The Burnt Orange Heresy (2020) Review

 rating: ****

the story: A con artist art critic stumbles on the opportunity of a lifetime.

review: Sometimes titles alone are a hook, which for me anyway if you’re going to call your movie The Burnt Orange Heresy it’s practically irresistible. The other big draw is Elizabeth Debicki, who has also been a standout in Widows and Tenet. Technically she isn’t the lead actor here. Danish actor Claes Bang is (he comes off like a bootleg Cary Grant, where the movie itself feels like authentic classic Hollywood), playing the con artist art critic.

Here’s another movie worth talking about based off how terrible its reviews have been. It’s astonishing how terrible these things can be, so utterly obviously dismissive, because critics know audiences aren’t really going to care one way or another (especially thanks to aggregate websites that arbitrarily grant grades to movies based on the results, which somehow only emphasize how poorly critics do their jobs).

Anyway, this is to say that you don’t have to worry what critics have said about it. Their opinions are worthless.

The results are interesting for the very reason that Claes Bang is himself so hard to care about. You don’t need to care about him. So much of popular entertainment in recent decades has been obsessed with trying to make bad people look compelling, it’s refreshing to let the lead character in one of them suavely unsympathetic, emphasized by the actor himself having the lowest profile of the main cast. You get to see him for what he is, a conman willing to do anything to get what he wants, in an environment that’s considered high brow, and as a result diminishing attacks on the results as part of its message. Mick Jagger is an easy target as the smarmy collector who both facilitates the results and condemns them, Donald Sutherland the reclusive artist who ends up kind of welcoming his doom. 

The only victim here is Debicki, or at least her character, who actually becomes a martyr in her effort to expose the conman, who believes until the clever twist ending that he got away with it. But he absolutely doesn’t. The art world celebrates him, but he doesn’t get away with it, murdering Debicki, Sutherland. History will eventually expose him. 

Anyway, it’s a movie that’s sultry in all the right ways, losing itself in the glamour of the con, the patent romance of filmmaking, of art, and using it against itself.

So yeah, it’s a modern version of classic Hollywood. With a great title.

Ava (2020) Review

 rating: ****

the story: A hitwoman is targeted for elimination by an associate who views her as a liability.

review: Here’s a movie I felt compelled to review based on the idiotic reviews I’ve so far seen for it. They seem fixated on its familiar plot. You can boil even the most innovative plot to something familiar. In this case the selling point is absolutely Jessica Chastain as the title character. Of course it is. To even begin to suggest anything else is to completely fail to comprehend the art of filmmaking.

But if you really want to boil it down, Ava could be called the Jessica Chastain John Wick. What made John Wick so much fun was how it helped viewers see Keanu Reeves as exciting again. Reeves has been pretty good at finding defining roles over the years. He’s got three recognizable franchises under his belt at this point. Ava was never going to be as popular as John Wick, for the same reason that Chastain doesn’t have the same kind of career as Reeves. It’s arguably tougher now than in Hollywood’s golden age for actresses. When it’s gotten tougher for actors in general to stand out in a blockbuster-saturated era (which has actually made 2020 refreshing, with so many blockbusters relocated away), women will especially struggle for attention. You have a few that critics can’t seem to get enough of, and then you have ones like Chastain and Cate Blanchett who more often than not are taken for granted.

Simply put, if this were an earlier era, it’d be a lot harder to say “blah, another Katherine Hepburn movie” (fully aware as I am that even Hepburn could be taken for granted, but the greater point here being Hepburn is a widely acknowledged cinematic treasure, and Chastain is not). The fact that Ava is a Chastain movie is absolutely itself a good enough reason to pay attention.

It’s like the John Wick version of her best movie(s) The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, if anything. As much attention is given to her professional problems (and prowess) as her domestic problems. This is a good year, if anything, for human women action stars, counting Blake Lively’s Rhythm Section. And while Lively is very human in all aspects, Chastain is given no room for doubt in her ability to survive a brutal fight, even if little space is even given how much her background hurts her, and the family she had to leave behind.

So the perceived limitations critics see in Ava are quite calculated. It’s a movie bold enough to let us know what we need to know but not dwell on it, and have flashy elements but not dwell on them.

The other reason I had to catch it was Colin Farrell, who costars as the guy who decides Chastain has become a liability. He shows flashes of real passion, something Farrell usually keeps below the surface. It’s one of his villainous roles, and yet another that also proves his utter lack of vanity, which is what has continually cost him mass appeal (early in his career, for instance, Farrell exhibited few qualms to looking less obviously heroic than his more famous costars, Tom Cruise in Minority Report and Bruce Willis in Hart’s War). It’s a great role at this point in his career.

Chastain’s ally against Farrell is John Malkovich, who gets to have an epic fight scene but also the kind of death that leaves you guessing until the end. Her mom is Geena Davis, and the one weak acting link is Common as her ex-lover. I don’t know why Common is so common.

If the problem is that it confounds expectations, then that’s a very good one for Ava to have. When people get around to appreciating Chastain, it ought to be remembered as the kind of thing only she could pull off.

A brief summary of some brilliant movies I’ve watched during the pandemic, including some 2020 highlights

 I haven’t been updating this blog as much as I should. I’ve seen some pretty great movies while sitting through the pandemic. Two were months ago, stuff I came across by sheer chance.

One was Bill (2015), which strictly speaking is not a theatrical feature (which is what this blog typically discusses), but a BBC production, a farcical, brilliant fictional account of Shakespeare’s formative development. Since I grew up adoring Monty Python, it’s always nice to see something that resembles the level of satirical insight of Holy Grail, which is exactly what Bill does, as The Death of Stalin did a few years later. Pythonesque is officially a film genre, I guess.

The other was Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai (2011), a Japanese film (in case it weren’t obvious from the title) in which the ramifications of a feudal lord’s decision to force a supplicant to perform seppuku play out in unexpected ways. It’s a hugely affecting drama in all manners, that cuts well beyond the romance of samurai life we normally see (but still has an epic showdown).

Funny thing is, I also finally watched what will likely go down as the last Monty Python production, a little more recently, what has turned out to be the obscure Absolutely Anything (2015), directed by Terry Jones and featuring all surviving members in vocal performances, as squabbling aliens, as they decide what is to become of humanity based on... Simon Pegg’s ability to wield infinite power. Yes, Simon Pegg. You’d think we were screwed, right? But his dog, voiced by Robin Williams in one of his last roles (which is what made me interested in the movie in the first place, not Monty Python), has...other ideas. Williams is surprisingly committed to a specific scope for the role, so unlike...every other animated role he tackled he’s pretty subdued. And Kate Beckinsale is pretty in general, of course, and Pegg’s would-be girlfriend. The basic outline of the movie is similar to Bruce Almighty, but the results are ultimately very different. I think they’re well worth celebrating, at any measure.

I’ve finally watched The Wiz (1978), which is a bit ridiculous because I had been working on an Oz project earlier this year without having done so. Turns out Michael Jackson’s whole career pivoted around this thing, and watching him in it is a real treat.

For films to be considered 2020 releases, in a year that couldn’t possibly be more challenging, in every regard, if it tried, I’ve seen two that are now contenders for my favorite of the year.

The first is Waiting for the Barbarians (2020). Mark Rylance has sort of been a critical favorite, out of nowhere, in recent years. This is my first Rylance, and as far as this one’s concerned, he was absolutely worth the hype. Somewhat a pity he has such a worthy adversary in Johnny Depp, in another recent villainous role, as a government official auditing an imperial outpost and finding Rylance...entirely too sympathetic to the locals. Rylance’s deep convictions aren’t presented in a preachy fashion but a personal concern. He isn’t looking to convince anyone of anything, and yet he finds Depp’s attitude appalling. Robert Pattinson has a supporting role as Depp’s supercilious subordinate. It’s the kind of allegorical tale that’s both timely and timeless. Before I cracked the other film, I thought I’d found the best movie of the year.

The other one’s True History of the Kelly Gang (2020). This is the kind of movie that’s designed to be the exact opposite of everything you’d expect, so of course a lot of what I’ve read about it assumes it’s everything you’d expect it to be. It’s supposedly too violent, even though it doesn’t actually show most of the violence (or even young Ned Kelly saving another boy, perhaps the only time he’s unabashedly a hero). It’s a complicated study of gender, even though most of that is kind of incidental, merely a part of the intricate web of motivations that led to Ned’s infamy. George MacKay (1917, which I’ve also finally seen and absolutely loved) is Ned, and Charlie Hunnam, Nicholas Hoult, and especially Russell Crowe are the males in his life that only complicate it, to say nothing about his domineering mom. I had to keep trying to watch it to make it all the way through. But it was absolutely worth it. This is an unusual film that’s unusual in all the right ways, forcing you to consider Ned Kelly in a lot of different ways, if not sympathetically then certainly as a product of his experiences, which is also a hugely pertinent message for these times.

Watched lots of other movies, of course. I finally gave Jojo Rabbit (2019) the time of day, and, yeah, absolutely worth it. If I blogged here as much as I watched, it would be clearer how much I love movies. Yeah. It’s a great medium. In a different lifetime I would have loved to have pursued a career in it. Well, still time, I guess.

The New Mutants (2020) Review

 rating: ****

the story: Young mutants in a kind of rehab center.

review: The X-Men film series began in 2000 with a girl named Rogue who was trying to get over the traumatic way she discovered her mutant abilities. In a lot of ways, it ends on the very same note. That’s as appropriate as it gets.

The problem, if it can be said to be one, with that first film was that Rogue’s journey was completely stolen by other plot elements (and a breakthrough performance by the best-known X-Men actor; you know his name). By the time she makes her last appearance in the series (X-Men: Days of the Future Past), it was apparently possible to pretty much cut the part entirely but later release a different cut of the film with it, and actually market it that way. 

Anyway, New Mutants focuses squarely on the archetype Rogue established. Most of the cast is unknown, including the actress who plays lead character Dani Moonstar, Blu Hunt, who is unlikely to garner a bigger career from the role. Alice Braga is the authority figure running the center. Among the other young actors are Game of Thrones alum Maisie Williams and Anya Taylor-Joy, who turns out to be the highlight here, just as she’s been an emerging star in general (among other roles she starred in the Unbreakable sequels, Split and Glass).

It seems any time someone’s powers are a problem in these X-Men movies, it involves perception of reality. Several attempts were made to explore Jean Grey (including the nominal final X-Men, Dark Phoenix), and X2, originally received by fans as a standout superhero movie (since lapsed), as well as the Legion TV series. Dani’s of course part of that trend. No powers in the movie are especially unique, but they’re used effectively (as is a sock puppet, which is eventually...not a sock puppet), as extensions of character rather than the whole character (which can sometimes be a problem in superhero movies).

Bottom line here is that you don’t even need to be a fan of the series, or even superhero movies in general, to enjoy the results. You can follow the story as recovery and acceptance. As part of the series it’s a fitting final statement, and finally puts all distractions to the side and lets the audience dwell on the customary mutant (and Marvel in general) concept that powers usually cause equal amounts trauma as anything else. 

I’ve enjoyed the series all along, so it’s nice to enjoy the last one, too.

Tenet (2020) Review

 rating: ****

the story: In order to prevent the end of the world, a man must travel back in time.

the review: All of Christopher Nolan’s films are about cause and effect. Usually but not always it’s easy to tell which, um, comes first. Of course, he made his name with Memento, which plays out chronologically in reverse. Tenet is sort of like that, except this time it isn’t merely for storytelling effect but built into the plot.

So I’m a big fan of Nolan’s. His existence in a persistent blockbuster moviemaking state, the sheer scale of his ideas, has of course existed since The Dark Knight. The opening of Tenet is perhaps the first time he’s consciously sought the feel of that particular achievement, which for a fan of that particular film was a great way to kick things off.

From there we eventually reach the time travel element. It’s called “inverting” in the movie, but it’s time travel. The cleverness is in how it’s executed. Visually it looks like effects being played backward. It’s memorable in that regard to how Inception most obviously presented its conceit, with the cityscape folding in on itself.

The cleverness, however, is that “inverting” essentially means time travel in Tenet is “rewinding the tape.” It reminds me of Source Code, another high concept movie using a repeating time conceit that turns into a chance to actually prevent (not merely inhabit the circumstances, as is originally believed) a catastrophe from happening. 

Unusually, Nolan lets the concept sell itself more than rest on the star power of the actors (although he did this in his last movie, Dunkirk, too). Since Memento (which for the general public was in casting a mini-reunion of actors from The Matrix), Nolan has consistently gone for as well-known a cast as he could get. His star this time, however, is as close to an unknown as he’s gotten since his first movie, Following. John David Washington (son of Denzel Washington) has one prior lead role to his credit (BlacKkKlansman), in which, for me anyway, he sported a distractingly fake-looking afro. Chances are more people viewed that as a Spike Lee movie than a John David Washington one. As a known commodity, then his screen presence is minimal. That allows the audience to follow him along in the movie far more than linger on him alone (which is half the danger of the rabbit hole Leo DiCaprio leads us through in Inception).

Robert Pattinson, still popularly known for starring in the Twilight movies, costars. He’s been making a new name for himself in recent years by pursuing the kind of “interesting project, interesting role” career that Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp previously pursued as “pretty boy actors,” though they never really succeeded in avoiding the spotlight. But these are far different cinematic times. Now if you aren’t starring in obvious blockbuster material your career plays out in relative obscurity. Pattinson plays his part in Tenet with no desire to upstage anything, and in the process is perhaps inhabiting his first mature role (a knack for which Nolan should be well-known).

The rest of the cast is filled with highlights. Clémence Poésy (like Pattinson a veteran of Harry Potter, same entry and all! as well as In Bruges) and Michael Caine trade off early efforts to guide the audience along. Elizabeth Debicki, who was a standout in a cast of standouts in Widows, takes on the role that might have been the lead in a previous Nolan project, the woman whose life unravels and is the chief beneficiary from the opportunity to rewrite things. Her nefarious husband is played by Kenneth Branagh, perhaps the best strictly villainous figure Nolan has yet conjured, in yet another mid-careee standout performance. Himesh Patel, so appealing in Yesterday last year, has a fun supporting role (which itself is not normally a feature of Nolan movies), while Aaron Taylor-Johnson, so often robbed of his ability to be the movie star he deserves to be, is unrecognizable in a performance that seems to riff on Christian Bake (a familiar Nolan presence).

The whole affair is a trademark example of Nolan’s effortless ability to create sensational moviemaking magic. It plays out like James Bond (that’s how a lot of observers seem to be simplifying it) but is fueled by clever execution of yet another stylistic gimmick, which to my mind Nolan has so far failed to make anywhere close to a routine affair. Christopher Nolan is the opposite of routine. If nothing else Tenet is the latest example of this.

I hesitate to boost the results too far. It’s bravura but stops just short of wanting to be seen as much more than an exceptional action movie. If you can wrap your head around rewinding time travel, then you aren’t left with the ambiguity that made Inception so intoxicating. It really feels as if it’s Nolan saying he could do Dark Knight without Batman. Where that film examines the surveillance state that was then hotly debated, Tenet is essentially an argument for intelligence agencies, which most often end up viewed with suspicion and distrust. It’s a sensational depiction of such work being incredibly effective.

So it’s very interesting, sometimes in ways Nolan hasn’t really pursued before. In the years to come, depending on what he does next, Tenet might be viewed differently, as the movie that transformed Nolan’s already extraordinary career. We’ll see!

2020 thru August

 Here’s a list of 2020 movies I’ve seen thru August, my thoughts. And how I’d rank them:

1. The Gentlemen - The latest Guy Ritchie (I’m not overly versed in his work, so I don’t love this one, much less would’ve hated it, based on that alone), a great ensemble flick told interestingly.

2. Capone - The latest example of Tom Hardy’s brilliance.

3. The Way Back - The latest Gavin O’Connor, another great spotlight for Ben Affleck.

4. Sonic the Hedgehog - For me, Jim Carrey’s mainstream comeback.

5. Birds of Prey and the Fabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn - This definitely worked for me.

6. Bloodshot - An attempted Valiant comics universe starter, it’s a fun vehicle for Vin Diesel that actually works really well as a meta response to costar Guy Pearce’s best-known film, Memento. Totally unexpected. Totally works.

7. The Night Clerk - A great spotlight for Tye Sheridan and Ana De Armas.

Obviously I hope to see a lot more 2020 releases one way or another. But this has been a solid set so far.

Capone (2020)

 rating: ****

the story: Al Capone in his last year, riddled with dementia.

the review: Sometimes great acting is its own reward. Capone isn’t just about great acting but great storytelling, too, though.

Getting films released obviously got a lot harder when the pandemic hit. Capone started out as Fonzo but metamorphosed to get its release. Whatever hassles were involved, they were well worth it. Tom Hardy is the “great acting” in question, even if he’s absurdly hard for critics and mass audiences to love. He scored a box office hit with his last movie, Venom, despite a considerable amount of doubt, but for the most part he’s the rare instance where critics and audiences converged to scoff at the hype he’s amassed in the ten years since his breakout appearance in Inception.

And he’s playing Al Capone here, the second time he’s done a gangster movie (after the criminally underrated Legend, dismissed by the critics as “just another Kray Brothers rehash”...despite the fact that no one outside of England had ever heard of them).

Only, he’s not playing “Al Capone,” as in the dude at the height of his powers, but the guy after he’s been released from prison because it’s been determined...he’s no threat to anyone anymore.

(Ah, unless he imagines it.)

It’s not as if we’ve never seen deconstruction in film before. My personal favorite is The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, for instance. But to do it to a gangster, let alone a famous one, let alone a real one...We’re used to glorifying these guys, since at least The Godfather, since the nauseatingly acclaimed Goodfellas. We hear Capone fart. There’s nothing pretty here. This is a guy even the feds realize isn’t worth anything anymore.

The folks who still love him are his family, those who work for him. He’s got bills that need paying, things that need selling to pay them, a museum of a home that gets gutted to do so. The movie bookends itself at Thanksgiving and the granddaughter who in all innocence idolizes Capone.

Hardy’s Capone is practically catatonic. He’s an actor who can be compelling almost entirely by looking compelling, and director Josh Trank is brave enough to let him. Trank knows deconstruction. He did Chronicle, he did the Fantastic Four remake, which dared to sideline three of four major characters, for the most part. Nothing is sacred to him except the dramatic results. 

Surrounding Hardy are Linda Cardellini in the traditional long-suffering wife archetype, Kyle MacLachlan as the guy trying to keep Capone’s remaining wits together, and Matt Dillon as the guy who thinks it’s still possible to find his hidden treasures. They ground the movie in enough traditional expectations that it’s easier to accept it on Trank’s and Hardy’s terms.

For some reason we find it increasingly difficult to appreciate great acting. The less ambitious Daniel Day-Lewis got, the more he was loved. I don’t get it. Hardy remains as ambitious as they come, and he’s yet to dip into Johnny Depp levels of cartoonery. There’s always the sense that he believes in the integrity of his creations, even the bombastic Bane. He’s one of the few actors, or perhaps the only actor, who could sit in a car the whole movie, literally the whole movie, and be the only actor we see throughout it, and still be completely compelling (Locke). Hardy’s Capone is a great performance.

And on that level alone, this is a must-see. But the whole movie works.