Black Bag (2025)

Score: 4.5 / 5

With each new project, I'm increasingly grateful that Soderbergh didn't retire after all. His latest release, a spy thriller like few others, reminds us of his highly entertaining ability to cover familiar ground in a wildly unfamiliar way. Black Bag manages to turn a high-stakes story about international security, satellite surveillance, and eavesdropping with AI, and turn it into a tense dinner table drama about camaraderie and companionship. David Koepp's riveting screenplay takes special focus on a conspiracy to leak a top-secret software called Severus, which could apparently cause a nuclear meltdown and claim thousands of lives.

MI6 officer George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is given one week to locate and stop the leak; he narrows his list to five suspects and invites them over for dinner. Perhaps I should say, rather, that he invites four over for dinner; the fifth suspect is his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), his personal and professional match in every way. The others include two couples, all British Intelligence agents of various temperaments and dispositions, and their dinner is a bit awkward; at least, it's a bit stilted and guarded between these folks with their stiff upper lips. But George has lightly drugged their meal to lower their inhibitions with the intention of getting someone loose enough to reveal their secret. One couple is fiery Freddie (Tom Burke), angry about not getting promoted, and satellite image specialist Clarissa (Marisa Abela), who is his subordinate. The other is Colonel James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page) and the agency psychiatrist Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris). Despite the revelation that Freddie has been cheating on Clarissa, causing her to stab his hand with her cutlery, and some fractures in their relationships generally, George learns nothing of value.

With less than a week to go, and with his own supervisor found mysteriously dead, George refocuses attention on his wife, resorting to secretive surveillance of Kathryn on one of her missions. Kathryn suspects their boss (Pierce Brosnan) of attempting to destabilize Russia at any cost, and leaks the Russian operatives' location to a CIA contact, resulting in their annihilation from a drone strike. Meanwhile, George issues polygraph tests to his suspects; based on their respective intel, George and Kathryn conclude that they are being set up and decide to host another little dinner party.

If you know me, you know I love a dramatized dinner party gone wrong. You don't often see these in espionage thrillers, but in this Koepp/Soderbergh project, we get two! As bookends of what is otherwise an engaging but somewhat rote spy story, these sequences frame the whole affair as one of intimate, psychological proportions. We get to know these characters as perfection-oriented, ambitious professionals and as socially icy Brits in what could be an awkward domestic setting. That drastically changes our opinions of them once the game is afoot. As we follow George, primarily, we see his calculated method of putting pressure on each suspect to try and elicit their secrets; Fassbender's typically masterful, subtle performance is key here in ensuring that we trust him without his having to say much.

As his second release this year already, Soderbergh is showing no sign of slowing down or of being predictable in his choices of cinematic topics. This film, understated as it can feel, nevertheless features speedy edits and cool camera tricks such as shifting focus mid-shot and dousing everything in soft lighting to create a unique visual appeal to the proceedings. This helps the dinner scenes best, making things feel natural and nice even as we wait for the traitor to erupt. It also helps us trust -- and then not trust, and then trust again -- George's relationship with Kathryn, as their sexual chemistry and cerebral gameplay are showcased only briefly but highly effectively. And despite her role as a sort of secondary character, Blanchett matches Fassbender point for point, performing Kathryn with a glamorous, ballsy delivery that makes the character have an edge you don't usually see in films like these. He lays a careful trap and waits for his prey; she will unapologetically push people to see which one takes the bait. The middle act of the film works because of Blanchett's choices: she is clearly the only character in the film who could actually be outsmarting George.

Koepp's fraught dialogue and Soderbergh's uncanny knack for unique genre twists combine here in a heady test of smarts that is over almost too quickly. I could have lived in this world a little longer. Brosnan is having fun as a former James Bond who is a bit insecure professionally, and Harris is particularly delicious to watch in her equally cerebral and emotionally complex position as the group's therapist. While the final reveal could delight or upset genre fans, it strikes a memorable balance of tonal uplift and satisfying closure that we don't often see in such films.

The Killer (2023)

Score: 3.5 / 5

A new David Fincher film? On Netflix? With Michael Fassbender? It didn't take much to put The Killer on my awards season watchlist, so I never really knew what to expect. And, now having seen it, I don't really know how to feel. It is at once exactly what I imagined and a bizarre surprise that didn't quite earn my favor. Make no mistake: Fincher is as precise and commanding as he's ever been, and the film is a blessing to behold. It's just a strange story with unexpected tone, and its release exclusively on streaming does it no favors in that regard.

A Fincher thriller about a hitman whose most recent job got botched? Yeah, okay, that tracks. The story of a cold-blooded, calculated assassin who has to reckon with suddenly losing control of his craft? Sounds suspicioiusly personal for Fincher, notoriously exacting in his obsessive creativity. Starring a man accomplished in playing heartless monsters and scary killers? Michael Fassbender has it down to a science. The dramatized perfectionism exceeds the story, adapted by Andrew Kevin Walker (8mm, Sleepy Hollow, The Wolfman, and Se7en), and feels quite at home with both cast and crew, blurring the lines between art and artists. Even when Tilda Swinton shows up, it's less a shock and more a natural bit of casting inclusion; of course she'd be there too, whether you see this as an exercise in coldly precise artists working together or because you see this film as an updated, zhuzhed-up Michael Clayton (which crossed my mind more than once). 

But it's also not what you'd expect because of its odd sense of humor. Granted, part of this may stem from its source material, a French graphic novel series I don't know anything about. The opening sequence is of the nameless protagonist -- Fassbender as the titular professional assassin -- staking out a hotel room and waiting for his target to arrive, and as chilling as it is to watch someone watching for someone, his "method," if you will, involves listening to The Smiths on repeat and justifying his murderous job to us in listless voiceover. The deadpan presentation is helped by the ironic music, to be sure, but also in an almost Ebenezer Scrooge-like means of self-defense via monologue; the killer often keys us into his own justification for being creepy and violent by noting that his actions are infinitesimal compared to the number of people are born and die any given day.

Things become less drily funny when his stakeout ends in disaster. Faced with running and hiding as his only reasonable option, he returns home to find his girlfriend in a bad way, and then he makes a shattering decision. Everything we've learned about him has been planned and calculated, emphasized in his repeated rule to never improvise or get emotionally involved. Suddenly he chooses to make this personal and seek revenge. He embarks on a bloody journey that, while mostly predictable in conventional narrative, remains endlessly watchable due to the cinematic craftsmanship on display by a team working in perfect harmony, harnessing the perfectionist streak of its protagonist and owning that same perfectionism in each aspect of bringing the film's world to life.

Fascinating and beautiful as it all is, it's also hard to connect with emotionally. Maybe we're not supposed to. I'm glad that the film never makes its leading man sympathetic -- I kept expecting some revelation meant to endear us to him -- but his detached approach to murder also saps the film of some of its prurient intrigue. Sometimes you want someone to love or hate more than just vaguely fear. Then again, this isn't a story of feelings. It's a story of someone who so carefully constructs their lives around being perfect and precise who then makes a mistake and has to messily deal with that to protect himself. Again, doesn't it sound a little personal for Fincher? That might also be why its strange tone leans so far into comedy. I was reminded more than once of Steven Soderbergh's filmography, vacillating between riveting dramatic thrillers and crime comedies. This is Fincher's version of the latter, including a running gimmick about the killer's aliases and countless references to name brands (some would say product placement), a curiously bitter commentary on our commodified, consumer culture that keeps us all connected while distracting us from very real threats walking among us.

Next Goal Wins (2023)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Taika Waititi is back in pure form with Next Goal Wins, which is also one of my favorite movies this year. Perhaps it feels unfairly fresh to me because I usually eschew sports films; those more accustomed to the genre might find this bland or trite, because it doesn't offer many surprises to the typical narrative or themes. But novelty doesn't trump other concerns, and this movie has style and heart to spare. I haven't laughed aloud this much in cinemas in years, and before the film ended I had also openly wept.

The story concerns Thomas Rongen (a terrific Michael Fassbender), the real-life Dutch-American football (soccer) coach with a nasty temper. That rage has gotten him into trouble with FIFA before, and now he's offered an ultimatum: he'll be fired outright, or he can relocate to American Samoa to coach their losing team back to a ranking that isn't worst. Because they are, literally, the worst team, having notoriously lost a World Cup game by the largest margin in the organization's history. As they prepare for the 2014 World Cup, Rongen has to navigate a culture he doesn't understand and build trust among his team, yes, but he also has to face himself, his temper, and the pain in his past he hasn't yet processed. Sometimes it takes failure and displacement to get you to really take stock and make internal changes. So Next Goal Wins is a sports story about underdogs, and in that it isn't anything groundbreaking; it's also the story of a tortured coach who finally starts to heal, and in that it's similarly rote.

What makes it special is the Waititi flair and humor, especially paired with a setting we don't get to see much in American movies. While that reveals my tendency to enjoy stories of white Westerners in "exotic" cultures, I'd argue that even those of the Eat, Pray, Love ilk aren't all bad. Escapism works, both in life and in art, and as long as the white visitors or transplants know their place and the story doesn't hinge on cultural appropriation or colonialism, I find it potentially incredibly endearing. Think of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, its sequel, or even last year's Ticket to Paradise, and they're just fabulous feel-good exercises that offer tastes of wholly different lives, and we can be changed along with the protagonist by just absorbing the newness.

All this said, I do rather wish that Waititi had chosen to situate his protagonist not as the new coach but rather as the team captain, Jaiyah, played by Kaimana, who easily gives one of the best performances in the movie. Jaiyah is fa'afafine, a community in Samoa that is recognized and respected as another gender (other than male or female). In real life, she is the first openly non-binary and trans woman to play in the World Cup qualifiers. With that incredible germ of a story right there, it's hard to swallow that Waititi wanted to center everything about a bitter white coach unable to handle his anger instead. Jaiyah's dynamic arc of courage and perseverance could have dramatized hours of storytelling on its own, but Waititi uses her as a subplot to help Rongen see the light. And while this relationship is one of the most important and central to the film, it's also treated with a certain glibness by the screenplay: during one particularly nasty scene, Rongen uses Jaiyah's legal name intentionally cruelly in front of the team in an attempt to control and shame her, and it's really just chalked up to his not knowing better as a foreigner. Even later when they reconcile, Rongen's pointed questions about her genitals aren't addressed as anything more insidious than an annoyance.

Dramatically, even on Rongen's side, things are kept pretty close to the chest. His ex, played by Elizabeth Moss, and her new fling, played by Will Arnett, pop in for a few scenes, but they're mostly treated as silly distractions after they've sent Rongen packing in the opening sequence. Much more screen time is given to the Samoans, including a brilliant Oscar Kightley as Tavita and the team under him. Tavita plays perhaps the strongest role in showing Rongen that island life isn't the same as it is in the rest of the world, getting him to slow down and seek happiness in practical, real ways. His lessons, and lessons from the other islanders, are laced with large dollops of comedy, intentionally eccentric to white ears but rich in Waititi's idiosyncratic wit. While sometimes the humor tries to mask a shallowness of these characters, who aren't very well realized, the effect on the film is a sort of delightful romp through a wholly new slice of life. I absolutely loved it all, from the soundtrack choices to stunning tropical visuals and richly designed costumes. For a heartwarming and inspiring story that is as reliably safe as it is hilarious, please go see Next Goal Wins with your friends and family this holiday weekend!

Dark Phoenix (2019)

Score: 4 / 5

I can't believe it's all over.

The final installment in my favorite superhero franchise is here and mostly indicates a bittersweet revelation for me that an era of filmmaking is ended: one that allowed for cinematic universes before it was popular, one that bent comic book style to suit its own needs, one that allowed each installment freedom to create unique aesthetics and plots while still remaining thematically true to source material. And while the Dark Phoenix saga has been done before in this franchise, it's nice to see another attempt at what is arguably the most famous (and insanely difficult to adapt) comic series under the X-Men title.

Dark Phoenix is a deceptively simple film, one that boils the bizarre elements of its source material down to a few core moments, mostly associated with character. Not development, exactly, but more of a snapshot of really interesting character circumstances, if that is even a thing. On a space mission, Jean Grey gets stuck saving her teammates and is caught in a radioactive storm. She appears to absorb the energy which, after they return home, has unlocked the potential of her psychic powers. Unfortunately, she also becomes increasingly unstable emotionally as she learns the truth of her condition and her past. The X-Men try to help her, but the team fractures as they learn the telepathic control Professor Xavier had been exerting over her development.

Meanwhile, an alien race known as the D'Bari hunt the Phoenix Force, the apparently semi-sentient cosmic energy Jean has absorbed, which had previously destroyed their planet. Of course, in the comics, it is Jean herself who inadvertently done the deed, but this movie tries hard to make sure we sympathize with Jean. Sophie Turner's teary eyes -- so often in closeup here -- do more than enough to endear us as she battles her inner turmoil. It would seem writer/director Simon Kinberg might have thought the popular failure of The Last Stand was a result of Famke Janssen's Jean Grey being more ambiguous, even demonic. That is only my suspicion, of course, but it would explain the drastically different tone in this film.

Indeed, it is Professor Xavier here who is almost villainous, and I found it a little surprising that he wasn't put on the chopping block in this movie, compared to Patrick Stewart's untimely disintegration previously. James McAvoy allows the character to go through some unexpected ups and downs that we've never really seen from Xavier before in film. Then again, he is forced to confront true horror when, at a moment of intense personal failing, he witnesses Jean murder Mystique. And his ending here is probably more touching, as he abdicates his rule over the school, allowing Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) to preside over the renamed Jean Grey School for Gifted Youngsters.

The film suffers, it's true, from a straightforward script, simplified themes, and general disregard for most of the characters. This one really only cares about Xavier and Jean, and in that sense it is pretty magnificent. But the rest of the film relies on the vaguest shorthand regarding all other characters, assuming that the previous installments had created enough drama for audiences to fully appreciate everything going on. But now that we're used to more than twenty films in a shared universe with the MCU, Kinberg just doesn't have enough treasure in this safe to make anyone rich by proxy.

And while I perfectly enjoyed this film (and all X-Men films, including the much-hated Last Stand), perhaps we can hope that if/when the X-Men characters start popping up in MCU movies, we can get some more mileage out of this particular storyline. Perhaps the producers will allow for a more full exploration of the Dark Phoenix saga, complete with the Hellfire Club and Mastermind and the Shi'ar. Perhaps we'll also finally get Mister Sinister and Galactus. Perhaps we'll finally get to see Savage Land!

Okay, maybe I'm getting carried away. But I'll keep hoping! Kind of like how I've been hoping for The New Mutants for years now.

The Snowman (2017)

Score: 2 / 5

We had such high hopes. Michael Fassbender in a frozen wasteland, hunting a serial killer who leaves snowmen (sometimes supplemented with human remains) as his calling card. What could go wrong?

Everything, apparently. The film feels like a ripoff of other, better, material, especially The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Fassbender, the tortured detective on the brink, allows the film to be watchable, if only just; his name, after all, is Harry Hole, and he's sinking. Supposedly he's a genius, but that never really emerges from his sluggish, bleary demeanor. The rest of the cast is largely wasted, with big players like J.K. Simmons, James D'arcy, Val Kilmer, and Toby Jones barely even on screen. The script is confused and unfocused, making the mystery as flat and frigid as the icy landscape. There's little of interest, with the notable exception of Chloe Sevigny as (SPOILER ALERT) twins in an unexpectedly funny (if macabre) scene.

The film has its moments of tension and beauty, the former being menacing shots of snowmen and the occasional bloodstain, the latter being a couple shots of a gorgeous bridge the characters drive over. That's it. The basic mystery is subverted and ruined by the screenwriters and director (Tomas Alfredson, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Let the Right One In), who try to misdirect us in almost every scene, allowing red herrings to pile up so much that we're not sure what to care about. I'm still not sure if the plot is too convoluted or too simple for its own good, which is a problem. The editing doesn't help, as we are often forced to look away from important images and genuine emotions that might help us make sense of the film. Sure, the minimal, impressionistic visual approach is a bit interesting, but aesthetic form has to match substance, and here it does not.

What else can I say? It's just disappointing. How could so many good artists make such a mediocre mess? Save your time and money. Actually, go watch the trailer; it's more entertaining and makes more sense.

IMDb: The Snowman

Alien: Covenant (2017)

Score: 4.5 / 5

It's still one of the best franchises out there.

Alien: Covenant, despite its title, is a fitting continuation of the series that re-invents itself as often and as well as its titular villain. An awesome, roller coaster of a movie, it exhibits pitch-perfect sci-fi horror with expert pacing and awesome production value. It feeds off the energy that this series exudes so well, and leaves us craving ever more (thankfully, Ridley Scott has indeed promised at least two future films). Though attempting to connect its title to the iconic 1979 Alien classic, the film bears far more resemblance to the 2012 prequel Prometheus. Of course, it's a direct sequel to that film, also starring Michael Fassbender, taking place not long after the end of Prometheus (about 15 years, if my notes are correct).

Though Prometheus was criticized by some for its existential themes and broad metaphysics, I found it to be the most engaging of the series, after of course the deeply disturbing original. It gave us that disgusting alien-monster C-section scene, don't forget! Covenant similarly pushes the body horror and does so as befits a sequel: more often, more intense. It also -- though it seems many critics are telling us otherwise -- continues and builds upon the existential crises in its themes and plot. In fact, I found parsing through the mysteries it raises far more engaging than any violence and blood on screen.

It's the same story as all the others in this franchise. A colony ship (yes, the stakes are much bigger here), after suffering malfunctions, receives a signal from a nearby planet and goes to investigate. they discover a seeming paradise, even better than the world they had intended to colonize. Soon the exploration crew discovers a crashed ship, and their attempts to unravel its mystery are paralleled by their desperate fight for survival against vicious, bloodthirsty alien monsters.

How does it differ from the others, then? I don't want to spoil too much, but there is some we can safely mention here. David, the synthetic aboard the Prometheus survived the crash of his and Elizabeth Shaw's hijacked Engineer vessel, as did the black liquid bioweapon he used to destroy that expedition. On this new world, he has continued his experiments with it, though the film fails to explore the many questions that raises. Why did the Engineers create it, or did they create it? Were they going to use it to create life or destroy life? David has been attempting to use it to fashion an ideal form of the iconic alien monster, but still we're not sure why or to what end. We see some o his experiments -- or what we assume are his experiments -- including pod-like flora whose spores float through the air and "impregnate" the humans with the beasts. Later, after David has revealed his experimentation with a type of insect that lays its eggs in a host to be cannibalized, we see a room of eggs we recognize as the Xenomorph eggs, but where did they come from? How did David make those eggs without a Queen? Which came first, the Alien or the creepy slimy egg?

Maybe I was reading too far into it, or not far enough, but the film seemed to raise as many questions as it answered. It makes sense, narratively, of course, but it seems Scott and his team are deliberately withholding some information, some ties between ideas and films that might assuage our anxiety and fill in the blanks (not plot holes, mind, just blank spaces). Of course, even the next film may well answer all; the ending of Covenant is so arrestingly disturbing that most of the audience in the screening I attended stayed long after the credits started rolling.

It's a fabulous film. Enough gore and suspense to sate the horror fans, enough mystery and awe to absorb the sci-fi geeks, and enough action to satisfy those early summer blockbuster cravings. It keeps us the feminist punches, gives the queer theorists even more to chew on (and fret over), and does it all with a knowing wink and some new-fashioned razzle dazzle.

IMDb: Alien: Covenant

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

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Score: 4 / 5

The first X-Men film that actually feels like it's one of the comics. It's excellent.

Jam-packed in its lengthy running time are dynamic action shots, extravagant destruction, vibrant colors, wit and charm, high stakes and higher concepts, and almost nostalgic melodrama. All the makings of blockbuster summer entertainment. Sure, it's not as intelligently written as Days of Future Past, and it doesn't have the heart that film bared, but a game-changing movie like that can only come once in a series. This is a big, blustery, loud and proud follow-up, as it should be, and it owns its own preposterousness. The villain is cliched, the apocalyptic images are all too familiar these days, the plights of our heroes are typical.

And yet, as you can even see from the poster below, it may be the most visually arresting film in its franchise. At every moment, the bland and empty shots of catastrophe and destruction are parried with bright and stylized shots of the outlandish characters in colorful costumes straight out of the comics striking poses and leaping frame to frame as if it were drawn on page. Are you getting my message here? I liked the damn movie.

There's not much more to say. I need to watch it again to get everything -- I confess, at two and a half hours of explosive energy and dizzying effects, my mind began to wander. This film knocks its Quicksilver scene out of the park (again), effectively balances itself between all the players in its vast cast, and beautifully reintroduces several beloveds (notably Storm and Jean).

It's not the most original superhero movie. But it does its thing, and it does it well. Bryan Singer's still got it.

IMDb: X-Men: Apocalypse

Macbeth (2015)

Score: 2 / 5

Confession: If you start your movie with a child burning on a pyre (or, for that matter, getting mashed to a pulpy skin cream, a la The Witch), I'm definitely going to watch. I'll probably like.

And like Macbeth I most certainly do. It's a nightmarish descent into the psychological depths of what might be Shakespeare's darkest play. Not unlike the Fiennes film Coriolanus (my favorite Bard adaptation by far), this Scottish play/movie works best in its visuals and physicality. It gets us inside the world it presents. The production designers and art directors deserve most of the praise for their incredibly detailed work on this film, and cinematographer Adam Arkapaw (True Detective, Top of the Lake) presents us with a vibrant, dreamlike approach to the bleak atmosphere of war-torn Scotland highlands. I'd compare his technique to that of Nicolas Winding Refn (Valhalla Rising, Only God Forgives) in its stylized poetics as well as its bloody realism. Beautiful and haunting, this vision of hell won't let you look away until after the crimson-lit climactic battle. Light thickens, as Mac would say.

But as a piece of Shakespeare, this movie is no more than disappointing for me. It holds so little of the original dialogue that half of the scenes barely make sense, and that's saying a lot, considering that this is one of the Bard's shortest plays. It's almost as though director Justin Kurzel and his writing team used a search engine to find the most familiar lines in the show and then strung them together piece by piece, weaving together their own story in the gaps. And before you roll your eyes at my purist leanings, consider the almost absent issue in the play of Mac's childlessness. It's almost disturbingly absent in the play, which is what makes his "tomorrow" speech, or his wife's "I have given suck" moment so mysterious and suggestive. But in this film, we start with the death of their child, we see a young man die in battle who later reappears to haunt Mac, and Lady Mac's climactic "sleepwalk" scene is reworked into a strange sort of confession in a church where she's doused with pale white light as if emphasizing her barren nature.

And that is just one example of a rabbit-trail theme in this movie. There are some gems,though, perhaps the best being Macbeth's apparent PTSD as he groans that his mind is full of scorpions through gritted teeth and vein-bulging expression. And maybe I'm being too picky. I just don't really know why you would do a Shakespeare adaptation, and then not use your greatest tool: the language! If you wanted to do a surreal or metaphysical version, why not take out all the dialogue? That would be a trip, which would be totally appropriate for this movie. Who needs dialogue when you could see the visions Mac and his wife describe so beautifully? Maybe that film will happen some day. I'm down. But here, the visceral visuals serve only to pump up the experience of the play, rather than taking the reins entirely, and so the lacking dialogue and plot results in failure to remind us of why this story is so haunting and memorable at all. 

And -- this is totally personal preference -- the wickedly thick accents actually hinder the clarity of the words and the already murky motivations (a result of the butchered script). Kurzel seems to have coached his actors on delivering the lines in conversational and naturalistic tones, and that totally stops the drama from moving, much less lifting off. I've almost never been so bored with the Bard. After MacB slays Duncan's guards and declares as much to the others, one of them stares at him, completely deadpan, and slowly and flatly intones, "Wherefore did you so?" It's laughably dull, and doesn't make sense. I suppose it would if the movie had a faster pace or if the visuals were consistently over-the-top. But it doesn't, and they don't, and what we have instead is a bizarre combination of the two extremes. If the visuals are operatic, shouldn't the performances be, too? I think so.

This just felt half-assed and unsure of its focus, leacing us with a confused mishmash of sight and sound and fury that ultimately signifies little more than the thick fog rolling across the battlefield. Turn, hellhound.

IMDb: Macbeth

Steve Jobs (2015)

Score: 5 / 5

I have done exactly no research into the making of this movie or its namesake, so I can't say how realistic the film is. But I can say that the film is perhaps the most consistently engrossing movie I've seen this year. Credit for that goes mostly to writer Aaron Sorkin, whose dialogue is so rich, dense, and kinetic that I occasionally found it hard to breathe in the auditorium. Rarely have I sat through a film with such profound dialogue; I think the last I recall was 2013's August: Osage County.

The film has been advertised as a biography, but in fact it is a fiercely theatrical character study into a superstar's complex backstage life and the demands that ravage his soul. We see our hero (or, arguably, antihero) in three acts, each time only minutes before unveiling a new product, and caught in operatic rhetorical and logistical battles with various members of his personal and professional lives. It's a daring concept for a film, but Sorkin's feverish dialogue burns so quickly and with such brilliance I completely lost myself to it.

The astounding range of the dialogue is matched impressively by director Danny Boyle, who restrains his often peripatetic photography and editing here. He keeps things close and intimate, clean and colorful, and manages to house Sorkin's language in a chamber piece worthy of operatic energy. By the third act, the realism and restraint of the film has been largely cast aside, and Boyle casts us with the characters into a centrifuge of memories, abstracts, and passions. Its final heartstring tugs notwithstanding, the film lets us out of the experience with a more or less pure understanding of the paradoxical heart inside the machine. It's a daring concept for a film, and one the artists deliver in each scene.

Michael Fassbender as the titular character fashions his own distinctive conversational rhythms and marries them to fierce facial expressions and body language almost as inspired as the dialogue itself. He carries the film with apparent ease, though his performance is so raw I can scarcely imagine the lengths he went to in research and practice. Kate Winslet almost manages to match him in energy and skill, but her limited screen time hinders her. With her fabulous Polish accent and lightning delivery, she parries Fassbender's cruelties and queries in biting style.

I don't really know what else to say about this movie. It's dense, intimate, calculated, intense, and grandiose. It's an opera about power and money and fame and love and family and passion. Most important, it's surprisingly beautiful.

IMDb: Steve Jobs