Queer: Another Gay in Paradise

Jeremy BeckReviews
Daniel Craig in Queer

Luca Guadagnino makes movies about lust. William S. Burroughs wrote books about pain. The obvious overlap between those two emotions might suggest a fruitful creative partnership—a provocative picture that marries the writer’s jagged prose with the director’s sensual style. Alas, Queer, Guadagnino’s adaptation of Burroughs’ second novel, is both obtuse and banal, defying comprehension while also courting boredom. It may traffic in addiction, but it isn’t stimulating. It just plunges you into a stupor.

Which might be the whole idea. Being poorly read, I’m only familiar with Burroughs’ work via reputation rather than experience, but I know that he deployed an experimental style designed to mirror his own challenges with substance abuse. To the extent Queer is intended to evoke the perpetual desolation of the junkie, well, mission accomplished I guess? The movie dabbles in purported forms of intrigue—sex, violence, blackmail, journeys in the jungle—but it’s mostly just one long bummer, a sludgy morass of misery. Read More

Read more

Y2K: Millennium Ugh

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jaeden Martell, Rachel Zegler, and Julian Dennison in Y2K

Being unpopular in high school can feel like the end of the world. Your parents are embarrassing. Your best friend is a loser. The cool kids either bully you or ignore you. The girl you have a crush on barely knows you exist. And sentient computers have hatched a conspiracy to enslave the human race.

That the last of these items feels concordant with its predecessors is the central joke of Y2K, Kyle Mooney’s occasionally inspired, ultimately tedious new horror comedy. For Eli (Jaeden Martell, one of those anodyne actors who seems destined to play teenagers into his 30s), every day feels like its own miniature apocalypse—a perpetual ritual of awkwardness and humiliation. That’s an exaggeration, of course; his parents (Alicia Silverstone and Tim Heidecker) are sweet and supportive (how mortifying!), and he has plenty of fun playing videogames and goofing around with his closest pal, Danny (a solid Julian Dennison). But Eli still feels anxious and unfulfilled, especially because Laura (Rachel Zegler), the hot brainiac whom he sweatily flirts with online, seems more interested in older, more muscular dudes. So when his humdrum Friday night turns into a chaotic free-for-all full of death and dismemberment, he’s more than ready to save the day and get the girl. Read More

Read more

Moana 2: Consider the Coconut, Consider It’s Twee

Jeremy BeckReviews
A scene of Moana and Maui in Moana 2

Bracing herself for yet another hazardous journey, Moana insists to a village elder that “It’s not like last time.” Isn’t it, though? In Moana 2, a princess abandons the security of her homeland and embarks on a high-seas escapade, where she teams up with a vainglorious demigod and battles an existential threat. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s basically the logline for Moana, Disney’s heartfelt and winning 2016 animated feature. Rather than messing with success, Moana 2 strives to recapture its predecessor’s magic by faithfully adhering to its venerable blueprint.

That it fails is no great shame or surprise; any topographic survey of the modern cinematic landscape will uncover countless inferior sequels. What’s strange about Moana 2 isn’t that it’s a lesser movie but that it’s a work of lesser ambition. Most sequels are doomed by the obligation to provide more, invariably diluting their ancestor’s charms in a frenzy of self-defeating one-upmanship. Moana 2, by contrast, doesn’t try to do much of anything bigger or different or even interesting. It just sets sail and allows itself to be borne on the waves of its forerunner. Read More

Read more

Wicked: Thank U, Hexed

Jeremy BeckReviews
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande-Butera in Wicked

At the risk of defying Julie Andrews, let’s start at the ending. Well, it’s really the middle, given that Wicked—Jon M. Chu’s big-screen adaptation of the hit play by Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz, which in turn was based on a novel by Gregory Maguire—has been split into two parts, with the second installment slated to arrive next November. (Lest unsuspecting viewers be startled by this division, the label “Part 1” appears beneath the opening title.) Anyway, shortly before this movie’s intermission conclusion, several of the characters survey architectural blueprints for a planned renovation of Oz, including a certain brick road of indeterminate color. “You don’t like yellow?” the engineer asks. He then magically toggles through a number of alternatives, the miniature boulevard shifting from blue to green to purple.

There’s a lot to process here. To begin with, the mastermind’s effortless manipulation of his punctilious model functions as an obvious metaphor for the role of film director—a visionary tasked with fabricating an environment and bending it to his artistic will. But my more pressing concern is the concept of color itself, and how Wicked dutifully traffics in pigmentation—there are a variety of shades and hues on display—without fully exploiting its power. Read More

Read more

Gladiator II: And the Rome of the Slave

Jeremy BeckReviews
Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal in Gladiator II

One of the more memorable lines of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator was its hero’s insistence that what we do in life echoes in eternity. Maybe not, but it definitely echoes in sequels. Gladiator II, Scott’s quarter-century-later follow-up to the Best Picture winner of 2000, takes great pains to (strength and) honor its predecessor—not just by recalling dialogue or by repeating themes (the screenplay is by David Scarpa), but by crafting a story that latches onto the original’s skeleton like a necromantic barnacle. The result is less a mighty statue than a wispy hologram, aiming to resemble its predecessor but struggling to acquire its weight or texture.

The concept of diminishing returns in Hollywood is hardly new, and besides, it seems unfair to ding Scott and Scarpa for modeling so faithfully off of their existing blueprint. After all, what is a sequel but a continuation? Still, in its early going, Gladiator II threatens to develop its own personality, hinting toward narrative independence, if not stylistic novelty. Sure, the first time we see Hanno (Paul Mescal), he’s tending crops on his farm, a symbol of classical masculinity that inevitably recalls Russell Crowe’s Maximus dreaming of golden fields of swaying wheat. But any thoughts of gladiatorial combat or imperial destiny are far from Hanno’s mind; a legionnaire living in the humble province of Numidia, his more pressing concern is the advancing Roman army, led by a brilliant and ruthless general named Acacius (Pedro Pascal). Read More

Read more