EILEEN

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

It’s a strange position to be in, trying to be careful not to spoil key plot points in a barely better than mediocre movie. Does it even matter? Are any of you going to watch it? I suppose if you read the 2015 novel of the same name by Ottessa Moshfegh, you might have some interest regardless of what I have to say about it. Either way, this is a decent film that I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend.

Unless, perhaps, you’re an Anne Hathaway completist. And to be fair to her, she is absolutely the most fascinating figure in Eileen, as Rebecca, a charismatic woman hired as a pyschologist in a 1960s Massachusetts juvenile detention center.

The title character, Eileen, is played by Thomasin McKenzie. She’s been working as a secretary at the prison for the few years since the death of her mother, tending to her drunken widower father (Shea Wigham) in the meantime. When Rebecca shows up, Eileen becomes infatuated. And for the first half of the movie or so, you wonder why it wasn’t called Rebecca. (There’s already another famous movie called that, of course, but since when has that stopped anyone?)

The script, written by both Luke Goebel and novelist Moshfegh herself, has a thing for introducing narrative threads and then never fully exploring them. Is Eileen sexually repressed? We see her masturbating more than once, near the beginning of the film, in unusual situations. In one, she’s covertly got her hand down her own skirt at work. In another—the opening sequence—she’s in a car, spying on a couple necking in another car. And then she grabs a handful of snow off the ground and stuffs it down her skirt and into her crotch. What the hell? Eileen never directly addresses what that’s about.

Instead, Eileen’s head is turned by the entrance of Rebecca, and even though both of them have otherwise only ever indicated tastes in men, we wonder if this is some kind of budding lesbian romance. There’s something sensual about their budding friendship, with a confidence on the part of Rebecca, and a tentative excitement on the part of Eileen. Until the point at which Rebecca calls and invites Eileen over to hang out at her place on Christmas Eve, I honestly wondered what exactly this movie was supposed to be about.

Eileen arrives at the house. Rebecca is embarrassed by the mess. There’s an odd vibe, as they sit in the kitchen, attempting to visit. And then, when I tell you Eileen takes a turn, it seriously takes a turn. Something comes out of Rebecca’s mouth that I won’t spoil, but it radically alters everything about this film from that point forward, and it’s a moment that compelled me to say “What?” out loud through a disbelieving chuckle in the middle of a movie theater.

I’ll give Eileen this much credit: it is absolutely not about what it makes you think it’s about, for a shockingly long time. It’s also surprisingly straightforward, stunning twist notwithstanding: there’s not a lot of complexity going on here, which would seem to suit the 97-minute run time. And when it gets to the end, both of these women make unexpected choices, most of which lack common sense. When the credits rolled, all I could say was, “Uh. Okay.”

Thus, I can’t really decide what to make of Eileen, which manages to be a simple tale in spite of it folding in elements of patricide, incest, and pedophilia. What nuance this film contains comes from the performances, which are easily the best thing about it. Both of these actors are perfectly cast in roles that are both ultimately bemusing. That may have been the point, and McKenzie and Hathaway embody their roles in a way it’s hard to imagine anyone else doing as well. They make a fine pair on screen together. I just kind of wish they were featured together in a meatier story than something that falls just short of adequate.

Just because it isn’t flat-out bad doesn’t mean these two don’t deserve better.

Overall: B-

MAY DECEMBER

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

I feel like I should watch May December four more times before I can make a truly definitive statement regarding my opinion of it. But, well, I have other things to do so I’m writing the review now.

How often is the average viewer going to watch it, anyway? Critics can watch movies over and over to gain clarity on their perceptions of them, but that won’t change the average viewer’s experience of it. Most people who watch this movie are only ever going to see it once. Well, I can tell you: this movie might throw you for a loop. It might stun you. It might make you deeply uncomfortable. It might fascinate you on concurrent, multiple levels. It did all of the above to me.

Making a movie clearly inspired by the Mary Kay Letourneau story—which I completely forgot occurred right here in the Seattle area (Burien, to be specific, in 1996)—would be one thing. Todd Haynes, the visionary director behind such masterpieces as Far From Heaven (2002) and Carol (2015), compounds the complexity by making a movie about an actress researching a role in which she plays the woman who had an affair with a middle school-aged boy.

It should be noted that there are many key differences between Latourneau and Gracie, the older woman here played magnificently by Julianne Moore (here being directed by Todd Haynes for the fifth time). The most curious, perhaps, is that Latourneau had her affair with Vili Fualaau when he was 12 years old, but Gracie’s affair with Joe (a remarkable Charles Melton) when he was 13—23 years before the setting of the film. I can’t quite decide what to make of this difference. Does making the kid a legit teenager rather than a preteen somehow make the story more palatable? I can’t say it does: Elizabeth, the actress (an astonishing Natalie Portman), complains to her director about how the 13-year-old boys auditioning for the part aren’t “sexy enough,” and we rightly feel a little gross. Later we see a card Joe made for Grace around the time of their so-called “affair” (I hesitate even to call it that), and I cringed so hard I nearly felt like throwing up.

As it happens, Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau separated after 14 years of marriage. Steve Letourneau, Mary Kay’s ex-husband, moved to Alaska with the four children, of which he was awarded custody—all perfectly sensible. In May December, evidently to make things far more awkward, Gracie’s older children and ex-husband all still live in the same town, in this case Savannah, Georgia. This way they can all run into each other at a restaurant the night before Gracie’s twins as well as one of her grandchildren are graduating from high school.

Another key difference: in May December, Gracie and Joe are still married, now more than twenty years, Joe at the age of 36 and Gracie at 59. This is a film that examines the psyche of the people involved in this wildly unusual, deeply unhealthy scenario. There is so much to unpack in this movie, it’s difficult to know even where to start. If you have sexual abuse in your childhood, some of this could be triggering.

The wildest thing about this movie, of course, is that the premise is not just plausible—this has actually happened. How would May December play if the Mary Kay Letourneau story had never happened? Would it feel like too much of a stretch, a test of suspension of disbelief? The only reason this movie exists, of course, is Letourneau—it’s impossible to discuss the film without discussing her. And, just as Elizabeth tries to find ways to understand and empathize with how these people made the decisions they made, we find ourselves making the same exploration, through her.

The stealth surprise of May December is that Elizabeth, as it happens, is just as fucked up as anyone else in this movie. There’s a subtle narrative thread here, touching on the salacious fascination we have with sensationalized stories like this. Natalie Portman is absolutely incredible in this role, as a woman overstaying her welcome as she “researches” the role, taking the task to new and dangerous places, fucking with the stability of people already existing in precarious emotional spaces. Elizabeth engages in her own sort of grooming, gaining the trust of people she is ultimately just using for the purpose of serving her onscren performance. (One of many fantastic touches is how Julianne Moore plays Gracie with a slight lisp, and when we later see Elizabeth playing her, she really leans into that lisp.)

Gracie’s younger children are surprisingly well put together, but the eldest from the previous marriage, Georgie (Cory Michael Smith), is understandably a bit unstable. Everyone in Gracie’s orbit has a different way of dealing with such truly unique circumstances, which compels people to mail literal shit in a box to their house. Gracie herself, while prone to sobbing breakdowns due to endless, barely covert judgment in her community, is fascinatingly unrepentant. She remains steadfast even in the face of Joe coming to an unusually existential moment: is it possible he was too young to be making these kinds of decisons? “You seduced me,” Gracie says to him—a horrid line I’m not sure I will ever forget.

It occurs to me, suddenly, that I easily empathize with everyone in this movie, except for the two leads. Gracie declares herself “naive,” which is perhaps true, but in a way that masks a kind of sociopathy. Elizabeth is eager to understand where Gracie is coming from, but in ways that ultimately only serve her narcissism. There is something deeply wrong with both of these women.

There’s a lot that really got under my skin in May December—but in all the right ways. There’s something about the delivery, particularly in the beginning, that feels almost unnecessarily overwrought, and then somehow it clicks and really works. If I had any complaint, it would be about the score, by Marcelo Zarvos, which is incongruously melodramatic. These jarring piano cords will ring out in even the most otherwise quietly performed scenes. I can see what Haynes we going for, but it never quite worked for me.

That said, I have a strong feeling I could change my mind about the score upon repeat viewings. I remain unconvinced as to whether that’s really relevant, though. Even after one viewing, even accounting for intrusive music, May December is a film I will be thinking about for a long time to come. It has far more to unpack than I even managed to cover here, making it a treasure trove of discomfort.

Either you’re Haynes Hive or you aren’t. Count me all in.

Overall: A-

RENAISSANCE: A FILM BY BEYONCÉ

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

There is so much to say about Reinassance: A Film by Beyoncé, not least of which is that subtitle: the film was written, produced and directed by Beyoncé herself. Could I possibly cover everything there is to say about it? My best hope is to cover a fraction of it—I’m just another gay White guy, after all. There are things Beyoncé means to other communities that I could not possibly relate to.

This much is clear: People. Love. Beyoncé. Renaissance is packed with audience clips featuring fans going apeshit, and my best guess would be that, to those people, this film is an outright masterpiece. When it comes to those kinds of fans, the star can do no wrong. The closest to that kind of idol I have ever had is Madonna—who even gets a shoutout here, during the performance of “Break My Soul” that samples Vogue, and literally folding “queen mother, Madonna, we love you!” into the lyrics—and not even I go apeshit at her concerts. (I do get excited in a way I don’t at other concerts.) I quickly run out of patience for excessive fan fawning, and have even left Madonna fan groups on Facebook because of ridiculous backlash to the slightest of criticisms.

And yet, when it comes to Renaissance, here’s the thing: I can find nothing, really, to criticize. It’s a fantastically immersive, documentary concert film, a fairly even mix of impeccably shot live performance footage and backstage and behind-the-scenes footage. If forced to criticize anything, it might be the run time, which comes in at just eleven minutes shy of three hours. It seems even concert films are not immune to the current trend of indulgent editors. Of course, I say this as a genuine fan of Beyoncé, someone with all of her albums, someone who loves her too—but, you know, just not that much. I don’t go apeshit over her.

It should be noted that I went to a 12pm screening on a Saturday. I was one of literally four people in the theater, and one of two people who came alone. Only the two guys who came together, and sat two seats away from me in my row, so much as sang along to a few of the songs. Given what I have heard about packed evening screenings that make quite a contrast to this experience, crowds so rowdy it might as well be at a literal concert, it’s clear that how great an experience this film is will depend a great deal on what you’re looking for, and the context in which you see it.

There are two major things that stayed with me after seeing Renaissance. The first is the audience, and who this film’s editors chose to focus on. It comes as no surprise that Beyoncé’s audiences are largely Black people, but also—holy shit, a lot of gay men. Such a majority of the men seen in the audience display some level of queer sensibility that I made a game of identifying what few men at least appeared to be cisgender and straight. (It’s not lost on me that this is ultimately a regressive exercise, especially in an age when the very concept of “gaydar” is deeply dated.) As you can imagine, there’s a lot of queer Black men.

And nowI have to bring it back to Madonna once again, because of the inevitable comparisons to her seminal 1991 concert documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare. There have of course been several other films inspiring comparison to Truth of Dare, but I’m not sure there as ever been a more apt comparison than with Renaissance. And Renaissance is executed as though it identified the flaws in Truth or Dare—creating a false narrative of the star being “mother” to her dancers; artistic choices that serve only to sensationalize—and dispensed with them.

As someone who is a huge fan of both Madonna and Beyoncé, I see these two artists’ status in the queer community as representative of different eras. Much as I love Madonna and still acknowledge the trail she blazed for others after her, most of her business decisions were ultimately self-serving, and it must be acknowledged how much queer and Black culture (and, in particular, Black queer culture) she appropriated. “Vogue” is the ultimate example of this, mainstreaming Black ballroom culture and ultimately whitewashing it. I suppose you could argue that Beyoncé makes ultimately self-serving decisions as well—I mean, shit, the woman is worth $540 million—but she also elevates other communities in a way few of her artistic forebears have. An entire behind-the-scenes sequence in Renaissance is dedicated to how many of her dancers on this tour are queer Ballroom dancers.

There is an organic flow to how the backstage footage is edited into the concert performance footage. Renaissance begins with a collage Beyoncé addressing whatever city she’s in, saying “I love you” to them, and then launching into the “I love you, I love you, I love you” of “Dangerously in Love”—a conceit that is both simple and clever. She makes the unusual, yet effective, choice of opening her set with a couple of ballads, and then shifts into higher-tempo tracks from the Renaissance album: “I’m That Girl,” “Cozy,” “Alien Superstar.” It’s actually several songs in before the shift from concert to documentary footage occurs, and it happens mid-performance at a concert where the sound suddenly cuts out. Suddenly we’re backstage, seeing everyone scramble, find a quick solution, and then launch right back into performance.

The documentary footage is used very sparingly during the first hour or so of the film, but at a measured pace, the behind-the-scenes stuff becomes more frequent. I can’t say that Renaissance reveals who Beyoncé “really is” any more than any of these kinds of films do, but we do get a glimpse of some of her frustrations, particularly when crew around her don’t give her the respect she deserves (this plays out very subtly, for the record, but it’s there). Beyoncé is well known to be fiercely protective of her personal life, and whatever she has revealed, from whatever informed the Lemonade era to anything she shares here, has been meticulously calculated and controlled.

The second major thing that stayed with me after seeing Renaissance is the spectacular costuming. I found myself thinking: I want a feature length documentary on just the costume designs for this tour. Eventually, we actually do get a segment on costume design, which touches on the Uncle Johnny who made the dress referenced in “Heated.” And here we get to some of the best editing in Renaissance, because in nearly every performance, shots will seamlessly cut between different performances of the same song, in either a totally different dress or outfit, or a variation of the same jumpsuit. The edits are so clean that it often looks as though her outfit magically changes mid-movement.

The great costuming extends to the dancers and musicians, perhaps most memorably the trumpeter Crystal Torres, who was very pregnant during much of the tour. She is often seen in the background, elaborately costumed in a way that proudly frames and accentuates her bare, pregnant belly. And this is, perhaps, the magic of Beyoncé: she commands authority, won’t take no for an answer when she knows she doesn’t have to, and also elevates and supports the people who work with her. Or so it would seem from this movie, anyway—and the effectiveness of the film is all I am judging here.

Overall, I had a great time at Renaissance: A Film, even if I found it to be even poorer a substitute for a real, live concert than I expected. I could easily feel differently about that had I seen it in a full house of fans, or if I had managed to attend an actual concert but had to sit in nosebleed seats. Emotional distance aside, there is no physical difference between audience and performance in Renaissance, which is probably the best thing to recommend it. As is typical with films like this, if you are a casual fan, there’s no need for you to go out of your way, necessarily. But if you love Beyoncé the way the fans shown in this film do, then you will have a spectacular experience.

The costumes alone are worth the price of admission.

SALTBURN

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

Saltburn is a beautifully shot narrative with inconsistencies to the point of distraction. It’s fun to watch while it’s happening, then a twist comes at the end that forces a re-examination of everything that came before, with the inevitable conclusion that the twist is unearned.

I came into this movie expecting something fun, sexy, borderline scandalous. I already knew about the infamous bathtub drain and gravesite scenes. Neither of them really lived up to the hype, failed to offer much in the way of shock value, although the bathtub drain was still pretty effectively gross (more because of dirty bathwater than bodily fluids).

The film really kicks into high gear when Oliver (Barry Keoghan) finally arrives at the Saltburn estate of the film’s title, home of the filthy rich college classmate, Felix (Jacob Elordi), who has invited him to stay. Felix’s parents are wonderfully cast with Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant, as vaguely oblivious characters whose wealth has made them entertainingly detached, superficial, and catty. The moment Oliver meets them, the dialogue crackles, and you want to watch a whole movie just about this family.

Instead, Saltburn seems to fancy itself a lite version of class satire, except it never has any real bite. Rounding the cast are Alison Oliver as Venetia, Felix’s sister with an eating disorder; Archie Madekwe as Farleigh, Felix’s multiracial cousin visiting from America (details that could be a goldmine for exploration that never happens); and Carey Mulligan as Pamela, a friend of Felix’s parents who is also staying and on the cusp of overstaying her welcome. Mulligan in particular gets surprisingly short screen time and nothing of real substance to work with, even though she gets top billing with the rest of the cast—evidently she just wanted to work with writer-director Emerald Fennel again after starring in Promising Young Woman.

Saltburn is thus Emerald Fennell’s second feature film as writer-director, and a pattern is already emerging, in which a clearly talented filmmaker has some deeply compelling ideas, and then squanders them in various ways with a truly unnecessary twist ending. In the case of Saltburn, the ending practically negates everything that came before it, calling into question the idea that Oliver was ever truly obsessed with Felix, or possibly in love with him, as we were led all the while to believe. Ultimately, during an extended scene in which we see Oliver dancing naked through the estate house for so long we are struck by a body so hot it shockingly nearly rival’s Jacob Elordi’s, we are left to wonder if all he ever wanted was the house itself. And: why? That part is a mystery.

And on the road to this inexplicable ending, there are shifts of power between characters that never get explained. One moment the cousin, Farleigh, is acting pointedly superior to Oliver. In a later scene Oliver gains an upper hand, I guess, by going into Farleigh’s room and, one could argue, sexually assaults him. Why Farleigh would act frightened and intimidated in that scene and then turn around and behave the next day with the same superiority as though the nighttime intrusion never happened, is anyone’s guess. Similar shifts happen between Oliver and Felix’s sister, Venetia.

No such shift ever happens with Felix himself, who seems to remain in Oliver’s thrall throughout—until the end. I won’t spoil what ultimately happens to Felix, except to say that Fennell taks her time to make that specifically clear, during which time I could not stop thinking about it as I was utterly baffled.

Saltburn is a rare breed of film in its quality of visual execution, and great performances, making you feel for most of its runtime that you’re watching something good. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind watching it again just for the georgeous cinematography, of both the sprawling estate and the captured beauty of Keoghan’s and Elordi’s bodies (and, emphatically: both of them). Ditto the eccentric chemistry between everyone in Felix’s filthy rich family, who dress up for dinner, are woken every morning by servants, and are served breakfast as a family in the mornings.

Oliver is subtly manipulating Felix, and then the rest of his family, throughout, which we are meant to understand going in. And then that ending comes, and there’s nothing subtle about it whatsoever, nor was anything that came before it, apparently. Oliver becomes a cartoon, essentially. I left the theater wondering what the point of it all was.

I thought it would burn a little more.

Overall: B-

NAPOLEON

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

There’s a battle sequence in Napoleon, one among countless, in which Napoleon tricks an enemy onto a snow-covered, frozen lake, and then pummels the shit out of them, breaking the ice and sending many faceless and nameless soldiers into an icy grave. With a bunch of incredibly rendered shots from beneath the surface, the sequence is as spectacular and thrilling to watch as any in this film, and arguably in any other film this year. 

When it comes to Napoleon as a complete film, however, you could go out of your way to watch just this one sequence, and get just as much out of it. Who needs two hours and 38 minutes covering decades of broad historical events, without any character dimension to speak of? 

Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in the title role is so understated as to be to its detriment. Where is the notorious megalomania? Perhaps we are meant to take this as what distinguishes this Napoleon from any other film about the man. Honestly, it didn’t take long for me to get bored. 

Ridley Scott is now 86 years old. His poliferous output in such later years is astonishing—he’s directed seven feature films in the past ten years alone. But have any of them been great? Maybe one. It’s starting to feel like Ridley Scott is just hell bent on proving he can keep doing the job until he finally keels over. 

Napoleon is getting reviews that are mixed to positive, and I’m clearly leaning toward the mixed side. I kept hearing how funny the movie is. I didn’t laugh once. They say the film is flawed but incredibly entertaining. I nodded off more than once. Even incredibly well executed battle sequences start to get dull when they are virtually all that’s on offer. 

Okay, so the film also explores Napoleon’s relationship, marriage, and ultimate divorce from Joséphine, here played by Vanessa Kirby. She and Phoenix have fair chemistry, but again, virtually everything this film covers is never explored with any depth. Even in a movie this long, that goes with the territory when a single film attempts to cover decades of people’s lives. Napoleon and Joséphine’s relationship proves to be no exception.

I was looking forward to seeing this movie. I thoroughly enjoyed . . . some of it. When it finished, I was glad it was over. 

You’ll see a shot just like this a couple dozen times. Fun!

Overall: B-

DREAM SCENARIO

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

Nicolas Cage now has over 110 acting credits to his name, which is an average of over 2.5 roles each year since his career started in 1981. I only mention this because it is now well documented that Cage loves to work as an actor so much that he is hardly discerning as to which parts he’ll take. This means he’s in a lot of very bad movies. It also means that, when some of his parts end up actually being really good, it’s the career equivalent of a broken clock being right twice a day.

A recent example: Pig (2021), which impressed me a great deal more than I expected—both the film overall but especially Nicolas Cage’s performance. Even now I would call it his best starring role in at least twenty years—and I said as much in 2021.

In the meantime, in between many other roles that hold no interest, Cage has started taking roles that make it seem like maybe he’s in on the joke, but with spotty results: last year’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which Cage played himself, fell far short of meeting its vast potential; and earlier this year Renfield, a comedy in which Cage played Dracula, legitimately disappointed.

So this is the strange expectation any new Nicolas Cage film has come to: the man actually does have massive talent, but he also has a deeply unreliable track record of having it effectively harnessed. Enter Dream Scenario, a slightly surreal blurring of the line between reality and dreaming, which, as presented by writer-director Kristoffer Borgli, might be called “Charlie Kaufman-esque.” Honestly I’d have been far more interested in what Charlie Kaufman might have done with this premise, in which, inexplicably, one very average middle-aged man suddently starts appearing in the dreams of people around the world.

Dream Scenario is getting very good reviews, and I get it, I suppose. But here’s my issue with it: Nicolas Cage’s college professor, Paul Matthews, is not just a totally average, balding Boomer. He’s also a guy who makes consistently bad decisions, and is a straight up annoying guy. This isn’t a peformance decision, either: Paul is written this way, and it’s very much a part of the point of the story. From where I was sitting, though, spending a very well-edited 100 minutes with him was more than enough.

What’s odd is that I still can’t say I din’t like the movie. It’s a competently constructed, subtly provocative exercise. There’s a compelling notion in Paul’s benign behavior in nearly every dream—his total lack of inaction becoming a sticking point for the Paul who lives in reality—shifting in response to a particular instance of aberrant, furtive behavior. When a young woman asks Paul to re-enact her unusual dream in which they have passionate sex, things go wrong, but in a predictably pathetic way. Paul doesn’t actually harm the woman, but something about how wrong the entire scenario is shifts the tone of everyone’s dreams, and suddenly Dream Paul is brutally attacking everyone.

Dream Scenario then touches on things like “cancel culture,” but without ever having anything substantive to say about it. It is an interesting question, whether someone in reality has any obligation to apologize for their behavior in anyone else’s dreams (it also has an easy answer: they don’t—but when this applies to a mass audience, that answer gets complicated). Surely many viewers of this film will deeply relate, after a dream colors their perception of someone, however unfairly.

Dream Scenario is surprisingly grounded, for a film in which so much of the story takes place in dreams. And making dreams legitimately interesting is tricky business, not often pulled off well. The concept of infiltrating other people’s dreams has been done before, of course—Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film Inception might be the best example—but to Kristoffer Borgli’s credit, Dream Scenario gives it a new twist. I just wish that twist had turned in a less cringey character. You could make the argument that cringe is the point here, but I would argue that this premise could be explored just as well, if not better, without it.

I guess I don’t regret spending a hundred minutes with this loser, but I can’t very enthusiastically recommend it.

Overall: B

NEXT GOAL WINS

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

We’ve been told for centuries never to judge a book by its cover, so maybe don’t judge Next Goal Wins by its opening shot, which features director Taika Waititi as an American Samoan priest, dressed in a campy robe, and donning what might be the most ridiculous fake mustache ever put onscreen. Waititi as the priest also narrates, very briefly, but effectively sets the tone when he says this is a true story, “with a couple of embellishments.” It’s an amusing acknowledgement of artistic license, and cuts down any sense that this movie is going to be way over the top.

On the contrary, Next Goal Wins is packed to the gills with a winning, goofy sweetness which, somewhat surprisingly, really works. I laughed a lot, and the laughs are consistently borne of a uniquely innocent comic sensibility.

I’d really be interested in what the citizens of American Samoa think of this movie. One could argue that this film grossly oversimplifies their people and culture. On top of that, I’m not sure how to unpack exactly where the “white savior” concept plays into this, what with a White an coming to guide a soccer team of Brown people to victory, which is based on an actual White man who did just that—and the film is directed and co-written by a Brown man (co-witten with Iain Morris, a White man).

There’s also a trans woman on the American Samoan soccer team in this film, which was also the case in real life—the first openly trans athlete to compete in a FIFA World Cup qualifier—played by nonbinary Samoan actor Kaimana. There was a curious thing to realize watching this, seeing how beautiful Kaimana is. Even when trans actors are cast in trans roles, they get the Hollywood glow-up. That’s . . . progress? Side note: the actual trans athlete in question, Jaiyah Saelua, apparently has complicated feelings about this film, which tells part of her story—and the stories of a few of the other team members—while placing the narrative focus on the coach, Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender, here bleached blond). You know . . . the White guy. There it is!

We seem to be still in an era where we take what we can get, and I still have to say, it’s deeply refreshing to see a story like this, in which a trans person exists in a traditional cisgender, particularly male space, and is widely accepted. In fact, “trans” isn’t even quite accurate here, as Jaiyah makes multiple references to fa’afafine, a third gender that is unique to Samoa and widely accepted there. Well, this film is clearly made for American audiences, where that is definitively not the case, and yet here we get a movie that shows how easily these things can work.

I suppose it does complicate some of the narrative choices in Next Goal Wins, particularly when Rongen deliberately deadnames Jaiyah (a sincere apology and reconcilation occurs shortly thereafter), and Jaiyah’s decision to go off hormones so she can continue qualifying to be on the team.

This gets into some sticky stuff when you drill deep below the surface of Next Goal Wins, which Waititi clearly wants us to take in on a fairly surface level. And to Waititi’s credit, he establishes and maintains a precariously sweet and goofy tone in this film, which almost never steps into outright stupid (the aforementioned mustache being a notable exception). He cast a whole bunch of Samoan actors who are collectively full of charisma and charm, while bringing in marquee names for the FIFA staff characters, including Elisabeth Moss (her character also being Rongen’s separated wife) and Will Arnett. Waititi also throws a bone to fans of Our Flag Means Death with a small part given to Rhys Darby.

In terms of plot arc, Next Goal Wins could not be more of a standard underdog sports movie. These may be the biggest underdogs in history, having suffered the biggest loss of any FIFA World Cup qualifying game. But it’s hardly a spoiler to say that, eventually, they get a win, and the movie cuts to several different groups of characters in different locations jumping for joy at their TV sets. I’d say we’ve seen all this before, except we’ve never seen it dressed in lavalavas.

Match that with the Taika Waititi sensibility, and you’ve just got an incredibly winning, feel-good movie. I was giggling early on, and continued to consistently through the end. This film is getting somewhat mixed reactions, but it honestly exceeded my expectations. I really enjoyed it. Then, of course, I came home and thought about how to pick apart its narrative choices.

Okay let’s talk about optics.

Overall: B+

THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES

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

Watching The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, eleven years after the first film in the Hunger Games franchise and eight years after the last one, is a little like getting offered one more drink while you’re barely buzzed at a party that’s not very exciting. Okay, sure, why not. I’ll have another.

In the moment, this film is engaging enough, with several charismatic performers. Tom Blyth charms in bleached blond hair as young Coriolanus Snow, assigned as “mentor” to one of the District 12 tributes, a stunning songstress (hence the film’s subtitle) named Lucy Gray. Rachel Zegler makes the most of the part, particularly with an incredible singing vioce, but Lucy isn’t given a whole lot of agency. She doesn’t ever even use any weapons in the arena.

After three novels and four movies that made Jennifer Lawrence a superstar, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes feels a little regressive. Even as a clear nostalgia play and franchise cash grab, here we are given the early life story of the authoritarian President Snow of the previous films, now with a young man as the hero, saving a helpless little lady. At least Katniss was a badass.

Oh sure, this is presented with characters facing all the expected moral dilemmas, and we already know what eventually happens to Snow, which makes this movie this franchise’s equivalent of the Star Wars prequels. A burning question might still be: did we really need this?

In the original Hunger Games, the games—in which, in case you’re one of the five people in the world who don’t already know, a group of teenagers are thrown into an arena to fight to the death—are in their 74th year. In The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, they are in their 10th year, which takes us back in time 64 years. Cornelius Snow is now supposed to be 18 years old, so I guess he was 82 the last time we saw him. The production design here is vaguely evocative of a society not quite as “perfected” as we saw it became later.

The story is presented in three parts, and the story beats are the only memorably unusual thing about it. This movie is two hours an 37 minutes long, pointlessly the longest film in the franchise. This is an average of 52 minutes per part, and we see the actual Hunger Games in “Part Two”—which end in such a way that the movie itself feels very much like it’s ending. By that point, we are indeed already a standard feature film’s length in. A group of seven very young adults sat in a line of seats two rows ahead of me, clearly big fans of the franchise, regularly raising the three finger salute from the previous films at the screen. And when Part III appeared onscreen, even one of those kids said, out loud, “There’s a whole other part”?

Indeed, Part III feels almost exclusively extraneous, although it is in this part when we finally see Lucy Gray take some real control. To be fair, she is defiant from the start, even belting out a song the very moment she is chosen at the Reaping Ceremony—a scene that would have come across as a lot more stupid if not for Zegler’s beautiful voice. This never makes her any less helpless and dependent on Snow any time she’s in the arena. And by the time this movie all but declares Lucy’s ultimate fate a total mystery, it’s too late for it to matter much.

If anything makes The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes watchable, it’s the cast. This includes Jason Schwartzman, amusingly smarmy as the Hunger Games’s first televised host; Peter Dinklage as the slightly drunken Dean of the Academy; Viola Davis as the deliciously nefarious head gamemaker; and even Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer as Coriolanus’s cousin. (The casting of a trans actor in a part never identified as such is maybe the one truly progressive part of this production, and it was really great to see her here.)

In other words, due in no small part to the performances, I found myself entertained by this, the fifth film in the Hunger Games franchise. I’m tempted to say I enjoyed even more than The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, but that may be just because this time it’s been so long since I’ve seen one of these movies. The truth is, it’s more of the same but with different characters and actors. Which is . . . fine. Like that last drink you didn’t need but won’t hurt.

Try watching through rose colored glasses.

Overall: B-

THE PERSIAN VERSION

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

The Persian Version had me at the start, and then it lost me almost completely, and then it pulled me back in again. It was kind of an emotional roller coaster, from fun to total confusion to moving warmth.

I’m not sure this movie intended to take me on this particular journey. It seems much more intent on telling the lighthearted story of how an estranged mother and daughter found a way to connect, with mixed results. It can’t seem to decide what character’s point of view it’s taking, being mostly narrated by the young but grown daughter, one of nine children, until suddenly, in a flashback to the mother’s youth, the young Shireen (Kamand Shafieisabet) suddenly yells out that she wants to be the narrator of her own story.

This is maybe halfway through the movie, and Shireen proceeds to tell (and show) us how she and her husband made their way from an incredibly remote village in Iran to the United States in the late sixties. This goes on for quite some time, during which I realized I had no clue where this movie was going. It does eventually come to a pivotal point, which connects to Shireen’s relationship with her now-grown daughter, Leila (Layla Mohammadi).

This involves a pretty major revelation, but when the narrative cuts back to Leila’s point of view, there is no indication whatsoever as to whether they have any subsantive discussion about it. A bit later, at the wedding of one of her countless brothers, Leila makes a reference to it to Shireen, and it’s clear Shireen knows she knows. It feels like there was a lot of important stuff there in the middle that just got skipped over. What’s more, Leila is an aspiring writer and filmmaker, and the flashback to Shireen’s childhood is presented as an account written by Leila, until Shireen takes over the narration. Who is actually telling this story is frustratingly never made clear.

On the upside, the undeniable onscreen charisma of both of these women makes up for a lot. And to be clear, it does have to make up for a lot—Shafieisabet and Mohammadi are both great, but the acting of some of the supporting characters is at times abysmal. Most of the young men playing Leila’s brothers, who are so numerous that none of them get very many lines, are wooden at best. I found myself wondering where the hell writer-director Maryam Keshavarz even found the woman who plays Leila’s father’s doctor. She sounds like she’s barely even sure she knows her lines.

We also get flashbacks to Leila’s own childhood, and both that actor (Chiara Stella) and the young Shireen (Kamand Shafieisabet) are charming enough—although the young Shireen has little time for charming as she carries multiple babies before she’s even fifteen. The fact that Shireen is married off to a young man of 22 when she was 13 is presented with neutrality, and cultural differences notwithstanding, I don’t know how I feel about that. Being told that “we were intellectual equals” does little to mitigate it. The background does, however, inform the nature of Shireen as a hard working, crazily tenacious middle-aged mother.

And it’s very easy to engage with both the adult Shireen and the adult Leila whenever they are onscreen. Leila’s sexuality is handled with awkwardness at best, a big part of her estrangement with her mother, but we learn that Leila’s selfishness played a part in her marriage to and then divorce from another woman. (A scene in which they have a conversation in a department store while Leila has a gorilla mask on really doesn’t work.) Leila consistently self-identifies as a lesbian, but then has a one night stand with an apparently mostly-straight man who happens to be playing the lead in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and ax (Tom Byrne) declares, upon learning of Leila’s pregnancy, that he wants to try making a go of a relationship. Leila seems oddly open to this. I thought she was supposed to be a lesbian? Sure, yes, sexuality is fluid—except The Persian Version never gets even cose to interrogating such ideas. Like so many other things in this movie, I could not figure out what to make of it.

And still: even in the midst of all this mess, the two leads deliver winning performances, which broadly won me over. I was moved and cried a little at the end. There’s a lot about being children of immigrant parents here that I’m sure many can relate to, and I can only guess how nice it must be for Muslim or Iranian audiences to get this kind of fun representation. I don’t want to conflate Iranians with Palestinians, but Americans are unfortunately prone to such things, and right now more than ever, anything that humanizes Muslims as nuanced individuals can only be a good thing.

I just wish the execution had been a bit cleaner. This movie has some bad editing, in one instance cutting right when one of Leila’s brothers appears to start saying something to someone in a direction that makes no sense. Was the actor about to say something to a key grip or what?The more I write this very review, the more I wonder why I think I liked it even as much as I did. How did it win me over? Well, it won me over with two standout performances in a sea of confused ineptitude, captured with incongruously competent cinematography.

These two might win you over. Maybe. We’ll see.

Overall: B-

THE KILLER

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

The Killer could also have been called The Assassin’s Odyssey. It’s presented in a series of “Chapters,” each in a different location where the title character (Michael Fassbender) makes a kill. Or, as in the case of the deliberately tedious opening sequence, attempts to make a kill. His botched hit makes for the entire premise of the film: he stupidly heads home, stupidly waits an extra night, discovers his girlfriend severely injured in Santo Domingo, and spends the rest of the film hunting down all of those responsible for harming her.

I’m hard pressed to find this plot to be exceptional or memorable, except that, ironically, it is exceptionally and memorably executed. In spite of it veering on being self-satisfied, the editing, and particularly the sound editing are consistently clever. This is a David Fincher film released as a Netflix movie on November 10, after a theatrical release limited enough that I was not able to see it theatrically—and I found myself, watching it at home, rather wishing I had seen it in a theater. The sound editing alone would have made it a much better, certainly more immersive experience.

It’s an objectively fun watch even at home, at least once it gets past that opening scene, hanging out with The Killer in an abandoned WeWork office, waiting out the right time to shoot a mark in a building across the street, and truly overwhelming us with voiceover narration. Voiceover is often pointless and lazy, but it proves to have a point here, coming from an unreliable narrator with a penchant for self-delusion. I was bracing myself for the voiceover to overwhelm the entire film, but mercifully, it’s used comparatively sparingly once that first shot is missed. It’s the inciting incident, and it comes roughly 15 minutes into the film.

The locations of each “Chapter” span the globe and virtually every corner of the States: Paris, Santo Domingo, New Orleans, Florida, New York, Chicago. Each has a vibe distinct from all the others. Only one—Florida—proves to feature a legitimate action sequence, with his mark getting the job on The Killer after he’s crept into his house in the middle of the night. And to be clear, the sequence is tense, and thrilling to watch, with excellent fight choreography.

This is what I like most about The Killer: each change of scenery is given room to breathe, all the while with The Killer not so much getting character development, as gradually revealing his subtle ineptitude. This is a guy who exudes confidence, and then regularly makes preventable mistakes. Much as I lapped up the crackling energy of the Floridian house fight, my favorite of all the hits we follow The Killer on is the one in New York, where he catches up with the one woman on his list. Even when the movie is already quite good, Tilda Swinton manages to elevate anything she’s in. Her sequence is the one with real dialogue, a verbal sparring partner with Michael Fassbender who not only matches his talents but exceeds them.

It seems a lot more common for a film to run out of steam, its second half being the weaker half. The Killer achieves the inverse of this, in fact with each scene being better than the last. That opening scene left me skeptical, but by the time The Killer meets up with “The Lawyer” (Charles Parnell) and fatally ropes in his secretary (Kerry O’Malley), revealing to us some bullshit about empathy in his inner monologue, it becomes clear that The Killer is not your standard hitman movie.

I wasn’t quite as satisfied as I wanted to be by the end of this movie, essentially a series of creatively violent vignettes. So many of the preceding scenes so far exceeded my expectations, though, I’m willing to let it go. Everything builds effectively on what came before it, and the destination being a bit hollow means less when the journey is the point.

You want your sociopaths to be at least competent.

Overall: B+