The Odyssey review: The Call Is Coming from Inside the Horse

Jeremy BeckReviews
Matt Damon in The Odyssey

Nobody else could have done this. I’m not suggesting that no other contemporary filmmaker could have adapted The Odyssey, which seems to get remade in some fashion every few years, officially or otherwise. But only Christopher Nolan possesses the requisite combination of vision and hubris to remold Homer’s classic poem into a movie so tailored to his thematic, aesthetic, and moral concerns. For a quarter-century, Nolan has built a distinctive brand of scrambled timelines, breathtaking innovation, and cornball romanticism; he’s cultivated his own mythology. Now he has the chutzpah to bring his singular artistry to bear on the granddaddy of all myths.

The results of his herculean labor (sorry) are both expected and surprising. In terms of scale, The Odyssey is a monumental achievement—a huge, exhilarating work of relentless energy and unimpeachable technique. Such an accomplishment shouldn’t be taken for granted, but it was virtually axiomatic the instant the projected was announced. What proves more striking is the movie’s gritty humanity. It’s an epic yarn of pillaging and seafaring, of gods and monsters, but its grandeur is engraved with punchy writing and credible emotions. Read More

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Comedy Clang Bang: Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass; The Invite

Jeremy BeckReviews
Zoey Deutch in Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass; Olivia Wilde in The Invite

An aphorism claims that, while dying is easy, comedy is hard. Writing about the genre is no less difficult. I’m not just talking about the peril of ruining jokes by explaining them. I’m also bemoaning the challenge of translating physical reactions—giggles, winces, hoots and howls—into descriptive assessments. The purest analysis of comedy is also the most tautological: The reason it was funny is that it made me laugh.

With the possible exception of horror (hello Obsession!), comedy is the format that most benefits from theatrical exhibition. Even as their quantity has dwindled (often migrating to Netflix), jokefests benefit from collective appreciation—the cascades of laughter that ripple through the audience. We may be sitting alone, but we watch them together. Read More

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Supergirl review: Flaring at the Sun

Jeremy BeckReviews
Milly Alcock and Matthias Schoenaerts in Supergirl

It takes all of 15 seconds for Supergirl, the latest comic-book jaunt in the reimagined DC Universe (not to be confused with the DC Extended Universe—that’s deader than Ezra Miller’s career), to announce its tonal intentions. As the guitars of a Sleigh Bells song churn on the soundtrack, a white dog with floppy ears careens through a ramshackle interior, settles atop a newspaper whose headline proclaims the exploits of Superman, and urinates all over the front page. The message is plain: The Man of Steel’s cousin is too hip, too fun, to be fettered by wholesomeness or optimism.

At least, that’s the idea. But while Supergirl, which was directed by Craig Gillespie from a script by Ana Nogueira, operates with a sheen of irreverence—the pop-punk needle drops, the eye-rolling insouciance, the slow-motion beatdowns—it isn’t truly rebellious. After all, it’s a cautiously designed would-be blockbuster, the second venture in producer James Gunn’s ongoing refurbishment of prized intellectual property, following the smash hit that was Superman (which Gunn wrote and directed himself). This means that, as much as Supergirl presents itself as arch and quippy, it must also fulfill the usual commercial imperatives: fitting into a carefully constructed mythology, supplying uplifting themes, and taking care not to actually offend anyone (well, aside from the misogynistic trolls who perceive the very existence of a female-centered superhero flick as an assault on their values). And this solemn, grudging duty places the movie squarely in conflict with its main character. Read More

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Toy Story 5 review: If It Makes You Happy, It Can’t Be That iPad

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jessie and Bullseye in Toy Story 5

The two main characters in Toy Story 5 are named Joy and Anxiety. Wait, sorry, that was Inside Out 2. But like most outputs from the Pixar animation factory, the Toy Story franchise has always mingled childlike delight with gnawing apprehension. Its titular playthings, be they cowboys or spacemen or dinosaurs, perpetually worry about their charge’s well-being, to say nothing of their own potential obsolescence. They’ve battled maniacal prospectors and tyrannical bears and possessive dummies, but none of that has prepared them for their most daunting challenge yet: an iPad.

Technically she’s a smart tablet. Her name is Lilypad, as befits her glossy green bezel, but despite her smooth finish and smoother voice (as provided by Greta Lee), she isn’t here to make friends—at least, not with toys. Lily is the property of eight-year-old Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), the kindhearted, soft-spoken girl whom we first met in Toy Story 3, when she became custodian of the action figures and stuffed animals who previously belonged to Andy. Those relics have plenty of experience assimilating new arrivals—the thrust of Toy Story 4 involved Woody (Tom Hanks) looking after the freshly assembled Forky (Tony Hale), a misshapen utensil who was less interested in playing with children than diving into trash—but Lily represents a different sort of threat to their established ecosystem. She may have the same prime directive (ensure Bonnie’s welfare), but whereas our existing toys are products of spit-and-glue physicality, Lily operates in the digital ether, using her online functionality and programming savvy to connect Bonnie with screen-wielding peers. What is the labor of a sandcastle or the complexity of a racetrack compared to the ease of a group chat? Read More

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Disclosure Day review: The Day the Earth Stood Thrilled

Jeremy BeckReviews
Emily Blunt in Disclosure Day

The possibility of intelligent life on other planets has long preoccupied countless dreamers, philosophers, and filmmakers—few more famous than Steven Spielberg. The director’s career is as versatile as it is vast, but every so often he has returned, like a pilot locked in an orbital loop, to the topic of extraterrestrials. Disclosure Day, his deeply enjoyable and sneakily provocative new movie, represents both another iteration of this process and a thoughtful update of it. It is plainly a work of science-fiction, featuring cosmic discoveries, dastardly villains, and earth-shaking developments. But it is also an urgent and thorny tract that fixates, quite profoundly, on the nature of the human race. For all its stargazing, it’s less about aliens than people.

Not that anyone would confuse Disclosure Day for a sterile think-piece. It is instead, in nuts and bolts, a chase picture. Daniel (Josh O’Connor), a programmer at a paramilitary security firm called Wardex, has smuggled a trove of classified materials out of the company’s Virginia archives, along with a handheld MacGuffin-y device that looks like a cross between the cryptex from The Da Vinci Code and the neuralyzer from Men in Black. Catching him if he can is Wardex’s CEO, Scanlon (Colin Firth), who acquires some leverage by kidnapping Daniel’s girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson, who worked with Spielberg in Bridge of Spies). In the movie’s tense opening sequence, Scanlon and his no-nonsense underlings hold the lovers at gunpoint, only for Daniel to threaten to activate the device and use its apparent danger to pull off a daring escape, at which point the hunt is on. Read More

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