By Susan Granger
Special to WestportNow
Renee Zellweger is dazzling in “Judy.” With Oscar-caliber dexterity, she captures the tragic strength and vulnerability of legendary Judy Garland — her wit and warmth, along with the charismatic emotionality of her voice.
Based on Peter Quilter’s play “End of the Rainbow” and adapted by screenwriter Tom Edge, Robert Goold’s sad film focuses on fragile Judy’s final London concerts before her death by overdose in 1969 at age 47.
By that time, she has already yielded to perpetual substance abuse, so it’s not a pretty picture.
Financially forced to leave her two young children (Lorna, Joey) with their father, Sid Luft (Rufus Sewell), notoriously unpredictable Judy accepts a series of dates at the Talk of the Town nightclub in London, where, out of loneliness, she marries her fifth husband, young pianist, Mickey Deans (Finn Wittrock).
There are spellbinding glimpses of Zellweger onstage as Judy, poignantly singing “You Made Me Love You,” “The Trolley Song,” “By Myself,” “For Once in My Life,” “Come Rain or Come Shine” and “Over the Rainbow.”
Gaunt and haggard, Zellweger’s world-weary songbird is broken, and stylized flashbacks reveal why.
As eager Frances Gumm (Darci Shaw), her life was totally controlled by tyrannical M.G.M. mogul Louis B. Mayer (Richard Cordery), who dictated what she could/could not eat, whom she could date and when the fake ‘photo op’ for her 16th birthday would occur.
Ultimately, it’s a tragedy, chronicling how a talented teenager was abused and exploited, tormented to seek affection and approval from strangers in order to feel any self-worth. A quote from “Oz” author L. Frank Baum notes: “A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others.”
As a cinematic chameleon, Renee Zellweger has progressed from a lovable ingénue (“Jerry Maguire”) to romantic comedy (“Bridget Jones”), musical star (“Chicago”), twangy Southern farmer (“Cold Mountain”), sinister tech mogul (Netflix’s “What/If”) and now iconic Judy Garland.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Judy” is an erratic, yet empathetic 8, marking the 50th anniversary of her death.
With an American whistleblower dominating headlines, Gavin Hood’s political thriller “Official Secrets” about a British intelligence specialist has added resonance.
While South African writer/director Gavin Hood is best known for “X-Men Origins” and “Wolverine,” he relishes ethical dilemmas like “Eye in the Sky” about drone strikes and this story of a government official who decides that the public’s right to know about deception is worth breaking the Official Secrets Act.
Just as George W. Bush is justifying the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Katharine Gun (overwrought Keira Knightley), a midlevel Mandarin Chinese translator at GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) in Cheltenham, receives a Top Secret memo from Frank Koza at the NSA.
It details a plan to enlist the U.K.’s help in collecting compromising information on United Nations Security Council members with the intention of blackmailing them into voting in favor of invading Iraq.
Shocked, Gun realizes that, if the British agree to the plan, the result would be a war predicated by false information and manipulation. She shares this incendiary information with an anti-war activist friend who passes it along to journalist Martin Bright (Matt Smith), along with Ed Vulliamy (Rhys Ifans) and Peter Beaumont (Matthew Goode).
When The Observer concludes the memo is authentic, and publishes it, there’s a search for the “leaker” — like when Daniel Ellsberg disclosed the Pentagon Papers to The Washington Post.
When Gun is arrested and charged with treason, she righteously declares: “I do not gather intelligence so the government can lie to the British people.”
Complicating matters further is the fact that her husband, Yasar (Adam Bakri), is Muslim, an Iraqi Kudish immigrant who faces deportation. Eventually, the case against Gun is dropped after her lawyer, Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes), threatens to use disclosure to put the legal basis of the war itself on trial.
Unevenly scripted by Sara Bernstein, Gregory Bernstein and Gavin Hood, it’s overly-talky in its execution, emphasizing accountability — because truth always matters.
On the Granger Gauge, “Official Secrets” is a steely 6, examining the essence of heroism.
Over the past four films, John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) has established himself as an unstoppable killer. Trained by the military, he was deployed to the jungles of Vietnam. Like many soldiers returning from that unpopular war, suffering PTSD, he never adjusted to civilian life, becoming jaded and bitter.
But “Rambo: Last Blood” begins with seemingly contented Rambo spending his twilight years on his secluded Arizona ranch with his adopted family: middle-aged, matriarchal Maria (Adriana Barraza) and her teenage granddaughter Gabrielle (Yvette Monreal), who calls him “Uncle John.”
“I haven’t changed,” Rambo notes. “I’m just trying to keep a lid on it, every day.”
But when Gabrielle travels to Mexico to find her biological father who abandoned her many years earlier, she’s kidnapped by a sex-trafficking ring led by brothers Hugo (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) and Victor (Oscar Jaenada).
All his repressed rage resurfaces when Rambo takes off to find her, only to suffer a savage beating as the bad guys sneer, “Are you lost, old man?”
Afterward, he’s nursed back to health by a Mexican journalist (Paz Vega), whose sister was kidnapped and murdered by the same brothers.
Unable to fight on their territory, Rambo lures the cartel thugs back to his heavily fortified, booby-trapped compound, after making sure Maria and his horses are safely hidden away. Predictably, bloody, violent carnage — including impalements, decapitation and incineration — ensues during the revenge/siege.
Working from a generic screenplay by now 73-year-old Stallone and Matthew Cirulnick, director Adrian Grunberg (“Get the Gringo”) makes sure that — when Rambo threatens to cut a man’s heart out — he does exactly that.
If that’s not enough to discourage you, David Morrell, author of the “First Blood” novel on which the series is based, tweeted: “I agree with the ‘Rambo: Last Blood’ reviews. The film is a mess. Embarrassed to have my name associated with it.”
On the Granger Gauge, “Rambo: Last Blood” is a traumatized 2. Mercifully, it runs only 89 minutes.
(Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
