"Nosferatu"

   ☆☆ 

Now that it has been seen, online chatter about Robert Eggers' remake of Nosferatu is divided: It's a love-it-or-hate-it movie. I did not fall on the "love it" side of things. It's a splendid-looking film, one that aims for and hits a target of being an overwrought gothic melodrama. Perhaps its vampire story is fitting, because despite its visual merits, the whole thing feels curiously undead.

The original incarnation of Nosferatu is more than a century old, and its imagery is so famous that almost everyone knows it even if they've never seen the film. Eggers doesn't try to replicate the original as much as deconstruct it, and by doing so he's performed a task that reminded me of Gus Van Sant's infamous remake of Psycho: He proves that replication doesn't equate with inspiration.

Opening with a nonsensical scene in which a young woman named Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) seems to summon the evil known as Nosferatu, who in this version is hilariously mustachioed, the movie then fast-forwards "years later" to 19th century Germany, where Ellen's new husband Thomas Hutter is sent by his estate-agent boss Herr Knock to close the deal for mysterious Transylvanian Count Orlok to buy a decrepit castle in town.

So, off Thomas goes, over the deep protestations of his wife, encountering local folk along the way who, naturally, warn him that Orlok is evil ... evil ... eeeeevvvil I say! Drat, he doesn't speak their language. When the two men meet, Orlok carries none of the suave countenance of Count Dracula, on which this character is based. (The original Nosferatu was a low-budget, copyright-infringing knock-off of Bram Stoker's Dracula that led to legal challenges.) From there, the movie follows the basic outlines of Dracula, but does it all ... very ... very ... very ... very slowly.

Eggers has directed effectively dread-laden films like The VVitch and The Lighthouse, but in Nosferatu the stylization can't mask the unhinged, increasingly hysterical screenplay that requires too many logical leaps by the audience and too much from actors who seem entirely ill equipped to meet the demands of such high-pitched nonsense. Even Willem Dafoe, who last year was so impressive and moving in a similarly over-the-top role in Poor Things, is undone by the movie, which requires him to act ever more crazed and overwrought.

By the end, timelines make no sense, motivations are non-existent, and Nosferatu seems mostly in a hurry (after taking its own sweet time for the first 90 minutes) to find a way to wrap things up, no matter how nonsensical they seem. Adding nearly an hour to the running time of the 80-minute original has done the story no favors, nor has the choice to make Count Orlok a deep-croaking, mumbling mess of a creature, a silly (did I mention mustachioed) concept, a man in a creepy suit that is designed to make him look like he's decomposing but mostly makes him look like he spent a lot of time in a makeup chair. There's nothing seductive, grotesque or interesting about him, and despite all the hype the role gives Bill Skarsgård almost nothing to do.

Lots of people are finding lots to love in Nosferatu, and I'm not about to say they're wrong—online debates about this movie are not fascinating, rather (as happens so often today) devolve almost immediately into name-calling. If this movie proves to be your thing, then more power to you; but aside from the visual style virtually nothing about Nosferatu worked for me, except the moment the lights went up and I was able to leave the theater.

Viewed December 30, 2024 — AMC Topanga 12

1905

"Emilia Pérez"

  ☆☆☆☆½ 

The best way to see the Spanish-language, French-produced rock-opera crime thriller Emilia Pérez is on the big screen, but it is a depressing fact that we live in a largely post-cinema world, when streaming services have replaced the communal act of moviegoing.

What will people watching this genre-defying, hyperactive, unpredictable musical at home make of it? Judging by some of the viewer comments I've seen, Emilia Pérez loses something on the small(er) screen—and movie lovers lost something when deep-pocketed Netflix bought the film after its rapturous response at the Cannes Film Festival. Though it got released on a handful of movie screens (I was fortunate to see it one of the few cinemas screening it a month after it opened), this movie, which took no fewer than 15 funding sources to bring it to life, is going to be seen at home.

Emilia Pérez isn't easy enough for today's watch-while-doing-a-dozen-other-things audiences, but in the cinema, it is a wonder to behold, a movie that casts a spell and never lets it be broken, even if it loses some of its musical razzle-dazzle in its second half, when it veers more toward pure, adrenaline-fueled over-the-top melodrama.

The less you know about Emilia Pérez going into it, the better. The general outline of the story follows Rita Mora, an overworked, under-appreciated attorney in Mexico City, who finds herself recruited by the leader of a powerful cartel and its biggest, baddest boss, Manitas del Monte. Manitas has a secret: He wants to become a woman, and hires Rita to take care of all of the details — not just arranging his surgery, but ensuring the world, including his family, knows of his death.

Manitas becomes Emilia Pérez, who sets about changing everything in her life. As Emilia discovers who she is, she develops an astonishing sense of destiny, though the movie, which is based on an unproduced opera libretto that, in turn, was inspired by a novel, has a lot of ideas about fate and destiny and the ways the past gets invited to intrude on the present.

As Emilia Pérez races toward a climax entirely in keeping with its operatic sensibilities, it's anchored by two excellent performances—Zoe Saldaña as Rita and Selena Gomez as Manitas' wife, Jessi. But the film belongs to Karla Sofía Gascón, an actress who brings Emilia to life in a way that thrills and delights. She commands the screen with no effort at all, finding a bold and unexpected heart at the core of a woman who thinks she knows enough to outwit her past.

Every moment of Emilia Pérez worked for me, even the most outrageous ones, though after seeing it I read some downright scathing criticism of the film from trans writers who believe the film is an inaccurate representation of the trans experience. I imagine they might have a point if the film were seeking—like, say, Hedwig and the Angry Inch—to portray some sense of realism about its subject.

But Emilia Pérez has no interest in depicting a real world; its vision is one of stylization, of embracing the sensibilities of a Mexican telenovéla, albeit one very much made for the big screen. What a shame, then, that this mesmerizing film will almost entirely be experienced on the small screen, watched by audiences primed to press the "back" button when they are less than entranced. Emilia Pérez is a big, glorious movie, unashamed to revel in its drama, aware that sometimes life is filled with feelings so overwhelming, so complicated, so robust that the only way to express them is by singing, dancing, and just letting it all wash over you.

Viewed December 21, 2024 — Landmark Sunset

1900

"Queer"

 ☆☆ 

Queer is Luca Guadagnino's second film this year, and it almost everything that made his first 2024 film, Challengers, thrilling, exciting and compelling. More crucially, it lacks the urgency and vibrancy of Guadagnino's earlier Call Me By Your Name, which is curious for many reasons — not the least of which is that Queer is about a gay junkie but doesn't seem able to come up with anything interesting to say about being gay or being a junkie.

Everything in Queer has been done before and been done better. That's something Guadagnino seems to understand, because Queer cribs from a long history of better movies. There are the stylized settings and saturated hues of Querelle and One from the Heart. There are the wild-eyed moments of lust and horror from Reflections in a Golden Eye and Suddenly, Last Summer. There is the languid, lurid, boozy lecherousness of Death in Venice and Touch of Evil. There is the main credit sequence lifted from Call Me By Your Name.

What, then, is Queer trying to do, except maybe liberate Daniel Craig from the legacy of James Bond in a way none of his acting predecessors ever tried to do with as much definitiveness. This is the second gay character Craig has played, after detective Benoit Blanc, and we get it: He is not defined by his macho screen persona. Fair. But we're not five minutes into Queer when Craig is (as discreetly as this can be done) pretending at gay oral sex.

The rest of the time, he's a walking stereotype of desperate, middle-aged gay swishiness. The film's rambling screenplay makes sure he says the word "queer"—in self-mocking reference, as an adjective, as a noun, as an epithet, as a pejorative—as often and as campily as possible.

There isn't a moment of actual recognizable humanity on display anywhere in Queer, which takes its time—oh, does it take its time—finding a story within the descriptive novella by William S. Burroughs. This is a meandering, plodding affair, enlivened by the eye candy provided by Drew Starkey, his well-built and often unclothed body, and his affected Southern drawl.

Craig's character, an itinerant loner living in Mexico named William Lee, becomes obsessed with Starkey's Eugene Allerton. Why? No real reason, other than the boy looks good (and he does look good, Guadagnino makes sure everyone in the audience, no matter their sexual orientation, thinks so). They sweat, they have sex, they do it all over again, and eventually—after a long, long while—we learn that Lee is an addict, and that he wants to go further south to find a legendary hallucinogen. He takes Eugene with him. They have more sex. They sweat some more. Lee has withdrawals. They go to the jungle. They meet an American hermit (Lesley Manville, proving that even the best actors are not capable of breathing life into ridiculous characters). They take the drug. They get really, really high.

Then there's some more weirdness. The movie takes on some of Burroughs' phantasmagoric imagery, but ... why? How did a movie called Queer end up stoned in the jungle?

Then it ends.

Critics seem divided. Audiences less so. I talked with the nonplussed couple next to me, self-professed "Luca" fans. This didn't do it for them. Will Queer do it for anyone? Time will tell. At the very least, you won't only see Daniel Craig as James Bond from this point on; you'll also see him as a straight actor who will go gay for pay.

Queer doesn't just star a prominent heterosexual, it's written by one, too: Justin Kuritzkes, who also wrote Challengers, a movie that teased at its gay themes. Queer isn't meant to be a tease. It shouldn't be a tease. And I suppose—I'll concur with a heavy sigh—that it shouldn't matter whether an actor or a screenwriter is gay. They're getting at a human experience, right?

In Queer, they're supposed to be getting at a queer experience, but it doesn't work. The movie seems clueless about its central theme. It's strange to see Guadagnino flail so badly with this material, despite his visual flair. It leaves me wondering if the reason Call Me By Your Name succeeded so fully is that it was written by James Ivory, a gay man who understood the central emotional conundrum inherent in that film. A perspective like his is what's so desperately, glaringly missing from Queer. 

Viewed December 13, 2024 — AMC Universal

1920