Period Piece

Original Screenplay Weekend, Again: Honey Don’t, Eden, and Relay

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ana de Armas in Eden, Margaret Qualley in Honey Don't, Riz Ahmed in Relay

The top grosser at the box office last weekend was a sing-along version of KPop Demon Hunters, Netflix’s animated phenomenon about a girl-pop trio who use their musical talents to battle demons disguised as a boy band. I’m not lamenting this; it’s a mostly charming movie, and it’s nice to see any Netflix product in theaters, even if that company remains philosophically committed to eradicating the very existence of cinema. KPop Demon Hunters is also an original work, meaning its success derives from thoughtful artistry and word-of-mouth rather than by leveraging intellectual property.

Not every new release last weekend was so triumphant. Look considerably lower down the box-office chart, and you’ll find the debut of three movies with original screenplays that combined to gross less than one-third of Demon Hunters’ $19M. (I’m ignoring Splitsville, which played in just five theaters across the country.) When I last performed this exercise in 2021, I expressed gratitude that original pictures had returned to theaters as the industry rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic. Four years later, I’m less optimistic about our cinematic future. But let’s celebrate (and evaluate) what we’ve got, while we’ve still got it. Read More

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The Phoenician Scheme: The Hand Grenade’s Tale

Jeremy BeckReviews
Mia Threapleton, Benicio Del Toro, and Michael Cera in The Phoenician Scheme

Wes Anderson’s movies are so meticulously constructed, it’s easy to overlook that they also tend to be explosive, messy, and violent. It takes all of 30 seconds into The Phoenician Scheme, his latest lavishly imagined whirligig, before someone gets literally blown in half by a missile. Not long after, the picture’s unscrupulous hero, an entrepreneur named Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro), emerges from the wreckage of a plane crash, trying to stuff a protruding organ back inside his body. Over the picaresque adventure that follows, Korda will face flaming arrows, gun-toting guerillas, duplicitous spies, overcooked pigeons, and a pit of quicksand. He’s the unflappable eye of a fastidiously unstable hurricane.

That all of this mayhem unfolds in the context of Anderson’s characteristic rigor—a method of careful framing, crisp camerawork, and filigreed production design—isn’t really a product of dissonance. Rather, The Phoenician Scheme harmonizes control and commotion. Anderson’s style is often pejoratively deemed fussy, but his exacting craft doesn’t drain the life from his filmmaking. Quite the opposite: The rich colors, the sharp wordplay, and the impeccable ornamentation all coalesce to imbue the proceedings with urgency and vivacity. In this heightened alternate reality, precision generates momentum. 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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The Brutalist: Nadirs of the Lost Architect

Jeremy BeckReviews
Adrien Brody in The Brutalist

The American dream gets flipped upside-down in The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s soaring, scathing portrait of post-war greed. Yet while it may be a troubling tale of moral decline, it opens with its hero going up, up, up, climbing toward the prospect of salvation. His name is László, and we first see him in the steerage of a ship docking at Ellis Island, his pallid skin and crooked nose long shielded from the light of day. As his mind recites a letter from his absent wife, he begins to ascend along with countless other sweaty hopefuls, the camera swooping and twisting like he’s navigating a labyrinth. When he finally bursts onto the deck, his face breaks into an ecstatic grin, the sunlight beaming down on him, the score’s trumpets booming in triumph. Never mind that our first view of Lady Liberty comes at an inverted angle, as though she’s about to plunge her torch—and its elusive promise of prosperity—into the harbor.

This knockout introduction instantly signals The Brutalist’s monumental ambition, both thematic and aesthetic. Much has been made of the film’s length (over three-and-a-half hours, including a 15-minute intermission), but its running time is just one of its many extravagances. Corbet, eschewing subtlety in favor of sheer grandeur, has delivered a truly maximalist production, a work of sweeping scope, vigorous style, and provocative rhetoric. The movie is, to borrow the tagline from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, an epic of epic epicness. Read More

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A Complete Unknown: Don’t Judge a Schnook by His Covers

Jeremy BeckReviews
Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown

In the most memorable scene of Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, a band takes the stage at a music show and turns to their guitar cases, only to retrieve a cache of machine guns and open fire on their unsuspecting audience. It’s a metaphor for the 1965 Newport Festival where Bob Dylan, beginning his pivot from homespun folk to electric oomph, infuriated the fans who’d clamored to hear the plaintive, stripped-down ballads that made him famous. A Complete Unknown, James Mangold’s new Dylan biopic, recreates that historic moment, though it does so with careful fidelity rather than brash surreality. That’s in keeping with the guiding spirit of the movie, which follows Dylan’s early rise and initial backlash while faithfully abiding by the conventions of the genre. In telling the story of the man who revolutionized an art form, it doesn’t exhibit a rebellious bone in its body.

This doesn’t make it bad. In fact, A Complete Unknown is pretty good. It has good music, good actors, good pacing, and good dialogue. (While you’re considering the source, I happen to think I’m Not There is Haynes’ worst picture, but that’s another story.) What it lacks—what it doesn’t even seem to try to achieve—is a sense of majesty or wonder that might befit its subject. It plays the greatest hits without evincing any aspirations toward true greatness. Read More

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