Grade: A minus

Little Women: Sisters, Suitors, and Other Nightmares

Jeremy BeckReviews
Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Saoirse Ronan, and Eliza Scanlen, in Greta Gerwig's "Little Women"

I keep thinking about the ink smudges. Greta Gerwig’s new adaptation of Little Women is a film of boundless beauty, full of ravishing sights and sounds: bright hoop dresses, handsome estates and gardens, Alexandre Desplat’s piano, Timothée Chalamet’s cheekbones, Saoirse Ronan’s eyes. But amid all of this delicate loveliness is a writer who cannot seem to scrub the stubborn streaks of pencil lead from her hands. The primary hero of Louisa May Alcott’s novel, Jo March is the perfect embodiment of Gerwig’s creative spirit—not just because she’s a talented and intelligent artist, but because her work seems to bleed with feeling. Little Women, Gerwig’s second feature following the lightning bolt that was Lady Bird, is a surpassingly elegant movie. It’s also stained with life.

Jo (Ronan), an amateur playwright and aspiring novelist, is one of four mostly grown sisters; the others (in descending order of age) are Meg (Emma Watson), Beth (Eliza Scanlen), and Amy (Florence Pugh). You probably already knew this, seeing as Alcott’s book is beloved, and has previously been transferred to the silver screen four times, with Jo being played by personalities as varied as Katharine Hepburn and Winona Ryder. And so, the question that initially hovers over this incarnation of Little Women—the same skeptical inquiry that lurks beneath any new adaptation of a repeatedly staged classic—is why it needed to be made, why it stands out. Several decades having passed since I’ve read the book or watched any of its prior re-imaginings, I am perhaps not the ideal critic to answer this question. But I have seen this one, and I can say with some confidence that you should herald its arrival not with cynicism but with gratitude. The reason to see Gerwig’s movie isn’t that it rejuvenates old tropes or interrogates long-held assumptions or introduces a literary landmark to a new generation, even if it may very well do all of those things. The reason to see it is that it’s wonderful. Read More

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Marriage Story: Till Life and Lawyers Do Us Part

Jeremy BeckReviews
Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson in "Marriage Story"

Marriage Story opens with a pair of sweet, complementary monologues. First, Charlie (Adam Driver) tells us what he loves about his wife, Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), who then follows with a parallel recitation of what she admires about her husband. Both ruminations are full of affectionate detail and cute peccadilloes: how she leaves cabinets open, how he devours food, how they both play Monopoly like cutthroats. They’re the kind of quotidian observations that can only be amassed through the act of sharing a life, and they’re redolent with warmth and appreciation. Which makes it all the more shocking when these adoring speeches are revealed to be exercises suggested by a mediator, therapeutic assignments designed to mitigate the inevitable pain of their looming divorce.

Well, maybe not shocking, given who’s behind the camera. Even if you have no knowledge of the plot of Marriage Story—which chronicles the life cycle of Nicole and Charlie’s separation over 137 excruciating, beautiful minutes— so long as you’re aware that it was written and directed by Noah Baumbach, you’ll hardly be surprised by this sudden swerve into gloom. America’s poet laureate of marital and familial discord, Baumbach has devoted his career to exploring relationships—not just between couples, but also between parents and children, siblings, and friends—with a tricky combination of brutal honesty and wry comedy. Marriage Story is no exception; this is a film of lacerating insight and raw emotion. But it is also perhaps his most tender, least showy work (though Frances Ha may want a word). As ever, Baumbach refuses to sentimentalize his characters, but here he regards them with unprecedented empathy. In examining how two people break apart, he creates a sensation of togetherness. 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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Official Secrets: Blowing the Whistle, and Facing the Consequences

Jeremy BeckReviews
Keira Knightley in "Official Secrets"

Three days before I saw Official Secrets, the Washington Post released a story that provided new details regarding a previously filed whistleblower complaint, which alleged that President Trump had made an improper promise to a foreign leader. The whistleblower, a member of the intelligence community, had felt compelled to take action because he believed that Trump’s conduct rose to the level of an “urgent concern”, which appears to be spook-speak for A Big Fucking Deal.

The aftermath of these explosive revelations is currently unspooling on various media: newspapers and their online affiliates, with their wide range of clickbait headlines and weary fact-checks; Twitter, with its armchair policy experts and viral memes; and—the President’s primary source of information gathering—TV news programs, with their ranty guests and exasperated moderators. The pages of history surrounding these events are currently being written; movies dramatizing them will surely pop up in the ensuing years and decades. In a less insane, more cinematically karmic world, this ongoing furor might have served as serendipitous marketing for Official Secrets, a movie which—if you can believe it—involves a civil servant in an intelligence agency who blows the whistle on her government after discovering that it’s engaged in illegal activity regarding foreign countries. Read More

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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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