“Cyrano” is not about the nose! 

Director Joe Wright re-imagines “Cyrano de Bergerac,” Edmund Rostand’s 1897 poetic drama about a swashbuckling poet/solider with self-esteem issues. All his life Cyrano has been besotted by his beautiful childhood friend Roxanne but unable to express his love for her because of embarrassment over his enormous nose. 

When cultured Roxanne falls in love with Christian, a handsome but inarticulate soldier in Cyrano’s regiment, Cyrano offers to covertly coach Christian, pouring out his passion through Christian’s lips. But will his secret ever be discovered?

In her musical adaptation of the French classic love story, Erica Schmidt discards the gigantic nose as an impediment and substitutes short stature. Cyrano is embodied by Peter Dinklage, while Roxanne is played by Hayley Bennett and Christian by Kelvin Harrison Jr. Ben Mendelsohn plays the villainous DeGuiche.

In an interview with the New York Times, Peter Dinklage compares the courtship to contemporary ‘catfishing,’ noting: “It’s exactly what we’re doing today with online dating, where you’re putting up a profile of yourself that is not necessarily true to who you are. We all pretend to be other people to a varying degree.”

Four-time Emmy-winner Dinklage is best known for playing Tyrion Lannister for eight seasons on TV’s fantasy drama “Game of Thrones.”

Historically, there was a 1950 film version for which Jose Ferrer won an Oscar as Cyrano. Gerard Depardieu also tackled the role, along with Christopher Plummer, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Steve Martin, who made it into a modern rom-com with “Roxanne.” There have been countless stage productions.

This production is a family affair. Peter Dinklage’s real-life partner is Erica Schmidt. Working with Aaron and Bryce Dessner of rock band The National, they developed this concept in a workshop at Goodspeed’s Norma Terris Theater in Chester, CT.  

Joe Wright, whose real-life partner is Hayley Bennett, shot the film in Sicily, placing the wintry battle scenes against the magnificent backdrop of Mount Etna.

On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Cyrano” is an engrossing 8, a classic tale enhanced by the music.

Triple Oscar-nominated as Best International Film, Best Documentary Feature, and Best Animation, Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s “Flee” chronicles a refugee’s journey from war-torn Afghanistan to Denmark.

Based on extensive audio interviews with a gay man using the pseudonym ‘Amin Nawabi,’ who has known director Jonas Poher Rasmussen since they were teenagers, it begins with Amin’s heartfelt assertion that “Home is somewhere safe.”

Amin grew up in Kabul in the 1980s, flying kites and dancing down the street in his sister’s nightshirt, but his life took a precarious turn after the repressive Mujahideen seized power. His parents were killed and his sisters were kidnapped. So he fled to Soviet Russia, where unscrupulous human traffickers left him imprisoned in a squalid Estonian asylum center.

Eventually, 15-year-old Amin was granted refugee status in Denmark, where he met Rasmussen on a school bus. Their friendship grew over the years and, eventually, Amin confided how he once asked a Danish Red Cross social worker for medication to ‘cure’ him of his ‘unnatural’ sexual attraction to men. 

What makes this docudrama so extraordinary is Rasmussen’s use of hand-drawn animation from Copenhagen’s Sun Creature Studio to depict fragmented sequences, like being trapped in a sealed cargo container, that could not be filmed in a normal documentary, along with authentic news footage, archival material and Swedish composer Uno Helmersson’s score.

One particularly heart-tugging sequence involves a group of migrants stranded on a small vessel that’s spotted by a large Norwegian cruise ship, detailing the eager expectations of the refugees and the bleak dispatch with which they are evacuated.

Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau voice Amin Nawabi and director Jonas Poher Rasmusen in the English-language version. In the press notes, Ahmed explains: “This fulfills the highest calling of storytelling, which is to remind us through the force of its imagination that there is no ‘us and them,’ only ‘us.’”

On the Granger Gauge, “Flee” is an uplifting, emotionally engaging 8, streaming free to subscribers on Hulu and available to rent/buy on Prime Video.

In “Licorice Pizza,” it’s the 1970s in the San Fernando Valley when 10^th grader Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) first spies Alana Kane (Alana Haim) working for a yearbook headshot photographer. He’s 15 and she’s in her mid-20s. But that doesn’t stop him from asking her for a date. 

How will he pay for it? she inquires. Not a problem. He’s a smooth-talking former child star, declaring: “I’m a showman. It’s my calling.” 

If not a showman, a real hustler. With entrée to the Valley’s ever-popular Tail O’ The Cock restaurant, he sells waterbeds out of a storefront; when that fad fades, he peddles pinball machines. 

(FYI: Considered a form of gambling, pinball was banned from 1939-1973.)  

Now if you find it credible that a pimply 15-year-old who doesn’t even have a driver’s license can woo and win an attractive 25-year-old, this story might intrigue you. 

Even Alana acknowledges: “Don’t you think it’s weird that I hang out with Gary and his friends all the time?”

So filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson (“Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” “Punch Drunk Love”) uses star-studded cameos. Sean Penn is Jack Holden, a fading film star who plops Alana on the back of his motorcycle, and Bradley Cooper is hairstylist-turned-producer Jon Peters, Barbra Streisand’s then-boyfriend.

Diversions like Tom Waits’ aging film director and Harriet Sansom Harris’ casting director are far more interesting than Gary’s avid pursuit of Alana.

Family connections abound: Cooper Hoffman’s father was Philip Seymour Hoffman. Leonardo DiCaprio’s father George sells a waterbed. Alana Haim’s real-life parents play her parents and her sisters are members of Haim, a Grammy-nominated rock band.

As a youngster, Paul Thomas Anderson had a crush on his teacher, Dolores Rose Haim, Alana’s mother – giving him the idea for the story. And Licorice Pizza was the real name of a vinyl record store that Sam Goody subsequently bought out.

On the Granger Gauge, “Licorice Pizza” is a far-fetched, improbably frolicsome 5, Oscar-nominated as Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.