Thriller

Bullet Train, Prey, and Action Silly and Serious

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Brad Pitt in Bullet Train, Amber Midthunder in Prey

I take movies seriously, but how seriously should movies take themselves? One of the saws about modern blockbusters is that they’re meant to be dumb fun—that they’re designed to function as a respite from the harshness of reality, and that they grant viewers the blessed opportunity to “turn your brain off.” Setting aside the wisdom of deactivating your central nervous system, I acknowledge that films which operate primarily as pleasure dispensers carry a certain appeal, though it’s debatable whether they need to be dumb—or to neglect more pesky, brainy attributes like plot, theme, and character—in order to be enjoyable. The phrase “it doesn’t take itself too seriously” is generally considered a compliment, implying not that the picture in question is foolish, but that it’s unpretentious.

But is this a sliding scale? That is, when it comes to action—the genre most typically cited by Brain-Off enthusiasts—do movies necessarily trade seriousness for satisfaction? Or can a film’s sincerity instead indicate its level of artistic commitment, suggesting that it approaches its crowd-pleasing task with formal rigor and genuine care? These are false dichotomies, but this past weekend nevertheless presented an intriguing contrast, featuring two new action flicks that occupy opposite ends of this theoretical spectrum. One takes its blockbuster imperative deadly seriously; the other treats seriousness akin to a disease. Read More

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Vengeance: The Lone Star Bait

Jeremy BeckReviews
Boyd Holbrook and B.J. Novak in Vengeance

When the American version of The Office began, it presented B.J. Novak’s character Ryan as a thoroughly normal guy who happened to wander into a horribly dysfunctional workplace. (In the very first episode, he sits by helplessly as Michael plays a pointlessly cruel prank on Pam.) If he could at times appear above it all, that was simply a matter of relativity; he was superior by virtue of being average. Yet as the series progressed and the characters gained dimension, Ryan’s bemusement curdled into smugness, and Novak gradually revealed the character’s face—generically handsome, with darting blue eyes and topped by wig-worthy hair—to be a mask that camouflaged his selfishness and cruelty. If Michael Scott was the terrible boss who secretly had a heart of gold, Ryan Howard was the reverse—a superficially nice guy who was actually a complete jerk.

Vengeance, Novak’s first feature as writer-director, interrogates that same arrogance with a curious mixture of irony and sincerity. He casts himself as Ben Manalowitz, a smarmy and vapid New York writer who’s quick to tell you that he “went to school in Boston.” Ben has aspirations of breaking into the podcast scene, but when we first meet him on the terrace of a poshly appointed loft, he’s more preoccupied with defending his singlehood, pontificating with a friend (played by John Mayer?!) about how their rigorous lack of commitment is really an advanced form of human evolution. Later that evening, he reconnects with a past hookup whom he’s stored in his phone as, “Random House Party”; when she enters his apartment, he asks her (to her bafflement), “How’s the book business?” Real prince. Read More

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Nope: Intelligent Equine

Jeremy BeckReviews
Daniel Kaluuya in Nope

Throughout Nope, the eye-popping and brain-tingling third feature from Jordan Peele, title cards bearing the name of an animal interrupt the proceedings, as if to divide the movie into discrete, enigmatic chapters. The headings typically refer to various horses (Lucky, Ghost, etc.) who are owned and trained by the main characters, while the final section opens with a nickname assigned to the mysterious, malevolent force that looms in the sky above their house. At the rough midpoint, however, the elaborate scheming and the interplanetary hijinks are put on pause, and the film rewinds several decades to the set of a multi-camera sitcom, where the titular attraction is a chimpanzee called Gordy.

What follows is one of the most spellbinding set pieces I’ve seen on screen in quite some time. Combining sturdy cinematic building blocks—witty production design, precise framing, a painstakingly purposeful harmony of image and sound—Peele concocts a sequence that accumulates furious momentum yet is also achingly, exquisitely still. We glimpse the events, a ghastly display of chaos and carnage, from the perspective of a small boy named Jupe (Jacob Kim), who we already know will age into the commercially savvy proprietor of a Western-style theme park, where he will be played with sly confidence by Steven Yeun. Yet in the moment, that foreknowledge provides little comfort, and as the young Jupe hides under a table, paralyzed with fright, you are less likely to sympathize with him than embody him—frozen in horror, yet helpless to look away. Read More

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Where the Crawdads Sing: Swamp Fling

Jeremy BeckReviews
Daisy Edgar-Jones in Where the Crawdads Sing

No beating around the bush (or trudging through the marsh): Where, exactly, do the crawdads sing? The answer is both literal and metaphysical, obvious and unknowable. In Olivia Newman’s strained, soulful adaptation of Delia Owens’ best-selling novel, characters speak the title aloud twice: first as a breathless suggestion of childhood sanctuary (it’s a place where kids can hide), second as a lofty notion of spiritual permanence (it’s a realm where essences can linger). Quoting your title in dialogue isn’t a crime, but it can nonetheless signal a certain awkwardness—a fumbling attempt to convey meaning through words rather than images. As a piece of dramatic storytelling, Where the Crawdads Sing is clumsy, sticking moments of raw power into the gummy machinery of the pulp thriller and the courtroom drama. But it is at least sincerely clumsy. What it lacks in clarity and persuasion, it makes up for with earnestness and gumption.

One of the many pure-hearted lessons that the film teaches (or perhaps preaches) is that people often contain more than they appear. The same might be said of movies, though the reverse can also be true; some pictures attempt to distract you with the sheer bustle of stuff—plot twists, hectic action, nonlinear structure—to conceal the fundamental emptiness at their center. Where the Crawdads Sing somehow embodies both sides of this dual principle. Despite cramming itself with incidents and swinging wildly between genres, its story is not especially interesting. Yet its tonal capriciousness—its willingness to shift and swerve while nonetheless rooting itself in its distinct milieu—lends it a certain integrity. Read More

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The Black Phone: No Answer, Try His Hell

Jeremy BeckReviews
Ethan Hawke in The Black Phone

Listen up, kids, here are some dos and don’ts courtesy of The Black Phone, the grimy new horror movie from Scott Derrickson: Do stand up to bullies by hitting them in the head with rocks. Don’t beat your children with a belt, even if you’re really just a sad dad on the inside. Do pay careful attention to your dreams, which may or may not be premonitions. Don’t invite the cops inside your home while lines of cocaine are visible on your coffee table. And if a dude in clown makeup driving a black van branded “Abracadabra” approaches you on a vacant sidewalk, do immediately walk the other way; don’t—seriously, do not—ask if you can see a magic trick.

That last nugget comes courtesy of The Grabber, a serial killer terrorizing a morose Denver neighborhood in 1978. With lank hair and dark eyes that peek out from behind a two-piece mask—the upper part topped with devilish horns, the lower forming a demented smile—he’s played by Ethan Hawke, continuing the actor’s not-unwelcome veer into villainy following his small-screen turn on Marvel’s Moon Knight. There are moments of real menace in Hawke’s performance here; when he smothers a child’s cries and threatens to gut him like a pig before strangling him with his own intestines, you know he means it. For the most part, though, he keeps things in second gear, gesturing toward evil rather than embodying it. Read More

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