Review: The French Dispatch

Image courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Meticulous. That's the best word to describe the films of Wes Anderson, especially "The French Dispatch," which could very well be the most Wes Anderson movie that Anderson has ever made. There have been times when critics have complained over Anderson's fussy attention to detail - and make no mistake, literally every object in every shot appears to have been fussed over to great lengths - but in the case of his latest film, it works so well. With only "The Grand Budapest Hotel" as its rival, this new picture could be the director's best in 20 years.

There's not a plot, in the typical sense, in "The French Dispatch," but rather an extended opening sequence describing the creation of and goings-on of the fictional titular publication - a weekly addition to a Kansas newspaper operated by an ex-pat named Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray, always an asset), who draws from a roster of - what else - eccentric writers abroad. Howitzer's two mottos are "no crying" and "just make sure it sounds like you wrote it that way on purpose."

After we run quickly through a slew of characters - Elisabeth Moss's strict grammarian is only in a brief scene or two, while Jason Schwartzman's cartoonist is barely present - on the staff, the film moves on to a prologue of sorts about the town in which much of the action is set. By the way, nobody but Wes Anderson could get away with a fictional French town called Ennui. The narrator is Owen Wilson, one of the magazine's writers, and his regaling of the ins-and-outs of Ennui are matched with a frenetic series of scenes about town, complete with a number of classic Anderson dioramas. 

The remainder of the film is split up into three chapters, all of which represent three stories that have run in various publications of The French Dispatch at some point during the 20th century. The lead characters in all three pieces are primarily the writers. In the first, Tilda Swinton narrates a story about a convict artist (Benicio del Toro in a growling performance) whose model (Lea Seydoux) is a female prison guard with whom he's fallen love. Adrien Brody, Bob Balaban and Henry Winkler plays the rich financiers who see the potential in the artist's work and want to bankroll a major show.

In the second scenario, Frances McDormand plays a writer who runs into the problem of not being able to distance herself from her subject matter after she becomes fascinated with - and a little smitten by - a young French wannabe revolutionary played by Timothy Chalamet, whose big showdown with the police and the town's mayor involves a tense game of chess.

In the final - and, in my opinion, best - story, Jeffrey Wright plays Roeback Wright, a writer with a self-described topographic memory who's on a talk show describing to the host - played by Liev Schreiber - how a piece on a chef (Steve Park) who works at a police station somehow led him to the story of the kidnapping of the police chief's (Mathieu Amalric) son by a group of anarchists (led by Edward Norton and Saoirse Ronan). 

Some of the year's biggest laugh-out-loud moments can be found in "The French Dispatch" - a fight during an art opening, a cartoon involving a man in spandex riding around on the hood of a car during a chase and, my personal favorite, a crack about the effects of communion wine on altar boys. 

Even more impressive is the insane attention to detail throughout the film. This is an immaculate film, from a visual standpoint. In nearly every shot, there's something interesting going on, and occasionally there are several things going on at the same time within the frame. The film is often bursting with energy, and every shot is just so.

While Anderson's previous films - especially "Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "The Grand Budapest Hotel" - often mix hilarity with pathos, and some occasional emotional gut punches, "The French Dispatch" mostly avoids that for much of the film. Its coda, however, involves a death at the magazine, its effect on the publication and a group memorial, of sorts. It's here that Anderson's film sneaks up on you. 

"The French Dispatch" is a labor of love and love letter that pays tribute to The New Yorker issues of yesteryear and the writers who filled their pages with fascinating stories. It seems obvious that Anderson reveres these journalists and the magic they can create by simply crafting what they've witnessed into great storytelling, just as a viewer might admire how deftly this film's director uses remarkable attention to detail, camerawork, humor, nostalgia and wit to make something magical like "The French Dispatch."

Review: Last Night In Soho

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

Edgar Wright's films typically subvert genre and, in previous efforts, drew laughs from the expectations one might ascribe to a certain genre - whether it's zombie movies, buddy action films or end-of-the-world scenarios. His 2017 film "Baby Driver" played more like a straightforward action movie - and a very good one it was - and his latest, "Last Night in Soho," is a stylish blending of the horror and Italian giallo genres. 

But while films like "Baby Driver" and "Hot Fuzz" were successful genre subversion exercises for Wright, "Last Night" doesn't quite work. It has a very stylish - and mostly compelling - first half, during which young Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) moves to London - which is referred to as such a dangerous place so often during the film that it almost becomes a joke in itself - to attend fashion school, although her grandmother warns Eloise that her mother, seen only in occasional mirror images, attempted the same and lost her mind in the process before committing suicide.

A lot of the spaces and people in "Last Night in Soho" are haunted. But for a while, that's OK for Eloise, who loves to dream that she had been her age during London's Swinging 60s, rather than in the present. One night, she gets her wish after moving into an attic apartment in the home of an elderly woman named Mrs. Collins (Diana Rigg). Eloise's nocturnal adventures involve her making her way through the mid-60s, but in the dream Eloise is in the body - yet sees her own face in mirror reflections - of an aspiring singer named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy).

The film features one of those aspects that always makes me roll my eyes a little - college students behaving like high school students in movies. In this case, it's the mean girls who treat Eloise like crap, thereby convincing her to move into Mrs. Collins' attic. The only people who pay her any positive attention include a fashion school teacher, her worried grandmother via telephone and a young Black man (Michael Ajao) who takes a romantic interest in her.

There's a scene in which this suitor finds himself in a sticky situation in which a young woman appears to be having some sort of psychotic fit after he nearly sleeps with her, and we see the great level of discomfort he goes through by being a Black man in a screaming white girl's room, but while this scene might have worked well in a film that seriously intended to weigh the consequences of such a scenario, here it seems to exist and then disappear - which makes it sort of a crime to include it in the first place since the filmmakers appear to not seriously address it ever again. 

Even worse, the young man goes to great pains - and I mean literally - to later help the screaming girl, which just seems unrealistic considering all that came first. I'm a little off topic here, but the aforementioned scenario is only one of several in this film that appears to grapple with weighty subject matter, only to take the wrong approach after introducing it. 

Regardless, Eloise soon realizes that the woman in whose body she has been seeing Swinging London was, in fact, murdered, and she first believes the culprit to be an old man she sees in the present day played by Terence Stamp. Once the film begins to be taken over by the murder mystery, "Last Night" loses some steam - there's scene after scene of Eloise seeing a group of male ghosts literally everywhere, and numerous others of her running from various things and then snapping out of trances after she almost does something bad, such as stabbing her roommate with a pair of scissors.

Then, there's the plot twist near the film's end. I wouldn't dare ruin it, and I have to give credit that the concept behind it is fairly strong, but then it's as if the filmmakers don't know how to handle it. Up until this point, the film appeared to be on a somewhat feminist path for a movie of this sort - in which young women are sliced up by a madman - but the manner in which the big reveal is handled goes in a direction that comes off in a pretty bad way. Later, the filmmakers attempt to reconcile these problems, but it feels as if the film's pat ending doesn't quite fit.

There's a reasonable amount to recommend in "Last Night in Soho" - the two female leads are good, when given more to do than just run and scream, and the visuals are often stylish in the way that many giallo films of the 1970s were - strobing neon lights, splashes of red and camera angels reminiscent of that era. But the repetitiveness of some of the film's more ghostly elements, and the bungled manner in which the final scenes are handled detract from the picture overall. It's not a bad movie, but "Last Night in Soho" feels somewhat like a missed opportunity. 

Review: Bergman Island

Image courtesy of IFC Films.

Mia Hansen-Love's latest film is an engrossing drama that includes a film within a film and focuses on the creative process and how our surroundings influence us. Its two lead characters — at least, in one of its two stories — are filmmakers in the middle of creating new projects, but "Bergman Island" is not one of those films about movie-making that seem to appeal only to people in the film industry.

The title refers to Faro, an island in Sweden where the legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman became obsessed with its geography and eventually lived there, shooting several of his films — including "Shame" and "Through a Glass, Darkly" — on the island. At the film's beginning, a director named Tony (Tim Roth) and his girlfriend, Chris (Vicky Krieps), also a filmmaker, arrive on the island. He's there for inspiration, as Bergman is one of his favorite directors, but also to take part in a Bergman festival, where one of Tony's latest films will screen with a Q&A to follow.

Chris, on the other hand, has the bare bones of a story in mind, and seemingly a personal one. Oddly enough, little is made of this story until about halfway through the film when she decides to relay the story to Tony to get his feedback. 

It should be noted that as she tells her story — which may or may not have anything to do with Chris's own life, or her relationship with Tony — her beau is occasionally interrupted by phone calls, breaking off her story. Meanwhile, Chris stands Tony up when he attends the "Bergman Safari," a tour of the island's locations where Bergman shot his films that, apparently, is an actual thing. 

Anyway, Chris's film concept revolves around a young woman named Amy (Mia Wasikowska) who has had a longstanding on-again-off-again relationship with a man she's known since her youth named Joseph (Anders Danielsen Lie). The two of them bump into each other during a wedding being held by a mutual friend on Faro. At first they resist, but eventually rekindle their romance — at least the sex part — despite his having a girlfriend elsewhere and she having a child and, possibly, a significant other.

Among the more interesting aspects of "Bergman Island" are the sequences during which Tony and Chris explore the island, occasionally together, but just as often separately — he takes the Bergman Safari, while she finds a young man to show her around the island. These scenes also explore the creative process and how locations can inspire or mold our perceptions — for example, how Tony finds inspiration in visiting locales where one of his heroes made movies, while Chris tries to find an ending for her own story, using the island as a location where she envisions it taking place.

It's also interesting to note that conversations about Bergman films take place between Tony and Chris throughout the film, but it wasn't until after I watched it that I realized that, much like Bergman's "Persona," two women trade places during the course of the film — Chris's story becomes her telling of the film-within-a-film, which stars Amy. They may not swap places in the manner of the two women in Bergman's film, but one takes over for the other as the film's lead character, for a time at least.

The film ends a bit abruptly, but it's an otherwise deceptively simple, but engaging picture that ranks highly — for me, at least — among Hansen-Love's solid filmography. Roth's character may be more in a minor key, but Krieps is able to developer her character in an interesting way. With roles like this one and her stellar work in "Phantom Thread," she continues to prove to be an actress who's often fascinating to watch. "Bergman Island" is a showcase for her talents, but also those of Hansen-Love, who tells stories about human relationships with aplomb.

Review: Dune

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Frank Herbert's "Dune" is a more coherent - if, perhaps, not quite as fun - adaptation of the classic science-fiction novel than David Lynch's maligned, but since more positively reevaluated, version of the story. While Lynch's film featured some of the idiosyncrasies typically associated with that director as well as a welcome dose of camp, Villeneuve's is much more self-serious and hews more closely to the novel.

However, Lynch's version was more compact, squeezing the entire epic into a two-hour-plus movie, whereas Villeneuve's picture is only "Part 1" of "Dune," meaning that like so many other big budget Hollywood movies of late - the recent "Halloween," numerous "Star Wars" or comic book movies, for example - the film is somewhat of a means for drawing audiences back in for more. Sort of how the final "Harry Potter" movie didn't really need a first and second part, "Dune" probably could have been condensed to allow for a longer movie without a second part.

Regardless, it's often great to look at and features a terrific cast - Timothy Chalamet, Stellan Skarsgard, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Rampling, Dave Bautista and others. Trying to explain the plot of "Dune" might be a fruitless task, but here goes: two families - the House of Atreides (the good guys) and the House of Harkonnen (the villains) have been vying for the emperor's favor to be the tender of a planet that holds the galaxy's most valuable resource - spice.

The House of Atreides, led by Duke Leto (Isaac), has been led to believe that it has been chosen by the emperor, and Leto tells his son, Paul (Chalamet), that one day he will be responsible for leading the family, a task that Paul doesn't know if he's up to. Meanwhile, Paul's mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), is involved with a group of mystics who hold a power known as "The Voice," which Lady Jessica has tried to instill in her son.

Some have said that "Dune" influenced George Lucas's "Star Wars" movies, and it's easy to see how - the desert locales, the "Voice" being an influence on "The Force," intergalactic space opera elements, a "chosen one" character (Luke in "Star Wars," Paul in "Dune") and monstrous creatures (in "Dune," the objects of fear are the gigantic sandworms that populate the desert). 

Just as Paul believes he has started to master "The Voice," a betrayal leads to the Harkonnen taking over Arrakis, the spice planet, and Paul and his mother must throw in their lot with the Fremen, the people who live in the deserts of that planet. Leto had attempted to make peace with the Fremen, but now Paul has no other choice but to team up with them. Zendaya pops up in the final scenes of the movie as Paul's love interest, Chani. 

And that's basically where the story ends, for now. As I'd mentioned before, the film was seemingly intentionally split into two for the purpose of making more money out of a new franchise. Perhaps, the filmmakers thought the story was too long to fit properly into one movie, although Lynch was able to - then again, his version was more of a Lynch film than a by-the-book adaptation of a novel that its fans consider somewhat sacred.

The two films each have their own merits. Lynch's was more bizarre and some sequences - the sandworms, the portrayal of the Baron of Harkonnen and the Gom Jabbar "hand in the box" sequence" - were better handled in the 1984 version. Villeneuve's version takes the story more seriously as a drama, it has some gorgeous cinematography, its story is better laid out and the characters are a little more two dimensional. Chalamet does a fine job as Atreides, and most of the cast provides solid supporting work.

So, while I might not find the new "Dune" to be a great epic as some early reviews have called it, it's a well made, mostly engaging sci-fi blockbuster that sets up a sequel to finish telling its story. "Dune" has long been called a notoriously difficult story to adapt to the screen, but Villeneuve - who also pulled off the seemingly difficult task of making a "Blade Runner" sequel - has risen to the challenge. In other words, so far so good.

Review: Halloween Kills

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

John Carpenter's 1978 "Halloween" remains the greatest slasher film in movie history, and the 2018 reboot by David Gordon Green was a surprisingly effective rethinking of the series, which at that point was up to 11 entries. So, it's a surprise and disappointment that the second film in this new trilogy, "Halloween Kills," is a significant step backward.

The original "Halloween," which by far remains the scariest of the series, was a lean and effective thriller with not an ounce of fat on it, while the 2018 Green film was a tense return to the series that erased all of the other films and acted as a direct sequel to Carpenter's original. Much like the original "Halloween" bled into "Halloween II" by making them take place on the same night, "Halloween Kills" picks up directly after the end of 2018's "Halloween."

As the film opens, Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode, the final girl of the 1978 film now grown up into a survivalist grandmother, is riding away in a truck with a stab wound to the abdomen with her daughter, Karen (Judy Greer, who is the MVP of this latest venture), and granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), as firefighters rush to the scene of Strode's house that is engulfed with flames. Michael Myers, thought to be dead in the burning house, strolls out of the flames and slaughters about a dozen firefighters.

It was around this point that I felt that "Halloween Kills" was off on the wrong foot. And it never gets back on the right one. Where to begin? For starters, the film makes the same mistake as 1981's "Halloween II" by relegating Curtis to a hospital bed, which she barely leaves during the film and spends much of her time in the company of Officer Hawkins (Will Patton), who was left stabbed and bleeding by Myers's kooky doctor in the previous film. In fact, the picture opens with a somewhat intriguing, if ultimately unnecessary, prologue set in 1978 — hello, digitally enhanced Donald Pleasance! — during which a young Hawkins (portrayed by Thomas Mann) misses his chance to kill Myers.

So, rather than focusing on Laurie, which was the selling point of the 2018 film, "Halloween Kills" instead focuses on a support group of characters who were in the 1978 film, some of whom are portrayed by the original actors, who meet annually on Halloween to commemorate surviving Myers' original massacre. They include Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), the leader of the group and once upon a time the young boy with many questions for Laurie, as well as Lindsey (Kyle Richards), the young girl being babysat in 1978; Lonnie Elam (Robert Longstreet), who bullied Tommy in the original film, and nurse Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens).

That group is together at a bar when they hear the news that Myers has escaped and is engaged in his latest rampage. Armed with purpose and a baseball bat, Tommy decides to take charge, rounding up a vigilante group — which quickly begins harassing the wrong man whom they believe to be Myers — and roaming the streets while shouting, "Evil dies tonight!" Strangely, the film focuses much more on this group — as well as an aging couple who are neighbors of Strode and a gay couple watching "Minnie and Moscowitz" in the former Myers home on Halloween night — rather than the 2018 characters, although Greer gets most of the film's best moments. These new — or rather, old — characters are merely here to be among Myers' latest victims.

The original "Halloween" was violent, but it wasn't fetishistic about it, and the 2018 version, while more so, wasn't either. This latest "Halloween," on the other hand, looks as if it were filmed by Lucio Fulci. Heads are smashed repeatedly against walls and necks are twisted at odd angles. A man is stabbed in the eye and blood sprays out of his socket, while another man has his eyes gouged out, the eyeball oozing out as blood sprays everywhere. A man who falls from a hospital window lays splayed on the sidewalk, his body parts arranged at grotesque angles and viscera spreads out over the sidewalk. "Halloween Kills" may not be very scary, but it's plenty gross. The film's Black and LGBTQ characters seem to bear the brunt of the violence.

Also, the film becomes even less scary as the characters discuss what they believe to be Myers' nature. In the original, Carpenter was smart enough to not assign any motivation to Myers, merely pronouncing him as "pure evil," which made him scarier. In this new film, you won't forget that he's evil because it's mentioned every few minutes.

Social commentary in horror movies is a longstanding tradition — director George Romero did it best with his "Dead" movies — but the mob mentality on display, which appears to bear some resemblance to individuals participating in election disruption around the nation late last year or storming the Capitol in January, comes off here as slightly ham-fisted. Green has noted that the last in the series will take place four years later during COVID-19 and "peculiar politics." This sounds compelling, but only time will tell if that films works better than this one.

But, perhaps, the strangest misstep in "Halloween Kills" is that its ending seems to fly completely in the face of what the 2018 film seemed to be saying. In that picture, three generations of women fought back against the violent man who'd left them frightened for years. The end of "Halloween Kills" seems to say that doing such a thing is, ultimately, a fruitless task and, well, there's no point to it. 

The picture has some moments that are intriguing — the opening sequence set in 1978, for example — but it ultimately squanders them in favor of relentlessly gory deaths, an over-the-top attempt at social commentary, the sidelining of its most interesting character and a bleak ending that contradicts the previous film's concept. Perhaps, the finale will be an improvement, but the 12th entry into this 43-year saga has too many unforced errors.

Review: The Last Duel

Image courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.

 

Those expressing some element of surprise that Ridley Scott's "The Last Duel" is being described as a "feminist" film have seemingly forgotten the director's "Thelma and Louise," "Alien" and, to a lesser extent, "G.I. Jane." Scott is often thought of as the director of muscular — and masculine — big budget studio enterprises such as "Gladiator," "Blade Runner," "Kingdom of Heaven" and "Black Hawk Down," but his work has on occasion considered — thoughtfully, I might add — feminist themes.

"The Last Duel" is no different. And bad haircuts aside — and in all honesty, they're pretty bad — the film, which features the first co-screenwriting credit between Matt Damon and Ben Affleck since "Good Will Hunting" along with an assist by indie director Nicole Holofcener, is a surprisingly tense and well made period piece.

To simplify its description, the true story tells the tale of Sir Jean de Carrouges (Damon) and Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), two 14th century squires and old friends whose relationship goes sour for a number of reasons. For starters, de Carrouges saves Le Gris' life, but later comes to resent him after their foppish, degenerate liege Pierre d'Aloncon (Affleck, with a blonde goatee and haircut that makes him look like the leader of a one-hit wonder band from the late 1990s) holds Les Gris in favor over the more accomplished, mullet-wearing de Carrouges.

The first sign of bad blood is when de Carrouges takes as his wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer), the daughter of a wealthy man who has fallen in bad favor with the king, and Le Gris is given a piece of land that de Carrouges believed was to be his as part of his wife's dowry. Things get worse when d'Aloncon, who hates the icy de Carrouges, makes Le Gris the captain of the parcel of land where de Carrouge's father had previously held the position and de Carrouges expected to follow in his footsteps.

But things really go south after de Carrouges and Le Gris attempt to patch things up, and Le Gris becomes attracted to Marguerite. He later shows up at de Carrouges' abode while the man of the castle is away on business and sexually assaults Marguerite. She, in turn, accuses him of the crime, which leads to a planned duel between the two men. The catch is, as all the faux-pious men in the film decree, that God will decide who is telling the truth (Le Gris denies the rape), and therefore Marguerite could face a torturous death should her husband lose the duel.

For a movie set during medieval times, "The Last Duel" is oddly timely, as women's rights are still being challenged in our modern era. One priest, who attempts to find ways for Le Gris' crime to be considered something other than an assault, tells Le Gris that a rape is not a crime against a woman, but rather her husband, since his wife is considered his property. During the trial involved in the case, Marguerite is, of course, subjected to all the usual torment from her misogynist interrogators - they ask if she receives pleasure from her husband during sex, and tell the pregnant Marguerite that a baby cannot be born from an incident that causes pleasure, suggesting she enjoyed Le Gris' assault, thereby not making it a rape.

The film is told in three chapters, all of which are titled "The Truth According To (Insert Character's Name)," and this "Rashomon"-style approach is an interesting one indeed. In de Carrouges' telling of the story, he sees himself as the hero who has been wronged by a friend and who is protecting his wife, whereas Le Gris sees himself as a lover who was given signs of attraction by Marguerite that he followed to fruition. In describing the rape to d'Aloncon, he says that Marguerite put up the "expected opposition" to his advances, as if women saying "no" is really a way of saying "yes."

When we get to "The Truth According to Marguerite," the words "the truth" linger slightly longer on the screen. In her version of the story, both of the men are beasts, de Carrouges a cold, self-important man whose only reason for engaging in the duel is his wounded pride and longstanding sense of injustice at the hands of d'Aloncon and Le Gris. Not surprisingly, Le Gris comes off as a rapist who believes that no woman on earth could possibly not want to have sex with him. Both men see themselves as just in their roles in the affair, but Marguerite would likely be better off if the two end up killing each other in the duel.

Speaking of which, the titular bout is a brutal sequence that will likely leave one flinching. In terms of sheer brutality — and execution — it's a heart stopper. At 83 years of age, Ridley Scott proves that he still has it as a maker of big budget spectacles — he even has a second film, "House of Gucci," getting released later this year — and his latest is a tale well told with concepts that are resonant in our current political climate. "The Last Duel" was a pleasant, if that's the word for a film about such dark occurrences, surprise and one of Scott's better films of recent years.

Review: The Velvet Underground

Image courtesy of Apple.

On the one hand, Todd Haynes' documentary "The Velvet Underground," which chronicles the creation and eventual dissolution of one of America's seminal rock 'n roll bands, displays the characteristics of your typical rock doc - the origins of the band, the back stories of its members, the moment they clicked, their longstanding influence and, in the case of this band, the eventual breakup.

And yet, the film feels quite unlike most music documentaries. While the story goes from point A (the creation of the band) to point B (its breakup) in a linear style and features some talking head interviews with everyone from surviving members John Cale and Maureen Tucker and musician Jonathan Richman (of The Modern Lovers) to director John Waters and avant garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas (who founded the Anthology Film Archives), it's an aural and visual experience in the style of one of Andy Warhol's films - the pop artist icon produced the band's debut record - blended with a visual representation of how the Velvets sounded: haunting, discordant, otherworldly, chaotic.

At times, much like Warhol's "Chelsea Girls," split screens are telling several parts of the story at once, with the narrative of the band's formation on one side, and scenes of yesteryear in New York City or Warhol's screen tests of Reed or Cale on the other. So, ultimately, the end result is that the film feels less like your typical music documentary, although containing the basic structure of one, and more like a live performance by the Velvet Underground, with flashing lights, the droning sounds often present in their music and a slight sense of being off balance. 

Then again, it shouldn't be surprising that the film does such a good job of capturing the band's essence. Haynes' work - when it doesn't involve remarkable 1950s pastiches like "Far from Heaven" or "Carol" - has often focused on musicians, from his incredibly strange "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," which imagined the tragic life of the singer via Barbie dolls, to his glam rock extravaganza "Velvet Goldmine" and his absolutely brilliant treatise on Bob Dylan, "I'm Not There." While "The Velvet Underground" is his first documentary, it fits right into his wheelhouse.

This is also not a movie with a sole aim to praise the brilliance of its subjects and gloss over any unglamorous aspects. Amy Taubin, the film critic who (previously unbeknownst to me) spent a fair amount of time at Warhol's Factory, notes at one point that women at the Factory were primarily there for their looks, and had a hard time being taken seriously otherwise, although both Warhol and the Velvets, according to this documentary at least, appeared to be taken by Nico's otherworldly presence during her contribution to "The Velvet Underground & Nico" album.

Also, as brilliant an artist as he was, Reed is often portrayed as difficult, both to work with and as a friend. He fired Warhol after the band's first two albums, and eventually pushed Cale out of the band. Cale, who is the most extensively interviewed member during the documentary, is also described as a temperamental artist by others, and it's not kept a secret that the band members became increasingly aggressive and hostile toward each other on the road and during recording sessions, which was why albums like "White Light/White Heat" felt pretty intense.

One of the aspects that Haynes does a great job of capturing and using cinematic techniques at representing is the band's improvisational nature. Cale notes on more than one occasion that this element made their live performances unique, and was the aspect of the band that was most appealing to him - he started in Wales as a classical performer. Haynes' film often feels improvisational by nature, compiling the interviews from his subjects to lay out the general story, but often allowing the conversation to veer in different directions in a manner that feels loose, but by no means lacking direction.

And while Warhol's work - especially "Chelsea Girls" and his extremely long static shot of the Empire State Building titled "Empire" - is scattered throughout the documentary, Haynes also makes great use of a number of other iconic experimental films of the era, including Jack Smith's raunchy "Flaming Creatures" and Kenneth Anger's "Scorpio Rising." 

Brian Eno once famously said that The Velvet Underground didn't sell many records at the time when they were together, but that everyone who bought one of their records went out and started a band. It's easy to see why. This is a fascinating look at one of the U.S.'s most unique bands. Haynes has made a chronicle of the band in a manner that has captured its members' voices and would likely make them proud.

Review: No Time To Die

Image courtesy of MGM.

 

Daniel Craig's James Bond goes out with a bang in the slightly overlong, but mostly enjoyable, "No Time to Die," which features a smorgasbord of great actors in supporting roles, the most memorable theme song and opener in some time and a lot of breathtaking locations. In other words, another day's work for this series, which has almost existed for 60 years onscreen.

When we catch up with Bond at the film's beginning, he is living a retired life in Jamaica, five years after he believed that his lover, Madeleine (Lea Seydoux) sold him out. She has disappeared and when she resurfaces late in the film, she has a young daughter (his?) in tow. Bond is pulled out of retirement by his pal Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright, always a pleasure) to track down a villain who appears to being hunting Spectre, the rogues gallery of villains of previous Bond films.

At the center of this conspiracy is a shadowy figure named Lyutsifer Satin (Rami Malek), which sounds close enough to "Lucifer Satan" to make the eyes roll a bit, whom we first meet in a flashback as he murders a mother and nearly kills a young girl, who will grow up to be one of the film's characters. In the present, he is tending to a poison garden - the concept of the diabolical plot that puts the world at risk in this film is a little too threadbare - that he will use to... well, do something bad.

Once back on the job, Bond is amused to find that there's a new 007 agent, Nomi (Lashana Lynch), and the two do a whole lot of stepping on each other's toes. The weapon being developed by Malek's character was apparently stolen from a top secret lab, where a corrupt Russian scientist had helped to develop it. Apparently, M (Ralph Fiennes) had been overseeing the development of the weapon with better intentions than those who steal it.

The plot of "No Time to Die" is a bit labyrinthine, at least in terms of what Satin's plan is, who exactly he is seeking revenge upon, what the weapon he has will exactly do, etc. I'm sure some explanations are given that I missed, but this is a long film with a lot of action sequences, a fair amount of exposition and at least one shocking plot development, so some of the details might have been lost in the mix.

Regardless of these issues, "No Time to Die" is a fairly fast paced Bond picture, better than "Spectre" and "Quantum of Solace," about equal to "Casino Royale," but not as good as "Skyfall." It's either the second or the middle-of-the-pack in the Craig series. Craig is steely as ever and brings pathos to the role, while the supporting cast is pretty solid, especially Ana de Armas as an agent who gives an assist to Bond during a mission in Cuba. I would have been happy to spend much more time with her character.

So, while much has been made of this being the final Daniel Craig Bond film, it's surely not the last. Craig has left his stamp on the role, and the films in which he has been involved have tried to evolve the character somewhat, whereas the older Bond films, fun as they could often be, were mostly a lot of shootouts, scenes of Bond bedding women and double entendres. By making Bond more of an actual character, the Craig era has made a franchise that had grown a little stale become more engaging, even if all of the entries didn't succeed. "No Time to Die" is a pretty decent sendoff for the actor's portrayal of the iconic character.

Review: The Many Saints Of Newark

Image courtesy of Warner Bros.

While "The Many Saints of Newark" may not be on the level of "The Sopranos," the groundbreaking HBO series for which it acts as a sort of prologue, it is a mostly engaging story set in the 1960s that focuses - but only occasionally - on a young Tony Soprano (played by Michael Gandolfini, James's son) and his youthful foibles, and how they might have led to him becoming the fearsome New Jersey mobster who we know.

However, the story of "Many Saints" is more about the person whose name gives the film part of its title. Dickie Moltisanti - whose name in Italian means "many saints" - is the father of Christopher (Michael Imperioli), who narrates the film from a graveyard, and cousin-by-marriage of Tony. In the film, he comes to act as a guiding influence on Tony, although much less than you might expect based on the trailer.

Dickie is a bad guy who tries to convince himself that he's a good one, mostly because he believes that he looks out for Tony and, in his free time, coaches a blind baseball team. His father, Hollywood Moltisanti (Ray Liotta) has just arrived back from Italy with a new bride, Giuseppina (Michela De Rossi), with whom Dickie becomes close after he notices that his father slaps her around. Eventually, something more than friendship blooms.

Meanwhile, tensions are flaring all around. Junior Soprano (Corey Stoll captures the character in all of his snakiness) begins to sour on Dickie after the latter laughs at the former during an embarrassing moment, while on the other side of Newark buildings are being burned and stores looted during the Newark riots of 1967, caused by several cops who brutally beat a Black cab driver. 

During all this, Dickie's work relationship with a Black crime affiliate named Harold (Leslie Odom Jr.) begins to fray after the two had been involved in a lucrative partnership involving the numbers game. But Harold wants to break out on his own, rather than continually relying on Dickie as a benefactor, and violence soon breaks out between the mob and Newark's Black gangsters.

Throughout all of this, new actors pop up as favorite old characters - Samson Moeakiola and Billy Magnussen have the look and mannerisms down for Big Pussy and Paulie Walnuts, respectively, while John Magaro's portrayal of Silvio Dante is, while impressive in its mimicry, perhaps a little too much of an impersonation. Vera Farmiga certainly scores as Livia Soprano, Tony's beleaguered mother, and Stoll is scary as Uncle Junior.

Among the new characters, Harold is certainly an interesting figure, although somewhat of a cypher and mostly missing during the film's second half. While Liotta's portrayal of Hollywood is fine, his work as Hollywood's brother in prison, whom Dickie visits out of a sense of duty, is more impressive. A jazz aficionado, his character comes to act as somewhat of an adviser for Dickie, who is being pulled in different directions by different people.

But, not surprisingly, the most interesting facet of the film is the story of young Tony, who is portrayed by Gandolfini as a sweet, luggish kid who might have become a decent person had he not grown up around his family, and those in The Family. While Gandolfini has his father's mannerisms down pretty well, he also displays his vulnerability. There are moments here when the character vacillates between being the thug Tony would become and an entirely different person whom he might have been if he'd been exposed to better mentors.

There's also an interesting, albeit brief, subplot in which Tony tries to get his depressive mother to consider taking some pills that her doctor prescribed for sleep, signaling Tony's own interest in psychiatry that would come years later during David Chase's show. There's a particularly moving sequence during which Tony attempts to contact Dickie, who has decided to stay out of his nephew's life to prevent him from getting into crime, only to be stuck outside alone in the snow around Christmas.

So, no, "The Many Saints of Newark" doesn't reach the heights of the incredible TV show, which heralded in the Golden Age of Television, and influenced so many great shows that came after it. "The Sopranos" in turn was influenced by Scorsese's mob movies, especially "Goodfellas," so it's interesting to see this story come full circle with Liotta in two roles and, of course, Lorraine Bracco's fantastic work on the show. While it may not be on par with the show's best episodes, it's still an entertaining mob picture with a great supporting cast and some interesting links drawn between this film and the show that preceded it. Fans of the program will likely get a kick out of it.

Review: Titane

Image courtesy of Neon.

It's a rare occasion when I can make such proclamations, but Julia Ducournau's "Titane" is mostly unlike anything else you've ever seen. I say mostly because while there are some elements that feel influenced by other filmmakers - some body horror in the vein of David Cronenberg, a dance sequence and some other stylistic elements that would feel at home in a Claire Denis movie - this demented serial killer splatter picture cum familial drama is truly in a mind boggling league of its own.

The film's grim prologue acts as somewhat of an explainer, although there's nothing that can quite explain the rest of the picture. At the beginning, a young girl is misbehaving in the back seat of a car, making loud noises and kicking the seat in front of her while her increasingly annoyed father attempts to drive. When he turns around to punish her, his car spins out of control, and the young girl's head is thrown against the window. An operation is performed and a metal plate is inserted into her head. Upon leaving the hospital, the girl approaches the car in which she was injured and lovingly embraces it.

Some years later, this same girl, Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), works at car shows, performing what amount to stripper-like dances (but leaving her clothes on) on the hoods of cars at car shows. She has attracted a following and often signs autographs after her performance. One night, a seemingly obsessed fan follows her out to her car, forces himself upon her and gets stabbed through the head with her weapon of choice - a metal hair pin with which she keeps her hair held in place. We soon realize that the man is not her first victim.

Alexia's victims begin to pile up - and the film features a delirious sequence in which she bumps off one victim who has come onto her (that seems to be her tipping point), only to realize that the house where the killing has taken place is hosting a sex party, and people continue to come downstairs, leading to a body count that quickly piles up. The absurdity of the otherwise gory sequence - there's a killing involving a bar stool that's just brutal - reminded me of the hilariously bungled hit in "Mulholland Drive," or felt like a scene that wouldn't be out of place in a Quentin Tarantino movie.

Then, something completely loony happens. Alexia finds a car waiting for her one night after her performance, she enters it and a sexual encounter occurs... between Alexia and the car. The result of this insane tryst displays even more chutzpah than the sex scene itself. This is a film that forces you to extend your disbelief quite a bit, and then asks you to extend it even more to absurd heights. But because the film is so completely committed to its vision, it works.

Alexia finds that she must hide out, believing the police to be on her trail, and notices a sign on a wall regarding a young boy who has been missing for years. She decides to pose as the young man, tapes down her chest and passes herself off as the missing lad. The boy's single father, a brutish firefighter captain named Vincent (Vincent London), appears so overwhelmed by the possible return of his son that he doesn't question the obviously bizarre circumstances and Alexia's odd appearance. He's just glad to have his son back.

The film's second half almost feels like another movie altogether, transforming from a bloody serial killer thriller into a dysfunctional family drama with some extreme body horror elements. There's no way I can discuss the film further without giving away a key plot point, so if you don't want the film's most absurd plot thread ruined for you, read no further.

The second half of "Titane" is some sort of treatise on the fragility of the body - both because Alexia is trying to hide her pregnancy, brought on by her sexual tryst with the automobile, as oil seeps out of her body in the shower and her stomach starts to bulge, while Vincent is obsessed with retaining his physique in his battle with Father Time, sticking himself in the ass with a needle full of steroids in an attempt to retain his muscular frame.

The film's second half is not only about the failings of the body over time, but also explores the concept of what it means to "take care of" another person. While Vincent is determined to watch over his long-lost son, and is fiercely protective when bringing Alexia around the alpha males in his firehouse, Alexia must also care for the tormented Vincent, often picking him up off the bathroom floor after his steroid use has caused him to collapse.

With only two features - including "Raw," her squirm inducing debut about cannibalism - Ducournau has proved herself to be a provocateur and a chronicler of body horror who would make Cronenberg proud. While "Raw" was impressive, it was a film that I more appreciated than loved, whereas "Titane" is one of the most unique, bizarre, intentionally unpleasant, hilarious, shocking and confident films I've seen in some time. This is a filmmaker in control of a particularly bold vision. 

Some may love "Titane" (count me among that crowd), while others may hate it and some may have no idea what to make of it. Others may feel a combination of these responses. But I'd bet that one thing is for sure: Those who have seen won't soon forget it.