THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MAGICAL NEGROES

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

There were multiple ironies to my experience watching The American Society of Magical Negroes, starting with the fact that the theater I went to see it at started to show the wrong film at first. After deeply confusing those of us in the audience with this very film’s trailer playing amongst all the others before the feature started, they then played American Fiction—a vastly superior film in every way imaginable.

Eventually, once the correct film was playing, after some time I registered another irony. This is a film about Black people whose literally magical job is to ease the discomfort of White people. And this film is so blandly inoffensive, with a premise with great potential to be effectively biting, it plays as though the movie itself exists to ease the discomfort of White viewers.

On the one hand, The American Society of Magical Negroes just can’t win. It triggers the Fox News set by quite directly suggesting the most dangerous animal on the planet is “White people.” Then it rankles leftists by having its Black protagonist risk everything by falling in love with a White woman. (Sort of. We’ll get back to that.)

And here is where we get into the fundamental difference between The American Society of Magical Negroes and American Fiction. American Fiction didn’t give any of its White characters a pass. This movie, by contrast, wants us to think it’s highlighting the absurdity of the myth of the “Magical Negro,” and then gives its White characters a pass at every turn. There’s an impassioned speech near the end, delivered by Justice Smith as Aren, a new recruit for the Society of the film’s title, explaining to his coworker Jason (Drew Tarver) what it’s like for him to live in this country as a Black person. And—spoiler alert!—a minor light goes on in Jason’s head, showing a definitively contrived, if small, step toward White understanding. Except to present all this in the context of literal fantasy genre filmmaking rather undermines the message we’re meant to get from this movie.

This is a film of endlessly missed opportunities. It doesn’t even play with the concept of a “Magical Negro” as a historic stereotype specifically in literature, cinema, and television, where Black supporting characters reliably come to the aid of White main characters. Instead, while trying to convince us it’s using the concept subversively, it’s just continuing the tradition of its use. The only difference is that now, the protagonist of the film is the Black supporting character, and the White main characters are its target audience. The oddest thing about this movie is that it’s like a low-rent Harry Potter but with an undercooked premise and a lead actor who is actually more charismatic and talented than Daniel Radcliffe.

Because this is the one major strength of The American Society of Magical Negroes: the winning cast. Justice Smith embodies his character wonderfully, playing both awkward and increasingly confident with equal skill. David Alan Grier exudes warmth as Aren’s mentor, and Michaela Watkins is a welcome presence, if relatively inconsequential, as his boss. An-Li Bogan has great chemistry with Smith as the love interest for whom Aren ultimately risks everything. The story here rather lacks focus and suffers from uneven tonality, but the cast alone makes up for a lot, and together make this movie watchable, if ultimately forgettable.

A particularly curious element of this film is the multiracial ethnicities of both its protagonist and his love interest. Aren even mentions at one point that his mother was White, yet never offers any clarity on what must be unique to that experience, distinct from either being White or having two Black parents. Lizzie is briefly referred to as “ethnic” but never clarified beyond that—evidently we are to understand that, as a matter of fact, she is not a White woman. At least not fully: she’s Asian and White. But, given that Jason makes a comment about not realizing she’s “ethnic,” it would seem she’s “White enough.”

It may be that I’m splitting hairs here, and overdoing the parsing of ethnic heritage in characters—except that this movie is quite literally asking for it. It seems to give White women a pass in particular, in the end offering Lizzie a last-minute “twist” that underlines the role of women in society as “supportive wives and girlfriends.” This is incongruously problematic on its own, as it creates a a false equivalency between the otherwise very real struggles of women, including White women—something that has its place in film for sure, just not this one and not in this way—and Black people experiencing racism.

The American Society of Magical Negroes has some genuine charms (including Nicole Byer as the Society’s president), but it ultimately fails at what it aims to be, and struggles to clarify its point of view. Everything it aspires to, American Fiction achieves with ingenious finesse. I recommend you just watch that movie instead.

We’re meant to learn how White people are more dangerous than sharks, except this movie has no bite.

Overall: B-

ANSELM

Directing: C+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: C+
Music: B

It’s not often that the experience of a film so closely resembles getting a dose of chloroform. I suppose that’s hyperbole, but I was certainly sedated. I truly could not keep myself awake during Anselm.

Art is subjective, right? I hesitate to say this makes Anselm a bad movie. And there were moments, when I managed to stay awake, that I was genuinely astonished and amazed. Anselm Kiefer, a German painter and sculptor who is now 79 years old, is seen in this film working on many of his countless works of art—this guy is incredibly prolific. And makes tactile, three-dimensional pieces on canvases so huge, often twice his height and double again the width, that countless of his pieces are seen, both stored and in progress, in a gigantic warehouse. He gets around the space riding on a bicycle.

In one sequence, Kiefer is seen melting metals down into liquids, then pouring it from a bucket—using a pulley system operated from a safe distance—directly onto a canvas lying flat on the floor. It’s genuinely fascinating, and makes you yearn to find the finished piece, wherever it is now, and touch it. In fact, Kiefer evidently has so many pieces in a quasi-abstract style that is very much my jam, I would be first in line to an exhibit were I to find out there was one near me. Seeing the art in person, I am sure, would be very stimulating indeed, on both visual and tactile levels.

Which is all to say, I don’t think my response to the film Ansel has anything to do with Ansel Kiefer at all. Rather, it has to do with the film’s director Wim Wenders, who once made a name for himself with eighties films like Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire. And, to be fair, the critical consensus with Anselm is very high praise indeed—and I don’t begrudge anyone responding to this film in such a way. Still, I have to speak my truth, and my truth is that this movie literally sedated me.

It’s not like I was operating on lack of sleep or anything. I was perfectly alert before going into the theater, and woke right up when the movie ended (when I was also relieved it was over). There’s something about the smooth, gliding movements of the camera as it passes through Kiefer’s works of art, alternating between a soothing, quiet score, and much longer shots of total silence. It’s the visual equivalent of being rocked to sleep.

The theater where I saw this movie, at 7:30 on a Friday night, was surprisingly full, and I found myself looking around to see if I could get any sense of how the rest of the audience was reacting to it. I couldn’t tell if anyone else was nodding off, but it did strike me that I could not hear anyone eating popcorn. It did feel like, in one way or another, the rest of the audience was also being put under some kind of spell.

It should be noted, also, that Anselm is being presented in 3D. I feel compelled to mention the 2012 documentary Pina, featuring dance tributes to German choreographer Pina Bausch. That film was also presented in 3D, the first documentary feature I had ever seen in that format, and I was truly blown away by it, completely held in its thrall. I actually came to Anselm with Pina very much in mind, thinking: if a documentary must be presented in 3D, an examination of art is the way to do it. How much closer can you get to feeling like you’re in the same room with it, without actually being there?

The stark difference really comes down to tone. Pina was a film of action, a kind of documented series of interpretive dances. Anselm, by contrast, is a visual catalog of stationery objects. I don’t dislike museums, but they do have a tendency to tire me out surprisingly quickly; I get fatigued, as though all that art has tested the limits of my brain function. This was essentially my response to Anselm, just much more severe. I hadn’t been this powerless to sleep since I was anesthetized for a colonoscopy.

My best theory is that it simply had to do with the environmental context: a movie that lulled me to sleep, the 3D format giving it a heightened realism, in a very dark movie theater. I suspect this film, ironically, might be more effective seen in 2D at home. If nothing else, it introduced me to an artist I had never heard of, whose art itself I actually love.

I didn’t actually want to take a nap, I swear!

Overall, what I actually saw: B-

LISA FRANKENSTEIN

Directing: B-
Acting: B-
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

The funniest thing about Lisa Frankenstein is its release date, nestled up against Valentine’s Day as though it’s a sweet romance. This is a romance between an eighties teen and a reanimated corpse.

It is amusing that Diablo Cody, who wrote the script, has a mind as bent as one that thinks up the absurdist, gross-out gags that are sprinkled throughout this film. Cody lives to defy stereotypes. Lisa Frankenstein was also directed by Zelda Williams, daughter of Robin Williams, setting the story the year she was born (1989). If this and her previous film, Kappa Kappa Die (2020) are any indication, she has a real taste for old-school camp. (There are even cop characters named Officer John, and Officer Waters.)

But, nailing the tone in a film like this is the real tricky part, and Williams doesn’t quite make it. We get introduced to our young heroine, Lisa (a lovely Kathryn Newton), her blithely affectionate stepsister Taffy (a bubbly Liza Soberano), her indifferent dad (Joe Chrest) and her weirdly cruel stepmother (Carla Gugino, chewing the contrived scenery), and establish ourselves in their slighty off-kilter world for just a bit too long before we ever even meet “The Creature.”

“The Creature” is played by Riverdale’s Cole Sprouse, who apparently took months of mime lessons for months to prepare for this role, in which he has (mostly) no lines. He does a fine job for what it is, but I’m not sure he couldn’t have done just as good a job without so much effort. He’s playing a man dead for at least a century or two, and Lisa Frankenstein does very little to explain his reanimation—Lisa is just a high school kid with a crush on the bust of his tombstone, who wishes to “be with him,” and then a sudden burst of lightning results in him showing up at her house.

This is a deliberate lack of depth, of course; it’s very much the point. Lisa Frankenstein is a cross between Heathers, Beetlejuice, and Mommy Dearest, but minus the depth, the cleverness, or the biting satire. Lisa Frankenstein has some cleverness, to be fair, and it’s all in service of camp, to varying degrees of success. I enjoyed it most when its humor is darkest, as with a great gag involving what amounts to a penis transplant.

There weren’t a lot of people in the theater when I went to see this, maybe twenty people—and yet, in spite of how critical I am of it, oddly, in the smattering of moments I found genuinely funny, I was the only person there laughing. That was an odd experience.

There is a very specific sensibility Zelda Williams is going for here, and mileage will definitely vary depending on what you’re looking for. I suppose it could be said that Lisa Frankenstein delivers on its promise; I just wanted a better promise. Its sort of “camp lite” aesthetic gets tired pretty quickly, and that happens before The Creature even shows up. There’s a physical journey he goes on, getting less and less gross as Lisa, an established seamstress of skill, systematically sews him up. Conversely, Lisa starts off withdrawn and then becomes sexily confident over time, but also oddly selfish, using The Creature for assistance with another boy who is her crush at school. I guess we’re supposed to feel bad for The Creature, except of course, he’s a reanimated corpse. I don’t know about you, but I’ll never have any interest in fucking an undead guy, I don’t care how cute he is.

In the end, Lisa Frankenstein has its fun, if tonally inconsistent, moments. The casting is very much in its favor, and I particularly look forward to seeing Kathryn Newton—who was also fantastic in Freaky (2021)—in other things. They make the most of the slightly undercooked ingredients they have to work with.

I guess it’s not terrible, as meet-cute body horror goes.

Overall: B-

WONKA

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-
Special Effects: C+
Music: B-

An argument has been made that, well, Wonka is for kids, and kids deserve movies too, right? Well, here’ s my counter-argument: the likelihood that kids will indeed enjoy Wonka notwithstanding, there are still kids’ movies out there that are actually good. This is not one of them.

Mind you, it’s not terrible either. But that’s just the thing: there is a Roald Dahl legacy to live up to here, as well as a Gene Wilder legacy, and Wonka falls short on both counts. This movie doesn’t even live up to the 2005 Tim Burton film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I still insist was wonderful, I don’t care how many haters there are out there. Of course, that’s not to say any of these films have held up to the truly classic, enduring 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory—which, astonishingly, was rated G—but, on the flip side, kids today are neither likely to know anything about that film, nor have much interest in watching it if they do. It would be the equivalent of me having any interest in a film released in 1934 when I was ten years old.

The bummer of it right now is, if you want to take your kids to the movies, Wonka is nearly the only option. The only others in multiplexes right now are the animated films Migration and Wish, which are both getting worse responses than Wonka. Wonka, at the very least, is sprinkled with several genuinely charming moments, of the sort that are a signature of director Paul King. (King directed both of the Paddington films, and both of them are far superior to this.) If you’re one of the adults taking kids to this film, well, you’re kind of shit out of luck.

And, to be fair, it’s not just that it doesn’t live up to Roald Dah’s cinematic legacy. From the opening scenes, in which Timothée Chalamet dances with a bunch of people holding “Wonka” umbrellas behind him, the choreography middling and the lyrics unmemorable, I thought: Oh. This isn’t going to be great. The sequence ends with Wonka getting charged a fee for daydreaming, a brief gag that works better than any of the extended theatrics that came before it.

My biggest issue with Wonka is the visual effects. This movie was made on a budget of $125 million, and I just have to wonder: where the hell was the money spent? Just on the talent? Chalamet’s $9 million paycheck is objectively ridiclous, and yet even that is but a fraction of that budget. Once again, the shockingly good Godzilla Minus One comes to mind—that film was made for $15 million, and it looks far better than this.

Wonka is appropriately color saturated for a film that is clearly presented as a musical fantasia. And yet, a huge amount of it is rendered in subpar CGI, giving it a far more artificial look than films about the same character released 52 and 18 years ago. I was especially mystified by the one Oompa Loompa, whose movements are noticeably jerky-jerky. How can a film this expensive to make look so bad? To give credit where credit is due, Hugh Grant imbues the Oompa Loompa with more personality than any single other character in the film, which almost makes up for the bad visual effects. Almost. (Side note: it’s also in this film’s favor that the Oompa Loompa is given full autonomy, and never becomes the stand-in for slave labor that the Oompa Loompas were in either of the previous films.)

To be fair, Timothée Chalamet, an objectively great actor, does his best with what he has to work with. As do a bevy of other big names who make up the supporting cast: Olivia Colman as Mrs. Scrubitt, the innkeeper who tricks Wonka into indentured servitude; Keegan-Michael Key as the Chief of Police, so easily bribed by Wonka’s rival chocolatiers with chocolate that he gains a ton of weight over the course of the film (and I find the idea that this is “fat shaming” to be debatable at best); Rowan Atkinson as Father Julius, also easily bribed with chocolate; Jim Carter as Abacus Crunch, one of the other indentured servants slaving away in the inn basement; even Sally Hawkins, the mom in the Paddington movies and here playing Wonka’s mother in a few flashback sequences. In none of these cases does the actor get as much to chew on as they deserve, in spite of Olivia Colman’s extensive screen time as one of many villains, but the one who most directly steals Wonka’s luck away from him.

Fundamentally, Paul King seems to have missed the point entirely, of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which is about a possibly-corrupt, borderline sociopathic chocolatier weeding out the one good little kid in a group of spoiled brats. The only way Wonka’s return to that character’s story, particularly as a prequel, would make sense would be for Willy to learn the same kind of lesson himself as a youngster. Instead, Wonka is presented as pure hearted, and constantly taken advantage of by the adults around him who are the spoiled brats.

There is only one genuine kid in this movie, Calah Lane, who plays Noodle, also toiling away indefinitely in the inn basement. Lane is quite lovely, actually, one of the best things about Wonka, with onscreen charisma that helps keeps the proceedings watchable. But Noodle and Willy are both similarly pure of heart, dealing with heightened, standard kids-movie villains. Willy Wonka is supposed to be backed with subtext, and Wonka, generally pleasant as it is to watch, is all text.

All of that brings us back to this: kids will have a great time. The group of kids in the row of seats behind me, who did not shut the fuck up the entire film, certainly did. Surely they neither know nor care anything about Gene Wilder’s or even Johnny Depp’s iterations of Willy Wonka. For them, there is only Timothée Chalamet. But here’s the key difference: none of those kids are going to grow up regarding this as an unfortgettable classic from their childhoods. It’s just another passable outing at the movies, and in the context of its cinematic legacy, that’s a real shame.

Hugh Grant’s ample charms can’t elevate a middling achievement.

Overall: B-

EILEEN

Directing: B-
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

It’s a strange position to be in, trying to be careful not to spoil key plot points in a barely better than mediocre movie. Does it even matter? Are any of you going to watch it? I suppose if you read the 2015 novel of the same name by Ottessa Moshfegh, you might have some interest regardless of what I have to say about it. Either way, this is a decent film that I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend.

Unless, perhaps, you’re an Anne Hathaway completist. And to be fair to her, she is absolutely the most fascinating figure in Eileen, as Rebecca, a charismatic woman hired as a pyschologist in a 1960s Massachusetts juvenile detention center.

The title character, Eileen, is played by Thomasin McKenzie. She’s been working as a secretary at the prison for the few years since the death of her mother, tending to her drunken widower father (Shea Wigham) in the meantime. When Rebecca shows up, Eileen becomes infatuated. And for the first half of the movie or so, you wonder why it wasn’t called Rebecca. (There’s already another famous movie called that, of course, but since when has that stopped anyone?)

The script, written by both Luke Goebel and novelist Moshfegh herself, has a thing for introducing narrative threads and then never fully exploring them. Is Eileen sexually repressed? We see her masturbating more than once, near the beginning of the film, in unusual situations. In one, she’s covertly got her hand down her own skirt at work. In another—the opening sequence—she’s in a car, spying on a couple necking in another car. And then she grabs a handful of snow off the ground and stuffs it down her skirt and into her crotch. What the hell? Eileen never directly addresses what that’s about.

Instead, Eileen’s head is turned by the entrance of Rebecca, and even though both of them have otherwise only ever indicated tastes in men, we wonder if this is some kind of budding lesbian romance. There’s something sensual about their budding friendship, with a confidence on the part of Rebecca, and a tentative excitement on the part of Eileen. Until the point at which Rebecca calls and invites Eileen over to hang out at her place on Christmas Eve, I honestly wondered what exactly this movie was supposed to be about.

Eileen arrives at the house. Rebecca is embarrassed by the mess. There’s an odd vibe, as they sit in the kitchen, attempting to visit. And then, when I tell you Eileen takes a turn, it seriously takes a turn. Something comes out of Rebecca’s mouth that I won’t spoil, but it radically alters everything about this film from that point forward, and it’s a moment that compelled me to say “What?” out loud through a disbelieving chuckle in the middle of a movie theater.

I’ll give Eileen this much credit: it is absolutely not about what it makes you think it’s about, for a shockingly long time. It’s also surprisingly straightforward, stunning twist notwithstanding: there’s not a lot of complexity going on here, which would seem to suit the 97-minute run time. And when it gets to the end, both of these women make unexpected choices, most of which lack common sense. When the credits rolled, all I could say was, “Uh. Okay.”

Thus, I can’t really decide what to make of Eileen, which manages to be a simple tale in spite of it folding in elements of patricide, incest, and pedophilia. What nuance this film contains comes from the performances, which are easily the best thing about it. Both of these actors are perfectly cast in roles that are both ultimately bemusing. That may have been the point, and McKenzie and Hathaway embody their roles in a way it’s hard to imagine anyone else doing as well. They make a fine pair on screen together. I just kind of wish they were featured together in a meatier story than something that falls just short of adequate.

Just because it isn’t flat-out bad doesn’t mean these two don’t deserve better.

Overall: B-

SALTBURN

Directing: B-
Acting: A-
Writing: C
Cinematography: A
Editing: B-

Saltburn is a beautifully shot narrative with inconsistencies to the point of distraction. It’s fun to watch while it’s happening, then a twist comes at the end that forces a re-examination of everything that came before, with the inevitable conclusion that the twist is unearned.

I came into this movie expecting something fun, sexy, borderline scandalous. I already knew about the infamous bathtub drain and gravesite scenes. Neither of them really lived up to the hype, failed to offer much in the way of shock value, although the bathtub drain was still pretty effectively gross (more because of dirty bathwater than bodily fluids).

The film really kicks into high gear when Oliver (Barry Keoghan) finally arrives at the Saltburn estate of the film’s title, home of the filthy rich college classmate, Felix (Jacob Elordi), who has invited him to stay. Felix’s parents are wonderfully cast with Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant, as vaguely oblivious characters whose wealth has made them entertainingly detached, superficial, and catty. The moment Oliver meets them, the dialogue crackles, and you want to watch a whole movie just about this family.

Instead, Saltburn seems to fancy itself a lite version of class satire, except it never has any real bite. Rounding the cast are Alison Oliver as Venetia, Felix’s sister with an eating disorder; Archie Madekwe as Farleigh, Felix’s multiracial cousin visiting from America (details that could be a goldmine for exploration that never happens); and Carey Mulligan as Pamela, a friend of Felix’s parents who is also staying and on the cusp of overstaying her welcome. Mulligan in particular gets surprisingly short screen time and nothing of real substance to work with, even though she gets top billing with the rest of the cast—evidently she just wanted to work with writer-director Emerald Fennel again after starring in Promising Young Woman.

Saltburn is thus Emerald Fennell’s second feature film as writer-director, and a pattern is already emerging, in which a clearly talented filmmaker has some deeply compelling ideas, and then squanders them in various ways with a truly unnecessary twist ending. In the case of Saltburn, the ending practically negates everything that came before it, calling into question the idea that Oliver was ever truly obsessed with Felix, or possibly in love with him, as we were led all the while to believe. Ultimately, during an extended scene in which we see Oliver dancing naked through the estate house for so long we are struck by a body so hot it shockingly nearly rival’s Jacob Elordi’s, we are left to wonder if all he ever wanted was the house itself. And: why? That part is a mystery.

And on the road to this inexplicable ending, there are shifts of power between characters that never get explained. One moment the cousin, Farleigh, is acting pointedly superior to Oliver. In a later scene Oliver gains an upper hand, I guess, by going into Farleigh’s room and, one could argue, sexually assaults him. Why Farleigh would act frightened and intimidated in that scene and then turn around and behave the next day with the same superiority as though the nighttime intrusion never happened, is anyone’s guess. Similar shifts happen between Oliver and Felix’s sister, Venetia.

No such shift ever happens with Felix himself, who seems to remain in Oliver’s thrall throughout—until the end. I won’t spoil what ultimately happens to Felix, except to say that Fennell taks her time to make that specifically clear, during which time I could not stop thinking about it as I was utterly baffled.

Saltburn is a rare breed of film in its quality of visual execution, and great performances, making you feel for most of its runtime that you’re watching something good. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind watching it again just for the georgeous cinematography, of both the sprawling estate and the captured beauty of Keoghan’s and Elordi’s bodies (and, emphatically: both of them). Ditto the eccentric chemistry between everyone in Felix’s filthy rich family, who dress up for dinner, are woken every morning by servants, and are served breakfast as a family in the mornings.

Oliver is subtly manipulating Felix, and then the rest of his family, throughout, which we are meant to understand going in. And then that ending comes, and there’s nothing subtle about it whatsoever, nor was anything that came before it, apparently. Oliver becomes a cartoon, essentially. I left the theater wondering what the point of it all was.

I thought it would burn a little more.

Overall: B-

NAPOLEON

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-
Special Effects: B+

There’s a battle sequence in Napoleon, one among countless, in which Napoleon tricks an enemy onto a snow-covered, frozen lake, and then pummels the shit out of them, breaking the ice and sending many faceless and nameless soldiers into an icy grave. With a bunch of incredibly rendered shots from beneath the surface, the sequence is as spectacular and thrilling to watch as any in this film, and arguably in any other film this year. 

When it comes to Napoleon as a complete film, however, you could go out of your way to watch just this one sequence, and get just as much out of it. Who needs two hours and 38 minutes covering decades of broad historical events, without any character dimension to speak of? 

Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in the title role is so understated as to be to its detriment. Where is the notorious megalomania? Perhaps we are meant to take this as what distinguishes this Napoleon from any other film about the man. Honestly, it didn’t take long for me to get bored. 

Ridley Scott is now 86 years old. His poliferous output in such later years is astonishing—he’s directed seven feature films in the past ten years alone. But have any of them been great? Maybe one. It’s starting to feel like Ridley Scott is just hell bent on proving he can keep doing the job until he finally keels over. 

Napoleon is getting reviews that are mixed to positive, and I’m clearly leaning toward the mixed side. I kept hearing how funny the movie is. I didn’t laugh once. They say the film is flawed but incredibly entertaining. I nodded off more than once. Even incredibly well executed battle sequences start to get dull when they are virtually all that’s on offer. 

Okay, so the film also explores Napoleon’s relationship, marriage, and ultimate divorce from Joséphine, here played by Vanessa Kirby. She and Phoenix have fair chemistry, but again, virtually everything this film covers is never explored with any depth. Even in a movie this long, that goes with the territory when a single film attempts to cover decades of people’s lives. Napoleon and Joséphine’s relationship proves to be no exception.

I was looking forward to seeing this movie. I thoroughly enjoyed . . . some of it. When it finished, I was glad it was over. 

You’ll see a shot just like this a couple dozen times. Fun!

Overall: B-

THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-
Special Effects: B

Watching The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, eleven years after the first film in the Hunger Games franchise and eight years after the last one, is a little like getting offered one more drink while you’re barely buzzed at a party that’s not very exciting. Okay, sure, why not. I’ll have another.

In the moment, this film is engaging enough, with several charismatic performers. Tom Blyth charms in bleached blond hair as young Coriolanus Snow, assigned as “mentor” to one of the District 12 tributes, a stunning songstress (hence the film’s subtitle) named Lucy Gray. Rachel Zegler makes the most of the part, particularly with an incredible singing vioce, but Lucy isn’t given a whole lot of agency. She doesn’t ever even use any weapons in the arena.

After three novels and four movies that made Jennifer Lawrence a superstar, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes feels a little regressive. Even as a clear nostalgia play and franchise cash grab, here we are given the early life story of the authoritarian President Snow of the previous films, now with a young man as the hero, saving a helpless little lady. At least Katniss was a badass.

Oh sure, this is presented with characters facing all the expected moral dilemmas, and we already know what eventually happens to Snow, which makes this movie this franchise’s equivalent of the Star Wars prequels. A burning question might still be: did we really need this?

In the original Hunger Games, the games—in which, in case you’re one of the five people in the world who don’t already know, a group of teenagers are thrown into an arena to fight to the death—are in their 74th year. In The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, they are in their 10th year, which takes us back in time 64 years. Cornelius Snow is now supposed to be 18 years old, so I guess he was 82 the last time we saw him. The production design here is vaguely evocative of a society not quite as “perfected” as we saw it became later.

The story is presented in three parts, and the story beats are the only memorably unusual thing about it. This movie is two hours an 37 minutes long, pointlessly the longest film in the franchise. This is an average of 52 minutes per part, and we see the actual Hunger Games in “Part Two”—which end in such a way that the movie itself feels very much like it’s ending. By that point, we are indeed already a standard feature film’s length in. A group of seven very young adults sat in a line of seats two rows ahead of me, clearly big fans of the franchise, regularly raising the three finger salute from the previous films at the screen. And when Part III appeared onscreen, even one of those kids said, out loud, “There’s a whole other part”?

Indeed, Part III feels almost exclusively extraneous, although it is in this part when we finally see Lucy Gray take some real control. To be fair, she is defiant from the start, even belting out a song the very moment she is chosen at the Reaping Ceremony—a scene that would have come across as a lot more stupid if not for Zegler’s beautiful voice. This never makes her any less helpless and dependent on Snow any time she’s in the arena. And by the time this movie all but declares Lucy’s ultimate fate a total mystery, it’s too late for it to matter much.

If anything makes The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes watchable, it’s the cast. This includes Jason Schwartzman, amusingly smarmy as the Hunger Games’s first televised host; Peter Dinklage as the slightly drunken Dean of the Academy; Viola Davis as the deliciously nefarious head gamemaker; and even Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer as Coriolanus’s cousin. (The casting of a trans actor in a part never identified as such is maybe the one truly progressive part of this production, and it was really great to see her here.)

In other words, due in no small part to the performances, I found myself entertained by this, the fifth film in the Hunger Games franchise. I’m tempted to say I enjoyed even more than The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, but that may be just because this time it’s been so long since I’ve seen one of these movies. The truth is, it’s more of the same but with different characters and actors. Which is . . . fine. Like that last drink you didn’t need but won’t hurt.

Try watching through rose colored glasses.

Overall: B-

THE PERSIAN VERSION

Directing: C+
Acting: B-
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: C+

The Persian Version had me at the start, and then it lost me almost completely, and then it pulled me back in again. It was kind of an emotional roller coaster, from fun to total confusion to moving warmth.

I’m not sure this movie intended to take me on this particular journey. It seems much more intent on telling the lighthearted story of how an estranged mother and daughter found a way to connect, with mixed results. It can’t seem to decide what character’s point of view it’s taking, being mostly narrated by the young but grown daughter, one of nine children, until suddenly, in a flashback to the mother’s youth, the young Shireen (Kamand Shafieisabet) suddenly yells out that she wants to be the narrator of her own story.

This is maybe halfway through the movie, and Shireen proceeds to tell (and show) us how she and her husband made their way from an incredibly remote village in Iran to the United States in the late sixties. This goes on for quite some time, during which I realized I had no clue where this movie was going. It does eventually come to a pivotal point, which connects to Shireen’s relationship with her now-grown daughter, Leila (Layla Mohammadi).

This involves a pretty major revelation, but when the narrative cuts back to Leila’s point of view, there is no indication whatsoever as to whether they have any subsantive discussion about it. A bit later, at the wedding of one of her countless brothers, Leila makes a reference to it to Shireen, and it’s clear Shireen knows she knows. It feels like there was a lot of important stuff there in the middle that just got skipped over. What’s more, Leila is an aspiring writer and filmmaker, and the flashback to Shireen’s childhood is presented as an account written by Leila, until Shireen takes over the narration. Who is actually telling this story is frustratingly never made clear.

On the upside, the undeniable onscreen charisma of both of these women makes up for a lot. And to be clear, it does have to make up for a lot—Shafieisabet and Mohammadi are both great, but the acting of some of the supporting characters is at times abysmal. Most of the young men playing Leila’s brothers, who are so numerous that none of them get very many lines, are wooden at best. I found myself wondering where the hell writer-director Maryam Keshavarz even found the woman who plays Leila’s father’s doctor. She sounds like she’s barely even sure she knows her lines.

We also get flashbacks to Leila’s own childhood, and both that actor (Chiara Stella) and the young Shireen (Kamand Shafieisabet) are charming enough—although the young Shireen has little time for charming as she carries multiple babies before she’s even fifteen. The fact that Shireen is married off to a young man of 22 when she was 13 is presented with neutrality, and cultural differences notwithstanding, I don’t know how I feel about that. Being told that “we were intellectual equals” does little to mitigate it. The background does, however, inform the nature of Shireen as a hard working, crazily tenacious middle-aged mother.

And it’s very easy to engage with both the adult Shireen and the adult Leila whenever they are onscreen. Leila’s sexuality is handled with awkwardness at best, a big part of her estrangement with her mother, but we learn that Leila’s selfishness played a part in her marriage to and then divorce from another woman. (A scene in which they have a conversation in a department store while Leila has a gorilla mask on really doesn’t work.) Leila consistently self-identifies as a lesbian, but then has a one night stand with an apparently mostly-straight man who happens to be playing the lead in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and ax (Tom Byrne) declares, upon learning of Leila’s pregnancy, that he wants to try making a go of a relationship. Leila seems oddly open to this. I thought she was supposed to be a lesbian? Sure, yes, sexuality is fluid—except The Persian Version never gets even cose to interrogating such ideas. Like so many other things in this movie, I could not figure out what to make of it.

And still: even in the midst of all this mess, the two leads deliver winning performances, which broadly won me over. I was moved and cried a little at the end. There’s a lot about being children of immigrant parents here that I’m sure many can relate to, and I can only guess how nice it must be for Muslim or Iranian audiences to get this kind of fun representation. I don’t want to conflate Iranians with Palestinians, but Americans are unfortunately prone to such things, and right now more than ever, anything that humanizes Muslims as nuanced individuals can only be a good thing.

I just wish the execution had been a bit cleaner. This movie has some bad editing, in one instance cutting right when one of Leila’s brothers appears to start saying something to someone in a direction that makes no sense. Was the actor about to say something to a key grip or what?The more I write this very review, the more I wonder why I think I liked it even as much as I did. How did it win me over? Well, it won me over with two standout performances in a sea of confused ineptitude, captured with incongruously competent cinematography.

These two might win you over. Maybe. We’ll see.

Overall: B-

PRISCILLA

Directing: B
Acting: A-
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

When I left the theater after seeing Priscilla, my moviegoing companion addressed the elephant in the theater: “How many movies can Sofia Coppola make about bored white ladies?”

It made me laugh. It’s also a legitimately valid question. And Priscilla takes that notion to the extreme, an odd sort of accomplishment in that it’s incredibly well made, excellently acted, well shot, and is also incredibly slow. Coppola has a long history of dealing in cinematic subtleties, but virtually the entirety of Priscilla feels like an extended prologue to Priscilla Presley’s life after Elvis—none of which do we get to see.

It’s a bit fascinating to have Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis come out just last year, and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla come out this year. Elvis had far too much going on; Priscilla doesn’t have enough going on. Evlis features a depiction of Priscilla but makes no mention of the fact that they met when she was fourteen and he was twenty-four; Priscilla is not only all about that fact, but subtly depicts the ways in which Elvis groomed both her and her parents. Elvis featured a truly unfotunate Tom Hanks performance as “The Colonel” who was depicted as the villain who controlled his life; Priscilla features Colonel Tom Parker only as someone Elvis speaks to occasionally over the phone, and shows Elvis himself as kind of an asshole.

There are some additional narrative choices in Priscilla that are, let’s say, compelling topics for discussion. Once Priscilla is of legal age and living with Elvis, she’s frustrated by his lack of sexual interest in her. Suddenly she’s having a baby, and then another—evidently they had sex at least twice. What are they, the protestants from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life?

This is an odd idea to layer onto Elvis’s clear grooming of an underage girl, only to have eventual affairs with costars in the movies he finds increasingly unsatisfying to be a part of. I can’t quite make sense of Elvis Presley’s sexuality as depicted in Priscilla. Add to that another layer: Jacob Elordi is is so gorgeous, and so perfectly cast as Elvis (dare I say, even better than Austin Butler in Elvis), it’s almost unbearable. And yet, Priscilla has absolutely nothing to say about his scandalously sexy live performances, the signature swinging of his hips. Indeed, it has nothing to say about his excess of fame, although at least it acknowledges it—when it comes to wealth, forget it. Coppola seems interested only in the story of a young woman who is seduced by a star and then systematically robbed of all her agency.

And Coppola takes her dear sweet time doing it. Here’s another oddity of Priscilla: it’s quite recognizably a Sofia Coppola film, and yet it might be the slowest film she’s ever made. I spent a lot of time wondering if anything of substance was actually going to happen onscreen. Are we meant to be as bored as Priscilla is? Honestly her life, while far from ideal, was clearly a lot more exciting than this movie is.

There are plenty of people who are expressing genuine appreciation for this film, and I can’t say I fault them for it, per se. The performances are exemplary, and 25-year-old Cailee Spaeny delivers a solid, nuanced delivery as the title character. The world it depicts feels lived in, if leaving a lot of things about the Presleys’ lives unexamined. Clearly a great deal of talent went into this movie. That’s maybe what’s the most disappointing about it, how it adds up to less than the sum of its parts. Would this film be getting the same level of acclaim without the Coppola name attached to it? I really wonder.

The untold story of a bored starwife.

Overall: B-