Nightmare Alley (2021)

                  
I was somewhat disappointed by Guillermo del Toro's version of William Lindsey Graham's Nightmare Alley. It is a good film, lovingly crafted, but it lacks the potency of Edmund Goulding's 1947 version. Some forty minutes longer than the older film, del Toro and Kim Morgan's screenplay tries to be a more expansive adaptation of the novel, but their work lacks the concision and meticulous craftmanship of Jules Furthman's earlier screenplay. The new film is too deliberate in its pacing, overly wallowing in detail. It is as if del Toro was so enamored with the source material that, during the course of a long shoot delayed by COVID, he lost perspective on what makes this story work. There are too many superfluous scenes and too much showing off of the film's, admittedly wonderful, production design. The 1947 is so superbly constructed that there is not a wasted moment or shot.

A prologue, not in the earlier film, presents the protagonist, Stanford Carlisle, as more of a narcissistic psychopath. This is a little bit out of the range of Bradley Cooper. His performance lacks the seething desperation of Tyrone Power. Cooper also lacks the level of charisma that Leonardo DiCaprio, the initial choice for this remake, might have brought to the role. Rooney Mara gives a performance that is much too wan even for the relatively colorless role of Molly, a carnival girl who becomes Carlisle's mate. Coleen Gray, a bland actress herself, gave the role a little more spark. 

Mr. del Toro has more luck with his supporting cast. Cate Blanchett, Toni Colette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, David Strathairn, Jim Beaver, and Tim Blake Nelson are all more than adequate. The production is lushly bespoke, every pickled freak in the menagerie seems to have been curated with care, but Nightmare Alley's transgressive power seems diminished in this version. 

Crimson Peak

Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain in Crimson Peak

Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak ranks with such relative clunkers as Blade 2 and Mimic in his oeuvre rather than reaching the summit of his twin peaks of The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. The film displays del Toro's visual panache, but his material is misbegotten pulp.

Crimson Peak is set within the 'sick house' subgenre of horror. Its cinematic and literary forebears include The Turn of the Screw, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Shining, and Mandingo. In the subgenre, the decayed manse reflects the corruption of its owners. Unfortunately, the gothic tropes (incest, orphans, poisoned tea) parade by with little surprise or invention. Décor and F/X are top-notch, but the story is dreadful in only one fashion.

None of the leads seems well cast. Hiddleston has a snaky charm when he is cast as a Rathbone like villain, but fails to find a romantic spark with either Mia Wasikowska or Jessica Chastain. Wasikowska is fine with the more modern aspects of her character, but seems at sea when stuck in a trite Victorian mode. She did convey a sense of a 19th century character with Tim Burton, so the blame seems to rest with del Toro here. Chastain is technically fine, but any number of Brit thesps could have assayed the role with more continental aplomb. Jim Beaver, as always, is wonderful.

On the whole, I prefer del Toro to Burton because his concerns are more adult. Crimson Peak, though, is a misfire. (4/24/22)

West Side Story

            

Steven Spielberg's West Side Story is an entertaining, if not exhilarating, rendition of the Broadway chestnut. Screenwriter Tony Kushner has wisely jettisoned much of what Pauline Kael lambasted as the "painfully old-fashioned and mawkish dialogue" of the 1961 film. Kushner has set the film a bit later than was done on Broadway, after the groundbreaking of the Lincoln center project which provided the death knell to the West Side tenements where the musical is set. This adds a poignancy to the film. We know that the world the Jets and Sharks inhabit will soon be gone forever. 

Spielberg's technical mastery is evident here, his swooping crane shots are especially effective, and Janusz Kaminski's cinematography offers a riot of color. The magnificent sets look more lived in than in the Robert Wise film. Justin Peck's snazzy choreography smartly deviates little from that of Jerome Robbins. 

However, the cast, as in the original, provides few sparks. Rachel Zegler has a fine voice, but is no more animated dramatically than Natalie Wood was. Conversely, Ansel Elgort is a better actor than Richard Beymer, but lacks the pipes to make the role of Tony sing. I enjoyed David Alvarez in the role of Bernardo slightly more than George Chakiris and Mike Faist in the role of Riff slightly less than Russ Tamblyn. Ariana DeBose is only adequate as Anita. I missed the fire Rita Moreno brought to the role. 

Moreno returns in the rejiggered role of the pharmacy proprietor and she offers, once again, the best performance in the film; a nice mixture of vulnerability and steeliness. I was grateful that the role was concocted with her in mind and appreciated a number of the other touches Mr. Kushner added. He makes the love at first sight tryst at the gym dance less hokey, by separating Tony and Maria from the dance floor and giving them a fleeting moment alone behind the bleachers. I also respected the effort to harken back to the Romeo and Juliet origin story, most specifically in the use of The Cloisters as a setting. 

David Newman's orchestration of the score, the best from any musical in the 20th century, is lively. This West Side Story is a nice redo of the original, but not definitive enough to preclude future attempts. No matter what Hollywood has done or will do to this material, it is one of Broadway's classic musicals. 

George Harrison: Living in the Material World

                     
Martin Scorsese's George Harrison: Living in the Material World is an immaculately crafted documentary that never loses momentum through its almost four hours. Essentially an authorized biography, the film both benefits and suffers from its being overseen by Harrison's second wife, Olivia. The benefits includes a wealth of archival material unrivalled by any Beatles oriented flick. Scorsese has already shown he is a master at integrating rock music with film and this documentary is no exception. The music sounds wonderful here.

While Mrs. Harrison is willing to touch on her husband's drug use and straying ways, other embarrassments are elided. The lawsuit concerning his alleged plagiarism of "My Sweet Lord" is not mentioned and his, largely abysmal, musical output after Dark Horse is barely alluded to. Still, a superior documentary. (5/16/17)

Quick Takes, April 2022

The Hand of God

A Neapolitan coming of age story, Paolo Sorrentino's The Hand of God is adventurous cinema that showcases Sorrentino's artistic growth. One of the past year's best. Currently on Netflix.

Angeles Hernandez and David Matamoros' Isaac aims for pathos and quickly achieves bathos. Overlong at a scant 80 minutes and overly tasteful, even the sex.

Josie Rourke's Mary Queen of Scots is an incoherent mish-mash, neither fish nor fowl. A Ren Faire masque with the occasional actorly interlude. Ronan is fine as Mary, nailing her girlish impulsiveness. Robbie is disastrous as Elizabeth. The film's handling of religious, political, and sexual issues is laughably jejune. The subject seems cursed in terms of film adaptations. 

Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, from 1960, is an engrossing look at the plight of a bar hostess in the Ginza. The film never feels like a manipulative melodrama, despite the presence of a small boy on crutches, because Naruse develops the story deliberately and serenely. The denouement is all the more shattering because of Naruse's restraint. Hideko Takamine, in the lead role, provides one of the era's most memorable characterizations.

Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...Spring, from 2003, offers the story of two Buddhist monks told in five discrete vignettes. The film has the elegance and profundity of a well constructed fable, but also contains the mordant undercurrents that were Kim's calling card. Kim's best film and a landmark of Korean cinema. 

Dune is a lumbering sand worm of a movie, but it could have been worse. Director Denis Villeneuve's stolid and humorless style is a good match with that of Frank Herbert's ponderous epic. The film is generally well cast, though the appeal of Rebecca Ferguson continues to escape me. Villeneuve does find untapped pockets of warmth and charm in Jason Momoa. I prefer David Lynch's manic surrealism, but this version is, at least, more coherent. 

Reinaldo Marcus Green's King Richard is innocuous Oscar bait. Will Smith is fine and I particularly liked the contributions of Jon Bernthal, Tony Goldwyn, and Aunjanue Ellis. The portrayal of Richard Williams is fairly toothless. He is a far more prickly and complex character than the filmmakers were willing to portray. No other character in the film seems to have a comprehensible psyche. The recent Academy Awards contretemps will linger longer in the collective memory than the forgettable King Richard. 

Cary Joji Fukunaga's No Time to Die is above average Bondage.

Nocturnal Animals

Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals is a pretty good thriller somewhat encumbered by Mr. Ford's attempts at significance. Amy Adams is an insomniac gallery owner depressed by her loveless marriage and a lack of meaning in her life. The titular manuscript is sent to her by her former husband, Edward. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Edward in flashbacks that trace their relationship's arc and also plays the protagonist in the visual rendering of the manuscript.

The story within the story is the more compelling part of the film. A trio of thugs in West Texas rape and kill Gyllenhaal's wife and child. A spectral sheriff, well played my Michael Shannon, tries to track down the killers and, when justice fails, helps Gyllenhaal take the law into his own hands. Ford is at his lean best here. There is an apt sense of menace in the suspense scenes, greatly helped by Abel Korzeniowski's Herrmannesque score.

Unfortunately, Ford wants to one up Hitchcock with numerous artsy flourishes and the framing story featuring Adams falters badly. Ford pads the film with too many location shots. One, featuring the LA freeway cloverleaf seems particularly gratuitous. A montage of naked zaftig dancers, taken from a video installation at Adams' gallery, also falls flat.

All in all, Ford's work with his actors keeps Nocturnal Animals interesting. Laura Linney, Jena Malone, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Karl Glusman all are effectively utilized. Amy Adams is good as always, but has a fairly lifeless role. Gyllenhaal, never the most elastic actor, is well cast here. His big, deer like eyes radiate suffering. Nocturnal Animals may not project the meaning and significance Tom Ford intends, but it functions well enough for a thriller. (5/14/17)

Red Rocket

Sean Baker's Red Rocket, a comedy of sorts, is his richest tapestry of American underclass life thus far. Simon Rex plays Mikey, an actor in adult films who moves back to his hometown of Texas City after his career in L.A. reaches a dead end. Mikey, hat in hand, moves in with his estranged wife and her mother. The broke palooka rides around his oil refinery town on a child's bicycle. He looks up former acquaintances and ends up working as a low level pot dealer. To top things off, he romances a 17 year old (Suzanna Son) who  work in a doughnut shop.

The film is a showcase for Mr. Rex and it is his charisma that enlivens this tale of an aging narcissist. As creepy as Mikey's "courtship" of the teenaged, all too knowingly nicknamed "Strawberry" is, we can appreciate her attraction. Mr. Rex, whose checkered filmography includes some adult film work, exudes a boyish wonder that brightens up this dour portrait of Gulf Coast proles. Baker seizes upon Rex's dumb beauty and Rex is game, appearing in various states of undress throughout the movie. When Mikey runs through town in the buff to escape his latest batch of trouble, it seems fully in character. Mikey's nakedness is indicative of his living below the poverty line, but also his childishness. While Mickey's lack of responsibility and maturity is a negative aspect of that childishness, there is a positive aspect: a lack of macho 'tude that makes him catnip to the ladies. When Mikey is treated violently, he does not respond in kind, but ends up prone and whimpering like a babe.

Baker's social realism is not exactly my cup of tea. There are too many shots of the oil refinery smoking away in the background. An attempt to weave the 2016 Presidential election into the film's tapestry is a loose thread that leads nowhere. However, Baker has never before given us such a rich trove of supporting performers, most of whom are making their film debuts. Drew Daniels' cinematography makes even a doughnut shop glow without undue ostentatiousness. Red Rocket ends with Strawberry giving Mikey, the camera, and the audience a bump and grind in a skimpy red bikini. A fantasy send-off to a film designed to puncture America's adolescent fantasies. That Baker seems more willing to couch his cultural critiques in humor and sexuality seems to me a sign of  artistic growth and development.

Anthropoid

Jamie Dornan and Cillian Murphy in Anthropoid

Sean Ellis' Anthropoid, from 2016,  is an impassive rendering of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich that occurred in June of 1942. At the time, Heydrich's official title was Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, but he was more commonly known in Allied territory as "The Butcher of Prague". His assassination was a morale booster for the Allies in a war that had had few successes for them up to that point. 

Józef Gabcik (Cillian Murphy) and Jan Kublis (Jamie Dornan) were dropped by parachute into Czechoslovakia from England with the directive to eliminate Heydrich. The film focuses on the accomplishment of their mission with assistance from members of the Czech resistance, many of whom became martyrs to the cause in the aftermath of the assassination. Ellis' objective style suits the mechanics of the plot well. When it is depicting the conspirators devising the means of Heydrich's demise or picturing Resistance infighting, Anthropoid is on firm ground. 

However, the film, which bears the ominous title "based on true events", founders in pairing the two male leads with romantic counterparts. Ellis is too stolid and objective a director to give the love scenes any pulse. Anthropoid meanders rather than races to its conclusion. The most effective film about the assassination is still Fritz Lang's 1943 wartime propaganda film Hangmen Also Die! with a script written by Bertolt Brecht, no less.

There are a large number of film and television features about Operation Anthropoid. So many that Detlef Bothe, who plays Heydrich in Anthropoid, had already played the fiend twice before. Laurent Binet's novel HHhH, published in 2010, provides the best overview of this historical episode and its subsequent portrayals in literature and film. 

Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure

         
Richard Linklater's Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Adventure is a nostalgic look back at Linklater's suburban Houston boyhood set against the backdrop of the space program. The film employs similar animation techniques to the ones Linklater used in A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life: live actors were initially filmed and then animators altered the images to augment the director's vision. The film is in a minor key compared to Linklater's previous animated forays, but it is another successful addition to the director's lifelong attempts to recreate the Texas of a bygone era.

Apollo 10 1/2...has the barest semblance of a plot, Linklater's pre-pubescent protagonist and stand-in is enrolled in a secret NASA mission, and that is its weakest attribute. The boy astronaut sections are a bit too cutesy-poo. The film's success lies in its evocation of the rituals, pastimes, and style of suburban America in the late 1960s. Linklater shows how the excitement of the space race influenced the pop culture of America in general and the economic and social landscape of Texas in particular.

Linklater and his animation team give the film a pop art look that not only mirrors the then current work of Warhol and Lichtenstein, but also the Day-Glo look of 60's advertising in that era of Tang and the Archies. A fount of pop culture artifacts are marshalled by Linklater to nail the time and place: baseball cards, TV shows and movies, hit songs, and classic board games. Linklater even pays tribute to some of the more gruesome hamburger helper type recipes of the period. I am a contemporary of Linklater's, though my childhood in Baltimore was in a totally different cultural milieu, and I can think of no other filmmaker who has so richly captured what the Sixties felt like to a child.

Apollo 10 1/2 also brilliantly depicts the cognitive dissonance of growing up at that time. While the world of the suburbs was relatively idyllic, the turmoil that America and the rest of the world was experiencing was only a click of the television switch away. An affectionate remembrance of things past, Apollo 10 1/2 is another enjoyable slice of cultural anthropology from one of our better filmmakers. It is currently streaming on Netflix. 

Moonllght

                     
A circle dolly and a long tracking shot introduce and gracefully link two characters to each other and their milieu. This virtuosic opening immediately won me over to Barry Jenkins' Moonlight, the most recent Best Picture winner. This coming of age story beautifully captures the colors and light of South Florida whilst the harsh artificial glow of the interiors cast an alienated eye to domestic discord. The sullen, gay protagonist, Chiron, has fleeting moments of release outside (both figuratively and literally) of his daily routine, but inside his home and school he is beset by his crack addled Mom and an indifferent educational environment.

Largely shorn of cliché. Moonlight maintains its momentum through its first two acts until it flounders a bit in its drawn out last third. Andre Holland, so good in The Knick, provides some charisma as Chiron's long lost love, Kevin. Kevin is able to help Chiron drop the mask of his machismo, if only for moments, and try to release long pent up feelings. Their embrace is not milked as a happy ending, but as a furtive moment of comfort amidst a world of suffering. Moonlight succeeds as a drama because it does not proffer tidy bromides, but an ambivalent mix of sorrow and beauty. (4/26/17)

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Wheel of Fame and Fortune was overshadowed by the success of his adaptation of Haruki Murakami's Drive My Car, but it, too, ranks as one of 2021's better films. The film consists of a trio of episodes linked only by a thematic concern with the effects of chance and happenstance upon people. The film is extremely talky, but I don't mean this in a pejorative way. Hamaguchi's dialogue is rich and multilayered, equal to our finest playwrights and authors, including Murakami. Parts of the film reminded me of Neil LaBute with its depiction of a social landscape teeming with sexual manipulation and emotional insularity. However, the film's most obvious forebear is Eric Rohmer.

Rohmer's work has always been divisive. Gene Hackman's character in Arthur Penn's Night Moves compares seeing a Rohmer film to watching paint dry and I'm sure many of today's ADD afflicted cinema goers would concur. However, I'm a big fan of Rohmer's dry sense of humor and moral probity and found the same intellectual rigor in Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. My comparison is not arbitrary since Hamaguchi himself has cited Rohmer's Rendezvous in Paris as Wheel of Fortuner and Fantasy's primary influence.

Most interchanges between people are not moments of romantic and violent passion or comic pratfalls (i.e. the stuff of most commercial cinema), but simple conversations. This is the pith of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. In the first episode, one woman tells another of a magical date she experienced the day before. The women are sitting in the back of a taxi. Hamaguchi films them almost entirely in a simple two shot which goes on for about ten minutes in length. This may be like watching paint dry for some, but I found it to be a thrilling moment of real time cinema. Hamaguchi's simplicity of technique sharpens our focus on the extraordinary performance of his two actresses. Of course, we later learn that more is going on in the scene than is first apparent, which only heightens the importance of this deceptively simple scene in one's mind's eye.

Hamaguchi is not averse to cinematic effects, but uses them sparingly. A revelation over tea inspires a zoom into one character's face, stressing her devastation and isolation. When a script has the sharp dialogue and humanistic insight that World of Fortune and Fantasy has, bells, whistles, and CGI multiverses are not needed.

 

Silence

           

Martin Scorsese's Silence left me, as ever, respectful for his skills as a craftsman, but, as with his previous spiritual films, somewhat emotionally unsatisfied by the effort. Silence tells the story of Christian missionaries in 17th century Japan with reverence and taste, but a lack of dynamism is fatal to the film's flow. Part of the problem I had was that I could not get into the two main characters played by Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver. They have been sent to Japan to spread the Word and check up on Liam Neeson's possibly lapsed priest. Driver is quite good, but Garfield is merely OK; struggling with an on again, off again Portuguese accent. They arrive in Japan, where Christianity is outlawed, make contact with local Christians and preach covertly to their flock.

This section is told well enough, but it is always hard to visually express the interior spiritual yearnings of characters. Even Bergman struggled with it and that was, largely, his schtick. Things perk up a bit, as they did in The Last Temptation of Christ, whenever this film's Judas figure appears. Still, the main problem with the first part of the film is that the two missionaries are not as compelling figures as, say, Travis Bickle and Johnny Boy. 

Scorsese sometimes seems to need Dostoyevskian discord for his films to fly and Silence gets that when Garfield's priest is apprehended and confronted by the film's grand inquisitor. Issey Ogata, in the role, is wonderful and provides the film some juice as he tests Garfield's faith. Liam Neeson is a sturdy presence as the apostate missionary who teaches Garfield that the sacrifice of innocents may not be the best way to serve a savior who died for our sins. Silence is a worthy film that makes up for its longueurs by its commitment and craftmanship. (4/19/17)

Last Night in Soho

               
Edgar Wright's reach exceeds his grasp in Last Night in Soho, but, at least, he is attempting to address more grownup concerns after the success of Baby Driver. Wright has a gift for combining music with his images and Last Night in Soho shows off that knack. Whenever Anya Taylor-Joy appears on the screen and starts frugging to a 60s pop tune amidst a stellar recreation of swinging Soho, the film achieves liftoff. However, the present day sequences with Thomasin McKenzie tend to drag, in part because Ms. McKenzie doesn't have the charisma of Ms. Taylor-Joy.

Wright also fails to add much originality and visual spark to the horror elements of the film. His cribs from Psycho, Repulsion, and The Shining betray an auteur not fully confident of his own storytelling abilities. This is too bad because Krysty Wilson-Cairns screenplay contains some interesting themes. The movie wants to evoke the dark side of the sexual revolution in Soho during a period when young women trying to make it in show biz could easily become sexual and economic victims. A worthy theme for a film, but Wright fails to make an impactful expression of this visually. The lechers who dog Ms. Taylor-Joy morph into faceless ghouls who torment Ms. McKenzie, but they never seem sinister, only faceless.

The presence of Diana Rigg who (partial spoiler alert) turns out to be an avenging angel of death for the "me too" miscreants of yesteryear, is a masterful casting coup that doesn't quite pan out. As Emma Peel, Ms. Rigg was the English epitome of a kinky boots sexiness that bubbled into media consciousness in the 60s. Dispatching baddies with a karate chop while trading bon mots with Patrick Macnee, Rigg embodied a kickass sexuality that demanded parity with the James Bonds and Matt Helms of the era. In Last Night in Soho, Wright reduces Ms. Rigg to ludicrously slashing youths with a chopping knife. A great pity and waste.

The late Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in The Avengers

Wright has more success utilizing another 60s icon, Terence Stamp, and Michael Ajao is fine as the romantic interest. Where Wright really succeeds is expressing his love for Soho, then and now. Last Night in Soho fails as a horror film and a psychological twister, but it does capture the aura of a place in time.

I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore

Macon Blair's I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore is an adroitly askew indie comedy. Melanie Lynskey stars as a woman who has been trod upon too many times. When a burglar victimizes her, she snaps out of her complacency. She teams with a nun chuck wielding neighbor, Ellijah Wood, but their attempts at vigilantism lands them in dire straits. The supporting cast is superb, particularly Christine Woods as a bored trophy wife. Fans of the Cohen brothers and David O. Russell should check it out. ((4/18/22) 
 

Five Came Back

George Stevens

Laurent Bouzerau's Five Came Back is a decent adaptation of Mark Harris' book, an exploration of five Hollywood directors' military service during the Second World War. The film lacks the detail of the book, but its utilization of wartime propaganda and documentary footage (but who is to say which is which) creates a heartfelt tribute to those who served. I'm enough of a film and military history buff that I could nitpick this documentary, but, instead, I'll invoke Nathan Brittles' solid gold pocket watch, "lest we forget." (4/18/17)
 

Judas and the Black Messiah

             

Shaka King's Judas and the Black Messiah chronicles the FBI's campaign against the Black Panther party and its Chairman, Fred Hampton. The film is logically constructed, well paced, and intelligently directed. J. Edgar Hoover is the film's Great Satan, but the film gives the devil his due in terms of motivation. Like most American films, Judas and the Black Messiah lacks political sophistication. The Panther spout rhetoric trumpeting proletariat revolution, but Marx is never mentioned. The film aligns itself with the Panther's false dichotomy between "freedom fighters" like Che Guevara, Angela Davis, and Huey Newton on the one side and "pigs" like Hoover and Nixon on the other.

Despite its sloganeering, I enjoyed the film. Mark Isham and Craig Harris' stirring symphonic jazz score colors the film's mood without hammering the audience on the head. Daniel Kaluuya is adequate though a little old to be playing Hampton who was only 21 at the time of his death. Kaluuya is good bringing the fire and brimstone of Hampton's speeches, but a little stiff in the more intimate moments. Dominique Fishback is a washout as Hampton's comrade in love. The scenes of their romance are overly rhetorical and dry. 

The film's outstanding performers are LaKeith Stanfield and Jesse Plemons playing, respectively, the snitch and his FBI controller. There is an odd implacability to Plemons' screen persona. He can suggest a void in that big, fleshy head of his or relentless cunning. As in Breaking Bad, he is adept at presenting a friendly and guileless façade masking white racist perfidy. 

Playing a rat is always a choice role for an actor whether it be Victor McLaglen slobbering his way to an Oscar in The Informer or Matt Damon weaseling his way through The Departed. Stanfield memorably channels the paranoia and self-loathing of this film's Judas. If there is a place in the American cinema for Dirty Harry than I see no reason why the Left shouldn't have their mythic icons. Judas and the Black Messiah is simple minded, but it is effective entertainment for those willing to swallow the Panther's mythos.