Portrait of a Lady on Fire briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
In my humble heterosexual opinion (so sorry), it's worth lamenting the tragic arc seemingly rounding out every LGBTQ+ romantic feature. Is a recipe for melancholy the permanent fixture of this cultural subgenre?
It's not just for melodramatic exploitation. Do you think Spike Lee sidesteps happy endings because he’s after your tears or your attention? White, straight, male-gazing movies dealing little in the topics of race, sexuality, gender or up-bringing have had their heteronormative day in the Hollywood sun since the beginning, so it’s no surprise films about and sometimes created by members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community often express the repression, longing and discrimination that can emerge where affairs of the heart are concerned.
Whether you consider the demystifying resolve of Brokeback Mountain, the epic closeness of Blue is the Warmest Colour, the subtle devastation of Call Me By Your Name or even blistering gems like A Fantastic Woman and Weekend, you have to admit most examples of queer bliss swiftly follow a clear path toward tough, gut-punch endings, with the austerity of straight society likely cropping up in between. However, unlike — but not exactly to the discredit of — Ang Lee, Abdellatif Kechiche, Sebastián Lelio and Luca Guadignino (Andrew Haigh, you're OK), lesbian director Céline Sciamma lends Portrait of a Lady on Fire (and the rest of her filmography) a rare, raw reality and fervent forthcoming. Portrait is in excellent company and exceeds them all — it's on an entire separate wavelength of deliberate rapture and poetic sadness. This film too ends in muted, masterfully arranged misfortune but Sciamma would be guilty of employing a similarly fateful sentiment if her filmography wasn't so formidable, or if Portrait's ending was anything less than stunning.
Oddly enough it's the film about straight women (her last, 2014's Girlhood) that is her most aimless, perhaps purposely so. But the sensitive coming-of-age tenderness of Water Lilies and Tomboy were more mild invocations of the same invisible, euphoric touch more undeniably, brilliantly glimmering in her fourth effort. Sciamma's patience, impeccable blocking and predisposed fascination with formative, identity-fracturing flashes of youth let her assume her own fittingly painterly eye with a cinematographic grandeur somehow both understated and explicitly exuberant. Portrait has narrative restraint, subliminal, scopophilic beauty, breathtaking music moments, consummate compositions and open, natural acting by the lead performers Adèle Haenel — a key figure of Sciamma's debut Water Lilies — and Noémie Merlant.
This French feature didn’t find its way to American theaters until after the decade it belongs to — and single-handedly elevates — had past. Portrait of a Lady on Fire will go down as one of the best films of a rich, vibrant year for cinema and already one of the most choice excerpts of all lesbian films (The Duke of Burgundy deserves a barely relevant shout-out). Especially with the output of specifically tailored content broadening year by year, this movie will be a bookmark for genuine queer cinema for decades to come, up there with Moonlight even — one of the rare LGBTQ+ films to end in hope, I might add.
Portrait is dazzling in every way — it’s a poster child for art house cinema, a message movie with nothing imparted by way of pomposity or manipulation, a sublime love story that catches you off guard for the fun of it and Sciamma's most deft iteration of the dicey hurdles of social adaptation. Countless moments will startle you with emotion and awe regardless, as will many instances you might predict to be forced or overly erotic (ahem, did I mention how much Disobedience SUCKS). Contemplative, classical and rewardingly refined, Portrait of a Lady on Fire expels no unneeded effort in dismantling any expectation you might bring along while gently restoring your faith in cinema as well.
In my humble heterosexual opinion (so sorry), it's worth lamenting the tragic arc seemingly rounding out every LGBTQ+ romantic feature. Is a recipe for melancholy the permanent fixture of this cultural subgenre?
It's not just for melodramatic exploitation. Do you think Spike Lee sidesteps happy endings because he’s after your tears or your attention? White, straight, male-gazing movies dealing little in the topics of race, sexuality, gender or up-bringing have had their heteronormative day in the Hollywood sun since the beginning, so it’s no surprise films about and sometimes created by members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community often express the repression, longing and discrimination that can emerge where affairs of the heart are concerned.
Whether you consider the demystifying resolve of Brokeback Mountain, the epic closeness of Blue is the Warmest Colour, the subtle devastation of Call Me By Your Name or even blistering gems like A Fantastic Woman and Weekend, you have to admit most examples of queer bliss swiftly follow a clear path toward tough, gut-punch endings, with the austerity of straight society likely cropping up in between. However, unlike — but not exactly to the discredit of — Ang Lee, Abdellatif Kechiche, Sebastián Lelio and Luca Guadignino (Andrew Haigh, you're OK), lesbian director Céline Sciamma lends Portrait of a Lady on Fire (and the rest of her filmography) a rare, raw reality and fervent forthcoming. Portrait is in excellent company and exceeds them all — it's on an entire separate wavelength of deliberate rapture and poetic sadness. This film too ends in muted, masterfully arranged misfortune but Sciamma would be guilty of employing a similarly fateful sentiment if her filmography wasn't so formidable, or if Portrait's ending was anything less than stunning.
Oddly enough it's the film about straight women (her last, 2014's Girlhood) that is her most aimless, perhaps purposely so. But the sensitive coming-of-age tenderness of Water Lilies and Tomboy were more mild invocations of the same invisible, euphoric touch more undeniably, brilliantly glimmering in her fourth effort. Sciamma's patience, impeccable blocking and predisposed fascination with formative, identity-fracturing flashes of youth let her assume her own fittingly painterly eye with a cinematographic grandeur somehow both understated and explicitly exuberant. Portrait has narrative restraint, subliminal, scopophilic beauty, breathtaking music moments, consummate compositions and open, natural acting by the lead performers Adèle Haenel — a key figure of Sciamma's debut Water Lilies — and Noémie Merlant.
This French feature didn’t find its way to American theaters until after the decade it belongs to — and single-handedly elevates — had past. Portrait of a Lady on Fire will go down as one of the best films of a rich, vibrant year for cinema and already one of the most choice excerpts of all lesbian films (The Duke of Burgundy deserves a barely relevant shout-out). Especially with the output of specifically tailored content broadening year by year, this movie will be a bookmark for genuine queer cinema for decades to come, up there with Moonlight even — one of the rare LGBTQ+ films to end in hope, I might add.
Portrait is dazzling in every way — it’s a poster child for art house cinema, a message movie with nothing imparted by way of pomposity or manipulation, a sublime love story that catches you off guard for the fun of it and Sciamma's most deft iteration of the dicey hurdles of social adaptation. Countless moments will startle you with emotion and awe regardless, as will many instances you might predict to be forced or overly erotic (ahem, did I mention how much Disobedience SUCKS). Contemplative, classical and rewardingly refined, Portrait of a Lady on Fire expels no unneeded effort in dismantling any expectation you might bring along while gently restoring your faith in cinema as well.
1917 briefing
3 (out of 4)
Sam Mendes returns to the Oscar cachet from whence he came with 1917, the closest thing to a Best Picture winner the British big shot has whipped up since his notable domestic deconstruction debut American Beauty capped the 20th century and incited his career. I won’t act like I’m not impressed by his WWI epic but despite such immediate, imposing showmanship, I’m just not sure the awesome measure with which the film is composed advances any of Mendes’ emotional or commemorative intentions.
Inspired by and partly constructed from war stories recounted by Mendes' grandfather, 1917 thrives on the secure simplicity of its generally unbroken mission movie narrative. It doesn't smack of exploitation but I'm not sure the film's first-person shooter framework would appeal to Alfred Mendes. Any speculation on how near, dear, and personal this is for the director aside, when the film works, it works wonders. Those intermittently amazing instances of visceral dread and paranoia play into Mendes' strengths — dear Lord that central night sequence is a perfect storm of divine lighting and marvelous orchestration (courtesy of the talented composer Thomas Newman) and moreover a tactile communication of deep, winding desolation and despair. Mendes hasn’t come across so confident since Road to Perdition.
Whereas his only other combat film Jarhead melded the psychological warfare of Operation Desert Storm into a curiously effective case of cinematic blue balls, the goal of 1917 is antithetical to the careful prudence of crafting a historical simulacrum. The movie is supposed to stun you with the whole IMAX-Experience single-take simulation gimmick, taking only one tiny intermission inside unconsciousness to otherwise examine the century-old conflict with unblinking lucidity. But considering this is Roger Deakins behind the cinematography, our mind's eye is more caught up in the exquisite artistry of the film camera than the unsavory evils of war — which is a little contradictory, no?
Years ago I would have lost my marbles at the sight of such astonishing camerawork but 1917 is more fulfilling in the peripherals than in the dramatic promises it intends to keep. As someone actively looking for all the invisible edits and paying close attention to how the movie reignites purpose without traditional montage, I can at least say the film's audacious approach is often employed to great effect, especially in the bordering stylistic flourishes. Sometimes the absence of juxtaposed images perfectly placed me in a practical, uncompromising depiction of WWI and other times my mind strained to shut out the spectacle.
Mendes wisely utilizes formidable, relatively unknown talent (George MacKay and Dean Charles-Chapman) to make a 24-hour journey feel like eons. But as these actors assist in buying into the exaggerated realism, the illusion is always cut off by big, distracting names in British acting — Colin Firth, Andrew Scott, Mark Strong and Benedict Cumberbatch are all basically checkpoints along the way. Nearly every time you think you can give yourself over to the film’s power, there’s another ostentatious obstacle. 1917 doesn’t feel compromised as much as it feels unrealized and all its undeniably impressive trappings can’t mask a certain squeamish obliviousness to the boring, filthy terror of war.
As far as The Great War is concerned, 1917 may be worthy of discussion alongside Howard Hawks' homely debate of God and country in Sergeant York but it has absolutely nothing on Stanley Kubrick's immortal, heartrending Paths of Glory, the candid, indifferent horror of Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front or the tragic, scenic clasps at innocence within Peter Weir's Gallipoli. Next to modern achievements in direct, dirty anti-glorification, in whole it’s a far cry from Saving Private Ryan and in more recent comparable fare it’s barely in the same conversation as Dunkirk. Yet like Christopher Nolan’s dutiful feature, the relatively real-time aspect of 1917 becomes the film’s compositional linchpin as well as the biggest distraction from the pathos and internal rhythm.
Within the passing observations of the camera and especially amidst the controlled chaos of the more elaborate sequences, Deakins' incredible film photography masters what films of the same ambition — Silent House, Birdman and Hardcore Henry — experimented with and, to some degree, bungled. That said, if we're talking about great movies edited to appear seamless, this ain't no Rope. And next to genuine one-shot attempts like Russian Ark and Victoria, 1917 boasts a fraction of the authentic, palpable urgency. Deakins clearly drew inspiration from cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's recognizable tendency for long takes, notably in collaboration with Alfonso Cuarón and Terrence Malick. Deakins' only occasionally achieves the same slippery, sublime visual poetry — his take on Lubezki is too clean and refined, never really recreating the cinema vérité conviction or skating on the line between entertainment and artistry smoothly enough for 1917 to function as escapism and awards fare simultaneously.
The irony is that for all its cinematic trickery, the movie has more value as an uncommon addition of the sparse WWI genre than as some magnificent technical endeavor — the fact that Mendes' film is not even in a similar realm of sumptuousness as other seminal Deakins-shot films (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country For Old Men, Blade Runner 2049) is more ironic still. If 1917 felt like living, breathing history and a little less like a video game demo I’d be content to sing its praises fully. Some of the bleakest moments hit hard but it’s the relentless return to action making a cynic of me — most audiences would rather forget about the woes of war and gleefully opt to have it all play out as virtual reality.
Sam Mendes returns to the Oscar cachet from whence he came with 1917, the closest thing to a Best Picture winner the British big shot has whipped up since his notable domestic deconstruction debut American Beauty capped the 20th century and incited his career. I won’t act like I’m not impressed by his WWI epic but despite such immediate, imposing showmanship, I’m just not sure the awesome measure with which the film is composed advances any of Mendes’ emotional or commemorative intentions.
Inspired by and partly constructed from war stories recounted by Mendes' grandfather, 1917 thrives on the secure simplicity of its generally unbroken mission movie narrative. It doesn't smack of exploitation but I'm not sure the film's first-person shooter framework would appeal to Alfred Mendes. Any speculation on how near, dear, and personal this is for the director aside, when the film works, it works wonders. Those intermittently amazing instances of visceral dread and paranoia play into Mendes' strengths — dear Lord that central night sequence is a perfect storm of divine lighting and marvelous orchestration (courtesy of the talented composer Thomas Newman) and moreover a tactile communication of deep, winding desolation and despair. Mendes hasn’t come across so confident since Road to Perdition.
Whereas his only other combat film Jarhead melded the psychological warfare of Operation Desert Storm into a curiously effective case of cinematic blue balls, the goal of 1917 is antithetical to the careful prudence of crafting a historical simulacrum. The movie is supposed to stun you with the whole IMAX-Experience single-take simulation gimmick, taking only one tiny intermission inside unconsciousness to otherwise examine the century-old conflict with unblinking lucidity. But considering this is Roger Deakins behind the cinematography, our mind's eye is more caught up in the exquisite artistry of the film camera than the unsavory evils of war — which is a little contradictory, no?
Years ago I would have lost my marbles at the sight of such astonishing camerawork but 1917 is more fulfilling in the peripherals than in the dramatic promises it intends to keep. As someone actively looking for all the invisible edits and paying close attention to how the movie reignites purpose without traditional montage, I can at least say the film's audacious approach is often employed to great effect, especially in the bordering stylistic flourishes. Sometimes the absence of juxtaposed images perfectly placed me in a practical, uncompromising depiction of WWI and other times my mind strained to shut out the spectacle.
Mendes wisely utilizes formidable, relatively unknown talent (George MacKay and Dean Charles-Chapman) to make a 24-hour journey feel like eons. But as these actors assist in buying into the exaggerated realism, the illusion is always cut off by big, distracting names in British acting — Colin Firth, Andrew Scott, Mark Strong and Benedict Cumberbatch are all basically checkpoints along the way. Nearly every time you think you can give yourself over to the film’s power, there’s another ostentatious obstacle. 1917 doesn’t feel compromised as much as it feels unrealized and all its undeniably impressive trappings can’t mask a certain squeamish obliviousness to the boring, filthy terror of war.
As far as The Great War is concerned, 1917 may be worthy of discussion alongside Howard Hawks' homely debate of God and country in Sergeant York but it has absolutely nothing on Stanley Kubrick's immortal, heartrending Paths of Glory, the candid, indifferent horror of Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front or the tragic, scenic clasps at innocence within Peter Weir's Gallipoli. Next to modern achievements in direct, dirty anti-glorification, in whole it’s a far cry from Saving Private Ryan and in more recent comparable fare it’s barely in the same conversation as Dunkirk. Yet like Christopher Nolan’s dutiful feature, the relatively real-time aspect of 1917 becomes the film’s compositional linchpin as well as the biggest distraction from the pathos and internal rhythm.
Within the passing observations of the camera and especially amidst the controlled chaos of the more elaborate sequences, Deakins' incredible film photography masters what films of the same ambition — Silent House, Birdman and Hardcore Henry — experimented with and, to some degree, bungled. That said, if we're talking about great movies edited to appear seamless, this ain't no Rope. And next to genuine one-shot attempts like Russian Ark and Victoria, 1917 boasts a fraction of the authentic, palpable urgency. Deakins clearly drew inspiration from cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's recognizable tendency for long takes, notably in collaboration with Alfonso Cuarón and Terrence Malick. Deakins' only occasionally achieves the same slippery, sublime visual poetry — his take on Lubezki is too clean and refined, never really recreating the cinema vérité conviction or skating on the line between entertainment and artistry smoothly enough for 1917 to function as escapism and awards fare simultaneously.
The irony is that for all its cinematic trickery, the movie has more value as an uncommon addition of the sparse WWI genre than as some magnificent technical endeavor — the fact that Mendes' film is not even in a similar realm of sumptuousness as other seminal Deakins-shot films (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country For Old Men, Blade Runner 2049) is more ironic still. If 1917 felt like living, breathing history and a little less like a video game demo I’d be content to sing its praises fully. Some of the bleakest moments hit hard but it’s the relentless return to action making a cynic of me — most audiences would rather forget about the woes of war and gleefully opt to have it all play out as virtual reality.
Little Women briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
Literary classics prove their status by sustaining their stature rather than diminishing as years pass. Some only become immortal when cinema tries to realize their essence to both remind the acquainted and demonstrate to the unaware what was so powerful about the characters, situations and subjects in the first place.
So Little Women isn’t Shakespeare or Pride and Prejudice, but Louise May Alcott’s treasured story has had many an adaptation in its day — George Cukor directed Katherine Hepburn in the 1933 version, there's one from the 50s with Elizabeth Taylor and the 1994 reiteration starring Susan Sarandon and Winona Ryder surely stands out in today’s consciousness. Just after last year’s reviled modern take marked the 150th anniversary of the novel’s publishing, Greta Gerwig was already out tailoring the defining film version — with talent like Laura Dern and Meryl Streep in support, it was not shocking that her telling would play out as the absolute, unbeatable attempt. Before I use up the rest of this space as a further expression of my reverence for Gerwig, let me get rid of my gripes and point out the remote extent to which she’s sullying her bright, sunny new career.
While her romantic partner Noah Baumbach is scraping the highest artistic highs of his storytelling vitality with Marriage Story (his 10th original film in an ever-mounting, remarkably homespun career), Gerwig has already turned down the easier avenue following her tenderly crafted breakthrough debut Lady Bird in 2017. After bearing her soul with an autobiographical inception to a filmography it makes sense that she would gravitate toward recreating a famously personal near-nonfiction masterwork. But when the story movements are already laid out for you, the trimmings on top — the tastefully stylish camerawork, savory mise-en-scène, gorgeous Alexandre Desplat score, the uniformly superb performances — aren’t quite as meaningful as they might be in something drawn from scratch.
Still, my god, the icing overtop this proven recipe is incredibly rich and even the substance itself is excellent and flavorful in ways you would not anticipate. Gerwig has the instinct to reexamine Little Women through a deviating narrative lens, redefining the parameters and rhythms of Alcott’s reflection of her own deprived Civil War-era upbringing. The adapted text has an insistent equilibrium of whimsy and melodrama courtesy of Alcott’s crocheted realism but the temporal hopscotching of Gerwig's script demonstrates every internal conflict of the March sisters by juxtaposing a perfect past with a faded future. The color scheme (warm hues offset by bluer tones) informs this rift in time between the good old days and an uncertain present, invoking a well-illustrated nostalgia and pining.
The zigzagging nonlinear direction takes the tale in halves and works through them diligently and thoroughly, the unannounced transitions through adolescence informing the distance between the simple, fixed memories of youth and the more immediate trepidations of early adulthood. By utilizing methodical editing as a pick to unlock the more cinematic feelings of Little Women’s endurance, Gerwig’s hand also reconsiders Alcott through the newfangled filmmaker's emphasis on awkward, jittery naturalism, lending the adaptation an accessibly modern flavor despite the beaming, excited acting and textured production and costume design. It’s not as memorable and drastic as Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite or Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, but Little Women finds Gerwig exercising a singular, resonant voice through a beloved feminist period template.
Until a new fashioning of Emma arrives in February, Gerwig’s classically composed drama will remain the lit-head's movie of the moment, burning with the appetite of a revisionist eye and the inherent intent of Alcott’s wit and wariness. I was worried Little Women would be unable to exceed a sense of irrelevance, functioning as a vehicle for Gerwig to secure her career for safer, businesslike goals rather than artistic ones. Pleasantly, it's just about effortless to forget any hesitations while watching, though that is to say I dearly hope she formulates her own fictions as she goes forward. With a clarifying understanding and appreciation for the source, there’s nothing but the rewards of superlative adaptation to appreciate from Gerwig’s second feature. Is it even worth bringing up that Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Timothée Chalamat, Emma Watson, Chris Cooper, Dern and Streep are without flaw?
Literary classics prove their status by sustaining their stature rather than diminishing as years pass. Some only become immortal when cinema tries to realize their essence to both remind the acquainted and demonstrate to the unaware what was so powerful about the characters, situations and subjects in the first place.
So Little Women isn’t Shakespeare or Pride and Prejudice, but Louise May Alcott’s treasured story has had many an adaptation in its day — George Cukor directed Katherine Hepburn in the 1933 version, there's one from the 50s with Elizabeth Taylor and the 1994 reiteration starring Susan Sarandon and Winona Ryder surely stands out in today’s consciousness. Just after last year’s reviled modern take marked the 150th anniversary of the novel’s publishing, Greta Gerwig was already out tailoring the defining film version — with talent like Laura Dern and Meryl Streep in support, it was not shocking that her telling would play out as the absolute, unbeatable attempt. Before I use up the rest of this space as a further expression of my reverence for Gerwig, let me get rid of my gripes and point out the remote extent to which she’s sullying her bright, sunny new career.
While her romantic partner Noah Baumbach is scraping the highest artistic highs of his storytelling vitality with Marriage Story (his 10th original film in an ever-mounting, remarkably homespun career), Gerwig has already turned down the easier avenue following her tenderly crafted breakthrough debut Lady Bird in 2017. After bearing her soul with an autobiographical inception to a filmography it makes sense that she would gravitate toward recreating a famously personal near-nonfiction masterwork. But when the story movements are already laid out for you, the trimmings on top — the tastefully stylish camerawork, savory mise-en-scène, gorgeous Alexandre Desplat score, the uniformly superb performances — aren’t quite as meaningful as they might be in something drawn from scratch.
Still, my god, the icing overtop this proven recipe is incredibly rich and even the substance itself is excellent and flavorful in ways you would not anticipate. Gerwig has the instinct to reexamine Little Women through a deviating narrative lens, redefining the parameters and rhythms of Alcott’s reflection of her own deprived Civil War-era upbringing. The adapted text has an insistent equilibrium of whimsy and melodrama courtesy of Alcott’s crocheted realism but the temporal hopscotching of Gerwig's script demonstrates every internal conflict of the March sisters by juxtaposing a perfect past with a faded future. The color scheme (warm hues offset by bluer tones) informs this rift in time between the good old days and an uncertain present, invoking a well-illustrated nostalgia and pining.
The zigzagging nonlinear direction takes the tale in halves and works through them diligently and thoroughly, the unannounced transitions through adolescence informing the distance between the simple, fixed memories of youth and the more immediate trepidations of early adulthood. By utilizing methodical editing as a pick to unlock the more cinematic feelings of Little Women’s endurance, Gerwig’s hand also reconsiders Alcott through the newfangled filmmaker's emphasis on awkward, jittery naturalism, lending the adaptation an accessibly modern flavor despite the beaming, excited acting and textured production and costume design. It’s not as memorable and drastic as Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite or Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, but Little Women finds Gerwig exercising a singular, resonant voice through a beloved feminist period template.
Until a new fashioning of Emma arrives in February, Gerwig’s classically composed drama will remain the lit-head's movie of the moment, burning with the appetite of a revisionist eye and the inherent intent of Alcott’s wit and wariness. I was worried Little Women would be unable to exceed a sense of irrelevance, functioning as a vehicle for Gerwig to secure her career for safer, businesslike goals rather than artistic ones. Pleasantly, it's just about effortless to forget any hesitations while watching, though that is to say I dearly hope she formulates her own fictions as she goes forward. With a clarifying understanding and appreciation for the source, there’s nothing but the rewards of superlative adaptation to appreciate from Gerwig’s second feature. Is it even worth bringing up that Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Timothée Chalamat, Emma Watson, Chris Cooper, Dern and Streep are without flaw?
Uncut Gems briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
The raw vigor of the Safdie brothers’ electric touch plus Adam Sandler’s own inscrutable moxie amounts to a lustrous, New Hollywood-esque cinematic combo called Uncut Gems. The brothers drafted the screenplay with Sandler in mind early in their career, only securing the comedy legend at their award circuit rounds a few years ago.
It’s a karmic cautionary tale about tempting fate or at least trying to master it — like Good Time the movie is one extended tiptoe on the verge of a nervous breakdown, an actual adrenaline rush of hallucinatory colors, restless, grainy camerawork and getting caught up in the momentary hoopla of an ominous comedy-of-errors situation from hell. Uncut Gems just has a stronger sense of the wheeling and dealing in the dance of dialogue, congealing monetary and existential crises with a dense, overlapping structure all built for profuse entertainment. Like Heaven Knows What, the Safdie duo take their lowlife lead characters at face value sans condescension until their addictions — heroine, gambling, what have you — become our own concerns, thrills and despairs.
Their propensity for coarse naturalism has rarely been so convincing or visceral, and Sandler just happens to be the most magnetic talent they’ve thus acquired. Actually Robert Pattinson probably has the Sand-man beat with his growing independent body of work (not to mention donning that crusading cape for Warner Brothers soon enough) but this is probably Sandler's best performance ever. Creeping out of the financial security of his most idiotic affairs to prove his range once per decade, this turn supersedes Judd Apatow's strong Funny People by miles and Uncut Gems exceeds even Punch-Drunk Love as his most well-suited, crowning dramatic turn, a perfectly written and performed movie character. Whether or not you have an opinion on Sandler's sea of silliness outside excused little classics like Happy Gilmore, this has virtually nothing in common with the Little Nicky's, Anger Management's or Jack and Jill's of the past.
Burnished in every frame with glassy splendor and scrappy intensity, Uncut Gems' distinct, tangy busyness and distress makes it at least one of the great films of the year and maybe up there with some of the best of the decade. It’s the faultless consummation of a rapidly arresting dual directing career — if the ending seems like a copout, consider the story with Hollywood think tanks in mind and you have a cheap, ill-defined fantasy rather than a rich existential warning. It’s a game-of-chance thriller that lets you have your cake and eat it too, unlike the potent but thematically flawed Mississippi Grind.
Howard may be a loathsome charlatan at heart but the Safdies have no difficulty in relating his own subjectivity to the universal, turning his bad luck and impulsive strokes of genius into the balancing act of life, played out like some coked up round of Monopoly. The performances, including involved acting debuts by Kevin Garnett and The Weeknd, boast extreme, effective realism. The score by electronic artist Oneohtrix Point Never is retro-future heaven and simultaneously a second brilliant collaboration between the Safdies and Daniel Lopatin, dropping the OPN alias. The seedy, surreal world of New York jewelers, based on the profession of the film duo's own father, is fashioned by way of terrifically believable discourse before the more terrifying confrontations.
From the hallucinatory bookends to the urgent questions of character and ethics, Uncut Gems is the kind of potential future classic that will more than likely stand above some awards season ignorance, especially considering it's A24's highest grossing release so far.
The raw vigor of the Safdie brothers’ electric touch plus Adam Sandler’s own inscrutable moxie amounts to a lustrous, New Hollywood-esque cinematic combo called Uncut Gems. The brothers drafted the screenplay with Sandler in mind early in their career, only securing the comedy legend at their award circuit rounds a few years ago.
It’s a karmic cautionary tale about tempting fate or at least trying to master it — like Good Time the movie is one extended tiptoe on the verge of a nervous breakdown, an actual adrenaline rush of hallucinatory colors, restless, grainy camerawork and getting caught up in the momentary hoopla of an ominous comedy-of-errors situation from hell. Uncut Gems just has a stronger sense of the wheeling and dealing in the dance of dialogue, congealing monetary and existential crises with a dense, overlapping structure all built for profuse entertainment. Like Heaven Knows What, the Safdie duo take their lowlife lead characters at face value sans condescension until their addictions — heroine, gambling, what have you — become our own concerns, thrills and despairs.
Their propensity for coarse naturalism has rarely been so convincing or visceral, and Sandler just happens to be the most magnetic talent they’ve thus acquired. Actually Robert Pattinson probably has the Sand-man beat with his growing independent body of work (not to mention donning that crusading cape for Warner Brothers soon enough) but this is probably Sandler's best performance ever. Creeping out of the financial security of his most idiotic affairs to prove his range once per decade, this turn supersedes Judd Apatow's strong Funny People by miles and Uncut Gems exceeds even Punch-Drunk Love as his most well-suited, crowning dramatic turn, a perfectly written and performed movie character. Whether or not you have an opinion on Sandler's sea of silliness outside excused little classics like Happy Gilmore, this has virtually nothing in common with the Little Nicky's, Anger Management's or Jack and Jill's of the past.
Burnished in every frame with glassy splendor and scrappy intensity, Uncut Gems' distinct, tangy busyness and distress makes it at least one of the great films of the year and maybe up there with some of the best of the decade. It’s the faultless consummation of a rapidly arresting dual directing career — if the ending seems like a copout, consider the story with Hollywood think tanks in mind and you have a cheap, ill-defined fantasy rather than a rich existential warning. It’s a game-of-chance thriller that lets you have your cake and eat it too, unlike the potent but thematically flawed Mississippi Grind.
Howard may be a loathsome charlatan at heart but the Safdies have no difficulty in relating his own subjectivity to the universal, turning his bad luck and impulsive strokes of genius into the balancing act of life, played out like some coked up round of Monopoly. The performances, including involved acting debuts by Kevin Garnett and The Weeknd, boast extreme, effective realism. The score by electronic artist Oneohtrix Point Never is retro-future heaven and simultaneously a second brilliant collaboration between the Safdies and Daniel Lopatin, dropping the OPN alias. The seedy, surreal world of New York jewelers, based on the profession of the film duo's own father, is fashioned by way of terrifically believable discourse before the more terrifying confrontations.
From the hallucinatory bookends to the urgent questions of character and ethics, Uncut Gems is the kind of potential future classic that will more than likely stand above some awards season ignorance, especially considering it's A24's highest grossing release so far.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
So a long time ago there once was a really good space fantasy movie called Star Wars. It became and remains essentially the most popular original film of all time, at least as far as domestic audiences are concerned. The sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, was a blockbuster miracle superseding the iconoclastic predecessor with rich emotion, vibrant drama and deepened ingenuity.
Everyone with a sliver of a grasp of pop culture is aware of this but it’s important to reiterate that 1980 really was the last time Star Wars movies were exceptionally great. Return of the Jedi, regardless of its operatic strengths and classic climax, was a considerable step down from the earlier films as the series had already found itself in a state of creative rehashing. The prequels famously splintered both the religious fanbase and critical voices, setting the stage for the exponential divide we have now in the age of the Mouse's movie monopoly. George Lucas’s heart was in the right place when he sought to impart brand new stories within his established universe by way of shiny new digital technology and yet, whether you cite the crutch of green-screen-imprisoned visual effects, hokey plotting, faulty humor (unintentional or otherwise) or any other repeated nitpicks, you have to admit Lucas was unable to conjure anything close to an instant, enduring classic like his watershed original movie, nor emulate the tales of old and tangential influences that inspired him. Revenge of the Sith is the only story apart from the first trilogy really worth a damn — there was potential for masterful moviemaking if not for Lucas’s shortcomings, which are far more unregulated in the grotesque indulgence of The Phantom Menace and the protracted melodramatics of Attack of the Clones.
By the time The Force Awakens came out just four years ago, Disney hedged their bets on drawing in the largest, most diverse audience possible while assuaging disgruntled diehards in order to funnel the maximum number of eyeballs back into the collective fan machine. The safe nostalgia trip was little more than a remix, a redo and a softball setup for potentially better movies down the line. Reportedly, and astonishingly, nothing was planned beyond Episode VII — enter Rian Johnson, who put forth his own radical vision in disregard to the template provided by The Force Awakens and a lot of Star Wars mythos in general. This was the irreparable fragmentation of the base — some critics declared The Last Jedi to be one of the great Star Wars movies to date while others deemed it an awful, meandering, contradictory mess, myself included. No amount of decent visual direction, fine developments of the dynamics between Rey and Kylo Ren and admirable (not to mention unfulfilled) attempts at thematic substance can redeem Johnson’s most baffling, bold and borderline stupid choices.
Capping off this new, controversially uneven trilogy, The Rise of Skywalker is forced to serve as a two-fold finale — the end of a fan fiction-tier sequel trilogy and, in the greater scheme of things, the climax of nine terribly popular movies, all while supposedly fulfilling its individual cinematic goals. J. J. Abrams, who jumped from Star Trek to Star Wars in one bound, was brought back into the fold after Jurassic World's Colin Trevorrow dropped out of direction. And as you probably predicted, this new film tries to placate the abandon of its predecessor by reversing many of Johnson’s more unpopular decisions. Luke’s aged ideology has been completely autocorrected, Rose’s role has been diminished and Snoke’s importance is immediately downplayed, just to name a couple reversions.
So after deliberation on all of Star Wars’ past, the short review is this: if you hated The Last Jedi, logic suggests you’re probably okay with The Rise of Skywalker and vice versa. I can't defend Johnson's film as entertainment whereas J. J. compels me to enjoy his films in spite of myself. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that the pleasures of the original and Empire cannot be duplicated, manufactured or otherwise reattained and the whole idea of continuity in this 'saga' has been one fantastical bit of winging it at every turn. However, this does not excuse how discordantly Episodes Seven through Nine play out as consecutively conceived space operas. At least with the prequels there was a definitive destination for the story, although those films are almost just as guilty of foolish miscalculations.
All this to say — relatively speaking within the realm of Star Wars movies and big blockbusters overall — I enjoyed The Rise of Skywalker for what it was, and it was mostly a loud, practically incoherent, expensive, intermittently lovely yet roughly nonsensical pile of glossy corporate excrement. Maybe that's a good descriptor for The Last Jedi and even The Force Awakens too, but it doesn't really matter. Something urges me to die on the "Rise of Skywalker is the best of the trilogy" hill. Call me cuckoo.
J. J. the writer and his partner Chris Terrio (the odd duck with both an Academy Award for Adapted Screenwriting with Argo and co-writer credits on Batman v Superman and Justice League) had the unenviable job of wrapping up at least two and at most eight predecessors immediately after Johnson crudely painted the new franchise into a claustrophobic narrative corner. TRoS is, if anything, admittedly overstuffed and cacophonous — but J. J. the director can almost always smooth over internal absurdity, dull dialogue and sometimes downright dumb interludes with the disciplined velocity of his digestible gifts. His first Star War loses points inherently for narrow-mindedly blocking out all creative directions for the springboard story and The Last Jedi both ignores a decent cliffhanger for a middle chapter and offers us a wasted, misplaced feeling of finality.
Of course by returning to the comfort zone, the structure of part nine is planted in Return of the Jedi. But this one still feels like a neatly continuous yet separate, standard Star Wars movie — the planet-trotting adventure emulates silly serial escapades, the newer characters finally feel comfortable and established, the broad humor lands abnormally well and the action (in the second act specifically) is kind of exhilarating when Abrams’ camerawork is most fluid and polished. The cinematography is fairly vivid and the emotions, mainly between Rey and Kylo (whose relationship has been the only source of consistent character drama the past three films), are effective even if the bumbled, half-baked story isn’t so much.
My enjoyment doesn’t deter the film’s countless flaws, yet I reiterate: Star Wars has never exceeded the level of “eh..” in 40 years, no matter the numerous apologists in Lucas’s or Johnson’s respective camps. The Rise of Skywalker is flashing colors and paper-thin myth-making — but if you're itching for a sleazy, exciting visit to the movies, this one goes down easy and if you’re looking for much more from this franchise at this point, you’ve backed the wrong horse. Frankly, if you can get past the Emperor’s resurrection (“somehow, Palpatine returned,” was explanation enough for Kathleen Kennedy) and maybe reaffirm the idea that these films are literally about monks with space magic, futuristic military machines and a puréed blend of science fiction, fantasy, adventure and Westerns, the more gaping errors in the trivial story mechanics feel inconsequential next to detectable entertainment value. At least the insults to our intelligence are employed for the sake of greater cinematic appeal rather than feeble moral revisionism (ahem, Rian). This appropriate simplicity within The Rise of Skywalker probably explains why audiences are receiving it so reasonably while critics have finally mounted their high horse after shamelessly shilling the mediocre Disney Wars thus far (Solo notwithstanding). I won’t even go so far as to say all these movies are for children (though that is the core audience that will get the most out of them) but I can’t think of another film of late more deserving of the preliminary, and very asinine, advice to just, like, turn your brain off dude.
In-theater enjoyment and retroactive embarrassment is how nearly every Abrams movie plays out, and The Rise of Skywalker is just that and then a little more just to be safe. Still, Abrams knows how to shoot a movie efficiently with his trademark Spielberg-lite senses. You can criticize so much — the wonky third act, the needless new characters, the bullet train plot process — but the film gets you your money’s worth by the sheer ration of content versus time. This Star War has a whole beginning, middle and end when it ought to be considerably focused on resolution like any actually good, properly planned trilogy should.
Babu Frick was cool! Adam Driver is magnificent, filling out the only character of the trilogy we can be glad about. They gave Oscar Isaac's Poe a few more layers. It’s almost miraculous the way Carrie Fischer’s scenes play so smoothly, until Leia's death when they don’t so much. Richard E. Grant should've been an Imperial General for all three movies and then Domhnall Gleeson's Hux actually wasn't an Imperial General all along so... the Wayfinder and the Sith dagger were sort of stupid uh... the climax was kind of um... yeah I change my mind this isn't the hill I want to die on.
So a long time ago there once was a really good space fantasy movie called Star Wars. It became and remains essentially the most popular original film of all time, at least as far as domestic audiences are concerned. The sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, was a blockbuster miracle superseding the iconoclastic predecessor with rich emotion, vibrant drama and deepened ingenuity.
Everyone with a sliver of a grasp of pop culture is aware of this but it’s important to reiterate that 1980 really was the last time Star Wars movies were exceptionally great. Return of the Jedi, regardless of its operatic strengths and classic climax, was a considerable step down from the earlier films as the series had already found itself in a state of creative rehashing. The prequels famously splintered both the religious fanbase and critical voices, setting the stage for the exponential divide we have now in the age of the Mouse's movie monopoly. George Lucas’s heart was in the right place when he sought to impart brand new stories within his established universe by way of shiny new digital technology and yet, whether you cite the crutch of green-screen-imprisoned visual effects, hokey plotting, faulty humor (unintentional or otherwise) or any other repeated nitpicks, you have to admit Lucas was unable to conjure anything close to an instant, enduring classic like his watershed original movie, nor emulate the tales of old and tangential influences that inspired him. Revenge of the Sith is the only story apart from the first trilogy really worth a damn — there was potential for masterful moviemaking if not for Lucas’s shortcomings, which are far more unregulated in the grotesque indulgence of The Phantom Menace and the protracted melodramatics of Attack of the Clones.
By the time The Force Awakens came out just four years ago, Disney hedged their bets on drawing in the largest, most diverse audience possible while assuaging disgruntled diehards in order to funnel the maximum number of eyeballs back into the collective fan machine. The safe nostalgia trip was little more than a remix, a redo and a softball setup for potentially better movies down the line. Reportedly, and astonishingly, nothing was planned beyond Episode VII — enter Rian Johnson, who put forth his own radical vision in disregard to the template provided by The Force Awakens and a lot of Star Wars mythos in general. This was the irreparable fragmentation of the base — some critics declared The Last Jedi to be one of the great Star Wars movies to date while others deemed it an awful, meandering, contradictory mess, myself included. No amount of decent visual direction, fine developments of the dynamics between Rey and Kylo Ren and admirable (not to mention unfulfilled) attempts at thematic substance can redeem Johnson’s most baffling, bold and borderline stupid choices.
Capping off this new, controversially uneven trilogy, The Rise of Skywalker is forced to serve as a two-fold finale — the end of a fan fiction-tier sequel trilogy and, in the greater scheme of things, the climax of nine terribly popular movies, all while supposedly fulfilling its individual cinematic goals. J. J. Abrams, who jumped from Star Trek to Star Wars in one bound, was brought back into the fold after Jurassic World's Colin Trevorrow dropped out of direction. And as you probably predicted, this new film tries to placate the abandon of its predecessor by reversing many of Johnson’s more unpopular decisions. Luke’s aged ideology has been completely autocorrected, Rose’s role has been diminished and Snoke’s importance is immediately downplayed, just to name a couple reversions.
So after deliberation on all of Star Wars’ past, the short review is this: if you hated The Last Jedi, logic suggests you’re probably okay with The Rise of Skywalker and vice versa. I can't defend Johnson's film as entertainment whereas J. J. compels me to enjoy his films in spite of myself. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that the pleasures of the original and Empire cannot be duplicated, manufactured or otherwise reattained and the whole idea of continuity in this 'saga' has been one fantastical bit of winging it at every turn. However, this does not excuse how discordantly Episodes Seven through Nine play out as consecutively conceived space operas. At least with the prequels there was a definitive destination for the story, although those films are almost just as guilty of foolish miscalculations.
All this to say — relatively speaking within the realm of Star Wars movies and big blockbusters overall — I enjoyed The Rise of Skywalker for what it was, and it was mostly a loud, practically incoherent, expensive, intermittently lovely yet roughly nonsensical pile of glossy corporate excrement. Maybe that's a good descriptor for The Last Jedi and even The Force Awakens too, but it doesn't really matter. Something urges me to die on the "Rise of Skywalker is the best of the trilogy" hill. Call me cuckoo.
J. J. the writer and his partner Chris Terrio (the odd duck with both an Academy Award for Adapted Screenwriting with Argo and co-writer credits on Batman v Superman and Justice League) had the unenviable job of wrapping up at least two and at most eight predecessors immediately after Johnson crudely painted the new franchise into a claustrophobic narrative corner. TRoS is, if anything, admittedly overstuffed and cacophonous — but J. J. the director can almost always smooth over internal absurdity, dull dialogue and sometimes downright dumb interludes with the disciplined velocity of his digestible gifts. His first Star War loses points inherently for narrow-mindedly blocking out all creative directions for the springboard story and The Last Jedi both ignores a decent cliffhanger for a middle chapter and offers us a wasted, misplaced feeling of finality.
Of course by returning to the comfort zone, the structure of part nine is planted in Return of the Jedi. But this one still feels like a neatly continuous yet separate, standard Star Wars movie — the planet-trotting adventure emulates silly serial escapades, the newer characters finally feel comfortable and established, the broad humor lands abnormally well and the action (in the second act specifically) is kind of exhilarating when Abrams’ camerawork is most fluid and polished. The cinematography is fairly vivid and the emotions, mainly between Rey and Kylo (whose relationship has been the only source of consistent character drama the past three films), are effective even if the bumbled, half-baked story isn’t so much.
My enjoyment doesn’t deter the film’s countless flaws, yet I reiterate: Star Wars has never exceeded the level of “eh..” in 40 years, no matter the numerous apologists in Lucas’s or Johnson’s respective camps. The Rise of Skywalker is flashing colors and paper-thin myth-making — but if you're itching for a sleazy, exciting visit to the movies, this one goes down easy and if you’re looking for much more from this franchise at this point, you’ve backed the wrong horse. Frankly, if you can get past the Emperor’s resurrection (“somehow, Palpatine returned,” was explanation enough for Kathleen Kennedy) and maybe reaffirm the idea that these films are literally about monks with space magic, futuristic military machines and a puréed blend of science fiction, fantasy, adventure and Westerns, the more gaping errors in the trivial story mechanics feel inconsequential next to detectable entertainment value. At least the insults to our intelligence are employed for the sake of greater cinematic appeal rather than feeble moral revisionism (ahem, Rian). This appropriate simplicity within The Rise of Skywalker probably explains why audiences are receiving it so reasonably while critics have finally mounted their high horse after shamelessly shilling the mediocre Disney Wars thus far (Solo notwithstanding). I won’t even go so far as to say all these movies are for children (though that is the core audience that will get the most out of them) but I can’t think of another film of late more deserving of the preliminary, and very asinine, advice to just, like, turn your brain off dude.
In-theater enjoyment and retroactive embarrassment is how nearly every Abrams movie plays out, and The Rise of Skywalker is just that and then a little more just to be safe. Still, Abrams knows how to shoot a movie efficiently with his trademark Spielberg-lite senses. You can criticize so much — the wonky third act, the needless new characters, the bullet train plot process — but the film gets you your money’s worth by the sheer ration of content versus time. This Star War has a whole beginning, middle and end when it ought to be considerably focused on resolution like any actually good, properly planned trilogy should.
Babu Frick was cool! Adam Driver is magnificent, filling out the only character of the trilogy we can be glad about. They gave Oscar Isaac's Poe a few more layers. It’s almost miraculous the way Carrie Fischer’s scenes play so smoothly, until Leia's death when they don’t so much. Richard E. Grant should've been an Imperial General for all three movies and then Domhnall Gleeson's Hux actually wasn't an Imperial General all along so... the Wayfinder and the Sith dagger were sort of stupid uh... the climax was kind of um... yeah I change my mind this isn't the hill I want to die on.
Black Christmas, Bombshell and Cats briefings
Black Christmas
1 ½ (out of 4)
In hindsight, the original Black Christmas is bolstered by its place in film history — as an early excerpt of the slasher genre it was a horror forebear only a few notches below the infamous esteem of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre until Halloween’s popularity would make the genre too sweeping not to classify. That 1974 film was blessed with giallo sensibilities, self-restraint and some iconic moments. The 2006 revision was a turd — a sour, sick-minded, minimal-effort slay ride padded out with superfluous backstory for an inbred serial killer (whoa he has yellow skin, real cool) rather than much, much, much preferable mystery.
This 2019 attempt suffers from the same slightness and inventive monotony of the last remake yet it’s a significantly classier affair, at least in character. Imogen Poots is an alright lead in a flop confirming she'll never be the starlet she might at one point have seemed destined — this is no Green Room, the far superior low budget horror-thriller with the lovely, talented actress. But this feeble PG-13 redo wastes so much time attempting to align the premise of stalked sorority sisters with today’s college campus rape culture, which out of context is a decent idea relevant to the #metoo movement.
But Black Christmas rides political coattails into oblivion (go woke, go broke as some say) in an embarrassing ploy to turn what was always just a bloody Christmas mystery movie into some soapbox for genuinely important topics that couldn’t be more tactless in the telling if they tried. The thrills are nonexistent and the psycho-cult fraternity is a fair thematic lens carried out with pathetic carelessness. Empowerment this hapless earns no upvotes.
Bombshell
2 ½ (out of 4)
There’s a lot in this film’s corner — Jay Roach’s documentarian approach, a script that shapes the arguments of the #metoo era without too much patronizing, one of many great turns for Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie respectively and most obviously the indelible make-up work (this movie’s guaranteed Oscar). As the most lookalike biopic performance since who knows when, it’s never been so relieving to get lost in a performance like Theron’s simulacrum of Megan Kelly's complexion and televised ticks.
But for such a supposedly fired up feminist film about courageously breaking the silence, it's an ironically timid production. The condemnation of Roger Ailes (John Lithgow nailing the executive depravity) is an easily shot target but the film is wrapped up in the idea that the reparations of sexual assault damages will never balance out, even though the system has been rocked in the wake of fallen industry titans since 2016. Bombshell’s a little skimpy on the pain, frustration and exploitation at the heart of inappropriate and coercive workplace behavior. If the script found a way to ponder the politics more than just career vs. moral duty angles — which are as common as the recurrent Oscar season — maybe Bombshell would stand out or hit harder.
The informal narration and enraged comedy seem to emulate The Big Short with a shortage of fervor or informative charge. The messages are sometimes too self-explanatory, lost in a cautious communication of the embarrassment and the empowerment. Maybe the guy behind Meet the Fockers and Austin Powers shouldn't have been handling such a sensitive issue.
Cats
2 (out of 4)
I wish I could come down on this thing like a critical nuke but darn it, that wouldn’t be true to my honest to God feelings about Cats.
While Tom Hooper surely underestimated what his already inflated sense of skill could do for such an elaborate conversion of popular musical theater to big screen, this frolicking disaster was not without a respectable goal in mind. Right off the bat it’s necessary to illustrate that if the film’s bloated budget was blown on the rights things like textured, elaborate make-up and costume design, and all the further ingredients of tangibility that do not dissociate your audience from the movie or its characters — i.e. Hooper's 2013 Les Mis, although even that was unfulfilled — Cats wouldn't be a petri dish for memes and mainstream revilement.
The effects are better than what the infamous early trailers implied we were in store for but from the stage novice's perspective, the idea of a musical about cats doesn’t offer much more than a few moments of emotive punctuality, if you're lucky. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s best excerpts are stirring in a sketchy sort of way but it's the conviction of select performers who take the material seriously enough elevating Cats out of the litter box. Judi Dench, Jennifer Hudson, Taylor Swift and most egregiously Ian McKellen get WAY too into feline mode, fortunately offsetting the pure agony of witnessing Rebel Wilson and James Corden do their thing.
The movie is a living, breathing cinematic cataclysm and one of the biggest box office busts of recent memory — still, for being completely misguided the film is not entirely meritless nor emotionally exasperating. Occasionally Cats is actually okay, which is not a sentiment I thought I’d ever honestly utter after absorbing the film at the movies in one sticky, sickly dose. I'll take a flick so deliciously misconceived over Hooper wearily dropping stodgy Oscar bait like The King's Speech and The Danish Girl.
1 ½ (out of 4)
In hindsight, the original Black Christmas is bolstered by its place in film history — as an early excerpt of the slasher genre it was a horror forebear only a few notches below the infamous esteem of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre until Halloween’s popularity would make the genre too sweeping not to classify. That 1974 film was blessed with giallo sensibilities, self-restraint and some iconic moments. The 2006 revision was a turd — a sour, sick-minded, minimal-effort slay ride padded out with superfluous backstory for an inbred serial killer (whoa he has yellow skin, real cool) rather than much, much, much preferable mystery.
This 2019 attempt suffers from the same slightness and inventive monotony of the last remake yet it’s a significantly classier affair, at least in character. Imogen Poots is an alright lead in a flop confirming she'll never be the starlet she might at one point have seemed destined — this is no Green Room, the far superior low budget horror-thriller with the lovely, talented actress. But this feeble PG-13 redo wastes so much time attempting to align the premise of stalked sorority sisters with today’s college campus rape culture, which out of context is a decent idea relevant to the #metoo movement.
But Black Christmas rides political coattails into oblivion (go woke, go broke as some say) in an embarrassing ploy to turn what was always just a bloody Christmas mystery movie into some soapbox for genuinely important topics that couldn’t be more tactless in the telling if they tried. The thrills are nonexistent and the psycho-cult fraternity is a fair thematic lens carried out with pathetic carelessness. Empowerment this hapless earns no upvotes.
Bombshell
2 ½ (out of 4)
There’s a lot in this film’s corner — Jay Roach’s documentarian approach, a script that shapes the arguments of the #metoo era without too much patronizing, one of many great turns for Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie respectively and most obviously the indelible make-up work (this movie’s guaranteed Oscar). As the most lookalike biopic performance since who knows when, it’s never been so relieving to get lost in a performance like Theron’s simulacrum of Megan Kelly's complexion and televised ticks.
But for such a supposedly fired up feminist film about courageously breaking the silence, it's an ironically timid production. The condemnation of Roger Ailes (John Lithgow nailing the executive depravity) is an easily shot target but the film is wrapped up in the idea that the reparations of sexual assault damages will never balance out, even though the system has been rocked in the wake of fallen industry titans since 2016. Bombshell’s a little skimpy on the pain, frustration and exploitation at the heart of inappropriate and coercive workplace behavior. If the script found a way to ponder the politics more than just career vs. moral duty angles — which are as common as the recurrent Oscar season — maybe Bombshell would stand out or hit harder.
The informal narration and enraged comedy seem to emulate The Big Short with a shortage of fervor or informative charge. The messages are sometimes too self-explanatory, lost in a cautious communication of the embarrassment and the empowerment. Maybe the guy behind Meet the Fockers and Austin Powers shouldn't have been handling such a sensitive issue.
Cats
2 (out of 4)
I wish I could come down on this thing like a critical nuke but darn it, that wouldn’t be true to my honest to God feelings about Cats.
While Tom Hooper surely underestimated what his already inflated sense of skill could do for such an elaborate conversion of popular musical theater to big screen, this frolicking disaster was not without a respectable goal in mind. Right off the bat it’s necessary to illustrate that if the film’s bloated budget was blown on the rights things like textured, elaborate make-up and costume design, and all the further ingredients of tangibility that do not dissociate your audience from the movie or its characters — i.e. Hooper's 2013 Les Mis, although even that was unfulfilled — Cats wouldn't be a petri dish for memes and mainstream revilement.
The effects are better than what the infamous early trailers implied we were in store for but from the stage novice's perspective, the idea of a musical about cats doesn’t offer much more than a few moments of emotive punctuality, if you're lucky. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s best excerpts are stirring in a sketchy sort of way but it's the conviction of select performers who take the material seriously enough elevating Cats out of the litter box. Judi Dench, Jennifer Hudson, Taylor Swift and most egregiously Ian McKellen get WAY too into feline mode, fortunately offsetting the pure agony of witnessing Rebel Wilson and James Corden do their thing.
The movie is a living, breathing cinematic cataclysm and one of the biggest box office busts of recent memory — still, for being completely misguided the film is not entirely meritless nor emotionally exasperating. Occasionally Cats is actually okay, which is not a sentiment I thought I’d ever honestly utter after absorbing the film at the movies in one sticky, sickly dose. I'll take a flick so deliciously misconceived over Hooper wearily dropping stodgy Oscar bait like The King's Speech and The Danish Girl.
A Hidden Life briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
The current cultural climate would indicate these are not the times in which a filmmaker as uncompromising and recently erratic as Terrence Malick would prosper. But, at least in terms of unmitigated productivity, my God, the man has seriously redefined his work ethic to the exact polar extreme of his 20th century career's strict selectivity. It really feels like some executive at Fox should have told him to stop somewhere along the way but his prolific drive has miraculously let him mold the most controversial, disputed, discussed and otherwise divisive entries of his filmmaking pilgrimage.
A Hidden Life is the first Malick feature in a long while to bear an identifiable narrative structure after a streak of five variably experimental projects during the last decade. There’s no stopping him either — the extended renaissance of America’s most cloistered moviemaker continues in a new enterprise with Géza Röhrig (Son of Saul) as Jesus and Oscar winner Mark Rylance as four separate manifestations of Satan in the forthcoming The Last Planet.
In retrospect, however, the greatness of The Tree of Life will surely remain uncontested as it tops numerous best of the decade lists but otherwise all bets are off — the significance of the stretch from To the Wonder through Knight of Cups and Song to Song and finally Voyage of Time will be forever questioned. But with relative, specific and passionate confidence I can say A Hidden Life is Malick’s legitimate return to form, his most sweepingly beautiful and actively meaningful motion picture since his tremendous, awe-inspiring peak with The New World and The Tree of Life, though this is not to say equally valid arguments cannot be made for Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line.
In years of late he has categorically bent the fabric of the medium to the point of ineffectual disrepair. While I'll happily defend the ethereal artistry of Wonder and Knight, I would certainly not be the first to denounce Song and Voyage as needless, uninspired and almost like self-parody. Now, with a dependable formula back in employment, Malick returns to the emotionally blistering breadth of his earlier historical renditions.
Relentlessly ruminating on faith, nature and dogmas, Malick's impeccable eye and intrinsic ability to extol martyrs and noble detractors magnifies a particular instance of personal devotion into an allegorical implication of broad social and political injustices. This isn’t Hacksaw Ridge — the moral sincerity of A Hidden Life notes how much doing the right thing can cost you without going into Mel Gibson-level preaching or religious symbolism. Malick's unrestricted sensibilities are nonetheless as indulgent and steadfast as ever, patiently taking three contemplative hours to contrast the rustic contentment and idyllic day to day of a Polish farmer with the extensive reach of Hitler’s totalitarian reign and the senseless brutality of Nazi prison camps.
It’s the kind of masterpiece that will be a struggle to revisit casually but A Hidden Life has more urgency, moral deliberation and scenic resplendence than several of Malick's late-era, improvised one-offs combined. It’s riveting and harrowing, and just as surreally edited, probingly photographed and narratively unconcerned as his best and most frustrating creations, though those classes are certainly not mutually exclusive. Malick also improves his prescribed whispery voice-overs by using actual letters exchanged by the central separated couple — played to painful perfection by August Diehl and Valerie Pachner — as a way to upgrade a directorial trademark (and easy point of mockery) from inner monologue to longing longhand, bettering the excruciating power of the acting, not to mention the filmmaker's other celestial, prayer-like characteristics.
This will be an agonizing beauty to those with enough attention to submit to an imposing vision, a brutal bore to those unaccustomed to the auteur's predilections and sure to be generally ignored since Malick's capricious career has all but abandoned whatever mainstream appeal it once maintained. It’s probably preferable that way since audiences with the tolerance for and interest to seek out A Hidden Life are far likelier to appreciate the painstaking process of lucid misfortune.
The spellbinding synthesis of stunning visual compositions and James Newton Howard (scoring his only Malick feature akin to other heavyweights in his field like Hans Zimmer, James Horner and Alexandre Desplat) assisted by choice classical selections, coalesces into faintly familiar, breathtaking catharsis. The firm defense of selflessness and unshakable fealty at the expense of subjective logic is what affirms the film's greatness. A Hidden Life finds an American legend back in tune with the potential of his innovative formal singularity and fervid spiritual resolve.
The current cultural climate would indicate these are not the times in which a filmmaker as uncompromising and recently erratic as Terrence Malick would prosper. But, at least in terms of unmitigated productivity, my God, the man has seriously redefined his work ethic to the exact polar extreme of his 20th century career's strict selectivity. It really feels like some executive at Fox should have told him to stop somewhere along the way but his prolific drive has miraculously let him mold the most controversial, disputed, discussed and otherwise divisive entries of his filmmaking pilgrimage.
A Hidden Life is the first Malick feature in a long while to bear an identifiable narrative structure after a streak of five variably experimental projects during the last decade. There’s no stopping him either — the extended renaissance of America’s most cloistered moviemaker continues in a new enterprise with Géza Röhrig (Son of Saul) as Jesus and Oscar winner Mark Rylance as four separate manifestations of Satan in the forthcoming The Last Planet.
In retrospect, however, the greatness of The Tree of Life will surely remain uncontested as it tops numerous best of the decade lists but otherwise all bets are off — the significance of the stretch from To the Wonder through Knight of Cups and Song to Song and finally Voyage of Time will be forever questioned. But with relative, specific and passionate confidence I can say A Hidden Life is Malick’s legitimate return to form, his most sweepingly beautiful and actively meaningful motion picture since his tremendous, awe-inspiring peak with The New World and The Tree of Life, though this is not to say equally valid arguments cannot be made for Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line.
In years of late he has categorically bent the fabric of the medium to the point of ineffectual disrepair. While I'll happily defend the ethereal artistry of Wonder and Knight, I would certainly not be the first to denounce Song and Voyage as needless, uninspired and almost like self-parody. Now, with a dependable formula back in employment, Malick returns to the emotionally blistering breadth of his earlier historical renditions.
Relentlessly ruminating on faith, nature and dogmas, Malick's impeccable eye and intrinsic ability to extol martyrs and noble detractors magnifies a particular instance of personal devotion into an allegorical implication of broad social and political injustices. This isn’t Hacksaw Ridge — the moral sincerity of A Hidden Life notes how much doing the right thing can cost you without going into Mel Gibson-level preaching or religious symbolism. Malick's unrestricted sensibilities are nonetheless as indulgent and steadfast as ever, patiently taking three contemplative hours to contrast the rustic contentment and idyllic day to day of a Polish farmer with the extensive reach of Hitler’s totalitarian reign and the senseless brutality of Nazi prison camps.
It’s the kind of masterpiece that will be a struggle to revisit casually but A Hidden Life has more urgency, moral deliberation and scenic resplendence than several of Malick's late-era, improvised one-offs combined. It’s riveting and harrowing, and just as surreally edited, probingly photographed and narratively unconcerned as his best and most frustrating creations, though those classes are certainly not mutually exclusive. Malick also improves his prescribed whispery voice-overs by using actual letters exchanged by the central separated couple — played to painful perfection by August Diehl and Valerie Pachner — as a way to upgrade a directorial trademark (and easy point of mockery) from inner monologue to longing longhand, bettering the excruciating power of the acting, not to mention the filmmaker's other celestial, prayer-like characteristics.
This will be an agonizing beauty to those with enough attention to submit to an imposing vision, a brutal bore to those unaccustomed to the auteur's predilections and sure to be generally ignored since Malick's capricious career has all but abandoned whatever mainstream appeal it once maintained. It’s probably preferable that way since audiences with the tolerance for and interest to seek out A Hidden Life are far likelier to appreciate the painstaking process of lucid misfortune.
The spellbinding synthesis of stunning visual compositions and James Newton Howard (scoring his only Malick feature akin to other heavyweights in his field like Hans Zimmer, James Horner and Alexandre Desplat) assisted by choice classical selections, coalesces into faintly familiar, breathtaking catharsis. The firm defense of selflessness and unshakable fealty at the expense of subjective logic is what affirms the film's greatness. A Hidden Life finds an American legend back in tune with the potential of his innovative formal singularity and fervid spiritual resolve.
Marriage Story briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
What’s the opposite of a flash in the pan? That’s Noah Baumbach, who has unflaggingly evolved like some perfect creative organism into one of the great screenwriters and most assured original filmmakers of his generation. His last film The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) was among the first to establish Netflix as a considerably cinematic platform as well as a respite for auteurs, so long as their preeminent features play in at least a handful of theaters. And Baumbach — the hipster wunderkind, the mumblecore, screwball, comedy-drama practitioner — has returned with the most classically expressive and profoundly personal film of his career. After Roma officially symbolized streaming's place on the awards landscape last year, Marriage Story sits alongside Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman as Netflix’s two forerunners for bragging rights in the latest Oscar conversation.
Whether you see Marriage Story in theaters or in your home, Baumbach’s commanding domestic shake-up exceeds the bubblier coming-of-age iterations defining his recent filmography — at last the drama has officially drowned out the laughs. His longest, most feverish, seamless, richly themed and structurally inspired film is soundly settled in an emotive autobiographical screenplay and instinctive direction — Kramer vs. Kramer wishes it was as urgent or transfixing.
Baumbach has been forever outdoing himself since The Squid and the Whale, the New York native's confessional, lifelike early high point earning him a nomination for Best Original Screenplay nearly 15 years ago. Afterwards Margot at the Wedding and Greenberg found him taking his capacity for prickly cynicism to heart by magnifying challenging, unlikable protagonists to an eventual exhaustive breaking point. This is just before his subsequent romantic relationship with Greta Gerwig would produce the most formatively fruitful moments of his career — well, until now. His former masterworks — the fizzy, wistful Frances Ha and the barbed satire of Mistress America — were both miniature miracles. In addition, further collaborations with Adam Driver and Ben Stiller along the way (While We’re Young and a little later in The Meyerowitz Stories) lived up to an elevated standard of watertight, theatrical, character-scrutinizing, soul-revealing dramedies.
Precedents and formulas aside, Marriage Story is nothing less than an artistic surprise, a delicate, ruthless apex and an inevitability of its author’s realist and humanist tendencies. Baumbach has never shied from introducing a heightened sense of verisimilitude into his fictions, allowing his own experiences and relationships to dictate the scope, honesty and purpose of each passing movie as any supposedly authentic American filmmaker should. Seemingly relating his own understanding of marital separation — Baumbach and his ex-wife and accomplished actress Jennifer Jason Leigh (who starred in Margot) were divorced just over a decade ago — this is his most serious examination of the classic tale of creator and muse, in this case with Adam Driver in the patriarchal role of Charlie and Scarlett Johansson's Nicole initiating the prolonged pains of annulment, especially with the custody of a child to settle.
One of Driver's earliest roles was Frances and you could see the promise right away. Between balancing an impressive portfolio of collaborations (within a decade he's worked with Steven Spielberg, the Coen brothers, Jim Jarmusch, Martin Scorcese, Spike Lee and has upcoming projects with Ridley Scott and Leos Carax) with mainstream acceptance (as Kylo Ren, literally the only redeeming thing about Disney's Star Wars sequels), he’s blossomed into one of the standouts of his generation. Johansson too has kept a steady diet of great turns in instant classic material such as Lost in Translation, Under the Skin and Her while remaining tethered to Marvel's staggering success since 2010. Both Driver and Johansson offer career-crowning performances in Marriage Story; they genuinely draw out the best in each other, as their characters do the opposite.
So much of the runtime is built out of crucial, extended monologues and conversations making up the bulk of the film's greatness, selectively unleashing the pent up bitterness of any kind of discordant relationship. Nicole's early recount to Laura Dern's Nora, the climactic bout, the spine-shivering discomfort of "the thing with the knife" excerpt — they all hinge on momentous, dedicated acting and faultless, illuminating writing. When Baumbach isn't wielding his expertise at coinciding, revealing dialogues, he's positing the potency of emotional epiphany or the futile control we have over the perception of ourselves. Few moments like the courtroom tussle — which brilliantly employs Ray Liotta and Dern's enormous personalities as cutthroat divorce lawyers — followed by the now annoyingly memed argument scene so plainly exercise Baumbach's passion for examining the ugliness of personal trivialities and the ubiquity of oblivious, everyday egomania.
But because the impartiality is expertly reconciled it's less about who wins and more to do with the fleeting nature of bad times, the irony of fighting for the love of a child who couldn't care less about the legal circumstances deciding his fate, the yearning for a greater sense of understanding and communion with the people closest to us. Like any successful breakup movie should, each side gets their due time and no one ends up the bad guy or the victim.
Beyond the obvious irony of its title, Marriage Story is filled with the writer-director's most relied upon juxtapositions — mostly the equilibrium of human nature, our flaws and virtues in a cyclical succession, invoking clear and true personalities. But this time Baumbach’s emotional scope is at its widest, the dramatic weight has never been heavier and his exceptional, bracing black humor never so excruciatingly searing and deeply relieving. If the final minutes don’t break you down to brine and shiny eyes I don’t know what will. This is a dearly earned masterwork, the sum of 25 years of tireless independent filmmaking giving way to rare cinematic clarity and appreciably intimate reflections. Despite touching on the darkest, most despicable aspects of civilized behavior, the ending has such terribly poignant power — Baumbach quaintly ties little bows at the end of even his most troubling yarns, but the optimism of Marriage Story is honest, piercing and graceful. Randy Newman lends Baumbach the assist on the emotive front — his movies have never had so much purifying pathos walking in step with beautiful cinematic scoring to illustrate all the layered interactions and reliable wisdom.
Marriage Story is the best film of the year — it’s the zenith of Baumbach’s career to date, crucial evidence of the refinement of his unshakable skills and also an encouraging indication that he might never stop exceeding his former triumphs. He’s a reincarnation of Woody Allen, Ernst Lubitsch and Whit Stillman all folded in one, a man whose purpose is the consistent attempt to fashion the impeccable screenplay and thus, in some cases, the flawless film.
What’s the opposite of a flash in the pan? That’s Noah Baumbach, who has unflaggingly evolved like some perfect creative organism into one of the great screenwriters and most assured original filmmakers of his generation. His last film The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) was among the first to establish Netflix as a considerably cinematic platform as well as a respite for auteurs, so long as their preeminent features play in at least a handful of theaters. And Baumbach — the hipster wunderkind, the mumblecore, screwball, comedy-drama practitioner — has returned with the most classically expressive and profoundly personal film of his career. After Roma officially symbolized streaming's place on the awards landscape last year, Marriage Story sits alongside Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman as Netflix’s two forerunners for bragging rights in the latest Oscar conversation.
Whether you see Marriage Story in theaters or in your home, Baumbach’s commanding domestic shake-up exceeds the bubblier coming-of-age iterations defining his recent filmography — at last the drama has officially drowned out the laughs. His longest, most feverish, seamless, richly themed and structurally inspired film is soundly settled in an emotive autobiographical screenplay and instinctive direction — Kramer vs. Kramer wishes it was as urgent or transfixing.
Baumbach has been forever outdoing himself since The Squid and the Whale, the New York native's confessional, lifelike early high point earning him a nomination for Best Original Screenplay nearly 15 years ago. Afterwards Margot at the Wedding and Greenberg found him taking his capacity for prickly cynicism to heart by magnifying challenging, unlikable protagonists to an eventual exhaustive breaking point. This is just before his subsequent romantic relationship with Greta Gerwig would produce the most formatively fruitful moments of his career — well, until now. His former masterworks — the fizzy, wistful Frances Ha and the barbed satire of Mistress America — were both miniature miracles. In addition, further collaborations with Adam Driver and Ben Stiller along the way (While We’re Young and a little later in The Meyerowitz Stories) lived up to an elevated standard of watertight, theatrical, character-scrutinizing, soul-revealing dramedies.
Precedents and formulas aside, Marriage Story is nothing less than an artistic surprise, a delicate, ruthless apex and an inevitability of its author’s realist and humanist tendencies. Baumbach has never shied from introducing a heightened sense of verisimilitude into his fictions, allowing his own experiences and relationships to dictate the scope, honesty and purpose of each passing movie as any supposedly authentic American filmmaker should. Seemingly relating his own understanding of marital separation — Baumbach and his ex-wife and accomplished actress Jennifer Jason Leigh (who starred in Margot) were divorced just over a decade ago — this is his most serious examination of the classic tale of creator and muse, in this case with Adam Driver in the patriarchal role of Charlie and Scarlett Johansson's Nicole initiating the prolonged pains of annulment, especially with the custody of a child to settle.
One of Driver's earliest roles was Frances and you could see the promise right away. Between balancing an impressive portfolio of collaborations (within a decade he's worked with Steven Spielberg, the Coen brothers, Jim Jarmusch, Martin Scorcese, Spike Lee and has upcoming projects with Ridley Scott and Leos Carax) with mainstream acceptance (as Kylo Ren, literally the only redeeming thing about Disney's Star Wars sequels), he’s blossomed into one of the standouts of his generation. Johansson too has kept a steady diet of great turns in instant classic material such as Lost in Translation, Under the Skin and Her while remaining tethered to Marvel's staggering success since 2010. Both Driver and Johansson offer career-crowning performances in Marriage Story; they genuinely draw out the best in each other, as their characters do the opposite.
So much of the runtime is built out of crucial, extended monologues and conversations making up the bulk of the film's greatness, selectively unleashing the pent up bitterness of any kind of discordant relationship. Nicole's early recount to Laura Dern's Nora, the climactic bout, the spine-shivering discomfort of "the thing with the knife" excerpt — they all hinge on momentous, dedicated acting and faultless, illuminating writing. When Baumbach isn't wielding his expertise at coinciding, revealing dialogues, he's positing the potency of emotional epiphany or the futile control we have over the perception of ourselves. Few moments like the courtroom tussle — which brilliantly employs Ray Liotta and Dern's enormous personalities as cutthroat divorce lawyers — followed by the now annoyingly memed argument scene so plainly exercise Baumbach's passion for examining the ugliness of personal trivialities and the ubiquity of oblivious, everyday egomania.
But because the impartiality is expertly reconciled it's less about who wins and more to do with the fleeting nature of bad times, the irony of fighting for the love of a child who couldn't care less about the legal circumstances deciding his fate, the yearning for a greater sense of understanding and communion with the people closest to us. Like any successful breakup movie should, each side gets their due time and no one ends up the bad guy or the victim.
Beyond the obvious irony of its title, Marriage Story is filled with the writer-director's most relied upon juxtapositions — mostly the equilibrium of human nature, our flaws and virtues in a cyclical succession, invoking clear and true personalities. But this time Baumbach’s emotional scope is at its widest, the dramatic weight has never been heavier and his exceptional, bracing black humor never so excruciatingly searing and deeply relieving. If the final minutes don’t break you down to brine and shiny eyes I don’t know what will. This is a dearly earned masterwork, the sum of 25 years of tireless independent filmmaking giving way to rare cinematic clarity and appreciably intimate reflections. Despite touching on the darkest, most despicable aspects of civilized behavior, the ending has such terribly poignant power — Baumbach quaintly ties little bows at the end of even his most troubling yarns, but the optimism of Marriage Story is honest, piercing and graceful. Randy Newman lends Baumbach the assist on the emotive front — his movies have never had so much purifying pathos walking in step with beautiful cinematic scoring to illustrate all the layered interactions and reliable wisdom.
Marriage Story is the best film of the year — it’s the zenith of Baumbach’s career to date, crucial evidence of the refinement of his unshakable skills and also an encouraging indication that he might never stop exceeding his former triumphs. He’s a reincarnation of Woody Allen, Ernst Lubitsch and Whit Stillman all folded in one, a man whose purpose is the consistent attempt to fashion the impeccable screenplay and thus, in some cases, the flawless film.
Knives Out briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
Rian Johnson’s career is the real mystery. Arriving after a competently thorny neo-noir debut (Brick), a half-baked comedy caper (The Brothers Bloom), some solid sci-fi (Looper) and what can only be described as the most detestable Star Wars sequel you could possibly dream up (Episode VIII, The Last Jedi, in case you forgot), Knives Out is what you could call his mischievous masterpiece. It's the movie he’s clearly been itching to get to, deserving of all the hype since this past TIFF and one of the most emphatically, heartily entertaining films in years.
Whereas his snide teasing and frivolous misdirection left a spurious space where The Last Jedi’s supposed soul and sophistication is, Knives Out merrily frolics through your expectations in a way that invigorates Johnson’s self-branded whodunit genre-disassembly. The writer-director finds plenty of room within the Thrombey Mansion to administer his shrewd formal finesse — by the end of Act 1 Knives Out has already become its own enterprising creative item despite copious influences. With the likes of Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle too obvious to mention, more relevantly this film is something like the crass Americanized companion to Robert Altman’s Gosford Park. However Knives Out is also comprised of timeless dramatic irony and substantial suspense, reaching back to the voluptuous anxiety of seminal noir classics such as Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity or Fritz Lang’s The Woman in the Window.
Daniel Craig’s magnificent lead performance as Detective Benoit Blanc crowns an imposing cast. In a role reminiscent of the empirical investigative work of, say, Dial M for Murder, Knives Out demonstrates the same anticipatory unease of many a Hitchcock flick. Johnson’s idea of the spellbinding, unshakably suave private snoop is a fine riff on the Philip Marlowe’s and Hercule Poirot’s of the past. “This machine, unerringly, arrives at the truth,” and so go many of Craig's southern-baked soliloquies, each as smooth and sharp as Kentucky Bourbon. Ana de Armas is the film’s emotional ballast and her affect makes for a sympathetic protagonist and ensures some refinement in the conspicuous politics.
The remainder of the sterling ensemble includes Michael Shannon, Chris Evans, Toni Collette, Jamie Lee Curtis, Lakeith Stanfield, Christopher Plummer and Don Johnson, all who conform to Johnson’s cognizant premise without gleefully slipping into mugging stereotypes. As a reflection of our culture’s dread of holiday histrionics, the underpinnings of national divide are appropriate but will get the Right riled up for spitting in the face of anti-immigration rhetoric. But the fiscal journey of the Thrombey children is about the hypocrisy of entitlement and how little self-sufficiency can be expected of privileged, opportunistic leeches. Essentially Knives Out supposes karma rewards nature’s kinder characters; the upper class comeuppance and ultimate meritocratic sentiment is a fine notion.
From the dexterous dolly shots to the mansion's sublime mise-en-scène, Johnson’s airtight picture is able to serve all audiences equally with admirable auteur craftwork as well as timely cheek. The vivid characters sell the design of the moral debates and borderline inane revelations of the final admissions — Johnson’s script dances down the tightrope of cleverness, wobbling only slightly in the last steps over the vacuum of convolution. If the dialogue weren’t so savory, the editing so poetic or the performances so refreshing, one slip-up could have spoiled the whole stew — is a minor plot hole of much consequence in the scope of such cunning storytelling?
In addition to Johnson’s intention for audiences to find themselves debating, dissenting or otherwise disagreeing, on revisit I’m sure the gratification of the film’s composition will be its own reward. In the face of box office prosperity a sequel has been ordered for Detective Blanc’s further cases — Craig is so delectably compelling to observe in action, who could resist?
Rian Johnson’s career is the real mystery. Arriving after a competently thorny neo-noir debut (Brick), a half-baked comedy caper (The Brothers Bloom), some solid sci-fi (Looper) and what can only be described as the most detestable Star Wars sequel you could possibly dream up (Episode VIII, The Last Jedi, in case you forgot), Knives Out is what you could call his mischievous masterpiece. It's the movie he’s clearly been itching to get to, deserving of all the hype since this past TIFF and one of the most emphatically, heartily entertaining films in years.
Whereas his snide teasing and frivolous misdirection left a spurious space where The Last Jedi’s supposed soul and sophistication is, Knives Out merrily frolics through your expectations in a way that invigorates Johnson’s self-branded whodunit genre-disassembly. The writer-director finds plenty of room within the Thrombey Mansion to administer his shrewd formal finesse — by the end of Act 1 Knives Out has already become its own enterprising creative item despite copious influences. With the likes of Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle too obvious to mention, more relevantly this film is something like the crass Americanized companion to Robert Altman’s Gosford Park. However Knives Out is also comprised of timeless dramatic irony and substantial suspense, reaching back to the voluptuous anxiety of seminal noir classics such as Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity or Fritz Lang’s The Woman in the Window.
Daniel Craig’s magnificent lead performance as Detective Benoit Blanc crowns an imposing cast. In a role reminiscent of the empirical investigative work of, say, Dial M for Murder, Knives Out demonstrates the same anticipatory unease of many a Hitchcock flick. Johnson’s idea of the spellbinding, unshakably suave private snoop is a fine riff on the Philip Marlowe’s and Hercule Poirot’s of the past. “This machine, unerringly, arrives at the truth,” and so go many of Craig's southern-baked soliloquies, each as smooth and sharp as Kentucky Bourbon. Ana de Armas is the film’s emotional ballast and her affect makes for a sympathetic protagonist and ensures some refinement in the conspicuous politics.
The remainder of the sterling ensemble includes Michael Shannon, Chris Evans, Toni Collette, Jamie Lee Curtis, Lakeith Stanfield, Christopher Plummer and Don Johnson, all who conform to Johnson’s cognizant premise without gleefully slipping into mugging stereotypes. As a reflection of our culture’s dread of holiday histrionics, the underpinnings of national divide are appropriate but will get the Right riled up for spitting in the face of anti-immigration rhetoric. But the fiscal journey of the Thrombey children is about the hypocrisy of entitlement and how little self-sufficiency can be expected of privileged, opportunistic leeches. Essentially Knives Out supposes karma rewards nature’s kinder characters; the upper class comeuppance and ultimate meritocratic sentiment is a fine notion.
From the dexterous dolly shots to the mansion's sublime mise-en-scène, Johnson’s airtight picture is able to serve all audiences equally with admirable auteur craftwork as well as timely cheek. The vivid characters sell the design of the moral debates and borderline inane revelations of the final admissions — Johnson’s script dances down the tightrope of cleverness, wobbling only slightly in the last steps over the vacuum of convolution. If the dialogue weren’t so savory, the editing so poetic or the performances so refreshing, one slip-up could have spoiled the whole stew — is a minor plot hole of much consequence in the scope of such cunning storytelling?
In addition to Johnson’s intention for audiences to find themselves debating, dissenting or otherwise disagreeing, on revisit I’m sure the gratification of the film’s composition will be its own reward. In the face of box office prosperity a sequel has been ordered for Detective Blanc’s further cases — Craig is so delectably compelling to observe in action, who could resist?
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood briefing
3 (out of 4)
Last year Won’t You Be My Neighbor? was touted less as an exceptionally enlightening documentary and more simply because anything venerating Fred Rogers is by extension worth celebrating. Such is the case with the third film by Marielle Heller — A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is securely anchored by the graceful hand of Tom Hanks but more actually safeguarded by the very spirit of Rogers alone.
But Heller has a flair for knotty personality profiles and with A Beautiful Day she sustains a spotless, steady career. The director has become a biopic specialist since her first, fussiest and most uncomfortably realistic film — and the only one she’s also written the screenplay for — the adaptation of quasi-graphic novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl. Last year’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? could coax anyone out of their antipathy toward Melissa McCarthy whilst illustrating a psyche I’m sure no other filmmaker could've drawn clearer. The messy verisimilitude of those two dark-comic films distinguishes just how few rough edges outline A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.
The unsympathetic elements are there in a logical attempt at emotional revelations, an obvious contrast to draw next to Roger's unwavering earnestness for the necessary melodramatic backdrop. The Esquire article from which the movie is inspired tries to place you in the writer/cynic (same thing) Tom Junod's disposition — Matthew Rhys stars as the "Can You Say ... Hero?" article scribe, reasonably detailing the mindset of the curmudgeon. As Rogers, Hanks plays a supporting figure who is less a foil than a headshrink (yes I realize Rogers was an ordained minister) so that Heller's propensity to depict discomfort can be applied to the genuine yet exasperating process of watching Rogers transform journalism into therapy.
But nearly everyone who walks into the Mr. Rogers movie doesn’t need an intervention. Only a few scenes deserve the easy tears they so smoothly extract, often at the assistance of Hanks’ portrayal which takes a mere 90 seconds to get used to. The grains of wisdom and inquiries into solemn truths take a collectively heavy toll as Heller cranks the waterworks nearly as high as the 2018 documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? did. But, as I said in that review, with no dirt to dig up, Rogers' legacy exists as it always has, making me question whether this Oscar-attractor circa 2019 is worth more than a bit of binging Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood cannot get around the fact that the tenderhearted television icon’s mentality has only so much to offer other than a civic ideal to aim for — and of course the film takes time to assert that we shouldn't place his piousness on a pedestal apart from the status quo as Rogers needs no deification.
Hanks has his first Supporting Actor nomination in the bag after two famous consecutive Best Actor wins for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump plus three more nominations in the same category. This latest biographical portrait amounts to the sixth real-life person modeled in six years — Fred Rogers follows the titular Captain Phillips, Walt Disney in Saving Mr. Banks, two Spielberg projects including James B. Donovan in Bridge of Spies and Ben Bradlee in The Post as well as Sully in the only decent recent Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. Great acting is about being as good at playing yourself as you are at emulating a chameleon and Hanks is suited for this role like he's been for so many before. This performance is just below some of his deepest, most distinguished turns like Saving Private Ryan, Cast Away, Big and Phillips.
Heller’s film has a convincing moral compass but it is just not as gutsy or provoking as her earlier explorations. This is no slump since she’s willing to touch on an unregistered maturity at the heart of even the most innocent of circumstances like the cardigan-toting shepherd himself. Just because Heller’s playing it safer doesn’t mean she isn’t doing it well.
Last year Won’t You Be My Neighbor? was touted less as an exceptionally enlightening documentary and more simply because anything venerating Fred Rogers is by extension worth celebrating. Such is the case with the third film by Marielle Heller — A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is securely anchored by the graceful hand of Tom Hanks but more actually safeguarded by the very spirit of Rogers alone.
But Heller has a flair for knotty personality profiles and with A Beautiful Day she sustains a spotless, steady career. The director has become a biopic specialist since her first, fussiest and most uncomfortably realistic film — and the only one she’s also written the screenplay for — the adaptation of quasi-graphic novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl. Last year’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? could coax anyone out of their antipathy toward Melissa McCarthy whilst illustrating a psyche I’m sure no other filmmaker could've drawn clearer. The messy verisimilitude of those two dark-comic films distinguishes just how few rough edges outline A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.
The unsympathetic elements are there in a logical attempt at emotional revelations, an obvious contrast to draw next to Roger's unwavering earnestness for the necessary melodramatic backdrop. The Esquire article from which the movie is inspired tries to place you in the writer/cynic (same thing) Tom Junod's disposition — Matthew Rhys stars as the "Can You Say ... Hero?" article scribe, reasonably detailing the mindset of the curmudgeon. As Rogers, Hanks plays a supporting figure who is less a foil than a headshrink (yes I realize Rogers was an ordained minister) so that Heller's propensity to depict discomfort can be applied to the genuine yet exasperating process of watching Rogers transform journalism into therapy.
But nearly everyone who walks into the Mr. Rogers movie doesn’t need an intervention. Only a few scenes deserve the easy tears they so smoothly extract, often at the assistance of Hanks’ portrayal which takes a mere 90 seconds to get used to. The grains of wisdom and inquiries into solemn truths take a collectively heavy toll as Heller cranks the waterworks nearly as high as the 2018 documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? did. But, as I said in that review, with no dirt to dig up, Rogers' legacy exists as it always has, making me question whether this Oscar-attractor circa 2019 is worth more than a bit of binging Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood cannot get around the fact that the tenderhearted television icon’s mentality has only so much to offer other than a civic ideal to aim for — and of course the film takes time to assert that we shouldn't place his piousness on a pedestal apart from the status quo as Rogers needs no deification.
Hanks has his first Supporting Actor nomination in the bag after two famous consecutive Best Actor wins for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump plus three more nominations in the same category. This latest biographical portrait amounts to the sixth real-life person modeled in six years — Fred Rogers follows the titular Captain Phillips, Walt Disney in Saving Mr. Banks, two Spielberg projects including James B. Donovan in Bridge of Spies and Ben Bradlee in The Post as well as Sully in the only decent recent Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. Great acting is about being as good at playing yourself as you are at emulating a chameleon and Hanks is suited for this role like he's been for so many before. This performance is just below some of his deepest, most distinguished turns like Saving Private Ryan, Cast Away, Big and Phillips.
Heller’s film has a convincing moral compass but it is just not as gutsy or provoking as her earlier explorations. This is no slump since she’s willing to touch on an unregistered maturity at the heart of even the most innocent of circumstances like the cardigan-toting shepherd himself. Just because Heller’s playing it safer doesn’t mean she isn’t doing it well.
The Irishman briefing
3 (out of 4)
Martin Scorsese is a great director whose magnitude is under ceaseless reappraisal — his superior touch must reestablish itself as new ventures rectify the compounded weight of a filmography stretching over half a century. It’s been a decade of providence for Scorsese with vigorous, extravagant epics and purposeful passion projects (Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street and Silence, you decide which is which) leading to The Irishman. Despite its shortcomings as a late, indulgent excerpt alongside a seismic oeuvre and within the tradition of the gangster film, this is nonetheless another autumnal masterstroke fashioned out of each and every one of Scorsese’s convictions and practicalities.
The Irishman is flimsiest when the story must adhere to the unavoidable if oftentimes impressively accomplished digital de-aging, but the extreme expense behind the Netflix-backed undertaking is otherwise exhausted on the integral things — substantial period reproduction in the sets and costumes, thoroughly convincing make-up and premiere acting talent. The informal narration, discreet editing and cold humor are as blistering as the subjective historical commentary and vicious violence — all the elements adding up to Scorsese the auteur are fully functional, though whether or not we have indispensable cinema on our hands will be long disputed.
Will this endure as immaculately as the fundamental gangster benchmarks of Francis Ford Coppola, Sergio Leone or Quentin Tarantino? The Irishman has its own exposé, its own history, and Scorsese never appears to tire of forming new questions of conscience and hefty, mythically complex portraits. His dedication to the apathetic reality of Philadelphia hitman Frank Sheeran’s story is as effectual as his dissections of other nefarious figures in crime history and the seedier exploits of his own experiences that snuck into early efforts like Mean Streets.
Robert De Niro, in his ninth collaboration with Scorsese, is somewhat worse for wear despite his devotion, and while Joe Pesci outshines him in general, both actors posit greater empathy the closer they are to their real age. De-aging technology is a long way from perfection but, even when the CGI is passable, the actors are more organic when they're living in their own skin. Al Pacino is the film's strongest asset as Jimmy Hoffa and, even with a legendary career founded on heralded, iconic performances (Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather films, Scarface, etc.), he’s still an actor to be reckoned with as he ruggedly operates a classically tragic arc.
No matter if you think three and a half hours of mobster ethos is too much, The Irishman is so assured, authoritative and abundantly entertaining it’s enough to have you reassessing and reacquainting yourself with the mighty scope of Scorsese’s body of work. Personal favorites like The Last Temptation of Christ and After Hours inch up on the rewatch list, his most cherished films (Taxi Driver, Goodfellas) demand another bout of evaluation — how superfluous was Casino after all? — and I’ve never felt more compelled to fill in the blanks with The Age of Innocence, New York, New York or Who’s That Knocking At My Door? In short, if you really are only as good as your last movie, Scorsese is doing pretty well for himself. After 50 years of supremacy why quit now?
Martin Scorsese is a great director whose magnitude is under ceaseless reappraisal — his superior touch must reestablish itself as new ventures rectify the compounded weight of a filmography stretching over half a century. It’s been a decade of providence for Scorsese with vigorous, extravagant epics and purposeful passion projects (Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street and Silence, you decide which is which) leading to The Irishman. Despite its shortcomings as a late, indulgent excerpt alongside a seismic oeuvre and within the tradition of the gangster film, this is nonetheless another autumnal masterstroke fashioned out of each and every one of Scorsese’s convictions and practicalities.
The Irishman is flimsiest when the story must adhere to the unavoidable if oftentimes impressively accomplished digital de-aging, but the extreme expense behind the Netflix-backed undertaking is otherwise exhausted on the integral things — substantial period reproduction in the sets and costumes, thoroughly convincing make-up and premiere acting talent. The informal narration, discreet editing and cold humor are as blistering as the subjective historical commentary and vicious violence — all the elements adding up to Scorsese the auteur are fully functional, though whether or not we have indispensable cinema on our hands will be long disputed.
Will this endure as immaculately as the fundamental gangster benchmarks of Francis Ford Coppola, Sergio Leone or Quentin Tarantino? The Irishman has its own exposé, its own history, and Scorsese never appears to tire of forming new questions of conscience and hefty, mythically complex portraits. His dedication to the apathetic reality of Philadelphia hitman Frank Sheeran’s story is as effectual as his dissections of other nefarious figures in crime history and the seedier exploits of his own experiences that snuck into early efforts like Mean Streets.
Robert De Niro, in his ninth collaboration with Scorsese, is somewhat worse for wear despite his devotion, and while Joe Pesci outshines him in general, both actors posit greater empathy the closer they are to their real age. De-aging technology is a long way from perfection but, even when the CGI is passable, the actors are more organic when they're living in their own skin. Al Pacino is the film's strongest asset as Jimmy Hoffa and, even with a legendary career founded on heralded, iconic performances (Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather films, Scarface, etc.), he’s still an actor to be reckoned with as he ruggedly operates a classically tragic arc.
No matter if you think three and a half hours of mobster ethos is too much, The Irishman is so assured, authoritative and abundantly entertaining it’s enough to have you reassessing and reacquainting yourself with the mighty scope of Scorsese’s body of work. Personal favorites like The Last Temptation of Christ and After Hours inch up on the rewatch list, his most cherished films (Taxi Driver, Goodfellas) demand another bout of evaluation — how superfluous was Casino after all? — and I’ve never felt more compelled to fill in the blanks with The Age of Innocence, New York, New York or Who’s That Knocking At My Door? In short, if you really are only as good as your last movie, Scorsese is doing pretty well for himself. After 50 years of supremacy why quit now?
Charlie's Angels, Ford v Ferrari and
The Good Liar briefings
Charlie’s Angels
2 (out of 4)
The funny thing about feminist cinema is its prime examples are never self-declared but self-evident. At the very least if a woman's picture (as a man in the 40s might refer to it) was a financial failure the director didn’t blame it on absent misogynists — sorry but if this Charlie’s Angels flops, isn’t it the missing ladies in the audience who are the real problem? If the film is so instantaneously forgettable and when novice filmmaker Elizabeth Banks — whose only directorial credit is shooting Kay Cannon’s script of Pitch Perfect 2 — is hardly some kind of Kelly Reichardt or Greta Gerwig in waiting, there's really nothing to defend or get worked up about.
K-Stew is trying but frankly I’ve never found her notion of charisma more excruciating to behold. If there isn’t lame, trifling humor, which doesn’t jar at all with the blockbuster big boy pants the film yanks on when the action drops, then the super woke dialogue is literally reciting gender statistics. Gee, I bet women feel so empowered! Naomi Scott (Jasmine from the new Aladdin) is an idle audience insert while the utterly winsome Ella Balinska is misspent when she’s good enough to be bolstering Bond.
I never thought I’d look back at the McG Angel’s flicks with nostalgia and admiration, but besides Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu playing more compellingly capable heroines, those two dumb wire-fu parodies at least had a semblance of stylization and adequate proportions of fetishism and feminism. All 2019’s reboot has is Patrick Stewart.
Ford v Ferrari
3 (out of 4)
This is what they call a good old-fashioned time at the movies — nothin’ fancy at all. Technical prowess, sprawling historical illumination, thrilling tests of human endurance and seasoned actors bringing legends to life — if not for those things Ford v Ferrari somehow doesn’t abandon the common yokel's grasp of the joint business/engineering competition or insult your intelligence with too much superfluous open-road navel-gazing. Basically everyone in the audience has a hook, especially with such phenomenally edited action, but FvF is foremost steeped in emotional earthiness.
James Mangold ventured down the biopic path with Walk the Line to similarly well-rounded success (healthy awards recognition and decent treatment at the box office) while more current detours to comic book country with The Wolverine and Logan did not erase but fortified his craft. The friendship between Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles naturally clicks the film’s disparate dramatics into place — Christian Bale is as good as some of his defining performances (American Psycho, The Machinist, The Prestige, Rescue Dawn) and Matt Damon reminds you why he was ever such a big deal to begin with. It's no surprise the most momentous part of the racing movie is the human friction.
The Good Liar
1 ½ (out of 4)
The employment of standard narrative discipline usually conjures the expectancy of forthcoming scenes, but there are some movies so transparent, predictable and pointless it's actually befuddling to picture people enjoying such stuffy schlock. No matter how many movies I’ve seen I’m usually the one playing the fool when it comes to twist-laden attractions like The Good Liar, but damn — I could call every listless shot of this overstated bore.
So I'm admittedly not so clever but there was only so much to be done with the arrangement of dueling elderly deceivers. Let me give you a hint — whoever you think has the upper hand (wait for it) doesn’t. The Good Liar has a pinch of merit as opposing legends of stage and screen Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren make the viewing compulsory and… that’s about it. It’s a pity the tacky novel wasn't restricted to the rotating rack at the airport kiosk as culture intended. Something tells me the hidden #metoo/Nazi-revenge double threat helped keep this snooze in the creative conversation.
2 (out of 4)
The funny thing about feminist cinema is its prime examples are never self-declared but self-evident. At the very least if a woman's picture (as a man in the 40s might refer to it) was a financial failure the director didn’t blame it on absent misogynists — sorry but if this Charlie’s Angels flops, isn’t it the missing ladies in the audience who are the real problem? If the film is so instantaneously forgettable and when novice filmmaker Elizabeth Banks — whose only directorial credit is shooting Kay Cannon’s script of Pitch Perfect 2 — is hardly some kind of Kelly Reichardt or Greta Gerwig in waiting, there's really nothing to defend or get worked up about.
K-Stew is trying but frankly I’ve never found her notion of charisma more excruciating to behold. If there isn’t lame, trifling humor, which doesn’t jar at all with the blockbuster big boy pants the film yanks on when the action drops, then the super woke dialogue is literally reciting gender statistics. Gee, I bet women feel so empowered! Naomi Scott (Jasmine from the new Aladdin) is an idle audience insert while the utterly winsome Ella Balinska is misspent when she’s good enough to be bolstering Bond.
I never thought I’d look back at the McG Angel’s flicks with nostalgia and admiration, but besides Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu playing more compellingly capable heroines, those two dumb wire-fu parodies at least had a semblance of stylization and adequate proportions of fetishism and feminism. All 2019’s reboot has is Patrick Stewart.
Ford v Ferrari
3 (out of 4)
This is what they call a good old-fashioned time at the movies — nothin’ fancy at all. Technical prowess, sprawling historical illumination, thrilling tests of human endurance and seasoned actors bringing legends to life — if not for those things Ford v Ferrari somehow doesn’t abandon the common yokel's grasp of the joint business/engineering competition or insult your intelligence with too much superfluous open-road navel-gazing. Basically everyone in the audience has a hook, especially with such phenomenally edited action, but FvF is foremost steeped in emotional earthiness.
James Mangold ventured down the biopic path with Walk the Line to similarly well-rounded success (healthy awards recognition and decent treatment at the box office) while more current detours to comic book country with The Wolverine and Logan did not erase but fortified his craft. The friendship between Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles naturally clicks the film’s disparate dramatics into place — Christian Bale is as good as some of his defining performances (American Psycho, The Machinist, The Prestige, Rescue Dawn) and Matt Damon reminds you why he was ever such a big deal to begin with. It's no surprise the most momentous part of the racing movie is the human friction.
The Good Liar
1 ½ (out of 4)
The employment of standard narrative discipline usually conjures the expectancy of forthcoming scenes, but there are some movies so transparent, predictable and pointless it's actually befuddling to picture people enjoying such stuffy schlock. No matter how many movies I’ve seen I’m usually the one playing the fool when it comes to twist-laden attractions like The Good Liar, but damn — I could call every listless shot of this overstated bore.
So I'm admittedly not so clever but there was only so much to be done with the arrangement of dueling elderly deceivers. Let me give you a hint — whoever you think has the upper hand (wait for it) doesn’t. The Good Liar has a pinch of merit as opposing legends of stage and screen Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren make the viewing compulsory and… that’s about it. It’s a pity the tacky novel wasn't restricted to the rotating rack at the airport kiosk as culture intended. Something tells me the hidden #metoo/Nazi-revenge double threat helped keep this snooze in the creative conversation.
Doctor Sleep briefing
2 (out of 4)
Stephen King's spot on the big screen is more illustrious than ever and just as inconsistent. In an already big year for the heavyweight author — a Pet Sematary reboot, It Chapter Two, even In the Tall Grass for Netflix — the creative feebleness of Doctor Sleep feels more like a King-guided misfire even though the movie principally functions as an inevitable spin-off of the 1980 interpretation of The Shining.
Since no one's ever clamored for a King screenplay save for Creepshow, the story usually goes that the more detached he is from the visual rendition of his novels the purer the results. Historically this is most evidently felt in the lingering predominance of Stanley Kubrick's hallmark of the horror horizon some 40 years out. That said, I wasn’t automatically pessimistic when I heard King’s latent continuation of his famous 1977 novel was being fit for the screen courtesy of the runaway success of 2017’s It. Considering Doctor Sleep invariably must exist as a curiously inconsequential follow-up to maybe Kubrick’s most inscrutable creation, it soon becomes apparent that this film's artistic task, as both fresh King adaptation and dormant sequel, was impossible.
But what matters by the time you sit your posterior in the theater is the film finds some way justify its stupendously ill-advised undertaking and ridiculously indulgent two and a half hours. At the outset Mike Flanagan's feature looks like it's navigating a divergent nightmare but, because of the fatal choice to perpetually hammer home Kubrick’s influence, Doctor Sleep is ultimately so dysfunctional as entertainment and can be so promptly discredited as cinema. Flanagan is certainly no force of filmmaking nature akin to Stanley but honestly who is? As a sharp marksman of B-movie diligence — Oculus is a treat, better than his triptych of Netflix joints (the shrewd slasher Hush, the dim-witted dreams of Before I Wake, and an antithetically pocket-sized King adaptation Gerald’s Game) — Flanagan is a man of quiet consistency. At the very least his gloomy voice as a lesser yet practiced digital auteur is intact, the only factor shaking off a few of Doctor Sleep's inescapable cinematic shadows. Even as the film’s writer, editor and director, who knows how much of his voice was left unspoken since there’s King’s capital K Krazy source material to consider and Warner Brothers' itch for a movie proportionate to Kubrick’s deliberate, initially alienating calculations.
By egregiously citing Kubrick’s premeditated dexterity, Flanagan's Hollywood break is incapable of emerging as its own thing. Despite a radical shift in the internal mythology, Doctor Sleep never fails to act as a stylistic simulacrum of The Shining’s meticulously mind-dissolving psychological trip. The exact score (harsh horns, nebulous, spectral ambiance and those heartbeat jungle drums) and visual references (striking symmetry, glacial superimposed transitions and haunting tracking shots) feel more like plagiarism than homage, serving to constantly remind you of its predecessor's perfection while King's imagination solemnly unspools the most boring, witless X-Men tale of all time.
Yet so much paling in comparison can't discount the fact that Ewan McGregor will forever play a creditable protagonist and Rebecca Ferguson continues to exercise villainesses as her exquisite forte. A friend told me if this movie reminded him of the dreadful related sequence from Ready Player One it'd be the kiss of death, and with pointless reproductions of memorable Shining moments by lookalike actors (um, WB you do own the original footage correct?) the worst has been realized. As with Spielberg's conundrum, reverence alone does not suffice to give you a pass no matter how intrinsically great the point of origin or praise — and whether the inspiration of Doctor Sleep is more Kubrick's film or King's book, the movie just kind of sucks either way.
Stephen King's spot on the big screen is more illustrious than ever and just as inconsistent. In an already big year for the heavyweight author — a Pet Sematary reboot, It Chapter Two, even In the Tall Grass for Netflix — the creative feebleness of Doctor Sleep feels more like a King-guided misfire even though the movie principally functions as an inevitable spin-off of the 1980 interpretation of The Shining.
Since no one's ever clamored for a King screenplay save for Creepshow, the story usually goes that the more detached he is from the visual rendition of his novels the purer the results. Historically this is most evidently felt in the lingering predominance of Stanley Kubrick's hallmark of the horror horizon some 40 years out. That said, I wasn’t automatically pessimistic when I heard King’s latent continuation of his famous 1977 novel was being fit for the screen courtesy of the runaway success of 2017’s It. Considering Doctor Sleep invariably must exist as a curiously inconsequential follow-up to maybe Kubrick’s most inscrutable creation, it soon becomes apparent that this film's artistic task, as both fresh King adaptation and dormant sequel, was impossible.
But what matters by the time you sit your posterior in the theater is the film finds some way justify its stupendously ill-advised undertaking and ridiculously indulgent two and a half hours. At the outset Mike Flanagan's feature looks like it's navigating a divergent nightmare but, because of the fatal choice to perpetually hammer home Kubrick’s influence, Doctor Sleep is ultimately so dysfunctional as entertainment and can be so promptly discredited as cinema. Flanagan is certainly no force of filmmaking nature akin to Stanley but honestly who is? As a sharp marksman of B-movie diligence — Oculus is a treat, better than his triptych of Netflix joints (the shrewd slasher Hush, the dim-witted dreams of Before I Wake, and an antithetically pocket-sized King adaptation Gerald’s Game) — Flanagan is a man of quiet consistency. At the very least his gloomy voice as a lesser yet practiced digital auteur is intact, the only factor shaking off a few of Doctor Sleep's inescapable cinematic shadows. Even as the film’s writer, editor and director, who knows how much of his voice was left unspoken since there’s King’s capital K Krazy source material to consider and Warner Brothers' itch for a movie proportionate to Kubrick’s deliberate, initially alienating calculations.
By egregiously citing Kubrick’s premeditated dexterity, Flanagan's Hollywood break is incapable of emerging as its own thing. Despite a radical shift in the internal mythology, Doctor Sleep never fails to act as a stylistic simulacrum of The Shining’s meticulously mind-dissolving psychological trip. The exact score (harsh horns, nebulous, spectral ambiance and those heartbeat jungle drums) and visual references (striking symmetry, glacial superimposed transitions and haunting tracking shots) feel more like plagiarism than homage, serving to constantly remind you of its predecessor's perfection while King's imagination solemnly unspools the most boring, witless X-Men tale of all time.
Yet so much paling in comparison can't discount the fact that Ewan McGregor will forever play a creditable protagonist and Rebecca Ferguson continues to exercise villainesses as her exquisite forte. A friend told me if this movie reminded him of the dreadful related sequence from Ready Player One it'd be the kiss of death, and with pointless reproductions of memorable Shining moments by lookalike actors (um, WB you do own the original footage correct?) the worst has been realized. As with Spielberg's conundrum, reverence alone does not suffice to give you a pass no matter how intrinsically great the point of origin or praise — and whether the inspiration of Doctor Sleep is more Kubrick's film or King's book, the movie just kind of sucks either way.
Jojo Rabbit briefing
3 (out of 4)
Taika Waititi is going places and he’s not pausing along his abnormal directorial path to catch a breath or sniff some roses. Alongside the Russo brothers and Joss Whedon, Waititi was one of the few indie-Hollywood transitions — ya know, the routine of converting small time filmmakers into overnight blockbuster neophytes — to pay off successfully in Thor: Ragnarok, a Marvel film with an uncommonly discernable identity. Before Waititi returns to the superhero game in Thor: Love and Thunder, with Jojo Rabbit he protects his place as an oddball on the outskirts while also netting some invaluable license to Oscar prestige.
Something like Wes Anderson's mind meshed with Life is Beautiful or perhaps Come and See, Jojo Rabbit is constructed on an inflexible tone of indifference. The movie's somewhat inflammatory existence makes me all the curiouser about Germany’s take on a thoroughly Americanized (or Kiwied, however you look at it), flagrantly parodic impression of Adolf Hitler’s ideology on youngsters, particularly when certain stateside spectators are so irked. Waititi’s satire doesn't exactly succeed as brazen folly, although a well-placed pun or turn of phrase lets Waititi prove his truest talent lies in swift, sage dialogue.
It's never too soon to comment on the nature of distorting history to your own will — especially the extra sensitive, 20th century sort. When Tarantino warps WWII to his pleasing, it's a saucy continuation of a foolhardy brand but somehow Waititi's impish twists on Nazis, Jews and the subjects in between have been enough for grumbling critics to dismiss the film altogether. To be frank I don't care one smidgen how writers and directors erroneously tweak the past for the sake of a cinematic present, nor about the frail sensitivity of audiences conditioned to be rattled at a moment's notice. Jojo Rabbit got to me emotionally and no amount of personal provocation could agitate shoo-in sympathetic wit once the uneasiness of the first act subsided. This isn't Au Revoir, Les Enfants after all, it's a quirky, sappy comedy by the guy who made that vampire mockumentary starring himself and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which is twice the eccentric feel-good flick Jojo is and sadly no one has seen it. Even when someone both respected and Jewish steps behind the camera like Steven Spielberg with Schindler's List, still the most petulant of bellyachers are unable to be quelled. I guess religion and nationalism can always be counted on to bring out the worst in the worst of us.
Even if this affair has some overly cute or farcical flashes, the succession of goofiness and heartache is rather strategic, even mathematical. At first, especially with Rebel Wilson on-screen, you're daring Waititi to hit an emotive peak high enough to win TIFF's People's Choice Award (over Marriage Story and Parasite) but it doesn’t take long for the agreeable juggling act of silliness and substance to strike a sincere rhythm. Waititi himself executes this both on and off-screen, inhabiting young Jojo's idea of Hitler like a wisecracking devil on the shoulder throughout the entire film. Waititi purposely did no research on the infamous dictator, which while an adorable way to posthumously stick it to the Naziest Nazi is a little lazy no matter how appropriately ignorance suits the performance. His supporting cast — Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell and Stephen Merchant — hand in some of the better performances of their careers as they have terrible fun with pronounced stereotypes. Johansson specifically is moving as the mother raising Jojo (the unassumingly extraordinary Roman Griffin Davis) and sheltering a Jewish girl Elsa (the wonderful Thomasin McKenzie) while her husband fights the war.
Building an organic bridge of empathy as any wholesome film should, Jojo’s steadily sentimental relationship with Elsa elicits an innocent earnestness to reconcile the film’s touchy tonal oddities. McKenzie — who maybe is only so good at acting when it comes to playing scruffy homeless girls as in Leave No Trace — commits to every leap of pathos with recognizable devotion, preventing Jojo Rabbit from tripping over its own excess of twee.
Taika Waititi is going places and he’s not pausing along his abnormal directorial path to catch a breath or sniff some roses. Alongside the Russo brothers and Joss Whedon, Waititi was one of the few indie-Hollywood transitions — ya know, the routine of converting small time filmmakers into overnight blockbuster neophytes — to pay off successfully in Thor: Ragnarok, a Marvel film with an uncommonly discernable identity. Before Waititi returns to the superhero game in Thor: Love and Thunder, with Jojo Rabbit he protects his place as an oddball on the outskirts while also netting some invaluable license to Oscar prestige.
Something like Wes Anderson's mind meshed with Life is Beautiful or perhaps Come and See, Jojo Rabbit is constructed on an inflexible tone of indifference. The movie's somewhat inflammatory existence makes me all the curiouser about Germany’s take on a thoroughly Americanized (or Kiwied, however you look at it), flagrantly parodic impression of Adolf Hitler’s ideology on youngsters, particularly when certain stateside spectators are so irked. Waititi’s satire doesn't exactly succeed as brazen folly, although a well-placed pun or turn of phrase lets Waititi prove his truest talent lies in swift, sage dialogue.
It's never too soon to comment on the nature of distorting history to your own will — especially the extra sensitive, 20th century sort. When Tarantino warps WWII to his pleasing, it's a saucy continuation of a foolhardy brand but somehow Waititi's impish twists on Nazis, Jews and the subjects in between have been enough for grumbling critics to dismiss the film altogether. To be frank I don't care one smidgen how writers and directors erroneously tweak the past for the sake of a cinematic present, nor about the frail sensitivity of audiences conditioned to be rattled at a moment's notice. Jojo Rabbit got to me emotionally and no amount of personal provocation could agitate shoo-in sympathetic wit once the uneasiness of the first act subsided. This isn't Au Revoir, Les Enfants after all, it's a quirky, sappy comedy by the guy who made that vampire mockumentary starring himself and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which is twice the eccentric feel-good flick Jojo is and sadly no one has seen it. Even when someone both respected and Jewish steps behind the camera like Steven Spielberg with Schindler's List, still the most petulant of bellyachers are unable to be quelled. I guess religion and nationalism can always be counted on to bring out the worst in the worst of us.
Even if this affair has some overly cute or farcical flashes, the succession of goofiness and heartache is rather strategic, even mathematical. At first, especially with Rebel Wilson on-screen, you're daring Waititi to hit an emotive peak high enough to win TIFF's People's Choice Award (over Marriage Story and Parasite) but it doesn’t take long for the agreeable juggling act of silliness and substance to strike a sincere rhythm. Waititi himself executes this both on and off-screen, inhabiting young Jojo's idea of Hitler like a wisecracking devil on the shoulder throughout the entire film. Waititi purposely did no research on the infamous dictator, which while an adorable way to posthumously stick it to the Naziest Nazi is a little lazy no matter how appropriately ignorance suits the performance. His supporting cast — Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell and Stephen Merchant — hand in some of the better performances of their careers as they have terrible fun with pronounced stereotypes. Johansson specifically is moving as the mother raising Jojo (the unassumingly extraordinary Roman Griffin Davis) and sheltering a Jewish girl Elsa (the wonderful Thomasin McKenzie) while her husband fights the war.
Building an organic bridge of empathy as any wholesome film should, Jojo’s steadily sentimental relationship with Elsa elicits an innocent earnestness to reconcile the film’s touchy tonal oddities. McKenzie — who maybe is only so good at acting when it comes to playing scruffy homeless girls as in Leave No Trace — commits to every leap of pathos with recognizable devotion, preventing Jojo Rabbit from tripping over its own excess of twee.
Parasite briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
So I know Parasite ruled the Academy Awards so it stood to reason that a few words needed to be said about the newest and arguably most laudable Best Picture winner in some time. But first, for some reason, some extended ramblings about the Oscars before we get around to the review.
I was light on Green Book for its feel-good frivolity with history and the authorship of biopics, against my better judgment. The Shape of Water only generally captivated my heart and my imagination. Moonlight was an outstanding winner, yet Manchester and La La Land, I feel, were slightly more deserving. Spotlight was fine, at least The Revenant didn’t win. Birdman beating Boyhood was probably just as bad as The King’s Speech besting The Social Network to respectively close and kick off the first leg of the past decade. 12 Years a Slave is an essential piece of filmmaking in any class and the best of its year. Argo is sort of thrilling even though you know the real thing played out just a tad different. The Artist is OK in my book, it’s not like The Tree of Life was gonna win.
ANYWAY, Parasite was not some deserving by default winner in a weak pool of selections but honestly one of the best films of an exceptional cinematic year. This year's roundup of Best Picture nominees is one of the best batches since we ditched five nominees over a decade ago. In 2009 and 2010 we had 10 guaranteed nominees before it switched to the current five to 10 possible selectees. Obviously this made room for lots of I Can't Believe It's Not Oscar Bait, as we always get at least eight if not nine nominees every year since. It's almost mathematically assured each time — crap like The Blind Side and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close sneak in or, in the case of 2016, muddy the waters with tedious filler (Hidden Figures, Lion and Hacksaw Ridge) to match genuine, best-of-the-year frontrunners (Manchester, Moonlight and La La Land).
Unless you rode the hate train of Joker or Jojo Rabbit all the way home, 2019 didn’t have a sour apple in the bunch spoiling the very idea of an annual ceremony observing cinema as art. There’s almost always a Bohemian Rhapsody, a Darkest Hour, an Imitation Game (hey there’s a trend appearing) or the honorary nod casually tossed to Steven Spielberg (War Horse, Bridge of Spies, The Post) with an occasional merited one (Lincoln). Even with one of Tarantino’s finest in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Noah Baumbach’s latest masterpiece Marriage Story, a waning epic from Scorsese and Greta Gerwig’s commendable reexamination of Little Women filling in the other good seats aside admirable popular movies like Ford v Ferrari and the aforementioned weaker links courtesy of Todd Phillips and Taika Waititi, Parasite truly earned it. Last but not least Sam Mendes was supposed to take home a second round of trophies for his Roger Deakins-assisted WWI thriller 1917.
Instead, Bong Joon-ho’s masterfully handled arthouse juggernaut Parasite set an incredibly inspiring precedent for the Academy Awards undoing many cumulative years of politically-minded follies and backwards agenda-keeping. I may like Marriage Story just a tad more, but Bong’s newest is even better than his excellent run of exemplary South Korean cinema from the Fincher-adjacent mysteries of Memories of Murder to the heavenly creature feature The Host and the psychological games of Mother. This is the most significant turn for international cinema’s representation at the Oscars but we'll have to wait and see what it's worth — as thoroughly warranted as Parasite's win is and pleasing as it is to see the Academy bending closer toward meritocracy, ultimately this could be just another consolation prize.
But history has been made nevertheless and when it comes to blazing, eternal classics, only great filmmakers entertain you just as invitingly as they test your patience and capacity to give in to something bigger than yourself. This is a momentous victory up there with the 21st century’s highlight moments and most quality BP wins — The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, No Country for Old Men, 12 Years a Slave and now a classic for the modern age and for every culture, not just those that ascribe to Middle Earth, Coen befuddlement or McQueen’s harrowing piece de resistance. Parasite is a comfortably original work and already a slice of timelessness too universal to become stale for future viewers.
I skirt around saying much about the film in question because although I love Parasite and have thought about it a good deal, those words would simply echo what so many have said about the film’s tragicomic balance of con-like hijinks and fist-clenching intensity embellishing the sound statements on economic inequality. It’s terribly engrossing, makes you ponder moral and social standing, upends your expectations in the surest, most rewarding ways and concludes with an almost epic, storybook sense of sadness. It’s a ball of fun the first time round and a sour Shakespearean exercise the next. It will live on, however, as a quintessential stepping stone for the average viewer into world cinema and the blissful thing is I can hardly think of a more inviting, beautiful and haunting peek at how the other half lives.
Between the serious satire, Gothic garnishes and Marxist bent, Parasite is deep without getting its hands dirty and superficially gratifying without coming close to insulting the intellect. The way Bong resolves all the numerous genres and diffused creative intentions into a congealed, zeitgeist-bottling whole is a trick of true talent. The film defies classification as readily as it nestles into your psyche.
So I know Parasite ruled the Academy Awards so it stood to reason that a few words needed to be said about the newest and arguably most laudable Best Picture winner in some time. But first, for some reason, some extended ramblings about the Oscars before we get around to the review.
I was light on Green Book for its feel-good frivolity with history and the authorship of biopics, against my better judgment. The Shape of Water only generally captivated my heart and my imagination. Moonlight was an outstanding winner, yet Manchester and La La Land, I feel, were slightly more deserving. Spotlight was fine, at least The Revenant didn’t win. Birdman beating Boyhood was probably just as bad as The King’s Speech besting The Social Network to respectively close and kick off the first leg of the past decade. 12 Years a Slave is an essential piece of filmmaking in any class and the best of its year. Argo is sort of thrilling even though you know the real thing played out just a tad different. The Artist is OK in my book, it’s not like The Tree of Life was gonna win.
ANYWAY, Parasite was not some deserving by default winner in a weak pool of selections but honestly one of the best films of an exceptional cinematic year. This year's roundup of Best Picture nominees is one of the best batches since we ditched five nominees over a decade ago. In 2009 and 2010 we had 10 guaranteed nominees before it switched to the current five to 10 possible selectees. Obviously this made room for lots of I Can't Believe It's Not Oscar Bait, as we always get at least eight if not nine nominees every year since. It's almost mathematically assured each time — crap like The Blind Side and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close sneak in or, in the case of 2016, muddy the waters with tedious filler (Hidden Figures, Lion and Hacksaw Ridge) to match genuine, best-of-the-year frontrunners (Manchester, Moonlight and La La Land).
Unless you rode the hate train of Joker or Jojo Rabbit all the way home, 2019 didn’t have a sour apple in the bunch spoiling the very idea of an annual ceremony observing cinema as art. There’s almost always a Bohemian Rhapsody, a Darkest Hour, an Imitation Game (hey there’s a trend appearing) or the honorary nod casually tossed to Steven Spielberg (War Horse, Bridge of Spies, The Post) with an occasional merited one (Lincoln). Even with one of Tarantino’s finest in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Noah Baumbach’s latest masterpiece Marriage Story, a waning epic from Scorsese and Greta Gerwig’s commendable reexamination of Little Women filling in the other good seats aside admirable popular movies like Ford v Ferrari and the aforementioned weaker links courtesy of Todd Phillips and Taika Waititi, Parasite truly earned it. Last but not least Sam Mendes was supposed to take home a second round of trophies for his Roger Deakins-assisted WWI thriller 1917.
Instead, Bong Joon-ho’s masterfully handled arthouse juggernaut Parasite set an incredibly inspiring precedent for the Academy Awards undoing many cumulative years of politically-minded follies and backwards agenda-keeping. I may like Marriage Story just a tad more, but Bong’s newest is even better than his excellent run of exemplary South Korean cinema from the Fincher-adjacent mysteries of Memories of Murder to the heavenly creature feature The Host and the psychological games of Mother. This is the most significant turn for international cinema’s representation at the Oscars but we'll have to wait and see what it's worth — as thoroughly warranted as Parasite's win is and pleasing as it is to see the Academy bending closer toward meritocracy, ultimately this could be just another consolation prize.
But history has been made nevertheless and when it comes to blazing, eternal classics, only great filmmakers entertain you just as invitingly as they test your patience and capacity to give in to something bigger than yourself. This is a momentous victory up there with the 21st century’s highlight moments and most quality BP wins — The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, No Country for Old Men, 12 Years a Slave and now a classic for the modern age and for every culture, not just those that ascribe to Middle Earth, Coen befuddlement or McQueen’s harrowing piece de resistance. Parasite is a comfortably original work and already a slice of timelessness too universal to become stale for future viewers.
I skirt around saying much about the film in question because although I love Parasite and have thought about it a good deal, those words would simply echo what so many have said about the film’s tragicomic balance of con-like hijinks and fist-clenching intensity embellishing the sound statements on economic inequality. It’s terribly engrossing, makes you ponder moral and social standing, upends your expectations in the surest, most rewarding ways and concludes with an almost epic, storybook sense of sadness. It’s a ball of fun the first time round and a sour Shakespearean exercise the next. It will live on, however, as a quintessential stepping stone for the average viewer into world cinema and the blissful thing is I can hardly think of a more inviting, beautiful and haunting peek at how the other half lives.
Between the serious satire, Gothic garnishes and Marxist bent, Parasite is deep without getting its hands dirty and superficially gratifying without coming close to insulting the intellect. The way Bong resolves all the numerous genres and diffused creative intentions into a congealed, zeitgeist-bottling whole is a trick of true talent. The film defies classification as readily as it nestles into your psyche.
The Current War briefing
3 (out of 4)
The appropriate prescription for drafting a movie review suggests a pun here or there is just good fun and, especially as a headline or parting sentence, often inevitable. With The Current War the fruit has never hung so low — no matter how you come down on this picture it's just too easy to joke about, so I’ll just get it all out of the way now and say the film is enlightening if not electrifying and has enough battery life to bypass short circuiting etc. etc.
Before it was shelved as a result of Harvey Weinstein's industry-shifting descent into disgrace, what eventually became the original version of the predictably tailored Oscar bait premiered to general derision at the 2017 TIFF. After the film was acquired by the ashes of The Weinstein Company (Lantern Entertainment oddly enough) and entirely re-edited in eventual post-post-production — the ineffectual subtitle Director's Cut used in advertisements was at least stupid for a reason — The Current War picked up distribution at last. Two years ago the film would have deservingly premiered to a muted response as marketing pathetically clamored for Academy awareness. Today the circumstances are not at all dissimilar except this historical drama doesn't conduct itself (damn it) like an awards sweetener firsthand.
A multifarious biopic, turn of the century period piece, hoity-toity costume picture — the film has all the mandatory accoutrements of past, proven Weinstein-backed snores. The secret ingredient in this case is Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, director of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, who is enriched with his cache of filmmaking sleights and strategies and was not hesitant to enforce his final word as head honcho. He stood by a clause in executive producer Martin Scorsese's contract securing creative control including reshoots deemed artistically necessary because of the rushed post-production of the first cut. However deficient the early draft of The Current War may have been, Gomez-Rejon's renovation can’t help but spin the stodgiest of historical topics and trifling rivalries into an intriguing exercise.
Benedict Cumberbatch as Thomas Edison, Michael Shannon as George Westinghouse, Nicholas Hoult as Nikola Tesla, Matthew Macfayden as J. P. Morgan all ensure their roles are not overstated caricatures but suitable embodiments of towering Industrial Age figures. Hollywood is always calling on Cumberbatch to be the face of curt robotic thinkers real and fictional — Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, his stint leading Sherlock and I guess playing the WikiLeaks guy counts too — but his analogously contemptible and smug Edison is apparently in accordance with historical memory. Shannon and Macfayden have never disappointed and don't here. Meanwhile Hoult could have easily done a disservice to the most important innovative magnate in the story but his Tesla, while no David Bowie in The Prestige, measures up to the young actor's best attempts.
But really it's Gomez-Rejon stealing the show, eagerly snatching from his grab bag of influences and techniques to ward off possible boredom as his rendition of the dawn of the 20th century unfolds. The Current War is also written with unthinkable wit by playwright Michael Mitnick, who initially envisioned the AC/DC contention as a musical in the making before dozens of subsequent drafts. The script also refuses to congratulate or condescend to today's audiences for common knowledge, at least not as egregiously as some equivalent fare. The screenplay spells out the authorship of invention with fascinating form, finding truths on business, politics, journalism and the global direction of technology applicable to our removed 21st century existence.
Usually generous explanation and exposition can be a waste of time — Mitnick, although he takes the popular route, must have realized that the social concerns of the contests of intellect and economy in the countrywide Westinghouse/Edison skirmish would be more captivating than some patronizing science class. Even if Gomez-Rejon wasn’t pulling out all the cinematographic stops — whips pans, low angles, zooms, overheads, breathless tracking shots, headlong editing, literally you name it, there's a movie moment like it — there would still be an engrossing chapter of the past left to uncover.
The appropriate prescription for drafting a movie review suggests a pun here or there is just good fun and, especially as a headline or parting sentence, often inevitable. With The Current War the fruit has never hung so low — no matter how you come down on this picture it's just too easy to joke about, so I’ll just get it all out of the way now and say the film is enlightening if not electrifying and has enough battery life to bypass short circuiting etc. etc.
Before it was shelved as a result of Harvey Weinstein's industry-shifting descent into disgrace, what eventually became the original version of the predictably tailored Oscar bait premiered to general derision at the 2017 TIFF. After the film was acquired by the ashes of The Weinstein Company (Lantern Entertainment oddly enough) and entirely re-edited in eventual post-post-production — the ineffectual subtitle Director's Cut used in advertisements was at least stupid for a reason — The Current War picked up distribution at last. Two years ago the film would have deservingly premiered to a muted response as marketing pathetically clamored for Academy awareness. Today the circumstances are not at all dissimilar except this historical drama doesn't conduct itself (damn it) like an awards sweetener firsthand.
A multifarious biopic, turn of the century period piece, hoity-toity costume picture — the film has all the mandatory accoutrements of past, proven Weinstein-backed snores. The secret ingredient in this case is Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, director of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, who is enriched with his cache of filmmaking sleights and strategies and was not hesitant to enforce his final word as head honcho. He stood by a clause in executive producer Martin Scorsese's contract securing creative control including reshoots deemed artistically necessary because of the rushed post-production of the first cut. However deficient the early draft of The Current War may have been, Gomez-Rejon's renovation can’t help but spin the stodgiest of historical topics and trifling rivalries into an intriguing exercise.
Benedict Cumberbatch as Thomas Edison, Michael Shannon as George Westinghouse, Nicholas Hoult as Nikola Tesla, Matthew Macfayden as J. P. Morgan all ensure their roles are not overstated caricatures but suitable embodiments of towering Industrial Age figures. Hollywood is always calling on Cumberbatch to be the face of curt robotic thinkers real and fictional — Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, his stint leading Sherlock and I guess playing the WikiLeaks guy counts too — but his analogously contemptible and smug Edison is apparently in accordance with historical memory. Shannon and Macfayden have never disappointed and don't here. Meanwhile Hoult could have easily done a disservice to the most important innovative magnate in the story but his Tesla, while no David Bowie in The Prestige, measures up to the young actor's best attempts.
But really it's Gomez-Rejon stealing the show, eagerly snatching from his grab bag of influences and techniques to ward off possible boredom as his rendition of the dawn of the 20th century unfolds. The Current War is also written with unthinkable wit by playwright Michael Mitnick, who initially envisioned the AC/DC contention as a musical in the making before dozens of subsequent drafts. The script also refuses to congratulate or condescend to today's audiences for common knowledge, at least not as egregiously as some equivalent fare. The screenplay spells out the authorship of invention with fascinating form, finding truths on business, politics, journalism and the global direction of technology applicable to our removed 21st century existence.
Usually generous explanation and exposition can be a waste of time — Mitnick, although he takes the popular route, must have realized that the social concerns of the contests of intellect and economy in the countrywide Westinghouse/Edison skirmish would be more captivating than some patronizing science class. Even if Gomez-Rejon wasn’t pulling out all the cinematographic stops — whips pans, low angles, zooms, overheads, breathless tracking shots, headlong editing, literally you name it, there's a movie moment like it — there would still be an engrossing chapter of the past left to uncover.
The Lighthouse briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
The Lighthouse is the American cinephile's stupefying, tactile moment of bliss for 2019. Doused in Gothic, Poe-like gloom, Lynchian soundscapes, an expressionist aura and early surrealist spontaneity, director Robert Eggers' formal fussiness is one of such consideration that the mere montage of this scrupulous digression of sanity already easily supersedes contemporary attempts to bewilder the brain like Shutter Island or A Tale of Two Sisters.
Both Eggers' film and his primitive cinematic approach will be everlasting to the art form for emphasizing the surest signs of great period filmmaking or filmmaking period: ceremonious performances, palpable production and the orchestration of as much consummate, painterly beauty as can be mustered. Rounding out a year of superlative second features for thriving horror saviors — Eggers’ film joins Jordan Peele’s Us and Ari Aster’s Midsommar as unquestionable evidence to the genre’s relentless revival — The Lighthouse lives up to every capacity of excellence demonstrated in that one sick New England Folktale debut that was The Witch, horror's most marvelous interlude in many moons.
But Eggers’ latest is really its own act of separate genius regardless of its forthright influences both mythological and artistic. Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson are phenomenally convincing, the period garnishes are exhaustively studied and the dreamlike downward spiral is deliciously grotesque. The antiquated 1.19:1 aspect ratio and orthochromatic color spectrum are decisive elements of The Lighthouse's macabre, illusory nature.
Psychological thrillers have been the bedrock of classic horror for ages and Eggers’ spectacular imagination is completely evocative of former filmmaking eras where philosophical drama was not incongruous with invitingly, and often vexingly, strange fables. But for every painstaking piece of the minimalist bedazzlement, the Shakespearean parlance and prose of Eggers' and his brother Max's script is brought to life by Dafoe’s otherworldly, vitalizing conviction; he's doubtlessly true to his Melvillian character. Otherwise the hallucinatory passages are wonderfully implicit and chilling, so much so that the lofty ambiguity precisely employs the intended essence of mythic allegory, enrapturing theatricality and playful puzzlement. The editing and cinematography are faultless — the prolonged plunge into hysteria is hard to withstand.
The Witch’s sense of storytelling is more unadorned than the volatile obscurity of The Lighthouse — but neither film can be diminished when auteurs so astounding allocate so much attention. So far Eggers is deeply drawn to the area where the fundamentally real intersects with the supernaturally indefinite and this fiber interlacing his two films is also a crucial condition of this cornerstone of horror's history. The morose sequences of disarming then distressing gaslighting, suggestive poetry and spiraling monotony are so methodically arranged it’s effortless getting swept up in the blinding, hypnotizing promise of Eggers’ brilliance. Whatever necessary pretensions lay within, The Lighthouse is an incontestable, mesmerizing masterwork worthy of any morsel of praise it reaps.
The Lighthouse is the American cinephile's stupefying, tactile moment of bliss for 2019. Doused in Gothic, Poe-like gloom, Lynchian soundscapes, an expressionist aura and early surrealist spontaneity, director Robert Eggers' formal fussiness is one of such consideration that the mere montage of this scrupulous digression of sanity already easily supersedes contemporary attempts to bewilder the brain like Shutter Island or A Tale of Two Sisters.
Both Eggers' film and his primitive cinematic approach will be everlasting to the art form for emphasizing the surest signs of great period filmmaking or filmmaking period: ceremonious performances, palpable production and the orchestration of as much consummate, painterly beauty as can be mustered. Rounding out a year of superlative second features for thriving horror saviors — Eggers’ film joins Jordan Peele’s Us and Ari Aster’s Midsommar as unquestionable evidence to the genre’s relentless revival — The Lighthouse lives up to every capacity of excellence demonstrated in that one sick New England Folktale debut that was The Witch, horror's most marvelous interlude in many moons.
But Eggers’ latest is really its own act of separate genius regardless of its forthright influences both mythological and artistic. Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson are phenomenally convincing, the period garnishes are exhaustively studied and the dreamlike downward spiral is deliciously grotesque. The antiquated 1.19:1 aspect ratio and orthochromatic color spectrum are decisive elements of The Lighthouse's macabre, illusory nature.
Psychological thrillers have been the bedrock of classic horror for ages and Eggers’ spectacular imagination is completely evocative of former filmmaking eras where philosophical drama was not incongruous with invitingly, and often vexingly, strange fables. But for every painstaking piece of the minimalist bedazzlement, the Shakespearean parlance and prose of Eggers' and his brother Max's script is brought to life by Dafoe’s otherworldly, vitalizing conviction; he's doubtlessly true to his Melvillian character. Otherwise the hallucinatory passages are wonderfully implicit and chilling, so much so that the lofty ambiguity precisely employs the intended essence of mythic allegory, enrapturing theatricality and playful puzzlement. The editing and cinematography are faultless — the prolonged plunge into hysteria is hard to withstand.
The Witch’s sense of storytelling is more unadorned than the volatile obscurity of The Lighthouse — but neither film can be diminished when auteurs so astounding allocate so much attention. So far Eggers is deeply drawn to the area where the fundamentally real intersects with the supernaturally indefinite and this fiber interlacing his two films is also a crucial condition of this cornerstone of horror's history. The morose sequences of disarming then distressing gaslighting, suggestive poetry and spiraling monotony are so methodically arranged it’s effortless getting swept up in the blinding, hypnotizing promise of Eggers’ brilliance. Whatever necessary pretensions lay within, The Lighthouse is an incontestable, mesmerizing masterwork worthy of any morsel of praise it reaps.
Zombieland 2: Double Tap briefing
2 (out of 4)
With a decade of horror-comedy hindsight, the ingenuity of Zombieland rings considerably fainter than it did in 2009. Whereas Shaun of the Dead is a legitimately animate genre-niche template reinforced with as many iconic touches as its flesh-eating progenitor, Zombieland is really just as boorish and haphazard as you’d expect any latent American counterpart to be.
Besides beating a couple of catch phrases into the ground and securing an uncommonly fair profit for Sony, there was no reason why this afterthought of a sequel to the first Z-land demanded creation. Whatever the present purpose behind such a follow-up, the questionably aged modesty of Zombieland has been remotely improved with a new installment — but the trivial, hardly noteworthy adjustments are too slight to celebrate. The original movie and now Double Tap’s reliance on rom-com remedies ultimately places them closer to the forgettable mashup Warm Bodies (recollect that one if you can) than little cultural moments inspired enough to treasure long-term.
But most of the audience is there for the cast rather than spoofs and trashy gore. Of course the most bankable performer is Woody Harrelson, who thank God has dropped the Twinkie thing and pleases most reliably as himself and himself alone. Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone follow suit although to far less dependable results — Harrelson's essence alone can shift lifelessness into revelry with satisfaction guaranteed but Eisenberg’s meekness, an inseparable fact of his shtick, hasn't matured much. And although Stone has retracted the bangs and excessive make-up, the Academy Award-winning actress is barely removed from the Queen of Sarcasm status she was known for in her Easy A days. Meanwhile the former innocence of Abigail Breslin doesn’t hold weight when the young lady is 23 years old — as the smallest celebrity on the poster, the writers do what they can to remove her character from the centerfold of the movie. The search for an absconded, impulsive 18-year-old is more of an actual story than the sketch comedy of the former movie and the additional characters apart from undead cannibals are the film’s only antidote to sameness.
Extended cameos by Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch lead you to a gleefully choreographed one-take sequence, making up the best second act action-comedy excerpt you could ask for from something like this. But it takes Zoey Deutch (of Everybody Wants Some!! and other far worse movies) playing a stereotypical mid-20s dumb slut to secure some decent chuckles and give this Z-quel a specific flavor. Unfortunately Deutch's character is just a pawn in Double Tap's labored attempt to shade the Eisenberg-Stone romance with a new hue but this reliance on the most shopworn sitcom jealously angle severely limits the intended charm.
In theory, the idea of misfits surviving a zombie apocalypse is genre gold, maybe once; in practice, it’s marginally strained and underwhelming in either case. The continuation of Eisenberg’s narration exacerbates things, tying together faint, unrelated themes in passable enough fashion for a random episode of Scrubs. Both Zombieland flicks fall just short of the laugh-out-loud funny threshold — if this new one didn't happen to accommodate sharper self-awareness and insert a twist or two beyond the accidental murder of Bill Murray, Double Tap would be hazardous to your health rather than a mid-October evening-killer.
With a decade of horror-comedy hindsight, the ingenuity of Zombieland rings considerably fainter than it did in 2009. Whereas Shaun of the Dead is a legitimately animate genre-niche template reinforced with as many iconic touches as its flesh-eating progenitor, Zombieland is really just as boorish and haphazard as you’d expect any latent American counterpart to be.
Besides beating a couple of catch phrases into the ground and securing an uncommonly fair profit for Sony, there was no reason why this afterthought of a sequel to the first Z-land demanded creation. Whatever the present purpose behind such a follow-up, the questionably aged modesty of Zombieland has been remotely improved with a new installment — but the trivial, hardly noteworthy adjustments are too slight to celebrate. The original movie and now Double Tap’s reliance on rom-com remedies ultimately places them closer to the forgettable mashup Warm Bodies (recollect that one if you can) than little cultural moments inspired enough to treasure long-term.
But most of the audience is there for the cast rather than spoofs and trashy gore. Of course the most bankable performer is Woody Harrelson, who thank God has dropped the Twinkie thing and pleases most reliably as himself and himself alone. Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone follow suit although to far less dependable results — Harrelson's essence alone can shift lifelessness into revelry with satisfaction guaranteed but Eisenberg’s meekness, an inseparable fact of his shtick, hasn't matured much. And although Stone has retracted the bangs and excessive make-up, the Academy Award-winning actress is barely removed from the Queen of Sarcasm status she was known for in her Easy A days. Meanwhile the former innocence of Abigail Breslin doesn’t hold weight when the young lady is 23 years old — as the smallest celebrity on the poster, the writers do what they can to remove her character from the centerfold of the movie. The search for an absconded, impulsive 18-year-old is more of an actual story than the sketch comedy of the former movie and the additional characters apart from undead cannibals are the film’s only antidote to sameness.
Extended cameos by Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch lead you to a gleefully choreographed one-take sequence, making up the best second act action-comedy excerpt you could ask for from something like this. But it takes Zoey Deutch (of Everybody Wants Some!! and other far worse movies) playing a stereotypical mid-20s dumb slut to secure some decent chuckles and give this Z-quel a specific flavor. Unfortunately Deutch's character is just a pawn in Double Tap's labored attempt to shade the Eisenberg-Stone romance with a new hue but this reliance on the most shopworn sitcom jealously angle severely limits the intended charm.
In theory, the idea of misfits surviving a zombie apocalypse is genre gold, maybe once; in practice, it’s marginally strained and underwhelming in either case. The continuation of Eisenberg’s narration exacerbates things, tying together faint, unrelated themes in passable enough fashion for a random episode of Scrubs. Both Zombieland flicks fall just short of the laugh-out-loud funny threshold — if this new one didn't happen to accommodate sharper self-awareness and insert a twist or two beyond the accidental murder of Bill Murray, Double Tap would be hazardous to your health rather than a mid-October evening-killer.
Joker briefing
3 (out of 4)
Even with a resemblance to Lynne Ramsay’s fiery You Were Never Really Here a few years back and roots soundly planted in Martin Scorsese’s revered early history — Taxi Driver and most directly The King of Comedy — Joker is nonetheless a 2019 movie mile marker all its own. DC's latest standalone success is more meritorious than your garden-variety comic book movie, but is it as dangerous to mass consciousness as was preordained? Would it be such a bad thing if it were?
So despite an unwarranted forecast of devastation before this film's debut, obviously no one was slaughtered and anyone who feared and/or expected some eruption of white male aggression at the cinema should have felt a tart combination of shame and chagrin the Monday after opening weekend. As a film alone though, my prior wariness to whatever variety of villain exposé I was walking into was due entirely to Todd Phillips' place at the helm. With the overrated quintet of Old School, the Hangover trilogy and Due Date behind him, the symptomatic normalization of infantile men seemed to make Phillips precisely the wrong choice to handle material so potentially inflammatory and disruptive. Little did I expect some realist themes, such gorgeously candid digital cinematography or third act risks so ballsy — the cumulative moments of insanity alone are enough to destine Joker the status of cult favorite. Joker enriches DC’s strong year of consecutive, separate solo features: the underrated Aquaman, Shazam!'s undeniable appeal and now Joker's timely, ferocious acting showcase.
The remarkably provocative movie around Joaquin Phoenix eclipsed my middling expectations, but it is the Method (acting) Man himself who quickly quieted every other reservation. Phoenix's extraordinary commitment exponentially amplifies the film's cinematic power — then again, try not capturing documented gold after a spell with Phoenix and an expensive camera. Sure, Heath Ledger’s role will reign supreme forever as the last exquisite entry of an all too brief legacy because, ya know, he's the best part of the cultural touchstone that is The Dark Knight — when you watch Phoenix though there’s nothing reminding you of Ledger, Jack Nicholson or anyone else. It’s almost as if you didn’t need Phillips or any direction whatsoever to mold Phoenix's utterly feral exertions, especially after a decade of mesmerizing performances in The Master, Inherent Vice and YWNRH. His magnetic, impeccable role-playing averts not only foolishly portraying mental illness but also pissing off comic book disciples.
Of course, given how divisive this film has been even ahead of hitting theaters, there’s no denying how many feathers have been ruffled, or maybe even plucked, in public and critical circles. The philosophical backbone of the film — that seedy, spiteful nihilism — will rigidly appeal to the most dejected members of the audience, the 4chan-browsing incels we should be oh so cautious of at the local cinema. Just like common sense folks exasperatedly opposing those who claim callous video games and Tarantino films manifest real carnage, all I can say for the crowds using the Joker's ideology as a liberating model for their own dispirit is let them enjoy the movie and vicariously rid themselves of a few repressed impulses as each one of us subconsciously does at some point or another when we enter a dark theater.
Still, the very fact that Warner Brothers has to remind people this film is not a call to incite actual anarchy should tell you how explosive the narrative substance is and, more importantly, how little implicit trust can be placed on the general public's facility to process any subtextual satire, irony or motifs nowadays. This is without mentioning how swiftly pop culture journalists and easily offended social media users will scramble to scandalize anything incongruous with their worldview. The whole sick escapism/heinous portrait angle of Joker, in addition to the unreliable narrator ticks and classist rage within, screams American Psycho more than any Marty film. Hilarious, horrifying — it's an incredibly fine line and Phoenix is there to deftly disguise the spaces between pity and empathy, catharsis and disgust better than the much less enthralling script.
Even if you loathe this film in its entirety you’re bound to ponder it significantly more than the movies you casually despise. I'm sure many will find fault in aspects of the film's composition but my only real grievance is Arthur Fleck's inflicted revolutionary change occurs almost entirely without his impetus or intention. Fleck's largely accidental V for Vendetta-esque symbol of collective resistance doesn't really reflect the character's renowned criminal ingeniousness.
Quibbles aside, DC and WB apparently have learned prudence is the way to outsmart, or at least counter, Marvel’s epic monopolizing — simply by stripping the blockbuster masquerade to the essentials with thrifty filmmaking, Joker has become the most profitable superhero film of all time in the wake of Endgame's record-annihilating run. Whether absorbed by overeager nerds or average Joes, it's rather infrequent that a mainstream standalone character study warranted intense dissection or considerable pondering, let alone one billion dollars in earnings (a first for R-rated films). From whichever perspective, even if all else is overlooked, it's impossible to ignore Phoenix's rare sensibilities.
Even with a resemblance to Lynne Ramsay’s fiery You Were Never Really Here a few years back and roots soundly planted in Martin Scorsese’s revered early history — Taxi Driver and most directly The King of Comedy — Joker is nonetheless a 2019 movie mile marker all its own. DC's latest standalone success is more meritorious than your garden-variety comic book movie, but is it as dangerous to mass consciousness as was preordained? Would it be such a bad thing if it were?
So despite an unwarranted forecast of devastation before this film's debut, obviously no one was slaughtered and anyone who feared and/or expected some eruption of white male aggression at the cinema should have felt a tart combination of shame and chagrin the Monday after opening weekend. As a film alone though, my prior wariness to whatever variety of villain exposé I was walking into was due entirely to Todd Phillips' place at the helm. With the overrated quintet of Old School, the Hangover trilogy and Due Date behind him, the symptomatic normalization of infantile men seemed to make Phillips precisely the wrong choice to handle material so potentially inflammatory and disruptive. Little did I expect some realist themes, such gorgeously candid digital cinematography or third act risks so ballsy — the cumulative moments of insanity alone are enough to destine Joker the status of cult favorite. Joker enriches DC’s strong year of consecutive, separate solo features: the underrated Aquaman, Shazam!'s undeniable appeal and now Joker's timely, ferocious acting showcase.
The remarkably provocative movie around Joaquin Phoenix eclipsed my middling expectations, but it is the Method (acting) Man himself who quickly quieted every other reservation. Phoenix's extraordinary commitment exponentially amplifies the film's cinematic power — then again, try not capturing documented gold after a spell with Phoenix and an expensive camera. Sure, Heath Ledger’s role will reign supreme forever as the last exquisite entry of an all too brief legacy because, ya know, he's the best part of the cultural touchstone that is The Dark Knight — when you watch Phoenix though there’s nothing reminding you of Ledger, Jack Nicholson or anyone else. It’s almost as if you didn’t need Phillips or any direction whatsoever to mold Phoenix's utterly feral exertions, especially after a decade of mesmerizing performances in The Master, Inherent Vice and YWNRH. His magnetic, impeccable role-playing averts not only foolishly portraying mental illness but also pissing off comic book disciples.
Of course, given how divisive this film has been even ahead of hitting theaters, there’s no denying how many feathers have been ruffled, or maybe even plucked, in public and critical circles. The philosophical backbone of the film — that seedy, spiteful nihilism — will rigidly appeal to the most dejected members of the audience, the 4chan-browsing incels we should be oh so cautious of at the local cinema. Just like common sense folks exasperatedly opposing those who claim callous video games and Tarantino films manifest real carnage, all I can say for the crowds using the Joker's ideology as a liberating model for their own dispirit is let them enjoy the movie and vicariously rid themselves of a few repressed impulses as each one of us subconsciously does at some point or another when we enter a dark theater.
Still, the very fact that Warner Brothers has to remind people this film is not a call to incite actual anarchy should tell you how explosive the narrative substance is and, more importantly, how little implicit trust can be placed on the general public's facility to process any subtextual satire, irony or motifs nowadays. This is without mentioning how swiftly pop culture journalists and easily offended social media users will scramble to scandalize anything incongruous with their worldview. The whole sick escapism/heinous portrait angle of Joker, in addition to the unreliable narrator ticks and classist rage within, screams American Psycho more than any Marty film. Hilarious, horrifying — it's an incredibly fine line and Phoenix is there to deftly disguise the spaces between pity and empathy, catharsis and disgust better than the much less enthralling script.
Even if you loathe this film in its entirety you’re bound to ponder it significantly more than the movies you casually despise. I'm sure many will find fault in aspects of the film's composition but my only real grievance is Arthur Fleck's inflicted revolutionary change occurs almost entirely without his impetus or intention. Fleck's largely accidental V for Vendetta-esque symbol of collective resistance doesn't really reflect the character's renowned criminal ingeniousness.
Quibbles aside, DC and WB apparently have learned prudence is the way to outsmart, or at least counter, Marvel’s epic monopolizing — simply by stripping the blockbuster masquerade to the essentials with thrifty filmmaking, Joker has become the most profitable superhero film of all time in the wake of Endgame's record-annihilating run. Whether absorbed by overeager nerds or average Joes, it's rather infrequent that a mainstream standalone character study warranted intense dissection or considerable pondering, let alone one billion dollars in earnings (a first for R-rated films). From whichever perspective, even if all else is overlooked, it's impossible to ignore Phoenix's rare sensibilities.
Ad Astra briefing
2 (out of 4)
The contemporary cinematic space race has been in full sprint since 2013 when Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity became the first in a fresh line of comparably ambitious affairs continuing with Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, Ridley Scott’s The Martian and Damien Chazelle’s First Man. It’s not that director James Gray is exactly late to the cosmos-obsessed blockbuster party but his final efforts, after delayed release dates and a lengthy post-production, are so compromised, disimpassioned and disappointingly dim the movie fails to serve as the truly anti-sensationalist sci-fi fare we've been sorely missing. Though, even before I saw Ad Astra, it was evident how little the project had to lend to the genre's revival.
Sure, Gray maneuvered through his early career mostly with numerous crime dramas (and the mangled, maddening Two Lovers) only to swap that alcove for a recent pair of historical features — the hushed poetry of The Immigrant and the Amazonian adventure epic The Lost City of Z. Ad Astra adheres to the similar father/son dynamics of Gray's last film, not to mention themes tallying the toll of legacy and levying critiques at both archetypal masculinity and Manifest Destiny-esque conquest.
However everything so supple and honorably antiquated about Gray's 20th century odyssey doesn't equivalently benefit his futuristic one. Even without some God-awful narration — which feels tiresome, tacked on and otherwise clumsy — the film is an impotent slog despite principled intentions, mistaking every one of its pedestrian attempts at existential investigation for something Kubrickian or at least likewise distant and new. Many have likened Ad Astra to Apocalypse Now, which is a fairly insulting comparison to draw between a longstanding classic and a modern snooze. Rather than draw out those parallels, all I'll say is Tommy Lee Jones is no Brando and the epic journey of disappointment has a quarter of the introspection and even less odious beauty.
Expectations of galactic intrigue may have misled the everyday moviegoer but I was one to anticipate some mind-numbing slowness from Ad Astra knowing the plot would venture through the vaguely immigrated and colonized solar system. But even as one who never associates the word 'boring' with any kind of film viewership, this exception to the rule is painfully tedious and emotionally dormant. Sometimes that can be my exact cup of tea — in general an underplayed and aged near future, as in Blade Runner or Children of Men, can elaborate on purposeful global predictions as easily as it implements stirring escapist stimulation. A mundane, gloomy space voyage to Neptune could be wonderful if paced out properly — but even with certain swells of action echoing Gravity's technical flourishes, the space voyage's steady clip through daddy issues loses out to a dull, plain, every so often ludicrous plot. Whether it's Brad Pitt's character sneaking onto a rocket mid-takeoff only to murder everyone onboard or detours with deadly lab monkeys, there's minimal intelligence to discover in Ad Astra in any sense.
And it can't be emphasized enough: not a single sentence of Pitt’s inner voice-over improves any given scene — even when we're blessed with actual dialogue the utilitarian drudgery and the emotive outbursts are equally cheesy. There's even an underused Liv Tyler as the ex-wife seen through stodgy flashbacks just to hammer down the customary melodramatics of the script.
If it weren’t for Hoyte van Hoytema’s lovely Roger Deakins-inspired cinematography — the gifted director of photography trades his Interstellar expertise for a visual scheme ripped right from Blade Runner 2049 — Ad Astra would be agonizing. There’s no shame in a film functioning as the product of multiple, rather pronounced past influences, but Gray’s offering is vastly inferior to every one of them and drawing from so many cinematic benchmarks eventually feels more like pastiche than inspiration. In theory this movie was designed to please me by way of old-fashioned genre storytelling and spectacle, but every modern insert — hasty editing, bisexual lighting, action interludes — sully such a possibly striking and pensive sci-fi fable. The mostly meditative film feels ripped apart by the simple conflict of studio prerequisites and artistic intent.
You can’t believe Pitt burned so bright in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood just a month or two ago and will likely secure his first deserved Academy win for such a surefire supporting role. His character here, Roy McBride, would have been a monotone bummer to see Ad Astra through even without the torturous internal monologues. Drawn on the Latin phrase per aspera ad astra, or "through struggles to the stars," Gray's film has all the conditions for classic science fiction filmmaking, but its minor victories just aren't worth trudging through all that discomfort.
The contemporary cinematic space race has been in full sprint since 2013 when Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity became the first in a fresh line of comparably ambitious affairs continuing with Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, Ridley Scott’s The Martian and Damien Chazelle’s First Man. It’s not that director James Gray is exactly late to the cosmos-obsessed blockbuster party but his final efforts, after delayed release dates and a lengthy post-production, are so compromised, disimpassioned and disappointingly dim the movie fails to serve as the truly anti-sensationalist sci-fi fare we've been sorely missing. Though, even before I saw Ad Astra, it was evident how little the project had to lend to the genre's revival.
Sure, Gray maneuvered through his early career mostly with numerous crime dramas (and the mangled, maddening Two Lovers) only to swap that alcove for a recent pair of historical features — the hushed poetry of The Immigrant and the Amazonian adventure epic The Lost City of Z. Ad Astra adheres to the similar father/son dynamics of Gray's last film, not to mention themes tallying the toll of legacy and levying critiques at both archetypal masculinity and Manifest Destiny-esque conquest.
However everything so supple and honorably antiquated about Gray's 20th century odyssey doesn't equivalently benefit his futuristic one. Even without some God-awful narration — which feels tiresome, tacked on and otherwise clumsy — the film is an impotent slog despite principled intentions, mistaking every one of its pedestrian attempts at existential investigation for something Kubrickian or at least likewise distant and new. Many have likened Ad Astra to Apocalypse Now, which is a fairly insulting comparison to draw between a longstanding classic and a modern snooze. Rather than draw out those parallels, all I'll say is Tommy Lee Jones is no Brando and the epic journey of disappointment has a quarter of the introspection and even less odious beauty.
Expectations of galactic intrigue may have misled the everyday moviegoer but I was one to anticipate some mind-numbing slowness from Ad Astra knowing the plot would venture through the vaguely immigrated and colonized solar system. But even as one who never associates the word 'boring' with any kind of film viewership, this exception to the rule is painfully tedious and emotionally dormant. Sometimes that can be my exact cup of tea — in general an underplayed and aged near future, as in Blade Runner or Children of Men, can elaborate on purposeful global predictions as easily as it implements stirring escapist stimulation. A mundane, gloomy space voyage to Neptune could be wonderful if paced out properly — but even with certain swells of action echoing Gravity's technical flourishes, the space voyage's steady clip through daddy issues loses out to a dull, plain, every so often ludicrous plot. Whether it's Brad Pitt's character sneaking onto a rocket mid-takeoff only to murder everyone onboard or detours with deadly lab monkeys, there's minimal intelligence to discover in Ad Astra in any sense.
And it can't be emphasized enough: not a single sentence of Pitt’s inner voice-over improves any given scene — even when we're blessed with actual dialogue the utilitarian drudgery and the emotive outbursts are equally cheesy. There's even an underused Liv Tyler as the ex-wife seen through stodgy flashbacks just to hammer down the customary melodramatics of the script.
If it weren’t for Hoyte van Hoytema’s lovely Roger Deakins-inspired cinematography — the gifted director of photography trades his Interstellar expertise for a visual scheme ripped right from Blade Runner 2049 — Ad Astra would be agonizing. There’s no shame in a film functioning as the product of multiple, rather pronounced past influences, but Gray’s offering is vastly inferior to every one of them and drawing from so many cinematic benchmarks eventually feels more like pastiche than inspiration. In theory this movie was designed to please me by way of old-fashioned genre storytelling and spectacle, but every modern insert — hasty editing, bisexual lighting, action interludes — sully such a possibly striking and pensive sci-fi fable. The mostly meditative film feels ripped apart by the simple conflict of studio prerequisites and artistic intent.
You can’t believe Pitt burned so bright in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood just a month or two ago and will likely secure his first deserved Academy win for such a surefire supporting role. His character here, Roy McBride, would have been a monotone bummer to see Ad Astra through even without the torturous internal monologues. Drawn on the Latin phrase per aspera ad astra, or "through struggles to the stars," Gray's film has all the conditions for classic science fiction filmmaking, but its minor victories just aren't worth trudging through all that discomfort.
It Chapter Two briefing
3 (out of 4)
It’s no small thing to make America sit through a three-hour movie, let alone one half of a supernatural clown story. Stephen King’s gargantuan bedside table paperweight has become the centerpiece of a madman’s prolific paperback output and, for the sake of cinematic clarity, the nonlinear, cocaine-fueled coming-of-age creeper has been severed into halves. The second and final portion of It is handily structured, pleasingly grotesque and thoughtfully cast — Chapter Two also has neat practical and visual effects, nasty (if at times oh so cheap) frights and a bargain bin of relatable humor courtesy of Bill Hader. In the philistine domain of horror sequels, this is one of the most justified of its kind in terms of both coasting off a former film’s success and in the knotty abbreviation of a daunting adaptation.
Chapter One separately had its own nostalgic simplicity as well as direct genre conventions, and the latter part of the tale should be held accountable for the same indiscretions: jump scares aplenty, half-baked (if self-aware) conclusions, not to mention every cliché and oddity each screen version has inherited from King’s own inscrutable kookiness. Both installments are some of the highest grossing horror films in history, which suggests things will not exceed a certain threshold of weirdness for today's eyeballs — but even abridged, King’s peculiarities have exited the page and provided the sort of heinous entertainment that lives up to It’s horribly big reputation.
So yeah, I admit I didn’t read the 1000+ page novel — I didn’t even make it all the way through The Shining and Kubrick's variation is one of my favorite films of all time. Neither It movie will become as iconic as other classic King flicks — Brian De Palma’s Carrie, John Carpenter’s Christine, Rob Reiner's Stand By Me and Misery — but damn if the pair of films in question aren't scary by public standards and at least a few cuts above the garbage enticing average audiences to flock in fear. My personal lack of refresher to the events of Chapter One made the collective amnesia of the Losers all the more relevant, the evolution of their childhood phobias more cogent and film's unavoidable repetition not only forgivable but satisfying. And the absence of the original film's camaraderie left the modified relationships full of apprehension and confusion — the old-fashioned crowd-pleasing of the former film is exchanged for disillusionment and unshakable unease.
If there are mistakes in adapting King’s unconscious insanity, I am gladly none the wiser — and I know about the space turtles and tween orgies and whatever else. It Chapter Two expands the budget, scope and momentum of its predecessor by taking risks with elaborate set pieces and generous narrative clip. The movie could have easily reeked of indulgence, but trying to reasonably relay King's overcooked omelette of nightmare ideas is bound to inform your final film with a fair share of both heedless experimentation and some dumb deficiencies. This It nestles into the seldom-entered territory of epic horror and leaves you there to bask in the genre's most self-evident and arcane gratifications.
It’s no small thing to make America sit through a three-hour movie, let alone one half of a supernatural clown story. Stephen King’s gargantuan bedside table paperweight has become the centerpiece of a madman’s prolific paperback output and, for the sake of cinematic clarity, the nonlinear, cocaine-fueled coming-of-age creeper has been severed into halves. The second and final portion of It is handily structured, pleasingly grotesque and thoughtfully cast — Chapter Two also has neat practical and visual effects, nasty (if at times oh so cheap) frights and a bargain bin of relatable humor courtesy of Bill Hader. In the philistine domain of horror sequels, this is one of the most justified of its kind in terms of both coasting off a former film’s success and in the knotty abbreviation of a daunting adaptation.
Chapter One separately had its own nostalgic simplicity as well as direct genre conventions, and the latter part of the tale should be held accountable for the same indiscretions: jump scares aplenty, half-baked (if self-aware) conclusions, not to mention every cliché and oddity each screen version has inherited from King’s own inscrutable kookiness. Both installments are some of the highest grossing horror films in history, which suggests things will not exceed a certain threshold of weirdness for today's eyeballs — but even abridged, King’s peculiarities have exited the page and provided the sort of heinous entertainment that lives up to It’s horribly big reputation.
So yeah, I admit I didn’t read the 1000+ page novel — I didn’t even make it all the way through The Shining and Kubrick's variation is one of my favorite films of all time. Neither It movie will become as iconic as other classic King flicks — Brian De Palma’s Carrie, John Carpenter’s Christine, Rob Reiner's Stand By Me and Misery — but damn if the pair of films in question aren't scary by public standards and at least a few cuts above the garbage enticing average audiences to flock in fear. My personal lack of refresher to the events of Chapter One made the collective amnesia of the Losers all the more relevant, the evolution of their childhood phobias more cogent and film's unavoidable repetition not only forgivable but satisfying. And the absence of the original film's camaraderie left the modified relationships full of apprehension and confusion — the old-fashioned crowd-pleasing of the former film is exchanged for disillusionment and unshakable unease.
If there are mistakes in adapting King’s unconscious insanity, I am gladly none the wiser — and I know about the space turtles and tween orgies and whatever else. It Chapter Two expands the budget, scope and momentum of its predecessor by taking risks with elaborate set pieces and generous narrative clip. The movie could have easily reeked of indulgence, but trying to reasonably relay King's overcooked omelette of nightmare ideas is bound to inform your final film with a fair share of both heedless experimentation and some dumb deficiencies. This It nestles into the seldom-entered territory of epic horror and leaves you there to bask in the genre's most self-evident and arcane gratifications.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette? briefing
2 (out of 4)
Richard Linklater has been long overdue for an honest misstep or even a big mistake. It wouldn't be his first flub, especially with that Bad News Bears remake in the rearview. He had a handsome hot streak this past decade with Before Midnight, the completed Boyhood and Everybody Wants Some!!, but unlike the enterprising filmmaker we’ve come to know and love since the early 90s, now Linklater is looking more like a washed up Jason Reitman. Without appealing humor, captivating performances or even useful revelations, Where'd You Go, Bernadette? is a comedy-drama excelling at neither, and the fresh venue for some of the indie savior's most deflated introspection.
Bernadette has plenty in common with Linklater’s customary inclinations: optimism, philosophizing, gentle laughs — his trademark humanism is at the forefront where it usually sits. But whereas the writer-director's reflective dialogue often leads to magical spells of wit and burning, veracious insights, the adapted voice of Maria Semple, not to mention a handful of other screenwriters, reduces Linklater's ability to impart his naturally harmonious truths. I didn’t need to see several bad trailers to know this was going to be more than a little underwhelming — after numerous delays for the release date spanning the last 10 months, the movie’s precarious mediocrity became readily apparent even without dispiriting confirmation of its internal confusion on the level of Fast Food Nation.
Cate Blanchett is always fun to scrutinize and as fascinating an actor as you could pray to have steer your film, but her graces here are underutilized. Her depressive, pretentious role reminds you of the class catastrophes of Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, except that 2013 pearl was an actually adroit character study anchored by a full-blooded performance. Blanchett seems wasted on this cheap consideration of fame, talent and individuality, whereas Billy Crudup and Kristen Wiig seem right at home filling in the background of the bland status quo. Whether a miscalculation of tone, adaptative finesse or general cinematic potential, Where’d You Go is lost in purposelessness.
Richard Linklater has been long overdue for an honest misstep or even a big mistake. It wouldn't be his first flub, especially with that Bad News Bears remake in the rearview. He had a handsome hot streak this past decade with Before Midnight, the completed Boyhood and Everybody Wants Some!!, but unlike the enterprising filmmaker we’ve come to know and love since the early 90s, now Linklater is looking more like a washed up Jason Reitman. Without appealing humor, captivating performances or even useful revelations, Where'd You Go, Bernadette? is a comedy-drama excelling at neither, and the fresh venue for some of the indie savior's most deflated introspection.
Bernadette has plenty in common with Linklater’s customary inclinations: optimism, philosophizing, gentle laughs — his trademark humanism is at the forefront where it usually sits. But whereas the writer-director's reflective dialogue often leads to magical spells of wit and burning, veracious insights, the adapted voice of Maria Semple, not to mention a handful of other screenwriters, reduces Linklater's ability to impart his naturally harmonious truths. I didn’t need to see several bad trailers to know this was going to be more than a little underwhelming — after numerous delays for the release date spanning the last 10 months, the movie’s precarious mediocrity became readily apparent even without dispiriting confirmation of its internal confusion on the level of Fast Food Nation.
Cate Blanchett is always fun to scrutinize and as fascinating an actor as you could pray to have steer your film, but her graces here are underutilized. Her depressive, pretentious role reminds you of the class catastrophes of Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, except that 2013 pearl was an actually adroit character study anchored by a full-blooded performance. Blanchett seems wasted on this cheap consideration of fame, talent and individuality, whereas Billy Crudup and Kristen Wiig seem right at home filling in the background of the bland status quo. Whether a miscalculation of tone, adaptative finesse or general cinematic potential, Where’d You Go is lost in purposelessness.
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
It only took nine successively dumber movies for the Fast and Furious franchise to realize just how stupid it actually is. Even with the most rudimentary skeleton of a plot, a heavy injection of cheekiness and a competent man of action behind the camera in director David Leitch, somehow the seemly spin-off Hobbs & Shaw fails to outshine the best of its adjacent films like it seemed properly primed and poised to.
Not that this flick isn't immediately superior to a majority of the rest of the macho, metal-minded affairs. The simple on-screen marriage of The Rock and Jason Statham — the antagonistic, furrowed brows of the fifth and sevenths movies respectively before each foe became an ally — adds up to more chemistry, appeal, likability, what have you than any cast led by Vin Diesel. Statham doesn't extend beyond his Transporter gruffness and The Rock just plays himself as always, but their personalities properly suit the marginally sillier material. Idris Elba deserves better than his stock villain role even if the esteemed actor has some appreciable fun as our bionic baddie. Leitch, the tactician behind Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2 and part of the original John Wick, implements at least some kind of cinematographic gravitas parallel to James Wan's (The Conjuring, Aquaman) series-best direction in Furious 7.
And the right turn into broad laughs — not just tired quips via Tyrese Gibson — should have happened ages ago. Remember when the crux of The Fate of the Furious just two years ago was Charlize Theron threatening to murder a baby? Johnson and Statham's over-the-top personas bring about enjoyable repartee but the indication to laugh is spelled out a little too clearly given prominent supporting roles for Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Hart to ad-lib it up. The lighthearted direction also follows less trodden paths by reducing the fetishization of the major female players (mostly Vanessa Kirby, not the only element reminiscent of Mission: Impossible – Fallout). All I'm saying is there’s only one obligatory ass shot — the times really are a-changin'.
Still, at over two hours — the runtimes of these movies have ballooned just as fast and furiously as the budgets and 'splosions — you couldn’t have indulged in more paint-by-numbers action plotting. This "presentation" sports so many genre clichés (a mad scientist, a deadly virus MacGuffin, world ending stakes, evil corporations, twisted bad guy logic and monologues) you might get whiplash. Now, having binged every Fast & Furious movie in one week awhile back, recalling the finer narrative facets of any of them would be too impossible even for Ethan Hunt. But there'd be no reason to whine about a braindead story if the action hit like it should.
Sadly, apart from a few seconds of practical exhilaration scattered throughout, Leitch’s proficiency in superbly arranged stunts and standoffs is all but lost amidst the numbing stubbornness of quick-cutting, and likely too much of that 200 million dollar budget spent on VFX. When there is something worth mouthing “wow” for, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw usually feels the need to spoil it with gratuitous slow motion. Yet within a scale of relative quality that almost forces you to call crap palatable, on charm alone the film becomes part of the upper crust of a barrel-bottom-tier media property.
It only took nine successively dumber movies for the Fast and Furious franchise to realize just how stupid it actually is. Even with the most rudimentary skeleton of a plot, a heavy injection of cheekiness and a competent man of action behind the camera in director David Leitch, somehow the seemly spin-off Hobbs & Shaw fails to outshine the best of its adjacent films like it seemed properly primed and poised to.
Not that this flick isn't immediately superior to a majority of the rest of the macho, metal-minded affairs. The simple on-screen marriage of The Rock and Jason Statham — the antagonistic, furrowed brows of the fifth and sevenths movies respectively before each foe became an ally — adds up to more chemistry, appeal, likability, what have you than any cast led by Vin Diesel. Statham doesn't extend beyond his Transporter gruffness and The Rock just plays himself as always, but their personalities properly suit the marginally sillier material. Idris Elba deserves better than his stock villain role even if the esteemed actor has some appreciable fun as our bionic baddie. Leitch, the tactician behind Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2 and part of the original John Wick, implements at least some kind of cinematographic gravitas parallel to James Wan's (The Conjuring, Aquaman) series-best direction in Furious 7.
And the right turn into broad laughs — not just tired quips via Tyrese Gibson — should have happened ages ago. Remember when the crux of The Fate of the Furious just two years ago was Charlize Theron threatening to murder a baby? Johnson and Statham's over-the-top personas bring about enjoyable repartee but the indication to laugh is spelled out a little too clearly given prominent supporting roles for Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Hart to ad-lib it up. The lighthearted direction also follows less trodden paths by reducing the fetishization of the major female players (mostly Vanessa Kirby, not the only element reminiscent of Mission: Impossible – Fallout). All I'm saying is there’s only one obligatory ass shot — the times really are a-changin'.
Still, at over two hours — the runtimes of these movies have ballooned just as fast and furiously as the budgets and 'splosions — you couldn’t have indulged in more paint-by-numbers action plotting. This "presentation" sports so many genre clichés (a mad scientist, a deadly virus MacGuffin, world ending stakes, evil corporations, twisted bad guy logic and monologues) you might get whiplash. Now, having binged every Fast & Furious movie in one week awhile back, recalling the finer narrative facets of any of them would be too impossible even for Ethan Hunt. But there'd be no reason to whine about a braindead story if the action hit like it should.
Sadly, apart from a few seconds of practical exhilaration scattered throughout, Leitch’s proficiency in superbly arranged stunts and standoffs is all but lost amidst the numbing stubbornness of quick-cutting, and likely too much of that 200 million dollar budget spent on VFX. When there is something worth mouthing “wow” for, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw usually feels the need to spoil it with gratuitous slow motion. Yet within a scale of relative quality that almost forces you to call crap palatable, on charm alone the film becomes part of the upper crust of a barrel-bottom-tier media property.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
Quentin Tarantino has managed to sustain the novelty of his immediate success rather flawlessly. His filmography really only diminishes in quality based on individual taste and how you feel about Tarantino's exceptional ability to tread the middle ground between high and low-brow filmmaking. The man's reputation long precedes him by now — the inexhaustible penchant for graphic violence, the ear for the musicality of film dialogue, the sheer number of female feet and so forth. Tarantino is a sort of perpetual wunderkind, informed by a multitude of cinematic obsessions and nonetheless a stalwart original all the same.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood broadens the scope of his controlled catalogue and helps make the case that, despite his last film The Hateful Eight forming the lowest rung on the ladder of his career, Tarantino's historical revisionist trilogy (Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and now this) are on par with his most laudable work. His latest doesn’t quite attain the momentary high highs of Basterds' scrupulous tension or deftly merge genres like Django’s fearlessly satirical Blaxploitation/Spaghetti Western hybrid, but Once is Tarantino’s most restrained, sophisticated and sweepingly subtextual film in years, and already destined to age finer than anything he’s composed in a long time.
For as indulgent as Tarantino is (really? Tarantino? Indulgent?) with the runtime and the restlessly breathable pacing, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood saves its darkest gratifications for an ending at once marvelously tasteless — like some of his best bloodbath finales, though it's no Crazy 88 massacre from Kill Bill: Volume 1 — and in touch with the function of film. In making a mockery of Charles Manson's murderous followers Tarantino is able to retroactively alter the evil and immorality of the world by creating an idyllic and hopeful remedy, not unlike killing Hitler and exacting retribution upon slavers. Of course the director’s insensitive sensibilities spawn new detractors at every turn (he got away Django guys, he’s going to get away with anything) but any fresh semblance of misogyny or racism is clearly satire, and any naysayers are probably projecting their values against a radically different period in hope of contradiction. This epic Tinseltown fairy tale abides only by well-considered scripting and the intrepid auteur's childhood idea of the era.
Which means the lens with which Tarantino sees late 60s Hollywood is intensely nostalgic if still unusually authentic — neither Charlie nor Sharon Tate is key to the sprawling, era-capping chronicle. Splendid as Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Tate is, the moviemaking reality here is obviously obfuscated by Tarantino’s ageless playfulness, and the inserted fiction, which shuffles around the events of 1969, is in sharper focus. The fictitious Western actor Rick Dalton (played to pure excellence by Leonardo DiCaprio), his equally fictitious stuntman Cliff Booth (a perfectly pitched Brad Pitt) and the steady wane of their respective careers form a tragicomic snapshot of the seemingly copious possibilities Hollywood, and popular culture at large, appeared to offer through the 20th century's most culturally prosperous decade.
It’s not exactly worthy of Sergio Leone’s titular legacy and yet, my God, Tarantino's ninth feature is in the same ballpark, which is no small feat. Everyone should witness the sublimity of Once Upon a Time in the West unless you, like Rick Dalton, believe Italian Westerns to be awful. As much as Brad Pitt anchors the film in classic, studied cool and an everyman fantasy only he could provide, Leo is the one exerting perhaps the peak performance of his career (up there with The Wolf of Wall Street and The Aviator). Especially backed by Tarantino's ability to harness Leo's larger than life, 120% persona, you end up with a faultless dramatic display and priceless roles within roles — DiCaprio's really exquisite here.
Tarantino's myriad influences have always been plainly conspicuous but he's never made a fool of himself in relying so dearly on homage. It's sad that his seasoned skills will likely be with us for only one more film, should he stick to his word and end his career with 10 features to his name. It's wise to quit while you're ahead but Tarantino's singular style of postmodernist, hyper-escapist, cinematic history potpourri still feels like a taste of a Brand New Wave after more than 25 years in the racket. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood may come across underwhelming side by side with his most unshackled, exaggerated works but it's yet another Tarantino film worth carefully dissecting, gleefully quoting and lackadaisically living in, only you can feel reasonably less ashamed since this time the writer-director's smugness is blessed with purpose.
Quentin Tarantino has managed to sustain the novelty of his immediate success rather flawlessly. His filmography really only diminishes in quality based on individual taste and how you feel about Tarantino's exceptional ability to tread the middle ground between high and low-brow filmmaking. The man's reputation long precedes him by now — the inexhaustible penchant for graphic violence, the ear for the musicality of film dialogue, the sheer number of female feet and so forth. Tarantino is a sort of perpetual wunderkind, informed by a multitude of cinematic obsessions and nonetheless a stalwart original all the same.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood broadens the scope of his controlled catalogue and helps make the case that, despite his last film The Hateful Eight forming the lowest rung on the ladder of his career, Tarantino's historical revisionist trilogy (Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and now this) are on par with his most laudable work. His latest doesn’t quite attain the momentary high highs of Basterds' scrupulous tension or deftly merge genres like Django’s fearlessly satirical Blaxploitation/Spaghetti Western hybrid, but Once is Tarantino’s most restrained, sophisticated and sweepingly subtextual film in years, and already destined to age finer than anything he’s composed in a long time.
For as indulgent as Tarantino is (really? Tarantino? Indulgent?) with the runtime and the restlessly breathable pacing, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood saves its darkest gratifications for an ending at once marvelously tasteless — like some of his best bloodbath finales, though it's no Crazy 88 massacre from Kill Bill: Volume 1 — and in touch with the function of film. In making a mockery of Charles Manson's murderous followers Tarantino is able to retroactively alter the evil and immorality of the world by creating an idyllic and hopeful remedy, not unlike killing Hitler and exacting retribution upon slavers. Of course the director’s insensitive sensibilities spawn new detractors at every turn (he got away Django guys, he’s going to get away with anything) but any fresh semblance of misogyny or racism is clearly satire, and any naysayers are probably projecting their values against a radically different period in hope of contradiction. This epic Tinseltown fairy tale abides only by well-considered scripting and the intrepid auteur's childhood idea of the era.
Which means the lens with which Tarantino sees late 60s Hollywood is intensely nostalgic if still unusually authentic — neither Charlie nor Sharon Tate is key to the sprawling, era-capping chronicle. Splendid as Margot Robbie’s portrayal of Tate is, the moviemaking reality here is obviously obfuscated by Tarantino’s ageless playfulness, and the inserted fiction, which shuffles around the events of 1969, is in sharper focus. The fictitious Western actor Rick Dalton (played to pure excellence by Leonardo DiCaprio), his equally fictitious stuntman Cliff Booth (a perfectly pitched Brad Pitt) and the steady wane of their respective careers form a tragicomic snapshot of the seemingly copious possibilities Hollywood, and popular culture at large, appeared to offer through the 20th century's most culturally prosperous decade.
It’s not exactly worthy of Sergio Leone’s titular legacy and yet, my God, Tarantino's ninth feature is in the same ballpark, which is no small feat. Everyone should witness the sublimity of Once Upon a Time in the West unless you, like Rick Dalton, believe Italian Westerns to be awful. As much as Brad Pitt anchors the film in classic, studied cool and an everyman fantasy only he could provide, Leo is the one exerting perhaps the peak performance of his career (up there with The Wolf of Wall Street and The Aviator). Especially backed by Tarantino's ability to harness Leo's larger than life, 120% persona, you end up with a faultless dramatic display and priceless roles within roles — DiCaprio's really exquisite here.
Tarantino's myriad influences have always been plainly conspicuous but he's never made a fool of himself in relying so dearly on homage. It's sad that his seasoned skills will likely be with us for only one more film, should he stick to his word and end his career with 10 features to his name. It's wise to quit while you're ahead but Tarantino's singular style of postmodernist, hyper-escapist, cinematic history potpourri still feels like a taste of a Brand New Wave after more than 25 years in the racket. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood may come across underwhelming side by side with his most unshackled, exaggerated works but it's yet another Tarantino film worth carefully dissecting, gleefully quoting and lackadaisically living in, only you can feel reasonably less ashamed since this time the writer-director's smugness is blessed with purpose.
Midsommar briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
Ari Aster effortlessly entered horror's ongoing revival with last year’s Hereditary but he swiftly secures his name as one worth remembering in his gonzo follow-up a mere 13 months later. Swapping out demons and mental illness for culture shock, PTSD and ancient perversions, Midsommar is a real doozy.
Grandly composed yet atmospherically insular, Aster ignores the safeness of the supernatural to take a classically inspired look at the most macabre facets of human nature. The commitment to measured realism naturally informs the irresistible slasher setup with grace and patience while invoking copious genre thrills. Aster melds breakup subject matter with once-a-generation Swedish folk festivals, finding advantageous ways to thread the setting, mythos and themes together without sacrificing verisimilitude at the altar.
With strong subtext coursing through its scarce plot, the narrative overambition noted in Hereditary is channeled into a discreetly organized summer vacation from hell, packing its own punch of internal panic while justifying the evolution of its enticingly psychotic premise every creeping step through. Reminiscent of seminal excerpts in film history (the patient escalation of Rosemary’s Baby and of course the cult crazies of The Wicker Man), Aster disregards today's tastes craving more spookhouse hogwash to create a vivid, intrepid psychological horror epic.
Tonally Aster has achieved something so delicately bizarre it becomes difficult to resist laughing along with the absurdity just as surely as we wince at the freakiest turns. Midsommar is so strangely funny — thanks Will Poulter — even its most jaw-droppingly grotesque moments may have you guffawing simultaneously. It’s a risky spatial and emotional balance to strike — this could have so plainly been parody in lesser hands.
Though the characters are function-only, they're developed enough that the typical frustration as a powerless horror movie audience member doesn't impede captivation. Partaking in the Kool-Aid and going with the flow bring you two psychedelic sequences so eerie in their own subtlety and thematic employment they stand apart as separate bookends of scariness. Following the lure of spiritual rebirth only to find death awaiting you with a warm smile on its face is its own warped brand of creepy, even as the film dances to its coyly optimistic final frames.
Like anything so initially inviting, Midsommar doesn’t entirely deliver on every promise of its foregone potential but it arrives damn close. Hereditary had something special going until it wet the bed in the home stretch. Aster aims past the risers here and walks away far more unscathed than his debut.
Ari Aster effortlessly entered horror's ongoing revival with last year’s Hereditary but he swiftly secures his name as one worth remembering in his gonzo follow-up a mere 13 months later. Swapping out demons and mental illness for culture shock, PTSD and ancient perversions, Midsommar is a real doozy.
Grandly composed yet atmospherically insular, Aster ignores the safeness of the supernatural to take a classically inspired look at the most macabre facets of human nature. The commitment to measured realism naturally informs the irresistible slasher setup with grace and patience while invoking copious genre thrills. Aster melds breakup subject matter with once-a-generation Swedish folk festivals, finding advantageous ways to thread the setting, mythos and themes together without sacrificing verisimilitude at the altar.
With strong subtext coursing through its scarce plot, the narrative overambition noted in Hereditary is channeled into a discreetly organized summer vacation from hell, packing its own punch of internal panic while justifying the evolution of its enticingly psychotic premise every creeping step through. Reminiscent of seminal excerpts in film history (the patient escalation of Rosemary’s Baby and of course the cult crazies of The Wicker Man), Aster disregards today's tastes craving more spookhouse hogwash to create a vivid, intrepid psychological horror epic.
Tonally Aster has achieved something so delicately bizarre it becomes difficult to resist laughing along with the absurdity just as surely as we wince at the freakiest turns. Midsommar is so strangely funny — thanks Will Poulter — even its most jaw-droppingly grotesque moments may have you guffawing simultaneously. It’s a risky spatial and emotional balance to strike — this could have so plainly been parody in lesser hands.
Though the characters are function-only, they're developed enough that the typical frustration as a powerless horror movie audience member doesn't impede captivation. Partaking in the Kool-Aid and going with the flow bring you two psychedelic sequences so eerie in their own subtlety and thematic employment they stand apart as separate bookends of scariness. Following the lure of spiritual rebirth only to find death awaiting you with a warm smile on its face is its own warped brand of creepy, even as the film dances to its coyly optimistic final frames.
Like anything so initially inviting, Midsommar doesn’t entirely deliver on every promise of its foregone potential but it arrives damn close. Hereditary had something special going until it wet the bed in the home stretch. Aster aims past the risers here and walks away far more unscathed than his debut.
Spider-Man: Far From Home briefing
2 (out of 4)
Well it appears the Marvel/Spidey mashup has officially hit the brink of diminishing returns. With Spider-Man (the character and Tom Holland) trapped like a cute kid in a nasty divorce, Sony and Disney's bickering and bartering over the rights appears to have finally settled down. After losing the webslinger for about a month or so, Disney reclaims Spidey as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — though in that leg of limbo the Disney executives pretended they actually did everything they planned to do with Spider-Man concluding with Far From Home. The Mouse can't help but affect the movies themselves with their backstage wheeling and dealing but, even viewed as just a comic book movie, Far From Home is Marvel at its most conventional and monotonous.
After Endgame left nothing beyond Thor and Guardians adventures to forecast post-Phase Three — at least until Comic-Con reminded us, inevitably, that nothing about this franchise is ending whatsoever — Far From Home approaches the cinematic situation with even less. Spidey's second subtitled affair doesn't come close to sufficiently serving as the soothing comedown to the biggest theatrical release of all time. Some impressive aspects notwithstanding, this Marvel 'vacation' proves just why the long running and recycling series will never match the pure evocative earnestness of Sam Raimi’s original trilogy, let alone the better parts of the MCU.
The most bothersome blemish of Disney's two featureless Spider-Man films is the fact that the insanely iconic hero just isn't trusted to be the star of his own show. The boilerplate themes of Far From Home are even more frustrating than they were in Homecoming, particularly because they haven't changed at all. Peter Parker must once again strive to live up to Tony Stark’s precedent (now in death rather than the flesh) but the responsibility-shrugging struggles were lame the first time and RDJ's shadow looms all too imposingly and unnecessarily — it's a flagrantly unmasked repeat of stale ideas.
Tom Holland has been a dependable age-appropriate Spider-Man and Jake Gyllenhaal continues Marvel’s late-period streak of strong antagonists as Mysterio who, granted, may be one of the finest villains of the series. The underplayed teen romance is surprisingly winning although I do not respect Zendaya as an acting talent, or as any talent really. The third act gets things moving but by then the series has been slightly retconned and you’re being frequently reminded of a bad take on The Incredibles. Gyllenhaal's perfect casting as a nerd favorite has to be cathartic for some but whatever righteous reinvention Homecoming offered with our central characters, Far From Home has scrubbed off most of the residual charm. The movie wants to be a relaxing summer tonic following a far more eventful, emotional heavy hitter à la Ant-Man rearing Age of Ultron (or their respective sequels three years later) but the hype is all exhausted and any exaltation at new CG effects and freshly shopworn quips is long expired.
Furthering the John Hughes imitations and those pesky recurring jokes — best friend Ned's fling, Jon Favreau's Happy and his infatuation with Marisa Tomei's Aunt May (haha isn’t she HOT?) — does not assist the amusement but deflate it. Never has the classic MCU 'comedy' been so strained, the action literally been more artificial and the sense of wonderment and heroism been so dampened by the overwhelming serialization and minimal digestion between installments. This is the fourth time Spider-Man has played a key role in an MCU film, once per year since 2016 — it just makes Far From Home, especially as a farewell to the relatively grand, if overlong Phase 3, the antithesis of amazing.
Until J. K. Simmons reappears in a rare, actually worthwhile post-credits stinger (sadly more enjoyable than the entire preceding movie) Far From Home offers few particulars of enjoyment other than some trippy Spidey-screensavers via Mysterio's anticipated trickery and high school hipster courtship. There are no more puzzle pieces left to put together and the forward motion of the most momentous Hollywood endeavor ever is suddenly glacial. As a mere passable dessert following Endgame's purposeful overindulgence, Far From Home seeks to evade routine and winds up one of Marvel's most formulaic efforts.
Well it appears the Marvel/Spidey mashup has officially hit the brink of diminishing returns. With Spider-Man (the character and Tom Holland) trapped like a cute kid in a nasty divorce, Sony and Disney's bickering and bartering over the rights appears to have finally settled down. After losing the webslinger for about a month or so, Disney reclaims Spidey as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — though in that leg of limbo the Disney executives pretended they actually did everything they planned to do with Spider-Man concluding with Far From Home. The Mouse can't help but affect the movies themselves with their backstage wheeling and dealing but, even viewed as just a comic book movie, Far From Home is Marvel at its most conventional and monotonous.
After Endgame left nothing beyond Thor and Guardians adventures to forecast post-Phase Three — at least until Comic-Con reminded us, inevitably, that nothing about this franchise is ending whatsoever — Far From Home approaches the cinematic situation with even less. Spidey's second subtitled affair doesn't come close to sufficiently serving as the soothing comedown to the biggest theatrical release of all time. Some impressive aspects notwithstanding, this Marvel 'vacation' proves just why the long running and recycling series will never match the pure evocative earnestness of Sam Raimi’s original trilogy, let alone the better parts of the MCU.
The most bothersome blemish of Disney's two featureless Spider-Man films is the fact that the insanely iconic hero just isn't trusted to be the star of his own show. The boilerplate themes of Far From Home are even more frustrating than they were in Homecoming, particularly because they haven't changed at all. Peter Parker must once again strive to live up to Tony Stark’s precedent (now in death rather than the flesh) but the responsibility-shrugging struggles were lame the first time and RDJ's shadow looms all too imposingly and unnecessarily — it's a flagrantly unmasked repeat of stale ideas.
Tom Holland has been a dependable age-appropriate Spider-Man and Jake Gyllenhaal continues Marvel’s late-period streak of strong antagonists as Mysterio who, granted, may be one of the finest villains of the series. The underplayed teen romance is surprisingly winning although I do not respect Zendaya as an acting talent, or as any talent really. The third act gets things moving but by then the series has been slightly retconned and you’re being frequently reminded of a bad take on The Incredibles. Gyllenhaal's perfect casting as a nerd favorite has to be cathartic for some but whatever righteous reinvention Homecoming offered with our central characters, Far From Home has scrubbed off most of the residual charm. The movie wants to be a relaxing summer tonic following a far more eventful, emotional heavy hitter à la Ant-Man rearing Age of Ultron (or their respective sequels three years later) but the hype is all exhausted and any exaltation at new CG effects and freshly shopworn quips is long expired.
Furthering the John Hughes imitations and those pesky recurring jokes — best friend Ned's fling, Jon Favreau's Happy and his infatuation with Marisa Tomei's Aunt May (haha isn’t she HOT?) — does not assist the amusement but deflate it. Never has the classic MCU 'comedy' been so strained, the action literally been more artificial and the sense of wonderment and heroism been so dampened by the overwhelming serialization and minimal digestion between installments. This is the fourth time Spider-Man has played a key role in an MCU film, once per year since 2016 — it just makes Far From Home, especially as a farewell to the relatively grand, if overlong Phase 3, the antithesis of amazing.
Until J. K. Simmons reappears in a rare, actually worthwhile post-credits stinger (sadly more enjoyable than the entire preceding movie) Far From Home offers few particulars of enjoyment other than some trippy Spidey-screensavers via Mysterio's anticipated trickery and high school hipster courtship. There are no more puzzle pieces left to put together and the forward motion of the most momentous Hollywood endeavor ever is suddenly glacial. As a mere passable dessert following Endgame's purposeful overindulgence, Far From Home seeks to evade routine and winds up one of Marvel's most formulaic efforts.
Yesterday briefing
1 ½ (out of 4)
In spite of noted classics and separate brushes with Oscar limelight lending him the status of household name, Danny Boyle is not a director you could accurately call an all-time great. But considering this is the man who initially brought us the lively licentiousness of Shallow Grave and the scintillating sickliness of Trainspotting, you’d hope his summer fairy tale flick in the form of a musical tribute to the Beatles wouldn’t share the same mediocre sheen of the rest of this season's releases.
After Trance earlier this decade I thought Boyle could never make a more frustrating film but never mind I guess. Unless he’s dipping into genre fare like space (Sunshine), zombies (28 Days Later) or an Aaron Sorkin-penned biopic (Steve Jobs) the dependency on Dutch angles and contrasted colors ironically highlights just how little substance Boyle's really bringing to the table and serves only to energize my anger. The premise of Yesterday (of a world where only one dude remembers the Fab Four) is already wildly dumb on arrival but the film averts every potentially fascinating direction for the story and the internal sense adds up to ass the more you ponder it. Would a song like "I Saw Her Standing There" really resonate with the contemporary pop music climate without a trap beat?
Some hazily creative choices are situated as insistent jokes, making for real narrative non-starters. In Yesterday not only the Beatles but other societal #1's (Coca Cola, Harry Potter, cigarettes I guess?) have also been erased from existence — but this is treated as a pointless curiosity unfit for investigation. Actual ingenuity is downplayed for more Ed Sheehan, pathetically spoonfed themes or the worst representation of an aged John Lennon conceivable — sorry no, the guy who scream-sang "I'm lonely, wanna die" on "Yer Blues" would not be dishing out love advice at random. Richard Curtis's maddening screenplay teases the odd and nightmarish by introducing a few strangers also not affected by this mass memory wipe. Instead of capitalizing on a neat aspect of paranoia that would have given our protagonist his deserved comeuppance, the film instead takes one last turn for the saccharine.
A movie so generally innocent shouldn't inspire such violent reactions but that's just how stupid Yesterday gets. The crucial romance is tepid, most performances are forced and even Kate McKinnon for all her charisma can't liven things up in the background. Himesh Patel is a grating lead to watch take advantage of this musical blackout and Lily James' doe-eyed loveliness is wasted on sugary mush. The dynamics of their banal love story are bafflingly backwards — yeah I'm sure Cinderella herself would be the one doing the yearning.
Even in a world where proper summer escapism had been erased, Yesterday would still dissatisfy. If I were as religiously attached to the Beatles as some, I'd be devastated by such an insensitive, unstudied and prosaic so-called celebration of the band. I can't believe I'm typing this out, but you're better off revering the most popular music act in history through 2007's Across the Universe.
In spite of noted classics and separate brushes with Oscar limelight lending him the status of household name, Danny Boyle is not a director you could accurately call an all-time great. But considering this is the man who initially brought us the lively licentiousness of Shallow Grave and the scintillating sickliness of Trainspotting, you’d hope his summer fairy tale flick in the form of a musical tribute to the Beatles wouldn’t share the same mediocre sheen of the rest of this season's releases.
After Trance earlier this decade I thought Boyle could never make a more frustrating film but never mind I guess. Unless he’s dipping into genre fare like space (Sunshine), zombies (28 Days Later) or an Aaron Sorkin-penned biopic (Steve Jobs) the dependency on Dutch angles and contrasted colors ironically highlights just how little substance Boyle's really bringing to the table and serves only to energize my anger. The premise of Yesterday (of a world where only one dude remembers the Fab Four) is already wildly dumb on arrival but the film averts every potentially fascinating direction for the story and the internal sense adds up to ass the more you ponder it. Would a song like "I Saw Her Standing There" really resonate with the contemporary pop music climate without a trap beat?
Some hazily creative choices are situated as insistent jokes, making for real narrative non-starters. In Yesterday not only the Beatles but other societal #1's (Coca Cola, Harry Potter, cigarettes I guess?) have also been erased from existence — but this is treated as a pointless curiosity unfit for investigation. Actual ingenuity is downplayed for more Ed Sheehan, pathetically spoonfed themes or the worst representation of an aged John Lennon conceivable — sorry no, the guy who scream-sang "I'm lonely, wanna die" on "Yer Blues" would not be dishing out love advice at random. Richard Curtis's maddening screenplay teases the odd and nightmarish by introducing a few strangers also not affected by this mass memory wipe. Instead of capitalizing on a neat aspect of paranoia that would have given our protagonist his deserved comeuppance, the film instead takes one last turn for the saccharine.
A movie so generally innocent shouldn't inspire such violent reactions but that's just how stupid Yesterday gets. The crucial romance is tepid, most performances are forced and even Kate McKinnon for all her charisma can't liven things up in the background. Himesh Patel is a grating lead to watch take advantage of this musical blackout and Lily James' doe-eyed loveliness is wasted on sugary mush. The dynamics of their banal love story are bafflingly backwards — yeah I'm sure Cinderella herself would be the one doing the yearning.
Even in a world where proper summer escapism had been erased, Yesterday would still dissatisfy. If I were as religiously attached to the Beatles as some, I'd be devastated by such an insensitive, unstudied and prosaic so-called celebration of the band. I can't believe I'm typing this out, but you're better off revering the most popular music act in history through 2007's Across the Universe.
Toy Story 4 briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
I’ll be damned Disney — I came into the latest latent Pixar sequel with enough upfront cynicism to ready myself for Cars 4. Why oh why go out of your way to spoil a good thing? It goes without saying the Toy Story trilogy is the flagship of the Pixar brand — each installment has an abundance of emotional complexity and unencumbered creative freedom, as well as the potential for joy and pathos in devastating spells. Number four’s strongest distinction is the renewed inventiveness in addition to a consistently impassioned approach to more mature themes. It's hard to keep Disney's money-milking schemes out of your head (especially in the year of three remakes of their own animated classics, three Marvel movies, Frozen II and a Star Wars episode) but unbelievably Toy Story 4 is a product of prudence and sincerity rather than brand recognition and capitalist underpinnings.
It’s crazy to consider but this is some of Pixar’s finest stuff this decade, a few forgivable moments notwithstanding. The sympathetic villain in a voice(box)less Gabby Gabby doll improves on past antagonists while the major anthropomorphic trinkets are redrawn with enough new wrinkles to justify the very idea of this film's existence. Some inspired new character creations like Keanu Reeves' Duke Caboom mean some old favorites have to take the backseat, which would be disappointing if it weren't an even trade. Ultimately after having nightmares in anticipation of this sequel's mediocrity, I have to humbly admit the results of the previously predicted corporate devilry behind Toy Story 4 are as optimistic as one can imagine. The plot is appropriately minuscule for a film functioning as a touching epilogue to a great series. Just from the opening scene — a flashback of Woody and Bo Peep's parting that could work as its own short film — you know up front this is not some obvious cash-in.
Toy Story 4 might even have the upper hand on 3, thought to be its own impressive series-capper. I grant you the final act of the 2010 Story is masterly but the progressed quality of animation, moderation in the storytelling and the revisionist examination of Woody’s character makes Toy Story 4 the sequel we didn’t know we needed and deserved. Similar to Incredibles 2 (a strong and reasonable revisitation to an original film unlike Monsters University or Finding Dory) there is little compromise of independent imagination for the sake of popular demand.
I’ll be damned Disney — I came into the latest latent Pixar sequel with enough upfront cynicism to ready myself for Cars 4. Why oh why go out of your way to spoil a good thing? It goes without saying the Toy Story trilogy is the flagship of the Pixar brand — each installment has an abundance of emotional complexity and unencumbered creative freedom, as well as the potential for joy and pathos in devastating spells. Number four’s strongest distinction is the renewed inventiveness in addition to a consistently impassioned approach to more mature themes. It's hard to keep Disney's money-milking schemes out of your head (especially in the year of three remakes of their own animated classics, three Marvel movies, Frozen II and a Star Wars episode) but unbelievably Toy Story 4 is a product of prudence and sincerity rather than brand recognition and capitalist underpinnings.
It’s crazy to consider but this is some of Pixar’s finest stuff this decade, a few forgivable moments notwithstanding. The sympathetic villain in a voice(box)less Gabby Gabby doll improves on past antagonists while the major anthropomorphic trinkets are redrawn with enough new wrinkles to justify the very idea of this film's existence. Some inspired new character creations like Keanu Reeves' Duke Caboom mean some old favorites have to take the backseat, which would be disappointing if it weren't an even trade. Ultimately after having nightmares in anticipation of this sequel's mediocrity, I have to humbly admit the results of the previously predicted corporate devilry behind Toy Story 4 are as optimistic as one can imagine. The plot is appropriately minuscule for a film functioning as a touching epilogue to a great series. Just from the opening scene — a flashback of Woody and Bo Peep's parting that could work as its own short film — you know up front this is not some obvious cash-in.
Toy Story 4 might even have the upper hand on 3, thought to be its own impressive series-capper. I grant you the final act of the 2010 Story is masterly but the progressed quality of animation, moderation in the storytelling and the revisionist examination of Woody’s character makes Toy Story 4 the sequel we didn’t know we needed and deserved. Similar to Incredibles 2 (a strong and reasonable revisitation to an original film unlike Monsters University or Finding Dory) there is little compromise of independent imagination for the sake of popular demand.
Dark Phoenix briefing
1 ½ (out of 4)
20th Century Fox’s former piece of the Marvel pie is going out with a wheeze rather than one last hurrah. After Apocalypse popped a blood vessel grasping for epic scope, Dark Phoenix, the fourth installment in the rebooted X-Men series, inverts the abnormality of X-cinema to its cheesiest and most frugal form. The final mutation of the now extinct franchise places its chips on Sophie Turner's latent Game of Thrones popularity and a twice-tried storyline stuck on the overpowered character Jean Grey. I thought Famke Janssen was always lacking personality, especially in X-Men: The Last Stand, but this immaterial redo (directed by the same spotty writer Simon Kinberg no less) is on its own level of whatever.
As far as the 12-film, 19-year Fox franchise is concerned, there really is nothing new under the sun — same old themes, character traits, reflective politics, generic platitudes and clumsy confrontations. The story of Dark Phoenix is not unlike Captain Marvel in many ways (premise and villains largely) but the dialogue itself lands with a crash and thud from start to finish, as if a spec script made it through all of shooting. Even the extraordinary displays of mutant combat barely live up to the usual freakish fun until its admittedly exciting — and entirely reshot — finale.
Michael Fassbender's Magneto sustains his one beautiful note but he and Baby Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee, the most well-cast of the new X-generation) are underused despite being the current company's best in show. Baby Cyclops sucks (or maybe Tye Sheridan does) while Evan Peters' Quiksilver gets classically nerfed early on. James McAvoy hardly does justice to the role of Professor X anymore and J Law's Mystique literally can’t die soon enough (whoops spoilers, like anyone cares).
Beyond Disney buyouts, this was already the bastard child of the X-Men series. An initial trilogy, a prequel trilogy and three successively improved Wolverine films (not to mention two separately successful Deadpool films) led to this: a hamstrung borderline-parody of a superhero film full of phoned-in acting, TV editing, lackluster visual effects and more than a few stretches of unintentional humor. Phoenix deserves to be left right in the ashes, never to be reborn except under the strict direction of Master Mouse.
20th Century Fox’s former piece of the Marvel pie is going out with a wheeze rather than one last hurrah. After Apocalypse popped a blood vessel grasping for epic scope, Dark Phoenix, the fourth installment in the rebooted X-Men series, inverts the abnormality of X-cinema to its cheesiest and most frugal form. The final mutation of the now extinct franchise places its chips on Sophie Turner's latent Game of Thrones popularity and a twice-tried storyline stuck on the overpowered character Jean Grey. I thought Famke Janssen was always lacking personality, especially in X-Men: The Last Stand, but this immaterial redo (directed by the same spotty writer Simon Kinberg no less) is on its own level of whatever.
As far as the 12-film, 19-year Fox franchise is concerned, there really is nothing new under the sun — same old themes, character traits, reflective politics, generic platitudes and clumsy confrontations. The story of Dark Phoenix is not unlike Captain Marvel in many ways (premise and villains largely) but the dialogue itself lands with a crash and thud from start to finish, as if a spec script made it through all of shooting. Even the extraordinary displays of mutant combat barely live up to the usual freakish fun until its admittedly exciting — and entirely reshot — finale.
Michael Fassbender's Magneto sustains his one beautiful note but he and Baby Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee, the most well-cast of the new X-generation) are underused despite being the current company's best in show. Baby Cyclops sucks (or maybe Tye Sheridan does) while Evan Peters' Quiksilver gets classically nerfed early on. James McAvoy hardly does justice to the role of Professor X anymore and J Law's Mystique literally can’t die soon enough (whoops spoilers, like anyone cares).
Beyond Disney buyouts, this was already the bastard child of the X-Men series. An initial trilogy, a prequel trilogy and three successively improved Wolverine films (not to mention two separately successful Deadpool films) led to this: a hamstrung borderline-parody of a superhero film full of phoned-in acting, TV editing, lackluster visual effects and more than a few stretches of unintentional humor. Phoenix deserves to be left right in the ashes, never to be reborn except under the strict direction of Master Mouse.
Booksmart briefing
2 (out of 4)
As a sister of the mumblecore movement, Olivia Wilde should have felt right at home crafting her own hipster coming-of-age debut. It's something of a right of passage from Welles and Truffaut to Gerwig and Burnham. In Wilde's case a less than stellar acting career has led to a desperate appeal to the Gen-Z audience in the form of the essay in clichés known as Booksmart.
What is this genre known for? Adolescent insight, barbed one-liners, high school tomfoolery and maybe even a tear or two shed. John Hughes' multiple distillations of this formula gave the 80s a few of its intrinsic flavors but Wilde’s amendment on the tactics matches neither Hughes' overrated abilities or the ingenuity of her contemporaries. Unlike the novelties of Edge of Seventeen, Lady Bird, The Diary of a Teenage Girl or especially and most recently Eighth Grade, Booksmart falls way shy of the creativity of its counterparts. The wisdom is weak, the situational comedy is forced and many characters do little other than secure an imagined quota of LGBTQ+ representation, a political move just as deliberately predisposed as the rest of the film.
Booksmart wants to be the female Superbad — let the losers loosen up just as high schools ends — but that 2007 flick still holds favor because its script finds the appropriate time for each instance of silliness, satire and intelligence in order to maintain both relative realism and unrefined, inappropriate entertainment. Wilde's attempts to illustrate the newfangled quirks of present-day youth are periodically cringe-inducing and ignore any semblance of universality. Even with a hard R, Wilde's film is a soft summer comedy — Booksmart desperately yearns to shine with the luster of an underseen cult classic. It's another faux-indie wide release with an oppressively modern soundtrack (sorry but these girls don’t listen to Death Grips along with Top 40 garbage), broad gags and big comedy names in the lesser roles (Lisa Kudrow, Jason Sudeikis and Jessica Williams). As much as the supporting cast amuses, a few funny side characters don't outweigh the stock of stereotypes and agenda-fillers.
Leads Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever both seem typecast. The former repeats her exact role in Lady Bird albeit larger and the latter is still playing high schoolers, this time in a more comic context. Feldstein’s shtick is already stale and Dever’s improvisational chops are nonexistent. Their on-screen friendship has sweet moments but there’s no self-awareness in Wilde asking us to sympathize, not scrutinize, the most privileged teens imaginable. There’s nothing at all revelatory about realizing rich kids get into ivy league schools regardless of their grades, which is the inciting insecurity of Feldstein's valedictorian, straight-edge protagonist. If Booksmart took place in a Midwest town... well the premise would be moot but her character's shock is unrelatable and every succeeding act of their unexpected evening is contrived.
If it weren’t for the fact that Booksmart has damn near unanimous praise, I wouldn’t blink an eye at a middling SXSW film. I would guess the deeply feminist slant has the liberal majority of critics on its side regardless of the film’s actual content, though I don't deny there are some inspired choices amongst the prescribed fun and feels. Wilde's work still lands without empathetic impact and its coaxing through breakneck editing and blaring needle drops is more exasperating than charming.
As a sister of the mumblecore movement, Olivia Wilde should have felt right at home crafting her own hipster coming-of-age debut. It's something of a right of passage from Welles and Truffaut to Gerwig and Burnham. In Wilde's case a less than stellar acting career has led to a desperate appeal to the Gen-Z audience in the form of the essay in clichés known as Booksmart.
What is this genre known for? Adolescent insight, barbed one-liners, high school tomfoolery and maybe even a tear or two shed. John Hughes' multiple distillations of this formula gave the 80s a few of its intrinsic flavors but Wilde’s amendment on the tactics matches neither Hughes' overrated abilities or the ingenuity of her contemporaries. Unlike the novelties of Edge of Seventeen, Lady Bird, The Diary of a Teenage Girl or especially and most recently Eighth Grade, Booksmart falls way shy of the creativity of its counterparts. The wisdom is weak, the situational comedy is forced and many characters do little other than secure an imagined quota of LGBTQ+ representation, a political move just as deliberately predisposed as the rest of the film.
Booksmart wants to be the female Superbad — let the losers loosen up just as high schools ends — but that 2007 flick still holds favor because its script finds the appropriate time for each instance of silliness, satire and intelligence in order to maintain both relative realism and unrefined, inappropriate entertainment. Wilde's attempts to illustrate the newfangled quirks of present-day youth are periodically cringe-inducing and ignore any semblance of universality. Even with a hard R, Wilde's film is a soft summer comedy — Booksmart desperately yearns to shine with the luster of an underseen cult classic. It's another faux-indie wide release with an oppressively modern soundtrack (sorry but these girls don’t listen to Death Grips along with Top 40 garbage), broad gags and big comedy names in the lesser roles (Lisa Kudrow, Jason Sudeikis and Jessica Williams). As much as the supporting cast amuses, a few funny side characters don't outweigh the stock of stereotypes and agenda-fillers.
Leads Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever both seem typecast. The former repeats her exact role in Lady Bird albeit larger and the latter is still playing high schoolers, this time in a more comic context. Feldstein’s shtick is already stale and Dever’s improvisational chops are nonexistent. Their on-screen friendship has sweet moments but there’s no self-awareness in Wilde asking us to sympathize, not scrutinize, the most privileged teens imaginable. There’s nothing at all revelatory about realizing rich kids get into ivy league schools regardless of their grades, which is the inciting insecurity of Feldstein's valedictorian, straight-edge protagonist. If Booksmart took place in a Midwest town... well the premise would be moot but her character's shock is unrelatable and every succeeding act of their unexpected evening is contrived.
If it weren’t for the fact that Booksmart has damn near unanimous praise, I wouldn’t blink an eye at a middling SXSW film. I would guess the deeply feminist slant has the liberal majority of critics on its side regardless of the film’s actual content, though I don't deny there are some inspired choices amongst the prescribed fun and feels. Wilde's work still lands without empathetic impact and its coaxing through breakneck editing and blaring needle drops is more exasperating than charming.
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
Finally attaining the breadth of frenzied hysteria and hysterics this film series intended from the start, the third John Wick installment is an individually dynamite action picture systematically outdoing its predecessors and establishing a fresh benchmark in stunt perfectionism for today's genre enthusiasts. Of course, if you prefer sensible storytelling to violent skirmishes you most likely already don't look favorably upon Wick or any blockbusters of the same ilk.
But scrutinizing plot is wasted effort in this context and anticipating narrative innovation is misguided when one's focus should be fixed on the particulars of editing, choreography, stuntwork and set design — with uncompromising action thrillers, story usually does and should fade into the aesthetics of ornate, staggering, red-blooded filmmaking, assuming there’s someone proficient behind camera. When your central premise is the most unbeatable assassin returning from retirement for a cascading series of absurdly brutal scenarios and new emotional motivations, the propulsion better be one more of feeling than logic. As much as Chapter 3 doesn’t necessarily solve persisting genre clichés — one-by-one henchmen attack plans or the elasticity of movie physics — this series nonetheless already sits as a modern measure of action film greatness.
The first Wick was a blistering, left field gem, now regarded as a modest action classic. The sequel posited impressive improvements on the finer fringe details of the assassin-verse but regrettably threw the combat switch from thrill to overkill. Parabellum lands firmly in between, reaffirming the original's brazen tongue-in-cheekiness and reverting the violence to a kinetic, outlandish funhouse. The sheer amount of FPS headshots isn't as thoroughly numbing as last time and the sense of visual clarity has never been more uniformly crisp. Bourne has been forgotten and Bond has been the sight of every kind of reinvention process — only Mission: Impossible and Fast & Furious hold relevancy to the genre and each are two movies away from completion. John Wick had humble beginnings and expertly earned its cult following, critical raves and exponential box office numbers. Who knows where this crazy train ends but the views so far have been uncommonly spectacular.
Collecting the memorable antagonists from the Raid franchise — Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahman — as merciless number twos to Zero, the deadliest fanboy on the planet (Mark Decascos), the Wick series restores its genre cred and impossible niche in another martial arts/neo-noir hybrid brimming with gun-fu freak-outs and practical choreography tutorials. Ballet ties into its basic but functional themes on the harmonic relationship between art and pain — the exploration of the elegance of movement is at the core of John Wick 3, crystallizing the film and franchise within their artistically justified heights. If lustrous final boss battles and antique knife fights bring us closer to some savage audiovisual poetry to absolve us of our restrained recklessness, so be it. Chapter 4 will suitably raise the stakes, break the rules and have us laughing and/or gaping in awe once again — topping Parabellum's slew of sick opening set pieces and the algorithmically orchestrated climax will be a marvelous challenge.
Finally attaining the breadth of frenzied hysteria and hysterics this film series intended from the start, the third John Wick installment is an individually dynamite action picture systematically outdoing its predecessors and establishing a fresh benchmark in stunt perfectionism for today's genre enthusiasts. Of course, if you prefer sensible storytelling to violent skirmishes you most likely already don't look favorably upon Wick or any blockbusters of the same ilk.
But scrutinizing plot is wasted effort in this context and anticipating narrative innovation is misguided when one's focus should be fixed on the particulars of editing, choreography, stuntwork and set design — with uncompromising action thrillers, story usually does and should fade into the aesthetics of ornate, staggering, red-blooded filmmaking, assuming there’s someone proficient behind camera. When your central premise is the most unbeatable assassin returning from retirement for a cascading series of absurdly brutal scenarios and new emotional motivations, the propulsion better be one more of feeling than logic. As much as Chapter 3 doesn’t necessarily solve persisting genre clichés — one-by-one henchmen attack plans or the elasticity of movie physics — this series nonetheless already sits as a modern measure of action film greatness.
The first Wick was a blistering, left field gem, now regarded as a modest action classic. The sequel posited impressive improvements on the finer fringe details of the assassin-verse but regrettably threw the combat switch from thrill to overkill. Parabellum lands firmly in between, reaffirming the original's brazen tongue-in-cheekiness and reverting the violence to a kinetic, outlandish funhouse. The sheer amount of FPS headshots isn't as thoroughly numbing as last time and the sense of visual clarity has never been more uniformly crisp. Bourne has been forgotten and Bond has been the sight of every kind of reinvention process — only Mission: Impossible and Fast & Furious hold relevancy to the genre and each are two movies away from completion. John Wick had humble beginnings and expertly earned its cult following, critical raves and exponential box office numbers. Who knows where this crazy train ends but the views so far have been uncommonly spectacular.
Collecting the memorable antagonists from the Raid franchise — Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahman — as merciless number twos to Zero, the deadliest fanboy on the planet (Mark Decascos), the Wick series restores its genre cred and impossible niche in another martial arts/neo-noir hybrid brimming with gun-fu freak-outs and practical choreography tutorials. Ballet ties into its basic but functional themes on the harmonic relationship between art and pain — the exploration of the elegance of movement is at the core of John Wick 3, crystallizing the film and franchise within their artistically justified heights. If lustrous final boss battles and antique knife fights bring us closer to some savage audiovisual poetry to absolve us of our restrained recklessness, so be it. Chapter 4 will suitably raise the stakes, break the rules and have us laughing and/or gaping in awe once again — topping Parabellum's slew of sick opening set pieces and the algorithmically orchestrated climax will be a marvelous challenge.
Pokémon: Detective Pikachu briefing
2 (out of 4)
Like the Jack Sparrow of his own Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Ryan Reynolds is the recurring grace note keeping Detective Pikachu afloat, or in this case at least bearable. If it weren’t for his hapless PG-filtered improv, the first live-action Pokémon movie would be a true bust rather than this season's most forgettable summer flick for the whole family.
The actual narrative within this Roger Rabbit rip-off quasi-mystery is pretty pitiful but Detective Pikachu thankfully doesn't rely entirely on nostalgia to secure your investment. The updated poké-politics — I suppose it is a little cramped inside those pokéballs — try to finagle the ridiculous reality of Pocket Monsters into a format vaguely fit for a cinematic reality. But nondescript lead characters in Justice Smith and Kathryn Newton, unmistakable bad guy by way of Bill Nighy and some abysmal visual effects do not help the cause of this so-called urban fantasy. Plus no matter how many dead parents there are, the movie never gets even remotely emotional.
Now’s the moment to bellyache like I resemble a real fan: I grew up with Pokémon — the trading cards, the action figures, the television series and of course the video games — and had my own common attachment to the property. This movie is inspired by the 2016 game of the same name, with Warner Bros. undoubtedly placing its bets on the freshest, most susceptible generation of fans. Still, when you hope to see such fantastical delirium in a tangible setting, you'd like classic characters filling in not only the foreground but the edges as well. Favorites like Psyduck, Mr. Mime and Mewtwo are on the front lines, but the background is teeming with the most witless ideas those Japanese creators ever conceived. I could be doubly upset at the lack of an Ash Ketchum storyline but the gripes continue since Rob Letterman's film settles for a mediocre visual spirit when the bracing anime style of the original show and early films could've been cleverly converted.
But, like all mainstream blockbusters, this movie was not created with only myself in mind. Tweens and younger are probably gonna lose their minds watching Detective Pikachu. All I know is the first animated Pokémon movie from 20 years back didn’t require Pikachu to act human in order to convey the master-trainer bond with Ash. Primitive as the idea of battling is as each film in question suggests, the reverent relationship between man and the creatures of nature was always the point. Detective Pikachu has taken extraordinary effort to write its way around this crucial element of the world of Pokémon in order to have the Deadpool guy say funny things.
You’re better off watching Pokémon 3 if you want an actual story and not just placeholder plotting, weightless CGI and middling humor.
Like the Jack Sparrow of his own Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Ryan Reynolds is the recurring grace note keeping Detective Pikachu afloat, or in this case at least bearable. If it weren’t for his hapless PG-filtered improv, the first live-action Pokémon movie would be a true bust rather than this season's most forgettable summer flick for the whole family.
The actual narrative within this Roger Rabbit rip-off quasi-mystery is pretty pitiful but Detective Pikachu thankfully doesn't rely entirely on nostalgia to secure your investment. The updated poké-politics — I suppose it is a little cramped inside those pokéballs — try to finagle the ridiculous reality of Pocket Monsters into a format vaguely fit for a cinematic reality. But nondescript lead characters in Justice Smith and Kathryn Newton, unmistakable bad guy by way of Bill Nighy and some abysmal visual effects do not help the cause of this so-called urban fantasy. Plus no matter how many dead parents there are, the movie never gets even remotely emotional.
Now’s the moment to bellyache like I resemble a real fan: I grew up with Pokémon — the trading cards, the action figures, the television series and of course the video games — and had my own common attachment to the property. This movie is inspired by the 2016 game of the same name, with Warner Bros. undoubtedly placing its bets on the freshest, most susceptible generation of fans. Still, when you hope to see such fantastical delirium in a tangible setting, you'd like classic characters filling in not only the foreground but the edges as well. Favorites like Psyduck, Mr. Mime and Mewtwo are on the front lines, but the background is teeming with the most witless ideas those Japanese creators ever conceived. I could be doubly upset at the lack of an Ash Ketchum storyline but the gripes continue since Rob Letterman's film settles for a mediocre visual spirit when the bracing anime style of the original show and early films could've been cleverly converted.
But, like all mainstream blockbusters, this movie was not created with only myself in mind. Tweens and younger are probably gonna lose their minds watching Detective Pikachu. All I know is the first animated Pokémon movie from 20 years back didn’t require Pikachu to act human in order to convey the master-trainer bond with Ash. Primitive as the idea of battling is as each film in question suggests, the reverent relationship between man and the creatures of nature was always the point. Detective Pikachu has taken extraordinary effort to write its way around this crucial element of the world of Pokémon in order to have the Deadpool guy say funny things.
You’re better off watching Pokémon 3 if you want an actual story and not just placeholder plotting, weightless CGI and middling humor.
Long Shot briefing
3 (out of 4)
Director Jonathan Levine has grappled with horror and hilarity from the Texas Chainsaw pastiche of All the Girls Love Mandy Lane to his exceptionally honest cancer comedy 50/50 to the rom-zom-com middle ground of Warm Bodies. Long Shot is in many ways just another Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg product — much like Levine’s last film The Night Before — but damn if Rogen hasn't maintained his acclaimed affability.
The sole smudge of Long Shot, an otherwise honest and well-dressed romantic comedy, is the idea that a ceaselessly stoned Jewish schlep (yet again Rogen's character is barely removed from his real persona) would ever obtain the love of someone as untouchable as Charlize Theron, let alone her as Secretary of State and future president. Rogen has been paired with fine ladies over the years (Katherine Heigl, Elizabeth Banks, Rose Byrne, Amber Heard for Christ's sake) but the coupling in Long Shot sails past even Adam Sandler-tier male fantasies.
With that primary nitpick out of the way it's safe to say Long Shot is frequently hilarious, appropriately cast (Randall Park and O'Shea Jackson Jr. continue to and should pop up in everything) and discerning enough given the usual quota of sex jokes and pop culture references. The film actually has its own take on the relationship between the media, the public and the powers that be. And regarding the premise — the early stages of a successful female presidential run — this isn't really a feminist film; It Was Her Turn is not the big ol' message. The viewpoint looks decidedly left — Bob Odenkirk as President Chambers, former TV star and self-obsessed dummy, should spell this out obviously enough — but Long Shot's relatively thoughtful view of public discourse and political candor is alright for mainstream amusement.
Apart from the joint topics on journalism and government, a Seth Rogen movie means we’re getting self-deprecating humor, drug sequences, offhand ad-libbing and a fairy tale ending. All of this is true of Long Shot but, like the best Rogen vehicles, the laughs hit very naturally and relaxation becomes second nature. The sequence wherein Theron’s Charlotte Field negotiates a hostage situation whilst on MDMA is a bit of brilliance. The occasional forced namedrop can’t spoil Long Shot's fun — Levine reminds us of all the shameless comfort you can glean from a romantic comedy worth suspending reality for.
Director Jonathan Levine has grappled with horror and hilarity from the Texas Chainsaw pastiche of All the Girls Love Mandy Lane to his exceptionally honest cancer comedy 50/50 to the rom-zom-com middle ground of Warm Bodies. Long Shot is in many ways just another Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg product — much like Levine’s last film The Night Before — but damn if Rogen hasn't maintained his acclaimed affability.
The sole smudge of Long Shot, an otherwise honest and well-dressed romantic comedy, is the idea that a ceaselessly stoned Jewish schlep (yet again Rogen's character is barely removed from his real persona) would ever obtain the love of someone as untouchable as Charlize Theron, let alone her as Secretary of State and future president. Rogen has been paired with fine ladies over the years (Katherine Heigl, Elizabeth Banks, Rose Byrne, Amber Heard for Christ's sake) but the coupling in Long Shot sails past even Adam Sandler-tier male fantasies.
With that primary nitpick out of the way it's safe to say Long Shot is frequently hilarious, appropriately cast (Randall Park and O'Shea Jackson Jr. continue to and should pop up in everything) and discerning enough given the usual quota of sex jokes and pop culture references. The film actually has its own take on the relationship between the media, the public and the powers that be. And regarding the premise — the early stages of a successful female presidential run — this isn't really a feminist film; It Was Her Turn is not the big ol' message. The viewpoint looks decidedly left — Bob Odenkirk as President Chambers, former TV star and self-obsessed dummy, should spell this out obviously enough — but Long Shot's relatively thoughtful view of public discourse and political candor is alright for mainstream amusement.
Apart from the joint topics on journalism and government, a Seth Rogen movie means we’re getting self-deprecating humor, drug sequences, offhand ad-libbing and a fairy tale ending. All of this is true of Long Shot but, like the best Rogen vehicles, the laughs hit very naturally and relaxation becomes second nature. The sequence wherein Theron’s Charlotte Field negotiates a hostage situation whilst on MDMA is a bit of brilliance. The occasional forced namedrop can’t spoil Long Shot's fun — Levine reminds us of all the shameless comfort you can glean from a romantic comedy worth suspending reality for.
Avengers: Endgame briefing
3 (out of 4)
Avengers: Endgame is a virtually perfect resolution to a miraculous franchise and an adequate superhero movie all its own. We can forever argue in apocalyptic or utopic rhetoric about serialized filmmaking forever changing the very fabric of Hollywood's ability to satiate the masses. But as the wave of the superhero sensation appears to have finally crested near the shore, Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will likely confirm the collective decline of the phenomenon. Endgame has reached audiences in numbers akin to just a few films in cinematic history — if this final Avengers (for now) felt more complete, emotionally conscientious or prudently trimmed, it could have been a pop culture criterion worthy of the blinding spotlight.
Endgame traces the best and worst of Marvel's proven formula, from the studio's selective capacity to stir audiences to its most feeble attempts to pander to them. As a three-hour triptych including a weepie, Back to the Future Part IV and finally the superhero showdown to rule them all, Avengers: Endgame is almost too much to process at once. For the most part the movie is a sustained wonder of synchronicity save for a soft joke here and or a jarring edit there — but like countless epics before it there are trade-offs to the long-form dramatic staging. Engrossing, multi-strained spectacle can be foolishly interrupted by condescending simplifications or structural top-heaviness.
But at least the Avengers finally have something to avenge. While clearly inferior to Avengers: Infinity War (pretty much tippity top on the MCU scale), the subsequent half of this titanic superhero sendoff is unwieldy and unexpected. Endgame strolls along a fine line between all-ages entertainment and nerd-specific sensory overload, just not quite as gracefully as its predecessor. As much as Endgame isn’t your typical latter half of a huge series finale (like Deathly Hallows, Mockingjay or Breaking Dawn), it still takes anywhere from a few flicks to up to 21 movies of preparation to enjoy. All the rewards meant for devoted Marvel fans are actualized primarily in the last hour of pornographic superhero battles which, ironically, can also be fundamentally enjoyed by just about anyone.
The mounting drama running through true film sequels can prompt instances so poignant they are capable of transcending the medium altogether – look no further than The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King for said pathos. Despite its enormous pleasures, Endgame feels in many ways like another link in the chain of endless buildup leading to all too little crowning compensation. Minor gripes aside — the misuse of Captain Marvel, lack of closure beyond the biggest characters, the overflowing narrative — Endgame is the sort of mass cultural orgasm that doesn’t need to earn over a billion dollars opening weekend to prove itself a mammoth event picture. Protracted, monopolizing execution lent this film unfathomable, impossible anticipation and expectations, a detriment only to people like me who scoff at comic book readers and yet take these movies way too seriously.
The Russo brothers have been upping their game since the Captain America sequels and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and head MCU screenwriter Stephen McFeely have handled the paramount points of the interrelated universe with some scrupulousness thus far. Whether through affect or sheer dumb luck, Endgame's outcome is involving and emotional in spite of its myriad moving pieces. The payoff for major character arcs — at least the highlighted heroes, this time including Hawkeye and Ant-Man (absent from the last get together) alongside big finishes for Captain America and Iron Man — are fairly reasonable in their ultimate satisfaction. Thor's blubbery, manic-depressive turn is fitting even if it's milked for many laughs — only Hulk and some of the previously dusted superfolk feel forgotten or underrepresented.
Seen with some measure of clarity — this is just a movie after all, no matter how many loose ends were dangling following Thanos' climactic snap — Endgame has as much fun as is logically allowed and makes a number of judiciously weighed gambles rearing the 22-film, 4D chess game. While no disappointment it's almost as if this one colossal undertaking needed to be its own two-parter to elaborate properly. As an overworked three-hour superhero quasi-denouement the film may be Hollywood excess at its zenith and yet the major instances of catharsis are classically effective.
Endgame became the highest grossing film of all time worldwide just as the seeds of Phase Four were sown. If Disney's streaming service played no role in their best and surest property's future (I will NOT be watching television to prepare for Doctor Strange 2), there would be a fitting corporate comedown on the horizon. Instead Disney will do it all over again, just the same but bigger — how can they stop feeding such ravenous hunger? Chances are Endgame will be looked back on fondly after superhero flicks — whether in terms of general interest or relative quality — recognizably fade to oblivion. For now, we can criticize and enjoy the peculiarity of the popular cinematic present for all its worth.
Avengers: Endgame is a virtually perfect resolution to a miraculous franchise and an adequate superhero movie all its own. We can forever argue in apocalyptic or utopic rhetoric about serialized filmmaking forever changing the very fabric of Hollywood's ability to satiate the masses. But as the wave of the superhero sensation appears to have finally crested near the shore, Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe will likely confirm the collective decline of the phenomenon. Endgame has reached audiences in numbers akin to just a few films in cinematic history — if this final Avengers (for now) felt more complete, emotionally conscientious or prudently trimmed, it could have been a pop culture criterion worthy of the blinding spotlight.
Endgame traces the best and worst of Marvel's proven formula, from the studio's selective capacity to stir audiences to its most feeble attempts to pander to them. As a three-hour triptych including a weepie, Back to the Future Part IV and finally the superhero showdown to rule them all, Avengers: Endgame is almost too much to process at once. For the most part the movie is a sustained wonder of synchronicity save for a soft joke here and or a jarring edit there — but like countless epics before it there are trade-offs to the long-form dramatic staging. Engrossing, multi-strained spectacle can be foolishly interrupted by condescending simplifications or structural top-heaviness.
But at least the Avengers finally have something to avenge. While clearly inferior to Avengers: Infinity War (pretty much tippity top on the MCU scale), the subsequent half of this titanic superhero sendoff is unwieldy and unexpected. Endgame strolls along a fine line between all-ages entertainment and nerd-specific sensory overload, just not quite as gracefully as its predecessor. As much as Endgame isn’t your typical latter half of a huge series finale (like Deathly Hallows, Mockingjay or Breaking Dawn), it still takes anywhere from a few flicks to up to 21 movies of preparation to enjoy. All the rewards meant for devoted Marvel fans are actualized primarily in the last hour of pornographic superhero battles which, ironically, can also be fundamentally enjoyed by just about anyone.
The mounting drama running through true film sequels can prompt instances so poignant they are capable of transcending the medium altogether – look no further than The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King for said pathos. Despite its enormous pleasures, Endgame feels in many ways like another link in the chain of endless buildup leading to all too little crowning compensation. Minor gripes aside — the misuse of Captain Marvel, lack of closure beyond the biggest characters, the overflowing narrative — Endgame is the sort of mass cultural orgasm that doesn’t need to earn over a billion dollars opening weekend to prove itself a mammoth event picture. Protracted, monopolizing execution lent this film unfathomable, impossible anticipation and expectations, a detriment only to people like me who scoff at comic book readers and yet take these movies way too seriously.
The Russo brothers have been upping their game since the Captain America sequels and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and head MCU screenwriter Stephen McFeely have handled the paramount points of the interrelated universe with some scrupulousness thus far. Whether through affect or sheer dumb luck, Endgame's outcome is involving and emotional in spite of its myriad moving pieces. The payoff for major character arcs — at least the highlighted heroes, this time including Hawkeye and Ant-Man (absent from the last get together) alongside big finishes for Captain America and Iron Man — are fairly reasonable in their ultimate satisfaction. Thor's blubbery, manic-depressive turn is fitting even if it's milked for many laughs — only Hulk and some of the previously dusted superfolk feel forgotten or underrepresented.
Seen with some measure of clarity — this is just a movie after all, no matter how many loose ends were dangling following Thanos' climactic snap — Endgame has as much fun as is logically allowed and makes a number of judiciously weighed gambles rearing the 22-film, 4D chess game. While no disappointment it's almost as if this one colossal undertaking needed to be its own two-parter to elaborate properly. As an overworked three-hour superhero quasi-denouement the film may be Hollywood excess at its zenith and yet the major instances of catharsis are classically effective.
Endgame became the highest grossing film of all time worldwide just as the seeds of Phase Four were sown. If Disney's streaming service played no role in their best and surest property's future (I will NOT be watching television to prepare for Doctor Strange 2), there would be a fitting corporate comedown on the horizon. Instead Disney will do it all over again, just the same but bigger — how can they stop feeding such ravenous hunger? Chances are Endgame will be looked back on fondly after superhero flicks — whether in terms of general interest or relative quality — recognizably fade to oblivion. For now, we can criticize and enjoy the peculiarity of the popular cinematic present for all its worth.
Missing Link briefing
3 (out of 4)
It’s a new Laika movie — what more need be said? Maybe Boxtrolls has been lost in movie-limbo but Coraline, ParaNorman and Kubo and the Two Strings are some of the leading examples of what one of the most antiquated processes of animation has left to uncover in an overwhelmingly digital age.
Each project of this sort — Aardman is the only other studio loony enough to commit to these impractical undertakings — requires the investment and integrity of a painstaking collective. The efforts are always rich and rewarding purely by the homespun aesthetic often regardless of how the story plays out. Missing Link, like other Laika features, secures an impressive voice cast (Hugh Jackman, Zach Galifianakis and Zoë Saldaña) to bring an original oddity to life. Landing more on the comic side of the studio's crop, it follows a stubbornly stalwart explorer (Jackman) out to prove Sasquatch’s existence only to discover the myth is desperate to locate a purpose of its own. While these films typically have an urban legend aura between homey and haunting (Coraline most accurately), the parody of old-fashioned adventure trappings renders Missing Link a revivifying albeit slightly less sincere shift from its predecessors.
As wee as it is, in relation to 2019's paltry context Missing Link is an unsailed channel in a sea of familiar. Though almost all these movies are created with the intention to fail financially, hopefully the founding Knight family doesn’t discontinue their factory of creative obsessions any time soon. As long as people are dedicated enough to continue stop-motion animation’s history of fastidious wonder, there will surely be enough patient viewers to beam at their tedious work as it intricately unravels.
It’s a new Laika movie — what more need be said? Maybe Boxtrolls has been lost in movie-limbo but Coraline, ParaNorman and Kubo and the Two Strings are some of the leading examples of what one of the most antiquated processes of animation has left to uncover in an overwhelmingly digital age.
Each project of this sort — Aardman is the only other studio loony enough to commit to these impractical undertakings — requires the investment and integrity of a painstaking collective. The efforts are always rich and rewarding purely by the homespun aesthetic often regardless of how the story plays out. Missing Link, like other Laika features, secures an impressive voice cast (Hugh Jackman, Zach Galifianakis and Zoë Saldaña) to bring an original oddity to life. Landing more on the comic side of the studio's crop, it follows a stubbornly stalwart explorer (Jackman) out to prove Sasquatch’s existence only to discover the myth is desperate to locate a purpose of its own. While these films typically have an urban legend aura between homey and haunting (Coraline most accurately), the parody of old-fashioned adventure trappings renders Missing Link a revivifying albeit slightly less sincere shift from its predecessors.
As wee as it is, in relation to 2019's paltry context Missing Link is an unsailed channel in a sea of familiar. Though almost all these movies are created with the intention to fail financially, hopefully the founding Knight family doesn’t discontinue their factory of creative obsessions any time soon. As long as people are dedicated enough to continue stop-motion animation’s history of fastidious wonder, there will surely be enough patient viewers to beam at their tedious work as it intricately unravels.
Shazam! briefing
3 (out of 4)
Where did DC's swift turnaround come from? After Wonder Woman broke the sour spell of the Extended Universe in 2017, Justice League arrived just in time to remind us why Snyder’s apocalyptic visions could only hypothetically operate in an era free of self-awareness and irony. Aquaman was recently a dynamically divisive change of pace and the global response has been resoundingly celebratory. The muted anticipation for Shazam!, the most prudent installment of the DCEU by far, suggested the movie would be worth a chuckle during the trailer at best. Instead director David F. Sandberg proved that although the superhero origin story is an exhausted template, with a heartfelt approach it remains a specifically sturdy framework for a resilient sort of moviegoing bliss.
A winning cast (young Jack Dylan Grazer is the highlight) brings out the best of an enchanting screenplay that levels out savvy, family friendly humor with situations of wickedness more in line with 80s escapism and dark bedtime stories. As much as it plays to a general audience (even though it shares several traits with Deadpool) Shazam! emanates a classic sort of simplicity and understated idealism. After Aquaman successfully discarded the idea of crossover interconnection, Shazam! confidently demonstrates the essentials of caring for characters from scratch. You don’t need trilogies and team ups to develop a handful of well-acted personalities — even our generic villain (Mark Strong in his moody mode) has a slick, sympathetic backstory.
The movie is a restrained rarity, an unanticipated, unfettered pleasure trapped in a bloated, saturated, liposuction-ready genre. Obviously Shazam! has a narrative a child could understand but this universality is indicative of sentimental honesty, sharp, clean humor and occasionally profound realism. Orphanhood, estrangement, identity crises — the film's emotional zeal overcomes any lack of the expensive spectacle and headlong pacing we’ve been progressively attuned to expect. Shazam!'s whimsically meta delights are enough because the film resists easy, derisive smugness. Did I mention Zachary Levi is an absolute treasure?
Where did DC's swift turnaround come from? After Wonder Woman broke the sour spell of the Extended Universe in 2017, Justice League arrived just in time to remind us why Snyder’s apocalyptic visions could only hypothetically operate in an era free of self-awareness and irony. Aquaman was recently a dynamically divisive change of pace and the global response has been resoundingly celebratory. The muted anticipation for Shazam!, the most prudent installment of the DCEU by far, suggested the movie would be worth a chuckle during the trailer at best. Instead director David F. Sandberg proved that although the superhero origin story is an exhausted template, with a heartfelt approach it remains a specifically sturdy framework for a resilient sort of moviegoing bliss.
A winning cast (young Jack Dylan Grazer is the highlight) brings out the best of an enchanting screenplay that levels out savvy, family friendly humor with situations of wickedness more in line with 80s escapism and dark bedtime stories. As much as it plays to a general audience (even though it shares several traits with Deadpool) Shazam! emanates a classic sort of simplicity and understated idealism. After Aquaman successfully discarded the idea of crossover interconnection, Shazam! confidently demonstrates the essentials of caring for characters from scratch. You don’t need trilogies and team ups to develop a handful of well-acted personalities — even our generic villain (Mark Strong in his moody mode) has a slick, sympathetic backstory.
The movie is a restrained rarity, an unanticipated, unfettered pleasure trapped in a bloated, saturated, liposuction-ready genre. Obviously Shazam! has a narrative a child could understand but this universality is indicative of sentimental honesty, sharp, clean humor and occasionally profound realism. Orphanhood, estrangement, identity crises — the film's emotional zeal overcomes any lack of the expensive spectacle and headlong pacing we’ve been progressively attuned to expect. Shazam!'s whimsically meta delights are enough because the film resists easy, derisive smugness. Did I mention Zachary Levi is an absolute treasure?
Us briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
Jordan Peele rode the dystopian zeitgeist of our tempestuous times to several accolades with 2017's Get Out, which appropriately repurposed its genre and proved the director a horror film scholar of preposterous promise. Us is a vastly different stroke of terror and one capable of creating conversations beyond certain political implications — it's spectacularly bizarre by its end and unfailingly suspenseful up front. Peele's sophomore bump is tailored for far more interpretation than the exaggerated racial nightmare parable that is Get Out, though each are authentic enough to prove lasting artifacts of a propitious career.
Especially with the foreknowledge of the simple twist, the profound universality of Us lies in trading genetic themes for classist ones, to make light of our own domestic hypocrisy in the most unthinkably ambitious fashion possible. Peele puts up no barrier between the literal and implicit components of his Twilight Zone-primed phantasm — broken down even by subconscious cinematic logic Us doesn’t really make a lick of sense. What really matters is the film has managed to impress audiences while forcing them to reconcile their own social speculations, sparking more valuable discourse than any movie for at least the past two Oscar seasons.
It’s very unwise to take Us at face value given all of its symbolic, metaphorical substance. It’s bug-eyed wacky at its core and the wiliest kind of clever on the surface. A movie idea like evil doppelgangers doesn’t even require an explanation and might have even been better for it — it's hard to say whether a trim, freaky thriller from Peele would have made for a more effectively scary film, but the unchecked resourcefulness of Us gives way to broad and brawny societal suggestions. Even the most half-baked conceit in this story is drawn from more inspiration than the entire Conjuring universe combined. Peele is already a savant of his mode, understanding the correct shape and atmosphere a pivotal genre excerpt must possess to retain everlasting value.
Lupita Nyong'o is incredible also, taking the complexities of a profoundly complicated dual role and shining in the ambiguous, uncomfortable strangeness on both accounts. But as harebrained as the steady rise to the climax is, its implications outweigh any grandstanding or Hollywood rug-pulling. We should not take our own national counterparts for granted; each life spent in comfort is karmically leveled by one spent in misfortune. Us is just as insane and brazen as Peele required to affirm his status as a blossoming auteur of exceptional control — the film is at once audacious and calculated, proving that theatrical ingenuity comes from expanding the possibilities of what the most basic gotcha premise can elicit in either a cinematic or sociological sense.
Jordan Peele rode the dystopian zeitgeist of our tempestuous times to several accolades with 2017's Get Out, which appropriately repurposed its genre and proved the director a horror film scholar of preposterous promise. Us is a vastly different stroke of terror and one capable of creating conversations beyond certain political implications — it's spectacularly bizarre by its end and unfailingly suspenseful up front. Peele's sophomore bump is tailored for far more interpretation than the exaggerated racial nightmare parable that is Get Out, though each are authentic enough to prove lasting artifacts of a propitious career.
Especially with the foreknowledge of the simple twist, the profound universality of Us lies in trading genetic themes for classist ones, to make light of our own domestic hypocrisy in the most unthinkably ambitious fashion possible. Peele puts up no barrier between the literal and implicit components of his Twilight Zone-primed phantasm — broken down even by subconscious cinematic logic Us doesn’t really make a lick of sense. What really matters is the film has managed to impress audiences while forcing them to reconcile their own social speculations, sparking more valuable discourse than any movie for at least the past two Oscar seasons.
It’s very unwise to take Us at face value given all of its symbolic, metaphorical substance. It’s bug-eyed wacky at its core and the wiliest kind of clever on the surface. A movie idea like evil doppelgangers doesn’t even require an explanation and might have even been better for it — it's hard to say whether a trim, freaky thriller from Peele would have made for a more effectively scary film, but the unchecked resourcefulness of Us gives way to broad and brawny societal suggestions. Even the most half-baked conceit in this story is drawn from more inspiration than the entire Conjuring universe combined. Peele is already a savant of his mode, understanding the correct shape and atmosphere a pivotal genre excerpt must possess to retain everlasting value.
Lupita Nyong'o is incredible also, taking the complexities of a profoundly complicated dual role and shining in the ambiguous, uncomfortable strangeness on both accounts. But as harebrained as the steady rise to the climax is, its implications outweigh any grandstanding or Hollywood rug-pulling. We should not take our own national counterparts for granted; each life spent in comfort is karmically leveled by one spent in misfortune. Us is just as insane and brazen as Peele required to affirm his status as a blossoming auteur of exceptional control — the film is at once audacious and calculated, proving that theatrical ingenuity comes from expanding the possibilities of what the most basic gotcha premise can elicit in either a cinematic or sociological sense.
Captain Marvel briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
My God, how many of these are there? Even as Phase Three barrels toward Endgame, the ultimate culmination and climax of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they’re still introducing characters? And it took 21 movies for their first solo heroine? And, despite the most pernicious online precedent to one film's release, Captain Marvel is actually decent?
Listen, there’s very little left to critique stylistically regarding the MCU as it comes and goes, which happens more frequently than ever. The action and humor relieve each other in quick succession; a few jokes hit, many fall flat. The structure, despite any side-agenda universe building, is rooted in three traditional acts. Although you'd think grading Marvel movies on their own curve would bring about harsher appraisals, it actually leaves you far more lenient. Films like Infinity War, Civil War and the original Avengers had satisfyingly scopic spectacle. The offbeat, individual entries of this epic miniseries — the best includes Doctor Strange, Ant-Man and of course Iron Man — need to please in the premise of their story and the personality of their protagonist.
Captain Marvel as both movie and character is sensibly showcased for the sake of the collective franchise. She's a spark of hope for anyone dumb enough to have thought the final moments of Infinity War were permanent and her film itself is a way to introduce fresh blood into the Marvel crowd before the main players (Cap, Thor, Tony) more than likely depart. It's hard to understand the genuinely dissatisfied naysayers and 'true' fans acting like this movie is ruining the whole enterprise. The actors are strong (casting has always been Marvel's forte and Jude Law, Ben Mendelsohn and obviously Samuel L. Jackson don't disappoint) and the architecturally fresh, self-contained story is driven by nice twists and revelations. It’s all fairly routine at its core and even underwhelming in totality given what the MCU has offered before, yet Captain Marvel goes down as easy as many watchable Marvel flicks have.
Despite not clocking in the same hours, Brie Larson is as talented as her seasoned co-stars with which she will soon share the universe. Carol/Vers' relationship with Jackson's long-returning and now de-aged Nick Fury is enjoyable indeed. Larson's public rants interfered none at all with my experience because all I see is the woman who moved me so in films like Short Term 12 and Room. Considering her character's ridiculously overblown invulnerability (a problem at large but not in context), how is having a chip on her shoulder a big deal or somehow inconsistent? However many contrarians click buttons on Rotten Tomatoes, the reaction to her performance has been one of sickeningly undue scrutiny.
The sequences on Hala liken to old-fashioned sci-fi more than the majority of the Thor and Guardians films — the first act of Captain Marvel is what one would imagine a Star Trek fan’s wet dream is like. The visuals are impressive for a movie as meagerly budgeted as Ant-Man. Themes on memory and identity keep things intriguing and emotional. The comedy bits aren’t too distracting and the soundtrack choices/90s references, while wearing thin after awhile, don't rain down in bombardment.
Given how long we've known the Avengers, it's hard to ignore the drawbacks of the film's placement in the greater whole of the saga. I enjoy my superhero movies largely free of future moneymaking ingredients but the introduction of this character into MCU is the most shoehorned aspect of a corporate empire that usually places its bets conservatively and congeals its disparate heroes smoothly. With only eight weeks prior to Endgame, Captain Marvel is in line with production quality and yet little more than an appeteaser and an afterthought.
My God, how many of these are there? Even as Phase Three barrels toward Endgame, the ultimate culmination and climax of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they’re still introducing characters? And it took 21 movies for their first solo heroine? And, despite the most pernicious online precedent to one film's release, Captain Marvel is actually decent?
Listen, there’s very little left to critique stylistically regarding the MCU as it comes and goes, which happens more frequently than ever. The action and humor relieve each other in quick succession; a few jokes hit, many fall flat. The structure, despite any side-agenda universe building, is rooted in three traditional acts. Although you'd think grading Marvel movies on their own curve would bring about harsher appraisals, it actually leaves you far more lenient. Films like Infinity War, Civil War and the original Avengers had satisfyingly scopic spectacle. The offbeat, individual entries of this epic miniseries — the best includes Doctor Strange, Ant-Man and of course Iron Man — need to please in the premise of their story and the personality of their protagonist.
Captain Marvel as both movie and character is sensibly showcased for the sake of the collective franchise. She's a spark of hope for anyone dumb enough to have thought the final moments of Infinity War were permanent and her film itself is a way to introduce fresh blood into the Marvel crowd before the main players (Cap, Thor, Tony) more than likely depart. It's hard to understand the genuinely dissatisfied naysayers and 'true' fans acting like this movie is ruining the whole enterprise. The actors are strong (casting has always been Marvel's forte and Jude Law, Ben Mendelsohn and obviously Samuel L. Jackson don't disappoint) and the architecturally fresh, self-contained story is driven by nice twists and revelations. It’s all fairly routine at its core and even underwhelming in totality given what the MCU has offered before, yet Captain Marvel goes down as easy as many watchable Marvel flicks have.
Despite not clocking in the same hours, Brie Larson is as talented as her seasoned co-stars with which she will soon share the universe. Carol/Vers' relationship with Jackson's long-returning and now de-aged Nick Fury is enjoyable indeed. Larson's public rants interfered none at all with my experience because all I see is the woman who moved me so in films like Short Term 12 and Room. Considering her character's ridiculously overblown invulnerability (a problem at large but not in context), how is having a chip on her shoulder a big deal or somehow inconsistent? However many contrarians click buttons on Rotten Tomatoes, the reaction to her performance has been one of sickeningly undue scrutiny.
The sequences on Hala liken to old-fashioned sci-fi more than the majority of the Thor and Guardians films — the first act of Captain Marvel is what one would imagine a Star Trek fan’s wet dream is like. The visuals are impressive for a movie as meagerly budgeted as Ant-Man. Themes on memory and identity keep things intriguing and emotional. The comedy bits aren’t too distracting and the soundtrack choices/90s references, while wearing thin after awhile, don't rain down in bombardment.
Given how long we've known the Avengers, it's hard to ignore the drawbacks of the film's placement in the greater whole of the saga. I enjoy my superhero movies largely free of future moneymaking ingredients but the introduction of this character into MCU is the most shoehorned aspect of a corporate empire that usually places its bets conservatively and congeals its disparate heroes smoothly. With only eight weeks prior to Endgame, Captain Marvel is in line with production quality and yet little more than an appeteaser and an afterthought.
Alita: Battle Angel briefing
2 (out of 4)
Robert Rodriguez has an exalted reputation but considerably less clout. When the Spy Kids movies (the original, The Island of Lost Dreams and 3-D: Game Over that is) seem like career highlights alongside the trend-setting style of Sin City and the precise genre-crossings of From Dusk till Dawn and The Faculty, there isn’t anywhere for your prestige to go but up. Rodriguez continues to be a polished practitioner of visual flair but what Alita: Battle Angel does most skillfully is pass the time.
Alita is positively the director's most ambitious undertaking and at least one of the most technically accomplished films of Rodriguez' career — Battle Angel is nonetheless a deficient example of what big-budget cyberpunk and sci-fi cinema can yield in emotion and prescience. There’s copious thematic substance to be extracted from the subjects of artificial intelligence without great recent examples like Upgrade, Blade Runner 2049, and Ex Machina. Meanwhile Rodriguez' manga adaptation doesn't function as anything more than masturbation fodder for teenage boys. It's yet another Western take on a popular Japanese property about a mechanical female badass in a dystopian world; Alita barely has the upper hand over 2017’s disastrous Americanized live-action Ghost in the Shell remake. Both films have little to ride on save for respected source material and a hot cyborg chick punching people — I guess that counts for something.
The uncanny valley and bloated eyeballs of our protagonist Alita (Rosa Salazar) aren’t as distracting as trailers suggested. The visual effects are for the most part intricate and grandiose — some of the action has show-stopping weight and transfixing choreography. With a 175 million dollar price tag and what felt like eons in development, at minimum Battle Angel looks properly constructed.
But as soon as I saw James Cameron's credit as screenwriter and not just as producer, I knew why the film was a halfway decent epic save for a laughably developed love story. Alita and her boy toy Hugo are the worst cinematic couple of the decade, maybe this century. A cast including a pair of two-time Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winners in Mahershala Ali and Christoph Waltz is not just for show, but even prime acting caliber doesn't salvage silly conflicts and a passable futuristic history. For all the money behind it and established popularity in other pockets of media, the cinematic Battle Angel is just short of DOA.
Robert Rodriguez has an exalted reputation but considerably less clout. When the Spy Kids movies (the original, The Island of Lost Dreams and 3-D: Game Over that is) seem like career highlights alongside the trend-setting style of Sin City and the precise genre-crossings of From Dusk till Dawn and The Faculty, there isn’t anywhere for your prestige to go but up. Rodriguez continues to be a polished practitioner of visual flair but what Alita: Battle Angel does most skillfully is pass the time.
Alita is positively the director's most ambitious undertaking and at least one of the most technically accomplished films of Rodriguez' career — Battle Angel is nonetheless a deficient example of what big-budget cyberpunk and sci-fi cinema can yield in emotion and prescience. There’s copious thematic substance to be extracted from the subjects of artificial intelligence without great recent examples like Upgrade, Blade Runner 2049, and Ex Machina. Meanwhile Rodriguez' manga adaptation doesn't function as anything more than masturbation fodder for teenage boys. It's yet another Western take on a popular Japanese property about a mechanical female badass in a dystopian world; Alita barely has the upper hand over 2017’s disastrous Americanized live-action Ghost in the Shell remake. Both films have little to ride on save for respected source material and a hot cyborg chick punching people — I guess that counts for something.
The uncanny valley and bloated eyeballs of our protagonist Alita (Rosa Salazar) aren’t as distracting as trailers suggested. The visual effects are for the most part intricate and grandiose — some of the action has show-stopping weight and transfixing choreography. With a 175 million dollar price tag and what felt like eons in development, at minimum Battle Angel looks properly constructed.
But as soon as I saw James Cameron's credit as screenwriter and not just as producer, I knew why the film was a halfway decent epic save for a laughably developed love story. Alita and her boy toy Hugo are the worst cinematic couple of the decade, maybe this century. A cast including a pair of two-time Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winners in Mahershala Ali and Christoph Waltz is not just for show, but even prime acting caliber doesn't salvage silly conflicts and a passable futuristic history. For all the money behind it and established popularity in other pockets of media, the cinematic Battle Angel is just short of DOA.
Happy Death Day 2U briefing
3 (out of 4)
A Blumhouse movie turned a profit?! Surprise, surprise. Weird thing is 2017's Happy Death Day was actually great fun despite flagrantly thieving from its handful of influences. Just short of a gem, the sorority horror on repeat was nevertheless a most ingenious premise with which to perfect the PG-13 slasher.
Christopher Landon’s agreeable sequel to his gratifying original finds him favoring sci-fi over serial killers. Like the original Happy Death Day there is an inability to ignore the debt owed to Groundhog Day — this entry borrows mainly from the montage of inventive suicide scenarios — but additionally there is more focus on time travel claptrap fit for Doc and Marty or an Edge of Tomorrow sequel.
Borrowing from the Marvel manifesto of pseudo-heady plot concepts, quantum energy is used not only to explain a day repeatedly reset but parallel existences as well. Side character Ryan (Phi Vu) begins 2U experiencing the same phenomena as Tree (Jessica Rothe) did in the first; soon after his college science experiment malfunctions, sending Tree back to her initial birthday time loop in an alternate timeline this go around.
Rothe remains the same treasure of charm and comic chops as the temporal trooper. Her natural chemistry with Israel Broussard (as love interest Carter) lets Happy Death Day 2U slide as essentially a romantic comedy — the Valentine's Day weekend release, as opposed to October, is no accident. The mystery of the baby-masked psycho is of far less concern but this giddy continuation is an enlightened alternative to Rebel Wilson, Battle Angels and Taraji P. Henson reading Tracy Morgan's disgusting thoughts.
It’s not terribly clever in sum given the sly scope laid out in its first and best act, but sweetness and well-tuned wit carry Happy Death Day 2U far indeed. If it wasn't so modest it could have been the rare superlative sequel.
A Blumhouse movie turned a profit?! Surprise, surprise. Weird thing is 2017's Happy Death Day was actually great fun despite flagrantly thieving from its handful of influences. Just short of a gem, the sorority horror on repeat was nevertheless a most ingenious premise with which to perfect the PG-13 slasher.
Christopher Landon’s agreeable sequel to his gratifying original finds him favoring sci-fi over serial killers. Like the original Happy Death Day there is an inability to ignore the debt owed to Groundhog Day — this entry borrows mainly from the montage of inventive suicide scenarios — but additionally there is more focus on time travel claptrap fit for Doc and Marty or an Edge of Tomorrow sequel.
Borrowing from the Marvel manifesto of pseudo-heady plot concepts, quantum energy is used not only to explain a day repeatedly reset but parallel existences as well. Side character Ryan (Phi Vu) begins 2U experiencing the same phenomena as Tree (Jessica Rothe) did in the first; soon after his college science experiment malfunctions, sending Tree back to her initial birthday time loop in an alternate timeline this go around.
Rothe remains the same treasure of charm and comic chops as the temporal trooper. Her natural chemistry with Israel Broussard (as love interest Carter) lets Happy Death Day 2U slide as essentially a romantic comedy — the Valentine's Day weekend release, as opposed to October, is no accident. The mystery of the baby-masked psycho is of far less concern but this giddy continuation is an enlightened alternative to Rebel Wilson, Battle Angels and Taraji P. Henson reading Tracy Morgan's disgusting thoughts.
It’s not terribly clever in sum given the sly scope laid out in its first and best act, but sweetness and well-tuned wit carry Happy Death Day 2U far indeed. If it wasn't so modest it could have been the rare superlative sequel.
The Kid Who Would Be King briefing
3 (out of 4)
Last year when Guy Ritchie bestowed upon us a telling of King Arthur by way of PS4 cutaways with (colon) Legend of the Sword, it would have been reasonable to suggest the popular story of old never again be told through film. John Boorman's Excalibur did as much honest justice as the history and folktales could possibly allow in serious fashion, and in parody Monty Python conceived mythocomical perfection nearly 45 years ago.
It would take a Brit with more than glib gangsters on his mind to actually revitalize the wearied lore. Cue Joe Cornish — following his lively 2011 indie sci-fi debut Attack the Block and a co-writer credit on Ant-Man, The Kid Who Would Be King functions as mighty tyke-friendly entertainment and easily services the participation of the average viewer. It's a properly scary children's fantasy film — Rebecca Ferguson is as terrifying as she is wickedly attractive as the sorceress Morgana — and a pointed commentary on Britain's current national tumult. Cornish ruminates Brexit's massive toll to unearth the present-day relevance of the country's most perennial legend, Tolkien notwithstanding.
It may be about 20 minutes too long but after so many poor attempts to make better on fatigued fables, the sheer ambition of The Kid Who Would Be King is of such assured, gladdening gusto it counters the quaint laptop visual effects and the same proudly ridiculous English tendencies of Attack the Block's neighborhood alien invasion with earnest novelty. If you were wondering what took Cornish eight years to churn out what amounts to a tenacious kid flick, the answer is quiet diligence. He appeals to whatever helpless innocence is left in all of us while fancying himself a populist filmmaker, January release and tiny box office receipts be damned.
Last year when Guy Ritchie bestowed upon us a telling of King Arthur by way of PS4 cutaways with (colon) Legend of the Sword, it would have been reasonable to suggest the popular story of old never again be told through film. John Boorman's Excalibur did as much honest justice as the history and folktales could possibly allow in serious fashion, and in parody Monty Python conceived mythocomical perfection nearly 45 years ago.
It would take a Brit with more than glib gangsters on his mind to actually revitalize the wearied lore. Cue Joe Cornish — following his lively 2011 indie sci-fi debut Attack the Block and a co-writer credit on Ant-Man, The Kid Who Would Be King functions as mighty tyke-friendly entertainment and easily services the participation of the average viewer. It's a properly scary children's fantasy film — Rebecca Ferguson is as terrifying as she is wickedly attractive as the sorceress Morgana — and a pointed commentary on Britain's current national tumult. Cornish ruminates Brexit's massive toll to unearth the present-day relevance of the country's most perennial legend, Tolkien notwithstanding.
It may be about 20 minutes too long but after so many poor attempts to make better on fatigued fables, the sheer ambition of The Kid Who Would Be King is of such assured, gladdening gusto it counters the quaint laptop visual effects and the same proudly ridiculous English tendencies of Attack the Block's neighborhood alien invasion with earnest novelty. If you were wondering what took Cornish eight years to churn out what amounts to a tenacious kid flick, the answer is quiet diligence. He appeals to whatever helpless innocence is left in all of us while fancying himself a populist filmmaker, January release and tiny box office receipts be damned.
Glass briefing
2 (out of 4)
M. Night Shyamalan had been lowering the bar for his own brand since before The Village silenced those citing him as Spielberg 2.0 15 years ago. But thanks to the more recent success of Split, the director's esteem seemed to be all but restored following box office profits and favorable reviews.
Split’s positive reception was confirmation that Shyamalan needs only a decent, pithy premise and a few respectable actors in order to have people salivating over his trademark class of thriller once again. The crass, problematically distasteful depiction of mental illness by a mugging James McAvoy (a proven, likable actor just having fun yet still pissing me off) is really baffling given how fervently the public complains about every little thing nowadays. The bothersome 2017 flick demands the foremost focus considering Glass is less a trilogy topper beginning with 2000’s Unbreakable than it is Split's slightly more ambitious follow-up.
The detriment of Glass is in spite of a strong continuation for Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson's returning characters from Unbreakable, which makes up two-thirds of the main cast, the loose connection between McAvoy's Beast and Anya Taylor-Joy's character from the film before is the primary, dismally weak emotional tether. Glass also is and looks dirt cheap — Shyamalan's capacity to bore you apart from his visual sensitivity is rather insane when one accounts for so much X-Men psychology and stripped superheroics.
Finding the space where supernatural horror and comic book tropes coexist is admirable, yet the film still cannot relocate the extraordinary realism of Unbreakable. Glass is the best thing Shyamalan has done this decade and nonetheless unforgivably bland and eventually sterilized by an inevitable and uninspired triptych of last-minute twists. Restraint has always marked the infamous director's most potent work (The Sixth Sense, Signs to an extent) — Glass finds Shyamalan indulging in his worst behavior even if the outcome is more interesting than it has been in some time.
M. Night Shyamalan had been lowering the bar for his own brand since before The Village silenced those citing him as Spielberg 2.0 15 years ago. But thanks to the more recent success of Split, the director's esteem seemed to be all but restored following box office profits and favorable reviews.
Split’s positive reception was confirmation that Shyamalan needs only a decent, pithy premise and a few respectable actors in order to have people salivating over his trademark class of thriller once again. The crass, problematically distasteful depiction of mental illness by a mugging James McAvoy (a proven, likable actor just having fun yet still pissing me off) is really baffling given how fervently the public complains about every little thing nowadays. The bothersome 2017 flick demands the foremost focus considering Glass is less a trilogy topper beginning with 2000’s Unbreakable than it is Split's slightly more ambitious follow-up.
The detriment of Glass is in spite of a strong continuation for Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson's returning characters from Unbreakable, which makes up two-thirds of the main cast, the loose connection between McAvoy's Beast and Anya Taylor-Joy's character from the film before is the primary, dismally weak emotional tether. Glass also is and looks dirt cheap — Shyamalan's capacity to bore you apart from his visual sensitivity is rather insane when one accounts for so much X-Men psychology and stripped superheroics.
Finding the space where supernatural horror and comic book tropes coexist is admirable, yet the film still cannot relocate the extraordinary realism of Unbreakable. Glass is the best thing Shyamalan has done this decade and nonetheless unforgivably bland and eventually sterilized by an inevitable and uninspired triptych of last-minute twists. Restraint has always marked the infamous director's most potent work (The Sixth Sense, Signs to an extent) — Glass finds Shyamalan indulging in his worst behavior even if the outcome is more interesting than it has been in some time.