NYAD

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

I’ve held a longstanding opinion that movies should be judged on their own merits, and not by comparison to source material. But Nyad, which was written by Julia Cox and based on Diana Nyad’s 2015 memoir Find a Way, complicates this notion due to Diana Nyad’s well-documented penchant for embellishment. Taking creative license is one thing, and being outright misleading is quite another—and Nyad the film depicts notable events that never happened. Most crucially, the claim that Diana Nyad was the first person to swim “unassisted” from Cuba to Florida is so dubious, that Guinness World Records rescinded their recognition of the crossing as an unprecedented achievement.

I must admit, I watched multiple scenes in Nyad wondering how accurate it was. To be fair, no one is labeling Nyad strictly as “a true story”—neither co-directors Jimmy Chin or Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi—but, come on: we are meant to understand, and take it in, as such. There are some sequences in the film that are obvious inventions for dramatic effect, such as a near-miss shark attack (Nyad did really bring a crew who used shark repelling electronic pulses) or two different hallucination sequences. When Nyad hallucinates, it’s pretty to look at, although for me it brought to mind how the entire film Life of Pi employs scenes of that sort far more successfully.

Does all this mean I didn’t like Nyad? Far from it—this is a film that succeeds remarkably well at what it sets out to do, which is to entertain, inspire, pull at the heartstrings. I only mention all of the above because what it does do is mitigate how impressed you can really be with the film, and with Diana Nyad herself. This is a really compelling film, which also could have been better.

Nyad does go out of its way to illustrate its title character’s ego, and even her penchant for embellishment, and eagerness to talk about herself. Annette Bening is perfectly cast in the role, and although Jodie Foster is also great as Bonnie, Diane’s best friend and coach, it’s honestly surprising to see Foster getting so much more Oscar buzz than Bening, as Bening impresses more memorably here. I can only theorize that Bening’s four nominations with no wins is an ironically contributing factor, whereas Foster, in spite of also having four nominations and two wins under her belt, is catching more attention in a “comeback” role in her first lead part since the poorly reviewed Hotel Artemis in 2018, and only her second since Elysium in 2013. The woman has not exactly been prolific in the past ten years, and people pay attention when she turns up again.

The question of whether Foster is playing a lesbian for the first time in Nyad is also a complicated one. The film never directly addresses Bonnie’s sexuality, nor can I find anything online even referencing it—everything only covers their relationship as longtime best friends, and that Nyad herself is an out lesbian. This movie does acknowledge that, in one single, brief reference to a woman she once dated, but it still establishes the fact, makes it clear, and then renders it completely incidental. The natural assumption is that Bonnie is also a lesbian, especially given the degree to which Foster leans into a clearly “lesbian vibe” in her performance. If nothing else, it’s quite nice to see a story about close friends who are lesbians (?) but not in any way romantic with each other.

Indeed, romance never factors into the story of Nyad, a departure from traditional approaches to movies like this. Instead, this is about a single-minded woman stunningly obsessed with gaining the achievement that eluded her upon her first attempt at the age of 28, and then she finally—spoiler alert!—achieves it after her fifth attempt at the age of sixty-four. And if we want to give Diana Nyad the benefit of the doubt, her achievement is stunning regardless of the technicalities of “independent observers.” She has every right to be proud, although given the characterization of her ego, being stripped of official accomplishment—a fact this film never actually acknowledges—must be driving her bonkers.

In spite of the issues swirling around Nyad, I really enjoyed watching this film. Whether I truly rooted for the woman is kind of another story—she strikes me as kind of psychotic. She drives her friends crazy, and Diana’s self-absorbed obsession with accomplishment is not something I could tolerate the way Bonnie does. It may be apparently platonic, but how much these two women love and care for each other cuts through all the bullshit, and might just be the biggest reason this move is worth watching.

It may be a cinematic fish story but it works.

Overall: B+

THE HOLDOVERS

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A

It would seem that director Alexander Payne and star Paul Giamatti are a reliably magical combination. I loved their last collaboration, 2004’s Sideways, and two decades later I love The Holdovers just as much—if not even more so.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a film so thoroughly heartwarming. There’s something about the script, by first-time feature writer David Hemingson, with its characters who are cynical and wounded, but we only get to watch them work through those challenges. Where other writers would give their characters a sudden, renewed hardship or mistake to overcome or get past at a prescribed point in the story, in The Holdovers you only continue growing more fond of them. There is nothing flashy about this movie, and yet its storytelling is deceptively unconventional.

Payne does like to give his movies odd little flourishes, as in this one, set in the year 1970, and given utterly 1970s-style production company logos at the start of the film, complete with visual graininess to make it look like a film that was actually shot fifty years ago. At first I thought this was a little unnecessarily cutesy, but Payne successfully plants you into the fully realized world of this movie.

Paul Giamatti is a peculiar movie star, a guy with a storied career, and an undeniable charm and screen presence that belies his longstanding frumpy look. Now at the age of 56, he’s perfectly cast as a longtime rural private school teacher with a lazy eye and a penchant for solitude. This is the kind of part we have seen a zillion times in movies, and Giamatti manages to make Paul Hunham utterly his own. Paul has a warmth to him that surfaces naturally, under the right circumstances.

In particular, the circumstances here involve him being roped into chaperoning the “holdovers” of the movie’s title: five kids who are unable, for various reasons, to go home for Christmas break and have to spend it at the otherwise abandoned school. One of these kids is Angus Tully, played by impressive newcomer Dominic Sessa. The school these kids attend has a lot of students from very rich families, and when one of the “holdover” kids gets invited home for a ski trip and invites all the other kids, Angus is the only one whose parents can’t be reached, leaving Mr. Hunham and Angus to themselves, alongside grieving school cook Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph, currently more likely than anyone else in this film to be nominated for—and win—an Oscar).

It’s difficult to put into words how wonderful I found The Holdovers. It filled my heart. I tried to think of other descriptors that could work. There’s an element of sweetness, I suppose, but that’s not really what the movie is. Maybe “wholesome” is the right word. Yes, I think that’s it: many “feel-good” movies of the 21st century are self-consciously bawdy with a “wholesome” subtext that just rings false. The Holdovers is the kind of movie that is never bawdy although it can be slightly vulgar when it wants to be, and it gets its tone of wholesomeness exactly right. It brings to mind old family dramas like Terms of Endearment—except movies like that are what I would call “comic tearjerkers,” and The Holdovers is neither as comic (although it’s often funny) nor nearly as much of a tearjerker (although I did cry a little).

It would seem that Alexander Payne is in a class of his own. His movies are about the people who connect in spite of familial challenges of almost pointed specificity. These characters are expertly drawn, complete people. The best I can tell you is to watch The Holdovers and see for yourself. Maybe it won’t bowl you over, as it’s not designed to be. But it spoke to me at a deep level.

An unlikely trio make for a cozy found family of wounded souls.

Overall: A

ANATOMY OF A FALL

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A
Cinematography: A-
Editing: A

Anatomy of a Fall is a spectacular specimen of cinematic craftsmanship. At 151 minutes, it does seem at first to move at a somewhat labored pace, and between that and the fact that the dialogue is in three different languages, this film won’t work for everybody. I would argue that it works for anyone with an appreciation for cinema that is elevated to high art through writing, editing and performance rather than dazzling visuals.

Mind you, the visuals in Anatomy of a Fall should not be underestimated. There’s a tracking shot early in the film that had me thinking, Why the hell are we suddenly going through the house from the point of view of the dog? Much later, during the second half of the film that is dominated by a trial, seemingly out of the blue we hear a clear recording of a recent argument between the woman accused of murder and her dead husband—and, at first, all I could think was, How is this happening? Who the hell recorded this?

I learned quickly enough that no matter what questions arise in Anatomy of a Fall, I need only to put my trust in the filmmakers—co-writer Arthur Harari, and especially director and co-writer Justine Triet. The early scenes in this movie seem to skirt the edges of inconsequential, but later prove important. This isn’t a “whodunnit” so much as a “did she do it?”, but in any case all the details we see onscreen are important.

As the title refers to, everything hinges on the discovery of Samuel (Samuel Theis), husband and father, dead in the snow outside the family home in Grenoble, having evidently fallen from the third-floor, attic window of the house. The key players in this mystery are wife and mother Sandra (Sandra Hüller, incredible); 11-year-old son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner, excellent); and of course, Samuel himself. Although a fascinating element of the storytelling here is how little we actually see Samuel onscreen. Aside from two scenes in which we see his dead body, he has only two flashback scenes, only one of them with his own audio—a visualization of the aformentioned argument, which ultimately cuts back to the courtroom when the audio becomes violent but ambiguous. In the second, Daniel is recounting a conversation with him in the car, and we see him, but his lips match Daniel’s voice quoting him as he tells the story. Beyond these spare examples, Samuel exists only in the abstract, as we follow Sandra and Daniel as they face Sandra being put on trial for murder.

I feel compelled to mention the dog, Snoop, again. I don’t want to get too close to spoiler territory here, but Snoop ultimately becomes one more key player, a pivotal part of the final days of the trial, the details of which make that earlier tracking shot from the dog’s perspective make sense. I’ll tell you that Snoop is fine in the end, but there is still a scene in the film involving him that is arguably the most horrifying in the movie, and if you love dogs, watching it might prove tricky. Side note: I can’t speak to any such intentions on Triet’s part, but this sequence is also provocative in regards to the notion that, when push comes to shove, people are more important than animals.

Broadly speaking, the genius of Anatomy of a Fall is how it skirts any of the details that might give us concrete answers about Sandra’s guilt or innocence—we are left to struggle with the same questions as the prosecutor (Antoine Reinartz), or Sandra’s old lawyer friend brought in to defend her (Swann Arlaud), or the judges, or the jury, or indeed even Daniel. There’s a moment in the film when Daniel is told that sometimes, when there are two possibilities that seem equally plausible, but it can’t be both, you just have to make your own choice. Such is the case with Anatomy of a Fall, which answers all the right questions and the right times, but also has just the right amount of ambiguity, leaving just enough questions unanswered to keep you guessing.

If you have limited patience with subtitled foreign films, Anatomy of a Fall might be a workable compromise: because Sandra is German and Samuel is French, but neither has mastered the other’s language, they speak to each other at home in English, making that the spoken language roughly half the time—even though it’s technically a French film. Rarely do you see films in which so many characters so casually switch back and forth between languages, sometimes from sentence to sentence. Here, it also proves to be a pertinent plot point, a source of resentment between Sandra and Samuel, as is the decision to relocate the family from London to Samuel’s hometown in France.

What this brings us back to is how, in Anatomy of a Fall, every detail matters. Sandra Hüller’s performance in particular is stellar in its ambiguity, easily gaining empathy but with an undercurrent of doubt, obstinately stoked by the prosecuting attorny, and indeed the inconclusive evidence itself. When all this ambiguity is the result of such deliberate intention, the result is a masterful achievement.

There’s a lot more to discover beyond the margins.

Overall: A

PRISCILLA

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

When I left the theater after seeing Priscilla, my moviegoing companion addressed the elephant in the theater: “How many movies can Sofia Coppola make about bored white ladies?”

It made me laugh. It’s also a legitimately valid question. And Priscilla takes that notion to the extreme, an odd sort of accomplishment in that it’s incredibly well made, excellently acted, well shot, and is also incredibly slow. Coppola has a long history of dealing in cinematic subtleties, but virtually the entirety of Priscilla feels like an extended prologue to Priscilla Presley’s life after Elvis—none of which do we get to see.

It’s a bit fascinating to have Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis come out just last year, and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla come out this year. Elvis had far too much going on; Priscilla doesn’t have enough going on. Evlis features a depiction of Priscilla but makes no mention of the fact that they met when she was fourteen and he was twenty-four; Priscilla is not only all about that fact, but subtly depicts the ways in which Elvis groomed both her and her parents. Elvis featured a truly unfotunate Tom Hanks performance as “The Colonel” who was depicted as the villain who controlled his life; Priscilla features Colonel Tom Parker only as someone Elvis speaks to occasionally over the phone, and shows Elvis himself as kind of an asshole.

There are some additional narrative choices in Priscilla that are, let’s say, compelling topics for discussion. Once Priscilla is of legal age and living with Elvis, she’s frustrated by his lack of sexual interest in her. Suddenly she’s having a baby, and then another—evidently they had sex at least twice. What are they, the protestants from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life?

This is an odd idea to layer onto Elvis’s clear grooming of an underage girl, only to have eventual affairs with costars in the movies he finds increasingly unsatisfying to be a part of. I can’t quite make sense of Elvis Presley’s sexuality as depicted in Priscilla. Add to that another layer: Jacob Elordi is is so gorgeous, and so perfectly cast as Elvis (dare I say, even better than Austin Butler in Elvis), it’s almost unbearable. And yet, Priscilla has absolutely nothing to say about his scandalously sexy live performances, the signature swinging of his hips. Indeed, it has nothing to say about his excess of fame, although at least it acknowledges it—when it comes to wealth, forget it. Coppola seems interested only in the story of a young woman who is seduced by a star and then systematically robbed of all her agency.

And Coppola takes her dear sweet time doing it. Here’s another oddity of Priscilla: it’s quite recognizably a Sofia Coppola film, and yet it might be the slowest film she’s ever made. I spent a lot of time wondering if anything of substance was actually going to happen onscreen. Are we meant to be as bored as Priscilla is? Honestly her life, while far from ideal, was clearly a lot more exciting than this movie is.

There are plenty of people who are expressing genuine appreciation for this film, and I can’t say I fault them for it, per se. The performances are exemplary, and 25-year-old Cailee Spaeny delivers a solid, nuanced delivery as the title character. The world it depicts feels lived in, if leaving a lot of things about the Presleys’ lives unexamined. Clearly a great deal of talent went into this movie. That’s maybe what’s the most disappointing about it, how it adds up to less than the sum of its parts. Would this film be getting the same level of acclaim without the Coppola name attached to it? I really wonder.

The untold story of a bored starwife.

Overall: B-

WHAT HAPPENS LATER

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

For a split second I found myself thinking: wouldn’t it be great if Tom Hanks had been cast in this movie with Meg Ryan? But then I got a few minutes into What Happens Later, Meg Ryan’s second directorial feature film and her first film acting role in eight years, and I realized Tom Hanks wuold have been horribly miscast in the part. For the character of Bill, a man who displays a playful cynicism, David Duchovny is perfectly cast. We can just hold out hope for a another pairing of Meg and Tom in some other movie before they die.

In the meantime, Ryan and Duchovny have fantastic chemistry, and it’s great fun to see them onscreen together, in a film that charms in a way few romantic comedies manage. Some might find What Happens Later to be too cute for its own good, and those people might have solid arguments. Personally, I rather enjoyed it, and found this movie to exceed my expectations.

Granted, Meg Ryan’s direction does eventually take us to a few moments a little too deep into the “magical thinking” that Bill consistently scoffs at, particularly in a scene where Bill and Willa (Ryan) take turns shouting at the universe from inside a snowed-in regional airport. The two characters have indeed endured a long series of irritations up to that point, but the level of outburst on both their parts feels unearned.

Such a moment is just a temporay speedbump, however, in the infectiously engaging dialogue that otherwise permeates What Happens Later, co-written by Ryan, Kirk Lynn, and Steven Dietz, the playwright upon whose 2008 play, Shooting Star, is based. It’s always a delight when a film based on a play actually works, and this one works so well as an adaptation, with filming locations in an actual airport, that it’s difficult to imagine it working as well on a live stage.

Ryan and Duchovny are both casually naturalistic performers, and are thus quite believable as a couple of aging, sometimes cranky ex-lovers who run into each other during passing layovers at the same airport. Usually romantic comedies are amusing at best, not eliciting a lot in the way of genuine laughter, but I laughed more than usual at this one—largely on the strength of its two lead performers. Well, them and the third of only three speaking parts in this film, the airport announcer (“Hal Liggett,” a credit apparently a pseudonym), who consistently respoonds to Bill and Willa’s questions in subtly funny ways.

Holing an audience’s attention for an hour and 45 minutes with only two characters is no easy task, but What Happens Later makes it seem easy. I had a lovely time just hanging out with these two, and appreciating the telling of a story like this with older actors. Although we learn that they had been in a serious relationship in their twenties, we never do learn their current age, although there is a sarcastic reference to Bill being “well into my fifties.” The two actors are in their early sixties, both looking their age and looking good—a rare Hollywood combination.

Ryan, for her part, plays a character less flightly than in her previous romantic comedy parts, in spite of Willa the character being, as Bill puts it, into “magical thinking,” putting her faith in “woo woo,” unscientific ideas. But, at her age, Willa is also hardened a bit, worn by the ups and downs of life, as is Bill, and the two characters catch up on the decades they’ve missed in each other’s eyes, as well as reexamine their previous relationship with each other, what worked about it and what didn’t.

In a fairly refreshing way, What Happens Later—a title that is both frustratingly vague and perfect for this story—ends without the typical burst of romance that ends most romantic comedies. It still ends on a charming note, with a bit of hope for these two and their connection to each other. I’d say it gives me hope for the movies, except that I was literally the single person watching it in the movie theater—because, these days, this is the type of movie audiences see no need to eventize in cinemas. Which is to say: this will be one to watch for when it hits a streamer near you.

It’s a good time just hanging out with these two.

Overall: B+

DICKS: THE MUSICAL

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

Dicks: The Musical is definitely the filthiest rip-off of The Parent Trap you’ll ever see. Strangely, even as it goes further with certain taboos than any other movie ever has—this is very much the point—I’m sort of disappointed it wasn’t any filthier. Get this: there aren’t any actual dicks in this movie. No genuine full-frontal nudity whatsoever! This feels like false advertising. If it weren’t for the endless amount of times someone says “fuck,” this movie might have gotten a PG-13 rating. Okay, probably not.

One of the many meta gags about this movie is that the “Dicks” of the title actually refers to the personalities of the two leads, Craig and Trevor (Josh Sharp an Aaron Jackson, on whose original 2015 UCB show this is based; they are also co-writers of the script). We’re told in opening title cards how “brave” it is that these two gay actors are playing straight characters—who are, you guessed it, both dicks. They display such a camp level of narcissism and misogyny that it circles all the way back around to delightful.

There was a moment early on in Dicks: The Musical when I was finding it so genuinely hilarious, I actually thought to myself: Is this the 21st century’s answer to AIRPLANE? Alas. If only.

As Craig and Trevor discover they are “identical twins” (even though the two actors don’t look anything alike aside from being a cuple of brown haired White guys) and hatch a plan to trick their estranged and bonkers parents (Megan Mullaly and Nathan Lane, milking this movie for all the moderate value that it’s worth), the potential is there. There’s a scene with Nathan Lane and his two janky puppet “Sewer Boys” that had me laughing so hard I was in tears. You’ll never look at a bag of ham the same way again.

And then there’s Megan Thee Stallion, cast as the CEO of the company both Craig and Trevor also discover they work for, and are tied for the top sellers of parts for autonomous vacuum cleaners. Getting such a wildly random name into this movie is fun, right? She even gets a pretty elaborate song and dance number. The problem is that her song is merely slightly amusing, and doesn’t elicit any genuine laughs, and in that failure kind of stops the momentum of bonkers hilarity dead in its tracks. And although there are certainly genuinely funny moments after that, Dicks: The Musical never fully recovers.

Megan Thee Stallion’s song isn’t even the only issue, musically—it’s just the best example, of how a movie like this works far better if the music is as exceptional as its humor. The Book of Mormon, for example, has much greater success at this. (To be fair, The Book of Mormon has never been adapted to film, and there’s no guarantee that it would adapt well.)

Dicks the Musical also features a pointedly flamboyant Bowen Yang as God, with mixed but fun results. I won’t spoil the specific depravity “God” winds up fully endorsing, which I have mixed feelings about, even as irreverent comedy. I don’t even necessarily take issue with it as a comic idea, but rather the manner in which it’s presented here. It’s simply not as funny as Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson want us to think it is.

Megan Mullaly’s vagina falling off and running away, though? We don’t even see that happen, we get to watch Aaron Jackson as Trevor describing it to his brother—and it’s fucking hilarious. And that’s the thing: I laughed a lot at Dicks: The Musical. Unfortunately, like way too many other comedies, it’s front-loaded with the funniest gags, which means it starts to lose steam about halfway through. And this movie is all of 86 minutes long.

The performers across the board are clearly having a great time, and that alone keeps the filthy depravity a fun time, punctuated with some great outtakes during the end credits. It just moves from a movie that feels wildly underrated at first, to one where you consider its mixed reviews and think: that tracks.

You won’t see any actual dicks but you’ll see some guys singing about them.

Overall: B

MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MARRIAGE

Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
Animation: B+
Music: B

According to writer-director Signe Baumane, at a festival screening of My Love Affair with Marriage, a scientist in the audience stood up and declared it the most scientifically accurate film they had ever seen. What a ringing endorsement! From a solitary voice that by definition does not represent scientific consensus! As reported by the filmmaker!

I don’t mean to sound flippant. At the post-screening Q&A I was at, hearing this bit of information, in the moment, I was genuinely impressed. And: for the most part, the surprisingly extensive bits about the physiology and biology behind behaviors and emotions related to romance—in an animated musical—comes across as plausibly accurate. It even features “Biology” as an incredibly charming animated character, narrating these many interludes, a cell serving as the character’s face. The only part of this that I bumped on was a reference to dueling amounts of hormones during fetal development as explanation for a man turning out to be a cross dresser, which struck me as a gross oversimplifcation, of science that is not even fully settled.

To be fair, how to handle such a concept in the context of My Love Affair with Marriage is tricky. Baumane, a Latvian-born filmmaker who is using animation to tell a largely autobiographical story here, actually did marry a Swedish man (here voiced by Matthew Modine) who revealed he was a cross-dresser after they separated—and, this was her second marriage.

And it really should be not only noted, but stressed: this is a story about much more than that, though it’s a vital chapter in the story of the central character here, Zelma (Dagmara Dominczyk). We follow Zelma not just from birth, but conception (or Inception, as the “Prologue” is titled), learn how many of her behaviors and peronality traits are traced back genetically, even to the childhood traumas of her parents. We see that she is born on the Soviet island of Sakhalin, just north of Japan; and soon thereafter moves all the way west to Latvia, where she gets a rude awakening from classmates in regards to gender norms and expectations.

We watch Zelma grow up, learn through culture to lose her confidence as a woman, gain some of it back by selling art, and then eventually get emotionally blackmailed, manipulated and abused by her first husband (Cameron Monaghan). Through all of it, we switch over to “Biology” using neural pathways and chemical reactions to explain Zelma’s decisions and behaviors, a completely objective backdrop for otherwise subjective ideas and choices. What’s happening to our brain when we fall in love? When we have sex? When we kiss? When we get depressed? When we get defensive? When we fall out of love, or fall into resentments? “Biology,” the character (Michele Pawk), may not cover absolutely everything, but she’s memorably comprehensive.

This tension between biological imperatives and erratic behaviors is what really makes the movie, My Love Affair with Marriage, for me. Baumane says she spent a year studying the science, and it really pays off.

The animation style is peculiar, with what often look like photo backdrops onto which are superimposed the animated characters, themselves animated at a low number of frames per minute. I must admit that I wasn’t much into it at first, but I got past it quickly—and the Biology interludes are especially well animated, sort of like animated films from high school health class with nuanced intellectualization. I was not quite as taken with the musical interludes, most of them sung by a trio of “Mythology Sirens,” a few of which are catchy. The best song, with lyrics by Signe Baumane and performed by Storm Large, plays over the end credits.

In the end, I was very taken with My Love Affair with Marriage—and I wish I could tell you how or where to see it. I happened to see a one-time encore showing after it was at the Seattle International Film Festival six months ago; I’m not aware of it having gotten a wide release domestically. My fervent hope is that it winds up on a streamer sooner than later, for more people to discover. This film is the epitome of specificity translating to universal relatability.

Biology illustrates how feelings and behaviors are rooted in things more complex than they might seem.

Overall: B+

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

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

I have conflicting feelings about Killers of the Flower Moon. One of the burning questions about it is whether or not it’s a “white savior” movie, and, without contextualization, it absolutely is not. This is a film that easily outclasses any film like The Blind Side or Green Book, and does not deserve to be in the same conversation with them. On the other hand, on a much more meta level, there is an argument to be made that such elements creep in: this is, after all, made by an 80-year-old White man, speaking for the Osage Nation and thereby decentering their very specific point of view.

It’s easy to go back and forth on matters of this sort. This film is telling a vital, American story that has never been told on this scale with this scope of distribution, after all, and a director like Martin Scorsese is one of few with the clout to make it happen. Does that make it right that no Indigenous director has been given the resources to tell such a story to as many people? Of course not.

There is some debate regarding the central character, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), and the moral ambiguity with which he is presented and characterized. He has returned home from World War I, and taken into family business by his uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro), by whom he is easily manipulated. With relative ease, Hale puts Burkhart into the path of an Osage woman named Mollie (a stupendous Lily Gladstone), who is one of the local Native American tribe who struck it rich by discovering oil wells on their reservation land. And this is Hale’s clearly stated intention from the start: to marry his family members to Osage women and thus secure land rights.

Ernest Burkhart, for his part, is a bit o a simpleton, incapable of much in the way of critical thinking. Over time, it becomes less and less clear how much we as viewers are expected to sympathize with him. Is it possible for him genuinely to love his wife, while at the same time taking an active part in the murder of both her people and her siblings? This is where much of the debate and discourse about Killers of the Flower Moon is going, and I am not convinced that was what Scorsese wanted to happen. The more important question regarding Ernest’s capacity for romantic compartmentalization (a concept he would not likely understand) is this: does it matter? The man’s a fucking murderer.

Making Ernest the primary protagonist of this film was a choice. Making him seemingly morally ambiguous, perhaps even vaguely morally conflicted, were also choices. The reasons for these choices may be the central mystery of this film, but to its credit, Killers of the Flower Moon does not let any of its White characters off the hook—least of all Ernest. It could be said that it makes sense for Scorsese to have centered these violent, White men because that is the story of both American history and Scorsese’s own filmography. That still leaves us begging the question as to whether Scorsese was the right choice for telling this story. If nothing else, much like the 1921 Tulsa race massacre—which gets a couple of mentions here—the Osage Nation “Reign of Terror” between 1918 and 1931 are not known to many, but are a deeply important part of American history. Now a lot more people will learn about this tragic chain of events.

How do you characterize how much you “like” a film like this? I find myself comparing it to last year’s The Fabelmans, which was also a late-career project by an iconic director, and which I loved. As cinema, it succeeds to a much greater degree than Killers of the Flower Moon, but it also does as entertainment. Killers of the Flower Moon wants to be more art than entertainment, but can’t escape also being the latter, its subject matter notwithstanding. It’s almost shockingly lacking in the cinematic flair of your typical Martin Scorsese film, which makes sense if he wants you to be paying more attention to all this shit that happened, than to any technical filmmaking achievements.

And on that level, Killers of the Flower Moon really works. This film is already famous for its runtime, at three hours and 26 minutes—although to be fair, that’s still three minutes shorter than The Irishman (which I felt was overrated, as is this film, albeit to a lesser degree). For a film that is pointedly not “propulsive,” with a consistently measured pacing, it’s genuinely impressive that it never lulls or feels tedious. It does not feel three and a half hours long. And the events depicted here are something we should all be sitting with for a while.

The issue, if indeed there is one, is in the point of view offered within that runtime. I happen to agree with the idea that it would be better for the entire story to be told from Mollie’s perspective as opposed to Ernest’s. There’s no reason this couldn’t have been done, skillfully, even with Martin Scorsese as Director. He could have gotten input from Indigeous and particularly Osage people (which, incidentally, he did), and maybe at least hired an Indigenous person to cowrite the script with him—instead, he wrote it with Eric Roth, another White guy (who cowrote both Forrest Gump and Dune, so at least he’s got range, I guess). The final result is at times uneven, as when Ernest is reading a line from a book aloud to say, “Can you find the wolves in this picture?” I thought, That’s a little on the nose.

I’m always interested in the reactions of critics and audiences who are part of the people being depicted onscreen, and in this case reactions have ranged from ambivalent to fawning. I would call Killers of the Flower Moon a solid yet imperfect work of cinema, a genuine achievement, but for now at least, even I fall in the ambivalent category. Subsequent viewings may very well crystalize my feelings, but at least this movie, even at this length, warrants multiple viewings.

Overall: B+

STRANGE WAY OF LIFE / THE HUMAN VOICE

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

Here’s another development in the evolving state of the American film industry: right now, you can go see film shorts in the theater, where the shorts are the draw themselves as opposed to being shown ahead of another film—and they aren’t even part of the annual theatrical release of Oscar-nominated shorts, which typically happens in February. We are still months away from Oscar nominations. Although it is arguably relevant that this new Pedro Almodóvar film, Strange Way of Life, will almost certainly be among the five live-action shorts nominated for the next Academy Awards.

There are several reasons why this is a film you can, right now, book a ticket to see in a theater—this one, 31-minute film being the headliner, the title on the ticket. My theory is that the biggest reason would be that there just aren’t enough other releases to choose from, thanks to a constantly changing stew of changing viewing habits in a post-pandemic world (changes that were beginning before it but which the pandemic hastened), and the industry impact of dual strikes by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA in the past few months. People weren’t going to movies in droves already (Barbenheimer being the exception that proves the rule), and then studios started postponing high-profile release dates due to their stars being unable to promote the work.

Presumably, that left some holes in the showtime schedule at your local multiplex. Enter Almodóvar, who at the very least has a niche but devoted audience (this includes me). It doesn’t hurt that Strange Way of Life is a Western starring Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke as past lovers hooking up one last time. Or that the film opens with a young singer-guitarist crooning through one of the most beautiful pair of lips I have ever seen.

Evidently in an effort to make the outing worth the time and effort, this presentation is followed by another Almodóvar live-action short featuring a movie star, this one made in 2020 and starring Tilda Swinton: The Human Voice. This one is 30 minutes long, so, taken together, this “movie-going” outing has a runtime of a whopping 61 minutes, not counting the trailers at the top.

The thing is, it’s very difficult for film shorts to stack up to the best of feature filmmaking, even if it’s made by the likes of Pedro Almodóvar. I enjoyed both of this films, but I can’t say I would call them vital viewing. They were just an option at the movies by a writer-director I love.

Strange Way of Life certainly has the novelty of beloved stars playing gay characters, setting aside the now-longstanding discussion of straight actors taking gay parts away from gay actors. Maybe it makes a difference that Almodóvar himself is gay? Pascal and Hawke are lovely, believable, and nuanced. The story here is about much more than just old lovers reconnecting; it’s about why they are reconnecting: Silva’s son is suspected of killing Jake’s daughter-in-law, and Silva has returned in an effort to either defend or protect his family. This complicates matters between these two men in a way I’d be far more interested in seeing play out in a feature-length film, and I found the way this one ends to be strangely unresolved and abrupt.

There is also one flashback, to Silva and Jake’s younger, hornier days, and it features one of the oddest, and most manic, makeout sessions I have ever seen on film. First they are drinking wine literally getting poured onto their faces until they are drinking it out of each other’s mouths, and then they are jamming hands down the fronts of each other’s pants in ways that, let’s just say, don’t feel natural. It was very incongruous to the rest of the story.

Which is to say: both of these short films have their strengths and weaknesses. The Human Voice is mostly just Tilda Swinton, alone, in a home I suppose we are meant to accept as hers even though we see onscreen that it is built like a live stage set. She spends about eighty percent of the time talking to a recently-parted lover on the phone, gradually revealing herself to be mentally unstable, and we never hear the voice on the other line. I wasn’t super keen on this half-hour profile of a woman who is increasingly hysterical, if not sociopathic. But, Tilda Swinton’s performance is incredible, a solo tour de force. This film might be worth watching for her performance alone.

Taken together, Strange Way of Life and The Human Voice are imperfect but solid pieces, worth the time at the very least for Almodóvar fans.

A pleasant enough half hour to pass

Overall: B

THE ROYAL HOTEL

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

I can’t decide how I feel about The Royal Hotel. My initial reaction, particularly to the ending, was that the supposed payoff was unearned. The more I think about it, though, the more I think: but, was it?

There was a David Mamet stage play, and then a film, about thirty years ago called Oleanna. In the first half, we witness a series of conversations between an older, male professor and a younger woman student. In the second half, she accuses him of rape, and you are forced to re-evaluate everything you thought you saw in the first half. It was a very polarizing story, particularly down gender lines. I can still remember reading about the arguments it elicited among audience members. in Rogert Ebert’s 1994 film review.

That script was clearly designed to make audiences second-guess their own opinions, and to a degree, even their own eyes and ears. I’m not convinced that was the intention of director and co-writer Kitty Green with The Royal Hotel, and yet I find myself having that sort of response to it. I can imagine very different, and very gendered responses to it.

The trouble with me is, I exist somewhere in the middle. And when I start to go down the road of criticism in my mind, I start to wonder whether I am falling into the trap of victim blaming.

Kitty Green, who also happens to be Australian, has set this film in the Australian outback. Two young “work travel program” backpackers, both women, need to make some money quickly, so they take a gig bartending in a mining town many hours’ drive away from any city. When they arrive, there are two young women from the UK staying and working there, but they soon move on. The pub they work at has one other woman employee, an Aboriginal woman. The entire time we spend with these ladies, we see maybe two other women patrons of the bar. The point is, women here are vastly outnumbered by men.

And Green definitely traffics in nuance and subtlety. The men that Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) contend with, mostly pub regulars, display a variety of demeanors. But, the more you think about it, the more you realize that they’re displaying varying degrees of toxic masculinity. So much of The Royal Hotel moves at a labored pace, with seemingly very little actually happening, it takes a while to register.

My own gender expression has no bearing on the fact that I cannot truly fathom what it’s like to exist in the world as a woman—whether it’s in the United States, or Canada (where these two characters are from), or Australia. Of course, the Outback is a reliable source for putting these sorts of cultural ideas into sharp relief. In any case, I could very well be off base when my initial reaction is to think that the way Hanna and Liv ultimately respond to these men is wildly disproportionate. The more I consider it, the more it occurs to me that there are plenty of women who suffer a sort of million tiny cuts, and these are a couple of characters who reach their breaking point.

They don’t reach it at the same time, mind you. Hanna is uncomfortable in this working-class, male-dominated environment from the first night. Liv spends a lot of time giving virtually all the men the benefit of the doubt, even a particular one who is clearly a creep. She’s convinced they all just have cultural differences.

A lot of The Royal Hotel is spent worrying about what harm might come to Hanna and Liv. Nothing as bad as feared ever really happens, and yet, it’s in this space of degrees where the real food for thought lies. There is a bit of violence that occurs in one instance, and again: it’s easy to imagine the interpretation of the degree to which it was an “accident” being split down gender lines. I think this is where Kitty Green knows exactly what she’s doing.

It’s whether it works, particularly as a movie, that I can’t quite decide. Also, no discussion about misogyny or toxic masculinity is complete without consideration of race, and that is every bit as much the case in Australia as any other bastion of colonialism around the world. An Aboriginal man appears in one scene, driving a delivery truck. The owner of the pub, Billy, still owes him three months back pay. Elements of racism, both with this character and with the woman who works the pub kitchen, are only hinted at. But, to a large degree, so is toxic masculinity.

Billy is played by Hugo Weaving, bearded and much aged since his heyday in the Matrix movies. I didn’t even recognize him. There are so many men with speaking parts in this film, I find myself wondering how much they truly understood the nuances of the script. The setting was very remote, and so was the set: filming occurred in the town of Yatina, South Australia, with a population of about thirty people. It’s roughly 150 miles north of Adelaide, where, presumably, a lot of the local actors were found. Billy is a drunk, and is predictably late paying Hanna and Liv, who over time are left to fend for themselves tending bar to rowdy locals.

I find myself struggling with this movie. I wanted more to happen in it, to justify the telling of the story. The plot pivots significantly at the end, in a way that may make some think of it as a “women’s revenge” movie. It’s not at all that simple. That’s an element in its favor, but, while I suspect I would gain greater insight with repeat viewing, I just didn’t find the overall story compelling enough to think that kind of investment would be worth it.

The Rorschach Hotel: you tell me what you see.

Overall: B