Hamnet (2025)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Few filmmakers view mundanity -- or indeed nature -- with the level of Romanticism displayed by Chloé Zhao. The Rider and Nomadland deal with individuals practicing their individualism in an unforgiving and bleak western America that nevertheless feels warm and richly layered. This palpability is shared even by her MCU entry, Eternals, which I find one of the most visually original and beautiful of the franchise (take another look at that naturally-lit forest fight scene if you want to argue me). Though I find the stories she chooses to tell stupefying, superheroes excluded, I cannot deny the spiritual craft at work in her attention to atmosphere and landscape. Her characters are not isolated in nature; her characters find connection with each other through nature, and it seems that's also how we're meant to connect with them.

Based on the 2020 novel of the same name (which I've admittedly not read, and now do not plan to), Hamnet tells a fictionalized story of how William Shakespeare and his wife, Anne Hathaway, may have dealt with the untimely death of their son. Meant to be a tearjerker of a certain literary order, we'd have seen a title like this sweeping the Oscars back when The Weinstein Company was churning out Best Pictures every damned year. The Academy loves a period, British biography and sob story. Or at least it did. As it is, star Jessie Buckley (playing Anne as Agnes, presumably in reference to her sometime legal name, according to official records) brings the bulk of the film's emotional intensity. Much as Frances McDormand managed to wrangle profoundly emotional work out of the otherwise dismally dry Nomadland screenplay, Buckley here has her work cut out for her.

Not that Hamnet, here adapted by novelist Maggie O'Farrell along with Zhao herself, is dry. Quite the opposite: this heartfelt and deeply sad material could have gone a number of directions, perhaps most dangerously melodrama. Yet Buckley and her costar, Paul Mescal, carry us through with rigorously internalized beats of eroticism, affection, loss, shame, guilt, withdrawal, and communion. One wishes to have been a fly on the wall during their intimacy coordination sessions, where surely simply hearing them talk through their craft would have sold expensive tickets. Unfortunately, they're forced to navigate familiar, dare I say rote, scenes with predictable revelations, resignations, and reconciliations to the point that I nearly dozed off in our screening.

Moments of interest abound, here, though they're rarely explored in any length or detail. Agnes is supposedly the daughter of a forest witch, hence her connection to nature both visually and aurally. The sound designer (IMDb tells us that Johnnie Burn won the Oscar for The Zone of Interest recently, deservedly) lures us into the woods in the same way cinematographer Lukasz Zal (also from The Zone of Interest) arranges it around us. Lush and sensual, the forest feels alive and communicative. It's telling that we're introduced to Agnes as she's dressed in a startling red gown, curled up under a tree, and our first instinct is of Grimm fairytales or Puritanical nightmares about alluring women in the woods. Her contrived but horny encounter with the man she'll be remembered for marrying feels natural in this setting; it's an effective storytelling device to immerse us in this cinematic world.

The first half is quite charming, and I found myself absorbed into the dynamics of this family. Between their somewhat mythic family being born and raised -- superstitions and all, as one child is miraculously revived from stillbirth -- to the intergenerational makeup and casting (shout out to Emily Watson and Joe Alwyn in almost pointedly underwritten roles), Hamnet sets up a lot of narrative and thematic possibilities. Yet, from its title and what we already know of shadowy history, the loomings and forebodings never allow us the opportunity to enjoy the present so much as dread what's coming.

Come it does, in full operatic fashion. Grief has become somewhat trite in some genres, drama included, arguably since 9/11, and this is no exception. Shrill and histrionic, the film luxuriates in the visceral pain both Mescal and Buckley deliver: score swelling, light fading, camera lingering in moments of private sorrow for far too long. I could feel the other bodies in my theater shifting with unease as we voyeuristically fed on the characters' bereavement. Powerful stuff, sure, but not clear in its own purpose or efficacy.

As a side note, if you haven't yet, please do yourself a favor and go watch All is True from 2019; the film tackles the same tragedy, navigating the same fraught marriage, but through the eyes of significantly older versions of the characters. It's wonderfully literate, minimalist in execution, with some of the most underrated acting and screenwriting of that year (by Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, and especially Ian McKellan). 

And then there's the mess of Hamlet, which is posited in this material as being Shakespeare's therapeutic response to his son's death. The historicity of that notwithstanding -- I'm not the person to judge, as I'm a bit of a conspiracist when it comes to the Bard's identity -- the film discredits itself as pandering claptrap when Mescal recites the Danish prince's "to be, or not to be" soliloquy like Inspector Javert looking at his reflection in the river and contemplating suicide. There's a nice nod to the play when, in the film's climax, Agnes travels to London to see Will's new hit; the playwright might say here that the play's the thing wherein he'll catch the feelings of his embittered wife. Agnes, sure that Will has been avoiding coping, or is profiting from their son's death, becomes enraptured in the play, pushing forward through the groundlings to all but crawl onto the stage itself.

And while far too much of Hamlet is shown here in the film, largely out of context -- and the case is frankly not made convincingly that the playwright had bereft paternalism in mind when writing this tragedy -- there is a keen observation that should be more clear. This is art therapy, both for its creator and its audience, and it works effectively. We watch the play (or, rather, a montage of its most irrationally recognizable one-liners) mostly through Agnes's eyes. There's a clever touch here, in that the actor playing the actor for Hamlet is Noah Jupe (A Quiet Place and its Part 2, Wonder, and series such as The Undoing) is the older brother of the actor who played Hamnet. It's as if Agnes is seeing her own son, grown up rather than fatally arrested, acting on stage, as he'd excitedly desired as a child. You'll notice, during this scene, that the cinematography and sound design revert to similar techniques from the opening scene: we hear the breathing of the crowd, the pulsing rhythm of life around a singular woman attempting to connect. The theatre is as natural and, indeed, lively as the forest of Agnes's origins, and she's spiritually returned there as a result of catharsis and finding meaning through art.

No Sudden Move (2021)

Score: 3 / 5

There's a lot of joy to witnessing Steven Soderbergh returning, as he does every few years, to an ensemble-driven crime drama. He's the master at it for a reason, and since his premature "retirement" is now bunk, we can all be groveling with gratitude that he's back at it again. Sadly, this time his feature film is only streaming on HBO Max, meaning most people will see his beautiful work on a tablet, phone, or otherwise pathetically small screen. But Soderbergh's uncanny attention to detail and passion for men in sticky social and economic situations shines here, mostly overcoming this narrative's confusing plot and energizing what could otherwise be fairly boring material. It helps that the film gorgeously transports us to Detroit in the mid-'50s.

As with most grizzled detectives or gangsters in films noir, recently un-incarcerated criminal Curt (Don Cheadle) just needs one good job in order to get out of town for good. Partnered with Ronald (Benicio del Toro), they are hired by a mysterious recruiter named Doug Jones (a delicious Brendan Fraser) to threaten the family of a GM accountant named Matt (David Harbour). The gangsters are both desperate; we learn eventually that Curt is being hunted by a haunting figure called Watkins (Bill Duke), while Ronald is having an affair with the wife (Julia Fox) of mob boss Frank Capelli (of course, Ray Liotta). This tangled web of angry men is enough to spur the two gangsters to succeed in this new endeavor, so they can escape with their lives.

Possibly due to their precarious position, Jones teams them up with a mysterious third man -- much as Macbeth does to Banquo's assassins -- played with creepy efficacy by Kieran Culkin. Shortly after they take the accountant's family (including Amy Seimetz and Noah Jupe) hostage, they convince Matt to retrieve a secret item from his boss's safe; it helps that Matt's affair with the boss's secretary will grant him access. It doesn't help that all these people are suddenly thrust into a panicked frenzy and surreal circumstances, and it follows naturally that things don't go according to plan for anyone.

It's all an extraordinarily taut exercise in screenwriting from Ed Solomon (Now You See Me), and frankly a fair bit of the middle act was lost on me. Names dropped faster than I could catch them, and something about older men squabbling over wealth and behaving badly in pursuit of it is generally unappealing to me anyway. The focus shifts several times between characters, and I realized about halfway through that the main character at the beginning was no longer the main character. In fact, I'm still not sure now if there was a main character. And that's fine, but it requires another viewing to appreciate the plot's relay effect, and I don't think I have it in me yet. I found more pleasure in Soderbergh's delivery, as each scene drips with atmosphere and detail, working to place the audience keenly within the awareness of its characters. To this end, almost the entire film is shot (by Soderbergh as "Peter Andrews" again) with a fisheye lens, exaggerating the middle of the screen and warping the frame, forcing us into a magnified and myopic view of the scene. 

I most enjoyed the film when I stopped trying to make sense of each character's name, occupation, and dramatic role, and instead let Soderbergh's style wash over me. It's melancholy and bitter and awkwardly funny, and unlike anyone else's crime thrillers out there. Moreover, even without full command of the story being told, its complex and unexpected climax and denouement hit me over the head with its central thematic concerns before I was able to really articulate what they were. No Sudden Move has a cynical axe to grind -- played out in the treacherous auto race, no less -- and its unsophisticated, greedy characters are determined to avoid that axe at any cost.

A Quiet Place Part II (2021)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

Sequels are dangerous, especially in horror, and the unexpected (yet long-awaited) follow-up to the 2018 smash hit A Quiet Place hits a lot of the red flags. It's louder and faster, more expensive and expansive, and feels often derivative of other sci-fi horror. It doesn't really change the formula from the first movie, unless you count the bizarre switch from almost exclusive sign language communication to mostly whispered communication. As such, this movie has a lot more dialogue in it; it makes sense, as one of the four main characters is now dead (RIP zaddy Abbott) and we can hardly expect other characters to know how to sign. But even the three survivors of that family often whisper to each other while signing, which just seems like cheating after the first movie made us terrified to even breathe out loud.

But A Quiet Place Part II gets a lot of stuff right, and its conviction and sense of dignity for its characters take primary focus here. We begin with a flashback to "Day 1," when what looks like a giant burning asteroid -- or spaceship -- streaks through the sky above a small town kids' baseball game. As the nervous crowds disperse for the relative shelter of their homes, violent spidercrab-like monsters attack, apparently attracted to anything making significant noise. It's a nasty way to open this film, and works best because of its sudden, brutal violence. It also clarifies something notably absent from the first film: the monsters do not appear to eat people, but rather simply enjoy slaughtering their victims. In the middle of town, they slice and dice with their javelin limbs, or simply smash their prey to a bloody pulp, but there's not an indication that they are hungry or even carnivorous. Perhaps they hate sound so much that they just kill whatever makes noise, rather than "hunting" noisemakers?

We then leap forward in time over a year, to the aftermath of the first film's climactic and sudden ending. Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt) leads her children Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and Marcus (Noah Jupe) out of their destroyed farmhouse, apparently having fought off the additional monsters that attacked them after their father Lee (John Krasinski) sacrificed himself. Evelyn's newborn baby, literally fresh out of her womb, has been safely stored in a soundproof trunk with a supply of oxygen, but who knows how long that will last?

We have no clear indication of where the family is headed, though they may not know either. We've seen other fires at night on the hillsides, so we suspect a few other pockets of families might exist. As their defense, Regan also carries an amplifier, which when plugged into her hearing device (that otherwise doesn't seem to work), releases feedback that seems to be the only thing to weaken and bewilder the monsters. Marching beyond the borders of their farm and its sand-covered pathways, the family steps into new thematic realms as well as geographical ones. Part one seemed to focus on the sacrifices on makes for family and the domestic horrors of having that threatened; part two keenly shifts into the potential need to sacrifice for others, even strangers. It's a haunting reminder of what we've all had to consider during the past year, which makes the film (planned to be released over a year ago, in March 2020) terrifyingly prescient.

Approaching an apparently abandoned steel foundry, Evelyn hits a trip wire attached to a mess of glass bottles, summoning monsters instantly. Fleeing through the debris field, Marcus is caught in a bear trap. His screams, paired with her panic, drive the movie into full-octane terror that almost never lets up, much like the first movie. Here, the game is less novel, less interesting, but never less than thrilling. Krasinski ratchets up the tension with every scene, demonstrating at even more intense levels his uncanny ability to jump between various characters in various locations to tell the same cohesive story. Moreover, each character deals with impossible circumstances and almost always rises to the occasion.

While the first film terrifies us with sound -- and this one does, too -- what's scariest about this new installment is its unexpected attention to physical violence. Once the family starts meeting other people, especially their bereaved neighbor Emmett (a chillingly efficient Cillian Murphy), we get the sense that the people still alive might be as dangerous as the monsters. He suggests in his introductory, very creepy scene, that the people still alive are not worth saving. And he's also proven right, somewhat; one scene near the lurch toward the climax features a group of menacing humans; the only thing scarier than a group of clearly desperate and violent men trapping you and preparing to do something is when they're all silent. The whole movie is very The Walking Dead, and by the time our heroes finally locate a safe community, we are fully aware that the zombies -- er, monsters -- will arrive shortly afterward, with deadly consequences.

And while the proceedings aren't as wildly unpredictable as in the first, there's nothing wrong with Kraskinski's impeccable writing or directorial brilliance. A Quiet Place is a rarity in the genre for several reasons, but a major plus is its remarkable lack of subversion. So many popular horror movies lately are deeply subversive, and Kraskinski seems almost to use that new standard to his advantage, by utterly ignoring it. His robust and graphic approach to horror is the kind of balls-out, "what you see is what you get" action that has fallen out of vogue in recent years; even so, he's never exploitative, he treats his characters and his audience as intelligent, and he respects the craft more than he respects cheap thrills.

Given that this movie is a nearly perfect sequel -- meaning that it broadens, intensifies, and slightly changes the game while remaining mostly true to the spirit of the original -- and that it came from a movie we all thought would be standalone, I found myself immediately wanting a part three by the end of this film. If the first movie ended suddenly -- not really a cliffhanger -- with Evelyn taking control of her family and their situation, this movie ended with an even stronger character development in the two older children stepping up and into their adulthood. It's the kind of bravura filmmaking that drove me to tears even as I inched toward the edge of my seat in fear. And it's the kind of movie that, really, has to be seen in cinemas.

Ford v Ferrari (2019)

Score: 3 / 5

If you think racing cars is a sport, then this movie is definitely for you. I don't, and I still enjoyed it; the only other movie about racing I like is Ron Howard's Rush. James Mangold brings an absorbing, warm aesthetic to the (more or less) historical story that makes it accessible in the few times its eminently likable leads aren't stealing the screen. And yet, for all its high-octane tension and occasional sense of fun, I found myself constantly checking the time. At two-and-a-half hours, it's an exhausting exercise in trying to find something interesting.

In the 1960s, the Ford executives attempt to merge with Ferrari. Negotiations fail, and CEO Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) declares war on the Italian car company to be determined in races, specifically the Le Mans 24-hour race. Ford hires engineer and former racer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to design the car and find drivers. He selects Ken Miles (Christian Bale), a struggling mechanic and professional race car driver with strong personality and a fiery temper. Miles doesn't adhere to the image Ford presents, and so the executives attempt to deter his involvement. But eventually he succeeds in his race and Ford wins at Le Mans four years in a row as the only American company to win at the European race.

As far as sports dramas go, this is strictly standard stuff. The infighting and conflict between the tough-headed macho grunt-men and the equally stubborn, greedy money-men hits every predictable dramatic shift. Miles, a WWII veteran with a need for speed and thrills, has trouble with his wife (Caitriona Balfe) when he promises to stop racing after a near-death experience and then dives back in again. She, meanwhile, is the only woman of any substance in the film, and she calmly plays the dutiful housewife who exists only to support her husband (though she does occasionally yell at him before caving to his decisions).

But the more I think about Ford v Ferrari, the less I like it. It seems determined to hearken to an age of car-obsessed macho-man nostalgia -- read "very white and very straight" -- and even the humor of the film is profoundly sexist. At one point they joke about putting Doris Day behind the wheel, a throwaway line that hangs uncomfortably in the air as it reveals some strong unspoken assumptions the movie constantly makes. My favorite scene in the film works because of its inherent misogyny, when Shelby takes Ford himself in a racing car for a spin; Letts's performance steals the scene as he begins weeping from the thrill and emotional significance, but he stands in stark contrast to the mechanics, who comment on the un-manliness of anyone who doesn't race and estimate how long it takes for weaker men to lose control of their bowels.

And, while the film does end with Miles being killed in a car accident two months after Le Mans, it does not even come close to trying to understand the mystery of why Miles needed to race. He was almost killed multiple times doing it, knowing full well his wife and son did not want him to continue. We can guess his needs, especially in light of his prior service, but the film conveniently ignores the psychological reality of Miles's life and motivations. Similarly, the film conveniently ignores the seriously problematic parts of Shelby's life: while it paints Shelby as a hero, and he is in some ways inspiring, even a cursory Google search reveals the man's history of poaching, womanizing, suing, and even raping. So, taken for what it is, the film is aesthetically pleasing even as its substance lacks in every conceivable way.

The Titan (2018)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Netflix's newest sci-fi thriller mashes together The Fly with something that might be Prometheus fanfiction. That is to say, while it's not terrible, it's a mess.

In a not-so-distant future, the overpopulated and war-torn Earth is looking to Titan, one of Saturn's moons, as a possible new home. Sam Worthington (is he playing a character, or just himself? I never really know) is recruited by Tom Wilkinson (forget the character names; they're unimportant) for an experimental training program that will prepare humans for the extreme conditions of the alien moon. The rigorous training and horrific experiments claim the lives of most of the team, and when Worthington is finally left standing as the sole success, he is no longer entirely human.

The Titan really wants to be profound, and I think that's what makes it fall flat. It centers on abstract ideas about human identity, evolution, and exploration. The heart of the story, it would seem, is not with the test subject himself but with his wife and son. The two watch, horrified, as their beloved man is injected and augmented with animal DNA and traits until he becomes a forced evolution of humanity. Homo titanien, he is labeled. What a crock. He looks like the bluish, scaly Engineer from the Alien franchise and can't communicate. He's a Frankenstein monster, but then the film lurches into a bizarre conspiracy mess about government agencies and money and other boring stuff that allows Wilkinson to be wicked. The film wants to be scientific but neglects to explore novel questions and possibilities: What would colonization actually look like? How would a single successful experiment become a legitimate wide-scale medical procedure, and who would undergo such a transformation?

Perhaps its primary problem is its budget. Shot in a gorgeous house that frankly steals the movie, it would seem the production only had funds for sets and salaries. Then again, the problems here are abundant. The special effects leave a lot to be desired, the script teeters violently between cerebral and campy, and half-baked ideas and sizable plot holes make navigating the movie at once treacherous and tedious. It doesn't help that Taylor Schilling is so desperately trying to make up for the lack of acting from her starring counterpart. Director Lennart Ruff doesn't know whose story he wants to tell or how to tell it. Its first two-thirds are a moody, broody character study with a lot of sci-fi freakshow buildup; its final stretch is body-horror-meets-romance with some gimmicky thriller elements, and none of it feels like it belongs to the same film.

I was left with a sometimes pretty, sometimes ugly movie with sometimes smart, sometimes silly ideas and a so-so attitude. If James Cameron or Ridley Scott or J.J. Abrams had been involved, I could imagine any of them attempting to rework it into an early prequel of some of their respective projects. That's why I think The Titan is fanfiction: It hadn't the budget nor the vision nor the copyright allowance to become greater than it is. That's not good for a movie about evolution.

Save your time for Annihilation. It's just better.

IMDb: The Titan

A Quiet Place (2018)

Score: 5 / 5

In a not-so-distant future (2019, to be less than exact), the world has been overrun by monsters. Their origin remains unknown, though they seem to be the alien version of a crab/spider hybrid, but it is common knowledge that they have extremely sensitive hearing. They hunt anything that makes much noise but are apparently blind. They move terrifyingly fast and tend to just smash anything that makes noise.

Enter the family of our story (do they even have names, apart from the credits?), played by real-life couple Emily Blunt and John Krasinski. Their three children -- including Noah Jupe from Wonder and new Deaf actress Millicent Simmonds of Wonderstruck -- learn to live in silence, fearing for their lives. Living on a farm in isolated foothills, the family has fortified against attack by creating a soundproof basement, making paths of sand to soften footfalls, and stringing lights to indicate safety and danger (the use of red is a stroke of cinematic genius). They are incredibly prepared for everything and might be labeled a survivalist family, as the father has stockpiled all kinds of supplies and is aggressively researching both the monsters and his daughter's deafness, trying to find a connection between sound and survival.

Of course, the best-laid plans will go awry. It is a horror movie, after all. Apart from a few expository and scary scenes, especially an emotional opening on day 80-something of the apocalypse, most of the film takes place over the course of a single day and night when pretty much everything that could go wrong does go wrong. The family gets hopelessly split up, the mother goes into labor, the deaf daughter is out on her own, a bent nail causes pain (!), a monster comes lurking, and a series of disasters makes the entire second half of the film a nonstop climax. You can scarcely find time to breathe, which is good because breathing too loudly will attract the monsters.

A Quiet Place isn't necessarily the most innovative film you've ever seen, but it's close, and it's one of the best-executed genre films of the decade. Smart without being pretentious, the film moves along quickly and carries you each step of the way. You're never lost or confused; every moment is important to our experience as viewers. The movie makes you care instantly about everyone, ratcheting up our dread about their fates, and earning your tears at the end. Fret not! While grief and death inevitably stake their claim, the final five minutes of the film will make you want to stand and cheer, as at least three people did in the viewing I saw last night.

What else can we say? It's impeccably detailed, bone-chilling and endlessly terrifying, heartfelt and sweet, and ultimately rousing. The sound mixing and editing is really amazing, and it boasts a gorgeous musical score. And, really, you just can't get much better than Emily Blunt being badass.

IMDb: A Quiet Place