Reel-View Ratings: The Bigger The Beard, The Better The Movie

on April 13, 2015 at 11:53 am

MANNY

It is not enough for the documentarian to play Pygmalion and carve his perfect idol from marble; no, to be great, he must be Aphrodite and breathe human life into Galatea. Unfortunately, the directors of Manny must’ve missed that memo. They cover Filipino boxer and national hero Manny Pacquiao’s eight world championships, his stint as an action film star and a budding political career, but it’s more akin to a commercial than a portrait. There’s no depth to it, no acknowledgment of the darker side of his success, nothing about who Pacquiao is behind the fame and glamour — it’s a highlight reel without narrative or context.

Plays at 7:30 p.m. April 19 and 22, and 1 p.m. April 24 and 26 at Doris Duke Theatre

TRUE STORY

Disgraced, source-falsifying journalist Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill) has a serendipitous run-in with murderer Christian Longo (James Franco) after Longo borrows Finkel’s name as an alias. The two strike a deal: Finkel will give Longo some writing tips if Longo shares the true story behind the murder of his wife and three children. A “true story” told by two liars sounds juicy with narrative potential, but this film squanders all of it with a surprisingly straightforward plot and miscast, dull performances from both leads. This is the kind of role Franco would normally relish, but he’s about as charming as hotel wallpaper here.

Opens April 17 at Kahala Theatre

WUNDERKINDER

A good Holocaust film is also a tragedy. You wish there would be a way the genre could be stale — that we have, at last, exhausted all the grief and horror that topic has to offer. That, unfortunately, will never be true. Wunderkinder focuses on three musical prodigies — two Jewish, one German — living in Ukraine just as the alliance between Germany and Russia starts to crumble in WWII. The children are innocent; the Nazis cruel but not caricatures. It is, at times, a hammy film, rough around the edges, but its heart is in the right place: with the 1.5 million children who died in the Holocaust.