MovieManifesto

Past Lives: No Sublime Like the Present

July 7, 2023July 7, 2023 Jeremy BeckReviews

Late at night in a Manhattan bar, we see three people: an Asian woman seated in between two men (one white, the other Asian). They’re chatting amiably, but we can’t hear what they’re saying; instead, we listen to the observations of an unseen couple who speculate about the triad’s possible relationships. Perhaps two of them are married and the other man is her brother, they suggest, or maybe the white guy is an American tour guide. As they conjecture, the woman turns her head and looks directly into the camera, her eyes both inviting and comprehending of our attentions, as though she’s slyly caught us in the act.

This is the opening scene of Past Lives, the debut feature of writer-director Celine Song, and it immediately signals the film’s rare, delicate intimacy. When you buy a ticket for Past Lives, you end up not so much watching a movie as participating in an act of eavesdropping. Sure, you’re seeing actors pantomime a fictional story of love and loss, but you are also receiving an unauthorized glimpse into the inner worlds of two people—a secret chance to understand their desires and bear witness to their heartbreak. Read More

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Traders of a Lost Spark

July 5, 2023July 4, 2023 Jeremy BeckReviews

Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

The first thing you notice is the thing you don’t notice: The Paramount logo doesn’t dissolve into a real-life mountain, instead smoothly transitioning to the sterile placard for Lucasfilm Ltd. And so, before a frame has flickered on screen, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny has differentiated itself from its four predecessors. In some ways, this is a smart move. After all, it’s been 42 years since Harrison Ford outraced a giant boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark and lodged a smash franchise into pop-culture lore in the process; undue fidelity to such a treasured past might brand this new effort as a pale imitator, like one of those moldy skeletons Indy brushes past on his way to fortune and glory. But not all departures from prior history are healthy, and the change that most harms Dial of Destiny takes place not in the script, but behind the camera: This is the first Indiana Jones adventure that wasn’t directed by Steven Spielberg.

This is perhaps unfair to James Mangold, one of an infinite number of filmmakers who is guilty of being less talented than Spielberg. No stranger to inheriting a beloved fictional character—he gave Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine a lovely and powerful send-off in Logan—Mangold approaches his assignment here with what might be called cautious reverence. John Williams’ famous “Raiders’ March” theme appears on the soundtrack, but only sparingly. Indy occasionally deploys his classic bullwhip, but his weapon of choice tends to be his fists. Cherished supporting characters reemerge—including John Rhys-Davies’ Sallah, plus another figure best left unspecified—but only for a scene or two. The chief villains are once again Nazis, but they (mostly) operate in secret rather than with swastika-emblazoned armbands. The result is that Mangold has made a new Indiana Jones movie both like and unlike the old Indiana Jones movies, tentatively perpetuating their legacy without being beholden to it. Read More

From the Vault: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, 20 Years Later

July 1, 2023June 29, 2023 Jeremy BeckReviews

Kristanna Loken and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

[EDITOR’S NOTE: In 2003, long before MovieManifesto.com existed, I spent my summer as a 20-year-old college kid writing as many movie reviews as I could. My goal was to compile them all into a website, possibly hosted by Tripod or Geocities, which would surely impress all of the women in my dorm. That never happened—neither the compiling nor the impressing—but the reviews still exist. So, now that I ~~am a wildly successful critic~~ actually have a website, I’ll be publishing those reviews on the respective date of each movie’s 20th anniversary. Against my better judgment, these pieces remain unedited from their original form. I apologize for the quality of the writing; I am less remorseful about the character of my 20-year-old opinions.]

The most important quality found in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is, coincidentally, also characteristic of the terrifying androids of the movie’s creation, and it is not intelligence but self-awareness. The first two Terminator films were astonishing in their innovation, offering spectacular action sequences while simultaneously employing dizzying storylines that toyed with the high-brow concepts of time-travel and artificial intelligence. James Cameron’s pictures radiated a daring but thoughtful ingenuity largely absent from today’s science-fiction genre (though not entirely so – see The Matrix). Now, rather than attempting to equal the historic heights of the franchise’s previous features, Terminator 3 has the humility not to try. Recognizing (for the most part) that it lacks the tools required for greatness, T3 settles for simply being enjoyable, and while it is surely deficient in the subtlety of Cameron’s works, it more than qualifies as absorbing entertainment. Read More

Asteroid City: Turn That Town Upside-Down

June 30, 2023June 29, 2023 Jeremy BeckReviews

Jason Schwartzman and Jake Ryan in Asteroid City

During a quiet moment in Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, a journalist played by Jeffrey Wright bristles when a television interviewer asks him why he’s written so frequently about food. “Never ask a man why,” he grumbles. Wright returns in Anderson’s new feature, the strange and beguiling Asteroid City (he plays a gruff military general with the onomatopoetic name of Grif Gibson), but his reporter’s distaste for contemplation has been left behind. Instead, the characters in this movie are constantly pondering questions of meaning and motive. Why does a photographer injure himself in a burst of frustration? Why does a brainy teenager constantly invite others to dare him to perform perilous stunts? Why does an alien suddenly appear in the middle of the desert? And above all: Why are we here?

“Here” is a matter of perspective in Asteroid City, which again finds Anderson indulging his penchant for nesting tales within tales, art within artifices. Simply telling an entertaining story is no longer sufficient for him, if it ever was; even Rushmore, his breakout second film released a quarter-century ago, found its amateur-playwright hero obsessed with substantiating his own legend. As it happens, that enterprising yearner was the screen debut of Jason Schwartzman, who stars here as Augie Steenbeck, a gifted photographer with four children, a recently deceased wife, and multiple types of baggage. Schwartzman, with his thin frame and bookish demeanor, is a natural fit for the famously fastidious Anderson (this is their eighth feature-length collaboration), but Augie is a departure, armed with a corncob pipe, a tanned complexion, and a masculine beard that’s so sharply manicured, you wonder if it’s a prosthesis. Read More

From the Vault: 28 Days Later, 20 Years Later

June 27, 2023June 26, 2023 Jeremy BeckReviews

28 Days Later is like a Twilight Zone episode on crystal meth. It takes a standard science-fiction concept – a small band of mismatched renegades must save humanity from extinction – and infuses it with Danny Boyle’s high-octane style to create quite a gruesome cocktail. There’s a lot of potential here with such an intriguing motif, but the result is disappointingly bland. So intent is Boyle on creating his twisted, macabre universe that he fails to immerse us within it. Thus, while the movie is supposed to be chic, edgy, and above all scary, we’re too detached to be frightened. 28 Days Later is occasionally taut and innovative, but it is never compelling. Read More