The Christophers: Michaela Coel and Ian McKellen – Photo: Claudette Barius
Soon to return to mastering magnetism in Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday, and to Middle Earth in next year’s The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, Sir Ian McKellen works a totally different screen magic in The Christophers.
Playing rascally rich and famous painter Julian Sklar, McKellen chows down on a meaty part that swings from acid-tongued bluster to tender vulnerability, often in the space of one or two lines of dialogue. Julian is an aging diva who won’t be tamed but needs to be loved, and he wants to remain relevant, somehow.
Directed by Steven Soderbergh, and elegantly scripted by Ed Solomon, The Christophers peels back layers of real truth about aging while working, while being an artist, while being bisexual, among other qualities, and wraps it in a bright, suspenseful caper about a plot to swindle Julian.
The culprits are his own adult children, Barnaby and Sallie (James Corden and Baby Reindeer‘s Jessica Gunning, both well-cast). They’re trying to get their hands on “The Christophers,” a series of paintings that Julian never completed.
So they hire an art restorer, Lori (a dialed-in Michaela Coel), to forge his work, and secretly complete the paintings, which will be worth millions when they’re discovered — after Julian dies, if all goes according to Sallie and Barnaby’s plan.
Their familial conflict, played for laughs, captures the tension between creating art for art’s sake, for self-expression and catharsis, versus viewing art strictly as a commodity. Julian understands that, as a celebrity, he’s a commodity along with his art.
We meet him recording Cameo birthday greetings for fans, the scene of ring-lit McKellen tossing off bon mots into an iPhone, an amusingly incongruous sight in itself. Some artists might choose to fade away, but most, like Julian — be they painters, or filmmakers, or actors — want their work to stay relevant.
“That’s the thing, isn’t it? To last in the minds of others,” Julian tells Lori. Solomon’s script has wisdom and witticisms rolling off Julian’s tongue like water, and few actors could make the language sound as rich as McKellen.
Coel holds her own as scene partner and co-lead, with Lori giving as good as she gets, while gaining Julian’s trust as his new assistant. The deceptions and double-crosses mount, offset by sincere discussions about style and meaning in art, and consistent comic relief from McKellen, Gunning, and Corden.
One nice comedic touch is that Julian already distrusts Sallie and Barnaby before this particular plot is even hatched. The running gag catching us up on why he refers to his “heirs abhorrent” as buzzards builds to a hilarious visual punchline.
Soderbergh shrewdly uses the paintings, good and horrible, to advance a narrative that’s paced fluidly, set to a sprightly score by frequent collaborator David Holmes, and keeps revealing intriguing new facets to its two main characters.
It turns out there’s a heart-tugging love story behind “The Christophers.” While the film largely lets Julian off the hook for having been, apparently, a distant, or simply absent, father, it covers, in brief but vivid strokes, the same-sex romance that inspired his paintings.
Ultimately, it’s his art — and Lori’s — that tie the whole story together, visually completing the picture of this profusely satisfying film.
The Christophers (★★★★☆) is rated R, and playing in theaters nationwide. Visit fandango.com.
If ’80s teen movie master John Hughes had been brave enough or interested enough to explore the obvious queer subtext in any of his classic coming-of-age comedies (we’re looking at you, Duckie), he might have come up with something like Screams from the Tower -- though probably funnier and with a better soundtrack.
Cory Wexler Grant wrote and directed this sweet, engaging, and still chuckle-worthy trip back to 1995, set at a suburban Illinois high school.
Clearly inspired by Hughes films and the TV series Glee, Grant’s film deals in obvious gay subtext, as well as loud-and-proud coming-out drama, in its touching story of best friends Julien (Richie Fusco) and Cary (David Bloom) co-hosting a wild and crazy morning show on their school’s public radio station.
The bounty of films this season bears some strange fruit that audiences might love to sample, along with shiny new apples like films from heavy hitters Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, and Steven Soderbergh, the latter two spinning original stories, respectively, in the sci-fi thriller Disclosure and the laid-back, art-world caper The Christophers.
A bumper crop of high-profile original stories, from Zendaya and Robert Pattinson vehicle The Drama, to Jane Schoenbrun's phantasmagoric horror film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, bodes well for the business, and should help balance the usual abundance of sequels, superheroes, game adaptations, and reboots. Dig in!
Right on time for Hollywood's Oscar night celebration of some of the best films of last year, theaters this weekend welcome a film certain to be remembered as one of the worst of this year: the acutely underwhelming, audio-files-from-hell chiller undertone.
The supernatural horror story from writer-director Ian Tuason does have its moments. Like the moment, about 90 minutes in, when, at a seemingly random point, the movie just ends. The abrupt cut to credits prompted a wave of groans, gasps, and wry chuckles from the audience at my screening, all of us fairly unanimous in the collective expression of "Was that it?"
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