The Midnight Sky (2020)

Score: 1.5 / 5

I'm so glad to say George Clooney is back to acting after four years, but I wish it wasn't in this movie. Playing a post-apocalyptic scientist named -- I can't believe I'm typing this -- Augustine Lofthouse, Clooney has elected to remain on a dying Earth after some unidentified crisis in 2049. Yes, the date is a bit too soon, and yes, it brings to mind Blade Runner 2049 along with scores of other ambitious science fiction movies. He discovers that a space station called Aether is on its way back to Earth from scouting out a new planet for humans to inhabit. Determined to stop them and send them back to the new Earth, Augustine can't get his radio signal to work properly, so he is forced to find a better means of communication. Despite Augustine trekking across the Arctic with only a little girl for company -- little Iris, bless her, is mute and just not the best conversationalist -- the movie never really feels very urgent on this front. Sometimes technically impressive, and with the bones of a decent survival thriller, but bloodless and trite in practice.

Thankfully, there's a parallel story happening on board the Aether. Led by a pregnant Felicity Jones (I think they all had character names, but I didn't catch or retain any) and her partner David Oyelowo, the team including Tiffany Boone, Demian Bichir, and Kyle Chandler have to navigate their way home despite several obstacles that, oddly, mirror the threats faced by Augustine. The hint of horror, though, apart from drifting away into space or getting smashed by asteroids, is that they do not yet know that Earth is now uninhabitable. Oddly enough, the scenes in space held my interest better than Clooney in the snow, mostly due to the camaraderie of the crew and some excellent cinematography by Martin Ruhe (Hulu's Catch-22 and The American).

Realistic complications of both dire situations are almost nonexistent in this movie, and the new threats often feel as irrelevant as the unnecessary exposition, presented to us in unwelcome and sloppily interspersed flashbacks dripping with sickly sentiment. It's not even really character-driven, making these scenes feel spliced in from another movie altogether. At least, that is, until the climax, when a bizarre twist is revealed in soapy, melodramatic fashion that made me feel irredeemably cheated. I don't know how or why Clooney attached himself as director to this project, but he usually works harder to tell worthwhile stories.

Even the scenes that generated in me the most interest and excitement feel copied from other, better science fiction features, especially in a scene when the astronauts are working outside the Aether and run into an asteroid field. It's got Gravity written all over it, even is Alexandre Desplat's uncommonly overwrought score makes it feel a bit different. Ultimately, I can't help but feel that the film was, at best, a couple interesting ideas that the screenwriting committee decided to string together with facile plot threads. Characters are dull, the action isn't novel, and whatever control over narrative Clooney has is wasted across various focal points that can't integrate. If a movie like this makes you want to watch Interstellar or The Martian or even Titan A.E. instead of considering it on its own, it's not worth a watch. No matter how great the cast list may be.

First Cow (2020)

 Score: 3 / 5

At once a fascinating deconstruction of the foundational problems of capitalism and the sort of pretentious arthouse flick that drives people away from high art, First Cow tries to do a lot of things. It mostly succeeds, I think, as a result of its quiet, gentle delivery. A Western of the most basic sort, it dramatizes a frontier story that is a little absurd, a little familiar, and a little sad. It champions the virtues of brotherly love and lasting friendship for an America that should still be a melting pot and isn't. It uses a very funny heist plot arc in ways that are often less than humorous, choosing instead to focus on literalizing the details of living simply through hard work and ingenuity. And yet, for all this, I found it unbearably boring.

Beginning with a quote from William Blake's "Proverbs of Hell" -- "The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship" -- the film launches into the story of Cookie (John Magaro) and King Lu (Orion Lee), who meet each other in a state of desperation. Cookie, harassed by the fur trappers he travels with, decides to help the naked and frightened Lu, who is hiding in the woods. After another chance encounter, with roles rather reversed, the two men become friends out of circumstance and perhaps out of some natural inclinations for each other. Their friendship is depicted, ultimately, as a basic human need like food and shelter, and one wonders why exactly an entire movie hinges on that less-than revolutionary revelation. Perhaps because it is tied with larger themes.

Somehow, the tone First Cow, handled deftly by director Kelly Reichardt, manages to inject parallel sensations of brutality and nihilism into its primary conceit of pastoral Romanticism. Because of the opening scene, in which a woman and her dog discover two skeletons in close proximity, we suspect the two main characters will die together in the woods. The rest of the movie is just telling us how this happens; for people obsessed with plot, this movie is a definite no-go. Much like this woman, presumably (as she never appears again), we are encouraged to piece together parts of the story, as it is decidedly not filmed in real time. And yet, plot points be damned, we are treated to several sequences of their almost idyllic life together. A favorite sequence depicts Cookie collecting flowers to place in a bottle in their home together, clearly cherishing simple comforts of rustic life.

The movie does indeed move into plotted momentum eventually when the cow of the title arrives in Oregon. It belongs to the Chief Factor (Toby Jones, who of course is doing this weird-ass role in this weird-ass movie) and is apparently the first and only cow in the territory. Interestingly, and in one of the few laugh-out-loud moments, it is often shot as if it were imbued with magic or some fairytale entity come to bestow its gifts on wretched mankind. Cookie (who, I don't think I mentioned before, is a cook) imagines baking goods with the milk from this cow, and so the remainder of the plot unfolds. Rather than taking care of themselves as they are, Cookie and Lu decide to steal the cow's milk to secure a successful, wealthy, secure future we all know they will likely never have. It's the sort of bleak optimism that is seductive to those of us jaded viewers in 2020 America who know it won't end well for the poor folks trying to win a rigged system.

The movie is populated with other odd characters, but none of them matter much in the end. What matters is that eventually the Chief notices his prized cow is not producing much milk, frightening Cookie and Lu so much that they, annoyingly, decide to make "one last" milk-pirating venture. They fail miserably and go on the run. By this point, we know how it will end, and the final act, which should be exciting, proves deadly dull. The movie could easily have been at least thirty minutes shorter and still would have been too lengthy for this viewer. I suppose further viewings might allow me to better appreciate the subtleties of this film, its gentle depictions of eccentric American stories woven around and suffering from the sins of a fledgling nation expanding beyond its healthy boundaries. But it's so bloody boring that I'm not sure I ever want to watch it again unless I need a soporific.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Score: 4.5 / 5

She's back, and not a moment too soon. After being pushed back several times during the pandemic Wonder Woman 1984 became the face of a controversial decision by Warner Brothers to release their feature films for the next year simultaneously in cinemas and digitally on HBO Max. Regardless of the financial repercussions and potential doom for movie theaters (dare we call them old-fashioned?!), I worry most that the streaming service will result in bad viewing experiences for folks at home, safe as they may be there. Case in point: WW84, which has apparently become cool to hate by audiences watching from home. Never mind that they are probably not giving the movie the undivided attention it deserves as they become distracted by talking, bathroom breaks, and cell phones. And, of course, never mind relegating Patty Jenkins's masterful follow-up to her 2017 introduction of the character to a small screen when it screams to be seen in IMAX.

We begin with the sort of prologue that often begins a hero's story, of young Diana competing against her much older Amazon peers on Themyscira. An exciting overview of the gauntlet leads into the child choosing to take a shortcut before approaching the finish. Antiope (Robin Wright) stops her, lecturing her that "no true hero is born from lies." It's the sort of on-the-nose lecture that might induce some eye-rolling at first, reminding us of comparable Disney movie morals. We then jump ahead -- past the first film's origin story -- into, well, 1984, as Diana works in D.C. as an anthropologist at the Smithsonian, moonlighting as a mysterious crime fighter. Because it's the '80s, Gal Gadot looks effing fabulous all the time, and quickly becomes the envy of her new co-worker, Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig doing scene-stealing brilliant work).

Her latest heist-foiling reveals a cache of stolen artifacts including one inscribed with Latin. Anyone who has ever seen a horror movie knows you should not read the Latin, but Diana is an expert in ancient Mediterranean cultures and languages, so she translates the message and inadvertently wishes for her love, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), to return to her. Of course, the artifact is really the Dreamstone -- an item created by the "god of lies" or Duke of Deception as known in the DC comics, originally working for Ares -- which has, Diana later learns, caused the collapse of several now-extinct civilizations.

And grant wishes it does. Steve's spirit returns, taking over the body of an unsuspecting stranger before seeking out his long-lost love. Meanwhile, overlooked and ignored Barbara wishes to be like Diana, unwittingly also gaining her superhuman speed and strength. Failing businessman Max Lord (Pedro Pascal in his best performance to date) has been seeking the stone -- how he knows about it remains a mystery, but people crazed with desperation do tend to find what they seek, no? -- and seduces Barbara to gain access to it. The problem with the Dreamstone is that it gives, yes, but also takes. In exchange for getting her lover back, Diana's powers weaken. In exchange for becoming like Diana, Barbara starts to lose her humanity, evidenced most clearly in a chilling scene on the streets when she attacks a man who had previously attacked her.

At one point, Steve Trevor refers to the Dreamstone as a Monkey's Paw, referencing the famous W.W. Jacobs short story from 1902 (an apt reference for the WWI spy and pilot). That comparison is dubious at best, as the fictional paw doesn't take so much as ironically twist the wishes it grants. The Dreamstone indeed takes, and that seems to be a result of its design to destroy entire cultures. Nothing exemplifies the corruption at the heart of '80s materialism and the American Dream of capitalist success as Max Lord, who wishes to become the living embodiment of the Dreamstone. Any child on a playground who would use a single wish to ask for infinite wishes can relate. As the stone dissolves and gets absorbed into Max, it becomes more like a Pandora's Box than a monkey's paw, though it fittingly takes Max's bodily health. His body is not his own, you might say.

From this point to the climax, the film does flirt with incoherency between its focal points and numerous unseen plot developments as Max gets people to make wishes en masse, feeding their greed and ambition while causing unbelievable chaos to society. But it's a narrative choice I found fitting, given the dangerous and compromised central plot device. Speaking of which, Jenkins's screenplay does some truly remarkable things: even amidst her use of cliché and almost metafictional references to the superhero genre, making the film more than once appear to be an exceptionally beautiful comic book brought to vivid life, she surprises us with genuinely progressive storytelling. Take her MacGuffin, the Dreamstone itself, which disappears halfway through the movie into her primary villain who reveals the real problem is greed, not the magical ability to grant wishes. Take Barbara, the sort of villain who isn't, whose incredible development rivals that of Killmonger in Black Panther. Or Max himself, who in his final scenes becomes an equally complex and beautifully redeemed character. This is highly sophisticated superhero art, and even if some of the minor plot points don't make immediate sense, I trust that Jenkins and her team understand their own work better than I did after a single viewing.

That's not to say I liked this more than the original. Frankly, nothing compares with the No Man's Land sequence or Diana's infiltration of the German ball. The camaraderie of diverse soldiers that team up with Diana in that movie had some of the best chemistry between men in cinema that year, to say nothing of Lucy Davis as the pitch-perfect sidekick Etta Candy. But Ludendorff, Doctor Poison, and even Ares were laughably shallow villains compared to Max Lord and Cheetah. The brown and grayscale colorscape of World War I can't compare with the vivid beauty of '80s Washington (to say nothing of gorgeous excursions to Cairo and a climactic scene of riotous chaos on Pennsylvania Avenue). And Diana's own character development is intensely internal here; in the first, her black-and-white view of the world is shattered, but in this, the gray areas become a mess that she is forced to simply try and navigate rather than fix. Her learning of the cost of hope, ultimately, is something I found decidedly mature and unexpected as a storytelling choice.

In fact, I had only two problems with this new movie, significant enough to score lower than its predecessor. First, I couldn't take the scene of Diana flying. I mean, what is that? The same scene could have been achieved with her lassoing lightning bolts or just running faster than she ever has, without turning her into a bizarre Superman. Second, I really did not like Barbara's lack of dramatic closure. I trust that Jenkins or the studio have plans in a future installment to continue or rectify that, but for this movie's integrity I would have preferred some conclusion on that front.

But for a gorgeous movie to behold, a personal favorite superhero doing classic work, dazzling escapism and fantastic drama, and some shockingly timely thematic concerns that manifest in two of the best cinematic supervillains ever, Wonder Woman 1984 has solidified its place among my favorite genre movies. I can't wait for the next one.

P.S.: I was fortunate to visit the Watergate Hotel and Pennsylvania Avenue during a weekend in summer of 2018 as the film was shooting. We were allowed on the set to meet the crew and experience the making of "Magic Hour" as it was publicized. I could say a lot about the experience, but relevant to this review is that everything you see on screen during those sequences was real. There are no digital effects to add to the number of people, the period cars, the smoke or chaos. It was a fully practical scene, and the energy and passion exuded were infectious. Seeing it brought to dramatic life on screen -- especially Diana running straight down the street and into the sky -- brought tears to my eyes. That's the magic of movies.

Promising Young Woman (2020)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

A devastating directorial (and feature film screenwriting) debut for Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman might be the most complex and ambitious movie I've seen all year. Aggressively undefinable by genre, it weaves its characters and plot through black comedy to revenge thriller, from coming of age drama to romantic comedy, and it does so effortlessly. I found myself repeatedly laughing aloud and then stifling gasps; sometimes even choking back laughs that weren't going to be welcome in the auditorium at large. It's an emotionally exhausting experience, one that is never less than hilarious or horrifying, sometimes within the same scene.

The opening scene sets things up perfectly. A group of young business men -- the kind who probably left undergrad from frat row within the last few years -- drinking at a bar begin to comment upon a young woman, clearly intoxicated to the point of losing consciousness, sitting alone in a compromising position on a red leather sofa. What begins as a sort of bizarre slut-shaming conversation shifts into them commenting on how pretty she is, and which of them should try to rouse her and hope for more than casual acquaintance. Finally one, the "nice guy" goes over to her and offers to help her leave. They can't find her phone, so he offers to order her pickup vehicle. In the car, his tactics change until he redirects the driver to his own apartment. Is he going to let her sleep on the sofa to make sure she's okay? Maybe, until he sits a little too close and puts his arm around her. Then it's on, and as he removes her panties, she rouses and confronts him, suddenly stone-cold sober and with a devilish glint in her eye. She's going to teach him a lesson about being a predator.

It's a brilliant premise, and the movie delivers time and again as Cassie, the young woman, apparently goes to bars and clubs with alarming frequency to enact the same scenario with other unsuspecting men. Fennell is working from a place of anger, turning it into productively painful scenes of "nice guys" revealing the dark side of sexist objectification and ignorance (willful, of course) of sexual consent. And just as things seem a bit too on-the-nose, Fennell pulls out the rug beneath us for a third-act twist that demolishes our hopes for a romantic comedy and pushes things into hardcore satire that will no doubt alienate some audience members.

But the movie is far more than just a black comedy, and it is held together by a magnificent Carey Mulligan doing some of her best work yet. Cassie is a tough role, one that could have easily been played for camp value, and Mulligan imbues her with so much inner conflict and pain, so much internalized guilt and externalized hatred, that she will, I expect, go on to become an icon of twenty-first century female characters. Mulligan is joined by a surprising but excellent cast firing on all fronts, including sudden scenes with Laverne Cox, Alison Brie, Alfred Molina, Connie Britton, Molly Shannon, Max Greenfield, Jennifer Coolidge, Clancy Brown, and Adam Brody. Everybody kills it, so to speak, following a brilliant supporting performance from Bo Burnham, whose casting in a particularly thankless role here is a stroke of genius.

In case you forget, by the third act twist, that this is all meant to be a bleak and damning comedy, Fennell keeps her visual style relatively light, slathering candy-colored hues across costumes, sets, and makeup. She pumps ironic and catchy tunes through the soundtrack -- I especially loved a sly inclusion of Britney Spears's "Toxic" just before the climax -- to keep us in that sweet spot between comfortable and on edge. And even when the film threatens to skim over real character development, motivation, exposition, or thematic depth, Fennell organically answers our questions, satisfies our sympathetic need for connection, and allows her film to breathe before jumping back into the meat of her thematic odyssey. It's a brilliant work, and I can't wait to see more.

I should note that the only reason I didn't award this movie a full five points is a result of the end. Some may love it, and I certainly like it as it is, but I do wish Cassie had a different conclusion to her own story. To say anything more would spoil it, but if you've seen it, I'd love to hear your thoughts! As vaguely as I can, I guess I just don't see the necessity of her exit strategy, and I think she could have accomplished her endgame without sacrificing too much. But maybe that's exactly the point.

Run (2020)

 Score: 3.5 / 5

The newest entry in the psycho-biddy subgenre, Run is currently only available to stream on Hulu. It's the kind of movie I usually like anyway, even if others find it a little too old-fashioned and predictable. But a movie that works by isolating people, locking them inside and preying on our latent fears about family and trust, hits differently in a year defined by staying at home. It's the second feature for director Aneesh Chaganty, following 2018's Searching, which similarly used a familiar and even trite premise to great effect, slow-burning the plot until its suspense became almost too much to bear. This one works pretty well, too, though the story is anything but novel; here it's all about the acting, and Chaganty's directing abilities if not his writing.

Newcomer Kiera Allen plays Chloe, a high school senior eagerly awaiting acceptance to the University of Washington. Homeschooled and relatively homebound her entire life, she battles no less than five chronic illnesses (described to us in the opening text of the film) from the confines of her wheelchair. Thankfully, she is homeschooled and cared for dutifully by her helicopter mother Diane, played by Sarah Paulson. But when, by accident, Chloe sees a prescription pill bottle with Diane's name on it -- pills that are regularly fed to Chloe -- she begins to wonder if something is wrong. As Diane clearly covers it up (literally, as Chloe later sees the bottle with another label covering up its true addressee), Chloe is increasingly frustrated and scared when her attempts to learn more are met with subterfuge, lies, and even hostility.

Chloe is, in many ways, a sitting duck, and when the internet goes out, she gets desperate to learn what pills she's really taking. Allen proves a fabulously capable actress, carrying the weight of the movie and getting us instantly to recognize and feel the wheels turning in her mind. Despite her reliance on her wheelchair (Allen herself uses a wheelchair, in a rather rare occurrence of disability representation in casting choices), Chloe is forced into serious physical situations that risk and sometimes score bodily injury. Countering her in a psychological cat-and-mouse game is her own mother in the kind of role Paulson does better than any other actress working today. Diane's sickly-sweet demeanor belies a potential for madness simmering beneath the surface. First we wonder if she's a crazy, the sort of "bad mother" that gives undergrad seminars lots of fodder for discussion. Then, and quite quickly, we are only meant to wonder how long it will take for Chloe to rescue herself from her predicament.

There's nothing particularly fresh about the content, but Chaganty keeps the mercifully short running time tight with tension, ratcheting up our anxieties with a calculated cruelty. But the joys of the terribly titled Run mostly belong to its stars, a pair of brilliant actresses at the top of their games. One, a seasoned veteran doing what she does best; the other, a breakthrough leading lady who manages to control and convey each step of emotion through the deadly mystery around her through mostly wordless sequences. Even as the film teeters away from its Hitchcockian premise and into Stephen King spectacle, Chaganty and his stars keep things believable, grounded, spooky, and lots of fun.

Mulan (2020)

 Score: 1.5 / 5

An ungodly waste of resources, Disney's live-action remake of Mulan may make fans of people who just want an escapist action movie. Anyone else is in for a rough ride. One could argue that its classic -- and still surprisingly unique -- narrative needs little fixing up, and that any new adaptation is welcome. That may be, and I found myself occasionally caught up in Niki Caro's new vision. But it constantly flirts with our expectations through references to the 1998 animated masterpiece, and I feel fully justified in unfavorably comparing this flick when it exists as an act of comparison.

On a positive note, this movie is beautiful to watch. The actors are uniformly talented, and Yifei Liu gracefully and absorbingly carries the film as Hua Mulan, the girl who follows an imperial conscription order in her father's place to save his life. Impersonating a man to join the army, she endures the trials of training camp, allowing the film some moments of welcome levity amidst its high stakes. Ultimately, she saves her battalion and then the emperor himself from Bori Khan (Jason Scott Lee) and his Rouran invaders. All characters are dressed in gorgeous costumes that showcase the range of experiences Mulan has to go through to be recognized by men in her culture; from her colorful dress and makeup as she meets with her matchmaker to binding her chest and donning silver armor, her identity and fate are determined by how she presents herself, and this movie draws special attention to her sartorial performance.

My anger with this movie, however, is in its inability to exist apart from its own reliance on the original. While some may be grateful that this remake differs slightly from its animated source material, I'd argue it hews too closely to be imaginative while making superficial changes that challenge its own reason for being. Its filmmakers decided to do away with its musical numbers and its magical characters (such as Mushu and the family ancestors) in order to make the film more realistic and more true to the ancient Chinese legend. I'd love to see that movie. I'd also have loved to see a more or less exact remake of the earlier film. We got neither.

Inexplicably, this film does not hew close to reality, revealing the creators to be untrustworthy by their own rationale. Mulan's fighting is distinctly implausible, as she cartwheels and flips her way around before kicking spears dozens of yards away for killing shots. People catch arrows with their bare hands. A phoenix follows Mulan around and helps her occasionally. And the secondary villain is a witch named Xianniang (Gong Li) who turns into a falcon among other magic tricks. What about any of this, exactly, is realistic? Granted, Xianniang is a pretty interesting character, and her tragic parallel to Mulan's own fight against the imperial patriarchy provides some nice dramatic conflict. But frankly, even with Mushu, this picture would have been more realistic without the witch.

What else is there to say? The film's constant use of familiar music is annoying because it is never satisfying. Don't give us the "Reflection" theme and then never use it -- and no, Christina's revamped cover during the credits doesn't count. Don't give me an instrumental rehashing of "Make a Man" while you're showing me almost the exact same visuals from the animated movie. And while we're talking about unsatisfying, don't do away with Grandmother's lucky cricket and then add a new solider character named Cricket who thinks of himself as a lucky token. What is that?!

If a remake makes you want to watch the original to cleanse your palate, it was unsuccessful. Give me the feminist brilliance of the original without lying to me about your reasons for revamping it. I've liked most of Disney's live action remakes, except Cinderella, but Mulan was a sore disappointment.

Antebellum (2020)

 Score: 4 / 5

It begins with a daring long take as we weave through the field surrounding a Louisiana slave plantation. The costumes and rustic set design appear to be from the mid-nineteenth century, in the titular American antebellum period. In fact, the gorgeous natural lighting, the swaying Spanish moss, and the brutal conditions of the plantation reminded me almost immediately of Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave. Then, in slow motion, a woman flees through the tall grass, chased by slavers on horseback; a closeup of her face as a lasso loops around her neck and she is pulled back, dragged along the ground. It's the sort of unbearably violent thing that will get people riled up, filmed in that beautiful-and-disturbing way that could be exploitative. I wondered what movie I was getting into, and this is just the opening sequence.

Antebellum is a rarity. I went in knowing almost nothing about it, and I think that served me well. Because it's ultimately doing a whole lot in terms of plot and theme, and very little of it is clearly defined. At the end of Act 1, which I'll guess is loosely the first forty minutes or so, the entire movie suddenly changes as the rug is pulled from beneath us. It takes some getting used to, but it's the kind of twist that made M. Night Shyamalan famous, and frankly the twist strongly reminds me of one of his movies in particular (can't say which, or I'll spoil it for you!). Some will see it as gimmicky, but by the end I was struck by just how horrifyingly plausible the entire premise is in our country today.

But I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, because it's too difficult to talk about this movie without starting to give away its secrets. Perhaps it would be better to praise Janelle Monae at this point, because she is magnificent as always. Here she plays Eden, a slave planning to escape, and a dual role as Veronica, a renowned sociologist in the present day. Both are strong women working to assert themselves, but their enemies are closing in. The two characters exist quite separately, and we aren't sure of their connection, if there is any. It's a gamble on the filmmakers' part, and one that will leave some people scratching their heads for a while. Thankfully, cinematographer Pedro Luque works hard to capture lots of detail in his gorgeously framed shots; the gritty, tactile warmth of the plantation and the sleek, modern coolness of a bourgeois home clearly belong in the same movie.

Without giving anything else away, I want to end by saying that the movie juggles a lot. I'm not sure it handles its weighty ideas with any real ideological intention or even much conviction. There are themes, but few morals. Despite its contrived plot and major reveals in the latter half, it hardly manages to feel urgent, much less important. Mostly the movie feels angry. Righteous anger from the last four years (and of course, the last several hundred) is past due, and if more movies were made out of raw passion like this I'd be much more critical. The pain and anger fueling this movie could have serviced any number of concise, coherent meanings, but Antebellum as it is seems content to just express itself. With its brilliant, troubling premise, I am surprised it didn't delve deeper to become something profound.

Ava (2020)

 Score: 3 / 5

Marketed as another thrill-a-minute action movie with spies and assassins for Jessica Chastain to shoot her way through, Ava was a slight disappointment. Not because of the movie itself -- I quite enjoyed it -- but because it wasn't another Atomic Blonde. I've said it before and I'll say it again, but sometimes marketing tactics can really ruin a movie, and this one set us up for an experience totally beyond the scope or purpose of Tate Taylor's latest flick.

In the vein of so many before it, Ava concerns its titular character, a former soldier and recovering addict now working as an assassin. We see her in action right away and notice that, for all her cunning and murderous efficiency, she has a remarkable moral streak. She asks her target if he knows why someone wants him dead, apparently needing some kind of confession or at least acknowledgment before dealing out death. That's not the way a lethal killer should do business, and she's being observed; we correctly suspect that her tenure is nearing an end. Jessica Chastain handles the character beautifully, as usual, and proves that she's as capable in action scenes as she is in high drama.

In fact, part of the reason I so enjoyed this movie is in its focus on Ava's character and relationships. The fighting is nice and all, but the movie soars when Ava faces off against people who are significant to her. Her hospitalized mother (Geena Davis), her sister Judy (Jess Weixler), and Michael (Common), Ava's ex who is now engaged to Judy, feature in only a few scenes but manage to carry immense dramatic weight. John Malkovich plays Duke, Ava's handler and self-professed father figure, who is forced to try and defend her behavior and reputation to his superior, Simon (Colin Farrell).

Actually, the plot is frustratingly straightforward and makes the most sense if you think about genre and not about logic or realism. But the thematic strength of how the film handles addiction is fascinating. Most of the characters are either addicts or recovering, and several times I was struck by the parallels to criminality. These assassins seem to crave risk and secrecy and murder in a way that keeps them trapped in a cycle; it is telling that Ava and Duke met in the military. Even Simon, who appears to be quite wealthy and well-adjusted socially, harbors nasty violent tendencies. Nothing about considering crime in terms of addiction is new, but the actors and director here are making a movie about real people that is thrilling and mysterious and sad. Too often it's the other way around, and the addicts are just used for the plot.

Come for Chastain being badass and looking amazing. Stay for Davis and the rest of the cast doing lovely things. Don't expect much, or expect to be frustrated or disappointed.

Happiest Season (2020)

 Score: 1.5 / 5

Oof. A wildly uncharacteristic misstep for Clea DuVall takes its form in Happiest Season, a Hulu original flick that breaks some ground as one of the first gay-themed Christmas movies. But even that sentence requires some unpacking. This movie, while arguably important simply as a result of its lesbian romance in a genre created and controlled by aggressively heterosexual folks (and overwhelmingly white), still isn't really mainstream. Unless Hulu originals are now mainstream, and now that I've said that, I need a Xanax. Regardless, this movie never ends up feeling like anything but a cheap Hallmark knockoff with a slightly comedic bent as a result of its queer focus. Think I'm being unfair? It's a standard story of someone with a secret and the comedy of errors that occurs as she tries to hide her secret; her secret is her identity, and you can't tell me what results isn't commodifying her exploitation.

Abby (Kristen Stewart) and Harper (Mackenzie Davis) have been dating a year, and Harper spontaneously invites Abby home for Christmas. This happens during the first scene, and let's just be clear about the unbelievably expository screenplay by DuVall and Mary Holland. People don't talk this way, first off, and so the scenes pile up with absurdities and stupidities multiplying until I half expected a band's vamp to play them off the screen like the end of bad comedy club sets. They're self-aware enough to be aware, it seems, that their audience needs information about their lives, but not self-aware enough to know that their behaviors are problematic at best and downright cruel at worst. Cruel, you ask? Cruel, says I.

Abby, you see, hasn't liked Christmas since her parents died (as her partner robotically spells out for us in the aforementioned cringe-worthy scene). Harper invites Abby on a whim, and Abby is determined to use this opportunity of meeting her parents and enjoying the holidays to propose to her girlfriend. En route, ring in the pocket and parcels packed, Harper reveals that she is not out to her parents and has only invited her apparently straight, orphaned roommate for the holidays. As an act of charity. It appeals to her wealthy family because they want to show themselves off as the perfect Americans they are. Victor Garber plays the politician father who is probably conservative even though we never hear about his platform; Mary Steenburgen plays his fastidious wife, obsessed with social appearances and her Instagram feed.

Meanwhile, Harper's siblings enter the picture as the caricatures they are meant to be. Holland plays Harper's younger sister, a stay-at-home neurotic mess who would apparently be an embarrassment to all were she not sweet with her eccentricities. Alison Brie pops in as Harper's elder sister Sloane, trapped in an unhappy and unfaithful marriage but carefully planning a separation so as to keep up appearances. And Aubrey Plaza (the only truly interesting part of the film) graces the proceedings occasionally as Harper's ex, who commiserates with Abby's pain in a series of fascinating and potent scenes. Then again, the always delightful Dan Levy is wasted utterly as Abby's gay best friend, spitting out morals in what is meant to be a humorous fashion. It's as if DuVall keeps smacking us over the head with archetypes, and each time one is introduced she eagerly reminds us to pay attention because she's going to teach us a moral lesson. DuVall, whose own work especially in queer cinema has long been insightful and even crucial to the form, must simply think a gay-ass story about festive lesbians is enough on its own merit.

I don't even like saying I don't like this movie because it is a vanguard into the religiously hetero genre of holiday fare. If we had more of its ilk, I'd cast this trash aside faster than a reindeer flying. As it is, I watch its insultingly simplistic worldview eke out of the screen in bland production design with generic red, green, and gold trimmings, in dull and absurd conversations between self-absorbed jerks, and a relative lack of joy that denies the movie's titular reason for existence.

The Personal History of David Copperfield (2020)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

This is the way Dickens should always be done.

First: It's unexpected. Sure, a realistic period piece is good now and again, but if we wanted to slog through messy class hierarchies and a comedy of manners in Victorian social strictures, we could just read the book. I personally find Dickens torturous to read, his prose jokingly turns on itself, repeating ideas and phrases ad nauseam, literalizing everything to the point where even the stories themselves feel farcical. While we can applaud the man for giving us some of the most iconic, grotesque characters in Western literature -- indeed, the entire Dickensian low-Gothic subgenre, as I consider his legacy -- I just can't stand his wretched prose. But director Armando Iannucci has here revitalized it into the comic brilliance it is, at its core. Not unlike adding vaudevillian music to Oliver Twist and creating the perennial theatrical favorite, this adaptation injects color and humor and style into a tired old story that, otherwise, would simply have no life left to it.

Second: It's delightful. Cutting out the boring, prosaic heft of Dickens's text, Iannucci and his co-writer Simon Blackwell here carve out only the crucial nuggets of story. Using incredible visual shorthand to convey loads of information to us, they have utterly stripped bare the classic and rebuilt it with every intention to cater artistically to an unfamiliar audience (and even a jaded one). Vibrant colors and fabrics adorn likeable, talented stars. Gorgeous and expansive production design immerse us in a grounded but fabulous world. I'd liken this closely to this year's Emma., which preys on similar aesthetic desires for hilariously awkward, densely colorful stylizations. Editing follows deliberately broken, theatrical logic much as it did in Joe Wright's Anna Karenina (2012), here perhaps all the more successful as a result of connected themes of creation and artistry. Copperfield, after all, like an actor, is a man who goes by many names hoping to become a successful artist.

Third: It literalizes themes I only grasped tangentially in the novel. Making Copperfield the actual narrator of his own story -- in the beginning, speaking his life to an audience before turning and witnessing his own birth upstage -- before revealing that his own life story becomes his first major work of literature is a beautiful way to frame discussions of memory and art, imagination and recollection, and how the ways we tell stories sometimes matter more than the stories. Creativity and creation go hand-in-hand for these characters, much as they do for the production crew of this piece, and in a year of impoverished artists and audiences, we would do well to remind ourselves of the joys inherent in silly theatricality.

Finally: This might be the first movie based on a classic work of Western literature I've ever seen that features truly colorblind casting. Well, except Disney's 1997 Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella. And while I'm sure there was some small intentionality involved, I found myself wondering time and again when race or ethnicity would become an unexpected part of the story or theme or characterization. And it never does. It's amazing. It's almost like a community theatre production that casts whoever is right for the part instead of making any statements about it. It's brilliant. This is pure, unadulterated British filmmaking that uses BBC regulars like Peter Capaldi and Hugh Laurie next to such dynamic stars as Tilda Swinton and Dev Patel. Benedict Wong and Rosalind Eleazar are the Wickfields, and that tells you all you need to know. Brilliant.

A Rainy Day in New York (2020)

 Score: 0.5 / 5

Woody Allen's latest flick (well, the most recently released to mass audiences) is, for me, among his most disappointing. He rarely wins me over completely, and I tend to scorn the most beloved entries in his filmography. But A Rainy Day in New York is unbearably vapid, the sort of mindless and joyless bilge he prolifically churns out once every two or three years for no discernible reason other than slapping his name on something.

The story is the same as any other bloodless rom-com: a young college couple go to New York City to spend a weekend together. One has an interview booked with a famous filmmaker, the other is tagging along hoping to make the weekend especially romantic. Through misadventures and miscommunication, the two drift apart and have to come to terms with their burgeoning incompatibility. There's nothing new or special about it, and though Allen has handled trashy material like this before, here he seems completely incapable of finding or doing anything interesting with it.

Timothée Chalamet appears to do his best Woody Allen impression -- as all Allen leading men do (or are forced to do) when the director himself stays off screen -- stammering through his uppity turns of phrase as a character named, no joke, Gatsby Welles. If his affected acting doesn't bother you, the privileged and directionless character he plays will. Gatsby wants to charm his girlfriend and plans drinks and museum trips with the money he won playing poker; her unexpectedly busy schedule unhappily gives him some free time, which he uses to meet his awful brother and his fiancee, and Selena Gomez (playing some girl, but really it's just Selena) who is the younger sister of a former girlfriend and with whom he has harbored a mutual crush. Grossed out yet? Hang on to something, because by the "climax" of the flick, he feels inspired to crash his domineering socialite mother (Cherry Jones) while accompanied by a sex worker.

His girlfriend Ashleigh, played by the usually winning Elle Fanning, is a daring but dewy-eyed flake of a person, ditsy when she should be in control. Meeting the morose filmmaker (Liev Schrieber) and his collaborator (Jude Law), she makes an impression on them that feels creepier than it should be, in light of the #MeToo controversies surrounding its production and distribution. By the time she meets a famous actor (Diego Luna), we're keenly aware her future with Gatsby is in jeopardy, and for good reasons. But having so many attractive men fawn over her only makes her more incomprehensible. Then again, the end of the film ends more happily for Gatsby than Ashleigh, arguably, and so whatever might have empowered her character is utterly stripped from her by Allen, who by this point is revealed to be the self-servicing worm we suspected at the start of the movie.

The only decent things about this movie are as follows: Diego Luna is really pretty, Cherry Jones is always a pleasure to watch work (and she is given one pretty solid scene to shine through), and Vittorio Storaro's cinematography is quite lovely to experience. He makes the movie feel dreamlike and romantic in the way classic Hollywood romances were. Too bad Allen had to ruin it all with terrible direction and a musty waste of a screenplay.

Let Them All Talk (2020)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

Let Them All Talk is an oddly prescient film in several ways. Filmed over two weeks with an impossibly skimpy budget -- Meryl Streep has gone on the record saying she was paid twenty-five cents for her performance -- its production is an act of sheer rebellion, really more an experimental performance art piece than a proper movie. Its cast of, what, seven or eight people performed with key moments scripted, but most of their dialogue was, supposedly, improvised. Director Steven Soderbergh himself served also as cinematographer and editor. There is no costumer or makeup artist, as the actors dressed themselves, no special effects, no set or production design. The film was shot aboard the RMS Queen Mary 2 using totally natural (or, at least, natural to the ocean liner) light. Other than his camera, Soderbergh reportedly only used sound equipment. 

Apart from it taking place on an ocean liner (thankfully not a cruise ship), the movie's tiny crew, cast, and budget might suggest a way forward for studios and indie filmmakers hurting after a year with COVID.

There's a lot to unpack here, but we should start with what story there is. Plot, in this product, seems to have been inspired by Deborah Eisenberg at the outset, forgotten about during filming, and then revisited during the editing stage. Alice Hughes (Streep) is a Pultizer-winning novelist working on a new book, which many people suspect might be a follow up to her most famous book published decades earlier. Upon learning she is receiving a prestigious award in the UK, she books tickets on the QM2 for herself, her nephew Tyler (Lucas Hedges), and her two university friends Roberta (Candice Bergen) and Susan (Dianne Wiest). Alice and her old chums have fallen out of touch, and their invitation comes as a mild surprise to all. But Alice's success as a writer has in fact damaged her relationships, and as her motives are unknown to all, the characters meet for a trip that will change their lives. Or, rather, that might. We don't really know. Rather unlike most of Soderbergh's plot-heavy projects, here he truly does "let them all talk", apparently hoping to make something of it. And, because he's him, he does.

Leisurely and soporific, this movie will not please everyone. Despite amazing performances from all cast members -- even a strange role for Gemma Chan as Alice's agent, who is secretly tailing Alice for news on her new manuscript -- the real star of this movie could be said to be the ship itself. Each scene takes place somewhere new on the boat, showcasing it for its glory and beauty even as we start to feel, like the characters, more and more constrained and trapped. It's not a claustrophobic sensation, but one in which the artifice offers only limited comfort, and the sweeping vistas of tranquil blue sea and sky belie the frustrating interpersonal cat-and-mouse games amidships. For all the calming colors and first-class elegance, Alice is having trouble overcoming her writer's block. Susan, a Seattle lawyer for domestic abuse cases, is happy to be on vacation; Roberta, a Dallas retail worker selling lingerie in a department store, is desperate to meet a wealthy, handsome stranger. The central dynamic here, though, is the slowly revealed resentment between the women: Roberta feels that Alice pirated her life story, turning it into fame and fortune for her own uses before leaving her friends in the dust. Could this voyage be a place to right that wrong, or a way for Alice to collect material for her sequel?

My favorite scene takes place during a public talk Alice gives on the ship. In a darkened theatre, Alice discusses her work in heightened language, describing quality literature (arguably discussing her own by proxy) as a sort of spiritual realm where writers and readers can commune; the camera cuts suddenly from a glowing view of an "iconic" Alice to her trio of guests in the dark, who are clearly aware that she in fact betrayed Roberta's trust and preyed on her for professional sustenance. They've already discussed amongst themselves that Alice sounds different and talks differently than she did in university; of course, we all change over time, but they mean that she thinks more highly of herself, and is putting on an artistic act, perhaps to feel worthy of her fame. Her act is shown for what it is when another passenger on the ship appears: a prolific, famous, rich writer of genre books named Kelvin Kranz introduces himself to Alice and the others. The ladies very much admire him, but Alice considers his work to be "Styrofoam" and akin to "jigsaw puzzles" in structure. It's all about the creation of stories, and Soderbergh himself is a third counterpoint to Alice and Kelvin.

This distinction is easy to grasp, and the ironies start to multiply; Soderbergh works hard to literalize the paradoxes, though, and his own multiple names on the crew list may be justified by this thematic concern, as we've discussed in his visual approach here. What plot he assembled in the cutting room may be understated to a fault, it is also as psychologically complex as a slow-burning puzzle and only really works because we fully understand each character in play. We don't fully understand Alice, and in fact we cannot help but judge her multiple times and ways over the course of the film. While she is arguably the protagonist, we are only within her perspective briefly near the end, and it is frankly a baffling sequence the movie would have done well to cut. We never really understand the motives of anyone, their goals, their reservations, their resentments. We never know the subject of Alice's new book. We never learn the full history of these women, or really anything about Tyler. In fact, one might say the characters only exist in any "real" way inasmuch as they interact with each other. Their relationships are the edges of puzzle pieces, and the movie traces those as it puts them together.

And isn't that just how a cruise goes? In any conference center or theatre or ocean liner (or Downton Abbey, for that matter), the "backstage" is meant to be invisible. The interior, the secret mechanism, the truth of functionality is that which is hidden, that which once seen disturbs the fantasy. I thought of this during the one scene when someone -- Alice, of all people -- wanders into a service corridor, where she is promptly escorted out by a staff member. She has wandered into a rare space that is not her own, and its coolly professional workaround stands in stark contrast to the messy relationship she created with her friends. Unfortunately, there's not much to be done about it by her or by us. Soderbergh seems content to just let them all talk, even if it's not anything you can really talk about.

The Prom (2020)

 Score: 5 / 5

The most rousing musical comedy in at least five years has arrived to save us from 2020!

When four washed-up actors on Broadway decide to become relevant again, they naturally take to Twitter to determine a cause worthy of their beneficence. Upon discovering that a rural PTA cancelled prom in protest of a lesbian girl named Emma requesting attendance, they gather their glamor and descend upon a small town in Indiana. Intent on starting a fight for tolerance, they are dismayed that the locals don't appreciate their "zazz" and end up making things worse for Emma. It's not exactly a new tale, and nothing about it is meant to be particularly fresh. But a timeless story is here remade in high fashion with genuine heart, making The Prom one of the best movies of this wretched year.

Ryan Murphy (God's gift to the gays, or perhaps vice versa) helms this prestigious film adapted from the recent Broadway musical by the same writers. It's certainly apparent he's learned a lot since his Glee days, and here the high school musical vibes are less frenetic and more fantastic; that's to say nothing negative about his earlier groundbreaking series, just that he's not recycling old tricks. Murphy's work here reminds me of some other movies that have magnified or even changed the scope and aesthetic of their corresponding stage shows (specifically thinking of Chicago) in that he's not really changing much -- and actually keeping a surprising amount of source material intact -- just adding flair and fantasy elements to heighten the experience. He seems to take his aesthetic inspiration here from recent movie musicals Burlesque and The Greatest Showman in terms of pace, glitter, lights, and emotional beats.

And the show itself is damn good, for having appeared quite suddenly in 2018 on the Great White Way and not doing all that great in only ten months. It's a classic, and not in the oxymoronic "instant classic" sense; it follows the lead of feel-good musical comedies of Charles Strouse or Menken and Ashman, repurposing standard songs (jazz, tango, chorus, anthem) and mashing them into a vaudevillian pastiche. Yes, I'm thinking of Hairspray. Music aside, the story sounds horribly kitsch if you simply describe it, and we (I mean I) tend to feel jaded when confronted with something so beautifully and effectively simple.

Its beguiling good humor and incredibly fast sensibility, though, almost immediately allayed my initial skepticism. The movie is in the best possible hands, and its cast fully commits as much as its production team. Meryl Streep is her usual, impossibly brilliant self, and manages somehow to be even more interesting in the still, quiet moments than in her fiery songs and dance breaks. Nicole Kidman reminds us all that she hasn't aged in decades and deserves so much more spotlight than she ever gets due to her immense talents of voice and body. Andrew Rannells and Keegan-Michael Key (how ridiculously handsome are they?) each deliver slightly understated supporting performances that still steal their respective scenes, and even Kerry Washington has fun and sounds great in her brief moments. James Corden, whatever the gays might say, nails this performance and proves for the first time in many years that he is actually a very talented actor as well as singer.

And then there's the two young women at the emotional heart of this movie and each delivers above and beyond, remarkable in a film with so many huge names. And while I might wish the story were more nuanced and complicated, and that some of the songs hadn't been shortened for time, The Prom is everything we could have wanted and more. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if future (read: post-pandemic) productions of The Prom take primary inspiration from Murphy's movie. This is the candy-colored, flame and flair, razzle-dazzled, glorious kind of movie musical we all want, and it's the kind we all need right now.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

 Score: 5 / 5

"The whole world is watching!"

Aaron Sorkin's latest movie is an astounding project, on par with so many of his pieces in terms of wit, beauty, and urgency. It is also, now, very possibly my favorite of his films (closely contending with Steve Jobs) simply as a result of its massive scope and thrilling timeliness. Manifesting the best of his work, The Trial of the Chicago 7 teaches as it dramatizes, assembling an amazing cast and letting each major player have glorious moments in the spotlight, and cuts through difficult ideological and historical complexities even as it entertains. Molly's Game was a solid directorial debut, but here is Sorkin at his finest, both as writer and burgeoning director, and it deserved so much more than a Netflix premiere.

The film's prologue features stock news footage from the '60s, quickly and efficiently painting the scene: the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and King, President Johnson increasing the draft for an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam, and the looming Democratic National Convention in Chicago to find a successor to JFK, as Johnson would not campaign again. These scenes are interspersed with the main characters of our story, eight young men leading or representing various liberal factions, as they prepare to head to the Windy City to participate in the convention. We suddenly skip to five months later, when all eight have been arrested for conspiracy to incite rioting. Which, of course, happened in August 1968.

Apart from these eight central characters, we're quickly introduced to their legal counsel, including Joseph Gordon-Levitt as lead prosecutor and Mark Rylance as attorney for seven of the eight defendants. The film, as you might have guessed, closely follows the trial and highlights the absurd length of time taken to determine justice; justice, unfortunately, is not the goal here, and it is often repeated that the publicly scrutinized trial is a political farce. Sorkin seems hell-bent to paint it in all its complex enormity but without too much razzle-dazzle we might expect from a Chicago courtroom musical. At key points, he allows flashbacks so that we can see the various outbreaks of violence that comprised the convention protests and riots; it is in these scenes that we see perhaps most clearly the urgency of Sorkin's screenplay, as the corrupt police force engages in brutal and illegal behaviors against the protestors.

Indeed, the timeliness of this film was surely why it was released when it was, on Netflix in mid-October, just as bills against protests gain support in various legislatures and the country was on the brink of its most important election in many years. The incredible Frank Langella graces the screen as the villainous judge Julius Hoffman, the kind of juicy role he always deserves and rarely gets, a Trumpian character at once terrifying and eminently watchable; he is only clearly evil in the moments when his incompetence fractures. And, given the turmoil of the DNC in 2016, our political climate is definitely ready to revisit this most infamous of debacles in popular sovereignty.

All the actors are giving masterclasses here, all the more so because they are actively supporting each other in this massive movie. Sorkin displays his incomparable ability to make even frantic, emotionally charged, intellectually intricate dialogue sound beautiful, but he also caters dialogue to the characters he's created. Even if it's at times weird that the "Yippies" (played by a delightful Jeremy Strong and Sacha Baron Cohen, who I liked for the first time in a movie) speak in such a polished manner, the actors uniformly make Sorkin's instantly recognizable style palatable and believable. Mark Rylance deserves perhaps the most credit, as he allows brief pauses each time before he speaks, allowing us to believe his lines are actually not scripted.

The beats pile up quickly, and it's hard sometimes to gauge where the facts morph into fiction. But, while he is attempting to teach us parts of history, Sorkin is more interested in the ideas and feelings involved for us in 2020. So even if he doesn't get all the facts exactly right, the sensation of the story he's telling is no less harrowing for its dramatization. More importantly, it's not really trying to teach us any clear moral lesson, a tendency Sorkin often flirts with; rather, he's showing us the dangerous theatricality in the courtroom and the internal war the U.S. government waged on its own citizens, and one key way that war was handled by some of the most outspoken, irreverent, and idealistic young people of the times. It's a story for us, for now, and in that, it is one of the best movies this year.

Greyhound (2020)

 Score: 2.5 / 5

I'm a sucker for war movies, and the latest in that vein was meant to be released theatrically. It became one of the first major pictures to be released during the pandemic digitally, and frankly I think audiences are a bit handicapped when it comes to appreciating something clearly designed to be experienced on a large screen with surround sound. And yet its incredibly short running time and streamlined narrative probably work better for people streaming stories into their living rooms, and so Greyhound may prove more popular at large than it was with me.

Tom Hanks, who has repeatedly proven himself Hollywood's most prolific and intelligent WWII historian, stars as his typical American hero; that is, the kind of humble everyman whose perseverance and wisdom and hope make him a hero. Here, he plays Commander Ernest Krause, leading a convoy of thirty-something ships from America to England. His warship, the one codenamed "Greyhound," is an escort, and the movie begins when they enter the "Black Pit", an area in the middle Atlantic where the ships are too remote to be assisted by Allied planes. This is Krause's first wartime command, and despite his obvious qualification, Hanks shows us the anxiety and determination his character without "doing" much of anything. Hanks has long been a master of acting shorthand, and it helps that he often plays the same type of character. We won't tire of it, yet, because heaven knows we need more encouraging images of heroes who don't wear capes or tights in this ago of bloated superhero flicks.

But this is no character drama, and the entire movie rotates on its plot, a series of cat-and-mouse chases and skirmishes that effectively encapsulate the Battle of the Atlantic, a war-long effort between German U-boats and Allied forces that has rarely been dramatized on screen. This partly may be because there weren't climactic points to this conflict, as it was more of an open wound, hemorrhaging thousands of lives; it is also surely because until recently, movie technology just couldn't accommodate war movies about submarines in a dynamic way.

Inasmuch as he can, Hanks -- also the writer here -- shows off his understanding of the language of the time, working hard to include as many naval terms and period soldierly jargon as he can. In fact, I'd bet someone in the navy (especially someone who served in the world war or shortly thereafter) would appreciate the authenticity of this verbal world Hanks has crafted far more than a layperson like myself. But, as the film never quite dives into the character of Krause, or indeed any character, and focuses so much on the technical aspects of maritime warfare, we start to appreciate the streamlined quality in a way we might like a History Channel documentary. The problem with this is that the onus of the film must then be placed on plot or spectacle, neither of which the film gets quite right.

Repetitive in a not-quite entertaining way, the grayscale shots of churning ocean waves littered with battleships and periscopes only rarely manage to arrest our visual attention, even as things quickly heat up between explosive conflicts. Swooping camera flybys barely allow us a clear picture of what exactly is happening on the open seas, which may be a valid storytelling choice but does not carry aesthetic heft. As the droning score and monochromatic images continue, and the paranoia of what may be just under the water's edge keeps us frantically looking at the horizon, I wondered if the film is in fact hampered by its own technical prowess. Wouldn't this story have been better served intimately, claustrophobically, without the bird's-eye views that give us frequent breaths of air and effectively distance us from the drama? Then again, "story" is a stretch here, and the movie's economy of time pushes it through the fight to the end, when we realize we were pleasantly distracted but never really moved.

Hillbilly Elegy (2020)

Score: 3 / 5

One of the most polarizing books of the decade, J.D. Vance's memoir Hillbilly Elegy was published the summer before the 2016 election and gained surprising momentum when it became apparent Donald Trump would step into the presidency. Book clubs ate it up and it was added to syllabi in classrooms and seminars all over the country; it hit the top of the New York Times bestseller list in August of that year, and again in January. Many people took it as a gospel account of how and why poorer, working-class white people came out in droves to vote red, and exactly how powerful the invisible masses of Rust Belt Americana could be, given proper motivation. It seemed to explain a culture alien to large areas of the continental U.S. in ways that slyly slid around more clearly controversial topics like race and shied away from definitive political ideology. And in its seductive pathos, it raised more than a few hackles from Appalachians; in its alluring ethos, it inspired ire and scorn from those disillusioned by its championing of the American Dream.

How do you turn a book like this into a film? Well, first you hire a director known for tackling controversial topics like The Da Vinci Code and who has carved a place for himself as a strong and prolific "American" filmmaker; it helps that Ron Howard's introduction to popular culture came through the Andy Griffith Show. Then you hire Vanessa Taylor as a screenwriter whose brief list of accomplished work is gobsmackingly varied (Hope Springs, Aladdin, The Shape of Water, and Game of Thrones). Finally, you cast two of the biggest names in acting to lead the film in roles that, to a reader, might be a tad surprising as main characters.

The memoir primarily works, as you might guess, as an elegy: it paints a picture of a dying or even dead Appalachia, autopsying it to analyze social rot, and generally condemning a region for not saving itself even as Vance mourns the circumstances that brought his family and friends low. Debates rage about the author's use of circular logic, his dubious claims of authority in making his conclusions, and his gross use of broad generalizations based on limited and fairly privileged personal experience. But I don't want to spend too much time critiquing the book here, because the movie ultimately doesn't share a lot of what makes the book so damned controversial.

Indeed, Howard and Taylor have adapted Hillbilly Elegy in ways that, while not necessarily surprising in terms of narrative, definitely change the rhetorical impact on its audience. Cutting out many of Vance's masturbatory passages describing his feelings about everything from chicken decapitation to Japanese crotch rockets, the film takes as its focus the journey that young, precocious JD (I'll refer to JD as the dramatized character, Vance as the real-life author) undergoes. Yes, this is a bildungsroman in the worst way, and we can scarcely deny the power of poverty porn in contemporary storytelling. We are all guilty of indulging to some extent, and JD's journey from a muddy swimming hole in Kentucky through decaying Ohio suburbs and finally to the pristine halls of Yale can quietly win over even the most guarded viewer.

This may be partly due to the eminent wonder of our two leading women, both of whom are popularly recognized for their socially and politically left-leaning work. Amy Adams, increasingly playing nuanced and thankless roles to magnificent effect, plays Bev, JD's mother, who would sound like a shoehorned welfare queen trope if I described her. Bev's drug abuse has made her an unreliable and ineffective mother, despite her strong beliefs about family duty and loyalty; no matter how old JD gets, his mother will constantly haunt his steps, invariably drawing his mind to the dangers awaiting him if he does not overcome his past. An almost unrecognizable Glenn Close, on the other hand, plays Mamaw, JD's maternal grandmother, letting out her full acting powers on a character that appears to be a caricature to anyone not familiar with Appalachian culture; those of us with experience will recognize the character immediately, and Close's powerhouse performance can then be seen as the force of nature it is. Without sacrificing her beliefs or values, Mamaw has almost single-handedly taken it upon herself to make life better for her grandchildren, raising them far from their ancestral home and instilling values to help them succeed in a world that would otherwise ignore their existence.

In case you couldn't tell, this movie is almost impossible to discuss without bearing lots of personal baggage, but decrying it without seeing it -- without trying to understand what it's doing -- is intellectually lazy and, I'd argue, deeply damaging to the art and the people it purports to represent. I've seen countless people call this movie offensive and inaccurate because that's what they've heard about the book. This movie is not the book. The closest it comes is in its plot, writ large, which dramatizes the sort of "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" upward climb that comprises the American Dream. And while that is of course a dangerous story to praise, I do think this movie invites more complex discussions about why the American Dream myth is problematic than we've had, culturally, in many years.

My major takeaways from the film were two amazing performances of characters so rarely seen in movies, a story of two amazing women and their impact on a troubled young man, and the stereotypically inspiring story of what you can do to better your life and the lives of your family if you have the opportunity. Its sense of place is authentic and infectious. Its sense of hope and trauma and joy and sorrow is more or less universal, even if the specifics sorely limit its actual scope. The film, wisely, avoids making any sweeping statements about the political or social makeup of impoverished Rust Belt blue-collar Republicans; in avoiding these troubling tendencies by Vance, Howard and Taylor have nonverbally and gracefully dismissed many of his published conclusions.

I would have preferred this film, however, to more actively engage the inherent absurdity of some of the elements it dramatizes. This may have given the film a clearer aesthetic and given it a purpose for existing (beyond being a Hallmark-level emotional journey from family trauma to self-help). Often during the film, I felt the urge to guffaw or even laugh aloud, but choked it down, feeling that it would be inappropriate of me, though I spent the formative years of my young adulthood in southern West Virginia and knew full well what was so funny and relatable about the portrayed drama. Like other movies about such a specific demographic, it can be difficult to know when, as an audience, we are appropriating their humor or appreciating it, laughing with them or laughing at them. My mind immediately goes to Lee Daniels's Precious or the transgressive works of John Waters, the kind of postmodern gothic that flirts with exploitation even as it revels in its unique power. That aesthetic would have been a more fascinating approach, for me, carrying more ideological possibilities and complexity.

Relic (2020)

Score: 4.5 / 5

The camera slowly zooms in on an urn, illuminated on a mantel by pulsing multicolored lights. Death has visited this house before we know anything about it, and not even the nostalgic, warm glow of Christmas can deny the macabre chill we feel right away. Suddenly cutting to half a year later, we learn through exposition that the urn contains the ashes of Edna's husband. The elderly widow recently disappeared from her remote country home in Australia, so we join her daughter Kay and granddaughter Sam as they travel from Melbourne to the home. The house is locked from the inside, but there's no sign of granny here; the camera lingers over dusty household artifacts, a stained-glass window, waxy residue from Edna's candle making, relics of her life that seem to be housed in a dusty, tenebrous museum.

The first act of Relic works incredibly hard and indelibly well at evoking foreboding, an aesthetic choice increasingly popular in horror movies these days. The thick atmosphere of this Gothic house serves as a grim backdrop to the family drama that is all too familiar. Edna appears to be suffering from dementia. Sticky notes litter the house with sometimes functional, sometimes cryptic notes: one demands, "DON'T FOLLOW IT" a la Amityville, and it proves the apparent bewilderment of a disintegrating mind. Kay tells the police about the prior Christmas when Edna flooded the house, about lapses in memory, about the hoarding in her bedroom; the police search the woods and find nothing. Meanwhile, Kay is disturbed by the bowl of rotting fruit on the table and the spots of black mold all over the house.

When Edna suddenly appears in the kitchen, the movie shifts from a chilly creeper to a slow burn. The dynamics of these leading women propel us through act two: the three generations living under the same roof reveal certain strains and affections that are not always what we expect. Edna (Robyn Nevin) was clearly a proud and strong woman -- still is, at least emotionally -- and it seems to have somewhat alienated her daughter Kay (Emily Mortimer) even as it has endeared the distanced and less scarred Sam (Bella Heathcote). Concerned for Edna's well-being, Kay and Sam elect to stay for a time, even as it already apparent to us that Edna needs to be placed in assisted living. Kay must know better though, and even looking at potential new homes for her mother is exhausting and apparently shameful. She's in for a long, tough trial of willpower. Anyone who has lived with or cared for someone with dementia or Alzheimer's knows, and will surely connect instantly with this movie's shorthand for the deeply troubling issues that ensue. For example, Edna seems occasionally frightened, saying the house seems larger and unfamiliar since her husband's death, exactly the sensation described by many a widow or widower.

Of course, being a horror movie, the real horror is buttressed and contrasted with a secondary horror, and it is around the halfway mark that we realize there may be a more sentient malevolence in this house than dementia. What's endlessly fascinating about Relic, though, is the lengths to which it refuses to give solid answers or explanations about the supernatural elements at work here, or even if anything paranormal is happening at all. First-time feature film director Natalie Erika James increasingly allows for the weird to happen, but there's no concrete evidence for any of it; paired as it is with a story of mental illness and aging, the film staunchly frustrates arguments to define the haunting. She suggests a demonic or ghostly presence, even showing it once quite clearly, even as our perspective begins to warp like Edna's has. By the third act, we are as lost as the three women in the labyrinthine hallways of this house that grows and shrinks, twists and turns beyond rationality, time, or space.

Is it real? Definitely, if by "real" we mean consequential for the characters and for our own experience. An inciting incident is teased at one point, suggesting that an unhinged great-grandfather's cottage on the property may have transferred madness (or more literal demons) to the house via the stained-glass window; I took this to symbolize the past returning to haunt the present rather than a portal for spirits, but I suppose that's up for interpretation. The problem is that if you want to lean into the ghostly side of things, you'll wind up horribly frustrated. Though James -- no doubt influenced by her Japanese heritage -- leans heavily into J-horror tropes of a rotting house and sickly, pallid bodies in a shadowy void, there are precious few scares until the surprisingly violent climax of this movie. The plot never really amounts to much here, but the character drama spins suddenly into psychological horror when the house comes alive, more or less claiming what is left of Edna and turning the finale into a home invasion thriller that had a baby with spiritual possession.

It might be difficult to swallow on purely psychological terms, but emotionally, even the finale feeds into the allegory, spectacularly dramatizing the violence and cruelty these degenerative mental illnesses cause on those we love the most. And somewhere between the emotional gut-punches, uncompromisingly beautiful and cerebral aesthetic, and downright terrifying revelations, Relic is one of the most surprising and satisfying movies this year. Hopefully it manages to reach a wider market -- it helps, surely, that Jake Gyllenhaal and the Russo brothers produced it -- so that James can make more amazing movies!