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      ‘Dear Mr. Brody’ Review: Spreading the Wealth Doesn’t Go Smoothly

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      The scion of a margarine empire says to ask him for money. And many, many people asked.In January 1970, Michael Brody Jr. announced he’d share his $25 million inheritance. All people had to do was ask — and ask they did. Archival news footage in “Dear Mr. Brody,” a documentary directed by Keith Maitland, shows a line of hopefuls outside and inside 1650 Broadway where Brody, 21, the groovy scion of the Jelke margarine empire, opened an office.Journalists were drawn to his peace-love-and-understanding worldview. Filmmakers, too, among them the movie producer Ed Pressman, who had hoped to make a fiction film. People also wrote letters: tens of thousands of them.“Dear Mr. Brody” invites timely thoughts about the wealthy and income disparity. While Brody leverages his stunningly brief moment in the limelight — appearing on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” securing a record deal, finding quite the platform for his messages — a scene of him tossing cash out a window to a crowd below hints at an underlying ugliness. “Food. Shelter. Love,” he snappishly tells a reporter later. “They don’t need money.”“Dear Mr. Brody” nods to and teases the era’s psychedelic tendencies. (“Brody Says Drugs Inspired Giveaway,” reads a New York Times headline.) Interviewees who had been on the journey — among them, wife, Renee Brody, and friend Michael Aronin — share some of its vexing details. Brody died in 1973. But the film’s exquisite pathos comes as Melissa Robyn Glassman, a producer, discovers a cache of unopened letters in Pressman’s storage unit. Her sleuthing leads to letter writers — or their children — and those interviews are quietly stunning. It might be hard to upstage Brody, yet they do.Dear Mr. BrodyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Icahn: The Restless Billionaire’ Review: Right on the Money

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      The war stories of the famed financier Carl C. Icahn power this deft documentary portrait.To the uninitiated, the term activist investor can sound as if a shareholder is out on Wall Street with a picket sign and a cause. Carl C. Icahn, an activist investor par excellence, is a veteran of what the practice actually entails: buying a stake in a company and pushing for changes in management or strategy. Above all, as the genial documentary portrait “Icahn: The Restless Billionaire” explains, he’s dauntingly good at making money.The octogenarian Icahn anchors this deft pocket biography, with his appealing directness and dead-level stare, as he presides at the office and around the house. The Queens-raised son of a cantor and a teacher, Icahn has for decades targeted firms like Tappan, Texaco and Apple, while seeking out undervalued stocks.The director, Bruce David Klein, smartly builds out Icahn’s war stories in terms of problem solving and negotiation, not mere bets. Icahn’s triumphs, as well as his past tangles with the Transport Workers Union and the hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, create ready-made drama, while visits with his family (and a wizardly synthesizer score) keep up a sunny vibe.But even for Icahn, a respected headline-maker who has taken the Giving Pledge, the profile can be a little soft. It blurs comparisons to corporate raiders in its rote account of the 1980s. The talking-head commentary is dominated by finance journalists (including Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times) and millionaires, without always clarifying Icahn’s financial maneuvers (or his political ones, such as his service under Donald Trump as a special adviser).The perspective — while producing something eminently watchable — may strike some viewers as old-fashioned and incomplete.Icahn: The Restless BillionaireNot rated. Running time 1 hour 41 minutes. Watch on HBO Max. More