Ava (2020) Review

 rating: ****

the story: A hitwoman is targeted for elimination by an associate who views her as a liability.

review: Here’s a movie I felt compelled to review based on the idiotic reviews I’ve so far seen for it. They seem fixated on its familiar plot. You can boil even the most innovative plot to something familiar. In this case the selling point is absolutely Jessica Chastain as the title character. Of course it is. To even begin to suggest anything else is to completely fail to comprehend the art of filmmaking.

But if you really want to boil it down, Ava could be called the Jessica Chastain John Wick. What made John Wick so much fun was how it helped viewers see Keanu Reeves as exciting again. Reeves has been pretty good at finding defining roles over the years. He’s got three recognizable franchises under his belt at this point. Ava was never going to be as popular as John Wick, for the same reason that Chastain doesn’t have the same kind of career as Reeves. It’s arguably tougher now than in Hollywood’s golden age for actresses. When it’s gotten tougher for actors in general to stand out in a blockbuster-saturated era (which has actually made 2020 refreshing, with so many blockbusters relocated away), women will especially struggle for attention. You have a few that critics can’t seem to get enough of, and then you have ones like Chastain and Cate Blanchett who more often than not are taken for granted.

Simply put, if this were an earlier era, it’d be a lot harder to say “blah, another Katherine Hepburn movie” (fully aware as I am that even Hepburn could be taken for granted, but the greater point here being Hepburn is a widely acknowledged cinematic treasure, and Chastain is not). The fact that Ava is a Chastain movie is absolutely itself a good enough reason to pay attention.

It’s like the John Wick version of her best movie(s) The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, if anything. As much attention is given to her professional problems (and prowess) as her domestic problems. This is a good year, if anything, for human women action stars, counting Blake Lively’s Rhythm Section. And while Lively is very human in all aspects, Chastain is given no room for doubt in her ability to survive a brutal fight, even if little space is even given how much her background hurts her, and the family she had to leave behind.

So the perceived limitations critics see in Ava are quite calculated. It’s a movie bold enough to let us know what we need to know but not dwell on it, and have flashy elements but not dwell on them.

The other reason I had to catch it was Colin Farrell, who costars as the guy who decides Chastain has become a liability. He shows flashes of real passion, something Farrell usually keeps below the surface. It’s one of his villainous roles, and yet another that also proves his utter lack of vanity, which is what has continually cost him mass appeal (early in his career, for instance, Farrell exhibited few qualms to looking less obviously heroic than his more famous costars, Tom Cruise in Minority Report and Bruce Willis in Hart’s War). It’s a great role at this point in his career.

Chastain’s ally against Farrell is John Malkovich, who gets to have an epic fight scene but also the kind of death that leaves you guessing until the end. Her mom is Geena Davis, and the one weak acting link is Common as her ex-lover. I don’t know why Common is so common.

If the problem is that it confounds expectations, then that’s a very good one for Ava to have. When people get around to appreciating Chastain, it ought to be remembered as the kind of thing only she could pull off.

The Beguiled (2017)

rating: ****

the story: A Union soldier ends up resting in a house full of Southern belles.

what it's all about: The story began as a book (1966's A Painted Devil by Thomas Cullinan) and then a Clint Eastwood film in 1971.  Sofia Coppola turned it into her sixth feature film in 2017.  It seems befitting for the director of The Virgin Suicides.  And also the star of Miss Julie, Colin Farrell.

Critics seem to have dismissed it as a mostly unnecessary duplication of Eastwood's film.  This is odd, as Eastwood's film really has no lasting cultural legacy.  You can tell when critics can't come up with a better way to dismiss a movie when they start referencing stuff they probably had to research in order to talk about, or otherwise material the general public has never heard of. 

At any rate, I think, as a movie layman, that The Beguiled works quite well, especially in relation to Coppola and Farrell's back catalog.  Coppola's first movie, The Virgin Suicides, was about a brood of sisters who, ah, beguile the neighborhood boys who can't understand what happens to them.  Farrell and Jessica Chastain matched wits in Liv Ullmann's Miss Julie, a 2014 adaptation of the August Strindberg play; it's Chastain who dominates Farrell in that one, although there ends up being a fair amount of blame to go around in how it ends.

Likewise, Farrell is both criminal and victim in The Beguiled.  His Union soldier can't help but exude charm amongst the women he becomes surrounded by, and he leads basically all of them on.  But this ends up backfiring on him when he chooses one of them and by default betrays the rest of them, which leads to...ah, well, nothing good. 

The women are led by a few heavy hitters: Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning, and Coppola veteran (she appeared in Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette) Kirsten Dunst.  Between Kidman's and Dunst's characters, Farrell has the most trouble.  He arrives at their doorstep with an injured leg, and reinjures it when Dunst sends him tumbling down a stairway.  Kidman makes the decision to amputate it, believing she has no other choice.  Farrell interprets it as a spiteful gesture. 

In Miss Julie, it's Chastain who becomes totally unhinged; in Beguiled it's Farrell (I kind of wish it had been Chastain, rather than Kidman, who played the matriarch, for that reason alone).  It occasions his best scenes in the movie, anyway.  Kidman channels her Cold Mountain performance; Dunst is again her classic shrinking violet, a role that thrust her to prominence early in the millennium (the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, where she portrayed Mary Jane Watson), and as in her previous Coppola collaborations, she again finds new ways to present it.

The story itself must be considered fascinating.  Even if you fault Farrell for his fate, you can't say it's justified.  In some ways it seems a rebuke from Coppola for the exaggerated emotions running rampant today.  And it can't be a mistake that it's a Civil War drama, in an age where the United States seems to be teetering on schism once again. 

It's a contemplative drama well worth relishing, and a sobering reflection on the battles of the sexes.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)

rating: ****

the story: New Scamander travels to New York with a briefcase full of magical creatures, and things kind of spiral out of control from there.

what it's all about: In a lot of ways, judging the Harry Potter movies (all eight of them) was always going to be a tough proposition.  There's a diehard subculture that believes movie adaptations by definition are inferior to their book counterparts.  Actually, let me reword that: the prevailing opinion is that the book is always better than the movie.  It's a persistent prejudice, one that never really takes into account the unique benefits of both mediums.  To anyone who goes along with this line of reasoning, try to watch a movie based on a play.  If it's not a musical, and particularly if it was done years ago, you'll find "staginess" in the movie that would otherwise not be there.  That's the result of being excessively faithful to one version of a story at the expense of a different and wholly unique experience.  What works on the stage works that way because of the particular confines of the stage, which do not exist in movies. 

My point being, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them may in fact be the first real chance we get at how well the world of Harry Potter works in movies.  It's only too appropriate that the movie is set in America, which is where the majority of moviegoers around the world expect blockbuster movies to be set.  That's just one of the things it kind of automatically have going for it.  But there's also the threat of franchise fatigue.  Fans don't like to admit such a thing exists.  But you only have to look at the muted reception of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy to see it in action.  If these movies had been released right after his highly acclaimed and enthusiastically received Lord of the Rings trilogy, fans would have reacted to them very differently.  Franchise fatigue is a thing that happens mostly when fans have...moved on to something else.  It's no surprise that the Star Wars prequels were relative failures when Star Wars-scale blockbusters suddenly happened all the time (including Jackson's Lord of the Rings, and yes, the Harry Potter series).  But fans will attribute it to declining quality.

And actually, no matter how much lenience fans gave J.K. Rowling when she started to vastly increase the page-count of her books (the strain most showed in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the second giant-size entry, and also the first one in the series directed by David Yates in the film adaptations, which will be important later in this review), this blind love has declined in recent years, as she's begun a career writing books specifically for adults, none of which (there have been four, including three detective stories, which will also be important later in this review).  This is relevant, because of course Rowling wrote the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts, the first full-length story she's written in this series since 2007's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (the book).

So there's no telling how enthusiastic fans, or critics, will be with this movie.  But they should be pretty ecstatic, because it's a brilliant success, like the stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which debuted this past summer, an unexpected continuation as well as restatement of everything that worked so well about Harry Potter the first time.

The story revolves on a vaguely familiar character, the author of a textbook Rowling released in the real world, for charity, but more importantly, the lone Brit in the story, who's an instant connection to Hogwarts lore even though he's technically off entirely on his own.  In a lot of ways, though, Rowling takes great pains to paint a portrait of the intrepid Newt Scamander very much in the mold of the beloved Rubeus Hagrid, the beloved groundskeeper portrayed by Robbie Coltrane in the movies, an outsider befriended by Dumbledore with a great love for magical creatures.  But make no mistake: Newt is no Hagrid.  In a lot of ways, he's what Harry Potter would have become if he hadn't found such stolid friends in Hermione and Ron, a sensitive soul with a fierce devotion to what he believes in, and an unwillingness to open up easily to others, fearing they just won't understand.

But the movie quickly pushes Newt in the direction of two helpful people, one being an American witch and the other a No-Maj, which is the American term for muggles.  (Some critics have suggested that "No-Maj" is a clumsy term, but anyone who grew up with the Magi of the Bible, or heard a similar term in the Mummy movies featuring Brendan Fraser shouldn't have any problem accepting it.)  Both of these characters add a wealth of inspiration to the movie, and help represent the uniquely American aspects of the movie.  In their own ways, they represent Newt's Hermione (someone who knows what's the what) and Ron (a charming bumbler) without consciously evoking them.  If I hadn't just pointed it out, I doubt you'd make the connections (not to insult you or anything).

And actually, Katherine Waterston's Tina Goldstein is more like Rowling's Robin from her Cormoran Strike mysteries, a woman who enjoys the thrill of the chase, even if it sometimes gets her into trouble.  Dan Fogler's Jacob Kowalski is so protoptypically American he's also fat, which is what most people around the world (and quite a few Americans) have assumed is the standard model for years, even though American movies rarely reflect that (Paul Blart, Mall Cop not withstanding).  His most interesting arc in the movie actually has nothing to do with Newt or Tina, but rather Tina's sister Queenie, played by Fine Frenzy, who would be a dead ringer for Idina Menzel.  Queenie is mesmerized by Jacob, the first No-Maj she's ever known.  The movie is actually about breaking through old modes of thought, and this is the easiest way it's demonstrated, and ends up finishing out the movie, too, so that you could very easily watch Fantastic Beasts as a completely standalone experience, whether or not subsequent sequels (there are four projected) picks up their story.

But these are all supporting players; Eddie Redmayne is, well, the main event.  He's developed a reputation lately of being a mercurial performer, able to slip into the unlikeliest roles, whether Stephen Hawking in 2014's Theory of Everything or a transgendered woman in 2015's The Danish Girl.  In Fantastic Beasts he brings almost lyrical physicality to the role of Newt Scamander, especially in a sequence where he coaxes a particularly troublesome creature back under control.  He brings effortless charm to Newt, which is the crux of the movie's appeal, and how it sells further exploits into the world of Harry Potter as something that doesn't actually need Harry.  In other words, he achieves the unthinkable.

There are other notable performances: Ezra Miller as the conflicted Credence (more on this later), Jon Voight as Henry Shaw Sr., Ron Perlman as Gnarlak, and Samantha Morton as Mary Lou, each of whom make indelible marks on fleshing out the American nature of the story.  (The whole concept of the Second-Salemers is brilliant, addressing something that was missing in Harry Potter previously, a tangible connection to the past.)  They have limited parts to play, so I won't spend too much time talking about them.

More notable is Colin Farrell as Percival Graves.  I would've watched this movie even if I wasn't already a fan of Harry Potter (and Rowling), because I've been a fan of Farrell's for nearly a decade now.  The Irish actor ironically plays an American in this one, as he has for the vast majority of his roles.  Critics have been silent about his appearance, if not dismissive, but he brings to Fantastic Beasts what he brings to all his movies: a distinct, brooding presence.  It's not just the eyebrows.  Farrell tends to inhabit all his characters will three dimensions.  This is not the first time he's spent the majority of his screen-time more or less silent (Dead Man Down, or even Miami Vice, or the most artistic example, The New World).  His role as Graves is the most direct reflection of the deeper ramifications running through Fantastic Beasts, and by the time the movie ends it's easy enough to understand why (I'm not going to spoil that, but I would give those who know reason enough to keep an open mind; this is hardly the first time we've been asked to ignore the personal life of someone making movies, and not even the hardest one to stomach, which I would say is the career of Roman Polanski).  Graves is almost Snape done all in one movie, but in the way fans expected rather than what Rowling eventually gave them.  His relationship with Credence is a dark reflection of Newt's with Jacob, and the film greatly benefits from the contrast.  I think Farrell is a powerful asset to the movie, and one of the few actors who could've pulled off such a tricky role.

Yates proves a deft hand as director once again.  By the time he started directing Harry Potter movies, the material had existed so long it almost didn't matter who was at the helm anymore, but this is an assumption he calmly busts with Fantastic Beasts.  Like the new look at Harry Potter in general, he proves that he really is as competent, and imaginative, as the movies might have only had fans think.  Matching him is Rowling, who proves she wasn't just doing this to further cash-in on her biggest success to date (now that there's been a lot of other stuff, too).  Some critics have said Fantastic Beasts reveals the debt she owes Roald Dahl, which is true, but there's also L. Frank Baum, too, anyone who's done truly imaginative work in the grand tradition Rowling continues, really.  There's even some Jumanji in there!

Where Yates proves that he was capable adapting even questionable material (his streamlined and incredibly effective improvement on Order of the Phoenix), Rowling demonstrates what she's learned since leaving behind the comforts of telling epic adventures one school year at a time.  If there are those who begin to suspect a lot of Harry Potter storytelling was somewhat convenient, fans can watch Fantastic Beasts and finally see for themselves that Rowling needs no such crutches.  This is a lot like the free-form nature of Deathly Hallows (both the book and movies) taken to its next logical extension.

In short (!), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is pretty fantastic.

For those who became Colin Farrell fans after Saving Mr. Banks

Suppose you've just seen Saving Mr. Banks, the new movie based on the creation of Disney's Mary Poppins and you really enjoyed Colin Farrell's performance as P.L. Travers' dad.  Perhaps you're now wondering, where has this actor been all this time?

It's true that Travers Goff is a new kind of role for Farrell, but he's been this consistently good for ages, since Tigerland, really, the movie where Hollywood discovered him.  He gives a performance of considerable depth in Banks, sure, and it's probably his most romantic role in a mainstream movie ever, certainly where he wasn't top-billed (although his part as one of three Heath Ledger stand-ins in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus would give that title a run for its money).  (It's also a perfect lead-in to his upcoming Winter's Tale.)

Truth in fact, he's my favorite actor, but this is only because Farrell has consistently impressed me, even when the material around him needs a little more time to appreciate than his own work.  Critics like him, too, although the form his career has taken to date has made it hard for them to admit it, except for the Golden Globe he won for In Bruges.

That's actually the movie I'd suggest you start with, post-Banks.  He plays a mournful assassin, troubled by the accidental shouting of a child.  It presents a comparable display of his impressive full range.

So far, then, Saving Mr. Banks and In Bruges.  What else?  It's hard for me to not say everything else, but I'm trying to be objective here, okay, trying to keep his career open.

Let's go back to the beginning, then, with Tigerland, where he plays a noncomformist Army recruit during the Vietnam War, giving equal doses of hope and hell to those around him.  His early Hollywood roles after this struggled to expand on a performance that already said everything there was to know about that particular facet of his talent.

Try The New World next.  It's his John Smith in the Terrence Malick version of Pocahontas.  It's perhaps the defining role of Farrell's famous soulful eyes, nearly silent (as with all Malick films) but none the worse for it.

Another strictly bouncy performance of whimsy (if you don't want him in a superhero movie, Daredevil) is featured Ask the Dust, where he plays a struggling writer who falls in love with a woman as contentious as he is.

That's Saving Mr. Banks, In Bruges, Tigerland, The New World, and Ask the Dust.  Anything else?  Again, being a big fan already makes it hard for me to limit myself.  One of the least popular movies ever also happens to be my favorite ever, Alexander, which to my mind is Farrell's most important performance to date.  If you want to take one last suggestion from me, that's it.  As far as I'm concerned, you'd start there, but perhaps it's a better place to finish.  By this point you will probably want to just see all of his movies anyway...

Seven Psychopaths

****

directed by: Martin McDonagh
starring: Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, Tom Waits, Olga Kurylenko, Abbie Cornish, Zeljko Ivanek, Harry Dean Stanton, Kevin Corrigan, Gabourey Sidibe

Released in 2012.

Seven Psychopaths could very easily be mistaken for the continuing series of movies that wish very badly they were directed by Quentin Tarantino.  Except, much like Joe Carnahan's movies, this is at worst a variation of a Tarantino flick.  It's a film by Martin McDonagh, and that's becoming a thing now, after this and In Bruges.

Both star Colin Farrell, although aside from gunplay there's very little else that's overtly similar between them, other than confident and spectacular filmmaking on a fairly intimate level.  Bruges was about a hitman who felt great remorse after the accidental murder of a little kid.  Psychopaths is about a writer who's trying to work on a new story, but his subject matter has inadvertently drawn him into the very life he's been trying to evoke.  The writer is Farrell, the friend who causes the latter is Sam Rockwell.  If you know Rockwell at all, and you should, that part should more or less explain itself.

It's the structure that really makes the movie pop.  McDonagh allows us to follow the characters Farrell is writing, and they have terrifically compelling narratives all their own, and even when you think the movie's done with them it surprises you again by bringing them back.  Part of that is because at least one of the characters is drawn from the web Farrell is being drawn into, an acquaintance played by Christopher Walken.  Walken is in top form.  He's got a famously deadpan expression, but he knows how to sell a role because hardly anyone delivers a line like he does.  I'll bet that anyone who just knows the name of the film and that Walken (not to mention Rockwell) appears in it will already think they know everything they need to know.

And yet the true genius of McDonagh is that he subverts every expectation.  He knows and you know because that's one of the themes, what Farrell's writer tries to do and Rockwell's main function is to try and embody the reverse.  Woody Harrelson is another presence that begs the boundaries of these expectations.

It's just this side of brilliant.

One of the things I look for in any movie that is or approaches brilliant is the ability to sneak in actors as good as the ones anyone will know appears in the movie in supporting roles.  Here the list includes Olga Kurylenko (proving once again she's not just a pretty face), Kevin Corrigan, and Harry Dean Stanton, who has made a career of these kinds of roles.  There's also Tom Waits, better known for his music, making another periodic movie appearance.  His most recent role was in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.  His appearance here is as similar as he could get.  It's also worth noting that the late Heath Ledger based his Joker in The Dark Knight on Waits.  Ledger's Joker is the iconic psychopath of modern cinema lore.  It stands to figure that Waits would have to be featured in a movie with that term in its title.

If you're another of those film fans like me who enjoyed the chaos of the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading, this is an experience you'll definitely enjoy.  Farrell is restrained, for the most part, but he loses his kit at least once, and that may be worth seeing right there.

Alexander

*****

directed by: Oliver Stone
starring: Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Anthony Hopkins, Jared Leto, Rosario Dawson, Christopher Plummer, Jonathan Rhys Meyers

Released in 2004.

This is my favorite movie.  Oliver Stone is among my favorite directors and Colin Farrell is my favorite actor.  If a convergence of Stone and Farrell weren't enough, the movie itself exactly fits the parameters for everything I want from a movie.  It has an excellent cast, it knows what to do with that cast, the characters are compelling and relevant in relation to each other, and the scope of the narrative is broad and intimate at the same time.

Some of this, again, is reflected by the talent assembled.  Stone made his name as a director who was interested in exploring big issues on a small (though epic) scale.  Alexander is a movie about Alexander the Great, the Macedonian conqueror who came as close to ruling the known world as anyone.  He died young, his empire was broken back into the pieces he had briefly united, and in 2004 no one seemed to really like the movie Stone made about him.  Tough break.  But nice try!

Stone's vision is all about the motivations that inspired his famous subject, chief among them his parents.  Philip was not only his immediate predecessor in the conquering game, but Alexander's father, who found it remarkably easy to both embrace and reject his son before his assassination.  Olympias surely fascinated Philip at some point, but she became a liability as he continued to formulate his plans. She instead found lasting influence through her son, "my avenger," as she calls Alexander at one point. Kilmer has perhaps his last great role, almost unrecognizable behind woolly hair and a missing eye, portraying Philip, while Jolie's accent as Olympias makes a dubious impression on some but is ideal in distinguishing her unmistakable appeal.  To my mind, it's a defining role for her.

Farrell is always the soulful loner caught in someone else's story.  This is probably not how most historians choose to view Alexander the Great, but as Alexander the man, Farrell is once again firmly in command of the screen, forced to exert himself the more those around him doubt his methods.  He's muted around Jolie, hopeful around Kilmer.  As a warrior, he's every bit the match for Alexander's own inspiration, Achilles, portrayed in Troy by Brad Pitt.

Much of what anyone knows about Alexander is its depiction of homosexuality, as embodied by Farrell's interactions with Jared Leto's Hephaistion, Alexander's own Patroclus (who was Achilles' favorite).  The story here is really about Alexander's reasoned passion.  The less it becomes reasonable, the more he appears to spiral out of control.  So of course Hephaistion dies before the end.

Alexander learns his reasoned passion from Christopher Plummer's Aristotle, the famed philosopher.  It's always a good thing to have Plummer involved, and he's the rare actor who becomes more dignified with age.  Anthony Hopkins is another.  He narrates the film as Ptolemy, who served with Alexander and then later succeeded him as patriarch of Egypt.  Some might find this aspect of the film to be pedantic, but I like perspective.  Stone already provides plenty of that, but Ptolemy exists to ensure that none of it is overlooked, the broad scope, and to remind the viewer that Alexander was indeed great, even if most of what happens in the film is about what undermines his greatness.

In smaller roles are Rosario Dawson as Roxana, the "barbarian" bride Alexander takes on his travels, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Cassander, one of many military advisers who don't share Alexander's vision.

Also significantly adding to the movie is the score from Vangelis, appropriately sweeping in nature and evocative of the momentous life being examined.

There are three cuts of the film: the original theatrical cut, the director's cut, and Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut, which came a few years later.  Each succeeding version seeks to guide the viewer into an easier journey along Stone's central vision, adding and resequencing scenes.