Features

Original Screenplay Weekend! On Annette, Reminiscence, and the Night House

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Rebecca Hall in The Night House; Rebecca Ferguson and Hugh Jackman in Reminiscence; Adam Driver in Annette

Some original screenplays are more original than others. Last week, for example, I reviewed Disney’s Free Guy, a jumbled, weirdly fascinating action comedy that prides itself on not being based on any existing intellectual property, then spins an entire film from references to (and rip-offs of) other intellectual properties. I was happy to see Free Guy perform well (it’s now spawning a sequel, naturally), if only because I want studios to keep making original movies. As if by magic, this past weekend featured the release of three such pictures, a veritable bonanza of novel #content. (Technically there were four, but I failed to make time for Martin Campbell’s The Protégé.) None is a perfect film—in fact, all three have considerable problems—but my disappointment is tempered by my enthusiasm for their very existence. I didn’t love any of these movies, but I did love that I was able to watch them.

Of the trio, The Night House is the most conventional, which isn’t to say it’s typical. Directed by David Bruckner from a script by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, it’s a ruminative ghost story that’s less interested in freaking you out than pulling you in. Its heroine, a high school English teacher named Beth (a fantastic Rebecca Hall), isn’t just the frightened resident of a haunted house; she’s also a little bit scary herself. An early scene, in which she calmly shames a grade-grubbing parent into stunned silence, reveals her capacity for blunt anger, while a night out with colleagues quickly turns into an unhappy hour where busybodies tiptoe around a powder keg. Read More

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Pig, Gunpowder Milkshake, and the Instant Legacy of John Wick

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Karen Gillan in Gunpowder Milkshake; Nicolas Cage in Pig

John Wick is technically an original character, but the films featuring him aren’t really anything new. They’re just slickly repackaged creations that combine the archetypes of the classic Western—the retired warrior begrudgingly forced back into battle—with the balletic flair of John Woo’s gun-fu pictures. Still, their mythology is so wonderfully detailed, and Keanu Reeves’ central performance is so intensely charismatic, that the franchise has quickly morphed from pastiche into primary source. Now, when a genre exercise like Nobody hits theaters, it’s instantly billed as “Bob Odenkirk doing John Wick”.

Last week alone saw the release of two new movies that wear their Wick influences loudly: Gunpowder Milkshake, featuring Karen Gillan as an assassin on the run, and Pig, starring Nicolas Cage as a hermit who’s drawn back into a dangerous underworld. Neither is nearly as good as the best Wick flick (that remains Chapter Two, though Parabellum certainly has its moments), but they’re nonetheless interesting for how they both pay tribute to and differentiate themselves from the film that has suddenly become the standard-bearer for revenge cinema. Read More

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Ranking Every Movie of 2020 (sort of)

Jeremy BeckFeatures
Ellie Chu in The Half of It; Amarah-Jae St Aubyn in Lovers Rock; Emily Blunt in Wild Mountain Thyme; Rachel Brosnahan in I'm Your Woman; Carrie Coon in The Nest

The headline says it all. Every year, in addition to publishing our list of the best movies of the past 12 months, MovieManifesto unveils an exhausting ranking of every release of that year. Except the ranking isn’t really a ranking, because that invites widespread ridicule (or maybe just my own nightmares); instead, we separate everything into 10 distinct tiers. In addition, as part of our ongoing efforts to serve the public, we append certain data to each title: its director, its respective ratings on Rotten Tomatoes on Metacritic, and—most valuably—where it’s currently streaming. This is our gift to you. You’re welcome.

Obligatory disclaimer: The tiers aren’t infallible, if I re-ranked things a month from now they’d look considerably different, appreciation of art isn’t a fixed object but shifts over time, blah blah. The point is, don’t take these rankings too seriously; do use them as an opportunity to search for intriguing films from 2020 that you might have missed. Read More

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Does The Father Play Fair with Dementia?

Jeremy BeckFeatures
Anthony Hopkins in The Father

Movies lie. They lie not as a callous display of dishonesty, but as a matter of literal operation; deception is a necessary function of the medium. Actors pretend to play other people. Directors manipulate their environments. Set dressers and production designers falsify the scene just so. Special effects wizards show us things that don’t really exist. Every movie is a lie, even if the best ones search for the truth. It’s an art form based on artifice.

The Father, which is currently contending for six Oscars (including Best Picture), explores this inherent contradiction to peculiar and unnerving effect. It features an unreliable narrator, but instead of mining that trope for suspense, it wields it for the purpose of immersion. That’s because The Father, which was directed by Florian Zeller from a screenplay he wrote with Christopher Hampton (based on Zeller’s play), actively grapples with dementia in a way that’s especially unsettling. It uses familiar cinematic tricks, often better associated with genres like horror or thriller, to bring you inside the diseased mind of its protagonist. It lies to you because lies are all its hero knows. Read More

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Is Promising Young Woman’s Ending a Vindication, or a Betrayal?

Jeremy BeckFeatures
Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman

Endings are overrated. Or at least, the importance we attach to them tends to outstrip their actual significance. Quantitatively speaking, the typical ending constitutes less than 10% of a film’s runtime, so it seems peculiar that we factor their quality so heavily into our overall appreciation of a movie. At the same time, endings matter, if only as a simple matter of recency bias; it makes sense that our brains prioritize the last few scenes that we just watched as we leave the theater (or, sigh, exit the streaming service). That’s why a lousy ending can tarnish an otherwise enjoyable picture; by way of example, Danny Boyle’s mostly terrific Sunshine could have been a modern classic if it hadn’t so badly flubbed its finale. (The converse scenario, where a forgettable film is redeemed by a strong finish, is far more rare, though I’d submit for consideration Avengers: Infinity War.)

Promising Young Woman, which was just nominated for five Oscars, features an ending that is undeniably memorable—unusually so, given that it doesn’t rely on a big reveal à la The Sixth Sense or Planet of the Apes. I still don’t know whether its culmination is spectacular or terrible; what I do know is that it doesn’t change my opinion of the movie as a whole, which is largely fantastic. A modern jolt to the classic rape-revenge genre, Emerald Fennell’s debut feature is an exhilarating cocktail that blends provocative messaging with slow-building suspense and sure-handed craft. It’s a statement picture, both in that it has something to say and in that it announces the arrival of Fennell—heretofore best known as playing Camilla Parker Bowles on The Crown—as a hugely talented filmmaker. She could have wrapped up Promising Young Woman with aliens suddenly enacting a (ninth) plan from outer space, and the movie would remain a major achievement. Read More

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