The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki
★★★ out of four stars
Rated: Not rated (subtitled)
"Olli Mäki," inspired by the life of a Finnish boxer, is a sweet, warmly observed tale.
The title character, convincingly played by Jarkko Lahti, is two weeks away from a title fight with the world champion, and his manager wants him to focus on his preparations for that bout — except Olli has fallen in love. His attention is split between what he knows he should be doing and what his heart tells him to do.
This is not an original dilemma, but the treatment it's given by first-time filmmaker Juho Kuosmanen makes it seem like it is.
Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
The Dinner
½ out of four stars
Rated: R for profanity
After scoring a career highlight only days ago in "Norman," Richard Gere is back to square one. "The Dinner," a hopeless jumble of non-sequitur flashbacks and erratic timelines, casts him with the estimable talents of Steve Coogan, Laura Linney and Rebecca Hall and squanders them all.
Gere and Coogan play brothers, and the women are their long-suffering wives. The audience will out-suffer them as all the players gather at a pretentious, uptight gourmet restaurant to discuss an impending family crisis.
Director/writer Oren Moverman (who has done fine work with "The Messenger") creates a two-hour endurance test. The argument careens from mental illness to marital woes, ethics, sibling rivalry, morality, politics and a murder involving the couples' two teenage sons, all far less intriguing than it sounds. To make a movie this completely bad is almost an accomplishment. For that very reason, from a film history perspective, it's interesting.
Colin Covert
