Comings and Goings at the Movies, Dec. 22.
Purple/Ferrari/Claw/Strangers. A packed Christmas slate.
The Christmas weekend is always so packed. There are a lot of new movies getting their theatrical release in the next several days, but only one of them gets a strong recommendation. And some fall favorites are now up on VOD platforms or streaming services, if a trek to the cinema isn't in your holiday plans.Â
The Color Purple
Opens December 25 in wide release.
This movie comes from an impressive lineage. Alice Walker's novel won a Pulitzer in 1983. Steven Spielberg's 1985 film adaptation garnered eleven Oscar nominations. The Broadway musical won the Tony for Best Revival eight years ago. (I haven't read or seen any of these existing works, but one can imagine each of them building on each other, with this musical movie the culmination of all three.) Is an Oscar for Best Picture on the horizon? Unfortunately, The Color Purple left me feeling rather blue. Powerful performances and occasional moments of beauty are sunk by uninspired, flat direction from Blitz Bazawule. His first studio picture lacks the bold vision of his debut feature, The Burial of Kojo, or the musicality of Beyoncé's Black is King, which he co-directed.
Moving throughout the early twentieth century, from 1909 to 1947, the story follows the life of Celie (Fantasia Barrino), as she tussles with and triumphs through adversity on the coast of Georgia. With all of the terrible things that happen to Celie, the plot summary could make it seem like trauma porn. Worry not, as the story is complex and layered and even joyous. Barrino and Danielle Brooks, who make the leap from the recent Broadway revival to the big screen, are fantastic. They play to the rafters when it makes sense, but dial down to a more intimate note when the moment calls for it. Brooks in particular is the MVP of a terrific ensemble that includes Colman Domingo, Corey Hawkins, and Taraji P. Henson. I just wish the film that was built around these talents was better.
Screenwriter Marcus Gardley tries to split the difference between a stage musical and a straight drama, and in theory, there's no problem with that, even if extensive cuts to the musical numbers will disappoint fans of the Broadway show. In the musical scenes that we do get, the actors and the dancers are really well choreographed, and their efforts shine through uninvigorating shot design and jumpy editing. Much of the time, it seems like a movie musical made by people who don't really like movie musicals. But there are a few scenes throughout that embrace the theatricality, and they're the best parts of the movie: Celie and Shug's (Taraji P. Henson) duet in an homage to the silver screen, Celie's show-stopper "I'm Here," every scene with the fiery Sofia (Danielle Brooks).
A lot of the parts to The Color Purple are good, sometimes great. But there's just something missing from the movie as a whole, which typically points to an issue with the directing. It is possible that Bazawule, jumping from a micro-budgeted independent to a big studio picture, simply did not get to develop the very different skillset that this type of filmmaking requires (directing gets much more managerial once your budget surpasses the tens of millions). Some of the shots quote from The Burial of Kojo, Bazawule's first feature film, and Julie Dash's seminal picture Daughters of the Dust, but the overly digital sheen of Dan Laustsen's cinematography just made me wish I was watching one of those two movies instead, or perhaps the older Spielberg adaptation. Or better yet, I could listen to the cast recording of the recent Broadway revival. Unfortunately there was never a proshot of the stage production, but one can close their eyes and imagine a musical that's deeper, more rewarding, and more moving than this movie, which unfortunately will end up becoming the definitive recorded version of the musical. Unless there's a better remake in thirty year's time.
And for dinner…
I don’t have any concrete suggestions (read: I ran out of time to research), but it would be worthy to look into the foodways of the American South in the early twentieth century, particularly in Georgia, where The Color Purple is set.
All of Us Strangers
Opens December 22 in New York and LA. Expands wider in the coming weeks.
My apartment in Downtown Brooklyn has a view of that ugly Eye of Sauron tower (it looks just as bad up close as it does from afar). It’s partially under construction, and most of the condos are still vacant. But there’s a couple windows that have the lights turned on at nighttime, and when I look at those faint signs of life, it gets me thinking about the lonely men at the center of All of Us Strangers. Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal headline the film, as the only two occupants of an otherwise empty London apartment building. Both happen to be gay, and after an encounter, love burgeons as the elder Scott excavates his relationship with his parents (or lack thereof). It would have been so easy to make this film so incredibly sentimental and cloying, and that would have been ghastly. But Andrew Haigh's script and direction are understated, sometimes to a fault. The result is a haunting story of love and guilt and acceptance that has stayed in my mind in the weeks since I watched it.Â
Haigh takes the premise of a Japanese novel from 1987 and makes the story his own, bringing the setting up to the present. (The themes about isolation are certainly a reaction to COVID.) The protagonist's sexual identity, not at all a part of the source material, becomes the focal point in this adaptation, and the film explores the internalized fear that he holds towards himself. It's a story about the gay men who grew up in the thick of the AIDS epidemic and a bitterly homophobic society. It’s an examination of the generational gap between the Gen-Xers and the millennials, who were born into a world that is far more accepting of their sexuality. The small cast of four actors are all brilliant — Scott holds it all together in the lead role, Jamie Bell and Claire Foy are shattering as the spectres of his past, and Mescal brings depth to a supporting role that is no less important than the others.
People who had seen Strangers before I did had told me that everyone around them was crying, but that wasn’t quite my screening experience. (If it had, I could have titled this review "All of Us Sobbing.") The way I feel about this movie is similar to how I felt about Past Lives, which similarly excels at crafting a mature, intelligent story, but did not truly move me. Yet both films have stayed in my mind in the hours and days since I had seen them. It's hard to write more without getting into the plot, and I think it's best to come into this with little preconceptions. There's two ways to interpret Strangers, by the end of it: one way makes this movie a cynical failure, the other makes it beautiful. It’s best to believe in the beautiful.
And for a tipple…
Perhaps as a nod to the source novel’s origins, Paul Mescal’s character is all about Japanese whiskey. There’s also a family special at an American-style mall restaurant, but we don’t really see what’s on the tray.
The Iron Claw
Opens December 22 in wide release.
The real life misfortunes of the Von Erick wrestling dynasty are chronicled in Sean Durkin's new family drama. Although handsomely made, the film lacks any special quality that justifies its existence besides trying to get Zac Efron an Oscar nomination. He stretches his acting capabilities in this movie (in a good way, mostly), as one of the older brothers in a family that's obsessed with professional wrestling thanks to a domineering patriarch (a leering Holt McCallany). The goal is to break out of Denton, Texas, and contend for the World Championship.Â
We all know by now that those matches are staged, but there's no kayfabe when it comes to climbing the ladder. As Efron puts it, it's kind of like any job promotion. Show up, know your role, and sell it to the audience. Durkin does something similar when shooting the wrestling action. In some matches, the ones that really matter to the characters involved, are made to feel real, with the camera getting closer into the ring. But in other tilts, the wider angles are unflattering. We see where the punches are pulled, the seams of the choreography.
Rounding out the cast are Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, and Stanley Simons as younger brothers in the family who join the family business, and some of them leapfrog their older brother in their career trajectories. (Lily James is here too, and she's done up to look like Shailene Woodley's understudy.) Dickinson's particularly good here. He's the brother whose sensitive soul belies the fact that he has the highest trajectory in the wrestling world until it's tragically cut short. It's the first of many misfortunes to befall the Von Erich clan, and it stretches credulity even though it all happened in real life (one family member was cut from the script, because it would have been too much misery). Stranger than fiction, sure, but as the bad stuff piles up, the film gets into a cyclical rut. It falls on Efron's character to break the cycle.Â
You could take a guess whether or not The Iron Claw ends on a note of optimism. (Or you could read Wikipedia.) But don't take the A24 branding as a hint. The studio, once famous for provocative, challenging cinema, is pivoting strategy to produce more commercial films. This seems to mark the beginning of the transition: this is the kind of mid-budget drama that Harvey Weinstein would have produced back in the day. Like many of those films, they're often based on an inspirational true story and are well made. But there's nothing surprising or particularly novel that pushes the artform forward. Like the wrestling matches of this film, the outcome is preordained.
And for dinner…
This being Texas, it’s quite easy to eat or drink like the boys in The Iron Claw. Munch on some burgers in your truck, crush several cans of Shiner Bock, and most importantly, have some Texas BBQ. My shortlist of BBQ restaurants in New York are out of date, though I always had a soft spot for Morgan's Brooklyn Barbecue.
Ferrari
Opens December 25 in wide release.
The thrilling and terrifying Mille Miglia racing setpiece is the lone bright spot in an otherwise inert movie that, at times, is painful to watch. It’s a drastic misfire of what could have been a great drama, or at least a fun dad movie. Ferrari has been in development for more than twenty years, and the script shows its age. The story is focused more on Enzo Ferrari's domestic issues, which is a perfectly reasonable angle if those issues weren't so rote and listless. There's no... drive behind any of the plot beats, and it doesn't help that the choppy edits make it hard to get a sense of the narrative arc.
What’s more, the leads are wildly miscast. Similar to House of Gucci, Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz have completely different acting styles, and the clash makes both of them look worse off. Both have been great actors, separately, but they are not great together. I'm afraid that Driver is in his flop era: none of his movies since Marriage Story have been both critical and commercial successes, and the gaudy hairpiece he wears in this movie does not acquit him. That wig is made especially distracting by Erik Messerschmidt's ugly, overly digital cinematography (he also lensed Mank, also a terribly shot film).Â
It's not like the whole thing is a disaster: the supporting cast of racecar drivers on Team Ferrari are all fun in their limited roles. Michael Mann was able to film in Enzo's actual family home, which is certainly meaningful to those who made this movie, even though that transference of realism ends up absent from the finished product. And the Mille Miglia race sequence that ends the film is quite good, though maybe that's just because it's the only part that made me feel anything. It feels out of place with the rest of the movie, which is a really weird thing to say about a movie named Ferrari.
And for dinner…
Put together a meal of the cuisine of Modena, washed down with red wine and a Ferrari shot (Fernet & Campari), and it’ll be a better way to use up two hours of your life compared to watching this movie.
At Home
Gather your family around the TV, if you dare…
Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Berstein biopic Maestro is now on Netflix. I need to give it a second watch before writing about it, but you didn’t need me to tell you that it’s nowhere near as good as A Star Is Born. Saltburn has apparently been popping off on TikTok, and now it arrives on Amazon Prime, which means it’ll go even more viral, because this movie is primed to be screencapped and giffed and memed. Don’t think too hard about the politics of Emerald Fennell’s script; this is meant to be a guilty pleasure. And if being in close quarters with your family puts you in a murderous mood, Eli Roth’s slasher Thanksgiving is now available for home viewing. Nothing in that movie is as terrifying as the first scene, a Black Friday sale gone horribly wrong, the depravity of consumerism at its basest. But it's always fun to watch hot teens get killed in increasingly creative ways.
I was ready to set The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, which depicts Coriolanus Snow’s origin story, as one of my top five films of the year, at least during its first half. The entire dynamic between the Capitol and the Districts is utterly chilling: the casual dehumanization, the willful complicity, all set against a backdrop of quasi-Soviet architecture. Alas, an underdeveloped script in the third act, which should have been the most fascinating section of the movie, prevents Songbirds & Snakes from being a wholly great movie. Both Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler, the star-crossed would-be lovers, outperform their material. (Zegler gets to have some fun performing musical numbers and give off massive theater kid energy.) The adults in the film are also having fun; Viola Davis is just eating up the sumptuous scenery, and Jason Schwartzman is doing his best impression of Stanley Tucci.Â
Despite some flaws throughout, it's a well-crafted, compelling movie about ambition and self-deception. Perhaps the issues could have been fixed had it been a bit longer; even an extra ten minutes would do, to let the audience take a pause and smell the roses. There's some really good shot compositions, and the neo-brutalist production design is a highlight. And the fashy Thom Browne suit-skirts on the Capitol students... yes!!!!!
This will be the last edition for a while that’s primarily about movies that haven’t yet been released (until next year’s fall season). I’ll keep writing about the things I’ve been watching as well as what’s on my radar, but it won’t be in such a timely manner. Happy holidays, and see you at the movies!