Salem's Lot (2024)

Score: 3.5 / 5

After an interminable wait from Warner Bros., the feature film adaptation of Salem's Lot finally arrived in time for spooky season! Stephen King's second published novel is one of my favorites in his extraordinary body of work; a rural American version of Dracula, its length includes about as much vampiric horror as the horror of the dissolution of social ties in a small isolated town. Typical of much of King's work, the threat of real people in unreal circumstances brings out the worst in almost everyone, and this story is no exception. It's been adapted twice before to miniseries, one in 1979 and one in 2004, both of which I thoroughly enjoy, though neither is particularly "scary," which has led to some less-than-warm reception of each.

Gary Dauberman's ambitious new adaptation, then, had to do an awful lot of work in not an awful lot of time. If the main horror of the material is in a small town cannibalizing itself socially (and, I guess, literally), you need to care about the town. That's almost impossible to do in a two-hour film, especially given the huge cast of characters in the novel. How can you care for them all? The answer, of course, is that you can't, so Dauberman does his damnedest to prune away the excess and pare it all down to the raw scares. Thankfully, he does not modernize the story (like the 2004 miniseries did), and so the atmospheric charm does a fair amount of heavy lifting here. It doesn't stop things from feeling dangerously, outrageously rushed, and even being familiar with the story won't help you follow all the narrative jumps. Some edits between scenes feel like whole scenes were skipped entirely, and you've got to keep up, because there is no reprieve.

Vampiric as his edits might be, Dauberman is nevertheless determined to scare you. As if he knew how deadly dull the miniseries have been, he delivers as much gusto as he can with the more visceral horror elements, no doubt hoping to stop the casual viewer from clicking out of this streaming feature and into another. His directing credentials from Annabelle Comes Home are tested yet again here (his writing credentials have been long established), and his product was deeply satisfying to me in terms of reminding me why this material is effectively scary.

And, apart from the cinematography and visuals, which are hauntingly beautiful, Dauberman accomplishes the feat by letting us care about the few characters we can actually latch onto. Lewis Pullman as protagonist Ben Mears is charming, capably pulling us along for the wild ride even as we're never quite sure what his internal life is all about. Pilou Asbaek's Straker is easily a letdown after the likes of James Mason and Donald Sutherland, but he's still an effectively creepy presence; thankfully, Dauberman doubled down on Tobe Hooper's inspired design for a Nosferatu-esque villain in Kurt Barlow, and the character is a brilliant vision of chilling monstrosity in an age saturated with CGI. Meanwhile, Ben and his girlfriend (it's a fast transition, but Makenzie Leigh tries to sell it well) team up with Dr. Cody (a typically pitch-perfect and somewhat sardonic Alfre Woodard) and schoolteacher Matthew (Bill Camp in a role that gracefully sidesteps the awkward potential for queer creepiness) and preacher Callahan (John Benjamin Hickey, just along for the ride) to investigate and hunt for vampires. Their drive through a night-shrouded Lot as their quarry materialize from the fog all around them is the stuff of nightmares, and I was on the edge of my seat, wondering how far Dauberman would stray from the material.

It's a worthy wonder, because -- as we all know of King adaptations -- the ending is always in question. Given the bizarre, terrible ending of the remake of Pet Sematary, I felt my insides shivering as this film took us into the local drive-in for its climax. And while I do wish it had stayed closer to the original material, I can't argue that it was both a thrilling climax and an appropriately metafictional one that scratched my itch for commentary on the state of cinema in the face of bloodthirsty threats to its own existence. HBO Max streaming notwithstanding, it's telling that this film didn't get a theatrical release, and while its visual splendor perhaps deserves a large screen, this production does make a case for what kinds of projects perhaps should be released direct to streaming. 

A note: when Alfre Woodard finds Mike's body missing from the morgue, turns toward the camera, and mutters, "This is some shit," I had to pause to cackle, and then I replayed it no fewer than three times before proceeding with the film. That moment will replay in my head periodically, and when it does, people surely think I'm a glitch in the Matrix based on my reaction. That is all.

Bagman (2024)

Score: 2.5 / 5

I saw this movie as the second screening of a date night double feature with myself while far from home, and, like with Azrael, I knew nothing about it in advance. It helped, surely, that I was a bit into my Coke and smuggled-in Jack at this point, so I hereby renounce any claims of objectivity, dubious as they might anyways be. But Bagman, about which I knew literally nothing, was a pleasant surprise and an enjoyable watch, one I'd happily watch again with a group of like-minded and generally kindly friends. There is a lot to be said about the enjoyment of a work that knows what it is and leans into itself, if only for passing entertainment value.

Feeling like something I'm sure Stephen King wrote about in a short story or two, Bagman tells of a sinister character out of an urban legend who preys not on the naughty children but on those who are good. Patrick and his family are forced to move back into his childhood home after his engineering invention falls flat, and things immediately go bump in the night. Apart from the obnoxious heteronormative tropes at play about a man's personal failings as the sole breadwinner and protector of his nuclear family, not to mention the brotherly and fatherly issues that subsequently come to light, it's a bizarre premise due to its obsession with family: his intended invention is a state-of-the-art tree trimmer, and if you think that's not a symbol for his family tree, you're tipsier than I was in the screening.

Patrick (Sam Claflin, in a surprising casting choice for this otherwise completely under-the-radar film) hears noises outside at night and endures nightmares of Jake, his toddler son, being kidnapped. He leaves bed by night to stalk their yard and notices lights flickering aggressively; eventually, when a creepy doll materializes, he becomes convinced that his family is in peril. There is a predatory presence in the house, and its designs seem set on Jake. Karina  (Antonia Thomas), Patrick's wife, dutifully stands by her husband, though she is almost wholly unaware of what's happening and just wants to be sure Jake is safe. That, and that her hunky husband isn't completely cracking. 

Without real proof of anything wrong at home, Patrick tentatively broaches the subject with his brother Liam (Steven Cree), for whom he now works at the family lumber yard. Again, the masculinities issues raise their collective head. Eventually we learn that Patrick's fears aren't just in his head, and that his father taught him the story of the titular Bagman, an evil mythic figure who incapacitates parents before snatching their well-behaved children and zipping them up in his large bag. Seemingly crafted as a tall tale or urban legend, it's not until they had their own encounter with him that they believed the story. Though the question remains, then: does knowledge of this being turn you into a bad kid? Is naughtiness a virtue, according to the logic of this film?

Perhaps we're not meant to think that way, but it's a glaring hole in what exactly we're meant to take away from this strange little movie. Why does Bagman live in the nearby abandoned copper mine? Why was he apparently dormant for about twenty years? We know he isn't solely a curse to Patrick's family, as the pre-credits scene shows him zipping up another kid. It feels like a half-baked monster concept somewhere between Pennywise in It and the bag-laden "villain" in The Soul Collector. And Patrick's method of fighting is about as stubbornly manly as you might expect, meaning that the film progresses through tired cliche after worn-out trope to its inevitable and deeply predictable conclusion. Director Colm McCarthy (The Girl with All the Gifts) works hard to maintain a spooky atmosphere and, I think for the most part, succeeds in offering that sort of daydreamlike quality sprinkled with a few jump scares.

More than anything, this is the kind of watered-down horror that would work well for newcomers to the genre. Anyone at all familiar with horror won't find much novelty to enjoy here, though I found it a pleasantly diverting experience as an exercise in old-fashioned PG-13 spookiness. And there's always the very cute Sam Claflin. 

The Deliverance (2024)

Score: 3.5 / 5

In 2011, Latoya Ammons moved into a Gary, Indiana, rental house with her family, and they soon experienced strange and disturbing phenomena that led them to contact a priest, who exorcised the house. After multiple attempts, the family relocated to Indianapolis, where the suspected haunting activity did not pursue them. The story gained notoriety in 2014 (when I heard about it, having moved to nearby Michigan City that year) when the Indianapolis Star published a story and photos of the alleged haunting. Notably, the police chief believed that supernatural events were indeed happening in the "Demon House," adding credibility to the tale. Naysayers flocked, criticizing Latoya for faking it to avoid house payments, to cover up child abuse, and to gain money for the publicity. The whole affair smacks of racism and classism, but the question is really who stood to gain (and what) from the hubbub, a question that leaves more concerns than answers in its wake.

When Lee Daniels was announced to head up a dramatic adaptation of these events, I was thrilled. Daniels has a very specific aesthetic and oeuvre, and like his style or not, he never holds back his punches. He also demonstrates a keen eye when it comes to moments of slippage and fluidity in intersectional social problems, as seen in Precious, The Paperboy, Shadowboxer, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, and even that odd ensemble piece The Butler. He'd surely handle the material with sensitive care around issues of addiction, poverty, racialized housing, and child abuse, while dramatizing it with appropriately suburban Gothic flair. Right?

Well, no, actually. The Deliverance, as awfully titled as it is, manages to offer a lot of key moments that all deserve special attention -- including visits from a troublesome CPS agent (Mo'Nique) and more -- and skirts them in order to deliver (ha ha) what it thinks are profound and effective scares. Daniels doesn't know how to craft a horror atmosphere and maintain it for two hours, and that ineptitude is on full display here. A few scares are fun, but they are all too familiar and most are outright stolen tropes from other, better possession films. Characters clambering up walls, bodies contorting with grisly sound effects, children spewing profanities ad nauseam; it's all here and then some, with pedestrian effects and weak follow-through on what should be a waking nightmare.

But the horror in this story isn't just what Daniels pulls out of his magic hat in the film's latter half. Its first half has some really gripping interracial family drama rooted in intergenerational trauma and attempts to overcome institutional oppression. The film works best in the first half, when Daniels clearly knows he's one of the best at what he does. His incredible cast, including Andra Day, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and Glenn Close all at the tops of their games, pull no stops in their raw, often brutal encounters with each other. Day, playing Ebony Jackson as the stand-in for a much-fictionalized Ammons, carries most of the film on her capable shoulders, injecting gravitas and earned weight to her fight with the demons in her life: addiction, jobs, finances, supporting her unconventional family. She's raising three kids alone until her mother, recently diagnosed with cancer, moves in with them. Her mother (Close, in a gobsmacking performance) is a chain-smoking born-again Christian who flirts too much with the young men at her clinic, and seems intent to atone for her bad motherhood by being a present and mindful grandmother. It would be a lot for anyone to handle, and did I mention that Ebony is alcoholic?

I expected Daniels and his writers to lean into the family drama as the source of possible horror. Are the hauntings products of Day's drunken haze? Is she the one abusing her children, not ghosts or demons? Is the stress of their domesticity leeching the lives of her children away despite her best efforts? When will the next child be struck, the next appliance futz out, the next knock at the door take away her family? Daniels knows melodrama and he can deftly communicate the complex intangibles of oppressive -isms, and he clearly wanted this story to feed off that, making it the Midwestern Gothic version of OJ Simpson's crime in its acute intersection of social ills. Let the supernatural stuff go by the wayside, like in The Exorcism of Emily Rose, wherein the mere possibility of supernatural horror slides under the audience's consciousness even as its main plot takes place in a courtroom.

Alas, the producers or Netflix or whoever seem to have thwarted his efforts. The film raises clear flags in moments when Daniels obviously had his vision wrenched from his grasp, usually when the "scares" occur with unfortunately underperforming effects and efficacy. By the time it's obvious The Deliverance is about a literal demon preying on Ebony and her family, the grotesque appeal of the film wanes as it teeters into rote generic steps, plodding safely to its most obvious denouement. I suspect the kids in a normal Daniels film would face much more devastating threats in the real world than against demons climbing up from hell, and we'd have a much more satisfying film had he been able to focus in on what he does best. Instead, we're given a middling effort that still is very much worth watching, if only to see Glenn Close sewing in tracks on Andra Day's head!

Azrael (2024)

Score: 4 / 5

Sometimes the most rewarding viewing experiences are those about which you know nothing at all before entering a darkened theater. You're there for whatever the storyteller throws at you, and if the filmmakers have succeeded, you'll be swept into another form of consciousness. So, when out of the state and alone for the evening, I stumbled into a cinema with two brand-new horror flicks about which I knew nothing, I grabbed some mini bottles of Jack Daniels and smuggled them in to mix with a Coke, settled into a soft leather recliner, and prepared for a double feature with myself and no one else in the auditorium. In small town Appalachia, Friday nights are for the football games.

First up was Azrael, and the opening hits like a brick wall. Onscreen text sets the stage: many years after the Rapture -- "holy fuck," said I, downing one of the mini bottles before it could pour into the cup -- some of those left behind have been driven to renounce the sin of speech. What? Conservative apocalyptic fiction notwithstanding, this opening text forces far too many questions for its own good. Assuming that the film is referencing an evangelically dubious version of the supposed catalyst for the end of the world, who exactly is "driving" people to stop talking? Since when is speech sinful? And why would that particular sin take precedence over, let's say, mass murder, ritualistic homicide, irresponsible use of finite resources, or inhospitality to strangers?

Before we're able to cogently articulate these gaping concerns, we are thrust into one of the most interesting and strange movies I've seen all year. A young man and woman, clearly in love, wander a forest with some underlying tension. They don't speak, but they are mildly frustrated with each other, communicated through stern looks and vague gestures (one wonders, not for the first time, why over the years since the population instantly halved, a better means of communication wasn't learned? Like, I don't know, sign language?). Something dangerous in the forest is drawn by noise and motion (and possibly fire?), so the couple are pretty quiet and still, if not as rigidly enforced as the survivors in A Quiet Place. Without much warning -- or any context -- other humans burst upon them, Mad Max-style, rounding them up and knocking them out.

Like that, the woman played by Samara Weaving (according to the credits, the character's name is Azrael) is taken by a menacing older woman (some kind of grim enforcer of a cult's woodland compound) and made into an attempted sacrifice to the dangerous thing in the woods. Again, there is a lot happening very quickly in the start of this film, but my understanding is that Azrael and her man had either been exiled from this compound or had recently escaped to live alone in the woods. It also seems that the cult surgically cuts vocal cords of its devotees, as the main characters' lack of speaking is revealed later to not be a choice. For whatever reason, the cultists decided to use them as sacrifices, hence the capturing. Now, as Azrael is bound in a chair while the cultists turn their back and breathe rhythmically in some bizarre ritual, a blackened demonic humanoid creature materializes from the forest and lumbers toward her. Barely escaping, Azrael attacks one of her captors to distract the monster and flee. 

I won't share many more specifics about the plot, because this film is a wild ride of breakneck action and some really effectively disturbing sequences. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, completely unsure what was going to happen next. Weaving works hard to sell this material, and her physicality has only improved in the somewhat similarly themed (and similarly gory) breakout hit Ready or Not. Her fight to survive though all hell has broken loose around her is a riveting journey to behold, even when it seems her endurance is a bit superhuman. Clearly, she wasn't named after an archangel for no reason, particularly an archangel associated with death. It eventually becomes clear that she's not just looking for escape; she's looking for revenge.

Riddled with religious imagery -- and plenty of subtextual thematic concerns about religion and womanhood and sacrifice and suffering -- the film's questionable plot devices might give some viewers pause. Why, exactly, the female leaders of this cult want to sacrifice Azrael and only Azrael might be an unanswered, mysterious MacGuffin, but it's never less than compelling. The film isn't a treatise on how to craft apocalyptic fiction or an exercise in thorough worldbuilding. It's an extended violent cat-and-mouse game that, for whatever aesthetic reasons, is placed in a weirdly specific setting. And it's fabulous in doing just that!

Apart from several other movie references and genre conventions -- including a Virgin Mary-like cult leader who is pregnant with, presumably, Rosemary's baby; including folk horror a la The Wicker Man or The Ritual -- the film's internal logic was only lost on me regarding the demonic monsters. At first I wondered if they were drawn to fire because they wanted it, but it does seem to also hurt them; more importantly, their appearance is that of having been injured by fire beneath their charred and crispy skin. Perhaps meant to be straight from hell, or perhaps meant to look this way after prior conflicts with the cult, the monsters also move in unpredictable and seemingly contradictory ways, sometimes shuffling along like undead sloths and sometimes sprinting like zombies in modern video games. Sometimes they are drawn to fire -- but apparently not within the compound -- and sometimes they are completely blind if you don't move. These inconsistencies will frustrate some viewers obsessed with worldbuilding, but they're easy enough if you assume (rightly, I think) that the filmmakers have answers for these quite natural changes (after all, no human is homogenous in this film, so why should the non-humans be thus?) that, due to their own imposed conventions, they just cannot tell us.

Inconsistencies like these weren't enough to derail my viewing experience, which was as thrilling as it was entertaining. Interspersed in the film were apparent chapter breaks with scriptural text, foreshadowing what is to come, tonally, but they were so fast and I was so engrossed that I didn't take notes to see if they were, in fact, biblical quotes, or if they were only meant to convey that flavor. Again, this is not the kind of movie where those details matter, especially not during a first watch. Weaving underscores her rightful title as a scream queen, and utterly impressed me with her physical prowess. The film's unrelenting action and horror made this a jolting exercise in frisson I'm eager to endure again soon. But next, the second part of my double feature: Bagman.

Never Let Go (2024)

Score: 4 / 5

Alexandre Aja, master of thrilling set pieces and isolated, harrowing locations, scales things back a bit in his most recent film. Eschewing the visual excesses of his most recent theatrical feature Crawl, here he embraces the isolation of paranoia and how the insular family can become its own worst enemy. The horrors on display here are sometimes physicalized but are generally meant to be understood as extensions or manifestations of what is likely mental illness. Aja carefully balances his horror to avoid this becoming an "issue" movie, but there is a lot to appreciate here, and it's easily one of the better horror movies of 2024. 

More a parable than a realistic story, we're introduced to "Momma," Halle Berry's otherwise unnamed character, a single mother living in a humble but nice cabin in the middle of a dense forest. Her two sons, Nolan and Samuel, live under a strict code of survival rules dictated to them by Momma daily, especially the titular mantra, referring to lengthy ropes they use to literally tether themselves to their front porch while venturing out to scavenge and forage for sustenance. It's not a wholly unfamiliar idea, not in the years since The Village and especially A Quiet Place, and Momma tells of an infectious evil out in the woods that will surely get them if they ever leave the rope behind. Symbolic of health measures (read: masks or vaccines, perhaps, in the age of Covid) or of family ties (read: umbilical cord), the rope connection must be maintained at all costs, literally tying all three characters to their home. If the bond is severed, the evil entity will infect its victim, who will bring it home and they will all die as a result. That much is clear.

What's not always clear is exactly what's out there in the woods. The boys cannot see anything, at least not yet; only Momma can see the evil, which we are permitted to see as well, taking the form of zombified versions of Momma's abusive mother and wicked husband, now-dead loved ones from their past whose behaviors are slowly suggested, providing us some work to piece together exactly who Momma is and why she behaves as she does. She goes to all lengths to save her children when, one day, a sibling rivalry stemming from doubt about her dogma results in Nolan stepping on Samuel's rope and causing his brother to fall down an embankment, lose his rope, and break his ankle. Nolan, immediately regretful, lets go of his own rope; when Momma saves them from a ghoul only she can see, she punishes Nolan in the cabin's crawlspace like a quarantine measure, ensuring he is not infected as she treats Samuel's injury.

The acting among these three -- and the screenplay that allows them all moments to shine -- is remarkable. Berry, in a thankless, ugly role, performs with a grit and determination we haven't seen from her in years. Gaunt and starving, the family never looks good, and they tend to behave even worse, though her love and concern for her children is never less than palpable. Her desperation feels at first earned and believable, to us and to her children, but as we experience life among them, we begin to suspect, along with Nolan, that she might be unwell and that their lives might be better without their bonds. Nolan and Samuel themselves, played by Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B. Jenkins, respectively, play off each other dynamically, at times with brotherly affection and at times with the bitterest hatred, especially when tension reaches a deadly breaking point.

Starving and unwell, Momma makes a terrible choice that could just as easily be read as psychological punishment for Nolan, who has an intimate connection with the family dog. I won't spoil what happens, but this sequence nearly destroyed me, and things only escalate from this roughly midpoint climax through the furiously paced second half. It's a daring storytelling choice that then allows us ample time to dwell in its implications when the boys must subsequently determine their own course of actions. Will their mother's dogma dictate the rest of their lives, however short and hungry that might be? When an outside visitor materializes and the boys can see him -- horror of horrors -- should they accept his aid or suspiciously ward him off, as their mother would have?

A heady mix of possibilities, this horror works best in not quite defining the limits of its metaphysical scope. Mental illness, trauma (both psychological and spiritual), abusive parents, sibling rivalry, and of course the ever-present threat of evil manifesting just outside, Never Let Go offers boons for anyone willing to abide in its intentionally half-baked ideas. Could Momma have been driven mad years ago and is now dealing with that? Are evil spirits loose in the woods, hunting their family and its mystical ancestral cabin? Aja's attuned sense of effective scares -- both those lurking in the background of wide shots and those that pop out with stinging musical hits -- keep this a fun and entertaining ride that constantly leaves you on the edge of your seat for the next emotional pitfall. The performances (and screenplay) balance various readings remarkably well, leaving a haunting remembrance of the film long after its credits have rolled. 

Megalopolis (2024)

Score: 1 / 5

Oh boy.

Much will be made of the four-decade history of this film and its sociohistorical relevance and references. There will be renewed debate about Francis Ford Coppola's artistry and claims about his place as one of the most important film directors in history (I agree, by the by) despite some widely criticized missteps. Some will decry the identification of "great films" and what constitutes masterpieces and for whom. But few reviewers will dig into themselves, locating the basis of their feelings and why their writing (and thinking, from which writing comes) feels the need to be defensive, informative, and supportive. Because the uncomfortable, nasty truth is that Megalopolis makes no sense and is one of the most confusing and boring movies ever made.

Don't get me wrong: I appreciate Coppola's vision and some of his technique. Reading a screenplay of this might offer some insight; then again, it might make things worse, as so much of the film is ripped from the likes of Shakespeare, Marcus Aurelius, Sappho, and other sources. Understanding the Roman histories from which large parts of these characterizations and thematic and plot developments are copied would likely help as well; it's possible that knowledge would only cloud the murky ideas further, as these are clearly meant to be more personal reflections than historical treatises. Seeing the film again in its entirety would almost certainly help me parse and triage the onslaught of images, sounds, ideas, and sensations vomited by Coppola onto his warmly golden vision of men in charge of the world dealing with personal crises. But, honestly, I will never willingly watch any part of this film again.

Less a narrative and more an experience of wandering through an auteur's dream, no review could possibly impart the pure sensory experience of watching this film. There is constant tension in the most unexpected of ways, built into the fabric of the film rather than simply on display. Alternating scenes depict actors at the height of their powers -- looking at you, Aubrey Plaza -- performing with ballsy gusto in front of what appear to be CGI backgrounds of shimmering golden light that feel cheaper than what you might see in a children's museum. Interspersed with these are legendary actors like Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Fishburne utterly wasted on inane dialogue and relegated to looking Deeply Concerned in the background while balancing on precarious catwalks in richly detailed but almost visually ignored sets. The biggest visual flourishes feel ungrounded and unmoored, a drug-induced kaleidoscope with Adam Driver (clearly a stand-in for Coppola, as he observes the city from on high like a director mapping out his set) awkwardly floating in full frame.

Thematically, I still don't know what to make of it, either. Clearly a deeply personal project about nations rising and falling but Art and Artists lasting through them, it feels like a cruel joke that the messaging is married to this confused format and bewildering, self-indulgent "artistry." Any concerns about Art are blurred by references to urban development, renewable resources, governmental corruption, big businesses interfering in family affairs, and -- because why not -- prenup agreements between gold-digging sexual predators and lecherous old men eager for the next trophy wife. Is Megalon, the fancy new material created by Driver to build his utopia, supposed to be a symbol of something? Because its convenient ability to have very different qualities based on the needs of various scenes makes the material utterly incomprehensible and unbelievable except as a symbol. But, again, for what? And as "New Rome," the setting of the film (inadequately doubling New York with what appears to be Atlanta) is meant to be modern America (and in proximity to Atlantic City), one has to wonder exactly what, in an election year and after years of political unrest, Coppola is saying by not saying things about contemporary politics. 

The interpersonal relationships that comprise (read: waste) most of the film's runtime notwithstanding, I found myself repeatedly annoyed that Shia LaBeouf, Kathryn Hunter, and more talents than should have been assembled are wasted in this confused mess of misdirected opportunities. Is this our decade's Caligula? Maybe, but it's neither as sexy nor as disastrous as it should be to earn that designation; Babylon might approach it, then, but that, for all its decadence, at least knew what it was and allowed its audience in to experience it fully. Here, Coppola keeps us at an arm's length -- if not father -- forcing us to regard it without requisite understanding. Thankfully, it generally eschews the cloying sentimentality that poisoned the self-reflective exercises of other great auteurs in their "masterpieces" I loathed (looking at you, Martin Scorsese and Alfonso Cuaron), but it's small consolation in such an unenjoyable doldrums.

The confused viewing experience is, reportedly, shared by many on set; some accounts claim that Coppola actively changed his mind and directorial style before repeated takes, leaving actors and crew alike unaware of what they were creating and why. In as much as his story is about a real Roman coup, one wonders if his mind was attempting an artistic coup itself; it will be telling when certain professional reviewers attempt to suck up to his vision, advocating that people go to cinemas to see this material where it really belongs, even as they sidestep real consideration of what this film is doing and why. Why? Because it's impossible for anyone who isn't Coppola to know what this film is doing and why. And that has to be a failure of art. Doesn't it?

Like the satellite he shows a few times on its crash course with Earth's atmosphere, Coppola's film embraces no reason and reaches no conclusions, dropped unceremoniously at the start of the awards race and oblivious to its own lack of meaning. A wedding in Madison Square Gardens that looks like the Colosseum, statues of justice collapsing amidst the skyscrapers, women being eaten out on an office desk in multiple positions by a man more interested in boning his sisters, it's just incomprehensible sequence after offensively incomprehensible setpiece. Fundamentally, formally, foundationally: this film doesn't work.

Argylle (2024)

Score: 1.5 / 5

A bumbling disappointment, Argylle released earlier this year as Matthew Vaughn's latest tongue-in-cheek, action-packed mess of a genre mashup. Shifting slightly in tone from his Kingsman franchise -- though we learn eventually that this is intended to be part of the same mythos -- this film follows a modern author eager to churn out the final installment of her beloved spy book series but suffers writer's block. Seemingly shifting perspective between the fictional world she has created and a real-life (and really life-threatening) espionage campaign around her, the author comes to learn awful truths about herself, her family, her livelihood, and the man she might possibly love. And we're along for the bizarre ride.

Vaughn's style is not for everyone, and even if you choose to get on his wavelength, it's not always a pleasant experience. Feverishly paced and obnoxiously buttressed by cartoonish CGI, his action sequences -- the bread and butter of his directorial efforts -- dazzle with eye-popping excess even as they clearly defy logic. Argylle seems to enjoy the unbelievability of its own action, flagrantly drawing attention to itself during the most incredible moments. Some of this you may have seen in trailers: remember the cat bouncing up off the tarp-wrapped boat to scream into the camera?

As usual, the ensemble cast is delightfully assembled and does its job well, led by Bryce Dallas Howard as author Elly Conway and a particularly excellent Sam Rockwell as Aidan Wilde, a real spy. Henry Cavill pops in occasionally as the imagined title character, though his hideous hair saps him of his usual charm. The fictional characters (including John Cena and Ariana DeBose) play as intentionally flat stock tropes, which works well enough, especially when the editing puts us in Elly's eyeballs and reality and her vision flicker back and forth. Add Catherine O'Hara as Elly's worrisome and somewhat condescending mother -- whose feedback only fuels Elly's block and whose (SPOILER ALERT) Marlene Dietrich-esque turn had me sputtering in joy -- and Bryan Cranston as the sinister head of an undercover agency determined to find and stop Elly from publishing (as her books oddly accurately predict their missions) and the whole thing should have been a lot of fun. But then you remember how many other stars were involved, including Richard E. Grant and Samuel L. Jackson, and the squandered promises come crashing back to the fore.

Aggressively plotted beyond the last inch of its life, the film uses archetypal devices stolen from everything from Mission: Impossible to The Lost City in its efforts to entertain. And it all feels like an exhausting, if not exhaustive, effort indeed. Satire and spoofery are sometimes admirable goals, especially when the state of the art calls for comic reflection and metafictional humor. But spy films are hardly in a place, culturally, to be dissected and repurposed right now, making this enterprise bizarrely forced, artificial in concept as much as in execution. Vaughn's penchant for cheap needle drops is on its most bombastic display here, and while they periodically elicited a guffaw from me, they were rarely appreciated because they weren't earned. Except regarding the obvious high prices paid for certain tunes.

Incomprehensible plotting results in convenient and unlikely twists, revelations, and resolutions that baffled more than enlightened me. And the more flashbacks and expositional monologues piled into the screenplay to make it make more sense, the farther from entertaining the whole thing gets. Its contrivances push it into formulaic romantic beats, draining the leads from their initially interesting characterizations. By the climax, a thoroughly overcooked exercise in banality shot in slow motion with some of the most invasive and unwelcome CGI Skittle-colored smoke I've ever seen, I was ready to abandon the whole thing, and frankly, I wish I had. The crushing disappointment of what could -- and should -- have been a delightfully camp speculation on the future of spy cinema ruined any memory of cutesy gags and funny potentialities that came before.