"The End We Start From"

    ☆☆½ 

For a movie about the end of the world, or at least about the end of civilization as we know it, The End We Start From is awfully melancholy. Maybe we learned too much in the pandemic: an apocalypse probably won't be accompanied by screaming in the streets and military jets zooming overhead. As we saw ourselves, the beginning of the end can feel surprisingly small and downbeat.

So, I guess it makes sense that The End We Start From is so lugubrious and often dull. But if it's reasonably true to life, it doesn't make for a very involving movie. The End We Start From is engaging enough in fits and starts, but more often so slow it threatens to come to a complete stop.

Jodie Comer plays the unnamed woman at the center of the story, a very expectant mother living in London during one excessively rainy summer, which we gather—and much of this movie requires extrapolation; it's not a film that likes to explain—is the result of a climate catastrophe. She, her husband and her newborn flee to his parents' house on higher ground. The world collapses around them.

And it collapses with rather alarming speed. If we saw for ourselves that the world is shockingly, maybe even disturbingly, resilient (and quick to shrug off the worst), in The World We Live In, society seems to fall apart within a matter of weeks, and in short order the woman and her husband are debating whether to spend time in a shelter.

For those who plan on seeing The End We Start From, it's best to stop there because what few surprises the story contains are about all that keep its energy from flagging. It's a wet rag in every possible way, except for Comer's central performance. She's always interesting, though the movie doesn't give her character much depth. Worse is her husband, presented here as a coward and a dullard; ultimately, the movie's central question becomes whether she will find him again. I kept hoping she wouldn't, and would just start a new and more interesting life.

More strange is the scale of the crisis. We get the sense it's supposed to be massive, yet outside of London there's no sign of disaster, save one brief mention late in the film. Without clarity on the stakes, or the extent to which the world will need to begin again, it's hard to feel very invested. Is it wrong to wish that when the world ends, at least in the movies, it'll feel at least a little significant?

Viewed January 21, 2023 — AMC Universal 16

1445

"American Fiction"

    ☆☆☆ 

American Fiction is nothing if not ambitious. In less than two hours, it's a satire of the publishing industry, a satire of liberal racial guilt, a satire of Hollywood, a character study, a family drama, and a dysfunctional family comedy. Some of these things it does well. Most of these things it does less well. But because it even dares to try, it's worth seeing.

Thelonious "Monk" Ellison is a literature professor who doesn't suffer fools (especially student fools) gladly, and an author who doesn't know how to write a commercial hit. The movie begins from the assumption that the only kind of book worth writing is a successful one, which means, in its world view, Monk is eminently unsuccessful.

Whether this is, in point of fact, true is not something American Fiction wants to consider. Monk's books are sold at retail chain stores (in the "African-American Studies" section because, well, he's African-American), but because they are serious, literary books, the movie takes it as a truth that Monk is a failure. He's also deeply introverted, and stand-offish with his family. So, the story packs him up and sends him off to Boston to be with his family—his aging, declining mother (a delightful Leslie Uggams), his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), and their live-in housekeeper Lorraine. For surprising reasons, they're soon joined by his newly uncloseted brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown).

Frustrated by the crass success of another Black author, Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), Monk impulsively writes a ridiculous, grotesque parody of a "Black novel," which becomes a massive success. In one of the movie's weirder conceits, Monk decides not to tell anyone at all about his—not his family, and not Coraline (Erika Alexander), the beautiful woman across the street. Monk finds himself pretending to be the made-up ex-con author, and wackiness ensues.

Or should. But American Fiction isn't a door-slamming farce, or a parody of mistaken identity, or an incensed and ironic view of a broken publishing industry. It plays a surprising amount of the comedy straight, and is at its best when it focuses on the convoluted home life Monk finds in his family's beach house. The family is filled with memorable, well-drawn characters. They are the best parts of American Fiction.

But the film thinks the best parts are the satirical ones. Alas, they're neither quite funny nor scabrous enough to be incisive. Mostly, they're pretty toothless and obvious, which doesn't mean they're not entertaining—just surprisingly mild and inoffensive. The targets are the obvious ones.

As Monk, Jeffrey Wright always strikes the best hangdog balance between comedy and pathos, but as the film nears a tenuous, contrived ending, he is not enough. The film falters under the weight of its setup, which is so very good. Too good. American Fiction is all beginning and middle, with no satisfactory end. It's never quite sure what it's trying to say, so in the end doesn't say too much we don't already know. But with characters and performers as charming as these, it's almost possible to forgive American Fiction its faults. Almost.

Viewed January 18, 2024 — Laemmle NoHo 7

1910

"Godzilla Minus One"

   ☆☆☆☆½ 

On my way out of the theater, I ran across a group of kids who had just seen Godzilla Minus One and were humming the pulsating, rhythmic theme music. "That was incredible," one said, to which another concurred, "I want to see it a third time."

And in that little moment, there's some sort of magic, I think.

The business pages say we live in a post-theatrical world, a time when streaming rules all with its incessant pipeline of indistinguishable content. There's every reason to imagine Godzilla Minus One would be right at home on a streaming service, where it could headline for a few days before being rotated into a carousel of "Recommended For You" content for people who like mindless entertainment.

But Godzilla Minus One is not mindless entertainment, and the studio behind it wisely decided it would be best experienced on the big screen—and, best of all, it turns out to be so good that kids, who are a demographic that allegedly doesn't go to movies anymore, not only turns out for it, but goes back to see it again. And again.

This is a movie that deserves such a happy fate, though Godzilla Minus One isn't, generally, a very happy movie. That's not to say it's not a rousing film or an almost ridiculously entertaining one; it's both, but it has some deep and often dark thoughts on its mind—so significant, really, that the only way it can convey these difficult observations about humans and politics and environmental disaster is by being a monster movie, through and through.

There have been a lot of Godzilla movies in the last 25 years, most of which have not been very good. This one comes from Toho, the studio that created Godzilla, and it treats the legacy and history and underlying meaning of its King of the Monsters with respect, even as it breathes new life into the giant old lizard with the sheer force of Godzilla's light ray.

It's the 37th Godzilla film but seems like the first, as it tells the story of Koihchi, a Japanese kamikaze pilot who cannot bring himself to die for the sake of his country. His decision is dishonorable, and fills him with guilt as, following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all of Japan lies in ruin. Fate brings Koichi together with Noriko, a young woman caring for Akiko, a baby left in her care. Koichi's trauma is made worse by having witnessed an attack by the mythical Godzilla—and when he discovers the monster not only didn't die but has grown to gargantuan proportions, he's helpless as Godzilla attacks and lays waste to an already suffering Tokyo.

It sounds dour and heavy, and it would be if it weren't for the sheer spectacle of it all. We may have grown up watching a man in a rubber suit stomp on miniature buildings, but we've also seen the true horrors of 9/11, so when a hyper-real Godzilla destroys this Tokyo, the results are shocking in scope and scale. Godzilla may be a movie monster, but the calamity is all too real.

So, then, is the heroism at the heart of the story, and the real suspense and tension that come with it. Godzilla Minus One is expertly made, not just equal to but far better than the hyperactive CG-driven action films Hollywood pumps out. It has real people with real consequences at its core, and as the characters in Godzilla Minus One race toward their showdown with the epic monster, something happens in this movie that never happens in mainstream films: Our hearts beat faster, we sit forward in our seats, and we actually cheer. The audience I saw Godzilla Minus One with actually burst into applause toward the end of the movie, a spontaneous show of emotion. It's the kind of thing we go to the movies for, and all too rarely get. Godzilla Minus One delivers it.

Viewed January 14, 2023 — AMC Universal 16

1520

"The Color Purple"

  ☆☆½ 

Because it's based on the Broadway production, the suggestion is that this is the first time The Color Purple has been adapted as a film musical, but that ignores so much of what Steven Spielberg did with his 1985 movie, which I'd argue is one of his most under-appreciated und unfairly criticized works.

The earlier film not only had a masterful, soaring score by Quincy Jones, it also featured multiple songs that were integral to the plot: "Makidada," the clapping song sung by Celie and her sister Nettie; the spiritual "Maybe God Is Trying to Tell You Something"; and the Oscar-nominated "Miss Celie's Blues." In all, The Color Purple featured more than two hours of music—nearly the entire film contains some musical component.

But now here's a version of The Color Purple that features people breaking out into song and dance in sometimes incongruous ways that interrupt the action and often detract from the dramatic thrust of the story. Instead of using music, this new version of The Color Purple from director Blitz Bazawule and a host of producers (including Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey) uncomfortably inserts bland and unmemorable songs into an already packed story. The unfortunate result is that in this version, it's hard to understand much about Celie's plight except what we already know having seen the previous version.

It's not the fault of the charismatic performers. Celie is brought to life both by Phylicia Pearl Mpasi as a young woman and Fantasia Barrino as an adult. They're both determined to find the soul of this quiet, tortured, beaten, scared woman, but it's a hard thing to do when the film insists on having them burst out into mostly upbeat songs every few minutes.

As in Alice Walker's 1982 novel and Spielberg's film, Celie's story plays out against a sweeping backdrop and is peopled with memorable women: her sister, Nettie (Halle Bailey and Ciara); the indomitable Sofia (Danielle Brooks, who steals the show); and Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson). Each of these women undergoes a dramatic evolution, but because this version of The Color Purple needs to accommodate all those songs, most of the change is only hinted at.

Spielberg's version was often criticized because of its artful production design, its tentative approach to the central, revelatory sexual relationship between Celie and Shug; and its insistence on redemption for Mister, Celie's abusive husband, here played by Colman Domingo. Those perceived faults are only heightened in Bazawule's adaptation, which is largely a candy-colored confection that feels as antiseptic as a Broadway stage. While Celie and Shug sorta-kinda end up in bed together this time, this film is even less certain of what the relationship means for Celie. Worse, Mister is given total forgiveness, making lighthearted, tender jokes with Celie in the final scene.

It all fits together uncomfortably, unlike Spielberg's music-infused film. It's almost unfair to compare any director's efforts with Spielberg, whose version of this story not only retained much of Walker's epistolary style through voice-over narration that is sorely missed here. What Spielberg could say with one wordless shot or a brilliant composition feels forced and labored here. It's not for lack of trying by the talented cast, and there's no doubt that much of this new version has a sumptuous, well-designed look.

But it labors under the extra burden of its heavily staged production numbers. To see The Color Purple at its musical best, rewatch the Spielberg version. This new adaptation feels too clean, too careful and too forced to get at the hard and sometimes bitter truth at the heart of this difficult, essential story.

Viewed January 5, 2024 — AMC Topanga 12

1830

"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