Comedy

Emma: Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Show Me a Catch

Jeremy BeckReviews
Anya Taylor-Joy in "Emma"

Jane Austen’s Emma is a comedy of manners, which of course means that nobody in it is actually polite. It may unfurl in high society—the kind where estates have proper names, like Donwell Abbey and Hartfield —but its veneer of decorum is a mere smokescreen, camouflaging base instincts of lust, greed, and jealousy. Its language is unfailingly civil, with a premium placed on honorifics—Mr. Elton! Miss Smith!—but its characters wield words like weapons, brandished with lethal force and sheathed with calculated fury. It’s a frolicsome tale of romance and friendship; it is also blood sport.

This duality can be bracing, but for most viewers it is no longer surprising, given how frequently Austen’s novels have been transmuted to the screen. Her works provide a certain comfort, a warm and familiar blend of sophisticated wordplay, comic misunderstandings, and graceful resolution. This new adaptation of Emma, which has been directed by Autumn de Wilde from a screenplay by Eleanor Catton, respects its author deeply and faithfully. Unlike Clueless, which boldly transplanted Austen’s narrative and themes to the frivolous exploits of mid-’90s teenagers, this Emma is frank and straightforward. You might think that such a rigorous approach would result in the diminution of risk, in an absence of artistic identity or imagination. To be sure, the movie is predictable. It is also magical. Read More

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Knives Out: Murder Most Foul, Movie-Making Most Divine

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ana de Armas and Daniel Craig in Rian Johnson's "Knives Out"

There are a great many significant clues in Knives Out—a pair of blood-spattered sneakers, a set of muddy footprints, a deadly syringe—but what may be its most meaningful artifact has little to do with its labyrinthine plot. I’m speaking of the Panasonic pop-up VCR, the ancient device whose grainy security footage may hold critical information, if the investigators can just extract the damn tape from the machine. A relic from an earlier era when Betamax was still a contender and consumers had to select between EP and SP, the Panasonic’s presence would seem to brand this film as a throwback, a nostalgic hymn to cinema’s halcyon days, when mid-budget studio productions ruled the day and superheroes were relegated to the pages of the comic book.

To be sure, Knives Out is laden with analog pleasures: sudden rack focuses; portentous musical cues; dizzying flashbacks; Chris Evans in knitted sweaters. (OK, that last one might not be old-fashioned, but its appeal is certainly timeless.) Yet it would be a mistake to pigeonhole this bracing new movie, which was written and directed with vigor and wit by Rian Johnson, as an homage to the pictures of yesteryear or as a critique of the contemporary multiplex. Knives Out is too energetic, too entertaining, too celebratory—too much damn fun—to be scolding. And while it may carry a certain classical sensibility, it is also distinctly modern, with an impish tone that couldn’t possibly be deemed traditional. They say they don’t make ’em like they used to, but I’m not sure they ever made them quite like this. Read More

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Jojo Rabbit: Consider the Nazi, Through Childish Eyes

Jeremy BeckReviews
Taika Waititi and Roman Griffin Davis in "Jojo Rabbit"

The rise of the Third Reich is such a blight on the world’s history, it’s no wonder we keep making fun of it. Sure, there are plenty of sober cinematic reconstructions of the era, so many that the Holocaust drama has practically become a genre unto itself. But the genocidal horror of Nazism is so obscene, so incomprehensible, that unless you’re Steven Spielberg, it can seem impossible to confront head-on, like staring into a black sun. Maybe it’s better to approach this unspeakable atrocity askance, to attack its ugliness and brutality not with outrage and solemnity, but with cleverness and mockery.

Or maybe it isn’t. Certainly some viewers will take umbrage at Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi’s comedy-drama-satire-coming-of-age-whatever, which is set in Germany in 1945 and which unfolds with an impish tone that, while hardly seditious, is decidedly less than utterly respectful. I’m not here to tell you what you can and can’t get mad about, but I will suggest that this awkward, weirdly sincere movie is too eager and silly to be truly offensive. Its parodic vision of Nazis as bumbling stooges feels like an appropriate portraiture, not so much trivializing evil as acknowledging its senselessness and banality. And so, my problem with Jojo Rabbit isn’t that it tries to be funny. My problem is that it isn’t funny. Read More

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Parasite: Out of the Basement, Climbing the Social Ladder

Jeremy BeckReviews
The family of Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite".

The underground is both a geographic location and a lowly caste in Parasite, the electrifying new movie from Bong Joon-ho. In this tonally shifting and artistically unwavering film—it’s part comedy, part thriller, all silky craft—the social order is upended with mayhem and precision, as the dwellers of the subterrane invade the castles of the aristocracy. Yet Parasite’s ravishing, blood-soaked imagery is complemented by its patience, its humor, and its observational savvy. Consider that it largely transpires in two different homes, whose contrasting layouts illuminate a crucial truth: that some basements are more equal than others.

The film’s title suggests an infestation, though Bong, who also wrote the screenplay with Han Jin-won, plays it coy, leaving open to interpretation just who’s the scourge and who’s the plagued. What’s obvious from the jump, however, is that Parasite is a movie about class. This is nothing new for Bong; in Snowpiercer, he imagined a giant train that separated its inhabitants according to their inherent station, a rigid hierarchy enforced by Tilda Swinton, who brutally reminded the steerage occupants of their lesser status with a chillingly didactic fable featuring the edict, “Be the shoe.” The stratification in Parasite may not be as linear, but it’s still firmly in place, visible to the eye and—as becomes at first amusingly and then grotesquely clear—detectable to the nose. Read More

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The Zombieland and Maleficent Sequels Both Fail, But for Different Reasons

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
The cast of "Zombieland: Double Tap", all clearly terrified of Angelina Jolie.

Asked to describe Claude Rains’ self-regarding police captain in Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart replies, “He’s just like any other man, only more so.” Aside from accurately summing up one half of cinema’s most beautiful friendship, that quip encapsulates what might be called The Law of the Hollywood Sequel. The motion picture industry is big business, so it’s only logical that when a movie makes money, you make another one. And because follow-ups are typically driven more by fan enthusiasm than by creative compulsion, you make the sequel just like the original, only more so: more action, more jokes, more special effects, more stars, more blood.

Last weekend saw the release of two decidedly different sequels which, if not exactly long-awaited, are certainly far-removed from their respective progenitors. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil arrives five years after Robert Stromberg’s surprise smash, which found Angelina Jolie donning pointy black horns and vivid green contact lenses for a reimagining of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. Five years is an eon by Hollywood standards, but it’s half the interval between Zombieland: Double Tap and its predecessor, whose comic take on the apocalypse won moviegoers’ hearts and wallets a full decade ago. These unusually long gaps might suggest that both sequels are motivated by art rather than commerce—that their creators returned to their universes after significant time away because they’d actually developed exciting new stories rather than because greedy studios recognized an opportunity to cash years-old checks. Read More

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