Steven Spielberg has made a semi-autobiographical version of his boyhood years called The Fabelmans. It’s a film that has been nominated for 7 Oscars. Sammy Fabelman is a fictional portrait of Spielberg as a youth. As the film unfolds, we meet the whole Fabelman clan, including a somewhat unbalanced mother (Michelle Williams) and a mild-mannered acquiescent computer-genius father (Paul Dano). Their stories are worth following. And why would they not be? The screenplay is co-written by Spielberg and the talented Tony Kushner with whom Spielberg developed the recent remake of West Side Story.
All in all, the events of The Fabelmans are entertaining. The whole film has the aura of a sitcom. Even the darker events of Sammy’s life are not shown in a tragic manner. At the start, we witness the Fabelman parents bringing little Sammy to his first film. It is January 1952. They take him to see C.B. DeMille’s The Greatest Story Ever Told, not realizing that the violence and graphic train crash may have an emotional impact. This is the first instance in the film where we experience Sammy’s love of film -- no… his obsession with film. Over and over, we witness this aspect of Sammy’s life, all the way into his college years.
In addition to the believable nuclear family. there are two less credible characters: a preposterous, bombastic great uncle played by Judd Hirsch and a close family friend who holds a secret, played by Seth Rogen. While watching The Fabelmans, all 151 minutes of it, I kept being reminded of the current TV series The Goldbergs. If you edit The Fabelmans into six half-hour episodes, you would have a typical sitcom.
For a coming-of-age story, there is little emphasis on aspiration or inspiration. The Fabelmans is nicely directed by Spielberg himself, and it is pleasurable to watch. One can see it in theaters, on disc, or stream it from Prime Video.
Another recent film is more complex. Ralph Fiennes stars in The Menu, a movie described as a dark comedy. I would classify it as a thriller, a horror film. The plot revolves around a group of foodies who intend to spend an evening eating delicious and unusual food from the kitchen of an exclusive celebrity chef while enjoying the company of friends. However, the atmosphere soon turns out to be weird and scary. The Chef, Fiennes, is authoritarian, freakish in his presentations. The pace set for the cooks is militaristic.
The Menu features quite a number of characters, some would be comfortable in crime dramas, others in romance films, or dysfunctional family stories. Then there is the oddest character of all, the Chef’s mother. Haggard-looking, she sits by herself, says nothing, and drinks wine.
The Menu is unique in storyline. The writers, Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, each have won multiple primetime Emmys -- Tracy for his work on Succession and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and Reiss for Late Night with Seth Myers.
The film is directed by Mark Mylod who has co-produced and directed episodes of the highly creative HBO series Succession and Game of Thrones.
The Menu has an artist’s touch to it, and I look forward to seeing more films by Mylod. What makes this film special is its style. The manner in which Ralph Fiennes portrays The Chef is sometimes quite frightening and always exciting. Anya Taylor-Joy also puts in a strong performance as Margot, the last-minute guest for whom The Chef has not made preparations. Whoever began calling this film a dark comedy is pushing it. I was engrossed and alarmed throughout, but never recognized the comedic element. I shy away from scary films, but The Menu is a standout movie created by a host of talented people. It is on disc and streaming from multiple sources.
Audrey Kupferberg is a film and video archivist and retired appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and co-authored several entertainment biographies with her late husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
