Comings and Goings at the Movies, Dec. 1
New Netflix flick, an action misfire, and the best Christmas movie of the year.
Oddly enough, I’ve seen nearly every movie that’s getting a release this weekend, thanks to film festivals and early screenings, so here’s some brief reviews of some new movies you can see, either at the cinema or on your couch!
(While I have did not have the privilege of an early screening for Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé, I did see her perform in London earlier this year. The show was brilliantly conceived and masterfully executed, so I would expect nothing less than perfection from the corresponding concert film. Godzilla Minus One has been receiving positive reviews and it also opens in theaters this weekend.)
May December
Directed by Todd Haynes. Now playing at Lincoln Center & IFC. Streaming on Netflix December 1.
A schoolteacher (Julianne Moore) becomes a tabloid legend after getting caught having sex with a thirteen year old boy and giving birth to their son while imprisoned. Twenty years later, the two are now married and have settled in a small town near Savannah. An actor (Natalie Portman), set to play that teacher in a true crime movie, travels to Georgia to research her role. As she gets closer to solving the mystery of how this couple came to be, and how the two continue to be happily married despite the scandal from which their relationship began, the line seems to blur between her professional and personal interests.
You may have some ideas for where this story will go, based on Todd Haynes’ prior movies like Safe or Carol. I certainly thought this would be some sort of sapphic cross between Black Swan and Persona, and while I won’t divulge all the plot developments, I’ll say I was incorrect. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s good to be surprised! But what was on screen didn’t feel like the fullest exploration of this story, even if it was an enjoyable takedown of the true crime genre that also reads as a riff on a Pedro Almodóvar picture. May December is a soapy, often fun snack that had the potential to have been a more substantial meal. Netflix is the perfect distributor for this movie, and that’s meant to be complimentary and derogatory.
Ultimately, I take May December to be largely about how “true story” movies fail to actually capture the truth. It’s always illusion, and actors have to create their own realities when developing performances based on real people. While that may be interesting for those in the performing arts, it took time away from what I found to be a far more compelling story: the one about that thirteen year old boy whose far too early relationship has persisted into his stunted adulthood. (Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman may headline the film, but it’s Charles Melton who delivers the best performance.) When we meet the family, their youngest kid is about to graduate high school. But what was going through her father’s mind when his children were turning thirteen? If one of them was taken advantage of by an adult at the same age that he was sexually abused, would he find it reprehensible, even if that’s what happened to him and seems pretty cool with it now? A movie about that situation, now that could cause a scandal.
My lukewarm opinion on this film makes me a pretty big outlier, so don’t let me dissuade you from seeing this! I saw this movie at Cannes way back in May so I look forward to seeing it again this December to see if my opinion changed.
Dinner and a Movie
If you wanna have a little May December dinner and a movie party, which I highly recommend for a good night in, here’s some ideas:
Roast late spring & winter vegetables. Asparagus paired with butternut squash, perhaps.
Something involving duplicitous duplication: perhaps sea scallops served next to a king oyster mushrooms (often used as a vegan scallop).
Featured in the movie itself: lots of hot dogs, an upside down pineapple cake, and Aperol spritzes aplenty.
Eileen
Directed by William Oldroyd. Opens December 1 in limited release at AMC Lincoln Square, Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn, and the Angelika.
Faithfully adapted from Ottessa Moshfegh's novel, the titular young woman (Thomasin McKenzie) lives a very unglamorous existence in Massachusetts. A college dropout who lives with an alcoholic ex-cop father, she floats through her secretarial job at a juvenile detention facility until she is entranced — or ensnared, depending on how you look at it — by the prison’s new psychologist, the glamorous Rebecca Saint John (a blonde Anne Hathaway). The grimy visuals match Eileen’s psyche, as does the harsh snows of a New England winter.
Without the benefit of first-person narration, we don’t get the best sense of Eileen's inner life, which was the strongest aspect of the novel. We lose the character study and are left with a noir-ish thriller that's as underdeveloped in the movie as it was in the book. Despite being perfectly cast as the femme fatale, Hathaway doesn't get much to work with, and McKenzie plays yet another mousy, "plain looking" girl. The supporting cast acquits themselves well, particularly Marin Ireland, who is shouldered with delivering the story's thesis in a long monologue. She knocks it out of the park, and you can see her do some other monologues, on stage, right now, in Spain.
Silent Night
Directed by John Woo. Opens December 1 in wide release.
Legendary Hong Kong action filmmaker John Woo's long awaited return to Hollywood is an unfortunate bust. The little touches that we get from him are magnificent, but he's sticking close to a horrible script. Silent Night is a revenge tale about a guy (Joel Kinnaman) who loses his son — and his vocal cords (the lack of dialogue is the big gimmick here) — to gang violence. He gets revenge by slaughtering the gangsters, thirty-six of them, to be exact. I counted. It's a mashup of John Wick and Taken and End of Watch and the result is as uninspired as it sounds. The Christmas angle implied by the film’s title is nothing more than a transparent attempt to make this the next "Die Hard is a Christmas movie." Neither of these movies are actually Christmas movies, but at least Die Hard is good.
The Sweet East
Directed by Sean Price Williams. Opens December 1 at IFC.
I'm a pretentious edgelord who is terminally online so the dirtbaggy, chaotic The Sweet East was perfectly on my wavelength. Talia Ryder stars as Lillian, a wayward teenager who encounters weirdos and miscreants throughout her journey through the underbelly of a new Americana. Without giving too much away, it's the type of movie where she's hanging out with Antifa in one scene, neo-Nazis in the next, and the inciting action is Pizzagate. If that sentence makes no sense to you, you are well-adjusted and I envy you.
The film explores the eternal allure of the teenage girl, in subtext and metatext. Most of the people she meets are men, older than her to varying degrees. Presenting herself as a blank slate, our young hero rarely betrays her inner thoughts. So it's easy for the men in this film to project their views onto her, which usually manifests in everyone constantly talking at her, and in turn, Lillian uses this as a way to slyly advance her own goals. (The major characters in the movie are all male, with the exception of Ayo Edebiri, who, along with Jeremy O. Harris, provide much of the laughs. I don’t know where else to mention this, but indie it-boy Jacob Elordi pops up in this movie too!)
The space that holds Lillian at a distance from the viewer never really closes, and it's fair to wonder if The Sweet East can be an effective interrogation of the teenage girl archetype when the director and screenwriter are both middle aged men, around the same age as cast member Simon Rex, who has the most sexually charged relationship with Ryder's character. I think the film still works, but it's a lot more enjoyable if you're not thinking about this stuff and just going along with this demented trip through the not so sweet East Coast.
This is the directing debut of cinematographer Sean Price Williams, who also lensed Good Time and boygenius: the film. Befitting a director who has been a longtime cinematographer, this film is indeed a picturesque picaresque. The gauzy haze of 16mm film fits the material perfectly, as does a more dissonant score of electronic noises. Pretty images of ugly things, always a great combination.
The Holdovers
Directed by Alexander Payne. This movie opened in theaters about a month ago and was released on VOD platforms this week. It will eventually land on Peacock in the new year. I highly recommend seeing it in a theater though!
Left alone in a boarding school during the winter holiday, a grouchy teacher (Paul Giamatti), a cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), and a miscreant student (Dominic Sessa) form a unique bond. Warm and sentimental and acidic all at once, The Holdovers is an empathetic and humane drama that earns a place in the alt-canon of Christmas movies. It certainly warmed up my Grinchy heart.
Set in the 1970s, it also feels like watching a movie from that era, and not just because of the vintage studio logos and the film grain. (Eileen does the same thing, but The Holdovers is a much better movie.) The charming script by David Hemingson has that character focused style that was so popular at the time, which director Alexander Payne laments is now categorized as an "art film." Most impressive is the cinematography: the lighting really makes it look like this movie was made fifty years ago. This is an area where most period pieces fail to reach that verisimilitude.
The music of The Holdovers stands out as well. Mark Orton's score mixes in seamlessly with the songs, which are recognizable without feeling too precious. And those songs were not cheap! In a Q&A, the director mentioned that the Cat Stevens song cost $300,000 — and that was negotiated down from $400,000 after Payne wrote a letter citing he and Stevens' shared Greek ancestry.
With such a character driven story, it's no surprise that all of the actors get to showcase their skills. Paul Giamatti is terrifically blustery, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph is trusted to bring a wellspring of grief and perserverance to her character in relatively few scenes. Newcomer Dominic Sessa more than holds his own against them, and this was the Deerfield Academy student's first time acting in front of a camera!
KitKat Turns Four
Today is KitKat’s fourth birthday (it’s also the anniversary of her adoption date, since no one knows the actual day of her birth.) She’s spending the day as she usually does: sleeping, eating, and meowing all morning.
Hope you found this little roundup helps you see a good movie or two. If you enjoyed it, you can subscribe to get the next post directly to your inbox.
This is amazing! Now you need to do this every week!