Grade: C plus

Don’t Look Up: May the Planet Jest in Peace

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jonah Hill, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, and Jennifer Lawrence in Don't Look Up

Are you familiar with the scientific phenomenon known as climate change? If not, then you might find Don’t Look Up, the new star-studded political satire from Adam McKay, to be profoundly eye-opening. Doubtless, McKay wishes it to provoke outrage as well as laughter; this has been his shtick ever since The Other Guys’ closing credits featured a flurry of graphics illustrating the mechanics of a Ponzi scheme. It isn’t a critic’s job to predict how an audience will react, but I suspect that most people who possess rudimentary knowledge of global warming (and I, to be clear, am no expert) will greet McKay’s latest effort not with howls of fury but with snorts of derision. I suppose Don’t Look Up is a passion project, in the same way that certain third graders can be passionate when they’re arguing for a snow day.

It feels somewhat mean to criticize a movie that carries such an urgent message, even if the delivery of that message is fairly mean. To be sure, anger is an appropriate response to society’s collective shrug toward its own existential threat, and it’s undeniably maddening that the fact of climate change is still framed as a political issue—a polarizing debate in which #BothSides present meritorious arguments. Yet agitprop tends to be more persuasive when it’s targeted; here, McKay paints with such a broad brush that he sacrifices precision. In addition to attempting to skewer the electoral establishment—embodied here by Meryl Streep as a coldly calculating, vaguely Trumpian president, flanked by an army of flunkies and an Oedipally charged chief of staff (Jonah Hill)—he also lampoons greedy tech profiteers (Mark Rylance plays an awkward genius designed to recall Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk), militaristic jingoism (Ron Perlman pops up as a demented former general), mainstream media (Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry play fatuous morning-show anchors), celebrity culture (Ariana Grande and Scott Mescudi suck up some oxygen as vain pop stars), millennial slackerdom (Timothée Chalamet receives a measure of dignity as a skateboarder), and social-media vacuity (fake memes routinely spring up). It’s a lot—the film clocks in at a baggy 145 minutes—and that muchness seems to be an element of McKay’s broader point. If you aren’t part of the solution—that is, if you don’t subscribe exactly to his hazy set of principles, which I guess could be described as Pro-Science—then you’re part of the planet-killing problem. Read More

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Thanksgiving Roundup: Encanto and House of Gucci

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Stephanie Beatriz in Encanto; Lady Gaga in House of Gucci

The double feature is a long-defunct relic of moviegoing, but lately I’ve done my best to revive the concept in my writing, if only to give myself the excuse to review as many films as possible. But while I’ve previously managed to contort unrelated movies into purportedly similar shapes—Dune and The French Dispatch are both made by obsessive world-building auteurs, King Richard and Tick Tick Boom both contemplate tortured geniuses, Malignant and The Card Counter both go for broke, etc.—this Thanksgiving’s pair of high-profile releases presents a more daunting challenge. How to possibly unify Encanto, the cheery new animated musical from Disney, with House of Gucci, Ridley Scott’s sordid fact-based saga of opulence, betrayal, and murder? I could argue that both films center on crumbling dynasties who cling to their power through deceit and corruption, but let’s not kid ourselves—not when one of them is geared toward kids and the other toward creeps. Instead, let’s focus on their qualitative differences, because one of these movies is quite good and the other one isn’t.

Conceptually speaking, Encanto isn’t anything special. Directed by Jared Bush and Byron Howard (Zootopia) from a script Bush wrote with co-director Charise Castro Smith, it’s another of Disney’s misfit-kid pictures, centering on a plucky heroine who, despite her wholesome spirit and positive attitude, is unsure of her place in the world and within her family. Of course, world and family are essentially the same thing for Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz), who technically isn’t a princess in the same way Moana technically wasn’t a princess. She’s nonetheless the granddaughter of Alma (María Cecilia Botero), the benevolent matriarch who rules over her brood, the Madrigal family, with what might be called generous rigidity; everyone is happy, so long as—and perhaps because—everyone abides by Alma’s decree. There is even something vaguely feudal about the Madrigals’ elevated position; they’re basically aristocratic leaders of a humble South American village, one whose welfare hinges on the noble class’ prosperity and munificence. Read More

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Eternals: Yuck Everlasting

Jeremy BeckReviews
Angelina Jolie, Richard Madden, Salma Hayek, and Gemma Chan in Eternals

Auteur theory meets its match in Eternals, the strange, occasionally beguiling, ultimately tedious new entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Critics tend to consider movies as belonging to their director, but Disney’s primary interest in property has always been intellectual rather than artistic. This doesn’t mean that the 21st century’s dominant franchise is devoid of personality—just that its cagiest filmmakers (James Gunn and Ryan Coogler among them) operate simultaneously as smugglers and stewards, sneaking in eccentric touches while hewing to commercial imperatives. Hell, the Russo brothers turned the latter Avengers pictures into billion-dollar hits less through innovation than carefully calibrated deference; they served their fans, pleased their bosses, and didn’t make anyone unhappy, which becomes easier when you take so few risks.

Into this minefield of consumer expectation and corporate ownership now steps Chloé Zhao, fresh off of winning two Oscars for Nomadland, and laboring to bring some art-house punch to the multiplex’s most anodyne commodity. It’s tempting to accuse the Marvel machine of squeezing the color out of Zhao’s filmmaking, and to brand her as yet another victim sacrificed on the altar of sequel churn. But Eternals, which Zhao also wrote with Patrick Burleigh (repurposing an original script by Ryan and Kaz Firpo), is too odd and intriguing to be disregarded as the product of studio interference. No, its failings are more pedestrian and predictable; its characters are unmemorable, its plot is nonsensical, and its action is risible. Read More

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Free Guy: Leveling Up, One Cross-Promotion at a Time

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ryan Reynolds in "Free Guy"

Once you acknowledge that it’s creatively bankrupt, Free Guy becomes a reasonably diverting time at the movies. It’s a work of benevolent fraud, like an identity thief who steals your credit card and then buys you some cool shit before jetting off to Cancun. It’s also a fascinating document for where it sits in today’s precarious blockbuster landscape: a big-budget original screenplay that nonetheless feels awkwardly bootstrapped to the superior pictures it’s imitating. It’s an original copy—an organic movie with a synthetic soul.

Free Guy was technically directed by the journeyman Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, Real Steel), but its true authorship is corporate. It’s being distributed under the banner of “20th Century Studios”, which means it was initially developed at Fox before that company was acquired by Disney, the insatiable commercial behemoth that currently owns roughly 98% of the market share. The film’s first trailer, which premiered back during the Before Times of December 2019, winkingly ridiculed the Mouse House’s penchant for recycling old hits (“from the studio that brought you Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King… twice”), but Free Guy occupies a curious double-zone; even as it’s trumpeting its original bona fides at every turn, it’s continually leveraging its preexisting brand in the hope of launching yet another merchandise-friendly franchise. Read More

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Wonder Woman 1984, The Midnight Sky, and the Christmas of Flops

Jeremy BeckReviews
George Clooney in "The Midnight Sky"; Gal Gadot in "Wonder Woman 1984"

On Christmas Day 2019, I attended one of the most memorable double features of my life: Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, followed by the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems. Forget the visual and verbal audacity of both pictures (not to mention their, er, tonal differences); what I remember most now is the sensation of sitting in a jam-packed auditorium. Neither of those films is conventionally crowd-pleasing, but I don’t think I’m manufacturing a memory when I recall the communal thrill that swept through the audience when Saoirse Ronan delivered an impassioned speech, or when Adam Sandler placed yet another dubious bet. What could better distill the holiday spirit—the anticipation, the laughter, the shared cheer—than watching a movie with total strangers?

Suffice it to say that Christmas Day 2020 unfolded a little differently. But even though the COVID-19 pandemic prevented me from spending my holidays at the movie theater, it didn’t prevent me from spending it watching movies. The clear highlight of the season was Pixar’s Soul, which I’ve already reviewed, but Christmas also brought us two other high-profile streaming releases: Wonder Woman 1984 (on HBO Max) and The Midnight Sky (on Netflix, and technically released on December 23). Both have received fair-to-middling reviews, though I’d argue that one is rather underrated. Read More

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