Satire

Indie New Year: No Other Choice, We Bury the Dead, The Plague

Jeremy BeckReviews
Lee Byung-hun in No Other Choice; Daisy Ridley in We Bury the Dead; Everett Blunck in The Plague

Christmas tends to be a big holiday for new movies, but New Year’s Day, not so much. Major studios rarely drop new films in the chill of early January, so the flip of the calendar instead becomes an opportunity for limited releases to expand slowly (sometimes glacially—looking at you, The Testament of Ann Lee). Today, we’re catching up with three independent pictures gradually making their way around the country, though viewers in some markets may be forced to wait until they hit streaming. This is why I support a national law requiring all movies to play in all theaters at all times.

No Other Choice. Capitalism is murder. You work and you work, pouring your blood and sweat into a numbing career that drains the life from you, in service of unfeeling bosses who can sack you whenever they want. (Note to any of my superiors who happen to be reading this piece: I love you and I love my job, please don’t fire me.) If you’re a CEO, they send you packing with a golden parachute. If you’re a line worker, they give you an eel. Read More

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Bugonia review: Alien vs. Redditor

Jeremy BeckReviews
Emma Stone in Bugonia

Have you noticed that the world is falling apart? That corporations wield enormous power? That the mega-rich are infiltrating the government to advance their own agenda at the expense of the working poor? Teddy has noticed. More than that, he’s determined that our ongoing societal collapse stems from a particular form of unchecked immigration—one that has nothing to do with national borders. That’s right, according to Teddy there’s a more insidious invading force at work: aliens.

Bugonia is the latest whatsit from Yorgos Lanthimos, the fiendishly inventive filmmaker of such marvels as Poor Things, The Lobster, and The Favourite. It isn’t as great as those movies, lacking their conceptual ambition and their ravishing craftsmanship. But it is nonetheless a potent and arresting work—an intimate, suspenseful thriller that also tackles modern discontent with satirical ingenuity and sobering clarity. Read More

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Eddington: Sicking and Screaming

Jeremy BeckReviews
Joaquin Phoenix in Eddington

Some films yearn to transport you to days bygone, preying on your nostalgia for the glories of the past. Then there’s Eddington, the latest freak-out from Ari Aster and the exact opposite of a whimsical memory-lane venture, instead regarding its chosen era with suspicion and exasperation. Set in May 2020 at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s an unholy time machine of a movie—the kind that will have you clawing at the walls, breaking your fingernails as you search for a way out.

Aster made his bones with Hereditary, a skin-crawling nightmare that refused to let you ever look at your parents or telephone poles the same way again. Eddington has no curses or demons or decapitations, but thematically speaking, it’s even scarier than his debut, seeing as it grapples with society’s collective cluelessness in response to an encroaching plague. Sure, supernatural forces are disturbing and all, but they’ve got nothing on human stupidity. Read More

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American Fiction: By Book or by Crook

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jeffrey Wright in American Fiction

Writing is a task infected with misery and failure: an endless cycle of staring at a blank screen, deleting reams of gibberish, and questioning your life choices. (Am I speaking hypothetically? Reader, I am not.) So it was with a mixture of envy and disbelief that I watched Thelonious Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), better known for obvious reasons as Monk, sit at his desk and confidently compose an entire novel in what appeared to be a single night. What’s his next trick, building Rome?

Not that Monk is an especially successful artist. The flailing hero of American Fiction, Monk is a mythological scholar whose fearsome intellect has failed to translate into financial security or critical renown. (When he appears at a book panel, he scratches a missing vowel onto the placard that misspelled his name.) His latest text, a meticulous analysis of Aeschylus’ The Persians, hasn’t attracted the slightest nibble from publishers, given that it’s miles removed from the zeitgeist. “They want a Black book,” explains his agent, Arthur (John Ortiz). Monk’s frustrated response—“I’m Black, and it’s my book”—betrays not only his stubbornness, but his woeful ignorance of consumer demand. Read More

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Saltburn: Brother, Can You Spare a Crime?

Jeremy BeckReviews
Barry Keoghan and Archie Madekwe in Saltburn

“Eat the rich” is generally meant as a metaphor, but in Saltburn, the new psychodrama from Emerald Fennell, it verges on becoming literal. Midway through the movie, during one of the many pivot points in its kinked narrative, a young man coos that he intends to devour his female quarry before burying his face between her legs. Shortly thereafter, we see him sinking into a bathtub, blood dripping down his chin, like a vampire crawling into his coffin after a fresh kill.

This is among the movie’s plentiful striking images that are designed to induce a gasp of horror or a shudder of pleasure. Saltburn’s plot may traffic in ghastly occurrences—deception, suicide, murder, undercooked eggs—but it primarily operates as a work of provocation. If you find yourself clucking your tongue at its tactlessness or wincing at its indecency, you are simply playing your part as the appalled observer. To paraphrase a popular line that tends to circulate on social media, the obscenity is the point. Read More

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