10 Cloverfield Lane

John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead in 10 Cloverfield Lane

Dan Trachtenberg's 10 Cloverfield Lane is an efficient enough suspense film that lacks the personal vision to enable it to transcend a rather routine script. If there is a true auteur behind the project it is J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot production team. Bits and pieces from previous Abrams projects (Lost. Super 8, Star Trek and Wars, and obviously, Cloverfield) are cobbled together here in a fashion that reflects commercial rather than artistic intent. 

That the film functions well enough is testament to Trachtenberg's and his lead actors' craft. John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are always assets and both perform with aplomb. John Gallagher Jr. lends able support even when saddled with the lamest backstory monologue I've encountered in some years. The script is Swiss cheese, not fatal to a genre flick like this, but clunky all the same. The film is OK fast food fare, digestible, but not memorable or nourishing. (6/22/16)     

Murina

Gracija Filipovic in Marina

Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic's Murina, the winner of the Camera d'Or at Cannes in 2021, seems to me the most assured cinematic debut since Panah Panahi's Hit the Road. Gracija Filipovic stars as Julija, a Croatian teen living with her parents on an isolated island in the Adriatic. On the surface, it seems as if they live in a sun-kissed paradise, but we soon learn that the family, especially Julija, feel frustrated and stunted there.

The visit to the island by Javier, a titan of business, brings things to a head. Javier is a lifelong friend of Julija's parents, but there are tensions between the three. Julija's father used to work for Javier, but there was a falling out between the two. Embers of a romance exist between Javier and Julija's mother. We learn that the family is financially strapped and the possibility that Javier will turn their land into a resort seems to be a last chance for them to escape the island. The father is envious of Javier's success and he takes out his resentment and anger upon Julija. His ogre like behavior culminates in him locking Julija in a dank basement as if she were a beleaguered heroine in a fairy tale.

Julija hopes Javier will rescue her and her mother and take them along with him to his seemingly magical life. This is also a dark reflection of the wish fulfillment of fairy tales in which downtrodden children find their long-lost parents to be royalty. Julija's wish turns out to be as much of a pipe dream as her father's desire to turn their property into a resort. An ambivalent ending stresses the resiliency needed for an individual to free themselves from the tyranny of their parental legacies.

I often diss films that foreground criticism of the patriarchy or capitalism or whatever at the expense of narrative and character. Ms. Kusijanovic does not fall into that trap. Because she takes the time to develop her characters, such themes emerge naturally and not heavy-handedly from her scenario. She is greatly help by the cinematography of Helene Louvart (The Lost Daughter, Happy as Lazzaro). Her work, particularly in the underwater sequences, suggest the unconscious impulses at work upon the characters of which they are only dimly aware of.

Elvis

Austin Butler in Elvis

Baz Luhrmann's artistic credo seems to drive him to turn all of his projects into glitzy musicals. His ostentatious, life is a carnival style reminds me of what Pauline Kael (I think) wrote about Alan Parker: he has style to burn and that is exactly what he should do with it. That said, Elvis provides Luhrmann with a suitable project containing good music, and it is his best film since Moulin Rouge. Yet, I was more exhausted by it than exhilarated.

Part of the reason is the scope of the film. Instead of focusing on a narrow slice of Presley's career, Luhrmann and his numerous screenwriters try to tackle the whole enchilada. Events whirr by and characterization, something often lost in the stars in Luhrmann's films, is meagre. Only Helen Thompson as Elvis' beloved mother is able to project a character and she goes to meet her maker far too soon. This is a problem for any author or auteur addressing what Greil Marcus called the Presliad. Elvis' life went slowly downhill after the death of Gladys Presley. Even Pete Guralnick's outstanding biography becomes a litany of bad movies and prescription drugs after her death.

Luhrmann does himself proud in his presentation of the musical performances in the film. Glimpses of Little Richard, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Big Mama Thornton, and Arthur Crudup give a good background sketch of the musical influences that helped form Elvis. The influence of country music on Elvis is downplayed. The film's caricature of Hank Snow is overly broad and reductive. Luhrmann gives him a Southern accent despite Snow being from Canada.

Snow is in the film because Colonel Tom Parker was his manager before Parker glommed onto Presley. Elvis is presented from the point of view of a dying Parker, played by Tom Hanks. The failure of his performance is fatal to the film. An icon of decency, like Jimmy Stewart before him, Hanks is unable to exude greed, malice or even a hint of evil from beneath his prosthetics. Luhrmann wants the relationship between Elvis and Parker to resemble that of Faust and Mephistopheles. Instead, we get a waxworks Elvis and Mr. Rogers in a fat suit.

Austin Butler does reasonably well as Elvis. He does not embody Elvis with the ease of a Kurt Russell, but he is a more than reasonable facsimile of the real thing. In the cinematic oeuvre of Baz Luhrmann, one devoid of thematic depth and ambiguity, presenting a comprehensible façade of a character is the best a thespian can do. Still, Elvis could have been a lot worse. The kinetic drive of Presley's story and music is better suited to Luhrmann's sensibilities than the challenges of Australia or The Great Gatsby. While not a good or satisfying movie, Elvis has enough love and respect for its subject to satisfy fans of the King.