Drama

Creed: With a Legend in His Corner, a Young Man Enters the Ring

Jeremy BeckReviews
Sylvester Stallone and Michael B. Jordan in "Creed", a sequel to "Rocky"

The main character of Creed is an aspiring boxer striving to make a name for himself, and to evade the giant shadow cast by his father, a former legend of the sport. And Creed itself is on a similar mission. This movie, which was directed by Ryan Coogler from a script he co-wrote with Aaron Covington, is the sequel to Rocky, the winner of the Oscar for Best Picture in 1976 and one of the most beloved sports films of all time. (Technically, it’s the sixth such sequel, but let’s forget about those intervening installments for the moment.) That fact poses a monumental challenge for Creed: It must pay tribute to its predecessor while also standing as its own, fully realized creation. That it passes the first test is no great feat; as soon as Sylvester Stallone eases into the frame, shoulders sagging from the weight of playing the American icon that defined his career, the film instantly connects with its cinematic ancestor. What is more surprising—and more satisfying—is how Creed establishes itself as an enjoyable boxing movie in its own right. It doesn’t break much new ground, but it doesn’t need to. Like its hero, it relies on a combination of agility and determination to deliver a rousing experience that is simultaneously comforting and exhilarating.

As its title suggests, Creed is not primarily about Stallone’s Rocky Balboa, the Italian-American prizefighter who captured the hearts of Philadelphia (and the rest of the country) 39 years ago. Its protagonist is instead Donnie Johnson, played by Michael B. Jordan, the former television actor from The Wire and Friday Night Lights who finally broke out two years ago in Coogler’s earnest drama, Fruitvale Station. Donnie is a bright young man who works a desk job at an unspecified Los Angeles corporation, where he has just earned a promotion. Despite his relative success, his heart isn’t in finance, and he moonlights as a boxer in Tijuana, where he routinely pummels opponents at seedy underground rings. That’s where we first meet Donnie as an adult (the film begins with a quick prologue that illustrates his penchant for roughhousing as a child), the camera approaching him cautiously from behind, observing the muscles rippling down his back as he psychs himself up before delivering a brisk, savage beatdown of an unworthy foe. As soon as Donnie lands the knockout blow, he starts to remove his gloves before the fight is even called, a silent indicator of both his talent and his arrogance. Read More

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Brooklyn: Welcome to the United States. Now Start Your Life.

Jeremy BeckReviews
Saoirse Ronan, center, as an Irish immigrant in John Crowley's soaring "Brooklyn"

Brooklyn is a movie about an immigrant seeking a modest life on America’s rocky shores. In these tumultuous times, that alone makes it an interesting artifact. But while it is a thoroughly global production—it was directed by the Irishman John Crowley from a screenplay by the English writer Nick Hornby, adapting a book by Irish novelist Colm Toibin, and it is being distributed here by the American studio Fox Searchlight—it is not concerned with current political or social issues. In fact, it has little interest in contemporary complexities at all. On the contrary, Brooklyn—with its period setting, its classical warmth, its swooning simplicity—is proudly, almost brazenly old-fashioned.

That is a dangerous label to apply to a movie, one that suggests either snobbish nostalgia (“They don’t make ’em like they used to!”) or sneering modernism (“Old movies are so dated!”). But Brooklyn is neither a strained tribute to pictures of the past nor a wistful critique of the uncertainties of the present. It is instead its own creature: funny, tender, a little bit treacly, and entirely true. At its core, Brooklyn is about nothing more than a woman searching for happiness. Watching it, you will have no struggle finding the same. Read More

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Spotlight: Inside the Confessional, Abuse Reigns, and a Story Beckons

Jeremy BeckReviews
Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Brian d'Arcy James, Michael Keaton, and John Slattery get to work in "Spotlight"

Spotlight, Tom McCarthy’s meticulous and provocative reconstruction of the Boston Globe‘s exposé of systemic abuse within the Catholic Church, is an investigative drama about a newspaper. This essentially marks it as a double dinosaur. The journalism industry may not be extinct, but it is changing so rapidly—an ever-morphing mélange of instant reactions, hot takes, and online clickbait—that it scarcely resembles the model of old, when ravenous readers folded oversized pages and inked their hands with newsprint. And Spotlight itself, with its sprawling cast and its long, talky passages, is something of a throwback, an ode to the muckraking magnificence of All the President’s Men. Yet it would be a mistake to perceive this fleet, largely exhilarating film as a mere exercise in halcyon-tinged nostalgia. It is too persuasive, too urgent, to function simply as tribute. Spotlight may dredge up horrors of the past, but its ethos—a near-primal insistence on the eternal value of hard work and nose-to-the-grindstone reporting—renders it thoroughly present.

Following an unnecessary cold open set in the late ’70s, the movie begins in July 2001, at the drab, messily adorned offices of the Globe. The title refers to the paper’s four-person investigative team, spearheaded by editor Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), and staffed by reporters Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James). It operates as a quasi-independent pod, supplementing the Globe‘s daily coverage with longer, more exhaustive pieces. The stories are designed to be hard-hitting, but they also require months of scrupulous research, and when Robby explains the process to his new superior, incoming editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), he is met with a raised eyebrow. Periodicals need to report the news, but they also need to make money, and a question hangs in the air about the sustainability of this old-fashioned, low-output research squad. Read More

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Room: Within Four Walls, Two Lives Unfold

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jacob Tremblay and Brie Larson, in "Room"

The boy lives with his Ma in Room. Not the room, not a room—just Room. To preface the proper noun with an article is to suggest the possibility of other rooms, different rooms. But there is only Room: Four walls, a ceiling with Skylight, and beyond that Outer Space and Heaven. That is all there is. That is the world.

A harrowing, heartbreaking drama from Lenny Abrahamson, Room is a film of many virtues—superlative acting, tender writing, enormous feeling—but its greatest achievement is immersing its audience into the boy’s state of mind, articulating how he perceives this tiny, cloistered space that is his entire universe. The screenplay is by Emma Donoghue, adapting her novel, which she wrote from the perspective of the boy, named Jack (portrayed on screen by Jacob Tremblay, in an astonishing performance). Her script is a model of economy and minimalism; she supplies Jack with a few quick voiceovers that concisely set the scene, but otherwise, she and Abrahamson simply drop you into this strange, unsettling place and let you puzzle things out for yourself. Read More

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Steve Jobs: Thinking Different, and Big, and Mean

Jeremy BeckReviews
Michael Stuhlbarg, Michael Fassbender, and Kate Winslet star in Danny Boyle's "Steve Jobs"

Steve Jobs was undeniably a great man, but was he a good one? That question, along with many others—What is the true purpose of technological innovation? Why did the Macintosh look like it was grinning? Is that really Kate Winslet?—is tackled forcefully and adroitly in Steve Jobs, Danny Boyle’s exhausting, exhilarating biopic of Apple Computer’s founding father. A portrait of an artist as an obsessive young man, this manic, mostly marvelous movie wisely sidesteps the unconquerable challenge of condensing Jobs’s entire adult life into a two-hour film. But while its scope is sensibly narrow, Steve Jobs nevertheless allows you to glimpse the magnitude of its subject’s vision, and to feel the intensity of his longing. It is not another generic movie about a tortured genius; it is wholly its own movie about this tortured genius.

Speaking of troubled smart people, the screenplay for Steve Jobs is by Aaron Sorkin, which practically makes it a clandestine autobiography. (In fact, it is a loose adaptation of a book by Walter Isaacson.) Perhaps America’s preeminent wordsmith, Sorkin is renowned for creating characters who are brilliant, driven, and insufferable—you know, kind of like Aaron Sorkin. It’s small wonder he wanted to write about Steve Jobs, who is portrayed here, in a fantastic performance by Michael Fassbender, as equal parts visionary, egomaniac, genius, and jerk. The German-born Irish actor, who appears in every scene in the film, is blessed with a colossal screen presence (recall his magnificently loathsome turn in 12 Years a Slave), and he is effortlessly hypnotic in front of the camera. But there is more to Fassbender’s performance than sheer charisma—every narrowing of his eyes, every curl of his mouth, conveys a precise combination of intelligence and condescension. The Jobs we meet here isn’t just a man with a prophetic plan; he’s a higher power who’s so convinced of his superiority, he can’t help but look down on humanity with despair and disgust. Read More

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