Category: ★★

The Batman (2022, Matt Reeves)

The first rule of the The Batman is the most interesting thing about Batman is Batman, so new Batman Robert Pattinson spends his time in the costume, with only a handful of scenes moping around as Bruce Wayne. The second rule of The Batman is “show, don’t tell,” which is strange since the third is “tell, don’t show.” But it works out; because Pattinson’s spellbinding in the costume. Pattinson’s biggest scene opposite supervillain Paul Dano—who’s also great, though not in his costume, a DIY number made out of green garbage bags apparently—is just eyes.

Heck, Pattinson doesn’t even do the Batman lip work. Back in the Forever days, some interviewer asked Nicole Kidman about Michael Keaton (who she wasn’t in a Batman with) and Val Kilmer (who she was in a Batman with), and she said the important thing is the lips.

Pattison and Reeves don’t worry about the lips. Pattinson does more with his jaw than the lips. Whatever else, The Batman’s an exemplar of person-in-mask acting.

For the story and tone, director Reeves and co-screenwriter Peter Craig pick and choose from the decades of comics, movies, video games, and seemingly Darren Aronofsky’s old Batman: Year One proposal. The ground situation is where the show, don’t tell, comes in; Pattinson’s been masked vigilanting for a couple years, long enough to become best friends with police lieutenant James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright). Wright brings Pattinson, in costume, to official crime scenes where a bunch of dude cops make fun of Pattinson, and then Pattinson finds some clue they’d all missed.

The Batman’s got a boy problem. None of the cops are women, and they’re all at least jerks, though we’ll find out a vast majority of them are murderously corrupt (Reeves and Craig rush through that story arc). But Pattinson’s Batman is another “this is my father’s house” Batman. Not only doesn’t he care about Martha, but she’s also a de facto Eve, whose personal failings led Papa Wayne to dishonor. Despite being a subplot, the parents aren’t significant, especially not after fellow orphan Dano’s soapboxing about what it must be like to be a billionaire orphan.

The movie’s A-plot is Riddler Dano, a TikTok serial killer terrorizing Gotham’s elite. Batman’s been on the job a couple of years and hasn’t done anything about them eating Gotham’s wealth and spirit, so Dano will have to do it. Reeves and Craig make some excellent observations about Batman and his resulting rogues, leaning in on the idea of anonymous power. They don’t end up amounting to anything because The Batman needs a disaster movie finale, but the groundwork’s solid, and Dano’s monologuing is fantastic.

There’s lots of great acting in The Batman. Dano and Wright without masks, Pattinson with, and then the unrecognizable Colin Farrell in prosthetics, showing off the potential for actors acting as someone else. The rest of the acting’s at least good. John Turturro as a mob boss, Andy Serkis as an utterly pointless Alfred, and, of course, Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman.

Kravitz figures into the A-plot through Farrell and Turturro; Farrell owns a club where the mob and the corrupt politicians play, Kravitz works there. When Pattinson goes to interrogate Farrell, he sees Kravitz and follows her for investigatory purposes. Pretty soon, they’re fighting bad guys together and getting horizontal under the proverbial mistletoe. They gaze at each other with common sympathy and bridled lust, which always comes with composer Michael Giacchino’s gentle but passionate love theme. Even with their finale sequence’s oddly bland visuals and Kravitz disappearing too long so Pattinson and Dano can play, The Batman does an excellent job with the romance.

When Kravitz isn’t runaway strutting past gross white guys at Farrell’s club, she’s mooning at Pattinson for one reason or another. She doesn’t get much of a story to herself. She’s got a missing friend, but it soon becomes part of Pattinson’s investigation, and her relationship with the mob bosses also ends up being for the big arcs. It’s okay; no one else gets much to themselves either. Mask-off, Pattinson’s a teensy-weensy arc about being ungrateful to Serkis. It won’t matter because Serkis is either shoehorned in or edited out. Not like a three-hour Batman needed more.

But the film also doesn’t explain Pattinson and Wright’s relationship; for the most part, Wright’s a true blue copper, only he knows most of his fellow officers are on the take, so he can only trust Batman. Does it matter? Yes and no. Or, yes, but Reeves, Pattinson, and Wright make you forget about it.

The big mystery’s okay. Dano leaves riddles at each scene, which Pattison usually figures out immediately until suddenly, he doesn’t, so there can be the disaster movie finish. It’s about the performances, the interactions, the mood. Pattison, Reeves, composer Giacchino, cinematographer Greig Fraser, and production designer James Chinlund create a mesmerizing film. Reeves cracks how to do a grim and gritty Batman in broad daylight, in crowds, and so on. The filmmaking’s never remarkable, but it’s never not consistent, confident, compelling. However, William Hoy and Tyler Nelson’s editing is closer to exceptional than not. Chinlund’s Gotham City is modern, Gothic, and humid, a dream turned nightmare.

If only Reeves and Craig hadn’t strung together two movies’ worth of A-plot (cutting the character development for time) to get it done.

But The Batman—thanks to Reeves and Pattinson (with help from Kravitz, Wright, Dano, Farrell, and the crew)—is the most special and successful this franchise has felt in numerous decades.

Snoopy, Come Home (1972, Bill Melendez)

Snoopy, Come Home’s parts are better than their sum. The film’s a number of vignettes, usually set to music, sometimes with songs. Sometimes there’s connective material between the vignettes, sometimes the circus shows up, and it’s time for a new scene. Also, sometimes, the vignettes have a rough cut between them. Not too rough, there’s a fade-out and a fade-in, but there’s no attempt to transition between them. Usually when the action cuts between Snoopy and Charlie Brown. As the title indicates, Snoopy has left home, and Charlie Brown wants him to come home. So the action cuts between Snoopy and Woodstock on adventures and Charlie Brown whining.

I guess it would be hard to find the right transition music for whining.

Though Charlie Brown does get a song to himself late in the movie, which is effective, but also entirely changes what the movie’s about. Sort of. The third act has a couple surprise turns, narratively speaking, and the Charlie Brown song fits one of those turns but because the film’s pushing hard to make it work. It’s a stretch, though it comes right after (and refers to) an absolutely fantastic, out-of-nowhere scene. About halfway through Come Home, director Melendez starts doing these phenomenal sequences occasionally—a hallucinogenic astral dream, for example—and they’re outstanding. The second big sequence, that third act one, it’s completely different than the dream sequence, instead relying on the characters. Though, specifically, the visuals they can all create. Come Home’s always very visual, for better or worse.

The worse is how often Charlie Brown and Snoopy use their comic strip expressions, which the film uses more in the first half than the second. The expressions are deadpan, reminding the viewer it’s an adaptation of the comic strip, which kills the momentum a little. At least until the expressions change. It’s a strange device, especially since Come Home shows off a bunch of expressions on Snoopy from multiple, not-comic-strip angles too. Come Home’s got innumerable visual flexes; they just sometimes come with distracting music.

The film runs eighty minutes, with the first twenty building to the inciting incident. Snoopy’s fed up with “No Dogs Allowed” places getting in the way of his good time. Every time Snoopy comes across such a location, there’s an accompanying song sung by Thurl Ravenscroft. It’s not a great song; it does pay off in the end, but it’s not great.

The film’s best song is easily Linda Ercoli’s one, which accompanies Ercole’s character tormenting her new pets, Snoopy and Woodstock. They went to her for help, and she just couldn’t wait to hug them and squeeze them. The duo’s just passing through; Snoopy gets a letter from his former owner, a little girl named Lila (voiced by Johanna Baer); she’s sick and in the hospital and would love a visit. So, peeved at the no dog zones as well as Charlie Brown being a jerk lately, Snoopy goes to visit her, Woodstock in tow. The incident at Ercoli’s is just one of their adventures along the way.

Performance-wise, Come Home’s got a couple significant problems. Chad Webber’s rarely good as Charlie Brown, and Baer’s usually bad as Lila. They do the most talking—both pleading their cases with Snoopy. The resulting turmoil gets the film into the third act with a firm footing and enables Melendez to mix style and narrative better. Though it gets rocky because the third act goes on way too long. Also, it’s rushed. Never a good combination.

Oddly, the charming end credits help pull Snoopy, Come Home around at the last minute; they last-minute find some humor they lost in the first act.

Besides Webber and Baer, the voice acting’s good; Robin Kohn and Stephen Shea, as Lucy and Linus, respectively, are really good. Kohn gets more range, including some good laughs.

Lovely animation, good music (Ron Ralke); it’s technically solid. Snoopy, Come Home’s fine. It’s got the chops to be better but just makes some hampering choices along the way and leans into them way too hard.

But when Melendez hits, he hits hard.

Dancing Pirate (1936, Lloyd Corrigan)

Dancing Pirate has multiple awkward points: the omnipresent brownface, the astounding action conclusion (not astounding in a good way), or just the charmless lead performances. The film tells the tale of Bostonian Charles Collins, who—on his way to visit a relation—gets kidnapped and taken aboard a pirate ship. Hence the title.

Collins is a superb dancer and a mediocre but not incompetent singer. Unfortunately, he’s also one of the least charismatic people ever to get a close-up, certainly in a classic Hollywood production. There’s a reason he didn’t become a movie star, and it’s patently obvious from the first shot in the movie. Collins is teaching the waltz to 1820’s Boston society, complete with the lead putting their hand on the follow’s waist, which causes quite a comical stir.

That scene succeeds thanks to the general comedic timing and uncredited Ellen Lowe, a dance student infatuated with Collins (for his dancing, not his acting), rather than her old man husband.

Then Collins has a well-choreographed and well-directed tap number, which gets him some goodwill. It’s like Pirate is saying at least he can dance.

Pretty soon, he’s kidnapped and aboard the pirate ship, which sails down under South America and up to California, which is still a Spanish colony. They couldn’t take the Panama Canal because too early for it too.

When the pirates go ashore for water, Collins sees his opportunity to escape.

Intercut with the pirates’ arrival is the reaction of the nearby residents. They’re freaking out because they have nowhere to go, and they’re assuming a full invasion. The film immediately introduces Luis Alberni as the “voice” of the people. He’s great. He sort of disappears in the second half, but he’s excellent when he’s around. He’s also from Catalonia, the closest the main cast is getting to Spanish.

Alberni leads people to the mayor’s house, where they have to wake him up. Frank Morgan plays the mayor. Frank Morgan is not Mexican or Spanish but doesn’t wear brownface, so it’s hard to fault him. He’s fun. While he’s not great, primarily because of the script, he’s often a lot of fun.

One thing leads to another and the only pirate coming to invade turns out to be Collins, who thinks he’s just escaping. Luckily for him, the mayor’s beautiful daughter (Hungarian Steffi Duna) wants dancing lessons, even if they’re from a pirate.

There’s a lot of action, a couple big synchronized dance numbers, and a fair amount of comedy. Collins will eventually end up in a love triangle with Duna and Victor Varconi (also Hungarian and wearing brownface). Varconi’s a military official out of Monterey who shows up unexpectedly and messes up Collins’s hopes for escape. Though the townsfolk aren’t too sure about Collins, Varconi’s presence may keep him alive depending on the circumstances.

Besides Collins being a charisma vacuum, Duna has a similar effect. She’s got more presence than Collins, but mostly in comparison. It’s also not a very good part. Pirate’s got a slight screenplay and a short runtime (eighty-ish minutes). The film constantly leverages the comedy, either with Morgan or Alberni, to move things along. And it almost always succeeds thanks to them.

The film’s early Technicolor—with gorgeous photography from William V. Skall—but director Corrigan stages the big dance numbers at night, shot day-for-night, and so all the costume colors are muted. They’re missed opportunities.

Corrigan’s not great with the actors. They do better when they don’t need direction, like Morgan, Alberni, and, to some extent, Varconi.

Technically, there’s not much notable other than Skall’s color photography. Archie Marshek’s editing is bad, but in a way to suggest there aren’t better shots, especially not for the Collins close-ups. The music—uncredited Alfred Newman—is also disappointing. He uses Yankee Doodle Dandy as Collins’s theme, which makes the cultural appropriation, brownface, white savior smorgasbord of an action finale even trippier—but it’s also just not a good theme. It doesn’t time well for how Collins moves.

Still, Pirate’s more successful than not; Collins isn’t unlikeable in his badness, while Duna’s certainly sympathetic. Then the supporting cast is all fine. It’s incredible how far a picture can get on great color, good dancing, and solid jokes.

Seobok (2021, Lee Yong-ju)

The first act of Seobok is an espionage thriller (or the first act of one), the second act is a buddy action road picture, the third act is a Sturm und Drang superhero movie. Well, superhuman movie, at least.

The best part is the second act when spy-who-tried-to-get-out-but-they-pull-him-back-in Gong Yoo is teaching new charge Park Bo-gum the ropes of the world. Park is the world’s first cloned human, except the scientists couldn’t resist genetically engineering him a bit, so he’s also got a decent set of mutant powers. Telekinesis mostly, which looks exactly like Magneto’s powers in a fight scene.

Despite only being ten years old, Park looks twice the age. And we find out there are reasons he’s more verbose and intellectually capable than a tween. He’s awkward, constantly asking Gong questions with the Five Ws. Treacherous action scenes will fully pause so Park can ask Gong why he’s phrasing a statement a certain way. It’s not quite comic relief, but it does make for some amusing interchanges between the pair as they bond.

Gong only took the job—from former boss, Jo Woo-jin—for selfish reasons, which he’s happy to tell Park about, then surprised when Park gets upset about it. Even though all of Park’s mortality lessons have come from “mom” Jang Young-nam, the lead scientist on his project. Her chief sidekick is Park Byeong-eun, who’s kind of a wiener, but is also Gong’s point of contact in the lab. So when it comes time to show off Park Bo-gum’s superpowers, Jang gets him to demonstrate, while Park Byeong-eun tells Gong what they’re seeing.

Also involved with the cloning company is owner Kim Jae-gun, who doesn’t show up until halfway through the movie, despite having a bunch to do in the third act.

The spy stuff is okay—Jo Yeong-wook’s music covers for there not being a lot of story with it, just mood and intensity. Gong and Jo have some history, which we find out about during one of the flashbacks, and their relationship bristles just enough without the details. Especially with the music. Music’s awesome.

The flashbacks are not a particularly successful device. As something happens in the present action, the movie cuts to a pertinent flashback. Sometimes Gong is telling Park a story, sometimes Park is telling Gong, but writer and director Lee skips over giving the actors the chance to act out those moments, instead going full into flashback. There are no rules; there are other flashbacks just for viewer edification. The scenes themselves are usually compelling because Lee tries hard with them; even the worst flashbacks are well-directed sequences. But there are also some well-acted ones, particularly by Jang and Park, whose “mother and son” relationship only exists in those flashbacks.

Seobok opens with one American actor, Paul Battle, not getting any lines, just emoting and being assassinated well, which made it seem like the film would avoid bad American performances. The plot involves the South Korean National Intelligence Service working with the CIA, so more Americans seem inevitable, but it’s a long time until Andrea Paciotto shows up for a terrible monologue. Paciotto’s real bad. But predictable.

Lee Mo-gae’s photography is quite good; again, the scenes where Gong’s introducing Park to the world are the best, not just for actors, but the lighting as well. The world from Park’s perspective has a lot of personality.

Given all the narrative constraints and contrivances, Seobok starts forecasting likely resolutions before the halfway point. But the ending’s worse than it needs to be. Lee goes for visually impressive bombastic instead of anything character motivated, which was where the film got its momentum.

Despite having little to do in the third act, Gong’s a great lead. It’s a movie star-type role, and he excels. Park’s successfully essays the film’s most challenging part. Jang’s pretty good; her performance suffers because she’s barely in the movie. Sidekick Park Byeong-eun’s in it slightly more, and he’s good. Ditto Jo. Most of Seobok’s acting is solid.

There’s just not much acting to do in the third act when the VFX take over. The end’s inevitable by the third act and obliviously so, which turns it into a race against time. Is the film going to make it to the finish before its charm runs out?

It makes it. Barely. And leveraging a lot of that earlier momentum. Then the postscript’s okay, with good Jo music making it all more palatable.

Thanks to Gong and Park and their buddy action road movie, Seobok’s got a lot of good moments. They add up to a mostly entertaining, occasionally too wanting, genre mishmash.

The Nice Guys (2016, Shane Black)

I recently joked to a friend I wanted to claim “audacity” as a complementary phrase, but just for Stanley Kubrick. Something simple like, “Stanley Kubrick: Audacity can be a compliment.” But then she called me on it being gross.

The Nice Guys is basically, “Shane Black: Humility is for [slur we’re allowed to use because the movie’s set in 1978].” It’s never terrible, though Black’s got his usual “no, but, maybe you’re misogynistic for saying this scene or characterization is misogynist,” which gets exasperating. Especially since it’s in the Boogie Nights riff part of the movie. Nice Guys is a pseudo-noir and mostly a series of lifts from other movies, including ones Black wrote for other directors.

The film’s heroes, The Nice Guys, are soulful bruiser Russell Crowe, who hates his comically evil ex-wife and protects young women from predators, and sad drunk private investigator Ryan Gosling. Except the de facto protagonist of the movie is Angourie Rice, playing Gosling’s daughter. Since she’s a thirteen-year-old in 1978 L.A., tagging along on her dad’s job to porn parties, hunted by vicious hitmen, she’s always in danger, and the audience knows it. Gosling and Crowe forget about it at the drop of a hat, but the film’s always about reminding terrible things could happen to Rice anytime. So when she’s not around, it just means she might be in danger, which focuses the film on her.

Of all the things Black didn’t think to rip off… it’d be a fine “Veronica Mars” riff.

Gosling is bilking client Lois Smith (the film’s most successful cameo but only because the others mostly stink); she’s convinced her pornstar granddaughter is alive, even though the movie showed her dying in the first scene. You know, kind of like Lethal Weapon 1.

He’s actually doing some investigating—which the movie never shows and instead uses as gotchas from Gosling to other characters—and is pretty sure Smith really saw Margaret Qualley. Qualley knows Gosling is after her, so she hires Crowe to beat him up.

Then the actual bad guys looking for Qualley—an okay but wasted Keith David and an annoying Beau Knapp—go after Crowe, so he has to team up with Gosling (and Rice).

There are various chase scenes, drunk comedy scenes, objectified young women (it’s the seventies so it’s okay), fight scenes, kidnappings, and so on. At one point, Knapp warns the real villain of the movie isn’t even in town yet, letting Crowe know he’s got a big fight in the third act.

At some point, Nice Guys becomes just a period-action comedy instead of something else with those themes. No one gets an actual character arc, just the potential for a sequel.

Both Crowe and Gosling seem like they’re playing sidekick to the star. Of the two… Crowe’s better most of the time. Rice is fine. Her performance is more successful thanks to script and blocking, but she’s charming enough.

As the film progresses, there’s more supporting cast introduced. Kim Basinger, Matt Bomer, Yaya DaCosta. Basinger’s terrible and derails the movie. Boomer’s terrible, but because of the script and the directing, he’s just aboard while it derails. DaCosta’s got a thin part, but she’s good.

Technically, Nice Guys is solid. Black’s direction is fine—he doesn’t have a single well-directed action sequence, though, which is a problem—Philippe Rousselot’s photography is good, John Ottman and David Buckley’s music always seems like it’s just about to get good and never does. The visual stars are obviously production designer Richard Bridgland and costume designer Kym Barrett’s recreation of seventies L.A. In some ways, it’s more impressive how much they’re able to recreate, not their actual designs.

Nice Guys is fine. It’s got a whole bunch of problems, and all of them are Black’s, but it’s fine. It’s better than the Shane Black movies it rips off but not better than the other movies it rips off.

Krisha (2015, Trey Edward Shults)

Krisha is an eighty-minute film with a present action of maybe twelve hours. It’s about a family’s black sheep (Krisha Fairchild) coming to Thanksgiving after some time away. There’s no big exposition dump—it isn’t until the third act the film confirms the basic information the characters have all been dealing with—and for the first half or so, Krisha gets away with it. Right until the third act, when director, writer, and editor Shults brings on the drama, Krisha seems like it may end up somewhere special.

Or at least somewhere ambitious and not predictable.

After the third act, it’s clear the rest of the film was never going to add up, which brings it down in hindsight. It was all busy work to keep the audience distracted.

Of course, since the streaming service we watched Krisha on felt the need to put a “confirm” button under a warning about particularly adult content, I was watching the film with an impending sense of dread. Some of it is because Shults employs distorted angles, a noisy non-diegetic soundtrack, and a fragmented narrative. But also because it all seems like it’s building to something extraordinary. It’s not just going to be a Thanksgiving drama about this obnoxious privileged white family; for much of the runtime, when nothing’s going on except turkey preparation, you can just hear them talking about doing their own research on vaccines or maybe complaining about critical race theory.

When we finally find out what the movie’s all about, almost an hour in, it’s doesn’t derail the film. Shults could take it someplace. Only it’s not a character study of Krisha Fairchild; it’s about how shitty she is to her family, apparently. We get a sense of the hostility from Bill Wise, who tries bonding with Fairchild over how much he hates her sister (his wife) but still stays with her, and when Fairchild’s not receptive, he lashes out with some white male truth bombs.

The third act mainly falls apart because Robyn Fairchild—presumably Krisha’s real-life sister—isn’t good. And because Shults starts playing with the aspect ratio too much, he goes from 4:3 to 2.35:1 to 4:3 for sure, and maybe there’s some 16:9 in there. It’s distracting in the third act, particularly because Drew Daniels does a terrible job lighting it.

For a literal family affair, with the occasional professional actor (Wise and Chris Doubek, both of whom aren’t as good as the non-professionals), Krisha’s impressive. Shults’s editing is outstanding. Fairchild’s performance is pretty good until she becomes the film’s villain. Turns out we weren’t supposed to empathize with her coming into this passively hostile environment filled with bland white people—who make her do the entire Thanksgiving dinner herself while the men all do macho shit—but instead empathize with the family giving her another chance.

I mean, Krisha’s a movie where a wife (Olivia Grace Applegate) complains to a husband (Alex Dobrenko) about how she’d prefer to be enthusiastic about their sex life, and he’s the good guy for telling her to shut up and put out. The whole movie can basically be summed up as the “white, cishets aren’t okay.” Also, upper-middle-class people are energy vampires, which doesn’t seem to be Shults’s intent.

Though you also see someone prod grandma Billie Fairchild into performing from off-camera. She was suffering from Alzheimer’s in real life and apparently not entirely aware she was in a movie. It tracks with the film’s interesting cognitive dissonance about personal accountability, responsibility, and consent.

But, you know, for an indie white guy movie, it’s okay. Like sixty percent impressive low budget, fifteen percent too bland, fifteen percent bad. Fairchild’s performance would be outstanding if she weren’t a caricature, but Shults uses caricature to get away with the non-professional cast. But, sure, technically, it’s successful. Shults’s direction’s okay, and that cutting’s phenomenal. If only his writing weren’t manipulative and deceptive.

Though, who knows, since the entire thing ends up hinging on Robyn Fairchild’s performance, if she were better, things might work out.

7 Women (1966, John Ford)

First, it’s actually 8 Women; Jane Chang doesn’t count because she’s not white. Though I suppose it could just be counting good Christian women, then Anne Bancroft doesn’t count. Women is a Western, just one set nearer to modernity and not in the American West. Instead, it’s about a mission in China on the border with Mongolia. By 1966, apparently Hollywood had decided it was no longer okay to do yellowface of Chinese people, but you could still go whole hog on Mongolians. Including eye makeup. It’s a lot. It takes a while for the Mongolian raiders to show up, and the film definitely saves its big swings for them.

Bancroft is the new doctor at the mission. She had to take the job because she wanted to get out of the States, where being a female doctor in the thirties meant a mostly unhappy life helping out in the slums. The mission’s boss is Margaret Leighton, who’s definitely the most tragic figure of the film. Women has many hurdles with Leighton’s character; she’s a repressed, self-loathing lesbian, which the film sensationalizes for a moment then sort of drops. The film also swings hard against Leighton’s religiosity, especially after a harder working missionary from elsewhere in the province stops in. Flora Robson plays that other missionary; she’s actually British, while Leighton’s character (Leighton herself being British) is a stuck-up American from the Northeast. Nevertheless, Leighton’s definitely the most interesting character in the film, even if the last third has her descending into religious blather as Bancroft has to maneuver a way to save everyone’s life.

Well, everyone who’s left. Women’s a Western with the Mongolians standing in for the Native Americans, but the Mongolians have automatic weapons and can kill lots of people at once. It’ll eventually be a combination siege and hostage picture, with Leighton, Robson, Sue Lyon, Mildred Dunnock, Betty Field, Anna Lee, and Chang hostages; Bancroft’s a hostage with privileges.

Bancroft gives an excellent performance. She lifts up every other performance in the film, which usually has religious constraints. The film calls bunk on Christian missionary philosophy, but it can’t actually call bunk on it, so it instead shows it playing out as bunk. Specifically American Christian missionary philosophy. Robson, Lee, and Chang, representing the British, come off a lot better. They’re at least aware of themselves. Leighton’s not happy unless everyone works themselves into severe depression thanks to cognitive dissonance, including protege and object of her affection Lyon. It breaks Leighton’s heart when Lyon takes to brass, worldly Bancroft; if it weren’t for Bancroft, no one but her would be getting Lyon’s attention. Dunnock is meek, Field is exceptionally annoying. Of course, Field’s also there with her husband, Eddie Albert. Albert always wanted to be a preacher, but the closest he could get was teaching badly at a mission school in China.

So there’s no one to impress Lyon except Leighton, who hates herself for wanting to do so, but at least it’s kind of sympathetic for a while. At least until she shows how much she’s willing to jeopardize others to maintain her control.

While Bancroft is top-billed, she’s more the catalyst than the protagonist. Especially in the last third, when Bancroft’s machinations off-camera with white guy in yellowface Mike Mazurki and Black guy in yellowface Woody Strode drive the plot. The film still can’t be too explicit about what’s going on–well, unless you’re a Bible freak like Leighton, who can’t stop spouting made-up scripture to damn everyone but her–so knowing looks and fade-outs do a lot of work.

The film’s got its technical high points—while director Ford goes for Western siege picture most of the time, he and composer Elmer Bernstein treat Bancroft’s arc like it’s more of a film noir. Okay photography from Joseph LaShelle. LaShelle should’ve gotten Ford to double-check the headroom, though. The framing’s always just a little off, with Ford sometimes struggling to fill the wide Panavision frame. There’s also some crappy “Oriental” music in Bernstein’s score. Not as much as there could be, but the rest of the music is good especially Bancroft’s themes.

Otho Lovering’s editing is fantastic.

7 Women (8) does pretty well with all its constraints, including Lyons, who’s likable but not very good, and is an outstanding showcase for Bancroft. It’s also classist, racist, misogynist, and homophobic.

But it does pass Bechdel with flying colors. And it’s got no time for hateful religious malarky.

This post is part of the Anne Bancroft: A 90th Birthday Celebration Blogathon hosted by Crystal of In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood.

Casino (1995, Martin Scorsese)

The best part of Casino isn’t my favorite part of Casino because the best part is James Woods bickering with Erika von Tagen. It’s mainly in the background, and it’s the only time anywhere in the film anyone shows any personality not expressly required for their scenes. Director (and co-screenwriter) Scorsese doesn’t believe in background action; if it’s not foreground, it doesn’t matter. The problem is von Tagen is a kid, and Sharon Stone’s her mom, and Woods is the pimp who groomed Stone from age fourteen. The movie doesn’t even seem to see its problem, which isn’t a surprise because Casino is holy shit levels of misogynist.

My favorite part of Casino is a scene where Robert De Niro bitches about Stone being all about money and fame when he’s walking through the dressing room for the showgirls who dance on his big-budget local talk show. He needs the talk show so he can bitch about how the state government is targeting him even though he’s just a successful businessman who happens to be helping the mob steal from their own casino. During that sequence, when Casino is dragging its way through its second act, it’s clear just how little self-awareness has gone into making the film.

It hurts De Niro the most, as he plays a caricature of Robert De Niro in a mob movie. He spends most of his time not being the super-genius bookmaker he’s supposed to be and getting more possessive and controlling of Stone, a successful Vegas hustler who De Niro gaslighted into marrying him. The omnipresent narration (by De Niro, Joe Pesci, and occasionally a surprise narrator for effect, but never Stone because women don’t think) sometimes teases a significant plot development involving the mob, the FBI, or the casinos. Still, until the rote mob clean-up sequence at the end, it’s always about De Niro and Stone. Specifically, De Niro being awful to her, Stone reacting poorly, and De Niro being more and more horrific. It’s a strangely crap part for Stone. She’s there to decorate and be decorative, and when she refuses to decorate, well, De Niro’s done with her.

The film runs three hours. The first act takes about an hour, almost all of it in summary, with the first twenty minutes or so jumping ahead, jumping back, filling in the details from different perspectives (well, De Niro’s and Pesci’s), and dumping a bunch of great exposition about how the mob ran Vegas. The second hour and a half is about Stone’s failings as a weak woman bringing down De Niro, which will eventually affect Pesci, then the casino, then the mob, then Vegas itself. Also, we’re not sure who’s narrating from Norma Desmond’s swimming pool because the movie opens with De Niro getting blown up in a car bomb. Once you’re narrating from beyond the grave, anything’s possible.

Though not De Niro’s character listening to The Rolling Stones all the time, and they’re practically every other song. Casino’s got a great soundtrack. Clearly, a lot of work went into it. Shame more didn’t go into the writing.

Given the speedy first hour and the absolutely fantastic procedural set-up, it seems like Thelma Schoonmaker’s cuts alone make the picture coherent. It looks excellent–Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson do a remarkable halo effect with the lighting, then some cool spotlighting later—but the “scenes” are so short, it’s hard for anyone to work up any acting momentum.

Except Pesci and Stone, who both do well until they just can’t beat the film working against them. De Niro’s never particularly good, always just fine. Not exactly miscast, but the part’s so thin it gets blown around the frame. If it weren’t for his spectacular wardrobe (having De Niro look glamorous in his silly clothes really works against the film) and Richardson’s lighting, you could forget De Niro’s even there.

The supporting cast has some good acting, but no one’s in it long enough to give full performances. Woods is excellent; Don Rickles and Alan King are perfect, but scenery. Rickles is in an extended cameo; King is just a cameo. The most significant supporting part is Frank Vincent as Pesci’s chief goon. He’s fine, but the narration explaining his behavior does a lot more than anything Vincent can do onscreen.

It’s clear from the start Casino’s got a low ceiling and will probably just be a masterfully directed mess, but it ends not even being energetic enough to be considered a mess. I suppose it’s vaguely interesting to see how the film presents De Niro as a hero, but even then, not really. The writing is too tepid, and there’s nothing to his performance past the pomp. It’s most disappointing for Stone and Pesci. Scorsese and Casino fail them. Besides them (and De Niro), everyone else in Casino gets to ride the prestige wave while it lasts.

Shame it’s in such a shallow pool.

Macbeth (1948, Orson Welles)

There are two classes of performance in Macbeth, those who can only handle a double r-rolling and those who go for a triple r-rolling. Director, star and screenwriter Welles gets to do the triple. As does Jeannette Nolan as Lady Macbeth. Everyone else is only doing the double r-roll for their Scottish accent. Like much of Macbeth, it’s a puzzling directorial decision from Welles. Though nothing’s more baffling than him taking the lead role. When Dan O’Herlihy gets his incredible monologue—I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Macbeth or read it because I think I’d remember the Holy Father (Alan Napier, in the film’s best performance) telling O’Herlihy his family’s “well” only to say “jk, Macbeth killed them all, why are you upset”—but when O’Herlihy gets that moment, it’s clear it’s the better part. At least in how Welles made Macbeth.

The film has a bunch of apparent constraints. Budget is the first and most obvious. The film’s primary location is a paper machete castle. Welles and cinematographer John L. Russell play with contrast throughout to compensate, and it often works. Macbeth’s often well-directed. It’s always cheap, but it’s often well-directed. One of the problems is when you visibly see Welles chafe against the budget. Instead of working through the specific constraint, he comes up with a universal fix (the lighting, dubbing the entire thing), and it might work for that one scene, but it sure doesn’t work everywhere. Welles hasn’t figured out how to be a low-budget filmmaker at this point.

Another significant constraint is the play itself. It’s not Welles’s fault Nolan goes from having a transfixing part in the first act to getting upstaged at every turn in the second and third. She’s one actor Welles trusts with the power of the triple r-roll (outside himself), and she gets looped by Peggy Webber and Lurene Tuttle. Webber, playing O’Herlihy’s doomed wife, has a meaty part, but Tuttle’s literally just describing Nolan’s behavior and ends up getting the better scene. Of course, by the third act, it’s clear Welles doesn’t have anything else up his sleeve, filmmaking-wise, but, unfortunately, Nolan is lashed tight to the film’s wanting ambitions.

Because the first act of Macbeth is ambitious as all hell. Another reason I don’t think I’ve read or seen Macbeth is not knowing how many common phrases come from the play, but also because it hopefully would’ve occurred to me Macbeth, at least in the first act (here and then the first two acts of the play itself), is film noir, actually. So much I thought it’s weird no one ever tried calling film noirs Macbeths. Obviously, by the finish, it doesn’t work; heck, it doesn’t work immediately after Macbeth starts losing it, but until then… it’s the best noir ever.

Welles plays Macbeth’s descent into madness as drunken guilt. Nolan’s concerned, but the guilt part doesn’t occur to her, so she just sees it as weakness. She’s not wrong, of course. Macbeth’s all about men with drinking problems and a variety of complexes at play. One big problem with Welles’s adaptation here is the lack of engagement in the descent. He and Nolan don’t deserve any sympathy, but Welles’s performance isn’t good enough to make it interesting without. Though—and I’ll admit I thought about the technology required to visualize it—if you imagine Welles is an original “Star Trek” Klingon dubbed in English… well, it kind of works. Especially since the cheap 1948 historical costume design, made for black and white, does look a lot like 1960s color TV costumes. Fred A. Ritter and Welles did the costumes. The guards look like Little Caesar. As in, pizza pizza. The capes and cloaks look like thin throw blankets or table clothes. The gowns are good, and Napier’s get-up is solid, but otherwise, not good. Sometimes silly.

Macbeth just can’t sustain itself. The other constraint—the Production Code—figures in a whole bunch, too; Welles’s take on the Weird Sisters is terrifying and effective, but it clearly could go so much further. And Welles knows it. Some of the shots are intentionally blurry to appease sensibilities, which sort of sums up the entire experience. If you broaden sensibilities enough to include the clear budget limitations.

The film does have its moments. Sadly none really for Welles after the first act; the trip out to see the Weird Sisters is lackluster, though the transition to it is solid and some of the direction is good, just unrealized. He’s boring as a guilt-ridden incompetent drunk. Nolan never gets to do anything anywhere near as good as in the first act, though her sleepwalking scene is still good. The first act stuff is too excellent to overcome. O’Herlihy’s fine. I kept wishing he’d be better. Great hair. Roddy McDowell’s disappointing, but it doesn’t seem to be his fault; Welles told him to lay into the rhyming.

I somehow managed to forget the rhyming stuff. Starting in the second act with McDowell trying to comfort O’Herlihy about his dead family (“bro, why you sad”), Welles all of a sudden decided the double r-roll class should try to emphasize rhymes when possible. They don’t do it until that point in the film but then do it for the rest. It’s like Welles figured the audience would have gotten used to the Scottish accents and would need something else to cringe through. Leveraging the rhyming really doesn’t work. Though would it be worth going all rhyming to get rid of the accents? The unanswerable questions.

There’s some excellent filmmaking in Macbeth, there’s some interesting filmmaking in Macbeth, but there’s mostly unsuccessful filmmaking in Macbeth. Welles does what he can with what he’s got; he later rationalized the project as an attempt to encourage other filmmakers to “tackle difficult subjects at greater speed” (it only took twenty-three days to shoot), but—and here’s the big problem—Welles just isn’t very good making a cheap, quick movie here. All of his impulses beg for big budget.

And when he doesn’t have it, he just gives up, and it’s a bummer.

This post is part of the No True Scotsman Blogathon hosted by Gill Of Realweegiemidget Reviews.

Black Widow (2021, Cate Shortland)

Black Widow gets a lot better after the first act. Mostly because the prologue—set in 1995 Ohio where tween-who-will-be-Scarlet-Johansson Ever Anderson lives with her All-American family (little sister Violet McGraw, mom Rachel Weisz, dad David Harbour)—is almost classy enough. With better music and a more patient, less blandly jingoistic look at Americana, it’d be potentially great; Widow’s got a handful of scenes where the actors’ performances break its commercial bounds and its potential all of a sudden seems boundless, but the prologue is about the only time the filmmaking’s there. Even with the weak score and anemic filmmaking—though, it takes place in Ohio so it is kind of appropriate it’s flavorless. And it answers the question of Johansson never having a Russian accent even though the character’s Russian.

Except then it turns out she’s not about to be bitten by a radioactive black widow and they’re actually Russian sleeper agents and they’ve got to get out of town. It ends up being a really effective sequence thanks to the acting, Anderson in particular, and the action set piece out of a James Bond movie.

Almost all of Widow’s action set pieces seem like they’re out of a James Bond movie. There’s even a scene where we find out Johansson—grown-up—loves James Bond movies. Loves Moonraker. So, like, laughably bad taste but the reference also sets the film’s targets appropriately. I’ve actually never seen Moonraker; I don’t know if Widow ends up homaging it with any of the sequences. The movie’s got a very Bond villain in Ray Winstone, but only on the surface. Winstone’s repugnant villain isn’t flashy at all. He’s just an evil son of a bitch. At the beginning of his villain monologue I wondered why—well, I wondered why they didn’t get a single Russian actor for the four new Russian parts–but I also wondered why he wasn’t flashy. No scenery chewing. Ray Winstone can eat a couch, but not here. Because he’s just a repugnant son of a bitch. Take out the Bond villain hideout and he’s the realest Marvel villain maybe ever.

After the too long opening credits (flashbacks to Anderson’s assassin training intercut with her happy Ohio life), it’s post Captain America 3 and William Hurt is hunting down Johansson. But since it’s the first act, she gets away for now and runs off to… well, somewhere. But then gets attacked by a costumed supervillain called “The Taskmaster” who can duplicate any fighting style he sees, which is comics accurate. Why they decided to make him look like an extreme sports version of early eighties Batman villain “The Sportsman” (not Sportsmaster, Sportsman)… well, I assume budget. Since most of the characters aren’t actually superheroes, but they all have costumes and then they have multiple ones because action figures, it’s often Johansson fighting a bad guy who looks like a mid-eighties Darth Vader rip-off.

Like almost out of the Dolph Lundgren Masters of the Universe movie. Throw in the uninspired (being complimentary there) fight choreography and cinematographer Gabriel Beristain shooting everything through a yellow pee filter, it seems like Widow’s going to be a slog.

But then Florence Pugh shows up—playing little sister grown-up—and it starts getting better. Pugh and Johansson aren’t great together from the start. Pugh’s great. Johansson’s outacted—though the script’s particularly not great for that portion of the film. Once Harbour and Weisz show up in the present action, however, everything starts to balance out nicely. Minus some joyless flashback reveals and more disappointing fight scenes.

Best performance is Pugh or Harbour, then Weisz. Johansson ends up doing pretty well, even though the movie—her single solo outing without any of the boy Avengers comes eleven years after she first appeared in the part and is, due to big developments in the boy movies, a flashback story. Though there’s room for more because the epilogue is nonsensical and entirely played for a fun Bond-esque moment.

Shortland’s direction is middling. She’s better with the actors than the action for sure, but even then it takes until Harbour shows up to get the energy right. She does all right with the tension, however, which is important since Johansson not really be in danger is part of the film’s conceit. After all, she’s fine for the movies you’ve presumably already seen. But it works even in the prologue. Shortland’s good at finding the humanity in the characters. And the actors run with that humanity admirably.

There were a couple surprising omissions—not including the big, intentional plot hole—and it seems like they could definitely gin up a sequel. And even it were as contrived as this outing, it’d be welcome one. Johansson and company (emphasis on the company) work really well together.