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4 stars

Poor Things – 4.75 stars

February 27, 2024
2023, 4 stars, Comedy, Drama
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I was not a big fan of Yorgos Lanthimos. He is clearly talented, but he also revels in the ugly. The Lobster was inventive, but also, masochistic, even abusive. The Favourite was evocative but also grotesque. Lanthimos traffics in the absurd, but he luxuriates in meanness and the darkly visceral, with all its bleeding, flatulence, fluids, and muck. Yet, here, in this hilarious and charming re-telling of Frankenstein, he allows himself whimsy and some gut-busting hilarity.

The time is Victorian London. Emma Stone (Bella Baxter), a fully grown drowning victim fished from the Thames, is brought back to life by none other than a Dr. Frankenstein (actually, Dr. “God”win Baxter, Willem Dafoe) and given life via the insertion of her own unborn baby’s brain. When we meet her, she’s a mere child, eating like a infant, urinating where she stands, stubborn and defiant. But she grows, quickly, and when she happens upon sexual pleasure, she is out and free, with the assistance of a dandy (Mark Ruffalo) who haughtily acts as her tutor even as he is slowly enslaved. Soon, Bella becomes worldly, and learns a few hard lessons, but she quickly masters (speaking of absurd – this word was tagged by spell check as problematic) the ability to make her own destiny in a world that would normally relegate her to docility and subservience. To see her eat, to come, to dance, it is hard not to be as captivated by Stone’s gifted performance as Bella is by the world. And Ruffalo’s foppish moth to her carnal flame is riotous. Bella’s journey is wondrous, funny and beautifully shot, deftly lifting from the best artistic visions of both Tim Burton and Wes Anderson.

I laughed uproariously and sat in wonderment at Lanthimos’ ingenious world.

Two nits. First, I never really thought I’d say, “Hey, there’s just too much of Emma Stone naked” but the film is 20 minutes too long, and there’s just too much of Emma Stone naked. I think Lanthimos became entranced by Stone’s moxie, but soon, all of the sex seems less like a revelation, and more like an obstacle course.

Second, Jerrod Carmichael makes an appearance and there is no other way to put it – he’s terrible. Stilted, clunky, confused, and aggravatingly amateurish. You kind of feel bad for him, but you brighten when you realize he is gone.       

Otherwise, great, smart fun.

Seven down, three (Past Lives, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Zone of Interest), to go.

Anatomy of a Fall – 4.75 stars

February 26, 2024
2023, 4 stars, Crime/Mystery
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A man falls from a window and dies. Was he pushed?

Like HBO’s The Staircase, this is a courtroom drama about one spouse accused of murdering the other, but this film is like nothing you’ve likely ever seen before, simply because half of it is in a French courtroom, where as near as I can tell, a criminal trial is-

  • Nothing but a series of closing arguments between the prosecutor and defense counsel.
  • A venue where they let anything in as evidence, including absolute, groundless conjecture.
  • A therapy session.     

As someone steeped in both American and British procedurals, the picture is fascinating. Think about a prosecutor who elicits, “Well, I think she did it because I was the victim’s therapist” from a witness, and then the prosecutor turns to the defendant and basically says, “Well??? What say you to that!” And all other witnesses get to hang out and watch.

Also, if there were ever a cautionary tale that French and German people should not marry, this is the one.

This is edge of your seat stuff, a film that jams in a flashback of a fight between the spouses on the day before the murder, an exchange that far eclipses the tension of the courtroom.

I am somewhat burdened by the “whodunnit?” aspect of the picture to get deep into analysis, so I’ll focus on the performances, which are stellar.  Sandra Huller has the misfortune of coming up against Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) and Emma Stone (Poor Things), so, no chance. But her turn as the accused is riveting.    

It’s a bit long, and ambiguity has its limits, but a great picture nonetheless.

The Holdovers – 4.75 stars

December 26, 2023
2023, 4 stars, Comedy, Drama
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When I saw the preview for Alexander Payne’s latest picture, I thought, “Okay. Older father figure. Private New England boys school. Some Christmas break bonding. Not the Baird school, but Barton. It’s Scent of a Woman, with a couple of tweaks.” I was right and also very wrong.

Now, I like Scent of a Woman. It’s occasionally moving, impressively manipulative, and entertaining as hell. Chris O’Donnell is vulnerable and empathetic. And even in a small part, a young Phillip Seymour Hoffman (poor George, “sitting in Big Daddy’s pocket”) resonates.

But the picture is near-obliterated by Al Pacino’s roar and Martin Brest’s complete lack of restraint. Hey, folks, not only are we going on a last hurrah with a blind depressive and his young charge, but let’s make the blind depressive a) do a flawless tango with a complete stranger; 2) have such a “fix-is-in” fight with his family that you feel for the bad guy, Bradley Whitford, the sneeriest of nephews; and 3) drive a race car in the Big Apple!

Hoo-ah!!!!!!

Still, like a Whopper Jr., the flick delights until the inevitable dyspepsia.

Now, the differences. First, without Pacino sucking up all the oxygen, The Holdovers has room not only for a Paul Giamatti as a strict, sneakily populist professor, and newcomer Dominic Sessa, the poor rich boy abandoned to staying over at school for the holidays under Giamatti’s thumb, but Da’Vine Joy Randolph, the school’s cook, who must endure the Christmas break and her own recent tragedy. I can’t commend her performance enough – restrained, clever, surprising, and then heartrending without a hint of stereotypical sass and easy schmaltz. Her sharing of the ins-and-outs of The Newlywed Game with Giamatti is primo.

But Pacino could not have allowed it. There was simply no space.

Second, Giamatti and Sessa actually grow, and bond, primarily through conversation, revealing a beautifully rendered mutually protective nature. Whereas, Pacino and poor O’Donnell simply pinged from situation to situation, each increasingly absurd, because they were confronted with two legitimate threats.

Third, again, whereas the scorching flames from Pacino’s engine disallowed any real growth, space or time for others, Payne depicts important interplay between or including secondary characters. The heartbreak and frustration of a bullied kid and his mitten choked me up, and after another poor holdover from Korea breaks from homesickness in the middle of the night and is comforted by Sessa, the job was nearly finished. Indeed, the kids in The Holdovers run the gamut – the dumb bully is there, but so too the clueless but tender-hearted jock and the poor youngsters. In Scent, with the exception of O’Donnell, every kid at Baird seemed to be some form of generic, shit heel carnivore or mere prey. Here, Payne delves a little deeper and produces some truly poignant moments.

Last, Pacino had one change to make, from bigger-than-life suicidal howler to a man who wants to live for himself and others. Conversely, Giamatti is seemingly a martinet, but in fact, turns out to be multi-layered. Rather than merely having Giamatti overcome his condescending and authoritarian nature, writer David Hemingson explores several aspects of his personality and past, all of which fill in the puzzle. And Sessa isn’t the only contributor to his growth, which fleshes him out even more fully,

The end of the film is a bit of a surrender to Scent’s need for big dramatic closure, and in particular, one Giamatti zinger is off-kilter and completely out of character. But the sin is venial.

If they are still holding the Academy Awards, I see a slew of nominations, and if you can get some juicy early odds on Da’Vine Joy Randolph for supporting actress, go heavy.

 

American Fiction – 4.75 stars

December 25, 2023
2023, 4 stars, Comedy, Drama
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The previews suggest an unrelenting, biting send-up of the idiocy of the so-called black experience as represented in the arts. On that front, the film delivers, though with a stiletto rather than a cleaver.  But while the social satire of the film is paramount in its marketing, in presentation, the picture is a sweet and moving story about a family whipsawed by tragedy. It is not lost on the viewer that the dramedy is refreshingly devoid of the stereotypes punctured by the picture. Writer-director Cord Jefferson practices what he preaches, delivering on the traditional at the expense of a caricature he effectively obliterates.

We meet Monk (Jeffrey Wright), a college professor and author in California, as he is confronted by an entitled white undergrad who objects to his having written the title of a Flannery O’Connell short story on the blackboard. Monk explains that as a black man, if he can get over the word that shall not be said, surely, so can she. Our Precious, however, stands in for every vapid girlchild who haunts the modern university, likely cheering for Hamas though they would throw her and her heightened sensibilities off the nearest roof. So she complains. Monk is summarily placed on sabbatical and forced to reunite with his upper middle class family back in Massachusetts and, as with all “going home” movies, things get messy. 

Monk is also going through a professional slump, his books fewer and farther between, and not very popular. While attending a book fair, he notices the crowds at another black writer’s (Issa Rae) event, and when she reads a passage from her novel, a tale of domestic hardship told in the patois of the street (“Yo, Sharonda! Girl, you be pregnant again?”), Monk winces. The crowd, however, swoons and applauds the bravery, grit and authenticity.

Furious, Monk writes his own ghetto tale, My Pafology, as a joke and a rebuke.  He also creates a pseudonym, and soon, the big publishing houses and Hollywood come calling. He is stunned yet seduced, and in aid of his scam, must adopt the mien of the inner city thug, a character so “real” that he cannot make public appearances because, of course, he is wanted by the law.  He negotiates his double life in the midst of rapprochement with his family, with varying levels of success.

I laughed out loud in the theater at least a dozen times, and was thoroughly amused throughout. No one is unscathed, and nothing feels cheap or gratuitous. Most jibes are nuanced, and when Rae and Monk finally go at it, there is no dawning, no lesson. Just an insoluble conundrum that thankfully is not laid at the feet of whitey or oppression or the usual suspects that are part of the grievance mill Jefferson has in his crosshairs. 

The script crackles. Not only in Monk’s hilarious attempts at playing street, but in the familial slings and arrows between Monk and his siblings and the interplay between Monk and his colleagues. When Monk is solicited by a tony literature award contest to be one of the judges, the courter explains that they needed to add some diversity to the panel.  Monk responds, “I’m honored you’d choose me out of all the black writers you could go to for fear of being called racist” to which he receives the oblivious reply, “Yeah. You’re very welcome.”

If it has any flaws, it may be a bit top-heavy on family melodrama over the social satire. But it’s one of best movies of the year. 

Godzilla Minus One – 4 stars

December 18, 2023
2023, 4 stars, Sci-Fi
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When the James Bond series sunk into the self parodic lethal brew of bad puns and worse hair, the franchise was revived by Casino Royale. It was no accident that the first scene in the film was a sweaty, driven Daniel Craig relentlessly chasing a bomber through streets, windows, buildings, a construction site, up a crane, and further, all physicality and adrenaline, no gadgets, brutally visceral.

A necessary antidote to the disease that preceded it-

I thought about this scene while watching Godzilla Minus One, the Japanese production that has, as of this writing, reached $60 million worldwide and $30 million domestic.

The picture is roundly and rightly lauded. But a mere $60 million, you say? Not exactly world shattering.

Except for the following facts

a) the film is foreign language;

b) there are no stars;

c) there are no Avengers or Wookies;

d) the picture’s budget was $15 million, not $150 million.

Quite an achievement and hopefully a harbinger.

At the end of World War II, a young Japanese kamikaze pilot chickens out. While preparing for another sortie on a Pacific island, he sees Godzilla, who wipes out his entire contingent, and again, he hesitates. Wracked with shame, he returns to postwar Tokyo, cobbles together a makeshift family and suffers in ignominy, until Godzilla appears to threaten once again.

There is a real story here. The picture tugs on the heartstrings (admittedly, sometimes a bit too much), makes one stir with emotion, and actually draws characters rather than caricatures. Even better, no one is clad in a stupid superhero uniform, and CGI is not crammed down the viewers’ eye sockets to the point of blinding.

There is CGI, of course, but it  is done with great care, and melded seamlessly into the production. It felt real, not silly, shiny, and stupid. It was exciting to see it, not numbing.

Director Takashi Yamazake also doles out Godzilla sparingly, making his appearances even more impactful. The feel is like an old-fashioned serial, updated for modern times. Thrilling, fun, moving, heroic and devoid of cheap cynicism and snark. Loved it through and through.

Who knows? Maybe this will convince Hollywood that it doesn’t need to spend $250 million for another shit box from spent IP, one almost certain to tank at the box office.

Barbie – 4 stars

November 29, 2023
2023, 4 stars, Comedy, Musical
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The other day, my son bemoaned people who couldn’t just enjoy the silly movies from their childhood, like Star Wars or Indiana Jones, because they had to find a reason to justify the continuation of their early filmic love into adulthood. So, they create a form of criticism that makes their adoration of juvenilia acceptable, even erudite, elevating simple, fun movies to high art or of great social import (which then naturally leads to a concomitant acceptability of their living at home in the basement amongst their toys well into their 30s).

To be fair, I added the parenthetical.

I thought about what he said when I was watching Barbie. Of course, it will be the subject of Gender Studies papers for the next 20 years, and has already spawned reviews of great seriousness (“a searing social critique”; “An earnest feminist manifesto inside a barbed social satire”; an “existential exegesis on what it means to be a woman, and a human”).

There are indeed very smart things in Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s script, including some clever, contemporary touches and social observations. Some land and some elicit a groan.

However, the movie works best as a series of jokes and physical humor encased in a startlingly resonant set design and an energetic commitment to unbridled fun.

That it lightly lampoons patriarchy, consumerism, wokeness, feminism, bro’ culture, capitalism, and much more is undeniable. But that is icing. The cake is the yuks, and Gerwig offers an endless parade of laugh-out-loud lines and sight gags and rousing musical dance numbers, almost all of which land and charm.

A few nits.

I am sick of Will Ferrell. He’s the same schtick, every single time, and he is lazy and boring.

Also, there’s an inspiring speech that screeches the flow to a halt. A rousing feminist speech. To dolls. It’s a bit like watching a character in Star Wars give a soliloquy about colonialism. To Wookies.

The picture is also a bit repetitive and long in its syrupy, maudlin end (though it lands on a great crack to close out).

But these are annoyances. The film opens wondrously, as we are introduced to Barbieland, where everything is perfect; what is not perfect is plainly identified as such (aka, “Weird Barbie” and “Pregnant Barbie”); girls rule; and the Kens serve and bicker amongst themselves, vying for the attention of their masters. But the perfect world of one Barbie (Margot Robbie) begins to crack (her arches fall, she thinks of death), the real world beckons, and she answers the call with a besotted Ken (Ryan Gosling) as a stowaway. There, she finds sadness, men in power, and her own obsolescence. When she is gone, an empowered Gosling returns to Barbieland, and the Kens rise, in hilarious fashion.

After checking its social responsibility box with indelible ink, the picture ramps up as the Barbies use their superior intellects and, interestingly, their feminine wiles, to overthrow the dum dum Kens during their short-lived reign.

This allows for Gosling’s musical numbers, which are worth the entire movie. There is no way around it. He steals this picture. It crackles in every frame in which he appears, and his resume’ as a strong comedic actor (The Nice Guys, Crazy Stupid Love) has expanded.

And “I’m Just Ken” is undeniably the best musical number EVER!

The Killer – 4 stars

November 28, 2023
2023, 4 stars, Action/Disaster, Crime/Mystery
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David Fincher could grippingly film a Frosted Flakes commercial.

Fortunately, he has more to work with here, with Michael Fassbender as a lonely, meditative, assassin embarking on his own city-to-city retribution against his employers and their henchpeople.

We learn about the business, a grim primer without the dark humor of Grosse Pointe Blank, the panache of the John Wick franchise, or the earnestness of The Accountant. The work is drudgery and rote, until it isn’t, and things go tits up. Even then, though, there is no glamour. Just the racking up of air miles that cannot be utilized, the eating of fast food on stakeouts of dumps, and boring trips to any number of storage units.

Fincher’s picture is very easy and assured, occasionally inventive, never stalling, and yet, the endeavor feels beneath his gifts. The comedy is often too dark to resonate. Though the ending is refreshingly, thought-provokingly anticlimactic.

On Netflix.

Rio Bravo – 4 stars

August 21, 2023
4 stars, 50s, Western
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Howard Hawks’ western is competent, light, entertaining, and currently on MAX. The film also sports a few surprises, the most enjoyable of which is the performance of Dean Martin as the shaky alcoholic deputy trying to go cold turkey. It’s a hell of a dark and moving turn from a guy who you normally think is all easy-breezy, no heavy lifting.

Other notes.

1) If you have Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson in a movie, they’re going to sing, and while it’s a little bit clunky when they do, the tunes are still a lot of fun. It would’ve been better if they just had Nelson playing guitar and Martin and Nelson singing together in the live shoot, but I presume the sound obstacles were too great, so they used a studio track and lip-synched instead. The dissonance between the music and the normal soundtrack is dramatic, but I imagine audiences in 1959 didn’t give two hoots.

2) I laud Martin’s performance, but Nelson is pretty damn good too as a youthful medium cool gun hand. He’s not asked to do much, but what tasks are given, he fulfills well.

3) Wayne made the picture in part as a rebuttal to the more cynical High Noon. Per Wayne, “A whole city of people that have come across the plains and suffered all kinds of hardships are suddenly afraid to help out a sheriff because three men are coming into the town that are tough. I don’t think that ever happens in the United States.”

4) Other than The Quiet Man, this is the only film I can remember where John Wayne is a romantic lead. It half works. Wayne smartly plays flummoxed, and Angie Dickinson’s magnetic performance nearly carries the day (when she kisses Wayne the first time, and he is stunned, they kiss again, and she says to him, “it’s even better when two people do it”).  Romance works a little better in The Quiet Man, because Wayne was not asked to woo Maureen O’Hara so much tame her, an endeavor that seemed a lot like breaking a colt.

5) If my recollection is correct, Kevin Spacey modeled his performance in L.A. Confidential on Martin’s here. You can see it. 

6) Trigger warning. Back to Angie Dickinson – va va voom! 

Oppenheimer – 4.5 stars

August 9, 2023
2023, 4 stars, Drama, Historical
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Obviously, I am overwhelmingly pleased to see a three hour film about a historical figure (and to think, Ridley Scott’s next picture is … Napoleon!) Just the other night, I was having drinks with younger colleagues (I am the last year of the baby boom, I estimate that these folks are late 20s), who were excited to see the movie.  I took a pull from my pipe and asked them, “what do you know about Oppenheimer?“ One answered, “the atomic bomb.“ Then I thumbed my tweed jacket and said, “what else do you know about Oppenheimer?“ Neither knew anything further, which makes sense. Yet due to the cachet of Christopher Nolan and the buzz about the film, they couldn’t wait to go see it. One was teaming it up with Barbie for a Barbenheimer, which sounds both intriguing and daunting. But to each their own. 

They should not be disappointed. Nolan’s first two acts are so fully realized and lovingly shot, they are nothing less than stunning. And his narrative-hopping from time period to time period is not just for show. Nolan captures the important vignettes that underscore what you will see later. His rendition of the first atomic test is gripping and fraught. I was on the edge of my seat knowing full well that for the denizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was not a good day.

Alas, the third act is a bit clunky. In the end, a bureaucratic and personal feud between Oppenheimer and Robert Downey, Jr. eclipses some of the larger themes of the picture. It just struck me as a little bit beneath what preceded it, as if Oppenheimer’s undoing stemmed from a mere misunderstanding or snit. 

I read the book upon which the film was premised, American Prometheus, years ago (and had the honor of being taught a course entitled “Nuclear War Crises” by the book’s co-author, Martin Sherwin). The real Oppenheimer was a bit of a mess. His views on the efficacy, wisdom and impact of the bomb matured, but also wavered, and he could speak with confident enthusiasm and also wary trepidation. He could be thoughtful and also, cooly lethal (he once rejected a poisoning scheme with, “I think we should not attempt a plan unless we can poison food sufficient to kill a half a million men, since there is no doubt that the actual number affected will, because of non-uniform distribution, be much smaller than this”).

Cillian Murphy does a beautiful job of working it out in front of us with an internal, searching performance. We see him struggle, not by soliloquy, but by discussion and quiet deduction. Murphy is, rightfully, a lock for best actor (if the Oscars are still a thing next year). 

Murphy is ably complemented by Emily Blunt (wife), Florence Pugh (lover), Matt Damon (the glue guy, still Hollywood’s best and least heralded actor, as General Groves), and a slew of others, all solid (Josh Hartnett? Yes, Josh Hartnett has grown up) and of whom you invariably remark, “Damn. Where have I seen him?”

As Oppenheimer’s bureaucratic nemesis, Downey Jr. crackles, though, as mentioned, he is seminal to the weakest aspect of the movie. 

Talky, meticulous, massive, yet chock full of the little things, Nolan has made a grand, intelligent epic. I hope it spawns more to come.

Papillon – 4 stars

June 5, 2023
4 stars, 70s, Action/Disaster, Drama, Historical
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Franklin Schaffner’s (Patton) big-budget adventure/escape flick is competent, professional, well-acted (even if Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman have no interest in playing French people) and occasionally imaginative, particularly McQueen’s dream sequences as he fights solitary confinement and near-starvation. McQueen is the title character, sent to French Guiana for killing a pimp, where he meets the bespectacled Hoffman, a forger whose only protection is the ability to bribe officials. Their relationship deepens as McQueen, the Cooler King of The Great Escape, naturally attempts escape again and again here.

You may like the flick or not, but it is noteworthy for one scene, below. That crocodile has its snout wired shut and sure, it is drugged to the gills, but those are two massively bankable stars messing with a real crocodile. Nuts!


On MAX (formerly HBO Max).