Period Piece

Darkest Hour: Taking Power, Then Feeling Powerless

Jeremy BeckReviews
Gary Oldman is Winston Churchill in Joe Wright's "Darkest Hour"

Let us dispense immediately with the obvious and unfortunate comparison: Darkest Hour is no Dunkirk. It isn’t designed to be, of course; Joe Wright’s terse examination of Winston Churchill’s tumultuous ascension to Prime Minister is styled as an informative docudrama and a thoughtful character study, not an epic war film. Still, it’s rotten luck for Wright’s movie that it opened a mere four months after Christopher Nolan’s, given that the gap in intensity between the two films equates roughly to the length of the English Channel. It’s tempting to suggest pairing them as a double feature—after all, both chronicle the fateful events of Europe in May of 1940, albeit from opposite sides of the Channel—but in the wake of the pulverizing heroics of Dunkirk, the political brawls of Darkest Hour feel more like a palette cleanser, or maybe a sleeping pill.

Again, this (dis)similarity is not Darkest Hour’s fault. And while it’s unlikely to get anyone’s pulse racing, this modest movie sports its own elegant pleasures, chief among them affirmation of its director’s silky cinematic talents. Ever since his feature debut (the deeply underrated Pride & Prejudice), Wright has demonstrated a knack for wielding classical tools—camera placement, composition, lighting—in ways that feel invigorating rather than staid. His formidable abilities are again on display here, operating with a visual panache that does wonders to enliven his wobbly, predictable narrative. In Wright’s hands, shafts of sunlight and swirls of shadow become characters in their own right, turning every frame of the film into its own gorgeously told micro-story. There’s always something stunning to see on screen in Darkest Hour, even if you’re also invariably just watching crusty old men argue. Read More

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The Shape of Water: A Tale of Monsters, and a Creature Too

Jeremy BeckReviews
Sally Hawkins and Doug Jones in Guillermo del Toro's "The Shape of Water"

It’s tempting to call The Shape of Water a monster movie, given that it revolves around the mysterious arrival of an amphibious fish-man—an imposing humanoid creature with slimy, mottled skin, webbed hands, and a nasty temper. And indeed, this inspired whatsit from Guillermo del Toro is replete with disturbing images and ghoulish presences: severed, decomposing fingers; a mutilated housecat; nefarious Russian communists; Michael Shannon’s sneer. Yet while The Shape of Water is suitably invigorating—as he demonstrated in Crimson Peak, del Toro knows how to set a mood and build suspense—it isn’t really a fright flick. It isn’t really any single type of movie, in fact, preferring to hopscotch across genres with dexterous fluidity. The result is a delicate, beguiling film that’s simultaneously familiar and original; you’ve seen the various pieces before, but you’ve never seen them assembled quite like this.

Some of them fit together better than others. A playful and enthusiastic remodeler of classic movies, del Toro takes evident delight in braiding together seemingly conflicting strains of stories; his last feature, the robot-kaiju mash-up Pacific Rim, was basically $190 million worth of giant toys crashing against one another, an appealing idea marred by uncharacteristically poor execution. The Shape of Water is a gentler, more thoughtful picture, but it still shows some seams from where its director has stitched its disparate elements together. As an underdog caper and a spy thriller, it’s entertaining without being especially exciting. But as a romantic fantasy, it largely soars. Read More

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American Made: I Feel the Need, the Need for Greed

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Cruise is a cocksure pilot, again, in "American Made"

By all rights, American Made should play as a tragedy—a sobering study of moral decay and rampant corruption that can only conclude in sadness, irony, and death. Its hero is Barry Seal, a commercial airline pilot-turned-drug-runner who liaised with Colombian traffickers on behalf of the CIA, and who became the target of numerous investigations by an alphabet soup of domestic law enforcement agencies (the DEA, FBI, and ATF all sought their pound of flesh). From this description, you might suspect that the movie is depressing. Quite the opposite—it’s a blast. That’s because its director, the perennially underappreciated Doug Liman (Swingers, The Bourne Identity), approaches the material less like a cop or historian than an end user. So while American Made studiously chronicles Barry’s rise and fall, it isn’t principally interested in bringing its protagonist to justice. It just wants to get you high.

This is refreshing. Cinema suffers from a glut of grim gangster movies, and while many of them are compelling, they often blur together in their fetishized violence and relentless dourness. American Made, by contrast, proceeds with a lightness of touch that, paradoxically, highlights its darker undertones. It leaves a mark precisely because it isn’t trying too hard. Read More

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Detroit: Black and White and Dead All Over

Jeremy BeckReviews
Will Poulter and Anthony Mackie in Kathryn Bigelow's "Detroit"

Detroit opens with a police raid on an African-American nightclub, an edgy incursion that concludes with dozens of black patrons being forcibly loaded into paddy wagons. The movie, which takes place in 1967, was released in theaters on July 28, 2017. That same day, the President of the United States said this:

So, yes: In an era where virtually every American movie feels unnervingly topical—from franchise films to alien adventures to romantic comedies—Detroit resonates even more than most. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, it rakes up considerable muck, tackling two intertwined issues—endemic racism and police brutality—with unapologetic frankness. This relevance almost automatically makes Detroit worth seeing; it’s rare for a film to firmly exist in both past and present at once. But if you can set aside its political significance (not that you should, of course), what emerges is a strange, decidedly uneven movie. Helmed by a filmmaker renowned for her precision, Detroit is oddly undisciplined, chaotic, even flabby. Yet it is also, at least during its extended central passage, a gripping, nightmarish tale of sweaty panic and helpless inevitability. It doesn’t always seem to know where it’s going, but it sure shakes you up in the process of getting there. Read More

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Atomic Blonde: She’s a Lady, and a Killer

Jeremy BeckReviews
Charlize Theron is cool as ice in "Atomic Blonde"

These boots are made for kicking in Atomic Blonde, David Leitch’s sexy, overstuffed actioner of new-age kineticism and carefully curated retro cool. Forged of tactile black leather and stretching what seems like acres up to their subject’s knee, the boots adorn the statuesque body of Charlize Theron, that South African goddess with a 14-year-old Oscar and a newfound thirst for blood. As a one-armed warrior in Mad Max: Fury Road, Theron showcased a bristling physicality that meshed nicely with her more classical qualities. She has all of her limbs back in Atomic Blonde, and good thing too, since she does roughly as much talking with her fists—and those boots—as with her mouth.

If anything, there’s too much dialogue in Atomic Blonde, which tends to stall whenever its heroine isn’t in slick, liquid motion. Adapting the graphic novel The Coldest City, screenwriter Kurt Johnstad (300—you get what you pay for) piles on the spy-speak and the Bournean intrigue, layering the busy plot with triple agents, double-crosses, and a single ungainly framing device. It isn’t incomprehensible, exactly, but Leitch, who previously co-directed John Wick before departing its sequel to make this film, has little use for all this blather. He’s much more interested in cranking up the music—the post-punk-heavy soundtrack here feels like the offspring of a union between The Americans and Deutschland 83—and unleashing his leading lady as an unstoppable force of lithe, purposeful destruction. Read More

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