A family comes unglued in the grim but well-crafted drama The Nest

In his first directorial effort since the 2011 movie Martha Marcy May Marlene, director Sean Durkin has made The Nest, which explores a married couple slowly crumbling as they move into a new home. It's the kind of storytelling that defines escapist entertainment! All joking aside, Durkin's newest feature is a great example of a quiet drama that can still leave a memorable impact. At times, the production, which features several big emotional scenes framed in extended single-takes, carries all the emotional immediacy of the best live plays. It's not going to be for everyone but I'll be darned if this subdued production didn't grip me.

In a New York suburb, Rory O'Hara (Jude Law) and his wife, Allison (Carrie Coon), carry out a reasonably pleasing existence with their two kids. Rory works as a trader while Allison teaches people horseback riding. But Rory is fearful about his future employment opportunities in America. It takes some convincing, but Rory coerces Allison and the kids to move to his home country of England. Now residing in an old mansion in Surrey, Rory is trying to make it big at his firm while Allison and the kids adjust to an unfamiliar land. There are always growing pains when you move somewhere new. But for this family, the turmoil will prove especially challenging.

My favorite quality about Durkin's screenplay is how it well it juggles instilling an ominous tone without making it obvious where The Nest is headed. At first, all the struggles the central family faces feel like normal issues anyone would face going to a new home. Even Rory's initially promising desire to get his boss, Arthur (Michael Culkin) to sell his business to a Chicago bidder looks like it might go someplace. But gradually, Durkin peels back a new layer of displeasure in these characters that keeps chipping away at their new life. All the while, both Durkin's writing and directing make sure The Nest isn't just a whole lot of build-up to inevitable trouble.

Instead, it's a portrait of a family crumbling in front of our very eyes as they each respond to their own dire circumstances. Rory, for example, retreats into being a pathological liar. Whether he's schmoozing clients at fancy parties by acting like he owns multiple homes or lying about his finances to Allison, Rory lives under the idea that if you keep repeating a lie enough, it'll automatically become the truth. Allison, meanwhile, runs in the opposite direction, embracing brutal reality like an old friend. An early scene where she speeds along the highway while the radio blares, a cigarette lies in her fingers and a haunted expression lingers on her eyes cements how Allison is always staring at the world as it is.

Durking delicately unwraps these individual personalities and then creates such compelling drama in challenging them. This goal is executed through Durkin's decision to frame much of The Nest through single-takes captured in wide shots that instill a sense of coldness into the movie. There's as much physically emptiness in each individual frame as there is internal emptiness in the characters of The Nest. Best of all, this filmmaking style ends up working as immersive rather than gimmick. Throughout The Nest, I got wrapped up in the conversations between characters and the mood of certain scenes rather than being distracted by Durkin framing things without any cuts.

Of course, how could not get absorbed by a pair of superb lead performances from Jude Law and Carrie Coon? After spending a couple of years delivering supporting turns in a series of big blockbusters, it's great to see Law in more grounded acting territory again, complete with a role that makes great use of his movie star looks and charisma. Rory can talk and look like a guy who knows how to do anything, but Law does great work in depicting the messier, vulnerable and angrier sides of the character. Meanwhile, after acing so many supporting film roles, it's great to see Coon nail a lead role like Allison, she captures the characters haunted nature with such devastating clarity.

Though its restrained nature and relentlessly grim tone won't be to everyone's tastes, The Nest certainly worked for. The lead performances are both so thought-provoking while Sean Durkin's commitment to both the gradual unraveling of a family and a unique filmmaking style left me thoroughly impressed.

In Laman's Terms: How Fred Claus failed to recapture the magic of Elf

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

CW: Mention of Kevin Spacey 

Success breeds imitators in Hollywood. Sometimes, these imitators are more obvious than others. So it was with the 2003 Will Ferrell vehicle Elf. Four years after that movie became a roaring success came another movie that attempted to merge Yuletide cheer with a well-known comedian, Fred Claus. This film concerned Santa's (Paul Giamatti) brother Fred (Vaughn), a regular human who comes to the North Pole to ask his brother for desperately-needed cash so that he can build a casino. In the supporting cast are Rachel Weisz (yes, really), John Michael Higgins, Elizabeth Banks, Kathy Bates, and a villain played by real-life villain Kevin Spacey. 

Whereas Elf' became a beloved Christmas staple, audiences greeted Fred Claus with a shrug and it's subsequently found itself at the bottom rung of Christmastime cable reruns.  As someone who followed the year-long marketing campaign of Fred Claus and was then disappointed with the resulting movie, I've always been fascinated by Fred Claus. Here was a movie clearly trying to mimic the Elf formula but failed to do either that or come up with its own brand of success. What happened here? How come Fred Claus couldn't break through in the realm of Christmas movies, a domain where anything, no matter how crummy, can earn "classic" status simply by getting replayed annually?

Well, there were a few qualities to blame. For starters...

The Vince Vaughn Problem

In a new Christmas edition of the Netflix show The Movies That Made Us, there's an episode dedicated to Elf. According to anecdotes in this episode, that film was Ferrell's first time headlining his own movie and studio executives were nervous about him carrying an entire motion picture. However, other interview subjects point out that Buddy played to Ferrell's strengths on Saturday Night Live. Whether he was prospector, an enthusiastic cowbell player, or a cheerleader, Ferrell worked well playing oblivious but enthusiastic oversized characters. Buddy the Elf was a perfect extension of this. To boot, the character was also perfect for a Christmastime family film. Buddy could wring yuks out of his unfamiliarity with New York City without a hitch. But Ferrell's total lack of cynicism in his performance meant emotional moments with Buddy could work equally well.

By contrast, Vince Vaughn's style of humor is akin to the grin a cat gives after being caught with a canary in its mouth. His comedy hinges heavily on rambling and saying inappropriate things with swagger. It's not my type of humor but successful movies like Wedding Crashers make it apparent that it can be widely-appealing in certain circumstances. Unfortunately, Vaughn's humor and screen persona just doesn't work in Fred Claus for a multitude of reasons. 

For one thing, there's no reliability to his mean-spirited personality, which is key for Christmastime anitheroes. We've all felt like the Grinch sometimes, overwhelmed with the noise and chaos of Christmas. How many of us, though, are like Fred and want extra money so that we can build a casino? For another, Fred Claus is a movie dripping with sentimentality and Vaughn cannot sell it. At all. A scene where he realizes his cynical nature has rubbed off on an orphaned kid nicknamed Slam (Bobb'e J. Thompson) is supposed to be a critical moment for Fred as he realizes that his worldview can be downright toxic. Instead, Vaughn always looks like he's seconds away from cracking a self-deprecating joke.

This problem becomes fatal once the third act of Fred Claus arrives and the movie decides it's time to be a drama rather than a comedy. Vaughn's as woefully out of his depth here as director David Dobkin. Speaking of all that sentimentality...

Unearned Pathos

One of the most puzzling decisions in Dan Fogelman's script for Fred Claus is the idea to put comedy almost entirely on the backburner for the final 30-40 minutes. Santa gets a back injury, Christmas gets threatened and Fred eventually returns to the North Pole and helps make sure every kid on Earth gets a simple toy, like a baseball. There's also an agonizingly overlong and joke-free scene where villain Clyde Northcutt (Kevin Spacey) is revealed to have had a long-term grudge with Santa over not getting a Superman cape as a kid. Now, Santa urges Northcutt to be a real superhero and save Christmas. This was already a poorly-designed scene even before all allegations against Spacey came out.

Like so many other people in Fred Claus, Northcutt is yet another unlikeable character who we haven't been given a reason to care about. Dobkin seems to believe that ramping up treacly music and having characters speak in whispers will automatically make everything touching. He's wrong. Equally misguided is a climactic scene where all the Elves rush in to watch kids open their presents while a somber choir sings Silent Night on the soundtrack. Compare this ending to the ending of Elf, where we see al; the characters we've met throughout the movie gradually begin to join in on a rendition of Santa Claus is Comin' to Town. 

This scene actually means something because we've met all these people who're singing. There's something unexpectedly poignant in seeing everybody from a Gimble's manager to a whole biker bar to two crank security guards joining in on the festive fun. By contrast, Fred Claus tries so hard to get viewers to tear up, but since it all involves characters we don't care about, it all falls flatter than uncooked Christmas cookies.

Who Is This Movie For?

Fred Claus is a movie that begins with elf ninjas and slapstick antics accompanied by cartoony sound effects. It ends with that aforementioned Silent Night montage. It's a tonally disjointed mess and the absolute worst kind of tonally disjointed mess too. The tonal inconsistencies aren't here because of creative ambition. Fred Claus wants to mimic other movies so desperately that it never figured out who exactly it's made for.

Are kids really going to be invested in Fred and his casino schemes? Ditto for the plight of elf Willie (John Michael Higgins), whose only desire is to make out with a lady elf played by Elizabeth Banks? Additionally, will adults get invested in any of this thinly-written material that reads like what a ten-year-old think "grown-up" problems must be? Even the few jokes for adults (like intoxicated elves walking away from a North Pole tavern) aren't funny enough to tickle the funny bones of grown-up viewers. Heck, even Paul Giamatti die-hards like yours truly won't walk away satisfied given that Giamatti doesn't get nearly enough to do in his inspired casting as Santa Claus.

In the end, Fred Claus is a movie for nobody except studio executives wanting to replicate the Elf magic. Thirteen years after its release, it serves as a strange relic that inspires reminiscing more than anything else. Remember when Wedding Crashers (Vaughn and Dobkin's big collaboration prior to Fred Claus) was the biggest thing in the Hollywood comedy scene? Remember when Vince Vaughn was headlining studio comedies annually? Remember when Weisz was stuck playing just girlfriends in Hollywood movies? One question Fred Claus doesn't inspire, though, is "Who wants to watch Fred Claus?", because we all know the answer is "nobody".

Mulan is another empty rehash of an animated Disney classic

Here's Mulan, which isn't really a movie. It's the next in a conveyor belt of taking vibrant animated Disney movies and turning them into realistic live-action films. As seen with The Lion King, Aladdin, and so many others, the broadly drawn characters you love are gone, the songs you know have vanished. And yet, these aren't original stories masquerading under a family brand-name. These live-action Disney remakes are still so bound to the original stories that they're never brave enough to go anywhere new thematically. In fact, in some cases, they tend to take steps backward in terms of thoughtful storytelling, like Beauty and the Beast giving a magical reason why the villagers are so mean to the Beast. People aren't really prejudiced, it's all just a magical spell.

So too does Mulan follow this hat trick. Even if there wasn't an old animated Disney movie to compare it to,, the film would still unsatisfactory. The fact that it keeps reminding you of a superior version of this story only makes it all the more of a slog to watch.

For those unfamiliar, Mulan concerns Fa Mulan (Liu Yifei), a young woman with a bold spirit and an enormous amount of Chi which makes her a great fighter (because that's totally how Chi is supposed to work). Her family, including father Hua Zhou (Tzi Ma), insists that Mulan start acting like a proper lady and get engaged to a boy. But Mulan's always been a rule-breaker and that gets taken to the next level when her father is recruited into war to fight against an army led by Bori Khan (Jason Scott Lee) and a witch ally named Xianniang (Gong Li). Mulan takes her father's place in the army by disguising herself as a man, in the process setting off an adventure that will allow her to find what really makes her a warrior.

Mulan's screenplay, credited to Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver and Lauren Hynek & Elizabeth Martin, makes a smart move early on by distinctly throwing out certain elements from the original animated Mulan like the musical numbers and the comic relief sidekick of Mushu. This would seem to bode well for Mulan, since the best of these live-action Disney remakes, such as Pete's Dragon or Christopher Robin, tend to just play as their own standalone stories rather than rigid recreations of the past. However, neither the writers nor director Niki Caro have found a way to substitute any of those missing ingredients with something meaningful. 

This is especially true regarding how the 2020 Mulan has taken out scenes that actually built up connections between Mulan and her fellow soldiers, like the trio named Ling, Yao and Po). Through the I'll Make a Man Out of You montage, for instance, we saw everyone grow closer through training. This new Mulan has failed to come up with its own ways for these characters to similarly bond. As a result, none of the characters really leave an impression on each other or on the audience. This becomes especially noticeable given that there are even more soldiers for Mulan to interact with this time around, including a pair of new characters who basically represent the original movie Colonel Shang. Though the live-action Mulan has more physical beings on-screen compared to its animated counterpart, it has fewer characters for viewers to grow attached to.

The writing problems with Mulan extend beyond the strangely underdeveloped characters. Most egregiously, Mulan becoming someone who wants to fight to defend the patriarchy that previously held her down is an utterly baffling decision. This new Mulan exhibits as much girl power as Margaret Thatcher. Giving Mulan superpowers that explain her strength is also totally groan-worthy. Forget "anyone can wear the mask", Mulan is merely an ode to people who are destined to be powerful and who only protect the powerful. Hey, at least that fits the lead actress's comments regarding police brutality...

Mulan at least looks gorgeous, which is an improvement over the dour color palettes of The Lion King and Dumbo. Bright colors populate every set and the costumes are appropriately extravagant. In the pre-pandemic times, the production design would certainly get called worthy of seeing on an IMAX screen. Unfortunately, the decision has been made to filter all those pretty colors and environments through choppy editing that proves especially bad during action sequences. Caro can't keep things still for a moment to let us absorb Mulan's prowess in battle unless it's time for some Zack Snyder-esque slow-motion action shots. Mulan's massive budget is certainly reflected in its production values but good luck appreciating any of it tanks to the underwhelming editing and camerawork.

Mulan is a constantly frustrating affair on so many levels that raises troubling questions rather than instills thrills. For one thing, how come movies with no budget have such crisp editing yet something like Mulan, which carries the GDP of a small country, has amateurish editing that would get laughed out of any filmmaking class? How come so many of our modern big-screen heroes are about protecting the status quo and the powerful rather than challenging those qualities? How come one of the most powerful monopolies, er, movie studios is so fixated on these sterile rehashes of their animated titles? This trend of live-action remakes of animated Disney movies isn't going away anytime soon (live-action Bambi, coming soon!) Let's hope future installments in this trend are more satisfying than Mulan or at least don't bring dishonor on you or your cow.

Promising Young Woman is as thoroughly impressive as it is bold

CW: Discussions of sexual assault

As Promising Young Woman begins, we meet Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan) slumped over in a booth at a bar, seemingly heavily intoxicated. A trio of men notices her, with two of the guys immediately hurling insulting remarks her way. One member of the group goes over to help her and ends up, against her wishes, taking her home. As they sit on his bed, the guy begins to force himself on top of Cassie...just as she reveals she's not intoxicated at all. This opening establishes a number of critical details regarding Promising Young Woman. The way it establishes that predators can be anywhere. Carey Mulligan's fearless lead performance. Best of all, it cements that what you're about to see is something that has gusto to spare and will keep you glued to the edge of your seat.

From this opening, we soon learn more about Cassie, a thirty-year-old working in a coffee shop. She spends her nights pretending to be intoxicated at bars so that she can intimidate the guys who try to assault her. Everything about her current life stems from her abrupt drop-out of medical school five years prior, which coincided with a tragedy involving sexual assault at her school. While the guys accused of this act have been able to move on and secure fiancees, Cassie is still tormented by the past. Now, she's beginning to execute a plan of revenge for the past just as hope for the future emerges through a new relationship with former classmate Ryan (Bo Burnham).

It's already been said that Promising Young Woman is a bit of a Drive-scenario, where the marketing is selling one movie while the actual film is something else entirely. That turns out to be a bit true since Promising Young Woman's marketing couldn't convey how much of this film centers around the psychological trauma Cassie is dealing with. Cassie isn't depicted as "crazy" so much as she's stuck in a society where closure for her trauma is impossible. Everyone else just wants to sweep under the rug the horrors that keep her up at night. It's important to maintain the reputations of college-aged boys, not offer support for women in distress. 

These rules of reality provide the impetus for Cassie's new double-life and her inability to move on to the future. Writer/director Emerald Fennell does exceptional work rendering the complexities of Cassie's psychology. I especially love how her exploration so thoroughly challenges the viewer as to how they should be feeling about what they're seeing on-screen. Should we be thrilled at Cassie becoming a quasi-vigilante? Should we be distressed that this is the lengths people have to go to in a society that dismisses the humanity of sexual assault survivors? It's all so messy, but appropriately so. Nobody surviving extreme trauma comes out with a tidy psyche and Cassie is no different. 

Through the exploration of Cassie as a character, we see how well Promising Young Woman keeps the viewer on their toes. This is further reflected in the clever casting, which is primarily filled out by actors playing against type. Comedic actor Molly Shannon, for instance, gets a one-scene appearance as a grieving mother. Meanwhile, fellow comic performers Christoper Mintz-Plasse and Allison Brie get to play antagonistic figures embodying the systemic misogyny Cassie is being crushed under. Best of all in this style of casting is Jennifer Coolidge and Clancy Brown as Cassie's parents. Who knew Brown could channel the soft-spoken dad routine so well? He evokes Tracy Letts in Lady Bird here and it's such an unexpected but welcome turn from the guy.

Of course, it's impossible to talk about the cast of Promising Young Woman without bringing up Carey Mulligan. The whole movie revolves around her turn as Cassie and she proves to be more than up for the challenge. Mulligan's experience with capturing interior anguish in films like Brothers and Wildlife means she's more than prepared to tackle all the pent-up horrors stirring up inside Cassie. But her handling of dark comedy, an area we haven't seen her explore much before, proves especially impressive here. Her glib line delivered excellently reflected the detached nature of Cassie. To boot, Mulligan gives Cassie a constant air of unpredictability that always puts you on edge. It's like even Mulligan isn't 100% sure what this character is capable of and it makes for a livewire of a performance.

The unique tone and performances of Promising Young Woman are paired up with sharply-detailed visuals. Fennell and cinematographer Benjamin Kračun keep coming up with, among other visual feats, such interesting pieces of staging throughout the runtime. An exchange between Cassie and a remorseful lawyer (Alfred Molina) doesn't settle for stagnant medium-shot/reverse-medium-shot framing. Wider shots are employed for the two characters that situate them each at the bottom of the frame with a vast amount of space hovering above them. This emptiness reflects the horrors of the past weighing on the heads of both of these characters. To boot, starting their dialogue in this style makes it palpable when the camera shifts to more cramped shots for the later more intense parts of their conversation.

The clear layers of thought put into Promising Young Woman's visuals extend onto the use of bright colors (Cassie's fingernails that each have their own vibrant hue is a great touch) and the different outfits Cassie wears out to her nighttime bar trips. Promising Young Woman gives one so much to contemplate on every level, including in its bravura ending that pulls a Trojan Horse in sneaking a haunting ending into a seemingly upbeat conclusion. A boldly-realized concoction, all the creative promise apparent in Promising Young Woman's opening scene endures right until the credits begin to roll.

The struggles of an Arkansas family make for captivating cinema in Minari

Throughout Minari, director Lee Isaac Chung employs a visual motif that just knocked me on my feet every time. The motif consists of Chung cutting to a shot of something like a dresser, a building, or two characters talking. Then, the next shot reveals that we've been watching things from the perspective of a character, usually that of young child David (Alan Kim). It's such a masterful way of immersing the viewer into the world of Minari without us even realizing it. To boot, Chung's restrained sensibilities as a filmmaker means he keeps deploying it sparingly enough that it doesn't become predictable. It's just one of many ingenious decisions Chung has made here.

The Yi family, father Jacob (Steven Yeun), mother Monica (Han Ye-ri), and their kids David and Anne (Noel Kate Chao) have moved to a small remote home in Arkansas. It's an unusual destination that takes the family far from their previous home in California. However, David is convinced that this is the perfect place to raise a fortune for his family through farming. As the families encounter all kinds of difficulties in their lives, Monica calls in her mom from South Korea, Soon-ja (Young Yuh-jung), to help take care of things. David is not a fan of Soon-ja, though this grandmother is a fiery spirit and she's not going to be brought down by just a precocious youngster.

A sense of melancholy permeates Minari, a quality made apparent in an early scene set at a poultry factory. David inquires to his father what a chimney constantly spewing smoke is for. That, Jacob explains, is where they dump male chicks, since they're unable to produce eggs and, thus, useless to the company. "We must be useful," Jacob informs his son. This desire to be useful to his family above all else drives all of Jacob's actions and it isn't long before it takes on a quietly tragic quality. Jacob is never an abusive father and it's easy to see why he's so committed to making money. But as Minari goes on, it's also clear that he's losing sight of what's important. 

This is an example, alongside David's heart condition, of the quiet challenges that motivate the characters of Minari. But fear not, it isn't all doom and gloom here. One of Chung's most impressive feats in his script for Minari is the balance between subdued sorrow and touching moments of kindness. The first time we meet Jacob's farmhand Paul (Will Patton), for instance, the character emanates such genuine warmth ("Y'know, the first time I saw you, I knew we were going to be friends!"). Ditto for Soon-ja, whose constant patience for David despite all of his misbehavior is thoroughly heartwarming. She's especially great at exuding a calming presence in a scene where she reassures David that he doesn't need to worry about Hell yet. 

There's a sense of tonal balance in Chung's writing that reflects how real-life rarely delivers one singular mood. Moments of joy can so easily turn into tragic events in the blink of an eye. Minari manifests this aspect of reality so beautifully while the character of Soon-ja similarly radiates authenticity. An elderly woman obsessed with drinking Mountain Dew and watching boxing matches, Soon-ja could have easily been another caricature of an "extreme" grandmother. Instead, Chung's filmmaking and Yuh-jung's performance both treat her unorthodox traits with a matter-of-fact quality that makes the character feel so believable. Of course, one can also attribute this level of believability to how Minari is an autobiographical venture, which certainly explains the richly unique details that littler the script.

Soon-ja and the other characters in Minari are filmed through crisp camerawork courtesy of director Lee Isaac Chung and cinematographer Lachlan Milne. This whole movie looks so striking, especially in regards to the colors seen in bright exterior scenes. The way Chung and Milne capture the vivid green grass and blue sky dancing across Jacob's farmland, we can immediately see why David is so attracted to this space. Ditto for the riverside Minari garden Soon-ja grows, which looks like something out of a painting. Meanwhile, there's a controlled quality to how interior scenes are filmed. The minimal amount of space in the Yin family's home is always apparent, but it can be used for such drastically different purposes. Sometimes, the domicile carries a cozy quality but then Chung and Milne can so gracefully make it feel claustrophobic on a dime.

Truthfully, every detail of Minari left me impressed and not just on a visual level. The screenplay, Emile Mosseri's ethereal score, and the performances! From Steven Yeun's richly detailed lead turn to Young Yuh-jung's fascinating supporting performance, Minari is packed with unforgettable performances. And while I know it's trite to say this in movie reviews, I will say Minari did feel like such an unintentionally relevant movie to 2020. Lee Isaac Chung's incredible movie reminds us all that tragedy is inevitable in life and we'll rarely walk away from it unscarred. But with ones we love to hold onto tightly, maybe we can hold on and find ways to endure. 

Minari hits movie theaters in February.

The Prom is a dance that isn't worth attending

The Prom is a busy movie. Nary a scene goes by without either vibrant colors or an enormous amount of dancing. Gags are in your face. And the emotional moments are all big speeches and overt displays of tears. It's a whole lot of movie, always running and running. But by the end of its 132-minute runtime, does it add up to much? In the end, not really. In translating this 2018 Broadway musical to the big screen, director Ryan Murphy is constantly exerting energy but he never goes somewhere really interesting. The story he's telling is one that proves all too familiar, especially in terms of how often it sidelines queer perspectives in favor of wacky heterosexual characters. The more things change, the more they stay exactly like Dallas Buyers Club.

Emma (Jo Ellen Pellman) just wants to go to her High School's prom. This Indiana High Schooler loves her girlfriend and wants to take her to prom like everyone else. But the local PTA, led by Mrs. Greene (Kerry Washington), has canceled the prom in response to Emma's attendance. This situation catches the eye of a quartet of down-and-out Broadway performers, led by Dee Dee (Meryl Streep) and Barry (James Corden), who are looking for a charitable cause they can support to rehabilitate their image. Heading down to Indiana, Dee Dee and company are merely looking for a PR boost. What they'll get instead is wrapped up in Emma's crusade to just be herself. 

The biggest issue with the hustling and bustling nature of The Prom is how it's way too glossy for its own good. Worse, the glossiness proves to be one-note. Once you've seen one instance of The Prom being visually bombastic, you've seen them all. Swooping camera movements invade every scene, for example, and get real old, real quick. Murphy's fixation with constantly moving the camera around makes one wish they could reach out and toss him a tripod he could just sit the camera down on. The inability to just let scenes breathe even intrudes on intimate emotional sequences, like a big song involving Emma explaining her story to the world. Murphy can't let the characters drive home the poignancy, he has to hammer it home with a spinning camera. 

This camerawork gets combined with frequently clumsy editing that cuts back-and-forth between shots with such a rapid yet pointless fervor. With these visual elements, The Prom is aiming to be something that constantly maintains your attention. Instead, just renders the whole exercise as weirdly insecure. It's like Ryan Murphy is terrified that if he ever stops shoving things at the audience everyone will just get bored and switch over to The Christmas Chronicles 2. With no confidence in either the audience or the actors to handle more subtle material, The Prom is something that becomes exhausting by the halfway mark, let alone by the time its overlong runtime is finished.

And then there are the musical numbers, which are already hampered by carrying lyrics that are, by and large, pretty forgettable. Visually, every one of the big musical numbers is decked out in the same purple and blue lighting. Instead of giving each set piece its own distinct identity, The Prom opts to make them all feel derivative of one another. That's why the best musical number in the whole movie is Love Thy Neighbor. It's a jaunty tune in the mold of Trouble from The Music Man or My Dead Gay Son from Heathers, which already gets it off on the right foot in my book. Better yet, Love Thy Neighbor separates itself from the other musical numbers in The Prom by firmly rooting itself in reality with a mall backdrop and naturalistic lighting. Why couldn't more of the songs in The Prom have this level of personality and zest?

The insecurity that infests the visuals are also, unfortunately, apparent in the story. Screenwriters Chad Beguelin and Bob Martin (who also wrote the original stage show) seem oddly disinterested in actually exploring the love story at the heart of The Prom. Within the film's first 28 minutes, Emma gets one notable scene to herself while the rest of the attention is entirely devoted to Dee Dee, Barry, and the other adult characters. This problem persists throughout the rest of the movie to a disappointing degree. Emma is usually relegated to a grinning character on the margins clapping and laughing at the antics of the New Yorkers who have invaded her life. Emma's storyline isn't anything revolutionary, but at least it occasionally warms your heart. 

Meanwhile, there's no sense of humanity in the storylines The Prom is much more preoccupied with. No matter how hard this movie tries (and God does it try), I didn't care about the New Yorker characters, who start as gratingly oversized comic caricatures and then are somehow supposed to be people we can emotionally invest in. Dee Dee and her inevitable redemption arc, complete with a romance with principal Hawkins (a warm and likable Keegan Michael-Key), totally tedious. Then there's Barry, who oscilates wildly between tired gay jokes (the app Scruff gets name-dropped) and a whole melodramatic backstory that probably never would have worked, let alone for this character. Worse than either of those elements is James Corden's performance, which is like a homophobic caricature straight out of a 1980's comedy. How on Earth does The Prom expect audiences to take Corden's performance as a tangible human being?

Honestly, the story of The Prom left me more tired than anything else, and not just because it's always running and running. It's such a miscalculated enterprise that once again believes general audiences can't possibly like down-to-Earth LGBQIA+ characters and their stories. These individuals are only important so long as they can be filtered through redemption arcs for heterosexual characters like Dee Dee. Fans of queer storytelling deserve better. Fans of musicals do too. Come to think of it, fans of anyone in this cast deserve better (except for James Corden, he's not capable of better than this). The Prom is proof that you can always be shuffling your feet yet still never manage to hit your mark.

Sorry We Missed You confronts the brutal realities of the modern gig economy

The gig economy is a new bedrock of the world economy. In the wake of the 2008 global recession and the popularity of services like Uber, this form of employment has become dominant for many people. While on the surface it offers opportunities for immediate cash, the fact that these companies don't have to adhere to labor laws creates enormous problems. As companies like Amazon and Uber make headlines for their dehumanizing approach to employees, it's astonishing more pop culture properties haven't tackled the perspective of living in this kind of economy. It's a problem that likely ties in how often poverty is overlooked in modern cinema from all over the world, which itself is tied into toxic notions about how poverty is "a choice".

Anywho, at least the new Ken Loach movie Sorry We Missed You is here to help counter the lack of stories about gig economy workers with this yarn about the Turner family. This family unit is led by Ricky (Kris Hitchen) and Abbie (Debbie Honeywood), the former working as a package delivery person and the latter working as a home care nurse. Their jobs keep the pair working almost all hours of the day. Meanwhile, they also have two kids,  Liza Jane Turner (Katie Proctor) and troubled teenager Seb Turner (Rhys Stone). Trying to keep this family together with all their employment responsibilities proves a monumental task, especially in regards to Ricky's increasingly demanding job.

Paul Laverty's screenplay is packed to the brim with great examples of real-world details that make the plight of the Turner family so discernible authentic. For one thing, there are their transportation woes. Ricky sells the family's van to have his own transportation for his delivery job. This leaves Abbie stuck taking the bus for her nursing gigs. This is the kind of struggle that other movies might only reference in offhand dialogue. Here in Sorry We Missed You, it's just another example of how turmoil is used to flesh out the individual perspectives of Ricky and Abbie. We can see why Ricky wants to have his own van for his job while fully understanding Abbie's frustration with being beholden to a bus route schedule.

Then there are the difficulties at Ricky's job, which isn't presented as an evil lair or anything like that. There's a naturalism to its presentation that makes it look like a run-of-the-mill location, which is the point. Brutal working conditions can thrive anywhere, not just in places that have been color-coded to indicate they can't be trusted. The performance of Ricky's superior Maloney (Ross Brewster) channels a similar vibe.  Whenever Ricky comes to Maloney with problems, Maloney's only response is a rehearsed line about the importance of working for the company and that "everyone's got problems". Maloney's cold and detached line deliveries play as a heartbreaking contrast to Ricky's constantly tormented circumstances.

In the character of Maloney and the business he oversees, Sorry We Missed You realizes the inevitable endpoint of seeing other human begins as just a means to a financial end. When you have more value for telxon's than people, well, that's where you have a problem. This problem is reflected in such a thoughtfully-rendered manner in Laverty's writing and Loach's direction. The latter element always keeps a level of a tangible reality in the plights of the Turner family. Melodrama is kept at bay thanks to Loach's keen eyes for knowing how to evoke real-world experiences and for making each new piece of character drama feel uniquely rendered.

Take the woes of Seb, a troubled teen boy with a penchant for graffiti. His storyline could have felt derivative of countless other stories about similarly wayward teenagers. But in the hands of Loach and Rhys Stone's performance, Seb comes alive as his own character. It's especially impressive how effectively the production reflects how his parents' financial struggles impact his own behavior. This isn't meant to shift the blame onto his parents but rather show the wide-ranging ripple effects of dehumanizing employment. The real world has shown just how devastating the consequences of the modern gig economy can be and Sorry We Missed You provides a boldly-realized cinematic reflection of that reality.

John Boyega delivers a powerhouse lead performance in the excellent Red, White and Blue

I never got to see Attack the Block until last year. However, I'll never forget watching its trailer when it first came out and being so enamored with it. The project looked so fun, so unique, so gnarly. Best of all, the glimpses of Attack the Block leading man John Boyega in it utterly captivated me. In just a trailer, Boyega conveyed such charisma and talent. I was immediately fixated on this guy and hoped he would be destined for great things. Well, after getting to headline a trilogy of Star Wars, Boyega is doing a light for himself. However, after he appeared in a pair of movies with more green than actual humanity, it's unspeakably great to see Boyega back to acting in down-to-Earth movies like Red, White and Blue again.

The third installment in director Steve McQueen's Small Axe collection, Red, White and Blue chronicles the true story of Leroy Logan (John Boyega). After earning a degree in Biology in the early 1980s, it seemed like Logan was headed for a career in a lab. However, he decided to instead pursue a career as a law enforcement officer. Seeing the struggles between minority communities and cops, Logan carried a desire to help instill reform in the local police from within. It's a noble goal that proved far more difficult than he could ever imagine. Everywhere Logan turns, there's a new challenge in front of him, particularly from his predominately white colleagues in the world of policing.

Screenwriters McQueen and Courttia Newland pull off quite the impressive storytelling feat with Red, White and Blue. On the one hand, this is an intimate portrait of Leroy Logan's journey into the belly of the beast of British society. On the other hand, the project also offers up plenty of time for differing perspectives on the role police play in society. McQueen and Newland make the smart choice to fill up the differing perspectives almost entirely with ordinary citizens. Only Leroy Logan and fellow police officer of color Asif Kamali (Assad Zaman) are the only cops whose points-of-view are explored in-depth. 

Red, White and Blue is concerned with the people whose lives are adversely impacted by cops, not the perspectives already dominating pop culture through shows like NCIS. These varying perspectives are vividly-realized even if they only show up briefly in the runtime. The perspective of Logan's dad, Ken (Steve Toussaint), is especially well-realized. After getting beaten at the hands of cops simply for the color of his skin early on, Ken reacts with anger at the idea of his son becoming a cop. Red, White and Blue lends empathy to both Logan and Ken's viewpoints. Through understanding the factors informing their decisions, the tragedy of their increasingly distant relationship becomes only more potent.

The writing in Red, White and Blue is just as sharp as McQueen's filmmaking. Across these Small Axe projects, I continue to be impressed with the creativity in how and where McQueen employs his camera. Logan and Ken's farewell before the former character attends police training, for instance, is filmed from a distance inside Ken's car. This subtly serves as a signifier of how, even a moment of tenderness, there exists such a distance between the two characters. Then there's the haunting scene where Logan comes across racist graffiti on his locker. McQueen captures this moment in a single take filmed in a profile shot position. 

This means our gaze is entirely on Logan's reaction to the graffiti and the dismissive comments from his peers. Through just this shot, McQueen's direction epitomizes how these Small Axe films are supposed to emphasize the human beings affected by bigotry rather than just lingering on the bigotry itself. This masterfully-executed scene is also one of many great showcases for Boyega's chops as an actor found throughout Red, White and Blue. Boyega handles the swirling vortex of conflicted emotions inside Leroy Logan with such effortlessness and his depiction of the characters growing sense of frustration is especially well-realized. Boyega displays the kind of acting chops that made him so eye-catching in that Attack the Block teaser from a decade ago.

It's a mild Irish life in the creaky romantic drama Wild Mountain Thyme

 

They say there aren't any innovations in cinema anymore. Everything that can be done in this medium has been done. I don't believe that. I strictly believe that as long as film exists, artists will find new ways to innovate it as much as trailblazers like Oscar Micheaux and Lynne Ramsey have in the past. It can be hard to think like that in 2020, a year where blows to the film industry are as common as racist cops. But within Wild Mountain Thyme, one can see hope. Writer/director John Patrick Shanley has broken new ground here by making the first-ever cinematic distillation of melatonin. Who knew this herb could be translated into a cinematic form so easily? Not since How It's Made has a piece of pop culture been seemingly engineered to put viewers to sleep.

Wild Mountain Thyme takes place in Ireland and follows a pair of neighbors, each of whom resides on a large piece of farmland. Rosemary Muldoon (Emily Blunt) is the stubborn horse-wrangler who loves doing things independently almost as much as she loves smoking cigarettes. Then there's Anthony Reilly (Jamie Dornan), who works hard on the farm owned by his father, Tony Reilly (Christopher Walken). Despite this, Tony isn't sure about giving his son this property when he dies. An American, Adam (Jon Hamm), might just be the one to take over the land and also win Muldoon's heart. Why can't Reilly commit to the woman who lives next door? 

Shanley has had a prolific career as a writer, having been responsible for directing Doubt and writing Moonstruck. Unfortunately, his writing for Wild Mountain Thyme is more along the lines of his screenwriting for Congo and without that films saving grace of a lively ape sidekick to keep things interesting. For one thing, the decision to immerse Reilly in so much mystery as to why he can't commit to a relationship with Muldoon proves a poor one. The "Will they/Won't they?" dynamic between the two lead characters has nothing to build upon. There's Muldoon's yearning and then nothing on Reilly's end but constant rejections. How can one get invested in a character dynamic so thinly-developed?

Also proving to be a problem is Shanely's penchant for extremely old-fashioned dialogue. It's nice that Shanely didn't feel the need for jaded cynicism to intrude on a classical romantic yarn. It'd be even nicer if the dialogue was actually good. Early on, Muldoon openly tells a horse "When [Reilly] speaks like that, I can't help but fall in love with him," and it's all downhill from there. Attempts to do erotically-charged dialogue in one of Wild Mountain Thyme's final scenes only go even worse. It's hard to imagine any moviegoer reaching for a fan to cool themselves off when Emily Blunt reads off tin-eared dialogue like "Have you ever imagined what I look like with less clothes on?"

Tasked with bringing this dialogue to life is a talented crop of actors saddled with a poor script and even worse Irish accents. The best thing one can say about the accents in Wild Mountain Thyme is that they make one further appreciate how Chernobyl and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood emphasized engaging characters rather than fully accurate accents. Christopher Walken is an absolutely fantastic actor and even he can't make an Irish accent work. A pivotal father/son scene between Anthony and Tony meant to drum up tears is rendered unintentionally hysterical because of how Irish Walken trying to sound sad just makes him sound like Grover from Sesame Street.

On top of everything else, the production is so unimaginatively staged that all the individual flaws don't even add up to an entertaining catastrophe. The uninspired direction and cinematography ensure that Wild Mountain Thyme is mostly a snoozefest...except for the ending. The eventual reveal of what's been plaguing Anthony is an utterly bizarre moment that simultaneously evokes Eugène Ionesco and Bee Movie. It's not worth slogging through the whole movie just for that bit of unexpected lunacy. But if more of Wild Mountain Thyme had been this brazenly strange, it would be worth seeking out. As it is, it's merely a boring movie that clearly didn't have any of the luck of the Irish on its side.

In Laman's Terms: So About That Warner Bros./HBO Max Deal

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

In 2009, NBC decided to give Jay Leno his own primetime comedy show entitled The Jay Leno Show. For five days a week at 10 PM, Leno would be the only thing on the NBC airwaves. It was a bizarre move done not out of creative impulses but of commerce. Leno's contract was up, NBC had given his Tonight Show to Conan O'Brien, but the network didn't want him to go to a competitor. Wanting to still make money off Leno, The Jay Leno Show was born.

The decision caused disastrous ripple effects across all corners of the television landscape. Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show lost its ubiquity having to air directly after a Jay Leno talk show. The placement of the show at 10 PM five days a week also meant there was no chance to launch five new adult dramas, the programs that used to be the default programming for NBC at 10 PM. Understandable anger erupted from showrunners and members of the Writer's Guild. It was a decision that really benefited no one except for Leno's pockets and studio executives.

In the Bill Carter book The War for Late Night chronicling this whole catastrophe, there's an anecdote from Conan O'Brien describing an NBC executive with no broadcasting experience who still wanted to make swift changes to the schedule of NBC. O'Brien described this individual as "like a new head of a factory that makes warheads who just walks in and starts swinging a wrench around". This executive didn't see late night hosts or their shows as more than just chess pieces to be shuffled across a board. In other words, there's no tact, no consideration for others, just a desire to emphasize one's prowess. 

I've been thinking of that anecdote and the whole Jay Leno show debacle a lot in the days since AT&T announced that all 2021 Warner Bros. titles would be receiving simultaneous debuts in theaters and on the AT&T streaming service HBO Max. It was a bizarre move building off a prior announcement that Wonder Woman 1984 would be undergoing this release pattern on December 25. The fallout on this decision has been enormous. For one thing, there's the fact that AT&T kept this so close to the chest that none of the people involved in these movies knew this was happening. 

Keeping directors and producers in the dark like this made AT&T's decision feel downright despicable. It shows an immense disregard for the artists who put their heart, soul, and tears into these movies. To boot, theater owners were kept out of the loop on this decision too. My heart goes out not to mega-conglomerates like AMC or Regal but to independent theater owners. They're already navigating a rocky exhibition landscape and now AT&T drops this bombshell out of nowhere that needlessly threatens an entire industry and countless jobs. As AT&T displayed when they pointlessly shut down FilmStruck at the end of 2018, this conglomerate doesn't care about movies or the people it lays off. This corporation and the richest people who run it only care about getting their stock up.

The coldness informing the Warner Bros./HBO Max decision is only reinforced by how AT&T executives have, much like the actual launch of HBO Max, utterly bungled things at every opportunity when it comes to talking about this decision. WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar's attempt to dub the HBO Max/Warner Bros. news as "For the fans" rang as a cringe-worthy attempt to channel Kevin Feige while acting like P.T. Barnum. Meanwhile, AT&T CEO John Stankey has shown little regard for the filmmakers or independent theater owners he and his cohorts have jeopardized. 

Stankey talks about "the horse leaving the barn" in regards to streaming being the future, but that's not really accurate. It's more like AT&T set a house on fire and are now shrugging and saying there's no way the house can be saved. If you hadn't set it on fire in the first place, maybe it could have been saved. Instead, Stankey and the other AT&T heads have just shrugged off all the consequences of their decision, just like AT&T shrugged off laying off 1,000+ people during a pandemic in November.

Naturally, such behavior from a conglomerate has inspired warranted outrage, particularly from the parties involved in 2021 Warner Bros. titles. Godzilla vs. Kong and Dune producer Legendary Pictures is considering a lawsuit against Warner Bros. The Hollywood Reporter reports that directors like Jon M. Chu are flummoxed by this choice. Who could blame them? 

Now, I do want make one thing clear here: streaming is not an inherently bad thing. People with certain physical and mental disabilities aren't able to attend theatrical screenings of movies, streaming makes those titles accessible. To boot, the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic makes it unsafe to go to movie theaters. The film industry will inevitably have to evolve to respond to the fact that there's really no way of returning to what was considered "normal" prior to the pandemic. This piece is not minimizing any of these factors. 

Rather, it's supposed to call out AT&T for treating their filmmakers like trash. It's one thing to reach out to these individual directors and talk about putting their projects on streaming. It's another thing to just plop them onto HBO Max without any forewarning. The rash HBO Max/Warner Bros. decision has enormous ripple effects on filmmakers and theater owners that, as shown by the dismissive comments from people like Kilar and Stankey, are being totally ignored by a massive conglomerate. 

Much like the NBC executives responsible for the 2010 Tonight Show debacle, the AT&T executives have swung a wrench around inside the Warner Bros. factory without any consideration for the consequences of their actions. 

Gretel & Hansel brings striking imagery to a familiar fairy tale

At this point, it's about as novel pointing out that classic fairy tales were actually dark creations as it is to observe that something "is really a Western if you think about it."  After so many years of gritty takes on public domain fairy tales, it's not exactly a fresh idea to ask "What if Rumpelstiltskin but he swears?" If you're gonna do a modern horror movie predicated on a "grim" reinterpretation of fairy tale, you better bring something new to the table. Gretel & Hansel doesn't exactly rewrite the book on these kinds of movies. However, it's got enough of its own warped charms to make it a decent exercise.

We all know the Hansel & Gretel tale so you know the basic concept for Gretel & Hansel (written by Rob Hayes and directed by Oz Perkins) concerning two kids who stumble onto a witch's home. In this version, though, Gretel (Sophia Lillis) is significantly older than her younger brother Hansel (Sam Leakey). The two aren't just left in the forest, they're abandoned by their mother because of the financial constraints she lives under. While traveling to a potential home with some woodcutters, Gretel & Hansel stumble onto a witch named Holda (Alice Kirge). She invites them into their home, but she isn't just interested in devouring the two of them like in the original fairy tale. She has plans for Gretel that could lead this young lady to discover wholly new parts of herself. 

Above all else, Gretel & Hansel suggests that the A24 mold of horror movies have become mainstream enough to inspire duplicators. An unorthodox aspect ratio (in this case, 1.55:1), a pre-electricity period era setting, an emphasis on a slow-burn atmosphere, sparse yet intricately detailed cinematography. The ingredients that were such a critical part of The VVitch, Midsommar, and Hereditary are all here in Gretel & Hansel. Of course, those indie horror titles did not invent those qualities, but they did popularize them as required ingredients for modern heady horror titles, like Gretel & Hansel, to imitate.  

How does Gretel & Hansel manage to evade feeling derivative? The striking cinematography from Galo Olivares does the trick. Gretel & Hansel is chock full of imagery that totally impresses in its ornate blocking and quietly eerie atmosphere. Extra props for how well Olivares and director Perkins incorporate stylized imagery into the proceedings to make both the viewer and Gretel doubt what is and isn't real. Such creepy shots and ambiguity ensure that Gretel & Hansel's PG-13 rating does not restrict its ability to instill actual fear in the viewer. For those worried this is a sanitized affair, though, worry not. There's a scene with Holda reaching into a barrel that's appropriately stomach-churning.

The rest of Gretel & Hansel isn't especially noteworthy, mostly because the restrained aesthetic keeps the viewer from totally connecting to the characters. I was never bored by Gretel's journey but I'd be lying if I said I was totally absorbed by it. However, as an atmospheric exercise, Gretel & Hansel registers as extremely well-crafted. Understand what you're getting into beforehand and Gretel & Hansel works well as a subdued and visual-oriented feature. If we must keep doing darker takes on classic fairy tales, let's get more of them in the mold of Gretel & Hansel, please.

The excellently-cast Happiest Season is too beholden to formula for its own good

Happiest Season is the newest movie from writer/director Clea DuVall, a Christmas rom-com fixated on happy couple Abby Holland (Kristen Stewart) and Harper Caldwell (Mackenzie Davis). Harper invites Abby to come meet her parents, Ted (Victor Garber) and Tipper (Mary Steenburgen), over a big Christmas week gathering. On their way to the event, Harper drops a bombshell on Abby: she hasn't come out to her parents. Abby will now pose as Harper's heterosexual roommate as Harper gathers up the courage to come out to her parents. Holiday season family gatherings are always difficult but this particular week is gonna be a nightmare for Abby.

Happiest Season fares best when screenwriters DuVall and Mary Holland lean into the unique possibilities offered up by the fact that the film's protagonists are queer. An extended rendezvous into a gay bar with two drag queens leading a packed house into redefinitions of Christmas carols is already an entertaining sight. Stewart and Aubrey Plaza (playing the character of Riley) are so entertaining in their rapport in this scene while the entire sequence is something that you won't get from, say, The Holiday. The fact that it's followed by an extremely amusing visual gag contrasting the cozy interior of the gay bar with the cold & sterile aesthetic of a straight bar (appropriately named FRATTY'S) is just the icing on top.

A later scene where Abby and best friend John (Dan Levy) openly talk about what how coming out of the closet is different for everyone is another similarly unique highlight of Happiest Season. It's also another sequence that reminded me how nice it is to have queer cinema that isn't afraid to explicitly talk about queerness. Don't get me wrong, I love movies like Call Me By Your Name where queer experiences are reflected in longing gazes and ellipses in a conversation. But that doesn't have to be the only way queer experiences are explored in cinema. The most insightful dialogue in Happiest Season shows the value of being upfront on cinematic queer experiences.

But if the best moments of Happiest Season break new ground for holiday rom-com's, the home stretch of the movie struggles to fit its storyline into the tonal norms of this genre. Holiday rom-com's are supposed to have cozy happy endings where everything gets wrapped up with a pretty red bow on top next to a crackling fire. Happiest Season tries to do the same thing here but it feels too easy considering how repugnant Harper's family has been up to this point. DuVall and Holland's screenplay has to rush everybody in Harper's family through drastic character changes so that Happiest Season can adhere to a formulaic happy ending. It's all so hurried and inorganic.

What if Happiest Season had found a different way to create a happy ending? Maybe one that involved a found family or at least dealt with the darker complexities of its story? Props to DuVall and Holland for attempting to subvert the bleak endings that befall so many cinematic lesbians. However, there's a dissonance between Happiest Season's storyline and its eventual cozy tone that leaves something to be desire in the execution of that subversion. Despite this issue, I'd be lying if the ending of Happiest Season didn't manage to instill some warm and fuzzies in my heart. Also leaving an impact in DuVall and Holland's screenplay are nice little details, like an eventual friendship between John and Harper's eccentric sister Jane (Mary Holland).

Those clever features keep Happiest Season a pleasant diversion, as do the uniformly entertaining cast. Mary Steenburgen, for example, wrings effective dark comedy of the coldness of her character while Dan Levy, surprising no one who's seen his work on Schitt's Creek, absolutely nails all his comedic line deliveries. Best of all, Kristen Stewart makes the leap from dark indie comedies to lighthearted rom-coms with ease. Turns out Stewart really can do anything as she makes for an engaging lead character. In fact, Stewart got me so invested in Abby that I wished her movie ended up going down a more creative path in its flawed third-act. 

Happiest Season stumbles the most when it's most adherent to formula. Thankfully, the moments where it chases its own unique vision of what a holiday season rom-com can be truly sparkle.

Mank has just enough to offer to distract from its familiar and insular qualities

 

In some ways, Mank isn't all that revelatory of a film. It's yet another historical drama starring a white guy who acts like a heel (particularly towards women) yet the audience is supposed to find his behavior endearing. It's also another example of modern filmmakers examining classic periods of Hollywood filmmaking and focusing exclusively on White dudes. Funny how we keep going back to classic Hollywood stories yet they never star Oscar Micheaux or Alice Guy-Blaché. However, if anyone could make the familiar approach and ideas of Mank work, it's director David Fincher and the cast & crew he's assembled here. Against my better nature and the shortcomings of the production, Mank managed to win me over despite its familiar tendencies.

So who is Mank? Well, he's Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), a screenwriter who worked all throughout Hollywood in the 1930s. He's also the man who, as Mank begins, has been tasked with writing the screenplay for a film for Orson Welles (Tom Burke). Mank's new passion project in between consuming copious amounts of liquor will eventually become Citizen Kane. Taking a cue from the non-linear structure of Citizen Kane, Mank engages in frequent digressions into the past to explore what informed Mank's ideas for Citizen Kane. In particular, these sequences set in the past explore Mank's relationship to William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance), a wealthy man who basically controls the film industry and so much of California.

If you don't know who Hearst is from David O. Selznick, I'm not sure how much enjoyment you'll wring out of Mank. Jack Fincher's screenplay makes no attempts to help out audiences who may be unfamiliar with these figures or their world. In its weakest moments, Mank, much like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, feels like showy name-dropping without much of a purpose. Thankfully, also much like with Hollywood, those aren't the only moments of note in Mank. Much of the films does manage to create its own identity apart from references to figures in older eras of Hollywood. In this case, Mank crafts its own identity by functioning as a fascinating exercise in ripping off the rainbow-colored vision people have of the "good o'l days" of Hollywood.

In a welcome surprise, Mank is no empty nostalgia trip. The Hollywood Mankiewicz inhabits is one of deceit. People struggle for work, studio executives openly talk about screwing over customers ("We work in the only business where we still own the item after the customer purchases it") and Mank views anything that goes on in this town with a sideways glance of skepticism. How does this system endure? Well, Mank's smartest concept is showing how it all thrives not on active villainy but laidback acceptance of the status quo. At one point, Mank talks to a studio executive who recalls that, as a child, he was physically tormented for handing out fliers promoting a  socialist candidate. "I didn't make the rules of politics," the executive notes. "I just live by them." In the world of Mank, the people with all the power aren't the only problem. Those who just go along with everything out of their own self-interest are just as much of an issue. Mank paints an outright bleak portrait of this era of Hollywood, right down to its portrayal of Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried) as someone all-too-aware of her status as arm candy for Hearst.

The unexpectedly grim atmosphere of Mank caught me totally by surprise but it turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the whole movie. Going this route ensures that Mank has more to offer than trivia about 1930s Hollywood and parallels to Citizen Kane. Also helping to make Mank work as well as it does is the visual look of the movie. Brought to life through Fincher and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, a meticulous level of detail informs nearly every frame of the enterprise. In the hands of these two gentlemen, Mank is such a handsome looking affair that had me constantly impressed with its blocking, staging, and especially the evocative use of black-and-white coloring. 

The film also gets bonus points for subtly incorporating all the restrictions of filming a movie in the 1940s. If a piece of camerawork couldn't be accomplished in this era, Mank avoids utilizing it. If Mank was being made in 1942, it would likely look remarkably similar. In its visuals, one finds the best example of Mank's adherence to the past. While clearly leaning on visual traits of early 20th-century filmmaking, you don't need to be an expert or even all that knowledgeable of this style of filmmaking to be wowed by the imagery Fincher and Messerschmidt deliver. Mank looks so impressive that it'll serve as great eye candy for all.

Filtering through the prism of 1940s filmmaking informs the majority of Mank, including another great film score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Though they've delivered sublime work with Fincher on multiple occasions prior, Reznor and Ross don't just rehash the past with their score for Mank. Bound to just instruments that existed in the 1940s, their compositions, many of them short bursts of music, find unexpected ways to enhance the ominous atmosphere of the story. Tracks like The Organ Grinder impressively combine tubas, wind instruments, and even xylophones to instill a sense of unshakable uncertainty in the viewer. 

The level of quality seen in the tone, visuals, and score of Mank is further reflected in other standout elements like a barrage of memorably snappy dialogue exchanges (very reminiscent of classic Hollywood fare like His Girl Friday) and an unforgettable supporting performance from Amanda Seyfried. Conceptually, Mank covers a lot of familiar storytelling territories and it's easy to imagine this extremely long and insular exercise not being everyone's cup of tea. But for me, a fan of both well-executed bleak tones and old movies, Mank just hit all the right buttons. It's not rewriting the book on biopics regarding either classic Hollywood or troubled white dudes. However, Mank does end up having its fair share of revelatory qualities that'll make you glad David Fincher is back directing movies again.

The boldly strange Swallow cements Hayley Bennett as a talented performer

When it comes to Hayley Bennett, call me one of the neutral people from Futurama because "I have no strong feelings whatsoever" on her. This is not me attempting to be too cool for the room or insult Bennett, who seems like a really nice person in interviews. It's just that I haven't been especially bowled over by the performances I've seen from her up to this point, though, to be fair, movies like The Girl on the Train don't really offer any actor anything of substance to do. But now I've gone from neutral to utterly excited about Bennett as a performer thanks to her totally fearless lead performance in Swallow. 

In Swallow, Bennett plays Hunter, a woman who lives a seemingly comfortable life with her wealthy husband, Richie Conrad (Austin Stowell). In reality, Hunter is constantly ignored by Richie and his parents. It's like she's just a prop for him to use and that only grows worse once she realizes that she's pregnant with Richie's kid. To give herself some jolt of life, Hunter begins to develop a fascination for swallowing things like ice cubes, thumbtacks, and marbles. This fascination gradually becomes a fixation as her life with Richie grows more and more unbearable. Swallowing inanimate objects is dangerous but it's still less painful than living with Richie.

So Swallow has a weird premise. This story is presented with nary a wink to the audience in sight. Writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis decides to just go all-in on executing this outlandish plot with a straight face. This all leads down a third-act detour into extremely heavy material involving a traumatic backstory for Hunter. The ambition inherent in this concept is admirable and, luckily, the execution proves even more impressive. Mirabella-Davis lends an eerie but also melancholy and discernibly human aura to Swallow. Those qualities are even more apparent in Bennett's performance, which serves as the lynchpin of the entire proceedings.

Bennett starts out the movie channeling the epitome of a rich wife, someone who could be on magazine covers and stock photos...well, almost. That's the brilliant thing about her lead performance. From the get-go, even before her character starts swallowing things, Bennett finds way to subtly suggest that not everything is alright with Hunter. The characters internal pain comes through even when she's grinning and bearing it during an awkward meal with Richie and his parents. There''s something so tangibly authentic about Bennett's depiction of concealed yet palpable torment. It's a quality that grabs you from the start and never lets go.

As the plot gets more and more outlandish, Bennett continues to imbue Hunter with down-to-Earth qualities. This is especially true in her depiction of Hunter trying to downplay her newfound fascination with eating things. Of course someone, when confronted about this, would shrug it off or try to play it off as "not a big deal". Hunter has spent her whole life being told she doesn't matter, why would she think this does? Bennett's performance effortlessly conveys these harrowing concepts while also fully embracing the utter strangeness of Swallow's central premise. It's hard to imagine Swallow being able to work properly without the character of Hunter working. Luckily, Bennett's work in the role delivers a standout lead performance.

Bennett's strong work is complimented by similarly noteworthy direction from Carlo Mirabella-Davis. I was especially impressed with Mirabella-Davis in regards to how both his writing and direction kept me on pins and needles unsure of where Swallow was going. Commendably, the proceedings never devolve into predictable treacle and nor do they end up spinning their wheels in the service of empty lunacy. Swallow follows its bold storytelling traits right to the very end all while digging deeper and deeper into Hunter as a character. To borrow another Futurama quote, good news everyone! Turns out you can have your cake and eat it too, or in the case of Swallow, have a thoughtful character study that also features a lady eating dirt.

Five Delayed 2020 Movies That Have Somehow Not Gone To Streaming

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has been going on for nine months now. Nine months. While vaccines are on the horizon, it'll still be months until anything even resembling normalcy arrives, if it ever comes. Under such conditions, movie studios have spent much of the pandemic sending big theatrical titles like Soul or The Trial of the Chicago 7 to streaming services. Sometimes, it can feel like everything's headed to streaming or premium video-on-demand. Of course, that's not true. In fact, Hollywood has opted to just delay theatrical release dates for a large number of movies. Some of these, like Black Widow or Candyman, make sense. But others are truly baffling, like the five movies covered in this In Laman's Terms column. How did the new PIXAR movie get sent to streaming before these five titles once set to grace 2020 screens? Let's look at these five titles and the reasons they still haven't been dumped onto Hulu or Amazon.

(Note: all speculation over why these movies haven't gone to streaming is just that: speculation)

Jungle Cruise

First off, Jungle Cruise, a movie that was already experiencing massive delays prior to the pandemic. Originally set for an October 2019 debut, Jungle Cruise was delayed to a July 2020 slot. Disney subsequently delayed the movie a whole year to its current July 30, 2021 date. That'll mean Jungle Cruise will premiere more than three years after it first started filming in May 2018. Considering it's not connected to any of Disney's crown jewel franchises like Marvel Studios or Star Wars, why isn't Jungle Cruise setting a course for Disney+? 

Paying off Jungle Cruise leading man Dwayne Johnson could be part of the issue. When movies head to streaming, studios have to pay off talent for backend deals they now won't be able to get. Johnson gets 15% of the grosses of blockbuster movies he's appearing in. If Jungle Cruise does even half of the business of the 2017 Jumanji movie, it would make nearly $500 million. Johnson's not gonna give up a $75 million payday, maybe that's why Jungle Cruise is staying put in theaters. Plus, there may even be an additional clause in his contract preventing Jungle Cruise from going to streaming. Though it seems like a prime candidate to avoid theaters, Jungle Cruise is sticking around in theaters...for now.

Death on the Nile

We might as well just label this section "20th Century Studios movies". Save for a trio of Fear Street movies and The Woman in the Window, Disney has insisted on titles from the 20th Century Studios labeled sticking to their theatrical release plans. This isn't necessarily because Disney believes the studios output should only be seen on the big screen, after all, 20th Century Studios is making new movies for Disney's Hulu service. However, notice those are new titles. Titles meant for theatrical releases, like Death on the Nile, are bound by 20th Century Studios pay-TV contract with HBO through 2022. If Disney decides to send them to streaming, they don't go to Disney-owned services like Disney+ or Hulu, they'll go to competing streamer HBO Max. Obviously, Disney would much rather have Hercule Peroit snoop around in theaters in 2021.

Monster Hunter

Even with theaters closing around the country, Monster Hunter is still set for a December 25, 2020 theatrical release date. Why is Sony/Screen Gems so intent on launching this one theatrically so soon? Well, Monster Hunter is a quintessential example of an American movie that has its sights set overseas...overseas box office that is. Monster Hunter director Paul W.S. Anderson's last movie, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, made $160 million in China. Monster Hunter makes even half of that in China and it automatically surpasses Tenet to become the biggest American movie of 2020 in China. It would also make Monster Hunter, which cost $60 million to make, well on its way to profitability even in a worldwide marketplace rocked by the pandemic. Whatever it makes domestically is just gravy.

Fatherhood

In an age when even Will Ferrell can't be relied on to launch a comedy movie, Kevin Hart is the kind of steady comedy leading man Hollywood used to thrive on. Since his breakout movie Ride Along, only one of his live-action comedies (About Last Night being the lone exception) has grossed under $65 million while the majority of them have grossed upwards of $80+ million. Given all that, it's no wonder Sony/Columbia has opted to keep his next vehicle, Fatherhood, in theaters. Who knows what the cinematic landscape looks like once the pandemic dies down, but chances are, there'll still be plenty of room for comedies headlined by Hart.

Morbius

Nearly a year ago, Morbius dropped its first trailer. The newest spin-off from Sony's Spider-Man movies had high hopes of kicking off a new franchise in its original July 2020 release date. But early into the pandemic, Sony delayed it to March 19, 2021. Since then, the films been on radio silence, leading to everyone basically forgetting about it. Morbius is doubtlessly heading for another delay considering that the pandemic still hasn't died down and that marketing for it hasn't resumed despite its release being only three months away. What's far less likely is this one finding its way to a streaming platform, especially since there isn't a natural streaming service home for the title. 

Sony/Columbia is the only one of the major American movie studios to not have a sibling streaming service (even Paramount Pictures lives alongside Paramount+). That doesn't mean the studio has totally eschewed sending certain movies, like Greyhound, to streaming but it does make the prospect less attractive. That's especially true when it comes to a big-budget superhero movie. At least if Sony+ existed, sending Morbius there could boost an in-house streaming service. The fact that it's attached to a massive superhero franchise is further incentive for Sony to keep this one on the big screen. Why would Sony sacrifice a Venom-sized worldwide box office haul just to get some quick cash from Apple TV+? No wonder, then, that Morbius is sticking with a theatrical release. 

All aboard top-notch thrills with The Bridge on the River Kwai

A common complaint with many big-budget movies is that they lose sight of normal human beings while chasing all of that spectacle. Director David Lean did his fair share of intimate affairs (like the Katharine Hepburn vehicle Summertime), but his most iconic works have also been his most epic affairs like Lawrence of Arabia. Such productions rarely had the trouble of losing touch with their humanity while delivering enduringly impressive spectacle. You could find proof of this feat all across Lean's work as a filmmaker but especially within his Best Picture-winning production The Bridge on the River Kwai.

The year is 1943. A group of British soldiers has arrived at a Japanese concentration camp located somewhere in Burma. These soldiers are led by Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), the perfect model of a rule-following military man. Overseeing this P.O.W. camp is General Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), who insists that, in a violation of the Genova Convention, all prisoners, including lieutenants, will be put to work on constructing a bridge. Nicholson initially refuses and is put inside a cramped box as punishment for his efforts. Eventually, Nichols relents and begins to throw himself into making this the best bridge you've ever seen. Meanwhile, long-time prisoner Lieutenant Commander Shears (William Holden) has managed to escape the camp, though he'll soon be returning when he's hired to lead an expedition to blow this new bridge up.

Filmed in the CinemaScope format, The Bridge on the River Kwai is a movie all about expansive imagery. The daunting nature of the P.O.W. camp is effectively conveyed just in how Lean uses these massive shots. Every inch of this place and its surrounding jungle is caught in a single image. The viewer never loses sight of how there's danger at every turn for these captured men. Meanwhile, the ambition of the bridge is similarly reflected in extended wide shots that make the scale of this project obvious. Lean loves grandiose imagery, but one reason it never comes at the expense of depth is how there's always a larger character-centric point behind it. The tools at his disposal are being used for a purpose and not for showing off.

Just look at how wider shots are used in early scenes to show how Nicholson can gather the rapt attention of all his men so easily. These shots show Nicholson speaking while a dozen men (plus the jaded Shears) linger around him, listening to his every word. You'd still get the engaging performance from Guinness in a more cramped shot. But by pulling the camera out, one can immediately tell how this guy is a natural-born leader. This effortlessly and stylishly establishes who Nichsolon is early on, which makes the places he's taken to throughout the screenplay by Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson all the more interesting. 

At first, Foreman and Wilson's script is content to undercut Nicholson's initially established personality by emphasizing his vulnerability. Nicholson's time spent in a box leaves him ratty, dirty, and riddled with bruises. To see this guy so obviously worn down by the world is a startling sight. But then things get even more intriguing once Nicholson throws himself into building this bridge. Cut off from the rest of the world after spending decades in the trenches, this railway is now what Nicholson lives for. The character constantly goes down incredibly compelling directions, all brought to life with such vivid believability by Guinness.

In a secondary storyline, Shears leads a group of men back to the place he was held prisoner. This plot includes its own share of enjoyable surprises, including a brilliantly-handled reveal regarding the true identity of Shears. Both plotlines converge in a masterful climax where Shears and his men try to blow up the bridge only for Nicholson to get wise to the plan at the last minute. This whole sequence works as a masterclass in how to execute suspense, particularly as Nicholson gets closer and closer to figuring out what's going on. Lean refusing to cut away from the brutality of this moment (not every character you like gets out of here alive) makes both the suspense and moral complexity of this finale all the more engrossing. Though it's a climax that ends with a big o'l bang, this ending to The Bridge on the River Kwai epitomizes how well Lean could juggle spectacle with intimate stakes.