Viewed/Ranked
Viewed/Ranked
rating: ****
the story: Pat Garrett hunts down his old friend Billy the Kid.
the review: I recently sat down making my way through three edits of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and basically, I loved it. There's a lot of passion and history behind those edits, but what it boils down to is a film that's much more about Pat Garrett than Billy the Kid, and then, at that, less about his conflicted feelings and more about the sequence of events that led from the badge to the murder.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is nearly twenty years old at this point, and is unquestionably the greater cinematic achievement, but probably it would never have existed without Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Neither film spends a lot of time explaining the bona fides of their infamous outlaws, but plenty of time exploring the journeys the men who kill them take. For Pat Garrett, there's precious little time spent sharing a screen, without bullets, with Billy. Instead it's Sam Peckinpah indulging himself one last time in the lush visual language of the old west, including Pat's snazzy black duds that when updated with modern technology pop off the screen just as if he were Darth Vader hunting down Han Solo.
Which, by the way, there's plenty of that to be found here, too. Kris Kristofferson's Billy is a visual template for Han, and James Coburn's Pat is given another possible origin for Han's famous cantina showdown with Greedo (Harrison Ford himself had another in an episode of Gunsmoke).
Another valuable screen hand in Jason Robards casually points Pat in Billy's direction, but the reason I really cared about any of this is the enigmatic character known as Alias, who happens to be played by Bob Dylan. Peckinpah apparently felt Bob was an unwanted studio mandate, which is insane. I mean, if you have the young Bob Dylan in a western, wouldn't your first thought, as director, be nothing but abject gratitude? Maybe Sam wasn't much for music, although Bob certainly was. He composed "Knocking on Heaven's Door" for Pat Garrett, and it ends up featured in the movie's best scene. He also fiddled around with the song that would become "Wagon Wheel" in the recording sessions, by the way. His acting isn't much, but there isn't much asked of it. Mostly he's just the one guy smart enough to be faithful to Billy but also convincing factor into Pat's plans, the middle ground that's essential to discovering where these legends fit together when the film itself doesn't bother.
Coburn is effortlessly cool and so much more appealing than Kristofferson, who spends the movie basically preening, assured that the peasants around him are in awe of the legend, when they really should admire Pat as much as we do thanks to Coburn. These are all sketches, which is probably why the film had such a hard time finding appreciation on original release, why the studio had no idea what Peckinpah was trying to accomplish, which was nothing less than an ode to a dying era, both historically and as a film genre. He's not asking that you find either title character heroic, which is why he never frames either of their narratives. We are simply asked to bear witness.
Like so with the film itself. It's an essential part of film lore.
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.
rating: *****
the story: A new pope is elected amidst desperate maneuvering between cardinals.
the review: It was only a couple days ago that I finally figured out the ending, and as such unlocked the whole movie, and now I'm quite happy to report my love for Conclave.
As a Catholic, it's always nice to see, in recent decades, any film that breaks through the mainstream tackling Catholic matters. Conclave was a modest success in theaters, but more importantly critics actually liked it, and have been including it among the best movies of 2024. I suspect for a lot of them understanding the movie takes a backseat to the spectacle, up to and including that ending, and for many Catholics the ending only fuels a controversy. Catholics will assume Conclave makes a mockery of the faith, and critics will assume it's all good fun and high theater. It's a bit deeper than that.
It helps to hang all this on the sturdy shoulders of Ralph Fiennes, playing the cardinal tasked with running the election process, and therefore finding himself in the middle of seemingly endless intrigue, from John Lithgow's cardinal who ends up positively Machiavellian to Stanley Tucci's cardinal, who sees himself as the vanguard against backward traditionalism. The fourth name actor in the ensemble is Isabella Rossellini as the nun tasked with keeping the proceedings running on a practical level, but who also finds herself unable to ignore the drama unfolding around her.
My original reaction to Conclave was that it was a wonderful reflection of the post-John Paul II papacy, the inability to escape his considerable shadow. On that score it still works nicely. Mostly, though, the whole thing is a metaphor about the massive tangle of politics our age seems thoroughly incapable of escaping, and the ending a direct reflection of its consequences.
To be more specific, the ending, in which the newly elected pope stands revealed as having by far the biggest scandal just waiting to be exposed and yet having seemed like the best possible candidate after everyone else was eliminated from contention...In the rush to disqualify each other, the cardinals didn't stop to consider what they were losing in the process, and what they get as a result.
I can't think of a much more relevant story for these times.
the story: Nearly twenty years after Maximus took on Commodus with the fate of the Roman Empire at stake, his story unexpectedly concludes.
rating: ****
review: As someone who's enjoyed Ridley Scott's stream of historical epics since Gladiator, I figured I was in a good position to understand his vision for its much anticipated and also much delayed sequel. From Kingdom of Heaven to Robin Hood to Exodus: Gods and Kings to The Last Duel to Napoleon, I found his meditations on the complexities of leadership brilliant. Gladiator II, I determined, was much the same.
It's not at the same level as Gladiator or Last Duel, but it's not trying to be. Its sole mission is to finish the original narrative. Since Russell Crowe's Maximus dies at the end of Gladiator, how exactly a sequel was supposed to happen was always going to be a challenge. The speculation always drifted in the direction of revisiting Maximus in the afterlife, which for those keeping score who still haven't seen Gladiator II, does not happen. Rather, the plot follows two key players from the first film as they manage lives caught up in the further turmoils of empire.
Now, Ridley Scott was never playing strictly from the historical record. He plays fast and loose with facts, as he did the first time around. Faster and looser, actually. But his point isn't really fact, but rather searching for heroes. We don't live in an era chalk full of heroes. Or rather, we don't spend a lot of time worrying about them. We actually go out of our way to poke holes in the halos of past heroes, which reckless abandon. It seems relevant, in such times, to find heroes in a more creative fashion. Actually, when you stop to wonder why all the heroes are fictional superheroes these days, it begins to make a lot more sense. Ridley Scott found himself with a Roman superhero the first time around. Then he simply revisited as closely as he could.
You want spoilers? The little boy from Gladiator grew up, and through circumstances found himself repeating much of Maximus's arc. This isn't mindless duplication. That boy turns out to be Maximus's own child, the product of an affair with the sister of Commodus, once again played by Connie Nielsen. If you want the compelling reason to have a movie called Gladiator II once again hinge the plot on someone being a gladiator and trying to save the empire, it's really in the dramatic potential fully realized by how Nielsen's Lucilla reacts to the agonies that follow.
Actually, the title gladiator isn't even the one who most closely follows Maximus's arc, but rather the character played by Pedro Pascal, the latest actor beloved in TV roles but constantly struggling for respect in the movies (see: James Gandolfini, Bryan Cranston), who once again acquits himself well, in case you really doubt it. The title gladiator is played by Paul Mescal, who in his breakthrough role was never going to challenge Russell Crowe, and again, didn't need to. The draw here is the legacy, and the outcome. Derek Jacobi is the other returning actor from the first film, though he's mostly here as a link and a demonstration of the weakness of the senate, and old man on the sidelines trying desperately to make a difference, but it's just out of his grasp.
The true calling card of the movie is Denzel Washington. This deep into the review, and it's only here I even mention him, because it really shouldn't be necessary. Washington's presence is the true distinguishing feature of Gladiator II, its biggest claim to be more than just a sequel to Gladiator. It's by definition at least as much a Denzel Washington picture just by his presence. He's showy, but not in a Training Day way. He's not always dialed in, and he doesn't need to be. When he has something to do, you know it, and when he's trying to hide, you know it, and that's a new kind of role for Washington, and nothing that was part of Gladiator, and everything you need to know about Gladiator II and its vision of politics pivots around that description.
It's great filmmaking by extension. It's utterly gratuitous in its depiction of politics, the cheat code Maximus used in the first film removed, and all the dangers reinstalled. There are consequential deaths. There are rewarding deaths. They're all shocking, effective moments, some of the most deft ever depicted in film, and for that, Gladiator II earns more than it needs to, since without a Russell Crowe to root for, you wonder why you should care, and that's the reception the movie's gotten, and again, again, this is beside the point.
The point is, the story is finally finished. Good truly prevails, even though we know the empire's rot into oblivion soldiers on anyway. In the story of Gladiator, Marcus Aerelius had a dream that seemed unattainable, and certainly so when the hero he hoped would help him gain it is dead at the end. At the end of Gladiator II, the hero is still standing, and so, too, is the dream. It pivots the narrative to definitive hope. And that's the point.
These are the times we live in. We need heroes, even fictional ones. It doesn't hurt to have them grounded in some grand past in the real world, even if their stories are fictional. This is a perfect coda, and perfect storytelling, even if it isn't perfect filmmaking.
