The Front Room (2024)

Score: 2 / 5

Expectations can ruin films. Due to marketing or other, we've all experienced major letdowns when a new work of art doesn't quite match what we hope it will be. Personally, I attempt to leave expectations at the door to better access the film on its own terms, but we are all victims of that pitfall nonetheless. Yet when a film itself -- by nature of its premise -- establishes its own promises of what's to come and then fails to deliver that, disappointment and frustration will (and, I think, should) dampen your experience. For a recent example, I fully expected Babygirl to be a smutty but delicious erotic thriller with a nasty denouement; it turned out to be a shockingly restrained, nuanced, and thoughtful navigation through sexual mores in an increasingly fraught landscape of desire and agency.

The Front Room, produced by A24 and written and directed by Robert Eggers's two half-brothers Max and Sam, promised a lot to us, not least of which was the return of Brandy to the silver screen. She plays Belinda, a non-tenured professor who is treated like an adjunct at her troubled local college, who is pregnant with her public defender husband Norman (Andrew Burnap). With maternity leave looming and being barred from promotion at work, she quits, pushing their family into dire financial straits. The story, essentially, takes off from here: when Norman's estranged father dies, his stepmother calls to invite them to the funeral, and though he does not really want to attend, they do together. There, they encounter Solange, the aging and infirm widow, who pressures them into accepting her offer: take her into their home for the rest of her life, and she'll pay their mortgage and will them everything in her estate. Desperate but worried, they accept, and Solange moves into the titular space of honor in their house.

With a tagline like "All hell moves in," we are meant to expect that this arrangement will be torturous for Belinda and Norman, and indeed it is. Belinda, very pregnant and home alone, must care for Solange, who is rude and crude, deliberately mispronouncing her name and aggressively demanding to be catered to, hand and foot. To Belinda's nascent horror, Solange is also incontinent and mostly incapable of moving freely about the house, much less cleaning up after herself. Mothers-in-law may be stereotypically monstrous, but this is on another level, made much worse by Solange's fire-and-brimstone brand of Christianity (it seems to be an offshoot of Pentecostalism) and literally certified racist social philosophy. If Rosemary's Baby was about a pregnant woman trying to free herself from menacing forces closing in around her, The Front Room is about a pregnant woman needing to purge her own home of the evil within. Belinda and Solange are set up as two forces of nature meant to engage in a final battle of wits, belief, and power.

But that never actually happens. Sure, there are lots of encounters and fights and horrific messes (and I do mean lots), but the film never feels as claustrophobic or frightening as it should. Rather, it injects absurdity into most of its scenes, aided by bright, lurid color schemes that make everything feel more surreal than disturbing. The messes, disgusting as they are, are never really leaned into beyond a few nightmarish montages that flick by like a circus fever dream. Worse, Solange is never as menacing as she should be with her white supremacist and evangelical bona fides. This makes Belinda appear all the more incapable or weak, to say nothing of Norman, whose tender words of affirmation for her are proven, over time, to be practically all he has to offer in their marriage, their family, and their life. His ineptitude is almost as infuriating as Belinda's longsuffering, especially being a strong Black woman and soon-to-be mother.

Brandy does give a capable performance, but she can't do much with a character all but sapped of her own empowerment. The other actors are mostly forgettable and do little of import here. Kathryn Hunter, though, plays Solange with a cruel deftness that is intoxicating and certainly worth watching the film to experience. Unfortunately, her demoniac presence is similarly hindered by the screenplay, which seems scared to actually make the film be about anything. Tonally, the film is a mess, which doesn't help, and various scenes feel directed as thrilling, horrifying, silly, gross, and tepid, without any connective tissue or purpose from one sequence to the next. There is almost no tension, no fear, not even brazen attempts to fight back from any character. Is Solange's piety a cover for Satanic rituals? Will Solange bring other racists to Belinda's house and terrorize her? At one point, I even wondered if Solange would die and that Belinda's baby would be some perverse reincarnation. None of these pan out, and literally any of them would have been a worthy climax for this premise.

Instead, we get a familiar and quaint ending that might have worked in the '90s but simply doesn't now. With that to finish off this insipid and generally dull "thriller," I was left wondering what exactly the writers, producers, and distributors were thinking with this tired and shallow final product. A few more rounds of workshopping would have certainly helped, along with a strong dose of inspiration. 

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.

Poor Things (2023)

Score: 5 / 5

Some of the best cinematic scholarship of the year will center on the latest trip-and-a-half from Yorgos Lanthimos, whose auteur streak has just reached profound new heights. If you love him, you love him; if you don't, definitely avoid this film. The most profound, bizarre, and deeply literary film of the year is also one of the most purely entertaining and unforgettable viewing experiences in years. Poor Things is at once a natural extension of Lanthimos's oeuvre and a brazen evolution of timeliness and complexity, sure to launch him into a new strata of filmmaking in ways that The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and even The Favourite weren't prepared to do.

The Greek auteur here seems interested in his usual theming -- the awkwardness and easy fallibility of human relationships -- and finally embraces the Gothic pastiche with which he's always flirted. Without rehashing the full plot here, suffice it to say that Poor Things is a postmodern feminist reimagining of Frankenstein in a manner analogous to Guillermo del Toro's Cold War-era answer to The Creature from the Black Lagoon in the form of The Shape of Water. Which is to say that it takes the bones of that "source material," if you will, rearranges and redecorates it with contemporary style and ideas, and repurposes it for unique and culturally disrupting ends. It might also be fair to say that this is perhaps Lanthimos's most funny and positive -- or, at least, comedic in the most classically Greek sense -- film yet, which could arguably make it more accessible to those less familiar with his previous, darker films.

The entire production -- all nearly two and a half hours of it -- is impeccably, impossibly detailed with outrageously inventive artistry. Stilted and occasionally horrific dialogue elicits as many embarrassed chortles as it does explosive belly laughs. Sets reminiscent of something in a Tim Burton film or Dr. Seuss story are palpably realized, and I thought more than once of Barbie in terms of production design, practical effects, and theme. Otherworldy costumes fill the usually fisheye lens with popping colors and tactile intrigue. Victorian London becomes steampunk Paris with a few stops at Lisbon and Alexandria along the way, making the protagonist's journey indeed something of a road flick, allowing the filmmakers ample time and space to realize the splendor of their awesome, wholly original world.

Other writers will cover the endlessly fascinating characters with better insight and theory than I could summarize here, but this is one of the most radically feminist stories I can recall seeing in ages. It's helped, yes, by a magnificent cast, all here performing at their very best. Emma Stone pulls out yet another performance for the ages as Bella Baxter, the protagonist, whose journey of self-discovery and external discovery forms parallel plotlines; her intellectual enlightenment is woven with threads of her sexual and emotional maturity, and as she learns about the fantastic world around her, she learns to trust -- and to what extent -- the odd characters she meets, most of whom angle to use her in some way. She'll have none of it. Stone's performance is a tightwire act of impetuousity we rarely see from any leading actress; completely unpredictable in every scene, one wonders the extent to which she was allowed to improvise versus calculated specificity. The cast is uniformly great, but I'd note especially Mark Ruffalo as the greasy villainous cad (whose sexual proclivities reach a certain Streetcar Named Desire climax that had me weeping from laughter) and Kathryn Hunter as the powerhouse madame of a French brothel (whose comparatively brief screen time offers devastating and challenging nuance in what could easily be a one-note character).

The continuous references to Dr. Godwin (Willem Dafoe) as "God" deserves unpacking, as does most of the film in general, and I confess to know nothing about Alasdair Gray's novel of the same name which this screenplay by Tony McNamara adapts. It would be nice to know, but I'm hesitant to borrow the book from a library because I don't want to tarnish the raw experience of seeing this film's beauty and strangeness as filtered through Lanthimos's vision. But it is precisely the language of dialogue that I'm most curious about, having seen the film, because of the way it evolves along with Bella, both in terms of subject/substance, yes, but also in terms of rhetorical style and increasingly complex turns of phrase that bear multiple meanings. Witty in the best, most devious sense, McNamara pulls no punches with his biting sensibility. The smorgasbord of artists assembled here are all performing at the top of their craft, aligned to perfect effect by a director coming into his own with each new project. Poor Things is one of the best -- read: most important -- films of the decade.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

Score: 4 / 5

It's always tough to stomach a new adaptation of the Bard's work. Whether it's Kenneth Branagh's latest diva turn or an indie attempt at sacrificing substance for visuals, filmed Shakespeare often leaves a lot to be desired, at least for this viewer. And Macbeth, no doubt due to its already lean and mean plot, gets adapted more often than most of Shakespeare's work. Most recently, Justin Kurzel's 2015 adaptation was visually stunning but bereft of so much content that it felt more like an undergraduate's capstone than actual theatre. And, when I saw that the new adaptation from Joel Coen (as a solo writer and director, for the first time without his brother Ethan) had a running time of just under two hours, I panicked that it would travel the same, sorry road.

But turn, hellhound, as Macduff says, for this movie took me by blissful surprise. It's not the best version of the play I've ever seen, and it's not always a great movie, but it bravely pushes forward into fascinating new areas and, mostly, succeeds in telling its story anew. Shot in Gothic black and white by Bruno Delbonnel in gorgeous expressionistic sets by Stefan Dechant, the film reads visually somewhere between the nightmare aesthetic of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and the foggy grit of seedy L.A. or San Francisco films noir. Add a brooding score by Carter Burwell, and this film is pretty much exactly what I needed to see, cuddled up with a bottle of wine on a cold, snowy winter night while the fire crackled over the hearth.

To start with what we loved, let's start with the beginning. Veteran Shakespearean stage actress Kathryn Hunter appears in an almost blinding white desert, using her famed contortionist abilities to impressive and disturbing effect, growling out the witches' lines in her androgynous voice. She is the one and only witch, you might say, and the film occasionally highlights her acting acrobatics by placing her in relation to herself; one early moment has her standing over a pool of water as he pronounces fortune to Macbeth and Banquo, while her reflection shows two figures, making the trio of myth literal. There are also lovely visual cues to the boundary between worlds, usually heralded by crows (or ravens, perhaps) or still water reserves, as during the brilliant and chilling scene later when Macbeth returns to the witch(es) to learn more from them and their "masters." Hunter appears, too, as another important character usually treated as a cameo or cut altogether, and I love that this inclusion helped showcase her immeasurable talents.

Alex Hassel plays Ross, one of the "other" Thanes in a role more obvious and interesting than I've ever seen, one that plays more intentionally off Ross's fascinating character as one vacillating between loyalty to the crown -- whoever is wearing it -- and loyalty to whatever side will win the power struggle for Scotland. As this film makes him into the mysterious third assassin of Banquo, and it is he who discovers the hiding Fleance before the scene blacks out on him smiling at the boy, there is a lot to unpack there. As intimately familiar as I am with the play, this use of Ross made me want to re-read it again just to find justification or reason for it, because I'd never even considered his character much before, and now he feels like a dark parallel line to Macbeth himself. Oh, and I'd be remiss to say Corey Hawkins wasn't a pretty great Macduff, though I wish the stunted screenplay had given him a bit more to do.

And that, friends, is a segue into the criticisms. This film sounds like a SparkNotes audio summary of the tragedy, not so much like the Bard made manifest. Of course it hits all the beats it needs to, narratively, but for one of Shakespeare's shortest plays, I can't help but begrudge them for slicing his beautiful prose. Further, the players are largely not playing this film as a presentation of Shakespeare, despite the lavishly evocative sets (I thought more than once of Lars von Trier or even Bertolt Brecht) that should have informed a stylized acting technique. They play it as, instead, a deeply inverted chamber piece, grunting and hissing their lines to the point of being nearly inaudible most of the time.

No doubt this style was headed up by Denzel Washington as the titular antihero, whose occasional acting work for the last fifteen years or so has left me repeatedly underwhelmed (with some exceptions, like Fences and Roman J. Israel, Esq., of course). He injects his blasé grunts and typical deadpan "huh" into what should be glorious dialogue, and never allows himself to tip into madness, something that the role absolutely and unequivocally requires. A case could be made that he uses nuance to internalize his madness, but it just doesn't read on screen. Conversely, but also in tandem, Frances McDormand pops in for her limited scenes as Lady Mac, and while she naturally has a slightly wild glint in her eye, she too delivers her performance in atypically understated fashion. It's chilling until it's not, and even her sleepwalking scene felt a little too self-conscious. And then the film gives her death a visual, and that's just something I'm never down with in adaptations of the work.

On the other hand, I really liked the idea of Mac and his wife as an older couple. They are normally played young -- which checks out with his recent battle experience against Ireland and Norway, as well as their profoundly sexual dynamic -- but this time we can more deeply feel her desire to be "unsexed" when she turns toward murder, his lust for power and control as the end of his family line, and of course the weight of his legacy as he ponders "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow." This also makes their attempted murder of Fleance and successful murder of Macduff's son more desperate and cruel. It also makes MacB's murder of King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson), which is fully shown on screen, a shockingly intimate moment, one that feels more like a betrayal of friendship and even kinship rather than simple regicide.

Light thickens, as Mac says, and this is a delicious cocktail to mull over as the snow continues to fall. Get into it, y'all.