Grade: B plus

Luca: Summer Loving, Glazed by the Past

Jeremy BeckReviews
A scene from Pixar's Luca

Luca is a shape-shifting sea monster, and Luca itself is something of a transformer. It is by turns (and sometimes all at once) a coming-of-age story, an underdog sports movie, an ode to canonical Italian cinema, and a heartfelt fable of tolerance. That it ably fulfills all of these roles without succumbing to chaos or incongruity is a testament to the dexterity of its storytelling and the fluidity of its construction. It doesn’t so much offer something for everyone as it provides everything for someones—namely, for those audiences who hunger for art that is simultaneously funny, kinetic, sweet, and affirming.

It is not—and with every new Pixar release, the conversation tends to focus on what it isn’t rather than what it is—terribly imaginative. Small in scale and gentle in heart, Luca lacks the bold ingenuity that has (ahem) animated some of the studio’s more impressive recent works: the metaphysical philosophizing of Soul, the existential angst of Toy Story 4, the triumphant razzle-dazzle of Incredibles 2, the anthropomorphized emotions of Inside Out. But not every Pixar picture can be expected to stretch or redefine an entire genre, and besides, lamenting Luca’s familiarity risks diminishing some of its considerable charm. Here is a playful, gorgeous, heart-warming adventure that tells its tender story with craft and conviction. That it occasionally resembles other movies seems a small price to pay. Read More

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In the Heights: Defend the Block

Jeremy BeckReviews
Anthony Ramos and Melissa Barrera in In the Heights

“96,000,” the undeniable centerpiece of Jon M. Chu’s In the Heights, is a dizzying, dazzling musical number, a vibrant and symphonic sequence that opens on a sunbaked street, parades through a crowded neighborhood, and eventually unites what feels like a cast of thousands in a luminous public pool. Yet as propulsive and audacious as it is, the moment the song made me gasp is almost invisible; early on, when rhapsodizing about (and exaggerating) his own talents, a graffiti artist invokes the name of Obi-Wan Kenobi and then—as if from thin air—pulls out a lightsaber.

Not really, of course; as gifted and ambitious as these residents of Washington Heights may be, they aren’t actual Jedi knights. Instead, Obi-Wan’s intergalactic weapon appears as a puff of greyish shadow only to just as suddenly vanish, along with other mentioned objects like a golf club and a sparkling diamond. It’s a mild visual flourish, but it embodies the spirit of creativity that makes this Broadway adaptation sing. In all likelihood, a point-and-shoot version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first stage hit would have been entertaining; hell, the Disney+ broadcast of Miranda’s Hamilton was largely delightful, and it was literally just footage from theatrical performances. But while In the Heights obviously can’t approach that masterpiece in terms of writing or depth, Chu’s big-screen vision is nonetheless a robust and imaginative work. And that’s because it’s unashamedly a movie musical—emphasis on “movie”. Read More

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A Quiet Place Part II: Hush Growing Children, Don’t Lose Your Nerve

Jeremy BeckReviews
Emily Blunt in A Quiet Place Part II

The traffic light works. That’s how we know, even before the appearance of a freighted title card (“Day 1”), that the opening scene takes place during the era has become colloquially known, during our collective struggle with COVID-19, as the Before Times. (Remember, even movies that were made before the pandemic are totally still about the pandemic.) So even though the small town’s main square seems oddly deserted, the signal’s automatic flickering from green to yellow to red instantly communicates an attitude of relative safety. Yet at the same time, the introduction’s formal composition—the smoothness of the camera, the emptiness of the streets, the chaotic footage glimpsed on a news broadcast—articulates an undeniable sense of Damoclean danger. The apocalypse may not have arrived yet, but it’s surely on the way.

This expertly staged opening sequence, which builds from needling anxiety to clammy tension before erupting into all-out mayhem, confirms John Krasinski’s considerable skill as a director. He’s only made a handful of features, but here he again evinces a talent for conveying information and atmosphere through canny visual details. When he supplies a simple shot of a timid boy wincing in panic as a fastball buzzes past him during a Little League game, he isn’t watching a sport; he’s defining a character. Read More

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Nomadland: Movin’ On Out, Again and Again

Jeremy BeckReviews
Frances McDormand in Chloé Zhao's Nomadland

An ambitious cinematic tone poem that seeks to stand as tall as the stately redwoods it rapturously depicts, Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland pays homage to a number of distinctly American wonders: the crashing waves of the Pacific; the rocky palaces of the Badlands; Frances McDormand’s face. With soft-blue ice chips for eyes and hard lines creasing the corners of her mouth, the two-time Oscar winner has the chiseled look of an artifact excavated from one of the film’s historical preserves. But there’s nothing antiquated about McDormand’s performance, which is clipped and unsentimental, but also open and brimming with feeling. She’s the main attraction of this mostly lovely, occasionally frustrating movie, which doesn’t so much tell a story as communicate an experience.

That was more or less true of Zhao’s prior film, The Rider, which deployed non-professional actors to refract the gauzy mythology of the cowboy through the cold prism of modernity. I was somewhat immune to The Rider’s low-key charms; it often felt more like a vibe than a movie. Nomadland operates in a similar vein, but Zhao’s filmmaking has grown more expressive. Soundtracked by gentle compositions from the pianist Ludovico Einaudi, her camera greedily contemplates the vastness of the American frontier, discovering landscapes both beautiful and desolate. The country captured in this picture looks like a gorgeous place to visit and a hard place to live. Read More

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New Streamers: Judas and the Black Messiah, Saint Maud, and The Little Things

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jared Leto in The Little Things; Morfydd Clark in Saint Maud; Daniel Kaluuya in Judas and the Black Messiah

Ordinarily, early February is a cinematic dumping ground. But among the million other things that the COVID-19 pandemic affected, it caused the Oscars to expand their eligibility window by two months, meaning that some high-profile titles just landed on your favorite streaming services. Let’s take a quick run through this past weekend’s newest releases.

Judas and the Black Messiah (HBO Max). The second feature from Shaka King, Judas and the Black Messiah is a contemporary political text that’s also a classical spy thriller. It tells the story of Bill O’Neal (a very fine Lakeith Stanfield), the small-time car thief who became a big-league FBI informant in the late ’60s and infiltrated the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers, led by Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya). It isn’t subtle about its allegiance; you don’t need a degree in Christian theology to discern which character corresponds to which half of the title. Read More

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