Blog Posts

'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' briefing

5/10/2024

3 (out of 4)

I am about as wary as one can be regarding those few valuable Fox franchises Disney has to quietly reignite under the 20th Century Studios moniker — Alien: Romulus, sans Ridley Scott, will be another test for them, as will their incorporation of the X-Men and Fantastic Four into the fold of the waning MCU, beginning with Deadpool & Wolverine. Planet of the Apes, however, has an enduring legacy that almost outstretches every other film franchise apart from Bond or Godzilla. Until recently the original Apes sequels were foreign to me and frankly I can’t tell you how off-putting everything about Tim Burton’s quasi-remake was and remains, otherwise I maintained a relative fondness, short of admiration, for the reboot trilogy after seeing them each once in theaters.

Like Mad Max’s pre-to-post-apocalyptic, continuity-unconscious set-up, Planet of the Apes always succeeded in some even hand of spectacle and speculation, often functioning best, to my mind, when the ideas you could strip from the premise (be it evolutionary, science vs. religion, Cold War parallels, Civil Rights parallels, animal rights OBVIOUSLY) were presented more conspicuously. The reason the 2010s Rise and Dawn so neatly update the Caesar revolution (directing us from the present to the early days of ape domination) is because unlike Burton there isn’t just a world of difference in visual effects, but character nudges its way front and center every time. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the ideal sequel for finding the moral balance between good and bad primates and humans — the subtlety is most agreeable, as is Matt Reeves suitably Nolan-esque trimmings. Unfortunately Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes doesn’t have as many scripted nuances, nor anyone behind the camera to impose a noticeable stylistic shift; from Rises’ bright San Franciscan setting to Dawn’s industrial feel and War’s wintry Great Escape, at least Kingdom’s forests and beaches are visually memorable.

The best Kingdom can say is it dutifully fits into a distinct legacy with infinitely more room to grow and breathe than just about any other film-universe. While the original and its sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes take place about 2000 years in the future, the time-traveled line of continuity in Escape, Conquest and Battle encompassed 1970s modernity up to the concrete future of the 90s and beyond, with Rise and Dawn shaking the etch-i-sketch and War’s end inciting the biggest forward timeskip yet, a few hundred years after the death of Caesar. All to say, we’re FINALLY chronologically navigating the most interesting epoch in the Planet of the Apes storyline — the mysterious, mythic time when apes have eclipsed mankind’s own humanity and sapiens have regressed to voiceless, feral, flailing things. As opposed to early sequels positing the premise of a virus wiping out cats and dogs, with apes becoming the obvious pet-substitute (quickly skipping to subservient slaves all in about 20 years), the reboots used an alternate mutated virus (James Franco's cure for Alzheimer's) advancing apes and wiping out most of humanity. By War, they left Woody Harrelson (as our most prominent villain since the suit from Escape or perhaps the gorilla general in Battle) speechless as is LORE, and its funny how Kingdom already has to exclusively deal in the savage humans who can still talk while featuring almost fully talking apes, and to its discredit this 10th Apes adventure doesn't inherit the impressive, almost silent film qualities of Andy Serkis’ history-making trio of mo-cap turns.

The original film has a twist that seems completely apparent on rewatch, but what makes that film great boils down to Cornelius (Roddy McDowell, the only fellow to play parts in all five original films, three as Cornelius and two then as the son Milo/Caesar) and Zera, played by Kim Hunter, the key to Escape’s funny, satirically serrated edge. We get a sympathetic ape here with a new Orangutan (Raka, though its hard to replace the mute bro Maurice from the trilogy) but his time is too short and leaves us with less interesting individuals. The brand new NOVA (“um it’s Mae actually”) becomes a proper sanitizing Disney decision, updating the all too sexualized 1968/70 turn by Linda Harrison and later the pure bimbo/Barbarella look of Estella Warren in 2001’s Planet of the Apes to cast, of course, someone far too attractive — at least Freya Allen's draped in more than ridiculously skimpy rags and the make-up team had her properly dirty even after a shower, oh her having lines and actual acting ability helps. But my cynical mind sees them place the fairer sex in a prominent second bill role front and center (contrary to more sidelined roles for women in last decade's installments from Frieda Pinto to Keri Russell to little Amiah Miller) for the sake of steering female viewership to a storied, male-dominated series, just like they've done with Star Wars media, oh and that last Indiana Jones too. And I’m sorry but this new guy Noa ain’t just no Caesar, the young Owen Teague just isn’t Serkis, and that makes quite the difference, that and the fact that this mo-cap technology looked just as good 10 years ago, which is to say the string of visual splendor does still extend.

The longest Apes ever tries to make narrative moves with a long-dead Caesar but Disney only takes so many chances — this newer series has yet to get insane with time travel, even without cutaway footage to missing spaceships in Rise there's plenty enough room to pull a rabbit out your ass at some point: "break in case of Apes emergency." But there’s like 1700 Goddamn years of history before the events of the original, so possibilities are pretty endless, especially when we’re all just aping from the Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel (known in the UK as Monkey Planet) and nothing else but more incrementally low-budget and shiftily edited 70s sequels. For the nearly 30 year gap between the fifth installment Battle and Burton’s redo, many scripts and directors were thrown about, all culminating in an ironic rush job after decades of waiting. The new films have been more respectable on whole than even the most promising reboots of the late 2000s and early 2010s — if The Dark Knight Rises wasn’t so dumb Nolan’s trilogy would be very close, to a lesser extent so would Star Trek despite the fan-fellating of Into Darkness, but Craig’s Bond and X-Men would eventually shit the bed, and despite my problems with Kingdom, the Apes still have not. The fact that Mickey Mouse retained the ‘blockbuster with less action, more character conflict’ mantra of the earlier counterparts and added to the visual future-historical variety in any way (a high-altitude falconry tribe is enough for me), all while letting go of the past as these entries almost always do in their mostly standalone, loosely sequential from-scratch feel, is more than I could’ve hoped for from Disney in disguise.

We could use more marimba-heavy throwback scores skillfully served by Michael Giacchino as in Dawn, frankly more of everything interesting in that movie would be nice — more distinct drama, themes, philosophies, ironies and relationships, though Kingdom has the muted spectacle down pat. So yeah if this movie felt like it was getting deep as it turned to full adventure movie by its most exciting 2nd act, I wouldn't call this easily the weakest of the reboots and yet, while I could lament that Disney will stretch this out like a taffy I say let them. Despite the guy behind the fleetingly favorable Maze Runner trilogy (Wes Ball's entire resume, though he will be adding The Legend of Zelda) at the helm, Kingdom's scope and temperament is proof enough of artistic integrity. As it stands the Planet of the Apes series could stand to take another 10 installments after this one. The fact that it put up real box office numbers over the star power of The Fall Guy, and both the star power and recognition right there in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, just shows you how fertile this IP still is.

'The Fall Guy' briefing

5/3/2024

2 (out of 4)

“I deliver hits for all you little people!” Not in real life sister.

This is one had me at the premise alone: a behind-the-scenes action comedy with a noir twist? See, regardless of David Leitch — stuntman (five times for Brad Pitt) turned capable action blockbuster magic man — or even Ryan Gosling — the coolest cat in modern drama or comedy, I’m sorry between Drive, La La Land, Blade Runner 2049 and Barbie he’s already one of the new greats — you’d still have enough genre potential to immediately intrigue the likes of me and YET, given my pleasure is theoretically prerequisite, why does so little of The Fall Guy land on its feet or some other loathsome pun?

I can’t help but feel mildly disappointed, seeing as this is guy behind Atomic Blonde, Leitch's vivid, punchy debut outside of a partial hand in John Wick alongside Chad Stahelski. I’d just care for more economy, seeing as The Fall Guy is too forgettable and fluff-festered to somehow cost 50 million dollars more than John Wick Chapter 4 and sincerely, how did The Lost City, hell even Argylle churn out more acceptably tongue-in-cheek romantic wish-fulfillment than a will-they-won’t-they between Gosling and Emily freaking Blunt? How does your romantic action comedy fail to adequately deliver any of its three intents? Thank God the closest to quota is the stunt department, as Gosling’s human test dummy (from “I Drive…” to “I Fall…”) is forced into many situations where the regular action hero wouldn’t be able give the thumbs up, let alone stand. Occasionally there’s a tangible toughness but thanks to a totally silly tone even the best fights and most impressive physical feats are stripped of their “reality” given the enterprise’s forced, farcical folly.

But as far as stuntman odes, it’s ridiculous that The Fall Guy invests so gladly in celebrity worship — Leitch doesn’t prop up any stunt performers, the Ryan look-alikes are still in the wings just like any other action movie. You know what actually gave prominence and some representation to a stunt department? When Leslie Odom Jr. couldn’t take the heat, Mission: Impossible — Fallout went with stuntman Liang Yang for that immaculate, practically perfect bathroom fight sequence and considering it’s probably the best moment of fisticuffs in the last decade just furthers my point. But then, despite such a solid homage to honest-to-god hard-boiled pulp fiction in story alone, this is one of those tangled plots that pulls apart with one tug. I think the double entendre of the title had me too hopeful even if the story did indeed gestate from the neglected stunt double scenario to the doppelgänger dope hung out to dry as is one typical noir fashion.

So it better be laughs shoring up an altogether theoretically winning, shareholder-assuring setup and ultimately generously unedited film. Sadly, even before you roll your eyes at the movie’s half-baked tinder hookup pretending to parody a sizzling summer romance, it’s just unreal how unfunny this movie is — the little in-between gags are the best things going, like the fruit platter, not tired Gen X pop culture references like The Last of the Mohicans and The Fugitive, how many can you squeeze in? There's also some appreciated but fundamentally obtuse satire of Hollywood’s many ills (Egotistical stars! Lazy writers! Bloodsucking producers!). The Fall Guy even looks good as it was shot on glorious film, continuing Leitch’s penchant for garish, brilliantly contrasted throwdowns — so the visually rewarding stunt movie with pretty good stunts (but only a fraction of the visceral, paranoid fantasy-satire of 1980's The Stunt Man), starring talented folks, poking fun of Hollywood evil NONETHELESS adds up to something feigning breezy good vibes when half the time it just blows. It’s enough to make you think of how many exciting original movies could’ve been flubbed or hampered by the slightest misconception, under- or overdevelopment.

Leitch is no stranger to keeping things light, but the far too improvisational, slapdash, shotgun-splatter comedy script (by Hotel Artemis director/Hobbs & Shaw scribe Drew Pearce) doesn’t have a singular force of fun to smooth it all over. When your best gag is the Goose sniffling in his car blasting T Swift and your most standout sequence is his character zonked out on some spiked cocktail, kicking ass by muscle memory in dark light, maybe your boom-pow-haha script should have been treated to a proper punch-up. The “it’s complicated/situationship” side of things has whispers of restraint, class and charm but I was ready to puke after the third or fourth of those ironic, fake-sincere love monologues where the plain subtext is the film’s to-be-fulfilled yearnings.

The Fall Guy is a little too eager to please everybody — I can’t even say it wasn’t entertaining enough or decently crafted because of course it was, Leitch's storied stunt performer/coordinator career of 30 years experience rubs off on his every project. That's why I hate to highlight how David didn’t suitably honor stunt performers, your own unsung heroes — sure Gosling, as the incel’s champion, is well-cast as a fellow buried in the background. But even the behind-the-scenes blooper bullshit doesn’t really exhibit this movie’s stunt team, just a shiny world record for car rolls — it’s a self-congratulatory piece of work but in reality The Fall Guy is Leitch’s weakest movie next to his Fast and Furious spin-off. This love letter isn’t really reverent or respectful through unbelievable thrills, or outpacing The Stunt Man’s Hitchcockian wrong-man-wrong-time or movie-about-movie fakeouts. Speaking of, this freshly sarcastic, nihilistic, postmodern infinity mirror of Hollywood on Hollywood hollowness/hallowedness isn’t nearly as memorable or honest as Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time, the Coen’s Hail, Caesar! or even Damien Chazelle’s Babylon. It’s only self-aware insomuch as it sets up screenwriting shortcuts.

Because of a recent Disney schedule shakeup pushing back many a Marvel movie, the PRIME first weekend of May was left WIDE OPEN and here I was praying The Fall Guy didn’t utterly waste it. Unless you count pandemic outlier years like 2020 and 2021, not since since Mission: Impossible III back in 2006 has a Marvel comics adaptation not kicked off a modern summer blockbuster season, and it’s sad how certain I am that 2025’s Thunderbolts* will be the better time next to this hodgepodge of richer genres than it deserves to clad itself in.

'Challengers' briefing

4/26/2024

3 ½ (out of 4)

Wow, a movie with brains, brawn, beauty and bite — first-time screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes is almost more deserving of adoration than Luca Guadagnino or Zendaya, and he's also penned Luca’s William S. Burroughs adaptation coming this year too. I have no notes, except of course I do they’re just rarely so glowing.

Before Queer this November, I’ll be sure to revisit the so-called Desire trilogy (a spiritual one that is, with the swoony I Am Love, one of many Tilda Swinton/Luca combos, the sexier psychological ensemble drama A Bigger Splash all culminating in the rare James Ivory screenplay for the sublime Call Me By Your Name) but I managed to locate his debut The Protagonists and attempted to appreciate the macabre-obsessed pretense-overflowing mockumentary. What I will say is his second film, Melissa P., was so generous with the subsequent blowjobs I figured Challengers’ salaciousness had to be a bit more eloquent — those darn Italians! Even if he shares some of the same visual language as Yorgos Lanthimos for a peculiar European director’s accessible arthouse shenanigans (off-center low angle shots are a regular tell), this is Luca peaking out just as hard if not more than Lanthimos with The Favourite. He even gets to show Zack Snyder how slow motion can be used for good.

Seeing Zendaya as producer only makes sense since the movie is tailored to her every need career-wise: a complicated character offers range as an amoral script refuses to draw Tashi as the victim or the good guy, and the whole affair makes her look sexy as hell. It’s a textbook star-making turn, more an exhaustive expression of talent than anything I saw in the MCU Spidey flicks or either Dune put together. Of course between this particular Team Edward / Team Jacob rivalry I’m guessing Mike Faist is the vampire, making Josh O’Connor the lone wolf — anyway I’m team Mike and I don’t think I’ll ever not be on that guy’s side after Spielberg let him show his stuff as Riff in 2021’s West Side Story. For O’Connor I believe Challengers is his similarly great moment of discovery, or when and where he shows what he’s made of as he didn’t have quite enough room to stand out in May December. This love triangle paradigm is off the charts dripping with the rizz famalam, the shared emotional elasticity ready to snap on a dime — The Dreamers wishes its sex movie magic were as electrifying or literary, and unlike Melissa P. there isn’t a single blindfolded penis to the mouth happening here.

But if we’re talking film history likeness, of course this is closest to Woody Allen’s Match Point in that every atom of the technical filmmaking is clicking like clockwork but also there are meaningful metaphors are aplenty, it all becoming so much more about the characters and their mental romantic sportsmanship than swatting balls. However, unlike Woody’s Scarjo-exploit of pervert proportions, Challengers is a true sports movie despite the swinging dicks and Allen-level adultery, taking a subgenre without any real standouts (Battle of the Sexes, nah don't think so) and somehow besting other tired sporting events turned motion picture events like boxing and racing. It’s only too easy to say this is up there for possibly the best sports movie of the past 25 years AT LEAST, alongside cult favorites (I, Tonya, Moneyball), visionary heartbreakers (Million Dollar Baby, The Wrestler) and classic crowdpleasers (Ford v Ferrari, Rush, Cinderella Man and whatever recent Rocky movie they say was best, Creed was alright for my money) — I guess I need to see Miracle someday. True dueling spectacle is rarely divvied out with such visceral, verifiable grace and gusto.

And there to help with such gut-busting, frighteningly frenetic energy and spiking testosterone is Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross selling you the sweetest study/workout beats you’ve heard in forever to make sure the mathematical, practically perfect editing and modern/classic cinematographic look results in masterly cinematic energy bursting from every aspect radiating from Kuritzkes’ dazzling screenplay, which takes on more chronological criss-crossing than fucking Oppenheimer. The structure lends itself to folding emotional revelations, blistering parallels and sharp, all encompassing themes, yet even if you shuffled the scatterbrained timeskips into chronological order, Challengers would still be an exemplary movie-as-living-novel miracle. When this slows down to just the actors, Guadagnino is checking the gate on indelible takes of palpable enthrallment, edge and exhalation.

I would say this is Luca’s magnum opus by a long shot since for all of Call Me By Your Name’s beauty both scenic and sensory, Armie Hammer somewhat ironically spoils the tenderness and tears in retrospect. This comes out of nowhere since lately Guadagnino has decided to make such dour, brutal detours to fruitless horror revisionism in his interesting, frittering, boring companion piece / surely-not-a-remake of Suspiria, and likewise Bones and All with its cuddly cannibals and such. Between the left-field scares and leftover sex drive from his early career of aromatic, lovelorn repositories, Challengers is the finest mid-budget popcorn entertainment you could want, the most playful mainstream movie or the most approachable “independent” flavor feature in recent memory.

Tashi just wanted to see some great fucking tennis and I just wanted to see a great fucking movie. I love when no one’s got it all but in the end we all get what we want. Challengers deals in all the dichotomies: talent and professionalism, love and lust, opportunity and chance, confidence and psychological torment, all of course in this game of romantic pursuit beneath the 1v1s, from “It’s about a relationship” also “decimate that little bitch.” What a blast. Any sex-averse zoomers, or conversely anyone actually sorry to have missed out on potential soft-core porn, go fuck yourselves.

'Civil War' briefing

4/12/2024

3 (out of 4)

If any movie this year was gonna range from something else to pure shit, it was Alex Garland’s Civil War, another troubling, transgressive ticket to the show for science fiction’s former friend, not a man for whom allegory has served well so far, and you’re swapping gender for today’s political climate of division? Godspeed Alex and God Bless America I guess (you dirty redcoat), but it beckons asking: “Back to the drawing board are we?” Let’s see, why could you need to return to basics, oh yeah maybe it was because Men was folk horror that was mostly just folked in the head, a symbol-saddled psychological thriller of mostly incomprehensible, unpleasant feminism for masochists. It was bound to split critics and audiences for its potently agonizing, confusing choices that need quite the defense of artistic freedom to have been made in the first place.

Now that he’s dealing with a subject and situation that might have to result in some real ideological fallout for his creative decisions and, despite returning to near-future worlds with imminent crises to resolve (including the screenplays for Danny Boyle, that entails zombie apocalypse, a dying sun, attractive AI gone amok and swelling alien territory), still there’s a naggingly hazy notion as to what exactly Alex was trying to say here. Would he rather not get into election year conversations? To be fair April is juuuuust outside the realm where it would seem like some actual mainstream political moment like uh, Swing Vote? Purge: Election Year? Honestly I have no idea…. Back in the 90s there was a regular rotation of conspiracy thrillers echoing from the eras of JFK’s assassination, Watergate or the later days of the Cold War.

So Civil War is a political film with few political notions, from a “message” perspective too cowardly even to completely hide behind Drumpf and the mass media’s proclivity for left-leaning thought. I imagine the film would make both sides mad for not going hard enough on any kind of insight — the world-of-tomorrow promises of science fiction still invoke his steady genre’s prescription for implication and finding some far-sighted truths in contemporary concerns. Some may find Nick Offerman’s brief, pursed-lipped introduction to be indicative of Trump’s demeanor, or none at all. The orientation doesn’t exactly matter given the intimate scope of the movie, as is usually Garland’s liking — with six primary characters, Annihilation is probably as expansive an ensemble as we’ll ever see from him.

Though just as entertainment — even if it’s quite difficult to see it as such — Civil War is a hearty, lucid movie, a return to form, an irresistible Heart of Darkness for the homeland building to a memorable, thrilling finale. A24’s highest budgeted fare almost doesn’t feel or look like it, and the man emblematic of the studio’s signature minimalism (Robert Eggers and others fall into a caveat, there are only so many hipster auteurs to emerge from their indie film renaissance) finds himself toying with dangerous ideas, and all too stubbornly or frugally treating it all as merely moviemaking and nothing more. Sorry, but I find more to enjoy and extrapolate from the manipulative interplay at the infancy of human-cyborg relations in Ex Machina, as well as the haunting hallucinatory excuse to contemplate first contact in Annihilation.

Civil War does bear questions of conscience, or admits that journalism has no place for conscience — for a movie all about photography and crumbling empires, the near-future decay is convincing and Garland’s eye, sunken in steep, unshakable shallow focus (courtesy of longtime collaborating cinematographer Rob Hardy), can’t help but make the most of the turbulent beauty and anarchic dissent of an imprecise American future portioned by what looks like possibly politically nonsensical lines in the sand. Civil War has commentary on inflation, mid-war morality and how hard it is to be blindly objective (both in film and in political coverage), plus the characters are memorable and acted with admirable, all-too-precise naturalism, particularly Kirsten Dunst’s haunted anchor.

I couldn’t even recognize Cailee Spaeny — just like her breakout part in Priscilla, this girl’s entire visage is an agreeable, midcentury sort of template, the ideal everywoman. She shares the leading spot with Dunst (both Sofia Coppola veterans) who offers plenty of hardened caginess as the jaded war photojournalist begrudgingly escorting new blood through perilous terrain. Wagner Moura, who is definitely not Pedro Pascal, might end up the more popular Spanish guy, and Stephen McKinley Henderson is like the new Morgan Freeman or something (not the token black guy I swear!), a remarkable supporting player for any situation from Manchester by the Sea to Dune to Beau is Afraid.

Garland is apparently stepping away from directing for awhile to get back to screenplays — maybe avoid Danny Boyle as steward (Cillian Murphy is obviously okay in my book) and Garland could end up an even more productive Hollywood hack than however trapped he feels behind the camera. Civil War has the makings of one of 2024’s most interesting moments, if only (if ANYTHING) the themes illustrated any kind of stance at all, and I’m a CENTRIST for fuck’s sake: as Dylan said “fearing not I become my enemy in the instant that I preach.” I still feel like for all your gifts and graces, you made the ultimate choice to say oh well — such a casual, unexplained drop of the future-history event known as the ”ANTIFA MASSACRE” sums up this bloody Brit’s prodding (almost Anti-American) indifference rather well. See what you wanna see, hey maybe I will take a picture of your dead body for posterity… “What do you think?” is the thesis but I could ask you the same thing Alex.

The ironic soundtrack choices — like executing prisoners of war to De La Soul — doesn’t really speak to neutrality or something nonpartisan, in fact these moments find the movie at its most detached. The flippant foil these juxtapositions elicit range from meaningful to moronic, weird for a movie that maybe fruitlessly is “trying to send a message home, some warning” or whatever. Civil War evenly balances the chaos and the quiet, especially with two almost nonsensically placed Suicide tracks. Maybe in the end it’s predominantly a cogent, clearheaded, dispassionate, disturbing thriller about how truly fucked our country is and how little idea we have of how bad it could get no matter how you vote. The built-in bothsidesism is cavalier and even obtuse, nonetheless Civil War is a near-excellent exercise in cursory poke-the-bear cinema, emitting a good deal of cult classic potential for those who will eventually use this as another object of explanation for what the last decade of politics has done to the collective psyche.

'Dune: Part Two' briefing

3/1/2024

3 (out of 4)

May thy kino falter and flop!

Ah, finally I can understand how I feel about Dune: Part One! Well first thing’s first it sure as shit has nothing on its better half. Part Two packs a serious wallop, working with only half the pages condensed into its predecessor, which is certainly a strategy — if I wanna get immersed, of course I don’t want to drown in exposition but I also don’t want to feel like I’m subjected to superlatively composed SparkNotes. The best part of Frank Herbert’s world is his obsession with internal psychology, and through it a multi-lensed, panoramic exploration of politics and sociology and religion but IN SPACE. Almost like the Bene Gesserit’s planted and played upon legends of the Lisan Al-Gaib, the canvas of Part Two savors the way the tale eventually funnels, mounting to an intersection of insanity that just plain gets out of hand — the finale is so climactic and culminating that what accounts for about the 20 pages out of over 600 transposes to 30 minutes runtime at least. Structurally Villeneuve mostly manages to crack the way the book glosses over a few-year time jump, finding alternate, accommodating augmentations for Herbert’s way of diminishing the action to brief illustration outside of the single combat moments.

So Dune: Part Two is a far heftier feat, a legitimate blockbuster (as Part One was choked by WB’s simultaneous streaming and theatrical policy in 2021) that will etch itself alongside other formidable, fascinating sequels and epic, split-narrative “payoff” movies. Assuming Denis is going for Messiah and likely calling it quits (fans would kill for God Emperor, less Children of Dune, and maybe WB will oblige if the French-Canadian doesn’t) then, despite the fireworks and finality, at its best this operates like a mighty, masterful middle chapter fighting for rank up there with The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Dark Knight, Spider-Man 2, you know, the best of them. As far as prizes of patience go, nothing matches The Return of the King’s pent up, fully felt fervor and adaptive finesse (even ghost army glue), but this is comparable to Avengers: Infinity War and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse for accessibly artistic sundered sequels, cornucopias of pleasure and distraction.

Herbert’s world has been realized in both sturdy, sensible enough screenwriting and confident, basically exquisite production detail in all respects. Villeneuve’s sequel is part of a larger picture, considering expensive, expansive, living, breathing Hollywood sci-fi has been Denis’ strongest and only suit since Arrival. His graces are in his value of intimacy and introspection, and an ability to cater to trendiness without selling out. Blade Runner 2049 could’ve been ironically soulless but actually resonates much deeper on the visual and emotional front (than this OR the Ridley Scott original, I must say), Arrival could’ve been Contact without that Zemeckis HEART, and even the first Dune could’ve been a sloppier and far more shaved off summation. Both parts make for a near-ideal example of talent and tale — cinematographer Greg Fraser and he have worked miracles before, and Hans Zimmer’s most rumbling, tumbling score, though too close to Part One’s pulsations, highlights the film’s peaks of direct drama. Certain passages are truly bowel-shaking. But, as it goes, it’s a movie so close to greatness you wish there was some Lynchian instinct in Villeneuve to shake things up, to get riskier. Denis is no Buñuel but he made Maelström — if you can have a talking fish narrate your movie you can get weird in Dune of all things, Christ.

I cannot deny certain mesmeric spells but honestly, why isn’t this just a little trippier? His vision of Jamis at the end of the first film is more psyched out than anything here, which is crazy since in the novel's back half Paul’s been living off that spice, sending his already borderline supernatural ass to the brink, then the literal Kult Kool Aid (that neon blue Water of Life) takes him even further. I think there were more than a few missed opportunities for bold surrealism be it the flavor of Lynch or Alejandro Jodorowsky who famously abandoned an ambitious adaptation — at least Denis’ stitches things with some nice lens flare wipes, drifting vertical transitions not unlike Panos Cosmatos's stuff. And it’s hard to get more ‘far out’ than the introduction of the 1965 novel’s third and final part, which uses flowing dreamscape language to color the lapse of a few years in the desert — instead the movie makes the time jump disappear with a monster battle sequence, our anti-heroes scuffling with smugglers and Sardukar. It almost feels like you could levy Chris Tolkien’s complaint about Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies demographically targeting teen boys, but it’s more ironic here considering how conflicted they decide to make Paul: cautious about that Golden Path but ultimately very, very vengeful. Still, whether or not there’s enough movement to keep casuals awake, the movie’s positively gorgeous shot by shot. You can’t undersell the beautiful practicality, the tasteful reduction or incorporation of the CG, the perfect costumes and miscellaneous awe of the set construction.

But I’m sorry, Austin Butler as Feyde-Rautha? Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan? Christopher Walken as the Emperor? Were they begging for a legacy built on memes? Beyond funny casting, there’s a word for what’s been done to these characters — Denis didn’t fuck them up but contrary to the way The Lord of the Rings’ archetypes are more or less “humanized” through doubt or other emotions to make relatively static figures more complex, Herbert’s psychologically spacious, musing characters have been flipped, flattened to their extremes, either painted one coat or at very least scrubbed of most specifics. Sorry, I almost think I ruined the cinematic experience of Dune (both parts) by reading the book but here we are — now I have a good reason to whine “Why is Chani like this? She’s one of Paul’s most faithful followers in the text!” I can’t blame Zendaya for how they wrote her, I supposed you need some way to spell out the themes for dummies (“Paul, what you’re doing, um, ISN’T GOOD!”), but I smelled trouble from the moment I heard Denis call Chani the real protagonist of Part Two.

It’s the most egregious change but it does prove how subjective his take, how this story might just be too strange, with too many avenues within the web of personalities and politics to be taken for only one person’s interpretation. But of course the casting and acting takes you most of the way there even if the character nuances nag me. Young Timmy C. is the most believable 14-year-old turned messianic war leader you could ask for. I don’t know why everyone’s jazzed over Austin Butler, he just imitates the Baron’s (Stellan Skarsgård) drawl and general creepiness, like uncle like nephew I suppose. Josh Brolin as the grizzled Gurney Halleck simply murdered his role just like he slaughters stunt extras toward the not at all reeled in righteousness of the finale of coups and duels. But Chalamet’s Paul Atreides and Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica do this swap, where its like she’s just another evil manipulating witch before she’s the more resistant of the two when Paul leans in hard on his zealotry. Jessica was always different from the Bene Gesserit, she doesn’t exactly stir the pot, likewise Paul in the books is trained by mentats and fighters and Bene Gesserit, the teen titan’s just living out his life — it’s so wild seeing him go from “oh he’s humble he doesn’t want to do this” and flipping on a fucking dime, thanks to misconstruing the aqua de vida. Tyranny cannot be a slow boil — the audience could come to the wrong conclusion! The schism between the fabricated skeptics (led by Chani) and the “fundamentalists” are just for spicing up conflict, rendering Javier Bardem’s Stilgar into a fanatic from frame one — Paul friends do indeed become followers just not so damn fast. I personally feel that characters were codified, typified, some not even close to their original state.

In other adjustments and/or omissions, where the FUCK is THUFIR HAWAT? How can you nix that drama about the Atreides traitor, he and Gurney suspecting Jessica to be treasonous, especially when your invented conflicts are lame? They do the Baron dirty — how can such a cool, colorful bad guy end up so boring? When they reintroduce him he’s still in his black bath, I guess your choices are limited when you can’t show him molesting and killing young boys (THAT WOULD BE HOMOPHOBIC)… At least they justify not leaving Emperor and Irulan offscreen by framing Part Two with her historical journaling on the tale of the Atreides, a nice nod to the almost academic accounting of Herbert’s chapter arrangements. Then I’m sorry but I wanted young psychic cherub Alia to hilariously undermine the denouement’s grand confrontations, just like in Lynch’s 1984 fiasco/cult favorite I would love a jesting little freak giggling “I’m enjoying this way too much!”

But it’s all too silly and distracting (see ya next time Anya Taylor-Joy!) when you’re after the emotion of the outcast prince, the new Duke himself stabbing Baron Harkonnen in the neck, rather than a blue-eyed grandmotherly toddler taking the Gom Jabbar and ending that fool. In Paul’s hands alone you get a cleaner epic revenge setup BUT YOU ALSO want everyone to simultaneously feel for a fact that the false prophet angle is, what, righteous and wrong AT THE SAME TIME? If revenge is the name of the game and you want good dark motivation, why completely omit Paul and Chani’s child and swift death during the destruction of Sietch Tabr, sorry does that make him a little too sympathetic? God I hate when my jihad is spoiled! It’s no fun if Zendaya is scowling and suspicious of all the religious exploitation even though Chani still has to fall for this twink. The coolest part of Paul’s Golden Path is not how it’s paved to his exact liking but rather how he plays into it, and whether it’s REAL or not doesn’t matter, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. But this script feels the need to point with neon signs to how obviously frowned up this is supposed to be through Chani’s eyes, while Denis’ dynamic staging and cinematic low-risk high-reward clip reinforces just how badass his ascent is, because, in many ways, it is?

I think Villeneuve had a tough time unravelling the internal intricacies and moral quandaries at the heart of it all, as admirable a job as he does. There I go, like the first movie, spending most of my time whining when it’s often and in sum a thrilling, marvelous experience. Like the Bene’s, there’s a blindness that comes from the widest vantage, but I can’t see the macro-level here, though I’ve glanced at the stories past Paul’s upending of the empire, and it seems things become even more dour and narratively tricky to transfer to a visual format. This story alone, so it seems, is tough enough to reckon with between arresting world-building and its cautionary air — Paul himself is this true inversion of the prototypical hero, both in film and in culture. I can’t reprimand him for some mostly decent abridging. Oh NO mmmm aahhhhh where was the COUNT? One sexy scene with Léa Seydoux as Lady Fenring works for me (and although not in the books, interesting lore)… see it’s a balance.

The Battle for Arrakis is over… the Holy War is about to begin. It’s still a great slice of Denis doing his thing, getting around to action only when it matters, personally knowing it’s all gonna look pretty gorgeous, smooth sailing, pure hyperkinesthetics. In the circuits DV said something along the lines of ‘I would do away with dialogue if I could, the power is in the image itself’ and admittedly that’s where he’s strongest. The movie has its near-perfect otherworldly detail and mise-en-scene, lighting, visual effects, sound, score and roughly every damn technical quality you could crave. For mainstream entertainment, this is the best we’ll get in a good while, in spite of simplified and, at worst, shortchanged adaptation. This gamble could’ve scaled from incredible to embarrassing and double goes for the next one, if only considering there’s not exactly the same clout around Frank’s Dune sequels — but I think I’m on Denis’ side through the end. Let’s savor this as an unclouded high point, regardless of the subtext this movie dutifully scrubs out for more telegraphed moralizing — I know Herbert regretted some reader's treating Paul as a hero, and if that finds resolve here, sure, fine. Denis Villeneuve’s fondness for radiating a recognizable sci-fi world from Herbert’s imagination is not lost though, even if some subtlety has sifted out of the screenwriting.

'Madame Web' briefing

2/14/2024

1 (out of 4)

I don’t see any reason to bury the lead: this is the worst superhero movie I’ve ever seen. In the last year alone we’ve had some truly awful, stinky contenders for the genre’s WOAT in the third Ant-Man and The Marvels, but this just takes the cake no question. I even went back to see how bad Catwoman is and sorry, at least all the other trash has some sliver of panache, especially Marvel comics’ baby step movies like Daredevil — speaking of it was nice to discover the impressively shot and edited Elektra spinoff is entirely underrated, so what if stakes are slim while characters are made room for? Blade: Trinity sucked and was a terrible first draft of Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool shtick, but at least as an action vampire romp it offered some sleazy satisfaction, fuck even Howard the Duck has ILM making some anthropomorphic miracles happen and a few real laughs (plus admittedly plenty ‘so bad it’s good’ humorous exhalations).

Once you’ve pondered the lowest of the MCU, even when you start taking into account the various other embarrassments around town — Suicide Squad, Dark Phoenix, Fantastic Four (2005 most of all, personally speaking), Amazing Spider-Man 2, Dawn of Justice, Green Lantern, the list goes on and on — I genuinely think this was the most irredeemable, unequivocally pitiful and pointless, dull, detrimental and moreover an insult to escapism. Supers took off in wake of the digital technology making it all possible, and despite a quiet year for the genre outside of Deadpool & Wolverine and a second Joker, 2025 has four MCU features plus James Gunn’s Superman reboot, so the itch will keep on scratchin’ or vice versa for as long as capeshit generally holds up its end of the bargain.

The thing is, even the sloppiest stuff had its moments, an actor that made you care, a shot that interested you, a spectacular concept, fascinating ability, awesome sequence or storytelling decision that justified its existence. Perhaps it’s how much Madame Web fails to measure up to even the lowered standards of the Sony-Spidey legal loophole spin-off universe — Venom is no masterpiece but top of the heap, Morbius is overhated gothic goofiness that still hardly feels like a full motion picture, a lot like Let There Be Carnage. With the same writers (Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless) as Morbius and Gods of Egypt's watchable B-movie camp, I figured Web had a chance to be surprisingly slick even in the most superficial fashion. No, even with a premise ripped off from Next (a poor Philip K. Dick sci-fi riff with a poorer Nic Cage wig) and Final Destination, Madame’s ability of near-(fore)sight can’t settle on the setups and payoffs of manipulating the predestined present, and so the only chance at a flutter of an inkling of a thrill is thwarted by indecision and the worst heist movie logic (we can’t show the plan in action if it all works out! Only if something goes wrong!). For as unique as these horror-tinged hybrid movies are, this has no seat next to crud like New Mutants let alone Unbreakable or the first Blade movies.

So yeah, this is the junkiest of junk, the least memorable moment in a wheelhouse that has been blurring by like some vomit-splattered carousel maxing out for awhile, so it really takes a certain skillful laziness to be this daft, lifeless, fruitless and not even laughable enough to call it the schlock of the more modest early days of superheroes — Daredevil and Hulk at least were working through new waves of blockbuster attitudes and aesthetics, Evanescence notwithstanding. Madame Web has no style, no grace, nothing that could constitute a trip to the movies where you felt anything other than ripped off. When your villain’s motivation hinges on dream visions depicting superhero ladies that our zoomer supporting cast will one day become — Isabella Merced, Celeste O’Connor and Sydney Sweeney, all with prerequisite personalities (the nerdy one, the mean one, the shy one) and a punishing dialogue dump to quickly run through their nothing backstories — you know this flick’s agenda consists solely of stringing along the Spidey-simps (holy crap are you a future superhero too Emma Roberts? Or are you just giving birth to one offscreen?). If only this movie could’ve been saved by midriffs or bearing the male gaze in mind (Sweeney in a schoolgirl outfit is somehow not the most provocative thing here), but beyond sex appeal this movie isn’t doing jack shit with a nearly all-female ensemble. No amount of girl power or female directors (one S. J. Clarkson) can atone for dogshit, same went for The Marvels — you’re not anti-feminist for hating this movie.

Dakota Johnson’s done more reputable work than 50 Shades but this somehow feels even more degrading, like the paycheck must have made you as blind as the end of this movie where you’re Daredevil and Professor X in one — you ain’t no recent Oscar winner like Halle Berry sweetie, you might not recover from so big a misstep. Outside of the Grey notoriety, Madame Web is another embarrassing property to be tied down to, something like if K Stew went from Twilight to Charlie’s Angels, oh wait — all I’m saying is without a few key roles for Johnson in Bad Times at the El Royale and both Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash and Suspiria, there’d be no reason to say she should know better but damn she should’ve known better. The guy from A Prophet, Tahar Rahim poor fella, I’m sure he wishes there was something better to do with his time.

Even DC was never this embarrassing. Without a post-credits scene (curious since a third Venom and Kraven the Hunter will keep Sony’s sinister dreams alive), still the movies leaves you with stubborn sequel-prospecting: “look what this potential set of character and series COULD BECOME!” Sure, but at no point over the course of the generous 116 minutes did you make that an enticing suggestion — the irony of a superhero story constructed on the idea of limitless futures and pissloads of possibilities is almost NEVER (not since Argylle LMAO) has there been a more embarrassing, disastrous franchise non-starter. Few major motion pictures debut so DOA.

'Argylle' and 'Orion and the Dark' briefings

2/2/2024

Argylle

1 ½ (out of 4)

This antithesis to reinvention for Matthew Vaughn finds the British mischief proving yet again he shouldn’t be so adamant to cement his legacy with tongue-in-cheek spy spoofs — at this rate your movies will be long outlasted in memory by the likes of Charlie’s Angels for Christ’s sake (maybe even the new one, ew!), let alone Austin Powers or even Johnny English, and you’ll deserve it!

Frankly, it was crazy that for three consecutive attempts to follow up the positive reception toward 2015’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, not one has panned out critically, though I’ve never been shy to say I really enjoyed The Golden Circle’s dubious double-down as a direct sequel to an already cuckoo first go-round. But the prequel The King’s Man was much too serious and now, in quite a reactive move it seems, Argylle is all silliness, top to bottom — it’s his worst effort yet, finding his synchronized sincerity and smarm leaning almost exclusively in the direction of that maliciously edgier latter. Flattening fourth walls every other scene doesn’t confirm any kind of cleverness Mr. Vaughn.

Argylle, despite some manner of novelty, drowns in overwhelming preposterousness, unable to surmount the compounding mania and mediocrity even with a passionate, properly curated cast and 140 minutes of naught else but twists on twists on twists — this picture-show pretzel is all knots, which would be OK if there was some genre realignment in motion, action tailored with elaborate, impressive stuntwork like any Kingsman riffs gets to eventually or at least some tickling of the funny bone since it's so freakin' goofy. Argylle isn't inherently unwatchable, but self-aware tripe is still tripe. If it takes five minutes to explain the linchpin reveal, it’s probably not justified it in the least. It’s hard to be subversive in the vein of Kick-Ass when you’re muffled to all the outlandishness a PG-13 rating affords — the revelations and ridiculousness and even the lightly redeeming romance are all dished out in half-measures.

Bryce Dallas Howard (never seeming to top her breakout days in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village and Lady in the Water) is our unexpected, passively past-resistant protagonist, Bryan Cranston is living out the evil shit as gladly as Catherine Hahn (the respectively duplicitous ma and pa), meanwhile Sofia Boutella has one great scene (still nothing close to the swords-for-legs showdown by the first Kingsman’s end) and Samuel L. Jackson’s reunion with Vaughn loses the lisp without gaining a smidge of character. Then Henry Cavill, as Howard’s in-fiction stand-in, is the closest to 007 fare he’ll get since he comfortably suited up for Guy Ritchie’s fizzy The Man from U.N.C.L.E., though he and his stupid hairline are not at all the protagonist marketing might’ve made you presume. Meanwhile Dua Lipa is momentary sex appeal with about as much screentime as she had in the trailer and finally, as the film’s savior (hardly enough to actually save it), the ensemble’s strongest link is the superb Sam Rockwell who I’d take in any form, any day.

Stardust has a settling sweetness, X-Men: First Class is, to me, one of its genre’s best moments and Vaughn’s finest work seeing as Kick-Ass’s scabby subversion is not my cup of tea — but Argylle is soft, stupid and sure to avoid any actual risk in its irreverence. The real agent Argylle may as well have been the cat, and that CG puss could’ve been this movie’s crutch (like an extended Elton John cameo in Kingsman 2) but rather it’s the movie’s absolutely bargain bin visual effects and glossy greenscreening. Vaughn’s style is symmetrical, sharp and simple — without some convolution cornucopia of a script or a decent set to work with, this is all style minus any aesthetic worth ascertaining. Then you punctuate the bullshit with some post-credits scene tying this to the Kingsman universe... I'm sorry, did you learn nothing from the end of your last film, when you teased Hitler like he was Thanos? NO ONE CARES MATT, no one cares and you should know better. The Kingsman movies felt like enough to hang a franchise on, but we were clearly wrong about that and this would-be quirky paperback sleaze keeps even fewer of its promises, for instance that it would amount to direct, innocent fun. Argylle is taking that extra L much too literally, or should I say Vaughn is.

Orion and the Dark

3 (out of 4)

So I’d say Charlie Kaufman has made light of the loneliness and despondence of any age save for preadolescence — never too late! In what amounts to Dreamworks’ most daring feat in years in spirit and in substance alone comes a meta bedtime story with uncommon philosophical ponderousness and challenging narrative flimsiness rubbing against the grain of modern animation. We haven’t seen the rogue Kaufman screenplay outside of his own hands since, what, Eternal Sunshine? The fact that this is some Dreamworks Animation production is even more troublesome — how many kids are you gonna traumatize just so everyone’s turning their thoughts closer to the void of death? I jest, as for all his morose misery-mulling, few cinematic wordsmiths match his ability to scramble the intellect, needle emotion and elaborate on existence, and the way this fits into animation’s annals (especially contrast to the mundane stop-motion mind-rape of his co-directed and completely written Anomalisa) is an unanticipated blessing and conundrum.

Unfortunately, curiously, this could almost be mistaken for one of late Pixar’s finest efforts for maturity alone, there are indeed trademark Dreamworks shortcuts. First, most obviously, there's less inspired character design — the run of fantasy sleep characters (even more lightly detailed than the misfits of Inside Out or Rise of the Guardians) is a little too generic but just a product of the cheaper animation, apparently courtesy of the same folks behind the simple thick-lined style of Captain Underpants, which in all respect made the most of the potty-humored, “from the mind of a child” feel. More disappointing is despite Kaufman as sole screenwriter, lines as stock and standard as “hold on to your butts” sneak their way in, so no doubt potential greatness is on a leash. God, the part where Orion becomes a really prejudiced asshole isn't much more than a bland emotional conflict — remove those few clichés even the most shrewd self-awareness cannot erase or improve upon, beef up the wobbly second act and this would be its own compact masterpiece.

For Kaufman, imposing even more nihilism and heavier profundities on top of the kids fantasy yarn about overcoming basic phobic obstacles in daily life (or rather, MAKING THE MOVIE BETTER) would’ve just made things more devastating — there are really gracious sentiments regardless of him sucking his own dick a bit since he knows Netflix, Dreamworks, whoever has backed something superior to the usual lowest common denominator fare, something that eagerly ponders nothingness, generational inheritance and fear itself. This really must’ve been some kind of therapeutic comedown following I’m Thinking of Ending Things, seeing as Charlie sidesteps the archetypal animated zaniness to get too real about anxiety in its most innocent sense. See, even though it bows down to a certain cuteness, the voice cast is not overrun in celebrity nonsense and the thematic weight is virtually unparalleled for the brand — yes, this may be up there with the early Shreks, Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon (with none of the franchise potential), like back when they made poorly received 2D animated movies that nonetheless undeniably rest among the brand’s surest artistic strokes: Prince of Egypt, Road to El Dorado, Sinbad and of course Aardmann assists like Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

But that unchecked box next to profitability meant an unceremonious Netflix dump (Ending Things too barely came to theaters, understandable in prime pandemic times), and any attempt to sweep this under the rug is lightyears more respectable than how they’re burying the direct-to-streaming Megamind sequel with little returning talent. But to fortify my defensive tone, it’s crazy to consider Kaufman just riffing as he works with about 20 pages, trying to make something out of the grand adventure Orion and Dark are supposed to have in a blink of an eye before the credits roll, eyelids fall and its time for beddy-bye. But for pulling this right out of his ass 95% of the time, Charlie revels in the idea of spinning something for kids that ABSOLUTELY REFUSES to talk down to them even if the ‘story’ has to be solved by your grandson inserting time travel like he’s a Marvel Exec. This is a movie containing profound, productive ideas for the youngest among us, an intellectual commitment amounting to infinitely more than a simple capacity to distract some single-digit snot-nosed whipper snapper — Orion and the Dark sidesteps cringy first person perspective from frame one and breaks down the confines of conventional storytelling before the halfway mark.

“You want me to end it with a dance party?” Kaufman can’t help but make fun of Dreamworks’ formulas while he fashions something much more meaningful out of his rendition. “The stories that make a difference are the ones that are true” pleas the daughter (from outside the frame narrative) to let Orion be scared, and as part of the audience you can’t help but be thankful that someone cares about screenwriting's effect on the brain even more than the flashes of color and the whites of wide, sympathetic eyes. Somehow this standalone mini-miracle is worth weighing plenty of 2024’s remaining months against, and is easily the best thing Dreamworks has dished out since the first Dragon, next to Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, maybe.

'The Color Purple' briefing

12/25/2023

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.

'Ferrari' briefing

12/25/2023

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.

'American Fiction' briefing

12/22/2023

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.

'Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom' briefing

12/22/2023

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.

'Maestro' briefing

12/20/2023

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!

'Wonka' briefing

12/15/2023

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.

'May December' briefing

12/1/2023

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.

'Napoleon' briefing

11/22/2023

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.

'The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes' briefing

11/17/2023

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.

'The Killer' briefing

11/10/2023

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.

'The Holdovers' briefing

11/10/2023

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.

'The Marvels' briefing

11/10/2023

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.

'Priscilla' briefing

11/3/2023

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.

'Killers of the Flower Moon' briefing

10/20/2023

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.

Forward>>

Cinema Briefing

'Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes' briefing

'The Fall Guy' briefing

'Challengers' briefing

'Civil War' briefing

'Dune: Part Two' briefing

'Madame Web' briefing

'Argylle' and 'Orion and the Dark' briefings

'The Color Purple' briefing

'Ferrari' briefing

'American Fiction' briefing

'Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom' briefing

'Maestro' briefing

'Wonka' briefing

'May December' briefing

'Napoleon' briefing

'The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes' briefing

'The Killer' briefing

'The Holdovers' briefing

'The Marvels' briefing

'Priscilla' briefing

'Killers of the Flower Moon' briefing

To keep it brief...

Months in movies

Kino
of the Crop
(A recent selection of
consummate classics)

Cinema Briefing

To keep it brief...

Months in movies

Kinoof the Crop(A recent selection ofconsummate classics)

Kino
of the Crop
(A recent selection of
consummate classics)