→ March 14, 2022
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West Side Story.

StevenSpielberg had wanted to film a new version of the 1957 musical West Side Story, which was first adapted in 1961 in a film that won Best Picture, for several years before filming began in July of 2019. This new version, with a script by Tony Kushner that hews more closely to the original stage play at several points, was delayed by a year due to the pandemic, but came out in time to be eligible for this year’s Oscars, earning seven nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress for Ariana DuBose. It’s better than the 1961 film in some ways, worse in others, making it a perfectly fine film that nobody actually needed.

The framework of the story is the same as that of the first film: Two gangs of street toughs are engaged in a turf war on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the largely Puerto Rican Sharks and the white Jets, led by Bernardo (David Alvarez) and Riff (Mike Faist), respectively. Tony used to be in the Jets before he went to jail, and is trying to go straight now that he’s home, but at a community dance where both gangs arrive with their girls, he meets Bernardo’s sister, Maria (Rachel Zegler), and the two fall immediately in love. Tony works at Doc’s, which is managed by Doc’s Puerto Rican widow (Rita Moreno), who advises him against pursuing Maria while helping him learn some Spanish phrases. Bernardo isn’t happy to see his sister with a white guy, and wants her to marry his friend Chino (Josh Andrés Rivera), while Bernardo himself is with Maria’s friend Anita (DuBose). The two gangs decide to hold a “rumble,” a fight that ends up leaving two dead and has disastrous consequences for the star-crossed lovers.

I’ll save the biggest problem for last, but one major flaw in this version of West Side Story is that Ansel Elgort sucks. He wasn’t good in Baby Driver, where he barely had to do anything, but he’s awful here in every way – he’s stiff, uncharismatic, and dull, and his singing is the worst of any major character. Casting him was a poor choice, underscored by how much better Faist is as Riff – he’s a rascal, but has all the charm that Elgort lacks, and he owns every scene the two have together. Zegler is far better as a singer and actor than Elgort is, and unlike most of the cast, looks close to the age of her character. In general, the women in the film outshine the men, and the Jets’ big number, “Officer Krupke,” is one of the songs that’s clearly inferior to that of the original film.

There are some small differences from the 1961 film that do improve the end result, not least of which is employing Latinx actors as the Sharks and their girlfriends. The original had Natalie Wood, the daughter of Russian immigrants, in the lead role as Maria, and George Chakiris, the son of Greek immigrants, as her brother Bernardo. Both used comically bad accents that sounded more like mockery than imitation. Zegler and Elgort do their own singing, which neither of their counterparts did in the 1961 film. The character of Anybodys, a tomboyish Jets wannabe played by Susan Oakes in the original, is now much more fleshed out here, depicted as a trans man and played by iris menas, a nonbinary and trans actor. It’s a win for representation, but also adds substantially to the story, with Anybodys the character who gains the most in depth and screen time between the original and the remake. The audio quality is improved, of course, although sometimes that works against the singers, such as the men in “America,” whose vocals sound tinny, especially in comparison to the women on that song.

West Side Story can’t escape its fundamental, ontological problem: There is no good reason for this film to exist. The story is the same. The songs are all the same. The choreography is the same – perhaps captured more effectively by better camerawork and modern technology, but it’s still the same old song and dance. Elgort is a dud, a poor actor and mediocre singer whose hold on Maria is hard to believe. It’s a nostalgia play for Spielberg, and I’m sure 20th Century/Disney thought it would be a huge moneymaker, although that was foiled by the pandemic. For this film to get seven Oscar nominations while the superior In the Heights got zero – not even one for a song! – is a travesty.

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→ February 23, 2022
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Nightmare Alley.

Nightmare Alley took home a Best Picture nomination despite tepid reviews for a movie that ended up in that echelon, with unfavorable comparisons to the 1947 black-and-white version that director Guillermo del Toro chose to update. For fans of noir cinema, however, this is a fantastic melding of that genre’s conventions with del Toro’s visual style and meticulous placement, one that I found incredibly entertaining up until the rather predictable, on-the-nose ending.

Adapted from a 1946 novel of the same name, Nightmare Alley follows the path of a con man named Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), who we see burning down a house with a body in it, without any explanation given, and then who walks off a bus and into a carnival, where he ends up with a job. On his first night there, he sees the carnival geek, whose role is to bite the heads off live chickens and drink their blood as entertainment for the carnival’s patrons. Stanton learns the art of cold-reading from other carnival workers, and falls for one of the other carnies, Molly (Rooney Mara). The two take off together and form a mentalist act for a dinner theatre show in Buffalo, where they encounter Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) and her wealthy client, the latter of whom believes Stanton can communicate with his dead son. Stanton hatches a plan to con that client and other wealthy men in the city by using information from Dr. Ritter, offering to split the money with her, but it goes awry when another client, Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins), wants more than Stanton can provide.

The film looks incredible, as you’d expect from del Toro, although this time around he has no supernatural elements to work with – the monsters are inside the characters themselves, so to speak. The city of Buffalo has never looked so vibrant and glamorous, and even the carnival has a grim beauty under the lights, when the show is on. The film is set in 1939, with a depression on and war beckoning, but you’d never know it except when the characters mention the war in passing, with opulence everywhere once we get to the big city – especially Dr. Ritter’s office, with walls that appear gold-plated and a recording apparatus that looks like it came from the science fiction stories of that era.

Del Toro also coaxes some great performances from a loaded cast, not least of which are those of Cooper and Blanchett. Cooper earned more Oscar buzz for the two minutes he’s on screen in Licorice Pizza, but there’s far more to this character and Cooper plays it so effortlessly that perhaps we’re starting to take him for granted. Blanchett is marvelously inscrutable as the good doctor, with unclear motives and fungible ethics; her actual interest in Stanton is obscured until their final scene together. David Strathairn and Toni Collette do their usual, understated thing as the pair who pretend to be psychics at the carnival, while Willem Dafoe leans into his creepier side as the carnival’s operator, although he unnerves less through malice than through his lack of empathy for anyone else. There’s a great cameo from Mary Steenburgen in a one-note role as well. Mara, unfortunately, is as flat and toneless as ever, making it hard to see what Carlisle sees in her, and almost as hard to sympathize with her when he leaves her in the lurch.

This film looked like it was going to end in one of two ways, and del Toro chose the one that’s telegraphed early on in the film, which is true to the novel’s ending but feels so overdone – foreshadowing is great, but the amount of time this script spends telling you where it’s going to end up gives the ending the aftertaste of an artificial sweetener. It contrasts with the film’s refusal to be explicit with background details, including Carlisle’s and Ritter’s pasts, and what drives each of them to do what they do. There’s a recurring symbol of the corpse of a baby that Dafoe’s character keeps in his trailer, but it’s never fleshed out in any way, with a lot of speculation (this one is pretty good, with a small spoiler involved) but nothing concrete, and it felt more like del Toro being del Toro, rather than something that added to the finished product.

I enjoyed Nightmare Alley for its noir vibe and some of the very strong performances, but I can’t believe this is one of the top ten movies of the year – it’s more style than substance and it failed to stick the landing. It’s not as good as Parallel Mothers or The Lost Daughter, neither of which took a Best Picture nomination, just to pick two that I’ve already seen. It took a Best Cinematography nomination as well, but of the four nominees I’ve seen, I’d rank it fourth for that category. It’s also nominated for Best Costume Design and Best Production Design, however, and seems worthy of both honors.

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→ February 17, 2022
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Dune.

Dune could have gone wrong so many ways, but the biggest risk in converting Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic to the big screen was always the plot. The novel’s setting is iconic, from the desert planet to the sandworms, yet the complexity of the story around the Christ-like Paul Atreides stood out as the greater challenge, the one aspect of the book that couldn’t be addressed with CG. Denis Villeneuve’s Dune does a remarkable job of distilling the first half of the book into a single, accessible story that simplifies the plot without overdoing it, while also providing the look and feel that have helped make the novel an enduring classic of its genre.

(Disclaimers: I love the original Dune novel, so much that I read all five of Herbert’s increasingly terrible sequels, but have still never seen the David Lynch film adaptation from 1984.)

Dune follows the familiar template of the ‘chosen one,’ a story arc that stretches back to the Bible and continues now in YA fiction, most notably the Harry Potter series. The messiah here is Paul Atreides, the teenaged son of the Duke Leto Atreides, who rules the planet Caladan, and his concubine Lady Jessica, a member of the cultish spiritual order the Bene Gesserit. Paul exhibits unusual mental abilities from an early age that indicate that he may be the savior foretold by the Bene Gesserit’s prophecy. The story opens when the Emperor orders the Duke to take stewardship of the desert planet Arrakis, the only source of the drug known as spice or mélange, which also happens to be an essential element in interstellar travel. The present rules of Arrakis, House Harkonnen, are not especially keen to lose their powers, leading to armed conflict that puts Paul on the run and in charge of his own destiny.

Villeneuve’s decision with his co-screenwriters to split the book into two films, hoping the first would fare well enough that the studio would greenlight the second, paid off twice – it did do well enough that we will get a sequel, and I would argue that it only did that well because it didn’t try to cram a densely plotted 500-page novel into a 150 minute movie. There’s so much room to breathe here that Timothée Chalamet gets far more screen time to give a little depth to Paul’s character, while Rebecca Ferguson, as Lady Jessica, may be an even bigger beneficiary, as some of that character’s most important scenes would almost certainly have been cut in a single-film adaptation. Paul’s character comes alive more in the second half of the book, once he’s on the run with the Fremen people, which leaves a modest void in a first-half movie for another central character to fill, and Ferguson does so with the film’s best performance.

The cast of Dune is incredible on paper, although the result is more “I can’t believe they got Charlotte Rampling!” than “I can’t believe how great Charlotte Rampling is!” Oscar Isaac is here. So is Javier Bardem. Stephen McKinley Henderson, who you know by sight even if you don’t know him by name. And there is some value in having these very famous people, any of whom can command a scene by themselves, in smaller roles. They don’t get quite enough to do – not even as much as Jason Momoa does in a memorable turn as Duncan Idaho.

The film does look amazing, though. Villeneuve is no amateur at worldbuilding on the screen, and this is the Arrakis of the page, whether in wide shots or close-ups, feeling vast and foreboding and terrifyingly dry. You’ll find yourself craving water watching this film. Many of the special effects are impressive, especially those showing the various flying vehicles on the surface of the planet, but there’s just as much wonder in the sword fights or the scenes showing troops massed in formation when the Atreides arrive on Arrakis to take control.

Dune ended up with ten Oscar nominations this year, including Best Picture, Best Cinematography, and Best Adapted Screenplay, but not Best Director, which surprised me given how much Villeneuve had to put together here even taking the script (which he co-wrote) as a given. I’m not surprised at the lack of acting nominations, given how many people and named characters in the film, and how little depth most of them get even in a film that’s a solid two and a half hours. Ferguson might have had an argument for a supporting nod, but that’s probably it. My guess is Dune wins a bunch of technical awards – ones it may very well deserve – without taking Best Picture or Adapted Screenplay. Of the four BP nominees I’ve seen so far, though, I think it’s my favorite.

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→ December 30, 2021
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The Power of the Dog.

Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog is the closest thing we have this year to a Best Picture front-runner, although its status as favorite rests on the slimmest of margins according to Gold Derby. It appeared first on more critics’ year-end lists than any other film, and received more second-place votes than any other film received first-place votes except the acclaimed Japanese-language Drive My Car. Based on a 1968 novel of the same name, it follows a tense family drama on a ranch in Montana in 1925, with long, expansive shots of the landscape alternating with close-ups of characters, an auteur’s film that builds on several great performances and the slow burn of its plot.

Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) is one of the ranchers, a tough guy who refuses to use the bathtub inside the house he shares with his daintier brother George (Jesse Plemons), whom Phil thinks is soft and often derides as “fatso.” George falls for the widow who runs the local inn, Rose (Kirsten Dunst). Rose has a son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who speaks with a lisp, makes paper flowers, and generally acts and looks un-masculine, earning him the ire of Phil, who mocks and bullies the boy, a situation that only worsens when George marries Rose, moving her into the ranch while Peter attends boarding school. Phil bullies and torments Rose as well, driving her to drink, so when Peter returns from school, the situation threatens to boil over.

Campion directs the hell out of this movie. It cuts both ways; there are moments in this film when you just know it’s being directed, especially some of the lingering shots on characters’ faces (or sometimes hands) that last a few frames too long. It works for setting scenes, in the incredible landscape shots, or for framing segments like Phil’s awkward conversation with his parents and the state’s governor, shot from behind Phil with the other characters all facing the camera beyond him. There’s a solo scene with Phil on the side of the river that is so overwrought that it took me completely out of the movie. It may be the kind of direction that wins awards, but I prefer a subtler touch.

The acting shines across the board, starting particularly with Dunst, who does the most with a limited but critical role as a suicide widow who becomes the victim of Phil’s bullying, losing herself in drink and seeing her relationship with her son deteriorate in the process. Cumberbatch delivers, as he always does, although I found his American accent a little forced – but given some of the character details, that might be deliberate. Smit-McPhee may have the most to do, even though it’s a supporting role, as his character is the only one that truly evolves over the extent of the story, and the one we understand the least at the beginning, as Peter is far more than a weak, effeminate mama’s boy.

Much commentary on The Power of the Dog has revolved around the ambiguous ending – which isn’t ambiguous at all. You might argue that what comes next is uncertain, as is true in just about every movie, and the argument that what came before the film starts is now uncertain is even stronger, but there’s no doubt in my mind what happened at the end of the story. It simply casts what preceded it in a different light, and that is one of this film’s strongest attributes. You can see this ending coming if you watch carefully, but once it occurs, it should change your interpretation of the first ¾ of the film – and even some of what we were told about its prehistory. (If you want to discuss that part, throw it in the comments – I just don’t want to spoil anything here.)

I haven’t seen enough potential nominees yet to say what nominations the film and its people deserve, but it definitely feels like a movie that voters will support. It’s a movie that puts its movie-ness out in front of you, especially in the direction, for better and for worse. I think this is a very good movie, a B+ if I assigned letter grades (as my friends Tim Grierson and Will Leitch do on their superb podcast), but could have been an A- or better with a different director, someone whose fingerprints were less evident in the finished product. In hindsight, it’s the sort of film I should have loved – cowboy noir, in a sense – but that I respected and liked instead.

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