Women are fighting back. Well, at least at the movies. Women aren’t a monolith on screen or off, but this past weekend’s new theatrical releases were striking for how they centralized female characters, and how they placed them in varying postures of defiance. At the cinema, the fairer sex is through with unfairness.
The most ambitious of these movies, The Woman King, is also the most conventional. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood from a script by Dana Stevens, it’s an old-fashioned historical epic, in the vein of Spartacus or (for a more recent vintage) Gladiator. And when it comes to women fighting, its depiction is quite literal: It tells the story of the Agojie, a troop of female soldiers for the Dahomey kingdom in nineteenth-century West Africa. Led by the fearsome Nanisca (a reliable Viola Davis), they wage war against a rival empire—not out of territorial bloodlust, but out of desire to prevent their citizens from being conscripted into slavery. Read More
Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods is frequently breathtaking and just as frequently stultifying. It conjures images and sequences of enormous power; it also dilutes that power, thanks to the sloppiness of its storytelling and the willful indiscipline of its creator. This can be frustrating, but it isn’t especially surprising. Lee is a rare director not just for his filmmaking gifts, but for the breadth of his ambition; he’s a crowd-pleaser who wants to make you angry, a fire-breathing preacher who wants to show you a good time. His best movies (Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, 25th Hour) harmonize these seemingly contradictory impulses, functioning as robust works of eye-catching pulp without sacrificing their thematic relevance or political charge.
Da 5 Bloods is not on their level. Its mixture of entertainment and agitprop is ungainly; the competing ingredients clash rather than complement. Yet it remains a furiously watchable film—heavily flawed, yes, but coursing with energy and personality. You may chafe against its awkward blend of tones, but you are unlikely to forget its vigor or its fury. Read More
Two years ago, after 13 nominations without a victory, Roger
Deakins—one of the greatest cinematographers who’s ever lived—won his first
Oscar, for his magnificent work on Blade Runner 2049. I mention this
not because I care about the Academy Awards (I don’t… except
when I do), but because 1917, Sam
Mendes’ bold and brawny and periodically breathtaking new film, seems to have
been engineered specifically to secure Deakins an Oscar. Its technical premise—it
purports to capture its grueling events in a single take—is not wholly novel; a
recent example includes Birdman (which won Emmanuel Lubezki
the second of his three straight trophies), while the conceit stretches back to
Hitchcock and beyond. But in marrying the single-shot concept (or gimmick,
depending on your disposition) to the epic gravity of the war picture, 1917 practically screams to be
recognized for its grandeur. Some movies envelop you with the invisible pull of
their craft; this one pulverizes you with the sheer force of its technique.
The single-take maneuver, though undeniably impressive, is
not without its hazards. The risk of wielding the camera with such fluid
dynamism is that it will distract viewers. It’s a danger of distancing; the more
conscious you are of the stylistic prowess on display, the farther away from
the screen you tend to feel, which in turn prevents you from melting into the
immaculately constructed environments. But while my brain never quite stopped
registering the presence of Deakins’ camera in 1917, that subconscious awareness did little to sabotage my
appreciation of his work. There’s an elegance to his lensing, a grace that
somehow magnetizes you, forcing you to grapple with the lovely brutality of his
images. That distinctly cinematic paradox—the tension between horror and
wonder, between ghastliness and gorgeousness, between death and life—is what
animates 1917, and what makes it such
a fascinating sit. Like most war movies, it traffics heavily in blood, viscera,
terror, and despair. And it depicts this ugliness with what can only be called
beauty. Read More
There have been bloodier war movies—grisly productions committed to depicting the visceral horror as bullets tear through flesh. And there have been more provocative war movies, those that reenact armed conflict to make a political statement on its nobility or its lunacy. But there has never been, in my estimation, a war movie of such relentless, gripping intensity as Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s stunning World War II epic. The adjective “white-knuckle” has wilted into cliché, but as someone who spent the majority of this film with his fists clenched in involuntary apprehension, allow me to offer a word of advice: Before seeing Dunkirk, clip your nails. Otherwise, you’re liable to tear them right off.
The sheer magnitude of Dunkirk feels unprecedented, but it’s in keeping with a director who has made a career of smuggling brainy, stimulating ideas inside packages of overpowering brawn. Size matters to Nolan, and not just in the way you might think. Yes, Dunkirk is a gigantic film, shot extensively on 65-millimeter IMAX cameras, which help convey the enormity of its scale. (For the record, I watched the film projected in non-IMAX 70mm, though I intend to make a trip to the IMAX for round two.) But even as he’s painting on a sprawling canvas—showing you the vastness of a beach, the infinite reach of an ocean—Nolan is simultaneously compressing the carnage, paradoxically resulting in an expansive claustrophobia. Consider an early scene on the title city’s famous coastline: Thousands of soldiers scattered along its sands freeze in unison, their ears picking up the faint whine of an approaching German bomber. The horizon seems endless, but there’s nowhere to go. As the plane zooms past overhead, all they can do is flatten their bodies and cross their fingers. Read More
The soldier finds the mission underwhelming. Sure, he once trained with the Royal Geographical Society, but that was ages ago, and he barely remembers his studies. Why should he be the one tasked with mapping the border between Brazil and Bolivia? He’s a warrior, not a surveyor. Yet by the end of The Lost City of Z—the grand and grave historical epic from James Gray—the soldier’s reluctance has transformed into obsession. This touching, tragic film chronicles its hero’s gradual descent into something like madness, even as it acknowledges the nobility of his pursuit and the dignity of his character.
For all of the death and misery that it uncovers, The Lost City of Z is not exactly a downer. Gray, once known for his gritty thrillers, has of late developed an odd and interesting talent: He can make human suffering seem strangely beguiling. His Two Lovers put Joaquin Phoenix through the emotional wringer, but it also recognized the thrill of newfound romantic attraction. And while The Immigrant essayed the challenges facing Marion Cotillard’s woebegone traveler with unflinching directness, Gray’s lustrous craft shaded her predicament with tenderness and hope. Now with The Lost City of Z, he examines the ecstasy and the agony of mania—the fanatical need to prove yourself, no matter the mortal cost. Read More
