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.