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Gladiator II: And the Rome of the Slave

Jeremy BeckReviews
Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal in Gladiator II

One of the more memorable lines of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator was its hero’s insistence that what we do in life echoes in eternity. Maybe not, but it definitely echoes in sequels. Gladiator II, Scott’s quarter-century-later follow-up to the Best Picture winner of 2000, takes great pains to (strength and) honor its predecessor—not just by recalling dialogue or by repeating themes (the screenplay is by David Scarpa), but by crafting a story that latches onto the original’s skeleton like a necromantic barnacle. The result is less a mighty statue than a wispy hologram, aiming to resemble its predecessor but struggling to acquire its weight or texture.

The concept of diminishing returns in Hollywood is hardly new, and besides, it seems unfair to ding Scott and Scarpa for modeling so faithfully off of their existing blueprint. After all, what is a sequel but a continuation? Still, in its early going, Gladiator II threatens to develop its own personality, hinting toward narrative independence, if not stylistic novelty. Sure, the first time we see Hanno (Paul Mescal), he’s tending crops on his farm, a symbol of classical masculinity that inevitably recalls Russell Crowe’s Maximus dreaming of golden fields of swaying wheat. But any thoughts of gladiatorial combat or imperial destiny are far from Hanno’s mind; a legionnaire living in the humble province of Numidia, his more pressing concern is the advancing Roman army, led by a brilliant and ruthless general named Acacius (Pedro Pascal). Read More

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Rebel Ridge: Duck the Police

Jeremy BeckReviews
Don Johnson and Aaron Pierre in Rebel Ridge

Up until now, Jeremy Saulnier has been something of an “Imagine if” filmmaker. Whether centering on a hapless schmo embroiled in a deadly noir (Blue Ruin) or a punk-rock band trapped by bloodthirsty Nazis (Green Room), his movies have thrust ordinary people into impossible situations, forcing you to contemplate how you might respond in such drastic scenarios. With Rebel Ridge, he attempts to heighten both sides of his unbalanced equation while retaining the same fundamental sense of helplessness. The hero here is the opposite of an everyman; he’s smart, determined, and physically gifted. But he’s still the underdog, because the foe he’s facing is no less than the very institution of American policing.

The chief pleasure of Rebel Ridge is how it packages its big ideas—about racism, class entrenchment, and state-sanctioned violence—into a story that’s small-scale and tidy. Well, initially; as the film progresses, its thematic ambitions grow broader, which has the paradoxical effect of diminishing its boldness. Still, even if Saulnier isn’t always in full control of his thornier ideas, he remains in complete command of his immediate environment. As a polemic, Rebel Ridge is provocative but also uneven; as an action movie, it’s terrific. Read More

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Twisters: Storm Follows Function

Jeremy BeckReviews
Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell in Twisters

No cows fly in Twisters, but there’s still plenty of bullshit. Directed by Lee Isaac Chung from a script by Mark L. Smith, this muscular movie skillfully  and predictably conjures devastating cyclones capable of demolishing entire towns, but the most powerful force on display is the manipulative currents of the screenplay. If you’re having trouble distinguishing between the heroes and the villains, just wait for the scene where an anxious storm chaser expresses concern for the people of a nearby hamlet, only for his companion to snarl in response, “I don’t care about the people!”

So no, Twisters, like its singular-titled 1996 predecessor (with which it shares a spiritual lineage but no narrative connection), is not a work of great subtlety. But it is nonetheless a competent blockbuster—generally diverting and sporadically delightful, with pleasant characters and robust spectacle. Even its emotional hackwork is often agreeable, thanks to the warmth and agility of its cast. Read More

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Furiosa, a Mad Max Saga: Witness Glee

Jeremy BeckReviews
Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa

We often talk about directors playing around in a metaphorical sandbox, but George Miller uses the most actual sand. The Australian auteur has made an impressive variety of pictures—a sick-kid melodrama, an animated penguin musical, a mythological whatsit about a narratologist and her djinn—but he’ll forever be associated with the Mad Max films, those apocalyptic action epics where he wanders into the desert and smashes his million-dollar toys into bits. It isn’t quite that Miller keeps making the same movie over and over—more that he keeps finding new ways to reignite the simple, cathartic charge of vehicles speeding across the screen and bursting into flames. Furiosa represents his fifth such effort, and whether or not it’s his best (must our infernal culture always rank things?), it’s proof that he’s gotten awfully good at blowing things up.

In quantitative terms, Furiosa is a less herculean effort than its immediate precursor, Mad Max: Fury Road, which achieved cinematic immortality for its wall-to-wall (dune-to-dune?) automotive carnage. I remain a modest dissenter to Fury Road’s reception as a modern masterpiece—for all its brawny magnificence, it’s deficient in terms of theme and character—but I admire it for its bravura skill and relentless momentum; aside from a brief (and fairly dull) interlude by a desolate tree, it’s essentially one long, exhilarating car chase. Structurally, Furiosa is more conventional, using rip-roaring set pieces as exclamation points as it unspools a fraught, sprawling narrative. Yet conceptually, it’s far more ambitious—spanning decades instead of days, adopting a Tarantino-esque blueprint (five numbered chapters), and interrogating the ecstasy and futility of vengeance. Read More

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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes: Monkey See, Monkey Coup

Jeremy BeckReviews
Owen Teague, Freya Allan, and Peter Macon in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Whose side are you on? That was the key question posed by the most recent Planet of the Apes trilogy, which didn’t just chronicle an evolutionary shift where monkeys grew smarter as people got dumber; it framed humans as creatures of crudity and barbarism, thereby realigning our rooting interests to the hyperintelligent chimpanzees who warred against our own species. By the end of War for the Planet of the Apes, this battle appeared to be resolved; primates were now autonomous, while a devastating virus had crippled humans into a mute tribe of limited intellect. But in our era of IP churn, no franchise can remain dormant for long, and so now we have Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which takes place “many generations” after the events of War and which unfolds in a broadly post-human landscape. This means the issue is no longer whether we’re cheering for the monkeys or the men, but whether the simians selected as heroes can prevail versus foes who are also—in a biological sense—fellows.

This raises a more troubling question: Is Kingdom really a Planet of the Apes movie at all? On one level, the query is absurd; the troops of computer-generated monkeys clambering across the screen definitively establish that we’re located in the same cinematic universe where Charlton Heston screamed in anguish all those years ago (and, more recently, where Andy Serkis led an uprising on the Golden Gate Bridge). But despite some developmental tension—humans do in fact exist in this world, and while they’re generally regarded as inferior beings, some are less inferior than others—Kingdom is largely a portrait of intraspecies conflict, one that soberly violates the edict from the prior trilogy, “Ape not kill ape.” As a result, its story of tribal warfare and imperial conquest could mirror any number of historical pictures about rival clans. The warriors here just happen to be furrier than usual. Read More

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