To paraphrase a seven-time Oscar nominee: There are bad terminators—like, say, the COVID-19 pandemic—and there are good terminators—like the streaming services that keep pumping out new movies. Let’s focus on the good, shall we? Here’s a quick look at three recent releases:
Hillbilly Elegy (Netflix). Early in Hillbilly Elegy, Ron Howard’s diverting and facile adaptation of J.D. Vance’s memoir, a promising student at Yale Law attends a soirée, hoping to impress firm recruiters. He’s a smart and sympathetic kid, but he’s quickly overwhelmed by the trappings of luxury—calling his girlfriend in a panic, he asks, “Why are there so many fucking forks?”—and his charm offensive stalls. Then someone refers to West Virginians as rednecks, he bristles in response, and suddenly an evening of schmoozing has disintegrated into a sullen and awkward standoff between rich and poor. Read More
Who wants movie characters to live forever? Plenty of people, apparently, given how many films are made about the undead or the undying. This makes some sense: Reality has yet to discover the fountain of youth, so art has stepped in to fill the gap, allowing us to grapple with the dream (or the nightmare) of life everlasting. But it also presents a unique challenge for storytellers. No picture can fully encapsulate a person’s entire life (not even Boyhood), yet we still expect a certain degree of finality when the credits start to roll. How can movies deliver that necessary closure when their characters’ lives are open-ended?
Last month, two very different films wrestled with this quandary, in decidedly different ways. In The Old Guard, Charlize Theron plays the leader of a band of immortal mercenaries struggling to find meaning in a life of perpetual assassination. And in Palm Springs, Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti star as wedding guests locked in an infinite time loop, doomed to relive the same sunny Southern California day over and over. Both movies attempt to interrogate their characters’ predicaments, but only one does so with any real freshness. The Old Guard may be a sturdy and accomplished piece of action filmmaking, but it never truly distinguishes itself from the pictures it’s imitating. Palm Springs, on the other hand, improbably manages to evade the giant shadow cast by Groundhog Day, transforming into a romantic comedy that tickles your brain as well as your funny bone. Read More
Jane Austen’s Emma
is a comedy of manners, which of course means that nobody in it is actually
polite. It may unfurl in high society—the kind where estates have proper names,
like Donwell Abbey and Hartfield —but its veneer of decorum is a mere
smokescreen, camouflaging base instincts of lust, greed, and jealousy. Its language
is unfailingly civil, with a premium placed on honorifics—Mr. Elton! Miss Smith!—but
its characters wield words like weapons, brandished with lethal force and
sheathed with calculated fury. It’s a frolicsome tale of romance and
friendship; it is also blood sport.
This duality can be bracing, but for most viewers it is no
longer surprising, given how frequently Austen’s novels have been transmuted to
the screen. Her works provide a certain comfort, a warm and familiar blend of
sophisticated wordplay, comic misunderstandings, and graceful resolution. This
new adaptation of Emma, which has
been directed by Autumn de Wilde from a screenplay by Eleanor Catton, respects
its author deeply and faithfully. Unlike Clueless,
which boldly transplanted Austen’s narrative and themes to the frivolous
exploits of mid-’90s teenagers, this Emma
is frank and straightforward. You might think that such a rigorous approach
would result in the diminution of risk, in an absence of artistic identity or
imagination. To be sure, the movie is predictable. It is also magical. Read More
A romantic fantasy in more ways than one, Long Shot is a beauty-and-the-beast love
story that simultaneously aspires to work as a thorny quasi-satire of contemporary
politics. It aims not only to tell a crowd-pleasing tale of sweetness and
levity, but also to impart a valuable message to the American electorate. This
is a laudable idea, one with a rich cinematic history; Aaron Sorkin fans will
fondly remember The American President,
while film enthusiasts of a different generation may recall Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But to
borrow language from the political realm, Long
Shot is a smoke-and-mirrors candidate, spouting handsome rhetoric but
skimping on actual, meaningful substance. When the pairing of Seth Rogen and
Charlize Theron is one of the more
credible ideas on screen, you have perpetrated a fraud on the moviegoing
public.
Have I gone too far? Maybe. If you approach Long Shot while wearing a certain set of
blinders—if you ignore its poisonous ideas and its philosophical sloppiness—you
may perceive it as a harmless little rom-com, a passably diverting use of two
hours. The acting is quite good, not only from the leads but also the
supporting cast, in particular June Diane Raphael as a dubious staffer and O’Shea
Jackson Jr. as a loyal confidant. The script, by Dan Sterling (The Interview) and Liz Hannah (The Post), isn’t nearly as hilarious
as it thinks it is, but it features its share of clever lines, while the
direction, by Jonathan Levine (50/50),
includes the occasional visual flourish amid the forgettable point-and-shoot
mundanity. Theron gets to do a spit take and simulate rolling on molly, while Rogen,
best known for his verbal dexterity, receives an opportunity to showcase his
gifts as a physical comedian. It is an avowed cinematic truth that watching a
man fall down a flight of stairs is always funny, as is seeing him spurt bodily
fluids in unintended places. Read More
If High Fidelity was a lovingly critical look at the maniacal behaviors of fandom—the all-consuming need to know as much as possible about popular artists, and to lord your superior tastes and knowledge over other worshippers of your ilk—Juliet, Naked is about the crippling consequences of artistry itself. Adapted, like High Fidelity, from a novel by Nick Hornby, it stars Ethan Hawke as Tucker Crowe, a has-been musician who a quarter-century ago released a beloved alt-rock album and then suddenly vanished from the public eye. Now he lives in his ex-wife’s garage in Upstate New York, barely knows four of the five children he fathered via four different women, and shuffles through grocery stores looking for cereal and gardening supplies. He’s like the ghost of Jeff Buckley crossed with the Dude from The Big Lebowski, if the Dude still collected royalty checks.
If that sounds like the recipe for a punishing study of squandered talent, never fear. Directed by TV veteran Jesse Peretz (Nurse Jackie, Girls) from a script by Evgenia Peretz (the director’s sister), Jim Taylor, and Tamara Jenkins, Juliet, Naked is a spry and largely delightful romantic comedy, a welcome summer breeze of warm humor and enveloping gentleness. It’s more of a curio than a landmark, which means it’s unlikely to be pored over for decades by the collectors and fanatics who populate Hornby’s works. But its disarming lightness should not be mistaken for insubstantiality. There’s craft in telling a story that’s decidedly pleasurable but doesn’t churn its sweetness into froth. Read More
