Jeremy Beck, Author at MovieManifesto

Jurassic World: Fleeing from the Past, All Over Again

June 18, 2015June 28, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews

Chris Pratt attempts to tame velociraptors in "Jurassic World"

A giant looms over the tourists of Jurassic World, a towering figure that casts a long, dark shadow. But it is not a dinosaur. It is, rather, the specter of Steven Spielberg and the lingering greatness of the original Jurassic Park. One score and two years ago, our forefather of blockbuster filmmaking brought forth into multiplexes a new species of movie, a thrilling adventure of CGI-assisted wonder. But as striking and terrifying as certain moments of Jurassic Park were—the sight of water rippling from a faraway impact, the reveal that a reassuring hand is attached to a severed arm, that iconic warning that “objects in mirror are closer than they appear”—what made it truly special was its intimacy. Spielberg makes movies about fantastical creatures and aliens with an inimitably human touch, and in Jurassic Park, he made us care about the people he was terrorizing, from Sam Neill’s wary paleontologist to Richard Attenborough’s hubristic businessman to (most memorably) Jeff Goldblum’s cynical mathematician. It is not hyperbole to suggest that every effects-laden studio production released since 1993 has measured itself, at least in part, against the staggering triumph of Jurassic Park.

Jurassic World, the fourth and not-at-all-bad installment in the dino franchise, never entirely evades the yawning shadow cast by its primogenitor. But this is less a failure of imagination than a consequence of evolution. The world has changed. We now demand increasingly bigger amazements from our summer blockbusters, to the point where it’s difficult to cram emotional texture or narrative depth into a product already bulging with action and spectacle. Or, as one character puts it: “No one’s impressed by a dinosaur anymore.” I beg to differ, and as evidence, I need look no further than Jurassic World. This movie, which was directed by Colin Trevorrow from a screenplay he wrote with three others, may lack certain filmmaking fundamentals—plotting, character development, halfway-decent dialogue—but it is damn impressive. Read More

Love & Mercy: Picking Up Vibrations, Good and Bad Alike

June 12, 2015June 28, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews

John Cusack stars as one half of Brian Wilson in "Love & Mercy"

Being a musical genius must be hard. You hear harmonies no one else can hear, you struggle to communicate your vision to your band mates and studio bosses, and if you’re fortunate enough to be able to actually produce revolutionary music, your innovative advances often go unnoticed until they’re discovered by later generations. But making a movie about such a genius—conveying those enigmatic bursts of internal, auditory inspiration through the visible, visual medium of cinema—is similarly perilous. Love & Mercy, Bill Pohlad’s strange and sensitive biopic of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, does not entirely conquer this challenge. Despite its whirring sound design and persistent effort, it never quite communicates the creative synapses firing within its protagonist’s big, drug-addled brain. But Love & Mercy is nevertheless a compelling portrait of artistic triumph and toil. It is also, more surprisingly, a touching romantic drama. It’s odd that a film about such an idiosyncratic man is at its best when it is at its most conventional.

That doesn’t stop Pohlad, working from a screenplay by Oren Moverman (director of The Messenger) and Michael Alan Lerner, from laboring strenuously to circumvent the customs of the genre. His most obvious and daring maneuver is to structure Love & Mercy as two separate mini-movies. In one, set in the mid-’60s, Wilson (Paul Dano) drifts from his brothers and colleagues while obsessing over the production of the Beach Boys’ seminal album, Pet Sounds. In the other, set some 20 years later, a mentally ill, overmedicated Wilson (now played by John Cusack, delivering his best performance in more than a decade) romances a Cadillac saleswoman, Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks, radiant), and wilts under the yoke of his domineering psychotherapist, Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti, bewigged and ferocious). Love & Mercy toggles back and forth between the two eras without any particular rhythm or formula. (Think The Godfather Part II, only, er, not quite as good.) It’s an engrossing approach that nonetheless fails to reap any real dividends; it’s fair to wonder how the film would have played in linear fashion, given that neither subplot clearly informs the other. Of course, that lack of causality between the two stories is arguably the point, which is why, in the abstract, Love & Mercy‘s jagged chronology makes sense. This is a fractured movie about a broken man. Read More

Tomorrowland: Glimpsing a Bright Future Through Clouded Eyes

June 5, 2015June 28, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews

Britt Robertson and George Clooney blast off in "Tomorrowland"

With its imaginary worlds and bighearted humanism, Tomorrowland is practically engineered for viewers like me, those who crave original stories about plucky heroes and who don’t mind a dollop of sap mixed in with the sensation of wide-eyed discovery. It’s a sweet, irresistibly charming movie that’s also dangerously flimsy; tug too firmly at its threadbare construction, and it threatens to collapse into a puddle of moralism and solipsism. But while Tomorrowland, the second live-action feature from Brad Bird (following the rousing success of Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol), may be thinly sketched and frustratingly lacking in follow-through—no apologist can excuse its cratering final act—it remains for the most part a fun and fanciful story of lively adventure. It also deftly uses its childlike enthusiasm as a shield to camouflage its deficiencies. Tomorrowland has plenty of problems, but it’s tough to stay mad at a movie that’s so disarmingly cheerful. Read More

Pitch Perfect 2: Straining to Hit Those High Notes Amid New Lows

May 28, 2015June 28, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews

Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson lead the way in "Pitch Perfect 2"

The dirty little secret of Pitch Perfect is that, as delightful and refreshing as it may have been, it wasn’t a good movie. (In this, it was essentially the musical equivalent of Love Actually.) Its characters were one-dimensional, its romance was insipid, and its story was inane. Yet isolated parts of the movie—the riff-off, the “Since You Been Gone” auditions, anything involving Rebel Wilson’s Fat Amy—were so transcendently joyful that it became a classic anyway, an irresistible send-up of the sports movie transplanted to the goofy arena of competitive a cappella. It may have been familiar, but thanks to its inspired staging and tap-your-foot singing, it also felt fresh. Now, Pitch Perfect 2 attempts to repeat the first film’s formula; almost axiomatically, it is only half-successful. The unaccompanied musical numbers once again range from robustly enjoyable to deliriously fun, but the element of novelty has vanished. It’s hard for your movie to feel fresh when all of your material is recycled.

Anna Kendrick again stars as Beca, the too-cool-for-school member of the Barden Bellas who has embraced her role as the group’s primary arranger, even as she’s also covertly pursuing her dream of becoming a music producer via an internship at a record studio. She’s still dating Jesse (Skylar Astin), and to the movie’s credit, it doesn’t manufacture any lame complications between the two lovebirds and instead just shunts Beca’s bland boyfriend to the sidelines. (Astin does get to show off his vocal chops in an early scene.) That makes room for a far more interesting romantic pairing: Fat Amy (Wilson remains the franchise’s strongest asset, which is saying something, given that Anna Kendrick is involved) and Bumper (Adam DeVine), the buffoonish villain of the original who is now both pathetic and strangely endearing. Their love story is extravagantly goofy and commensurately enjoyable; there’s a funny scene in which Bumper feebly attempts to court his intended via forced grownup talk (“So, there’s a war, and also, the economy.”), but it’s dwarfed by the sight of Fat Amy subsequently serenading him with Pat Benatar’s “We Belong” while standing in a rowboat. Read More

Mad Max: Fury Road: On the Dusty Road, with Revved-up Engines

May 22, 2015June 28, 2021 Jeremy BeckReviews

Tom Hardy stars in George Miller's explosive "Mad Max: Fury Road"

At various points in Mad Max: Fury Road—George Miller’s outlandish, unpretentious, frequently glorious action epic—an electric guitar suddenly reverberates on the soundtrack. It’s a playful sonic touch, but the musicality of the riff is beside the point; the real story is that the composer, Tom Holkenborg (credited here as Junkie XL), seems to be taking his cues from an actual character in the film, a red-clad, masked musician armed with the biggest double-neck six-string you’ve ever seen. Credited as Coma-Doof Warrior or the Doof Warrior (and played by the Australian instrumentalist iOTA), whenever he slashes his right arm across the strings, not only do bolts of noise blare on the soundtrack, but giant flames shoot out of the guitar’s headstock. And if that isn’t enough, the Doof Warrior spends his entire time riding on the roof of a massive 18-wheeler (the Doof Wagon, naturally) that’s barreling at top speed through the Australian Outback.

The Doof Warrior, the movie's grandest flourish

The Doof Warrior is the most memorable thing about Mad Max: Fury Road, but he is also the embodiment of its zany, carefree spirit. This is, after all, a movie that features a host of pursuing ATVs adorned with bristling spikes, resembling a motorized prickle of mutant porcupines. When bald, emaciated underlings aren’t sailing through the air on tall pieces of wood like demented pole-vaulters, they’re scrambling onto the hoods of speeding cars and spitting gasoline into open engines. Big rigs crash into one another, characters leap from vehicle to vehicle, and everything always seems to be on fire. (It’s hardly surprising that Verdi’s iconic “Requiem” figures prominently on the soundtrack.) Yet as crazed as Fury Road is, it is also lovingly intimate, the work of a director who cares deeply about his fictional dystopia. Miller may paint on an enormous, chaotic canvas, but he’s still an artist. Read More