Grade: C plus

Speak No Evil, Beetlejuice 2, and Movies Nobody Asked For

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice; James McAvoy in Speak No Evil

One of the most common rhetorical questions you’ll find on the internet, posed in response to the green-lighting of a new movie, is “Who asked for this?” It’s a derisive expression meant to impugn the upcoming film’s artistic integrity and belittle its commercial viability, even if it really functions as a statement of personal taste; the literal answer to the question is invariably, “Lots of people, just not you.” It’s also correlative of asking whether a picture is “necessary,” which is equally foolish. Strictly speaking, no work of art is necessary because we’re talking about entertainment, not food or shelter; philosophically speaking, art is absolutely necessary because it provides us with pleasure, anger, knowledge, and the opportunity to get mad at people online when they disagree with us. We may not need movies to survive, but to quote the captain from Wall-E, I don’t want to survive—I want to live.

And yet: In our era of perpetual IP churn, it’s occasionally worth pondering why certain pictures are made, and whether their cinematic execution can transcend their facially dubious justification (which is, of course, that studio executives hope they might make money). The two movies currently atop the domestic box office, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Speak No Evil, inspire this sort of metaphysical musing, given that they’re typal cousins: the long-delayed sequel to a beloved classic, and the English-language remake of an acclaimed foreign work. They both have their virtues; they both also raise questions about whether they should exist at all. Read More

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Alien: Romulus: Razed by Wolves

Jeremy BeckReviews
Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson in Alien: Romulus

The first Alien was a very scary movie, but it also spawned a franchise that was unusually fearless in terms of reinvention. Made seven years apart, Ridley Scott’s singular original and James Cameron’s pluralized sequel share a few commonalities (Sigourney Weaver, those snarling xenomorphs), but they’re dramatically different in terms of tone and style; one is a gritty, claustrophobic creature feature, while the other is a boisterous, kinetic action extravaganza. David Fincher’s Alien 3 isn’t nearly as good as either of its predecessors, but it earns points for its despairing atmosphere and its defiant refusal to just replay the hits.

But the longer a series runs, the harder it is for each new installment to distinguish itself. Alien: Romulus, which is either the seventh or ninth episode (depending on whether you count its crossovers with the Predator pictures) of outer-space screaming, is a modestly diverting blockbuster, featuring some decent character work and a few scenes of nerve-jangling suspense. But it lacks a true identity or personality, instead feebly mirroring the first Alien (and the underrated Resurrection). The only thing scarier than a monster bursting from your chest, it seems, is the prospect of nudging this franchise in a new direction. Read More

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Horizon, an American Saga: To Each His Yellowstone

Jeremy BeckReviews
Kevin Costner in Horizon, an American Saga: Chapter 1

Can Kevin Costner save the movies? He’s certainly willing to try, even if nobody asked him. Horizon: An American Saga is many things—an epic western, a romantic melodrama, a historical reckoning, an ode to classical masculinity—but above all, it is a wager on the sanctity of the theatrical experience. In the 34 years since Costner captured the hearts of viewers (and Oscar voters) with Dances with Wolves, the landscape of American cinema has changed, with much adult-oriented prestige fare migrating from the expansive frontier of the multiplex to the cozier confines of your living room. Costner himself has played a small part in this, having spent five seasons starring on the wildly popular TV series Yellowstone. With Horizon—which Costner not only wrote (with Jon Baird) and directed, but also financed with $38 million of his own money—he aims to unfurl a long-gestating passion project that restores the big screen to its former glory.

So the bitter and abiding irony of Chapter 1, the first of at least four planned installments in the saga (with the second slated for release on August 16 er, we’ll get back to you on that), is that it feels very much like an episode of television. It introduces a large number of characters and sketches out their preliminary circumstances, rarely affording them anything resembling closure. It also cuts across numerous locations, hinting at a potential intersection of disparate subplots but reserving any such linkage for a subsequent entry. And it concludes not with an exclamation point but with an ellipsis—a frenetic, fairly absorbing montage that comprises footage from the already-shot Chapter 2, a technique akin to the “This season on [X]” stingers that wrap up the premiere of your favorite Netflix or Amazon series. This isn’t a movie; this is a pilot. Read More

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MaXXXine: Body Trouble, But Dressed to Thrill

Jeremy BeckReviews
Mia Goth in MaXXXine

A sweaty and methodical build-up followed by a burst of spurting fluids—am I describing a horror movie, or a porno? The two genres collide in MaXXXine, though without the satisfactory release you might hope for. Sure, there is a bit of bare flesh on display and a good deal of blood, but surprisingly little in the way of tension or excitement. Sexploitation homages shouldn’t feel this neutered.

MaXXXine supplies enough visual style to make it watchable, but it’s still a disappointment, especially when you consider its genealogy. It’s the third consecutive collaboration between writer-director Ti West and actor Mia Goth, who two years ago gave us X, a snappy slasher that subtly interrogated the puritanical attitudes of the skin-flick ’70s while also delivering some humdinger set pieces. They followed that with Pearl, a cheeky prequel which excavated the origins of X’s geriatric villainess and provided Goth (who co-wrote it) with the monologue of a lifetime. MaXXXine flashes forward to the more recent past, bringing back Goth’s now-titular character from X along with a few tedious plot points. Set in 1985, the action has shifted from the clammy farmland of rural Texas to the glitzy neon of the Hollywood Hills, but the thematic preoccupations are similar to those of X. Once again, West is examining retrograde gender norms surrounding sex and cinema, imagining a lurid universe that blurs the line between on-screen indecency and real-world brutality. Read More

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The Watchers: What You See Is What You Fret

Jeremy BeckReviews
Dakota Fanning in The Watchers

Think fast: Can you name a movie directed by someone with the surname Shyamalan where a handful of terrified survivors take shelter in primitive surroundings in the forest, bracing for an invasion of unseen monsters? If you guessed The Village, you’d be right, and also wrong. The Watchers, the debut feature from Ishana Night Shyamalan, conforms to a similar horror template as that 2004 tentpole, one of the most divisive (and best) pictures directed by her father, M. Night. It’s inevitable, in our era of toxic nepo-baby discourse, that the younger Shyamalan’s work will be measured against that of her sire (who serves as producer here), so there’s something admirable about her steering into the skid and inviting the comparison. In tone and style, The Watchers is a decidedly Shyamalan production, featuring a number of qualities—foreboding atmosphere, stiff dialogue, gripping images, hokey mythology—that inevitably evoke the filmmaker who was once infamously dubbed “the next Spielberg.”

It’s slightly disappointing, if hardly devastating, that The Watchers is a flawed movie, struggling to enliven its spooky premise with the requisite eccentricity or suspense. But it isn’t an ignoble effort, and it establishes Shyamalan as a director with a fine eye. She just isn’t always sure where to aim it. Read More

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