The Color Purple briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
Without getting too white about it, I’ll simply say The Color Purple as musical (and directed by an African-American) doesn’t have much on a Jewish guy working out the same affair. I don’t know whether author Alice Walker signed off on the turnaround of her Pulitzer Prize winning 1982 novel, but she’s most definitely cool with this new one, which takes the tale’s persistent anguish and attempts to fashion some kind of holiday escape from the extroversion of the story-to-song translation. Personally, despite finding the well-cut trailers absurdly moving, the troubling sum of this film, while forcefully acted and home to some fantastic theater talent, is underwhelming in pathos — I’m sorry but if your adapted musical can’t even top the singular performance (the wonderful juke joint sequence) of the original movie, then why bother?
When 2023’s Color Purple feels hymn-like or dreamlike, there’s a real, rapturous pulse beneath the direction of Blitz Bazawule in his second outing — but for the regular drama, or even just numbers requiring no dancing, no extravagance, this movie has jack shit on Steven Spielberg’s sense of gravity, composition and fitting the epic, despondent aspects of the novel to appropriately grand cinematic sweep. For sure, Colman Domingo is so good as Mister and looking uncannily similar to a young Danny Glover that he manages to top the 1985 turn. Corey Hawkins continues an auspicious career as a suitable Harpo and Taraji P. Henson is also pretty much the perfect choice for Shug Avery. Still in spite of very commendable work from Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks living and breathing Celie and Sophia respectively (they both, unsurprisingly, are the Broadway carryovers), there’s just so much emotional heavy lifting originally achieved through Whoopi Goldberg’s demeanor and Oprah Winfrey’s vigor. When you get to that dinner revelation and the long lost letters in Spielberg’s take, it feels so dearly earned, and here it’s “oh, already?” — turns out for as much as Steven was accused of softening the edges of Walker’s certainly more mature source material, this Color is pure plush with little tassels on the end, and so it turns out without illustrating the story’s pain properly, the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t so bright, and the tears don’t flow so easily, or at all.
You can’t cheat your way around this particular narrative’s deliberate oscillation between agony and exultation. Cutting out that Christmas visit is strange — what, too dark for the same day you ask your loyal audience to show up? It's especially weird considering the tales allows for making white people look even worse than you choose to but seriously, why does this feel just shy of “why don’t we turn 12 Years a Slave into a musical?” I’m curious, but mostly doubtful about whether the NAACP will have any words about this particular Color Purple — I guess the racist white lady, the one omitted here, wasn’t enough to offset the fact that there’s nothing inherently sinister about showing black on black violence onscreen, especially when its inextricably ingrained in the story. And considering all the “positive” characters like Harpo and Buster and Shug’s husband, most of the “reinforcement of negative stereotypes” boils down to the literal villain: an evil step-dad plus the dad of the evil step-dad — what gives, or gave, almost 40 years ago? Spielberg’s Purple is not faultless but something wholly heartrending.
Honestly, how is our juke joint moment here just lifeless outside of the big show? Maybe you shouldn’t be burying character and nuance when you could be fleshing out the novel’s illustration of the indispensable issues facing black women and the prejudices they encounter — I figured the bluesy song-and-dance could only extrapolate and empower the dramatic blueprint rather than hamper and reduce the narrative even further. Worst of all, not only is Barrino no match for Goldberg’s acts of uncontrollable meekness (Whoopi has an awkward cameo as midwife to her former character’s birth), the soft-spoken Celie isn’t even revealed to us through narration, as would make sense given the epistolary nature of the story and the significance of the fractured correspondence between Netty and the Lord above — the songs should truly make sense her host of hardships, yet Celie is one of this adaptation's least considered characters. Then there’s the stage-to-screen stuff, apparently 13 songs were cut — killing our darlings are we? And this selection was the best? Of course there are the two original songs pining for an Oscar (indistinguishable to me, doesn’t really matter) but SORRY, Barbie’s got that wrapped up tight.
This so-called Bold New Take is certainly new, but it’s dearly lacking sonic resonance, strong sentiment or any kind of spectacle, silly as that sounds — given how naturally Bazawule made something phantasmal from scratch in The Burial of Kojo, it's a shame his essential, spiritual immediacy has been shrunken and scattered. There’s one set most of the movie, so where’s another 90 million dollars of Warner Brothers' money going? It’s so funny that the studio was asking for some real names like Beyoncé and Rihanna to join the cast as the budget grew, and the best they got was H.E.R., no disrespect — no amount of celebrity power could replicate the 1985 version’s cathartic breadth and bitter grace.
Without getting too white about it, I’ll simply say The Color Purple as musical (and directed by an African-American) doesn’t have much on a Jewish guy working out the same affair. I don’t know whether author Alice Walker signed off on the turnaround of her Pulitzer Prize winning 1982 novel, but she’s most definitely cool with this new one, which takes the tale’s persistent anguish and attempts to fashion some kind of holiday escape from the extroversion of the story-to-song translation. Personally, despite finding the well-cut trailers absurdly moving, the troubling sum of this film, while forcefully acted and home to some fantastic theater talent, is underwhelming in pathos — I’m sorry but if your adapted musical can’t even top the singular performance (the wonderful juke joint sequence) of the original movie, then why bother?
When 2023’s Color Purple feels hymn-like or dreamlike, there’s a real, rapturous pulse beneath the direction of Blitz Bazawule in his second outing — but for the regular drama, or even just numbers requiring no dancing, no extravagance, this movie has jack shit on Steven Spielberg’s sense of gravity, composition and fitting the epic, despondent aspects of the novel to appropriately grand cinematic sweep. For sure, Colman Domingo is so good as Mister and looking uncannily similar to a young Danny Glover that he manages to top the 1985 turn. Corey Hawkins continues an auspicious career as a suitable Harpo and Taraji P. Henson is also pretty much the perfect choice for Shug Avery. Still in spite of very commendable work from Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks living and breathing Celie and Sophia respectively (they both, unsurprisingly, are the Broadway carryovers), there’s just so much emotional heavy lifting originally achieved through Whoopi Goldberg’s demeanor and Oprah Winfrey’s vigor. When you get to that dinner revelation and the long lost letters in Spielberg’s take, it feels so dearly earned, and here it’s “oh, already?” — turns out for as much as Steven was accused of softening the edges of Walker’s certainly more mature source material, this Color is pure plush with little tassels on the end, and so it turns out without illustrating the story’s pain properly, the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t so bright, and the tears don’t flow so easily, or at all.
You can’t cheat your way around this particular narrative’s deliberate oscillation between agony and exultation. Cutting out that Christmas visit is strange — what, too dark for the same day you ask your loyal audience to show up? It's especially weird considering the tales allows for making white people look even worse than you choose to but seriously, why does this feel just shy of “why don’t we turn 12 Years a Slave into a musical?” I’m curious, but mostly doubtful about whether the NAACP will have any words about this particular Color Purple — I guess the racist white lady, the one omitted here, wasn’t enough to offset the fact that there’s nothing inherently sinister about showing black on black violence onscreen, especially when its inextricably ingrained in the story. And considering all the “positive” characters like Harpo and Buster and Shug’s husband, most of the “reinforcement of negative stereotypes” boils down to the literal villain: an evil step-dad plus the dad of the evil step-dad — what gives, or gave, almost 40 years ago? Spielberg’s Purple is not faultless but something wholly heartrending.
Honestly, how is our juke joint moment here just lifeless outside of the big show? Maybe you shouldn’t be burying character and nuance when you could be fleshing out the novel’s illustration of the indispensable issues facing black women and the prejudices they encounter — I figured the bluesy song-and-dance could only extrapolate and empower the dramatic blueprint rather than hamper and reduce the narrative even further. Worst of all, not only is Barrino no match for Goldberg’s acts of uncontrollable meekness (Whoopi has an awkward cameo as midwife to her former character’s birth), the soft-spoken Celie isn’t even revealed to us through narration, as would make sense given the epistolary nature of the story and the significance of the fractured correspondence between Netty and the Lord above — the songs should truly make sense her host of hardships, yet Celie is one of this adaptation's least considered characters. Then there’s the stage-to-screen stuff, apparently 13 songs were cut — killing our darlings are we? And this selection was the best? Of course there are the two original songs pining for an Oscar (indistinguishable to me, doesn’t really matter) but SORRY, Barbie’s got that wrapped up tight.
This so-called Bold New Take is certainly new, but it’s dearly lacking sonic resonance, strong sentiment or any kind of spectacle, silly as that sounds — given how naturally Bazawule made something phantasmal from scratch in The Burial of Kojo, it's a shame his essential, spiritual immediacy has been shrunken and scattered. There’s one set most of the movie, so where’s another 90 million dollars of Warner Brothers' money going? It’s so funny that the studio was asking for some real names like Beyoncé and Rihanna to join the cast as the budget grew, and the best they got was H.E.R., no disrespect — no amount of celebrity power could replicate the 1985 version’s cathartic breadth and bitter grace.
Ferrari briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
If Michael Mann ain’t makin’ ‘em for the boys I don’t know who is, but who cares about gender when he’s got the craft by the balls? He makes movies equal to more than the sum of their parts but Ferrari is so whelming in sum it would probably have played better on Showtime where the 95 million dollar enterprise once was destined for. Ferrari functions as his fourth biopic for boomers, after his great whistleblower ode The Insider, the champion of the world against his culture’s grain for 2001’s Ali, as well as Public Enemies, one of his most commercial features and probably the strangest slice of his digital age given the period setting. Cassius Clay or Dillinger aside, Enzo Ferrari’s life is about as entertaining as watching tobacco industry snitches discloses corporate secrets, however if you’re as blind as I was to this tragic story’s full sum, you could be callously calling this boring. A lot of Ferrari’s character boils down to chilly, unfeeling determination — early on he watches a driver in one of his malfunctioning cars go FLYING to no reaction; yeah, well, shit happens — and the screenplay is content to unfold his double life for all the telenovela qualities are worth.
Adam Driver is seemingly warming up his accent before grasping it — just in the way a race car’s speed isn’t judged by the first lap but rather when it’s already in motion, Driver’s worst moments were likely shot at the beginning of production, and shooting out of sequence means feeling as if they’re slipping between dialectic amateurism and second nature. Speaking of, WAS Shailene Woodley supposed to be Italian? Because fuck if I could tell! I think she’s great but her voice is distinctly American, Driver’s too, like Will Smith as Muhammad Ali, in cadence or coaching or whatever, it’s just back and forth between real and “real”. Similarly to Driver’s experience, Tom Cruise was well-cast against type for cold-blooded villainy in Mann’s mighty good Collateral, but both of the roughly 40-year-old performers have far too much grey in their hair especially for how little you fill in the wrinkles, I don’t understand! Unlike Smith in Ali (whose casting alone always made me go “nah,” but he and the film are more convincing and mythically impressive than you expect) the average Joseph doesn’t really know what Enzo looked like without Wikipedia. So Driver, one of his generation’s finest, even with the advantage of the performative upper hand still can’t overcome how bitchy it is to play a character twenty years your senior, particularly when the makeup department seems more preoccupied with the stupid wig. Viewers are apparently saving all the praise here for Penélope Cruz, but she perhaps involuntarily turns this movie into Oscar bait given that her role is written through the lens of melodramatic hysterics from the word go.
For as much as Mann is a ferociously talented filmmaker, possessing Oliver Stone’s temperament (just less fiery cinematography, fidgety editing and overt political outrage) and a knack for crime thrillers of all shades like some Marty Scorsese secondary (Mann does often go toe to toe with the Italian stallion), frankly I couldn’t spot big Mike’s imprint here — forget about evening shots drowned in blue, forget about long lens and shallow focus shots too. Sure the racing scenes are bristling with economy and intensity, but they’re nothing next to the aesthetic dressing of even his worst stuff — at least his last, 2015’s Blackhat, the already outdated digital cat and mouse NCIS episode, had nice Atticus Ross (sans Reznor) bleeps slathered across. The new Mann says to hell with distinct, otherworldly, ethereal ambiance and scoring too, ain’t nothing close to Tangerine dreaminess here. And not to bury the lead, but Mann is probably the most respected man of the digital era next to David Fincher, (whose movies often play like film without the grain, with a perfected prototypical layer of that Netflix grease) and listen I hardly know a Viper from an ArriAlexa any more than the next film enthusiast/bashful film-tech novice, seriously. Considering I didn’t know if this was shot on film or digital — DIGITAL of course, the Sony Venice 2 Camera — it’s funny that it didn’t matter seeing as the “film look,” in tone and texture, leaves the distinct digital era of Mann’s work far behind regardless, so much so he kind of lost his identity.
It’s just ironic how traditionally sharp and impressive the visual result really is since there wasn’t too much to show off. But if his style has been somewhat shaken, it’s fine so long as the script doesn’t feel like typical biopic bullshit, and to my delight this is insistently anti-hagiography filmmaking. But that ruthless framing suggests this may as well be a CNN Special report or an engaging documentary, even more than The Insider. Even at his most adept his works were never terribly crowd-pleasing, this one especially so, nonetheless this movie is quite the masochists Christmas Day at the movies… I can’t remember vocalizing “Holy shit!” in a theater maybe ever, but this movie’s “climax” is memorably gruesome. Enjoy watching about a dozen people die horribly as you go on home to your goose and galoshes?
Mann has been a pioneer, a singular voice, but I think outside of his debut Thief, which illustrated his whole essence and carved out his cool corner for classic, calculated crime flicks, and his major triple plays (Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, then Collateral, Miami Vice and just barely Public Enemies, the aforementioned Insider and Ali sandwiched between) this marks only the third time he's felt outta sorts. After a power gap somewhere is Ferrari and its pitch dark, funereal take on the apparatus of the biographical features. This respectable enough movie could’ve been directed by anybody, and without the distinct soundcraft and flush camerawork reminding one of movies as gorgeous to the eyes and ears as his most astonishing accomplishments, this becomes a quiet then completely distressing conundrum in Mann’s oeuvre, next to his unsuitable sophomore synthesis of Nazis and supernatural horror in The Keep, or Blackhat proving old people should just stay away from “techno thrillers." Ferrari is debatably his worst in 40 years, and still remains hardly a fresh low point to be derided for. It's just a rare, borderline inessential notch in an outstanding filmography, though it’s easy to see why Mann has a fascination with this world — for auto nerds I’m sure this is orgasmic in glimmers.
If Michael Mann ain’t makin’ ‘em for the boys I don’t know who is, but who cares about gender when he’s got the craft by the balls? He makes movies equal to more than the sum of their parts but Ferrari is so whelming in sum it would probably have played better on Showtime where the 95 million dollar enterprise once was destined for. Ferrari functions as his fourth biopic for boomers, after his great whistleblower ode The Insider, the champion of the world against his culture’s grain for 2001’s Ali, as well as Public Enemies, one of his most commercial features and probably the strangest slice of his digital age given the period setting. Cassius Clay or Dillinger aside, Enzo Ferrari’s life is about as entertaining as watching tobacco industry snitches discloses corporate secrets, however if you’re as blind as I was to this tragic story’s full sum, you could be callously calling this boring. A lot of Ferrari’s character boils down to chilly, unfeeling determination — early on he watches a driver in one of his malfunctioning cars go FLYING to no reaction; yeah, well, shit happens — and the screenplay is content to unfold his double life for all the telenovela qualities are worth.
Adam Driver is seemingly warming up his accent before grasping it — just in the way a race car’s speed isn’t judged by the first lap but rather when it’s already in motion, Driver’s worst moments were likely shot at the beginning of production, and shooting out of sequence means feeling as if they’re slipping between dialectic amateurism and second nature. Speaking of, WAS Shailene Woodley supposed to be Italian? Because fuck if I could tell! I think she’s great but her voice is distinctly American, Driver’s too, like Will Smith as Muhammad Ali, in cadence or coaching or whatever, it’s just back and forth between real and “real”. Similarly to Driver’s experience, Tom Cruise was well-cast against type for cold-blooded villainy in Mann’s mighty good Collateral, but both of the roughly 40-year-old performers have far too much grey in their hair especially for how little you fill in the wrinkles, I don’t understand! Unlike Smith in Ali (whose casting alone always made me go “nah,” but he and the film are more convincing and mythically impressive than you expect) the average Joseph doesn’t really know what Enzo looked like without Wikipedia. So Driver, one of his generation’s finest, even with the advantage of the performative upper hand still can’t overcome how bitchy it is to play a character twenty years your senior, particularly when the makeup department seems more preoccupied with the stupid wig. Viewers are apparently saving all the praise here for Penélope Cruz, but she perhaps involuntarily turns this movie into Oscar bait given that her role is written through the lens of melodramatic hysterics from the word go.
For as much as Mann is a ferociously talented filmmaker, possessing Oliver Stone’s temperament (just less fiery cinematography, fidgety editing and overt political outrage) and a knack for crime thrillers of all shades like some Marty Scorsese secondary (Mann does often go toe to toe with the Italian stallion), frankly I couldn’t spot big Mike’s imprint here — forget about evening shots drowned in blue, forget about long lens and shallow focus shots too. Sure the racing scenes are bristling with economy and intensity, but they’re nothing next to the aesthetic dressing of even his worst stuff — at least his last, 2015’s Blackhat, the already outdated digital cat and mouse NCIS episode, had nice Atticus Ross (sans Reznor) bleeps slathered across. The new Mann says to hell with distinct, otherworldly, ethereal ambiance and scoring too, ain’t nothing close to Tangerine dreaminess here. And not to bury the lead, but Mann is probably the most respected man of the digital era next to David Fincher, (whose movies often play like film without the grain, with a perfected prototypical layer of that Netflix grease) and listen I hardly know a Viper from an ArriAlexa any more than the next film enthusiast/bashful film-tech novice, seriously. Considering I didn’t know if this was shot on film or digital — DIGITAL of course, the Sony Venice 2 Camera — it’s funny that it didn’t matter seeing as the “film look,” in tone and texture, leaves the distinct digital era of Mann’s work far behind regardless, so much so he kind of lost his identity.
It’s just ironic how traditionally sharp and impressive the visual result really is since there wasn’t too much to show off. But if his style has been somewhat shaken, it’s fine so long as the script doesn’t feel like typical biopic bullshit, and to my delight this is insistently anti-hagiography filmmaking. But that ruthless framing suggests this may as well be a CNN Special report or an engaging documentary, even more than The Insider. Even at his most adept his works were never terribly crowd-pleasing, this one especially so, nonetheless this movie is quite the masochists Christmas Day at the movies… I can’t remember vocalizing “Holy shit!” in a theater maybe ever, but this movie’s “climax” is memorably gruesome. Enjoy watching about a dozen people die horribly as you go on home to your goose and galoshes?
Mann has been a pioneer, a singular voice, but I think outside of his debut Thief, which illustrated his whole essence and carved out his cool corner for classic, calculated crime flicks, and his major triple plays (Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, Heat, then Collateral, Miami Vice and just barely Public Enemies, the aforementioned Insider and Ali sandwiched between) this marks only the third time he's felt outta sorts. After a power gap somewhere is Ferrari and its pitch dark, funereal take on the apparatus of the biographical features. This respectable enough movie could’ve been directed by anybody, and without the distinct soundcraft and flush camerawork reminding one of movies as gorgeous to the eyes and ears as his most astonishing accomplishments, this becomes a quiet then completely distressing conundrum in Mann’s oeuvre, next to his unsuitable sophomore synthesis of Nazis and supernatural horror in The Keep, or Blackhat proving old people should just stay away from “techno thrillers." Ferrari is debatably his worst in 40 years, and still remains hardly a fresh low point to be derided for. It's just a rare, borderline inessential notch in an outstanding filmography, though it’s easy to see why Mann has a fascination with this world — for auto nerds I’m sure this is orgasmic in glimmers.
American Fiction briefing
3 (out of 4)
It’s rare that I review a debut unless it’s from some overzealous Hollywood actor or proven writer — having seen nothing Mr. Cord Jefferson has charged (namely The Good Place and Watchmen, sorry my TV interests practically don’t exist), nonetheless the winner of the People’s Choice Award at TIFF is no small thing in any year, and this time it bested The Holdovers and The Boy and the Heron. Should be damn good right?
Regardless of festival fanaticism, American Fiction would’ve had me curious from its tempestuous high concept alone: an African American professor and novelist dumbing his efforts down to meet the pandering place where authorship, audiences and pompous middlemen publishers all compromise some intellectual equilibrium — if somehow Cord had come away with a less scrupulously conceived screenplay and screen-display (based on Percival Everett’s even more impressively culturally reflective 2001 novel Erasure, though I’m not reading modern stuff if anything either, sorry my narrow mind measures movies mainly), he could have possibly been accused of the same shady solicitousness the film goes to great lengths to satirize in order to stir up conversation. It may be the approachable version of both Spike Lee's brilliantly brazen, incisive, hysterical minstrel-disassemble Bamboozled as well as Ava DuVernay's anti-cinematic lecture come to life Origin.
While this hit the People’s Choice Award requisites for the mixture of mischievous, politically provocative positing and feel-good, pathos-padded mainstream-primed fare, this kind of complete left-and-right-brain package doesn’t ask you to make personal or political compromises in order to enjoy, gradually outpaces your expectations just as you think you have the story’s angles all figured out. This meta-comedy-drama could have stripped a layer of self-awareness and maybe been better for it, but there’s no room to complain when American Fiction candidly invests in potentially trite but practically touching family dynamics with recognizable, relatable, flesh and blood figures within and without the family unit. Exceptionally vivid dialogue and an oscillation between bitter bite and quiet contemplation are met by every performer, particularly Sterling K. Brown, Issa Rae and of course Jeffrey Wright, who after so long on the outskirts of many features finally feels at home in the spotlight.
Sure, in classic left-wing demoralizing fashion, the white characters are drawn broad, senseless and stupendously out of touch — if its targets of clever dissection didn’t also include hypocrite liberals just like the last great satire of its kind Get Out, there would be a chink in Cord’s impenetrable armor. AS A WHITE MAN, I could laugh at all the jokes because I’M sooooo progressive, not mind-poisoned like closet racists or open ones. But even the cutesiest meta elements are well-realized, from his own Phucking Pafology come to life born from a fed-up imagination to a denouement seemingly inspired from Clue’s pick-your-own-ending freedom. There’s little cinematic craft outside of letting a fantastic, multifaceted screenplay sing for a very full less than two hours, and that’s more than alright with me. “It’s not supposed to be subtle” or whatever 'Monk' about his fake "urban" book, and the film itself has built-in excuses for its more mass-appealed race-baiting — the so-called skewering of Hollywood brown-nosing is more prevalent than its commentary on modern literature, and moreover the cultural frustrations expressed here are raw, real, and just the movie we need right now hehehahahoho.
But seriously, this isn’t like Black Panther where the praise from white audiences is a foregone conclusion, a prerequisite out of fear of criticism reversed back — American Fiction is actually punchy and pure enough for universal cinema regardless of the specificity of its dissonant zeitgeist. The film pretends to be cuddly as a cactus, but it’s got a soft, chewy center outside of a provocative, pointed shell. Say what you will about its many-folded stances on the direction and authenticity of black art, this screenplay was the definition of tact, particularly in its standout conversational climax. American Fiction is a cunning movie that also feels like it could be something more, still the preference for emotional clarity and a familial reality (as opposed to occasionally plucking for lower hanging fruit of cheap racial shots) and speckled, tactile commentary make for a killer cine-cocktail.
It’s rare that I review a debut unless it’s from some overzealous Hollywood actor or proven writer — having seen nothing Mr. Cord Jefferson has charged (namely The Good Place and Watchmen, sorry my TV interests practically don’t exist), nonetheless the winner of the People’s Choice Award at TIFF is no small thing in any year, and this time it bested The Holdovers and The Boy and the Heron. Should be damn good right?
Regardless of festival fanaticism, American Fiction would’ve had me curious from its tempestuous high concept alone: an African American professor and novelist dumbing his efforts down to meet the pandering place where authorship, audiences and pompous middlemen publishers all compromise some intellectual equilibrium — if somehow Cord had come away with a less scrupulously conceived screenplay and screen-display (based on Percival Everett’s even more impressively culturally reflective 2001 novel Erasure, though I’m not reading modern stuff if anything either, sorry my narrow mind measures movies mainly), he could have possibly been accused of the same shady solicitousness the film goes to great lengths to satirize in order to stir up conversation. It may be the approachable version of both Spike Lee's brilliantly brazen, incisive, hysterical minstrel-disassemble Bamboozled as well as Ava DuVernay's anti-cinematic lecture come to life Origin.
While this hit the People’s Choice Award requisites for the mixture of mischievous, politically provocative positing and feel-good, pathos-padded mainstream-primed fare, this kind of complete left-and-right-brain package doesn’t ask you to make personal or political compromises in order to enjoy, gradually outpaces your expectations just as you think you have the story’s angles all figured out. This meta-comedy-drama could have stripped a layer of self-awareness and maybe been better for it, but there’s no room to complain when American Fiction candidly invests in potentially trite but practically touching family dynamics with recognizable, relatable, flesh and blood figures within and without the family unit. Exceptionally vivid dialogue and an oscillation between bitter bite and quiet contemplation are met by every performer, particularly Sterling K. Brown, Issa Rae and of course Jeffrey Wright, who after so long on the outskirts of many features finally feels at home in the spotlight.
Sure, in classic left-wing demoralizing fashion, the white characters are drawn broad, senseless and stupendously out of touch — if its targets of clever dissection didn’t also include hypocrite liberals just like the last great satire of its kind Get Out, there would be a chink in Cord’s impenetrable armor. AS A WHITE MAN, I could laugh at all the jokes because I’M sooooo progressive, not mind-poisoned like closet racists or open ones. But even the cutesiest meta elements are well-realized, from his own Phucking Pafology come to life born from a fed-up imagination to a denouement seemingly inspired from Clue’s pick-your-own-ending freedom. There’s little cinematic craft outside of letting a fantastic, multifaceted screenplay sing for a very full less than two hours, and that’s more than alright with me. “It’s not supposed to be subtle” or whatever 'Monk' about his fake "urban" book, and the film itself has built-in excuses for its more mass-appealed race-baiting — the so-called skewering of Hollywood brown-nosing is more prevalent than its commentary on modern literature, and moreover the cultural frustrations expressed here are raw, real, and just the movie we need right now hehehahahoho.
But seriously, this isn’t like Black Panther where the praise from white audiences is a foregone conclusion, a prerequisite out of fear of criticism reversed back — American Fiction is actually punchy and pure enough for universal cinema regardless of the specificity of its dissonant zeitgeist. The film pretends to be cuddly as a cactus, but it’s got a soft, chewy center outside of a provocative, pointed shell. Say what you will about its many-folded stances on the direction and authenticity of black art, this screenplay was the definition of tact, particularly in its standout conversational climax. American Fiction is a cunning movie that also feels like it could be something more, still the preference for emotional clarity and a familial reality (as opposed to occasionally plucking for lower hanging fruit of cheap racial shots) and speckled, tactile commentary make for a killer cine-cocktail.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
Apologies aquapals but I don’t see how propping up Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires as some indispensable influence somehow makes your sloppy sequel redeemable, as if citing more creditable camp were a get-out-of-criticism-free card — when you’re promised that the follow-up to 2018’s Aquaman will be “even goofier,” you just get me too excited for something as uniquely dumb and casual as The Lost Kingdom. Not that I wouldn’t take James Wan’s horror-informed, Snyder-ascending sense of kinetic, shiny cinematic turbulence over just about any of the other more forgettable, flash in the pan, undercooked and under-thought DCEU fare that has led to this shameful, pathetic whimper of a finale, if you can even call it that.
So yes, the second Aquaman is probably a hair or so better than Shazam: Fury of the Gods (remove a mugging Zack Levi and the skittles and there’s an OK movie), The Flash (something was clicking in the double trouble Ezra show, and similar buddy comedy crap happens here), and definitely superior to Blue Beetle, Black Adam, Wonder Woman 1984, even Birds of Prey and yes, most assuredly Zack Snyder’s untenable Cut of Justice League. Wan did just about as good a job as James Gunn (now the new messiah/Feige of whatever clean slate casts off with Superman’s latest legacy in 2025) did for The Suicide Squad, of course a marginal improvement over 2016's original abortion. I really don’t want to even comment on the artistic merit of BvS, I’ve tried to see why the cult is so fervent by way of the extended version but Snyderbros are their own special breed of stubborn, funny enough the frankensteined Joss Whedon version of Justice is somehow more approachable detritus. Man of Steel is arguably not bad in sum even if it gets bad, leaving only Wonder Woman, Shazam! and, of course, the highest grossing DCEU film with over 1 billy, 2018’s Aquaman, as the only installments in a 16-part series I could, with a straight face, say were pretty good, and even these finer cuts have their chewy bits. But personally the undersea undertaking is most forgivable…
I never expected anything show-stopping, momentous or in any way climactic — it’s crazy just how standalone the EU entries became, as the original Aquaman was already rather untethered and still made references to Justice League. MCU’s one-offs literally require some moment of context within the brand, some stupid reference to the shared universe, and I used to think ignoring this in-film-shilling made DC stronger, and specifically the separated installments like Joker spoke to this potentiality — The Batman would be another more mature, quality exception if it weren’t the longest, lamest mystery movie ever to wear the mask of a detective caped crusader movie. After all these years of enjoying DC as the foil, the wild card, the crazy cousin to Marvel’s mightier cultural powers, I've finally witnessed the scope of Warner Brother’s failure, and not just because The Lost Kingdom punctuates a decade of filmmaking with Patrick Wilson snacking on a roach burger.
Unfortunately, the incessant inanities save this one from total oblivion, as does some action showmanship, sincerely employed fantasy elements (like giant man-eating grasshoppers or an assistant cephalopod named Topo) as well as Wilson in probably his sixth collaboration with Wan — who in addition to inciting the Saw franchise with Leigh Whannell and executive producing many sequels, he created the first two installments of both the Insidious and Conjuring series. There’s some overlap and regular enough acclaim for his horror movies that at least halfway earns the cult, Conjuring with its acting and period elements, and Insidious with a balance of the usual ghost-hunting with domestic disturbances and ethereal astral planes, so all I can say is the man knew how to either actually improve upon a sequel as with The Conjuring 2’s mastery of expectations or how to make the most of the inevitable with a less fondly remembered and yet different enough Insidious: Chapter 2. Point is whether you have him belting Elvis tunes to comfort scared kids, or antithetically playing subject to some Jack Torrence-level episode of supernatural takeover, Wilson is clearly the guy holding together Wan’s sequels, and The Lost Kingdom makes three for three.
Wilson excels as straight man and fish out of water (“fucking surface-dwellers…”) whereas Jason Mamoa is too crass and quippy here as opposed to how roguish and intimidating he could be in the last, and it all evens out to some decent Abbott and Costello buffoonery between. The first act of this film is so rough at recapping events, establishing new threats and moving from very broad pee-in-the-face comedy to some sort of thematic mixer of tepid commentary on fatherhood and brotherhood (yuck!) to the whole Day After Tomorrow angle (wherein they’re scuba diving in minus 50 degree water) not so subliminally screaming some eco-exhale while functioning no less grotesquely as a dullard’s disaster movie on top of it all. The Lost Kingdom only made me smile during the Wilson-Mamoa team-up, and the rest of the movie’s madness is measured by greenhouse gases, cursed tridents and blood oaths rather rapidly coasting by in a colorful, damp fever dream.
Unlike, say J-Law basically mercy killing herself in Dark Phoenix just to get out, Amber Heard, despite whatever heavily publicized off-camera complications, was not too absent from this movie and actually tried her best whatever that amounts to, and Nicole Kidman certainly shows up too. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was trying hard last time, and while I wish a villain elevated to primary bad guy from a previously secondary role (a rarity, can you name anything closer than Spider-Man 3?) made for a better role, he was serviceable even if mystical brainwashing doesn’t trump proper character motivations. This movie misses a touch of Willem Dafoe complete with tight hair bun but elsewhere a bolstered role for Randall Park thankfully doesn’t obviously pigeonhole him for comic relief as thoroughly as Ant-Man and the Wasp does. Speaking of Marvel, the plot of Lost Kingdom pretty much copy-pastes huge portions of Thor: The Dark World, it’s own decade-removed, mixed-reviewed sequel perfect for memory-holing.
I have a soft spot still, carried over from my much fuller, more genuine appreciation for the first Aquaman — when this movie chases down the follies of cheesy, eager adventure movies that made 2018 float on, there’s enough corny, crumby fun (almost forgot that subsurface speakeasy with Martin Short) to call The Lost Kingdom a half-decent holiday flick, if you can stand the whiplash of an event feature that clearly went through the ringer in audience testing, only to be generally derided all the same.
Apologies aquapals but I don’t see how propping up Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires as some indispensable influence somehow makes your sloppy sequel redeemable, as if citing more creditable camp were a get-out-of-criticism-free card — when you’re promised that the follow-up to 2018’s Aquaman will be “even goofier,” you just get me too excited for something as uniquely dumb and casual as The Lost Kingdom. Not that I wouldn’t take James Wan’s horror-informed, Snyder-ascending sense of kinetic, shiny cinematic turbulence over just about any of the other more forgettable, flash in the pan, undercooked and under-thought DCEU fare that has led to this shameful, pathetic whimper of a finale, if you can even call it that.
So yes, the second Aquaman is probably a hair or so better than Shazam: Fury of the Gods (remove a mugging Zack Levi and the skittles and there’s an OK movie), The Flash (something was clicking in the double trouble Ezra show, and similar buddy comedy crap happens here), and definitely superior to Blue Beetle, Black Adam, Wonder Woman 1984, even Birds of Prey and yes, most assuredly Zack Snyder’s untenable Cut of Justice League. Wan did just about as good a job as James Gunn (now the new messiah/Feige of whatever clean slate casts off with Superman’s latest legacy in 2025) did for The Suicide Squad, of course a marginal improvement over 2016's original abortion. I really don’t want to even comment on the artistic merit of BvS, I’ve tried to see why the cult is so fervent by way of the extended version but Snyderbros are their own special breed of stubborn, funny enough the frankensteined Joss Whedon version of Justice is somehow more approachable detritus. Man of Steel is arguably not bad in sum even if it gets bad, leaving only Wonder Woman, Shazam! and, of course, the highest grossing DCEU film with over 1 billy, 2018’s Aquaman, as the only installments in a 16-part series I could, with a straight face, say were pretty good, and even these finer cuts have their chewy bits. But personally the undersea undertaking is most forgivable…
I never expected anything show-stopping, momentous or in any way climactic — it’s crazy just how standalone the EU entries became, as the original Aquaman was already rather untethered and still made references to Justice League. MCU’s one-offs literally require some moment of context within the brand, some stupid reference to the shared universe, and I used to think ignoring this in-film-shilling made DC stronger, and specifically the separated installments like Joker spoke to this potentiality — The Batman would be another more mature, quality exception if it weren’t the longest, lamest mystery movie ever to wear the mask of a detective caped crusader movie. After all these years of enjoying DC as the foil, the wild card, the crazy cousin to Marvel’s mightier cultural powers, I've finally witnessed the scope of Warner Brother’s failure, and not just because The Lost Kingdom punctuates a decade of filmmaking with Patrick Wilson snacking on a roach burger.
Unfortunately, the incessant inanities save this one from total oblivion, as does some action showmanship, sincerely employed fantasy elements (like giant man-eating grasshoppers or an assistant cephalopod named Topo) as well as Wilson in probably his sixth collaboration with Wan — who in addition to inciting the Saw franchise with Leigh Whannell and executive producing many sequels, he created the first two installments of both the Insidious and Conjuring series. There’s some overlap and regular enough acclaim for his horror movies that at least halfway earns the cult, Conjuring with its acting and period elements, and Insidious with a balance of the usual ghost-hunting with domestic disturbances and ethereal astral planes, so all I can say is the man knew how to either actually improve upon a sequel as with The Conjuring 2’s mastery of expectations or how to make the most of the inevitable with a less fondly remembered and yet different enough Insidious: Chapter 2. Point is whether you have him belting Elvis tunes to comfort scared kids, or antithetically playing subject to some Jack Torrence-level episode of supernatural takeover, Wilson is clearly the guy holding together Wan’s sequels, and The Lost Kingdom makes three for three.
Wilson excels as straight man and fish out of water (“fucking surface-dwellers…”) whereas Jason Mamoa is too crass and quippy here as opposed to how roguish and intimidating he could be in the last, and it all evens out to some decent Abbott and Costello buffoonery between. The first act of this film is so rough at recapping events, establishing new threats and moving from very broad pee-in-the-face comedy to some sort of thematic mixer of tepid commentary on fatherhood and brotherhood (yuck!) to the whole Day After Tomorrow angle (wherein they’re scuba diving in minus 50 degree water) not so subliminally screaming some eco-exhale while functioning no less grotesquely as a dullard’s disaster movie on top of it all. The Lost Kingdom only made me smile during the Wilson-Mamoa team-up, and the rest of the movie’s madness is measured by greenhouse gases, cursed tridents and blood oaths rather rapidly coasting by in a colorful, damp fever dream.
Unlike, say J-Law basically mercy killing herself in Dark Phoenix just to get out, Amber Heard, despite whatever heavily publicized off-camera complications, was not too absent from this movie and actually tried her best whatever that amounts to, and Nicole Kidman certainly shows up too. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II was trying hard last time, and while I wish a villain elevated to primary bad guy from a previously secondary role (a rarity, can you name anything closer than Spider-Man 3?) made for a better role, he was serviceable even if mystical brainwashing doesn’t trump proper character motivations. This movie misses a touch of Willem Dafoe complete with tight hair bun but elsewhere a bolstered role for Randall Park thankfully doesn’t obviously pigeonhole him for comic relief as thoroughly as Ant-Man and the Wasp does. Speaking of Marvel, the plot of Lost Kingdom pretty much copy-pastes huge portions of Thor: The Dark World, it’s own decade-removed, mixed-reviewed sequel perfect for memory-holing.
I have a soft spot still, carried over from my much fuller, more genuine appreciation for the first Aquaman — when this movie chases down the follies of cheesy, eager adventure movies that made 2018 float on, there’s enough corny, crumby fun (almost forgot that subsurface speakeasy with Martin Short) to call The Lost Kingdom a half-decent holiday flick, if you can stand the whiplash of an event feature that clearly went through the ringer in audience testing, only to be generally derided all the same.
Maestro briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
Oh geez Bradley I hope they can forgive you for this one! Listen, I don’t care for Cooper’s rock star regress in his own A Star Is Born, the man's acting has never really done it for me outside of Nightmare Alley, Licorice Pizza, The Place Beyond the Pines, Rocket Raccoon and maybe the David O. Russell collaborations, oh wait that’s not a bad profile, never mind. But for a movie about Leonard Bernstein, this might as well have been called CAREY MULLIGAN: The Movie, because you remove her, and there’s no calculated Oscar contender/pretender to speak of. “You don’t even know how much you need me, do you?” Carey utter as Felicia Montealegre… Cooper has admitted an awareness to just get out of his co-star’s way, be it Lady Gaga or now Mulligan who singlehandedly holds this film together and, my word, she’s not even turning in her best work (Promising Young Woman? Wildlife? The Great Gatsby? An Education? Take your pick). She’s a heaven-sent miracle worker — "What have we got, cancer melodrama? No sweat."
Despite reading across from Mulligan, Bradley had an uphill battle. Despite the assistance of controversially exaggerated prosthetic excellence (it wouldn’t be called antisemitic if that schnozz was a little more accurate), Cooper’s efforts add up to more than shy of a buck given a subject so many-splendored in his cultural significance. Cooper strives and struggles to marry his considerable abilities to a figure with whom he already bears a likeness but the mumbling, nasally 40s-diction is more distracting than protruding sniffers, bigger ears, bushier brows and a pronounced chin.
Watching someone imitate an icon is one thing but self-direction to top it off is another level of butt-scratching high-risk low-reward tomfoolery that I can’t get behind — there’s this crazy secondhand self-awareness, this heightened hellishness to it all. I’ll be damned if I can name one single other self-directed biographical movie, unless Citizen Kane's allusions to William Randolph Hearst count. His ego feels fairly removed, more than I believe haters think (there's less self-consciousness than A Star Is Born), but man, when Cooper’s doing his sweatiest, most vein-throbbing baton-waving, he’s losing just about everybody divorced from some orchestra nerd pointing out a missed beat — you practiced years for these few minutes and this is it? As Laurence Olivier said to Dustin Hoffman (for Marathon Man), “My dear boy why don’t you just try acting?”
But let’s just consider the facts, see if I have any questions: everyone hates this movie, especially those who haven’t seen it — for film twitter or zoomers this is Oscar bait in its purist distilled form, a vacuum for all things true concerning people let alone movies. With backing by both Spielberg AND Scorsese plus Netflix distribution, this is a real enough movie, one Steven even cued up for Bradley after an early screening of A Star Is Born (all told at least a decent update on the ’76 version, the trash one with Streisand and and Kristofferson). As much as I want to go to bat for Bradley, it’s hard to act as if Maestro is actually a home run or some misunderstood movie — we’re dealing with very textbook filmcraft. At its best it’s really evoking the desired style — the blockier B&W is a fairly brilliant simulation of the past, and even in modern color the distinguished makeup work still hold things up, not to mention the way the film mostly, wisely incorporates the prolific composer’s many creations into the fray. It’s only cloying or deadening when they need to throw his influence right in your face, like that terrible not-quite-dream-scenario-homage to On the Town. The film has subtler ways to make note of Bernstein’s musical breadth without stooping to silly, showy theatrics contradicting the more insular, tasteful, patient moments in earlier life (aside from a few contemporary, far too fluid match cuts that could never pan out back in the day).
Largely Cooper manages to extract some intimacy from a grandiose, drug ’n’ desire fueled life, so much so I can applaud the movie for getting deep into his pivotal, strained marriage considering all the extra-marital and extra-sexual affairs. But like, say, Mank, this is a film with fine dialogue, fairly faultless direction and by all accounts winning, well-worn acting that nonetheless feels like it needs to explore everything BUT the inner soul, like respectively what screenwriting or the composition process means in cinematic terms, what it feels like when “summer sings in you.” Cooper ain’t no Fincher for that matter.
Not only can I accept more of this historical timeline ping-ponging — both Oppenheimer and Maestro use of color and lack thereof for future or past — but Nolan’s latest film was actually meant to “provoke questions” (as an opening quotation from Bernstein indicates you were after) whereas Maestro is basically there to answer them, if well-dressed wiki-summary simplicity and bio bullet points is good for you. I’ve had it with the “new, unconventional” biopic ending up just as more of the same — for as much as Andrew Dominik’s Blonde leaves plenty to be desired (and is barely a biopic), that strange, sullen, schizophrenic style would’ve suited this ode to a noteworthy jack of all trades. Cooper wants to be both reverent and critical but Maestro isn’t much of either — it gets very close to covering the “grand inner life“ that Bernstein had but the script can’t stop recounting his deeds and bringing up that crucial fill-in conducting job when he was 25.
My contrarian ass desperately would like to rally behind an unfairly maligned movie relatively full of graces, good performances and handsome technical attributes but Jesus, all the careful consideration in the world can’t remedy a life-snapshot that is inevitably forced, a little full of itself and somehow soundly un-cinematic. Once time takes Mulligan out of frame, there’s nothing left but that REM reference and continuing to watch Bernstein fuck around with his students. WHAT A LEGEND!
Oh geez Bradley I hope they can forgive you for this one! Listen, I don’t care for Cooper’s rock star regress in his own A Star Is Born, the man's acting has never really done it for me outside of Nightmare Alley, Licorice Pizza, The Place Beyond the Pines, Rocket Raccoon and maybe the David O. Russell collaborations, oh wait that’s not a bad profile, never mind. But for a movie about Leonard Bernstein, this might as well have been called CAREY MULLIGAN: The Movie, because you remove her, and there’s no calculated Oscar contender/pretender to speak of. “You don’t even know how much you need me, do you?” Carey utter as Felicia Montealegre… Cooper has admitted an awareness to just get out of his co-star’s way, be it Lady Gaga or now Mulligan who singlehandedly holds this film together and, my word, she’s not even turning in her best work (Promising Young Woman? Wildlife? The Great Gatsby? An Education? Take your pick). She’s a heaven-sent miracle worker — "What have we got, cancer melodrama? No sweat."
Despite reading across from Mulligan, Bradley had an uphill battle. Despite the assistance of controversially exaggerated prosthetic excellence (it wouldn’t be called antisemitic if that schnozz was a little more accurate), Cooper’s efforts add up to more than shy of a buck given a subject so many-splendored in his cultural significance. Cooper strives and struggles to marry his considerable abilities to a figure with whom he already bears a likeness but the mumbling, nasally 40s-diction is more distracting than protruding sniffers, bigger ears, bushier brows and a pronounced chin.
Watching someone imitate an icon is one thing but self-direction to top it off is another level of butt-scratching high-risk low-reward tomfoolery that I can’t get behind — there’s this crazy secondhand self-awareness, this heightened hellishness to it all. I’ll be damned if I can name one single other self-directed biographical movie, unless Citizen Kane's allusions to William Randolph Hearst count. His ego feels fairly removed, more than I believe haters think (there's less self-consciousness than A Star Is Born), but man, when Cooper’s doing his sweatiest, most vein-throbbing baton-waving, he’s losing just about everybody divorced from some orchestra nerd pointing out a missed beat — you practiced years for these few minutes and this is it? As Laurence Olivier said to Dustin Hoffman (for Marathon Man), “My dear boy why don’t you just try acting?”
But let’s just consider the facts, see if I have any questions: everyone hates this movie, especially those who haven’t seen it — for film twitter or zoomers this is Oscar bait in its purist distilled form, a vacuum for all things true concerning people let alone movies. With backing by both Spielberg AND Scorsese plus Netflix distribution, this is a real enough movie, one Steven even cued up for Bradley after an early screening of A Star Is Born (all told at least a decent update on the ’76 version, the trash one with Streisand and and Kristofferson). As much as I want to go to bat for Bradley, it’s hard to act as if Maestro is actually a home run or some misunderstood movie — we’re dealing with very textbook filmcraft. At its best it’s really evoking the desired style — the blockier B&W is a fairly brilliant simulation of the past, and even in modern color the distinguished makeup work still hold things up, not to mention the way the film mostly, wisely incorporates the prolific composer’s many creations into the fray. It’s only cloying or deadening when they need to throw his influence right in your face, like that terrible not-quite-dream-scenario-homage to On the Town. The film has subtler ways to make note of Bernstein’s musical breadth without stooping to silly, showy theatrics contradicting the more insular, tasteful, patient moments in earlier life (aside from a few contemporary, far too fluid match cuts that could never pan out back in the day).
Largely Cooper manages to extract some intimacy from a grandiose, drug ’n’ desire fueled life, so much so I can applaud the movie for getting deep into his pivotal, strained marriage considering all the extra-marital and extra-sexual affairs. But like, say, Mank, this is a film with fine dialogue, fairly faultless direction and by all accounts winning, well-worn acting that nonetheless feels like it needs to explore everything BUT the inner soul, like respectively what screenwriting or the composition process means in cinematic terms, what it feels like when “summer sings in you.” Cooper ain’t no Fincher for that matter.
Not only can I accept more of this historical timeline ping-ponging — both Oppenheimer and Maestro use of color and lack thereof for future or past — but Nolan’s latest film was actually meant to “provoke questions” (as an opening quotation from Bernstein indicates you were after) whereas Maestro is basically there to answer them, if well-dressed wiki-summary simplicity and bio bullet points is good for you. I’ve had it with the “new, unconventional” biopic ending up just as more of the same — for as much as Andrew Dominik’s Blonde leaves plenty to be desired (and is barely a biopic), that strange, sullen, schizophrenic style would’ve suited this ode to a noteworthy jack of all trades. Cooper wants to be both reverent and critical but Maestro isn’t much of either — it gets very close to covering the “grand inner life“ that Bernstein had but the script can’t stop recounting his deeds and bringing up that crucial fill-in conducting job when he was 25.
My contrarian ass desperately would like to rally behind an unfairly maligned movie relatively full of graces, good performances and handsome technical attributes but Jesus, all the careful consideration in the world can’t remedy a life-snapshot that is inevitably forced, a little full of itself and somehow soundly un-cinematic. Once time takes Mulligan out of frame, there’s nothing left but that REM reference and continuing to watch Bernstein fuck around with his students. WHAT A LEGEND!
Wonka briefing
3 (out of 4)
WHO saw this one coming?? Seriously I want to know! How rare it is when a movie that not only sounded like a bad idea in conception alone but also looked fairly revolting from the previews somehow overcomes just about every limitation and apprehension. It's hard to believe Warner Brothers' Willy Wonka origin story is a children's musical light-years lovelier than Disney’s centennial piece Wish (maybe their worst Theatrical Animated Feature, like, ever) and a better squeeze of intellectual property than what anyone would’ve imagined the more soulful franchising, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, which lamentably does a good deal less to honor its celebrated progenitor.
This severely this kicked the crap out of Tim Burton’s edgier yet more ‘faithful’ redo of Willy from 2005, the only comparison is swapping daddy issues for sweeter Momma’s boy weak spots. Sure Christopher Lee can do plenty with nothing but Sally Hawkins elevated Paddington (not to mention anything else she’s touched) and serves as a nice secret weapon here. I'm shocked how darn cute Wonka was, how delightful, if somewhat forgettable, the tunes (SCRUB scrub), how delicately fanciful Timothée Chalamet’s turn is, and most unfathomable of all: that miraculously Hugh Grant’s Oompa Loompa (just after a villainous turn in Paddington 2) didn’t Achilles heel the whole project, especially after painfully punctuating each trailer.
But there you have it — I initially couldn't help but feel some certainty that director Paul King, relatively early into his career, was coerced by fat Hollywood checks to sell out, not unlike what Disney’s forced many MCU stooges to do — but no, the critical kindness (not to mention the fat box office haul) was actually earned because the man in charge is a great tactician of valuable children’s entertainment, finding himself ascending nearer to a correspondingly cinematic place akin to Roald Dahl as one of the key voices of youngster lit. Paddington is wonderful, 2 almost nearly as excessively charming, I don’t need to cite the sequel’s recent reign as the best-reviewed movie on Rotten Tomatoes to recall. Even his modest debut Bunny and the Bull makes something out of nothing through a rambunctious road trip format, showing his knack for the artifice of DIY VFX quite early. Since Bunny, King's immediate capacity for more "grown-up" humor has been filtered through a PG lens (siphoning none of the cleverness thank God) much like Lord and Miller bouncing between fashioning the hard-R hilarity of the Jump Street movies and the fetching, funny, tot-targeted flicks Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The LEGO Movie.
All the precise whimsy, dynamic enough musical numbers free with insistent melodies and amusing lyrics, even the little self-aware nods felt like reasonable evidence of a kid's movie that quickly, skillfully becomes an all-ages affair with equal measure in store for any lifespan. Wonka’s defiant, unfazed innocence, met with Timothée’s own winning efforts and face fit for all forms of cheek-pulling, sells the surface of holiday family fare that speaks directly to the light fantasy elements of the original film, that 1970s fluke still FAR and above this movie’s blindsiding quality. It’s not the emo, quasi-English garbage of Burton’s sights despite the London setting (though the odd steampunk magician mechanics have their place) nor does King feel the need to overload on nostalgic plucks and pokes at your memory. Other than Oompa Loompa refrains and “Pure Imagination” with inspired new verses, every song is original and pleasing, advancing story, comedy and fun, rarely reading as false, forced, too soon or too late. Other than some incredibly fine print, laundry stew, consumer-grade levitation and the occasional symphonic motif of an older musical theme — none of which it bothersome mind you — Wonka is like a vacation, “a holiday in your head” next to Disney's despicable, disgraceful pandering toward rabid Star Wars and Marvel devotees.
Young Calah Lane as Noodle is winsome indeed as the major player next to Timmy, each of our trio of villains (Mathew Baynton, Matt Lucas and Paterson Joseph) is more deliciously diabolical than the next, hell the whole supporting cast, including Keegan-Michael Key’s police chief, Olivia Colman's extra evil Mrs. Scrubitt and her many prisoners, is nestled firmly in the enchantment. King even makes room for a regular collaborator, the titular Bunny from Bunny and the Bull Simon Farnaby — the hyper-sexual funny man is yet again a security guard like the Paddington movies, and he’s the face, or rather the silhouette, of one of this movie’s best gags. Sure there’s the occasional dud in the joke department but mostly Wonka’s confections courtesy of King are an unqualified treat, with visual effects only slightly overused but largely appropriately practical. The movie's darkness is mild as far as the delightfully knowing, mature-for-kids sense of the original goes (I could've done with even more underground chocolate mafia moments), and thankfully this Willy is not some stunted weirdo à la Johnny Depp’s shameful iteration, but a kid for life in the most exuberant, mischievous sense — the slight distinctions matter here, like worrying about undoing the mystery of the character to begin with, though the impish icon retains a beaming ambiguity, more than the backstory bullshitting of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Shaping a dreamer rather than some creep with an affect does this movie wonders. If it’s reminding me of fellow Brit Joe Cornish’s exceptional young people’s feature films (Attack the Block, The Kid Who Would Be King) and evoking the spirit of Chocolat, that also doesn’t hurt.
New kids classic? Maybe not. Biggest surprise of the year? I think so. What I’ve really learned other than sharing good things with friends is MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE THING ITSELF is this — don’t judge a movie on its trailer or theoretical desperation. For Dahl media, I couldn't dream of this rubbing up next to Nicholas Roeg’s heartily homespun, brutally British The Witches, Henry Selick’s stop-motion staple James and the Giant Peach, Danny Devito’s marvelous, masterful Matilda and Wes Anderson’s slightly too Andersonian Fantastic Mr. Fox (not to mention his now Oscar-winning adaptation of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar). If this recent Roald revival is worth anything, it's that this truly titillating, disaster-deviating prequel sits comfortably above less chancy modern adaptations (that should've sucked), particularly Robert Zemeckis’ inoffensive, CG-slathered Witches and the better-than-expected Matilda the Musical, a fine Broadway companion piece to the ‘95 gold standard. Then, after all that unspoiled goodwill, I wouldn’t mind SEQUELS to fucking WONKA? See, the imagination isn’t exactly 100% pure but it sure is scrumdiddly-oh scratch that.
WHO saw this one coming?? Seriously I want to know! How rare it is when a movie that not only sounded like a bad idea in conception alone but also looked fairly revolting from the previews somehow overcomes just about every limitation and apprehension. It's hard to believe Warner Brothers' Willy Wonka origin story is a children's musical light-years lovelier than Disney’s centennial piece Wish (maybe their worst Theatrical Animated Feature, like, ever) and a better squeeze of intellectual property than what anyone would’ve imagined the more soulful franchising, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, which lamentably does a good deal less to honor its celebrated progenitor.
This severely this kicked the crap out of Tim Burton’s edgier yet more ‘faithful’ redo of Willy from 2005, the only comparison is swapping daddy issues for sweeter Momma’s boy weak spots. Sure Christopher Lee can do plenty with nothing but Sally Hawkins elevated Paddington (not to mention anything else she’s touched) and serves as a nice secret weapon here. I'm shocked how darn cute Wonka was, how delightful, if somewhat forgettable, the tunes (SCRUB scrub), how delicately fanciful Timothée Chalamet’s turn is, and most unfathomable of all: that miraculously Hugh Grant’s Oompa Loompa (just after a villainous turn in Paddington 2) didn’t Achilles heel the whole project, especially after painfully punctuating each trailer.
But there you have it — I initially couldn't help but feel some certainty that director Paul King, relatively early into his career, was coerced by fat Hollywood checks to sell out, not unlike what Disney’s forced many MCU stooges to do — but no, the critical kindness (not to mention the fat box office haul) was actually earned because the man in charge is a great tactician of valuable children’s entertainment, finding himself ascending nearer to a correspondingly cinematic place akin to Roald Dahl as one of the key voices of youngster lit. Paddington is wonderful, 2 almost nearly as excessively charming, I don’t need to cite the sequel’s recent reign as the best-reviewed movie on Rotten Tomatoes to recall. Even his modest debut Bunny and the Bull makes something out of nothing through a rambunctious road trip format, showing his knack for the artifice of DIY VFX quite early. Since Bunny, King's immediate capacity for more "grown-up" humor has been filtered through a PG lens (siphoning none of the cleverness thank God) much like Lord and Miller bouncing between fashioning the hard-R hilarity of the Jump Street movies and the fetching, funny, tot-targeted flicks Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The LEGO Movie.
All the precise whimsy, dynamic enough musical numbers free with insistent melodies and amusing lyrics, even the little self-aware nods felt like reasonable evidence of a kid's movie that quickly, skillfully becomes an all-ages affair with equal measure in store for any lifespan. Wonka’s defiant, unfazed innocence, met with Timothée’s own winning efforts and face fit for all forms of cheek-pulling, sells the surface of holiday family fare that speaks directly to the light fantasy elements of the original film, that 1970s fluke still FAR and above this movie’s blindsiding quality. It’s not the emo, quasi-English garbage of Burton’s sights despite the London setting (though the odd steampunk magician mechanics have their place) nor does King feel the need to overload on nostalgic plucks and pokes at your memory. Other than Oompa Loompa refrains and “Pure Imagination” with inspired new verses, every song is original and pleasing, advancing story, comedy and fun, rarely reading as false, forced, too soon or too late. Other than some incredibly fine print, laundry stew, consumer-grade levitation and the occasional symphonic motif of an older musical theme — none of which it bothersome mind you — Wonka is like a vacation, “a holiday in your head” next to Disney's despicable, disgraceful pandering toward rabid Star Wars and Marvel devotees.
Young Calah Lane as Noodle is winsome indeed as the major player next to Timmy, each of our trio of villains (Mathew Baynton, Matt Lucas and Paterson Joseph) is more deliciously diabolical than the next, hell the whole supporting cast, including Keegan-Michael Key’s police chief, Olivia Colman's extra evil Mrs. Scrubitt and her many prisoners, is nestled firmly in the enchantment. King even makes room for a regular collaborator, the titular Bunny from Bunny and the Bull Simon Farnaby — the hyper-sexual funny man is yet again a security guard like the Paddington movies, and he’s the face, or rather the silhouette, of one of this movie’s best gags. Sure there’s the occasional dud in the joke department but mostly Wonka’s confections courtesy of King are an unqualified treat, with visual effects only slightly overused but largely appropriately practical. The movie's darkness is mild as far as the delightfully knowing, mature-for-kids sense of the original goes (I could've done with even more underground chocolate mafia moments), and thankfully this Willy is not some stunted weirdo à la Johnny Depp’s shameful iteration, but a kid for life in the most exuberant, mischievous sense — the slight distinctions matter here, like worrying about undoing the mystery of the character to begin with, though the impish icon retains a beaming ambiguity, more than the backstory bullshitting of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Shaping a dreamer rather than some creep with an affect does this movie wonders. If it’s reminding me of fellow Brit Joe Cornish’s exceptional young people’s feature films (Attack the Block, The Kid Who Would Be King) and evoking the spirit of Chocolat, that also doesn’t hurt.
New kids classic? Maybe not. Biggest surprise of the year? I think so. What I’ve really learned other than sharing good things with friends is MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE THING ITSELF is this — don’t judge a movie on its trailer or theoretical desperation. For Dahl media, I couldn't dream of this rubbing up next to Nicholas Roeg’s heartily homespun, brutally British The Witches, Henry Selick’s stop-motion staple James and the Giant Peach, Danny Devito’s marvelous, masterful Matilda and Wes Anderson’s slightly too Andersonian Fantastic Mr. Fox (not to mention his now Oscar-winning adaptation of The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar). If this recent Roald revival is worth anything, it's that this truly titillating, disaster-deviating prequel sits comfortably above less chancy modern adaptations (that should've sucked), particularly Robert Zemeckis’ inoffensive, CG-slathered Witches and the better-than-expected Matilda the Musical, a fine Broadway companion piece to the ‘95 gold standard. Then, after all that unspoiled goodwill, I wouldn’t mind SEQUELS to fucking WONKA? See, the imagination isn’t exactly 100% pure but it sure is scrumdiddly-oh scratch that.
May December briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
It only took me until now to realize Todd Haynes hasn’t whiffed once or ever really come close, which ain’t easy for as many substantial risks in feeling and narrative the man is willing to take on the average project.
Maybe Carol was secured by the wave of LGBTQ arthouse features of yesterdecade, but even that film, a splendid adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt, is just a morsel of his tidy, intimate works of rascally transgression. His whole career is a wicked ride — Poison’s surqueerlism, Safe’s hypnotic hypochondriac disassembly (and first of many fruitful collaborations with Julianne Moore), the Bowie/Wilde/glam-rock zeitgeist kaleidoscope of Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven’s masterful modern Sirk-spin, I’m Not There’s profusely poetic rewrite on the rules of musical biopics (good luck with A Complete Unknown James Mangold), then after awhile Carol’s return to elegant, sumptuous melodrama was his last masterwork. More recently his ode to museums and silent films in the dual-deaf-child-odyssey Wonderstruck, the uncharacteristic legal thriller Dark Waters and the all too frontLOADED Velvet Underground documentary (the harshest way to say I wish the counter-counterculture essay was twice as long) seem to have found Haynes still prone to variety but with less to do with his place as one of Queer Cinema’s giants alongside Gus Van Sant.
So yeah, when you lay it all out there, this quiet king’s latest film May December isn’t all that strange even for all its bizarre, cringe-inducing taboo-probing. Like many Haynes features it’s a dazzling dance of intimacy and showmanship, artifice and reality, though May December specifically proves to be gently haunting, imperceptibly, oddly moving and cruelly funny. It’s unclassifiably one-of-a-kind, not unlike a good deal of his filmography, particularly Poison and Goldmine, which simply couldn’t have been made by anyone else. There’s nothing hetero-divergent going on here, and while from afar this looks like a fresh finagling of the revivified melodramatics seen in Heaven and Carol, it’s really some giddily grotesque, almost subtly black-comic psychological thriller within an art-is-life-life-is-art satirical Hollywood exploitation piece exuding, for all its serenity, some seriously evil cosmic energy. But, like Sofia just did with Priscilla, the grooming is spelled out only from a removed distance, each film bathed in a trance-like haze, an unknowable kind of dark wish-fulfillment and moral trepidation. The grainy, soft-focused, beautifully blocked, warm and welcoming aura is obviously atoned with the stark-raving batshit-bonkers subject matter and the score’s Hitchcockian, almost ironically overzealous score, all the more eerie for how well it imitates the almost aggrandized, symphonic stylizing of long-past film orchestration.
The cornucopia of cinematic meaning, extrapolated moment by moment, is unfathomable given the story’s sum — it seems like some disturbing exploitation/WTF cinema like Saltburn from afar, but even as May December sidesteps stupid, topical rich-rebuking, this movie has infinitely more to mull over inside the rigorously edited, gloriously acted fable on the ethics of teacher-student boundaries and real-life movie adaptations. Which brings me to my mildly sparring leads — my GOD, the fucking character dynamics move like lightning bolts, moment by moment you’re discovering things, shifting the sublime thematic detailing, your alignment of what the movie is and what you’re even watching adjusting scene after wonderfully executed scene.
Moore is in her mode offering perhaps the best of at least five collaborations with Haynes — historically plenty of directors have had their reliable performing counterpart as creative pillar to lean on — John Waters and Divine, John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina, Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams, Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich — and Moore is Hayne’s mercurial, matriarchal muse. In May December she’s just so hearth-like and homey in spite of the disarming lisp and, after everything, makes you feel this woman could break down someone also calculatedly polite as Natalie Portman’s quietly vainglorious starlet playing doting detective. Despite Portman’s better, more recent turns like Black Swan and Annihilation, she’ll be more remembered for earlier days like Leon the Professional and the Star Wars prequels… maybe that’s better than peaking with Closer when she’s showing her ass, or Garden State showing her innermost insufferable hipster, or V for Vendetta showing her bald head, all part of her ascension to bouncing between Terrence Malick and the MCU — this is one of her moments, a defining career culmination. So much of the movie’s sometimes spiked satire stems from Portman’s character nestling into a psyche she isn’t prepared for and all the simple, inherent insensitivity of her presence within a dynamic as delicate as a family founded on a grown woman and a teenage boy and the mindfuck of sending their set of offspring through graduation. Not to de-emphasize a diamond in the diamond rough, Charles Melton may not have the illustrious resume but he is still the remarkable highlight, offering an all too human performance in a sea of vanity and posturing. Despite the victory laps for his illustrious co-stars in an already exceptionally stupefying film, Melton gives the most vulnerable, incredible performance of a man backed up with short-circuited development and long-term denial.
This movie could make you think of anything, like the searing absorption of the other à la Persona or even topics of collar-tugging discomfort and testy social edginess via Licorice Pizza (STILL the genders reversed is TOO DAMN EDGY) or just the strands of distanced investigative dismay within Spotlight or Day for Night's dismantling of Hollywood's carefully curated reality and twenty other movies not too far off on the cinematic maps and charts. Yet it was so singular, and for such an original movie steeped in seamlessly woven, film-history film selections May December had flavors I could not have expected. Though the threat of adultery looms there’s not one part of this story I could’ve predicted and yet never does the film betray its noblest aims, particularly equalizing empathy even for our most despicable characters, be it the naive or the vain.
Notes on a Scandal wishes it were this incisive or challenging, this warped, twisted melodrama. Despite May December's beautiful, nearly unclassifiable ambiguity, it remains a completely unsympathetic, unsentimental rendition of the same story (the case of Mary Kay Letourneau look it up!) told in hindsight through an enigmatic, erotically charged psychological minefield, every little bit bearing sharp, reflexive, existential truths, subconscious insanity and invigorating showmanship.
It only took me until now to realize Todd Haynes hasn’t whiffed once or ever really come close, which ain’t easy for as many substantial risks in feeling and narrative the man is willing to take on the average project.
Maybe Carol was secured by the wave of LGBTQ arthouse features of yesterdecade, but even that film, a splendid adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt, is just a morsel of his tidy, intimate works of rascally transgression. His whole career is a wicked ride — Poison’s surqueerlism, Safe’s hypnotic hypochondriac disassembly (and first of many fruitful collaborations with Julianne Moore), the Bowie/Wilde/glam-rock zeitgeist kaleidoscope of Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven’s masterful modern Sirk-spin, I’m Not There’s profusely poetic rewrite on the rules of musical biopics (good luck with A Complete Unknown James Mangold), then after awhile Carol’s return to elegant, sumptuous melodrama was his last masterwork. More recently his ode to museums and silent films in the dual-deaf-child-odyssey Wonderstruck, the uncharacteristic legal thriller Dark Waters and the all too frontLOADED Velvet Underground documentary (the harshest way to say I wish the counter-counterculture essay was twice as long) seem to have found Haynes still prone to variety but with less to do with his place as one of Queer Cinema’s giants alongside Gus Van Sant.
So yeah, when you lay it all out there, this quiet king’s latest film May December isn’t all that strange even for all its bizarre, cringe-inducing taboo-probing. Like many Haynes features it’s a dazzling dance of intimacy and showmanship, artifice and reality, though May December specifically proves to be gently haunting, imperceptibly, oddly moving and cruelly funny. It’s unclassifiably one-of-a-kind, not unlike a good deal of his filmography, particularly Poison and Goldmine, which simply couldn’t have been made by anyone else. There’s nothing hetero-divergent going on here, and while from afar this looks like a fresh finagling of the revivified melodramatics seen in Heaven and Carol, it’s really some giddily grotesque, almost subtly black-comic psychological thriller within an art-is-life-life-is-art satirical Hollywood exploitation piece exuding, for all its serenity, some seriously evil cosmic energy. But, like Sofia just did with Priscilla, the grooming is spelled out only from a removed distance, each film bathed in a trance-like haze, an unknowable kind of dark wish-fulfillment and moral trepidation. The grainy, soft-focused, beautifully blocked, warm and welcoming aura is obviously atoned with the stark-raving batshit-bonkers subject matter and the score’s Hitchcockian, almost ironically overzealous score, all the more eerie for how well it imitates the almost aggrandized, symphonic stylizing of long-past film orchestration.
The cornucopia of cinematic meaning, extrapolated moment by moment, is unfathomable given the story’s sum — it seems like some disturbing exploitation/WTF cinema like Saltburn from afar, but even as May December sidesteps stupid, topical rich-rebuking, this movie has infinitely more to mull over inside the rigorously edited, gloriously acted fable on the ethics of teacher-student boundaries and real-life movie adaptations. Which brings me to my mildly sparring leads — my GOD, the fucking character dynamics move like lightning bolts, moment by moment you’re discovering things, shifting the sublime thematic detailing, your alignment of what the movie is and what you’re even watching adjusting scene after wonderfully executed scene.
Moore is in her mode offering perhaps the best of at least five collaborations with Haynes — historically plenty of directors have had their reliable performing counterpart as creative pillar to lean on — John Waters and Divine, John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina, Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams, Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich — and Moore is Hayne’s mercurial, matriarchal muse. In May December she’s just so hearth-like and homey in spite of the disarming lisp and, after everything, makes you feel this woman could break down someone also calculatedly polite as Natalie Portman’s quietly vainglorious starlet playing doting detective. Despite Portman’s better, more recent turns like Black Swan and Annihilation, she’ll be more remembered for earlier days like Leon the Professional and the Star Wars prequels… maybe that’s better than peaking with Closer when she’s showing her ass, or Garden State showing her innermost insufferable hipster, or V for Vendetta showing her bald head, all part of her ascension to bouncing between Terrence Malick and the MCU — this is one of her moments, a defining career culmination. So much of the movie’s sometimes spiked satire stems from Portman’s character nestling into a psyche she isn’t prepared for and all the simple, inherent insensitivity of her presence within a dynamic as delicate as a family founded on a grown woman and a teenage boy and the mindfuck of sending their set of offspring through graduation. Not to de-emphasize a diamond in the diamond rough, Charles Melton may not have the illustrious resume but he is still the remarkable highlight, offering an all too human performance in a sea of vanity and posturing. Despite the victory laps for his illustrious co-stars in an already exceptionally stupefying film, Melton gives the most vulnerable, incredible performance of a man backed up with short-circuited development and long-term denial.
This movie could make you think of anything, like the searing absorption of the other à la Persona or even topics of collar-tugging discomfort and testy social edginess via Licorice Pizza (STILL the genders reversed is TOO DAMN EDGY) or just the strands of distanced investigative dismay within Spotlight or Day for Night's dismantling of Hollywood's carefully curated reality and twenty other movies not too far off on the cinematic maps and charts. Yet it was so singular, and for such an original movie steeped in seamlessly woven, film-history film selections May December had flavors I could not have expected. Though the threat of adultery looms there’s not one part of this story I could’ve predicted and yet never does the film betray its noblest aims, particularly equalizing empathy even for our most despicable characters, be it the naive or the vain.
Notes on a Scandal wishes it were this incisive or challenging, this warped, twisted melodrama. Despite May December's beautiful, nearly unclassifiable ambiguity, it remains a completely unsympathetic, unsentimental rendition of the same story (the case of Mary Kay Letourneau look it up!) told in hindsight through an enigmatic, erotically charged psychological minefield, every little bit bearing sharp, reflexive, existential truths, subconscious insanity and invigorating showmanship.
Napoleon briefing
2 (out of 4)
Ridley Scott is 86 years old; this fact alone should outweigh the household name and imposing legacy, but hopefully Napoleon is proof enough for studios to stop handing him massive sums to produce such extravagant waste. The last man standing as far as grand-scale historical epics are concerned has rarely made it so clear he’s in need of a new outlet, and no I don’t mean Alien prequel sequels — at least 2024’s Romulus is under the command of someone else (though now, technically and treacherously, under the Disney umbrella). The Last Duel was a box office bum just coming out of COVID’s grip in late 2021, but it was one of his stronger affairs with the long past — his 1977 debut The Duellists is like an epic in miniature, and also his only other film set in the Napoleonic era, doubtless one of his best still, with an impeccably annoying Harvey Keitel keeping you on your toes.
There's more recent, mostly biographical history in Scott's films, like the horrendous crime against Italians that was House of Gucci, All the Money in the World’s Spielbergian sense of spinning something cinematic out of the unfilmable (though writer David Scarpa has hardly done the same with ol' Boney, one of history’s most legendary backstories, so let's just see about Gladiator II), America Gangster’s bristling, terse stroke of crime cinema or the Bay-esque shrapnel of Black Hawk Down’s punishing survival war thriller. For further back in time, the good includes the capable Christopher Columbus feature 1492: Conquest of Paradise, Gladiator's overestimated greatness and the aforementioned The Last Duel, meanwhile Kingdom of Heaven and Exodus: Gods and Kings, for all their minor crimes against the Almighty, are meaty, ambitious, heightened cinema and hell, even his insufferably serious Robin Hood had more identifiable visceral fortitude than 2023’s Napoleon. He really is like Ron Howard, constantly doubling up, bouncing from hit to failure, lowbrow to Oscar bait. Akin to a second-rate Spielberg, Scott is also a real genre schizo who can handle several spinning plates of film production and, in this particular case, I feel like the Paul Mescal-led Gladiator follow-up (due in one year’s time) has the larger share of his attention.
So you’ve got a filmmaker who could barely match up to the genre’s last full, sincere efforts — Oliver Stone’s underrated Alexander and Wolfgang Petersen’s testy, tremendously entertaining Troy, both from 2004 while Scott was cooking up the lesser Kingdom of Heaven (by theatrical standards) — in tandem with one of the best working actors pretty plainly phoning it in, despite the producer credit. Even worse for relative talent, Phoenix turned in a tenfold more committed, interesting, lasting showcase in Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid just this year. Probably not since Tom Cruise was supposed to be a one-eyed German in Valkyrie has a lead performance come off so plainly as actor in auto-pilot, with Joaquin turning in so-called efforts making his unsubtle sliminess in the original Gladiator look meek and mild. Some of Phoenix’s improvised takes are pedestrian, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do worse.
All this for, in theory and not to downplay the untapped ground, the film project Stanley Kubrick once deemed would be “the greatest movie ever made.” As is legend, following the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey Kubrick went hard on pre-production for a Napoleon epic with loads of research, an intended Jack Nicholson performance and a finished script long since available to read, which Spielberg and HBO are at work translating into a miniseries not too far away. Unfortunately financing was pulled after the failure of the Italian/Soviet production of 1970’s Waterloo, a fairly consummate, slimmer spectacle famous for featuring the most extras ever put to film before or since, with stunningly accurate simulations of Bonaparte’s last battle, sandwiched between exiles. I’ll have to see what Stanley thought of that film, but he was not a fan of the recent Russian War and Peace, and was also quite critical of what many consider to be a paragon of early film technique, 1927 exactly, Abel Gance’s deeply French, languidly storied, sometimes ravishingly composed and committed five-hour-plus rendering of the first few epochs of Napoleon’s greatly discussed, astounding ascension. Kubrick, admitting the technical significance (the tinted images, swooping camera movements, blitzing editing and its futuristic, one-of-a-kind triptych tableaux finale keep it one for the books), would call the performances crude and other than those playing Napoleon as child (Edmond Van Daële) and adult (Albert Diudonnée) I can’t help but agree. Gance planned on making many more movies, and the historic scope Scott tries to cover here could’ve made it 10 hours in Abel’s perfect world.
Needless to say, seeing as so surprisingly little has been made about him, Bonaparte's absence from media continually deepens a crater in historical cinema, a man whose storied-and-then-some life is supposedly ripe for feats of audiovisual inscription! This knowledge alone, let’s just forget that this is the closest thing we’ll get for some time to THE great film Kubrick had up his sleeve (probably because HE was at the helm), renders 2023’s Napoleon a crushing blow, despite Scott’s general aptitude for kinetic battle sequences and the patient, presumably anachronistic drama in between. I can’t be mad that the usual hard-R sex and violence now just makes me think of History Channel by way of Game of Thrones, as that’s always kinda been Scott’s thing in this particular arena and a dubious distinction of the new millennium's big epics. He may look to David Lean as a model but clearly from only so many vantages, in the same quote he says says this in regard to not letting epic qualities crowd character, because here it’s as if there were no figures in this period that mattered at all save for Nap and his lady.
Maybe, if you really did something exquisitely emotional, tender and psychologically challenging, I or some actual history nerd could forgive all the political/military history/intrigue ignored for the sake of pathos. So despite Vanessa Kirby’s best efforts, her and Phoenix as siphons of this second-rate script cannot shape the warmest part of the cold, sullen artillery ace to anything traditionally satisfying. Let’s not show his trials, just how his life was shaded by vag — you know there are more to people than their relationships? The film has no time for other figures big and small in the political area, which is wasteful considering Napoleon had a host of enemies.
Ultimately it doesn't matter whether you use love to redeem out titular emperor considering this movie also wants so desperately to paint Bonaparte as an unhinged toddler, like some carnival corner-guy's caricature of Trump. Hey I’m not French, and obviously this wasn’t as Frog-friendly as the 96-year-old homeland early-days epic all about the come-up and FRANCE, but considering Scott is English this is just plain RACIST! Even as a layman I know there’s more to one of the most talked about people ever than this shit — his short king charisma had to be real and you see none of that here because the narrative forgoes just about all of his development, and I would take a younger, radical actor at least for Act One instead of Phoenix in this case, even Timothée Chalamet for Christ’s sake.
Then there’s all the weird humor and the tough task it becomes to differentiate between intended and not. “You think you’re so great because you have BOATS!” Is this supposed to feel like some ZAZ movie outside of the battles? As a pivotal revolutionary figure in any respect, there’s just something so empty about the scripting, so diluted in the grim photography (also a 21st century thing, also which Scott only helped normalize), so workmanlike about the acting, so cheap about this expensive Apple TV+ movie (regardless of ILM) and so cynical in its inaccuracies — even the primary poster has him cavalry charging, something the cannon commander really didn’t do. Blowing up the pyramids that the real Napoleon had more humbled respect for is the last and most prominent of the many sad, blatant inconsistencies at play. Master and Commander eats this shit for breakfast and Kubrick’s Napoleonic-era sub-in Barry Lyndon even moreso, that and probably any other film I referenced in this review.
“Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well, shut the fuck up then.” — Ridley Scott
You know what? I’ll just drop the subject.
Ridley Scott is 86 years old; this fact alone should outweigh the household name and imposing legacy, but hopefully Napoleon is proof enough for studios to stop handing him massive sums to produce such extravagant waste. The last man standing as far as grand-scale historical epics are concerned has rarely made it so clear he’s in need of a new outlet, and no I don’t mean Alien prequel sequels — at least 2024’s Romulus is under the command of someone else (though now, technically and treacherously, under the Disney umbrella). The Last Duel was a box office bum just coming out of COVID’s grip in late 2021, but it was one of his stronger affairs with the long past — his 1977 debut The Duellists is like an epic in miniature, and also his only other film set in the Napoleonic era, doubtless one of his best still, with an impeccably annoying Harvey Keitel keeping you on your toes.
There's more recent, mostly biographical history in Scott's films, like the horrendous crime against Italians that was House of Gucci, All the Money in the World’s Spielbergian sense of spinning something cinematic out of the unfilmable (though writer David Scarpa has hardly done the same with ol' Boney, one of history’s most legendary backstories, so let's just see about Gladiator II), America Gangster’s bristling, terse stroke of crime cinema or the Bay-esque shrapnel of Black Hawk Down’s punishing survival war thriller. For further back in time, the good includes the capable Christopher Columbus feature 1492: Conquest of Paradise, Gladiator's overestimated greatness and the aforementioned The Last Duel, meanwhile Kingdom of Heaven and Exodus: Gods and Kings, for all their minor crimes against the Almighty, are meaty, ambitious, heightened cinema and hell, even his insufferably serious Robin Hood had more identifiable visceral fortitude than 2023’s Napoleon. He really is like Ron Howard, constantly doubling up, bouncing from hit to failure, lowbrow to Oscar bait. Akin to a second-rate Spielberg, Scott is also a real genre schizo who can handle several spinning plates of film production and, in this particular case, I feel like the Paul Mescal-led Gladiator follow-up (due in one year’s time) has the larger share of his attention.
So you’ve got a filmmaker who could barely match up to the genre’s last full, sincere efforts — Oliver Stone’s underrated Alexander and Wolfgang Petersen’s testy, tremendously entertaining Troy, both from 2004 while Scott was cooking up the lesser Kingdom of Heaven (by theatrical standards) — in tandem with one of the best working actors pretty plainly phoning it in, despite the producer credit. Even worse for relative talent, Phoenix turned in a tenfold more committed, interesting, lasting showcase in Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid just this year. Probably not since Tom Cruise was supposed to be a one-eyed German in Valkyrie has a lead performance come off so plainly as actor in auto-pilot, with Joaquin turning in so-called efforts making his unsubtle sliminess in the original Gladiator look meek and mild. Some of Phoenix’s improvised takes are pedestrian, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do worse.
All this for, in theory and not to downplay the untapped ground, the film project Stanley Kubrick once deemed would be “the greatest movie ever made.” As is legend, following the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey Kubrick went hard on pre-production for a Napoleon epic with loads of research, an intended Jack Nicholson performance and a finished script long since available to read, which Spielberg and HBO are at work translating into a miniseries not too far away. Unfortunately financing was pulled after the failure of the Italian/Soviet production of 1970’s Waterloo, a fairly consummate, slimmer spectacle famous for featuring the most extras ever put to film before or since, with stunningly accurate simulations of Bonaparte’s last battle, sandwiched between exiles. I’ll have to see what Stanley thought of that film, but he was not a fan of the recent Russian War and Peace, and was also quite critical of what many consider to be a paragon of early film technique, 1927 exactly, Abel Gance’s deeply French, languidly storied, sometimes ravishingly composed and committed five-hour-plus rendering of the first few epochs of Napoleon’s greatly discussed, astounding ascension. Kubrick, admitting the technical significance (the tinted images, swooping camera movements, blitzing editing and its futuristic, one-of-a-kind triptych tableaux finale keep it one for the books), would call the performances crude and other than those playing Napoleon as child (Edmond Van Daële) and adult (Albert Diudonnée) I can’t help but agree. Gance planned on making many more movies, and the historic scope Scott tries to cover here could’ve made it 10 hours in Abel’s perfect world.
Needless to say, seeing as so surprisingly little has been made about him, Bonaparte's absence from media continually deepens a crater in historical cinema, a man whose storied-and-then-some life is supposedly ripe for feats of audiovisual inscription! This knowledge alone, let’s just forget that this is the closest thing we’ll get for some time to THE great film Kubrick had up his sleeve (probably because HE was at the helm), renders 2023’s Napoleon a crushing blow, despite Scott’s general aptitude for kinetic battle sequences and the patient, presumably anachronistic drama in between. I can’t be mad that the usual hard-R sex and violence now just makes me think of History Channel by way of Game of Thrones, as that’s always kinda been Scott’s thing in this particular arena and a dubious distinction of the new millennium's big epics. He may look to David Lean as a model but clearly from only so many vantages, in the same quote he says says this in regard to not letting epic qualities crowd character, because here it’s as if there were no figures in this period that mattered at all save for Nap and his lady.
Maybe, if you really did something exquisitely emotional, tender and psychologically challenging, I or some actual history nerd could forgive all the political/military history/intrigue ignored for the sake of pathos. So despite Vanessa Kirby’s best efforts, her and Phoenix as siphons of this second-rate script cannot shape the warmest part of the cold, sullen artillery ace to anything traditionally satisfying. Let’s not show his trials, just how his life was shaded by vag — you know there are more to people than their relationships? The film has no time for other figures big and small in the political area, which is wasteful considering Napoleon had a host of enemies.
Ultimately it doesn't matter whether you use love to redeem out titular emperor considering this movie also wants so desperately to paint Bonaparte as an unhinged toddler, like some carnival corner-guy's caricature of Trump. Hey I’m not French, and obviously this wasn’t as Frog-friendly as the 96-year-old homeland early-days epic all about the come-up and FRANCE, but considering Scott is English this is just plain RACIST! Even as a layman I know there’s more to one of the most talked about people ever than this shit — his short king charisma had to be real and you see none of that here because the narrative forgoes just about all of his development, and I would take a younger, radical actor at least for Act One instead of Phoenix in this case, even Timothée Chalamet for Christ’s sake.
Then there’s all the weird humor and the tough task it becomes to differentiate between intended and not. “You think you’re so great because you have BOATS!” Is this supposed to feel like some ZAZ movie outside of the battles? As a pivotal revolutionary figure in any respect, there’s just something so empty about the scripting, so diluted in the grim photography (also a 21st century thing, also which Scott only helped normalize), so workmanlike about the acting, so cheap about this expensive Apple TV+ movie (regardless of ILM) and so cynical in its inaccuracies — even the primary poster has him cavalry charging, something the cannon commander really didn’t do. Blowing up the pyramids that the real Napoleon had more humbled respect for is the last and most prominent of the many sad, blatant inconsistencies at play. Master and Commander eats this shit for breakfast and Kubrick’s Napoleonic-era sub-in Barry Lyndon even moreso, that and probably any other film I referenced in this review.
“Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well, shut the fuck up then.” — Ridley Scott
You know what? I’ll just drop the subject.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes briefing
3 (out of 4)
Ah, The Hunger Games, a world where not one person is skin and bones as far as the eye can see — where’s a skeletal Joaquin or Christian Bale performance when you need it?
This was just about the only YA franchise to not only match Harry Potter money domestically but unbelievably outdo it — basically Katniss’s weakest day bested Potter’s average. Since the real cinematic stopping point for wizards is 2011 (God bless if, like me, you watched all three Fantastic Beasts waiting for ANYTHING), the Suzanne Collins’ adaptations themselves were the only worthwhile young adult series quality-wise too, taking cue from the Deathly Hallows trend of two-part finales, getting the most of their money just as other movies did at the time, your Twilights and Hobbits. Not undone by ripped-off, tangential, unfulfilled generic crap (Maze Runner, which doesn't justify its mysteries and Divergent, with little mysteries to speak of), The Hunger Games remains at the top of the teen dystopian dogpile — F. Gary Gray’s first film was budgeted modestly by Lionsgate (whose only other major, even more respectable franchise has become John Wick) and was a runaway success right out the gate — Catching Fire was greater than the original in profits and movie magic, elevating the first film’s template and stakes very comfortably while cleaning up the initial shaky-cam cinematography.
It’s all about the Battle Royale-lifted structure for a PG-13 place setting, which lends itself to the least graphic sort of choppy violence, as well as easy commentary on politics, war and the human condition — all that discourse, satire, glam-rock pageantry and buildup to an extended early finale, as the formula goes. The games were usually half the film, making both sides of Mockingjay disappointing if you were in it for thrills, and even the themes became more forward and heavy-handed than before. All this to say, starting with Catching Fire, it’s been Frank Marshall (of Constantine, I Am Legend and another J Law collab, the sultry, self-possessed spysploitation film Red Sparrow) in charge. His return — and especially since he was unable to save the business decision products of parts One and Two of the original series’ conclusion — made me think of a David Yates-equivalent stooge about to work out some truly repugnant cash-grab like Fantastic Beasts (take your pick) after managing most of the main movies. But as an individual installment no one asked for, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a damn engrossing watch, falling between the narrative riskiness and pontification of Mockingjay and the traditional satisfaction of the first two features. It works as bleak commentary, character-actor playground, escapist mini-blockbuster and decently involving long-form tragic romance.
But speaking of unnecessary prequels harboring love story sap going on for way too long, more than anything this made George Lucas’s early episodes look even more hilarious because you know what? I actually bought this romance even as it fizzles out in seconds — Songbirds slyly accomplished more than Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith put together. By the last act of Episode III it feels like Darth goes from 0 to 100, from desperate wife-saver to yellow-eyed child-murderer, but here you may actually forget Snow's inevitable destination. I was just following Coriolanus and I’m not sure I buy that he’s super complicit — I get that the exhibition of underage blood sport hadn’t quite become this civilization’s Super Bowl yet and this guy is the smarmy asshole in the ad department throwing out crass suggestions disguised as noble ones (“uh... let’s care about the people!?”), to which the head honcho goes “hm...genius!" On those terms this movie is quite stupid but in the minutia of world-building, most of Panem’s corners are well-considered.
Though it’s probably worse for pointing out, the reinforced cycles of violence and revolution feel pretty timely in light of the recent eruption of Middle Eastern conflicts — even without Israel-Palestine for backdrop, these were always fairly odd, dour pop entertainment. I feel as if the weaker reviews are a result of a spacious, venturous Act Three, which cuts the games off and puts you through tests of patience if you didn’t care two licks about these newly developed characters. You may walk away confused as to if you really watched Snow (felt out by a talented Tom Blyth) become Donald Sutherland’s dastardly dictator (didn’t like that parting, inserted voice-over copied over from Catching Fire) or whether he was the prickly president all along, but this villainous rise is so honorably resistant to sticking to the trend of twisted empathy for antagonists that aren’t ALL bad IF they had horrible things done to them — Songbirds and Snakes almost becomes a neat psychological thriller on top of it all by its final moments via well-employed ambiguity.
Though representation is one of those cinematic brownie points modern movies love to earn, here it all fits — the young girl with Down syndrome Sofia Sanchez and amputee Knox Gibson make for believable tributes. Then Hunter Schafer looks so similar to Blyth that they’re dead ringers for siblings — as the most prominent transgender actress around, she passes and plays the posh part well, echoing Elizabeth Banks’ Effie. Peter Dinklage was delightful, did you expect less? Viola Davis was likewise hamming it up splendidly but the coup de gras was the hilarious Jason Schwartzman, who gave me six good laughs, every time cementing Ballad’s sharp, pre-aged/retro-future satirical side, possibly outdoing Stanley Tucci’s absurdly bombastic TV-guru turn, like fictional father like fictional son. Then from the clunky, chunky subtitle I expected some serenades, or at the very least a few ditties, and Marshall doesn’t deny you. Rachel Zegler’s lovely voice works much better belting Joan Baez-like folk songs rather than speaking with a suspicious twang. Whether lovely a cappella, country-eyed, hee-haw stomps or some just good-ol' banjo-backed blues, the needle drops are aces outside of her first cringy protest moment.
I couldn’t believe this didn’t feel like some greedy, retreading franchise jumpstart — as far as I know there’s only one prequel Collins has penned, unless she decides Hamitch (Woody Harrelson onscreen) needed his own illustrated backstory called Sunrise on the Reaping. This Hunger Games has a registered maturity, profuse entertainment value and a tween story of unexpected dramatic and emotional clarity. All my indifference was contentedly washed away by Ballad’s continual catchiness.
Ah, The Hunger Games, a world where not one person is skin and bones as far as the eye can see — where’s a skeletal Joaquin or Christian Bale performance when you need it?
This was just about the only YA franchise to not only match Harry Potter money domestically but unbelievably outdo it — basically Katniss’s weakest day bested Potter’s average. Since the real cinematic stopping point for wizards is 2011 (God bless if, like me, you watched all three Fantastic Beasts waiting for ANYTHING), the Suzanne Collins’ adaptations themselves were the only worthwhile young adult series quality-wise too, taking cue from the Deathly Hallows trend of two-part finales, getting the most of their money just as other movies did at the time, your Twilights and Hobbits. Not undone by ripped-off, tangential, unfulfilled generic crap (Maze Runner, which doesn't justify its mysteries and Divergent, with little mysteries to speak of), The Hunger Games remains at the top of the teen dystopian dogpile — F. Gary Gray’s first film was budgeted modestly by Lionsgate (whose only other major, even more respectable franchise has become John Wick) and was a runaway success right out the gate — Catching Fire was greater than the original in profits and movie magic, elevating the first film’s template and stakes very comfortably while cleaning up the initial shaky-cam cinematography.
It’s all about the Battle Royale-lifted structure for a PG-13 place setting, which lends itself to the least graphic sort of choppy violence, as well as easy commentary on politics, war and the human condition — all that discourse, satire, glam-rock pageantry and buildup to an extended early finale, as the formula goes. The games were usually half the film, making both sides of Mockingjay disappointing if you were in it for thrills, and even the themes became more forward and heavy-handed than before. All this to say, starting with Catching Fire, it’s been Frank Marshall (of Constantine, I Am Legend and another J Law collab, the sultry, self-possessed spysploitation film Red Sparrow) in charge. His return — and especially since he was unable to save the business decision products of parts One and Two of the original series’ conclusion — made me think of a David Yates-equivalent stooge about to work out some truly repugnant cash-grab like Fantastic Beasts (take your pick) after managing most of the main movies. But as an individual installment no one asked for, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a damn engrossing watch, falling between the narrative riskiness and pontification of Mockingjay and the traditional satisfaction of the first two features. It works as bleak commentary, character-actor playground, escapist mini-blockbuster and decently involving long-form tragic romance.
But speaking of unnecessary prequels harboring love story sap going on for way too long, more than anything this made George Lucas’s early episodes look even more hilarious because you know what? I actually bought this romance even as it fizzles out in seconds — Songbirds slyly accomplished more than Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith put together. By the last act of Episode III it feels like Darth goes from 0 to 100, from desperate wife-saver to yellow-eyed child-murderer, but here you may actually forget Snow's inevitable destination. I was just following Coriolanus and I’m not sure I buy that he’s super complicit — I get that the exhibition of underage blood sport hadn’t quite become this civilization’s Super Bowl yet and this guy is the smarmy asshole in the ad department throwing out crass suggestions disguised as noble ones (“uh... let’s care about the people!?”), to which the head honcho goes “hm...genius!" On those terms this movie is quite stupid but in the minutia of world-building, most of Panem’s corners are well-considered.
Though it’s probably worse for pointing out, the reinforced cycles of violence and revolution feel pretty timely in light of the recent eruption of Middle Eastern conflicts — even without Israel-Palestine for backdrop, these were always fairly odd, dour pop entertainment. I feel as if the weaker reviews are a result of a spacious, venturous Act Three, which cuts the games off and puts you through tests of patience if you didn’t care two licks about these newly developed characters. You may walk away confused as to if you really watched Snow (felt out by a talented Tom Blyth) become Donald Sutherland’s dastardly dictator (didn’t like that parting, inserted voice-over copied over from Catching Fire) or whether he was the prickly president all along, but this villainous rise is so honorably resistant to sticking to the trend of twisted empathy for antagonists that aren’t ALL bad IF they had horrible things done to them — Songbirds and Snakes almost becomes a neat psychological thriller on top of it all by its final moments via well-employed ambiguity.
Though representation is one of those cinematic brownie points modern movies love to earn, here it all fits — the young girl with Down syndrome Sofia Sanchez and amputee Knox Gibson make for believable tributes. Then Hunter Schafer looks so similar to Blyth that they’re dead ringers for siblings — as the most prominent transgender actress around, she passes and plays the posh part well, echoing Elizabeth Banks’ Effie. Peter Dinklage was delightful, did you expect less? Viola Davis was likewise hamming it up splendidly but the coup de gras was the hilarious Jason Schwartzman, who gave me six good laughs, every time cementing Ballad’s sharp, pre-aged/retro-future satirical side, possibly outdoing Stanley Tucci’s absurdly bombastic TV-guru turn, like fictional father like fictional son. Then from the clunky, chunky subtitle I expected some serenades, or at the very least a few ditties, and Marshall doesn’t deny you. Rachel Zegler’s lovely voice works much better belting Joan Baez-like folk songs rather than speaking with a suspicious twang. Whether lovely a cappella, country-eyed, hee-haw stomps or some just good-ol' banjo-backed blues, the needle drops are aces outside of her first cringy protest moment.
I couldn’t believe this didn’t feel like some greedy, retreading franchise jumpstart — as far as I know there’s only one prequel Collins has penned, unless she decides Hamitch (Woody Harrelson onscreen) needed his own illustrated backstory called Sunrise on the Reaping. This Hunger Games has a registered maturity, profuse entertainment value and a tween story of unexpected dramatic and emotional clarity. All my indifference was contentedly washed away by Ballad’s continual catchiness.
The Killer briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
David Fincher has maybe frittered about so long with TV that something dispensable, episodic and shortchanged has sneaked its way into his movies — Mank was his late father’s Oscar bait/handed-down-homework special and now he’s back to the usual programming: adult thrillers with blood and shadows and some necessary brooding.
And it’s because Fincher was always so good at mainstream supply and demand as well as uncompromising skill in seedy exploitation that it makes The Killer seem perhaps lesser than it is. Whether he had Jeff Cronenweth or anyone else (this time DoP Erik Messerschmidt returning after Mank), the trademark look remains, operating within only a third of the color wheel, and as always it’s so cool to soak it in when the editing is as tight as it is here — slap a now signature Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross score of bleepbloops on top and you have what the non-normies refer to as KINO. All that assured style could make up for whatever novel David decided to adapt right?
Almost. The Killer has got to be a satisfying read but its peripheral qualities in an audiovisual domain are tougher to extract, and the primarily streaming release (there were no local theatrical options for me) is sadder because it’s just about where this sinewy sliver of content belongs. The totality of this taut tale isn’t nearly valuable enough to consider along the lines of Fincher’s much richer, sensationalist paperback punch, his go-to gradient — Seven, Panic Room, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl… see there’s cinematic urgency, artistic panache and thematic food for thought in all cases, even the slightest, Panic Room, which seems critically more dismissed and is nonetheless bottled, breathless bliss. The Killer is just some Netflix joint.
Something about it is so hapless, somehow sterile even though we're dealing with such extreme pulp, and pulpy for Fincher means practically all mush and no juice. The Killer strikes more like an obvious book adaptation than even Gone and Dragon Tattoo despite such famous sources — those 2010s gems play out as uncompromising movies whereas this rubbed off like a goddamn Steven Soderbergh movie if I’ve ever seen one, who similarly started dishing out for Netflix (as well as HBO Max) about five years ago. Granted, if The Killer was concocted by the prince of digital photography, it would barely be considered one of Steven’s better late-career wins.
In fact, this may as well have been a prequel spin-off about Michael Fassbender’s character from Soderbergh’s Haywire, a much more gripping, piquant assassin anecdote, with a stronger, similarly situated, solitary brawl to boot amidst a restricted exercise of stylization. I love the Fass but find his efforts here almost tragically… wrong. His American accent is an awkward, grating element and the narration itself, while clearly essential to the film’s social commentary and sleazy, self-obsessed interiority, is just fucking dimwitted at certain points, perhaps on purpose. Fassbender's performances often border on brilliant but this role is just too robotic for him to work with — he ironically has infinitely more room to spread wings in android-mode for Prometheus (he’s the best part) and Alien: Covenant (he’s the only watchable part).
It’s as if Nicolas Winding Refn ruined Drive with more subjectively and still failed to further edify our nameless protagonist in any way. In a similar backhanded move we have another autistic criminal who is a complete STONE COLD KILLER except when you happen to touch his only emotive nerve and he GOES CRAAAAAZY! "AHHH I’m so incredibly emotional and logical!" Not to mention The Killer lift's Drive's inciting getaway chase and simply swaps four wheels for two. If I heard the very basic recitation of the hit man code or mantra or whatever again I was gonna have to get my own piece. The intense, almost incessant mind-monologuing is the most traditional thing about this neo-noir, other than a muddied sense of "what's happening?" in the simple yet labyrinthine story — the sleazy, morbidly ironic gallows humor could’ve been stripped entirely and possibly made for a more appropriately empty movie, as even with a mildly complex character anchored by a phenomenal actor, our man with a gun isn’t interesting enough, nor is the ‘deconstruction’ of the related rules of the genre. Either taken as cool or calculated irony (akin to Fight Club’s cult of disenfranchised men), The Killer is only whelming as entertainment and vexing to enjoy and think about.
Maybe Summer Finn could’ve fixed this Smiths fan and put the assassin simp in his rightful place! The film is best in the first and last of its six segments, all gingerly bookending a gun-for-hire who isn’t terribly good at his job, and somehow Fincher slides by on this dark comic, semi-self-aware sincerity, even though this movie isn’t this secret comedy complete with bumbled protagonist like Redditors are projecting — if this guy’s such a regular fuck-up, a mediocre marksman, it’s a miracle he comes out unscathed in the end eh?
I guess I lament that day when a pivotal modern filmmaker produces something you can so easily skip. Like Matt Reeves’ The Batman, Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, Alex Garland’s Men, Edgar Wright’s Last Night and Soho and so many others of late, I’m just sick of technically flawless movies hanging their scrupulous hats on these ridiculously underdeveloped screenplays. It’s the most perfect style over substance example in some time and while, more often than not, I’m one to say that if said style is certain enough then a little narrative nothingness is forgiven, but not in this case. I don’t care if I’m “living amongst the normies” — this was Fincher’s most inessential movie since Alien 3 and YES that includes Benjamin Button thanks for asking.
David Fincher has maybe frittered about so long with TV that something dispensable, episodic and shortchanged has sneaked its way into his movies — Mank was his late father’s Oscar bait/handed-down-homework special and now he’s back to the usual programming: adult thrillers with blood and shadows and some necessary brooding.
And it’s because Fincher was always so good at mainstream supply and demand as well as uncompromising skill in seedy exploitation that it makes The Killer seem perhaps lesser than it is. Whether he had Jeff Cronenweth or anyone else (this time DoP Erik Messerschmidt returning after Mank), the trademark look remains, operating within only a third of the color wheel, and as always it’s so cool to soak it in when the editing is as tight as it is here — slap a now signature Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross score of bleepbloops on top and you have what the non-normies refer to as KINO. All that assured style could make up for whatever novel David decided to adapt right?
Almost. The Killer has got to be a satisfying read but its peripheral qualities in an audiovisual domain are tougher to extract, and the primarily streaming release (there were no local theatrical options for me) is sadder because it’s just about where this sinewy sliver of content belongs. The totality of this taut tale isn’t nearly valuable enough to consider along the lines of Fincher’s much richer, sensationalist paperback punch, his go-to gradient — Seven, Panic Room, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl… see there’s cinematic urgency, artistic panache and thematic food for thought in all cases, even the slightest, Panic Room, which seems critically more dismissed and is nonetheless bottled, breathless bliss. The Killer is just some Netflix joint.
Something about it is so hapless, somehow sterile even though we're dealing with such extreme pulp, and pulpy for Fincher means practically all mush and no juice. The Killer strikes more like an obvious book adaptation than even Gone and Dragon Tattoo despite such famous sources — those 2010s gems play out as uncompromising movies whereas this rubbed off like a goddamn Steven Soderbergh movie if I’ve ever seen one, who similarly started dishing out for Netflix (as well as HBO Max) about five years ago. Granted, if The Killer was concocted by the prince of digital photography, it would barely be considered one of Steven’s better late-career wins.
In fact, this may as well have been a prequel spin-off about Michael Fassbender’s character from Soderbergh’s Haywire, a much more gripping, piquant assassin anecdote, with a stronger, similarly situated, solitary brawl to boot amidst a restricted exercise of stylization. I love the Fass but find his efforts here almost tragically… wrong. His American accent is an awkward, grating element and the narration itself, while clearly essential to the film’s social commentary and sleazy, self-obsessed interiority, is just fucking dimwitted at certain points, perhaps on purpose. Fassbender's performances often border on brilliant but this role is just too robotic for him to work with — he ironically has infinitely more room to spread wings in android-mode for Prometheus (he’s the best part) and Alien: Covenant (he’s the only watchable part).
It’s as if Nicolas Winding Refn ruined Drive with more subjectively and still failed to further edify our nameless protagonist in any way. In a similar backhanded move we have another autistic criminal who is a complete STONE COLD KILLER except when you happen to touch his only emotive nerve and he GOES CRAAAAAZY! "AHHH I’m so incredibly emotional and logical!" Not to mention The Killer lift's Drive's inciting getaway chase and simply swaps four wheels for two. If I heard the very basic recitation of the hit man code or mantra or whatever again I was gonna have to get my own piece. The intense, almost incessant mind-monologuing is the most traditional thing about this neo-noir, other than a muddied sense of "what's happening?" in the simple yet labyrinthine story — the sleazy, morbidly ironic gallows humor could’ve been stripped entirely and possibly made for a more appropriately empty movie, as even with a mildly complex character anchored by a phenomenal actor, our man with a gun isn’t interesting enough, nor is the ‘deconstruction’ of the related rules of the genre. Either taken as cool or calculated irony (akin to Fight Club’s cult of disenfranchised men), The Killer is only whelming as entertainment and vexing to enjoy and think about.
Maybe Summer Finn could’ve fixed this Smiths fan and put the assassin simp in his rightful place! The film is best in the first and last of its six segments, all gingerly bookending a gun-for-hire who isn’t terribly good at his job, and somehow Fincher slides by on this dark comic, semi-self-aware sincerity, even though this movie isn’t this secret comedy complete with bumbled protagonist like Redditors are projecting — if this guy’s such a regular fuck-up, a mediocre marksman, it’s a miracle he comes out unscathed in the end eh?
I guess I lament that day when a pivotal modern filmmaker produces something you can so easily skip. Like Matt Reeves’ The Batman, Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, Alex Garland’s Men, Edgar Wright’s Last Night and Soho and so many others of late, I’m just sick of technically flawless movies hanging their scrupulous hats on these ridiculously underdeveloped screenplays. It’s the most perfect style over substance example in some time and while, more often than not, I’m one to say that if said style is certain enough then a little narrative nothingness is forgiven, but not in this case. I don’t care if I’m “living amongst the normies” — this was Fincher’s most inessential movie since Alien 3 and YES that includes Benjamin Button thanks for asking.
The Holdovers briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
Holy shit, is that an identifiable modern classic? Did Alexander Payne just radically rebound after his sci-fi social satire and all too prematurely self-declared “epic masterpiece” Downsizing blew up right in his face and diminished his reputation?
While I could be upset that certain auteurs (like David Fincher with The Killer or Sofia Coppola and Priscilla) are just sticking with their proven routines and subjects, for Payne that means tart, touching, remarkably textured, sneakingly sublime dramatic comedies with simmering sadness and just enough commercial appeal, those special, simple ones only dexterous writer-directors ever manage, offering joyful melancholy or vice versa. As one of his best (and admittedly one of two directed features he did not write), The Holdovers is too tasteful to beat its farcical nature into broad banality and too realist to let schmaltz spoil the who-hash. Somehow even with the gimmickry of so brashly and ironically shooting the film in digital and then modifying the footage to look as if it were out of its period, all the seasonal, sentimental trimmings of 1971 are in service of knowingly wielding nostalgia as a powerful theme rather than just some stylistic element to exploit. Even the sound design is appropriately, convincingly vintage.
In form, it could’ve easily been pure pastiche but in total The Holdovers is authoritatively authentic courtesy of one of those depressively-funny, emotionally scopic screwball scripts by longtime TV writer and first-time screenwriter David Hemingson, the second Payne film born of other scripts including another debut in Bob Nelson’s underrated Nebraska, the one you’d assume to be from Payne’s hand considering the strong representation for the cornhusker state throughout his ‘ography. The narrative doesn’t waste a beat, and though it emits a certain air of pop-cynicism along with potentially hokey Hallmarkiness, there’s no denying how genuine and veritable this throwback really is, especially as it instantly ascends to the ranks of alternative Christmas classics.
There aren’t really much of any Christmastime films worth popping on regularly, at least none in the last few decades that can measure to this beautifully bittersweet communication. Are you actually gonna say The Holiday qualifies? Why not Love Actually at that point? Bending the definition to fit Kiss Kiss Bang Bang or Carol or Tokyo Godfathers feels like cheating so I honestly ask: When was the last time there was a Christmas classic, for real? Elf? Eyes Wide Shut? The Holdovers is pure and potent enough for multiple viewings (like annual viewings) to feel like some grown-up Peanuts special in its utter, irrefutable wholesomeness — there’s even a crappy Christmas tree moment for Christ’s sake. Melding meditations on grief, late-pubescent angst and Scrooge-esque redemption, The Holdovers is the early miracle of awards season, an effortlessly endearing, wildly wistful tearjerker even divided from the wintertime wash. Traditional hymns and Auld Lang Syne color the holiday break time-lapse outside of hearty, agreeable background folk feels from many eras, all of it rubbing off like Leonard Cohen’s ghost blessed us with sound pieces to set your weary spirit on (thank you to Damien Jurado and Labi Siffre for the film’s excellent respective refrains “Silver Joy” and “Crying Laughing Loving Lying”).
So Holdovers has the Christmas/New Year season wrapped up, and equally checks out as well as unlikely hangout flick (with its troupe of lonesome misfit lead characters), a sorta satire on prep school rich kids and ultimately a renewing, soul-searching road movie, a sustained Payne staple — About Schmidt and the superior, aching Americana of Nebraska have the tired, elderly existential crisis down pat, even Citizen Ruth’s brutal consideration of the politics of abortion, The Descendants’ cathartic, comical Hawaiian telenovela and Downsizing’s overpopulation overcorrection all did some plot-pushing journeying. As the chilly foil to Sideways’ sensationally well-balanced Californian escape, still Payne’s apex as well as Paul Giamatti's, The Holdovers now makes a pair of complimentary west coast/east coast, soft-lit, feel-bad road trippers. On top of it all, it’s a new take on the typically quaint tale of professor and pupil going through all the expected relational hurdles, and as such this is like the antithesis of Election’s teacher v tryhard setup, its premise retaining just enough sap to remind you of a cuddlier, marginally less suicidal Dead Poets’ Society, curiously one of the only "influences" to which I’ve seen the familiar film compared.
Giamatti is nothing less than a phenomenal talent, handing in a career-best work, topping his similarly disgruntled characters from American Splendor, of course Sideways, Cold Souls and Win Win. His only other Oscar nom was for Cinderella Man — geez does he makes quite the loudmouth in your corner, so of course Paul is pigeonholed as the cranky curmudgeon, this time the pedantic pariah professor, but my is he caught in some splendid typecasting as he murders a classic, timeless role. And obviously the writing behind the articulate academic asshole persona is dripping with wit, Goddammit he has some great lines and, best of all, some sublime truths interspersed alongside the insults. Our newcoming lead Dominic Sessa — whose performance makes the film its own longing, glowing, Caulfield-esque coming-of-age criterion — is also superbly sparring with his seasoned co-star, panning out like a professional with places to go. Meanwhile Da’Vine Joy Randolph, at least this far out, seems due for an Academy Award and it wouldn’t be even slightly unearned, rounding out a delightfully mismatched trio with her devastating performance moments and uncommon warmth. She sincerely sells the thematic strand that no one’s suffering is as simple as it looks, a notion that could read like syrupy swill in lesser hands.
The Holdovers really does sound truly trite when you spell it out on paper, but this movie’s tact in imparting compassion and criticism makes it Academy-friendly and also more than worth recommending casually — it’s the perfect package, like Green Book without any of those trickier topics you have to deal with or ignore. There’s hilariously verbose put-downs, blindsiding emotional developments, fuzzy superimposition transitions, camerawork viscerally employing the techniques, not just the garnishes, of New Hollywood grit (Snap zooms! Wipes! Dissolves!) all in tandem with a wonderfully nimble, agreeably accessible, all but perfect script — this movie’s such a glimmering gem it’s like it already existed, 70s simulacra be damned. It would be at fault as feel-good tissue-box fodder if Payne’s film didn’t occasionally force you to sink so low, taking what rubs off as some recognizable ready-made romp to touch on everything from parental neglect to mental illness, exploiting a certain melodramatic undercurrent enough to remain true to the tragedy cloaking each character.
Payne’s eighth feature is a caustic, copiously enthralling crowd-pleaser and lovingly, introspective affair, a paradoxical pleasure to a range of the senses of cinema — The Holdovers has the comfiest of auras, a verifiable glow, that embered essence that sends you off beaming, brightened and bettered. It may not make you feel great about life but damn it’ll renew whatever remaining faith you have in filmmaking as art, so I’ll personally wade through general discomfort if and when it hurts just right.
Holy shit, is that an identifiable modern classic? Did Alexander Payne just radically rebound after his sci-fi social satire and all too prematurely self-declared “epic masterpiece” Downsizing blew up right in his face and diminished his reputation?
While I could be upset that certain auteurs (like David Fincher with The Killer or Sofia Coppola and Priscilla) are just sticking with their proven routines and subjects, for Payne that means tart, touching, remarkably textured, sneakingly sublime dramatic comedies with simmering sadness and just enough commercial appeal, those special, simple ones only dexterous writer-directors ever manage, offering joyful melancholy or vice versa. As one of his best (and admittedly one of two directed features he did not write), The Holdovers is too tasteful to beat its farcical nature into broad banality and too realist to let schmaltz spoil the who-hash. Somehow even with the gimmickry of so brashly and ironically shooting the film in digital and then modifying the footage to look as if it were out of its period, all the seasonal, sentimental trimmings of 1971 are in service of knowingly wielding nostalgia as a powerful theme rather than just some stylistic element to exploit. Even the sound design is appropriately, convincingly vintage.
In form, it could’ve easily been pure pastiche but in total The Holdovers is authoritatively authentic courtesy of one of those depressively-funny, emotionally scopic screwball scripts by longtime TV writer and first-time screenwriter David Hemingson, the second Payne film born of other scripts including another debut in Bob Nelson’s underrated Nebraska, the one you’d assume to be from Payne’s hand considering the strong representation for the cornhusker state throughout his ‘ography. The narrative doesn’t waste a beat, and though it emits a certain air of pop-cynicism along with potentially hokey Hallmarkiness, there’s no denying how genuine and veritable this throwback really is, especially as it instantly ascends to the ranks of alternative Christmas classics.
There aren’t really much of any Christmastime films worth popping on regularly, at least none in the last few decades that can measure to this beautifully bittersweet communication. Are you actually gonna say The Holiday qualifies? Why not Love Actually at that point? Bending the definition to fit Kiss Kiss Bang Bang or Carol or Tokyo Godfathers feels like cheating so I honestly ask: When was the last time there was a Christmas classic, for real? Elf? Eyes Wide Shut? The Holdovers is pure and potent enough for multiple viewings (like annual viewings) to feel like some grown-up Peanuts special in its utter, irrefutable wholesomeness — there’s even a crappy Christmas tree moment for Christ’s sake. Melding meditations on grief, late-pubescent angst and Scrooge-esque redemption, The Holdovers is the early miracle of awards season, an effortlessly endearing, wildly wistful tearjerker even divided from the wintertime wash. Traditional hymns and Auld Lang Syne color the holiday break time-lapse outside of hearty, agreeable background folk feels from many eras, all of it rubbing off like Leonard Cohen’s ghost blessed us with sound pieces to set your weary spirit on (thank you to Damien Jurado and Labi Siffre for the film’s excellent respective refrains “Silver Joy” and “Crying Laughing Loving Lying”).
So Holdovers has the Christmas/New Year season wrapped up, and equally checks out as well as unlikely hangout flick (with its troupe of lonesome misfit lead characters), a sorta satire on prep school rich kids and ultimately a renewing, soul-searching road movie, a sustained Payne staple — About Schmidt and the superior, aching Americana of Nebraska have the tired, elderly existential crisis down pat, even Citizen Ruth’s brutal consideration of the politics of abortion, The Descendants’ cathartic, comical Hawaiian telenovela and Downsizing’s overpopulation overcorrection all did some plot-pushing journeying. As the chilly foil to Sideways’ sensationally well-balanced Californian escape, still Payne’s apex as well as Paul Giamatti's, The Holdovers now makes a pair of complimentary west coast/east coast, soft-lit, feel-bad road trippers. On top of it all, it’s a new take on the typically quaint tale of professor and pupil going through all the expected relational hurdles, and as such this is like the antithesis of Election’s teacher v tryhard setup, its premise retaining just enough sap to remind you of a cuddlier, marginally less suicidal Dead Poets’ Society, curiously one of the only "influences" to which I’ve seen the familiar film compared.
Giamatti is nothing less than a phenomenal talent, handing in a career-best work, topping his similarly disgruntled characters from American Splendor, of course Sideways, Cold Souls and Win Win. His only other Oscar nom was for Cinderella Man — geez does he makes quite the loudmouth in your corner, so of course Paul is pigeonholed as the cranky curmudgeon, this time the pedantic pariah professor, but my is he caught in some splendid typecasting as he murders a classic, timeless role. And obviously the writing behind the articulate academic asshole persona is dripping with wit, Goddammit he has some great lines and, best of all, some sublime truths interspersed alongside the insults. Our newcoming lead Dominic Sessa — whose performance makes the film its own longing, glowing, Caulfield-esque coming-of-age criterion — is also superbly sparring with his seasoned co-star, panning out like a professional with places to go. Meanwhile Da’Vine Joy Randolph, at least this far out, seems due for an Academy Award and it wouldn’t be even slightly unearned, rounding out a delightfully mismatched trio with her devastating performance moments and uncommon warmth. She sincerely sells the thematic strand that no one’s suffering is as simple as it looks, a notion that could read like syrupy swill in lesser hands.
The Holdovers really does sound truly trite when you spell it out on paper, but this movie’s tact in imparting compassion and criticism makes it Academy-friendly and also more than worth recommending casually — it’s the perfect package, like Green Book without any of those trickier topics you have to deal with or ignore. There’s hilariously verbose put-downs, blindsiding emotional developments, fuzzy superimposition transitions, camerawork viscerally employing the techniques, not just the garnishes, of New Hollywood grit (Snap zooms! Wipes! Dissolves!) all in tandem with a wonderfully nimble, agreeably accessible, all but perfect script — this movie’s such a glimmering gem it’s like it already existed, 70s simulacra be damned. It would be at fault as feel-good tissue-box fodder if Payne’s film didn’t occasionally force you to sink so low, taking what rubs off as some recognizable ready-made romp to touch on everything from parental neglect to mental illness, exploiting a certain melodramatic undercurrent enough to remain true to the tragedy cloaking each character.
Payne’s eighth feature is a caustic, copiously enthralling crowd-pleaser and lovingly, introspective affair, a paradoxical pleasure to a range of the senses of cinema — The Holdovers has the comfiest of auras, a verifiable glow, that embered essence that sends you off beaming, brightened and bettered. It may not make you feel great about life but damn it’ll renew whatever remaining faith you have in filmmaking as art, so I’ll personally wade through general discomfort if and when it hurts just right.
The Marvels briefing
1 ½ (out of 4)
Lower, lesser, slower baby….
Captain Marvel ain’t looking too bad now huh? Personally, after Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania shrank to a new low at the bottom of the MCU monkey barrel, The Marvels just dug its nails in and tore up that damp wood despite the soggy splinters, daftly deflating the once monumental franchise’s legacy by the biggest margin in a 15-year, 33-film history. At least in 2019, for Act One of Carol Danvers’ first affair things played out like a strong modern Star Trek riff — in 2023, note to note this must be how poorly an average Picard episode or any other recent Trek Paramount+ show turns out…. cheap, goofy, confusing, false and forced, nerd fantasies mashed and muddled to mincemeat.
And look, I’m as forgiving and accepting as viewers come — if I’m entertained, there’s half the battle. But Jesus, I could barely spot the outer-marble first-draft movie that must have existed before this aborted, neutered mini-Avengers episode was Edward-Scissorhanded into superhero snowflakes in editing. Just in moments of dialogue, shot to shot, you can feel the internal rhythm lurch where the ends have been snipped. Foolishly I assumed brevity would be The Marvels’ greatest asset — no MCU flick yet has been so short but this is hardly sweet, somehow it could’ve been mercifully whittled down even further, even at the expense of logic. The film’s total length is only 95 minutes sans credits and I still checked my phone twice (rarely am I so severely disengaged), once to see if the first act just ended since it felt like the story had barely started (wow, we’re over halfway?) and later to see if the climax was even more premature than I guessed (another 20 minutes left??). I don’t know how else to paint a picture of the most pointless, lifeless, disjointed and derelict movie in this Cinematic Universe’s history EASILY and one of the most crooked, undercooked, jumbled, bewilderingly blundered “blockbusters” in recent memory.
I can’t help but find it funny that they’ll catch you up on Captain Marvel (which EVERYONE has seen) in a crappy recap flashback, but if you haven’t seen two of their least-watched Disney+ shows then FUCK YOU DUDE, keep up bro. It’s all backwards — maybe casuals watched WandaVision, but who in God’s name actually stuck around long enough for Ms. Marvel or Secret Invasion? The cameos are also nearly nothing, even for people who lap up that thick fan service — how could I for even a second think something was going down by showcasing Beast and bringing the latest X-Men closer to fruition, completely forgetting I already watched Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier explode into morsels about a year and a half ago, smack dab in the middle of the second Doctor Strange?
At least this movie didn’t double down on GIRL POWER, unlike the feeble feminism of Captain Marvel (“got a smile for me?”) — Black Panther: Wakanda Forever sported a similarly, ironically laudable resistance to jerking off its own female-forward self-congratulations. As far as the meager positives go, young Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan has spunky zoomer energy, but unfortunately the script knows it — Kamala has all the movie’s personality to herself, even when she’s pretending to recruit the daughters of cooler heroes like Hailee Steinfeld’s baby Hawkeye, hey let me just stop you there! NO ONE CARES! I like Ms. Marvel’s powers — maybe her show manages a few cool exploits of her matter-forming abilities that are nonexistent here. Teyonah Harris as Monica Rambeau doesn’t have a character apart from feeling hung up on abandonment issues regarding Carol/Vers (Larson) after an unkept childhood promise — in action it’s just scene after scene of her expositing sci-fi-semi-speech into oblivion, wielding powers so poorly introduced I can’t tell if they were earned in WandaVision or here, don’t care to check either. Danvers, like last time, isn’t a real character, and poor Brie has moments where it seems she’s about to deliver a joke and Carol or Larson herself just bail: “Fuck you I’m not quipping,” I see flash in her eyes during some truly AWKWARD passages. At least they don’t retroactively change Larson’s character completely à la Thor, but leaving her as the straight woman against another plank in Rambeau and some dorky teen (Vellani inherits the cliché of the geeking teenage side character ceaselessly suggesting undecided super-monikers) doesn’t make for a nice little team-up, not in the slightest. Speaking of, you never trust a late Marvel flick that has to lean on Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury as a supporting crutch — Spider-Man: Far From Home is even worse than Captain Marvel (honestly the best of his more prominent turns for the MCU) and he’s only a measurable player in that first Avengers flick.
The only gentle concession I can make in this film’s favor is the instances of absurdism were welcome even if they were so pitifully finagling, clasping and otherwise clamoring for MEME status, some puncturing pop culture moment to cycle around TikTok just so there’s ANY kind of social notoriety to this otherwise complete failure. As overcompensation for the altogether absence of thrills, this is now the most lame and lousy of the wilder, wackier B-movie selections of the collection (Ant-Mans, Taika’s Thors, Guardians) with dangerously littler charisma or cuddly wholesomeness to offer otherwise. This wasn’t even irreverent it was just bum-fucking dumb and, for one of the relatively “funnier” Marvel movies, quite the eye-rolling travesty. The Marvels is both bland and bizarre, not intrepid by any reach of imagination but rather a shapeless, exceptionally messy movie.
Poor Nia DaCosta — it’s actually nice that her movie managed a Tessa Thompson cameo (gee thanks Valkyrie for saving some alien refugees!) considering she’s the star of DaCosta’s decent little debut drug drama Little Woods. For Nia the only other stepping stone from indie literally-who to the so-called director of MCU flick #33 is Universal’s Candyman reboot from two years ago (in which Rambeau starred), also a frustrating, flavorless film if a slightly more coherent one. Marvel sure likes to pluck the anonymous, auspicious, aspiring filmmaker while they’re still flexible and willing to let Feige essentially take credit EXCEPT FOR when he blames the film’s failure on a lack of supervision of the on-set happenings.
At this late stage in the game (whether talking supers at large or just the MCU, we’re at like the post-post-game show at this point) I can forgive lighter, less pertinent fare. I’m not one to scoff at a one-off but I will not accept bafflement and displeasure, or the feeling like I’m watching some TV special rather than the surest comic book crap Hollywood can excrete. If I weren’t so utterly whiplashed by this movie’s clearly endless reshaping, then maybe I could be more kindly dismissive but I’m sorry, the film explains everything and orients you to nothing, is flighty without ever being fun and even the main genre gimmick (these three ladies of light can swap places with a simultaneous flick of the wrist) only equates to a few brief, decent fights that are so quick they could either be cleverly, logically choreographed or just nonsensical.
This was just Marvel content, barely a movie. The wheels turn on a dime; oh this is happening now: Carol, why don’t you just reignite a sun with your powers? OHH. My consistent expression throughout the movie was mouth slightly ajar and brows tightly furrowed. I thought last year’s threefold disappointment would be tough to beat but 2023 is the brand’s worst year by far, and I genuinely respect Guardians 3, it may be in my top 10 MCU offerings. I won’t say they studio is creatively bankrupt because they like to, at times, graze about in left field, though they are indeed DRAMATICALLY bankrupt. Feige would have to pull off miracle after miracle to make me care about ANYTHING anymore, and only yesterday we were so invested.
How hard can you lean into cat jokes? They literally played music from Cats for an extended, lady-catered comic breath. For now Marvel’s The Marvels supplants Quantumania’s tiny worst-ever reign as officially the biggest bust of the MCU oeuvre. Now that the emperor of movie media is a little more stripped, nothing can ever be counted on anymore (if it ever could after Endgame, now I don’t even think Fantastic Four could revitalize the universe) and, gratefully, general goodwill toward the brand has slipped past expiration.
Lower, lesser, slower baby….
Captain Marvel ain’t looking too bad now huh? Personally, after Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania shrank to a new low at the bottom of the MCU monkey barrel, The Marvels just dug its nails in and tore up that damp wood despite the soggy splinters, daftly deflating the once monumental franchise’s legacy by the biggest margin in a 15-year, 33-film history. At least in 2019, for Act One of Carol Danvers’ first affair things played out like a strong modern Star Trek riff — in 2023, note to note this must be how poorly an average Picard episode or any other recent Trek Paramount+ show turns out…. cheap, goofy, confusing, false and forced, nerd fantasies mashed and muddled to mincemeat.
And look, I’m as forgiving and accepting as viewers come — if I’m entertained, there’s half the battle. But Jesus, I could barely spot the outer-marble first-draft movie that must have existed before this aborted, neutered mini-Avengers episode was Edward-Scissorhanded into superhero snowflakes in editing. Just in moments of dialogue, shot to shot, you can feel the internal rhythm lurch where the ends have been snipped. Foolishly I assumed brevity would be The Marvels’ greatest asset — no MCU flick yet has been so short but this is hardly sweet, somehow it could’ve been mercifully whittled down even further, even at the expense of logic. The film’s total length is only 95 minutes sans credits and I still checked my phone twice (rarely am I so severely disengaged), once to see if the first act just ended since it felt like the story had barely started (wow, we’re over halfway?) and later to see if the climax was even more premature than I guessed (another 20 minutes left??). I don’t know how else to paint a picture of the most pointless, lifeless, disjointed and derelict movie in this Cinematic Universe’s history EASILY and one of the most crooked, undercooked, jumbled, bewilderingly blundered “blockbusters” in recent memory.
I can’t help but find it funny that they’ll catch you up on Captain Marvel (which EVERYONE has seen) in a crappy recap flashback, but if you haven’t seen two of their least-watched Disney+ shows then FUCK YOU DUDE, keep up bro. It’s all backwards — maybe casuals watched WandaVision, but who in God’s name actually stuck around long enough for Ms. Marvel or Secret Invasion? The cameos are also nearly nothing, even for people who lap up that thick fan service — how could I for even a second think something was going down by showcasing Beast and bringing the latest X-Men closer to fruition, completely forgetting I already watched Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier explode into morsels about a year and a half ago, smack dab in the middle of the second Doctor Strange?
At least this movie didn’t double down on GIRL POWER, unlike the feeble feminism of Captain Marvel (“got a smile for me?”) — Black Panther: Wakanda Forever sported a similarly, ironically laudable resistance to jerking off its own female-forward self-congratulations. As far as the meager positives go, young Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan has spunky zoomer energy, but unfortunately the script knows it — Kamala has all the movie’s personality to herself, even when she’s pretending to recruit the daughters of cooler heroes like Hailee Steinfeld’s baby Hawkeye, hey let me just stop you there! NO ONE CARES! I like Ms. Marvel’s powers — maybe her show manages a few cool exploits of her matter-forming abilities that are nonexistent here. Teyonah Harris as Monica Rambeau doesn’t have a character apart from feeling hung up on abandonment issues regarding Carol/Vers (Larson) after an unkept childhood promise — in action it’s just scene after scene of her expositing sci-fi-semi-speech into oblivion, wielding powers so poorly introduced I can’t tell if they were earned in WandaVision or here, don’t care to check either. Danvers, like last time, isn’t a real character, and poor Brie has moments where it seems she’s about to deliver a joke and Carol or Larson herself just bail: “Fuck you I’m not quipping,” I see flash in her eyes during some truly AWKWARD passages. At least they don’t retroactively change Larson’s character completely à la Thor, but leaving her as the straight woman against another plank in Rambeau and some dorky teen (Vellani inherits the cliché of the geeking teenage side character ceaselessly suggesting undecided super-monikers) doesn’t make for a nice little team-up, not in the slightest. Speaking of, you never trust a late Marvel flick that has to lean on Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury as a supporting crutch — Spider-Man: Far From Home is even worse than Captain Marvel (honestly the best of his more prominent turns for the MCU) and he’s only a measurable player in that first Avengers flick.
The only gentle concession I can make in this film’s favor is the instances of absurdism were welcome even if they were so pitifully finagling, clasping and otherwise clamoring for MEME status, some puncturing pop culture moment to cycle around TikTok just so there’s ANY kind of social notoriety to this otherwise complete failure. As overcompensation for the altogether absence of thrills, this is now the most lame and lousy of the wilder, wackier B-movie selections of the collection (Ant-Mans, Taika’s Thors, Guardians) with dangerously littler charisma or cuddly wholesomeness to offer otherwise. This wasn’t even irreverent it was just bum-fucking dumb and, for one of the relatively “funnier” Marvel movies, quite the eye-rolling travesty. The Marvels is both bland and bizarre, not intrepid by any reach of imagination but rather a shapeless, exceptionally messy movie.
Poor Nia DaCosta — it’s actually nice that her movie managed a Tessa Thompson cameo (gee thanks Valkyrie for saving some alien refugees!) considering she’s the star of DaCosta’s decent little debut drug drama Little Woods. For Nia the only other stepping stone from indie literally-who to the so-called director of MCU flick #33 is Universal’s Candyman reboot from two years ago (in which Rambeau starred), also a frustrating, flavorless film if a slightly more coherent one. Marvel sure likes to pluck the anonymous, auspicious, aspiring filmmaker while they’re still flexible and willing to let Feige essentially take credit EXCEPT FOR when he blames the film’s failure on a lack of supervision of the on-set happenings.
At this late stage in the game (whether talking supers at large or just the MCU, we’re at like the post-post-game show at this point) I can forgive lighter, less pertinent fare. I’m not one to scoff at a one-off but I will not accept bafflement and displeasure, or the feeling like I’m watching some TV special rather than the surest comic book crap Hollywood can excrete. If I weren’t so utterly whiplashed by this movie’s clearly endless reshaping, then maybe I could be more kindly dismissive but I’m sorry, the film explains everything and orients you to nothing, is flighty without ever being fun and even the main genre gimmick (these three ladies of light can swap places with a simultaneous flick of the wrist) only equates to a few brief, decent fights that are so quick they could either be cleverly, logically choreographed or just nonsensical.
This was just Marvel content, barely a movie. The wheels turn on a dime; oh this is happening now: Carol, why don’t you just reignite a sun with your powers? OHH. My consistent expression throughout the movie was mouth slightly ajar and brows tightly furrowed. I thought last year’s threefold disappointment would be tough to beat but 2023 is the brand’s worst year by far, and I genuinely respect Guardians 3, it may be in my top 10 MCU offerings. I won’t say they studio is creatively bankrupt because they like to, at times, graze about in left field, though they are indeed DRAMATICALLY bankrupt. Feige would have to pull off miracle after miracle to make me care about ANYTHING anymore, and only yesterday we were so invested.
How hard can you lean into cat jokes? They literally played music from Cats for an extended, lady-catered comic breath. For now Marvel’s The Marvels supplants Quantumania’s tiny worst-ever reign as officially the biggest bust of the MCU oeuvre. Now that the emperor of movie media is a little more stripped, nothing can ever be counted on anymore (if it ever could after Endgame, now I don’t even think Fantastic Four could revitalize the universe) and, gratefully, general goodwill toward the brand has slipped past expiration.
Priscilla briefing
3 (out of 4)
On the Rocks watered down and bottomed out Sofia Coppola’s career as its tasteless, out-of-touch, sitcom-premise bullshitting-about found her on autopilot and Bill Murray at his most lethargic — to my chagrin and surprise, the movie is one of her best-reviewed. Maybe that’s because everything since Lost in Translation has been a little spacious and experimental, with Sofia’s quintessentially airy aura just foggy enough to receive mixed reactions for Marie Antoinette (her first, most relevant biopic, a revisionist treat), Somewhere (retrospectively one her most celebrated, perhaps her most personally inspired, not-quite-autobiographical work outside of Lost) and the blunt-force Cali-crazy satire The Bling Ring, with better scores for the soured Southern Comfort of The Beguiled (remake of an Eastwood-starring flick from the 70s).
If not for the overarching irony that Priscilla, intentionally or no, can’t escape The King’s shadow despite an executive producer credit from Ms. Presley herself, the disquieting ending rounded out a structure situating Priscilla as almost anti-feminist given there’s not a single moment that’s not about Elvis, as if her life is only narratively, cinematically worthy if it’s Elvis-the-Pelvis-adjacent from scene one. I suppose the whole project concerns an inability to be her own person, plus Priscilla's autobiography is literally called Elvis and Me, look I get it OK — Coppola, oddly, rejects feminist labels despite their appropriate application in particular portions of her career, here especially.
This Elvis (Jacob Elordi exuberantly shooting from the hip) has one bit of music performance in the beginning and otherwise Presley is only who he was to his wife, which was quite the character — it’s hard not to simply see a man who spotted some underage girl and decided to keep the poor doting thing on the back burner for as long as he could justify, Presley’s prudent pants making this girl wait to get deflowered for years and years… There’s an intense parallel between the seeming impotence of both Jason Schwartzmann’s King Louis XVI from Antoinette and the King himself here, whether you’re too pussy to screw your Austrian-born queen or too tasteful of a manipulative groomer to take advantage of your virginal bride-in-the-works — the bedroom is a place of confusion, awkwardness and disappointment in Sofia’s eye, at least as far the subjects of her diabolically genre-upending biopics are concerned. Like Marie A, the love story is forced, stupid and unreal, but there is an earnestness that suggests flesh and blood humans caught in terrible unions.
Like many great juxtapositions of rapture and loneliness, there’s an element of the way in which couples can still be strangers to each other, and how the illusion is only broken when one doesn’t fulfill the fantasy the other has in their head — Priscilla wants Elvis to be a real husband and father, and Elvis wants someone under his thumb to come back home to after the tours and movie shoots. She’s his perfectly unsullied maiden, he the 50s teenager’s daydream manifest… Of course Priscilla is left gaping at any of his absences, especially if Elvis kissed you when you were FOURTEEN, yeah no girl is getting over that without some serious convincing. It’s a fairy tale slowly poisoned by constant cheating, intolerable isolation and at least a decade of lustful, readymade romantic entropy to undo.
So this one is not quite as dreamlike, meditative and pensive (and all the other words I pull out for Sofia’s particular stylistic preferences) as her usual cinematic incisions. Even in a less intense shade her ticks perfectly match the idea of poor Priscilla sitting around a mansion in Memphis, doing little other than biding time until her cheating-ass, wigglin’-ass boyfriend comes around for an apology or to impregnate you. At first you want to buy the whole grieving, gentlemanly facade — the movie even mindfucks you into thinking you’ve entered his sex dungeon, before he’s going “Not so fast, baby” for years on end. Restraining himself until legal age could be vaguely upstanding enough if you don’t consider the literal parade of grown-up tail he got probably each and every night away from the Mrs. or soon-to-be. So if you ignore all that, he wasn’t a bad influence, oh wait except for the copious drug addictions, emotional abuse and controlling every aspect of her public image.
But ALL THAT SAID Coppola is too matter-of-fact to let this be some prepaid woe-is-me exposé — the movie didn’t become a #metoo moment, you have to respect how unexaggerated it is. Elvis is doused in a most unflattering light and yet he is only so vilified, Coppola resists grossly manipulating a peculiar pairing (more than Presley could), and at its best it feels like any other strong relationship drama, only within the most ludicrous context of all time. The few scenes they’re together you can sense something of a special bond, only to be punctuated by the extravagant outbursts or seasons of abandonment of the housewife-shaped trophy on the mantelpiece you dust off when you make you homeward reset.
Cailee Spaeny has this incredible face that changes, as in seems to actually get older — I bought this 24-year-old at every single age. She’s got one of those mesmerizing, pliable kinda visages, she’s beautiful but every single different look was a detailed dead ringer on top of a performance that sold it. Take a talented, understated young person, an extremely dexterous makeup and costume department absolutely nailing every part of her romantic mythology with Elvis, and then bookend it with her actually looking like herself, the real Priscilla free of the intense mascara and puffed up black hair, and there you have the actual astonishment of cinematic real-life character studies. Jacob is almost good enough to overshadow Spaeny — he’s got some facial advantages too, that takes you plenty of the way there. Sure Elvis wasn’t some 6’5” Abercrombie model but apart from the lips he is the spitting image of Mr. Thank You Very Much in the right light, far more often than Austin Butler in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis just last year. Not to shit on Butler’s studied, excessive surliness but Jacob casually strips the affect, proving off the cuff can be a better method even if a matching head shape is doing too many favors. However you slice it these are two smashingly good performances, easily some of the best I’ve seen this year.
So by the reduction of sensation (there’s nothing downplayed under Luhrmann’s garish, gaudy, crazy-ass direction) Coppola has naturally made one of the most agreeable, exceptionally fortifying biopics of recent times and it will probably make a tenth of the money Elvis made — that film only had time for Priscilla in the courtship and the later regret and not much in between. Because of what Sofia finds cinematic, one of her most eventful movies to date becomes one of the genre’s most refreshingly dry renditions — Priscilla, not unlike Oppenheimer, finds strength in subjectivity, making for an anti-biopic in the best way. Coppola gradually illustrates the slow grind of social or romantic subjugation, and the psychology is more subtle, if less obscured and mournful than The Virgin Suicides' pretentious investigations of the unknowable minds of teenage girls, and otherwise I believed it to be the great plain Jane companion piece to Luhrmann’s squishy sensationalism in Elvis til I realized it was far more interesting, if less overtly entertaining.
Musically, even with the anachronisms alongside Coppola’s other aesthetic augmentations, plus a hurdle as big as the estate refusing rights to use Elvis' music, Sofia's husband and lead singer of Phoenix (akin to another internationally famous French pop group Air, which helped shape the strange, pretty, prickly vibes of her debut Virgin Suicides) Thomas Mars congeals even decades-removed cuts like they happened to be historically accurate. While there’s nothing as radical as a Strokes song in 17th century France, the 50s-late-60s era lets Coppola synthesize yet another incredible curation of sounds both informing and disrupting what she’s capturing on-camera — God there is some unregulated bliss cutting to roller-rink fun times synced with “Forever” by The Little Dippers. While her films once again prove masterclass in poetic, patrician, collage-like soundtrack selection, this mature turn was hardly an assault of ambience.
Overall this was a filmography redeemer, an intuitive subject for Coppola’s eye for sugary, almost antiquated artifice — Priscilla's outfit-matched, color-coated guns are so cute Coppola can’t help but lay the shot out and savor it. She also loves a good, meaningful photo shoot scene, several if the subject allows, with some measure of upper class realism or whatever, which this subject of course has loads of, it’s just her thing. Her caustic realism too shapes the sometimes baffling humor and painful ironies of Priscilla’s place in her own life, separate and also among the masses. It’s got the modern/classical paradox beat from both ends, sporting a jaunty, New Wave edge, forming a piquant hybrid of all these styles — Coppola's best in 15 years slides into a shining spot within her own neat little auteur corner.
Is the daughter, the Presley heir, wrong for speaking out? Do you hate your Mom? Maybe your Dad wasn’t so great and a culture of celebrity worship needs people like Sofia to take them down a peg and repeatedly demystify worship-worthy status. And that’s why she was perfect for the whole game of misusing stardom since the internal anguish of Priscilla’s situation is so specific — Spaeny’s version isn’t even particularly, painfully jealous but no other woman in the last century at least would have more of a right to keep tabs on her man, and it becomes a universal statement on the disparate dominant-submissive dichotomy of celebrity/non-celebrity couples.
On the Rocks watered down and bottomed out Sofia Coppola’s career as its tasteless, out-of-touch, sitcom-premise bullshitting-about found her on autopilot and Bill Murray at his most lethargic — to my chagrin and surprise, the movie is one of her best-reviewed. Maybe that’s because everything since Lost in Translation has been a little spacious and experimental, with Sofia’s quintessentially airy aura just foggy enough to receive mixed reactions for Marie Antoinette (her first, most relevant biopic, a revisionist treat), Somewhere (retrospectively one her most celebrated, perhaps her most personally inspired, not-quite-autobiographical work outside of Lost) and the blunt-force Cali-crazy satire The Bling Ring, with better scores for the soured Southern Comfort of The Beguiled (remake of an Eastwood-starring flick from the 70s).
If not for the overarching irony that Priscilla, intentionally or no, can’t escape The King’s shadow despite an executive producer credit from Ms. Presley herself, the disquieting ending rounded out a structure situating Priscilla as almost anti-feminist given there’s not a single moment that’s not about Elvis, as if her life is only narratively, cinematically worthy if it’s Elvis-the-Pelvis-adjacent from scene one. I suppose the whole project concerns an inability to be her own person, plus Priscilla's autobiography is literally called Elvis and Me, look I get it OK — Coppola, oddly, rejects feminist labels despite their appropriate application in particular portions of her career, here especially.
This Elvis (Jacob Elordi exuberantly shooting from the hip) has one bit of music performance in the beginning and otherwise Presley is only who he was to his wife, which was quite the character — it’s hard not to simply see a man who spotted some underage girl and decided to keep the poor doting thing on the back burner for as long as he could justify, Presley’s prudent pants making this girl wait to get deflowered for years and years… There’s an intense parallel between the seeming impotence of both Jason Schwartzmann’s King Louis XVI from Antoinette and the King himself here, whether you’re too pussy to screw your Austrian-born queen or too tasteful of a manipulative groomer to take advantage of your virginal bride-in-the-works — the bedroom is a place of confusion, awkwardness and disappointment in Sofia’s eye, at least as far the subjects of her diabolically genre-upending biopics are concerned. Like Marie A, the love story is forced, stupid and unreal, but there is an earnestness that suggests flesh and blood humans caught in terrible unions.
Like many great juxtapositions of rapture and loneliness, there’s an element of the way in which couples can still be strangers to each other, and how the illusion is only broken when one doesn’t fulfill the fantasy the other has in their head — Priscilla wants Elvis to be a real husband and father, and Elvis wants someone under his thumb to come back home to after the tours and movie shoots. She’s his perfectly unsullied maiden, he the 50s teenager’s daydream manifest… Of course Priscilla is left gaping at any of his absences, especially if Elvis kissed you when you were FOURTEEN, yeah no girl is getting over that without some serious convincing. It’s a fairy tale slowly poisoned by constant cheating, intolerable isolation and at least a decade of lustful, readymade romantic entropy to undo.
So this one is not quite as dreamlike, meditative and pensive (and all the other words I pull out for Sofia’s particular stylistic preferences) as her usual cinematic incisions. Even in a less intense shade her ticks perfectly match the idea of poor Priscilla sitting around a mansion in Memphis, doing little other than biding time until her cheating-ass, wigglin’-ass boyfriend comes around for an apology or to impregnate you. At first you want to buy the whole grieving, gentlemanly facade — the movie even mindfucks you into thinking you’ve entered his sex dungeon, before he’s going “Not so fast, baby” for years on end. Restraining himself until legal age could be vaguely upstanding enough if you don’t consider the literal parade of grown-up tail he got probably each and every night away from the Mrs. or soon-to-be. So if you ignore all that, he wasn’t a bad influence, oh wait except for the copious drug addictions, emotional abuse and controlling every aspect of her public image.
But ALL THAT SAID Coppola is too matter-of-fact to let this be some prepaid woe-is-me exposé — the movie didn’t become a #metoo moment, you have to respect how unexaggerated it is. Elvis is doused in a most unflattering light and yet he is only so vilified, Coppola resists grossly manipulating a peculiar pairing (more than Presley could), and at its best it feels like any other strong relationship drama, only within the most ludicrous context of all time. The few scenes they’re together you can sense something of a special bond, only to be punctuated by the extravagant outbursts or seasons of abandonment of the housewife-shaped trophy on the mantelpiece you dust off when you make you homeward reset.
Cailee Spaeny has this incredible face that changes, as in seems to actually get older — I bought this 24-year-old at every single age. She’s got one of those mesmerizing, pliable kinda visages, she’s beautiful but every single different look was a detailed dead ringer on top of a performance that sold it. Take a talented, understated young person, an extremely dexterous makeup and costume department absolutely nailing every part of her romantic mythology with Elvis, and then bookend it with her actually looking like herself, the real Priscilla free of the intense mascara and puffed up black hair, and there you have the actual astonishment of cinematic real-life character studies. Jacob is almost good enough to overshadow Spaeny — he’s got some facial advantages too, that takes you plenty of the way there. Sure Elvis wasn’t some 6’5” Abercrombie model but apart from the lips he is the spitting image of Mr. Thank You Very Much in the right light, far more often than Austin Butler in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis just last year. Not to shit on Butler’s studied, excessive surliness but Jacob casually strips the affect, proving off the cuff can be a better method even if a matching head shape is doing too many favors. However you slice it these are two smashingly good performances, easily some of the best I’ve seen this year.
So by the reduction of sensation (there’s nothing downplayed under Luhrmann’s garish, gaudy, crazy-ass direction) Coppola has naturally made one of the most agreeable, exceptionally fortifying biopics of recent times and it will probably make a tenth of the money Elvis made — that film only had time for Priscilla in the courtship and the later regret and not much in between. Because of what Sofia finds cinematic, one of her most eventful movies to date becomes one of the genre’s most refreshingly dry renditions — Priscilla, not unlike Oppenheimer, finds strength in subjectivity, making for an anti-biopic in the best way. Coppola gradually illustrates the slow grind of social or romantic subjugation, and the psychology is more subtle, if less obscured and mournful than The Virgin Suicides' pretentious investigations of the unknowable minds of teenage girls, and otherwise I believed it to be the great plain Jane companion piece to Luhrmann’s squishy sensationalism in Elvis til I realized it was far more interesting, if less overtly entertaining.
Musically, even with the anachronisms alongside Coppola’s other aesthetic augmentations, plus a hurdle as big as the estate refusing rights to use Elvis' music, Sofia's husband and lead singer of Phoenix (akin to another internationally famous French pop group Air, which helped shape the strange, pretty, prickly vibes of her debut Virgin Suicides) Thomas Mars congeals even decades-removed cuts like they happened to be historically accurate. While there’s nothing as radical as a Strokes song in 17th century France, the 50s-late-60s era lets Coppola synthesize yet another incredible curation of sounds both informing and disrupting what she’s capturing on-camera — God there is some unregulated bliss cutting to roller-rink fun times synced with “Forever” by The Little Dippers. While her films once again prove masterclass in poetic, patrician, collage-like soundtrack selection, this mature turn was hardly an assault of ambience.
Overall this was a filmography redeemer, an intuitive subject for Coppola’s eye for sugary, almost antiquated artifice — Priscilla's outfit-matched, color-coated guns are so cute Coppola can’t help but lay the shot out and savor it. She also loves a good, meaningful photo shoot scene, several if the subject allows, with some measure of upper class realism or whatever, which this subject of course has loads of, it’s just her thing. Her caustic realism too shapes the sometimes baffling humor and painful ironies of Priscilla’s place in her own life, separate and also among the masses. It’s got the modern/classical paradox beat from both ends, sporting a jaunty, New Wave edge, forming a piquant hybrid of all these styles — Coppola's best in 15 years slides into a shining spot within her own neat little auteur corner.
Is the daughter, the Presley heir, wrong for speaking out? Do you hate your Mom? Maybe your Dad wasn’t so great and a culture of celebrity worship needs people like Sofia to take them down a peg and repeatedly demystify worship-worthy status. And that’s why she was perfect for the whole game of misusing stardom since the internal anguish of Priscilla’s situation is so specific — Spaeny’s version isn’t even particularly, painfully jealous but no other woman in the last century at least would have more of a right to keep tabs on her man, and it becomes a universal statement on the disparate dominant-submissive dichotomy of celebrity/non-celebrity couples.
Killers of the Flower Moon briefing
3 (out of 4)
Man, Marty, no director’s cuts for you, just raw, uncut slabs of cinema, roadshows with no snack breaks! At least that’s how it’s been exclusively since Hugo — his one commendable kids movie I always forget exists — seeing as The Wolf of Wall Street was three hours long, Silence was just shy, and now Killers of the Flower Moon meets his last, The Irishman, for that 3 1/2 hour mark and sadly, for most, the runtime drowns out any discussion of the film’s spacious content.
Whereas my way of avoiding discourse about the cinematic present is to properly peruse a cinematic past. Scorsese is nothing less than a living legend, with hardly a misfire or mistake in the whole oeuvre stretching back damn near 60 years. Maybe New York, New York’s combo of Martin’s more realistic, meticulously rehearsed yet loose and unpredictable rhythm directing performance and dialogue with more classical Broadway theatricality felt like oil and water, and Gangs of New York is riding on the passion of Daniel Day-Lewis almost exclusively. Sure, Who’s That Knocking At My Door? felt like a film school warm-up for Mean Streets and The Color of Money doesn’t quite hit like a classic as The Hustler does. His second film, the sprightly caper Boxcar Bertha, was a little toothless, the first evidence of a career that would consistently return to criminal consciousness, but in general I think it unfair to boil Scorsese down to the guy who makes mobster movies — his religious corner (Silence, The Last Temptation of Christ and even Kundun’s spiritual reflections) is home to some of the best he’s ever committed to film history. And while I admit that Goodfellas, The Departed and Wolf are in my top 10, the fact that the same man is responsible for Raging Bull’s old-fashioned rebound (and textbook troubling De Niro-anchored character study, almost more than Taxi Driver), The King of Comedy’s still-scaly satire of our fame-obsessed culture, After Hours’ near-perfect night gone wrong, another biopic to put all others to shame in The Aviator, the pervasive psychological shivers of Shutter Island (let alone his insistently scary Cape Fear remake), the existential experiments in Bringing Out the Dead, the romantic refinement of The Age of Innocence and the sheer modesty of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, is more than evidence enough of a creator of pretty unmitigated capacity.
In my earned familiarity I was hoping Killers of the Flower Moon would go from vexing vilification to the extra large masterpiece critical consensus has deemed it. My main gripe is how little else besides the epic framework seems to compel curiosity, fear or contemplation about the Osage County murders from about a century ago, as accounted in David Grann’s book of the same name subtitled The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. While there are interwoven figures and newly forming family trees to keep a tally of, the moral suggestions of this film are unspeakably obvious. Is there room for the grey between good and evil when it comes to covering up dozens of targeted murders for money? This movie takes about five minutes to digest its thematic subtlety and, unfortunately for the dumbass casuals stumbling into a 210-minute movie, doesn’t stock the rest of the runtime with shootouts or showdowns or anything other than mournful semi-sour romantic tragedy.
While I was anticipating some dramatically delicious Neo-Western, what I ended up with is yet another Scorsese crime period picture, sprinkled with the blunt, unflinching splashes of violence, simple human comedy and Brando-like, in-the-moment re-acting. I wish Scorsese had actually strayed into a new genre instead of an updated shade of despicable criminal deconstruction that still somehow just about fits the qualifications for some tough guy’s go-to hangout movie. Like The Irishman, Killers is also a movie made to fall asleep to, unless you can really stick it out, feel the movie’s insistently ponderous energy and finally let some last moments level you like a truck — respectively, a hitman’s heavy regret and the peculiar “true crime” radio show epilogue along with Leo’s last squirm-worthy soul-cleansing. Each denouement lands so much better because the rest isn’t narratively reduced or grandly overwrought but rather carefully mounted.
Lily Gladstone’s fortitude is unspeakably apparent even as you watch her character succumb to secret poisoning — her compounding grief is the fundamental, singular soul of a heartless movie. Scorsese has most directly sampled story-wise from William Wyler’s The Heiress and George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun (Stevens’ Giant, just after Shane, too was a 20th century-set epic Western plus racial tension and oil fortunes), with Leo in Montgomery Clift’s place, taking his respective female co-stars (Olivia de Havilland, Shelley Winters more than Elizabeth Taylor) for a rollercoaster ride of romantic doubt. I think Scorsese saw a lot of de Havilland in Gladstone, the same tempered, simmering disquiet and discontent, though Molly is the far fiercer creature if just as passive — Lily’s performance must double down on the “sickly” in a remarkable, tremendously wrenching display of exponential anguish backed by reserved talent. For Leo’s Ernest, as one questionably taking up a particularly wealthy single woman’s interest, Scorsese’s fresh angle is flipping Clift’s completely cruel characters, instead testing out if a greedy, horrible, dumb asshole really is in love, does that make him less of an asshole or an even bigger one? Sure he just saves his wife from death, but lying about it just the same kinda cancels out the minimum mercy. DiCaprio and his unruly underbite aren’t helping the shortage of subtlety.
So while Gladstone works out bedridden miracles, frankly for such a stupendous set of sparring leads this has got to be the least entertaining Leo/Scorsese affair, though it’s surely better than Gangs of New York at least. But my God, for the FIRST TIME Scorsese has directed DiCaprio AND De Niro together, it should be somewhat more momentous than this, especially for how often they share the screen. Their characters’ final dialogue fills out one of the film’s best scenes, the sole instance worthy of a once in a blue moon cinematic pairing. I almost want to say De Niro is phoning it but maybe I’m not used to a Bobby DN role where he hides behind benevolence, usually he’s playing just as much as dick on the outside as in. This has nothing on his most of his Scorsese roles, classic or otherwise, even the weirder ones like Cape Fear — he’ll never get better than The King of Comedy but Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and The Irishman (sorry Casino) are untouchable acts as well. King’s character dynamics don’t confirm De Niro as the GOAT but he still runs circles around Leo and his try-hard Revenant-reminiscent jaw-jutting like he’s Keira Knightly in A Dangerous Method. John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser and Jack White make for unexpected final reel appearances.
Whatever backlash is coming from the side of “NOT ENOUGH NATIVE REPRESENTATION” somehow missed the film’s plain-as-day preaching which for sure AIN’T OUT TO PLEASE NON-NATIVE FOLKS. The white devil is in the details, Scorsese couldn’t make that clearer — and I’m all for dramatic irony in the name of pit-in your-stomach, secondhand suspense but in Killers of the Flower Moon the Hitchcockian, proverbial bomb under the table sits there ticking much too long. I love that Marty isn’t holding back anything, his style is simple enough, oscillating between panoramic portraiture and more recognizable, sweeping semi-long takes with active, astounding editing — as always, from the berserk energy of Cape Fear or Wolf of Wall Street to something as cold, reserved and mature as this or say The Age of Innocence and Silence, he only stylizes when the subject demands, or at least suggests it.
Like The Irishman, his 26th feature film (not to mention over a dozen docs) skirts around greatness the entire time — whereas the de-aging and been-there done-that feel kept his grandiose 2019 gangster picture from all-timer status, here too the meandering meditation on evil doesn’t explore moral slopes and slipknots enough for 200 plus minutes. Given all the time spent on the ins and outs of deplorable backwoods carnage I can actually understand anyone who questions why the Osage don’t have more of their side of the story told, ‘specially since the killer side has specifically been made unexciting. I don’t need good guys, but I do need durable, long-lasting drama that doesn’t just meld into some kind of interrogation with audience — The Irishman lets you decide if you feel bad for Frank Sheeran, and it’s cumulative revelations truly steamroll you given it actually adds up to something greater than the sum of its parts. I don’t find Killers to be a waste, but it's his weakest epic in 20 years.
Though the historical dynamic between European immigrants and the Native American people is such rich soil and decadent tapestry for a revisionist Western historical behemoth of rare might, this is only Scorsese’s most important movie in a long time, far from his most functional, let alone entertaining. But it was a true epic, a work that feels remote and subdued until it all aligns — if it had the poetic subtly, transcendent sense of wide-canvas tragedy and the similarly stone-set sympathy and respect for Natives emitting from Terrence Malick’s The New World, this could easily be named among 2023’s most exceptional. Instead Scorsese’s most ambitious feature yet is up to his steady, assured benchmark and not much else.
"Can you spot the wolves in this picture?" Yeah they’re right fucking there.
Man, Marty, no director’s cuts for you, just raw, uncut slabs of cinema, roadshows with no snack breaks! At least that’s how it’s been exclusively since Hugo — his one commendable kids movie I always forget exists — seeing as The Wolf of Wall Street was three hours long, Silence was just shy, and now Killers of the Flower Moon meets his last, The Irishman, for that 3 1/2 hour mark and sadly, for most, the runtime drowns out any discussion of the film’s spacious content.
Whereas my way of avoiding discourse about the cinematic present is to properly peruse a cinematic past. Scorsese is nothing less than a living legend, with hardly a misfire or mistake in the whole oeuvre stretching back damn near 60 years. Maybe New York, New York’s combo of Martin’s more realistic, meticulously rehearsed yet loose and unpredictable rhythm directing performance and dialogue with more classical Broadway theatricality felt like oil and water, and Gangs of New York is riding on the passion of Daniel Day-Lewis almost exclusively. Sure, Who’s That Knocking At My Door? felt like a film school warm-up for Mean Streets and The Color of Money doesn’t quite hit like a classic as The Hustler does. His second film, the sprightly caper Boxcar Bertha, was a little toothless, the first evidence of a career that would consistently return to criminal consciousness, but in general I think it unfair to boil Scorsese down to the guy who makes mobster movies — his religious corner (Silence, The Last Temptation of Christ and even Kundun’s spiritual reflections) is home to some of the best he’s ever committed to film history. And while I admit that Goodfellas, The Departed and Wolf are in my top 10, the fact that the same man is responsible for Raging Bull’s old-fashioned rebound (and textbook troubling De Niro-anchored character study, almost more than Taxi Driver), The King of Comedy’s still-scaly satire of our fame-obsessed culture, After Hours’ near-perfect night gone wrong, another biopic to put all others to shame in The Aviator, the pervasive psychological shivers of Shutter Island (let alone his insistently scary Cape Fear remake), the existential experiments in Bringing Out the Dead, the romantic refinement of The Age of Innocence and the sheer modesty of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, is more than evidence enough of a creator of pretty unmitigated capacity.
In my earned familiarity I was hoping Killers of the Flower Moon would go from vexing vilification to the extra large masterpiece critical consensus has deemed it. My main gripe is how little else besides the epic framework seems to compel curiosity, fear or contemplation about the Osage County murders from about a century ago, as accounted in David Grann’s book of the same name subtitled The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. While there are interwoven figures and newly forming family trees to keep a tally of, the moral suggestions of this film are unspeakably obvious. Is there room for the grey between good and evil when it comes to covering up dozens of targeted murders for money? This movie takes about five minutes to digest its thematic subtlety and, unfortunately for the dumbass casuals stumbling into a 210-minute movie, doesn’t stock the rest of the runtime with shootouts or showdowns or anything other than mournful semi-sour romantic tragedy.
While I was anticipating some dramatically delicious Neo-Western, what I ended up with is yet another Scorsese crime period picture, sprinkled with the blunt, unflinching splashes of violence, simple human comedy and Brando-like, in-the-moment re-acting. I wish Scorsese had actually strayed into a new genre instead of an updated shade of despicable criminal deconstruction that still somehow just about fits the qualifications for some tough guy’s go-to hangout movie. Like The Irishman, Killers is also a movie made to fall asleep to, unless you can really stick it out, feel the movie’s insistently ponderous energy and finally let some last moments level you like a truck — respectively, a hitman’s heavy regret and the peculiar “true crime” radio show epilogue along with Leo’s last squirm-worthy soul-cleansing. Each denouement lands so much better because the rest isn’t narratively reduced or grandly overwrought but rather carefully mounted.
Lily Gladstone’s fortitude is unspeakably apparent even as you watch her character succumb to secret poisoning — her compounding grief is the fundamental, singular soul of a heartless movie. Scorsese has most directly sampled story-wise from William Wyler’s The Heiress and George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun (Stevens’ Giant, just after Shane, too was a 20th century-set epic Western plus racial tension and oil fortunes), with Leo in Montgomery Clift’s place, taking his respective female co-stars (Olivia de Havilland, Shelley Winters more than Elizabeth Taylor) for a rollercoaster ride of romantic doubt. I think Scorsese saw a lot of de Havilland in Gladstone, the same tempered, simmering disquiet and discontent, though Molly is the far fiercer creature if just as passive — Lily’s performance must double down on the “sickly” in a remarkable, tremendously wrenching display of exponential anguish backed by reserved talent. For Leo’s Ernest, as one questionably taking up a particularly wealthy single woman’s interest, Scorsese’s fresh angle is flipping Clift’s completely cruel characters, instead testing out if a greedy, horrible, dumb asshole really is in love, does that make him less of an asshole or an even bigger one? Sure he just saves his wife from death, but lying about it just the same kinda cancels out the minimum mercy. DiCaprio and his unruly underbite aren’t helping the shortage of subtlety.
So while Gladstone works out bedridden miracles, frankly for such a stupendous set of sparring leads this has got to be the least entertaining Leo/Scorsese affair, though it’s surely better than Gangs of New York at least. But my God, for the FIRST TIME Scorsese has directed DiCaprio AND De Niro together, it should be somewhat more momentous than this, especially for how often they share the screen. Their characters’ final dialogue fills out one of the film’s best scenes, the sole instance worthy of a once in a blue moon cinematic pairing. I almost want to say De Niro is phoning it but maybe I’m not used to a Bobby DN role where he hides behind benevolence, usually he’s playing just as much as dick on the outside as in. This has nothing on his most of his Scorsese roles, classic or otherwise, even the weirder ones like Cape Fear — he’ll never get better than The King of Comedy but Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and The Irishman (sorry Casino) are untouchable acts as well. King’s character dynamics don’t confirm De Niro as the GOAT but he still runs circles around Leo and his try-hard Revenant-reminiscent jaw-jutting like he’s Keira Knightly in A Dangerous Method. John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser and Jack White make for unexpected final reel appearances.
Whatever backlash is coming from the side of “NOT ENOUGH NATIVE REPRESENTATION” somehow missed the film’s plain-as-day preaching which for sure AIN’T OUT TO PLEASE NON-NATIVE FOLKS. The white devil is in the details, Scorsese couldn’t make that clearer — and I’m all for dramatic irony in the name of pit-in your-stomach, secondhand suspense but in Killers of the Flower Moon the Hitchcockian, proverbial bomb under the table sits there ticking much too long. I love that Marty isn’t holding back anything, his style is simple enough, oscillating between panoramic portraiture and more recognizable, sweeping semi-long takes with active, astounding editing — as always, from the berserk energy of Cape Fear or Wolf of Wall Street to something as cold, reserved and mature as this or say The Age of Innocence and Silence, he only stylizes when the subject demands, or at least suggests it.
Like The Irishman, his 26th feature film (not to mention over a dozen docs) skirts around greatness the entire time — whereas the de-aging and been-there done-that feel kept his grandiose 2019 gangster picture from all-timer status, here too the meandering meditation on evil doesn’t explore moral slopes and slipknots enough for 200 plus minutes. Given all the time spent on the ins and outs of deplorable backwoods carnage I can actually understand anyone who questions why the Osage don’t have more of their side of the story told, ‘specially since the killer side has specifically been made unexciting. I don’t need good guys, but I do need durable, long-lasting drama that doesn’t just meld into some kind of interrogation with audience — The Irishman lets you decide if you feel bad for Frank Sheeran, and it’s cumulative revelations truly steamroll you given it actually adds up to something greater than the sum of its parts. I don’t find Killers to be a waste, but it's his weakest epic in 20 years.
Though the historical dynamic between European immigrants and the Native American people is such rich soil and decadent tapestry for a revisionist Western historical behemoth of rare might, this is only Scorsese’s most important movie in a long time, far from his most functional, let alone entertaining. But it was a true epic, a work that feels remote and subdued until it all aligns — if it had the poetic subtly, transcendent sense of wide-canvas tragedy and the similarly stone-set sympathy and respect for Natives emitting from Terrence Malick’s The New World, this could easily be named among 2023’s most exceptional. Instead Scorsese’s most ambitious feature yet is up to his steady, assured benchmark and not much else.
"Can you spot the wolves in this picture?" Yeah they’re right fucking there.
The Exorcist: Believer briefing
1 (out of 4)
Lord have mercy. Sure, all the slashers can have their franchises buried by bad sequels and reboots (Scream, Saw, Halloween, ALL OF THEM), but why for the love of Christ Jesus couldn’t you just leave The Exorcist alone? Aren’t there enough far finer failures in this specific property's limited past to figure out this is not some cash cow, like Michael Myers, guaranteed to equate to easily funneled franchise-material money?
At least at no point did The Exorcist: Believer feel the need to take the expected dump on the Catholic Church — that’s about the highest praise I can offer ironically the most agnostic movie in the religiously challenged legacy; here they almost act like Christianity doesn’t exist, probably because churchgoing audiences now see movies like Sound of Freedom and simply don’t represent the average viewer. This is the first installment in a would-be trilogy for Universal after acquiring the distribution rights (ONLY for future films) from Warner Brothers for a mind-blowing 400 million dollars. I’m not the first to say it but I’ll do it anyway — thank God William Friedkin croaked before he got to witness this projectile vomit of a flick, which probably would’ve killed him regardless. Could you imagine if he lived another four years to see this disrespectful soft reboot garbage become a whole damn trilogy, which this movie does incredibly little to set up or engage you for not one sequel — Deceiver is due in 2025, what’s next, uh, Griever? — let alone two? This movie barely has material enough for one blasphemous knock-off.
I really can’t get over the worst moment, within Ellen Burstyn’s mini-exorcist exercise session in which she promptly has her MOTHERFLIPPING EYES GOUGED OUT! Yeah, THAT’S how you treat a legacy figure, first let's find them a depressed, estranged husk and then mame them — boy I sure can’t wait til she’s some blind psychic next time. Believer is playing almost exclusively to doubters like me, so God was not on this film's side, since it’s a shitty TV pilot for the first act, then goes to town rushing any and all development of the possession with murky, overlapping montage and dialogue — a recurring headache and the only noticeable auteur tick for David Gordon Green in an otherwise superfluous directorial effort — in place of preferably painstaking, deliberate crescendos of desperation. Believer doesn’t properly test the patience of medical expertise on its way to a finale that feels like community theater, only it's exceedingly more embarrassingly when you’re trying to echo the shocking, unforgettable climax of the 50-year old original.
I know I should check out Green in some extra capacity — his debut George Washington is supposed to be his best, a decade before he went dumb with Danny McBride (co-writer here, yuck) for Pineapple Express (forgivable) and Your Highness (less so) as he apparently became the Blumhouse bitch, the whipping boy of lowest common denominator horror. I was never blessed with his oh so similarly arranged direct sequel to Halloween, but this was even worse than Nia DaCosta's reminiscent Candyman revamp.
But really it’s all about the ways in which The Exorcist could never be followed up, except in 1990 when the author himself took to the director chair. Some myths of lost footage and original cuts make Exorcist III’s supernatural murder mystery a hallowed item for horror at large, and the film itself is refreshingly different and particularly classy in the way it scares you, almost comparable to Friedkin's finest until the bamboozled, clearly reworked ending. William Peter Blatty’s adaptation of his own novel Legion was also a direct sequel, with only one superfluous entry to wipe from the slate, ignoring Exorcist II. John Boorman's first sequel from 1977, subtitled The Heretic, has the critical reputation of Freddy Got Fingered or some even sillier example, and was generally considered by many critical circles to be one of the worst movies ever, with interesting voices across the aisle like Pauline Kael and Martin Scorsese calling it even better than one of the best movies ever made, perhaps the genre’s highest pillar, the second most popular horror movie of all time (behind Jaws), “the scariest movie of all time,” The Exorcist. Yeah, not in my book — but The Heretic’s intermittently intrepid, more than slightly stilted, psychologically inundated concoction could be a lot worse given the infamy.
Speaking of a lot worse, then comes the tale of two prequels, wherein Warner Brothers shot the same crappy origin story for Father Merrin twice (with only star Stellan Skarsgård and supporting actor Julian Wadham carrying over) between Paul Schrader’s later released, initially scrapped Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist and Renny Harlin’s redo Exorcist: The Beginning, which, in spite of tasteless cosmetic adjustments is the same stale substandard tale of desert demon-dispelling. Dominion isn’t exciting but at least purposely so — like the second installment there's oddly respectable restraint but nowhere narratively to go with the name recognition. The Beginning is just a glossed-up, cynical waste of money and a perfect example of the slippery slope of studio-as-screen-tester. The visual language is ugly and saturated next to Schrader’s dry, parched footage, and the scares sprinkled throughout (WB’s main complaint and correction during what Schrader dubbed the company’s “buyer’s remorse”) are all futile and ineffective.
The original 1973 feature is not only a great drama and “the acting is perfect” (source: Exorcist expert MY DAD) but it also has an unerring, unanticipated and truly miraculous verisimilitude in step with otherworldly sound design and perhaps the best makeup effects ever committed to the screen, whereas Believer has nothing that could fool you or shake you for a second. This paltry sixth installment is a fresh fuck-up in a wacky, selective continuity, and literally already nonexistent next to The Exorcist’s tremendous, towering endurance. Then there’s all the other possession movies, like the way The Conjuring and all its sequels and spin-offs have taken a cheap chapter from the good book, or the freaking Pope’s Exorcist coming out just earlier this year — frankly that agreeable 2023 schlock is ten times what Exorcist: Believer is as pop-horror entertainment and even its weakest dialogue would shine in a movie as fundamentally rancid as this. Otherwise I recall The Last Exorcism as one neatly effective found footage humdinger. Possession is a healthy, mostly lazy subgenre, but whether we take reproachable Exorcist cash-ins or the genre’s most listless imitations (uh, Paranormal Activity 4?) there are only so many like Friedkin's masterpiece or Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession, since studios only opt for ambiguity and the unexplained when it serves to cover up their own stupidity.
It’s not frightening, has piss all to say about evil, faith and the ever-recurring Catholic guilt that must come round for misuse by Pazuzu’s omnipotent psychological manipulation. Exorcist: Believer has nothing but double trouble to offer, and even the horrific devil-may-care moments it seems to callously promise in marketing are barely present. The acting and writing is all half-effort (save those two little troopers Lidya Jewett and Olivia O’Neill, bless 'em for elevating filth), rote and routine — I like lead Leslie Odom Jr. well enough but damn, just like in Glass Onion, he’s barely allowed to have a character, the part is function only.
It has its unintentionally funny moments but not nearly enough to recommend to even someone with a high tolerance for bullshit should it result in a couple laughs. It’s a boring, testing slog with no clue how to exploit such a historically unexploitable property — Believer is irredeemable junk even in God’s eyes. Let us pray... mostly that they never recoup enough to make that third one, since it seems the second coming is en route no matter what, unless Green were fired and the rhyming requel were ripped right off the calendar.
Lord have mercy. Sure, all the slashers can have their franchises buried by bad sequels and reboots (Scream, Saw, Halloween, ALL OF THEM), but why for the love of Christ Jesus couldn’t you just leave The Exorcist alone? Aren’t there enough far finer failures in this specific property's limited past to figure out this is not some cash cow, like Michael Myers, guaranteed to equate to easily funneled franchise-material money?
At least at no point did The Exorcist: Believer feel the need to take the expected dump on the Catholic Church — that’s about the highest praise I can offer ironically the most agnostic movie in the religiously challenged legacy; here they almost act like Christianity doesn’t exist, probably because churchgoing audiences now see movies like Sound of Freedom and simply don’t represent the average viewer. This is the first installment in a would-be trilogy for Universal after acquiring the distribution rights (ONLY for future films) from Warner Brothers for a mind-blowing 400 million dollars. I’m not the first to say it but I’ll do it anyway — thank God William Friedkin croaked before he got to witness this projectile vomit of a flick, which probably would’ve killed him regardless. Could you imagine if he lived another four years to see this disrespectful soft reboot garbage become a whole damn trilogy, which this movie does incredibly little to set up or engage you for not one sequel — Deceiver is due in 2025, what’s next, uh, Griever? — let alone two? This movie barely has material enough for one blasphemous knock-off.
I really can’t get over the worst moment, within Ellen Burstyn’s mini-exorcist exercise session in which she promptly has her MOTHERFLIPPING EYES GOUGED OUT! Yeah, THAT’S how you treat a legacy figure, first let's find them a depressed, estranged husk and then mame them — boy I sure can’t wait til she’s some blind psychic next time. Believer is playing almost exclusively to doubters like me, so God was not on this film's side, since it’s a shitty TV pilot for the first act, then goes to town rushing any and all development of the possession with murky, overlapping montage and dialogue — a recurring headache and the only noticeable auteur tick for David Gordon Green in an otherwise superfluous directorial effort — in place of preferably painstaking, deliberate crescendos of desperation. Believer doesn’t properly test the patience of medical expertise on its way to a finale that feels like community theater, only it's exceedingly more embarrassingly when you’re trying to echo the shocking, unforgettable climax of the 50-year old original.
I know I should check out Green in some extra capacity — his debut George Washington is supposed to be his best, a decade before he went dumb with Danny McBride (co-writer here, yuck) for Pineapple Express (forgivable) and Your Highness (less so) as he apparently became the Blumhouse bitch, the whipping boy of lowest common denominator horror. I was never blessed with his oh so similarly arranged direct sequel to Halloween, but this was even worse than Nia DaCosta's reminiscent Candyman revamp.
But really it’s all about the ways in which The Exorcist could never be followed up, except in 1990 when the author himself took to the director chair. Some myths of lost footage and original cuts make Exorcist III’s supernatural murder mystery a hallowed item for horror at large, and the film itself is refreshingly different and particularly classy in the way it scares you, almost comparable to Friedkin's finest until the bamboozled, clearly reworked ending. William Peter Blatty’s adaptation of his own novel Legion was also a direct sequel, with only one superfluous entry to wipe from the slate, ignoring Exorcist II. John Boorman's first sequel from 1977, subtitled The Heretic, has the critical reputation of Freddy Got Fingered or some even sillier example, and was generally considered by many critical circles to be one of the worst movies ever, with interesting voices across the aisle like Pauline Kael and Martin Scorsese calling it even better than one of the best movies ever made, perhaps the genre’s highest pillar, the second most popular horror movie of all time (behind Jaws), “the scariest movie of all time,” The Exorcist. Yeah, not in my book — but The Heretic’s intermittently intrepid, more than slightly stilted, psychologically inundated concoction could be a lot worse given the infamy.
Speaking of a lot worse, then comes the tale of two prequels, wherein Warner Brothers shot the same crappy origin story for Father Merrin twice (with only star Stellan Skarsgård and supporting actor Julian Wadham carrying over) between Paul Schrader’s later released, initially scrapped Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist and Renny Harlin’s redo Exorcist: The Beginning, which, in spite of tasteless cosmetic adjustments is the same stale substandard tale of desert demon-dispelling. Dominion isn’t exciting but at least purposely so — like the second installment there's oddly respectable restraint but nowhere narratively to go with the name recognition. The Beginning is just a glossed-up, cynical waste of money and a perfect example of the slippery slope of studio-as-screen-tester. The visual language is ugly and saturated next to Schrader’s dry, parched footage, and the scares sprinkled throughout (WB’s main complaint and correction during what Schrader dubbed the company’s “buyer’s remorse”) are all futile and ineffective.
The original 1973 feature is not only a great drama and “the acting is perfect” (source: Exorcist expert MY DAD) but it also has an unerring, unanticipated and truly miraculous verisimilitude in step with otherworldly sound design and perhaps the best makeup effects ever committed to the screen, whereas Believer has nothing that could fool you or shake you for a second. This paltry sixth installment is a fresh fuck-up in a wacky, selective continuity, and literally already nonexistent next to The Exorcist’s tremendous, towering endurance. Then there’s all the other possession movies, like the way The Conjuring and all its sequels and spin-offs have taken a cheap chapter from the good book, or the freaking Pope’s Exorcist coming out just earlier this year — frankly that agreeable 2023 schlock is ten times what Exorcist: Believer is as pop-horror entertainment and even its weakest dialogue would shine in a movie as fundamentally rancid as this. Otherwise I recall The Last Exorcism as one neatly effective found footage humdinger. Possession is a healthy, mostly lazy subgenre, but whether we take reproachable Exorcist cash-ins or the genre’s most listless imitations (uh, Paranormal Activity 4?) there are only so many like Friedkin's masterpiece or Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession, since studios only opt for ambiguity and the unexplained when it serves to cover up their own stupidity.
It’s not frightening, has piss all to say about evil, faith and the ever-recurring Catholic guilt that must come round for misuse by Pazuzu’s omnipotent psychological manipulation. Exorcist: Believer has nothing but double trouble to offer, and even the horrific devil-may-care moments it seems to callously promise in marketing are barely present. The acting and writing is all half-effort (save those two little troopers Lidya Jewett and Olivia O’Neill, bless 'em for elevating filth), rote and routine — I like lead Leslie Odom Jr. well enough but damn, just like in Glass Onion, he’s barely allowed to have a character, the part is function only.
It has its unintentionally funny moments but not nearly enough to recommend to even someone with a high tolerance for bullshit should it result in a couple laughs. It’s a boring, testing slog with no clue how to exploit such a historically unexploitable property — Believer is irredeemable junk even in God’s eyes. Let us pray... mostly that they never recoup enough to make that third one, since it seems the second coming is en route no matter what, unless Green were fired and the rhyming requel were ripped right off the calendar.
A Haunting in Venice briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
If I could continually co-produce my personal detective fiction cosplay every few years, I would gladly — good for Kenneth Branagh that, for better or worse, self-direction is where he operates most naturally. These latest Hercule Poirot film adaptations have had diminishing returns at the box office even as the movies themselves turn out stubbornly, invariably decent. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: this is a serial that should keep on hacking and spinning — A Haunting in Venice was hot on the heels of Death on the Nile not even 18 months prior, and I can’t help but hope they earn enough back to keep the next one constantly on the horizon, c’mon three more at least monsieur!
In this movie’s favor, the ending adds up, the narrative step-stoning doesn’t cheat; A Haunting in Venice almost spoon-feeds you clues, actually. The visual extravagance remains such a strange remuneration for works meant to rub off a little dry and densely expository, but without 65mm cameras and 360 degree greenscreen sets, by subtraction Haunting is more restrained than the others — the horror-singed mystery isn’t overcompensating, just Branagh’s efforts have become more trim and sparing as the ironically sterling franchise has streamlined. Yet Murder, Death and Haunting always seem like they should be more tempered, stylistically unadorned escapism, but in an effort to make his movies less like homework Branagh dresses up the elements that can easily slip into tedium — especially the standard interview process — with flashy editing and a Magic 8 Ball of cinematography gimmicks. Branagh is adept at grappling with the full range of visual dynamics, forming interesting compositions out of next to nothing but a touch of short-sighting or angles extremely low and high… in general he’s a studied stylist that’s hard to pin down.
Despite a couple jump scares, few extraneous visual effects were needed in a film vainly attempting to render the romantic resplendence of Venice into something recalling Nicholas Roeg’s sinister classic Don’t Look Now, though there’s hardly the serious contemplation of grief and bad omens. Roeg made Italy scary whereas this is still a crazy comely collection of tourist shots. Originally based on Agatha Christie’s Halloween Party, A Haunting in Venice rides the wave of the past summer’s action movies high on Italy’s supply — Fast X, Mission 7 and Equalizer 3 all predominantly take place on the hallowed peninsula. But even with relatively dialed down haunted mansion shenanigans, Branagh’s third Poirot operates much too close to some cheap Conjuring period slop to strike as authentically old-fashioned or competently creepy.
I nearly felt talked down to until it threw down the HALLUCINOGENIC HONEY get-out-of-jail-free card — wasn’t Poirot drugged just last time? Seems like a lame excuse for more ghost story situations: “Oh hey, I didn’t tell you but I was actually tripping balls the whole time, so I really shouldn’t have been confused by auditory disturbances.” I knew the movie would pull the same stunt as Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes from 2009, where the author has to make you feel stupid: ”WOW YOU REALLY THOUGHT THERE WAS SOMETHING SUPERNATURAL YOU SIMPLETON!” Ritchie’s action-addicted, mainstreamed Holmes is entertaining but the actual mystery elements of it are an idiotic second thought. A Haunting in Venice doesn’t ridiculously pull unforeseeable, unforgivable shit out its ass by the end, though kiddies committing blackmail is close. The standout performances were clearly the masked Münchausen syndrome portrayed by Kelly Reilly (Watson’s wife in the Holmes films in question) and Jamie Dornan (repeating after excelling in Branagh’s Belfast) as well as Tina Fey and Michelle Yeoh.
Following an early career built on Shakespeare (five adaptations? Feels like more), this current career turn is clearly paid out from a decent commercial run in Hollywood (Thor, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and still Disney’s best live-action classic redo in 2015’s Cinderella) making Poirot something like early retirement, one Ken could tinker and play with for another decade if he desires. Even if Christie’s uniformly digestible work seems to write itself as you watch it, I’m confident there are plenty more substantive variations to unlock among the 30+ installments teeming with red herrings, barely safeguarded secrets and casts of characters in close quarters with the world’s most diligently perceptive French sleuth. Classy a filmmaker as Branagh is, transposing Christie’s paperback pulp merely cements dispensable, ephemeral films.
If I could continually co-produce my personal detective fiction cosplay every few years, I would gladly — good for Kenneth Branagh that, for better or worse, self-direction is where he operates most naturally. These latest Hercule Poirot film adaptations have had diminishing returns at the box office even as the movies themselves turn out stubbornly, invariably decent. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: this is a serial that should keep on hacking and spinning — A Haunting in Venice was hot on the heels of Death on the Nile not even 18 months prior, and I can’t help but hope they earn enough back to keep the next one constantly on the horizon, c’mon three more at least monsieur!
In this movie’s favor, the ending adds up, the narrative step-stoning doesn’t cheat; A Haunting in Venice almost spoon-feeds you clues, actually. The visual extravagance remains such a strange remuneration for works meant to rub off a little dry and densely expository, but without 65mm cameras and 360 degree greenscreen sets, by subtraction Haunting is more restrained than the others — the horror-singed mystery isn’t overcompensating, just Branagh’s efforts have become more trim and sparing as the ironically sterling franchise has streamlined. Yet Murder, Death and Haunting always seem like they should be more tempered, stylistically unadorned escapism, but in an effort to make his movies less like homework Branagh dresses up the elements that can easily slip into tedium — especially the standard interview process — with flashy editing and a Magic 8 Ball of cinematography gimmicks. Branagh is adept at grappling with the full range of visual dynamics, forming interesting compositions out of next to nothing but a touch of short-sighting or angles extremely low and high… in general he’s a studied stylist that’s hard to pin down.
Despite a couple jump scares, few extraneous visual effects were needed in a film vainly attempting to render the romantic resplendence of Venice into something recalling Nicholas Roeg’s sinister classic Don’t Look Now, though there’s hardly the serious contemplation of grief and bad omens. Roeg made Italy scary whereas this is still a crazy comely collection of tourist shots. Originally based on Agatha Christie’s Halloween Party, A Haunting in Venice rides the wave of the past summer’s action movies high on Italy’s supply — Fast X, Mission 7 and Equalizer 3 all predominantly take place on the hallowed peninsula. But even with relatively dialed down haunted mansion shenanigans, Branagh’s third Poirot operates much too close to some cheap Conjuring period slop to strike as authentically old-fashioned or competently creepy.
I nearly felt talked down to until it threw down the HALLUCINOGENIC HONEY get-out-of-jail-free card — wasn’t Poirot drugged just last time? Seems like a lame excuse for more ghost story situations: “Oh hey, I didn’t tell you but I was actually tripping balls the whole time, so I really shouldn’t have been confused by auditory disturbances.” I knew the movie would pull the same stunt as Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes from 2009, where the author has to make you feel stupid: ”WOW YOU REALLY THOUGHT THERE WAS SOMETHING SUPERNATURAL YOU SIMPLETON!” Ritchie’s action-addicted, mainstreamed Holmes is entertaining but the actual mystery elements of it are an idiotic second thought. A Haunting in Venice doesn’t ridiculously pull unforeseeable, unforgivable shit out its ass by the end, though kiddies committing blackmail is close. The standout performances were clearly the masked Münchausen syndrome portrayed by Kelly Reilly (Watson’s wife in the Holmes films in question) and Jamie Dornan (repeating after excelling in Branagh’s Belfast) as well as Tina Fey and Michelle Yeoh.
Following an early career built on Shakespeare (five adaptations? Feels like more), this current career turn is clearly paid out from a decent commercial run in Hollywood (Thor, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and still Disney’s best live-action classic redo in 2015’s Cinderella) making Poirot something like early retirement, one Ken could tinker and play with for another decade if he desires. Even if Christie’s uniformly digestible work seems to write itself as you watch it, I’m confident there are plenty more substantive variations to unlock among the 30+ installments teeming with red herrings, barely safeguarded secrets and casts of characters in close quarters with the world’s most diligently perceptive French sleuth. Classy a filmmaker as Branagh is, transposing Christie’s paperback pulp merely cements dispensable, ephemeral films.
The Equalizer 3 briefing
3 (out of 4)
I may have never seen Blade: Trinity (or watched Shaft movies past the first), but The Equalizer series could possibly be the finest franchise for African-American Hollywood heroes, vigilantes and gun/swordslingers. Robert McCall is the killer who cares — if you beat up a prostitute, axe one of his favorite couple (Bill Pullman, Melissa Leo) or relentlessly do the mafia’s dirty work all over poor, sweet, innocent Italian folk, he will utterly annihilate you and time himself all the while just to make sure he’s got his shit down pat.
Denzel Washington, dating back to his first of many Oscar noms with Cry Freedom, has always deserved to slip into the alter ego of such a character, one you could compare to the traditional ronin or some lonesome western figure with a lust for justice, but only when it simply DEMANDS to be served (NOT Book of Eli thank you). The fact that Denzel’s 68 blows the mind, since even Liam Neeson doesn’t look this good and he’s the current face of Hollywood's ‘aging hero' tradition. Washington has directed four movies himself in the last two decades, most respectably in his adaptation of August Wilson’s Fences. Director Antoine Fuqua has been with Denzel regularly since Tony Scott passed — Washington left five Scott turns combined (Crimson Tide, Man on Fire, Déjà Vu, The Taking of Pelham 123, Unstoppable, six if you count Ridley’s American Gangster), and now rounds out five with Fuqua in the supposedly completed Equalizer trilogy, The Magnificent Seven remake, and the pair were hardly able to top the towering cop tale Training Day, still Antoine’s surest, sometimes feeling like a T. Scott film in its restless, grainy stylishness and occasional emotional dressing via rapidly shifting light exposure and film footage speeds.
Despite some disdain for the boys in blue running though his filmography, in Equalizer 3 Fuqua almost goes out of his way to make sure his filmography ain’t ACAB adjacent. Furthermore, regardless of the unavoidable influences of samurai, western heroes and action movie men of many variations, this time it’s like he’s Hercule Poirot more or less, just trying to make time for European perambulating only to be interrupted by murder mysteries, or in this case Sicilian mobsters very publicly brutalizing doe-eyed townsfolk. I suppose we all want a hit man ultimately longing for resolve despite their mechanical, impossible reflexes and deathly instincts, and Antoine has you on your knees pleading for our OCD one man army to begrudgingly, righteously murder some motherfuckers. Mr. Wick is the closest modern comparison to the character’s spirit, another tragic legacy assassin — except whereas Denzel does the killer with a conscience thing with panache, Keanu is just Keanu.
Stripped down and padded out but for the right purpose, The Equalizer 3’s messaging is stronger than the second film, which was pure revenge cobbled with a tepid, clumsy social justice angle. Instead of unspooling national conspiracies as he shepherds black youth, here Denzel saves some small village and helps out the little guy in some bookended benevolence. This one also tries to correct the worst aspect of the best one, 2014’s original — maybe Robert doesn’t accidentally take down some massive criminal organization this time, maybe he actually takes half a movie to weigh up dismantling said mafia while we wait for him to heal from wounds that took two scenes to forget about in Man on Fire, a Washington character with an eerily similar sense of purpose, and a particular foil role opposite a confident, commanding Dakota Fanning. At age 10 or 30 her presence is palpable — this is a far cry from her sweaty, sleazy bit part in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Sadly in spite of her inherent graces, her character's portion of the story with “HEY HALPERT!” himself David Denman is quite the copy-pasted, gov't ops background filler on the ol’ action movie checklist, including gravely tedious procedural dialogue for those chasing and/or aiding our protagonist, like Bourne just more boring.
And though I’m so grateful this movie made especially sure I really hated the antagonists, there’s still something more hopelessly manipulative about letting the audience essentially salivate in wait for things to get fucking Equalized. The first film had Marton Csokas (Lord Celeborn himself), a legitimate equal to McCall’s hard-R recklessness, and they've yet to find better since Pedro Pascal is alright with me but his turned government op character from 2 was more than archetypal.
Though I have to admit I don’t really know a damn thing about the old show (I hope this is completely removed from network Queen Latifa nonsense), the Equalizer movies as such sneakily snuff out other moderately budgeted action trilogies (even one’s Fuqua started with promise like Olympus Has Fallen) that never bothered to try after the first installment (Taken, Transporter). Fuqua, dating back to his exceptionally sprightly, Woo-esque The Replacement Killers back in 1999, has the fast-tracked chops to make the most of what he can even if his pace has dampened (the Will Smith comeback Emancipation was his last), and his relative consistency saves this series from what could have been a product of recycled traditions and collected clichés to a trio just worthy enough of recognition and appreciation. If there was ever a counter to idea that the supposedly disappearing mid-budget movie has been lost in the corporatization of Hollywood’s better interests, this trilogy is it.
The Equalizer 3 is skinny, less-is-more moviemaking truly out of time and place, an era of moviegoing when 15 seconds of action could sustain the public for an hour of naught else but character, tension and scenery — I’m no attention-averse zoomer so I don’t mind at all. By the time Denzel even begins to contemplate bringing the heat, a threat in a small restaurant has you gasping for sweet, sweet vengeance. Waiting really can sharpen the appetite and this is the latest lesson that the brewing, boiling buildup counts for so much more than that ultimate moment of clarity and/or truth. Action junkies will be snoozing but the patient viewer should be pleased by the calm and crescendos.
I may have never seen Blade: Trinity (or watched Shaft movies past the first), but The Equalizer series could possibly be the finest franchise for African-American Hollywood heroes, vigilantes and gun/swordslingers. Robert McCall is the killer who cares — if you beat up a prostitute, axe one of his favorite couple (Bill Pullman, Melissa Leo) or relentlessly do the mafia’s dirty work all over poor, sweet, innocent Italian folk, he will utterly annihilate you and time himself all the while just to make sure he’s got his shit down pat.
Denzel Washington, dating back to his first of many Oscar noms with Cry Freedom, has always deserved to slip into the alter ego of such a character, one you could compare to the traditional ronin or some lonesome western figure with a lust for justice, but only when it simply DEMANDS to be served (NOT Book of Eli thank you). The fact that Denzel’s 68 blows the mind, since even Liam Neeson doesn’t look this good and he’s the current face of Hollywood's ‘aging hero' tradition. Washington has directed four movies himself in the last two decades, most respectably in his adaptation of August Wilson’s Fences. Director Antoine Fuqua has been with Denzel regularly since Tony Scott passed — Washington left five Scott turns combined (Crimson Tide, Man on Fire, Déjà Vu, The Taking of Pelham 123, Unstoppable, six if you count Ridley’s American Gangster), and now rounds out five with Fuqua in the supposedly completed Equalizer trilogy, The Magnificent Seven remake, and the pair were hardly able to top the towering cop tale Training Day, still Antoine’s surest, sometimes feeling like a T. Scott film in its restless, grainy stylishness and occasional emotional dressing via rapidly shifting light exposure and film footage speeds.
Despite some disdain for the boys in blue running though his filmography, in Equalizer 3 Fuqua almost goes out of his way to make sure his filmography ain’t ACAB adjacent. Furthermore, regardless of the unavoidable influences of samurai, western heroes and action movie men of many variations, this time it’s like he’s Hercule Poirot more or less, just trying to make time for European perambulating only to be interrupted by murder mysteries, or in this case Sicilian mobsters very publicly brutalizing doe-eyed townsfolk. I suppose we all want a hit man ultimately longing for resolve despite their mechanical, impossible reflexes and deathly instincts, and Antoine has you on your knees pleading for our OCD one man army to begrudgingly, righteously murder some motherfuckers. Mr. Wick is the closest modern comparison to the character’s spirit, another tragic legacy assassin — except whereas Denzel does the killer with a conscience thing with panache, Keanu is just Keanu.
Stripped down and padded out but for the right purpose, The Equalizer 3’s messaging is stronger than the second film, which was pure revenge cobbled with a tepid, clumsy social justice angle. Instead of unspooling national conspiracies as he shepherds black youth, here Denzel saves some small village and helps out the little guy in some bookended benevolence. This one also tries to correct the worst aspect of the best one, 2014’s original — maybe Robert doesn’t accidentally take down some massive criminal organization this time, maybe he actually takes half a movie to weigh up dismantling said mafia while we wait for him to heal from wounds that took two scenes to forget about in Man on Fire, a Washington character with an eerily similar sense of purpose, and a particular foil role opposite a confident, commanding Dakota Fanning. At age 10 or 30 her presence is palpable — this is a far cry from her sweaty, sleazy bit part in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Sadly in spite of her inherent graces, her character's portion of the story with “HEY HALPERT!” himself David Denman is quite the copy-pasted, gov't ops background filler on the ol’ action movie checklist, including gravely tedious procedural dialogue for those chasing and/or aiding our protagonist, like Bourne just more boring.
And though I’m so grateful this movie made especially sure I really hated the antagonists, there’s still something more hopelessly manipulative about letting the audience essentially salivate in wait for things to get fucking Equalized. The first film had Marton Csokas (Lord Celeborn himself), a legitimate equal to McCall’s hard-R recklessness, and they've yet to find better since Pedro Pascal is alright with me but his turned government op character from 2 was more than archetypal.
Though I have to admit I don’t really know a damn thing about the old show (I hope this is completely removed from network Queen Latifa nonsense), the Equalizer movies as such sneakily snuff out other moderately budgeted action trilogies (even one’s Fuqua started with promise like Olympus Has Fallen) that never bothered to try after the first installment (Taken, Transporter). Fuqua, dating back to his exceptionally sprightly, Woo-esque The Replacement Killers back in 1999, has the fast-tracked chops to make the most of what he can even if his pace has dampened (the Will Smith comeback Emancipation was his last), and his relative consistency saves this series from what could have been a product of recycled traditions and collected clichés to a trio just worthy enough of recognition and appreciation. If there was ever a counter to idea that the supposedly disappearing mid-budget movie has been lost in the corporatization of Hollywood’s better interests, this trilogy is it.
The Equalizer 3 is skinny, less-is-more moviemaking truly out of time and place, an era of moviegoing when 15 seconds of action could sustain the public for an hour of naught else but character, tension and scenery — I’m no attention-averse zoomer so I don’t mind at all. By the time Denzel even begins to contemplate bringing the heat, a threat in a small restaurant has you gasping for sweet, sweet vengeance. Waiting really can sharpen the appetite and this is the latest lesson that the brewing, boiling buildup counts for so much more than that ultimate moment of clarity and/or truth. Action junkies will be snoozing but the patient viewer should be pleased by the calm and crescendos.
Blue Beetle briefing
2 (out of 4)
DC is back baby, to let you down for what, is it the umpteenth time yet? In failing to live up to whatever moment this was queued up to be for the Spanish speaking community critically, financially, organically, Blue Beetle’s petty patronizing scarcely matches Black Panther’s more measurable empowerment and admirable attempt at sociopolitical superheroics. This will deservingly be lost to cultural irrelevance and a current collective memory without room for the mediocre and unmemorable — even Robert Rodriguez on his sleepiest, most cynical day could make something more lively and heartening.
Blue Beetle is acutely archaic even for DC, oddly bouncing firmly on every beat of the superhero origin story like its 2005 or something. The brand has managed to do it OK before, since Man of Steel could be a lot less spectacular for as numbing as it is and Shazam! is particularly charming despite functioning as a major minor film just like this latest WB tax write-off. But while something as golden, gratifying and timeless as 2002’s Spider-Man will never be achieved after two decades of riffing on readymade story structures that are now as tried and true blue as some seriously stubborn pair of jeans, Blue Beetle snake-oil sells you on the cheap with a considered, straight face.
So I can as easily chide this movie as more predictable than any movie, not just capeshit, I can recall of late — like, Grandma doing something unexpectedly youthful is how old of a gimmick? I can also find room to appreciate the way Blue Beetle isn’t afraid to be unrelentingly unfeigned, even when it appears to be pandering the hardest — still, all the mustered earnestness can’t compensate for entertainment value lesser than a below-average Marvel movie. There are simply zero thrills to be had from the film’s muddle of separate mythos: Spider-Man’s themes, Green Lantern’s imagination, Venom’s alien threat/potential buddy comedy backdrop hybrid (fused with Iron Man’s interactions with Jarvis) plus other inferior influences still making for superior super-junk.
George Lopez is pretty pitiful comic relief, dishing out jabs at classism and anti-immigration to make us feel good — yes movie I agree child trafficking is bad, even when it’s done to one of your sub-villains for the sake of an obvious last-minute betrayal. Our main boy Xola Mariduenya is cute and charming, as is his cute and charming love interest Bruna Marquezine. Susan Sarandon isn’t truly hamming it up but she’s clearly aware of the surrounding C-movie, and even then was unable to salvage such a stock role, good Lord. Though the "cry later" payoff worked for me, Blue Beetle director Ángel Manuel Soto clearly wanted to cut and paste at least one Black Panther moment, so for the 2nd act low point our hero communicates with a recently axed blood relative inside some bloom-buried spirit world.
But most disappointing of all, the alien supersuit itself is not exploited for some sort of valuable two-way relationship in any way apart from the parasite AI learning a little Spanish by the climax. I wonder, if the DCEU planned to keep kicking, is this a character you’d rope into the overarching, crossover clusterfuckery? I can’t imagine the losses they’re taking on this shit (as they pray Aquaman 2 doesn’t flop, making them four for four in 2023 financial disasters) but this one was always gonna underwhelm and unseating Barbie as the box office #1 is the best news the Beetle’s ever gonna get. It’s another DC blunder, an absolutely foolishly simple movie conceived with little idea as to what it wants to be, or perhaps doesn’t bother at all to commit to what it wants to be: some actually full-hearted, worthwhile cultural care-package for the community it is cultivated by, equipped with the basic fantasy-fulfilling everyone has come to expect from genre fare, or at least the origin story framework.
Whenever it manages to win you over with some semblance of soul, Blue Beetle shoots itself in the foot with bumbling, tired, trope-trapped tricks. The movie, even for a sizably modest budget, doesn’t overplay its hand like Shazam! Fury of the Gods did spreading things thin, and there is more than a hint of honesty, innocence and winsome spunk about the film’s miniature model of superhero escapism; nonetheless what remains is a nagging overcompensation, modern dress-up disguising plain ideas, mashup mythologies and unsatisfying, far too familiar heroes-journeying. I feel for latinos who long for more than what this sterilizing, curiously joyless feature has in store, as there’s barely a bit of fun or fighting that isn’t built on the backs of mad-libbed, genre-appropriate lines (“that’s what I’m talking about!”) or merely acceptable choreography.
Is this really the best superhero for hispanics? Isn’t Miles Morales close enough? Fast and Furious has more for the same target audience, more of their money that is — the real cinematic familia may be Vin’s court after all. If one more movie outside of Fast 11 and 12 tries to tell me about the importance of family I may just have to look into this whole domesticity thing.
DC is back baby, to let you down for what, is it the umpteenth time yet? In failing to live up to whatever moment this was queued up to be for the Spanish speaking community critically, financially, organically, Blue Beetle’s petty patronizing scarcely matches Black Panther’s more measurable empowerment and admirable attempt at sociopolitical superheroics. This will deservingly be lost to cultural irrelevance and a current collective memory without room for the mediocre and unmemorable — even Robert Rodriguez on his sleepiest, most cynical day could make something more lively and heartening.
Blue Beetle is acutely archaic even for DC, oddly bouncing firmly on every beat of the superhero origin story like its 2005 or something. The brand has managed to do it OK before, since Man of Steel could be a lot less spectacular for as numbing as it is and Shazam! is particularly charming despite functioning as a major minor film just like this latest WB tax write-off. But while something as golden, gratifying and timeless as 2002’s Spider-Man will never be achieved after two decades of riffing on readymade story structures that are now as tried and true blue as some seriously stubborn pair of jeans, Blue Beetle snake-oil sells you on the cheap with a considered, straight face.
So I can as easily chide this movie as more predictable than any movie, not just capeshit, I can recall of late — like, Grandma doing something unexpectedly youthful is how old of a gimmick? I can also find room to appreciate the way Blue Beetle isn’t afraid to be unrelentingly unfeigned, even when it appears to be pandering the hardest — still, all the mustered earnestness can’t compensate for entertainment value lesser than a below-average Marvel movie. There are simply zero thrills to be had from the film’s muddle of separate mythos: Spider-Man’s themes, Green Lantern’s imagination, Venom’s alien threat/potential buddy comedy backdrop hybrid (fused with Iron Man’s interactions with Jarvis) plus other inferior influences still making for superior super-junk.
George Lopez is pretty pitiful comic relief, dishing out jabs at classism and anti-immigration to make us feel good — yes movie I agree child trafficking is bad, even when it’s done to one of your sub-villains for the sake of an obvious last-minute betrayal. Our main boy Xola Mariduenya is cute and charming, as is his cute and charming love interest Bruna Marquezine. Susan Sarandon isn’t truly hamming it up but she’s clearly aware of the surrounding C-movie, and even then was unable to salvage such a stock role, good Lord. Though the "cry later" payoff worked for me, Blue Beetle director Ángel Manuel Soto clearly wanted to cut and paste at least one Black Panther moment, so for the 2nd act low point our hero communicates with a recently axed blood relative inside some bloom-buried spirit world.
But most disappointing of all, the alien supersuit itself is not exploited for some sort of valuable two-way relationship in any way apart from the parasite AI learning a little Spanish by the climax. I wonder, if the DCEU planned to keep kicking, is this a character you’d rope into the overarching, crossover clusterfuckery? I can’t imagine the losses they’re taking on this shit (as they pray Aquaman 2 doesn’t flop, making them four for four in 2023 financial disasters) but this one was always gonna underwhelm and unseating Barbie as the box office #1 is the best news the Beetle’s ever gonna get. It’s another DC blunder, an absolutely foolishly simple movie conceived with little idea as to what it wants to be, or perhaps doesn’t bother at all to commit to what it wants to be: some actually full-hearted, worthwhile cultural care-package for the community it is cultivated by, equipped with the basic fantasy-fulfilling everyone has come to expect from genre fare, or at least the origin story framework.
Whenever it manages to win you over with some semblance of soul, Blue Beetle shoots itself in the foot with bumbling, tired, trope-trapped tricks. The movie, even for a sizably modest budget, doesn’t overplay its hand like Shazam! Fury of the Gods did spreading things thin, and there is more than a hint of honesty, innocence and winsome spunk about the film’s miniature model of superhero escapism; nonetheless what remains is a nagging overcompensation, modern dress-up disguising plain ideas, mashup mythologies and unsatisfying, far too familiar heroes-journeying. I feel for latinos who long for more than what this sterilizing, curiously joyless feature has in store, as there’s barely a bit of fun or fighting that isn’t built on the backs of mad-libbed, genre-appropriate lines (“that’s what I’m talking about!”) or merely acceptable choreography.
Is this really the best superhero for hispanics? Isn’t Miles Morales close enough? Fast and Furious has more for the same target audience, more of their money that is — the real cinematic familia may be Vin’s court after all. If one more movie outside of Fast 11 and 12 tries to tell me about the importance of family I may just have to look into this whole domesticity thing.
Barbie briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
My personal anticipation for Barbie doesn’t stem from zeitgeist-piercing pop feminism but the study of scintillating satire and bright screwball comedies of self-discovery or lack thereof. This marks the third collaboration of Greta Gerwig and her half husband half creative partner Noah Baumbach (independently, well, the independent writer-director done right) but the first where he remained only on paper, having the last word on Frances Ha and Mistress America while Gerwig took center-frame (co-star at minimum in MA) in her best acting work I’ve seen. Not to piss on Gerwig’s command but Barbie is easily the weakest screenplay and resulting feature of their joint efforts; it’s almost as if a man in the captain’s chair might’ve made for the better motion picture haha! I’ll take the respective near-perfect quarter-life crisis flick and the most underrated screenplay of the past ten years over whatever this pink phenomena has become, even if I appreciate Gerwig almost more behind the camera than in front.
My waves of feminism are a little fuzzy, and the crests Barbie rides are about as phony as those silicon shore-breakers Ken bounces off of. Frankly if the doll movie was an actually identifiable statement on contemporary femininity outside of pure neurosis, then it wouldn’t be so easy to thematically question. Seriously, how unlikely is it that such unbridled, caustic comedy is exactly the cultural lightning rod this put-off, pessimistic, postmodern generation needed to grasp onto? This is what leads me to believe Barbie is the moment’s exploitation flick based on every definition, making blinding light of sad girl culture sneaking into pop music and society at large — just look at that depressed Barbie commercial, which probably gets more laughs than anything in the movie because anxiety, sweat pants and unhealthy social media habits are somehow a few of the most permeating, relevant aspects of modern womanhood.
So because of this, and also the fact that she’s making the fucking live-action Barbie movie, Gerwig is almost better off playing it fast, loose and very vague — she’s practically obligated to not quite settle on the message. Especially if you’re situated on the right side of the ideological aisle, this movie’s above-sea-level subtext is basically a cinematic Rorschach test of your own political (in)sanity. “Whatever you think Barbie is… It’s not that,” or so goes the exemplary, nebulous, goading tagline — so this an apology to women for Barbie’s psychological impact and also a celebration of women through Barbie, somehow… after having your cake and eating it too, the only thing Barbie’s full of in the end is itself, especially during the climactic, emotional B-roll of random ladies growing up? “Now, feel” demands the ghost of Ruth Handler, Mattel CEO for longer than this movie wants to admit for the sake of a more patriarchal “reality,” like we're currently living in the 50s.
I’ll say for the Barbenheimer comps, Oppie’s many-faced take on nuclear ethics is miraculously more apolitical, or at least more willing to please both conservatives and liberals than Barbie… Maybe, in spite of presumably innocuous, unimpeachable narrative material, it would be challenging to assemble an assuredly plastic, potentially fantastic 'adaptation' without today's topical consensuses in mind, but it’s so amusing that flipping Barbie got more people riled up than the epic about the guy who built the bomb. But this is really a beast all it’s own — appeasing the left-leaning, female-dominated demographic with the verifiable rainbow of Barbies including handicapped Barbie (totally fine, I’m no ableist!), plus-sized Barbie (pushing it, and definitely never saw the shelf) and transwoman Barbie (bona fide fantasy, wouldn't nonbinary be more appropriate?), clearly there to appease anyone who would have cried out at the absence of transgender representation. But, um, pardon me sweetie, doesn’t that parting gynecologist joke only really work for cis women you fucking bigots? Do they make up for lacking Latina Barbie in America Ferrera??? WHERE’S ASIAN BARBIE YOU RACISTS?!?! NO ASIAN KEN IS NOT ENOUGH!!!!!!!!
ANYWAY, still with me? Regardless, this movie is annoyingly worthy of the stupendously stupid watershed moviegoing moment it’s invoking — I thought Mario would be impossible to topple and Barbie convinced me it would be the #1 movie of the year just a week into release. I like the life-size sets, the goofy choreography, the fanciful matte paintings and all the old school theatrical gimmickry they casually, irreverently indulge in for the better. Gerwig claims to reference old musicals out the butt (Grease maybe, do I really see a lick of Demy anywhere?) but I can’t spot exactly how her passionately cited favorites in press circuits really percolate between Barbie’s blunt-force pedestal-preaching and otherwise savory fantasy romcom exploits, except a distinct debt owed to The Truman Show. The original soundtrack also boasts an impressive supportive (and separate) cultural explosion — the song and dance aspects could be more present and powerful, but the Mark Ronson-produced set of singles is a fun, fitting array of very recognizable artists molding to their respective homes:
* Although Lizzo is now recent persona non grata (oh you plump, hypocritical bitch), the two versions of her interactive day in the life song are funny contrasts
* Billie Eillish gracefully preps surprise tears for the emotional passages, which crop up exclusively when the elderly are present
* Tame Impala works pop-trippiness into the reality-transitioning portal-traveling montage
* Dua Lipa has the best pure single with her show-stopping dance-funk disco grooves
* Charli XCX isn’t far behind on the escape-themed hyperpop…
* Thankfully some credits-worthy Nicki Minaj trap remix of the original Aqua shit makes sure the purists can’t whine, all while cementing this film as utterly, numbingly mainstream rather than chaotically pushing against the grain.
If I feel like immersing in quality B-movies, I’ll have to wait til at least Christmas to be in the mood for 2001’s Barbie in the Nutcracker, the holy grail of the animated Barbie series so I’m told. But for the blonde who’s used to either end of the camera, Gerwig herself has enjoyed unencumbered success. You would never guess she’d find herself in the big leagues from her early, poorly aged, soft-porn meets crappy camcorder/mumblecore days with Joe Swanberg — 15 years ago she was so eager to be real and guileless, and now she’s doing Narnia movies for Netflix. She was already nominated for Best Director for Lady Bird, and her snub for Little Women was infamous (not as bad as passing over Baumbach for Marriage Story) especially when fucking Todd Phillips is nominated?! Nevertheless, Barbie has clearly been a smart choice to expand her clout and WB to capitalize on it.
BUT AS A MAN, there’s an inevitable destination in the film’s exploration of masculinity, where Greta and Noah wittingly, necessarily and almost derisively poke at men’s vulnerability. As Gerwig’s character Babette states from Don Delillo’s text White Noise (her husband’s last film adaptation for Netflix), “We all know about men and their crazy jealous rage.” Had Barbie not so cleverly locked down male audiences with the “literally me” guy himself Ryan “The Goose” Gosling, the movie would’ve been a little less successful and much more divisive, though I’m sure it would’ve made no difference to WB or the target audience. In good part thanks to Gosling’s superhuman comic graces (noted prior in The Nice Guys, La La Land, Crazy, Stupid Love and even the retrospectively ironic Lars and the Real Girl) Ken’s storyline becomes a most hilarious B-plot where every step of his sidelined comic odyssey is a hoot. Though men feel “seen” through the character’s unrequited frustrations, framing Ken as the villain guarantees a spot of backlash — you can almost feel Gerwig dare you to tell your girlfriend the best part of Barbie is Ken (he is). Michael Cera’s Allen can’t go unmentioned, an unqualified highlight, nor can Simu Liu's satisfying smirk.
Margot Robbie is, of course, stunning, almost more emotive-on-demand than she was in Babylon — moving from instant sex symbol á la Wolf of Wall Street to Australia’s most valuable import within a decade, her third Academy Award nomination is likely assured following I, Tonya and Bombshell. Robbie’s performance as stereotypical Barbie is the work of an astoundingly sympathetic, outstandingly committed professional bringing impossible characters to life — more exemplary still, this is a role only she could have done complete justice, not Anne Hathaway and certainly not Amy flipping Schumer. I’m glad Robbie’s career is now riding high on the upswing, especially right as she was developing a Katherine Hepburn-like reputation as box office poison. I’ll throw a supporting cast shout-out to Kate McKinnon’s excellent iteration of “weird Barbie,” exercising superb physicality and precise timing.
But I would need a tub-soaking, champagne-sipping Margot to explain this movie’s obsession with cellulite like we were discussing subprime mortgages. So in this movie cellulite is a human ailment affecting her plastic Barbie body, but it’s treated as such a joke — “Fine, get cellulite” “NO NO anything but the thing that affects most women!” This is an actual insecurity for womankind at large, the tissue beneath your skin dimples in a certain way… actually YOU’RE MALFUNCTIONING. Maybe I’m truly out of my depth altogether but I don’t know why this aspect is so crucial to this particular feminish matriarchy movie. “It’s literally impossible to be a woman…” That’s how America Ferrera’s BIG speech gets STARTED. “…it’s too hard, it’s too contradictory,” akin to the film itself, like Helen Mirren briefly explaining childhood logic, ironically refusing to let me “use my imagination." One of the screenplay’s most egregious errors is how annoyingly unavoidable the Easter eggs are (sure the Bratz reference is good, you couldn’t miss MIDGE if you were on your phone the whole time) and how poorly those cute asides are going to age.
Then there’s the “Ordinary Barbie” concept alone, God just at a glance there’s something inherently, flagrantly coddling about the way this movie decides to treat the general audience. “HELL YEAH WHITE SAVIOR BARBIE!” Damn Baumbach, Gerwig, you adorable twosome, any base you didn’t cover or self-aware safety net you forgot to deploy? Barbie is also so very sly about its admission of the toy’s negative impact on the world, especially as the biggest bombs it drops are from a teenage girl we’re supposed to see as some snarky, jaded, overly political, woke zoomer using terms like “sexualized capitalism” to the point where it makes our very sympathetic, super idealist protagonist cry. Every criticism of Barbie or Mattel is veiled in a similar fashion because it can’t really take shots at itself BUT it can’t ignore these issues either because THAT WOULD BE WORSE, so the partially delightful script has to play this half-assed game of sarcastic self-effacing. I felt like I was watching the evolved version of The LEGO Movie, and not just because of a key Will Ferrell role, merchandise as characters and multiple layers of traversed meta-reality. In friendlier terms this is less of a lazy, self-referential, soulless mess than Space Jam 2 and Matrix 4 — thanks Warner Brothers, keep breaking down those fourth walls! Our two dialogue-dense writers craft some wonderful lines (“after I found out the patriarchy wasn’t about horses, I lost interest”) but the joyful meta aspects reminiscent of a Lord-Miller joint (Across the Spider-Verse bests this and every other flick this summer) are often sullied by out-of-place intellectualism within the knowing, heightened tone, like when Robbie’s Barbie seems to be reading from some teleprompted textbook.
But the climax, from the female perspective, involves the offscreen brainwashing of the Barbies from the temptations (or something?) of patriarchy to their mental unchaining via pithy, purportedly profound examples of the “cognitive dissonance” of a woman’s experience in a man’s world. It seems to me I should largely take away from Barbie that women can be convinced of anything, and men have little to offer but arrogance and envy. But I’ll take that broad stereotype for a cuckoo guy-side culmination of Ken on Ken action in some zealously inspired noodling around with nerf wars, dance battles and high-test thrift store showdowns. It has to make up for the movie’s lacking emotional apex for Barbie and Ken outside scrubbing the get-the-girl ending smooch. There’s very little revelation and maybe that’s the joke — but special sweaters and becoming a human lady is pretty silly, substandard self-actualization. To pluck from Gerwig’s version of Little Women, “If you end your delightful book with your heroine a spinster, no one will buy it! It won’t be worth printing!”
It’s a ballsy aim for the risers that has to keep winning you back to win you over completely — when Gerwig has a pulse on the pathos she pulled off so well in Lady Bird and Little Women, Barbie, unironically, sparkles, though not quite with “female agency.” But the film mostly feels like a wannabe feminist masterpiece that’ll have to settle for a crazy effective, super queer cultural touchstone. My stomach shrank as I realized Mattel will join Nintendo at the forefront of new, stupid popular movements in the medium (Polly Pocket, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, fucking J J Abrams’ HOT WHEELS?!?!)
I wish this movie was “Closer to Fine” hehe or at least closer to DEFINED… I suppose the primary inside-joke tune (outside of Rob Thomas’ “I Will”) is about finding contentment just as one finds answers, which is funny considering Gerwig's third feature purposely obscures its own admittedly minimal logic to become a one-size-fits-all message movie. Barbie is simultaneously very singular and personal as well as maddeningly drawn to meet the more massive end of mass appeal. It certainly gets you talking, arguing, thinking and debating, just not really about topics the text itself is willing to fully confront. There are few too many college lectures laced within the movie’s edgy combination of bubbly absurdist comedy and an insistence on dwelling long and hard on mortality — it’s crazy but no entertainment in recent memory has reminded me of the fact that I’m gonna die more frequently. Despite the pop culture prowess and permutation, some unanticipated tears and instances of soulful farcical exploits, the ideas of Barbie 2023 will not “last forever,” in fact the amorphous themes will barely survive the year.
My personal anticipation for Barbie doesn’t stem from zeitgeist-piercing pop feminism but the study of scintillating satire and bright screwball comedies of self-discovery or lack thereof. This marks the third collaboration of Greta Gerwig and her half husband half creative partner Noah Baumbach (independently, well, the independent writer-director done right) but the first where he remained only on paper, having the last word on Frances Ha and Mistress America while Gerwig took center-frame (co-star at minimum in MA) in her best acting work I’ve seen. Not to piss on Gerwig’s command but Barbie is easily the weakest screenplay and resulting feature of their joint efforts; it’s almost as if a man in the captain’s chair might’ve made for the better motion picture haha! I’ll take the respective near-perfect quarter-life crisis flick and the most underrated screenplay of the past ten years over whatever this pink phenomena has become, even if I appreciate Gerwig almost more behind the camera than in front.
My waves of feminism are a little fuzzy, and the crests Barbie rides are about as phony as those silicon shore-breakers Ken bounces off of. Frankly if the doll movie was an actually identifiable statement on contemporary femininity outside of pure neurosis, then it wouldn’t be so easy to thematically question. Seriously, how unlikely is it that such unbridled, caustic comedy is exactly the cultural lightning rod this put-off, pessimistic, postmodern generation needed to grasp onto? This is what leads me to believe Barbie is the moment’s exploitation flick based on every definition, making blinding light of sad girl culture sneaking into pop music and society at large — just look at that depressed Barbie commercial, which probably gets more laughs than anything in the movie because anxiety, sweat pants and unhealthy social media habits are somehow a few of the most permeating, relevant aspects of modern womanhood.
So because of this, and also the fact that she’s making the fucking live-action Barbie movie, Gerwig is almost better off playing it fast, loose and very vague — she’s practically obligated to not quite settle on the message. Especially if you’re situated on the right side of the ideological aisle, this movie’s above-sea-level subtext is basically a cinematic Rorschach test of your own political (in)sanity. “Whatever you think Barbie is… It’s not that,” or so goes the exemplary, nebulous, goading tagline — so this an apology to women for Barbie’s psychological impact and also a celebration of women through Barbie, somehow… after having your cake and eating it too, the only thing Barbie’s full of in the end is itself, especially during the climactic, emotional B-roll of random ladies growing up? “Now, feel” demands the ghost of Ruth Handler, Mattel CEO for longer than this movie wants to admit for the sake of a more patriarchal “reality,” like we're currently living in the 50s.
I’ll say for the Barbenheimer comps, Oppie’s many-faced take on nuclear ethics is miraculously more apolitical, or at least more willing to please both conservatives and liberals than Barbie… Maybe, in spite of presumably innocuous, unimpeachable narrative material, it would be challenging to assemble an assuredly plastic, potentially fantastic 'adaptation' without today's topical consensuses in mind, but it’s so amusing that flipping Barbie got more people riled up than the epic about the guy who built the bomb. But this is really a beast all it’s own — appeasing the left-leaning, female-dominated demographic with the verifiable rainbow of Barbies including handicapped Barbie (totally fine, I’m no ableist!), plus-sized Barbie (pushing it, and definitely never saw the shelf) and transwoman Barbie (bona fide fantasy, wouldn't nonbinary be more appropriate?), clearly there to appease anyone who would have cried out at the absence of transgender representation. But, um, pardon me sweetie, doesn’t that parting gynecologist joke only really work for cis women you fucking bigots? Do they make up for lacking Latina Barbie in America Ferrera??? WHERE’S ASIAN BARBIE YOU RACISTS?!?! NO ASIAN KEN IS NOT ENOUGH!!!!!!!!
ANYWAY, still with me? Regardless, this movie is annoyingly worthy of the stupendously stupid watershed moviegoing moment it’s invoking — I thought Mario would be impossible to topple and Barbie convinced me it would be the #1 movie of the year just a week into release. I like the life-size sets, the goofy choreography, the fanciful matte paintings and all the old school theatrical gimmickry they casually, irreverently indulge in for the better. Gerwig claims to reference old musicals out the butt (Grease maybe, do I really see a lick of Demy anywhere?) but I can’t spot exactly how her passionately cited favorites in press circuits really percolate between Barbie’s blunt-force pedestal-preaching and otherwise savory fantasy romcom exploits, except a distinct debt owed to The Truman Show. The original soundtrack also boasts an impressive supportive (and separate) cultural explosion — the song and dance aspects could be more present and powerful, but the Mark Ronson-produced set of singles is a fun, fitting array of very recognizable artists molding to their respective homes:
* Although Lizzo is now recent persona non grata (oh you plump, hypocritical bitch), the two versions of her interactive day in the life song are funny contrasts
* Billie Eillish gracefully preps surprise tears for the emotional passages, which crop up exclusively when the elderly are present
* Tame Impala works pop-trippiness into the reality-transitioning portal-traveling montage
* Dua Lipa has the best pure single with her show-stopping dance-funk disco grooves
* Charli XCX isn’t far behind on the escape-themed hyperpop…
* Thankfully some credits-worthy Nicki Minaj trap remix of the original Aqua shit makes sure the purists can’t whine, all while cementing this film as utterly, numbingly mainstream rather than chaotically pushing against the grain.
If I feel like immersing in quality B-movies, I’ll have to wait til at least Christmas to be in the mood for 2001’s Barbie in the Nutcracker, the holy grail of the animated Barbie series so I’m told. But for the blonde who’s used to either end of the camera, Gerwig herself has enjoyed unencumbered success. You would never guess she’d find herself in the big leagues from her early, poorly aged, soft-porn meets crappy camcorder/mumblecore days with Joe Swanberg — 15 years ago she was so eager to be real and guileless, and now she’s doing Narnia movies for Netflix. She was already nominated for Best Director for Lady Bird, and her snub for Little Women was infamous (not as bad as passing over Baumbach for Marriage Story) especially when fucking Todd Phillips is nominated?! Nevertheless, Barbie has clearly been a smart choice to expand her clout and WB to capitalize on it.
BUT AS A MAN, there’s an inevitable destination in the film’s exploration of masculinity, where Greta and Noah wittingly, necessarily and almost derisively poke at men’s vulnerability. As Gerwig’s character Babette states from Don Delillo’s text White Noise (her husband’s last film adaptation for Netflix), “We all know about men and their crazy jealous rage.” Had Barbie not so cleverly locked down male audiences with the “literally me” guy himself Ryan “The Goose” Gosling, the movie would’ve been a little less successful and much more divisive, though I’m sure it would’ve made no difference to WB or the target audience. In good part thanks to Gosling’s superhuman comic graces (noted prior in The Nice Guys, La La Land, Crazy, Stupid Love and even the retrospectively ironic Lars and the Real Girl) Ken’s storyline becomes a most hilarious B-plot where every step of his sidelined comic odyssey is a hoot. Though men feel “seen” through the character’s unrequited frustrations, framing Ken as the villain guarantees a spot of backlash — you can almost feel Gerwig dare you to tell your girlfriend the best part of Barbie is Ken (he is). Michael Cera’s Allen can’t go unmentioned, an unqualified highlight, nor can Simu Liu's satisfying smirk.
Margot Robbie is, of course, stunning, almost more emotive-on-demand than she was in Babylon — moving from instant sex symbol á la Wolf of Wall Street to Australia’s most valuable import within a decade, her third Academy Award nomination is likely assured following I, Tonya and Bombshell. Robbie’s performance as stereotypical Barbie is the work of an astoundingly sympathetic, outstandingly committed professional bringing impossible characters to life — more exemplary still, this is a role only she could have done complete justice, not Anne Hathaway and certainly not Amy flipping Schumer. I’m glad Robbie’s career is now riding high on the upswing, especially right as she was developing a Katherine Hepburn-like reputation as box office poison. I’ll throw a supporting cast shout-out to Kate McKinnon’s excellent iteration of “weird Barbie,” exercising superb physicality and precise timing.
But I would need a tub-soaking, champagne-sipping Margot to explain this movie’s obsession with cellulite like we were discussing subprime mortgages. So in this movie cellulite is a human ailment affecting her plastic Barbie body, but it’s treated as such a joke — “Fine, get cellulite” “NO NO anything but the thing that affects most women!” This is an actual insecurity for womankind at large, the tissue beneath your skin dimples in a certain way… actually YOU’RE MALFUNCTIONING. Maybe I’m truly out of my depth altogether but I don’t know why this aspect is so crucial to this particular feminish matriarchy movie. “It’s literally impossible to be a woman…” That’s how America Ferrera’s BIG speech gets STARTED. “…it’s too hard, it’s too contradictory,” akin to the film itself, like Helen Mirren briefly explaining childhood logic, ironically refusing to let me “use my imagination." One of the screenplay’s most egregious errors is how annoyingly unavoidable the Easter eggs are (sure the Bratz reference is good, you couldn’t miss MIDGE if you were on your phone the whole time) and how poorly those cute asides are going to age.
Then there’s the “Ordinary Barbie” concept alone, God just at a glance there’s something inherently, flagrantly coddling about the way this movie decides to treat the general audience. “HELL YEAH WHITE SAVIOR BARBIE!” Damn Baumbach, Gerwig, you adorable twosome, any base you didn’t cover or self-aware safety net you forgot to deploy? Barbie is also so very sly about its admission of the toy’s negative impact on the world, especially as the biggest bombs it drops are from a teenage girl we’re supposed to see as some snarky, jaded, overly political, woke zoomer using terms like “sexualized capitalism” to the point where it makes our very sympathetic, super idealist protagonist cry. Every criticism of Barbie or Mattel is veiled in a similar fashion because it can’t really take shots at itself BUT it can’t ignore these issues either because THAT WOULD BE WORSE, so the partially delightful script has to play this half-assed game of sarcastic self-effacing. I felt like I was watching the evolved version of The LEGO Movie, and not just because of a key Will Ferrell role, merchandise as characters and multiple layers of traversed meta-reality. In friendlier terms this is less of a lazy, self-referential, soulless mess than Space Jam 2 and Matrix 4 — thanks Warner Brothers, keep breaking down those fourth walls! Our two dialogue-dense writers craft some wonderful lines (“after I found out the patriarchy wasn’t about horses, I lost interest”) but the joyful meta aspects reminiscent of a Lord-Miller joint (Across the Spider-Verse bests this and every other flick this summer) are often sullied by out-of-place intellectualism within the knowing, heightened tone, like when Robbie’s Barbie seems to be reading from some teleprompted textbook.
But the climax, from the female perspective, involves the offscreen brainwashing of the Barbies from the temptations (or something?) of patriarchy to their mental unchaining via pithy, purportedly profound examples of the “cognitive dissonance” of a woman’s experience in a man’s world. It seems to me I should largely take away from Barbie that women can be convinced of anything, and men have little to offer but arrogance and envy. But I’ll take that broad stereotype for a cuckoo guy-side culmination of Ken on Ken action in some zealously inspired noodling around with nerf wars, dance battles and high-test thrift store showdowns. It has to make up for the movie’s lacking emotional apex for Barbie and Ken outside scrubbing the get-the-girl ending smooch. There’s very little revelation and maybe that’s the joke — but special sweaters and becoming a human lady is pretty silly, substandard self-actualization. To pluck from Gerwig’s version of Little Women, “If you end your delightful book with your heroine a spinster, no one will buy it! It won’t be worth printing!”
It’s a ballsy aim for the risers that has to keep winning you back to win you over completely — when Gerwig has a pulse on the pathos she pulled off so well in Lady Bird and Little Women, Barbie, unironically, sparkles, though not quite with “female agency.” But the film mostly feels like a wannabe feminist masterpiece that’ll have to settle for a crazy effective, super queer cultural touchstone. My stomach shrank as I realized Mattel will join Nintendo at the forefront of new, stupid popular movements in the medium (Polly Pocket, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, fucking J J Abrams’ HOT WHEELS?!?!)
I wish this movie was “Closer to Fine” hehe or at least closer to DEFINED… I suppose the primary inside-joke tune (outside of Rob Thomas’ “I Will”) is about finding contentment just as one finds answers, which is funny considering Gerwig's third feature purposely obscures its own admittedly minimal logic to become a one-size-fits-all message movie. Barbie is simultaneously very singular and personal as well as maddeningly drawn to meet the more massive end of mass appeal. It certainly gets you talking, arguing, thinking and debating, just not really about topics the text itself is willing to fully confront. There are few too many college lectures laced within the movie’s edgy combination of bubbly absurdist comedy and an insistence on dwelling long and hard on mortality — it’s crazy but no entertainment in recent memory has reminded me of the fact that I’m gonna die more frequently. Despite the pop culture prowess and permutation, some unanticipated tears and instances of soulful farcical exploits, the ideas of Barbie 2023 will not “last forever,” in fact the amorphous themes will barely survive the year.
Oppenheimer briefing
3 (out of 4)
“Communism was just a red herring!”
This newer age of Christopher Nolan — let’s just start with his turn from cinematographer Wally Pfister to Hoyte von Hoytema between The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar — has been classified by futurism, even if only one instance was the mind-bending, head-hurtling litmus test that was Tenet’s potent palindrome. Otherwise he’s seemed to turn to well-trod genres (the war picture, the historical biopic) and just made his most self-serious, elliptically stitched, traditionally, pretenselessly acted, IMAX-camera-exploiting, mantra-repeating (“theory will only take you so far”), linear-lurching “masterpiece,” FINALLY!
Sorry to jest, but every critic hailing Oppenheimer as Nolan’s best must be really sold by the runtime, B&W film footage and/or “mature” material alone, refusing to acknowledge his relationship to entertainment as both populist and proper filmmaker — The Dark Knight and The Prestige are tied for my favorites because they are tightly scripted, intuitively edited (yes even the most awkward action moment in Batman’s best hour) and capable of enthralling you scene by scene from cinephile to casual viewer. Oppenheimer too is fueled by complex figures, yet seldom amazes, and it shouldn’t really — this has got to be the most oxymoronic spectacle to have ever somehow claimed IMAX theaters for three weeks, now extended to five in the wake of sold out screenings across the limited 70 mm IMAX showings around the country.
Apart from Memento, in his mindfuck mode (Nolan’s B&B) he can't resist some degree of science fiction (The Prestige falling on the end of the scale) and personally I have a soft spot for Tenet, a newly forming weaker preference towards Inception and remaining indifference toward Interstellar outside of the big bits. Then there’s a trilogy of Batman flicks of varying quality (if The Dark Knight Rises ain't at the bottom I don't know what is) and otherwise the odd duck Insomnia (remade from the 1997 Norwegian film) and his micro-budget debut Following — even with only 6,000 pounds at his expense, already he could mix up narrative continuity like he was being graded. Now the newest established alcove (grand-scale WWII dad movies) at best feels like late Spielberg, maybe more Lincoln than Munich, only with a little more gusto seeing as Nolan hasn't substantially slipped from his prime.
I can’t wait for some Inglourious Basterds comparison about how Nolan was actually thumbing noses at his audience for caring more about great balls of fire than the political fallout of its consequences — for Nolan the futurist, a diabolical cine-prophet of sorts who HAS to warn us against our less savory instincts, it makes perfect sense. “I must tell them they’re killing the earth (Interstellar) and subsequent generations will want to kill us all because that’s how SHITTY we are in the present (Tenet).” And I don’t see many hopeful antidotes from his WW2 fare, just grief, guilt, struggle and secondhand human-made horrors beyond our comprehension. Dunkirk witnessed such things in action, war’s sheer brutality and the mad scramble for survival — though the functionally near-enough-to-silent film felt pretty formally radical at the time (considering the separate irony of escaping the summer heat to watch young men burned alive in oily waters) it is a more traditional Nolan spectacle next to Oppenheimer’s seismic talkie.
Despite such straight-on, wiki-cribbing historical communication, Nolan’s penchant for puzzles and paradoxes still drives him to eerie places where ethics now fully take the place of heady thrills, akin to the moral quagmires in the back half of The Dark Knight. Oppenheimer also reminds one of Dunkirk’s three-fold perspective — land, air and sea now swapped for the bomb’s construction at Los Alamos, the security clearance deposition and the Lewis Strauss (a Supporting Actor nomination-ready RDJ) portion of events. Like Tenet, the script is a cascade of information as exposited by an enormous, talented cast and sold with thrifty, convincing production design in step with staggering large format photography, only this time Nolan seems to be challenging the notion of the summer movie even more than usual by not even trying to crowd-please outside of seemingly inescapable, patronizingly nonchalant references to obvious historical moments and figures (“some guy named… John F. Kennedy Jr…”) — I really would’ve been surprised if Nolan sidestepped this resilient cliché of the biopic genre, since making his audience feel intelligent is his one regular sin. “You know analysis?" inquires Pugh’s character, impressed when Robert J brings up the two most famous psychologists ever. Yes, please give me good pats on the head for being a smart boy… God those sex scenes suck (and not even in the good way).
Maybe that’s why I like Tenet since it specifically makes its audience feel stupid. Something as relatively wordy and unexciting as Oppenheimer playing so well in the ideal mid-July blockbuster slot up against his former steady studio WB, the other half of the "Barbenheimer" craze, is almost wilder than Barbie becoming the year’s most popular film — but as average audiences learn what counterprogramming is, Nolan can enjoy steady success with Universal doing, uh, Lord know what, whatever he pleases. My hopes are on something just a little lighter. Lately he manages to handle emotion by ignoring it, with as little emphasis in Oppenheimer as in Tenet’s emotionally scrubbed surface. I’ve barely felt anything watching a Nolan movie, apart from the losses of The Prestige and The Dark Knight, Michael Caine’s fine acting in The Dark Knight Rises and the decades-of-messages moment from Interstellar. When feelings pop up in his cinematic exercises — like the emotional cores of Inception and Interstellar bordering too close to ham to be some universal expression — they become hard to grapple with, since his moral grayscaling can be so forced if skillfully so.
Cillian Murphy should hopefully, deservedly, take Best Actor for his own since he capably holds the entire picture together — he’s such an unembellished performer and they’re just lucky his high, prominent cheekbones don’t look like he lost twenty pounds to match a certain likeness. The Peaky Blinders star is at his apex in this sixth turn with Nolan, his best yet in more a culmination of his talent than Nolan’s efforts honestly. Matt Damon is perfectly suited to the intensity and comedy of his key role as General Leslie Groves, and from everyone down to Josh Peck — Jason Clarke and RDJ are imposing forces — the multitudes of performers are utilized efficiently, particularly Josh Hartnett, as Ernest Lawrence, who gives the most unexpectedly strong turn. Distracting or dissolving, my favorite cameo was Gary Oldman (a casting surprise, buried under more makeup than as Churchill in Darkest Hour) as President Hoover putting the titular “crybaby” in his place and his ego in check. I have no notes for Emily Blunt, Benny Safdie, Dane Dehaan, Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh or most anyone else.
Regarding influences, primarily Oppenheimer smacks of JFK, Oliver Stone’s masterpiece as far as I’m concerned — measured, purposeful use of different film stocks and lenses, an information-dense, sprawling three hour runtime, a pivotal, controversial 20th century event, a massively recognizable cast of dozens of recognizable actors nonetheless attuned to their historical counterparts free with countless names to keep track of, time-jumping political subjectivity and, as Nolan admits himself, the feeling of an action movie without any action at all. Stone’s movies are sweaty, starkly stitched, fluid and feral, but for all the practical effort behind Nolan’s films, his oeuvre looks and feels very clean. I love both his directors of photography, Hoytema and Pfister, as both have a cool, clinical look matching Nolan’s creative inclinations.
For actual biopics, this is like his Schindler only surpassingly more escapist (and almost as likely to win Best Picture), like if Malcolm X made it to the real mainstream, another story structured around an interview/deposition oh so close to that of Citizen Kane and The Social Network. But then, next to Zodiac, one of my favorite pieces of historical dramatization, we have a similarly trifold biopic. 12 Years a Slave bears near enough unrelenting subjectivity, and Bernie is also worthy of a seat at this table for bending your empathy all about. To be gentler in contrast, Oppenheimer is The Theory of Everything if it was directed by a God or something, since it’s not easy to express scientific or intellectual inspiration and stimulation, witnessing the inside of Robert J’s brain imagining the infinitesimal. Even so, the basic editing tricks and practical visual beauty still result in a pretty blandly burdened genius. What I hate about biopics is whether you mystify or demystify, you’re really just doing nothing unless you’re Todd Haynes getting expertly, extraordinarily experimental like he did with Bobby Dylan’s life in I’m Not There. You need to reflect a person’s soul, not offer the music video of their life, and sometimes Oppie is like Elvis with less glitter.
Elsewhere, Nolan’s latest composer Ludvig Göransson is killing it, or at least beating up your eardrums real good, the chugging strings reminiscent of Johnny Greenwood’s There Will Be Blood, a noticeable contrast to the rubbery electronic rushes of Tenet’s tremors, the first change in Nolan’s music makers outside of Hans Zimmer in some time. Editing (courtesy of Noah Baumbach collaborator Jennifer Lame, also only her second with Nolan) and Ludwig alone have to compensate for his stubborn use of IMAX 70 mm on a film built on shallow focus closeups and plain interiors. The new MidWestern feel is just another TWBB comparison, as is the structure built around one huge burst of action. Like PTA only later in the respective career, this could be Nolan also getting his authoritative technical epic masterpiece out of the way just for posterity and critical catnip.
Hoytema, too, is murdering it, enough to mention him in the opening lines. Color is subjective bias, but then the first ever IMAX B&W film stock is gorgeous enough to behold even if I’m mostly beholding RDJ with a cosmetic receding hairline. Every establishing shot is incredible and natural lighting seems to be the default unless otherwise undoable. The focus can become a sliver deep — the psychological insides turn cosmic then toxic, especially in the crazy auditorium sequence when the clarity is so shallow it could get you nauseous regardless of the shocking jump scare equivalencies, starkly juxtaposed sound and most aggressively spelled out thematics. When he’s stepping in the ashes of imaginary people, OK WE GET IT; between two shots one woman expresses both the pure agony and the ecstasy of the situation, WE G- you get it. All the internalized style is drawn and suggested with a heavy hand.
Obviously the build-up to the trinity sequence is masterful, even more spectacularly titillating than the sequence itself, that’s how I know it’s good. It’s an uncharacteristically un-cinematic reward BEFORE the long-winded fall into committee-selected hell, as the last hour is an assault on Oppenheimer and same goes for the audience, forced to sit with it all after the uranium load is blown — I get it structurally and I didn’t feel my packed IMAX audience squirming, but I love subjecting the public to such deliberate pacing and severe topics, relatively unaltered for base pleasure.
As with Tenet, oh Lord I can’t wait for the subtitles — here the script is so particularly name-dense and ratatat that when his actors mumble for the sake of realism you must resign yourself to waiting for another watch to understand more. Too bad there’s no closed captioned IMAX. But concerning Nolan's claims there’s not one CG shot in the film (at first thought, not too unimaginable), I must ask: Do you happen to have B-roll of the earth’s atmosphere igniting on fire, a view from space? I’d kill to see how you didn't use CGI there, BUSTER.
“OH NO THE GOVERNMENT I LOVE AND TRUST USED ME!” <Oppie here, AITA?> If art is suggestion Nolan has a hard time not getting right to the point. This movie’s biggest crime, as aforementioned, are a few too many condescending cues for audience recognition and even more obvious nudges flat out telling you EXACTLY HOW YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO FEEL, making Oppenheimer a thematically redundant debate of conscience that for all the interesting angles fails to function as exactly intellectually evenhanded. When Alden Ehrenreich is smirking, you’re allowed to too! So much of the forced dramatic irony (like the ignorant aside about vacationing in Kyoto, supposedly improvised, which without would have been colder, scarier and more efficient) unravels the film’s otherwise strong commitment to candor both subjective and the legacy gathered altogether outside oneself.
Oppenheimer is epic and intimate, a curiously ironic extravaganza but a marginally magnificent character study. Yet for all its flourishes like Malick-esque practical snapshots of natural phenomena or Nolan’s first onscreen tits, Oppenheimer somehow almost overextends its insistence as the driest, most verbose slice of summer entertainment you could expect; it’s possibly heaven for critics and film nerds and probably living hell for certain casuals.
What new niche should Nolan carve out next? Maybe come back to WWII in 20 years, not to discredit Robert J. as one of the most ripe recent figures to pluck from, but just cause Chris has just made the best Dad movie ever doesn’t mean his boomer mode should become a default setting. Personally speaking, please get back to the action schlock if you don’t mind; he’s never gonna touch supers again but Tenet is recent enough evidence that he’s still a kid inside with sensory, Spielbergian energy. I’m fond of where he’s at as a filmmaker, his style has only become more cutting, comprehensive, classical and uncompromising, even if I would appreciate more gambles of craft or conceptual Hail Mary’s akin to his last few efforts.
And as much as one can critique his editing style, Oppenheimer is the result of a dozen movies of practice, and it’s sometimes very impressive how he mathematically dolls out information, character and story, finding a way to render monumental world history all his own, even when the movie carries on most like a neverending trailer. Nolan is an important director for our time, a household name with considerable integrity for the form, one of if not THE best mainstream filmmaker. So Oppenheimer may be just another step in a sensational career — as its own thing, it’s a bitter pill, an excruciatingly well-performed, formidably inhabited kind of anti-blockbuster.
“Communism was just a red herring!”
This newer age of Christopher Nolan — let’s just start with his turn from cinematographer Wally Pfister to Hoyte von Hoytema between The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar — has been classified by futurism, even if only one instance was the mind-bending, head-hurtling litmus test that was Tenet’s potent palindrome. Otherwise he’s seemed to turn to well-trod genres (the war picture, the historical biopic) and just made his most self-serious, elliptically stitched, traditionally, pretenselessly acted, IMAX-camera-exploiting, mantra-repeating (“theory will only take you so far”), linear-lurching “masterpiece,” FINALLY!
Sorry to jest, but every critic hailing Oppenheimer as Nolan’s best must be really sold by the runtime, B&W film footage and/or “mature” material alone, refusing to acknowledge his relationship to entertainment as both populist and proper filmmaker — The Dark Knight and The Prestige are tied for my favorites because they are tightly scripted, intuitively edited (yes even the most awkward action moment in Batman’s best hour) and capable of enthralling you scene by scene from cinephile to casual viewer. Oppenheimer too is fueled by complex figures, yet seldom amazes, and it shouldn’t really — this has got to be the most oxymoronic spectacle to have ever somehow claimed IMAX theaters for three weeks, now extended to five in the wake of sold out screenings across the limited 70 mm IMAX showings around the country.
Apart from Memento, in his mindfuck mode (Nolan’s B&B) he can't resist some degree of science fiction (The Prestige falling on the end of the scale) and personally I have a soft spot for Tenet, a newly forming weaker preference towards Inception and remaining indifference toward Interstellar outside of the big bits. Then there’s a trilogy of Batman flicks of varying quality (if The Dark Knight Rises ain't at the bottom I don't know what is) and otherwise the odd duck Insomnia (remade from the 1997 Norwegian film) and his micro-budget debut Following — even with only 6,000 pounds at his expense, already he could mix up narrative continuity like he was being graded. Now the newest established alcove (grand-scale WWII dad movies) at best feels like late Spielberg, maybe more Lincoln than Munich, only with a little more gusto seeing as Nolan hasn't substantially slipped from his prime.
I can’t wait for some Inglourious Basterds comparison about how Nolan was actually thumbing noses at his audience for caring more about great balls of fire than the political fallout of its consequences — for Nolan the futurist, a diabolical cine-prophet of sorts who HAS to warn us against our less savory instincts, it makes perfect sense. “I must tell them they’re killing the earth (Interstellar) and subsequent generations will want to kill us all because that’s how SHITTY we are in the present (Tenet).” And I don’t see many hopeful antidotes from his WW2 fare, just grief, guilt, struggle and secondhand human-made horrors beyond our comprehension. Dunkirk witnessed such things in action, war’s sheer brutality and the mad scramble for survival — though the functionally near-enough-to-silent film felt pretty formally radical at the time (considering the separate irony of escaping the summer heat to watch young men burned alive in oily waters) it is a more traditional Nolan spectacle next to Oppenheimer’s seismic talkie.
Despite such straight-on, wiki-cribbing historical communication, Nolan’s penchant for puzzles and paradoxes still drives him to eerie places where ethics now fully take the place of heady thrills, akin to the moral quagmires in the back half of The Dark Knight. Oppenheimer also reminds one of Dunkirk’s three-fold perspective — land, air and sea now swapped for the bomb’s construction at Los Alamos, the security clearance deposition and the Lewis Strauss (a Supporting Actor nomination-ready RDJ) portion of events. Like Tenet, the script is a cascade of information as exposited by an enormous, talented cast and sold with thrifty, convincing production design in step with staggering large format photography, only this time Nolan seems to be challenging the notion of the summer movie even more than usual by not even trying to crowd-please outside of seemingly inescapable, patronizingly nonchalant references to obvious historical moments and figures (“some guy named… John F. Kennedy Jr…”) — I really would’ve been surprised if Nolan sidestepped this resilient cliché of the biopic genre, since making his audience feel intelligent is his one regular sin. “You know analysis?" inquires Pugh’s character, impressed when Robert J brings up the two most famous psychologists ever. Yes, please give me good pats on the head for being a smart boy… God those sex scenes suck (and not even in the good way).
Maybe that’s why I like Tenet since it specifically makes its audience feel stupid. Something as relatively wordy and unexciting as Oppenheimer playing so well in the ideal mid-July blockbuster slot up against his former steady studio WB, the other half of the "Barbenheimer" craze, is almost wilder than Barbie becoming the year’s most popular film — but as average audiences learn what counterprogramming is, Nolan can enjoy steady success with Universal doing, uh, Lord know what, whatever he pleases. My hopes are on something just a little lighter. Lately he manages to handle emotion by ignoring it, with as little emphasis in Oppenheimer as in Tenet’s emotionally scrubbed surface. I’ve barely felt anything watching a Nolan movie, apart from the losses of The Prestige and The Dark Knight, Michael Caine’s fine acting in The Dark Knight Rises and the decades-of-messages moment from Interstellar. When feelings pop up in his cinematic exercises — like the emotional cores of Inception and Interstellar bordering too close to ham to be some universal expression — they become hard to grapple with, since his moral grayscaling can be so forced if skillfully so.
Cillian Murphy should hopefully, deservedly, take Best Actor for his own since he capably holds the entire picture together — he’s such an unembellished performer and they’re just lucky his high, prominent cheekbones don’t look like he lost twenty pounds to match a certain likeness. The Peaky Blinders star is at his apex in this sixth turn with Nolan, his best yet in more a culmination of his talent than Nolan’s efforts honestly. Matt Damon is perfectly suited to the intensity and comedy of his key role as General Leslie Groves, and from everyone down to Josh Peck — Jason Clarke and RDJ are imposing forces — the multitudes of performers are utilized efficiently, particularly Josh Hartnett, as Ernest Lawrence, who gives the most unexpectedly strong turn. Distracting or dissolving, my favorite cameo was Gary Oldman (a casting surprise, buried under more makeup than as Churchill in Darkest Hour) as President Hoover putting the titular “crybaby” in his place and his ego in check. I have no notes for Emily Blunt, Benny Safdie, Dane Dehaan, Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh or most anyone else.
Regarding influences, primarily Oppenheimer smacks of JFK, Oliver Stone’s masterpiece as far as I’m concerned — measured, purposeful use of different film stocks and lenses, an information-dense, sprawling three hour runtime, a pivotal, controversial 20th century event, a massively recognizable cast of dozens of recognizable actors nonetheless attuned to their historical counterparts free with countless names to keep track of, time-jumping political subjectivity and, as Nolan admits himself, the feeling of an action movie without any action at all. Stone’s movies are sweaty, starkly stitched, fluid and feral, but for all the practical effort behind Nolan’s films, his oeuvre looks and feels very clean. I love both his directors of photography, Hoytema and Pfister, as both have a cool, clinical look matching Nolan’s creative inclinations.
For actual biopics, this is like his Schindler only surpassingly more escapist (and almost as likely to win Best Picture), like if Malcolm X made it to the real mainstream, another story structured around an interview/deposition oh so close to that of Citizen Kane and The Social Network. But then, next to Zodiac, one of my favorite pieces of historical dramatization, we have a similarly trifold biopic. 12 Years a Slave bears near enough unrelenting subjectivity, and Bernie is also worthy of a seat at this table for bending your empathy all about. To be gentler in contrast, Oppenheimer is The Theory of Everything if it was directed by a God or something, since it’s not easy to express scientific or intellectual inspiration and stimulation, witnessing the inside of Robert J’s brain imagining the infinitesimal. Even so, the basic editing tricks and practical visual beauty still result in a pretty blandly burdened genius. What I hate about biopics is whether you mystify or demystify, you’re really just doing nothing unless you’re Todd Haynes getting expertly, extraordinarily experimental like he did with Bobby Dylan’s life in I’m Not There. You need to reflect a person’s soul, not offer the music video of their life, and sometimes Oppie is like Elvis with less glitter.
Elsewhere, Nolan’s latest composer Ludvig Göransson is killing it, or at least beating up your eardrums real good, the chugging strings reminiscent of Johnny Greenwood’s There Will Be Blood, a noticeable contrast to the rubbery electronic rushes of Tenet’s tremors, the first change in Nolan’s music makers outside of Hans Zimmer in some time. Editing (courtesy of Noah Baumbach collaborator Jennifer Lame, also only her second with Nolan) and Ludwig alone have to compensate for his stubborn use of IMAX 70 mm on a film built on shallow focus closeups and plain interiors. The new MidWestern feel is just another TWBB comparison, as is the structure built around one huge burst of action. Like PTA only later in the respective career, this could be Nolan also getting his authoritative technical epic masterpiece out of the way just for posterity and critical catnip.
Hoytema, too, is murdering it, enough to mention him in the opening lines. Color is subjective bias, but then the first ever IMAX B&W film stock is gorgeous enough to behold even if I’m mostly beholding RDJ with a cosmetic receding hairline. Every establishing shot is incredible and natural lighting seems to be the default unless otherwise undoable. The focus can become a sliver deep — the psychological insides turn cosmic then toxic, especially in the crazy auditorium sequence when the clarity is so shallow it could get you nauseous regardless of the shocking jump scare equivalencies, starkly juxtaposed sound and most aggressively spelled out thematics. When he’s stepping in the ashes of imaginary people, OK WE GET IT; between two shots one woman expresses both the pure agony and the ecstasy of the situation, WE G- you get it. All the internalized style is drawn and suggested with a heavy hand.
Obviously the build-up to the trinity sequence is masterful, even more spectacularly titillating than the sequence itself, that’s how I know it’s good. It’s an uncharacteristically un-cinematic reward BEFORE the long-winded fall into committee-selected hell, as the last hour is an assault on Oppenheimer and same goes for the audience, forced to sit with it all after the uranium load is blown — I get it structurally and I didn’t feel my packed IMAX audience squirming, but I love subjecting the public to such deliberate pacing and severe topics, relatively unaltered for base pleasure.
As with Tenet, oh Lord I can’t wait for the subtitles — here the script is so particularly name-dense and ratatat that when his actors mumble for the sake of realism you must resign yourself to waiting for another watch to understand more. Too bad there’s no closed captioned IMAX. But concerning Nolan's claims there’s not one CG shot in the film (at first thought, not too unimaginable), I must ask: Do you happen to have B-roll of the earth’s atmosphere igniting on fire, a view from space? I’d kill to see how you didn't use CGI there, BUSTER.
“OH NO THE GOVERNMENT I LOVE AND TRUST USED ME!” <Oppie here, AITA?> If art is suggestion Nolan has a hard time not getting right to the point. This movie’s biggest crime, as aforementioned, are a few too many condescending cues for audience recognition and even more obvious nudges flat out telling you EXACTLY HOW YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO FEEL, making Oppenheimer a thematically redundant debate of conscience that for all the interesting angles fails to function as exactly intellectually evenhanded. When Alden Ehrenreich is smirking, you’re allowed to too! So much of the forced dramatic irony (like the ignorant aside about vacationing in Kyoto, supposedly improvised, which without would have been colder, scarier and more efficient) unravels the film’s otherwise strong commitment to candor both subjective and the legacy gathered altogether outside oneself.
Oppenheimer is epic and intimate, a curiously ironic extravaganza but a marginally magnificent character study. Yet for all its flourishes like Malick-esque practical snapshots of natural phenomena or Nolan’s first onscreen tits, Oppenheimer somehow almost overextends its insistence as the driest, most verbose slice of summer entertainment you could expect; it’s possibly heaven for critics and film nerds and probably living hell for certain casuals.
What new niche should Nolan carve out next? Maybe come back to WWII in 20 years, not to discredit Robert J. as one of the most ripe recent figures to pluck from, but just cause Chris has just made the best Dad movie ever doesn’t mean his boomer mode should become a default setting. Personally speaking, please get back to the action schlock if you don’t mind; he’s never gonna touch supers again but Tenet is recent enough evidence that he’s still a kid inside with sensory, Spielbergian energy. I’m fond of where he’s at as a filmmaker, his style has only become more cutting, comprehensive, classical and uncompromising, even if I would appreciate more gambles of craft or conceptual Hail Mary’s akin to his last few efforts.
And as much as one can critique his editing style, Oppenheimer is the result of a dozen movies of practice, and it’s sometimes very impressive how he mathematically dolls out information, character and story, finding a way to render monumental world history all his own, even when the movie carries on most like a neverending trailer. Nolan is an important director for our time, a household name with considerable integrity for the form, one of if not THE best mainstream filmmaker. So Oppenheimer may be just another step in a sensational career — as its own thing, it’s a bitter pill, an excruciatingly well-performed, formidably inhabited kind of anti-blockbuster.
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One briefing
3 (out of 4)
Oh God, it’s here! My most anticipated of the year! The seventh Mission: Impossible movie is also the pandemic production most majorly fucked by circumstance at the height of COVID’s complications, hence why the usually moderate big budget numbers of around 150 million somehow doubled. The inflated costs were largely thanks to insurance backfiring on them, until a payout of over 50 million after Paramount sued said insurance company, which I’m sure was welcome financial padding for a series’ worst box office performance apart from M:i:III. With the self-reflexive ethos of figuring it out along the way, it’s ironic (in such a blindsiding, unprecedented global situation ultimately affording more time to work through everything) that Dead Reckoning's juggling act rubs off just like you’d expect from this backwards, baffling, “on the fly” fashion of moviemaking.
For a film guaranteed to draw varied reactions from fans as well as unanimous fawning by critics, I can’t help but find myself in the middle, for the most part titillated as every Mission film (in their distinct color wheel of action spy mechanics) manages to do at some point, for a stretch or two of testosterone transcendence at the very least. It’s funny, the ripples of reference here are in step with the franchise’s general black sheep — unless you really hate III, it’s vying for worst no doubt — John Woo’s Mission: Impossible II from 2000. Beyond Haley Atwell’s stubbornly swollen role as Grace supplanting Rebecca Ferguson (sorry, you’re too busy with Dune and Silo) as the latest leading lady of Mission, echoing Thandie Newton’s former character (also a capricious, English-accented thief, and forgotten Hunt love affair), Dead Reckoning too saves its most hysterically staggering sequence for dead last, subbing jousting motorcycles for tumbling train carriages.
Let’s just get all the pent up praise out of my system, if only that could mean the rest of the review; the action in the train sequence's final minutes is the mighty, sometimes mesmerizing spectacle I hoped for when citing Buster Keaton’s The General as classic, gobsmacking century-old inspiration. Director Christopher McQuarrie’s previous two Missions peak in the first act, first Rogue Nation’s classy, Hitchcock-inspired opera assassination interlude tops anything afterwards — in fact the original ending was so bad they had to delay the movie six months just to rectify it, even though the re-shot finale as it stands still sucks so God knows what they had prior. Next Fallout’s brilliant multipart cold open, absolutely gut-busting opening titles (a most wonderful montage and rendition on the musical theme, the best of a series staple) and one-two punch of the HALO jump and bathroom fight, respectively, were simply too breathtakingly conceived and spectacularly executed to care equally about the third act helicopter pursuit or an elaborate London rooftop sprint session, great as those bits are.
Out front for part seven (Part One), the Abu Dhabi airport segment still has breezy, fun, classic MI magic — it's a simple mission gone awry with puzzles and overlapping stakes, naturally making room for Simon Pegg’s Benji disarming nuclear devices in his own sidepocket subplot, even if I wish it didn’t just wrap up with “abort!” and bookin' into fadeout. But there’s also incredibly tragic momentum and subdued romance haunting this film as we enter the party sequence, and some of Lorne Balfe’s compositions (building upon his big, brassy sound in Fallout) sell an ultimately funereal, despondent, desperate and visually marvelous passage — as this second act closes, we’re gifted with some of the most kinetic, killer shots of the whole legacy. The quiet rooftop scene (and its mirrored moment a little later), shared by Cruise's Ethan Hunt and Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust, is lovely as scenery and character moments, even as it reduces dialogue to a minimum. Pom Klementieff is magnificent in a noteworthy supporting performance, like the best Bond henchman you’ve never seen, the one part of the cast, returning or brand new, that sticks in your mind and makes the film more its own. I will also defend Ethan’s in-camera sleight of hand without hesitation, even if Cruise probably couldn’t impress a ten-year old on command.
But the gripes start to gain ground all too soon. Even from afar I didn’t care about no bike stunt in Dead Reck, and thank God for that — apart from comically dumb excuses for the actual moment’s buildup, there is no real pay off. Oh my Lord, those editing inserts of Ilsa and Grace (and the random woman from Ethan’s past this movie didn’t have or make time to explore) right before the jump is just so FUCKING OBTUSE, like just in case the emotional stakes behind the central marketing gimmick weren’t clear, here’s a last second nudge. You, YES YOU TOM CRUISE alone are responsible for every sexy lady’s life, how very fucking noble… Can we see some fat loser become involved in the IMF to see just how much Ethan REALLY cares about “those we’ll never meet” or those he “hardly know[s]”?
For as carefully, rigorously rehearsed and filmed as it is, that primary stunt features pretty little technical wizbang or cinematic fortitude outside of Tom pulling a chute, something they spoiled at the end of the featurette released before Avatar: The Way of Water. The subsequent train set piece, (especially once things get to Buster-levels of gratifying showmanship and, save a few flourishes, tactile, old-fashioned thrills for modern audiences) is still stuck between two examples of cutting away from moments too treacherous to film or perhaps not interesting enough to justify showing? To not get too caught up in the action, this third act has pretty dazzling fireworks if you can ignore deus ex “paraCruise” and deus ex Paris and her wavering wounds. These films can occasionally make you mad with their incompleteness, with what happens offscreen, and now Dead Reckoning unfortunately joins parts five and three for painfully pussying out and cutting up those corners. Dating back to Mission: Impossible III’s God-awful decision to focus on Maggie Q’s pet song rather than Hunt stealing the MacGuffin of the GODDAMN movie, McQ carries on the annoyingly sinful legacy with that late brawl in Rogue Nation in addition to the quick cut from just after the main stunt (that poster-prepped plane hang) right into the title sequence. Fallout doesn’t cheat (in the same way) but DR Part One certainly does in just a few crucial scenes apparently proving too impossible even for this crazy, competent film crew.
It can be hard to even criticize a director so unwilling to be authentic and eager to criticize auteur theory because the literal translation is ‘shtick,’ which would be reductive of so many valuable filmmakers more worth their salt than McQuarrie, who is quoted as saying, rather cleverly, “I’m adamantly anti-style, I do not ever wish to develop one because I don’t want to be trapped in it… I’m perfectly comfortable with the fact that people think I’m bland.” Well, your shtick is Cruise flicks, and his commitment to Mission’s usual stylistic shakeup every installment has forced mister “I’m too real to be boiled down” to be some jack of all trades, master of fun. I now regret becoming more closely familiar with McQ in rewatching his Oscar-winning screenplay unfold in The Usual Suspects and feeling out more layers of the era’s snarky, suffocatingly snappy machismo. I’ve also realized how much he relies on wowing you with simple situations drowned in convolution for better or worse — for me Suspects is one of those twist films that is so much lesser when you know it, and honest to God probably doesn’t make any sense at all. As far as 1995 Kevin Spacey shock endings, I’ll take Se7en every day of the week.
McQ’s proper directorial debut The Way of the Gun is some wannabe Tarantino/Butch Cassidy crap if I’ve ever seen it, with only a few nice turns of dialogue among the puffed up, masquerading monologues, voice-overs and tough guy talk — somehow they say ‘faggot’ a dozen times in the first few minutes and find time for a Persona reference before the first act is over. Chris can be such a strange cocktail of bluffing modern edge and classical updates. The fact that he’s been Cruise’s shadow and confidant since Valkyrie, which he also wrote, has been a blessed kinda curse. Obviously for Top Gun: Maverick it worked wonders, and I’m sure he’ll take more credit for Edge of Tomorrow than he’s owed just as I'm sure he'll never remind us he helped write 2017's The Mummy. For Dead Reckoning, like the worst of MCQ’s era, there’s a little too much showboating. Similar to how Fallout teases so many things that don’t happen (the great film’s Achilles heel), Henry Czerny's returning Eugene Kittredge narrates lines like, “the world doesn’t know if yet, but they’re counting on you” and “the stakes of this mission are higher than ever." Then there's gold like, “Your usual rogue behavior will not be tolerated.” LMAO yeah don't you DARE question what you're stealing from us, uh WHY tell him that? What do you think is gonna happen next, idiot?
Which brings me to the mystery of audience scores and screen testing. For me this film proved that sometimes the audience can’t tell you everything in need of “fixing” in your movie. If it starts with you and then you allow strangers to basically sculpt and edit through thorough tweaking, it’s basically freeing you from taking charge of the most painful creative choices, like you put off proofreading your own movie. If I happen to admit some creative license, McQuarrie is a ruthless editor but curiously it’s the action here that reads as though its been delicately trimmed and the exposition that’s been insultingly pronounced and unkempt. You had to spend countless minutes explaining to audiences in 2023 what AI is… See this is where I miss the threat of nukes. You don’t have to explain a nuke, hence maybe why parts four and six are so efficient and economical.
The movie also rubs wrong on the concept of choice, idiotically retconning Ethan’s backstory to make him some criminal essentially strong-armed into shadow government service (along with most of the IMF presumably, hey remember when he was just an instructor in III?) to then have Benji later say “we’re here because we want to be,” what, when the alternative is jail? Are there honestly no working stiffs at the Impossible Mission Force? Grace’s rather generic characterization also does this movie no favors. The thief shit is so basic, and they so easily exploit pickpocketing/put-pocketing faux-cleverness about 14 times… Really Atwell just becomes the latest version of the “new guy” figure, like Jeremy Renner’s Brandt (or Pegg’s Benji) in Ghost Prot or Henry Cavill’s Walker in Fallout… the embarrassingly ill-equipped or unfamiliar audience surrogate who still has to be a total badass on demand. This woman can’t drive but somehow serious knife skills come with lifting people’s wallets. Really there would be no issue if it didn’t seem as if Grace was written specifically to unseat Ilsa, which brings me to perhaps the touchiest topic of the narrative.
After three movies with no kissy kissy between Hunt and Faust, their relationship became an impressive implied romantic connection built more on antiquated restraint than anything. However, given Grace’s semi-christening after Ilsa’s death (to save HER LIFE) I’m supposed to somehow feel even more special that Ethan cares about Grace’s life just as much DESPITE barely knowing her, OH FUCK OFF… You know whose life meant something to us? Here’s my problem with McQuarrie: when asked about potentially killing off Ilsa, he effectively told the interviewer in question he would never build up a character and relationship so much just for nothing... Well, intentional or not, that is exactly what this feels like, like Faust's fresh fridging was just an excuse to let Hunt be emo for a minute. Until the full scope is revealed in Part Two of Dead Reckoning, supposedly due out in less than a year (should SAG strikes not stall things further, oh wait), I won’t know whether I’m watching Cruise struggle to convey grievous shock or it’s just McQuarrie playing pointless tricks on the audience. Whatever the resolution, no matter what they do, whether she’s resurrected again like denial-ridden theorists believe or she’s just dead and that’s that… it’s always gonna seem swindling.
Big decision deaths included, I adore the music, the symmetry, the beautiful superimposition transitions and searing visuals of the post-party sprints and scuffles. Balfe certainly made the most of it (“Chasing Grace,” the best of the newly iterated variations on Lalo Schifrin's classic riff, is one hell of a track) just as he did with Fallout, intending to take Mission to epic rather than episodic places. The digital photography still looks fine alongside a history of Panavision’s rewards, and even without a substantial player in cinematography (the great Robert Elswit for four and five and Rob Hardy delivering possibly the series’ best palette in the green, orange, purple-tinged Fallout) Dead Reckoning looks classic, bright, visually active and suffused with wonderful primary colors, thanks Fraser Taggart! Just like Rogue Nation, while not wholly distinct from the others the look is more than agreeable, though obviously with dutch angles galore there’s more than enough homage to the original 1996 film, even without Czerny’s Kittridge and a pronounced moving train set piece for the final reel.
We’re fools for expecting better than Fallout, yet John Wick Chapter 4 bested 3 — I never thought it would be Keanu trouncing all over Cruise, but that’s how the current year is turning out. But, the lengthy Rome sequence is reasonably good fun, probably the best car chase of the franchise, full of the comic action energy that doesn’t always compute when Tom is otherwise trying so hard to be grave and intimidating. Cruise has still got it, never lost it, though regardless of the blessings of Xenu he's starting to look a little long in tooth, and I can't be too pleased that Hunt's oaths of friendship and selflessness are exploited as an excuse to accept Atwell as the abruptly new second bill figure. In anticipation, I dearly wished for Hayley not to steal show (my most fervent desire after the train sequence delivering) — she didn’t exactly but the film is too painstakingly written around her, talented as she is. Klementieff is the addition we actually need, so thank God for that stupid pulse at the end because both parts of Dead Reckoning need her.
Ferguson goes out swinging but her presence here is mostly being dead, or pretend dead and passing off some lady bounty hunter as her own corpse, somehow. The last of the strong supporting female players is Vanessa Kirby, unfortunately playing some weird parody of her character from the last one — the White Widow is a cartoon here but Kirby, especially performing as Atwell under the mask for the train mission, clocks in an exceptional turn regardless. Pegg is still the essential funny man, and while I would say Ving Rhames’ Luther is possibly more charming than he’s been in decades, his delivery (divorced from the fact that he’s fed some terrible lines) is occasionally abysmal, and his departure from the story near the conclusion is comical. I wanna love Shea Wigham but his character is far too much the typical snappy opposing force that becomes a general ally (Angela Bassett in six, Alec Baldwin in five, Vladimir Mashkov in four) and it becomes exponentially more repetitive watching him show up as the pointless spice of conflict for every sequence only to do and add nothing, and it’s a shame Greg Tarzan Davis is part of the same problem.
If Part Two can just get the ball rolling and temper the tonal whiplash, I can forgive the ways in which Dead Reckoning Part One can’t escape the curse of its story-sundering ilk. Even Spider-Verse (now officially the true summer spectacle unless Barbie and Oppenheimer are mucho masterpieces) has cliffhanger issues, which this movie narrowly avoids. It’s just, with room to breathe, Mission 7 doesn’t really pad out the time with much else other than establishing comic book-level sci-fi stakes, like a more condescending exposition scene from any Terminator movie. It’s not the concepts of Dead Reckoning that are tough to grasp, just the plot. I’ll be damned if I can exactly chart the paths of both keys, since we skip the very start of their journey from beneath arctic ice right off the bat after the white-knuckle submarine cold open, the only moment when the scope of the film seems truly great.
I don’t care how this performs financially because Dead Reckoning Part Two is already halfway filmed, and, at least until they deflated any idea of this serving as swan song for Ethan Hunt during the later leg of this press tour, I don’t have any stake in Cruise’s personal investment. He should definitely stop after the next and focus on something new, even if that means going to space for Elon Musk, sounds about right; McQ will be right there for whatever “gnarly” R-rated fare they’ve up their sleeve and beyond, unless I’m speaking about the same project.
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (sure you don’t want one more subtitle?) is middle of the road for perhaps the most exceptional comeback franchise of all time, which means it’s still a pretty fantastic film-median. Almost no other series so longstanding retains qualities this consistent and there’s no argument there no matter how iffy certain choices of Dead Reckoning play out. Whereas most films with enough sequels to build a popular history revolve around trying to recreate or escape the shadow of some initial classic (Die Hard, Raiders, Star Wars, Jurassic Park you literally name it) Mission: Impossible felt like that for the initial trilogy and has since reached for them stars and substantiated the whole collection with each passing picture. After what is now considered a pop-classic despite the mixed reviews back in ’96 for De Palma’s cold, paranoid original, and fresh tries in Woo and J J Abrams' attempts, the stylistic diversity is now up to how McQuarrie handles things, a lot like David Yates taking over all of Harry Potter halfway through for Order of the Phoenix after a similar run of varying directors laying down their idiosyncratic stamp. Fallout (like Half-Blood Prince’s impressive display next to Order’s new lows) redeemed Rogue Nation’s few failings, but paralleling Deathly Hallows: Part One, Dead Reckoning Part One is not so much truncated but, whether or not it’s in service of a future, overarching, five-hour climax, Cruise and McQ make sure there’s no “wait you’re kidding it’s over?” moment.
Then there’s Bond, which obviously has more classics (and over three times the number of entries) but unless you took the initial run of Connery and Lazenby, Cruise destroys just about every other 007. Especially when you take the Bond releases most adjacent to Mission (other than Casino Royale thrashing Mission: Impossible III in ’06) Hunt wins every time, and yes Ghost Protocol is better than Skyfall thanks for checking. Mission made the Craig Bond movies look like the deconstructed, de-fantasized disappointments they largely are — Dead Reckoning oddly enough has the technical craft of No Time to Die with as many baffling little late-career decisions, although the potentially penultimate Mission doesn’t fall apart but rather comes together by the end of Act Two.
In sum I’m glad the film at least tries to feel different, that’s all we should ask and expect from McQ. It’s hard to be the guy where people expect just the same but brand new every time, and crazy enough this movie is a variety pack within a series spanning nearly every form the modern spy blockbuster could take from Bourne-like grit to Spy Kids slapstick. Cruise’s goal is always the same: every Mission is to entertain, and each movie is a calculated, reactive adjustment from the last movie. That’s what sucks for Dead Reckoning, having to pivot from how comprehensively amazing Fallout was — the question of “How do you top that?” has been met with McQuarrie seemingly shrugging as if to say “I have no clue.” He and Cruise supposedly whisper to each other, “We can do better,” as each of their projects premieres. But what will you do when you’ve already bounced off your own ceiling and found out exactly what you’re capable of reaching and/or grasping?
How could they know to split this epic up, I wonder, when they haven’t even worked out the fucking ENDING?? Frankly I can’t figure out how there’s “so much story” demanding two installments when you don’t even know where your current crazy train begins and ends. It just doesn’t make any sense, especially since McQ also confirmed the climax of Part Two is already filmed? Why does it feel like this crew prides themselves on movie magic improv so much so that they’ll manufacture a little extra just for good behind-the-scenes material and quick, hyperbolic talking points for the sycophantic press?
There are the really good FILMS in the series (1996, Ghost Protocol and Fallout), pieces of work playing out to near-constant delight; then there are the entries you could boil down to its best clips in a YouTube playlist (II, III and Rogue Nation, though each are strong action movies within their respective eras). Dead Reckoning Part One is smack dab in the middle, finding Cruise naturally near-disaster, just about running right the fuck off those rails where I’ll want nothing more than the best scenes and to hell with the rest. Dead Reckoning Part Two has some heavy lifting to do, just when it seemed Cruise was having a profound resurgence in relevancy in the wake of Maverick’s massive win. Cruise is bruised but not beaten, and perhaps we’ll see him make ANOTHER comeback in 2025, ideally with some Ghost Protocol-level entry legitimizing the collection once again. That or DR Part Two will be the most underwhelming EPIC CONCLUSION to any recent film series outside of YA crap.
This is the last line I could have ever possibly wanted to pen in this review: It was no Fallout.
Oh God, it’s here! My most anticipated of the year! The seventh Mission: Impossible movie is also the pandemic production most majorly fucked by circumstance at the height of COVID’s complications, hence why the usually moderate big budget numbers of around 150 million somehow doubled. The inflated costs were largely thanks to insurance backfiring on them, until a payout of over 50 million after Paramount sued said insurance company, which I’m sure was welcome financial padding for a series’ worst box office performance apart from M:i:III. With the self-reflexive ethos of figuring it out along the way, it’s ironic (in such a blindsiding, unprecedented global situation ultimately affording more time to work through everything) that Dead Reckoning's juggling act rubs off just like you’d expect from this backwards, baffling, “on the fly” fashion of moviemaking.
For a film guaranteed to draw varied reactions from fans as well as unanimous fawning by critics, I can’t help but find myself in the middle, for the most part titillated as every Mission film (in their distinct color wheel of action spy mechanics) manages to do at some point, for a stretch or two of testosterone transcendence at the very least. It’s funny, the ripples of reference here are in step with the franchise’s general black sheep — unless you really hate III, it’s vying for worst no doubt — John Woo’s Mission: Impossible II from 2000. Beyond Haley Atwell’s stubbornly swollen role as Grace supplanting Rebecca Ferguson (sorry, you’re too busy with Dune and Silo) as the latest leading lady of Mission, echoing Thandie Newton’s former character (also a capricious, English-accented thief, and forgotten Hunt love affair), Dead Reckoning too saves its most hysterically staggering sequence for dead last, subbing jousting motorcycles for tumbling train carriages.
Let’s just get all the pent up praise out of my system, if only that could mean the rest of the review; the action in the train sequence's final minutes is the mighty, sometimes mesmerizing spectacle I hoped for when citing Buster Keaton’s The General as classic, gobsmacking century-old inspiration. Director Christopher McQuarrie’s previous two Missions peak in the first act, first Rogue Nation’s classy, Hitchcock-inspired opera assassination interlude tops anything afterwards — in fact the original ending was so bad they had to delay the movie six months just to rectify it, even though the re-shot finale as it stands still sucks so God knows what they had prior. Next Fallout’s brilliant multipart cold open, absolutely gut-busting opening titles (a most wonderful montage and rendition on the musical theme, the best of a series staple) and one-two punch of the HALO jump and bathroom fight, respectively, were simply too breathtakingly conceived and spectacularly executed to care equally about the third act helicopter pursuit or an elaborate London rooftop sprint session, great as those bits are.
Out front for part seven (Part One), the Abu Dhabi airport segment still has breezy, fun, classic MI magic — it's a simple mission gone awry with puzzles and overlapping stakes, naturally making room for Simon Pegg’s Benji disarming nuclear devices in his own sidepocket subplot, even if I wish it didn’t just wrap up with “abort!” and bookin' into fadeout. But there’s also incredibly tragic momentum and subdued romance haunting this film as we enter the party sequence, and some of Lorne Balfe’s compositions (building upon his big, brassy sound in Fallout) sell an ultimately funereal, despondent, desperate and visually marvelous passage — as this second act closes, we’re gifted with some of the most kinetic, killer shots of the whole legacy. The quiet rooftop scene (and its mirrored moment a little later), shared by Cruise's Ethan Hunt and Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust, is lovely as scenery and character moments, even as it reduces dialogue to a minimum. Pom Klementieff is magnificent in a noteworthy supporting performance, like the best Bond henchman you’ve never seen, the one part of the cast, returning or brand new, that sticks in your mind and makes the film more its own. I will also defend Ethan’s in-camera sleight of hand without hesitation, even if Cruise probably couldn’t impress a ten-year old on command.
But the gripes start to gain ground all too soon. Even from afar I didn’t care about no bike stunt in Dead Reck, and thank God for that — apart from comically dumb excuses for the actual moment’s buildup, there is no real pay off. Oh my Lord, those editing inserts of Ilsa and Grace (and the random woman from Ethan’s past this movie didn’t have or make time to explore) right before the jump is just so FUCKING OBTUSE, like just in case the emotional stakes behind the central marketing gimmick weren’t clear, here’s a last second nudge. You, YES YOU TOM CRUISE alone are responsible for every sexy lady’s life, how very fucking noble… Can we see some fat loser become involved in the IMF to see just how much Ethan REALLY cares about “those we’ll never meet” or those he “hardly know[s]”?
For as carefully, rigorously rehearsed and filmed as it is, that primary stunt features pretty little technical wizbang or cinematic fortitude outside of Tom pulling a chute, something they spoiled at the end of the featurette released before Avatar: The Way of Water. The subsequent train set piece, (especially once things get to Buster-levels of gratifying showmanship and, save a few flourishes, tactile, old-fashioned thrills for modern audiences) is still stuck between two examples of cutting away from moments too treacherous to film or perhaps not interesting enough to justify showing? To not get too caught up in the action, this third act has pretty dazzling fireworks if you can ignore deus ex “paraCruise” and deus ex Paris and her wavering wounds. These films can occasionally make you mad with their incompleteness, with what happens offscreen, and now Dead Reckoning unfortunately joins parts five and three for painfully pussying out and cutting up those corners. Dating back to Mission: Impossible III’s God-awful decision to focus on Maggie Q’s pet song rather than Hunt stealing the MacGuffin of the GODDAMN movie, McQ carries on the annoyingly sinful legacy with that late brawl in Rogue Nation in addition to the quick cut from just after the main stunt (that poster-prepped plane hang) right into the title sequence. Fallout doesn’t cheat (in the same way) but DR Part One certainly does in just a few crucial scenes apparently proving too impossible even for this crazy, competent film crew.
It can be hard to even criticize a director so unwilling to be authentic and eager to criticize auteur theory because the literal translation is ‘shtick,’ which would be reductive of so many valuable filmmakers more worth their salt than McQuarrie, who is quoted as saying, rather cleverly, “I’m adamantly anti-style, I do not ever wish to develop one because I don’t want to be trapped in it… I’m perfectly comfortable with the fact that people think I’m bland.” Well, your shtick is Cruise flicks, and his commitment to Mission’s usual stylistic shakeup every installment has forced mister “I’m too real to be boiled down” to be some jack of all trades, master of fun. I now regret becoming more closely familiar with McQ in rewatching his Oscar-winning screenplay unfold in The Usual Suspects and feeling out more layers of the era’s snarky, suffocatingly snappy machismo. I’ve also realized how much he relies on wowing you with simple situations drowned in convolution for better or worse — for me Suspects is one of those twist films that is so much lesser when you know it, and honest to God probably doesn’t make any sense at all. As far as 1995 Kevin Spacey shock endings, I’ll take Se7en every day of the week.
McQ’s proper directorial debut The Way of the Gun is some wannabe Tarantino/Butch Cassidy crap if I’ve ever seen it, with only a few nice turns of dialogue among the puffed up, masquerading monologues, voice-overs and tough guy talk — somehow they say ‘faggot’ a dozen times in the first few minutes and find time for a Persona reference before the first act is over. Chris can be such a strange cocktail of bluffing modern edge and classical updates. The fact that he’s been Cruise’s shadow and confidant since Valkyrie, which he also wrote, has been a blessed kinda curse. Obviously for Top Gun: Maverick it worked wonders, and I’m sure he’ll take more credit for Edge of Tomorrow than he’s owed just as I'm sure he'll never remind us he helped write 2017's The Mummy. For Dead Reckoning, like the worst of MCQ’s era, there’s a little too much showboating. Similar to how Fallout teases so many things that don’t happen (the great film’s Achilles heel), Henry Czerny's returning Eugene Kittredge narrates lines like, “the world doesn’t know if yet, but they’re counting on you” and “the stakes of this mission are higher than ever." Then there's gold like, “Your usual rogue behavior will not be tolerated.” LMAO yeah don't you DARE question what you're stealing from us, uh WHY tell him that? What do you think is gonna happen next, idiot?
Which brings me to the mystery of audience scores and screen testing. For me this film proved that sometimes the audience can’t tell you everything in need of “fixing” in your movie. If it starts with you and then you allow strangers to basically sculpt and edit through thorough tweaking, it’s basically freeing you from taking charge of the most painful creative choices, like you put off proofreading your own movie. If I happen to admit some creative license, McQuarrie is a ruthless editor but curiously it’s the action here that reads as though its been delicately trimmed and the exposition that’s been insultingly pronounced and unkempt. You had to spend countless minutes explaining to audiences in 2023 what AI is… See this is where I miss the threat of nukes. You don’t have to explain a nuke, hence maybe why parts four and six are so efficient and economical.
The movie also rubs wrong on the concept of choice, idiotically retconning Ethan’s backstory to make him some criminal essentially strong-armed into shadow government service (along with most of the IMF presumably, hey remember when he was just an instructor in III?) to then have Benji later say “we’re here because we want to be,” what, when the alternative is jail? Are there honestly no working stiffs at the Impossible Mission Force? Grace’s rather generic characterization also does this movie no favors. The thief shit is so basic, and they so easily exploit pickpocketing/put-pocketing faux-cleverness about 14 times… Really Atwell just becomes the latest version of the “new guy” figure, like Jeremy Renner’s Brandt (or Pegg’s Benji) in Ghost Prot or Henry Cavill’s Walker in Fallout… the embarrassingly ill-equipped or unfamiliar audience surrogate who still has to be a total badass on demand. This woman can’t drive but somehow serious knife skills come with lifting people’s wallets. Really there would be no issue if it didn’t seem as if Grace was written specifically to unseat Ilsa, which brings me to perhaps the touchiest topic of the narrative.
After three movies with no kissy kissy between Hunt and Faust, their relationship became an impressive implied romantic connection built more on antiquated restraint than anything. However, given Grace’s semi-christening after Ilsa’s death (to save HER LIFE) I’m supposed to somehow feel even more special that Ethan cares about Grace’s life just as much DESPITE barely knowing her, OH FUCK OFF… You know whose life meant something to us? Here’s my problem with McQuarrie: when asked about potentially killing off Ilsa, he effectively told the interviewer in question he would never build up a character and relationship so much just for nothing... Well, intentional or not, that is exactly what this feels like, like Faust's fresh fridging was just an excuse to let Hunt be emo for a minute. Until the full scope is revealed in Part Two of Dead Reckoning, supposedly due out in less than a year (should SAG strikes not stall things further, oh wait), I won’t know whether I’m watching Cruise struggle to convey grievous shock or it’s just McQuarrie playing pointless tricks on the audience. Whatever the resolution, no matter what they do, whether she’s resurrected again like denial-ridden theorists believe or she’s just dead and that’s that… it’s always gonna seem swindling.
Big decision deaths included, I adore the music, the symmetry, the beautiful superimposition transitions and searing visuals of the post-party sprints and scuffles. Balfe certainly made the most of it (“Chasing Grace,” the best of the newly iterated variations on Lalo Schifrin's classic riff, is one hell of a track) just as he did with Fallout, intending to take Mission to epic rather than episodic places. The digital photography still looks fine alongside a history of Panavision’s rewards, and even without a substantial player in cinematography (the great Robert Elswit for four and five and Rob Hardy delivering possibly the series’ best palette in the green, orange, purple-tinged Fallout) Dead Reckoning looks classic, bright, visually active and suffused with wonderful primary colors, thanks Fraser Taggart! Just like Rogue Nation, while not wholly distinct from the others the look is more than agreeable, though obviously with dutch angles galore there’s more than enough homage to the original 1996 film, even without Czerny’s Kittridge and a pronounced moving train set piece for the final reel.
We’re fools for expecting better than Fallout, yet John Wick Chapter 4 bested 3 — I never thought it would be Keanu trouncing all over Cruise, but that’s how the current year is turning out. But, the lengthy Rome sequence is reasonably good fun, probably the best car chase of the franchise, full of the comic action energy that doesn’t always compute when Tom is otherwise trying so hard to be grave and intimidating. Cruise has still got it, never lost it, though regardless of the blessings of Xenu he's starting to look a little long in tooth, and I can't be too pleased that Hunt's oaths of friendship and selflessness are exploited as an excuse to accept Atwell as the abruptly new second bill figure. In anticipation, I dearly wished for Hayley not to steal show (my most fervent desire after the train sequence delivering) — she didn’t exactly but the film is too painstakingly written around her, talented as she is. Klementieff is the addition we actually need, so thank God for that stupid pulse at the end because both parts of Dead Reckoning need her.
Ferguson goes out swinging but her presence here is mostly being dead, or pretend dead and passing off some lady bounty hunter as her own corpse, somehow. The last of the strong supporting female players is Vanessa Kirby, unfortunately playing some weird parody of her character from the last one — the White Widow is a cartoon here but Kirby, especially performing as Atwell under the mask for the train mission, clocks in an exceptional turn regardless. Pegg is still the essential funny man, and while I would say Ving Rhames’ Luther is possibly more charming than he’s been in decades, his delivery (divorced from the fact that he’s fed some terrible lines) is occasionally abysmal, and his departure from the story near the conclusion is comical. I wanna love Shea Wigham but his character is far too much the typical snappy opposing force that becomes a general ally (Angela Bassett in six, Alec Baldwin in five, Vladimir Mashkov in four) and it becomes exponentially more repetitive watching him show up as the pointless spice of conflict for every sequence only to do and add nothing, and it’s a shame Greg Tarzan Davis is part of the same problem.
If Part Two can just get the ball rolling and temper the tonal whiplash, I can forgive the ways in which Dead Reckoning Part One can’t escape the curse of its story-sundering ilk. Even Spider-Verse (now officially the true summer spectacle unless Barbie and Oppenheimer are mucho masterpieces) has cliffhanger issues, which this movie narrowly avoids. It’s just, with room to breathe, Mission 7 doesn’t really pad out the time with much else other than establishing comic book-level sci-fi stakes, like a more condescending exposition scene from any Terminator movie. It’s not the concepts of Dead Reckoning that are tough to grasp, just the plot. I’ll be damned if I can exactly chart the paths of both keys, since we skip the very start of their journey from beneath arctic ice right off the bat after the white-knuckle submarine cold open, the only moment when the scope of the film seems truly great.
I don’t care how this performs financially because Dead Reckoning Part Two is already halfway filmed, and, at least until they deflated any idea of this serving as swan song for Ethan Hunt during the later leg of this press tour, I don’t have any stake in Cruise’s personal investment. He should definitely stop after the next and focus on something new, even if that means going to space for Elon Musk, sounds about right; McQ will be right there for whatever “gnarly” R-rated fare they’ve up their sleeve and beyond, unless I’m speaking about the same project.
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (sure you don’t want one more subtitle?) is middle of the road for perhaps the most exceptional comeback franchise of all time, which means it’s still a pretty fantastic film-median. Almost no other series so longstanding retains qualities this consistent and there’s no argument there no matter how iffy certain choices of Dead Reckoning play out. Whereas most films with enough sequels to build a popular history revolve around trying to recreate or escape the shadow of some initial classic (Die Hard, Raiders, Star Wars, Jurassic Park you literally name it) Mission: Impossible felt like that for the initial trilogy and has since reached for them stars and substantiated the whole collection with each passing picture. After what is now considered a pop-classic despite the mixed reviews back in ’96 for De Palma’s cold, paranoid original, and fresh tries in Woo and J J Abrams' attempts, the stylistic diversity is now up to how McQuarrie handles things, a lot like David Yates taking over all of Harry Potter halfway through for Order of the Phoenix after a similar run of varying directors laying down their idiosyncratic stamp. Fallout (like Half-Blood Prince’s impressive display next to Order’s new lows) redeemed Rogue Nation’s few failings, but paralleling Deathly Hallows: Part One, Dead Reckoning Part One is not so much truncated but, whether or not it’s in service of a future, overarching, five-hour climax, Cruise and McQ make sure there’s no “wait you’re kidding it’s over?” moment.
Then there’s Bond, which obviously has more classics (and over three times the number of entries) but unless you took the initial run of Connery and Lazenby, Cruise destroys just about every other 007. Especially when you take the Bond releases most adjacent to Mission (other than Casino Royale thrashing Mission: Impossible III in ’06) Hunt wins every time, and yes Ghost Protocol is better than Skyfall thanks for checking. Mission made the Craig Bond movies look like the deconstructed, de-fantasized disappointments they largely are — Dead Reckoning oddly enough has the technical craft of No Time to Die with as many baffling little late-career decisions, although the potentially penultimate Mission doesn’t fall apart but rather comes together by the end of Act Two.
In sum I’m glad the film at least tries to feel different, that’s all we should ask and expect from McQ. It’s hard to be the guy where people expect just the same but brand new every time, and crazy enough this movie is a variety pack within a series spanning nearly every form the modern spy blockbuster could take from Bourne-like grit to Spy Kids slapstick. Cruise’s goal is always the same: every Mission is to entertain, and each movie is a calculated, reactive adjustment from the last movie. That’s what sucks for Dead Reckoning, having to pivot from how comprehensively amazing Fallout was — the question of “How do you top that?” has been met with McQuarrie seemingly shrugging as if to say “I have no clue.” He and Cruise supposedly whisper to each other, “We can do better,” as each of their projects premieres. But what will you do when you’ve already bounced off your own ceiling and found out exactly what you’re capable of reaching and/or grasping?
How could they know to split this epic up, I wonder, when they haven’t even worked out the fucking ENDING?? Frankly I can’t figure out how there’s “so much story” demanding two installments when you don’t even know where your current crazy train begins and ends. It just doesn’t make any sense, especially since McQ also confirmed the climax of Part Two is already filmed? Why does it feel like this crew prides themselves on movie magic improv so much so that they’ll manufacture a little extra just for good behind-the-scenes material and quick, hyperbolic talking points for the sycophantic press?
There are the really good FILMS in the series (1996, Ghost Protocol and Fallout), pieces of work playing out to near-constant delight; then there are the entries you could boil down to its best clips in a YouTube playlist (II, III and Rogue Nation, though each are strong action movies within their respective eras). Dead Reckoning Part One is smack dab in the middle, finding Cruise naturally near-disaster, just about running right the fuck off those rails where I’ll want nothing more than the best scenes and to hell with the rest. Dead Reckoning Part Two has some heavy lifting to do, just when it seemed Cruise was having a profound resurgence in relevancy in the wake of Maverick’s massive win. Cruise is bruised but not beaten, and perhaps we’ll see him make ANOTHER comeback in 2025, ideally with some Ghost Protocol-level entry legitimizing the collection once again. That or DR Part Two will be the most underwhelming EPIC CONCLUSION to any recent film series outside of YA crap.
This is the last line I could have ever possibly wanted to pen in this review: It was no Fallout.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny briefing
2 (out of 4)
“That belongs in a museum!” “So do you!”
This already self-reflexive exchange was uttered back in 1989, almost 35 years ago in the second scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, after a more modest, less CGI-glazed opening flashback/train sequence. Nearly 20 years later in 2008, Steven Spielberg’s next sunset sendoff cracked more than a few jokes at the whole crusted action hero premise, and funny enough Liam Neeson’s autumnal action movie takeoff was just around the corner. Though 2023's Dial of Destiny more than aggressively nudges the door to sequels just a crack open in case the new crop of senior citizens (since Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 15 years ago) shows up in scores, the fifth Jones flick appears to be the actual final bow, gliding by on recognizing its inherently insufficient nature.
All franchises allow the ability to see how the past informs the present and so forth, and with time travel and a de-aged Harrison Ford on the future-leaning side, I'll say when this movie goes for it, Dial of Destiny actually comes away looking surprisingly lean for geriatric fetch-questing — there’s the albeit minimal practical action, the fan-fondling, part soulless part soulful hum of its opening flashback set-piece (basically besting any of the movie’s wide midsection of countless chases), Ford putting in more effort than the paycheck (10-12 million) accounted for, not to mention an ending so batty and unconventionally poignant it could make you dangerously forgiving.
But other than a handful of saving graces, it’s a deplorable, desperate affair. The mimicry can really grate, as can Phoebe Waller-Bridge's second-billed smarm — I guess with figures in the shape of the father (Sean Connery) and the son (Shia Labeouf) done already, she had to play a smart-mouthed thief or some similarly stupid foil to Jones’ academic gruffness. There’s some small mustached boy (Ethann Isidore as Teddy Kumar) slipping into a stale reflection of Ke Huy Quan’s Short Round, John Rhys-Davies as both nostalgic and expositional emissary, and poor Karen Allen, as Marion Ravenwood, given a more suitable role of reconciliation than she did in the fourth film. Still, her cameo here is so miniaturized by melodramatic misuse, and maybe Mutt's offscreen death falls into the same sleazily effective category.
Mads Mikkelsen never fails to deliver great performances, even when typecast as villains as in Bond, the MCU and the last Fantastic Beasts. He’s a slab of grease and a trenchcoat away from looking just like the slimy weirdo sub-villain (Ronald Lacey as Arnold Ernst Toht) from Raiders anyway, albeit all the more handsome. With composure he carries the best of the legacy, slumming it with dignity a lot like Cate Blanchett in Crystal Skull. Antonio Banderas shows up to get shot, as does possibly the only black character in all of the series (government agent Mason played by Shaunette Renée Wilson). But Ford’s latest presence surprises me — he’s still an admirable, charismatic protagonist, even if they have to go out of their way to put Jones in controlled danger, or at least just enough so we're able to buy this indestructible 80-year-old handling two marathon’s worth of exercise. Unlike his Han Solo turns, Blade Runner 2049 and now Dial are late legacy offerings worth standing by. Oh and I must say, while the digital de-aging is leagues better when you compare this to say, Jeff Bridges in Disney’s own Tron: Legacy 13 years ago, movies like this and The Irishman haven’t solved deepfaking voice as well — I’ll buy a filtered youthful Indiana Jones when I’m not hearing the Harrison’s current gravelly, rumbling timbres.
Like The Last Crusade already found itself retreading, rooted in and restoring everything that worked in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (a considerably reactionary move to the mixed reception of the lesser, vividly campy, divergently freewheeling prequel Temple of Doom in 1984) Dial of Destiny wants to be one shiny greatest hits compilation, the best 290 million dollars can buy. There’s enough Nazi punching here to eclipse the series altogether, some traditionally nasty deaths, moments of decent, dusty stuntwork, even a surprising commitment to historical reverence, even if the expected, watered down Hollywood version of it. But they write Indy into way too many situations he just can’t get out of without distractingly choppy, blocky, dimwitted action editing, plus the globetrotting was never simply place/chase/exposition ad infinitum. All the while John Williams slaves away scrambling to make something triumphant out of this tame-by-default adventure escapism — when you can most proudly play the iconic theme as a CG younger Henry Jones runs across a train (in probably an entirely digital shot) or the real 80-year-old, just standing in a jeep, greets a soon to be deceased Banderas, that’s how you know your sequel is light on anything real, rough, brisk, or genuinely swashbuckling. In fact Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny scans more as distilled Disney-era Lucasfilm mediocrity for the majority of the runtime.
Oh God have I not mentioned James Mangold taking the reins from Spielberg?! I gotta be honest, his fluid, dynamic, old school temperament was already a good suit before it was trying to mime the Berg. To go backwards in Mangold’s journey to tentpole hackery, there was Ford vs Ferrari (he was ready for Dad movie material), Logan (aging sendoffs for iconic characters, nice), The Wolverine (the underrated, fun little blockbuster next to the overrated Logan), Knight and Day (passably outdated spy/romance silliness), 3:10 to Yuma (again bringing updated fervor to traditional formulas) and Walk the Line (ok this one’s pretty irrelevant) as his first big undertaking. 2003’s Identity is ludicrous, worth a look even just for a laugh. Even his stupid former time-traveling tale Kate and Leopold is a romcom treasure, and at least proof that the Back to the Future crap in Indy 5 was at least mildly practiced 20 years prior. What we see in Dial has little to do with the messy mental health drama Girl, Interrupted, the small town crime thriller Cop Land or Heavy's aptly titled existential weight.
Again, as far as movies that make me feel like I’m in the future (hey The Flash had TIME TRAVEL TOO), or rather just movies that should never have been made to begin with and know it (Solo for example), Dial didn’t make me feel too icky. It was always going to be a race to the bottom from the start but I think this movie’s respectable, bookended bravado was nearly enough to outdo Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s more baffling, awkward moments. Sure, Spielberg’s insurance (even in one of his worst by far) makes for the more complete, entertaining affair — all I can say is I found the way this handled time travel far more agreeable than how the last dealt with aliens, and hey I enjoy a good fridge-nuking so don’t call me a Lucas hater.
There’s an actual trilogy of Indiana Jones movies and now, at last, there’s a much worse, overlapping trilogy of parting flicks, and it’s so silly that we’re almost as desperate for it as Disney. Admissions of them not completely fucking this up aside (great job Kathleen Kennedy!), for as much Destiny wants to be this grand victory lap — as adventurous as advancing years allow — what works best is not the familiar but the gonzo gusto of its climactic destination. The final ten minutes of wacky, beautifully B-movie bliss finds the Temple of Doom/Crystal Skull strangeness winning the day and salvaging the movie, proving a remarkable movie often means more than playing it safe. It’s ironic that the simple, serialized feel of the series has slowly mutated into this tepid, seldom exciting epic when the older films never were and shouldn’t be so grandiose.
If adventure has a name it’s a 45-year-old Indiana Jones MAXIMUM. Speaking for millennials, I would be tenfold more psyched for Nicolas Cage’s return in National Treasure 3, why don't you get on THAT Disney?
“That belongs in a museum!” “So do you!”
This already self-reflexive exchange was uttered back in 1989, almost 35 years ago in the second scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, after a more modest, less CGI-glazed opening flashback/train sequence. Nearly 20 years later in 2008, Steven Spielberg’s next sunset sendoff cracked more than a few jokes at the whole crusted action hero premise, and funny enough Liam Neeson’s autumnal action movie takeoff was just around the corner. Though 2023's Dial of Destiny more than aggressively nudges the door to sequels just a crack open in case the new crop of senior citizens (since Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 15 years ago) shows up in scores, the fifth Jones flick appears to be the actual final bow, gliding by on recognizing its inherently insufficient nature.
All franchises allow the ability to see how the past informs the present and so forth, and with time travel and a de-aged Harrison Ford on the future-leaning side, I'll say when this movie goes for it, Dial of Destiny actually comes away looking surprisingly lean for geriatric fetch-questing — there’s the albeit minimal practical action, the fan-fondling, part soulless part soulful hum of its opening flashback set-piece (basically besting any of the movie’s wide midsection of countless chases), Ford putting in more effort than the paycheck (10-12 million) accounted for, not to mention an ending so batty and unconventionally poignant it could make you dangerously forgiving.
But other than a handful of saving graces, it’s a deplorable, desperate affair. The mimicry can really grate, as can Phoebe Waller-Bridge's second-billed smarm — I guess with figures in the shape of the father (Sean Connery) and the son (Shia Labeouf) done already, she had to play a smart-mouthed thief or some similarly stupid foil to Jones’ academic gruffness. There’s some small mustached boy (Ethann Isidore as Teddy Kumar) slipping into a stale reflection of Ke Huy Quan’s Short Round, John Rhys-Davies as both nostalgic and expositional emissary, and poor Karen Allen, as Marion Ravenwood, given a more suitable role of reconciliation than she did in the fourth film. Still, her cameo here is so miniaturized by melodramatic misuse, and maybe Mutt's offscreen death falls into the same sleazily effective category.
Mads Mikkelsen never fails to deliver great performances, even when typecast as villains as in Bond, the MCU and the last Fantastic Beasts. He’s a slab of grease and a trenchcoat away from looking just like the slimy weirdo sub-villain (Ronald Lacey as Arnold Ernst Toht) from Raiders anyway, albeit all the more handsome. With composure he carries the best of the legacy, slumming it with dignity a lot like Cate Blanchett in Crystal Skull. Antonio Banderas shows up to get shot, as does possibly the only black character in all of the series (government agent Mason played by Shaunette Renée Wilson). But Ford’s latest presence surprises me — he’s still an admirable, charismatic protagonist, even if they have to go out of their way to put Jones in controlled danger, or at least just enough so we're able to buy this indestructible 80-year-old handling two marathon’s worth of exercise. Unlike his Han Solo turns, Blade Runner 2049 and now Dial are late legacy offerings worth standing by. Oh and I must say, while the digital de-aging is leagues better when you compare this to say, Jeff Bridges in Disney’s own Tron: Legacy 13 years ago, movies like this and The Irishman haven’t solved deepfaking voice as well — I’ll buy a filtered youthful Indiana Jones when I’m not hearing the Harrison’s current gravelly, rumbling timbres.
Like The Last Crusade already found itself retreading, rooted in and restoring everything that worked in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (a considerably reactionary move to the mixed reception of the lesser, vividly campy, divergently freewheeling prequel Temple of Doom in 1984) Dial of Destiny wants to be one shiny greatest hits compilation, the best 290 million dollars can buy. There’s enough Nazi punching here to eclipse the series altogether, some traditionally nasty deaths, moments of decent, dusty stuntwork, even a surprising commitment to historical reverence, even if the expected, watered down Hollywood version of it. But they write Indy into way too many situations he just can’t get out of without distractingly choppy, blocky, dimwitted action editing, plus the globetrotting was never simply place/chase/exposition ad infinitum. All the while John Williams slaves away scrambling to make something triumphant out of this tame-by-default adventure escapism — when you can most proudly play the iconic theme as a CG younger Henry Jones runs across a train (in probably an entirely digital shot) or the real 80-year-old, just standing in a jeep, greets a soon to be deceased Banderas, that’s how you know your sequel is light on anything real, rough, brisk, or genuinely swashbuckling. In fact Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny scans more as distilled Disney-era Lucasfilm mediocrity for the majority of the runtime.
Oh God have I not mentioned James Mangold taking the reins from Spielberg?! I gotta be honest, his fluid, dynamic, old school temperament was already a good suit before it was trying to mime the Berg. To go backwards in Mangold’s journey to tentpole hackery, there was Ford vs Ferrari (he was ready for Dad movie material), Logan (aging sendoffs for iconic characters, nice), The Wolverine (the underrated, fun little blockbuster next to the overrated Logan), Knight and Day (passably outdated spy/romance silliness), 3:10 to Yuma (again bringing updated fervor to traditional formulas) and Walk the Line (ok this one’s pretty irrelevant) as his first big undertaking. 2003’s Identity is ludicrous, worth a look even just for a laugh. Even his stupid former time-traveling tale Kate and Leopold is a romcom treasure, and at least proof that the Back to the Future crap in Indy 5 was at least mildly practiced 20 years prior. What we see in Dial has little to do with the messy mental health drama Girl, Interrupted, the small town crime thriller Cop Land or Heavy's aptly titled existential weight.
Again, as far as movies that make me feel like I’m in the future (hey The Flash had TIME TRAVEL TOO), or rather just movies that should never have been made to begin with and know it (Solo for example), Dial didn’t make me feel too icky. It was always going to be a race to the bottom from the start but I think this movie’s respectable, bookended bravado was nearly enough to outdo Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’s more baffling, awkward moments. Sure, Spielberg’s insurance (even in one of his worst by far) makes for the more complete, entertaining affair — all I can say is I found the way this handled time travel far more agreeable than how the last dealt with aliens, and hey I enjoy a good fridge-nuking so don’t call me a Lucas hater.
There’s an actual trilogy of Indiana Jones movies and now, at last, there’s a much worse, overlapping trilogy of parting flicks, and it’s so silly that we’re almost as desperate for it as Disney. Admissions of them not completely fucking this up aside (great job Kathleen Kennedy!), for as much Destiny wants to be this grand victory lap — as adventurous as advancing years allow — what works best is not the familiar but the gonzo gusto of its climactic destination. The final ten minutes of wacky, beautifully B-movie bliss finds the Temple of Doom/Crystal Skull strangeness winning the day and salvaging the movie, proving a remarkable movie often means more than playing it safe. It’s ironic that the simple, serialized feel of the series has slowly mutated into this tepid, seldom exciting epic when the older films never were and shouldn’t be so grandiose.
If adventure has a name it’s a 45-year-old Indiana Jones MAXIMUM. Speaking for millennials, I would be tenfold more psyched for Nicolas Cage’s return in National Treasure 3, why don't you get on THAT Disney?
Asteroid City briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
From the look alone (never a great gauge of quality) I really wanted to go to bat for this one — but if anything was evidence that Wes Anderson’s shtick has slipped into a more trifling mode, it’s Asteroid City. Anderson isn’t exactly hit ’n’ miss but half of his filmography leaves me cold and discontented, this one falling right on the cusp. There’s method in the madcap, so I hate to be dismissive when an artist is so fully flexing the fathoms of their creative freedom, and does so regularly; I’m all for amusement and being amused. After Isle of Dogs’ Japanese-inspired stop-motion fable and The French Dispatch’s superior display of short-story favoring — he has more anthological offerings in store in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (based on Roald Dahl’s collection) due on Netflix late this year — Asteroid City seems to round out a trilogy of his tiniest offerings, all the more depressing after a run as soulful and masterfully arranged as Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel.
His writing remains academic and studied, his notions of character and aesthetic unsullied, his pen producing an abundance of airtight comic moments, but his next-to-nothing narratives have really bitten him in the ass of late. This movie is lighter than light, beyond the pale, and believe me I understand his eleventh feature is supposed to be a skimpy play within a play about its own making, all for television or something — I know Wes never met a framing device he didn’t like but damn. How can you make a narrator as fun as Bryan Cranston feel annoying just out of how purely unnecessary he is? Anjelica Huston wouldn’t have a prayer.
Though I doubt it’s true, it feels as if the movie was made without the outer edge backstage fuss and our creators couldn’t leave it be. Perhaps "Asteroid City" alone wouldn’t be as full, interesting or dynamic enough as its own diversion, but The Cosmic Wilderness could’ve done with less clutter — we get it, it’s all artifice dude, you don’t have to point it out every five seconds. When Wes isn’t literally decimating fourth walls every scene or so, it becomes so much easier to get lost in his efficient, oftentimes spotless pictures of pretend. Cut out all the extraneous creative fidgeting and you have a solid 80-minute retrofuture 50s/sci-fi riff — instead we have the far more hollow close encounter within a halfhearted, Droste-effected nightmare of fruitless behind-the-scenes hijinks.
I can appreciate the whole play as some typical midwest space invasion pitstop, but I really can’t say this film’s strategic, strongly established setup leads to much other than an imitation of the quirky government cover-ups of Isle of Dogs. Asteroid City is all place setting and staging, and it’s when the plot starts moving that Wes clearly has no idea how to orient his own desert. Act Two and Three are less in sum screen time than the first act altogether. As always this is yet another Wes movie bursting with gloomy characters who robotically recite their clinically composed dialogue on grief, romance, plus flying saucers this time! The experience is more terrarium-esque experimentation and, as is the case in Wes’s more aggravating, smug fare, the straight face behind all the emotion rubs against the absurdist trimmings of the scenarios, jokes and locales — this can be his cheat code to ironic cinematic revelry or a coarse, contrasting detriment.
But Asteroird City is like a really weak 60s Godard entry, where playing with the form itself was the means and end. This latest era of Wes (with AC as prime example) has been one of curious, obsessive self-defeat, one that’s all deconstruction, gimmickry, meta-minded aimlessness and painfully reductive entertainment made into a self-satisfied charade for the creator's pleasure foremost. For as winking and knowing as these movies can be in their obvious, consistently cute play-acting, this movie has the nerve to repeatedly rub it in your face — his compensation for cinematic substance is trivial, pointless gags and cloying quirk which don’t win you over but wear you down.
Jason Schwartzman I like more than a worse leading character in just barely a better movie, the dark-comic coming-of-age love triangle flick Rushmore. He’s the first to lead an Anderson movie twice, arguably, (maybe Owen counts with Bottle Rocket and Darjeeling Limited) and Scarlett Johansson makes for a great sparring partner. Steve Carrell fits in best of the newcomers like Tom Hanks, Maya Hawke and a few others, while Anderson also continues to provide suitable roles for his most steady, recently established partnerships with Tilda Swinton, Bob Balaban, Edward Norton (all with an impressive five in a row), plus Liev Schreiber in his third turn and Jeffrey Wright in his second, elsewhere Goldblum as the alien now has three. Still, his predilection for precocious children characters can somehow outstrip the finest performers in his regular rotation — Schwartzman’s three girls (“reallll witches” more like real sisters Gracie, Ella and Willan Faris as Pandora, Andromeda and Cassiopeia) are very funny, as are the adolescent band of brainiacs led by Jake Ryan as Woodrow, Grace Edwards as ScarJo’s daughter and Sophia Lillis as the other major youngin'.
Elements always remain — reading off instructional, utilitarian verbiage as in some side effects summary for new medication (all while our actors mess about like marionettes), those gliding pans of endless theatrical info, mid-century nostalgia, obscenely large casts, humor both baffling and broad, and stagey plasticity now been taken to almost regrettable levels of self-awareness. Dispatch was information overload with impressive replay value — I think most people will be done with Asteroid City’s vacuous Americana after one watch. “Trifling” doesn’t even cover it, it sums up his last but this time it’s tenfold truer — all shell, no substance, an empty egg, but, ya know, a nice pastel-painted one, like on Easter?
From the look alone (never a great gauge of quality) I really wanted to go to bat for this one — but if anything was evidence that Wes Anderson’s shtick has slipped into a more trifling mode, it’s Asteroid City. Anderson isn’t exactly hit ’n’ miss but half of his filmography leaves me cold and discontented, this one falling right on the cusp. There’s method in the madcap, so I hate to be dismissive when an artist is so fully flexing the fathoms of their creative freedom, and does so regularly; I’m all for amusement and being amused. After Isle of Dogs’ Japanese-inspired stop-motion fable and The French Dispatch’s superior display of short-story favoring — he has more anthological offerings in store in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (based on Roald Dahl’s collection) due on Netflix late this year — Asteroid City seems to round out a trilogy of his tiniest offerings, all the more depressing after a run as soulful and masterfully arranged as Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel.
His writing remains academic and studied, his notions of character and aesthetic unsullied, his pen producing an abundance of airtight comic moments, but his next-to-nothing narratives have really bitten him in the ass of late. This movie is lighter than light, beyond the pale, and believe me I understand his eleventh feature is supposed to be a skimpy play within a play about its own making, all for television or something — I know Wes never met a framing device he didn’t like but damn. How can you make a narrator as fun as Bryan Cranston feel annoying just out of how purely unnecessary he is? Anjelica Huston wouldn’t have a prayer.
Though I doubt it’s true, it feels as if the movie was made without the outer edge backstage fuss and our creators couldn’t leave it be. Perhaps "Asteroid City" alone wouldn’t be as full, interesting or dynamic enough as its own diversion, but The Cosmic Wilderness could’ve done with less clutter — we get it, it’s all artifice dude, you don’t have to point it out every five seconds. When Wes isn’t literally decimating fourth walls every scene or so, it becomes so much easier to get lost in his efficient, oftentimes spotless pictures of pretend. Cut out all the extraneous creative fidgeting and you have a solid 80-minute retrofuture 50s/sci-fi riff — instead we have the far more hollow close encounter within a halfhearted, Droste-effected nightmare of fruitless behind-the-scenes hijinks.
I can appreciate the whole play as some typical midwest space invasion pitstop, but I really can’t say this film’s strategic, strongly established setup leads to much other than an imitation of the quirky government cover-ups of Isle of Dogs. Asteroid City is all place setting and staging, and it’s when the plot starts moving that Wes clearly has no idea how to orient his own desert. Act Two and Three are less in sum screen time than the first act altogether. As always this is yet another Wes movie bursting with gloomy characters who robotically recite their clinically composed dialogue on grief, romance, plus flying saucers this time! The experience is more terrarium-esque experimentation and, as is the case in Wes’s more aggravating, smug fare, the straight face behind all the emotion rubs against the absurdist trimmings of the scenarios, jokes and locales — this can be his cheat code to ironic cinematic revelry or a coarse, contrasting detriment.
But Asteroird City is like a really weak 60s Godard entry, where playing with the form itself was the means and end. This latest era of Wes (with AC as prime example) has been one of curious, obsessive self-defeat, one that’s all deconstruction, gimmickry, meta-minded aimlessness and painfully reductive entertainment made into a self-satisfied charade for the creator's pleasure foremost. For as winking and knowing as these movies can be in their obvious, consistently cute play-acting, this movie has the nerve to repeatedly rub it in your face — his compensation for cinematic substance is trivial, pointless gags and cloying quirk which don’t win you over but wear you down.
Jason Schwartzman I like more than a worse leading character in just barely a better movie, the dark-comic coming-of-age love triangle flick Rushmore. He’s the first to lead an Anderson movie twice, arguably, (maybe Owen counts with Bottle Rocket and Darjeeling Limited) and Scarlett Johansson makes for a great sparring partner. Steve Carrell fits in best of the newcomers like Tom Hanks, Maya Hawke and a few others, while Anderson also continues to provide suitable roles for his most steady, recently established partnerships with Tilda Swinton, Bob Balaban, Edward Norton (all with an impressive five in a row), plus Liev Schreiber in his third turn and Jeffrey Wright in his second, elsewhere Goldblum as the alien now has three. Still, his predilection for precocious children characters can somehow outstrip the finest performers in his regular rotation — Schwartzman’s three girls (“reallll witches” more like real sisters Gracie, Ella and Willan Faris as Pandora, Andromeda and Cassiopeia) are very funny, as are the adolescent band of brainiacs led by Jake Ryan as Woodrow, Grace Edwards as ScarJo’s daughter and Sophia Lillis as the other major youngin'.
Elements always remain — reading off instructional, utilitarian verbiage as in some side effects summary for new medication (all while our actors mess about like marionettes), those gliding pans of endless theatrical info, mid-century nostalgia, obscenely large casts, humor both baffling and broad, and stagey plasticity now been taken to almost regrettable levels of self-awareness. Dispatch was information overload with impressive replay value — I think most people will be done with Asteroid City’s vacuous Americana after one watch. “Trifling” doesn’t even cover it, it sums up his last but this time it’s tenfold truer — all shell, no substance, an empty egg, but, ya know, a nice pastel-painted one, like on Easter?
Elemental and The Flash briefings
Elemental
3 (out of 4)
I’m almost more sick of writing Pixar reviews than I am cranking out the MCU briefings — but goddamn, Elemental, which looked like one of their weakest high concept movies to date, actually took an obvious, potentially pedestrian premise and worked out some elaborately creative, vividly animated, conceptually resonant scenarios, asides and sequences, even if we’re dealing with predictable enough themes from the bald-faced racially mixed romantic “subtext” and universal immigrant story (Iranian, Filipino and Chinese-born voice actors fill out our Firish family).
This wasn’t just another generational trauma type deal like Turning Red, it was actually their first romance, so it makes sense that Carl’s Date was the attached short, a pretty underwhelming companion piece in a legacy of skillful cinema apéritifs. Elemental is kinetically voiced and winningly tender enough to overcoming plotting layed out with something as stupid as pipe-fitting and flooding — even Mario had less time to do with the subject, and this movie could make an actual plumber’s head ache. Yet the radiantly alien score by Thomas Newman (Finding Dory, WALL-E, Finding Nemo for his Pixar résumé thus far) as well as a run of visually inviting gags and gimmicks (this is almost batting Monster’s Inc. numbers) make for a great deal more of a rich, relaxing, rewarding experience rather than the safe, colorful, easy-listening ambiance the marketing exudes. Some shots stole my breath — wondrous water railways, fiery first-hand glass-molding, using your viscous body to refract light, even just the bodily vibrations on Mr. Ripple from his headphones are so cool. That said, of course the idea of air basketball ultimately leading to mostly fart jokes is an admittedly lazier move.
The prepaid, generally Pixar-guaranteed tears were personally reaped and flowing nearly to the levels of our “water guy” Wade, infectiously voiced by Mamoudou Athie. Young Leah Lewis does an equally empathetic take on Ember’s intuitively more temperamental personality. I like the fun, foregone dynamics of our lead characters, that Ember’s half of the whole dominated, that it hit hard with those early It's a Wonderful Life bits of passed-on parental responsibilities, that it was a better work of invention than Zootopia, that it feels like a new apogee for these “lesser but still solid” original Pixar joints, famously noted by instances like Cars, Brave, Luca and, the best of this bracket, Coco. Is this a classic? Hardly, but after stooping as low as Lightyear last summer, this is a graciously accepted bounce back for later era Pixar. And for director Peter Sohn, seemingly the studio’s biggest bitch, only allowed to take the reins once before in likely the brand’s most reasonably forgotten feature, 2015’s The Good Dinosaur, Elemental is a superb sophomore effort in that sense.
With the alien-abduction-centric Elio looking promising as the next in store (like an expansion on the fave Pixar short Lifted), I’m glad the studio seems to be over their 2010s sequel/prequel era (ugh, save for Inside Out 2) and on to fresher furnishings, even if that bygone gold standard is probably forever out of reach. This movie’s pure lucidity, especially in its most emotive, inspired moments, has that singular beauty, that verifiable shimmer. Elemental very nearly functions like fundamental Pixar.
The Flash
2 (out of 4)
I remember first seeing Ezra Miller in City Island, the little seen indie comedy from 2010 — his personality was electric from the go, his humor really crisp. He then branched out to dramatic and comedic extremes in We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and he’s since been consistent in the WB crew between Barry Allen and his fruitless, personality-free part in the Fantastic Beasts movies.
The Flash was one of the four supers unworthy of their own film before Justice League came out in late 2017 and totally underwhelmed — the backwards universe never made room for a singular Affleck Batman, so of course they never gave two craps about Cyborg outside of the Snyder Cut, featuring his primary extended-version insert. Aquaman was a real surprise, still the best of the DCEU, which will only change if Blue Beetle or The Lost Kingdom, remnants of the shedded husk that was once the WB superhero surprise (like movie mystery meat), manage to make better on DC’s awful track record.
It’s crazy that the first ever movie about The Flash features a CG Nic Cage Superman and three separate former Batmen in Ben Affleck, Michael Keaton largely and George Clooney showing up for a nice cameo paycheck (Christian Bale would never and Val Kilmer can’t), yet there’s nothing about The Flash that screams “must-see.” I bet they added extra Keaton just to overshadow that DC in 2023 is DOA, while Batfleck and Wonder Woman remind you “oh yeah Warner Bros, you’ve already given up on the thing I’m currently watching.” It’s all corporate confusion at its finest and the worst part is in general I had more anticipation for this (and plenty left over for Aquaman 2) than whatever James Gunn has up his sleeve, I really couldn’t give a shit. All the “Elseworlds” stuff will be what matters materially, and the publicly desperate studio will be so thankful when Joker: Folie à Deux and a follow-up to The Batman make some coin, who knows when considering the strikes. Despite the intended summer event as the character’s first “solo” theatrical go, the film silently squanders so much creative promise. Now almost confirmed as the flop of the summer (or all of WB history) in a season stuffed with them, The Flash is somehow earning less than freaking Black Adam, which itself underperformed while it sold the public a far more unknown figure.
But as useless, anti-Marvel crossover spectacle goes, it’s an okay time as, of course, the Flashpoint storyline invites easy emotion, genre gimmickry and of course even more multiverses for the current age to smother us with. When it’s just Ezra in a Back to the Future situation, that cumulative 45 minutes or so is genuinely quite enjoyable. Falling babies is the absurdist take on the classic Quicksilver bit from X-Men: Days of Future Past, justified by screwy, selective riffs on speed logic where calorie counting matters until it doesn’t. The visual effects are almost as smooth-n-sloppy as trailers suggested ("No guys it intentionally looks like shit!" says director of the It movies Andy Muschietti), but some of the elaborately fake, completely CG oners we’re fun to watch.
The Flash, dismissing its obligation to continuity, should've just been origin story, though to be fair younger Barry (from the past!) is forced into his own compacted super-inauguration, never before seen onscreen! The bickering with myself trope is in uncommonly good hands — some of it clever and genuinely funny if, sadly, the other half is just crickets. I don’t give a damn about his offscreen craziness, Miller’s maximized presence saves the movie with proper, percolating performance duality. Keaton doesn’t embarrass himself but the cameos can become engulfing, and the overall ingenuity starts to flounder scene by scene around halfway. Like Shazam!, it was harmless amusement, relatively engaging — unlike Fury of the Gods though this should have been a more momentous cinematic occasion (the long-running CW Flash TV show probably has more viewers than this movie will sell tickets), not another stepping stone toward wiping the stupid slate clean again, the third to last shake of the etchisketch.
The Flash attempts to dazzle you with a bunch of truly meaningless nonsense, yet I’ve quickly forgotten it. It's also confusing, sure there’s actual paradoxical time travel touched on in the third act between the two Barry’s, but they act as if Mom’s death/Dad’s incarceration is one of those pivotal, unchangeable events (it's true when trying in vain to save Batman Beyond and Supergirl) but you did save your mom, so how is that a fixed event? I understand undoing a temporal mess you created but Jesus — at least it makes slightly more sense than No Way Home, which is simply batshit as actual science fiction. I wish it was tighter knit as genre fare because you could tell whatever was the germ of this script was fine and all this other noise was just for marketing purposes.
Ironically I think they turned everyone off going for broke with the “DO YOU RECOGNIZE THING FROM WB CATALOG?” Hail Mary. It’s more damning evidence of the powerhouse studio's recent habitual laziness, yet all told it could've been worse. The Flash is a passable, disposable, seldom boring popcorn flick with a decent little emotional center. It’s been so long in development that the release alone makes me feel like I’m in the future, the lackluster quality simply suggests I'm living in one of those timelines Barry probably fucked up.
3 (out of 4)
I’m almost more sick of writing Pixar reviews than I am cranking out the MCU briefings — but goddamn, Elemental, which looked like one of their weakest high concept movies to date, actually took an obvious, potentially pedestrian premise and worked out some elaborately creative, vividly animated, conceptually resonant scenarios, asides and sequences, even if we’re dealing with predictable enough themes from the bald-faced racially mixed romantic “subtext” and universal immigrant story (Iranian, Filipino and Chinese-born voice actors fill out our Firish family).
This wasn’t just another generational trauma type deal like Turning Red, it was actually their first romance, so it makes sense that Carl’s Date was the attached short, a pretty underwhelming companion piece in a legacy of skillful cinema apéritifs. Elemental is kinetically voiced and winningly tender enough to overcoming plotting layed out with something as stupid as pipe-fitting and flooding — even Mario had less time to do with the subject, and this movie could make an actual plumber’s head ache. Yet the radiantly alien score by Thomas Newman (Finding Dory, WALL-E, Finding Nemo for his Pixar résumé thus far) as well as a run of visually inviting gags and gimmicks (this is almost batting Monster’s Inc. numbers) make for a great deal more of a rich, relaxing, rewarding experience rather than the safe, colorful, easy-listening ambiance the marketing exudes. Some shots stole my breath — wondrous water railways, fiery first-hand glass-molding, using your viscous body to refract light, even just the bodily vibrations on Mr. Ripple from his headphones are so cool. That said, of course the idea of air basketball ultimately leading to mostly fart jokes is an admittedly lazier move.
The prepaid, generally Pixar-guaranteed tears were personally reaped and flowing nearly to the levels of our “water guy” Wade, infectiously voiced by Mamoudou Athie. Young Leah Lewis does an equally empathetic take on Ember’s intuitively more temperamental personality. I like the fun, foregone dynamics of our lead characters, that Ember’s half of the whole dominated, that it hit hard with those early It's a Wonderful Life bits of passed-on parental responsibilities, that it was a better work of invention than Zootopia, that it feels like a new apogee for these “lesser but still solid” original Pixar joints, famously noted by instances like Cars, Brave, Luca and, the best of this bracket, Coco. Is this a classic? Hardly, but after stooping as low as Lightyear last summer, this is a graciously accepted bounce back for later era Pixar. And for director Peter Sohn, seemingly the studio’s biggest bitch, only allowed to take the reins once before in likely the brand’s most reasonably forgotten feature, 2015’s The Good Dinosaur, Elemental is a superb sophomore effort in that sense.
With the alien-abduction-centric Elio looking promising as the next in store (like an expansion on the fave Pixar short Lifted), I’m glad the studio seems to be over their 2010s sequel/prequel era (ugh, save for Inside Out 2) and on to fresher furnishings, even if that bygone gold standard is probably forever out of reach. This movie’s pure lucidity, especially in its most emotive, inspired moments, has that singular beauty, that verifiable shimmer. Elemental very nearly functions like fundamental Pixar.
The Flash
2 (out of 4)
I remember first seeing Ezra Miller in City Island, the little seen indie comedy from 2010 — his personality was electric from the go, his humor really crisp. He then branched out to dramatic and comedic extremes in We Need to Talk About Kevin and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and he’s since been consistent in the WB crew between Barry Allen and his fruitless, personality-free part in the Fantastic Beasts movies.
The Flash was one of the four supers unworthy of their own film before Justice League came out in late 2017 and totally underwhelmed — the backwards universe never made room for a singular Affleck Batman, so of course they never gave two craps about Cyborg outside of the Snyder Cut, featuring his primary extended-version insert. Aquaman was a real surprise, still the best of the DCEU, which will only change if Blue Beetle or The Lost Kingdom, remnants of the shedded husk that was once the WB superhero surprise (like movie mystery meat), manage to make better on DC’s awful track record.
It’s crazy that the first ever movie about The Flash features a CG Nic Cage Superman and three separate former Batmen in Ben Affleck, Michael Keaton largely and George Clooney showing up for a nice cameo paycheck (Christian Bale would never and Val Kilmer can’t), yet there’s nothing about The Flash that screams “must-see.” I bet they added extra Keaton just to overshadow that DC in 2023 is DOA, while Batfleck and Wonder Woman remind you “oh yeah Warner Bros, you’ve already given up on the thing I’m currently watching.” It’s all corporate confusion at its finest and the worst part is in general I had more anticipation for this (and plenty left over for Aquaman 2) than whatever James Gunn has up his sleeve, I really couldn’t give a shit. All the “Elseworlds” stuff will be what matters materially, and the publicly desperate studio will be so thankful when Joker: Folie à Deux and a follow-up to The Batman make some coin, who knows when considering the strikes. Despite the intended summer event as the character’s first “solo” theatrical go, the film silently squanders so much creative promise. Now almost confirmed as the flop of the summer (or all of WB history) in a season stuffed with them, The Flash is somehow earning less than freaking Black Adam, which itself underperformed while it sold the public a far more unknown figure.
But as useless, anti-Marvel crossover spectacle goes, it’s an okay time as, of course, the Flashpoint storyline invites easy emotion, genre gimmickry and of course even more multiverses for the current age to smother us with. When it’s just Ezra in a Back to the Future situation, that cumulative 45 minutes or so is genuinely quite enjoyable. Falling babies is the absurdist take on the classic Quicksilver bit from X-Men: Days of Future Past, justified by screwy, selective riffs on speed logic where calorie counting matters until it doesn’t. The visual effects are almost as smooth-n-sloppy as trailers suggested ("No guys it intentionally looks like shit!" says director of the It movies Andy Muschietti), but some of the elaborately fake, completely CG oners we’re fun to watch.
The Flash, dismissing its obligation to continuity, should've just been origin story, though to be fair younger Barry (from the past!) is forced into his own compacted super-inauguration, never before seen onscreen! The bickering with myself trope is in uncommonly good hands — some of it clever and genuinely funny if, sadly, the other half is just crickets. I don’t give a damn about his offscreen craziness, Miller’s maximized presence saves the movie with proper, percolating performance duality. Keaton doesn’t embarrass himself but the cameos can become engulfing, and the overall ingenuity starts to flounder scene by scene around halfway. Like Shazam!, it was harmless amusement, relatively engaging — unlike Fury of the Gods though this should have been a more momentous cinematic occasion (the long-running CW Flash TV show probably has more viewers than this movie will sell tickets), not another stepping stone toward wiping the stupid slate clean again, the third to last shake of the etchisketch.
The Flash attempts to dazzle you with a bunch of truly meaningless nonsense, yet I’ve quickly forgotten it. It's also confusing, sure there’s actual paradoxical time travel touched on in the third act between the two Barry’s, but they act as if Mom’s death/Dad’s incarceration is one of those pivotal, unchangeable events (it's true when trying in vain to save Batman Beyond and Supergirl) but you did save your mom, so how is that a fixed event? I understand undoing a temporal mess you created but Jesus — at least it makes slightly more sense than No Way Home, which is simply batshit as actual science fiction. I wish it was tighter knit as genre fare because you could tell whatever was the germ of this script was fine and all this other noise was just for marketing purposes.
Ironically I think they turned everyone off going for broke with the “DO YOU RECOGNIZE THING FROM WB CATALOG?” Hail Mary. It’s more damning evidence of the powerhouse studio's recent habitual laziness, yet all told it could've been worse. The Flash is a passable, disposable, seldom boring popcorn flick with a decent little emotional center. It’s been so long in development that the release alone makes me feel like I’m in the future, the lackluster quality simply suggests I'm living in one of those timelines Barry probably fucked up.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
Ok let’s do this one more time — or maybe five. I’m now more than certain Beyond the Spider-Verse is going to deliver, but to count current blessings it’s nice to have a fresh benchmark for animation as Pixar’s formerly blinding light lessens, an ambitious, crowd-pleasing moment for superhero movies in their dying days, a masterful middle chapter as well as a second part that stylishly supersedes its captivating predecessor Into the Spider-Verse in practically all ways. Phil Lord, Chris Miller and company are such considered storytellers you can somehow delight in the exposition — make it 180 seconds into this feature and see the myriad manners with which the mind can be boggled.
Across the Spider-Verse sports an intense confidence, from frame one to the best Guggenheim sequence since The International to the early climax before an intense, elongated epilogue placing everyone in their cliffhanging cues for part III. Then there's some real emotional overtime as the first and second act slide together, and wise character choices, like beginning with an extended moment in the spotlight for Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld, somehow vocally invisible behind the white mask). But it’s still Miles Morales’ (Shameik Moore) tale, and if you care about the metatextuality all the way down to the core (concerning his character’s entrance into the comic book legendarium only a decade or so ago) then there’s plenty you can socially/racially strip from the second Spider-Verse, which is not to mention all the sublimely self-aware elements the Lord/Miller brand have dabbled in and perfected over so many projects. This really is the cuttingly contemporary, overwhelming, hyper-stimulating sensation for our times (all for the ruddy-faced moviegoing crowd who all but look on cinema as archaic), scaffolded by thematic universalities, sentiment of sincere fervor and cinematic splendor to revel in. Step aside Everything Everywhere All At Once losers, Across the Spider-Verse is actual postpostpostmodern paradise; it's a pure hit and just about as “instant classic” as kids movies come, especially stories mature as this, enough so I take back the term “kids movie.”
This is an ambitious son of a gun, one that would basically be perfection had it answered the evil riddle, the Part One of it all. Falling on the two-part sequel side of this structural spectrum, I’d say Infinity War bears the most petrifying dramatic stakes and palpable entertainment value of all penultimate episodes — Dead Man’s Chest also manages to give you the best sequel to pull off the shelf, save maybe Geoffrey Rush at the end. But Across the Spider-Verse at least exceeds Back to the Future Part II’s curious commitment, Dune and Deathly Hallows Part 1’s narrative nipping, and The Matrix Reloaded’s clearly front-loaded back-to-back enterprising. Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1 are barely worth the punctuation.
If any further complaints make sense, I don’t approve of typecasting Oscar Isaac for pretty plain antihero villainy, though as compensation the “villain of the week,” Jason Schwartzman as Spot, is a hilarious vehicle for ingenious action. Despite the jollies I wish it were as shockingly funny as Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs or 21 Jump Street, though I think for their superior side of self-conscious comedy, it has the LEGO movies beat. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is still a work of art across so many categories, and almost definitely has that Academy Award wrapped up nine months in advance, though Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron, Disney's Elemental and Wish, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, or even Netflix’s Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget and Nimona could put up a fight. Even with a new Impossible Mission made feasible for us, this was still summer 2023’s surest bet for bein’ a beaut' — they’ve gone above and beyond, with angry, overworked animators (just not the hacks that churned out She-Hulk and Quantumania) to prove it.
It’s rare to see a mainstream movie so newly beloved actually meeting the hype halfway and then plenty more — you could probably watch Across the Spider-Verse 11 times and never tire of it or completely soak in every molecule of the minutia. This dense, vibrant, staggering record of animation’s possibilities a quarter into this century is sometimes an exhilarating strain to keep up with, moving as fast as the human brain can even keep up with, every other frame seemingly removed from the reels. Never for a second does it take for granted the way the visual layers and textures can be finessed by feeling, gradually elucidating the ungodly, astonishing amount of effort funneled into this technical masterpiece — their storyboards must’ve stacked to the fucking ceiling 40 times over.
There aren’t enough good things to say, but here are a few more. With a fresh soundtrack of hardy aplomb, the new hip-hop arrangements by Metro Boomin cement the to-the-minute modernity these flicks bask in. All the easter eggs, from the obvious to the obscure, are welcome in the presented reality, tactically avoiding tackiness at each turn. Across also makes every other iteration of the already stale craze of multiverse media (á la EEAAO, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and The Flash) look worse in both hind and foresight.
The veritable voice acting, the scope of its sensitivity and especially its extra-sensory, psychedelic bent make for a glorious, lucid-dreamy marriage of so many techniques. The whole coagulates into a criterion moment for the 3D-2D splicing craze, capitalizing on this cool new wave of animation, part of Dreamworks’ intentional shift which reached surprising heights in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish after the just ok Bad Guys, and hell Sony Animation's The Mitchells vs. the Machines deserves a shout out too. All told it’s a game-changer and a piece of pristine, picturesque summer escapism.
Ok let’s do this one more time — or maybe five. I’m now more than certain Beyond the Spider-Verse is going to deliver, but to count current blessings it’s nice to have a fresh benchmark for animation as Pixar’s formerly blinding light lessens, an ambitious, crowd-pleasing moment for superhero movies in their dying days, a masterful middle chapter as well as a second part that stylishly supersedes its captivating predecessor Into the Spider-Verse in practically all ways. Phil Lord, Chris Miller and company are such considered storytellers you can somehow delight in the exposition — make it 180 seconds into this feature and see the myriad manners with which the mind can be boggled.
Across the Spider-Verse sports an intense confidence, from frame one to the best Guggenheim sequence since The International to the early climax before an intense, elongated epilogue placing everyone in their cliffhanging cues for part III. Then there's some real emotional overtime as the first and second act slide together, and wise character choices, like beginning with an extended moment in the spotlight for Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld, somehow vocally invisible behind the white mask). But it’s still Miles Morales’ (Shameik Moore) tale, and if you care about the metatextuality all the way down to the core (concerning his character’s entrance into the comic book legendarium only a decade or so ago) then there’s plenty you can socially/racially strip from the second Spider-Verse, which is not to mention all the sublimely self-aware elements the Lord/Miller brand have dabbled in and perfected over so many projects. This really is the cuttingly contemporary, overwhelming, hyper-stimulating sensation for our times (all for the ruddy-faced moviegoing crowd who all but look on cinema as archaic), scaffolded by thematic universalities, sentiment of sincere fervor and cinematic splendor to revel in. Step aside Everything Everywhere All At Once losers, Across the Spider-Verse is actual postpostpostmodern paradise; it's a pure hit and just about as “instant classic” as kids movies come, especially stories mature as this, enough so I take back the term “kids movie.”
This is an ambitious son of a gun, one that would basically be perfection had it answered the evil riddle, the Part One of it all. Falling on the two-part sequel side of this structural spectrum, I’d say Infinity War bears the most petrifying dramatic stakes and palpable entertainment value of all penultimate episodes — Dead Man’s Chest also manages to give you the best sequel to pull off the shelf, save maybe Geoffrey Rush at the end. But Across the Spider-Verse at least exceeds Back to the Future Part II’s curious commitment, Dune and Deathly Hallows Part 1’s narrative nipping, and The Matrix Reloaded’s clearly front-loaded back-to-back enterprising. Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1 are barely worth the punctuation.
If any further complaints make sense, I don’t approve of typecasting Oscar Isaac for pretty plain antihero villainy, though as compensation the “villain of the week,” Jason Schwartzman as Spot, is a hilarious vehicle for ingenious action. Despite the jollies I wish it were as shockingly funny as Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs or 21 Jump Street, though I think for their superior side of self-conscious comedy, it has the LEGO movies beat. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is still a work of art across so many categories, and almost definitely has that Academy Award wrapped up nine months in advance, though Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron, Disney's Elemental and Wish, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, or even Netflix’s Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget and Nimona could put up a fight. Even with a new Impossible Mission made feasible for us, this was still summer 2023’s surest bet for bein’ a beaut' — they’ve gone above and beyond, with angry, overworked animators (just not the hacks that churned out She-Hulk and Quantumania) to prove it.
It’s rare to see a mainstream movie so newly beloved actually meeting the hype halfway and then plenty more — you could probably watch Across the Spider-Verse 11 times and never tire of it or completely soak in every molecule of the minutia. This dense, vibrant, staggering record of animation’s possibilities a quarter into this century is sometimes an exhilarating strain to keep up with, moving as fast as the human brain can even keep up with, every other frame seemingly removed from the reels. Never for a second does it take for granted the way the visual layers and textures can be finessed by feeling, gradually elucidating the ungodly, astonishing amount of effort funneled into this technical masterpiece — their storyboards must’ve stacked to the fucking ceiling 40 times over.
There aren’t enough good things to say, but here are a few more. With a fresh soundtrack of hardy aplomb, the new hip-hop arrangements by Metro Boomin cement the to-the-minute modernity these flicks bask in. All the easter eggs, from the obvious to the obscure, are welcome in the presented reality, tactically avoiding tackiness at each turn. Across also makes every other iteration of the already stale craze of multiverse media (á la EEAAO, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and The Flash) look worse in both hind and foresight.
The veritable voice acting, the scope of its sensitivity and especially its extra-sensory, psychedelic bent make for a glorious, lucid-dreamy marriage of so many techniques. The whole coagulates into a criterion moment for the 3D-2D splicing craze, capitalizing on this cool new wave of animation, part of Dreamworks’ intentional shift which reached surprising heights in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish after the just ok Bad Guys, and hell Sony Animation's The Mitchells vs. the Machines deserves a shout out too. All told it’s a game-changer and a piece of pristine, picturesque summer escapism.
Fast X briefing
2 (out of 4)
The absurd, screwy, inane, insane and otherwise batshit era of The Fast Saga has been going round the bend way longer than the formative moments of the series, so much so that what would really blow people’s socks off is reducing the roid-rage energy and scaling things back.
Fast Five is often referred to as the series’ peak, where the cast seemed to flesh out into a working ensemble and the blockbuster big boy pants were finally pulled up, belted and buckled. Between 2011 and 2015 the escalation was hilariously effective, even if 6 was weaker — with Furious 7, between James Wan’s single installment of distinct directorial energy and Paul Walker’s death mid-filming, the franchise had invariably reached the pinnacle of its locomotive showmanship and its pathos with once-in-a-blue-moon, astonishingly tasteful emotional parting. Since then both the Fast's and the Furious’s have been stuck in neutral (sorry this one’s bringing the puns), unable to capitalize on its mainstay performers without resorting to insulting additions via celebrity cameos, nor have they managed to best the better entries' almost exceptionally Bollywood-adjacent heights for the gear-head extravaganzas.
The money is also an issue, as by the most profitable (easily 7 with over 1.5 billion) it was clear this brand had an extraordinary global audience, which I believe they are counting on when, a week before the release of Fast X, they’re announcing that the “end of the road” is a three-parter instead of two. I was curious how this one would do as opposed to F9, which was a ballsy theatrical-only release for Universal two years ago when the pandemic was a substantial hindrance on domestic profits. Those fresh box office numbers in 2023 are now, officially, quite underwhelming. How this motherfucking movie cost 340 million dollars to complete is a bit beyond me — for perspective that makes it one of the most expensive films ever made, surrounded by actually expensive looking, intricately technical spectacles, but X is putting up numbers similar to the brand's first steps.
Doesn’t help when there’s 100 million for the cast, 20 million of that number alone for Diesel, who reportedly was showing up out of shape and unable to remember lines, encouraging Justin Lin, longtime director of more than half the franchise, to throw up his hands a week into filming claiming Fast X “isn’t worth my mental health.” One million per day of stalled production had to add up and in desperation, Universal plucked Louis Letterier: pretty much a confirmed hack considering Transporter 2, Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans and Now You See Me are his most noted accomplishments. Too bad all the real drama happens off camera — still this doesn’t feel any more or less jumbled than these thoughtless, dumb-by-default action pictures have ever been.
Fast X is mid for a middleweight franchise and that’s being kind. The host of dangling, lazy cliffhangers (OH NO NOT OFFSCREEN DEATHS IN THE FRANCHISE WHERE PEOPLE NOTORIOUSLY GET RETCONNED BACK TO LIFE IN THE MOST RIDICULOUS BULLSHIT MANNER POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!) make you wonder: even if Ludacris, a never worser Tyrese Gibson, Nathalie Emmanuel, an already Lazarused Sung Kang and John Cena's speedily redeemed Toretto sibling actually all bit it, would it really hit you? “Who do you save?” Hmm, it’s pretty hard to pick when fresh familia is popping up act by act, speaking of, what are you doing here Rita Moreno? Sure you just fake killed off a bunch of less than beloved characters and blew up a dam with Dom and his kid underneath — I would care a tad more if you didn’t just confirm production for AT LEAST two more of these (the eighth entry Fate of the Furious was first promising to serve as part one of a conclusive trilogy). Don’t you dare tease narrative finality only to drag it out like a bad network sitcom.
The last movie’s crutch was brotherly flashbacks, the one before was Dom going evil, oh no! After Fast X’s admittedly, relatively solid first act — maxing out with a very involving chase/ambush/video game sequence through Rome wherein Vin Diesel has to perform acrobatic mechanical maneuvers to save the frickin’ Pope from a flaming bomb — this shit just stops and splinters into a multitude of B stories, content to pass the time stuck in shitty sports-mode until credits roll. From there it’s Dom and his never-before-seen sister-in-law (Daniela Melchior) in Rio, Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty in prison-break mode with Charlize Theron’s Cypher, the four disposables (Gibson, Ludacris, Emmanuel and Kang) flipping through exposition and cheap appearances (Pete Davidson plus another returning adversary-cum-ally Jason Statham) and, the best of the broken narrative, Cena as uncle supreme to Dom’s little boy, a stark switch from the oh so serious bad guy of F9. Brie Larson is late to the party but they do their best to make her look good.
But that’s what happens, especially with a fun post-credits signaling the return of Dwayne Johnson, who famously left the franchise for butting heads with Gibson’s ego and anonymously referring to his more difficult co-stars as 'candy asses' on Twitter. But look who caved and came back, eh? Every villain since Five save for Luke Evans in 6 and Idris Elba in Hobbs & Shaw has been redeemed or turned into some frenemy to the F&F family. Jason Mamoa won’t receive such treatment, but his super lucky, impossibly resourced, uber flamboyant cartoon character villain isn’t the show-stealer he’s touted as, just the same tough-talking, showboating smarm that Statham and Theron brought in their first turns for the Furiouseries. I love how our new force of evil somehow has the capacity to hold 20 people hostage, specifically in his need for Charlize’s men to do her dirty work? Um, who’s carrying out your host of crimes for you at the moment? I hate bad guys with ludicrously elaborate plans predicating every one of the protagonist’s moves, it's always some of the laziest, backpedaling, garbage writing, making Silva's schemes in Skyfall look sensibly thought out.
This movie is a pure par for the course, which mean is AIN'T EVEN GOOD! While I could say there's something to be appreciated in the original despite the Point Break pastiche (Walker originally suggested a mash-up of Donnie Brasco and Days of Thunder to then-producer Neil Moritz), Tokyo Drift despite its hick protagonist and H&S because of David Leitch-directed goodies, Five and 7 are clearly top of the pack. Fast X rests right at the mean, (median, whatever I'm done doing math for the dumbest movies ever) with all the other crappy, even-numbered entries behind, plus the underwhelming crescendos of 9 — I have to keep reminding myself they already went to space.
I could break down all the stupid stuff grindin' my friggin’ gears — crappy cop TV show dialogue, the unearned melodramatics, the abundance of paycheck performances, the faint throwbacks to “street racing roots,” the terrible sequel leadoffs, the constantly revived characters (ooh Gal Gadot’s back, wee), the shitty soundtrack that seems to always feature Pitbull even if it really doesn’t… not to mention the fact that this is WTF cinema that doesn’t shock but makes your eyes glaze over, more like “What in the fuck were you thinking?” type cinema, not actual gonzo bonkers shit that's been falsely promised a few too many times. Remember when the sixth one came out and people were like “this is getting kinda crazy!” There’s nowhere to go, you can’t max out at 11 forever — bluntly put this newly obnoxious, nutty Hot Wheels spectacle is evidence of an exhausting, poorly maintained, dementedly dim-witted continuity.
More kinetic distractions, less tearful telenovela crap please — then maybe the huge legacy this film believes is already cemented might mean something more than the most hit-and-miss, manically masculine cinema available. In the scope of 2023, this is a puny pit stop between John Wick: Chapter 4’s proven potency and the magnitude of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.
The absurd, screwy, inane, insane and otherwise batshit era of The Fast Saga has been going round the bend way longer than the formative moments of the series, so much so that what would really blow people’s socks off is reducing the roid-rage energy and scaling things back.
Fast Five is often referred to as the series’ peak, where the cast seemed to flesh out into a working ensemble and the blockbuster big boy pants were finally pulled up, belted and buckled. Between 2011 and 2015 the escalation was hilariously effective, even if 6 was weaker — with Furious 7, between James Wan’s single installment of distinct directorial energy and Paul Walker’s death mid-filming, the franchise had invariably reached the pinnacle of its locomotive showmanship and its pathos with once-in-a-blue-moon, astonishingly tasteful emotional parting. Since then both the Fast's and the Furious’s have been stuck in neutral (sorry this one’s bringing the puns), unable to capitalize on its mainstay performers without resorting to insulting additions via celebrity cameos, nor have they managed to best the better entries' almost exceptionally Bollywood-adjacent heights for the gear-head extravaganzas.
The money is also an issue, as by the most profitable (easily 7 with over 1.5 billion) it was clear this brand had an extraordinary global audience, which I believe they are counting on when, a week before the release of Fast X, they’re announcing that the “end of the road” is a three-parter instead of two. I was curious how this one would do as opposed to F9, which was a ballsy theatrical-only release for Universal two years ago when the pandemic was a substantial hindrance on domestic profits. Those fresh box office numbers in 2023 are now, officially, quite underwhelming. How this motherfucking movie cost 340 million dollars to complete is a bit beyond me — for perspective that makes it one of the most expensive films ever made, surrounded by actually expensive looking, intricately technical spectacles, but X is putting up numbers similar to the brand's first steps.
Doesn’t help when there’s 100 million for the cast, 20 million of that number alone for Diesel, who reportedly was showing up out of shape and unable to remember lines, encouraging Justin Lin, longtime director of more than half the franchise, to throw up his hands a week into filming claiming Fast X “isn’t worth my mental health.” One million per day of stalled production had to add up and in desperation, Universal plucked Louis Letterier: pretty much a confirmed hack considering Transporter 2, Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans and Now You See Me are his most noted accomplishments. Too bad all the real drama happens off camera — still this doesn’t feel any more or less jumbled than these thoughtless, dumb-by-default action pictures have ever been.
Fast X is mid for a middleweight franchise and that’s being kind. The host of dangling, lazy cliffhangers (OH NO NOT OFFSCREEN DEATHS IN THE FRANCHISE WHERE PEOPLE NOTORIOUSLY GET RETCONNED BACK TO LIFE IN THE MOST RIDICULOUS BULLSHIT MANNER POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!) make you wonder: even if Ludacris, a never worser Tyrese Gibson, Nathalie Emmanuel, an already Lazarused Sung Kang and John Cena's speedily redeemed Toretto sibling actually all bit it, would it really hit you? “Who do you save?” Hmm, it’s pretty hard to pick when fresh familia is popping up act by act, speaking of, what are you doing here Rita Moreno? Sure you just fake killed off a bunch of less than beloved characters and blew up a dam with Dom and his kid underneath — I would care a tad more if you didn’t just confirm production for AT LEAST two more of these (the eighth entry Fate of the Furious was first promising to serve as part one of a conclusive trilogy). Don’t you dare tease narrative finality only to drag it out like a bad network sitcom.
The last movie’s crutch was brotherly flashbacks, the one before was Dom going evil, oh no! After Fast X’s admittedly, relatively solid first act — maxing out with a very involving chase/ambush/video game sequence through Rome wherein Vin Diesel has to perform acrobatic mechanical maneuvers to save the frickin’ Pope from a flaming bomb — this shit just stops and splinters into a multitude of B stories, content to pass the time stuck in shitty sports-mode until credits roll. From there it’s Dom and his never-before-seen sister-in-law (Daniela Melchior) in Rio, Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty in prison-break mode with Charlize Theron’s Cypher, the four disposables (Gibson, Ludacris, Emmanuel and Kang) flipping through exposition and cheap appearances (Pete Davidson plus another returning adversary-cum-ally Jason Statham) and, the best of the broken narrative, Cena as uncle supreme to Dom’s little boy, a stark switch from the oh so serious bad guy of F9. Brie Larson is late to the party but they do their best to make her look good.
But that’s what happens, especially with a fun post-credits signaling the return of Dwayne Johnson, who famously left the franchise for butting heads with Gibson’s ego and anonymously referring to his more difficult co-stars as 'candy asses' on Twitter. But look who caved and came back, eh? Every villain since Five save for Luke Evans in 6 and Idris Elba in Hobbs & Shaw has been redeemed or turned into some frenemy to the F&F family. Jason Mamoa won’t receive such treatment, but his super lucky, impossibly resourced, uber flamboyant cartoon character villain isn’t the show-stealer he’s touted as, just the same tough-talking, showboating smarm that Statham and Theron brought in their first turns for the Furiouseries. I love how our new force of evil somehow has the capacity to hold 20 people hostage, specifically in his need for Charlize’s men to do her dirty work? Um, who’s carrying out your host of crimes for you at the moment? I hate bad guys with ludicrously elaborate plans predicating every one of the protagonist’s moves, it's always some of the laziest, backpedaling, garbage writing, making Silva's schemes in Skyfall look sensibly thought out.
This movie is a pure par for the course, which mean is AIN'T EVEN GOOD! While I could say there's something to be appreciated in the original despite the Point Break pastiche (Walker originally suggested a mash-up of Donnie Brasco and Days of Thunder to then-producer Neil Moritz), Tokyo Drift despite its hick protagonist and H&S because of David Leitch-directed goodies, Five and 7 are clearly top of the pack. Fast X rests right at the mean, (median, whatever I'm done doing math for the dumbest movies ever) with all the other crappy, even-numbered entries behind, plus the underwhelming crescendos of 9 — I have to keep reminding myself they already went to space.
I could break down all the stupid stuff grindin' my friggin’ gears — crappy cop TV show dialogue, the unearned melodramatics, the abundance of paycheck performances, the faint throwbacks to “street racing roots,” the terrible sequel leadoffs, the constantly revived characters (ooh Gal Gadot’s back, wee), the shitty soundtrack that seems to always feature Pitbull even if it really doesn’t… not to mention the fact that this is WTF cinema that doesn’t shock but makes your eyes glaze over, more like “What in the fuck were you thinking?” type cinema, not actual gonzo bonkers shit that's been falsely promised a few too many times. Remember when the sixth one came out and people were like “this is getting kinda crazy!” There’s nowhere to go, you can’t max out at 11 forever — bluntly put this newly obnoxious, nutty Hot Wheels spectacle is evidence of an exhausting, poorly maintained, dementedly dim-witted continuity.
More kinetic distractions, less tearful telenovela crap please — then maybe the huge legacy this film believes is already cemented might mean something more than the most hit-and-miss, manically masculine cinema available. In the scope of 2023, this is a puny pit stop between John Wick: Chapter 4’s proven potency and the magnitude of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 briefing
3 (out of 4)
This is not your usual MCU fare, by which I mean it’s actually impressive? I’ll be the first to admit that James Gunn is not exactly my guy — Scooby Doo movies I can defend due to irony and nostalgia, his Dawn of the Dead script sucked, but I can’t be too mad at what he did with Slither and Super. Now deep in mainstream capeshit, there are some who see his Guardians films as the exception to Marvel’s krabby patty formula, but I always thought they were more or less of the same ilk. He’s only a hair removed in the wrong direction from Joss Whedon’s indulgent edge, and for certain I would take the first two Avengers any day over the Guardians Vol. 1 'n' 2. I also was not taken by Gunn’s first DC departure, his reinvention of Suicide Squad that got lost in WB’s simultaneous streaming and theatrical "strategy" in 2021. My apathy entering this sequel cannot be overstated.
And yet, here I am, again on the other end of my indifference and somehow ready to extol another silly space opera action comedy more than I would have ever guessed. Maybe theoretically it was cheap to pad the runtime and prime those tears with an extensively scattered Rocket Raccoon origin story; a quest to save his tiny heart from exploding is the primary plot and motivation for the rest of the Guardians, all of whom have found their rhythms — Chris Pratt as Star-Lord, Pom Klementieff (personal favorite Mantis), Zoë Saldaña as a reset Gamora, Dave Bautista as Drax, Karen Gillan as Nebula, the reliable vocal support of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel as Rocket and Groot, each individual enhances the whole array memorable misfits.
Operating almost outside of the typical Guardians goofiness seemingly suffocating whatever emotional endeavor Mr. Gunn is after (save for Infinity War), this film is worth its weight in gripping, gravitational pathos — it’s so nice, for once in so long, to have a reason to care and enjoy a script with no episodic excuse to play off surging sentimental swells. Christ, even the fight scenes are awesome in moments. Our primary antagonist is the delightfully devoted Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary, who overacts so severely his hamminess is hickory. I ain’t thrilled about another God-like psycho, but I bet Kevin Feige is praying this guy outshines a now disowned Kang in the wake of Jonathan Majors, ahem, public image issues let’s say. Meanwhile Will Poulter is wisely accessed for his off-kilter comic chops as Warlock, the mage of those gold-skinned Sovereign folks from the last one, son of Elizabeth Debicki's High Priestess. Linda Cardellini is back from the Scoob days for her second role in the MCU, moving from Hawkeye’s housewife to voicing a cyborg otter.
Pretty powerful turns for principle players, personal stakes — that still end with a minimum of counter-world-ending destruction — and a deep-scrub of some of Marvel’s worst tendencies just leads me to the conclusion that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 outshined its predecessors, only in a more honorable fashion since Gunn didn’t even need team-ups (Civil War, Ragnarok) or studio mergers (No Way Home) to cheat its way to an exciting trilogy-topper. All the 32nd MCU feature needs is continued interest in bizarre production value, well-integrated visual effects, inspired character design, a decent sci-fi adventure outline and dialogue illustrating and elucidating how our familiar characters have grown or been reluctant to. Quantumania was a new low but this is up there with Iron Man 3 for a sturdy, singular third installment that actually brushes shoulders with Marvel's best efforts — it's at least the most feverishly entertaining, poignantly satisfactory, oddly triumphant and eagerly reverent the studio has been since Endgame, maybe before, and yes that includes Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Vol. 2 ended on Rocket’s teared-up face over Yondu’s passing, but back then I couldn’t get down with Gunn’s juggle of monologuing villains, beautiful vistas, low humor (oh do I hate to think of that Taserface bit) and general tonal tremors — Vol. 3 nixes most of the asides and hampering smarm, instead basking in absurdity that for once feels unique, soaring on this mini-series' rebellious ridiculousness rather than suspiciously tuning its peculiarities to mainstream appeal. I can’t believe I can say I laughed and I cried, but I did, I mostly cried — goddamn James was on a mission to wrangle your feelings in the last hour, maybe even last half.
Phase Five doesn’t look any brighter but this is personally vying with Eternals as the twilight era’s most intrepid, rightfully insular and passionately crafted effort. I more than expect Vol. 3 to be a hit — like Endgame this Guardians belts its well-earned swan song, and for all of the film’s intrinsic indulgences, Volume 3 doesn’t overstay its welcome. A few too many dry remarks from Gamora and Nebula (I always thought they were the weak links in the band of creeps and/or weirdos) doesn’t even remotely spoil this story's remarkable heart and seemingly invisible plot, which moves you through alien abandon and heightened spectacle much better than Doctor Strange 2 or Thor 4 — there are seldom distractions dragging things out. This is the diminished Marvel epic done right, gently caving into the franchise phenomenon’s afterglow rather than insulting us with medium-effort trifles masquerading as the real deal.
I thought the movie’s reflective, prequel-within-a-sequel structure might eventually wither the whole but the arrangment was no act of narrative desperation and compensation. Also with such fevered emotion throughout I don't understand why you misspent the first F-bomb in 30+ movies of franchise history on a joke ripped right from Scary Movie 4. But an MCU feature with nothing outside itself to promote? A villain we want to see bashed in? Camaraderie that actually makes you smile to yourself? Plus another solid playlist of kitschy 80s-90s sonic dressing? This pop sci-fi screwball is an unexpected residual redeemer of a borderline geriatric genre, and probably the last MCU feature in a minute that will be able to lean comfortably on the crutch of established, recognizable goodwill, ironic since casuals had never heard of the Guardians a decade ago. I don’t know exactly when or how the LEGENDARY STAR-LORD will return but with Saldaña and Bautista out for good, who knows if there are future features for these characters to sneak into.
I’m just glad I enjoyed myself and didn’t even have to try. Gunn may be off to better horizons (if you count saving and stewarding the sundered, staggering stupidity of DC’s sorry brand something positive) with Superman: Legacy but I’m relieved he's atoned for indirectly driving the MCU to its comically inclined doom, his attitudes infecting many installments following 2014’s separately strong but overall annoyingly frivolous original film. In one stroke here he’s ironically made me more hopeful for DC’s future than Marvel’s.
This is not your usual MCU fare, by which I mean it’s actually impressive? I’ll be the first to admit that James Gunn is not exactly my guy — Scooby Doo movies I can defend due to irony and nostalgia, his Dawn of the Dead script sucked, but I can’t be too mad at what he did with Slither and Super. Now deep in mainstream capeshit, there are some who see his Guardians films as the exception to Marvel’s krabby patty formula, but I always thought they were more or less of the same ilk. He’s only a hair removed in the wrong direction from Joss Whedon’s indulgent edge, and for certain I would take the first two Avengers any day over the Guardians Vol. 1 'n' 2. I also was not taken by Gunn’s first DC departure, his reinvention of Suicide Squad that got lost in WB’s simultaneous streaming and theatrical "strategy" in 2021. My apathy entering this sequel cannot be overstated.
And yet, here I am, again on the other end of my indifference and somehow ready to extol another silly space opera action comedy more than I would have ever guessed. Maybe theoretically it was cheap to pad the runtime and prime those tears with an extensively scattered Rocket Raccoon origin story; a quest to save his tiny heart from exploding is the primary plot and motivation for the rest of the Guardians, all of whom have found their rhythms — Chris Pratt as Star-Lord, Pom Klementieff (personal favorite Mantis), Zoë Saldaña as a reset Gamora, Dave Bautista as Drax, Karen Gillan as Nebula, the reliable vocal support of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel as Rocket and Groot, each individual enhances the whole array memorable misfits.
Operating almost outside of the typical Guardians goofiness seemingly suffocating whatever emotional endeavor Mr. Gunn is after (save for Infinity War), this film is worth its weight in gripping, gravitational pathos — it’s so nice, for once in so long, to have a reason to care and enjoy a script with no episodic excuse to play off surging sentimental swells. Christ, even the fight scenes are awesome in moments. Our primary antagonist is the delightfully devoted Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary, who overacts so severely his hamminess is hickory. I ain’t thrilled about another God-like psycho, but I bet Kevin Feige is praying this guy outshines a now disowned Kang in the wake of Jonathan Majors, ahem, public image issues let’s say. Meanwhile Will Poulter is wisely accessed for his off-kilter comic chops as Warlock, the mage of those gold-skinned Sovereign folks from the last one, son of Elizabeth Debicki's High Priestess. Linda Cardellini is back from the Scoob days for her second role in the MCU, moving from Hawkeye’s housewife to voicing a cyborg otter.
Pretty powerful turns for principle players, personal stakes — that still end with a minimum of counter-world-ending destruction — and a deep-scrub of some of Marvel’s worst tendencies just leads me to the conclusion that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 outshined its predecessors, only in a more honorable fashion since Gunn didn’t even need team-ups (Civil War, Ragnarok) or studio mergers (No Way Home) to cheat its way to an exciting trilogy-topper. All the 32nd MCU feature needs is continued interest in bizarre production value, well-integrated visual effects, inspired character design, a decent sci-fi adventure outline and dialogue illustrating and elucidating how our familiar characters have grown or been reluctant to. Quantumania was a new low but this is up there with Iron Man 3 for a sturdy, singular third installment that actually brushes shoulders with Marvel's best efforts — it's at least the most feverishly entertaining, poignantly satisfactory, oddly triumphant and eagerly reverent the studio has been since Endgame, maybe before, and yes that includes Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Vol. 2 ended on Rocket’s teared-up face over Yondu’s passing, but back then I couldn’t get down with Gunn’s juggle of monologuing villains, beautiful vistas, low humor (oh do I hate to think of that Taserface bit) and general tonal tremors — Vol. 3 nixes most of the asides and hampering smarm, instead basking in absurdity that for once feels unique, soaring on this mini-series' rebellious ridiculousness rather than suspiciously tuning its peculiarities to mainstream appeal. I can’t believe I can say I laughed and I cried, but I did, I mostly cried — goddamn James was on a mission to wrangle your feelings in the last hour, maybe even last half.
Phase Five doesn’t look any brighter but this is personally vying with Eternals as the twilight era’s most intrepid, rightfully insular and passionately crafted effort. I more than expect Vol. 3 to be a hit — like Endgame this Guardians belts its well-earned swan song, and for all of the film’s intrinsic indulgences, Volume 3 doesn’t overstay its welcome. A few too many dry remarks from Gamora and Nebula (I always thought they were the weak links in the band of creeps and/or weirdos) doesn’t even remotely spoil this story's remarkable heart and seemingly invisible plot, which moves you through alien abandon and heightened spectacle much better than Doctor Strange 2 or Thor 4 — there are seldom distractions dragging things out. This is the diminished Marvel epic done right, gently caving into the franchise phenomenon’s afterglow rather than insulting us with medium-effort trifles masquerading as the real deal.
I thought the movie’s reflective, prequel-within-a-sequel structure might eventually wither the whole but the arrangment was no act of narrative desperation and compensation. Also with such fevered emotion throughout I don't understand why you misspent the first F-bomb in 30+ movies of franchise history on a joke ripped right from Scary Movie 4. But an MCU feature with nothing outside itself to promote? A villain we want to see bashed in? Camaraderie that actually makes you smile to yourself? Plus another solid playlist of kitschy 80s-90s sonic dressing? This pop sci-fi screwball is an unexpected residual redeemer of a borderline geriatric genre, and probably the last MCU feature in a minute that will be able to lean comfortably on the crutch of established, recognizable goodwill, ironic since casuals had never heard of the Guardians a decade ago. I don’t know exactly when or how the LEGENDARY STAR-LORD will return but with Saldaña and Bautista out for good, who knows if there are future features for these characters to sneak into.
I’m just glad I enjoyed myself and didn’t even have to try. Gunn may be off to better horizons (if you count saving and stewarding the sundered, staggering stupidity of DC’s sorry brand something positive) with Superman: Legacy but I’m relieved he's atoned for indirectly driving the MCU to its comically inclined doom, his attitudes infecting many installments following 2014’s separately strong but overall annoyingly frivolous original film. In one stroke here he’s ironically made me more hopeful for DC’s future than Marvel’s.
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret briefing
3 (out of 4)
Are you there Hollywood? It’s me Judy Bloom, don’t you ever touch my books as long as I live. That is, until I find the right filmmaker.
After crafting an exceptional coming-of-age update in her directorial debut The Edge of Seventeen, Kelly Fremon Craig’s take on the foibles and fullness of adolescence must’ve been sincere enough to find some common cinematic ground to stage Bloom’s celebrated, generationally-passed young lady’s novella on both the crazy collective cusp of womanhood and a particular case of religious confusion. Like some Hobbit or Dr. Seuss situation, I figured this is one adaptation where inflated inspirations from the slim text are all to be found but Margaret is a stronger transposition for the evenhanded embellishment and reasonable reduction. Simplification and expansion aside, I could only be slightly annoyed when the alterations take you away from Margaret’s mind, as this movie feels the need to make sure Are You There God? is one for women at ANY age.
Outside of the 6th-grade perspective (seeing as Margaret’s first person journey can’t be internalized as it is in text) we gotta have a little extra Grandma in the script and give Mom a proper arc, which admittedly, gradually turned the potentially trite final scene into one of emotional fireworks. Quibbles quelled, Margaret is a marvelously cast movie — Ben Safdie is a more than convincing Jewish Dad, making the best of this small side-career in acting with self-directed turns and ones with PTA and Chris Nolan. Kathy Bates is magnificent in Nana-mode and even Rachel McAdams makes better on all her wacky reactions shots, going from the one stuck in dumb sitcom B-plot scenarios (oh look at me I’m over-volunteering at school, oh no I can’t cook) to moments fleshing out Momma Simon’s passions and agency — she seems so much more reserved, not cold exactly, in the book, as opposed to McAdams' bubblier presence, but the performance is appreciably ardent.
But it’s really the incredible young Abby Ryder Fortson deserving most due praise, known for playing little Cassie Lang in the first two Ant-Man features. The easy comparison for this flick is Eighth Grade just based on the age of our young female protagonist alone — of course Fortson isn't quite as ‘real’ as Elsie Fisher but she sells all of Bloom’s and Craig’s urgencies, you ultimately project yourself onto her. This could have been a case where these lady C-O-A tropes have been beaten into cliché and Are You There God? is a sad latecomer to the audiovisual party that the 1970 book had some part in inciting. Craig was even upstaged quickly after 2016 when Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig’s work is slightly superior I have to admit) debuted to even more acclaim than Seventeen’s universal praise, and Eighth Grade came just behind in Summer 2018. But even with many modern measures on the genre's capacity, Margaret accesses a certain timelessness by coming off how any era might have attempted to fashion this film — consolatory and straightforward. It doesn’t bear the rare James L. Brooks producer credit for nothing, the only of its kind since 2001 aside from Edge, other than his last two directed films Spanglish and How Do You Know, but who is writing home about them?
Period specificity is this movie’s best friend and the accurate 50-years-removed setting ensures there is no modern shenanigans disturbing the brief story’s infectious, universal directness. Pleasingly, Craig sticks to the source and trims it clean. The additions are hit and miss, at worst low aims at some broader humor — but save a moment or two there’s nothing stupid or crass crammed in that could really age It’s Me, Margaret and jeopardize its worth. Craig is quietly becoming a master of montage, specifically synced to soundtracks with appropriate drops. She’s got taste and economy, as well as Hans Zimmer’s score (it’s like he has a whole separate catalogue for fluff like Brooks' and Nancy Meyer’s filmography) to help raise the film above the twee nature of the entire enterprise — that central piano theme is equally wistful and soothing.
Before Kelly brought it all home, I was worried I might choke on the almost unfashionable optimism and outmoded earnestness — this movie probably scans as pure corn despite its resonance just for closely committing to a conservative adaptation. One last glaring, necessary observation important to note is Kelly’s own Benjamin Buttoning of her coming-of-age concerns, receding from the broad indie rom-com script, 2009’s shitty, scant, borderline anti-feminist Post-Grad for Alexis Bledel’s 22 year-old non-character Ryden to Hailee Seinfeld’s Nadine (on the titular Edge of Seventeen, a too-true representation of high school’s sociological hierarchy and the way it forces us into different roles of ourselves depending on who we are interacting with) to the almost-12 age range of young Margaret… I hope you just have a natural gift or intense proclivity, and haven’t just been pigeonholed into formative Bildungsroman stories… if Kelly’s next protagonist is some 7-year-old I’ll be a little concerned.
In the book she never reconciles with Laura Danker after they fight, so I knew for a fact they were going to clear up that dangling ambiguity, satisfyingly so. On the page it feels ready to be resolved but doesn’t, leaving you to obviously wonder what you yourself might do. The story is like the best of those instructional, cautionary pieces of media for pubescents with moderately easy moral lessons to grasp — don't lie and gossip like Nancy Wheeler kids! But even with such cut and dry text, Craig nimbly kneads the story’s elements in order to Trojan-Horse some real bombs of wisdom and lucidity. Like Seventeen, her work is bright, simple and marketable on the surface, hiding this surprisingly thick emotional core. Nadine too asks God for help in a moment of desperation, and both film’s congruently conceal their own mature sadness and subtler humor.
The wisest change Kelly makes is drawing the clear connection between our relationship with God and how we may as well be communing with ourselves. Religious freedom is what made the story most radical back in the day, more than all the menstruation, but in 2023 I’m finding it hard to be anything but pleased by the film’s purity and penetrating goodness. I hope a movie so warm-spirited finds its way. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is a modest feminist mini-masterwork, straight-up chicken soup for the soul kinda stuff. It’s comfy but so much more than cinematic comfort food, a work of superb wholesomeness, with still-relevant subjects to propagate without any need to cheapen Bloom’s original voice. Let’s just hope the legacy of Margaret isn’t wasted on the current generation of Nancy’s we have running around.
Are you there Hollywood? It’s me Judy Bloom, don’t you ever touch my books as long as I live. That is, until I find the right filmmaker.
After crafting an exceptional coming-of-age update in her directorial debut The Edge of Seventeen, Kelly Fremon Craig’s take on the foibles and fullness of adolescence must’ve been sincere enough to find some common cinematic ground to stage Bloom’s celebrated, generationally-passed young lady’s novella on both the crazy collective cusp of womanhood and a particular case of religious confusion. Like some Hobbit or Dr. Seuss situation, I figured this is one adaptation where inflated inspirations from the slim text are all to be found but Margaret is a stronger transposition for the evenhanded embellishment and reasonable reduction. Simplification and expansion aside, I could only be slightly annoyed when the alterations take you away from Margaret’s mind, as this movie feels the need to make sure Are You There God? is one for women at ANY age.
Outside of the 6th-grade perspective (seeing as Margaret’s first person journey can’t be internalized as it is in text) we gotta have a little extra Grandma in the script and give Mom a proper arc, which admittedly, gradually turned the potentially trite final scene into one of emotional fireworks. Quibbles quelled, Margaret is a marvelously cast movie — Ben Safdie is a more than convincing Jewish Dad, making the best of this small side-career in acting with self-directed turns and ones with PTA and Chris Nolan. Kathy Bates is magnificent in Nana-mode and even Rachel McAdams makes better on all her wacky reactions shots, going from the one stuck in dumb sitcom B-plot scenarios (oh look at me I’m over-volunteering at school, oh no I can’t cook) to moments fleshing out Momma Simon’s passions and agency — she seems so much more reserved, not cold exactly, in the book, as opposed to McAdams' bubblier presence, but the performance is appreciably ardent.
But it’s really the incredible young Abby Ryder Fortson deserving most due praise, known for playing little Cassie Lang in the first two Ant-Man features. The easy comparison for this flick is Eighth Grade just based on the age of our young female protagonist alone — of course Fortson isn't quite as ‘real’ as Elsie Fisher but she sells all of Bloom’s and Craig’s urgencies, you ultimately project yourself onto her. This could have been a case where these lady C-O-A tropes have been beaten into cliché and Are You There God? is a sad latecomer to the audiovisual party that the 1970 book had some part in inciting. Craig was even upstaged quickly after 2016 when Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig’s work is slightly superior I have to admit) debuted to even more acclaim than Seventeen’s universal praise, and Eighth Grade came just behind in Summer 2018. But even with many modern measures on the genre's capacity, Margaret accesses a certain timelessness by coming off how any era might have attempted to fashion this film — consolatory and straightforward. It doesn’t bear the rare James L. Brooks producer credit for nothing, the only of its kind since 2001 aside from Edge, other than his last two directed films Spanglish and How Do You Know, but who is writing home about them?
Period specificity is this movie’s best friend and the accurate 50-years-removed setting ensures there is no modern shenanigans disturbing the brief story’s infectious, universal directness. Pleasingly, Craig sticks to the source and trims it clean. The additions are hit and miss, at worst low aims at some broader humor — but save a moment or two there’s nothing stupid or crass crammed in that could really age It’s Me, Margaret and jeopardize its worth. Craig is quietly becoming a master of montage, specifically synced to soundtracks with appropriate drops. She’s got taste and economy, as well as Hans Zimmer’s score (it’s like he has a whole separate catalogue for fluff like Brooks' and Nancy Meyer’s filmography) to help raise the film above the twee nature of the entire enterprise — that central piano theme is equally wistful and soothing.
Before Kelly brought it all home, I was worried I might choke on the almost unfashionable optimism and outmoded earnestness — this movie probably scans as pure corn despite its resonance just for closely committing to a conservative adaptation. One last glaring, necessary observation important to note is Kelly’s own Benjamin Buttoning of her coming-of-age concerns, receding from the broad indie rom-com script, 2009’s shitty, scant, borderline anti-feminist Post-Grad for Alexis Bledel’s 22 year-old non-character Ryden to Hailee Seinfeld’s Nadine (on the titular Edge of Seventeen, a too-true representation of high school’s sociological hierarchy and the way it forces us into different roles of ourselves depending on who we are interacting with) to the almost-12 age range of young Margaret… I hope you just have a natural gift or intense proclivity, and haven’t just been pigeonholed into formative Bildungsroman stories… if Kelly’s next protagonist is some 7-year-old I’ll be a little concerned.
In the book she never reconciles with Laura Danker after they fight, so I knew for a fact they were going to clear up that dangling ambiguity, satisfyingly so. On the page it feels ready to be resolved but doesn’t, leaving you to obviously wonder what you yourself might do. The story is like the best of those instructional, cautionary pieces of media for pubescents with moderately easy moral lessons to grasp — don't lie and gossip like Nancy Wheeler kids! But even with such cut and dry text, Craig nimbly kneads the story’s elements in order to Trojan-Horse some real bombs of wisdom and lucidity. Like Seventeen, her work is bright, simple and marketable on the surface, hiding this surprisingly thick emotional core. Nadine too asks God for help in a moment of desperation, and both film’s congruently conceal their own mature sadness and subtler humor.
The wisest change Kelly makes is drawing the clear connection between our relationship with God and how we may as well be communing with ourselves. Religious freedom is what made the story most radical back in the day, more than all the menstruation, but in 2023 I’m finding it hard to be anything but pleased by the film’s purity and penetrating goodness. I hope a movie so warm-spirited finds its way. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is a modest feminist mini-masterwork, straight-up chicken soup for the soul kinda stuff. It’s comfy but so much more than cinematic comfort food, a work of superb wholesomeness, with still-relevant subjects to propagate without any need to cheapen Bloom’s original voice. Let’s just hope the legacy of Margaret isn’t wasted on the current generation of Nancy’s we have running around.
Beau Is Afraid briefing
3 (out of 4)
This is the guy with a considerable short film about a son forcing his father into a sexually abusive relationship, so lets say Ari Aster’s feature length career has been a somewhat tamer tableau of the utterly fucked up.
But The Strange Thing About the Johnsons is just the tip of a most insane, indelible iceberg. Billy Mayo plays poor papa in this particularly disturbing nightmare that put him on the map, and also leads the short with the clearest connection to Aster’s latest — 2015’s Beau is a springboard for some of the earliest anxiousness of Beau is Afraid’s epic of Freudian pain. Then there’s his silent film Munchausen, as well as his pair of first person bio’s from Marvelous Mrs. Maisel herself in the insightful, horror-free Basically and the homeless expose C’est la vie. You also can't ignore his noir spoof turned retracting penis panic flick The Turtle’s Head, the dick supplement ad TDF Really Works starring Aster himself or his first film Herman’s Cure-All Tonic, involving weirdly addictive belly button juice.
Needless to say, Aster has been singled out largely as the filmmaker you most want to pull aside and ask if everything’s ok, that and he’s A24’s silver boy (I feel as though gold goes to Eggers but that’s just me). If he hasn’t made a name for himself through excruciating familial scenarios ranging from dysfunctional to deeply, dangerously distressing, Beau Is Afraid makes the most of his studied, near-inscrutable gifts. Cribbing predominantly from Charlie Kaufman’s shame-spirals, with flavors of Roy Andersonn’s eye for miserable black-comic portraiture, David Lynch’s interpretive, ambivalent idiosyncrasies, Don Hertzfeldt’s cosmically infinitesimal comforts and cold revelations (especially about the inescapable, uncontrollable nature of upbringing itself [clearly a pressing subject for Ari]) with narrative elements lifted right from Peter Weir’s The Truman Show and Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life, this movie isn’t exactly the “pulse-blended pastiche” I accused Hereditary of, but it’s not too far off. Hertzfeldt’s particular pangs translate especially in the endlessly inverting centerpiece that folds upon itself with alternate personal histories and ideal potentialities with painful overseeing insight and ego-aimed deconstruction, given this Homunculus-argument/infinite regress kinda feel that ever-absconds from reality into theatrical, daydreamed alternate lives — even if it all amounts to smoke and mirrors, it’s still Aster at the height of his gift for well-tuned artifice, working through a texturally unique, gratifyingly gobsmacking fun house.
He’s mastering the marriage of image and sound, particularly the latter even though this is easily his best-looking feature thus far — the aural attitude here is one of the most Lynchian soundscapes I’ve heard outside of David’s own stuff or the recent Joaquin Phoenix feat in Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here. Aster is genuinely one of the real A24 artists and clearly the production/distribution company also thinks so as Beau is their highest budgeted affair yet — despite this movie mostly tickling my mind then leaving me cold toward the conclusion, there are copious creative labors to enjoy, extreme emotions to process and troubling themes to explore.
But Beau himself makes this movie — though I tend to enjoy more dynamic range from my Joaquin performances, he really did his best to express all the unease, bewilderment, panic and distress it would take to command this role. Maybe I’m used to his Doc Sportello, trapped in a dazed state and figuring out the overwhelming nonsense of his surroundings anyway — I can’t get enough of those shallow focus shots of Beau reacting to any assortment of awful, confusing, vexing situations. But even with Phoenix shining like a new version of the agency-averse mess of PSH in Synecdoche, NY (the span of influences owes the priciest debt to Kaufman’s existential horror) I can’t say this is one of my favorites of his performances, but it’s yet another impressive notch in the filmography of roles ONLY HE could have pulled off. Amy Ryan and Nathan Lane trade in warmth and comic brilliance as a caretaking obstacle couple, and the casting has no faults otherwise — their ill-adjusted daughter Toni (Kylie Rogers) is so particularly cruel. Right when I hoped there’d be some respite or reconciliation in his decades-late rekindling with grown-up tween love played by Parker Posey, it’s just more hilarious-then-horrible psychological anguish.
Beau Is Afraid, originally (preferably) working titled "Disappointment Blvd.," is the guilt trip of a lifetime. I don’t know precisely how much of the film’s total progression of paranoid odyssey-treading was manipulated by Mommie Dearest but it is the ultimate parental penance feature I can think of. The not so late Mrs. Wasseman is the meanest of movie moms from hell, up there with Carrie, Margot at the Wedding, Precious, who can top this witch? The degree of gaslighting is difficult to determine — it would sure be a crazy coincidence if Beau was also so severely fucked with by others on top of his mother’s malicious orchestration, an ersatz endgame beyond the grave.
For Aster, whether it’s your late mother leaving behind plans for a multigenerational decapitation (Hereditary) or your sister murder-suiciding your parents (Midsommar), Beau’s genetic malevolence and wickedness ain’t even that bad. The dichotomy between the incestuous undertones in the past with a younger Mama Wassermann (Zoe Lister-Jones) and the present, pure evil older version played by Broadway regular Patti LuPone spewing spit and vitriol, is something else, something to consider at least — the character truly becomes this omnipresent, oppressive, profoundly petty force of God. I almost feel like Patricia Clarkson could have perhaps killed the advanced role even harder though, sorry. Oedipal shit aside, what is the implication of “your dad was a giant penis monster?” Familial baggage, discomfort, disdain, judgment, sacrifice, the painfully inescapable nature of your own blood — these prickly topics seem to be at the forefront of Aster’s brain, for better or worse (mostly worse of course).
It does bother me since the whole point from a particular perspective is “hey, isn’t motherhood this grotesque, weird controlling thing?” but it really isn’t though. In another chubby, grizzled performance by Phoenix in Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon, his character reads a book his sister has, Jacqueline Rose’s Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty, quoting, “Motherhood is the place in our culture where we lodge, or rather bury, the reality of our own conflicts, of what it means to be fully human. It is the ultimate scapegoat for our personal and political failings, for everything that is wrong with the world, which it becomes the task — unrealizable, of course — of mothers to repair.” And that’s what this felt like, Beau Is Afraid has this duplicity akin to when children fantasize about death or injury just so their parents feel appropriately bad — you get scolded, “you’ll be sorry” — this is an inverse where mom fakes her death just to prove her son is, well, whatever she wants, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of dissatisfaction, as Aster is concerned with the notion of choice and Beau’s all but complete lack of it. But seriously, what does your own mother think of this Ari? I would hate to even show this movie to my mom (“Do we need to have a talk sweetie?”) let alone be its CREATOR, gosh I can’t even imagine.
I was deeply enrapt in this movie’s altered, Brazil-like nightmare of the now and taken by its embark into awfulness. I love the dream sequences and the way it explores his backstory inside every moment of Beau’s unconsciousness, which occurs frequently enough to basically checkpoint the entire movie — the car ride smoking scene cum formative pubescent flashback is so good between the lovely long shots and varied, incredible match cuts. I was thinking new masterpiece until it got to its destination, from there the speculative and substantial elements of the story start to chafe just like in Hereditary. There’s this multilayered psychoanalysis happening within and out of the movie both ways — maybe the penis monster is almost some ridiculous Rorschach test (how many fatherly red herrings are we really dealing with?), and perhaps the only real proof that Aster’s grasp ain’t quite what his reach suggests. I can maybe take it as some horrible hidden reality but the final scene I cannot, and I really don’t mind that you ripped a page directly out of Defending Your Life as a denouement for a most distressing picture, it works as a nice summary.
Does he actually have a twin up there? What was her plan if Beau got there and grieved naturally? It all obviously leaves you dumbfounded but blisteringly entertained — it has future cult classic written all over it, sealed by lots of subcutaneous and conspicuous visual minutia. He is a passionate, perplexing filmmaker with talent to spare, one who will stack up quite a résumé and populate a respectable following if this chancy film doesn’t bite him. More than any other recent director I can think of, Aster has come closest to Lynch in a willingness to take you down roads few dare, forcing audiences to accept situations almost all directors normally wouldn’t dream of. He’s got a lot of balls (the distended, epididymitis-level sort) and somehow even more trust.
How this was the Jewish Lord of the Rings I really cannot say, but I’m now kind of desperately looking forward to what cinematic offspring the medium’s leading anti-natalist will spawn next time.
This is the guy with a considerable short film about a son forcing his father into a sexually abusive relationship, so lets say Ari Aster’s feature length career has been a somewhat tamer tableau of the utterly fucked up.
But The Strange Thing About the Johnsons is just the tip of a most insane, indelible iceberg. Billy Mayo plays poor papa in this particularly disturbing nightmare that put him on the map, and also leads the short with the clearest connection to Aster’s latest — 2015’s Beau is a springboard for some of the earliest anxiousness of Beau is Afraid’s epic of Freudian pain. Then there’s his silent film Munchausen, as well as his pair of first person bio’s from Marvelous Mrs. Maisel herself in the insightful, horror-free Basically and the homeless expose C’est la vie. You also can't ignore his noir spoof turned retracting penis panic flick The Turtle’s Head, the dick supplement ad TDF Really Works starring Aster himself or his first film Herman’s Cure-All Tonic, involving weirdly addictive belly button juice.
Needless to say, Aster has been singled out largely as the filmmaker you most want to pull aside and ask if everything’s ok, that and he’s A24’s silver boy (I feel as though gold goes to Eggers but that’s just me). If he hasn’t made a name for himself through excruciating familial scenarios ranging from dysfunctional to deeply, dangerously distressing, Beau Is Afraid makes the most of his studied, near-inscrutable gifts. Cribbing predominantly from Charlie Kaufman’s shame-spirals, with flavors of Roy Andersonn’s eye for miserable black-comic portraiture, David Lynch’s interpretive, ambivalent idiosyncrasies, Don Hertzfeldt’s cosmically infinitesimal comforts and cold revelations (especially about the inescapable, uncontrollable nature of upbringing itself [clearly a pressing subject for Ari]) with narrative elements lifted right from Peter Weir’s The Truman Show and Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life, this movie isn’t exactly the “pulse-blended pastiche” I accused Hereditary of, but it’s not too far off. Hertzfeldt’s particular pangs translate especially in the endlessly inverting centerpiece that folds upon itself with alternate personal histories and ideal potentialities with painful overseeing insight and ego-aimed deconstruction, given this Homunculus-argument/infinite regress kinda feel that ever-absconds from reality into theatrical, daydreamed alternate lives — even if it all amounts to smoke and mirrors, it’s still Aster at the height of his gift for well-tuned artifice, working through a texturally unique, gratifyingly gobsmacking fun house.
He’s mastering the marriage of image and sound, particularly the latter even though this is easily his best-looking feature thus far — the aural attitude here is one of the most Lynchian soundscapes I’ve heard outside of David’s own stuff or the recent Joaquin Phoenix feat in Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here. Aster is genuinely one of the real A24 artists and clearly the production/distribution company also thinks so as Beau is their highest budgeted affair yet — despite this movie mostly tickling my mind then leaving me cold toward the conclusion, there are copious creative labors to enjoy, extreme emotions to process and troubling themes to explore.
But Beau himself makes this movie — though I tend to enjoy more dynamic range from my Joaquin performances, he really did his best to express all the unease, bewilderment, panic and distress it would take to command this role. Maybe I’m used to his Doc Sportello, trapped in a dazed state and figuring out the overwhelming nonsense of his surroundings anyway — I can’t get enough of those shallow focus shots of Beau reacting to any assortment of awful, confusing, vexing situations. But even with Phoenix shining like a new version of the agency-averse mess of PSH in Synecdoche, NY (the span of influences owes the priciest debt to Kaufman’s existential horror) I can’t say this is one of my favorites of his performances, but it’s yet another impressive notch in the filmography of roles ONLY HE could have pulled off. Amy Ryan and Nathan Lane trade in warmth and comic brilliance as a caretaking obstacle couple, and the casting has no faults otherwise — their ill-adjusted daughter Toni (Kylie Rogers) is so particularly cruel. Right when I hoped there’d be some respite or reconciliation in his decades-late rekindling with grown-up tween love played by Parker Posey, it’s just more hilarious-then-horrible psychological anguish.
Beau Is Afraid, originally (preferably) working titled "Disappointment Blvd.," is the guilt trip of a lifetime. I don’t know precisely how much of the film’s total progression of paranoid odyssey-treading was manipulated by Mommie Dearest but it is the ultimate parental penance feature I can think of. The not so late Mrs. Wasseman is the meanest of movie moms from hell, up there with Carrie, Margot at the Wedding, Precious, who can top this witch? The degree of gaslighting is difficult to determine — it would sure be a crazy coincidence if Beau was also so severely fucked with by others on top of his mother’s malicious orchestration, an ersatz endgame beyond the grave.
For Aster, whether it’s your late mother leaving behind plans for a multigenerational decapitation (Hereditary) or your sister murder-suiciding your parents (Midsommar), Beau’s genetic malevolence and wickedness ain’t even that bad. The dichotomy between the incestuous undertones in the past with a younger Mama Wassermann (Zoe Lister-Jones) and the present, pure evil older version played by Broadway regular Patti LuPone spewing spit and vitriol, is something else, something to consider at least — the character truly becomes this omnipresent, oppressive, profoundly petty force of God. I almost feel like Patricia Clarkson could have perhaps killed the advanced role even harder though, sorry. Oedipal shit aside, what is the implication of “your dad was a giant penis monster?” Familial baggage, discomfort, disdain, judgment, sacrifice, the painfully inescapable nature of your own blood — these prickly topics seem to be at the forefront of Aster’s brain, for better or worse (mostly worse of course).
It does bother me since the whole point from a particular perspective is “hey, isn’t motherhood this grotesque, weird controlling thing?” but it really isn’t though. In another chubby, grizzled performance by Phoenix in Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon, his character reads a book his sister has, Jacqueline Rose’s Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty, quoting, “Motherhood is the place in our culture where we lodge, or rather bury, the reality of our own conflicts, of what it means to be fully human. It is the ultimate scapegoat for our personal and political failings, for everything that is wrong with the world, which it becomes the task — unrealizable, of course — of mothers to repair.” And that’s what this felt like, Beau Is Afraid has this duplicity akin to when children fantasize about death or injury just so their parents feel appropriately bad — you get scolded, “you’ll be sorry” — this is an inverse where mom fakes her death just to prove her son is, well, whatever she wants, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of dissatisfaction, as Aster is concerned with the notion of choice and Beau’s all but complete lack of it. But seriously, what does your own mother think of this Ari? I would hate to even show this movie to my mom (“Do we need to have a talk sweetie?”) let alone be its CREATOR, gosh I can’t even imagine.
I was deeply enrapt in this movie’s altered, Brazil-like nightmare of the now and taken by its embark into awfulness. I love the dream sequences and the way it explores his backstory inside every moment of Beau’s unconsciousness, which occurs frequently enough to basically checkpoint the entire movie — the car ride smoking scene cum formative pubescent flashback is so good between the lovely long shots and varied, incredible match cuts. I was thinking new masterpiece until it got to its destination, from there the speculative and substantial elements of the story start to chafe just like in Hereditary. There’s this multilayered psychoanalysis happening within and out of the movie both ways — maybe the penis monster is almost some ridiculous Rorschach test (how many fatherly red herrings are we really dealing with?), and perhaps the only real proof that Aster’s grasp ain’t quite what his reach suggests. I can maybe take it as some horrible hidden reality but the final scene I cannot, and I really don’t mind that you ripped a page directly out of Defending Your Life as a denouement for a most distressing picture, it works as a nice summary.
Does he actually have a twin up there? What was her plan if Beau got there and grieved naturally? It all obviously leaves you dumbfounded but blisteringly entertained — it has future cult classic written all over it, sealed by lots of subcutaneous and conspicuous visual minutia. He is a passionate, perplexing filmmaker with talent to spare, one who will stack up quite a résumé and populate a respectable following if this chancy film doesn’t bite him. More than any other recent director I can think of, Aster has come closest to Lynch in a willingness to take you down roads few dare, forcing audiences to accept situations almost all directors normally wouldn’t dream of. He’s got a lot of balls (the distended, epididymitis-level sort) and somehow even more trust.
How this was the Jewish Lord of the Rings I really cannot say, but I’m now kind of desperately looking forward to what cinematic offspring the medium’s leading anti-natalist will spawn next time.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
It’s harder to be all stuffy, grumpy or otherwise curmudgeon-like when you actually, rarely, enjoy some kiddie shit in spite of yourself. Movies with “Movie” right there in the name are often IP flexes not to be trifled with — Simpsons, SpongeBob, LEGO are all easily superior pop culture clusters next to Mario’s less super, just safer approach, while Peanuts, Rugrats and even Digimon all have certain cults. From afar The Super Mario Bros. Movie seemed like the chief media franchise thus far to make use of such piercing, ubiquitous, international notoriety — how has Pokémon yet to cinematically grapple with their global rule over the entire horizon of mega-merchandizing?
I could smell the billion-plus gross from a year away — this film was bound to be a once-in-a-while corporate catastrophe or some cute, creative criterion moment, acceptably falling straight between. From Illumination’s involvement early on, my bets were on crap, but then the footage alone convinced me otherwise — so much so I even sat through the two Sing movies plus hours and hours of freakin’ Minions. Mario, while clearly afforded only a similarly stifled, limited effort, plagued by frustratingly preset, prosaic storytelling and textbook emotionality, is still the brightest and best thing Illumination has yet produced. It succeeds The Lorax (maybe the least upsetting Seuss film adaptation), the first Sing’s Zootopia-lite, from-scratch ensemble and winning jukebox musical makeup and yeah, I’ll admit I enjoy the gag-by-the-gallon style of the 2015’s Minions more than any other installment in somehow the 15th highest grossing film franchise of all time (with Despicable Me 4 on the way in 2024).
And to break this movie down more like those floating blocks, this film not only easily supersedes the 30 years removed waking nightmare kids movie from hell Super Mario Bros., but THE Super Mario Bros. Movie signals the commencement of the long-coming legitimization of video game movies in mainstream cinema, utterly removed from Resident Evils, Assassin's Creeds, Street Fighters, Mortal Kombats (Need for Speed, really?) and even more embarrassingly messy cringe-compilation-filler. Sonic’s 1 and 2 seemed to prepare the public for this moment, as well as the runaway success of the derided Uncharted, but free from any humans or reality, the lesser animation studio of Universal’s powerhouses (as they acquired the more daring Dreamworks in 2016) often commits to the hyper, squarer, sight-gag on sight-gag solution of building your movie from the jokes up. Oddly the original Mario games beckon toward the 8-bit fantasy physics and the comedic customs of kids’ entertainment, just a few degrees north of the vulgar velocity of Illumination’s usual fare. The film is a pretty comfortably converted to the brand's usual overeager, Looney-leaning sense of physical humor and the source material’s pixelated propulsion. That construction site dolly shot is such a succinct translation of the old console’s scroll-screen format.
The score was pretty tasteful too rather than taking the easy route, only utilizing Mario’s multipliticous memorable melodies momentarily before adjusting into more orchestral scoring, and sequences like Rainbow Road have cinematic thump, like some Michael Giaccino shit. As if they knew the voice cast controversy was coming, the accent problem is addressed pretty splendidly, making the 'Super Mario bros' business alter egos for the Brooklyn residents, with New York Italian roots making up for Chris Pratt and Charlie Day as the latest in solid celebrity voice roles eclipsing actual voice artists, as has long been the tradition of mainstream animation. But when Keegan Michael-Key is so unrecognizable (pitched up like Madlib’s Quasimoto) who cares when standouts can be so charming? Jack Black’s inflections dip down instead, flexing those Tenacious D pipes in longing Princess Peach love ballads. The latest girl-boss or whatever — honestly didn’t mind Day’s Luigi as the swapped out damsel in distress — is Princess Peach more in melee mode, and Anya Taylor-Joy does alright in the booth.
The film in sum is so damn shaved off, reduced to essentials — unlike Secret Life of Pets and Despicable Me movies, Mario has no need to stretch out a flimsy, sometimes utterly fruitless premise to its breaking point, not with so many settings, characters, obstacles and recognizable IP to exploit. But at less than 90 minutes in real runtime (an admirable amount of time is devoted to the brothers in the real world) there’s so little padding in the plotting you can mostly, solely gripe about what’s not included. The oh so inevitable sequels can branch out and siphon from countless variations on the prolific video game series that this movie can’t contain.
I'd be more mad at how streamlined The Super Mario Bros. Movie is if it wasn’t packed pound for pound with entertainment value — the quaintest quest of all time oxymoronically doesn’t have a boring moment and basically can’t afford to. It's consistently amusing, rightfully diving into the universe’s half rosy half rotten 80s acid trip with some aplomb, obviously in the candy colored sense but also in damn near every way you could make this stupid, silly, sensational world into a teeny tiny bite-sized cinematic hero’s journey for kids. The movie’s inevitably absurd success makes me happy for children with something vaguely new on the theatrical landscape to grasp onto, which is an impressive testament to Nintendo’s curious cash-in. This movie’s pop culture imprint will be innocuous and, well less like large-scale highway robbery than the lower-effort Despicable Me sequels.
In other words, this one is okay to enjoy, but it was also like shoo-in cinema — really hard to fuck up. I feel like since both Disney’s primary animation outlet as well as Pixar have been more or less hit and miss of late, it’s anyone’s game — speaking of which both studios just got their asses handed to them by Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and Sony’s second Spider-Verse is bound to be an artistic mover and shaker for summer moviegoing. The playing field is open, and maybe Mario’s successor will have something more to prove and actually offer tots a real reason to be freaking out in the cinema.
It’s harder to be all stuffy, grumpy or otherwise curmudgeon-like when you actually, rarely, enjoy some kiddie shit in spite of yourself. Movies with “Movie” right there in the name are often IP flexes not to be trifled with — Simpsons, SpongeBob, LEGO are all easily superior pop culture clusters next to Mario’s less super, just safer approach, while Peanuts, Rugrats and even Digimon all have certain cults. From afar The Super Mario Bros. Movie seemed like the chief media franchise thus far to make use of such piercing, ubiquitous, international notoriety — how has Pokémon yet to cinematically grapple with their global rule over the entire horizon of mega-merchandizing?
I could smell the billion-plus gross from a year away — this film was bound to be a once-in-a-while corporate catastrophe or some cute, creative criterion moment, acceptably falling straight between. From Illumination’s involvement early on, my bets were on crap, but then the footage alone convinced me otherwise — so much so I even sat through the two Sing movies plus hours and hours of freakin’ Minions. Mario, while clearly afforded only a similarly stifled, limited effort, plagued by frustratingly preset, prosaic storytelling and textbook emotionality, is still the brightest and best thing Illumination has yet produced. It succeeds The Lorax (maybe the least upsetting Seuss film adaptation), the first Sing’s Zootopia-lite, from-scratch ensemble and winning jukebox musical makeup and yeah, I’ll admit I enjoy the gag-by-the-gallon style of the 2015’s Minions more than any other installment in somehow the 15th highest grossing film franchise of all time (with Despicable Me 4 on the way in 2024).
And to break this movie down more like those floating blocks, this film not only easily supersedes the 30 years removed waking nightmare kids movie from hell Super Mario Bros., but THE Super Mario Bros. Movie signals the commencement of the long-coming legitimization of video game movies in mainstream cinema, utterly removed from Resident Evils, Assassin's Creeds, Street Fighters, Mortal Kombats (Need for Speed, really?) and even more embarrassingly messy cringe-compilation-filler. Sonic’s 1 and 2 seemed to prepare the public for this moment, as well as the runaway success of the derided Uncharted, but free from any humans or reality, the lesser animation studio of Universal’s powerhouses (as they acquired the more daring Dreamworks in 2016) often commits to the hyper, squarer, sight-gag on sight-gag solution of building your movie from the jokes up. Oddly the original Mario games beckon toward the 8-bit fantasy physics and the comedic customs of kids’ entertainment, just a few degrees north of the vulgar velocity of Illumination’s usual fare. The film is a pretty comfortably converted to the brand's usual overeager, Looney-leaning sense of physical humor and the source material’s pixelated propulsion. That construction site dolly shot is such a succinct translation of the old console’s scroll-screen format.
The score was pretty tasteful too rather than taking the easy route, only utilizing Mario’s multipliticous memorable melodies momentarily before adjusting into more orchestral scoring, and sequences like Rainbow Road have cinematic thump, like some Michael Giaccino shit. As if they knew the voice cast controversy was coming, the accent problem is addressed pretty splendidly, making the 'Super Mario bros' business alter egos for the Brooklyn residents, with New York Italian roots making up for Chris Pratt and Charlie Day as the latest in solid celebrity voice roles eclipsing actual voice artists, as has long been the tradition of mainstream animation. But when Keegan Michael-Key is so unrecognizable (pitched up like Madlib’s Quasimoto) who cares when standouts can be so charming? Jack Black’s inflections dip down instead, flexing those Tenacious D pipes in longing Princess Peach love ballads. The latest girl-boss or whatever — honestly didn’t mind Day’s Luigi as the swapped out damsel in distress — is Princess Peach more in melee mode, and Anya Taylor-Joy does alright in the booth.
The film in sum is so damn shaved off, reduced to essentials — unlike Secret Life of Pets and Despicable Me movies, Mario has no need to stretch out a flimsy, sometimes utterly fruitless premise to its breaking point, not with so many settings, characters, obstacles and recognizable IP to exploit. But at less than 90 minutes in real runtime (an admirable amount of time is devoted to the brothers in the real world) there’s so little padding in the plotting you can mostly, solely gripe about what’s not included. The oh so inevitable sequels can branch out and siphon from countless variations on the prolific video game series that this movie can’t contain.
I'd be more mad at how streamlined The Super Mario Bros. Movie is if it wasn’t packed pound for pound with entertainment value — the quaintest quest of all time oxymoronically doesn’t have a boring moment and basically can’t afford to. It's consistently amusing, rightfully diving into the universe’s half rosy half rotten 80s acid trip with some aplomb, obviously in the candy colored sense but also in damn near every way you could make this stupid, silly, sensational world into a teeny tiny bite-sized cinematic hero’s journey for kids. The movie’s inevitably absurd success makes me happy for children with something vaguely new on the theatrical landscape to grasp onto, which is an impressive testament to Nintendo’s curious cash-in. This movie’s pop culture imprint will be innocuous and, well less like large-scale highway robbery than the lower-effort Despicable Me sequels.
In other words, this one is okay to enjoy, but it was also like shoo-in cinema — really hard to fuck up. I feel like since both Disney’s primary animation outlet as well as Pixar have been more or less hit and miss of late, it’s anyone’s game — speaking of which both studios just got their asses handed to them by Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and Sony’s second Spider-Verse is bound to be an artistic mover and shaker for summer moviegoing. The playing field is open, and maybe Mario’s successor will have something more to prove and actually offer tots a real reason to be freaking out in the cinema.
John Wick: Chapter 4 briefing
3 ½ (out of 4)
“…Yeah…”
My thoughts exactly John. Considering the action junkie’s few reliable cinematic outlets include James Bond, Mission: Impossible (currently the GOAT despite how amazing Wick’s arsenal has become) and I suppose the Fast & Furious movies if you can stomach such cinematic shrapnel (Bourne, Kingsman and lesser legacies have come and gone…), John Wick’s rapid popular ascendance for the most adamant voyeurs of voluptuous violence and admirers of “action poetry” (as Ebert coined it with the miraculous fourth Mission movie) has been a blessing of quasi-comic, mostly magnificently badass assassin/revenge-thriller spectacle.
From the series' inception in the cute Keanu movie where he murders a bunch of Russians after they silence his symbolic pup, what always mattered was Wick’s shivery, larger-than-death reputation, which the series has done its damndest to match with equally legendary fights, finishes, freewheeling visual fastidiousness and increasingly titillating locales for Reeves’ character to stylishly take life and give his fellow stuntmen a good whacking. Regardless of which shade of ridiculous suits you better (for me, until this new formidable beast of a film came around, Chapter 3 — Parabellum was the most giddy, garish, gloriously self-satisfied and self-sufficient of the series), we can all agree on one thing — we’d all like to see the most benevolent, soft-spoken man in Hollywood murder even more people.
But I defy anyone who says 2014’s John Wick wasn’t just a less evolved form of identically straight-faced parody — keeping the line, “He’s not just the boogeyman, he’s the man you send to kill the fucking boogeyman” is evidence of this alone. When Chapter 4 starts out with Laurence Fishburne's Bowery quoting Dante’s Inferno (a continuation of the previous entries' similar citations) you know there’s been none of the heightened irony lost and only so much gained…. Which is why I get so ruffled when people fail to understand action movies fly by on form-first audiovisual logic and cinematic symmetry rather than the constructs of considerate, reality-bound plotting. John’s exponential invulnerability is only an issue if you haven’t taken stock of the wry, near-irreverent arrangement of the entire series. Sure, Wick at first is not quite the borderline immortal assassin we see in 2023, but the last movie demanded you accept the rumpus at full blast, so at this point you either do or don’t.
It’s funny how the audience spans from those deeply invested and curious about Wick’s underground operationality to the ones looking out more for footage fit for a Jackie Chan action comedy — the climactic tumbles down hundreds of stairs is truly slapstick for many folks. Of course, paradoxically, when it comes to the mood and atmosphere these movies can still be grave as a potentially fake funeral. These flicks are still high on their own supply, Chapter 4 more than before. As the most histrionic in scale and length, the most placated with another layer of the subterranean murder-for-hire bureaucracy and newly revealed customs, generously seasoned with fresh pseudo-intellectual, philosophical monologues in sublime settings to spread out the regularly excused killing sprees… somehow I still don’t think this near-three-hour action epic could have been whittled down much further.
In hard work, sweat, blood and any other perspirations of pain left on-screen, this film, even more than previous Wick’s, is going two points past the extra mile Tom Cruise-style. Even if you’re more invested in the verisimilitude of the stuntwork rather than that corresponding section of story, awe is hardly displaced. The buildup to that, what, something like six-part Osaka sequence extravaganza was masterfully in sync with the series’ consistently indelible production value — Chapter 4 is the most comprehensively appealing yet to see and hear (thanks for the vibes Tyler Bates, Joel J. Richard and especially La Castle Vania for the hardest cuts), actually like Nicolas Winding Refn was behind the camera trying to out-contrast his own colorblindness. The aesthetics are so gorgeous and gratifying it kinda pains you. After so much surefooted stylizing this entry is nonetheless the most ornate, neon-speckled, blatantly bisexually lit movie yet — even the midway club sequence that basically pops up in every film except Parabellum is a more showy environ for dazzlingly dynamic havoc.
Every single action climax moment — Keanu plus nunchucks in the art museum, the axe fights in the updated second act assassination and finally that Spielbergian overhead oner featuring the Dragon's Breath spitfire shotgun — is absolutely sick-NASTY. I didn’t even mention how cool that Arc de Triumphe sequence is too, like the Paris-proud feature was really tryna outdo Mission: Impossible — Fallout. It’s measured out in such a suitable way that you can’t possibly be one of those people whining “it’s just mindless action the whole time,” because it really isn’t. The third movie is basically that, unabashedly the most comically skewed of the series, jumping the shark, flipping you off with the coldest stare all the while — as inelegant as that sounds Parabellum is defiantly beautiful. This specific chapter is so sensationally, opulently, orgasmically momentous, home to so many little moments within the sequences that are just breathtaking, wonders of pure, operatic action-ballet bliss. When basically every set piece smacks, when your regular action movie sequel (whose budgets, for all the resplendence, only just hit 100 million?) can declare itself the "MOTHERFUCKING KING" in the first few seconds and then convince you of JUST THAT punch after stab, takedown to headshot, takes on divine takes of vigorously composed movement, you can only assess this as nothing other than the American action movie’s swagger in full tilt.
Keanu's character is now a man of fewer words than ever and cooler for it… Fishburne only exists really to hand Wick a new suit now and again… the questionably aligned Winston (Ian McShane) is letting his new dentures do the talking nowadays... poor Charon is only seen briefly, tragically Lance Reddick parted just before the film’s debut and his character leaves us all too quickly in Chapter 4. Donnie Yen, Hiroyuki Sanada and Rita Sawayama are welcome additions that elevate the film’s global martial arts credence. Bill Skarsgård is superbly slimy as the French emissary of the Table. Every new character is strong and full-blooded, particularly Shamier Anderson’s Mr. Nobody as the patient, bargaining bounty hunter and even Clancy Brown as the High Table’s Harbinger.
The scope is so epic, and coyly the filmmakers are leaving us in some way just how the first did, like we’ve only seen this sliver of a living, breathing world, like Star Wars or something. I can’t be the only one who expected Wick to run through the High Table one by one, or have some team-up like At World’s End and the Pirate Lords? I feel like most fans were at least a little butthurt that it all really boiled down to shooting skeevy little Skars in the face in a dutifully simple climax (possibly cumulative) and checking out. Regardless of some Dark Knight Rises kind of ambiguity going on out the door, there’s still an air of finality that suggests this is indeed the final installment — if so, godDAMN what a victory lap.
But I mean, c’mon, is this reeeaaally the end? Way back when, this movie was supposed to shoot concurrently with a fifth, and series’ director Chad Stehelski even later admitted that the back-to-back plan was scrapped because they didn’t feel two separate, worthwhile enterprises could be crafted. At Chapter 4's premiere, all talk of future sequels was dismissed readily. Maybe they can kill Bond, but surely they can’t finish off the Baba Yaga, the King Midas of murder. I can’t help but see this soft ending as just a way to let the fandom marinate and leave the bow at the end of this movie juuust loose enough to pull at a moment’s notice — after literally spitting in the face of death so often, I find three parting bullet wounds insufficient for putting JW in the ground.
But before we consider a fifth, we need to let the Ballerina spin-off (taking place between Wick 3 and 4, featuring Ana de Armas, seems that No Time to Die sequence was basically her audition tape), potential Akira follow-ups (this first act feels like a short film for a reason) and that Continental TV show all have their day, lest we forget the recently announced, reasonably appropriate video game. If that near-conclusive stair sequence were just a little tighter, sharper (and didn’t waste Justice’s "Genesis" so needlessly), Chapter 4 would be hands down an instant action classic — it just sucks that it might be the worst major sequence in the film and the last major moment in the entirety of John Wick, so far as this conclusion is, uh, conclusive. But their prudence is so respectable, capping the bottle while the carbonation's still bubbling. When you see the trailer for Fast X you think “how much further can they milk this bullshit” — here it’s nice that Chad isn’t keeping John anywhere past his expiration date. Maybe it was one more movie from getting too out of hand.
How would you bring him back? Have him fight through hell with some purgatory pistol and work his way to slaying Satan? A prequel in his prime concerning the insane job he executed to get out of the game in the first place? In other more permanent perspectives, the three sequels seem to form their own trio, one leading into another, leaving John Wick: Chapter 4 the technical trilogy topper. As a triptych of fevered follow-ups, as a rare, exemplary stretch where each sequel has succeeded its predecessor, it’s all pretty grand. And if we’re saying it’s all actually, abruptly finished, I can only impart that I’m ultimately contented how much I'm left wanting more — this has been the best mainstream cult movie series of at least the 21st century.
“…Yeah…”
My thoughts exactly John. Considering the action junkie’s few reliable cinematic outlets include James Bond, Mission: Impossible (currently the GOAT despite how amazing Wick’s arsenal has become) and I suppose the Fast & Furious movies if you can stomach such cinematic shrapnel (Bourne, Kingsman and lesser legacies have come and gone…), John Wick’s rapid popular ascendance for the most adamant voyeurs of voluptuous violence and admirers of “action poetry” (as Ebert coined it with the miraculous fourth Mission movie) has been a blessing of quasi-comic, mostly magnificently badass assassin/revenge-thriller spectacle.
From the series' inception in the cute Keanu movie where he murders a bunch of Russians after they silence his symbolic pup, what always mattered was Wick’s shivery, larger-than-death reputation, which the series has done its damndest to match with equally legendary fights, finishes, freewheeling visual fastidiousness and increasingly titillating locales for Reeves’ character to stylishly take life and give his fellow stuntmen a good whacking. Regardless of which shade of ridiculous suits you better (for me, until this new formidable beast of a film came around, Chapter 3 — Parabellum was the most giddy, garish, gloriously self-satisfied and self-sufficient of the series), we can all agree on one thing — we’d all like to see the most benevolent, soft-spoken man in Hollywood murder even more people.
But I defy anyone who says 2014’s John Wick wasn’t just a less evolved form of identically straight-faced parody — keeping the line, “He’s not just the boogeyman, he’s the man you send to kill the fucking boogeyman” is evidence of this alone. When Chapter 4 starts out with Laurence Fishburne's Bowery quoting Dante’s Inferno (a continuation of the previous entries' similar citations) you know there’s been none of the heightened irony lost and only so much gained…. Which is why I get so ruffled when people fail to understand action movies fly by on form-first audiovisual logic and cinematic symmetry rather than the constructs of considerate, reality-bound plotting. John’s exponential invulnerability is only an issue if you haven’t taken stock of the wry, near-irreverent arrangement of the entire series. Sure, Wick at first is not quite the borderline immortal assassin we see in 2023, but the last movie demanded you accept the rumpus at full blast, so at this point you either do or don’t.
It’s funny how the audience spans from those deeply invested and curious about Wick’s underground operationality to the ones looking out more for footage fit for a Jackie Chan action comedy — the climactic tumbles down hundreds of stairs is truly slapstick for many folks. Of course, paradoxically, when it comes to the mood and atmosphere these movies can still be grave as a potentially fake funeral. These flicks are still high on their own supply, Chapter 4 more than before. As the most histrionic in scale and length, the most placated with another layer of the subterranean murder-for-hire bureaucracy and newly revealed customs, generously seasoned with fresh pseudo-intellectual, philosophical monologues in sublime settings to spread out the regularly excused killing sprees… somehow I still don’t think this near-three-hour action epic could have been whittled down much further.
In hard work, sweat, blood and any other perspirations of pain left on-screen, this film, even more than previous Wick’s, is going two points past the extra mile Tom Cruise-style. Even if you’re more invested in the verisimilitude of the stuntwork rather than that corresponding section of story, awe is hardly displaced. The buildup to that, what, something like six-part Osaka sequence extravaganza was masterfully in sync with the series’ consistently indelible production value — Chapter 4 is the most comprehensively appealing yet to see and hear (thanks for the vibes Tyler Bates, Joel J. Richard and especially La Castle Vania for the hardest cuts), actually like Nicolas Winding Refn was behind the camera trying to out-contrast his own colorblindness. The aesthetics are so gorgeous and gratifying it kinda pains you. After so much surefooted stylizing this entry is nonetheless the most ornate, neon-speckled, blatantly bisexually lit movie yet — even the midway club sequence that basically pops up in every film except Parabellum is a more showy environ for dazzlingly dynamic havoc.
Every single action climax moment — Keanu plus nunchucks in the art museum, the axe fights in the updated second act assassination and finally that Spielbergian overhead oner featuring the Dragon's Breath spitfire shotgun — is absolutely sick-NASTY. I didn’t even mention how cool that Arc de Triumphe sequence is too, like the Paris-proud feature was really tryna outdo Mission: Impossible — Fallout. It’s measured out in such a suitable way that you can’t possibly be one of those people whining “it’s just mindless action the whole time,” because it really isn’t. The third movie is basically that, unabashedly the most comically skewed of the series, jumping the shark, flipping you off with the coldest stare all the while — as inelegant as that sounds Parabellum is defiantly beautiful. This specific chapter is so sensationally, opulently, orgasmically momentous, home to so many little moments within the sequences that are just breathtaking, wonders of pure, operatic action-ballet bliss. When basically every set piece smacks, when your regular action movie sequel (whose budgets, for all the resplendence, only just hit 100 million?) can declare itself the "MOTHERFUCKING KING" in the first few seconds and then convince you of JUST THAT punch after stab, takedown to headshot, takes on divine takes of vigorously composed movement, you can only assess this as nothing other than the American action movie’s swagger in full tilt.
Keanu's character is now a man of fewer words than ever and cooler for it… Fishburne only exists really to hand Wick a new suit now and again… the questionably aligned Winston (Ian McShane) is letting his new dentures do the talking nowadays... poor Charon is only seen briefly, tragically Lance Reddick parted just before the film’s debut and his character leaves us all too quickly in Chapter 4. Donnie Yen, Hiroyuki Sanada and Rita Sawayama are welcome additions that elevate the film’s global martial arts credence. Bill Skarsgård is superbly slimy as the French emissary of the Table. Every new character is strong and full-blooded, particularly Shamier Anderson’s Mr. Nobody as the patient, bargaining bounty hunter and even Clancy Brown as the High Table’s Harbinger.
The scope is so epic, and coyly the filmmakers are leaving us in some way just how the first did, like we’ve only seen this sliver of a living, breathing world, like Star Wars or something. I can’t be the only one who expected Wick to run through the High Table one by one, or have some team-up like At World’s End and the Pirate Lords? I feel like most fans were at least a little butthurt that it all really boiled down to shooting skeevy little Skars in the face in a dutifully simple climax (possibly cumulative) and checking out. Regardless of some Dark Knight Rises kind of ambiguity going on out the door, there’s still an air of finality that suggests this is indeed the final installment — if so, godDAMN what a victory lap.
But I mean, c’mon, is this reeeaaally the end? Way back when, this movie was supposed to shoot concurrently with a fifth, and series’ director Chad Stehelski even later admitted that the back-to-back plan was scrapped because they didn’t feel two separate, worthwhile enterprises could be crafted. At Chapter 4's premiere, all talk of future sequels was dismissed readily. Maybe they can kill Bond, but surely they can’t finish off the Baba Yaga, the King Midas of murder. I can’t help but see this soft ending as just a way to let the fandom marinate and leave the bow at the end of this movie juuust loose enough to pull at a moment’s notice — after literally spitting in the face of death so often, I find three parting bullet wounds insufficient for putting JW in the ground.
But before we consider a fifth, we need to let the Ballerina spin-off (taking place between Wick 3 and 4, featuring Ana de Armas, seems that No Time to Die sequence was basically her audition tape), potential Akira follow-ups (this first act feels like a short film for a reason) and that Continental TV show all have their day, lest we forget the recently announced, reasonably appropriate video game. If that near-conclusive stair sequence were just a little tighter, sharper (and didn’t waste Justice’s "Genesis" so needlessly), Chapter 4 would be hands down an instant action classic — it just sucks that it might be the worst major sequence in the film and the last major moment in the entirety of John Wick, so far as this conclusion is, uh, conclusive. But their prudence is so respectable, capping the bottle while the carbonation's still bubbling. When you see the trailer for Fast X you think “how much further can they milk this bullshit” — here it’s nice that Chad isn’t keeping John anywhere past his expiration date. Maybe it was one more movie from getting too out of hand.
How would you bring him back? Have him fight through hell with some purgatory pistol and work his way to slaying Satan? A prequel in his prime concerning the insane job he executed to get out of the game in the first place? In other more permanent perspectives, the three sequels seem to form their own trio, one leading into another, leaving John Wick: Chapter 4 the technical trilogy topper. As a triptych of fevered follow-ups, as a rare, exemplary stretch where each sequel has succeeded its predecessor, it’s all pretty grand. And if we’re saying it’s all actually, abruptly finished, I can only impart that I’m ultimately contented how much I'm left wanting more — this has been the best mainstream cult movie series of at least the 21st century.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods briefing
2 ½ (out of 4)
Creed III scored the best ever opening weekend for a sports movie. Scream VI is boasting the highest numbers yet for the slasher franchise. But I didn’t see those, I backed the follow-up to 2019’s little treat Shazam!, a moment when Warner Brothers was actually doing alright for itself DC-wise even as the MCU phenomenon was peaking.
DC went from catching up to Marvel to resisting Disney’s strategies and now they’re back to uh, just rebooting their own universe? Gag. Superhero movies seem to have lost the favor of youngins, catering almost exclusively to an aging comic book crowd rather than beaming, susceptible, easily transported children. Marvel is only seldom “well-rounded” and obviously same goes for DC on the whole, which made Shazam!, as well as its sequel, more refreshing than the modest affairs appear, even when you cut out our crappy sub-standards for super-flicks. These are actual children’s fantasy features where things explained and unexplained are nonetheless fascinating, the niche concealed just under the smaller-spectacle theatrics despite individually costing around only 100 million.
The relative blockbuster thrift, however, does not dictate how much either case can sometimes seriously and smoothly charm you — call me a pushover but most of Fury of the Gods was working. DC’s quip-per-flick ratio is wildly tolerable next to Marvel’s, plus there was ACTUAL PRODUCTION DESIGN *gasp* — after watching Quantumania, Shazam 2 had me going “Oh Lord look at all the practical effort! Damn DC, you’re still using sets?!?! Get with the soulless times!” In sum the visual effects look so much more laudable than anything Marvel has pumped out lately, and this movie clearly wasn’t at the top of DC’s stack either.
Despite my confusion, at first I was more than content with dumb high school rom-com crap focusing on Freddy Freeman (stellar supporting player Jack Dylan Grazer) and his romance with West Side’s Maria herself Rachel Zegler as, secretly, one of the less furious titular immortal beings. Grazer (one of the lead voices in Pixar’s Luca and also a standout from It) is actually funny, pretty much carrying the movie on his back as single-handedly as last time. Whether natural talent or studied naturalism, he has the gift of presence. His practiced act comes off for real, off-hand, in the moment AND he can emote — he’s well placed next to Djimon Honsou’s last wizard. To broaden the praise, the whole assortment of young adults are winsome without exception, particularly young, Skittles-shilling Faithe Herman. The grown-up, super-powered alter egos (now with more than 10 minutes in a finale to show off) are frankly not far behind in collectively curating this fun, forgettable little diversion, which otherwise wouldn’t be a strong 6/10 and still the best cape flick in, what, a year and a half?
Like the last, hammy villainy is played straight — this time Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu and Zegler (subbing out Mark Strong) fervidly commit to making total fools of themselves. Which leaves Zachary Levi — swallowing up all the screen time from Asher Angel (the real Billy Batson), the teen who probably shot all his scenes in two days — to mug his way through Fury of the Gods, quickly regressing from one of 2019’s delightful highlights to a wince-worthy weak link in his best moments. At worst, the relentless tone-deafness of his over-expressive, exaggeratedly boorish, officially tiresome 35-year-old-talks-like-a-teenager gimmick just illustrates the exasperating performative gap between Billy’s real, responsible 18-year-old personality and the total tomfoolery as the Champion. Whether there’s some id, ego, super-ego shit going on I can’t say, but I doubt it.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods earns the softest, most noncommittal recommendation, an eager 2 1/2. It’s superhero comedy that might actually get you a li’l jolly, reading like how any minor capefare might have played out anywhere from 1980 through yesteryear — it’s almost from a better time in a certain lens, not exactly classic but wearing its tropes so snugly you don’t mind when the occasional cliché clamors in and out of a scene. It was properly stupid, not abysmally, irredeemably stupid like the tangential Rock-flop Black Adam (though that’s not to say the second Shazam isn’t an even more woeful box office blunder).
Like the first, last (same difference) there are these jarring, darker horror elements offsetting all the revelry yet it's pretty sanded out. The mood can sometimes turn on a dime, some of the editing is a little wonky, and Jesus does the third act feel interminable — OH MY GOD candy ads and evil unicorns, when is this wrapping up? Also, FUCK I also just realized that dumb Fast & Furious reference (in trailers and all) is just a cute in-joke for seven-time F&F scribe Chris Morgan — did you really let your past Hollywood hackery spill into the present?
The inherent pointlessness as DC’s latest, soon-to-be-disowned detritus, the brand-new bastard child while the studio is switching tracks, definitely won't equal immediate franchise-festering but it doesn’t exactly stifle a stand-alone serving either. It's hard to ignore the genre's general decline, even though there will be plenty of last gasps if The Flash and a second Aquaman can entice audiences and keep critics quelled. DC’s regular mystery flavor status has yet to change — the brand really is like box a chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna fucking get, and despite a corresponding success rate that reads like a batting average, I like them that way because Marvel has always been the opposite.
It was cute and comforting and didn’t demand much of you and wait, was that Gal Gadot’s last turn as Wonder Woman? Before I digress, this stinger, just past said cameo, is awful — I’m sorry WB but did you literally just simp for the competition as a parting thought to your consumers? I don’t care if it was reshot, what is wrong with you?
Creed III scored the best ever opening weekend for a sports movie. Scream VI is boasting the highest numbers yet for the slasher franchise. But I didn’t see those, I backed the follow-up to 2019’s little treat Shazam!, a moment when Warner Brothers was actually doing alright for itself DC-wise even as the MCU phenomenon was peaking.
DC went from catching up to Marvel to resisting Disney’s strategies and now they’re back to uh, just rebooting their own universe? Gag. Superhero movies seem to have lost the favor of youngins, catering almost exclusively to an aging comic book crowd rather than beaming, susceptible, easily transported children. Marvel is only seldom “well-rounded” and obviously same goes for DC on the whole, which made Shazam!, as well as its sequel, more refreshing than the modest affairs appear, even when you cut out our crappy sub-standards for super-flicks. These are actual children’s fantasy features where things explained and unexplained are nonetheless fascinating, the niche concealed just under the smaller-spectacle theatrics despite individually costing around only 100 million.
The relative blockbuster thrift, however, does not dictate how much either case can sometimes seriously and smoothly charm you — call me a pushover but most of Fury of the Gods was working. DC’s quip-per-flick ratio is wildly tolerable next to Marvel’s, plus there was ACTUAL PRODUCTION DESIGN *gasp* — after watching Quantumania, Shazam 2 had me going “Oh Lord look at all the practical effort! Damn DC, you’re still using sets?!?! Get with the soulless times!” In sum the visual effects look so much more laudable than anything Marvel has pumped out lately, and this movie clearly wasn’t at the top of DC’s stack either.
Despite my confusion, at first I was more than content with dumb high school rom-com crap focusing on Freddy Freeman (stellar supporting player Jack Dylan Grazer) and his romance with West Side’s Maria herself Rachel Zegler as, secretly, one of the less furious titular immortal beings. Grazer (one of the lead voices in Pixar’s Luca and also a standout from It) is actually funny, pretty much carrying the movie on his back as single-handedly as last time. Whether natural talent or studied naturalism, he has the gift of presence. His practiced act comes off for real, off-hand, in the moment AND he can emote — he’s well placed next to Djimon Honsou’s last wizard. To broaden the praise, the whole assortment of young adults are winsome without exception, particularly young, Skittles-shilling Faithe Herman. The grown-up, super-powered alter egos (now with more than 10 minutes in a finale to show off) are frankly not far behind in collectively curating this fun, forgettable little diversion, which otherwise wouldn’t be a strong 6/10 and still the best cape flick in, what, a year and a half?
Like the last, hammy villainy is played straight — this time Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu and Zegler (subbing out Mark Strong) fervidly commit to making total fools of themselves. Which leaves Zachary Levi — swallowing up all the screen time from Asher Angel (the real Billy Batson), the teen who probably shot all his scenes in two days — to mug his way through Fury of the Gods, quickly regressing from one of 2019’s delightful highlights to a wince-worthy weak link in his best moments. At worst, the relentless tone-deafness of his over-expressive, exaggeratedly boorish, officially tiresome 35-year-old-talks-like-a-teenager gimmick just illustrates the exasperating performative gap between Billy’s real, responsible 18-year-old personality and the total tomfoolery as the Champion. Whether there’s some id, ego, super-ego shit going on I can’t say, but I doubt it.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods earns the softest, most noncommittal recommendation, an eager 2 1/2. It’s superhero comedy that might actually get you a li’l jolly, reading like how any minor capefare might have played out anywhere from 1980 through yesteryear — it’s almost from a better time in a certain lens, not exactly classic but wearing its tropes so snugly you don’t mind when the occasional cliché clamors in and out of a scene. It was properly stupid, not abysmally, irredeemably stupid like the tangential Rock-flop Black Adam (though that’s not to say the second Shazam isn’t an even more woeful box office blunder).
Like the first, last (same difference) there are these jarring, darker horror elements offsetting all the revelry yet it's pretty sanded out. The mood can sometimes turn on a dime, some of the editing is a little wonky, and Jesus does the third act feel interminable — OH MY GOD candy ads and evil unicorns, when is this wrapping up? Also, FUCK I also just realized that dumb Fast & Furious reference (in trailers and all) is just a cute in-joke for seven-time F&F scribe Chris Morgan — did you really let your past Hollywood hackery spill into the present?
The inherent pointlessness as DC’s latest, soon-to-be-disowned detritus, the brand-new bastard child while the studio is switching tracks, definitely won't equal immediate franchise-festering but it doesn’t exactly stifle a stand-alone serving either. It's hard to ignore the genre's general decline, even though there will be plenty of last gasps if The Flash and a second Aquaman can entice audiences and keep critics quelled. DC’s regular mystery flavor status has yet to change — the brand really is like box a chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna fucking get, and despite a corresponding success rate that reads like a batting average, I like them that way because Marvel has always been the opposite.
It was cute and comforting and didn’t demand much of you and wait, was that Gal Gadot’s last turn as Wonder Woman? Before I digress, this stinger, just past said cameo, is awful — I’m sorry WB but did you literally just simp for the competition as a parting thought to your consumers? I don’t care if it was reshot, what is wrong with you?
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania briefing
1 ½ (out of 4)
God, wake me when this shit gets good again, or even watchable. Kevin Feige believes audiences will be slurping up the capeslop for the next 80 years or something — I think he forgets that ‘superhero fatigue’ was coined about a decade ago… didn’t matter when there were places to go and sights to see, but its all been downhill for the Marvel Cinematic Universe since Endgame in regard to quality, investment, visual dazzle or proper escapism.
I recall referring to Ant-Man and the Wasp as mid-shelf Marvel, but in reality it almost certainly belongs at the bottom, and now this superficial start to Phase 5 (wait I thought we were still mucking about in Phase 4?) will join the detritus at the lowest altitude of the totem pole. I can’t tell if this or Spider-Man’s latest trilogy has been the bigger waste of resources and pure potential — No Way Home was at least intermittently delightful, but this was no better than passable even aside from the shabbiest sections. For me the first Ant-Man is the optimal filler MCU flick and the brand's best comedy-leaning entry, sorry Ragnarok. The first film buffered Age of Ultron’s impact while Wasp and Captain Marvel were little more than a bridge between Avengers finales, each as increasingly negligible as these movies come.
The second film might top this newest extravagant inadequacy through the sheer power of Michael Peña alone — at least shit was changing sizes like we all like enjoy and expect, even if that first sequel was set up for disappointment with misleading marketing. This fresh padding (until the next “Avengers”) has a particularly grating need to fit in all possible references to every canonical event with even the vaguest relation to Quantumania's squint-to-see story — as if some layman who hasn’t seen the other movies is randomly walking into this, that said the previous Ant-entries were some of the brand's most ignored. Quantumania ends up as more malpracticed mayhem, and this movie was supposed to be a big step forward where this “Universe” figured out just where it's expanding toward and/or what the actual fuck is going on in this Endgame-afterglow.
But it’s not like they’re giving us smaller, more suitable reasons to care — on technical quality alone, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is a fantastic failure. All the CG environs must’ve been rendered removed of the lighting department — and for all the audiovisual cacophony and incompetence, I swear there were maybe two or three actually interesting shots over two hours. This no-go just comes off so FAKE… I thought Thor: Love and Thunder looked a little phony but this shit is quite literally unreal. More clearly than any instance before, Disney, Marvel, Buena Vista, what have you, are just cranking it out, and keep in mind this tacky waste of thousands of screens cost 200 million dollars. The irony is you have this crazy world and sensational scenery that could bear Avatar-adjacent interactivity, but so little of it convinces and far too much of the creative character design comes off like cuts from the costume department of any of their Star Wars streaming spin-off's. Just like the Doctor Strange sequel’s titular madness was more imposed on the audience than exhibited, Quantumania is hardly manic in any kind of delirious, engaging kind of way like, hmm an EDGAR WRIGHT MOVIE. It’s not really entertaining at all even if it wasn’t necessarily boring — any meme-made comparisons to shoddy Robert Rodriguez movies like the third Spy Kids and Sharkboy and Lavagirl are completely justified. Corey Stoll looks like George Lopez’ living-TV antagonist verbatim.
Every performer was phoning it in. Michelle Pfeiffer's character is static and so frustratingly written — once you get sucked back into the dreaded quantum realm why not explain how you left things right away instead of teasing us about the microscopic mess you left behind? Michael Douglas is just there. For a titular character, Evangeline Lilly is remarkably absent, this coulda been Ant-Man and the Daughter, now Kathryn Newton (instead of both Abby Ryder Fortson and, for Endgame alone, Emma Fuhrmann) who while cute as hell is hardly a new talent and her character is yet another super genius teenage girl in a line of Marvel mandates. Paul Rudd isn’t even worth commenting on, he’s around, more neutered than funny nowadays, his character’s strongest moments found in Civil War (orange slices and all) and Endgame. To top it all, our new nefarious overarching baddie Kang is not particularly interesting, at least as someone who never sat through Loki or any other televised Marvel ‘content’ — by the time Jonathan Majors as our new crossover foe spouted his fourth set of generic platitudes about how much we just don’t understand time, all I could perceive is how much of mine was wasting away. Bill Murray’s cameo scenario was funny, but you know you’re watching trash when that’s not only a highlight from the cast but the entire film itself.
The last time I really enjoyed one of these was in the era’s brushed-over, pleb-filtering best Eternals — its funny how I’m already nostalgic for the previously disappointing start to Phase 4 and that comparative phenomenon is only gonna occur more and more as the natural direction of cultural entropy cannot be helped, particularly in this case. This one felt truly skippable and frankly everything’s gonna rub off that way until you bring X-Men into the fray. Regarding their planned, dated projects, at this juncture until Fantastic Four (maybe Blade if I’m feeling ok at the time), I am truly unconcerned and uninvested. Marvel is just about tapped out.
Maybe Peyton Reed should go back to rom-coms — Bring It On and Down With Love are more riveting than any Ant-picture — The Break-Up and Yes Man may be looking like the good old days for our director relative to this corresponding crap.
God, wake me when this shit gets good again, or even watchable. Kevin Feige believes audiences will be slurping up the capeslop for the next 80 years or something — I think he forgets that ‘superhero fatigue’ was coined about a decade ago… didn’t matter when there were places to go and sights to see, but its all been downhill for the Marvel Cinematic Universe since Endgame in regard to quality, investment, visual dazzle or proper escapism.
I recall referring to Ant-Man and the Wasp as mid-shelf Marvel, but in reality it almost certainly belongs at the bottom, and now this superficial start to Phase 5 (wait I thought we were still mucking about in Phase 4?) will join the detritus at the lowest altitude of the totem pole. I can’t tell if this or Spider-Man’s latest trilogy has been the bigger waste of resources and pure potential — No Way Home was at least intermittently delightful, but this was no better than passable even aside from the shabbiest sections. For me the first Ant-Man is the optimal filler MCU flick and the brand's best comedy-leaning entry, sorry Ragnarok. The first film buffered Age of Ultron’s impact while Wasp and Captain Marvel were little more than a bridge between Avengers finales, each as increasingly negligible as these movies come.
The second film might top this newest extravagant inadequacy through the sheer power of Michael Peña alone — at least shit was changing sizes like we all like enjoy and expect, even if that first sequel was set up for disappointment with misleading marketing. This fresh padding (until the next “Avengers”) has a particularly grating need to fit in all possible references to every canonical event with even the vaguest relation to Quantumania's squint-to-see story — as if some layman who hasn’t seen the other movies is randomly walking into this, that said the previous Ant-entries were some of the brand's most ignored. Quantumania ends up as more malpracticed mayhem, and this movie was supposed to be a big step forward where this “Universe” figured out just where it's expanding toward and/or what the actual fuck is going on in this Endgame-afterglow.
But it’s not like they’re giving us smaller, more suitable reasons to care — on technical quality alone, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is a fantastic failure. All the CG environs must’ve been rendered removed of the lighting department — and for all the audiovisual cacophony and incompetence, I swear there were maybe two or three actually interesting shots over two hours. This no-go just comes off so FAKE… I thought Thor: Love and Thunder looked a little phony but this shit is quite literally unreal. More clearly than any instance before, Disney, Marvel, Buena Vista, what have you, are just cranking it out, and keep in mind this tacky waste of thousands of screens cost 200 million dollars. The irony is you have this crazy world and sensational scenery that could bear Avatar-adjacent interactivity, but so little of it convinces and far too much of the creative character design comes off like cuts from the costume department of any of their Star Wars streaming spin-off's. Just like the Doctor Strange sequel’s titular madness was more imposed on the audience than exhibited, Quantumania is hardly manic in any kind of delirious, engaging kind of way like, hmm an EDGAR WRIGHT MOVIE. It’s not really entertaining at all even if it wasn’t necessarily boring — any meme-made comparisons to shoddy Robert Rodriguez movies like the third Spy Kids and Sharkboy and Lavagirl are completely justified. Corey Stoll looks like George Lopez’ living-TV antagonist verbatim.
Every performer was phoning it in. Michelle Pfeiffer's character is static and so frustratingly written — once you get sucked back into the dreaded quantum realm why not explain how you left things right away instead of teasing us about the microscopic mess you left behind? Michael Douglas is just there. For a titular character, Evangeline Lilly is remarkably absent, this coulda been Ant-Man and the Daughter, now Kathryn Newton (instead of both Abby Ryder Fortson and, for Endgame alone, Emma Fuhrmann) who while cute as hell is hardly a new talent and her character is yet another super genius teenage girl in a line of Marvel mandates. Paul Rudd isn’t even worth commenting on, he’s around, more neutered than funny nowadays, his character’s strongest moments found in Civil War (orange slices and all) and Endgame. To top it all, our new nefarious overarching baddie Kang is not particularly interesting, at least as someone who never sat through Loki or any other televised Marvel ‘content’ — by the time Jonathan Majors as our new crossover foe spouted his fourth set of generic platitudes about how much we just don’t understand time, all I could perceive is how much of mine was wasting away. Bill Murray’s cameo scenario was funny, but you know you’re watching trash when that’s not only a highlight from the cast but the entire film itself.
The last time I really enjoyed one of these was in the era’s brushed-over, pleb-filtering best Eternals — its funny how I’m already nostalgic for the previously disappointing start to Phase 4 and that comparative phenomenon is only gonna occur more and more as the natural direction of cultural entropy cannot be helped, particularly in this case. This one felt truly skippable and frankly everything’s gonna rub off that way until you bring X-Men into the fray. Regarding their planned, dated projects, at this juncture until Fantastic Four (maybe Blade if I’m feeling ok at the time), I am truly unconcerned and uninvested. Marvel is just about tapped out.
Maybe Peyton Reed should go back to rom-coms — Bring It On and Down With Love are more riveting than any Ant-picture — The Break-Up and Yes Man may be looking like the good old days for our director relative to this corresponding crap.
Knock at the Cabin briefing
3 (out of 4)
Now THAT’S more like it M. Night. In what I’ll call his sharpest little stab in 20 years, Shyamalan seems to have finally found his film footing after decades of flubs and misfires.
Beyond his sometimes mechanical writing and poor show of directing actors, this is not the dimwitted disgrace of Old less than two years ago. The man has apparently planned out his next three projects, probably because he’s caught up on some reading and slipped into a more adaptive mindset, which is perhaps why Knock at the Cabin feels like an aggressively decent Stephen King movie. His only other appropriated ideas stem from Old’s original French graphic novel and Nickelodeon's The Last Airbender — for their new live action Avatar TV adaption, Netflix has a literal what-not-to-do thanks to Night’s lowest of low points.
For a thriller up to his earlier, more prodigious standard — his stamp on the found footage genre (the geriatric-phobic The Visit) is the last decent thing he’s done since Signs, although I bet The Village is looking mighty impressive in retrospect — Knock at the Cabin uncharacteristically does not appeal to his typical last minute switcheroos, part of what made Old like a worst-of compilation. But he can’t resist an affinity for communicating exposition through TV news footage so much so its now a focal narrative point.
Knock at the Cabin is a compact comeback, it’s moral interests internalized and mapped mindfully, its pulp apocalypse worth unraveling, helping you get all tangled up in such spectrums of cynicism and belief. The ‘true or not’ angle (more specifically, will millions die in biblical hellfire if I do not murder one of my closest love ones?), like any self-respecting semi-psychological thriller, keeps you guessing But there is no hidden religiosity, at least not as stubbornly implemented as Signs. Even though the movie addresses the story’s same sex couple with the worst lines and delivery of the runtime, it all wisely sends back the presumed homophobic hate crime in exchange for something far more universal. The ultimate supernatural nature of Knock at the Cabin gratefully excuses some ambiguous silliness sprinkled within.
The acting can be great, getting under your skin by playing into the double-sided nature of the film's situation, the disarming levelheadedness of a supposed cult crazy quartet brought to life best by Dave Bautista alongside Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abby Quinn and a more briefly seen Rupert Grint, who also appeared in Shyamalan’s AppleTV+ show Servant. Knock at the Cabin actually sucks you in, sustains and follows up on the intrigue, with minimal insults to the intelligence. The idea that one of the four people on earth with matching world-saving, would-you-rather home invasion visions just so happens to be the same guy who previously committed a hate crime on one of the three victims in the subjected family unit is a stinker of a coincidence. Weasley winds up as the dumb red herring, a pretty protruding misdirect. Also, did these heaven-sent hallucinations come with instructions for the death rituals plus a Judgement Day agenda too?
So, the apocalyptic horror Twilight Zone morality play may have one of those awkward, bluntly descriptive titles like Man on a Ledge but it’s got so much more of a renaissance quality than the director’s last effort of critical and financial favor, the abominably stupid Split. With M3GAN and this to ring us in to 2023, it’s not an altogether inauspicious inauguration to a hopefully satisfying rebound year for mainstream cinema, knock on wood.
Now THAT’S more like it M. Night. In what I’ll call his sharpest little stab in 20 years, Shyamalan seems to have finally found his film footing after decades of flubs and misfires.
Beyond his sometimes mechanical writing and poor show of directing actors, this is not the dimwitted disgrace of Old less than two years ago. The man has apparently planned out his next three projects, probably because he’s caught up on some reading and slipped into a more adaptive mindset, which is perhaps why Knock at the Cabin feels like an aggressively decent Stephen King movie. His only other appropriated ideas stem from Old’s original French graphic novel and Nickelodeon's The Last Airbender — for their new live action Avatar TV adaption, Netflix has a literal what-not-to-do thanks to Night’s lowest of low points.
For a thriller up to his earlier, more prodigious standard — his stamp on the found footage genre (the geriatric-phobic The Visit) is the last decent thing he’s done since Signs, although I bet The Village is looking mighty impressive in retrospect — Knock at the Cabin uncharacteristically does not appeal to his typical last minute switcheroos, part of what made Old like a worst-of compilation. But he can’t resist an affinity for communicating exposition through TV news footage so much so its now a focal narrative point.
Knock at the Cabin is a compact comeback, it’s moral interests internalized and mapped mindfully, its pulp apocalypse worth unraveling, helping you get all tangled up in such spectrums of cynicism and belief. The ‘true or not’ angle (more specifically, will millions die in biblical hellfire if I do not murder one of my closest love ones?), like any self-respecting semi-psychological thriller, keeps you guessing But there is no hidden religiosity, at least not as stubbornly implemented as Signs. Even though the movie addresses the story’s same sex couple with the worst lines and delivery of the runtime, it all wisely sends back the presumed homophobic hate crime in exchange for something far more universal. The ultimate supernatural nature of Knock at the Cabin gratefully excuses some ambiguous silliness sprinkled within.
The acting can be great, getting under your skin by playing into the double-sided nature of the film's situation, the disarming levelheadedness of a supposed cult crazy quartet brought to life best by Dave Bautista alongside Nikki Amuka-Bird, Abby Quinn and a more briefly seen Rupert Grint, who also appeared in Shyamalan’s AppleTV+ show Servant. Knock at the Cabin actually sucks you in, sustains and follows up on the intrigue, with minimal insults to the intelligence. The idea that one of the four people on earth with matching world-saving, would-you-rather home invasion visions just so happens to be the same guy who previously committed a hate crime on one of the three victims in the subjected family unit is a stinker of a coincidence. Weasley winds up as the dumb red herring, a pretty protruding misdirect. Also, did these heaven-sent hallucinations come with instructions for the death rituals plus a Judgement Day agenda too?
So, the apocalyptic horror Twilight Zone morality play may have one of those awkward, bluntly descriptive titles like Man on a Ledge but it’s got so much more of a renaissance quality than the director’s last effort of critical and financial favor, the abominably stupid Split. With M3GAN and this to ring us in to 2023, it’s not an altogether inauspicious inauguration to a hopefully satisfying rebound year for mainstream cinema, knock on wood.