House of Gucci (2021)

Score: 5 / 5

For the second time this year: God bless Ridley Scott. Not only did he provide us with two of the best movies of the year (along with The Last Duel), they are also completely aesthetically and tonally different, proving himself yet again a master of the craft. Willing to change his style to fit the story he's telling, Scott is this time engaged in high fashion and high crimes. Not unlike his exploration of class, family, and wealth in the Getty dynasty (All the Money in the World), he is keenly interested in fraying lines of loyalty and dissolution of civility when powerful families are put under the pressure of greed. This isn't American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, but I wondered more than once if Scott had viewed Ryan Murphy's similarly sweeping, campy study of murder in an Italian fashion family. Whereas that miniseries delved into dark secrets and an outsider preying on insiders, House of Gucci works more as a soap opera.

Based on the book of the same title, the sensationalist story only works with the flamboyance and larger-than-life perspective we'd expect. As such, Scott and writer Becky Johnston work hard to make this movie an assault on our senses. The cinematography by frequent Scott collaborator Dariusz Wolski (also of Pirates of the Caribbean, The Crow, The Walk, News of the World) affords us luxurious views of impossible places, doused with warm light and vibrant colors. Music by Harry Gregson-Williams sweeps us into sumptuous highs before the film's abundant soundtrack of Italian pop or opera jumps to the next loud track. Costumer Janty Yates dresses the players in unbelievable outfits and ridiculous hues, clearly enabling them to do their thing in style if not comfort; the costumes also clearly inform our perception of the characters (and doubtless informed the actors' performances as well), as certain characters become notably animalistic in their devolution.

One wonders how much the stylized nature of this film was planned in advance by Scott and his team, or if it was primarily the result of casting choices. One can hardly expect a film with this starring lineup to be dull, but each major player seems handpicked based on their reliably campy deliveries elsewhere. Obviously any discussion of this movie will begin and end with the glorious Lady Gaga, whose fierce performance as Patrizia Reggiani is an unholy cross between technically proficient chameleonic acting and cheap dive bar drag. Patrizia, a willful and conniving working-class woman who stalks and falls in love with Maurizio Gucci (a less volcanic but no less intentionally wry Adam Driver), weasels her way into the family business to make something of herself. Or, perhaps, for herself. Her lack of high society manners is shamed by Maurizio's ailing father Rodolfo (an oddly stiff Jeremy Irons, not long for the world of this film) but welcomed by his commercially-minded salesman uncle Aldo (Al Pacino doing what he does best).

Like Aldo, Patrizia wants more money and to boost Gucci's international market. Redirecting Maurizio away from law school, she charges headfirst into the flailing family and attacks its weak spots. Namely, and most obviously, Aldo's flamboyant and absurd son Paolo, played by an unrecognizable and utterly arresting Jared Leto. With no taste or talent, he's the lone guppy in a sea of sharks, and Leto capitalizes on this, turning the character into a kitsch king as unaware as he is repulsive. Oh, and who can forget Salma Hayek's scenes as Patrizia's friend and psychic, Pina, who guides Patrizia through her feelings of desire, lust, fear, and greed in increasingly practical ways. She's hilarious as a naïve and unassuming fortune-teller, then a little disturbing as she cultivates Patrizia's dependency; not unlike the sisters in Macbeth, one wonders if Pina isn't enabling her friend rather than simply supporting her.

The first half of the film is radiant, bubbling, and darkly humorous in its foreshadowing, crowned by a brilliant and jaw-dropping sex scene that epitomizes much of the proceedings. The second half leans less into camp and more into crime drama, not unlike The Godfather I suppose, with a tighter focus on Maurizio's maturing attitude toward taking over the family business. Like the aforementioned Scottish king, he seems to have swallowed the Kool-Aid, to mix potent and relevant cultural touchpoints, and Driver's potential for danger oozes out from his impeccable suits (I will maintain that he has never looked better). And in this tonal transition, the film delivers on every single one of its promises. It's a messy, brazen, glamorous cocktail of sin and style, as audacious in its faith to storytelling as it is to its own sickly beauty. And thanks to Scott's tried-and-true direction, it's one of the best movies of the year.

Red Sparrow (2018)

Score: 3 / 5

Despite the cacophonous outcries of people who think it's a Black Widow ripoff, Red Sparrow is upon us with the integrity of its source material largely intact. It's a lovely film to behold, richly detailed and determined to tell its story with the style and flair that worked so well between director Francis Lawrence and star J Law in the Hunger Games series. The problems here are that the film is tonally confused and thematically problematic, and that the screenplay is just a little too bland to keep things interesting.

I don't want to totally blame screenwriter Justin Haythe, whose successes include Revolutionary Road and whose failures include The Lone Ranger (2013). I would compare Red Sparrow more to his and A Cure for Wellness, as it attempts to do some fresh and interesting things but only marginally succeeds. Here, the story flirts with "sexpionage" as some have called it, a sort of spy style that relies heavily on sexual prowess and ingenuity to extract information and protect secrets. It's fascinating, to be sure, and J Law delivers a fascinating performance as the duplicitous protagonist. She is a killer from the start: after an injury during a ballet performance, she brutally attacks the culprits seemingly without a second thought. Yet, in turns, she appears weak and fragile, unsure, desperate, even romantic. We're never sure of the truth of her character, which makes the film endlessly watchable.

The problem comes from the other characters, and this is where things get murky. She's surrounded by equally brutal men who exploit her time and again, force her to do their bidding, torture her to make her stronger and then torture her again to break her. The women in her life are either weak, stupid, or vile, and all operate at the whims of men. Even the extent to which our protagonist has agency is up for debate (there is no clear-cut argument here). She is invited to the Sparrow program quite unwittingly and somewhat unwillingly, though her violent streak and increasingly deceptive motivations belie her unwillingness. She's aware of being used (and sometimes abused) but she actively continues in her role, perhaps because she feels she has no choice (to save her ailing mother) or because she wants revenge on the people in power (such as her charming and abusive uncle, a character I'd liken to the mother in Manchurian Candidate). Her tenuous relationship with the American spies lead her to physical torment, but she then determinedly continues her work to become a crucial asset as a double-agent.

If this thematic mess sounds a little extreme, you should know it's only my pared-down understanding of some of the stakes of this film. It's really long and really complex, and I got more than a little lost halfway through. Who is in cahoots with whom? And why? Sometimes these questions matter. Here, I think not. What matters here is the film's style, which greatly exceeds its substance. Glamorous life meets unspeakable horror in this series of games between powerful people. It's dark, cold, and vicious, brutal and sometimes difficult to watch, sexy enough but always creepy.

Feminist or not doesn't really seem to be an applicable argument here. This film espouses almost no doctrines beyond exploring a human's capacity for deception. It's not even a totally satisfying movie, and I think that might be the point. It's part of a trilogy of books, and my hope is that they all get made into films like this (Actually, now I think on it, it seems tonally akin to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I also wanted to see more of). I don't want to say it's good or bad, even that I liked it or not, but it was by far one of the most interesting movies I've seen in some time.

IMDb: Red Sparrow

Justice League (2017)

Score: 3 / 5

I've said it before, but I feel a bit of a disconnect with these DC movies because I'm not a hardcore DC fan. So I have no scruples about specific characterizations or honoring classic comics. As movies, I have found Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman (the extended cut, because it's much improved), Suicide Squad, and Wonder Woman to be fabulously entertaining, if sometimes darker and heavier than I'd prefer (though Wonder Woman might be one of my favorite movies this year, period). I don't know that they're really "good" movies, but that's mostly subjective anyway. Zack Snyder has his issues as a filmmaker, and here we see him trying again; what I'm not sure about is the extent to which Joss Whedon remade parts of this film. You can certainly see his touch (by which I mean his ham-handed machinations).

And, as in other cases, I found Justice League to be fabulously entertaining. Batman and Wonder Woman (Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot) are trying to gather strength in the wake of Superman's (Henry Cavill) death. A new threat appears in Steppenwolf, leading an army of bug-men from portals that open above mystical power boxes. These "Mother Boxes", once combined, will apparently destroy Earth, something Steppenwolf has had experience doing, and he ruthlessly attacks Atlantis and Themyscira to collect the boxes hidden there. While he hunts for the third, the team slowly assembles, including self-loathing Cyborg (Ray Fisher), self-doubting Flash (Ezra Miller, as the film's comic relief), and hunky Aquaman (Jason Momoa). Even with their combined strength, they are determined to get more help, so they revive Superman (he's back, thank heaven) to aid them.

What's most interesting to me with this movie is that, at least to my mind, it tried really hard to make things feel like a comic book. A lot of the visuals have intensified colors, dynamic angles, and sometimes laughably poor special effects -- poor, that is, from a realistic perspective. But when you have Atlanteans and Amazons and aliens and cyborgs and metahumans battling oversized bug-people, how realistic can the effects be, really? Some moments unfortunately look like they were lifted directly from Snyder's other films, especially 300, for better or worse. I don't find any of that off-putting.

What I do find off-putting here is the screenplay. The first half of the film is laboriously episodic, almost as if the filmmakers are establishing exactly where commercial breaks will go when this starts airing on television. We lurch from character to character with little sequential logic, learning vague bits of their backstories and getting some grim foreshadowing before we jump to someone else somewhere else. I'm not sure exactly how the filmmakers could have done it better, what with 3 new protagonists to familiarize and get us to root for, plus all their respective secondary characters. And I'm not saying it's bad, just distracting.

Similarly, it feels at times like the writers were battling for control over the film. We have incredibly tense, dramatic moments with the Amazons or with the revived Superman and Lois, but then we have some really funny punchlines the likes of which we haven't seen in this franchise. It's as if the producers and writers decided to take people's complaints about Batman v Superman and try to do the exact opposite with this movie. We have comedy, we have a super simple plotline, we have only one villain, we have much more action and less moody-broody-ness. This is a prime example of how audience reaction can dictate franchise content; I will refrain from monologuing about artistic integrity. What I will mention is that, while the humor ends up a bit predictable and sometimes groan-inducing, there are some gems here. In one scene, Aquaman begins to emotionally discuss his feelings about the team before realizing he's sitting on Wonder Woman's truth-telling rope. In another, the Flash saves a Russian family and, trying to say "goodbye" to them, says "Dostoyevsky!"

Other than those issues -- which are more about preference than anything -- I fully enjoyed Justice League. Well, those, and the fact that the villain was pretty awful. Though voiced by the lovely Ciaran Hinds, Steppenwolf is a totally CGI character, and frankly, it's not great CGI. It's like Polar Express-level animation, which just doesn't fit. Add to that the character's single-minded ambitions and rhino-like fighting style, and you've got a flat megalomaniac who is apparently powerless without his killing axe. I was so much more invested in the almost-fight between the revived Superman and the rest of the Justice League than in any scene with Steppenwolf.

Be sure to stick around during and after the credits, folks. The mid-credits scene is very funny, and the post-credits scene made me angry, but you already know I don't like Jesse Eisenberg.

IMDb: Justice League

Assassin's Creed (2016)

Score: 2.5 / 5

Distinctly underwhelming but still a hell of a good time, Assassin's Creed is first and foremost a video game. I've never played it, and now I don't feel like I need to. The film's two-hour running time might seem fair for a sci-fi/action/fantasy/adventure flick about secret societies, martial arts, the Spanish Inquisition, and an eagle that just keeps showing up. While its overplotted, bewilderingly paced narrative slogs on, however, we are absorbed into the jittery, jerky fight scenes that give us neither blood nor much sophistication, leaving us unsatisfied yet craving more. Much like most video games.

Similarly, while the nature of an action-based film suggests a specific style of cinematography suited for handheld intimacy and kinetic grit, the camerawork here almost completely lost me. Director Justin Kurzel (Macbeth) continues his tendency of style over substance, but here he also employs an enormous budget. Rather than enhancing the drama at hand with better focus, detail, or insight, he douses each shot with so many visual effects that nothing looks real. Ethereal and foggy, lit with operatic spotlights and saturated in color, the images are both lovely and superficial, unweighted and ultimately inconsequential. The most memorable moments are those in which one of our leads faces off against the other, often with tears in their eyes, and the camera zooms in close. If the rest of the film would only make you care about them, you might tear up too.

That said, the only thing I found to make this movie bearable were its leads. Though they are robbed of significant screen time, they all perform admirably, especially Marion Cotillard. Her typical suavity and intrigue are about as opaque as the CGI dust swirling around, but that doesn't mean she doesn't rock at what she does best. Michael Fassbender is no less spellbinding though his role here is largely physical, and damned if he doesn't make a white undershirt and gray sweats look sexier than sin.

Brendan Gleeson pops in for a couple wasted scenes, and Jeremy Irons, while lovely to behold, is largely cast aside. Charlotte Rampling makes a surprise appearance, one that we might expect to continue in a sequel or five, however many the studios churn out these days. Speaking of which, the ending does indeed feed into franchise frenzy, one that here does not seem deserved. Maybe it would have if the film was as cheery or fresh as some of the Marvel ilk, though to be fair, I totally enjoyed this picture's solemnity and lack of humor. Maybe it would have if it weren't bogged down by its own mythology, explaining itself in repetitive cycles yet still managing to ignore sizable plot holes. Maybe it would have had it allowed its best special effects -- Fassbender and Cotillard -- to shine through the digital-visual swamps and not just look pretty. Then again, their mere presence in this half-baked semi-conscious quasi-coherent picture is miraculous enough.

IMDb: Assassin's Creed

High-Rise (2016)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Not unlike the films of Nicolas Winding Refn, High-Rise relies heavily on style to reach its audience. Where I might have expected the fairly plot-driven concept to translate into heightened speeches and not-so-abstract abstractions, I instead found myself totally absorbed in the vibrant images, the haunting production design of the titular complex, and its similarly complex tenants. There is nothing so delicious as a film that provokes us and overwhelms us and then leaves us desperate to catch up. Too many pictures take our hand, guiding us through the characters, the plot, the themes, and then let us out the other side after a couple hours of escape. Not so here.

Director Ben Wheatley transports us to a dystopian tower outside London where a famed architect (Jeremy Irons) has fashioned a chic abode for the accomplished and bourgeois. We follow a young doctor (Tom Hiddleston) into this tower, which we quickly see is a world unto itself, containing everything from gymnasiums and pools to restaurants and grocery stores. Trapped as we become in this paradoxically claustrophobic high-rise, we see the drama unfold between the social strata: the wealthy and influential live in the upper floors of the forty available, while lower-class families abide beneath. As the infrastructure periodically fails -- including power outages and garbage chute blockages that particularly infuriate the tenants of lower floors -- the various strata descend into violence and madness, warring against the other floors (and social classes).

Wheatley eyes the proceedings with a wicked sense of glee, allowing the horrors and the humors to coalesce into the blackest of comedies and the most stylized of thrillers. His film utilizes fluid cinematography and somewhat disconnected editing to enhance first the dreamlike quality of the apartments and secondly the dizzying madness brought on by their failure. The gorgeous costumes devolve into animalistic and bloodied scraps. The beauty and grandeur are wasted by vandals and thieves, the luxury is ignored in favor of debauchery and orgiastic hedonism. His team of designers have meticulously brought this 1970s world to life, and to then see it all destroy itself before our eyes is nothing short of astonishing. And, of course, there's the scene where James Purefoy dances with the camera.

For all its grim imagery and timely critique of our socioeconomic culture, High-Rise keeps things energetic, lively, and often very funny. It's a surreal adventure into a bizarre world of themes and images and people that is perhaps more complex than necessary, more specific than is comfortable, and more important than we expect.

IMDb: High-Rise

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Score: 2.5 / 5

Maybe it's because I'm not much of a DC fan. Maybe it's because I don't particularly like Zack Snyder or Jesse Eisenberg. I hesitated even putting my thoughts into words because so many of my friends liked or hated this movie. And I can't get down on them for it, because I have my weak spots too.

I'll make this short and sweet: Batman v Superman didn't do overmuch for me. It's an operatic, grandiose vision of iconic heroes declaring themselves and decrying the other. In that way, it's appropriate to our current political field. But whereas our candidates are flinging mud and hoping to sound crazier than the others to raise social media buzz, these two hunks are slinging punches and buildings at each other. More collateral damage? You tell me.

What comes from the two-and-a-half hours of almost incoherent plot points and exposition is a ludicrous amount of animated effects that ultimately feel cheap and unnecessary. The smoke and mirrors are just that. The final half hour is particularly stupid, because after the titular drama finally reaches a climax, a bizarre monster pops in to make our heroes join forces to save the wasted city. And finally Gal Gadot appears as a glorious Wonder Woman. But by that time, I almost didn't care because my ass was falling asleep.

I'm not criticizing Henry Cavill or Ben Affleck. I thought they were both fine. I especially liked the suave sort of sophistication Affleck brought to Batman; it was something I haven't seen before, which I'm all about. Jeremy Irons and Laurence Fishburne should have been featured more, and Holly Hunter was wonderful. Really with a cast like this, you can't complain much, and they all seem to be properly moody. Jesse Eisenberg's antics were enough to thoroughly annoy, though, but what else is new?

What else can I say? Will I watch it again? Sure. But I'd rather spend my time digging into the Marvel universe. At least those films have a sense of clarity (well, besides the Ultron issues). And, more important, they're fun. They don't weigh themselves down will silly thematic bull about gods and men until they actually show us those things, and then they poke fun or kick some ass. I guess if I'm going to watch a superhero action movie, I'd rather watch one like that. That said, there's a time and place for brooding superheroes doing dark and morally ambiguous things, and this is it.

**ADDENDUM**

Having now seen the Extended Edition on Blu-Ray, I can definitively say I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It's still very dark, non-action-heavy (until the climax), and filled with complex characters and plotlines. But whereas the theatrical cut was borderline incoherent, now the drastic shifts and obvious plot holes have been smoothed over. I almost never felt ripped from a scene by forced editing or clumsy dialogue. This edition would cause me to re-score this movie as a 4.5 / 5.

IMDb: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice