Judgment at Nuremberg (1961, Stanley Kramer)

Insofar as it has a protagonist,Judgment at Nuremberg is the story of recently electorally defeated Maine judge Spencer Tracy. Tracy is the chief justice on a military tribunal hearing cases in the Nuremberg trials, the Allied attempt to hold the Germans accountable for their actions during World War II. Tracy's coming in towards the end of trials; the American public has lost interest, more enthusiastic about hating the Communist Russians than their enemies… the defeated Nazis.

I mean, yikes.

The film's trial centers around four German judges, who all wore the literal Swastika while dispensing law during the Nazi period. Now they're being held accountable for their actions, which gives all the lawyers some pause. Judges aren't expected–Nuremberg's exposition from the legal minds contends–to administer justice; they're supposed to interpret and administer the laws on the books. So, since Nazi persecution was legal, the judges are exempt from accountability. Tracy's not sure about that take, but he's a Republican who voted for FDR, which fellow judge Ray Teal thinks is weak sauce. Third justice Kenneth MacKenna is going to sway with the wind, but Teal's sure these fellows were just doing their jobs.

After all, as the Germans' lawyer (Maximilian Schell) points out… The United States loved sterilizing people. Our greatest legal minds were all for it.

Schell's the breakout performance in Nuremberg. He's a little weasel who didn't learn anything from the war. However, none of the Germans learned much, other than Burt Lancaster. He's the Weimar leader who became a Nazi rubber-stamper. Much to Schell's chagrin, he refuses to participate in the trial proceedings. Schell figures if a guy like Lancaster could be a Nazi, it wasn't so bad for Schell to be one either.

Werner Klemperer, Torben Meyer, and Martin Brandt play the other judges. Klemperer is the goose-stepper, and the others are just regular Germans. They don't have much to do, but they're perfect at it.

Nuremberg is all about the performances.

The film has three phases, each punctuated by a performance from the witness stand. The first phase belongs to Montgomery Clift, who appears as a laborer who the Germans sterilized. The second is Judy Garland's. She plays a woman who, as an orphaned teenage girl, was friends with a sixty-ish Jewish man who knew her family. They executed the man and defamed her for denying a sexual relationship. Garland actually gets two scenes on the stand. Both are fantastic, but director Kramer takes the opportunity between them to change the narrative distance a bit. We're shifting for the finale, which will have the film's various philosophical showdowns.

See, it's not just the American people who'd rather forgive and forget the Germans and start hating the Russians; it's the U.S. Army, too. They've got a new war, and can't prosecutor Richard Widmark get with it? He's a soft touch, they all think, because he liberated Dachau and still has the sads about it. It's 1947, incidentally. Alan Baxter plays the General who calls Widmark a weak sister for still carrying about it.

It's a lot, especially because Nuremberg always talks about it. There are things they don't bring up, such as none of the Americans hanging out with the local Germans being Jewish or, seemingly, caring enough about their Jewish compatriots to be uncomfortable. They're all good white Christians, after all. But Tracy's really trying to figure out if they're monsters or not.

And Tracy's not just confining his fact-finding to the courtroom. He starts seeing Marlene Dietrich. She's a blue blood who's lost it all thanks to the war. She just wants everyone to forget about it and let the Germans back into society. It's not like she knew about the concentration camps–she was a regular Army general's wife, not the S.S.

Nuremberg has its more and less straightforward resolutions, but the one for Tracy and Dietrich is fecund with subtext.

The best performance in Nuremberg, no spoilers, is Lancaster. One reason being he's under scrutiny long before he does anything. The film examines him and the character's building underneath that silent observation. He's outstanding.

After Lancaster, Garland.

Nuremberg's got a position–in the last fourteen years, it's become clear the Allies didn't go hard enough on the Germans. Teal has a whole bit about the only way to judge anything is through historical lenses; at different times during the film, Tracy and Widmark will look almost dead into the camera and denounce that idea. Schell's whole defense of the judges revolves around reestablishing those good Nazi Germany legal principles. At least in terms of assailing the marginalized. Schell flexes the fascism, getting Teal hot while letting Tracy both sides enough to hang out with Dietrich.

So, seeing how the Germans victimized and abused their own becomes essential. And Garland is the face of it. It's a beautiful performance. Kramer and cinematographer Ernest Laszlo bust ass on about a dozen close-ups in Nuremberg, but they give the best to Garland. The film's too big–and constructed as a courtroom procedural–to allow for thorough establishing shots, much less arcs. Kramer utterly relies on his cast to deliver–Tracy, Widmark, Schell, Lancaster, Garland, Clift, Dietrich.

And no one's better from that angle than Garland. Lancaster embodies a righteous rage; it fuels his energy. Especially since he's so restrained; it's like this electric buildup. But not Garland. Garland's survived Nazi Germany and just gotten some semblance of stability for the first time since she was a tween, and then Widmark shows up and says risk it all.

And Schell uses her fears to amp up the cruelty, leading to a great courtroom scene.

Clift's scene is entirely different. It's a showcase, but it's self-contained. It's beautiful work, too. It's all beautiful work. Nuremberg doesn't miss.

Besides the gorgeous photography, Frederic Knudtson's editing is standout. Abby Mann's script (based on his script for TV) is excellent. The film never dawdles; Mann's good at the exposition, good at the courtroom back-and-forth. It's a smartly assembled narrative. Kramer and the cast do wonders with it.

Nuremberg is an exceptional, complex, terrifying, and tragic motion picture.

This post is part of the Third Judy Garland Blogathon hosted by Crystal of In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood and Kristen of Hoofers and Honeys.

Evil (2019) s03e05 – The Angel of Warning

The sad thing about this episode is Matthew Kregor’s direction is good. The episode starts with Mike Colter getting called to his first emergency crisis intervention; a building collapses, and he’s there to talk to the Catholics. He doesn’t remember his collar; everyone thinks he’s a cop; it’s fairly amusing despite the grim circumstances; it’s probably the best the episode gets.

A handful of survivors see an angel. Throughout the episode, Colter and Katja Herbers will have independent experiences with the same angel. Obviously, the show gives some reasonable doubt outs for the experiences—with Colter’s being the show’s running subplot, is all this religious mumbo jumbo real?

The show’s got four plot lines: the angel investigation, Colter defending nun Andrea Martin at her hearing, Christine Lahti’s professional stuff (albeit demonic), and Herbers’s kids being scared at the right-wing fear-mongering grandma Lahti publishes to the internet. But, of course, no one in the family knows about Lahti’s job because Lahti doesn’t want Herbers knowing she’s a cannibal.

None of the plot lines pay off. Most intentionally. The angel investigation is all a red herring to tie into Colter and Martin’s hearing. Martin’s always trying to convince Colter to believe his visions, but he has a very obvious eureka moment during the angel investigation about race and religious idolatry. All of it wraps nicely into the resolution for Martin’s hearing, which gives Kurt Fuller one of his two scenes; there are still big unanswered questions outstanding with him. The show’s been ignoring one of Herbers’s kids having a demon tail all season; ignoring Fuller’s possible religious conversion is small potatoes.

Lahti’s arc is the most amusing. She gets to be funny, awkward, enthusiastic, confident, scared, uncomfortable, confused. All sorts of things. The rest of the cast gets maybe two emotions; Aasif Mandvi gets one. He doesn’t get jack this episode.

The script—credited to Rockne S. O’Bannon (which I think should be a red flag) and Erica Larson—impressively ties some of the threads together and gives director Kregor a lot of setups for character development, but none of it goes anywhere. “Evil” is all about kicking the can down the road another few episodes; they haven’t even been back to the demonic adoption agency since saying they would be at the end of last season.

Episodes like this one, with its big but presently unimportant reveals, seem geared for fifteen-second clips in future recaps, not an actual story.

I’d been getting too bullish on “Evil.” This episode’s an adjustment.

The Equalizer (2021) s02e12 – Somewhere Over the Hudson

So, Rob Hanning gets the script credit this episode; his name stood out but not because of his “Equalizer” work. He used to write on “Frasier.” He did another “Equalizer” too, the relatively good episode with Chris Noth saving his son; an inglorious distinction, to be sure. But Hanning’s name stood out.

And his episode is a mix of Midnight Run and Oliver Twist. Just a straight mix of the two. Not the Liza Lapira subplot—she tells best friend Christina Brucato how husband Adam Goldberg’s actually alive, and Lapira’s been lying to Brucato for years about it. The subplot’s not good. Brucato’s profoundly unlikable.

But Oliver Twist J.J. Wynder is good. He’s a teen car thief who works for Alphonso Walker Jr. And then the Charles Gordon analog, Josh Cooke, is mostly good. Cooke’s got a weird, rushed romance subplot with Walker’s abused girlfriend, Louisa Krause. It’s a strange addition to the episode, which must’ve been stretching to make its runtime.

Cooke’s Queen Latifah’s client this episode. He’s a mob accountant who got a conscience—which makes him analogous to Wynder, eventually—only Wynder stole his car, and the ledger they need is in the car. The feds won’t have anything to do with him without the paperwork; if they just followed him around, they could get the mobsters for multiple murder attempts.

So Latifah’s got to keep Cooke alive while getting involved with Wynder, Walker, and Krause. There are double-crosses, missed connections, and a lot of botany talk. Cooke’s a green thumb.

It’s mostly amusing because Latifah and Cooke are fun together. He’s in way over his head in every situation, usually comically or awkwardly. Then Latifah decides to help out Wynder, leading to odd couple interactions for him and Cooke.

Despite there being quite a bit of danger, given Walker, given the mobsters, it’s kind of a light episode. At least for Latifah. Lapira’s subplot is pointlessly intense. Even if Brucato didn’t know Goldberg was a CIA hacker or whatever, she must’ve known Lapira was a Special Forces sniper and would have some correspondingly intense adventures. Or not. The only thing we find out about Brucato and Lapira’s friendship is they’ve known each other forever, and they like doing shots.

The good subplot is Laya DeLeon Hayes and Lorraine Toussaint playing spades against Toussaint’s rivals. Toussaint’s regular partner calls out, and Hayes has to sit in, leading to an amusing subplot. Toussaint and Hayes’s performances are delightful, even though the subplot doesn’t get any real resolution.

The end’s a little tepid too. While the show never gives up on Latifah’s relationship with Wynter, Cooke suddenly becomes the hero in a romantic comedy thriller, not the guest star on an “Equalizer.” It’s also unclear how much a better performance in Krause’s part would help; in addition to Krause’s performance being lackluster, she and Cooke don’t have any chemistry. It doesn’t help she’s in an abusive relationship and he’s doing a nerdy white knight whing. But also… Krause isn’t good.

The episode starts better than it finishes and never fulfills most of its promise. Wynter would make a good regular or recurring sidekick for Latifah. Especially if he doesn’t bring annoying guest stars like Brucato along.

Wayward Pines (2015) s02e03 – Once Upon a Time in Wayward Pines

“Wayward Pines: Season Two” really is committed to the bit. There’s a scene where schoolmarm, monster researcher, and psychotherapist Hope Davis tells a group of girls there’s nothing wrong with them not having their periods yet. They just don’t get to participate in the Davis-supervised orgies with the other thirteen-year-olds yet. Not in those words, but it’s the scene. They’re just running headfirst into the Davis breeding humans with these earthen vessels. It’s incredibly creepy; Davis is great at it.

That subplot may or may not be making Emma Tremblay into a regular supporting player. It’s too soon to tell because Davis has bigger fish to fry this episode, specifically very special guest star Melissa Leo.

They apparently can only afford a single season one regulars in an episode at a time, minus—I guess—Terrence Howard and Carla Gugino in the season premiere. Though it turns out Leo was with Howard on that people-hunting expedition, they just didn’t show her because, you know, budget.

She’s back this episode to fill in what’s happened to her since last season, but not really. Instead, she’s back to retcon Tom Stevens into being Toby Jones’s town savior. From birth. Stevens showed up in the last two episodes of season one, presumably when they decided Charlie Tahan wasn’t going to be a regular in season two despite the show literally being set up for him to be the new protagonist. But he’s been around since the beginning, raised to think Leo and her brother, Jones, are his biological parents.

In the flashbacks, Leo wants to brainwash the young versions of Stevens, which runs afoul with Djimon Hounsou (who’s also retconned in like Jones’s character would ever listen to a Black guy), who thinks the awful truth is a better option. It also puts Leo and Davis on a collision course because Davis’s whole character is manipulating young boys into doing her bidding. The Leo and Davis thing, which the episode introduces since they never had a scene together in season one, plays out before the episode’s over.

In the present, Leo convinces Stevens she’s ready to be a team player again and help him with his conquest of the surrounding area. Both Stevens’s ladies, Davis and Kacey Rohl, are unhappy with Leo’s return, and more unhappy Stevens is welcoming her.

Jason Patric’s arc involves meeting Leo—who treats him cruelly, just like she did Matt Dillon, and makes her hard to like—and arguing with wife Nimrat Kaur. Patric suspects Kaur of something, which the show never confirms, and he works through it. It’s a really good performance from Patric, making up for Leo’s lackluster return. Neither the flashbacks—with bad wigs and bad writing—nor the present action material is any good. The show can’t successfully shoehorn a relationship between her and Stevens, though Stevens gives it his best.

There’s some funny cringe material for Siobhan Fallon Hogan (whose current problems apparently stem from generally living in the post-post-apocalypse, not reacting to Stevens and his teenage stormtroopers randomly murdering people).

Having Leo back, having her give a bad performance, having that lousy performance be in a tepid retcon does clarify “Wayward Pines: Season Two”’s newfound strengths. Patric’s good and is great in a lead TV part. Stevens is a good shitbird villain. The exploitative genre-y stuff is more amusing than “M. Night Shyamalan TV.” But the show’s still got a litany of problems.

Superman & Lois (2021) s01e02 – Heritage

I’ll just admit I’m sort of rooting for “Superman & Lois.” Nothing outrageous like making my wife sit through it, but I’d like it to go well enough I can keep watching it. I’ve liked Elizabeth Tulloch’s Lois Lane, I’ve been OK with Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman. Now, they’re the only things with any continuity to the “Supergirl” show at this point, as I realized Adam Rayner’s villain is an Adrian Pasdar recast. Now, Pasdar quit “Supergirl” after its move from CBS to CW (and L.A. to Vancouver), and getting him back would’ve been a boon.

There’s no boon. Though “S&L” doesn’t really have any casting boons. It sets up another couple of “surprise” casts—but it’s just misunderstood super-villain Wolé Parks; the back of his character’s head appeared last episode, not Parks. Because even though it’s 2021, the promise of a Black Lex Luthor has a wow factor. At least “S&L” did it in the spring; “Loki” did it in the summer. And then the other surprise casting possibility is a fake-out.

Oh, wait. Angus Macfadyen as the Jor-El hologram. Macfadyen’s kind of stunt cast; I’ve really liked him before. He’s terrible here, playing the role as a gruff military-type. Kind of like Dylan Walsh as Tulloch’s father and Hoechlin’s de facto boss. This episode doesn’t just drop a big Injustice nod; it’s also got some shades of Dark Knight fascist pawn Superman stuff. It kind of helps the show, actually, showing Walsh being able to manipulate Hoechlin. I’m not sure if it’s intentional or if Hoechlin’s just not that good? But it definitely leads to some sympathies towards the end.

Plus the return to Smallville stuff, particularly the brother drama between Superboy-in-training Alex Garfin and got-his-mommas-DNA Jordan Elsass, their first days of high school with potential love square Inde Navarrette, everyone having to go to a cookout at Erik Valdez and Emmanuelle Chriqui’s where a bunch of white people call it a barbecue, and then we find out Chriqui’s kind of a lush… it’s all right. Garfin and Elsass might be way too old for their parts, but they’re getting close to appearing sincere. Like the brother relationship stuff is solid.

And there’s more of the “Superman is a bad dad” stuff, with Hoechlin a lot more comfortable with Garfin and Elsass.

Sadly the muscle suit hasn’t improved enough. It’s improved a little, but now Hoechlin has an extra pair of biceps growing out of his shoulders. Only in the suit too. They haven’t just run with it, and Kryptonians have a weird extra set of muscles or whatever.

Lastly, since I started the episode noticing all the continuity breaks with “Supergirl”—she doesn’t seem to exist (no one mentions her when they should be), and Hoechlin no longer has a badass Fortress of Solitude. Instead, he’s got a sad man cave with a single hologram table and then Macfadyen yelling at him. It’s really shitty how “Supergirl” spent multiple seasons having to justify itself against a literally absent Superman (to become the stronger, more capable hero of the two) only for the “Superman” spin-off from it, ignoring all that work.

It’s not hopeless—my rooting aside; Hoechlin and Tulloch on the porch playing super-parents? It’s a good concept. The show just may have too many constraints to realize it well.

Superman & Lois (2021) s01e01

There’s a lot going on with “Superman & Lois” before we even get to Tyler Hoechlin wearing the worst Arrowverse muscle suit in memory. There’s also Hoechlin wearing spandex dress shirts to look more ripped. There’s also the zero Arrowverse crossover aspect—Melissa Benoist really should’ve shown for her aunt’s funeral, and Hoechlin’s recap of his life-to-date has a Lex Luthor-sized hole in it—but it’s also post-Crisis crossover and apparently Hoechlin’s forgotten he remembers life before he had two teenage sons and instead just an infant one.

Also, it’s unclear if Jenna Dewan’s Lucy Lane (from “Supergirl”) exists anymore. Also in Crisis the Sam Lane character changed entirely, no longer character actor asshole Glenn Morshower (on “Supergirl”), now more affable Dylan Walsh. Walsh is still a hard-ass and a bit of an asshole, but he loves both his grandsons, not just the jock.

“Superman & Lois” is two parts teen drama—Jordan Elsass and Alex Garfin play the super-twins, no discussion yet on how mom Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch) got through labor without one of them kicking a hole in her—one part parent drama (“S&L” is running with the Superman Returns Superman as bad dad plot, though downgrading Hoechlin to a distracted, absentee dad), and one part superhero action. Muscle-suited Hoechlin circles the globe fighting a bad guy in a super-space suit who knows his Kryptonian name (which is usually public knowledge but, hey, post-Crisis continuity, right); the bad guy likes causing disasters at nuclear plants, so the first action sequence is basically a CGI Superman III iced lake riff. It’s all right. The muscle suit is annoying, but it’s far from terrible live-action Superman.

I was going to make a Dean Cain joke here but let’s just talk about the Trump politics.

The premise of the show is simple. Ma Kent (Michele Scarabelli, in a somewhat forced but not bad performance) has died, and the show will be the big city Kents coming back to the farm. Even though Elsass has just made quarterback as a freshman in high school, and he’s got a girlfriend, he’s the actually good sports bro, so he doesn’t care. He also doesn’t care he didn’t get the superpowers. Instead, Garfin, who’s got depression and anxiety, gets the more powerful than a locomotive gig. Hoechlin, Garfin, and Elsass will do old-time farming while Tulloch, I don’t know… works remotely. The Daily Planet lays Hoechlin off in the first act (the pilot runs an extra-long sixty-four minutes, and they have no idea how to pace it past forty-two), so he’s ready for something else.

Back in Smallville, the only people they really know are Hoechlin’s high school girlfriend, Lana Lang (Emmanuelle Chriqui), and her dog-whistle-blowing husband, Erik Valdez. Maybe they’ll do a subplot about Valdez falling for “Supergirl” white supremacist Sam Witwer’s movement. Probably not. Post-Crisis plus Arrowverse is post-institutionalized racism. Even though Valdez sounds like he’s about to start spouting MAGA (or Q or anti-mask), he’s just a sad regular working-class guy who’s upset all the intelligent kids moved away for college degrees and never came back to Kansas to improve his life for him. He’s a firefighter, after all, and Smallville’s full of meth cookers who burn down their houses and kids.

The pilot’s a mix of comics references (the 1930s-inspired suit looks terrible, but the Superman for All Seasons nod is cute), Man of Steel imagery and editing, and earnestness. Is the earnestness going to make up for Hoechlin’s okay but definitely not ready for the lead Superman? We’ll see. The show’s biggest ask as far as willful suspension of disbelief is the family dynamics. Sure, Hoechlin’s supposed to be aging at a reduced rate, and Tulloch’s forty, but she’s not having two teenage sons forty. Especially not since she was already a world-famous reporter when she and Hoechlin met. So maybe she’s supposed to be playing older too? Elsass and Garfin are playing fourteen. They’re not fourteen. Is “S&L” going to be able to gin up good character relationships when Hoechlin looks like his kids’ older brother? We’ll see.

I just hope they fix the ridiculous muscle suit.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s01e02 – The Dark Baptism

I started this episode very happy Lee Toland Krieger was directing and then immediately regretted it because Krieger uses these camera filters—the iMovie version of wiping Vaseline on the lens—to center viewer attention. So while “Sabrina” has that questionable streaming 2.1:1 aspect ratio… the action takes place in a traditional 1.33:1 TV frame. Not even 16:9.

It gets really, really, really annoying this episode, which just turns out to be a testament to the rest of the show’s quality. Save Miranda Otto, who’s not good enough, not opposite Lucy Davis, Kiernan Shipka, or even Chance Perdomo. Davis gets an amazing scene this episode. She’s a star reserve player.

Continuing from last episode are the days of the week title cards, including a very nice homage to Halloween, and by the finish, it’s clear Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa wrote this episode and last as the pilot. I wonder how it plays without an artificial break, like a two-hour pilot or like a very open-ended two-hour feature. I’m thinking the former, just because of Aguirre-Sacasa’s attention to detail.

Sadly some of that detail is in a… I’m not even sure what the right phrase is—a gay panic blackmailing bit. Shipka’s done with the football players who are bullying friend Lachlan Watson and decides to teach them a lesson. So she enlists the mean girls from the witch school she’s going to be attending to help her. Her plan involves using witchcraft to get the guys to do gay stuff, then taking polaroids and blackmailing them. It doesn’t play well. Even if the scene ends up being effective because lead mean girl Tati Gabrielle is good and because Shipka’s able to act through even when the script’s off, which is both a good and bad thing.

The episode resolves what Shipka’s going to do about her sweet sixteen, which is also when she signs her soul over to Lucifer and goes off to witch boarding school, leaving her human friends behind.

The beginning of the episode has some more bonding with secretly possessed teacher Michelle Gomez—who’s awesome—the end is mostly about the soul signing ceremony and fall out. Dark Pope Richard Coyle is a little more effective when not a peculiar stunt cameo but he’s still not enough; Shipka, even when she’s playing coy, dominates their scenes. Coyle’s bombastically clawing at scraps while Shipka’s nonchalantly walking all over him. It works for the character too. The show, two episodes in (one episode in?), is a great showcase for Shipka.

Though type-casting fears are probably justified.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s01e01 – October Country

The opening titles of “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” are, for the most part (if memory serves), Robert Hack art from the source comic book. Now, not only is the comic super-gory, it’s also a period(ish) piece; the show is set modern but none of the teenagers has a smartphone, so it’s a bit removed from reality. The episode opens in a movie theater, with Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) hanging out with her group of very modern friends. While boyfriend Harvey (Ross Lynch) is a non-jock white guy, Jaz Sinclair is the only Black girl in the town, and Lachlan Watson is non-binary. There’s a somewhat awkward thing about the bully-enabling principal—a fully dramatic Bronson Pinchot—isn’t an ally.

So some of the dialogue’s a little forced, but all the acting is good and, hey, at least there aren’t some mean girls causing problems too. Just some jocks, who bully and—oh, wait, physically assault—Watson, which Pinchot’s cool with because Watson doesn’t want to give up any names. Shipka tries to convince Bronson otherwise to no avail, which will eventually lead to her using witchcraft to even the playing field.

Shipka’s got the opening narration to set everything up: half-human, half-witch, raised by aunts Lucy Davis and Miranda Otto, T-minus five days until Shipka’s got to sign her soul over to Satan and go off to witch school in New England. Only Shipka’s not entirely sure she wants to leave her human friends, especially since her future witch classmates are mean to her for being half-human.

Further complicating matters is Michelle Gomez, one of Shipka’s teachers who just happens to have been possessed by a witch from Hell, whose job it is to make sure Shipka commits to her future as a minion of Lucifer only Gomez has to pretend to be the teacher. Of course, Gomez is playing a character from the comic and the show seems like a sequel to said comic, which show creator and episode writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa never finished because he started making TV shows. So I’ve got baggage and expectation with Gomez.

But it all works out, partially due to the great pacing.

Though Richard Coyle seems to be going way too hard on a Ewan McGregor impression; Coyle’s the cliffhanger arrival guest star… the Dark Pope, arrived to tempt Shipka to the cause. For the amount of build-up he gets, it’d be better if it were Ewan McGregor… It needs a final oomph.

Or would if Shipka’s acting weren’t on point enough to cover, which it is, which she does.

The show works because it’s well-written, Shipka’s a great lead, and the soundtrack is awesome.

A Quiet Place (2018, John Krasinski)

It’d be nice if A Quiet Place were exasperating. If, after seventy or eighty minutes of building tension, the finale somehow disappointed. It doesn’t. It’s not exactly predictable, but by the time it arrives, it’s been obvious for a while the movie’s not really going anywhere. The film’s split into three days. The first day is the prologue, about four months into some kind of invasion of Earth by giant monsters. Not like Godzilla giant monsters, but like fifteen foot tall giant monsters. Who apparently eat people? Doesn’t matter. They can’t see. They hunt by hearing. They kind of look like giant walking bats but without wings and Alien heads. The prologue introduces the film’s big device–no talking, no noise. The cast moves through the world, desperately trying not to make any noise. They’ve got to get some medicine for a sick child.

There’s dad John Krasinski, mom Emily Blunt, daughter Millicent Simmonds (who’s deaf), older son (Noah Jupe)–he’s the sick one, and younger son Cade Woodward. The prologue serves to showcase how important it is the be quiet and to give the characters some angst for later.

Fast forward sixteen months and the family is living in a farmhouse. There’s a new baby on the way, because even though Krasinski is dutifully trying to communicate via shortwave and he’s got the farm wired with closed circuit monitors and he’s working on a hearing device for Simmonds (teaching himself engineering), it apparently never occurred to him to rubberband his gonads. No worries though, because while Krasinski is working on his electronics stuff, Blunt’s making a covered baby crib complete with an oxygen tank for when the little tyke arrives, which is weeks off.

After that catchup with the family, the film cuts to another day. The cuts to days all have title cards giving the day. Except it’s just the next day. Most of the movie takes place on this third day, the day after the second day, when it becomes clear most of the time since the prologue hasn’t been making sure they’re prepared. Not for the baby, not for the monsters. As the film progresses, it just becomes more and more obvious–even though Krasinski is supposedly super-prepared, he’s really not. Sure, Woodward’s like three or something, but Jupe and Simmonds are tweens. And Krasinski has never come up with a plan for if they’re separated on the property?

The film gets away with not having much exposition–the family talks, with rare exception, entirely in American Sign Language (presumably they know it because of Simmonds) and rarely does it give the actors much emoting to do while signing. Outside Simmonds. It’s unfortunate because when Krasinski and Blunt have their first talk, it’s some really trite parenting responsibility nonsense. A Quiet Place has all the depth of a Disney TV movie as far as adult characterization, but without any of the charm. Oddly, the kids are fantastic. Simmonds has to do a bunch on her own, she’s great. Jupe’s the oldest male so he’s got to learn how to be a man in this new world and he’s terrified. He’s great. Simmonds and Jupe together (when they’re in trouble because Krasinski never came up with a plan for them getting across their farm to their house) are truly amazing. And a lot of it is how Krasinski, as director, works with the actors.

It’s kind of inexplicable why he doesn’t apply the same rigor to he and Blunt’s performances.

The script wants to get away with not having any exposition, which is fine. It kind of makes things more horrifying, but not really. The quiet device is about all A Quiet Place has got going for it; the monsters are nowhere near as terrifying as when the family gets into trouble because, usually, they’re exceptionally careless and unprepared for any common life occurrences. Contrivances are forecast–Krasinski’s not a subtle director, which is fine, he’s not trying to be subtle (Quiet Place is most effective in how it works as visual exposition, since no one’s talking the audience has to be able to understand what they’re seeing)–but also cheap. Lots of cheap contrivance. A Quiet Place is a comedy of errors; or a tragedy of them.

Good photography from Charlotte Bruus Christensen. Not bad but not special editing from Christopher Tellefsen. Marco Beltrami’s score is spare and only used–albeit effectively–for the film’s cheapest emotional moments.

Acting wise… Simmonds and Jupe impress. No one else does. Krasinski’s good with the kids. Blunt’s not bad with them but she’s not good with them either. Because of the short present action, she barely gets anything to do with Simmonds and her one big scene with Jupe is overcooked. Not even trying to establish the adults until an hour into the movie hurts; for some reason Krasinski thinks he can get away with them sharing headphones and slow dancing but… no. Especially not since their sole motivation is protecting their kids.

A Quiet Place is strongest in the first act. It declines from there. The film’s at its weakest point as it goes into the third act (at least its weakest point so far). It’s completely lost momentum, splitting between Blunt home alone and the rest of the family off in the world. And then it just keeps slipping.

By the end, A Quiet Place isn’t disappointing, just annoying. The quiet thing works in a horror movie. Who knew. Outside Simmonds and Jupe, there’s nothing to it.

Inherit the Wind (1960, Stanley Kramer)

A lot of Inherit the Wind is about ideas and not small ones, but big ones. Director Kramer is careful with how big he lets the film get with these ideas, because even though Inherit the Wind is about Darwin vs. the Bible as its biggest idea, the smaller ideas are the more significant ones. And when Kramer’s got Fredric March in a bombastic performance on the side of the Bible, Kramer’s careful to put him in front of those smaller, more important ideas.

The film’s impeccably acted, not just by March or Spencer Tracy as his pseudo-alter ego, but also Gene Kelly as a newspaperman and Florence Eldridge as March’s wife. Amid all these big ideas and small ideas and top-billed stars are Dick York (the small-town teacher teaching Darwin) and his fiancée Donna Anderson (who’s the preacher’s daughter).

Inherit the Wind has something of an anti-climatic finish, just because Kramer and the screenwriters want to let the viewer figure it out. Kramer sets up the film larger than life then, gently, reveals the film’s never larger than life, just the viewers’ expectation of it. There’s depth to the grandiosity and everyone should have been paying attention.

A great deal of the film is listening and watching people listen. Almost all of Harry Morgan’s time is spent listening (as the judge). It’s all important. Kramer’s trying to figure out how to make this too big story work. And he does. Mostly.

Great Ernest Laszlo photography.