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Cinema Briefing
Movie reviews by
Ian Flanagan
Ian Flanagan
 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. Outside of more recent, mostly biographical history in 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 culled cinema out of ol' Boney, one of history’s most legendary backstories, so let us 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, there’s only the capable Christopher Columbus feature 1492: Conquest of Paradise before the 21st century would see Scott’s five takes from further back — the good includes 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. Run-ons aside, 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, even in spite of 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 big 21st century 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 their 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.  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 you pick) after managing most of the main movies. But as 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 felt pretty timely considering 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 it all by its final moments by way of 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 story that doesn’t blow your mind in sum but twists and turns you around several times dramatically and emotionally before it’s done with you. All my indifference was contentedly washed away by Ballad’s considerable catchiness.  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 about five years ago. Granted, if this was concocted by the prince of digital photography (David is king don't deny), that is before it was the industry standard (much more praiseworthy than what George Lucas, Robert Rodriguez and Lars Von Trier [Michael Mann, debatable] did with the cusp of the crossover from celluloid to pixels just over a decade ago) The Killer 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-possessed 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. And I mean it 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.  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 thin-stripped ember 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.  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.  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. |
Forthcoming:
Thoughts on Snow White Black Bag Mickey 17 Captain America: Brave New World Flight Risk The Brutalist Nosferatu A Complete Unknown Sonic the Hedgehog 3 The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim Wicked Gladiator II Emilia Pérez Here Anora Megalopolis The Substance Longlegs Hit Man Dune Part Two Poor Things ... Follow me on Twitter @ newwavebiscuit To keep it brief...
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October 2024
Kino
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