Movie Reviews

  • Home Entertainment Guide: March 2024
    by Brian Tallerico on March 28, 2024 at 10:34 PM

    10 NEW TO NETFLIX "The Accountant""Alone""The Autopsy of Jane Doe""Bodies Bodies Bodies""Four Daughters""Godzilla""Pineapple Express""Step Brothers""To Kill a Tiger""Wanderlust" 15 NEW TO BLU-RAY/DVD "The Abyss" James Cameron's 1989 blockbuster has been one of the hardest films to find on physical media or streaming for over a generation now. Its long-delayed arrival on 4K technically happened at the end of 2023 with digital releases of this film, accompanied by similar releases for "True Lies" and "Aliens." Now, all three are also on physical media, accompanied by hours of special features. As you may have heard, the digital releases came with controversy, accusations of over-polishing that made the films look too plastic. Sadly, I agree with that assessment of the digital editions, and, while the physical releases seem to be a bit more refined, there's still something off about the visuals here, especially on "Aliens," a movie that needs to be dirty and grainy to work. Still, there's great joy in knowing that a new generation can now discover one of the most underrated films of its era. And, of course, "Aliens" and "True Lies" still rule too. Buy it here  Special FeaturesDeep Dive: A Conversation with James Cameron – An exclusive new sit-down with James Cameron as he revisits the origin of the project and addresses some of the myths behind the production.The Legacy of The Abyss – Discover the lasting legacy of The Abyss with stories from James Cameron and the crew about how and why the film continues to have an impact on filmmaking today.ADDITIONAL BONUS FEATURES:Under Pressure: Making The Abyss – The original documentary about the infamous production of The Abyss, with candid commentary by the actors and crew.ArchivesDeepcore Timelapse – Watch this production timelapse of the Deepcore set being created.Videomatics Montage – Watch a montage of behind-the-scenes production videomatics.Montana Bridge Flooding – See behind-the-scenes footage of the Montana bridge flooding.Engine Room Flooding – See behind-the-scenes footage of the engine room flooding.Surface Shoot Montage – Watch a behind-the-scenes montage of the surface shoot.Crane Crash Shoot – Check out behind-the-scenes footage of the crane crashing sequence.Visual Effects Reel – Watch a reel of visual effects progressions to see how they were developed for the film.Miniature Rear-Projection – Watch behind-the-scenes footage of how production used rear-projection techniques on miniatures.Motion Control Timelapse – Watch this production timelapse of the motion control technology being used.Teaser TrailerMain TrailerReviews TrailerStill Gallery – Presented here are extras as they appeared in the "Imaging Station" on the Special Edition DVD release of The Abyss, along with the trailers. Since their original presentation has been preserved, resolution and clarity will vary from element to element. "All That Money Can Buy" (Criterion) This movie rules. I had seen bits and pieces over the years but didn't have the chance to sit and watch "All That Money Can Buy" aka "The Devil and Daniel Webster" until this Criterion release. It's phenomenal, a fever dream of filmmaking that suffers a bit on the screenwriting level but makes up for it with incredible editing and one of Bernard Herrmann's best scores (for which he won an Oscar). Walter Huston landed an Oscar nomination for playing the Devil himself in a timeless story of a man who sells his soul. One of Criterion's best releases so far this year features a sharp 4K transfer and great special features, including a comparison between an early version of the film, and even radio adaptations with music by Herrmann. Buy it here  Special FeaturesNew 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrackAudio commentary by film historian Bruce Eder and Steven C. Smith, biographer of composer Bernard HerrmannNew restoration demonstrationReading by actor Alec Baldwin of the short story by Stephen Vincent Benét on which the film is basedEpisode of the Criterion Channel series Observations on Film Art about the film’s editingComparison of the differences between the July 1941 preview version of the film, Here Is a Man, and the film’s 1943 rerelease as The Devil and Daniel WebsterThe Columbia Workshop’s radio adaptations of Benét’s short stories “The Devil and Daniel Webster” and “Daniel Webster and the Sea Serpent,” both featuring music by HerrmannTrailerEnglish subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearingPLUS: An essay by author Tom Piazza and a 1941 article by Benét "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed" (Criterion) One of the best documentaries of the 2020s so far, this is about Nan Goldin and her activist art, work that tackles the Sackler family and how they've poisoned this country with opioids. More than a mere bio-doc, Laura Poitras has made a film that channels the spirit of its subject, a movie that's artistic and angry in equal measure. It's a reminder that nothing exists in a vacuum and that artists like Goldin can impact political and social change in this world. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, only the second non-fiction film to ever do so. The Criterion release is a little slight in terms of special features, but the movie speaks for itself. Buy it here  Special FeaturesNew high-definition digital master, approved by director Laura Poitras and artist Nan Goldin, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrackNew interview with PoitrasTwo conversations from the 2022 New York Film Festival, one featuring Poitras, Goldin, coproducer and PAIN activist Megan Kapler, PAIN activist Harry Cullen, and lawyer and PAIN member Mike Quinn discussing the making of the film, and the other featuring Goldin on art and activismTrailerEnglish subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and English descriptive audioPLUS: An essay by author and activist Sarah Schulman "Amelie" It's been almost 25 years since the world fell in love with Amelie Poulain, the protagonist of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's delightfully whimsical romantic fable. To celebrate the recently released 4K restoration, about which we spoke to Jeunet last month, Sony has released the film in a new steelbook edition with the best video quality available to date. It's accompanied by all of the archival special features, including a commentary by JPJ, and a new a featurette wherein the director looks back at his work. JPJ was a formative artist for me personally when I fell in love with "Delicatessen" and "City of Lost Children" in the '90s. Anything that brings a new spotlight on his wonderful filmmaking is good for the form. Maybe it will get him working again more often. Buy it here  Special FeaturesNEW Jean-Pierre Jeunet Looks Back (Blu-ray Exclusive)Commentary with Director Jean-Pierre JeunetThe Look of AmélieQ&A With the DirectorQ&A With the Director and the CastAn Intimate Chat With Jean-Pierre JeunetFantasies of Audrey TautouCast AuditionsHome Movie: Inside the Making of AmélieStoryboard ComparisonsThe Amélie ScrapbookTrailer "Anyone But You" Who said the rom-com is dead? Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney proved otherwise with one of the true unexpected box office smashes of late 2023 and early 2024. In part sparked by viral culture that embraced the film, "Anyone But You" has made over $200 million worldwide, making it one of the most successful rom-coms in a generation. Loosely based on Much Ado About Nothing, Will Gluck's film has become a legit phenomenon, the kind of movie that people will watch over and over again on a rainy weekend. It's been available digital for a bit and will almost certainly be an instant #1 when it lands on Netflix on April 23rd, but you can buy the physical Blu-ray to tide you over until then, a release that includes outtakes, featurettes, and deleted scenes. More Glen & Sydney! Buy it here  Special FeaturesHe Said She SaidEveryone Down UnderOuttakes & BloopersDeleted ScenesASMR Pickup LinesAussie Snacks "The Book of Clarence" Critics like to write about films that mismanage tone in a way that makes me feel like the accusation has lost some of its meaning. And yet the tonal whiplash of Jeymes Samuel's bizarre comedy is undeniable. There are so many beats within this film that feel right, whether it's a smart choice made by LaKeith Stanfield (who I think works here more than most critics) or sharp visual language by the undeniably talented Samuel himself. The script's wild variations in tone are where most of the problems lie, but I feel like maybe this is a project that plays better at home, without the expectation of a theatrical experience. (At least it did for me.) It's neither as bad as I had heard it was or as good as I originally hoped it would be. But it deserved a better fate than its dismal $6 million box office. That number means so few people have seen this film that it's likely to have a bigger audience at home than in theaters. I'm curious to see if its reputation gets resurrected. Buy it here  Special FeaturesDeleted scenes with filmmaker introductionsAudio commentary with Jeymes Samuel and Lakeith StanfieldBand of Brothers: Meet the CastSong of Songs: An Epic CollaborationThe Gospel of Jeymes: On the Set with Jeymes SamuelBook 4: Making the FilmGag Reel "The Color Purple" This was one of the more shocking casualties of awards season, a film that came in with the kind of energy that predicted critical and box office success. It had a reasonable amount of the former, with critics praising the performances in particular, but audiences seemed uninterested in this adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical as it hasn't crossed $100 million, which is reportedly what it cost to make. I think "The Color Purple" will eventually find an audience. It has an emotional language that connects with viewers, who could resurrect its legacy on physical media or streaming. As is always the case, the 4K transfer by WB is sharp, but the release is a little light in the special features department for a movie that took so many varied talents to bring together. Buy it here  Special FeaturesCreating The Color PurpleHell Yes! The Iconic Characters of The Color PurpleIn the Flow: Creating The Color Purple's Biggest Musical MomentsA Story for Me: The Legacy of The Color Purple "Contagion" The pandemic in 2020 made Steven Soderbergh's 2011 thriller unexpectedly popular again. People shared clips online as if they could unpack how we would respond to the rising death toll and the lockdown of that year. The truth is that there was much more abject stupidity in the American populous than Soderbergh's film could have possibly imagined, but it was a reminder that "Contagion" is an excellent movie, a piece of work that incorporates granular detail about contagious diseases and the international response to them with deeply human storytelling. Warner Brothers has released the film recently in 4K. Let's hope there's not a reason for it to be popular again soon. Buy it here  Special Features4K RESTORATION OF THE FILM*HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILMThe Reality of Contagion – FeaturetteThe Contagion Detectives – FeaturetteContagion – How a Virus Changes the World –Featurette "Dark Water" (Arrow) I love Hideo Nakata's "Dark Water." If "Ringu" was the lighter fluid for my love of Asian horror in the 2000s, "Dark Water" (and "A Tale of Two Sisters") was the match. It's such a well-made genre pic, a film that you feel in your bones like non-stop rain that soaks into your being. I was concerned that the Arrow release of a 4K version of the movie would reduce some of that sensation in that this is a movie that needs to be a little dirty and dark to be effective. A bad 4K could diminish its tension. The good news is that didn't happen here as Arrow has given the film a well-calibrated restoration that doesn't drain any of its shocking power. They've imported all of the special features from the last Arrow release too, including an interview with Nakata himself about his unforgettable double feature. Buy it here  Special FeaturesDOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILMOriginal lossless 5.1 DTS-HD Master AudioOptional English subtitlesGhosts, Rings and Water - interview with director Hideo NakataFamily Terrors - interview with author Koji SuzukiVisualizing Horror - interview with cinematographer Junichiro HayashiArchive interviews with actors Hitomi Kuroki & Asami Mizukawa and theme song artist Shikao SugaOriginal 'making-of' documentaryTrailers and TV SpotsReversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter StrainIllustrated collector's booklet featuring writing on the film by David Kalat and Michael Gingold "The Iron Claw" The story of the Von Erichs is an American tragedy. One of the most prominent families in the world of wrestling, their legacy is more a chronicle of pain than it is success in the ring. The excellent director Sean Durkin tackles that history in this strong drama, a movie that A24 basically buried at the end of 2023, barely pushing it at all during awards season. Yes, it's kind of a tough sell, but there's a lot to like here, especially in the excellent performances from Holt McCallany, Zac Efron, and Jeremy Allen White. There's almost too much story to tell, leading to a rushed final act, but Durkin is increasingly proving himself one of our best filmmakers, a man with a unique ability to convey the pain under the placid surface of Americana.  Buy it here  Special FeaturesBrotherhood Is Forever: Making Iron Claw - FeaturetteCast and Crew Q&ATheatrical Trailer "Lynch/Oz" (Criterion) David Lynch has never hidden his fascination with "The Wizard of Oz," foregrounding it most of all in "Wild at Heart," of course, but embedding it in everything he's ever made. From the curtains of "Mulholland Dr." to the alternate realities of "Twin Peaks," comparing Lynch's work to "Oz" makes for a fun exercise in Alexandre O. Philippe's film, which is essentially a series of video essays by different voices. A bit too long for its subject, my favorite parts of "Lynch/Oz" are when the film expands to reveal the influence of both Lynch and Oz on the participants like Karyn Kusama, Aaron Moorhead & Justin Benson, and David Lowery. We're all on the Yellow Brick Road together. Buy it here  Special FeaturesMeet the Filmmakers, a new interview with director Alexandre O. PhilippeTrailerEnglish subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing "Migration" The company known as Illumination has been somewhat bashed in critical circles. They make films like "Minions" and "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" that make absolute fortunes, but they feel like junk food compared to the work of even modern Pixar. Even fans would admit they're largely disposable children's entertainment, but literally everything they do is a hit. For some reason, I thought their latest, "Migration," might have busted their streak, but, no, it made almost $300 million worldwide. The relatively good news is that this one is on the better end of the Illumination ledger, a movie that's undeniably familiar and meandering but features much stronger visuals than a lot of the company's work and fun voice work by Kumail Nanjiani. Like so many Univeral family films, it's also worth noting that the Blu-ray is PACKED with special features, including new mini-movies. Buy it here  Special FeaturesFLY HARD (MINI-MOVIE) - Chump sheds her tough-as-nails attitude, risking her life to fly through a blizzard and the harrowing streets of New York to return a prized possession to a kind woman from the park.MOONED (MINI-MOVIE) - Following the events of DESPICABLE ME, Vector and a lost Minion are stranded on the moon, and struggle to get back to Earth.MIDNIGHT MISSION (MINI-MOVIE) - The Minions will try anything to help Agnes overcome her fear of the dark, even if it involves going into outer space.MICROPHONE MADNESS - A fun look behind-the-scenes as the cast record some of their silliest lines.MEET THE CAST - In this series of behind-the-scenes pieces, we learn more about our favorite characters and the legendary comedic voices behind them.TAKING FLIGHT: THE MAKING OF - MIGRATION is an original script so brand-new characters and locations had to be developed, designed, and animated from scratch! Here, filmmakers and crew break down their process to show us what gives this film an entirely new look and feel.THE ART OF FLIGHT - Using a series of production phases from storyboards to pre-viz, we peel back the feathers and reveal just what goes in to creating the avian heroes of the film.THE SOUND OF FLIGHT - Take a closer look at the music of MIGRATION as Composer John Powell walks us through his scoring journey.HOW TO DRAWBUILD YOUR OWN POP-UP BOOK - Daddy duck, Mack, likes to tell his two little ducklings some…overly imaginative bedtime stories. In this fun "How To" we'll show you how to create a pop-up book so you can tell your very own bedtime stories!CALLING ALL BIRDS - They may not have cellphones, but you can call your web-footed friends anytime you want! In this fun How To, we'll teach you how to create and customize your very own set of colorful bird whistles.BEST NESTS - You don't have to fly south –or anywhere –to find a perfect paradise for your feathered friends. Here we'll teach you how to make the best nest for your pet ducks, or anyone flying by, including a water feeder to keep them hydrated! "Saint Omer" (Criterion) Alice Diop's 2022 drama was one of the most acclaimed films of the last few years, a movie that often comes up on lists of the best works of the decade so far. It stars Kayije Kagame as a novelist who is attending the trial of a woman named Laurence Coly, played by Guslagie Malanda. Coly has been accused of murdering her child, allowing it to be swept away by the tide on a beach. Based on the real trial of Fabienne Kabou, "Saint Omer" is not your typical courtroom drama, a film that works in a deeply emotional register. I found some parts of it more manipulative than my colleagues, but it's undeniably a good film, and a very welcome addition to the Criterion Collection, complete with a new interview with Diop and an awesome conversation between the filmmaker and Dee Rees, the director of "Mudbound". Buy it here  Special FeaturesNew 2K digital master, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrackNew and archival interviews with director Alice DiopConversation between Diop and author Hélène FrappatConversation between Diop and filmmaker Dee Rees from a 2023 episode of The Director’s Cut – A DGA PodcastTrailerNew English subtitle translationPLUS: An essay by critic Jennifer Padjemi "The Shootist" (Arrow) Someone asked me the other day what my favorite Westerns were, and I started with "My Darling Clementine," "Stagecoach," and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," but it wasn't long before I mentioned "The Shootist," John Wayne's final film and a masterful drama that works both as its own standalone story and an elegy for both a genre and its most famous face. Wayne plays J.B. Brooks, a famous gunfighter who learns he has terminal cancer. The legendary performer is breathtakingly good here, giving one of his best performances opposite an insane supporting cast that includes Lauren Bacall, John Carradine, Harry Morgan, James Stewart, and a young Ron Howard. The Arrow release of "The Shootist" is one of the best physical media editions so far this year. Not only does the film look better than ever with a restoration from the camera negative, but it includes physical collectibles and new interviews and video essays, including a spectacular one by our very own Scout Tafoya called "Contemplating John Wayne: The Death of a Cowboy."  Buy it here  Special FeaturesNEW 2K RESTORATION by Arrow Films from the original 35mm camera negativeBrand new audio commentary by filmmaker and critic Howard S. BergerThe Last Day, a new visual essay by film critic David CairnsA Man-Making Moment, a new interview with Western author C. Courtney JoynerLaments of the West, a new appreciation of Elmer Bernstein's score by film historian and composer Neil BrandContemplating John Wayne: The Death of a Cowboy, a new visual essay by filmmaker and critic Scout TafoyaThe Shootist: The Legend Lives On, archival featuretteTheatrical trailerImage galleryReversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Juan Esteban RodríguezDouble-sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Juan Esteban RodríguezSix postcard-sized lobby card reproductionsOriginal lossless mono audioOptional English Subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearingIllustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing by film critic Philip Kemp "To Die For" (Criterion) Any list of the best performances of Nicole Kidman's career that doesn't include Gus Van Sant's "To Die For" is simply incomplete. In fact, this may be her true breakthrough, revealing the complexity she would bring to so many performances in the future. It's hard to believe it's almost been three decades since Kidman played Suzanne Stone in this thriller inspired by the true story of Pamela Smart, who convinced a 15-year-old to murder her husband in 1990. The brilliant Buck Henry wrote a script that seems so far ahead of its time now (it really was an early true crime drama), and stars like Kidman, Joaquin Phoenix, and Matt Dillon knew exactly what to do with it. The Criterion release includes a new 4K restoration overseen by Van Sant himself along with a commentary that includes the director. Buy it here Special FeaturesNew 4K digital restoration, approved by director Gus Van Sant and director of photography Eric Alan Edwards, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrackOne 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special featuresAudio commentary featuring Van Sant, Edwards, and editor Curtiss ClaytonDeleted scenesTrailerEnglish subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearingPLUS: An essay by film critic Jessica Kiang "Wonka" How will history judge Timothee Chalamet's "Wonka"? Of course, everyone loves the Gene Wilder version, and most people hate the Johnny Depp version (at least I do). But it feels like there's a lukewarm middle ground on "Wonka" that could make it the forgotten version before long. Or maybe not? Maybe it's a movie that parents put on for the current young generation and it gets passed down like the '70s version. There are truly wonderful moments in Paul King's musical origin story for the character, offset by some clunky character beats and performances. Still, "Wonka" is an incredibly easy rewatch at home. I've already found my youngest just throwing it on on a rainy weekend afternoon. The flavor of this "Wonka" could last. Buy it here  Special FeaturesUnwrapping Wonka: Paul King's VisionThe Whimsical Music of WonkaWelcome to Wonka LandHats Off to WonkaWonka's Chocolatier

  • The Ebert Fellows Go to True/False
    by The Editors on March 28, 2024 at 9:51 PM

    Editor’s note: Earlier this month, the 2023-24 University of Illinois College of Media Roger Ebert Fellows attended the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, MO. It’s an ideal first festival for any moviegoer, its documentary focus allowing for a wide range of stylistic and thematic encounters and venues of all sizes. Here are their reports. HANNA BRAZAS-MATAS After nearly four hours of tears steadily streaming down my face, my last day at True/False festival concluded as I tried to gather my things, and my composure, with a fistful of tissues in one hand and my fingers texting my parents “I love you” in the other. Watching the powerful documentaries “Look Into My Eyes” and “Daughters” back-to-back, admittedly, was a lot (and I cry at movies even if they’re minimally touching). Directed by Lana Wilson, “Look Into My Eyes” follows New York City psychics and their clients through a series of emotional readings. The film also examines the lives and feelings of the clairvoyants themselves, following them outside their client sessions and into their homes. It's a rewarding strategy. As one psychic says, “Sometimes healers need the most healing.” Wilson’s film doesn’t aim to make the audience believers. Instead, she’s interested in the importance of human connection and how these psychic readings, stemming from the supernatural or not, provide a therapeutic experience for both parties. “Daughters,” directed by Natalie Rae and Angela Patton, follows four young girls through their preparation, experience, and aftermath of a daddy/daughter dance with their incarcerated fathers. It’s a powerful critique of “no-touch” prison visitation policy and mass incarceration, while also paying close attention to the complex feelings underneath the event. The post-screening conversations between filmmakers and audience members engaged on another level entirely. One Missouri resident, in tears after “Daughters,” described her frustration with her home state’s regressive policy regarding the no-touch visits. Missouri is one of many states that has now banned snail-mail letters addressed to inmates. At True/False, moments like this showed how documentaries function beyond the role of giving voice to topics that otherwise may go unheard, or unfilmed. With audiences this engaged, the films create space for connection and self-reflection, after the lights come up. Across 36 hours and six films, stories of aging and mortality appeared on screen again and again. “I Like It Here,” directed by Ralph Arlyck, approaches the passing of time with sensitivity and thoughtfulness, acknowledging our collective fear of growing old, while asserting that to grow old is a privilege. In his film, Arlyck reflects on his own life and the lives of those around him, sharing memories, stories, and laughs with friends, family, and neighbors. The director takes the audience with him along this journey of making peace with whatever lies ahead. Throughout “I Like It Here,” Arlyck scatters younger photos of himself and friends. The filmmaker offers blunt commentary on one such photo, wondering, “What happened?” in a voiceover mourning a past version of himself. Growing old, as one of Arlyck’s friends describes it, is like living life “in the slow lane,” which in the film’s view, may explain why kids and seniors often get along so well. Moments like this capture the tenderness of the movie’s approach to the overarching anxieties so many have about transitioning into the final stages of life, and the inevitable end. Arlyck effectively diffuses these intense discussions of mortality and loss by capturing the joy of being alive. Another True/False title, “Flying Lessons” directed by Elizabeth Nichols, begins as a story about tenants' rights in New York City but quickly becomes a story about a specific tenant, Philly Abe. This woman represents a fleeting part of the city’s artistic history, as creatives have been pushed out by sky-high rent prices or have passed away. A New York resident since 1983, Philly Abe’s story echoes that of Arlyck’s in “I Like It Here.” At one point, feeling the effects of growing older, she says, “I look like myself. But I’ve become this creature.” “Flying Lessons” mixes director Nichols’ footage with older experimental films featuring Philly Abe. She and Nichols met as neighbors and as they grew closer during the filming of the documentary, her anxieties about death and legacy emerged on camera, often uncomfortably. Nichols’ questioning leads to some tense exchanges. Tough topics such as Philly Abe’s memories of artists and friends who died during the AIDS crisis prove hard for her to revisit. At one point “Flying Lessons” shows Philly and a friend at a deceased artist’s exhibit. In between touching moments of the two friends bonding over their memories of the late artist, one of Nichols’ crew members asks them to both tell “one serious and one funny story” to which Philly replies, “Do I have to bitch-slap you?” revealing her clear distress at the intrusive request. Such moments are included throughout the film in what appears to be a conscious critique of documentary ethics. Are such prompts inherently manipulative? Does the inclusion of these moments make the film more ethical or just more transparently unethical? When Philly is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she’s clearly frightened about what will happen to her body and what legacy she will leave behind. By the end of the film, the friendship between the filmmaker and subject provides the only real solace. Philly’s exuberant life lives on in “Flying Lessons,” and while human connection may not solve all our problems and conquer all our fears, it makes living through them a whole lot easier. Daughters STEPHANIE WAYDA In stellar fashion, both on screen and behind the camera, the stories of women in deeply complex relationships proved both emotional and, at their best, revolutionary. Three of those stories: “Daughters,” directed by Angela Patton and Natalie Rae; “Girls State,” directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss; and director Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s “A Photographic Memory.” In different ways, these films explore intimate relationships within a family and within a society. “Daughters” concentrates on four young girls and their incarcerated Washington D.C. area fathers, participating in a 12-week “date with Dad” program in prison. We watch as these girls, over the course of eight years, go through life's milestones and responding to the circumstances in their lives, for better or worse. Directors Patton and Rae mix angelic, nostalgic images with harder, sharper-edged footage of the girls’ shared reality. The Daddy-Daughter Dance, shot on film, captures light blues and purples; elsewhere, the color goes deeper and darker. The cinematographer’s work blends with the directors’, seamlessly. At True/False, after the “Daughters” screening I attended, co-director Rae led a discussion and talked about the sense of disbelief some people had when she told them the filmmakers were determined to shoot the all-important dance sequence on film, not digitally. The decision was right: Visually it cast a spell, and the festival audience sobbed, audibly, during this extended scene, reuniting parents and children in a rare moment of physical contact. A follow-up to the Texas-set 2020 documentary “Boys State,” “Girls State” (premiering on Apple TV+ on April 5th) spans a week in the lives of high school girls, competing for the governorship of Missouri Girls State. Sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary program, the competition becomes the setting for a wide variety of coming-of-age stories, anxieties and political beliefs. Compared to “Daughters,” “Girls State” is less experimental and more basic in its storytelling approach. It’s also effective and deeply emotional, as the girls experience all sorts of archaic rules and expectations within the camp setting. At one point one of the girls, falling short of the goal she has been chasing, instead finds a different outlet and opportunity for her talents. Moments like these in “Girls State” remind us that life moves in unimagined directions. And sometimes the better fit is the one you didn’t know was even an option. “A Photographic Memory” spans several years in the life of filmmaker Seed. Her mother, photojournalist Sheila Turner-Seed, died when the director was not yet two years old. Exploring her mother’s work, family, friends and artifacts, she searches for discoveries so she can know more about this woman. The film documents a highly personal struggle, and more and more, documentaries today appear to be making room for the idea of showcasing the filmmaker in their own narrative. Seed, in “A Photographic Memory,” embarks on the project to get to know her mother. The result interlaces tradition with innovation, and while there are times you’d like to know more about Seed herself, is it even fair to ask a filmmaker to divulge more of their personal story when they’re already opening up so much? As a first-timer to True/False, I couldn’t help but notice (and appreciate) the sense of community throughout the weekend. There’s no glitz and glam. People from all over the world gathered to show or watch films, to discuss them with one another as they queue up for the next screening, to cry, to laugh. And then to walk to one of the nearby food spots. If you live in the Midwest, make the trek to Columbia, MO. and get to know this film community. Ibelin CAROLINE TADLA True/False provides an overwhelming sense of belonging for any young writer. Being part of a community is essential. But what if you’ve spent most of your life perceived as an outsider? Two of the films I saw, director Benjamin Ree’s “Ibelin” and director Lana Wilson’s “Look into My Eyes,” take a closer look at this question. The Netflix-backed “Ibelin” explores the life of Mats Steen, a young Norwegian man who suffered from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, a disease that causes progressive muscular weakness and a shortened lifespan. As his condition worsened, Mats’ parents became increasingly concerned about the amount of time he spent online gaming, leading to his presumed isolation. When Mats passed away at 25, he left behind the passwords for his blog and “World of Warcraft” account. Mats’ parents discovered his rich online community, which granted him the freedom his body didn’t allow and the friends he always wanted. This documentary asks what it means to live a meaningful life, especially when it appears different from others’ idea of normal. Director Ree was unable to attend the screening or the post-screening discussion. In a pre-recorded message, he shared that he grew up in Norway near his film’s subject, and that Mats’ story inspired him to start filming. Innovative and accurate portrayals of online spaces have proven elusive for many filmmakers. Few things look dumber to moviegoers in their 20s than text boxes floating above a character’s head as they send and receive texts, or some other early 2000s visual gimmick. But in “Ibelin,” Ree’s use of animation to recreate in-game experiences and online interactions serves the film well. Growing up surrounded by gaming communities, the social importance of online gaming never felt mysterious to me. At the True/False screening of “Ibelin,” however, I noticed several people in the theater getting to know that world for what seemed like the first time. Ree’s aversion to lecturing results in a film that increases understanding between different generations. The entirety of the audience seemed to tear up in unison, at the moment when a gamer hugged his mom via emote. As I moseyed around downtown Columbia sampling treats between True/False screenings, I ran into several visiting directors, including Lana Wilson, maker of “Look Into My Eyes.” As we discussed the Letterboxd app, her energy mirrored that of her films. “Look Into My Eyes” follows a group of New York-based psychics as they give readings, navigate life and explain the profession. It reveals a hodgepodge of outsiders who find comfort in “joining the coven” and the importance of believing in something, starting with basic human contact. Throughout the film, the psychics’ credibility consistently wavers, but the audience was charmed beyond the point of caring. The A24 release ranked as the funniest film I saw at True/False by far. Director Wilson employs a self-awareness that remains judgment-free, aided by subjects who clearly know their way around a joke and embrace the very idea of performance. Several of the on-camera psychics have backgrounds in theater, a coincidence Wilson questions throughout “Look Into My Eyes.” When asked about the editing process during the film’s post-screening Q&A, Wilson said she hoped her movie was tense enough so that it becomes “one of those films where you can’t watch (it) alone.” She wanted a film with “an emotional cumulative effect.” Wilson plays with the viewer’s skepticism and trust so cleverly that I found my own views on psychic phenomena changing with each new scene. The breezy 108 minutes of “Look Into My Eyes” sent me out of the theater energized, as opposed to the usual nighttime fatigue that comes with a long day at a film festival (especially when one spends as much time crying in a theater as I do). I left True/False with a newfound appreciation for the festival communities I got to know–and for the reminder that at places like this, and genres as far-flung as documentary, there’s room for everybody.

  • Keith Law Wants You to Watch Better Baseball Movies
    by Tim Grierson on March 28, 2024 at 7:56 PM

    For some of us, Opening Day in Major League Baseball is a sacred thing—the unofficial start of spring, the launch of another season of the world’s greatest sport, that special time each year when we still believe that our crummy team might actually win the pennant. Sure, those are romantic notions, but most people who love baseball tend to be romantic about such things—it’s woven into the game we adore. Baseball has been around for more than a century, and so have the movies, with the National Pastime often the subject of films. Some baseball movies have been nominated for Oscars (“Moneyball,” “The Natural”), some are family classics (“The Sandlot”), and a few of them star Kevin Costner. So as a new season gets underway, I decided to talk to someone who has opinions about baseball movies but isn’t a movie critic—he does, however, know a thing or two about baseball. Keith Law is a senior baseball writer at The Athletic, where he breaks down teams’ top prospects, analyzes trades and free-agent signings, extensively covers MLB’s annual draft, and ranks clubs’ farm systems. He’s also written two great books, Smart Baseball and The Inside Game: Bad Calls, Strange Moves, and What Baseball Behavior Teaches Us About Ourselves, which push aside the biases and faulty thinking that often lead to bad baseball decisions. A former special assistant to the general manager for the Toronto Blue Jays, Law loves the game and thinks about it critically—both in terms of assessing players and calling out the sport’s ethical and moral shortcomings. (It should hardly be a controversial opinion, but he thinks players allegedly involved in domestic violence have no place in the game.) Outside of the world of baseball, he’s just as outspoken, taking to social media and his blog, The Dish, to defend trans rights and decry the death penalty. Tellingly, he ironically titles his weekly blog roundup of important political and cultural stories “Stick to Baseball.” On The Dish, Law also flexes his non-baseball muscles by writing about his other passions. He reviews books and restaurants. He writes about songs and albums. (In addition, he frequently publishes board game reviews at Paste.) And he digs into movies—blockbusters, documentaries, countries’ official entries for the Best International Film Oscar—to give his thoughts. His favorites of recent years have included “Burning,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “Amerikatsi.” He’s one of the people I most enjoy talking about films with, specifically because he doesn’t come from the same background as so many of my colleagues.  But what about baseball movies? Which do Law thinks hold up? Last week, over Zoom from his home in Delaware, he and I had a long talk about the best and worst of the genre. This conversation doesn’t include every supposed classic—he’s never seen the original “Bad News Bears”—and he makes no apologies about not being a completist. As he puts it, “If you tell me a baseball movie is not very good, why would I waste my time on that?”  Ultimately, what I was aiming for was a larger discussion regarding what baseball movies mean. What makes them work? What makes them fail? And, seriously, why is “Trouble With the Curve” so awful? Batter up. You’ve loved baseball since you were a kid, raised in a Yankee household. Where did movies fit into that? My parents are not movie people. We would go to some movies as kids—I remember going to see “Grease” when I was five or six. I remember seeing “Star Wars” in the theater. But those were cultural events, it was different—we were not folks who just went to movies.  In high school, and particularly in college, I was a big newspaper guy. We had Newsday, and I’d often read it close to cover to cover. I got into the film critics—I don’t even remember who the main one was, but he had standards. I was like, “Oh, this is interesting—this is why this movie is good, this is why this movie isn’t good.” I remember him giving a four-star rating to the Kenneth Branagh adaptation of “Much Ado About Nothing,” which I still adore. As Shakespeare adaptations go, it’s pretty spectacular—his particular brand of overstated is exactly right for that character Benedict, so it works really well. Do you remember the first baseball movie you ever saw? I think “Major League.” Well, “Max Dugan Returns” has a strong baseball element in it, and I did see that as a kid—I love that movie, saw it several times. I mean, it’s quaint, it’s a kid’s movie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen “The Bad News Bears” start to finish because my parents just weren’t into that kind of stuff, so we didn’t go see it. “Major League” has a ton of problems, obviously, but there are also pretty good parts that are endearing. There are parts that still get quoted around the backfields. Nobody’s quoting “Trouble With the Curve,” but they’re quoting “Major League.” Those problems you have with “Major League”—did you notice them at the time or when you were older? No, when I first watched it, I just loved it. It was a baseball movie that was really about baseball. “Bull Durham” is not about baseball—“Bull Durham” is a movie that is set in baseball, but it is not a baseball movie. “Major League” is a baseball movie. The problems it has are the ones we see now where [Tom Berenger’s character] stalks [Rene Russo’s character]—the way he just shows up at her apartment, none of that is okay. The baseball stuff, I actually feel like holds up reasonably well. “Field of Dreams,” I actually do have a soft spot for that movie, and I know a lot of people [have] come around to hating that movie. I really wish Michael Schur had gotten his chance to do the TV series based on that and just retell the whole thing in a totally different way—a less sentimental spin, I think he would’ve done that. That’s not a great baseball movie, either, but that at least is a movie about baseball history. I’m curious about this distinction you’re making: Some movies are set in the world of baseball, while other movies are baseball movies.  When I say “not a great baseball movie,” I’m talking about, “Are we seeing baseball—actual baseball?” Sports movies generally get the sport wrong, and if you know the sport at all, it’s really frustrating to watch and think, “That wouldn’t happen. That wouldn’t happen. That’s wrong." You cannot watch “Trouble With the Curve” with me because I’m not going to shut up for the whole—10 hours is what it feels like—where it’s like, “That’s wrong, that’s wrong. They made Amy Adams really unlikable, and that’s wrong, too.” Oddly enough, that’s a movie that tries to be a baseball movie—it just fails.  “Bull Durham” has very little baseball in it, and what there is is very tangential to the storyline—which, to me, is more about this small cast of eccentric characters. Which is fine. If you’re a screenwriter and you aren’t really making a baseball movie, just do that: Set it in baseball, but don’t have too much on the field and I’m not going to care.  So, using that distinction, what’s a good baseball movie—it’s about baseball, we see actual baseball and gets the baseball correct? “Sugar” is No. 1 for me. It’s a great movie. It’s such a small movie, but they clearly put in so much work into getting the baseball stuff right. It’s also a great assimilation story—or failure to assimilate, in a way. “Tragic” might be a little too much [to describe the film], but it’s certainly bittersweet.   For folks who don’t know, it’s about a prospect [named Miguel “Sugar” Santos, played by Perez Soto]. I don’t know if they ever explicitly say he’s from the Dominican Republic, or if it’s just strongly implied, but he is a hard-throwing teenager who gets money that, from a Dominican standard, is a lot—but it doesn’t get you very far once you move to the United States. He comes to play in the low minors in the United States and really has trouble assimilating, particularly in an era where teams did [not do much to help international players]. They do far more today, at least in terms of educating players, teaching them English, teaching them some basic life skills so that they can succeed when they come over to the United States—especially since they’re now in the United States and playing in the minor leagues sooner because we’ve lost a whole level of the minor leagues. The Sugar of today is playing in the Midwest League a year sooner than he might otherwise have been.  [The filmmakers] cared about getting the on-field stuff right, and they cared about getting the culture right, and they cared about getting some of the processes around baseball right. That is a lot to ask of a movie—it’s a level of research that we would expect from a science-y movie where it’s like, “Oh, you got to get that stuff right.” And it allowed me to get far more invested in the character and in the storyline.  I do think “Major League” gets a lot of the baseball stuff right. I absolutely love “Everybody Wants Some!!”—I wish that movie had found a much bigger audience. They get the baseball stuff right, and it being Richard Linklater, he’s got this great cast of characters, and he gets the camaraderie right. How can you watch that movie and not think, “Man, I wish I’d played baseball at some random college in Texas”? But, also, it looks like real baseball—he made the effort and had some understanding, and it just makes such a difference. I love “Everybody Wants Some!!” and “Sugar,” too. “Sugar” premiered 16 years ago—how much has changed about the world of international players since then? There are minor things that have changed. He would probably spend an additional year in the Dominican Summer League, whether he’s Dominican or not. The way it works now is if you’re signed internationally as a free agent, you can sign at 16—if you sign from essentially any country that is outside of the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, but still in the Americas, you are probably going to go play in the Dominican Summer League for at least one year while you’re 16, 17. Usually by the time you’re 18, you’re either coming to the United States or you get released. So his actual path might change a little bit.  The one thing that’s actually better today is, I believe, every team is doing more cultural assimilation. It’s education—it’s understanding that most of these [prospects], they’re 16, they’re not finishing high school. The level of English varies very wildly depending on the country of origin. For players who come in without the language skills, without the education, it’s making sure you’re okay in the world. [What’s shown in “Sugar”] you just don’t think about unless you’re in the industry and then start to see some of that. And that’s a very specific thing to baseball because we sign them so young—we sign a lot of players out of countries where there’s just no English whatsoever. Players who come over from East Asia, they may not speak English either, but they come over and they get a couple million bucks—or a lot more—and then the team hires an interpreter. But you can’t have one interpreter for every Spanish-speaking player you have in your entire system—they can do that for the three Korean-speaking players they might have.  Also, in the modern “Sugar,” he gets to 18, has his first Tommy John surgery, and then by the time he’s 23, he has to have the internal brace because it started to tear again. That would be the modern story of baseball. Because pitchers are now trained to throw as hard as possible—everybody wants the prospect who can hit 100 mph on the radar gun. Exactly, that’s what gets you paid, and that’s always been true with the international free agents—it’s just more so. If you don’t throw hard enough, you get nothing. If you’re right-handed and you’re not throwing 94 or 95 at age 16—I may be exaggerating slightly—but you’re not getting more than 50 grand. The big money guys, they throw hard, and we keep making the same mistake. I would rather have the younger guy who shows he can pitch—he can spin the ball, I like the delivery, I like the athlete—and you can add velocity as he grows. The guy who throws super-hard right now, he might need three surgeries before he is 24, but he gets paid. Is part of your love of “Sugar” based on the fact that it speaks to something in baseball that you feel very passionate about: How international players are treated when they come over here?  I’m sure there’s some subconscious bias: I like that they’re portraying the inherent exploitation of international free agents in our industry that does still exist. Am I fist-up pro-labor? Yes, absolutely, I am. So that’s going to resonate with me. But, also, movies have to hold my attention. We are in a world where it’s like, “My phone’s right here, my computer’s here, I have two kittens.” There’s all these things going on to distract me. A movie might drag, and if they get something wrong on the baseball side, it pushes me out. The best movies are the ones where you can’t stop [watching]. Kinda like the Beatles versus the Stones, I think a lot of baseball fans are either “Field of Dreams” people or “Bull Durham” people. One movie is very sentimental, the other is much more sarcastic. I’m going to cheat and say I really like both movies. But what kind of person are you?  I am a “Field of Dreams” person, and I say that with the recognition that the movie’s manipulative. Generally, I don’t respond that well if I know I’m being manipulated, but I’m like, “Yeah, that one got me.”  What is it that gets you in “Field of Dreams”? There’s a lot of little things that do. The Moonlight Graham subplot works. Basically, anything James Earl Jones does in that movie, he’s fantastic.  I’m still close to my parents—we went to lots of baseball games as a family. My dad is also a big sports fan. My mom was very much “We are watching the Yankees,” and so was her mom, and so was her mom’s father. My great-grandfather was on his deathbed and he wanted the Yankee score—that’s us. There’s something about baseball being shared across generations—most baseball fans, I think we watched from an early age, and we associate [baseball] with something positive about family.  I think the baseball stuff [in “Field of Dreams”] is fine—other than the whitewashing of Joe Jackson. He was a cheat—he knew, he knew. I don’t think Costner is anything special in that movie—he’s fine. I’ve never been the biggest Kevin Costner fan, so that may also be a factor, but [his character] is a bit of a cipher. He’s a very generic character at the center of this, and the action happens around him. You and I always enjoy making fun of how terrible “Trouble With the Curve” is. I know one of your complaints is that it gets the baseball wrong, but let me play devil’s advocate for a second: Why does that matter? It’s not like it’s supposed to be a documentary.  That movie’s extremely lazy across the board. The movie’s supposed to be some kind of defense of scouting. I’m friends with scouts, I talk to scouts all the time, I defend scouting constantly—I argue that teams are now employing too few scouts, and the teams that employ more scouts tend to be much more successful, particularly in the draft but also in trades. Why are the Dodgers constantly finding guys in the 12th and 15th rounds and getting a guy in a trade who turns into a star? Because they have better scouts—more and better scouts—and their scouts work well with their other departments. But that movie does a really lousy job of defending scouts. Also, the characterization is extremely lazy, it takes a lot of dumb plot shortcuts—some of which are baseball-related and some of which are not. It panders to the audience. It gets less from all of its actors. Clint Eastwood is like a billion years old, but Amy Adams is never bad, and she’s bad in that movie. It’s the movie we all love to hate because it just fails on so many levels—it’s a thing of beauty. I haven’t seen a worse one. I feel like “Moneyball” versus “Trouble With the Curve” is the modern “Field of Dreams”/“Bull Durham” debate—they’re two baseball films that have wildly different perspectives on the game. But even though “Moneyball” is more analytics-driven than “Trouble With the Curve”—so people might assume it’s closer to your heart—you don’t like that film much, either.  Yes, I hated the movie. I always tell people, “Read the book, the book is good. The book has its issues, but the book is good.” The movie was such a disjointed mess. Trying to build this whole story around an in-season winning streak, I understand that’s what actually happened, but it points to the problem with turning that book—which is a book about a process—into a movie. A movie demands results—you need an outcome, you need “We’re heading towards this thing, and this is the denouement”—and [the book] doesn’t have that.  The movie also does some sloppy and lazy things. The way that it mocks scouts is not accurate, and it’s really derogatory towards the actual scouts who worked for the A’s in that time period. And there’s also the very clear baseball [problem] where they don’t mention that [the A’s] had the best rotation in all of baseball [which is a big reason why they were so good]. I think the [subplot] with Billy Beane’s daughter was also very manipulative. There was a simpler movie to be made in there, but maybe that doesn’t get nominated for Best Picture. Maybe that’s not big enough for Brad Pitt. There are things in there, like [the line] “It’s very difficult,” that live forever—that scene is an all-timer, and I say that as somebody who sees [Chris Pratt’s character] Scott Hatteberg, because he’s a scout, a couple of times every spring. I’ve never, ever said that [line] to him—I’m sure he’s sick of that, but you know I think that. Here’s my argument for why “Moneyball” is good, despite the things you mentioned that it leaves out: I think it does a great job of hitting on the eternal poignancy of baseball—how it’s a children’s game played by adults, who eventually have to let that dream go. The impermanence of a player’s career—the inevitability that it will end—really gets to me.  “Everybody Wants Some!!,” there’s a lot great about that movie, but it is also very much a “Youth is wasted on the young” [film]. “Do you appreciate how amazing this is that you guys have this?” I know it’s based a little bit on Linklater’s own experiences, but to find that group, that camaraderie, that connection—and they come from slightly different backgrounds. “We’re all coming together over this one thing,” but it’s not going to last. And it’s college—three, four years, you’re all gone, you’re scattered to the four winds.  When you find [a bond] like that, it’s hard to appreciate those moments. Obviously, there’s baseball mortality and then there’s just mortality. We have a finite time here and you’ve got to learn—it’s a hard skill to learn—to appreciate what you have. This is a very American thing, we’re constantly looking forward: “What’s next? What’s more? When’s the next promotion, the next raise, the next big life thing?” You’re always wishing time away. But “Everybody Wants Some!!” [says,] “No, stop and look at what you have. This thing right here, there’s something magic.”  Some baseball movies tell inspirational true stories, like “42.” I’m not a fan of that film, but I was curious how you felt.  “42” was a tough movie to criticize even before Chadwick Boseman died. It exaggerates a lot of things. Jackie Robinson’s life had plenty of drama and tragedy and controversy—you didn’t have to gussy it up to the extent that they did. I don’t know that that’s really the biography he deserved—it might be the biography people wanted, but I don’t think they did a particularly good job with the baseball in that one. That movie also does the thing, it’s got to hit some of the more famous incidents—the problem with a lot of biopics is that you have to connect the dots. These dots are already in ink, so you just have to get us from one to the next. Those don’t work for me—tell a smaller portion of a subject’s life. Find the incident or short period that is most interesting, most illustrative that allows you to tell broader points.  What I also don’t like about a movie like that is it too easily assures the viewer, “Don’t worry, racism is gone now thanks to Jackie Robinson.” “42” should have been an angry, political movie—and we know, from Boseman’s other work, he could have done it. That movie is like a celebration of Jackie Robinson—it backed off from confronting some of the more serious [issues around racism]. Getting the N-word yelled at you repeatedly on a field, I’m sure is horrible—he took a lot of verbal abuse in his time through the Majors, I’m not trying to diminish that. But that is not all of racism—just because no one’s yelling that [epithet] at him and he played well in the Majors, racism isn’t gone. There’s a lot more subtle aspects to racism that continued well into his career that the movie just isn’t prepared to confront.  In terms of tackling sexism, the most popular baseball movie to do that was “A League of Their Own.” That’s actually a good movie that does have much broader themes. Let’s face it: Women are wildly underrepresented in all baseball fiction. But “A League of Their Own” does something really great in that they’re telling the story of the All-American Girls League—that’s going to get into much bigger issues and larger themes just naturally. That’s, to me, a hallmark of a lot of great fiction: Whether you’re telling a true story or a made-up one, you find the little that exemplifies the large that helps shed light on a larger story or opens up much larger questions. You could argue “Sugar” does that by telling one player’s story—issues of exploitation, assimilation, prejudice, immigration policy come into it. It’s a shame that “A League of Their Own” stands so much on its own—a lot of times, [women] either don’t exist in baseball movies or they’re the generic love interest. Are there certain nonfiction stories that you think would lend themselves to a good baseball movie? We haven’t discussed “Ballplayer: Pelotero,” which is the documentary about the signing of Miguel Sanó and Jean Carlos. That exposed a fair bit of the corruption involved in the process—there was a lot of sketchy stuff happening around [then]. I mean, it’s still the Wild Wild West in international free agency, but this was 13, 14 years ago, and it was much worse then. It’s a great documentary—could that story or a similar one be turned into a fictional one? Yeah, I would say so. I mean, the problem with Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?, the Jimmy Breslin book about the expansion Mets [who were terrible], is that the story probably has to end with the Mets suddenly getting good in ‘69. You could do a really good movie about a truly incompetent baseball team, except isn’t that the plot of “Major League”? That’s kind of what Seasons in Hell, which was [about] the Ted Williams-managed Rangers, [does] because they don’t get good at the end, either. That could be really fun and funny. We haven’t talked about baseball documentaries. I have to confess: I have never been able to get through Ken Burns’ “Baseball.” Something about his sepia-toned approach to the game just leaves me cold.  What I have seen of that documentary, it feels like he’s telling one side of the whole story, and that’s hard to do. It’s like this Ohtani story that’s happening now: How well is this going to get covered? MLB Network, which is one of the major purveyors of baseball news and employs a lot of people who get baseball news, how much are they going to cover it? This is deleterious to the sport as a whole, so maybe they’re not going to. Especially if you want to use team logos or the Major League Baseball logo [in a film], well, okay, you can’t be too negative—you can only tell the things that are favorable to Major League Baseball. So there are obstacles involved. Baseball is a sport, in general, where people are like, “I come to baseball to get away from politics and division and all this other stuff”—we all know what hat those people wear. But I’ve argued constantly there is no separation—politics and sports are inextricably intertwined, not least because we constantly, as taxpayers, pay for the sports stadiums. There is no separating baseball from the most controversial aspects of American life—from exploitation of immigrants to exploitation of labor in general, from the way that minor leaguers have been chronically underpaid, to the waxing and waning powers of unions, to racism, to sexism, to cartel-like behavior. I mean, baseball is a legal monopoly, essentially. There are so many things you could shine a light on through a baseball story, and most baseball stories choose not to do that. They just want to have a feel-good baseball movie. To that point, I wonder if we’ll ever get a “Spotlight” or “All the President’s Men” about the investigation into the steroid era of the 1990s. We are far enough past it. The most visible manifestations of PED usage, those are past us. All those players are retired—most of them are out of baseball. You’re probably at the point now where someone could do that. Someone could tell that story. But MLB would never allow the logos to be included, so it would feel inauthentic and cheap.  Major League Baseball doesn’t want to confront it. You know who else doesn’t? The Hall of Fame, they really don’t want to confront it—they don’t want to talk about the possibility that there are Hall of Famers who took PEDs. They have done everything they could to just try to squeeze those guys off the ballot. I am a Hall of Fame voter—they have never given us one iota of guidance on how to address players who were accused of PED usage, who tested positive for PEDs, or simply played in that era. These are complicated questions without easy answers, and people have asked the Hall of Fame to provide guidance, and the Hall of Fame has, through multiple regimes, declined.  Are there certain baseball movies you hear quoted a lot on the ballfield or around the folks you work with? “Major League” definitely comes up. Bits of “Moneyball” do get quoted—even though, obviously, a lot of scouts, not incorrectly, have strong feelings about that movie. It’s funny, “Field of Dreams” almost never does. But no extended mound visit can go by without somebody saying “candlesticks” thanks to “Bull Durham.” In the world of arthouse films, there’s a term called “slow cinema,” which is given to longer movies that usually move at a more deliberate pace—maybe not a lot happens, plotwise, in them. Among my friends who love international cinema and baseball, we talk about the similarities between slow cinema and baseball: how they both require patience as a viewer, but the rewards come from the intense concentration you apply to both.  I know you’re not a professional film critic, but you’ve seen some slow cinema: Do you think the comparison makes sense? I have always thought baseball and literature go well together because they’re meditative. For me at least, baseball isn’t a sport that can be rushed, and I don’t say that as a criticism.  One thing I always loved about ice hockey, indoor soccer and indoor lacrosse is that those are fast and exciting, and you can never really turn away—that’s great, too. But baseball, there’s often a slow build, and it gives you time to think about what’s happening in front of you. It also gives you time to not think about what’s happening in front of you—just enjoy your beer and talk to your friends, and that’s fine. No criticism—you enjoy baseball the way you want to enjoy baseball.  Two things I particularly enjoy doing is reading and watching baseball. But slow cinema does have a bit more of that literary quality: “We’re taking our time, we get there when we get there.” I don’t know slow cinema super-well, and sometimes I’m not along for the ride—sometimes I’m like, “Can you hit the gas already? Because we’re not getting anywhere”—but I feel that way at baseball games sometimes, too.  I’m often struck by the fact that you and I both have jobs where people want to come up to us and talk about them. Lots of folks watch movies and baseball, so we cover subjects that everyone can have an opinion about—and have no problem sharing those opinions with us. Baseball is just part of the fabric of [my] family. Baseball is very tied into daily life for me and for all of us. I often go out with friends and friends around here who know what I do. They generally want to talk about the Phillies, and they’ll often apologize: “I’m sure you don’t want to talk about work.” And I’m like, “You know what? I’m used to it.” I have a job that people like to talk about. I’m pretty lucky.

  • Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
    by Matt Zoller Seitz on March 28, 2024 at 4:00 PM

    Every one of the recent English language kaiju epics from Legendary Pictures has walked a different path, and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” continues the tradition. This one is a direct sequel to 2021’s “Godzilla vs. Kong,” a simple movie inspired by the 1962 Toho Studios film “King Kong vs. Godzilla” that pitted the big lizard and the big ape against each other before teaming them against a robot foe. But rather than just repeat the template in "The New Empire," returning director Adam Wingard and his two co-writers offer a more fragmented and sometimes knowingly silly narrative, cross-cutting between lines of action in multiple locations that all lead to a huge showdown with a lot of creatures.  Artistically it’s the most hit-and-miss entry in the current MonsterVerse, lacking the cohesive and distinctive vibe that powered all of the others, whether it was the 2014 “Godzilla” (basically “Close Encounters of the Godzilla Kind”), “Kong: Skull Island” (a bizarro riff on Vietnam movies), “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” (the first “team-up” entry, with lots of family melodrama stirred in), or Wingard’s original, gloriously goofy Godzilla-Kong flick, which owed quite a bit to 1960s exploration sci-fi like “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and 1980s Hong Kong and American action thriller/buddy films where the two main guys have to have a fistfight before they team up against a dangerous villain.  Rebecca Hall’s anthropologist Ilene Andrews is the main character this time, tending to her adoptive daughter Jia (Kaylie Hottle), and trying to figure out the connection between mysterious energy pulses detected on the Monarch Project’s monster-measuring tech and frenzied drawings that Jia has been scrawling on school desks and scratch paper. The answer—uncovered with help from muckraker/conspiracy podcaster Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry), another character from the last movie—is a return to the “Close Encounters with Godzilla” notion, positing that what they’re all experiencing is a combination distress signal and warning about an impending catastrophe. As intimated in trailers and other promotional material, there’s a secret civilization of giant Kong-like primates imprisoned in an unexplored portion of Hollow Earth, plotting their escape and a takeover of the surface world. Their leader is a scarred and sadistic despot who enslaves his own kind in a mining operation in a hellish volcanic cavern, a set that confirms the filmmakers have seen “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” more than once.  As somebody who’s been a booster of this franchise from the beginning, it’s my sad duty to report that “Godzilla x Kong” is all over the place, barely working up a proper head of steam before cutting to something else. It makes "King of the Monsters" seem single-mindedly on-message. And it’s even more larded with redundant and wooden “make sure that everybody in the audience understands everything that’s happening at all times” exposition than the previous films. The showdowns are rousing and often brilliantly choreographed, particularly the finale, a multiple-monster main event with lots of other creatures bustling around in the margins. The live-action and motion capture performances are mostly marvelous, despite the bum dialogue and Wingard’s tendency to rush through sequences and whole relationships that might’ve been extraordinary had they been presented with patience and elegance.  Dan Stevens is a pleasant though functionally absurd addition to the cast. He plays a swashbuckling, poetry-quoting ex-boyfriend of Ilene who's famous for being the first and so far only kaiju veterinarian, and is introduced extracting an abscessed tooth from Kong’s mouth by rappelling down into it from a hovercraft. (I don’t know if it was Shakespeare or Freud who said that a man with a toothache cannot be in love, but this movie offers a corollary: a giant ape with a toothache cannot defend the surface world.) Stevens has real chemistry with Henry, whose dialogue often sounds ad-libbed even if it wasn't. There are times when they seem like they’re at risk of cracking each other up and blowing a take. But the movie fails to take advantage of their connection and build it into something truly memorable.  Kong’s relationship with a big-eyed little scamp of an ape that he meets while exploring Hollow Earth is a much bigger missed opportunity, although the bits we do see are performed by motion capture performers and the FX teams with imagination and care. The younger ape is essentially an abused child who is treacherous, selfish, and cowardly because he grew up in a cult. He suddenly now has a good parenting model courtesy of Kong, a hairy, burly single dude who lives a solitary existence, is an orphan himself, and had no parent role models (at least not that we know of), yet still treats the younger ape with patience and compassion even when it’s not earned, and makes a decent primate out of him. Adam Sandler has told a version of this tale many times. As presented here, it’s a mirror of what’s happening between Ilene and Jia—the latter reconnecting with her own roots and Ilene growing increasingly sad at the possibility that the girl might outgrow the need for her. Two adoptive parents, two different sets of challenges, but the same basic story: so much could’ve been done, but wasn't. More for the minus column: The computer generated creature skins look more cartoony than in previous entries. And the screenplay introduces its genuinely terrifying and charismatic villain too late to give him and Kong a chance to build and flesh out their antagonism, as the preceding movie did with Kong and Godzilla's relationship. It’s fascinating to watch the slow revelation of Kong’s value system and realize how starkly it contrasts with the behavior of his evil doppelganger, a swaggering, preening rotter who seems to have been played via time warp by Gary Oldman in the '90s. Kong's triumph here should have felt cathartic: a victory of decency over despotic cruelty rather than narrative box-checking.  The whole film needed more ape content, really. It's the stuff that really hits. The movie doesn't seem to recognize how powerful it is. A more smartly prioritized film might have focused on the vividly rendered and characterized apes and the humans that follow them around, perhaps to the exclusion of Godzilla, who is treated here mainly as a mayhem-producing force that the movie cuts to regularly because the film has “Godzilla” in the title.  If you love the “what the hell, let’s try it” sensibility that the Legendary Pictures monster franchise has embraced thus far, you’ll still find plenty here to enjoy. But it shouldn’t have been necessary to go looking for it.

  • The Joy of Watching the Greats Continue to Be Great Well Into Their 80s and 90s
    by Matt Zoller Seitz on March 28, 2024 at 1:40 PM

    It's such a pleasure watching the greats continue to be great over the course of a long and productive life. It's also a source of comfort, because I'm no longer a young man, and I worry about whether I'll still have a career when I hit sixty or seventy, and if so, whether people will still care about the work, and seeing those legendary elders who are still knocking it out of the park gives me hope.  Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino are not only working at 80+ years old but doing some of the most interesting and surprising work of their lives. Martin Scorsese is not only still in the national conversation but making films that are controversial for one reason or another (with and without his friend De Niro), as if it were still 1976 ("Taxi Driver") or 1988 ("The Last Temptation of Christ"), and a few years ago he convinced another of my favorite actors, Joe Pesci, to come out of retirement at 76 to play an uncharacteristically quiet and reactive supporting role in "The Irishman." (He got his third Oscar nomination for it.) I didn't care for the recent reboot of "The Exorcist" and didn't like what they did with the legacy character of Chris McNeil, poor little Regan McNeil's mother from the original 1973 film, but I loved seeing Burstyn, now 91, seizing the movie by the throat for the brief time she was onscreen. Ian McShane, beloved from TV's "Lovejoy" and "Deadwood" as well as "Sexy Beast" and the John Wick movies and other crime films, just did a star turn in "American Star" that was completely unlike the avuncular yet menacing characters he has often played in the past quarter century, holding the screen with a quiet stillness you'd expect from somebody like Clint Eastwood, who, as it turns out, is 93 and working on his latest and supposedly final film, the legal thriller "Juror No. 2." (Do you believe he'll stop directing after this? I don't, and why should he? He's also said several times over the last couple decades that he was done acting, only to act again.)  More off-the-beaten-path, one of my favorite character actors is Bill Cobbs, who became one of those "Oh, I know that guy!" actors forty years ago and is still in the game. You might remember him from "The Hudsucker Proxy," "Demolition Man," "The Sopranos," "ER" or any of the more than 100 screen credits he's racked up. He's 89 and has been averaging two major credits a year during his eighth decade, including "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." and "Block Party." I was hoping I could include M. Emmett Walsh in this piece, but, unfortunately, he died this month at the tender age of 88, after amassing more than 200 film and TV credits dating back to the late 1960s, and his final performance can be seen in a 2024 film, the Mario van Peebles western "Outlaw Posse." Denzel Washington is not yet in that age range, but he's getting there (he turns 70 in December of this year), and it's been a joy to see him continue to knock assignments out of the park and into the next time zone, in role after role, even as he's aged out of matinee idol parts. He had his first successful ongoing franchise in his sixties, "The Equalizer," overseen by Antoine Fuqua, the filmmaker of "Training Day," which got him his first Oscar as a lead actor, and while I won't vouch for any of the films as great art, they're very satisfying as red meat for the reptile brain, and they work so well because Washington is a great screen actor who can suggest multiple contradictory and overlapping thoughts and feelings without saying a word. He's going to have a brilliant autumnal career, and I wouldn't be surprised if he did some of the best work of his life when he's pushing 80 or even 90. He was one of the all-time great screen Macbeths in Joel Coen's recent "The Tragedy of Macbeth," opposite Frances McDormand, with three Oscars for lead actress, and who is 66 herself and will also, I am sure, absolutely crush it when she enters her grand old lady phase, as Helen Mirren (78) and Judi Dench (89) have done.  Carol Burnett turns 91 next month, and not only is she still working, she's sharp and energetic and still pushing herself. I used to watch her show as a kid, first with my grandmother and then with my mother, so there were three generations of my family, at the very least, who adored her. I got to interview her recently for Vulture along with Kristin Wiig, her costar in the Apple+ series "Palm Royale," about a con artist (Wiig) who tries to gain access to an exclusive country club that wouldn't ordinarily have somebody like her as a member. The conversation between them was a mutual admiration society, with Wiig paying tribute to Burnett's formative influence on sketch comedy via variety series and specials ("The Carol Burnett Show" especially) and Burnett praising Wiig's acting skills (Burnett is just as formidable in dramas and won an Emmy for the 1979 film "Friendly Fire," about the mother of a Vietnam casualty trying to prove her son was accidentally killed by US troops).  Wiig, I realized at a certain point during the talk, looked at Burnett in much the same the way I did, as this important and in many ways awesome figure, though of course she'd taken her admiration a huge step further and gone into the same line of work, in hopes of being able to become a Burnett-like comedic performer (and succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, appearing on "Saturday Night Live" and then becoming a film and TV star in her own right). Burnett was incredible, talking about her early years in Los Angeles, where she'd lived since age seven, at a time when the Hollywood sign still said "Hollywoodland." She told us that she and her friends used to ride bikes and go roller skating around the neighborhood and then go up into the hills and climb the sign. That's how much history she brings with her. I like feeling that history when I watch somebody. That solidity. That sense that you're seeing somebody who's bigger than any one performance, somebody whose life and work truly have meant something, and continue to be meaningful. I've been doing this job long enough now (30+ years as a professional) that I've gotten to meet and even interview a lot of the performers who obsessed me when I was a kid coming up in the '70s and '80s, people who were (obviously) a generation or more older than myself. I've gotten to where I find myself thinking about some of them at random, and even checking in on them via news reports, not just to make sure they're OK but to see if they have something new coming out. It's like we're old friends, or related, even the ones I haven't met. OK, let's not delude ourselves into a kind of parasocial fantasy: they're entertainers. But show business is a funny thing. And so is, let's just say it, art. It's one of the few careers where the entire point is to connect with strangers so deeply that they feel as if they know you, and feel protective of you, because in some way they feel seen by you, or represented by you, and when it works, wow is it magical and powerful. I've seen manifestations of this alchemy many times in my life, but probably the greatest, for me, happened in 1996, shortly after I'd moved to New York from Dallas. It was late at night, and I was walking to the subway from the Paramount Screening Room in Times Square, and my footpath just happened to take me past the stage door of the Circle in the Square theater, where Pacino had starred in and directed a revival of the Eugene O'Neill play Hughie.  A crowd had gathered, maybe 40 people, to catch a glimpse of Pacino exiting through the stage door. It was clear that this group was not comprised entirely of people who'd seen the play. A lot of them were under 30 and dressed in ordinary walking-around clothes, and there were guys in uniforms (a bike messenger, a hospital orderly) who I supposed had either gotten off work or joined the crowd. When Pacino emerged, they started not only shouting his name but saying lines from his most famous films: "Make him an offer he can't refuse!" "Chi Chi, get the ya yo!" "Attica, Attica!" "I'd take a flamethrower to this place!" Somebody shouted, "Yo, Carlito!" I'd heard of how certain actors became men or women "of the people" but this was the first time I'd seen the dynamic demonstrated right in front of me.  Pacino came outside to cheers, applause and whistles. A few people moved towards him to get him to sign posters and other merchandise, but what struck me most was the people who reached out to him with ordinary scraps of paper—a flyer, a receipt; one guy handed him a copy of the New York Daily News, basically whatever they could find to affix a signature to. People were sharing pens. This, I thought to myself, was what art was about, or should be about. The work meant something. The art meant something. I'm sure it still means something. Probably somebody in that crowd watched Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa in "The Irishman," one of the great seriocomic (though ultimately tragic) performances of that movie year, and thought, "Yeah! My boy's still got it."

  • Giancarlo Esposito Can’t Keep Overcrowded, Rushed Parish on the Road
    by Brian Tallerico on March 27, 2024 at 6:09 PM

    There is something instantly kinetic about seeing Giancarlo Esposito in a crime drama. He often plays people of great stillness, and yet there's motion behind his eyes. You can see him thinking and feeling. Yes, of course, this on-screen persona is related to his iconic portrayal of Gus Fring in “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul,” but there’s more to it than just that character. The truth is that Esposito has been one of our most charismatic and complex actors for over three decades now. I can still remember seeing him burst into “Do the Right Thing” in a way that made people say, “Who is that? And can I watch him in everything?” Thirty-five years later, he’s still big enough to anchor a new crime drama on AMC called “Parish,” but the show suffers from a problem that sometimes arises when such a strong personality anchors it—everything else suffers in comparison. To be fair, the supporting cast here isn’t horrible, and gets richer in the last episode in a way that’s clearly designed to set up the next season—it’s more the mediocre writing that seems to be literally fighting with Esposito. The fact that he makes this clichéd character and the show around him interesting as often as he does is just another testament to his skill set. You’ll just wish it was in service of a show that had a better idea of what to do with its star. Esposito plays Gracian “Gray” Parish, a man with a dark past who has left most of it behind to run a car service in New Orleans. His life has already started to unwind when we meet him, after the shooting death of his son, leading to problems at work and home. The business is struggling, and his daughter Makayla (Arica Himmel) is pulling away from Gray and her mother Rose (Paula Malcomson). Rose is convinced they’re going to have to sell their expensive home, and Gray can’t stomach the thought of not only leaving behind all that he’s worked for but the only place that will hold memories of his lost child. That’s why he takes a job. It will be an easy driving gig for a break-in at a lawyer’s office. What could go wrong? Of course, everything goes wrong, and Parish finds himself entangled in the business of a family of Zimbabwean gangsters led by a power player who goes by The Horse (Zackary Momoh) and his sister Shamiso (a charismatic Bonnie Mbuli). There’s drama in the Tongai family, including a power struggle with The Horse’s brother Zenzo (Ivan Mbakop), but too much of this material is written in broad, clichéd dialogue that allows the show to sink every time it pulls away from its titular character. There are more distractions. Bradley Whitford pops up to gnaw on some scenery with a vague Southern accent as Anton, a crime magnate with a connection to Gray’s dark past. Skeet Ulrich slinks around the periphery as an old friend of Gray’s who likely has an equal ledger of getting him into and out of trouble. Amanda Brugel gets a mysterious tough-talking savior role as Sister Anne, a potential lifeline for Gray when things go wrong. Given its based on a show called “The Driver” and set in a world of high criminal stakes, one would hope that “Parish” was at least thick with action, but that’s not exactly true. There are big developments at the end of episodes like shootouts that shift allegiances, but there’s surprisingly little actual high stakes tension in this show. Part of the problem is the many plot threads fighting for air from Gray’s grief to the Tongai’s human-trafficking operation to political games being played by Anton. If it sounds like a lot for six episodes, it absolutely is and there’s a rushed sense to the storytelling here that never allows the supporting cast to feel as fleshed out as its leading man. By the end, Momo, Mbuli, and Mbakop have finally made an impact, and Esposito doesn’t step wrong for the entirety of his six episodes, but Malcomson feels particularly wasted, in part because we get almost no time with the Parishs before she’s marveling at the mess her husband has gotten them into. Ulrich and Brugel try their best but feel like plot devices.  It almost feels like maybe “Parish” was a victim of the strike, truncating a season of storytelling and character development into six episodes instead of ten or twelve. And then it largely resets for future seasons, bringing in new character actors who won’t be spoiled and ending on a line about how we haven’t seen the last of Parish. The only question is if audiences will care enough to see where he drives next. Whole series screened for review. Premieres on Sunday, March 31st.  

  • Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in Two Pieces
    by Brian Tallerico on March 27, 2024 at 3:55 PM

    There’s nothing worse than watching a bio-doc about a revolutionary, unique, creative voice that reduces the life story of its subject to the basic beats, using standard techniques instead of embracing that which made this person's story worth telling in the first place. Director Morgan Neville (“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”) likely struggled with this potential trap when approaching the life of Steve Martin, a man who has defied easy categorization his entire life. From his breakthrough days on the comedy stage, when he somehow merged an old-fashioned sense of humor with a brave new way of making people laugh, to when he left that behind to become a writer, film star, novelist, playwright, and a current TV star, Martin has been tough to pin down. Neville attempts to capture Steve Martin’s ability to never be put in an easy box in Apple TV+'s “Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces” by telling the two halves of his story in completely different formats. It’s a clever move to make what is essentially two feature-length documentaries about the man, and yet it still somehow feels like some of this story remains untold. That’s just how rich Steve Martin’s career has been. The first half of “Steve!” is a pretty straightforward piece of archive-driven documentary filmmaking, using old photos and clips of Martin’s childhood and ascendance to superstardom under audio of Martin and people who knew him then. From his days working at Disneyland to his love of magic as a young man, Neville tracks the formation of Martin’s stage persona. There are some fascinating insights into Martin’s process, such as when he explains how a punchline is designed to release tension in an audience, but he sought to keep the tension going, playing with the very form of a comedy show. There’s also the sharp context of Martin’s rise that notes that he was a sort of response to the Vietnam Era in which everything, even comedy, felt like it had to be serious. With an arrow through his head, Martin was defiantly silly. What I always loved about Martin from a very young age was his willingness to be both goofy and deceptively intellectual at the same time. He could nail a great old-fashioned laugher that would be called a “dad joke” today or jump around on his happy feet, but there was a deep intelligence behind everything Martin did. You could just tell. It was like his brain, heart, and funny bone were all playing together in unison. It was conceptual as much as it was goofy. And when Martin realized that the concept had run out of steam in 1980, he walked away at the top of his game. The first half of “Steve!,” subtitled “Then,” hints at some of the darker chapters in its subject life, but this is not a standard tell-all. Martin’s father was remarkably cold and even cruel; Martin became obsessed with satisfying entire audiences, talking about being obsessed with the one empty seat in a sold-out show; a sort of pompous persona that he refined on-stage led to him being defined that way off of it—Neville has a habit of feigning to deeper waters like these before going back to the shallower ones, likely out of deference to a man who seems reluctant to open up too much about his life. Consequently, the first half of “Steve!” becomes more about a career than a person, which left me feeling a little distant from the subject at its conclusion. And that’s what makes the second half, subtitled “Now,” a masterstroke on Neville’s part. After 90 minutes of photos and clips, the second part of “Steve!” opens with Martin himself walking into his kitchen, chit-chatting and telling jokes, almost mocking the very fact that a movie is being made about him. Ending the first half in 1980, Neville employs an entirely different format for the next 40+ years of Steve Martin’s life, a more free-form conversational approach with Martin and friends like Jerry Seinfeld, Martin Short, Tina Fey, Lorne Michaels, Eric Idle, and many more. Martin is working on a cartoon book filled with anecdotes about his career, and that’s the throughline for this half, a film that’s calmer and more observational, sometimes just content to film Martin riding his bike on a nice day. It also focuses heavily on friendship and collaboration with Martin noting that he will probably retire when Short does. They’re a package deal now on stage and on “Only Murders in the Building.” There are many joys to be found in the second half of “Steve!” too—I could watch Seinfeld interview Martin about comedy for literal hours, and the process scenes of Martin & Short writing jokes are a gem. However, four decades of Martin’s career is a lot to cram into a feature length, and a lot of his work gets dismissed or ignored in a way that might frustrate some fans. After a relatively long chapter on the failure of “Pennies from Heaven,” and how Martin responded to it, I was hoping for a similar unpacking of classics like “Roxanne,” “L.A. Story,” “Bowfinger,” and maybe even Martin’s excellent novels. The truth is there’s too much brilliance here. And Neville chooses to spend a great deal of time on WASP, Martin’s 1994 play that clearly includes some of the writer’s biography within it, even staging scenes from it with Finn Wittrock. Using Martin’s work as a key to unpack his life is wise, but I would argue you could do it just as easily with so many of his other projects about outsiders seeking approval too. How does a deeply empathetic filmmaker like Morgan Neville approach the life of a man who always seemed to keep his true emotions behind a curtain? It’s heartwarming and even moving to see where Steve Martin is today, comfortable with his emotions enough to cry when reading the “Planes, Trains, & Automobiles” script, and obviously enriched by being a father late in life. Comedian, actor, writer, father, husband, friend—Steve Martin is all these things, and more. Of course, Morgan Neville had to make two completely different films to try to tell his story. Honestly, he could probably make three or four and still just scratch the surface. Premieres on Apple TV+ on March 29th.

  • David Krumholtz Wants to Reintroduce Himself to You
    by Tim Grierson on March 27, 2024 at 2:05 PM

    Over Zoom, David Krumholtz flashes a friendly, bashful smile, his demeanor several shades warmer than the character he plays in the movie he’s here to promote. Named after the depressive malcontent at its center, “Lousy Carter” is a wry, off-kilter comedy of unhappiness, with Krumholtz starring as a mediocre literature professor who teaches “The Great Gatsby” to students who couldn’t be more bored. Lousy has very little going for him, and early on in writer-director Bob Byington’s film, he receives terrible news: His doctor informs him he’ll be dead in six months. In plenty of movies, that would inspire a curmudgeon to change his ways and embrace life. That is not what happens in “Lousy Carter”: Lousy tells no one about his medical death sentence, enjoying the private joke that he’ll be outta here soon. Acting since he was a teen, Krumholtz, 45, has worked on stage, in film, and on television. You know him from “Numb3rs,” “The Santa Clause,” “The Deuce” and “10 Things I Hate About You.” He recently received excellent reviews on Broadway in Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” and he’s superb as Robert Oppenheimer’s friend and colleague Isidor Isaac Rabi in the Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer.” By comparison to some of the loftier projects he’s been part of recently, “Lousy Carter” may simply be a small, idiosyncratic indie, but it allows Krumholtz the opportunity to explore an unlikable guy shuffling through his unremarkable life. He savored the challenge. “Bob Byington is really keen on making subversive cinema that doesn’t fall into tropes and sometimes takes tropes and turns them on their head,” he tells me. “It’s a risky thing to do, because we’re so used to the formulas, that it’s jarring sometimes for an audience to see the opposite—and very difficult for a filmmaker to make the opposite work. I knew that’s what Bob was going for, so when I told him that I wanted to play the character as completely relieved, without a second of real neurosis, about his death sentence, Bob was like, ‘Yeah, that’s what I intended.’” Between “Lousy Carter” and “Oppenheimer,” Krumholtz has been in the spotlight lately, but perhaps his most noteworthy moment in recent months was a series of Twitter threads he posted in which he detailed his misadventures in Hollywood, including being high at the Disney Christmas parade. These amusing, self-deprecating, candid tales made Krumholtz beloved on social media, but eventually the actor chose to deactivate his account. “It was an impulsive moment,” he says of that decision to pull the plug. “Literally, I had tweeted five minutes prior, and then it was just like, ‘No, shut this down. Shut it down right now.’ There is no regret about shutting it down.” What prompted Krumholtz to open up on Twitter about his career—and then abruptly stop? And how much does he relate to Lousy? During our 30-minute conversation, we touched on those topics, as well as how having children gave him a reason to live, and why the loss of his friend (and “10 Things” co-star) Heath Ledger hurts even more now than it did back then. Depending on your perspective, Lousy is somebody who is depressed, defeatist or maybe just realistic about life. How much does his worldview match your own? I think there’s a lot of similarities between how Lousy sees himself and how I see myself. I live in a perpetual state of embarrassment, and I think Lousy does, too. However, I’m much more optimistic about the future, and Lousy has kind of lost hope. I think Lousy very much is in lament of his solitude. Even with friends and ex-girlfriends and his mom, he feels very alone—I don’t feel alone.  Lousy doesn’t have a family of his own, but you do. I’m curious if that helps combat loneliness. I’ve been drastically lonely in my life. I wrote a script about loneliness—about the nature of loneliness—and I think loneliness defines so much of who people are. Ultimately, when you get to the point of real depression and you feel like you are just a small organism on a spinning rock in outer space—which is actually what you are—it’s a hard realization to accept. But I’ve come to accept it, and having children really has given me meaning in my life, which I direly needed—I was lacking meaning. You’ve said in the past that fatherhood has made you a better actor. But were you wanting to start a family, in part, because you wanted to change your perspective on life in general? Well, I was very bored with myself. I spent 35 years being worried about myself, obsessed with myself, admiring myself. It cured me of my narcissism, and it cured me of my loneliness at the same time. I knew that having kids would potentially do that, and it has, in spades. Could Lousy ever change? Or is he someone who’s stuck the way that he is? Correct—so much so that he’s relieved when he finds out he is dying. You get the sense that he’s all right with it, or at least he doesn’t react like the filmic trope would suggest he does. There’s no panic, there’s no worry, there’s no lament, there’s no deep sadness. He keeps it a secret—he’s enjoying the secret, he’s getting a kick out of knowing that all these people that have bad things to say about him are going to miss him when he’s gone.  It’s sociopathic in a way—silently sociopathic—which is really fun to play. He’s a guy who feels like his best days are behind him, and he never realized his full potential and he never will. So it’s okay to go—it’s time to go. It’s such an interesting choice to have Lousy not tell people—his condition is basically something only the audience knows. There’s this conspiratorial thing going on between us and him throughout the movie.  You are sharing a secret, and so it’s very easy for the audience to access the character psychology, even though the reaction is not prototypical. In terms of playing [Lousy], it’s great—I mean, it is a prank in a way, and there is a devilishness, a precociousness, a mischievousness to that.  I became obsessed with these videos on YouTube of the great actor Oliver Reed, very drunk on talk shows. What I loved about it is, he’s extremely drunk, but he’s in control of the idea that he clearly made a conscious choice: “I’m going to be drunk on these things.” He’s an alcoholic—he can’t help being drunk—but, “I’m going to be drunk on these shows, and that’s the joke. The joke is on me, I’m not going to harm anyone—if anything, I’m harming myself.” There’s something really deliberate about that and premeditated about that and cranky about that, which works so well. He takes such joy out of putting people in the awkward position of having to deal with a drunk on live TV. And that was a little bit of an inspiration for [playing Lousy]. About 13 years ago, you dealt with a cancer diagnosis. Did that inform how you played Lousy? It crossed my mind, but only in the way that I sensed that I’d earned the right to play the character—that I had been there, to some extent. I knew that it would inform it, but I didn’t make the choice to have it inform it—I just knew it was there. I had lived through that experience, so I didn’t have to fake anything. I knew that it would just come through—that I had been in that moment myself. It was just about reliving that moment a little bit. None of us can choose when something like that happens in our lives. Looking back, do you think of your own diagnosis as something that gave you an important perspective? I absolutely do. I got very lucky—a masseuse saved my life. I went and got a massage and she did the strangest thing: At the end of the massage, she massaged the front of my neck. Why? I’ll never know. And she told me, “You have a lump on your neck.” I didn’t feel it—she tried to get me to feel it, couldn’t feel it. Two months later, routine physical, thank god, my doctor at the end of the physical said, “Hey, is there anything else you want to tell me? Because you look really healthy.” And I said, “Yeah, this masseuse told me I had a lump on my neck,” and he [found] two lumps when he went and felt for it. That’s called divine intervention—that’s called an angel on my shoulder. If anything, [being diagnosed with cancer] gave me a sense of belief that I had lost—a belief in something greater and belief that I was on a path. That freed up a lot of artistic creativity and a lot of sensibility that I have a purpose—and that the purpose is not something that I have control over, nor do I need control over. To some extent, I am this rolling ball channeling some sort of cosmic energy, and my job is to emulate humanity and do so by channeling energy. There’s a lot less deliberation in my work now since that cancer diagnosis than there was in the past. Some people, in Lousy’s position, would say, “Screw it, I’m gonna do whatever I want with these last six months.” I’m thinking about the tweet threads you did recently, which went viral, because they seemed to be inspired by a different version of “Screw it, I have these stories, and I want to tell them.” Was there something dramatic going on in your life that prompted that outpouring?  No, it was totally calculated—that was deliberate. That was me going, “You know what? I’ve shied away from recognition for too long.” I [had] created some weird mystique for myself by not speaking up and not telling my stories and not being myself in public—not to mention some experiences with actually hiring a publicist and it not being what I wanted it to be. I thought at some point, “You got to stand up and be counted.”  The urgency of that came during the pandemic when there was no work to be had. At the end of the pandemic period, about halfway through 2021, my agent dropped me, and I saw the end of my career happening and it scared the living shit out of me. I thought, “Well, I better start letting people in, being more generous with myself to people, and admitting publicly that my life is a little different and that I am recognizable and there’s no shame in that.” Sort of indulging in that and creating more of it—I felt it was necessary for me to continue to work, to be honest with you.  Plus “Oppenheimer” being such an exposing thing for me just made me think, “Well, it’s time that I help people connect the dots.” I didn’t want anybody watching my performance in “Oppenheimer” and going, “Who is that guy? I’ve never seen him before,” when they’d seen me so many times. So it was about me going, “Hey, that guy in ‘Oppenheimer’ also was this and was this and was this and was this.” The more keen fans were aware already, but so many people, I was getting a lot of, “Are you still acting?” I’d get recognized in the street, and people said, “What do you do now?” That was bothering me a lot and scaring me.  I don’t want this to end—I love acting, I love being in this business. I live and breathe the business, and I always have. I fought so hard to get to the place that I’m in and have always been conscious of how lucky I am and trying to pay back the privilege of my luck that I thought, “I’m not going out like that. I don’t want to go out without people knowing that it’s all been part of some very calculated plan that I’ve had the whole time—this isn’t an accident and I’m an artist. I’ve fashioned this, to some extent.”  Telling those stories and making myself relatable was important for now. I deactivated my Twitter account and I’m sort of feeling my way through it. I don’t want to indulge in overexposing myself—I’m not a spectacle, I’m just a person. But for a moment there, I thought it was important to go, “Hey, I’m here. Hello, I’m here. That character’s there, but I’m also here—there’s a person behind it. And if you want to know the person, I’ll tell you who the person is because the person is not entirely boring, either.”  You mentioned mystique—when you were younger, did you think, “I want the work to speak for itself”? Very much so. This is a weird comparison, but I love Led Zeppelin and I love that they didn’t do a lot of interviews when they were popular. Their fans literally came to believe that Jimmy Page was the devil—that’s how quiet they were. The music spoke for him and it was like, “Whoa, this is so out there and so wildly brilliant and so devious.” We don’t get a sense of who he is—he’s a mystery, and because he’s a mystery then his music is telling us that he’s the damned devil. And I loved that—I thought that really worked.  It’s hard to do that now in this age of social media. Studios do look at the number of followers you have. They compare and contrast—you won’t get cast if you don’t have a certain amount of followers, which sucks and is stupid, frankly. They know it’s stupid, but they don’t care because they’re thinking of how they market the film or the TV series, which is fair.  But, yeah, there was a period where I just wanted my characters to exist and not me, and that was a foolish pursuit. But it was natural—I had to get to a point where I was comfortable with myself. Like I said, I spent so many years lonely and depressed and hating myself that I just wasn’t ready to expose myself. Living in a state of perpetual embarrassment is very much still me, but was way worse in the past. I also wonder if that uncertainty about putting yourself out there on Twitter was partly that Gen-X thing of “No sell out, man! It’s about the art, not the self-promotion.” It’s punk rock, man: “Don’t sell out like they’re selling out!” So, now that I have sold out… [Laughs] I didn’t want anyone to do that for me. I’m doing it my way and it’s not selling out. It’s information that I think will help me do what people like that I do, which is act in movies and television. I felt strongly that if I didn’t do it this time around with “Oppenheimer,” that work would slow down, and ultimately the whole goal is work. Plus having kids, you got to pay for their shit—I got responsibilities and I have to make money. So, yes, selling out but not really—I’m proud of myself for that. Now that it’s happened, how do you feel about going viral on Twitter? I liked the attention too much, which is why I deactivated it. It’s weird: I’m on Instagram, I don’t post all the time, I don’t need the attention there. But something about Twitter— something about my thoughts being validated—really scared me and how craven I was for the next bit of attention. “What do I tweet now that’ll make people…?” That’s not who I want to be. I wanted to tell my stories and I was thrilled that they got the response that they did—then that was over and I didn’t know what else to tweet, and I got out of there. One of your most beloved films is “10 Things I Hate About You.” You’ve talked about your friendship with Heath Ledger and how his passing affected you. But when you think back to that time, do you ever wonder, “What kept that from happening to me?” So, I was 13, I came from a difficult childhood, without getting into detail, and I got saved somehow. I got put on Broadway, discovered off the street, and I was suddenly an actor without any impetus to be one prior. I often think, had that not happened to me, I’d be dead—no doubt about it. I’m an addict, currently sober—I would’ve been less caring about keeping myself alive. Acting is my reason to live now. It’s my kids and acting, but acting was my reason to live for a really long time, and still is. When Heath passed away, I knew why he passed away. I had decided a long time ago to never do hard drugs. Heath wasn’t suicidal—Heath had a drug problem. As I get older, it gets harder to deal with Heath’s death because I think about how he would’ve been today, that he died wildly young. It gets more tragic, in a way, that he’s not here. Drugs are low hanging fruit in this business—and alcohol. They’re easy to do, and I don’t think Heath thought, “Oh, if I do drugs, I’m going to die.” No one thinks that, but I wish I had been more vocal about my worries and disapproval of him doing those things. But you just aren’t in the moment—you don’t want to be a buzzkill or a bummer. Yeah, there are regrets I have about it, but I know for a fact that Heath tried to fix himself right before he died. He understood he had a problem that was dangerous—he came to understand that. It took a really long time, but it was too late.  It gives me pause, not because it could have happened to me—it couldn’t have happened to me—but because it happened to my friend who was a dear man who didn’t want to die, had a young daughter and wanted to live and was full of life. It’s a cautionary tale—I don’t think Heath ever wanted to be a cautionary tale. He just wanted to be a great actor and he was only just beginning. Brittany Murphy is another one. I’ve rarely ever met, to this day, someone as full of life as Brittany Murphy. She was a shining example of spirit and soul. For that to be wiped out, it can happen to anyone. You got to be careful. You mentioned that acting and your kids are your reason to live. But I imagine at least your kids love you back—the business is a lot tougher.  I don’t have to act to be their dad. There’s no fakery—there’s no pretend. I love them with all my heart and I am as vulnerable with them, for humor’s sake and for their own sense of reality, as I can be. I show them all my insecurities and my nooks and crannies, and I think they appreciate me being a well-rounded person and not trying to be something I’m not. I’m in love with my children and they’re in love with me, as it should be. That’s been a journey that is just ever-rewarding. For a lifelong depressive, children are essentially happy pills. You wake up in the morning with morning dread, you walk upstairs to get your cup of coffee and there’s your child there going, “Hey, you want to look at the piece of art I made in class yesterday?” And your depression is lifted immediately. Am I using my children for that? It’s a reciprocal relationship—I’m there for them and I give them as much as I possibly can of myself. I just believe love reigns supreme and that you can love someone to the extent in which you can heal them and teach them. My showing them love is a way of teaching them. Now that “Oppenheimer” has won Best Picture, that time with your co-stars is finally over. It was a great run, but how are you adjusting to the whirlwind being over? It’s the nature of this business. It’s like a circus life—you go from one city to the next. There’s a new clown at every corner, and some of the old clowns die or go to different circuses. You keep in touch with the people you feel close to.  The “Oppenheimer” experience was such a unique experience and will always be a unique experience. I don’t think there’s a single member of that cast that I don’t feel especially close to, because we shared such a unique experience, and that’ll never change. But life is a series of hellos and goodbyes, and it’s not goodbye forever. I’ve come to be very used to that, and it’s always wonderful to see someone after some time has passed. I’m okay with letting the time pass. But that letting go can’t always be easy.  The hardest I’ve ever had to deal with in that regard was doing a long-term job, like “Numb3rs.” Saying goodbye to those people was very difficult because they’d become family. But I’d have a [harder] time if I worked in the same office for 30 years appreciating all my coworkers—there’s something about them being gone that makes you appreciate them more.

  • Titus: The Masterpiece that the Cinematic Greatness of 1999 Obscured
    by Matt Zoller Seitz on March 26, 2024 at 9:46 PM

    1999 was one of the very best movie years, producing masterpiece after masterpiece, and even the movies that were less than that still made viewers feel as if they were practically drowning in a sea of amazing work. Brian Raftery's book Best. Movie. Year. Ever. chronicled it in detail, and there have been entire podcasts and individual podcast episodes on the same concept. Everybody has their favorites from that year, but my own short list includes the original "The Matrix," "Fight Club," "Topsy-Turvy," "The Insider," "Boys Don't Cry" and "Being John Malkovich," and one that has strangely fallen off the radar, even though there were high hopes for it as an Oscar contender that year: "Titus." Based on Shakespeare's first and bloodiest tragedy—and a play that some consider to be more trouble to adapt and more off-putting to audience than it's worth to mount—"Titus" was a great example of a filmmaker expending the artistic capital they'd accrued on a very successful commercial project to make something that was expensive but challenging. It was the feature film debut of writer and director Julie Taymor, who was then hot off the Broadway spinoff of "The Lion King," which completely upended expectations of a soulless "intellectual property" cash grab by delivering a visually imaginative musical filled with splendid costumes, puppetry, and set design.  The show made a staggering amount of money, swept the Tony awards for Disney, and arguably reinvented Broadway's identity along the way, in more or less the same way that the success of the original "Star Wars" reinvented Hollywood blockbusters. Taymor turned around and spent $18 million of 20th Century Fox's money on "Titus," which is probably the closest Hollywood has ever gotten to the sorts of gory, sexually explicit, "Who am I supposed to root for here?" pieces that made English directors like Peter Greenaway and Derek Jarman into art house objects of argument in the earlier part of the decade. A hornet's nest of intrigue, "Titus" revolves around the eponymous Roman general, who has just returned home after a victory over the Goths, and features Tamora, Queen of the Goths (Jessica Lange), her sons, and Aaron the Moor (Harry Lennix), Tamora's servant and secret lover.  You know that Taymor isn't here to make friends, as reality show contestants always say, when she drops the audience directly into a world that mixes and matches production design elements from different centuries and cultures (including Ancient Rome and fascist 20th century Italy) and expects them to just accept it all as they would in a theatrical production. The characters and their expression of their savage and self-serving values are similarly presented without comment.  The opening scene (as in the play) finds Titus deciding to sacrifice Tamora's eldest son in front of her as partial recompense for losing 21 of his own sons in the war, and Tamora wailing in grief before accepting what's inevitable. The rest of the movie is similarly merciless and practically rocklike in its impassive presentation of an alien world. It's one of those exercises in moral relativity in the vein of "The Godfather" and "Game of Thrones" that asks viewers to enter into the world rather than standing back from it and being moralistically aghast at all the unacceptable behavior. It's all probably more closely related to science fiction or fantasy than the historical epic as it's typically presented in Hollywood, despite the magnificent, appropriately insistent score by Taymor's husband and frequent collaborator Elliot Goldenthal, who had a good run in the 1990s composing and conducting film scores that were often better than whatever they were accompanying (he did "Alien 3," "Interview with the Vampire," and "Batman Forever," among other blockbusters) and then pulling back to the classical music world he knew so well. The vast and almost absurdly talent-stacked supporting cast includes James Frain as Bassianus, one of the dead emperor's sons; Laura Frasier as his fiancée Lavinia; Alan Cumming as Basianus's lascivious and devious older brother Saturnius; Colm Feore as Senator Marcus Andronicus, and Matthew Rhys and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as two of Tamora's sons. Everybody throws themselves headfirst into the cruel and inscrutable spirit of the thing, which somehow becomes more strangely moving as it goes along because we start to get used to the peculiar atmosphere and visual logic of the production and feel as if we're part of this world, for better but mostly worse. "Titus" made a paltry $22,000 during its opening weekend and was gone soon after, topping out at less than $3 million globally. It didn't destroy Taymor's career in film—she went on to direct the multiple Oscar-nominated biopic "Frida," starring Salma Hayek, the Beatles fantasia "Across the Universe" and more filmed Shakespeare—but none of her follow-ups quite had the pile-driver force of "Titus," a literal and metaphorical go-for-broke experiment that hasn't lost one iota of its ferocious singularity during the past quarter-century. The movie is not legally available streaming, only on DVD and Blu-Ray (which can be expensive depending on who you're buying from). It would be amazing if somebody took it upon themselves to do a proper new collector's disc and perhaps promote it with theatrical screenings, but it's hard to imagine anyone footing the bill for that, especially now that 20th Century Fox is in the possession of Disney, a company whose image is antithetical to everything Taymor achieved with her first and still most impressive film.Note: An earlier edition of this piece incorrectly called Titus Andronicus Shakespeare's last tragedy when it should have said first.

  • Five Years Later, Us is Jordan Peele's Defining Puzzle
    by Robert Daniels on March 26, 2024 at 3:48 PM

    In the opening shot of Jordan Peele’s “Us” is a curious invitation: A Rubik's Cube, placed on the shelf just underneath a modest movie collection, is practically a winking acknowledgment by Peele of the appetite “Get Out” stirred in critics, scholars, and audiences to solve his movies. Such a sly visual joke eventually colors every perceived clue and incongruous detail in “Us” as both a startling revelation and an ever-growing punchline. While “Get Out” established Peele as an adept screenwriter capable of effortlessly reworking major social observations into symbolic visual language, “Us” firmly established him as a puzzle master. It’s a reputation that has made his projects, whether he’s directed them or not, highly anticipated—yet has often flattened how he is perceived as a filmmaker.  Since “Get Out,” with greater and greater frequency, it has felt like Peele has needed to explain himself. But the premiere of “Us,” five years ago, marked a turning point for the director. Many wondered if Peele could come remotely close to matching the dexterity, impact, and influence of his culture shaking debut. “Us,” of course, not only received rave reviews, it set up even higher expectations for his third film “Nope.” Following that film’s unmitigated success—“Nope” became his third straight film to gross over $100 million at the domestic box office—it’s worth looking back at “Us,” not simply as the follow-up to “Get Out,” but as a standalone work that shaped the limited way we interpret Peele as an artist.  He is the shorthand for ‘Black Horror’. And with that title, he, along with those who have followed, have been boxed in by the expectations of the genre to be the emcee of our buried nightmares and our deepest fears, a shaman to explain the systemic horrors that have historically ailed us, the keeper of a code to be cracked for its importance rather than admired simply for its pure ability to thrill.      It’s why I hesitate to return to the Rubik's Cube: After all, to place further emphasis on its meaning, would make me guilty of the same fever to strike symbolic gold from what could be a mundane choice. But return to the Rubik's Cube I must: Consider how a television envelops the entire opening frame, until the camera pushes so far into its reflection that a young girl, Addy (Maddison Curry), is revealed sitting with her doll, a bunny. The year is 1986, and a commercial plays informing her and the viewer about “Hands Across America,” the misbegotten fundraiser asking people across the country to lock arms in a bid to fight hunger. Nestled around the television are VHS tapes of “The Man with Two Brains,” “The Goonies,” “Thursday Nites,” and ‘C.H.U.D.” (a sci-fi horror flick about mutated humans turned radioactive monsters living in the sewers). It’s worth noting that following the runaway success of “Get Out,” many critics and scholars used the films that influenced the director as an avenue to “explain” Peele and his arresting picture. Here, Peele is practically cutting them off at the pass, handing them a syllabus to solve the Rubik's Cube of a narrative he has tantalizingly nestled in the lower shelf.  The viewer is further stoked to search the frame in the film’s second scene: Addy and her parents are now at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. The camera pushes in again, this time not toward the image of Addy, but to Addy herself. There are two barrettes in her hair (one is pink and the other is blue). Her father (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) hands her a prize, a “Thriller” t-shirt he’s won from a carnival game, as her exhausted mother (Anna Diop) looks on. Addy is a keen, wide-eyed child. She takes in the sights of zooming roller coasters and loving first dates, passing a man holding a sign saying “Jeremiah 11:11” as she wanders toward the beach and into a funhouse. She whistles as she explores the woodland themed hall and is surprised when she hears her melody, slightly distorted, returned by an unknown source. She comes to what seems like a mirror, except only the back of her head is reflected. Her eyes in horror widen; her mouth drops agape—the film cuts to a collection of white bunnies trapped in a wall of cages.  Peele’s second film is a startling journey that, opposed to “Get Out,” isn’t readily an allegory for race. Decades after the funhouse incident, Addy (Lupita Nyong'o) is now a mother to Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex) and a wife to Gabe Wilson (Winston Duke). The family live an upper-middle class dream, vacationing at a summer home that is nice, but just a tier below the luxe domicile belonging to their affluent white friends: Josh (Tim Heidecker) and Kitty Tyler (Elisabeth Moss) and their daughters Becca (Cali Sheldon) and Lindsey (Noelle Sheldon). The Wilsons’ lives are consumed by their daughter’s track meets and Gabe’s desire to buy a boat that’ll somewhat put the family on equal footing to the Tylers. For all intents and purposes, racial differences or issues of prejudice aren’t at all visible.  The seeming racial vacantness translates to the oncoming horror as well: One night Addy and Gabe notice a family bedecked in red jumpsuits forebodingly standing at their driveway. Each moves with lightning quickness and uncommon strength; barring a few differences—the boy Pluto wears a mask to hide the scarred burn marks on the lower half of his face—they are nearly identical to the Wilsons. None of them speak, communicating through grunting noises, except for their matriarch—Red (Nyong'o), whose voice is a low, raspy rattle mirroring the symptoms of Spasmodic Dysfonia. They are the tethers to the Wilsons, emanating from an underworld: They came about because of a failed cloning experiment carried out by the American government, and were abandoned when the tests proved futile. Their connection with their doubles, however, was never severed: The underworld tethers experience the same activities as their above-world brethren without the pleasure, forced into relationships, sex, and childbirth against their will. The strained interrelations initially appear to recall the conditions of chattel slavery until you realize that everyone in the world, including the white Tyler family, has a tether.  There is a coyness to Peele’s allegory, one relying on the uncanny: We discover through varying flashbacks that Addy is a tether; she switched positions with Red in the funhouse for a normal life, leaving Red to a life of subjugation. Ever since then, Red, a kind of messiah to the tethers, has been planning an all-out revolt. This is just one form of the uncanny—the uneasy familiarity of doubles—but there are others that reside in the symbolism of rabbits and aurally, from the tune Addy whistles to the modulated speaking voices of Addy and Red.  It's in fashioning complimentary souls where Peele finds contemporary richness. “This iteration of the uncanny in ‘Us’ is an overt commentary on the ways that history overburdens possibility, allowing us to consider the ways that the film’s ‘two bodies tethered by a soul’ illuminates the racialized shadow structures that underlie agency, desire, and liberal subjectivity,” writes Amber Jamilla Musser in Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined. Post Black Lives Matter, we can interpret the theme of liberal subjectivity, fused by a connectedness, to communal mourning: The senseless murder of one Black person at the hands of police is felt by all; the gruesome videos of their passing become experiences we can do little to insulate ourselves from, inspiring the kind of righteous public demonstrations by BLM that have hit on repeat over the last decade and have shadows in the revolutionary uprising depicted in “Us.”   A similar interpretation translates to the sense of double consciousness: There is the version of the Wilsons, a well-to-do Black family, that exists among their white friends, and another that has been buried so they might pass seamlessly into another class bracket. For the Wilsons, as opposed to the vain pro-capitalist Tylers, their tethers are an actualization of their racialized hidden selves. It’s a tenuous relationship dramatized by Nyong'o’s unparalleled performance as Addy/Red, particularly in the tumultuously climactic ballet shared by the two characters. Addy wildly swings a fireplace poker while Red makes smooth, fluid moments, slashing with her pair of golden scissors. During this tussle, Peele intermixes spasmodic flashbacks to an actual ballet performed by the pair’s younger selves: One effortlessly spins in the limelight while the other clumsily crashes against walls in the dank darkness. Notably, Peele films the present-day fight between Addy and Red using wide shots, which fully accentuates not only their disparate physicality, but how separate their consciousnesses have become.   Following the film’s world premiere at SXSW, “Us” garnered significant praise with some reservations. Many praised Peele’s sophomore effort for its ambition while acknowledging its unwieldy plotting. “It's one thing for a movie to humble you by leaving you unsure about yourself and your place in the world; it's another for it to leave you wondering what, exactly, a filmmaker is trying to use his formidable verbal and visual vocabulary to say,” panned Stephanie Zacharek for TIME Magazine. “As social commentary, it's not as razor-sharp as Get Out. But it still feels like an exceptional accomplishment, mainly because Peele created a role that is a worthy showcase of Nyong'o's talent,” observed Soraya Nadia McDonald for Andscape. Meanwhile RogerEbert.com awarded the film four stars: “Jordan Peele isn’t the next Kubrick, M. Night Shyamalan, Alfred Hitchcock or Steven Spielberg. He’s his own director, with a vision that melds comedy, horror and social commentary,” wrote Monica Castillo.  The complexity of opinions on Peele’s work have fueled a curious trend: the explainer piece. You’ve seen them. Heck, I’ve written a couple. Now, so many movies are followed by the compulsory “Ending Explained” features. “Get Out’ certainly didn’t begin that craze– movie Youtube channels have been an explaining board long before it jumped into written form. It is, however, notable that Peele did struggle with the conclusion of his landmark film. The original finale witnessed Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) incarcerated for the murder of the Armitages. Similar to what happened to “Fatal Attraction” decades earlier, test audiences rejected the ending, forcing Peele to conclude with Chris departing safely from the Armitages with Rod (Lil Rel Howery). Peele’s original ending, however, didn’t fade into obscurity. He included it during the end credits of the DVD/Blu-Ray release, replete with an explainer by him.     But an explosion seemed to occur in between “Get Out” and “Us”—written explainer pieces began popping up with regularity. Once again, this isn’t to say Peele’s work birthed this trend: Television recaps have often acted as explainers, and a quick search finds that Vulture first began cracking endings back in 2017 when it revisited Denis Villeneuve’s “Enemy.” The rise of the MCU also brought Easter Egg guides and examinations of post-credit scenes. Outside of television and movies, Ezra Klein’s Explained series was premised around taking complicated political and pop culture subjects and distilling them down to digestible talking points. Suffice to say, when “Us” arrived in 2019 the landscape was set. Unlike “Get Out,” which had a few explainers, mostly Peele talking about the symbolism and major themes in interviews, a wave of these articles seemingly sprung up with “Us.”     Because of the cultural success of “Get Out,” Peele’s filmmaker always seemed ready-made for this genre of writing. After all, white people love nothing more than having race explained to them. Here was a director versed in horror allegory and symbolism, capable of delivering big, bold observations of systemic racism, extralegal policing, forced assimilation, and erased histories in the graspable visual language of cinema. All of sudden you get writing deciphering bunnies, scissors, costume clues, the twist, and even the duality of man. I’m not here to say these aren’t worthwhile lenses to examine the film, but they make me hesitate. Unforeseen consequences arise when art is made definable. The work is not only flattened, but subjects like race, exploitation, animal rights, and so forth, are reduced to solvable equations while taking away the opportunity for critical thinking on the part of the viewer. Worst of all, we have devalued the filmmaker into a mere cipher.  Peele’s third film, “Nope” is seemingly fighting against being defined: OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and his sister Em (Keke Palmer) are picking up the pieces after their father’s sudden death. The owner of Haywood's Hollywood Horses Ranch—the family can trace their lineage to the Black jockey in Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Locomotion—died from a nickel that mysteriously fell from the sky through his skull. At risk of losing the ranch, OJ and Em concoct a plan to photograph an unidentified shapeless creature that has been lurking above their farm. Peele never offers a backstory for the creature’s origins or for the many other strange occurrences (from why a monkey went on a bloody rampage during a sitcom or a TMZ paparazzo that stumbles through a climactic scene) that make up the picture.  The mania such ambiguities inspired was the only predictable element of “Nope.” Because if the explainer pieces for “Get Out” were a drip, then a wave for “Us”—they were a tsunami for Peele’s third film. Quite literally, everyone wrote an explainer. There was, of course, the symbolism of the standing shoe. Then there was the talk about UAPs. Then the conversation about Gordy the monkey. Then the “Scorpion King.” These aren’t unworthy topics. But they were all framed as tutorials for watching the film rather than as vehicles for discussing it. Part of that could be because of the changing expectations readers have for criticism: Readers want less  priming for what they’re about to see as opposed to more material to understand what they’ve just watched. Explainers are how outlets have shifted to fit that need.   It would, of course, be a mistake to render Peele as passive. In interviews he does clearly take glee pulling the proverbial rug out from under audiences. And yet, similar to the Rubik's Cube, “Nope” could be interpreted as a curious kind of troll. From the costumes, to the horse’s names, to the integration of the story of Eadweard Muybridge, the plight of Gordy, falling objects from the sky, and even more, Peele appears to be purposely overwhelming the viewer with clues, hints, and easter eggs for a postmodern barrage that, tellingly, stoked everyone to try to explain a movie about the unexplainable, about a quintessential element of existence that is nearly impossible to capture.  It’s therefore tempting to wonder if Peele, well aware of his rising reputation as a puzzlemaker following “Us,” took “Nope” as an opportunity to cause many to chase their tails, thereby allowing him to meet audience expectations while still focusing his art on his primary interest—how the sudden death of a parent brought two Black siblings closer together to have their talents recognized by the world—in a way that allows him to remain emotionally allusive. Outside of the context of his political beliefs, the director has rarely discussed how much his films derive from his personal life (for instance every work has dealt with either the loss of a parent or the unmasking of a parental figure) and even fewer have critically analyzed his pictures for their emotional heft.  It’s then worth returning back to how “Us” shifted our sense of Peele. When the film premiered, it did so with Peele holding a reputation as being a spokesperson on race. With “Us” he sidestepped and played with that assumption by offering a picture centering a Black family dealing with the aftermath of Reagan’s America while also commenting on privilege, capitalism, and social hierarchy through the film’s supporting white family. Peele flexed the power he earned with “Get Out” to push inquisitive audiences into a frenzy, becoming one of the few auteurs capable of still inspiring watercooler talk—making the Nyong'o vehicle a testing ground for the influence he would fully wield with “Nope.” In that way, much like the opening Rubik's Cube, “Us” is both an incisive standalone work and emblematic of Peele’s artistic sleight of hand—by complexly making his films a reflection of us, he remains allusive.       

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