Reviews

Onward: Dwindling Magic, But What of Imagination?

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Holland and Chris Pratt voice brothers in Pixar's "Onward"

The world is gripped by existential despair, so what’s better to capture our collective terror than a Pixar movie? The wizardly corporation owns a patent on brightly colored, child-friendly entertainments that nevertheless speak to adults’ bone-deep fears. Of course, Onward, the newest adventure from the preeminent purveyor of computer-generated animation, isn’t about the coronavirus, no matter how tempted we might be to perceive everything through the lens of that horrifying pandemic. But it is about people—and a world—crippled with fear and self-doubt, struggling to adapt to unforeseen circumstances. That it’s also a playful children’s movie with a happy ending comes as something of a relief, even if it also currently feels like wishful thinking.

But enough about impending global catastrophe. Besides, there’s a more obvious metaphor to be found in Onward. At one point, its two brothers, Ian (voiced by Tom Holland) and Barley (Chris Pratt), squabble over navigation, disputing how best to reach their destination. Ian, the more pragmatic of the pair, insists on taking the freeway, a straight shot to their goal. Barley, a fantasist with either grand ideas or delusions of grandeur, instead suggests that they follow the Path of Peril, a twisting road fraught with danger and uncertainty. The freeway is of course the logical choice, but in Barley’s view, it is the eccentricity of the Path of Peril—its literal and figurative curves—that makes traveling it worthwhile. Read More

Read more

Emma: Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Show Me a Catch

Jeremy BeckReviews
Anya Taylor-Joy in "Emma"

Jane Austen’s Emma is a comedy of manners, which of course means that nobody in it is actually polite. It may unfurl in high society—the kind where estates have proper names, like Donwell Abbey and Hartfield —but its veneer of decorum is a mere smokescreen, camouflaging base instincts of lust, greed, and jealousy. Its language is unfailingly civil, with a premium placed on honorifics—Mr. Elton! Miss Smith!—but its characters wield words like weapons, brandished with lethal force and sheathed with calculated fury. It’s a frolicsome tale of romance and friendship; it is also blood sport.

This duality can be bracing, but for most viewers it is no longer surprising, given how frequently Austen’s novels have been transmuted to the screen. Her works provide a certain comfort, a warm and familiar blend of sophisticated wordplay, comic misunderstandings, and graceful resolution. This new adaptation of Emma, which has been directed by Autumn de Wilde from a screenplay by Eleanor Catton, respects its author deeply and faithfully. Unlike Clueless, which boldly transplanted Austen’s narrative and themes to the frivolous exploits of mid-’90s teenagers, this Emma is frank and straightforward. You might think that such a rigorous approach would result in the diminution of risk, in an absence of artistic identity or imagination. To be sure, the movie is predictable. It is also magical. Read More

Read more

The Invisible Man: Touch Me, Not So Easy to Leave Me

Jeremy BeckReviews
Elisabeth Moss in "The Invisible Man"

There’s virtually no dialogue in the first five minutes of The Invisible Man, but that doesn’t stop the director Leigh Whannell from telling you everything you need to know. We open in the dead of night, on a woman lying awake in bed, her partner’s arm slung across her waist like a fleshy chain. Her eyes wide with anxiety, she silently extricates herself from his grasp, then tiptoes through their opulent beachside home, packing a bag and disabling the alarm. She also deactivates the house’s many security cameras, except for one: the feed from the bedroom, which she routes to her phone and keeps glancing at in panic, worried that her jailer might have risen. As she quietly maneuvers toward the exit and her freedom, the tension mounts, with various obstacles—a dog’s dish, a car’s sensor, a looming enclosure—conspiring to impede her escape.

It’s the first of many gripping sequences in the movie, an expertly orchestrated medley of image, sound, and music. Yet beyond highlighting Whannell’s considerable craft, the opening is meaningful for the way it telegraphs the film’s metaphorical intentions. The Invisible Man is, quite simply, a picture about domestic abuse. It examines how powerful men feel entitled to possess beautiful women, resulting in violence that’s both physical and emotional. And it contemplates how such subjugation corrodes victims’ health and self-worth, how it can be toxic and dehumanizing. Also, there’s an invisible man. Read More

Read more

The Assistant: Working for the Man, and the Whole Rotten System

Jeremy BeckReviews
Julia Garner in "The Assistant")

Pronouns work overtime in The Assistant. Characters are constantly discussing the whims and whereabouts of their imperious boss, but they never refer to him by name. “He’s in a meeting.” “I don’t have him right now.” “He wants you on the flight to LA.” They may as well be talking about God. You might know him better as Harvey Weinstein.

But let’s not get too cute. The genius of this sobering movie, which was written and directed by Kitty Green, is that despite its painstaking detail, it isn’t about any particular person. It is instead a searing indictment of an entire ecosystem, a culture of domination, silence, and complicity. Rather than narrow its scope to the exploits and exploitations of a specific individual, The Assistant seeks to shine a harsh light on a prejudiced and predatory industry. The paradox of the film—the contradiction that Green deploys so thrillingly and, at times, frustratingly—is that, while its ambitions are undeniably dramatic, it unfolds with an absolute minimum of actual drama. Read More

Read more

Birds of Prey: Harley’s Angels

Jeremy BeckReviews
Margot Robbie and friends in "Birds of Prey"

She just wants breakfast. In an era where noble superheroes and dastardly villains are constantly preoccupied with saving the world or burning it down, all that initially matters to Harley Quinn—the brilliant but unstable psychiatrist, and the former squeeze of a certain lunatic called The Joker—is that she be able to chow down on a bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich in peace. Naturally, Birds of Prey, the hectic and uneven and largely diverting new addition to the dreary DC Extended Universe, strews plenty of obstacles in her path, continuously delaying her date with culinary bliss. But while Harley’s mania for locally sourced McMuffins (“Maybe it’s the Armenian arm hair,” she muses) is just one of countless random flourishes in the film, it’s also symbolic of the movie’s playful tone and plucky spirit. If you want tedious footage of solemn warriors grappling with the crushing existential weight of their powers, go watch Endgame. Birds of Prey is all about fun.

The DCEU has tried this before, most recently with Shazam!, a lightweight yarn whose cheerful silliness functioned as a welcome corrective to the relentless turgidity of leaden adventures like Batman v Superman. Shazam! was pleasant enough, and it featured a wonderfully limber comic performance from Zachary Levi, but it was also decidedly unmemorable, with flat humor and tiresome fight scenes. Birds of Prey, which was directed by Cathy Yan from a screenplay by Christina Hodson (Bumblebee), is a significant improvement on both fronts. It channels its flamboyant irreverence in ways that periodically resemble actual wit. It also happens to be a surprisingly good action movie. Read More

Read more