Category Archives: Reviews

‘First Man’ Review: A ghostly vision of grief

*This review contains spoilers for ‘First Man’*

First Man opens on Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) piloting an X-15 in a flight out of the atmosphere. We can’t see his face behind his visor, the ascent through the clouds clouding it, and the rest of the cockpit, in extreme darkness. It’s an unsettling sight, one that’s difficult to shake. But that first shot — as well as the rest of the intensely physical, claustrophobic opening sequence, in which we get a brief glimpse at wonder in the Earth’s horizon reflected across his eyes — sets up Neil forcefully.

He hides himself. Maybe not purposefully. But his deep emotions are rarely explicit. We see him through what he does, and the rare moments where and when he chooses to express something — like in the backroom of his cabin, quietly sobbing out of view and behind his hands, at the wake for his daughter Karen, after her shattering loss to cancer.

And the loose, vulnerable, visceral way in which Damien Chazelle and composer Justin Hurwitz traverse the loss makes it nearly unbearable, especially in a breath-stealing cut from Neil sitting with his daughter, gently stroking her hair, to her funeral, the harsh clicks of the casket being lowered beneath soil laid across the cut and the bare-bones strings of Karen’s theme haunting it.

Universal Pictures/Courtesy

In fact, death, and the grief that follows, is the ghostly specter of the entire film. The film’s depiction of grief — the slow, guttural, seemingly unending feeling of sickness that forces oppressive gravity on your body from the inside, like a collapsing star — is overwhelming. And that framework is something that Ryan Gosling lives in so fully, down to his bones, so much so that a simple “sorry,” which Neil struggles to get out as he communicates to his kids the possibility that he might not ever come back, tells us everything we need to know about how much he’s struggling with his journey.

To arrive at such paralyzing death, Chazelle approaches both spacecrafts and the home with such a knowing internal focus. He knows the intangible connection and intimacy at the home. A shadowy, slow dance scene with Neil and Janet Armstrong (Claire Foy) to Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman’s “Lunar Rhapsody” in front of a blue-lit curtain. Backyard conversations between aspirational astronauts over a beer and under the moon light. Playful freedom with kids in a game of hide-and-seek or in the backyard under the sun, where Chazelle takes a page from Terrence Malick.

He also knows how part of that comfort in the home is forever broken with the loss of a child. When the walls are suffocating and the people hardest to talk to about it, or anything of the sort, share those walls. When neighbors’ kids remind you of your own. Chazelle and cinematographer Linus Sandgren light and shoot that broken space — particularly the neighborhood where a swing set reminds Neil of his daughter — with a ghostly tinge, deep blacks and hazy white light. And Hurwitz leans into his theremin, a sound that nears extraterrestrial, but lands more so in the spectral.

Universal Pictures/Courtesy

It’s this approach to domesticity — a space often failed, failing those characters in turn — that does service to Janet, a decidedly more explicit person. In her care for their children, often intercut with Neil’s missions. In her confrontation of death, brought to near breaking points by those missions and his refusal to talk about them or their daughter, prompting her to reach into him herself and force him to talk to their kids so that they don’t end up broken in the way that he is. In her support for Pat White, wife of Neil’s colleague Ed, as she confronts death. In all this, Foy is riveting, rendering Janet as her own pilot of sorts, especially when Neil’s above.

NASA is Neil’s escape, work that he’s good at. And the work can be so indescribably beautiful, like the home can be. In Gemini VIII’s groundbreaking docking with the Agena, Chazelle constructs the sequence not triumphantly, but with pure awe and wonder at the stunning beauty. To Hurwitz’s “Docking Waltz,” an elegant, graceful piece, the crafts are gentle dancers in space, a vision clearly sprung out of Chazelle and Hurwitz’s affinity for classical music and musicals, but also clearly reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But space travel brings more death, tying a permanent bond to it just like the home has. With monstrous and jarring sound design, purely perspectival and quite shaky shots (mostly extreme close-up), and a score that, in especially terrifying instances like Gemini VIII’s malfunction after docking with the Agena, verges on horror, Chazelle makes it abundantly clear that these are rattling metal death traps, and that it’s miraculous that human beings can travel in them.

Universal Pictures/Courtesy

But is the human cost worth it? Chazelle constantly poses this, even when the characters of his film don’t, don’t want to, or are too late in doing so. However, Chazelle doesn’t necessarily formulate an ultimate answer, suggesting instead that the horribly tragic deaths were, at least, not in vain.

And that’s because of not the triumph of the moon landing, but the scope of it, something writer Josh Singer lays out toward the beginning of the film when Neil is asked why space travel is important.

“I don’t know what space exploration will uncover, but I don’t think it’ll be exploration just for the sake of exploration. I think it’ll be more of the fact that it allows us to see things that maybe we should have seen a long time ago, but just haven’t been able to until now.”

“Space exploration changes your perception.”

Universal Pictures/Courtesy

As Buzz Aldrin (Corey Stoll) and Neil open the craft door to the moon, we shoot out, the frame expanding, on full IMAX screens, to roughly six stories tall, and halt on a grey, barren landscape. The moment is quite literally arresting, as the massive sight is suddenly consumed in silence. Neil slowly descends, logging details about the ladder and the texture of the surface.

Then, he steps down and utters his famous words.

What’s so staggering about the moment is that it’s shot from an angle much like the real footage, and the almost square frame of the IMAX footage replicates the almost square frame of the 16mm real footage — except we see so much detail and the image takes up so much of our view. The reality of the construction of the shot and the reality of the detail in the footage combine to render the moment transcendent. We’re there.

But Chazelle doesn’t shoot the rest of the sequence like that. He very quickly returns to the ghostly, Hurwitz’s theremin following. The first footprint is meditated on. Buzz’s playful hopping across the surface is almost, like the docking sequence, an elegant dance, but quieter and more contemplative.

Universal Pictures/Courtesy

And Neil is shot in close-up, his visor reflecting the moon and its horizon over his face, the shadow of a man in what looks like the land of the dead. Scored by the restrained, but waning theremin piece, “Moon Walk,” the scene intercuts grainy, home video style footage of Neil and his family when Karen was alive, but expanded to the full screen as well, the parallel imbuing those loving moments with a scope just as large as the moon. And then, Neil steps up to a crater, pulls down the gold layer of his visor — revealing his tearful face and, really, himself for the first time — and holds out a bracelet of Karen’s, dropping it to the bottom.

Like the speech prepared in case of failure (which Chazelle partially includes) suggests, the sacrifice of the mission was not in vain, nor would it have been were Neil and Buzz to have to remain on the moon. But even though they came back, another part of the universe remains touched by mankind, no further than man has gone today.

And though Neil did not die on the moon, a piece of his daughter lays to rest there, allowing Neil to find a peace he couldn’t before.

Universal Pictures/Courtesy

The sequence deliberately ends on that moment, something so human, and cuts to archival footage of the hundreds of millions around the world that watched a pinnacle human achievement — the death that it took to get there honored by so much life. And while inarguably indulgent, Chazelle turns, respectfully romantic, to Kennedy’s famous speech.

Chazelle then ends his film like he’s ended all of his films: with a simple look. But too like those other films, the look embodies everything that the film is and finds some solace in the imperfect place it leaves its characters. While there is a wall and a window between them due to Neil’s quarantine upon return from the lunar surface, a wall that sits as much more than just physical, Neil and Janet connect in a way they struggled to after Karen’s death, hands against the glass, looking into each other’s eyes.

It’s odd for such a film, one of a momentous historical moment, to end up as an artful poem with the spirit of Dylan Thomas. But death permeates First Man because it had to. The human achievement was not simply for or of the time, but beyond the time. Throughout the film, Chazelle portrays Neil in his backyard, looking up at the moon, the camera refocusing through the branches to find it. Death has fallen around and upon the human beings who have looked up and wondered at our place in the stars ever since we left the cave. And while our attempts to venture further and define that place will always be touched by death, we don’t stop in fear of it. We keep going because of it. We keep going to pay respect to it.

Featured image via Universal Pictures

‘Blockers’ Review: A comedy as raunchy as it is heartfelt

The primary narrative strand in Blockers follows Lisa (Leslie Mann), Mitchell (John Cena) and Hunter (Ike Barinholtz) as they try to stop their daughters — Julie (Kathryn Newton), Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan) and Sam (Gideon Adlon) — from losing their virginity on prom night. Immediately, it sounds like a comedy we’ve seen before.

What makes Blockers so refreshing and delightful, though, is that this point-of-view is not the location of our heroes, who are the daughters, but it’s also an entirely necessary point-of-view to pull off what the film sets out to.

Blockers is littered with its share of awfully raunchy, unambiguously absurdist moments of comedy, and director Kay Cannon injects an infectious energy into each one, primarily through razor sharp pacing. But Cannon also utilizes nearly every single one of these moments to develop character. Comedies can run themselves into the ground when the humor exists for the sake of itself, but Blockers dedicates itself to its story and never falters.

Most of these moments, in fact, challenge the parents and their perceptions of their children. Is it right for these parents to try to “save” their daughters? Would they do the same if it were about their sons? The trio are framed as anti-heroes, but are still allowed sympathy, leaving the door open for redemption.

As these parents learn to accept their daughters, the daughters are learning to accept themselves, but not necessarily from a starting point of negative. Cannon brings a tone of sensitivity to these women’s explorations of their sexuality, affirming them rather than shaming them, while still offering them their own hilarious bits.

It truly is an outstanding balancing act from Cannon, who is aided by an equally outstanding ensemble. Mann, in the leading role, is as steady as she ever has been. Barinholtz both plays into type as the over-the-top idiot, while also playing against type as a surprisingly progressive father. Cena capitalizes on the tough guy persona, rendering his sensitive moments hysterical in juxtaposition. Newton is certainly serviceable, but Adlon shines with her vulnerability and Viswanathan nearly steals the whole show.

And when Blockers brings the families together toward the end, that dedication to the story the film set out to tell from the beginning pays off, leaving us with some genuinely powerful quiet moments.

Grade: B

 

Featured image via Universal Pictures.

‘Chappaquiddick’ Review: An unsettling portrait of political gaslighting

Political scandals are nothing new, or quite surprising, in today’s world. And as possible, even likely, as it is that Chappaquiddick was made without the specifics of today’s world in mind, its release at this moment in time colors the film in a deeply unsettling way.

The film picks up with Senator Ted Kennedy (Jason Clarke), brother to the assassinated John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, at a turning point in his life. After a party and some drinks, he takes a drive with Mary Jo Kopechne — a drive that ends with the car flipped off of a bridge into the water off Chappaquiddick island, and Mary Jo dead by drowning.

But Chappaquiddick doesn’t choose to focus on the event itself for too long. A majority of the story revolves around the aftermath, around Ted Kennedy’s attempts to turn himself from a possible criminal into another victim of the event. And that is where the film reaches into the filth of politics.

Rather early on, the film takes a side. Ted, on his way back to mainland, is advised by his cousin Joseph Gargan (Ed Helms) to immediately notify the police the night of the accident, and director John Curran chooses to crosscut between Ted ignoring Gargan’s advice and Mary Jo screaming for help, clinging onto the sliver of air left in the car as it sinks. The sequence is incredibly uncomfortable and infuriating to watch, but that’s purposeful and effective to the story the film tells.

Much of the visual look of Chappaquiddick, in regard to the costume design and production design, is rather standard, and risks rendering the film dull. But Curran’s composition of the film continues to work to reveal political filth. As Ted and the powerhouse publicity/legal team put together by his father plan their “version of the truth,” Curran chooses to literally manifest and show the type of story that they plan to feed to the American people, granting the film an almost dry-yet-unnerving humor in the immorality of it all. At a point, the film’s use of visual juxtaposition becomes almost cruel in its effectiveness, such as when the edit reveals that the manipulation is working on, of all people, Mary Jo’s parents.

Chappaquiddick does present us with some sense of identification in the form of Gargan. While the film makes clear in its editing that Gargan is, at the end of the day, complicit, the character creates constant tension at nearly every development. Ed Helms is particularly magnificent, the role playing into the typical good-guy tone that Helms is so good at, while also offering some quiet (and loud) dramatic moments that we don’t see much of from him.

But the film undoubtedly rests on the shoulders of Jason Clarke, and Clarke turns in one of his finest performances. He takes a character so clearly positioned as an anti-hero and doesn’t necessarily make him sympathetic, but makes him intriguing, accentuating the despicable faults of Ted Kennedy with force. Clarke hits on the pressure that the character feels with that last name and, in turn, evokes the whiplash infantilism, masked in the facade of the mysticism of “Kennedy,” that that pressure has resulted in.

And that is precisely why the film succeeds. It doesn’t deny the mysticism of the Kennedy family. It just simply understands that that mysticism can turn very, very ugly.

Grade: B

 

Featured image via Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures.

‘A Quiet Place’ Review: A juggernaut of a horror film

About half way into A Quiet Place, which follows a family living in silence due to monsters that track down victims by sound, Evelyn Abbott (Emily Blunt) asks her husband Lee (John Krasinski) a question that defines the entire film. “Who are we if we can’t protect them?”

“Them” refers to the Abbott’s children, Regan (Millicent Simmonds), who is deaf, and Marcus (Noah Jupe). A Quiet Place is, by all means, one of the scariest films of recent memory, but it’s even more effective because it’s a horror film with a gripping emotional basis — that of parenthood and the lengths we go to to protect our kids.

The film is almost entirely silent, with most of the interactions utilizing sign language. That set up leaves co-writer/director John Krasinski — wearing many hats on this project — with the difficult task of achieving the emotional basis through the physicality of the characters, through the actions they take more so than the words they say or sign. But Krasinski pulls it off.

A Quiet Place is a tight, lean picture — every second dedicated not only to Evelyn and Lee trying to protect their kids, but also to the kids learning the bravery necessary to begin to survive on their own. Many of these character moments are elevated immensely by the performances, and each one feels entirely integrated into the world. Movements through space are careful and calculated. And facial expressions are exacerbated excruciatingly, as they would be for people living in such a situation. The clear standout, however, is Emily Blunt, who bears the weight of her character — the weight of love, grief and the worst physical pain of any character — so thoroughly.

While Krasinski is undoubtedly rather strong, with his performance’s emotion sitting right under the surface, his most assured role on this film is as the director, composing every feature into a brilliant whole. The sound design is bare, but brutal. Charlotte Bruus Christensen’s cinematography is stark, but tender. And the production design builds a world far beyond the frame. In fact, it’s the world-building of A Quiet Place that is so astonishingly impressive. Some aspects of the layout of the Abbott’s home exist without explanation (to the film’s benefit) — and are then capitalized on for some harrowing imagery.

Yet, the film isn’t just harrowing and scary. It’s often incredibly invigorating and fun. And as A Quiet Place turns to its end and champions its female characters specifically, especially in a banger of a closing shot, it’s difficult not to walk out with a big, stupid grin on your face.

Grade: B+

 

Featured image via Paramount Pictures

‘Mute’ Review: A glimpse at a dull future

Mute, co-written and directed by Duncan Jones (MoonSource CodeWarcraft), is about a man named Leo (Alexander Skarsgård), who happens to be Amish and mute, trying to find his missing girlfriend (Seyneb Saleh) in a futuristic Germany. He has to fight gangsters, find clues that she left behind and put up with abuse for being unable to speak. An Amish mute? Fighting bad guys?! Having premarital sex?! The Future?! What sounds like a movie that’s at least mildly interesting turns out to be a complete bore, much like the slew of other Netflix originals over the past few months.

Paul Rudd plays Cactus, an American surgeon working for these gangsters, and is probably the most entertaining part of the entire movie. How he ended up in Germany taking bullets out of gangsters is a mystery, but I guess it doesn’t matter. Cactus is looking for a way back to America along with his daughter, and he’ll do anything to obtain that. It’s fun to see Paul Rudd playing a villain, a departure from his typical roles, but he deserves a much better movie around him.

If you’re wondering, “Wow, I wonder if Cactus has anything to do with Leo’s missing girlfriend,” you would be on the right track! There’s really nothing shocking about this movie, although I must admit I was taken aback by how advanced the sex dolls of the future are.

As much as I hate to say this about a movie Paul Rudd is in, Mute is one to steer clear of. It’s boring, its vision of the future is cliché and Cactus’s best friend is a pedophile. Watch at risk of wasting two hours of your life.

Grade: 4.5/10

 

Mute was released on February 23, 2018 and is currently available for streaming on Netflix.

Featured image courtesy of Netflix.

‘Phantom Thread’ Review: An elegant, dreamlike, hilarious psychological romance

Phantom Thread is a strange film, one that could only really sprout from the mind of writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson. Yet, its strangeness might be precisely what offers viewers so much to eat up.

Following master fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) as he courts Alma (Vicky Krieps), the film revels in the psychological dynamics between the two as their relationship grows. From misunderstanding each other’s intentions to nailing each other’s faults directly on the head, the two constantly negotiate emotional control. It’s often overtly uncomfortable, toned by a sense of deliberateness in Anderson’s delivery. We’re meant to, ourselves, become a third party in the fluctuating conversation.

That aspect of the film, the ambiguity and the resulting passive aggressiveness, is deliciously hilarious in its nastiness, especially when blurted with full pompous force by Daniel Day-Lewis. Woodcock is rendered utterly charming, magnetically powerful and horribly ridiculous, all at the same time.

But the relatively unknown Vicky Krieps goes toe-to-toe with Day-Lewis, even owning him in certain scenes. The film likely wouldn’t have worked without her turning in a performance so effectively controlled, her glare as cutting as razor blades, because much of the content literally requires Krieps to dominate her co-star with her presence. And thankfully, Alma is given the necessary agency and moments of power to keep the film from becoming some kind of sick show.

In Anderson’s construction of story, which is both fiercely and elegantly polished, Phantom Thread can be described as a genuine psychological romance — a subgenre not too common in contemporary cinema. But there’s also something about the director’s touch that evokes a nearly dreamlike aura when watching the film, similarly to the effect of The Master.

This film is, by all means, about love. When Woodcock and Alma are in sync — and especially in that climactic moment when they finally come to a true understanding of what exactly makes the other tick — the characters seemingly float in space and time, lifted up by the rich and depthful film photography of Anderson and his camera crew, the transfixing work of costume designer Mark Bridges and the somehow pleasantly visceral, overwhelmingly wistful and absolutely enchanting score by Jonny Greenwood.

As the credits start to roll, Phantom Thread begins to feel like a lovely dream itself. It’s an experience that’s hard to put to words, but it’s one that we long for and fall for in storytelling.

Grade: A

 

Featured image via Focus Features.

‘Molly’s Game’ Review: Jessica Chastain is electric in Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut

Aaron Sorkin is one of the few screenwriters to have become a recognizable name to the general audience, and for good reason. His scripts, for the likes of The Social Network and Steve Jobs, are masterful. So, him making his directorial debut, not only in features, but in either film or television, is a major point in his career.

With Molly’s Game, Sorkin proves himself behind the camera as well as he does on the page. Following Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) as she runs one of the most prestigious underground poker games in the country, the film is full of flash and glamor, and the editing of high stake sequences both at the table and beyond it is razor sharp.

But Sorkin does not simply allow the film to be about the extravagance of the poker. Every part of the story builds the character of Molly Bloom in deliciously dynamic feminist fashion. Much of the conflict of the story comes from toxic men and their abuse of power, such as when Bloom’s day job boss, who initially started the poker game, forces her to work for free because he thinks she’s making too much off of tips from the game.

Yet, this conflict adds to the central dilemma at Bloom’s core. She was nearly an Olympic skier until sustaining a devastating injury, and, ever since, or maybe even much earlier from her father’s tough parenting, she’s been searching for identity. The structure of the film revolves around this search, in that Bloom is portrayed at her highest when the games are going well and the players respect her, but that high only leads her to overcompensate and endanger what defines her — a structurally brilliant ebb and flow of character development.

Bloom is so well-defined and well-rounded, but it’s difficult to imagine her in the hands of anyone other than Jessica Chastain. Bloom narrates throughout the movie — a surprising move that somehow works, in part because the narration is edited so smoothly into the rhythm of the pacing, but largely because of Chastain’s vigorous line delivery.

When on screen, Chastain manages the tricky balancing act of channeling the spark of Sorkin’s dialogue while also shaping a character that feels naturally lived in. And as the film comes to an end and Chastain completely owns the character’s climactic moment, we truly feel for Bloom on an unexpected emotional level.

While it may not have held a stylistic flair quite like David Fincher’s The Social Network, Molly’s Game showcases Sorkin’s undoubtable directorial ability to translate the page into a magnetic visual story. But even regardless of that, the film is a platform upon which Jessica Chastain reasserts herself as one of the most powerful actresses working today.

Grade: B+

 

Featured image via Michael Gibson/STX Entertainment.

‘The Greatest Showman’ Review: Too showy and never great

It’s never a great sign when many aspects of a film have been done better elsewhere, which is the case with the Hugh Jackman-starring musical The Greatest Showman

In it, Jackman plays P.T. Barnum, a showman in the late 1800s, and he’s unsurprisingly charming. But Jackman has played almost this exact role before with far more complexity and emotional vigor in The Prestige. If one has seen the Christopher Nolan film, it’s difficult to watch The Greatest Showman without thinking of it.

Television spots will also make sure that the general public knows that the songwriters on this film are the Oscar-winning duo behind La La Land. And while there are some rousing numbers, such as the popular “This Is Me,” the music never really plants itself in viewers’ minds as each piece feels overdone and jarringly anachronistic. The seemingly key ingredients that the duo is missing are the musical help of the masterful Justin Hurwitz, composer of La La Land, and a good story.

The music seems to end up emotionally manipulative because the story asks the songs to do the leg work. When key character development is meant to occur, we’re asked to accept it in the form of a song. This can occasionally work when the song is beyond exceptional, such as the gleefully playful and vulnerable “A Lovely Night” or the heart-wrenching “Audition (The Fools Who Dream),” both from La La Land. But no song here reaches that kind of level, resulting in what is meant to be an emotional journey falling flat.

“This Is Me” comes close, but that song leads to another issue with the film, which posits itself as a celebration of humanity through outcasts and those who’ve been othered. But, outside of the song, the film never takes the point of view of those characters nor develops them thoroughly. At one point, one of them professes his appreciation for the “family” that Barnum has built. Yet, we haven’t seen much of this family in the first place and we’ve seen too much of Barnum treating them poorly for a redemption to be earned, or for its purported celebration to be earned either.

Strangely, though, it’s difficult to entirely hate the film. It’s not consistently visually dazzling, but it has its moments of pure wonder amid colorful, eye-popping costumes and sets. To go along with that, there’s an undercurrent of a struggle for happiness in every storyline, which latches on, at least loosely. And Zendaya stands out with the most lived-in and genuinely felt performance.

If anything, The Greatest Showman is a film that can bring families to a show, just as Barnum did. That’s worth something.

Grade: C-

 

Featured image 20th Century Fox.

‘The Shape of Water’ Review: A fantasy as rich emotionally as it is visually

When a film has a fantastical premise, it must naturalize that concept in order to sell it to an audience that doesn’t come from that world. It’s an achievement that’s often underappreciated and overlooked, but, when done well, it can result in cinematic magic.

Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water follows Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute woman working in an underground government facility, and the facility’s captured amphibian man (Doug Jones) with whom she falls in love. And due to cohesive, visually beautiful and thematically rich work from all departments, the film is perhaps the epitome of that kind of magic.

The most emotionally moving layer of The Shape of Water is its theme of the other. del Toro and co-writer Vanessa Taylor pace out Elisa’s growing attachment to the creature so smoothly and precisely, and center it on moments personally meaningful to the characters. The creature is a being that doesn’t communicate with language the way humans do and grows a bond with Elisa through action and sign language. And in a stunning scene from Hawkins, Elisa explains that she feels so close to this creature because he can’t understand that she’s mute — or how she is, as she says, “incomplete.”

The framing of character, mainly in regard to Elisa, but also in how the same might be true for the creature, grabs the viewer’s heart with full force as it relies on vulnerability forced upon these two by a world unaccepting. The scenes with only these two are transcendent, concoctions of Alexandre Desplat’s floating score, Dan Laustsen’s swimming cinematography, visually arresting craft work from the likes of makeup and production design, and just the beauty of the concept of the moments in the first place.

Much of it wouldn’t work, though, if Sally Hawkins weren’t a powerhouse. Dialogue can often be a cop out in explaining a character’s traits and motivations, so the fact that we understand Elisa as well as we do any other character in film this year is an accomplishment nearly beyond words. Hawkins leverages physicality, not just in sign language, but in how she signs, in how her eyes communicate with the other character in the scene, in how she moves through rooms and hallways with a levity and wonder that tell us exactly what Elisa is thinking.

Yet, the rest of the cast is also magnificent. Richard Jenkins’ performance as Giles is lived in, an almost foil to Hawkins’ mute character as his is full of words. But we get the same sense — of course, individualized in its specifics — of how Giles himself feels incomplete, of how he’s been othered. And his chemistry with Hawkins is just delightful, resulting in an onscreen friendship that is so depthful and lovely.

Michael Shannon also thrives as the film’s antagonist, Richard Strickland. For some storytellers, there might’ve been an inclination to offer Strickland less development than he receives here, and it would’ve been understandable, which is why it’s so refreshing that del Toro and Taylor dive deep into his psychology. We get a sense of his motivations and see those expanded upon, and Shannon’s growling sneer is the perfect device to take it all even further.

In fact, there’s so much going on in every minute of The Shape of Water. Beneath everything, Guillermo del Toro offers a love letter to cinema of the past, similarly to La La Land, and two particular scenes, one being a tender musical ode and the other a striking and gritty noir sequence, are delicious.

But what sticks with us about this film is that empathy that’s offered to its characters. The visuals are stunning — no one does fantasy and truly sells it and layers it into every corner of the frame quite like del Toro — but those visuals are even more memorable because of the tone of empathy that del Toro injects into it all.

The Shape of Water asks us to care for one another, to listen to those who feel incomplete and not only help them feel otherwise, but fully support the life they want to live. And that is a kind of story worth championing.

Grade: B+

 

Featured image via Fox Searchlight Pictures.

‘Hostiles’ Review: A haunting, meditative Western ruminating on duty and hatred

Great contemporary Westerns are few and far in between. They either come from a big time director like Quentin Tarantino with Django Unchained, are remade from classics like the Coens’ True Grit and James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma or strike at just the right time like David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water.

Writer-director Scott Cooper has neared the genre with the tangentially related Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace, so it’s not much of a surprise that he’s the next to deliver.

Hostiles, following Captain Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale) as he escorts Cheyenne chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) across the country despite hating him for killing many of his comrades, is brutal from minute one until the very end. But the brutality, the soul crushing violence serves narrative purpose. The film ruminates on the hatred that builds between these intruding white men and the Native Americans fighting for their lands, and Cooper pulls off a tricky moral balance in placing a white man, full of hate, at the head of his story.

Cooper evokes empathy for Blocker and for Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike) through the unfathomable violence that we see them encounter, while periodically and carefully invoking a sense of history to temper viewers’ full allegiance to these characters and force audiences to confront the long term, less visible violence that Yellow Hawk, his family and his people have faced.

The turn of Blocker’s morality is a fascinating one. Another of the underlying themes of the film is in how we follow duty, where duty leads us and where duty ends. The army men are often given direct orders to further the genocide of the Native Americans, and Blocker believes that this separates him from the others who just kill to kill.

But in taking on a duty that is in such direct tension with his hatred, one that the film contextualizes with violence, Blocker almost becomes like the audience, slowly forced to confront his shortsightedness of simply following duty ordered by men — and Cooper’s climactic moment for Blocker is precise and perfect in regard to the character’s arc.

Hostiles is slow and meditative, but there’s still a fire in its pacing. The beats are perfectly doled out and hit hard, creating a pulsating feel to the film’s progression. And when those moments hit, they’re shot hauntingly by cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, whether that be in low angle close-ups of broken men or in Deakins-esque long shots of heart-wrenching sights. Layer in Max Richter’s swelling score, and the film becomes emotionally overwhelming in a very effective way.

At times, though, Cooper does overwrite beats. So much of Hostiles works, and sticks with us long after we’ve left the theater, because of how quiet and subtle it all is — and it seems that Cooper is, sometimes, not confident in his ability to sell those quiet moments, causing him to indulge in laying out his point a bit too clearly.

But even then, that doesn’t become much of an issue due to every single actor performing at the top of their game. Rosamund Pike plays the character who encounters the most, and the most shocking tragedy in the film, and she turns all of herself over to the role to portray the trauma that the violence causes. Wes Studi’s role is, in terms of dialogue, small, but Cooper often frames him in close-up and Studi commands the screen.

And Christian Bale turns in one of his greatest performances, which is saying something when considering the career that he’s had. Similarly to Studi, Bale is riveting in his quietude, as he’s somehow able to portray his character’s interiority without saying a word. And when he speaks, it’s often soft and subdued, but there’s a consistent underlying intensity, achieved through how Bale interacts physically with his counterpart in the scene and how he often pushes the emotional work from his mouth to his eyes. It’s truly the sign of a master, and it’s a performance that renders Hostiles a brilliant Western.

Grade: A-

 

Featured image via Entertainment Studios.

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