Grade: B plus

Phoenix: Back from the Dead, But Something’s Off

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ronald Zehrfeld and Nina Hoss dance with deception and death in "Phoenix"

Suspension of disbelief is typically a viewing requirement at the multiplex, not the art house. Superhero movies and science-fiction flicks are expected to stretch the boundaries of reality in ways anathema to dialogue-driven dramas and period pieces. Phoenix, Christian Petzold’s electric, implausible anti-love story, is the type of muted, modestly scaled film that you wouldn’t expect to ask audiences to take a giant leap of faith. But it does precisely that, hinging on a conceit that, if rejected, threatens to topple the entire enterprise. If you refuse to accept the cornerstone of Phoenix‘s vertiginous plot, you may struggle to find rapture in its supple technique and vast emotions. But if you surrender yourself, you are likely to become intoxicated by its smoky beauty and limitless longing.

I strongly urge you to try your best, though my urgings are insignificant compared to those of Nina Hoss. A German-born actress best known to American audiences as one of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s weary spies in A Most Wanted Man (and also the anchor of Petzold’s sobering Cold War film, Barbara), Hoss delivers a transcendent performance as Nelly, a concentration camp survivor who was shot in the face during the war (in a wise decision, the details of the shooting are never explained), and who begins the film wrapped in bandages. She’s returning to Germany with her friend, Lene (Nina Kunzendorf, perfectly crisp), in order to undergo facial reconstructive surgery. When the doctor asks Nelly whom she wants to look like, she demands that he return her to her original self. “You won’t look exactly the same,” the surgeon warns her, and the subtitles for that line might as well be accented in bold. Read More

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The Gift: A Thriller of Victims and Villains, But Which Is Which?

Jeremy BeckReviews
Joel Edgerton stalks Rebecca Hall and Jason Bateman in "The Gift"

In an early episode of Seinfeld called “The Male Unbonding,” Jerry finds himself trapped in an unwanted friendship with a childhood chum named Joel (Veep‘s Kevin Dunn), a selfish and fatuous oaf who fancies himself Jerry’s best bud. Eventually, Jerry can no longer bear Joel’s boorish behavior, and he attempts to “break up” with him; this leads to Joel blubbering in public, followed by Jerry swiftly backpedaling, then spending the remainder of the episode inventing excuses (choir practice! tutoring my nephew!) to avoid seeing him. In theory, this pattern of evasion continued indefinitely, but because Seinfeld was an episodic sitcom, Joel was never heard from again. Still, I’ve often wondered: What might have happened going forward between these two self-involved men? Would their asymmetrical friendship have faded naturally, with Joel gradually taking the hint? Or would something else—something more traumatic—have occurred?

The Gift, Joel Edgerton’s dark and disturbing thriller, plays like a twisted version of “The Male Unbonding”. It examines the process by which adults attempt to extricate themselves from undesired relationships, but it also refracts that process through a fun-house mirror. In “The Male Unbonding”, Jerry gamely suffers through Joel’s antics, repeatedly rolling his eyes, always accompanied by a chorus of laughter. In The Gift, the eye-rolls have given way to cold stares, and the laughter has been replaced by screams. Read More

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Magic Mike XXL: Forget Your Day Job, It’s Time to Party

Jeremy BeckReviews
Channing Tatum and co. are back for "Magic Mike XXL"

A few months ago, I saw a movie about an inveterate warrior who gets pulled back into a turbulent conflict, and who uses his ingenuity and physical prowess to triumph in battle. A few days ago, I saw another movie with a similar storyline, about a legendary figure who grudgingly returns to the battlegrounds of his past, relying on both his cunning and his skill to achieve immortality. And while the two films are undeniably different—Mad Max: Fury Road is about a life-or-death struggle set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, whereas Magic Mike XXL is about a stripper performing in Myrtle Beach—their dissimilarities, from a filmmaking perspective, are almost incidental. The traits that made Mad Max: Fury Road such a sensation—the no-holds-barred attitude, the revelatory practical stunt work, the palpable swagger—apply with equal force to XXL. Both worship at the altar of cinematic excess, and both thrill their audiences with their verve and dexterity. It makes little difference that, while Max faces a hail of bullets, Mike is bombarded with “a tsunami of dollar bills”.

In conventional critical terms, Magic Mike XXL might appear to be a bit thin. It has no real plot to speak of, it is not especially interested in character development, and it is positively disdainful of plausibility. Certainly it lacks the lacerating bite of its predecessor, which benefitted from Steven Soderbergh’s artistry, expertly camouflaging a wolf’s tale of loneliness and manipulation in the sheep’s clothing of glamour and decadence. (For this sequel, Soderbergh has passed directing duties on to his longtime assistant, Gregory Jacobs, though he returns as both cinematographer and editor, working under his usual twin pseudonyms, Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard.) But virtually none of this matters. XXL doesn’t have time for trifling concerns like plot and character, and watching the movie, neither will you. You will be too busy cheering its electric set pieces and succumbing to its infectious spirit of euphoria. Read More

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Mad Max: Fury Road: On the Dusty Road, with Revved-up Engines

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Hardy stars in George Miller's explosive "Mad Max: Fury Road"

At various points in Mad Max: Fury Road—George Miller’s outlandish, unpretentious, frequently glorious action epic—an electric guitar suddenly reverberates on the soundtrack. It’s a playful sonic touch, but the musicality of the riff is beside the point; the real story is that the composer, Tom Holkenborg (credited here as Junkie XL), seems to be taking his cues from an actual character in the film, a red-clad, masked musician armed with the biggest double-neck six-string you’ve ever seen. Credited as Coma-Doof Warrior or the Doof Warrior (and played by the Australian instrumentalist iOTA), whenever he slashes his right arm across the strings, not only do bolts of noise blare on the soundtrack, but giant flames shoot out of the guitar’s headstock. And if that isn’t enough, the Doof Warrior spends his entire time riding on the roof of a massive 18-wheeler (the Doof Wagon, naturally) that’s barreling at top speed through the Australian Outback.

The Doof Warrior, the movie's grandest flourish

The Doof Warrior is the most memorable thing about Mad Max: Fury Road, but he is also the embodiment of its zany, carefree spirit. This is, after all, a movie that features a host of pursuing ATVs adorned with bristling spikes, resembling a motorized prickle of mutant porcupines. When bald, emaciated underlings aren’t sailing through the air on tall pieces of wood like demented pole-vaulters, they’re scrambling onto the hoods of speeding cars and spitting gasoline into open engines. Big rigs crash into one another, characters leap from vehicle to vehicle, and everything always seems to be on fire. (It’s hardly surprising that Verdi’s iconic “Requiem” figures prominently on the soundtrack.) Yet as crazed as Fury Road is, it is also lovingly intimate, the work of a director who cares deeply about his fictional dystopia. Miller may paint on an enormous, chaotic canvas, but he’s still an artist. Read More

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