In 2021, Disney+ aired nine episodes of “WandaVision”. The first Marvel Studios series created exclusively for Disney+, it starred Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff, Paul Bettany as Vision, and Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, who was introduced to audiences in “Captain Marvel.” Kat Dennings reprised her role as Darcy from “Thor” and “Thor: The Dark World,” and Randall Park reprised his role as Jimmy Woo from “Ant-Man and The Wasp.”
“WandaVision” was a blend of classic television and the Marvel Cinematic Universe in which Wanda Maximoff and Vision – two super-powered beings living idealized suburban lives – began to suspect that everything was not as it seemed. The series was directed by Matt Shakman with Jac Schaeffer as head writer. The composers were Christophe Beck and Oscar-winning songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez (“Frozen”).
While the series set up the MCU film DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS, it also introduced the complex relationship between Agatha Harkness and Wanda Maximoff along with the actress that would become a fan favorite, Kathryn Hahn.
Today, Disney+ released a new trailer and poster for the upcoming Marvel Television live-action series, “Agatha All Along.” The series focuses on Kathryn Hahn’s character, Agatha Harkness, from the acclaimed Marvel Studios’ series “WandaVision,” as she sets off on a dangerous, mysterious adventure filled with trials and tribulations. Showrunner Jac Schaeffer, who was the creative force behind “WandaVision,” directs the pilot episode.
In “Agatha All Along,” the infamous Agatha Harkness finds herself down and out of power after a suspicious goth Teen helps break her free from a distorted spell. Her interest is piqued when he begs her to take him on the legendary Witches’ Road, a magical gauntlet of trials that, if survived, rewards a witch with what they’re missing. Together, Agatha and this mysterious Teen pull together a desperate coven, and set off down, down, down The Road…
In addition to Kathryn Hahn, “Agatha All Along” stars Joe Locke, Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Maria Dizzia, Paul Adelstein, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Okwui Okpokwasili, with Debra Jo Rupp, with Patti LuPone, and Aubrey Plaza. The executive producers are Kevin Feige, Louis D’Esposito, Brad Winderbaum, Mary Livanos and Jac Schaeffer. The directors for the series include Jac Schaeffer, Rachel Goldberg and Gandja Montiero.
Marvel Television’s “Agatha All Along” premieres September 18 at 6:00 p.m. PT/9:00 p.m. ET, with the first two episodes, exclusively on Disney+.
Joaquin Phoenix as Beau in BEAU IS AFRAID. Courtesy of A24.
BEAU IS AFRAID – and confused and feeling guilty and often fleeing in panic, as he is caught in a world of bizarre events, in director/writer Ari Aster’s nightmarish fever dream of a movie, BEAU IS AFRAID. And mostly, Beau has mommy issues. This unsettling horror mind-trip, with a touch of darkest humor and surrealist fantasy, has the prefect star, that master of madness, Joaquin Phoenix, who plays an anxious, nervous man who might be prone to hallucinations who sets out to do a seemingly simple thing: visit his mother.
Craziness is afoot and there is plenty for Beau to be afraid of in Ari Aster’s BEAU IS AFRAID. The weird, imaginative and sometimes darkly humorous BEAU IS AFRAID is a squirm-inducing experience from a director who is scary good at creating unsettling movies, whose previous films MIDSOMMAR and HEREDITARY are striking examples of stylish psychological horror. While some films defined as horror are more bloody than actually scary, this is one that is truly scary, like the director’s previous two. BEAU IS AFRAID is masterfully-made, creative and often visually beautiful (particularly in a haunting fantasy sequence in the middle) and brilliantly acted, but it is a crazy, sometimes unsettling experience. While it is a creatively impressive film, it is not something for everyone, nor perhaps even an experience one would repeat.
Despite it’s nearly 3 hour length, it never drags and keeps up an almost breathless pace as the terrified Beau flees from one danger after another, and it is a tour-de-force performance by Joaquin Phoenix, with fine supporting work from Patti LuPone, Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Parker Posey and others.
In BEAU IS AFRAID, Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix), an anxious, solitary man, is just trying to travel to home to visit his mother, but is beset by a host of obstacles that evokes the trials of a modern odyssey. But unlike Odysseus’ travels to get back to his loyal wife and comfortable home, Beau’s destination is to visit a mother with whom he has a toxic relationship. Sort of Freud meets Homer.
Beau lives alone in a modest apartment in an impoverished, chaotic and crime-ridden area of a big city, one that seems to be a cartoonish version of all the violent stereotypes of a crime-filled New York. Beau is seeing a psychiatrist ((Stephen McKinley Henderson), who prescribes a new medication with a warning of side effects. This therapy session early in the movie gives us a glimpse into Beau’s troubled relationship with his strong mother (Patti LuPone), as her timid only child. Although the therapist questions the wisdom of Beau’s plan to visit her, Beau is determined to see his beloved mother, on his parent’s wedding anniversary, which is also the anniversary of the death of the father he never met. On his way back to his apartment, Beau stops at a street-side vendor to buy a little white ceramic figurine of a mother and child as a gift for his mother.
Visiting his mother seems such a simple thing but everything goes wrong that could. A series of unfortunate events, starting with an alarm clock that does not wake him, prevent him from catching his plane. Calling his mother, he gets a response that suggests Beau has been unreliable in the past, which both doubles his guilt and resolve to get home. But even more disasters ensue, as Beau tries to make his way through a remarkably malevolent world.
The film starts out with such over-the-top absurdities and dark humor, that the audience is forced to laughter. But the laughter becomes more nervous and uncomfortable as the film unfolds, until it fades away entirely in the later part of this journey of delirious horror.
Beau is buffeted by multiple horrific events which increase his fear and often his sense of guilt, and generally send him running in panic. At one point, he is essentially trapped in the suburban home of a seemingly well-meaning couple (Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan) who had accidentally hit him with their car, sharing space with their resentful teen-aged daughter Toni (Kylie Rogers), which shortly descends into an unexpected madness. A flashback to Beau’s youth, and a cruise with his mother in which the pubescent Beau (Armen Nahapetian) meets a girl (Julia Antonelli), gives insight on his toxic relationship with his mother (played at that age by Zoey Lister Jones), in a gorgeously-shot Freudian interlude.
The flashback is one of many with uncomfortable scenes skirting some disturbing stuff. The film purports to be an exploration of modern life and its challenges, and there are a host of awful forces surrounding Beau, starting with a crowd gather on a city street, who are urging a man on a skyscraper ledge to jump, and a corpse laying in the street, ignored, near his apartment, and later a deranged war veteran intent on murder pursuing him through the woods. But, for the most part, it is all about his mother. While the movie plays with stereotypes about overbearing Jewish mothers, Beau’s issues with his mother goes well beyond that and deep into creepiness – enough to make you wonder about the writer of this script.
Still, it is hard to overemphasize the impressive cinematic and visual artistry (from director of photography Pawel Pogorzelski) in this film, despite the squirm-inducing events taking place. One particularly impressive example of the visual artistry comes midway through the film, in a fantasy sequence that provides the audience (and the character) with a welcome break from Beau’s trials in the film. An escape into the woods leads to a magical fantasy sequence, in which Beau meets a traveling theater troupe and while watching their play, becomes a different character on a very different life journey, putting Joaquin Phoenix in a partly-animated and color-drenched landscape. This beautiful, creative fantasy sequence provides a respite from the terror of the Beau’s experiences and a relaxing breather for the audience, as well as the film’s highlight. After this delightful interlude, however, we come back to Beau’s nightmare journey.
Whether what is happening in this whole film is only in Beau’s imagination, whether it is all a nightmarish fever dream, the result of his new medication, a hallucination of a mentally ill mind, or some combination of those things, is never made clear in this crazy film. One has to admire the film’s artistry and the director’s skill and that of the actors but this film is an unsettling experience.
Casting Joaquin Phoenix for this role is the perfect choice, and in fact, the whole cast is impressive as well. Phoenix gives the kind of tour-de-force performance he is famous for, in this case, not as a villain but as a victim. Whether he is a victim of his own weakness, a mentally ill mind, a domineering mother, a series of unfortunate events or just evil afoot in the world, is not clear, but it sure falls hard on the unprepared Beau. Patti LuPone gives a powerful performance as Beau’s mother, a strong personality who has a host of her own issues, and represents some classic bad parenting. Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan play a weird couple who are obsessed with their son who was killed in the military yet ignore their angry teen-aged daughter.
At nearly 3 hours, BEAU IS AFRAID has all the earmarks of being yet another of those films that incubated during the Covid lock-down, joining a line of inward-gazing, and often long, films by major directors that were released last year and this. Among those are Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s visually lush BARDO: FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTH. BEAU IS AFRAID has several things in common with the rambling, surreal BARDO, but where that film is an imagined biography, here the major tone is terror.
BEAU IS AFRAID is impressive as cinematic art and a nightmarish psychological horror film that fits in well with director Ari Aster’s previous works HEREDITARY and MIDSOMMAR and features a perfectly-cast Joaquin Phoenix, but it is an intense experience that is not for every audience and one that is even more disturbing than the previous two. Frustratingly, nothing is really resolved in this story, although we do get the answers to a few questions, and little is really revealed about Beau’s or his mother’s inner life or motivations.
BEAU IS AFRAID opens Friday, Apr. 21, in theaters.
Nearly 35 years ago DeNiro truly stunned film fans (yes, he could do that back then) when they learned of his next big screen collaboration with Martin Scorsese. It was crazy enough that the duo would follow the brutal one-two punch of MEAN STREETS and TAXI DRIVER with a glossy homage to big splashy MGM-style movie musicals, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, but this? They seemed to be back in their comfort zone with the classic RAGING BULL, when they made another big detour. A look at comedy, namely a portrait of a failed stand-up comic (he’d be dubbed a “hack” today) named Rupert Pupkin. 1982’s THE KING OF COMEDY even co-starred the iconic Jerry Lewis, who often claimed that royal title. The film was then considered a box office flop, but the years have been most kind to it (in stand-up parlance, maybe it was “too hip for the room”). Now, all those years later Mr. D grabs the microphone once more, but without Scorsese to guide him, and toss insults and one-liners as THE COMEDIAN.
The story begins with the downward trajectory of the roller coaster career of stand-up comic Jackie Burke (DeNiro). The highest peak may have been thirty years ago when he had his own network TV sitcom. Now, he’s playing the “nostalgia” circuit, taking a cab to a far-away-from Manhattan club to join other past tube stars Brett Butler and Jimmie “JJ” Walker. Despite the drunken bachelorette party that’s too close to the stage, Jackie’s doing fairly well, easing the concerns of his manager Miller (Edie Falco), the daughter of his late manager. Then the heckling from one table escalates. Jackie engages in a verbal “smack down” with the burly dude when he notices his date recording everything with her phone. They’re grabbing free material for their internet show. A tug-of-war with the mike begins, then ends with the heckler down for the count. The duo take Jackie to court, and insist on an apology, which prompts a string of scathing insults from the star. The judge is not amused, and tacks a month in jail on to her 100 hours of community service sentence. When he’s released, Jackie immediately visits his brother (Danny DeVito) and hits him up for a loan ,while avoiding the cold shoulder from his sister-in-law Flo (Patti LuPone). Meanwhile, a woman named Harmony (Leslie Mann) is surprised by a visit from her Florida-based papa, Mac (Harvey Keitel). He insists that she return to the sunshine state with him, since she can fulfill her court sentence (?) by working at the senior center he owns. No, she’ll stay in the big apple, but will join him for his birthday dinner. Harmony goes to the local church’s homeless outreach center where she fulfills her service requirements next to new helper…the one and only Jackie B! Despite a rocky start the two agree to help each other out. He’ll be her present for her pop’s birthday (Mac’s a big fan of that old sitcom) while she’ll be his date for the wedding of Jackie’s niece. The booze and laughs flow, and the two wind up back at Harmony’s place. The next morning she’s history, on her way to Tampa, and blocking all of Jackie’s calls and texts. Over the next few months his career as many more ups and downs, but he still hopes to connect with her once more.
First off, the obvious: DeNiro is much more believable as a lousy, unpopular comic (as in the earlier KING) than a successful (though hitting the skids) one. His line delivery (knowing which words to “hit”) and stage command (showing the audience who’s in charge) are severely lacking. Of course his bits aren’t that funny (looking downward to give himself a “pep talk”). But he’s putting a lot more energy into this role than in most of his non-David O Russell work, so it’s not a complete slide into “does he ever turn anything down?”.The character is meant to be a foul-mouthed lovable rascal, but he’s more like the embarrassing uncle you hope won’t make the next family bash (the wedding scene is a prime example). Although there are many comics on screen playing themselves (Jim Norton, Gilbert Gottfried, etc.), DeNiro never seems to be part of the cabal, let alone their idol/leader. At least he finds a match in Harmony (no, not the web dating site), as they’re both disruptive, human firecrackers tossed into the library of life. Mann does some of her best non-hubby work (though she’ll be working with Judd Apatow again, hopefully). She’s just as silly and tough, a sparkly “b#@lbuster”, as in her other roles, but that script lets her down. Harmony seems under-written, never letting us understand her dark side (it doesn’t help when she’s suddenly gone for a good third of the flick). Mann certainly fares better than Falco, who’s mainly a devoted, fretting, loyal nanny to the tantrum-throwing “baby-man” Burke. The flick flickers back to life briefly when DeNiro gets to verbally spar with early career co-star Keitel. Mac may enjoy being in Jack’s company, but the thought of his daughter with….errr…well, you can see his BP rising (cue the cartoon stem puffs). The two circle each other like sumo wrestlers, locating each other’s weaknesses, thinking they know exactly what’s on the other’s mind. Otherwise Mac’s really a one-note flashy jerk, a “rat pack-wannabe”. DeVito has a nice believable rapport (they could be bros) with DeNiro, but he gets no chance to unleash his wild comic style (a real Louie DePalma explosion would’ve helped things). Charles Grodin and Cloris Leachman just appear bewildered and befuddled in a Friar’s Club Roast subplot that just fills time. But the biggest waste of talent may be casting Broadway royalty LuPone as a tired cliché, the sour, emasculating shrew. C’mon Hollywood, she deserves better, otherwise we’ll lose her to “the boards” for good!
Director Taylor has made several terrific music-based films (RAY, THE IDOLMAKER), but the world of stand-up is more difficult for him to command. Too many quick cuts to the audience, and too tight on the performers. Once he’s out of the stages and clubs, Hackford is more in control, but the situations seem too artificial. Perhaps it’s the old “too many cooks” problem with the script credited to five (!) writers. I’m wondering if each one contributed a storyline, giving the film a TV sitcom ‘arc” feel, like several episodes of the “first season” patched together (“Jackie at the Roast”, “Jackie Pitches a Show”, “The Big Wedding”, etc.). Perhaps that’s why Jackie is often inconsistent. He serves up bestiality routines along with the yams to the street folks at the church, but he balks at hosting an edgy “endure pain and humiliation for cash and prizes” cable TV game show. And the jabs at “viral stardom” are heavy-handed and silly. Jackie doing a sing-a-long with some feisty seniors about incontinence set to the melody of an Eddie Canter classic? Hmmmm, really? And what’s their idea of a “daring”, provactive final scene? Let’s have a sweet-faced little six year-old drop an “F-bomb”. Feels more lazy and desperate than anything edgy. But it represents the rest of the flick, because THE COMEDIAN never becomes a “top banana”. More like an over-ripe, mushy one. Don’t forget to tip your servers!
WAMG is giving away one signed poster for THE COMEDIAN, the upcoming movie starring Robert De Niro! Don’t miss De Niro, Leslie Mann, and Danny DeVito in director Taylor Hackford’s new film.
An aging comic icon, JACKIE BURKE (Robert De Niro) has seen better days. Despite his efforts to reinvent himself and his comic genius, the audience only wants to know him as the former television character he once played.
Already a strain on his younger brother (Danny DeVito) and his wife (Patti LuPone), Jackie is forced to serve out a sentence doing community service for accosting an audience member.
While there, he meets HARMONY (Leslie Mann), the daughter of a sleazy Florida real estate mogul (Harvey Keitel), and the two find inspiration in one another resulting in surprising consequences.
Through the alchemy of their unlikely friendship, Harmony and Jackie overcome their own emotional damage and emerge as better people.
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The world of sports has done this for many, many years -the all-star game. The very best players from all the different teams gathered together for one game. That big all-star type event has happened in the world of monster movie from THE HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN ( Frankenstein’s Monster! Dracula! The Wolfman! etc. ) to DESTROY ALL MONSTERS! ( Godzilla! Rodan! Mothra! etc.). Well you’ve got a limited chance to view an all-star once in a lifetime( although I think they did two performances ). Broadway musical. This past April the New York Philharmonic presented a staged concert version of Stephan Sondheim’s 1970 musical classic ” Company”. Broadway veterans and Hollywood stars joined forces to revisit this look at modern relationships. For all you theatre geeks and “gleeks” ( fans of the TV show “Glee” ) this is pure bliss.
The term “staged concert” is a fairly new show term. Like a concert performance of a stage musical, there are no backdrops, limited props ( most items are pantomimed ), and no big costume changes. The “staged” part refers to minimal dance choreography instead of the performers reading and singing from podiums. Here the actors present the show in front of the orchestra which has joined them on stage as opposed to being out of sight below them in the “pit”.
Enough with the tech stuff! What’s the show about? Well it centers on a single guy-Robert ( Neil Patrick Harris ) who’s given a surprise birthday party by his dear friends-four couples. All but one of the couples is married. We also get to meet three single ladies that swingin’ Bobby is seeing. In flashbacks we see Robert interacting with each of the couples. Harry and Sarah ( Stephen Colbert and Martha Plimpton ) keep track of each other’s indiscretions while confiding in Robert. Peter and Susan ( Craig Bierko and Jill Paice ) stun Robert when they announce their plans to divorce. David and Jenny ( Jon Cryer and Jennifer Lauren Thompson ) are sold suburban parents who share a walk on the wild side via a joint from Robert. Paul and Amy ( Aaron Lazar and Kate Finneran ) are in pre-wedding panic mode. Robert goes to a club with the much married, hard drinking, cynical Joanne ( Patti LuPone) and her new hubby, Larry ( Jim Walton ) where she challenges the indecisive single guy.
The actors are given a chance to shine with these gorgeous songs and great script. Some smart studio exec has to let Harris headline a big,brassy movie musical in between his excellent award show hosting gigs. The other big standouts are the delightful Tony winning actress Finneran’s exasperated “Not Getting Married Today” and LuPone showing her diva skills by belting out the show’s most enduring ballad, ” The Ladies Who Lunch”. Fans of TV’s “Mad Men” will be surprised by the great comic turn by Christine Hendricks as one of Robert’s girlfriends- the ditsy airline attendant ( or as Austin Powers would say,”sexy stew” ) April. Members of the Colbert Nation will get to see their hero in full singing, dancing mode. There’s no big camera tricks, no cinema enahancements on display here. Just a record of a classic show performed beautifully by an extrordinary group of actors. If you can’t make it out to Broadway, then this is the next best thing to the ” great white way”. It’s ” tops in taps”!
Overall Rating: Four and a Quarter Out of Five Stars
COMPANY is playing at St. Louis’s Tivoli Theatre ( and around the country ) only on Wednesday, June 15, Thursday June 16, and Tuesday June 21 at 7:30 PM
