'Vox Lux' Review: Pop Goes the World
Listening to pop songs brings about a rush of feel-good happiness to listeners, but when thinking of it as an engineered product of an industry, it might also be seen as a highly-concentrated construction of fantasy for consumers to buy into for momentary escape. This relationship between the artificiality of pop music and the culture that empowers it is what director Brady Corbet explores in his new movie Vox Lux, a fictional portrait of a pop star set in modern America. With bold and unflinching storytelling, as well as mesmerizing visuals and performances, Vox Lux is one of the most powerful films I've seen this year.
A pop portrait with an inventive structure
Vox Lux is a portrait of the rise of a pop star, but that's largely just the story that allows the movie to mirror this twenty-first-century America where entertainment, image, and pop culture hold all value. Vox Lux has a storybook-like quality, where meta elements such as its three-chapter structure and omniscient narration by Willem Dafoe give it lyrical quality, but that also includes its significantly darker tone (which audiences should brace themselves for as seen in the film's opening sequences).
Our future pop star – young Celeste (Raffey Cassidy) – was born from darkness. After being the sole survivor of a horrific deadly rampage, the soft-spoken New Jersey native is thrust into the national spotlight as the face of a nation's sorrow and strength. Poised and collected, we see that Celeste not only has words of honest strength to share, but music in her heart as well, and an original song co-written by her sister Eleanor (Stacy Martin) soon becomes a national anthem to a grieving and shaken country. With the guidance of a new manager (Jude Law), Celeste and her sister are introduced to a whole new world of entertainment and all that it brings.
Natalie Portman is transfixing
We see young Celeste go through the ropes – recording in the studio, dealing with her publicist (Jennifer Ehle), and further entrenching herself in the debauchery of the industry, but it's when Vox Lux jumps years ahead that we find present-day Celeste (Natalie Portman), no longer a novice of the pop music machine but now its biggest superstar. Although years have passed, the film plants us back into the present day on the day of another horrific rampage, sending a tour-bound Celeste back into national headlines through comments to reporters (Christopher Abbott). We've seen Natalie Portman embrace against-type roles before including her Best Actress award-winning performance in Black Swan, but in Vox Lux she is a full-on diva, playing every bit the self-obsessed and drug-dependent celebrity that one can imagine. It's a terrific performance that sees Portman play the full range of pop stars and should be remembered this Awards season.
Be ready – it's shocking
Audiences should be warned that Vox Lux depicts horrific events in vivid detail. Rampages with firearms are shocking, but only serve to show what it is that pop music tries to do – which is what young Celeste wisely notes: "I make pop music to make people feel good."
The film's original songs were written by Sia
Vox Lux reaches its end and climax with a full-on immersion into rock concert world, not dissimilar to Bohemian Rhapsody. The original music in this concert, as well as throughout the whole song, is done by artist and hit-maker Sia. For a movie that's about pop music, this movie needed to have good songs, and Sia is great.
'Amateurs' ('Amatörer') Review: Youngsters Make a Movie
There's a certain charm about a first-time filmmaker's debut.
Moreover, there's a charm to movies about first-time filmmakers, usually showing the humorous divide between their technical gifts (or lack thereof) and their indefatigable spirit to tell their story- their wild ambitions exceeding actual capabilities. To this point, the worse – or, less "professional" those characters' movies end up being (think Tommy Wiseau's The Room or Kyle Mooney's underseen Brigsby Bear), the more endearing these stories tend to be for the audience. The light-hearted Swedish comedy Amateurs (Amatörer) enters this storytelling space, showing rebellious youngsters who don't let talent get in the way of telling their story.
Upon hearing news of a German superstore considering moving their business into the sleepy Swedish town of Alafors – which would inevitably provide a big boost to their local economy – the city council looks for ways to attract the conglomerate, but on a shoe-string budget. It's the spirited Musse (Fredrik Dahl) who thinks of sourcing local students to create a welcome video of the city, an idea that is taken on by rebellious best friends Aida (Zahraa Aldoujaili) and Dana (Yara Aliadotter). They use their phone cameras and selfie sticks to explore the city and capture the magically mundane moments, including interviews with the hard-working locals who make up the city.
...[Amateurs] shows the special quality of a community and city that sometimes can only be captured by kids.
What makes Amateurs more than just a light-hearted comedy about first-time filmmakers is that it uses this set up to investigate current day economic themes that are part of the anxieties of globalization. Aida and Dana interviewing both local leather tanners as well as low-income shoppers about what it would be like if the megastore were to move in – all captured in hand-held and shaky home-video style footage – gives an innocence to their curiosity but gives the films a documentary-like blend that offers some unexpectedly profound insight. And seeing the two best friends having to acknowledge the divide in their own personal economic upbringings furthers their own understanding of their place in the economy and life at large.
Amateurs is good for easy viewing, though it suffers a bit from its own "amateur" quality.T here are a few moments in the film that truly stand out, like when a simple string arrangement accompanies why adding dish soap to fountains are always a good idea even if it's against the law – shows the special quality of a community and city that sometimes can only be captured by kids.
102 min. Amateurs (Amatörer) is not yet rated.
https://youtu.be/qIAg2lVDBEI
'Widows': A High Stakes Heist
There's no reason to skirt around it: Widows is rock-your-socks-off, absolute power-house filmmaking – the likes of which just don't get made as much as they should.
It's totally gripping, edge-of-your-seat fare that is elevated with its arthouse sensibilities. Widows is the type of movie that you forget can even be this good for the very reason that, well, these types of movies don't get made very much anymore – those being the elevated big screen genre movie for adult audiences. Not since The Dark Knight has a movie felt so commercially and artistically composed – and for both being movies about vigilantes seeking their own brand of personal justice, it somehow feels to be an appropriate comparison.
A wickedly pulpy plot and muscly movie, Widows crackles with emotional drama in its name already. Adapted from the stage play by Lynda La Plante, the story follows a group of women who aren't just connected by the unexpected passing of their husbands but by the same circumstance in which they lose them. In a heist job-gone-terribly-wrong, their criminal husbands end up dead. These fractured women are left alone to experience new grief and question how to move forward when their collective husbands' debt is still owed and the next job is laid out in front of them.
'Widows' is event filmmaking, a stunning and terrific execution that elevates its genre to be one of the most gripping and engrossing times in theaters this year.
The arthouse drama version of this might see these women meet and turn to each other for support, with long, drawn-out dialogue. But this is a Genre movie with a capital "G," and pulp female-championing writer Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) capitalizes on that, writing these women to come together to show the opposite of victimhood but as an aggressor.
Widows is such a strong outing for the number of different versions of women we see onscreen. There's steely Veronica (Viola Davis), determined Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and insecure Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), who all experience their newfound situations in different ways. While Veronica is left to devise her next steps from her lavish high-rise apartment, it's Linda whose husband left her with crippling debt and two small girls and emotionally and psychically abused Alice a chance at a new start. All three women bring their very most to these characters, and their energy makes this movie run like a blazing freight train.
Bringing all of these diverse elements together – the muscly action along with arthouse storytelling – is Academy Award-winning director Steve McQueen, who makes this movie a prestige picture with subtly woven subtext and themes. This deft balance fits like an intricately-connected web all its own, which makes the plot conceited in this movie look amateur by comparison. The A-list supporting actors (Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall, Daniel Kaluuya round out the rest of the roles) are paired with incredible writing that makes this a tightly packaged affair. Advanced McQueen fans will see the through-line of his films here, that of characters fighting for survival and against injustice that was at the center of films like 12 Years a Slave, Shame, and Hunger. Beyond criminals and robberies and more, Widows shows the lengths that desperate people are capable of going to in order to save themselves from horrific despair.
So run – don't walk, to see this one. Widows is stunning and terrific and one of the most gripping and engrossing films to see in theaters this year.
129 min. 'Widows' is rated R for violence, language throughout, and some sexual content/nudity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN2yBBSRC78
'The Long Dumb Road' Review: Jason Mantzoukas Makes "Dumb" Fun [WATCH]
The "buddy comedy" and "road movie" genre has always connected with audiences for the stories of personal growth that they inherently tell.
Previously comfortable or complacent characters who are met with obstacles that force them to recognize personal flaws, and by doing so grow from them, are movies that have a lot to offer audiences. Updating this template for the millennial generation, writer/director Hannah Fidell, whose last feature film was the steamy young love study 6 Years, takes this framework and adds a winning ingredient – funnyman Jason Mantzoukas as an unemployable drifter – to make the charming, delightful and heart-warming film The Long Dumb Road.
Taking his family’s mini-van across state lines to begin art school in Los Angeles, incoming freshman Nathan (Tony Revelori) expects nothing more than a nice drive where he can pull over and rattle off some photos on his film camera on his way to orientation, but plans change when his car breaks down. The first person Nathan meets is a very recently unemployed (quite literally quitting his job in hilariously theatrical fashion when we meet him) Richard (Mantzoukas), who puts the “manic” in “mechanic.” Nathan agrees to take Richard to his newly chosen destination – Las Vegas – as it's on the way to art school, and some company would be appreciated.
Nathan is an intelligent kid with his wits about him, collected and measured enough to bet that offering Richard a ride wouldn’t be a threat to him. The number of road beers and joints that Richard sparks, coupled with his overly braggadocios demeanor, only reveals his good-natured easy-goingness, something that Nathan realizes he could use a little more of in his own life. Of course, a number of not so enlightening incidents occur during the new friends’ journey through the American Southwest: an "almost" bar fight; disastrously reuniting with a lost love; overstepping boundaries with new flirty acquaintances (Taissa Farmiga, Grace Gummer), and getting set back by an old friend of Richard’s in a very inconveniencing way.
As he did in The Grand Budapest Hotel and more recently Spider-Man: Homecoming, Revolori shows that he’s able to hold his own against heavy-weight presences, but this time as just a young, earnest millennial without any character dressings. It's Mantzoukas who is the fuel of this movie, each of his impulsive and poor decisions more entertaining than the last. It’s a joy to see Mantzoukas, who always elevates any production he’s in as a supporting role, buddy up with a sort of adopted brother dynamic to play to his strengths as a leading man.
Whereas the artfully-eyed yet heavy-handed 6 Years saw Fidell explore the somber notes that young people’s mutually exclusive relationships can bring, The Long Dumb Road (as can probably be inferred by its title alone) has almost one-hundred percent less seriousness in it (a final act triumph includes Mantzoukas attempting to defecate on an enemy’s lawn), and it’s all the more watchable for it. At a tight ninety minutes, The Long Dumb Road, co-written by Carson Mell, sees Fidell exploring her own new world– comedy. It is a much looser style then we’ve seen her embrace before, which reminds us that sometimes the best thing we can learn is to not take ourselves too seriously.
This review originally ran on February 12, 2018, during the Sundance Film Festival
90 min. 'The Long Dumb Road' is rated R for pervasive language, sexual content and some drug use. Opening this Friday at
'Suspiria' Channels the Manic, Feminine Mystique
It's been said that life is all about balance: light and dark, order and chaos, good and evil.
In allegorical terms, it's clear to see how these qualities have been portrayed in gender senses. The idea of God and government is seen as having a masculine, "male" energy. Its opposite – temptation and unpredictability – has been embodied as feminine, "female" energy, as life itself offers dark uncertainty. Male-dominated hierarchies have long been apprehensive of women, fearing "the unknown." Which is all to say, Suspiria – the all-female coven horror film from director Luca Guadagnino– is the perfect film to offer haunting and electric feminine energy for these times.
A remake of the 1977 technicolor art-house horror flick, Suspiria follows an all-female dance academy where mysterious things are thought to occur inside the compound’s walls. There’s certainly danger in the politically-charged 1980’s in East Berlin where this movie takes place, the compound itself sitting just on the other side of the oppressive Berlin wall. The dance academy has been around for decades and is run by Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton) and her legion of ladies. The women not only maintain order in violent and unstable times but also run one of the most prestigious dance academies in the world. It’s where American transplant Susie (Dakota Johnson) arrives from her small-town in Ohio – coincidentally, as several lead girls crumble under the academy’s pressure (imagined or real?) – and impresses them all by dancing the lead solo on her first day of auditions, which results in everyone questioning who she is.
As Susie rises higher and higher, fellow dancer Sara (Mia Goth) grows highly suspicious of the oddities that seem to occur during Susie’s lead performances. Luca Guadagnino, who last year directed Timotheé Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name, makes this movie an art house exercise that operates with more mystery than on pure horror. He builds an atmosphere of unease into the academy’s walls, not unlike the eeriness of The Shining and because of this, at best, Suspiria will be polarizing and at worst, underwhelming.
...powerful thrusts and quick choreographed moves are set to inhalations and exhalations that ebb and flow to build to a symphony of senses and orchestration of evil.
What separates this remake from the 1977 version directed by Dario Argento is Guadagnino’s filming of the dance at the center of the film. Guadagnino is certainly one for understanding how senses play to the audience. Here, he fully orchestrates evil with a primal and animalistic expression compared to the ballet scene of the original film, where powerful thrusts and quick choreographed moves are set to the ebb and flow of inhalations and exhalations, building to a symphony of senses and an orchestration of evil. But it’s the time in-between these moments– a politically uninteresting side story, and a barely motivated Dr. Josef Klemperer (look closer at “his” makeup and re-look at Tilda Swinton’s credits in the film) that had me wishing Suspiria would’ve left me even more breathless.
Suspiria is an overall fascination for the senses, with its details and artful moments, but it lacks some of the core ingredients that make horror movies fun. It’s undeniably expertly crafted, and when it goes off the rails in the film’s head-spinning (or head-exploding) ending, it’s quite simply one of the most bizarre moments in movies this year. But even with that, Suspiria is not as shocking as it could be, making me think these ladies may not be entirely satisfied.
152 min. 'Suspiria' is rated R for disturbing content involving ritualistic violence, bloody images, and graphic nudity, and for some language including sexual references. Now playing in theaters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY6QKRl56Ok
'First Man' Review: Sailor of the Stars
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?" - Robert Browning
The moon, perched high in the sky, sits magisterially and quietly dignified. Like a watchful mother keeping eyes over her children that run around in the backyard of a grown-ups' dinner party, her protecting presence observes all. In director Damien Chazelle's eyes – and as he portrays in his latest film, First Man – this celestial entity is a shared spiritual ancestor to the first man to ever set foot on the moon, Neil Armstrong. Just as silently solemn, we see a man who was a brilliant engineer, loving father, and lonely sailor of the stars.
First Man sets out to be many things. Telling the story of the eight years prior to the famed moon landing – including early tests and unsuccessful trials that weighed heavy on all involved – it's a wonderfully exacted and historically accurate period piece dense with action-adventure elements that are captured with stunning practical effects and visionary camerawork. However, the real survival story that Chazelle focuses on is on the ground where Armstrong navigates the tragedies of life, including the early loss of his youngest child to cancer.
This is where the film's center is- a small character drama grounded not only by gravity but in the realities of life that surround him. It is Chazelle's and screenwriter Josh Singer's (Spotlight, The Post) interest and focus on this smaller side of history that characterizes Armstrong, but also what challenges the film. Armstrong is no space cowboy, but rather an engineer who thinks physics is "neat". To this end, I wish that Chazelle and company would have gotten more swept up into the romance of the cosmos.
With 'First Man', [Damien Chazelle's] third major release, he once again explores a young man's ambitions of greatness and the things he sacrifices to get it.
As this "first man," Ryan Gosling offers his quietly powerful persona to this real-life stoic man of few words, bringing steadfast commitment and beautiful restraint to the role. It's the enigmatic Claire Foy as Janet Armstrong who adds the necessary pulse and life force to the film, putting those "boys" at NASA in check in moments that put her husband in danger. A fantastic supporting cast, including Kyle Chandler, Jason Clarke, Christopher Abbott, and Corey Stoll, round out the film by adding virtuoso performances.
Damien Chazelle has always been a man of ambition. With First Man, his third major release, he once again explores a young man's ambitions of greatness and the things he sacrifices to get it. Chazelle naturally brings the cinema of life to the big screen with clear and incalculable vision. He is, after all, the youngest person ever to win the Best Director Oscar for last year's La La Land. To this end, perhaps First Man's overall effect would be even more impressionable and felt if seen in IMAX. In this setting, the 16mm film transforms into IMAX during the moon sequences, which Chazelle states that was intended to be his "Wizard of Oz moment."
At the end of the day, audiences will either cherish First Man for offering a contemplative inward journey or feel that it held itself too restrained. Overall, I would have liked to feel Armstrong be a little more awestruck, even if this was intentionally absent so as to faithfully show his brilliance as an engineer and devoted father whose still waters ran deep. Nonetheless, First Man is a brilliant work of art and dutiful historical document that no doubt furthers Chazelle's, Gosling's, and the rest of the creative company's artistry, as well as adds to the story of Armstrong and those who dare to find themselves amongst the stars.
141 min. 'First Man' is rated PG-13 for some thematic content involving peril, and brief strong language. Now playing in theaters everywhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4GtJB5WAlQ
'Galveston' Review: The Allure of Life on the Run
Living life on-the-run is a romantic idea, as made popular by the thriller genre.
It's certainly a tried-and-true storyline of the pulp-novel variety. But there's a problem in pulpy-writing: it's the same story, the same familiar tropes, characters and storylines that are recycled over and over. A movie like No Country for Old Men is perhaps the most brilliantly realized version of this country western crime thriller with its artistic sub-text. Or the intelligent character portrayal of the brothers in the recent filmHell or High Water with its great bank-heist story. But beyond these features, a film can be plagued if the story is lacking, as in the new movie Galveston.
Based on the novel by Nic Pizzolatto, the creator of True Detective, Galveston is another entry into the hit-man-on-the-run genre. The film stars Ben Foster as Roy, a murderer-for-hire who becomes the hunted when he's set-up by his boss (Beau Bridges). When the job goes south, he's left with young Raquel, played by Elle Fanning, "Rocky," as she calls herself, who wants to escape a life of selling herself as a call-girl. The relationship could certainly set itself up for a romantic pairing, but Roy's demons, including an ailment that has put an expiration date on his life, leaves Roy emotionally cut-off. Foster and Fanning always bring something special to the big screen and they share a sort of chemistry with the characters that live a bit too on-the-page.
Maybe it’s the reaction to the knowledge that impending doom is so close, so every moment makes us feel alive.
In an interesting move, this is the latest film directed by multi-hyphenate Mélanie Laurent, who audiences will know from such on-screen work as Beginners and Inglorious Basterds. Laurent adds artful introspection to what is the promise of redemption for Raquel and Roy's ever-consuming darkness. What's interesting here is that the French-born actress, singer, pianist, screenwriter, and now director takes on this American genre movie, which perhaps hearkens back to the idea that forging your own destiny against all odds is a particularly American tale.
Ultimately, Galveston's story of living life on the run is an alluring one, and maybe it will always continue to be alluring. Maybe it’s the reaction to the knowledge that impending doom is so close, so every moment makes us feel alive. Or maybe it's because, at some time or another, we all feel that we're running from something that we don't want to confront.
91 min. 'Galveston' is not yet rated. Opening at Laemmle Monica Film Center and VOD on this Friday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82UWW1bJdl0
'Beautiful Boy' Review: A Son, Astray
It’s a heartbreaking thing to sit helpless watching a loved one struggle with inner turmoil and grief.
And short of that person being oneself or a family member, watching two of the big screen’s most beloved stars – Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet – play out this heart-wrenching story as father and son, is a not easy to watch without letting your emotions surface.
Carell and Chalamet star in Beautiful Boy, the new film based on the pair of memoirs written by David and Nic Sheff, a father and son whose stories show the painful perspectives of a son’s ongoing struggle with drug addiction. Beautiful Boy depicts David’s desperate determination and Nic’s recurring relapses, revealing there may be no escape from rescuing someone from something as merciless and addictive as harrowing chemical dependencies.
It’s nothing short of expert casting to see these actors inhabit these real-life roles – you might even wish Carell and Chalamet were part of your own family. Few other actors could make you feel as crushed as seeing a heartbroken Steve Carell playing a forlorn father figure. And which other young actors could make you feel as torn up inside as Hollywood’s latest heartthrob, Timothée Chalamet, throwing his promising life away?
There have been other films about the consuming nature of drugs and addiction, and there are familiar notes to Beautiful Boy that don’t exactly differentiate themselves from those other films. But what distinguishes Beautiful Boy, making it so moving and impactful, is its ability to show how addiction affects more than just the drug user, but the user’s larger circle as well. Other stories of addiction might have focused solely on Nic and his journey of substance abuse, but in seeing his father David, meandering around his son’s empty bedroom consumed in thought and worry, we see the fractures from all sides. David calls the police to report his son as a missing person early on but eventually is resigned to accept that Nic’s reliable absence signals that he is no longer missing, but altogether lost.
David and Nic’s stories of recovery, relapse, and the hope for redemption paint a poignant picture of what makes life so beautiful.
What distinguishes Beautiful Boy further is that we see the moments where Nic momentarily recovers, rather than portraying him in a total downward spiral. Short-term stints of sobriety are an honest part of the experience. Nic rides the waves as best he can until he is all but swallowed up by the sea. Seeing a strung-out Nic at the end of the film at his absolute worst stands as one of the most tear-jerking moments I’ve had this year.
There is such heart brought to this adaptation by director Felix van Groeningen. It’s felt in the chemistry of its stars, which also includes Maura Tierney and Amy Ryan as Nic’s worried step-mother and mother (whose contributions in the film are effective but largely underutilized, being a story of father and son grief). The flashbacks of Carell as David with the younger Nic (Kue Lawrence, Jack Dylan Grazer) paint the entire picture of this family’s story even more affecting.
Beautiful Boy is a powerful, heart-wrenching story that offers the most sympathetic portrait of addiction that I’ve seen in recent times. David and Nic’s stories of recovery, relapse, and the hope for redemption paint a poignant picture of what makes life so beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y23HyopQxEg