Spider-Man: Brand New Day review: Parker? I Don’t Even Know Her!

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Holland in Spider-Man: Brand New Day

They say you can’t go home again, but Spider-Man sure did try. The subtitles of the superhero’s most recent big-screen trilogy—Homecoming, Far from Home, and No Way Home—all concerned his proximity to sanctuary, reflecting a longing to return to safe and familiar territory. But the franchise’s latest adventure, again starring Tom Holland as the Queens-based red-and-blue webslinger, is styled Brand New Day, a restorative title that promises novelty and opportunity. As you may remember (or not!), following a whole lot of magical hullabaloo, No Way Home culminated with the wizard Doctor Strange casting an obliviate-like spell, wiping the world’s collective memory of Spidey’s alter ego, Peter Parker, a sweet-natured boy with a big brain, a broad smile, and a slim bank account. This marked a significant sacrifice for Peter—most notably, he forfeited his cherished relationships with his girlfriend, MJ (Zendaya), and his best friend, Ned (Jacob Batalon)—but in storytelling terms, it created the tantalizing prospect of a cinematic reset button.

At its best, Brand New Day capitalizes on this artistic freedom, probing unexplored territory and tackling interesting themes. It’s a spry and appealing blockbuster with a sincere human center. But for all its liveliness and charm, it rarely feels genuinely new, instead repeatedly evoking prior, better Spider-Man movies. Read More

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Let’s Get Experimental: Her Private Hell and Motor City

Jeremy BeckReviews
Sophie Thatcher in Her Private Hell; Alan Ritchson in Motor City

Fifteen years ago, Nicolas Winding Refn improbably delighted audiences with Drive, a glittering, electronica-tinged jewel of a thriller about a wheelman mired in gangland savagery. Since then, the Danish provocateur has made three features, two TV shows, a handful of shorts, and few new fans. I haven’t seen all of Refn’s post-Drive output, but what I have watched—the films Only God Forgives and The Neon Demon, plus the Netflix miniseries Copenhagen Cowboy—suggests the work of a postmodern imp concocting some sort of experiment in anti-entertainment. With perverse pleasure, Refn assembles the raw materials of putatively interesting pictures—vivid colors, gorgeous actors, shocking violence—and then scrambles them into final products that are dreary and charmless. He seems to fancy himself the cinematic prince of darkness, but his movies are less devilish than simply dull.

Her Private Hell, Refn’s latest piece of feature-length trolling, isn’t without its surface diversions. As befits the studio that distributed it, it supplies a good deal of neon—bright bursts of pink and blue slashing through its literal and metaphoric fog. The production design is, if not exactly legible, at least striking, with jagged plinths and infinite spires. The costumes are eye-catching, in particular a seductive red leather coat that seems intended to inspire fetishism. The movie might be appealing if it weren’t so insufferable. Read More

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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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