War Archives - Page 2 of 4

Napoleon: Till Death Do Us Bonaparte

November 30, 2023January 23, 2026 Jeremy BeckReviews

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 principal 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

Golda: Funny, She Doesn’t Look Shrewish

August 31, 2023August 31, 2023 Jeremy BeckReviews

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

Oppenheimer: The Bomb Before the Storm

July 26, 2023July 25, 2023 Jeremy BeckReviews

Christopher Nolan doesn’t always make movies about the end of the world, but the worlds of his movies always feel like they’re about to end. Regardless of their focus—a memory-impaired man searching for meaning, a group of con artists invading the realm of dreams, a squad of soldiers marooned on a beach—their combustible tension creates the sense that their characters’ lives are on the perpetual verge of implosion. So it’s both fitting and perverse that Oppenheimer, Nolan’s study of the (mad?) scientist who developed the atomic bomb, is his least outwardly visceral picture in decades. The stakes here couldn’t possibly be higher—at various points, people discuss the possibility of “atmospheric ignition,” a chain reaction that would engulf the planet (the odds of this, we’re assured, are “near zero”)—yet they unfold in the context of a talky, intimate chamber drama. The apocalypse will be ushered in not by motorcycle chases or time paradoxes, but by stern looks and harsh words.

If you think that sounds gentle or staid, did I mention that this was a Chris Nolan movie? Unbound from his usual need to dazzle us with eye-popping set pieces and brain-scraping premises, cinema’s most enduring populist (OK, second-most) has channeled his commercial savvy into depicting a concept that’s disarmingly straightforward: men at work. Oppenheimer is a film of grave power and sweeping intensity, made all the more propulsive by Jennifer Lame’s exacting editing and Ludwig Göransson’s majestic score, but its energy is grounded in recognizable anxieties and human emotions. It’s the product of a science-fiction filmmaker pivoting to science-fact. Read More

Violent Femmes: The Woman King, Pearl, and God’s Country

September 23, 2022September 23, 2022 Jeremy BeckFeatures, Reviews

Viola Davis in The Woman King, Mia Goth in Pearl, and Thandiwe Newton in God's Country

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

Da 5 Bloods: No Jungle Fever, But the Country’s Still Sick

June 24, 2020July 10, 2020 Jeremy BeckReviews

Clarke Peters and Delroy Lindo in Spike Lee's "Da 5 Bloods"

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