Week Ending 11/24/23
Year One complete
Well, we’re a year into this endeavor now and I still think it was the way to go. While my intent to write less remains, my anticipated one-to-two paragraphs per title has unsurprisingly ballooned to an average of around 600-words. Still shorter than the 1000-word reviews I was writing beforehand, though. And I haven’t burned out doing these like I did doing those in 2022. So, all in all, it’s been a success.
Now I just hope work slows a bit through the end of the year so I can get as many screeners in as possible before nomination deadlines (12/19 for GWNYFCA and 1/14 for OFCS). I’d love to get four or five done during this long holiday weekend if possible. The hard part is choosing which to watch first.
Happy Thanksgiving!
What I Watched:
THE BURIAL
(streaming on Prime)
I get that the case Jeremiah O’Keefe v The Loewen Group is supposed to be a circus, but the trial moments (courtroom and behind the scenes) in Maggie Betts’ THE BURIAL have to be the goofiest I’ve seen in years. It’s one thing to present Jerry’s (Tommy Lee Jones) lawyer Willie Gary (Jamie Foxx) as a fast-talking, charismatic preacher sermonizing to the jury, but it’s another to just let him make the biggest mistake he can with zero lead-up and pretend it doesn’t make him look like a fool. Add the Harvard graduate super team on the other side led by Mame Downes (Jurnee Smollett) acting like they’re surprised when the prosecution does do their job and that circus becomes a farce.
Most of this is due to the rushed nature of Betts and co-writer Doug Wright’s script choosing to devote its time and energy to the characters rather than the case. They weren’t wrong to choose the former, I only wonder if there was a way to balance things better since it becomes hard to take anything seriously with screaming lawyers and comical jury box reaction shots. By the time the Loewen CEO (Bill Camp) takes the stand in a last-ditch effort ploy as ill-conceived as Willie putting Jerry up there earlier, I found myself wishing they’d stop going into the courtroom completely. Because the real success is Jerry and Willie bonding. Much more than the underlying, familiar tale of corporate greed.
Foxx and Jones are great. This probably would have earned the former an Oscar nomination ten years ago because the studio would have put a lot more clout behind it—more than today as a Prime Video offering. A Golden Globe nod is still on the table, though. Either would be deserving because Foxx is carrying the whole show on his back. He needs to considering all the tonal shifts and flirtations with satire (Amanda Warren’s Gloria Gary’s designer clothes) that never really go anywhere. Neither does that corporate greed angle since this is a contract dispute and not a class action suit. Loewen’s evil acts upon Black Americans are revealed for the benefit of one white man. It’s all really weird.
And is it just me or does Alan Ruck initially play Jerry’s lawyer Mike Allred as a duplicitous opportunist looking to gut his friend rather than have his back? I was genuinely flabbergasted when all that set-up for him to admit he was in Loewen’s back pocket was revealed as apparently being wholly in my imagination. I guess he was just casually racist. But not maliciously racist? Enough to cause a stir, create an exit, and never be heard from again. That’s kind of THE BURIAL’s modus operandi outside of Willie’s personal trajectory of empathetic growth. Everything is a means to an end and then forgotten. It leads to an entertaining yet messy affair.
- 6/10
THE KILLER
(streaming on Netflix)
If you ever wanted to see just how conducive twenty-first century technology is to assassin work, look no further than David Fincher’s THE KILLER. Adapted by SEVEN scribe Andrew Kevin Walker from Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon’s long-running comic series, the film shines a light on a world entrenched in the post-capitalism identity of convenience to the point where everyone is being watched despite nobody actually paying attention. Delivery drivers come and go without credentials. Office space is emptied and rented without oversight. As long as your payment clears, you never have to speak to anyone face to face.
It’s the perfect setting for a man like the titular contractor played by Michael Fassbender. He can be out in the open. He can purchase whatever tools he needs on Amazon. With a few dozen fake identities (how great that no one recognizes his names from old sitcoms), his paper trail can exist in the shadows while his body operates in public. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that the one liability anyone in this job has is the person who does keep records. When everyone is little more than a bank account number, those unknown pieces of paper connecting said digits to a name or address is akin to a death warrant.
Think of this film as a corporate JOHN WICK. It's about revenge (a job gone wrong leaves Fassbender’s girlfriend in the hospital as assassins show up at his door to tie off loose ends) and it exists solely in the headspace and environments of the lead character’s ilk. Civilians become window-dressing as Fassbender narrates the monotony and mantras that keep him alive. Because if you anticipate rather than improvise, you cannot be caught off-guard. If you’re willing to walk away and treat everything as a job without emotion, you can never get invested enough to risk making things personal.
This go-round is personal, though. Whether he wants it to be or not. Just as his client bought efficiency and success, this man’s girlfriend’s injuries have hired him to deliver the same level of professionalism and efficacy towards payback. That means following the trail and disposing of bodies. He does his best to make them look accidental (if he leaves a body behind at all), keeping his own footsteps in South America and New York erased from prying eyes that might connect these deaths with a fateful gunshot in Paris. He’s methodical. Pragmatic. Ruthless. He presses play on some The Smiths songs and does what needs to be done.
That means keeping a clear head. Sleeping well. Yoga. His mind and body is a temple he sells to an elite tax bracket that can afford his services to kill people—good or bad. He’ll need it going up against his employer (Charles Parnell), a roided-out wild card (Sala Baker), a posh contemporary (Tilda Swinton), and the man with the money (Arliss Howard). Not just to ensure they’re taken off the board, but to simply return home in one piece. Because he demands that respect. As a working man pushed around by the rich, he demands loyalty for a job well done. Rather than strike to get it, he goes on the offensive. If he lives, he wins.
- 8/10
LEO
(streaming on Netflix)
Considering most Adam Sandler films (especially the early ones) had some sort of wholesome life lesson behind the stupid jokes, pivoting to a children’s film shouldn’t be surprising. Neither should the fact he’s enlisted an SNL cohort to do so—namely, “TV Funhouse” creator Robert Smigel who co-directs (with Robert Marianetti and David Wachtenheim) and co-writes (with Sandler and Paul Sado). Sometimes the gag finds itself right up against the PG-line, but LEO restrains itself to stick to its goal of sharing those life lessons in the most absurd ways possible. And I don’t just mean because they come from a talking lizard.
Sandler plays seventy-four-year-old retile Leonardo who literally just discovered he’s about to die (someone told him his life expectancy is seventy-five). So, in hopes of finding his escape to finally live outside his cage, he embraces the decision by a Middle School taskmaster of a substitute teacher (Cecily Strong’s Ms. Malkin) to reinstate the tradition of one student taking a class pet home for the weekend. While his best friend Squirtle the turtle (Bill Burr) hides in his shell so as not to get picked, Leo starts hatching a plan to find a window and hitchhike to the Everglades. But before he can, he discovers his decades on Earth may have given him reason to stay by helping these anxious and awkward twelve-year-olds.
Think CHARLOTTE’S WEB (referenced as a bookend) if Wilbur was a classroom of insecure tweens desperate for anyone to listen to their problems without judgment. Leo gives them the push they need to excel, the parents think Ms. Malkin is some kid-whisperer with a liberal Dustbuster finger, and the inevitable fallout (via selfish motivations) leads to a heroic rescue attempt to ensure these fifth graders’ savior knows he’s loved. Add some endearing if forgettable songs (one is about how crying is a sign of weakness wherein the lesson that it really isn’t comes after the music and thus leaves the song itself quite problematic without that context) and you get a well-meaning if forgettable film.
The kid voice actors are great, though. And the running kindergarteners as feral, unformed doodles by comparison to the nicely rendered leads is a hoot. The jokes are lowbrow and the lessons less effective on their own than as a whole (don’t be afraid to be vulnerable since none of us are perfect), but the package is sufficiently cute with more than a few moments that had me laughing out loud—even if the rest was merely amusing at best. Its target audience will have a good time without being scandalized, so it succeeds at doing what it’s meant to do. Maybe it helps become a Sandler gateway as they age too, a development Netflix surely covets considering they’ve been his patron of the arts since 2015.
- 6/10
MAESTRO
(now in limited release; streaming on Netflix 12/20)
If you’re hoping to learn about who Leonard Bernstein was—pick up a biography. Bradley Cooper’s MAESTRO won’t give you what you need. If you’re conversely hoping to see the messy, adoring, frustrating, and devoted love story between two people who just happen to be Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre, however, you’ve come to the right place. Because although Cooper and Josh Singer’s script spans decades of history, it doesn’t really say much. It chooses to feel instead.
Think of the film as a series of intimately candid snapshots of a tumultuous romance that every so often skirts with public celebrity. There’s a television interview and a post-concert moment shaking hands with the audience, but MAESTRO is otherwise a behind-closed-doors account of what it was like for Lenny (Cooper) and Felicia (Carey Mulligan) to love each other so much that the chaotic nature of their careers and his extracurriculars never quite bent far enough to break.
The first half is a directing clinic for Cooper with inventive visual segues and sweeping camera shots capturing the whirlwind affair that pulled a young and just-made-famous Bernstein from his first love (Matt Bomer’s David Oppenheim). The second half is an acting clinic with two performers at the top of their game via unspoken tensions, unbridled resentment, and abject fear. With wonderful cinematography and Bernstein’s own music scoring the whole, Cooper has really gone full-bore into aesthetics over plot.
I honestly wish he pushed things even further. Make it a complete tone poem with his glimpses of emotional outburst. Throw away every semblance of narrative to force us to give ourselves over to the moment. Too often I desperately wanted to do so only to find myself bogged down by the literal connections of cause and effect that make the finished product feel more like an abridged edit of a much longer piece that leaves context on the floor rather than a carefully composed journey through extremely poignant and challenging vignettes.
It’s still an enthralling work, though. Mulligan and Cooper are too good for it not to be and the latter shows A STAR IS BORN wasn’t a fluke on the directing side. You can therefore forgive most shortcomings of the script because its presence is less a road map than a catalyst. It’s about the fireworks. The ego (kudos to Cooper for fitting in a little Billy Joel). The sadness. And the inexplicably unyielding love that always overcomes. Maybe it is all style and little substance, but its dual portrait (albeit shallow) is no less invigorating as a result.
- 7/10
PRISCILLA
(in theaters)
It’s not just that Sofia Coppola’s PRISCILLA is based on the book Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley and Sandra Harmon. Priscilla Presley is also an executive producer. So, what you see on-screen is presumably what really happened. The love and the abuse. This story is a trial by fire in many respects as a result—the eye-opening experience of becoming an adult under an oppressive spotlight alongside someone who never could himself. It’s about control. Acquiescence. Revolt. It’s an ivory prison of co-dependency wherein the doll becomes real and ultimately discovers that fantasy is often better kept to the imagination.
Cailee Spaeny is fantastic as Priscilla. Between wardrobe/make-up and performance, you really do get the sense that she’s a fourteen-year-old girl at the start who cannot contain the excitement of meeting the most famous man on the planet in Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi). And then the twenty-five-year-old actor gradually matures as the years go by, waking to the fact that her every movement since that fateful night in Germany has been dictated by him. Elvis lures her in with vulnerability and keeps her with delayed attention and gratification. He uses her as a stand-in for home—something to return to without needing to commit.
To watch these events unfold is to realize Priscilla is being groomed as a surrogate mother right when Elvis lost his. Not in a maternal sense, but in the sense of unconditional love. In his eyes, he can mold this child to be the woman he needs. Someone to “keep the fire going at home” while he’s away doing drugs and having affairs. Someone who will forgive his every indiscretion with but a smile because it is in her DNA to give him everything regardless of whether she receives anything in return. And when she dares to remind him that she in fact has no obligation, that’s when the rage flies. That’s when we see he was the real child all along.
It’s a captivating vantage point. Less about Priscilla herself (until the final fifteen or so minutes when she’s finally able to break loose, call him on his BS, and evolve through montage rather than extended bouts of Stockholm syndrome) than an uncensored look at Elvis through her eyes—the only ones able to truly experience that which Colonel Tom Parker meticulously kept from the public’s view. This is about surviving his magnetic charisma and mercurial temper. It’s about being trapped by the promise of happily ever after only to slowly realize the impossibility of that dream if everything revolves around his happiness alone.
Maybe Elvis wasn’t a monster (Elordi does a great job toeing the line with sweet nothings alternating between red hot anger and manipulative gaslighting), but he was a predator. And maybe Priscilla wasn’t a victim, but she was exploited. This isn’t a “usual” situation. There can exist complexity wherein Priscilla can look back with fondness for the good times and hindsight for the bad. I think Coppola does well balancing that duality, never shying from the violence or the romance. If anything, she employs that convergence to deliver a compelling biopic that seeks to dismantle the illusion by recreating its inescapable allure.
- 8/10
A THOUSAND AND ONE
(streaming on Prime)
Full disclosure: A.V. Rockwell’s A THOUSAND AND ONE takes a bit to get going. Everything that happens in 1994 is very by-the-numbers and you never quite know where things are going as the characters move in circles. Inez (Teyana Taylor) and her temper. Lucky (William Catlett) and his insecurities. Little Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola) and his fear. Nothing really seems to be advanced or said and I kept wondering where it was all heading once “2001” flashed across the screen. “Okay,” I thought. Tragedy will strike as the towers come down and we’ll finally break the monotony. Except 9/11 is never mentioned.
Instead, we get a first-hand look at “stop and frisk”. We start to see that the film is as much about this trio trying to survive each other as it is about them, as Black Americans, trying to survive a country that sees their skin as an obstacle to greater wealth and thus a blight that must be removed. It’s the gentrification of Harlem against the potential salvation of a young Black man raised by two ex-con orphans to be better and have better than they ever could or had. It’s not perfect or even ideal considering words Inez poignantly admits later on (“Damaged people don’t know how to love each other.”), but Terry (now played by Aven Courtney) does his best to get by.
Suddenly all the repetition in the first act finds context and clarity—both in how it has built these characters and how it’s changed them. And that evolution continues into a powerful third act that brings everything full circle to the film’s central event (Inez kidnapping her son from foster care after getting out of jail) and the inevitable consequences. By the time this final section begins with a “Four years later” designation, I found myself wholly invested in this family to the point where I forgot I was losing focus and checking my watch at the start. Rockwell knows full well what she’s doing here. Pacing. Plotting. Dialogue. It’s all working towards a reveal that forces you to question who the criminal truly is.
The details are everything too. Nothing on-screen is out there without specific intent to both obfuscate the secret being withheld and pointedly educate us on racist and bigoted New York City politics, ill-equipped social services, and corrupt foster homes (issues that still exist today). It even carries through to the end with two women discussing options and using a telling tone when discovering their best one is woefully insufficient. Despite everything that’s revealed, however, the life we are watching is the utopian choice. It proves to be a success story even if it might end in complete disarray and destruction. Happily ever afters can be complex.
It helps that Rockwell found actors who were able to give the material the authenticity it demands by portraying imperfect souls struggling to be better even as they find themselves failing again and again. The key is that, while they might end up failing themselves, they never fail each other. It leads to hard goodbyes and tearful recognition, all of which feels earned as a result of everything that came before. Catlett gets his time to shine in 2001, but it’s Taylor and Josiah Cross (as the now seventeen-year-old Terry) who steal the show in 2005. The culmination of their eleven years together is at once hopeful, heartbreakingly tragic, and real.
So, stick with it even if it seems like things are initially going nowhere. You need to know who Inez is at the beginning to understand who she’s become at the end. You need to see the pain that marks her relationship with both Lucky and her son to appreciate the sacrifices and toughness necessary to keep them together despite so much emotional, psychological, and financial distress. Because while damaged people might not know how to love each other, they do their best anyway. Maybe it’s not enough. Maybe it’s too late. But it’s still there. Sometimes you just can’t fully comprehend its deeply profound weight until it’s gone.
- 9/10
Cinematic F-Bombs:
This week saw BARBIE (2023), BLUE BEETLE (2023), FLASH OF GENIUS (2008), TRUE LIES (1994), and THE UNINVITED (2009) added to the archive. A couple more 2023 releases join the collection as censored f-bombs. Let the dramatic Ken gasps ensue. cinematicfbombs.com
New Releases This Week:
(Review links where applicable)
Opening Buffalo-area theaters 11/22/23 -
NAPOLEON at Dipson Amherst, McKinley Mall, Flix & Capitol; AMC Maple Ridge & Market Arcade; Regal Elmwood, Transit, Galleria & Quaker
SALTBURN at AMC Maple Ridge; Regal Elmwood, Transit, Galleria & Quaker
WISH at Dipson McKinley Mall, Flix & Capitol; AMC Maple Ridge & Market Arcade; Regal Elmwood, Transit, Galleria & Quaker
Streaming from 11/22/23 -
GENIE – Peacock on 11/22
GOOD BURGER 2 – Paramount+ on 11/22
HANNAH WADDINGHAM: HOME FOR CHRISTMAS – AppleTV+ on 11/22
I DON’T EXPECT ANYONE TO BELIEVE ME – Netflix on 11/22
THE VELVETEEN RABBIT – AppleTV+ on 11/22
LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING – Max on 11/23
“As a collection of new interviews and archival footage, Cortes isn't reinventing the wheel where structure or aesthetic are concerned. But she does a phenomenal job weaving everything together for optimal coherence and emotional impact.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
THE NAUGHTY NINE – Disney+ on 11/23
CYPHER (ANDSCAPE) – Hulu on 11/24
DOI BOY – Netflix on 11/24
ELENA KNOWS – Netflix on 11/24
ELF ME – Prime on 11/24
LAST CALL FOR ISTANBUL – Netflix on 11/24
FARAWAY DOWNS – Hulu on 11/26
SOUTH TO BLACK POWER – Max on 11/28
AMERICAN SYMPHONY – Netflix on 11/29
THE BAD GUYS: A VERY BAD HOLIDAY – Netflix on 11/30
FAMILY SWITCH – Netflix on 11/30
Now on VOD/Digital HD -
JOAN BAEZ: I AM A NOISE (11/21)
THE MARSH KING’S DAUGHTER (11/21)
MISTER ORGAN (11/21)
“It's the kind of story that might need a trigger warning for viewers who have fallen victim to manipulators like Organ. And it's a journey that can't help but draw you into its web of deceit—coercive and fatigued alike.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
OPPENHEIMER (11/21)
“Thankfully, despite my qualms with Nolan purposefully structuring things to exploit our belief he's finally told a straightforward story, I was still completely taken by its gravitas. Give Murphy and Downey Jr. Oscars.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
From the press kit archive:
