"All of Us Strangers"

   ☆☆☆☆☆ 

The London skyline glimmers with an ethereal glow in the opening shots of All of Us Strangers, as screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) sits at his computer and struggles with creating something new. And the city glows with promise—but Adam can't touch it, if only because the windows in his high-rise apartment block don't open.

Adam seems to be one of only two tenants in the whole of the modern building, which seems to open onto the sky, despite its dim and claustrophobic hallways. The other is Harry (Paul Mescal). They have seen each other before, in the oddest of ways, and when they finally meet Harry wastes no time in making the moves on Adam. Though he's rebuffed, something about their meeting seems almost fated.

And call it coincidence, but just after meeting and rejecting Harry, Adam takes a trip to his childhood home and finds, to almost no astonishment at all, that his mother and father still live in the house—even though they died decades ago.

So, at least on this one level, All of Us Strangers is a ghost story, but there are no sinister happenings, no spooky goings-on: These ghosts exist to try to reconcile the present and the past, and the whole of All of Us Strangers takes place in a quiet and melancholy place between life and death as Adam meets with his mother and father (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) with increasing frequency.

Largely, they discuss Adam's homosexuality, which is such an integral part of of All of Us Strangers—a movie that is in equal parts emotionally resonant, sexually stimulating, and engagingly mystifying—that it's something of a shock to learn the novel on which it's based is about a straight man and his relationship with a woman (and the ghosts of his parents). Writer-director Andrew Haigh has taken the scenario and turned it into a film that contains at its core a quiet devastation known mainly to gay men, yet I suspect also broad enough to touch the hearts of anyone who grew up differently than they, or their parents, hoped.

As Adam and Harry, initially aloof, grow closer, so does Adam draw nearer to his parents, in a flight of fantasy that remains perfectly grounded. An unexpected delight in All of Us Strangers is how perfectly, and without stereotype, it draws us back into the mid-1980s and the struggles of a teenager growing up gay in the twin shadows of homophobia and AIDS.

All of Us Strangers is partly about coming to terms with a difficult, turbulent past, and with the guilt that's left for so many who escaped the terror of the times only to struggle with the emotional challenges of finding love. But, more deeply, it's about the way death and time work together to leave everyone unfinished, unresolved, yearning for reconciliation.

There's another layer, too, to All of Us Strangers, one I haven't touched on, one that every viewer should be allowed to discover on their own. I thought it massively satisfying, deeply puzzling, and mysterious enough that I'm eager to see All of Us Strangers another time. Or two. Or three.

Viewed December 31, 2023 — Landmark Sunset 5

1500

"Society of the Snow"

   ☆☆☆ 

The first time this story was made into a mainstream film, in 1976, Paramount crudely dubbed and quickly released a low-budget exploitation flick called Survive! that inexplicably opened at No. 1 at the box office. Then, 30 years ago (astonishing in itself) came Frank Marshall's Alive, which was given a big-budget Hollywood sheen by, of all studios, Disney.

Now comes Society of the Snow (original title: La Sociedad de la Nieve), which both strips away the big-budget gloss despite having a big budget financed by the biggest of the modern versions of studios, Netflix, but that remains dogged by the core problem telling this story will always have.

The story is that of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which was carrying 45 people, mostly a rugby team and their friends and families, when it crashed high in the Andes Mountains. When two survivors finally made it to safety after a harrowing 10-day trek, 14 more young men were found alive—72 days after the initial crash. To survive those two months in the barren, snow-covered and storm-tossed mountains, they had to resort to cannibalism.

Almost every other aspect of their incredible, unbelievable experience pales next to the discussion of cannibalism. The survivors didn't even want to tell the world what they had done, knowing that it would become the only part of the story anyone wanted to know about. And so it remains.

From that first shlock movie to Frank Marshall's film this one, directed by J.A. Bayona, whose The Impossible and A Monster Calls each were harrowing in different ways, "they had to eat the bodies of the dead passengers" is the immutable fact at the core of the story. It is sort of shameful to admit it; it is not something we are supposed to want to know about. But it is there. And no filmmaker has ever been able to get past it; Bayona is no exception.

Society of the Snow is the first film to cast Uruguyan and Argentinean performers in the leading roles, almost all of whom are newcomers, which further adds to the film's significant challenges. The screenplay doesn't take time to help us get to know them before they take off in the plane, so in the confusion of the wreckage, all the actors seem interchangeable. With a cast this large, it's imperative to give us the time to know who the characters are, but none of the young men (or the few women who initially survive) become much more than stoic cyphers, often wracked with guilt over their actions.

Adding to the confusion over who's who is the film's incessant use of close-ups, which might work much better on a home screen than on the big screen. None of that can take away from the impressive, often grueling, physicality of the film. Society of the Snow is in every way well-made and constructed. But with not much differentiation between characters and even less in the setting—snow becomes hard to make interesting after a while—the movie has a hard time investing its audience emotionally. It comes down to wanting to know if they really did do that in order to survive.

Yes, they did. And since this is an oft-told story, Society of the Snow should be about a lot more than that. In its final few minutes, the film manages becomes more thoughtful and profound, but this story and the real people behind it may never overcome the shock factor of what they did to make it through those inconceivable 72 days.

Viewed December 27, 2023 — Laemmle NoHo 7

1900

"The Zone of Interest"

  ☆☆☆☆½ 

Nothing about The Zone of Interest is easy, a promise this imposingly calm film makes clear even before the first shot—a bucolic lakeside picnic—appears on screen. The movie opens instead on an empty screen, its title taking an ominously long time to fade into nothingness as we sit in the audience and are assaulted by a cacophony of sounds we don't understand. This goes on for an unusually long time, making us squirm in our seats, and it won't be the last time: The Zone of Interest is nothing if not uncomfortable for nearly every second of its running time.

The Zone of Interest is a movie about the Holocaust, a description that will leave you thinking the wrong thing. It's set at Auschwitz, the most infamous of the death factories, hellscapes of terror, torture and murder. But The Zone of Interest never goes inside the fortified exterior walls of Auschwitz. It doesn't need to.

The story it tells is terrifying and almost inconceivably disturbing for a different reason—it follows the story of Rudolf Höss, who was a real SS officer who led the operations at Auschwitz, where more than 2 million Jews were first gassed to death then burned in incinerators that ran all through the night; "loads" of 700 Jews an hour, we are told.

Höss, who is played with a chilling sort of blandness by Christian Friedl, has a wife (Sandra Hüller, equally unnerving) and children, including an infant. Together, they live in a beautiful villa with many rooms, a staff of servants, and two large, verdant gardens in which they like to host parties. Beginning near the front yard and extending the length of the garden is one of the impenetrable walls of Auschwitz.

Almost every hour or every day, the Hösses can hear men and women begging for their lives, screaming in terror, being shot in cold blood. Guns crack constantly. And above the backyard of the home that Frau Höss loves so much are the smokestacks, always belching out their unthinkable ash, emitting a hellish glow at night.

This is the background of their lives. They don't mind, especially since it comes with perks: from toys to shirts to china and silverware to fur coats, the Höss family can select any number of luxuries from the confiscated earthly possessions of the Jews sent to die at Auschwitz. They wear these clothes to lavish garden parties, where they eat, drink and be merry to the sounds of gunshots and bullets thudding against flesh.

All of this, director Jonathan Glazer shows is in long, static, unhurried shots, often composed with wide lenses. You may feel, watching The Zone of Interest, that not a lot happens, that it feels a little dull and ordinary, because this ultimate evil was carried out with bureaucratic banality.

There are inconceivable terrors on display in The Zone of Interest: One of Hess's sons collects human teeth; a local servant girl rinses blood from Höss's shoes; a seemingly mundane business meeting revolves around discussion of a new method to kill as many people as possible as swiftly as possible. None of this seems to disturb Rudolf Höss or his family—except during one peaceful trip to the river when the discovery of human remains causes unexpected panic.

Otherwise, children run and play. Young lovers dare an illicit kiss. Mother and Father fight over simple matters. Life goes on for the Hösses and their friends, though not for the tens of thousands of Jews who, right next door, are being treated like animals led to execution.

The Zone of Interest never asks us to empathize with the Hösses, nor does it suggest we should or could. They are cold and cruel and evil; nothing they do bothers them. But director Glazer has crafted a film that always, in almost every frame, bothers us. There is no rest throughout—the film is suffused with constant noises of cruelty, pain and death. Everywhere, the walls of the Auschwitz extermination camp crowd into view. It is always, always there.

There have been many films about the Nazis who conceived of this unfathomable evil, but never one like this, that presents them as such boring, everyday people, striving to be good at their jobs and earn the lives they have made. How could they have done such things? As easily, The Zone of Interest tells us with unyielding, oppressive certainty, as you or me.

Viewed December 21, 2023 — Vista Theater

1800

"Poor Things"

  ☆☆☆☆☆ 

Yorgos Lanthimos gives his audience no opportunity to settle in to Poor Things, which confuses and assaults from the moment the opening credits appear. This is not a film or a filmmaker who wants to take things slow and steady, and that's for the best, because if there were a minute to really consider what's on screen, the whole movie might collapse.

But it doesn't. Instead, it moves at its own crazed pace and dares the audience to keep up, and by the time the film and the audience are in synch (it did, I admit, take me quite a few minutes), Poor Things has worked its spell.

The movie takes place in the late 1800s, opening in Victorian England on a truly mad scientist who has shocking ideas. Well, maybe not so shocking, because they aren't too far removed from the general outline of the story of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. But what if the monster wasn't attacked and killed by outraged villagers, didn't have that flat head and those neck bolts, and learned at an advanced pace? And what if that so-called monster looked less like Boris Karloff and more like Emma Stone?

To give the broadest outline of Poor Things is to imply this is a horror film, or a science-fiction parable, or some demented satire, and all of those things are undeniably true. But Poor Things begins much in the same way, coincidentally, as Barbie, with the created woman treated merely as, well, some poor thing, and all the men around her laying one claim or another to her brain, her body, or both.

The name given to this fabulous creation is Bella Baxter, and it isn't long before she becomes the subject of legal wrangling and is swept off her unsteady, ungainly feet by a lustful lawyer who wants her for only one thing—the same thing they all want: her body. Bella, meanwhile, is starting to get an idea that she might crave adventure. That she might want something ... more.

Trying to condense the narrative plot points in Poor Things into a few lines is impossible, and the last paragraph is only the first 30 minutes or so of a wholly unexpected adventure, entirely disarming, frequently grotesque, often shocking in its graphic and matter-of-fact displays of both body functions and, above all, sex. Lots and lots and lots of sex.

This isn't a movie for prudes, but even the most prudish will have to admit they see something of themselves in the story of Bella's awakening to life and its complexities. As she journeys into Europe, her unpredictable experiences recall something of Voltaire's Candide and John Irving's Garp. Yet Poor Things is grandly, defiantly singular. This isn't like any movie you've known, and its blunt observations of humanity and the things "polite society" doesn't usually talk about (but we do, in our minds, in our hearts, in our darkened bedrooms or less savory locales) might land cinematic body blows on uptight audiences who aren't prepared.

Consider that a warning, a challenge and a delighted, full-throated recommendation: Poor Things is a marvel, a challenge, and a gloriously unprecedented bit of creation.

Viewed December 18, 2023 — AMC Topanga

1220

"Saltburn"

 ☆☆☆☆ 

Some very terrible people do some very terrible things in Saltburn, and while it may feel like at this particular moment in time we don't much need another movie about horrible people who live morally reprehensible lives, somehow Saltburn winds up delightfully, perversely enjoyable.

That said, understand that if you see Saltburn, you may find yourself gasping at some of the things that are done. The night I saw the movie with a packed audience—who seemed to be unaware that Saltburn has been getting mixed reviews and marginal audience scores—the gasps were audible and the uncomfortable laughter was loud and appreciative. There are things in Saltburn you might wish you hadn't seen, yet the film as a whole is so assured, twisty and well-executed that you never once want to turn away.

Take, for instance (and, don't worry, there shall be no spoilers) that midnight walk through the magnificent grounds of Saltburn, an impossibly grand, imposing and often cold estate in the English countryside. Or the scene in the graveyard. Or the scene in the bathtub. Any of the scenes in the bathtub, come to think of it, and there are a few. Or the discomfiting scenes featuring Poor Dear Pamela, a hilariously unaware bore of a person played with sniveling perfection by Carey Mulligan. These aren't scenes you have seen in movies before. You'll probably never see them in movies again, either.

But that's the perverse beauty of writer-director Emerald Fennell's contemporary gothic melodrama, in which Mulligan is just part of an ensemble cast that seems to have no inhibitions at all. Barry Keoghan, frequently an unsettling presence in film, and Jacob Elordi, frequently a tall and sexy presence on TV, lead that cast, and they excel at leaning into what we think we know about them. One of the most intriguing aspects of Saltburn is how aware it is that we will immediately make assumptions about its characters, its setting, its motives, and then has fun making us wonder if we were right or wrong all along.

Keoghan and Elordi are undeniably at the center of the film, but they are not the only characters or actors of consequence. Saltburn also brings us Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, and two less familiar but equally impressive performers in pivotal roles, Archie Madekwe and Alison Oliver, all of whom create such specific fully realized characters that involve us deeply in their unsettling, private dramas. So deeply, in fact, that like a master magician we don't even notice how easily we've been misled.

But to say anything more would be unfair and unwise—except that this is not a film for everyone, nor is it one that likely stands up to much scrutiny. It will shock and offend the easily shocked and offended, and it will almost certainly fall apart if picked over too much by the kind of moviegoer inclined to pick. There seems little deeper in its agenda than to entertain and provoke, two things it does spectacularly well.

Viewed Dec. 9, 2023 — AMC Universal City

1905

"The Abyss" Special Edition

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

At least from the perspective of the audience, The Abyss is a prime example of the cinematic ends justifying the means. To say this was an arduous, brutal production would, apparently, be putting it mildly. "I'm not talking about The Abyss and I never will," actor Ed Harris said in his one and only comment about making the movie. Likewise, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio has described the working conditions as "unnatural," and said she'll never talk about it again.

Is it some sort of disloyalty to two fantastic performers to find The Abyss an extraordinary achievement? That statement applies not only to the film as a technical marvel and a cracking adventure story, but to the performances by both Harris and Mastrantonio, who both deliver strong and compelling performances that rank with the best work either has done. And for both of them, that's saying something.

Whatever trauma they experienced cannot be diminished, but every sacrifice they made has proven to be in service of a movie that in many ways is better and more fulfilling now than it was 34 years ago, when it underwhelmed at the box office and left many audiences puzzled.

In part, at least, that was because of an anti-climactic third act in which the film moves from an intense, industrial-strength (and -looking) action film to a gentle encounter with underwater aliens. In the original theatrical release, the aliens appear, they act as a sort of deus ex machina to rescue our heroes from an impossible situation, then the film just sort of ends.

A few years after the theatrical release, director and writer James Cameron—whose technical mastery is unassailable and whose scripts are often derided for the simplicity that makes them fun, accessible, and insanely popular—went back and added in an extended ending, along with some additional scenes earlier in the film, that make all the difference.

The story, in broad terms, involves the crew of an experimental underwater oil rig that is called in to assist with the military search for a nuclear submarine that crashed with live warhead aboard. The rig was built by Lindsey Brigman (Mastrantonio) and its crew is led by Bud (Harris), who are estranged, warring husband and wife. There are evil Navy SEALS, a topside hurricane, and political tensions that drive the story and lead to some incredible action sequences and one of the most wrenching and nail-biting near-death scenes in movie history.

Everything about The Abyss is impressive and works as well as it did three decades ago, often better because we've become so used to empty spectacles lacking in character development, story and ideas. The Abyss has all of those things, arguably maybe a little too many ideas not entirely thought through, though to my mind even those climactic aliens and their renewed sense of purpose fits both the story, the mood of the late 1980s, and, more importantly, the title.

In 1989, the world was looking into an abyss. Now, here we are again. And it's something of a timely joy to have James Cameron's The Abyss back with us (it played in theaters for one day only, and will be released next week to streaming services) to remind us that our worst instincts are often little more than the mirror image of our best.

Viewed Dec. 6, 2023 — AMC The Grove

1800

"Maestro"

 ☆☆☆☆ 

NOTE: It's almost impossible to fully determine my thoughts on Maestro, as the presentation I saw at the newly renovated Egyptian Theater in Hollywood seems to have been marred by audio problems. Though my first thought was to blame my own aging ears for difficulty in hearing an overwhelming amount of the film's dialogue, post-screening discussions with several audience members revealed that everyone I spoke with was frustrated by muddy, nearly incomprehensible dialogue. My overall estimation of the film may have been different if the dialogue had been clear.

After more than a year, I caught up recently with Damien Chazelle's Babylon, a film about Hollywood that manages to make black-and-white filmmaking look silly, antiquated and dull. Bradley Cooper's Maestro isn't about Hollywood, but it contains some of the most extraordinary black-and-white filmmaking I've ever seen on screen, just one example of the incredible technical prowess of the film that is never quite matched by the sometimes stilted and puzzling storytelling of its screenplay.

Early the film, a woman gets off a bus at night on a leafy suburban street. She walks toward the camera. It's a simple shot, but in Maestro it's a breathtaking moment in which light meets shadow to create a sensuous, mysterious, hypnotic image. It's fitting that the woman turns out to be an actress named Felicia Montealegre, who becomes the girlfriend and then wife of the already legendary conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein.

Felicia is played by Carey Mulligan in a performance that isn't just one of the best this year, it might be one of the best performances ever committed to film. Mulligan—and, it can be assumed by what Maestro tells us, Felicia herself—is a remarkable force, a vibrant, magnificent presence, an intoxicating blend of charm and persuasion. Mulligan seizes the film and refuses to let go, and every moment she's in it, Maestro is stunning and alive.

But this is, after all, not a film called Lenny & Felicia, though its screenplay sometimes falls into the predictable and mundane routine of a made-for-TV romance: artist meets muse, muse accepts artists for all his flaws, muse and artist have a rocky relationship, then tragedy strikes ...

These story beats come all too often in Maestro, which ultimately feels like it's much less about the maestro than we hope. Walking out of Maestro, to the rich hyperactivity of Bernstein's overture to Candide, it struck me that we have no idea what Bernstein went through to make Candide, or how it failed and he remained stuck to it for decades in an ongoing effort to revise it and make it work, until it finally became recognized as a great American creation. We hear only a brief mention and a snippet of music from West Side Story. We hear about his popular TV programs, watch him conduct a time or two, but Maestro never gets to the heart of how it was done, what it took of and from Bernstein, how his success and celebrity both defined and constrained him.

Worse, Maestro uses his complex, confounding sexuality as a plot point rather than something on which to build the entire film. For whatever reason, Maestro mostly skirts the issue of Bernstein's bisexuality, or his closeted homosexuality, or his dazzling pansexuality, or whatever the reality turned out to be.

It both is and is not the fault of Cooper. As a director, he is an ambitious, bold visionary; he is able to tell his story through visuals that most directors would never dream or dare. As a performer, he's both committed and impressive. It takes only a moment to believe that Cooper is Bernstein, and once you do the illusion never fades. But Cooper also co-wrote the screenplay, with Josh Singer, and it's here that Maestro stumbles. Characters come and go; others are introduced in theory but never in fact—there are more than a few faces who keep popping up but whose names and functions we don't understand. Because it can't decide whether it's the story of a creative visionary or the story of a marriage, Maestro can't quite define itself.

And yet, it's a film well worth seeing, even though it's barely being released in theaters and its most important visual component—a shifting aspect ratio that reflects filmmaking techniques of the time in which the story is set—will be rendered meaningless on home screens. On that level, and almost every other, Maestro should be, but generally won't be, seen in a movie theater.

Ideally one with excellent sound. Maybe one day I'll get to see it that way, too.

Viewed November 25, 2023 — Egyptian Theater

1530

"The Holdovers"

    ☆☆☆☆½ 

Don't be fooled, The Holdovers is not here to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It doesn't exist to take a misanthrope and make him a happy, well-adjusted member of society, nor to show how an irascible taskmaster of a teacher, hated by his students, becomes a source of joy and inspiration. The Holdovers is not that simple.

Though it comes from the director of The Descendants, which, year after year, rises even further in my estimation and has become, I think, one of the really important movies of my life, The Holdovers is not The Descendants in a boarding school. It is its own complicated thing that refuses, even as it fades to black, to be easily defined. Yes, it's funny—at times it's very funny—but it could hardly be defined as a comedy. Yes, it's emotionally fraught—at times, very much so—but it could hardly be defined as a heavy drama.

Even before The Holdovers begins, it signals its intentions as director Alexander Payne opens with an old blue-and-white notice from the Motion Picture Association of America that the following feature has been rated R. This sort of thing vanished from movies in the early 1980s, but was prevalent in the early 1970s, when The Holdovers takes place; even if you're not familiar with it, you sense it's something different. The opening shots of the film have some scratches and grain added, and those who remember movies before the days of digital projection will recognize what Payne is signaling here: This movie is a throwback to a different time, and a different sensibility. What of those who don't understand the in-joke? Maybe it doesn't make much difference, or maybe the important thing is that The Holdovers is rather explicitly made for those who will.

But those who don't care about such things will still find something wonderful in The Holdovers, a movie that sets up its story quickly—only to reveal that what we think it's about is not at all what it's going to be about. To begin, it seems The Holdovers will tell how one curmudgeonly old teacher of history (he prefers "ancient civilization") at a tony New England boarding school, will need to care for five young boys between Christmas and New Year's Eve 1970. Except midway through telling that story, four of the boys are whisked away, leaving just the teacher (Paul Giamatti), one student (impressive newcomer Dominic Sessa), and the cafeteria manager (Da'Vine Joy Randolph).

Each of them, we come to learn, is living with the sort of deep, anguished pain that will never go away. Mary, the cafeteria manager, is struggling to make it through each day without her husband and her son, both of whom died terrible, awful deaths. Angus, the student, has been abandoned by his mother and her new husband—and harbors another secret that is revealed as the story progresses. And Paul, the teacher, is afflicted both with physical ailments that render him unattractive and undesirable, and with a deeper, harder betrayal from which he'll probably never fully recover.

It sounds trite to say that over the course of the two weeks that the teacher, the cafeteria manager and the student have to live with each other, they'll discover other truths about themselves and each other, but that is indeed what happens in The Holdovers, though it doesn't begin to suggest the way the film juggles emotional depth with comedic observation—and at least one painfully funny physical moment—without ever feeling maudlin or contrived.

The Holdovers does not try for the easy laugh or the easy cry. No one develops a fatal illness or plunges to their death or uncovers some dark conspiracy. The film is about how these people relate to each other, how they come to know each other and share the one thing that really matters: time.

Whether The Holdovers can catch hold in a moviegoing environment that favors big, bold statements as opposed to small, carefully observed ones remains to be seen. In another era, The Holdovers would be a big hit with both critics and audiences, would be the kind of movie we still talk about 30, 40, 50 years later. In that, it does seem like, well, a holdover from some other time—and that's what makes it feel all the more special.

Viewed October 28, 2023 — AMC Burbank 16

1855

"Leave the World Behind"

     ☆☆☆☆ 

A late-summer weekend getaway to Long Island becomes a nightmare of existentialist dread in the film adaptation of Leave the World Behind, a sometimes dazzling, sometimes frustrating film that largely eschews politics for tension, despite the presence of Barack and Michelle Obama as executive producers.

It's based on an equally dazzling, equally frustrating novel by Rumaan Alam, which by alarming coincidence was released during the height of the COVID pandemic, when even the most calm and rational of people couldn't help but be sucked in to conspiracy theories, ideological warfare, and often-justified paranoia. Three years removed from the darkest of those days, it's easy to forget just how hopeless, anxious and distraught the world felt, but no matter—Leave the World Behind is here to help those feelings zoom right back into the front of your mind.

Both the novel and the film are the story of a well-off White family from Brooklyn—mother, father, teenage son and daughter—who rent a lavish house on Long Island for a much-needed getaway. Just after they arrive, mysterious things begin to happen, not the least of which is a massive oil tanker running aground on a relaxing beach. Then comes a knock at the door in the middle of the night, heralding the arrival of a Black man who, accompanied by his daughter, claims to be the home's owner.

Initial tensions give way to a growing sense of uneasiness as the world seems to start collapsing around them, and part of the enjoyment of the film—if that's quite the right word, since it's disquieting and intense—comes from never quite knowing exactly what's going to happen next, or why, so there will be no major spoilers here.

The husband and wife, Clay and Amanda, are played by Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts, who is given the thankless task of reciting some of the most stilted expository dialogue in recent memory during the film's awkward opening scenes. Leave the World Behind does not get off to a great start, though an endlessly roving, twisting, careening camera (courtesy of cinematography Tod Campbell and a laundry list of visual effects companies) helps to disorient viewers and serve notice that the film never intends to find a center of balance. It's a queasy movie, both because of that ever-moving camera and because of the uncertainty of the story.

Mahershala Ali plays G.H., the wealthy homeowner, who seems to be harboring a fair number of secrets when he shows up to the house with his daughter Ruth (Myha'la), but the screenplay by director Sam Esmail copies the same core problem of the book by introducing tensions of both race and class and then never following through. Incomprehensibly, the movie changes Ruth from G.H.'s wife to his daughter, undermining the tension between two married couples that permeates the often florid prose of the book.

Yet, as things get stranger and stranger, and the world goes off the rails as its consumed by some horrendous conflict, Leave the World Behind offers some top-notch filmmaking, including a central sequence that serves as its own master class in parallel cutting as each of the main characters discovers a small, puzzling, disquieting piece of the overall puzzle.

In tiny little snippets, the characters begin to work out some—but not even close to enough—of what's happening. All along, the movie stays sharply focused on the six people in the house, with only small and supremely uncomfortable moments in which they manage to encounter others. For the most part, though, these characters face the dawning realization that they are soon to be all they have.

By design, very little is given an explanation, though the filmmakers aren't quite as bold as the novelist, and in the end succumb to spelling out the backstory perhaps a bit too pointedly. If the film is largely designed to confuse, disorient and disturb its audience, it ultimately can't resist the temptation to provide concrete details about the central events. Still other key moments, like the sudden appearance of hundreds of deer or the delightfully weird moment in which self-driving cars pile up on the road, are allowed to remain mysterious, and they're better for it.

Leave the World Behind may feel too obtuse to some viewers, too languid for others, and maybe even too on-the-nose disturbing for a few. Stick with it, though (ideally in a movie theater; it plays on the big screen for a few weeks before its debut on a certain major streaming service), and it and its disturbing strangeness will probably stick with you.

Viewed October 25, 2023 — TCL Chinese Theater

1900

"Killers of the Flower Moon"

   ☆☆☆ 

David Grann's meticulous, riveting book Killers of the Flower Moon is not, in itself, an angry or vengeful piece of writing, but the feelings it evokes in a reader are ones of anger and vengeance. Reading it is a harrowing experience, one that opens the vein of the past to find the blood inside has been poisoned with racism, bigotry, intolerance and hate, all cloaked by the veil of the American flag. The story it tells is both largely unknown and genuinely unforgettable.

Now, Martin Scorsese has made a $200-million dramatic adaptation of Killers of the Flower Moon, and it is a grand and thudding disappointment, dramatically wrong-headed, apparently lacking in any self-awareness that the story it tells is not at all the story that matters.

The story told in the book is an epic, sweeping one, spanning many decades, beginning with the U.S.-sanctioned ethnic cleansing and forced diaspora of millions of native Americans, commonly called the "Trail of Tears," and leading to a series of shocking murders (and they truly are shocking), many of which involve family members of a woman named Molly Burkhart.

Molly and her family are Osage "Indians," native Americans who were herded to a rocky, ugly part of the Oklahoma prairie, where the American government figured they would lead hardscrabble lives, if they led any lives at all. Someone forgot to check the ground, because it turns out that Osage land was some of the richest in oil anywhere in the United States. Within years, the Osage people became the richest Americans, and some of the richest people anywhere in the world. Then they began to die.

Molly Burkhart's sister was one of the first recognized murders. Her story is one of pain and anguish, as Molly watches the destruction of her land, her home, her community, her people, her family, and ultimately her marriage and, almost, herself.

There's a key plot point in the book that normally would be considered a spoiler, if the film's trailer didn't give it away so clearly: the perpetrators of some of these horrific murders are Molly's seemingly loving husband and his uncle, a pillar of the community and supporter of Osage rights. Except he's not. He's doing it all for the money.

And this is what the movie version of Killers of the Flower Moon gets so wildly wrong: It turns a story about one person, one family, one community, and one people who are degraded and devalued and dehumanized every single day, and who fight so hard to have these murders solved, and turns it into a Martin Scorsese gangster melodrama.

The most brutally inhuman people in the story, William Hale (Robert De Niro) and Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), Molly's husband, are made into its stars. A roster of white men cycle in and out of Killers of the Flower Moon, some of them dastardly villains, some noble heroes, and by and large this is their movie, this is their story. That it takes place on Osage land is mostly not germane to the story. Scorsese and screenwriter Eric Roth, both of whom should know better than this, let the movie become a story about white men ratting out other white men. About one white law enforcement officer going toe-to-toe with white crooks.

Throughout, once in a while we get to see more of Molly herself (Lily Gladstone), mostly as she suffers in incoherent pain while her husband administers poisoned insulin to try to kill her.

The purpose of all these deaths is "head rights," the legal process that ensures the relatives of a dead Osage who owned rights to oil and mining deposits, would automatically pass them to the next of kin. To make sure head rights went to the "right kind" of people (that is, Whites), greedy, unscrupulous White men started marrying Osage women, then systematically poisoning them or arranging their deaths in myriad ways. They'd even kill the children, too, if that's what it took.

Grann's book details all this in astonishing clarity. Scorsese can never quite latch o to the story, because to do so requires the entire movie be told from the perspective of the Osage, particularly the Osage women, particularly one Osage woman—Molly Burkhart. That's not what the movie wants to give us.

I've rarely seen a movie so utterly unable to hone in on its story. Even at 3 hours, 26 minutes, Killers of the Flower Moon seems to have left too much on the cutting-room floor. Relationships aren't clear, consequences aren't clear, motives aren't clear. You can watch the film and get a good idea of what's happening, but it takes a little bit of effort.

The true story of what happened to the Osage—not just to the Burkhart family, not just to this small community, but to thousands, maybe even more, of Osage over the years—deserves to be told. Alas, Killers of the Flower Moon hasn't nailed it, despite the glowing, magnificent performance of Lily Gladstone as Molly, who should be the biggest star in the movie, but is third billed.

Killers of the Flower Moon isn't a bad movie. Elements of it are remarkable, particularly a jaw-dropping set design. Gladstone commands the screen every time she's on it, though De Niro still mugs too much, and Di Caprio seems slightly out of his depth here in a nuanced, complicated role. He's put in the unenviable position of having the audience knowing his terrible deeds, even as they watch him coming home and making love to Molly. He is the bad guy, but the movie wants to position him as the romantic lead. Hitchcock might have been able to get away with that; Scorsese and screenwriter Eric Roth are incapable. Grann conceals the truth about the nature of these men until midway through, but the film sets them up as the bad guys—Scorsese's beloved gangsters—from their first scene.

For a director whose first mainstream success was the female-focused Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, it's confounding that he struggles to put Molly—not Ernest and Hale—at the center of this story. Sure, DiCaprio is the bigger star, but Gladstone displays her character's soul, one wracked by terrible feelings of hatred, death, and loss. By all rights, she's the star of the film and Molly should be the star of the story (in this streamlined version, at least), and Killers of the Flower Moon would have been infinitely better if it had let her be exactly that.

As a finale, the movie has a group of elite white radio actors tell the rest of the story, segueing to a group of nameless, faceless Osage performing a ceremonial dance, Killers of the Flower Moon highlights exactly what it gets so disastrously wrong: showing the White people in close up, giving them names and personalities, while dismissing the Osage as anonymous pawns.

It's enough to get admirers of the book angry all over again.

Viewed Friday, Oct. 21 — AMC Universal 12

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"Dumb Money"

  ☆☆☆ 

Not all that long ago—just four years ago, by the calendar, or last year, if you don't count the two missing years of the pandemic—movies like Dumb Money were Hollywood's bread and butter: Cheap, easy, fun entertainment that could reasonably be expected to bring in an audience of adults looking for an absorbing diversion. The movies were full of Dumb Money.

Not so much anymore. Dumb Money is still a good movie. Maybe even slightly better than good, though not quite good enough to be great. It's got an incredible cast, all of whom deliver amusing, credible performances, and it's got some worthwhile observations about one of the weirder bits of recent history.

If you don't pay very much attention to the stock market, there's a good chance you missed the story that Dumb Money retells: How, in early 2021, when the world had tired of the pandemic and lots of people were still white-hot with anger over the ugly, tumultuous summer of the year before, a whole bunch of otherwise normal people got together and turned the tables on Wall Street. They did this by taking two stock that were considered such terrible businesses—GameStop and AMC Theatres—that big investors had actually bet against them. And like the spoiler who comes in, bets against the table in craps, and wins, they turned the game around.

There are a lot of really interesting, disturbing, uncomfortable things the GameStop fiasco revealed about Wall Street, the herd mentality of the Internet, the willingness of people to follow leaders they don't even know, the 21st century obsession with wealth. Dumb Money only bothers to look deeply at the first of these, because it views the people who caused the financial headache to be heroes. And maybe they are. Based on Dumb Money, there's really no way of knowing, because the script isn't very deep.

But it is fun. It's always fun to watch people stick it to The Man. It's always fun to see people beat the system. Fun With Dick and Jane is nearly 50 years old, but it's still a hoot—and it wasn't even a true story. This movie is about on par with that one, though I don't think it will take 50 years before people forget about it entirely.

It's fun to watch, it's inoffensive (unless you're easily offended by crude language), and it's well acted by a lot of excellent performers. It's also, curiously, a bit of a time capsule, as it takes place at a time when everyone was still wearing face masks, a moment this movie commemorates. And yet, Hollywood has killed this kind of movie, at least theatrically. Movies like Dumb Money exist now almost entirely to be tossed into the great Content Machine of streaming services. And that, despite Dumb Money's borderline mediocrity, is a shame. Had I watched this on streaming, I probably would have turned it off; it's simultaneously lightweight and convoluted, and attention spans being what they are, who wants that anymore? But in a theater, where the options are watch the movie or leave (or, sadly, and increasingly, turn on your phone and stare at it), Dumb Money effectively captures the attention, tells a good story, and in its own tiny way, reminds us what moviegoing is all about.

Or, used to be.

Viewed October 1, 2023 — AMC Topanga

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"A Haunting in Venice"

 ☆☆☆ 

There have been some pretty good Agatha Christie film adaptations over the years, and some pretty bad ones, and some truly awful ones (word to the wise: avoid 1985's Ordeal By Innocence at all costs), and Kenneth Branagh has made films that fall into both of the latter camps. Overwhelmed by unnecessary CGI, filled with performances that border on camp, and unhelped by overripe camera work, Branagh's first two Christie efforts were not good films.

The third time's sort of the charm, then, as Branagh returns as both director and star of A Haunting in Venice, which is an intriguing riff on one of Christie's lesser-known novels ("Hallowe'en Party") that is neither particularly faithful to or precious about the source work. It's mostly an entertaining diversion, but it sure does move like a lead brick sometimes.

Its terrible pacing is not helped by dark and murky photography, which would be appropriately moody if it weren't combined with directorial choices that mistake slow for atmospheric. As an Agatha Christie drawing-room mystery, A Haunting in Venice is filled with dialogue, narration and lots and lots and lots of flashbacks to things we can't possibly have known ... which usually are part of the fun, but this time bog the whole thing down with a dismal, glum air.

So, why in the world am I recommending A Haunting in Venice? Mostly because it's fun to see a labyrinthine mystery play out on screen, fun to see strong performers like Michelle Yeoh and Tina Fey chew up the scenery with necessary overacting, and fun to see such sumptuous production and costume design ... when you can make anything out. The whole affair is murky, both in plot and in physical appearance, but in the end as Branagh's Hercule Poirot susses out the shenanigans—this time involving one suspicious death, one outright murder, and a whole host of other nefarious deeds, all on Halloween Eve in the heart of Venice—it's one of moviegoing's core delights to see a good, old-fashioned murder mystery with a clever, I thought so! kind of conclusion.

Watching A Haunting in Venice takes some effort, but it's worth the extra work.

Viewed Sept. 17, 2023 — AMC Burbank 6

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"Oppenheimer"

     ☆☆☆½ 

The first time I saw Oppenheimer, in 70mm at a spectacular old movie palace, something was off. It might well have been me, but I came away feeling overwhelmed by Christopher Nolan's film—not in that sense of being overwhelmed by something spectacular and new, but overwhelmed as if I had been beaten into submission for three hours by a relentless, pounding score and rapid-fire editing that left me dizzy.

Now I wonder if part of my problem—which led me to not reviewing the film at the time, sensing I was missing something—was how I saw Oppenheimer. I'll never say no to seeing a movie projected on 70mm film, but that more standard cinematic version of Nolan's film felt claustrophobic and close-up. Now I understand why.

I've seen the film again in its "native" format of 70mm IMAX, and it's an entirely different experience. The story is still often confusing, the film still feels overlong and sometimes preposterously talky, and the non-stop score is still hypnotically distracting. Yet, opened up for the IMAX screen, particularly when Nolan has chosen to use the entire IMAX screen, that felt muddled and tight now feels free and at least mostly coherent.

Oppenheimer still bears all the hallmarks of being a Christopher Nolan film, and I'm beginning to realize a cinematic truth that Nolan and I aren't really on the same wavelength. He's so enamored by the mechanics of filmmaking that simple things like narrative cohesion aren't entirely important to him. At least in Oppenheimer the dialogue is almost always clear (something that's not often true in Nolan movies), and the story's non-linear structure works because if shorn of it, Oppenheimer might be tediously dull.

Most of the film is structured around three dialogue-heavy meetings: One in which J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) has his security clearance revoked; one in which Oppenheimer, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) and other physicists meet to discuss the ramifications of nuclear arms; and a Senate hearing to confirm Strauss for a presidential cabinet post. It's hardly the stuff of mesmerizing drama, so Nolan mixes it all up with a more straightforward narrative of Oppenheimer's development of the team that created the first atomic bomb.

As in so many Nolan movies, the key to Oppenheimer is keeping up with the narrative time shifts, and this becomes slightly easier in the IMAX version, as Nolan uses both aspect ratio and black-and-white film to indicate different periods. There are double-crosses and triple-crosses and tales of espionage, and of course there's the development of the bomb itself, and the spectacular scenes involving the first Trinity tests. The history is portrayed by what we used to call an "all-star cast," an impressive roster of talent, some of whom get more screen time than others, and a few of whom feel terribly wasted, underserved by a screenplay that might have spent more time getting the words, thoughts and feelings as sharp as the visuals.

It all adds up to a film that is both more and less engrossing than it might have been if told more traditionally. Nolan's storytelling techniques make Oppenheimer a bit of a muddle sometimes—though its more confusing moments somehow seemed slightly more coherent on the massive IMAX screen—while his filmmaking techniques make the film an experience to be savored on the giant screen. IMAX really is the optimal way to see the film; Nolan's use of the format isn't a gimmick, even if it's unfortunately not easy to see the film in the combination 70mm film and IMAX he intended. If you're near one of the 30 movie theaters (in the U.S.) where that's possible, Oppenheimer is truly an event. If you're not, you may walk away wondering what all the fuss is about. 

Viewed July 25, 2023 (70mm) — Regency Village; and September 3, 2023 (70mm IMAX) — AMC Universal 16

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"Barbie"

    ☆☆☆½ 

Being this late to the cultural watershed moment of Barbie is an interesting experience: I've heard everyone raving, I've read both the reviews, criticisms, analyses and musings. And, finally, I've at long last seen the movie itself. I really liked it. Barbie is, for the most part, an undeniably good film. When it's bad, like in the long stretches with a supremely unfunny Will Ferrell, it's still amusing. There is hardly anything negative to say about Barbie.

That in itself is a more than spectacular achievement on behalf of director Greta Gerwig and the script she wrote with Noah Baumbach. It's a huge credit to Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling and Rhea Pearlman and America Ferrara and Kate McKinnon and every one of the other performers, almost all of whom are just wonderful. ("Almost" because of the movie's big, unavoidable Will Ferrell problem.)

When Barbie reaches its emotional climax, not only is it shocking that a movie about a toy has an emotion climax (but, really, after all those Toy Story movies, should it be shocking?), but that the film has so successfully and confidently navigated its path from absurdist, satirical comedy to sensitive emotional drama that, in an age of mindless superhero, horror and "franchise" fluff, Barbie at its core is just a really, really good, satisfying, enjoyable, less-than-two-hour-long movie.

The overwhelming box-office success of the film might, if nothing else, force some serious self-reflection from today's crop of writers. As they carry their picket signs, they might also consider how amazingly well Barbie illustrates that a complete character arc, a wonderfully satisfying screen-based entertainment, does not need to play itself out over 3½ or 10 or 26 hours. Two will do just fine.

The core story of Barbie's quest for self-discovery, her mythical journey into the "real world" from her home in Barbieland, and the effects it has not just on her self-determination but that of her self-proclaimed "boyfriend" Ken, is engaging and wonderful. Except for Will Ferrell's big, gaping wound of non-comedy, it's all splendid.

Which gets me to the crux of this. In improv parlance, not the but... as much as the and ...

Because Barbie is using its anti-consumerist story to supremely consumerist ends. The movie seems to poke fun at Barbie manufacturer Mattel—yet every joke in it was approved by and presumably encouraged by Mattel itself with the idea that being hip and cool and "meta" could ultimately help it sell more Barbie dolls. It is impossible to watch Barbie and not be constantly aware of its smug, look-at-me corporate antics. The "subversion" helps it sell dolls in the 21st century.

It is, ultimately, a two-hour commercial.

Do I hold that against Barbie? I don't think so. It's still a very, very good, sensationally entertaining film. It does bear the imprimatur of an important, exciting filmmaking talent. And it's also a corporate marketing gimmick. It exists to revive a moribund toy franchise.

The story of Barbie is both light and airy and silly, and also deeply thoughtful and not a little cynical. And so is the very existence of Barbie itself. If nothing else, Barbie is living proof of the paradoxes it seeks to show are endemic in the world: It is possible to adore Barbie and be deeply suspicious of it all the same. It is possible to know Barbie is, above all, a hugely successful marketing initiative, but also one fine movie. Which is, in the end, the only place to leave it, really. It exists in the flawed, imperfect world Barbie herself comes to realize is all around is ... and it is very much part of that world. 

In the end, then, Barbie is a toy commercial that is impossibly better than anyone would ever have thought possible. It is effective both as a marketing tool and a film. And that alone, perhaps, is something worth marveling about.

 Viewed August 26, 2023 — AMC Topanga 12

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"Haunted Mansion"

      ☆☆ 

If there were an Oscar for Most Valiant Effort, almost certainly it would go this year to Lakeith Stanfield, who, mystifyingly and astonishingly, finds an emotional, believable doorway into Haunted Mansion, the second film made from the Disney theme park attraction. He's the only reason to see the film, and while he's undeniably good, he's ultimately not enough—unless you're the kind who knows all the words to "Grim Grinning Ghosts" and the Ghost Host's narration by heart. Then, Haunted Mansion might work. But it's still iffy.

Stanfield plays Ben, a man mourning the loss of his wife. The word "grief" is uttered at least a dozen times in this film, perhaps in the hopes that naming this complicated emotion will help the young children for whom the film is ostensibly targeted. Stanfield finds a character with a real, beating heart at the core, which is something nobody else in this star-studded affair is able to do. Rosario Dawson comes close, but if Stanfield is given little to hang onto, Dawson is given nothing at all, nor is anyone of the other talented actors who flail about, hoping, perhaps, that they'll upstaged by the CGI ghosts. Mostly, no such luck.

Dawson plays the mother of a 9-year-old boy who, seeking a fresh start, apparently decides to buy (or rent? I'm not sure the movie makes it clear) an old, decrepit mansion deep in Louisiana back country without bothering to check it out first. Unfazed by decades worth of cobwebs and dust, they attempt to make a go of it, and it becomes apparent that neither of them has ever gone to Disneyland because they don't recognize that the interior of the place is taken straight from the ride.

Never mind that the lights don't work and the paintings on the wall are sinister at best. The fact that we're supposed to believe that this mother and son would set foot in the place—in the dead of night, no less—is the first of many, many problems the movie presents in its opening minutes.

Less complicated and more affecting is the story of Stanfield's Ben and his lost love, but even that runs into problems as the movie struggles to find some way to bring the two stories together, which it does with a bored-looking Owen Wilson playing the world's least-believable priest. Tiffany Haddish and Danny DeVito soon come on board, through various machinations, though neither is given a single funny thing to do or say.

Mostly, the film exists to offer fan service to the ride. The rooms, the wallpaper, the hallways and paintings, the house itself all look just like the one at Disneyland, and, yes, one of the haunted rooms actually stretches, but by the time it does the film has given up trying for a plot, and nothing about the action or the story makes even a semblance of sense.

Jamie Lee Curtis shows up as the head (and later body) of Madame Leota, the woman in the crystal ball, and Jared Leto is credited as The Hatbox Ghost—and if you know who the Hatbox Ghost is, and his history in the ride, and you know all about the effect of his head in a hatbox that he carries with him like a lantern, then you're likely the target audience for this film, which is neither particularly scary nor particularly funny, and not particularly good.

If you don't know the Hatbox Ghost, and you can't identify immediately why a tracking shot from above of a haunted dining room would prompt some Disney fans to smile knowingly, or why ghosts follow people home, then you're not the target audience. And if you're not under the age of 10 and you're looking for a movie with a coherent and complete story and interesting characters doing interesting things, then I'm afraid you're out of luck on this one. As fan service, it sometimes works. As a movie, it rarely does.

Viewed August 6, 2023 — AMC Burbank 16

1945

"Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One"

    ☆☆☆☆½ 

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to explain the plot of Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One, a title as un-punctuatable as the movie is inexplicable. I wasn't 30 minutes into this latest Mission: Impossible movie before I gave up trying to follow along, and I'm not sure my experience was diminished in any way.

I've seen all of the other Mission: Impossible movies, and of them and their globe-hopping, labyrinthine plots, here are the things I remember: Tom Cruise hanging on to a train inside a Chunnel tunnel; Tom Cruise hanging from wires; Tom Cruise hanging from the side of the Burj Khalifa; Tom Cruise in a motorcycle chase through Paris; Tom Cruise hanging from the side of an airplane.

I don't much remember why, and most importantly, I don't really care. The Mission: Impossible films seem to transcend plot, which is not to say they don't have any. Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One (there's got to be some punctuation in there other than that colon?) has a whole lot of plot, and even more characters. In one of the film's pivotal scenes, about six of the characters all meet up and discuss who's going to do what to whom, and when, and although it's all fantastically well acted, you can imagine the performers crying out, "What did I just say?" as soon as the camera shut off.

But it doesn't matter, and whenever the plot seems to overwhelming (which is frequently), there's only one thing to keep in mind: There's something everyone wants. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, naturally) and his tiny team from the Impossible Mission Force are looking for it. So is everyone else. And if the wrong people find it, something really, really bad will happen.

This time around, that something relates to artificial intelligence, and watching the film suddenly made me wonder if all the latest hand-wringing about ChatGPT and other AI systems hasn't all been a very elaborate marketing scheme for this film.

There are so many unanswered questions—none of which I can actually write here for fear of spoilers—and so many characters with murky motivations that you might be excused for thinking I'm putting this one on par with the equally murky and convoluted Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. But I'm not, because Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One has all of the things Indy doesn't:

This movie is impeccably well made, terrifically suspenseful, and moves with unbelievable swiftness: Its running time of 2 hours, 45 minutes may well be bloated, yet there's never any time this movie lets up. On top of that, one of the best car chase scenes in many years, this one involving Rome's Spanish Steps, is also the source of entirely unexpected humor—I laughed a lot at Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One, and also gasped and even squirmed in my seat a time or two, and really, what more can you ask from a movie? Well, except a coherent plot.

But the best thing about this movie is that even if you're thoroughly baffled by what's happening on screen, you won't have time or the inclination to notice. 

Oh, but if you are, and you've seen the film, here's a terrific, spoiler-filled exploration of what you might have missed—because, let's be honest, you almost certainly did miss at least some of it. And, let's also be honest, it doesn't much matter. In 20 years, you're going to remember Tom Cruise on that motorcycle, or Tom Cruise on that train, or Tom Cruise in Venice, and that's what you came for, anyway.

Viewed July 22, 2023 — AMC Universal

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