Thriller

The Lighthouse: Stormy Weather, Madness on the Horizon

Jeremy BeckReviews
Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe in Robert Eggers' "The Lighthouse".

A punishing movie whose bits of greatness are obscured by a fog of auteurist pretension, The Lighthouse is a deeply frustrating experience, a tantalizing work that defies explanation and categorization. It defies enjoyment too; as technically impressive and formidably confident as it may be, it isn’t much fun to watch. But it does carry a genuine personality, the imprint of a director who refuses to sacrifice his bizarre vision for the sake of more quotidian values like accessibility. Or, you know, coherence.

That director is Robert Eggers, whose first feature, the terrific horror movie The Witch, blended creeptastic folk-story terror with silky filmmaking craft. It also featured characters speaking in period-specific dialect, a trick Eggers repeats here, though the setting has been bumped up by a few centuries to the late 1800s. The screenplay, which Eggers wrote with his brother Max, is laden with old-timey jargon—“aye” in place of “yes”, “ye” instead of “you”, etc.—which enhances the film’s already-ornate degree of detail. Assuming, of course, you can understand what the hell they’re saying. Read More

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Joker: Violence. Murder. Insanity. It’s a Riot!

Jeremy BeckReviews
Joaquin Phoenix in "Joker"

Borne on the waves of controversy and leaving a trail of smoggy fumes in its wake, Joker is arguably the movie of the year. Not the best movie of the year, mind you—not even close. But while the events of this strange and faintly maddening film take place in 1981, in the fictional realm of Gotham City, it is plainly designed to tap into the anxieties of the present moment, to Say Something significant, whether about art, commerce, politics, or society. It screams to be pored over, analyzed, debated; it’s a movie that also feels like the belabored setup for a podcast. Does it glorify incel culture, or is it a pointed critique of toxic masculinity? Is it a scabrous attack on the wealth gap, or an ardent defense of the established social order? Is it a violent fantasy, or a repudiation of violence?

In theory, these are interesting questions, but Joker, which was directed by Todd Phillips from a script he wrote with Scott Silver, has no interest in answering them. That may in itself sound bold; after all, some of the world’s greatest art is open to vigorous interpretation. Yet the great irony of this movie—the gag that surely has its maker imitating its antihero, cackling in high-pitched glee—is how meaningless it is. It feints at profundity, but it does not trouble itself with forming actual ideas. It is less a Rorschach test than a brightly colored finger painting. It splashes the frame with divisive topics—police brutality, mental illness, social unrest, powerful men, victimized women—and then passes off such haphazard daubing for the articulation of genuine themes. To the extent Joker has a philosophy of any interest, it is that it proclaims itself to be interesting. Read More

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Official Secrets: Blowing the Whistle, and Facing the Consequences

Jeremy BeckReviews
Keira Knightley in "Official Secrets"

Three days before I saw Official Secrets, the Washington Post released a story that provided new details regarding a previously filed whistleblower complaint, which alleged that President Trump had made an improper promise to a foreign leader. The whistleblower, a member of the intelligence community, had felt compelled to take action because he believed that Trump’s conduct rose to the level of an “urgent concern”, which appears to be spook-speak for A Big Fucking Deal.

The aftermath of these explosive revelations is currently unspooling on various media: newspapers and their online affiliates, with their wide range of clickbait headlines and weary fact-checks; Twitter, with its armchair policy experts and viral memes; and—the President’s primary source of information gathering—TV news programs, with their ranty guests and exasperated moderators. The pages of history surrounding these events are currently being written; movies dramatizing them will surely pop up in the ensuing years and decades. In a less insane, more cinematically karmic world, this ongoing furor might have served as serendipitous marketing for Official Secrets, a movie which—if you can believe it—involves a civil servant in an intelligence agency who blows the whistle on her government after discovering that it’s engaged in illegal activity regarding foreign countries. Read More

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Luce: He’s Black and They’re Proud

Jeremy BeckReviews
Kelvin Harrison Jr. in "Luce"

He’s the valedictorian. His teachers often ask him to give inspirational speeches, which he delivers with disarming sincerity. He’s also a star athlete, a sprinter who runs in the upright style of Michael Johnson. And he excels on the debate team, where he presents his lucid arguments with a confidence that never slips into arrogance. His name is Luce, and as the school principal puts it, he is the very definition of a model student.

And Luce, while an imperfect film, feels similarly paradigmatic. Coursing with energy, insight, and relevance, it is exactly the kind of movie that American audiences should be watching right now, as the world burns and cultures clash. Unashamedly provocative, it is designed not to shame but to stimulate, to inspire discussion and reflection. It asks complex questions—about race, sex, drugs, criminal justice, even the platonic conception of the American dream—and then demands that you hunt for the answers. It holds up a mirror to the country and forces you to confront what you see. Read More

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Ready or Not: Here Come the Wealthy Satanists

Jeremy BeckReviews
Samara Weaving in "Ready or Not"

The rich really are different in Ready or Not, a bloody—and bloody-fun—satire of the American aristocracy. Every family has its quirky rituals, but the Le Domas clan—the coterie of smarmy blue bloods depicted here—is so accustomed to disposing of dead bodies, they instinctively toss a coin whenever they encounter a fresh corpse, a literal delegation of heads or tails. And if you think you’ve ever struggled to fit in with your moneyed in-laws, at least your great aunt has never charged at you while wielding a giant battle axe.

That’s just one of many daunting challenges faced by Grace (Samara Weaving), the heroine of this grisly, giddy tale. When the movie opens, she’s steeling herself for a different sort of nightmare: marrying into the Le Domas empire following a whirlwind romance with Alex (City on a Hill’s Mark O’Brien), one of the scions of the famous gaming dynasty. (“We prefer dominion,” he gently corrects her.) And if you strip away the brutal prologue, which finds a five-year-old Alex hiding in a closet while his relatives coolly murder a well-dressed man, the opening act of Ready or Not could perhaps be mistaken for a fish-out-of-water comedy, along with a send-up of the rich and brainless. Read More

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