Holiday Gift Bag: Mary Poppins Returns

Emily Blunt in "Mary Poppins Returns"

The book on Mary Poppins is that she’s practically perfect in every way. Like most movies, Mary Poppins Returns, which returns to the home of the Banks family on Cherry Tree Lane after a 54-year absence, is not perfect; it isn’t even very good. But it is hard to quibble with the rightness of Emily Blunt’s performance as the titular nanny, all withering glares and superior disdain. As a singer, Blunt is no Julie Andrews (who is?), but her perfectly calibrated acidity helps anchor a film that is otherwise so flimsy, it’s prone to drift off into nothingness, sliding up a banister until it disappears into the ether.

Not that Mary Poppins Returns is quiet. Directed by Rob Marshall, who seems to have become the emissary of the new-age Hollywood musical almost by default, it boasts a number of suitably impressive and boisterous numbers, which have been staged with evident care and skill. Yet there is a dispiriting adequacy to Marshall’s choreography, a lack of genuine wonder and flair. The music here is perfectly fine, but it seems unlikely that any of the songs will grow to acquire the classic status of “A Spoonful of Sugar”, or even join the ranks of more recent Disney hits such as “Let It Go” and “You’re Welcome”. Read More

Holiday Gift Bag: Vice

Christian Bale is Dick Cheney in Adam McKay's "Vice"

Adam McKay fancies himself an educator. He may clothe his films in the garb of genre, but only as a way to stealthily impart some wisdom onto unsuspecting audiences. And so, The Other Guys was a dumb buddy-cop comedy that attempted to smuggle in some rhetoric about financial malfeasance; The Big Short more directly addressed the collapse of America’s housing market, but it did so in the guise of a playful procedural, chronicling how a few smart guys got rich while the banks went bankrupt. Now comes Vice, a cheerful comedy that also happens to be a biopic of one of the nation’s most loathsome politicians, Dick Cheney.

You may quarrel with McKay’s politics, but you cannot deny that as a director, he has developed his own signature style. That is not a compliment. Vice, which hectically barrels through four decades of Cheney’s life before slowing its pace slightly during his fateful years in the Bush administration, often seems like a two-hour music video—the ugliest, messiest, least sexy such video ever made. Each shaky shot is held for approximately two seconds, while every scene is constantly interrupted by a barrage of random inserts, whether quick-hitting flashbacks or footage of wildlife metaphorically moving in for the kill. It’s like if a history textbook were animated by Paul Greengrass. Read More

Holiday Gift Bag: Aquaman

Amber Heard and Jason Momoa in "Aquaman"

Aquaman is a fun superhero movie. That is a significant achievement. To be clear, I don’t subscribe to the ideology that modern superheroes are too dark; I admire the solemn gravity of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films, the melancholic humanity of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man pictures, and even the interplanetary terrorism of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But it’s important to remember that Hollywood’s current (and seemingly inexhaustible) superhero franchise churn stemmed from kids geeking out over comics and playing with toys. Aquaman, directed with energy and vibrancy by James Wan, pays tribute to that spirit of youthful exuberance. It’s a movie about a big merman searching for a giant fork, and it’s a blast. Read More

Holiday Gift Bag: Mary Queen of Scots

Saoirse Ronan in "Mary Queen of Scots"

Sure, Brexit is bonkers, but should we have expected anything else from England? As the movies of 2018 seem intent on reminding us, this is a nation with a thoroughly absurd history, a vast empire that routinely suffered internecine conflict and insurrection. After The Favourite showed us the ludicrous extravagances of Stuart England, now comes Mary Queen of Scots to take on the Tudors, when Catholics and Protestants were mortal enemies and Henry VIII cycled through queens like a hedge fund manager on Tinder. Of course, Henry died not long after Mary Stuart was born, but as this engrossing and enjoyable film relays, his spirit of monarchial chaos raged on. Read More

Holiday Gift Bag: Ben Is Back

Julia Roberts in "Ben Is Back"

For someone whose smile is insured for $30 million, Julia Roberts is often glum on screen, consciously pushing back against the stereotype that she’s only persuasive in cheery rom-coms. But in too many dramatic roles—Secret in Their Eyes, August: Osage County, Closer—the gifted actress overcompensates, throttling down her charisma so severely, only an empty shell remains. So it’s gratifying to see Roberts deliver as rich and complete a performance as she gives in Ben Is Back, where she plays Holly, a woman who’s simultaneously elated and terrified. The source of Holly’s joy and fear is the return of—sorry, no points for guessing—Ben (Lucas Hedges), her son, a born charmer who is also a drug addict. Read More