Grade: B minus

Spider-Man: No Way Home: Once, Twice, Three Times a Spidey

Jeremy BeckReviews
Zendaya and a masked Tom Holland in Spider-Man: No Way Home

The twin cornerstones of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (not to be confused with the six infinity stones) are fan service and self-reference. Fan service, in that the primary purpose of these movies is satisfaction—not telling satisfying stories, but catering to their audience’s collective wants. And self-reference, in that the most efficient method of achieving this goal is to cram each picture with copious easter eggs, cameos, and callbacks, the better to flatter viewers’ knowledge and inspire periodic bursts of applause. The point of new installments is to remind people of older ones. The MCU is arguably the most successful global franchise in the history of popular culture, and its success derives from how it operates as a cumulative series of homework assignments.

So it’s fitting that Spider-Man: No Way Home—the third entry to center on Peter Parker, everyone’s favorite science nerd turned friendly webslinger, and the whopping 27th episode of the MCU overall (with another half-dozen films slated for theatrical release over the next two years)—finds its hero applying to college. (Never mind that Tom Holland, the talented British actor who again plays Peter with an appealing combination of gawkiness and sincerity, turned 25 this past summer; proper aging is the least of Marvel’s continuity concerns.) Sure, the movie that bears him carries the hallmarks of modern fantasy: warped spells, fractured universes, toppled buildings, freighted battles. But it is first and foremost a history lesson—a crash course in Spider-Man lore designed to reward viewers for their continued attention and scrupulous studying. If the past two decades of comic-book cinema were the substance of the curriculum, No Way Home is the refreshingly easy final exam. Read More

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King Richard, Tick Tick Boom, and the Tortured Genius

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Andrew Garfield in Tick Tick Boom; Will Smith in King Richard

Success stories can’t be simple. Presumably, many gifted artists and athletes achieve their goals through little more than the straightforward combination of labor and talent, without facing any daunting challenges or making any personal sacrifices. But who wants to watch a movie about them? Drama requires conflict, which is why rousing tales of ultimate success must contain moments of intervening failure. (Pictures about sustained failure are far more rare, give or take an Inside Llewyn Davis.) Last week featured the premiere of two fact-based films about obsessive geniuses: Warner Brothers’ King Richard, about the father of Venus and Serena Williams, and Netflix’s Tick, Tick… Boom, about the early struggles of the creator of Rent. One teeters perilously on the border of hagiography, while the other is largely enjoyable on its own artistic terms, but both are steeped in the cinematic wellspring of toil, triumph, anguish, and redemption.

Technically, King Richard isn’t so much the story of a genius as that of the man behind the genius(es), though I’m sure if you posed that framing to Richard Williams, he’d dismiss the distinction as one without a difference. Whether this on-screen version of Richard, incarnated by Will Smith with twinkly charm and bottomless gumption, represents a drastic departure from the actual man is a debate best left to historians and biographers. What matters here is whether this Richard is the suitable protagonist of a predictable, rags-to-riches sports picture—whether he is sufficiently separable from the countless coaches and motivators who have preceded him in the illustrious screen tradition of drilling, aggravating, and speechifying. Read More

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No Time to Die: Do You Expect Me to Squawk? No, It Expects You to Cry

Jeremy BeckReviews
Daniel Craig in No Time to Die

The pandemic may have delayed James Bond, but can James Bond defeat a pandemic? It’s a piece of unnerving cinematic kismet that No Time to Die, the fifth and final entry starring Daniel Craig as everyone’s favorite martini-drinking secret agent, finds the erstwhile 007 racing to stop the release of a deadly bioweapon. Originally set for release in April 2020 (ha!) before being postponed roughly 35 different times over the past 18 months, this latest depiction of Ian Fleming’s tuxedoed superspy has suffered gravely on its bumpy journey to the multiplex, so much so that its fictional threat—mass distribution of airborne toxins—seems both eerily prescient (the script was completed well before COVID-19’s arrival) and oddly quaint. When compared with widespread vaccine obstinacy, performative litigation over mask mandates, and right-wing disinformation campaigns, how dangerous can a single supervillain really be?

But nobody watches a James Bond flick for the plot; it’s the man with the golden puns we’re after. Every new 007 develops his own signature—the pithy charm of Sean Connery, the jocular cheese of Roger Moore, the arch distance of Pierce Brosnan—and the Craig era has been defined by a brooding intensity that mingles, sometimes productively and sometimes awkwardly, with an emotional vulnerability. The first blond Bond has always been a capable puncher and competent quipper, but his legacy is the sting of loss that lingers over his romantic entanglements; what were once male-gaze rituals of masculine conquest and feminine adoration became, in the new millennium, something resembling genuine, mutual relationships. As the capstone to Craig’s decade-and-a-half term of service in the role of 007, No Time to Die strives to marry the franchise’s more traditional elements—the gadgets and the globe-trotting, the brutes and the babes—with its newfound sensibility of heartache and regret. Read More

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Malignant, The Card Counter, and Movies Going All-In

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Oscar Isaac in The Card Counter; Annabelle Wallis in Malignant

Last Sunday, the critic Walter Chaw tweeted that, because more than 90% of the new movies he watches are “pretty much the same”, he’s more likely to appreciate a film that “just cocks an arm and swings for all it’s worth”. I might quibble with the mathematical accuracy of his first statement, but despite the mixed metaphor, I’m inclined to agree with his second; even when they fail, ambitious movies tend to be more memorable than their cautious counterparts. Chaw presumably had a specific picture in mind, but this past weekend provided multiple titles that refused to play by multiplex rules. One is far better than the other, but both succeed in upending expectations and carving out their own atypical territory.

At the outset—and, in fact, for the majority of its running time—James Wan’s Malignant isn’t especially novel. Despite stemming from a nominally original screenplay by Akela Cooper, it’s another haunted-house chiller that would fit snugly inside the Conjuring cinematic universe that Wan created back in 2013. Its heroine, Madison (Annabelle Wallis, best known to me as Grace on Peaky Blinders), is plagued by visions of a malevolent spirit called Gabriel, one of those shadowy creatures who’s never quite in focus but who looks a bit like the skeleton-masked bank robbers from The Town, only blacker and nastier. In addition to somehow speaking through electronic devices like a demonic Siri, Gabriel seems to be a burgeoning serial killer, and Madison—in an arresting manipulation of the image—periodically finds her mind transported to the sites of his murders, forced to watch his grisly wet work like a helpless, paralyzed bystander. Read More

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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: How to Contain Your Dragon

Jeremy BeckReviews
Simu Liu in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings could have been a damn good comic-book movie, if only it hadn’t been about the Ten Rings. Neatly ornamented circlets that flash blue-and-purple lightning, these conjoined jewels vest their bearer with cosmic power, which is cool for him but unfortunate for us. I’m sure that blasting bolts of deadly energy from your wrists is an efficient method of laying waste to your enemies; visually speaking, it’s a drag, and so is this film’s prologue, which appears poised to squander the great Tony Leung—saddling him with lank hair and medieval armor, then watching as he magically vaults over and slices through an entire opposing army. He’s lord of the blings, and his growling invulnerability initially marks him as yet another tedious Marvel villain.

Happily, the Ten Rings factor little into Shang-Chi, at least until its predictably torpid climax. Even the tired prologue is something of a feint, seeing as how it’s followed by a second preamble, this one far more elegant. Flashing forward a thousand-odd years to 1996, it finds Leung’s heavy, Xu Wenwu, newly shorn and stumbling into a pastoral grove, where he trades balletic blows with his future wife, Ying Li (Fala Chen); their graceful combat, as much a dance as a fight, recalls the stylish wirework of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And for most of its runtime, Shang-Chi aspires to that level of intimacy and fluidity, eschewing CGI pyrotechnics and globe-altering stakes in favor of taut action and clenched family drama. Read More

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