Nyad (2023)

Score: 3 / 5

It's rare that I find a film most compelling due to a single element, and perhaps even more when that element is acting, but Nyad fit that bill last year. Diana Nyad, in case you don't remember, is the legendary long-distance swimmer who tried multiple times to swim the Straits of Florida, from the Keys to Cuba, in the early 2010s. Raw material seemingly made for film, her story is one of stubborn perseverance almost to the point of martyrdom, as the over fifty hours of constant swimming in open ocean could have easily killed her, even while supervised. Some will note the various skeptics who doubt certain aspects of her achievements, but technicalities aside, it is clear that Nyad is one of the most determined and accomplished aqua-athletes in America, and this dramatization reminds us of the human story behind the headlines.

Annette Bening plays the title role with especial attention to the name's mythic Greek roots. Her character repeatedly references her fate to live in the water and succeed where mere mortals cannot. Bening embodies Nyad with determined physicality, shocking and riveting as she takes to the water like a professionally seasoned swimmer. Even out of the water, she has a messy-haired, wild-eyed, almost animalistic ferocity in her directness and lack of social grace. Bening's steely gaze sees through the artifice of everyone around her, cutting them down while inflating herself, despite a lack of stylish habiliment. Much like Bening's shockingly muscular prowess in mastering this role, Jodie Foster nails a more emotional role than she's had in a while as Bonnie Stoll, Diana's longtime friend and trainer, she watches her best friend flirt with death time and again. She's more perceptive and warm than her counterpart, offering us a welcome perspective on what's really happening to and around Diana from a person we immediately trust. She's also the only person to call Diana out on her prickly behavior. Their relationship is the dynamic that pulses through Nyad, and it serves up a raw feast for your heart.

But it's not all your typical sporty biopic about a dedicated athlete overcoming the odds. She does, of course, but there are twists to it. First, the two women are also exes, which adds a melancholic but heartwarming flavor to their interactions, especially as Bonnie has to witness Diana's monomania and try to support and protect at the same time. Second, Diana is hardly a likable person; so single-minded is her obsession that she can scarcely interact with other people without limiting the conversation to her methods, her training, her goal. She's also remarkably conceited, constantly boasting and self-promoting to the point of off-putting most who enter her orbit. One wonders how much her motivation and her narcissism stem from misogyny she's endured and needed to overcome on her own terms. Third, this isn't a team sport and therefore the film doesn't engage much with the whole camaraderie/teamwork/acceptance trope that structures most inspirational sporty stories. Diana feels that she is alone, fighting powers that seek to keep her in her place, combatting forces of nature like King Lear in the ocean (she is in her mid-60s, after all), and even challenging her supporters for trying to control and influence her pure dreams.

The narrative itself, apart from these character elements, is routine at best. All five of Diana's attempts are dramatized to various extent, and each introduces new and increasingly dangerous elements of her crossing. Powerful ocean currents, drifting courses, and threats of sharks and jellyfish send them back to the drawing board each time, learning new ways to light her path, protect her face and body, even to feed and water her without touching. In between, we get glimpses of her spats with reporters, friends, and even her colleagues, including her somewhat surly ship captain (Rhys Ifans), whose understanding of the sea surpasses her own, much to Diana's chagrin. The film features a few effectively intense and memorable scenes -- a jellyfish attack in the middle of the night is particularly harrowing -- but it also wallows in a lot of "same ol', same ol'" shots of, well, open ocean and torturous swimming, only really discernible by virtue of the forced and obvious soundtrack (that is supported by the screenplay, as Diana mentions songs that run through her mind as she keeps time, but it's still overbearing in our experience of the film).

In summation, the two lead performances are more than award-worthy and more than make the film worth watching. I'd have liked, perhaps, a bit more consideration of Nyad's real character, rather than the somewhat mythic caricature presented by this film. There is always a time and place for inspirational, (wo)man-against-nature adventure or sports flicks, and this definitely fits the bill with an unusually keen focus on complex characters. But when the real Diana Nyad, who is still alive and proudly making rounds as a motivational speaker, etc., has come under such fire for exaggerating her own accomplishments, fabricating her numbers and methods, and even being denied a Guinness World Record for the task depicted in this same story, it feels disingenuous and purposely misleading not to include more of the shady side of her persona. Bonnie at one point teases Diana for embellishing one of her repeated tales, but no further reference is made to her untrustworthiness. Not that painting Diana as a liar should be the point -- heck, the writer could have included more about her need to be better than how the male-dominated sport and society view her, or her determination to be an older, queer woman role model to inspire younger generations and how that can impact someone's self-image.

The Mauritanian (2021)

 Score: 3.5 / 5

In 2001 only two months after 9/11, Mohamedou Ould Salahi was arrested at his home in Mauritania. After the authorities, desperate for justice, traded him around a bit, he found himself a prisoner at the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Although he was never formally charged with a crime, and only circumstantial evidence even marginally related him to one of the hijackers, Salahi was held there for fourteen years, tortured for information he did not know. It's an horrific story, one that lends itself well to a cinematic medium, especially carried by such a stellar group of actors. It's also a distinctly manipulative screenplay by writers M.B. Traven, Rory Haines, and Sohrab Noshirvani, more or less the kind of "dear reader" pathos structured into an equally manipulative courtroom drama. Told in this way, the film must be inevitably compared to other, less timely, dramas, and found wanting as a result.

That's not to say the story isn't as interesting as the previous times we've heard it, on the news and never more than when Salahi's whistleblowing account of his time at Guantanamo Bay was published, heavily redacted by the government. After an initial sequence of Salahi's arrest, the film jumps to 2005, when a concerned lawyer named Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster) decides to defend Salahi and either get him charged or released. As she goes through the process of entering the detention camp, I couldn't help but feel that the film was hinting at the similar introductory sequence to her character in The Silence of the Lambs; she enters a warren of nightmarish holding cells, most of the base obscured by hanging tarps and stone walls, stripped of potential weapons, and advised to wear a head scarf. She's primed to fear and dehumanize the man she's promised to help, and through Foster's eyes you can see the unspoken battle of wills in her mind.

Joining her is Teri (Shailene Woodley), an associate who has never seen anything like this. During the course of their research, and visits to Salahi (played by a brilliant Tahar Rahim), the two women constantly fight red tape, analyze redacted documents, and slowly but surely seek to rectify the wrongs done not just to their client but to all the inmates. In this way, the film often feels a little out of time; the now publicly known problem that was Guantanamo Bay -- essentially a brutish and brutal prison of torture and total lack of oversight -- is the villain here, but its human rights violations have been the subject of scrutiny for years. One can only guess that the filmmakers, whose project was greenlit in late 2019, felt inspired after the 45th president signed an executive order to keep the prison open indefinitely. Now, however, President Biden's administration has publicly planned to close the prison. Hopefully this movie will add to the support for that plan.

Perhaps the most interesting character arc in the film comes from Benedict Cumberbatch as the Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch, representing the U.S. government even as he becomes disillusioned and disturbed by the information coming out about Guantanamo Bay. His is the proverbial fall from grace, and his oaths are put to the test as the government's crimes are finally spoken in courts of law. But, interesting as he is and effective as Cumberbatch makes him, he feels a little too thinly written; actually, I'd say all the characters in this movie -- specific as they are, nominally -- are little more than archetypes. Bouncing off each other in familiar ways, the stakes are never particularly high. Even if you don't remember this story blaring from the morning news years ago, you instinctively know how this story will progress, regress, turn, and end. While that's not a negative quality in any film, much less one that recounts real events, it does make The Mauritanian surprisingly dull viewing.

But, bland and trite as it feels in retrospect, there is a lot to appreciate in this film. Not only is its earnest attempt to vindicate Salahi's name and life a more than worthy cause -- and, I think, largely succeeds, emotional manipulations aside -- but it features really wonderful performances and a few interesting aesthetic choices as well. Lengthy flashback sequences, especially near the film's end, depict Salahi's many years of torment in the prison. These are largely presented in boxy 4:3 aspect ratio, isolating the frame and cueing us to see Salahi as trapped and under a microscope. It's arguably unnecessary, as the climactic sequence is a lengthy and particularly violent series of horrors much like we saw in Jonathan Demme's The Manchurian Candidate; and its placement as the climax feels extremely exploitative and sentimental at the same time. But the layers of mindful, if heavy-handed, direction makes the film immediately accessible to average viewers who may have no idea what they're in for.

Hotel Artemis (2018)

Score: 2.5 / 5

The summer of 2028: ah, yes, I remember it well. A riot breaks out in Los Angeles in a war-torn, dystopian future world that looks and feels like a preview of Blade Runner. The cityscape is dark and dank, saturated with rich lights from poor sources in an impressionistic neo-noir fever dream. Intrigued yet? You should be.

The Hotel Artemis lies nestled in a crowded block, identifiable only by the neon light crowning its roof. Its gorgeous interior harbors a secret hospital catering to criminals. What? Yeah, I know. Run by the Nurse (Jodie Foster, who really just needs to be in more movies) and her stern rules -- no guns, no cops, one at a time -- the hotel/hospital seems to operate smoothly, largely thanks to Everest (Dave Bautista), the orderly. The set is gorgeous, costumes are cool, lighting phenomenal, and a solid cast perform admirably.

Unfortunately, the film itself is a confused mess. It features an awkward, futuristic setting with high-tech devices without ever explaining how Los Angeles became this criminal war zone, how or why this hotel/hospital exists, or why anything we're seeing is important as a story, artwork, or even entertainment. The characters are so specific (beautifully so) that we cannot identify with or even sympathize with them, with the possible exception of the Nurse herself. That said, though, even she is so idiosyncratic and -- no thanks to the screenplay -- banally emotional that I was put off. The only character I wanted to like was the Wolf King (because it's a great title and he's played by Jeff Goldblum), who is basically the Big Bad of LA in a decade. And he's the one we're definitely not supposed to like.

What bothers me the most about this film is that it's actually quite impressive, artistically. There are some really cool moments, including Bautista being hilarious and hunky, Sofia Boutella being totally badass, and even Zachary Quinto emoting like crazy through metal bars. But no amount of design and beauty can cover up the fact that the story doesn't quite make sense. Actually, more than once I wondered if this was a sequel to something or a prequel of something. There is no character development or exposition in this movie, and yet the characters and setting are brilliantly thought out. I kept thinking that this would be a nice climactic ending to an earlier story.

Instead, we got a haphazard, half-baked mess that plays out like a game. Who can catch the most references, get the inside jokes, appreciate what we've done? If you can't, you lose.

IMDb: Hotel Artemis