Gladiator II: And the Rome of the Slave

Jeremy BeckReviews
Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal in Gladiator II

One of the more memorable lines of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator was its hero’s insistence that what we do in life echoes in eternity. Maybe not, but it definitely echoes in sequels. Gladiator II, Scott’s quarter-century-later follow-up to the Best Picture winner of 2000, takes great pains to (strength and) honor its predecessor—not just by recalling dialogue or by repeating themes (the screenplay is by David Scarpa), but by crafting a story that latches onto the original’s skeleton like a necromantic barnacle. The result is less a mighty statue than a wispy hologram, aiming to resemble its predecessor but struggling to acquire its weight or texture.

The concept of diminishing returns in Hollywood is hardly new, and besides, it seems unfair to ding Scott and Scarpa for modeling so faithfully off of their existing blueprint. After all, what is a sequel but a continuation? Still, in its early going, Gladiator II threatens to develop its own personality, hinting toward narrative independence, if not stylistic novelty. Sure, the first time we see Hanno (Paul Mescal), he’s tending crops on his farm, a symbol of classical masculinity that inevitably recalls Russell Crowe’s Maximus dreaming of golden fields of swaying wheat. But any thoughts of gladiatorial combat or imperial destiny are far from Hanno’s mind; a legionnaire living in the humble province of Numidia, his more pressing concern is the advancing Roman army, led by a brilliant and ruthless general named Acacius (Pedro Pascal). Read More

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A Real Pain: The Mend of the Tour

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain

Priming his Holocaust tour group for the fraught experience that awaits them, the guide doesn’t mince words: “There’s going to be a lot of pain.” But he also advises his company not to wallow in despair, and to take heart in the stories of the many Jews who survived their horrific ordeal in 1940s Europe, even as countless more were exterminated. A Real Pain, the second directorial feature from Jesse Eisenberg, isn’t so clumsy or didactic as to trace the contours of this historical tragedy onto the map of its own, infinitesimally smaller story. But it does mirror the guide’s message in the sense that it traffics in solemn, heavy emotions while deploying a tone that’s light and even playful. It’s a comedy about grief, or perhaps a tearjerker about joy.

The movie’s title carries an obvious double meaning—maybe even triple. The more literal (if still intangible) connotation refers not just to the suffering of the Holocaust but to the depression of Benji (Kieran Culkin), the vibrant yet plainly wounded young man who’s still mourning the death of his beloved grandmother. Having rousted himself from his mother’s basement couch in Binghamton, Benji has traveled for an edifying vacation in Poland, where he immediately imposes his indefatigable will upon his fellow tourists. He’s charming but also exhausting—the kind of guy who, upon learning that a different group member (Kurt Egyiawan) once fled the Rwandan genocide, shouts “Oh snap!” then clarifies, “I meant that in a good way.” Benji is unfiltered and undeniable, a combustible mixture that makes him both the most effervescent person in the room and also—to return to the title—a genuine nuisance. Read More

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Heretic: Creeping the Faith

Jeremy BeckReviews
Hugh Grant in Heretic

The girls aren’t stupid. They know that something is off—that the house is too small, the man too odd, the light too dim. They don’t behave like stereotypical female victims in a horror movie, even as they gradually realize they’re very much starring in one.

Their names are Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher), and they are Mormon missionaries crisscrossing their way through the mountain west. We first meet them sitting on a homey park bench, as Paxton is regaling Barnes with the story of how she first witnessed the existence of God in, of all things, a piece of amateur pornography. When Barnes doesn’t reciprocate with her own tale of almighty discovery, Paxton isn’t deterred. “But you know God is real,” she says sunnily, less of a leading question than a warm affirmation. That Barnes doesn’t reply speaks volumes about the temperamental differences between these two parishioners, as does the flicker of disquiet that flashes across Thatcher’s face. Read More

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Here: This Land Is Yore Land

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in Here

The animating force behind Robert Zemeckis’ work has long been nostalgia. Whether he’s making handsome period thrillers (the underrated Allied), refashioning childhood classics (the dreadful remakes of The Witches and Pinocchio), or interrogating his own work (the demented navel-gazing of Welcome to Marwen), the director can’t stop burrowing into the past. The legacy of Forrest Gump remains the subject of robust debate, but it is inarguably the quintessential Zemeckis picture for how it uses exquisite technique to tell a cornball story that hopscotches across the life of a boomer. Here, which reunites Gump stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, sports an even vaster temporal agenda: Where that 1994 Best Picture winner covered the latter half of the 20th century, this new movie seeks to encompass the entire American experiment.

The ironic conceptual hook of Here is that, while its chronology is extremely broad, its spatiality is scrupulously narrow. The whole film takes place on the exact same spit of land, with the camera never so much as budging (at least, not until the final shot). Initially—I’m speaking according to the passage of history, not the arrangement of events in the movie, whose timeline is scrambled—the location is a pastoral meadow frequented by Native Americans that subsequently becomes an entryway to the colonial estate of William Franklin, son of Benjamin. Roughly a century later, after we spy some bricklayers going about their business, the setting transforms into the living room of a single-family home, with a large triple-bay window that looks out onto the adjoining street. As the story leaps backward and forward in time, it chronicles the events of the various inhabitants of the land and house, observing their commonalities—birth and death, matrimony and separation, stout friendships and domestic fractures—while also charting their spiritual and technological differences. Read More

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Anora: Visit Your Local Poling Place

Jeremy BeckReviews
Mark Eydelshteyn and Mikey Madison in Anora

The opening shot of Sean Baker’s Anora finds the camera dollying along a row of champagne booths at a strip club, clinically observing a scene of stylish debauchery. The music is loud, the light is low, and the exotic dancers are gyrating with plastered smiles, pantomiming their pleasure while internally checking their watch. Given that this display is preceded by an austere title card informing audiences that the film has received one of the most prestigious prizes in cinema (the Palme d’Or at Cannes), you might think that the ensuing picture will be a squalid story of misery and disenchantment—an exposé revealing the predatory nature of the strip-club industry and the meager circumstances of the women whom it chews up and spits out. Surely this widely acclaimed and undoubtedly serious movie can’t be… fun?

But Baker, continuing his hot streak in the wake of The Florida Project and Red Rocket, demolishes his viewers’ assumptions as cannily as he develops his characters. It is true that Anora is a thoughtful and incisive work, exploring its drably decadent milieu with persuasive rigor. It is also, by and large, a blast—a ribald comedy that hums with playfulness and dynamism. It turns you on and pulls you in. Read More

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