Bohemian Rhapsody: Thunderbolt and Lightning, Not Very Frightening

Jeremy BeckReviews
Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury in "Bohemian Rhapsody"

Sparring with a grumpy studio executive over the direction of his ascendant band, Freddie Mercury insists that Queen’s new record will have operatic overtones, thereby defying the traditional formula of “Do it again, only bigger.” The suit balks. “I like formula,” he retorts, and well he should; formula has made him money. Bohemian Rhapsody, the new middle-of-the-road biopic about Mercury and Queen, frames this studio head as an out-of-touch buffoon, a crass businessman solely interested in profit and utterly lacking in artistic vision; the band, in contrast, is perceived as constantly knocking down barriers and fearlessly reinventing itself.

The juxtaposition is ironic, because while Bohemian Rhapsody may chronicle 15 years in the life of one of rock-and-roll’s seminal musicians, in terms of ambition and execution, it is entirely on the side of the suit. Which is to say: This movie is pure formula. Take a solitary dreamer with starry eyes and a disapproving dad; introduce him to some pleasant and unmemorable fellow aspirants looking for their own big break; show the group coming together to create some of rock’s classic tunes; follow a montage of their success with a reveal of slowly deepening fissures of dissension; mix in some substance abuse and romantic trauma; conclude with a harmonious reunion that reminds everyone of the unsullied joy of making music. Stuff everything in a blender and press “Play”, then wait for the dollars to start pouring out. Read More

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Suspiria: Witchy Women, Dying and Born Again

Jeremy BeckReviews
Dakota Johnson dances her way into Hell in "Suspiria"

Dance is death in Suspiria, Luca Guadagnino’s insane, exasperating, furiously watchable remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 cult classic. The collision of beauty and brutality on stage is hardly novel; Black Swan gave us a feral portrait of a performer who helplessly sacrificed her body and her sanity in the pursuit of artistic perfection. But Suspiria posits ballet as a more malevolent sort of blood sport, where lithe women twirl and leap and crash, all while sinister forces lurk behind the gleaming mirrors and beneath the polished floorboards, eager to feed on the talents of the young. I’m not speaking metaphorically; this really is a movie about a desiccated matriarch who craves to transplant her soul from her own befouled body into the supple flesh of an unsuspecting protégé. And you thought the battles in the Step Up franchise were intense!

Of course, Suspiria is more (or maybe less) than a gonzo supernatural thriller. “I could explain everything to you; I think that would be wrong, though,” an instructor murmurs to an unnerved pupil. I can’t explain much of anything to you, because this movie defies easy description, even as it eagerly courts post-hoc analysis. Suffice it to say that Suspiria seems to be about many things. Perhaps it’s about the intersection of political activism and grass-roots fanaticism, given that it’s set in Germany 1977 and glancingly depicts (by way of news broadcasts and radio snippets) the death knell of the Baader-Meinhof movement. Maybe it’s about femininity and solidarity, seeing as it traces the relationships—the camaraderie, the rivalries, the jealousy and admiration—of a company of female dancers at an elite academy. Maybe it’s about self-discovery; its main character, Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson), initially enters the conservatory’s halls with timidity, only to quickly reveal herself as an ambitious and capable dancer with a hunger for stardom. Maybe it’s about the persistence of fascism; how else to explain the extensive subplot about an elderly German man searching for his wife, who’s believed to have vanished decades ago at the Concentration Camps? Or maybe it’s just about a bunch of old women who want to be young again. Read More

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The Hate U Give: Beaten Down, Then Speaking Up

Jeremy BeckReviews
Amandla Stenberg in "The Hate U Give"

Overstuffed yet bracing, predictable yet provocative, The Hate U Give is above all defiantly, unapologetically loud. Yet it opens with a scene of sober, ominous quiet. As the camera glides through the fictional Compton-esque neighborhood of Garden Heights, it locks on a two-story house and creeps through an open window, where a man, Maverick, is talking with his wife and three children at the kitchen table. It could be any chat where a parent imparts advice about the larger world—about sex, politics, family values—but here, Maverick (Russell Hornsby) is calmly but forcefully telling his kids how to behave if they ever when they inevitably get pulled over by the police. Keep your hands flat on the dashboard, he says. Be respectful. Don’t make any sudden movements; don’t give them any reason to hurt you. The burden, he patiently explains to his kids, isn’t on the cops; it’s on them. His children, all under the age of 10, listen intently, as though their father is teaching them about the difference between life and death. Which, of course, he is.

In making The Hate U Give, the director George Tillman Jr. faces an unusual and somewhat perverse challenge. Tasked with adapting Angie Thomas’ bestselling novel to the screen, he must dramatize a fictional story—about the fallout of a white police officer killing an unarmed black youth—in an era where such events are horribly, commonly real. In a country already familiar with the tragic deaths of actual people—many of whom the film name-checks, including Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, and Philando Castile—do we really need an entertaining yarn about invented characters suffering the same fate? Read More

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The Old Man & the Gun: Hands Up, Please, This Is a Respectful Robbery

Jeremy BeckReviews
Sissy Spacek and Robert Redford in "The Old Man & the Gun"

Describing Robert De Niro’s vicious mobster in Goodfellas, Ray Liotta says, “What he really loved to do was steal; I mean, he actually enjoyed it.” David Lowery’s The Old Man & the Gun also follows a real-life criminal with a genuine passion for robbery, but that’s pretty much where the similarities between the two films end. Never one to tackle genre material head-on—Ain’t Them Bodies Saints was ostensibly about lovers on a shooting spree, but it was really just a collage of pretty Texas pictures overlaid by Malickian voiceover—Lowery paints this story’s true-crime elements with a warm, humanist gloss. What would typically play as a gritty thriller—there’s even a cops-and-robbers angle, with an obsessed detective who makes it his mission to capture this audacious thief—instead unfolds as a leisurely character study of aging and contentment.

Mostly, The Old Man & the Gun is a showcase for Robert Redford, appearing in what is supposedly his final role. He plays Forrest Tucker, the felon who, as relayed in the David Grann article that formed the basis for Lowery’s screenplay, robbed nearly 100 banks over a 60-year span, escaping from prison more than a dozen times in the process. That’s quite the rap sheet, but Redford doesn’t exaggerate Tucker’s legend or puff up his stature. Instead, he delivers a sly and twinkly performance, investing this sundance elder with a strange integrity that’s part-pride, part-grace. Read More

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First Man: Making History, One Small Step at a Time

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ryan Gosling shoots for the moon in "First Man".

Just how crazy did you have to be to become an astronaut? These guys clearly must have had a screw loose, because so did their spaceships. At one point in Damien Chazelle’s First Man, as intrepid explorers are piling into a bucket of bolts that’s designed to blast them into the stratosphere, the crew struggles to fasten somebody’s seat belt. The solution: “Anybody got a Swiss Army knife?” That’s right, these are multi-million-dollar missions spearheaded by the country’s greatest minds, yet somehow they’re repairing their vehicles with trinkets from your 10-year-old’s tool kit.

That scene is a blackly comic moment, but it also illuminates the forces that drive First Man’s characters, and its maker. Chazelle’s Whiplash was a bracing portrait of single-minded obsession in the pursuit of perfection; his follow-up, La La Land, was simply perfect, but it also involved artists who dreamed of glory and self-fulfillment. Yet where those movies were taut and intimate, First Man operates on a grand scale, seeking to compress nine years of scientific exploration into two-plus hours of white-knuckle adventure. It’s a monumental undertaking, and for the first time, you can see Chazelle strain, laboring to deliver the epic goods. But he remains a prodigiously gifted filmmaker, and even if First Man lacks the effortless fluidity of his prior works, it also routinely serves up sequences and images that are, literally and figuratively, out of this world. Read More

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