Review: The Brutalist

Image courtesy of A24.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free," a character states early in Brady Corbet's epic "The Brutalist," quoting Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. Late in the picture, another notes during a speech at a celebration of sorts that she refutes the old adage that "it's not the destination, it's the journey," and believes the opposite, which certainly holds true for several of the main characters in this incredible film.

The picture's title refers to a type of architecture and its lead character, Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian Jew who finds his way to the United States in the post World War II years after surviving a concentration camp with his wife and niece, is a practitioner of that particular style. However, the title could also refer to more than one of the film's characters, whose brutal treatment of others or themselves provides much of the drama in the movie.

The film opens with a remarkable sequence in which Brody is seen making his way through a rowdy crowd in tight quarters, and it's not until he has broken through to the daylight that we realize he is on a boat approaching Ellis Island in New York City. His first sight of the new world is the Statue of Liberty, but based on the boat's position in the water, we see the iconic monument inverted, which I'm sure is meant as a symbolic gesture.

After one of the more creative title sequences of recent memory, Toth makes his way to Philadelphia to meet up with his cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who emigrated to the U.S. some years before and runs a furniture business known as Miller & Sons. "Who's Miller?" Toth asks his cousin. This is, of course, the anglicized name he has taken to assimilate. 

The cousins get a job refurbishing a library after being hired by a man named Harry (Joe Alwyn), who wants to surprise his father, Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce), an extremely wealthy man, with the renovation. But while Laszlo and Atilla are working on the house, Harrison comes home and finds his home in disrepair, throws a fit, and kicks them out. Atilla blames Laszlo for the loss of the job and gives him the boot, sending him to live in a shelter, where he gives in to heroin addiction and befriends another immigrant named Gordon (Isaach de Bankole).

Some time later, Harrison seeks out Laszlo after discovering his work in a European architectural magazine and seems fascinated by him. During a dinner at Harrison's swank house, the wealthy man asks Laszlo why he chose architecture. Toth cites the destruction of the Holocaust and how his structures - like many great pieces of art - are built to survive for generations. "My buildings were designed to endure such erosion," Laszlo says.

Van Buren lures Laszlo with a new project that he wants him to build. It's meant to be a community center dedicated to Van Buren's late mother, but more keeps getting added to the project - a gymnasium, a reading room, a chapel - almost to the point of it being farcical. And yet, Laszlo tackles the project with the requisite seriousness and proposes a structure that is awe inspiring to Van Buren.

Laszlo is all but forced to move in with his benefactor, who utilizes his wealthy and powerful friends to help Laszlo's wife, Erzsebet (Felicity Jones), and a niece, Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy), who has been orphaned and will play an important role late in the picture, get to America. As time goes on, Harrison becomes more abusive toward Laszlo, culminating in an act that could best be described as past the point of no return, although there were a fair amount of indignities that preceded it.

One of the elements that makes "The Brutalist" so compelling is that while it's at once about many things, it is never pigeonholed into one particular storyline or theme. On the one hand, it's an epic about the immigrant experience, but it's also about how capitalism (in this case represented by Pearce's Van Buren) destroys art (represented by Toth) by attempting to control the artistic process and taking what it needs from it before tossing it aside.

The film is also about obsession and the prisons we create for ourselves. Van Buren's obsessions are fleeting and costly, whereas Toth's become all-consuming. There are a series of scenes in which he haggles over what seem to be some minor measurements regarding the structure he's building for Van Buren that take on a fascinating new meaning during the aforementioned speech given during the epilogue. This also ties back to the Goethe quote at the film's beginning in a compelling manner.

As the film nears its end, it becomes increasingly mysterious and some major acts that seemingly occur are either left to the imagination, or the audience is left to come up with its own reasons as to why they take place. At three hours and 35 minutes, this is a long film that takes a little work on the viewer's part. Its first half is the more propulsive, while the second is slower and becomes increasingly vaguer on the details. But there is major thematic payoff at the film's end.

There are many things to admire about this third film from actor-turned-director Corbet, whose first film, "The Childhood of a Leader," was an impressive directorial debut and whose "Vox Lux" was overall pretty good. But this picture is a major leap forward. The film, shot in VistaVision, is filled with stunning imagery and imaginative use of camera movements and angles. It also brings back the vibe of a moviegoing event with an overture that opens the film and a 15-minute intermission, which is frankly a practical move for those needing a bathroom break.

Corbet aims for the Great American Novel narrative style of classic films such as "The Godfather," "There Will Be Blood," or "Once Upon a Time in America," though the film's pacing, camera work, and visual style suggests a careful study of the great European masters.

The performances are phenomenal across the board. Pearce is brilliant as Van Buren, a man who can seductively lure people into his orbit so that he can get what he wants out of them. His most memorable scene involves his character expounding upon how he once got revenge on his grandparents. But it's Brody who carries the film in what is likely his best performance to date. Laszlo is at once a tragic figure, a genius, a survivor, and even occasionally a brute himself. It's a tough act to juggle, but Brody gives a performance that ranks as one of the year's very best.

This is a great film - the movie event of the year - but it's also one I appreciated for its mere existence. It is difficult in America to even get a movie financed these days that is aimed at adults, much less a three-and-a-half-hour arthouse epic that becomes more open ended as it goes along. "The Brutalist" is both deeply engrossing and intellectually stimulating, a rarity in modern American filmmaking.

Review: The Room Next Door

Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

For a filmmaker whose works are so eye popping and full of life, the subject of death might not seem like a natural fit for Pedro Almodovar. His first picture in English, "The Room Next Door," is a drama about friendship and death that is, for much of its running time, a two-woman show about some old friends who reconnect, which leads to a proposition that one be present when the other commits suicide in the next room.

Tilda Swinton plays Martha, once a hard-charging war photographer who is estranged from her daughter (just wait until you see who plays her) and has a tragic back story about the daughter's father who was messed up during his time in Vietnam. Julianne Moore is Ingrid, who learns from another old acquaintance during a book signing that Martha is back in town and is losing a battle with cancer.

Ingrid pays Martha a visit at the hospital and the two of them begin spending more time together. Shortly after this reconnection, Martha tells Ingrid that she has a pill that will kill her that she plans to take, rather than waste away from her disease. However, she wants someone to be in the room next door when she does this so that she's not alone.

She asks Ingrid to go for an extended stay in a remote locale in Woodstock, New York, where her death will ultimately take place. While there, she says, Ingrid can work on her latest book or - as she puts it - 
"go on a vacation." Martha tells Ingrid that they must plan how she will deal with the police, who could possibly see Ingrid as an accomplice to a suicide, and notes that she'll know that the day has come when, in the morning, her bedroom door is closed.

"The Room Next Door" poses the question as to how far a person would go to help a friend. On the one hand, it's humane to help someone who is suffering from a disease by being there if they decide that their life is over. On the other, there are legal ramifications and, let's face it, the entire scenario would be tough to stomach for most.

Despite the heavy subject matter, "The Room Next Door" is filled with the gorgeous color palettes one would expect from an Almodovar film, from striking shots of the two women wearing bright, different colored sweaters as they ride along in a car or Swinton's face surrounded by the dark blue of the night sky as she looks out on the horizon. In other words, the picture looks great.

There are multiple references to James Joyce's "The Dead," a personal favorite of Martha's as well as one of my own favorite short stories. The final line of the story is referenced multiple times: "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."  In Joyce's story, the protagonist mourns the loss of a love who was taken too soon, but in Almodovar's film the loss is one that has yet to occur.

Swinton and Moore are, not surprisingly, very good as always, and John Turturro is made good use of as a former lover of both women and a writer with a pessimistic view of the fate of mankind. Almodovar has made some of his best films in recent years - namely, "Parallel Mothers" and the astonishing "Pain and Glory." His first film in English doesn't quite rise to the level of those movies, but it's good nonetheless as a quiet meditation on death and friendship. 

Review: Hard Truths

Image courtesy of Bleecker Street Media.

Pansy is angry. An aging wife and mother, she often finds herself venting to anyone who will willingly – or more often, not – listen about mostly everything. Occasionally, her anger is righteous – for instance, an incident involving a brazen man who demands that she move out of the parking spot in which she is taking a moment for herself – but more often than not, it’s way out of proportion.

So, she finds herself shouting at supermarket workers, dentists, doctors, employees at furniture stores, her husband, her son, her well-meaning sister, pretty much everyone.

Why is Pansy so angry, her sister, Chantelle (Michele Austin), asks during a Mother’s Day visit to the gravesite of their mother, a moment that should have been a somber one, but instead resorts in the typical releasing of Pansy’s vitriol. Why can’t she enjoy life? “I don’t know,” Pansy answers in frustration.

Portrayed by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Pansy is one of the year’s most intriguing characters in one of 2024’s finest and deceptively complex performances. This is Jean-Baptiste’s first role in a Mike Leigh film since his phenomenal “Secrets and Lies,” a Palm d’Or winner that represents the best of British cinema from the past three decades.

But while Jean-Baptiste’s work in that film was of a quiet nature, Pansy is a force of nature. Much like Sally Hawkins in “Happy Go Lucky,” David Thewlis in “Naked” or Brenda Blethyn in “Secrets and Lies,” Pansy dominates every scene she’s in and everyone else merely revolves around her as planets circling a seething, burning sun.

If “Happy Go Lucky” was Leigh’s story of an overly pleasant person – albeit one whose happiness was, perhaps, an intentional mask worn to survive a difficult world – then his latest is a story of an overly unpleasant one. That’s not to say that Pansy isn’t a sympathetic character. Clearly, she’s hurting and the concept that “hurt people hurt people” is clearly at play here.

Just as we never quite knew what was going on under the surface with Hawkins in “Happy Go Lucky,” it’s never quite spelled out what makes Pansy so upset. She claims she doesn’t feel well, but can’t exactly put her finger on what ails her. She has little patience for her husband, a quiet handyman named Curtley (David Webber), or her son, a hulking and mostly silent 22-year-old named Moses (Tuwaine Barrett), who lives at home and seemingly has no ambitions.

Pansy spends most of her days vigorously cleaning her home, when she’s not complaining about the service she receives at furniture stores, dentist’s and doctor’s offices, or supermarkets. Scenes vacillate between being laugh-out-loud funny and awkward during her tirades. During one at the dinner table, she goes from attacking charity workers outside of stores to racist police within a few breaths.

At the cemetery, a visit planned by her sister that acts as a sort of centerpiece for the story, it is hinted that Pansy bore the brunt of the pressure from their single mother, while Chantelle – a single mother and hairdresser who seemingly has a joyful life at home with her two grown daughters – felt less of the burden. It was Pansy who discovered their mother’s body at the time of her death.

Throughout the course of the film, we watch as the other characters suffer from workplace indignities, health issues, or various annoyances. Moses is picked upon due to his size by two young men on the street. Curtley suffers a back injury at work. Aleisha (Sophia Brown), one of Chantelle’s daughters, has a massive amount of work dumped on her at her job, while a work-related research project completed by her sister, Kayla (Ani Nelson), is condescendingly dismissed by her boss, despite it being obvious how much work she put into it.

All of these characters suffer their problems in silence. Pansy, on the other hand, can’t let the smallest thing go. She is willing to die on every hill. And, the film seems to suggest, while this may have to do with past traumas, it could very well be because living in the world in this day and age is – let’s be honest – a lot. People are difficult. Work is difficult. Everyday life is difficult. The societal fabric seems to be tearing. The fact that most of us manage to compose ourselves on a daily basis seems like a small miracle.

“Hard Truths” is the best film by Leigh in about a decade. Rightfully considered England’s greatest living filmmaker, his body of work includes such classics as “Secrets and Lies,” “Happy Go Lucky,” “Naked,” “Life is Sweet,” “Another Year,” and “Mr. Turner,” but also a great second tier of pictures that includes “Topsy-Turvy,” “Vera Drake,” and “Career Girls.” His latest, much like “Happy Go Lucky,” is a great film about an outsized personality whose foibles may often provoke a laugh, if only to cover up the pain inside.

'Wild At Heart And Weird On Top': RIP David Lynch

David Lynch in "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me"

Today, I learned of the death of David Lynch, a singular artist who I’d count among the few who I can honestly say have changed the way I looked at the world and viewed art.

When I was young, I considered myself a “Twin Peaks” fan and will never forget the amount of discomfort I underwent seeing “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” on my 15^th birthday with my parents (who are about as open-minded as parents can be and do not easily squirm at movies).

In my teens, I was blown away by “Blue Velvet” and, in my first year of college, was mesmerized so much by “Lost Highway” that I went to see it multiple times, each time bringing along a new convert to be perplexed and freaked out by it.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I’ll never forget seeing “Mulholland Drive,” arguably the best film of the 21st century, at The Regent Showcase Cinema Palace. This was another that involved multiple screenings. When I lived in New York City, I was crazy enough to sit through “Inland Empire” for two back-to-back screenings. My open-minded folks, while visiting, attended a third screening of that film with me.

In 2017, “Twin Peaks: The Return” was a TV show experience like no other. Upon watching the much-vaunted Episode 8, I wondered how Lynch ever convinced a television network to air what must be the most avant-garde hour of TV ever made. I wrote a long piece about “The Return” here.

I’d always hoped that Lynch’s “Unrecorded Night,” a TV show he announced prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, would finally be realized. Alas, it will never be seen, much like other mythical never-to-be-realized Lynch projects, such as “Ronnie Rocket.”

It’s difficult to sum up Lynch’s work, other than to use the obvious words: nightmarish, surreal, dream-like, absurdist. Another word that best describes his work is intuitive. By this, I mean that what occurs in his films from frame to frame is less the mechanics of plotting, but rather what feels like should happen next. Another way to describe his style is that it operates on dream logic.

Sure enough, Lynch once described how he came up with the sinister, otherworldly Red Room from “Twin Peaks”: He leaned against a hot car and the image came to his mind. He then found a way to insert it into the series. Many of his films, he often noted, included imagery from his dreams.

However, Lynch notably did not like to discuss his films. His responses in interviews to what they mean have been intentionally vague and bland. The DVDs of his films often don’t even have chapter titles. Critic J. Hoberman does a lovely job of summing up Lynch’s life and work in The New York Times.

So, needless to say, Lynch is one of my favorite filmmakers. And it is undeniable that he is among the most unique ever to pick up a camera. He was also an avid painter and contributed wonderfully atmospheric music to some of his films (when composer Angelo Badalamenti wasn’t the one doing it).

“The world is wild at heart and weird on top,” says one character to another in the director’s 1990 Palm d'Or winner, “Wild at Heart.” That’s a great way to describe Lynch’s work in general – and the way that he enabled those of us who love his work to see the world.

Review: The Last Showgirl

Image courtesy of Roadside Attractions.

"The Last Showgirl" doubles as the best performance by Pamela Anderson and the best work to date from director Gia Coppola ("Palo Alto" and "The Seven Faces of Jane"), niece of Sofia and granddaughter of Francis Ford.

Anderson's work here as Shelly, one of the last of her types on the Las Vegas strip, is a genuine surprise. While some might think that Anderson taking on a stripped down, dramatic role like this is an example of attention seeking by all involved, they'd be wrong. It's an impressive piece of work from both the leading lady and director.

In the film, Shelly is a longtime performer in a Razzle Dazzle show, making her somewhat of a dinosaur in the modern world of live entertainment in Las Vegas, such as Cirque de Soleil or racier burlesque shows. A short way into the film, she is notified by longtime co-worker and friend Eddie (Dave Bautista) that the show will soon give its last performance to make way for a flashier, circus-like entertainment group at the casino where she works.

Although she pretends otherwise, Shelly has likely lived a life not completely without regrets, namely due to the fact that she gave up her child, Hannah (Billie Lourd), who mysteriously pops up early in the film, to live with relatives so that she could continue on in the Vegas show. She tells younger girls in the show that the Razzle Dazzle girls were once considered celebrities around town and that they'd grace the covers of magazines or be shuttled around the world for soirees.

But now, the company barely pulls in 20 people per performance and it'll soon be curtains up. Shelly is a mentor, of sorts, for a few of the younger girls in the show - Marianne (Brenda Song) and Jodie (Kiernan Shipka), whose background has some striking resemblances to Shelly's. Her best friend is a former showgirl named Annette (a brassy Jamie Lee Curtis), who now works two jobs, one of which involves her serving drinks in a bikini and occasionally doing dances to "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

If Shelly's life was once glamorous - at least, that's how she describes it - her present situation is far from it. She's no longer featured as prominently in the show, and when she is given a paycheck that was obviously smaller than expected, you can see the wheels turning as to how she'll pay the rent.

Meanwhile, Hannah is back in her life to a degree after having been raised elsewhere. Shelly's vague on details about who the father was, and there's some obvious tension between the two women that only later reaches a peak when Hannah confronts her after having finally watched her mother's show.

In some ways, "The Last Showgirl" follows a somewhat formulaic route, but its mood and tone are effective and the performances - especially Anderson and Curtis - are solid. Anderson, of course, is best known for her work on the long-running TV show "Baywatch" and she'd occasionally pop up in movies - such as "Barb Wire" - but it's great to see her nab a role that allows her to utilize her talent. It's one of the year's most surprising turns.

Review: The Damned

Image courtesy of Elation Pictures.

If you're looking for something to shake you out of your winter doldrums, I'm note sure that Thordur Palsson's "The Damned" will be the thing. Set in 1871 in Iceland, the film's chilly visual style combined with its gorgeous - but frigid - scenery made up of miles and miles of ice and snow might send shivers down your spine in more ways than one.

The film, which is the first release of 2025, is a horror movie, of sorts, although opinions as to whether it is a supernatural or psychological one may vary. Set in a remote spot, the film follows Eva (Odessa Young), a widow whose husband once ran a fishing station that she took over upon his death, and a group of men as they attempt to catch food for their community, where it is seemingly scarce. Due to the weather, they are unable to leave the spot until it clears up - which could be days or weeks.

One day while preparing to fish, they spot a foreign boat that has crashed in a treacherous spot between two rocks known as The Teeth. There's a debate as to whether they should attempt to save the boat's inhabitants, but the mission is deemed too risky. It's not too risky, however, to make their way out to the boat once they assume its crew is dead to see what they can scavenge.

Surprisingly, upon arriving at the scene of the boat, they realize that some of its crew members are still alive. They jump in the freezing water, hoping to be saved, but a struggle ensues to prevent these crew members from capsizing the boat and one of the foreigners is killed with an axe.

Eva and her crew flee back to their winter home with what they've plundered, but an older woman living there warns them of the draugr, ghost-like creatures of Nordic legend that emerge at night, are fueled by hatred, and attempt to get into their victims' heads. They are often borne out of a tragedy that results in revenge - such as the one involving the men at the crashed boat. 

Shortly thereafter, members of Eva's group begin disappearing or winding up dead. It's difficult to tell whether they're being haunted or - much like in "The Shining" - the isolation, with the addition of some guilt regarding their actions, is causing them to lose their minds. The men begin to turn on each other and one of them counsels Eva that "the living are more dangerous than the dead." A sort-of plot twist late in the film makes the viewer question how much that has been taking place is psychological, rather than literal.

I'll give credit where it's due: "The Damned" is long on atmosphere and has some great locales. On the other hand, it tends to drag a bit at various points after the visit to the boat, becoming yet another in a long line of horror movies in which groups of people are haunted or tormented by something they've brought on themselves and begin dropping like flies. Young is a solid lead and the rest of the cast - which includes Rory McCann of "Game of Thrones" and Joe Cole of "Peaky Blinders" - is good as well.

But other than its locations and cinematography, "The Damned" doesn't offer much that hasn't been done before in this genre. It's intermittently engrossing and well-enough made, but I believe that the best work of this director - who has obvious talent - is likely ahead of him. 

Review: Nosferatu

Image courtesy of 

There have been countless tales of the count since the birth of cinema - but oddly, my favorite film versions of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" tend to be the ones with the name "Nosferatu." There have been some very good versions under other names - Tod Browning's 1931 "Dracula" with Bela Lugosi and Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula," to name a few - but F.W. Murnau's creepy 1922 "Nosferatu" and Werner Herzog's brilliant and atmospheric "Nosferatu: Der Vampyre" remain my favorites.

Robert Eggers' adaptation of the Stoker novel has much more in common with these latter two films as it is artfully rendered and more cryptic than your average Hollywood adaptation of the story, although it veers off from the novel a bit (never a complaint in my book). There are some breathtaking shots here - the most memorable is the approach via coach through the Carpathian Mountains toward the count's castle.

There's not much of a point in describing the plot in depth here, since most viewers and readers likely know it. Of course, every version differs slightly, but suffice it to say that the film starts with Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) traveling to Count Orlok's (Bill Skarsgard) castle to make a land deal on a new home to which the count will relocate in Germany.

Meanwhile, Hutter's wife, Ellen (Lily Rose Depp) is having night terrors in which a voice - that of the count - calls to her to submit to its will. Without going too much into it, Ellen has long been tormented by the count, and not just due to her husband's visit to his castle. Orlok's coffin is transferred via boat and he kills all aboard before it reaches its destination. Once there, a plague overtakes the town and a local doctor (Willem Dafoe) recognizes that it's the work of an evil force.

There are some curious changes to the story. Instead of the Harkers and Van Helsing, here we have the Hutters and Albin Eberhart (Dafoe). The ending of the story is more tragic than that of the original novel. Eggers' film is certainly gorier - this film's Renfield character pulls an Ozzy Osbourne on a pigeon - and more sexual than Stoker's novel.

Eggers comes at the material with a painterly touch and the film is filled with gorgeous imagery. One of my favorite shots is of Nosferatu reaching his hand out of a window and it appearing as if it were devouring the entire German town in which he has relocated.

Eggers' work is primarily period piece horror films that deal with folklore and mythology. His debut, "The Witch," was an entrancing tale of witchcraft in the Colonies, while "The Northman" was a gory viking epic. My favorite of his was "The Lighthouse," a seriously weird mythological horror film set in the late 1800s in New England.

"Nosferatu" seems like a natural choice for the filmmaker. It might not be the greatest movie ever made about the count - that's a tossup between the Murnau and Herzog versions - but it's a unique artist's inspired take on a timeworn classic.