Spiral (2021)

Score: 2.5 / 5

Right around the halfway point of this movie, I started feeling a little sick. Not because of the graphic violence, which of course makes anyone squeamish, nor because of the sadistic bent of movies in this franchise. But a gnawing, churning sensation gripped me somewhere below my heart but above my diaphragm. It bothered me to distraction, ringing in my ear like a cold, hard steel cage that wouldn't stop rattling. And right around the time the movie tipped inevitably to its second act, I recognized the feeling all too well: knobbly, gnarled disappointment.

Spiral looked like something new. Sure, it's a spin-off of one of the most recognizable franchises in the last two decades, but between its stars, late date, and effective marketing campaign, I was sure this would shed new lights on a long-dead franchise. Frankly, I hated all of the Saw series after the first three, and even the third teetered on the edge of my disdain; the first is a work of pure genius, while the second is a fun extension of its concepts. But Spiral, subtitled "From the Book of Saw" told me that, while it would concern a serial killer copycat, it would bear little direct resemblance to the earlier films. But this new installment features no novelty, no ingenuity, and most damningly, no relevance to 2021.

It begins with, yes, a deadly trap. After chasing a robber into the subway system, a cop is strung up by his tongue, forced to choose to rip it out or be splattered by the oncoming train. His demise brings detectives Zeke Banks (Chris Rock) and William Schenk (Max Minghella), newly assigned partners, to the scene, and they discover almost immediately that it's the work of a Jigsaw copycat. The killer is smart -- despite his robed and hooded pig costume that tempts me with the moniker "Pigsaw" -- and apparently seeks to torment Banks with his history of internal affairs problems at the precinct. The killer picks out corrupt cops one by one, pretending to teach them lessons by "playing a game" with them, as we know full well. Few survive, and all suffer.

As goes with this franchise, we are trained to suspect the unexpected (which is to say, expected) suspects. Could it be the captain (Marisol Nichols), whose badass role as the only female in command might have murderous underpinnings? Could it be the new partner, who clearly feels the tension with his new, unwilling partner? Could it be Banks's father Marcus (Samuel L. Jackson), who gets pulled into the fevered hunt? Or could it be Banks himself, who grows increasingly eccentric as the case spirals inward? Whoever it is, Banks needs to work quickly, especially after his partner is skinned alive and his father goes missing. The problem for me is that nothing about these characters is very compelling. They're all only so much meat, ultimately, and the film treats them as such before they get sucked into the inevitable meat grinder.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, even the film's signature traps -- torture devices intended to symbolically and literally reshape their victims -- aren't that interesting. Not that I really liked the gore-porn tendencies of this series (besides the first film), but at least some of the installments embraced the absurdity of horror its creators imagined. Here, we have fairly generic traps that, while effective in making viewers cringe, feel more nihilistic in their determination to kill rather than teach. Then again, in some ways, I felt more invested in this movie because the traps weren't, writ large, a Grand Guignol splatterfest; they were more grounded and realistic, so I wasn't consistently taken out of the moment.

Mostly, I am disappointed because of what the film could have been, based on the marketing and casting. The film flirts with raising really interesting questions about police corruption and brutality, about people of color in policing roles, about the brutality of social pressures on law enforcement and the cruel extremes to which cops can fall. But the movie never invests any time -- or even intelligent conversation -- to any of these ideas. Every time I wondered if the thematic stakes would drive home, we're jolted into another laughably strange flashback with Jackson and his team, cheated out of yet another hope for timeliness. Even Rock, who is talented at bridging the gap between humor and horror here, can't save his scenes, though he tries desperately to dig his heels in as a world-weary detective on the edge of propriety. It's worth a watch, but not much more than that.

Voyagers (2021)

 Score: 1.5 / 5

In the near future, as the sci-fi tropes go, Earth will become uninhabitable. Scientists discover, in the nick of time, another planet for humans to colonize, and sends a team to set up the initial community. Unfortunately, the trip to this new planet takes 86 years, and so the team of young adults will probably never see it. Rather, the mission is for them to maintain the ship, procreate, and die in space, with the goal that their grandchildren will be the first generation on the new Earth. Not necessarily a groundbreaking concept, it nevertheless opened a wide berth of storytelling opportunities, and in the first 20 minutes or so, I had no idea where this movie was going.

And it chooses one of the more interesting options available to it: Lord of the Flies in space, with attractive young people grappling with their sexual awakenings. The kiddos -- chief of whom are Tye Sheridan, Lily-Rose Depp, and Fionn Whitehead -- begin to fear that some ghostly alien creature is stalking the ship after some mysterious noises rock the ship and a suspicious, violent death rocks their fragile equilibria. Then they learn that "the blue," a drink they are ordered to imbibe daily, is not just a vitamin supplement but a suppressant of hormonal extremes and negative emotional outbursts. As teens will do, they rebel, embracing their adolescence in all its messy manifestations. Breaking free of their routine duties on board, they abuse their food supply, destroy valuable equipment, sacrifice their health, and decide to ignore their mission.

Well, most of them, that is. Colin Farrell -- the only redeeming part of this movie for me -- is the only adult on board, a tender, father-figure who has crucially connected with these young people and who embarked on this voyage knowing full well he'd only live for about half of it. And, bless him, he doesn't make it far at all. His loss affects all the kid-astronauts, who split into factions of idealism and hedonism and, you guessed it, the hedonists are more numerous. The middle of this movie devolves into montages of horny, rageful kiddos embracing their natural sensations as if life itself is a hallucinatory drug; swirling cameras and expressionistic lighting make the trip, well, trippy, and it's easy to get annoyed with all the bad decisions they're all making.

Because everyone is making terrible choices here, even behind the scenes. If this movie had gone full Lord of the Flies, I could have loved it, especially with a nice twist or two like focusing on the intelligent and least-cringey character played by Miss Depp. Instead, there is a sharp dichotomy between the two men, one angry and brutish, the other level-headed and quite boring. Attempts at violence and horror become washed out in sensory overload, and there is a sharper focus on teenage angst and appeal than on anything resembling character development, thematic complexity, or even anything but a rote plot. There's no real horror, other than what kids are capable of doing, and the strong thrust of vindication for their actions from the filmmaker's perspective makes the whole affair dangerously immature.

Colin Farrell should have blasted those kids into space and set up a new world all on his own.

In the Earth (2021)

 Score: 3.5 / 5

Ben Wheatley is back, baby! After his disastrous attempt at mainstream fare in Rebecca on Netflix, Wheatley returns to the form he has perfected. That's not to say it's perfect, and generally speaking his aesthetic isn't my cuppa, but its peculiarities mark it as canon among the filmmaker's signature works like Kill List and High-Rise. Wheatley movies are seemingly made for my people: artsy-farsty weirdos who, in the middle of the week, like watching challenging and often unsatisfying films in small, intimate groups while the wine is flowing; discussion may follow, but probably won't bypass the "and what the heck was that moment about?" commentary. It's the midnight arthouse kind of earned pretentiousness that I find dazzling only when it's about something horrific. Like In the Earth. 

Despite a relative lack of scares, Wheatley's latest might be one of his more accessible genre films. It's certainly his timeliest. Dr. Martin Lowery (played by an effectively miserable Joel Fry) is on a mission in a world gone awry. As a deadly pandemic rages, forcing people to learn how to live with it, he journeys to a remote government outpost in a dense forest. Meeting up with park ranger Alma (Ellora Torchia), the two embark on a two-day trek to find Dr. Olivia Wendle (Hayley Squires), who has been missing for months after turning off her radio. Wendle has been working with fungi and plants to improve crop growth, and has theorized that the natural world is sentient and communicates through a psychic network of roots and spores.

Before you start counting, I'll start. The references here abound, and it's easy to get distracted. Apocalyptic plants? The Happening. A journey into rural crazyville? Heart of Darkness. A mysterious monolith that might be sentient? 2001: A Space Odyssey. Shocking brutality and anguish in a world devoid of rationality or morality? Take your pick, but The Texas Chain Saw Massacre isn't a far cry. Wheatley knows how to make an effective, low-budget movie that feels expensive, and gloomy forests that just might be the home of supernatural horrors is right up his alley. From these examples, you pretty much know what's going to happen, but that doesn't stop you from giving in to this movie's hypnotic seduction.

Apart from plenty of kaleidoscopic hallucinations -- which we are made to experience along with the characters -- there isn't too much chaos in this film. An otherwise linear story is layered thickly with references, themes, and ideas that individually would make interesting movies but altogether make a muddy sort of fever dream. Possibilities, in Wheatley flicks, tend to matter more than reality, and impressions matter more than expressions. Discussions range from the scientific use of death (fungus) to increase life (crops) to the effect of the Malleus Maleficarum on Western civilization, and if that doesn't prime your head for a wild trip, you're probably already on shrooms.

Of course the woodland trek goes badly, but then it gets worse. And worse again. And bad things keep happening. There's a hostage situation with a wackadoo hermit, there's a prolonged chase, and there's some particularly gory dismemberment. There's a hazmat suit and there's white ceremonial robes, there's a bow and arrow and an axe (and a very dangerous hook). There's pre-Christian folklore, lots of blood, and an obsession with rounded openings (eyes, wounds, holes). There's speakers and strobe lights in the middle of the woods, and there's a fog of spores that rings a clearing. What do we make of all this? I guess it doesn't much matter, because that's Wheatley's job. More than once I was reminded of the 1979 Soviet film Stalker, mostly because of the weird mixture of psychology and science fiction in the woods, but Wheatley seemed to want to do it with something like Leatherface as the titular stalker.

And when they do finally find Dr. Wendle, she's about as terrifying as anything you might expect, clearly unhinged but confined under respectable layers of purpose and education and civility. She delivers some intense exposition in terms of character -- regarding her past relationships with both Martin and the batshit crazy, violent hermit Zach (Reece Shearsmith) -- and in terms of theme and plot, as she reveals that her research has bent away from agriculture and toward an eldritch guardian of the woods. Science, after all, is just the modern verbiage for magic. And when you see the unholy but very interesting experiments Wendle is enacting, it's easy to feel, for even the briefest of moments, that she might be onto something real. After the last year of our lives, aren't we all a bit desperate to try anything if it helps us all reconnect? Remember the joy we felt last spring when we saw images and read data about nature healing itself as we all locked down? Shouldn't we still yearn for that?

There's a bit of a bloodbath climax, which is nice, but then the movie just sort of ends. Leave it to Wheatley to make us scramble for comprehension and meaning after throwing so much at us, but I confess to hoping for a bit more cohesion. If the various and varied elements of this movie fit together, it's largely without clear logic or connections; that's okay, but it does leave one feeling distinctly unsatisfied. Then again, why should we feel satisfied in a movie -- in a world -- so messed up that even looking for answers will leave you brutalized, bewildered, and ultimately lost in the woods?

Justice League (2021)

 Score: 5 / 5

It's the superhero movie event of our lives. Well, single event, as the final Avengers movies (as of this date) were split. It's the sort of gloriously indulgent, remarkably unsentimental, utterly transporting film that epics are made of. This is the new Ben-Hur or Ten Commandments, a continuous and almost unbearably lengthy drama that, while rooted in emotional and spiritual journeys, takes us to worlds we've never seen but now can clearly imagine. Four hours of graphic novel -- and characters of myth -- beautifully rendered in a sqaure (4:3-ish) aspect ratio that looks like panels of a comic book. Seen in IMAX, I can only imagine the transcendent sensation it provokes. And now all I want to do is see it in IMAX, preferably with an intermission.

There's a lot to be said about the road to this movie, and how it's been released, and why it exists at all, but there are far too many others talking about that. There's equally tons to be said about the implications of releasing auteurist visions like this, bucking studio trends, and even caving to mass fanbase pressure. Think of the collapse of the BBC's Sherlock, amongst others, and the revelation of Zack Snyder's newest film feels miraculous. But that's also a discussion for other people and places and times. But it bears noting that I certainly hope the supposed five-film arc Snyder had planned will come to pass with the success of this film. It leaves a lot to hope for, and I for one would be severely crushed if the majesty of this picture ended with itself.

But what of the movie itself? When compared to the 2017 theatrical version, clearly pumped out after Snyder's exit by a desperate studio and a particular director whose antics and style can be criticized elsewhere, this version is a wholly different film. I don't want to say "superior in every way," but it comes damn close to that dangerous descriptor. While I missed some of the awkward humor and forced action of the other Justice League, this one is consistently more organic even as it gives in to its superficial facade, perfecting the beautiful tableaus of battle and spectacle, and giving time and money to its computer-generated imagery. Its villains -- yes, now there are two! -- are gorgeous and tactile; its action sequences are the sort of balls-out insanity we expect from Snyder; its heroes are respected, even revered, rather than crudely used for cheap humor and cheers.

And while I liked the 2017 Justice League more than many others at the time of its release, this movie slapped me right in my opinions time and again upon my first viewing. Upon subsequent viewings (I've seen it now four times) I appreciate its marriage of subtlety and grandiosity more, its appreciation of delicate character development, its exquisite attention to detail and beauty, and its, well, Snyderisms. He's not a director I ever really valued much, and I probably still won't going forward, but I have to say his interpretation and vision for a DC movie universe will remain a favorite franchise of mine for a long time.

A consummate comic book movie, this Justice League is split into seven parts, each with titles and each feeling somewhat self-contained. Given the aspect ratio and digital artwork, and the rumors that this was meant to be a miniseries, I have to wonder if this was intentional, to evoke the serial editions of new comics. The action is easier to follow than in most similar genre movies, thankfully, and while some may still decry Snyder's comparative lack of humor, the deadpan quips and absurdism Snyder injects into this masterpiece makes the marathon sparkle with wit. Whereas many films of this ilk (MCU, I'm looking at you) exist to feed viewers exactly what they know they want, generating money without earning it and digging their studios deeper into fan loyalty hell, this movie is a unique vision by an unexpected auteur, who holds fast to his expression (feverishly radical as it is) despite clear and tempting opportunities not to.

All its characters are here, finally, given balanced screen time with strong individual arcs. Specifically, I needed more from Cyborg and this movie totally delivers. It also gives us Martian Manhunter, which heaven knows I pray we'll get to see in future films. And while the plot is essentially the same, now it feels earned and organic rather than forced and rushed. Moreover, plot is not what's driving this movie, something more superhero flicks would do well to emulate. It's worth noting, too, that both James Wan and Patty Jenkins have been quoted as basing their movies off Snyder's movie, not Whedon's. So what happens in this new movie is, really, the only thing that happens in this movie universe.

But I came, I stayed, and I will not stop preaching about the style here. Sure, the film is as fragmented as any superhero movie, and sure, it consistently skews left of expectations. It's so large and loud and busy that it makes even the wonderful and bloated Batman v Superman feel simple and sweet (and I loved the extended cut of that movie). It's a rush of pop art, with music and imagery and video games on its mind. It's fabulously excessive and gloriously escapist and troublingly incisive into the often unspoken psyche of superheroes. And it's the most -- well, it's the most. I love it. And now I think I'll go watch it again.

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)

Score: 3 / 5

Let's not split too many hairs about it, Godzilla vs. Kong is the sort of trashy mess that I usually try to avoid. It features lengthy sequences that, in any other franchise, I'd call utterly unwatchable. More often than not, it feels like a video game in ridiculously high definition. At least disaster movies usually focus on human characters, but this feels more like the smash-bang hoopla of a Transformers movie, which is to say, not particularly satisfying as anything but mindless summer action. Then again, it is the climactic part of the franchise that birthed it, and as such deserves some consideration in context of its buildup and its intended effect on future films. As the COVID box office leader, its financial successes will surely lead to more monster mayhem. We can certainly hope so, and that they will anchor it back into the aesthetic and themes that birthed it.

The fourth installment of Legendary's MonsterVerse begins with a distinctly troubling opening credits montage. Not troubling in terms of plot or theme, but troubling in terms of franchise: apparently five years have passed since the events of the magnificent Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and all the recorded Titans are eliminated. It's not totally clear if they have been, like Kong, isolated in secure facilities for observation and containment, or if they have been killed (by humans) or defeated (by Godzilla). The opening credits wind their way through a bracket, like sports teams, in which each loser is marked with a red X, until apparently the only two remaining are the giant ape and the giant lizard. After such beautiful and suggestive renderings of other Titans in the previous film, it's horrific to me, as a fan, that they'd so quickly kill everyone off simply so they can get to the "showdown" fight between the god and the king.

At least they could have given us a Monster Island movie first.

But without the inherent creepiness of some of the kaiju, Godzilla vs. Kong works best as an action film on the scope of a disaster movie. Its woefully thin story begins innocuously, with Kong held in a Monarch observation dome on Skull Island (and a strange aside suggesting that, for some reason, the encircling violent storm nearly destroyed the island before dissipating). Kong appears to have a nice enough life, and has developed a friendship with a little native Iwi girl who is deaf and uses sign language to communicate. Meanwhile, Godzilla attacks a facility in Pensacola, Florida, owned by Apex Cybernetics, apparently drawn there by mysterious experimentations and power surges.

A former Monarch scientist (Alexander Skarsgard, who has no business in a movie where he shows no skin) is approached by Apex to lead a term into the Hollow Earth to prove the theory of its existence as the homeland of the Titans and to search for other potential threats as well as alternative energy sources. He joins up with Rebecca Hall (I don't remember the character names, but they don't really matter anyway) and the Iwi girl and they transport Kong to Antarctica, where they plan to enter the Hollow Earth. Godzilla, drawn to Kong, attacks them en route and almost eliminates him. Round one goes to the lizard.

All this is fairly interesting plotting, and it works especially well as a development of the human organizations associated with the monsters. Monarch now fully represents the "good guys," the vindicated crypto scientists seeking to study and contain the Titans; Apex appears to be the new baddies, secretively experimenting and building something to combat the Titans. The human element poised to bring them down is led by a hilarious Brian Tyree Henry and Millie Bobby Brown, who infiltrate the Pensacola facility, get trapped in an underground high-speed train, and are shipped to another Apex facility in Hong Kong. It's all a little weird, but their discovery is one of the more exciting thrills of this movie, even if we see it coming hours in advance (I mean, Godzilla is the apex predator, so obviously the industrial machinists of Apex are doing something a little, well, mechanical to rival him).

If the first Godzilla was a Spielbergian encounter with a wondrous and dangerous Other, the first Kong was a Vietnam-era fever dream of violence and fun. Then, in King of the Monsters, we got a transcendent view of the apocalyptic possibilities these sacred kaiju could wreak on an abused and tortured Earth. The series worked hard to stress its theme of humans corrupting the world and nature fighting back, even as it repeatedly demonstrated that the monsters themselves are not intentionally killing humans for sport. The MonsterVerse fabulously manages to ground its movies in real, existential horror, allowing us glimpses of extinction-level events through the eyes of relatively inconsequential humans who nevertheless fail to understand that the only way forward is coexistence. The main characters are complex and conflicted, who grow even as they fail. When the army trucks roll up, it's often laughably silly, and we are well aware that most or all of the fighters will die.

But Godzilla vs. Kong, for all its energy and intensity, fumbles its characters. It doesn't know what to do with its own shadowy organizations, its complex human relationships, or even the parts of the plot it completely sacrifices on the altar of spectacle. I choked on my own incredulity during the impressively stupid journey Kong and his human handlers take to Hollow Earth; they fall through a black hole that becomes a weird, neon-blue jet, and it's all so fantastic, so utterly unbelievable, that I wasn't sure it belonged to the same movie, or even the franchise. Similarly, when Kong retrieves his weapon from Hollow Earth and activates the cosmic power source Apex is hunting -- that might actually allow him to defeat Godzilla -- Godzilla senses it and, in the most laughably absurd scene, blows his atomic breath straight down from downtown Hong Kong, through the crust, and into the Hollow Earth right where Kong is standing. What about the black hole and antigravity? Does anybody care?

And that's not to say Adam Wingard's (You're Next, The Guest, Blair Witch) installment in the franchise isn't without its pleasures. But, for me, they were a little too few and far between, laced thinly with excessively messy and dull action. The Hollow Earth scenes were a beautiful throwback to psychedelic fantasy standards of the '80s, and I wanted more of that. Brian Tyree Henry, Rebecca Hall, and Demian Bichir were fun to watch, even if they didn't get to do much, while everyone else was clearly squandered. Actually, part of me wonders if the film would have simply been better as a straight-up buddy monster mash, as Godzilla and Kong are here treated as anthropomorphized boxers in a ring. They get about three chances to knock each other out, and between their impressive physicality and cartoonish facial expressions, the movie seems determined to make them the primary characters in human terms. I don't love that at all, and can easily see this as a turning point for the franchise into self-parody.

Let's just hope the next torch-carrier chooses to respect the awe and horror of this franchise without settling for spectacle.

The Unholy (2021)

 Score: 3 / 5

Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays the unfortunately named Gerry Fenn, a disaster of a journalist. The sort of world-weary, washed-up mess of a guy he plays so very well (Desierto, The Possession), Gerry is eking along as an outcast reporter, traveling long distances to "investigate" ridiculous and bizarre things. His most recent trip brought him to a rural Massachusetts town, where a farmer is a little too ignorant to know that the apparent mutilation of his cows are really just Metallica logos painted on by bored kids. Naturally, he's drinking a lot, and his grungy, grizzled manners are off-putting to just about everyone.

Well, almost everyone. Young Alice (Cricket Brown), niece of the local priest, is known to be deaf and mute, but after a supernatural encounter at a gnarled old tree next to the Catholic church, she miraculously can hear. She claims to have seen the Virgin Mary in the tree, and the oracle will use Alice as her mouthpiece. She speaks shockingly well, too, and determines that Gerry will be her exclusive outlet for delivering her messages to the masses. Because hers is not the only miracle: she performs healings and blessings in the name of her beloved Lady. Gerry sees her as his ticket back into business, but his gruff charm belies a heart quickly warming to the otherwise faithful and innocent girl.

Gerry's protective -- dare we say fatherly? -- relationship with Alice is one of the several things the film does not handle well. It's believable, and that's a definite plus, but it's interesting and unusual in the genre, and I wanted more insight and drama from it as a result. It's almost treated as a given that Alice needs an outlet, and that he is the natural choice. His desperation isn't made as clear, in the film, as his eye for opportunity. Moreover, the film clearly doesn't understand journalism, as there is no way he can afford motels and travel expenses on the bizarre stories he writes for, what, $150? And there are two or three early bits of dialogue that suggest he intentionally rewrites reality to skew the story for wider readership and sensationalism; the last thing we need now is more examples of fake news.

But, for whatever reason, the relationship works, and soon the masses descend on the town, convinced it is a new Lourdes or Fatima. The sick and downtrodden hope for miracles; the pious hope for proof it is either a hoax or the real deal. Alice's uncle summons a bishop (Cary Elwes with an ungodly Boston accent) and monsignor (hunky Diogo Morgado) to investigate, and suddenly global interest focuses on the creepy-ass dead tree where Mary appears to Alice. But Alice is in charge, or rather Mary is, and she controls the circus like a pro. "Doubt weakens faith," she declares, quelling any naysayers by harnessing the virtue and intervention of her faithful followers. She goes viral, and we're treated to online videos of girls feeling "seen" as they watch and react to videos of Alice's speeches and miracles. This fascinating montage deserved a lot more time and consideration in the film, as the tension slowly rises for our main characters: Is Mary really the Blessed Virgin? Is the Emperor actually wearing any clothes?

It's a fun release for Holy Week, and has some really cool ideas about the nature of religion -- especially popular religion in the age of information -- in a postmodern world. It has a lot of heart between the two leads, and it has a lot of suitably scary bits that mostly rely on jump-scares and a creeping sensation of dread. And despite some really clever, moody-broody cinematography, it's largely a standard exercise in diabolical horror. Its greatest source of tension, the question of Mary's true nature and intentions, are undermined from the very beginning, which makes the proceedings feel inevitable and morose rather than thrilling and disturbing. I'd watch this movie as a counterpart to The Exorcism of Emily Rose, by far by favorite in the subgenre, and I will continue to wish this movie took more leaves from that book. The most original ideas in The Unholy are mostly left unfertilized, so the hints of thematic and theological depth are as suggestive and engaging as they are ultimately disappointing.

The Courier (2021)

 Score: 3 / 5

British businessman Greville Wynne is surprised to be meeting two rather uptight people for an exclusive lunch. When he finds out one is with MI6 and the other is with the CIA, he seems both amused and bewildered. When they attempt to recruit him to help smuggle secrets out of Russia, he's completely dumbfounded. The year is 1960, and fears are growing about nuclear weapons in communist countries; Wynne is more interested in succeeding in his work to support his wife and son than in frequently flying to Moscow. But the agents are convinced that he, with no ties to the government and the theatricality inherent in salesmanship, is a perfect secret agent. They connect him with a secret Russian agent named Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze), and the two embark on a dangerous mission to help President Kennedy as the Cuban Missile Crisis looms.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays Wynne with somewhat atypical flair. Usually typecast as a introverted brainiac with unsavory social tendencies, here Cumberbatch seems to relish a more emotionally-driven character. The movie is, frankly, worth watching almost solely for the unexpected drama he proves himself adept at conveying. As he attempts to become the titular courier of intel, we never doubt that he's in pretty far over his head. His frequent conversations with his intelligence agent "handlers" -- Angus Wright and Rachel Brosnahan -- reveal his discomfort with lying to his wife and being constantly in danger of arrest. The Russians in the film are clearly ruthless, and fears of being thrown in a gulag are almost debilitating to the proper British gentleman. Well, "proper" when he's not schmoozing with potential clients; it's a joy to watch a loose Cumberbatch confirm for the Russians their worst suspicions about capitalist Westerners in raucous barrooms.

Remember Bridge of Spies, back in 2015? This movie reminded me of that, and of earlier movies in the genre, especially Hitchcock's. Based on true events that revolve around Cold War spies between Russia and the West, these films are most accessible as a character study, delving into the personal costs of espionage in service to your country (and, of course, the world generally). While I doubt The Courier will ever be considered an iconic or even particularly memorable entry in this genre, there's still a lot to be said for a smartly produced picture (Sean Bobbitt's engrossing cinematography feels as though it could have been made back in the 60s, while never feeling less than contemporary) with bankable stars who make a movie that comforts and interests and entertains us, even through and perhaps because of the clichés it relies upon.

Director Dominic Cooke and screenwriter Tom O’Connor work hard to strike a balance between spy-thriller action and character drama, and they mostly succeed. The movie's heart seems to be given to Wynne and Penkovsky, whose scenes together are often both fraught with tension and brimming with warm feelings. As the two men work together, they become entangled in each other's personal lives. Penkovsky even visits Wynne's family in England and becomes friendly with his wife and son. But Wynne's wife Sheila, played by Jessie Buckley, was the most interesting character to me. Patient and supportive and endlessly forgiving, she plays the dutiful wife even as she begins to suspect her husband is having an affair. He's exercising a lot, and trying new things in bed, and of course taking lots of long trips for work. When she finally learns what he's really been up to, she's utterly heartbreaking as she fights her own guilt for not trusting him and being unable to tell him, now that it's too late.

For it is indeed too late, when Wynne and Penkovsky are captured, imprisoned, and tortured by the KGB. The subsequent scenes are tired and morose, mostly taking place in dimly lit, grimy cells as they are deprived of food and sleep, beaten and abused, and isolated for two years. I found my mind drifting during these scenes simply due to their familiarity; the film renewed my interest for their final scene together, when Penkovsky's betrayal leads to his execution and Wynne is finally released after maintaining his innocence. Its sentimentality works as a result of the unpleasantness of the preceding 40 minutes or so, but I would have preferred more information about the spying and less about the incarceration, partly out of historical interest and partly because cutting out what is essentially stock footage of imprisonment would have made for a more engaging second half of the story.

Malcolm & Marie (2021)

 Score: 3.5 / 5

Gorgeously shot in black and white, Malcolm & Marie belongs to the great tradition of "dinner party gone wrong" dramas. It of course pioneers a few new variations on the genre, and in these it brilliantly succeeds. First, it features only actors of color. Second, there are only two characters in the film. Third, it was one of (if not the) first feature film created and released during the COVID-19 pandemic, and though it's not part of the plot, we feel the effects of isolation, paranoia, resentment, and loneliness pervading the movie. As the two characters talk, tired and hungry and eager to unburden their souls, they shift from space to space around the house in various states of undress. Their desires for each other are often eclipsed by desire for themselves, the end result looking something like a ballet of titanic proportions as they verbally assault each other until there is nothing left to say.

What's it all about? Malcolm (John David Washington of BlacKkKlansman, Tenet) is a writer-director whose new film just premiered. He's riding a high from the emotional audience response, and he wants to celebrate with his girlfriend. Well, he also wants to pontificate ad nauseam about film critics. It's sincere, and quite funny to hear when it's not grating, but it also reveals intense insecurities in his mind. Marie (Zendaya of The Greatest Showman and the MCU's Spider-Man movies) has been supportive all night and does not want to start a fight, but feels slighted for not having been thanked or even mentioned in Malcolm's premiere speech. She's mostly quiet at the outset, but you can see her begin to seethe when she lights up her first cigarette. It's simple but significant, and the two begin what will prove to be an exhaustive argument that will stretch late into the night.

It's mostly significant, as we learn through their dialogue, because Malcolm appears to be using Marie for dramatic inspiration, pirating her life and turning it into his grand works of art. He constantly strokes his ego, pretentiously parading his brilliant mind in circles around the flock of vulture-like critics, who have notably not yet descended. He's insulating himself against their attacks, but Marie knowingly lets him dig his own grave, as she feels like the carrion he himself has feasted upon, without so much as a public acknowledgement. But in many ways, and because it's all coming from writer-director Sam Levinson, it also feels a bit like a manifesto from someone we don't fully know and therefore can't fully appreciate.

The potential problem with this movie is that, even before the halfway point, it all begins to feel like a writer playing with himself, rather than two distinct and rounded characters squaring off at home. His masturbatory tirades against critics are intelligent and articulate, but Levinson is showing his hand in a surprisingly aggressive way in only the first half hour of the film. Even when things veer into more personal, emotional territory, as the characters engage in a full-blown domestic about their history, it feels like their dependency on each other prevents us from seeing them as separate people. Much like other recent works have explored (Let Them All Talk and The Wife come to mind), this is about an artist -- here a man -- using the women around him in his work without thanking them, and becoming so deluded in his own genius that he isn't even always aware of his own vampirism.

But Levinson's movie stretches on through new evolutions of the same fight, and it does indeed become repetitive in increasingly exhausting ways. How many ways can these characters rephrase their grievances? Always one more, according to the writer, who nevertheless has worked into his screenplay a very clever means of deflecting his own critics. Their fight becomes a series of monologues, as one character rests before returning to the microphone; the performances are masterful, and we can certainly hope that this role will land Zendaya some leading parts in serious fare in the future. But frankly, this screenplay could have used some workshopping to make it more cinematic. Levinson as director is fine, and the movie is beautiful to behold. But the screenplay, as it is, would probably work better on stage than on film. It would still need some work, though, if only to increase the dynamism of its scope and its seriously confounding pace.

The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

 Score: 4 / 5

"All of Me" is the featured song of this film, and I'm more than a little surprised it wasn't chosen to be the title. Because indeed we are treated to all of Billie Holiday in this dramatization of her life. Showcasing her brilliant artistry, the film nevertheless creeps into her infamous personal life in the 1940s, as her problems with alcohol and drugs became public knowledge. And much like her vocal style, unconventionally jazzy and swinging with unusual phrasing, the film tries hard to make a case for another adaptation of her life story. It doesn't always succeed in that endeavor -- though Lady Day's legacy surely calls for more visions like this -- because the plot and themes are now cliché: fame and wealth motivate stress to find self-destructive release through substance abuse and abusive relationships. 

What saves this movie from others of its ilk -- those that often cut-and-paste bits of an artist's life to show how fame corrupts and destroys -- is its darker, external story of the targeting of Billie Holiday by the government in their so-called War on Drugs. The United States vs. Billie Holiday, the title taken from this highly publicized but notably shady series of encounters, makes Harry Anslinger, the first chief of the government's Bureau of Narcotics, the white villain. Played by Garrett Hedlund, Anslinger is a cardboard cutout racist, of the "jazz is jungle music" variety. This explains his apparent obsession with Billie Holiday, whose new single "Strange Fruit" is making big waves for the singer who usually sings romantic songs about love. The song, about the lynched bodies of Black people, of course upsets the people looking to racialize the war on drugs. Before you criticize that judgment, take a look at how Judy Garland was treated by law enforcement and the press and compare the two cases.

The movie suggests, quite clearly, that Anslinger has authored Holiday's troubles, from losing her license to perform to being victimized in a drug bust arranged by dirty cops who planted evidence. Much of the dramatic tension of the film, however, focuses on Holiday's relationship with Jimmy Fletcher, an up-and-coming FBI agent trying hard to be a sort of model Black man in a white boys' club. Played by the amazing Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight, Bird Box), Jimmy is not unlike O'Neal in this year's Judas and the Black Messiah, which works on some similar themes, in that he has been seduced into helping to bring down a popular Black artist and activist for the government. A quick Google search unfortunately shows that much of this character is drastically different than his real-life counterpart, but the change allows Holiday to have quiet, romantic, and sensual dynamics to her character that would otherwise be difficult for the performer to rely upon.

And what a performer. Andra Day is nothing short of astounding as Billie Holiday, from her looks to her impossibly accurate singing voice. In her big moments -- of which the film features many -- she outshines everyone around her. I find myself now more concerned about the film's bizarre editing techniques, its thematic suggestions to a streaming audience, and its lavish production values, but while I was watching, I didn't care about anything as long as the star was on screen. She takes this vehicle and rides it hard, letting the gritty, cruel underbelly of her life motivate every look and every note. It helps that, when she's first introduced, she's squaring off with a deliciously naughty Leslie Jordan as he interviews her about her legacy.

Then again, with such a sprawling story, it was difficult to always know what else deserved paying attention to. Her friendship with Tallulah Bankhead -- surely ripe for dramatization -- is forgettably and regrettably brief. Each new friend or assistant in her circle becomes an addict like her, resulting in seemingly endless scenes of people tying off and shooting up, sometimes with unexpectedly graphic attention by a voyeuristic camera. Are we meant to feel uneasy due to our own worship of celebrity culture? Maybe, but the film doesn't do enough to make us feel voyeuristic except in two or three notable scenes, as long takes drag us through especially traumatizing scenes from her life.

Lee Daniels always makes interesting movies, but the audacity of Precious and The Paperboy is utterly absent here. This reminds me a bit more strongly of The Butler, a similarly serious, sentimental, and sprawling account of a long life well-spent, or rather, well-serving. In recalling my viewing experience, I found the film lovely and challenging and entertaining, but in remembering the film itself, it's hard for me to say it wasn't unfocused. Or even that it had much to say other than "Don't do drugs" and "white cops are bad for Black people", things we don't need to watch a Black woman suffer through to understand.

The Dig (2021)

 Score: 3 / 5

Edith Pretty wants to dig. She lives with her young son Robert on a huge estate in Suffolk, in poor health, no doubt partially due to her nursing of her own father before his death, and her subsequent marriage leaving her a widow. But she's sure those mounds out on her property fields contain something interesting; her childhood interest in archaeology has piqued her adult interest in culture and history. No time like the present, either: it's 1939, as war in Europe began its march, and the fear of losing art and history was becoming palpably real. Carey Mulligan plays Ms. Pretty with all this left mostly unspoken, providing a depth of character with the grace of an English lady, someone whose past has scarred her but whose future she is determined to claim for herself.

She hires Basil Brown, an excavator and archaeologist working at Ipswich Museum to come unearth her mounds, which now that I say it, sounds much more sexual than this movie ever gets. Mr. Brown, a humble man with no formal education or financial pretense, arrives on the scene determined to work hard. Played by a typically eccentric and introverted Ralph Fiennes, he gives off the impression he learned from his father and grandfather and knows that their way is best. Honoring the past means honoring his own legacy too, right? But when Basil sees the property, his hopes teeter on doubt; the land has not been preserved, and these mounds have been scoured before. Between the considerable money Edith offers him and Robert's clear affection, viewing Basil as a father figure, he assembles a small team and starts digging.

The titular dig site reveals a wealth of treasure, ultimately known as the Sutton Hoo cemeteries. The Anglo-Saxon burial ship has been touted as one of the greatest archaeological finds in British history, predating the more common but similar Viking sites. After Edith and Basil, in a mesmerizing first act of the film, approach the same questions from totally different backgrounds, they (and we) are rewarded with the feeling of awe as the burial ship stands uncovered. Before long, eager authorities descend on the site, determined to assist and, of course, claim some fame. They bring with them ambition and drama, which starts to annoy Edith and Basil and carries the bulk of the middle of the film.

Simon Stone's drama is lovely to behold. Soft, warm, and tranquil, this is the kind of sentimental historical drama that, ten or twenty years ago, would have been produced by the Weinstein Company. Its strong performances, pervasive thematic underpinnings about art and history, and absorbing sense of place would have made it awards-bait in years past. But right now, after the last four years and during a pandemic, as those awards shows continue to be lambasted about their lack of diversity, The Dig feels distinctly out of place. Like the treasures unearthed by Edith and Basil, this relic is as beautiful as it is forgettably quaint. Even as it tries to peacefully and nicely hammer home the importance of this event and this find, it rarely manages to break free from its own quiet self-importance to make us care about it. Because of this event, we know Anglo-Saxons had culture and art, as one impassioned character declares in the film; this movie just wants to show us how that knowledge came to be known.

Which would still make for a nice movie, I suppose, except for all the silly drama that enters in the second half. Once outsiders pop in, Basil all but disappears and with him went the movie's heart. Vapid exchanges between strangers churn out drama faster than the mounds churn out gold. Ken Stott (The Hobbit trilogy) plays a famous archaeologist who wants to take the site from Basil's amateur hands. Johnny Flynn (Emma.) shows up as Edith's cousin Rory, who takes pictures of the dig. Stuart and Peggy (Ben Chaplin and Lily James) arrive to help, but they are both dissatisfied in their marriage; as Peggy and Rory grow closer together, Stuart seems too interested in a male colleague. Then Rory is summoned to the war effort. It's all a lot of drama that doesn't really have to do with anything, and it arrives far too late to be of any consequence to the film. Even the impending threat of the Blitz only marginally matters, adding the tiniest sense of urgency to the whole proceedings, making most of the romantic aspects of the second half merely irritating.