Producers: Jessamine Burgum, Kara Durrett, Trudie Styler, Celine Rattray, Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Lia and Keenan Flynn   Director: Scarlett Johansson   Screenplay: Tory Kamen   Cast: June Squibb, Erin Kellyman, Jessica Hecht, Rita Zohar, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Will Price, Lauren Kline and Steven Singer   Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Grade: B-

Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut walks a fine line between feel-good empathy and tastelessness.  It’s what might be called a Holocaust-by-proxy movie in particular and a study of grief more generally, while also being a genial portrayal of a spunky, sharp-tongued nonagenarian.  Trying to cram all of that into a single film proves a tough assignment, but with the redoubtable June Squibb anchoring things “Eleanor the Great” manages the task reasonably well despite Johansson’s pedestrian direction.

Eleanor Morgenstein (Squibb) is introduced living in a Florida coastal apartment with her long-time best friend Bessie (Rita Zohar).  They’ve been roommates for eleven years following the deaths of their husbands.  But they’re very different.  Bessie is a Holocaust survivor, inconsolable over the grief she feels over the loss of her family, especially her brother; they jumped off a train that was carrying them to a camp together, but he was shot while she scurried to safety, and she’s carried the guilt over the unfairness ever since.  She tells the story to Eleanor only shortly before passing away herself, peacefully in her sleep. 

Now alone, Eleanor moves back to New York City to live with her divorced daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) and grandson Max (Will Price).  Lisa, trying to help her mother, arranges for her to join a community club, expecting her to attend a singing group.  But finding that intolerable, she wanders the halls until a woman (Lauren Kline), misunderstanding her interest, invites her to another group, which turns out be a counseling session for Holocaust survivors.  Invited by the rabbi (Steven Singer) to tell her story, the embarrassed Eleanor recites Bessie’s as her own.

That deception—innocent, perhaps, but unconscionable—impresses Nina (Erin Kellyman), a college journalism student observing the session in hopes of finding the subject for a class paper.  She’s immediately taken with Eleanor, and the interest is mutual.  They become friends, and it turns out that Nina is dealing with grief as well—the recent death of her mother.  She’s also feeling distant from her father Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who’s unable to cope with his wife’s loss; instead he immerses himself in his work as a human interest commentator on a television program that has made him a celebrity; by coincidence Eleanor is a big fan.

From this point Tony Kamen’s script focuses on two interrelated tracks.  One centers on how Eleanor is drawn against her will into owning, and expanding, the false story she impulsively embraced, which Roger takes up.  The other involves the intense friendship that develops between her and Nina.  How the two converge is fairly predictable, leading to closure for both of them and reconciliation between father and daughter.  Plenty of room is made for Squibb to show off Eleanor’s sauciness, not only on her outings with Nina but in a sidebar in which she asks the rabbi to oversee the late-in-life bat mitzvah she never had (understandable, when it’s revealed that she’s a Des Moines-born woman who converted only when she married Mr. Morgenstein in 1953 and moved to New York with him).

Squibb has become one of the screen’s go-to actresses for embodying feisty old broads, and she again delivers the goods.  She also captures the queasiness viewers feel along with Eleanor as she blunders into, and then gets trapped in, a lie that—especially given that it’s made before actual Holocaust survivors—is actually quite unsettling.  (You can argue that it ensures that Bessie’s story will not go unrecorded, but that’s hardly exculpatory.)  Squibb manages to maintain sympathy even as her character gets in deeper and deeper, but it’s a difficult chore, and Johansson is extremely fortunate to have her as the film’s star.

She also excels in convincing us of the friendship that grows between Eleanor and Nina—also not an inconsiderable feat, especially since Kellyman’s performance, while okay, is far from extraordinary.  No one else in the supportive cast does outstanding work either—even Ejiofor is oddly muted—save Zohar, who’s unrestrained in displaying Bessie’s pain.

Technically, the film is scruffy but perfectly watchable.  Happy Massee’s production design and Tom Broecker’s costumes fill the bill, and Hélène Louvart’s cinematography is workmanlike, while Harry Jierjian’s editing conceals the seams pretty well and Dustin O’Halloran’s score is relatively subdued.

Despite the title “Eleanor” is far from great, but it’s just good enough.

Producers: Jennifer Todd and Chris Columbus   Director: Chris Columbus   Screenplay: Katy Brand and Suzanne Heathcote   Cast: Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie, Naomi Ackie, Daniel Mays, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Tom Ellis, Jonathan Pryce, David Tennant, Geoff Bell, Richard E. Grant and Ingrid Oliver   Distributor: Netflix

Grade: B-

A lightweight murder mystery in the vein of “Murder She Wrote,” Chris Columbus’ movie, based on a popular 2020 novel by Richard Osman, is a piece of cinematic comfort food that’s easy to swallow but not terribly nutritious.  “The Thursday Murder Club” features a gaggle of senior-citizen stars who are guaranteed to please even if the material they’re serving up isn’t top-drawer.

Former spy Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), erstwhile labor organizer Ron (Pierce Brosnan) and psychiatrist Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley) are the three still-active members of a crime-solving group at Coopers Chase, a rustic onetime convent that’s been transformed into a remarkably posh retirement community.  Penny (Susan Kirby), a former detective who directed their activities, including investigating a cold case involving a woman who was killed years before by an unknown assailant, now lies in a coma, with her husband John (Paul Freeman) constantly at her bedside.

The group, and all their fellow residents, face an immediate threat.  One of the two owners of Coopers Chase, Ian Ventham (David Tennant), wants to sell the property for development as upscale apartments.  The other, Tony Curran (Geoff Bell), refuses, especially because his sourpuss Aunt Maud (Ruth Sheen) lives there.  When Curran is murdered, the sale becomes less a possibility than a likelihood, so the trio recruit newbie resident Joyce (Celia Imrie), a retired nurse, for her medical knowledge, to join the team provisionally in the investigation of his death.  When senior police investigator Hudson (Daniel Mays) proves resistant to their interference, they arrange for Donna De Freitas (Naomi Ackie), a young cop eager for a more challenging role in the department, to be assigned as his partner, and a conduit to official reports.

Along the way to the solution of the Curran murder, and of the cold case they’d been looking into earlier, a second death occurs, and others associated with the club members—Elizabeth’s Alzheimer’s-afflicted husband Stephen (Jonathan Pryce), Ron’s ex-boxer son Jason (Tom Ellis) and Joyce’s daughter, hedge-fund manager Joanna (Ingrid Oliver)—are called into service to assist our intrepid sleuths in various ways.  Jason even briefly becomes a suspect, only to be rigorously defended before Hudson by old rabble-rouser Ron (who also organizes resident demonstrations against Ventham; so too do Father Mackie (Joseph Marcell), a retired priest who’s among the residents, and Bogdan (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), a Polish immigrant on the Coopers Chase staff.

Even more interesting than these is Bobby Tanner (Richard E. Grant), a master criminal long thought dead, who reappears among the living as a result of Elizabeth’s cunning investigations.  The inimitable Grant appears in a delicious, more than a little frightening cameo, exuding a bit of the air of sinister eccentricity that Alastair Sim used to bring to his roles.

With a cast as starry as this, it’s inevitable that there are delightful sequences popping up throughout the movie and that, given the expertise of director Chris Columbus, they register.  An outstanding one has Elizabeth and timid Joyce venturing out in disguises; Elizabeth dons one—kerchief, glasses, sweater–that, as it’s noted, makes her resemble Elizabeth II out for a stroll at Balmoral—and, by cheeky extension, Mirren’s portrayal of the late monarch in “The Queen.”  But each of the stars gets some moments to shine, though Kingsley’s subdued professor fewer of them than Mirren’s sly spy or Brosnan’s raffish troublemaker.  All the supporting players get into the spirit of things as well; Pryce brings a nice touch of poignancy playing (as in the new season of “Slow Horses”) a man succumbing to the on-and-off symptoms of dementia.

The picture also boasts superb visuals, with sets by production designer James Merifield and costumes by Joanna Johnson that are quite easy on the eye and the British locations lushly caught by cinematographer Don Burgess.  The script, it should be noted, is more complex than the usual TV mystery, but editor Dan Zimmerman keeps the various threads pretty clear and the pacing sprightly, while Thomas Newman contributes a jaunty score.

By the time “The Thursday Murder Club” winds down with a graveside scene, it’s careened through so many twists, turns and coincidences that you might conclude that Osman tried too hard to keep the plot spinning into surprising directions.  But with a cast like this one to keep it humming, it’s hard to quibble about that.  Just sit back and go with the flow.