Musical

In the Testament of Ann Lee and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Religion Gets Musical

Jeremy BeckFeatures
Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Ann Lee; Ralph Fiennes in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

All movies compel suspension of disbelief, but the musical demands an extra dose of willful credulity. In real life, people don’t break into choreographed song-and-dance routines, so appreciating the genre requires accepting the form’s heightened surreality. It’s an act of faith—a gesture of surrender to a higher power whom you trust to guide you through the inexplicable.

This means that musicals about religion create a kind of feedback loop, reinforcing their characters’ spirituality—the belief in the unseen, the quest to convert others through vigorous performance—via their staging and technique. As (ahem) fate would have it, two recent releases toy with this idea, even if neither of them conforms to classical conventions of how movie musicals are meant to operate. Read More

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Wicked: For Good review: Make Up With Your Girlfriend, I’m Bored

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo in Wicked: For Good

Did you know that the Yellow Brick Road was paved with slave labor? That Munchkins were subjected to a despotic travel ban? That Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum can’t really sing? These revelations and more emerge in Wicked: For Good, the droopy, flabby conclusion to last year’s spirited introduction. Less a coherent second act than an endless culmination, this tepid musical makes sure to answer all of your burning questions about the lore of Oz, like how the Tin Man lost his heart or whether Dorothy was in fact a total brat.

The executives at Universal are surely not regretting their decision to split Wicked, the Broadway hit from Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman (adapting Gregory Maguire’s novel), into two parts—not when the first raked in over $750M worldwide and the second is already smashing bespoke box-office records. But the motivation behind this maneuver was always commercial rather than artistic, and even as For Good profits financially, it suffers a painful storytelling cost. Read More

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Sinners: (Don’t) Let the White One In

Jeremy BeckReviews
Michael B. Jordan, times two, in Sinners

We always say we want more original movies, but how many movies are truly original? Sinners, the latest feature from Ryan Coogler, is in some ways a work of pastiche, incorporating strains of gangster cinema, music videos, and horror lore. But despite embracing its influences (which is not, in itself, a bad thing), it manages to feel new—both for the urgency of its ideas and the vibrancy of its filmmaking.

That description also applied, with partial force, to two of Coogler’s earlier efforts, Creed and Black Panther. In those pictures, the director managed to imprint his personality onto the material while still operating within the brand-managed confines of the cinematic franchise. (His attempt to repeat the feat with Black Panther’s sequel, Wakanda Forever, was markedly less successful, if partly for tragic reasons beyond his control.) Sinners, for all its boisterous entertainment value, shackles him with no such commercial chains. No longer is Coogler reinterpreting and revitalizing a cherished piece of intellectual property. He’s reimagining the world. Read More

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Better Man: Diary of a Chimpy Kid

Jeremy BeckReviews
A scene from Better Man

The story of an artist’s rise and fall and rise again, Better Man is in many ways a thoroughly typical picture. Like most musical biopics, it conforms to a three-act structure, dutifully following its hero’s rags-to-riches trajectory while interspersing boisterous performances of the songs that made them famous. Like most musical biopics, it juxtaposes euphoric highs (the thrill of nailing an audition, the joy of climbing the charts) with crippling lows (drug abuse, daddy issues). And like most musical biopics, it aims to provide a three-dimensional portrait of its subject while still ultimately lionizing them. In fact, Better Man is like most musical biopics in virtually every way. Except one.

I generally try to go into movies as cold as possible, but I’m wondering how a truly oblivious ticket-buyer might feel upon randomly selecting a screening of Better Man, settling in for the opening voiceover (in which its protagonist declares that he’s been called “narcissistic” and “punchable”), and then watching as the camera focuses on… a monkey. Not an actual monkey—a computer-generated chimpanzee who otherwise walks, talks, and behaves like a human, to the point where nobody remarks on his biological dissimilarity. Even the kids in Paddington acknowledge that they live with a bear. All of the characters here are either extraordinarily tolerant or exceedingly near-sighted. Read More

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Moana 2: Consider the Coconut, Consider It’s Twee

Jeremy BeckReviews
A scene of Moana and Maui in Moana 2

Bracing herself for yet another hazardous journey, Moana insists to a village elder that “It’s not like last time.” Isn’t it, though? In Moana 2, a princess abandons the security of her homeland and embarks on a high-seas escapade, where she teams up with a vainglorious demigod and battles an existential threat. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s basically the logline for Moana, Disney’s heartfelt and winning 2016 animated feature. Rather than messing with success, Moana 2 strives to recapture its predecessor’s magic by faithfully adhering to its venerable blueprint.

That it fails is no great shame or surprise; any topographic survey of the modern cinematic landscape will uncover countless inferior sequels. What’s strange about Moana 2 isn’t that it’s a lesser movie but that it’s a work of lesser ambition. Most sequels are doomed by the obligation to provide more, invariably diluting their ancestor’s charms in a frenzy of self-defeating one-upmanship. Moana 2, by contrast, doesn’t try to do much of anything bigger or different or even interesting. It just sets sail and allows itself to be borne on the waves of its forerunner. Read More

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