Quick Takes, February 2023

Banks Repeta and Anthony Hopkins in Armageddon Time

I enjoyed James Grey's handsome portrait of his Queens youth in Armageddon Time. The satiric and fantasy sequences feel a little off, but I was won over by the period verisimilitude and the warm conjuring of Jewish family life. Anthony Hopkins is particularly moving as the sacrificial grandfather.

Xavier Giannoli's Lost Illusions is a good Balzac adaptation and the most lavish French period production I've seen in some time. The novel's insights into the rise of the periodical press and print advertisements in the 1820s and how they affected France's culture are crisply portrayed. Giannoli's leads are not as interesting as the supporting cast and that kills some of the film's emotional intensity. The acting laurels go to Xavier Dolan, well cast as the aristocratic aesthete, Nathan d'Anastazio. 

Speaking of aristocratic aesthetes, I was surprised how bored and disappointed I was with Brett Morgen's Moonage Daydream, a documentary about David Bowie. Instead of a film about the exciting musician and media star, we get a portrait of Bowie the intellectual dilettante. More time is spent on Bowie the painter than Bowie the musician toiling in the studio. Unless one thinks Bowie was the equal of  Michelangelo or da Vinci, this is an unbalanced viewpoint. Instead of Bowie the exciting stage performer, we get a host of inane interviews in which Bowie, usually in a cocaine induced psychosis, babbles on about Nietzsche and Aleister Crowley. What live musical moments there are here are dominated by footage from D.A. Pennebaker's widely seen concert film, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. All in all, a missed opportunity. 

Even worse is Robert Rossen's inert sword and sandal epic Alexander the Great from 1956. Rossen has no feel for epic filmmaking or Cinemascope. There are too many midrange shots of stultifying speeches or static tableaux. The matte painting is some of the worst I've seen in a major production. A chore to sit through despite a fine cast; including a bewigged Richard Burton, Frederic March, Claire Bloom, Michael Hordern, Stanley Baker, and Danielle Darrieux. Harry Andrews, of all people, wins the acting laurels as the Persian monarch, Darius.

Andrew Semans' Resurrection is a woman in peril film that is a good vehicle for Rebecca Hall. Hall plays a single mother whose life is upended when a crazed and controlling lover from her past reappears after two decades. Semans use of a subjective perspective helps paint a disturbing picture of a mind losing its moorings. The anonymous public buildings and corporate towers of Albany are used to good effect in delineating Hall's character slip into paranoia. Hall is ably assisted by Tim Roth and Grace Kaufman. Nothing revelatory, but a successfully unsettling B picture. 

Ron Howard's Thirteen Lives, currently streaming on Amazon Prime, is one of his more credible efforts. This tale of the rescue of a Thai youth soccer team trapped in a cave is good nuts and bolts filmmaking. Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell, and Joel Edgerton offer solid and believable lead performances. No one will ever mistake Howard for a distinctive stylist, but he has crafted a number of solid entertainments including Ransom, Splash, A Beautiful Mind, Frost/Nixon, and Thirteen Lives' cinematic twin, Apollo 13.