Capone (2020)

 Score: 3 / 5

It was only a matter of time before Tom Hardy tackled Scarface as only he can. With his famous penchant for Method acting, he dives directly into the title role of Capone with characteristically balls-out gusto. True to form, he works unexpected magic in this movie partly due to its focus: we're in the final year of Al Capone's life, the opening text tells us. Hardy peers out from layers of makeup and prosthetics with his piercing eyes, playing the prematurely dying Fonz with the audacity and theatricality we would expect from his old-school style and his larger-than-life character. And it makes for a dazzling, rapturous performance. Hardy belongs to the rare class of actor -- like Marlon Brando or Orson Welles -- who delivers to the beat of his own drum, filtered through his own internal logic, often inaccessible and opaque. It's powerful to behold, but only works in the right context.

Hardy here rots away before us, disguised by the mask he wears and his typically arresting voice. Often unintelligible, he gurgles and grunts his way through this movie, intermittently spitting out imprecise and incorrectly pronounced Italian phrases. Be sure to watch this one with subtitles! It's calculated and chameleonic, to be sure, but this is a far cry from the technical genius of Meryl Streep and Gary Oldman; here it often feels as though Hardy's voice has been wrung through a strainer, filtered through a synthesizer, and then boiled in its own bile. As the necrotic gangster dwindles, the skin peeling off his pallid face and bodily fluids excreting themselves from his shorts, we become increasingly aware of the syphilitic fever raging in his brain. He's far from the fearsome legend he was, but when he handles a gun we see glimpses of his former horror. Most of the movie, however, comprises Hardy chewing an oversized cigar, puffing clouds of smoke, and muttering to himself as he wanders through his Florida mansion. In fact, that's about the length and breadth of whatever plot exists here.

Writer and director Josh Trank (Chronicle, Fantastic Four), despite dubious conventional measurements of "success," will never be less than an original filmmaker. In Capone, he works significant magic that cannot be overlooked, both in his remarkable skills as an old-school filmmaker and in his ability to wrangle meaning and emotional intelligence from Hardy's performance. It can't have been easy to plan this movie around Hardy's antics, but in fact Trank's mastery over the proceedings suggests that this movie was so carefully planned out it might actually be too controlled. Scenes are so choreographed, so beautifully shot (by cinematographer Peter Deming) with unexpected light and movement, so synchronous with sound and performance, and so deliberately cut and juxtaposed with other images or movements that I suspect Trank took Hardy's Brando/Welles inspiration and ran with it. He's not setting up cameras all around and splicing together "good" moments caught at random; he's dancing with his own Black Swan. Along those lines, he ends the film with an amazing sequence in which his storytelling matches the audacious theatricality of his star, erasing the line between reality and fantasy, history and character. I'm guessing that, apart from harnessing the power of Hardy, this sequence is the reason Trank made this movie.

I don't want to take away from the fascinating performance or direction here, but it is worth including that I don't expect to watch this movie again. Challenging and even, arguably, beautiful as it is, it is far from entertaining and less than engaging. Capone never tries to explain, rationalize, defend, or even explore its antihero's past, a decision I fully support. But it also never tries to dramatize anything resembling, well, dramatic. It's 103 minutes of watching a man die, a man who tries to reflect on his life but can't make connections due to his neurosyphilis; a man who still treats his family (specifically Linda Cardellini) and friends (including Matt Dillon) as though he's the pinstriped kingpin who could kill them with a flick of his finger; a man who shits his bed and plays hide-and-seek with ghostly visions in his five-star haunted house. I don't mind a tragedy, or even a bleak exercise in nihilism, but it's difficult to much care for Scarface in any capacity, especially as he's dying with so much suffering.

The Boys in the Band (2020)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

The devastating brilliance of The Boys in the Band is back in a big way with its newest incarnation, which debuted on Netflix recently. This production has been lifted directly from its brief Broadway revival in 2018, including its entire cast and director, and though its stagey delivery will surely invite criticism from some, it allows those of us who enjoy the theatre to experience something of what we might see on stage. With most responsible theatre groups still shut down these days, heaven knows we needed something like this. (And of course Hamilton, but that's been on repeat all summer!)

It's one of the defining dinner-party-gone-wrong dramas, and remarkably noteworthy for many reasons. Mart Crowley's original off-Broadway play premiered in 1968 and was groundbreaking for portraying a group of gay men authentically. They weren't isolated, and they weren't a trope: the villain, the victim, the sidekick. They weren't even heroic, which wouldn't happen yet for many years. The entire play explores their lives in a way that, now, feels like a perfect experience dropped into a time capsule: only the next year, which brought the Stonewall riots, changed queer urban culture forever. Not long after, as AIDS claimed the lives of thousands, gay art grew urgent, preachy, tragic, and poignant. Because of the intersection of queer lives, mainstream media, and increasing social justice, it's terribly difficult for most young people today to grasp the revolutionary power of The Boys in the Band, even if it wasn't all that well-received in its day.

But it's still a magnificent drama on its own terms, and as long as we let its tempo, language, and profound truths guide us, this new film works wonders on the screen. Thankfully, director Joe Mantello and producer Ryan Murphy avoid any attempts to modernize or dumb-down the original text, making this film as important (if more accessible) than William Friedkin's 1970 film. The play doesn't need to be topical because it will always be relevant, and the artists here trust the work to stand on its own. With only a few added moments to make this feel less like it was shot on stage, the film takes place almost entirely within one character's apartment in Manhattan's Upper East Side. What begins as a not-quite-surprising birthday party turns into a night of chaos as the characters drink, play games, and reveal awful truths about themselves and each other.

Jim Parsons plays Michael, the host, whose recent sobriety is put to the test as he prepares for company. His former college roommate Alan has called and wants to visit, but when Michael tells him he's having friends over Alan won't like, Alan breaks into tears (something the very straight character certainly hasn't done before). Michael allows his friend a brief time to come, but before long the gaggle of gays show up and get a little rowdy. It would be easy to classify this bunch of queens as too campy, too effete, too much; but you'd be forgetting that this was a time that their behaviors -- even their identities, as much as the concept existed then -- were strictly illegal. Once in the privacy of a home, they could finally relax and be as flamboyant as they could not in the "real" world. And does that affect their mannerisms? You bet.

You could say the characters are fairly stereotypical, by today's standards, but that washes away the fact that these stereotypes had not yet been cemented as fundamental to queer representation in art. We have effeminate interior decorator Emory, tortured and hunky former lover Donald (who, it is suggested, is undergoing psychoanalysis in an early form of conversion therapy), artist Larry who prefers to sleep around and his live-in boyfriend Hank who is still married to a woman, and finally librarian Bernard, a hopeless romantic and the only black man. We know that, based on the time period and the verbal cruelty of these queers, before long someone will call him the "n" word. And I nearly forgot the guest of honor: Harold, played by a deliciously wicked Zachary Quinto, the lapsed Catholic and alcoholic riddled with a poisonous mix of vanity and malice.

As the night slowly becomes a nightmare, we're locked in the genius world of Eugene O'Neill and Edward Albee, in a party-hell that is as absorbing as it is repugnant. Its grotesquerie reaches a chillingly quiet climax during a particularly nasty party game in which the men take turns calling the one person they've loved the most and telling them. Revelations spiral out of control and the characters are each given chances to dramatically shine; of course the central issue, a now-cliché MacGuffin in which the one most repelled by gay men is probably gay himself, comes to the fore before all ends with tears. Of course, that's not to deny our own devilish pleasure at watching a member of the hegemony get what's coming to him when he is suddenly at the mercy of those he detests. I read that "schadenfreude" was the most-searched vocabulary word after Trump caught the coronavirus. The same concept is dramatic gold here.

If for nothing else, this movie is a delicious drama that perfectly captures real lives lived in a time before what most of us can remember. As such, it can foster lively and enlightening discussions about history, politics, and social justice as easily as it can about friendship, love, truth, and the tragedy of our lives. Boasting memorable performances, beautiful production design, and its timeless script, The Boys in the Band ultimately reminds us all that denying and disguising ourselves can only end with pain, but embracing and building each other up allows us to hope.

I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

 Score: 4 / 5

"I'm thinking of ending things," the narrator repeats several times in the opening scene. The narrator is also the main character, played by Jessie Buckley, and she's sitting in a moving car. Amidst her not-quite stream of consciousness, including memory and hope, judgment and suggestion, her voiceover feels at once sad, bored, wistful. "I'm thinking of ending things," she repeats, seemingly contemplating dumping her boyfriend of six weeks, Jake, the man driving the car. He's taking her to meet his parents for the first time. On a farm. In a blizzard. It's not ideal. I'd think about ending things too, though by this point it's surely a little too late.

"I'm thinking of ending things," she says, framed by the window of the car and underscored by the sound effects of a whistling wind. The lengthy opening scene is entirely within the car. So is the third major movement of the film, when Jake and our narrator leave his parents' farm. These people spend a lot of time in the car and, thematically, get absolutely nowhere. They're trapped in the world of the film and by the film itself; the movie is shot in a tight 4:3 aspect ratio that feels unwelcome and uncomfortable in our days of big-ass-tv digital screenings. Her entrapment in these frames suggests another, darker meaning to her gerund thoughts: suicide. It helps that most of the shots are from outside the car windows, with the whistling wind and thick snowfall. It makes it that much harder to see their faces and hear their voices, which are the only things worth trying to see clearly. In fact, the first we see of the pair is the clearest we see them, in many ways. Things only get more cloudy, more strange from here.

"I'm thinking of ending things," but who is she? We never really know. Her name is, initially, Lucy, but it apparently changes when other people call her other names like Ames and Yvonne and she doesn't correct them. As Jake introduces her to his parents and their conversation develops, details of her life change from sentence to sentence, including how they met, her job, her past. She quotes poetry at length and, in one incredible scene I had to pause during to reference-check, imitates Pauline Kael while quoting her review of A Woman Under the Influence (a film in which that woman attempts suicide) as if she herself is creating the monologue. And she's not alone in this. Jake, played by Jesse Plemons, is apparently such a vapid man that he has essentially no character. Almost everything he says is a reference, a quote, or something he clearly lifted from another source.

Not long after they get to the farm and meet Jake's parents (played by Toni Collette and David Thewlis), the film teeters close to psychological horror. In this haunted house of Americana, each time the parents -- who very much seem to have missed the memo they'd be receiving visitors -- leave the room and return, they jump to a different time in their lives. From dewy-eyed newlyweds to a couple on their deathbed, their aging follow no linear logic. By the time Jake and his girlfriend leave into a night repeatedly referred to as treacherous, we're fully engaged in an organized nightmare; the problem is, we have no access to the organization of it.

And that's really writer/director Charlie Kaufman's modus operandi. But unlike his other films, i'm thinking of ending things is almost inaccessible in its opaque artistry, its tedious dialogue that would require a reference appendix, its bizarre obsession with -- typical for the creator -- an utterly unlikable and deeply introverted man in the throes of agony simply because he's alive and can't cope. Here, I'd argue (based on the conclusion, which I'd rather not spoil but may need to), his main character is in fact much more fascinating than in Being John Malkovich or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for example, but then we'd have to discuss the issue of dramatizing mental illness in this way and with this very specific ending. It just gave me the willies, and not in a juicy frisson but in a guilt-ridden way. "I'm thinking of ending things" might be Kaufman's way of trying to end our understanding of his movies.

Of course, I'm sure a repeat viewing would help, especially now that I have a few notes of specific references these characters make. Frankly, I'm not sure I want to watch this hypnotic, bewildering movie again any time soon. It certainly doesn't help that it premiered on Netflix; this kind of experience needs to be seen in a blackened auditorium with absolutely no distractions. Netflix fare has to compete with all manner of food, cell phone conversations, family members interjecting, bathroom breaks ad nauseam, and to combat the soporific comfort of a viewer's bed or sofa and ambient lighting. I'd be surprised if this movie garners many fans, much like the beautiful and haunting I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. Then again, Kaufman's work here is clearly a labor of love, and one that manages, despite its unfathomable ambiguities, to carry us along with it by sheer virtue of his control of the craft.

If you've seen it, or read the novel on which it is loosely based, let's have a conversation about it. I'm not at all convinced my interpretation holds all of the water. I'm not sure any interpretation would. I guess that's good, but it's also dreadfully dull in context of this movie. I guess I'd rather end things too.

The Devil All the Time (2020)

 Score: 1.5 / 5

It's at least the devil for two hours, and that was more than enough for me. The new Netflix drama The Devil All the Time dropped this weekend, and I was ready for Spider-man to go full Southern Gothic. As I sipped pinot noir, I was treated to a haunting opening sequence of WWII in which American soldiers come across one of their own sergeants crucified on a battlefield by the Japanese. To end his suffering, Willard (Bill Skarsgard) shoots him in the head. After his return home in Ohio, he gets married and has a son named Arvin, whom he raises in their rural Christian faith. But, thanks in large part to Skarsgard's shell-shocked and glistening eyes, we know that Willard has seen actual horrors every time he beholds his religious crosses. It's this sort of timeless reminder of the bloody basis of Christianity I expected from the movie, and it's one that would have more than satisfied me.

But then the movie almost immediately falters, and never recovers. We are suddenly thrust into the lives of other, seemingly unconnected characters, and we quickly lose track of whatever timeline we should be following. The film rockets us across time and place, from Ohio to West Virginia, from 1945 to 1965 and several times between, and through crucial moments in the lives of no fewer than eight people. It doesn't help that many of them look and act the same. I was quite lost well before the halfway point of the movie, which seemed to consist of episodic scenes depicting depravity, violence, and cruelty. In fact, the violence is often so sudden and so graphic that I wondered if this was meant as a straight-up horror flick. But the melodrama greatly outweighs anything, which renders these scenes grotesque and the whole of the film little more than poverty porn.

The main plot follows Arvin (Tom Holland, unexpectedly flexing his acting chops) as he comes of age. He fiercely protects his step-sister Lenora (Eliza Scanlen) from any and all evil but of course is unable to stem the tide of evil in the world. He then embarks on a journey of revenge that costs many more lives than necessary, and in his bloody wake the hounds close in, notably the corrupt Sheriff (Sebastian Stan) seeking revenge for his sister (Riley Keough). His sister, mind, is a serial killer who was killed by Arvin along with her hubby Carl (Jason Clarke) after they attempted to abduct and kill Arvin. Oh, and I can't forget that Lenora's mother (Mia Wasikowska) was killed by her preacher father (Harry Melling) who handles spiders instead of snakes and starts hallucinating after one too many bites, thinking he can resurrect the dead.

Sound crazy? It is, and this is only the first half of the damn movie.

Indeed, I can conceive of little reason this movie exists at all, except to say that the American heartland -- at least its Appalachian foothills -- is populated by a cast of stupid, violent people whose religious fanaticism has long been its only social standard and who escape the sad realities of their lives through violence and vengeance. It is increasingly difficult to make narrative or thematic sense of any of it, partly due to the bizarre editing and unremarkable production design, partly due to the unfocused and broad scope of its screenplay. We're not allowed into any character's psyche because we are yanked between characters too often. Even the most delicious performance in the film -- I'd say the performances are wonderful across the board -- is lost in the messy void: Robert Pattinson, whose crisp, clean preacher with a campy, overbearing personality is as delightful as it is surprising, and I'm not sure it fits within its context. Which may be the point, but as nothing else here compares to it in tone or delivery, I find his relative lack of consequence troubling.

Ultimately, the movie feels like a vicious fever dream, an uninspired attempt at Gothicizing rural America by demonizing its religious foundations -- which arguably deserve this kind of treatment, and more -- and exploiting the impoverished and uneducated lower classes. For example, we derive a certain pleasure in seeing the insane preacher pouring live spiders on his face, sure, and even seeing him get his comeuppance, but the film's question of stopping the cycle of violence is made irrelevant by the cruelty and stupidity of its protagonist. There is little worth watching in this movie, from its incoherent plot incomprehensibly strung together by a laughably bad voiceover narrator (apparently the author of the book that inspired this movie) to its squandered cast of A-listers, and finally to its celebration of the banality of evil in the heartland. What a damned waste.

Dolemite is My Name (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

In the 1970s, Rudy Ray Moore is working a record shop by day and a nightclub by night, hoping to make it in LA show biz. It's not going well. His boss won't let him perform a stand-up routine, even though he's the emcee, and his wistful manner is just begging for inspiration. Thankfully, the city of angels gives it to him when a homeless wino stumbles into the store entertains and spellbinds everyone within earshot with his boisterous storytelling. The slick rhymes and tight meter of his stories and jokes are as brazenly audacious as the crude and vulgar content. Soon thereafter, a hypnotized Moore takes to the streets by night and absorbs everything he can about this urban ghetto talk, and in a magnificent scene around a trash can fire, he fashions his future stardom from the most unlikely of sources. But, in vino veritas, and what appears to us a Shakespearean fool appears to Moore a muse.

Indeed, Dolemite is My Name is the story of the man behind the pop culture sensation, the popularly dubbed "Godfather of Rap." A biopic of rare insight and frenetic energy, it carries us along with Moore as he develops his stage persona, Dolemite, a wisecracking pimp with excessive charisma that manifests in braggadocio and rhyming syncopation and no small amount of profanity. "Dolemite is my name," he announces himself to anyone who will listen, "and fuckin' up muthafuckas is my game." He details his bizarre sexual exploits along with his impossible feats of heroism, criminality, and social prowess, all the while strutting along in suits of vibrant hues, bedazzled and glittering, with his hat and cane akimbo.

The role is a perfect match for the unique talents of Eddie Murphy, who has been largely absent from the silver screen for many years now. This is not as clearly a dramatic role as his in Dreamgirls, nor is it remotely child-friendly as many might have come to expect. This is Murphy in rare form, spitting out so many profanities you might think this was a Tarantino flick. But he's no Samuel L. Jackson, and Murphy is here making a bold reclamation of his talents as a serious artist. Other worthy players buttress the film, especially Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Tituss Burgess, and even Ron Cephas Jones in a single scene, but the movie only works because of its leading man.

Moore eventually decides he's going to make a movie about his alter ego, and suddenly the movie takes a drastic turn and feels more akin to Ed Wood or The Disaster Artist than I was ready to handle (Fun fact: the writers of this film also wrote Ed Wood and Big Eyes). We get plenty of slapstick to mirror the foul-mouthed blasphemies, hilarious sex scenes, and downright absurd effects. The madcap comedy boils over to a fever pitch both in terms of content (the movie's production is bedeviled with setbacks, conflicting characters, and financial turmoil) and in terms of execution: fierce editing, heightened music, and increasingly voluptuous production design raise the stakes in every frame. They take over an abandoned hotel as a soundstage, employ (or, rather, "employ") a group of white film students from UCLA as tech crew, and heartily enjoy the shoot. Well, everyone except the director, who ends up walking out when he can't Moore's campy artistry and flippant attitude any longer.

By the finale, which depicts the premiere of the troubled and troubling kung-fu blaxploitation film, we understand that for all his faults and failures, Moore is an admirable and even endearing man. Moreover, as the on-screen text describes before the credits roll, Moore is in many ways the catalyst and safe haven of a specific subset of American culture at a time when culture was breaking. His amazing ability to signify (more properly, signifyin') is the touchstone for much of what we now appreciate as rap music, sure, but also largely establishes a foundation for contemporary Ebonics or Black Vernacular English. The film's amazing insight into the creation of culture carries along its messages of cultural appropriation in heavy doses, but they are quite easy to take along with its main course, the surprisingly heartwarming story of a down-and-out hopeful who makes it big. At least, big on his own terms.

And, ultimately, isn't that what really matters?

The New Mutants (2020)

 Score: 3.5 / 5

It's difficult to talk about this movie in glowing terms, as it rings the tragic death-knell of one of my favorite film franchises. Post mortem knell, in fact, as The New Mutants is indeed released not by 20th Century Fox but by 20th Century Studios, the new name of the old company now under the Disney corporate umbrella. Much as Disney cancelled the four magnificent Marvel/Netflix Defenders superhero shows, here they have effectively put a stop to all productions not in line with their vision for the MCU. For better or worse (much worse, I fear), we'll not be seeing X-Men the same way again.

Yet hope remained, while the company was true. Despite what some critics and fans might say -- given the ridiculous delays this movie's release has endured, and the studio's odd choice to have no socially distant options for press screenings or streaming -- The New Mutants is a lot of fun. It grants us a fresh take on a genre consistently on the verge of becoming boring. Keeping with its source material, the film works best when it fully indulges its idiosyncratic YA horror. The original three X-Men films featured notably older cast members and characters, and even young Rogue putting her boyfriend into a coma wasn't filmed as horrific, just sad and awkward. But put enough young people trying to understand and control their feelings, bodies, and minds in stressful enough situations, and horror is a perfectly logical way to branch out in this franchise.

Here, we follow young Dani Moonstar (played by Native American actor Blu Hunt), a Cheyenne girl whose reservation is destroyed in a freak storm that kills her family. She suddenly awakens in a remote hospital (or perhaps asylum), handcuffed to her bed and given the bad news by her doctor, Cecilia Reyes. Reyes is seemingly the only staff at this medical facility, and is played with austerity by Alice Braga. With Dani, we are quickly introduced to the other patients at this facility, all of whom seem to be the more sad, more rebellious, more angry versions of the students at Xavier's school. Their superpowers, we learn, have each been triggered by some trauma or dark secret, and Reyes tries to research them while helping them examine themselves. She also uses her own mutant powers to keep them locked on the premises, with the implied promise that once their "twelve steps", you might say, are completed, they can go to a better place under her superior's tutelage. It's gotta be the bald man in the wheelchair, right?

The very basic plot notwithstanding, we are mostly carried along by our understanding of these characters. In remarkably simple yet effective ways, the film twists a generic coming-of-age formula into troubling understandings of childhood trauma and its lasting effects. To give a brief rundown: a badass Russian girl who talks to her sock puppet and conjures magic, a hunky Brazilian boy whose sexual history isn't as hot as his powers, an abused sprite of a Scottish girl whose bite is far worse than her bark, and a battered and broken human torpedo from Kentucky. Then there's Dani who has no idea what her mutant powers could be, but she is plagued by nightmarish visions. After initial conflict with each other, the kids finally begin to band together and question the nature of their "treatment."

As a film, The New Mutants is nothing remarkable or groundbreaking, despite its depiction of a lesser-known branch of my favorite superhero team. Its editing leaves a lot to be desired, as does its leading actress; it relies as heavily on CGI and a dangerously vague screenplay as IT did, but is less effective in its scares and emotional depth (and nostalgia, but really there's no comparison to the two beyond the rising action of the plot). But as a work that finally gives me some of the Marvel mutant stories I've always wanted more of, I can't deny my absolute pleasure in having seen it. We finally -- finally -- get explicitly queer characters (in the most queer superhero comics) who aren't exploited by the camera, and whose queerness is as natural and organic as any trait of the other characters. Watching Magik and Sunspot and Lockheed and Wolfsbane and the Demon Bear come to life before my eyes was nothing short of awesome, even if the frame of the movie was less than spectacular. By the CGI-heavy finale, I was at once elated and exhausted, and even depressed that it was over.

This was supposed to be a spin-off trilogy of movies to buttress the already existing X-Men franchise. This was supposed to lead into the Essex Corp. plotlines, the rise of the Hellfire Club's Madelyne Pryor, and finally Mister Sinister (who was going to be played by Jon freakin' Hamm) bringing about the Inferno apocalyptic horror event. I'm devastated that won't happen now.

Underwater (2020)

 Score: 4 / 5

I hadn't seen many trailers for Kristen Stewart's latest outing amidst the flurry of the holidays and pre-awards season, but it's been a long summer and I finally got around to viewing it. Having forgot almost everything in the trailers, I only knew the plot revolved around her getting stuck in a research station at the bottom of the ocean. I didn't know that the disaster would happen in the very first scene. I didn't know that Stewart has turned into a very physical actress. I didn't know that this movie would be so technically accomplished. And I certainly didn't know I was going to really enjoy it.

Underwater takes place entirely under water; at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, in fact, so under a lot of water. Before we know anything about anything, Kristen Stewart's tooth-brushing is suddenly interrupted by an earthquake. The submerged station -- which seems to be a research facility as well as a drill -- is nearly destroyed, and the few survivors race against time to gather near the escape pods. But they're all gone. Knowing they will die in the facility, they don deep-sea suits and drop to the ocean floor (not without casualty), with the insane goal of walking a mile to another station. As if it weren't already a thrilling update to a disaster movie, we soon learn that they are being hunted in the pitch-black water.

*Spoiler alert*

In the impossibly dark atmosphere (or lack of), the movie often looks and feels like a space movie. In fact, substitute just a couple of visuals, and we have what amounts to Ridley Scott's Alien. People are forced to travel between relatively safe spots where they can recharge and clean their suits; the pressure is exhausting and claustrophobic; we suspect they will all die. And then there's the humanoid monsters hunting them. I was a bit bewildered by this because I simply didn't expect it, and while the scares are mostly effective and well-designed, the horror of this movie felt increasingly gimmicky. It's just that we've seen it all before, you know? Throw the Xenomorph into James Cameron's The Abyss, and that's this movie, right?

Wrong. Because in Underwater's climax, Stewart and the last survivors have to navigate a hallway that serves as a nesting ground for these creatures. Hanging like bats, they seem to be dormant for the present, until of course one is awakened by the clumsy intruders (to be fair, they are wearing those unwieldy suits). Once Stewart extricates herself from being swallowed by a particularly hangry monster, she fires a flare gun into open water for a distraction and for, you know, a little enlightenment. And suddenly we see with her that a titan has emerged from the depths. No, this isn't The Meg. 

It's Cthulhu.

I know, I know, it's weird. But honestly the shock of that single shot was enough to bowl me over, and I still haven't quite recovered. It's the money shot of the year. We could talk about whether the movie deserves to be in Lovecraftian canon all we want, but that revelatory shot is the single coolest, most effectively horrifying shot in any movie inspired by the Lovecraft mythos. There are a couple passing hints earlier in the film that something strange was going on behind the scenes with the drilling company, including a pentagram drawn on a blueprint of the first drill site. There really isn't anything like xenophobia, paranoia, racism, madness, or cult worship, which may be why the reveal is so damn shocking.

Sure, it's probably even a cheap ploy by the filmmakers. But before that point, it was already an effective movie in its own right, derivative though it is. It's lean, it's mean; it drops us literally as the action explodes, and it never relents its horror until the credits start rolling. It has no pretense, no unnecessary fluff; it gives exactly what it wants and takes exactly what it wants. It's perfectly self-contained, mercifully brief in length, and doesn't even give you enough time to consider disliking what you're watching. It boasts some real technical artistry, too, especially in sound design and cinematography from the criminally underrated Bojan Bazelli (Hairspray, Burlesque, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Ring, Pete's Dragon, A Cure for Wellness, and Spectral, among others). And then to have that big bastard come clomping out, Underwater totally won me over. I can't exactly articulate why, but I just really had a blast with this flick. What a ridiculous delight.

Tenet (2020)

 Score: 3 / 5

There can be no denying that Christopher Nolan is a unique voice in the industry. For better or worse, he saved the Warner Bros./DC partnership and has revitalized cinematic noir for the twenty-first century. It's impossible to watch one of his movies and not instantly recognize his aesthetic, but his latest ultra-high-budget outing is a nearly perfect microcosm of a case study, showcasing why his visions are brilliant and often utterly inaccessible.

We begin with a SWAT siege on an opera house in Kiev. During the concert performance, our unnamed Protagonist (as identified in the credits) rescues an exposed spy and retrieves a bizarre-looking artifact. He is saved by a mysterious soldier before he is captured and tortured; after biting into his cyanide pill, he is resuscitated to learn that the pill was a fake, the mission was a test, and he passed. It really doesn't make much sense at this point, but it makes for a pulse-pounding opening sequence. Unfortunately, the movie makes less sense from here on.

The Protagonist, played by a beautifully dressed and skillfully underperformed John David Washington, is basically a stand-in for what we might imagine 007 to look and sound like under Nolan's directorial control. Suave and stoic, he infiltrates, races, fights, and of course shoots in his impeccably tailored suits. He travels around the world form Kiev to Mumbai, Tallinn to Oslo, meeting with powerful oligarchs and arms dealers while following his lead: a single word, "Tenet." He learns the shadowy organization has developed technology to reverse entropy, essentially "inverting" seemingly spontaneous, kinetic objects to travel backward through time.

Much like Nolan's last foray into theoretical physics, Interstellar, this movie manages to impress us with its Big Ideas but utterly fails to convey the science involved. Unlike that film, though, at least Tenet can boast of plenty of exciting action between the messily contrived, exposition-heavy scenes of dialogue. But for a movie that runs 150 minutes, you'd think Nolan could have included a concise, simplified description of just what the hell is happening. While the science of inverted movement is bizarre enough -- I mean, entropy itself is insanely complex -- Nolan further complicates it by allowing humans to invert themselves in time, and suddenly we have a particularly bizarre version of time travel in what is otherwise an already twisty spy thriller. He's basically showing off his dubious understanding of theoretical physics (he consulted with the same physicist on Interstellar) but in such a way that he doesn't let us in on his masturbatory fantasies. In fact, he lets one of his characters early on -- a scientist, no less, played by Clemence Poesy in a single scene -- tell the Protagonist, "Don't try to understand it; feel it." It's really a shame Nolan didn't take that advice, either.

The Protagonist learns that a Russian oligarch named Andrei Sator (played by a deliciously wicked Kenneth Branagh, doing his best Bond villain impression) supplies the inverted bullets that started this whole mess, and he attempts to infiltrate through Sator's wife. The art dealer Kat, played by a cool Elizabeth Debicki, is unfortunately as underwritten as she is transparent, and is easily the weakest element of the movie (again, a common criticism of Nolan's work, this one of female roles). In a truly mind-numbing series of dialogue, we learn that she is being blackmailed by the husband she loathes for selling him a forged painting. Instead of giving her a character, the movie gives Kat a son, whom Sator dangles as incentive for her to not simply leave. The Protagonist seemingly cares for Kat and his attempts to help rescue her result in a parallel plot that often intersects with the espionage/heist mess.

To discuss the plot any further will surely confuse me, so I'll leave that to the hordes of YouTube "explainers" who get off on that sort of thing. My takeaway here is that the plot often makes just enough sense if you just let it take you along for the ride, but the more I try to understand the physics the worse my comprehension fails me. This is Inception on steroids; at least that film had a fairly simply vertical structure of levels of artificial dreams. This film is a web of time-travel like we've never seen before and hopefully will never see again, draped in Nolan's slick style and carried along by a series of fabulously realized action scenes. Of course, many of these are also commonly criticized in his flicks, which boast high concept themes but rely heavily on car chases, heists, and hallway combat to entertain. There's really not much that's groundbreaking in those, despite his fans' loudest praises.

And, frankly, the film might make more sense upon a repeat viewing. Specifically one in which I can use closed captions. Ludwig Goransson's hypnotic, pulsing, drone of a score may be effective, but it is also deafeningly loud. The sound editing, too, often drowns out the voices of the cast in key scenes -- I'm thinking of the characters behind their breathing masks a la Bane (in The Dark Knight Rises) or Kenneth Branagh whispering into a walkie-talkie during the climax. Some might call this technique immersive, but struggling to hear took me out of the moment in ways that were, at that point, irreversible. An immersive experience like Dunkirk this most certainly is not.

Finally, and just because this is the kind of thing I'm interested in, I became aware of attempts at palindrome in the script in ways that I'm desperate to hear Nolan discuss. Not only is the back-and-forth visual dynamic key in the film -- in ways that sometimes occur in the same scene, or are visited later in the same scene from a different perspective -- but specific names reminded me of the Sator square, which the credits confirmed for me with the spelling of the villain's name:
SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

I would love to know what the square means for Nolan, and if it helped serve as his inspiration. Actually, I'd just like to know what the hell this movie means to him, generally, because I'm just at a loss. You could discuss the briefly-mentioned impetus for the plot as climate change; you could discuss the problematic female lead; you could discuss the thematic implications of inverted time. Even the basic plot is sure to spark some bewildered after-screening discussion; my group stood in the parking lot and some fairly basic plot points were topics of some contention and consternation. Ultimately, there is too much going on in this movie to really make any concrete sense of, well, anything. Which is fine, for some viewers.

This viewer preferred to enjoy the vibrant chemistry between Washington and Robert Pattinson, and their incredible habiliments that were never less than impeccably ironed. My God. 

You Should Have Left (2020)

Score: 2 / 5

You Should Have Left could refer to several things here. It could refer to Theo Conroy, the protagonist of this spooky little flick, who really should have left his first wife before things ended especially badly. It could also refer to Susanna, his new wife and Hollywood actress, who probably should have left their current marriage before starting an affair. Most clearly, it refers to the sort of Amityville-esque "GET OUT" foreshadowing these characters should have heeded before deciding to live in a rural vacation home in Wales that happens to be very haunted. Finally, it acts as a clear warning to us, its audience, that unless we are just looking for some mindless entertainment, we'd do better elsewhere.

In its defense, haunted house movies are awfully difficult, especially if you want to do something new and interesting with one. This tries neither, and rests happily on the premises of other, well, premises. Though this particular house is no Overlook Hotel, the story is only a shy replication of The Shining while the characteristics of the abode behave similarly to that iconic building. Easily the most interesting thing in this movie, the house is not the sort of pastoral cottage you might envision in Wales; its cold, modern architecture marries cool tan wood and sharp gray stone for a severe, notably not-Gothic atmosphere that even throws a few glimpses of pastel coloring in for good measure. It's quite pleasant to view, and most of the film takes place during the day, lulling us into a sense of warmth and safety.

But the house seems to be conscious. Though the haunting initially manifests as shadows that move around on their own, they quickly suggest a more psychologically-driven basis. Doorways appear in one shot but are gone in the next; characters measure internal spaces that are larger than the external structure allows; the shifting layout lengthens staircases and hallways or adds hidden spaces that cannot architecturally fit. And then, of course, there's the mysterious caretaker named Stetler who never seems to be present but is often around, and might be taking candid Polaroid photos of the new tenants. These elements, like those of the Overlook, suggest that the scariest hauntings aren't necessarily vengeful spirits to be placated a la Ghost Whisperer but are in fact places where bad things have happened, the knowledge of which torments and twists the minds of those caught within its walls.

And it's fair to say that, despite the less-than-original plot and themes, the performances of its small cast also help the movie. Kevin Bacon plays Theo, the much-older husband and father figure, who seems about as tightly wound mentally as he is physically. I mean, honestly, the man is gorgeous, and the salt-and-pepper thing he's got with his facial hair is hard to ignore. While he's no Jack Torrance, he is a writer suffering block; he is the older, jealous husband of a young woman; he is the father of a child who learns secrets about their family. Amanda Seyfried plays Susanna with surprising restraint, and her coy, seductive demeanor belies a strikingly acute awareness for the fractures in their otherwise happy relationship. Seemingly-happy, rather, as we learn. The filmmakers clearly understand these characters well, and as the house haunts them, we also become haunted. Neither we nor these characters are ever fully aware of what's real, what's warped or exaggerated, or what's fake.

The biggest problem for me, here, is that writer/director David Koepp has done this kind of thing before, much more effectively and beautifully. In Secret Window, he magnificently pulls off the kind of home-invasion psychological thriller that could easily translate to a haunted house, one in which fabulously inventive character drama married genuine terror on screen. Literary and witty, that film fully fleshed out its own complexity and managed to make perfect sense the whole time. Conversely, this new flick rarely makes sense, twists and turns often not because of character development but for the sole purpose of audience manipulation, and ends with a bizarre attempt at catharsis that answered few of the questions I still had. And its laughably bizarre quasi-religious explanation neither fits nor sits here. Not that horror should always explain itself, mind, but it should at least be interesting -- and consistent -- enough to allow for theoretical discussion afterward.

Da 5 Bloods (2020)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Four aging Vietnam War veterans reunite in Ho Chi Minh City. Catching up doesn't take long -- the bonds forged in war clearly have not weakened -- and we quickly learn their purpose. The four black Americans recently learned of a landslide that revealed what they hope is the plane near which their squad leader was killed. The "Bloods", as the group called themselves, hope to reclaim what's left of the body or at least memorialize the site; they also hope, as we discover, to reclaim a buried locker of gold bars they had buried there during the war.

The four men, older if not necessarily wiser, embark on their journey into the heart of darkness much as we might expect in any movie dramatizing the war in Vietnam. Tempers run as high as the jungle temperatures, dangers lurk around every palm frond, and madness slowly manifests before the group fractures. It doesn't help that each successive scene reveals -- mostly through quickly paced, jargon-infused expository dialogue -- increasingly disturbing details about the relationships between the men. After all, the character who is perhaps most like a protagonist declares very early on that he is a vocal Trump supporter. Later, as the group explores the city, one reunites with his old Vietnamese girlfriend and learns he fathered a now-grown child. One man reveals his financial bankruptcy and consequential desperation for this journey. All seem to have varying degrees of PTSD.

The story, far from inventive, nevertheless manages to feel consistently fresh, clearly due to the uncompromising vision of its writer and director Spike Lee. Though this movie doesn't reach the horrific immediacy and jolting timbre of his previous feature, Da 5 Bloods must be ranked among the best of the director's films. Its surprising humor and sudden, gory violence combine into a fever dream of an experience, one that I would have preferred to see on the big screen instead of streaming on Netflix. Don't be daunted by its lengthy runtime; this movie is electric with energy, both thematically and dramatically. I found myself only briefly getting lost in the implications of certain developments before getting absorbed into the next crucial sequence. And its mix of genres (the heist aspect of the plot feels very Western, as if Lee were turning The Treasure of the Sierra Madre into an homage of Apocalypse Now) keep it fabulously engrossing in terms of aesthetics.

And, as only Lee can do, this movie wears its relevance on its sleeve without beating us over the head with its significance. A stock story of warring men journeying into the wild for gold could be storytime fodder for any time and place. Add elements of racial injustice, colonial and imperial fallout, gender politics, mental illness, etc., and you can start to actually say something audiences might consider relevant. Lee, with his typical flair, combines all these elements and more until such easy "lessons" become impossible to untangle, much less critically defend. Instead, he simply allows the complexity of the story he presents to be just that -- complex -- while framing it with timely and equally complicated stock footage. Here, he frames the story of the Bloods with the voices of Muhammed Ali and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., both of whom are synonymous with Civil Rights activism in the U.S. and both of whom were vocal opponents of the war in Vietnam.

Through this frame, Lee also seems to be repurposing the trope of American films that deal with Vietnam. They are, far and wide, populated by macho white men who behave very badly and are glorified in cinematic history as a result. Name any major movie about the Vietnam War and it will not indicate that nearly one-third of the soldiers sent by the U.S. were black. But here, bolstered by what I would call the most surprising and award-worthy performance of the year so far by Delroy Lindo, the focus is firmly on black men. Sure, they don't behave much better than their white counterparts in other flicks, but the dramatic depth is far more profound. During flashbacks, the Bloods squad leader Stormin' Norman (played by Chadwick Boseman) educates his comrades (and audience) on the history of a racist country relying on black and brown bodies to die in its wars, on the few significant soldiers of color actually recognized by history, and on viewing the gold they seek as the first step toward reparations for slavery.

Perhaps most welcome, for me, was that this movie isn't nearly as on-the-nose as BlacKkKlansman was. Granted, Lee's wit and messages worked magnificently well there, and it spoke keenly to the America he was trying to entertain and teach. But here, despite Lee's insistence that Trump be named multiple times in this movie, Lee is not simply "bashing" anybody, much as they may deserve it. In playing a longer, more delicate game, he reveals the devastating legacy of "President Fake Bone Spurs", as one character says, pointing out that while his red MAGA hat floats around the Vietnamese jungle, the man himself never did. Delroy Lindo's character, the Trump supporter, makes his case for the Oscar this year in one particular scene as he cuts his way, alone, through the jungle and rants and raves directly into the camera. As Lindo speaks about the U.S. government and grows more incensed, Lee twists our expectations by not having the character go mad; rather, he reaches a cathartic revelation (an apocalypse, now, if you will) before calling on a cruel God and -- well, there's still more irony to be had in the scene.

As always, Lee can be enjoyed as pure entertainment. But what I love best about him is that he layers so many complications atop each other -- dramatically, thematically, artistically -- that you could never fully and absolutely understand one of his movies. I haven't even mentioned the score by Terence Blanchard (and soundtrack by Marvin Gaye!) which also deserves an Oscar nomination, or the Vietnamese woman who acts as a sort of Greek chorus, accentuating themes of racial injustice in history and wartime governments while raising questions about the narrative filters on this film. Further, Da 5 Bloods would seem to be Lee's means of revisiting his earlier movie The Miracle at St. Anna and putting it in a crucible to make new art that is dramatically and intellectually more dense and satisfying. And, by framing it the way he does, Lee performs the haunting revelation that this war, for black Americans, is far from over.