The Post: Stop the Presses, or Else

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in Steven Spielberg's "The Post"

Describe The Post in terms of its plot, and you risk making it sound like a bore. Here is a based-in-fact film about a band of huffy journalists who squabble with a cadre of wussy pencil-pushers about whether to publish a newspaper article; these are not typically the raw materials of exciting drama. Yet because we currently live in a society where the government openly wages war on the press, The Post is one of the most important political movies of our time. And because it has been directed by Steven Spielberg, it is also one of our most enjoyable.

In recognizing the former, one should be careful not to ignore the latter. The unnerving topicality of The Post threatens to overshadow just how effortlessly it works as a piece of cinema, how sharply crafted and exquisitely performed it is. Employing his characteristic care and vigor, Spielberg has almost imperceptibly transformed the film’s bustling narrative—a thicket of murky backroom meetings, lavish dinner parties, and complex legal proceedings—into a rousing and supremely entertaining production. Contemporary circumstances may have rendered The Post regrettably relevant, but this movie would be a delight to watch regardless of who’s sitting in the Oval Office. Read More

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Call Me by Your Name: One Lazy Summer, a Dance of Desire

Jeremy BeckReviews
Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer in "Call Me by Your Name"

“So what do you do around here?” Oliver asks Elio early in Call Me by Your Name, Luca Guadagnino’s feverish, unusual love story. In response, the 17-year-old ticks off a number of banal activities—he reads, he swims, he parties—but his answer basically amounts to, “Not much.” Over the course of its 132-minute running time, Call Me by Your Name stirs up a broad array of emotions—desire, heartache, anger, elation, grief—but what it perhaps evokes most effectively is that ineffable state of boyhood restlessness, the feeling of being suspended in a cocoon where nothing of consequence ever happens. Elio is something of an intellectual and musical prodigy (“Is there anything you don’t know?” an amused Oliver asks), but as the movie opens, he is nevertheless waiting for his life to begin.

By the time the film ends, he’ll have undergone a transformative experience that will feel largely familiar to enthusiasts of coming-of-age cinema. Yet while Call Me by Your Name travels well-covered narrative terrain, it is not exactly typical. It is, in essence, a strange telling of a normal story. In chronicling the standard tale of a young man discovering himself, Guadagnino has retained the basic elements but altered them, glazing them with a peculiar finish that mixes awkwardness with compassion. To watch the film is to feel by turns frustrated, surprised, confused, and blissful—you know, kind of like falling in love. Read More

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Darkest Hour: Taking Power, Then Feeling Powerless

Jeremy BeckReviews
Gary Oldman is Winston Churchill in Joe Wright's "Darkest Hour"

Let us dispense immediately with the obvious and unfortunate comparison: Darkest Hour is no Dunkirk. It isn’t designed to be, of course; Joe Wright’s terse examination of Winston Churchill’s tumultuous ascension to Prime Minister is styled as an informative docudrama and a thoughtful character study, not an epic war film. Still, it’s rotten luck for Wright’s movie that it opened a mere four months after Christopher Nolan’s, given that the gap in intensity between the two films equates roughly to the length of the English Channel. It’s tempting to suggest pairing them as a double feature—after all, both chronicle the fateful events of Europe in May of 1940, albeit from opposite sides of the Channel—but in the wake of the pulverizing heroics of Dunkirk, the political brawls of Darkest Hour feel more like a palette cleanser, or maybe a sleeping pill.

Again, this (dis)similarity is not Darkest Hour’s fault. And while it’s unlikely to get anyone’s pulse racing, this modest movie sports its own elegant pleasures, chief among them affirmation of its director’s silky cinematic talents. Ever since his feature debut (the deeply underrated Pride & Prejudice), Wright has demonstrated a knack for wielding classical tools—camera placement, composition, lighting—in ways that feel invigorating rather than staid. His formidable abilities are again on display here, operating with a visual panache that does wonders to enliven his wobbly, predictable narrative. In Wright’s hands, shafts of sunlight and swirls of shadow become characters in their own right, turning every frame of the film into its own gorgeously told micro-story. There’s always something stunning to see on screen in Darkest Hour, even if you’re also invariably just watching crusty old men argue. Read More

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Molly’s Game: Shoving All-In, with Her Cards and Her Soul

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba in Aaron Sorkin's "Molly's Game"

Molly’s Game is about an obscenely intelligent drug addict who wields her intellect and verbal dexterity to achieve professional fortune and personal satisfaction. Which drug addict, you might ask? The film’s protagonist is Molly Bloom, the so-called “Poker Princess” who ran outrageously high-stakes games of Texas hold ’em for movie stars, hedge fund managers, socialites, and other reprobates. But scrub the gender-specific pronoun from the description, and we could just as easily be talking about Aaron Sorkin, the uber-literate Oscar-winner who battled substance abuse on his way to becoming one of America’s most recognizable and divisive wordsmiths. It’s easy to see what attracted Sorkin to Bloom, and to perceive Molly’s Game—his crackling, robustly entertaining directorial debut—as a kind of cracked-mirror self-portrait, as well as a flick about a babe with brains.

Yet even if Molly’s Game is in part a stealth vanity project for Sorkin, it also functions as a well-calibrated response to one of the most common complaints lobbed against him: his inability to write strong roles for women. With her sky-high stilettos and low-cut cocktail dresses (“the Cinemax version of myself”), Molly can occasionally suggest a male screenwriter’s fantasy of feminine sexuality—in fact, she makes this very point to one of her clients who pathetically confesses his love for her—but she is too forceful a presence to be reduced to a mere object. Brought to flaring, ferocious life by Jessica Chastain, Molly reveals herself as a number of things over the course of the movie—a manipulator, a visionary, a lamb, a lioness—but in no way is she a minor player. Read More

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi: As a New Hope Emerges, an Old Fight Rages On

Jeremy BeckReviews
Daisy Ridley and Mark Hamill in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"

For all its deafening noise and frantic activity, Star Wars: The Force Awakens concluded with a quiet and surprisingly stirring image: the aspiring Jedi named Rey (Daisy Ridley) tentatively approaching the long-vanished Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill, as if you didn’t already know), reaching out to offer him his cherished lightsaber. It was a tantalizing ending, one that sent Star Wars fans—a sect that, according to the box-office receipts, appears to constitute most of the known world—into a state of delirious anticipation that has persisted for two full years. So it is difficult to exaggerate the audacity with which The Last Jedi, the eighth episode in the Star Wars saga (excluding the standalone Rogue One), chooses to resume this fateful encounter set on the verdant island planet of Ahch-To. Rather than expressing gratitude or even curiosity toward Rey’s arrival, Luke simply accepts the weapon, grimaces, and promptly flings it over a cliff.

This is a hilarious scene, a swift and brutal undercutting of fans’ long-gestating expectations. Yet it also symbolizes the refreshing streak of independence that Rian Johnson, The Last Jedi’s fearless writer and director, has brought to cinema’s most gargantuan franchise. The Force Awakens was a fun and spirited adventure, but it also felt somewhat safe, J.J. Abrams carefully returning the enterprise to the tracks that George Lucas’ (unfairly) maligned prequels so gleefully leapt off. The Last Jedi, by contrast, is a more interesting and exciting movie, flawed in its own ways but charged with genuine unpredictability and risk. In taking the reins from Abrams, Johnson pledges fealty to no one—not even Star Wars fans. Read More

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