Saltburn (Movie Review)

⭐⭐ 

Satires poking fun at the rich are nothing new. Even as far back as the 1920s and 1930s, cinema was used to make fun of how disillusioned and disconnected the elites are from the reality of the working class. Films like Metropolis, The Rules of the Game, and then skipping ahead multiple decades, Parasite, The Menu and many more were all immensely popular. It’s a worthy topic to make a satire on given today’s political climate, but certain filmmakers, and more importantly, screenwriters, have a much better feel on how to actually hit their targets than others. 

Emerald Fennell is not one of these filmmakers. Fresh off of her Oscar-winning film Promising Young Woman, the film is undeniably stylistically bold, but what else is there really to this experience? Fennell’s screenplay feels cripplingly misguided in its depiction of the relationship between the elites and the working class. For starters, the rich family may superficially appear to be snobby and annoying, and they certainly are, but it makes it very clear that they are the victims in this story. Their little utopia is disturbed and dismantled when they include outsider Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) into their lifestyle. There is even a scene in which he literally describes himself as a vampire, which is the kind of subtlety we are dealing with here. This framing of the rich as victims of outsiders feels extremely misguided and inaccurate, seeing as how we are facing unprecedented and unfathomable levels of wealth inequality, especially in the United States. 

And this leads us to ultimately undoes any effectiveness this movie may have. It isn’t necessarily in how the perspective and blanket portrayal of working class people are inaccurate, but that this film isn’t actually saying anything at all about class. While many of the aforementioned films and other notable satires about this subject focus on things like the deliberate exclusivity, inbred callousness and other subjects, Saltburn has absolutely nothing on its mind beyond being a weird movie. Keoghan’s performance is fine, but Fennell always makes sure to make a point in just how weird he is. Fennell focuses on how everyone whispers about how strange he is behind his back, and how kind and supportive Felix (Jacob Elordi) is to him in spite of his obvious strangeness. This compassion Felix shows to Oliver is just hard to buy, as Oliver gives him very little reason to want to be around him to begin with. 

Oliver’s motivations are also rather unclear, as we never find out if he is doing this because he is in love with Felix, or if it’s because he really is just a leech who wants to take all of the rich family’s resources. I think this would have worked much better if it zeroed in on the sexual fantasy element of Oliver’s plan. Fennell could have abandoned the class satire and instead turned this into a surrealist odyssey reminiscent of Mulholland Drive, but alas, what we get instead is a shallow attempt at satire that falsely assumes that wealth is worshiped not necessarily because that’s the only thing people strive for, but because you have no choice when you are born into a capitalistic society that prioritizes material over character. My first thought when this finished was that this must be a neoliberal's worst nightmare.

The Iron Claw (Movie Review)

 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

The Iron Claw is the latest biographical sports drama, exploring the true and unexpectedly tragic story of the Von Erich family, the Texas family who was largely responsible for the massive surge in wrestling’s popularity in the late 1970s and 1980s. The film is directed by Sean Durkin and stars Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Maura Tierney, Stanley Simons, Holt McCallany and Lily James. 

Wrestling is a sport not often explored in cinema, as the industry has often chosen to use boxing as a vehicle to explore warped perceptions of masculinity instead. There’s something more elegant and graceful to wrestling, rather than the strategic (and real) jabs and vicious competition in boxing. But, as with any great sports drama, this is a film that is about more than just wrestling, because what this finds within the ring is an expression of turgid masculinity that is hard to not find tragic even when you don’t consider the drama outside of the ring. 

I absolutely loved this whole movie from start to finish. The authenticity of the 1970s aesthetic was a treat to look at, complemented by a fittingly nostalgia-inducing classic rock playlist featuring songs everyone has heard, such as “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” and “Tom Sawyer”. The camera often focuses intensely on the sweat glistening all of these damaged men’s bodies, fetishizing the brutality without criticizing what it is that they are clearly so passionate about. Durkin’s screenplay clearly has a lot of empathy for its subject matter and it’s all the better for it. I went into this film completely blind to the real story, and if you are able, that is how I recommend you experience it as well. 

It may be easy to look at the physiques in the movie and think that this is another movie in which the actors’ physical transformations are the performances, and maybe one could argue that Efron specifically has been typecast that way for a few years now, but he accomplishes something that can only be described as career best work. Despite what I just said, his physique and passions appear to, at least on the surface, be hypermasculine, but he conveys a gentleness to all of the dramatic scenes that make it hard to not like his character despite some of his relatively inconsequential shortcomings as a husband and father. 

A thread that runs throughout is Kevin’s jealousy of his brothers, as his father notices their brutal work ethics more so than him, and seems to go out of his way to get shows for them. This jealousy escalates as the family’s fame becomes more and more widespread, and it’s put into perspective by Durkin’s script, which focuses on Kevin’s workouts, which include rigorous weight training and runs. Take that and combine it with how Kevin idolizes his father as the man who represents his family in the eyes of the country, and you’ve got a man constantly reminded of his own insecurities while desperately wanting to be able to do the same as his father. It may be easy to look at wrestling and dismiss it due to the fact that the “competition” is predetermined before the match begins, but we should ask ourselves if this is fundamentally any different than, say, a ballerina’s routine. Just because it’s a performance, that doesn’t mean the pain isn’t real.

Maestro (Movie Review)

 

⭐️⭐️

 

There’s a scene in Bradley Cooper’s sophomore directorial effort Maestro that perfectly captures what I view as the fundamental problem with this film. In the scene, Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) and Felicia Montealegre (Mulligan) are having a passionate argument with each other about how exhausting he is to be around, and it’s shot in one continuous take and from a distance. It’s an engrossing scene that both looks great and features some fine performances from its two leads, but the camera being far away from its focal points serves as an accidental reminder that so little of this has any intimacy, despite how pretty it looks and how showy it loves to be. 

In fact, most of this is frustratingly superficial. I didn’t know anything about Leonard Bernstein before the movie started, and by the end of the film’s 131 minute runtime, I don’t feel like I knew much about him afterward. Cooper chooses to focus the most on his marriage to Montealegre, which is a fine decision in theory, but I don’t feel like he or anyone else involved came even close to trying to express what they clearly wanted to. Even with regards to the composing, I have no idea what made Bernstein stand out as a composer from anyone else. 

I seriously question why Bradley Cooper even chose to make this movie. If I had to guess, it’s because he clearly wants an Oscar VERY badly. I mean, why else does anyone make biopics these days? There are a lot of fine impersonations, but this still plays out like a glorified, handsomely mounted reenactment of a Wikipedia page rather than any compelling drama. While the makeup is generally impressive, I found Cooper’s prosthetic nose and chin to be incredibly distracting, and this is definitely one of those performances where it’s hard not to focus on an actor “acting”. It is the very definition of Oscar bait, right down to the one word title with a double meaning. 

The best performance in the film by a mile is Mulligan’s, but I found her dialogue to be very unnatural and grating. Truth be told, I don’t know if this is how Montealegre actually spoke in real life, but it sounds overly elegant and posh and made it feel like I was watching a caricature born from someone’s imagination rather than what seems real. It’s fitting that one of the first scenes between Bernstein and Montealegre is a tender moment where the two rehearse lines from one of her upcoming performances, which is also accidentally symbolic for how annoyingly superficial all of this really is. Make no mistake, this is little else than a vehicle for Cooper’s and Mulligan’s obvious and undeniable talents, and it’s also crystal clear that Cooper wants an Oscar rather desperately. 

And speaking of compelling drama, I can’t for the life of me figure out what the actual conflict of this movie or Bernstein’s life is. He was clearly a gifted artist who devoted his life to it and was extremely successful by every measurable way of defining the word, and, despite some of his personal shortcomings, never seemed to be at any real risk of losing any of the things this success brought him. That being said, none of what I’ve said about this film is enough to make me not root for Bradley Cooper, both in front of and behind the camera as well. With his debut A Star is Born, he proved himself as a filmmaker who absolutely has the capability of mining raw emotional power from the text, but while this might represent what is debatably a formal improvement over his debut, this has almost none of the impact that film had. A disappointment, but I will always be interested in what Cooper decides to do next.

Godzilla Minus One (Movie Review)

⭐⭐⭐⭐

 After 1945, Japan found itself in an incomprehensibly bleak situation, experiencing partial nuclear annihilation. As westerners, we have no idea how to even process the myriad of overwhelming negative emotions the Japanese people felt, and it raises the question if a group of people could ever move on from such a trauma. The concept of Godzilla was created as an allegory for said collective trauma. Because of this, the defeat of the monster is deeply cathartic on a grand scale, and represents Japan holding each others’ hands and healing. I will be transparent and say that I have not seen the 1954 film, but after seeing how well this operates on so many levels, I will absolutely make a point of seeing it sooner rather than later. 

Enter Godzilla Minus One, a film that directly deals with all of these themes by being set in immediate post-war Japan. We meet our protagonist in Koichi Shikishima (Ryûnosuke Kamiki), who is a Kamikaze pilot for the Japanese military, who lies about his plane malfunctioning and makes a stop at a small island base. Later that night, a smaller version of Godzilla emerges and wipes out every man except our protagonist and another mechanic. Shikishima’s central conflict throughout the story is reconciling with what paralyzes him when he feels he needs to take action. There are even moments that address how imperialist governments aren't satisfied with you until you die in “service” for them, and how useless the U.N. is. 

While the plot is relatively straightforward and telegraphs its moves pretty clearly, the emotional impact of many of its beats are hard not to feel. Shikishima’s intense struggle with survivor’s guilt is a microcosm of what many ex-soldiers felt not only in Japan, but all over the world as well. Strong performances keep everything engaging, namely Kamiki and Minani Hamabe as Noriko Oishi, who Shikishima works through his trauma with after opening up to her at almost exactly the middle mark. I loved the moment where Shikishima immediately sleeps much later in the morning after he finally tells her about what he’s been struggling with for the past few years. 

Some audience members might be skeptical of this from a distance due to the marketed focus on the human element rather than the monster elements, but this is precisely what makes these sorts of movies have the impact that they have. This isn’t a creature-feature to gawk at how good its own effects are, unlike the last few Godzilla movies that have been released (though just for clarity, I do genuinely enjoy Gareth Edward’s film from 2014 and respect the effort it put into the human element). But that being said, the CGI in this is surprisingly fantastic, especially considering the budget for this is a mere $15 million, which is absolutely mind boggling to me, even more so when you think about how the average blockbuster being released these days is costing on average about ten times that amount. It’s fascinating how a film with literally a tenth of the resources can end up mining so much more from the ideas than many of these films could ever dream of. There is real weight to all of the explosions, and the sound design, especially Godzilla’s roar, is chilling. 

Honestly, my only gripe with the film whatsoever is its ending. I don’t mind the fact that this is relatively predictable, but, without spoiling specific plot details, I felt like this ties up all of its threads a little too nicely. It feels like writer/director Takashi Yamazaki was afraid to take more risks with the third act payoff, which unfortunately takes away from some of what he is clearly trying to communicate. It’s probably premature to say since I did say I have never seen the original, but as it stands, this is the best Godzilla movie out there by a mile. Some people might also view the ending as a copout, but my interpretation is that such a trauma can never truly be gotten rid of; rather, we learn to deal with it when it returns.

Eileen (Movie Review)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

A recurring motif in Eileen is that of prisons. Not only does Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) work in one in the literal sense, but she is imprisoned by her life circumstances. She lives alone with her emotionally abusive father, who is in his own prison of alcoholism, in a rundown house in a small town in Massachusetts. When we meet her, there seems to be an almost total lack of future, but suddenly, everything changes when Rebecca (Anne Hathaway) is hired by the prison she works at. Her presence intensifies her already overpowering sexual fantasies.

I’ve been a fan of Thomasin McKenzie for years now, and she continues to impress with what may just be her best work yet. She has a look and a demeanor throughout every scene that conveys how repressed all of her desires and negative emotions are. Eileen doesn’t only fantasize about having Rebecca, but she wants to become Rebecca. She admires Rebecca for how confident and expressive she is about what her desires in life are and how she refuses to settle for less. 

Even before seeing the film, learning of the premise for it immediately reminded me of Todd Haynes’s Carol, which was also about a woman becoming obsessed with an older woman who appeared to have her life more figured out than it really was. Even the scenery constructed by director William Oldroyd and lead cinematographer Ari Wegner seems to mimic that cozy but desolate winter aesthetic, even going as far as including a very subtle green-ish hue to many scenes of the film. 

One of the rarest criticisms I have of films is not being long enough, but it’s something I felt applies here. Eileen has a lot on its mind, and it needed more than ninety eight minutes to convey all of it. I would argue that this could have even been another half an hour could have been added to this, and it seemed to end rather abruptly. The future is equally uncertain for Eileen as it was at the beginning of the story. One prison was replaced by another.

Napoleon (Movie Review)

 ⭐⭐1/2

“If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.” David Scarpa, accredited screenwriter, seems to have taken this Napoleon quote to heart when writing this. That may seem overly harsh, and perhaps it is, but this seems to encapsulate the overall experience of Ridley Scott’s new movie. To say this delivers nothing isn’t entirely true, as the battle scenes are fantastic and find a way to be gripping even to those squeamish to violence. Set designs and costume designs are all flawless, as you would expect from a movie like this with this sort of budget.

Napoleon is the latest project from legendary filmmaker Ridley Scott, who continues to churn out ambitious projects on a regular basis at the whopping age of 85. Unfortunately, this reeks more of Oscar bait and a gorgeous interpretation of Napoleon’s Wikipedia page rather than any meaningful insight into one of history’s most notorious and bloodthirsty psychopaths.

Even though Ridley Scott is an all-time great filmmaker, his track record over the last twenty years has been somewhat sketchy. Absorbing environments, (generally) strong performances and a refusal to shy away from the inherent brutality and beauty found in violence are all things we’ve come to expect from Scott in the 21st century. In fact, I felt The Last Duel was one of the best films he has ever made and I will die on that hill. While he’s demonstrated firm control over those things in his better movies, he has struggled immensely with restraint, more specifically when it comes to a film’s runtime.

Since the dawn of the new century, more than a fair amount of Scott’s films approach 150 minutes, and while some earn that runtime and accomplish a lot in as many minutes, there are ones like this where it’s simultaneously too long and not long enough. I personally felt every single minute of this film’s runtime and was waiting for the credits to start rolling, but at the same time, this is so scattershot that I don’t think it dives into any one section of his life long enough for us to gain any more understanding than we would get from simply reading his aforementioned Wikipedia page. It would have been far more successful if it focused exclusively on the relationship between Josephine, or even if it told this story through her point of view specifically. It not only would have been the perfect complement to the aforementioned The Last Duel, diving further into how women were perceived as sexual objects for men to project onto, but it would have mined so much more emotional substance from both these historical figures.

Speaking of Josephine, Vanessa Kirby is another undeniable positive of the film, and it’s a shame that her performance and character were not explored to the extent that they deserve. There’s a feminist thread throughout the film that doesn’t get tugged on enough, as she is held prisoner by not only her status as the empress of France, but also by Napoleon’s insecurities and shortcomings as a man and as a husband. Kirby does all that any actor can do to convey this, and she is innocent of all criticisms the film is going to continue to receive.

Joaquin Phoenix has cemented himself as one of the finest actors working today, but I truly don’t know what Scott was having him do here. I can ignore the fact that everyone is speaking English, but it almost sounded like Phoenix was delivering his lines in such a way where the American accent was exaggerated. It’s impossible for Phoenix to give a truly bad performance, but his work here, much like Scott’s surrounding him, is rather underwhelming. On paper, Scott is the perfect guy to direct this, but this lacks much of what would have made it great.