A Complete Unknown (2024) Review

rating: *****

the story: A young Bob Dylan navigates his early career while remaining stubbornly true to himself.

the review: While I was waiting for Conclave to make sense, I kept wondering what was going to pop out unequivocally to me as the best movie of 2024, and then I saw A Complete Unknown, and it was no longer in doubt.  I was going to see it anyway; catching up with Bob Dylan has been a hobby of mine for more than a decade.  I had figured out that I loved the guy's music, and I understood his role in pop music history, but it wasn't until A Complete Unknown that I got to see a version of how it played out at the time.

Biopics are a staple of American film, and musical biopics especially, these days, since it's easy to assume that the music itself will sell the movie if nothing else, just waiting for something familiar to start playing.  But the problem with biopics is that they happen to follow a basic template, and any real understanding of the artist or band in question can be lost in the details.  For instance, the other day I watched I Saw the Light, about Hank Williams, and not only is Williams lost in the movie, but even his songs are badly layered in it, so that there's no sense at all about why you should care about any of it, or what Williams meant.  

A Complete Unknown certainly has no such problems.  We catch up with Boby Dylan as he treks over to meet with his hero Woody Guthrie, who's stuck in a hospital trying to rehabilitate, while Pete Seeger basically acts as his ambassador to the world, and in turn, Bob's.  We know his goals, his talent, and his future without even reaching his best-known material, right from the start. 

The movie itself is sort of like the real world illustration of Yesterday's conclusions of what it'd be like if everyone forgot about the Beatles except one guy, who proceeds to present all their songs as if they were his own, so that he amazes everyone with his ability to generate great material.  A Complete Unknown leans on the great material available and sometimes makes it look too easy, until Bob starts running into problems because as it turns out, success or not, he still just want to be Bob, and isn't too keen to fulfil someone else's vision of him, whether it's Joan Baez or a record label or the Newport Folk Festival.

In this era of blockbuster film movie stars have struggled to stay in the picture, and certainly new ones have found it equally difficult to be noticed, but Timothee Chalamet is one of the few to have figured it out, and his Bob Dylan is a truly uncanny accomplishment, both in the music and in general.  Roger Ebert's review of Walk the Line suggested he found Joaquin Phoenix indistinguishable from Johnny Cash, and that's a considerable exaggeration, but in Chalamet's case it isn't.  Possibly this is because Bob Dylan famously isn't much of a singer (the one glaring omission of the movie is failing to acknowledge this reputation).  It really doesn't matter.  This is the central miracle that makes all others possible.

Walk the Line's Johnny Cash is here, as portrayed by Boyd Holbrook in hopefully what's finally his breakthrough role, a true creation is a career that's been floating just under wide recognition for years, including a standout performance in Logan, which like Walk the Line and A Complete Unknown, is directed by James Mangold, who between all those Wolverine movies, these biopics, and other material like Ford v Ferrari, has comfortably settled into one of my favorite and most reliable directors.

Edward Norton, once one of those late Hollywood leading actors but since settled into picking his spots in art films, inhabits Pete Seeger just as if, like everyone else Norton plays, is as comfortable being Edward Norton as it is watching him.  At this point he's the closest we've really gotten to another Jimmy Stewart.  Elle Fanning, Dan Fogler...But the biggest surprise is Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, a true discovery.  Joan Baez fans might quibble, but if A Complete Unknown has to crib from Walk the Line, then Barbaro fills out the June Carter role better than Reese Witherspoon, so effortlessly naturally it's a shock that she isn't already a star.

The film is otherwise Bob being Bob.  I have footage of the Newport Folk Festival where Bob plugs in, so the trash being tossed at him visibly didn't really happen, but the effect is there, and it's Bob dealing with the consequences of being Bob, the way his relationships faulter, the way he can't understand what's so wrong about working on new material while crashing in someone's home instead of, y'know, paying attention to them...It's always the music.  He may be uninterested in detailing his past, but for Bob Dylan, the future is ever full of the music that fills him.

Anyway, for my money, totally fascinating, engrossing stuff.  These are maverick times.  And as always Bob's the bard leading the way.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) review

the rating: ****

the story: Indy has a chance for one last great archeological find.

the review: I now have my second favorite movie in the series.  And who knows?  It might even become my favorite.  This is not likely something you've heard about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny before.  Certainly not with someone saying their favorite is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  I don't come to the franchise as a diehard believer.  I caught up with Raiders of the Lost Ark much later than other fans.  To me it's the first movie (and Temple of Doom is just another in the series).  I liked Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, thought it was inconceivable that Lucas and Spielberg struggled to make what was such an obvious entry in the series (aliens) for the kind of careers each otherwise had.  But it took James Mangold to reach Dial of Destiny, which achieves its greatness in much the way he did with Logan.

By finally just doing the kind of story that should have been told in the first place.

Henry Jones is an adventurer.  But that's just the stories he finds himself in.  He's actually, in his normal life, a professor, a lover of history, who sometimes goes on archeological searches, which happen to blow all out of proportion.  But mostly a lover of history.  I think Dial of Destiny is the first time that's really emphasized.  By the time we reach the ending (anyone quibbling about what happens is perhaps forgetting about the leaps of faith the other entries ask of us), it's what he always wanted, the thing that he was destined to experience all along.

Mangold previously achieved this with Logan, as I said, the first and to date only Wolverine appearance from the X-Men film franchise to stop worrying so much about superhero adventures and just let the guy be himself, in his own life.  The Wolverine, which was supposed to be the one that fixed that, buried him in a moody superhero adventure anyway.  X-Men Origins: Wolverine tossed him throughout the timeline, and forgot who the villain was supposed to be (Victor Creed, not Deadpool, regardless of how he was portrayed).  Logan made up for all of that.  It told a complete story, and even played out symmetrically with the first standalone movie (by having Wolverine fight himself, it finished the story the first one abandoned).  It also let him by the hero in an X-Men movie, which the X-Men movies kept dancing around, even when it was clear he was the star.

Dial of Destiny throws the accustomed Nazis at Indy, enemies and allies to work off of, but for the first time it's not the adventure that drives the plot (as with a lot of modern filmmaking the screen is too dark anyway) but rather the awareness that Indy himself is the star, which is also why Last Crusade worked so well, because it put the focus on Indy and his dad (which is what inspired the National Treasure movies).  While Disney continues to marvel at the technology that allows it to de-age faces, it's the older Indy that fascinates, and he's still very much up to the task, incredibly, all these years later.  And at five films and a little over forty years, we've gotten to see a complete arc of the good professor's life.

What's most remarkable, perhaps, is that if you were to watch only one Indiana Jones movie, you could absolutely make the case for it being Dial of Destiny.  Partisans will always default to Raiders, while Last Crusade has its selling points, too, but Destiny has young Indy, and it has old Indy, essentially a complete arc unto itself, and a single story uniting both, and a story linking his teaching life definitively to his private life.  It's all there.  That's why it's easy to sell.

Rounding out the cast this time are Antonio Banderas (I confess to missing everything but a glimpse of him), Mads Mikkelsen as the obligatory Nazi, Boyd Holbrook (who was also a standout in Logan), and Phoebe Waller-Bridge as a more youthful audience surrogate in case you're not that interested in seeing old bones revisited.  

They say this is the last one.  It should be.  What a way to go! 

Knight and Day (2010) Review

rating: ****

the story: A CIA operative has been set up, and in the process of clearing his name his life becomes entangled with an unlikely accomplice.

review: I will readily admit, until a rewatch a few weeks back I was as convinced as anyone that Knight and Day was nothing much writing about. In 2010 Tom Cruise was scrambling to put his career back on track, and when I saw this particular effort in theaters I thought it was a particularly desperate byproduct. I even dismissed costar Cameron Diaz, who has been a favorite since her film debut in The Mask, as forgettable.

I don’t believe any of that anymore.

If anything, Knight and Day has the potential of being a modern classic. It’s lighthearted and flippant concerning its surface action elements. The whole point is calculated screwball, which in older Hollywood days was the holy grail of romantic comedy. It’s a unique movie in Cruise’s career, which has in the decade or so since its release relied ever more heavily on straight action.

It’s really a waltz between Cruise and Diaz; eventually the tables are turned and it’s Diaz in control rather than the character who seems to have been one step ahead and her to be dozens of steps behind. 

And there’s plenty of support around them, too, something of an embarrassment. Maggie Grace, officially wrapping up her time on Lost, is there in one of her many tiny supporting roles (she’s also in the Taken movies, although you’d be forgiven to assume they’re all just Liam Neeson brandishing his action jones). Peter Sarsgaard (nearly always a villain, alas!), Viola Davis, Paul Dano actually feeling like he’s perfectly cast for a change, even Gal Gadot!

The director in charge of all this is the perennially criminally underrated James Mangold, who has proven himself a master of modern cinema. In fact, restoring Knight and Day, and this is not why I choose to champion it now but it’s a nice benefit, as a treasure would add an additional feather to his cap (Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma, Logan, Ford v Ferrari).

Too often today we reduce the art of moviemaking to…whatever’s not the box office blockbuster. There’s a huge tradition and a wide range of material out there. Recognizing achievements is a fine way to encourage the breadth of the medium to continue pursuing that range, rather than allowing it to narrow to “blockbuster” and “art film.”

That and acknowledging that movie stars continue to deliver, regardless of whatever happens in their personal life.