Category: Will Price

ELEANOR THE GREAT

By Marc S. Sanders

In her directorial debut, Scarlett Johansson offers purpose and more to gain and learn about life even when you’re in your mid-90’s.  She directs June Squibb as Eleanor Morgenstein, a widowed ninety-four-year-old Jewish mother who relocates from Florida back to New York City when her roommate of eleven years, Bessie (Rita Zohar), has passed away.   Temporarily, she moves in with her preoccupied daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) and her twenty something son Max (Will Price), whose best friend is his cell phone.  Lisa encourages Eleanor to move into an assisted living home, but the spunky, independent woman opts to visit the local Jewish Community Center (JCC) where she inadvertently comes upon a Holocaust survival group.  She certainly doesn’t belong here as she never had to endure that dark period, nor did any of her family.  Yet, before she can excuse herself, she is recounting Bessie’s personal experience of surviving the concentration camps while losing her brother to the Nazis.  It’s Bessie’s story, not Eleanor’s.

Nina is a student at NYU who’s been welcomed to observe this meeting to complete a journalism assignment.  She is a quiet, young girl played with stunning sensitivity by Erin Kellyman (Solo: A Star Wars Story, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier).  The entire group of elders and Nina are completely taken with Eleanor’s anecdote and extend a loving hand of gratitude and support.  When the meeting ends, Eleanor makes a quick exit, but Nina is determined to learn more about her ordeal.  

Nina is enduring an aftermath of grief following the sudden loss of her mother.  Her father is Roger, a famous newscaster played by Chiwetel Ejiofor beautifully staying under the radar of the leading ladies. Roger hardly engages with Nina.  Her world is empty and alone.  Yet, when a bond forms with Eleanor the isolation dwindles. Eleanor doesn’t frown or judge Nina for being gay.  She loves that she’s filled a void her daughter and grandson leave empty, especially around Shabbat.  The two need one another. 

It’s the lie that sets the women apart though.  In addition, Eleanor’s story is catching on with the JCC community and Nina’s NYU professor and class.  More importantly, her school project impresses Roger who sees potential for a televised story that will include the ladies’ newfound friendship, Eleanor’s upcoming bat mitzvah service, and her supposed survival through the Holocaust that never happened to her.  The more this tale evolves among the populace, the harder it becomes for Eleanor to be honest.

Eleanor The Great hinges on the chemistry between two distant generations with very uncommon backgrounds.  For the film to work June Squibb and Erin Kellyman had to be interesting both together and separately.  Tory Kamen’s script explores their respective loneliness just as much as the times they share either in a surprise trip to Coney Island, over a Shabbat dinner, or when Eleanor gets up the nerve to be bat mitzvahed with Nina by her side.

Johansson’s film is not long and therefore not as expansive on dialogue.  She finds scenes to detail the exposition of Kamen’s screenplay with impressive visual performances from Squibb, and especially Kellyman.  We eventually learn how Nina’s Jewish mother passed, but we first learn that she died when Kellyman enters a room in the apartment she shares with Roger.  Scarlett Johansson does not rush through this scene.  There’s no verbiage.  Only coverage with her camera and strong closeups on Kellyman and the decor and props that occupy the room.  It’s enough to get the idea and feel strongly for the character.

The director takes a similar tactic with Eleanor.  The prologue of the film presents an endearing relationship of daily routine between her and her best friend Bessie as they wake up with an energetic early start to their day comprised of breakfast, exercise, a visit to the market and a lively argument with another customer, followed by a sit down on a bench overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.  When Bessie passes, Eleanor returns to these familiar locales only now we recognize the best friend’s absence.  This is all completed in the first ten minutes.  Superb, uncomplicated visual storytelling.

I have two shortcomings with the film, however.  One concerns how the truth is finally revealed.  It’s too contrived and the only time that this story doesn’t feel genuine.  Yet, it does not capsize the movie either.  

As well, a side storyline for Eleanor seems unfinished.  Just one more scene was needed to complete the picture.  It could have even been offered over the end credits.  I’ll explain down below so as not to spoil anything.  Perhaps, the budget on this small project wouldn’t allow it to be shot.

Eleanor The Great is a wonderful surprise for all ages.  It teeters on getting schmaltzy without getting thick, and while you expect the big misunderstanding is going to reveal itself, you’re not eager to get there.  You get taken up in this very special relationship.  When all the cards are laid on the table, the film puts all the weight on Rita Zohar’s character for Bessie to recall her heartbreaking experience.  The last thing that terrible encounter could ever be is weepy or schmaltzy.  Zohar offers complete truth and transparency in a genuinely heartbreaking monologue.  The budget likely wouldn’t allow a visual recap in history for this small film, but that’s a blessing.  We’ve seen literal flashbacks far too often.  Johansson goes for the acting and recollection of the character.  She does not get over inventive with camera work and simply depends on Zohar’s skilled stage performance with Squibb next to her to listen and react.  It’s utterly harrowing and brilliantly descriptive.

June Squibb is lovable but also tough, happy, sassy and suddenly complex, which Eleanor absolutely never wanted to be.  This ninety something year old is not stressing about death like so many other characters in this category. Her conflict is stressed on holding on to her connection to a new friend.

Erin Kellyman is a young actress that needs a huge following.  She has a unique natural beauty; an appearance that doesn’t invite glamour like so many others in Hollywood rely upon. Still, the camera loves her. She’s completely striking with her natural behavior. This is an actor ready for dimensional roles that are summed up over a two hour span, and not in the first five minutes.  It would be a huge regret to overlook the promise of her instinctive talent in front of the camera.  Scarlett Johansson lends every favor imaginable to enhance everything Kellyman can offer.  This actress is this new director’s Jackson Pollack.

This small picture with so much to offer, Eleanor The Great, can be found on Netflix currently (May, 2026).  It’s an absolute treasure not to be missed.

SPOILER ALERT: Eleanor was intent on having a Bat Mitzvah.  We see her discussing her Torah portion with the Rabbi about the deception that Jacob does on his father Isaac, and we witness her practicing for the upcoming event.  However, due to an inconvenient interruption, that service never gets completed.  When all is resolved by the end of the film, we never get to see Eleanor’s bat mitzvah occur.  It’s like Rocky missing the championship fight.  It really had to be there, even if it was filmed with an orchestral score over the scene.  Truly a glaring, regrettable omission.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (2024)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: James Mangold
CAST: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 79% Certified Fresh

PLOT: In 1961, Bob Dylan arrives in NYC for the first time.  Four years later, his groundbreaking performance in Newport changed the music world forever.


The 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams began as a small-scale, 30-minute project concentrating on two inner-city boys who dreamed of making it to the NBA.  It was supposed to cover only a few months in their lives, but as their stories progressed, the filmmakers just continued filming, and the sprawling documentary eventually covered five years and became an absorbing three-hour odyssey.

In a weird way, that’s how I felt about James Mangold’s Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.  The movie opens with no backstory, no flashbacks, just a disheveled young Bobby Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) arriving in 1961 New York City with his guitar, determined to meet his idol, legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie, hospitalized at the time with Huntington’s disease and no longer able to sing or speak.  In Guthrie’s hospital room, Dylan also meets another folk legend, Pete Seeger (Edward Norton), in what must count as one of the greatest musical summit conferences of all time.

The way this scene is shot, it almost feels like, after it’s over, it could be the end of a marvelous short film about three legends bumping into each other.  But, like Hoop Dreams, this biopic remains focused on the unknown Bobby Dylan, with his nasal whine and preternatural gift for lyrics, for five years.  He eventually gets more and more exposure and cuts his first album.  Along the way, he meets two women who will be his emotional touchstones during the film: the celebrated Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), whom Dylan accuses of being and singing “too pretty,” and Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), who becomes his girlfriend despite his flirtations with Ms. Baez.

But throughout the film – and this is one of the reasons I enjoyed it more than I thought I would – we remain focused almost exclusively on Dylan, the man and his music.  We are treated to countless scenes of Dylan performing live, Dylan recording in a studio, Dylan scratching out a new song note for note and word for word.  If a soundtrack album were ever compiled of the full-length versions of all the songs we hear in A Complete Unknown, I have to believe it would be between two to three hours long, if not more.

Why did I react so favorably to this kind of treatment?  My two favorite musical biopics of all time are Ray [2004] and Amadeus [1984].  Amadeus certainly contains a LOT of music, much like A Complete Unknown, but we are given a lot of background information into Mozart’s life, his relationship with his father, his childhood years, and so on, whereas the Dylan film presents him as a blank slate without a single flashback to his younger years.  Ray is much more in the vein of your “traditional” musical biopics like Walk the Line [2005, also directed by Mangold] or Bohemian Rhapsody [2018], containing the standard story beats of struggles in their personal lives, a haunting past, liberal-to-moderate use of flashbacks, you get the idea.

I suppose part of my enjoyment of A Complete Unknown stems from the fact that, even though I’m not a Dylan fan, or Fan with a capital F, I appreciate the songs themselves, with their intricate lyrics and folksy rhythms, so I thoroughly enjoyed the myriad musical breaks.  I also liked the way the movie did not spoon-feed me chunks of information it felt I needed to know.  Instead of the movie telling me how I should feel about a scene or a moment with clunky dialogue or exposition, it simply presents a situation and kind of stands back from it, allowing me to form my own emotional reactions to the material.  That’s a tricky storytelling method; one false step and you’re left with a story with no heart, no meat in the middle.  But A Complete Unknown pulls it off extremely well.  I’m sure there’s a way to explain how they did it, but I’m not the one to try.  I just know that it works, and that’s enough for me.

Any discussion of this movie must necessarily include Timothée Chalamet’s magnetic performance as Bob Dylan.  It is destined for an Oscar nomination.  I am reliably informed that Chalamet did all the singing himself (as did Norton and Barbaro as Seeger and Baez, and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash), and he went to great lengths to mimic Dylan’s trademark sound.  Combined with the pitch-perfect hair and makeup, it really feels like the real Dylan onscreen, especially when the movie jumps forward to the Newport Music Festivals of ‘64 and ‘65.  Of course, I wasn’t alive back then, but I have seen pictures and documentary footage of the man himself, and Chalamet is utterly convincing.  Even if you’re not a Dylan fan, this movie is worth watching just to see Chalamet’s performance…he’s that good.

My colleague, Marc Sanders, mentions in his review how the production design of the film went to great lengths to recreate early-1960s New York City, and I second that statement.  It’s as utterly convincing as Chalamet himself, especially when it comes to the various “underground” music clubs Dylan performs in, clubs where the folk music revolution was born.  I get the feeling that anyone who watches this movie, who was also alive at the time, will be easily transported back to that era when Kennedy’s Camelot was in full swing, as was the hippie movement, the folk movement, the civil rights movement, the Cold War, the Beatles.  There are aspects of this film that I may never fully appreciate since I was born in the early ‘70s, but I get the gist.

I feel compelled to rebut a specific argument from my girlfriend, who did not like the movie because it did not give us any real background information about who Bob Dylan really is.  (We only get a single tantalizing glimpse when someone leafs through one of his old scrapbooks that had been delivered to a “Mr. Zimmerman.”)  All the movie does, so her argument goes, is present us with a performer singing his music, culminating in a pivotal big concert, of which the same could be said of many other biopics that came before.  A Complete Unknown could just as well have been about Richie Havens, or Jerry Lee Lewis, or Janis Joplin, or anyone else.  There is no real personal conflict presented in the film.

To which I have to say…that’s not quite true.  I acknowledge the absence of background story and flashbacks, but for me, as I said, that’s a strength, not a weakness.  It follows the theme set up by the film’s title, after all.  Also, there is a real conflict in the story, as Dylan, after becoming the figurehead for the folk music movement in America, takes the unprecedented step of recording an album and performing live songs that are (gasp!) non-acoustic.  He complains that his fans want him to sing “Blowin’ in the Wind” for the rest of his life. This generates shockwaves throughout the folk community, and at one of his concerts where he performs an electric set, the crowd jeers, throws trash at him, and even calls him “Judas.”  That pretty much counts as “conflict,” in my opinion.

A Complete Unknown goes down as one of the best films of 2024 that I’ve seen.  For Dylan fans, it is an absolute must-see.  For fans of great acting, it’s also a must-see.  If you’re not a Dylan fan at all, well, it’s not likely to change your mind, but do yourself a favor and give it a chance.  Not many musical biopics, or films of ANY kind, are made this well and with as much loving care as A Complete Unknown.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN

By Marc S. Sanders

A drifter hitches a ride into New York City with a guitar on his back looking for Woody Guthrie.  He only comes to realize that his musical idol is in a New Jersey hospital ward with a debilitating illness. The drifter just came from Jersey.

The young stranger eventually catches up with the legendary folk singer, and a friend named Pete Seegar.  He plays a song he wrote for the ill and mute Mr. Guthrie and the men are dazzled by this young man.  This is Bob Dylan, and he writes music and lyrics as quickly as he breathes.  But where did this wunderkind stem from?  To everyone that encounters Bob Dylan, he’s simply A Complete Unknown.

Timothée Chalamet delivers a blazingly convincing performance as Bob Dylan, surely a front runner for the Best Actor Oscar.  The appearance is easy to get used to. The dialect and expressions of what I’d like to think is the summit of what most of us know about the musician never falters from an apathetic expression or that mumbling hoarseness we all know.  Everything from the clothes to the shaggy brown hair to the sunglasses and motorcycle he confidently rides perfect this embodiment. In James Mangold’s latest musician biography (prior credits include the Johnny Cash bio Walk The Line), with Timothée Chalamet in this role, I was truly watching a Bob Dylan of the early to mid-1960’s.

Any movie has a conflict for its story to work around.  There’s more than one conflict in A Complete Unknown, but Bob Dylan would not know that.  He’s content with doing what he does and has not one care for what anyone else wants him to be or wants him to share.  Bob lacks much concern for the tumultuous times of the mid twentieth century either.  JFK and Malcolm X are assassinated.  The Vietnam War persists.  The Cuban Missile Crisis terrifies everyone.  Yet, Bob only focuses on his songwriting.  He’ll make connections with Pete Seegar (Edward Norton) and develop a sometimes-romantic tryst but mostly singing partnership with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro).  He also gets involved with Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), one of his first fans.  However, no matter what they might expect of the performer, he’s only going to follow the path that drives him.  Therefore, that will be their own respective problems to contend with, not his.  Bob is only going to follow that path that he chooses.

Sylvie wants to know more about her live-in boyfriend who only tells tales of when he moved with a travelling carnival.  Joan wants to know where he learned to play guitar or even how he developed a knack for poetic lyricism.  Later, she’ll want to play the original numbers that solidified their friendship on stage despite his stubbornness not to agree.  It becomes curious when photo albums are delivered, addressed to a Robert Zimmerman.  Pete and his other peers want Bob, a now marquee name, to hold on to the grassroots of folk singing.  Bob will not acquiesce though.  Like other masterful musicians such as Prince or John Lennon and Elton John, Bob Dylan is going to continue to reinvent himself. 

In a matter of months, the signer becomes a nationwide superstar and he can’t walk the streets without getting bombarded; something he never wanted.  He performs with a passion for the music he’s written and he persists in making the next new thing with his talents as he transitions from acoustic to electric guitar and incorporates keyboards and drums to accompany his performances.  His friend Pete sees a berth becoming wider from the folk music he parades at annual festivals in Newport, Rhode Island and what Dylan insists on only playing.  Record producers (primarily represented by actor Dan Fogler) beg the singer to perform his older familiar tracks, but Bob Dylan only wants to move on to what is new and fresh. 

A Complete Unknown is full of such energy because it delivers what was produced by the guy who composed all of these magnificent and magnetic tracks from Song To Woodie to Blowin’ In The Wind to Like A Rolling Stone and to The Time’s They Are A Changing and A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.  You might not know or even understand all the verses by heart, but you quickly catch on to the choruses. To hear these newly composed songs pulled out of a dusty attic for an updated biography, performed by Timothée Chalamet in underground bars, at concert festivals or even in messy apartments is addicting.  You don’t want the actor to stop the song.  You don’t want the film to cut away from any of the numbers and you wish the concert would never end.  Like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan’s works stay with you.

I’ve become a huge admirer of James Mangold.  He’s a writer/director who does not criticize his subjects.  He empathizes with them and respects their boundaries.  We might find frustrations in people like Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash, but Mangold does not compromise the biography.  He finds reasons for you to like these men even while those who stand in their circles might not care for their attitudes. 

The director is also skillful at showing the history of the time.  Like the last Indiana Jones film he covered, the settings are so authentic.  New York City in A Complete Unknown is depicted down to the finest detail including the yellow street signs within the small boroughs of damp Brownstones and city streets that Bob Dylan navigates. The musty interiors of Woody Guthrie’s hospital room or Pete Seegar’s cabin home are shot with a hazy photography.  The Newport music festival, full of concert spectator extras feels like it was pulled from a documentary; what maybe a calm and relaxing Woodstock might have looked like.

Beyond Timothée Chalamet, the cast of this film is superb.  Elle Fanning need not say a word as James Mangold provides an assortment of close ups depicting her pain of wanting to love Bob Dylan but knowing she just can’t.  Her complexion turns into a weeping pink without one tear shed.  Monica Barbaro is on the cusp of becoming a marquee name in films.  The actress who was recently in action material with Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger hides so well under the folk appearance of Joan Baez and she carries an immense stage presence. Scoot McNairy is Woody Guthrie who never speaks and only stares straight ahead during visits from Bob and Pete. Yet, the silent performance offers the only character who truly understood the value of an enigmatic Bob Dylan. Edward Norton has given a new range as a liberal and calm Pete Seegar who uses folk music as an escape from the turmoil of the times and not as a harbor to protest or fight an authority with aggression and violence.  He might wish for his friend Bob Dylan to uphold the value of folk music, but he knows he can’t keep a bird caged in one place either.  Norton’s introductory scene in a courthouse with a banjo in hand is unforgettable.  The casting is simply perfect in A Complete Unknown.

Since I saw this film on Christmas Day, I have not stopped thinking about it, and I think I want to see it again in a theater with a speaker system that amplifies the power of Bob Dylan’s guitar and mumbly vocals.  Right now, nothing sounds better.

A Complete Unknown is one of the best films of the year.