Grade: B minus

Napoleon: Till Death Do Us Bonaparte

Jeremy BeckReviews
Joaquin Phoenix in Napoleon

Great-man biopics come with their own prepackaged one-word titles—Oppenheimer, Elvis, Mank—so it isn’t as though Ridley Scott calling his new movie Napoleon demonstrates a criminal lack of imagination. Besides, what were his alternatives? A 1987 miniseries was titled Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story, but while Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) and Joséphine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby) are indeed the two principle characters of this grand, unwieldy epic, they are far from the only figures that have captured Scott’s interest. A more accurate summation of his narrative and thematic concerns might have read, “Napoleon and Josephine and cannons.”

Essentially, Napoleon is two movies in one, and they aren’t so much at war with each other as independent from one another, like separate regiments tasked with fortifying distinct strongholds. As one would anticipate from a Ridley Scott picture, one piece centers on Bonaparte’s military exploits, with large-scale battle sequences and imperial consequences; it’s pretty good, if flawed. Less expected, though perhaps not shocking following the nuanced gender dynamics of Scott’s The Last Duel, is the film’s study of Napoleon and Josephine’s marriage, with all its kinks and complications; it’s pretty good, too. Yet despite its discrete qualities, Napoleon amounts to less than the sum of its pretty-good parts, resulting in an impressive-looking production that’s as predictable as it is entertaining. Read More

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The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: The Ditty of Lost Children

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

The premise of the Hunger Games franchise—every year, the tyrants of The Capitol conscript two dozen children from the surrounding “districts” for a televised gladiatorial competition designed to continually cow potential rebels into submission—is one of recurrence. So it’s only natural that the series keeps perpetuating itself—first with three sequels (which were pretty good until they cratered), now with a prequel that rewinds 60-odd years and explores the ritual’s genesis. If The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes reminds us of what we’ve seen before, well, isn’t that the point?

To its credit, this new-old movie, which Francis Lawrence directed from a script by Michael Lesslie and Michael Arndt (adapting Suzanne Collins’ novel), isn’t overly reliant on its own mythology. Sure, there are some throwaway references to surnames like Flickerman and Heavensbee, and I suspect that the initiated will locate plenty more easter eggs in the margins. (When a character uttered the word “katniss,” the teen-heavy audience at my screening buzzed with audible recognition.) For the most part, though, Songbirds and Snakes has its own story to tell, one that is by turns awkward, engaging, clumsy, and commendable. It doesn’t really work, but the ways in which it doesn’t work are strangely satisfying. Read More

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Priscilla: Can’t Help Bawling in Love

Jeremy BeckReviews
Cailee Spaeny in Priscilla

It takes roughly 15 minutes before Priscilla announces itself as a Sofia Coppola movie. Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny), a meek 14-year-old American girl living on an army base in Germany, has just shared her first kiss with Elvis Presley (Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi), possibly the most popular musical artist on the planet. As she glides down her school hallway—oblivious to her surroundings, deep in the swoon of adolescent love—“Crimson and Clover” flares to life on the soundtrack. The year is 1959, nearly a decade before Tommy James yearned for a girl he hardly knew to come walking over, but Coppola has never let anachronisms get in the way of emotions. Priscilla is hopelessly smitten, and Priscilla represents Coppola’s attempt to capture both the purity of her rapture and the agony of its inevitable deflation.

Strangely, this blissful sequence is something of an outlier—a fleeting moment of canny cinematic imagination in a picture that is broadly functional and orthodox. It’s weird, because conceptually speaking, Priscilla’s pairing of artist and subject seems ideal. Even setting aside her filial connections to Hollywood royalty, Coppola has long been fascinated by celebrity, having considered it through the various lenses of middle-aged ennui (Lost in Translation), historical opulence (Marie Antoinette), and vicarious obsession (The Bling Ring). Yet where those movies all hummed with vivacious technique and energetic style, Priscilla is oddly conventional. Apart from some sharp music cues and a few arresting images (such as a woman walking down a corridor bathed in red light), it feels like anyone could have made it. Read More

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A Haunting in Venice: The Ghost of the Town

Jeremy BeckReviews
Kenneth Branagh in A Haunting in Venice

Just what kind of genius is Hercule Poirot? Six years ago, in his remake of Murder on the Orient Express, Kenneth Branagh reimagined Agatha Christie’s famous detective as a man obsessed with balance; his gift for crime-solving derived from his preternatural ability to recognize when clues and alibis didn’t line up. In his two ensuing movies—first the forgettable Death on the Nile, now the somewhat-improved Haunting in Venice—Branagh seems to have abandoned this conceit, instead depicting his super-sleuth as a quasi-scientist who unravels mysteries through the rigorous application of “order and method.” He isn’t some sort of deductive wizard; he just pays attention.

This doesn’t make Poirot an especially interesting character, but it does function as a handy metaphor for Branagh’s own filmmaking. The traps inherent in the murder-mystery picture—the isolated location, the assemblage of suspects, the cheap twists and red herrings, the destination overshadowing the journey—are difficult to evade. This time out, Branagh doesn’t so much avoid them as skillfully blunt their impact. His version of “order and method” is to deploy familiar cinematic tools in order to bring energy and flair to a production whose narrative bones are dusty and creaky. A Haunting in Venice doesn’t exactly revive this moldy skeleton, but it does clothe it in alluring imagery and spooky atmosphere. Read More

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Bottoms: Top Queer

Jeremy BeckReviews
Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri in Bottoms

Justifying your own unpopularity is harder than it used to be. In the past, the ostracized heroes at the center of coming-of-age stories could take solace in the recognition that their tormentors were either stupid or bigoted; the bullying they faced was simply a consequence of the ruling class failing to perceive their true worth. But the nerds of Booksmart discovered that their partying brethren were also headed to the Ivy League, and now the losers of Bottoms can’t attribute the everyday cruelty they experience to insecurity or small-mindedness. “They don’t hate us because we’re gay,” Josie (Ayo Edebiri) says with gloomy honesty to her best friend, PJ (Rachel Sennott), as they watch a jock congratulate an effeminate actor on his performance in the school musical. “They hate us because we’re ugly and untalented.”

That assessment is unduly self-deprecating, though the wardrobe department has joined forces with Edebiri’s lack of vanity to make Josie look as frumpy as possible. (The first time we see her, she’s trying to stack multiple baseball caps atop her haywire afro.) But it’s crucial for Bottoms to establish its heroines’ putative undesirability in order to lay the groundwork for its story of improbable triumph and feminist upheaval. Directed by Emma Seligman from a script she wrote with Sennott, it’s an affirming movie that tells the tale of a marginalized sect rising up against its oppressors, claiming a measure of power and upending the entrenched social order. In related news, it’s about punching cheerleaders in the face. Read More

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