Reviews

Thoroughbreds: Horsing Around, with Mai Tais and Murder

Jeremy BeckReviews
Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke in "Thoroughbreds"

It is an exhilarating feeling, watching the work of a first-time director who operates with absolute confidence, with an imperceptible clarity of vision. As someone who’s only been going to the movies for a few decades, I’ve felt that sensation just a handful of times—during personality-fueled debuts like Brick, Being John Malkovich, and Michael Clayton—but I like to imagine that the cinephiles of yesteryear experienced something similar when they wandered into the theater and settled themselves for a screening of The Maltese Falcon or The 400 Blows or Blood Simple. I felt stirrings of it watching Thoroughbreds, the bold and provocative first feature from writer-director Cory Finley. I have no idea where Finley’s career will take him; maybe he’ll ascend, maybe he’ll flame out. I do know that with this impossibly gripping movie, he’s made one hell of an entrance.

Speaking of entrances, Thoroughbreds begins with a doozy, a short and sharp cold open that instantly announces its seriousness of intent as well as its formal rigor. We open with a direct shot of a horse, its alien snout practically poking through the screen, before turning to the face of a teenage girl, regarding the animal with a mixture of curiosity and indifference. The lighting is dark, the mood eerie, so by the time the camera reveals a large, glittering knife, our nerves are already on edge. Read More

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Red Sparrow: Can You Trust Anyone? Nyet!

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jennifer Lawrence as a Russian spy in "Red Sparrow"

In the deeply silly and agreeably entertaining Red Sparrow, Jennifer Lawrence plays a Russian ballerina who transforms into a devious and lethal spy. If you think that sounds like a stretch, you’ve never seen Lawrence act. Having previously applied her prodigious talents to a number of American Everywomen—housewives and mothers, travelers and strivers—here she dons an ushanka and a Russki accent, soldiering forward in a chilly, vodka-soaked Europe. It’s a ridiculous part, but Lawrence is just too damned good to let it go to waste. She initially plays it big and bold—savoring every morsel of Russian diction and leaning into every absurd revelation—only to sneak up on you with her intelligence and vast feeling. All good actors can play well-written roles convincingly; here, Lawrence turns an outrageous conceit into a real character.

That’s more than I can say for Red Sparrow, an implausible thriller that, despite a capable cast and a tone of deadly self-seriousness, struggles to transcend its narrative shortcomings. But while the movie has significant problems—it is too long, too scattered, and too convoluted—it is never less than watchable. Star power can go a long way, and so can sleaze. Read More

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Black Panther: With Great Power Comes Great Villainy

Jeremy BeckReviews
Lupita Nyong'o, Chadwick Boseman, and Danai Gurira in "Black Panther"

Early in Black Panther, Ryan Coogler’s bold and thorny new film that is the eighteenth entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the titular hero asks his young sister, Shuri, why she’s bothering to upgrade an already elegant technological system. Shuri—played by an impish, scene-stealing Letitia Wright—responds with huffy wisdom: “Just because something works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.” The MCU has its faults—low-stakes storytelling, visual sameness, an exponentially swelling character base—but as mega-franchises go, it’s pretty good, churning out suitably entertaining products that are typically funny, professionally made, and well-acted. What’s gratifying about Black Panther is the way it operates within the MCU’s preestablished confines (the groaning Stan Lee cameo, the post-credits scenes) while simultaneously seeking to push beyond them. In raw terms, it isn’t the MCU’s best movie—its hero is too bland, its story too busy—but it may be its most interesting. And in an era where carefully packaged formula rules the cinematic roost, an interesting superhero movie is something to savor.

It also helps dispel the myth that personal filmmaking and corporate oversight are somehow incompatible. With Black Panther, Coogler continues to tackle the themes of racial strife, familial loyalty, and youthful conflict that animated his previous features, the heartfelt docudrama Fruitvale Station and the boisterous boxing picture Creed. But he has also made—and I mean this sincerely rather than pejoratively—a comic-book movie, complete with bright colors, complex mythology, and CGI-inflected rumbles. His estimable achievement is to weave these elements into a cohesive vision. Black Panther is packed with excitement and ideas, but it never feels choppy or overstuffed. Read More

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The Post: Stop the Presses, or Else

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in Steven Spielberg's "The Post"

Describe The Post in terms of its plot, and you risk making it sound like a bore. Here is a based-in-fact film about a band of huffy journalists who squabble with a cadre of wussy pencil-pushers about whether to publish a newspaper article; these are not typically the raw materials of exciting drama. Yet because we currently live in a society where the government openly wages war on the press, The Post is one of the most important political movies of our time. And because it has been directed by Steven Spielberg, it is also one of our most enjoyable.

In recognizing the former, one should be careful not to ignore the latter. The unnerving topicality of The Post threatens to overshadow just how effortlessly it works as a piece of cinema, how sharply crafted and exquisitely performed it is. Employing his characteristic care and vigor, Spielberg has almost imperceptibly transformed the film’s bustling narrative—a thicket of murky backroom meetings, lavish dinner parties, and complex legal proceedings—into a rousing and supremely entertaining production. Contemporary circumstances may have rendered The Post regrettably relevant, but this movie would be a delight to watch regardless of who’s sitting in the Oval Office. Read More

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Call Me by Your Name: One Lazy Summer, a Dance of Desire

Jeremy BeckReviews
Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer in "Call Me by Your Name"

“So what do you do around here?” Oliver asks Elio early in Call Me by Your Name, Luca Guadagnino’s feverish, unusual love story. In response, the 17-year-old ticks off a number of banal activities—he reads, he swims, he parties—but his answer basically amounts to, “Not much.” Over the course of its 132-minute running time, Call Me by Your Name stirs up a broad array of emotions—desire, heartache, anger, elation, grief—but what it perhaps evokes most effectively is that ineffable state of boyhood restlessness, the feeling of being suspended in a cocoon where nothing of consequence ever happens. Elio is something of an intellectual and musical prodigy (“Is there anything you don’t know?” an amused Oliver asks), but as the movie opens, he is nevertheless waiting for his life to begin.

By the time the film ends, he’ll have undergone a transformative experience that will feel largely familiar to enthusiasts of coming-of-age cinema. Yet while Call Me by Your Name travels well-covered narrative terrain, it is not exactly typical. It is, in essence, a strange telling of a normal story. In chronicling the standard tale of a young man discovering himself, Guadagnino has retained the basic elements but altered them, glazing them with a peculiar finish that mixes awkwardness with compassion. To watch the film is to feel by turns frustrated, surprised, confused, and blissful—you know, kind of like falling in love. Read More

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