Thor: Ragnarok: God of Thunder, Bringer of Rain, Cracker of Jokes

Jeremy BeckReviews
Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston smirk and squabble in "Thor: Ragnarok"

Midway through Thor: Ragnarok, a creature called Korg—a soft-spoken gladiator whose body is composed entirely of lumpy blue rocks—informs the God of Thunder that the planet they’re currently inhabiting doesn’t really make sense. It may not be coincidental that Korg is voiced by Taika Waititi, the film’s director and impish guiding spirit. A New Zealand native best known for his fanciful comedies (What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople), Waititi may not seem an intuitive choice to helm Ragnarok, the third Thor-centric feature and the seventeenth(!) installment in the corporatized mushroom cloud that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yet Waititi’s gift of whimsy proves perfectly suited for the MCU, thanks to a deceptively similar set of priorities. The Marvel movies, for all their lumbering technological clamor, have typically been better at dialogue and character than at action and story, and Waititi embraces that hierarchy with energy and savvy. He realizes that, if you’re going to make a senseless comic-book movie, you might as well make it fun.

And make no mistake: This movie is senseless. Perhaps comic-book aficionados can assemble its random artifacts and fantastical esoterica—fire demons and bi-frosts, eternal flames and infinity stones, cryptic prophecies and resurrected skeletons—into an intelligible map, but even an intimate understanding of Marvel mythology cannot provide Ragnarok with any narrative logic. Nor can it instill any legitimate stakes or tension into a product that is, in broad strokes, entirely predictable. (Given Marvel’s commitment to the perpetual expansion of its sequel-happy universe, it is hardly a spoiler to declare that no Avengers were harmed in the making of this film.) But unlike the first two Thor pictures—which felt leaden and lifeless, weighed down by their ostensible otherworldliness—Ragnarok seizes on its own silliness. When it comes to enjoying this frolicsome, jokey adventure, the plot’s lack of relevance proves irrelevant. Read More

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Thank You for Your Service: Back from War, Now Fighting Demons

Jeremy BeckReviews
Miles Teller and Beulah Koale struggle with PTSD in "Thank You for Your Service"

In the best scene in American Sniper, a one-legged veteran (Mindhunter’s Jonathan Groff) cautiously approaches Bradley Cooper’s titular Navy SEAL in an auto shop and warmly thanks him for saving his life during battle. It’s a moment that ordinarily would play as sweet and triumphant, but instead it’s awkward and tentative, as Cooper’s laconic soldier is utterly incapable of handling such direct gratitude. Now, Sniper screenwriter Jason Hall homes in on that discomfort with Thank You for Your Service, a humane and sober movie that tackles the war after the war.

Based on a book by David Finkel, Thank You for Your Service is a film of such unimpeachable decency—well-intentioned, understanding, respectful—that it’s virtually impossible to disapprove of. But those same qualities make it difficult to enjoy, or even really admire, as a piece of cinema. It’s more message than movie, and while the message—that post-traumatic stress disorder is a serious illness, and that many of our veterans need psychiatric help far more than they need banal platitudes—is undoubtedly worth conveying, the delivery system lacks oomph. It’s a movingly penned essay that just happens to unfold on screen. Read More

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The Florida Project: The Tragic Kingdom

Jeremy BeckReviews
Willem Dafoe and Brooklynn Kimberly Prince in "The Florida Project"

It’s a funny thing, how a movie can sneak up on you. Take The Florida Project, Sean Baker’s striking and incrementally devastating new film, which transpires over the course of a languid summer in a low-rent motel complex just outside of Orlando. An attentive humanist with a keen eye for illuminative details, Baker is committed to conveying the sweaty tedium that afflicts his hard-luck characters. In fact, he so convincingly captures the housing development’s collective lethargy—the sweltering heat, the pervasive boredom, the maddening feeling of having nothing to do—that he is almost too successful. For the first half hour that I spent watching these restless children scampering around bland parking lots and darting through paint-peeling hallways, I found myself stifling a yawn. So imagine my surprise when, as the movie barreled into its mesmerizing climax, tears welled in my eyes and my heart pounded in my chest. The Florida Project starts with a snooze. It ends with a sledgehammer.

Not that its beginning is entirely disposable. Even when the movie flirts with narrative monotony, it always offers something visually arresting. Baker’s last film was Tangerine, a day-in-the-life story that was notable not just because it starred two transgender actresses, but because it was shot entirely on an iPhone. The Florida Project, by contrast, is triumphantly widescreen, with a brilliantly vivid palette and elegantly composed frames that recall the formal mastery of Raise the Red Lantern. The opening act essentially functions as a tour of the neighborhood, a candy-colored district dotted with dopily themed motels, indistinguishable strip malls, and rinky-dink food stands. The pastels keep popping, from the cheery orange glow of a grocery to the powder blue of a gift shop to the gentle lavender of the titular housing complex, a bleak and raucous purgatory called The Magic Castle. Read More

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The Meyerowitz Stories: The Kids Are All Wrong

Jeremy BeckReviews
Misery reigns in "The Meyerowitz Stories"

You might think, upon learning that The Meyerowitz Stories stars Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller—and that it includes a scene where the two slap-fight and wrestle pathetically on a university quad—that the movie is a stupid comedy. It isn’t, though it does feature a number of acrid laughs and a few displays of idiocy. Instead, The Meyerowitz Stories is another of writer-director Noah Baumbach’s incisive portraits of insecurity and indecision. As with many of his films, it’s sharply observed, making it more thoughtful than enjoyable; Baumbach’s talent for conjuring realistically flawed people is so pronounced that it becomes almost uncomfortable. Watching this astute, upsetting movie, you are likely to wince frequently, partly because its characters tend to behave terribly, and partly because you will recognize in them slivers of your friends, your family, and yourself.

Told in a seemingly patchwork fashion that’s deceptively coherent, The Meyerowitz Stories is in some ways a genealogical exercise, examining the strained relationships that form the branches of a cluttered family tree. The crusty patriarch is Harold (Dustin Hoffman), a sculptor of minor renown who is constantly explaining to polite listeners why his work is so underappreciated. He is more enamored of his art than of his three children, each of whom carries lingering scars and resentments from their childhood. Danny (Sandler) once had aspirations of being a musician, but he ended up a house husband, and he’s now crashing in his father’s Brooklyn brownstone after separating from his wife. His sister, Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), works a dull office job in Rochester but often drives down to the city to help keep the peace and laments that nobody pays attention to her. And their half-brother, Matthew (Stiller), long ago escaped the family’s suffocating New York vortex for LA, where he thrives as some sort of accountant (Baumbach is intentionally vague on the details) but battles marital woes and middle-age ennui. Read More

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Blade Runner 2049: A Dark Future, Bathed in Beauty and Sorrow

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ryan Gosling in Denis Villeneuve's "Blade Runner 2049"

Tears do indeed fall in rain in Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve’s grave and gorgeous sequel to Ridley Scott’s 35-year-old cult classic. Consider those tears an easter egg for the original’s ardent admirers. A vocal pocket of cinephilia can surely recite from memory the original Blade Runner’s “tears in rain” speech, delivered mournfully by Rutger Hauer on a desolate rooftop all those years ago. But while the passion of those fans doubtless drove the development of this follow-up, Villeneuve’s film does far more than simply pay homage to its predecessor. When I say that I’ve seen Blade Runner 2049, what I mean is—to quote the first line of Hauer’s soliloquy—I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.

The exquisite craftsmanship of Blade Runner 2049 is staggering, but it is not exactly surprising. Over the past several years—beginning with Prisoners, then continuing with Sicario and Arrival—Villeneuve has demonstrated his ability to deliver robust, stealthily provocative genre films inside striking and elegant packages. And his regular cinematographer, Roger Deakins (aka “the legendary Roger Deakins”), is responsible for some of this century’s most breathtaking images, most notably in works by the Coen Brothers and Sam Mendes. Blade Runner 2049 represents these two artists operating at the absolute peak of their visual powers. This is, quite simply, a movie of flabbergasting beauty. Scene after scene reveals new marvels: a cloaked figure venturing into a burnt-orange desert, clouds of dust swirling around him; a sepulchral, yellow-tinted palace, where light and shadow swim on the walls; a giant glowing hologram, backlit by the night sky, beckoning to her minuscule quarry, a mere man who—like the rest of us—can only gape upward in awe. Read More

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