Matilda the Musical (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

Netflix offers us, yet again, a stunningly beautiful movie musical in the form of Matilda, the long-loved Roald Dahl story adapted to a stage musical in 2011. This adaptation, directed and co-written by Matthew Warchus (Pride), with the same team who created the stage production, is about as bonkers as you'd expect from a Roald Dahl story. Personally, I've never much liked Dahl or Matilda, but the songs by Tim Minchin are rather wonderful in this adaptation. This film -- which, from what I've gathered, is fairly faithful to the original stage version -- is a nonstop technicolored fever dream of energy and awe. And that seems to be completely appropriate for its subject matter.

Matilda, played by Alisha Weir, is a clever and lonely young girl who loves to read to learn but also to escape from her family life. Her narcissistic, selfish, and stupid parents (played hilariously by Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough) finally send her to school at the prompting of others, but warn the headmistress that she is a troublemaker. At school, Matilda excels at her studies but has more trouble navigating other schoolchildren. The headmistress, Miss Agatha Trunchbull (played by the incomparable Emma Thompson under heavy prosthetics) is a terror to her --and indeed the other children -- as she torments children for pleasure, although Matilda in particular is aided a bit by her lovely teacher, Miss Honey (a pitch-perfect and arrestingly lovely Lashana Lynch). During her tribulations at school, Matilda discovers that her mind also harbors another secret: a surprise skill for telekinesis and light telepathy.

For someone like me, who doesn't particularly like the source material, mileage on this movie will vary. I found myself drifting between engrossing curiosity and vague annoyance with each complex character and each outlandish plot development. But most of that is directed at Dahl, not this film. Dahl's stories are usually aimed at and enjoyed by children although he was reportedly a exceptionally unpleasant person; perhaps this air of authentic emotional weight and raw, almost cruel observations of the real world are why his tales remain classics. There isn't really sentimental fantasy involved, and usually in fact it's all a bit macabre. I just don't find much humor in surreal depictions of brutish women stretching a boy's ears like putty or throwing pigtailed girls over garden walls like Olympic hammers (although her characterization here is fascinating as a Soviet-style commandant). I also don't find much humor in the vicious pranks Matilda plays on her father, deserved as they may be for the abusive man in question.

But Warchus's direction, Tat Radcliffe's kinetic cinematography, and especially Tim Minchin's songs weave a dazzling spell of infectious fun. I was completely blown away by the lyrical structure of "School Song" in particular with its endlessly smart use of the alphabet as the students singing it disclose the horrors in store at school to Matilda. Gorgeous, candy-colored production design heightens the proceedings to a level of whimsical fantasy directly in opposition to the pure content, not unlike what Lemony Snicket (and filmmakers who have adapted his work) did with his Series of Unfortunate Events. The Dickensian school notwithstanding, the film keeps things a little too bright and clean; even the remarkably acrobatic choreography is edited to be in perfect time, tightening things up in an almost cartoonish way that highlights the fantasy aspect of Matilda's awakening to the real world.

The Phantom of the Open (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

Mark Rylance is one of the most underrated and dexterous actors of his generation working today, and he blesses us with another fabulous performance this year (his others were The Outfit and Bones and All) as The Phantom of the Open. Under an assortment of argyle vests and his signature bucket hats, he plays Maurice Flitcroft, the real-life worst golf player in history. Well, more or less; Flitcroft is known for having shot the worst round ever at the British Open in 1976 and for being subsequently banned by the organization. Not that that stopped Flitcroft, who played (or attempted to) many more times under various false identities.

British comedies are really hit-or-miss for me, but this one nailed the dry, sweet humor that hit the mark dead-on. It's a story of pluck and gumption, of chasing your dreams regardless of what the world tells you to do, accomplishing the impossible and inspiring others to do the same. Flitcroft was a shipyard crane operator in a working-class lifestyle with his wife Jean (Sally Hawkins in a terribly underwritten role) and three sons who in turns encourage and discourage him from continuing his antics. But once Maurice is bit by the golf bug, there's no stopping him from sneaking onto ranges to practice or wheedling his way into upscale clubs.

I confess a little annoyance that the film never really gets to the heart of exactly why Maurice spontaneously fell in love with golf and determined to make it his passion. Perhaps it doesn't really matter, ultimately, because simply knowing it's his passion should be enough. But for such a wacky, largely unbelievable story, it might help us emotionally connect with the otherwise distractingly eccentric protagonist. His thick accent and little quirks and tics reveal the depth of Rylance's acting skills much more than they reveal anything about Maurice's internal life other than his indomitable optimism for himself and determined perseverance. The closest we get to understanding Maurice's view of the world is in a few notable scenes of magical realism, as Maurice daydreams about his own stardom and about himself orbiting a golf ball like he's its moon (and that golf is, by extension, his whole world).

And that's the ultimate point of this film, I think: celebrating the virtues of hope and honesty with oneself, despite how the world mocks you for or restricts you from living your best life. Rhys Ifans plays the villainous head of the Open, a sort of cartoonish business man determined to maintain the higher class of his tournament and organization. He's essentially the bumbling schoolmaster to Maurice's naughty schoolboy, warily watching for a fake moustache or poor French accent to identify Flitcroft and then chasing him off the premises. And, really, it's this sequence of elaborate disguises and chases that could have made for the bulk of the film, rather than being relegated to the final third of this film, in something I'd imagine not unlike the tone of Catch Me If You Can. That caper would make for a much more action and comedy-heavy film, which clearly director Craig Roberts is not interested in making. Instead, his film turns Maurice into a hero for anyone who has ever chased a dream against all odds, even the knowledge that they aren't "good" at their passion. Really, if anything, this film reminded me most of Florence Foster Jenkins in that way. 

Glass Onion (2022)

Score: 5 / 5

Thank goodness they're back at it. Rian Johnson returns with Daniel Craig for another quick-witted, topical whodunnit to follow up Knives Out. And, befitting a sequel, this one is glossier, flashier, and bigger. The Gothic tendencies of the first are still present, but now in chic modern trappings. The self-aware political dialogue of the first is somehow more trenchant and expansive now. Think of this as like Branagh's new Poirot films: the first was more isolated and spooky, the second was more glamorous and brutal. It helps that Glass Onion takes place on a picturesque private Greek island topped with an enormous glass globe, because murder in paradise is always more fun.

It's the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and a group of old friends gathers for their annual vacation together at the island paradise home of Miles Bron, a billionaire techie and patented idiot played to perfection by Edward Norton, who plays against type to hilarious effect. One wonders if his idiocy has led to paranoia, because the group of friends he amasses are surely close-knit but they each hide devious secrets that only each other knows. They affectionately refer to themselves as "The Disruptors," which reveals their collective narcissism and smug self-righteousness, and their various pursuits smack of shady dealings and ill-gotten gains. Guarding each other's secrets as they do, they might best be described as frenemies.

Much as with the first installment, Johnson both honors and inverts typical whodunnit tropes. Yes, everyone in the large ensemble cast is a suspect, but they're also all deeply conflicted and ambiguous characters. The pool of suspects Johnson treats as a microcosm of social ills: the first film's insular family felt a bit Trumpian in its hyper-fixation on money and entitlement as well as their performative tolerance, and this film's fraternity of friends is more than a little echo chamber-y in its treatment of social media and its condemnation of greedily inspired tech advancements. Johnson also structures his delightfully twisty plot with knowing loops on itself, making it deucedly difficult to predict, much like the first film. Adding in metafictional flair -- such as his numerous gobsmacking cameos from people like Ethan Hawke and the late great duo Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury -- only adds to the festive wackiness and off-the-wall ingenuity.

Daniel Craig leads again as Benoit Blanc (now confirmed to be gay and partnered to Hugh Grant) as the Cajun detective with a mind like a steel trap, although this time he plays more of a character than before. His attention was piqued when he receives an invitation to the Disruptors' vacation: each invitation takes the form of a deviously complex puzzle box Blanc declares to be silly and simple. However, Blanc was more or less recruited by a character played by Janelle Monáe. SPOILER ALERT: it is Monáe who really owns this movie in a dual role of twin sisters determined to bring down Miles for his criminality and dangerous new alternative fuel. And so, Blanc himself is a bit more relaxed and even goofy during the film's first act, which is a memorably blissful change in style for him.

The rest of the cast is uniformly great (including Kate Hudson's model and influencer with a penchant for racist tweets, Dave Bautista men's rights YouTuber, and a surprisingly nuanced Madelyn Cline as his sexed-up girlfriend Whiskey), although I personally felt that Leslie Odom Jr.'s tortured scientist and Kathryn Hahn's shady governor up for a senate election were underused despite being arguably the most dynamic actors of the ensemble. It's nice to see the actors play into or against type intentionally, and I wondered more than once how much of that was intentional to this movie in particular, to tie in with the symbolic ambiguity of its titular structure.

The plot, characters, performances, and themes are all pretty clear, but the layers get more interesting and intricate as they are peeled back. That's the brilliance of Johnson's creation in this series; it's like what Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson did with the Scream franchise in honoring the genre traditions while flipping them on their heads in intelligent and daring ways. Other recent satires like The Menu aren't dissimilar in targeting hot topics with complex, half-joking wit. And Glass Onion takes everything we loved about Knives Out and gives us more of it all, which makes it one of the best movies of the year and a joyous addition to what we can all hope will be a thriving new Netflix series.

Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

James Cameron may be a lot of things, but his films do push the limits of state-of-the-art technology, and as such we might consider him visionary. He always gives us something new, something radical, and something eye-popping. His latest, the long-awaited sequel to Avatar in 2009, is a bit unusual in that here he's revisiting a lot of familiar territory. Not only in terms of the previous film in this soon-to-be series, but knowing viewers will also see material from Aliens, The Abyss, The Terminator, and yes, Titanic. One wonders if he is revisiting these themes and even some visual moments because of updates in technology that allows him to do things differently, or if his plans to expand the world of Pandora over several upcoming films means he doesn't plan to leave this fantasy world, and so he means to stake his claim there just as he has in our world. Regardless, The Way of Water isn't quite original, fresh, or interesting; it is, however, beautiful to behold and a mostly exciting advancement of his burgeoning franchise.

Our re-introduction to Pandora is more than a little messy, and we're reminded instantly that Cameron is a visual master, not a master storyteller. Not only is his dialogue woefully underwritten -- the first Avatar had better dialogue than this by far -- but his narratives are annoyingly derivative of other epics. But we jump in nevertheless! Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is now fully Na'vi, leading the Omaticaya alongside his partner Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), with whom he has started a large family. They have adopted a daughter named Kiri, who is the unexplained Na'vi offspring of Sigourney Weaver's character from the first film (and also voiced, quite comically, by Weaver doing her best adolescent impression); they also have two sons Neteyam and Lo'ak who are training to be warriors and a young daughter named Tuk. They also harbor and care for a human boy named Spider, who was the child of Miles Quaritch, the villain of the first film, who is growing up as a sort of Tarzan-like young man among the natives.

Twelve years have passed since the first film, and finally the "sky people" (humans attempting to colonize Pandora as Earth dies) return in force, under command of a new leader (Edie Falco in a terribly underwritten part). This time, they mean to establish a permanent new home rather than simply harvest resources, and Jake leads the Omaticaya in full-on war against them. So the humans unleash a new weapon: "recombinants," essentially cloned human minds in Na'vi avatar bodies. Their chief is, naturally, Quaritch himself, whose dismay at being reincarnated as a blue-skinned alien quickly changes to elation as he can freely navigate Pandora's climate and enjoy his new, unparalleled organic strength. While the motives of these villains, as in the first film, are pretty black-and-white, thankfully this time Quaritch's character has a bit of intrigue when he discovers the existence of his son Spider and captures him. Can he convince Spider to sympathize, even work with him to undermine Jake Sully? It's a bit Ahab-like in terms of megalomaniac obsession with his prey, but it makes for compelling blockbuster fare.

Jake and his family, to save the Omaticaya from annihilation (again) flee to another clan located in a massive archipelago in Pandora's oceans. This is where Cameron is most happy to work, and so the bulk of this film consists of extensive worldbuilding among the seafaring Metkayina people. Jake's ethics primarily concern "fight or flight" for his family's sake, and his family certainly has trouble fitting in with the paler, slightly greener new clan. They have webbed digits and finlike appendages and can hold their breath for a long damn time. Their leader Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his pregnant wife Ronal (Kate Winslet) are worried about the Sully family presence but choose to harbor them even as Quaritch and the humans approach. Cameron spends a lot of time exploring and glorifying the marine world, going so far as to include lengthy whale-chasing sequences as humans hunt the Tulkun (sentient and pacifist cetaceans who are like extended family to the Metkayina) that feel ripped from the pages of Moby-Dick. 

These sequences, among many others, are so visually stunning and realistic that it's hard to remember it's not real. How the hell do images like these come out of a computer, even if hundreds of hands worked on every pixel? It's like what Peter Jackson did in The Hobbit trilogy in terms of sheer majestic CGI. It helps that, unlike the narrative simplicity of the first film, here Cameron weaves together multiple plotlines with the various family members so we get faster, more expansive insights into Pandora and its Na'vi cultures. The downside of this is a certain frenetic energy that doesn't allow us to simply dwell with a singular, powerful story. We're constantly swept to and fro between bits of stories that don't always inform each other or coalesce into a coherent narrative structure, especially when the adolescent characters start making annoyingly stupid choices (and their constant refrains of "bro" and "cuz" do nothing but remind me of the screenplay's woeful shortcomings). I imagine a lot of these threads are intended to be fleshed out or redeemed in future franchise entries, but so far they make the whole affair of this film a bit, well, watered down.

I personally love that these movies are so popular, even if I wouldn't claim them as personal favorites. I love that mass international audiences are getting state-of-the-art science fiction almost solely about the importance of environmentalism and the horrors of colonization. I don't love that he seems to be appropriating elements of various real-life Indigenous cultures, but I suspect that future films in the series -- if they continue the trend -- will mellow that out as we learn about still more clans on Pandora, hopefully ones less directly inspired by real-world cultures deeply scarred by our own historical colonization patterns.

Babylon (2022)

Score: 3 / 5

Babylon is a wild ride. Damien Chazelle's latest is also his largest, a massive and immersive cinematic experience of excess. In every way that La La Land was a sentimental look at making it big in Hollywood, this is the dark, wicked underbelly of that dream. It all looks glamorous and fun, especially from the outside, but this film delves deep into how much work and sacrifice "the biz" can be, especially for those whose broken dreams and desperation lead them to increasingly dangerous new paths.

The film immediately introduces us to Manny Torres (Diego Calva in a star-making performance), a Mexican immigrant in Los Angeles trying to deliver an elephant to a party. It shits all over one of the delivery drivers, and we see everything. It's this unabashed "fuck you" Chazelle gives us right away to set the tone of Babylon, a movie that pulls no punches with its nasty, icky, and bizarre depictions of all things taboo. By the time he gets to the party -- at a Kinescope Studios executive's mansion -- he sees it in all its Gatsby-like flair, in which an elephant is hardly the most gobsmacking element. It's a full-on bacchanal, dripping with drugs and booze, blasted with loud jazz, with the main ball room serving as a an orgy. Again, we see pretty much everything, as Chazelle pulls us though the middle of the party in long takes with a swiveling camera (thanks to cinematographer Linus Sandgren for some truly unforgettable visuals). It's Chazelle's Caligula, and time will only tell if this will be remembered as infamously. I suspect it will.

I could spend paragraphs talking about various aspects of this film. Its stellar cast -- including Jovan Adepo as a jazz trumpeter, Li Jun Li as a queer cabaret singer, and especially Jean Smart as a gossip journalist -- with no few notable cameos are a lot of fun. Apart from Calva, Margot Robbie leads with her usual panache as an aspiring actress and Brad Pitt shines with an almost too-personal level of gravitas as an actor on the way out. I would have liked to see more of his story, as it was just about the only thing that grounds this movie emotionally. What plot exists in this three-hour escapade hinges on the end of the silent film era, as "talkies" began making big waves; but this is hardly The Artist or Singin' in the Rain. And so, even though Tobey Maguire's shocking and uncomfortable extended cameo near film's end is well worth the wait, there is just too much muchness to discuss in this film. So that's really what I want to talk about.

(Vis-à-vis the cast, I do want to praise composer Justin Hurwitz's score for isolating recurring themes for each character that really help connect things thematically and emotionally through this odyssey of chaos.)

Babylon, if it weren't orchestrated on such an immense budget and with such big names attached, should be considered something like an experimental film. Chazelle, who also wrote it, has crafted a series of vignettes with few through-lines to connect them other than a general aesthetic of chaos and excess. Each is almost standalone in its incisive assault on our senses and on various specific aspects of the industry. Perhaps nowhere is this more obvious than a magnificent sequence probably an hour or so into the film in which Robbie, Pitt, and everyone else amasses in a desert field owned by Kinescope to shoot several movies at once. The insane reality of a live shoot on location is hammered home by the frenetic editing, bombastic score, lurid colorscape, and fevered performances; by the end, we feel as exhausted as everyone on set must feel. Its effect? To show us a Hollywood film -- with all its glamor -- that ultimately makes us feel sick; this is not the usual inspirational "dream it, be it" a-star-is-born movie.

In fact, I'd argue it often deliberately tries to ruin our opinion of itself by drawing special attention to bodily functions and fluids. Much like the elephant shit that opens the film, the film treats us to plentiful vomit, urine, blood, venom, etc., to the point that by its end -- paired as these elements are with grotesque imagery, vicious language, and bonkers new ideas -- I felt thoroughly drained and crushed by the sheer weight of manipulations thrown at me. And that's surely by design, as it is no doubt similar to how many of the characters (and real-life Hollywood workers of the time) felt about major studio climates, working conditions, and the impending threat of new media to displace their craft. Even on a purely verbal level, the film all but drowns us with actual historical detail and wacky urban legends to the point that the whole thing just zings with ambivalent energy. Not unlike Tarantino's Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, you're never exactly sure if things should be funny or cringey, and who exactly the butt of each joke is meant to be.

And that's why the film, ambitious and huge and memorable as it is, doesn't really work for me. I'm all for a story about collapsed dreams and personal compromises against the glitz of pre-Golden-Age Hollywood, but we've had these before. One with so many tendencies toward a real narrative that doesn't actually follow through on that narrative can't maintain my attentions for such a long runtime, not even with spectacle coming out the wazoo. It doesn't help that the final act of this film desperately injects the experience with contrived urgency and moralistic lessons; it's all about the dangers of doing drugs in the industry and how deeply in trouble you can get if you're not careful. Really? One wonders if some producers needed Chazelle to end on a less hedonistic or debauched note, and it rings false not only for his project as a whole but for him as an artist. Otherwise, the idealistic mantra at film's end -- "wasn't it all worth it?" they ask -- lands flat. Which it kind of does anyway. Out the wazoo, indeed.

The Whale (2022)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Charlie is in trouble. He's alone in a small Idaho apartment he can't leave. He teaches writing to online college kids from his laptop with the camera off, telling them it's broken. He binges on pizza and fried chicken and sweets, mostly delivered to his door by a faceless driver named Dan who he never sees. He hasn't been outside in years. Charlie has a complex life, one that we learn about over the next two hours, but the gist is this: a decade prior, he left his wife (and mother of their daughter) for a young male lover named Alan, who committed suicide due to religious guilt over his sexuality. Since then, Charlie's depression has led to binge eating and sloth to the point that he now weighs over 600 pounds. He's almost immobile, more or less glued to his sofa, and as of the start of this film, is in the throes of congestive heart failure. The film takes place over the course of one fateful week in his life.

He's got a few visitors, who mobilize the plot. There's a young man named Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a hopeful missionary determined to save the grotesque recluse; his church is the same one Alan belonged to. There's his friend and caregiver Liz (Hong Chau), a nurse who was also Alan's sister, who chastises Charlie for his self-destructive behavior while offering him whatever comfort she can. And then there's Ellie (Sadie Sink), a bitter and wicked young woman who is in fact Charlie's estranged daughter, who shows up because Charlie offers her money to spend time with him. He loves her unconditionally, and her indifference is only slightly mitigated by her desire for money. You see, when Charlie left his wife Mary (Samantha Morton), she took full custody of Ellie and forbade all contact. Oh yes, and Mary shows up in perhaps the film's most emotionally fraught confrontation.

For indeed, Samuel D. Hunter's screenplay (adapted from his own stage play) is essentially a series of confrontations. We learn incredible depth to these characters, and all revolve in and out with horrific new insights. Sometimes appallingly funny, other times devastatingly sad, their revelations finally help us better understand the mystery that is The Whale's titular protagonist. Charlie is, especially in Brendan Fraser's magnificent performance, the most unnervingly empathetic and optimistic person. He genuinely (and repeatedly) believes that people are really, truly good at heart and just want to connect honestly with each other. He wants to help the missionary divorce himself from the trappings of his church and just live faithfully; he wants Mary to stop drinking and forgive him (or herself); he wants Ellie to express her angst in healthier ways; he wants Liz to be free and live her best life on her own terms. The trouble is that Charlie is incapable of any of these things for himself: he's not being fully honest with anyone, he's not making any healthy choices whatsoever, and he is so addicted to self-pity and sorrow that he can't even imagine himself escaping his self-imposed doom.

And the ironies and cognitive dissonance only get worse, just as his intelligence, humor, and loving personality become more clear. He consistently tells the abominable Ellie she's an amazing person -- and she wrote, according to him, the best essay he's ever read -- but then, as she asks him, why doesn't he care enough about living to be around for her now? Why can't he heed his nurse and make healthy choices, if he so desperately wants to see Ellie shine? That's only one example, but each successive confrontation reveals more of these complexities.

A quick note on what has become the dominant discourse around this film: makeup, wigs, costumes, padded suits, and CGI are all tools used by filmmakers and actors to embody and portray characters. Always have been, always will be. Yes, it's good to talk about representation and be mindful and sensitive. But that doesn't precede or preclude the art from happening, and it shouldn't. So don't watch this film if you don't want to, but don't decry it for doing exactly what all performance art has done throughout history. Especially if you don't know what the film is doing with it.

Director Darren Aronofsky, one of my favorite directors, manages to do amazing work in this film with his actors (especially Hong Chau), with the production design (the whole film, with few minor exceptions, takes place in Charlie's apartment, but it never feels too staged or boring), and with his cinematographer Matthew Libatique. It's difficult to watch, both in terms of source material and thematic elements; Aronofsky tends to love psychological trauma in his films, and is used to generating an atmosphere of excess. I wouldn't have thought this was material appropriate for his aesthetic, but now describing it, I see it's exactly right for him. And, with the screenplay's use of Moby-Dick as something between allegory and allusion, it's just about perfect for me.

I Wanna Dance with Somebody (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Musical biopics are tough. Do you let an actor do their own version of the star's music, or do you have them imitate as best as possible? Do you play the original artist's music and ask the new actor to lip-sync? These are critical decisions to make early in the production process, no doubt mired in legal issues of who has the rights and how much they cost, and as such each musical biopic is wildly different in scope, intention, and effect. Rami Malek, for example, was a great Freddie Mercury, but one wonders how the film would have been different if someone else played him while singing his music. Conversely, when Sissy Spacek played Loretta Lynn and sang all her music, I personally appreciated the performance more. So what the heck are you going to do in a film about someone with such an iconic voice and impossible talent as Whitney Houston?

You hire Naomi Ackie to play her. While it would have been nice to see someone like Cynthia Erivo sing all the hit Whitney songs, it probably wouldn't have felt like an honest biopic; it's just too different a voice and body type. So in almost every musical number, Ackie lip-syncs; she does this extraordinarily well, to the point that I wasn't always sure it's Whitney's voice we hear. But the sound editors pull a lot of surprises out for us, namely in the way her vocals are not the familiar ones from her records. I don't know how they did it, but they either found alternate recordings or mixed them to sound unique, and the effect was a constant element of doubt as to exactly whose voice we really hear. It's dazzling.

Ackie -- relatively unknown to me, apart from her brief role in Star Wars 9 -- here does the work of a newborn star, much like Whitney herself did in those early years. She knows she's a star, and it's time the world sees it. Early in the film, Whitney sings in church and as a backup singer for her professional mother Cissy until one day when a major record producer (Stanley Tucci) arrives in the nightclub. Cissy fakes an illness so Whitney can shine, and as she sings "The Greatest Love of All" we are treated to the sight of a producer immediately recognizing the talent of a goddess. It's a lovely scene, buttressed by the film's depiction of Whitney engaging in an early lesbian relationship with Robyn Crawford (Nafessa Williams). That's the kind of representation and emotional honesty a filmmaker like Kasi Lemmons brings to her films, and it's so refreshing to see.

Unfortunately, as it seems all biopics of music superstars do, things go awry, and it's not too long before the fame and pressures build too high. For multiple reasons, her relationship with Crawford suffers as her hits climb the charts, and soon enough she becomes addicted to drugs. Choosing her image and career over living authentically -- the evils of fame are suggested more than explored in this particular story -- she chooses to romantically engage with Bobby Brown. A lot of the second half of this film feels more motivated by the need to hop and skip through critical moments of Whitney's life rather than let the story organically follow any emotional or spiritual beats. More than once, I wished the film might have dramatized more of her early years, or up through her early fame, rather than try to encompass her whole life. By about the time of her singing the national anthem, I was wondering where exactly the film would climax; the Superbowl would have been a nice ending point (had the earlier scenes been more fleshed out), and many other points would have been satisfying.

Instead the film continues its skipping and jumping to the inevitable end of Whitney's life. It's hard to watch her story through a vibrant and life-affirming lens while knowing her story through the lens of public scrutiny, as we know that her voice and style and personhood were so diminished by what was happening to her. The business part of show business is, of course, where the problems originate. Lemmons and Ackie do their best with an otherwise unfocused and desperate screenplay (by Anthony McCarten who also wrote Bohemian Rhapsody); Barry Ackroyd's (The Hurt Locker, United 93, Bombshell, Detroit, Coriolanus) cinematography was a bit garish in light and color saturation, and often felt bizarrely split between shaky personal images and concert-style wide shots. I would have liked more of a personal take on Whitney's story, more of the woman-behind-the-tabloids perspective with didactic meditations on queer Black female fame in the '80s. Because that's what's so life-affirming and fascinating about the real woman, and we're still left to speculate on most of it.

The Fabelmans (2022)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Leave it to Spielberg to make me eat my words. Overtly sentimental coming-of-age films are just not part of my areas of interest, and it tends to be the domain of prominent auteurs. Think everything from Spike Lee's Crooklyn to Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale to Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (although I do quite like that one). Then there's Alfonso Cuaron's much-praised Roma and even this year's Armageddon Time from James Gray. Sometimes I like the film, but rarely enough for a rewatch; notable exceptions include Richard Linklater's Boyhood and Kenneth Branagh's Belfast, though those I like primarily for aesthetic reasons, not because of the story. These movies tend to feel like we're being forced to watch the director thumb through old family photo albums, and it's just not entertaining or interesting to me.

To be sure, The Fabelmans is meant to be understood as an autobiography of sorts for its director. The family in question is middle-class, Jewish, and very close; they move around a bit during the 1950s from New Jersey to California. We see the family -- and the world -- primarily through the eyes of their son, Sammy, who in the opening sequence is taken by his parents Mitzi and Burt (Michelle Williams and Paul Dano) to see his first film. Awed and inspired by it (DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth), he asks for a model train set for Hanukkah that year, which he then crashes and films using an 8mm camera. Mitzi recognizes his talent and eye immediately; Sammy might be a prodigy, and so she encourages his artistic experiments and helps him get the tools he needs to continue learning. Thus begins a lifetime pursuit of capturing awesome images and arresting stories on film.

While the main plot centers on Sammy's youth and adolescence, navigating new schools and anti-Semitic bullies while attempting to make movies, a parallel plot primarily concerns Mitzi and Burt. Mitzi was once a concert pianist who became a housewife and mother; Burt is a scientist and engineer who is really very good at his job. They are both lovely people -- and performed beautifully -- and they reinforce themes of the relationship between talent and purpose and of the cost of squandered talent. Burt's best friend Benny (Seth Rogen) is basically a third part of their marriage, as he injects the sense of fun and excitement into the family's domestic life that Burt -- who is admittedly boring, as a fundamental character trait -- cannot. Benny helps as he can, but naturally his presence becomes deeply complicated for the increasingly unhappy Mitzi and Burt. We're left to wonder exactly how far the passion between Mitzi and Benny goes, but her ultimate denial of it to Sammy is believable. Sammy of course has caught on, cursed/blessed as he is to witness everything via film.

The family aspect of the film is crucial (just look at the title), but it also reeks of unsentimental memory, which makes it feel cloyingly sentimental to me. On the other hand, I was glad to have some diversion from the Boy Wonder, whose antics are delightful until they're tiring. Spielberg brilliantly imbues moments with Sammy -- usually montages of his group of friends shooting new scenes of various projects -- with moments that surely shaped his own artistic and personal growth, as he learns (or demonstrates) that film isn't just about cool stunts and unique visuals. He can manipulate strangers into being friends or win over a girlfriend, he can memorialize a parent or shame an enemy, he can shield himself from pain and lie or tell the truth in varying degrees. One early interaction he has with his Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch), who used to be a circus performer, makes it clear to him that he cannot waste his talents, even though it may mean sacrificing time and energy with his family.

And that's ultimately the point of the film, beyond any fictionalized autobiography: each of us must determine what happiness is for us, and then seek it out without hurting the people we love. It helps that Spielberg's playfulness is on full display here -- perhaps most obviously in the early sections with a very young Sammy and then again in the final shot of the film -- because, typical for him, even the "silly" or fun moments contain nuggets of raw, resonant power. He's a genius at the top of his game, and while The Fabelmans isn't going to be a regular repeat viewing experience for me, it is certainly one of the best movies about moviemaking ever made.

Devotion (2022)

Score: 3 / 5

For the most part, Devotion is as average war film, and you largely get what you expect. It helps that it's a true story and that the "war" aspect is mostly in the background. It also helps that, for those of us who aren't fans of the Top Gun movies, this one graced us in a year otherwise largely bereft of typical war films. Crucially, and the only reason I really had much interest, it focuses its heart and story on civil rights: namely, the biographical account of Jesse Brown, the Korean War hero and pioneering Black naval pilot. The film doesn't try to make him a conventional activist or disruptor, and as such the film smartly skirts a lot of the rote rhythms and trappings of anti-racist flicks (specifically those involving war or sports). Which is to say, he's not a "magic Negro" or really even Othered in any concrete way, nor is the point of the film to "convert" his white counterparts into viewing Brown as a real person instead of a stereotype. As such, the white folks in this movie aren't the heroes by film's end.

It starts with Tom Hudner (Glen Powell, also a producer here) arriving at the Navy base in Pensacola in roughly 1950. He immediately meets Brown (Jonathan Majors), who is quiet and serious in his work, and they don't seem a likely pair at all, with Hudner's confident but naive suavity. Hudner seems like the former football star whose best days were in senior year, but he's pulled in by Brown's gravity. We see Brown's vitriolic but contained self-hatred in burning moments early on, in which he mumbles racist and misanthropic slurs at himself in the mirror. We don't see any of the racist violence enacted on him earlier in his career, thankfully, but it's clear he's not had it easy as one of the first Black men in this job. Majors masterfully contorts his face and carries heavy weight between his shoulders, sharing plenty of the torments and hardships he has endured. Their burgeoning allyship is in no way forced, and it takes most of the first half of the film to even get them to enjoy each other's company; it's endlessly believable, and it is so deliberately paced that it helps the film breathe, which so few in this vein do.

As the two grow together, the screenplay brilliantly avoids simplifying Brown's lived experience and even allows his character to grow; so often in these anti-racist flicks, the Black character's perspective is both stoic and stalwart, making the character strong and memorable but also inert and hardly human (or, I suppose, such stories hinge on the Black characters also humbling themselves along with the white characters to come to some sentimental appreciation for each other). Perhaps most meaningfully, this is clear when Brown eventually invites Hudner to his home to meet his wife and daughter, where Brown's entire physicality changes as he's free from the pressures and expectations and criticisms of both military atmosphere and civilian society.

The film's middle almost made me check out, as the constant flight drills became a bit repetitive and highly technical. There were multiple scenes when I almost wondered aloud in the cinema if anyone really knew what the pilots were talking about. And then there are the airborne dogfights, which I care about as much as I do car chases, but director J.D. Dillard and his team (including cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt of Mank and Mindhunter) make the experience wonderfully immersive in terms of fierce editing, teeth-rattling sounds, and beautiful visuals. At least these sequences mostly have purpose and aren't just flights for the sake of spectacle.

It's a really long film, and by the time of the ending, I wished two hours hadn't already gone by because it is otherwise really affecting. There's a lot to be said for the freedom Brown experienced through Majors's performance at home and in the sky; it makes his efforts, and really mostly his alone, heroic because he's at once a living rebellion and a quiet, unassuming cog in the machine. He knows what to do, and he does it to the best of his ability, which makes him a perfect soldier. And the film itself doesn't collapse under the weight of racial tension nor does it bend to stereotypical Hollywood tropes in similar stories. Let's hope this movie helps set the course for future war movies about real heroes and real issues facing them.

Spirited (2022)

Score: 4.5 / 5

I wasn't ready for this one. Attempts at new holiday classics are tiring if nothing else, especially new adaptations of Dickens's most famous work. And frankly, if you know me at all you know I just don't like Will Ferrell or his comedy. So to have all the above in one, and to make it a direct-to-streaming feature on Apple TV, was not a recipe for piquing my interest. But as fate would have it, and as winter break was settling in, Spirited materialized on our screen at home and took us by storm.

Wholly original because it riffs on so many other Christmas classics, this film takes its inspiration from the idea that an entire industry exists among spirits to save a new soul every Christmas. Think Monsters, Inc. meets The Santa Clause. Basically, every year, Jacob Marley (Patrick Page of Hadestown on Broadway) and his team of spirits researches, locates, and identifies one jerk or miser to be un-Scrooged, so to speak. They think they've found the guy -- a hotel manager -- until the Ghost of Christmas Present (Will Ferrell) comes across the guest speaker at the hotel. It's Clint Briggs (Ryan Reynolds), a social media manipulator who consults other companies on branding in an aggressive manner. He's amoral to the point that he even counsels his niece Wren to engage in some bullying online to win a school election. His assistant Kimberly (Octavia Spencer) doesn't approve of his antics, but it's a good job and there's always the hope she can help for good, right? It's interesting that the film chooses him because it's almost like the writers are more interested in the banality of evil, or perhaps reframing that in a 21st Century context; Clint isn't wholly unlikable, he's just meta-aware of his place in a dog-eat-dog world.

All this happens a few songs in, so you can start to get the idea of the pacing here. It's a lengthy movie, chock-full of music and big numbers. Oh, did I mention this is a musical? With the genius of Pasek and Paul behind the songs, it's the kind of sudden hit that made The Greatest Showman a lasting classic. Energetic and peppy, it also hits those upbeat but heavy emotional ballads that soar directly from the screen and into your heart. Of course, the best in that vein is given firmly to Spencer in "The View from Here," but really everyone gets their chance to shine. Which is saying a lot for musically bereft performers like Ferrell.

Then again -- and this is what took me by complete surprise -- Ferrell is very much the heart of this movie, and the plot largely turns on his own "conversion" experience of sorts. As he spends so much time in the world of the living, he starts wishing to become human again, and it's just damned cute. Thankfully, he delivers a much more grounded and reserved character than usual, which may not sound like much, but it's actually nice to see from him. He and Reynolds, who delivers pretty much exactly what we expect, make a pretty good team, and their repartee and burgeoning buddy-ship is as annoying as it is heartwarming. They shine in a rousing number, "Good Afternoon," which will surely become a signature favorite; the song title is the Dickensian phrase, they tell us, for "F--- off." And you will absolutely cackle at its audacity and good-natured irreverence. 

All this against a fabulously colorful (if not always inventive) and kinetic backdrop of capital-B Broadway style flair. Each performer seems to approach the production with an almost vaudevillian enthusiasm, which especially helps in the enormous chorus numbers. The production design occasionally feels like old-school filmed musicals with bare sets and an over-emphasis on dramatic lighting, but I don't hate that; it does feel a bit lackluster at times, and the apparently reliance on green-screen backgrounds is disappointing, but the excellent choreography and stirring music help tide us over. By about two-thirds of the way through I personally began to feel some exhaustion, and I'm still not sure this movie needed to be over two hours long. But the whole thing just feels so good, it's hard to take a miserly attitude toward it.