Across the River and Into the Trees (2024) Review

the story: An old soldier tries to find a reason to live.

the rating: ****

the review: I've become somewhat of a Hemingway nut, in the past decade, stemming, ironically or not, from a depiction of Hemingway himself, in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, and have been steadily plugging away at his fiction (and some of his nonfiction, including, of course, A Moveable Feast), and he's become very easily one of my favorite writers as a result.  Across the River and Into the Trees, though, first came to my attention as a home video release (since its theatrical run was negligible), as it's not considered one of Heminway's essential works, and as such hadn't previously showed up on my radar.

So I collected the movie and ordered a copy of the book, and watched the movie and then read the book, and having read the book, rewatched the movie.  As these things tend to go, for those who aren't slavishly devoted to the narrative that "the book is better," I drew more from the movie the second time around, as a result.  

The movie changes things somewhat considerably, but it's the same story, all the same, and anyway, it's really a very fine excuse to spend some time with Liev Schreiber.

Schreiber has been one of my favorite actors since I first saw him, either in Scream or RKO 281, in which he plays Orson Welles as he constructs Citizen Kane, although it was probably another TV movie, one I'm fairly certain I'm in exclusive circles for remembering, much less very fondly, at all, called Since You've Been Gone, just an absolutely great, classic voice, and the knowledge of how to use it.  He's otherwise had a fairly obscure career, most notable as the second actor to play Sabretooth, in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  

In some alternate version of history Schreiber is an acknowledged classic Hollywood lead actor with a rich catalog everyone knows.  

In this one?  You could do far worse than to appreciate him in Across the River and Into the Trees.  Which, by the way, is popularly considered one of Hemingway's worst efforts, but I enjoyed it as much as I have any Heminway, and as I've said, the film version is worth watching on its own merits, chief among them being perhaps the long-awaited true spotlight for Liev Schreiber.

They say Bogart wasn't really Bogart until he hit middle age, when he at last became a valuable commodity.  I don't see that being Schreiber's fate.  Today's Hollywood is far too finical for such things.  But that he found such a role, in such a film, is worth celebrating all the same.  The whole performance seems natural, a culmination of everything he's done so well before, everything he was always meant to be, but never quite found in other movies.  

I'm the kind of film fan who can appreciate a movie even if all that's worth recommending is the lead actor.  I can accept a good performance for its own regard.  Fortunately, the movie around Schreiber knows what it's doing, too, and although it's not Hemingway's version, it feels like classic Hollywood in ways that haven't been seen in probably half a century, an international setting (Venice) that's allowed to settle into the backdrop, as Schreiber embarks on his last fateful excursion, with a young lady who finds herself caught up in it, despite every reason not to be.  

Josh Hutcherson, playing a very different role than in a much wider release in 2024, The Beekeeper, is probably the chief beneficiary of the alterations Peter Flannery made to the story, in an expanded, wiser supporting turn than Hemingway envisioned.

Asteroid City (2023) Review

the rating: ****

the story: Young achievers are unexpectedly at the heart of an unlikely alien encounter.

the review: So I've really gotten into Wes Anderson, finally, and predictably it's just when critics have gotten over him.  I mean, they've been over him for at least a decade, and I didn't get into him, really, until a few years ago, so it's not that surprising.  Of course I had to see Asteroid City.  Of course it was likely that I would enjoy it.  I expected to like it more, but I definitely liked it.  The appearances of Tom Hanks and Steve Carell actually created a kind of uncanny valley, that breaks the typical mold of total control on Anderson's part.  Most actors who appear in his films fit the mold perfectly; Hanks can't help but be Hanks, and the same is true of Carell.  Everyone else (Owen Wilson is atypically absent, but Jason Schwartzman, another longtime collaborator, is back in a starring role) very much fits in nicely.

"You can't wake up if you don't go to sleep."

That's how the movie ends.  This is not a spoiler.  Just as Amsterdam ends with each of the principle characters reciting the eponymous city name to the audience, and Cradle Will Rock builds to the climactic moment from the 1937 play it's built around, Asteroid City concludes with the cast of stage actors reciting this line.  How much you appreciate the movie is likely tied to how much thought you put into it.  The movie preceding it plays out along two separate tracks: one is a presentation of a play, and the other as if the play were happening in reality and not on a stage.  Schwartzman's character pulls himself out of the play when he struggles to understand why his character chooses to burn his hand on a grill, and so clearly Anderson's intent is for his audience to figure out his intent, too.

"You can't wake up if you don't go to sleep."  There will be plenty of speculation about it for those interested, and so maybe this review isn't really the place for it, but the story pretty happily busies itself with the story of Schwartzman's character in the story trying to have an honest reckoning with himself and his young family, something he's been avoiding for the past few weeks.  Eventually an alien shows up (an absolutely perfect moment, a perfect marriage of Anderson's best live action and stop-motion instincts).  Around all this, as Anderson movies tend to go, a niche community (well, in this case, two) is explored, although it's not really the point, but how the community(s) reacts to circumstances.  

Me, I'd choose, if forced, to interpret the point of Asteroid City to warn against comforting complacency, that in order to make progress you have to challenge yourself.  But this isn't possible unless you're first willing to admit your complacency.

At any rate, Hanks and Carell are the signifiers that although this acts and behaves like a typical Anderson movie, it really isn't.  He is very obviously trying to make a point.  It's very possible this will raise Asteroid City's value for me, later, when I will have more fully digested the results.  But it's certainly another excellent effort on his part.

Isle of Dogs (2018)

rating: *****

the story: A corrupt politician creates a conspiracy to exile all dogs, but his adopted son mounts a campaign to rescue them.

what it's all about: The exact parallels aren't there, and they don't need to be, but Isle of Dogs might be the first great cinematic response to Trump, regardless of where you are on the political spectrum.  Its plot can be seen as a response to Trump's immigration policies.  But regardless of all that, it's a great film, the crowning artistic achievement of Wes Anderson's career. 

Anderson has made a career of creating quirky movies.  He's become increasingly ambitious over the years.  2001's The Royal Tenenbaums was his first widely-acknowledged success, but Anderson took a giant leap forward with his follow-up, 2004's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which can be interpreted as a modern, absurdist's version of Moby-Dick.  2009's Fantastic Mr. Fox, a stylistic herald to Isle of Dogs, saw Anderson begin to break free entirely of conventions, while 2014's The Grand Budapest Hotel saw him emerge on a truly grand scale for the first time. 

Isle of Dogs, no matter how you interpret it, even if it's only to be understood as a generic cautionary tale, is a wholly contained accomplishment, a complete vision capable of being enjoyed on multiple levels.  The title itself is a nod and a wink; you can love it if all you are is a dog lover.  This is an era that relishes simple pleasures, after all.  You can relish it for the rich vocal cast, a true embarrassment of riches that continues Grand Budapest Hotel's most simple pleasure, all those small roles filled by well-known actors.  You have Bryan Cranston, still justifiably riding the wave of his breakthrough performance in Breaking Bad, in the lead role.  You have Edward Norton and Liev Schreiber just below him.  You have Bill Murray, you have Jeff Goldblum, you have Scarlett Johansson, you have Bob Balaban, Greta Gerwig, Harvey Keitel.  You even have Fisher Stevens!  You have Courtney B. Vance as narrator! 

You can appreciate it as a boy's quest movie.  You can appreciate it as the rare movie omitting subtitles despite heavy usage of Japanese characters speaking Japanese.  You can appreciate it for subverting the "white savior" concept, despite criticism that it plays into that concept.  Gerwig voices an American schoolgirl who leads a peoples revolution against the corrupt politician, but in the end it isn't her actions that produce the happy ending, but the adopted son's, who is Japanese, and the dogs, all of whom have plenty of reasons not to work together, but do.  And that's as much the message of the movie as anything else, that idea of putting aside differences that seems to have been utterly lost today. 

The music is intrinsic to all this.  Not just the taiko drumming.  Another criticism of the movie is that it takes a white man's poor understanding of Japanese culture and assumes it's being accurate.  The whole point of omitting subtitles is acknowledging the cultural divides that even the dogs represent, speaking English (dogs don't speak English).  It's metaphor, people.  There's nothing intrinsically Japanese about this movie, it's a creative choice, in a movie brilliantly bursting with them.  Very few directors in history have made as many of them, and as many of them as well, as Wes Anderson has in Isle of Dogs.  The constant drum beats, with or without taiko drums, and the anonymous indy-style songs, are incumbent of a talent who has been synthesizing the castoffs of film history for decades, and come up with a masterpiece from them.

I don't know if this is going to remain my favorite movie of 2018, but it's going to be difficult to beat.