Grade: C plus

Sasquatch Sunset, Ungentlemanly Warfare, and the Risk of Originality

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Eiza González in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare; a scene from Sasquatch Sunset

When it comes to intellectual property, cinema doesn’t operate in absolutes. There are great superhero movies and also terrible ones; there are great original movies and also terrible ones. Still, the franchise boom of the 2010s created an uneven playing field that lent a certain luster to smaller-scale films which weren’t rooted in comic books or young-adult literature. In fact, the continued survival of these types of pictures is what makes me confident that the medium isn’t on the verge of collapsing, despite the constant industry doomsaying about A.I. or tax write-offs or Netflix giving Zack Snyder a billion dollars to make seven different versions of an off-brand Star Wars rather than releasing any of its #content in theaters. The movies have been at death’s door ever since their birth over 100 years ago. They just never seem to die.

Currently, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe dwindling in dominance and audiences rewarding more ambitious storytelling like last year’s #Barbenheimer phenomenon, there seems to be an opportunity for studios to pivot away from the IP craze and toward more original movies. But again, the mere fact of a film’s putative originality doesn’t necessarily mean it’s, y’know… good. This past weekend featured two new releases that don’t feature masked heroes, magic wands, or talking animals. At last, real movies for adults! Except, well, suffice it to say that both have their flaws. Read More

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Immaculate: Snacc of All Trades, Master of Nun

Jeremy BeckReviews
Sydney Sweeney in Immaculate

Until she cracked the box-office code with Anyone But You (still in theaters, over three months later!), Sydney Sweeney was best known for her television work: as a tempestuous sexpot on Euphoria, as a privileged troublemaker on The White Lotus, as a mentally unstable cellmate on Sharp Objects. Even as her star ascended and she appeared in more movies, the pandemic and studio hesitation conspired to prevent her from arriving on the actual big screen, as streamers gobbled up solid pictures like Reality and Big Time Adolescence… and also The Voyeurs, a spiky little thriller that dropped on Amazon a few years ago with little fanfare. Strictly speaking, The Voyeurs wasn’t a good movie, but it did showcase Sweeney’s ability to be both exotic and innocent; it also afforded its director, Michael Mohan, the opportunity to ape Brian de Palma. Now, Mohan and Sweeney have reteamed for Immaculate, a horror flick that contemplates a different sort of lusty possession.

As with The Voyeurs, Immaculate isn’t very good, but it isn’t without its guilty pleasures. As a creature of pure genre, it offers a handful of images—a watchful eye peering through a crevice to witness a sacrilegious ritual; a distant figure launching herself from a background tower—that contain a certain elemental power. The opening scene finds a young nun (Simona Tabasco, also from The White Lotus) trying to escape from an Italian convent that might as well be a medieval castle; as she fumbles frantically with the keys at the wrought-iron gate, a quartet of elders inexorably stalk toward her, like four Darth Vaders in habits. There’s no ambiguity or complexity here, just primordial terror. Read More

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Society of the Snow: The Hunger Shames

Jeremy BeckReviews
A scene from Society of the Snow

The movies love an impossibly true story—and if you aren’t familiar with the ultimate fate of the passengers of Uruguayan Air Force flight 571, you should probably stop reading now. If you are acquainted with this chilling saga of disaster, despair, and endurance—in which the survivors of a plane crash spent 72 days marooned in the Andes before being rescued—it might be because you’ve seen Alive, the 1993 feature directed by Frank Marshall. That decidedly American production, which was distributed by Disney, starred Ethan Hawke and Josh Hamilton as two of many white dudes cast as Uruguayan rugby players. Now, in a reclamation of sorts, comes Society of the Snow, a more culturally accurate recreation of the 1972 ordeal suffered by the Old Christians rugby team and other unfortunate travelers.

In a way, this operates as an inversion for J.A. Bayona, the Spanish filmmaker whose diverse credits include Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and The Orphanage (his first and best), and who previously revisited real-world tragedy and triumph with The Impossible. That movie, inspired by the plight of a Spanish woman during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, made the controversial decision to tell its story primarily through the lens of three white UK actors. Here, Bayona seems to have inoculated himself against any accusations regarding representation; the men who play the ill-fated athletes all hail from Uruguay or Argentina, and none of them possesses a recognizable name that could be leveraged for marketing purposes. Their relative anonymity is in keeping with the picture overall—both for the heartfelt homage it pays to its real-life counterparts, and for the struggle it exhibits when attempting to turn torchbearers of agony into distinct characters. Read More

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Middlebrow Christmas: The Color Purple and The Boys in the Boat

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Fantasia Barrino in The Color Purple; Callum Turner in The Boys in the Boat

In critical circles, the term “middlebrow” is wielded as a pejorative, alongside “prestige fare” and “Oscar bait.” The idea is that these types of films—often period pieces, featuring inspirational stories that are based on either historical events or popular novels—are tasteful to the point of decorousness, flattering Academy voters for their refinement without taking real risks as works of cinema. As someone who spent his formative years greedily devouring as many Oscar winners as possible, I maintain a steadfast appreciation for the middlebrow picture; I like The Cider House Rules, I love A Beautiful Mind, and I think Kate Winslet was terrific in both Revolutionary Road and The Reader. That a movie attempts to appeal to a broad adult audience doesn’t automatically nullify its pleasures, especially when it’s well-made and well-acted (and sure, gorgeous period costumes can’t hurt).

Christmas tends to be an ideal time for the release of a middlebrow movie, given that the holiday affords extended families the opportunity to spend two-plus hours in a climate-controlled environment without offending any sensibilities. In recent years, sterling examples of this vintage include Little Women, Mary Queen of Scots, and other period pieces that didn’t star Saoirse Ronan (e.g., Fences). Quality prestige pictures, all! Still, just as I reject the notion that middlebrow flicks are inherently inferior, I also acknowledge that they aren’t intrinsically superior; they still need to work on the levels of storytelling and aesthetics. Along with the Michael Mann biopic Ferrari (which I previously reviewed here), this Christmas brought the arrival of two films that seemed like easy wins for prestige-hungry audiences. But despite their differences in tone and scope, they share a sense of failure—both to inspire and, more crucially, to entertain. Read More

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The Marvels: O Captain, Why Captain

Jeremy BeckReviews
Iman Vellani, Brie Larson, and Teyonah Parris in The Marvels

The title of The Marvels doesn’t appear on screen until the end, but it’s announced verbally midway through, during a cutesy scene where the three main characters debate potential nicknames for their improbable team-up. It’s easy to condemn such dialogue as unduly meta, but the problem with The Marvels isn’t the Marvels; it’s Marvel, singular. On its own terms, this movie exhibits its fair share of appealing qualities: charming actors, playful humor, a generally buoyant tone. But it can’t really exist on its own terms—not when it’s constantly being pulled into the yawning black hole that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

This is partly a matter of laborious franchise integration. Multiplex attendees have long since accepted the term “threequel,” but logistically speaking, The Marvels is essentially a triple-sequel, providing a conjoined follow-up for its three disparate members. Most obviously, it operates as a successor to Captain Marvel, the 2019 smash hit that introduced Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) as the final piece of the superhero puzzle before the studio delivered the ultimate crossover event with Avengers: Endgame. That behemoth may have concluded with a sense of nominal finality, but while it said goodbye to several of the series’ biggest stars (most notably Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man and Chris Evans’ Captain America), it hardly turned off the corporation’s lights; there have since been eleven additional feature installments, along with quite a few TV series—two of which factor in here. WandaVision introduced Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), the daughter of Carol’s old friend Maria (who also appeared in Captain Marvel, which actually took place in the ’90s and, look, just go with it); Monica acquired her own superpowers when she waltzed through the force field that was trapping Wanda Maximoff in the fabricated town of Westview, and she now serves as a galactic sentry for Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). And then there is Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), the New Jersey teenager who morphed into Ms. Marvel on the show of the same name, and who has long nurtured a celebrity crush on one Captain Marvel. Read More

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