Review: Aftersun

Image courtesy of A24.

Charlotte Wells' debut, "Aftersun," is a film that I could appreciate more once it was over and I had some time to reflect on it - which is appropriate, considering that the movie itself is a looking back, of sorts, on a trip taken some years before by a young girl and her father. In other words, this is a movie about regret and the things we can only see in hindsight, rather than at the time of their occurrence.

In the film, 11-year-old Sophie (Frankie Corio) is taking a trip with her father, Calum (Paul Mescal), to Turkey, and the film's first half mostly details the smalls odds and ends of their daily routines, although some glimpses of things that Sophie missed as a girl but recognizes as an adult - her father taking some solace in a solitary dance on a balcony while smoking, a Tai Chai book, a story about her father's childhood, and a pained look on his face when Sophie mentions that she knows he can't afford the snorkel mask she carelessly lost - begin to come into focus.

Calum's sadness later is more pronounced but - interestingly enough - away from the focus of Sophie, who doesn't narrate the film so much as recall it as a series of memories. During one scene, Calum cries alone in the hotel room where they're staying. During another, he walks into the sea, and we wonder if he'll return.

Interspersed with these scenes - which, based on the music by Los Del Rio and Chumbawumba, are set in the late 1990s - are a series of sequences that only make sense when the film is seen as a whole. A grown Sophie - now living with a woman and apparently a mother - dreams that she is in a strobe-lit nightclub where she sees Calum dancing. She tries to approach multiple times, but when she finally reaches him, well, I won't give that away. 

Suffice it to say, it punctuates what the rest of the film has been getting at: Adult Sophie is reliving that trip with her father in her head, wondering why she didn't see the sadness that was engulfing him, and trying to reconcile the man she thought she knew then with the one she obviously didn't know at all. 

The final moments of the picture - which piece together two dance scenes, both set to Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure" - are fairly piercing and effective, which makes it slightly frustrating that the first half of the film took so long to get where it's going. The picture's early scenes have a lethargic rhythm, and the dialogue is often muffled by the characters' surroundings. 

"Aftersun" eventually reaches its destination and powerfully drives home the points it wants to make, but it takes a little more time than is necessary in doing so, and the film's second half feels infinitely more effective than its first. So, while I wasn't taken with it quite as much as most others have been, I appreciate how it causes the viewer to reflect on how likely it was that their own parents were still figuring things out when they - the viewer, that is - were children, much as Calum clearly is here. 

And I appreciated how some of the film's most intimate scenes - there's a particularly heartbreaking one in which Calum pleads with his daughter to always tell him about her experiences, no matter how bad they are, and we get the sense that she did not do so - are shot from a distance as if to give the characters privacy. "Aftersun" may take a little time to grow on you, but it'll likely stick with you after it's over.

Review: Bones And All

Image courtesy of United Artists.

Luca Guadagnino's "Bones and All" - based on the novel by Camille DeAngelis - is possibly the only cannibal romance I've ever seen and the director's second attempt at horror following his interesting, but divisive, "Suspiria" reimagining in 2018.

The picture is an odd blend of a road trip romance between two damaged drifters and an occasionally gory film about people whose appetites are satiated only by the taste of human flesh. Often dreamy with stunning vistas or music from the 1980s - during which time period the film is set - "Bones and All" often makes sharp turns into Grand Guignol territory when you're least expecting it.

As the film opens, teenager Maren (Taylor Russell) has just started to get situated in her latest high school - she and her father (Andre Holland) appear to flee from town to town and keep a low profile - when, after having been invited to a high school girl sleepover, she nearly bites off the finger of one of her new friends. She and her father prepare to flee again, but when she awakens the next day he is already gone, leaving only a tape-recorded message about how he can't continue to live like fugitives and protect her from her dangerous appetites.

No sooner than Maren has set off for herself than she runs into another drifter, a creepy guy named Sully (Mark Rylance) who often refers to himself in the third person, and he schools her on how to survive on the road while being a cannibal - yes, he's one too. He also teaches her how to sniff out other fellow cannibals, and claims to be able to smell death the moment it occurs. While awaiting an overnight bus, she - ahem - dines with him at the home of an elderly woman who has fallen and, eventually, dies.

But Maren is put off by Sully's demeanor - and when he makes a reappearance late in the film, it's obvious that her instincts were good - and sets off on her own again, this time meeting a young man named Lee (Timothee Chalamet) who also happens to be a cannibal. The two begin traveling together - and Maren is slightly disturbed by Lee's ability to kill without feeling much remorse - and eventually a romance blossoms.

The pair travel to seek out Maren's mother - Chloe Sevigny pops up in a disturbing cameo - but when that doesn't prove fruitful, they try to set up what could quality as a normal life in a small town. But, not surprisingly, some dangerous elements from their past catch up to them.

"Bones and All" could be considered a dreamy romance if it weren't also so unsettling in parts - the meeting with Maren's mother, any appearance of Sully, and a disturbing conversation with a traveling cannibal (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his cop buddy about a ritual that gives the film its title - and the film's cast all make a slightly implausible story feel believable.

Guadagnino, who made the gorgeous "Call Me By Your Name" and the stylish "I Am Love," knows how to create swoon-worthy romances out of ill-fated love affairs with scenic backdrops, appropriate needle drops, and lush photography. 

He has also dabbled in horror moviemaking. Whereas his "Suspiria" remake was all style and its mood felt all of a piece, "Bones and All" often bounces back and forth between its dramatic elements and its icky moments. At times, it's a little jarring - and while the picture certainly isn't on the level of the director's previous outing with Chalamet, it's still pretty compelling. Just don't plan on eating anything squishy for dinner for a few days afterwards. 

Review: The Fabelmans

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Young Sam Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) discovers early on in his obsession with watching and making movies that the camera can be yielded as a weapon to humiliate enemies, it can impress the WASPish girls with whom he attends school, and it can help him discover who he is and who he wants to be - but in one of the most heartbreaking moments in a film full of them, it can also lead to the discovery of devastating truths.

Sam, of course, is a stand-in for a young Steven Spielberg, whose parents' divorce is - for lack of a less tacky phrase - the stuff of legend that fueled the creation of one of the director's most beloved classics, "E.T. the Extra Terrestrial," but also pops up elsewhere in his filmography ("Close Encounters of the Third Kind").

But in his latest film - which is his best at least since "Munich" - Spielberg tackles the subject matter head on. It's not surprising how sad the film often is, but what caught me off guard is how funny it is as well, whether it's the mishegoss of the Fabelman family foibles or a final scene in which a very famous director portraying another legendary filmmaker that's possibly the biggest laugh-out-loud moment of the year.

Although autobiographical, there's a telling moment early in the picture in which Sam sits transfixed in a theater as he watches John Ford's classic "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." There's a famous line from that movie that goes, "This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Naturally, the Fabelmans - ahem, the Spielbergs - made their way from New Jersey to Arizona and then further west to California by the film's end. Whether the inclusion of a clip from Ford's film aims to suggest that some of this story is dramatized for effect, well, you decide.

Regardless, the film is a very personal one for Spielberg, that remains clear. In the film, a young Sam (Mateo Zoryon Francis DeFord) discovers the magic of movies when his parents - in a scene pulled directly from Spielberg's bio - take him to see "The Greatest Show on Earth." Sam is fascinated and horrified by a train crash in the picture; asks his father, Burt (Paul Dano in a very solid performance), to buy him a train set for Hanukkah; and then proceeds to crash it over and over again while filming it from various angles for the purpose of creating suspense.

His mother, Mitzi (an excellent Michelle Williams), a free spirit who once wanted to be a piano player but never got her shot, recognizes a fellow artist and is impressed by her son's endeavors. She realizes that his filming the train crash is a means of controlling his anxiety over the experience of seeing the crash on a big screen in a theater. As Sam continues to grow into a teenager, he continually tries to maintain that level of control through filming - for example, he tells an endearingly dopey actor portraying a soldier about how he should feel seeing his fellow comrades dead on the battlefield, but it's clear that Sam is channeling something more personal.

A visit from a distant uncle (Judd Hirsch in a brief, scene-stealing performance) who once performed in the circus and then the movies proves to be revelatory for Sam. The uncle recognizes Sam's need to create art and that while he may love his family dearly, he has just as much passion for his filmmaking. Art is all-encompassing, the uncle tells him, and therefore it's also lonely.

One day while editing a film that Sam shot while camping with his family and Benny (Seth Rogen), whom the family calls "uncle," although he's really just a close family friend, he makes a shocking discovery in the background of a frame. The confrontations that ensue lead to the Fabelman family structure beginning to unravel.

Each of the three places where the Fabelmans live for Burt's work - he's an engineer of some sort and considered a genius - play their own role for Sam and his family. New Jersey is the place that seems most like home, while Mitzi takes to the deserts of Arizona, although it's in that state where the fated camping trip takes place. California proves the most challenging for Sam, as it's where he temporarily gives up his filmmaking and has to deal with anti-semitic bullies, although a romance with a devout, Jesus-loving girl results in some of the film's funniest moments.

One of the elements that makes "The Fabelmans" so special is that's so specific. Yes, it's technically the origin story for a director who was among the most consequential of the past 50 years, but it, thankfully, doesn't get to the point where Spielberg has become a Hollywood success, but instead leaving us with the aforementioned hilarious run-in with an iconic director he idolizes.

It's also specific in its little touches - Sam and his mother discussing the merits of burnt toast after some fraught moments, Burt's surprise at being hugged after purchasing his son a camera, a moment of solidarity between Sam and his younger sister after a harrowing family discussion, and even a moment in a hallway in which a bully displays some frailty - which make it feel like so personal a work.

Spielberg has made a number of very good movies in recent years - "Lincoln," "Bridge of Spies," and "West Side Story," to name a few - but "The Fabelmans" is one of his best of the 21st century and one of his all-around most moving and, surprisingly, funniest. It's also one of the year's very best.

Review: She Said

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Maria Schrader's "She Said" - based upon the 2017 articles written by New York Times reporters Megan Twohey (portrayed here by Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (played by Zoe Kazan) - doesn't deviate too far from the formula of many of the great journalism movies ("All the President's Men" or "Spotlight," for example) and there isn't much in the way of surprises since we all know how it ends; however, the film derives its power from the nature of its story and some strong performances, and somehow manages to be fairly suspenseful.

As the film opens, Twohey is in the process of writing a series of articles about sexual misconduct allegations against Donald Trump, who shortly after the story kicks in wins the presidency. She's unsettled by the fact that voters were presented with numerous complaints of Trump's inappropriate behavior with women but voted for him anyway.

Shortly afterward, Kantor stumbles upon a story from some Hollywood insiders that Miramax mogul Harvey Weinstein has a long history of covering up his own sexual misdeeds through NDAs and payouts to keep his victims - who vary from assistants to movie stars such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Judd, and Rose McGowan - quiet.

As Kantor and Twohey, who gets enlisted by another Times editor (Patricia Clarkson), dig around, they find that the level of sexual misconduct is much worse than they imagined regarding Weinstein and goes much deeper than just one man. Like politics and so many other lines of work in the United States, they discover that there are methods in place to protect powerful men from sexually harassing and even assaulting women in the workplace in Hollywood.

As I'd mentioned, there's not much in the way of invention in terms of how this story is portrayed - we get the typical scenes of diligent reporters working their sources until they finally break down and agree to take part in the story, scenes of editors going through the reporters' work and suggesting new leads, and the big confrontation with the subject of their investigation. 

On the one hand, you've probably seen a film very similar stylistically to "She Said" before. On the other, it's an example of a tried-and-true formula being done well. Plus, the story itself is powerful, and one that is still seeing a societal reckoning to this day. Mulligan gets the MVP of the film's leads, but there are some very strong supporting performances here as well - especially Jennifer Ehle and Samantha Morton as two women who were terrorized by Weinstein when they were younger women working for Miramax. Peter Friedman is also solid as Weinstein's slick lawyer.

At a time when powerful people - at least one specifically comes to mind - evade responsibility for their misdeeds and media coverage often feels like entertainment rather than the presentation of facts, a film like "She Said" is inspiring in its portrayal of journalists digging around in pursuit of the truth and holding influential people to account. The manner in which it portrays its story may feel overly familiar, but it's important that this film was made - and the result is a well-crafted, well-acted, and moving experience.

Review: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Image courtesy of Disney.

Ryan Coogler's 2018 "Black Panther" was a breath of fresh air in the comic book movie genre as well as Marvel's best offering to date. It remains so and its sequel, "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" is a pretty decent follow up, even if it doesn't live up to the original.

To be fair, it was a tall order. The absence of Chadwick Boseman haunts this sequel, and its uniqueness in the Marvel universe - in which an African nation and its fearless leader were the film's heroes, rather than your typical white guy in Spandex - is a little less pronounced this time, primarily because its plot follows most of the typical comic book movie beats.

There's a touching tribute to T'Challa (Boseman) in the film's opening scenes, though the filmmakers have left his cause of death somewhat vague. The plot mechanics kick in soon afterward. This time around, a nation under the sea that was unbeknownst to others poses a threat when it turns out that it also possesses vibranium - the metallic ore that powers Wakanda - and colonist countries want to come into possession of it.

But Wakanda and Talokan (the underwater kingdom) are pitted against each other when it turns out that a young Black student in the United States has assisted with technology that is aiding the U.S. government, and Talokan's fierce leader Namor (Tenoch Huerta) wants to have the girl killed. Shuri (Letitia Wright) and Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett) decide to protect the girl, which leads to conflict between the two nations.

At one point when Shuri is captured by Namor, they each relay their own personal histories and seem to almost come to some understanding, but she blanches when she realizes that he wants Wakanda to team up with Talokan to take on the rest of the world. A lot of fighting ensues.

While the film's opening sequence is fairly moving and the final hour - it's a whopping two-hours-and-41-minutes - moves fairly rapidly and ties things up nicely, the middle section of the picture drags a bit. Part of it is that Talokan isn't as compelling as the filmmakers seem to think it is - the fact that its warriors seemingly can't be killed makes the film's many battles somewhat low-stakes - and too little time is spent on an arc involving one of the film's lead characters that just kind of gets rushed along toward the end.

But overall - and especially for a comic book movie sequel - "Wakanda Forever" is pretty good. One blessing for this story is that, unlike so many of the other Marvel films, there's little in the way of world building here. In other words, no other characters from other Marvel films randomly pop up, and there's no eye-roll-inducing references to things that happened in other Marvel movies, which often makes the films feel more like marketing than filmmaking.

It also helps that Coogler - who went from low budget indie filmmaking ("Fruitvale Station") to franchises ("Creed") and comic book movies - seemingly cares for his characters and their fates. I usually wouldn't suggest using stock footage from a previous film - especially in a comic book series, which often references itself in so many other ways - but the clips from the first "Black Panther" here hit home, and the film's cast -  Bassett, Wright, Lupita Nyong'o, Michaela Coel and Danai Gurira - all deliver. 

So, no, "Wakanda Forever" doesn't compare to the original "Black Panther" movie - but that's fine. As it stands, it's a pretty solid blockbuster and among the better Marvel movies to follow in its predecessor's wake.

Review: Armageddon Time

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

The memoir film is becoming an increasingly popular trend that is yielding great results - Paolo Sorrentino's "The Hand of God" and Steven Spielberg's upcoming "The Fabelmans," for example, while other acclaimed directors have recaptured the times and places of their youths even if the stories aren't exactly theirs, such as Paul Thomas Anderson's "Licorice Pizza" or Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." 

The latest entry is James Gray's subtly heartbreaking "Armageddon Time," which is anything but a rose-tinted look back at the past. I'm not sure how much of the film's story is Gray's, but regardless it's a mournful coming of age story that is tinged with regret and extremely timely. 

Set in Queens in 1980, the film follows the story of Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), a Jewish sixth grader who has a streak of mischief that annoys his parents, Esther (Anne Hathaway), who wants to be the head of the PTA in Paul's school district, and Irving (Jeremy Strong), a plumber with a mean - and occasionally violent - temper. While Paul's parents are all about upward mobility and send his older brother off to a fancy private school, Paul has remained in the public school system. 

Paul's parents engage in subtle racism - they appear upset by his friendship with Johnny (Jaylin Webb), a Black student in Paul's class, primarily because the two get into trouble but also for reasons possibly stemming from classicism. Paul's closest confidant is his Grandpa Aaron (a very good Anthony Hopkins), who sees America for what it is - "the system is rigged," he tells Paul at one point - as the presidential election that Ronald Reagan went on to win plays in the background.

Aaron and his family escaped the Holocaust and fled to America, but he is disturbed by some of the things he sees in the country where he has made his home. After getting into some trouble with Johnny, Paul is transferred to the private school his brother attends - where he is greeted during a school assembly along with the other cheering students by Donald Trump's sister, Maryanne (Jessica Chastain in a cameo), who rails against the concept of handouts, arguing that hard work is what will make students at the upper crust school become leaders, obviously passing over the fact that her brother wouldn't have made it without a handout from his father, Fred, who also makes an appearance here. Aaron chides his grandson after he learns that he didn't say something to the privileged white boys at the school who throw around racial slurs casually. "Be a mensch," Aaron tells Paul.

There are numerous scenes throughout the film in which characters try to wake Paul up - including a humorous one in which Irving, in a brief moment of levity, bangs some pots and pans. But this concept, though subtly played like everything else in the picture, is the whole point of "Armageddon Time": Paul needs to wake up.

Paul often brags to Johnny that his family is wealthy and that his mother - who is actually only a member of the PTA - runs things in the school district. When the two of them get into trouble, Esther doesn't have that much pull, but it's of little surprise how Paul is able to get out of trouble, and how the consequences are much more dire for Johnny.

Without giving too much away, Johnny's prospects dim because he lives with an elderly grandmother who might soon need to be put in a nursing home, and Paul comes up with an idea of how to help his friend get to Florida, where his brother lives. But Paul doesn't see far enough ahead as to how the plan can backfire and what the consequences will be for himself, but especially for Johnny.

This all culminates in a series of scenes that plant "Armageddon Time" firmly in the realm of being a - for lack of a better phrase - morality play. As such, it's understatedly powerful and its lack of showy performances make for an even more brutal gut punch. A final, devastating coda involves another smarmy speech by a member of the Trump family, but before that a scene in which Grandpa Aaron has some departing words for Paul as well as a call to do better.

Gray has made some very good films, and his tales often set in America's past are usually delivered in a more minor key. An acolyte of Francis Ford Coppola, Gray's films frequently deal with immigrant stories (the excellent "The Immigrant"), crime ("We Own the Night" and "The Yards") or explorers ("Ad Astra" and "The Lost City of Z"). "Armageddon Time" might be his most potent to date. Named after a Clash song that tells us that "a lot of people won't get no justice tonight," the film shows an America where there are two sets of rules. Paul learns about the evils of complicity in agreeing to go along with that system. 

The film may seem emotionally muted, but it's still likely to knock the wind out of you by the time you reach its climax - which involve the aforementioned words of wisdom from Paul's grandfather, but also a conversation in a parked car that is likely to haunt you. Paul is told late in the film to "try his best" when faced with the unfairness of how people who look different than he does are treated, but the film clearly suggests that this is not close to being good enough.

Review: The Banshees Of Inisherin

Image courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Set in 1923 against the backdrop of the Irish civil war, Martin McDonagh's mordantly funny and strangely moving "The Banshees of Inisherin" details the sudden dissolution of a friendship between the somber fiddler Colm (Brendan Gleeson) and the amiable milk farmer Padraic (Colin Farrell). It all starts when, one day apropos of nothing, Padraic drops by his old friend's house to see if he wants to join him at the local pub on their desolate island, but cannot find him.

Padraic's mournful but book-smart sister, Siobhan (Kerry Conlan), suggests jokingly to her brother that "maybe he just don't like you no more," but Padraic is still shocked when, upon finally tracking Colm down, he is told exactly that. Colm says that he has been considering his own mortality and that he has decided to spend his time trying to create something lasting - such as the songs he writes and plays on his fiddle - rather than wasting his time on small talk with a "dull" man like Padraic.

But Padraic is mystified by Colm's casual cruelty in the matter and can't let it go, continuously approaching Colm and asking why he refuses to talk to him anymore. This finally leads the exasperated Colm to tell Padraic that if he doesn't stop bugging him, he'll begin to cut off his own fingers - which could be a challenge for a fiddle player - and leaving them at Padraic's doorstep. 

Colm's threats of self-mutilation mirror that of the civil war raging in the backdrop - we occasionally hear shots fired from neighboring islands but never see any action - in that a war on one's own home turf is itself a self-inflicted wound.

Focusing on themes of isolation, mortality, despair and the virtue of niceness, "The Banshees of Inisherin" could have quickly become a downer if it weren't for McDonagh's typically hilarious dialogue as well as the brilliant comedic pairing of Gleeson and Farrell - who reunite here after producing similarly impressive work in McDonagh's film debut, "In Bruges" - and some strong supporting performances by Conlan and Barry Keoghan as Dominic, a blunt young man whose father is the abusive island policeman - who also mistreats Padraic - and who becomes Padraic's only friend once Colm cuts him loose.

As Colm and Padraic's feud - if that's the right word for it - begins to escalate, others stand by and watch either with horror (Siobhan) or bemusement (the island's fortune teller, Mrs. McCormick, played by Sheila Flitton). Gleeson plays Colm as an exasperated, seemingly depressed man who views his time on earth as fleeting and wants to make something worthwhile of it, while Farrell's Padraic is a simpler soul who just can't let go of the fact that an old friend could drop him without good reason. Their story plays as a tragedy, of sorts, although it's often too funny to be depressing.

Originally a playwright, McDonagh's work as a director - after the marvelous debut "In Bruges" - has gone from being pulpy ("Seven Psychopaths") to weighty ("Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri") to downbeat gallows humor ("Banshees"). 

Some might read his latest film as some sort of treatise on the state of the world - cruelty for the sake of it, the loss of the sense of right and wrong behavior, burgeoning civil strife and escalating tensions, and the film does have a timely feel to it, although the desolate Irish locale, gloomy self critiquing and behaviors of its lead characters are specific enough to think twice about whether McDonagh is actually commenting on the current state of things. 

Regardless, "The Banshees of Inisherin" is one of his finest works as a director and one of the year's most memorable films.