Grade: B plus

It Comes at Night: Something Toxic in the Air, and a Virus, Too

Jeremy BeckReviews
Christopher Abbott and Joel Edgerton in "It Comes at Night"

There are no zombies in It Comes at Night, unless you count the vacant, dead-eyed stares that regularly materialize on each of its characters’ stricken faces. An eerie shiver of a horror-thriller, it’s scary less for its shocks than its sober observations on human nature. When a body is burned in the film’s harrowing opening sequence, the corpse never reanimates, though it does emerge in a spooky, silent nightmare, darkened eyes shooting daggers of ill will. In this movie, the dead stay dead. Maybe they’re the lucky ones.

The second feature from writer-director Trey Edward Shults, It Comes at Night takes for its premise that all-too-plausible scenario that has beckoned to many an aspiring artist: the apocalypse. Doomsday has long fascinated filmmakers, who relish the chance to turn a universal fear—it’s the end of the world!—into a personal vision; the last few years alone have given us works as varied as the demolition derby of Mad Max: Fury Road, the steampunk allegory of Snowpiercer, and the bro-sploitation comedy of This Is the End. It Comes at Night is quieter than those movies, but it is arguably more unsettling. For Shults, the collapse of civilization creates the opportunity to explore how people relate to and value one another, pitting civic values against Darwinian impulses. The picture he paints, much like the ghastly mural that adorns one of the walls of the house where the action occurs, is far from pretty. Read More

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The Lost City of Z: Unwelcome to the Jungle, But Pressing On

Jeremy BeckReviews
Charlie Hunnam in James Gray's "The Lost City of Z"

The soldier finds the mission underwhelming. Sure, he once trained with the Royal Geographical Society, but that was ages ago, and he barely remembers his studies. Why should he be the one tasked with mapping the border between Brazil and Bolivia? He’s a warrior, not a surveyor. Yet by the end of The Lost City of Z—the grand and grave historical epic from James Gray—the soldier’s reluctance has transformed into obsession. This touching, tragic film chronicles its hero’s gradual descent into something like madness, even as it acknowledges the nobility of his pursuit and the dignity of his character.

For all of the death and misery that it uncovers, The Lost City of Z is not exactly a downer. Gray, once known for his gritty thrillers, has of late developed an odd and interesting talent: He can make human suffering seem strangely beguiling. His Two Lovers put Joaquin Phoenix through the emotional wringer, but it also recognized the thrill of newfound romantic attraction. And while The Immigrant essayed the challenges facing Marion Cotillard’s woebegone traveler with unflinching directness, Gray’s lustrous craft shaded her predicament with tenderness and hope. Now with The Lost City of Z, he examines the ecstasy and the agony of mania—the fanatical need to prove yourself, no matter the mortal cost. Read More

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Logan: For Ailing Hero, a Road Trip and a Reckoning

Jeremy BeckReviews
Hugh Jackman returns one last time as the Wolverine in "Logan"

The most valid criticism of Marvel movies is that they’re all the same. That’s an exaggeration, certainly, but there’s an undeniable whiff of formula that pervades the MCU, a familiarity that sometimes slips into complacency. The oversized casts, the pithy banter, the FX-laden fight scenes, the mundane aesthetic, the cameos and the fan service and the post-credits stingers—all of these combine to form a brand that, while powerful and successful, threatens innovation and disdains originality. (My favorite MCU entry, Guardians of the Galaxy, is delightful in part because it is only tenuously connected to its eponymous universe.) Some of the individual titles are good, others are bad, but few even try to be great.

Logan, the seventh movie to feature Hugh Jackman as the Wolverine (ninth if you count his single-scene appearances in X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Apocalypse), is not a great movie. Its villains are bland, its action sequences are mediocre, and its pacing is occasionally sluggish. These are flaws that would cripple most comic-book movies. But Logan, which was directed by James Mangold from a script he wrote with Scott Frank and Michael Green, is not most comic-book movies. A welcome outlier in a cinematic landscape of alarming uniformity, it is decidedly unlike its peers: bold, thoughtful, and surprisingly powerful. Above all, it is distinctive. Read More

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Get Out: The Stepford Jives

Jeremy BeckReviews
Daniel Kaluuya in Jordan Peele's horror movie "Get Out"

The hero of Get Out suffers. Over the course of the movie, he is assaulted, humiliated, choked, tied up, shot at, and regularly deprived of his physical and personal liberty. It’s a crucible of pain. But nothing is more terrifying, more indignifying, than when he’s forced to hobnob at a fancy garden party with a bunch of rich white people.

OK, I’m exaggerating. But Get Out, the first feature by comedian Jordan Peele, is more than just another fright flick. It’s a film that examines, with insight, empathy, and anger, the challenge of being a black man in white America. Peele is not exclusively interested in making you jump out of your seat (though he proves plenty good at that). He also wants to clamp you to your chair and make you grapple with the current state of race relations in this country, to wrestle with his characters’ prejudices and maybe even your own. Read More

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John Wick: Chapter 2: Back in Black, But Check Out the Color

Jeremy BeckReviews
Keanu Reeves returns in "John Wick: Chapter 2"

Midway through John Wick: Chapter 2, the title character and a deadly foe engage in a ferocious, no-holds-barred brawl, complete with pistols, knives, and fists o’ fury. This type of fight is entirely familiar to action fans, but what happens next isn’t; after the combatants crash through the plate-glass window of a hotel, their vicious duel to the death is interrupted by the establishment’s proprietor. “Gentlemen!” he sternly admonishes them, raising his voice just a hair. “Need I remind you that business will not be conducted on Continental grounds?” The men, shrinking in stature from lethal death-dealers to sullen schoolboys being tsk-tsked by their principal, dolefully nod in assent, then agree to buy one another a drink.

This is the glorious insanity of the John Wick franchise. It takes the standard elements of your typical actioner—the gunfights, the car chases, the vendettas, the retired hero yanked back down to the underworld against his will—and situates them within an extravagantly tricked-out universe, a world with its own peculiar codes, currencies, and dialects. In the realm of John Wick, when the villain decides to put a bounty on his nemesis, he doesn’t scream or snarl or deliver a sneering speech. No, he takes out his phone, calls “Accounts Payable”, and places an order with a receptionist, one of a fleet of prim bureaucrats who may as well be fielding customer-service requests. “Murder Incorporated” was a snappy moniker; in John Wick, contract killing requires a literal contract. Read More

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