The Prestige (2006) Review

rating: ****

the story: Rival magicians push each other to dangerous limits.

review: I’ve had, of all Christopher Nolan’s films, the most difficulty appreciating The Prestige. For me it’s the most desperate of his efforts.

Which is kind of the point.

Following Memento there was tremendous pressure to follow it up with something equally compelling. With his next two films, actually, next three films, including Batman Begins (but that’s another matter entirely), Nolan adapted the work of others rather than conjure his own magic. Insomnia adapted a Swedish film, The Prestige a book. Insomnia, in hindsight, seems to lack the typical Nolan ambition entirely. It is, rather, “merely” Nolan playing, for the first time, as a member of the Hollywood establishment, giving two well-known actors, Al Pacino and Robin Williams, roles that instantly defined that particular stage of their careers. It was atmospheric, but it was very much an actor’s showcase.

The Prestige is the bridge. It is both an actor’s showcase and an obvious return to Nolan’s own brand of magic. 

And deliberately so. I think he took the course he did to reach this point, and beyond it, quite deliberately. Nolan rose to prominence a few years after M. Night Shyamalan’s own breakthroughs. But Shyamalan was quickly, and all but permanently, dismissed as an obvious act, always, at least perceptually, relying on a twist ending to sell his concepts. Nolan didn’t want to be seen as a gimmick filmmaker. So he first stepped away, and then leaned heavily into it.

That’s the whole point of The Prestige, to put a big emphasis on the popular perception of his work.

The story of the movie revolves around rival magicians who very nearly stop at nothing to achieve their magic. In fact, terrible sacrifice, on both their behalves, are revealed as the story reaches its climax. And again, that’s the whole point, but then it’s also in the manner in which they do it, the lengths, and the contrasts between them, they are willing to go.

Which is to say, Nolan is using this film to convey to the audience that he knows what they expect of him, and he is not going to be what they think he is. At least until Inception, anyway, when he will weave his magic in an entirely different manner.

Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman couldn’t possibly do a better job representing all this. They are a new breed of actor, and this is the moment in which they cast off all doubt. They are surrounded by other remarkable performers: Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Piper Perabo, David Bowie, even Andy Serkis, back when he was still best known for motion-capture performances. It takes a bold director to build such a cast, which is itself part of the magic of this movie.

Watching Bale and Jackman duel, learning their awful secrets, Jackman’s final confession (“It was the look on their faces”), emphasizing all over again their contrasts, what motivated them, it’s like another parable, a message well beyond the magic: Is the sacrifice worth it? Or do you become, perhaps, a monster capable of rationalizing anything? 

So when Nolan is ready, four years later, to reveal his own brand of magic again, the stakes have been raised considerably. And he has been working out of that playbook ever since. That’s only possible if he’s willing to sacrifice what came before, that budding artist, the one everyone thought they had figured out. And, well, of course it’s sleight-of-hand.

So yeah, I dig it.

Memento (2001) Review

rating: *****

the story: Guy with memory issues tracks down clues to his wife’s killer.

review: Yeah, I was one of those people who got caught up in Christopher Nolan thanks to Memento, that movie with the apparently gimmicky backwards narrative. I watched his debut feature, Following, which is on the whole fairly similar (an ending that rewrites the whole story), which confirmed for me what I thought of Nolan’s filmmaking. I didn’t actually catch his third movie, Insomnia, until a few years after it was released. I caught back up with him thanks to Batman. I actually thought the other magician rivalry movie from 2006, The Illusionist, was better, even though I enjoyed The Prestige. It wasn’t until Inception (okay, The Dark Knight, which gave me whole new reasons to appreciate Nolan and replaced Memento as my favorite Nolan) that I saw him as truly capable of living up to the promise of Memento as I originally understood his talent.

So I thought pretty highly of it. But it’s not necessarily a movie I went out of my way, in the next twenty years, to revisit.

So watching it again, especially with those additional years and all the subsequent Nolan projects, was quite interesting. I ended up viewing its achievement differently.

It’s actually thanks to his most recent effort, Tenet. A lot of observers think Tenet was basically vastly overhyped. It was an especially strange year, 2020, and Nolan positioned Tenet to carry a lot of weight. A lot of people thought it would be Nolan’s first film to live up to Inception, which is to say it seemed to be so similar, at least as far as its premise looked. But then people actually saw it and they ended up thinking, that backwards time thing, it looked a lot like Memento.

Which is nonsense. The link between them, meanwhile, is real, but also very different than people imagine. Tenet is basically a story about threat prevention. It’s a complicated way to explore what it’s like to stop a tragedy before it happens. So it’s “about” time travel, which in this version looks like time running backwards.

So Memento, from this vantage point, looks different, too. Watching it again, I see it very differently. Maybe I just understand it better now. The whole story is a parable of using, or more accurately misusing, facts.

It’s an interesting thing to think about. We live in an age fraught with the application of facts: facts versus lies, facts as a totem of truth, of moral rectitude. But facts can be unreliable. Facts can in fact be lies. It’s in how they’re reached and how they’re applied that they become, well, dangerous.

And Nolan’s whole story, the way it unfolds, is a perfect testament to that. It doesn’t hurt that he tells it so well, that he has a cast so perfect to purpose, actors who seemingly could never top their roles in it, despite being so interesting: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano. I’ll give you a minute. Tell me one thing any of them did later that was nearly as magnetic. 

Yeah, didn’t think you could. Usually that’s what happens with actors in blockbusters. Later, when Nolan exclusively made blockbusters, he could afford to access actors whose careers were well-established, could pull away from his remarkable gravity, even conjure entire careers from it (Tom Hardy, the true miracle of Inception). Here at the beginning, it was a special kind of privilege to be trapped by it. Because they inhabit the truest form of classic.

This isn’t just a movie with a clever framework, it’s one that exhibits complete command of itself. That’s what defines the potential for greatness, if not greatness itself, why everyone still talks about Christopher Nolan, even if Memento itself seems somehow forgotten. It shouldn’t. If Nolan himself abandoned the relative small scale it represents for an endless series of grand visions, none of them would have been possible without Memento, quite literally. This is the portrait of an artist discovering the canvas. And filling it. And preparing to make that canvas even bigger, in the future. Same talent, different scale. 

You cannot appreciate Nolan, or the art of film itself, without due appreciation of Memento.

Waiting for the Barbarians (2020) Review

 rating: *****

the story: An allegorical tale about an imperial outpost and the magistrate trying to keep it moral.

review: Mark Rylance found himself a late-career critical favorite, but until Waiting for the Barbarians I hadn’t really found something to enjoy him in. In it he embodies a gentle morality that’s as magnetic as the forces he finds himself up against, namely villainous roles for Johnny Depp and Robert Pattinson.

Depp is particularly interesting, as he tends to be. Lately a pariah in Hollywood, it probably made it all the easier to accept roles like this one, at once the visually flourished look he tends to go for but also the same edge he brought to Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (which I imagine, as he was selecting projects, these two were chosen in quick succession of each other for that very reason, even though their contexts and thus impact are vastly different). And as interesting as he is, he knows he isn’t meant to be the star of this thing, and seems content to take that backseat.

He’s assisted, in both senses, by Pattinson, who shows up late into the movie as a kind of stand-in. Pattinson could not possibly do a better job of picking interesting projects. To see him show up for something like this is a further affirmation that he knows exactly what he’s doing with his career at this point.

But again, it’s Rylance at the core, Rylance for whom the audience is meant to, and easily so, care about, as he stands up to the unforgiving forces Depp and Pattinson represent, apparently losing everything in the process.

And in the process, Waiting becomes a sort of less heavy-handed Lawrence of Arabia, less a story about some interloping hero and more about a man just trying to do the right thing, and all the more effective when he seems to have failed miserably. That’s where Rylance is so easy to depend on, how effortlessly he embodies the role of martyr without being needlessly flashy about it, what makes the whole movie work so well, steeped heavily in an era that seems to have rejected a figure like Rylance, as presented here, could possibly hope to solve anyone’s problems, let alone his own.

I’d like to imagine in an earlier era Waiting for the Barbarians would have been hailed as an instant classic, gotten all the buzz and even the Oscars to prove it. I don’t mind championing it in lieu of such acclaim. Not at all.

True History of the Kelly Gang (2020) Review

rating: *****

the story: Mostly the sort of fictional history of Ned Kelly.

review: True History of the Kelly Gang is a bold piece of filmmaking. It doesn’t really matter if you think Ned Kelly was thug or hero, Australian rogue or patriot. This is the kind of movie that throws up all kinds of reasons why he ended up the way he did, but isn’t particularly concerned if you agree or even think it has conclusions to reach. It’s complicated. And that’s a good thing.

Obviously the big draw of 1917 was the illusion of a single cut, but George MacKay did a good job of helping keep things interesting. By the time he shows up as Ned, ripped to a lean core, he’s holding his own against a backdrop of better known talents including Charlie Hunnam and Nicholas Hoult. The star of the early movie is Russell Crowe, the nasty figure who spurs on a resentful young Ned, whose domineering mother and disgraced father set him on an uncertain path of immigrants reacting against a British establishment.

And the whole is a kaleidoscope of rough moments, poetic in their way, from the cheerful, profane tune Crowe sings about constables to the dresses the Kelly Gang dons just to throw off their opponents. This is no ordinary biopic. It isn’t as weird as you may have heard, either. But by the time Ned’s fate is discussed by ostentatious politicians you can see its grandeur well enough.

I’m not heavily versed in Kelly lore. I’ve seen the Heath Ledger version. That’s about as much as I knew before True History. Nothing’s sacred here. And that’s what makes it so interesting.

It’s the kind of filmmaking that can’t help but be memorable, in all the right ways.

End of Watch (2012) Review

rating: ****

the story: Partners on the police force find themselves embroiled in trouble.

review: Here’s another movie I was initially wowed by but eventually took for granted until a rewatch. Especially in 2020, in which End of Watch suddenly seems impossible. 

This is actually a cop movie in which the cops themselves decide to record their activities. This is after they have already been involved in a service-related shooting incident. And they can’t stay away from trouble. Imagine recommending this to someone outraged this past summer. I don’t understand why End of Watch was so easy to take for granted in 2012, never mind, part of the shift movies started taking, toward almost exclusively blockbusters for audiences and art films for critics. From that vantage point it’s inevitable for everything else to be lost in the shuffle.

And in the process Michael Peña’s career becomes narrowed down to a caricature. Peña is now that motormouth from the Ant-Man movies, which is a great spot, sure. Who else can pull that off? But Peña has so much more to offer. Between this, World Trade Center, Lions for Lambs, there’s a whole alternate film history where he’s a major star of great acclaim. Just not this one.

Jake Gyllenhaal, meanwhile, has a movie star career, but likewise if any of his films at all were better appreciated, he would himself be better appreciated. This is a guy who consistently makes good choices, some of the most interesting choices of any modern actor, and yet he gets little enough attention for any of it.

Combine both with the gritty tendencies of David Ayer, who soon enough for pigeonholed as the “urban chaos guy,” and easily enough dismissed, that he doesn’t get any love either. There are few enough directors whose work is distinctive enough, consistent, that you know what you’re going to get, that it is always going to be interesting. Ayer is one of those.

Frank Grillo is in the supporting cast. Eventually he found himself typecast as a thug, so it’s good to see him as an outright good guy. Anna Kendrick, David Harbour help round out the cast, among others.

But this is really a showcase for Peña, Gyllenhaal, Ayer, and a look at how wonderful, and awful, it is to be a cop.

Bee Movie (2007) Review

rating: ****

the story: A bee discovers that humans use honey.

review: The thing about Bee Movie is that it’s an animated movie that’s probably better appreciated by adults than by kids. It’s kind of the whole point.

For one thing, it’s probably going to end up the only time Jerry Seinfeld does an actual attempt at telling a story, rather than what he did for nine seasons of Seinfeld, “a show about nothing,” in which he poked fun at everyday foibles with no real concern whether he acting or sort of just waiting to deliver his stand-up material around a given cast of characters. I mean, I loved it, but no one, including Seinfeld himself, was ever going to argue that Seinfeld made any kind of effort to be an actor.

A lot of Bee Movie is a collection of gag material, too, but it ends up being an actual story, with a point an’ everything, and not just a point but a very good one. Seinfeld’s bee goes to trial to prevent humans from stealing honey. And this leads to bees no longer producing as much honey. And not so much pollinating. And suddenly it gets real.

It’s a morality tale. It’s about failing to see the interconnectedness of things, how in trying to rip one thing apart from another, it ends up being like that loose thread that unravels the whole sweater. This has huge applications for a modern world that no longer understands how much unraveling is really being done, that can’t distinguish between distinctions being made and losing the sweater in the process.

And it’s got Patrick Warburton! I don’t know, I’m always a sucker for the guy, ever since discovering him in Dave’s World. And John Goodman, making full use of his booming voice. Renee Zellweger kind of recedes into the animation (I think even she learned years later that her eyes are a huge part of her appeal when she tried to surgically change them). Also: Chris Rock. He’s Chris Rock. Hilarious minor role.

And Jerry Seinfeld. As a bee. It’s kind of a big deal. I loved the movie when I first saw it, and then eventually just thought of it as that movie where Jerry Seinfeld is a bee. But the whole thing absolutely works, and is worth celebrating.

Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) Review

rating: ****

the story: Bill & Ted, thirty years later, still trying to find the song that will change the world.

review: Here’s my reaction in a nutshell: Most excellent!

Bill & Ted Face the Music may end up the entry in the series that’s most easy to enjoy years down the road, the kind of experience the series has been chasing since the start, taking all the familiar elements and finally knowing exactly what to do with them.

The idea of time-traveling dimwitted wannabe rockers was a fine novelty, guaranteed to stand out, especially since when we first met them Bill & Ted were in high school, like so many other movie characters in the ‘80s. They gave off a similar vibe as Back to the Future, but less complicated, wackier, and as it turned out, Keanu Reeves had better movie star chops than Michael J. Fox. He went on, aside from everything else, to launch two additional franchises with The Matrix and John Wick. Which is virtually impossible. Usually the max is two. Even more usually, one. A lot of stars would be very happy just to have one, especially in the modern era, but many can’t even pull that off.

I don’t think Face the Music works off nostalgia alone. I think you could watch it with no prior knowledge of its two predecessors and it would still be satisfying. Even the callback gags aren’t difficult to parse, and there’s more than enough new gags built directly into the plot (Bill & Ted meeting future versions of themselves, couples therapy) that even if you don’t settle into the air guitars you’ll be fine.

Then there’s Kid Cudi being a time travel physics genius. There’s Dennis Caleb McCoy, who only gets better as the film progresses. There’s even the idea of Bill & Ted not even being the heroes, but knowing not to lean too heavily into that.

It works. It absolutely works. This is how you solidify a cult classic. By making a sequel that only further justifies that status. And pretty much replaces it.

Live by Night (2016) Review

rating: ****

the story: A Boston gangster is relocated to Tampa and finds unexpected complications in establishing himself.

review: Gangster movies are about as old as Hollywood itself, so well-established that it’s become increasingly difficult for new entries to find any real appreciation. It’s just assumed that everything’s already been seen and done, and if not, The Sopranos was too big a recent phenomenon to worry about what the movies might be doing, too. I think Sopranos spent a little too much time glorifying gangsters, the way Goodfellas did, the exact opposite of how human Donnie Brasco made them, the last time a movie made an impression.

Live by Night opts for an entirely new route. It actually makes gangsters potentially moral authorities.

Yeah. Based on the middle act of a historical trilogy from Dennis Lehane, Hollywood’s favorite author in the first decade of the millennium, Ben Affleck’s adaptation posits an Irish immigrant cleaning up a white supremacist scene by uniting all the undesirables under his empire. He has a black girlfriend (Zoe Saldana), his nemesis is a phony Christian proselytizer (Elle Fanning) and his biggest ally is her police chief father (Chris Cooper). He also wants to replace booze (about to become legal again) with gambling, when no one else sees the wisdom in it.

Like The Godfather, this is a story that doesn’t really dwell on whether or not the basic premise of gangsters is justifiable, but rather whether there is any semblance of honor in what they do. So we follow Affleck around as a hero. His enemies are the viewer’s enemies. His ideas are ideas we can get behind. 

So it’s interesting. Of course, the cast is pretty interesting. Brendan Gleeson’s also in it, Titus Welliver, guys who’re natural fits for this kind of movie. Clark Gregg is there, too, Sienna Miller. Fanning continues to be an inexplicably mature youthful screen presence, in perhaps one of her best roles. Affleck himself never goes out of his way to put the spotlight on himself. If anything, he’s finally found a role that allows him to be the star but also the casual screen presence that saw his best early material (Good Will Hunting, Shakespeare in Love), which often found him in supporting roles.

This is the sort of movie that doesn’t feel like it should be a big deal. But perhaps is for that very reason. It leaves a better impression that way. By not trying to be so impressive, it is. In an era bereft with flashy material, large and small, it’s a welcome digression.

2020 thru November

I keep doing these updates partly because I haven’t written actual reviews for all the new movies I’ve watched from the very strange 2020 movie year, but it’s worth keeping track of them before I settle on formal rankings (which I informally did in August, before watching a lot of what will be covered here). So here’s a summary of things I’ve so far caught:

Ava - Wonderful spotlight for Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell mixing action with drama.

Bad Boys For Life - Puts the spotlight firmly on Will Smith in this follow-up, Gemini Man without CGI shenanigans.

Birds of Prey And the Fabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn - Just the right amount of spunk.

Bloodshot - Better than a would-be superhero franchise starter has any right to be.

The Burnt Orange Heresy - Old school throwback featuring Elizabeth Debicki.

Capone - Tom Hardy in another sensational showcase.

Downhill - Hilarious and uncomfortable midlife Will Ferrell.

Emperor - Slave drama that diverges into fresh territory by dramatizing John Brown and focusing on a little-known true story around him.

The Gentlemen - An early favorite featuring an all star cast.

The Last Full Measure - Another old school drama that would’ve gotten far more attention previously, with an all star cast of aging Hollywood stars.

Legion - Critics seem positively allergic to Mickey Rourke, but his few scenes in this one absolutely emphasize all the right thought-provoking elements.

The New Mutants - Last of the original X-Men movies.

The Night Clerk - Yet another old school Hollywood production that deserves greater and better attention.

The Rhythm Section - Blake Lively has turned into one of the most fascinating actors we have. This spy drama only further emphasizes that.

Robert the Bruce - An improbable late follow-up to Braveheart.

Sonic the Hedgehog- Jim Carrey returns to form.

Tenet - Christopher Nolan. Doing what he does.

True History of the Kelly Gang - The leading contender for runner-up in best film of the year.

Waiting for the Barbarians - My leading contender for best film of the year.

The Way Back - Another great sports drama.

And there will be more watched later, by the end of the year itself and the usual lingering assortment in the months and years to come...Already at this point I think 2020 speaks well for itself. As I’ve said before clearing out the kind of material that has come to dominate Hollywood at least in the past decade has helped make room for movies that have become easy to ignore, which of course is what’s still happening to them. But the void they inhabit now might make them easier to rediscover later. This might yet become known as a renaissance year.

Actor Spotlight: Josh Brolin

 I’ve been reading Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, and the thing that keeps standing out is how I can’t tear myself away from thinking about Josh Brolin’s performance as Bigfoot Bjornsen in the 2014 film adaptation every time Bjornsen appears in the book. It got me thinking all over again how fascinating Brolin has become as an actor.

When I think about my favorite actors, I don’t necessarily include Brolin among them, in part because he never really broke out as a lead. But very few actors in modern cinema have so thoroughly dominated the supporting actor field like Brolin.

In a lot of ways, he’s something of a miracle. A lot of actors have to fight tooth and nail for a career, but Josh Brolin’s family kind of gave him an edge, so he didn’t have to work too hard to find a way in. His first film credit is Goonies (1985). He didn’t quite count as a child actor at that point, but he was still a teenager at the time. 

His career for the next twenty years is pretty unremarkable. He was just a guy who appeared in movies. In 2004 he acted in Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda. I would have to rewatch it to know what Brolin does, but that’s the first movie I personally care about to feature Brolin in some capacity. He’s got long locks in the Jessica Alba/Paul Walker gazing vehicle Into the Blue from 2005.

Brolin’s unquestionable breakout year was 2007, in which he starred in No Country for Old Men, as well as appeared in Grindhouse, American Gangster, and In the Valley of Elah. I caught all four in theaters and enjoyed each of them, and Brolin was a pleasant discovery each time. He had, at last, a magnetic, unavoidable presence. Ironically he actually takes a distinct backseat in No Country, which will always be remembered for Javier Bardem’s Anton Chicurh.

But there was no turning back from that point. In 2008 he starred in Oliver Stone’s W. He was featured in a string of projects from that point onward, but with Men in Black 3 in 2012 solidified his place in supporting actor lore, doing an impressive version of a young Tommy Lee Jones that somehow manages to feel natural and be the kind of performance Bardem had previously pulled on him, stealing the show from under the nominal lead (Will Smith).

Then in 2014 of course there was Inherent Vice. There’s lots of reasons to watch this one, but as I said, reading the book I kept coming back to Brolin’s Bjornsen. If you want to disentangle Brolin from his later career role as Thanos and consider him only as a classic actor in classic film material, this is the one that showcases him in all his natural charisma.

That same year he makes his first appearance as Thanos in Guardians of the Galaxy, with larger spotlights in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame (neither of which, to my mind, really nail the character). He has another standout comic book movie  appearance in 2018’s Deadpool 2.

But again, if you prefer more earthbound heroics, you would probably prefer his appearances in 2015’s Sicario and 2018’s Sicario: Day of the Soldado, which feel like the organic follow-ups to his 2007 work.

It’s a career I will continue to follow with great interest.