Capone (2020)

 Score: 3 / 5

It was only a matter of time before Tom Hardy tackled Scarface as only he can. With his famous penchant for Method acting, he dives directly into the title role of Capone with characteristically balls-out gusto. True to form, he works unexpected magic in this movie partly due to its focus: we're in the final year of Al Capone's life, the opening text tells us. Hardy peers out from layers of makeup and prosthetics with his piercing eyes, playing the prematurely dying Fonz with the audacity and theatricality we would expect from his old-school style and his larger-than-life character. And it makes for a dazzling, rapturous performance. Hardy belongs to the rare class of actor -- like Marlon Brando or Orson Welles -- who delivers to the beat of his own drum, filtered through his own internal logic, often inaccessible and opaque. It's powerful to behold, but only works in the right context.

Hardy here rots away before us, disguised by the mask he wears and his typically arresting voice. Often unintelligible, he gurgles and grunts his way through this movie, intermittently spitting out imprecise and incorrectly pronounced Italian phrases. Be sure to watch this one with subtitles! It's calculated and chameleonic, to be sure, but this is a far cry from the technical genius of Meryl Streep and Gary Oldman; here it often feels as though Hardy's voice has been wrung through a strainer, filtered through a synthesizer, and then boiled in its own bile. As the necrotic gangster dwindles, the skin peeling off his pallid face and bodily fluids excreting themselves from his shorts, we become increasingly aware of the syphilitic fever raging in his brain. He's far from the fearsome legend he was, but when he handles a gun we see glimpses of his former horror. Most of the movie, however, comprises Hardy chewing an oversized cigar, puffing clouds of smoke, and muttering to himself as he wanders through his Florida mansion. In fact, that's about the length and breadth of whatever plot exists here.

Writer and director Josh Trank (Chronicle, Fantastic Four), despite dubious conventional measurements of "success," will never be less than an original filmmaker. In Capone, he works significant magic that cannot be overlooked, both in his remarkable skills as an old-school filmmaker and in his ability to wrangle meaning and emotional intelligence from Hardy's performance. It can't have been easy to plan this movie around Hardy's antics, but in fact Trank's mastery over the proceedings suggests that this movie was so carefully planned out it might actually be too controlled. Scenes are so choreographed, so beautifully shot (by cinematographer Peter Deming) with unexpected light and movement, so synchronous with sound and performance, and so deliberately cut and juxtaposed with other images or movements that I suspect Trank took Hardy's Brando/Welles inspiration and ran with it. He's not setting up cameras all around and splicing together "good" moments caught at random; he's dancing with his own Black Swan. Along those lines, he ends the film with an amazing sequence in which his storytelling matches the audacious theatricality of his star, erasing the line between reality and fantasy, history and character. I'm guessing that, apart from harnessing the power of Hardy, this sequence is the reason Trank made this movie.

I don't want to take away from the fascinating performance or direction here, but it is worth including that I don't expect to watch this movie again. Challenging and even, arguably, beautiful as it is, it is far from entertaining and less than engaging. Capone never tries to explain, rationalize, defend, or even explore its antihero's past, a decision I fully support. But it also never tries to dramatize anything resembling, well, dramatic. It's 103 minutes of watching a man die, a man who tries to reflect on his life but can't make connections due to his neurosyphilis; a man who still treats his family (specifically Linda Cardellini) and friends (including Matt Dillon) as though he's the pinstriped kingpin who could kill them with a flick of his finger; a man who shits his bed and plays hide-and-seek with ghostly visions in his five-star haunted house. I don't mind a tragedy, or even a bleak exercise in nihilism, but it's difficult to much care for Scarface in any capacity, especially as he's dying with so much suffering.

Calibre (2018)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Our understanding of fraternity between British boarding-school mates may not be complete, but that might actually help us as we are suddenly launched into the adventure of one such pair. We might say Marcus and Vaughn are best friends, but they don't seem all that familiar with each other. Their initial conversations are strained, perhaps because the more aggressive Marcus (Martin McCann) has arranged to go on a hunting trip to the Scottish Highlands with Vaughn (Jack Lowden of Dunkirk, Mary Queen of Scots, and the BBC miniseries War & Peace). Vaughn is expecting to be a father soon and is hesitant to leave his pregnant fiancee; he has also never hunted before. The night before their hunt, the two men drink and dance at a village pub, pairing up with young women for the night despite being warned by the locals to keep to themselves.

If this sounds like the setup to a horror movie, you'd be on the right track. Calibre quickly ramps up the energy as a geopolitical thriller in the vein of Deliverance. It may be partway around the globe from Appalachia, but there's no denying the similarities in geography, social structure, economic disparity, isolated and traditionalist culture, and even some patterns of language. I'd argue that, unlike that 1972 hicksploitation flick, Calibre works better toward understanding the nature of human violence in the wilderness without resorting to too much shock value and degeneration of human bodies. But, then, this Scottish picture has plenty of blood, even if it is rooted in realism.

Waking up hungover, the two foolishly stick to their plan and go hunting. Marcus, snorting coke to stay alert, lets Vaughn borrow his gun because the miserable newbie forgot his ammo, even though they are aware this breaks strict gun laws. So when Vaughn finally prepares to shoot a deer, we know the worst will happen. And it does, when the deer turns and Vaughn's bullet kills a little boy behind it. The boy's father shows up and, in a bereaved rage, attacks Vaughn before Marcus kills him. It's hard not to shout at all of them for not wearing proper hunting attire, not scouting the location first, children separated from guardians, not being in the right state of mind, but what's done, as Lady Macbeth would say, cannot be undone.

The two protagonists make a series of grave blunders -- they do not bury the bodies, fleeing the scene and talking to a nearby gas station operator before deciding to return that night -- that are nothing short of infuriating. In fact, by the film's halfway point, I rather wanted these guys to be tarred and feathered. Having returned to town, their sins revisit them: their tires are slashed by a jealous, toxic man for having slept with the aforementioned forbidden women, and they are spotted returning to the village after burying the bodies just before dawn. They learn the identities of the men they killed even as they are entreated by the town leaders to help find investors for their remote community. The incidents pile up, weaving an intricate tapestry of anxieties so fraught, even viewing it made me feel sick to my stomach. The film's chromatic scale turns bleak, gray and brown and sickly green, while shadows lengthen and sweat shines. That shrill, heady sort of soundscape (music and mixing) typical of the genre is sure to raise your gooseflesh if you listen in surround sound.

I won't reveal the rest of the action, climax, or ending here because it's utterly thrilling. While rarely unexpected, the plot twists are given a distinct edge by the filmmakers due to the raw acting of Lowden and McCann, the setting and sounds, and the stunning editing choices. It helps, too, that the film supplies a few thematic intrigues as it progresses, especially in terms of debt and investment; it also shifts the tropes of outsiders as foreign to the differences between urban and rural communities, something infinitely more universal and interesting.

Mary Queen of Scots (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

This was a perfect companion for The Favourite on a double-feature date night with myself. Highly recommend the pairing, though lots of wine would have been nice.

While The Favourite was easily, well, my favorite of the screenings, Mary Queen of Scots has a lot to offer. Though arguably a remake of the 1971 film of the same name -- starring the incomparable Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson -- this new film owes a lot to its time and place. It's the sort of revisionist history porn that we all love feel guilty about, but keep indulging anyway. Think I'm wrong? Look at The Tudors and the host of shows it inspired and that keep making history sexy and soapy. Look at one of my favorite flicks, The Other Boleyn Girl, and the extent to which it obsesses over style and smut while sacrificing history at the altar. It's a magnificent aesthetic, one that loves history so much that it allows itself to take liberties.

Don't forget, these are films. Not history books. So get off your high horse.

Mary Queen of Scots begins with Mary Stuart (Saoirse Ronan) returning home to Scotland after being the Queen of France and widowed at the age of 18. Everything is set against her ruling in her homeland, from the Protestants taking over to her cousin Elizabeth (Margot Robbie) having assumed rule over both England and Scotland. The film focuses of course on Mary, establishing her household and plans for domination in spite of overwhelming opposition and open violence. The two queens regard each other from afar, admiring and testing their strengths while timidly seeking for answers. The world of men they inhabit is dangerous, and they know that far much more than their crowns are at stake.

Politics and religion, money and laws, rebellion and warfare aside, the film seems most interested in the private lives of these women. Though some will argue it's more fanciful than realistic to fantasize thus about the sexual exploits of these women, the film works because of its fascinating split between private and public realms. Just look at their costumes, inviting appraisal as well as interest, or the constant use of windows and doorways as frames for us to view both the inner and the outer. We're assaulted by endless facades, from the thick white makeup on Elizabeth's face to the translucent sheets adorning the barn in which our queens eventually meet.

Their adventures through worlds of men and sex seem awfully timely for this era, and the film is deeply queer in its attitudes. Leave it to screenwriter Beau Willimon -- developer and showrunner of House of Cards -- to acutely examine this most fascinating of boundaries between high politics and eroticism, suggesting that major points of history were dictated by a man eating out his queen or by the same man seducing another man in her retinue. Set in a crumbling castle in the exotic highlands, it becomes weirdly difficult to imagine anything else having happened in reality. Why shouldn't we review history as sexy? Otherwise, it's all too depressing and boring.

IMDb: Mary Queen of Scots

Dunkirk (2017)

Score: 5 / 5

Who knew Oscar season would start so early? July it may be, but Dunkirk is unquestionably one of the best movies we'll see this year. Shall we begin nomination guesses? Best picture, director, cinematography, sound mixing and editing, screenplay, score, and maybe editing and production design. If it sounds like a lot, it should: This movie is also Christopher Nolan's masterpiece, something I didn't expect after the middling Interstellar.

Hailed by some as the greatest war film ever -- a claim I'd readily argue against -- Dunkirk recounts the awesome drama of the Dunkirk evacuation in France, 1940. Told in three parts that recount the events by sea, by air, and by land, the film weaves its way through time and space with amazing clarity. Ever the auteur, Nolan's command of this picture is absolute, eyeballing the spectacle with 70 mm film and immersing us in the horror from the opening sequence. Immerse, I say, because despite the film's non-linear narrative and wide scope, he places us in the thick of each dramatic twist with intimate visual and aural sensation. Though I didn't see it in IMAX, I would recommend that option, if only to really experience Nolan's vision.

Though certainly the vision alone is enough to make the movie great, Nolan has some other surprises up his sleeve. He cuts away the tropes and trappings of war films to unveil a relatively new subgenre. I thought this was going to be a wartime psychodrama, like The Hurt Locker or Apocalypse Now, but it's more an experiential war movie, one that forces us into its world before letting us emerge changed. Like Zero Dark Thirty or Fury, this picture narrows its scope enough that we can't see everything, we don't know everything, and so we're sitting on the edge of our seat while we absorb the violence, the fear, and the pain. Though, with our three vantage points of trooper, pilot, and sailor, we get more information than in those other examples, we're kept invested by the tight editing and compelling score, ticking away at our nerves like a timebomb waiting to explode.

And explode it does, though not conventionally. Nolan masterfully manipulates events so that our emotional reaction is similar to that of the characters. We aren't on the outside, feeling pity or sympathy; we feel isolated, fearful, and vulnerable too. The notices of imminent doom fluttering down on the town at the beginning are disturbing enough; the fighter planes start swooping overhead and firing at random made me flinch more than once; and when a band of boys find themselves in a grounded ship's hull while enemy troops are using it as target practice, it was all I could do not to scream. Which is exactly the problem for the characters. It's an exercise in intensity, one that makes the most of a mere 106-minute screen time. When the yachts and fishing boats come sailing in to save the day, it's the lone, glorious moment of sentiment in the whole picture, all the more rare because it actually works. I'd compare it to a similar scene in Australia, when the boat filled with children sails through the smoking harbor of Darwin to prove the Japanese soldiers did not win the day.

There's so much more to say about Dunkirk, but let's leave it there for now. It's an amazing film. I'm going again this week and probably will still have trouble being too objective. Do yourself a favor and go see it on the biggest screen available.

IMDb: Dunkirk