Grade: A minus

Blade Runner 2049: A Dark Future, Bathed in Beauty and Sorrow

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ryan Gosling in Denis Villeneuve's "Blade Runner 2049"

Tears do indeed fall in rain in Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve’s grave and gorgeous sequel to Ridley Scott’s 35-year-old cult classic. Consider those tears an easter egg for the original’s ardent admirers. A vocal pocket of cinephilia can surely recite from memory the original Blade Runner’s “tears in rain” speech, delivered mournfully by Rutger Hauer on a desolate rooftop all those years ago. But while the passion of those fans doubtless drove the development of this follow-up, Villeneuve’s film does far more than simply pay homage to its predecessor. When I say that I’ve seen Blade Runner 2049, what I mean is—to quote the first line of Hauer’s soliloquy—I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.

The exquisite craftsmanship of Blade Runner 2049 is staggering, but it is not exactly surprising. Over the past several years—beginning with Prisoners, then continuing with Sicario and Arrival—Villeneuve has demonstrated his ability to deliver robust, stealthily provocative genre films inside striking and elegant packages. And his regular cinematographer, Roger Deakins (aka “the legendary Roger Deakins”), is responsible for some of this century’s most breathtaking images, most notably in works by the Coen Brothers and Sam Mendes. Blade Runner 2049 represents these two artists operating at the absolute peak of their visual powers. This is, quite simply, a movie of flabbergasting beauty. Scene after scene reveals new marvels: a cloaked figure venturing into a burnt-orange desert, clouds of dust swirling around him; a sepulchral, yellow-tinted palace, where light and shadow swim on the walls; a giant glowing hologram, backlit by the night sky, beckoning to her minuscule quarry, a mere man who—like the rest of us—can only gape upward in awe. Read More

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Dunkirk: War Is Breathtaking Hell

Jeremy BeckReviews
Soldiers swim to rescue in Christopher Nolan's staggering "Dunkirk"

There have been bloodier war movies—grisly productions committed to depicting the visceral horror as bullets tear through flesh. And there have been more provocative war movies, those that reenact armed conflict to make a political statement on its nobility or its lunacy. But there has never been, in my estimation, a war movie of such relentless, gripping intensity as Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s stunning World War II epic. The adjective “white-knuckle” has wilted into cliché, but as someone who spent the majority of this film with his fists clenched in involuntary apprehension, allow me to offer a word of advice: Before seeing Dunkirk, clip your nails. Otherwise, you’re liable to tear them right off.

The sheer magnitude of Dunkirk feels unprecedented, but it’s in keeping with a director who has made a career of smuggling brainy, stimulating ideas inside packages of overpowering brawn. Size matters to Nolan, and not just in the way you might think. Yes, Dunkirk is a gigantic film, shot extensively on 65-millimeter IMAX cameras, which help convey the enormity of its scale. (For the record, I watched the film projected in non-IMAX 70mm, though I intend to make a trip to the IMAX for round two.) But even as he’s painting on a sprawling canvas—showing you the vastness of a beach, the infinite reach of an ocean—Nolan is simultaneously compressing the carnage, paradoxically resulting in an expansive claustrophobia. Consider an early scene on the title city’s famous coastline: Thousands of soldiers scattered along its sands freeze in unison, their ears picking up the faint whine of an approaching German bomber. The horizon seems endless, but there’s nowhere to go. As the plane zooms past overhead, all they can do is flatten their bodies and cross their fingers. Read More

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War for the Planet of the Apes: No More Monkeying Around

Jeremy BeckReviews
Andy Serkis' Caesar is on a mission in "War for the Planet of the Apes"

Columns of soldiers goose-step in perfect rhythm, staring upward with reverence at their messianic leader. Behind them, enslaved prisoners, chained and starving, lug giant blocks of stone, piling them into a towering wall. A flag, emblazoned with religious symbolism, hangs firmly alongside an embankment, like gang colors marking territory. The loudspeakers blare an anthem, and the foot soldiers unleash a thunderous war cry.

You might think, from this bleak and jingoistic description, that I’m discussing a documentary on the Third Reich. But the anthem is “The Star-Spangled Banner”, and the flag is colored red, white, and blue. So when the leader orders his zealots to purge the world of an inferior race, he isn’t just marshaling his troops for battle. He’s putting America first.

Such is the chilling subtext of War for the Planet of the Apes, Matt Reeves’ tense, bracing new saga of conflict and community. As you can gather, the politics on display here are not exactly subtle, even if their allegorical impact may be more acute than intended. (Shooting took place well before the 2016 presidential election.) But while the film’s nationalist rhetoric and iconography may feel distressingly plausible, they are not the movie’s primary draw. No, what makes War for the Planet of the Apes so successful is that it’s a genuinely thrilling action movie, replete with exhilarating combat sequences and grand adventure. Had it been released ten years ago, it would still feel essential, getting both your blood pumping and—in more of a surprise—your tear ducts flowing. Read More

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Manchester by the Sea: After Death Strikes, Life Shuffles On

Jeremy BeckReviews
Michelle Williams and Casey Affleck, in Kenneth Lonergan's heartbreaking "Manchester by the Sea"

Manchester by the Sea opens with a scene of tranquil, quintessentially New England bliss. As a trawler glides through Massachusetts Bay, an uncle gently teases his six-year-old nephew, lightly dropping his “R’s” while warning that child-chewing sharks prowl these waters. It’s a vision of serene, understated happiness in a film that subsequently grows heavy with melancholy and loss. You might think that the sweetness of this introduction is but a feint, a setup that lulls viewers into dropping their guard so that they can be more easily knocked out. Yet while Manchester by the Sea is primarily a tragedy—few movies are so profoundly, terribly sad—it is not exactly a downer. Instead, it somehow manages to be life-affirming as well as shattering, to reveal glimpses of light and hope within its miasma of heartbreak and devastation. It derives its enormous power not just from its literal tragedy, but from its emotional honesty.

Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea stars Casey Affleck as Lee Chandler, a handyman who lives alone in a wintry Boston suburb. In its prosaic early scenes, the film efficiently establishes Lee as competent, sullen, and a bit of an asshole. He snaps at clients, brawls at bars, and seems generally incapable of human connection. His solitary routine of changing lightbulbs and shoveling snow is interrupted when he receives word that his brother, Joe (Kyle Chandler), who lives in the titular hamlet an hour-and-a-half north of Boston, has just died of a heart attack. That’s dreadful news—in a brief moment at the hospital, Affleck silently conveys the bond that Lee shared with his sibling, and the depths of his pain—but it isn’t exactly surprising, given that Joe had been suffering from congestive heart failure for the past decade. The real shock comes when Lee meets with a lawyer to read Joe’s will and discovers that he is now the guardian to Patrick (Lucas Hedges, very good), Joe’s 16-year-old son. Read More

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Arrival: They Come in Peace, But What About Us?

Jeremy BeckReviews
Amy Adams is a troubled linguist in Denis Villeneuve's mesmerizing "Arrival"

Arrival is a movie that asks a lot of weighty, philosophical questions—What does it mean to be human? How do our memories inform our sense of self? Are we alone in the universe? Are we alone with one another?—so let’s begin with a question typically asked of movies: What is it about? The answer, naturally, is a matter of perspective. From a literal standpoint, Arrival is an example of “hard” science-fiction, a piece of popular art that contemplates, with scrupulous discipline and serious pragmatism, what might actually happen if aliens suddenly appeared on Earth. That description is accurate, but it both over- and undersells the merits of this complex, thought-provoking film. On a deeper level, Arrival is a meditation on human connection, or lack thereof: the ties that bind us, the prejudices that plague us, our twin capacities for hope and fear. It isn’t about aliens. It’s about people.

That’s a lofty goal, and the challenge for Arrival, which has been directed by Denis Villeneuve from a screenplay by Eric Heisserer (based on a short story by Ted Chiang), is to fully explore its intellectual inquiries while simultaneously supplying frissons of drama and suspense. It’s a delicate balance that the film doesn’t always strike perfectly—it’s a little slow, and the integrity of the storytelling is occasionally compromised by a few one-dimensional minor characters. On the whole, though, Arrival is a consistently fascinating and sporadically transcendent achievement, the rare movie that demands being grappled with and argued about. Read More

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