I could go on about why I didn't like this movie, but it would say more about me than about the film. So I'll just note that I was pretty sure I wouldn't like it, and I was right, and maybe that kind of pre-judging is wrong, but I mostly don't like modern musicals and I mostly don't like Broadway show tunes and I am clueless about the entire genre, so even though there are special showings of this movie where the audience sings along, thus demonstrating that a lot of people know these songs by heart, I couldn't sing five words of any of the songs within five minutes of seeing the movie. It was pretty, the cast was OK, if it wins a bunch of awards I will understand, but I hope I never see it again.
It's easier to list the things that are good about The Outrun than it is to explain why it didn't quite make it for me, so I'll start there. And there really is nowhere to start other than with Saoirse Ronan. She's been nominated for four Oscars, and this should be her fifth, although I suspect she will fall short of winning once again. She has matched well in the past with Greta Gerwig, but she shines with other directors as well. She tends to be the best thing in any movie in which she appears, which is to say, she is better than her films (at least the ones not directed by Gerwig). Here she plays an alcoholic, Rona, which is always good for Oscar attention, and she finds interesting ways to make the character different from all the other alkies we've seen. She is convincingly an individual, not just a stereotype.
The setting is crucial and impressive ... director Nora Fingscheidt and cinematographer Yunus Roy Imer make great use of the Orkney Islands, an imposing location both inspiring and frightening (and thus a perfect place to work out one's alcoholism). The film is based on a memoir by Amy Liptrot, who worked on the picture and who knows the Islands well.
There is a bit of an inevitability to the narrative ... woman is an addict, she falls, she gets sober, she falls again. Fingscheidt addresses this with a non-chronological approach that simulates forward movement, but I found it more jarring than anything. It wasn't confusing, but neither did it seem necessary.
Having just seen Blitz, where Ronan's blonde hair stood out among a fairly drab-looking setting, it was interesting to see how in The Outrun, Ronan is often stripped of makeup, as if to emphasize how her drinking brings down whatever natural effervescence she might have. Rona frequently changes her hair color, and each time it marks her attempt to rescue that effervescence.
I can't find much in what I have written to explain why I wasn't overwhelmed by The Outrun. It's a worthy picture, about as good as the much different Blitz, but unlike her movies with Gerwig, I don't imagine returning to The Outrun for a taste of Saoirse Ronan. Don't get me wrong, though, she'll deserve that Oscar nomination.
Clint Eastwood. It's like a brand name. You know what you are getting from a film he directed, even when he is 94 years old. Mick LaSalle encapsulated Eastwood's career: "Think about a legendary actor like John Wayne — enormous, iconic, indelible. Think of a director like John Ford — monumental, untouchable, profound. Now imagine if John Wayne and John Ford were the same guy."
Eastwood is/was an iconic actor, which isn't to say he was a great actor, although he certainly let his audience know the kind of character he was playing on a basic level. He was a popular movie star, although for me, the closest he came to a classic was in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. He has a handful of Oscars, but none of them are for acting (in fairness, he has been nominated twice). Characters like Harry Callahan are easy to describe and easy to remember, and it's harder than it looks to portray the essence of such a shallow character. I'm not here to denigrate Eastwood's acting, nor am I denying his appeal to audiences. You know what you are getting: a minimalist approach that largely avoids overt emotionalism.
Eastwood as director is much like Eastwood the actor, and I fear at this point I'm just repeating myself, for I say this every time I see once of his pictures. He takes a minimalist approach, he stays within his budget, he trusts his actors, and from everything I know his movie sets are good to work on. But the closest he came to a classic was Mystic River, with maybe Letters from Iwo Jima second. He's made enough solid movies to convince a lot of people he is a great director ... and of course, two of his Oscars are for Best Director. But he also made weaker movies ... OK, if you make as many as he has, perhaps a little weakness is inevitable. People remember his work under Sergio Leone, and his Oscar for Unforgiven, and gradually we just assume everything he does is quality. But the Westerns he has directed include such non-classics as Pale Rider and The Outlaw Josey Wales, films with reputations that don't match what's on the screen. And what to make of stuff like Absolute Power and Space Cowboys? (It's worth noting that both of those movies had reasonably-sized budgets and made money worldwide. Clint Eastwood makes money for his studios.)
So what about Juror #2? It's one of Eastwood's better movies ... he lets his actors act, he lets the screenplay do its thing, and all of it is solid. There are hokey plot twists, but Eastwood gets about as much as you can out of a courtroom drama in 2024. He deserves the plaudits, even if he wasn't 94 years old. But is Juror #2 as good as Anora, or Furiosa, or The Wild Robot, or His Three Daughters? No. It's as good as The Beekeeper with Jason Statham, and that is not an insult ... The Beekeeper is a good movie. But it's not great, and neither is Juror #2.
Blitz carries an aura of prestige: Oscar-winner Steve McQueen takes on life in London during the German attacks during World War II. Saoirse Ronan has four Oscar nominations of her own, and although I think she's at her best in her Greta Gerwig movies, she certainly shines here. New discovery Elliott Heffernan as 9-year-old George is a real find who would seem to have a strong career ahead of him.
Blitz's look is eye-catching in an appropriately dreary way (Yorick Le Saux is the cinematographer), and Ronan's blonde hair stands out strikingly (as do the red clothes she often wears). McQueen presents the historical story as a personal one ... Ronan plays a young mother, Rita, who sends her son George off as part of an evacuation of children. George escapes that fate, and works his way back home to London. McQueen effectively moves between the various elements he has concocted, with just enough flashbacks to establish Rita's character. And the cast is filled with fun names: Paul Weller of The Jam plays Rita's aging father, poet Linton Kwesi Johnson turns up, and there's the ever-present Stephen Graham as a frightening stand-in for Fagin. We even get Christopher Chung from Slow Horses as one of Graham's henchmen.
Somehow it doesn't quite add up to a classic. Harris Dickinson is completely wasted. His scenes could have been eliminated without damage to the film. There is an inherent intensity in the situation, the incessant bombing, George's long trip home, but outside of a few strong set pieces, everything feels a bit slack. Blitz is a good movie that will probably earn a couple of Oscar nominations. But it's my fourth McQueen movie, and it falls short of the others (Hunger and 12 Years a Slave for sure, even Widows).
It's easy to see why The Return was made. You've got a classic tale based on Homer's Odyssey. You've got two top actors in Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, appearing together for the first time since The English Patient in 1996. One of the screenwriters was the esteemed Edward Bond, his last film before his death at 89. The director was Oscar-nominated Uberto Pasolini.
Epic story, honored actors and crew, what could go wrong? Honestly, nothing goes wrong. But after watching The Return, I'm not sure why anyone bothered. Oh, Fiennes and Binoche might get Oscar nominations, and cinematographer Marius Panduru will be in the Oscar discussion as well. Perhaps the problem lies in the decision to turn Homer's epic into a brooding character story. That gives the two stars plenty to chew on, and they deliver, but the action is pretty limited until an ending so violent it earns the picture its "R" rating. It takes forever to get things going ... Odysseus washes ashore on Ithaca, naked, unrecognizable, then for what felt like forever we go back and forth between Odysseus keeping his identity a secret and Penelope pining for the man who left her so many years ago. It's not boring, not with two actors as strong as the leads. But it did feel like it took ten years to get Odysseus, naked on that beach, to finally claim his identity. The Return is not a waste of your time or the talent involved, it's just inconsequential.
As I sat down to write this, David Fear at Rolling Stone dropped his list of the 20 Best Movies of 2024, and His Three Daughters was #1. That's not happening with me, but I admit the film has grown on me since I watched it. It improves upon reflection, and it's pretty good in the actual watching. It's largely a chamber piece, so much so that I wondered if it was based on a play. But Azazel Jacobs, who wrote, directed, produced, and edited the film, makes full use of the primary set, a New York City apartment. We get to know all of the rooms, including one bedroom where the father of the three daughters lies under hospice care ... we never enter the room, but the sounds of the medical equipment are ever-present, an effective reminder that dad is there.
Jacobs apparently wrote the script with the three actresses in mind (Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen), and then gave them the dialogue to shine. I wanted to watch this from the moment I learned of the cast. They are all varying levels of favorites of mine, Coon for The Leftovers, Lyonne for everything, Olsen for Martha Marcy May Marlene. They work together perfectly as believable sisters, just this side of estranged, who come together to watch their father die. Believable, yet Jacobs does not write them as predictable, and combined with the skills of the actors and the concise setting, you feel intimately involved with these people. None of them are ingratiating at first glance ... or second or third glance, for that matter. Jacobs never makes the mistake of giving any of the sisters a saintly sheen, and while you might find yourself rooting for one or another (I was partial to Lyonne), the flaws of all are apparent. But eventually, they get past those flaws ... the women don't turn perfect, but by the end of the film, they accept each other, and accept themselves. This was my first Azazel Jacobs film, and I was impressed.
Conclave is receiving a lot of Oscar buzz. It's already picked up a handful of awards on the festival circuit, with the acting in particular getting notice ... an ensemble award at Palm Springs, individual honors to Ralph Fiennes at Santa Barbara. Conclave is also the kind of serious drama that might seem particularly respectable come Oscars time ... I don't think it's better than movies such as My Old Ass, Love Lies Bleeding, or The Beekeeper with Jason Statham, but Conclavesounds like an Oscar movie.
And as prestigious Oscar movies go, Conclave is pretty good. The acting is indeed strong, and the film looks great, with what looks to my clueless eyes to be a remarkable recreation of the Sistine Chapel at Cinecittà Studios.
But the plot itself is too mundane for such grandiose possibilities. Conclave is in essence a mystery story about the politics underlying the selection of a new Pope, which sounds engrossing. But the film relies on stock narrative devices, such as the withholding of information until it will have the maximum impact on the audience, and the ways in which the various Cardinals fit into standard stereotypical roles: the devious one, the ambitious one, the humble one, and the unknown late-arriving one. The pieces fit together well enough to be noticeable, and I wanted to be more surprised. The final revelation also felt tacked on, as if to prove that the story wasn't as ordinary as we might have thought.
Conclave is not as bad as it might sound. It isn't boring, the acting draws you in, and even stock plot turns often work. When I say it's no better than My Old Ass, I don't mean it's worse. But it's got prestige, and that only goes so far.
It's the return of Geezer Cinema! And I'm welcoming the return with a lot of spoilers here, so you've been warned.
Anora is one of the more buzz-worthy films out right now, and I'd been looking forward to it for a while. I'm a fan of Mikey Madison's work in Better Things and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and while this is only the third Sean Baker movie I've seen, I liked the others, especially The Florida Project. I was never less than engrossed in Anora, but I admit about halfway through I wondered if anything was "going to happen". Ultimately, that first half worked as a setup for what followed, but the film is a bit long and Baker could have done some trimming in those earlier segments.
Still, they established the basics about the titular Anora (who perfers to be called Ani), a young sex worker who partners with a rich, also young, customer, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn). The portrait of Ani is nuanced, for which we can thank both Baker and Madison. Ani is never shown as being coerced ... she seems to enjoy her job, it gives her a feeling of control over her customers without making that job be overly sweet/cool. In fact, Baker is steadfastly non-judgmental about sex work. What gradually makes the story progress is something else, something that is clear with hindsight, but something that presents itself gradually. Because Anora is basically about class.
Ani's problems don't arise out of her occupation, but out of the difference between her class status and that of her rich customer (who becomes her rich husband). There is a Cinderella aspect to how Ani views her relationship with Ivan, and while she is clear-eyed when it comes to her job, she gets blinded by the damage class difference will cause. When Ivan's family intercedes in the marriage, Ani at first thinks they will understand she and Ivan are in love, and even if they don't come around, the ring on her finger makes the romance real. But in the end, Ivan is just a spoiled rich kid. The family wins out, Ani is bought off, the marriage is annulled, and to an extent we are back to where we were at the beginning. Ani is quite clear-eyed about class by this point ... what she thought was a romance turned out to be instructional for her.
In the heartbreaking final scene, Ani seems to be returning to her old self. But then she bursts into tears. They aren't tears of regret about her job. They are tears of regret about her naivety regarding class, tears of recognition that Cinderella romances don't happen in real life, that the rich are different from you and me, and not just because they have more money.
One area where I was missing elements of Anora is that it is apparently a comedy. The audience in the theater laughed quite often, and many reviews have focused on the comedic aspect of the film. It's not that I don't understand the notion that it is a comedy, it's that I seem constitutionally incapable of finding humor in modern movies. I never thought Anora was stupid ... I wasn't bothered at its attempts at humor, because I didn't realize they were there. So put that on me when I say that I liked Anora quite a lot without being as taken with it as those critics who are offering overwhelming praise (a Metascore of 91, winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes).
Our local paper, The San Francisco Chronicle, managed to summarize Megalopolis via multiple reviews. First to speak was the paper's primary film critic, Mick LaSalle, who hadn't yet seen the picture when he called it "The movie to see this fall". His argument is that Francis Ford Coppola "is one of the greatest filmmakers who has ever lived", and thus a passion project from the master demands to be seen.
The main review, by G. Allen Johnson, said it was "One of the most polarizing movies of this or any other year, ... a gargantuan, epic vanity project unlike any other made." Johnson claims "it’s immaterial whether it’s good or bad", which is what a director can get away with when he is a legend.
But it was Drew Magary who may have gotten the attention of the most readers. Or at least his headline writer was on the ball: "'Megalopolis' is a piece of s—t". ("Do not see this movie. It is a piece of s—t.... This movie is unwatchable.")
If it's possible, they are all correct. It's a must-see movie. It's a polarizing vanity project. It's a piece of shit. And it probably doesn't matter if it's good or bad.
I'm not one for offering extended plot summaries when I write about movies, which is a good thing in this case, because Megalopolis doesn't make sense as you watch it, and makes even less sense afterwards when you think about it. It truly is one of a kind, and I know plenty of people who think that in itself makes it worth watching. It's got a great cast, although the situations and dialogue are often so stupid, the actors are wasted. (How about Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, my beloved Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, and Laurence Fishburne for starters?) I'm sure Coppola intended to make a great statement about ... well, I have no idea what he's about, but it's clearly great, whatever it is.
Last week, I saw Aubrey Plaza in My Old Ass. It was better than Megalopolis. So was Emily the Criminal, for that matter, and it had the benefit of Plaza in the lead role. Should you see Megalopolis? I don't know ... depends on if you trust the guy who said it was the movie to see, or the guy who called it a piece of shit. Or you could watch it and make up your own mind, but as Magary said, "You’ve been warned".
Megan Park's feature debut as a writer-director was 2021's The Fallout, a very good film about which I wrote:
Park's directing debut is confident ... there are no signs of first-timers disease. She tells the story as she wants, gets the performances she wants, creates a believable world of high-schoolers, and even makes the adults seem true-to-life, neither ogres nor saints.... Park doesn't reach too far, which just adds to the powerful nature of what we see.
I could say the same about My Old Ass, which features actors portraying believable teenagers and reasonable adults. But the tone of My Old Ass is different from its predecessor. The Fallout was about trauma, and while that topic sneaks in the backdoor at the end, My Old Ass is a more standard coming-of-age story. And where The Fallout was realistic enough to require a trigger warning at the beginning, My Old Ass drops a fantasy element into what is otherwise a straightforward account of the blossoming of a young woman. In My Old Ass, Elliott (a delightful Maisy Stella) does mushrooms and encounters her own self from 20 years into the future. That the older Elliott is played by Aubrey Plaza only adds to the enjoyment, although Plaza fans should note she is only a supporting actor here.
The time-travel angle doesn't always make sense, but Park explains it in such a way that we go along with it anyway. The obvious questions arise, as the previews make clear: if you could talk to yourself from a different age, what would you want to know, and what if you could change everything? What's nice is that, once again, Park doesn't reach too far ... the questions arise, but in the middle of a feel-good movie about youth. It's not too smarmy and it's not too serious until the end.
Park's background is interesting ... she's been a musician and an actor, and now she has two solid feature films to her credit. She is definitely someone to keep an eye on.