"Ferrari" and "Napoleon"

Time to take stock of some recent biopics. 

I wasn't originally planning to write reviews for either of these films.  They're both pretty standard biopics, and deeply flawed in many ways.  However, Michael Mann hasn't directed a movie since 2015's "Blackhat," and "Ferrari" was better than I was expecting.  Ridley Scott continues to make the kind of epics that nobody makes anymore, and "Napoleon" is not one of the better ones.  However, it's ambitious enough to be interesting.  

First, "Ferrari."  Adam Driver plays Enzo Ferrari, the famous Italian race car manufacturer and enthusiast.  His Italian accent has not improved since "House of Gucci," and he's a couple of decades too young for the part, but eventually I got used to it.  Penelope Cruz as his wife Laura, however, is fabulous.  The film takes place in 1957, a year after the Ferraris' son has died, and while Enzo is developing a Formula One car and preparing for a race, the Mille Miglia, that he hopes will help change the Ferrari company's fortunes.  He also has to find a way to admit the uncomfortable truth to Laura that he has a longtime mistress, Lina (Shailene Woodley), and a young son with her, Piero (Giuseppe Festinese).  

Half of "Ferrari" is exactly what you'd expect it to be about - the race, the cars, the drivers, and all the sturm and drang of a landmark moment in sports history.  Mann does a great job of getting across how dangerous and how terrifying these races were, with cars that had no safety features to speak of, experimental vehicles, and all kinds of unforeseen hazards.  There are two major crash sequences in the film, both impressively intense and absolutely horrific.  The drivers, including Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone), Peter Collins (Jack O'Connell), and Piero Taruffi (Patrick Dempsey), have big personalities and plenty of competitive spirit.  As a racing film, "Ferrari" is perfectly satisfactory - exciting, suspenseful, and not too shabby with the historical detail.

However, I like "Ferrari" primarily for the domestic drama simultaneously playing out between Enzo and Laura.  Penelope Cruz's Laura drives so much of the action because she's not afraid to wield what power she has, and to ensure she gets what she's owed.  She doesn't actually appear much in the film, but when she does, everything else is of secondary importance.  Enzo may rail and struggle and despair over his legacy, but Laura is the one who sets out the terms of their relationship and what their path forward will be.  It's fantastic stuff, and only possible because Cruz's performance is so good.  Having very Italian characters being played by Americans with silly, exaggerated accents almost never works, but "Ferrari" gets away with it by having Cruz in the mix as the crucial lynchpin.        

Now on to "Napoleon," which has been roundly scolded by everyone who knows anything about Napoleon Bonaparte about all of the historical inaccuracies.  I know almost nothing about Napoleon Bonaparte, and moderately enjoyed the movie.  We follow the life of Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix) from the start of his career during the French Revolution, through his famous conquests and reign as Emperor, and finally to Waterloo, exile, and death.  His political and military career is shown in counterpoint with his tumultuous relationship with Josephine  de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby), his eventual wife and Empress.

Unlike "Ferrari," I enjoyed "Napoleon" mostly for its epic battle scenes and recreations of historical events.  The film really got across how good Napoleon was at conquering things, and how his power was tied to his facility in waging wars against anybody who dared to oppose him.  The scenes of battle as depicted by Ridley Scott are designed to look good, and I was very impressed with the scale of his ambitions.  I couldn't keep track of most of the secondary characters, though Rupert Everett shows up in the last act as the Duke of Wellington, but the whole point of the movie is that Napoleon was always the most important man in the room, and the only one worth paying attention to.  

So, I was a little perplexed that the depiction of Napoleon's private life was so chaotic.  Vanessa Kirby does fine with the material she's given, but doesn't seem to be playing the same character from scene to scene.  Josephine's attitude toward Napoleon swings wildly from seductive to fearful, from affectionate and happy in the marriage to depressed and desolate.  Napoleon remains obsessively in love with her throughout his life, but is unable to express this except in the most brutish terms.  Neither of them are faithful, ultimately.  Phoenix still seems to be in recovery from "Beau is Afraid" at times, and his Napoleon is often an awkward, loutish bully, desperately playacting at nobility.  Nothing else in the film suggests he's supposed to be a Trump stand-in, but I can't help but wonder.

So, this "Napoleon" is far from a great film, but I respect that Ridley Scott is trying things that a less confident director wouldn't.  I do feel like I've learned a lot about Napoleon Bonaparte - but unfortunately not much that's actually true.    

---

"Rustin" and "The Color Purple"

My two cents on more prestige pics, incoming.  

"Rustin" is one of those films that I like the idea of more than I like the film itself.  It's a biopic of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who is best known for organizing the March on Washington in 1963 where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the famous "I Have a Dream" speech.  Rustin is considered a controversial figure because he was a socialist and a gay man.  However, being active since the 1940s for a number of causes, his influence on the Civil Rights movement was enormous.  The film focuses on Rustin's relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. and specifically on the lead-up to the March on Washington.  

The film is designed for awards season, full of familiar faces playing important historical figures.  Chris Rock plays the head of NAACP.  CCH Pounder and Glynn Turman are in the mix as other organizers.  Aml Ameen delivers a very fine Martin Luther King Jr.  However, they're really just the backdrop for Colman Domingo's work as Bayard Rustin.  It's an instantly memorable performance, giving life to a character who feels incongruous to the way that the Civil Rights movement is usually portrayed onscreen.  Rustin is an out gay man who many of the rest of the Civil Rights leadership are uncomfortable with acknowledging.  But, of course, Rustin is unable to be anyone but himself.  He has to fight to be taken seriously, to get his ideas heard, and to do the work that he knows is possible.  I like the film best when it becomes a process story, and Rustin and his team are working out the logistics and PR for the March.  It gives Domingo the chance to really show off Rustin's gifts - his charisma, his persuasiveness, his unwavering commitment, and his ability to inspire.

All the right people are behind the camera.  Legendary theater great George C. Wolfe directs a script co-written by Dustin Lance Black and Justin Breece.  The Obamas' Higher Ground production company produced it for Netflix.  There's a new Lenny Kravitz song on the soundtrack.  However, in spite of this, "Rustin" doesn't feel like a big, important epic film, but rather something much smaller and scrappier - sort of epic-adjacent.  Though many famous figures pass through the frame, the scope of the film is limited to events that Bayard Rustin was directly involved in.  "Rustin," is about celebrating an overlooked man through all the work he did to make a historic moment possible.  And that's all it's interested in doing, which I appreciate.  

Now, on to the new film version of "The Color Purple," which I had a lot of trouble with.  I'd seen the 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker's novel, directed by Steven Spielberg, several times when I was younger, but at a point when I was probably too young for it.  It wasn't until seeing this version, adapted from the stage musical, that I finally worked out how all of the major characters were related to each other, and who was whose mistress or girlfriend or wife.  I also got a much better grasp on why there was controversy over the removal of a major LGBT relationship, and the negative depictions of so many of the black men in the story.     

I appreciate having a less whitewashed, more LGBT friendly, more nuanced version of "The Color Purple."  Ghanaian director Blitz Bazawule and screenwriter Marcus Gardley certainly address all the criticisms, and have their own distinct take on the material.  The performances are very good, especially Fantasia Barrino as Celie, Taraji P. Henson as Shug Avery, and Danielle Brooks as Sofia.  Barrino and Brooks are both reprising their stage roles.  However, there are some fundamental problems here from the outset.  I haven't seen the stage musical of "The Color Purple," but I can tell there were a lot of songs cut, and a lot of story beats condensed.  At 141 minutes, which is shorter than the 1985 film, this version constantly feels rushed.  It feels like it's ticking off boxes, making sure all the important lines and plot points are accounted for, instead of letting the characters fully inhabit the universe and reach those moments organically.  I have no complaints about the songs or their energetic execution, but the added layer of unreality took a lot of getting used to.  

And while there were certainly improvements to some aspects of the film, I feel they could have been better.  The lesbian relationship is made more explicit, for example, but still rendered in very Hollywood terms with a fantasy dance sequence doing most of the heavy lifting.  The portrayal of Celie's oppressive husband Mister, played by Colman Domingo, is more sympathetic and complex, but the character ends up losing a lot of his impact as the chief villain.  It's also clear that the filmmakers were doing their best to avoid evoking the Spielberg version, and ended up undercutting some vital sequences.  The finale, for instance, makes the choice to have everyone in monochromatic clothing instead of the famous purple outfits, which is totally unnecessary and sacrifices a big thematic element.     

Points for effort, but the 2024 "The Color Purple" just doesn't work as a film as well as the 1985 one did, and I expect that it didn't work as a musical as well as the theatrical version.  It's fine as a showcase for some talented performers, and the discourse around it has been valuable, but I came away from the film itself with very mixed reactions.   

---

"30 Rock" Year One

I decided I needed another sitcom in my life, since I was getting a little burned out on genre shows and whodunnits.  I settled on "30 Rock," which I had seen two or three episodes of during its original broadcast run, and remember enjoying.  However, back in 2006 I wasn't consuming much media, and I never really got into the habit of watching regularly.   I knew vaguely that it was based on Tina Fey's time as head writer of "SNL," and that she was essentially playing a version of herself, Liz Lemon.  Liz is in charge of the similar "The Girlie Show," or "TGS" and spends her time corralling her writing team, including Pete (Scott Adsit) and Frank (Judah Friedlander), keeping her cast out of trouble, including Jenna (Jane Krakowski) and Tracy (Tracy Morgan), and dealing with new NBC executive Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), her direct boss.  The rest of the time, she's trying to survive being a single New Yorker in her thirties. 

I remember liking Jack, Liz, and NBC page Kenneth (Jack McBrayer) when I first watched the show, and being a little put off by Jenna and Tracy, because they came across as selfish, self-obsessed celebrities that Liz seemed forever playing the voice of reason to.  The humor in general felt a little meaner and more cynical than what I was used to.  Now, after watching a full 21-episode season, eighteen years after these episodes aired, "30 Rock" feels positively cuddly.  Yes, Tracy and Jenna are outrageous and get themselves into all sorts of stupid situations, but they can be generous and warm, and do care about their co-workers.  Jack takes Liz under his wing and is genuinely concerned with her personal life.  Liz is also just as much of a terror as anyone else on the show, prone to letting her relationship woes run amok, and refusing to let little things go.  Everyone is absurd, everyone is out for their own interests, and everyone has to be brought to their senses regularly.  

"30 Rock" was fairly bold for its time, airing a show about working at NBC on NBC, and constantly having little meta nods about what was actually going on behind the scenes at the network.  The density of the jokes was unusual, with lots of wordplay, pop culture references, and self-referentiality.  There are "SNL" alums and other NBC talent dropping by regularly, sometimes playing themselves.  There's a running bit where Rachel Dratch keeps showing up as different minor characters, like a cat trainer and a hallucinated monster.  Tracy has to go on Conan O'Brien's late night show in one episode, and of course Conan is one of Liz's many exes.  The NBC/GE merger had recently gone through, so Jack is the "Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming." The inside baseball aspect of the show went down a lot better this time, and I suspect that it was partly due to nostalgia.  As someone who has found myself struggling to keep up with pop culture lately, it's nice to be watching a show where I get most of the references and recognize all the guest stars.  I'm dating myself, and I don't care.     

Because "30 Rock" is a network sitcom and has the resources of a major network in its prime, it can pull off some fairly ambitious episodes.  A clear highlight of the first season is the format-breaking episode "Black Tie," where Jack, Liz and Jenna attend a black tie dinner for a visiting European prince.  The prince is a grotesque pervert played by Paul Reubens.  Jack turns out to only be there to spy on his ex-wife, Bianca, played by a magnificent Isabella Rossellini.  Watching the escalating madness is a delight.  The caliber of the show's talent is consistently high, with a Nathan Lane or an Eileen Stritch showing up practically every week.  You can also spot up-and-comers in bit parts - Aubrey Plaza and Charlyne Yi both appear as NBC pages in this season.  "30 Rock" acts as a great time capsule for 2006, when network television was still a big deal, and streaming videos over the internet was still a very dicey proposition.   

  

It's nice to know that I have over a hundred more episodes of this show to watch, and from what I've read it hasn't even hit its stride yet.  

---

Hashing Out "American Fiction"

I respect "American Fiction," the film debut of writer director Cord Jefferson, more than I enjoyed watching it.  It's certainly an ambitious film, but one that bit off a little more than it could chew.  On the one hand, it's a broad satire of the publishing industry, specifically the frustrations of being an African-American writer trying to get ahead in an industry when the public only seems to want a very stereotypical, very narrow kind of African-American story.  At the same time, it's a very specific story of an African-American family going through hard times, the kind that goes against the grain of so many other portrayals of African-Americans in fiction.  The two sides of the film don't always coexist very well.

Thelonious Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), known as "Monk," is a gifted writer who has just been fired from his teaching job for being too challenging in the classroom, and can't seem to get anything new published.  After his mother (Leslie Uggams) is diagnosed with Alzheimers and his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) can no longer look after her, Monk has to move back to Boston to try and help out.  His brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown) isn't quite out of the picture, but after recently being outed as gay and having blown up his life, he's very unstable.  After seeing the success of other authors like Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) in writing exaggerated black struggle stories, Monk writes a fake memoir called "My Pafology" as a joke, under a pseudonym, and insists that his doubtful editor Arthur (John Ortiz) shop it around.  Nobody is prepared when "My Pafology" turns into a monster hit.   

One of the reasons that I'm hesitant to embrace "American Fiction" is that I put "The 40 Year Old Version," about a black playwright confronting many of these same issues, on my  list of the best films of 2020, and I think that film did a lot better with a lot less.  I absolutely enjoyed the excellent performances by Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, and Tracee Ellis Ross, but those performances are in service of a film that I was never quite on the same wavelength with.  I thought that the satire was handled well, even if it was very on the nose.  I preferred the more personal stories playing out with Monk and the various members of his family.  I even got invested in his romance with a friendly neighbor, Coraline (Erika Alexander).  

However, when it comes to making one cohesive movie, the pieces don't all fit.  The scenes with the Ellison family feel sluggish next to the scenes of Monk struggling to keep up the pretense that he's a wanted felon named Stagg R. Lee.  The white editors and marketers who are so bullish about the book come off as cartoonish next to the much more grounded characters in Monk's personal circle.  I appreciate that there's plenty of nuance, and Monk's attitudes are constantly being questioned and challenged by intelligent, well-intentioned people.  Monk gets to vent and lay out his grievances, but he also has to answer for his own hubris and his own short-sightedness.  There are no easy answers and no elegant way to resolve any of the issues being raised.  

And I guess that's why the film chooses the out-of-nowhere, metatextual, fourth-wall breaking ending that it does (which oddly gives it something in common with recent Netflix animated film "Orion and the Dark.")  It doesn't feel like a cop out, but more like a very imperfect compromise ending, which left me dissatisfied.  The more emotional, personal storyline didn't feel resolved, and the satire felt like it had been undercut.  I don't know if picking one or the other would have helped, but the best thing I can say about "American Fiction" is that it's very, very close to being a much better film.  Its actually kind of infuriating how close, because Cord Jefferson has some great insights and great instincts on display.

I don't know if "American Fiction" deserved a Best Picture nomination, but of all the films about the African American experience that came out in 2023, this is one of the more original ones.  Like "Barbie," which I hold in roughly equal esteem, "American Fiction" strikes me as a very honest, earnest attempt to grapple with big issues through a different lens.  It may not have totally succeeded, but it certainly has plenty to say.  I hope the right people are paying attention.

---

"The Zone of Interest" Examines Evil

If you've heard anything about Jonathan Glazer's "The Zone of Interest," it's probably that the film helps to illustrate the famous Hannah Arendt passage about "the banality of evil" she observed in the Nazis.  This is a very good place to start, but I feel that reducing the film to such a simple summation is doing it a disservice.  There's a lot more going on here, and the more I read up on the making of the film and the history of the events depicted, the more fascinating it became.  

Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel) serves as the Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943.  He lives just on the other side of the camp's walls, in a lovely house with his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their five children.  We watch the Höss family live a seemingly idyllic life, but being in such close proximity to the horrors of the concentration camp inevitably affects all of them.  The camera never goes into the camp itself, but we constantly see the disturbing evidence of its activities on the edges of the frame.  More than that, we hear what's going on there with increasing frequency.   

Initially it seems like the film is making a case for how ordinary people could have ignored or excused the horrors of the Holocaust by showing us the Höss family in happy domesticity right next to Auschwitz.  The contrast between the scenes of frolicking children and the inhumanity happening just offscreen is certainly effective.  However, Rudolph Höss is far from an ordinary German citizen and we're shown many times that his wife is completely aware of what's going on.  There's a shocking casualness with which Höss entertains Nazi colleagues in his garden, and discusses building crematoriums in his parlor.  Hedwig's mother (Imogen Kogge) comes to visit, and Hedwig gives her a tour of the garden, barely even acknowledging the looming camp buildings on the other side of the wall.  Later, it's made clear that Hedwig loves her life as one of the privileged in Auschwitz, and is proud of the home she's created.  The Hösses aren't just ignoring the atrocities, but actively participating in them and making great efforts to compartmentalize them.  However, this way of life has its limits, and unintended consequences.

Jonathan Glazer's filmmaking feels like it's getting more experimental over time.  Here, his approach is very formalist, using long, lingering shots of carefully recreated environments and the characters carrying out their everyday lives.  However, the sound design works against the sense of normalcy, offering a discordant Mica Levi score and disturbing aural interjections that are harder and harder to ignore.   There are also the occasional narrative breaks.  There are a few scenes of a young Polish girl (Julia Polaczek) who sneaks out at night to leave food for the Jewish laborers.  These are shot with thermal cameras, creating sinister, seemingly inverted black and white images.  An even more severe narrative break occurs in the final act that I will not spoil, except to admire Glazer's use of truly unique Holocaust imagery.  The most striking and effective cinematic inventions, however, may be the scene transitions.  Occasionally scenes will fade to black or to screens of a specific color, while the sounds of the concentration camp come to a crescendo.  These serve as reminders of the constant, inescapable pain surrounding the Hösses, no matter what else is going on in their lives.        

There's so much careful, deliberate work that went into every part of the film, from the performances to the art direction to the sound design.  I appreciate that the slow pacing really let me examine the frames and consider the director's choices.  Everything the camera focuses on is beautiful and pristine, reflecting the warped view of the Hösses and their friends.  I've never seen a more pleasant depiction of the Nazis outside of a Leni Riefenstahl film.   Friedel and Hüller got me invested in Rudolph Höss's woes over his career prospects on a personal level, and then, of course, reminded me what the consequences of his success meant for every non-Nazi in Europe, in the most chilling way possible. 

More than any other film I've seen from 2023, there's a weight to "The Zone of Interest" that is unarguable.  The subject matter is so dark, and handled with such deftness and fearlessness, it utterly defies any conventional categorization.  I have no choice but to declare this a masterpiece, and one of the very best films I've ever seen. 

---

My Favorite Ida Lupino Film

I really wish I could write this entry about one of Ida Lupino's film noirs.  They're what she was best known for, along with several socially conscious dramas about taboo subjects that she directed through her company, The Filmakers Inc.  Lupino had a remarkable career behind the camera, and racked up a lot of superlatives and firsts, simply because she was a rare independent female writer/director in the classic era - the only woman to direct a film noir in the Hollywood studio system after starring in several.   A lot of her rare clout came from having established herself as an actress first - and honestly, I like her better as an actress than a director, with memorable performances in "They Drive By Night," "Moontide," and many more.  However, once Lupino started directing, it became her passion.  

I should probably be writing this entry about "The Bigamist" or "The Hitch-hiker," Lupino's most well-known and widely praised films.  Unfortunately, she also directed a Hayley Mills comedy at the end of her career, one that I absolutely adored as a small child.  It would not be honest of me to write about any other picture than Lupino's last theatrical feature, "The Trouble With Angels."  It is completely unlike her other films - gentle and sweet without a single murder or felony.  Lupino took the job in the 60s, when she had transitioned to directing "blood and guts" television westerns and thrillers.  It's much easier to think of "The Trouble With Angels" as a Hayley Mills film than an Ida Lupino film, because it's exactly the kind of family picture Mills was known for making in that era.  For years I thought that this was one of the Hayley Mills Disney comedies, because the tone is similar to "The Parent Trap" and "That Darn Cat!"

Taking place in a Catholic boarding school, "The Trouble With Angels" is also a nun movie, a troublemaking kids movie, and a coming of age movie.  Told from the perspective of two mischievous adolescent girls and the ever-patient Mother Superior who keeps them in line, we learn all the ins and outs of life at the fictional St. Francis Academy.  The cast is almost entirely female.  And despite all the nuns in their habits, and the girls in their gray school uniforms, I think of the film as a very colorful affair - swimming pools, art classes, Christmas decorations, marching band outfits, and a brief episode with Gypsy Rose Lee as a wiggy dance instructor in bright purple.  As a kid, of course Hayley Mills as Mary Clancy, with her "scathingly brilliant" prank ideas was the coolest girl ever.  As an adult, however, I have far more appreciation for Rosalind Russell's stern, but deeply loving Mother Superior.  A big part of the film is Mary learning to view her as a role model rather than an antagonist authority figure.           

The film was based on a best-selling memoir, and the movie uses a very episodic structure, covering three years in the girls' lives, from arriving at St. Francis as fourteen year-olds to graduation day.  The transitions between one event and the next are often unclear, and there are a lot of time jumps to skip the girls' vacations and trips, so time always feels very fluid.  You don't notice that Mary and Rachel are growing up until suddenly they're on the brink of adulthood.  Likewise, I always loved how Blanche Hanalis's script slowly introduces more mature elements into the film, bit by bit, from the visit to the elderly home to the passing of one of the nuns, until Mary Clancy reaches the point where she's ready to make a very grown-up decision.  It's obvious why Rosalind Russell took the part of Mother Superior, as she's allowed to transform from a cartoon villain to a shining example of humanity by the end of the film.  And she gets to have an awful lot of fun in the process - getting pranked, outfoxing her charges, bantering with her fellow nuns, and forever soldiering on in the face of crass modernity and youthful chaos.  It's one of her best roles.     

Why did Ida Lupino direct "The Trouble With Angels"?  Maybe she needed a break from her stories of violent men and desperate women.  Maybe it was because she had a teenage daughter at the time and wanted to make something that she could watch.  Her third marriage hit the rocks roughly when the film was released, and maybe she just needed the distraction.  For whatever reason, Lupino directed almost nothing after "Angels," which was a hit.  Instead, she spent the rest of the '60s and '70s working as a character actress.  Her directing career was brief, but highly influential and her work remains a touchstone to this day.

What I've Seen - Ida Lupino

Never Fear (1949)

Outrage (1950)

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

The Bigamist (1953)

The Trouble with Angels (1966)

---

"Dream Scenario" is Not Ideal

I think I expected too much from "Dream Scenario," the recent existential comedy from Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli and A24.  It stars Nicolas Cage as Paul Matthews, a rather ordinary, somewhat dull biology professor.  He's married to a woman named Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and has two young daughters.  One day, out of the blue, Paul discovers that he's been randomly appearing in other people's dreams, and soon becomes a celebrity.

"Dream Scenario" chronicles what happens to average, ordinary people when they go viral.  We watch as Paul and his family first enjoy the newfound attention and take advantage of it.  However, Paul's expectations of fame are unreasonable, and he quickly hits the limits of his influence.  And, of course, he goes too far trying to live up to other people's perceptions of him, and experiences the equivalent of being canceled.  I was frustrated with Paul throughout, because he makes such basic mistakes interacting with people, and is often such a blunt caricature of a narcissistic intellectual.  However, it's the fame and resulting entitlement that make Paul so insufferable, and his mistakes are the same ones we've seen play out online over and over again.

The dreams themselves are strange and surreal, and Paul has no control over his inexplicable connection to them.  This was the part of the film that I felt the most unsatisfied with, because "Dream Scenario" is thematically so much like the work of Michael Gondry, Charlie Kaufman, and Spike Jones in the early 2000s, but lacks the same fluency with dream imagery and experimental film language.  There are some interesting visuals, but these are very limited and not as absurd or inventive as I was hoping for.  I don't think I'm on the same wavelength as the filmmakers when it comes to the film's humor in general.  The satire is spot-on, especially when it comes to Paul's encounters with a marketing company led by a passive-aggressive, buzzword-loving exec played by Michael Cera.  Otherwise, there's a lot of cringe and a lot of awkwardness, which I found hard to sit through.  I've seen this described as a comedic horror film in a few places, which I can see, but if the horror was intentional it didn't really come across.  Ari Aster, who did this sort of thing much better in "Beau is Afraid," is listed as an executive producer.  

Cage delivers a good performance, as he dependably does, by turns highlighting Paul's banality and his ineptitude.  The filmmakers get a lot of mileage out of sticking his dumpy professor figure into incongruous surroundings.  However, Cage is so good at playing someone so boring that I'd had enough of him well before the film was done.  Even watching him getting shunned and bashed on by the fickle universe felt tiresome after five minutes because his reactions were so obvious.  I'm not sure if going full, over-the-top Nicolas Cage would have helped, but it would have made "Dream Scenario" more engaging.  Similarly, while I like the themes and ideas that the movie explores, it all feels very obvious and surface level.  It was so disheartening to find Carrie Coon in a wife role that barely gives her anything to do.  The cast is full of interesting actors like Tim Meadows, Dylan Baker, and even Amber Midthunder showing up in a bit part, but the material just doesn't live up to their talents.

"Dream Scenario" is the kind of weird, ungainly, high concept film I usually enjoy, but the execution here fell flat.  It's a shame, because we don't see these films come around too often anymore, and similar A24 efforts have bombed regularly enough that they may give up on this kind of filmmaking entirely.  It's nice to know that Nicolas Cage is still capable of screen schlubbery when necessary, but we're very far from the days of "Adaptation," and Kristoffer Borgli has a ways to go as a filmmaker.  He's on the right track, but here's hoping his next film is more ambitious and feels less like a minor retread of other, better films.  

---