Marry Me is just what you'd want from an old-school romantic-comedy

 

Shortly after his directorial debut, The Rental, came out, Dave Franco revealed that his next project as a filmmaker would be a romantic-comedy. But not just any entry in the genre, oh no, this would be an "elevated romantic-comedy". Using the same "elevated" term used to describe many modern horror movies, this comment bugged me. The romantic-comedy doesn't need to be "elevated", just make an entry in this genre! Don't be ashamed of it! There's such a self-conciousness in approaching romantic-comedies in this manner, though that quality is totally absent from the new motion picture Marry Me, which is about as traditional of an entry as you can get. That's no complaint, though, and the best moments of this movie suggest why it'd be best for the romantic-comedy to be unapologetically old-school.

Kat Valdez (Jennifer Lopez) is a massively successful singer preparing to get married during a concert to her boyfriend Bastian (Maluma). Charlie Gilbert (Owen Wilson), meanwhile, is a cynical math teacher reeling from divorce whose just concerned with helping his students and daughter. The duo would've likely never crossed pathes, let alone gotten involved in a whirlwind romance, if not for the fateful night Gilbert accompanied a friend to Valdez's big marriage concert. There, Valdez discovered Bastian was cheating on her and then made the impulsive decision to marry a random stranger from the audience. That stranger turned out to be Gilbert, whose now stuck navigating stardom and a possibly blossoming marriage he never could have imagined.

The predictable nature of Marry Me is interwoven into the fabric of the story. You come to a musical for singing and dancing, you come to a superhero movie for the spectacle, and you come to a romantic-comedy for certain story beats. Marry Me is all too happy to provide on that front and that's just fine. A bit more of a problem is an exposition-heavy first act that works a bit too hard to try to justify the outlandish premise. Some of the gags here also fall flat, namelt broad attempts at mimicking jokes from older movies, like yet another instance of someone in a film forgetting to put the cap on a blender. It's an odd problem for a film belonging to a genre that's often as much about the jokes as it is the passionate love affairs.  

Marry Me isn't so much a laugh riot as it is deeply pleasant to watch, which is it's secret weapon. Director Kat Cairo's traditional approach to this movie goes hand-in-hand with a decision to eschew snark or random outbursts of cruelty to see seem savvy to modern-day cynicism. Does it result in hokey moments? Of course, ditto for the inevitable side-effect of too many characters talking in profound kernels of wisdom destined to be shared as generic inspirational quotes on Facebook.  But making Marry Me unabashedly content to just be upbeat escapism proves endearing enough to carry the movie. 

It helps that the feature is capable of delivering entertaining sequences that justify the chipper tone, including a grin-inducing rendenvous in a classroom where dance moves help Mathalon students recite their numbers. The constantly kindhearted energy of the movie also makes the lowkey bonding scenes between Lopez and Wilson's protaganists nice. Their dialogue is about getting to know one another rather than dropping snarky remarks or gratingly coy meta-jokes about romantic-comedy tropes. Even the inevitable second-act downturn in the duo's relationship is smartly built more on quiet detoriation rather than a big explosive argument. 

It's hard to dispute such an agreeable atmosphere that allows actors like Lopez and Wilson plenty of opportunities to shine. Plus, you get a bunch of original tunes from the former performer that aren't all-time great songs, but do work just right as enjoyable pop ditties. I always appreciate when fictional pop stars in movies produce music that's actually solid, makes it easier to buy their in-universe success. Even if it runs too long and the gags can feel more obligatory than hysterical, Marry Me proves a charming and enjoyable watch. Committing to the feel-good version of a familiar genre is so much more fun than being so self-concious about whether you've "elevated" the romantic-comedy enough.

Kimi is a superb technological thriller

It'd be great under any circumstances that Steven Soderbergh, the man behind so many exceptional films, came back from retirement. But it's especially great given how his post-retirment output has been uniformly strong, save for The Laundromat, a weird attempt on Soderbergh's attempt to mimic Adam McKay. This hot streak continues on with aplomb with Kimi, a low-key thriller that shifts between intimate and gleefully fun modes with remarkable skill. The biggest complaint I have with the whole production is that this should've gone to theaters! How come The King's Man got the big screen treatment but not this treat?

Like so many of us in the last two years, Kimi protagonist Angela Childs (Zoe Kravits) works from home. Her job concerns an Alexa-like device called Kimi, with Childs working manually to help fix any miscommunication between this piece of technology and consumers. Listening to so many people's Kimi request is usually a snooze...but then Childs hears something disturbing. A woman getting murdered. But by who? And where? She begins to dig deeper, but finds herself in trouble. Not only is her company uninterested in Childs pursuing this any further, but somebody is hot on her trail and looking to silence her before she can find the answers.

David Koepp doesn't have a spotless track record with thrillers, but when he delivers the goods, he can make something that keeps you glued to the screen and satisfied. Kimi is like a polished version of his 2012 feature Premium Rush, a restrained entry in the thriller genre following a singular protagonist being pursued by relentless embodiments of the privileged class. That film could get a little sidetracked in its non-lienar plot structure, whereas Koepp keeps things cleaner and simpler for Kimi. This allows the focus of the story to remain firmly focused on Angela Childs and her plight. Koepp's streamlined approach really allows the tension of the story to crackle, there's a lack of pointless digressions, not to mention a short and sweet 89 minute runtime, that keeps things consistently intense.

Steven Soderbergh's direction and Peter Andrews' cinematography share the focused nature of Koepp's screenplay. These two are in especially rare form, as they constantly find great ways of visually reinforcing the anxiety that grips Childs when she goes outside. Disorienting lenses, tilted camera angles, and appropriately stomach-churning shades of yellow dominate the frame once Childs ventures beyond her apartment. Their work here in realizing how Childs is always looking over her shoulder evokes 1970s political thrillers, but cinema of the past is merely used as a springboard for something new and exciting. Keeping this story so small-scale hasn't curbed the imagination of these artists, it's only exacerbated their most imaginative impulses.

Sequences of Childs on the run also make heavy use of an original score by Cliff Martinez, reuniting with Soderbergh for the first time since the 2011 film Contagion. It's a welcome reunion since Martinez does outstanding work here. In a wonderful twist, Martinez incorporates several techno-sounding flourishes into his pieces, but also heavily leans on flutes and wind instruments that often make Kimi sound like a movie straight out of the 1960s. It's a wonderfully unique harmonious mixture that conveys so much personality that it's no wonder the movie often forgoes dialogue. Martinez's score has no problem picking up the slack and capturing the interior worlds of these characters. 

All these great writing, filmmaking, and musical touches and Kimi still has the good sense to deliver both a standout Zoe Kravitz lead performance and a great scene where protestors intervene in a potential kidnapping scenario. Kimi's obviously not perfect or a life-changing movie, but boy is it ever a fun and thoughtful thriller. It's the kind of feature that can delicately balance thoughtful, not exploitative, depictions of coping with long-term psychological trauma while also delivering a rousing climactic showdown between good and evil involving a nailgun. Any movie that can deliver both of  those ingredients is A-OK in my book, especially when it's executed through the lens of Steven Soderbergh.

In Laman's Terms: A eulogy for Entertainment Weekly

The 1000th issue of Entertainment Weekly and one of the first issues I ever devoured of the publication

In Laman's Terms is an editorial editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas. Sometimes, it's all about serious subjects, other times it's just some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know Doug's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

For a 12-year-old growing up in the suburban landscape of Allen, Texas, far from the glitzy lights of Hollywood or New York City, it was hard to feel connected to the world of pop culture. Movies provided me so much escape, but what about the world that produced or commented on those films? That all felt so far away. But then I’d go to my uncle’s house and see a stack of Entertainment Weekly magazines, usually featuring a recognizable movie star or TV show on the front cover. Flipping through the pages of these issues, suddenly, everything that once seemed out of my gasp was between my fingers.

My obsession with this publication grew so fervent that it wasn’t long before my uncle bestowed me with an annual subscription to Entertainment Weekly. So begin a love affair that stretched on for more than a decade. My love for pop culture an especially cinema was bolstered by this outlet, with so many fond memories getting attached to individual issues that I refused to throw them out! Clearly, Dotdash Meredith, the company that owns Entertainment Weekly doesn’t quite have the same connection to this publication. This past Wednesday, Dotdash Meredith announced that the magazine iteration of Entertainment Weekly would cease publication. The brand name will live on for the foreseeable future as a website.

While a magazine dedicated to pop culture news people can access on Twitter may seem anachronistic in the modern era, those of us with a fondness for Entertainment Weekly will know why it’s hard to say goodbye to this magazine.

For starters, Entertainment Weekly was shockingly eclectic in the topics they covered. Sure, they loved putting Twilight characters or superheroes on their covers. But look within the issues themselves and one will find a pleasantly surprising assortment of different types of pop culture. Everything from books to music to video games to even stage productions were covered by the dutiful writers of this outlet. Even within the individual media sections of a single issue, a wide variety of projects would get covered. The movie review section, for example, is where I first got exposed to the existence of movies like Synecdoche, New York or filmmakers like Guy Maddin.

This comprehensive approach to different mediums of artistic expression made for enjoyable reading and served as a weekly reminder of just how much art is out there to experience and appreciate. Sure, the internet allows you to access movie reviews at the click of a button, but it doesn’t feel the same. The modern age of Twitter can let you access more information than a single Entertainment Weekly, but algorithms for major social media sites box you in and only regurgitate what you already like or things similar to what you’ve previously enjoyed. By contrast, issues of Entertainment Weekly wasn’t cultivated on a user-by-user basis. They gave readers a comprehensive look at all forms of popular media, in the process exposing them to new things they may have never even known about otherwise.

Just as influential was how Entertainment Weekly made the behind-the-scenes process of Hollywood moviemaking digestible. The language used in pieces from this magazine was designed to appeal to a broad range of readers and not just people who were already knowledgeable about every part of the filmmaking experience. For teenage me, these magazines were a reliable way to understand how the films I liked or disliked came to be. It wasn’t even like I was the only person to be impacted by Entertainment Weekly in this manner. In an interview for the magazine for his 2008 movie Tropic Thunder, Ben Stiller commented that Entertainment Weekly made enough people conscious of the behind-the-scenes world of Hollywood that a movie like Tropic Thunder could resonate with mainstream audiences.

Something else Entertainment Weekly exposed me to? Writers. Lots of great writers. I’m not even just talking about the immensely talented collection of regular reviewers for the outlet, like Lisa Schwarzbaum. When I was growing up, Entertainment Weekly had an editorial in each issue penned by a famous face, with these writers ranging from Stephen King to Diablo Cody. This was my first exposure to King’s writing, not through a horror novel but his declaration that Junior Mints eaten with toothpicks were the quintessential movie theater snack. Getting to digest so many types of writing styles from such distinctive writers opened my eyes to a whole new style of writing.

The benefits of Entertainment Weekly magazines aren’t just limited to what was within the pages of individual issues. One of the greatest parts of this publication was the human being I associated with them. My Uncle Doug turned me onto Entertainment Weekly, a publication that ended up playing a pivotal part in me pursuing a career as a film critic. Even more importantly, receiving these magazines has been a great way to be reminded of his presence even after he passed away in July 2017. Hard to believe he’s been gone for almost five years. Even harder to believe that yet another way of me connecting with him is gone.

But the memories I have of bonding with him over articles, covers, reviews, and everything else in Entertainment Weekly, those aren’t going anywhere.

In talking about the demise of Entertainment Weekly, Mark Harris, a former writer for the publication, wisely said he’d learned long ago “not to be sentimental about businesses, brands, titles.” It’s a good lesson and one that’s guided me in processing my sadness over the Entertainment Weekly magazine being no more. What I’ll really miss here isn’t so much the brand name or even physical magazine of Entertainment Weekly, but the voices of talented writers, the artists these issues exposed me to, the career field this magazine pushed me towards pursuing, and especially the people this magazine brought me even closer to. Like the fond memories I have with my uncle, those positive aftereffects of the Entertainment Weekly magazine won't be vanishing anytime soon.  

Death on the Nile comes alive when it gets around to being a murder mystery

Not even a pandemic could keep the great detective Hercule Poirot away. The fictional mystery novel character that Agatha Christie created back in 1920 has had several cinematic incarnations over the years. The most recent has been a take performed and directed by Kenneth Branagh that premiered in the 2017 film Murder of the Orient Express. Turning into a tidy box office hit, it was only a matter of time before Branagh set his sights on adapting another one of Poirot's countless literary escapades. Though several different factors (including Branagh's commitments to a role in Tenet and the COVID-19 pandemic) kept on delaying a follow-up, such a project has finally arrived in the form of Death on the Nile. 

After a prologue detailing Poirot's time in World War I, Death on the Nile picks up in 1937, with this detective on an overdue holiday in Egypt. A chance encounter with old friend Bouc (Tom Bateman) at the pyramids of Giza leads to Poirot get invited to a sizzling wedding between Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer) and Linnet Ridgeway-Doyle (Gal Gadot). It's all a big party full of extravagant gestures, including taking all the guests on a boat on the Nile. Glitz turns to gruesome, though, when a murder occurs on this boat. With each of the people onboard harboring some kin of grudge for the deceased, Poirot must spring into action. It's time to solve another murder before this killer can strike again. 

An unexpected benefit of Death on the Nile is how it makes one appreciate a tiny but significant detail about Knives Out. I never truly absorbed it before, but that Rian Johnson movie ingeniously kicks off with the inciting murder. That's a perfect beginning for a murder mystery. The corpse has been established, now we can get to the fun stuff where a detective parses out all the motives behind the assorted suspects. Johnson wastes no time in his script, with the only drawback to this clever structural touch being that it makes the pacing issues in something like Death on the Nile more apparent.

Screenwriter Michael Green dedicates this movies first half to table-setting, which wouldn't be bad except the individual here function much better as murder suspects than people in a hangout movie. Very arch character dynamics are rehashed over and over again while everyone, including the sleuth himself, talks in ham-fisted dialogue about the internal angst Poirot deals with on a daily basis. Branagh and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos also shoot these early sequences in a tepid fashion. Despite featuring some lavish costumes and potentially glamorous locales, simple dialogue exchanges are framed with little imagination while the poor green-screen work proves distracting.

Once the murder happens, though, Death on the Nile does finally get some life. It doesn't turn out to be the second coming of Knives Out, but Branagh is much more comfortable doing a melodramatic mystery than he is with the more restrained conversations that have dominated the film up to this point. Striking uses of shadows and darker lighting populate the scenes where Poirot grills potential murder suspects. Meanwhile, unique spaces on the boat, namely a meat freezer to store the corpse, provide appropriately claustrophobic backdrops for these interactions. Green's script sn't impossible to crack in terms of what's going on, but he does keep things well-paced and isn't afraid to lean into enjoyably showy executions of big twists and turns. 

The high drama of this section of the story is also a boon for several of the actors, who excel with much jucier flamboyant material. Sophie Okonedo is my pick for the movies MVP as blues singer Salome Otterbourne, she's a lot of fun with her "I do declare!" accent and a strong sense of conviction. Really, Death on the Nile is at its best whenever it decides to let its freak flag fly, particualrly in a bunch of sexually aggressive dancing in the film's opening scene. So often Death on the Nile opts to play things in a monotone manner that these instances of sudden sexuality or flowery acting stand out in an entertaining fashion.

Death on the Nile isn't good enough to suggest that Branagh's take on Poirot should run for countless installments. However, once it gets to being a murder mystery, it's a reasonably competent entry in the genre that'll deliver what audiences want. Maybe next time, though, take a cue from Knives Out and just start things off with a murderous bang. 

Nominee Predictions for the 94th Academy Awards

 

The 94th Academy Awards are almost upon us and tomorrow morning the nominations for this ceremony will be announced. How will this staple of the film scene frustrate, excite, and inspire other complicated emotions in all of us again? Who knows, but I've posted my predictions for the nominees for each category below. Due to time constraints, this is a very stripped-down nominations prediction piece, I don't have in-depth reasons in each section explaining why I picked my predicted nominees. Save for Best Picture nominees being in alphabetic order, the films are also arranged in a random manner, they are not ranked by most likely to get nominated to least likely.

Onto the nominees!

Best Picture:

Belfast

CODA

Don’t Look Up

Drive My Car

Dune

King Richard

The Power of the Dog

Licorice Pizza

Tick, Tick…Boom!

West Side Story

Best Director:

Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)

Kenneth Branagh (Belfast)

Denis Villeneuve (Dune)

Steven Spielberg (West Side Story)

Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car)

Best Actor

Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog)

Andrew Garfield (Tick, Tick…Boom!)

Denzel Washington (The Tragedy of Macbeth)

Leonardo DiCaprio (Don’t Look Up)

Will Smith (King Richard)

(Oh please for the love of God, let Nicolas Cage in Pig get in over DiCaprio in Don't Look Up)

Best Actress:

Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos)

Olivia Coleman (The Lost Daughter)

Penelope Cruz (Parallel Mothers)

Lady Gaga (House of Gucci)

Kristen Stewart (Spencer)

Best Supporting Actor:

Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog)

Ciaran Hinds (Belfast)

Troy Kotsur (CODA)

Bradley Cooper (Licorice Pizza)

Jesse Plemons (The Power of the Dog)

Best Supporting Actress:

Caitríona Balfe (Belfast)

Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard)

Arianna DeBose (West Side Story)

Ruth Negga (Passing)

Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog)

Best Original Screenplay:

Licorice Pizza

Belfast

Being the Ricardos

Don’t Look Up

Parallel Mothers

Best Adapted Screenplay:

The Power of the Dog

CODA

The Lost Daughter

West Side Story

Drive My Car

Best Cinematography:

Dune

The Power of the Dog

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Belfast

The Green Knight

Best Editing:

Dune

The Power of the Dog

Belfast

West Side Story

Summer of Soul

Best Animated Feature:

Encanto

Flee

The Mitchells vs. The Machines

Luca

Raya and the Last Dragon

Best Original Score:

Dune

The Power of the Dog

Encanto

Parallel Mothers

Don’t Look Up

Best Original Song:

No Time to Die

Encanto

King Richard

Don’t Look Up

Annette           

Best Visual Effects:

Dune

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Godzilla vs. Kong

No Time to Die

Best Documentary Feature:

Summer of Soul

Flee

The Rescue

Procession

Attica

Best International Feature:

Drive My Car

A Hero

Flee

The Worst Person in the World

Compartment No. 6

Best Makeup/Hairstyling

Cruella

Dune

The Eyes of Tammy Faye

West Side Story

House of Gucci

Best Costume Design

Dune

West Side Story

Cruella

Nightmare Alley

House of Gucci

Best Sound:

The Power of the Dog

West Side Story

No Time to Die

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Dune

Best Production Design:

Nightmare Alley

West Side Story

The French Dispatch

Belfast

Dune

Best Visual Effects:

Dune

No Time to Die

Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Godzilla vs. Kong

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Best Animated Short Film

Us Again

Robin Robin

Bestia

The Windshield Wiper

Namoo

Best Documentary Short Film

Lynching Posts: "Tales of a Great Day"

Day of Rage 

Three Songs for Benazir 

Coded: The Hidden Love of J.C. Leyendecker 

The Queen of Basketball

Best Live-Action Short Film

Tala'vision

Please Hold

When The Sun Sets

Frimas

The Criminals

Subpar visuals drag the intermittingly enjoyable Moonfall back down to Earth

 

In 1902, director George Meleis delivered a breakthrough motion picture titled A Trip to the Moon. Though quaint by today's standards, this was the birth of science-fiction cinema told through visual effects techniques that still register as impressive today. In 2022, the art form of filmmaking returned to the moon through Roland Emmerich's Moonfall. No rockets plunge into anyone's eyes here and the visual effects are often of noticeably worse quality than they were in 1902. Another key difference? That earlier Meleis movie was merely interested in exploring the moon. This new feature from director Roland Emmerich is all about the moon plunging towards Earth...among other things.

Former astronaut Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) had a devastating experience while fixing a satellite ten years ago. This event, which consisted of an encounter with some indescribable mechanical being seemingly descended from those Big Hero 6 nanobots, cost the life of a fellow astronaut and Harper's reputation. Now disgraced in the modern world, Harper is soon called back into action by conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman (John Bradley). Everyone called this guy a loon for thinking that the moon was a megastructure housing larger organisms or machines. Turns out, he was right and now the moon is headed straight for our planet. 

Partnering up with former co-worker Jocinda Fowler (Halle Berry), Harper is now determined to save the planet and outwith the malevolent being living inside the moon. Oh, and Donald Sutherland shows up for one exposition dump scene, presumably reprising his role from Max Dugan Returns.

On the spectrum of disaster movies, Moonfall is better than the cluttered Geostorm, though both show the dangers of splitting these disaster movie stories across Earth's surface and the cosmos. It's not as good as the relentlessly cheesy 2012, which practically browbeat viewers into submission with an avalanche of nonsense, or Armageddon and its erotic animal crackers. Moonfall is probably on par with San Andreas among modern disaster movie contemporaries. They're competent in dishing out big things going boom and not being too grim, but both struggle with humans lacking in likable personality and their visual effects.

When it comes to flaws specific to Moonfall, the big problem here is that Emmerich isn't in top form dishing out sequences showing big cities devastated by big disasters. For example, when a wave of water begins to crush Los Angeles, it's depicted in a detached wide shot with little pomp and circumstance. Even the score by Thomas Wander and Harald Kloser can't be bothered to ramp up the excitement. A third-act segment depicting New York getting crumbled by moon debris is similarly flatly-realized in every respect. We don't know any Moonfall characters residing in New York, so there's no emotional investment in its destruction, while the camerawork and imagery in the scene are lacking in imagination.

On the plus side, the sequences that actually do lean into fun imagery at least register as especially exciting. When you haven't drank anything for a while, any water will be tasty! A scene where a gigantic wave, with portions of the wave reaching for the sky like tiny cyclones, attacking a rocket launch is a fun idea executed with visual panache. The camera isn't afraid to get up close and personal with the watery threat, we actually know the people at risk, and the juxtaposition of Apollo 11 with a wave straight out of The Perfect Storm is an entertaining image. Emmerich seems to get more of a pulse once he's up in the stars and our three leads navigate what's going on with the moon.

The distinctive production design (apparently the interior of the moon looks like a set from Tron: Legacy by way of the Apple store) and the screenwriters just throwing out a ton of over-the-top twists and turns makes the moon-set scenes of Moonfall the best part of the movie. The preceding sequences, heavy on character interactions, aren't torturous, but they do feel like hollow echoes of past Emmerich features. Yet another antagonistic stepdad, yet another chase scene set against an apocalyptic backdrop, more divorced parents just trying to work together as the world ends. Nobody's expecting human drama on par with Drive My Car in a movie called Moonfall, but I did find myself wishing Emmerich would find new archetypes or family dynamics to explore.

One departure from earlier Emmerich works is that it looks downright awful in the Earthbound scenes. Nearly every exterior scene set on our planet is inexplicably filmed in front of an obvious green screen. Just do the rear projection technique if your green-screen work is going to look this bad. Meanwhile, the interior sets are usually draped in obnoxiously dim lighting. Possibly an attempt to visually reflect the uncertain atmosphere created by NASA keeping secrets about the moon (yes, that's a plot point), it just makes Moonfall look murky. The humor here is also a step down from other Emmerich movies. Big gag lines went over like a lead balloon at my screening, probably because nobody in the cast has the comic chops as Will Smith in Independence Day or Woody Harrelson in 2012.  

Though this barrage of critiques may make it sound like I had no fun with Moonfall, that's actually not true. As a disaster movie devotee, I was only intermittently bored. Emmerich's smart enough to keep delivering destruction at regular intervals throughout the runtime and several dramatic lines that miss the mark do deliver chuckles. Plus, the bursts of originality and cynicism-free execution of big grand gestures on the part of humanity in the third act are fun to watch. The problems that drag down Moonfall from being the next Independence Day aren't its lack of scientific accuracy or hokey performances. Rather, the issues here are Emmerich leaning too heavily on familiar narrative elements and especially the sometimes downright atrocious visual scheme of the affair. Too messy to live up to its fullest potential, Moonfall will probably make some disaster movie connoisseurs happy while proving painless, though instantly forgettable, for everyone else. The jury is still out on what George Meleis would've thought of it.

Flee is a deeply human and powerful feature

 

In the early minutes of Flee, director and interviewer Jonas Poher Rasmussen asks Amin Nawabi what his definition of home is. For Nawabi, it's somewhere you feel safe, somewhere you can be yourself. Nawabi hasn't had the luxury of having a place to call home for so much of his life. Born in Afghanistan, he left the country at a young age with his family. Having stifled his memories and experiences related to this section of his life for so long, a grown Nawabi, now a public speaker, academic, and on the verge of getting married to his boyfriend, decides that now is the time. He will relay his past. The years that shaped him are packed with traumatic experiences, including his family's time being shuffled around by human traffickers, the only people who can get them in and out of certain countries.

Watching Flee isn't just getting a glimpse into one man's past. This documentary also offers a window into how his present psyche has been molded by the horrors of childhood. The gulf between who Nawabi was and who he is gets crystallized early on in a devastating moment where Nawabi uncovers a journal he wrote in when he first came to Denmark as a teenager. Opening up the pages and trying to read aloud what he once penned, Nawabi observes that he can no longer fluently read the language he wrote these passages in. What once came so naturally to him is now a stranger. The passage of time is suddenly all too apparent for this man and the viewer. 

The anecdotes Nawabi presents are bursting with raw emotion, with Rasmussen wisely preserving any imperfections in Nawabi's voice as he tells these stories. A slight pause, lingering on one word for a moment too long, those emotion-driven instances of vulnerability lend humanity to this narration. They're a reminder of the vividly-detailed person who experienced what's filling up the frame. Flee's willingness to also shine a light on the imperfect moments in Nawabi's life coming from disagreements with his husband further effectively humanize the film's central subject. There's almost something comforting about bearing witness to these interactions, as, even after all the horrors Nawabi has experienced, he's capable of having relationship problems like anyone else.

These and nearly every other part of Flee (save for brief bursts of live-action archival news footage) are told through animation. It took me a moment to get used to the animation, which skips frames to create intentionally jerky movements for the human characters. This eventually works well as a visual reflection of how the mind can forget things even in important circumstances. Just as the animation forgets certain movements in between a character's hand gestures, so too can we forget integral details of the past. Plus, it isn't long before your eyes adjust to the unique qualities in this style of hand-drawn animation. The jerkiness becomes just another part of the visual tapestry that Flee is weaving. 

Even more remarkable in the animation is when Flee opts to deviate from its default style. These usually come in intense moments to accentuate danger and manifest through a monochromatic color scheme dominating the frame while all the characters are suddenly realized through figures so sparsely detailed that they can even lack eyeballs. The stripped-down quality of these segments conveys a haunting aura appropriate for some of the most devastating moments of Nawabi's anecdotes. Their uniqueness in the context of Flee's visuals also allows these parts to stand out in the minds of viewers, a sensation evocative of how they're used to tell stories that Nawabi similarly can't forget about it.

Animation is a medium with limitless possibilities but is usually only used for crass purposes designed to make corporations more money. Flee is a reminder of the glorious capabilities of this method of storytelling. Animation allows Nawabi's past, which wasn't captured through camcorder footage or old family photos, to finally be seen. It also offers Nawabi something at least emulating a home, with the confines of Flee affording him the chance to feel safe enough to be vulnerable and open about his experiences.  While far from the first animated documentary (Waltz with Bashir is another great example of this subgenre), Flee is an especially great example of the richly human filmmaking that can emerge when animation is used for loftier purposes.

Belle is one of the more thoughtful cinematic takes on the internet

This will be a real quick review since I'm juggling Sundance Film Festival obligations and the start of a new graduate school semester right now.

This is an awesome movie! What especially struck me about Belle is that it's one of the few movies that seem to "get" the internet, its inherently chaotic nature, and how to properly reflect that in a film. Projects like Ralph Breaks the Internet keep trying to tether the inner workings of the internet to a parallel to recognizably human environments like your average workspace or a library. But within the social media service U, it's just mayhem, avatars speeding along the screen without any rhyme, reason, while the closest thing to "protectors" this domain has can appear at any moment. There's randomness here, not to mention a leaning in into the inherently stylized nature of animation, that captures the unpredictability of navigating an average day on the internet.

It's also fascinating to see the various animation styles collide within the domain of U, which also functions as a great visual manifestation of the variety of people and perspectives you can encounter on the web. It also makes for a great contrast with the real world, which is coated in a singular visual scheme and a more restrained color palette. These sequences strike a fine balance between emphasizing a sense of normalcy without sacrificing an ability to conjure up well-blocked shots or evocative imagery. Much like Sean Baker or Lucrecia Martel, writer/director Mamoru Hosoda understands that conveying a sense of everyday reality doesn't mean you have to throw out your ability to create interesting imagery.

One of the stealthily impressive parts of Hosada's screenplay comes from how the well-rounded nature of the supporting characters sneaks up on you. It isn't until the final half-hour arrives and everyone converges together to help fulfill one goal that I realized just how enjoyable everyone from the protagonist's adult lady friends to a himbo classmate was. Making this many characters seem engaging while juggling a deeply personal central story about coping with past trauma, not to mention incorporating all the fantastical elements related to the U universe, makes Hosada's writing here truly exceptional. 

Best of all, it's cool to get a movie about the internet that see's the potential for this tool to bring people together. There are obviously insidious parts about the internet, particularly when big corporations like Facebook turn a blind eye to festering swamps of white supremacy. But the internet can also be a wonderful way for people to bond, to discover new interests, and to bring out new parts of yourself. Belle is conscious of the darker parts of the internet experience, but it's also an ode to all the possibilities that exist within the realm of the online. Such possibilities are explored through thoughtful writing and extraordinary animation to make for a remarkable viewing experience.

Scream is a conflicted but mostly fun slasher sequel

So much has changed in the last two years. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the world as we know it and reinforced so many problems in our society (namely ones related to wealth inequality and how we treat working-class jobs) that were always hiding in plain sight. Change is good, obviously, especially when it's related to altering systemically-ingrained problems that harm the proletariat. But the avalanche of uncertainty that greets each new day in the pandemic does make the idea of a new Scream movie, on paper, a cozy one. Who knows what new horrors this unending health crisis will bring, but I know what the beats of a Scream film are! That sounds like just the ticket! 

Though intended to bring some of that comforting familiarity to slasher movie fans, Scream is very much rooted in the pop culture world of 2021. Everything's changed for scary movies since Scream 4 graced multiplexes in April 2011, let alone when the original Scream hit theaters in 1996. In the time between the fourth and fifth Scream installments, The Purge and Conjuring franchises were born while Jordan Peele has gone from being a sketch comedy pro to the face of the genre. The new status quo is made apparent right away, when just minutes into the runtime of 2022's Scream, Tara Carpenter (Janna Ortega) references her fondness for The Babadook and "elevated horror".

Carpenter won't have any time to soak in the finer details of the new Ti West or Brandon Cronenberg movies, though, since this Woodsboro teenager is promptly attacked by Ghostface. Her estranged older sister, Samantha (Melissa Barerra, good to see the In the Heights leads getting further major work), returns to Woodsboro with boyfriend Richie (Jack Quaid) in tow upon hearing this devastating news. Once she gets there, she realizes that somebody is picking off people in Tara's friend group one by one. To fight this new iteration of the Ghostface killer, Samantha calls upon the help of reclusive former sheriff Dewey (David Arquette). And if Dewey's tracking down masked killers, well, Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) and Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) can't be far behind...

I mentioned at the outset of this review that the familiarity of a new Scream movie sounds, on paper, like a balm in these uncertain times. Imagine my surprise, then, to discover that the weakest parts of this installment come when it adheres too closely to both the original 1996 Scream as well as other legacy sequels (I'm not using the term "lequel"). While commenting on the hallmarks of films like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Terminator: Dark Fate, Scream ends up indulging in these very same elements. In trying to have its cake and eat it too, Scream sometimes feeds moviegoers a juicy cake, but other times just spills everything on the floor. This also injects a bit too much familiarity into the production, which is just not what you want in horror filmmaking, a genre that's all about surprises.

Thankfully, for the most part, Scream does remain a fun horror movie, with much of this coming from screenwriters James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick making sure to focus primarily on new characters above all others. These newbies are given new personalities and interior struggles that ensure they're not just rehashes of old Scream personalities, save for one teenager who proves to be a smart modern equivalent to Randy Meeks. Samantha and Tara's estranged relationship is an especially smart dynamic to anchor the film on to immediately differentiate themselves from the internal horrors Sydney was navigating in the original Scream titles. 

Meanwhile, directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, fresh from their work on the rousing 2019 horror/comedy Ready or Not, also leave a distinct mark in their filmmaking compared to the late great Wes Craven (who helmed all four preceding installments in this saga). The duo establishes this identity by defining many of the big scary set pieces through a sense of playfulness. They stretch out big scary sequences, including the obligatory cold opening, nearly to their breaking point as you wait for something to pop out of nowhere, but in a way that charms and gives you some shivers rather than frustrates. I also enjoyed the fun recurring visual motif where something in the background of a mundane character exchange will resemble Ghostface (a black cloak with a pale white face) but it's just some mundane objects, like garden tools or a coat. The fact that the movie never comments on this makes it an extra fun touch that amplifies the devilishly devious nature of Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillet's approach to the scares of Scream.

Much like the 2018 Halloween movie, Scream feels torn between being something extra subversive and also delivering the requisite element of the franchise it belongs to. Luckily, there are enough fun scares, not to mention solid performances from cast members new and old (David Arquette is the MVP of the legacy performers) to keep you entertained despite the production's jagged nature. It can't hold a candle to the original in terms of scares or The Matrix Resurrections in terms of commentary on legacy sequels. However, unlike Scream 3 and Scream 4, this new Scream does feel like it has more to say than just asking fans of the franchise to give them some more money. I had a fun time watching it and I suspect die-hard devotees of this series will find it an especially rewarding experience.

Asghar Farhadi delivers another great film with A Hero

 

A little over a decade ago, filmmaker Asghar Farhadi delivered A Separation, one of those widely-acclaimed features you watch years after it first hit theaters and discover that it's even better than the years of hype would suggest. With this project, Farhadi weaved a story about a morally complicated man navigating a divorce and potential murder charges. The questions of morality, truth, and justice were heavy in this film and Farhadi managed to navigate such weighty queries with a stunningly deft hand. Though his newest directorial effort, A Hero, isn't as good as A Separation (what is?), it's another slice of morally complicated cinema that will make you grateful Farhadi is around on the filmmaking scene.

Like so many great cautionary tales about morality, A Hero begins with a bag of money. In this case, it's a bag of coins, which have been discovered by the sister of Rahim (Amir Jadidi) at a bus station. Once Rahim comes home on parole, he considers using the coins to help pay off some suffocating debts that are crushing his life. However, he opts instead to return them to their owner, a choice that leads him to be declared a hero by his local community. However, as the days go on, and Rahim tries to get employment, his newfound image begins to unravel. One little falsehood after another keeps getting revealed in this situation that ensures that Rahim's already difficult life will only be getting harder from here.

Though the premise seems ripe for big grand dramatic events, A Hero takes its storytelling cues from prior Farhadi films in shaping its plot around small incidents that add up over time. To watch Rahim's world gradually crumble is to watch a series of dominos slowly but surely tumble rather than just one explosion going off in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it fashion. The glacial approach to conflict allows viewers a chance to understand how Rahim and his loved ones are responding to each new setback in their lives. It also allows viewers to appreciate and understand how the tiniest details can come back to haunt someone. There's no line of dialogue here that's wasted, everything serves a purpose. 

It's also a welcome trait that Farhadi refuses to pigeonhole even aggressive supporting characters as just broad caricatures of villainy. A brother-in-law, whom Rahim owes a significant amount of money, is the primary source of the anti-Rahim sentiment in earlier parts of A Hero. However, his quarrels with this ex-con are not unfounded, there's an understandable weariness to his behavior and dialogue that makes it believable why he'd be so slow to believe this man has undergone a drastic change of heart. By allowing the individuals who populate A Hero to remain fleshed-out people, its grappling with moral quandaries can be all the more interesting. 

The nuanced storytelling is told through equally thoughtful filmmaking from Farhadi, whose camera often finds such ingenious ways to use camera placement and blocking to accentuate the inner lives of the principal characters of A Hero. The final shot, especially, is a haunting piece of work contrasting shadows with a small doorway of bright light. No one needs to utter a word of dialogue for the underlying meaning of this moment to bowl you over. That may be the apex of A Hero's visuals, but there are tons of other shots and images throughout the runtime that prove similarly impressive in terms of being as detailed as the central moral quandary.

All of these details culminate in a third act that begins to lean a bit too hard on more obvious moral shadings, including a climactic scene involving Rahim's son (who has a speech impediment) that isn't bad but does feel easier to navigate in terms of "is this good or bad?" compared to the more intricate story that preceded it. Aside from these climactic stumbles, though, A Hero resonates as another powerful and insightful work from Asgar Farhadi, who has a gift for tapping into the complexities that define everyday life. It's impossible to boil down people to "good" or "bad" labels, but it is much easier to boil down movies as well-made as A Hero into the label of "great".

Hotel Transylvania: Transformania is a monstrously forgettable animated sequel

 

The binary nature of online film criticism can often boil movies down to being either the best thing ever or the absolute worse creation foisted on an unsuspecting Earth. Hotel Transylvania: Transformania is an unexpected reminder of why nuance is a necessary ingredient in these kinds of discussions. The fourth installment in the long-running Hotel Transylvania franchise isn't necessarily bad, even by the standards of animated kid's movie sequels. But boy is it perfunctory. The whole film feels like an obligation, resulting in a viewing experience that isn't torturous so much as it is instantly forgettable.

Dracula (Brian Hull, taking over the role from Adam Sandler) is preparing to finally retire after running the titular Hotel Transylvania for centuries. He's decided to leave this vacation destination to his daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) and, by proxy, her human husband Johnny (Andy Samberg). Dismayed at the thought of a goofball like Johnny taking over his beloved hotel, Dracula tells his son-in-law that he can't legally hand over the place to a human. This results in Johnny using a magical crystal to turn himself into a dragon while the fantastical object also manages to turn Dracula and his cohorts into humans. Reversing these spells will require a dangerous trek to South America to pursue a new crystal while also forcing Dracula and Johnny to work together.

After Hotel Transylvania: Summer Vacation finally gave this series some comedic oomph by focusing squarely on absurdist gags and strange visuals, Transformania, unfortunately, brings things down to Earth again. For one thing, Dracula and Johnny are back to being antagonistic with each other like all the other sequels never happened. It's never a good sign when comedy sequels just backtrack character development to justify lazy narratives (see: Anchorman 2). Meanwhile, turning the monsters into humans largely removes any chances of doing monster-centric gags that could only work in this franchise. The majority of the jokes are instead focused on generic beats related to the monsters dealing with everyday human ailments like loss of hair, mosquito bites, and not being able to fly. 

Transformania also stunningly miscalculates where its strengths lie by turning over a shocking amount of screentime to poignant moments. This includes a nails-on-the-chalkboard monologue in the climax from Dracula meant to wrap up the primary emotional storyline of the whole production. But does anyone care about the Hotel Transylvania crew to this degree? Leave the big moments of pathos to PIXAR movies. Across this series, the best Hotel Transylvania moments have been ones leaning on slapstick and visual gags that could only be accomplished in animation. Nobody comes to these movies to cry. Given that, it's a bummer Transformania tries so hard to be a tearjerker and comes off so hollow in its attempts at these beats to boot.

It's not all necessarily a wash, of course. There are some fun character designs to be found in translating recognizable monsters like The Mummy or The Wolfman into everyday humans. Meanwhile, the colorful animation remains as vibrant as ever. Returning voice performers like Kathryn Hahan admirably refuse to sleepwalk through an easy paycheck gig. Meanwhile, though Genndy Tartakovsky has left directorial duties this time around to Jennifer Kluska and Derek Drymon, it's nice that Transformania maintains its predecessor's love for squashing and stretching computer-generated characters to their limits. Plus, young kids are bound to still like Transformania, it'll work fine as a babysitter. 

That's about the highest compliment I could pay this newest installment in the Hotel Transylvania saga, though. The whole thing's just a miscalculated exercise that feels especially strained on a storytelling level, with Transformania constantly feeling like it's sweating to figure out how to stretch its premise to a feature-length runtime. This is exemplified by how 19 minutes of Transformania's 97-minute length is comprised of credits. Though obviously not the worst movie of all time, Hotel Transylvania: Transformania is an exceedingly disposable enterprise, one that not even Adam Sandler could be bothered to show up for. 

You'll wanna say hi, hi, hi to Red Rocket

 

After Tangerine and The Florida Project delivered riveting tales about everyday, morally complicated people navigating the hardships of poverty, without having said poverty be their defining quality, I thought I knew what to expect from a movie by writer/director Sean Baker. And then he throws the ultimate cinematic curveball in the form of Red Rocket. Baker has maintained the naturalistic settings and use of non-professional actors from his preceding works, but this otherwise feels like a different beast. A dark comedy that's bound to make you squeamish, Red Rocket distinguishes itself from prior Baker movies, though the compulsively watchable nature of the production will be familiar to anyone whose watched Tangerine and The Florida Project.

Mikey Davis (Simon Rex) is not an upstanding person. Not because he's a former pornstar, oh no. Davis isn't trustworthy because of how he views every person who crosses his path as just a means to his own end. He begins Red Rocket by stumbling off a bus in a bruised state in Texas City, his hometown, and someplace he hasn't been in years. His mission here? Well, firstly, he's gonna hit up his ex-wife for a place to crash. From there, Davis alienates all potential employment opportunities and resorts to selling weed so that he can make some rent money to pay off his spouse and her mom. As he looks around for other people to exploit, he begins dating a 17-year-old by the name of Raylee/Strawberry (Suzanna Son). Like I said, Davis is not a good guy.

Red Rocket is an excellent example of how to make a film with an unlikeable protagonist work as the lead of a movie for two hours. Perhaps the most important reason is something that isn't in the film: backstory. Not once does Baker attempt to give audiences a sob story to explain why Davis is the way he is. Similarly, there aren't even feigned gestures at the idea of a tidy redemption arc that could pack his life into a neat three-act structure. Heck, the audience doesn't even get the full details on how Davis ended up so beaten up when he arrived in Texas City. Davis is an enigma, his abhorrent behavior is just part of who he is. By not trying to provide a rationale for Davis, Baker makes this character click together. This fellow works so much better as an inexplicable tornado than anything else.

It also helps that Simon Rex is electrifying in the lead role, holy cow. Rex portrays Mikey Davis as someone who's always talking yet not saying much. He exudes a confident air, but he always portrays the character, on a physical level, like he could crumble if a strong breeze came along. There's an undeniably fascinating contradiction here, a dude who thinks he's Harold Hill, but in reality, is circling a drain. This compelling personality is executed with live-wire energy from Rex, who harnesses a motormouth dialogue delivery yet such realistically awkward body language in portraying this idiosyncratic guy. A trainwreck manifested as a human being, Davis is always repulsive, but Rex's performance ensures you can't keep your eyes off of him.

Rex's performance plays off a variety of natural Texas City locales that make for a great contrast to the character of Mikey Davis. This guy's always got his head stuck in delusion of enormous grandeur, but he's waltzing around small homes, tiny businesses, and other locations whose physical imperfections reflect the unavoidable reality Davis ignores. These environments are often peppered with bright hues, including an important donut shop coated in vivid yellow or a series of houses near a beach that are adorned in shades of blue and red. This color palette makes Red Rocket a pleasing affair in terms of cinematography (props to Drew Daniels on that part of the production) while the colors themselves look great captured on 16mm film.

Red Rocket is so good that even its choice to set its story against the 2016 presidential election comes off as a thoughtful detail rather than an intrusive strained grasp at relevancy. With speeches from Donald Trump and Ted Cruz blaring on TV's throughout the film, it's interesting to hear their commentary played in close proximity to the newest lying diatribe from Davis. There are chilling parallels here, as Red Rocket quietly suggests that the manipulative behavior of its protagonist is no anomaly. Rather, Davis is emblematic of how much white guys can get away with in American society. Having a moment where Davis races past an American and Texas flag while naked in the climax of Red Rocket only sends home how much this guy is supposed to represent the country he's living in. 

There's a lot going on underneath the surface of Red Rocket, but impressively, Baker manages to pull off noteworthy feats of filmmaking and sociopolitical commentary with ease and without undercutting experiencing this feature in the moment. The barrage of unsavory behavior and successful dark humor makes Red Rocket an entertaining film, the kind that can keep your eyeballs engaged in the moment but then leave you impressed with the details informing all that entertainment afterward. It's not quite as good as his last two films, but Sean Baker has delivered another uncomfortable yet well-crafted winner with Red Rocket. 

No tragic disappointment to be found in the excellent The Tragedy of Macbeth

We've done Macbeth on film. A lot. Even more than that, honestly. It's been adapted in so many ways in cinema over the years that it's hard to imagine that we'd need another one. History will tell if Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth is indeed essential to the canon of William Shakespeare film adaptations. Right now, though, I can say it's plenty good enough to justify returning to familiar territory. Much like Steven Spielberg's West Side Story remake, The Tragedy of Macbeth takes a tale you know and makes it seem brand-new again. Impressively, Coen does this without gimmicky updates or attempts to make the text "cool". 

While out beyond his kingdom's borders, Macbeth (Denzel Washington) is informed by a witch (Kathryn Hunter) that he'll secure great power as a king. It's an impressive prophecy for Macbeth, but it's one that, with encouragement from Lady Macbeth (Frances McDormand), he becomes convinced can only be achieved through bloodshed. So starts a series of massacres, which see Macbeth slicing throat of anyone who gets in his way. However, the severity of his actions began to weigh on the man's mind all while Macduff (Corey Hawkin) begins to plot a scheme of revenge against this mad ruler of Scotland.

The visual style of The Tragedy of Macbeth is an immediately striking one. The imagery captrues the haunting nature of the works of Ingmar Bergman, the intentional artificality of the play scenes in Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, and both the intimacy and the scarceness of a black-box theater play.Combining all these influences into one makes for a visually impressive experience, with everything coated in black-and-white coloring and told in sparsley-decorated sets. The castle belonging to the titular character is never shown in full in exterior shots and its interior environments are intentionally vaguely-defined. It's practically the suggestion of a castle, one that, like the hotel at the heart of The Shining, seems to go on forever and ever indoors

The haunting emptiness is reflected in the sparing use of a score, with a constant bump-bump-bumping noise on the soundtrack being more prominent to the ears than a traditional orchestral accompaniment. It all creates such an eerie feeling I haven't always gotten from prior MacBeth film adaptations and this sensation is compounded by the decision to depict the principal characters as being over the age of 60. The finite amount of time Macbeth and his wife have in their life lingers quietly over their actions. This emphasis on their mortality only heightens the creepiness of the production and add an extra sense of tragedy (no pun intended) to the slaughter that follows.

I mentioned West Side Story earlier, but allow me to return to comparing The Tragedy of Macbeth to that newest Spieberg triumph in how both recontextualize familiar moments both of their respective pieces of source material to outstanding effect. In the case of Macbeth,  I found myself impressed by how familiar pieces of dialogue get rendered brand new by unique pieces of staging. Macbeth's query of "Is that a dagger I see before me?" is here shown as the "dagger" being the door handle to a fateful room where he'll commit his horrific murders. Meanwhile, the mental anguish informing Lady Macbeth's "Out damn spot!" line is powerfully felt through surrounding the character with pitch-black darkness.

All these thoughtful reinterptations of some of Shakespeare's most famous lines are handled beautifully by a cast that excels under the restrained creative direction of this enterprise. With the sparse surroundings drawing most of the focus primarily on the performances, rightful acting legends Washington and McDormand don't mess around and deliver just the kind of stirring turns you'd expect actors of their caliber to churn out. The standout by far for me, though, is Kathryn Hunter in a new vision of the witch. Her opening scene alone conveys an eerie otherworldly quality and her creaky voice can make a few syllables something that forces the the hair on the back of your neck to go straight up. It's a bravura performance you won't soon be forgetting.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is an odd outlier in Joel Coen's filmography in some ways, including its lack of dark humor, something that permeated even the most brutal of earlier directorial efforts from the Coen Brothers (even No Country for Old Men had time for some glib gags). That's not a complaint, though, rather just a reflection of what a unique creative enterprise this is. Rather than rehashing what he's already done as a filmmaker or even just leaning on classic visions of what Macbeth can be, Coen delivers an idiosyncratic vision told with impressively precise visuals and powerful performances. With these achievements, The Tragedy of Macbeth leaves no question on whether or not we needed another adaptation of Macbeth.

Guillermo del Toro goes grounded, to varying degrees of success, with Nightmare Alley

Fresh off directing The Shape of Water, filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has some clout in Hollywood. For his next cinematic trick, del Toro isn't just working with a star-studded roster of acting talent. He's also delivering something more grounded than his previous projects. No fish monsters, no superheroes, no giant robots, no allegorical fairy tale beasts. Nightmare Alley is the most grounded in reality del Toro's ever been as a director. Committing to realism leads to some intriguing performances and visuals, ones that couldn't have been accomplished in his other directorial efforts. Strangely, though, Nightmare Alley also lacks the thoughtfulness of his prior stylized endeavors.

Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) begins Nightmare Alley disposing of a corpse and walking away from a burning home. From there, he hops a bus and ends up at a carnival fairground, where he ends up securing work performing manual labor for Clement Hately (Willem Dafoe). While working at this carnival, Carlisle sparks up a romance with Mary Elizabeth Cahill (Rooney Mara) and becomes proficient in the act of clairvoyance, or at least pretending he is. Able to trick audiences into thinking he has this fascinating fit, Cahill and Carlisle set off on their own to perform a solo show. This program attracts the attention of Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), a psychiatrist who sees right through Carlisle...and also becomes embroiled in his latest scheme, an elaborate plot that could either make or break this conman.

If I have a major grievance with Nightmare Alley, it makes the unfortunate mistake of believing that inherently making things very quiet and slow-paced will automatically make your movie meaningful. Those qualities aren't bad, but all-time classics with glacial pacing aren't classics because of their glacial pacing. They're classics because this pacing allows one to appreciate a certain atmosphere, or subtle editing details, or the finer nuances of the performances. Unfortunately, Nightmare Alley's screenplay, penned by del Toro and Kim Morgan, falls prey to this in several spots where it opts for slow-burn grimness but can't quite come up with themes worthy of this approach. This includes a drawn-out ending whose conclusion you can see coming a mile away.

This isn't the default mode of the movie, but it happens enough to make Nightmare Alley the weakest del Toro film since the original Hellboy in 2004. On the plus side, its overtly bleak nature makes it work well as a modern homage to classic noirs and both del Toro and Morgan show a welcome ability to letting everyone in the story be totally duplicitous. There are no kind audience surrogates here, Carlisle is just one of many people looking out for themselves. This wall-to-wall nastiness even leads to some quietly cutting social commentary, like the camera lingering on Carlisle plopping coins into a Salvation Army tin. Wonder if there are any parallels between that organization and a man saying he's doing good while only engaging in malicious behavior?

The carnival ground backdrop also allows del Toro to get his freak on with the visuals in a pleasingly grotesque manner. A dead baby's carcass, complete with a strange third eye on its forehead, floats in a jar of green goo while all the interior locations in this carnival are adorned with impeccably-realized expressionistic visuals. This filmmaker may not be bringing out the aliens or monsters that dominated his prior features, but these sets do show that del Toro hasn't missed a beat in his vision for memorably stylized backdrops. Period-era costumes are also spectacular looking while the heavy use of snow-covered landscape in the third act also results in pleasing-looking imagery. 

As for the performances, it's an overall solid collection of talent, though I felt Bradley Cooper suffered most from Nightmare Alley mistaking inherent restraint for substance. Cooper's got several memorable moments in his performance, including his final scene captured in an extended single-take, but other times he fades a bit too much into the background. Most of the other players, namely Blanchett and Dafoe, are playing variations on their movie star personas, but they're entertaining to watch, so it's difficult to complain. The major standout turns out to be Richard Jenkins in a small but pivotal role as the reclusive Ezra Grindle. Leave it to Jenkins to leave a mighty impression with minimal screentime.

There's a welcome sense of creative ambition in Nightmare Alley, as del Toro channels the horrors man, rather than monsters that go bump in the night, are capable of. Lingering on these terrors doesn't necessarily result in a production as thoughtful as its tone would suggest and certain storytelling beats (including rushed shifts in Carlisle's relationship to both Cahill and Grindle in the third act) undercut its thematic goals. Still, it's a del Toro movie, so it looks beautiful and leaves you with idiosyncratic chilling moments. Even a lesser effort from this filmmaker is bound to deliver some kind of impression.