Review: Ferrari

Image courtesy of Neon.

The inevitable crash occurs late in "Ferrari," Michael Mann's latest opus about a complicated man, and we've long been expecting it. In this case, it's a literal crash, a horror show in which one of Ferrari's race drivers loses control of his vehicle and plows into a crowd of spectators during a race in which Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) had hoped to revitalize his flagging company.

But a crash of some sort was expected. Ferrari, whom we learn was a race car driver himself early in his career before founding his exotic car company shortly after World War II in Italy, is teetering on the edge throughout the course of the picture, which takes place in the late 1950s.

Enzo's relationship with his wife, Laura (an excellent Penelope Cruz), is rocky to say the least. An early scene in the film finds Enzo sneaking home after a night with his mistress, Lina (Shailene Woodley), with whom he has a son about whom his wife has no idea, and Laura confronts him with a gun, shooting a hole in the wall near his head. He has broken their arrangement: While out galavanting with his lovers, he must arrive home in the morning before the maid.

Ferrari's company is also on shaky ground. His accountant tells him that he is burning through more money than he is making to pursue his passion project - winning races with drivers behind the wheel of his Ferraris. There are rumors that other car companies - Ford and Fiat, for example - are considering stepping in, thereby likely relinquishing the power that Enzo and Laura have over their own company.

And, of course, there's his aforementioned relationship with Lina and the young boy - Piero - who is their child. Enzo is clearly torn between his relationship with Laura, whom he loves but also thinks more of as a business partner, and this younger woman. So, when the crash finally comes, it's been long expected.

The film's focal point is Enzo's plan to win the 1957 Mille Miglia, an auto race totaling more than 900,000 miles set along public roads throughout Italy. Ferrari's main competitor in this race is Maserati. Enzo hopes that if his cars win the race this will spark new interest in Ferrari and, therefore, he'll sell more cars and save his company. He enlists a number of drivers - including an older driver (Patrick Dempsey) and a young hot shot (Gabriel Leone) with an actress girlfriend (Sarah Gadon).

Similar to other Mann films, "Ferrari" is an exploration of what makes a complicated and flawed man tick. The director, who found fame in the 1980s due to his creation of "Miami Vice," has long been one of Hollywood's best creators of stylish dramas and action films - most notably, "The Insider," "Thief," and "Heat." 

"Ferrari" might not rank among Mann's best, but it's an engrossing and, as always, visually impressive picture, from the early backroom scenes that have a "Godfather" vibe to the intense racing scenes. It takes a measured approach in its first half but switches gears during its final third with the Mille Miglia. Cruz is terrific as the no-shit-taking Laura, while Driver gives an solid, icy performance as the iconic carmaker. It feels as if "Ferrari" has gotten a little lost in the shuffle of end-of-the-year films, but it's one that's well worth seeing.

Review: The Iron Claw

Image courtesy of A2.

A public saga that is rivaled only by the Kennedys' in terms of suffering and loss, Sean Durkin's "The Iron Claw" tells the story of the Von Erich clan, a wrestling dynasty from Texas that was, at one point, considered the future of pro-wrestling until tragedy struck again and again.

The film opens with a wrestling match involving Fritz Von Erlich (Holt McCallany), the clan's patriarch, and an opponent during which Fritz mercilessly employs the titular technique to the other man's face. It is a bit of foreshadowing as to how little feeling Fritz has. If he won't spare his family from cruelty, it's no surprise that he won't go lightly on an opponent in the ring.

Years later, Fritz is bitter because he has long been ignored by the wrestling world and puts an absurd amount of pressure on his four sons to win the championship title that eluded him. He explains to his sons that the title is basically a political thing since wrestling is staged; therefore, those who display great showmanship and are willing to make good with the wrestling federation have a shot at the title.

First in line is Kevin Von Erlich, the good-hearted older brother, who wants the title but not as much as he merely hopes to enjoy time in the ring with his brothers. If given the choice between the two, he'd pick the latter. Kevin is portrayed by Zac Efron in a career-high performance. Even when the other characters in the film go off the rails, Efron's portrayal of this complex and kind-natured character keeps the film grounded. He also has a sweet romance with a young woman named Pam (Lily James), whom he ends up marrying.

David (Harris Dickinson) is the showier brother, a tall and lean wrestler who displays great showmanship in the ring. Fritz's cruelty is on full display when he chooses David for the title shot over his older brother and then proceeds to rub salt in the wound. Jeremy Allen White is Kerry, a near-Olympic medalist whose career goes into a tailspin when President Jimmy Carter announces that the United States won't participate in the games due to Russia's involvement in Afghanistan. Kerry is the self-destructive brother who shines bright briefly.

From a character standpoint, the brother who is, perhaps, most interesting is shy and quiet Mike (Stanley Simons), the youngest brother who is glad to mostly go ignored by his father (at one point, Fritz even lists the brothers in terms of which one is his favorite) and concentrate on his music. There's a nice scene when the boys' mother (Maura Tierney, in a slightly underwritten role) refuses to let Mike play a gig and the other three and Pam help to sneak him out.

"The Iron Claw" is a well-made family saga that's superficially about wrestling, but is more interesting when it focuses on the family dynamic that slowly but surely begins to crumble. Efron's Kevin blames the family's numerous woes - the film's second half feels like one tragedy after the next - on a curse, although it's likely that the only thing plaguing these boys is that they have a tyrant for a father. Tierney's mother isn't as cruel, but she makes a point of not coming to anyone's rescue.

Durkin's films often focus on dark and compelling stories such as the cult thriller "Martha Marcy May Marlene" and the very good "The Nest." His latest is a bigger budget drama but it still has a lot of nice touches, most of which are quieter moments among the various characters -for example, the aforementioned scene in which the sibling sneak Mike to his concert, a scene in which Pam flirts with Kevin at a restaurant, and a heart to heart between Kevin and David in a bathroom during the former's wedding. This is a fairly bleak film, so these moments go a long way in piercing the otherwise funereal air. All in all, this is a solid film.

Review: Poor Things

Image courtesy of Fox Searchlight.

The Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos' films chronicle excessive and outlandish behavior in settings where one might expect more decorum - the royal palace in "The Favourite" or the wealthy suburbs of "Dogtooth" and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" - and his latest follows the story of a woman's journey of exploration as her occasional shocking behavior clashes against a society in which she is learning the rules as she goes along.

Sort of a Frankenstein story, the picture follows the adventures of Bella (a very game Emma Stone), whose body was discovered in a canal after the person who inhabited it jumped off a bridge. The carcass is rescued by Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), a deformed surgeon who transplants the brain of the baby into the dead woman's head and brings her back to life. Bella is essentially a child in a woman's body, albeit one with crude and outrageous impulses.

Baxter brings in an assistant, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), who becomes a friend and eventual romantic interest for Bella. However, Bella discovers sex and realizes that there's a lot about the world from which she's protected that she doesn't know about when a cad named Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo, portraying the character with a sniveling affect of which I didn't know he was capable) whisks her away, prompting her to run off and go out into the world to discover herself.

Let's just say the journey is pretty outlandish. The picture is filled with fairly provocative sex scenes and there's an entire passage in which Bella gets introduced to the world's oldest profession that is sure to push some buttons. But the film obviously cares about Bella and the women in her orbit, while most of the men - Dr. Baxter and Max are the rare exceptions - are viewed as pathetic, creepy, cretinous, cowardly, amoral, and vile.

For a movie this icky - there are more than a few operation sequences and other grotesqueries that you might expect in a Lanthimos picture - it's also pretty funny, and much of the humor has to do with Bella discovering that some of her behavior isn't so proper - such as threatening to punch a screaming baby or making commentary on how crisp a pastry is after someone discusses the death of a loved one.

Previously, Lanthimos' work has either really worked for me - "Dogtooth" was unforgettable and "The Favourite" deserved the laudits it received - while other entries in his oeuvre - such as "Alps" and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer," which felt like the director was trying too hard to the point of being nearly risible - have not.

"Poor Things" is his finest work to date. It's bursting with imagination, incredible visuals and gorgeous compositions; its first half is rendered in gorgeous black and white; and it boasts numerous stellar performances. In the hands of a lesser actress, the character of Bella might not have worked - much of her early dialogue is in a broken form of communication in which she pieces together meaning through nonsensical language (my favorite is her reference to sex as "furious jumping") - but Stone really brings her to life. And Dafoe gives a wonderfully subtle performance as the good doctor.

Lanthimos isn't really telling us a story here that we haven't heard before - it's a more gentle version of Frankenstein, but if the lead character were a woman who finds herself making her own way in the world, despite patriarchal figures attempting to stifle her growth. 

But it's in the telling that "Poor Things" is unique - it's often incredible to look at, its dialogue has such a strange but discernible rhythm, its storytelling is assured, and its performances are strong across the board Did I mention that German legend Hanna Schygulla pops up in a great supporting role? It's one of the year's most memorable and best films.

Review: Monster

Image courtesy of Wild Bunch International.

Hirokazu Koreeda's subtle bullying drama "Monster" subverts expectations at every turn, from the intentions of its characters to the relevance of its title. Koreeda is one of Japan's best living filmmakers and his pictures always go about studying the human condition in a delicate and thoughtful manner, thereby causing some to suggest that his work is a modern incantation of master Yasujiro Ozu's work.

"Monster" tells several stories surrounding a series of incidents in which a boy has either been bullied by a fellow student, by a teacher, or even doing the bullying himself. The film observes the story from the perspective of the boy's mother, a teacher who gets accused of getting physically rough with the kid, a principal who is grieving the death of a grandchild, and even the two boys themselves.

Not all of the story is told in a linear fashion. We start out with the mother's story, which seems pretty clear cut as she gets increasingly frustrated while visiting the school after being led to believe that her son was struck by his teacher and getting what can only be described as an obnoxious response from the principal - whose grandchild was killed, we learn, when her husband was backing out of a driveway - and other teachers, who seem to want to keep the matter under wraps.

We then cut to the teacher's perspective and learn that not everything is nearly as clear cut as we'd thought. By the time we get to the story involving the boy and his awkward friend who is actually bullied by other students at the school and his macho father, it would seem we know very little. It brings to mind the saying that the more you learn, sometimes the less you know.

By the film's end, a few characters have been implicated while others look better once we have more of the pieces of the puzzle, but "Monster" doesn't give us all of the pieces, and it's up to the viewer to formulate their own opinions on what really happened here and who's to blame. Often, the questions posed by works of art are more interesting than the answers - and that's the case here.

Koreeda has been steadily making great movies for nearly three decades and his best work includes the Palm d'Or winner "Shoplifters," the two 1990s films "Maborosi" and "After Life," and last year's "Broker." While "Monster" might not be among his finest films, it's a thoughtful and engrossing take on how a community reacts - or, in this case, fails to react - to a complicated situation. It's well worth a look.

Review: Fallen Leaves

Image courtesy of The Match Factory.

Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki's films typically focus on downbeat characters and have an overall deadpan vibe to them. The filmmaker with whom he, perhaps, shares the most cinematic DNA is Jim Jarmusch and, sure enough, there's a scene in his latest, "Fallen Leaves," in which the two lead characters go to a movie together to watch a Jarmusch picture.

Kaurismaki's characters are often people down on their luck who either find a small piece of solace in a gloomy world or instead realize that they will forever be stuck in the mire. "Fallen Leaves" is one of the former and tells the tale of a grocery store worker named Ansa (Alma Poysti) who is fired from her job when a jerk of a security guard rats her out to her jerk of a boss for pocketing a food item that was going to be thrown into the trash anyway.

Meanwhile, Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) bounces from construction job to construction job, often getting fired for seeming - and likely being - inebriated on the job. He frequents a dive bar with a pal, Huotari (Janne Hyytiainen), who tries to convince Holappa to sing karaoke. There they meet Ansa and one of her friends and Huotari fails to score with the other woman.

Later, Holappa and Ansa run into each other and make plans for a date, which ends up being the aforementioned Jarmusch movie. However, their plans to connect again keep failing due to various circumstances - he loses her number and fails to show up at an appointed date and time and, later, a more serious intervention occurs.

Kaurismaki's more recent films have included some political commentary, such as the lovely "Le Havre," in which a community hides an immigrant boy from the authorities. "Fallen Leaves" is a little less overt, other than running commentary on the radio about the war in Ukraine. However, one can read this inclusion - and pair it with the unkind manner in which Ansa is fired and other misbehavior from minor characters - and see how Kaurismaki sets this love story against the backdrop of a world that's increasingly unkind. 

While the news on the radio makes it obvious when the picture is taking place, Kaurismaki includes his typical retro touches, such as the surf rock music that populates the soundtrack and the old-fashioned interiors in the film's bars, restaurants, and homes.

As Ansa and Holappa's burgeoning relationship has its ups and downs - mostly caused by near misses due to fate or bad circumstances - Ansa finds another bright spot in her life after adopting a dog that almost becomes the film's third main character. There's a lovely shot at the end when she and Holappa are walking and he asks about the dog's name, only to receive an answer that feels absolutely right.

Kaurismaki's films and characters might have a downbeat vibe, but the bright spot they provide in an increasingly dark world - as evidenced by the radio playing throughout the film - is due to the possibility of hope that his characters manage to retain despite job losses, wars, and failed romantic foibles. This movie is truly a pleasure.

Review: Eileen

Image courtesy of Neon.

Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) doesn't have much going for her. She works at a prison in Massachusetts in what appears to be the early to mid-1960s. Her father (Shea Whigham) is a former police chief and current drunk who routinely draws police to his house for interventions regarding his bad behavior - mostly waving guns at passersby while inebriated. He compares Eileen to her sister - not favorably - and tells her to "get a life" and a "clue." Her sister is a non-presence and her mother is dead.

The other secretaries in the pool in which she works at the prison scoff at her, though Eileen isn't a shrinking violet. I got a good laugh at her response when one of them insinuates that she is in the midst of having her period. But no, there's not a whole lot to recommend in Eileen's day-to-day life. Despite the occasionally snarky comment, she might appear mousy to some, although a young prison guard who works in her line of sight probably doesn't know about the sexual fantasies she has, nor do her coworkers realize that she occasionally masturbates on the job.

The film is directed by William Oldroyd ("Lady Macbeth") and is based on the novel by Otessa Moshfegh, whose acclaimed chronicles of weirdos include "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" and "Death In Her Hands." "Eileen" tells the story of a young woman who's trapped in a bleak lifestyle and finds release upon the arrival of an exciting new person.

That person is Dr. Rebecca St. John (Anne Hathaway in a very credible femme fatale role), the prison's new psychiatrist whose glamorous outfits and confidence couldn't make Eileen more excited than if Marilyn Monroe herself wandered into her place of work. For reasons quite not explained, Rebecca takes a shine to Eileen and the two immediately hit it off.

Eileen's sexuality is seemingly a work in progress and possibly undergoing a transition. Early in the film, she fantasizes about the security guard having sex with her in a public place, but she is transfixed by Rebecca and clearly in a sexual way. This is compounded when Rebecca invites her out to drink and not only ignores the men at a bar where they meet, but focuses squarely on Eileen, first asking her to dance and then giving her a not-quite-chaste good night peck on the lips.

The film is a coming of age story, but a dark one indeed due to a plot twist that I didn't see coming - my wife has read the novel, but I have not - that takes "Eileen" down the road of film noir in its final third. Although I won't give away details, the plot thread involves Rebecca's interest in a young prisoner who was convicted for murdering his father while he slept in bed with the boy's mother. 

Rebecca thinks the boy was lashing out due to something sinister going on in the relationship and Eileen finds herself sucked into the scenario. In fact, the manner in which she finds out that she's suddenly involved in the scenario is played somewhat brilliantly as she and Rebecca sit across a table from each other.

Much of the film's success is involved in how well-developed Eileen is as a character - and McKenzie's strong performance - as well as how much of a mystery Rebecca turns out to be (Hathaway plays her with just the right amount of charisma and aloofness). While the surprise in the film's final third takes it into darker territory, the film leaves a bit to the imagination regarding Rebecca's intentions toward Eileen all along. This twist is jarring and while its presentation is effective, there's not enough information as to why Rebecca is so invested in the fate of the young prisoner.

This is the first Moshfegh novel to be adapted to the screen - my wife assures me that her slightly better known "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" is likely unadaptable - and its allure stems from the electricity between the two leads, who have some of the best chemistry I've seen this year, and the fact that the film doesn't take great pains to make Eileen likable. 

This is a film about a young woman who lives a somewhat bleak existence and is awaiting a spark of inspiration. She is unaware what she's capable of and her budding friendship with Rebecca provides her with a disturbing answer. Not all of the pieces of "Eileen" completely come together, but this is a solid sophomore feature for Oldroyd and a great showcase for its two leads.

Review: Maestro

Image courtesy of Netflix.

Bradley Cooper's second foray into directing - following 2018's "A Star is Born" update - at first feels like a standard biopic in its stylish portrayal of the life of legendary conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein (also played by Cooper in makeup that at times makes him semi-unrecognizable). Its early scenes briefly depict Bernstein's rise after he is called upon to lead the New York Philharmonic orchestra when its conductor takes ill. 

However, once Bernstein - who has affairs with men and doesn't try too hard to hide this from anyone - meets Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), the story becomes more interested in their relationship and transitions, to an extent, into an examination of how much a person will tolerate to continue to be married to a great artist (in this sense, it's similar to Paul Thomas Anderson's "Phantom Thread") and how two people live their lives - sometimes uncomfortably - in the spotlight.

The film opens with an older Bernstein at a piano being recorded by a film crew. He makes a reference to his wife and how often he thinks of her. Despite his affairs with men and his occasionally flaunting them in plain sight of her, it's obvious that Bernstein loves Felicia, who is in many ways the guiding light for his life and career.

The film's early black and white scenes are so convincing that one might believe they are watching a film from the 1940s if they didn't know better. The later scenes set in the 1950s and 1960s have a glorious Technicolor vibe to them, and nearly each frame of the film is gorgeous. 

As a director, Cooper has a great eye for visuals that stick around long after they have faded from the screen. One that has remained in my mind is the floating by of a massive balloon in the Macy's Day Parade that passes by Bernstein's window as he stands alone following a fight with his wife. It gave me the impression of a character who can be lonely even while being surrounded by people who fight for his attention.

Although the film is not meant to be an all-encompassing biopic and its focus is on Felicia and Leonard's marriage and her discomfort with his not-so-well-hidden affairs, we don't learn a lot about Bernstein otherwise. We hear snippets of "On the Town" and "West Side Story," and there's a particularly well-shot scene in which he conducts the London Symphony Orchestra's performance of Mahler's "Resurrection Symphony No. 2" at the Ely Cathedral in the early 1970s; however, Bernstein as a character is often kept at a distance.

Despite this slightly underdeveloped sense of his character - Mulligan's Felicia feels much more developed and her performance, most notably a monologue at a restaurant while dining with a friend, is stellar - "Maestro" is still an often exquisitely shot and engaging film about a legendary figure. 

It's obvious that a lot of care and effort - Cooper apparently spent years learning how to conduct to prepare for the film - went into it, and it's further proof of Cooper's abilities not only in front of the camera, but also in the director's seat.

Review: The Boy And The Heron

Image courtesy of Studio Ghibli. 

It's been a decade since Hayao Miyazaki last unleashed one of his gorgeous, strange, and magical films on the world and many thought 2013's "The Wind Rises" would be his last. Thankfully, he has returned with a new film, "The Boy and the Heron," which plays in some respects as a greatest hits for the director. 

It tells a child's story as he finds himself in a fantastical world while dealing with grief and attempting to find a way to free his pregnant stepmother, all of which sound like pieces from other Miyazaki films. However, Miyazaki's is a singular voice and even if some of the elements feel overly familiar - and the plot occasionally labyrinthine - it's the emotions and the loving detail to which the animator and filmmaker have crafted its visuals that make it entrancing.

The film's original title was "How Do You Live?," which is also the name of a novel by Genzaburo Yoshino that makes an appearance here with a note to Mahito, the boy who is the lead character, from his mother, who died in World War II in a Tokyo hospital fire that opens the film. He is sent to the countryside by his father, Shoichi, to live with his new, pregnant stepmother, Natsuko, who is the sister of his late mother.

Bored by his new surroundings and unfriendly to Natsuko, Mahito meets a heron that teases him about his mother and notes that his "presence is requested." After Natsuko goes missing, Mahito follows the bird to a tower where his great-granduncle once disappeared. Upon entering the tower, Mahito is plunged into a strange and fantastical world that is ruled by birds, from hordes of pelicans to man-sized and violent parakeets as well as small creatures known as warawara that float to Earth to become people.

As always, Miyazaki's latest film is full of wonder and fantastical sights - one particularly memorable moment involves the floating of the warawara up into the sky as they try to avoid being eaten by pelicans, while another takes place during Mahito's first meeting with the heron as he is covered in frogs and other creatures. 

During the course of the film, Mahito uses this fantasy world to escape the pain of the real one, namely having to deal with a new mother who replaces the one lost in the fire at the beginning whom he occasionally believes he sees while navigating this Wonderland. Mahito learns that while we can escape into fantasy worlds for respite, we must ultimately find the courage to live in the real one.

Miyazaki is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of the past 30 years. My personal favorite of his work is the spellbinding "Spirited Away," although I also have a soft spot for the lovely "My Neighbor Totoro." It's great to see Miyazaki back at work and, hopefully, this won't be his last. "The Boy and the Heron" is a nice reminder of how magical the experience of watching one of his films can be.

Review: Dream Scenario

Image courtesy of A24.

If Charlie Kaufman wanted to make a film about our self-devouring culture that focused on everything from cancel culture and viral sensations to social-media groupthink, it would likely look something like "Dream Scenario," a proudly weird, occasionally frightening, and overall compelling new film from Kristoffer Borgli that carries on the recent tradition of making Nicolas Cage the star-du-jour for all things bizarre.

In the film, Cage plays Paul Matthews, a nondescript, tenured evolutionary biology professor whose classes appear to leave students unengaged. Suddenly, for seemingly no reason, Paul begins popping up in people's dreams - and not just those with whom he's familiar. In some sort of unexplainable psychological phenomenon, Paul makes appearances in dreams of thousands of people, many of whom he has never met. In all of the dreams, he - at first, at least - plays a passive role, a passerby to a nightmare or unusual nocturnal escapade.

As a result, he finds his star on the rise and hopes to use his newfound fame to publicize a book he has long dreamed of writing, but hasn't actually begun. His wife, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), appears unsure whether his becoming a celebrity is a good thing, and he is soon contacted by a strange advertising agency led by Michael Sera known as Thoughts? that wants him to act as the spokesperson for Sprite.

Paul's insecurities and some of the early sequences involving his awkward encounters with people in whose dreams he has appeared are quite funny, especially a failed sexual interlude that is interrupted by flatulence. For the first half of the film, we are in Kaufman territory, whereas the film takes a much darker turn during its second half and one of the film's producers, director Ari Aster, appears to be an influence, notably his own strange film from earlier this year, "Beau is Afraid."

As people's dreams containing Paul soon become nightmares that feature much more overt acts from the professor - mostly violent ones - his status as an overnight celebrity soon turns into one as a pariah. His car is defaced, he is attacked in a diner after refusing to leave to make the other patrons more comfortable, and he is not allowed to attend his daughter's theater performance at the local high school.

During one sequence, a group of his students - whom he attacked in their dreams - take part in a ritual meant to relax them in which a counselor brings Paul into the room with them and asks him to slowly step forward. When they flee in a panic and then shout at him as he walks toward his car - which has the word "Loser" scrawled onto it - he notes to the counselor that his students are overdramatizing the fact that his presence is a trauma, adding that everything from an argument to being faced with uncomfortable topics has become trauma in the modern age, thereby minimizing actual traumatic events.

One of the things that "Dream Scenario" does best is capture the current age of overnight celebrity and the social media - and otherwise - mobs that ensue when the crowd tires of one's celebrity. Paul is completely helpless to the fact that he appears in people's dreams - and that his presence later becomes violent - but he is ostracized and has his life ruined as a result. 

A scene that had me nodding my head in disturbed recognition late in the film involves scientists figuring out how to enter others' dream-spaces and corporations then utilizing this to sell products subconsciously, reminding me of the subliminal capitalist messaging in John Carpenter's brilliant "They Live." The thing that makes "Dream Scenario" effective, often hilarious, and frightening is how possible all of its absurdist twists and turns feel in today's surreal age.

If there's any criticism to be made here, it's that "Dream Scenario" doesn't quite stick the landing in the way that one of its cinematic kinfolk - such as "Being John Malkovich" or "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" - do. At the film's end, it appears as if the filmmakers didn't quite know where to go next or how to resolve Paul's dilemma, so the film just ends. Regardless, "Dream Scenario" is an unusual and engaging social commentary mindbender with another memorable performance by Cage, who has revitalized his career to become one of cinema's most intriguing weirdos. 

Review: May December

Image courtesy of Netflix.

In scene after scene of Todd Haynes' new film, "May December," we overhear or spot groups of people walking the streets of Savannah, Georgia - where the film is set - as they listen to guides on what appear to be ghost tours. The guides provide commentary about something horrible that happened in the past on the spot where the group happens to be standing. As long as they are bystanders and not participants, people love to hear grim stories about dramatic incidents or tragedies.

This minor element of the film is a great microcosm for the story of "May December," which concerns an actress named Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) who travels to Savannah to spend a few days with a woman named Gracie (Julianne Moore), who was some years ago the subject of much tabloid scandal when she had an affair with a seventh grade boy named Joe. 

As an adult, Joe (Charles Melton) is a beefy but silent type who fathered a child - and then several more afterward - with Gracie and is now married to her. Elizabeth has invaded their domicile to study Gracie so that she can portray her in an indie movie that tells the salacious story of her relationship with the boy, which began in a pet shop.

Much like two of Haynes' best films - "Far from Heaven" and "Carol" - his latest is a Sirkean melodrama that relies heavily on some of the tropes you might expect: overly dramatic music, line readings that occasionally border on the absurd, and passions that run high. Early in the film, Gracie stares blankly into a refrigerator and mumbles that she doesn't know whether there will be enough hot dogs for a cookout that she's hosting and the accompanying music might make you believe you have stumbled into a horror movie.

At first, Elizabeth's research into Gracie and Joe seems innocuous. She asks the types of questions you'd expect and she pays a visit to a few other people affected by the incidents of the past - Gracie's lawyer, her ex-husband, and the son from her first marriage, the somewhat hostile Georgie (Cory Michael Smith), who appears to be trouble.

While Gracie, based on her past behavior, would likely be pegged as a predator, she's seemingly accepted by her community, although at times her outwardly friendly persona seems to crack. On the other hand, our perception of Elizabeth begins to change during the course of the film. There's an uncomfortable scene in which she discusses what it takes to be an actress with a group of high school students and one student - a boy, of course - decides to be a class clown and asks what it's like to be in sex scenes while making movies. The detail to which Elizabeth describes her experience to the class of students is unsettling.

As she attempts to get into character, Elizabeth digs a little deeper than she should with her subjects, especially Joe, who starts to question more and more throughout the course of the film why people look at him like he's a victim and whether he actually is one. During one scene in which Elizabeth takes matters too far with Joe, she responds that physical intimacy is just something that adults do, driving home the fact that the woman with whom he shares his life was the only adult in the equation at the time of their first dalliance, and that Elizabeth is willing to also take advantage of him.

Elizabeth also finds out some unsettling news about Gracie's upbringing through Georgie, but this is then called into question during a final, somewhat mystifying sequence at a graduation. "May December" is the type of film that feels as if it's continually pulling the rug out from under our feet. How the viewer feels about any of the characters or their relationships is up to them. This is not a film of easy answers.

Haynes is among the top echelon of current American filmmakers and he boasts an impressive resume - "Far from Heaven," "Carol," "Safe," the superb "Mildred Pierce" miniseries, and "I'm Not There," which is, for my money, probably the greatest music biopic I've seen. "May December" might not be quite on par with those films, but it's a solid entry into the director's oeuvre that utilizes some of his trademark stylistic touches - female lead characters, melodramatic aspects, stories about secrets bubbling to the surface - and will no doubt leave an impression. It's a film that leaves much to chew on after it's over, which to me is always a high mark of praise for any movie.

Review: Napoleon

Image courtesy of Apple TV.

"Napoleon" may not be a great Ridley Scott film, but it's a good one that features another reliably solid performance by Joaquin Phoenix, even if the character of the notorious French general and emperor Napoleon Bonaparte is slightly underwritten. The film tries to cram a lot of information about Napoleon's life into its two-and-a-half hour running time - which occasionally gives the film the feel of one thing occurring after another without much time to develop its two lead characters - but the battle scenes are pretty spectacular and the picture has a surprisingly wry sense of humor.

The film opens, naturally, with the French Revolution in full swing and Marie Antoinette being carted off to the guillotine, where the gory remains of her death are on full display for the angry mob. Silently lurking among them is Napoleon, who is already plotting how his skills for tactical warfare will come in handy in the new France. Shortly after Robespierre's bloody reign of terror comes to an end, Napoleon finds himself on the ascent, especially after some military victories, most notably an intense and well shot portrayal of the Siege of Toulon.

The film is primarily focused on two things - the first is Napoleon's military prowess and how his ego not only allowed him to take risks that often led to great victories, but also would not allow him to ever seemingly admit that he was wrong. The second area of focus is Napoleon's relationship with his wife, Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), a prisoner whose first husband was killed during the reign of terror.

On the one hand, Napoleon and Josephine's relationship is often beset with strife - he becomes enraged when he learns that she has a lover while he's away on a campaign in Egypt, prompting him to return home and risk being accused of desertion; in later scenes, he threatens divorce when she can't bear children and, therefore, leave no heir to throne. On the other, Napoleon clearly relies on his wife to give him strength. A scene beginning with him telling her that she's nothing without him ends with him saying the same to her at her command.

While the film occasionally stumbles in the dramatic scenes - Phoenix is good as always, although the script often plays as a series of scenes in which Napoleon is scowling through one scenario after another - it makes up ground in its overall sense of spectacle and impressive battle sequences. Along with the aforementioned Toulon siege, there's another horrifying sequence during which Napoleon and his forces trap Russian and Austrian soldiers on a frozen lake and drown them with cannonballs.

Scott has long been a master of the epic period piece, from his Oscar-winning "Gladiator" to the recently underrated "The Last Duel." "Napoleon" isn't quite on the level of those pictures, but could be compared to the solid - but more mid-tier - Scott pictures such as "Kingdom of Heaven" or "1492: Conquest of Paradise." 

It may not be among his best, but there's a decent amount to like here and there are a few surprises - for example, its occasionally offbeat humor (those sex scenes) and its overall anti-biopic feel. For a movie about a historical figure who looms so large, Scott's film doesn't always go places that you'd expect and that's a good thing.

Review: Saltburn

Image courtesy of MGM.

Emerald Fennell's sophomore film, "Saltburn," is trying, perhaps, even harder than her debut, the solid "Promising Young Woman," to push buttons. Granted, her previous film took a very serious topic - date rape - and turned it into a twisty thriller that was more entertaining and funnier, albeit darkly, than any movie on such a topic had the right to be. 

Her latest film feels like a director trying her hand at well-trodden territory - in this case, an upstart trying to finagle his way into the society of the wealthy - and doing something if not new, then certainly more outrageous, with it. Blending elements of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" with the boarding school thriller trappings of such novels as "The Secret History" and "Black Chalk," "Saltburn" starts off innocently enough before veering - much like Fennell's previous film - into much darker, and in this case more scandalous, territory.

Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan, seemingly an expert at deeply unsettling performances) is a scholarship student at Oxford University who becomes fixated on Felix (Jacob Elordi, seen recently as the King of Rock 'n Roll in "Priscilla"), the handsome scion of a posh British family whose titular estate rivals only Versailles in terms of size and ostentatious decor. After ingratiating himself with Felix's friends - although looked upon with suspicion by Felix's gay cousin, Farleigh (Archie Madekwe) - Oliver is invited to spend the summer at the palatial Saltburn estate.

Oliver is warned by several characters that Felix has previously taken an interest on lower class toys - Oliver tells Felix a sob story about drug-addicted parents but we always have the sense that there's something off about his story - that he likes to befriend, bring home for the summer, and then discard when he becomes bored with them. 

Regardless, Oliver throws himself into the world of Saltburn with aplomb. He attempts to seduce not just one (Felix's faux-tragic sister, Venetia, played by Alison Oliver) but two characters during his stay, and gets on the right side of Elspeth (Rosamund Pike, who gets many of the film's funniest lines), Felix's mother, a former model whose casually cruel dismissal of those who bore her rival her son's own fleeting interests. Felix's father, Sir James (Richard E. Grant), is flighty to an almost childlike degree.

As the summer wears on and Felix does indeed become bored with Oliver, the latter ups his game in horrific ways to ensure that he can stay on at Saltburn. A rivalry with Farleigh is ongoing, a seduction of one character is brief but graphically memorable, and a series of jokes involving the level to which the family's head butler must degrade himself is never not funny.

I liked "Saltburn" and appreciated how unapologetically warped it is. There's a sex scene involving a gravesite that I doubt anyone who's seen it will forget, and a great few scenes with Carey Mulligan as a quickly discarded friend who is also crashing at the estate. 

However, it doesn't have as much to say as "Promising Young Woman" and, therefore, all the shock value throughout the course of the film doesn't pack quite the punch that Fennell's previous film did. There's always good fodder for satires about the horrors of becoming entrenched with vapid, rich layabouts - a throwaway line about the importance of staying on a lunch schedule after the discovery of a dead body left me not knowing whether to wince or laugh uncomfortably - but there's not necessarily anything new being said here. "Promising Young Woman," on the other hand, felt like it was risking something.

That's not to say that "Saltburn" isn't good - it is. It goes on about 10 to 15 minutes too long and its final sequence involving a celebratory dance works overtime to be provocative, but this is a mostly engrossing - and often visually gorgeous - thriller that blends elements of Patricia Highsmith - Oliver is a more debauched Tom Ripley - and Donna Tartt's seminal novel, "The Secret History," about a lower class character becoming enmeshed in a group of rich - and possibly dangerous - students. 

As such, "Saltburn" is a wicked entertainment. Not everything about it works, but it's often quite funny and even has a few solid twists up its sleeve. I can't think of a more uncomfortable movie to take the family to on Thanksgiving. 

Review: Thanksgiving

Image courtesy of TriStar Pictures.

Eli Roth's holiday-themed horror movie "Thanksgiving" - based on the hilariously grim faux trailer of the same name that was included in the 2007 double feature "Grindhouse" - is no turkey. In fact, the director - a member of the so-called Splat Pack due to their penchant for grotesquely gory offerings - serves up what is most likely his best feature with this mostly enjoyable slasher picture.

While the "Grindhouse" trailer made the film look as if it were from the late 1970s or early 1980s and invoked such holiday horror films as "Halloween" or "My Bloody Valentine" - complete with a dose of the absurd and some tasteless jokes, many of which are once again utilized here - Roth's feature film is set in the present and doesn't have the murky photography or throwback vibe of the trailer.

Instead, it satirizes American greed and consumerism in the style of a George Romero film, opening on a chaotic scene outside a big box store in Plymouth, Mass., where the film's action is set. The store has decided to open its doors on Thanksgiving, rather than Black Friday, for a sale and a rowdy crowd has assembled outside. When the guards become reluctant to open the store due to the frenzied behavior of those waiting in line, the crowd begins to go nuts and, in the process, a security guard is trampled to death and others are killed as they break through the store's doors.

A year later, a man dressed in a pilgrim outfit who calls himself John Carver begins picking off various characters involved in the Black Friday tragedy. This includes a cowardly security guard who fled the scene, a waitress who killed a woman with her shopping cart, the store's owners, and a group of teenagers who taunted others in the crowd outside after they were first to get into the store because final girl Jessica's (Nell Verlaque) father owns it. Other characters include the town's sheriff (Patrick Dempsey) and a guy who seemingly exists to sell guns or drugs to whoever needs them.

The film's numerous death sequences become more outrageous and gory as the film goes on, and everything from a dumpster to corn cob pins are used as unlikely weapons. There's an amusing bit after one of the character's bloody demises when the killer takes a moment to feed the victim's cat before exiting the apartment.

This is one of those types of films that leave you guessing as to who the killer is and what their motivation might be. It's obviously someone affected by the Black Friday melee, so there's fun in trying to narrow down the list of suspects, as they are narrowed down by grotesque means. One of the film's flaws is that since there are so many characters in the suspect pool, some of them fall off after a while and are not heard from again and, therefore, only exist to throw viewers off.

My favorite Roth film remains the trailer for "Grindhouse," which beautifully captured the vibe of the old slasher classics in trailer form. His other work has often left me a bit cold - "Cabin Fever," "Hostel," and "The Green Inferno," for instance, all emphasize grossing their audiences out rather than building suspense or making us care about the characters. In "Thanksgiving," the characters have more personality and there are some for which to root.

It's not a great horror movie - but as far as these things to, it's better than average. And it's also pretty funny, which helps lighten the mood in a film that would otherwise be a barrage of blood and guts and familiar genre tropes. It may not be as good as its source material, but "Thanksgiving" isn't half bad. It's a lot easier to digest than some of the director's previous work.

Review: The Holdovers

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

Set against the snowy backdrop of Massachusetts, circa 1970, Alexander Payne's "The Holdovers" is an example - similar to another very good film this week, David Fincher's "The Killer" - of taking a familiar formula or storyline and approaching it from a different angle, thereby creating something magical from a scenario that might have come across as dusty in lesser hands.

The film follows the friendship that blossoms between a cantankerous teacher and his wily young student - but also a school cafeteria manager - when the trio gets stuck together at the school over the Christmas holiday break. This might sound like the stuff of cliche, but its execution is far from it and the result is Payne's best film in over a decade.

Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti, great as ever) is a grouchy professor at the prestigious Barton Academy in the early 1970s who is hated by his students and fellow teachers alike. When another teacher weasels out of the assignment of spending the holiday break at the school - and watching over the few students who are not going home for those holidays - Hunham gets stuck with the gig, which he sees as punishment from the headmaster for having failed a legacy student who, as a result, didn't get into an Ivy League school.

A small group of students are stuck at the school during the holidays but all but one of them - Angus (Dominic Sessa in a great breakout performance) - will end up fleeing early when an invitation for a ski trip arises. Angus' mother has recently remarried and hopes to use the holidays for the honeymoon she never took with her new husband, leaving Angus alone at the school with grumpy Hunham and head cook Mary (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), who is grieving the death of her son, seemingly the only student at the school - most likely because he was Black and didn't have rich parents - who was drafted and sent to the Vietnam War.

Hunham is a stickler for rules and comes off as the type of guy who likes to make others' lives miserable by adhering to them simply because he can and it's the only bit of power that he holds. He's also a wiz at insults, and Giamatti gets to deliver some absolute humdingers during the course of the film. He sees it as his personal hell that he's stuck having to keep an eye on wealthy brats over the holidays, which he'd rather spend with his nose in a book, although it is established early on that Angus is among the few students who actually do well in Hunham's class.

But small moments of decency begin to break through the gloom of these three sad sacks - Angus has his own share of problems, from a mother and stepfather who want him out of the picture during the holidays to some other issues that are slowly revealed through the course of the picture. The first is when a good-natured colleague, Lydia (Carrie Preston), whom Hunham discovers to also be a part-time waitress during the holidays at a local restaurant, invites the trio to her holiday party, where Angus develops a crush on an attendee, Mary has an emotional breakdown over her dead son, and a fourth character, Danny (Naheem Garcia), a school janitor who has feelings for Mary, gets thrown into the mix.

Mary chides Hunham after he angrily tells Angus that he's not happy to be stuck with him over the holidays, arguing that he shouldn't try to ditch a boy who's been treated as an afterthought by his family. She suggests that Hunham, as the song says, try a little tenderness and he makes an attempt at getting into the spirit of the season by purchasing a dilapidated tree and buying gifts for his fellow holdovers, which provides for a pretty good joke.

But the film's centerpiece involves a road trip to Boston - which Angus had been expecting on the drive home with his mother before leaving for the trip to St. Kitts from which he was given the boot - where Hunham and Angus leave Mary with her sister. The two bond over a trip to a museum, a screening of Arthur Penn's "Little Big Man" and a series of lies they tell to others they come across that they promise to keep entre nous. Both characters have pasts that they'd hoped to have kept hidden, but as they begin to confide in one another, they realize that the other isn't so bad as they'd originally expected.

"The Holdovers" is unexpectedly sentimental - and I don't mean that as a pejorative - considering it is from the director of "Election" and "About Schmidt." This stems from Payne obviously caring about these characters and having compassion for their struggles. On the other hand, the picture is full of the acidic humor that we'd expect from the director. 

For a movie that involves a lot of melancholic plot threads involving death, depression, failed career ambitions, and alienation from one's family, "The Holdovers" is often riotously funny, featuring some of the best turns of phrase - uttered with contempt for those around him by Giamatti - of recent memory. One of the biggest laughs involves a run-in with a Boston prostitute, while another has to do with a failed attempt at recreating a dessert.

It has been six years since Payne's last movie, "Downsizing," which had its moments but was considered at the time to be a financial and critical misfire. "The Holdovers" features the best elements of his finest work - "Sideways," "About Schmidt," "Election," and "The Descendants" - and is not only his finest film in a number of years, but also one of the best of 2023 so far.

Review: The Killer

Image courtesy of Netflix.

 

David Fincher's "The Killer" is a lean and stylish thriller that struck me as one of a highly personal nature to its creator. Fincher is known as being a student of the Stanley Kubrick school of perfectionism and numerous takes, and this film portrays a character who lives by that code - he's a hired assassin who lives rigidly by a set of strict rules - but one day throws it all to the wind. There are likely to be debates as to whether this is intentional.

The film, based on a graphic novel by Alexis Matz Nolent, opens as the unnamed killer is on assignment in Paris, where he is holed up in a seemingly abandoned WeWork studio and waiting for his latest target to appear in an apartment across the street. During this time, he tells us in monotone voiceover about the tricks of his trade ("avoid empathy") while also making excuses for his line of work (he notes that the killings in which he takes part are a drop in the bucket when you consider how many people are born and die each second).

But after he misses his shot, accidentally (or not?) shooting another person rather than his target, he notes, "This is new." And that statement can apply to both the Killer's own personal experiences - we assume he's never missed a shot before - but also the subgenre in which this film exists. "The Killer" follows a storyline that feels overly familiar, and yet this one isn't quite like any other.

Upon arriving in Santa Domingo, where the Killer has his hideout, he realizes that his home has been broken into and finds out that his girlfriend has been hospitalized after being paid a brutal visit by a pair of assassins looking to clean up the situation after the botched hit. The Killer has long lived by the mantra of not injecting personal feelings into his work but, well, this situation is new to him and so he goes on a mission of revenge to take out those involved in the deal who might try to make another attempt on his or his girlfriend's life.

His travels take him all over the United States, where he pays bloody visits to his point of contact (Charles Parnell); a man known as the Brute (Sala Baker), who tangles with the Killer in a visceral and incredibly choreographed fight scene; and another assassin known as the Expert (Tilda Swinton, who gets a lot of mileage out of her cameo appearance).

While this all might sound run-of-the-mill, it's anything but, not only because of the film's sleek visual style and great use of lighting, but also due to the deadpan humor that makes it feel so different from other films of its type. There's a great joke told by the Expert to the Killer involving a hunter and a bear that also serves as some sort of metaphor for the stage at which the titular character finds himself in life. Music by The Smiths acts as a morbidly amusing running commentary on the action, and there's a great running joke in which the Killer uses the names of famous TV show characters as his aliases. 

Then, there's the surprising ending, during which the Killer pays a visit to the man (Arliss Howard) whose involvement started the entire scenario. He's a billionaire living in a high-rise apartment, where the Killer slinks in unnoticed. I won't give anything away, but how this scene plays out is sure to cause some debate. There's also a final shot involving a twitching eye and the Killer's mention of society's few and many that is introduced early in the film and brought up once more in the finale that is intriguing. As usual,

Fincher is not one to spell out his intentions, and this open-ended culmination feels right considering all that has come before it.

Fincher is among the better current crop of American filmmakers. His "Zodiac" and "The Social Network" are masterpieces and I have high regard for "Fight Club," "Seven," "Mank" and, yes, the underrated "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." While "The Killer" might not quite be on the level of those great movies, I disagree with some assertions that it's a minor Fincher movie. 

There are a lot of interesting things going on here and it's a film made by an obsessive that provides a fair amount of material to obsess about. For a movie this dark and bleak, "The Killer" is often wickedly funny and there's a bit of pointed late-capitalist satire as well as some terrific set pieces (the fight scene and Fassbender and Swinton's tete a tete at a restaurant) and an intriguing air of mystery surrounding its lead character and, perhaps, even human nature on the whole. The film is a great example of a filmmaker taking his typical style and well-trodden subject matter and doing something new with them.

Review: Priscilla

Image courtesy of A24.

Comparing Sofia Coppola's "Priscilla" to Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis" is like night and day in that the latter was an exuberant jukebox musical filled with flashy editing and the director's trademark over-the-top style, while Coppola's film is more visually muted and tells a story that is less romantic in its portrayal of the king of rock 'n roll. 

Whereas Luhrmann's film was a visually zippy life-and-times-of biopic that detailed the typical rise and fall of a superstar, Coppola's picture tells the tale from the perspective of Presley's wife, portrayed here with aplomb by Caillee Spaeney, and is based on her 1985 memoir, "Elvis and Me." 

The story portrays Priscilla as a woman who's caught in a trap - she's a bird in a gilded cage - and can't walk out. Thematically, the film fits in with a number of the best films in Coppola's oeuvre about women in some form of captivity - the girls locked up by their overbearing parents in "The Virgin Suicides," the young woman left by her famous husband in a hotel in Tokyo in "Lost in Translation" and, of course, the queen isolated in her lavish palace in "Marie Antoinette."

It's easy to see why Priscilla, at age 14, becomes transfixed with Elvis (Jacob Elordi). She's a lonely girl living in Germany with her military father and mother, and a soldier approaches her at a diner where he tells her that she can meet the iconic musician - who's serving in the military for a stint and is the fantasy romantic idol for most of her classmates - at a party at his house. Once there, it's almost as if she were brought there to fulfill some sort of destiny. She and Elvis quickly take to each other, despite his being 21 years of age, and a relationship of sorts blossoms.

This relationship is mostly carried out through letters and, at first, is chaste. For more than a year, he doesn't write her and when they are together, he will barely touch her - whether this is because he doesn't want to sleep with her until they are married as he says or because he knows that doing so would be against the law is for viewers to judge. This doesn't prevent him from having flings with other women that Priscilla reads about in the press.

Once she agrees to move to Graceland a few years later and live with his extended family, she finds herself more and more under his control. He tells her she has to choose between working - she wants to work part-time at a salon - and her relationship with him, and he at times becomes aggressive physically, especially during a pillow fight and during a moment of tension when discussing new material for his next album.

Lisa Marie Presley, prior to her death, had objected to Coppola's script, but it seems difficult to have portrayed this story without there being a vibe of predatory behavior in it. At one point, Priscilla's father legitimately asks why Presley can't find a woman his own age - rather than her - since he's probably the most famous entertainer in the world at that point.

All of this material is handled delicately and while it's easy to side with Priscilla, a young girl who is somewhat kept captive while her famous husband runs all over the country, the film is more overt in how it handles the power structure in their relationship. Priscilla is seen as being a captive at Graceland, although the film doesn't go so far to portray Elvis as the villain.

For a movie with subject matter that's - let's be honest - a little heavy, "Priscilla" still has the look and feel of a Sofia Coppola movie - that is to say, vibrant and engaging - especially when it gets into some of Elvis' more eccentric behavior. We get a glimpse of the Bible study phase, an LSD trip, a few nods to the couple's obsession with martial arts and the increasingly outrageous outfits. For a movie that features a musician with such an iconic body of work, it's funny that there are only a few Elvis songs in the picture.

The film essentially follows the period of time during which Priscilla, as a girl, met Elvis to the time when she finally leaves him. While Presley's behavior has an obviously much darker edge here than in Luhrmann's movie, which I also liked, the film treats his ultimate downfall as a self-made tragedy, whereas the place where we finally leave Priscilla is one of liberation. 

Coppola's films frequently follow female characters who must struggle to find their way in a male-dominated world made up of rules that limit their freedom. As such, "Priscilla" is another solid entry in her overall body of work.

Review: Anatomy Of A Fall

Image courtesy of Neon.

Justine Triet's Palm d'Or winner "Anatomy of a Fall" may have a mystery at its center - less a matter of whodunnit than what happened - but its most intriguing passages involve the decline of a partnership and its effect on a family. The film is a courtroom drama, but the lead character's key interest is not so much what the jury decides, but rather what her son thinks happened.

The film opens on author Sandra (Sandra Huller) taking part in an interview with a younger woman. Not only is the interviewer obviously interested in Sandra's work, but the author seems equally intrigued by the younger woman's opinions. The interview is interrupted numerous times by the sounds of 50 Cent's "P.I.M.P" blaring from upstairs, where Sandra's husband, Samuel (Samuel Theis) - a failed writer who has moved his German wife and young son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) back to his rural French hometown - is apparently working on the house.

The blasting of the music seems to be a passive aggressive act. Sandra cuts short the interview and goes to confront her husband, which takes place off camera. Daniel, who mostly lost his sight some years before due to an accident for which Sandra partially blames her husband, returns from walking his dog, Snoop, to find his father lying dead in the snow outside of the home. It appears that he has fallen from an open window in the attic where he was working.

Sandra is questioned by the police and, shortly thereafter, indicted in the death, primarily because the authorities cannot seem to come up with any other explanation for Samuel's demise. They don't buy that he was murdered by someone else, fell accidentally, or committed suicide. Sandra proclaims her innocence, but enlists a lawyer friend, Vincent (Swann Arlaud), to take her case, and much of the rest of the film is spent in courtrooms, where Sandra defends herself against witnesses - many of whom don't actually know her, such as Samuel's opinionated psychiatrist and other forensic experts - and tries to explain why her rapidly declining marriage to Samuel doesn't explain why or how he died.

"Anatomy of a Fall" is less interested in who killed Samuel or why, but instead about the nature of truth and whether we can actually ever truly know someone. Sandra sits on the stand listening to people who don't know her try to dissect her life, but she tells them they are merely grazing the surface. She argues with the psychiatrist, who insists that Samuel's version of the marriage is the true one, and notes that she could hire a psychiatrist who could appear in court and say the exact opposite, based on what she told him. She must also contend with the misogynist prosecutor's harangues involving a past infidelity and accusations of how she castrated her husband, a writer who was unable to produce anything and, therefore, blamed his wife for his incapacity. 

Meanwhile, Daniel listens to the trial. One of the more interesting elements of the film is how the investigators lecture the young boy - who was clearly traumatized by his father's death - on his inability to recall everything he experienced or felt on the day of the death; however, Daniel, who has learned to focus his other senses - namely, his hearing - in the wake of his damaged eyesight - actually gains more insight into the situation as the court case drags on. His final appearance in the court - and his take on a conversation he had with his father some time before when Snoop fell ill - seemingly rattles the prosecutor and judges in the case because he is able to deduce things that they clearly cannot.

Huller, who was so good some years ago in "Toni Erdmann," gives a remarkable performance as Sandra, who seems tightly wound during the course of the trial, but whose intensity results in an outburst during a flashback that involves the courtroom listening to an audio file. 

The film is a slow burn that doesn't exactly wrap up the case neatly - although the action of the story is technically resolved - and that is because Triet and company are more interested in the questions posed here, and it is to the film's benefit that it doesn't pretend to have all the answers. As a result, "Anatomy of a Fall" is a thought provoking film that ranks among the year's best.

Review: Killers Of The Flower Moon

Image courtesy of Paramount.

 

The final line - spoken in a surprise cameo appearance - of Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" is the most devastating in its summation of how the horrors that the Osage Nation faced during a series of murders that plagued them in the 1920s were nonchalantly swept under the rug. The film's coda - which I won't spoil - is sure to leave some heads being scratched, but it comes back to the question of preventing oppressed people from being able to tell their own story and, instead, allowing that story to be relayed by people who look like those who are doing the oppressing.

The film is an immense, three-and-a-half hour historical drama that occasionally plays like a romance, at times like one of the gangster pictures in which Scorsese has specialized these past 50-plus years, and even a true crime procedural and courtroom drama. At the heart of this story are three stunning performances - two by Scorsese regulars (Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro), and the third by Lily Gladstone in what is sure to be a star-making performance as Mollie Burkhardt, an Osage woman whose family is murdered for the oil on their land throughout the course of the film.

As the film opens, we learn that the Osage had been pushed off the land they originally inhabited and forced to live in Oklahoma. As luck would have it, they landed on a veritable goldmine - black gold, that is - and, naturally, the very people who forced them to relocate now make fast work of ingratiating themselves into the Osage community and marrying their women to be able to get the head rights for the land should their spouses die - a frequent occurrence that the film's primary villain (De Niro's William Hale, a wealthy cattle rancher who has gotten the Osage to trust him) refers to as "bad luck," and not the epidemic that it actually is.

Overnight, the Osage found themselves among the nation's wealthiest inhabitants because of the oil bubbling under the surface of their land. The film is told through the eyes of Mollie and her husband, Ernest (DiCaprio), Hale's nephew, who has returned from World War I and gets work as a driver. Ernest's second job is doing misdeeds for Hale and Ernest's older brother, Bryan (Scott Shepherd), who is married to Mollie's sister, Anna (Cara Jade Myers). 

While reading a children's book on the Osage to learn about the people among whom he is living, Ernest reads aloud the line, "Do you see the wolves in this picture?" In Scorsese's film, the wolves aren't hard to spot and their grisly work is carried out not only in the shadows, but also in broad daylight.

Hale sees an opportunity for Ernest to marry Mollie to secure the head rights for the oil on her land, and while Ernest agrees to go along with this ploy, he and Mollie also genuinely seem to fall in love. In fact, there never seems to be much doubt about this, even when Ernest begins to take part in acts - at Hale's behest - that put his wife's health in danger.

"Flower Moon" is a long historical crime epic that often bears some similarity to Scorsese's best work in that genre - a courtroom scene at the end reminded me of "Goodfellas," as did a series of scenes in which Hale begins to clean up his messes as the law closes in on him by bumping off those with whom he did business. But in terms of tone and style, it also fits in with the director's late work, most notably "The Irishman" and "Silence," slow burn films that deal with matters of conscience. "Flower Moon" could also be considered part of a trilogy - along with "The Irishman" and "The Wolf of Wall Street" - that depict the moral rot at the center of the nation that he calls home.

The film is impeccable in sound and vision, from Rodrigo Prieto's sweeping cinematography and the late Robbie Robertson's score, which is a near-constant thrum, to Jack Fisk's detail-heavy production design. DiCaprio gives one of his most impressive performances as Burkhardt, while De Niro is frightening as Hale, a man who treats those around him like family and close friends, and still orders their deaths when he finds a way to make a profit from it. 

Gladstone is the heart of the film, and her performance is the type that might typically get overshadowed because it is so subtle. She often tells her character's story with her face in the style of a great silent actress. The film is loaded with great bit parts and supporting roles for everyone from Jesse Plemons as lawman Tom White and Tantoo Cardinal as Mollie's mother to a roster of musicians - Jason Isbell, Pete Yorn, and Sturgill Simpson included.

One of the elements that makes "Flower Moon" so powerful and haunting is its depiction of injustice as an ever-present way of life among the white people and Osage living together in Fairfax, Oklahoma. Mollie may be richer than most of the white men in town, but she has to account for her spending to a banker who also happens to be the leader of the local KKK branch and who sits on a jury during a trial involving the film's crooked characters near its end. Hale and his associates discuss the murders of the town's Osage characters as business transactions, and during one of the film's powerful early scenes, Mollie narrates a number of unexplained deaths in the territory, ending each scenario with the words "no investigation."

Scorsese's original plan for the film was to tell the story from the perspective of White, the BOI investigator sent by J. Edgar Hoover, but conferring with the Osage nation and DiCaprio resulted in a film that tells the story from the perspective of Ernest and Mollie. The result is a great film that feels authentic and epic in scale, yet intimate in its portrayal of a marriage built upon lies against the backdrop of one of this nation's great injustices. 

It has long been held that filmmaking is a young person's game, and that directors' late work tends to not be as potent as their earlier films. At age 81, Scorsese is still cranking out one great film after another. He has been called the greatest living filmmaker, and it's difficult to argue with this assertion. "Killers of the Flower Moon" is one of the year's best.

Review: Fair Play

Image courtesy of Netflix.

If people still gathered around water coolers - hell, if people even went to offices anymore - "Fair Play" might be the movie they'd be arguing about in that setting. Set in the cutthroat world of hedge funds, the film follows the story of a couple who work at the same firm - but are keeping their relationship a secret due to company policy - and intend to get married.

However, a promotion for one of the characters - which was believed to be in store for the other character - sets the duo on a path of destruction, well, at least the crumbling of their relationship because while one of the pair's star begins to rise, the other's plummets, threatening to take both of them down.

The film begins as a romantic drama set on Wall Street, but by its end it feels as if it's in thriller territory. From the start, it's a bit kinky. Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) are analysts at the financial firm and, as the film opens, they are keeping their relationship a secret from their boss, Campbell (played ruthlessly by Eddie Marsan), but also from their parents.

As the film opens, they are at a wedding, where they sneak off to have sex in the bathroom, despite Emily being on her period. They exit the party looking like, as Luke puts it, they're leaving the scene of a murder. Emily hears a rumor at work that Luke will be named as the next PM at the firm, but she soon finds out that it is in fact she who will take over the high-pressure role.

Luke is obviously disappointed, but at first he acts supportive, although he engages in subtly passive aggressive acts, such as withholding sex or making comments about her not being assertive. He later takes it up a notch by noting that she dresses "like a cupcake" and appears to insinuate that late-night meetings with her bosses have a sexual nature to them.

When Emily attempts to intervene at work by talking Luke up with Campbell for other higher positions, he makes it clear that he is not impressed with her fiance's work. The arguments start to become more unpleasant and Luke begins to engage in self-sabotaging acts - a scene in which he pledges his loyalty to Campbell in his office is even more cringe inducing than that scene in "Swingers" when Jon Favreau keeps leaving messages on a love interest's voicemail - before considering acts that will sabotage both members of the couple.

The film paints a grim picture of this line of work, especially the rampant sexism involved in being in a mostly all-boys club. If the scene in which a group of men tell disturbing college sex stories in front of Emily doesn't unsettle you, I'd be willing to bet that Campbell's response to Emily when she makes a bad call on some stocks likely will.

Does "Fair Play" get a little over the top in its finale? Yeah, you could argue it does. But the great chemistry - both in its attraction and repellant forms - between the two leads is palpable, and the picture keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat as if it actually were a thriller. For a first-time feature director, Chloe Domont shows a lot of promise and exhibits impressive mastery of the form. 

Review: The Exorcist: Believer

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Director David Gordon Green lurches from one iconic horror movie franchise - he directed the three recent "Halloween" reboot films - to another new trilogy, of which "The Exorcist: Believer" is the first entry. Despite a few atmospheric moments in the more involving first half of the picture, I'm not quite sure what possessed - sorry, couldn't help myself - the director to resurrect this saga.

William Friedkin's original 1973 film is one of the greatest of all horror movies and typically ranks high on most lists of the genre's best offerings. Its sequels - which include the interesting but muddled 1977 film "Heretic," the freaky but forgettable 1990 film "Legion" and some 21st century offerings that are not particularly memorable - aren't as bad as the "Texas Chainsaw" ones, but they're not very good either.

Green's film is set in small town Georgia, rather than Washington D.C., where the first film was located, and although we are never told if the demon possessing the two girls in this film is the same one as in the original, we get the sense that this might be a different spirit. The film opens in 2010 in Haiti where a photographer named Victor (Leslie Odom Jr.) and his pregnant wife are vacationing. An earthquake occurs and Victor's wife is trapped beneath the rubble. Moments before, his wife had accepted a blessing for her baby from some locals. He is told that either the mother or the baby can be saved, but he must choose.

About 13 years later, Victor is living with his daughter, Angela (Lidya Jewett), and has a portrait studio. One day, Angela asks her father permission to have an after-school study session with her best friend, Katherine (Olivia O'Neill); however, the girls instead go into the woods to commune with a spirit - we later get a flimsy reason for why this happened - and reemerge after being considered missing for several days. But something is off about the two girls.

These early scenes are the most effective and the creepiest as Green uses silence and atmosphere to create some pretty decent mood. This, of course, is all for naught as the film's second half is primarily a lot of recycled sturm und drang we've seen before in basically every exorcism movie. Not only does "Believer" not reach the gargantuan task of living up to the original, but it's really not much better than any number of other generic possession movies we've seen over the years.

The film is loaded with problems. For starters, as I'd mentioned, there's no good explanation as to how or why the girls were possessed - or even by whom or what, although this might be explored further along in this new trilogy. Secondly, the film's biggest set piece - during which the parents of the two girls, a former nun turned nurse (Ann Dowd), and some other clergy gather in a house to try to rid the two girls of the demon possessing them - lands with a thud, utilizing the same old tropes one might expect from such a scene (demons saying nasty things to cast doubt on those trying to exorcise them, characters all spouting religious texts out loud, some minor house rattling, etc.) and it all feels like an exercise.

The film's biggest flaw, however, is its criminal misuse of the great Ellen Burstyn as Chris MacNeil, whose daughter, Regan (Linda Blair), was possessed in the original film. She is brought on in a legacy character role, but there's little for her to do but drop some pearls of wisdom and come face to face briefly with the demon until reasons that I won't divulge essentially remove her from the action for most of the rest of the film. Not since Marilyn Burns was misused in the awful recent "Texas Chainsaw" film has an iconic character been underutilized in such a clunky way.

Green is a talented filmmaker and he has some abilities as a horror director. I liked the first entry in his "Halloween" saga before the final two chapters kind of got away from him. If "Believer" is the first in a new horror trilogy, it's not starting off on sure footing. Not that the world needed another "Exorcist" sequel - the first is good enough that it stands on its own - but this reboot feels like a missed opportunity.