8 THENEWYORKER,APRIL20, 2020
COURTESY NETFLIX
With this year’s Tribeca Film Festival postponed and the baseball sea-
son delayed, it’s worth revisiting the zesty documentary “The Battered
Bastards of Baseball,” about the joy and the business of the game, which
screened at the festival in 2014. (It’s now streaming on Netflix.) Fittingly,
its subject unites sports and movies—it’s centered on Bing Russell, a
film and TV actor who, in 1973, at the end of a twelve-year run in sup-
porting roles on the Western series “Bonanza,” founded the country’s
only independent minor-league baseball team, the Portland Mavericks.
A lifelong baseball obsessive, Russell combined the scouting acumen to
field a winning team and the canny showmanship to turn games into
events—and reaped local success, national celebrity, and aggressive
pushback from Major League Baseball. His son, the actor Kurt Russell,
also played for the Mavericks, and is one of the movie’s main interview
subjects, whose reminiscences—interwoven by the directors, the brothers
Chapman and Maclain Way, with tangy archival footage—resound with
the hearty wonder of a modern-day folktale.—Richard BrodyWHATTO STREAM
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For more reviews, visit
newyorker.com/goings-on-about-townstuck there. Spurning college to care for her
mother (Michelle Forbes), who’s a recovering
drug addict, Casey works at the local library.
When Jin (John Cho), an architectural histori-
an’s son, comes to town, he stokes an outpour-
ing of her pent-up ideas about architecture and
tries to help her change her life. Richardson’s
hyperalert performance has a rare dialectical
ardor; her avid gaze at the city’s landmarks is
matched by Kogonada’s own images, which cap-
ture the virtual libido of aesthetic sensibility.
Filming Casey and Jin beside the buildings that
inspire them, he revels in the power of contem-
plative companionship—of looking, talking,
thinking together—and unfolds the wonder of
an artistic coming of age. With Rory Culkin,
as Casey’s colleague, and Parker Posey, as Jin’s
longtime friend.—Richard Brody (Streaming on
Amazon, Google Play, and other services.)Creed
This stirring, heartfelt, rough-grained reboot of
the “Rocky” series is directed by Ryan Coogler,
who also wrote the story. It starts in a Los An-
geles juvenile-detention center, where youngAdonis Johnson is confined. He’s soon adopted
by Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad), Apol-
lo’s widow, who informs him that the late boxer
was his father. As an adult, Adonis (played by
Michael B. Jordan) defies Mary Anne to pursue
a boxing career, moving to Philadelphia to be
trained by Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone),
his father’s rival. The burly backstory and the
weight of personal history don’t stall the drama
but, rather, provide its fuel. Coogler—aided by
the cinematographer Maryse Alberti’s urgent
long takes—links the physical sacrifices of box-
ing and acting. Adonis also finds romance with
the rising singer Bianca (played with febrile
passion by Tessa Thompson), who has physical
struggles of her own. Coogler ingeniously turns
the myth of bootstrap-tugging exertions on its
head: without family and connections, the new
boxing star wouldn’t stand a fighting chance.
Released in 2015.—R.B. (Streaming on Amazon,
Google Play, and other services.)Dance, Girl, Dance
Dorothy Arzner’s 1940 melodrama spotlights
two dancers from a scuffling New York troupe—
Bubbles (Lucille Ball), a brazen gold-digger, and
Judy (Maureen O’Hara), a serious ballet student
who dreams of high art and true love. Bubbles
steals Judy’s rich beau and then steals a job from
her, as a bump-and-grind dancer in a burlesque
show. What’s more, as a cruel joke, Bubbles
brings Judy into the act for boorish spectators
to catcall—but Judy boldly turns the tables on
her tormentors. Arzner films dance with sharp
psychological nuance, looking with rapt admi-
ration at the ballet and highlighting the obscene
slobbering of men at the burlesque. These fe-
male artists face the crisscrossing conflicts of
art versus commerce and romance versus lust.
Arzner’s idealistic paean to the higher realms of
creative and romantic fulfillment is harshly real-
istic about the degradations that women endure
in entertainment—including the cinema itself.
With Maria Ouspenskaya, as the clear-eyed
dance teacher fallen from artistic heights.—R.B.
(Streaming on Amazon, Vudu, and other services.)Tucker: The Man and His Dream
This bright-toned and dynamic drama, from
1988—based on the true story of the automotive
visionary Preston Tucker—displays Francis Ford
Coppola’s artistry boldly and poignantly. The
action starts in 1945, when Tucker (played with
brash and good-humored verve by Jeff Bridges),
a military contractor in Ypsilanti, Michigan,
launches a daring plan to create a new kind of
car that will compete with Detroit’s Big Three
automakers. He’s joined by a New York invest-
ment banker (Martin Landau), a trio of brilliant
engineers (Mako, Elias Koteas, and Frederic
Forrest), and family members—his wife, Vera
(Joan Allen), and his son, Preston, Jr. (Christian
Slater). Much of the movie focusses on Tucker’s
clashes with financiers and established business
interests—and on the burden that his family
bears. (Tucker’s quest resembles Coppola’s trou-
bles with his own studio.) The film gleams with
the allure of lacquered sheet metal and hurtles
forward with the supercharged art and refined
science of industrial movie craft, which Coppola
and his crew imaginatively reinvigorate.—R.B.
(Streaming on Hulu, Amazon, and other services.)urrection of Anvil, a band that was founded
in the early nineteen-seventies and banged
heads with fame in the eighties—to emerge
with a saga of devotion and perseverance that’s
both touching and absurd. Gervasi is especially
fortunate to have the founding fathers of the
group, Robb Reiner and Steve (Lips) Kudlow,
now in creased middle age, to guide us through
its many downs and very occasional ups. The
action stretches from the band’s native Canada
to Transylvania, via Japan and Stonehenge. By
the end, to our surprise, we mind very much
whether the fortunes of Anvil are set to soar or
doomed to lurch once more; if most of its music
sounds like a fight in a lumber mill, who cares?
Released in 2009.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in
our issue of 4/27/09.) (Streaming on Amazon.)
Columbus
The title of Kogonada’s intellectually passionate
drama, from 2017, refers to the Indiana city
that’s home to a surprising abundance of mod-
ern architectural masterworks. Those buildings
fire the imagination of a twentyish woman
named Casey (Haley Lu Richardson), who’s