Grade: B plus

John Wick: Chapter 4: Sit Back, Relax, and Destroy

Jeremy BeckReviews
Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 4

During one of the many, many fight scenes in John Wick: Chapter 4, an antagonist named Caine issues a call for expediency: “Let’s get this shit over with.” I hesitate to quibble with Caine, not least because he’s a deadly assassin played with balletic grace by Donnie Yen, but his directive here isn’t just grouchy; it violates the very spirit of the franchise. The John Wick pictures are creatures of excess and extravagance. Their hero may be a ruthlessly efficient killer, but the movies which sustain him are fueled by elaborate martial artistry and ornate mythology. They don’t get shit over with; they deliver some of the craziest shit imaginable.

Chapter 4, the latest, longest, and (potentially) last installment in the series which began in 2014, capably fulfills the franchise’s extremist imperatives, even as it subtly interrogates them. Or maybe not so subtly. It’s been nine years and four films since a group of Russian thugs killed the wrong guy’s puppy, and the plot hasn’t really changed ever since; John is still angry, still hunted, and still—as played with soulful physicality by Keanu Reeves—meting out retribution via manifold means and gruff precision. The prior episode, the bonkers and gloriously operatic Parabellum, essentially finished where it started, with a bloodied but unbroken John vowing revenge against the sinister cabal known as the High Table. Chapter 4 continues this endless battle—a rather lopsided duel in which one person wages war against what seem to be thousands of expendable henchmen (when someone asks John how many people he needed to kill to reach a certain point, he responds, with characteristic curtness, “A lot”)—but it also contemplates the existential toll that time and death have levied on the bearded man in the bulletproof suit. Read More

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Quick Hits: Scream VI, Cocaine Bear, Creed III, Magic Mike 3, and Emily

Jeremy BeckReviews
Michael B. Jordan in Creed III; Keri Russell in Cocaine Bear; Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera in Scream VI; Emma Mackey in Emily; Salma Hayek Pinault and Channing Tatum in Magic Mike's Last Dance

Between the Oscars, our TV rankings, and our list of the year’s best movies, it’s been a busy past month here at MovieManifesto. As a result, while I was able to write a few proper reviews of new movies (the new Shyamalan, the new Ant-Man), I neglected to make time for a bunch of additional 2023 films. That changes now! Well, sort of. Unlike Lydia Tár, I can’t stop time, so I’m unable to carve out enough space for full reviews. Instead, we’re firing off some quick-and-dirty capsules, checking in on five recent releases. Let’s get to it.

Scream VI. The clever double-act of the Scream pictures—the platonic ideal established by the first installment and never quite equaled since—is that they’re movies about scary movies and are also, well, scary movies. In the prior episode, Scream (which should have been called Scream 5, but never mind), new directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett satisfied one and only one side of that equation, cleverly skewering the toxic fandom that attends modern discourse but failing to serve up memorable carnage. Now returning with Scream VI, the pair have essentially flipped the script. The meta ideas bandied about here are a little less trenchant, but the nuts-and-bolts execution—and executions—is first-class. Read More

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Babylon: Putting the Sin in Cinema

Jeremy BeckReviews
Margot Robbie and Diego Calva in Babylon

In the Bible, the city of Babylon is referred to as a dwelling place of demons—a haunted, sinful metropolis that is ultimately befallen by evil, disaster, and ruin. That Damien Chazelle has selected it as the title of his new movie, a rampaging epic set in the dawn of Hollywood, is one of the filmmaker’s subtler touches.

I mean this less as criticism than observation—maybe even admiration. The maximalism with which Chazelle has constructed Babylon, a simultaneously nostalgic and seditious homage to cinema’s golden age, is unmistakably a product of courage, even if it is also a signifier of poor taste and bad sense. His heedlessness—the way he has envisioned 1920s Tinseltown as a gluttonous underworld of sex, drugs, and generalized depravity—carries with it a monumental ambition, one that demands the skill of a truly great director. That Chazelle mostly pulls it off is a testament to his talent; that he fails in stretches makes his vanity no less interesting. Read More

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Glass Onion: The Sleuth Shall Set You Free

Jeremy BeckReviews
Daniel Craig in Glass Onion

The real mystery of Glass Onion, Rian Johnson’s breezy and punchy sequel to Knives Out, is how Netflix so badly bungled its distribution. After bidding the GDP of a small country to secure its production rights, the streaming giant broke with its own foolish tradition and granted the movie a semi-wide theatrical release… for seven measly days. It made a healthy chunk of change during that span (over $13 million despite a general lack of marketing), but if you missed it, you’ll need to wait for its small-screen premiere later this month. This is frustrating, not least because Glass Onion is exactly the type of picture whose experience is vastly improved in a crowded theater—not because of its crisp visuals or its gleaming sets, but because of the murmurs of pleasure it inspires from its audience. That ineffable kinship—the ripples of laughter, the squirms of tension, the collective hum of anticipation and enjoyment—is unique to theaters. Netflix’s half-measure—offering a modest release but severely restricting its scope (not to mention its opportunities to make money)—is a puzzle so bizarre, even Benoit Blanc couldn’t solve it.

Blanc is back in Glass Onion, again played by Daniel Craig with a winning combination of Southern-fried decency and innate perspicacity. His return is the lone nominal carryover from Knives Out, though Johnson also retains the broader architectural blueprint of the whodunit. As a result, there is a bit less suspense this time around, and a bit more familiarity. You know the formula: A dead body will turn up, a cluster of suspicious malcontents will be implicated and suspected, and in the end Blanc will pierce the elaborately constructed veil and elucidate the plot’s relentless machinations. The build-up will be artificially loaded with crucial clues and red herrings, while the climax will be breathlessly satisfying and also beside the point. Read More

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Triangle of Sadness: The Big Seasick

Jeremy BeckReviews
Charlbi Dean and Harris Dickinson in Triangle of Sadness

The opening scenes of Triangle of Sadness, the latest sharply etched provocation from writer-director Ruben Östlund, suggests that the Swedish filmmaker has once again shifted his satirical sights. After splintering the nuclear family in Force Majeure and skewering the pomposity of the art world (sometimes brilliantly, sometimes tediously) with The Square, Östlund opens his newest effort at yet another swanky location: a modeling agency. Strolling amid the male performers—there are enough six-packs on display to fill the soda aisle at Wal-Mart—a preening media personality (Thobias Thorwid) remarks on the industry’s inverse relationship between prestige and temperament; the fancier the brand, the grumpier the models tend to appear. This pithy observation is followed by a faintly humiliating audition scene in which the gorgeous Carl (Harris Dickinson) is instructed on how to walk the runway with a semblance of rhythm, then a catwalk sequence where eager onlookers are unceremoniously shunted aside to make room for more exalted clientele.

This playful, reproachful introduction insinuates that Triangle of Sadness will proceed as a systematic dismantling of the bizarre rituals and entrenched smugness of the land of high fashion. But Östlund’s aim isn’t so small. No, it turns out instead that his target is no less than all of western civilization. This movie, with its beaming smiles and gleaming surfaces and gauche desires and festering underbellies, seeks to rip up the social contract and expose humanity’s rotted core. Superficially speaking, it’s attacking the shamelessness of the ultra-wealthy, but that’s only half the game. Sure, Östlund wants to eat the rich, but if he inadvertently devours some poor people in the process, more’s the better. Read More

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