Tag: Daniel Brühl

The Alienist (2018) s02e02 – Something Wicked

This episode we meet Luke Evans’s editor at the newspaper—I think he’s at the New York Times; doesn’t really matter; Demetri Goritsas plays the editor. Goritsas is terrible. And somewhat indicative of the show’s casting choices. It really doesn’t care if anyone’s good. Not if it can get the… scares, I guess. Thrills? Chills? Grosses? “Alienist” is grosser than it is scary or thrilling or chilling. Anyway. Bad script by Stuart Carolan again, barely competent direction from David Caffrey. And only if you don’t count the performances against Caffrey. If you did, well, “Alienist” would just be entirely risible.

There’s more of what one would call character development if Carolan’s script weren’t so bad and the performances weren’t—generally—so wanting. Evans’s girlfriend (or fiancée) Emily Barber is daughter—in actuality illegitimate daughter but the show doesn’t address it—of Matt Letscher’s William Randolph Hearst. Barber’s not good but the writing for her is atrocious. And everyone in the show keeps reminding Evans he’s really in love with Dakota Fanning, though he still plays his scenes with her brotherly enough. She’s abjectly disinterested in him—seriously, all the show’s got going for it at this point is Fanning’s performance is captivating. It’s not even necessarily successful, just captivating. The way she moves, how she reacts, Fanning puts in a lot of work.

As opposed to top-billed Daniel Brühl, who doesn’t put in any real work. He just does the thing where he’s knowingly obnoxious and socially awkward—actually, more like imposing—then doesn’t react at all when people seem put out. I wonder what the script pages look like for this show; are they giving Brühl direction or no. Like, first season he was a would-be movie star turned cable limited series star… this season he’s just a TV show actor. He gets zero prestige whereas Fanning—much more deservingly, obviously—gets it all.

Robert Wisdom gets shoehorned in for a pointless cameo, there are some red herring street toughs, Ted Levine’s silly in his leprechaun audition, and Michael McElhatton is terrible as the doctor. I don’t think there are any more babies in danger this episode—oh, wait am I saying, there’s a caged Spanish baby. Though “Alienist” isn’t making any statements. Statements would take more than Carolan’s got.

Captain America: Civil War (2016, Anthony Russo and Joe Russo)

I wasn’t aware it was possible, but go-to Marvel superhero movie composer Henry Jackman is actually getting worse as he does more of these movies. His score for Captain America: Civil War is laughable, which is too bad, because if the film hit the thematic beats Jackman failed to achieve? Well, it wouldn’t fix the script, but it would definitely make the film flow a bit better.

The film is two and a half hours of action scenes every ten minutes or so. Unless the action scene goes on for longer than ten minutes, in which case it screws up the rhythm of subsequent scenes. But directors Russo keep it on schedule. Their job is getting this train ride to its conclusion and they do it. Their action direction is a bunch of sped-up fight scenes and they’re usually pretty boring. The opening one, with its strong performances from the way too big cast, could’ve been amazing with better direction. And the big superhero showdown is awesome for the most part, only… it doesn’t make much narrative sense as far as keeping the players in motion.

But there’s a lot quite good about Civil War. They blow the chance to give Robert Downey Jr. an actual character to play here, but they get pretty close on occasion. His scenes opposite Tom Holland are fantastic and Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely’s script does give Downey the opportunity for character development. The film just rejects it.

The real standout is Sebastian Stan, who never quite gets enough to do because there’s always another action scene for the Russo Brothers to get through–they have a really lame chase sequence, more is usually just more–but Stan is hypnotic. He also has great chemistry with ostensible lead Chris Evans (and Evans’s replacement sidekick, Anthony Mackie). Less action, more character; would’ve helped Civil War a lot. Especially since that way too big cast is often pretty good together.

Elizabeth Olsen is good, she and Paul Bettany are great together. Bettany’s got a bit of a crap part. So does Jeremy Renner, but Renner does get better material. Markus and McFeely–or maybe it was the Russo Brothers–seem to acknowledge they need to hit emotional beats and then they skip them. Paul Rudd’s fun, though his character’s pretty thinly written. William Hurt is embarrassing himself. Emily VanCamp gets the worst part in the movie. Seemingly intentionally.

As for the newcomers to the brand? Well, Holland’s great. He’s playing the Marvel Studios (sorry, Walt Disney) version of Spider-Man. Can’t wait for his movie. Chadwick Boseman’s fine as the Black Panther. It really ought to be his movie, but there’s so much pretending it’s Evan’s. Instead, Boseman’s basically Boba Fett. Sort of literally. Villain Daniel Brühl gets a terrible part (though still better than VanCamp) and not much opportunity to act.

Rather weak cinematography from Trent Opaloch, but otherwise Civil War is a completely competent outing.

There’s a lot of potential to this film and the filmmakers didn’t go for any of it. Instead, they went for a bunch of mediocre action scenes, one heck of a superhero battle (proving having ten superheroes fight on the big screen is an accomplishment in itself) and a really weak ending.

Evans and Downey both look exhausted throughout the film. Evans doesn’t get the material he (and the film) deserves, while Downey rejects the material. But until the denouement, it’s perfectly fine stuff.

And Sebastian Stan is truly phenomenal.

Inglourious Basterds (2009, Quentin Tarantino)

Tarantino will probably never make a film as good as the good parts of Inglorious Basterds again. Possibly because the good parts of the film–even with the Sam Jackson narration–seem so unlike Tarantino, it’s impossible to imagine him making them. It’s like, all of a sudden, an adult magically appeared and took his place. Unfortunately, the real Tarantino returns for the last twenty or so minutes, when Basterds collapses.

But I’m going to try to talk about the good things. The Tarantino conversation scene is nearly twenty years old. It’s never been used as well as it is in Basterds. The film opens with one, an unbelievably affecting scene (with a lot, in the end, owed the Searchers). It’s like Tarantino finally learned his “chapters” work better as real time vignettes, instead of jumbles of location shooting and stunt casting.

Besides his excellent writing–since it’s mostly non-English, Tarantino doesn’t bother going for cool sounding dialogue–Basterds succeeds because of Mélanie Laurent and Christoph Waltz. The rest of the cast doesn’t really matter (they’re all great, except Eli Roth, who went to the Quentin Tarantino school of lousy acting). The great film inside Basterds is about Laurent. The silly one Tarantino delivers is, unfortunately, not.

He does some really stupid stuff at the end, the kind of nonsense one would do if he didn’t want to make a real movie, but a joke.

It’s a shame Tarantino keeps growing as a director, but never as a filmmaker.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino; director of photography, Robert Richardson; edited by Sally Menke; production designer, David Wasco; produced by Lawrence Bender; released by the Weinstein Company and Universal Pictures.

Starring Brad Pitt (Lt. Aldo Raine), Christoph Waltz (Col. Hans Landa), Eli Roth (Sgt. Donny Donowitz), Michael Fassbender (Lt. Archie Hicox), Diane Kruger (Bridget von Hammersmark), Daniel Brühl (Fredrick Zoller), Mélanie Laurent (Shosanna Dreyfus), Denis Menochet (Perrier LaPadite), Sylvester Groth (Joseph Goebbels), Mike Myers (Gen. Ed Fenech) and Rod Taylor (Winston Churchill).

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