Review: Anora

Image courtesy of Neon.

Sean Baker's Palm d'Or winner "Anora" is a real spark plug of a movie - a wild, coarse, often funny, and occasionally very sad movie that starts out as being a tale of amour fou, but then spirals into a wild chase through New York when one of its lead characters goes missing.

Baker's films often feature sex workers or those working in sex-related industries. His "Starlet" featured porn stars, while "Red Rocket" chronicled the tale of a former actor in that line of work. "Tangerine" was about two transgender sex workers and his masterpiece, "The Florida Project," followed a young girl and her mother, who occasionally dabbled in sex work.

The title of his new film refers to the full name of Ani (Mikey Madison), a Russian-American exotic dancer who occasionally lets a client take her home for money. Ani's sharp tongue and observational insights seemingly disarm her clients - while performing a dance at a strip club, a client asks her if her family knows where she is at the moment. She poses the same question to him.

One night, Ani meets Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), a fun-loving young Russian who is living in the United States at the moment, while his oligarch parents reside in Russia. He offers to pay her for sex, so she makes several trips to his ridiculously laid-out pad in New York City's outer boroughs. He then invites her to a New Year's Eve party and, finally, to Las Vegas, where in the spur of the moment, he proposes to her.

Not too long after their hasty marriage, two men - Igor (Yura Borisov) and Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) - show up at the door and tell Ivan that his parents want the marriage annulled and that they are flying to the United States to see that this is carried out. Ivan flees the scene and Ani engages in a physical struggle with the two men that goes from being unpleasant to comical. Another man, Toros (Karren Karagulian), who works for Ivan's family shows up and the four take an extended cruise through New York City as they search for Ivan.

"Anora" is really made up of three parts - the first sequences of partying when Ani meets Ivan, the search for Ivan, and a finale in which Ivan's family arrives. The first third - the amour fou section - feels like a blast out of a cannon, all propulsive motion as Ani and Ivan meet and fall in love. The second half often feels absurdist as the four characters search for Ivan and spend a lot of time hurling invective - or, in one scene, just hurling - at each other. The final third is the most, at times, poignant or, at others, just downright sad.

Madison, who was previously seen in one of the recent "Scream" sequels and as a Manson family member in Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," gives a star-making performance. She's a ball of fire and her character is among the most memorable I've seen in a film this year. The rest of the cast is good as well, especially Borisov as Igor, who gets off on the wrong foot with Ani, but eventually tries to make amends.

While "Anora" is quite good, my favorite Baker film is still "The Florida Project," which was one of the biggest gut-punch films I've seen in the past decade (and my favorite movie of 2017). "Anora" has a gut punch of its own and by the time you get there, you'll realize how many mood shifts the film has undergone and how Baker deftly juggles hilarity and heartbreak in the course of its two hours and 20 minutes. 

Review: Here

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures.

 
The concept for Robert Zemeckis' latest film, "Here," is ambitious but the execution, unfortunately, doesn't quite match it. In theory, the film sounds like a great idea - a reunion between the director of "Forrest Gump," one of the biggest films of the 1990s, with its two co-stars, Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, that involves a time shifting narrative all from the perspective of a single camera angle from the corner of a room. 

The film is based on a graphic novel by Richard McGuire that tells the story of a single plot of land, from the dinosaurs to the colonial period of American history up through the 1920s and World War II and, finally, settling in to tell the story of a family from the 1940s to the present. The primary story in the film involves World War II veteran Al (Paul Bettany) and his wife, Rose (Kelly Reilly), and their children, one of whom grows up to be Richard (Tom Hanks).

The main concept at play in the film is that Richard and his wife, Margaret (Wright), live with Al and Rose and feel stuck in the house for decades, complicating their marriage, while at the same time Richard gives up his dream of being an artist to sell life insurance and Margaret regrets that she's never gotten out to see more of the world.

One of the film's primary stumbling blocks is its use of de-aging technology that makes Hanks and Wright look like younger versions of themselves. The somewhat plastic-looking versions of these actors often mute the emotions that their characters are emoting. The scenes in which they are older are more convincing.

There are some issues in the script department as well. Often, the characterizations feel a little skin deep and the fact that the film jumps back and forth in time so frequently - from story to story - means that any momentum that starts to build is quickly cut off during a scene, only to be replaced by stories taking place on the plot of land in the past, which include an aviator and his wary wife, an inventor and his significant other, Benjamin Franklin's grandson, some Native Americans living on the land before a home was placed there, and a Black family who move in after Richard and Margaret have moved on.

One example is a sequence during which the father of the Black family is explaining to his son how to act if he is ever pulled over by a cop. The scene's power is undercut by the fact that it is brief and then is quickly followed by some other foray into one of the past stories. Only Richard and Margaret's story is given any weight and even they are frequently interrupted by a quick jaunt back several hundred years.

"Forrest Gump" was a film that gave a tour of the 20th century through the eyes of its main character. "Here" occasionally includes landmarks as that film did - we hear The Beatles on TV for the first time, lots of reruns old TV shows, and the occasional needle drop ("Our House" is maybe a little too on the nose) - but it doesn't feel as momentous because we aren't seeing these moments through anyone's eyes so much as they are being used as indicators as to what year we are in at any given moment. While this is helpful from a narrative standpoint, the constant jumping around in time ends up giving all of the stories the short end of the stick.

"Here" has its moments - a reunion between two of the characters in the house and a home movie screening are effective scenes - but for those hoping for something that resembles Zemeckis' past hits, namely "Forrest Gump," his latest feels more like a conceptually interesting experiment that doesn't quite stick the landing.

Review: Conclave

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

The most interesting movie about organized - or, in this case, disorganized - religion in some time, director Edward Berger's "Conclave" is likely to be one of the year's most talked about films, and not only due to that twist near its end. 

The movie plays like a political thriller, although its story would not suggest such intrigue. "Conclave" opens with the death of a pope, who seemingly left behind his share of secrets and some unresolved palace intrigue. Ralph Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence, the man who has begrudgingly been tasked with leading the conclave that will select the next pope.

Although the film doesn't go so far to suggest that Lawrence has lost his faith, he openly tells his closest allies in the church - which include Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) and Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), a man whom no one in the Catholic Church hierarchy knew even existed until he turned up for the conclave from Kabul, where he secretly presides - that he doesn't believe he's the man for the task.

In one of the film's strongest scenes, Lawrence opens the conclave with a bit of controversy - a speech in which he attacks the nature of certainty, which he says removes the mystery of religion but also, in turn, the necessity of faith itself. 

Lawrence's speech could be viewed as a warning to some of the cardinals vying for the spot as the church's leader. Among those gathered include the ambitious Cardinal Tremblay, who will resort to unethical tactics to remove others from contention; Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), an African bishop with some controversial views and possibly some skeletons in the closet; Bellini; and Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), an Italian who wants to overturn the liberal order favored by Lawrence and Bellini and return to an ultraconservative church.

While the film is not technically a thriller - other than the pope dying in the opening scene, the only other violence in the film is a series of surprise terrorist attacks around Rome during the course of the conclave - it sure plays like one.

When Bellini's candidacy begins to falter and Tremblay and Tedesco begin to rise to the top of the pack, the liberal consortium begins to panic and two unlikely figures end up getting pushed to the forefront. I won't give anything else away, other than to say that Lawrence gets a chance to question how much he himself wants to be part of the church's power structure and there's a major plot reveal late in the film regarding another character.

Fiennes has long been an actor of great stature, but his performance here ranks among his very best. Tucci is solid as Bellini and I'm not sure I've ever seen Lithgow play such a loathsome character (other than his villain role in "Blow Out"). Diehz is the film's breakout performance as the cardinal whom no one even knew existed and whose role as a Mexican cardinal leading missionaries in dangerous locales around the world (first, the Congo, and then Baghdad and Kabul) lend him an air of mystery.

This is a very intriguing film, especially as the film is less about religion and more about power structures. In fact, the most interesting element that has anything to do with religion in the film is Fiennes' early speech about the dangers of certainty - although this is also clearly aimed at the regressive beliefs of some of his fellow cardinals, namely Tedesco, who gives a long-winded speech attacking Muslims and calling for the church to conduct a holy war amid the terrorist attacks in Rome.

Berger's previous film, the adaptation of "All Quiet on the Western Front," was solid and was nominated for a bunch of Oscars, but I think "Conclave" is even better. It is, thus far, one of the standouts in a year that has otherwise been a bit lackluster so far.

Review: We Live In Time

Image courtesy of A24.

It's been a while since I've seen a weepy that aims to tug at the heartstrings like "We Live in Time," a reasonably decent romance featuring solid performances by Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh. In the early 2000s, these types of films were seemingly everywhere, especially following "The Notebook" and the boom of Nicholas Sparks adaptations. But they've been curiously fewer and far between since - perhaps the COVID-19 era wore out viewer's tolerance for stories centered around diseases.

This film, which is told out of sequence (and, on occasion, a little confusedly) tells the story of the romance, marriage, childbirth, and ultimately battle against cancer for Almut (Pugh), a successful chef who wants to take her career to the next level, and her husband, Tobias (Garfield), whose work has something to do with promoting a cereal, although it's oddly nebulous.

It's a little unclear why director John Crowley ("Brooklyn") tells the story out of sequence, other than the impact that a specific scene can have when we learn new information that sheds light on something that came before. At times, this can feel gimmicky, but at others it works.

The film's most interesting moments revolve around Almut's work as a chef. Once she is diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer, she is told by her doctor to go easy in terms of work. However, she takes part in a challenge involving chefs from around the world - and without her husband knowing about it - in which she partners with a younger chef from her restaurant. The film also features what has to be the most memorable birth sequence of recent memory.

"We Live in Time" is somewhat by-the-numbers in how it handles the romance between Almut and Tobias - they have a meet-cute that involves her hitting him with her car - and her battle with cancer. But what makes the scenes work, for the most part, are the film's lead actors, both of whom are good here. 

The film doesn't reinvent the wheel for this type of picture or do anything you haven't seen before - its non-sequential format is its most unique element - but it's slightly better than your average film in this subgenre. 

Review: Rumours

Image courtesy of Bleecker Street Media.

Canadian director Guy Maddin is one of filmdom's most unique voices - an auteur whose films are offbeat tales that often look as if they were made in the 1920s or 1930s (including two of his finest, "The Saddest Music in the World" and "Careful") or strike a personal note ("My Winnipeg").

His latest picture, "Rumours," features some of the same visual stylings and quirky beats, but it feels like a far cry from many of his best-known films. For starters, the film is in color, is set in the present, and features some well-known actors (Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander, and Charles Dance).

The picture is mostly a one-joke pony about a group of world leaders - Blanchett is the German president, while Dance is the U.S. president, despite his having a British accent - who have gathered at a remote location for a G7 summit and are sitting around a gazebo where they are trying to put together a statement on some unnamed international crisis.

The joke is that while things begin to crumble around them - which mostly revolves around graves in which the bodies of semi-prehistoric natives have been discovered and, much later, these natives arise and roam the countryside similar to a George Romero film - the world leaders expend all of their energy on personal crises (several of them have had or currently are having affairs with each other) and their angst at crafting their statement, which, in light of everything, seems pretty inconsequential.

So, while this might all sound more straightforward than your typical Maddin film, there are touches that alert you that you're in his universe, namely, a massive, pulsating brain discovered in the woods and, at several points, instances of zombie native masturbation (no, seriously).

"Rumours" is occasionally amusingly quirky in the way you might expect from a Maddin film, but it's also a little bit of a slog. There's little in the way of changes of scenery and the satire here doesn't feel as sharp as one might expect from the often-hilarious Canadian filmmaker.

Some of the film's laughs are generated by the Italian leader's seemingly inexhaustible selection of cured meats that he carries on him and the fact that Dance's U.S. president is about as British as one can get. Some plot elements veer toward the absurd - as one would expect in a Maddin film - such as a character suffering what seems to be a serious injury after he merely fell and rolled around a little in the mud.

But these minor amusements aside, "Rumours" is a curiously low key and not always effective Maddin creation. It's exciting to see him working with such a great cast and there's some of the usual humor you'd expect, but the film is ultimately a minor entry in his body of work.

Review: The Apprentice

Image courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment.

Ali Abbasi's controversial new film, "The Apprentice," is a surprisingly watchable and frequently unsettling origin story for America's worst person. The picture's title refers to the popular reality show in which Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) was once the star, but in the context of this story it refers to Trump's mentor-friend relationship with the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).

There are more than a few scenes here in which the groundwork is laid for the Trump who would later go on to become its 45th president and is currently seeking the role of its first fascist dictator, but mostly the picture is a well written and intriguing story about how a guy with few morals but a lot of bluster was able to rise to the top through the tutelage of an unscrupulous mentor.

As the film opens in the 1970s, Trump has just been admitted to the Manhattan billionaire's club and has taken a date to an exclusive lounge where he fawns over the wealthy and powerful people hanging out there. It's here that he meets Cohn, an unrepentant bigot and sleaze merchant who is proud of his ability to hob knob with Richard Nixon (he previously worked with Joseph McCarthy) and blackmail people.

Trump wants Cohn to represent his family after his father, Fred Trump (Martin Donovan), and he have been sued by the federal government for refusing to rent to Black people. Cohn decides to take the family on as a client but, more importantly, take Donald under his wing.

Cohn teaches him the three most important tricks of business: attack, attack, attack; reframe the truth as being only what you say and deny every accusation; and never admit defeat, but rather claim victory even when the truth shows otherwise. Sound familiar?

A viewer who dislikes Trump might believe it would be hard to spend two hours in his company - and while this is somewhat true, I still found "The Apprentice" to be compelling and watchable. The film is shot in the seedy 1970s style one might expect from a film set in that era and there's an ever present sense of menace during its entire running time. 

Stan gives a solid performance as Trump, looking somewhat like him and and sounding a little bit like the real estate tycoon, but certainly nailing his mannerisms. In many ways, Strong gives the most compelling performance as Cohn, a ruthless man who views those lower on the societal totem pole as weak and not deserving compassion, that is, until he contracts AIDS (Cohn was gay, although he denied it) and suddenly finds himself being viewed by Trump in the same manner.

Ali Abbasi's filmography has been one that never fails to surprise. His "Border" was a freakish film about a Danish border security guard, while "The Holy Spider" was a haunting true crime film about an Iranian serial killer that cracked my top 10 of 2022. "The Apprentice" feels more in line with Abbasi's second film in that both study sociopathic behavior that comes to be deemed as acceptable by society. 

While I wouldn't go as far as saying that "The Apprentice" does a great job of capturing the essence of what has made Trump such a prominent figure in American politics and culture, it's an often fascinating origin story about how a sociopath is given the tools through a mentor of equally questionable morals to conquer the world or, at least, smooth talk his way to the top. 

Yes, it was difficult to spend two hours in Trump's company - especially during the scene in which he rapes his first wife, Ivana (Maria Bakalova) - when we are inundated with his awfulness on an hourly basis thanks to our feckless media, but "The Apprentice" is a film that is a little more watchable than you might expect.

Review: Saturday Night

Image courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

Jason Reitman's "Saturday Night" is nothing less than what it appears to be - a play-by-play of the hours and minutes leading up to one of the most momentous nights in comedy TV history. Filmed in the style of Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu's "Birdman," the picture follows a number of personalities as they navigate the sets of NBC just before the show was set to go on the air in 1975.

Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle), the show's creator, is our main window into the proceedings as he attempts to get one of his stars, John Belushi (Matt Wood), to sign his contract as well as nail down a final script - a board is covered with numerous pieces of paper with skit titles, clearly too many to squeeze into 90 minutes of television - and hob knob with skittish producers (Willem Dafoe is NBC big wig David Tebet while Cooper Hoffman is producer Dick Ebersol, who takes a lot of abuse from pretty much everyone).

The cast is massive. There's a cocky Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), a fast-talking Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O'Brien), affable Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Laraine Newman (Emily Fairn), Jane Curtin (Kim Matula), and Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), who fears he is the cast's token Black cast member. There's also George Carlin (Matthew Rhys), future Letterman band leader Paul Schaffer (Paul Rust), Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany), Nicholas Braun pulling double duty as the shy Jim Henson and eccentric Andy Kaufman, and even an appearance by Mr. Television himself, Milton Berle (J.K. Simmons).

The list goes on and on. Surprisingly, a number of the figures get their own memorable moments - Henson pleads gently over and over again with Michaels for a script for his Muppets bit, Carlin gets to rant and rave, Morris connects with musical guest Billy Preston and later with Curtin when he ponders what exactly he's doing there, Kaufman does his Mighty Mouse routine, Belushi goes ice skating, and Chase has a confrontation with Berle that he was not likely expecting.

And yet, the film feels more like a series of enjoyable moments, rather than any sort of deep dive into the relevance that "Saturday Night Live" represents for American pop culture. So while "Saturday Night" - the film's title refers to the show's original name, which later added a third word - isn't anything more than it purports to be, well, that's perfectly fine. It's an amusing behind-the-scenes look at what allegedly took place while the show's cast and crew struggled to get it on the air.

Considering that next year is the 50th anniversary of that evening, it should come as no surprise that Reitman's film exists. It's an enjoyable homage to the show's lasting legacy and a number of the cast members nail their impersonations. It's not likely to give anyone new insights into the show, but instead it celebrates the quirky collaborative spirit that has allowed it to last this long.