→ February 23, 2023
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The Fabelmans.

Steven Spielberg has apparently been trying to make a semi-autobiographical film for over twenty years, but waited until his parents died before producing it. He finally did so with last year’s The Fabelmans, a thinly-veiled rendering of his childhood and teenage years with a particular eye on the relationship between his parents. I don’t think Spielberg is capable of making a bad movie, but he is capable of missteps within his movies, and the way he depicts his parents here through their surrogates detracts from the movie’s overall power. (It’s available to rent on Amazon, iTunes, etc.)

Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and Burt (Paul Dano) Fabelman are Jewish couple living in New Jersey, near Philadelphia, in 1952, when they take their son Sammy to see his first film, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth. Sammy is entranced, especially by the movie’s train-crash scene, and this sparks what becomes a lifelong love of the movies. The young Sammy’s burgeoning interest in filmmaking is set against the drama of his parents’ failing marriage, his mother’s apparent connection to his father’s best friend and colleague Bennie (Seth Rogen), and his mother’s mental health issues. The story takes us through the family’s moves to Arizona and then California, while Sammy makes films, often involving his younger sisters, dates the most comically Christian girl you could imagine, and encounters antisemitic bullies at his WASPish high school.

By far the best parts of The Fabelmans are the movies within the movie. There’s incredible care taken to depict the results of these efforts by Sammy, but also how he combined the ingenuity he inherited from his engineer father with the artistic sensibilities of his pianist mother to create and improve the sort of illusions he loved so much in Greatest Show. These track with the actual film projects from Spielberg’s youth, short films up through the longer documentary-style movie he made of senior skip day at his high school. It’s a little behind-the-scences peek at old-school moviemaking, and often quite joyous.

Sammy’s parents are so strangely drawn, however, that the scenes that center on either or both of them all feel too sharp-edged, bordering on caricature. Burt, who is based on Spielberg’s highly successful inventor father Arnold, is a milquetoast who does basically nothing while his wife openly flirts with his best friend, and just generally seems oblivious to most of what’s going on in his own house. There are hints about his ambitions at work, but it’s oddly unbalanced, especially since Spielberg has said that his father was a major influence on his own career, something that is completely absent from the film. Dano plays Burt with a simpering affect that makes the character seem sad and pitiable, but not interesting or complex. Mitzi is depicted with somewhat greater depth, although there’s still something hollow about the writing (not the portrayal), as if this is Spielberg’s visualization of his mother rather than an attempt to write and depict her as a complete person. It’s more sympathetic than empathetic, and while I suppose it’s not my place to tell a writer how to portray his mother on film, it doesn’t read well to me as a viewer.


There are several supporting performances here that stand out, not least of them a brief turn from Judd Hirsch as Mitzi’s uncle, who appears unannounced, spends a few days with the family to sit shiva after Mitzi’s mother dies, and then leaves after imparting some essential wisdom to Sammy. It’s the standout performance of the film, reminiscent of Judi Dench’s Oscar-winning turn in Shakespeare in Love (“Have a care with my name, you’ll wear it out”), which parlayed about 13 minutes of screen time into an Academy Award. Hirsch might have even less time in The Fabelmans, but it’s by far the best performance of the movie. Rogen gives a very solid turn as Bennie, further underscoring his shift as a serious actor after his excellent work as the carpenter-cum-thief in Pam and Tommy. Gabriel LaBelle is excellent as the teenaged Sammy, even when he’s more observer than participant in the action; there are a couple of scenes with Sammy and Mitzi where Sammy is the more interesting character, and LaBelle pulls these off well. (Also, he kind of looks like a younger Barry Keoghan.) And there’s a cameo later in the film that I won’t spoil but that involves someone known better as a director than as an actor and who is clearly having a blast in a tiny role.

Spielberg’s best work usually revolves around Big Things. His most critically acclaimed films rely more on broad brush strokes in plot and character, while he’s had more difficulty when he’s trying to work small, whether it’s nuance in story and theme or characters who require more three-dimensional depictions. The Fabelmans falls into the second category. As a love letter of sorts to the movies, and a memoriam to his parents, it’s fine, but as an actual film, it’s lacking. The story is thin and the two main characters are just too two-dimensional.

The Fabelmans picked up seven Oscar nominations this year, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress for Williams, Best Supporting Actor for Hirsch, and Best Original Screenplay for Spielberg and Tony Kushner, the latter marking Spielberg’s first-ever Academy Award nomination for screenwriting. I won’t be surprised if it goes 0 for the awards this year; it’s not the favorite, nor should it be, in any of those five categories, at least. Hirsch might be the most deserving, but Ke Huy Quan is better and he’s the favorite. Williams gives a good-not-great performance, limited by the way the character is written, although the scene at the campsite is sublime. (I do want to know why she can’t move the top half of her face, though.) This is a movie about how great movies are, so I can’t rule it out even for Best Picture, but the odds are against it. Perhaps there’s a sop to Spielberg in the Screenplay category, but that could easily be the place the voters honor Tár, assuming Everything Everywhere All at Once remains the favorite to win the whole thing. I can’t see picking The Fabelmans anywhere it’s nominated, though. It’s a perfectly adequate film, but it’s not Spielberg’s best, and I think highlights what he does well because so much of this film is about things that he doesn’t.

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→ February 12, 2023
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Causeway.

Causeway is a solid little film, and I mean that in a very positive way. It reminded me a ton of Columbus, the 2017 debut feature from Kogonada (whose After Yang I still need to catch up with); and of Driveways, maybe a little bit because of the similar names. It’s not quite as good as either of those movies, as the script itself is thinner and less credible, but like those two films, it’s anchored by two outstanding performances by its leads. (It’s streaming on Apple TV.)

Jennifer Lawrence plays Lynsey, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who suffered a traumatic brain injury when an IED hit her convoy, forcing her to come back to the U.S. for rehabilitation. She’s struggling with all aspects of the injury, including accepting that she can’t return to combat immediately once she’s regained most of her physical functions. After she has a panic attack in traffic and damages the car from her temp job cleaning pools, she befriends the owner of the garage where she takes it, James (Brian Tyree Henry), and the two form an unlikely, platonic friendship where the two talk through their problems and fears with each other in a way that Lynsey certainly can’t do with her family.

Like the two other films I mentioned above, Causeway is a talkie – if you don’t like movies that are about 90% dialogue, this probably isn’t for you. I am very much in the target demographic for that sort of film, because they often feel to me like well-written novels or novellas, and I’m perfectly happy to spend an hour and a half with two interesting characters even if there isn’t much action or romance. There’s no action here, and the closest thing to romance is a failure – which is good because it’s not the least bit credible when it does happen. It’s two people, each haunted by trauma, having honest and realistic conversations about themselves, revealing their feelings by degrees, holding things back as people do when dealing with guilt and shame.

Henry was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his work here, and he’s deserving. He’s been an actor to watch for years now, making huge impressions in Widows and If Beale Street Could Talk. I’m thrilled to see him get a leading role (regardless of the Supporting tag, he’s the co-lead here) and to get recognition for his film work after he’s received two Emmy nominations for his work on Atlanta. Lawrence is predictably strong here in a role that’s more understated than much of her previous work, including three of the four times she’s earned an Oscar nomination, which might have worked against her here. I did find it funny when the owner of the pool-cleaning company asks if her character is “home from college,” since Lawrence is 32, although she does look pretty young in the film because of how they dress the character.

The bar for a film like this to clear to be a truly great movie is pretty high – it’s like how a corner outfielder just has to hit that much more to be a potential star. I don’t think Causeway clears it. There are aspects of the relationship between James and Lynsey that aren’t entirely credible, and there’s a part of her back story that is never adequately explained given its prominence in her character’s current state. The film also favors Lynsey over James too much, rather than giving the two characters equal weight in the script and in the way they help each other, which unfortunately opens the film to criticism that James’ character is the “magical” Black man there to help the white lead. (I don’t think it applies, but I concede the possibility that I’m wrong.) Instead, Causeway is merely very good, a film of modest ambitions that largely achieves them, and that’s worth watching on its own merits and for what Henry and Lawrence bring.  

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→ December 28, 2022
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The Banshees of Inisherin.

The Banshees of Inisherin is writer/director Martin McDonagh’s first film since 2017’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which was his most acclaimed movie to that point and took home the BAFTA for Best Film and the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Drama. His latest led all films this year with eight Golden Globe nominations, and reunites the two leads from his debut film In Bruges, Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, in a dark comedy with two distinct, serious themes lying beneath the film’s absurdist surface. (It’s streaming now on HBO Max.)

Padraig (Farrell) and Colm (Gleeson) both live on the small island of Inisherin off the west coast of Ireland, where not much of anything happens, and as far as I can tell almost nobody ever has to go to work. Padraig and Colm are drinking buddies who walk to the pub every afternoon, with Padraig stopping by Colm’s house on the way, until one day Colm completely ignores Padraig’s knock, and ignores him at the pub as well, eventually telling him he doesn’t want to be friends any more. This unprovoked severing of ties, which Padraig can’t understand and won’t accept, even in the face of Colm’s threats and rather disturbing actions, leads to an escalation of hostilities that wrecks the peace of the island and leaves nobody better off than before.

McDonagh has a gift for language and crafting witty lines, starting off early on in Banshees when everyone asks Padraig if he and Colm are “rowin’” often enough that it becomes funny just by repetition. The comic elements here are a necessary reprieve from the film’s increasingly dark elements, including the deterioration between the two main characters, the insidious gossip that poisons the island’s culture, young Dominic (Barry Keoghan) and his abusive father, and more. It’s the sort of story where its pervasive awfulness becomes even more apparent after it’s over, because the humor and absurdity mask the bleak story while you’re still watching it.

The film works on one level as an exploration of male friendship, and how fragile those bonds can be in the wrong sort of environment. It’s not so much a question of toxic masculinity, as neither character exhibits much in that vein; Padraig is probably too sensitive, at least when he’s not in his cups, and Colm’s reasons for shunning Padraig and subsequent reactions are more those of someone dealing with mental illness. One of them eventually takes their quarrel too far, pushing them past the point of no return, and a once-solid friendship, one that everyone on the island took as a given, is reduced to ashes.

It’s also a thinly-veiled metaphor for the Irish Civil War, which is often mentioned in the script, including in the final scene, and is nearing its conclusion as the movie takes place. This civil war began after the Irish War of Independence, which led to the establishment of the Irish Free State as a “dominion” within the Commonwealth, giving the island – sans Northern Island, which exercised its opt-out clause and became a free agent remained part of the United Kingdom as Northern Island – greater autonomy, leading to full independence in 1933. After the Free State was established, however, pro-independence forces who opposed this partial solution fought an armed rebellion against the new, provisional government, with former IRA members from the war of independence now split between the two forces. The Irish fought a war to kick out the English, won it, and then ended up fighting themselves, leading to nearly 2000 deaths and substantial economic losses. The conflict may have begun over a principle, but escalated into violence when a democratic solution was likely achievable. It led to decades of mistrust between the spiritual descendants of the two sides, one of which later split into the political parties Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin. The metaphor here doesn’t map perfectly one-to-one – I don’t think Colm is one side and Padraig the other, although a scholar of Irish history may see it quite differently – but it does speak to the pointlessness of war, especially when the two sides escalate hostilities in turn.

This is the best thing I’ve ever seen Colin Farrell do, requiring more range from him than In Bruges or The Lobster, as he makes Padraig feel completely three-dimensional – you know someone like him, someone well-intentioned but unable to get out of his own way, someone who’s probably not the most interesting guy to have a beer with, let alone a beer every day, but who would likely be the first person to show up if you needed help. Gleeson is also strong, as always, but his character is just not as well-written, and his complexity is, shall we say, a little harder to understand. Keoghan is fine as Dominic, who is probably developmentally disabled, although his story feels tangential and his main function seems to be to serve as a plot point for Padraig and Padraig’s sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon), on whom Dominic has a crush. Siobhan’s life is even more stifled than Padraig’s, and an opportunity eventually arises for her to leave Inisherin, a move that completely unmoors her brother, already shaken from having Colm cast him off.

We’ve largely just begun our run through Oscar-worthy movies, so I can’t compare it to much, but I wouldn’t put this over Everything Everywhere All at Once, which is still the best movie I’ve seen from 2022, although I could take an argument for McDonagh’s script over the Daniels’ script for EEAAO. Both are outstanding, but McDonagh’s dialogue is better. The Academy has already nominated McDonagh twice before for his screenplays, which makes me strongly suspect he’ll get a nod for this one as well.

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→ August 25, 2022
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Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is a madcap adventure, a martial-arts action film, a dark comedy, a sci-fi romp, bursting at every seam with ideas and dad jokes. It’s a brilliant work of screenwriting, carried by a career performance from the always wonderful Michelle Yeoh – who nearly wasn’t even in the film. (You can rent it on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, etc.)

The film, written and directed by the Daniels (Kwan and Scheinert, who also directed the bawdy video for Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What”), follows Evelyn (Yeoh), a harried, unhappy laundromat owner, married to the hapless Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). They have a daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), and Evelyn’s estranged father, Gong Gong (James Hong, who turned 91 during filming), who is just arriving from Hong Kong. Evelyn is preparing a welcome party for her father while also staring down piles of receipts for an upcoming IRS audit (with Jamie Lee Curtis playing the tax authority’s agent). It’s clear that Evelyn is unhappy across the board in her life, but while the two are in the elevator at the IRS offices, Waymond suddenly changes and begins telling Evelyn that theirs is just one universe among many in the multiverse, and in his (the Alphaverse), people can verse-jump, gaining special skills from their parallel selves – but one person, Jobu Tupaki, has used this to accumulate immense power and is threatening to destroy all universes at once. It’s up to Evelyn, our universe’s Evelyn specifically, to save them all.

Part of the genius of this script is its combination of highbrow philosophical questions with lowbrow humor. The difference between existentialism and nihilism, with the former holding that the only meaning in life is created by the individual while the latter views life as meaningless, full-stop, is at the core of the movie; Jobu Tupaki sees and experiences all universes simultaneously, and thus believes that there is no meaning anywhere, only pain. (I don’t think there’s a Major League reference here, but I also wouldn’t say it’s impossible given some of the other allusions here, including one to a 1990s alternative song that is so perfectly integrated into the dialogue I had to pause the movie just to admire it.) Jobu is the film’s Bazarov, accumulating followers in a sort of nihilist cult, even as she seems to be speeding towards her own destruction.

The Daniels originally envisioned Jackie Chan in the main role, but rewrote the script to make the lead character a woman, with Yeoh their first choice, and the decision to re-center the film around not just a woman but a mother and an immigrant changes one of the film’s core messages. Evelyn is asked to run the family business and manage the family, to handle the finances and the relationships and organize this ridiculous party for a father who disowned her decades earlier when she chose Waymond and his dubious financial prospects against her parents’ wishes. Of course she has to save the universe: She’s a mother. If this wasn’t written as a commentary on the modern working American mother, who is expected to do it all and 20% more, it sure as hell plays like one – and Yeoh never lets us forget it, with an undercurrent of stress on her face throughout almost the entire movie. It’s a tour de force of a performance, one that lets her show tremendous range, and I’m going to hazard the opinion that it’s the best thing she’s ever done, even though I know I haven’t seen most of her performances because she’s been extensively pigeonholed since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Look at her filmography – it’s a sad commentary on the industry’s narrow view of Asian-American actors, and I haven’t even mentioned that this is Quan’s first film role in 20 years after he retired due to the lack of interesting parts offered to him.

The movie is also highly, consistently funny, from the allusions to wordplay to some gross-out jokes to some of the bizarre parallel universes we see, like the one where people have hot dogs for fingers, or the one where there are no people, just rocks. The sheer audacity of much of the humor, often right in the middle of a huge action sequence or a big emotional scene, helps some of the goofier jokes land, and even makes what is probably the grossest gag in the film much more acceptable. It feels like a film written by two people who never said no to the other’s wackiest ideas, and in this milieu, where we’re suspending disbelief to allow for its premise of travel between parallel universes, that sort of humor is almost a requirement. I do think the Daniels missed an opportunity by not having Eels or at least Mark Oliver Everett on the soundtrack, though.

I thought the story here ended exactly where it should, and the script gets to that point in a reasonable and not too predictable fashion, although it does involve a big downshift from the intensity of the first ¾ of the film. There’s yet one more theme that comes up in the back half of the film that further informs the ending, although discussing that would involve a significant spoiler; I’ll go as far as saying that I thought that was handled perfectly and hope those of you who’ve seen it know what I’m addressing. I doubt I’m going to find ten films this year that I liked more than this, or five performances by actresses I like more than Yeoh’s. It’s just a fantastic film in almost every way.

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