NOPE

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Special Effects: B+

It’s entirely possible that there’s something I’m missing about Nope, that there’s something great about it that isn’t registering. I’m inclined to give Jordan Peele the benefit of the doubt because Get Out (2017) alone proved him to be a visionary writer and director. Us (2019) was a less coherent, but still compelling, follow-up with a truly stunning performance by its lead actor, Lupita Nyong’o.

It might be fair to say that Nope, Peele’s new film, indicates a consistency of diminishing returns. There was something profound about his previous two films, whether in its script or in its actors (or both), which I fail to identify this time around. The potential certainly seems to be there: early on in Nope, an eerie tone settles over the film, and suggests this could be the 21st-century answer to the Spielberg masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Except . . . maybe not. Benevolence is clearly not what Jordan Peele is going for, nor is it ever. At 130 minutes, the pacing is slower than one might expect, and in the end, disparate threads I expected to come together in the end just remain unresolved. This may have been by design, but a sub plot about a chimpanzee rampage tragically killing people on the set of an old nineties sitcom—I just don’t get it. Maybe I will after I read some other reviews, a think piece here or there, and listen to some podcasts. Where my mind is right after seeing the film, though, is that I prefer films that provide some clarity on what the hell we’re seeing onscreen.

There’s a lot that happens in Nope that skirts logic. This is not to be confused with realism; a movie about a literally alien, otherworldly threat is unrealistic by definition. There are storytelling choices here that lack logic.

Which makes discussing Nope here much more of a challenge, because I don’t want to spoil anything critical, nor does anyone reading this (presumably). If Nope has any deeper value to me, it’s in the fact that I am now eager to learn what other people make of it. The trailer already reveals what appears to be a flying saucer, although “appears” is the key word there. I would be interested to learn what kind of research went into the design of that thing, which at times resembles a jellyfish, using the atmosphere the way a marine animal might move through water.

Nope is certainly unlike any other movie, or even any other Jordan Peel movie. In terms of what value that holds, I suppose your mileage may vary. It’s a mark in its favor, in my opinion. Daniel Kaluuya, returning after his starring role in Get Out, returns as a young man who has inherited his late father’s horse ranch, where they provide stunt horses for Hollywood productions. Keke Palmer plays his sister, who is barely interested in the business dealings of the ranch. With just a few scenes that are exceptions, the majority of Nope features either only these two, or a combination of them and three additional people: Brandon Perea as the alien-obsessed guy from the electronics store where they buy surveillance cameras; Steven Yuen as the local cowboy-entertainer who also happens to have been a child actor on the show with the chimp; and Michael Wincott as the cinematographer roped into helping them get the “impossible shot” of whatever they’re dealing with in the sky.

Kaluuya is one of the best actors working today, and yet his character here is so deadpan that it barely feels like he’s trying. Michael Wincott gives a similar performance, while Palmer and Yuen are a bit more animated. Yuen’s character is telegraphed to be key to the story, but in the end I cannot pinpoint how. The very opening scene is a reference to the chimp tragedy from the nineties, which would suggest it’s very important, but the narrative thread there winds up blowing away in the wind of that grey saucer thing.

In short, I don’t really understand Nope. What I can’t yet figure out is whether I should have, in light of its many redemptive elements: this movie is very effective at the suspense it establishes, and successfully creeped me out. It remains a fairly good time at the movies, with a plainly talented director and excellent actors, all of whom make unusual choices here, perhaps worth mulling over. Perhaps the most unusual thing about is that, in spite of my inability to settle on what to make of it, I want to recommend it, just so I can hear what others make of it. If that was specifically Jordan Peel’s intention, then maybe he really is a genius. Fuck if I know!

Sure.

Overall: B

MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Costume Design: B+

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is a harmless diversion, if slightly rushing through its plot points, and just superficial enough to serve as blandly pleasant entertainment that is not much in the way of intellectual stimulation. I’m starting right off by coming close to backhanded compliments, but movies like this have their place and have their audience; it had its place for a couple of hours in front of my own face, after all. That said, I did think this film was a little too enamored with its own cuteness, with several diversions into overtly contrived speeches and dialogue.

All that said, if there is any reason to see Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, it is absolutely Lesley Manville, doing a stellar job in the title role as a London cleaning lady with dreams of buying a £500 dress. And even though the characters ironically speak about how fairy tales aren’t real and this is “the real world,” Mrs. Harris’s entire story here plays very much like a fairy tale, what with her coming into surprising amounts of money from multiple sources all at once, giving her barely enough money to realize her dream of traveling to Paris and going to the Chrisian Dior fashion house to buy an expensive, custom tailored dress.

Mrs. Harris somehow quite easily stumbles into the Chrisian Dior space, after leaving the airport on foot, befriending a few sweet homeless men (did she get all the way into town on foot?), and finding her way there after getting some simple directions. When the fashion house manager, an elitist woman (but of course, spoiler alert, also with a heart of gold) played by Isabelle Hupert, tries to convince Mrs. Harris she really belongs in a department store, all the models and seamstresses are immediately charmed by her.

There’s a somewhat odd dichotomy of themes here, with director and co-writer Anthony Fabian weaving in a persistent subtext of classism, while somehow completely ignoring racism—in the real real world, you can hardly have a society with one without the other. Yet in this particular fairy tale, it seems to be a sort of racial utopia, with Mrs. Harris’s best friend being a Black woman who is also a cleaning lady (played charmingly, I might add, by Ellen Thomas); and a majority of the Dior fashion models being beautiful women of color. There is likely a historical element of exoticism going on here, but that is never commented on or acknowledged; rather, it is presented more as a period detail. It should also be noted that this is supposed to be the Paris of 1957, which was presumably more “progressive” than the U.S., but you would never know in what ways or to what true degree by watching this film.

Nevertheless, I did find myself engaged by Manville’s performance in particular, and am not sure I would have enjoyed the movie even this much had someone else, a lesser performer, been cast in the role. The last time Manville turned heads in a major role was as Daniel Day-Lewis’s designer sister in the wonderful 2018 film Phantom Thread, which also happened to be set in the world of fashion. Her characters in these two films are diametrical opposites, and watching her in these two movies alone might constitute a masterclass in acting. The earlier film is far more serious, far more nuanced, and far more challenging, but those are often more my cup of tea.

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris will still be plenty of people’s cup of tea, and for a couple of hours it was even mine too; it’s just not my favorite tea. Not the most flavorful. I like something with slightly more of a kick. This film is largely superficial in its themes, gleaning over what might have benefited from more depth. But, sometimes you just want to escape into a movie about a woman in love with beautiful dresses, and this film does a perfectly good job of quenching that thirst.

Take a swirl though Mrs. Harris’s broadening world.

Overall: B

OFFICIAL COMPETITION

Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-

Official Competition feels very much a lesser Pedro Almodóvar film, one of his rare offerings with less substance. This movie satirizes celebrity culture, a recognizable point of view even from a non-American culture, but it’s also begging to be picked apart, analyzed, part of think pieces. Unfortunately for co-directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, it’ll never get that kind of attention. It’s almost an irony that I’m even writing about it right now. My movie review audience reaches will into the . . . ones.

This isn’t all Cohn and Duprat’s fault. Official Competition is getting some good reviews, by many people who clearly liked it more than I did. And, it’s almost certain that this movie would be a larger part of the pop culture conversation had it been released prior to 2020—maybe not much larger, but larger nonetheless. I went to see this at 7:30 on a Tuesday night and I was one of four people in the theater. So many people prefer watching their movies at home anymore, it had me contemplating the ultimate fate of the Seattle International Film Festival, which runs the theater where I saw this. How long can they sustain running the three theaters in town at this rate, I wonder?

I went to see it because I wanted to go to a movie, and this was the option. Options are limited broadly; what few options there are, I have either already seen or can already tell they aren’t worth my time. Was Official Competition worth my time? That’s tricky to answer. I enjoyed getting out to see a movie. I’d have preferred to see something better though, something not so convinced of its own cleverness.

Particularly in the beginning, scenes in this movie go on a very long time, usually with some combination of only three actors: Penélope Cruz, playing an eccentric and wildly demanding film director; and both Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez, playing the two stars of the film she is making. They have very different acting styles but ultimately the same amount of ego and hubris, and therein lies the central tension.

I thought a lot about the pandemic while watching this, as it felt a lot like a “covid movie,” with such a small cast. There’s a good 15 or so other actors, but never all in the same room, and probably ninety percent of the time, only three or four people in the same room at once. Production did get shut down due to covid, but the script was already written. I suppose they lucked out in already having a production that was easier to mount than most during lingering lockdowns.

It does make the story feel a little outside reality at times, though. We are witness to countless rehearsals and “acting exercises” (one of which gets Banderas’s and Martínez’s actor characters to unite in their fury toward their director), but never really any actual shooting on set. The script is very dialogue heavy, with both regular dialogue and the reading of their script-within-a-script. I have to admit that, in hindsight, it is very well constructed. It just that, from scene to scene, I consistently grew restless. I’ve seen references to this film’s “hilarity” and, with the exception of maybe two chuckles, it’s not funny at all. It doesn’t even particularly feel like it’s intended to be. Such is the case with satire, though, which makes the movie only particularly entertaining to those who are convinced they “get it.”

I’m pretty sure I get it, though. I’m just not exceedingly impressed. And unless you already have a deep investment in foreign films that explore such quasi-intellectual themes, you won’t be either.

Sitting around trying to find ways to make the movie better.

Overall: B-

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+
Animation: B+
Special Effects: A-

I just wanted to see a movie today. I checked the listings at my local AMC Theater, noticed a title I had never heard of called Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, checked to make sure the score on MetaCritic worked for me, and thought: that’ll do.

And I’m so glad I went, even though it became clear pretty quickly that what i was watching was the culmination of an internet phenomenon I had not been aware of—but, take it from me, that knowledge is not in any way necessary to being thoroughly charmed by the little, one-inch toy shell with a single eyeball, an animated mouth, and, as the title indicates, standing on a pair of tiny little shoes. Marcel is lent a slightly intensified, even more childlike voice by the truly distinctive Jenny Slate, although one of the most deeply impressive things about this production is the naturalistic dialogue between Marcel and director and co-writer Dean Fleischer-Camp, who plays himself, mostly from behind the camera.

The conceit of the film is that Fleischer-Camp is doing a documentary, focused on Marcel while he stays in the AirBnB space where Marcel lives. After some introductory sequences that establish a tone of mild but unique enchantment, we learn that with the exception of Marcel’s shell grandmother, his entire family and community has disappeared from a sock drawer they had all designated as a safe space. Over the course of the film, the search for Marcel’s loved ones results in a prime time news program interview. There are certain delights I do not want to spoil here, such as the delightfully left-field cameo in the part of the TV journalist, or even who voices the grandmother shell, Nana Connie.

Honestly, if at all possible, I would recommend going into Marcel the Shell as blind as possible. For a bit I just found it moderately amusing, wondering vaguely it this really needed to be stretched into a feature-length film—and then it blindsided me with several truly hilarious gags, unique in execution and thus transcending its “quirkiness.” Listening to Marcel talk is like listening to the most hilariously original ideas coming from a four-year-old.

Of course, as this film makes clear, there will be many people for whom going in totally blind will be impossible. I didn’t even know who Marcel the Shell was, and there are tens of millions of people who do. It should be noted, though, that there is a vast difference of sophistication between that first YouTube video from 2010 and this film, although it should also be stressed that all of it is in the best way. On a technical level, I was consistently impressed by this film. There’s a sequence in which Marcel rides on the dashboard of Fleischer-Camp’s car, while standing on a map. The combination of stop-motion animation with seamless shifting light and shadow patterns on the map, the kind of thing most viewers probably aren’t even paying attention to, left me in awe. For all I know, it was an effect achieved through some simple means. Or maybe it was some massive technical achievement. Either way it looked incredible.

This brings me back to the dialogue between Fleischer-Camp and Marcel, usually with Fleischer-Camp speaking from behind the camera. It all comes across as totally natural and real, but there clearly had to be a lot of meticulous planning involved, in order to create animation that synced with it convincingly, That this film could be made with such considerations and still be so charming—and, surprisingly, poignant—is something I find legitimately astounding. This is one of those lucky instances where something so clearly a labor of love resulted in something its audiences can easily love just as much.

And whether you know Marcel the Shell already or you don’t, I am loathe to reveal any more about it. It’s such a delightful surprise on its own terms, every audience deserves to experience that surprise as thoroughly as possible.

Marcel has an eye opening experience on the internet.

Overall: B+

THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER

Directing: B-
Acting: B-
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B
Special Effects: B-

Christian Bale. Russell Crow. Sam Neill. Melissa McCarthy! I swear to god, whether it’s a lead role or a cameo—and eventually, honestly, probably both at different times in most cases—every working actor today will one day find themselves in one of these Marvel movies. How does anyone find it in any way novel anymore?

There was this period where it felt like MCU movies were getting more consistently good. Now there’s a burgeoning attitude about post-Infinity War movies on average waning in quality. I’m thinking there is some truth to that. How many MCU movies have featured Thor as a character? This is the fourth in the “Thor series,” but I had to Google it: Chris Hemsworth has appeared as Thor in yet another four of the movies. He is hardly the only character for which this is an issue.

Much was made of how much life director Taika Waititi breathed into Thor with Thor: Ragnarok in 2017. The previous two films, directed by Kenneht Branagh in 2011 and Alan Taylor had taken themselves too seriously, the first one in particular given an unearned sense of “pedigree.” Taika Waititi came in with Ragnarok and gave it wit, made it fun in a way other MCU films thus far had not been, and it became widely regarded as one of the best of all the Marvel films. Even I think it remains one of the most fun.

So, Thor: Love and Thunder, also directed and co-written by Taika Waititi, arrives after hot anticipation—and a general let down. The trailers certainly titillated fans with the return of Natalie Portman as Jane Foster from the first two films, but attempting to mashup the sensibilities of the earlier films with that of Ragnarok resulted in something uneven at best, using an actor of Portman’s caliber only to leave her ample talents wasted. This kind of “quirky superhero movie,” in which her “Lady Thor” is trying in vain to come up with a catchphrase that sticks, just isn’t a good fit for her. Every minute Portman is onscreen is collectively the weakest element of Love and Thunder.

On the upside, we get to see Chris Hemsworth nude from behind for a split second in this one. And, Russell Crowe as Zeus is pretty fun, with the significant exception of a moment when he prances in a way that turns being effeminate into a punch line. There is another sequence, like in the previous film, with a re-enacted play featuring other actors playing the “characters” of Thor, in which several name actors make cameos. For a moment we get to see another Hemsworth.

The villain this time around is Christian Bale, playing “Gorr the God Butcher,” giving his all in a performance of a character who ultimately lacks substance, or even half the depth we’re supposed to feel. He is let down by gods who do nothing about his dying child, somehow gets his hands on a sword that can kill gods, and sets out to exact revenge on all gods as a result. Curiously, Gorr is the one character never afforded any humor; we are meant always to pity him. Villains in a movie like this always work better if they can offer at least some level of comedy. But, Gorr seems to exist in a different movie.

Honestly, Thor: Love and Thunder feels a bit rushed, with some CGI effects that feel like their seams are showing, and a sometimes incoherent plot. This movie has four credited editors. By and large the ensemble cast of actors have enough collective charisma to keep the proceedings engaging, so I was relatively entertained. But, it also tries to be all things to all people, and winds up being not-great for anyone. Well, except for the eager fanboys in the row behind me, I guess. Those kids would have lapped this movie up no matter how bad it was, though. One of them declared the movie “hilarious” when it ended, and I just found myself thinking about how that guy needs to broaden his horizons.

To be fair, a lot of it is funny. I got a few good chuckles out of it. But, this far in, it also feels like what genuine cleverness is left to Thor is being wrung out like a spent sponge. It’s feeling once again like these superhero movies are becoming more of the same shit, different cast. Except it’s just the supporting cast that’s different, because the principals are still the same. And as always, what reason is there to get emotionally invested when we know that gods never die? Even those supposedly threatened by a “god butcher” predictably find a way to better him in the end. Oh, oops. Spoiler alert! Thor: Love and Thunder is, in the end . . . adequate.

She doesn’t even look like it’s a comfortable fit.

Overall: B-

MR MALCOM'S LIST

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

Mr. Malcom’s List is basically Bridgerton in feature film form. It’s fine entertainment, pleasant enough if otherwise unremarkable, except for its similarly “color conscious” casting. I suppose in this case it might be more accurate to fall back on the “color blind casting” phrase, given that in this case, unlike Bridgerton, none of the characters comment on their ethnic differences.

I’m never against this sort of approach, although it’s inevitably distracting when placed squarely within the context of a deeply patriarchal Regency-era society which is afforded none of the same revisionist history. Why make the cast unrealistically diverse but make no change to the subjugation of women? Because then we wouldn’t get the same Jane Austen-lite period pieces we love, I guess. Not that it would be impossible to change this aspect of society and still tell basically the same story, about a spurned woman’s attempt at revenge.

I can’t find any source online as to whether the Suzanne Allain novel on which this film is based also featured principal characters of different races, as though they all lived in 19th-century England harmoniously. All I can speak to is the film, which clearly serves as a salve for people going through Bridgerton withdrawals. The story telling is incredibly similar, right down to the narration by an older woman. Mercifully, the voiceover narration here is used sparingly.

The spurned woman at the center of the story is Julia Thistlewaite (Zawe Ashton), a woman reaching a ripe old age of mid-twenties and apparently running the risk of becoming a spinster. She is taken to the opera by one very wealthy and very eligible Mr. Malcom (Sope Dìrísù), who doesn’t bother taking Julia out again after she responds to an intellectual question with ignorance, and somehow this gets around and results in Julie’s public humiliation. When Julia learns from her cousin Lord Cassidy (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) that she was rejected by Mr. Malcom due to not meeting his list of qualifications to be his bride—hence the film title—she is quite unproportionately indignant, and enlists the help of her childhood friend Selina (Freida Pinto) in exacting revenge: she will meet all of these qualifications, then reject him with her own list.

Where this is going it easy to see from virtually the first frames of the film, and to say Mr. Malcom’s List is packed of conventional contrivances is an understatement. Most significantly, though, I had a hard time with Julia’s cousin Cassidy, who is bizarrely subservient to Julia’s many bizarre demands. Then again, there’s a minor twist later revealing ulterior motives on his part as well, and it barely works.

The bottom line is that Mr. Malcom’s List is a period romance just like countless others, but employing a template that has long proved effective. I can’t deny that I was engaged from start to finish, and found myself modestly charmed by the performances across the board—with the possible exception of Julia, who is insufferably self-involved, and her romantic resolution in the end is arguably the most contrived of all. It says a lot about the rest of the movie that the rest of the movie basically makes up for this. This movie is just another pleasant diversion, and of course there are times when that’s all you’re looking for.

Generally lovely isn’t it?

Overall: B

ELVIS

Directing: C+
Acting: B+
Writing: C
Cinematography: B+
Editing: C-
Music: B+

The most astonishing thing about Elvis is how a movie so long (159 minutes) could still be overstuffed—and somehow leave out crucial, well-documented details of the singer’s life. It barely mentions his movie career, which included over 30 film roles between 1956 and 1969. There is a depiction of Priscilla Presley (Olivia DeJonge), but no mention of the fact that she met Elvis when she was only fourteen and he was twenty-four. That wouldn’t be convenient for the depiction of Elvis Baz Luhrmann is going for—one of objective reverence, even in light of his infidelity and drug habits.

The second most astonishing thing about Elvis is that it’s biggest liability is, of all things . . . Tom Hanks. Why this script focuses so heavily on “Colonel Tom Parker,” as depicted by Hanks, is truly a mystery. Plenty of music biopics have adopted this framework of storytelling, with a person close in the star’s orbit telling the story, but Elvis feels just as much about Parker as it does about Elvis himself. And even by Luhrmann standards, Parker’s element feels like it’s a different movie, not least of which because Hanks is put into a poorly conceived “fat suit,” given a huge fleshy chin, and apparently encouraged to go with a Dutch accent far heavier than Parker reportedly actually spoke with. Everything about Hanks’s performance in this movie is a constant distraction, and never a good one—and yet the movie spends far too much time on him at the expense of relevant details in Elvis’s own life.

Is there a third most astonishing thing about Elvis? You bet there is! This movie addresses how so much of Elvis’s music was influenced by Black music and Black culture, but does it in a blatantly revisionist way. This movie would have us believe that Elvis Presley simply grew up in a poor white family in a predominantly black neighborhood, found success using the musical styles he was surrounded by, and the Black community was delighted by his success. This is demonstrably untrue. Now, no one would ever turn to a Baz Luhrmann film for historical accuracy, but this is egregious stuff, right there in “white savior” territory.

I’ve long said that the best biopics narrow their focus, on either a particular incident or at least a single period in a person’s life. Trying to tell a person’s entire life story in the space of just one movie—even a long movie—generally renders it dull, and Elvis is no exception, its frenetic editing notwithstanding. What’s more, this style is well suited to Luhrmann’s earlier work, most notably Moulin Rouge! (2001) but also Strictly Ballroom (1992) and even Romeo + Juliet (1996), those films being the only ones regarded as “classic” in Luhrmann’s filmography, even by Luhrmann fans. (Although a fair number seemed to enjoy The Great Gatsby in 2013; I wasn’t that impressed.) There’s something about Luhrmann’s style that sets the viewer at a remove from the story, never offering a chance to connect on a deeply emotional level—something that should really be possible in the telling of Elvis Presley’s story. Luhrmann was always more interested in visual innovations than emotional resonance, and his style is so recognizable now that it could hardly even be called innovative anymore.

In other words, Elvis would have been much improved if told by another director. Instead, we get a production depicting a quintessentially American figure that was filmed in Australia, exclusively on movie lots and with recognizable American landscapes and skylines rendered in obvious CGI. Luhrmann’s earlier films were set in obvious fantasy worlds, in which this sort of artifice worked for the story at hand.

But! All that said, Elvis does have some redeeming qualities, by far the most important of which is the performance of Austin Butler, who is eminently convincing as Elvis Presley. He has a naturally passing resemblance to the man, at least when he was young (oddly, Butler is never in any obvious fat suit when depicting “older, fatter Elvis”), and his actual singing voice is used in many of the performances. Butler has a magnetic screen presence, just as Elvis had a magnetic stage presence, and both of those facts are bizarrely obscured by telltale rapid-fire editing.

Elvis is also packed with music, though, and the music is almost uniformly great—at least when it’s classic Elvis tunes, as well as Black singers performing the songs Elvis later covered (those are arguably the best tacks on the soundtrack). Elvis does sprinkle in several contemporary tracks, often with rap vocals, as if in an attempt to acknowledge the lasting influence of Black music. The rap tracks are a bit misplaced, though. Honestly, someone should make a movie “about Elvis” that focuses on the Black artists who either “inspired” him or from whom he outright stole, depending on how you (or they) look at it.

Butler’s performance and the music throughout the movie are almost enough to make Elvis worth what is clearly made to be a theatrical experience rather than something viewed at home. Almost. It might well have gone all the way if there were less “Dutch Hanks” and a lot more of Butler, singing as well as acting (his performance is excellent).

It’s also hard not to wonder if this movie kind of missed the boat, having been released about twenty years too late. There were some clear Elvis fans in the row behind me at the theater, and they were deeply invested in the story, quite openly commenting on how they felt about certain characters’ behaviors, all of them depicting as hangers-on who were bringing down an otherwise innocent Elvis Presley. Huge fans of Elvis today, who would now almost exclusively be among the elderly set, will surely enjoy this movie. But, Elvis has not been an active part of the pop culture conversation in decades, and this movie could have found a lot larger audience back when more of his own fans were still alive.

In other words, Baz Luhrmann stopped far short of the greatness his movie Elvis could have been, and is offering it too late. Clearly I am not the only one who feels this way; the film has already grossed over $55 million worldwide, although with a budget of $85 million, it will likely barely break even, if even get to that point. I don’t regret having gone to see it, and found it moderately entertaining for what turned out to be far too long a time, but this is not re-watch material. The memory of this movie will get filed away in the back of my mind, in a drawer that never needs to be pulled open again.

You can’t look away . . . whenever he’s actually onscreen.

Overall: B-

FREEDOM UNCUT

Directing: B-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B-

If you were already a fan of George Michael, then the documentary Freedom Uncut is likely worth your time. Otherwise, I’m not entirely sure.

We are told at the beginning that Michael was putting “the finishing touches” on this film when he died, on Christmas Day in 2016. That was five and a half years ago. There’s a deeply awkward attempt at a “sexy spin” by Kate Moss in a swivel chair to introduce the film, dated 2017. I had wondered why it had taken so long for any kind of release, but checked IMDb and discovered this had previous iterations: a Showtime documentary film just called George Michael: Freedom in 2017; then George Michael Freedom : The Director’s Cut in 2018. I guess this was just a special engagement theatrical release. Why am I even bothering to review it? Well, I did see it in a theater. Whatever.

Anyway, I am indeed a George Michael fan, and so I enjoyed this movie—mostly—but I also found it almost disappointingly self-indulgent. Michael was also charmingly self-deprecating and quick to admit his faults, but there’s still something about the fact that he is credited as co-director (with David Austin). Something made entirely by someone else would likely have been more reliably objective. George Michael is understanding about his criticisms, but arguably unapologetic to a fault. I can’t speak as confidently about how it would have been received in 2016, but from the vantage point of 2022, his winning the 1989 American Music Award for “Best Soul/R&B Album” is a little . . . cringey. Michael, on the other hand, at least at the time, was quick to defend himself: he’s proud of the accomplishment; he didn’t make the choice, the voters did. There’s no accounting for taste on the part of American Music Awards voters.

Freedom: Uncut had a strange presentation, beginning with the original music video for “Freedom ‘90” in its entirety, with no credit or title cards. That was followed with a full promotional video for his 1996 album Older, as though it were that year right now and we were being primed for its release. For a minute I began to wonder if I had misunderstood this as a documentary film and we were just going to sit through a bunch of videos. Then we see Kate Moss in the swivel chair, and she tells us this film was George Michael’s “final work.”

The film goes into a fair amount of detail regarding George Michael’s initial rise to superstardom, after initial fame with WHAM! (but literally nothing whatsoever about how or why WHAM! split up, after only two album releases in the early and mid-eighties) and then releasing his seminal work, Faith, in 1987. There are multiple references to George Michael being the best-selling artist in the world in 1988, using that fact to justify comparisons to superstars like Michael Jackson, Madonna, or Prince. There’s a key difference between George Michael and all those other artists, however: Michael Jackson and Madonna both released several albums that each sold over 10 million copies, and while Prince had only one album to exceed that amount, he was so prolific and had so many albums that went multiplatinum he outsold George Michael as well.

And George Michael had just that one megahit with Faith, which hardly puts him in the same league. His 1990 follow-up, Listen Without Prejudice Vol. I, sold 8 million copies worldwide and that’s a stunning achievement considering his infamous refusal to take part in any promotion of it whatsoever—he wouldn’t even put his own photo on the album cover. He wanted the music to speak for itself, and there’s some integrity in that; the choice to pack his video for “Freedom ‘90” exclusively with lip syncing models is now iconic.

But is it that memorable, thirty years later? Consider this: at the concession stand at the movie last night, the young woman at the register was 19 years old. That means she was born in 2003. She asked us what movie we were seeing, and when we told her, she said she didn’t know who George Michael was. The sad truth is, this is a guy who died five and a half years ago, and didn’t even have a modicum of cultural relevance since his 1998 arrest for cruising in a Los Angeles public bathroom, and the cheeky single he wrote about it for the release of a greatest-hits package the same year.

Even by that point, George Michael had only released three full length studio albums. He only released another two after that, both completely unnoticed, the most recent in 2004, a good 12 years before he died. It probably tells us something that this film had a single showing in theaters and even that had maybe a third of the seats sold, residual effects of a pandemic notwithstanding. In other words, Freedom: Uncut exaggerates the lasting cultural impact of George Michael a bit—at least in the United States; we do see James Corden speaking about how he’s “part of the fabric” of culture in the UK, and I obviously can’t speak to that.

The impact he had on fans can’t be denied, nor can the impact of mega-stardom on him, which was the reason for his about-face with promoting his work only three years after Faith was released. Older was important thematically to his life, as the album is largely about the love of his life dying of AIDS and his eventual coming out. The film is engaging and interesting; it’s just that its mileage will vary depending on a host of factors, including both how big a fan you are and whether you even know who he was.

I’ll say this much: the man knew how to fill out a pair of jeans.

Overall: B

LIGHTYEAR

Directing: C
Acting: B
Writing: C
Cinematography: B-
Editing: C+
Animation: B

At the beginning of Lightyear, we are informed that in 1995, Andy’s favorite toy, Buzz Lightyear, was a toy from his favorite movie. “This is that movie,” it says. After that movie finishes, though, I was left thinking about how children often have bad taste. Like, why would he obsess over toys from this movie?

It’s not that Lightyear is bad. It’s just . . . bleh. And when it comes to the bar set by Pixar Animation Studios in the nineties and 2000s, it might as well actually be bad. If it were actively bad, at least then it would be more interesting. Also, there’s a truly strange irony in this film: easily the most fun character in it is a robot cat, the kind of thing tailor made for merchandising. But in 1995, the marketers of this “movie” never made any toy SOX the Robot Cats to sell? And Andy was only interested in Buzz Lightyear, and (in the case of Toy Story 2), Zurg toys? Apparently Andy was a lot weirder kid than we realized.

Lightyear is clearly, objectively, a crowd-pleasing movie. The showtime I went to had plenty of actively engaged children in the audience, which erupted in applause when the film ended. It’s always so strange to me when people do that. Who do they think is there to appreciate it? This movie is getting relatively mixed reviews, and it’s easy to see why.

That’s why, even though the movie is successfully, if formulaically, entertaining, I found it to be kind of a bummer. I won’t go so far as to say Pixar has jumped the shark, but this movie is a definite step in that direction. We already got an arguably unnecessary Toy Story 4 in 2019, but at least it had the comfort of a familiar universe with long beloved voices. Now Disney and Pixar is just milking the original Pixar intellectual property for all it’s worth, branching out into odd-angled spinoffs.

And the thing is, the principal characters in Lightyear just aren’t nearly as compelling as those in the Toy Story series. That franchise had a novel concept: kids’ toys come to life when they aren’t looking. Lightyear is just a straightforward science fiction tale, with a lot of production design oddly reminiscent of the Alien franchise. Nothing here feels particularly original. I should be lauding Disney, I suppose, for making Lightyear’s best friend a lesbian (voiced by Uzo Aduba). But the trouble I have with this “feature” of the film is that it feels written expressly for that purpose, and that purpose only.

The one character I kind of loved was SOX, the aforementioned robot cat. Nearly all of the humor in Lightyear that actually lands is in relation to SOX. Very little of SOX’s critical role in the plot makes sense, but then neither does the rest of the plot. But, there are several gags delivered by or through SOX, as voiced by Peter Sohn, that got to me. I love me a cat character, even if it’s actually a robot, and any humorous bit involving a hairball. Or robot-paws typing away at a computer and figuring out complex equations. Everything about SOX is amusing and cute as hell. I wish the movie had been about SOX.

Chris Evans is well cast as the voice of Buzz Lightyear, but Lightyear lacks a certain angle, maybe even a gimmick—like, say, a Buzz Lightyear toy who doesn’t realize he’s a toy. That’s funny stuff. The “movie character” Lightyear just has to learn to accept that he makes mistakes. Yawn!

There’s a lot of time-travel that happens in Lightyear, with the title character obsessively “testing the hyperdrive” of a ship meant to get a marooned community off of a hostile planet. These are complex ideas that must by definition be oversimplified in an animated feature, and every time Buzz leaves the planet, only a few minutes go by for him but anywhere from four to 22 years passes for the people on the ground. This is how he winds up returning after one of many trips to find his best friend has passed away, and later meeting her grown granddaughter, Izzy (Keke Palmer). I’d be a lot more interested in a live-action drama about the implications of these evolving relationships.

But, of course, I’m a sometimes cynical 46-year-old, trying to hold Pixar to the same standards they had 27 years ago. That fact would be easier to dismiss if not for the fact that Lightyear exists on the assumption of an audience connection with a film that came out 27 years ago. True, the Toy Story movies have captured the imaginations of multiple generations of children, but it’s difficult to see how any of them will connect with Lightyear the same way just because of that tenuous connection. The young children dazzled by this movie don’t know any better.

The animation is competent, at least, if not jaw dropping the way that so many of Pixar’s previous films have been. And while Lightyear is engaging from start to finish, if a little rushed in its plot development (something no child is going to give a shit about), there’s a bit of Pixar soul that feels like it’s missing. I may need to rewatch Soul (2020) just as a palette cleanser.

We’re also treated to Taika Waititi and Dale Souls as … more forgettable characters. Stick with SOX the robot cat.

Overall: C+

JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION

Directing: C+
Acting: B-
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B-
Special Effects: B-

When push comes to shove, every single one of the Jurassic movies is dumb—yes, even the groundbreaking original 1993 film Jurassic Park, in spite of it being a justifiable favorite of many (including myself). News flash: cloning extinct animals is not actually possible. But! That first film is expertly paced, sprinkled with humor that reliably lands, is cleverly constructed, and all of that is on top of early-stage CGI effects that somehow still hold up nearly thirty years later.

There have now been two separate trilogies in this franchise, and it was never any surprise that, on average, it’s been diminishing returns. I would argue that the first Jurassic World (2015) was a step up from Jurassic Park III (2001), but Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) wasn’t quite as good—but it was close. It was close enough, in fact, that even with a worse script, it was still enough thrilling fun to give both of those films a solid B. Bad writing, great thrills—the net result was something I still very much enjoyed.

And I have been particularly excited for the third Jurassic World installment since the end of the last film, when (spoiler alert!) the dinosaurs were finally all brought to the mainland and let loose in the wild. It was clear that the next film would live up to that title, with dinosaurs roaming all around the world, interacting with modern environments. Exciting stuff. And indeed, the opening sequence of Dominion offers the very kind of thrill that promises, with a giant sea dinosaur chomping down on a crab cage off the coast of Alaska. It then cuts to a “Now This” video about the state of dinosaurs around the world. It feels, for just a moment, that it’s all uphill from there, but Colin Trevorrow—who also directed Jurassic World but not Fallen Kingdom, but he did co-write all three—takes it in the opposite direction, evidently so he could run this franchise into the ground.

It’s like Jurassic World Dominion is in a sprint to be by far the dumbest installment in this franchise’s 29-year history. I won’t deny there are some thrilling sequences, particularly a raptor-and-motorcycle chase through the streets of Malta (Dumb? Of course. Thrilling? You bet). Oddly, after the previous films wasted no time getting to the action, this one spends a lot more time on the characters, which would be a good thing if the characters were interesting. Even Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), arguably the most compelling character in the original Jurassic Park and now making his fourth appearance in the franchise, is rendered nothing more than a puzzle piece for contrivance, platitudes and a nostalgia trip.

I was so excited when the trailer to this film was first released, revealing the return of both Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Satler (Laura Dern). I literally got chills. I had just loved that first movie so much. What a disappointment, then, to find them in this movie completely phoning in their performances, presumably struggling to hide their embarrassment over the lifeless dialogue they were saddled with. I kept imagining them reading the script for this movie for the first time—and then groaning. But then, I suppose, just throwing their hands up and saying, “Well, a check’s a check!”

I suppose this is where I should say something about the perennial Jurassic World leads, Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt, but why bother? They never did anything but serve as by-the-numbers human characters who were always secondary to the creatures who have always been the draw in these movies. But that’s what is perhaps most disappointing about Dominion: the creatures themselves. The special effects in Jurassic World movies never did break new ground and always just ran on the fumes of the stunning effects of the first films, but at least they were serviceable. In Dominion, there are several shots depicting a raptor suddenly turning around and running away, and they very much look like a computer effect, and distractingly so. The whole point of these films at the start was how stunningly realistic the dinosaurs were. Now they’re settling for what looks like a rush job, for what? A cynical expectation that the movie will make a ton of money regardless?

I hate to say it, but this movie is so badly written it makes the previous two, which had scripts plenty bad in their own right, look like masterpieces by comparison. Every turn of the plot, every corner a character goes around, is met with a preposterous lack of logic. Trevorrow regularly throws in clear visual references to the original Jurassic Park, maybe so we won’t notice. In one insanely stupid sequence, Grant and Satler infiltrate the lab of yet another villainous head of a genetics corporation, scanning a digital wrist band given to them by Malcolm in order to get through doors. The ease with which they do this strains plausibility even by the standards of these movies—and then they reach said lab and there’s not another human to be found anywhere. Jurassic World Dominion is full of these sorts of conveniences, designed to make it easy for the characters to get quickly to the next plot point.

BD Wong appears yet again, also his fourth appearance in the franchise as Dr. Henry Wu—he was in the original Jurassic Park and is in all the Jurassic World movies—and his moral place in the franchise has been all over the map. It seems he’s given a shot at redemption now, somehow using the existence of human clone Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon, returning from Fallen Kingdom) to solve the problem of giant mutant locusts threatening to eat up the world’s grain supply. Did I mention literally none of the plot mechanics in this movie make sense?

The only thing left to admire are the dinosaurs themselves, when they are convincingly rendered anyway. We get the obligatory fight between a tyrannosaur and a “gigantosaurus,” and as always the film finds one way or another to make us cheer for the T. Rex—no matter how many species of theropod are discovered to be bigger, T. Rex still wins the popularity contest. It’s also interesting to see some dinosaurs with actual feathers for once, after years of speculation regarding birds having evolved from them. A couple of “harrowing” sequences feel a lot like people getting chased by a giant chicken.

I was never a big fan of the concept of Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady character “training” velociraptors; that’s a thread of idiocy that runs through this entire trilogy. It largely takes the bite (so to speak) out of the unexplored danger and terror they represented in the first trilogy, and particularly the first Jurassic Park. By the time we get to this movie, we see Grady literally herding Parasaurolophus while on horseback, even lassoing one like a cowboy. That hokiness is the tip of the iceberg here, and it comes very early in the film.

In other words, plainly speaking, Jurassic World Dominion is a mess. It’s an entertaining mess, but still a mess, wasting far too much time on dull, one-note characters when it could be spending more time wowing us with special effects its makers didn’t even bother to perfect. With a bit more time and a modicum of effort, this movie, even being the sixth in the franchise, could have been so much better. The return of original-film cast is little more than stunt casting that ultimately serves only to disappoint. But hey, it did manage to get me to jump about a foot off my chair at least once, and once the film finally gets its shit together and has dinosaurs chasing and/or eating people, it becomes gripping again for a few minutes at a time.

“Nobody move!” someone shouts, right before . . . everybody moves.

Overall: C+