CHALLENGERS

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

Had Challengers been directed by anyone else, I likely would not have been interested. But, offbeat Cicilian director Luca Guadagnino is a game changer. This is the guy who previously brought us the beautiful Call Me By Your Name in 2017; the unusually subtle and lovely queer-ish limited series We Are Who We Are in 2020; and the jarringly tender cannibal love story Bones and All in 2022. He also made the wild mess that was the remake of Suspiria in 2018—the director can be all over the place with his projects, but one thing you can never say about him is that he is unoriginal.

Challengers is easily Guadagnino’s most mainstream project to date, with superstar Zendaya at its center, her injured-tennis-player-turned coach Tashi also being the center of a dysfunctional love triangle with two other rising tennis talents: Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist, who played Riff in Steven Spielberg’s underrated 2021 version of West Side Story). This movie is also only about tennis on the surface, featuring plenty of onscreen tennis matches, but always as a metaphor for the personal tensions between the players. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Guadagnino film without some homoerotic undertones, which here occasionally veer into overtones.

It’s easy to say that these are the kinds of film details that speak to me, but it’s much deeper than that. I don’t think it’s even an accident that O’Connor and Faist are both hot young men, but almost pointedly unconventionally hot—as they compete for a woman played by one of the most universally attractive woman stars in the world. And this is a film that sexualizes all three of them, albeit in one case the camera zooms in on an inexplicably gratuitous shot of Faist’s butt in form fitting pajama bottoms. I found myself wondering if there were any conversations about the intentionality of that on set. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were.

Challengers is presented with a curious narrative structure, where “present day” is a 2019 tennis match that turns out to be a rematch between Patrick and Art after thirteen years, a pivotal match that we return to regularly throughout the film. It jumps back and forth from there to a week ago, or three days ago, or in a great many cases, thirteen years ago—when Patrick and Art first meet Tashi. This is where the homoerotic undertones begin: “I’m not a homewrecker,” she says, about getting in between the two of them, who have been “bunking together” since they were twelve.

I had mixed feelings about this approach to editing at first, and honestly it took several scenes at the beginning of the film before I started to find any of these characters interesting. But this is Guadagnino’s subtle, secret weapon: an expertly applied slow burn, getting you to a point where you don’t even realize yet that you’ve been won over. And in retrospect, Challengers would not have been as effective with a more linear plot line. As it was, every time we jump back to the “present day” match, at which point Tashi is married to one of the eternally competitive (yet unusually intimate) friends as well as acting as his coach, the stakes become clearer. Tennis is just used as a uniquely effective framework for a deeply compelling romantic drama.

Still, in anyone else’s hands, I could easily have lost interest. Guadagnino works with frequent collaborator Sayombhu Mukdeeprom for his cinematography, consistently finding angles on the action that are at once beautiful and offbeat. Several scenes largely hinge on their visual impact, from a sudden wind storm, to a bevy of unconventional shots during tennis matches: off-center closeups of the players’ tense bodies, or POV shots of the players hitting the ball with their racquets, or in one memorable sequence, taking on the point of view of the tennis ball itself. I remain eternally confused by how the hell tennis is scored, but somehow I remained deeply invested in everything happening onscreen.

The performances are excellent all around, but especially stellar on the part of Zendaya. Challengers had already more than won me over by the climactic end to the present-day tennis match at hand, but then the acting, the memorably propulsive score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the editing, and the cinematography all converge with first-time feature writer Justin Kuritzkes’s script, and everything comes together with such deep satisfaction, it’s like a beautiful puzzle where the picture isn’t clear until the final pieces are set in place. Sticking the landing is a significant challenge even in many otherwise great movies, but here it’s done so well that it elevates an already great film. I left the theater thinking about what a fantastic experience it was.

Match points: I suppose you could call this my favorite tennis movie.

Overall: A-

HOUSEKEEPING FOR BEGINNERS

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

I don’t know why, until I actually watched Housekeeping for Beginners, I thought it was a Spanish-language movie. It even took a few minutes into the beginning of the movie for it to register: this doesn’t sound like Spanish. For a hot second I thought it was Portuguese. Was this movie Brazilian? I looked it up: of all places, this film is from North Macedonia. Have I ever seen any North Macedonian films before? Apparently, I have—Honeyland, a documentary I actually felt was the best film of 2019. And while that one was the true story of a rural beekeeper, this one is about an urban, blended queer family in the North Macedonian capital of Skopje. (It turns out, I even saw the previous film by the director of Housekeeping for Beginners: You Won’t Be Alone, about a shape shifting witch in 19th century Macedonia, which I did not like nearly as much, and did not have North Macedonia as a producing country, while this one does.)

One might rightly wonder how the hell I started from Spanish to that: within a European context at least, this film could hardly be further from Spanish. Such is the legacy of colonialism, I suppose—the English are hardly the only ones in the world to have such a history. Spanish is actually the second-most spoken native language in the world (behind Mandarin), which can make it easy to forget: there are 16 times as many people in the world who speak some other language. In North Macedonia, the dominant language is Macedonian, but there are other officially recognized languages, including Albanian, Turkish, Bosnian, Serbian, and one that becomes a key plot point in Houesekeeping for Beginners: Romani. That last one is the language spoken in the neighborhood of Shutka, an autonomous Roma community on the outskirts of Skopje.

It turns out, there is a lot to learn about this small corner of the world—a country of just under 10,000 square miles (barely larger than Vermont), a population of 1.8 million (about the population of West Virginia), its capital a metropolitan population of 537,000 (about the metro population of Huntsville, Alabama). Such is the case with just about every international location you can think of, actually—but here, writer-director Goran Stolevski, an openly gay thirtysomething man born in Macedonia who grew up in Australia, finds a unique way to turn our attention to it.

It’s not often we get queer stories in global cinema that blend queer life with racial and ethnic concerns, making Housekeeping for Beginners an unusually intersectional story. When the film opens, we see what appears to be two teenagers, Ali (Samson Selim) and Vanesa (Mia Mustafi), belting out along to a song they both apparently love, using household items as fake microphones. It’s a deceptively charming and simple scene, and only moves into a portrait of a rather chaotic household.

And the home includes a lesbian couple, Dita (Anamaria Marinca) and Suada (Alina Serban), and their gay housemate Toni (Vladimir Tintor). As we just hang out with this household for several minutes, it takes a little while to fully register what all the relationships are. Vanesa, and insanely cute little Mia (Dzada Selim) are Suada’s children. Ali, just a few years older than Vanesa, is Toni’s 19-year-old hookup—the opening scene of him singing with Vanesa really driving home how he’s rather young.

But, there are several other queer teens who also hang out at the house, which serves as a de facto safe house for kids who are rejected by their families or communities. And here, in a country with no legal recognition of same-sex couples or their children who are not blood relatives, this chaotically supportive mini-community they have created for themselves is massively disrupted when Suada is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

The first third or so of Housekeeping for Beginners focuses on this lesbian couple, how they deal with a prognosis understood early on to be hopeless, and how they drag their feet in regards to informing the family. It’s not a spoiler, per se, to say that Suada dies, because the overall point of this film is Dita dealing with both her promise to Suada that she will be the children’s mother going forward, and in particular Vanesa’s passionate rebellion against that scenario, all while navigating the legal hoops and deceptions necessary for her to stave off any threat of the children being taken away. Toni, for his part, is resistant to being pressured into playing the part of a straight father / family man type. Ali organically settles into his own position in the family, his relationship with Toni having complications of its own.

I was fully absorbed and moved by ths movie, a rare feat of ensemble storytelling in which every principal character has dimension and character development. It should be noted, also, that both Ali and Suada happen to come from the aforementioned Shutka community, a people for whom “gypsy” is considered a bigoted term, and they are people of color—making Dita and Suada not just a lesbian couple, but an interracial couple, and then Dita a White woman raising children of color. There are many references to this dynamic in the film, and when Vanesa insists on seeking out a grandmother in Shutka she hasn’t seen in several years, deep cultural differences quickly become apparent.

I can only imagine Housekeeping for Beginners would be seen in a far more intricate way by Macedonian audiences, and I would be fascinated to learn how the film was received there—it was indeed their submission for the Best International Feature award from North Macedonia, but, criminally, it did not make the cut among last year’s nominees. This is a film that absolutely deserves attention, both in its home country and abroad—even the most frustrating characters are deeply human, and the domestic situation portrayed is emblematic of evolving ideas of family the world over. I won’t soon forget this one.

Love makes a family, and so does not taking any shit lying down.

Overall: A-

DUNE PART TWO

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

The word “iconic” has been overused for decades. For this reason, I don’t ever use it. Maybe Dune Part Two is the exception that proves the rule. There is a moment in this film that is so visually iconic, it looks like the cover of a pulp science fiction novel come to life. There’s nothing kitschy about it, though; it’s very earnest—a key element of both these movies’ success.

I have to admit, I spent a fair amount of Dune Part Two thinking that it might not be living up to the hype. I wanted to be bowled over, overwhelmed by my love for it, and that wasn’t quite happening. The thing is, that’s just not how Denis Villeneuve operates. This is an artist with such unparalleled skill as a storyteller, you need to regard the piece in its entirely before you can properly judge it. This movie does not disappoint.

There’s something about Dune Part One, released in the fall of 2021—two and a half years ago—that makes it stand apart. I really liked that film when I first saw it, but I didn’t love it. And yet, every single time I rewatch that film, I appreciate it more than the last. I’ve seen it at least four times now, and I still notice new details every time.

It is for that reason that I expect the same thing with Dune Part Two. I’m not yet prepared to declare my undying love for it, but, much like Paul Atreides’s visions, I can see a near future where I’ve gotten to that point. I am genuinely looking forward to seeing this movie again, and will certainly be seeing it many times. This first go-round, I know there is much I did not catch, which is to be expected with films so well adapted from literary source material, but material I have not read. I have started to consider reading it, though.

I am especially looking forward to the point at which both Dune Part One and Dune Part Two are avaiable to watch together, back to back, as one film. Part One was two hours and 35 minutes long; Part Two is two hours and 46 minutes; the two combined, as one interrupted narrative, would make a five hour and 21-minute movie. When combined, maybe one of the greatest science fiction films ever made.

Has anyone else thought to compare this to Kill Bill Vol. I and Kill Bill Vol. II? Wildly different movies, obviously, but a key thing in common: a first part that ends abruptly, with much of the story clearly left to go—but incredible up to that point. Then the second, concluding part comes out, and even the first part is improved when regarded as part of the whole.

And there’s a lot new to discover in Dune Part Two, particularly when it comes to the cast. Zendaya had all of seven minutes of screen time in the first Dune, and as expected, here becomes a critical part of the story. She is great as expected as Chani, as is Timothée Chalamet as Paul—effectively embodying a young man who is maturing, for both good and for ill, before our eyes—but I simply must mention Austin Butler, as Feyd-Rautha, nephew to the grotesque Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård). I could already tell from Elvis that he was a very good actor, but only when comparing that to his performance here does Austin Butler prove to be an astonishing talent. He’s not just the most eminently believable psychotic character in this movie, but he takes it a step further with an incredible vocal performance just similar enough to Stellan Skarsgård’s to make him believable as a relative of his.

There’s a lot of other new famous faces introduced to Part Two: Christopher Walken as the Emperor; Florence Pugh as his daughter, Stellan Skarsgård; Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot Fenring, one of the Bene Gesserit; even Anya Taylor-Joy as a flash-forward of Paul’s little sister. Unfortunately, none of these top-notch actors get much to work with, while Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson (as Paul’s mother, Jessica), Josh Brolin and especially Javier Bardem get all the desert scenery to chew. Anya Taylor-Joy get about one minute, if that, of screen time.

It’s understandable, however, for them all to want to be part of something that is greater than the sum of its parts. There may not be any better example of that phrase than the two Dune movies—and, incidentally, unlike many other franchises, you absolutely need to have seen Dune Part One in order to fully appreciate, or possibly even understand, this movie. They really should be regarded as part of a collective whole, like Kill Bill or The Lord of the Rings.

The special effects, once again, are spectacular. Even more of this film takes place on the desert planet of Arrakis than the previous one did, and still Villenueve makes it a work of art, between the incredible cinematography and the seamlessly integrated visual effects. The fact alone that he manages to render characters riding sandworms without it looking ridiculous is an impressive accomplishment. The sandworms alone give the film an arresting, visual grandeur.

None of this would matter, of course, without such rich storytelling, in a fully realized, wholly separate universe. For much of this film, we see Paul learn the ways of the Fremen, the people native to the desert, fighting alongside them, protesting their insistence that he is their Messiah while also using that faith to his advantage. This film certainly has more to say about religion, a running subtext to the intergalactic political intrigue and fighting between different planetary clans. Which of these “houses” will ultimately gain the greatest power is incidental to the means by which this power is attained.

I will say, I could feel large swaths of the source material left unaddressed, at least not directly, while watching Dune Part Two. But, like Dune Part One, it is denslely packed with information, which no doubt gives greater satisfaction to those familiar with the books, and more easily picked up on by the rest of us with subsequent viewings. “Epic” is another word I try to avoid because of its overuse, but it is unavoidable here. This is an epic film for the 21st century, done right in a way it hasn’t been for decades, a classic that might just be beloved for generations to come.

Just when you wonder when there will be shock and awe . . . it comes.

Overall: A-

ORIGIN

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

Origin isn’t so much an adaptation of the 2020 book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Isabel Wilkerson, as a telling of the story of Wilkerson, clarifying the ideas for and then writing that book.

It’s a clever conceit, which works surprisingly well, as it then works as Wilkerson herself, portrayed wonderfully here by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, presenting her thesis and arguments, both to her family, friends and colleagues—many of whom take some time to understand what she’s getting at—and to us as the audience. The basic premise is that American racism does not exist in a vacuum in the world, but is rather an aspect of caste systems with common pillars in many societies.

Specifically, though, she finds “connective tissue” (her words, or at least her character’s words in this film) between the legacy of American racism dating back centuries to enslavement; the Nazi demonization of Jewish people; and the persecution of the Dalit caste, historically regarded as “Untouchables” in India. And there are some mind-blowing revelations in there, which present irrefutable evidence of that connective tissue. Documented evidence of the Nazi Party in Germany using American Jim Crow laws as a blueprint for what they did, via legal processes, to the Jewish people. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s visit to India informing the commonality between “Untouchables” there and the dehumanized status of Black people in America.

Origin features a minor flaw overall, one that informs a separate discussion about the nature of adaptation. It may very well be that writer-director Ava DuVernay has presented us with the best film version of this story, and these ideas, there could possibly be. That doesn’t change the fact that reading a book about all these things is far more likely to dig deeper, more permanently into our brains. I have not read the book, and it seems clear that I should. On the other hand, I am also, like many other people, getting the most immediate, and possibly the only, direct exposure to these concepts via watching this film.

And this film, while arguably a little slight on plot, is packed with scenes that are likely to stay with you a long time. Consider the conversation Wilkerson has with a couple over dinner during a visit to Germany. This German, White woman argues to the American Black woman that the Holocaust and the American legacy of slavery are too different to be compared, that they are not based on the same underlying precepts. She clarifies that slavery is about subjugation, and the Holocaust was about extermination. This conversation could perhaps have been better informed with more direct reference to the American genocide of Indigenous people, which absolutely was also about extermination.

What Wilkerson argues is that, whether it’s subjugation or extermination, it’s the pillars of caste ideology that gets used to justify the action. One of the great things about this film is how it lays out this argument, but allows us to spend some time pondering them. This is not a film spending time insisting on its rightness, but making its case. I even left the screening I attended not having taking it in quite the same way as the person I saw it with.

Origin has a fairly lengthy, 141-minute run time, with an even pacing that justifies it. It opens on Trayvon Martin (Myles Frost) walking the neighborhood after visiting a convenience store. It explores the concept of “endogamy,” the practice or romance or marriage as limited only to within one’s own defined clan or tribe, partly through Wilkerson’s own interracial marriage to the late Brett Hamilton (Jon Bernthal). Wilkerson is encouraged by her editors (one of whom is played by Vera Farmiga) to write something about the Trayvon Martin case, while she is considering a hiatus to take care of her elderly mother (Emily Yancy).

There’s a particularly memorable scene, of Wilkerson with her husband and her mother, discussing the Trayvon Martin case. Isabel and Brett argue that Martin should never have had to answer to another man questioning his presence walking through a neighborhood, a sensible argument. Isabel’s mother argues that if Martin had just answered the question, he might well still be alive, also a sensible argument. In a later scene, we see an interaction between Isabel and a plumber (played by Nick Offerman), investigating a flood in a basement. The plumber is wearing a red MAGA hat, and Isabel quite understandably looks upon him with unease. Still, she connects with him by mentioning her late mother, and asking about his parents. The scene seems simple on the surface, but it presents the same question: Isabel diffuses tension by taking the initiative to connect, but should she have to?

Origin spends a significant amount of time on the three societies Isabel Wilkerson explores, with conversations with “real people” in her personal life at home (including her cousin, played by Abbott Elementary’s Niecy Nash, and a close friend pointedly named Miss Hale, played by Audra McDonald), as well as extended visits in both Germany and India, wildly different societies with commonalities of oppression that are all too easy not to see.

It would be a fascinating exercise to see particularly how this film plays with German, Indian, or Jewish audiences, as it explores very disparate histories, and then connects dots, between them. These are issues very personal to people, as with the White German woman who is unable to see the similarities—something Isabel’s cousin also struggles with. This all just provides Isabel Wilkerson multiple opportunities to clarify her thesis, which the film Origin then imparts to its audience very successfully. It provides a huge amount of provocative food for thought, and I left the theater feeling very grateful to have been presented with it.

When different underclasses are not so different: Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Isabel Wilkerson, visiting the site of the oldest example of it.

THE ZONE OF INTEREST

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

The Zone of Interest is a film that challenges you to pay attention, then makes you uncomfortable, forces you to sit in that discomfort, and regularly reminds you of the ease of complacency. It is within this context that I found how it ended to be one of the greatest endings of a film, perhaps ever.

Jonathan Glazer, who co-wrote the script and directed this film, previously gave us such wildly disparate films as Under the Skin (2014), Birth (2004) and Sexy Beast (2000), certainly takes his time between feature films, and has evidently honed his craft over time. Under the Skin in particular, a film now a decade old, is similarly subtle in both its profundity and provocative themes; it definitely has something to say. And, while it is imperfect, its ideas, its visuals, and especially its tone has me returning to it every few years.

The Zone of Interest is a bit more direct in its challenge, a slight irony given how it shifts nearly all the horrors of the Holocaust outside the borders of the frame. This is a story focused on Rudolf and Hedwig Höss (Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller), and their children, living their seemingly ordinary, every day lives in a home literally on the other side of the fence surrounding the Auschwitz concentration camp. Rudolf is the commandant of the camp, Hedwig is his wife, and in their minds, they are living the dream: everything they want in a home, with an elaborate garden, and a loving family.

The Jewish people loom large in this film, in that to the German family we are following—as well as the rest of their family, friends and colleagues—Jewish people are entirely incidental, no more or less worth considering than generic cargo. Their conscious thought about Jewish people is limited to questions of whether the few of them being used as slave labor on the grounds should be allowed inside the house. Occasionally an unusual consideration punctures their idyllic existence, such as when the ashes of human remains float down a nearly river and reach them while obliviously fishing or swimming. (That image of the ash flowing down the river toward them is not one I will soon forget.)

Glazer is a master of tone, particularly of the deeply creepy sort, but in The Zone of Interest, he quite intentionally does away with tone altogether. The proceedings are generally very matter-of-fact, the same approach the Höss family has toward Rudolf’s work. This only changes in sporadic fits, with Mica Levi’s truly nightmarish score, which reaches occasional crescendos over seemingly mundane images, like flowers growing in the garden. But, there is always something insidious under the surface of any particularly domestic image: those flowers are grown with human remains in the soil.

I might be tempted to call The Zone of Interest the 21st-century answer to Schndler’s List, except Jonathan Glazer is far removed from the kind of populist director that Steven Spielberg is. Even a film like Schindler’s List, which I would still regard as essential viewing, is similarly pointed in how it challenges its audience, but would never have reached the same number of people without the Spielberg name attached to it. Glazer, by contrast, is a longtime critical darling whose films just don’t get widely seen. Even with The Zone of Interest fairly likely to become his most-seen film, it’s never going to get genuinely mainstream exposure.

It’s too bad. The Zone of Interest is the kind of film you don’t particularly want to watch, but which you’ll be glad to have seen. I would hesitate to call it “homework,” but plenty of people would likely see it that way. For those who actively seek it out, and you absolutely should, it is likely to be seen as a profound work of art.

Is it a masterpiece? It’s too soon to tell. I was deeply impressed by almost everything about it—including Sandra Hüller, who also gave a spectacular performance recently in Anatomy of a Fall—but was left with mixed feelings about that jarringly severe score. I could feel differently after some time. And that is a specific thing The Zone of Interest plays with, time: nearly all of it is set in the last couple years of World War II, and that changes briefly only once, in a way that is incredibly effective.

I left this film thinking a lot about “the banality of evil,” and how easily it become part of our day to day existence. Rudolf recounts to Hedwig over the phone how he spent a party thinking mostly how he would gas everyone in the high ceilinged banquet room, and those were all people ostensibly on his side. This is a portrait of people far more concerned with logistics than humanity, and the casual way it invites us into their world is the most frightening of all.

The Banality of Evil: The Movie

AMERICAN FICTION

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

Being a White guy who loves a movie about Black people pandering to White audiences with misguided love for stereotypical depictions of Black people can be . . . tricky. Is there a version of MetaCritic out there that just aggregates the reviews of Black critics? That would be so helpful! How do I know whether or not I am being complicit in the very thing this film is critiquing and satirizing?

Well, there is the fact that the Black Film Critics Circle named American Fiction its Best Film of 2023. Whew. What a relief! So I don’t have to worry about this anymore . . . right?

I will say this, to other White people watching this movie: there are no White people in major roles, but there are plenty of them in small parts throughout, and they are worth paying particularly close attention to. The vast majority of them serve as one example or another of White people convinced of their allyship while being unable to see their own latent racism. This usually comes through in some kind of subtle gag, always very well executed, the only possible downside being that it might go down too easily. These are behaviors that stem from genuine truths, and are worth reflection.

Side note: the one example of a white character I can think of who isn’t used as an example in this way is the one White gay character. And honestly, racism in the queer community is something that could really use its own kind of exposure—comic or otherwise—in cinema, but writer-director Cord Jefferson and co-writer Percival Everett, upon whose novel Erasure this film is based, already have enough going on in this movie.

Speaking of gay characters, Sterling K. Brown plays Jeffrey Wright’s gay brother in this film, an interesting tidbit when it comes to representation in casting. Increasingly films are criticized for casting straight actors in queer roles, but given the topic and premise of American Fiction, I can’t see many people having the balls to criticize it for this. And I’m not going to either, actually—both because I felt Sterling K. Brown was objectively well cast and did a good job. I also loved that no effort whatsoever was made to make Brown’s character, Cliff, any “gayer” than Brown is as a regular guy himself. There’s a scene in which Cliff has two gay guys around, one of them the aforementioned White guy—wearing nothing but a Speedo—and those guys lean a bit more into obvious queerness, but in a way that was comfortably subtle. It actually felt like a reasonable representation of the diversity of queer expression.

But this is largely the point of American Fiction, in which the protagonist, Monk (Wright), is a well-off author from a wealthy Black family of doctors, Monk being the self-described “black sheep” because he is a novelist. He is also a highbrow writer, a professor, and a terminally flawed character. He’s deeply frustrated, both by the low sales of his beautifully written, complex prose, and by fellow Black writers (one in particular is played by the always-welcome Issa Rae) who seem to exploit stereotypes in order to write best-sellers.

American Fiction is kind of two movies in one, only one of which got much acknowledgment in the film’s promotion: the unusually successful satire, about “Black art” and how White people respond to it. The other is a family drama, in which Monk deals with multiple deaths in the family, as well as the gradually worsening dementia of his widowed mother, Agnes (Leslie Uggams). There are some who find it difficult to reconcile these two sides of the film, but Cord Jefferson strikes a delicate balance with this narrative that ultimately works. An important element here is how the characters of this film are multidimensional while the characters in the books and movies they talk about (or write) are one-dimensional.

The last act of American Fiction suddenly gets very meta, in a way the film had not at all been before then, and it almost lost me. I tend to love meta commentary when done well, but for a moment, the narrative of American Fiction itself becomes the narrative of something Monk is adapting into a movie, and I wasn’t sure if we’d ever get any real resolution to the “real life” characters. To Cord Jefferson’s ample credit, he brings the narrative back around, so the story we’d been seeing up to that point, and the story Monk is now spinning, meet up again, in a genuinely satisfying way.

American Fiction is a carefully crafted work of art, the kind in which nothing is an accident and there’s far more to consider than what’s on the surface. Monk, as a character, is someone we are eager to root for, even though he can be kind of an asshole. Just like any person. What this film pointedly refuses to do is either make him a trope or make him a flawless hero. He’s actually very self-involved, which his otherwise very understandable snobbery about literature only exacerbates. And American Fiction pulls off a bit of a magic trick, being a genuinely entertaining movie while also having a whole lot to say that’s worth considering beyond the confines of its narratives. There’s a whole lot more going on in it than I could cover here, but you should just watch it, as it’s all ripe for discovery.

There’s a whole lot of compelling ideas in here.

Overall: A-

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-

MAY DECEMBER

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

I feel like I should watch May December four more times before I can make a truly definitive statement regarding my opinion of it. But, well, I have other things to do so I’m writing the review now.

How often is the average viewer going to watch it, anyway? Critics can watch movies over and over to gain clarity on their perceptions of them, but that won’t change the average viewer’s experience of it. Most people who watch this movie are only ever going to see it once. Well, I can tell you: this movie might throw you for a loop. It might stun you. It might make you deeply uncomfortable. It might fascinate you on concurrent, multiple levels. It did all of the above to me.

Making a movie clearly inspired by the Mary Kay Letourneau story—which I completely forgot occurred right here in the Seattle area (Burien, to be specific, in 1996)—would be one thing. Todd Haynes, the visionary director behind such masterpieces as Far From Heaven (2002) and Carol (2015), compounds the complexity by making a movie about an actress researching a role in which she plays the woman who had an affair with a middle school-aged boy.

It should be noted that there are many key differences between Latourneau and Gracie, the older woman here played magnificently by Julianne Moore (here being directed by Todd Haynes for the fifth time). The most curious, perhaps, is that Latourneau had her affair with Vili Fualaau when he was 12 years old, but Gracie’s affair with Joe (a remarkable Charles Melton) when he was 13—23 years before the setting of the film. I can’t quite decide what to make of this difference. Does making the kid a legit teenager rather than a preteen somehow make the story more palatable? I can’t say it does: Elizabeth, the actress (an astonishing Natalie Portman), complains to her director about how the 13-year-old boys auditioning for the part aren’t “sexy enough,” and we rightly feel a little gross. Later we see a card Joe made for Grace around the time of their so-called “affair” (I hesitate even to call it that), and I cringed so hard I nearly felt like throwing up.

As it happens, Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau separated after 14 years of marriage. Steve Letourneau, Mary Kay’s ex-husband, moved to Alaska with the four children, of which he was awarded custody—all perfectly sensible. In May December, evidently to make things far more awkward, Gracie’s older children and ex-husband all still live in the same town, in this case Savannah, Georgia. This way they can all run into each other at a restaurant the night before Gracie’s twins as well as one of her grandchildren are graduating from high school.

Another key difference: in May December, Gracie and Joe are still married, now more than twenty years, Joe at the age of 36 and Gracie at 59. This is a film that examines the psyche of the people involved in this wildly unusual, deeply unhealthy scenario. There is so much to unpack in this movie, it’s difficult to know even where to start. If you have sexual abuse in your childhood, some of this could be triggering.

The wildest thing about this movie, of course, is that the premise is not just plausible—this has actually happened. How would May December play if the Mary Kay Letourneau story had never happened? Would it feel like too much of a stretch, a test of suspension of disbelief? The only reason this movie exists, of course, is Letourneau—it’s impossible to discuss the film without discussing her. And, just as Elizabeth tries to find ways to understand and empathize with how these people made the decisions they made, we find ourselves making the same exploration, through her.

The stealth surprise of May December is that Elizabeth, as it happens, is just as fucked up as anyone else in this movie. 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. (One of many fantastic touches is how Julianne Moore plays Gracie with a slight lisp, and when we later see Elizabeth playing her, she really leans into that lisp.)

Gracie’s younger children are surprisingly well put together, but the eldest from the previous marriage, Georgie (Cory Michael Smith), is understandably a bit unstable. Everyone in Gracie’s orbit has a different way of dealing with such truly unique circumstances, which compels people to mail literal shit in a box to their house. Gracie herself, while prone to sobbing breakdowns due to endless, barely covert judgment in her community, is fascinatingly unrepentant. She remains steadfast even in the face of Joe coming to an unusually existential moment: is it possible he was too young to be making these kinds of decisons? “You seduced me,” Gracie says to him—a horrid line I’m not sure I will ever forget.

It occurs to me, suddenly, that I easily empathize with everyone in this movie, except for the two leads. Gracie declares herself “naive,” which is perhaps true, but in a way that masks a kind of sociopathy. Elizabeth is eager to understand where Gracie is coming from, but in ways that ultimately only serve her narcissism. There is something deeply wrong with both of these women.

There’s a lot that really got under my skin in May December—but in all the right ways. There’s something about the delivery, particularly in the beginning, that feels almost unnecessarily overwrought, and then somehow it clicks and really works. If I had any complaint, it would be about the score, by Marcelo Zarvos, which is incongruously melodramatic. These jarring piano cords will ring out in even the most otherwise quietly performed scenes. I can see what Haynes we going for, but it never quite worked for me.

That said, I have a strong feeling I could change my mind about the score upon repeat viewings. I remain unconvinced as to whether that’s really relevant, though. Even after one viewing, even accounting for intrusive music, May December is a film I will be thinking about for a long time to come. It has far more to unpack than I even managed to cover here, making it a treasure trove of discomfort.

Either you’re Haynes Hive or you aren’t. Count me all in.

Overall: A-

STOP MAKING SENSE 40th Anniversary Rerelease

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

Several times while watching Stop Making Semse, the now-classic, cult favorite Talking Heads concert film, I almost thought I was looking at Cillian Murphy. David Byrne, the lead singer of the Talking Heads—which have not released an album of original music as a band in 35 years—was 32 years old at the time of this concert’s filming, in December 1983. (Hence the “40th anniversary” moniker, I guess, even though the film was originally released in October 1984). Cillian Murphy is 47 now. He’d better get on it if he’s ever going to star in a biopic. I’d be there in a flash, anyway.

I have a curious personal history with this band. In spite of collecting the entire discography of many singers and bands from the seventies and eighties, I have never owned any album by the Talking Heads. And yet, as a lover of film, I have genuinely loved both concert films with David Byrne as lead performer. David Byrne’s American Utopia was my 8th-favorite movie of 2020. Having now seen Stop Making Sense in a theater, I think I am just slightly partial to American Utopia, which is, as a recording of a Broadway performance, is much more of a choreographed stage production.

They do make great companion pieces, I think. In 2020, I marveled at David Byrne as an exceptional live vocalist, particularly at the age of 67. Turns out, this was nothing new. To say Byrne is an odd man is an understatement, but his stage presence is undeniable, and his unique singing style still manages to blend perfectly well with backup singer harmonies.

There must be something to the quality of The Talking Heads’s back catalogue, as well as their power over an audience, considering how much I love watching them perform, in spite of having only cursory familiarity with the material. I know the tunes to “Psycho Killer” and “Burning Down the House” and “Once In a Lifetime,” of course, but Stop Making Sense is full of songs I am unaware of having heard anywhere else, and still I am just as into the next one as I am the last.

The presentation of Stop Making Sense is a simple conceit, but a very effective one. It opens with Byrne alone, performing “Psycho Killer” with nothing but a boom box and an acoustic guitar. For the next song, “Heaven,” he sings only with Talking Heads bassist Tina Weymouth. And so it goes with the following songs, each with a new instrument added: drums by Chris Frantz; guitar (and later keyboards) by Jerry Harrison; and an expanding number of supporting instrumentalists. Stagehands either carry or roll out their equipment ahead of time, while Byrne continues performing in front of them.

Even at the age of 32, Byrne’s energy and stamina are stunning. Like all the band members, he sweats a good amount, but never shows any signs of tiring, particularly when it comes to his vocals. He sounds incredible from start to finish.

So: is it “the best concert film of all time,” as considered by many critics? Who am I to argue? Granted, this strikes me as wildly objective. If the Talking Heads’s music doesn’t speak to you, would you still align with this perspective? Granted, this film is also known for some technical innovations, as in its digital audio techniques. I suppose that means this could be called “the Citizen Kane of concert films.” Does that make it the best? Well, it’s excellent, anyway.

If nothing else, it certainly holds up, incredibly well. I find myself wondering what it might be like to watch in a house theater full of fans. I watched this at a 4:20 p.m. screening, with one single other person in the theater. I was super into the music, moving a bit to it, in my sleep. The young woman two seats down from me was not so much as tapping her foot.

I’m glad I got to see it in a theater. There’s no question that, nearly empty theater notwithstanding, it was a far more absorbing experience than it would have been watching at home. I had a blast.

You don’t have to be a Talking Heads fan, but it helps.

Overall: A-

BARBIE

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

One might not be blamed for ambivalence about the movie Barbie, which is the latest in a long line of “movie adaptations” that seem far from intuitive ideas, perhaps starting with the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie twenty years ago. The flip side of this notion is that Pirates of the Caribbean turned out far better than anyone could have expected a movie based on an amusement park ride to be; and Barbie proves that, with the right director, the right writers, and the right casting, really any movie concept can be great if it’s done right.

And, to be clear: the sole reason I had interest in Barbie from the start was that it was directed and co-written by Greta Gerwig, who previously gave us fantastic works like Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019). Barbie is her third film as a solo director (fourth when counting a co-directing gig), and hardly anything anyone would guess based on her previous offerings. But, her name on the project gave it both specific and unparalleled pedigree that made it something that had to be seen.

It is co-written by her longtime partner, Noah Baumbach, also an unusual and fascinating choice. These are both voices of critical independent films of the past decade or so, and in both cases Barbie qualifies as their first bona fide blockbuster film. I’m not sure anyone expected Barbie to be this huge when it was first greenlit, but this movie based on Mattel’s most famous toy has been the beneficiary of a marketing push the likes of which we haven’t seen in ages, and it’s one that has worked. A year ago, I would have expected Barbie to be the modest success and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer to be the blockbuster. Instead, almost certainly to the surprise of the makers of both movies, who no doubt opened them on the same weekend regarding them as counter programming, “Barbenheimer” became a thing, and a stunning number of movie-goers have committed to seeing both movies on opening weekend, making this almost certainly the biggest box office weekend of the year. What’s more, Barbie is tracking to be the biggest earner of the two.

You might think that comparing these movies is like comparing apples and oranges, but they do have a surprising amount in common, each with a protagonist who deal with the paradigm-shifting consequences of their actions, forever altering the universes that they live in. And from that perspective, I would argue, actually, that Barbie is the better movie.

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.

Barbie does indeed owe a certain debt, in premise, to movies like Toy Story or The Lego Movie (which really just ripped off Toy Story), in which toy characters live in the world of imagination created by those who play with them. Barbie is simply more dense with both meaning and humor. The humor part should really be stressed, because this is a very funny, wildly entertaining movie. Barbie manages the rare feat of taking ideas that were successful before, and making them better.

With a standard three-act structure, Barbie takes place in Barbieland in both the first and third acts, and this is the preferable setting, the more fun place to be. Barbie and Ken’s journey to The Real World is crucial to the plot, however, and this is where the second act takes place—and where I still very much enjoyed myself. I was charmed and impressed by everything in, and everything about, this movie.

Margot Robbie could not possibly have been better cast in the lead role, as what we come to discover is “Stereotypical Barbie.” Few other actors could pull off the balance of wide-eyed innocence and undiscovered pathos. Ryan Gosling is brilliantly cast as Ken, the would-be boyfriend who follows Barbie into The Real World only to discover the patriarchy that exists there, and then bring it back to Barbieland. This theme of patriarchy becomes a huge part of the movie, which will likely rub a lot of men the wrong way—the very men Greta Gerwig clearly wants to rub the wrong way. And those of us all-in on this movie from the jump are here for it.

A diverse array of other women play other Barbies, the ones long known as associated with a specific profession or particular personality trait. Amusingly, no fewer than eleven women are credited with just the same character name “Barbie,” among them Issa Rae (who plays the President of Barbieland), Kate McKinnon (for a while referred to as “Weird Barbie”), Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, and Dua Lipa, among others. Emerald Fennell even appears as Midge, the short-lived pregnant doll that apparently came across as a little creepy. Similarly, several men are credited as “Ken,” including Simu Liu (who is Gosling’s primary rival), Chris Evans and even John Cena. Michael Cera plays Allan, the onetime doll introduced in the sixties as Ken’s buddy, now a bit of an oddball outsider.

As can be expected with a movie like this, Barbie is also cram packed with visual gags and references to “Barbie” characters, careers, outfits and dollhouses throughout the toy’s history, none of which was I particularly familiar with and thus most of which I was unable to catch. But the magic of Barbie the movie is how it pokes fun at all of this, while also acknowledging the nostalgia that still exists for it, as well as the critiques of what the doll has been perceived to represent for women in society. These ideas only get underscored by Barbie and Ken’s journey into The Real World, where the meet America Ferrera as a mother with fond memories of playing Barbies with her now-teenage daughter (Ariana Greenblatt), as well as Will Ferrell playing the Mattell CEO—alongside a cadre of doltish male board members—as a bumbling fool but whose intentions are in the right place.

Given the wide range of perspectives on this doll, not by any means all of them positive, it’s almost extraordinary that Mattel actually signed off on the film as is. There has been some coverage of certain scenes that Gerwig refused to cut as requested, and a bit of hand wringing about the movie’s undeniably corporatized nature regardless of how much it satirizes. I am here to tell you, though, that Barbie is a genuine cinematic achievement, something that transcends its myriad ways of becoming a pop culture phenomenon. It’s actually a great film, an incredibly fun couple of hours constructed and designed by great minds and delightful performers alike. I genuinely look forward to seeing it again so I can catch some of the fun details I missed the first time around.

Barbie discovers that self-doubt and thoughts of mortality will break the spell.

Overall: A-