Grade: B minus

Onward: Dwindling Magic, But What of Imagination?

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Holland and Chris Pratt voice brothers in Pixar's "Onward"

The world is gripped by existential despair, so what’s better to capture our collective terror than a Pixar movie? The wizardly corporation owns a patent on brightly colored, child-friendly entertainments that nevertheless speak to adults’ bone-deep fears. Of course, Onward, the newest adventure from the preeminent purveyor of computer-generated animation, isn’t about the coronavirus, no matter how tempted we might be to perceive everything through the lens of that horrifying pandemic. But it is about people—and a world—crippled with fear and self-doubt, struggling to adapt to unforeseen circumstances. That it’s also a playful children’s movie with a happy ending comes as something of a relief, even if it also currently feels like wishful thinking.

But enough about impending global catastrophe. Besides, there’s a more obvious metaphor to be found in Onward. At one point, its two brothers, Ian (voiced by Tom Holland) and Barley (Chris Pratt), squabble over navigation, disputing how best to reach their destination. Ian, the more pragmatic of the pair, insists on taking the freeway, a straight shot to their goal. Barley, a fantasist with either grand ideas or delusions of grandeur, instead suggests that they follow the Path of Peril, a twisting road fraught with danger and uncertainty. The freeway is of course the logical choice, but in Barley’s view, it is the eccentricity of the Path of Peril—its literal and figurative curves—that makes traveling it worthwhile. Read More

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Richard Jewell: A Bomb Detonates, and a Life Explodes

Jeremy BeckReviews
Paul Walter Hauser in Clint Eastwood's "Richard Jewell"

Even when they aren’t appearing in Westerns or war films, Clint Eastwood’s heroes routinely find themselves under siege. Earlier in his everlasting late period, in movies like Invictus and J. Edgar, Eastwood’s principals operated from inside the government, attempting to impose order and decency on a cruel and lawless world. Lately, however, The System itself has become Eastwood’s chief antagonist, a daunting power intent on smearing the names and ruining the lives of good men. In Sully, a skilled and noble pilot found himself the target of a biased and insidious bureaucratic inquiry. Now comes Richard Jewell, which dramatizes the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing and its aftermath, when the country collectively decided—based on hunches rather than evidence—that the doughy security guard who thwarted the attack was in fact the man who perpetrated it.

This material—an innocent man, railroaded!—is catnip for Eastwood, which means it plays to his worst instincts. Yet while Richard Jewell is clumsy and dubious, it is also fleet and colorful, featuring some of the director’s most relaxed and immersive filmmaking in years. It would be terrible if it weren’t so enjoyable. Read More

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Jojo Rabbit: Consider the Nazi, Through Childish Eyes

Jeremy BeckReviews
Taika Waititi and Roman Griffin Davis in "Jojo Rabbit"

The rise of the Third Reich is such a blight on the world’s history, it’s no wonder we keep making fun of it. Sure, there are plenty of sober cinematic reconstructions of the era, so many that the Holocaust drama has practically become a genre unto itself. But the genocidal horror of Nazism is so obscene, so incomprehensible, that unless you’re Steven Spielberg, it can seem impossible to confront head-on, like staring into a black sun. Maybe it’s better to approach this unspeakable atrocity askance, to attack its ugliness and brutality not with outrage and solemnity, but with cleverness and mockery.

Or maybe it isn’t. Certainly some viewers will take umbrage at Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi’s comedy-drama-satire-coming-of-age-whatever, which is set in Germany in 1945 and which unfolds with an impish tone that, while hardly seditious, is decidedly less than utterly respectful. I’m not here to tell you what you can and can’t get mad about, but I will suggest that this awkward, weirdly sincere movie is too eager and silly to be truly offensive. Its parodic vision of Nazis as bumbling stooges feels like an appropriate portraiture, not so much trivializing evil as acknowledging its senselessness and banality. And so, my problem with Jojo Rabbit isn’t that it tries to be funny. My problem is that it isn’t funny. Read More

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The Lighthouse: Stormy Weather, Madness on the Horizon

Jeremy BeckReviews
Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe in Robert Eggers' "The Lighthouse".

A punishing movie whose bits of greatness are obscured by a fog of auteurist pretension, The Lighthouse is a deeply frustrating experience, a tantalizing work that defies explanation and categorization. It defies enjoyment too; as technically impressive and formidably confident as it may be, it isn’t much fun to watch. But it does carry a genuine personality, the imprint of a director who refuses to sacrifice his bizarre vision for the sake of more quotidian values like accessibility. Or, you know, coherence.

That director is Robert Eggers, whose first feature, the terrific horror movie The Witch, blended creeptastic folk-story terror with silky filmmaking craft. It also featured characters speaking in period-specific dialect, a trick Eggers repeats here, though the setting has been bumped up by a few centuries to the late 1800s. The screenplay, which Eggers wrote with his brother Max, is laden with old-timey jargon—“aye” in place of “yes”, “ye” instead of “you”, etc.—which enhances the film’s already-ornate degree of detail. Assuming, of course, you can understand what the hell they’re saying. Read More

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Ad Astra: Distant Papa, Can You Hear Me?

Jeremy BeckReviews
Brad Pitt in "Ad Astra"

Early in Ad Astra, James Gray’s searching, often astonishing, deeply frustrating new film, a man finds himself sitting alone at a kitchen table. A woman, whom we presume to be his wife, enters the background of the frame and starts to walk into an adjoining room, then stops and tilts her head to look at her husband. At this point, most directors would pull focus from the man to the woman, allowing us to discern her expression, be it pensive, affectionate, or disapproving. Gray, however, keeps his camera trained on the man in the foreground, watching his impassive features as he remains still, refusing to turn and look at his spouse. The woman leaves the room as she arrived, a blurred outline: hazy, indefinite, unknowable.

In terms of plot, this is one of Ad Astra’s least essential scenes. But it’s still a revealing moment, demonstrating both its director’s purposeful technique and his thematic and visual priorities. The man at the table isn’t just the movie’s main character but our sole point of entry. He appears in every scene of the film and conveys its lofty ideas, whether through his wistful demeanor or via one of his numerous, egregiously unnecessary voiceovers; here, he informs us that he is focused on his mission to the exclusion of all else. Yet while Ad Astra aspires to be both a bold adventure and a poignant character study—a somber interstellar epic that explores the mysteries of the universe by way of one man’s scarred psyche—its more accurate embodiment is the blurred outline of that faceless woman. With his customary craft, Gray has made a sweeping study of humanity that, despite its strenuous efforts, never feels especially humane. Read More

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