Drama

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: To LA, with Love

Jeremy BeckReviews
Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"

During one of the many enjoyably languorous stretches in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a woman buys a ticket to a movie. Told that the price is 75 cents—one of a million quaint signifiers that this film takes place in 1969—she haggles with the ticket taker, asking if she might receive a discount on account of being in the movie. After proving that she is indeed the picture’s third-billed actor—and after posing for a photo next to its poster—she gains free admittance to the theater, where she skittishly sinks into her seat and dons a pair of giant hoop glasses, eyes darting around the crowd in the sweet, vaguely desperate hope that her fellow patrons might appreciate her performance.

The woman is Sharon Tate, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the bold and beautiful and surprisingly moving new film from Quentin Tarantino, is in some ways about her grisly murder at the hands of the Manson Family. But it is also very much not about that. It is, more principally, a movie about its maker’s love of movies. And while, physically speaking, few would confuse Tarantino with Margot Robbie—the actress who here plays Tate with fizzy, wistful adorability—it’s possible to view Tate as a surrogate for the director, a man who takes immense pride in his work and who also craves validation for his craft. Read More

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High Life: Entering the Void, High-Strung and Horny

Jeremy BeckReviews
Robert Pattinson in Claire Denis's "High Life".

The spaceship has a garden. Somewhere, amid the instrument panels and the spartan bunks and the anti-gravity suits, there is a verdant room full of plants, moss, and dirt. It’s as if the astronauts, saddened by the prospect of leaving Earth behind, insisted on bringing a bit of earth along with them.

This contrast—between the personal and the fantastical, between presence and absence, between flowering life and merciless death—is emblematic of High Life, Claire Denis’ strange, frustrating, beguiling new film. Part sci-fi thriller, part philosophical meditation, it is always challenging, often boring, and occasionally mesmerizing. Read More

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On the Basis of Sex: Fighting for Equality, Through the Law and Gritted Teeth

Jeremy BeckReviews
Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsburg in "On the Basis of Sex".

Last year, the documentary RBG attempted to honor the extraordinary life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, charting her path from able young mind to Harvard Law student to U.S. Supreme Court Justice to feminist icon to internet meme. It was a well-intentioned effort that suffered from the usual pitfalls of cinematic hagiography, struggling to compress 85 years of the life of one of the most important legal figures in modern American history into a tidy 98 minutes. On the Basis of Sex, the new Ginsburg biopic from Mimi Leder, takes a narrower approach, homing in on two key periods in its subject’s life: her challenges as one of the few female students at Harvard, and her early labors as a litigator striving for women’s equality. Where RBG’s impact was glancing—to borrow from Supreme Court terminology, it felt more like a syllabus than a full opinion—Leder’s film lands a blow with something resembling force.

If the boxing metaphor seems peculiar, bear in mind that, despite trafficking in bookish disciplines and legal arcana, On the Basis of Sex is essentially a sports movie. Its heroine, played with poise and pluck by Felicity Jones, is the proverbial underdog, fighting to rise through the ranks and topple an entrenched dynasty. Its villains, most notably personified by Sam Waterston as Harvard’s dean of students, are pillars of the establishment, wielding their superior resources—money, power, connections—to extend their unbroken streak of competitive dominance. There are triumphs and setbacks, eager rookies and cagey veterans, strategic coaching maneuvers and breezy montages. There is even a Big Game, with a climactic moment designed to be as suspenseful as the final jump shot in Hoosiers. Read More

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Holiday Gift Bag: Mary Queen of Scots

Jeremy BeckReviews
Saoirse Ronan in "Mary Queen of Scots"

Sure, Brexit is bonkers, but should we have expected anything else from England? As the movies of 2018 seem intent on reminding us, this is a nation with a thoroughly absurd history, a vast empire that routinely suffered internecine conflict and insurrection. After The Favourite showed us the ludicrous extravagances of Stuart England, now comes Mary Queen of Scots to take on the Tudors, when Catholics and Protestants were mortal enemies and Henry VIII cycled through queens like a hedge fund manager on Tinder. Of course, Henry died not long after Mary Stuart was born, but as this engrossing and enjoyable film relays, his spirit of monarchial chaos raged on. Read More

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Holiday Gift Bag: Ben Is Back

Jeremy BeckReviews
Julia Roberts in "Ben Is Back"

For someone whose smile is insured for $30 million, Julia Roberts is often glum on screen, consciously pushing back against the stereotype that she’s only persuasive in cheery rom-coms. But in too many dramatic roles—Secret in Their Eyes, August: Osage County, Closer—the gifted actress overcompensates, throttling down her charisma so severely, only an empty shell remains. So it’s gratifying to see Roberts deliver as rich and complete a performance as she gives in Ben Is Back, where she plays Holly, a woman who’s simultaneously elated and terrified. The source of Holly’s joy and fear is the return of—sorry, no points for guessing—Ben (Lucas Hedges), her son, a born charmer who is also a drug addict. Read More

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