The Father briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
The Father is unequivocally the best cinematic debut of the year, not to mention the foremost Best Picture nominee. What this film quietly accomplishes with mise-en-scène alone would make it one of the most enthrallingly perfectionist films in recent memory but then there's superb acting, scrupulous, deeply considered writing, provocative editing and the smashingly rich thematic wellspring its story produces.
Contrary to the boring posters, simple trailers and topics that just scream "HELLO THERE YOOHOO! YES, WE'RE LOOKING FOR AWARDS PLEASE," The Father communicates infinitely more than you bargain for and adroitly, unexpectedly, furthers cinema's formal possibilities. With disabilities as subject matter, this seemingly typical Oscar bait aimed at the elderly is a great, possibly classic film in disguise instead of something as forgettable and pandering as Still Alice.
Olivia Colman, Olivia Williams, Rufus Sewell, Mark Gatiss and Imogen Poots are all well chosen supporters in perfect tune. But really its Florian Zeller — celebrated French playwright, novelist and first-time filmmaker adapting his own widely acclaimed 2012 theater piece — who somehow sorts out the minutia of the aged mind and the subjective deterioration of one's reality through an entirely sympathetic framework. The Father is an invisibly innovative, downright devastating psychological drama that almost (but not nearly enough to come off as underhanded or indelicate) plays like a masterful head game as per the vantage of an unreliable protagonist like some sophisticated, geriatric Memento. Getting inside the mind of someone with dementia sounds tacky and exploitative until you see how ingeniously they've pulled it off, not with dishonest chicanery or an overreliance on dopplegänger switcheroos, but the gradual dissolution of confidence in memories, the passage of time and your own identity.
Zeller's careful calculations are so artful — every instant harmonizes with the story's greater purpose. The rare moments where the sad light of reality shines through the fog of regression are so pitiful, so true and, almost cruelly, Anthony Hopkins is there to masterfully make it all too painfully recognizable. Only Don Hertzfeldt’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day has considered the steady disassembly of the subconscious so subtly, soul-crushingly well. The Father will make you reconsider getting older, though its heartrending, fastidiously laced revelations and honestly developed players can be grasped and appreciated by any age.
If this is Hopkins' final bow then bravo, encore. If the most awkward Best Actor win/absentee in history gets a few more curious eyeballs on an exceptionally vitalizing film, so be it. But for Zeller this is just the beginning, as The Father is the first adaptation of his trilogy of recent plays. The next film entitled The Son (with The Mother due after) has already netted Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern and Vanessa Kirby into the picture. If it also brilliantly draws you into to every bit of dialogue, challenging your intellect every 20 minutes or so while stealing your breath with staggering, luminous performances, bring it on.
The Father is unequivocally the best cinematic debut of the year, not to mention the foremost Best Picture nominee. What this film quietly accomplishes with mise-en-scène alone would make it one of the most enthrallingly perfectionist films in recent memory but then there's superb acting, scrupulous, deeply considered writing, provocative editing and the smashingly rich thematic wellspring its story produces.
Contrary to the boring posters, simple trailers and topics that just scream "HELLO THERE YOOHOO! YES, WE'RE LOOKING FOR AWARDS PLEASE," The Father communicates infinitely more than you bargain for and adroitly, unexpectedly, furthers cinema's formal possibilities. With disabilities as subject matter, this seemingly typical Oscar bait aimed at the elderly is a great, possibly classic film in disguise instead of something as forgettable and pandering as Still Alice.
Olivia Colman, Olivia Williams, Rufus Sewell, Mark Gatiss and Imogen Poots are all well chosen supporters in perfect tune. But really its Florian Zeller — celebrated French playwright, novelist and first-time filmmaker adapting his own widely acclaimed 2012 theater piece — who somehow sorts out the minutia of the aged mind and the subjective deterioration of one's reality through an entirely sympathetic framework. The Father is an invisibly innovative, downright devastating psychological drama that almost (but not nearly enough to come off as underhanded or indelicate) plays like a masterful head game as per the vantage of an unreliable protagonist like some sophisticated, geriatric Memento. Getting inside the mind of someone with dementia sounds tacky and exploitative until you see how ingeniously they've pulled it off, not with dishonest chicanery or an overreliance on dopplegänger switcheroos, but the gradual dissolution of confidence in memories, the passage of time and your own identity.
Zeller's careful calculations are so artful — every instant harmonizes with the story's greater purpose. The rare moments where the sad light of reality shines through the fog of regression are so pitiful, so true and, almost cruelly, Anthony Hopkins is there to masterfully make it all too painfully recognizable. Only Don Hertzfeldt’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day has considered the steady disassembly of the subconscious so subtly, soul-crushingly well. The Father will make you reconsider getting older, though its heartrending, fastidiously laced revelations and honestly developed players can be grasped and appreciated by any age.
If this is Hopkins' final bow then bravo, encore. If the most awkward Best Actor win/absentee in history gets a few more curious eyeballs on an exceptionally vitalizing film, so be it. But for Zeller this is just the beginning, as The Father is the first adaptation of his trilogy of recent plays. The next film entitled The Son (with The Mother due after) has already netted Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern and Vanessa Kirby into the picture. If it also brilliantly draws you into to every bit of dialogue, challenging your intellect every 20 minutes or so while stealing your breath with staggering, luminous performances, bring it on.
Nomadland briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
Only in a year as unorthodox as 2020 could a film so miniature and mumblecore-esque sneak its way into Hollywood history. Or maybe billionaire-heir Chloé Zhao was selected by our Disney overlords to steal away all the press in preparation to sell an otherwise tricky Marvel feature Eternals later this year. I kid but maybe I don’t?
Coming off like the gay love child of Terrence Malick and Harmony Korine, Zhao already has her arsenal of ticks — neorealism/Neo Western hybrids, longing magic hour moments that come standard with breathtaking pastoral landscapes and disaffected lead characters surrounded by uber-believable supporting performances selling the verisimilitude enough to make you ponder the exact degree of its docufiction. Nomadland, her third feature, doesn't exactly make the best of these traits but rather freewheels on by because of them. It's like if The Florida Project handled poorslpoitation with any sense of measured respect and profundity, but not that much.
Her debut Songs My Brother Taught Me put a face on the unspoken pains of those stuck in Native American reservations and The Rider dearly deconstructed the cowboy figure for modern times. They're both superior precedents, more personal, character-concerned films supported by stronger storytelling and more brightly illuminated truths. By nothing more than the presence of Frances McDormand alone, Nomadland can't boast the same forthright attitude and moving infectiousness. The actress/ producer/bride of Coen undermines and quickly spoils the potentially powerful portrait of postmodern pioneers.
Based on the nonfiction book by journalist Jessica Bruder, Zhao’s film heavily incorporates many of the same figures featured and interviewed in the 2017 account subtitled Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century. As is sometimes the case with nonfiction books rendered fictional films, Nomadland really would’ve been realized more sincerely as a documentary on alternative lifestyles for the elderly in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
The mingling of the less-than-honest and the actual in Nomadland is disconcerting, distracting and disharmonious. I have no problem with Zhao speaking outside her age or experience but structuring this new, more fabricated account around McDormand pretending to be a vandweller (or more accurately the designated voyeur for our Hollywood-tinged minds) is enough to give one pause. Zhao’s earlier films melded unprofessional individuals into the fold so, even though disbelief must expectedly be suspended, the performative authenticity sold everything. This film was McDormand’s idea, having approached Zhao after seeing The Rider — Zhao was in pre-production for Eternals when she was shooting Nomadland and you can almost register her appropriate ambivalence toward the film’s conceits even as she honors the human subjects.
The primary real-life nomads featured (Swanky, Linda May, Bob Wells) are examined with starkly unfettered candor — every last non-actor is better than Frances, even fellow thespian David Strathairn upstages her. These sorry, searching folks bear their souls and pour their hearts into their in-film counterparts, meanwhile the bravest thing McDormand does for cinema is relieve herself a few times. You might think I’m being brash but she really does just sit back and wait to eventually seize an honorary, gratuitous third Oscar. Did any voters see Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman or Andra Day in The United State vs. Billie Holiday? It’s all a little soulless, pointless and wearying in sum.
The positives though, are worth carrying on about, displaced and distorted as Nomadland’s themes come to be. Ludovico Einaudi's "Oltremare" enriches the film as a gentle, fitting sonic refrain within a well-gathered soundtrack — furthermore Zhao is capable of sneaky music moments and this is no exception, with three borderline non-sequiturs that sweetly take you by surprise. Her clearly Malick-borrowed system of shooting hours on hours of footage and boiling it all down in the editing room really aids the quotidian aspects of Nomadland, though occasionally the film feels like something of a tourist ad. The sense of detachment from domesticity resonates by the final act — with a poet's eye and an everywoman's perspective, Zhao remains a freshly formidable filmmaker regardless. Her quick sellout turnaround is curious but I'll hold on hope that maybe she's able to retain her creative flexibility and auteur imprint.
At its worst Nomadland is like a sick twist on Sullivan’s goddamn Travels but for real, irony-free. You wanna discuss the “tyranny of the dollar” while your star has a net worth of 100 million and your director simultaneously works for Mickey Mouse? Please. Personally, the peripheral disingenuousness permeates through even the film’s most direct, affecting instances.
Only in a year as unorthodox as 2020 could a film so miniature and mumblecore-esque sneak its way into Hollywood history. Or maybe billionaire-heir Chloé Zhao was selected by our Disney overlords to steal away all the press in preparation to sell an otherwise tricky Marvel feature Eternals later this year. I kid but maybe I don’t?
Coming off like the gay love child of Terrence Malick and Harmony Korine, Zhao already has her arsenal of ticks — neorealism/Neo Western hybrids, longing magic hour moments that come standard with breathtaking pastoral landscapes and disaffected lead characters surrounded by uber-believable supporting performances selling the verisimilitude enough to make you ponder the exact degree of its docufiction. Nomadland, her third feature, doesn't exactly make the best of these traits but rather freewheels on by because of them. It's like if The Florida Project handled poorslpoitation with any sense of measured respect and profundity, but not that much.
Her debut Songs My Brother Taught Me put a face on the unspoken pains of those stuck in Native American reservations and The Rider dearly deconstructed the cowboy figure for modern times. They're both superior precedents, more personal, character-concerned films supported by stronger storytelling and more brightly illuminated truths. By nothing more than the presence of Frances McDormand alone, Nomadland can't boast the same forthright attitude and moving infectiousness. The actress/ producer/bride of Coen undermines and quickly spoils the potentially powerful portrait of postmodern pioneers.
Based on the nonfiction book by journalist Jessica Bruder, Zhao’s film heavily incorporates many of the same figures featured and interviewed in the 2017 account subtitled Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century. As is sometimes the case with nonfiction books rendered fictional films, Nomadland really would’ve been realized more sincerely as a documentary on alternative lifestyles for the elderly in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
The mingling of the less-than-honest and the actual in Nomadland is disconcerting, distracting and disharmonious. I have no problem with Zhao speaking outside her age or experience but structuring this new, more fabricated account around McDormand pretending to be a vandweller (or more accurately the designated voyeur for our Hollywood-tinged minds) is enough to give one pause. Zhao’s earlier films melded unprofessional individuals into the fold so, even though disbelief must expectedly be suspended, the performative authenticity sold everything. This film was McDormand’s idea, having approached Zhao after seeing The Rider — Zhao was in pre-production for Eternals when she was shooting Nomadland and you can almost register her appropriate ambivalence toward the film’s conceits even as she honors the human subjects.
The primary real-life nomads featured (Swanky, Linda May, Bob Wells) are examined with starkly unfettered candor — every last non-actor is better than Frances, even fellow thespian David Strathairn upstages her. These sorry, searching folks bear their souls and pour their hearts into their in-film counterparts, meanwhile the bravest thing McDormand does for cinema is relieve herself a few times. You might think I’m being brash but she really does just sit back and wait to eventually seize an honorary, gratuitous third Oscar. Did any voters see Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman or Andra Day in The United State vs. Billie Holiday? It’s all a little soulless, pointless and wearying in sum.
The positives though, are worth carrying on about, displaced and distorted as Nomadland’s themes come to be. Ludovico Einaudi's "Oltremare" enriches the film as a gentle, fitting sonic refrain within a well-gathered soundtrack — furthermore Zhao is capable of sneaky music moments and this is no exception, with three borderline non-sequiturs that sweetly take you by surprise. Her clearly Malick-borrowed system of shooting hours on hours of footage and boiling it all down in the editing room really aids the quotidian aspects of Nomadland, though occasionally the film feels like something of a tourist ad. The sense of detachment from domesticity resonates by the final act — with a poet's eye and an everywoman's perspective, Zhao remains a freshly formidable filmmaker regardless. Her quick sellout turnaround is curious but I'll hold on hope that maybe she's able to retain her creative flexibility and auteur imprint.
At its worst Nomadland is like a sick twist on Sullivan’s goddamn Travels but for real, irony-free. You wanna discuss the “tyranny of the dollar” while your star has a net worth of 100 million and your director simultaneously works for Mickey Mouse? Please. Personally, the peripheral disingenuousness permeates through even the film’s most direct, affecting instances.
Wonder Woman 1984 briefing
2 (out of 4)
The DCEU’s first actual straightforward sequel — sorry but Batman v Superman and Justice League really don’t count, Snyder Cuts be damned — would feel refreshing if it didn't feel hopelessly restructured, haphazardly written and 20 years dated.
Somehow Birds of Prey has Wonder Woman 1984 beat in regards to faithful, earnest feminist filmmaking, whereas Patty Jenkins’ voice (which ironically had no hand in writing the original, plainly preferable 2017 film) seems inclined toward manic, cumbersome too-muchness as it pretends to possess fun and character development. If not for Chris Pine’s effortless charisma, Kristen Wiig giving her all in a thankless, clichéd secondary villain role and Pedro Pascal providing any semblance of suitable pathos — or appropriate gauges of corniness — as our oil magnate schemer turned genie-madman, this would be a formal flub rather than an aimless, scarcely acceptable sequel. When the only vaguely emotional passages resonate from the final arc of the wacky villain and not our lead, something’s gone afoul at Warner Brothers. Frankly if the film was nothing but Pine wandering around flabbergasted at 80s culture and technology 65 years past his time, it’d be a far more easygoing time than this overbusy, overboring sequel.
WW84 doesn’t feel like the beginning of a new era for cinema (as the studio's first flick to try out a concurrent theatrical/streaming release through HBOMAX) but rather a residual consequence of better superhero follow-ups — the powers lost and regained of Spider-Man 2, the historical rewriting of X-Men: Days of Future Past and the loose, overeager establishment of multiple villains (Spider-Man 3, Iron Man 3, I guess The Amazing Spider-Man 2). The contradictions of its Saturday morning cartoon premise add up fast — I’m sorry but if your evil dude is granting wishes for everyone on earth, wouldn’t the hippies hoping for world peace contradict the sorry bastards pining for dead spouses and nukes? Nothing can make up for the film's half-assed hamminess when Jenkins appears undecided as to whether the film's foot is or isn't intentionally planted in kitsch.
Nothing comes close to 2017’s best moments — the tender romance, the act-long exploration of the Amazonian, Themysciran world, that hair-raising no man’s land centerpiece. I’m all for sparse action with more story but the few set pieces are goofy as hell and I haven't seen such repulsive, unmistakable use of green screen in a blockbuster this big in some time. The narrative itself feels like an excuse for the film’s tacky zoomer's-idea-of-the-80s mise-en-scène, the gimmickry still refusing to grip too tightly at nostalgia, by which I mean New Order's "Blue Monday" is nowhere to be found.
Gal Gadot is certainly doing something resembling acting even as Jenkins’ paltry writing narrows her already extraordinarily thin range, so the blame is shared — meanwhile Linda Carter’s brief parting cameo is glowing with exponential grace; it's truly night and day. Also, the implication of Pine’s character hijacking another man’s body when he’s wished back from death is genuinely bewildering in its casual, brushed off ignorance. WW84 is no psychedelic, extremist reinvention like the Thor: Ragnarok-esque posters and trailers indicated, rather an extended fit of tedium ensured by misapplied characters and confusing sentiments.
Originally this was supposed to be a summer flagship to counteract the gamble of Tenet. WW84 is so silly that on an IMAX screen you might have been taken by the movie's alienating, amateurish antics or seen past them even clearer. The film’s opening (a tacked on, irrelevant prologue with younger Diana, since surely the following mall action scene had WB execs going, “Is this really how we’re going to open this movie?”) is strangely the only IMAX footage I can identify other than the final bit during Christmas-time, even moreso a reshoot if I've ever seen one. The film in between, which most audiences will be forced to watch on their TV anyway, would have been plenty embarrassing on its own. This extended episode of The Fairly OddParents, once a would-be blockbuster hit, is now a near-comical media experiment. Wonder Woman 3 here we come?
The DCEU’s first actual straightforward sequel — sorry but Batman v Superman and Justice League really don’t count, Snyder Cuts be damned — would feel refreshing if it didn't feel hopelessly restructured, haphazardly written and 20 years dated.
Somehow Birds of Prey has Wonder Woman 1984 beat in regards to faithful, earnest feminist filmmaking, whereas Patty Jenkins’ voice (which ironically had no hand in writing the original, plainly preferable 2017 film) seems inclined toward manic, cumbersome too-muchness as it pretends to possess fun and character development. If not for Chris Pine’s effortless charisma, Kristen Wiig giving her all in a thankless, clichéd secondary villain role and Pedro Pascal providing any semblance of suitable pathos — or appropriate gauges of corniness — as our oil magnate schemer turned genie-madman, this would be a formal flub rather than an aimless, scarcely acceptable sequel. When the only vaguely emotional passages resonate from the final arc of the wacky villain and not our lead, something’s gone afoul at Warner Brothers. Frankly if the film was nothing but Pine wandering around flabbergasted at 80s culture and technology 65 years past his time, it’d be a far more easygoing time than this overbusy, overboring sequel.
WW84 doesn’t feel like the beginning of a new era for cinema (as the studio's first flick to try out a concurrent theatrical/streaming release through HBOMAX) but rather a residual consequence of better superhero follow-ups — the powers lost and regained of Spider-Man 2, the historical rewriting of X-Men: Days of Future Past and the loose, overeager establishment of multiple villains (Spider-Man 3, Iron Man 3, I guess The Amazing Spider-Man 2). The contradictions of its Saturday morning cartoon premise add up fast — I’m sorry but if your evil dude is granting wishes for everyone on earth, wouldn’t the hippies hoping for world peace contradict the sorry bastards pining for dead spouses and nukes? Nothing can make up for the film's half-assed hamminess when Jenkins appears undecided as to whether the film's foot is or isn't intentionally planted in kitsch.
Nothing comes close to 2017’s best moments — the tender romance, the act-long exploration of the Amazonian, Themysciran world, that hair-raising no man’s land centerpiece. I’m all for sparse action with more story but the few set pieces are goofy as hell and I haven't seen such repulsive, unmistakable use of green screen in a blockbuster this big in some time. The narrative itself feels like an excuse for the film’s tacky zoomer's-idea-of-the-80s mise-en-scène, the gimmickry still refusing to grip too tightly at nostalgia, by which I mean New Order's "Blue Monday" is nowhere to be found.
Gal Gadot is certainly doing something resembling acting even as Jenkins’ paltry writing narrows her already extraordinarily thin range, so the blame is shared — meanwhile Linda Carter’s brief parting cameo is glowing with exponential grace; it's truly night and day. Also, the implication of Pine’s character hijacking another man’s body when he’s wished back from death is genuinely bewildering in its casual, brushed off ignorance. WW84 is no psychedelic, extremist reinvention like the Thor: Ragnarok-esque posters and trailers indicated, rather an extended fit of tedium ensured by misapplied characters and confusing sentiments.
Originally this was supposed to be a summer flagship to counteract the gamble of Tenet. WW84 is so silly that on an IMAX screen you might have been taken by the movie's alienating, amateurish antics or seen past them even clearer. The film’s opening (a tacked on, irrelevant prologue with younger Diana, since surely the following mall action scene had WB execs going, “Is this really how we’re going to open this movie?”) is strangely the only IMAX footage I can identify other than the final bit during Christmas-time, even moreso a reshoot if I've ever seen one. The film in between, which most audiences will be forced to watch on their TV anyway, would have been plenty embarrassing on its own. This extended episode of The Fairly OddParents, once a would-be blockbuster hit, is now a near-comical media experiment. Wonder Woman 3 here we come?
Soul briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
Don’t call it comeback — seriously don’t, since even the most surprisingly phenomenal Pixar movie can’t be taken as the start of some new renaissance but rather a momentary grasp at bygone greatness, likely soon to be upset with more of Disney's insistence on marketability over artistic aims. Nevertheless, gun to my head this is the most blindsiding rebound moment of Pixar’s 25 year history, which means it's their best effort in a good long while.
I predicted months earlier that we might be in for an Inside Out-esque year where an enterprising potential classic from the brand would be offset by a disposable softball (The Good Dinosaur in 2015 and last March’s Onward respectively) and, fortunately, I wasn't wrong. Countering everything so predictably underwhelming about their recent suburban fantasy road trip flick, Pixar’s latest and the first genuine Disney movie to succumb to the COVID era’s streaming-centered situation (I don’t think the 30$ fee for Mulan really counts) is twice the treat you could ever hope it to be.
It rejoices in creative passion almost as keenly as Ratatouille, depicts black culture as respectfully and ardently as the Mexican musical Coco and grapples with existential matters more mindfully and truthfully than, well, so many Pixar films before it. Inside Out made the psychological star command of a teenager’s head a fun experiment — that prior revival of the brand is Soul's closest companion in that it bravely molds life’s interior abstractions into something universally understandable and appreciable.
Soul may have the detours of cuteness — oddly most of them are cutaways out to please parents able to digest every adult reference — but the film’s direction, themes and ultimate philosophical power are extraordinarily strong through the end. Unlike all the superfluous animated features (Pixar included) too afraid to alienate younger viewers, this film has substantially less to do with whatever corny comedy, condescension or simplification could get in the way of its beautiful, noble aims — not since Up has Pixar really dared to get its hands dirty with observational, sophisticated subjects, refusing to dull the esoteric edges.
Pete Docter's fourth near-perfect film has some anomalous cinematic citations as its foundation — Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death, Albert Brooks' Defending Your Life, not to mention the Freaky Friday-esque body swapping hijinks of its second act, which actually plays out magnificently given what you might anticipate from the setup. It echoes La La Land both in the forward, unashamed love of jazz and the embrace of the slippery, hypothetically trite yet impossibly endearing notion of following your dreams. It even conjured feelings akin to one of my all-time favorites, Richard Linklater’s hypnagogic, prismatic, dazzlingly rotoscoped Waking Life — Soul sits at the crossroads between "regular old living" and some Great Beyond, pondering the very essence of being with altogether humbling lucidity and exuberance.
Between Trent Reznor’s ethereal electronics glitches for the life-death limbo space and John Batiste handily translating his ardor for piano and jazz, the musical scope of Soul is a newly established Pixar benchmark, exceeding even Michael Giacchino’s supreme scores for Up and The Incredibles. The 23rd Pixar entry is an imaginative miracle rivaling some of the brand’s early masterworks, offering audiovisual euphoria even its most minimalist moments while feeding your psyche heady, fundamental, unavoidable life questions.
Yet Soul is not too deep to be enjoyed since it's also a banquet of fine to finessed gags on the ubiquitous concerns of mankind, namely ourselves. Underneath it all I believe that’s why we seek out movies to begin with — as a means to enlighten even if the idea of entertainment is what our base desires yearn for most.
Don’t call it comeback — seriously don’t, since even the most surprisingly phenomenal Pixar movie can’t be taken as the start of some new renaissance but rather a momentary grasp at bygone greatness, likely soon to be upset with more of Disney's insistence on marketability over artistic aims. Nevertheless, gun to my head this is the most blindsiding rebound moment of Pixar’s 25 year history, which means it's their best effort in a good long while.
I predicted months earlier that we might be in for an Inside Out-esque year where an enterprising potential classic from the brand would be offset by a disposable softball (The Good Dinosaur in 2015 and last March’s Onward respectively) and, fortunately, I wasn't wrong. Countering everything so predictably underwhelming about their recent suburban fantasy road trip flick, Pixar’s latest and the first genuine Disney movie to succumb to the COVID era’s streaming-centered situation (I don’t think the 30$ fee for Mulan really counts) is twice the treat you could ever hope it to be.
It rejoices in creative passion almost as keenly as Ratatouille, depicts black culture as respectfully and ardently as the Mexican musical Coco and grapples with existential matters more mindfully and truthfully than, well, so many Pixar films before it. Inside Out made the psychological star command of a teenager’s head a fun experiment — that prior revival of the brand is Soul's closest companion in that it bravely molds life’s interior abstractions into something universally understandable and appreciable.
Soul may have the detours of cuteness — oddly most of them are cutaways out to please parents able to digest every adult reference — but the film’s direction, themes and ultimate philosophical power are extraordinarily strong through the end. Unlike all the superfluous animated features (Pixar included) too afraid to alienate younger viewers, this film has substantially less to do with whatever corny comedy, condescension or simplification could get in the way of its beautiful, noble aims — not since Up has Pixar really dared to get its hands dirty with observational, sophisticated subjects, refusing to dull the esoteric edges.
Pete Docter's fourth near-perfect film has some anomalous cinematic citations as its foundation — Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death, Albert Brooks' Defending Your Life, not to mention the Freaky Friday-esque body swapping hijinks of its second act, which actually plays out magnificently given what you might anticipate from the setup. It echoes La La Land both in the forward, unashamed love of jazz and the embrace of the slippery, hypothetically trite yet impossibly endearing notion of following your dreams. It even conjured feelings akin to one of my all-time favorites, Richard Linklater’s hypnagogic, prismatic, dazzlingly rotoscoped Waking Life — Soul sits at the crossroads between "regular old living" and some Great Beyond, pondering the very essence of being with altogether humbling lucidity and exuberance.
Between Trent Reznor’s ethereal electronics glitches for the life-death limbo space and John Batiste handily translating his ardor for piano and jazz, the musical scope of Soul is a newly established Pixar benchmark, exceeding even Michael Giacchino’s supreme scores for Up and The Incredibles. The 23rd Pixar entry is an imaginative miracle rivaling some of the brand’s early masterworks, offering audiovisual euphoria even its most minimalist moments while feeding your psyche heady, fundamental, unavoidable life questions.
Yet Soul is not too deep to be enjoyed since it's also a banquet of fine to finessed gags on the ubiquitous concerns of mankind, namely ourselves. Underneath it all I believe that’s why we seek out movies to begin with — as a means to enlighten even if the idea of entertainment is what our base desires yearn for most.
The Midnight Sky briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
Even if George Clooney has been more intrepid a filmmaker than a performer, I’d still rather watch him act under more agile direction any day. Not to slight the Hollywood living legend, it's just his behind-camera portfolio has been all over the map, stylistically and critically.
If we’re just watching Clooney in his element, I’ll take a Coen brothers collaboration (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Intolerable Cruelty, Burn After Reading or Hail Caesar!), Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air or Alexander Payne’s The Descendants before revisiting the man's own soft screwball update Leatherheads, the flavorless blunder The Monuments Men or even his Co-bros-inspired (and partially penned), all too broad satire Suburbicon. Even his best film Good Night, and Good Luck feels closer to a fluke than a breakthrough, although the commitment to a timeless idea of historical realism and journalistic integrity makes it one of the most convincing period pieces of the 21st century. Along with his debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind as well as the lean political thriller The Ides of March, Clooney’s directorial filmography suggests talent enough.
The Midnight Sky is a new shift in the tradition of his scatterbrained genre-hopping, a mid-budget sci-fier rivaling Ad Astra and Interstellar in mediocrity, though at least Clooney's bid hits its middling mark square on the head instead of aiming for agelessness and falling way short. The production design is thrifty without looking cheap, the acting is serviceable in sum and the film has virtually zero interest in trying to blow your mind or keep you awake with dumb action like moon marauders or something even sillier.
The primary plot of Clooney's character and his nearly isolationist survival thriller supersedes a space entourage B-side including David Oyelowo, Felicity Jones, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir and Tiffany Boone as they travel back from a newly discovered Jupiter moon supposedly 30 years from now. The segments on Earth fashion an Arctic Neo Western of sorts from the simple quest to communicate the message to definitely not return to a recently radioactive planet. The near-future tech is rightly restrained but the film is unable to let you forget its web of influences — Gravity, Minority Report, Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky's or the Clooney-led remake by Steven Soderbergh), literally you name it. The dialogue is almost just as pitiful as Clooney’s doughy lines in Alfonso Cuarón's technical juggernaut and, at the helm here, he doesn’t have the gall for awe-activating innovation.
The Midnight Sky is a Netflix-partnered picture, though at least the standard streaming glean doesn’t do a disservice to Clooney's rough cinematic competence. It’s efficiently shot, scored (thanks Alexandre Desplat) and doesn’t work overtime. The final two twists are appreciably un-Shyamalan-like, topping the muted, pristine, pulpy fare with even coats of emotion and intrigue — the film seldom strains for the epic, the operatic, the convoluted or the overly clever. The flashbacks are corny but at least Ethan Peck actually looks like a young Clooney (dubbed with a less gravelly, still identical voice), a positive alternative to some digital de-aging makeover.
Thankfully, out of all of Clooney’s self-directed performances (Suburbicon is the only feature to his name without a self-approved turn), this is the most prominent and wholehearted. He could have some Eastwood-akin determination in him still, if not quite as many masterpieces. There’s not much thematic meat on its bones yet The Midnight Sky feels like a post-apocalyptic, space-voyaging paperback novel adaptation that realizes its premise dutifully without costing a fortune or attempting to tear your heart out while ripping off Stanley Kubrick. The film is a perfectly average redemption story for our renewed space-hankering times, though Christopher Nolan, James Gray, Cuarón, Ridley Scott (The Martian) and even Damien Chazelle (First Man) are largely too skilled to be exceeded even when certain auteur’s floundered hardest. What we’ve really got in the end is a mild holiday diversion and quite possibly a good background for a nap.
Even if George Clooney has been more intrepid a filmmaker than a performer, I’d still rather watch him act under more agile direction any day. Not to slight the Hollywood living legend, it's just his behind-camera portfolio has been all over the map, stylistically and critically.
If we’re just watching Clooney in his element, I’ll take a Coen brothers collaboration (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Intolerable Cruelty, Burn After Reading or Hail Caesar!), Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air or Alexander Payne’s The Descendants before revisiting the man's own soft screwball update Leatherheads, the flavorless blunder The Monuments Men or even his Co-bros-inspired (and partially penned), all too broad satire Suburbicon. Even his best film Good Night, and Good Luck feels closer to a fluke than a breakthrough, although the commitment to a timeless idea of historical realism and journalistic integrity makes it one of the most convincing period pieces of the 21st century. Along with his debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind as well as the lean political thriller The Ides of March, Clooney’s directorial filmography suggests talent enough.
The Midnight Sky is a new shift in the tradition of his scatterbrained genre-hopping, a mid-budget sci-fier rivaling Ad Astra and Interstellar in mediocrity, though at least Clooney's bid hits its middling mark square on the head instead of aiming for agelessness and falling way short. The production design is thrifty without looking cheap, the acting is serviceable in sum and the film has virtually zero interest in trying to blow your mind or keep you awake with dumb action like moon marauders or something even sillier.
The primary plot of Clooney's character and his nearly isolationist survival thriller supersedes a space entourage B-side including David Oyelowo, Felicity Jones, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir and Tiffany Boone as they travel back from a newly discovered Jupiter moon supposedly 30 years from now. The segments on Earth fashion an Arctic Neo Western of sorts from the simple quest to communicate the message to definitely not return to a recently radioactive planet. The near-future tech is rightly restrained but the film is unable to let you forget its web of influences — Gravity, Minority Report, Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky's or the Clooney-led remake by Steven Soderbergh), literally you name it. The dialogue is almost just as pitiful as Clooney’s doughy lines in Alfonso Cuarón's technical juggernaut and, at the helm here, he doesn’t have the gall for awe-activating innovation.
The Midnight Sky is a Netflix-partnered picture, though at least the standard streaming glean doesn’t do a disservice to Clooney's rough cinematic competence. It’s efficiently shot, scored (thanks Alexandre Desplat) and doesn’t work overtime. The final two twists are appreciably un-Shyamalan-like, topping the muted, pristine, pulpy fare with even coats of emotion and intrigue — the film seldom strains for the epic, the operatic, the convoluted or the overly clever. The flashbacks are corny but at least Ethan Peck actually looks like a young Clooney (dubbed with a less gravelly, still identical voice), a positive alternative to some digital de-aging makeover.
Thankfully, out of all of Clooney’s self-directed performances (Suburbicon is the only feature to his name without a self-approved turn), this is the most prominent and wholehearted. He could have some Eastwood-akin determination in him still, if not quite as many masterpieces. There’s not much thematic meat on its bones yet The Midnight Sky feels like a post-apocalyptic, space-voyaging paperback novel adaptation that realizes its premise dutifully without costing a fortune or attempting to tear your heart out while ripping off Stanley Kubrick. The film is a perfectly average redemption story for our renewed space-hankering times, though Christopher Nolan, James Gray, Cuarón, Ridley Scott (The Martian) and even Damien Chazelle (First Man) are largely too skilled to be exceeded even when certain auteur’s floundered hardest. What we’ve really got in the end is a mild holiday diversion and quite possibly a good background for a nap.
Mank briefing
3 (out of 4)
David Fincher returns to filmmaking with a particularly Hollywoodized take on Tinsel town history, both new ground for the digital duke and Oscar-ready material even more gussied up than The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the movie most easily forgotten of his filmography. Mank is uncharacteristically sentimental for the fastidious, typically macabre-minded director — his late father Jack Fincher penned the screenplay that was lined up to be David’s next project more than 20 years ago after the tiresome tricks of The Game and before committing to an adaptation of Fight Club.
Fincher's 11th feature is blessed with textbook technical prowess, splendid performances uniform to the vision of the period and at least some manner of reverence for the many political and cinematic subjects. There is also a gentle, noticeable bias and a fanciful hand in reopening the cooled off controversy on the genesis of Citizen Kane. The Fincher duo's feature might have done better by conducting as much personal research as David did while in pre-production of Zodiac, the director's scrupulous, marvelous masterwork.
I get that Fincher didn't want to mess with his Dad's script too much (as Jack died in 2003) but the film was ultimately modified to portray Orson Welles a little more fondly anyway, which is funny given the movie is just as factually one-sided and generally skewed as the oft-contested, discredited yet enduringly impactful Pauline Kael extended essay published in 1971, from which Mank is partially based. It was only a matter of time before the mystery of Citizen Kane’s creation was eagerly discussed again — when the film looks past the historical mist and petty dispute, it's nice to see a simple biopic of a man left out of public consciousness aside from a shared Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Good God I haven't even mentioned William Randolph Hearst, here played by Charles Dance, and his influential reign of yellow journalism that seemingly beckoned Herman J. Mankiewicz’s quest for artistic justice in the face of unfounded sensationalism. This screenplay also tries to throw both Welles and especially MGM co-founder Louis B. Mayer under the bus, and with so many fish to fry and moments of the 1930s to touch on the film is, at worst, scattered and purposeless. I wouldn't have those thoughts if the movie delved into the creative process of screenwriting, but even with an admirably antiquated rhythm and ring to the dialogue, Mank isn't as revealing as intended. It doesn't quite communicate enough of the mythic, foggy backstory of Kane’s contentiously debated origins, but like Fincher's other virtually untouchable masterpiece The Social Network — itself a modern classic in the vein of Kane's vigorous stream-of-consciousness and DIY deterioration storyline — the film's trajectory is an intoxicating gradual downfall that soars like a rising fever. By the time it ends you’ll be clamoring for an entire act more just out of the desire to see what cacophony and controversy bubbled up during production with Welles, or after release regarding Hearst and Marion Davies (a fantastic, possibly Oscar-bound Amanda Seyfried).
Papa Fincher’s screenplay emulates Mank’s famed wit and unrecognized shaping of the snappy, smart symphony of dialogue as talkies became the standard of cinema in the 30s. Apparently Mankiewicz helped develop the early stages of The Wizard of Oz — though at least several uncredited writers tried their hand at it — and movies bearing his famed cleverness (namely Dinner at Eight and even less well-known pictures) lent him the reputation of a seasoned script doctor. Kane was his flash of genius and recognition — it’s actually his younger brother Joseph (portrayed here by Tom Pelphrey) who would go on to claim greater renown, with a crowning directorial effort in the immortal All About Eve as well as The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Barefoot Contessa and the 60s Cleopatra.
Seyfried has never been more exceptionally praiseworthy and the same goes for Lily Collins as typist Rita Alexander. But while I think their performances are modeled for Academy love, it’s good ol' Gary Oldman projecting career-topping gold as the sharp-tongued, alcoholic, gambling critic turned writer, which would be great as far as awards are concerned if he wasn’t given a consolation prize three years back for his serviceable, make-up buried role as Winston Churchill in Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour. As Mankiewicz, he makes his Churchill look like dress-up at a Sunday school play. Otherwise the cast is a who's who of Old Hollywood era figures, from the blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Bill Nye as Upton Sinclair to apparently tangential portrayals of the likes of Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, among a host of others hidden in the film's dense lining.
But as always with Fincher the craft is most laudable. The sound mixing and editing is just so divine — if the digital camerawork evoking 30s and 40s era grain and transitions doesn’t do it for ya (the widescreen format is a doggedly contemporary choice), the recording of the dialogue is a perfect replication of the crackly imperfection of the time. Mank will also force you to brush up on your Golden Age Hollywood history in order to appreciate some of the film's important sentiments and certain superficial details. And Fincher’s fourth collaboration with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is a bright spot and the most invisible scoring of their films together, nixing the electronic, industrial percolating for fitting orchestral backdrops.
And who could be surprised this is a Netflix movie, especially after Fincher’s House of Cards literally inaugurated the conglomeration of streaming services with television and film production. Yeah there was Mindhunter as well but Fincher had already changed the game, and seeing him arrive at such classical ideas within a company and format so contemporary is a testament to his own thoughtful, postmodern impulses.
Unlike something like the Coen brothers’ true neo-noir The Man Who Wasn’t There (Mank's topics have more than a little in common with Barton Fink and Hail, Caesar! also) and especially George Clooney’s best film Good Night, and Good Luck, this movie was shot with the new RED Monster Monochrome camera, meaning it need not be filmed in color and then corrected in post-production. Even without the cute, frequent inclusion of cue marks, the film often exudes authentic enough picture despite its digital design. Speaking of which, other than the aforementioned B&W features, Tim Burton's masterpiece Ed Wood or Paweł Pawlikowski's Ida and Cold War, I cannot think of another film that so sweepingly evokes the mode and feeling of an earlier age.
Whereas Citizen Kane is composed through epic, revelatory storytelling within a compact vacuum, inspired by disdain and deference, concerned about our ego's will to hasten our downfalls, Mank is about a similar sense of self-destruction, although, despite the writer's ills, Oldman and both Finchers' depiction of the obscure titan is wholly sympathetic. The idea of Charles Foster Kane was about unveiling internal, all-consuming hypocrisy — for all of Mankiewicz' faults, Mank is still a sly, history-eschewing underdog story of an unsung hero.
As a dramatic take on the nucleus of Citizen Kane’s reign as one of cinema history’s prized achievements, Fincher occasionally nods to Welles’ signature visual emblems, namely some well-timed instances of deep focus, dusty chiaroscuro lighting and intuitively artistic blocking and camera movements. It won't go down as one of Fincher’s finest but Mank will at least be remembered as the ultimate film companion piece.
David Fincher returns to filmmaking with a particularly Hollywoodized take on Tinsel town history, both new ground for the digital duke and Oscar-ready material even more gussied up than The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the movie most easily forgotten of his filmography. Mank is uncharacteristically sentimental for the fastidious, typically macabre-minded director — his late father Jack Fincher penned the screenplay that was lined up to be David’s next project more than 20 years ago after the tiresome tricks of The Game and before committing to an adaptation of Fight Club.
Fincher's 11th feature is blessed with textbook technical prowess, splendid performances uniform to the vision of the period and at least some manner of reverence for the many political and cinematic subjects. There is also a gentle, noticeable bias and a fanciful hand in reopening the cooled off controversy on the genesis of Citizen Kane. The Fincher duo's feature might have done better by conducting as much personal research as David did while in pre-production of Zodiac, the director's scrupulous, marvelous masterwork.
I get that Fincher didn't want to mess with his Dad's script too much (as Jack died in 2003) but the film was ultimately modified to portray Orson Welles a little more fondly anyway, which is funny given the movie is just as factually one-sided and generally skewed as the oft-contested, discredited yet enduringly impactful Pauline Kael extended essay published in 1971, from which Mank is partially based. It was only a matter of time before the mystery of Citizen Kane’s creation was eagerly discussed again — when the film looks past the historical mist and petty dispute, it's nice to see a simple biopic of a man left out of public consciousness aside from a shared Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Good God I haven't even mentioned William Randolph Hearst, here played by Charles Dance, and his influential reign of yellow journalism that seemingly beckoned Herman J. Mankiewicz’s quest for artistic justice in the face of unfounded sensationalism. This screenplay also tries to throw both Welles and especially MGM co-founder Louis B. Mayer under the bus, and with so many fish to fry and moments of the 1930s to touch on the film is, at worst, scattered and purposeless. I wouldn't have those thoughts if the movie delved into the creative process of screenwriting, but even with an admirably antiquated rhythm and ring to the dialogue, Mank isn't as revealing as intended. It doesn't quite communicate enough of the mythic, foggy backstory of Kane’s contentiously debated origins, but like Fincher's other virtually untouchable masterpiece The Social Network — itself a modern classic in the vein of Kane's vigorous stream-of-consciousness and DIY deterioration storyline — the film's trajectory is an intoxicating gradual downfall that soars like a rising fever. By the time it ends you’ll be clamoring for an entire act more just out of the desire to see what cacophony and controversy bubbled up during production with Welles, or after release regarding Hearst and Marion Davies (a fantastic, possibly Oscar-bound Amanda Seyfried).
Papa Fincher’s screenplay emulates Mank’s famed wit and unrecognized shaping of the snappy, smart symphony of dialogue as talkies became the standard of cinema in the 30s. Apparently Mankiewicz helped develop the early stages of The Wizard of Oz — though at least several uncredited writers tried their hand at it — and movies bearing his famed cleverness (namely Dinner at Eight and even less well-known pictures) lent him the reputation of a seasoned script doctor. Kane was his flash of genius and recognition — it’s actually his younger brother Joseph (portrayed here by Tom Pelphrey) who would go on to claim greater renown, with a crowning directorial effort in the immortal All About Eve as well as The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Barefoot Contessa and the 60s Cleopatra.
Seyfried has never been more exceptionally praiseworthy and the same goes for Lily Collins as typist Rita Alexander. But while I think their performances are modeled for Academy love, it’s good ol' Gary Oldman projecting career-topping gold as the sharp-tongued, alcoholic, gambling critic turned writer, which would be great as far as awards are concerned if he wasn’t given a consolation prize three years back for his serviceable, make-up buried role as Winston Churchill in Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour. As Mankiewicz, he makes his Churchill look like dress-up at a Sunday school play. Otherwise the cast is a who's who of Old Hollywood era figures, from the blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Bill Nye as Upton Sinclair to apparently tangential portrayals of the likes of Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin, among a host of others hidden in the film's dense lining.
But as always with Fincher the craft is most laudable. The sound mixing and editing is just so divine — if the digital camerawork evoking 30s and 40s era grain and transitions doesn’t do it for ya (the widescreen format is a doggedly contemporary choice), the recording of the dialogue is a perfect replication of the crackly imperfection of the time. Mank will also force you to brush up on your Golden Age Hollywood history in order to appreciate some of the film's important sentiments and certain superficial details. And Fincher’s fourth collaboration with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is a bright spot and the most invisible scoring of their films together, nixing the electronic, industrial percolating for fitting orchestral backdrops.
And who could be surprised this is a Netflix movie, especially after Fincher’s House of Cards literally inaugurated the conglomeration of streaming services with television and film production. Yeah there was Mindhunter as well but Fincher had already changed the game, and seeing him arrive at such classical ideas within a company and format so contemporary is a testament to his own thoughtful, postmodern impulses.
Unlike something like the Coen brothers’ true neo-noir The Man Who Wasn’t There (Mank's topics have more than a little in common with Barton Fink and Hail, Caesar! also) and especially George Clooney’s best film Good Night, and Good Luck, this movie was shot with the new RED Monster Monochrome camera, meaning it need not be filmed in color and then corrected in post-production. Even without the cute, frequent inclusion of cue marks, the film often exudes authentic enough picture despite its digital design. Speaking of which, other than the aforementioned B&W features, Tim Burton's masterpiece Ed Wood or Paweł Pawlikowski's Ida and Cold War, I cannot think of another film that so sweepingly evokes the mode and feeling of an earlier age.
Whereas Citizen Kane is composed through epic, revelatory storytelling within a compact vacuum, inspired by disdain and deference, concerned about our ego's will to hasten our downfalls, Mank is about a similar sense of self-destruction, although, despite the writer's ills, Oldman and both Finchers' depiction of the obscure titan is wholly sympathetic. The idea of Charles Foster Kane was about unveiling internal, all-consuming hypocrisy — for all of Mankiewicz' faults, Mank is still a sly, history-eschewing underdog story of an unsung hero.
As a dramatic take on the nucleus of Citizen Kane’s reign as one of cinema history’s prized achievements, Fincher occasionally nods to Welles’ signature visual emblems, namely some well-timed instances of deep focus, dusty chiaroscuro lighting and intuitively artistic blocking and camera movements. It won't go down as one of Fincher’s finest but Mank will at least be remembered as the ultimate film companion piece.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and Rebecca briefings
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
2 ½ (out of 4)
Sacha Baron Cohen is a slick, cheeky, unrivaled provocateur but it’s important to note how funny he is even when everything’s scripted out for him. Something as insipid as the action spy spoof The Brothers Grimsby, or more relevantly the Chaplin/Marx brothers-inspired satire of The Dictator, can catch you off guard. He just turned in a convincing, uncommonly dramatic offering in The Trial of the Chicago 7, essentially his only role that doesn’t lean on some sort of silly, flamboyant theatricality like supporting parts in musicals like Sweeney Todd and Les Misérables, or as the inspector in Hugo. But Baron Cohen's true appetite is for disappearing into personas built on generating pointed cultural commentary and milking taboo-shredding responses from unwitting victims of his idiosyncratic improvisational comedy.
Yes, there are other impish fictional characters in his arsenal like Ali G and Brüno, but nothing comes close to the iconoclastic near-genius of Borat. Years later we have the all too welcome of-the-minute topicality of Subsequent Moviefilm, though Baron Cohen struggles to duplicate the original's unexpected insanity, enduring quotability or sweeping satirization of American society. Nevertheless no one else could — or would even attempt to — perfectly meld in-story mockumentary absurdity with real-world pranks, cons, setups and other delightfully clandestine unmaskings of the United States' true face.
Of course Baron Cohen sometimes eggs people on too overtly — either Borat flick is best when he is able to extract exactly what he wants from interviewees without even trying. Those crafty moments obscuring the borders between the fictional plot and the reality show-esque antics are the crux of these films' successes. It’s just this sequel’s revelations concerning the nation's underbelly are nothing more than reiterations of the dumb racists ousted in the former 2006 comedy classic. The only identifiable differences here are Borat’s rotation of disguises within disguises in the wake of his stateside notoriety and the supporting role of his estranged daughter Tutar (played to sly excellence by Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova), who serves as Kazakhstan's gift idea for President Trump, then Vice President Pence and finally Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani’s already infamous lampooning is unfortunately overedited and reeks of entrapment, although I’ll watch that fool get humiliated any chance I can.
Whereas the original Borat is the popular flagship of an incredibly niche genre, the Subsequent Moviefilm will never hold the same stature no matter how watchable, amusing and daring it is. Apart from the Lonely Island’s Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and Taika Waititi's What We Do in the Shadows, this decade has been dry for docucomedies. Frankly I’d rather take the orchestrated fakery of Christopher Guest’s body of work (seminal farces like This Is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show), Michael Patrick Jann's Drop Dead Gorgeous, Woody Allen’s Zelig or Peter Jackson’s Forgotten Silver over deliberate, hit-and-miss button-pushing.
Rebecca
2 ½ (out of 4)
Even if this new adaptation of Rebecca landed with the poise and power of a major Oscar player, the inherent, inescapable irony of trying to elude the shadow of former greatness — just like our naive, nameless protagonist must live up to the deceased titular character's impossible reputation — would still be just as painfully poignant.
Ben Wheatley is a proven talent with fine filmmaking ingredients in his favor but did he really think he was going to outstrip Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine? Armie Hammer and Lily James are wisely cast as Mr. and Mrs. De Winter, but their admirable performances simply cannot compete with that of the Best Picture winner of 1940. It's only Kristen Scott Thomas who is able to polish and improve upon the role of the obsessive Mrs. Danvers — previously played by Judith Anderson — with her icy, elegant touch. The production value and photography are impressively opulent and the adaptation — barring a rosy, paperback epilogue acutely reminding you you're watching more of a Netflix original than a Gothic literary classic come to life — is reasonably faithful. And James and Hammer really are exerting their best efforts, although I’ve seen enough quivering lips and furrowed brows for a single two-hour sitting.
Other than a few dream sequences wherein we're reminded of the fearless British auteur who arranged films as sharp, strange and surreal as A Field in England, Wheatley seems to be appealing to popular interests rather than his own, albeit to far more ravishing and engrossing results than his tepid, tiresome shootout gag reel Free Fire. The psychological romantic drama has been shifted a touch too close to Nicholas Sparks territory but, more often than not, Rebecca is a robust if futile endeavor to outdo an untouchable work of art.
2 ½ (out of 4)
Sacha Baron Cohen is a slick, cheeky, unrivaled provocateur but it’s important to note how funny he is even when everything’s scripted out for him. Something as insipid as the action spy spoof The Brothers Grimsby, or more relevantly the Chaplin/Marx brothers-inspired satire of The Dictator, can catch you off guard. He just turned in a convincing, uncommonly dramatic offering in The Trial of the Chicago 7, essentially his only role that doesn’t lean on some sort of silly, flamboyant theatricality like supporting parts in musicals like Sweeney Todd and Les Misérables, or as the inspector in Hugo. But Baron Cohen's true appetite is for disappearing into personas built on generating pointed cultural commentary and milking taboo-shredding responses from unwitting victims of his idiosyncratic improvisational comedy.
Yes, there are other impish fictional characters in his arsenal like Ali G and Brüno, but nothing comes close to the iconoclastic near-genius of Borat. Years later we have the all too welcome of-the-minute topicality of Subsequent Moviefilm, though Baron Cohen struggles to duplicate the original's unexpected insanity, enduring quotability or sweeping satirization of American society. Nevertheless no one else could — or would even attempt to — perfectly meld in-story mockumentary absurdity with real-world pranks, cons, setups and other delightfully clandestine unmaskings of the United States' true face.
Of course Baron Cohen sometimes eggs people on too overtly — either Borat flick is best when he is able to extract exactly what he wants from interviewees without even trying. Those crafty moments obscuring the borders between the fictional plot and the reality show-esque antics are the crux of these films' successes. It’s just this sequel’s revelations concerning the nation's underbelly are nothing more than reiterations of the dumb racists ousted in the former 2006 comedy classic. The only identifiable differences here are Borat’s rotation of disguises within disguises in the wake of his stateside notoriety and the supporting role of his estranged daughter Tutar (played to sly excellence by Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova), who serves as Kazakhstan's gift idea for President Trump, then Vice President Pence and finally Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani’s already infamous lampooning is unfortunately overedited and reeks of entrapment, although I’ll watch that fool get humiliated any chance I can.
Whereas the original Borat is the popular flagship of an incredibly niche genre, the Subsequent Moviefilm will never hold the same stature no matter how watchable, amusing and daring it is. Apart from the Lonely Island’s Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and Taika Waititi's What We Do in the Shadows, this decade has been dry for docucomedies. Frankly I’d rather take the orchestrated fakery of Christopher Guest’s body of work (seminal farces like This Is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show), Michael Patrick Jann's Drop Dead Gorgeous, Woody Allen’s Zelig or Peter Jackson’s Forgotten Silver over deliberate, hit-and-miss button-pushing.
Rebecca
2 ½ (out of 4)
Even if this new adaptation of Rebecca landed with the poise and power of a major Oscar player, the inherent, inescapable irony of trying to elude the shadow of former greatness — just like our naive, nameless protagonist must live up to the deceased titular character's impossible reputation — would still be just as painfully poignant.
Ben Wheatley is a proven talent with fine filmmaking ingredients in his favor but did he really think he was going to outstrip Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine? Armie Hammer and Lily James are wisely cast as Mr. and Mrs. De Winter, but their admirable performances simply cannot compete with that of the Best Picture winner of 1940. It's only Kristen Scott Thomas who is able to polish and improve upon the role of the obsessive Mrs. Danvers — previously played by Judith Anderson — with her icy, elegant touch. The production value and photography are impressively opulent and the adaptation — barring a rosy, paperback epilogue acutely reminding you you're watching more of a Netflix original than a Gothic literary classic come to life — is reasonably faithful. And James and Hammer really are exerting their best efforts, although I’ve seen enough quivering lips and furrowed brows for a single two-hour sitting.
Other than a few dream sequences wherein we're reminded of the fearless British auteur who arranged films as sharp, strange and surreal as A Field in England, Wheatley seems to be appealing to popular interests rather than his own, albeit to far more ravishing and engrossing results than his tepid, tiresome shootout gag reel Free Fire. The psychological romantic drama has been shifted a touch too close to Nicholas Sparks territory but, more often than not, Rebecca is a robust if futile endeavor to outdo an untouchable work of art.
On the Rocks briefings
2 (out of 4)
I’ve pretty much always been on Sofia’s side — she manages to maintain a degree of hushed, near-transcendental ease even in her weaker excerpts. She'll give you ASMR-adjacent goosebumps like it's nothing. If her recurring sense of social appraisal was more obvious or obtuse (The Bling Ring, Marie Antoinette) she made sure the daydream editing and hazy, handpicked soundtrack choices factored into a fragile atmospheric paradise. Her misfires are still full of feeling, disenchanting or not.
To report that On the Rocks is the most deficient of a recognizably distinct filmography is not saying much. Coppola's seventh film is approximately mediocre but next to the rest of her vaporous, unimposing filmography it's far from a protruding blemish. As the first actual auteur film to be distributed by AppleTV+ I wish there was more cause for celebration, especially in a year where streaming is our savior through which we can actively keep the exchange of film culture from fading.
Whereas Bill Murray yielded the performance of a lifetime — despite openly displaying a more moderated rendition of his trademark traits — for her detached masterwork Lost in Translation, in On the Rocks his efforts are little more than a sprawl of self-pleasing improvisation. His flawed father figure is barely a character but more a poor excuse for reactionary role-playing. Poor Rashida Jones can't muster much personality in lead position, though maybe it's Coppola's fault for writing a protagonist more absent of self-discipline and self-awareness than any of her customarily dispassionate leading ladies. It’s relieving to see a Wayans brother (Marlon to be precise) acting with irony-free composure, which hasn't happened outside of Requiem for a Dream. Coppola utilizes a bit part for Jenny Slate to form part of her round of everyday societal critiques, although never has the director's sense of meditation been so misconstrued by meandering melodrama and timid screwball comedy.
Though all of her movies have a ponderous futility — as detractors will surely point out — this one has the measliest purpose of all. I’m all for shattering the egoist shell surrounding a disappointing reality and keeping the commonplace aspects of existence alive in contemporary storytelling. The problem is On the Rocks has about as much introspective insight as a Reader’s Digest and even Coppola's capacity for peerless ambience and reasonably imperfect characters seems to have wilted into late-career Woody Allen hogwash, stocked with soap opera plotting and needless New York worship.
I’ve pretty much always been on Sofia’s side — she manages to maintain a degree of hushed, near-transcendental ease even in her weaker excerpts. She'll give you ASMR-adjacent goosebumps like it's nothing. If her recurring sense of social appraisal was more obvious or obtuse (The Bling Ring, Marie Antoinette) she made sure the daydream editing and hazy, handpicked soundtrack choices factored into a fragile atmospheric paradise. Her misfires are still full of feeling, disenchanting or not.
To report that On the Rocks is the most deficient of a recognizably distinct filmography is not saying much. Coppola's seventh film is approximately mediocre but next to the rest of her vaporous, unimposing filmography it's far from a protruding blemish. As the first actual auteur film to be distributed by AppleTV+ I wish there was more cause for celebration, especially in a year where streaming is our savior through which we can actively keep the exchange of film culture from fading.
Whereas Bill Murray yielded the performance of a lifetime — despite openly displaying a more moderated rendition of his trademark traits — for her detached masterwork Lost in Translation, in On the Rocks his efforts are little more than a sprawl of self-pleasing improvisation. His flawed father figure is barely a character but more a poor excuse for reactionary role-playing. Poor Rashida Jones can't muster much personality in lead position, though maybe it's Coppola's fault for writing a protagonist more absent of self-discipline and self-awareness than any of her customarily dispassionate leading ladies. It’s relieving to see a Wayans brother (Marlon to be precise) acting with irony-free composure, which hasn't happened outside of Requiem for a Dream. Coppola utilizes a bit part for Jenny Slate to form part of her round of everyday societal critiques, although never has the director's sense of meditation been so misconstrued by meandering melodrama and timid screwball comedy.
Though all of her movies have a ponderous futility — as detractors will surely point out — this one has the measliest purpose of all. I’m all for shattering the egoist shell surrounding a disappointing reality and keeping the commonplace aspects of existence alive in contemporary storytelling. The problem is On the Rocks has about as much introspective insight as a Reader’s Digest and even Coppola's capacity for peerless ambience and reasonably imperfect characters seems to have wilted into late-career Woody Allen hogwash, stocked with soap opera plotting and needless New York worship.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 briefing
3 (out of 4)
Aaron Sorkin has been reveling in the real for the better part of a nearly 30-year career. Though his latest concoction and his second directorial feature is more than a little comparable to his screenwriting debut A Few Good Men — wherein he was adapting his own stage play — and built on the same democratic idealism of The American President and his shows The West Wing and The Newsroom, The Trial of the Chicago 7 appears consistent with his 21st century proclivity for ruthless biopics. He's known for cultivating the political climate and news cycles of the time to fashion the bureaucratic, judicial and executive interplay to his liking, but since the aughts Sorkin has prided himself on dramas built on relevant current events.
The liberties are there yet his strengths persist — The Social Network would probably be half the masterpiece it is if the script adhered to history rather than drama. But along with his solid debut Molly’s Game three years back or the savory cult figure dissection of Steve Jobs, The Trial of the Chicago 7 offers about as much as one could expect from a man wholly concerned with the logistics behind everything from baseball stats to well, all governmental operations — that and making sure every single observation and exchange punches and crackles.
Trial escalates into the finally feel-good courtroom territory you’d expect but all the verbosity in the world couldn’t make up for the story’s urgency in light of its release — the recent explosion of racial unrest could not have been anticipated by Sorkin, making it all the better still. If there were literally ever a time to investigate America's perpetual appetite for peaceful protest and police brutality, it’s in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the surging Black Lives Matter movement. It’s truly insane to think of this movie coming out without the precedent of such topically synonymous violence and dissent. The film is achingly, almost scorchingly of the moment.
The ensemble cast is giving everything they've got — Eddie Redmayne, Mark Rylance, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, John Carroll Lynch, Frank Langella, Jeremy Strong, up-and-comer Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and especially Sacha Baron Cohen cohesively feed off each other in a script that hardly has time to separate leads from supporting players. And in the realm of historical accuracy, save for that schmaltzy conclusion this movie has relatively few dramatic alterations regarding an otherwise remarkably unknown excerpt from the Vietnam War era.
Sorkin’s movie not only nobly dissects what public resistance and ideological demonstrations are really about, but Trial intently informs and entertains as some of his most significant reproductions of modern history have. Of course there are the textbook Oscar drama dressings but it's such a relief just to behold a film that comfortably resides in a familiar aura of prestige despite 2020 becoming the most discordant, disconnected year in the medium’s history. After being robbed of summer escapism, I can't believe I'm giving thanks for the various deals struck between production and distribution companies and certain streaming services. Without a stay-at-home option — although I'll take advantage of a limited release whenever I get the chance, pandemic be damned — the preservation of consistently renewed content would be lost and cinema likely with it.
Netflix has this and Mank, so, as they've established in years past, the platform will have a place in the Awards conversation for some time. But The Trial of the Chicago 7 is worth more than the mode with which it reaches the masses. This is one great, reciprocating instance of art reflecting reality and vice versa, even if it's the kind of stimulating history lesson that might slip your mind once class is over.
Aaron Sorkin has been reveling in the real for the better part of a nearly 30-year career. Though his latest concoction and his second directorial feature is more than a little comparable to his screenwriting debut A Few Good Men — wherein he was adapting his own stage play — and built on the same democratic idealism of The American President and his shows The West Wing and The Newsroom, The Trial of the Chicago 7 appears consistent with his 21st century proclivity for ruthless biopics. He's known for cultivating the political climate and news cycles of the time to fashion the bureaucratic, judicial and executive interplay to his liking, but since the aughts Sorkin has prided himself on dramas built on relevant current events.
The liberties are there yet his strengths persist — The Social Network would probably be half the masterpiece it is if the script adhered to history rather than drama. But along with his solid debut Molly’s Game three years back or the savory cult figure dissection of Steve Jobs, The Trial of the Chicago 7 offers about as much as one could expect from a man wholly concerned with the logistics behind everything from baseball stats to well, all governmental operations — that and making sure every single observation and exchange punches and crackles.
Trial escalates into the finally feel-good courtroom territory you’d expect but all the verbosity in the world couldn’t make up for the story’s urgency in light of its release — the recent explosion of racial unrest could not have been anticipated by Sorkin, making it all the better still. If there were literally ever a time to investigate America's perpetual appetite for peaceful protest and police brutality, it’s in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the surging Black Lives Matter movement. It’s truly insane to think of this movie coming out without the precedent of such topically synonymous violence and dissent. The film is achingly, almost scorchingly of the moment.
The ensemble cast is giving everything they've got — Eddie Redmayne, Mark Rylance, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, John Carroll Lynch, Frank Langella, Jeremy Strong, up-and-comer Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and especially Sacha Baron Cohen cohesively feed off each other in a script that hardly has time to separate leads from supporting players. And in the realm of historical accuracy, save for that schmaltzy conclusion this movie has relatively few dramatic alterations regarding an otherwise remarkably unknown excerpt from the Vietnam War era.
Sorkin’s movie not only nobly dissects what public resistance and ideological demonstrations are really about, but Trial intently informs and entertains as some of his most significant reproductions of modern history have. Of course there are the textbook Oscar drama dressings but it's such a relief just to behold a film that comfortably resides in a familiar aura of prestige despite 2020 becoming the most discordant, disconnected year in the medium’s history. After being robbed of summer escapism, I can't believe I'm giving thanks for the various deals struck between production and distribution companies and certain streaming services. Without a stay-at-home option — although I'll take advantage of a limited release whenever I get the chance, pandemic be damned — the preservation of consistently renewed content would be lost and cinema likely with it.
Netflix has this and Mank, so, as they've established in years past, the platform will have a place in the Awards conversation for some time. But The Trial of the Chicago 7 is worth more than the mode with which it reaches the masses. This is one great, reciprocating instance of art reflecting reality and vice versa, even if it's the kind of stimulating history lesson that might slip your mind once class is over.
Mulan briefing
1 ½ (out of 4)
Whether you’re looking through a political, economic or cultural lens, Mulan is a monument to mediocrity and a how-to guide for fumbling what was thought to be routine international brown-nosing and creative recycling. It's a big, phony, inexcusable flub on Disney's part.
As someone who wanted this to be in the vein of Cinderella five years back so we could return to slightly less egregious cash-grab adaptations of the studio's older animated films, I can say this film made no argument that the trend — which has Cruella, The Little Mermaid and other nonsensical acts of stiflingly regurgitative media down the pipeline — has done anything but produce mounting cinematic waste, each more soulless than the last, since it started.
I didn’t want to yearn for all the musical numbers or a fun-size animated dragon voiced by Eddie Murphy, but this turgid take on Mulan is most parts Ancient Chinese artifice, screenwriting built on generic platitudes and action borrowing from Bollywood and wuxia films with a fraction of the artistry or awesome bewilderment. Especially with the crutch of a 90s Disney classic, fascinating folklore and bottomless financial resources, this live action remake is a dismally disappointing failing no matter how many dimwits spent 30 dollars on something they probably could've found elsewhere online for free.
I haven't even mentioned the film's multiple off-camera controversies. Take your pick: there's the absence of Chinese and Asian talent on the production side, lead Yifei Lui’s political comments suggestively supporting police brutality in Hong Kong and lest we forget the film credits lend their thanks to the same governmental body in charge of the Xinjiang internment camps. What do human rights matter when we need pickup shots right? The alienating condescension toward American and Asian markets has definitively underscored Disney’s tactlessness and inability to create new or (God forbid) original content that doesn’t assume its audience is dumber than dirt.
The movie has flashes of nice spectacle and borderline intriguing takes (witches? Alright) that are hastily squandered. And just like Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin (remember that match made in heaven?) all the colorful sets and costumes stink of disingenuousness — just about every moment looks like actors stranded on set or before a green screen. Ironically, New Zealand director Niki Caro only gets you to lend yourself to a fantastical reality during the halfhearted, funereal dialogue scenes. However, even with dominating over-seriousness, Mulan never falters in sustaining some manner of interest — nobody can blow 200 million dollars like Disney.
I still refuse to see The Lion King redo — and on that note why would I bother with Tim Burton's Dumbo honestly? — so I can't say for certain, but what could have easily been a worthless watermark for an awful, cancerous film business gambit is instead a pedestrian, scarcely palatable new low.
Whether you’re looking through a political, economic or cultural lens, Mulan is a monument to mediocrity and a how-to guide for fumbling what was thought to be routine international brown-nosing and creative recycling. It's a big, phony, inexcusable flub on Disney's part.
As someone who wanted this to be in the vein of Cinderella five years back so we could return to slightly less egregious cash-grab adaptations of the studio's older animated films, I can say this film made no argument that the trend — which has Cruella, The Little Mermaid and other nonsensical acts of stiflingly regurgitative media down the pipeline — has done anything but produce mounting cinematic waste, each more soulless than the last, since it started.
I didn’t want to yearn for all the musical numbers or a fun-size animated dragon voiced by Eddie Murphy, but this turgid take on Mulan is most parts Ancient Chinese artifice, screenwriting built on generic platitudes and action borrowing from Bollywood and wuxia films with a fraction of the artistry or awesome bewilderment. Especially with the crutch of a 90s Disney classic, fascinating folklore and bottomless financial resources, this live action remake is a dismally disappointing failing no matter how many dimwits spent 30 dollars on something they probably could've found elsewhere online for free.
I haven't even mentioned the film's multiple off-camera controversies. Take your pick: there's the absence of Chinese and Asian talent on the production side, lead Yifei Lui’s political comments suggestively supporting police brutality in Hong Kong and lest we forget the film credits lend their thanks to the same governmental body in charge of the Xinjiang internment camps. What do human rights matter when we need pickup shots right? The alienating condescension toward American and Asian markets has definitively underscored Disney’s tactlessness and inability to create new or (God forbid) original content that doesn’t assume its audience is dumber than dirt.
The movie has flashes of nice spectacle and borderline intriguing takes (witches? Alright) that are hastily squandered. And just like Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin (remember that match made in heaven?) all the colorful sets and costumes stink of disingenuousness — just about every moment looks like actors stranded on set or before a green screen. Ironically, New Zealand director Niki Caro only gets you to lend yourself to a fantastical reality during the halfhearted, funereal dialogue scenes. However, even with dominating over-seriousness, Mulan never falters in sustaining some manner of interest — nobody can blow 200 million dollars like Disney.
I still refuse to see The Lion King redo — and on that note why would I bother with Tim Burton's Dumbo honestly? — so I can't say for certain, but what could have easily been a worthless watermark for an awful, cancerous film business gambit is instead a pedestrian, scarcely palatable new low.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
Unless he's actively deepened your depression, you can't extol Charlie Kaufman enough. The screenwriting savant came to fame bouncing back and forth between celebrated pairings with art house eccentrics — first Spike Jones' Being John Malkovich and Michel Gondry's Human Nature, then again for Jones' second feature Adaptation. and later Gondry's sophomore effort Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. George Clooney's 2002 directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind happened somewhere in the middle, though Kaufman's says his scripted input is hardly represented in the final film.
His wistful, introspective, recursive, progressively mortality-obsessed filmography speaks for itself but maybe I’m just used to Kaufman’s sinewy, serpentine existential extremism. Even after pushing the envelope nearly off the table in his ego-evaporating directorial debut Synecdoche, New York, his third and arguably most stupefying film advances his inscrutable perplexities far indeed, but not quite enough to spoil a new masterpiece. For introverts like me even the most abnormal, unpleasant, strange and sad moment of I’m Thinking of Ending Things is as stimulating and efficaciously relatable as anything Kaufman has put his name to. Just as Gondry made The Science of Sleep and Be Kind, Rewind his own and only a solo Jonze could have fashioned Her, Kaufman's cosmically caustic visions sit apart from (and probably a hair or two above) his revered collaborations. He doesn't necessarily need surrealism and visual invention to disclose his passionate, pathetic point of view, though the experimentation rarely hurts. As a film vying for his most disconcerting and disassociated to date, Kaufman's latest is no cakewalk.
Synecdoche has more prodigious ambition in a shorter runtime but here he's created an even more off-putting, cryptic, semi-lucid dream of a film at least equal in cerebral magnitude. The littlest details of I'm Thinking of Ending Things — the nostalgic motifs, the kookiness of single-children parents, the intermittent glimpses at the intersections of fantasy and memory, the interrupted, all too accurate internal monologues, the apprehensive unease behind every one of its mindful, suspenseful setups, the fake Robert Zemeckis romantic comedy, that godforsaken talking pig that keeps popping up — are all in the service of a director's grave, purposeful, dizzying thematic perspective.
I wish I could just confirm Kaufman a genius so I feel better about liking him so much but, as uncommon as it is, this film derives from somewhere other than his own mind. I don't doubt Iain Reid's book is good, and I wouldn't want to pretend every superlative element about the adaptation is solely Kaufman’s realization. However, the central and peripheral subject matter are so indistinguishably attuned to Kaufman's element — if the novel is indeed a superb thriller, Charlie has found something personally intriguing to be redrafted into another installment of his mournfully transcendent repertoire on the senses of self, identity or lack thereof.
As the story implies there’s the nagging notion of romantic futility in the spotlight but never does the movie let up its rotation of pseudo-intellectual exchanges, cultural references and philosophical inquiries. Otherwise Kaufman’s gone full Lynch, loading the film with layers of mystifying subconscious madness and, wouldn't you know, a handful of doppelgängers to boot. Even at its most unambiguous there is some manner of puzzling abstraction worthy of Luis Buñuel.
I can’t even see Brie Larson (the original lead casting choice) playing the nebulous role half as well as Jessie Buckley. Lucy, Louisa, Lucia, whoever she is at the moment, is a flawed, nearly shapeless ideal with a revolving set of interchangeable professions, interests and personalities — yet even as a forged, subservient figment of another's imagination, she is suffused with gnawing doubt. Jesse Plemons is all too recognizably eager as the earnest, brainy farm boy (or really our janitor character's projected self in awkward youth? This movie is like a never-ending, rarely explained descent into The Twilight Zone). David Thewlis — a key voice in Kaufman’s second film, the 2015 stop motion animated mid-life crisis film Anomalisa — and Toni Collette are superb as crusted, abstractly aging parents. The elders play different periods of their autumnal selves as the second act sees their states slipping forward and backward in time (without cumbersome Christopher Nolan exposition) and their performances are excellent at any stage.
The film thrives on nimble, edifying discourse — Kaufman's script nonchalantly, nigh invisibly drops burdensome universal truths like he’s Richard Linklater's satanic rival out to offset much more easygoing experiential ideas. Ending Things fills in enough literary, artistic and historical footnotes to fill a few Jean-Luc Godard or Woody Allen films no problem — see, now I'm doing it too. William Wordsworth, Oklahoma!, Leo Tolstoy, Andrew Wyeth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oscar Wilde, Ralph Albert Blakelock, Anna Kavan, Pauline Kael, David Foster Wallace, Guy Debord, so many citations. If Kaufman wasn’t so brilliantly, smoothly self-aware all the name-dropping would be regularly aggravating.
Ultimately there’s no way to look at this film without gleaning some cynical impression of reality, whether its the entropy of romantic feelings at the top or the subcutaneous layers of geriatrics, below the impossible creativity of the desperate imagination and the consistently, often abruptly collapsing and reforming versions of our individuality — Kaufman is after only those who can stomach his most stubborn cinematic inclinations. As our many-named, multitalented, trepidatious protagonist comments about the snowy landscape that becomes the backdrop for the film’s seemingly eternal car ride conversations, this exceedingly exceptional Netflix feature is “beautiful in a bleak, heartbroken kind of way.” I’m Thinking of Ending Things offers so many avenues for the mind to see itself in the film’s quaint meet-the-parents core premise and outer shell of lonely daydreams. It’s one of the subtlest, most scintillating psychological thrillers I’ve ever seen and another solemn success for Kaufman’s unquenchable urge to mirror the discomfort and disorientation of real life and all its uncontrollable inconveniences. It's both distressing and miraculously healthy, like eating your vegetables and finding out they're actually delicious.
If dwelling on many of the more miserable sides of life isn’t your idea of movies, move on. If you want to be phantasmically engaged, enraged and enlightened, you can’t do much better in the desert of 2020 distractions. The average person would agree art is oftentimes best when it serves as an inspirational remedy for existence; but I’m Thinking of Ending Things is such potent, purifying poison and the most nearly perfect film of the year.
Unless he's actively deepened your depression, you can't extol Charlie Kaufman enough. The screenwriting savant came to fame bouncing back and forth between celebrated pairings with art house eccentrics — first Spike Jones' Being John Malkovich and Michel Gondry's Human Nature, then again for Jones' second feature Adaptation. and later Gondry's sophomore effort Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. George Clooney's 2002 directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind happened somewhere in the middle, though Kaufman's says his scripted input is hardly represented in the final film.
His wistful, introspective, recursive, progressively mortality-obsessed filmography speaks for itself but maybe I’m just used to Kaufman’s sinewy, serpentine existential extremism. Even after pushing the envelope nearly off the table in his ego-evaporating directorial debut Synecdoche, New York, his third and arguably most stupefying film advances his inscrutable perplexities far indeed, but not quite enough to spoil a new masterpiece. For introverts like me even the most abnormal, unpleasant, strange and sad moment of I’m Thinking of Ending Things is as stimulating and efficaciously relatable as anything Kaufman has put his name to. Just as Gondry made The Science of Sleep and Be Kind, Rewind his own and only a solo Jonze could have fashioned Her, Kaufman's cosmically caustic visions sit apart from (and probably a hair or two above) his revered collaborations. He doesn't necessarily need surrealism and visual invention to disclose his passionate, pathetic point of view, though the experimentation rarely hurts. As a film vying for his most disconcerting and disassociated to date, Kaufman's latest is no cakewalk.
Synecdoche has more prodigious ambition in a shorter runtime but here he's created an even more off-putting, cryptic, semi-lucid dream of a film at least equal in cerebral magnitude. The littlest details of I'm Thinking of Ending Things — the nostalgic motifs, the kookiness of single-children parents, the intermittent glimpses at the intersections of fantasy and memory, the interrupted, all too accurate internal monologues, the apprehensive unease behind every one of its mindful, suspenseful setups, the fake Robert Zemeckis romantic comedy, that godforsaken talking pig that keeps popping up — are all in the service of a director's grave, purposeful, dizzying thematic perspective.
I wish I could just confirm Kaufman a genius so I feel better about liking him so much but, as uncommon as it is, this film derives from somewhere other than his own mind. I don't doubt Iain Reid's book is good, and I wouldn't want to pretend every superlative element about the adaptation is solely Kaufman’s realization. However, the central and peripheral subject matter are so indistinguishably attuned to Kaufman's element — if the novel is indeed a superb thriller, Charlie has found something personally intriguing to be redrafted into another installment of his mournfully transcendent repertoire on the senses of self, identity or lack thereof.
As the story implies there’s the nagging notion of romantic futility in the spotlight but never does the movie let up its rotation of pseudo-intellectual exchanges, cultural references and philosophical inquiries. Otherwise Kaufman’s gone full Lynch, loading the film with layers of mystifying subconscious madness and, wouldn't you know, a handful of doppelgängers to boot. Even at its most unambiguous there is some manner of puzzling abstraction worthy of Luis Buñuel.
I can’t even see Brie Larson (the original lead casting choice) playing the nebulous role half as well as Jessie Buckley. Lucy, Louisa, Lucia, whoever she is at the moment, is a flawed, nearly shapeless ideal with a revolving set of interchangeable professions, interests and personalities — yet even as a forged, subservient figment of another's imagination, she is suffused with gnawing doubt. Jesse Plemons is all too recognizably eager as the earnest, brainy farm boy (or really our janitor character's projected self in awkward youth? This movie is like a never-ending, rarely explained descent into The Twilight Zone). David Thewlis — a key voice in Kaufman’s second film, the 2015 stop motion animated mid-life crisis film Anomalisa — and Toni Collette are superb as crusted, abstractly aging parents. The elders play different periods of their autumnal selves as the second act sees their states slipping forward and backward in time (without cumbersome Christopher Nolan exposition) and their performances are excellent at any stage.
The film thrives on nimble, edifying discourse — Kaufman's script nonchalantly, nigh invisibly drops burdensome universal truths like he’s Richard Linklater's satanic rival out to offset much more easygoing experiential ideas. Ending Things fills in enough literary, artistic and historical footnotes to fill a few Jean-Luc Godard or Woody Allen films no problem — see, now I'm doing it too. William Wordsworth, Oklahoma!, Leo Tolstoy, Andrew Wyeth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oscar Wilde, Ralph Albert Blakelock, Anna Kavan, Pauline Kael, David Foster Wallace, Guy Debord, so many citations. If Kaufman wasn’t so brilliantly, smoothly self-aware all the name-dropping would be regularly aggravating.
Ultimately there’s no way to look at this film without gleaning some cynical impression of reality, whether its the entropy of romantic feelings at the top or the subcutaneous layers of geriatrics, below the impossible creativity of the desperate imagination and the consistently, often abruptly collapsing and reforming versions of our individuality — Kaufman is after only those who can stomach his most stubborn cinematic inclinations. As our many-named, multitalented, trepidatious protagonist comments about the snowy landscape that becomes the backdrop for the film’s seemingly eternal car ride conversations, this exceedingly exceptional Netflix feature is “beautiful in a bleak, heartbroken kind of way.” I’m Thinking of Ending Things offers so many avenues for the mind to see itself in the film’s quaint meet-the-parents core premise and outer shell of lonely daydreams. It’s one of the subtlest, most scintillating psychological thrillers I’ve ever seen and another solemn success for Kaufman’s unquenchable urge to mirror the discomfort and disorientation of real life and all its uncontrollable inconveniences. It's both distressing and miraculously healthy, like eating your vegetables and finding out they're actually delicious.
If dwelling on many of the more miserable sides of life isn’t your idea of movies, move on. If you want to be phantasmically engaged, enraged and enlightened, you can’t do much better in the desert of 2020 distractions. The average person would agree art is oftentimes best when it serves as an inspirational remedy for existence; but I’m Thinking of Ending Things is such potent, purifying poison and the most nearly perfect film of the year.
Tenet briefing
3 (out of 4)
I doubt Christopher Nolan will ever concoct a better litmus test with which to filter out the casual admirers from his diehard fanboys. It's almost as if while scouring negative reviews of Inception and Interstellar the blockbuster filmmaking magnate decided regular old convolution was not enough to deter the nonbelievers and challenge the true Nolanites. This film will make you feel just plain stupid on the first round and it might not be your fault — the second time it will click much cleaner and yet you'll still be longing for the digital or physical release when you can ACTIVATE SOME GODDAMN SUBTITLES and likely unwrap a new layer of not only Nolan's densest movie but one of the major Hollywood mindbenders of this or any era.
Really, if the first sequence doesn’t have you immediately flabbergasted you will be by the final battle. It’s so difficult to praise or nitpick what you genuinely aren’t even sure you saw, let alone understood. In the soupy, sometimes staticky sound mixing it's difficult to distinguish where the speculative details and physical substance of the story end and begin. The best part about heady, original sci-fi filmmaking costing over 200 million dollars — sadly about as rare as actual time travel — is if there is some ingenuity at its core unbeknownst to dismissive audiences, it will only be recognized and appreciated once everyone's caught up. All I'm saying is the initial reception of Tenet is how many cult classics have been welcomed. I despise the predigested aspect of any art (mostly music) and in Nolan's 11th film he keeps the spoon-feeding for simpletons to an almost nonexistent minimum — although, paradoxically, his exposition is cranked as high as ever — and I'm only pretty sure all the confusion will slowly dissolve and give way to something more. But considering the director is the same guy who has his own mind blown by the fact that mirrors reflect side to side but not up and down (ever heard of a spoon good sir?), maybe it's all a bunch of bananas.
At least it's easy to see why Nolan didn’t want this film released on your phone, for even the muddy distortion of every other scene of dialogue can't mangle the purposely gargantuan IMAX/70mm-directed arrangement of practical future-espionage showmanship. Regardless of the format, Tenet will make you yearn to catch every word of every scene just based on how much knowledge breathlessly whizzes past you. But even if the sound entered my ears full and unsullied, this would surely be one of those rare films requiring at least two viewings to grasp both its extraneous minutiae and possibly very crucial thematic and logical design.
As someone who believes the oft-debated director’s finest hour was the period from The Prestige cresting at The Dark Knight, this is Chris’s comeback after almost a decade of overreaching ambition and weak developments on his obsessions with time, reality and faith. Tenet is an overstuffed, perplexing and downright exasperating barrage of befuddlement at worst, but it also represents all the best things popular cinema can offer: elaborate, how-the-hell-did-they-shoot-that cinematic thrills, intellectual — or at least pseudo-intellectual — philosophy and plotting as well as meticulously inscribed psychological manipulation. It’s hard to think of any large-scale movie since Inception invoking such useful, interesting and necessary post-viewing discussion, and this film, though not as immediately rewarding, is at least a manic elaboration of the same sort of high-concept, neo-noir, narrative-contorting mind games.
Jon David Washington does his darndest and is a fine protagonist, although his in-film referral as such is so stupid it keeps Tenet teetering over parody; this is Nolan's riskiest, most insane undertaking exceeding even the nearly three-hour muzzled extravagance of both The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar. However if this film is in debt to any previous Nolan entry it is without hesitation 2000's Memento, although clearly Tenet has more head-spinning schemes for the ol' noggin than the gimmicky genius of that short-term memory loss thriller. Robert Pattinson charismatically sells a bizarre friendship in another sensible step on his way to the Bond-like hall of Batmans.
Believe me, like anyone who felt less than smart coming out of Tenet — and especially as part of an audience that almost fetishizes a bit of mental superiority — I wanted to tear up this movie's logic as if all its effort and ambition hinged on love being the key to time and the universe or something laughable like that. Nolan may have retread his concerns about climate change's effect on our near future but in terms of a story that makes you feel like all of its components were judiciously considered, Tenet makes Interstellar look like Spielberg-simulating child’s play. The Dark Knight Rises is better for memes at this point and Dunkirk, his last, was just as risky as Tenet if antithetically restrained.
There are glaring defects and miscalculations — almost inconceivably bad sound design, a disdain for invigorating pacing, the possibly pointless floodgate of fan theories the story opens up, not to mention Elizabeth Debicki as the whiny, plot-pushing wife and Kenneth Branagh's hackneyed Russian villain character that's basically identical to his self-directed B-movie bad guy turn in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Personally I can't wait for all the neurotic nerds to play the movie in reverse and infer some irrelevant synchronicities; after all Nolan is at his most masterful and magician-like when he beckons you to extrapolate more than might really be there. For better or worse, Tenet is the Nolan film to end them all — a mighty, maddening new calling card for the rare, prolific English mainstream auteur.
I doubt Christopher Nolan will ever concoct a better litmus test with which to filter out the casual admirers from his diehard fanboys. It's almost as if while scouring negative reviews of Inception and Interstellar the blockbuster filmmaking magnate decided regular old convolution was not enough to deter the nonbelievers and challenge the true Nolanites. This film will make you feel just plain stupid on the first round and it might not be your fault — the second time it will click much cleaner and yet you'll still be longing for the digital or physical release when you can ACTIVATE SOME GODDAMN SUBTITLES and likely unwrap a new layer of not only Nolan's densest movie but one of the major Hollywood mindbenders of this or any era.
Really, if the first sequence doesn’t have you immediately flabbergasted you will be by the final battle. It’s so difficult to praise or nitpick what you genuinely aren’t even sure you saw, let alone understood. In the soupy, sometimes staticky sound mixing it's difficult to distinguish where the speculative details and physical substance of the story end and begin. The best part about heady, original sci-fi filmmaking costing over 200 million dollars — sadly about as rare as actual time travel — is if there is some ingenuity at its core unbeknownst to dismissive audiences, it will only be recognized and appreciated once everyone's caught up. All I'm saying is the initial reception of Tenet is how many cult classics have been welcomed. I despise the predigested aspect of any art (mostly music) and in Nolan's 11th film he keeps the spoon-feeding for simpletons to an almost nonexistent minimum — although, paradoxically, his exposition is cranked as high as ever — and I'm only pretty sure all the confusion will slowly dissolve and give way to something more. But considering the director is the same guy who has his own mind blown by the fact that mirrors reflect side to side but not up and down (ever heard of a spoon good sir?), maybe it's all a bunch of bananas.
At least it's easy to see why Nolan didn’t want this film released on your phone, for even the muddy distortion of every other scene of dialogue can't mangle the purposely gargantuan IMAX/70mm-directed arrangement of practical future-espionage showmanship. Regardless of the format, Tenet will make you yearn to catch every word of every scene just based on how much knowledge breathlessly whizzes past you. But even if the sound entered my ears full and unsullied, this would surely be one of those rare films requiring at least two viewings to grasp both its extraneous minutiae and possibly very crucial thematic and logical design.
As someone who believes the oft-debated director’s finest hour was the period from The Prestige cresting at The Dark Knight, this is Chris’s comeback after almost a decade of overreaching ambition and weak developments on his obsessions with time, reality and faith. Tenet is an overstuffed, perplexing and downright exasperating barrage of befuddlement at worst, but it also represents all the best things popular cinema can offer: elaborate, how-the-hell-did-they-shoot-that cinematic thrills, intellectual — or at least pseudo-intellectual — philosophy and plotting as well as meticulously inscribed psychological manipulation. It’s hard to think of any large-scale movie since Inception invoking such useful, interesting and necessary post-viewing discussion, and this film, though not as immediately rewarding, is at least a manic elaboration of the same sort of high-concept, neo-noir, narrative-contorting mind games.
Jon David Washington does his darndest and is a fine protagonist, although his in-film referral as such is so stupid it keeps Tenet teetering over parody; this is Nolan's riskiest, most insane undertaking exceeding even the nearly three-hour muzzled extravagance of both The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar. However if this film is in debt to any previous Nolan entry it is without hesitation 2000's Memento, although clearly Tenet has more head-spinning schemes for the ol' noggin than the gimmicky genius of that short-term memory loss thriller. Robert Pattinson charismatically sells a bizarre friendship in another sensible step on his way to the Bond-like hall of Batmans.
Believe me, like anyone who felt less than smart coming out of Tenet — and especially as part of an audience that almost fetishizes a bit of mental superiority — I wanted to tear up this movie's logic as if all its effort and ambition hinged on love being the key to time and the universe or something laughable like that. Nolan may have retread his concerns about climate change's effect on our near future but in terms of a story that makes you feel like all of its components were judiciously considered, Tenet makes Interstellar look like Spielberg-simulating child’s play. The Dark Knight Rises is better for memes at this point and Dunkirk, his last, was just as risky as Tenet if antithetically restrained.
There are glaring defects and miscalculations — almost inconceivably bad sound design, a disdain for invigorating pacing, the possibly pointless floodgate of fan theories the story opens up, not to mention Elizabeth Debicki as the whiny, plot-pushing wife and Kenneth Branagh's hackneyed Russian villain character that's basically identical to his self-directed B-movie bad guy turn in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Personally I can't wait for all the neurotic nerds to play the movie in reverse and infer some irrelevant synchronicities; after all Nolan is at his most masterful and magician-like when he beckons you to extrapolate more than might really be there. For better or worse, Tenet is the Nolan film to end them all — a mighty, maddening new calling card for the rare, prolific English mainstream auteur.
The New Mutants briefing
2 (out of 4)
It’s hard to believe after ages of troubled post-production and looming reshoots which never came to pass during Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox, this is supposedly exactly the final product director Josh Boone promised studio executives years prior. This cursed movie about cursed kids is just pitiful enough to make you wonder why it didn’t remain on the shelf indefinitely.
We thought we just put the franchise to bed with last year's disgraceful Dark Phoenix but The New Mutants is genuinely the last pathetic gasp for the X-Men movies as we've known them. At least the idea of Boone's movie is something approximately new instead of yet another awkward, aspiring blockbuster bookend to an already butchered series. Don't even bother asking where this works into the greater, utterly buggered timeline — we don't even have a forced Hugh Jackman cameo to give us a hint.
Pitched as a bold superhero/horror hybrid, this timid experimentation has nothing on Darkman, Blade, Blade II or even Ghost Rider. On the spooky side, New Mutants doesn't quite look like something inspired by A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining or its other alleged influences. Conversely the film also fumbles the juvenile, John Hughes-tier coming-of-age stuff as well as the asylum-centric psychological paradigms of movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Shutter Island. Despite its novel collage of genres, this stand-alone (yet annoyingly sequel-prospecting) final episode of the screwy, sometimes savory X-Men franchise comes off nearly as doctored and diluted as Dark Phoenix’s worst passages.
But Disney didn't care how it turned out and the all too eager release of The New Mutants as soon as theaters reopened indicated a plain case of cutting losses rather than finding the right time for a film to succeed. But The New Mutants deserves, as anyone could have guessed, every bit of indifference — the story is listless and repetitious, the acting is mostly TV-grade and the thrills in any supernatural sense are wanting.
At least the lead performers aren’t helpless. Strangely enough the movie's only well-developed thread is the understated lesbian romance between our newcomer and functional enough lead Blu Hunt as Dani Moonstar/Mirage and Maisie Williams as Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane. Anya Taylor-Joy's hammy role as Russian sorceress Illyana Rasputin/Magik is entirely welcome, though on the sidelines Charlie Heaton, Henry Zaga (as Cannonball and Sunspot respectively) and poor Alice Braga are carelessly cast and clumsily written.
There are a few fine visual effects even within the silliest detours like the kooky, comical climax but never does The New Mutants sink into consistently undeniable self-parody the way Dark Phoenix does. This disappointing parting gift is its own discouraging calamity, just not one worth reviling. I'll take a dour distraction over a professional disaster any day assuming I'm not in a masochistic mood, which is never certain many months into a pandemic.
It’s hard to believe after ages of troubled post-production and looming reshoots which never came to pass during Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox, this is supposedly exactly the final product director Josh Boone promised studio executives years prior. This cursed movie about cursed kids is just pitiful enough to make you wonder why it didn’t remain on the shelf indefinitely.
We thought we just put the franchise to bed with last year's disgraceful Dark Phoenix but The New Mutants is genuinely the last pathetic gasp for the X-Men movies as we've known them. At least the idea of Boone's movie is something approximately new instead of yet another awkward, aspiring blockbuster bookend to an already butchered series. Don't even bother asking where this works into the greater, utterly buggered timeline — we don't even have a forced Hugh Jackman cameo to give us a hint.
Pitched as a bold superhero/horror hybrid, this timid experimentation has nothing on Darkman, Blade, Blade II or even Ghost Rider. On the spooky side, New Mutants doesn't quite look like something inspired by A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Shining or its other alleged influences. Conversely the film also fumbles the juvenile, John Hughes-tier coming-of-age stuff as well as the asylum-centric psychological paradigms of movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Shutter Island. Despite its novel collage of genres, this stand-alone (yet annoyingly sequel-prospecting) final episode of the screwy, sometimes savory X-Men franchise comes off nearly as doctored and diluted as Dark Phoenix’s worst passages.
But Disney didn't care how it turned out and the all too eager release of The New Mutants as soon as theaters reopened indicated a plain case of cutting losses rather than finding the right time for a film to succeed. But The New Mutants deserves, as anyone could have guessed, every bit of indifference — the story is listless and repetitious, the acting is mostly TV-grade and the thrills in any supernatural sense are wanting.
At least the lead performers aren’t helpless. Strangely enough the movie's only well-developed thread is the understated lesbian romance between our newcomer and functional enough lead Blu Hunt as Dani Moonstar/Mirage and Maisie Williams as Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane. Anya Taylor-Joy's hammy role as Russian sorceress Illyana Rasputin/Magik is entirely welcome, though on the sidelines Charlie Heaton, Henry Zaga (as Cannonball and Sunspot respectively) and poor Alice Braga are carelessly cast and clumsily written.
There are a few fine visual effects even within the silliest detours like the kooky, comical climax but never does The New Mutants sink into consistently undeniable self-parody the way Dark Phoenix does. This disappointing parting gift is its own discouraging calamity, just not one worth reviling. I'll take a dour distraction over a professional disaster any day assuming I'm not in a masochistic mood, which is never certain many months into a pandemic.
Irresistible briefing
3 (out of 4)
Next to the adolescent button-pushing of The Hunt, the award for the most unapologetically centrist movie of 2020 decidedly goes to Jon Stewart's Irresistible. Following a personally important real-life drama in the underseen Rosewater six years back, the man has abandoned plans at HBO (which have resurfaced in a sync-up with AppleTV+ for a new Daily Show-esque current events program) in order to reconnect with the passionate political satire his now-legendary career summarized so perfectly.
With Steve Carell as a reliable, pliable comic centerpiece, Irresistible manages to have its cake and eat it too as both a smattering of the contemporary ideas whirling inside Stewart's head and a more than decently digestible piece of entertainment. There are more jabs at liberal hypocrisy (maybe the most effectively since Get Out) than the expected dead horses to beat: the social gulf between the conservative voters and their representatives, or just the stock TRUMP STUPID attitude ad infinitum.
Thankfully between Chris Cooper and Mackenzie Davis selling the small-town sincerity while we enjoy the comedic fortitude of Carell, Rose Byrne, Topher Grace and Natasha Lyonne, there’s enough aptitude to aid the insight into the microscopic facets of government in action and the gamesmanship of the whole electoral system. Irresistible should illuminate anyone looking for a dose of reasonable truth, particularly in an era so bankrupt of comprehensible normalcy or levelheaded bipartisan communication coming from either side.
The final twist has its own thematic worth justifying some trickery beforehand, mostly due to Stewart's skillful anticipation of your own predispositions. Not every attempt at an impressionable argument lands gracefully and neither does every joke. Nevertheless this is politics as entertainment in the only place it belongs — the movies, not our 'unbiased' news sources that totally don’t selectively embellish certain talking points to ensure the echo chamber keeps on banging and clanging.
As the man who set the stage for so many other left-leaning comedy pundits — Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee and most famous of all CBS's Stephen Colbert — Irresistible could've been an ironic cluster of narrow political awareness. Instead it has the heat of that famous Crossfire interview, more or less Stewart's objective, almost apolitical axiom — the film has a lot on its mind without pulling out a condescending soapbox or prescribing how you should think. Stewart simply makes too much sense and his ridicules still deeply satisfy. This is the mainstream media doing its job.
Next to the adolescent button-pushing of The Hunt, the award for the most unapologetically centrist movie of 2020 decidedly goes to Jon Stewart's Irresistible. Following a personally important real-life drama in the underseen Rosewater six years back, the man has abandoned plans at HBO (which have resurfaced in a sync-up with AppleTV+ for a new Daily Show-esque current events program) in order to reconnect with the passionate political satire his now-legendary career summarized so perfectly.
With Steve Carell as a reliable, pliable comic centerpiece, Irresistible manages to have its cake and eat it too as both a smattering of the contemporary ideas whirling inside Stewart's head and a more than decently digestible piece of entertainment. There are more jabs at liberal hypocrisy (maybe the most effectively since Get Out) than the expected dead horses to beat: the social gulf between the conservative voters and their representatives, or just the stock TRUMP STUPID attitude ad infinitum.
Thankfully between Chris Cooper and Mackenzie Davis selling the small-town sincerity while we enjoy the comedic fortitude of Carell, Rose Byrne, Topher Grace and Natasha Lyonne, there’s enough aptitude to aid the insight into the microscopic facets of government in action and the gamesmanship of the whole electoral system. Irresistible should illuminate anyone looking for a dose of reasonable truth, particularly in an era so bankrupt of comprehensible normalcy or levelheaded bipartisan communication coming from either side.
The final twist has its own thematic worth justifying some trickery beforehand, mostly due to Stewart's skillful anticipation of your own predispositions. Not every attempt at an impressionable argument lands gracefully and neither does every joke. Nevertheless this is politics as entertainment in the only place it belongs — the movies, not our 'unbiased' news sources that totally don’t selectively embellish certain talking points to ensure the echo chamber keeps on banging and clanging.
As the man who set the stage for so many other left-leaning comedy pundits — Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee and most famous of all CBS's Stephen Colbert — Irresistible could've been an ironic cluster of narrow political awareness. Instead it has the heat of that famous Crossfire interview, more or less Stewart's objective, almost apolitical axiom — the film has a lot on its mind without pulling out a condescending soapbox or prescribing how you should think. Stewart simply makes too much sense and his ridicules still deeply satisfy. This is the mainstream media doing its job.
Artemis Fowl, Greyhound and
The King of Staten Island briefings
Artemis Fowl
1 ½ (out of 4)
You got me Disney, I’ve never read Eoin Colfer’s very popular young adult fantasy novels — I was too caught up in Alex Rider, Lemony Snicket and other rewarding tween distractions. But just because I skimmed a Wikipedia article on the first book in the eight-part Artemis Fowl series doesn’t mean I couldn’t have just as easily figured out at a glance how much you tampered with the spirit of the source material.
Whether it's several awkwardly inserted dialogue dubs, editing so hapless it's obvious at least an hour was cropped out or a narrative framework designed to force Josh Gad into yet another Disney debacle, this sterile fluke makes Percy Jackson look like a feat of filmmaking. Speaking of Gad, the man ruins everything — his horrid stamp marks not only both Frozen features and the Beauty and the Beast redo, but he even dismantled a recent, potentially lovely Zoom reunion of the cast of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. His gravelly narration and insulting improvisation renders a skewered, lifeless wannabe blockbuster turned direct-to-streaming disgrace all the worse.
Apart from Gad the casting is decent. Colin Farrell (who only joined the film during reshoots) does what he can as Papa Fowl, an excellent Lara McDonnell makes you believe in fairies and Judi Dench, who is apparently hungry for sillier supporting roles these days à la Cats, can't help but be a pleasure to watch. And young novice Ferdia Shaw, grandson of the late actor Robert Shaw, is undeniably tolerable as our prodigious titular descendant of legendary criminals.
But trying to make a zoomer of the reclusive, mischievous 12-year-old mastermind from the get-go is just going to piss off everyone that cared about Fowl to begin with. Warping his character to fit some hackneyed origin story is not only stupid and unjustified screenwriting, but ultimately shortchanges the film's considerable production quality and Kenneth Branagh’s unembarrassed direction. It really feels like the acting legend and efficient filmmaker sold his soul to Disney during the 20th Century Fox acquisition to secure his Poirot sequel Death on the Nile.
Greyhound
3 (out of 4)
Greyhound is the ultimate dad movie forged by your pops' favorite actor — somewhere about halfway into this naval WWII exercise your own father might just combust from such finely tuned, matter-of-fact, masculine middle-aged media.
Though I would look for any reason to discount AppleTV+ (good God is that the name they went with?) as a vessel for cinematic content, for their first noteworthy theatrical procurement Greyhound works well enough at home even though it must have cost enough to anticipate maybe nine figures at the box office. It’s the finest at-sea film we’ve seen in some time — director Aaron Schneider does well in elaborating on more rarely discussed areas of 20th century warfare by simply illustrating a few ships and some watery geography before throwing you into the mix and quickly pulling off a realistic relay race of fine editing and green screen trickery that passes by fairly cogently.
It’s not some kind of Master and Commander, Das Boot or even as good as Nolan's knotty, antimatter war flick Dunkirk — but there are so few genre greats because sea-fare is not the easiest to recreate convincingly or cheaply. What one would expect to be a middling military masturbation session is instead a period thriller that aptly reproduces the risk and treachery of crossing the Atlantic without air cover in the early days of the United States' involvement in WWII. The movie is ruthlessly compact and doesn’t waste a minute of your time — as more a summer flick than strained Oscar bait there’s not much else you could ask for. We’ll see if Apple’s investments in Sofia Coppola and Martin Scorsese can increase the clout of the streaming service with the least respect and the most to prove — unless you really want to count Peacock.
Regardless of any distribution strategy, it's amazing after all these years Tom Hanks — who also scribed the adaptive screenplay — can still act his ass off so much you seldom discredit the film’s believability or showmanship. He capably lets you enjoy the roughly ceaseless tension and convenience store history lesson.
The King of Staten Island
2 ½ (out of 4)
There is something to be said for wearing your heart on your sleeve — that is the purpose of tattoos after all and the most consequential asset of the latest star vehicle stewarded by the relatively selective comedy auteur Judd Apatow.
But The King of Staten Island is more than just the Pete Davidson showreel like Trainwreck was for Amy Schumer. Remember Trainwreck? Better yet remember Amy Schumer? This feels like the closest thing to an arguably artistic attempt the stringently juvenile director has pieced together — or should I say DRAWN OUT for almost two and a half hours — since 2009's Funny People. Staten Island doesn’t quite touch the appeal, honesty or unflagging hilarity of The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up, nor does Davidson’s breakout role feel like the inception of a new comedy bigwig like Steve Carell and Seth Rogen. But the SNL heavy hitter gets to flex those scrawny muscles enough to satiate his fans and properly introduce himself to a general audience.
King is good enough, built on memorable, fleshed out characters and consistent enough laughter even if it is predictably crude, indulgent and overlong. The biographical elements would feel a tad more personal if not for Davidson’s continued public disclosures concerning his late father — who, if you didn't already know, died on 9/11 — on SNL and his stand-up special, though the incorporation of real life gives Apatow some room to fashion a bit of humanity and prove he’s not a broken record when it comes to the screw-up subjects he always exhibits. Staten Island almost feels like a grander Davidson companion piece to the 20-something coming-of-age kicks of Hulu's Big Time Adolescence.
Bill Burr is hilarious especially with a fellow stand-up to knock around words with and Marisa Tomei, who finally looks more or less her age (ENOUGH of the hot mom crap Hollywood), is in rare, sincere form. If the film didn’t eschew its considerations of mental illness by the end — something that affects both Davidson and his character Scott — I’d have kinder words to write.
1 ½ (out of 4)
You got me Disney, I’ve never read Eoin Colfer’s very popular young adult fantasy novels — I was too caught up in Alex Rider, Lemony Snicket and other rewarding tween distractions. But just because I skimmed a Wikipedia article on the first book in the eight-part Artemis Fowl series doesn’t mean I couldn’t have just as easily figured out at a glance how much you tampered with the spirit of the source material.
Whether it's several awkwardly inserted dialogue dubs, editing so hapless it's obvious at least an hour was cropped out or a narrative framework designed to force Josh Gad into yet another Disney debacle, this sterile fluke makes Percy Jackson look like a feat of filmmaking. Speaking of Gad, the man ruins everything — his horrid stamp marks not only both Frozen features and the Beauty and the Beast redo, but he even dismantled a recent, potentially lovely Zoom reunion of the cast of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. His gravelly narration and insulting improvisation renders a skewered, lifeless wannabe blockbuster turned direct-to-streaming disgrace all the worse.
Apart from Gad the casting is decent. Colin Farrell (who only joined the film during reshoots) does what he can as Papa Fowl, an excellent Lara McDonnell makes you believe in fairies and Judi Dench, who is apparently hungry for sillier supporting roles these days à la Cats, can't help but be a pleasure to watch. And young novice Ferdia Shaw, grandson of the late actor Robert Shaw, is undeniably tolerable as our prodigious titular descendant of legendary criminals.
But trying to make a zoomer of the reclusive, mischievous 12-year-old mastermind from the get-go is just going to piss off everyone that cared about Fowl to begin with. Warping his character to fit some hackneyed origin story is not only stupid and unjustified screenwriting, but ultimately shortchanges the film's considerable production quality and Kenneth Branagh’s unembarrassed direction. It really feels like the acting legend and efficient filmmaker sold his soul to Disney during the 20th Century Fox acquisition to secure his Poirot sequel Death on the Nile.
Greyhound
3 (out of 4)
Greyhound is the ultimate dad movie forged by your pops' favorite actor — somewhere about halfway into this naval WWII exercise your own father might just combust from such finely tuned, matter-of-fact, masculine middle-aged media.
Though I would look for any reason to discount AppleTV+ (good God is that the name they went with?) as a vessel for cinematic content, for their first noteworthy theatrical procurement Greyhound works well enough at home even though it must have cost enough to anticipate maybe nine figures at the box office. It’s the finest at-sea film we’ve seen in some time — director Aaron Schneider does well in elaborating on more rarely discussed areas of 20th century warfare by simply illustrating a few ships and some watery geography before throwing you into the mix and quickly pulling off a realistic relay race of fine editing and green screen trickery that passes by fairly cogently.
It’s not some kind of Master and Commander, Das Boot or even as good as Nolan's knotty, antimatter war flick Dunkirk — but there are so few genre greats because sea-fare is not the easiest to recreate convincingly or cheaply. What one would expect to be a middling military masturbation session is instead a period thriller that aptly reproduces the risk and treachery of crossing the Atlantic without air cover in the early days of the United States' involvement in WWII. The movie is ruthlessly compact and doesn’t waste a minute of your time — as more a summer flick than strained Oscar bait there’s not much else you could ask for. We’ll see if Apple’s investments in Sofia Coppola and Martin Scorsese can increase the clout of the streaming service with the least respect and the most to prove — unless you really want to count Peacock.
Regardless of any distribution strategy, it's amazing after all these years Tom Hanks — who also scribed the adaptive screenplay — can still act his ass off so much you seldom discredit the film’s believability or showmanship. He capably lets you enjoy the roughly ceaseless tension and convenience store history lesson.
The King of Staten Island
2 ½ (out of 4)
There is something to be said for wearing your heart on your sleeve — that is the purpose of tattoos after all and the most consequential asset of the latest star vehicle stewarded by the relatively selective comedy auteur Judd Apatow.
But The King of Staten Island is more than just the Pete Davidson showreel like Trainwreck was for Amy Schumer. Remember Trainwreck? Better yet remember Amy Schumer? This feels like the closest thing to an arguably artistic attempt the stringently juvenile director has pieced together — or should I say DRAWN OUT for almost two and a half hours — since 2009's Funny People. Staten Island doesn’t quite touch the appeal, honesty or unflagging hilarity of The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Knocked Up, nor does Davidson’s breakout role feel like the inception of a new comedy bigwig like Steve Carell and Seth Rogen. But the SNL heavy hitter gets to flex those scrawny muscles enough to satiate his fans and properly introduce himself to a general audience.
King is good enough, built on memorable, fleshed out characters and consistent enough laughter even if it is predictably crude, indulgent and overlong. The biographical elements would feel a tad more personal if not for Davidson’s continued public disclosures concerning his late father — who, if you didn't already know, died on 9/11 — on SNL and his stand-up special, though the incorporation of real life gives Apatow some room to fashion a bit of humanity and prove he’s not a broken record when it comes to the screw-up subjects he always exhibits. Staten Island almost feels like a grander Davidson companion piece to the 20-something coming-of-age kicks of Hulu's Big Time Adolescence.
Bill Burr is hilarious especially with a fellow stand-up to knock around words with and Marisa Tomei, who finally looks more or less her age (ENOUGH of the hot mom crap Hollywood), is in rare, sincere form. If the film didn’t eschew its considerations of mental illness by the end — something that affects both Davidson and his character Scott — I’d have kinder words to write.
The Trip to Greece briefing
3 (out of 4)
The Trip series is probably the most consistent this past decade (well, except Mission: Impossible, let's be real) and like many cinematic successions, the secret in recreating the same pleasures over and over lies in carefully tuning each atmospheric, dramatic and thematic variation. Looking back, other than a few titular tweaks to the locale and the soapy personal relationship foibles for the fake-real-life portrayals of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, the conceit of two guys traveling, talking and eating exquisite food has never been lost. However, even though the reliable comfiness derives from basic pleasures — the cutaway footage of Europe’s finest chefs at work, the deluge of celebrity impressions, the balance of ego-stroking and self-deprecation — The Trip to Greece does a fine job continuing a strange tradition of plotless week-long retreats rife with fabulous fine dining and the kind of vistas you couldn't frame poorly if you tried.
This one jumps straight into said holiday — the famous Michael Caine impressions are absent and the last film’s cliffhanger ending is discarded with a throwaway resolution. There are some anxiety-ridden black-and-white dream sequences as well but the individual newness of the fourth Trip ends there. Whether you opt for a getaway in London (the original 2010 film which, like all of them, sheds much more footage fit for British television), Italy, Spain or this new escapade (my only guess is Paris is next), Brydon’s tireless showmanship and pantomiming is a sharp, complementary foil to Coogan’s sobering self-obsession.
The moments pass blissfully this go-round as they often do — the humor has only become more undemanding and unforced over time. Juxtaposed with the best bits of the decade-old maiden voyage, the first movie now seems almost amateurish in light of where their gradually practiced, polished, vérité-drenched repartee has brought them. Brydon and Coogan are worth the trouble every time.
The Trip series is probably the most consistent this past decade (well, except Mission: Impossible, let's be real) and like many cinematic successions, the secret in recreating the same pleasures over and over lies in carefully tuning each atmospheric, dramatic and thematic variation. Looking back, other than a few titular tweaks to the locale and the soapy personal relationship foibles for the fake-real-life portrayals of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, the conceit of two guys traveling, talking and eating exquisite food has never been lost. However, even though the reliable comfiness derives from basic pleasures — the cutaway footage of Europe’s finest chefs at work, the deluge of celebrity impressions, the balance of ego-stroking and self-deprecation — The Trip to Greece does a fine job continuing a strange tradition of plotless week-long retreats rife with fabulous fine dining and the kind of vistas you couldn't frame poorly if you tried.
This one jumps straight into said holiday — the famous Michael Caine impressions are absent and the last film’s cliffhanger ending is discarded with a throwaway resolution. There are some anxiety-ridden black-and-white dream sequences as well but the individual newness of the fourth Trip ends there. Whether you opt for a getaway in London (the original 2010 film which, like all of them, sheds much more footage fit for British television), Italy, Spain or this new escapade (my only guess is Paris is next), Brydon’s tireless showmanship and pantomiming is a sharp, complementary foil to Coogan’s sobering self-obsession.
The moments pass blissfully this go-round as they often do — the humor has only become more undemanding and unforced over time. Juxtaposed with the best bits of the decade-old maiden voyage, the first movie now seems almost amateurish in light of where their gradually practiced, polished, vérité-drenched repartee has brought them. Brydon and Coogan are worth the trouble every time.
Scoob! and Trolls World Tour briefings
Scoob!
1 (out of 4)
Ruh-roh Warner Brothers, what have you wrought? Did you honestly make us look back on those live action films with reverence, ironic or otherwise? Just from the trailers I knew this would be a waste of time but there’s frankly nothing about Scoob! that wouldn’t have felt right at home in a direct-to-digital release — it's terrible to imagine wasting thousands of theater screens on something so cheap, joyless and misconceived. Whether it’s the haphazard milking of Hanna-Barbera properties via cramped, cringy and confusing cameos for the tangential characters, voice casting apparently done at random (aside from Jason Isaacs, bless him) or a story that doesn't even pretend to live up to the tradition of a classic cartoon mystery, this is an irredeemable mess and something of an insult to fans of the franchise's numerous delightful iterations.
You're better off with Matthew Lillard, Linda Cardellini, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr., but somehow even the most shoddily animated classic episode, hilariously aged straight-to-video feature (Cyber Chase anyone?) or cockamamie idea tossed into an episode of the recent, really fun Mystery Incorporated would be an incomparably better time. Will Forte is a fine talent but the worst Shaggy you could pick when you could have anyone, a big name or an unknown — Zac Efron is an OK Fred, Gina Rodriguez brings some Latina energy to Velma and Amanda Seyfried makes a convincing Daphne.
Warner Brothers has never really cracked the transition to 3D animation — without Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, I doubt The LEGO Movie would be able to support their short, deficient filmography since 2013. All I know is they screwed the pooch (I couldn't help it) and the gang should disband until teenage hippies and talking dogs can solve the unending mystery of why we shamelessly force needless nostalgia on new generations, free of earnestness or worthwhile invention. The animation is also ugly as sin, and the insistence on a small part by Simon Cowell, Easter egg overdoses and other inane trivialities means there’s never a moment to consider any real interpersonal relations within Mystery Inc. or arrive anywhere close to Saturday morning spookiness. Kids should be able to tell this is a dumb folly, at least I hope.
Trolls World Tour
2 ½ (out of 4)
They said it couldn’t be done, and the good luck trolls laughed in the faces of AMC and Regal. You’ll be back — you can't pass up that DreamWorks money. There were ethical and economical consequences in releasing Trolls World Tour to everyone through VOD, the first major COVID-affected would-be theatrical film to do so. Did they troll the cinema world? Or was it all an overreaction?
But enough speculation — what is this epic sequel all about? If I told you it reached back to the origins of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth through the Ainulindalë of The Silmarillion, would that be enough to justify the film’s disruption of the industry? Culture war, homogeny of taste and tribalism are at the core of World Tour’s story, which is not some silly road trip film but rather concerned with the diversity of music. 2016's Trolls was an enjoyable enough journey given the average expectations going in, with bubbly poptimism offsetting neat evil folklore. World Tour takes a ridiculous, limited world (which never addresses the whole Danish doll thing) and expands it with ornamental details along with a fruitful and fun mythology to unravel. Of course Tolkien comparisons are hyperbole but what if a wannabe overlord of hard rock (a mini Melkor) tried to usurp all other genres and control any music fit to fly under one banner? Anna Kendrick still voices Princess Poppy, out to save the leaders of the Techno, Country, Classical, Funk trolls.
Yodeling, K-pop, Smooth Jazz, and Reggae all appear for bit jokes, and most of the central styles are there just for a couple gags too. Yet the film’s themes are so uncommonly strong that when all the genres are blended together in some quasi-utopia multicultural melting pot by the end, it undermines earlier ideas spelled out by the leaders of Funk, namely that the multiplicity and perhaps the separation of sound is what makes each culture's creations special. Especially in America, our idealism leads us to believe that peaceful coexistence could strengthen our unified identity — things get a little muddled in World Tour because it's a pretty baseline kids movie. But damn, what topics to consider.
Melkor was ultimately banished from Valinor for disrupting the harmony of Eä's great cosmic symphony and he'd eventually be kicked out of the Kingdom of Arda for good after enough mischief, not won over by compromise and empathy. Here our villain is tidily redeemed. Trolls World Tour recognizes why the world is divided even if it takes all the usual DreamWorks cheats to get to the very improbable happy ending. It's also a tolerable jukebox musical built upon the most preposterous lore you could dream up for a film based on novelty children's toys.
1 (out of 4)
Ruh-roh Warner Brothers, what have you wrought? Did you honestly make us look back on those live action films with reverence, ironic or otherwise? Just from the trailers I knew this would be a waste of time but there’s frankly nothing about Scoob! that wouldn’t have felt right at home in a direct-to-digital release — it's terrible to imagine wasting thousands of theater screens on something so cheap, joyless and misconceived. Whether it’s the haphazard milking of Hanna-Barbera properties via cramped, cringy and confusing cameos for the tangential characters, voice casting apparently done at random (aside from Jason Isaacs, bless him) or a story that doesn't even pretend to live up to the tradition of a classic cartoon mystery, this is an irredeemable mess and something of an insult to fans of the franchise's numerous delightful iterations.
You're better off with Matthew Lillard, Linda Cardellini, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr., but somehow even the most shoddily animated classic episode, hilariously aged straight-to-video feature (Cyber Chase anyone?) or cockamamie idea tossed into an episode of the recent, really fun Mystery Incorporated would be an incomparably better time. Will Forte is a fine talent but the worst Shaggy you could pick when you could have anyone, a big name or an unknown — Zac Efron is an OK Fred, Gina Rodriguez brings some Latina energy to Velma and Amanda Seyfried makes a convincing Daphne.
Warner Brothers has never really cracked the transition to 3D animation — without Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, I doubt The LEGO Movie would be able to support their short, deficient filmography since 2013. All I know is they screwed the pooch (I couldn't help it) and the gang should disband until teenage hippies and talking dogs can solve the unending mystery of why we shamelessly force needless nostalgia on new generations, free of earnestness or worthwhile invention. The animation is also ugly as sin, and the insistence on a small part by Simon Cowell, Easter egg overdoses and other inane trivialities means there’s never a moment to consider any real interpersonal relations within Mystery Inc. or arrive anywhere close to Saturday morning spookiness. Kids should be able to tell this is a dumb folly, at least I hope.
Trolls World Tour
2 ½ (out of 4)
They said it couldn’t be done, and the good luck trolls laughed in the faces of AMC and Regal. You’ll be back — you can't pass up that DreamWorks money. There were ethical and economical consequences in releasing Trolls World Tour to everyone through VOD, the first major COVID-affected would-be theatrical film to do so. Did they troll the cinema world? Or was it all an overreaction?
But enough speculation — what is this epic sequel all about? If I told you it reached back to the origins of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth through the Ainulindalë of The Silmarillion, would that be enough to justify the film’s disruption of the industry? Culture war, homogeny of taste and tribalism are at the core of World Tour’s story, which is not some silly road trip film but rather concerned with the diversity of music. 2016's Trolls was an enjoyable enough journey given the average expectations going in, with bubbly poptimism offsetting neat evil folklore. World Tour takes a ridiculous, limited world (which never addresses the whole Danish doll thing) and expands it with ornamental details along with a fruitful and fun mythology to unravel. Of course Tolkien comparisons are hyperbole but what if a wannabe overlord of hard rock (a mini Melkor) tried to usurp all other genres and control any music fit to fly under one banner? Anna Kendrick still voices Princess Poppy, out to save the leaders of the Techno, Country, Classical, Funk trolls.
Yodeling, K-pop, Smooth Jazz, and Reggae all appear for bit jokes, and most of the central styles are there just for a couple gags too. Yet the film’s themes are so uncommonly strong that when all the genres are blended together in some quasi-utopia multicultural melting pot by the end, it undermines earlier ideas spelled out by the leaders of Funk, namely that the multiplicity and perhaps the separation of sound is what makes each culture's creations special. Especially in America, our idealism leads us to believe that peaceful coexistence could strengthen our unified identity — things get a little muddled in World Tour because it's a pretty baseline kids movie. But damn, what topics to consider.
Melkor was ultimately banished from Valinor for disrupting the harmony of Eä's great cosmic symphony and he'd eventually be kicked out of the Kingdom of Arda for good after enough mischief, not won over by compromise and empathy. Here our villain is tidily redeemed. Trolls World Tour recognizes why the world is divided even if it takes all the usual DreamWorks cheats to get to the very improbable happy ending. It's also a tolerable jukebox musical built upon the most preposterous lore you could dream up for a film based on novelty children's toys.
Onward briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
This is a B-team Pixar joint if I’ve ever seen one. Yet Onward is not so minor or emotionally predigested as the studio’s brand-dismantling turns for the mediocre (the Cars movies, to a lesser extent The Good Dinosaur) and it doesn't stink of creative confusion that led to mildly watchable yet painfully nostalgic detours like Monsters University and Finding Dory. Still I’d rather give Toy Story 4 and Incredibles 2 another watch any day than take a spin through this Dungeons & Dragons/daddy issues concept that could have easily found its way on the desk of the less daring Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Translating the absence of magic in the new world — one of a few Tolkien carryovers — to a suburban setting, the film tries to balance domestic and quest-like concerns as any fun Pixar movie should. But this is really just Zootopia with some Narnian paint overtop, like the tolerable feeling of Brave but half as splendid to behold — at minimum Onward's story and sequences have enough ingenuity to outweigh nerd references and generic worldbuilding. MCU brothers Tom Holland and Chris Pratt lend acceptable fraternal voice work although Holland is channeling the same manic, high-pitched inflections he just exercised in Spies in Disguise.
I’m keen to take an original Pixar over a sequel even when the studio has made a habit of middling novelty this past decade but, all the same, these alright additions do not remotely live up the instant classic status that once made Pixar the undisputed king of a now muddled subset of feature filmmaking. The basic emotions and cheap, obligatory dead parent angle keep Onward from pushing itself into the realm of Pixar’s recent best. Still, those same tricks to take your tears are what render this, Coco and especially last year’s Toy Story 4 somewhat impactful.
With yet another original film (Soul) out in just three months (ya know, should the world not enter self-destruct mode between March and June of 2020), maybe this will be the lesser of efforts evening out a new favorite — I’m pretty sure Good Dinosaur and Inside Out came out within the same year. Onward may not possess the gusto of a bold, singular Pixar gem but it is, regardless, a work of playful pastiche and careful enough consideration for a collective audience.
This is a B-team Pixar joint if I’ve ever seen one. Yet Onward is not so minor or emotionally predigested as the studio’s brand-dismantling turns for the mediocre (the Cars movies, to a lesser extent The Good Dinosaur) and it doesn't stink of creative confusion that led to mildly watchable yet painfully nostalgic detours like Monsters University and Finding Dory. Still I’d rather give Toy Story 4 and Incredibles 2 another watch any day than take a spin through this Dungeons & Dragons/daddy issues concept that could have easily found its way on the desk of the less daring Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Translating the absence of magic in the new world — one of a few Tolkien carryovers — to a suburban setting, the film tries to balance domestic and quest-like concerns as any fun Pixar movie should. But this is really just Zootopia with some Narnian paint overtop, like the tolerable feeling of Brave but half as splendid to behold — at minimum Onward's story and sequences have enough ingenuity to outweigh nerd references and generic worldbuilding. MCU brothers Tom Holland and Chris Pratt lend acceptable fraternal voice work although Holland is channeling the same manic, high-pitched inflections he just exercised in Spies in Disguise.
I’m keen to take an original Pixar over a sequel even when the studio has made a habit of middling novelty this past decade but, all the same, these alright additions do not remotely live up the instant classic status that once made Pixar the undisputed king of a now muddled subset of feature filmmaking. The basic emotions and cheap, obligatory dead parent angle keep Onward from pushing itself into the realm of Pixar’s recent best. Still, those same tricks to take your tears are what render this, Coco and especially last year’s Toy Story 4 somewhat impactful.
With yet another original film (Soul) out in just three months (ya know, should the world not enter self-destruct mode between March and June of 2020), maybe this will be the lesser of efforts evening out a new favorite — I’m pretty sure Good Dinosaur and Inside Out came out within the same year. Onward may not possess the gusto of a bold, singular Pixar gem but it is, regardless, a work of playful pastiche and careful enough consideration for a collective audience.
First Cow briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
Kelly Reichardt thought she’d make it official that she stands at the forefront of essential contemporary female filmmakers. There's Sofia Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow and Claire Denis but Reichardt has never taken a false step or failed to improve upon her reserved neorealism through profiles in companionship of all sorts. Without her go-to girl Michelle Williams — who led Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff and was a major player in her last film Certain Women — First Cow's closest Reichardt relative would be the existential road trip of Old Joy, although the pioneer times of this new film are just as thoroughly real as Meek's Revisionist Western touches, only more so.
In all frankness this may be her dramatic masterpiece and one of her strongest attempts to communicate life lived without pretensions or anything at odds with the rough, tactile naturalism of North American terrains and candid performances. The film’s opening quote points to themes of friendship while the haunting, nearly dialogue-free modern day prologue imposes lurking tragedy upon a story of a traveling cook and a wandering Chinese man who form a bond before pilfering milk from the only cow in Oregon, all part of a plan to sell some delicious buttermilk biscuits, make some coin (and some snake fangs?) and hit the road to greener pastures.
It feels like an elegy on capitalism and an unsentimental, tender snapshot of fellowship. Few period movies this year or this decade bother trying to convey the utter humility of reflecting on one’s place in time and the paradoxical melancholy of transitioning from the old world to the new as you age. Even when it functions most closely to entertainment, Reichardt proposes pressing questions like, how would you live honestly as you forage for your next meal?
The performances are incredibly composed (John Magaro and Orion Lee up front with Toby Jones in support) and the black humor and dramatic irony are welcome adjustments to a filmography built on all things stoic, meditative and mundane. It’s a charming, ultimately tense, thoroughly gorgeous fable with visual, tangible authenticity rivaling the historical works of Terrence Malick, Paul Thomas Anderson or even the fresh mise-en-scène mastery of Robert Eggers. Reichardt's latest does nothing more than cement an uncompromising filmmaker's calming and often critical view of humanity's place, past or present.
Kelly Reichardt thought she’d make it official that she stands at the forefront of essential contemporary female filmmakers. There's Sofia Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow and Claire Denis but Reichardt has never taken a false step or failed to improve upon her reserved neorealism through profiles in companionship of all sorts. Without her go-to girl Michelle Williams — who led Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff and was a major player in her last film Certain Women — First Cow's closest Reichardt relative would be the existential road trip of Old Joy, although the pioneer times of this new film are just as thoroughly real as Meek's Revisionist Western touches, only more so.
In all frankness this may be her dramatic masterpiece and one of her strongest attempts to communicate life lived without pretensions or anything at odds with the rough, tactile naturalism of North American terrains and candid performances. The film’s opening quote points to themes of friendship while the haunting, nearly dialogue-free modern day prologue imposes lurking tragedy upon a story of a traveling cook and a wandering Chinese man who form a bond before pilfering milk from the only cow in Oregon, all part of a plan to sell some delicious buttermilk biscuits, make some coin (and some snake fangs?) and hit the road to greener pastures.
It feels like an elegy on capitalism and an unsentimental, tender snapshot of fellowship. Few period movies this year or this decade bother trying to convey the utter humility of reflecting on one’s place in time and the paradoxical melancholy of transitioning from the old world to the new as you age. Even when it functions most closely to entertainment, Reichardt proposes pressing questions like, how would you live honestly as you forage for your next meal?
The performances are incredibly composed (John Magaro and Orion Lee up front with Toby Jones in support) and the black humor and dramatic irony are welcome adjustments to a filmography built on all things stoic, meditative and mundane. It’s a charming, ultimately tense, thoroughly gorgeous fable with visual, tangible authenticity rivaling the historical works of Terrence Malick, Paul Thomas Anderson or even the fresh mise-en-scène mastery of Robert Eggers. Reichardt's latest does nothing more than cement an uncompromising filmmaker's calming and often critical view of humanity's place, past or present.
Emma briefing
3 (out of 4)
I’ve read Pride & Prejudice and I’ve seen damn near every major Jane Austen adaptation except the one with zombies. At this point her legacy is so recognizable it’s just a relief that her prose and pointed commentary still prods and stabs as surely as it did 200 years ago.
Emma, next to P&P, is what one might call a defining work, characterized by a headstrong protagonist lacking self-awareness and populated with one of her vintage webs of romantic politics, social hurdles and feckless families. Between 1995 and 1996 we got Clueless and a Weinstein-funded direct adaptation of the tale starring Gwyneth Paltrow. The charming, timeless, teen-sophisticated cult classic exceeds the routine realization, which has nothing on the performances and direction of something like Ang Lee’s Sense & Sensibility.
The question remains whether incoming director Autumn de Wilde’s tenderfooted talents materialize through the groundwork laid down by Austen. As much as Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride bears more unironic feeling and Whit Stillman’s elegant Love & Friendship is a more ample act of reverberating the author’s poisonous comedy, this Emma has all the parodic, ironic, supple shimmer of something like Yorgos Lanthimos' The Favourite. In addition to its aesthetic peerlessness, fair casting and an evident recognition of the text's vivid characters, Emma has modern and fortunately repressed bite.
De Wilde has been a music photographer and videographer for ages, creating the album covers for alternative favorites like Elliott Smith, The White Stripes, Fiona Apple, Beck, Wilco and a host of others. Her practiced portraiture envisions Emma with appropriate artifice and splendor while author and fresh screenwriter Eleanor Catton communicates Austen's best assets — verbosity, dry, searing humor and the social ironies and trivialities of courtship within the upper-class lifestyle of the Regency era.
Anya Taylor-Joy is one of the few greats of her generation and enchanting to behold, radiating every angle of Ms. Woodhouse's unconcealed hubris. Bill Nighy as her temperamental, hypochondriac, all but absent father is an amusing choice and musician Johnny Flynn suits George Knightley's childhood friend turned unassuming lover quite well. Stillman came closest to imparting Austen's lucid, trenchant subtleties in 2016 but Emma might have had the upper hand if not for a handful of concessions to those unfamiliar with Jane's shrewd inclinations.
I’ve read Pride & Prejudice and I’ve seen damn near every major Jane Austen adaptation except the one with zombies. At this point her legacy is so recognizable it’s just a relief that her prose and pointed commentary still prods and stabs as surely as it did 200 years ago.
Emma, next to P&P, is what one might call a defining work, characterized by a headstrong protagonist lacking self-awareness and populated with one of her vintage webs of romantic politics, social hurdles and feckless families. Between 1995 and 1996 we got Clueless and a Weinstein-funded direct adaptation of the tale starring Gwyneth Paltrow. The charming, timeless, teen-sophisticated cult classic exceeds the routine realization, which has nothing on the performances and direction of something like Ang Lee’s Sense & Sensibility.
The question remains whether incoming director Autumn de Wilde’s tenderfooted talents materialize through the groundwork laid down by Austen. As much as Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride bears more unironic feeling and Whit Stillman’s elegant Love & Friendship is a more ample act of reverberating the author’s poisonous comedy, this Emma has all the parodic, ironic, supple shimmer of something like Yorgos Lanthimos' The Favourite. In addition to its aesthetic peerlessness, fair casting and an evident recognition of the text's vivid characters, Emma has modern and fortunately repressed bite.
De Wilde has been a music photographer and videographer for ages, creating the album covers for alternative favorites like Elliott Smith, The White Stripes, Fiona Apple, Beck, Wilco and a host of others. Her practiced portraiture envisions Emma with appropriate artifice and splendor while author and fresh screenwriter Eleanor Catton communicates Austen's best assets — verbosity, dry, searing humor and the social ironies and trivialities of courtship within the upper-class lifestyle of the Regency era.
Anya Taylor-Joy is one of the few greats of her generation and enchanting to behold, radiating every angle of Ms. Woodhouse's unconcealed hubris. Bill Nighy as her temperamental, hypochondriac, all but absent father is an amusing choice and musician Johnny Flynn suits George Knightley's childhood friend turned unassuming lover quite well. Stillman came closest to imparting Austen's lucid, trenchant subtleties in 2016 but Emma might have had the upper hand if not for a handful of concessions to those unfamiliar with Jane's shrewd inclinations.
The Invisible Man briefing
3 (out of 4)
The Dark Universe is dead — long live individual movies! So by now everyone has forgotten about The Mummy (not the Brendan Fraser one, the one with Tom Cruise?) and if you recall that 2017 embarrassment it’s for no good reason. Soon after, Universal’s shared spooky-verse was supposed to include Johnny Depp in the titular role of the movie in question, the next step in the would-be interconnected franchise with talk of Bride of Frankenstein to follow. Next to 1954's Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1933's The Invisible Man was always an appreciable favorite: an oddball madman undone by his own creative ambitions, a genius turned loony, misanthropic prankster. Maybe it's not what H. G. Wells was going for but as a pulpy, Gothic shock treatment like many early Universal features were, the manic and now iconic vision of science gone too far was memorable fun.
After many needless follow-ups, remakes and reimaginings in the years since the 1933 inception of the imperceptible icon, Leigh Whannell radically revises The Invisible Man. His career was built on horror’s painful sequel turnover in the Saw and Insidious franchises until Whannell found some semblance of artistic purpose in Upgrade, a standout sci-fi/action hybrid of late. I wish more of his palpable energy could be located in The Invisible Man but fortunately the story — wherein domestic abuse is the ironically conspicuous theme of the minimalist take — is entertaining before it gets a little self-congratulatory.
Psychological terror and especially feminist cinema has a place in my taste and also in the tradition of horror, and the success of The Invisible Man lies in timeless, tasteful restraint. The film is slight but by no means exploitative, nor is it exaggerated in other facets like outrageous gore or pedantic politics. If you're a forgiving fan of Paul Verhoeven's lesser work, you might be craving the more recognizable sci-fi of something like 2000's problematic but fascinating Hollow Man, though it’s hard to deny 2020's fun mental games and procession of inescapable paranoia. The final twists can keep you on your toes and Elizabeth Moss is already too good for the movie star cred she will have fully inherited before the Handmaid’s days are done.
It would be nice to believe Universal is wisely opting for DC’s latest strategy and giving up entirely on duplicating Marvel’s intertwining, monopolizing tactics in favor of distinct director-driven movies, but it's too early to tell. Most in-development movies currently being strategized by Universal sound pretty disagreeable but if they're behind Whannell's The Wolf Man (with Ryan Gosling heavily involved no less!) then... by all means. There’s no real rule of thumb but something tells me keeping costs low and blockbuster prospects in check will equate to swifter success.
Then again there's nothing more terrifying than cutting short the potential profits of a sleeper horror hit in the wake of an unseen disease spreading across the globe. When (but more like if) things go back to normal, Universal's scary movies will probably have the sheen of Blumhouse surrogates but, if luck and prudence holds, they will be much better.
The Dark Universe is dead — long live individual movies! So by now everyone has forgotten about The Mummy (not the Brendan Fraser one, the one with Tom Cruise?) and if you recall that 2017 embarrassment it’s for no good reason. Soon after, Universal’s shared spooky-verse was supposed to include Johnny Depp in the titular role of the movie in question, the next step in the would-be interconnected franchise with talk of Bride of Frankenstein to follow. Next to 1954's Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1933's The Invisible Man was always an appreciable favorite: an oddball madman undone by his own creative ambitions, a genius turned loony, misanthropic prankster. Maybe it's not what H. G. Wells was going for but as a pulpy, Gothic shock treatment like many early Universal features were, the manic and now iconic vision of science gone too far was memorable fun.
After many needless follow-ups, remakes and reimaginings in the years since the 1933 inception of the imperceptible icon, Leigh Whannell radically revises The Invisible Man. His career was built on horror’s painful sequel turnover in the Saw and Insidious franchises until Whannell found some semblance of artistic purpose in Upgrade, a standout sci-fi/action hybrid of late. I wish more of his palpable energy could be located in The Invisible Man but fortunately the story — wherein domestic abuse is the ironically conspicuous theme of the minimalist take — is entertaining before it gets a little self-congratulatory.
Psychological terror and especially feminist cinema has a place in my taste and also in the tradition of horror, and the success of The Invisible Man lies in timeless, tasteful restraint. The film is slight but by no means exploitative, nor is it exaggerated in other facets like outrageous gore or pedantic politics. If you're a forgiving fan of Paul Verhoeven's lesser work, you might be craving the more recognizable sci-fi of something like 2000's problematic but fascinating Hollow Man, though it’s hard to deny 2020's fun mental games and procession of inescapable paranoia. The final twists can keep you on your toes and Elizabeth Moss is already too good for the movie star cred she will have fully inherited before the Handmaid’s days are done.
It would be nice to believe Universal is wisely opting for DC’s latest strategy and giving up entirely on duplicating Marvel’s intertwining, monopolizing tactics in favor of distinct director-driven movies, but it's too early to tell. Most in-development movies currently being strategized by Universal sound pretty disagreeable but if they're behind Whannell's The Wolf Man (with Ryan Gosling heavily involved no less!) then... by all means. There’s no real rule of thumb but something tells me keeping costs low and blockbuster prospects in check will equate to swifter success.
Then again there's nothing more terrifying than cutting short the potential profits of a sleeper horror hit in the wake of an unseen disease spreading across the globe. When (but more like if) things go back to normal, Universal's scary movies will probably have the sheen of Blumhouse surrogates but, if luck and prudence holds, they will be much better.
Birds of Prey briefing
2 (out of 4)
DC’s little renaissance hasn’t gone unnoticed, nor could it have occurred at a better time. Just as the sun was beginning to set on Marvel’s indisputable empire, DC stopped mimicking and started outthinking, using the least likely moneymakers — Aquaman, Shazam! and supervillain spin-offs — to readily revert their superhero movie empire back to the individual basis. As Wonder Woman 1984 this June should be one of the year’s highest earners (here in the oblivious bliss of February 2020), Birds of Prey enters the scene with all the fervor Margot Robbie, as star and executive producer, can commit to. The film is a shade or so north of underwhelming, barely taking the time to explore a storyline suitable for a TV pilot. But the talent and budget is there, sadly saddled with a subversion-lite, fairly prudish use of an R rating.
But practically no one really cares about this movie and there’s little reason they should. It’s fine next to Marvel's Ford-assembly-model movies but barely exceeding Ant-Man and the Wasp can’t really be considered much of an accomplishment. Birds of Prey doesn’t have any point and admits as much, but there isn't enough compensation for its nihilism other than some pretty good stunts and a couple laughs. Though the band of female misfits are all decently developed by the eventual team-up, they couldn’t have been scripted or edited together more awkwardly, unless we’re talking about Suicide Squad-sized stupidity. I didn’t really care for Deadpool but that movie does the meta, schizophrenic storytelling thing with more proven relish and popularity, and the sequel made better on the promise of the first. If I could tell certain moments of cute ignorance from the spots of lazy writing in Harley Quinn's movie, there would be more reason to celebrate a finely forthright feminist mini-blockbuster that doesn’t pat itself on the back or smack you with every message, a rarity in an era of increasingly fake-woke pandering.
Maybe I’m just mad Mary Elizabeth Winstead wasn’t in every single scene I MEAN pardon me oh dear my male gaze is showing. But man, when your best stuff is generic villain crap held up by Ewan McGregor ham-fisting every line with casual glee, your little spin-off is in sorry shape. Changing the title doesn’t actually change a damn thing. With a James Gunn-ified sort-of-sequel The Suicide Squad already filming, the disposable quaintness of Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) feels even more glaring.
DC’s little renaissance hasn’t gone unnoticed, nor could it have occurred at a better time. Just as the sun was beginning to set on Marvel’s indisputable empire, DC stopped mimicking and started outthinking, using the least likely moneymakers — Aquaman, Shazam! and supervillain spin-offs — to readily revert their superhero movie empire back to the individual basis. As Wonder Woman 1984 this June should be one of the year’s highest earners (here in the oblivious bliss of February 2020), Birds of Prey enters the scene with all the fervor Margot Robbie, as star and executive producer, can commit to. The film is a shade or so north of underwhelming, barely taking the time to explore a storyline suitable for a TV pilot. But the talent and budget is there, sadly saddled with a subversion-lite, fairly prudish use of an R rating.
But practically no one really cares about this movie and there’s little reason they should. It’s fine next to Marvel's Ford-assembly-model movies but barely exceeding Ant-Man and the Wasp can’t really be considered much of an accomplishment. Birds of Prey doesn’t have any point and admits as much, but there isn't enough compensation for its nihilism other than some pretty good stunts and a couple laughs. Though the band of female misfits are all decently developed by the eventual team-up, they couldn’t have been scripted or edited together more awkwardly, unless we’re talking about Suicide Squad-sized stupidity. I didn’t really care for Deadpool but that movie does the meta, schizophrenic storytelling thing with more proven relish and popularity, and the sequel made better on the promise of the first. If I could tell certain moments of cute ignorance from the spots of lazy writing in Harley Quinn's movie, there would be more reason to celebrate a finely forthright feminist mini-blockbuster that doesn’t pat itself on the back or smack you with every message, a rarity in an era of increasingly fake-woke pandering.
Maybe I’m just mad Mary Elizabeth Winstead wasn’t in every single scene I MEAN pardon me oh dear my male gaze is showing. But man, when your best stuff is generic villain crap held up by Ewan McGregor ham-fisting every line with casual glee, your little spin-off is in sorry shape. Changing the title doesn’t actually change a damn thing. With a James Gunn-ified sort-of-sequel The Suicide Squad already filming, the disposable quaintness of Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) feels even more glaring.
The Gentlemen and Gretel & Hansel briefings
The Gentlemen
3 (out of 4)
Guy Ritchie has had a hell of a time working out his filmmaking purpose. Before Sherlock Holmes there was little to say he would ever break out of the arsenal on which he relies: British gangster comedies that would feel like discount Tarantino if they weren’t such grubby, quotable, freewheeling fun. Indeed Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. are still satisfying distractions for aging 20 plus years.
He would try to same shtick over and over to few new successes until RDJ’s renaissance would inaugurate Ritchie's Hollywood stooge era. Whether it's the Xbox mythmaking of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword or the pretty paycheck that must have been attached to Aladdin, these movies surely describe a huge sellout — except excuse me, I completely forgot The Man From U.N.C.L.E. even existed, it wasn't bad. But The Gentlemen is a reinvention and a reversion, a bit of getting back to basics with a naturally complicated, lewd, stouthearted reclamation of a lost directorial identity.
Like any traditional Ritchie flick, the story’s interlocking mechanics shift around a simple premise and a colorfully silly web of foul-mouthed characters. The needle drops imitate Scorsese, the violence is both hysterical and fierce and the twists are ridiculously movie-esque, never settling for a tickle of the brain when a convoluted cartwheel and last-ditch gotcha will befuddle you better. As a marijuana kingpin keen on retirement, Matthew McConaughey is in touch with his mojo in the excellent company of secondary players like Charlie Hunnam, Hugh Grant and Colin Farrell.
The dialogue is crisp and cutting, built on the fundamentals of lengthy, condescending put-downs and excessive threats. The storytelling is either dazzling or it doesn’t make a lick of sense, but Ritchie can show you an emphatically good time regardless of how little you grasp the sinuous, it's-not-even-worth-explaining plot. January never usually has flavors like this, so if this is a Ritchie reawakening or not (he's already got a Jason Statham movie entitled Wrath of Man lined up for this time next year, with another Statham collab Five Eyes after), it's at least a momentary, compulsively enjoyable return to form.
Gretel & Hansel
1 ½ (out of 4)
Looks like someone saw The Witch and got a wee bit envious. After the stilted, tedious snooze of a debut The Blackcoat’s Daughter and the shivery, respectably crafted Netflix contribution I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, director Osgood Perkins clearly intends to mimic Robert Egger's macabre folklore/feminist hybrid, only in a significantly more trite, specious and meaningless fashion. Like Oz's other films, Gretel & Hansel looks lovely enough and exudes a potentially shuddersome aura but film student scripting — padded by excessive narration and a pathetic reliance on dream sequences — left the film feeling fainter than A24’s most fruitless indie spooker.
Sophia Lillis is a competent lead, continuing her trend as a horror princess following her admirable breakout role in 2017's It, but the storyline is mostly just hanging out with a suspicious old lady while Perkins beats us over the head with whatever petty messages he can muster for such scant material. There are no scares to remark about, only fleeting moments of agreeable imagery and promising experimentation — the core cinematic ideas of Gretel aren't worth much more than what any schmuck could brainstorm in an afternoon.
This is the sort of flick offering a few surreal sequences as compensation for your own restlessness and boredom, urging you to tell yourself the movie makes up for its sizable deficiencies with atmosphere and tension. It's an appallingly asinine movie idea that can have you rolling your eyes before you’ve seen a single frame, though Gretel & Hansel might’ve been a devilish, diverting short film if it weren't an 85-minute endurance test instead. And it's really irrelevant in the end but I DIDN'T SEE NO BREAD CRUMBS!
Bad Boys for Life and Doolittle briefings
Bad Boys For Life
1 (out of 4)
Whatcha gonna do when your movie’s poo? If I could have thought of a worse lead you would have read it.
I have no intense disdain for these films or ill feelings about Will Smith or Martin Lawrence, but when this movie became the biggest January release ever (before COVID, before George Floyd’s death) you could nonchalantly write it off as a dutiful, innocuous sequel. But considering all the fresh hindsight it’s so easy to see that this latent Bad Boys is almost objectionably lame and the glory days of the buddy cop genre are long expired.
Let’s spell out the ways in which Bad Boys For Life — sure you don’t want to save that title for the fourth installment that, by the looks of a completely stupid stinger, you were already intending to make? — is equivalent to excrement. First you’ve swapped the homophobia (which makes Michael Bay’s earlier films uncomfortable to revisit) for sexism: there's Fast & Furious-fitted B-roll of scantily clad women and underwritten characters for poor Vanessa Hudgens as well as Paola Núñez as Will's stock love interest. And in a feeble attempt to improve upon the drug lord antagonists from the previous movies, a mother and son (Kate del Castillo and Jacob Scipio respectively) have a vendetta against Smith’s Mike Lowery. Revenge motivator clichés aside, the ultimate story moments of Bad Boys 3 laughably embrace the telenovelic cheesiness, nearly aiming for sympathetic bad guys before copping out by the finale with guns blazing.
Smith still looks young and plays smug well. Lawrence was never the draw but from the particularly pained desperation of his typical comic moments I can just picture him a few years back begging Smith for a career-jump-start: “PLEASE WILLIAM I NEED THIS.” So even if the Boys are Middle-Aged Men by now, the direction by Adil & Bilall in their duo debut shouldn’t feel so dead. I would rarely defend Bay and here it is — at least if he had helmed this film it would have been trash with authentic flare instead of just trash. Some of the in-camera action is watchable but the fast cutting and murky, filtered cinematography are no sleazy virtues.
Most crucially, the ignorant, pandering, borderline-agitprop police glorification — which, granted, Bay’s films helped crystallize after the macho-minded 80s — have no justifiable context in 2020 and now just function as obsolete movie tropes For Life carelessly coasts on. The main insult to me was the idea that an officer seeking therapy after having to kill people should be treated like a joke, let alone the casually included parting sentiment before credits roll.
And I know Bad Boys never had politics on its mind, but the series' collective failings amount to so much more thanks to this film's headaches. After Bad Boys II came out in 2003, Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz), Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (the Jump Street films) would refurbish the bluecoat action-comedy genre into their own stomping ground for deceptive satire and meta-meticulous miracles, and there's no going back. We didn't need The Other Guys, Zootopia and a few Rush Hour sequels to reduce possibly sadistic male fantasies into deserved buffoonery and parody.
I couldn't suffer through another installment's slick, tacky manufacturing, tasteless, thoughtless attempts to balance stakes and humor and, worst of all, friendly reinforcement of vigilante justice and cop-hero, law-bending propaganda. Enough riding together, let's get to the dying part soon guys, please.
Dolittle
1 ½ (out of 4)
Speaking of redundancy and pointlessness, don’t get me started on Dolittle. Not eight months after we all supposed it might be time for Robert Downey Jr. to score an honorary Best Actor nod for playing the most iconic film superhero of the age, the Jesus of Gen Z cinema (millennials like myself have Harry Potter) came back to show he’s a savior of only so much, reputation not included.
This was not some contractual pact with the devil — RDJ's family production company is at least partially responsible for this ill-conceived remake or, I'm sorry, a modern adaptation of the 1922 installment The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle in the Hugh Lofting series. Now maybe Downey Jr.’s tryna please his kids or something but damn, from the spotty accent to the foolish, plastic story to the overblown, deeply unimpressive visual effects that no doubt inflated a budget totaling a steep 175 million dollars, Dolittle is a comprehensive bad idea so forgettable you’ll be able to recycle the wasted brain space almost immediately. The supplemental voice cast has no ability to be interesting or even noticeable — the animal sounds of Marion Cotillard and Ralph Fiennes managed to pass by my ears unrecognized. And Antonio Banderas musters as much effort in villainy as he did for SpongeBob: Sponge Out of Water.
I have no idea how this lifeless, grotesquely boring misapplication of cinematic resources wound up the lesser, more harmless of two January evils — incredibly, you could somehow do worse than Dolittle, but not by much.