Comedy

The Suicide Squad: I Think I’m Gonna Thrill Myself

Jeremy BeckReviews
John Cena in Idris Elba in The Suicide Squad

What makes a good superhero movie? Given the routine onslaught of costumed crusaders at the multiplex, the question seems pertinent. It also seems irrelevant, as the discourse surrounding the genre’s overall merits—a perpetual battle between triumphant, weirdly hostile fans (comics rule, deal with it!) and bitter, exasperated detractors (get a life, nerds!)—tends to feel preprogrammed, regardless of the particular installment at issue. But even if all superhero flicks are the same, some are less the same than others. And The Suicide Squad, the entertaining and ridiculous sequel/reboot/standalone/whatever from James Gunn, possesses an unusually keen understanding of how such films should work. Funny, colorful, and only occasionally tedious, it keys in on two fundamental truths: Superheroes are comedians, and superheroes are psychopaths.

It’s easy to miss that second one, as popular culture tends to connote masked vigilantism with virtuous qualities: responsibility, integrity, sacrifice. (They’re called superheroes, after all.) The job’s less savory aspects—the constant deception, the maniacal narcissism, the extralegal beatdowns—tend to be secondary considerations, or obstacles of self-doubt that the protagonist must hurdle en route to saving the world and getting the girl. One nice thing about The Suicide Squad is that it scarcely bothers to imbue its demented warriors with any righteousness or internal conflict. Instead, their motivations are squarely selfish; most of them are convicts, and they agree to participate in the obligatory searching and rescuing in exchange for years being shaved off their prison sentences. And of course, if any of them misbehaves or goes off mission, then their no-nonsense director, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis, all business), will remotely detonate the explosive charge embedded in their skull. Read More

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I Care a Lot: Lies of the Guardians

Jeremy BeckReviews
Rosamund Pike in I Care a Lot

Even before you see her blond bob, you know instantly that Rosamund Pike’s newest star vehicle will find her working in the same vein of coolly ruthless savagery that she mined so brilliantly in Gone Girl. That much is clear from her opening voiceover, which finds the crisply talented actor once again ditching her British lilt for a capable American accent, and which concludes with her declaring, “I am a fucking lioness.” It’s an accurate if unnecessary introduction; one glare from her cold-blue eyes or one puff from her vape pen, and it’s plain that Pike’s Marla Grayson is a lethal predator. She plays for keeps, even when the game is other people’s lives.

This description might sounds like the template for a dark and provocative study of sociopathy, but I Care a Lot isn’t especially interested in digging into the pathologies of its protagonist. It isn’t interested in much of anything, really, beyond treating viewers to a rollicking good time with bad people. And this, it mostly does. Written and directed with slick snap by J. Blakeson, it coasts amiably on the gifts of its cast and the jolts of its pulp, untroubled by its own vacuity. Small wonder Marla is its hero. Read More

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Soul: It’s All About Goals. Or Is It?

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jamie Foxx in Pixar's "Soul"

There may not be a venue explicitly called Imagination Land in Pete Docter’s latest feature, but there’s still plenty of innovation and ingenuity. Soul, the new movie from the Pixar standout, is another triumph, an inspired mix of vibrant animation, rich storytelling, and powerful themes. It asks big, probing questions—about life and death, art and commerce, work and pleasure—while also making generous room for ticking-clock suspense and broad comedy. This is a sweeping metaphysical adventure tale, complete with fart jokes.

The signature achievement of Soul is its conception of the Great Before, a vast supernatural laboratory of sorts where human personalities are forged before birth. Advancements in technology have allowed animators to pack the frame with infinite minutiae, but Docter’s approach here is spare and restrained. The realm he’s conceived is gently pastoral, a luminous land of rolling hills, peaceful meadows, and placid lakes. The blue-and-purple color scheme is similarly serene, smoothly shifting between various hues of turquoise and lavender. And the world’s essential openness—its sense of being permanently incomplete—feels not like a failure of vision, but like a gift from creator to viewer. Some fictional environments are overwhelming in their detail. Docter lets you fill in the blanks. Read More

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Streaming Roundup: Borat 2, His House, On the Rocks, Rebecca, and The Witches

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Sope Dirisu in "His House"; Maria Bakalova in "Borat 2"; Anne Hathaway in "The Witches"; Lily James in "Rebecca"; and Bill Murray in "On the Rocks"

Not long ago, the United States was rocked by a seismic event—one that historians will be grappling with for generations, and one that threatens to further divide an already polarized nation. I’m talking, of course, about the new Sofia Coppola movie.

OK, OK, settle down. The 2020 presidential election may be unprecedented in a variety of ways—voter turnout, disinformation campaigns, whispered implications of an outright coup—but even it couldn’t derail the movies, which keep getting made and released. We here at the Manifesto have been a bit busy of late obsessively tracking every electoral development doing important confidential work, so let’s catch up with some capsule looks at five recent streaming titles. Read More

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Unpregnant, The Glorias, and Women Directing Women

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Julianne Moore in "The Glorias"; Haley Lu Richardson and Barbie Ferreira in "Unpregnant"

The COVID-19 pandemic has ruined lives, crippled economies, and paralyzed entire nations, but what has it meant for the movies? The received wisdom is that 2020 has been a lost year for cinema, and there’s a degree of truth to that; I’ve lost count of how many major studio releases have been delayed until 2021 or beyond, and many other films—which ordinarily would have had the opportunity to chase eyeballs on the big screen—were unceremoniously interred in the graveyard that is VOD. But while it’s understandable to lament the movies that this year has taken from us, it’s also important to acknowledge those that it’s given us. The dearth of blockbusters created a cinematic vacuum that was promptly and happily filled by scrappier, less conventional titles: quirky comedies, chilling horror flicks, tender romances, robust actioners. And many of these movies came from a demographic that Hollywood has long neglected: They were directed by women.

Perhaps this has nothing to do with COVID-19; maybe 2020 was already shaping up to be the Year of the Woman even before the coronavirus reached American shores. Regardless of causality, it’s oddly invigorating to survey the year’s best films and to see how many were helmed by women, and with such variety. Consider: the quiet agony of The Assistant and the boisterous fun of Birds of Prey. The contemporary sadness of Cuties and the classical enchantment of Emma. The male friendship of First Cow and the female solidarity of Never Rarely Sometimes Always. (I dissented on both The Old Guard and Shirley, but other critics would surely point to them as well.) Women have always been making good movies, but their collective voice seems to be growing louder now, telling stories of ever-greater urgency and vitality. Read More

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