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The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023)
Felt like I was drowning in cutesiness
Wes Anderson has made only one really great movie, "The Grand Budapest Hotel." That one is magical; I can watch it with pleasure again and again.
In "Henry Sugar," unfortunately, he reverts to his signature twee-ness, and the result -- unless you're either a rabid Wes Anderson fan or a total newcomer -- is tedium, since the inventive but show-offy visuals totally overwhelm the thin, not-very-interesting material.
I can almost imagine Anderson someday attempting to recount a fable or fairy tale using only origami or matchsticks or animated Turkish taffy. It would be a perfect project for him, one in which the story would be merely a trifle, a platform for him to display his cleverness. After all, in his films, you're not supposed to dwell on the story; you're supposed to think, every single second, of Wes Anderson. And like an origami-matchstick-taffy production, "Henry Sugar" is pretty, highly stylized, briefly diverting, shamelessly artificial, and ultimately unrewarding.
Manhunter (1986)
A slick, stylish thriller, but not in the same league as "Silence of the Lambs"
This movie hasn't aged well. I saw it when it came out -- really liked it at the time -- and have seen it at least twice since then. It's intelligent and absorbing, but awfully thin gruel compared to "Lambs."
For one, William Petersen is not Jodie Foster, and his character, Will Graham, simply isn't as touching, appealing, nuanced, and unusual as Clarice Starling. She's a great character (and deservedly netted Foster an Oscar), one of the few examples in movies of a genuinely good, pure, virtuous heroine who's also thoroughly interesting. Petersen's Graham, on the other hand, looks and acts like a cool-guy GQ cover. Graham's backstory -- his psychological breakdown after "Dr. Lecktor" got in his head, and the fact that he's retired and has to be lured back into crime-solving -- is trite and never very believable. When Lecktor observes that the two of them are actually quite alike, it's a line we've heard movie villains declare a million times before.
There's also a problem with the music, as people here have noted. Howard Shore's brilliant score for "Lambs" is haunting, romantic, yet appropriately sinister, whereas "Manhunter" gives us throbbing rock songs which, for me, at least, totally worked against the mood. (It's a problem with a lot of Dario Argento's films as well.)
The pace of "Manhunter" is also markedly different. "Manhunter" is all slick Michael Mann cut-and-dried tough-guy stuff, with intercity Lear jets, police snapping their lines at one another, orders barked over the phone, guys sprinting down office corridors, etc. It lacks the humanity of "Lambs" and totally lacks that film's rich regional atmosphere (even though it's Pittsburgh standing in for a lot of other places). Worse, "Manhunter" periodically grinds to a halt and forces us to watch Will Graham hanging out with his wife and son. Those sticky family scenes are just plain boring. Nothing in "Lambs" is boring.
Tom Noonan makes a fascinating serial killer (partly because of his unusual height, his gentle voice, and his angelic face beneath that bald dome). Ted Levine was even better.
As for whether you prefer Anthony Hopkins's showy performance amid all the gothic trappings of that underground chamber, or the more subdued Hannibal of Brian Cox in his small sterile cell, it's a matter of taste. I think they're both superb.
The Hunt (2020)
Clever, shocking, and thoroughly satisfying, even without the dead-on political satire
I agree with many of the commenters here: It's Betty Gilpin's movie, she's delightful, and it wouldn't be half as much fun with any other actress.
And kudos to all the Hollywood libs who were willing to be in a movie that essentially makes fun of Hollywood libs. The first time I saw it, I thought the caricatures were maybe a little too broad. Now I'm a bit older and more experienced, and watching this a second time, the caricatures seemed all too real. (I was pleased, for example, with the reference to NPR.)
P. S. It's always good to see Macon Blair. Please check out, if you haven't seen it, a wonderfully original indie noir he stars in and helped create, "Blue Ruin."
Freud's Last Session (2023)
Turns out Freud had all of Anthony Hopkins' most annoying mannerisms!
Hopkins playing Freud was bound to be hit or miss. Unfortunately, he delivers here one of his familiar, highly mannered performances. Whenever this "Freud" opens his mouth, he speaks in the same rapid, slightly eccentric rhythm Hopkins favors. Then he pauses, reflects a moment, flashes a sudden rueful grin, and utters a little chuckle or cackle. It's been Hopkins' default style throughout his career (at least when not playing Lecter), this time with a Viennese accent. I doubt Freud was ever so hammy.
My faith was also shaken early in the movie when, for no discernible reason, the order of two famous events was reversed. On September 3, 1939, Prime Minister Chamberlain announced over the radio that the nation was at war with Germany. A few minutes later, air raid sirens went off, terrifying London's populace. (It proved to be a false alarm.) For some reason, the movie has the false air raid preceding the declaration of war.
It also features, in connection with Chamberlain's broadcast, an old bête noire of mine: A large group of psychologists is listening to his historic speech on the radio, and when it's over, the BBC announcer says something like "That ends the Prime Minister's message" -- at which point someone (is it Anna Freud?) snaps off the radio. No one would do that in real life, with war just declared and with urgent government announcements yet to follow (and there were plenty of them).
One further complaint: the clumsy way flashbacks are shoehorned into the narrative, giving us the backstories of Freud, Lewis, and Anna, with a heavy emphasis on Anna's lesbianism.
Incidentally, considering that C. S. Lewis was one of the most brilliant speakers in Britain -- eloquent, persuasive, never at a loss for words -- he is uncharacteristically tight-lipped, timid, and hesitant in this movie, even for someone being courteous to a revered, dying old man. Armand Nicholi's fanciful book "The Question of God," one of the inspirations for this movie, lets the two iconic figures battle it out, with Lewis (and God) ultimately gaining the upper hand. But in this movie's version of that imaginary encounter, Lewis has little to say. It is all Freud's show.
At least the movie is handsomely mounted; it's nice to see what Freud's office must have looked like. That aside, I can't see the point of the movie. Is it just to give Hopkins the chance to do another bad impersonation of a historical figure?
The Batman (2022)
A grim, joyless three-hour slog (except for John Turturro and Paul Dano)
Yikes! I can't believe I just watched the whole thing! Three hours of darkness, rain, and gloom, with that mopey, stone-faced Bat Guy stalking around, muttering sour little pronouncements in a husky whisper!
Thank God for the presence of John Turturro -- who's always fun -- and Paul Dano -- who's been unsettlingly brilliant ever since he played a baby-faced young psycho in "Taking Lives." (Don't miss him as a convict in Ben Stiller's "Escape at Dannemora" and as director of the indie "Wildlife.") These two supply the only enjoyable moments in this interminable film, whose message, as far as I can figure it out, is that all white politicians and cops are hopelessly corrupt and that only a black woman mayor can save us.
Married to the Mob (1988)
We're supposed to believe Michelle Pfeiffer fell for... wait, Matthew Modine?!! (But like another commenter here, I fell for Nancy Travis.)
The most amusing thing about this moderately entertaining movie is watching a bunch of very unlikely, resolutely un-Italian actors and actresses -- not only Michelle Pfeiffer but Alec Baldwin, Dean Stockwell, Mercedes Ruehl, Joan Cusack, O-Lan Jones, and Al Lewis -- playing gum-chewing Mafia types with thick Queens or Jersey accents.
The best thing in it, as another reviewer here pointed out, is Nancy Travis's all-too-brief nude scene. Actually, she's great in her other few scenes as well.
The dumbest thing about the movie is the plot requirement that has Michelle Pfeiffer falling madly in love at first sight (in an elevator, no less) with Matthew Modine. It's a silly, lazy idea that is ridiculously unconvincing, especially because Modine is, to say the least, a decidedly uncharismatic actor. I guess he embodies, satisfactorily enough, the straight-arrow, Boy Scout aspect of the FBI agent he's portraying, but he'd never be the instant love object for a hottie who, just weeks before, had been married to Alec Baldwin.
Kong: Skull Island (2017)
Another cause for celebration is how lousy this movie COULD have been!
Let's face it, there've been so many bad Godzilla movies... and Jurassic World movies... and just about any movies that qualify as "franchises"... that you have to feel relieved that this entry in the Kong saga turned out to be so unexpectedly charming.
The hero, played by Tom Hiddleston, could easily have been a swaggering macho type, or a wisecracking smartass, or an insufferable prig... but he isn't. The heroine, played by Brie Larson, could easily have been an airhead, a sexpot, or one of those ridiculous kickass superwomen who outfights men... but she isn't. The producer, played by John Goodman, could easily have been a crass caricature... but he isn't. The military characters could easily have been turned into gun-toting cartoons... but they're not.
The reptilian monsters are actually original in conception, appropriately hideous, and scary. The comic bits (and there are a number of them) are actually funny. Kong himself is sympathetic without being sentimental.
We should all be thankful. The movie is thoroughly satisfying -- all the more so because it could easily have been a bomb.
3 Body Problem (2024)
Ludicrous casting! And supposedly brainy scientists behaving stupidly.
The title above echoes the one I gave my review of the Chinese TV series "Three-Body," based on the same novel. I found both versions, Chinese and American, unwatchably stupid and eventually bailed out.
The only virtues this American series has are a bigger budget and a blessedly faster pace. Plot points that took three hours (i.e., four episodes) in the Chinese version were dispensed with in the first hour of the American.
The casting is ludicrous, in a typically woke Netflix way. Most absurd of all is Eiza Gonzalez, with the sculpted cheekbones and huge puffy lips of a lingerie model. Cast as a world-class nanotechnology inventor, she's a joke. Jovan Adepo plays a top quantum physicist, a potential young Einstein. Likable? Very. Believable? Never.
The main problem is that almost all the characters are supposed to be genius-level science whizzes, yet all too often they talk and behave like college sophomores. And the world's other top scientists, we learn, are so irrational, so mentally fragile, that it's easy to drive them stark raving mad and eventually to suicide. All that's necessary, it turns out, is to baffle them with some unexplained visual hallucinations ("the countdown") and to mess with the expected results of their research projects -- at which point they tear their hair out, declare that physics is dead, and proceed to off themselves. Their behavior seems ridiculous; anyone possessed of natural scientific curiosity wouldn't go this haywire when confronted with these mysterious new phenomena -- a true scientist would attempt to study and explain them. Sci-fi should be smarter than this.
Some flashbacks set in Maoist China during the 1960s were handsome and packed more power than the contemporary scenes. Still, an opening Red Guard rally rang false, the huge crowd suddenly falling silent and contrite as if on cue. In another early scene, a prisoner in the Chinese equivalent of a Gulag passes a heavy hardcover book -- "Silent Spring," no less -- to a woman prisoner, outdoors in broad daylight with other people around, while cautioning her not to dare let the authorities catch her with it!
Since I bailed out early from this disappointing series, I've avoided giving it a star rating.
San ti (2023)
Supposedly brainy scientists behaving stupidly
I've watched only the first four episodes of this exasperatingly slow-moving Chinese series. The action and plot development that these episodes cover -- in around three hours of screen time -- would have been covered by an ordinary unpretentious Hollywood sci-fi movie in less than twenty minutes. This series pads out the story with flashy (but unnecessary) visual effects, unusually lengthy (and unnecessarily elaborate) opening credits, and shots and sequences monotonously repeated from earlier episodes.
Most annoying of all, the story is prolonged because it depends on characters -- supposedly brainy scientists -- keeping crucial information to themselves rather than talking about it to colleagues and family. These scientists are also depicted as so irrational, so mentally fragile, that it's easy to drive them stark raving mad and eventually to suicide; all that's necessary, it turns out, is to baffle them with some unexplained visual hallucinations and to skew the expected results of their research projects, at which point they tear their hair out, declare that physics is dead, and proceed to off themselves. Their behavior seems ridiculous; anyone possessed of natural scientific curiosity wouldn't go so haywire when confronted with these mysterious new phenomena -- they'd attempt to study and explain them.
The acting -- at least to these Western eyes -- is stiff and robotic. In an obvious attempts to generate tension, the music is loud, pretentious, and ominous.
Okay, it's plainly time for me to check out the more recent American version. I hope it's an improvement.
Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau (2014)
Probably the best movie ever made about moviemaking
I've watched this droll documentary three times, each time finding it hilarious, horrifying, and appalling -- and also quite touching. I wish it were twice as long, as there were no doubt additional memorable anecdotes worth recording among the cast and crew (all of whom, incidentally, come across as astonishingly articulate and likable). It certainly confirms all the negative stuff I've read over the years about Val Kilmer, described in this film as "a prep-school bully."
It occurs to me that that this film probably should be seen along with another documentary, Peter Medak's "The Ghost of Peter Sellers," about another horribly misbegotten production destroyed by outsize egos.
Manhunt (2024)
Wait, who made off with Edwin Stanton's beard?
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was one of the oddest-looking men in Lincoln's administration, a pudgy-faced, unattractive fellow with a distinctive (and distinctively ugly) beard. He's one of the few Civil War figures I always assumed I'd have no trouble picking out of a lineup.
But in this TV series, he's portrayed by a lean-jawed, clean-shaven Tobias Menzies, who races around playing Sherlock Holmes, even going so far as to measure, like a Hollywood detective, a mysterious boot print in the mud.
In the key scene in the first episode from which all the action starts -- Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theatre -- this series doesn't even bother to get the details right. The president and his wife were seated in a box along with friends -- a young couple, Major Henry Rathbone and his fiancee -- but as depicted in this episode, the Lincolns are sitting alone.
To say the least, this sort of nonsense shakes one's faith in the historical authenticity of the series.
So does Patton Oswalt, who seems to be playing his Union officer for laughs.
I liked, as always, Lili Taylor and Matt Walsh, as, respectively, Mrs. Lincoln and Dr. Mudd.
Da Vinci's Demons (2013)
Visually, quite beautiful. In all other respects, the most offensively stupid trash.
The art direction, the CGI, the decor, the costumes, the vistas of Italian landscape -- they're all quite beautiful, as befits big-budget modern TV.
But as a way-too-flamboyant Da Vinci, Tom Riley struts and shouts, postures and capers, like an Errol Flynn pirate, or like Joseph Fiennes playing young Shakespeare at the top of his voice. God help us if Leonardo had been a gesticulating clown like this. The history in this series is dumbed down, the characters cardboard, the dialogue too clever by half, the nudity too gratuitous, and the various conflicts and acts of violence too predictable. Everything about this series is aimed at the stupidest of viewers. No doubt that explains its success, in that it managed to survive through three seasons.
Liebes Kind (2023)
Can a psychological thriller that lacks a really satisfying ending still be worth a 7?
Obviously, in this case, I think it can.
But it can also be argued -- indeed, it's something I would argue, most of the time -- that a thriller is only as good as its ending. If that's your criterion, I'd suggest you avoid this series. (And it's why I won't recommend it to friends.)
However, despite all the annoying plot holes (admirably laid out by several commenters on this site) and lapses of plausibility, and despite the fact that the final episode, for all its drama, will probably leave you somewhat disappointed and baffled, I had a rather good time binge-watching this series with a friend. It's well-acted, well-directed, and, for most of the way, enjoyably creepy, atmospheric, and intriguing. In fact, it was so well done that, in this particular case, the journey was worth it, even though the destination was not.
Hyperdrive (2006)
Sorry, "Red Dwarf" fans, this show is actually a lot funnier
Brilliant? No. Hilarious? Rarely. But "Hyperdrive" is amiable, light-hearted, and goofy. It goes down easy and keeps me smiling, which is rare. It even raises a couple of chuckles per episode -- also rare.
And despite what I realize is prevailing opinion, it's considerably funnier than the inexplicably popular "Red Dwarf," which a horrible laugh track has made nearly unwatchable. ("Hyperdrive" spares us the laugh track, thank God.)
You have the sense that the entire crew of the HMS Camden Lock had a lot of fun putting the show together. Still, it mainly depends on Nick Frost and Amanda Hart, and they're extremely endearing together. I never realized that Frost could be funny when not teamed up with Simon Pegg, but he's actually terrific -- great line delivery, timing, facial expression, and physical comedy.
Of course, I'm speaking about a show nearly two decades old. I wish I'd known about it sooner.
In the Cut (2003)
Makes absolutely no sense, and doesn't even try to.
This is the sort of movie in which someone sitting motionless in a chair, or sleeping in bed, is filmed with a deliberately jerky hand-held camera in an attempt to generate a feeling of tension and suspense. (What it generates, of course, is confusion -- and ultimately a headache.)
I know teaching, police work, and New York City. All of them are elements in this movie, and none feel remotely authentic. The city is filmed in that same jerky, fragmented style (we can call it, to be generous, "impressionistic"), with a heavy emphasis on garbage and graffiti. It feels like a student film. Meg Ryan is supposed to be some sort of college-level English instructor or adjunct. She isn't believable, not for a single moment. Mark Ruffalo and Nick Damici are supposed to be NYPD detectives engaged in a murder investigation. They are ridiculously crude, foul-mouthed, and slobbish; even cops at their worst would never be so unprofessional. The investigation never seems real, nor does the creepy masochistic relationship that immediately develops between Ryan and Ruffalo. (Nor does the fact that the Hollywood-beauty Ryan is so available, so up for grabs, that she and her half-sister actually discuss what big news it is that a man wants to go out with her.) And then tack on, to your wasted two hours, a solution to the crime that feels illogical and unexplained, and you have the makings of an extremely unsatisfying film.
Josie and the Pussycats (2001)
See it for Alan Cumming and Parker Posey
And for Missi Pyle. And Tara Reid and Rosario Dawson.
Okay, it's not for everyone. It's not even for me, exactly. But you know how, when you go to to kids' movie with a little child who absolutely loves it, YOU end up having a good time? Well, I saw this movie in the theater when it came out, with a young woman who'd grown up on Josie & the Pussycats comic books, and she was utterly entranced by it. Maybe because of that, I enjoyed it, too, especially Alan Cumming and Parker Posey, old pros who seem to have a great time playing the villains. When you're not looking at them, or at Tara Reid's cleavage, you can look at Missi Pyle, who steals every scene she's in. (I wish I could say something nice about Rachael Leigh Cook in the title role, but her casting is a bit of a mystery.)
True Detective (2014)
Season Four, "humiliate the men" season, was the unattractive feminists' revenge for the macho excesses of Season One
Yes, the legendary Season One of "True Detective" was guilty as charged, especially in the feminist playbook, for all sorts of illicit macho fun. As some hostile critics pointed out, that opening season really did exploit women; all the women in it (except maybe Ann Dowd) were young and gorgeous and of easy virtue.
This time out, the women are anything but gorgeous, to say the least, and they're tougher than the men. In the opening episode, the hulking, tattooed, perpetually aggrieved trooper played by Kali Reis easily trips and cuffs a struggling man bigger than herself, and even manages to answer her cell phone while doing so. It's the sort of familiar Hollywood fantasy -- woman beats up stronger guy -- that Emily Blunt once described, correctly, as "cheesy."
Familiar, too, is the bleak arctic landscape. Season Four recycles elements from "30 Days of Night," "Fortitude" (a weirder, woefully unknown series from 2018), "Smilla's Sense of Snow," the Icelandic series "Trapped," and all three versions of "The Thing" -- only this time out the story is heavier-handed, slower-moving, and not half as much fun.
The first season of "True Detective" moved slowly, too, but the fantastic acting of the two leads made every one of its eight hours a pleasure. Season Four runs just six hours long, but the hours just drag by. And the resolution is so ridiculously unsatisfying that you'll regret having wasted those six hours.
In fact, I attribute the warm critical reception "Night Country" enjoyed to three things: (1) the fact that it checks all the right woke boxes; (2) the residue of good feeling we have, after "The Silence of the Lambs," for Jodie Foster in another crimefighting role; and (3) the probability that the early critics reviewed it without having viewed the weak, disappointing conclusion.
Season One was also, at times, quite funny, thanks to Woody Harrelson. This fourth season is totally humorless. (To be fair, there was a Netflix quip and one about "Mrs. Robinson" that brought a smile.)
Where Season One gave us nice atmospheric Southern blues, this season gives us tinny, jarring, annoyingly intrusive radio rock.
Even the details seem recycled. That clue we keep seeing, the mysterious spiral tattoo (a nod to Season One), feels like something out of the Hardy Boys. The conflict of whether the local police will be granted time to solve the crime, before higher authorities from outside take over, is the tritest of clichés. (Why should we care whether Jodie Foster loses control of the case to "Anchorage"?) The dialogue is clumsy with exposition, a frequent problem with TV. The special effects -- the frozen corpses -- are so amateurish that I found myself looking away.
Which also goes for the sex. The sex scenes in both Season One and Season Four are embarrassingly gratuitous, but in Season One they were...sexy! Here, you just avert your eyes and wish they'd been deleted.
Barbie (2023)
Lots of people here say it's "preachy." And boy, is it ever!!
Making a light, entertaining comedy apparently wasn't enough for Gerwig and Baumbach. For some reason -- maybe to maintain their intellectual bona fides -- they couldn't resist weighing the movie down, after its light-hearted beginning, with increasingly serious Messages -- a whole heap of Messages, in fact, about Patriarchy and Feminine Self-Realization and What It Means to Be Human, blah blah blah, to the point where I tuned out all the sermonizing, all the earnest Life Lessons, and was simply grateful for the occasional chuckle.
In support of one of its Messages, the filmmakers pretend that the toymaker's managing board is 100 percent male. (It's actually half female.)
The high point of the movie comes in the opening minutes. I fell in love with that spot-on "2001" parody, even though it feels like an inspired afterthought. (So does Helen Mirren's brief narration.)
The entire first third is amusing. After that, it's all downhill. "Barbie" becomes increasingly sour and eventually downright tedious. It's at least half an hour too long.
I confess to being somewhat baffled by its success, both with critics and the public.
The Holdovers (2023)
Hard to believe a director who got high school so right in "Election" could make something this lame and cartoonish
Alexander Payne's 1999 comedy "Election," set in a Midwestern high school, was brilliant, sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious. Best of all (I say this as a onetime high school teacher), it felt refreshingly authentic.
"The Holdovers" is quite the opposite: contrived, predictable, and intended to teach -- you guessed it -- a little lesson in compassion. An hour into it, I realized that it hadn't yet contained a single moment that seemed genuine, much less surprising. Every line of dialogue sounds phony. Characters speak in little announcements, spelling things out for us. Some of the characters -- a couple of menacing townies, for example -- are mere cartoons.
Giamatti's protagonist is a wholly artificial creation, designed as if in a screenwriting course to follow the approved character arc -- initially stuffy and unsympathetic to the point of caricature, ultimately vulnerable. Ironically, an early scene between him and the school's headmaster violates what's sometimes regarded as a screenwriting rule: Do NOT, even in the interest of exposition, have people telling each other what they already know. (The by-the-numbers triteness of that conversation -- meant to show us that the instructor is uncompromising and pedantic but possesses old-fashioned integrity, blah blah blah -- put me off from the start.) The scenes between Giamatti and the school's cook -- in which, with the audience in mind, the two provide personal backstories and reveal their inner selves -- are painfully heavy-handed and at times so gooey that I felt sorry for the actress: "You can't even dream a whole dream, can you?" she is made to say at one point. "What are you afraid of?"
Yes, I know, everybody seems to love the movie. I could barely stomach it. But do check out "Election."
The Crown: Ritz (2023)
In which the future Queen gets a politically correct makeover
The notion of the young Princess Elizabeth disguising herself on VE Day, abandoning her chaperone, and sneaking downstairs at the Ritz to dance a joyful jitterbug is cringe-making enough, but as the "Crown" writers envisioned it, she is also shown, most implausibly, striking an unlikely 2023-ish blow for diversity while surrounded by a cheering, implausibly diverse crowd. And of course, this episode turns the incident into a sort of epiphany, a precious moment of liberation.
This ranks with that ridiculous key dramatic scene in "Darkest Hour," when Churchill, totally against character, wanders down into the London tube and, in a p.c. Epiphany similar to that of "The Crown," gets his spine stiffened in the fight against the Nazis by a passenger quoting from Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome." He goes back upstairs, resolved to carry on the good fight.
It is really amazing, the shameless, pernicious nonsense that filmmakers are foisting on us!
Lot No. 249 (2023)
Handsome old-fashioned setting, nice decor and costumes, but...
But honestly, aside from the decor and the resulting atmosphere, what a waste of half an hour! The story is downright simple-minded, like something a schoolboy horror fan would dream up, with no attempt to make it more believable or to explain why any of the characters behave as they do. And in the end you're left saying, "Wait. You mean, that's IT? That's all there IS?? Where's the story?"
I should add that "Oxford," as depicted in this little tale, seems to be -- even in an age before electricity -- a place badly in need of lights, since virtually all the rooms and corridors we see are shrouded in darkness.
Saltburn (2023)
Fennell's nasty films depend on an absurdly dumb, easily duped set of victims
Fennell's previous film, "Promising Young Woman," was a hate fantasy about wreaking vengeance on a bunch of abusive guys (and one woman administrator) responsible for the death of the heroine's friend. As happens in such fantasies (and ONLY in such fantasies), every step of her plan went way too smoothly; the avenging heroine easily tricked all the men -- reducing them, one by one, to contrite weeping wimps -- and humiliated the woman administrator, leaving her crushed.
The hate fantasy in this new film succeeds with even more implausible ease. A homely, inarticulate, lumpish nerd at Oxford is -- implausibly -- befriended by a tall, handsome, immensely wealthy fellow student who takes him home to his lavish, implausibly underpopulated country estate the size of Buckingham Palace, where his aristocrat family lives with what appears to be a single butler and two footmen (except at one point near the end, where a gaggle of servants we've never seen before suddenly appear). This family -- implausibly sappy, since the success of the comic-book plot depends on their being a bunch of absolute patsies -- takes the lumpish young visitor to its bosom, lavishing upon him a totally unbelievable degree of attention and affection.... whereupon, halfway through the movie, the inarticulate young visitor is suddenly revealed to be a smooth-talking, Machiavellian, diabolical psychopath who neatly -- did I mention implausibly? -- murders the family members, one by one, and in the end inherits the estate.
So basically, the movie starts out as "Brideshead Revisited," only cruder and ickier, and midway through turns into "The Omen," only dumber.
There's one original surprise involving the young man's return home. I didn't even recognize the wonderful actress Dorothy Atkinson as his mother. And Archie Madekwe is all too believable as the sort of arrogant, racially privileged type we don't often see depicted in today's media.
Friends & Crocodiles (2005)
Watch this for Jodhi May. Ignore the cartoonish depiction of big business.
Though handsomely produced and fairly diverting, this is ultimately a rather silly movie. Characters rise and fall and undergo drastic transformations at the whim of its simple-minded plot. (Mike Leigh's two-hander "Career Girls" seemed similarly unrealistic, but its characters were so endearing that it didn't matter.)
The biggest problem with "Crocodiles" is that it has a high school freshman's idea of what the workaday business world is like. The heroine's ascent is never believable, nor are the emotional changes she goes through. The three bosses we see -- a fussy, posturing little fellow played by Allan Corduner, a ruthless corporate CEO played by Patrick Malahide, and some pushy, fault-finding fat guy at the beginning -- are all ridiculous caricatures. The office Corduner presides over resembles a kindergarten class. The Damian Lewis character is treated by everyone there with inexplicable deference and indulged for months in ways no real-life company would put up with. (In fact, his character's imperturbable smugness throughout the film is increasingly hard to take.) And in light of what's happened in the real world, his success in establishing a string of old-fashioned bookstores seems sadly ironic.
The movie also forces us to watch too many long, lavish parties, and it's a reminder that -- for me, at least -- there's nothing more boring (although they were probably fun to stage).
On the other hand, Jodhi May remains fairly breathtaking in just about anything; and considering all the closeups and screen time she gets, I have the impression that Poliakoff was as enamored of her as I am.
Stealing Beauty (1996)
So bad it's made me rethink my love for "The Conformist"
There's a metaphor that's often trotted out to describe excruciatingly bad movies: They're like being "trapped at a weekend house party with a bunch of bores." It applies perfectly to "Stealing Beauty." In fact, it IS about a weekend house party, and the characters ARE a bunch of bores.
You're supposed to be interested in whether or not the Liv Tyler character is going to lose her virginity -- and if so, to whom? But it's awfully hard to care.
You're supposed to wonder if one of the older guys in the house is her real father -- and if so, which one is it? Hard to care.
You're supposed to wonder whether the ailing writer played by Jeremy Irons will stay alive till the end of the film. But he's so pretentious and obnoxious that you'll probably want him to die.
Those three not-very-interesting questions were the closest thing to a plot in this lethargic, talky, self-indulgent movie. I kept thinking, "Who cares? Get on with it!" The running time was two hours. It felt like four.
I suspect that people who praise this film and award it 9 or 10 stars are simply taken with the pretty Tuscan landscape and the picturesque stone farmhouse. There's nothing remotely appealing about any of the characters, nor is there a shred of drama.
Maybe my expectations were too high, because "The Conformist" is one of my all-time favorite films, and I also admire "The Last Emperor" and "The Sheltering Sky." This one, sad to say, is so dull and flabby that I've lost some respect for Bertolucci.
The Killer (2023)
We're apparently supposed to root for a repellent stone-cold hit man
David Fincher's films tend to be technically proficient but cold, sadistic, and fairly unpleasant. "The Killer" is a case in point.
The hero -- or rather, the anti-hero -- is himself a cold, stony-faced, ruthless professional assassin who possesses, implausibly, near-superhuman skills. He seems able to obtain, with little effort, any information he needs, open any locked door, outwit any enemy, and beat up any opponent no matter how large, all while delivering, in voice-over, a stream of pretentious philosophical musings about mankind, justice, and the universe.
Also implausibly, we're expected to believe that this emotionless, robotic character nonetheless becomes hell-bent on revenge when his girlfriend is assaulted and hurt.
I found barely one pleasurable moment in this film's monotonous two hours, except for Tilda Swinton's single too-brief scene.