Period Piece

Wuthering Heights review: Promising Stung Woman

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie in Wuthering Heights

In the opening scene of Emily, Charlotte Brontë disparages Wuthering Heights as “an ugly book, base and ugly.” Emerald Fennell must have missed that memo. To be sure, this umpteenth screen adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel is suffused with crude, primal emotions: lust, hatred, anguish, cruelty, more lust. But because Fennell fancies herself one of modern cinema’s most flamboyant stylists, her version clothes this vulgarity in beauty and extravagance. This is not your literature professor’s Wuthering Heights; this is more of the music-video edition.

Does that make it sacrilegious or sensible? Maybe a bit of both. I am not sure we needed another update of Brontë’s classic, much less one so high-strung and turgid. At the same time, if you are going to reimagine an article of the literary canon, you may as well do so with some flair. Fennell’s first two movies, Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, were original conceits, (arguably) teeming with provocative ideas and piercing insights into contemporary class and gender. Now pivoting from the freedoms of invention to the constraints of adaptation, she has redirected her inflammatory instincts away from theme and toward feverish form. The results may not be great, but at least they’re distinctive. Read More

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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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Marty Supreme review: Nights of the Downed Table Tennis

Jeremy BeckReviews
Timothee Chalamet in Marty Supreme

There’s a moment in Marty Supreme when someone tells the title character to stay calm. I generally don’t like spoiling things, but given that the movie was directed by Josh Safdie—and given that Marty (surname Mauser) is played as a bundle of raw nerves and febrile energy by Timothée Chalamet—I feel comfortable in informing you that this advice proves unsuccessful. Asking Marty Mauser not to get agitated is like asking the earth not to rotate on its axis. It’s a plea in defiance of natural order.

The cinema of the Safdie Brothers, which includes grubby scraps like Good Time and Heaven Knows What, places a premium on speed and shock while also championing aesthetic ugliness in the name of visceral authenticity. They found the right calibration on Uncut Gems, their 2019 tour de force of addictive anxiety, before venturing out on their own. Benny recently made The Smashing Machine, a solid enough picture that was largely forgettable outside of Dwayne Johnson’s committed performance. Marty Supreme is hardly a perfect movie, but it sure is a memorable one. It’s got sex and violence and mad dogs and crooked cops and Chalamet’s bare ass and Gwyneth Paltrow in mink-wrapped lingerie. Josh Safdie may have gone solo, but he hasn’t gone acoustic; he remains committed to pulverizing viewers with volume and intensity, resulting in an experience that straddles the line between exhilarating and exhausting. Read More

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Thanksgiving Roundup: Zootopia 2, Frankenstein, Train Dreams, Rental Family, Sentimental Value

Jeremy BeckReviews
The fox in Zootopia 2; Oscar Isaac in Frankenstein; Joel Edgerton in Train Dreams; Brendan Fraser in Rental Family; Renate Reinsve in Sentimental Value

In a perfect world, I’d use this website to write long-form reviews of every new movie I watched. Sadly, I lack both the time and the talent to do so. Yet my combination of OCD and narcissism compels me to always register my opinions in some fashion—typically via Letterboxd, where I can scribble down two-paragraph capsules that convey my overarching thoughts without adhering to the formal style and detail of a proper review. (For example, I never found the time to review Hamnet, but my spoiler-heavy Letterboxd blurb digs into that film’s majestic ending.) I try not to shill for corporations, but whether you’re the dorkiest of cinephiles or just a casual viewer, it’s a free and useful app, and—what was I saying about narcissism again?—if you’re ever searching for my thoughts on a movie that I didn’t review here, you can likely find them there.

This week, though, rather than choosing a single title to highlight, we’re going rapid-fire through some recent releases—a blend of audience-pleasing blockbusters, independent fare, and streamers that Netflix refused to let you see in a theater. Let’s get to it. Read More

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Deliver Me from Nowhere, Blue Moon, and the Pleasures of the Biopic Performance

Jeremy BeckFeatures
Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon; Jeremy Allen White in Deliver Me from Nowhere

The biopic-to-Oscar pipeline isn’t what it used to be. Sure, slathering on makeup and adopting a pronounced accent is probably still the safest way to catch the Academy’s eye; of the past 10 ceremonies, seven have awarded at least one acting trophy to someone playing a celebrity or historical figure. (You could quibble about including 2015 in this tally, since Leonardo DiCaprio, Alicia Vikander, and Mark Rylance and all won statuettes for portraying people who are real but not exactly embedded in the popular imagination.) But it’s hardly a sure thing. Last year, for example, Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, and Monica Barbaro all received Oscar nominations for playing famous musicians in A Complete Unknown, but they all lost to competitors portraying fictional characters (in The Brutalist, A Real Pain, and Emilia Pérez); two years prior, Austin Butler’s flashy reincarnation of Elvis Presley succumbed to Brendan Fraser’s obese writing teacher, a person who wasn’t real in any sense.

Still, the biopic star turn remains appealing to the Academy, and for reasons beyond its membership lazily equating dutiful impersonating with great acting. There is undeniable pleasure in watching a performer trying to embody a renowned individual, using the inherent falseness of their craft to achieve a semblance of truth. Last weekend saw two new releases featuring actors playing 20th-century artists. One of these depictions is conventionally satisfying; the other flirts with the sublime. Read More

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