Grade: B plus

1917: Hold the Line. Hold the Shot.

Jeremy BeckReviews
George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman in Sam Mendes' "1917"

Two years ago, after 13 nominations without a victory, Roger Deakins—one of the greatest cinematographers who’s ever lived—won his first Oscar, for his magnificent work on Blade Runner 2049. I mention this not because I care about the Academy Awards (I don’t… except when I do), but because 1917, Sam Mendes’ bold and brawny and periodically breathtaking new film, seems to have been engineered specifically to secure Deakins an Oscar. Its technical premise—it purports to capture its grueling events in a single take—is not wholly novel; a recent example includes Birdman (which won Emmanuel Lubezki the second of his three straight trophies), while the conceit stretches back to Hitchcock and beyond. But in marrying the single-shot concept (or gimmick, depending on your disposition) to the epic gravity of the war picture, 1917 practically screams to be recognized for its grandeur. Some movies envelop you with the invisible pull of their craft; this one pulverizes you with the sheer force of its technique.

The single-take maneuver, though undeniably impressive, is not without its hazards. The risk of wielding the camera with such fluid dynamism is that it will distract viewers. It’s a danger of distancing; the more conscious you are of the stylistic prowess on display, the farther away from the screen you tend to feel, which in turn prevents you from melting into the immaculately constructed environments. But while my brain never quite stopped registering the presence of Deakins’ camera in 1917, that subconscious awareness did little to sabotage my appreciation of his work. There’s an elegance to his lensing, a grace that somehow magnetizes you, forcing you to grapple with the lovely brutality of his images. That distinctly cinematic paradox—the tension between horror and wonder, between ghastliness and gorgeousness, between death and life—is what animates 1917, and what makes it such a fascinating sit. Like most war movies, it traffics heavily in blood, viscera, terror, and despair. And it depicts this ugliness with what can only be called beauty. Read More

Read more

Uncut Gems: Doubling Down, on Distress and Excess

Jeremy BeckReviews
Adam Sandler in the Safdie Brothers' "Uncut Gems"

Of course Uncut Gems opens with an extreme close-up of a colonoscopy. After all, this nasty, edgy, oddly exhilarating movie is the work of Josh and Benny Safdie, those sibling purveyors of stomach-churning New York City sleaze. Their prior film, Good Time, steeped itself in grimy brutality, featuring all manner of crimes, deaths, and maulings. Their new picture, as its initial footage of a man’s digestive tract suggests, in no way eases up on the throttle; it’s another portrait of a desperate man, and it’s uncompromising in its vulgarity and intensity. Yet there’s something strange about Uncut Gems, something shiny buried within its crusty shell of unfiltered savagery and heedless aggression. It is—and I can’t believe I’m writing this, given that the Safdies’ filmmaking ethos seems to involve making the viewing experience as nauseating as possible—fun to watch.

Whether it’s pleasant to look at is another matter. With each new feature—before Good Time, they made the low-budget addiction drama Heaven Knows What, starring mostly non-professional actors—the Safdies grow increasingly accomplished in refining their distinctive style. It is not an aesthetic I particularly care for. The camera is wobbly, the music (again by Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneohtrix Point Never) is invasive, and the lighting is, well, not very light; many scenes play out in dim interiors, with unflattering illumination that makes the actors look wan. Occasionally, they subvert their grungy approach in productive ways, such as when a musician activates a black light at a nightclub, suddenly brightening the screen with bolts of neon. The veteran cinematographer, Darius Khondji, has worked with David Fincher, Bong Joon-ho, and Michael Haneke, and he helps modulate the Safdies’ signature freneticism with a measure of discipline. Still, for the most part, this movie looks gritty, sickly, and ugly. Read More

Read more

Luce: He’s Black and They’re Proud

Jeremy BeckReviews
Kelvin Harrison Jr. in "Luce"

He’s the valedictorian. His teachers often ask him to give inspirational speeches, which he delivers with disarming sincerity. He’s also a star athlete, a sprinter who runs in the upright style of Michael Johnson. And he excels on the debate team, where he presents his lucid arguments with a confidence that never slips into arrogance. His name is Luce, and as the school principal puts it, he is the very definition of a model student.

And Luce, while an imperfect film, feels similarly paradigmatic. Coursing with energy, insight, and relevance, it is exactly the kind of movie that American audiences should be watching right now, as the world burns and cultures clash. Unashamedly provocative, it is designed not to shame but to stimulate, to inspire discussion and reflection. It asks complex questions—about race, sex, drugs, criminal justice, even the platonic conception of the American dream—and then demands that you hunt for the answers. It holds up a mirror to the country and forces you to confront what you see. Read More

Read more

Midsommar: A Vacation to Paradise, But Darkness Looms

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jack Reynor and Florence Pugh in Ari Aster's "Midsommar"

Toxic relationships have rarely faced as brutal a reckoning as the one visited upon the central couple in Midsommar, the breakup film to end all breakup films. Consistently ravishing, frequently mesmerizing, and occasionally exasperating, this horror whatsit from Ari Aster fixes on a festering union, the pus that oozes from its wounds slowly morphing into nightmare fuel. With Hereditary, Aster transformed a family’s hellish history into a gateway to literal Hell. Now with Midsommar, he’s turned his precise, pitiless eye to a doomed romance, exposing every crack in its fetid underpinning. Some directors might seize on the concept of attractive people taking a European idyll as the chance to tell a beautiful love story. This is a death story.

Still a beautiful one, though. Most of Midsommar takes place in Sweden (shooting was held in Hungary), in a bucolic paradise whose natural loveliness makes it the perfect camouflage for the inevitable suffering to come. It’s a land of warm, inviting colors: rippling green grass, snowy white gowns, a cheery yellow temple whose simple architecture seems to have been plucked from a book of fairy tales. There are slender trees with spangled leaves, and vast meadows full of swaying flowers. It’s heaven on earth, a rejuvenating escape from the persistent recognition that hell is other people. Read More

Read more

Booksmart: Two Smarties, Determined to Party

Jeremy BeckReviews
Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever in "Booksmart".

Lots of high school movies feature a comic scene set in a bathroom—Lindsay Lohan eating alone in Mean Girls, Eddie Kaye Thomas defecating in American Pie, That Scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High—but Booksmart, as it does time and again, flips the script. Quietly revising grammatically incorrect graffiti inscribed on a stall, valedictorian Molly (the magnetic Beanie Feldstein) overhears three of her classmates mocking her. Stung but not surprised, Molly emerges dramatically from the stall and unleashes a measured but vindictive riposte, calmly informing her intellectual inferiors that she will one day have the last laugh. Yet as she spins on a heel to leave in triumph, a quiet reply stops her in her tracks; one of her ostensible bullies casually announces that she’s going to Yale. Another will be attending Stanford; the third has already secured a lucrative job at Google. In a split second, Molly’s supposed supremacy—academic, personal, moral—has been flushed down the drain.

Booksmart, the finely cut and completely hilarious directorial debut of Olivia Wilde, is hardly revolutionary. It is instead a proud member of the One Crazy Night genre, a freewheeling, episodic narrative of absurdity, embarrassment, and misadventure. But even as it accumulates belly laughs and imparts familiar lessons, Booksmart simultaneously punctures your assumptions about how movies like this should look and behave. Like Molly, it is smart, energetic, and determined. Yet it is also exactly the kind of film that Molly herself might underestimate, gradually revealing hidden depths that you never suspected were there. Read More

Read more