A Hero (2021)

January 5, 2022Posted in2021, 2022, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, France, Iran, Streaming, Theatrical, Thriller

A Hero

Ghahreman
**½/****
starring Amir Jadidi, Mohsen Tanabandeh, Fereshteh Sadrorafaii, Sarina Farhadi
written and directed by Asghar Farhadi

by Walter Chaw A Hero is Asghar Farhadi's Iranian Neorealist version of Stephen Frears's gaudy American prestige flick Hero, in which a man lauded as one type of person is secretly another type of person, thus calling to the stand society's process for determining object choice and assigning value. Not a new conceit, in other words. Here, it's given Farhadi's "miserablist parade" approach, whereby the exhausted didacticism of the premise is meted out with the punishing drip-drip of water torture. Freed for 48 hours from a debtor's prison, Rahim (Amir Jadidi) has a clandestine–because of divorce or something–meeting with his girlfriend, Farkhondeh (Sahar Goldust), who produces a handbag she's found abandoned that's full of gold coins. Problem solved, yes? No. Exchange rates being what they are in this global economy, the gold isn't quite enough to cover Rahim's obligations, and so he hatches a plan to make a big show out of giving the money back, the better to capitalize on his freshly-minted Good Samaritan persona. It works until it stops working, as these things do.

“The 50 Best Films of 2021” by Walter Chaw

December 31, 2021Posted in2021, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best-of Lists, Blog

Top502021

by Walter Chaw Writing these annual wrap-ups feels to me a little like this passage from Anne Sexton’s “45 Mercy Street”:

I walk, I walk
I hold matches at street signs
for it is dark,
as dark as the leathery dead

The annual best-of ritual is frustrating because one can never see all the great films in a year–but it’s the kind of frustration that feels aspirational for a change in this, our time of social and environmental apocalypse. I’m thrilled to talk about things that are good for a change and the movies in 2021 were very good indeed. So good that while I feel like I could have made a list 100 strong, I know there are still more gems from this year left to see.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

December 24, 2021Posted in2021, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coen Brothers, Drama, Esoterica, Shakespeare, Theatrical, Thriller, War

Tragedyofmacbeth

***½/****
starring Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Bertie Carvel, Brendan Gleeson
written for the screen and directed by Joel Coen

by Walter Chaw The Tragedy of Macbeth is a middle-aged lament of the childless, a haunted interpretation of Shakespeare that underscores my belief that the Coen Brothers–in this case, just Joel–are/is among our finest literary critics. Their O Brother, Where Art Thou? unpacks The Odyssey as a collection of regional tales and songs; their adaptations of No Country for Old Men and True Grit demonstrate a deep understanding of not merely the specific works being adapted, but Cormac McCarthy’s and Charles Portis’s entire bodies of work as well. The Big Lebowski, needless to say, is a brilliant and essential take on Chandler’s The Big Sleep. That their planned adaptation of James Dickey’s To the White Sea with Brad Pitt hasn’t happened yet and doesn’t look like it ever will is a genuine tragedy. (The relative failure of their Ladykillers remake suggests this skill may be limited to the transmutation between mediums.) For his solo debut, Joel Coen has taken a German Expressionistic approach, leaning heavily into long shadows and aestheticism that feels like mourning. The film falls somewhere between the mysticism of Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood and Orson Welles’s incantatory 1948 Macbeth, though it’s less wild and windswept than either, reminding in this way of how steeped in superstition and the supernatural was Shakespeare–and how raw, even stripped down, the Scottish Play seems in comparison to the Bard’s other histories.

Editor’s Choice: The Year in Blu-ray (2021)

December 23, 2021Posted in2021, 4K Ultra HD, Authors: Bill Chambers, Best-of Lists, Blog, Blu-ray Disc

Tenbestdiscs2021

by Bill Chambers It was a pretty strong year for Blu-ray and another bad one for civilization, which is probably why an unusually high number of discs (Donnie Darko 4K, The Road Warrior, and Criterion’s Citizen Kane, to name a few) fell victim to human error in 2021. I’m not dissuaded by this, I’m touched by the format’s resilience in the face of adversity. One thing is for certain: the pandemic has not been kind to the hoarder of physical media–this hoarder, at least. It’s led to short-stocked titles, import levies, fewer offers of review copies, and me not making one of these lists in 2020 because there was so much I missed. I don’t think I expected to be back in the same boat 12 months later–or maybe, to paraphrase the world’s greatest detective, I knew I would be, but I hoped I wouldn’t be. I’m ignoring any pangs of FOMO this time around, though, because I did see at least 10 titles worth singling out, even if collectively they don’t tell the whole story of the year in home video. Besides, any excuse to proselytize for physical media as the oil slick of streaming continues to submerge preexisting content delivery systems.

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

December 21, 2021Posted in2021, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Esoterica, Sci-Fi, Streaming, Theatrical

Matrix4

½*/****
starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Neil Patrick Harris
screenplay by Lana Wachowski & David Mitchell & Aleksandar Hemon
directed by Lana Wachowski

by Walter Chaw I guess I wouldn’t mind that The Matrix: Resurrections (hereafter Matrix 4) is so stupid if it didn’t spend so much of its bloat trying to explain itself. Just let it go. If you’re riding with the same plot as Space Jam: A New Legacy, own it–run with it, for fuck’s sake. Exposition is always a delicate if necessary evil, but here it’s particularly undignified. It’s Glen from Raising Arizona explaining his Polack jokes. The plot of Matrix 4 is essentially that conversation with the guy who’s way too stoned who has this great idea for a Matrix sequel. “Okay, okay, see, Neo is–haha–NEO is Mr. Anderson again and–haha, check it–he’s like this programmer dude, real boring piece of shit, and he made a game back in 1999 called ‘The Matrix’, and yo, yo, yo, wait, wait… What if Trinity was The One, too?” You’ve heard of the concept of “raising all boats”? Well, an hour of deadening exposition devoted to explaining a plot this contrived, this smug and half-cocked, this simultaneously convoluted and simplistic, sinks the boat–sinks all fucking boats. Good poker players have confidence and chill; not only does Lana Wachowski have a real bad tell, she gives speeches about what she’s holding. “Hi, I’m Lana, creator of The Matrix, and I’m drawing on an inside straight.” Small wonder Lilly refused to participate in this boondoggle, leaving Lana to recruit their Cloud Atlas partner-in-crime David Mitchell as one of her co-writers. That either of these people kept their names on this is evidence of an almost majestic, feline confidence.

The Agony and the Ecstasy: An Interview with Lauren Hadaway

December 19, 2021Posted in2021, Authors: Walter Chaw, Interviews

Laurenhadawayinterview

World-weary and wise and sharp as the crack of a pistol, Lauren Hadaway, after years as a top-shelf ADR artist, set a goal for herself to become a director. During the downtime between looping sessions on Justice League in 2017, she started writing the script for what would become The Novice, a semi-autobiographical film about a driven young woman joining her college crew team and finding in it an Everest she must scale just because it's there. Just because, nay, especially because, it's hard. The resulting film is as sharp and as driven as its creator, every frame composed not just beautifully but to tell a visual story of the protagonist's interiors. It's clear almost immediately that, more than a sports story, The Novice is about finding purpose through ritualized pain–and maybe a little bit or more about Hadaway overcoming self-doubt and enduring an unprecedented global event to see this project through to completion.

I began our interview by asking her about the process of coming through a difficult time.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

December 17, 2021Posted in2021, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Spider-Man, Superhero, Theatrical

Spidermannowayhome

**½/****
starring Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Marisa Tomei
written by Chris McKenna & Erik Sommers
directed by Jon Watts

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Peter Parker (Tom Holland), having just been outed to the world as Spider-Man by a dying Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), finds himself besieged by press and angry mobs mistaken in their belief that Mysterio was a very handsome hero. This pushes Peter into hiding with his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei), girlfriend MJ (Zendaya), and bestie Ned (Jacob Batalon). The kids need guards when they go to school (why are they still going to school?) and are trying to focus on applying to MIT because they’re all three of them brilliant, in case you’ve forgotten. Recognizing the toll of his exposure on the people who have remained loyal to him, Peter asks Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to cast a spell on the universe so that people forget him. How this might be achieved in the age of social media and pocket cameras is dismissed as “magic,” which is also how it’s explained that a hole in the multiverse opens up, allowing a bunch of villains and other versions of Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield) to cross over into this one’s reality. At least the film has the self-awareness to constantly call out the facility of “magic” as a catch-all, layering its characters’ incredulity in a running joke about a “wizard’s dungeon” and one character’s “You have magic here?” As wit goes, it ain’t much, but I’ll take it.

The Novice (2021)

December 16, 2021Posted in****/****, 2021, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sports, Streaming, Theatrical, Thriller

Thenovice

****/****
starring Isabelle Fuhrman, Amy Forsyth, Dilone, Jonathan Cherry
written and directed by Lauren Hadaway

by Walter Chaw Lauren Hadaway’s hyphenate debut The Novice is so good, so self-assured, so kinetic and so very much about something that, all hyperbole justified, it heralds the arrival of an important new artist. Garnering instant comparisons to Whiplash for its heart-attack-fuelled kineticism and hyperfocus on the obsessive, gnostic practice of an obscure discipline and to Black Swan for similar reasons as well as its troubled female protagonist, The Novice‘s closest analogue for me is actually Andrew Niccol’s Gattaca, a film about the pursuit of knowledge and sublimity free of the depressingly quotidian limitations of the body. The Novice itself is free of Damien Chazelle’s preening and the literalness of the hero’s emotional fracture in Black Swan. Rather, it preaches the gospel of being fine with who you are not despite how fucked up and “intense” you might be, but because of that. At the end of all that auto-excavation, it says that the self, whatever its attendant flaws and hardwired weaknesses, has intrinsic value, and the knowledge of that value comes with immeasurable power. The title of Hadaway’s film recalls the Christian concept of the religious “novitiate,” that period where a person called to servitude enters into intense study, constant prayer, forced brotherhood, and an invasive interiority, all to prove whether or not they will be welcomed into the fold. In The Novice, the novitiate is Alex Dall, and the “fold” is everyone at her school who thinks she’s some kind of freak.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) – 4K Ultra HD + Digital Code

December 14, 2021Posted in2013, 2021, 4K Ultra HD, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Directors: Martin Scorsese, Drama

Vlcsnap-2021-12-14-21h26m42s437Please note that all framegrabs are from the 1080p version

***½/****
BD – Image A+ Sound A Extras C-
4K UHD – Image C+ Sound A Extras C+
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Jean Dujardin
screenplay by Terence Winter, based on the book by Jordan Belfort
directed by Martin Scorsese

by Angelo Muredda “For us, to live any other way was nuts,” Ray Liotta’s schnook turned gangster Henry Hill explains early on in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. With that, spoken over a montage of permed Italian men in tailored suits gorging themselves at an upscale restaurant, Hill at once launched a wave of lesser, faux-conflicted pictures about the swanky perks and ethical compromises of organized crime, and raised the fundamental moral question of Scorsese’s latest, The Wolf of Wall Street. An unashamedly indulgent, ribald, and formally troubled biopic of Jordan Belfort, this unofficial Goodfellas follow-up likewise revolves around the kind of work that makes living like a pig in shit possible. His kinship to Hill aside, Belfort has had an unusually clear-sailing trajectory to garner the interest of a filmmaker who tends to be drawn to Catholic tales of excess followed by redemptive suffering. Belfort is still a born stockbroker and swindler, despite his working-class origins and federal inquiries and stints in rehab; the fact that he debuted on Wall Street the day of the crash and remains in demand as a guru well after the financial crisis of 2008 seems to give Scorsese and screenwriter Terence Winter pause, as well the astonishing survival rate of cockroaches should. What better way to make a film about such a man, Scorsese and Winter appear to have concluded, than to structure his story as a Roman orgy?

Being the Ricardos (2021)

December 11, 2021Posted in2021, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Streaming, Theatrical

Beingthericardos

**/****
starring Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, J.K. Simmons, Nina Arianda
written and directed by Aaron Sorkin

by Walter Chaw One of the best home viewing experiences I ever had was going through New Line’s “Infinifilm” DVD of Roger Donaldson’s Thirteen Days with my wife, clicking on every single prompt to view the voluminous supplementary material threaded through the picture and getting what felt like a freshman-level introductory course on the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. An old and dear friend here in the Denver Market threw his hands up while we were talking about Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos and asked, rhetorically and not to an imaginary Sorkin, “Why Aaron Sorkin?” It’s a great question. I think the “why Aaron Sorkin” is that he is the human manifestation of the “Infinifilm” concept but less educational and more facile and self-indulgent, hence populist in the worst way. That is, populist in a way that seems prestigious but is, in fact, playing to the groundlings-infested pit. Emboldened perhaps by the success of the David Fincher-directed/Sorkin-scripted The Social Network and the Bennett Miller-directed/Sorkin-co-scripted Moneyball, Sorkin’s directorial efforts so far–Molly’s Game, The Trial of the Chicago 7, and now Being the Ricardos–have all been based on true stories. Maybe he figures he’s hit a rich vein of biopic dramaturgy that he can strip-mine until this mountain is just a pile of rubble littered with Oscars. Sorkin is a slick one-trick pony, that guy. Giddyup, cowboys.

Extracurricular Activities: “Voir”

December 9, 2021Posted in2021, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blog, Streaming
Heads up! This past Monday Netflix launched "Voir", a new 6-part series produced in collaboration with David Fincher. Featuring visual essays on film from a variety of Internet-based critics, "Voir" wraps up its first season with an episode written, produced, and narrated by none other than our own Walter Chaw. In "Profane and Profound," Walter takes a close look at Walter Hill's 48Hrs., which launched the movie career of Eddie Murphy and cemented the "buddy-cop genre" as a staple of '80s cinema--even though, as Walter points out, "buddies" hardly describes what Murphy's and Nick Nolte's characters are to each other.…

SDAFF ’21: Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

December 7, 2021Posted in****/****, 2021, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Film Festivals, Japan, Romance, San Diego Asian Film Festival

Sdaffwheeloffortune

Gûzen to sôzô
****/****
starring Kotone Furukawa, Ayumu Nakajima, Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Katsuki Mori, Fusako Urabe, Aoba Kawai
written and directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi

by Walter Chaw Ryusuke Hamaguchi listens well. His films may be indicated by the denseness of their dialogue, their patience in allowing their characters to speak it, and his trust in his actors to do unbroken takes and in his audience to go along for the ride, but what enchants about them is how carefully they hear what their characters are saying, and how they invite us to do the same. At some point during each of Hamaguchi’s films, I’ve found myself leaning in–not because the mix is too low, but because I’m socially conditioned to lean towards a speaker when they’re saying something that’s at once difficult for them to say and imperative that they say it. I’m giving these characters eye contact and attention. Hamaguchi’s movies are a form of communion–that is to say, a connection that touches on profundity. Given their intimacy and wisdom, they hold within them the capacity to rip my guts out. Which they do, remorselessly and sweetly. Does that describe the concept of “winsome”? In “Magic,” the first of the three short films that comprise Hamaguchi’s Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, beautiful Tsugumi (Hyunri), in the back of a long cab ride with her friend Meiko (Kotone Furukawa), describes a platonic first date in which she and her partner “caress” each other with their words. Not “talk dirty,” she clarifies–getting to know the other person by telling the truth when lies are expected. Through Tsugumi, Hamaguchi is talking about his process.

Malignant (2021) – Blu-ray + Digital Code

December 5, 2021Posted in2021, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, China, Crime, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Vlcsnap-2021-12-05-20h53m44s035

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Annabelle Wallis, Maddie Hasson, George Young, Michole Briana White
screenplay by Akela Cooper
directed by James Wan

by Walter Chaw James Wan’s Malignant is spectacularly, unabashedly fucking nuts. Not nuts in a random way, nuts in the way Oliver Stone’s The Hand is–or, more to the point, Brian De Palma’s Sisters. It’s what the Dario Argento The Phantom of the Opera should have been: not entirely giallo, not without elements of high opera; a classic “madwoman” picture as well as a possession movie. Also, that voice on the phone from Black Christmas, and also a loving homage to Stuart Gordon, and also… Malignant is a joyful mishmash that plays like a NOW That’s What I Call Music compilation for horror fans. It’s the North by Northwest of delirious genre fare: Bava if you want it, the most gothic Hammer if it pleases you, complete with a Universal Monsters monster I kind of can’t believe someone hasn’t done before. I’m not giving anything away by saying the cosplay is going to be lit.

West Side Story (2021)

December 2, 2021Posted in****/****, 2021, Crime, Drama, Musical, Romance, Spielberg, Theatrical

Westsidestory21

****/****
starring Ansel Elgort, Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Rachel Zegler
screenplay by Tony Kushner, based on the stage play by Arthur Laurents, with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
directed by Steven Spielberg

by Walter Chaw West Side Story is the perfect vehicle for all of Spielberg’s prodigious strengths while deemphasizing his obvious weaknesses. In that way, it reminded me of another Stephen Sondheim adaptation, Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, wherein a savant-like visual artist is paired with a genius for storytelling, plotting, and characterization. It occurs to me that every single Robert Wise film would be better had Spielberg directed it. This isn’t because Wise butchered The Magnificent Ambersons and betrayed Val Lewton, it’s because he played in the same sandbox as Spielberg and no one has ever been better at building those particular sandcastles. There’s a scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Spielberg, with a drumbeat gathering power on the soundtrack, transitions from a sign at a crossroads pointing to Berlin to a book burning in a public square. Kind of like the ones they’re organizing in central Virginia right now. He does it again in A.I. in the lead-up to the Flesh Fair. The combination of action and the rising thrum on the soundtrack is…visceral? Yes, that; kinetic, too. Chills-inducing. He uses the tactic again in the build-up to the “Mambo” number as Anita, Bernardo, and Maria arrive at the school gymnasium for the big dance. You hear the music, muted, through the doors, and then they’re thrown open, and Jerome Robbins’s ageless choreography explodes with all the furious vibrancy a collaboration between Jerome fucking Robbins and Steven fucking Spielberg promises. It’s a synesthetic representation of life and youth, ridiculously effective. We speak of spectacle films and the magic of “big” movies–I don’t know that I’ve felt a film’s scale like this in decades. All of this West Side Story‘s showstoppers are just that. They are alive and fresh, and Spielberg gets that when you have a Robbins or a Fosse or an Agnes DeMille, your job is to dance it like your shoes are on fire and let us see the bodies from head to toe. There is possibly no better visual storyteller in the history of movies than Spielberg, who finds in this partnership with great artists alive and dead the truest fruition of his gift.

Life During Wartime #25: THE GODFATHER (Patreon exclusive)

November 29, 2021Posted inPatreon
by Walter Chaw The Godfather (1972) U.S.: Fubo, Showtime, DirecTV, Spectrum Canada: Paramount+ My daughter turned 18 last month and my son just got his driver's permit, so I've never felt more mortal--not even when my dad died. (When that happened, my daughter was a month away from being born.) Not even when my in-laws died, because the labour of supporting my wife and kids through their grief mitigated the arc of my own. Not even when I got a few scary medical diagnoses, causing me to change my diet and habits, or when my mom was diagnosed with stage-4…

House of Gucci (2021) + Benedetta (2021)

November 26, 2021Posted in2021, Al Pacino, Authors: Walter Chaw, Belgium, Biopic, Canada, Crime, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, France, Netherlands, Romance, Theatrical

Houseofguccibenedetta

HOUSE OF GUCCI
***/****
starring Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, Al Pacino
screenplay by Becky Johnston and Roberto Bentivegna
directed by Ridley Scott

BENEDETTA
***½/****
starring Virginie Efira, Charlotte Rampling, Daphné Patakia, Lambert Wilson
screenplay by David Birke and Paul Verhoeven, based on the book by Judith C. Brown
directed by Paul Verhoeven

by Walter Chaw Ridley Scott’s second based-on-a-true-story prestige period piece of 2021 after The Last Duel takes place in the I Love You to Death cinematic universe, wherein formerly dignified actors affect ridiculous Italian accents while taking bullets from hitmen hired by their wives, ex or otherwise. Just the spectacle of watching Adam Driver do a scene with Al Pacino at an Italian picnic, the two of them talking like Mario brothers while a brunette Lady Gaga croaks in an accidental Russian accent is… And the soundtrack! George Michael, Donna Summer, New Order, the Eurythmics–it’s all of it like a Nagel painting come to life: gaudy affectations of glamour and art for the bawdiest appreciators of unintentional camp. Indeed, House of Gucci is prime grist for the headliner in a midnight call-along, or the feature presentation in a future episode of “MST3K”–although, at two-and-a-half hours, I worry the same jokes would keep getting recycled, most of them about the accents, a few of them about sex-pest Jared Leto’s turn as Paolo Gucci, buried beneath a ton of prosthetics that make him look on the outside what he is on the inside. (Here’s the punchline: Leto steals the movie.) A deadly drinking game could be devised from the times Pacino’s accent slips from hilarious Italian to Al Pacino to, during a weird funeral scene, Bela Lugosi Transylvanian. There’s a scene in the last half of the film where Paolo groans into an airport payphone, “I got to wash! If you could smell-a between my groins, you’d-a unnerstan!” while Aldo makes the “c’mon” expression trying to get his attention, and then later Aldo gives Paolo, his little Fredo, the “you disappointed the hell out of me” kiss of death and, again, it’s… Well, it’s notably, spectacularly terrible is what it is. And I liked it.

Licorice Pizza (2021) + Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

November 22, 2021Posted in2021, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Coming of Age, Directors: Paul Thomas Anderson, Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

Licoricepizza

LICORICE PIZZA
*½/****
starring Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Penn, Tom Waits
written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE
**½/****
starring Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace
written by Gil Kenan & Jason Reitman
directed by Jason Reitman

by Walter Chaw In Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, John Michael Higgins plays real-life restaurateur Jerry Frick, proprietor of “The Mikado.” Frick is married to a severe and disapproving Japanese woman (Yumi Mizui) who apparently doesn’t speak any English, although she seems to understand it fluently. She certainly understands her husband, who doesn’t speak Japanese but does speak English, when he’s speaking it to her, in a cartoonish Asian accent. This is perhaps a commentary on how backwards everyone was in 1973, but Licorice Pizza is not otherwise a satire, so what the fuck is going on here? Is PTA reserving the barbed edge of his keen sociological blade exclusively to excavate anti-Asian depictions in film and nowhere else? Based on Hong Chau’s brief but memorable turn in Inherent Vice as a tough hooker (oops) who tries to warn the idiot hero of danger, there’s reason to hope. Yet if Frick is meant to be a satire of how white men are racist towards Asians in general and Asian women in particular… How? Just by the fact of him? In his second scene, he shows up with a different wife (Megumi Anjo), explaining how his first wife has left him and this is the new Mrs. Frick. The joke is either that Frick is a fetishist, or that all Asians look alike.

Tick, Tick… Boom! (2021)

November 19, 2021Posted in2021, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Drama, Musical, Streaming

Ticktickboom

tick, tick…Boom!
**/****
starring Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, Robin de Jesús, Vanessa Hudgens
screenplay by Steven Levenson, based on the musical by Jonathan Larson
directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda

by Walter Chaw Dropping the same weekend as another hagiography for a narcissistic workaholic (King Richard), tick, tick…Boom! at least doesn’t include a 70-page manifesto for its subject’s unborn children. Also in its favour? It doesn’t centre a man in the success story of two women. No, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s technically-proficient biopic instead adapts the autobiographical musical of self-pitying tragic figure Jonathan Larson, played in the film by Andrew Garfield. Watching it, I got the feeling the whole exercise was just a way of showcasing songs from Larson’s defunct sci-fi magnum opus Superbia, which… Look, there’s a Ray Bradbury story called “The October Game” that tells about that nasty kid’s game where you turn out the lights and put your hands in a bowl of spaghetti and someone says, “This is the witch’s hair,” and so on. Except Bradbury suggests that there’s been a pretty terrible murder, and this is the murderer’s idea of a Greek kind of justice. It ends with one of the most memorable lines in Bradbury’s career: “Then …… some idiot turned on the lights.” I think about that line a lot, unbidden at the weirdest times; I thought of it during tick, tick…Boom! because I realized that some idiot will one day resurrect Superbia, a musical based on 1984, and make a billion dollars, thus driving me insane.

No Time to Die (2021)

November 16, 2021Posted in****/****, 2021, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Espionage, James Bond, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

Notimetodie

****/****
starring Daniel Craig, Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux, Christoph Waltz
screenplay by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and Cary Joji Fukunaga and Phoebe Waller-Bridge
directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Cary Fukunaga’s No Time to Die, the twenty-fifth canonical James Bond film, is the best one since Peter Hunt’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and for many of the same reasons. One could hazard that the similarities, a vulnerable Bond chief among them, comprise the guiding principle behind this picture, with its multiple call-outs to Fleming’s books–On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in particular, along with its downbeat, mortal sequel You Only Live Twice, the last Bond Fleming completed himself. In the latter, 007’s boss, M, uses the same Jack London quote to eulogize the presumed-dead superspy (“The proper function of a man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time”) that his screen counterpart (Ralph Fiennes) uses to eulogize Bond in No Time to Die. It ends with Bond, initially dumbstruck by grief over the death of his wife in the previous novel (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), now stricken by amnesia and about to abandon his impregnated wife–the child a development Fleming never got to bring to term, but who finds her fruition in Fukunaga’s film. At a late point in No Time to Die, two combatants reaching the end of their struggles agree that the only reason to live is to leave a legacy. I find it touching that this film brings a small and precious note of Fleming’s to life, so many years after his death.

SDAFF ’21: Introduction + In Front of Your Face

November 14, 2021Posted in2021, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Film Festivals, San Diego Asian Film Festival, South Korea

Sdaffhongsangsoo

인트로덕션
INTRODUCTION
**/****
starring Kim Min-hee, Park Mi-so, Shin Seok-ho
written and directed by Hong Sang-soo

당신 얼굴 앞에서
IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE
**½/****
starring Cho Yunhee, Kwon Hae-hyo, Lee Hye-young
written and directed by Hong Sang-soo

by Walter Chaw Hong Sang-soo’s films, more so than most, are only ever about Hong Sang-soo–and in his mind, Hong Sang-soo is Henrik Ibsen: the iconoclast, the great social observer and auto-didact, the artist who, late in his career, shifted his observations from class concerns in general to the insular peculiarities of individuals imprisoned by lifetimes of secrets. Hong is now more playwright and stage director than filmmaker; increasingly, the act of capturing his interpersonal dissections on film has felt like an afterthought unto inconvenience. One gets the sense Hong would rather be left alone with his company of players like the playwright/theatre director hero of Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, initiating a lifetime of rehearsals with no opening date in sight. I think, closer to the truth, he can’t get out of his head anymore. Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that two new Hong films are dropping simultaneously, given that both credit Hong as director/writer/editor (and, one presumes, sound engineer, gaffer, and craft services). In Front of Your Face is the less consumer-grade-home-movie-seeming between it and Introduction, though neither seems like something that took much time to put together, landing the same way as vignettes in a local one-act play festival might. Which is not to say there aren’t pleasures to be had, only that these are less full meals than amuse-bouches served at a tastefully-set party to which you weren’t necessarily invited.