Zola: All That Twitters, Newly Told

Jeremy BeckReviews
Riley Keough and Taylour Paige in Zola

Almost Famous may have immortalized the trope of passengers giddily belting out a classic pop song, but Zola, the indecently entertaining new film from Janicza Bravo, revives the conceit and reinvests it with a distinctly modern sensibility. In an early scene that finds four strivers cruising south from Detroit to Tampa, a young man cues up Migos’ “Hannah Montana” and starts enthusiastically bobbing along to the beat. At first he seems foolish (in no small part because he’s played by Nicholas Braun, aka Cousin Greg from Succession), but before long his gusto infects his fellow travelers, who join him in a rambunctious display of lip-synching and tongue-wagging. The mood is jubilant but also performative, the gesticulators constantly posing for pics and racking up the likes on Instagram. It’s a celebration that’s simultaneously authentic and synthetic.

This preoccupation with digital gratification—a mingling of heedless joy and self-conscious artistry—doesn’t belong exclusively to the characters; it’s embedded in the movie’s very DNA. Zola was born from Twitter, specifically a viral 148-tweet thread from A’Ziah “Zola” King, who in October 2015 tapped out on her phone an emoji-laced saga of vice, mayhem, and betrayal. (The reporter David Kushner quickly turned it into an article for Rolling Stone.) A sprawling collection of 140-character missives may seem like bare bones for a feature film, but one of the lessons of the technological age is that art can come from anywhere. And Zola, as brought to the screen by Bravo and co-writer Jeremy O. Harris, is a proudly contemporary picture that also draws from classic cinematic influences. As the saying goes, all you need to make a movie is a girl, a gun, and a smartphone to orchestrate your illicit prostitution scheme. Read More

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F9: The Fast Saga: Love Motion No. 9, Now with Magnets

Jeremy BeckReviews
Vin Diesel and John Cena in F9: The Fast Saga

The Fast and Furious movies are rarely funny—what passes for comedy typically involves shrieks from Tyrese Gibson, followed by pained reaction shots from Ludacris—but at least one moment in F9: The Fast Saga made me laugh. Describing the logistics of an impending piece of preposterous derring-do, Tej (Ludacris) calmly declares, “As long as we obey the laws of physics, we’ll be fine.” To quote Frances McDormand in Almost Famous: funny joke! It’s been two decades since this nominal saga began with a B-movie production of underground street racers hijacking trucks full of DVD players; as the installments have grown increasingly expensive and elaborate, their interest in physical plausibility has correspondingly waned to the point of vanishment. Over the course of F9’s long and loud 145 minutes, cars don’t just zoom down roads and across bridges and into the occasional wall; no, they leap off cliffs and crash through department stores and even careen through outer space. Forget physics—the only law this movie is interested in obeying is the law of the sequel.

This isn’t necessarily a complaint. While there’s something to be said for cinematic action that’s rooted in real-world corporeality, films that use convincing special effects to distort and exaggerate reality carry their own outsize appeal. My issue with the maniacal chaos of F9, which was directed by Justin Lin (helming his fifth entry in the franchise, and first since Fast & Furious 6), isn’t that it’s unrealistic but that it’s unexciting. No one could possibly accuse this movie of lacking energy or noise, but it rarely executes its vehicular mayhem with wit or distinction. It’s less an issue of credibility than anonymity; the film’s defining aesthetic personality is no more inventive than Cars Go Vroom. Read More

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Luca: Summer Loving, Glazed by the Past

Jeremy BeckReviews
A scene from Pixar's Luca

Luca is a shape-shifting sea monster, and Luca itself is something of a transformer. It is by turns (and sometimes all at once) a coming-of-age story, an underdog sports movie, an ode to canonical Italian cinema, and a heartfelt fable of tolerance. That it ably fulfills all of these roles without succumbing to chaos or incongruity is a testament to the dexterity of its storytelling and the fluidity of its construction. It doesn’t so much offer something for everyone as it provides everything for someones—namely, for those audiences who hunger for art that is simultaneously funny, kinetic, sweet, and affirming.

It is not—and with every new Pixar release, the conversation tends to focus on what it isn’t rather than what it is—terribly imaginative. Small in scale and gentle in heart, Luca lacks the bold ingenuity that has (ahem) animated some of the studio’s more impressive recent works: the metaphysical philosophizing of Soul, the existential angst of Toy Story 4, the triumphant razzle-dazzle of Incredibles 2, the anthropomorphized emotions of Inside Out. But not every Pixar picture can be expected to stretch or redefine an entire genre, and besides, lamenting Luca’s familiarity risks diminishing some of its considerable charm. Here is a playful, gorgeous, heart-warming adventure that tells its tender story with craft and conviction. That it occasionally resembles other movies seems a small price to pay. Read More

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In the Heights: Defend the Block

Jeremy BeckReviews
Anthony Ramos and Melissa Barrera in In the Heights

“96,000,” the undeniable centerpiece of Jon M. Chu’s In the Heights, is a dizzying, dazzling musical number, a vibrant and symphonic sequence that opens on a sunbaked street, parades through a crowded neighborhood, and eventually unites what feels like a cast of thousands in a luminous public pool. Yet as propulsive and audacious as it is, the moment the song made me gasp is almost invisible; early on, when rhapsodizing about (and exaggerating) his own talents, a graffiti artist invokes the name of Obi-Wan Kenobi and then—as if from thin air—pulls out a lightsaber.

Not really, of course; as gifted and ambitious as these residents of Washington Heights may be, they aren’t actual Jedi knights. Instead, Obi-Wan’s intergalactic weapon appears as a puff of greyish shadow only to just as suddenly vanish, along with other mentioned objects like a golf club and a sparkling diamond. It’s a mild visual flourish, but it embodies the spirit of creativity that makes this Broadway adaptation sing. In all likelihood, a point-and-shoot version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first stage hit would have been entertaining; hell, the Disney+ broadcast of Miranda’s Hamilton was largely delightful, and it was literally just footage from theatrical performances. But while In the Heights obviously can’t approach that masterpiece in terms of writing or depth, Chu’s big-screen vision is nonetheless a robust and imaginative work. And that’s because it’s unashamedly a movie musical—emphasis on “movie”. Read More

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A Quiet Place Part II: Hush Growing Children, Don’t Lose Your Nerve

Jeremy BeckReviews
Emily Blunt in A Quiet Place Part II

The traffic light works. That’s how we know, even before the appearance of a freighted title card (“Day 1”), that the opening scene takes place during the era has become colloquially known, during our collective struggle with COVID-19, as the Before Times. (Remember, even movies that were made before the pandemic are totally still about the pandemic.) So even though the small town’s main square seems oddly deserted, the signal’s automatic flickering from green to yellow to red instantly communicates an attitude of relative safety. Yet at the same time, the introduction’s formal composition—the smoothness of the camera, the emptiness of the streets, the chaotic footage glimpsed on a news broadcast—articulates an undeniable sense of Damoclean danger. The apocalypse may not have arrived yet, but it’s surely on the way.

This expertly staged opening sequence, which builds from needling anxiety to clammy tension before erupting into all-out mayhem, confirms John Krasinski’s considerable skill as a director. He’s only made a handful of features, but here he again evinces a talent for conveying information and atmosphere through canny visual details. When he supplies a simple shot of a timid boy wincing in panic as a fastball buzzes past him during a Little League game, he isn’t watching a sport; he’s defining a character. Read More

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