The Suicide Squad: I Think I’m Gonna Thrill Myself

Jeremy BeckReviews
John Cena in Idris Elba in The Suicide Squad

What makes a good superhero movie? Given the routine onslaught of costumed crusaders at the multiplex, the question seems pertinent. It also seems irrelevant, as the discourse surrounding the genre’s overall merits—a perpetual battle between triumphant, weirdly hostile fans (comics rule, deal with it!) and bitter, exasperated detractors (get a life, nerds!)—tends to feel preprogrammed, regardless of the particular installment at issue. But even if all superhero flicks are the same, some are less the same than others. And The Suicide Squad, the entertaining and ridiculous sequel/reboot/standalone/whatever from James Gunn, possesses an unusually keen understanding of how such films should work. Funny, colorful, and only occasionally tedious, it keys in on two fundamental truths: Superheroes are comedians, and superheroes are psychopaths.

It’s easy to miss that second one, as popular culture tends to connote masked vigilantism with virtuous qualities: responsibility, integrity, sacrifice. (They’re called superheroes, after all.) The job’s less savory aspects—the constant deception, the maniacal narcissism, the extralegal beatdowns—tend to be secondary considerations, or obstacles of self-doubt that the protagonist must hurdle en route to saving the world and getting the girl. One nice thing about The Suicide Squad is that it scarcely bothers to imbue its demented warriors with any righteousness or internal conflict. Instead, their motivations are squarely selfish; most of them are convicts, and they agree to participate in the obligatory searching and rescuing in exchange for years being shaved off their prison sentences. And of course, if any of them misbehaves or goes off mission, then their no-nonsense director, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, all business), will remotely detonate the explosive charge embedded in their skull. Read More

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The Green Knight: It’s Not Easy Being Guillotined

Jeremy BeckReviews
Dev Patel in The Green Knight

During one of the many ruminative exchanges in David Lowery’s The Green Knight, a common young woman scoffs at her paramour’s obsession with greatness. “Why is goodness not enough?” she wonders with a combination of selfishness and curiosity. Like most of its maker’s movies, The Green Knight operates—or attempts to operate—as both a sincere answer to the question and an emphatic rejection of its premise. In films like the Malick-infused crime drama Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and the austere metaphysical puzzler A Ghost Story, Lowery wasn’t aiming for passable entertainment; he wanted to make high art, true masterpieces that reshaped our attitude toward what cinema can be. (His Ghost Story follow-up, The Old Man & the Gun, was enjoyable in part for how atypically relaxed it was.) Judged against that impossible standard, he failed both times, and does so again here; The Green Knight is no masterpiece. But it is undeniably a mighty work, and its towering ambition—the way it takes an epic poem and updates it with its own combination of beauty, whimsy, and nonsense—is itself commendable.

The title of that poem, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (by Anonymous), briefly emerges on screen, in an Old-English font that’s nigh unreadable; over the course of the proceedings, other headings make similarly quick appearances, each harder to decipher than the last. In fact, illegibility is something of a precept for the movie, be it vocally, visually, or narratively. Actors often mumble lines, their “thees” and “thines” drowned out by the clangs of nature or Daniel Hart’s moody score. The image, especially in the opening scenes, is often dark, as though a fog of war has settled over the screen. And the trajectory of the story, which follows Gawain (Dev Patel) on a picaresque adventure, is regularly interrupted by strange sights and odd digressions. Read More

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Old: Time Isn’t On Their Lakeside

Jeremy BeckReviews
Thomasin McKenzie and Alex Wolff in Old

The great twist of M. Night Shyamalan’s career is that his movies aren’t really about twists. Sure, a number of his films indulge in third-act rug-pulls that invariably induce gasps, hoots, or groans. But the thing about endings is that, while they tend to stick in our brains, they rarely make or break a picture. The Sixth Sense features one of the most memorable reveals of all time, but it wouldn’t be nearly as meaningful (or as memorable, for that matter) if it weren’t preceded by a delicate story that unfolds with such elegance and detail. And even if you scoffed at the conclusion of The Village, your momentary derision shouldn’t invalidate its haunting, excruciatingly suspenseful depiction of a frightened young woman attempting to navigate the world. So when I tell you that the ending of Old, Shyamalan’s latest feature-length puzzle box, doesn’t really matter, I’m not implying that it doesn’t carry any element of surprise; I’m simply expressing a judgment that this movie’s soft, not-entirely-unpredictable destination is less important than its silky, enveloping journey.

I’d still encourage you to go into Old as cold as possible, not only as a matter of principle but also because its very premise essentially constitutes a spoiler. Even here, though, foreknowledge can’t tarnish the pleasure in how Shyamalan gradually unveils his brain-teasing conceit. To wit: Roughly half an hour into the film, two vacationing children—six-year-old Trent (Nolan River) and 11-year-old Maddox (Alexa Swinton)—find themselves conversing pleasantly with fellow travelers, a married couple named Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and Jarin (Ken Leung). The camera, operated by the invaluable Mike Gioulakis, is fixed solely on the adults, with the kids sitting behind the frame. The mood is cheerful, but as Jarin plays the friendly game of guessing the youths’ ages (“I’m pretty good at this”), an invisible tension begins to grip the screen, an unspoken frisson of strangeness. Jarin turns his eyes to Maddox, still off screen, and appraises her figure: “I’d say you’re about 15,” he estimates, as Trevor Gureckis’ score starts to quietly throb. We hear giggles from the still-unseen youngsters, who promptly inform Jarin that they are, in fact, 6 and 11. As Jarin’s expression slips from amusement to bafflement, the camera finally (finally!) rotates back toward Maddox and Trent, and we see that they’re now a good five years older than they’d been a few minutes ago, and are being played by entirely different actors. Read More

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Pig, Gunpowder Milkshake, and the Instant Legacy of John Wick

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Karen Gillan in Gunpowder Milkshake; Nicolas Cage in Pig

John Wick is technically an original character, but the films featuring him aren’t really anything new. They’re just slickly repackaged creations that combine the archetypes of the classic Western—the retired warrior begrudgingly forced back into battle—with the balletic flair of John Woo’s gun-fu pictures. Still, their mythology is so wonderfully detailed, and Keanu Reeves’ central performance is so intensely charismatic, that the franchise has quickly morphed from pastiche into primary source. Now, when a genre exercise like Nobody hits theaters, it’s instantly billed as “Bob Odenkirk doing John Wick”.

Last week alone saw the release of two new movies that wear their Wick influences loudly: Gunpowder Milkshake, featuring Karen Gillan as an assassin on the run, and Pig, starring Nicolas Cage as a hermit who’s drawn back into a dangerous underworld. Neither is nearly as good as the best Wick flick (that remains Chapter Two, though Parabellum certainly has its moments), but they’re nonetheless interesting for how they both pay tribute to and differentiate themselves from the film that has suddenly become the standard-bearer for revenge cinema. Read More

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Black Widow: Sister Pact

Jeremy BeckReviews
Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh in Black Widow

That Black Widow, the new superhero extravaganza starring Scarlett Johansson, is in some circles being labeled a “standalone” film speaks to the bizarre taxonomy of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Here is a movie that’s littered with countless references and asides to the lore of cinema’s most fearsome global behemoth: the Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D., Wakanda, the Sokovia Accords, “the god from space.” It stands alone the same way the Dread Pirate Roberts stood alone—invisibly lifted by associates toiling in the background. So when Natasha Romanoff (Johansson) at one point declares, “I’m actually better on my own,” the meta claxon that blares in accompaniment is louder than any of the fiery explosions that engulf the film’s tedious climax. If the plot of Black Widow features a woman striving, at long last, to locate some agency (not to be confused with locating an agency, though she essentially needs to do that as well), the subtext involves a taut, character-driven action flick seeking to assert some independence while also maintaining fidelity to the broader scriptures that govern the MCU.

It’s a tricky balance, but cinematically speaking, Natasha is right; she is better headlining her own picture than functioning as part of a bulky ensemble. Most superheroes are, frankly. The final two Avengers team-ups, as insistently epic and intermittently enjoyable as they were, suffered from bloat and congestion, dutifully apportioning screen time and subplots across their gargantuan casts. In contrast, relatively streamlined adventures like Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther benefited from a sharper sense of focus, not to mention a genuine artistic sensibility. Black Widow isn’t quite as good as either of those movies, lacking their piercing wit and visual flair. But it’s a fleet and efficient piece of blockbuster filmmaking, one that, despite all of those aforementioned references, stands sturdily on its own. Read More

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