The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) Review

rating: ****

the story: Baron Munchausen dooms and then saves a European city thanks to his fantastical adventures.

review: I first saw The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in college some twenty years back, but eventually it took a backseat to other Terry Gilliam films (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and The Man Who Killed Don Quixote became my favorites, and Brazil became better known to me among his earlier efforts).  So in revisiting it, I've rediscovered it.

Munchausen, incredibly, based on a real historical figure, albeit one known for his incredible tales, which were themselves eventually written into fiction, was a famously troubled production that became a box office bomb, and so if you know of it at all, it's because of Gilliam, or your general interest in cult films.  And yet it was filmed in a decade full of fantasy productions chasing Star Wars, and is probably the best of them.  Probably?  It is.  It absolutely is.  How could the results be any different, with Gilliam at the helm?

Conceptually and artistically, there are few filmmakers who rival Gilliam's vision.  In order to achieve it, he usually goes all the way to hell and back (which is why Man Who Killed Don Quixote went into production twice, the first time producing only the documentary Lost in La Mancha, in which the epic collapse of the film is chronicled).  His old Monty Python colleague Eric Idle, who costars in Munchausen, had already gleamed such a reputation when he agreed to appeared in the film.  

Aside from Dox Quixote itself, it's hard to find a better, more natural story to showcase Gilliam's gifts than Munchausen, in which the world of the fantastic is superimposed on the real world by a charismatic and yet disconnected lead character, who in this case eventually has everyone believing in the same reality, mostly because there are supernatural elements that are so mythical they become accepted for reality, such as Idle's speedster.  (Although Idle's real talent is of course his voice; along with John  Cleese, who also hails from Monty Python, he has one of the most naturally hilarious voices of the past fifty years in film.)

The lead is played by John Neville, a fairly unknown commodity otherwise who nonetheless fills the fantastical shoes of Baron Munchausen regardless of depicted age (a sliding scale on par with all the other loose elements of reality).  He's got Gilliam's Brazil lead actor Jonathan Pryce, Oliver Reed (later best known for the role he died playing for Gladiator), Uma Thurman, and Sarah Polley, still just as a child, supporting him, plus a Robin Williams uncredited performance that seems like a preview of his Genie from Aladdin in hindsight.  

In fact, if I had never seen Tarsem's masterpiece The Fall, Munchausen would now stand as my favorite film in the fantasy genre.  Where Tarsem eclipses Gilliam, here, Gilliam would rally later to catch up (his Don Quixote was worth the wait).

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) Review

rating: ****

the story: Grindelwald tries to trick his way to political power, with Dumbledore standing in the way.

review: I've been struggling with how to view this one since its theatrical release earlier this year.  I continued to struggle after reading the screenplay published last month.  A large part of this is that Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore was caught up in the continuing scandals surrounding J.K. Rowling, Ezra Miller, and Johnny Depp, which dampened interest in its predecessor, The Crimes of Grindelwald (which is otherwise my favorite movie in the Wizarding World cinematic saga, barring Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire).  Depp's legal hassles continued into production of Secrets, as so he was replaced as Grindelwald by Mads Mikkelsen, and Rowling, previously lone scripter of the Fantastic Beasts films, was joined by Harry Potter veteran screenwriter Steve Kloves.  After being unabashedly wowed by Crimes, I knew I wasn't with Secrets on first viewing, and second viewing didn't change that, and reading the screenplay didn't, and I began to wonder, were my reservations justified?  Or was this simply a different movie experience?

I kept trying.  Eventually my conclusion was that this is perhaps the first film in the saga where the human drama is more important than the wizarding drama.  I understood this on one level.  It's the first time the material has acknowledged what had previously only existed in Rowling's tweets, that Dumbledore is gay, and his relationship with Grindelwald is complicated by that, and by extension, his ability to fight him.

The film opens with a quiet conversation between them, in which Dumbledore explains that he has moved past their youthful ideas, and this offends Grindelwald, because of course he hasn't, and has become a notorious figure in the wizarding community as he presses on with them.  The conversation, and the film, and the series (this is Dumbledore's second appearance in them, after Crimes), still ignores how Dumbledore could ever have shared them, except by extension through the complicated nature of his sister Ariana, and her death, which ties into the character of Credence Barebone, whose story began in the first film, and whose true lineage was revealed in Crimes, but explained here in Secrets: he's Aberforth Dumbledore's son.  Dumbledore is his uncle.

Grindelwald has been manipulating Credence, as we saw him operating throughout Crimes.  He trades on fear in order to achieve his goals.  He also won Queenie Goldstein to his side last film, shattering a relationship with muggle baker Jacob Kowalski.  Dumbledore maneuvers against Grindelwald as best he can throughout Secrets.  He recruits Jacob, an unlikely ally as ever, as well as the Scamander brothers, Newt and Theseus, as well as others.

Newt was ostensibly the star of these films, certainly in the first one, until Dumbledore appeared in Crimes and then dominated Secrets.  And it might seem as if Newt indeed takes a definitive backseat, here, especially with the near absence of Tina Goldstein, the American wizard he fell in love with previously (some reports are that Katherine Waterston's participation was diminished, this time, due to her stance against Rowling).

And yet his unabashed enthusiasm for the title beasts, and his otherwise bashful demeanor, remain the heart of these films, as he gets to spend time with his brother as an actual colleague for the first time, which along with Jacob and Queenie and learning the truth of Credence's existence moves original stories from the first film along nicely.  Newt and Theseus have the best sequence of the film as they enact another of Newt's trademark beast-centric performances, this time scuttling like a crab.

Eddie Redmayne's star has dimmed in recent years.  I'm hard-pressed to think of his work outside these films, and yet the films themselves remain clearly affectionate of his unique charms.  Callum Turner, as Theseus, has become a more distinguished actor (for me, anyway, as I discovered in Emma.), so it's nice to see him in an expanded role.  Alison Sudol has been a standout as Queenie from the start, and I doubt anyone could've been more quintessentially American for the time period than Dan Fogler's Jacob, who has threatened to steal all of the movies.

But is there any real doubt that Jude Law's Dumbledore is the center of Secrets?  He had better be, getting his name in the title!  By the time Dumbledore and Grindelwald duel, we've seen Dumbledore do everything possible to avoid that moment.  When it's suggested he become the new leader of the wizarding community, the moment becomes the heart of how to interpret the movie around it.  No attention is called to Dumbledore, until he's pulled from a crowd as it happens, and he talks his way out of it, the way Harry Potter once convinced the Sorting Hat to place him in Gryffindor, and the moment passes.  No one argues the point.  No one draws attention to him at all.  It happens.  And the story moves on.

How to interpret it, and the whole film, rests on how comfortable you are with the rapid ascent of Grindelwald, and his just as rapid descent.  As viewers we're privy to nearly every beat of how this is accomplished, so relentlessly, throughout the movie.  The opening scene of Crimes was said to be distractedly dizzying, when Grindelwald breaks out of prison, and yet this is a whole movie in which, to accomplish what it needs to, the viewer has to accept two hours of logic that makes internal sense, and yet also feels as if, in a different reality, would have played out over several films.  Possibly.  The studio has been expressing doubt for years.  I follow a website that breathlessly reported every negative aspect of production, cheering on the possibility of failure.  Was this what it was always supposed to be?

And perhaps so.  This is what we never got to see with Voldemort, after all.  The other arcs feel so natural, this must always have been in the cards, surely?  Crimes ends dramatically with Grindelwald having split the wizarding community in half.  Secrets suggests winning the right allies makes even the impossible possible (from criminal to candidate, which even the Star Wars prequels didn't dare attempt; Palpatine appears the innocent even after his drastic transformation).

And...the more I live with this, the more comfortable.  At no point does the film dwell on Grindelwald as a real threat, except as Dumbledore's opposite number.  This is all supposed to build (like the Star Wars prequels) to a legendary duel, against which the one that happens in Secrets is mere prelude.  In some respects, there are notes in Secrets that feel like a possible concluding note (Jacob and Queenie marrying), should the studio decide to end the series early.  And yet Dumbledore acknowledges Newt as a valuable ally, even as Grindelwald has lost his (Credence, whose arc concludes here, too), which ought to sound...ominous.  The fight isn't over.  Grindelwald only becomes more dangerous, once more on the loose, nothing left to lose, and he has already endlessly proven his inventive resilience.  

The conclusion, for me, of how to view Secrets of Dumbledore is as a quiet success, in much the character of Newt himself, watching as all the drama around him boils down to Dumbledore and Grindelwald, as they're forced to confront the reality that they will one day have to fight each other.  Forget everyone else, every thing else.  This really does hinge on that conversation, at the start of the film.  And that's actually refreshing.

One Shot (2021) Review

rating: ****

the story: A suddenly high value terrorist suspect is the subject of a highly coordinated extraction.

review: The concept of a film being, or appearing to be, one continuous tracking shot has apparently now reached the point where it can be taken for granted.  The likes of Birdman, 1917, Russian Ark, and Crazy Samurai have been joined by One Shot, which if it has been greeted at all, then as a glorified cinematic first-person-shooter experience, and yet the results are as thrilling as any other attempt of the technique yet attempted.

Part of the problem is that it stars Scott Adkins, best known as a stuntman or as the lead in direct-to-video releases, the bargain basement of the medium.  As far as I know, this is my first Adkins film, and I found him to be a riveting action hero, very much akin to Cole Hauser's performances in the TV series Yellowstone, the new "alpha male" template of popular entertainment, though Adkins achieves it mostly by surviving against all odds, being the de facto lead character, and engaging in at least one brawl that calls on his stunt experience.

Supporting him are Ashley Greene (billed here with her married name Ashley Greene Khoury) and Ryan Phillippe, a long way away from his potential as a new leading man some twenty years back, and not even getting to play a particularly heroic part (a glorified bureaucrat who stands in Adkins' way to get the job done).

The story is compelling and the odds are long.  The alleged terrorist in sympathetic in apparently the same way as the lead in The Mauritanian, claiming innocence deep into the film.  It doesn't even particularly matter to the actual terrorists arriving in a horde to break him free if he's what he appears to be.  They need him; it's that simple.  And so they throw their massive numbers (don't spend too much time worrying about how they amassed so many without anyone noticing), and it becomes a Black Hawk Down war incident.  Of course we'll route Adkins on!  We haven't had a guy like him in ages, and he's as close to an everyman there's ever been, although he's never less than compelling.

Bonus material insists there are points in which the footage breaks tracking, and yet it's virtually impossible to tell with the results.  If that's the only reason you choose to watch, fine, because it's impressive filmmaking by default, all the more given the constant fighting that necessitates constant choreography without ever bogging down.  Details lost in narrative are picked up everywhere else.

This is not a B movie.  In a different time it would've been a massive hit.  It should develop a following eventually.  It deserves one.

The Contractor (2022) Review

rating: ****

the story: A Green Beret is drummed out of the service, but ends up right back in the thick of it anyway.

review: Quite unexpectedly, a spiritual sequel to Hell or High Water.  Chris Pine stars as the Green Beret, who ends up drafted into a black ops outfit, although the results are less military maneuvering and more a spy game, in which Pine discovers he can't trust the outfit that recruited him.  Along the way, he's got to figure out if he can trust a colleague played by Ben Foster, his costar in High Water, which ought to be considered one of the key selling points of The Contractor.

Pine's charisma was a little long in coming to be recognized by filmmakers, but eventually, with his casting as Kirk in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot, he at last became a movie star, and yet it ended up becoming a recurring problem: directors still had a hard time figuring out what to do with him.  Hell or High Water found a perfect fit, the rare antihero (a bank robber) who was actually sympathetic, a response to the Great Recession that cast the whole idea back to the feel of the Great Depression, or even Robin Hood.  Foster was the unambiguously less sympathetic cohort then, and he is again here, although he has a better shot at redeeming himself this time around.  Less so Kiefer Sutherland, in a rare bid to reclaim some of the shine he himself earned somewhat belatedly in the TV series 24, cast squarely as the villain.  Eddie Marsan, whose career often veers between such roles, has one of his welcome turns among the angels, although it's an unfortunately brief one, while Gillian Jacobs has a similarly thankless nod as Pine's wife.

But the compromise is worth it, as The Contractor works best as an atmospheric tour of Pine's troubles, spending little time worrying about things like dialogue, as he struggles along the labyrinth of doubt, accented frequently by the bum knee he needs to periodically inject just to keep functioning.  This is an aging action hero, after all, forced to control uncomfortable realities at every turn.

I think, given time, the results will garner greater interest, if only as a companion to Pine and Foster's previous work together.  At the moment it needs struggle against a shifting market, between a box office that is increasingly geared almost exclusively to big budget blockbusters and streaming services either desperately competing for the same aesthetic or proudly boasting the opposite, with everything else in between being ignored, such as the notion that movie stars exist and can carry their own material, same as they ever did.  

And Chris Pine, despite every adversity, is still standing, thank you.

Lincoln (2012) Review

rating: ***

the story: Lincoln pushes for the 13th Amendment.

the review: Gosh, so I spent a decade fearing I wouldn't like this one.  Sometimes, or perhaps very often, when you think you're going to have a certain reaction, whether good or bad, you end up having it regardless of the material.  In this instance, I ended up with exactly the reaction I always thought I would to Steven Spielberg's Lincoln.

Chalk this up to star Daniel Day-Lewis.  Beloved of Hollywood insiders but rarely outside of it, my first exposure to him was his Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York, which was a wildly entertaining performance.  Then it was There Will Be Blood, a film I thought I would greatly enjoy, and was one of my most anticipated experiences of 2007, which instead became perhaps my greatest disappointment that year, when my impression of Day-Lewis greatly soured.  He's the kind of actor who immerses himself in his work, who reinvents himself with every performance, or so the story goes, and yet the disappointment of Blood was how much obvious connective tissue there was to Gangs, and none of it positive.  It was as if he dialed in on the villainous tones but lost all intonation.  Where his Bill chewed all scenery in delicious fashion, his Daniel Plainview was a lethargic inverse whose total dominance of Blood was unearned, with no chance at being checked.  He was among the antiheroes who came to dominate critical taste in the last few decades not because he deserved to, but because critics had fixated on the idea and wouldn't let go.

Lincoln is certainly no antihero, today.  Although in his time he was.  Which is perhaps one of the reasons Day-Lewis ended up playing him.  Spielberg's take is a riff on the popular history book Team of Rivals, which centers on Lincoln's political acumen, which the subsequent film zeroes in on as he desperately seeks approval for the amendment that will guarantee freedom for slaves.  He stoops to all available levels in the process, which is not to say his cause was not worthy nor his tactics justified, but nowhere is the inherent mythic nobility on display, and yes, that clip shown at the Oscars in which Lincoln exhorts his cabinet in an impassioned demand to fulfill the vision "Now! Now! Now!" really the central lasting impression...

In choosing such a narrow focus, and perhaps in selecting (there was much development of the project along the way, and so it really was a choice) playwright Tony Kushner over, say, Aaron Sorkin, who had made politics a truly operatic affair in The West Wing and would later become as well known a screenwriter in film, there is no chance to discover the man even as the myth is gently exploded, so that man nor myth, as the man lunges in one direction or another, receives proper focus.  At times it seems Day-Lewis is up to the challenge, when Spielberg, Kushner, and the actor are up to the challenge of the folksy charm of the man, but in their efforts to wring drama from him, they lose sight of it, and the wrinkly profiles they find of Day-Lewis, which are so often fixated on, are subsequently lost to clearer gazes, late in the film, in which Day-Lewis instead looks like, well, Day-Lewis.

Surrounding this is a host of incredible talent, from Tommy Lee Jones perhaps for the first time sinking into his aging gravitas, Sally Field asking no quarter as Mary Todd Lincoln, David Strathairn doing all the heavy lifting, James Spader playful in all the right ways for a change, Hal Holbrook, and a trio of young actors on the cusp of greatness, if film would let them: Joseph Gordon Levitt, the acknowledged preferential favorite; Lee Pace, so versatile and yet forever taken for granted; and Adam Driver in a thankless glorified cameo, years before anyone truly recognized his talent.

And there are others, curiously the black actors (Gloria Reuban, David Oyelowo) in roles Spielberg has no earthly idea what to do with among them, worth picking out.

The whole affair comes off as more a companion piece to Spielberg's earlier and far more triumphant Amistad, with far less historic grandeur to its credit and yet so much more power and cinematic achievement...This was the point where Spielberg really started to worry about his continued standing in Hollywood royalty, where he stopped trusting himself and instead just started doing what he thought his peers wanted to see, all the more bizarre from a director who had previously made his name on things audiences seemingly demanded...So much of modern film ignores the American heritage so passionately embraced in the past, it's all the more a shame that the most famous recent example has no idea what it's really trying to accomplish, other than demonstrate saintly Lincoln in his last desperate push for history, above and beyond, y'know, ending the pesky war around it.

And yet Spielberg's peers have been so driven to distraction concerning political maneuvering, I suppose, in the grand scheme, it's only fitting that such are the results of the effort.