FERRARI

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

I don’t want to spoil Ferrari—and if you want to get technical, you can’t spoil history—but I think it might do well for viewers to be warned: something almost absurdly horrific happens in the final act of this film, and I have somewhat mixed feelings about it.

I say “almost” only because it can’t exactly be absurd if it actually happened, and this incident did indeed happen, during the 1957 Mille Miglia, a road race across Italy. I already knew to expect some sort of tragic crash to occur, given what had already been seen many times in the film’s trailer. But, nothing could have prepared me for where that scene goes in the actual film, during which I exlaimed, loud enough for everyone in the theater to hear, “Jesus Christ!” It’s shocking what director Michael Mann chooses to depict onscreen here, which would be dismissed as ridiculous and unrealistic had it not been based on an actual event.

For some, perhaps, hearing this about Ferrari will pique the interest. It should also be noted, perhaps, that the visual effects, in both this and other crash sequences, are noticeably, let’s say, lower-budget. They’re serviceable, and they serve the story. Whether the carnage we see needed to be put onscreen is perhaps up for debate.

Also: Ferrari on the whole is nowhere near as exciting as it sounds, to say it features one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen onscreen (albeit clearly using actors who went unharmed). The story here is much more concerned with family drama, with Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) in a tense marriage with Laura (Penélope Cruz), a couple still grieving the death of their one son, while Enzo maintains a separate family with a woman named Lina (Shailene Woodley), with whom Enzo has a little boy. On top of that, Laura is effectively Enzo’s business partner, having been given co-ownership of his factory during the war in an effort at thwarting Nazis.

Adam Driver’s transformation notwithstanding, Penélope Cruz is easily the best part of Ferrari, a tough negotiator and a woman with power far ahead of her time. Laura doesn’t take any shit, even if she openly tolerates Enzo’s infidelities. As she directly states within the first ten minutes of the film, they have an agreement.

I did find myself slightly distracted by this American film, telling an Italian story, with non-Italian actors speaking English but in surprisingly subtle Italian accents. (To its credit, Ferrari features none of the cartoonishly exaggerated accents of House of Gucci.) Driver and Woodley are both America; Cruz is Spanish. Are there any actual Italian actors in this film at all? Certainly none of the famous ones are, including Patrick Dempsey as Italan race car driver Piero Taruffi. Among the actors playing all these characters, the accents are so understated that sometimes they just sound like their American selves. Reportedly, some of the people in Europe aren’t thrilled about it.

Nevertheless, I was engaged enough by Ferrari—just not enough to tell anyone to go out of their way to watch it. To be honest, it might be that Michael Mann, a director who has offered a few great movies, has lost his edge. Perhaps he did a while ago; the man is eighty years old, after all. He’s in the same club as Ridley Scott (age 86), who this year gave us Napoleon, a similar film in that it didn’t quite add up to the sum of its parts, but had some memorably executed scenes. Ferrari, for its part, is more tightly edited and thus more coherent, making it a slightly superior film.

Indeed, Ferrari would seem to have a lot going for it: assured editing and cinematography, and uniformly competent performers. There’s not as much actual racing as you might expect, nor did I find most of the racing footage especially exciting—but, it’s well shot. That’s what makes Ferrari a pecular specimen, though: a whole lot of greatness went into its construction, and yet somehow it still can’t manage to be much better than fine.

Adam Driver ironically does not drive much in this movie.

Overall: B

Cinema 2023: Best & Worst

Below are the ten most satisfying and memorable films I saw in 2023: 10. Barbie A-   Remember America Ferrara's speech everyone raved about online? I recently heard someone characterize it as "it sounds like AI," and you know what? Fair. Also: beside the point. Barbie's inclusion in my top ten for the year as connected to, but about far more than it being the biggest movie of the year. There's something to be said for a movie like this one becoming the biggest movie of the year, with its seemingly cliche platitudes which nonetheless got mainstream exposure like never before. A cliché doesn't sound like a cliché when you're hearing it for the first time, and both Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling give genuinely award-worthy performances. Greta Gerwig being the director and co-writer of this expertly constructed film is the sole reason I had any interest in it to begin with, and not only did she not disappoint, she massively exceeded expectations. Women can make giant blockbusters too! Women are just as capable of harnessing late-stage capitalism! What I said then: A different director could have made a film version of Barbie that was every bit as fun, and maybe even worth seeing, but only Greta Gerwig, with the help of her expertly curated ensemble cast, could so successfully pack the movie with subtext. Even better, viewers with no interest in the subtext can just as easily enjoy the movie on a surface level—this doesn’t have to be an intellectual pursuit, or something you have to analyze or deconstruct. Gerwig’s genius is in how she makes that possible without making it necessary. 9. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse A-   How do I account for my inclusion of Across the Spider-Verse here, when its predecessor, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which I also gave an A-minus, did not make it onto my top 10 in 2018? Both films are similarly exhilarating viewing experiences, after all. All I can say, I suppose, is that I saw more films in 2018 that had a deeper impact on me. Furthermore, I would argue, the fact that Across the Spider-Verse matches the previous film's quality in every way, and in some ways perhaps even surpasses it, is an even greater accomplishment. Now, I benefited from the prior knowledge, going in, that this was to be the first of a story split in two parts, so I was not incensed, as some were, by its cliffhanger ending, which I was fully anticipating. And everything up to that point is a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of distinct artistic styles associated with different characters, each of which is given far more dimension than in any average live-action superhero film. Across the Spider-Verse is as often hilarious as it is moving, layered with both thematic and visual meaning. It has far more to offer than can be taken from just one viewing. What I said then: It can be hard to trust any assertion that a movie has everything you could possibly want and more, but in this case, you can take that to the bank. The movie’s producers almost certainly will. This movie is a truly amazing specimen of cinematic craft. 8. BlackBerry A-   Maybe the biggest cinematic surprise of the first half of 2023, BlackBerry may not be quite the instant classic that The Social Network had been, but it's the closest we've come in a long, long time. This movie, about the minds behind the staggering success of the BlackBerry mobile device and its rapid fall in the face of Apple's iPhone, has a propulsive energy unlike any other film this year. BlackBerry deserved far more attention than the little it comparatively got—it barely fell short of $2 million worldwide, on an otherwise tiny budget of $5 million—though it later aired as a slightly expanded miniseries on AMC. In any case, it was one of the more thrilling experiences I had in a cinema this year. What I said then: It’s not the story, it’s how it’s told. It’s good to remember that if you hear that there is a movie about the rise and fall of the first mass-market mobile device, the BlackBerry. Because this film, directed, co-written and co-starring Matt Johnson, is stunningly propulsive, edge-of-your-seat stuff. 7. Past Lives A-   There's something about the way this film is constructed, it's just . . . achingly beautiful. It's also very sad, a story of missed opportunities between a boy and a girl who start of as best friends in Korea, and then the girl, over the years, moves with her family to Canada and then to the U.S. It's a deceptively simple premise, with deeply affecting, if subtle, layers of emotion. In the end, there's a love triangle of sorts, except not quite exactly, a scenario when these two people who have longed for each other all their lives are faced with a romantic conundrum. Past Lives is a quite film with a hell of a lot to say, culminating in a "What would you do?" scenario for the ages. This is the kind of movie that deserves to be remembered and savored for generations. What I said then: Past Lives is a unique experience, in that its emotional resonance takes some time to percolate. I nearly started crying thinking about it on my way home after the movie ended, and I still can’t really say why, except that the movie permeated my soul, and it took some time for me to focus on anything else, rather than continuing to think about this deeply affecting love story. 6. May December A-   What would we do without the mind of Todd Haynes, which isn't so much fucked up as it is concerned with deeply nuanced depictions of fucked up people? This has never been more the case than with May December, a film so directly inspired by the Mary Kay Letourneau story that it blurs the line between fact and fiction. Except, it is also a compelling thought exercise: Latourneau and her husband divorced after 14 years of marriage, but this film asks the question: what if they were still married, twenty years after the affair between an older woman (Julianne Moore) and a younger man (a standout Charles Melton)? And for good measure, let's throw in an actress (Natalie Portman), visiting the family, taking "research" to dubious lengths as she prepares to star in a TV movie based on their story. The dynamic between Moore and Portman is especially fascinating, as is the dynamic between Melton's character and his children, who are unnaturally close to him in age. Of all the movies I saw this year, this one arguably has the most to talk about—and boy, is it fun to talk about. What I said then: There’s a subtle narrative thread here, touching on the salacious fascination we have with sensationalized stories like this. Natalie Portman is absolutely incredible in this role, as a woman overstaying her welcome as she “researches” the role, taking the task to new and dangerous places, fucking with the stability of people already existing in precarious emotional spaces. Elizabeth engages in her own sort of grooming, gaining the trust of people she is ultimately just using for the purpose of serving her onscren performance. 5. Close A   Close has an unfortunate taint to it, in that it was directed by Lukas Dhont, who previously made a film about a trans girl that was rightly critically reviled for its irresponsible depictions. If there is any possibility for redemption, though, then Close is it, a vividly realized example of a filmmaker taking on a subject that allows him actually to write what he knows. This is about adolescent boys, with a deep connection, both emotional and physical in ways that they don't register consciously—and then, in ways they are too young to understand, an insidious bit of homophobia splits their pure and innocent connection in two. Your heart aches for these boys, because you understand what they don't have the ability to contextualize. What I said then: One of many things Dhont deftly handles in Close is the way adolescents experience feelings that have no tools to articulate. Something is definitely happening between these boys, but neither of them knows or understands exactly what. We, as observers in the audience, are the ones who understand: Léo is afraid of being misjudged by his peers; Rémi is deeply saddened and doesn’t know for certain why. It’s heartbreaking to watch, and will make you recall your own cherished childhood friendships that fell apart without explanation or warning. 4. The Holdovers A   If I just went by how the movies made me feel, I might very well have ranked The Holdovers at #1—this was, by a mile, the most heartwarming film I saw this year. The premise isn't even particularly profound: a loner teacher at a private school (a reliably fantastic Paul Giamatti) gets stuck with chaperoning several students unable to go home for the holidays, and first butts heads with and then forms a bond with a similarly contemptuous student (Dominic Sessa). But there's something about the way director Alexander Payne and writer David Hemingson present this story, in a film specifically stylized to feel not just like it's set in, but as though you're actually watching it in the early 1970s, that just works. It may sound conceptually pretentious, but there is such sincerity in the performances and presentation that you leave the theater feeling thoroughly uplifted, for both the characters and for your own experience at the movies. What I said then: It’s difficult to put into words how wonderful I found The Holdovers. It filled my heart. I tried to think of other descriptors that could work. There’s an element of sweetness, I suppose, but that’s not really what the movie is. Maybe “wholesome” is the right word. Yes, I think that’s it: many “feel-good” movies of the 21st century are self-consciously bawdy with a “wholesome” subtext that just rings false. The Holdovers is the kind of movie that is never bawdy although it can be slightly vulgar when it wants to be, and it gets its tone of wholesomeness exactly right. 3. Anatomy of a Fall A   A stunning accomplishment of cinematic craft, Anatomy of a Fall just begs for analysis—in all the best ways. Don't let the two-and-a-half-hour run time deter you: this film is riveting from start to finish, even if some of the earlier scenes seem at first to lack purpose, "at first" being the operative phrase. You'll want to pay close attention, because every moment ultimately proves to be important, making this one of the most compelling crime dramas to come along in many years. To say it's less a "whodunnit" than a "did she do it?" very much undersells the skill and artistry at play in this film, particularly when it comes to interpersonal dynamics between a married couple, their young, blind son, and even their dog. The fact that the wife and mother is German, the husband and father is French, and neither has learned the other's language well enough so they speak in English at home, only enriches the material, as how communication might get lost in translation becomes a key detail, particularly in French courtroom scenes in the second half of the film. Anatomy of a Fall is an intricate family drama as much as it is a murder mystery, and it starts strong and only gets better as it goes along. What I said then: In Anatomy of a Fall, every detail matters. Sandra Hüller’s performance in particular is stellar in its ambiguity, easily gaining empathy but with an undercurrent of doubt, obstinately stoked by the prosecuting attorney, and indeed the inconclusive evidence itself. When all this ambiguity is the result of such deliberate intention, the result is a masterful achievement. 2. A Thousand and One A   For a solid eight months, I was telling everyone that A Thousand and One was the best movie I've seen this year. The title references an apartment number, in New York City between 1994 and 2005, during which a young mother (Teyana Taylor) struggles to raise a boy she illegally pulled out of the foster care system, shortly after she was released from prison. The technicality of whether she kidnapped Terry (played in different segments by three different young actors, each distinct and equally excellent) is incidental to this story, which focuses far more on the challenges of raising a young Black man, often subtly contextualized in the local city politics—and, in particular, the NYPD policies and practices—of the time. This is a period piece of recent history, an intimate portrait that still serves as a reflection of how America's flagship city has evolved, and a story with a dramatic turn at the end that may spark some debate. I was good with it, because I was so deeply impressed with every facet of this movie's production. What I said then: Rarely does such a vividly drawn portrait so effectively occupy the gray areas of life and history. In this case, writer-director A.V. Rockwell proves to be such a talent with a first feature film that I can’t even say she has potential. She’s already realized it. I can only say that I already breathlessly await whatever she makes next, and if she doesn’t have a vastly accomplished career ahead of her, we will have all been criminally deprived. 1. Maestro A   Simply put, Maestro knocked my socks off. My only regret is that this was one of the Netflix-produced films with such a short theatrical window that I had no choice but to watch it at home—and yet, I immediately watched it a second time the very next day, a rare thing indeed. The way I see it, the people criticizing this film's comparative lack of focus on Leonard Bernstein's career as a conductor and composer are missing the point—Bradley Cooper's intent is to explore how that level of acclaim and success affects a person's relationships, especially his marriage. The fact that Bernstein was also queer, a very important aspect of the story as told here, only enriches this examination—and Cooper is transformative, transfixing, and an astonishing revelation as Bernstein. Some might find my reaction to Cooper's accomplishments here, both as actor and as director, to be unjustifiably hyperbolic, but I stand by it, especially after seeing the film a second time. How he can turn in a performance like this, while also directing the film, defies the imagination. And Carey Mulligan is every bit as impressive—if far less literally transformed—as Felicia, Leonard's genuinely beloved but also understandably beleaguered wife. What I said then: Honestly I’m not sure I could even count the ways I loved the experience of watching Maestro. I expected to like it, and to say it exceeded my expectations would be an understatement. I’m gushing so much over it now, I fear it may make readers set their own expectations either impossibly high, or with an unfair amount of skepticism. I can only speak my truth: I loved this film. Five Worst -- or the worst of those I saw 5. Babylon C   I know, I know—a solid C grade is merely average, as opposed to bad. Well? If you want me to review movies I already know will be terrible, you can pay me to do it! Any takers? As it is, my "five worst" winds up just being the five films I most misjudged whether I would like them. In the case of Babylon, this film tested my patience from its very release date, at least locally: technically a 2022 film, I could not see it locally until January. It was not worth the wait, and then I had to wait nearly an entire year to complain to you about it! The POV elephant shit and the golden shower, both within the first ten minutes, are the tip of the iceberg in this wildly unnecessary, wildly excessive, 189-minute movie, about the wild excesses of the last days of the silent movie era. Haven't we covered this terrain already? What I said then: 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. 4. Saint Omer C   If the massive critical acclaim Saint Omer received is any indication, it's entirely possible that this is an example of a movie where "Matthew just doesn't get it." I'm not above admitting that. All I can say is, this movie, about a novelist attending the trial of a woman who abandoned her baby on a beach to drown to death at high tide, bored me senseless. If you really want to see a great film that spends an inordinate amount of time in a French courtroom, see Anatomy of a Fall. That one, at least, spends a sensible amount of time outside the courtroom. What I said then: 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. 3. The Origin of Evil C   Another one with good acting . . . and that's the only particularly good thing about it. With direction and writing that's at the high end of mediocre, and cinematography and editing that skirt the edges of bad, The Origin of Evil is a French family drama with intricate plotting that gets less interesting with each successive turn. It's like Knives Out but without the fun. What I said then: Here’s something I’ve never said about a movie before: The Origin of Evil might just be too French or its own good. Full of unlikably arrogant people, with an inflated sense of self. Not all of the French are like that, I’m sure; these are stereotypes. But this movie isn’t doing them any favors. ... It gets progressively weirder, in less compelling ways. 2. The Flash C   Possibly the greatest waste of potential (and resources) in cinema this year, The Flash actually had a lot going for it, with Michael Keaten actually returning as an aged Batman—a good portion of his presence in the film actually being pretty fun. But, why he gets grafted onto this garbage dump of bad CGI action set pieces is a mystery. And all of that's not even to mention how star Exra Miller evidently turned out to be a massive creep. That aside, if this movie could have just been the second act, expanded into its own feature length film, I might have actually enjoyed it on the whole. Instead, the first and third acts are just witless, poorly rendered messes telling a story I couldn't be bothered to care about. What I said then: The bottom line is, The Flash is a shit sandwich with a moderately tasty center, except what’s the point of a tasty center in a shit sandwich? I suppose we could call the two Ezra Millers in it the buns. There are some nice shots of their butt in that suit, for what it’s worth. And for the record I am separating the art from the buttocks. 1. Renfield C-   I actually had relatively high hopes for Renfield, the movie with Nicholas Hoult as the title character, indefinite servant to Dracula, played by Nicolas Cage, who famously loves to work, apparently so much that he can act in his sleep. Which he might as well have been doing here, a bit of an irony for a film that shifts into manic-mode within the first five minutes and never lets up, relying solely on excessive gore as its "humor" and never managing to be funny enough—or even fun enough—to live up to its premise. Someone should remake this movie about a "familiar" coming to grips with his codependent relationship with a vampire, but with writers who have talent. What I said then: I’m sure some people will be entertained by Renfield. Those people have no standards and no taste. Okay, maybe that’s a little harsh. A more generous read on this movie would be that it’s an homage to mediocrity. The run time is merely 93 minutes and I was more than ready for it to be over after thirty. Why couldn’t they hire whoever cut the trailer to edit the movie? Complete 2023 film review log: 1. 1/5 MEGAN B
2. 1/6 Women Talking B+
3. 1/7 BABYLON C
4. 1/14 Saint Omer C
5. 1/16 The Pale Blue Eye B *
6. 1/17 Plane B
7. 1/26 Living B+ *
8. 1/31 Infinity Pool C
9. 2/2 Knock at the Cabin B-
10. 2/9 Exposure B+
11. 2/10 Close A
12. 2/12 Titanic 25th Anniversary (3D) B **
13. 2/14 80 for Brady B-
14. 2/15 Godland B-
15. 3/9 Cocaine Bear B+
16. 3/13 Emily B
17. 3/29 John Wick: Chapter 4 B
18. 3/30 Linoleum B+
19. 4/6 A Thousand and One A
20. 4/11 Air B
21. 4/12 How to Blow Up a Pipleline B+
22. 4/17 Renfield C-
23. 5/2 Polite Society B
24. 5/4 Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. A-
25. 5/6 Beau Is Afraid B-
26. 5/9 Joyland A-
27. 5/12 The Mattachine Family B+ ***
28. 5/14 And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine B ***
29. 5/15 BlackBerry A-
30. 5/18 Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes A- ***
31. 5/19 Being Mary Tyler Moore B ***
32. 5/20 Theater Camp B+ ***
33. 5/23 Filip B+ *** / *
34. 5/24 Monica B+
35. 5/27 You Hurt My Feelings B+
36. 5/29 The Eight Mountains B+
37. 6/2 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse A-
38. 6/5 Sanctuary C+
39. 6/11 You Hurt My Feelings B+ (2nd viewing)
40. 6/16 The Flash C
41. 6/22 Asteroid City B+
42. 6/26 Past Lives A-
43. 6/30 Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny B
44. 7/2 Every Body A-
45. 7/3 No Hard Feelings B+
46. 7/9 The Lesson B
47. 7/10 Joy Ride B
48. 7/11 Biosphere C+
49. 7/14 Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One B
50. 7/22 Oppenheimer B+
51. 7/23 Barbie A-
52. 7/25 Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One B (2nd viewing)
53. 8/12 Barbie A- (2nd viewing)
54. 8/14 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem B
55. 8/18 The Unknown Country B+
56. 8/27 Strays B
57. 9/3 Bottoms B+
58. 9/8 Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe B+
59. 9/18 Fremont B
60. 9/25 Mutt B
61. 9/28 The Origin of Evil C+
62. 9/29 Stop Making Sense 40th Anniversary Rerelease A-
63. 10/1 The Creator B
64. 10/2 Dumb Money B
65. 10/6 The Royal Hotel B
66. 10/11 Strange Way of Life / The Human Voice B
67. 10/21 Killers of the Flower Moon B+
68. 10/22 My Love Affair with Marriage B+
69. 10/23 Beetlejuice B+ **
70. 10/26 Dicks: The Musical B
71. 11/2 What Happens Later B+
72. 11/3 Priscilla B-
73. 11/4 Anatomy of a Fall A
74. 11/5 Killers of the Flower Moon B+ (2nd viewing)
75. 11/6 The Holdovers A
76. 11/8 Nyad B+ ****
77. 11/12 The Marvels B
78. 11/13 The Killer B+ *
79. 11/14 The Persian Version B-
80. 11/16 The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes B-
81. 11/17 Next Goal Wins B+
82. 11/25 Dream Scenario B
83. 11/26 Napoleon B-
84. 11/28 Saltburn B-
85. 12/2 Reinassance: A Film by Beyoncé B+
86. 12/4 May December A- *
87. 12/8 Eileen B-
88. 12/8 Leave the World Behind B *
89. 12/12 Godzilla Minus One B+
90. 12/14 Poor Things A-
91. 12/16 Fallen Leaves B
92. 12/20 Maestro A *
93. 12/21 Wonka B-
94. 12/23 The Iron Claw B
95. 12/31 Ferrari B * Viewed streaming at home
** Re-issue (no new review)
*** SIFF Advanced screening
**** Viewed streaming in the Braeburn Condos theater

THE IRON CLAW

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

Spoiler Alert! The Von Erich family had a total of six children, and five of them died in a variety of tragic ways. In The Iron Claw, the new film by writer-director Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene), “inspired by” this family’s story, it sticks to the truth of the eldest child having died as a little boy, one of the elder brothers is written out, reportedly because of the expectation that it would be too much for audiences. Well, here’s my take: more than deaths happen to this family, so many awful things, I honestly don’t see how it would have made any real difference. After the other deaths, illnesses, comas, and dismemberments, The Iron Claw already had me pretty desensitized to the plight of this family.

This is a well-executed film that struggles to justify its own existence. I suppose it is indeed a darkly fascinating story, but I’m kind of at a loss as to why we needed a movie about it. It’s less a story of perseverance or overcoming adversity than it is a tale of one family member who happened to avoid the tragic fates of nearly all the others.

There’s so much tragedy, in fact, that The Iron Claw didn’t even manage to be the tearjerker I fully expected it to be. I took five tissues into the theater with me, expecting to be bawling by the end. But there’s no time for grieving when you’re just enduring the shock of one tragic accident or suicide after the next. Which, I suppose, must have been the Von Erich’s experience, except they didn’t experience it as a simple, 130-minute narrative.

If there is anything to truly recommend The Iron Claw, it’s the performances. Zac Efron plays the son and brother around which the narrative revolves, for fairly predictable reasons. Now almost unrecognizable after reconstructive surgery to his jaw after his own real-life tragic accident, the part of Kevin Von Erich showcases his talents like nothing ever before. Jeremy Allen White both bulks up and disappears into his role as brother Kerry. Arguably most impressive of all is Harris Dickinson as brother David. Dickinson’s performance here isn’t especially showy, but if you’re one of the few people who have also seen him in both Beach Rats (2017) and Triangle of Sadness (2022), making these a trio of wildly different characters, each of them equally convincing, you’ll discover that this is a young man with an astonishing talent. Even if he never graduates to leading-man status, he’s got a great future ahead of him as a character actor.

The fourth older brother, Mike, is played by Stanley Simons, who holds his own onscreen with all of these other actors, as do both Holt McCallany as their dangerously obstinate father, Fritz; and Maura Tierney as their steely mother, Doris.

There’s a fair number of artistic choices in the telling of this family’s story, which range from fascinating to mystifying. This is clearly the basis for The Iron Claw being “inspired by” rather than “based on” a true story. A narrative thread in the film has to do with Von Erich being a last name used professionally by the family, though it’s not their given name—Sean Durkin opts, perhaps sensibly, not to get into the fact that in real life, the name stemmed from Fritz’s early-career wrestling days as a Nazi villain character. The name gets contextualized in the so-called “Von Erich curse,” but the whole Nazi thing is never mentioned. Presumably a lot of problematic (at best) character representations occurred in 1980s professional wrestling, but the only taste we get of it here is a brief glimpse of a villain character dressed as an Arab.

Incidentally, the most mystifying part to me was the depiction of professional wrestling in this film. Durkin spends no time whatsoever educating us on how much of it is contrived, a pre-written narrative, and how much is real (Darren Aronofsky’s far superior The Wrestler made it clear that the stories were made up, but the strain on the body was real). Fritz pressures his sons, different ones at different times depending on how pleased he is with them, to fight for wrestling titles, as though a lot of the outcomes were left up to chance. And yet, a couple of scenes have the brothers discussing planned moves before entering the ring, or in one case, a surprisingly chipper opponent who just got really beat up in the ring telling Kevin “I’ll do a rematch any time” in the same breath as he invites him out for a drink. All of this left me confused.

I was mostly okay letting that go, though, because the point of the story here is the so-called “Von Erich curse,” and in particular Kevin’s fear of it. He’s the only one of the brothers to get married, his wife (Lily James) increasingly frustrated with him because of it. The family drama at play here is far more compelling than anything that happens inside a wrestling ring, notwithstanding the relevance of Fritz pushing all of his sons too hard. Most of The Iron Claw—the title itself referring to a strange Von Erich move in which they supposedly painfully grab the face and head of their opponent—plays like any decently constructed family drama, minus the more typical moment of triumph. I just left the theater feeling a bit uncertain as to why I needed to see it.

A parade of tragedy, in and out of the ring.

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-

MAESTRO

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

There’s a scene somewhere in the middle of Maestro, when Leonard Bernstein has an argument with his wife, in a large Manhattan room with the door closed. The camera remains distant, so we watch both of the characters in a wide shot, for the duration of their argument. There are no close-ups of either one of them, in the manner you would typically expect of a scene like this. It’s actually much closer to the real experience when you witness people arguing in person: you don’t get close into their personal space, and yet the tension in the room reaches you as though there were no distance at all. It’s a very unusual style of shooting, and it works perfectly, punctuated at its end by a sort of visual gag, an overture—if you’ll forgive the term—toward the heightened experience of moments like this.

It might be my favorite scene in the film, one of countless great scenes. Honestly I’m not sure I could even count the ways I loved the experience of watching Maestro. I expected to like it, and to say it exceeded my expectations would be an understatement. I’m gushing so much over it now, I fear it may make readers set their own expectations either impossibly high, or with an unfair amount of skepticism. I can only speak my truth: I loved this film.

I have said many times how seldom I like biopics that cover decades in a person’s life. It’s just not possible to distill someone’s life story within the space of two hours. Along comes Bradley Cooper, to whom I can only say: I stand corrected.

Thus, perhaps more than anything, Maestro is a triumph of editing. It begins in 1943, when Bernstein was working as an assistant conductor but had to fill in at short notice when the conductor came down with the flu; and it ends just one year before his death in 1990—which means the story spans 46 years. And yet, every single scene has much to say about Berstein and his life, and fits together to make a holistic picture of a man’s life.

Without focusing on just one moment in the man’s life, Bradley Cooper, who directed and co-wrote this film, instead focuses on Bernstein’s relationship with his wife, Felicia. More specifically, how his bisexuality affected their marriage. And the thing is, before watching this film I knew very, very little about Leonard Bernstein, but hey, wait a minute, he was queer? Well there’s the perfect doorway for me to leap right through—suddenly I’m very interested.

There has been a fair amount of coverage and discussion about Cooper’s decision to cast himself in this role, playing a Jewish man, wear a prosthetic nose, also playing a man who was queer. These are the things that increasingly invite crticisim: why not cast an actor who was actually both Jewish and queer? I still have no answer for that. I can only say this: Cooper’s performance is so astonishing, all of those concerns just fluttered right out of my head. I suppose it helped that he cast Matt Bomer, an openly gay actor, to play one of the objects of his affection.

Cooper is hardly new to making movies that left us wondering why we needed it, only to find it surprisingly accomplished. A Star is Born (2018) was the fourth version of that story on film, and in my opinion, turned out to be second only to the very first one, released in 1937. It also signaled to the world that, as both a director and an actor, audiences had long underestimated his abilities. Maestro goes even further, and cements Bradley Cooper as one of the great actors of his generation. I spent my time watching this film alternately marveling at Bradley’s incredibly lived-in performance, and being practically unable to believe it was really him. There’s “disappearing into a role,” and then there’s Bradley Cooper in Maestro. The fact that he did that while also directing the film is arguably the most amazing achievement I have seen in film this year.

And yet: we must not glean over the stellar Carey Mulligan as Felicia, in a performance without which Maestro would simply not work. She may not make the same kind of dramatic physical transformation as Cooper, but she stands as every bit his match onscreen. Her top billing, above even Cooper himself, is wholly justified. I have long loved Carey Mulligan as an actor, and she has never been better, in a part that in lesser hands may have been pitiful. Here, she strikes a fascinating figure, as a woman who goes into a marriage with a man whose proclivities she is perfectly aware of, and then, over time, discovers she overestimated her ability to tolerate them.

The scenes depicting the early years of Leonard Bernstein’s life and career are shot in beautiful black and white, and I think I may need to watch again to get a better sense of why the point at which it switches over to color was chosen. At the moment, I am unsure about that, and it’s the only thing about Maestro I can even come close to being critical of—except that, everything else works so well, I simply don’t care.

Maestro was edited by Michelle Tesoro, whose previous credits are mostly in television (including the spectacular limited series The Queen’s Gambit), and I am fully convinced she deserves the Oscar for Best Editing—setting aside roughly ten minutes of end credits, this film ends at an even two hours. And, with so much of a man’s life to convey, Maestro employs several unusually clever visual transitions from one scene to the next, a character walking through a doorway and suddenly they are on a new set. In every case, it’s an organic transition that propels the narrative forward, always serving the story.

Before today, perhaps the only thing I might have known or remembered about Leonard Bernstein was that he composed the music for West Side Story—as it happens, he also composed the score for On the Waterfront, for which he received his single Oscar nomination (but did not win). He’s also credited as the composer of the score for Maestro, which is indeed scored with many of his compositions. One scene even features a section of the West Side Story overture, and these musical choices are also consitently, expertly chosen.

Leonard Bernstein was the first American composer to receive international recognition, something I learned merely by virtue of watching this fantastic film. To have Bradley Cooper tell it, however, the most interesting thing about him was his marriage to Felicia, something unconventional especially for the time: they were married from 1951 until (spoiler alert!) Felicia’s death in 1978. They had three children, who don’t get prominence in this film and yet they are given appropriately vital presence, all of them in some way a reflection of the consequences of how Bernstein chose to live his life.

In the end, however, at least as far as Bradely Cooper is interested, it was about his genuine love for Felicia. I don’t have a clue how true to life the events in Maestro are, which I don’t see as especially relevant—we’re dealing with ideas and themes here, conveyed through immensely compelling characters. It does go to a very sad place toward the end, which only left me marveling at the man’s emotional—and romantic—range. Whether or not Leonard Bernstein was a good man is not really something Maestro is concerned with, which is to its benefit. He is a deeply fascinating, towering historical figure, and all we can ask for is that a biopic like this do him justice. Mileage among viewers may vary, but for me it all came together in perfect harmony.

This is actually Bradley Cooper, if you can believe it.

Overall: A

FALLEN LEAVES

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

Fallen Leaves is reveiving virtually universal acclaim, and I’m over here thinking: I must be missing something. It’s fine, but with all due respect, it has yet to strike me as being something particularly special. This is a very simple, surprisingly short (81 minute) tale of two middle-aged people awkwardly falling in love.

This film is being billed as a “romantic comedy.” Romantic, I can get on board with it being. I got a light chuckle out of it maybe three or four times. Otherwise, I’ll concede that Fallen Leaves has a unique sort of sweetness to it. This is about two people who lead very solitary lives, one a little more content with the solitude than the other. They meet at a karaoke bar, and in this particular scene, I did enjoy the furtive glances back and forth between a man and a woman who seem subtly taken aback by how attractive they’re finding each other.

We never learn the names of the characters, but Ansa is played by Alma Pöysti, who is 42; and Holappa is played by Jussi Vatanen, who is 45. Curiously, the story seems to be set over-so-slightly in the future: after getting fired at her supermarket job for taking expired food, Ansa is seen in the kitchen of a bar where she’s hired as a dishwasher, and a 2024 calendar is seen hanging on the wall. This might seem an insignificant detail given how close we are indeed now to 2024, but for the many scenes in which Ansa’s radio plays news reports of Russian attacks in Ukraine.

I had difficulty ascertaining the point of these news clips, in the middle of a love story between two people in Helsinki, Finland. Granted, Finland is the scandinavian country—indeed, the European country—with by far the longest border with Russia. But, there is no political element to the story here otherwise, and if there were supposed to be some symbolic element to these news briefs of war, they sailed right over my head.

Furthermore, the performances across the board are rather flat, muted, almost monotone. This was clearly a deliberate choice, something that happens in a lot of independent and/or foreign films. I wonder how this film is playing in its native Finland. Critics in America are loving it. Am I just jaded after being in my own relationship after twenty years? I’m inclined not to think so, but I’ve been known to be off base about things.

Holappa is a heavy drinker. Ansa doesn’t much care for it. Before they confront that issue, far more minor things occur that result in persistent missed connections: Ansa’s written phone number falling unnoticed out of Holappa’s pocket. Ansa’s playful but ill-advised decision to wait until their second date to tell Holappa her name. They both get fired from their jobs, although Holappa’s drinking is a good reason for it.

That’s not especially a spoiler. There aren’t any major plot turns in Fallen Leaves, which is appealingly unsophisticated in its execution. There’s not a lot to unpack here, really. Nor is there much in the way of emotion. Some movies are wildly emotionally manipulative; Fallen Leaves is the antithesis of that approach. Some might argue that this beautifully underscores the very simple love story at play, one about two people finding love much later in life than most people do. I would argue that this is just a pleasantly simple, straightforward love story and there doesn’t seem to be any more to it than that.

Yep. That’s about all that’s going on here.

Overall: B

POOR THINGS

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

I’m having somewhat of a difficult time deciding what to make of Poor Things. It does seem excellent, but to what degree am I coming to that conclusion because so many others have already said so? Indeed, I can come up with very few criticisms. Does my take that much of it struck me as a cross between Edward Scissorhands and Mars Attacks! count as a criticism?

Poor Things is the kind of film that, perhaps, requires multiple viewings. But we’ve just recently been over this: who has the time for that? Well, I do love director Yorgos Lanthimos, and this may actually be one of the few films I do go out of my way to see again. This guy has a knack for taking a premise that might seem derivative on the surface, and transform it into an innovation. That just may be what he’s doing here.

Of course, just as Edward Scissorhands was before it, Poor Things is a riff on the Frankenstein story. Except, in this case, the doctor (Willem Dafoe) is the mutilated monster, and the “monster” is the radiant Bella (a genuinely remarkable Emma Stone). Bella is the revived corpse of a woman who threw herself off of a bridge, but with the brain of her unborn child transplanted into her head.

Lanthimos is entirely unconcerned with pracitcal matters like fitting a tiny infant’s brain into the head of a grown woman. This is entirely beside the point, in a highly stylized universe that mixes Victorian aesthetics with 21st century sensibilities, a color-saturated world that presents itself as fantasy but mirrors the realities of Western ethics and morals, however bent they might be.

I thought a lot about the potential timelessness of Poor Things as I watched it, with its stunning production design that places it in a sort of outer region of time. This is a film that will hold up after many years, even as it references ideas, and even films, that came long before it. There’s some of The Wizard of Oz at work here, quickly shifting from the brilliant color of a pregnant woman leaping from a bridge, to stark black-and-white scenes of Bella, an infant growing into the world from the vantage point of an adult human body. The black and white lasts a surprisingly long time, Bella clapping like a baby, stumbling around like someone who is just learning to walk, because she is.

It’s only when it flashes back to Dr. Godwin Baxter (Dafoe) performing the brain transplant does it briefly shift back to color, and only when Bella has grown a bit, learned enough words and absorbed enough ideas, and has decided to go on a grand adventure, does the shift to color become permanent. I’m slightly ambivalent about this as a concept, but it’s mesmerizing to look at.

Poor Things, it turns out, is very interested in sexuality. This is one of the things that makes the movie great, with the fascinating premise of an incredibly innocent mind making the discovery, before society has had a chance to instill any shame in her about it. This makes for a lot of confusion and comedy among those around Bella, such as when she masturbates at the dining table with a fruit. I hope they use that as Emma Stone’s clip at the Oscars.

Baxter has an assistant, Max (Ramy Youssef), hired to collact data about Bella’s progress, in the process of which he develops feelings for her. Baxter decides they should marry, as a purely practical decision, and brings in a lawyer to draw up the legal documents—Duncan (Mark Ruffalo). Duncan is immediately smitten with Bella, and, over time, alternately flummoxed by her self-interested and self-assured behaviors. Ultimately Duncan becomes a clear microcosm of male reactions to women, and particularly their sexuality and their autonomy. There were times I found this played out very insightfully, and at others it just seemed really on the nose. Either way, Ruffalo is wonderful, in a role that showcases his talents far more than any of the countless Marvel movies he’s been in have managed.

We glean that Baxter has performed many amputations, swapping heads of different species of animals, a chicken with the head of a pig, or a dog with the head of a duck (these were the things that reminded me of Mars Attacks!). I hesitate to call any part of Poor Things “over the top,” but it might be fair to call some elements “a little much.” This is definitely the case with a sort of gag at the very end, without which I think this film would be notably improved—and it’s already uniquely impressive.

During Bella’s adventures away with Duncan (during which she also meets a young, self-described cynic played by Jerrod Carmichael), Baxter finds another body to revive. This one is played by Margaret Qualley, but nearly all of her screentime depicts her in a state of arrested development. It seemed a waste of Qualley’s talent. On the other hand, clearly there are actors simply eager to work with Yorgos Lanthimos.

I’m having an unusually odd reaction to Poor Things, a somewhat middling response to a piece of excellence with slightly wobbly foundations. This film spoke to me, but not in the visceral way I have responded to Lanthimos’s previous work, be it The Lobster (delightfully twisted) or The Killing of a Sacred Deer (deeply disturbed) or The Favourite (a provocative and funny period piece that has the unusual distinction of consistently improving with repeat viewings). If there’s one thing I can count on Yorgos Lanthimos for, though, is for him to keep pulling me back again. Either I will distance myself from this film as time goes on, or time will strengthen my affection for it—and this is a filmmaker with a talent for achieving the latter.

We find ourselves analyzing what Bella is learning.

Overall: A-

GODZILLA MINUS ONE

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

There are many impressive things about Godzilla Minus One, but the one that sticks with me the most is its technical achievement: no special effects-laden American film has ever looked this good on just a $15 million budget.

It should still be noted: you can still recognize the effects here as CGI—this doesn’t have the jaw-dropping effects of, say, Avatar: The Way of Water. What it does have, however, is a far better story, one that references a decades-old history of a global pop icon without being derivative (something James Cameron has never managed). And when it comes down to it, the effects here are far more impressive on such a comparatively meager budget, than stunning effects that are the result of a limitless budget could ever hope to be.

There are arguments either way when it comes to how impressive that $15 million budget really is. A Japanese production has no unions for actors or filmmakers, and far greater potential for exploitative practices than even Hollywood. Of course, to suggest that Hollywood isn’t exploitative, unions notwithstanding, is preposterous, and these considerations hardly account for how expertly executed Godzilla Minus One is on virtually every level, at literally a fraction of the budget of American tentpoles that spend $250 million to make—and often still look like shit.

This much I can tell you for certain: Godzilla Minus One does not look like shit. And, far more importantly, it has a story that is compelling in its own right, even without a giant radioactive sea creature entering the picture. This was the first Japanese-production Godzilla movie I have ever seen, and it’s far better than any of the several American Godzilla films I have seen (Roland Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla was a downright embarrassment; Gareth Edwards’s C+ 2014 Godzilla squandered its potential; Michael Dougherty’s C- 2019 Godzilla: King of the Monsters was a mess of chaos; Adam Wingard’s C+ 2021 Godzilla vs Kong was merely a minor relief in not being quite as bad). Godzilla Minus One is a clear indicator that it’s best to go to the source: this is the 33rd Godzilla film to come out of Japan since the first one was released in 1954, and I can verify it’s a great introduction.

Not a lot of those 33 films are outright sequels, and neither is this one. In fact, it takes the “return to roots” so seriously that writer-director Takashi Yamazaki sets it at the very end of World War II—when Japan has already been leveled. Rare is the blockbuster monster-movie that offers the level of nuance at play here, much of which likely went over my head just by virtue of my not being Japanese. Still, there’s a lot to consider even for the global audience, particularly this film’s fascinating point of view, which clearly indicates a cultural shift in Japan in which kamikaze missions are no longer seen as the ultimate in honor.

We meet the protagonist, Koichi (a truly wonderful Ryunosuke Kamiki), landing a fighter plane on an island for repair, and quickly revealed to have backed out of a kamikazi mission. His guilt over abandoning his “duty” informs everything he does from then on, including his inability to shoot the creature that suddenly appears and wreaks havoc on the military installation. (It’s clear to us, though, that he makes the right decision not to shoot at it: “What if it just makes it angry?”) He meets a woman, Noriko (Minami Hamabe), who also has no family left, and who is taking care of a baby whose parents died in the war. They become a sort of tentative family, coping with all their own forms of PTSD in the wake of war, only to then be faced with a giant monster.

Okay, so let’s talk a bit about the monster, because I have some ambivalence about its design. Godzilla doesn’t look so much like a radioactive lizard as a barely-disguised guy in a monster-lizard suit—even as rendered in CGI. I understand the impetus to do this, as Godzilla is such an iconic character, and one might argue he should look, at least roughly, like he always did. Nevertheless, in many of the wide shots, which make Godzilla look like a strangely buff lizard-man, I just found the look distractingly hokey.

When Godzilla is swimming in the sea with his back spikes slicing through the surface, though, or he’s powering up to spew nuclear-strength heat rays out of his mouth, the look is pretty damned cool. The corny looking wide shots notwithstanding, Godzilla Minus One is packed with set pieces that are fantastically shot and edited, always giving us a strong sense of place with the characters, and using the effects shots exclusively in ways to convey the shock and awe of what the characters are witnessing.

And this is really what it comes down to: countless moments in this movie are genuinely thrilling, which alone would make it worth a look. But the drama unfolding between the characters grounds the story in a way that blockbuster disaster movies never bother with, because we are expected to be thrilled without consideration for expendable characters. This only raises the stakes when the thrills actually do happen, resulting in final scenes that actually offer a genuinely emotional payoff.

Here’s another great thing about Godzilla Minus One: this movie never asks us to think of the creature as just a misunderstood animal, something that deserves our empathy because he’s just acting on instinct. That’s often a good perspective to have with real-life animals—which Godzilla is not, and with Godzilla, that is not the point. In many Godzilla films, the creature is a symbol, and the possibilities of meaning are endless. In this case, he’s a stand-in for Koichi battling his own demons, and it really works.

There’s a lot going on in Godzilla Minus One, but in this case, it’s beautifully orchestrated chaos. This, right here, is the way Godzilla should be done, and a slew of American directors could learn a lot from it. Or, of course, we could just continue looking to the Japanese for how to shepherd one’s own aging creation into a vital future.

It turns out you really can make the old inventive again.

Overall: B+

LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND

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

This is the new power of Netflix, apparently: Leave the World Behind debuts on Netflix December 8, and that very day I get texts from two different friends: Have you watched Leave the World Behind Yet? and I’m watching the movie Leave the World Behind on Netflix have you seen it?

This movie wasn’t even on my radar. It might have been, had there been a wide release in theaters—instead, yet again, it merely got a limited theatrical release on November 22, something that completely passed me by. I look up what’s playing at my local theaters on a nearly daily basis, but that does not include the traditionally last-run theater The Crest up in Shoreline, which is 11 miles away from me—without a car, that might as well be Mars, especially with three separate multiplexes and three first-run, single-screen theaters within three miles of me. I couldn’t even tell you if this movie did indeed play at The Crest, or anywhere locally, at all.

It’s not even clear whether my friends realized the film had just been released on the very day they were watching it, given the question from both of them as to whether I had watched it yet. I had gone to an actual theater to watch a different movie, give me a chance, sheesh! I looked up the synopsis, though, found it compelling, and I suppose I should admit I was also swayed to a degree by its star power: Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke as Amanda and Clay, parents of teenagers who make a sudden decision to rent a house outside the city for a quick, relaxing, “barely off-season” getaway. Then there are Mahershala Ali, as well as Industry’s Myha'la, as G.H. and his grown daughter Ruth, who show up at the house after a blackout occurs, claiming to be the owners of the house and asking for assistance.

I put the movie on, was a bit surprised by the runtime—138 minutes—and, I must confess, there was something about the camera work, as we were introduced to this family of four (Charlie Evans playing horny 16-year-old Archie and Farrah Mackenzie playing inquisitive, Friends-obsessed, 13-year-old Rose). I found myself thinking: This feels like a TV movie. I wonder how differently it might have played in a movie theater.

The plot unfolds very much like a mystery-thriller, and we don’t get anywhere close to concrete information as to what’s behind the blackout until the very end of the film, a kind of quasi-reveal that I only found moderately satisfying. Leave the World Behind is a film that Has Something To Say, and some of the time it’s compelling, but very little of the time is it particularly profound.

What slowly becomes clear as that there is some kind of national cyber attack occurring. G.H. is the only one who seems to know anything, but because he only suspects more than the others know, for a very long time he’s very hesitant to share, which in turn makes him suspicious. Julia Roberts plays Amanda very knowingly as a somewhat typical, urban middle-class White woman, and tensions between her and this Black father-and-daughter straddle the line between her stated mistrust of anyone regardless of who they are, and biases that dare not speak their name (namely, racism). Director and co-writer Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot) is ultimately being coy about these themes in this film, until he bumps right up against being heavy-handed.

Because it soon becomes very clear, you see, that Leave the World Behind isn’t so much about an external attack, as we are clearly meant to believe until certain plot reveals, as it is about how Americans will treat each other in times of crisis, and particularly manipulated times of crisis. Very weird things occur that make you wonder whether something otherworldly is occurring: deer keep gathering around certain characters, in unnaturally large groups, as though trying to communicate something. An oil tanker runs aground on the beach. A plane crash is discovered on another beach. An earsplitting alarm blares across the region. A snippet of radio broadcast through static reveals whatever is happening is wreaking havoc on animal migrations.

In one eerie and exciting sequence, a bunch of self-driving Teslas have driven to crash into each other on the highway, thereby blocking the family’s one attempted route back to the city—a place they clearly don’t want to be right now anyway. This is where the mystery is at its greatest: is this an alien invasion, or a machine uprising? This would technically fall under the genre of science fiction, but the science element really takes a back seat to the fiction, which is meant to be just plausible enough to get under our skin.

Leave the World Behind rarely succeeds at getting under my skin, but even at its measured pace for well over two hours, it certainly succeeded at keeping my attention. This is the kind of movie that will be fun to talk about, if not especially intellectually stimulating. There are moments when the script gets a little close to preachy, about our inability to be kind to each other. In the opening sequence and just before the opening credits, we hear Amanda exclaim how much she fucking hates people. Broadly speaking, this movie is a little on the nose. It’s perfectly tailored to be a middle-of-the-road streamer release—indeed, the modern equivalent of a TV movie, with some seriously under-par CGI. I’m not disappointed I didn’t get to see this in a theater, but it certainly passed the time more than well enough at home.

A quartet of characters trying to ascertain who the real enemy is.

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-