"Wuthering Heights" and "The Bride!"

Emerald Fennell made a new version of "Wuthering Heights," and Maggie Gyllenhaal did a new take on "The Bride of Frankenstein" called "The Bride!" and I need to talk about these two together.  Both take the original stories and rework them into something different, using anachronistic elements, a lot of camp, and a lot of emphasis on style over substance.  Both function as star vehicles for their leading ladies - Margot Robbie and Jessie Buckley respectively.  I think one movie mostly works and one mostly doesn't, but both are so bold and display so much ambition that I have to offer my sincerest appreciation to everyone involved for getting the 2026 "Wuthering Heights" and "The Bride!" to the big screen in their current forms.  If nothing else, these movies are big, uninhibited, and more than a little bit bonkers.  And I love that.  

"Wuthering Heights" starts out mostly following the plot of the Emily Bronte novel, with the impoverished but headstrong Catherine Earnshaw (Margot Robbie) growing up with her foundling adopted brother Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) under the questionable care or Cathy's dissolute father (Martin Clunes).  To improve her family's fortunes Cathy marries a rich neighbor, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), though she really loves Heathcliff.  He disappears and returns many years later, unexpectedly rich, and Cathy finds her feelings for him have only increased.  And then the movie ditches Bronte and never looks back.  Cathy and Heathcliff's love affair is the centerpiece of the film, full of torrid imagery and scandalous behavior, but little actual sex.  Some of their encounters feel anticipatory of magazine photo spreads, with over-the-top costuming, dramatic color palettes, and increasingly campy, horny, and downright bizarre expressions of desire.  

And this all would have probably gone over a lot better if the movie wasn't called "Wuthering Heights," (the quotation marks are not optional) and the characters weren't called Cathy and Heathcliff.  As an adaptation, frankly the movie isn't even trying.  It tones down the notoriously cruel and damaged characters to the point of toothlessness.  It tacks on a hurried and compromised new ending that kneecaps any sense of the larger themes of the original novel.  If you have no familiarity with the original "Wuthering Heights," the new adaptation comes across as a messy, but fairly harmless bodice-ripper pastiche with a nice Charlie XCX score, inventive production design, and some amusingly trashy plot twists.  Robbie and Elordi do have some chemistry with each other, and understand the assignment - playing at a heightened, unhinged version of romance that doesn't need to make any kind of sense.  It would have probably been more entertaining if Fennell had fully embraced the darker, more sexually deviant elements that kept being hinted at, but alas this isn't "Saltburn," and nobody gets to be truly nasty in this universe.

On to "The Bride!" which is definitely guilty of trying to do too much.  Set in 1930s Chicago, Jessie Buckley plays a dual role as gun moll named Ida, and the spirit of Mary Shelley who possesses Ida one evening, full of rage and unfulfilled creative need.  This leads to Ida's tragic death and subsequent resurrection by Dr. Cornelia Euphronius (Annette Bening), who is working at the behest of a curious newcomer to the city named "Frank" (Christian Bale).  And I suppose it's not really a spoiler that "Frank" turns out to be the monster created by Dr. Frankenstein over a century ago, which means that both the monster and his creator, Mary Shelley, are characters in this movie.  The resurrected Ida, who I will now refer to as The Bride, goes on a journey of discovery exploring her identity, monstrosity, and capability for love and violence.  

"The Bride!" strikes out in a totally original direction from its very first frames, so we don't have to worry much about the source material here.  However, it's a very chaotic film that combines horror, gangster, camp, romance, and even musical elements with a big dose of metatextual commentary.  Trying to follow the "Bonnie and Clyde" plot feels like an exercise in futility, especially when a pair of detectives played by Peter Skarsgaard and Penelope Cruz show up to be boring.  However, when the movie is following Frank and The Bride, it's very watchable.  The performances are good - very good, even.  It's worth seeing the movie just to watch Jessie Buckley play The Bride with so much exuberant freakishness.  I've seen mixed reactions to the inclusion of Mary Shelley, who keeps breaking into the narrative with her rambling interjections, but I thought she was great, especially after I turned on the closed captioning so I could better parse what she was saying.      

However, the movie is simply too scattered and underdeveloped to leave much impact.  "Poor Things" was a much more subversive, more coherent take on a feminist "Frankenstein" narrative.  By comparison, "The Bride!" feels far too slick and surface level.  It's also often preoccupied with its references to Herman Melville, Mel Brooks, and 1930s movies, which are all jumbled up in increasingly obscure configurations.  I don't feel like "The Bride!" wasted my time, but I don't feel I got much out of it either, beyond a few good scenes in isolation and the most WTF needle drop of the year.  It's one of those movies that is so singular and strange that I'm happy it exists to be puzzled over, like "Megalopolis," even though I didn't vibe with it.   I also find it encouraging that Maggie Gyllenhaal got to make this at a major studio, which means that riskier films, made on this scale, are still occasionally possible.  

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"The Bear," Year Five

I was under the mistaken impression that the fourth season was the final season of "The Bear."  So imagine my surprise when eight new episodes were dropped a few weeks ago, plus an extra episode titled "Gary" that is about Richie and Michael taking a fateful day trip to Gary, Indiana.  It was probably meant to be a flashback at some point in this season, but it doesn't really fit into the flow of this batch of episodes anywhere, so I'm glad that they released it separately.  

 

Anyway, the fifth and final season of "The Bear" is required viewing if you enjoyed any of the previous parts of this show.  If you lost interest during the increasingly meandering and indulgent (but still very good) third and fourth seasons, it's time to get back in the kitchen.  Season five wraps up the whole series and pays off all the various character arcs, resolves some longstanding problems, and answers most of the big questions too.  The pacing issues are largely gone, with the show's creators taking a page from "The Pitt," and having seven of the eight episodes take place during one tense, nail-biting, stormy night at the The Bear where everything goes wrong, but the staff still has to pull off a miracle and keep the restaurant running through a full meal service.  The last episode serves as a coda that surveys the aftermath and lets everyone say goodbye.

What's great about this last season is that it shows us the characters at their best and working as a team at last.  After so many seasons of everyone being at odds, fighting their own personal demons, and only making progress in fits and starts, this final run of episodes lets them all succeed together.  There are still plenty of clashes and setbacks, and the writers engineer crisis upon crisis in the final push, but the characters get to rise to the occasion, showing all the ways that they've grown.  For those viewers who like "The Bear" because it lets them watch professionals work at the top of their game, this will be catnip.  I especially like the way that all these different, interlocking subplots develop involving the crew in the kitchen, the staff in the front of the house, and even Oliver Platt's Uncle Cicero, who gets to trudge around Chicago with a misfit crew on his own mission.    

I love that everything in this season feels like it's been taken back to basics.  There are still an array of impressive guest stars, but the show doesn't draw much attention to them.  The only major new character is the Computer's niece Cheese (Elsie Fisher), who tags along with Cicero's crew for the evening.  Some episodes run significantly longer than others, but not in a way that feels excessive or indulgent.  One of the longest episodes, "Caramel," is also the most tense and nerve-wracking, where we go through the process of creating every single course of the final dinner service, almost in real time.  The running time is close to a full hour, but it's an hour that flies by.  The humor worked for me throughout - even the Faks, who are deployed exactly as much as they need to be.  Also, the show backing off from being so singularly focused on Carmy helps it immensely.  You could absolutely make another season or two of "The Bear" with Sydney or Richie taking over at this point.  I don't really want that though - I feel like the show is already pushing its luck, and it would be a shame to undercut the finale.

Frankly, I'm a sucker for a happy ending, and that's exactly what "The Bear" gives us here.  Nearly every major character gets a win, even if it's coming to the decision that they need to throw in the towel. Best of all, the wins feel earned, never coming too easy and never feeling too telegraphed.  Sure, some loose ends don't get tied up, and I know there will be complaints about the resolution of Carmy's character arc, but I came away from "The Bear" thoroughly satisfied with the last course and inclined to leave a big tip.  

Check please. 

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"Send Help" is a Scream

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is an overacheiving corporate worker who has been promised a VP position at her company.  Unfortunately the new boss, an insufferable youngster named Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien), won't give her what she's due.  However, the tables are turned during an overseas work trip, when the two are stranded on an uninhabited tropical island together, after their flight crashes.  

It's been far too long since we had an original Sam Raimi film, and this one is a lot of fun.  It's got action, comedy, bloody gore, and pig snot being flung on the camera lens.  I love that it gives Rachel McAdams a really juicy leading role.  Linda Liddle is great at her job, but she's got terrible people skills and some hygiene issues that signal that she's not very self-aware, and probably deluded about her career prospects.  McAdams isn't afraid to get gross or come off as a weirdo.  She's stellar at juggling the movie's variety of different tones, from straight drama to wildly over-the-top genre nastiness.  Dylan O'Brien is also very good at being obnoxious and awful, but also just charismatic enough that he's not entirely unsympathetic.  And that's important, given where the movie goes.  

You could classify "Send Help" as part of the recent spate of media about the class-divide, similar to "Triangle of Sadness" and "The White Lotus."  Linda turns out to be a "Survivor" enthusiast who thrives in the wild, while Bradley is useless.  However, Raimi has little interest in social satire, and puts all his efforts into thrills and mayhem.  Linda and Bradley might represent the forces of the privileged and the exploited, but it's their decisions as individuals that make the movie so compelling to watch.  It's not clear cut who you're supposed to be rooting for, all the way up to the end, and the movie gleefully keeps subverting common genre conventions and keeps the audience guessing.  What kind of movie are we even watching?  Is this a revenge thriller?  Is this a "Misery" style psycho caretaker scenario?  Is this some kind of twisted romance?  Maybe a little of everything?

One thing that I've noticed about modern comedies is that there aren't many of them that have a good grasp of comedic film language anymore.  Sam Raimi has always been fantastic at it.  There's a montage sequence involving Bradley getting dehydrated that's just a long string of dissolves of Dylan O'Brien head shots, floating over the screen one after the other.  It stood out because it had been so long since I'd seen any other action comedy attempt something similar - with the exception of last year's "Naked Gun" reboot. I hope to see more comedies that follow suit.   Raimi also manages the shifting tone extremely well.  Here, he balances cartoonish gags and heightened imagery with pretty grounded characters.  Sure, they're broadly drawn and are prone to unhinged behavior, but they exist in a pretty believable emotional reality for most of the film, so you get more invested in their clashes.   

My only major criticism of "Send Help" is of the ending, which I found too abrupt.  I liked the ultimate outcome, just not how we got there.  Maybe I was looking for more closure and maybe I was hoping for more carnage, but it feels like Raimi could have gotten more out of the material.  Then again, "Send Help" already runs 113 minutes, and hits every element you want out of a Raimi film, so it feels greedy to want more.  I hope the film's success means that we can get Rachel McAdams in more starring roles, and that it won't be over a decade before they let Sam Raimi make something similar again.  There hasn't been nearly enough screen splatter in circulation lately.

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"Paradise," Year Two

The second season of "Paradise" is different from the first.  It expands the show's universe, introduces many new characters, and alters the fundamental format of the series in some important ways.  It's also much easier to now categorize "Paradise" as a post-apocalyptic melodrama similar to "Station Eleven" or "The Last of Us," except "Paradise" is more hopeful about humanity than either of those shows, and avoids the bleakest material.  I never believed for a moment that our main character, Xavier Collins, was ever in any real danger as he searched the ruins of America in search of his missing wife.  

However, "Paradise" is still capable of some pretty strong dramatic hours of television, presenting several compelling portraits of different characters in the show's universe.  The season opener is about a tour guide at Graceland named Annie (Shailene Woodley), and her experience of the apocalypse and its aftermath.  Another is about a mailman, Gary Jones (Cameron Britton), and his survival story.  While much of the season is spent with Xavier, "Paradise" also keeps an eye on what's going on with the community he left behind in Colorado.  Agent Driscoll from last season gets a spotlight episode as the character dynamics of the rest of the regular cast go through some shakeups.

The eight-episode season seems a little too short, considering how much incident is packed into some of the storylines, but I thought that the creators did a decent job regardless.  While the plot twists often feel a little unlikely, the execution is always very good.  The deaths feel meaningful, big decisions carry weight, and the character arcs are satisfying, even if the logic of certain developments isn't quite there.  I get a sense that some elements are being set up for a potential third season that doesn't exist yet and may never exist, which is a little infuriating.  However, "Paradise" also manages to pull off some really good twists and subversions in a way that only happens when you have seasoned television writers who understand how to write good melodrama.  And that's rarer than you'd think when it comes to big, expensive genre shows these days.

The shape and the strengths of the series have become clearer.  Nearly all the best episodes of "Paradise" to date have been the little individual character studies, episodes that break away from the main stories and dig into people's pasts.  Sure, the big apocalypse flashback from the first season is still the high point of the show to date, but where "Paradise" has been consistently excellent is in how it explores the lives of specific individuals.  So many of the people who cross paths with Xavier this year are complete strangers to him, but their stories are just as compelling and eventful.  The way that the show gives these smaller histories the narrative space to play out in meaningful ways is the big thing that distinguishes "Paradise" from most other post-apocalyptic shows.

There's still plenty of genre material too - the finale features several impressive large scale action set pieces that feel appropriately epic.  Getting to that point is pretty rocky this year, though.  The Colorado storyline is the weaker part of this season, reorienting to focus on Sinatra, Agent Driscoll, and Sarah Shahi's therapist character,  Dr. Torabi, who find themselves in the middle of a power struggle as outside threats emerge.  A couple of additional episodes really could have helped here, if only to keep much of the talented cast from feeling underutilized.  As for Xavier's storyline, I won't spoil whether or not he finds his wife, but I imagine that this also would have played out better over a longer stretch of episodes.   

Still, I appreciate that the season wraps up pretty conclusively and manages to find a natural end point, in case this turns out to be the last season.  The alternative would be "The Last of Us" approach, where the material for one season got awkwardly split up over two, with a very long gap in between.  This season's ending might be rushed, but it's serviceable.  Of course, the door is left open for more, and if the show does come back it's very likely going to be a very different show again.  I think I'd be okay with that.  

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"The Agency," Year Two

Spoilers for the first season ahead.

I complained last year that Paramount's "The Agency" was a slow burn spy series that was burning too slowly for me, and needed to pick up the pace.  Well, the second season has definitely picked up the pace.  The newest batch of ten hour-long episodes positively flew by, and I'm hoping we get a lot more to come.  Everything that the first season of "The Agency" set up pays off in the second, as the scope of the show expands.  

So, when last we left CIA operative Martian, he'd become a double agent, while Danny was just getting settled in Iran.  Martian is still working various angles to rescue Samia, getting himself more entangled with the Brits.  Meanwhile, Danny attempts to recruit a new asset, Hassan Zamani (Keanush Tafreshi).  We also follow another case officer, Owen Lublin (John Magaro), trying to track down a mercenary leader code named Viking (Clayne Crawford), based in the Central African Republic.  Meanwhile, the situation is heating up for Martian at London Station, with both Naomi and Henry Ogletree suspicious of his actions.  This year, the focus shifts so that "The Agency" makes much more use of its ensemble, and more characters are carrying storylines individually.  We still get plenty of Martian and Samia, but I found many of the other stories and relationships just as compelling, and it was great to see actors like Jeffrey Wright and Richard Gere, as the London Station Chief, Bosko, really get to sink their teeth into some of this juicy material.    

As much as I like Michael Fassbender in spy mode, and think he's fantastic in this series, "The Agency" works better when it's showing us more POVs and not just relying on Martian as a focal point.  Samia spends the bulk of the season trapped in the custody of ne'er-do-wells in Khartoum, and the isolation from the rest of the characters allows Jodie Turner-Smith's performance to have much more interiority and resonance.  It's the same with Saura Lightfoot-Leon as Danny, who is often left to navigate complicated situations on her own as her mission progresses.  A lot of the minor characters who were only fleeting presences in the first season are a lot more well-defined now, like Blair (Ambreen Razia), Simon (Bilal Hasna), and Craig (Raza Jeffrey).  Katherine Waterston's Naomi is still playing second fiddle, but you can tell that she's being set up for bigger things down the line.  Even Poppy, who came off as a tiresome distraction in the first season, is a lot more nuanced and sympathetic in the second.

Another major improvement is that the characters in the field this time are a lot easier to identify with than the passel of similar-looking agents and operatives that were involved in the Coyote mission in the first season.  Dangerous situations feel much more visceral and impactful when they're happening to Danny or Owen, who we get to know before they're sent in harm's way.  As impatient as I was with the first season, I'm grateful that "The Agency" took the trouble to lay out all that groundwork, because it's so invaluable in the second.  Fans of spy media will probably see all the twists and turns coming long before they occur, but the high quality of the production and the accomplished cast really make a difference this time out.  "The Agency" isn't an action show primarily, but when the action scenes do come around, they're terrifically violent and unnerving.

Most of the comparable spy shows running now are much broader genre programs, some leaning toward action-adventure or comedy.  "The Agency" certainly takes the usual liberties to be more entertaining, but the level of the writing and intrigue help to distinguish this as probably the best straightforward espionage thriller out there right now, along with "Slow Horses."  Plenty won't have the patience for it, but those who stick it out will be well rewarded.  The French series "Le Bureau," which "The Agency" was based on, ran for five seasons.  I hope we're lucky enough that "The Agency" will follow suit.

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"Margo's Got Money Troubles" and More

"Margo's Got Money Troubles," based on the book by Rufi Thorpe, is an admirable attempt to try and navigate some of the murky attitudes around sex work, drug addiction, and non-traditional family structures.  It's also a prime opportunity for some talented older actors to play some colorful, interesting characters that we haven't seen them play before.  The adaptation is spearheaded by David E. Kelley, who really outdid himself casting this one.

Margo (Elle Fanning) is a 20-year old with a bright head on her shoulders, who gets involved with her literature professor Mark (Michael Angarano), which results in a cutie pie baby boy named Bodhi, and Margo dropping out of school to support him.   Her mother Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer), a former Hooter's waitress, is wooing the local pastor Kenny (Greg Kinnear), and can only offer limited help.  Her father Jinx (Nick Offerman), a former wrestler, eventually shows up fresh from rehab and in need of a place to stay.  Margo and her roommate Susie (Thaddea Graham) let him move in, where he becomes Bodhi's regular babysitter.  Unfortunately, Margo finds that the only way she can reliably make money is with an OnlyFans account, where she posts risque stories and photos under the persona of the Hungry Ghost, a sexy space alien. 

"Margo's Got Money Troubles" is absolutely bursting with talented actors.  Marcia Gay Harden and Nicole Kidman show up later in the series in roles that I will not spoil.  In addition, familiar faces like Kerri Kenney, Paul McCrane, and Laura San Giacomo keep showing up in bit parts.  And it's clear why.  "Margo's Got Money Troubles" is largely a family dramedy full of complicated, entertaining characters struggling to connect with each other.  It's offbeat, but heartwarming and an easy watch.  Nick Offerman and Michelle Pfeiffer strike me as the clear standouts, two people who had a wild youth together and now have to deal with the consequences as best they can.  Offerman as a burly, hard-living ex-wrestler who effortlessly slides into the role of doting grandfather, is a joy to watch.  Pfeiffer as the more reluctant, status-obsessed grandmother trying to maintain the fiction of a wholesome family life, takes longer to warm up to, but I found her deeply relatable in the end.

And of course there's Elle Fanning, taking on one of her most challenging roles yet as an overwhelmed young mother whose life gets complicated very quickly.  The show's creators make it clear that motherhood is tough, spending a good amount of screen time on the hell of newborn care.  Most of the nudity in the show involves Margo nursing, or in other non-sexual contexts.  And for all the talk of demystifying and destigmatizing sex work, Margo quickly discovers that making money with OnlyFans has its own challenges.  She has to be a smart self-promoter, find a niche,  and eventually partner up with other creators.  My biggest criticism of the show is that it's a little too cutesy about portraying OnlyFans as a platform where Margo is able to find a creative outlet, and focuses on the cosplay and the kitsch while avoiding the sleaze.  There are negative social consequences that Margo has to face for her OnlyFans work, but the depiction of the work itself feels too sanitized, and probably paints a misleading picture of how much effort is actually required.

Then again, "Margo's Got Money Troubles" isn't really about the sex work.  It's about Margo making choices about her life that society deems unacceptable and having to deal  with the fallout.  And it's about the people closest to her also reckoning with their choices, and eventually reconnecting and becoming close enough to try and help one another when things get tough.  I was constantly being surprised by the show, whether it was Shyanne repeatedly misjudging Kenny, or Jinx and Susie unexpectedly bonding.  I don't expect that "Margo's Got Money Troubles" will be around for the long term considering the caliber of the cast, but it's so nice to see talented actors in roles where they actually get to use that talent.  Nicole Kidman in a slightly kooky supporting role is great - she could totally transition to being a character actress if she wanted.  Michelle Pfeiffer doesn't get enough good roles, and I'm so grateful she got to do this.

And with an eight episode season, "Margo" doesn't outstay her welcome.  I know another season is in the works, but the first feels like a complete show, and one I will happily recommend.

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"Pluribus" For One and All

There are a lot of spoilers in "Pluribus" that make it difficult to talk about.  It's a science fiction show from Vince Gilligan starring Rhea Seehorn, it's very conceptual and deliberately paced, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.  It's not going to appeal to everyone, because it's not in a hurry at all, but I loved the way that the first season unfolded, slowly giving us more and more information over nine episodes, and letting the characters work through various dilemmas at their own pace.  About 90% of the show is solely focused on Seehorn, playing our protagonist Carol Sturka, a difficult woman who is still a good person.  How much you like "Pluribus" may come down to how much you like spending time with her.  From this point on, I'll be spoiling the events of the first two episodes.

"Pluribus" is my kind of science-fiction, all about exploring a fantastical concept that isn't just an excuse for cool action sequences or power fantasies.  Rather, the focus is on how the world changes because of this new event, and exploring all the unintended consequences and unexpected issues that come about in its wake.  In this case, you have everyone on Earth, minus eleven people, becoming part of a single hive mind through an extra-terrestrial agent.  Gilligan and his collaborators have clearly spent a lot of time thinking this through, and a lot of the fun of "Pluribus" is watching them spend an impressive amount of Apple TV+'s money to realize the sweeping, grand scale spectacle of humanity's transformation.  You don't need a lot of society and infrastructure when everyone is in perfect agreement with each other, and you can get so much more done, more efficiently.  Some of the most unnerving images in the show involve groups of people simply moving or talking in unison, which must have taken a monumental amount of work to achieve.

I always liked Seehorn as Kim Wexler in "Better Call Saul," and she's similarly fantastic as the very different Carol Sturka.  The show is just as much an examination of Carol as it is about the hive mind.  She's a successful romantic fantasy writer who wants to write more serious books, but isn't good enough to do that.  She doesn't like people much, except her partner Helen (Miriam Shor), and takes the loss of her very hard.  And despite being a curmudgeon and world class grump, who ticks off nearly every other person on the planet over the course of the first season, Carol discovers that she needs other people.  Seehorn is often the only character onscreen for large amounts of time, and the role is often very physical and demanding.  She does such a great job of keeping us in her headspace as she goes through doubts, frustrations, discoveries, and the grieving process.  Her relationship with the hive mind is fascinating to watch develop, since Carol is often stubborn, prickly, and downright mean, while the hive mind, usually embodied in the form of Carol's assigned "chaperone" Zosia (Karolina Wydra), is nothing but kind, generous, and accommodating.  I love that there's a real ambiguity as to whether Carol's resistance to "The Joining" is actually a good thing for her and the rest of humanity.    

  

"Pluribus" is the rare kind of show where I have no idea what's going to happen in most of the episodes, and I love it.  Most of it takes place in Albuquerque, but "Pluribus" also regularly goes globetrotting to Morocco, Peru, Colombia, and other far-flung locations.  Multiple episodes open with characters I don't know, speaking languages I don't speak, and I'm instantly caught up in figuring out what's happening every single time.  Vince Gilligan and his collaborators have earned the benefit of the doubt from me after all those years of "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul."  But even if they hadn't, "Pluribus" is executed so well, and the material is so consistently interesting that I'd be hooked regardless.  Of all the shows that came out in 2025, this is easily the most distinct, unique, and ambitious.  And it has my full attention.    

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The Matter of "Marty Supreme"

"Marty Supreme" is very much in the vein of the other Safdie films - a tense, chaotic portrait of a terrible man who just can't seem to stop himself from making bad choices.  In this case, we have Marty Mauser (Timothee Chalamet), a table tennis/ping-pong champion loosely based on a real figure from the 1950s.  

When we first meet Marty, he's working as a shoe salesman in New York for his uncle (Ratso Sloman), trying to secure funds to go compete in a London table tennis tournament, and having an affair with his married childhood friend Rachel (Odessa A'zion).  He ends up robbing the shoe store to pay for his plane ticket, and his behavior just gets more reprehensible from there.  Most of the film follows Marty eight months later, when he's in the same position trying to get money to go another tournament in Japan, only his personal life has gotten much more complicated, and he's burned a lot more of his bridges.  Marty is only too willing to send the rest of his life up in flames in the dogged pursuit of his dreams.  

Despite being played by the charming and talented Timothy Chalamet, it's never in doubt that Marty Mauser is a downright horrendous human being.  The movie often seems to be daring us to root for him.  His main rivals in table tennis are the far more humble Bela Kletski (Geza Rohrig) and Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), who have more sympathetic histories.  Marty's endless quest for more money means he takes advantage of everyone he comes into contact with.  He regularly betrays his friends like black taxi driver Wally (Tyler Okonma) and potential business partner Dion (Luke Manley).  He displays some attachment to his mother (Fran Drescher) and to Rachel, though that doesn't stop him from also aggressively pursuing an aging screen star, Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), who he meets by chance in London.  He ends up running afoul of dangerous characters like mobster Ezra Mishkin (Abel Ferrara) and Kay's husband Milton Rockwell (Kevin O'Leary), and it's entirely his own fault.    

The film, chronicling Marty's many adventures in skullduggery and self-destruction, is two and a half hours of occasional sports drama, interwoven with segments of melodrama, suspense, and escalating chaos.  Some of the material is very difficult to get through, though if you've seen the Safdies' other films, you know what you're in for.  Marty talks his way out of bad situations, creates others, and sometimes has to get more creative or craven in his tactics.  Many of the episodes unfold like shaggy dog stories, with wild twists and improbable getaways.  Other times, Marty's luck runs out and he has to face humiliation and defeat, though he never knows when to give up.  As the film goes on, the stories get wilder and Marty's behavior gets more outrageous and cringeworthy.  I've never seen a sports film work so hard to make you root against its protagonist, and it's definitely on purpose.   

So, obviously "Marty Supreme" isn't about table tennis as much as it's about poking at the audience's own impulses to elevate or vilify people based on totally arbitrary characteristics and how they happen to be positioned in a narrative.  There's also a lot more going on in the margins - post WWII rebuilding, the Jewish immigrant experience, the commercialization and commodification of sports, and of course this is a New York story too.  The movie has more in common with "The Brutalist" than other sports movies like "The Smashing Machine."  Eventually you realize that "Marty" may be a narcissist and a grifter, but many of the people he interacts with are also various degrees of dishonest, and some of the people he's using are using him right back.  Maybe Marty stands for America or the Jewish diaspora.  Maybe he's just another wannabe.

I don't see how it's fair that Josh Safidie got both cinematographer Darius Khondji and writer/editor Ronald Bronstein in the Safdie brothers breakup.  So I'm definitely not giving all the credit for "Marty Supreme" to Josh.  Frankly, I think he was very lucky that Timothee Chalamet decided to get onboard, and committed so hard during the awards season lead-up and promotional campaign, he actually helped make the film a bona fide box office hit.  Odessa A'zion also distinguishes herself nicely in a cast chock full of familiar faces and random cameos.  See if you can spot David Mamet and Penn Jillette.

Frankly, "Marty Supreme" is too mean to its audience for me to embrace it fully.  I will happily respect and admire it from afar, and hope everyone involved enjoys their success.

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"Hamnet" is a Heartbreaker

I have a few major biases when it comes to film.  I get more invested in stories about children and motherhood.  I'm partial to Shakespeare adaptations.  And when it comes to romances and tearjerkers, the more earnest and uncynical, the better.  Chloe Zhao's "Hamnet," which she directed and co-wrote with Maggie O'Farrell, based on O'Farrell's book, is all of these things.

The approach of the book and the film is to treat William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) like a human being instead of a genius, following him and his beloved Agnes (Jessie Buckley) through their initial encounters, courtship, marriage, parenthood, separation, and then terrible tragedy.  The film never plays coy with the identities of its leads, but neither is William's playwriting presented as anything of particular importance until the last act, when it becomes a way for him to process his grief and despair.  Instead, the focus of the film is on the family - William and Agnes battling their parents to be allowed to marry, the dramatic births of their children, Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breahtnach), and twins Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) and Judith (Olivia Lynes), William relocating to London for work, and then the arrival of the devastating plague.  

Most of the film is a lovely, intimate domestic drama about love and loss from Agnes' point of view.  She is rumored to be the daughter of a witch, and deeply connected with the forest and nature, so we get a very naturalistic, immersive view of Stratford, England and its inhabitants through her eyes.  However, she's also guided by visions and haunted by portents of doom that follow her all her life.  Lukasz Zal's cinematography captures lush greenery, lively family scenes, a few hints of the supernatural, and all the emotional highs and lows of the performances.  However, I was struck by how evocative some of the simplest shots of trees or quiet interiors were, despite no action or dialogue at all.  I have to point out that a lot of the heavy lifting is also done by Max Richter's score, which does exactly what you expect a Max Richter score to do in a tragedy.

I expect that some Shakespeare fans will take issue with the portrayal of the Bard and his family, as "Hamnet" plays up the relationship of the stage play to the real-life tragedy considerably, even inventing a few additional connections.  It's also clear that nobody was too concerned about the historical accuracy of the period dress and mannerisms.  However, as a piece of pure, cathartic cinema, nothing hit me as hard as "Hamnet" did this year, and I was warned well in advance what kind of movie this was.  The execution is just that good, on every level.  Jessie Buckley's raw, uninhibited performance is extraordinary, as has been widely reported, but the whole cast is  excellent - Paul Mescal, Emily Watson as Agnes' mother-in law, Joe Alwyn as her brother, Noah Jupe as one of the players, and especially the kids for getting us to love them, and really make the big losses hurt.    

It's also one of those rare, ambitious films where everything is building up to the emotional crescendo of the last ten minutes, and about twenty things pay off one after another, which has a tendency to go wrong in less experienced hands.  Considering how the film is structured, it feels positively miraculous that the third act came together as well as it did.  I never expected Chloe Zhao to tackle Shakespeare, but her approach is so refreshing, and her instincts are dead-on.  I expect "Hamnet" works better if you already know Shakespeare's "Hamlet," and I do know Shakespeare's "Hamlet" pretty well, but I'm very curious what newcomers to Shakespeare will think of the movie.  

I know I want to watch this again, but I'll also approach with caution, as the film is very emotionally intense.  And frankly, I'm a little afraid that the magic of that last scene might not work as well the second time around.  This is one trick where I'm not keep on peeking behind the curtain or looking for the seams.

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"Beef" Year Two

So, Netflix's "Beef" is going the anthology route.  The newest eight-episode season tells an original story about more desperate people in conflict, with no connections to the first season.  Showrunner Lee Sung Jin continues to explore themes of the Asian-American diaspora and misplaced rage, this time through a story about three couples in three different socioeconomic categories.

The Monte Vista Point Country Club is managed by Josh (Oscar Isaac) and his wife Lindsay (Carey Mulligan).  They have money troubles and their marriage is on the rocks, despite their lavish lifestyle and the lofty company they keep.  One of the employees of the club, Ashley (Cailee Spaeny), and her fiancée Austin (Charles Melton), catch Josh and Lindsay in the middle of a violent fight one night, and manage to film it.  This gives them the leverage to potentially escape their own stalled lives in low-income purgatory.  However, there's another wrinkle.  The club has a new Korean owner, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), a very rich and influential businesswoman who has a habit of playing favorites.  Her husband, plastic surgeon Dr. Kim (Song Kang-ho), is in the middle of a potential scandal, and Chairman Park is eyeing the club as a potential way out.   

Like the first season of the show, all the main characters are people who do terrible things.  Some are driven by money or ambition.  Some act badly due to being in relationships that enable their worst behavior.  Some are bad because their circumstances or upbringing seems to give them no other choice.  Nearly everyone turns out to be redeemable, but hardly any of them choose redemption in the end.  The show follows all the players as couples and as individuals, having some episodes focus only on one or two characters at a time.  A noticeable difference from the first season is that there isn't a simple inciting incident that pits two or more characters directly against each other.  The character dynamics are much more complicated, and the intra-couple hostilities are just as important as the ones between the different couples, especially when the lines start to get blurry.

The high level of acting talent involved means that there are all kinds of subtleties and shadings to the characters that are exposed as the show examines them from different angles.  This is very much a black comedy, so while there's some tugging at the heartstrings, the characters have a tendency to turn on a dime.   You might be rooting for someone in one episode, and rooting against them in the next.  For instance, Ashley starts out as the most vulnerable character with the least amount of power, and seems perfectly nice and sweet.  It's understandable that she decides to try the blackmail scheme when she discovers a medical issue and needs health insurance fast.  However, behavior that just seemed quirky and innocent when she was at the bottom of the ladder becomes more and more distasteful as she moves higher up, and starts getting used to wielding her privilege.  We see her at her best and her worst.  In one episode she's utterly sympathetic as the hapless victim of systemic forces arrayed against her.  In another, she's a nightmare of a selfish, social-climbing shrew, who doesn't hesitate to take advantage of Austin's tendency to be a doormat.  

Speaking of Austin, with the cast pretty well balanced between Korean and non-Korean actors, Austin is the lynchpin character narratively, a half-Korean, half-Caucasian former sports star who is an aspiring personal trainer.  He's gone for most of his life without much connection to his Korean heritage, and suddenly he's around all these Koreans, including the lovely interpreter Eunice (Seoyeon Jang), and his ethnicity is unexpectedly seen as an asset.  The new opportunities mean new temptations to avoid and new expectations that he struggles to meet.  I found one of the best moments in the whole season is the revelation of how fluent in Korean Austin actually is, during a pivotal moment.  Charles Melton was absolutely the highlight of the show for me, along with Youn Yuh-jung getting to be more of a villain for once.  

Isaac and Mulligan are probably the most familiar names in the cast, but Josh and Lindsay strike me as broader characters who aren't all that interesting, and their actors really have to do some heavy lifting to keep them engaging.  They're the characters who are the most caught up in schemes and stratagems against everyone else, and are done the most disservice by the twisty nature of the plotting and a relatively straightforward disintegrating marriage storyline.  There are class and race issues that could have been explored in their pairing that just never materialized, and the glimpses of their happier past together weren't enough to make it feel like there were real stakes to their conflicts.  Issac and Mulligan are two of my favorite working actors at the moment, so this was the major disappointment of this season of "Beef" for me.  

I'm still glad they're here, and I enjoyed the season overall, but this is a step down from the first season.  However, I'm still rooting for the show, and I'd be happy to watch a third installment of "Beef" somewhere down the line.    

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"Song Sung Blue" and "Rental Family"

"Song Sung Blue" is easily mistaken for a musical biopic about Neil Diamond.  It's actually a musical biopic about a Neil Diamond impersonator, or "interpreter," named Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman).  Based on the documentary of the same name by Greg Kohs, "Song Sung Blue" follows frustrated musician Mike as he falls in love with a Patsy Kline impersonator named Claire (Kate Hudson), and forms the fabulous performing duo of "Lightning and Thunder" with her.  Both have children from prior marriages, including Claire's hostile teen daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson) and son Dayna (Hudson Hensley), and Mike's daughter Angelina (King Princess).  Despite finding great fulfillment in performing, Mike and Claire's lives see dramatic ups and downs over the years, and their love is tested in many ways.

Directed and written by Craig Brewer, the movie is utterly charming from the opening frames.  I love biopics about people who are more adjacent to fame rather than very famous, so we don't have to worry so much about the audience's existing relationship with a celebrity.  The Sardinas are a fairly ordinary couple who live ordinary lives and have the problems that ordinary people have.  However, since they're impersonators, we still get the benefit of hearing Jackman and Hudson perform lots of catchy Neil Diamond songs.  You can tell how much the filmmakers genuinely love Thunder and Lightning, because they always look fabulous onscreen, in spite of the kitschy stage outfits and goofy played up personas.  The performances are very good, with Jackman and Hudson selling the love story, and keeping the Sardinas very human as they face major challenges together.    

 

I'm not a Neil Diamond fan and I admit that "Sweet Caroline" is one of only three Diamond songs that I know.  However, I had a very good time with this film.  I think the actual fans would like it too, because the Sardinas love Neil Diamond as much as anybody.  Mike is initially reluctant to assume the role because he's worried that it might be disrespectful, and when he does he displays a very protective attitude towards Diamond's music throughout.  After listening to the songs for two hours, I still don't think the music is really to my taste, but I enjoyed watching Jackman and Hudson as the Sardinas so much, it didn't matter.

On to "Rental Family," which is a dramedy about the Western and Japanese cultural divide, from director HIKARI, but in a more interesting and nuanced way than I expected.  Brendan Fraser plays an actor named Phillip Vanderploeg, who has lived in Japan for several years since starring in a popular toothpaste commercial.  He's adapted to life in Japan very well, but his career has stalled.  Unexpectedly, he gets a gig with "Rental Family," a service owned by a man named Shinji (Takehiro Hira), who hires out actor stand-ins for personal and social situations.  Phillip is called on to play a groom for a sham wedding, a mourner for a fake funeral, and a reporter to conduct a fake interview with a forgotten filmmaker, Kikuo (Akira Emoto).  However, his most challenging assignment is to play the father of a little girl named Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), who isn't supposed to know he's just an actor.

Companies like Rental Family are real, having originated in Japan in the 90s.  As a very Japanese phenomenon with very particular cultural nuances, it's a great angle to illustrate how Philip still thinks like an American, and hasn't quite figured out how to fit in Japanese society.  Casting Brendan Fraser for this was a wonderful choice, since he's so physically out of place wherever he goes in Japan, and dwarfs all of his co-stars, especially little Shannon Mahina Gorman.  The concept of hiring people to play loved ones has great comedic and dramatic potential, but "Rental Family" chooses to be very gentle, heartwarming, and sincere.  Regarding less savory aspects of the business, there's only a brief subplot involving one of Philip's co-workers, Aiko (Mari Yamamoto), who specializes in playing fake girlfriends to deliver apologies to wives who've been cheated on.   As a result, there's a very old-fashioned feel to "Rental Family," and the comedy is extremely nice in a way that's becoming very rare.

"Rental Family" reminds me a lot of "The Farewell" in the way that it deals with Western and Eastern approaches to personal difficulties, and love is shown in very different ways that seem to be contradictory.  This is a very sanitized and idealized depiction of the rental family concept, but I admire the impulse to make a movie like this, more than I like the movie itself.  "Rental Family" is a pleasant watch that I'd happily recommend to those who might need a comforting feel-good movie, but the resolutions are all a little too pat and tidy for me.  People's emotions are treated very carefully, but the more morally troubling aspects of the rental scheme are largely sidestepped or dealt with superficially.  Everything may look fine, but everyone in this movie still needs a ton of therapy.  

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"Death By Lightning" is Illuminating

At some point, a few years ago, I wrote up a post on this blog about the dearth of American costume dramas, wondering if we'd ever get more media about the less well-known periods of American history.  "Death By Lightning," the Netflix miniseries about the eventful presidency of James A. Garfield, America's twentieth POTUS, is exactly the kind of program I was talking about.  It may not be the most historically accurate dramatization of the events of the 1880s, but I'm very glad to have it.  

Created by Mike Makowsky, and directed by Matt Ross, we trace the lives and careers of several men over the four-episode miniseries, primarily President Garfield (Michael Shannon), and his eventual assassin, Charles J. Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen).  Initially a Republican Congressman, Garfield is the surprise nominee for the American Presidency, who has to deal with a doubtful running mate, Chester A. Arthur (Nick Offerman), jealous political rivals James Blaine (Bradley Whitford) and Roscoe Conkling (Shea Whigham), and a worried wife, Lucretia (Betty Gilpin).  The other half of the narrative is taken up by the troubled grifter Guiteau, who sees politics as a potential pathway to the success and renown that he seeks.  He makes multiple attempts to ingratiate himself with Garfield's campaign, and later his administration, becoming less and less emotionally stable as time goes on. 

Clearly this is a very fictionalized take on history, which paints Garfield as a great man, who reluctantly accepts a presidency that he doesn't want, and inspires the best in those closest to him.  From what little I've read about Garfield, in real life he was a much shrewder operator whose non-campaign was a deliberate ploy for the presidency from the beginning.  The script also offers modern profanity in abundance, modern attitudes toward class and race relations, and modern views on a slew of issues from immigration to industry.  However, we still get a very entertaining and enlightening look at how politics functioned during the Reconstruction era, with rampant corruption and political machines in operation, affecting every stage of the election.  I was especially impressed with the first episode, where the nominating convention shows the various groups and organizations and processes in action, and reveals that there's still the opportunity for surprises.  

And if you don't care about any of this, "Death By Lightning" is still a great watch for the performances.  The show presents a bonanza of excellent character actors delivering memorable, colorful performances.  MacFadyen is the standout as the weaselly, deluded and yet perpetually hopeful Guiteau, who exudes a nervous energy every time he's onscreen.  I disliked him immensely, but he always held my attention.  Conversely, I loved Nick Offerman as Arthur, a jovial cog in the political machine who is happy where he is, but eventually is encouraged to become more.  Shannon is more constrained by having to be presidential, but he gets plenty of opportunities to play big moments.  The dialogue is full of shouting and colorful invective, and this was the era of epic facial hair, so you have truly never seen some of these actors the way you will see them here.  I mistook Matthew Macfadyen for a different actor for the first two episodes, because he looks completely different from the guy  in "Succession."  

I wish that the series was longer and some of the secondary characters a little better flushed out.  I enjoyed some of the brief looks we got of the earlier, formative chapters of the protagonists' lives, such as Guiteau spending time in a free love utopian religious sect, and Garfield's time fighting in the Civil War.  However, it's probably better that the show left me wanting more.  "Death by Lightning" was constructed from the outset as a true crime story, focusing on everything that led up to the assassination.  However, it's also a great entry point into this particular era of American history, and I hope that the creators find their way back to it one of these days.  And that other creators will take inspiration to get a little more historical.     

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"No Other Choice" and "The Secret Agent"

It brings me no pleasure to tell you that both of the major foreign language contenders in this year's award season, "No Other Choice" and "The Secret Agent," didn't work for me.  I don't know why, as I've liked previous movies directed by Park Chan-Wook and Kleber Mendonça Filho, but I'm going to use this post to try to tease some of the answersout.

"No Other Choice" was one of my most anticipated films of last year, about an unemployed family man Yoo Man-su, (Lee Byung-hun) who figures out who his likeliest competitors are for getting a specific job, and decides to eliminate them.  Son Ye-jin plays Man-su's wife, and the targets are played by Lee Sung-min, Cha Seung-won, and Park Hee-soon.  Park Chan-Wook wrote and directed the film, based on a Donald Westlake thriller, "The Ax," examining his protagonist's obsession with getting his perfect life back, and what he's willing to do to make it happen.  "No Other Choice" has plenty to say about the merciless state of modern-day capitalism, and how a man's morals can be warped by desperation.  The filmmaking has a lot of fun visual flourishes, and I like Lee Byung-hun's performance.  However, it takes forever for the action to get going, and once it does the movie is overlong, repetitive, and lacking in much tension.  

I appreciate that "No Other Choice" is much more restrained than some of Park Chan-Wook's other films, and doesn't feature any extreme content.  However, this means that as a comedy it's not as much fun as I was hoping for, and as a thriller it's not nearly as exciting.  I was never quite onboard with the story either - Lee Byung-hun makes Man-su a compelling tragicomic character, and his targets all turn out to be reflections of different aspects of himself - but there was never a sense of real urgency about his quest.  The worst casualty of the job loss is only Man-su's ego.  The wife is downsizing their lives, but otherwise seems fine with the state of affairs.  One of the clear messages is that the stakes are only so high in Man-su's own mind, and whatever advantage he might gain isn't worth all the madness that he puts himself through.   I was frustrated with Man-su for his pig-headedness more than anything else, especially since he's confronted with his own hubris repeatedly.  I derived the most enjoyment from watching his schemes unfold in unpredictable ways.  Well, until they wore out their welcome.

On to "The Secret Agent," a political thriller which has several secrets, so I'll have to discuss the film more obliquely.  I liked this one more than "No Other Choice," as the storytelling was better able to hold my interest, despite a similar running time, and I found the characters more enjoyable.  The year is 1977, and a man named Marcelo (Wagner Moura) arrives in the northern Brazilian city of Recife during carnival season.  Political turmoil means that the atmosphere is dangerous and uncertain, and Marcelo is being targeted by two men of dubious intentions.  Information comes slowly about Marcelo's identity, but we learn he has a young son who lives with his grandparents, an extremely helpful landlady, and many neighbors and acquaintances who have their own secrets.  The film's title promises intrigue and excitement that it does deliver on, but not in the way I expected.

There is a very strong sense of time and place in "The Secret Agent."  Marcelo spends much of his time settling into Recife and meeting various characters, some who only show up for a single scene, like a WWII vet played by Udo Kier and a political resistance member played by  Maria Fernanda Cândido.  We see recreations of '70s apartments, government buildings, a movie theater, a barber shop, a gas station, a university, crowded streets, bridges, parks, and many, many glimpses of lives being lived out by a variety of people.  All of them together contribute this wonderfully eclectic, lively setting for an old fashioned political thriller in the vein of Alan J. Pakula and Bernardo Bertolucci.  I was enjoying myself until the abrupt ending, which left me clutching at straws. 

Still trying to avoid spoilers here, I think my issue with "The Secret Agent" is the same as my issue with last year's "I'm Still Here."  The film is too fragmentary to be narratively satisfying for me, even though its messages about living under an oppressive regime are well conveyed.  Also, I still don't know enough about South American history.

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"Eternity" and "It Ends"

Here are two smaller, existential, high concept films that I want to recommend before they slip too far back in my memory.

The more cheerful, life affirming one is a movie about the afterlife.  Directed by David Freyne, and co-written by Freyne and Pat Cunnane, "Eternity" follows an elderly couple who have been married for sixty-five years when they die, and learn that they have to choose where to spend their eternal rest.  The deceased have a variety of different afterlives available to them, and help from "Afterlife Coordinators" like Anna (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) and Ryan (John Early) during the transition.  However, in the case of Joan (Elizabeth Olsen), she not only has to choose an afterlife, but who to spend it with - the man she was married to for decades, Larry (Miles Teller), or her first husband Luke (Callum Turner), who died young as a soldier.  

"Eternity" presents a vision of the afterlife that's a lot of fun.  The newly dead arrive in what looks like a 1960s conventional hall, full of salespeople trying to hawk different afterlives, ranging from eternity at the beach, to eternity with no men allowed, to eternity in Weimar German without the Nazis.  Joan and Larry are returned to the age they felt the most comfortable, which is when they were in their thirties, but their neighbor Karen (Olga Merediz) stays elderly.  We also learn that each eternity has an archive for its inhabitants to review old memories of their lives, which also comes in handy for exposition.  The amount of fun little details in the set designs, despite a limited budget, made me think of "The Good Place," though there's more similarity plotwise to something like "Defending Your Life." 

There's a lightness and optimism to "Eternity" which is a little old fashioned and very appealing.  Despite the big concepts, this turns out to be a romantic comedy at heart, where we spend most of the movie with Luke, trying to figure out how to make Joan fall in love with him again.  The performances are warm and winning, with Miles Teller continuing to make the case for himself as a solid cinema everyman, and Elizabeth Olsen being very charming.  "Eternity" hearkens back to much older supernatural films in the tradition of "A Matter of Life and Death" and "A Guy Named Joe," and it easily won me over.  It's currently at the top of my list of films I'd like to watch with older relatives.

Now on to a much less conventional indie film, "It Ends," which starts out as horror and morphs into something quite different.  Four twentysomething friends are in a car together, take a wrong turn, and end up on a road in a wooded area that never seems to end.  What's more alarming is that the foursome never seem to get tired, never need to eat or drink, their phones never run out of power, and the car never runs out of gas.  However, if they stop for too long, people will emerge from the woods to attack the car.  Their only choice is to keep driving.  At least, that's what they think is their only choice at first.  James (Phinehas Yoon), Day (Akira Jackson), Fisher (Noah Toth) and Mitchell (Tyler) all ultimately decide to deal with their extraordinary circumstances in different ways.  

"It Ends" is one of those films where the central premise is clearly meant to be treated as a metaphor for something profound, and the audience will take away as much meaning as they bring to it.  From a production standpoint, "It Ends" is a minimal, shoestring piece of work with very green actors and not the best technical bona fides. However, it's got some great ideas, and I like the way that it starts in such familiar genre territory and gradually subverts itself more and more.  It's also very good at capturing the mood of long car trips, and the dynamics of a friend group with a lot of history.  I think it'll resonate the most with viewers in their twenties who are at the same state of life as the protagonists, trying to figure out their path through life, and which relationships are worth fighting for as people in their lives start drifting away.  I had a great time with it.

"It Ends" also has the distinction of being one of the first films distributed by Letterboxd, which is starting to pick up smaller titles in danger of falling through the cracks.  I look forward to their future offerings with interest.

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"Wake Up Dead Man" is the Best Blanc Mystery

I suspect that "Wake Up Dead Man" is the best Rian Johnson film.  It's easily the best of the three Benoit Blanc movies he's made so far, and I really liked the first two.  "Wake Up Dead Man" is another murder mystery featuring the Daniel Craig sleuth, with plenty of social commentary, and some good laughs in the mix.  However, this is a darker, more thoughtful story, set in and around a small Catholic church in upstate New York.  The new assistant pastor, Father Jud (Josh O'Connor) has written to Benoit Blanc about a murder.  Who the victim is probably counts as a spoiler, so I'll just say that the major figures involved in the crime are the charismatic firebrand Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), his henchwoman Martha (Glenn Close), her husband Samson (Thomas Hayden Church), and local townsfolk played by Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Daryl McCormack, Mila Kunis and Cailee Spaeny.

Unlike "Knives Out" and "Glass Onion," the rich aren't the targets of "Wake Up Dead Man."  Rather, we're looking at a different facet of privilege and power, with religion put under the microscope.  Christianity is examined from several different points of view, with Monsignor Wicks and Father Jud each offering their own contrasting viewpoints.  Benoit Blanc is the skeptical atheist who comes on the scene trying to find the truth, and it's a much more complicated story than it seems at first glance, touching on a lot of the different roles that Christianity and the church play in American society.  The only way to solve the mystery is to understand the worldviews of the suspects, and the lesson, ultimately, is the importance of empathy rather than faith.  Rian Johnson has described himself as an ex-believer in interviews, and you can absolutely tell how personal this material is to him.  There are some very funny scenes and suitably sharp zingers, but Johnson is also earnestly grappling with questions of how religion fits into the modern world, in a way that only someone very familiar with the church could.

"Wake Up Dead Man" benefits from a very strong cast.  The clear standout is Josh O'Connor, who has the tricky job of staying both sympathetic and untrustworthy in the minds of the viewers for most of the movie.  He has the vast majority of the screentime, and I find it very meaningful that he struggles honestly and openly with his role at the church in a way that feels far too rare.  Unfortunately, this means that the rest of the cast feel less well served.  Or rather, the other characters feel broad and caricatured the way that the characters in "Knives Out" and "Glass Onion" were, but few display the depth and the shadings that Father Jud does.  Wicks, for instance, is memorably vile, and I admire Brolin's performance, but I was never able to quite take him seriously as a threat to our heroes, and he wasn't outrageously nasty enough to be as entertaining as he could have been.  Actors like Andrew Scott and Kerry Washington barely have enough screen time for their characters to register, though they're good enough actors that they do.  Glenn Close, however, finally gets a role worthy of her talents in who knows how long.

Johnson gets a lot of great imagery out of the ecclesiastical trappings, and the visual storytelling is consistently excellent.  I love the local bar that's devil themed, and Father Jud's tattoos hinting at a past that can't be easily erased.  The running gag with Martha is pitch perfect every time it happens.  The editing is fabulous, deftly juggling the multiple POVs and jumps to different points on the timeline.  This is a long movie, and the investigation doesn't really get underway until Blanc shows up around 45 minutes in, but it never feels too slow or too indulgent.  Okay, Rian Johnson probably wouldn't have gotten away with some of the more venal jokes if this were the first Benoit Blanc movie, but he's earned some leeway from me.

Most importantly, the story feels fully explored and the tone is well balanced.  All the little things that used to bother me about Rian Johnson films have been addressed, or are compensated for.  This is the first film of his I'm comfortable calling a great film, and it's timely, entertaining, and genuinely moving too.  If this is the last Benoit Blanc film, the series is going out on a high note.  And it's leaving me wanting more.

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"Train Dreams" and "Jay Kelly"

More Netflix Oscar hopefuls today.

"Train Dreams" is the kind of contemplative, existential film that it's very difficult to do well.  Directed by Clint Bently, and based on a Denis Johnson novella, the story follows the life of a man in the late 1800s named Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), who spends long stretches working on railway construction and logging sites in Idaho.  The work is dangerous, and forces Robert to spend too much time away from his wife, Gladys (Felicity Jones), and young daughter, but their options are few.  

Nearly all of "Train Dreams" is set in nature, specifically in the seemingly endless forests of the American Northwest.  However, the intrusion of the workers brings all the ugliness of westward expansion, industrialization and environmental degradation with them.  Robert has a front row seat to instances of brutal racism and exploitation that haunt him through the years, and his life is marked by too much tragedy.  His friendships are rare and fleeting, and he spends years trying to find a sense of connection with the rest of humanity.  Robert is a quiet man, who avoids trouble and keeps to himself, so many of the particulars of his life are relayed to the audience via narration provided by Will Patton.  

The pleasures of "Train Dreams" chiefly involve the skill of the filmmaking in evoking an older, bygone era of America that has largely receded from the current cultural consciousness. Adolpho Veloso's cinematography is intimate and lovely when it needs to be, and occasionally awe-inspiring as it explores the pristine landscapes.  Robert has meaningful encounters with memorable characters played by William H. Macy, Kerry Condon, Paul Schneider, John Diehl, and others.  However, as much as I admire and appreciate the commitment to this slower, more thoughtful approach to looking back at a chapter of American history, I rarely found it compelling.  Joel Edgerton is an actor who's been very hit-or-miss for me, and without a stronger narrative, the tale of his subdued everyman just couldn't hold my interest.  "Train Dreams" ends up being a lovely cinematic elegy that I wish that I liked more than I did.          

On to "Jay Kelly," the Noah Baumbach film where George Clooney is playing a fictionalized version of himself in the middle of a midlife crisis.  Jay Kelly is a famous movie star who starts behaving erratically after he has a bad encounter with an old friend (Billy Crudup), learns his mentor (Jim Broadbent) has died, and is caught off guard by his youngest daughter Daisy (Grace Edwards) decamping for Europe with friends before she goes to college.  Jay decides to accept a career tribute being offered in Italy that he previously turned down, so he can follow Daisy to Paris, with his longtime manager Ron (Adam Sandler) and publicist Liz (Laura Dern) in tow.  As the tribute draws nearer, Kelly's thoughts stray to regrets about his past and anxieties about his future, while Ron attempts to contain the crisis.  It's a very star-studded picture, with many familiar faces in the cast, playing figures from Jay Kelly's past and present.    

"Jay Kelly" strikes me as a film with some glaring fundamental flaws, and I suspect that it only got made because Clooney said yes to starring in it.  I mean, it's a fine idea to have a self-critical Baumbach film examining the cost of stardom, and highlighting all the little oddities of being extremely famous people, while trying to navigate travel in foreign countries.  However, the story choices and tonal shifts make the film constantly feel like it's floundering, the humor rarely works as intended, and Jay Kelly is surrounded by more interesting characters.  Clooney has the movie star wattage turned up high for the first time in a long time, but it's Adam Sandler and Billy Crudup who deliver the best performances, and have the juicier parts to play.  The plotting is also very messy - does the film only take place in Tuscany because Baumbach is trying to evoke Federico Fellini?   

Frankly, there's not much about "Jay Kelly" that worked for me.  I found it confusing, underdeveloped, and a waste of some very talented people's time.  This was a big swing for Baumbach, and I want him to keep aiming high, but too many of the choices here are wrongfooted, and I know Baumbach's capable of something much smarter and more thoughtful.  Better luck next time. 

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