Grade: B minus

The Aftermath: He’s a Good German. Or at Least, He’s Good-Looking.

Jeremy BeckReviews
Keira Knightley in "The Aftermath".

Quality acting may not be able to make a bad movie good, but it can certainly make a silly movie less silly, and more watchable. The Aftermath, James Kent’s sober and strenuous adaptation of Rhidian Brook’s novel, is in many ways unpersuasive, with clunkily conceived characters, overly decorous presentation, and dubious politics. But its performances, particularly those of Keira Knightley and Jason Clarke, are exemplars of craft and commitment. With elegance and poise, they take a soapy, soggy romance and lift it into the realm of juicy, entertaining melodrama.

This is nothing new for Knightley, who has made something of a career out of elevating prestige period pieces with her cut-glass precision and simmering feeling. Just last year, she applied her considerable talents to Colette, helping turn what appeared to be a stodgy biopic of feminine awakening into a bawdy, sexy romp. Unfortunately, The Aftermath lacks Colette’s sense of impish fun; nor does it move with the same directorial alacrity that Joe Wright brought to his excellent collaborations with Knightley (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, Anna Karenina). It is instead decidedly tasteful, with a gentle score, a lacquered production design, and a profound fear of offending anyone. Read More

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Dumbo: What Big Fears You Have

Jeremy BeckReviews
Colin Farrell and kids in Tim Burton's "Dumbo"

Tim Burton’s Dumbo is a movie about a plucky band of misfits who struggle to reclaim their individuality and artistry while operating under the yoke of an oppressive, profit-driven machine. It is also a live-action remake of a 78-year-old animated landmark, the latest in the continuing assembly line of Walt Disney Studios productions designed to ruthlessly exploit nostalgia for its classic properties, and to churn that nostalgia into a merchandising bonanza. This contradiction is not subtle. When you buy a ticket to see Dumbo, you do not need to possess abnormally large ears to perceive the sound of Disney executives laughing on their merry way to the bank.

That this new Dumbo works as well as it does—that it periodically slips the shackles of dutiful blockbuster adaptation and acquires a frisson of genuine wonder and joy—is a testament to Burton’s showmanship and skill. Now 60 years old, the director rose to fame for his portraits of oddballs (usually portrayed by Michael Keaton or Johnny Depp), which he infused with exotic color and seductive angularity. Age may have blunted Burton’s sharp edges—his last few films, including the underrated Big Eyes, lacked the decisive personality of his early work—but he has remained a capable purveyor of strange spectacle. Here, he is the consummate ringmaster, dazzling you with one illusion after another in a feverish effort to conceal what lies behind the curtain. Read More

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Captain Marvel: Blasting Into the Past, with a Feminine Touch

Jeremy BeckReviews
Brie Larson travels back to the '90s in "Captain Marvel".

Trawling through the visualized memories of a warrior captive who’s suspended upside-down via electromagnets, the interrogator becomes baffled by the shapelessness of what he’s seeing. “Is anyone else confused?” asks Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), a member of a green-skinned, shape-shifting extraterrestrial species called the Skrulls. It’s a question that would ordinarily carry a meta charge; after all, this is the Marvel Cinematic Universe we’re talking about, that ginormous, globally branded franchise which has grown so sprawling, even those weaned on comics can barely navigate it without a map. Yet one of the satisfying things about Captain Marvel, the 21st and decidedly not-bad entry in the MCU proper, is that you don’t need to possess a doctorate in comic-book lore to appreciate its familiar origin-story rhythms. This isn’t to say that the movie skimps on fantastical elements or idiosyncratic detail; there are intergalactic wars, levitating soldiers, enigmatic androids, photon blasters, aptitude suppressors, and countless shots of characters manipulating or absorbing beams of glowing blue energy. But that’s all souped-up window dressing. At its core, Captain Marvel is about a hero grappling with her powers and struggling to claim her identity.

Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck from a script they wrote with Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Captain Marvel’s relative streamlining comes as something of a reprieve following the overstuffed Avengers: Infinity War. Where that bulky behemoth crammed countless characters and subplots into its 160-minute running time, this movie feels positively slender, with a refreshing clarity of focus. Sure, the obligatory mid-credits scene necessarily links what you just watched to the broader narrative of the MCU—a narrative that will theoretically conclude (ha!) next month with Avengers: Endgame—but otherwise, Boden and Fleck’s film features a welcome lack of duty-bound integration. Blessedly, Captain Marvel is about Captain Marvel. Read More

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Greta: Come for Dinner, Stay Forever

Jeremy BeckReviews
Chloë Grace Moretz and Isabelle Huppert in "Greta".

It would be unfair to accuse Greta of jumping the rails, because it’s never on the rails in the first place. Deeply silly and persistently entertaining, this campy thriller would be laughable if it were remotely interested in being taken seriously. Thankfully, the director Neil Jordan, working from a script he wrote with Ray Wright, seems to have recognized the material’s inherent kitsch; he abandons logic and nuance in favor of cheesy suspense. He wants to give you goose bumps, not dig under your skin.

It’s a smart decision, if not as smart as casting Isabelle Huppert in the title role. One of the most intuitive actors in the world, Huppert often flashes a steely sternness, a rigidity that she wields to mask her characters’ inner pain and longing. The logline of Greta—elderly immigrant widow befriends bereaved Manhattan twentysomething—feints at a sober exploration of maternal isolation and compassion, and if you enter the film with no knowledge of its premise, you might expect the title character to be another of Huppert’s keenly intelligent, emotionally fraught women. But while she may be quick-witted and determined, Greta is not especially humane. In fact, she isn’t even human, because she’s actually a vampire. Read More

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On the Basis of Sex: Fighting for Equality, Through the Law and Gritted Teeth

Jeremy BeckReviews
Felicity Jones as Ruth Bader Ginsburg in "On the Basis of Sex".

Last year, the documentary RBG attempted to honor the extraordinary life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, charting her path from able young mind to Harvard Law student to U.S. Supreme Court Justice to feminist icon to internet meme. It was a well-intentioned effort that suffered from the usual pitfalls of cinematic hagiography, struggling to compress 85 years of the life of one of the most important legal figures in modern American history into a tidy 98 minutes. On the Basis of Sex, the new Ginsburg biopic from Mimi Leder, takes a narrower approach, homing in on two key periods in its subject’s life: her challenges as one of the few female students at Harvard, and her early labors as a litigator striving for women’s equality. Where RBG’s impact was glancing—to borrow from Supreme Court terminology, it felt more like a syllabus than a full opinion—Leder’s film lands a blow with something resembling force.

If the boxing metaphor seems peculiar, bear in mind that, despite trafficking in bookish disciplines and legal arcana, On the Basis of Sex is essentially a sports movie. Its heroine, played with poise and pluck by Felicity Jones, is the proverbial underdog, fighting to rise through the ranks and topple an entrenched dynasty. Its villains, most notably personified by Sam Waterston as Harvard’s dean of students, are pillars of the establishment, wielding their superior resources—money, power, connections—to extend their unbroken streak of competitive dominance. There are triumphs and setbacks, eager rookies and cagey veterans, strategic coaching maneuvers and breezy montages. There is even a Big Game, with a climactic moment designed to be as suspenseful as the final jump shot in Hoosiers. Read More

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