THE LAST DUEL

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

If you watch The Last Duel, it may become clear how easy it becomes to debate “what it’s about.” There’s a line from the film that really sticks with me, in which Ben Affleck’s supporting character, Pierre d'Alençon, says, “Simple minds don’t understand such nuances.” Such will be the case, no doubt, with many people who watch this movie—which is layered with nuance, much of which will be lost on certain audiences.

It’s the three-act structure which provides the solid ground on which the narrative stands, each one telling “the truth” according to each of the three main players: Sir Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon); Lady Marguerite (Jodie Comer), husband to Sir Jean; and Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), friend and then enemy to Jean, and accused of rape by Lady Marguerite. Being 14th century France, this becomes a case of Sir Jean’s word against Jacques’s, because of course, the word of the woman means nothing.

Much can be discussed about the very choice of subject matter here, the spreading characterization of The Last Duel as a “14th century #MeToo movie,” but there’s much more at play here than that. There’s also the perfectly fair criticism that two thirds of this movie whose story hinges around the rape of a woman still centers the points of view of men. To me, though, that misses the point: this isn’t a movie about rape so much as it is a movie about the insidiousness of literally centuries of patriarchy, and how men have long been culturally conditioned to delude themselves in regards to their relationships with women. Many people lose sight of the fact that misogyny harms men as well as women, and in a very subtle way, that is the point this movie is making.

Indeed, whether or not Lady Marguerite was raped is never presented as any mystery. The answer to that question is clear—not just from her own point of view, but even from that of Jacques, all while he still sincerely believes their sex was consensual. The man went to his death truly believing that. But, having a “sincerely held belief” does not mean you aren’t still wrong.

The second and third acts—or “chapters” as they are called in title cards—each build upon the last, including several scenes already seen, just presented from a different point of view. Subtle things change, such as whether Lady Marguerite kicks off her shoes as a signal of desire as she goes ahead of Jacques up a staircase, or her shoes merely falls off as she scrambles up the stairs away from him in terror. There’s even the idea of exactly how “noble” Sir Jean is, whether his moral conviction is about defending the honor of his wife, or defending his own pride and standing in society. He’s a lot nicer to Lady Marguerite in his “truth” than in hers, wherein his is much rougher about getting assurances that she’s telling the truth.

It gets tricky, the idea of recommending a movie whose entire plot hinges on the act of rape, particularly to women. I’m not sure I could, in good conscience, recommend this movie to women. The “revelations” about how men have been for centuries aren’t exactly going to be news to any woman; they’re not going to learn anything new from this movie. But, there are some men who might. The Last Duel is surprisingly insightful about the male point of view, and it takes no pains to be flattering about it. That, if nothing else, is refreshing.

Beyond that, The Last Duel is compulsively watchable, in a way that surprises. It’s also worth noting that it was co-written not just by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck—their first such collaboration since Good Will Hunting—but also Can You Ever Forgive Me? co-writer Nicole Holofcener, specifically for an authentic female perspective. Which is to say, this movie gives equal time to the male perspectives, but it is clearly on the woman’s side.

There’s a point in the movie at which Sir Jean’s mother (Harriet Walter, well cast) says to Lady Marguerite, “The truth does not matter!” Ironically, even as it illustrates how “truth” is manipulated depending on who is telling it, The Last Duel makes clear how much the truth really does matter. Then again, there’s that pesky 14th-century notion that whoever wins the duel to the death, challenged by Sir Jean against Jacques, it is “ordained by god” and thus proves that person was the one telling the truth. This movie is based on real events, so you can easily look up who wins, but still: what if Jacques wins? In that case, society would have just accepted that he was the one telling the truth. (And, as a relevant reminder, given that Jacques believes what he is saying, from his perspective, he is telling the truth.) This is a society, after all, who believes conception is only possible if sex is pleasurable, and thus a rape cannot produce a pregnancy.

If nothing else, The Last Duel provides a lot to unpack. It’s a movie ripe for discussion, which certainly has its appeal for many. I enjoyed it more than much of the media coverage might have led me to expect, but it would seem that’s because this is one of those rare movies so easily misinterpreted, or at least interpreted in countless different ways. There’s no harm in healthy debate, and that may very well have been the intent behind this movie.

Straddling that fine line between serious discussion and pop entertainment.

Overall: B+

LAMB

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

Nobody in Lamb, the Icelandic horror-drama out this weekend, seems to react appropriate to whatever the hell is going on. There’s a moment when “Uncle Pétur,” the third of only three people in this movie with speaking parts, asks his brother and his sister-in-law, “What the fuck is this?” It’s the one moment in the movie when any of the characters comes even halfway close to reacting sensibly to what is before their eyes, and the question might have better served as the film’s title.

Setting aside the glacial pacing, relatively early on in the narrative, married couple Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) have already assisted in the delivery of two lambs from a pregnant sheep, and are now on the third. We don’t see what they see plop onto the floor of the barn, only the bizarrely subtle shock on Maria and Ingvar’s faces. One would think the first question Maria would have is, “Have you been fucking our sheep?” Instead, they come to an unspoken but immediate agreement to raise this lamb child as their own child, clearly as a replacement for a child they lost. They even give it the same name, Ada.

In any realistic scenario, all of this would be met with shock and horror. Instead, after Ingvar’s brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) shows up and waits about a day to ask that million-dollar question, “What the fuck is this?” the answer he gets is: “Happiness.” Well all right then, thanks for clearing that up!

For part of Lamb, I wondered if the lamb child was meant to be symbolic rather than literal. Maybe Maria and Ingvar have simply taken in a regular, literal lamb and just decided to treat it like a new baby, and we’re seeing some version of what they’ve created in their minds—kind of like Lars and the Real Girl but with a sheep instead of a blow-up doll. The couple of scenes in which Pétur angrily tells them “It’s not a child, it’s an animal!” seems to support this theory. It had to be either that, or Ingvar was indeed fucking the sheep, and Maria simply couldn’t be bothered to care. Maybe they’re just the most open minded couple on the planet? Hashtag couples goals!

Side note, the special effects in this movie are decidedly low budget. The lamb’s head is only ever fully a regular lamb’s head, never even animated (Babe, this is not), superimposed crudely onto the body of a human child. In only one shot to we get a good look at the entire body, and we see that the lamb child has one two human legs, one human arm and hand, and one lamb leg and hoof for the other arm. There are moments that are just too goofy for words, such as when Maria dances to pop music with Ada in the living room, or when Ada sits at the kitchen table with the house cat on her lap. On the upside, a whole lot of the scenes are shot outside, with beautiful cinematography of stunning vistas, by far the best part of the movie.

It would be a fascinating experience to have gone into this movie having no clue whatsoever was coming, to just sit and see this movie completely blind to its content. If I had not seen the trailer first, the shocks would have been a lot more effective. I don’t know that it would have made the overall experience any better, mind you, so I don’t feel particularly bad about what I have revealed here. Besides, this is all incidental to the turn the story takes at the end anyway. It turns out, all the questions about how the hell this lamb child exists at all do get answers in the end, and they don’t come anywhere close to what you might expect. And, as a matter of fact, the one scene to which I refer here is where the makeup and special effects are actually relatively impressive.

Bottom line: Lamb is a movie you are meant to expect to be weird . . . and you still leave thinking, Jesus, that was fucking weird. There are some critical reactions to this movie that ascribe it a level of emotional depth that I just did not see. This movie just wants to be strange for its own sake, and in that endeavor it’s a smashing success. I’m still over here wondering why both Maria and Ingvar are so chill about the discovery that Iceland is apparently The Island of Doctor Moreau.

When she said she wanted a kid, maybe she should have been more specific.

Overall: B-

NO TIME TO DIE

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

It’s been interesting seeing the evolution of Daniel Craig’s run as James Bond—the longest-running Bond in the official Eon Productions franchise films, at 15 years, albeit far from the highest number of times he appeared as Bond. There were only five films released in that time: Casino Royale (2006); Quantum of Solace (2008); Skyfall (2012); Spectre (2015) and, now, No Time to Die (2021). This one would have made Craig’s run a total of 14 years had it been released in 2020 as originally planned, but, we all know how that went.

Daniel Craig was 38 years old when he started these movies. Not super young, but young enough to be perfectly plausible—and hot—in the role of a newbie British spy in this reboot of a then-44-year-old franchise. Hitting the reset button in this way, in a way different from the four other times the role had been recast, revitalized the character in a way not done in decades.

And then, as Daniel Craig’s Bond went on, the movies gradually shifted back to many of the typical characteristics of the “Bond brand.” With the introduction of Q (Ben Wishaw) in Skyfall, we once again began to see high-tech gadgets thrown in as fun plot devices. By the time we got to Spectre, ironically the worst of the Craig films right after the best (Skyfall), both of them directed by Sam Mendes, we even found ourselves re-inroduced to Ernst Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), the villain who appeared so many times in the original Sean Connery Bond films that he grew truly tiresome.

Waltz as Blofeld returns again here, albeit as a secondary villain this time—someone just as threatened by the new villain as Bond himself. Something Blofeld and this new villain, Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek), have in common though, is a calm but cold and sinister demeanor, someone more calculating than violent, allowing their many henchmen to carry out the physical attacks (and, of course, in most cases get quickly dispatched). No Time to Die brings with it another throwback to old-school Bond henchmen, with a gimmicky villainous characteristic: here one of them, referred to as “Cyclops” (Dali Benssalah), has an artifical eye. The eye evidently also serves as his boss’s spycam.

All this is to say, No Time to Die is a quintessential James Bond film, with all the expected trappings. To its credit, a key difference from early films is that the women serve as more than window dressing and are given agency—and this installment features no fewer than three key women characters meant to be vital to the plot (with varying degrees of success). My favorite would have to be Lashana Lynch, whose casting as Nomi, the 007 agent hired to replace Bon in the five years he’s been retired, could be considered a bit of a troll. After all the speculation about the next James Bond being a Black man, it’s a bit delicious to see a Black woman cast as 007 before Daniel Craig is even officially out the door.

We also get a great sequence with Ana de Armas as Paloma, a rookie but very capable agent assisting Bond in one elaborate sequence in which we get to see her and Bond kicking a whole lot of ass together. The sequence is far from vital to the story overall, and cutting it completely would have tightened up this movie’s truly bloated, record-length 163-minute run time, But, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch, so I guess I can’t complain.

The third woman is Bond’s love interest, Madeleine, played by Léa Seydoux, as she had also done in Spectre. It’s a bit disappointing that the “Spectre organization” plays so significantly into the plot yet again here, as it made for the dumbest premise of all the Daniel Craig films once already. The premise of No Time to Die isn’t quite as silly, but it’s silly enough. The villainous Lyutsifer Safin is out for revenge against the man who killed his entire family, a Spectre member who happens to be Madeline’s father. As part of this revenge, he’s manufacturing “nanobots” to be deployed around the world and trigger deadly viruses by programming them for specific genetic makeups. Once again, the plot is needlessly convoluted.

Ultimately, among the five Daniel Craig films, I would say No Time to Die ranks right in the center, after Skyfall and Casino Royale. It fulfills its service to fans, but it’s hardly essential viewing to casual moviegoers, even if it still qualifies as a fitting sendoff to this version of Bond, who is visibly older, less capable, and more tired. Daniel Craig is 53 years old now. Granted, that’s six years younger than Tom Cruise, who still shows no signs of slowing down in the Mission: Impossible franchise. But, Tom Cruise is not normal. He’s probably an alien.

I will say that No Time to Die features an end for Bond’s story in this iteration that is genuinely surprising, if not outright shocking. It’s a compelling choice, if nothing else. As is the seemingly throwaway line that seems to suggest Ben Wishaw’s Q is actually gay, which did not go unappreciated, although it would still have been nice for the clarity there to be more overt.

All that aside, No Time to Die takes its time, something I usually appreciate, but here it was often more than necessary. The film is decent but not good enough to justify its excessive length. It still has its fun moments, such as when Bond suddenly needs to shoot his gun toward the camera in a tub-shaped subterranean tunnel, directly mirroring the classic shot that has long started all of these movies, with him in a tuxedo with a white background. Much of No Time to Die is very nicely shot, its cinematography being easily its best element. Otherwise, it’s a serviceable last hurrah for arguably the best James Bond actor since Sean Connery, and honestly my own favorite of them all. But, all good things must end, and 15 years were more than enough. Inevitably, a few years down the line, yet another Bond will get cast, and I for one do hope it’s not just another white guy. Either way, I’ll be curious to see how the franchise is reset once again.

Seeing double: double-o sevens.

Overall: B

TITANE

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

The one question running through my mind through the entirety of Titane was: why? I’ve had some time to think about it, and I have yet to come up with an answer to that question.

It’s certainly not boring, I’ll give it that much. It’s about all I’m willing to give it. Well, except that the acting is adequate, I suppose. The editing is slightly better. The director is a woman, at least; that’s something I am always prone to support. Julia Ducournau’s previous feature film effort as both writer and director, Raw (2016), was a film I did enjoy. It had a cleverly bent premise, in which a vegetarian gets a taste for blood and then becomes a murderous cannibal. Judging by Titane, “body horror” as a genre is apparently Ducanau’s thing.

With Titane, however, I struggle to find a point or a purpose, other than that genre for the sake of itself. I mean, I can just imagine the intellectuals finding all the “deeper meaning” in this film that supposedly flew over my head, but I have officially lost my patience. If I can’t easily find an answer to why this particular story is being told to me, I am just left annoyed.

How much can I tell about this movie without spoiling it? How many of you will watch it anyway? This is a relatively obscure French film, albeit one with apparently the “biggest US debut by a Palme d’Or winner in 17 years.” That is evidently a pretty low bar, though. The movie has made about half a million dollars. I’m still left wondering how much it matters.

I’ll tell you this: the first half of the movie features an exotic dancer, Alexia (Agathe Rousselle) straight up murdering people, often with the metal stick she uses to keep her hair up. She is quickly identified as a wanted suspect, literally referred to as a serial killer. Many of these murders are rather graphic. In the second half of the film, she disguises herself as the long missing son of a firefighter (Vincent Lindon), and develops a familial bond with him, although there are moments that are borderline incestuous. From his perspective, anyway.

Through all of this, Alexia experience a rapidly developing pregnancy from . . . a car. I mean, fuck it, I’ll spoil it: Alexia fucks a car. We basically already saw Cameron Diaz fuck a car in The Counselor (2013), but this movie ups the ante with a subsequent pregnancy—with what appears to be motor oil as the amniotic fluid.

Julie Ducaournau effectively, one might even say amazingly, makes the pregnancy the “B plot,” as Vincent deludes himself into believing Alexia really is his son, while the young firefighters who work under him plainly see that Alexia is not who she’s pretending to be. She spends a lot of time binding her breasts, and over time even her expanding belly, and it gets into vaguely uncomfortable territory when it comes to movies featuring characters crossdressing for nefarious reasons.

Such considerations are vasty overshadowed, of course, by the wild shit happening in the movie otherwise. What the hell is this baby going to look like? Alexia has a titanium plate in her head, the result of a terrible car accident she could easily be blamed for as a young girl, irritating her dad from the backseat in the opening sequence of the film. Even as a little girl Alexia is definitively creepy, a little shit, and when she leaves the hospital after her surgery we see her kiss and hug the car. Cut to her dancing in a club amongst exotic dancers who gyrate against and on cars inside a giant warehouse. I suppose we’re meant to understand Alexia has a lifelong car fetish, although Titane doesn’t ever make that idea particularly explicit. Except when she’s somehow literally impregnated by one, I suppose. I’m pretty sure we even see the car reach sexual climax, which was new.

The effect of the titanium plate is never given true clarity, either. Is that what makes her psychotic? And why does she pause and actually find herself caring for an unwilling to slaughter Vincent? I really don’t understand any of it. We do eventually find out what her baby looks like, which winds up somehow being simultaneously bizarre and somewhat disappointing.

it would sure be interesting to be privy to some psychoanalysis of Julie Ducournau. I suspect it would be more satisfying than watching this movie was. Raw at least succeeded in the evident purpose of grossing us out. All I really got out of Titane was an hour and forty-five minutes of thinking, What the fuck? We never see Alexia bleed, although we regularly see her leaking motor oil, out of tears in the skin of her belly revealing more shiny metal underneath, or even leaking out of her nipples. Her body goes through a lot of abuses, much of it self-inflicted in her attempt to make herself look like Vincent’s missing son. I had to turn away from the screen a lot.

I was just relieved when I could turn away one last time and leave the building.

Apparently they don’t make automotive condoms.

Overall: C

THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE

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

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is not garnering a lot of attention or box office receipts, and to be honest, it’s not all that much of a surprise. Even setting the quality of this film on its own terms aside, what possible relevance could Tammy Faye Bakker have to the current culture, easily forty years after the peak of her cultural cachet, and fourteen years after her death? Does anyone under the age of forty even remember her? I barely do, and even that’s only because of the famed cult documentary of the same name that was released in 2000, programmed as part of queer festivals, and focused far less on Jim Bakker and quite a bit more on her pointed support of the queer community—something I only learned from that documentary film, at the age of 24.

It may seem like a leap that this film brought to mind the recent Aretha Franklin biopic Respect. That film, also on its own terms, is no better or worse than The Eyes of Tammy Faye, but, crucially, it does far more easily justify its own existence. Aretha Franklin passed away far more recently (2018), her life’s work continues to have a profound impact on ongoing art and culture, and we can safely assume it will continue to for decades to come. None of these same things can be said of Tammy Faye Bakker, whose cultural influence at its peak was niche at best, and for the later years of her life she was unfortunately the largely unfair target of ridicule. This would have been due to her notoriously clownish makeup, the stereotype of her constantly crying, and just her general loopiness—which this current film suggests was largely due to prescription drug addictions.

The 2000 documentary set out to humanize her, and it did a pretty good job of it. This new, narrative film version of The Eyes of Tammy Faye, as directed by Michael Showalter (The Big Sick), clearly has the same intention. But, in 2021, how much does it even matter anymore? In 2000, Tammy Faye was still alive and vry much active; she was indeed an active participant in the filming process. What all this boils down to is, the current film is not just too little too late, but it is definitively redundant. You’d be far better off just seeking out. the original documentary—which, incidentally, is officially credited as the source material.

None of this is to say that this The Eyes of Tammy Faye is without any redeeming value, however. There’s always the unfortunate fact that more people are interested in narrative features than they are in documentary films—that documentary earned all of $1 million at the box office, after all, although the fact that the current film has earned all of $1.5 million 10 days into its run isn’t painting the greatest picture either. On the other hand, like it or not we are in the streaming era, and a fair number more people will will likely see it that way soon enough.

The best thing about this movie, actually, is the acting. Well, although Andrew Garfield has proved capable of greatness in many other parts, he is merely serviceable here as Jim Bakker, donning his own slightly distracting facial prosthetics and varied and evolving hairstyles through the many years this movie covers. Jessica Chastain, however, is legitimately impressive as Tammy Faye, somehow transcending the truly ridiculous amount of makeup and prosthetics. In fact she disappears into this part in a way she arguably never has before, achieving the aforementioned goal of humanizing the woman she plays.

It could even be argued she's too good at it. There are side-by-side stills at the end of the film, showing the actors playing their parts next to the real people they played. It's only when Chastain is seen up next to the real Tammy Faye that it's a little jarring. After sitting through that entire 126-minute movie, it becomes clear that Chastain actually dialed it down: Tammy Faye Bakker, to put it as sensitively as I can, was a truly nutty lady.

And the story we are privy to here, details the rise of the Bakkers as televangelists, their public marital problems, and their deep-dive fall from grace when Jim Bakker was indicted on charges of fraud, thereafter even serving a prison sentence. There are even allusions to secret gay affairs on the part of Jim, although the movie us never really straightforward about them. All we know, based on this movie anyway, is that Tammy Faye was along for the ride, largely oblivious, or perhaps more accurately, wilfully ignorant. The two are both massively materialistic, using their televised "ministry" as an excuse for their excesses, which build up in some ways independent of each other.

I enjoyed The Eyes of Tammy Faye for what it was, but still found myself wishing it were better. It could have been improved by, say, making direct connections between the lives of these two personalities and what the far-right in America has become today. But this movie isn't interested in that; it just wants us to be interested in their story, and to be impressed by the performance of it. I can give it that much, at least—and it's worth mentioning that Cherry Jones is also excellent as Tammy Faye's mother—but, in the end, it's still just not quite enough.

A great performance, still no substitute for the real thing.

Overall: B-

DEAR EVAN HANSEN

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

Dear Evan Hansen is the perfect movie for people with no critical thinking skills. Anyone who sees this movie and then wonders how the Broadway play on which it’s based was a huge success has evidently never met your average mainstream audience. People want to be entertained, and hear great music, and to be moved to tears, and this movie offers all of those things. I mean, I cried too.

So what’s the problem? Well, nothing, if you have no interest in looking beyond superficial concerns. I guess I won’t begrudge you that, if it’s the choice you make. More power to you, I guess. But while the characters in this story are supposedly working through their grief and learning to conquer their anxieties, it's all based on an endless cascade of lies, and people doing what are bizarrely never quite presented as such but are objectively horrible things to each other. One would not be too far off the mark to call this movie unhinged.

Except, it's never presented that way, nor does it ever really feel that way. You only get there when you stop to think critically about what's going on. In the meantime, you're being moved by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul's original music and wowed by Ben Platt's voice.

But, okay, let's back up a little and talk about Ben Platt, because there are actually a lot of criticisms of this movie that I feel are unfair. As in, although Platt originated the title role of a 16-year-old when he himself was 21, he still plays the same role in the film adaptation at the age of 27. To that I say, who cares? If we can literally celebrate 32-year-olds playing middle schoolers in the Hulu series Pen15, why is this such a big deal? People are acting like Ben Platt as a "grown man" in this film is outrageous casting, and I did not find it the least bit distracting. Furthermore, Kaitlyn Dever as Evan's love interest Zoe is 24 years old in the part herself, and that fact is getting far less press.

Honestly, the performances matter far more to me than the actual ages of the actors, as long as they're still young. (Although to be fair, in the hands of the right director, even someone far older in the part could have worked. It's all in the handling.) And while some are saying Platt is overdoing his performance, the character of Evan is someone I relate to on a viscerally personal level. So much of his high school experience, his social anxieties, brought me right back to my own remarkably similar experiences at the same age. He takes many medications for these things, as does at least one other student he gets to know a little, and I found myself wondering what medications I might have been given had I been born twenty years later.

Well, maybe none. Evan's disorders are often manifest in very physiological ways, and my own problems in my youth, rooted in childhood traumas, were better served with therapy than with medication. And this actually is relevant to the film, because that brings me to the other truly legitimate criticism of Dear Evan Hansen, which is how it characterizes mental illness. Every "breakthrough" Evan makes is as a result of bizarrely fated circumstances, and his use of medication is presented as one of the many things that otherize him rather than as a genuine solution to any of his struggles.

Then there's Connor. I haven't even mentioned him yet! He's the emotionally unstable classmate who committed suicide after randomly signing the cast on Evan's arm, with a letter Evan wrote to himself still on his person after he snatched it from a school printer Evan printed it to. It convinces Connor's parents (Amy Adams and Danny Pino, both great in what are ultimately thankless parts) that Connor had friends after all, and in his social panic Evan goes along with their assumptions, creating a fantasy relationship he had with Connor to make Cynthia and Larry feel better in their grief.

And I kept thinking about Connor, over and over, through the vast majority of Dear Evan Hansen—he's the character completely swept aside, in favor of some fantasy construction of him. With hints of his true personality sprinkled in here and there, perhaps director Stephen Chbosky felt that we were given a full picture of who he really was. But, Connor is really given the shaft here, all the "real" details about him amounting to nothing more than a ghost, in favor of an exponentially larger amount of time spent on the fiction of him. Evan convinces Connor’s parents that he had some secret life of fulfilling friendship, that he was capable of real connection with his peers. Except we never see that actually happen, because it all exists as a deceitful construction built by Evan. The closest we ever get is a brief home video of Connor singing and playing guitar. But, as far as we know, Connor really was the awful shit he seemed to be in the few scenes we see of him when he was still alive. Either way, Connor is never given fair representation in this movie.

And sure, the movie is about Evan rather than Connor, except Evan uses Connor to make it so, and in the process quite elaborately emotionally manipulates an entire family. Evan's own single mother is played by Julianne Moore, easily the best thing in this movie, unfortunately absent too much of the time because she is an overworked nurse constantly taking on extra shifts. She even gets one song near the end, and it's a moment at which tissues should be handy.

I do have to wonder, would Dear Evan Hansen work even as well as it does if it were not a musical? An odd thing to ponder, because you wouldn't expect people breaking out into song about anxiety and grief to make it better—but, it really does. The songs are wonderful, and almost certainly are the reason the Broadway play was so successful. Watch this movie and then try imagining the exact same story as a non-musical stage play. You'd be ready to slit your own wrists by the end of it. As it is, the music serves a dual purpose of keeping you engaged with the story, while also distracting you from how truly fucked up the premise is. As long as you give in to that distraction, you might leave with the delusion that this movie is actually great.

Connor has good reason to be pissed, I’m on his side!

Overall: C+

COPSHOP

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

I can’t help but wonder, is Copshop another movie that’s the product of the pandemic? The cast may not be especially small—there are 23 credited parts—but the setting is still characteristically limited: probably 80% or more of the movie takes place at a rural Nevada police station (hence the title). I would guess that at least a third of the movie features only the three leads: Val (Alexis Louder), the cop looking after two criminals in the jail downstairs: Teddy Murretto (Frank Grillo), the man on the run from Bob Viddick (Gerard Butler), the man hired to kill him. Several scenes feature just the three of them, bantering in the jail, Murretto and Viddick in separate cells.

The rest of the cast, ultimately, ultimately serves to up the body count, which is quite high in this film. There’s a lot of gun fights, and a lot of relatively multidimensional characters we’ve spent some time getting to know get dispatched unceremoniously. Given the action-crime genre, I have mixed feelings about this. Director Joe Carnahan is offering a quasi-stylized movie clearly meant to be more fun than gritty, in which case, why bum us out like that? On the other hand, it could be seen as a refreshing change of approach: these people may be characters, but their lives mean something. Something tells me, though, that Carnahan wasn’t thinking too much about that.

It’s not that big a deal, anyway; I found myself having a good time with this movie regardless. In fact, I never did watch a trailer to this movie before seeing it, and only went to see it based on relatively good reviews and a synopsis that made it sound more dramatic than action-packed. As a result, this movie was a pleasant surprise, and exceeded my expectations.

Granted, there is no question that Carnahan is emulating far better directors here, like Quentin Tarantino or Edgar Wright. Or even Shane Black, whose 2016 film The Nice Guys is vaguely similar in tone but lands its humor with far greater success.

In the moment, though, Copshop suffices, and I did enjoy the supporting turn by Toby Huss as Anthony, the unhinged rival assassin who shows up and ultimately wreaks all the havoc that makes this movie as entertaining as it is. As for Gerard Butler, this is the kind of low-rent crime thriller he’s basically typecast to be a part of these days, his very screen presence is generic, and the character of Viddick manages more than one implausible plot twist that made me wonder if he moonlights as an illusionist.

Butler aside, it’s the casting of Copshop that elevates the material at least a little bit, especially Alexis Louder as the unusual choice of a Black woman as the hero in a film of this type. There’s a lot of genuine gun loving in this movie, of course, but that just goes with the territory here. Part of the fun is the confined setting at the police station for the vast majority of the film, much of it with Val, Murretto and Viddick locked behind the bulletproof door to. the jail while Anthony, cracking weird jokes—and Copshop is best when it gets weird, which it honestly doesn’t do enough—as he tries to get in after them all.

Copshop could have benefitted from some polishing, but its minor messiness, even when it gets a little hackneyed at times, is part of its charm. I wouldn’t say anyone should rush out. to theaters to see it, but I still found it well worth my time.

Val is a gunslinging badass,

Overall: B

LANGUAGE LESSONS

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

There’s a turning point in Language Lesson, where the conceit of FaceTime being the singular lens through which we see the only two characters finally becomes secondary, and the narrative comes to the forefront and even becomes genuinely moving. This is mostly due to the winning performances by Natalie Morales and Mark Duplass, the only two people we ever see onscreen, but even that is, ultimately, too little too late.

Their intentions are good, their hearts very much in the right place, and Language Lessons is the latest in the increasing line of experimental cinema borne of COVID lockdowns. Not only are there only two characters in this entire story, but there is only one scene in which they are seen in each other’s physical presence. The rest of the time, watching this movie is a lot like actually being on the video calls so many of us grew weary of months ago—most of us actually stopped using them so regularly that long ago, in favor of still-careful, but more frequent in-person socializing. How many people actually want to experience that again?

Much of the same concerns apply to the other lockdown-related movie released recently, Together, but that movie is actually about living through this pandemic; it’s far more successful at creating a plausible, compelling story within that context; and crucially, it’s about a household of characters who still do interact within each other’s physical spaces. Turns out, this makes a pretty significant difference: the 2018 John Cho vehicle Searching already explored this type of filmmaking, the entire film consisting of computer and mobile device screens, with mixed results at best. And that was well before there was any hint of a pandemic. Incidentally, I gave Searching a C+, and it does beg the question: would I have liked Language Lessons more had it been released then? Or would I even have liked Searching more had it been released now, perhaps with current limitations making it more impressive? Context always makes a difference.

Granted, so does writing, no matter the context, and if not the entire script of Language Lessons, then certainly its premise is its real problem. This movie offers no acknowledgment of a pandemic, but is clearly a product of it—directed by Natalie Morales, and co-written by Morales and Mark Duplass. (Knowing Morales was a writer makes me feel slightly better about a couple of cringey lines referencing “white savior” and even the literal phrase “white shit,” which would have worked even less well had they just been written by some white guy.) Duplass plays Adam, a gay man whose wealthy husband (heard, but never seen) has gifted him 100 virtual Spanish lessons as a surprise gift.

This setup is relatively problematic from the start. For some reason, the Spanish “immersion” teacher is based in Costa Rica, patching in via what looks like FaceTime from abroad to teach these classes virtually. How did Adam’s husband find her, I wonder? And why on earth would he not loop Cariño in on the fact that this is a surprise? She’s just as baffled by what’s going on when the husband sets up the laptop for Adam to find one morning as his surprise first lesson. We are meant to think of the husband as a decent, loving person, but this kind of behavior seems weirdly sociopathic to me.

And then, by the second lesson, Adam’s husband has died in a car accident. And this is ultimately the premise of the movie: Cariño calls in at the scheduled time to find Adam in a stunned daze, and does what she can, from thousands of miles away, to offer support, basically becoming a long distance friend under very strange circumstances. Adam frets about his husband’s family and the employees of the dance business he owns, but does he not have any family or friends of his own? It’s never even brought up, even though over time we learn at least a little about Cariño’s family.

If only Language Lessons took some time with its countless unanswered questions, it might have worked, even if barely. Instead, its half-baked premise, and its stunted character development, are its fatal flaws. It’s understandable that artists should want to find ways to express themselves even under the massive constraints of last year’s pandemic lockdowns, and some of the products of those expressions work, and some of them don’t. Ultimately, most of Language Lessons, the first half of which is packed with unintentional awkwardness, is the latter. It does find its footing, and Morales and Duplass have chemistry, but it takes a bit too long for the narrative to find it.

Hola from the awkward place.

Overall: B-

THE CARD COUNTER

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

The Card Counter is . . . different. Sometimes that’s a genuine strength to a film; sometimes it’s just a neutral fact about it, and I would argue this film falls in the latter category. Thus, it becomes another one of those movies with wide critical acclaim where I watch it and then think, okay, sure, I guess. I understand the critical claim, and also understand why it won’t go far with general audiences.

Take the title, for instance. In the first half of the film, the title character, William Tell (Oscar Isaac), spends a lot of time in voiceover narration, telling us not so much how counting cards works, but how it works for him. We spend a lot of time in casinos, watching him work, aiming for what he calls “modest goals”—he explains that casinos don’t mind card counters, as long as they don’t win too big too often. When asked why he spends his days doing this and virtually nothing else, Tell replies, “It passes the time.”

I could say the exact same thing about how much time I spend going to the movies, and often seeing movies like this one. There’s no better explanation than “It passes the time.” It’s neither particularly painful nor particularly rewarding. I mean, don’t get me wrong; I do have genuine passion for film, and for writing about film. But that passion cannot run at a consistent level of intensity, and it never has. My only point is, I get it.

That’s about as far as my empathy goes, however, because as the film goes on, we learn that card playing in often low-rent, out-of-the-way casinos across the country is just a way to fill the emptiness of Tell’s life, a distraction from his heavy guilt, having been a participant in the abuses documented at Abu Ghraib. He was sentenced to ten years in prison, served eight and a half, and it was in that time he taught himself how to count cards. He had the time, he practiced until he was damned near perfect.

And, the title notwithstanding, The Card Counter is far more about a man reckoning with past sins than it has anything to do with card playing, really. The cards is just the easy self-distraction. Except, Tell comes across distractions in two other human forms: La Linda (Tiffany Haddish, very well cast in an unusual role), the woman who runs “a stable” of gamblers who play with investors’ money and recruits Tell; and the real turning point in Tell’s life, a young man named Cirk (Tye Sheridan). Cirk is the son of another veteran of Abu Ghraib whose tortured memories of what he did ultimately led him to commit suicide; Cirk happens to be at a seminar where a Sergeant from Abu Ghraib (Willem Dafoe) is speaking, and he recognizes Tell.

Cirk plainly naive from the start, with an asinine plan to capture Sergeant Gordo, torture him the way they did the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and kill him. Tell takes a liking to him, and takes him on as a new sense of purpose in his life, intent on helping him settle his college debts and reunite with his estranged mother. This is the bulk of the story in The Card Counter, Tell having invited Cirk to ride with him from tournament to tournament, his expenses paid, ostensibly just to keep him company but having no idea Tell is just saving up his winnings to give to him.

All of this is done with mostly deadpan delivery, something that happens a lot in movies with wide critical acclaim but which I find strangely divorced from realism. Writer-director Paul Schrader is clearly going for, and achieving, a particular tone, but it’s just as muted as the lighting in all these second-tier casinos. It’s easy to imagine a lot of viewers being bored by this movie, even though I found it to be quite unusually well written—the only especially impressive element of its production. Often it’s the other way around, movies with great acting and great cinematography but a crap script. I guess you could say this one flips that script.

I was compelled by it for that very reason, but I’m not especially convinced that you will be, unless you’re an intermittently pretentious film snob like I am. And hey, if you’ve made it this far in this very review, maybe you are!

Schrader goes out of his way to note, in this movie, how the only people at Abu Ghraib who were convicted were the ones in published photographs. This is the injustice that Cirk is convinced he’s crusading to justify: that none of those people’s superiors were held accountable, and instead got to go on with diversified and lucrative careers. We are subject to some flashbacks to Abu Ghraib, which are mercifully few and fairly brief. In these scenes, I found myself thinking about casting. It’s nice to see Tiffany Haddish in such an unusual role as a Black woman; I wish I could say the same for the several actors depicting the Abu Ghraib prisoners, who likely still get saddled with virtually nothing but roles like these. And here they’re just extras: no lines, so nowhere near the same pay scale.

If nothing else, The Card Counter is a fascinating contemplation of moral complexity. Any kind of easy entertainment, it certainly is not—but it has its own certain value.

Well that’s eight down, I guess.

Overall: B

THE LOST LEONARDO

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

If you have any interest in the objectively wild 21st-century story of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting The Salvator Mundi, and thus go in to the new documentary The Lost Leonardo, you are bound to leave still questioning the authenticity of the painting. This is clearly by design on the part of director Andreas Koefoed, who is amping up the mystery and the absurdity for our entertainment.

I’m not denigrating that approach, per se—it’s precisely why I went to see the movie, after all. (Pro tip: if you want your own space in a movie theater, see a 4:50 pm showing of a semi-obscure documentary on a weekday. I literally had the entire theater all to myself, which was glorious.)

I hadn’t even heard of this paining before I started seeing trailers to this film, which had me intrigued. It also means that literally all the information I have gotten about this story is from this film, so I can’t help but wonder whether that painting—which sold for an astonishing record $450 million in 2017—was really painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

The film gets into all the myriad twists and turns of its story, since its rediscovery in, of all places, New Orleans, in 2005. Eventually it got restored by New York University’s Dianne Dwyer Modestini, who is interviewed extensively, leading critics to claim the restored painting was “eighty percent painted” by her. I know nothing about how painting restoration works so I can’t speak to the validity of such claims. I can say it’s amusing to see someone declare that the painting is not authentic but Modestini simply did extraordinary work replicating da Vinci’s skill, only to cut to her retorting that she’s not as good a painter as da Vinci.

And make no mistake, the journey of this painting between 2005 and 2017 is nothing short of epic. Presumably its journey prior to that dating all the way back to the 16th century is exponentially more so, but we of course have no access to the details of those five hundred years. The fifteen years or so represented her provides more than enough for a full length documentary feature film in which, at one point, people speak with begrudging respect for a wildly successful, cynical marketing campaign by auction house Christie’s. They succeeded in turning a painting of questionable authenticity into a worldwide celebrity in its own right, prompting people to visit museums and take photos of even plainly labeled copies of it. My personal favorite bit is when one of their commercials shows Leonardo DiCaprio, among others, gazing in awe at the painting.

By the end of that painting’s life cycle—or at least its current phase of it—it has become a pawn in geopolitical maneuvering, particularly between France and Saudi Arabia but with historical context that stretches around the globe. This does make the story rather fascinating even to fine art novices like myself; you really don’t need to be a deep appreciator of art to enjoy this movie.

The film has a few design flaws, however, most notably its frequent vignettes of the interview subjects striking dramatic poses or reenacting their serious examinations of the painting, which devalue the documentary form itself. There is no need for that kind of cornball crap, and The Lost Leonardo has a bit too much of it. It’s far better served when it allows the subjects to speak as their authentic selves, as they run the gamut of personality types, one of the more critical ones being especially gregarious.

There’s a subtle tone to this movie that makes it feel a little too much like, say, a low-rent doc on cable television, yet with ironically high production value. The story itself remains a fascinating one, even if they way it’s told here is undeniably manipulative.

There’s a lot to unpack here.

Overall: B