Asteroid City (2023)

Score: 4 / 5

Another year, another Wes Anderson project. His titles are really hit-or-miss for me; out of his now eleven titles, I'd only happily rewatch five, while the others I prefer not to remember at all. Thankfully, Asteroid City falls squarely in the former category for me. Anderson's latest is a love letter to boyhood interest in space and to our love of theatre and television especially in an age of exciting (or scary) new advancements.

Asteroid City reimagines the luster and wonder of postwar curiosities and anxieties about the space race, radioactivity, and of course aliens. Reliably shot by Anderson's frequent cinematographer Robert Yeoman and beautifully, brilliantly designed by Adam Stockhausen (a regular collaborator with Spielberg, Anderson, and Steve McQueen), the film breathes excitement and ingenuity. The film opens in black-and-white square Academy ratio as if it were a televised special, a radio play or documentary in the mid-50s. Our host is Bryan Cranston, who does a sort of emcee-narrator riff as he tells the story of the fabulous new play "Asteroid City," to be presented presently, by fictional playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton). The play itself is presented to us in glorious widescreen and stylized technicolor and comprises most of the runtime. 

The mise en abyme here is perhaps the most clearly delineated in all of Anderson's films that include multiple layers or framing devices; I appreciated the simplicity for once. And the film -- the televised play, that is -- is a wonderfully realized production. Asteroid City looks not unlike those experimental "Stepford" type towns constructed in a remote desert for the dual purposes of being a sweet oasis for the weary traveler and to ostensibly be destroyed by bomb fallout at test sites. It's a bare place, with neat lines and cookie-cutter shacks and a certain retro charm, helped in no small part by the vibrant colors of the desert (the bright orange sand and light blue sky in stark contrast separated only by a thin horizon are picturesque and uncanny at once). The "city" is about to host a camp for science-oriented youth, drawn no doubt partly because it's also the site of a large meteor crater.

Comedy ensues partly due to Anderson's affinity for nerdy malcontents, naturally, and this film assembles quite an ensemble, which is saying a lot considering all Anderson's films have ludicrously large casts. The main character (arguably) is Woodrow (Jake Ryan), the oldest son of Augie Steenback (Jason Schwartzman), a war photographer who hasn't yet told his children that their mother has been dead for almost a month. Woodrow connects most closely at camp with Dinah (Grace Edwards), daughter of a melancholic but accomplished movie star (Scarlett Johansson), but their cohort of "Stargazers" also includes Ethan Josh Lee as a boy who questions authority and Aristou Meehan as a boy eager to be dared to enact dangerous or foolish stunts. Naturally, more comedy ensues when the camp's keynote speaker, General Gibson (Jeffrey Wright, a perfect casting for what is essentially the banality of evil), is revealed to be planning to steal the tech developed by these kids for the US government.

Those more interested in the human emotional core of this film should find it more accessible and relatable than in most of Anderson's films; at least, I did. The central family drama expands a bit when Augie's father-in-law (Tom Hanks) arrives to help his grandchildren process grief over their mother's death. Woodrow's sisters never quite land as real characters, but their interactions with Hanks are very cute. Surprisingly, I did not care much about the human part of this film -- perhaps I've been burned too often by Anderson to want to care about characters this time -- and much preferred the caricatures and form. That said, Johansson and Schwartzman completely blew me away with their performances; specifically Schwartzman, who has never done a role quite like this, and who plays Augie as well as the actor playing Augie as he convinces (seduces?) Earp to cast him. 

Asteroid City isn't wholly unlike those slice of life plays of a type of expansion-era mindset. Think October Sky meets Our Town. There's a lot of busy action, people talking and not listening, seeing and not appreciating, and connecting in unexpected ways. But by the final act, it all seems to boil down to everyone wondering what the meaning of human life is or could be. Because not only is their liminal space, floating precariously on ruin in the desert, an existential crisis itself, but during the camp they are visited not once but twice by an alien flying saucer. This revelation -- portrayed in brilliant stop-motion -- does very little to help anyone's existential crises, but it certainly provides opportunity for the characters to reflect and stay in town for another week. Which, really, is what we're all doing in life, right?

Anderson, of course, handles these themes deftly, perhaps even briskly here. His characters are agonizing for answers and purpose, and yet when given the metaphorical microphone, they voice their version of the questions we ourselves have as audience members: "I don't understand the play. Am I doing it right?" It's these moments that take us out of the play and into the film properly, and I loved that. Much as how every single detail of the sets and props are important and brilliant, these little "asides" from Anderson's screenplay are crucial and poignant. There is a lot of silly stuff here, much like in Moonrise Kingdom, but Anderson wants us to work our way though tough questions. One of my only notes from watching this movie came from Johansson, who while gazing through neighboring windows at Augie and discussing their melancholia, says, "We're just two catastrophically wounded people who don't express the depths of our pain because [...] we don't want to."

A Rainy Day in New York (2020)

 Score: 0.5 / 5

Woody Allen's latest flick (well, the most recently released to mass audiences) is, for me, among his most disappointing. He rarely wins me over completely, and I tend to scorn the most beloved entries in his filmography. But A Rainy Day in New York is unbearably vapid, the sort of mindless and joyless bilge he prolifically churns out once every two or three years for no discernible reason other than slapping his name on something.

The story is the same as any other bloodless rom-com: a young college couple go to New York City to spend a weekend together. One has an interview booked with a famous filmmaker, the other is tagging along hoping to make the weekend especially romantic. Through misadventures and miscommunication, the two drift apart and have to come to terms with their burgeoning incompatibility. There's nothing new or special about it, and though Allen has handled trashy material like this before, here he seems completely incapable of finding or doing anything interesting with it.

Timothée Chalamet appears to do his best Woody Allen impression -- as all Allen leading men do (or are forced to do) when the director himself stays off screen -- stammering through his uppity turns of phrase as a character named, no joke, Gatsby Welles. If his affected acting doesn't bother you, the privileged and directionless character he plays will. Gatsby wants to charm his girlfriend and plans drinks and museum trips with the money he won playing poker; her unexpectedly busy schedule unhappily gives him some free time, which he uses to meet his awful brother and his fiancee, and Selena Gomez (playing some girl, but really it's just Selena) who is the younger sister of a former girlfriend and with whom he has harbored a mutual crush. Grossed out yet? Hang on to something, because by the "climax" of the flick, he feels inspired to crash his domineering socialite mother (Cherry Jones) while accompanied by a sex worker.

His girlfriend Ashleigh, played by the usually winning Elle Fanning, is a daring but dewy-eyed flake of a person, ditsy when she should be in control. Meeting the morose filmmaker (Liev Schrieber) and his collaborator (Jude Law), she makes an impression on them that feels creepier than it should be, in light of the #MeToo controversies surrounding its production and distribution. By the time she meets a famous actor (Diego Luna), we're keenly aware her future with Gatsby is in jeopardy, and for good reasons. But having so many attractive men fawn over her only makes her more incomprehensible. Then again, the end of the film ends more happily for Gatsby than Ashleigh, arguably, and so whatever might have empowered her character is utterly stripped from her by Allen, who by this point is revealed to be the self-servicing worm we suspected at the start of the movie.

The only decent things about this movie are as follows: Diego Luna is really pretty, Cherry Jones is always a pleasure to watch work (and she is given one pretty solid scene to shine through), and Vittorio Storaro's cinematography is quite lovely to experience. He makes the movie feel dreamlike and romantic in the way classic Hollywood romances were. Too bad Allen had to ruin it all with terrible direction and a musty waste of a screenplay.

Spotlight (2015)

Score: 5 / 5

It could easily have given itself over to sensationalism, given its lurid subject. But, much to its credit, it didn't, and it ended up being one of the best movies this year.

Spotlight is that magical movie that shines because all of its comprising elements are so thoughtful, calculated, and impassioned, and they all blend together seamlessly. Everything about this movie is about as perfect as it could have gotten. Not a moment of screen time is wasted. Not a breath of dialogue is cast aside. Even Howard Shore's score is so understated that I often forgot it existed, until I realized its subtle tugging at my heartstrings.

Concerning the Spotlight team of the Boston Globe in 2001, the film follows a group of journalists who labored to, pardon, shine a spotlight on the epidemic of child sex abuse by Catholic priests. As they uncover the conspiracy, they learn that the entire city is implicated, including clergy, lawyers, judges, and even journalists. As one of the characters describes it in a revealing conversation, "If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse them." It's a damning indictment, all the more horrifying because of its truth.

The script is perfect. Written by Josh Singer (The West Wing, Fringe) and director Tom McCarthy, the dialogue clips along at a furious pace, but never sinks into melodrama and never sacrifices plot for clarity. McCarthy's attention to emotional beats and character arcs is pretty amazing, considering that his film could easily have gotten swept away with its frenzied plot, numerous characters, and thematic concerns. He keeps everything anchored on his main characters -- Mark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton are a wonder, but never break ranks with the fabulous ensemble -- and follows them to their climactic end. That keeps the film emotional but never sentimental.

McCarthy and his editor keep the film streamlined and taut, roiling through the tumultuous plot with a firm resolve to spare no details and to face the evils head-on. Their breakneck pace keep the film feeling more like a thriller than a biography or drama, helped along by an ensemble prepared to go into the dark subject matter. Cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi (Silver Linings Playbook, Black Mass) helps with that, too, painting a picture of urban duplicity, where the whitewashed facades are at once pure and decadent, holy and monstrous, reflective and deceptive. Together, they keep our focus on the characters' emotional rollercoasters as they hear stories from survivors, lies from lawyers, sins from priests, accusations, condemnations, revelations, confessions, and ultimately more stories.

It's a brutal movie. Sweeping? No. I don't think a sweeping movie on this subject is possible. Partly because the problem is too widespread. Partly because the problem itself isn't a pleasant one that everyone talks about. Partly because one of the best ways to understand the issue is to hear directly from the victims and survivors, and no movie could possibly have the time or resources for that scope (and my favorite documentary, 2006's Deliver Us from Evil, handles it brilliantly, in my estimation, for reference). As the tagline declares, we need to "Break the story. Break the silence."

IMDb: Spotlight

Pawn Sacrifice (2015)

Score: 3.5 / 5

I've never been much of a Tobey Maguire fan, but this is one movie where all his little (or not so little) "isms" pay off in an effective manner. In Pawn Sacrifice, he plays Bobby Fischer, World Chess Champion and controversial public figure during the Cold War, with boiling energy and furious resolve. In fact, I was able to watch him so attentively precisely because he plays a character so distinctly unlikeable. In turns pathetic and maddening, Maguire spins a web of paranoia so convincing, it's almost hard to see that it's him and not the filmmakers at all.

And I admire Edward Zwick, but this is not one of his better films. Balanced between drama and thriller, it's too intimate to be Big Picture and too funny to be thrilling. Its rather ostentatious title suggested that this might be this year's The Imitation Game, subtle and harsh with an eye to poignancy. Rather, it feels like a knockoff of that film, but this time with more American silliness and an obnoxious protagonist. Not a good trade. On the other hand, Maguire is playing by a different set of rules, apparently taking his hint from Black Swan or last year's Whiplash in his single-minded stab at weighty character acting. Not that he hasn't tried that before.

Mad props must be given to his co-stars, however, who marvelously parry his every word with generosity and humility. Michael Stuhlbarg and Peter Sarsgaard wonderfully support the action and the pathos of each scene, while Liev Schreiber looms in opposition to Maguire's mania. It's not a showcase for anyone but Maguire, though, who does what we can with his unstable character in volcanic eruptions of high-pitched yells and popped-out veins.

Zwick does manage to succeed in one way The Imitation Game failed: the action of his lead characters and the tone of the film are reflected wonderfully in the "footage" of the period. We see the mobs, hear the music, and get a good look at both American paranoia and European anxiety as they interact with our characters. I think this device works better here because it's presented as media, which it is, and the media already play a large part in this story. Zwick makes it work, and as someone who had no idea about the chess world or Fischer's apparently famed existence, I certainly benefitted from it.

One more thought. I mentioned Whiplash earlier, and that hints at something else I find curious about Pawn Sacrifice. Whereas the former film effectively educates the audience on the world it presents -- that is, even if you knew precious little about music, the film is not difficult to understand in musical terms -- the latter does not. In fact, there is little dialogue describing the game, and even less screen time devoted to depicting the nuances of play. Rather, I think Zwick tries to use chess as a not-so-subtle metaphor for the psychological war between nations during the Cold War and the various subterfuges and feints involved. Taken further, I wonder if he is trying to make a statement about the war, perhaps trivializing the global drama into a single board game that is taken far out of context, disguised in rich trappings, and played by mentally ill divas.

But that might be giving him too much credit. I think this movie is more face-value than that.

IMDb: Pawn Sacrifice