Emma. (2020) Review

rating: *****

the story: A young society lady is master of everything except her own heart.

review: Happily, Anya Taylor-Joy is experiencing one of those rare conflagrations. She’s someone I’ve grown to enjoy watching who also happens to be having a moment of critical popularity. Emma. is one of several recent projects she’s appeared in to help her reach that status, and I can say that I am utterly enchanted with it.

Of course, it’s based on the oft-adapted book by Jane Austen, though in the hands of first-time director and herself a remarkable discovery, Autumn de Wilde, it’s beyond fresh. It’s like elevating Austen to the realm of Shakespeare while simultaneously freeing the material in the most lively ways possible.

The story itself is as relevant as ever, full of piercing social insight, and in this presentation (a period drama in the vein of The Favourite) as likely to be enjoyed as appreciated.

The casting is impeccable. Taylor-Joy, of course, unleashed to her full potential, surrounded by equally inspired actors, including the perennial standout Bill Nighy as well as breakthrough performances from Callum Turner and Johnny Flynn. Turner particularly intrigues me here; in the Fantastic Beasts films he’s struck me as the least fantastic element, but he now strikes me as a revelation of physical presence alone, a Stan Laurel smile pressing itself against the starched collars out of the many lush costumes on display.

The score alone deserves recognition! I always love when a film is truly complete like that, in direction, staging, acting, and music. That’s how to reach the brass ring with me. 

It’s the kind of film you can happily share with those who think the classics are stuffy, or even if you don’t want to fuss over Emma.’s origins at all. It stands on its own. A classic crafted from a classic.

Vanilla Sky (2001) Review

rating: *****

the story: A perfect life goes off the rails in disorienting ways.

review: I just watched Vanilla Sky for the first time. It’s one of those films that took on instant notoriety, so that if you never saw it all you knew was that it was probably problematic at best, incomprehensible at worst. It could not have arrived in theaters at a better, or worse, time.

It’s a remake, but that didn’t help anyone make any better sense of it. It was just weird. 2001 gave us two other, similarly complex films at even more diverging ends of the spectrum. One was A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a Spielberg movie that was also a Kubrick movie, and no one knew what to make of that. The other was Memento, the movie that made Christopher Nolan’s career. With Vanilla Sky, this was a mind-bending confluence of films that seemed to try and reconcile the cerebral injection of M. Night Shyamalan into the language of American cinema. And of course only one of them survived in the popular consciousness, the new voice.

Ten years later Nolan had reprocessed it into Inception, of course, but that was well after Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind had already gotten there, a critical favorite but a box office dud.

Funny enough, but Vanilla Sky might almost be termed an earnest remake of another Jim Carrey film, The Mask. Cameron Crowe seems to go out of his way to evoke the comparisons early in the film, from the casting of Cameron Diaz herself to Tom Cruise aping Carrey’s cartoonish antics for a brief but memorable moment.

And, I gotta say, I really wish anyone remembered any of this.

Crowe was a Hollywood golden boy for a split second. He had a huge success with Jerry Maguire, and then followed that up with the well-received Almost Famous, a version of his own origins. Then he made Vanilla Sky and suddenly could do nothing right.

This is easily his most ambitious film. Anyone, regardless of how they view the merits of the end result, should be able to admit that. Heck, it’s arguably Cruise’s best spotlight, too, at last willing to let it all hang loose. And it’s fascinating. And it spins its web about as seductively as any film appearance Penelope Cruz has ever made, so human and yet so very intoxicating at the same time. And the big twist, even if you know the source material, works, too, for all the subtle setup put into it. The results never lose sight of the end goal, and never wallow in misery. (The only real comparison I have to that is Steven Knight’s brilliant Serenity.) Cruise always has something interesting to work off of, a different character, whether Diaz, Cruz, or Kurt Russell or Jason Lee. There’s even Michael Shannon in a small role for future-proof credibility!

Having now seen it, and maybe it’s the subsequent history of film, and even the equally ambitious TV show Lost I have the pleasure to draw from, but I’m so, so glad to have done so. The history of film in the 21st century falls a little more clearly into place, and a classic takes its place in history.

Hopefully other viewers catch up at some point, too.

The Latest Hollywood Hatchet Job On Orson Welles

Orson Welles was the boy wonder. He achieved miracles. And then he made Citizen Kane, and then to achieve anything at all again became a miracle.

Famously, Welles had to contend with studios butchering his films. The Magnificent Ambersons was the first of them. Later he labored years on projects he couldn’t find proper funding or support for, including The Other Side of the Wind, finally completed and released via Netflix only a few years ago. And now Netflix touts Mank, in which the genius of Citizen Kane itself is ascribed to Herman Mankiewicz. 

Mankiewicz and his family (Tom, even TV host Ben) were a part of the Hollywood establishment. Quite obviously, Welles was not. The film Welles is sometimes best known for these days is The Third Man, which he starred in but did not direct. The insidious nature of the continuing campaign against Orson Welles is such that people don’t even watch Citizen Kane. It’s a critical darling, after the fact, that’s occasionally listed as the best film ever made, but still not a popular one. And anytime it slips from the critical radar, it becomes that much easier to ignore completely. Or rewrite, as it were.

And internet people with opinions (surely an epithet) will talk about Mank as if it actually achieves something. I’ve read from one such voice its Welles is a better one than the real Welles, which is exactly the level of absurdity it’s likely to provoke. Its director, David Fincher, and its star, Gary Oldman, certainly have distinguished pedigree. I just don’t understand why either would so eagerly hitch their wagons to such a project. And it might even shed light into how Citizen Kane was conceived. But not written. Not created. That was Orson Welles. Herman Mankiewicz never approached that level of achievement, before or after. Orson Welles did, with every project he ever pursued.

And we’re supposed to be happy denying that. We’re supposed to marvel at this other guy, this Hollywood hack, in a biopic that attempts to frame him as the real hero of the most sensational movie ever made, the pinnacle of a career that not only chased greatness but accomplished it repeatedly, despite every obstacle. And industry obstruction. Now including posthumous effort. Of which Mank, sadly, may be only the beginning.