Colette: Carnal Explorations, with a Parisian Gloss

Jeremy BeckReviews
Keira Knightley in "Colette"

Early in Colette, the entrepreneur Henry Gauthier-Villars—better known as Willy, his nom de plume—lays out his plan to publish a wildly popular novel. He conceives of an epic work that’s both refined and ribald, literate enough to appeal to highbrows but sufficiently tawdry to intrigue “the unwashed masses”. Then he pauses, musing, “Maybe it’s the other way around.”

He might be onto something. The issue endemic to many period pieces—this one opens in 1892 and spans roughly 15 years—is a surfeit of gentility, and a corresponding lack of vulgarity, like a catered dinner party with no spice and no impudent conversation. Colette plainly has the handsomeness part of the equation down pat, sporting a luxuriant score, ravishing costumes, and fluid camerawork. What surprises and enchants about this movie, which was directed by Wash Westmoreland from a script he wrote with Richard Glatzer (his late husband) and Rebecca Lenkiewicz, is how breezily entertaining it is. Colette is elegant, yes, but it is also funny, sexy, angry, and even a little bit naughty. To paraphrase Gordon Gekko: Gauche is good. Read More

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The Predator: They Don’t Come in Peace. Neither Do the Aliens.

Jeremy BeckReviews
Olivia Munn and Boyd Holbrook in "The Predator"

The eponymous monster of The Predator is very good at one thing, and it’s killing people. Shane Black, the director and co-writer of The Predator, is also very good at one thing, and it’s writing smart, quippy dialogue. But where the Predator is single-minded in its focus—it kills with precision and without mercy—Black is less committed to channeling his energies into his strengths. He’s great with words, but he also loves mayhem, and after appearing as an actor in the original Predator in 1987, he’s clearly overjoyed at the opportunity to take ownership of this franchise as it continues to slice limbs and spill blood. It’s hard to blame him for following his heart, but his ambition can’t match his execution, because as gifted as Black is with masculine banter, he is not an especially skilled director of action.

This is a problem, because The Predator, for all its verbal wit, is an action movie. It is constructed as a series of explosive set pieces, with periodic interruptions for bouts of exposition and exchanges of vulgar, good-natured ribbing. It’s a reliable formula that Black helped create—he penned a number of big-budget screenplays in the ’80s and ’90s, including Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, and The Long Kiss Goodnight—though where his earlier scripts tended to be complex to the point of indecipherability, this one (co-written by his old collaborator Fred Dekker) is blunt and purposeful. There’s a murderous alien on the loose in suburbia. A cadre of shady bureaucrats want to capture it, a band of hardy soldiers want to kill it, and a few hapless innocents—embodied by an exasperated biologist (Olivia Munn) and a 10-year-old autistic boy (Jacob Tremblay)—find themselves caught in the crossfire. Read More

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A Simple Favor: Sipping Martinis with a Twist. Lots of Twists.

Jeremy BeckReviews
Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively in "A Simple Favor"

Anna Kendrick looks nice. I don’t mean that she’s attractive (though of course she is); I mean that, with her soft-blue eyes and small build and delicate features, she presents as a decent, wholesome person. That innate tenderness has served her well in films like 50/50, End of Watch, and The Accountant, where she’s quietly elevated the material around her with unassuming grace. A Simple Favor, the gleefully absurd, indecently entertaining new comedy-mystery from Paul Feig, efficiently exploits Kendrick’s inherent geniality while also cannily subverting it. Her character, a single mom and moderately popular suburban vlogger named Stephanie, is sugary-sweet and aggressively eager—she’s always volunteering for multiple PTA assignments (her surname is literally Smothers)—but her helping hand has an iron grip. Her dainty exterior camouflages a mettle of steel, arousing your suspicion that she has something to hide.

But really, who doesn’t? One of the many pleasures of A Simple Favor, which is as much an amateur detective yarn as a pointed comedy of manners, lies in teasing us with misdirection and insinuation, encouraging us to anticipate its inevitable twists and turns. It’s being marketed as coming from Feig’s “darker side”, which is misleading on a few counts. To begin with, the former Freaks and Geeks showrunner is no stranger to troubling themes; even his more straightforward comedies, like Bridesmaids and Spy, carry undercurrents of sadness and pain. But more centrally, labeling this movie dark is false advertising. A Simple Favor may traffic in deception, seduction, and murder, but none of that changes the fact that, at its core, it’s a total fucking hoot. Read More

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Searching: Tumbling Down the Internet Rabbit Hole

Jeremy BeckReviews
John Cho is frantic online in "Searching"

Did you know that technology is, like, A Thing? Were you aware that people regularly communicate via the internet, often in the guise of false personas? Have you ever grappled with the reality that innovations in hardware and software have, in both positive and negative ways, forever changed the contours of human interaction? If your answer to these questions is no, then you are sure to be electrified by Searching, a clever and gimmicky little thriller directed by Aneesh Chaganty. But if you have even the faintest familiarity with online culture—if you have a Gmail account or an iPhone or a web browser—you may find this film’s purported insights to be stale and preachy. Who knew the kids these days were so darned secretive?

I dare say most of us. But just as we shouldn’t judge an online account based on its avatar (whoops, spoiler alert!), we shouldn’t judge a movie for its tiresome themes alone. And Searching, despite its occasional shrillness, is a taut and engaging potboiler, as well as an audacious formal exercise. It may not have anything meaningful to say about technology, but it does use that technology in new and interesting ways. Read More

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Juliet, Naked: London Calling, Washed-Up Rock Star Emailing

Jeremy BeckReviews
Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke in "Juliet, Naked"

If High Fidelity was a lovingly critical look at the maniacal behaviors of fandom—the all-consuming need to know as much as possible about popular artists, and to lord your superior tastes and knowledge over other worshippers of your ilk—Juliet, Naked is about the crippling consequences of artistry itself. Adapted, like High Fidelity, from a novel by Nick Hornby, it stars Ethan Hawke as Tucker Crowe, a has-been musician who a quarter-century ago released a beloved alt-rock album and then suddenly vanished from the public eye. Now he lives in his ex-wife’s garage in Upstate New York, barely knows four of the five children he fathered via four different women, and shuffles through grocery stores looking for cereal and gardening supplies. He’s like the ghost of Jeff Buckley crossed with the Dude from The Big Lebowski, if the Dude still collected royalty checks.

If that sounds like the recipe for a punishing study of squandered talent, never fear. Directed by TV veteran Jesse Peretz (Nurse Jackie, Girls) from a script by Evgenia Peretz (the director’s sister), Jim Taylor, and Tamara Jenkins, Juliet, Naked is a spry and largely delightful romantic comedy, a welcome summer breeze of warm humor and enveloping gentleness. It’s more of a curio than a landmark, which means it’s unlikely to be pored over for decades by the collectors and fanatics who populate Hornby’s works. But its disarming lightness should not be mistaken for insubstantiality. There’s craft in telling a story that’s decidedly pleasurable but doesn’t churn its sweetness into froth. Read More

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