InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 1

THE CRUSHING FUTILITY
OF HUMAN ACTION
BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI’S
THE CONFORMIST
[A new 4K
restoration of
Bernardo Bertolucci’s
The Conformist is playing
at Film Forum January 6-19.]
The '60s and '70s were a highly politically-charged time for Italian
cinema. The country's neorealism movement chronicled working class
lives in a post-WWII Italy — a newly post-fascist society still reeling from the
fallout of the deadliest, most devastating conflict in human history. But unlike
these grounded proletarian dramas, films like Ettore Scola's A Special Day, Lina
Wertmüller's Seven Beauties, and most infamously Pier Paolo Pasolini's hellish Salò,
or the 120 Days of Sodom confronted the nation's fascist past directly and in subversive,
often highly controversial ways. Bernardo Bertolucci's luscious political thriller The
Conformist, meanwhile, rendered the grim realities of fascism in ways none of his
contemporaries did: alluring, hazy, anxious, and rife with repressed sexuality.
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Adapted from Alberto Moravia's 1951 novel of the same name, the film is, in essence, a character study of an easily persuadable yet
deeply conflicted and profoundly disaffected also-ran named Marcello Clerici (played with remarkable complexity by Jean-Louis
Trintignant). After a childhood marred by neglect, dysfunction, and a traumatic episode of sexual abuse, Marcello yearns for a "normal"
life in an Italy that has fallen to fascism. His beliefs may not run deep, but his commitment does, and he goes through the motions of
assimilating into fascist society — impassive church confessions where he comes clean about all manner of sin, an unenthusiastic
marriage to a petit bourgeois putz, conscientious service for the fascist secret police — before being sent to Paris to assassinate his
exiled former professor, Luca Quadri (Enzo Tarascio). Since fleeing Italy, Quadri has partaken in anti-fascist activities, and the Italian
authorities believe they need to make an example of him. True to form, Marcello decides to take his wife along so he can get his
honeymoon over with as well, but once they arrive, he soon begins an affair with Quadri's young wife, Anna (Dominique Sanda), who,
upon learning of his motives, openly criticizes his allegiance to fascism, begging him not to hurt her and her husband.
Sitting in a car on his way to finally finish the job for which he was sent to France, Marcello ponders his life and the circumstances
that put him where he is. Bertolucci presents these memories with a subtle, dreamlike haziness that is emphasized by fluid camera
movements and a vibrant, high-contrast color scheme. Even though its visuals have earned particular praise, The Conformist
functions as a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk: image, sound, editing, script, and performance all combine into something transcendently
cinematic. Shot by legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, the film frames its characters against the cold, imposing architectural
Rationalism popular under Mussolini's rule — in particular, the marble-benched asylum which houses Marcello's
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father, Antonio (Giuseppe Addobbati), stands out for its
modernist harshness — and contrasts the latter with
middle-class drawing rooms and the bohemian cafés of Paris.
It's noteworthy that The Conformist still manages to shock with
its depictions of sexual pathology, given that, aside from Salò,
the era also saw the release of Tinto Brass's 1976
proto-Nazisploitation erotic drama Salon Kitty and Luchino
Visconti's sexually frank 1969 film, The Damned. Bertolucci would
further explore themes of sexuality with the controversial Last
Tango in Paris, but with The Conformist, he opted explicitly to link
sexual repression with the ideology of fascism. Far from the first
(or last) work to do so, the film's take nevertheless proves
uniquely tragic, as the story not only highlights the depths of its
main character's pathetic ennui, but also the crushing futility of
human action: in spite of his best efforts, Marcello's obsessive
conformism proves to be in vain when Mussolini resigns as head
of state and the rubble-filled streets are overrun by celebrating
anti-fascists. Worse, he learns that perhaps the most pivotal
moment of his life, his supposed murder of childhood abuser
Lino (Pierre Clémenti), didn't actually happen as he thought it did,
as he finds Lino, now balding and gray, sitting in a dark alley,
again attempting to seduce a young boy.
Marcello isn't the only one who lives his life in the shadow of
sexual abuse, though. On the train to Paris, his wife Giulia
(Stefania Sandrelli) relays a story of how she lost her virginity at
15 to a 60-year-old family friend — a man she used to call uncle.
Aroused, Marcello begins undressing her while asking whether or
not she liked the encounter. The score swells romantically as the
couple are consumed by the lust her memory has roused in them,
the warm, red sky outside paradoxically transforming into a
muted, cool blue. The film also hints at some element of
impropriety in the relationship between Marcello and his
morphine-addicted mother (Carla Mignone, better known by her
stage name Milly), although Bertolucci wouldn't explore the
subject of mother-son incest in depth until 1979's La Luna, a
drama that Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky described as
"monstrous, cheap, vulgar rubbish" in a diary entry.
“… functions as a kind of
Gesamtkunstwerk: image,
sound, editing, script, and
performance all combine into
something transcendently
cinematic.
In spite of its grave subject matter, The Conformist manages to
portray both the dark and light sides of passive conformity, such
as when a meeting between Marcello and a high-ranking member
of the secret police concludes with Marcello absentmindedly
pointing a gun at his superior before nonchalantly noticing that
he must have misplaced his fedora. Similarly, the form bounces
from uninterrupted camera glides to the skewed, claustrophobic
angles of film noir, and by the time the fascist henchmen emerge
like specters from the foggy woods to dispose of the
troublesome Quadris, the ensuing burst of violence — not to
mention the sheer terror in Anna's eyes as she realizes Marcello's
betrayal — as refracted in the titular conformist's detached gaze,
scans as nothing short of sociopathic. His conscience has been
extinguished by his desire to fit in, an utterly pointless
transformation as he will come to realize just a few years later
when the end of the Duce's reign is announced on the radio. And
when he finally sits down during the final moments, he fixes his
eyes on the audience; his guilt, regret, and confusion becoming
truly tangible for the first (and last) time. — FRED BARRETT
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KICKING THE CANON
Korine's unflinching artistic instincts were apparent when Larry
Clark adapted his screenplay for Kids in 1995. The New York City
tale of youthful depravity shocked and intrigued audiences with
its loose storytelling form and frank depictions of sex and drug
abuse, but with Gummo, the then-24-year-old former
skateboarder decided to do away with narrative entirely. In an
interview with fellow director Werner Herzog — both a fan of and
a major influence on the young filmmaker — Korine had this to
say about the state of film in the mid-to-late '90s: "When I look at
the history of film […] and then look at where films are now, I see
so little progression in the way they are made and presented, and
I'm bored with that [...] With Gummo I wanted to create a new
viewing experience with images coming from all directions." His
dissatisfaction with the medium's creative stagnation is felt in
the feverishness of the film's audiovisual assault, a formal
“
Gummo
approach where every frame is overloaded with information.
remains [Korine’s] purest artistic
statement, the epicenter of all of his creative
endeavors, the fount from which every
other work in his oeuvre springs.
Revisiting the film 25 years later, Gummo not only retains every
bit of its darkly enticing appeal, but it also makes clear Korine's
status as a genuine cultural force. Although he was, and
sometimes still is, dismissed as a cheap provocateur — Maslin
wasn't the only critic who was less than impressed with what he
had to offer — his profound influence on contemporary pop
aesthetics cannot be overstated. Another admirer of Korine's, Gus
Van Sant, praised the film's "sophisticated and refined cinematic
dialogue of modern cultural influences." This cinematic dialogue
has cast a long shadow — as the film's cat-killing main
characters Solomon (Jacob Reynolds) and Tummler (Nick Sutton)
ride their bikes down a hill, looking for prey, the scene is
accompanied by the thunderous stoner metal riff of Sleep's
"Dragonaut," and the bizarre underclass Americana that the short
vignette evokes has retained so much of its aesthetic
staying power that, more than two decades later, it's easy to
picture a similar scene playing out to the sinister trap sounds of
Migos or Kodak Black in an episode of Atlanta, or couched within
the upside-down-cross pranksterism of an early Odd Future
music video.
While Korine's acute awareness of the zeitgeist would eventually
lead him to godfather the Tampa-core genre with his oneiric
black comedy crime thriller Spring Breakers, Gummo remains his
purest artistic statement, the epicenter of all of his creative
endeavors, the fount from which every other work in his oeuvre
springs. The Dogme 95 drama Julien Donkey-Boy, the low-rent
scuzzfest Trash Humpers, and the melancholy outsider dramedy
Mister Lonely all boast DNA that can be traced back to Korine’s
first film. Even his absurdist novel, A Crack Up at the Race Riots —
an attempt at "the Great American Choose Your Own
Adventure Novel" — trades in the same bleak, fragmented,
quasi-comedy of Gummo. In his interview with Herzog, Korine
elaborates: "It goes back to [Charles and Ray] Eames and
[Isamu] Noguchi talking about a unified aesthetic. You can make
movies, write books, do a ballet, and sing opera, but it's all part of
the same vision."
There’s a crucial piece that the director's lesser imitators, critical
naysayers, and quite a few ignorant fans miss, however: in spite
of the depravity it depicts, in spite of the borderline exploitative
relationship it itself has with its subjects, there is a quiet
tenderness to Gummo that exists alongside the nihilistic
radicalism that permeates it. Korine isn't interested in shocking
the audience as much as he's trying to place them squarely in a
milieu that they (most likely) know nothing about. And yet, the
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KICKING THE CANON
famous scene of Solomon eating spaghetti and drinking milk in a bathtub filled with filthy, brown water resonates exactly because of
how familiar and mundane it feels — a young boy sitting in a dirty bathtub, messily eating his dinner, while his mother tries to get him
clean. It's decidedly odd — for some reason, a strip of fried bacon is taped to the bathroom wall — and it's slightly uncomfortable, but
seen through Korine's eyes, the scene also becomes strangely touching, a snapshot of normalcy amidst a world that has been thrown
into disarray. It confronts us with the fact that the people we tend to look down on are, in fact, human beings, too — maybe that's
where the crux of Korine's provocation truly lies. — FRED BARRETT
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FILM REVIEWS
ALCARRÀS
Carla Simón
From the first frame of Alcarràs, Carla Simón alerts the viewer to
the integrality of the summery Catalonian landscape of her film.
Within these windswept fields and misshapen buttes resides the
Solé family, modest peach farmers — partially based on the
director’s own family — and played by a rugged cast of
nonprofessionals. The vantage point of childhood often mingles
with realism in Simón’s work, with the still-present undercurrents
of the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War lending a subtle
historicity. Alcarràs hinges on the Solé family being evicted from
their peach farm, which was given to them as a reward from the
wealthy Pinyol clan, after offering their protection during the
war; these sorts of displays of gratitude, enacted through any
formal paperwork, are unfortunately archaic in the film’s present
day.
The conflict, however earth-shattering it may read, is also
somewhat ancillary, encouraging the viewer to map out the ebb
and flow of relationships of this extended family rather than
anticipate their final displacement. Modernity has its harbinger
in an unwelcome, monstrous tractor crane in the opening shots
— interrupting the play of the smaller children, whose reaction
shots from behind a car’s windshield seal the Lucrecia Martel
influence then and there — but work still has to continue,
regardless of encroaching industrialization and the threat of
deposition. The arbiters of change offer an alternative, and even
if it is lucrative, it doesn’t account for the loss of an
intergenerational home.
The eviction is sinuous; it doesn’t buffet the family as much as it
lies in wait. So in the meantime, Simón catalogs and files the
quotidian activities of a peach farm maintained by the various
generations of a single family. Daniel Cajítas’ camera often
begins at the center of a permutation of the ensemble, before
casually attaching itself to a certain party, the latent isolation
registered by quiet observation of larger events. More than once,
teenagers, children, and the elderly will make their way out to the
crop, standing alone amidst what’s provided for them for so long,
and what may be soon repossessed. In some ways, Alcarràs
resembles Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours, or at least a proletariat
transposition, especially in the party scene near the end, where
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FILM REVIEWS
focus is equally dispensed amongst all participants. The Solés
live with the very reminder of what they may lose, a rather
poignant development, which is what makes the most relaxed of
scenes also the most enjoyable, and meaningful; they convey all
that the verbal disputations can’t.
However, the demands of contemporaneous realism trip up the
more patient — even spiritual — pastoralism of Alcarràs. The
rapport of the extended family is as warm as it is believably
strained, so a few of Simón’s efforts to delineate the variety of
viewpoints are unfortunately redundant, rendering characters as
brief stock-types, especially the brother-in-law who tries to
ingratiate himself into the Pinyols. The director’s own narrative
motivations sit uneasily atop those of the characters; these are
the intervals where the film, purporting to be of a documentary
quality, comes off as unbearably written. But then there’s the
closing shot, an image of such unceremonious perfection, and
the fitful heaviness of the directorial hand is, at least to some
degree, justified. — PATRICK PREZIOSI
DIRECTOR: Carla Simón CAST: Jordi Pujol Dolcet, Anna Otin,
Xenia Roset, Albert Bosch, Berta Pipó DISTRIBUTOR: MUBI IN
THEATERS: January 6 RUNTIME: 2 hr. 0 min.
I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY
Kasi Lemmons
When Kasi Lemmons made her directorial debut with the 1997
Southern Gothic masterpiece Eve's Bayou, it likely wouldn't have
occurred to people that she would eventually be reduced to
working on by-the-numbers fare like I Wanna Dance with
Somebody, the latest cinematic equivalent of a Wikipedia article
— this one based on the life of Whitney Houston. Lemmons's film,
adapted from a script by Bohemian Rhapsody screenwriter
Anthony McCarten, is a slipshod attempt at cleaning up the
legendary songstress' image and legacy, all while scrubbing away
the messier aspects of her humanity. As such, even I Wanna
Dance with Somebody's decision to not focus on Houston's
scandal-ridden later years feels cynical, a transparent effort by
her estate, which participated in the project, not to rehabilitate
her as much as make her marketable again — a process which is
already in motion, with a line of cosmetics and a variety of Funko
POP! Figurines.
It's unfortunate, but the rote filmmaking on display here couldn't
be further removed from the layered sensitivity that has marked
Lemmons's previous work — even her somewhat formulaic 2019
Harriet Tubman biopic Harriet drew out some memorable
performances from its cast. I Wanna Dance, by contrast, plays
more like a glorified clip show where none of the actors are given
room to breathe. Naomi Ackie manages to wring a surprising
amount of depth out of the clichéd material, but her co-stars,
including Stanley Tucci and the woefully underemployed Ashton
Sanders, are completely suffocated under a barrage of shoddily
conceived and assembled scenes, filled with tropes that would
have felt stale a decade ago.
The film opens at the 1994 American Music Awards, where
Whitney Houston (Ackie) is preparing to deliver her famous
medley of "I Loves You, Porgy," "And I Am Telling You I'm Not
Going," and "I Have Nothing," obviously setting up what will come
to represent the peak of her musical career — her own 1985 Live
Aid moment, so to speak. After the title card, the audience is
taken to 1983, where a young Whitney dazzles a New Jersey
church congregation with her raw vocal talent. Led with a firm
but loving hand by her mother, Cissy Houston (Tamara Tunie) —
an accomplished singer in her own right — Whitney eventually
manages to secure a record deal after her extraordinary
performance of George Benson's "The Greatest Love of All"
impresses record producer Clive Davis (Stanley Tucci). However,
the ensuing success proves difficult to navigate, and Whitney is
forced to contend with accusations of selling out, her
overbearing father John (Clarke Peters), who also works as her
manager, and a strained and abusive marriage to R&B singer
Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders).
Much like he did with Freddie Mercury — Bohemian Rhapsody
played down the Queen frontman's queerness in favor of a more
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FILM REVIEWS
flattering portrayal of the surviving band members, another
example of an estate working to protect its own bottom line —
McCarten here flattens Houston into an uncomplicated, easily
digestible avatar, and as such, her same-sex relationship early in
life, as well as her internalized homophobia, are included but
insufficiently explored. Similarly, her spiritual development —
admittedly unhip subject matter that few contemporary
filmmakers are willing to engage with — is barely given the time
of day, in spite of her having been brought up in the church and
the film’s penchant for asking characters to use the Bible to
rationalize their behavior. Instead, we get predictable gestures,
transparently designed to appeal to modern sensibilities: "Yes,
I'm exhausted. All Black women are exhausted," complains
Houston in a particularly unnatural exchange.
While I Wanna Dance's hagiographic treatment mostly relies on
the power of the music (or, more specifically, its subject's
soaring voice) to generate its few captivating moments, it fails to
truly capture the transcendent beauty that made Houston's
legendary melisma such an enduring part of popular culture. The
singer's legacy needed a corrective after years of being defined
by her premature, drug-related death, and regardless of
whatever financial motivations led to it, the choice to ultimately
not frame her life as mere tragedy, particularly given the genre,
is indeed commendable. But it's hardly an excuse for crafting a
film that is ultimately this lifeless and dull. — FRED BARRETT
DIRECTOR: Kasi Lemmons CAST: Naomi Ackie, Ashton Sanders,
Stanley Tucci, Tamara Tunie, Clarke Peters DISTRIBUTOR: Sony
Pictures IN THEATERS: December 23 RUNTIME: 2 hr. 26 min.
TURN EVERY PAGE: THE ADVENTURES OF
ROBERT CARO AND ROBERT GOTTLIEB
Lizzie Gottlieb
What makes a great writer? Romantics and bookworms might
wax poetic about unparalleled emotional insight or the fearless
plumbing of the human condition, but pragmatists (and
publishers) know the real answer: the secret to a great writer is a
great editor. Lizzie Gottlieb’s documentary Turn Every Page: The
Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb focuses on the
50-year editorial relationship between two giants of 20th-century
letters: Caro, deemed “the greatest political writer and thinker of
our time” by his publisher, and his editor Gottlieb,
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FILM REVIEWS
panic mode. As someone who moved home after college partly to
sustain an unpaid publishing internship — which never turned
into a full-time job — I viewed much of Gottlieb’s archival footage
with a certain (perhaps unwarranted) wistfulness. Here are but
two bespeckled white dudes arguing about semicolons in a
book-lined conference room, and not a federal antitrust lawsuit,
employee walkout, or paywall in sight. Ah, those were the days.
the luminary who, among other achievements, convinced Joseph
Heller to swap out “18” with “22” in the title of his most famous
book. As Gottlieb’s daughter, Lizzie has enviable access to both
men, as well as a host of other literary titans, industry insiders,
Caro superfans, and a couple of former Presidents to share in
the memories of its two octogenarian subjects.
After quick biographical sketches — Caro’s unhappy childhood,
Gottlieb’s unabashed nerdiness — the documentary settles into a
pleasantly unobtrusive yet instructive rhythm. In addition to its
central relationship, Turn Every Page is part New York City history
as told through Caro’s biography of its massively influential and
divisive master builder, Robert Moses, and part 20th-century
American history as told through his multi-volume biography of
President Lyndon B. Johnson. It’s also a slightly rose-tinted
chronicle of the golden age of print media. Both men started
their careers in the 1960s, long before the Internet’s slurry of free
and endless content sent the publishing industry into prolonged
An unelected city planner might not seem like the natural subject
for a 1,300-page doorstop, but no matter: like Infinite Jest, just
having The Power Broker on your shelf, no matter how dusty,
oozes intellectual pedigree. No one actually expects you to read
it (I myself live with two city planners, and I’ve only ever seen the
book used as a laptop stand.) But for its many fans — it is
currently in its 41st continuous printing — The Power Broker both
cemented Caro’s genius and set the stage for his next
multi-decade undertaking: an as-yet-unfinished five-part
biography of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who wielded immense
political power in profoundly contradictory ways. And every step
of the way, Robert Gottlieb was there with his No. 2 pencil (never
mechanical!) to wrangle, wrassle, and chisel Caro’s manuscripts
into masterpieces. As he wryly states early in the documentary,
“He does the work, I do the cleanup. Then we fight.” If all editorial
relationships were twice as adversarial but even half as fruitful,
publishing executives might have cause to finally stop
hand-wringing (and maybe even raise wages.)
The timing of Turn Every Page is fortuitous, and not just because
its subjects are rapidly aging and Caro is still industriously
plugging away at Now! That’s What I Call LBJ. The past few years
have enjoyed a renewed popular interest in urbanism as a whole,
with the pandemic sparking national conversations about the
role of urban spaces post-lockdown; suddenly, it seemed like all
the cool kids were discussing Jace Jacobs over their sourdough
starters. This interest hasn’t abated: 2022 saw the debut of
Straight Line Crazy, starring Ralph Fiennes as Robert Moses (a
canny bit of casting for someone who’s often viewed as the
Voldemort of modern cityscapes). And given the global political
and cultural slide toward authoritarianism, Caro’s stated goal —
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FILM REVIEWS
to inform the public about democracy as it is, not as it should be,
so they can vote accordingly — is more valuable than ever. For all
our sakes, let’s keep the pencils sharpened, the archives dusted
off, and the pages turning. — SELINA LEE
DIRECTOR: Lizzie Gottlieb CAST: Robert A. Caro, Robert Gottlieb
DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Classics IN THEATERS: December
30 RUNTIME: 1 hr. 52 min.
highlight of last year’s Ida Red being a random moment where
Frank Grillo, clad in cowboy hat and mesh shirt, dances to Naked
Eyes’ “Promises Promises” before brutally murdering a woman.
Candy Land is that moment dialed to one hundred, a deep dive
into depravity that is refreshing in its remorselessness. Indeed,
this is a film that, within its first five minutes, features graphic
sex, full-frontal nudity, and the tormenting of religious
fundamentalists.
CANDY LAND
John Swab
In only a few short years, writer-director John Swab has churned
out a handful of low-budget features that have rarely risen above
the mantle of mediocrity. Part of this seems like a direct result of
attempting so much in so little time, for a filmmaker happy to be
getting consistent work in today’s hellish filmmaking landscape.
Yet those familiar with Swab’s filmography may find themselves
going a tad easier on this particular director than many of his ilk,
largely because it’s obvious that he’s in possession of true
technical chops, with a genuine love of the medium ingratiating
itself into every frame. If one were to be especially generous,
they might see a little of the early Walter Hill in his work, a true
legend who understood the supposed limitations of genre fare
and exploited them to produce bracing works of bravado.
“[This] callback to the
grindhouse flicks of the ‘70s
offers up the most respectful
portrait of sex workers the
big screen has seen in ages.
Swab’s latest, Candy Land, eschews the crime drama framework
so inherent to his other films and embraces pure exploitation,
which ultimately frees the filmmaker to deliver his best and most
accomplished work to date. Swab has always excelled when
leaning into this particular texture in past projects, with the
The titular location refers to the last exit on Route 66 before
endless miles of nothingness, the type of low-down and dirty
truck stop where travelers can grab both a meal and a piece of
ass. It’s here where we meet our ragtag group of protagonists, a
five-person squad of sex workers including house mother Nora
(Guinevere Turner) and employees Sadie (Sam Quartin), Riley
(Eden Brolin), Liv (Virginia Rand), and lone male Levi (Owen
Campbell). Not long after, a newcomer — Remy (Olivia Luccardi),
one of the aforementioned zealots who has seemingly
abandoned the church to discover a newfound world of
independence — enters this tight-knit clan. Unfortunately, she’s
arrived at exactly the wrong moment, as a killer, whose identity
is as obvious as it is inevitable, is targeting various clients of
Candy Land.
But make no mistake: Candy Land isn’t trying to pull the rug out
from under its audience members; it establishes its central
antagonist early in the game. Such a move simply reinforces the
film’s exploitative roots, seen in every leering close-up of its
female cast members’ naked bodies and its somehow lovingly
shot moments of brutal violence. Indeed, Swab embraces these
details in ways that put other such 21 st -century attempts to
shame — those films that serve up so-called “exploitation” in the
most sanitized and neutered fashion possible, obviously intended
not to offend audience members in a bid for populist
acceptance. Candy Land has no interest in such bullshit, offering
up its tale of religious cleansing in the most overheated ways
possible. Still, such a description fails to recognize the deep
empathy Swab clearly feels for his characters, namely the
individuals who call Candy Land home. It’s hard to believe that, in
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FILM REVIEWS
2023, a callback to the grindhouse flicks of the ‘70s offers up the
most respectful portrait of sex workers the big screen has seen
in ages, and yet here we are.
It also can’t be overstated just how great the film looks, each
shot a tutorial in proper shot composition, with the occasional
ajar door and rain-streaked car window proving as effective as
the choice of shag carpeting seen at its end — which, pardon the
expression, is quite simply chef’s kiss. This is only outdone by the
choice of a needle drop, also approaching the denouement, so
utterly perfect that Swab deserves credit for blowing his entire
budget on simply obtaining its rights. Much like past Swab
projects, the cast is uniformly terrific, which proves that the
filmmaker is both a technician and an actor’s director, and that’s
a rare combo in today’s climate. The lone name cast member,
one Mr. William Baldwin, certainly seems thrilled to get
down-and-dirty and earn a paycheck, but the fact that he is the
weak link here seems less a factor of commitment and more a
result of the level of wackadoo characterization he is forced to
endure. Such a complaint, however, is one of the few this critic is
going to lob at Candy Land, which kicks off 2023 on exactly the
right foot; Team Swab starts right here. — STEVEN WARNER
DIRECTOR: John Swab CAST: Olivia Luccardi, William Baldwin,
Sam Quartin, Owen Campbell DISTRIBUTOR: Quiver Distribution
IN THEATERS: January 6 RUNTIME: 1 hr. 33 min.
THE PALE BLUE EYE
Scott Cooper
Based on Louis Bayard’s 2003 novel, Scott Cooper’s painfully dull
The Pale Blue Eye imagines a fictional murder mystery featuring
one Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling) assisting alleged master
detective Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) in sleuthing around
West Point (which Poe actually did attend). Someone’s strung up a
cadet and cut out his heart, and for some reason Landor settles
on Poe as someone who can help him navigate the ins and outs
of both the Academy and the local gentry, while the famous
author finds both fuel for his writing and a pretty girl in the
course of the case.
It’s an ostensibly intriguing idea to give us a moody, atmospheric
mystery as the inspiration for some of fiction’s most famous
works, but the film that Cooper delivers is instead inert,
suspense-free, and so emotionally remote as to render any
attempts at complexity or ambiguity completely unnoticeable.
Even more puzzling is that the story would appear to have little to
no bearing on Poe’s work at all; even though Melling is sufficiently
convincing as a melancholic weirdo, one could swap Poe out here
for literally anyone else, famous or not, and The Pale Blue Eye
would remain the exact same film. Sure, there might be a few
easter eggs to be found and some references to remind of Poe’s
famous stories and poems, but they don’t
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FILM REVIEWS
enhance the story or add any layers of cleverness or nuance to
the bland proceedings.
The mystery itself is both sluggish and fairly rote, even if it does
revolve around heart removal and privileged secret societies that
bloom into cults. Poe and Landor barely do any actual
investigating, as most of the important clues, like a crucial
journal or a crumpled note, for instance, simply fall into their
laps. Meanwhile, the culprits — at least in the initial murder —
are pretty readily identifiable. You can only feature so many
portentous bits of dialogue and clandestine shifty-eyed
close-ups before one begins to tire of taking the hint. And that’s
all doubly bizarre since the whole film is building to a ridiculous
rug-pull ending that most viewers probably won’t see coming
simply because it’s wildly illogical and narratively arbitrary,
retroactively turning what started as a placid literary procedural
into one of Cooper’s patented mopey revenge flicks.
Indeed, the director’s usual brooding is as present as ever, but in
truth it barely registers over the whispery performances and the
grayed-out color palette, both of which contribute to the wasting
of such resourceful actors as Robert Duvall as some wily old
investigator, Timothy Spall as the conniving base commander,
and a briefly amusing Gillian Anderson. Bale himself is fully on
autopilot, imbuing Landor with exactly nothing but his usual dose
of gruff and aloof masculinity. The character is a total blank,
making the events of the third act all the more baffling and
unsatisfying. You’d be better off watching the supremely goofy
John Cusack-as-Poe film The Raven: that film is certainly one
that time has forgotten, but The Pale Blue Eye is in fact the work
that much more richly deserves to disappear into the dustbin of
history. — MATT LYNCH
DIRECTOR: Scott Cooper CAST: Christian Bale, Harry Melling,
Gillian Anderson, Robert Duvall, Lucy Boynton DISTRIBUTOR:
Netflix STREAMING: January 6 RUNTIME: 2 hr. 26 min.
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FILM REVIEWS
THE BOY, THE MOLE, THE FOX AND THE
HORSE
Charlie Mackesy, Peter Baynton
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse is quite naked in its
ambitions to become the next classic British Christmas special —
The Snowman (1982) for a new generation. While Raymond Briggs’
influence can be seen in both Charlie Mackesy’s book and the
film adaptation he co-directed with Peter Baynton, he pinches
much more liberally, and much more blatantly, from Winnie the
Pooh: from the loose art style which (like E.H. Shepard) tries to
retain the energy of underdrawing to the sentimental one-liners
which don’t just borrow their rhythm from A.A. Milne, but their
content too. The book’s second line, “[you’re so small] but you
make a big difference,” reads suspiciously close to “sometimes,
the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”
Suspicious beyond a reasonable doubt, some would say.
pointing toward emotional caricature rather than any emotion in
particular. Mackesy’s addition to the formula is this: instead of
images, like a group of people or animals around a table or tree,
he evokes emotion bluntly and directly through the little self-help
quotes that solely populate the dialogue.
What’s quite shocking is how untethered these warmed-over bits
of “wisdom” are from any kind of story. Based on the
accompanying documentary, however, this seems to be a point
of pride for Mackesy; he insists that the story doesn’t need a
narrative, that the story is the conversation. But for there to be a
conversation, there must be characters to converse in it. These
four are only thinly distinguished by a single trait — the Mole
loves cake (in a way that’s reminiscent of a different character’s
love of honey), and the Fox is drawn — and all speak in the exact
same voice. Either way, they aren’t having a conversation;
nothing is bridging one inspirational quote from the next, as they
are simply stated without motivation or context. It’s hard to
convey the extent of this, except to say that when reading the
even looser book — which doesn’t even have the setup of being
lost or the idea of some home to move toward — it’s easy to find
yourself wondering if the pages might be in the wrong order.
But The Boy, the Mole is best understood as part of a lineage of
British Christmas adverts: specifically, the style brought in by the
collaborations between the department store John Lewis and the
advertising agency Adam & Eve, which started in the late 2000s
but peaked throughout the 2010s as innumerable similar brands
copied them, making ever so slight variations on the exact same
thing. They are always faintly narrative — the Bear and the Hare
in John Lewis’ 2013 ad centered around the vague idea of
Christmas, just as the Boy, the Mole, and the others travel toward
the vague idea of home — but are primarily driven by sentimental
setpieces, created only from abstracted signifiers
“The Boy, the Mole is best
understood as part of a
lineage of British Christmas
adverts.
It’s no surprise, then, to learn that this horrible enterprise began
as Instagram posts. Little work has gone into adapting it into
anything else for the movie — the book might as well be a bunch
of random posts printed and stapled together. It’s hard not to
wonder if Charlie Mackesy is just as cynical. The ads which his
work most resembles frame themselves as non-commercial in
that they never feature the brand or their products (though they
do tend to feature a cuddly character who will no doubt be
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FILM REVIEWS
available as a plush toy). Alongside the wacky adverts that just
preceded them, like the Gorilla drumming along to Phil Collins’ In
The Air Tonight for Cadbury, they are driving marketing further
toward abstraction, moving away from the tropes that the
general public are familiar with in order to smuggle their
messages into their brains through other means, such as the
false pretenses of quirkiness, sentimentality, or social cause. And
so, despite how aggressively surface-level and thin Mackesy’s
work seems to be, one has to ask what exactly it is that he’s
trying to sell.
Most literally, it’s all the T-shirts and tote bags, and a new
twenty-pound version of his book composed of screenshots from
the film. But when returning to the source, his Instagram, there is
a sense of the wider project. He seems to share most of the
same pet causes with the Tories (the British right): from
supporting nurses without ever advocating for their better
treatment (he side-steps this by drawing them as angels, as
saint-like creatures only to be looked up at and celebrated) to
worshiping the royal family. Some of the only art that isn’t
nakedly recycled is his loving portraits of the rotting former
Queen and her ghoulish husband. This might seem in contrast
with his calls for kindness, with the use of mental health and
self-help rhetoric, but of course, it isn’t. This language has been
appropriated by the right in increasingly cynical ways, teaching
people to solipsistically acquiesce to the status quo; to look
inward rather than out.
Even Mackesy’s already wishy-washy gesture toward climate
change — a character saying, without context, that there is “so
much beauty we need to look after ”— can be read in this way,
knowing that Mackesy has said that these characters are all
fragments of the same person. The empty space around them,
made blank by the white snow, is intentionally non-specific
because it doesn’t represent a place but a mind, much like the
room that Jordan Peterson claims you must clean before trying
to change anything outside. But maybe that’s imagining a work
more coherent than Mackesy is capable of making. Maybe this is
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FILM REVIEWS
just wish fulfillment in bleak times, like the naïvely
well-intentioned Everything Everywhere All At Once, which also
imagines material change coming from the inside. Tax issues are
solved metaphorically through the same generic kindness that
will somehow stop climate change. But ultimately, one has to
look where the art is pointing. Like Christmas adverts, The Boy,
the Mole, the Fox and the Horse tries to obscure its useless, if not
entirely regressive, ideology with what feels intuitively good,
heart-warming, and kind. But even by the standards of
advertising, Mackesy’s vision is so thin, and his talent so limited,
that it can’t hide anything at all; his work is as bare as it is
dishonest. — ESMÉ HOLDEN
DIRECTOR: Peter Baynton & Charlie Mackesy CAST: (voices) Idris
Elba, Tom Hollander, Gabriel Byrne DISTRIBUTOR: Apple TV+
STREAMING: December 25 RUNTIME: 32 min.
M3GAN
Gerard Johnstone
Welcome to the new world of genre cinema, where decades of
low-budget sleaze and slime have been overtaken by PG-13-rated,
eminently meme-able stuff that’s marginally funny but designed
mainly to repeat yourself back to you. It’s a space where you’re
encouraged not to take a story seriously, where a murderous doll
reciting the lyrics to a pop song replaces actual scares. Welcome
to M3GAN.
Meet Cady (Violet McGraw), an ordinary little girl. She spends too
much time on her iPad and just wants to be left alone, until a
mishap on a snowy highway during a ski vacation with mom and
dad leaves her an orphan. She’s sent to stay with her aunt,
Gemma (Allison Williams), a designer at a toy company. Gemma
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FILM REVIEWS
couldn’t be more ill-equipped to take care of a child, despite the
fact that she builds playthings for them. She’s career-focused,
wealthy, planning vacations with pals — simply put, caregiving is
a huge interruption in her life (her level of empathy for her
orphaned niece is neither established nor particularly at issue in
the narrative).
“M3GAN isn’t so much a horror
movie as a meme generator…
the humor is constant but
it’s also toothless.
It just so happens that Gemma is in the process of a major
technological breakthrough. She’s building M3GAN, short for
Model 3 Generative Android (a truly exquisite piece of jargon
gobbledygook). M3GAN is designed to be a learning computer, a
caretaker, a best friend, and an educator — a do-it-all helper to
take the burden of parenthood off of your strained soccer parent
shoulders. At first, Gemma’s boss, David (Ronny Chieng), thinks
the whole thing is a waste of time, but once Gemma shows him a
convincing demo, the company is on board with a rushed and
heavily promoted launch of this new $10,000 toy. Meanwhile,
Cady and M3GAN are becoming closer by the minute. It shouldn’t
surprise anyone that murder comes into play, in addition to some
vague swipes at the sacrifices intrinsic to parenthood and the
way in which screen time and technology have become
surrogates for some. But these are merely pretenses for what
amounts to a pretty basic, camp-leaning comedy about a killer
robot, one that unfortunately pulls its graphic punches and
frankly isn’t funny enough to carry the project past a serious lack
of gory violence. Reports suggest the film was recut for a lighter
rating; that might be its biggest mistake.
M3GAN isn’t so much a horror movie as a meme generator. The
much-hyped moment where the killer robot girl does an equally
killer dance lasts longer in the trailer than it does in the finished
film. The humor is constant, but it’s also toothless; it’s supposed
to be funny when M3GAN does bad things, but she only really
does them to bad people, so we feel safe in her presence. There’s
nothing remotely unpleasant or suspenseful about any of this,
and there’s barely any detectable grue; all four — yes, that’s all —
of her kills occur mostly off-screen, and one is by proxy (we’re
not counting the dog). There will be those that say this movie
does exactly what it says on the tin, but it does so in the safest
and most predictable way possible, and it ultimately has nothing
to say about parenthood, technology, or even killer robots. All
M3GAN is interested in is providing GIF material.— MATT LYNCH
DIRECTOR: Gerald Johnstone CAST: Allison Williams, Violet
McGraw, Ronny Chieng, Jen Van Epps DISTRIBUTOR: Universal
Pictures IN THEATERS: January 6 RUNTIME: 1 hr. 42 min.
THE OLD WAY
Brett Donowho
Despite being arguably the popular genre of the classical era of
Hollywood, the Western has faded over time into the background
of mainstream cinema. The Old Way looks to revisit that
throwback style of a bloody revenge tale, rife with horse riding
and gun fighting, but it never much feels like a genuine Western.
Thanks to an anonymous set design and too dry narrative, the
film never realizes an immersive viewing experience, with its
setting left to feel more like mere window dressing than a
meaningful engagement with the genre.
Nicolas Cage (somehow starring in a Western for the first time,
believe it or not) is Colton Briggs, an old-school gunslinger who
has tried to bury his past and start a family. But as these things
go, his new and peaceful existence is shattered when James
McAllister (Noah Le Gros) — whose father was killed by Briggs
twenty years prior — shows up at his house while he is away,
killing his wife in an act of premeditated vengeance. For a
moment, the film slows to revel in this pure horror, even lending
the feel of something like Funny Games; but that tension is
swiftly dissipated, and we’re swept back to the familiar narrative
saddle. Briggs takes up the gun once more, only this time, his
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FILM REVIEWS
young daughter (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) joins him on his quest for
retribution.
A generous reading might note that The Old Way’s tale of guilt and
exorcising past demons can at times feel akin to something like
Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, but while the always-game Cage is
more than capable of imbuing some genuine pathos into his
character, the final product lacks the emotional weight and
necessary grit of finer Westerns. In fairness, repurposing
recognizable narratives and tropes isn’t an uncommon approach
to the Western construction, so the failure to build something
novel here isn’t a flaw that necessarily weighs the film down. The
bigger problem, then, is that The Old Way is too often just plain
boring, with little drama or tension to drive the film forward or no
distinctive personality to sell the material. It simply plods along
to its obvious destination — the climactic showdown.
In addition to the film’s underwhelming action and largely stale
dialogue, there’s the problem that McAllister simply isn’t an even
remotely interesting villain. He is neither the cruel and ruthless
sadist of so many yesteryear Westerns, nor is he a flawed but
genuinely sympathetic character to which viewers can relate.
Rather, he’s just a tired, cookie-cutter outlaw. Littered amongst
all of this retread are moments of appealing stillness, respites
where we glimpse human moments between father and daughter
and where the film manages to deliver a few genuinely heartfelt
scenes and sequences, but it’s simply not enough. Most of the
time, viewers are left to ponder what a shame it is that, despite
the resurgence of quality work Cage has been turning in for a
while now, this was the best Western he could get his hands on.
— OLIVER PARKER
DIRECTOR: Brett Donowho CAST: Nicolas Cage, Ryan Kiera
Armstrong, Noah Le Gros, Nick Searcy, Clint Howard
DISTRIBUTOR: Saban Films IN THEATERS: January 6
STREAMING: January 13 RUNTIME: 1 hr. 35 min.
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FILM REVIEWS
OLD REVIEWS NEW RELEASES
WHITE NOISE
Noah Baumbach
“While DeLillo’s satire evokes the cosmic tragicomedy of the
theater of the absurd, meshing an existential focus on life’s
meaninglessness with the spiritualistic ritual and alienated sense
of belonging surrounding suburban consumerism, Baumbach
never moves beyond a surface-level farce of pop-culture
Americana. Baumbach, an inveterate New Yorker, has something
of the Woody Allen-esque condescension of the rest of America
in the way he facetiously tosses off the Gladneys’ predilection for
mass market culture as goofy, sardonic character quirks.” —
JOSHUA BOGATIN
BROKER
Hirokazu Kore-eda
“This is all in the same territory as Shoplifters, and Kore-eda
doesn’t find anything new to weave into the scenario. Bae, for a
while, brings a prickly edge to her part… [But] Despite the best
efforts of his actors, there’s just nothing subtle, nothing
unexpected about Broker. It’s the kind of film where everyone
always thinks of the children and things all work out for the best
and everyone learns that families built on forgiveness and mutual
self-sacrifice come in all shapes and sizes and love conquers all
and even Bae’s hardened cop heart is melted by the adorable
powers of the divine moppet.” — SEAN GILMAN
DIRECTOR: Noah Baumbach CAST: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig,
Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix
STREAMING: December 30 RUNTIME: 2 hr. 16 min.
DIRECTOR: Hirokazu Kore-eda CAST: Song Kang-ho, Gang
Dong-won, Bae Doo-na, Lee Ji-eun DISTRIBUTOR: NEON IN
THEATERS: December 26 RUNTIME: 2 hr. 9 min.
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ALBUM REVIEWS
IDFK
Julia Wu
Simply put: Julia Wu has established
herself as one of the most consistent
artists of the decade so far. The
Australian-Chinese singer-songwriter has
put out an album every year since 2019
(and more before that) — the mixed
Mandarin and English 5 am in 2019, its
entirely English version 5 pm in 2020, 2622
in summer 2021, and now IDFK in winter
2022 — and each of them has been a
smooth, groovy R&B delight. Highlights
during that run include the indelible hook
of “One in a Billion,” the hazy “Sunset,” and
the cozy, rainy day single Better,” plus
many more tracks that fully vibe without
sacrificing their character.
IDFK’s title might seem to
suggest an under-promise, but
its content is that of an
excellent R&B record that easily
lives up to the standard of Wu’s
last few projects. “If Only You,”
for instance, is the exact kind
of song that tends to grace the
middle section of a Wu
tracklist, but it’s so velvety and
honestly sung that the
familiarity justifies itself. Other
tracks do try styles that she
hasn’t explored quite as much:
On opener “I Can’t,” Wu tosses
off the line “I could be
everything that you’ll ever need”
over refreshingly dancey
production, and “The
One,” with its funky electric guitar and
disco synth shimmers, is one of the
artist’s most upbeat songs to date. In
contrast, single “Late Night Cruising” is
slow and sultry, vocals drawn out around
the bends in the road: “Make a little wish,
I’ll take you up high / Breaking through the
clouds, we’ll feel the sun rise.”
The title of the eponymous track
downplays its lyrical content, where Wu
reaches up into her falsetto over muted
electric guitar to declare that she “feel[s]
like staring into you forever.” A lot of her
songs capture this sensation, that of
being caught up in feelings for another
person to the point where the music
communicates almost a physical texture
being caught up in feelings for another
person to the point where the music
communicates almost a physical texture
to her desire. With the exception of the
bouncy, slightly more cynical “Retail
Therapy,” the tracks on IDFK are focused
on attraction and romance, and that’s one
of the reasons why, despite its consistent
sound, Wu’s music doesn’t feel stale. Even
when the hooks are breezy, her songs are
deeply felt, and her vocal performances
operate as such passionate confessions
that they make every line feel important.
It’s no surprise, then, that the overall
production on the album is warm, packed
with lush vocal layering, and neatly
balancing elegance and casual
conversation. IDFK may only consist of
eight tracks, but it accomplishes a lot in
that limited space. There are a
few immediate discography
highlights, some familiar tracks
that ground the set as a
distinctly Julia Wu project, and
enough quality and variety to
hopefully pull in new fans too.
Not every, and nary a, prolific
musician is able to reliably pair
quantity with quality — so when
an artist does manage to
deliver every time, even if only
over a period of time, it’s even
more important for us listeners
to celebrate. — KAYLA
BEARDSLEE
LABEL: ChynaHouse Digital Co.
RELEASE DATE: December 2
20