Blink Twice, Strange Darling, and the Third-Act Problem

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Channing Tatum in Blink Twice; Willa Fitzgerald in Strange Darling

Movies are built for catharsis. Regardless of genre—the romantic comedy’s race through the airport, the murder mystery’s unmasking of the killer, the sports picture’s big game—cinematic endings are designed to cash the checks that their films have spent the past two acts writing. The paradox of this construction, at least when it comes to the modern thriller, is that most directors are more skilled at building tension than unleashing bedlam. Auteurs such as Ari Aster, Osgood Perkins, and M. Night Shyamalan (to name a few) are all capable craftsmen, wielding their razor-sharp technique to amplify our unease, but while they’re skilled at manufacturing suspense, they often struggle to pay it off in ways that are genuinely unpredictable or exciting.

Last weekend saw two new releases acutely vulnerable to this common pitfall. One tumbles into it. The other does its best to evade it, partly by rewiring its chronology. At the risk of evoking that head-tapping “Roll Safe” meme, your third act can’t ruin your movie’s ending if it arrives in the first 15 minutes. Read More

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Alien: Romulus: Razed by Wolves

Jeremy BeckReviews
Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson in Alien: Romulus

The first Alien was a very scary movie, but it also spawned a franchise that was unusually fearless in terms of reinvention. Made seven years apart, Ridley Scott’s singular original and James Cameron’s pluralized sequel share a few commonalities (Sigourney Weaver, those snarling xenomorphs), but they’re dramatically different in terms of tone and style; one is a gritty, claustrophobic creature feature, while the other is a boisterous, kinetic action extravaganza. David Fincher’s Alien 3 isn’t nearly as good as either of its predecessors, but it earns points for its despairing atmosphere and its defiant refusal to just replay the hits.

But the longer a series runs, the harder it is for each new installment to distinguish itself. Alien: Romulus, which is either the seventh or ninth episode (depending on whether you count its crossovers with the Predator pictures) of outer-space screaming, is a modestly diverting blockbuster, featuring some decent character work and a few scenes of nerve-jangling suspense. But it lacks a true identity or personality, instead feebly mirroring the first Alien (and the underrated Resurrection). The only thing scarier than a monster bursting from your chest, it seems, is the prospect of nudging this franchise in a new direction. Read More

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It Ends with Us: Wild at Start

Jeremy BeckReviews
Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively in It Ends with Us

Multiple times in It Ends with Us, the camera focuses on a crinkly napkin on which Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) has scrawled the numbers one through five in sequence. Lily’s mother (Amy Morton) has tasked her with delivering her father’s eulogy and has advised her to “just say your five favorite things about him,” but because Lily remembers her departed dad less than dearly, the rest of the wrinkled cotton remains blank. Yet when she stands at the funeral podium, Lily still retrieves the napkin from her pocket and glances at it—despite knowing full well that it contains no substantive text—before silently exiting the church.

This is not, strictly speaking, plausible behavior. But it nevertheless serves a purpose, loudly announcing the extent to which Lilly’s daddy issues have paralyzed her. And writ large, It Ends with Us proceeds accordingly to a similar pattern, sacrificing textural realism in the name of dramatic force. As a piece of storytelling, it is often clumsy and unpersuasive. As a work of messaging, it is engaging and even provocative. Read More

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Trap: Catch Me If You Stan

Jeremy BeckReviews
Josh Hartnett in Trap

M. Night Shyamalan fancies himself a philosopher as well as a showman. Sure, he makes genre movies designed to rattle your nerves, but he also wants to dig under your skin and force you to wrestle with his pet themes and ideas. The Sixth Sense, The Village, and Old are all spellbinding constructions, embroidered with aesthetic flair and clockwork precision, but they’re also treatises on the fragility of parenthood—the quixotic dream of just keeping your kids safe. With his prior feature, the well-intentioned but unsatisfying Knock at the Cabin, Shyamalan skewed the balance too far toward the intellectual, building a meditative puzzle about humanity and faith but neglecting to supply the requisite thrills. His follow-up, Trap, tilts decidedly in the opposite direction. It is not among his most thought-provoking works, but as a specimen of pure entertainment, it is what the kids call a banger.

One of those kids is Riley (Ariel Donoghue), an obsessive fan of beloved girl-pop star Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan, the director’s daughter). Riley is elated that her father, Cooper (a never-better Josh Hartnett), has rewarded her academic excellence by taking her to a Lady Raven matinee show in downtown Philadelphia. For his part, Cooper seems happy to be there, basking in his daughter’s ebullience, even as he can’t help but notice the arena’s curiously robust police presence… Read More

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Deadpool & Wolverine: Logan’s Pun

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in Deadpool & Wolverine

Superhero movies invariably deal with threats to the world, but what’s really in peril in Deadpool & Wolverine is the Marvel Cinematic Universe itself. “Welcome to the MCU, by the way. You’re joining at a bit of a low point,” Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) says to Logan (Hugh Jackman), implicitly bemoaning the underwhelming grosses of recent efforts like The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. As a costumed savior, Wade’s track record is spotty—his application was rejected by both the Avengers and the X-Men—but as a box-office analyst, his assessment is hard to argue with. That’s why his mission in his newest picture is less cosmic than commercial: He must salvage the MCU’s viability as an ongoing franchise, even as he constantly mocks its quality and lampoons its conventions.

And I do mean constantly. Scarcely a scene passes in Deadpool & Wolverine in which Wade, whether bobbing his head in his trademark red mask or turning to the camera with his heavily burned face, doesn’t deliver a knowing quip concerning behind-the-scenes shenanigans. Why, after having seemingly retired the character in Logan, is Jackman returning to play everyone’s favorite clawed mutant? “A big bag of Marvel cash.” Why did the X-Force bite the dust in Deadpool 2? “The police say gravity, but just between you and me, they didn’t test well in the focus group.” What is Wade’s conception of his own superheroic destiny? “I’m Marvel Jesus… suck it, Fox!” (After that last one, he literally headbutts the camera.) Forget the comic-book brand immortalized by Stan Lee; the MCU is now the Meta Cinematic Universe. Read More

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