War

Gladiator II: And the Rome of the Slave

Jeremy BeckReviews
Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal in Gladiator II

One of the more memorable lines of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator was its hero’s insistence that what we do in life echoes in eternity. Maybe not, but it definitely echoes in sequels. Gladiator II, Scott’s quarter-century-later follow-up to the Best Picture winner of 2000, takes great pains to (strength and) honor its predecessor—not just by recalling dialogue or by repeating themes (the screenplay is by David Scarpa), but by crafting a story that latches onto the original’s skeleton like a necromantic barnacle. The result is less a mighty statue than a wispy hologram, aiming to resemble its predecessor but struggling to acquire its weight or texture.

The concept of diminishing returns in Hollywood is hardly new, and besides, it seems unfair to ding Scott and Scarpa for modeling so faithfully off of their existing blueprint. After all, what is a sequel but a continuation? Still, in its early going, Gladiator II threatens to develop its own personality, hinting toward narrative independence, if not stylistic novelty. Sure, the first time we see Hanno (Paul Mescal), he’s tending crops on his farm, a symbol of classical masculinity that inevitably recalls Russell Crowe’s Maximus dreaming of golden fields of swaying wheat. But any thoughts of gladiatorial combat or imperial destiny are far from Hanno’s mind; a legionnaire living in the humble province of Numidia, his more pressing concern is the advancing Roman army, led by a brilliant and ruthless general named Acacius (Pedro Pascal). Read More

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Sasquatch Sunset, Ungentlemanly Warfare, and the Risk of Originality

Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews
Eiza González in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare; a scene from Sasquatch Sunset

When it comes to intellectual property, cinema doesn’t operate in absolutes. There are great superhero movies and also terrible ones; there are great original movies and also terrible ones. Still, the franchise boom of the 2010s created an uneven playing field that lent a certain luster to smaller-scale films which weren’t rooted in comic books or young-adult literature. In fact, the continued survival of these types of pictures is what makes me confident that the medium isn’t on the verge of collapsing, despite the constant industry doomsaying about A.I. or tax write-offs or Netflix giving Zack Snyder a billion dollars to make seven different versions of an off-brand Star Wars rather than releasing any of its #content in theaters. The movies have been at death’s door ever since their birth over 100 years ago. They just never seem to die.

Currently, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe dwindling in dominance and audiences rewarding more ambitious storytelling like last year’s #Barbenheimer phenomenon, there seems to be an opportunity for studios to pivot away from the IP craze and toward more original movies. But again, the mere fact of a film’s putative originality doesn’t necessarily mean it’s, y’know… good. This past weekend featured two new releases that don’t feature masked heroes, magic wands, or talking animals. At last, real movies for adults! Except, well, suffice it to say that both have their flaws. Read More

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Civil War: The Revolution Will Not Be Rationalized

Jeremy BeckReviews
Kirsten Dunst and Wagner Moura in Civil War

Something is wrong. We know this immediately, as soon as the A24 vanity card appears and bursts of noise explode from all sides, as though miscreants in the theater have set off fireworks in both aisles. We see a middle-aged white man (Nick Offerman) fumbling his lines as he rehearses a televised speech, and the ceremonial nature of his surroundings gradually reveals that he’s the President of the United States. As he yammers about secessionists—a faction he labels “the Western Forces”—the screen periodically cuts away to scattered shots of chaos and destruction. The President blusters that these rebels are on the brink of defeat, but the panicked nature of his rhetoric, along with the pointed images of mayhem, suggest otherwise. This uprising won’t be put down anytime soon.

This is the arresting first scene of Civil War, Alex Garland’s engaging, muddled, knotty new thriller. Simultaneously sprawling and intimate, it chronicles the challenges facing four people as the country around them is engulfed by anarchy and despair. Garland is no stranger to grappling with weighty philosophical ideas in the context of spiky, character-driven adventures. Ex Machina, his first and still best movie as a director, meditated on the very nature of humanity via a twisted, triangular war of wills; his theatrical follow-up, Annihilation, and his TV miniseries, Devs, both conjured dazzling worlds while interrogating their heroes’ motives and pondering their destinies. Civil War is his boldest effort yet, and also his emptiest. Read More

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Napoleon: Till Death Do Us Bonaparte

Jeremy BeckReviews
Joaquin Phoenix in Napoleon

Great-man biopics come with their own prepackaged one-word titles—Oppenheimer, Elvis, Mank—so it isn’t as though Ridley Scott calling his new movie Napoleon demonstrates a criminal lack of imagination. Besides, what were his alternatives? A 1987 miniseries was titled Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story, but while Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) and Joséphine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby) are indeed the two principle characters of this grand, unwieldy epic, they are far from the only figures that have captured Scott’s interest. A more accurate summation of his narrative and thematic concerns might have read, “Napoleon and Josephine and cannons.”

Essentially, Napoleon is two movies in one, and they aren’t so much at war with each other as independent from one another, like separate regiments tasked with fortifying distinct strongholds. As one would anticipate from a Ridley Scott picture, one piece centers on Bonaparte’s military exploits, with large-scale battle sequences and imperial consequences; it’s pretty good, if flawed. Less expected, though perhaps not shocking following the nuanced gender dynamics of Scott’s The Last Duel, is the film’s study of Napoleon and Josephine’s marriage, with all its kinks and complications; it’s pretty good, too. Yet despite its discrete qualities, Napoleon amounts to less than the sum of its pretty-good parts, resulting in an impressive-looking production that’s as predictable as it is entertaining. Read More

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Golda: Funny, She Doesn’t Look Shrewish

Jeremy BeckReviews
Helen Mirren in Golda

Was Golda Meir a brilliant stateswoman or a power-hungry extremist? A crusader for justice or an enabler of discrimination? You’ve likely already made up your mind on such matters, and even if you haven’t, Golda is unlikely to inform your opinion. Directed by Guy Nattiv from a script by Nicholas Martin, it is a thin and meager picture, providing little insight into its subject beyond a vague intimation of her tenacity. If it defies Truffaut’s maxim that war movies inevitably glorify battle, it does so by virtue of being boring.

Not bloated, though. To its credit, Golda doesn’t try to contemplate the entirety of its heroine’s life; its 100 minutes contain no flashbacks to her childhood or formative sequences depicting her political ascendancy. Instead, the screenplay adopts what might be called the Lincoln approach, attempting to build a sweeping character study by chronicling a single famous event. That would be the Yom Kippur War of 1973, a 20-day conflict in which Israel reeled from a two-pronged attack initiated by Syria and Egypt. The theory of the movie is that, by showing us Meir’s behavior in the face of this catastrophe—her keen intelligence, her dry wit, her steely resolve—it will turn a narrow slice of history into a rich and evocative portrait. Read More

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