INFINITY POOL

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

There comes a moment in Infinity Pool when Mia Goth’s Gabi, who has been toying with Alexander Skarsgård’s vacationing author James all along, pulls out a bad review of James’s one published novel, which did not sell well. She reads it aloud to him, emphasizing a passage that leans on how pretentious the novel was.

She might as well have been describing this movie, which spends all of its time attempting to convince us it has something to say while it actually says nothing.

This is a film by Brandon Cronenberg, son of David Cronenberg, who released his own subpar movie last summer. I guess you could say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, except that with Infinity Pool, Brandon elicits very good performances in a story that fails to justify itself. I spent two hours watching this film, not bored per se, but keeping an open mind: maybe something will eventually tie everything together impressively. No such luck. The movie ends with a narrative thud. It’s not the greatest thing when a movie ends and you just think, That’s it?

It could be argued that the most interesting thing about this movie is that it features an orgy with people wearing deeply disturbing, disfigured-face masks. Except that the orgy is both an overly stylized fever dream of a scene and somehow still a bit dull.

Here’s the potential in the premise of Infinity Pool: James leaves the resort compound against the advice of the people who run it, or an excursion out in the fictional European island country they are visiting. When he accidentally hits a local man with his car and kills him, they discover the country has a tradition of a family’s firstborn son killing anyone who kills a member of their family—apparently for any reason, accident or not. But to maintain their tourism industry, they have this incredible side hustle where they make “doubles” (basically clones, though that word is never used in the script) to be sacrificed. The double is given all the same memories, and for reasons never even close to explained, the original people must be present to witness. What must that be like, then, to see a copy of your own self murdered? This is the kind of existential theme that is the makings of a rich text, for which Brandon Cronenberg offers no useful illumination.

Instead, we get Mia Goth as Gabi, an effectively creepy and manipulative woman from the start, beginning with one of the oddest hand job scenes ever put onscreen. You want to see some urine and then some semen splatter onto some beach pebbles? This is your movie!

James’s wife, also on this vacation and the breadwinner as the daughter of a successful publisher who we are told detests James, is played by Cleopatra Coleman. She has a notable presence through about half the movie, until she decides she’s had enough of the wild shit happening in this country and up and goes home. Coleman is good in a thankless role that completely wastes her. There is never even any sexual tension, as evidently Em remains oblivious to Gabi’s advances.

I knew there would be some kind of plot twist in Infinity Pool, and it comes along maybe three quarters of the way through the story. It’s disappointingly minor as twists go, and not particularly satisfying. Infinity Pool offers plenty of sex and violence and depravity, I guess maybe as commentary on the excesses of wealth: all these people can afford to pay for doubles to be sacrificed for their own sins, over and over again. The thing is, Brandon Cronenberg is what the kids these days call a “nepo baby,” and is plenty wealthy in his own right, which inevitably skews his perspective. It lands differently when someone with more than their fair share of advantages attempts commentary on the pitfalls of privilege. In this case, it’s kind of just a tedious mess.

Get over yourselves already.

Overall: C

LIVING

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

Director Oliver Hermanus takes a decidedly old-school approach to his presentation of Living, which is based on a then-contemporary 1952 Japanese film called Ikiru (translation: To Live), which itself was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Both the opening and end credits are presented in a very retro style, making it feel as though we are watching a movie that actually was released in the 1950s.

My favorite thing about this film’s pedigree is its clearly conscientious connection to its Japanese heritage: the script was written by Nobel Prize-winning novelist and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro, who was born in Japan but brought to Britain by his parents in 1960 when he was five. Ishiguro’s past novels, which were later adapted into screenplays, include the likes of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. With Living, Ishiguro has a meeting of both worlds: taking one interpretation of this story from his motherland, and marrying it with his actual lived experience to fashion a decidedly British tale.

As with those other stories, Living has a particular, soft-spoken tone, which makes it feel both unique and special. It also makes the peculiar achievement of being simultaneously melancholy and sweet.

When Living opens, we don’t immediately meet its protagonist, Mr. Williams (Bill Nighy, at age 73 getting his first-ever Oscar nomination for this role), but rather four of his work subordinates, riding the train into London for work. The younger men discuss the stuffiness of Mr. Williams, if not his intimidation, and when we first see him, he is indeed stiff, subtly gruff, and single-minded in the pursuit of his daily tasks. It doesn’t become immediately clear why we then spend so much time in the office all of these men share in the Parks department, or indeed the amount of time spent on a small group of women pushing for the construction of a neighborhood playground and constantly getting referred back and forth between several departments in the building. Rest assured that every single thing experienced in this first scenes prove pertinent to the story later.

But first, we follow Mr. Williams briefly into his doctor’s office, where he gets grim news. We only learn at first that it is grim, and shortly thereafter witness him confessing to a stranger, the first person he tells that he is terminally ill.

What Living then makes clear it is about is precisely what the title suggests. Mr. Williams is a man who suddenly realizes he spent a lifetime on moving through his days like clockwork, and when it comes to actual living, he wants to get some of that in while he still has time. But, as he confesses to the stranger, “I don’t know how.”

Really, this movie is about Mr. Williams learning how—but, not in the way one might expect. Even within the limited time he has left, the process is gradual, sometimes even fumbling, but always subtle. Williams changes, but not in any particularly grand fashion. There is an almost jarring moment when Living cuts right to Williams’s funeral, with about half an hour left of the film to go. That doesn’t mean it’s the last we see of Mr. Williams, however, as we witness his colleagues gradually come to their own realizations of how Mr. Williams did indeed change in the end. As they discuss it, we see more of Mr. Williams in flashbacks, starting from the scene from which we cut to the funeral.

There’s some real skill in the writing here, very much justifying this film’s only other Oscar nomination, for Best Adapted Screenplay. It’s too bad the prognosticators say it is the least likely of the nominees to win in this category, when, upon reflection, I really feel this film has the best script among them. Mr. Williams finds himself viewing relationships in his life with new eyes, from the grown son (Barney Fishwick) he can’t bring himself to devastate with the news, to the young woman from his office (Aimee Lou Wood) with whom he becomes infatuated, not romantically, but with envy for her zeal for living. He makes mistakes along the way, some of which he learns from and some of which aren’t clear until after he dies.

We don’t learn the precise way he dies until a while after the funeral scene, but it all comes back to the aforementioned neighborhood playground. It’s not tragic or even especially sad, so much as it is deeply poetic, as is the entirety of Living.

A poignant capstone to a long career.

Overall: B+

I'd Like to Thank the Academy

(And the nominees are . . .) And just like that, Everything Everywhere All at Once becomes the frontrunner—something I never, ever would have suspected when that film was released all the way back in April. I enjoyed that film a great deal, and gave it an A-minus. I reject the idea that it's the best film of the year, but am thrilled to see such an unconventional film, at least by historic Academy standards, get heaped with eleven nominations—the most of any film this year, followed by All Quiet on the Western Front and The Banshees of Inisherin with nine nominations each.If recent years are any indicator, huge numbers of nominations are no guarantee of wins (The Irishman was nominated for ten Oscars in 2020 and didn't win any of them). Still, 2023 is showing how the Academy Awards are evolving, an organization and an institution in flux, learning how to adapt to shifting motion picture industry landscapes while diversifying its voting body. The slate of nominees this year is both unusually satisfying overall, and featuring a stunning number of nominations for films I haven't seen, or in some cases never even heard of. In the case of All Quiet on the Western Front, I had no opportunity to see it in any local theaters, and although I knew it had a certain amount of buzz as a Netflix movie, I truly had no idea it had this level of Academy buzz. It's now at the top of the list of movies I still need to see. How about we just get right into it?
Actor in a Leading Role Austin Butler, Elvis
Colin Farrell, The Banshees of Inisherin
Brendan Fraser, The Whale
Paul Mescal, Aftersun
Bill Nighy, Living WHO I THINK WILL WIN: Brendan Fraser has been the frontrunner for months, but most of that was before general audiences saw the truly mixed bag that was The Whale. I will freely admit I frequent the odds-making website godderby.com, where they still rank Fraser at the top—but, with Austin Butler given the very same odds. I have a real feeling Austin Butler will edge him out in the end. 
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: I'm all about Colin Farrell here, and not just because I think he's the hottest thing on legs (his not being particularly hot in this movie notwithstanding). There has even been some speculation that he could win this award, but I'm not holding out hope there. Both Brendan Fraser and Austin Butler have far more momentum.
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: Honestly? I'm not really here for the discourse that says Brendan Fraser deserves an Oscar for a great performance in a movie that is admittedly deeply problematic. I would love for Fraser to get an Oscar; I really like him as an actor. Just not for this movie, which does not deserve to be rewarded.
Actress in a Leading Role Cate Blanchett, Tár
Ana de Armas, Blonde
Andrea Riseborough, To Leslie
Michelle Williams, The Fabelmans
Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once WHO I THINK WILL WIN: For ages, Cate Blanchett has been the clear winner. That was before Everything Everywhere All at Once got eleven nominations, putting Michelle Yeoh neck and neck with her. It would usually be relevant that Blanchett already has two Oscars, but I'm not sure about that anymore, with the demographic changes of the Academy. So this is a really tough call. Right now I lean ever so slightly toward Cate Blachett.
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: I also think Cate Blanchett deserves the award. Her performance in Tár is brilliant, and far better than either of the other roles for which she won Oscars (The Aviator and Blue Jasmine).
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: I don't care that I haven't seen To Leslie. The fact that she managed to snag this nomination via a weird last-minute social media campaign is just dumb.
Actor in a Supporting Role Brendan Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin
Brian Tyree Henry, Causeway
Judd Hirsch, The Fabelmans
Barry Keoghan, The Banshees of Inisherin
Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once"> WHO I THINK WILL WIN: You can all place your bets right now. This one is going to be Ke Huy Quan.
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: My vote here would go to Barry Keoghan, whose performance in The Banshees of Inisherin is stellar. I won't be mad at Ke Huy Quan winning, though.
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: I have nothing particularly against anyone here (even though I hadn't even heard of Causeway, another movie I guess I need to seek out). If pressed, though, I suppose I would say Judd Hirsch makes the least sense—but only in this particular instance, in competition with the others. He's still great and he does give a great, if brief, performance in The Fabelmans.
Actress in a Supporting Role Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Hong Chau, The Whale
Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin
Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once WHO I THINK WILL WIN: The odds right now are on Angela Bassett, who, incidentally, becomes the first acting nominee from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: My vote here goes to Kerry Condon, whose performance in The Banshees of Inisherin did not get nearly enough attention in my opinion. I was delighted to see her get nominated. Her odds aren't that much lower than those for Angela Bassett, and if the Academy sheds a lot of love on Banshees, the edge could go to her. It's tricky, though: for the specific performances, I feel strongly that Condon deserves the Oscar, but for an entire career, Angela Bassett is long overdue.
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: As much as I loved Everything Everywhere All at Once, here I'm going to say Stephanie Hsu, whose nomination I see as just a product of momentum in the broad love for the movie she's in. But I felt her performance was the weakest, most self-conscious in the film.
Animated Feature Film Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
The Sea Beast
Turning Red WHO I THINK WILL WIN: I honestly wouldn't have any idea if not for Gold Derby, which says Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio is ahead in this race. I'm kind of amazed to see, though, that Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is not far behind it.
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: And I would rather see Marcel win this than Pinocchio, much as I enjoyed both. In my mind, though, of the three of these I actually saw at least, Turning Red beats them all, with its themes both universal and unprecedented in any film of its genre.
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: Nobody needs to be giving the sixth film in the "Shrek universe" an Oscar. 
Cinematography All Quiet on the Western Front, James Friend
Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Darius Khondji
Elvis, Mandy Walker
Empire of Light, Roger Deakins
Tár, Florian Hoffmeister WHO I THINK WILL WIN: Apparently this is one race All Quiet on the Western Front is ahead in. I need to see that movie!
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: I guess I'll go with Tár, the only film in this bunch I was a huge fan of. Even though I wasn't especially enamored with its cinematography specifically.
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: Bardo is absolutely the most "showy" of the films here, in terms of cinematography. The fact that it's practically begging for this award, though, puts me off of it. Also, there's a reason this is the sole Academy Award nomination that film got.
Production Design All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
Babylon
Elvis
The Fabelmans WHO I THINK WILL WIN: I think this will be one of a few undeserved awards Elvis is likely to win.
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: Babylon did not really work for me overall, but its grand production design can't really be denied. 
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: Did I mention Elvis?
Costume Design Babylon, Mary Zophres
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ruth Carter
Elvis, Catherine Martin
Everything Everywhere All at Once, Shirley Kurata
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, Jenny Beavan WHO I THINK WILL WIN: It may be that this is the only award for which Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is a lock.
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: I'm also going to go with Wakanda Forever on this one. The film has its flaws, but much like its predecessor, the costume design is flawless.
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: Elvis needs to just . . . shut up!
Directing Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans
Todd Field, Tár
Ruben Östlund, Triangle of Sadness WHO I THINK WILL WIN: I am increasingly convinced that this will be yet another year with a split between Best Director and Best Picture, and that Steven Spielberg will win this award.
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: I didn't even realize it until this very moment, but if I were voting right now . . . I would actually give this one to Todd Field. He's not going to win this one though.
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: I would not be unhappy with any of these people winning, actually.
Film Editing The Banshees of Inisherin, Mikkel E.G. Nielsen
Elvis, Matt Villa and Jonathan Redmond
Everything Everywhere All at Once, Paul Rogers
Tár, Monika Willi
Top Gun: Maverick, Eddie Hamilton WHO I THINK WILL WIN: Everything Everywhere All at Once is almost certainly the frontrunner here.
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: And you know what? If Everything Everywhere All at Once truly showcased anything at all, with its massive amount of dimension-hopping, it is wildly skilled editing.
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: Evlis in this category? Please. If anything, that movie had too little editing.
Makeup and Hairstyling All Quiet on the Western Front
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Elvis
The Whale WHO I THINK WILL WIN: I fear that the Academy will give an award to The Whale just for its fat suit.
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: I would also give this one to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. That film just has a stellar look, all around.
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: Neither Brendan Fraser's fat suit in The Whale nor Tom Hanks's fat suit in Elvis should be encouraged with any kind of award.
Music (Original Score) All Quiet on the Western Front, Volker Bertelmann
Babylon, Justin Hurwitz
The Banshees of Inisherin, Carter Burwell
Everything Everywhere All at Once, Son Lux
The Fabelmans, John Williams WHO I THINK WILL WIN: At the moment I'll put my money on The Banshees of Inisherin here.
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: To be perfectly frank, I can't remember the score from any one of these movies. They could run a random lottery for this award and I wouldn't care any more or less.
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: See above.
Music (Original Song) "Applause," from Tell It Like a Woman, Music and Lyric by Diane Warren
"Hold My Hand," from Top Gun Maverick, Music and Lyric by Lady Gaga and BloodPop
"Lift Me Up," from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Music by Tems, Rihanna, Ryan Coogler and Ludwig Goransson; Lyric by Tems and Ryan Coogler
"Naatu Naatu," from RRR, Music by M.M. Keeravaani; Lyric by Chandrabose
"This Is a Life," from Everything Everywhere All at Once, Music by Ryan Lott, David Byrne and Mitski; Lyric by Ryan Lott and David Byrne WHO I THINK WILL WIN: "Naatu Naatu" seems to be the favorite in this category . . .
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: . . . which would be delightful. The rest of the nominees here are almost shockingly bland tracks, especially coming from superstars like Lady Gaga or Rihanna. You know what's going to be a showstopper live at the Oscars telecast? A live performance of "Naatu Naatu."
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: I truly love both Lady Gaga and Rihanna. Neither of their snoozefest songs need an Oscar.
Visual Effects All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Batman
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Top Gun Maverick WHO I THINK WILL WIN: I mean . . . duh. Avatar: The Way of Water.
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: I mean . . . duh. Avatar: The Way of Water. The visual effects are the reason to see that film, which wowed me like no other film has in more than a decade. 
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: I really enjoyed The Batman a lot, and it has several stunning action sequences. But, it really can't compete with the other films here when it comes to visual effects.
Writing (Adapted Screenplay) All Quiet on the Western Front, Screenplay - Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson & Ian Stokell
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Written by Rian Johnson
Living, Written by Kazuo Ishiguro
Top Gun: Maverock, Screenplay by Ehren Kruger and Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie; Story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks
Women Talking, Screenplay by Sarah Polley WHO I THINK WILL WIN: This category seems to be a bit of a toss up. But, it may just be the only one of the two nominations for Women Talking to get a win.
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: Among these nominees, I'll also have to go with Women Talking. But, check back with me after I see All Quiet on the Western Front.
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: I truly don't even understand how or why Top Gun: Maverick is nominated in this category.
Writing (Original Screenplay) The Banshees of Inisherin, Written by Martin McDonagh
Everything Everywhere All at Once, Written by Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert
The Fabelmans, Written by Steven Spielberg & Tony Kushner
Tár, Written by Todd Field
Triangle of Sadness, Written by Ruben Östlund WHO I THINK WILL WIN: I may be tipping toward this movie at the expense of Everything Everywhere All at Once too often, but I'm still going with The Banshees of Inisherin here.
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: I'm actually tempted to go with Triangle of Sadness here, which I loved just as much, but ultimately my vote goes to the deeply nuanced screenplay for Tár.
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: All five of these films are worthy. It's nice when a category does not feature a dud.
Best motion picture of the year All Quiet on the Western Front
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Banshees of Inisherin
Elvis
Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Fabelmans
Tár
Top Gun: Maverick
Triangle of Sadness
Women Talking WHO I THINK WILL WIN: I never would have imagined it possible nine months ago, but right now it really seems as though Everything Everywhere All at Once is going to take this award.
WHO I THINK SHOULD WIN: Tár, by just a hair, is the best of these films. It doesn't have a chance in hell of winning this award.
WHO I THINK SHOULD NOT WIN: Oh, shit, how much time do you have? Avatar: The Way of Water. Elvis. Top Gun Maverick. The Academy is just throwing a bone to people who want to see populist films get nominated—or three bones, really—and none of these have any business even being considered for Best Picture.
(Nominations for international feature film, documentary feature, documentary short, animated short, live action short, sound editing, and sound mixing were also announced, but I don't know enough about them to make any worthwhile observations.) The 95th Academy Awards telecast will air on ABC Sunday, March 12 at 4 p.m. Pacific Time. .

PLANE

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

Gerard Butler seems to have settled comfortably in his role as ruler of a particular genre: the low-rent action movie. And as such movies go, Plane, rather surprisingly, sits on the higher end. This is solid entertainment, a movie that fulfills its promise, never being anything other than what it set out to be. It’s nothing special either, mind you, but that hardly bears mentioning. This movie isn’t trying to be special, it’s only trying to be a good time at the movies.

It’s a relief, as a matter of fact, that Plane does not go out of its way to telegraph that it doesn’t take itself seriously. On the other hand, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, either. It strikes just the right balance, for the most part avoiding the cliche of the action hero’s pithy lines (although there’s a line or two near the end that come close).

Actually, it’s less “action” than a cross between a disaster movie and a hostage thriller. It even sort of breaks these elements apart, with the hostage part sandwiched between thrilling airplane flight sequences: first a crash landing as the result of a lightning strike in the middle of a storm; then a daring escape on the plane that miraculously still works (with a lot of its instruments fried). Either way, let’s call it Die Hard on an Island. Only in this case, the heroes aren’t full of sardonic asides.

Plane is also a “buddy movie” of sorts, but with a fairly unique twist. This flight, en route to Tokyo from Singapore, has only a handful of passengers (not sure how often that happens, but it’s convenient for plotting), and captain Brodie Torrance (Butler) has been informed he is also carrying a man charged with murder being extradited (Mike Colter). Once the plane lands—skillfully by Torrance once he spies a road on the island—it’s these two industrious, former military men who find themselves working together.

There’s a quietly progressive way these men, one White and one Black, are treated onscreen. Race is never discussed or addressed directly in any way in this movie, and it even narrowly avoids problematic depictions of local island Filipinos by making the villains “separatists” who run the island. Colter is cast to look like an intimidating, very large and strong, bald Black man, who, once he has teamed up with Torrance, quickly proves both competent and at ease with himself, a guy with personality to spare. Plane exists in a world where racial tensions just don’t exist, which, in a movie like this one, is a perfectly good choice. Colter’s Louis Gaspare is presented as intimidating not because of his race, but because of his size and status as an accused murderer.

And, spoiler alert, we never even find out if Gaspare actually killed anyone. “Wrong place at the wrong time” is the phrase he uses when referring to whatever the incident was fifteen years before that got him here. He knows how to use weapons, and ultimately comes to Torrence’s rescue.

There aren’t any slickly choreographed fight sequences in Plane, but rather a series of increasingly desperate near-misses, keeping the tension effectively high. Torrence gets into a fight with a local islander, and cinematographer Brendan Galvin shoots it with effective urgency. He does the same in the flight landing sequence, almost imperceptively jerking the camera forward toward Butler’s face with each jolt of turbulence in the cockpit.

Plane is quite definitively a B-movie, right down to its plain and simple title. I can just imagine the pitches for what to title this film, only to wind up landing on the obvious. Talk about on the nose; it barely stops short of being tongue-in-cheek. This film’s refusal to go anywhere near camp is one of my favorite things about it. Director Jean-François Richet has no interest in winking at his audience, and that choice is what elevates the material, if only slightly. It’s still B-movie entertainment, and yet, the pointed title notwithstanding, it’s never ridiculous. These days, that kind of subtle earnestness almost qualifies as subversive. This is the perfect January release, one that won’t put on airs and lives up to its promise.

I spent way too much time looking for a screenshot featuring both Gerard Butler and the plane.

Overall: B

THE PALE BLUE EYE

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

There are so many familiar faces in The Pale Blue Eye, it gets genuinely distracting. There are four Harry Potter series cast alumni, although to be fair Toby Jones was merely the voice of the house elf Dobby in those films; his actual face is familiar from countless other films. The same goes for Simon McBurney, to a lesser degree: he voiced Kreacher in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I. The genuinely jarring faces are two who were much larger characters in the Harry Potter universe but are much older and thinner now: Timothy Spall as Superintendent Thayer; and Harry Melling as Cadet Edgar Allen Poe—yes, the Edgar Allan Poe, played by the young man who once played the far heavier Dudley Dursley.

As it happens, Melling is inspired casting. This guy grew into a gaunt, almost crater-eyed young man, perfect for the aesthetic of a 19th-century poet with a taste for the truly morbid. He works well for ambiguity as well: Poe has a flair for the eccentric and dark, but it is well established early on that he is not the villain.

Who is the villain proves to be complex, arguably even convoluted, in The Pale Blue Eye, which is wrtier-director Scott Cooper’s version of a murder mystery. Cooper is the man who previously brought us such varied titles as Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace, Black Mass and Hostiles, and this body of work evidently granted him a blank check from Netflix: this new film was granted limited release just prior to Christmas, and has otherwise been streaming exclusively on Netflix since January 6.

I rather wish I could have seen it in a theater. The Pale Blue Eye is the kind of movie that moves at a glacial pace but rewards patience, and strikes a compellingly melancholy tone that would far more successfully draw viewers entirely into its world from inside a cinema. As for whether it’s worth watching at home, at best that depends on your interest in the film’s genre, and particularly, its aesthetic.

To be honest, this movie isn’t quite dark enough. It establishes an eerie vibe, but never manages to be unsettling, or even particularly spooky. I dug it when Poe asked a woman out on a date to a cemetery, where she proceeds to have a seizure. More of this please! But really, even with its element of Satan worship—which itself is really quite sanitized—this film is really nothing more than a conventional murder mystery, grafted onto a 19th-century American setting.

That’s not to say I still didn’t find it worth watching, mind you. Christian Bale returns to work with Scott Cooper for the third time—that’s half of his feature films, to date—as the detective summoned to investigate grisly murders involving the removal of corpse’s hearts. He makes a rather unlikely but oddly workable pairing with Melling as Poe, as they team up to suss out clues together.

Charlotte Gainsbourg is underused in a supporting part as a passing love interest of Bale’s. Robert Duvall appears in two scenes as a crusty old academic. And Gillian Anderson is both virtually unrecognizable and iconic as Toby Jones’s tightly wound wife—the wife of the local doctor. The glacial pace picks up about halfway through the run time, which for me at least made it worth the wait. And then, about three quarters of the way through the story, there is a sequence climactic enough to feel like a solid ending to the film. Anyone not already familiar with the runtime would no doubt be surprised to find another half an hour left to go, in which we are treated to the final twist, turning everything we saw on its head.

It’s fun enough, I suppose. Not as thrilling in surprise as I might have liked. But, to its credit, The Pale Blue Eye offered a world I enjoyed inhabiting for a couple of hours.

We’re not on Privet Drive anymore: Christian Bale and Harry Melling have an unlikely meeting of the minds two hundred years in the past.

Overall: B

SAINT OMER

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

Maybe Saint Omer just isn’t for me. What possible insight could I, a gay White American man, have about a film depicting the trial of an immigrant African French woman who killed her baby, also directed by a French woman of African descent? My knowledge of problematic French colonialist history is limited at best, and my best frame of reference is my own complicated relationship with my own mother, which bears no resemblance whatsoever to what is depicted onscreen here. There’s a lot of Venn diagrams that can be built here, where the circles just overlap at all.

All of that is to say: I’m a little insecure about judging this film, which critics by and large seem to be tripping over themselves to declare a stunningly brilliant piece of work, and I seem completely unable to see it. I went searching for what few reviews panned it, and predictably, they are generally White men. Are there any women who hated this movie? I found one, and then realized she was also White. Dammit! It would be a lot easier to feel vindicated in my distaste for this film if I could find any women of color who felt the same way. (To be fair, working women critics of color are hard to find overall, let alone any who also could not connect with the same film that failed to move me.)

How much general audiences like this movie also varies depending on the source. At Rotten Tomatoes, the “tomatometer” score is 95%; the audience score 25%. Over at IMDb.com, the average rating of this film is 7/10—pretty high by that site’s usual user rating standards. As you can tell, I’m eager to decipher whether I somehow missed something everyone else is managing to see in this film.

And I have to tell you, it bored me half to death. And not because of the subject matter, which is compelling (if not salacious) by definition, but because of the way the movie is shot, edited, and acted. Everything about how this film is put together put me off.

It took me a while even to understand why director and co-writer Alice Diop chose this structure: although the film is ostensibly about the incomprehensible act of a woman leaving her baby to die on a beach at high tide—that being based on a true event—the protagonist here is Rama (Kayije Kagame), a novelist who is attending the trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda) with the idea of it informing her work. Saint Omer (the title is a reference to a town in France, where the trial is taking place) is sprinkled with brief flashbacks of Rama as a young girl, unable to connect with her blank-faced, stoic mother. It takes a while to realize we met this same mother, in the present day, during one of the opening scenes, when Rama visits her family, standing awkwardly and not chatting or connecting with anyone.

I was mystified enough by that introduction to Rama, but still keeping an open mind and being patient. The setting shifts to the French courtroom, where a good majority of the film takes place, and finally something interesting happens: this is when we meet Laurence, learn that she is charged with infanticide, and most bizarre of all, she both admits to killing the baby—that part is never a mystery—and pleads not guilty. And then Alice Diop trains her largely stationery camera on extended shots of the judge, or the defendant, or Rama, during jury selection, preliminary questions, and more.

And it goes on. And on. And on. And on. This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the delivery of the actors, which consistently stops just short of deadpan. The characters nearly always speak softly, as though it’s just the normal way all humans talk, even though it isn’t. This is not to say there are never any displays of emotion—the prosecuting attorney is increasingly frustrated with Laurence’s demonstrably inconsistent testimony, and there’s a moment, during the rare time we see her in her hotel room rather than in the courtroom, when Rama breaks down weeping.

The cinematography is rudimentary at best, and it’s possible I hated that most of all, the way the camera moves very slowly in straight lines back and forth or up and down, if it moves at all. I spent a long time wondering why the hell we were spending so much time watching Laurence’s testimony rather than, say, seeing her story in flashbacks. What the hell happened to “show, don’t tell”? This movie is almost nothing but “telling,” rendering it one of the least cinematic films I have seen in ages. And then I realized: this movie is “showing,” by telling the story, ultimately, of how attending this trial and witnessing the aforementioned testimony is affecting Rama. Mind you, Rama is never revealed to have any direct connection to the defendant or her crime, although more gets revealed to explain her interest.

I can’t help but wonder if I am being unfair to this film—a feeling I have only because of its otherwise universal critical acclaim—but I can only be honest about my personal experience with it. When the film ended, after what felt like an eternity of tedium, I felt sweet relief.

I’m just as bored as all these people look.

Overall: C

BABYLON

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

The first thing you need to know about BABYLON is that it is three hours and nine minutes long. You should then be asking yourself whether the film justifies its own length, and the answer is no.

Within the first ten minutes, we see a man get shit on by an elephant, and we see another man get pissed on by a woman. Both of these things have been widely reported, so if you have paid any attention whatsoever to the press coverage of these movies, you might think you already knew these things. Except, I don’t think you understand. There’s a close-up shot of an elephant’s asshole, dilating, and it sprays a firehose of shit right at the camera, before it cuts to the man, getting doused by an elephant-shit waterfall. What I’m trying to say is, there is a lot of elephant shit. And then, minutes later, in the back room of a wild party that takes up the bulk of the first thirty minutes of the movie—the party to which the aforementioned elephant is being delivered, that’s how wild it is—a woman is straddling a naked fat man lying on his back on the floor, and she pisses all over his belly, then penguin-walks forward and pisses all over his face. What I’m trying to say is, there is a lot of piss (although, I suppose it should be noted, less of the piss than the elephant shit).

One might be relieved to learn that these sorts of things do not make up the rest of the movie, but that does not mean it’s all uphill from there. Regardless, it still begs the question: are these things you really want to see? Does this sound fun to you? I did not find it particularly fun.

I’m tempted to say I can’t decide what writer-director Damien Chazelle is playing at, except that I think I get it: this is about the wild excesses of “classic” Hollywood, from the waning days of the silent era. The self-indulgent excess of this movie itself is very much the point. I won’t go so far as to call it “kink shaming,” but the choice of an extremely fat man is clearly a conscious choice, one meant to remove most of us from any kind of actual titillation. The pissing scene just as much as the elephant shit scene is meant to disgust us. So much is going on in that party—random fucking, several fleeting gimpses of full frontal nudity of both sexes—we are meant to be overwhelmed by the idea of BABYLON as a film that directly references Singin’ in the Rain multiple times, and in so doing makes us understand that BABYLON is the same movie if it were made by unrepentant deviants.

BABYLON even follows many of the same story beats. It just stretches them out over an eternity, so that a solid two hours pass before we are even introduced to Tobey Maguire as a yellow-toothed gangster who escorts us through multiple underground levels of dungeons that, according to many interpretations anyway, are meant to be the “circles of movie hell.” I just saw it as a random diversion in a movie packed with random diversions, brought to me well after I had long since tired of diversions.

There are far too many things happening in BABYLON to count, and I spent an inordinate amount of time focusing on elephant shit and golden showers. The thing is, Chazelle has to have included those things for a reason, and they are the things that leave the most lasting impressions, even through the two and a half hours that follow them.

Brad Pitt, who plays Jack Conrad, a former silent movie star now aging and struggling to succeed in the era of sound, does have a line far later in the film that I found the most unforgettable. He is asked how the movie he just starred in is, and he assesses it as “a giant swing at mediocrity.” If that doesn’t describe BABYLON perfectly, I don’t know what does.

There’s another conversation between Jack and gossip writer Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), in which she attempts to console him by noting how his circumstance is one among many to be experienced by countless other actors for decades to come, maybe forever: “It’s bigger than you,” she says. This is one of many moments where BABYLON gets into a love of cinema, its timeless nature, blah blah blah. She even notes that countless other people will have this exact same conversation. I saw that as a metaphor for BABYLON itself, which covers well-trodden ground with every thematic layer it purports to have.

With every single thing BABYLON has to say, it’s like: yeah. We get it. We’ve been through this already. Maybe to Damien Chazelle that’s the point, but there also comes a point where a dead horse can only be beat for so long. And it’s after this point that our primary protagonist, Manny Torres (Diego Calva), literally goes to the movies to see Singin’ in the Rain some twenty years after the previous events depicted, and recognizes everything that happens in it as what happened to him and all the people he knew, just sanitized, made more “wholesome,” and certainly whitewashed. It’s meant to be a moment of grand poignancy, but it came far after I had lost my patience—and that occurred before the title card (which comes up thirty minutes in).

I haven’t even mentioned Margot Robbie yet. As Nellie LaRoy, she is effectively the co-star of this film, alongside Diego Calva (with Brad Pitt in what is essentially a supporting role). She finagles her way into Hollywood filmmaking and quickly becomes a star, while Manny is rising through the ranks behind the camera. Virtually everything that happens to the awful-voiced actress in Singin’ in the Rain happens to Nellie, just in far dirtier, grittier and more dangerous ways. Robbie is a great talent who actually kind of gets swallowed up by the excesses of this movie, given how easy it is—as I have just demonstrated—to talk about countless things in the film before even mentioning her.

I went to BABYLON really wanting to love it. Damien Chazelle has made films I consider to be truly great. This one, though, feels like the last, desperate attempt of an auteur throwing all of his unused ideas into a movie, as though terrified no one will ever allow him to make another one. The sad irony is that none of those ideas were particularly original.

Paul Thomas Anderson did everything this movie tries to do better 25 years ago in Boogie Nights.

Overall: C

WOMEN TALKING

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

There is a scene near the end of Women Talking, which consists mostly of dense and high-stakes conversation between eight women meeting secretly in a barn, in which the majority of their Mennonite community are seen together. I won’t spoil the context, except to day that in spite of the scene’s relatively subtlety and fleetingness, I have not seen any more powerful image in film over the past year.

Women Talking is a deeply affecting film, with far more things to say about power and patiarchy than this seemingly small and self-contained story might suggest. It’s the means of getting to that powerful moment that counts, not necessarily how the journey begins.

Because, to be clear, the opening scenes feel not just like a filmed play (even though director Sarah Polley adapted it from the novel of the same name by Miram Toews, who also co-wrote the script, and not a play), but like the dialogue is over-written. This is a film whose title is the ultimate in truth in advertising: it is almost exclusively women talking, and they sure are a wildly articulate bunch, particularly for being deliberately uneducated sectarian women to such a degree that they can’t even read or write.

The one exception is the film’s literal manifestation of “not all men” (a phrase that one of the women actually utters), August, played by the perennially reliable Ben Wishaw. He is the colony’s schoolteacher—of boys exclusively—recently returned from college after his family’s exile, and he has been tasked with “keeping the minutes” of this meeting, in which the women must decide whether to stay or leave the colony. To be fair to Wishaw himself, he gives every bit as good a performance as anyone else in the cast, notwithstanding the muddled nature of his character’s presence. August often seems to be present just to bear brunt of, or act as a barrier between, these women’s rage against the other men of the colony.

The rest of the cast is a list of powerhouse women, with which Wishaw has no hope of competing: the women in the meeting include Rooney Mara as Ona, the one “spinster” present; Claire Foy as Salome, whose righteous anger prevents her from the forgiveness their faith tasks her with; and a stunning (and, as is often the case with her, unrecognizable) Jessie Buckley as Mariche, whose own anger has her passionately defending the perceived security of the colony. These three deliver the level of performance their reputations lead us to expect from them, but I was just as impressed with some of the lesser-known actors: two women playing mothers (Judith Ivey and Sheila McCarthy), and especially the rather distinctive Michelle McLeod as Mejal. The latter women demonstrates how people who endure the same trauma can react in wildly different ways, something the rest of the women, who again are given no education or even knowledge of the world, struggle to understand.

And, to be clear, this is a story about trauma, and of a very specific sort: inspired by similar real-life events that occurred in Bolivia, these women have only recently learned that the “evil” that has descended on all of them was not devils and demons as the local men have led them to believe, but the men themselves, incapacitating them with animal anesthetic and raping them. We are meant to understand this has been going on for years, although the script of the film doesn’t emphasize that very much, which makes it easy to glean over.

That said, there are many flashbacks, clearly designed to break up the monotony of endless debates between women in a barn. These days, it would be shocking for any film to depict racial violence or violence against women directly onscreen, as there is now a deeper understanding of how that forces audiences to relive their traumas. It remains a relief that none of this violence is seen onscreen in Women Talking, which is much more concerned with the nuances discussion from the point of view of the deeply pious, who believe in forgiveness, but must reconcile that with self-protection.

The debate, at first, is a choice between three options: do nothing; stay and fight; or leave. Because one young male attacker has been caught and the women are so wildly upset that several men have been arrested “for their own protection,” the women are left largely alone for a day when the rest of the men have gone to post bail. This is their time constraint: they must make a communal decision before the men return.

I thought a lot about the danger and uncertainty of the option to leave, considering these women have never known anything else, and have little concept of the world outside their colony. Polley deftly balances this with the terror that also comes with any decision to stay, and in so doing underscores the resilience of women throughout history.

There is one character I can’t decide how to feel about, an evidently trans teen boy named Melvin, played by nonbinary actor August Winter. Women Talking seems to suggest that Melvin was pushed into his trans-ness by the same trauma the grown women went through, which strikes me as problematic at best. He also refuses to speak to any adult, only to the colony’s children, presumably for the same reason. And the strangest thing about it, to me, is the idea that Melvin could exist so freely in a Mennonite colony we’re supposed to understand is ruled over by violent misogynists. In what universe would such men allow someone like Melvin to join their ranks? Even the grown women here, whose side we are rightly on otherwise, are still deeply religious and conservative, and their relative ease in accepting Melvin stretches plausibility. Still, it’s nice to see a trans boy accepted for who he is, I guess. I just had a hard time making sense of the context.

The flip side of that plausibility, to a degree, is the elder woman played by Frances McDormand, the one woman in the colony who refuses even to entertain the idea of leaving, thanks to the conviction that doing so would deny them entry into heaven. McDormand’s character is steadfast in her contrarian position, but especially for a character and name featured prominently in marketing materials, she is barely in this movie. We see her in all of three or four scenes, each so brief as to make it impossible for McDormand to showcase her well known talents.

Narratively speaking, largely thanks to the hyperconscious style of the dialogue, Women Talking takes a little while to click with. But, perhaps that is the point: give these women time to make their case as they engage in earnest and urgent debate, and they will win you over. By the time this movie ended, I was deeply moved by it.

Every one a unique perspective, each of them valid.

Overall: B+

MEGAN

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

MEGAN answers the question you never thought to ask: What would Chucky be like if he had the brain of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey? Or more specifically, if HAL 9000 were reincarnated as a 4’ tall, fashion-forward sorority girl?

Do people younger than forty even understand these references? 2001 was released 55 years ago and Child’s Play was released 35 years ago. Granted they both spawned sequels over the years, but if MEGAN proves anything, it’s that given enough time everything can be recycled.

Or is it M3GAN? Lead character Gemma (Allison Williams) informs us early on that it stands for Model 3 Generative Android. M3GAN is a lifelike doll with intuitive AI much more sophisticated than, but clearly modeled on, the Furby—which this film makes explicitly clear with an opening commercial for an incredibly similar toy developed by Gemma’s company. The TV spot is darkly funny, instantly setting the tone for the horror-comedy genre.

None of this is especially original, mind you. It’s all tried-and-true story tropes and concepts, given a slightly different twist. That said, I can’t deny the twist makes the movie fun, if wildly lacking in logic. (Where does M3GAN get all her fantastic outfits, anyway?) Not that any horror movie is particularly concerned with logic, nor is any horror movie audience.

I guess I’m just prone to nitpicking. MEGAN is set in Seattle, made clear by maybe three or four establishing wide shots of the city skyline; for locals, it would seem Gemma’s company offices are in the Columbia Center. We don’t see any recognizable part of Seattle otherwise, though; filming took place in Los Angeles and Auckland, New Zealand. How original!

Normally I give a lot more respect to films that give their story room to breathe, but the rules are different for horror, and MEGAN sure takes its time to get to the good stuff. I kept wondering what it would be like for someone sitting to watch this movie knowing nothing about it. They would spend at least twenty minutes thinking, What the hell is this about a kid (Violet McGraw, well cast) with a vaguely creepy doll-playmate? We spend an incredible amount of time with Gemma and her colleagues, trying to perfect this beta model robot doll while enduring their obnoxiously impatient boss (Ronny Chieng), before anything sinister is really even hinted at.

Once M3GAN becomes evidently self-aware, however, she becomes quite the fierce little bitch, instantly turning this film into something with the potential to become a cult favorite in a way no movie has in a long while. (She gets some choice lines, as when she finally turns on the child she’s been imprinted on: “You ungrateful little bitch!” Obviously she’s projecting.) I had been fairly neutral on this film when I first saw the trailer, although the bit showing M3GAN doing a little dance in a hallway before attacking someone—which became viral before the film was even released—did crack me up. I couldn’t tell if it was because the movie was unintentional camp.

What makes MEGAN work, as it happens, is how it deftly straddles the line of camp, offering plenty of satirical humor while also taking itself seriously as a horror film when appropriate. The script, by Akela Cooper (Malignant) from a story by James Wan (Annabelle Comes Home), could have stood a bit more sophistication, but in their defense—and thanks to first-time feature director Gerard Johnstone—this movie never falls short of what it promises to be. Which is to say: ridiculous in every respect, and also in all the right ways.

The doll herself, M3GAN, is actually played by two actors: 12-year-old Amie Donald provides the body and movements (under a just-short-of lifelike robot mask); 18-year-old Jenna Davis provides the voice. The voice is mostly digitally enhanced, but I wonder how much young Amie Donald got paid, given that usually there is less payment when an actor has no lines? M3GAN’s movements strike a perfect balance, though, between innocently youthful and creepily robotic.

Indeed, the production design of the title character is arguably the greatest contributor to this movie’s success—and it certainly works on its own terms. Overall MEGAN feels like a slightly undercooked effort, but in a way that could easily enhance its cult legacy in the long run. Once M3GAN goes on a murderous rampage, it’s really fun.

She’s got that killer look.

Overall: B