Author: Justin Humphreys

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Arts Culture

Country creeper

Jessie Buckley stars as a recovering widow in the gripping, folk-horror film Men. Photo: A24.

Director Alex Garland’s tersely titled new horror film, Men, is the kind of movie we need more of: unpredictable, relatively inexpensive, and risky. Garland (Ex Machina) builds a genuine sense of mystery, then pulls off a rare move when he allows the audience to parse the story on its own. Some may argue that his deliberate obscurity goes too far, but Men is a fascinating, gripping, and memorable experience.

Recent widow Harper Marlowe (Jessie Buckley) retreats to a plush rental house in rural England to heal from her husband James’ (Paapa Essiedu) apparent suicide. Initially enraptured by the estate’s sartorial splendor and the idyllic countryside, things shift quickly toward the bizarre. The locals, all men (all played by Rory Kinnear), are nearly identical—and almost unanimously hostile toward Harper. During a walk in the woods, she is followed by a silent, naked man, and her rustic retreat begins to unravel.

Men is infused with religious symbolism and pagan iconography, beginning with the apple Harper eats upon arriving in this seemingly Edenic setting. (“Forbidden fruit,” her landlord, Geoffrey, jokes.) Her visit to a local church reveals that the cross from its steeple has been cast aside and an altar, adorned with a mythological Green Man and birth imagery, is standing in place of a pulpit. And the film hints at the identical males as expressions of some kind of heathen demigod.

These details position Men firmly in the British tradition of folk horror, where stories involve city people confronted with strange and deadly pagan doings in rustic settings—it is a grandchild of The Wicker Man (1973) and a more obscure gem like Robin Redbreast (1970). The bittersweet song brilliantly bookending Men, Lesley Duncan’s “Love Song,” is the most eerily effective cinematic use of vintage music in ages, and could easily have appeared on The Wicker Man’s unforgettable soundtrack. 

Men’s otherworldly plot is grounded by Buckley and Kinnear’s performances. Buckley beautifully conveys Harper’s mercurial emotions, all underpinned by her grief. Kinnear wryly differentiates his many characters—vicar, cop, publican, et al.—imbuing them with a darkly comic edge. This sinister sense of humor is one of Men’s major assets.

Rob Hardy’s excellent cinematography has long phenomenological stretches where the verdant landscape seems like a single, unified organism. Hardy vividly captures the sense of an underlying primeval threat constantly lurking outdoors, treating the scenery as a character unto itself.

People will leave the theater talking about Men. But it loses something in its last act, as it gets  loopy, cartoonishly gory, and, at times, nearly indecipherable. When done just right, ambiguous endings are fantastic, but more clues would have helped this one. Men’s murky commentary on misogyny and patriarchal attitudes could also do with clarification. Still, it’s a film that deserves to be seen. One intriguing, imperfect movie is worth a hundred tedious, neatly packaged blockbusters.

Men

R, 140 minutes
Regal Stonefield IMAX, Violet Crown Cinema

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Arts Culture

Heads will roll

Alexander Skarsgård stars as a brutally violent Viking in The Northman. Photo: Focus Features.

Set in ninth- and 10th-century Europe, Robert Eggers’ brutal revenge saga The Northman is a lavish, sweeping film, but its unrelenting gore will undoubtedly repel many viewers. 

Loosely based on the Scandinavian legend that inspired Hamlet, with elements of Macbeth thrown in, The Northman’s antihero, young prince Amleth, vows revenge after seeing his father, King Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), slaughtered by his uncle, Fjolnir (Claes Bang), who then steals his kingdom and marries his mother, Gudrun (Nicole Kidman). After being raised into full warriorhood by Vikings, the adult Amleth (Alexander Skarsgård) tracks his uncle down and sets his vengeance in motion, aided by one of Fjolnir’s slaves, Olga (Anya Taylor-Joy).

The Northman doesn’t sugarcoat its pagan characters’ bleak, filthy, violent lives. These are bona fide barbarians who thrive on casual slaughter and enslaving conquered peoples—their facility with mayhem means the difference between freedom, death, or lowly servitude. Beheadings, disembowelment, and general bloodletting abound—a Viking raid on a Slavic village is particularly hideous, and makes for troubling viewing, especially in light of recent world events.

For his tale of bestial savagery and revenge, Eggers drew heavily on John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian—lifting the opening narration, the overall plot structure, key scenes, ad infinitum—but The Northman lacks a critical ingredient that made Conan a more successful film in every sense: Milius’ wicked sense of humor.

The Northman’s humorlessness is arguably its weakest point, while no doubt an artistic choice by Eggers, and the film takes itself too seriously. Eggers also draws on Roman Polanski’s bleak Macbeth in many ways, from its pivotal witches to the consciousness-raising medieval drug-induced hallucinations. The Northman’s score by Robin Carolan and Sebastian Gainsborough also seems to echo the Third Ear Band’s unforgettable soundtrack for Polanski.

Although not on par with Eggers’ excellent The Witch, The Northman is a well-crafted production and a distinct improvement over his meandering The Lighthouse. The film’s cast is fine overall, particularly Kidman, Willem Dafoe as Heimir the Fool, and Bjork in a small, memorable appearance as a  witch.

Production design and costumes are high-quality, the Nordic locations are striking, and Eggers keeps his camera mercifully steady, eschewing senselessly jerky camerawork. CGI effects don’t overwhelm the movie, but the sadism and bloodshed levels are high enough to reach Valhalla.  

Bleak and grim, with glaring plot holes, The Northman is 20 minutes too long and doesn’t inspire multiple viewings. Films about truly barbaric characters are a gamble, because, as in this case, they focus on inarticulate thugs who are little better than the vermin they’re battling. Eggers succeeds at making a Viking epic, but a joyless, often repulsive one that’s easy to appreciate, but not so easily palatable.

The Northman

R, 137 minutes
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Violet Crown Cinema

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Arts Culture

All this and more

Everything Everywhere All At Once, starring Michelle Yeoh, is upending clichés, and winning over audiences everywhere. Photo: A24

Co-directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All At Once is a relentlessly entertaining, hilarious parody of the nonstop kinetics and overused “multiverse” concepts of recent comic book and action movies. Although it’s heavy on its cartoonish, Sam Raimi-esque mayhem, the consistent likability and humanity make the film peculiarly uplifting. This science fiction/kung fu hybrid glories in over-the-top silliness but, ultimately, it’s a good-natured story about grappling with late middle age.

Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) stars as harried working mom Evelyn Wang, who’s barraged with existential dilemmas and annoyances: the laundromat she co-owns with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) is failing, and he’s having serious doubts about their marriage. Their daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), can barely stand her mom. And her surly, estranged father, Gong Gong (James Hong), is visiting from China. During a meeting with stiff-necked IRS bureaucrat Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis), Evelyn finds herself drawn into a battle spanning multiple universes that alters her mundane existence and reveals her own extraordinary, untapped abilities.

Once it gets going, Everything Everywhere All At Once continually ups the ante with unpredictability and nonsensical humor at a furious pace. Highlights along the way include a farcical reworking of the “Dawn of Man” sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film’s loony tone is exemplified by the characters’ arcane arsenal in their many kung fu melees, where weapons range from a fanny pack to a Pomeranian.

Everything’s success is largely due to its cast, which shines not only in main roles, but also as their characters’ various incarnations intermingling throughout alternate universes. Yeoh deftly combines vulnerability, athletics, and comic skill in her winning character(s). Returning from a nearly 20-year acting hiatus, Quan is outstanding as Waymond. For viewers who grew up watching Quan as Data in The Goonies or Indiana Jones’ sidekick Short Round, his return is like a reunion with a dear childhood friend. Quan doesn’t disappoint: He’s a natural on camera, and his nerdy charm belies his martial arts expertise. Curtis dives headfirst—almost literally—into the frumpy, sour Deirdre. And as Gong Gong, prolific character actor Hong is still killing it in his 90s. It’s a pleasure seeing this movie stalwart in such a big, meaty role.

Directors Kwan and Scheinert designed Everything Everywhere All At Once for audiences with tiny attention spans, but they work within this frantic form playfully enough that even viewers who hate high-speed, stylized gimmickry can enjoy it. It isn’t deep, nor does it aspire to be, but it mercifully lacks the sermonizing, preciousness, and nihilism that have spoiled other recent movies. It’s unpredictable, funny, engaging, risqué, goofy, and just plain fun in ways that few movies are. Within its pandemonium lurks what will likely be the most enjoyable movie of this season.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

R, 140 minutes

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Violet Crown Cinema

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Arts Culture

I, robot

A nostalgic look at the pop art icon keeps fans guessing in “The Andy Warhol Diaries.” Photo: Netflix.

Whether you love or hate Andy Warhol’s work, his impact on the arts as a provocateur, businessman, and impresario is immeasurable. Andrew Rossi’s six-part Netflix series “The Andy Warhol Diaries” sets out to pierce the façade its subject presented to the media. The series gives a fairly nuanced portrait of the godfather of pop art through new and archival interviews with Warhol, his co-workers, friends, and critics. Along the way, it explores Warhol’s era(s) almost as much as it does its subject.

The first three episodes follow Andrew Warhola, Jr. from his early years as an awkward Pittsburgh kid, through his initial New York graphic design career, into his ascension to art superstar, offering fascinating details, like how the Russian Orthodox iconography of his youth influenced his style. The bulk of the story revolves around the period from 1976-1987, when Warhol dictated his activities to writer Pat Hackett. What began as daily accounting by phone became full-fledged diaries, which were published posthumously in 1989.

Therein lies the series’ biggest flaw. Extrapolating on Warhol’s statement “I want to be a machine,” Rossi has an A.I. recreation of the artist’s voice reading his diary entries in a clumsy simulation of his trademark monotone. This synthetic Warhol is gimmicky and off-putting, mispronouncing words robotically like a GPS, and ending its sentences in a clipped, computerized way. The series is clearly attempting to transcend Warhol’s mythic status and humanize him, but this artificial speech undermines a fair amount of those worthwhile efforts. And probably the other biggest problem here is a string of unnecessary dramatizations of Warhol’s private moments, his face always obscured. These precious, stagey vignettes resemble reenactments from an “Unsolved Mysteries” rerun.

That aside, “The Andy Warhol Diaries” is engaging overall. The interviews with his co-workers and others are generally informative, funny, and revealing. Standouts include Interview magazine editor Bob Colacello and director John Waters, who praises Warhol as a trailblazer in underground cinema. In terms of presenting Warhol’s humanness and emotionality, the series is particularly poignant when it examines Warhol’s asexual pose and his secretive romantic life—or lack thereof—with his various companions like Jed Johnson and Jon Gould. And despite the obvious veneration of Warhol, Rossi deserves credit for including quotes from the brilliant art critic Robert Hughes, arguably Warhol’s sternest detractor, who once called him “one of the stupidest people I’ve ever met in my life . . . because he had nothing to say.”

Archival footage of Warhol-era Manhattan and his studio, The Factory, is memorable, including excursions into Studio 54 and the thriving ’70s gay bar scene. The music is well-curated by period, including Sparks’ “The Number One Song in Heaven” and The Skatt Bros.’ “Walk the Night.”  But Nat King Cole crooning “Nature Boy” over the opening credits is an odd choice, even if it’s used there ironically.        

Was Warhol a ridiculous charlatan or an artistic powerhouse—or both? Was he a deep soul, or, as Truman Capote described him, a “Sphinx without a secret”? “The Andy Warhol Diaries” doesn’t definitively answer questions like these, nor should it be expected to. But it does partially succeed in revealing facets of Warhol that the artist himself seldom, if ever, would.

“The Andy Warhol Diaries”

Six-part series
Streaming (Netflix)

Categories
Arts Culture

Robotic delivery

Funny and foreboding, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Bigbug details the perils of artificial intelligence. Photo: Netflix

If Terry Gilliam remade “The Jetsons,” it might go something like Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Bigbug. This French science-fiction comedy takes a generally dark movie sub-genre—robot servants revolting against their human masters—and transforms it into an outwardly sunny, pastel-colored farce. The results are a hilarious, fascinating satire that’s seemingly light, but overflows with pointed observations about unchecked technological evolution at its worst.

Set in near-future France, suburban divorcée Alice (Elsa Zylberstein), her date (Stéphane De Groot), ex-husband (Youssef Hajdi), his secretary (Claire Chust), and others are sealed inside her house as malfunctioning security androids launch an insurrection outside. Meanwhile, her robotic servants faithfully try to protect their owner. (No giant insects here—the titular “bug” has infected the computer systems that manage the characters’ lives.)

Bigbug echoes—and affectionately parodies—Blade Runner, Westworld, Demon Seed, and other excellent works about artificial intelligence in revolt. Like those films, it confronts a major modern conundrum: Where does A.I. end and sentience begin? How much human-like behavior makes a robot human? 

As Jeunet takes his viewers on a windy trip through the “uncanny valley” between mechanical and flesh-and-blood life, he keeps Bigbug compelling by raising dozens of intriguing questions, and offering few pat answers. But the film’s opening image—leashed human beings led on all-fours by androids—sets the tone: Our own labor-saving technology ultimately enslaves us.

Bigbug’s reviews have been mixed because it’s definitely not for everyone, especially anyone who only knows Jeunet’s breakout hit Amelie. Bigbug is more akin to Delicatessen and other off-kilter early collaborations with Marc Caro. Be warned: Some viewers will find Bigbug overly frenetic and unconventional. But for those who stick with it, it’s a rewarding and hysterical film. (Be sure to watch the French-language version—the dubbed one sounds awful.)

The point that some viewers miss is that Bigbug’s background is its foreground. The humans’ antic interactions are funny, but what’s most intriguing is Jeunet’s intricate world-building. With most of this claustrophobic story occurring inside a single house, its vision of future life unfolds through background details within this ecosystem. Alice, for instance, keeps her journal with pen and ink, which have become as obsolete as IBM punch cards.

The cast is strong, particularly Claude Perron as the robotic maid Monique and Zylberstein in the lead. The voice acting is equally good, with André Dussollier standing out as the sanguine Einstein. Keep an eye out for cameos by Jeunet movie vets like Dominique Pinon, too.

Aline Bonetto’s retro-futuristic production design is marvelous, equal parts Bauhaus and mid-century modern by way of Betty Crocker. Outstanding credit is also due to special effects supervisor Pascal Molina, robot designer Jean-Christophe Spadaccini, and visual effects directors Alain Carsoux and Jeremie Leroux for their excellent work on the non-CGI mechanical co-stars. Most notable among the robotic cast is Einstein, a scuttling, six-legged head that looks like a caricature of its namesake crafted from typewriter parts.

Bigbug isn’t a masterpiece, nor is it as good as some of Jeunet’s more recent underseen gems like Micmacs. At an hour and 51 minutes, it’s 10 minutes too long. But it’s very funny, highly imaginative and intelligent, and the kind of science fiction movie that matters most: one about ideas.

Bigbug

R, 111 minutes
Streaming (Netflix)

Categories
Arts Culture

Direct miss

Oscar-nominated disaster film Don’t Look Up, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, is a comedy that takes itself too seriously. Photo: Netflix

In Adam McKay’s satire Don’t Look Up, astronomy grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), discover a “planet-killing” comet that’s hurtling toward Earth. Aided by NASA official Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), our heroes bravely try to warn the world. As the news breaks, backwards mobs vehemently deny the comet’s existence, and these three Cassandras desperately struggle to prevent doomsday. What all this amounts to is a ham-handed allegory about climate change, undone by its preachy, self-congratulatory tone, which constantly reminds the audience this is a very important film. In reality, its recent Academy Award nomination in the Best Picture category hardly reflects the actual film. For an alleged comedy, Don’t Look Up takes itself way too seriously.

The issues the film confronts are important: America’s rampant greed, misguided priorities, sick obsession with celebrity, overdependence on technology, scientific illiteracy, and—metaphorically—global warming. But tackling substantial topics doesn’t inherently give a movie substance. This story about whistleblowers blasts a shrill and persistent whistle.

Moreover, Don’t Look Up really isn’t saying anything new, in terms of either cultural commentary or science fiction. Its runaway comet concept is a deathless chestnut in genre films and literature, in everything from When Worlds Collide to Greenland. Parodying that sub-genre could be very funny, but here the humor is bludgeoning. Ultimately, Don’t Look Up plays like an overlong, half-baked episode of “Black Mirror,” with little of that series’ scathing intensity.

Don’t Look Up has been compared to Stanley Kubrick’s apocalyptic comedy Dr. Strangelove, which is stretching a point. What Kubrick accomplished tightly in just over an hour-and-a-half, this film doesn’t come close to matching in its draggy two hours and 25 minutes.

There’s a gag Kubrick belabored in Dr. Strangelove: a sign reading Peace is Our Profession at the Air Force base where World War III is triggered. Don’t Look Up has similar weak spots—the flick stridently overworks various on-the-nose satirical jabs about why our heroes can barely get anyone to listen or actually mobilize the world to overcome the grave problem at hand.

DiCaprio and Lawrence are both good. Melanie Lynskey is excellent as DiCaprio’s put-upon wife, and Tyler Perry is spot-on as a glib, glad-handing talk show host. Meryl Streep as the U.S. president and Cate Blanchett as Perry’s co-host are both arch and unfunny. Jonah Hill as the president’s son is, as his part demands, repulsive, but he doesn’t believably capture that character’s stupidity. And as a cartoonish military thug, Ron Perlman gamely does his best with a very broadly written role.

It’s Mark Rylance’s performance that steals the movie. As billionaire cell phone mogul Peter Isherwell, whose vast wealth blinds the public to his deep fallibility, Rylance skillfully hits all the right notes, from his simpering voice to his perpetual gameshow-host grin. Rylance flawlessly delivers Isherwell’s stream of messianic double-talk, which masks the dehumanization and invasiveness lurking behind his technology. If all of Don’t Look Up paid off like Rylance’s exceptional performance, it would be a superior film.

Most of the film’s ideas holler out for more skillful treatment. The cinematography gets needlessly jerky. There are self-indulgent montages that could have been better handled. During Oscar season, as you make your list of movies to watch before the awards show, don’t bother to look at Don’t Look Up.

Don’t Look Up

R, 145 minutes
Streaming (Netflix)

Categories
Arts Culture

On location

Ty Cooper’s Indie Short Film Series will feature films from different genres at Vinegar Hill Theatre on February 26. More info can be found at indieshortfilmseries.com. Supplied photo

Since 2019, local filmmaker Ty Cooper’ Indie Short Film Series has given aspiring Charlottesville filmmakers a valuable opportunity to showcase their work. “It’s a way for you to enter the business without having to spend a lot of money,” Cooper says.

Shorts are traditionally novice directors’ best way of making a name for themselves, but getting those shorts seen and spotlighted—especially theatrically—can be more grueling than making them.

Theater rentals are expensive, and patrons may shy away from paying 20 bucks to see just one short, so a series of screenings like Cooper’s gives hopeful directors an otherwise unaffordable venue. “They’re able to be seen without paying a whole bunch of money like I pay—I rent the theater for them,” Cooper says. 

Cooper’s programs generally include six to eight titles, followed by panel discussions with several featured filmmakers, and his February 26 screenings will encompass many genres, including international shorts. “I don’t want the same type of film to show up within this block,” says Cooper. “It’s really based on what I feel is going to be different—what’s going to make the patron’s experience really good. I choose various genres—horror, drama, romance, whatever.” 

Since 2015, Cooper has volunteered at the Sundance Film Festival, and he cherry-picks some of his material from it. This allows his audience to “truly see how good these local and regional filmmakers are, by comparison,” he says. And, as a promotion and outreach consultant for the Virginia Film Festival, he says he is always looking at films.

Many of the submissions come to Cooper through his website, indieshortfilmseries.com. He carefully curates his series, studying the content and technical qualities of the submitted films. “I’m looking at everything I possibly can, to say, ‘This will be an enjoyable experience for the patron,’” says Cooper, who observes both sides of the viewing experience to balance the patrons’ and filmmakers’ appreciation of the series. 

Experiencing films in a real theater is also fundamental for Cooper. With streaming dominating the market, he elected not to go online, with either the series or his newest film, Amanda. And it paid off. The series opened in 2019 to “an amazing turnout,” and a February 29, 2020, screening of shorts was almost sold out. He says it was catching momentum and about to go monthly before the pandemic closed it down until late last year. 

“I just don’t like the whole online festival type of experience,” he says. The communal theater setting was too critical, so he waited until things opened back up.

The Indie Short Film Series’ December 2021 revival was met with a packed house, and the series is scheduled to run monthly or bimonthly until 2023.

Cooper also aims to push Charlottesville as a key destination spot for filmmakers to  visit, saying “It’s about building consistency and exposure for the town.” Some of the filmmakers Cooper brought in early on only knew of the city from the infamous August 12, 2017, incident. “They actually didn’t know where UVA was! Now, they know,” says Cooper.

On his post-screening panels, the gleam in the filmmakers’ eyes has been enormously satisfying for Cooper, and he shares their pride: “I see it in their eyes and I love it, because I provided the opportunity, that sense of empowerment for another creator. And I know where that creator is at, mentally: They want to get their stuff seen . . . They want people to judge it—get feedback.

“I know—I’ve been there, and I’m still there.”

Indie Short Film Series at Vinegar Hill Theatre

• The Accidental Grandson, director Paul Terzano

• Jack, the Town, and I, director Kendra Copeland

• Mappatura. AKA: the city as a musealized taxonomy of
human disappointments, director Niccolò Buttigliero Junior

• Apocalypse Notes (Music is in danger!), director Pierre Gaffié

• Elemental, director Eric Hurt

• Tongxiang (people from the same hometown), director Anna Ma

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Arts Culture

Belly up

Ben Affleck is both surly and kind as Tye Sheridan’s Uncle Charlie in The Tender Bar. Photo: Amazon Studios

Adapted from J.R. Moehringer’s memoir, director George Clooney’s The Tender Bar is story worth telling—and at times it’s well-told. But the film never fully coalesces, and it feels like a rough cut in need of further editing. 

The Tender Bar has the makings of a truly touching story: Young J.R. Maguire (Daniel Ranieri) transcends his fatherless, drab 1970s Long Island origins and graduates into a writing career, guided by Charlie, his guardian angel uncle (Ben Affleck). The boy’s maturation revolves around The Dickens, a dingy bar that Charlie manages. 

If all of this sounds familiar, it should: It’s another heart-tugging coming-of-age movie. Judging by the scenes that click, Clooney is a capable director, but what the film lacks is focus. Fifteen minutes could go, including a neurotic, meandering romantic subplot.

Above all, The Tender Bar is Affleck’s show. In a role that could easily go wrong and be too cloying, surly, or loutish, he deftly balances Charlie’s gruffness with the deep kindness it camouflages. The film’s high points mostly involve Charlie and the bar’s scruffy regulars—warmly funny scenes exuding good-naturedness in their unpatronizing portrayal of working-class people. 

The supporting cast is solid, too. Several standout performances include Ranieri in his debut role as young J.R., Lily Rabe as J.R.’s harried single mom Dorothy, and Christopher Lloyd, who’s up to his usual eccentric character actor high jinks as J.R.’s cantankerous granddad, who gets showcased in a scene with young J.R. at school.

Among the few off-key performances is Max Martini as “The Voice,” J.R.’s absent dad, known almost solely as a disembodied radio disc jockey. This complete wretch is a well-written part, but it belongs in the hands of a sketchier, scarier, and more nuanced actor—say, a young Rip Torn. Also, Tye Sheridan turns in an indifferent performance as the collegiate J.R. 

The film’s most egregious flaw is The Tender Bar’s relentless period hit parade. By themselves, the songs are fine—there are just too many of them, piling up and bombarding the audience. More of a connection should have been drawn between the nonstop musical barrage and the Martini character’s broadcasts, but, again, the film stays unfocused. With that said, several tracks, including Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” and King Harvest’s “Dancing in the Moonlight,” are used effectively. 

Production designer Kalina Ivanov and costume designer Jenny Eagan both contribute beautifully here. The look and feel of blue-collar Long Island is convincing—you can practically smell the Rice-A-Roni, Schaefer Beer, and Tiparillos. The Tender Bar also deserves praise for not glossing over or erasing a prior generation’s looser standards: Like in real dive bars, characters enthusiastically smoke, including Charlie. Little J.R. gets sent out to buy smokes, as working-class kids sometimes did. There’s an enjoyable lack of revisionism here, and not entirely without consequences for its characters.

The Tender Bar definitely has its moments, but it’s overly familiar tropes and unfinished feel make it very uneven. This particular dive bar isn’t to be avoided completely—just know that most of what you’ll get on tap is a little watered-down.

The Tender Bar

R, 106 minutes
Streaming (Amazon Prime)

Categories
Arts Culture

Carnival swindle

Nightmare Alley stars Cate Blanchett and Bradley Cooper. Photo: Walt Disney Studios

From start to finish, Guillermo Del Toro’s Nightmare Alley is a dreary, plodding, flashy reminder of why filmmakers should leave great movies alone. The William Gresham novel was adapted into a 1947 film noir classic, and again by Del Toro­—but Del Toro’s misuse of excellent source material is the real nightmare here.

The film follows Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a fugitive who joins a traveling carnival, and seduces Zeena (Toni Collette), a phony mentalist, to learn how to perform her alcoholic partner Pete’s (David Strathairn) sideshow tricks. Stanton gradually develops more sophisticated, lucrative con games, assisted by his younger lover, Molly (Rooney Mara). Unscrupulous psychologist Judith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) then aids him in grander, darker schemes.

Nightmare Alley has proved a box office bomb, just like the 1947 version, which tanked partly because pretty-boy lead Tyrone Power sought to shatter his nice-guy image by playing a lowlife, which only repelled audiences. It seems like 21st-century audiences are having a similar reaction to Cooper’s casting as a creep. That’s where the similarities between the two films end.

Director Edmund Goulding gave his Nightmare Alley a raw, tightly wound intensity, leaving the viewer feeling truly hellbound. Its portrayal of broken-down carny mentalist Pete remains one of the most terrifying depictions of chronic alcoholism in film history.

Del Toro, however, revels in silly excess. Hideous gore provides periodic sophomoric shocks. The film is totally humorless, and all style without substance. The camera roves needlessly, and the cast always seems to be lit with green gels. The film’s costume design and art direction are solid, but the sets become a distraction. One sequence takes place in an overwrought carny funhouse simply because Del Toro obviously thought it looked cool. Lilith’s office is an Art Deco stunner, but its visual splendor upstages Cooper and Blanchett.

As for the cast, Cooper is wrong for Stanton, and shows little of the cynical hardness that Power radiated. In interviews, Del Toro has derided superficial clichés that people generally associate with film noir style. But his film is devoid of any dark ambiance­—Blanchett lays her hokey femme fatale act on as cartoonishly as Carol Burnett impersonating Barbara Stanwyck. The supporting cast is better: Mara, Ron Perlman, and Willem Dafoe are standouts.

As with all his films, Del Toro gets derivative, and here he references everything from Andrew Wyeth’s “Christina’s World” to Tales from the Crypt comics. An avowed fan of director Tod Browning, Del Toro lifts a memorable “spider girl” act from Browning’s The Show and aims to emulate Browning’s classic Freaks. Browning, however, actually drew on his own firsthand experiences working as a carny. Del Toro is merely referencing other people’s work—a kind of lame reality-twice-removed. Del Toro and co-screenwriter Kim Morgan affect authenticity by casually tossing in period slang like “blind pig” (a speakeasy), yet undo any genuine-sounding dialogue with anachronistic terms like “daddy issues.”

The seedy world of carnivals is deeply fascinating material, but here it’s just tedious. Like an actual carny, this Nightmare Alley is all a façade, as phony as a midway barker’s pitch. Although it’s not nearly as bad as Del Toro’s earlier remake of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, it’s just as unwelcome. Skip this and see the far superior original.

Nightmare Alley

R, 150 minutes
Violet Crown Cinema

Categories
Arts Culture

Flashback to fun

Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim roam from one bizarre adventure to the next in the light and funny Licorice Pizza. Photo: MGM

With the current glut of super­heroes, franchises, and remakes at movie theaters, a film like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza stands out by default simply for being low-key, unpredictable, and featuring normal- looking people. It’s also low on narrative cohesion and depth, and still sticks out. In short, Licorice Pizza is enjoyable with a strong cast, and well worth seeing, but what’s it really about? The overriding answer: P.T.A. loves L.A.

Anderson’s films overflow with adoration for his native Los Angeles—usually, the San Fernando Valley—and its people, from Boogie Nights’ porn stars to Inherent Vice’s stoner beach bums. That deep affection shines through in every frame of Licorice Pizza, this time through an exuberant, youthful lens.

This warm re-creation of the Valley circa 1973 nicely evokes the era’s look, feel, and looseness—of kids being kids, and adults usually behaving more juvenile than the children. (Licorice Pizza would pair well with Michael Ritchie’s The Bad News Bears.) Anderson captures the uniquely surreal nature of the Valley’s deep ties to “The Industry,” where seeing aging movie stars or the Batmobile is humdrum stuff.

The film’s nominal plot follows two kids seemingly as incongruous as the film’s title: 15-year-old inveterate hustler Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman), and Alana Kane (Alana Haim), an aimless 25-year-old spitfire. Gary pursues Alana even more fervently than his endless money-making schemes, and the story finds the pair roaming from one bizarrely comic, sometimes poignant, episode to the next, punctuated by their mercurial reactions. There are period trappings everywhere—Nixon on TV, Todd Rundgren on the radio, hideous wallpaper in the living room—but this appropriately funky window dressing never overwhelms the cast.

American cinema of the 1970s is another trademark of Anderson’s vision. He has so superficially assimilated Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, and Hal Ashby’s works that he can conjure their films’ look and feel without being openly derivative (although he does lift a scene from Taxi Driver, and also draws on Clint Eastwood’s Breezy).

Altman’s influence on Anderson can be seen in his excellent ensemble casts, and Anderson’s latest is no exception. Hoffman and Haim are endearing. The supporting cast shines, particularly Harriet Sansom Harris as a chain-smoking agent. Sean Penn’s scenes as aging action hero Jack Holden, loosely parodying William Holden, is Penn’s best, funniest work in years. Bradley Cooper as hairstylist Jon Peters is a hilarious caricature of that era’s machismo, complete with a caveman’s hair, beard, and attitude. And the cast members who deserve special praise are the many child actors, who appear effortlessly natural and unforced.

What does it all add up to? It’s an undisciplined, arrhythmic film, and essentially just Anderson having a blast taking a sentimental journey. It’s not deep and it’s 20 minutes too long (like most current movies). But it succeeds as a light, laconic, funny film—the key word here being light—that hearkens back to 1970s filmmaking, but doesn’t equal the richness of that decade’s cinema.

Licorice Pizza

R, 133 minutes
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Violet Crown Cinema