Delayed Reaction: The Guilty

Premise: Jake Gyllenhaal is a 911 dispatcher who gets too involved in a specific call.

 

I'm a sucker for this kind of movie. All of it takes place at the 911 call center from Jake Gyllenhaal’s perspective. Mostly, it's watching him talk to people on the phone. That kind of claustrophobic thriller almost always works for me: Locke, Buried, Phone Booth. If the story and characters are interesting enough, I'm happy to sign on. Even without that gimmick, I like movies that expand then contract the narrative around a complicated situation (think, Eye in the Sky). And Jake Gyllenhaal is on my shortlist of favorite actors. He's not infallible, but when he's on (Nightcrawler), he's great.

 

I didn't connect with this movie as much as I thought I would though. It felt more tense than busy, and the more I learned about Gyllenhaal's character actually made him harder to relate to. The mechanics of the emergency with the mother who he thinks is in danger are great. I love following the series of calls he makes trying to locate the car and learn more. It makes me appreciate the people doing that job more.

 

The twist is gutting. However, I can't shake the feeling that they aren't playing fair with it. It's probably just me being salty for being tricked. I think some of it ties to not knowing what Gyllenhaal is in trouble for. As we find out, his guilt over killing a young man while on the job drove his decision to continue so hard with this call. It's his chance for redemption in his mind. I think understanding his motivations more would help the tension. Because that's the other problem I had with the movie. It felt more busy than tense. The reason why something like Locke works so well is because it feels like Tom Hardy is trying to keep several plates spinning at the same time. All have priority and urgency in their own way. In The Guilty, only one thing is actually urgent. The calls from reporters are annoying. His attempts to speak to his daughter are his attempt to escape, not an added complication. With the mother he is trying to help, the complications are because he's trying to break protocol, not because he's actually doing much to help. The fact that that falls apart fundamentally changes the kind of movie I thought I was watching. Instead of being "competency porn"*, it's about a guy who is effective but bad at this job. He's bad at his last job. He's bad at his family life. He's kind of a dick to people. It made me less engaged the more I learned. It's a slow-moving train wreck story, but it deprived us of the buildup to the crash. The aftermath of a slow-moving train wreck may be bad, but seeing it happen and knowing you can't stop it is was makes it so tense. Just imagine if we knew early on that he's feeling guilty over shooting the young man. What if there were more warning signs that something's not right with the mother? How tense would it be if there was a pause every couple minutes for us to decide whether he was pushing so hard because of guilt or because it's the right thing to do?

 

*Another term I've heard for movie about people doing their damn jobs well.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Nightmare Alley

Formula: Shutter Island * Freaks

I remain a little confused about Guillermo del Toro’s reception in Hollywood. When he won Best Picture for The Shape of Water, there was a major “It’s about time” quality to it. Somehow, it was the establishment vote. This confused me, because it’s not like he’s really an Academy director. He has Pan’s Labyrinth as Oscar bait, but otherwise he’s been on the fringes of fanboy cinema with Hellboy, Blade sequels, and Pacific Rim. In 2015, I remember there being buzz about Crimson Peak as a sight-unseen awards contender. Then people saw it and remembered that del Toro doesn’t really play for the Oscar. I expected the same for The Shape of Water, then it somehow won. Because of that, now every movie he makes gets put in the Oscar discussion.

 

Nightmare Alley is a really fun thriller. Del Toro uses his love of unsettling imagery wonderfully. I had to keep reminding myself that he hadn’t made a carnival movie before. It pairs so well with him though, that it seems like “he’s doing another circus movie”. The performances are wonderfully pulled from the filmnoir era with a touch more menace. However, I can’t help but think how with any other director, it wouldn’t be surprising if this really wasn’t in the Oscar discussion. Perhaps some technical awards. Maybe, MAYBE a supporting actress nomination.

 

I’m getting way ahead of myself though. Nightmare Alley is either a book adaptation or a remake of the 1940s movie depending on how you want to look at it. It’s about a drifter (Bradley Cooper) who becomes a carnival worker, uses the tricks her learns to become a psychic act for the wealthy, and falls from grace due to his own hubris. It’s broken into three pretty uneven parts. The best is the first act when Cooper becomes part of the circus. That’s where most of the best supporting stars show up: Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, David Stratharin, and more. Del Toro really captures the oddity and comradery of that world. I love the look and taste of it. The only thing that bothered me about it was that Bradley Cooper looks at least a decade too old to play the character. I think they even call him ‘kid’ at one point. He doesn’t play the character at all like someone who has live enough live to be in his 40s. All of his eagerness and gumption makes a lot more sense for someone much younger.

 

The second act is entirely propped up by Cate Blanchett as a doubter-turned-co-conspirator of Cooper’s. She’s eats up every morsel of every scene she’s in. Not only did she understand the assignment. She wrote the exam and found a typo. I’d be fine if she got one femme fatale role per year for the rest of her life. She’s so much fun. Cooper fits more in his role for this portion of the movie, but his character choices don’t always make sense to me. Then the final act, only a couple scenes, when he’s down on his luck, the story comes full circle. It wasn’t at all satisfying though. It really feels like a bunch of chunks of this movie were cut out. Cooper’s rise in the ranks through the circus feels too fast. Blanchett’s long con doesn’t feel intricate enough. The conclusion to the story of the judge and his wife has little additional context. Then Cooper’s hobo years are rushed through.

 

The ending is odd too. So, a very specific analogy comes to mind. There’s a scene in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones where Obi-Wan is pointing out where the planet Kamino should be to Yoda. The stars and moon formations suggest there should be a planet there but the records don’t show one there. That’s how I feel about this ending. It’s shot and written like a killer ending. I’ve seen enough movies to know how full-circle it should feel. I reflexively even had a wry smile on my face like “I see what you did there, Guillermo”. Yet, it didn’t feel earned enough. It’s like the end was written first, then when the rest of the script didn’t actually point to that ending, they jumped a couple years and hoped we wouldn’t notice.

 

I loved looking at this movie. Visually, I could eat it up. I really loved Blanchett’s performance as well as many of the smaller supporting performances. Those things made this worth the ticket. It’s in that weird middle-space in terms of length though where it needed to be an hour shorter or longer. Either keep it a brisk 90-120 minutes and focus more on the Cate Blanchett part, including the carnival stuff as flavor, or pull an Irishman and make it 3+ hours to capture the full scope of the story. As is, it’s a bloated 2.5 hours that somehow can’t fit in everything it wants to.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Movie Reaction: West Side Story

Formula: West Side Story + 60 Years

 

I watched the original West Side Story for the first time in 20 years a couple months ago and the one word to describe it is ‘undeniable’. That’s a movie you watch and immediately know it won all the Oscars. It’s a brawny display of major studio filmmaking. Not everything about it has aged well over the last 60 years, but it remains one of the most untouchable movies ever made. Hearing that they were going to remake it, I was torn. There’s a lot about the original that could be corrected: namely the complexion of the casting. However, it was coming out the same year as In the Heights, which in a lot of ways is the modern reenvisioning of West Side Story. Stephen Spielberg was directing it, which brings its own baggage, good and bad. He’s arguably the greatest American filmmaker ever. If anyone is capable of withstanding the pressure of this project, it’s him. Yet, he’s never made a musical before. And is a 70-something white director really the best person to tell this story in 2021? Even the casting of this gave me whiplash. Rachel Zegler is easy to root for. Ansel Elgort has become problematic. Everything about this movie gave me pause. I was fully prepared to respond to this with a complete “meh”.

 

Much to my surprise, this new West Side Story is a complete success. The kind of success that feels obvious in hindsight.

 

It’s still the same story: Romeo and Juliet in 1950s Manhattan. There are rival street gangs: the Jets – young white men seeing everything about their community going away and blaming it on assorted minorities rather than the city officials gentrifying them out – and the Sharks – a gang of Puerto Rican immigrants trying to make it in this new city where they don’t always fit. The reformed former leader of the Jets, Tony (Ansel Elgort), falls in love with Maria (Rachel Zegler), the sister of the current leader of the Sharks. This escalates a turf war between the gangs until there’s a big brawl that Tony tries to stay out of and Maria wants to stop. The movie can’t fix some of the core problems with the story, like how quickly Tony and Maria fall madly in love. It does add in some new wrinkles that weren’t there before. Like, Rita Moreno is back in a different role as a Puerto Rican shop owner who is helping out Tony and serves as the moral authority of the block. The gentrification angle is nice too, with the Lincoln Center and high-rise apartments set to displace everyone in the block. It adds to the meaningless of the fighting. It handles the racial issues nicely too. The Jets are the clear instigators, but it’s a bunch of dumb men on both sides making things worse. In other words, Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner do the one thing this remake needed: they made enough changes to justify the need for it.

 

That’s the fun of this remake. It’s reverent of the original without being precious about it. Spielberg clearly just wanted to make a big 1960s musical. The way the whole thing is shot is like you asked someone to make a musical in 1960 but with 2020 technology. Like the original movie, even though most of this movie was shot on real locations, every scene looks like it was shot on an impressively large sound stage. It’s like I’m watching a modern fable or fairy tale. I think we all take it for granted how reflexively Spielberg makes a competent movie. He knows what he’s doing and who to hire. I doubt any of the choreography was him, but he sure found the right people for it. That goes for the whole crew of this.

 

Similar to the original movie, even though the movie has an overwhelming number of men, the women really rocked this movie. This is Rachel Zegler’s first screen appearance and it’s a hell of a debut. Maria is an imposing role and she nailed it. Great voice. Great performance. At only 18 when she filmed this, she’s much younger than all her cast members yet she holds her own with all of them*. Arianna DeBose could win an Oscar for the same role that won Rita Morena an Oscar 60 years ago as Anita, the girlfriend of Maria’s brother. She has a couple gutting dramatic scenes and she’s got “America”: one of the great showcase songs. Rita Moreno in her new role is so vital that you wonder how the first movie worked without that character. It’s probably not enough screen times for Oscar consideration, but I wouldn’t rule it completely out. The men aren’t bad in this by any means though. Ansel Elgort is a perfectly serviceable Tony. David Alvarez as Bernardo, the head of the Sharks, is a little broadly drawn but he plays the character well. Riff, leader of the Jets, is almost a caricature, but Mike Faist’s performance dials it back just enough to work. Spielberg didn’t rely on established stars for this and it turns out he really didn’t need them. And in a couple years, there may be a few more stars in it than we realized.

 

*And on a personal note, Rachel Zegler seems just delightful. She’s been a good Twitter follow for a while and it’s nice to see just how excited she is by the beginning of her career. It’s hard not to root for her.

 

The movie mostly does right by the music. I’ll admit, I’m not the biggest fan of all the West Side Story songs. A lot of them have that stagy rhythm where it sounds like they are struggling to make the words fit the melody. There are some bangers though. “America” is a showstopper. “Tonight” gets me going. “I Feel Pretty” is a lovely little song. They gave “Somewhere” to Rita Moreno which works really well. My favorite sequence in the movie might actually be “Gee, Officer Krupke” which had some really clever staging.

 

I really have to hand it to Steven Spielberg and company for making a bad idea look good. There’s no reason this West Side Story remake should’ve worked. The original is an untouchable classic. The only way a remake could go is down. Perhaps this version isn’t quite as good as the original, but it’s damn close. Closer than it has any right to be.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Encanto

Formula: Coco – 16 degrees latitude

 

Disney Animation is a formula. No one is denying that. It changes over time, but the change is incremental and slow. The intent is never to blow audiences away at the time. It’s more concerned with staying power. The company literally kept the lights on for years thanks to being able to re-release the classics in theaters. Fittingly, Encanto feels really similar to a lot of other animated Disney films while being just different enough to work.

 

Encanto tells the story of a magical family in Columbia who all have powers they use to help the community. It centers on Mirabel, the one family member who doesn’t have powers. She loves her family but is often the black sheep because of her lack of powers. When the powers are threatened one day, Mirabel is blamed or at least feels she is to blame and decided to figure out how to stop the family from losing their powers. Disney loves doing stories about the one outcast in the family. Frozen is about that. Zootopia in a lot of ways too. And Wreck-It Ralph. So it’s no surprise that they get the emotional beats of it right here.

 

There’s a little Moana in this too with Lin-Manuel Miranda doing the music for Encanto. I didn’t love this music though. Nothing really stuck in my head. The way a lot of the music was mixed in the movie didn’t help. The instruments often drowned out the words, so I missed a lot of what sounded like clever lyrics. Some of it will probably grow on me. Moana certainly did. A lot of Disney movies work like that. They are OK until one day you realize they are classics. That’s likely to happen here.

 

The voice cast opts for accuracy over domestic star power, which I like. I recognized a few names like Stephanie Beatriz (as Mirabel), Diane Guerrero, and John Leguizamo. Many of the actors are maybe more famous in Latin America. I certainly don’t know them, but they work for the characters. I appreciate that Disney isn’t huge on the star-chasing. I imagine they also realized they can’t get away with having white actors doing accented work anymore.

 

At some point, it’s going to start feeling like Disney is working off a checklist of countries or areas to set a movie in, but as long as the movies are enjoyable, I can’t complain. I appreciate that Encanto is Disney making a movie about the Jan Bradys of the world. I really like the messaging of this one. It’s similar to the Monsters University message but more elegantly said. At the moment, this isn’t a top tier Disney Animated movie for me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it grew on me. Regardless, it’s thoroughly enjoyable.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: House of Gucci

Formula: A Perfect Murder ^ The Devil Wears Prada

 

A few weeks back, talking about Last Night in Soho, I discussed how some movie can never live up to their trailer. They promise too much of a world of possibility for a narrative film to ever live up to. House of Gucci is nearly one of those movies. The difference is that it’s not even the trailer. It’s the existence of the movie. The production stills, the posters, the casting, the title: it all promises something remarkable. House of Gucci was legendary with the first picture of Lady Gaga and Adam Driver on the snowy mountain. I’m not sure any movie could’ve lived up to the public imagination for it. The same people couldn’t even decide if they were excited for prestige or trash. Either way, it would be memorable.

 

The story of the Gucci family does sound irresistible. Brothers Aldo (Al Pacino) and Rodolfo (Jeremy Irons) own the company 50/50. Aldo’s son, Paolo (Jared Leto) is a fool. Rodolfo’s son, Maurizio (Adam Driver), is uninterested in the family business until he meets and marries Patrizia (Lady Gaga). Patrizia motivates Maurizio to scheme for control of the business leading to betrayal and eventually murder. All the while, everyone (except Paolo) is dressed in the height of 80s fashion. On paper, I’d happily sign up for a 2.5+ hour fashion epic. The Godfather on a Runway.

 

In actuality, House of Gucci is much duller than the pieces that make it up. Director Ridley Scott is incapable of making campy trash. He wants to make this something more serious yet every element of it is rejecting that. The movie is pitched as a Lady Gaga showcase. She is to this what Cookie is to Empire. It certainly starts out that way, but she’s pretty powerless for the last hour of the movie. Her marriage with Maurizio falls apart and it’s never that clear why. She’s sidelined just as her story really gets crazy. Maurizio’s arc is supposed to be that of a cutthroat monster, but instead his character is too impenetrable to understand. He leaves Patrizia for being a monster right as he’s being a monster? And it’s never that clear when the switch in his brain switched from being ambivalent about the family business to deeply desiring full control of it. I think the big issue here is that they didn’t decide if this was Lady Gaga’s movie or not. They make her first among equals which throws the balance off. Whenever the movie got boring, I’d sit there wondering why I wasn’t just following Patrizia right then or why Patrizia wasn’t taking over a scene more.

 

The performances (and the costuming, of course) are the highlight of the movie. They are all very big. I’m not great with accents, so I won’t comment on how accurate they are. What I will say is that all the accents are big. After surprising everyone with her A Star is Born performance, Lady Gaga gives the kind of performance in this that people expected her to break into movies with. This is the performance of a woman who showed up to a red carpet in a meat suit. She is so much fun to watch. Adam Driver is striking visually with his glasses and simple style but he is a pretty static character. It’s the worst performance only because it’s the worst character. Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, and especially Jared Leto are a lot fun to watch. All three have a history of making meals out of characters and this movie encourages that. In dull corporate takeover scenes, their performance choices keep things interesting.

 

Of the dueling Ridley Scott movies this Fall, I very much prefer the largely ignored The Last Duel. House of Gucci is just entertaining enough to be worth watching, but it is frustrating that it refuses to be the movie the performers are trying to make it into. It’s weird to watch a Ridley Scott movie and think, was Ryan Murphy too busy to offer consulting?

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Movie Reaction: Ghostbusters: Afterlife

Formula: Ghostbusters (2016) – All those women

 

Ghostbusters was more of an accident than people want to accept. Everything I’ve ever heard about the production was a mess. There were several competing ideas and a script that was still coming together. The idea itself – high concept Sci-Fi comedy – is a tough thing to balance in the first place. Comedy tends to diffuse the stakes, so films typically have to choose whether the comedy or action is dominant. That the original Ghostbusters became a decade-defining hit is pretty crazy. Since it is such a unique and identifiable IP, I understand the desire to bring it back. I worry that they’ll be forever chasing the high of the original.

 

Ghostbusters: Afterlife is the latest attempt to bring the franchise back. It comes with slightly more blessing than the 2016 movie, given that it’s directed by Jason Reitman, son of Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, and Afterlife is a more direct homage to the original movies. It exists in the same timeline as the original and stars the daughter and grandchildren of Harold Ramis’ Dr. Egon Spengler. After the death of her estranged father, Egon’s daughter, Callie (Carrie Coon), moves her children, Phoebe (McKenna Grace) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), to the small town where he died. Callie and the kids know very little about his past life as a Ghostbuster but quickly learn more about it, thanks to him leaving behind all the toys in his rundown farmhouse. I’ll spare you the details, but it turns out that Egon chose this location due to ghostly activity which is now erupting for the first time in decades, and his family must stop the ghosts.

 

Where the 2016 movie maybe leaned too hard into the comedy aspect, Afterlife swings in the more dramatic direction. This isn’t a very funny movie. It almost feels irresponsible for IMDB to label it a comedy. It throws in a few jokes by bringing in Paul Rudd, but this is no more a comedy than most action movies. Instead, it’s a very reverent movie. They seem to have gone into this with the idea that if they are going to make this, they need to memorialize Harold Ramis’ passing. He’s the silent lead of the movie, guiding the characters from beyond the grave. I respect that. It’s nice to see that Reitman and company take this franchise so seriously, but it does miss the point of why this franchise is so well remembered. (I suppose I should give a spoiler alert here, but if you didn’t already expect what I’m about to say, then you don’t understand how movies work) Late in the movie, when the surviving three Ghostbusters appear, I was struck by how much more I enjoyed that than the rest of the movie. And I’m not someone who holds the 1984 movie in high regard. They just brought a relaxed levity that the rest of the movie was missing. There was actual banter. It didn’t feel like they were afraid to step on the toes of the franchise’s legacy.

 

The movie is fine. Reitman isn’t the best director for this. Jason Reitman specializes in darker comedies with more bite. He wisely backed away from that for this (no one wants the Young Adult version of Ghostbusters) but didn’t replace it with much else. This became a movie that could’ve been directed by anyone. The big note I came away from the movie with is that it had mystery but little curiosity. There’s definitely a puzzle to the movie, but it doesn’t have much fun exploring the world of Ghostbusters. What would a world with Ghostbusters look like 40 years later? Apparently, according to this movie, their impact is that of a seldom read Wikipedia article. Say what you will about the 2016 movie, but it’s clear while watching it that Paul Feig is a big fan. You can tell he brought a lot of ideas to that movie. In Afterlife, Reitman doesn’t take advantage of the richness of the world at all. It can’t even decide how much people do and don’t know about the original Ghostbusters. Something tells me if there was really an attack on New York City in the 80s, more than just a nerdy science teacher would remember it.

 

I do think some of the casting is pretty good. I always welcome Carrie Coon into anything I watch. Rudd plays his role like someone who was a lifelong Ghostbusters fan excited to be in a Ghostbusters movie. It’s not a special performance, but you can almost see in his eyes him telling his agent to get him an audition. Mckenna Grace is the standout for me. She basically turns into a tween girl Egon Spengler, which is really impressive when I consider how different her past roles have been. Finn Wolfhard is very much just along for the ride. There’s little use for his character other than being someone who can drive. So I can’t knock him for doing little with the character. All the cameos are fun. Most of them jumped back into their characters nicely.

 

I wish I could be more positive about the movie, because I really didn’t hate it. My feelings are closer to apathy. Other that some sweet homages to Harold Ramis, little in the movie made me feel anything. I didn’t realize Jason Reitman would leave out so much of what makes him distinctive as a director. This was just…dull.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Movie Reaction: King Richard

Formula: The Pursuit of Happyness / Battle of the Sexes

 

I’ve missed this Will Smith. For a while there, I thought his career was going the way of Tom Cruise’s. Cruise became a box office star then quickly turned his sights to Oscars and prestige. After a few nominations without a win, Cruise went back to blockbusters with infrequent failed attempts at an Oscar. The Last Samurai and Collateral got nominations for costars. Lions for Lambs and Valkyrie failed to attract any attention. Eventually, Cruise gave up entirely and has made a series of very entertaining blockbusters ever since. That’s great, but it’s a bummer knowing that he has these other kinds of performances in him that he just doesn’t do anymore. Smith had a similar arc. After becoming the biggest box office star on the planet with Bad Boys, Independence Day, and Men in Black, Smith got the Oscar bug. He’s great in Ali and The Pursuit of Happyness. Could’ve gotten Oscars for either. Seven Pounds was misguided and ended his epic run of $100 million movies. He’s had a few attempts at prestige since. Winter’s Tale and Collateral Beauty were misfires. I worried that the close call with Concussion would be Smith’s Valkyrie moment when he gave up. I mean, he followed that with Suicide Squad, Bright, and Aladdin, so it looked like the fear was warranted. Thankfully, he’s taking at least one more swing at it with King Richard: a movie from the Blind Side playbook in a lot of ways.

 

King Richard is about Richard Williams: father of Venus and Serena. It’s the story of how his determination along with other things, led to his daughters becoming Tennis superstars. It is a pretty remarkable story and it was only a matter of time before it was made into a movie. The Williams family went from Rodney King-era Compton to a prestigious Tennis academy. Richard refused to let his daughters play in Juniors competitions for years out of fear of burning them out. The fact that it worked out is either evidence that Richard Williams is a genius or very lucky. Probably and perhaps dangerously both.

 

The movie dips just enough into all the obstacles in their way to work. It touches on the Williams’ meager means and sometimes militant but loving parenting style. It addresses the threats within their Compton community and the racism outside of it without languishing in them. It never loses sight of the Tennis itself and how hard Venus and Serena had to work at it. It’s a tremendously balanced screenplay. While on the long side – the movie is 2h24m – it uses all the time well. It’s one of the best inspirational sports movies made in many years.

 

Smith is at the center, of course. His performance is pretty impressive. Richard is a unique character. If calibrated poorly, he could come off very silly. There’s a little Bobby Boucher in the way he talks. Richard is smart but not educated, which is tricky to do. It’s assumed that Will Smith is the Oscar front-runner right now, and it’s easy to see why. I’ll leave the Oscar prognosticating for another day, but I’d be happy to see him holding that trophy for this. It really isn’t a one-man show though. This is a strong cast all-around. Aunjanue Ellis holds her own against Smith. You get the sense that there’s an entire movie behind Brandy’s story too. The young women playing Venus and Serena – Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton respectively – are great too. Sidney has a lot more to do, since Venus is the older sister and the one who really had to shine to make these in-roads. Again, even though the move is centered around Richard and Smith’s magnetic performance, it doesn’t lose sight of the fact that Venus is the one actually playing. When the movie shifts focus to her on occasion, she’s great. Jon Bernthal is there too as Venus and Serena’s Tennis coach, Rick Macci. It’s a trickier performance than it appears. Macci is a salesman. He is recruiting them for eventual financial game and he comes on strong. He’s ultimately a good guy though. Macci is comically flustered by Richard’s many bewildering decisions yet he never comes off as incompetent. I’ve seen that same performance handled very poorly in other movies.

 

I don’t know a lot about the true story of the Williams family. I get the sense that the movie sanitized a decent amount. I’m hearing the Williams family’s account. Venus and Serena are producers on this after all. Even if that’s in name only, that does affect the way the story will be told. Frankly, I don’t really mind. The movie does reference some of the seedier aspects of Richard’s life and it doesn’t deify him as a character. The pitch line version of this story is good enough that they don’t have to embellish that much to make it interesting. I don’t need the movie to be 100% true to life anyway. It told its story in an engaging way and made the thematic points it wanted to. This is a wholly enjoyable movie.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Movie Reaction: Spencer

Formula: Jackie * The Crown

 

My knowledge of Princess Diana is pretty limited. She died when I was 10. That’s old enough to understand how extremely famous she was but young enough to miss out on the specifics. I was never that interested in the royals in general either, so most of what I know about Diana has been recently acquired from The Crown and the Wikipedia dives that has inspired. Given that I had much the same experience with Jacqueline Kennedy, I was excited to hear that Pablo Larrain was following up Jackie with a Diana film. I’m firmly in the pro-Jackie camp. I love Natalie Portman’s performance. I loved the almost off-putting score. I loved the limited scope of the story. Well, Spencer also has a Portman-caliber actress, has another aggressive score, and covers only a single weekend. However, I didn’t like Spencer as much.

 

The most important thing to say early is that Spencer isn’t a biopic. A title card in the film calls it a fable. This is not intended to reflect an actual weekend Diana lived. At most, it’s a representative weekend. At least, it’s a mood piece of an interpretation of Diana. It’s set during the latter stages of her marriage. She’s going to a country estate where the royal family celebrate Christmas. Diana, played by Kristen Stewart, is feeling the confines of her life. Everywhere she goes she is recognized and gawked at. She feels just as uncomfortable with the Royal family, who haven’t let her into the inner-circle. They try to micro-manage everything about her. Spencer is the story of a woman who feels trapped. The film strongly references Diana’s history of bulimia. In this, it’s her only way to exert control over her life. It’s not flattering. I’m not even sure to what level it’s accurate. It makes its point though.

 

Stewart is really fantastic, especially since she’s rarely playing off anyone. Even when she’s talking to members of the royal family, they all sound like NPCs in a game who deliver set dialogue or disapproving looks. Stewart carries it anyway. Weirdly, since Charlie’s Angels she’s really established herself as one of my favorite screen presences. The only people she really interacts with in this are her sons, the estate’s chef (Sean Harris), the head butler (Timothy Spall), and her dresser (Sally Hawkins). Harris, Spall, and Hawkins almost feel like her Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, all serving a specific purpose for her over the weekend.

 

I was lower on the movie as a whole than I wanted to be*. It’s kind of an unpleasant movie. Diana is on the edge of a mental breakdown for most of it. The tone was bipolar, ranging from practically a horror movie to something like a RomCom. I didn’t care for this score either. It called too much attention to itself in all the wrong ways. I’m not that sure what the movie was trying to say either. It hits the beats of Diana having no control over her life a lot. It doesn’t develop them that much. On paper, a lot of these things also describe Jackie, which I preferred a lot. The best difference I can point to is that Jackie has Jackie giving an interview as the framing device, which lets her take more control. In Spencer, Diana is hopelessly trapped and basically has to fantasize about getting away. It didn’t work for me. Or, perhaps it worked but in a way I found too repellent to enjoy the merits.

 

*Full Disclosure: I had a huge fit of restlessness while watching this. I could not sit still and badly wanted to get up and move around. Perhaps that was a result of the elements in the movie. It is a movie about feeling trapped after all. Maybe it was working really well on me. Or maybe it was a Sour Patch Kids high. I honestly don’t know. It made it incredibly hard to focus though. This almost never happens when I’m seeing a movie. I just want to own up to possibly external forces hurting my opinion of the movie.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend

Movie Reaction: Spider-Man: No Way Home

Formula: Spider-Man: Homecoming + The Amazing Spider-Man + Spider-Man

 

I love the Disney Parks and my all-time favorite ride is the now defunct The Great Movie Ride. For those unfamiliar, it’s a pretty simple dark ride that movies you through rooms of animatronic scenes from classic movies of the 1920s to 1980s. They do their best to give it a story, having a gangster take over the ride from the ride operator midway through. It’s pretty forced, but I appreciate the effort. The finale of the ride is a video montage of film history, cutting together hundreds of films, famous scenes, and iconic songs and scores. The emotions of that ride were cheaply gained but authentic, and ultimately, I’d rather have it make me feel something than make perfect sense.

 

I bring this up, because that’s exactly my opinion of Spider-Man: No Way Home. It’s a movie that struggles to justify its plot but makes up for it in the emotions it brings out.

 

Marvel and Sony have been advertising this movie for a while on the idea that it’s a crossover of 3 generations of Spider-Man films. Alfred Molina’s Doc Oc was prominently featured in the trailers. Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin was strongly hinted at. I think everyone paying any attention figured seeing Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire was a question of when and how much, not if. Ultimately, they do show up for significant parts but not before a lot of really forced plotting.

 

The idea for this movie is that Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has been revealed as Spider-Man and it’s ruining his life more than all the other Avengers for some reason. He convinces Dr. Strange to cast a spell to make everyone forget his identity, but Peter changes his parameters midway through and ruins it. That opens the gates to let a few villains from other multi-verses into his universe. It just so happens that it’s villains from the worlds of the 2002 and 2012 movies. Instead of simply capturing the villains (which he does pretty easily) and sending them back, Peter decides it’s better to try and reform them first. This has disastrous consequences and eventually requires him to recruit two other Spider-Men into his universe: Tobey and Andrew.

 

That all is a stretch. It screams “fan service”. It’s a painfully reverse-engineered screenplay. I applaud the filmmakers for how well they integrated ideas like the multi-verse from other ends of the MCU into this for the story, but it’s undeniable that over an hour of the movie is spent setting up a chess board in only somewhat engaging ways.

 

That said, I don’t care. And there are two reasons for this. 1) Once the Spider-Men are together, they are so much fun. Ignoring the film quality, they’ve never cast a bad Spider-Man and seeing the different takes on the same character gave the movie so much life. Not to mention most of the villains are fun. Much of the Sam Rami movies’ success was Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina as great villains. Anything to bring them back is welcome, since the modern MCU continues to have a villain problem. 2) Like The Great Movie Ride, No Way Home understands the power of using history to connect with an audience. I got chills seeing Andrew and especially Tobey show up as 20 years of the franchise came flooding into my brain. It’s a weird evolution of the MCU. Step 1: Bring the heroes they introduced together (The Avengers). Step 2: Payoff years of their own mythology (Avengers: Endgame). Step 3: Payoff decades of work with Marvel characters all-around (No Way Home). Between Into the Spider-Verse and this, the Spider-Man franchise has turned into the most self-examining superhero franchise and knows how to play on the audience’s past knowledge and expectations for new story.

 

What’s really crazy is when you start going galaxy brain on this. This movie is fundamentally a factory reset that allows Sony to take more control over the character. Think about it. Aunt May is dead and delivers the “great power, great responsibility” line, which is traditionally the kicking off point for Spider-Man. He’s back to a hidden identity. The Avengers have all forgotten him, so he’s not beholden to those team ups. As a struggling nobody in New York, he can be a photographer selling pictures of Spider-Man to J. Jonah Jameson. Marvel just gifted Sony a clean slate. The only downside is no Zendaya as MJ if they continue with this angle*.

 

*Btw: That final scene between Peter and MJ was just terrific. If that really is the farewell to MJ, then it’s a damn great one. Zendaya and Tom Holland played that so well.

 

Then there’s the fact that neither previous Spider-Man franchise had a proper ending, and No Way Home actually completed those arcs to an extent. It sounds like Tobey’s Peter and Mary Jane made things work. He’s lasted into “middle-back pain” age and has found some peace. Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man movies were abruptly ended because they weren’t good. Garfield was never the problem with them though. The one aspect of those movies that worked was him and Emma Stone’s chemistry, so Gwen’s death is the only moment of significance from the films. He gets to make good on that by saving MJ in the way that he couldn’t save Gwen. A surprisingly moving scene.

 

I suspect this movie will never be better than it is at this moment. It’s a film designed for surprise and delight. You’re supposed to come out of that movie beaming, and I was. Over time, when the novelty of the crossover wears off, I’m sure the sweaty place-setting and pacing problems will be more noticeable. I sure as hell enjoyed the movie though. I could get into some proper review points like saying who in the cast worked best or praise the action-set pieces, but there’s no point. The product remains consistent in those ways. No Way Home just got the emotion right better than nearly any other MCU movie.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend