Reality in the raw

There's a certain appeal to Sean Baker's films that one could almost call "street-level." The fact that he tends to pick stories that are largely centered around the American underclass is part of that, but there's also his tendency to pick non- or new actors to fill his roles so that they feel natural in their environment. In his latest offering, Red Rocket, he cast one actor (Brittney Rodriguez) after seeing her walking her dog on the street, followed by him pulling over and asking if she'd like to do an audition. That's about as "street-level", literally, as it gets and it's that kind of unusual approach that gives his films an emotional authenticity that makes them so compelling, even if the situations that his characters end up in don't leave his audiences walking away feeling like something good has happened. Most people don't make it out of poverty and the tough situations that it creates, after all.

Red Rocket is the story of Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) returning to his hometown of Texas City after his porn career has ground to a halt and trying to generate some fast cash so he can find an opportunity to get back in the swing of things. That involves crashing at his ex-but-still-current wife's mother's home, becoming a dealer for one of the local under-the-table weed distributors, and getting involved with a cashier at the local donut shop whom he thinks he can turn into a star and use to ride back into the San Fernando Valley as a (re)conquering hero (but not, as his ex-wife, Lexi (Bree Elrod) points out, a "suitcase pimp" aka a male porn star making a living off a female talent.) Along the way, Mikey sponges off anyone who will offer a hand, including Lexi's neighbor, Lonnie (Ethan Darbone), whom he knew as a child and who still looks up to Mikey as a good guy to hang out with. Mikey, of course, is not a good guy, but is instead someone obsessed with his previous status as someone able to escape the confines of Texas City and the shadow (and fumes) of its massive refinery and whom can't stand the fact that he- a star -is stuck living with these regular people once again.

In the same way that his previous work, The Florida Project, dealt squarely with the lives of people living on the fringes of the Magic Kingdom and forced audiences to take a look inside the daily grind of their lives, Baker isn't afraid to step right into topics that are bound to make some viewers uncomfortable. Above and beyond his acknowledgment of the reality of sex as a fact of daily life, professionally and otherwise, he's willing to tread some sensitive ground when his protagonist, Mikey, essentially seduces a teenager into a career that she may not be interested in or prepared for, but which will make Mikey a lot of money and we're left with a mild feeling of tragedy when he realizes that his reach exceeded his grasp; not least because he makes the mistake of constantly trying to prove that he is more capable than everyone else around him until they decide to take advantage of that situation. In that respect, it's almost possible to feel like Mikey is correct in that he doesn't belong in this small town with all these other small people who aren't as, uh, gifted. But we also can't escape the fact that he's willing to sacrifice everyone else, to one degree or another, to his own self-interest. Baker and cinematographer, Drew Daniels, frequently highlight this contrast in a series of little moments, such as when Mikey is sure that he's sold Strawberry (Suzanna Son) on his scheme and we see him swaying from side to side on his battered bicycle on the way home in a moment of ecstasy that's just as intense as any orgasm. It's not a good thing that Mikey has done, but it's a little triumph that makes his world light again.

There are several great performances here; not least Rex's as the irrepressible Mikey, but especially Son as Strawberry, who is playfully magnetic every time she appears on screen. She responds to Mikey's expansion of her horizons with a growing self-confidence, leading us to believe that she understands more than she lets on, despite still being a prospective victim in this whole scenario. It's a role both understated and physically flamboyant, which presents Son as something of a natural and yet another of Baker's significant finds (He recruited her outside a theater in LA and didn't call her for a job for two years.) Another highlight is Judy Hill as Leondria, the local drug kingpin, who is fully aware of just who and what Mikey is from the moment he returns to town. Like him, she's more than willing to take advantage of another talented outlet for her business, but is also more than willing to cut him loose in favor of the residents (and regular customers) who are still interested in calling Texas City home, rather than discard it (and them) as trash in their wake. Leondria adds yet another key moment of hilarious normalcy when she insists on a family meeting to sort out the problems between her abrasive daughter, June (Rodriguez) and disinterested son, Ernesto (Marlon Lambert.) But possibly most affecting was Darbone (another newcomer; spotted as a waiter in a Nederland, Texas restaurant by Baker) as Lonnie, the neighbor kid whom Lexi used to babysit for and who naively believes that Mikey is someone to admire. At one point, Lexi asks that he keep Mikey from getting into trouble which he earnestly agrees to, not knowing that the situation will become quite reversed, as all of us anticipate much earlier.

Just as with The Florida Project, we can look at this film as an example of how there are often no happy endings, deserved or otherwise, but there are still real and interesting stories to tell in those situations. This film was in contention for the Palm d'Or at Cannes and it's not difficult to see why. While it does feel like it drags a little bit in the middle, as we wonder just how long it's going to take for Mikey to execute his master plan, the journey to get there is still wholly worthwhile. Highly recommended.

Blah blah blah

I'm a Joaquin Phoenix fan, not only because it's clear that emotional engagement with his characters is a tool that he possesses and is willing to put to regular use, but also because he does so in a manner that lacks artifice. As Tricia said last night, he seems "normal" when he's acting, even when in the roles of larger-than-life people like Johnny Cash or fantastical creations like The Joker. Consequently, I was interested in seeing C'mon C'mon, even though the trailer I'd seen indicated that it seemed to lack a little heft in the story department. A radio journalist trying to make contact with the tempestuous son of his estranged sister sounds very "introspective 70s." That era of filmmaking did lead to the creation of some excellent characters and the films that they carried, but it also led to some material that was a bit of a slog to get through unless you're instantly a fan of Hallmark Channel-style stories. Good characters can cover for quite a bit, though, and it's long been my assertion that Jaws, often reviled for introducing the blockbuster summer movie phenomenon, is actually a great film because of the characters that lift it above being a schlock horror film (that Robert Shaw thought it was and which, ironically, would give him the role for which he is forever remembered.) In that respect, C'mon C'mon does the same thing. It's a character study of multiple characters and just how they react to their uncontrollable emotions and follow those emotions into eventually understanding each other. The story is secondary to what these people are doing and saying on the screen, in the moment.

The framing device that writer-director, Mike Mills, uses is an interesting one. On the one hand, it could seem trite that Johnny's (Phoenix) current job is interviewing children to both absorb and convey their views on the world at the same time that he suddenly has to do the same thing on a more personal level with his nephew, Jesse (Woody Norman, in his first major role in film.) But in a more "meta" sense, it seems like something that serves what the plot is trying to convey and is one of those jobs that most people don't think about unless they're being directly entertained or informed by the output. It is, in a sense, subliminal, just like many of the emotional cues and hang-ups that all of the characters in this film have, to one degree or another. This is a film about the language of expression, which often has little to do with words, but which words make understandable and foundational for those whom haven't yet acknowledged their own emotional language deficiencies, which is usually everyone, fictional and actual. It's a topic and approach that many will interpret differently, but which almost everyone will relate to: the difficulty of getting someone(s) else to understand what you mean and why you're feeling as you do, but often without the ability to truly (or comfortably) express it.

In that respect, we're all often 9-year-old Jesse, no matter what age we are at present. Phoenix does well with this, as he has the whiny, imposed-upon reaction to being suddenly responsible for this emotional time bomb who is now wholly within his care. It doesn't help that Jesse is both unusually perceptive and fond of expressing his concerns in oblique ways, such as pretending to be an orphan, which is a regular pantomime he's worked out with his mother, Viv (Gaby Hoffman.) Further complicating the issue is Jesse's awareness of his father Paul's (Scoot McNairy) struggle with mental illness and Jesse's concern that his emotional behavior might be signs of a similar problem. Having to convey that one's emotions are normal while still living under the strain of how to guide and advise on them is the struggle of every good parent at one time or another, if not constantly. Again, these are real characters that Mills has created and they don't veer away from that realism at any point.

The other nice touches of the production also demonstrate what a complete vision this is. The choice to film in black-and-white is smart. There are no distractions of color, either from action or lighting. Everything remains focused on the characters and their emotions, which provide the real color of the story. Similarly, using Mozart's Requiem as Jesse's choice of when to be "loud" (on Saturdays) was interesting, as the music is normally used in film to convey a sense of doom and/or majesty, but in this case was more a reaction to the overall moroseness and fear that Jesse was feeling about his father and about himself. Contrary to its frequent use, the Requiem was never meant to be a funeral dirge, but rather an acknowledgement of life that was lived fully, on top of the grief that those listening would know at its passing. It's also a choral piece, demonstrating that we are all singing this song together and trying to be heard within it. Which brings us to the title.

Johnny, in trying to explain his work and also hint at his detachment from his own emotions tied up in his mother's prolonged death, introduces the expression "Blah, blah, blah" to Jesse, who quickly catches on to the fact that it's a way to avoid communicating what one doesn't feel like revealing or confronting. Johnny makes a living listening to other people talk, so he tries to convince others (and himself) that hearing him talk is just a waste of time. But Jesse finally confronts him with his own reluctance to say what's on his mind; to join the chorus, as it were. "From the mouths of babes" and all that. Just like last time, this is a film that doesn't have a complicated story, but it does have one of depth that makes it wholly worthwhile, as long as one is willing to listen.

Untroubled

Kenneth Branagh's latest film, Belfast, has its roots in The Troubles which increasingly dominated his childhood in the 1960s in his native city. Given that reality, it's easy to see why he chose to present the work largely from the perspective of the child that he was then. That perspective steers it away from being turgid or overly dramatic or triggering the kind of visceral responses that many of these films often fall victim to (see: In the Name of the Father.) But it's worth questioning whether his touch was so light and the story so goodhearted that it missed the chance to deliver its message with the impact that he, perhaps, was hoping for.

First and foremost, the performances are excellent and they're what truly carry the film, beyond any considerations for plot or history. Jude Hill (Buddy), who was all of nine when the film was shot (in other words, just about the same age as Branagh when the Troubles kicked into high gear), is a delight. Even at the point where one could accuse him of overacting, he does so in situations when almost all children would overact (expressing surprise, showing obvious distaste for something, etc.), so it seems perfectly natural. And that's really the key here: all of these actors (with one exception) seem perfectly natural in their roles. These aren't actors playing inhabitants of Belfast. They are inhabitants of Belfast. And in many cases, this is almost the literal truth, as Branagh went to some effort to cast mostly Northern Irish actors- and, in many cases, Belfast natives -to fill the roles. They act like this is their home because it basically is their home. That one exception is Colin Morgan, who plays Unionist Billy Clanton, and that may be a factor of the part he was given, more than any lack of capability on his part, as he spends most of his screen time giving grandiloquent speeches about why Buddy's "Pa" (Jamie Dornan) should join their efforts to drive out their Catholic neighbors, rather than the more subtle chats on the stoop or in the neighborhood pub that were the regular paths of recruitment. He's the one local who carries the story into a broader scope than what could be seen as the petty disagreements of said locals, until you incorporate the presence of British troops. Billy takes the story past the child's perspective/coming-of-age tale that otherwise suffuses everything. That's not necessarily a flaw, as it was a larger situation with roots hundreds of years in the past, but it just loses that veneer of "naturalness" when that character is involved.

Both Ciarán Hinds (another Belfast native) and Dame Judi Dench (hidden behind an impressive amount of makeup and daunting spectacles) are excellent as Buddy's grandparents; doling out sage advice as if they'd lived in the world, rather than having been handed a script. Likewise, Caitriona Balfe, as "Ma", plays an excellent, harried mother, trying to protect her children in the midst of chaos and the frequent lack of a partner/husband, but displaying just as obviously how devoted she is to him when they are able to enjoy life together. (The dancing scene at the local hall is a particular highlight.) I'm spending a lot of time talking about those performances because, again, the do make the film. The story really isn't much to speak of past the usual "here's daily life as a 9-year-old in unusual circumstances" approach and me, being Story Guy, would usually be hung up on that point. But it doesn't matter as much here, since you're so preoccupied with watching these people live their lives amidst the new life of barricades, riots, and soldiers on what used to be a pretty mundane street in Belfast which is, of course, exactly the point.

Branagh took care to spend time on the details, which is no different from most of his other films, citing the type of candy he might've been talked into swiping as a kid but which he didn't really like, as well as using Belfast native(!) Van Morrison for much of the soundtrack, including a new track composed just for the film. It won't deliver profound insights or give a new perspective on The Troubles (there are many, many other ways to do that, if you're interested. And you should be.), but it will give you a look into life as it often was and from the standpoint of a bunch of actual humans caught in a situation that almost none of them wanted, especially the small humans. Despite the lack of intriguing story, definitely recommended.

Endings, timely or otherwise

Spoilers! 

No Time to Die is Daniel Craig's last excursion as James Bond 007 which, in a way, seems fitting as, in the macro sense, the overall impression that I got from it was that they'd kinda run out of ideas. It's well-constructed and director Cory Fukunaga still has action scenes down to a science. But what most attracted me to his work on the first season of True Detective was the intrigue and moody atmosphere that he was able to convey in every, single, well-paced scene. When I heard that he was the director for this film, I anticipated that kind of thoughtful storytelling. But what I got was a James Bond film, most of which haven't been lauded for their stories, despite the often subtle approach of novelist Ian Fleming. In fact, the one film that does stand out for story is Craig's first effort, Casino Royale, which remains as the best Bond film ever made. So, you can say that NTTD was an example of competent filmmaking, but it was hard to shake the feeling that we've seen it all before.

There was a point from about You Only Live Twice onward that Bond became mostly about the hi-tech doohickeys, both used by him and used against him. Then the Other JB, Jason Bourne, films emerged and demonstrated that, yes, you could use advanced technology in action spy movies and still be serious about what was happening on the screen, rather than smarmy and goofy like Roger Moore and Pierce Bronsnan had been (We should really just forget about Timothy Dalton.) Casino Royale was the turning point in the series because it not only returned Bond to being a serious spy, but also saved him from being a better-dressed Inspector Gadget. As Roger Moore himself once noted, Craig's Bond was the closest to the character depicted in Fleming's novels than anyone who'd done the role before; an ice-cold killer, mission above all, but still a "good guy" in true Cold War fashion. The key to Casino was that it took the emotionless, impermeable operative and forced him to confront those emotions that he'd suppressed. Craig's films have largely continued in that theme, as his evolution of the character has shown him repeatedly driven by passion, whether affection or rage, as well as his struggle to contain that passion so that he can put the work ahead of anything personal. That's a solid read on the character, but you can only keep doing that for so long before there should be a breaking point, either within the story or with the audience. I think we probably passed that breaking point in Spectre, leaving NTTD as something akin to a TV series that ran a season too long.

Thankfully, as the Craig version has progressed, his supporting cast has continued to grow and get stronger, having real purpose as opposed to the sideshow carnival that a lot of them were reduced to in the Moore years. There's been a notable growth of stronger women in the Craig era, departing from what almost become hallowed tradition of damsels in distress (A View to a Kill is perhaps the most execrable depiction of that, among its many other flaws) and NTTD was no exception. Indeed, the most entertaining character in the whole film was Ana de Armas' Paloma, who managed to kick ass in a designer gown and heels with "only three weeks training" and a delightfully casual attitude about the whole thing. All of that support combined with Craig's ability to actually act (something not especially common among previous Bonds...) in order to convince us that these were actual people, for the most part, going through these extraordinary circumstances. In the best Bond films, the villains have been part of that ensemble when it really works. But good characters need a combination of two things: good writing and good acting. Rami Malek, as Lyutsifer Safin, had the latter but not the former. Most Bond films are about a personal contest of wills between Bond and whomever the main villain is. One is trying to enact a nefarious scheme and the other is trying to stop him. But part of that personal contest is getting to know said villain as something other than simply a force of evil; a Sauron ("I am mean and angry... because I am mean and angry!") In the early films, they usually did that with Bond meeting said villains and exchanging pleasantries in an "espionage is a gentleman's game" style.

But Safin is introduced in the first few minutes as an implacable assassin, hidden behind a Noh mask. He doesn't deviate from that approach for the rest of the film, despite losing the mask and having a couple scenes fairly loaded with exposition. We don't really get to know the villain as a person. He's just The Villain, like a Sauron. Despite Fukunaga's claim that Safin was "more dangerous than anyone Bond has ever encountered" and a "hyper-intelligent and worthy adversary", we get none of that from this character. He's simply a malevolent force and one more in the list of guys that Bond has knocked off for almost sixty years. There isn't the panache of Christopher Lee's Francisco Scaramanga or the ferocity of Robert Shaw's Red Grant or the desperation of Mads Mikkelsen's Le Chiffre and certainly not the eerie charm of Christoph Waltz's Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who upstages Safin in this very film. On top of that, while it's great to see Léa Seydoux getting lots of work lately (I wrote about her just last week), her scenes as the female lead are largely so angst-ridden that it feels like we move past the "help Bond with his emotions" stage and straight into genuine soap opera at some point. Yes, she's a Bond woman and not a Bond girl. She takes care of herself, largely makes her own choices, and even guns down a few bad guys in true action movie form (Alas, no one passes the Bechdel test.) But in the second half of the film, when she's largely the caretaker of Matilde, we end up doing a bit of the Helen Lovejoy scenario. Yes, it's important to save the child, especially because it's Bond's child, but it's equally important to save all of the other lives that have just as much value. Dropping Matilde into the clutches of the villain to be dangled in front of Bond until he supposedly debases himself is so stock Hollywood filmmaking that it's almost boring. And, again, we've all seen stock Hollywood more times than we probably care to count, which is not what I expected of Fukunaga, who also had a hand in writing the screenplay.

The little touches of classic Bond were funny to see, like the Aston Martin DB5 with the smoke and guns; the recreation of the title shot sequence in the hallway on Safin's island base (near Japan; I half expected the extinct volcano from You Only Live Twice); using Louis Armstrong's "We Have All the Time in the World" which is prominent in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which is also about Bond dealing with emotional loss; and so on. Obviously, these were people trying to tend to the IP as well as continue to tell their version of it. But what might have compounded the flaws of the film is it's mildly ridiculous length, as it runs almost three hours, which is longer than any Bond film before it and longer than this story needed to be. Yes, it's Craig's sending off and there's a certain level of emotion attached to that but you could have excised chunks of some of the longer action sequences and a lot of the dithering with Valdo Obruchev (David Dencik), among other things, and it might have felt like the film's pace didn't descend to the turgid at times; again, not something I'm accustomed to from Fukunaga's previous work. One also can't understate the genuine level of emotion involved in many of the performances. Craig, Seydoux, and others do really well in that respect with what they're given to work with.

So, yeah. Not great, not terrible. If you're a hardcore Bond fan, it's a decent entry. If not, I can't say you'll be missing much that you haven't seen before.

Haute couture

It's very easy to spot a Wes Anderson film. The limited color palette, the offbeat characters, the feeling like every one of them is some kind of caper, even if the story is far more sedate and intricate than that; all of these little details make an Anderson film instantly recognizable as soon as a trailer for one of them begins. When Jaime and I were sitting through the previews before Bergman Island a couple weeks ago and the first moments of The French Dispatch appeared on the screen, we both thought two things: "That looks like a Wes Anderson film." and "That looks amazing." It's a telling reminder of his consistent style (noted by most film scholars as being a central figure in the "American Eccentric" mode), as well, since Jaime is more a fan of his earlier work (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums) and I'm more attached to more recent offerings (Moonrise Kingdom, Grand Budapest Hotel) but we both were instantly moths to the flame at the brief glimpses into the concept of The French Dispatch. There's little doubt that he's a huge hit to those of us who are fond of films that go a bit beyond standard offerings and, likewise, little doubt that he's just as popular within the film industry itself, considering the legion of names he was able to entice into taking bit roles in this project (everyone from Christoph Waltz to Henry Winkler), but it's just as true that his style is unusual enough that it's easy to understand how it doesn't make a connection with a lot of regular movie fans. As far as Dispatch is concerned, it's fair to wonder how much of that possible disconnect was style and how much was substance when compared to previous efforts.

As I've mentioned here many times, I'm a story guy. If I'm going to appreciate what you're doing, you first have to tell me a decent story. That's been true of all of Anderson's films to date and one of the things that supports his style. He has quirky characters doing odd things, but they're all rooted in a solid, meaningful story that provides the foundation for the slightly off-kilter worlds that they're told in. Dispatch is no different except that this time, it seems like his motivation for doing this film was to present an homage to The New Yorker and the various long-time writers who worked for the magazine, instead of coming up with a new world all his own. That's not really a story and, indeed, Dispatch is made up of three separate tales connected by an overarching framework which is the fictional French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun. It's a way of connecting small town Kansas with equally small town France, in this case the fictional Ennui-sur-Blasé (literally "boredom on apathy".) That provides a basis for Anderson's odd scenarios and characters, but it also detracts from the driving central theme that usually inhabits his work. It's more of a survey than a novel, which seems appropriate because, again, he was writing it as something of an homage, rather than solely telling a story as he's done before. I certainly don't object to directors and writers trying something new. After all, everyone has to stay interested in their work if it's going to be what they want it to be, but I can't help but think that the departure from the story as the prime motivator may have left this film lacking a bit of the magic that usually inhabits his creations.

The three segments are almost as odd as ever: an artist imprisoned in Ennui's Prison/Asylum (as always, the wry allusions to modern circumstances are everywhere in Anderson's productions) who becomes famous in the art world because of a fraudster imprisoned with him (The Concrete Masterpiece); a reporter who has an affair with a leader of a student protest and helps him write his manifesto (shades of Jack Reed) (Revisions to a Manifesto); and another reporter who writes about a dinner with a police commissioner which is interrupted by the kidnapping of his son who can only be rescued by the police chef who prepared the dinner (The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner.) I say 'almost as odd' because, as noted, Revisions is quite similar to something that can be drawn straight from history. That can't be totally surprising as, again, Anderson was doing this as something of a love letter to The New Yorker, which was and is a prominent voice of journalism. But it also means that we're veering away from the usual Anderson fantasies (Isle of Dogs, etc.) and into something where "offbeat" is perhaps not the best descriptor. In that respect, Revisions is also the most forgettable of the three stories and "forgettable" is not a word one often uses about a Wes Anderson film.

But, also per usual, many of the performances are excellent and show the willingness of the actors to completely immerse themselves in an Anderson world. Particular standouts are Tilda Swinton, Benicio Del Toro, and Léa Seydoux from Concrete (the latter with less than half a dozen lines); Timothée Chalamet and Lyna Khoudri from Revisions; and Jeffrey Wright and Saoirse Ronan from Private. Wright, especially, hit the combination of world-weariness but still earnest inquiry that seems to fit the conception of a veteran New Yorker writer. (He was one of the many highlights for me from Boardwalk Empire and one of the few from Westworld, too.) It was a treat to see so many well-known faces show up in minor roles; among them Winkler and Waltz, as noted, but also Edward Norton, Lois Smith, Liev Schreiber, Willem Dafoe, and Owen Wilson as the travelogue writer who sets the stage for the whole piece, among many others.

So, overall, it works as both a film and a Wes Anderson film. I certainly want to watch it again to see some of the many details which I may have missed and to convince myself that I haven't simply missed out on the magic of this one. But it's certainly not among my favorites of his oeuvre and not something I would suggest that people rush out to see unless they already enjoy his work. At the very least, it was entertaining, which is the bottom line for any film.

Shorted

There's a certain strain of acting role that you can identify with particular performers who've seemingly made said roles part of their public image, intentionally or not. Despite what range they may have (sometimes considerable), it's not out of the realm of reason to suggest that some things are "a Nick Cage role" or a "Jon Hamm role." When a film's main character is "eccentric English artist who has difficulty functioning in society and interacting with other people", I don't think it's too far a stretch to suggest that that's a "Benedict Cumberbatch role", based primarily on his most notable performance as Sherlock Holmes for the BBC's Sherlock. So when I saw the trailer for The Electrical Life of Louis Wain and saw who was starring in it, it immediately looked like a "Benedict Cumberbatch role" to me and, in that one small respect, it didn't disappoint. In most other respects, there wasn't a lot to be said for it.

Wain was an English artist whom I confess to have never heard of prior to seeing the film. Said film is a depiction of his life as an often-struggling artist in Victorian England, his rise to fame with his stylized pictures of cats and kittens, and his difficulties in dealing with the commercial and economic side of making a living at what was the foremost of his many, many hobbies. Seems like a decent story to be told, yes? And for the first third of the film, it's clearly set up to tell that story. Wain's personal foibles are examined, his devoted but brief relationship with his wife is explored, and his relationships, professional and familial, are all on display. Act I of Storytelling 101 is fairly fleshed out. The problem occurs when we try to move on to Acts II and III. Most stories have some kind of conflict to be resolved. Wain's story has conflict, in that he doesn't socialize well and is awful at managing money in a situation where, as the male of the household, he's expected to care for his sisters and indolent mother. But that conflict never changes and no resolution ever occurs. We're introduced to that situation in the first 10 minutes of the film. Thirty minutes later, it hasn't changed. Sixty minutes later, it hasn't changed. In fact, other than Wain's direct living conditions and slowly deteriorating mental state, basically nothing changes as the film moves along. He's still drawing cats. His family is still hard-up for money. His eldest sister continually reproaches him for not having that money. The overall situation is as static as it was at the beginning of the film. It's like watching a Wikipedia article come to life: "This is what Louis Wain's life was like, from beginning to end." Even the first other character we see besides Louis, Dan Rider (Adeel Akhtar), reappears at the film's conclusion to talk about how he still enjoys Wain's artwork. Overall, nothing much happens in the story and it's mostly a vehicle to display pictures of cats.

Now, there is such a thing as being detached and whimsical. Many filmmakers have used that style to show somewhat off-kilter stories with little moments of import that aren't filled with drama, so much as they are odd quirks that make the story and the film memorable. Wes Anderson has built a career on that approach; as has Taika Waititi, who actually has a small role in this film. But there really isn't anything memorable in this film because the only genuinely interesting character is Louis and he just does the same thing, over and over. The most interesting part was Act I, where director and co-writer, Will Sharpe, sets the stage for Louis' life. We reach a moment in the film where the whimsy comes to the fore, as we see the cats that Louis enjoys more than people begin talking to him in a fashion he finds perfectly understandable. But Sharpe doesn't persist with that and, instead, we just go back to Louis drawing and painting and his economic situation persisting and nothing really changing. There are no real moments of delight that either let us laugh at how Louis interprets the situation before him or, instead, give us insight as to why he sees things that way. At some point, I was expecting an assertion on his part in the same way the children's view of the world is explored in Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom or something similar. But, instead, Louis remains tediously detached from us, as we watch him go through the same routines and avoid the same problems and receive the same flack from his sister, Caroline (Andrea Riseborough) and on and on.

There's a known writer's issue in that storytellers sometimes find themselves in what feels like a perfectly-created world and they shy away from really telling a story for fear of wrecking that perfect image. There is no real change or transformation or development that happens in that story because that would be a change to the original creation. It takes a certain amount of will and desire to step past world creation into actual storytelling. Somewhere, Sharpe and co-writer, Simon Stephenson, didn't take that step. Is it because there really wasn't much story to tell about Wain other than what is shown in the film? That's debatable. In reading the actual Wikipedia entry on his life, it seems like there was more to draw from that which might have shown his progression into madness or even an accumulation of smaller facts, like the contrast between his seeming obsession with personal electricity that Sharpe and Stephenson repeatedly emphasize and how he returned from his time in New York with even less money than he came with because of an investment in a new type of oil lamp(!) There does seem to be room to explore in the story of his life, even if Sharpe wanted to maintain the seemingly whimsical approach. But the film just doesn't go there and ends up more like a display of his artwork with dialogue.

In the end, it feels like Sharpe and Stephenson are great fans of the artist and this was simply a paean to that fandom; as if just having Louis Wain on screen should be treat enough for the audience, especially given that he's portrayed by the perfect casting of Cumberbatch. But most biopics are actually a story of someone's life and this film simply didn't have much story to tell, by the cats or otherwise.

Creative detachment

I'm not an Ingmar Bergman fan. I appreciate his work and I understand why his admirers are legion, but much of what he produced simply never spoke to me in the same way as, say, Akira Kurosawa, whose themes actually frequently intersect with Bergman's. Both were fond of questioning the human condition and, in this respect, the film Bergman Island is no different.

The plot is a very Bergman-esque tale about unpredictable human emotions, the bowels of creativity, and the loneliness that often comes with that. It's set on Bergman's home of Fårö and is populated by characters who are great fans of his and the main two of which also happen to be filmmakers. In the course of the story, we're introduced to two more characters who are part of a story that one of our main characters is working on while on the island, so it's all very meta and self-referencing the whole way through. There is no breaking of the fourth wall, but you get the feeling that the audience is very much supposed to be in on the central joke, as it were. For as convoluted as that sounds, the plot is actually quite simple and, amusingly enough, led me to echo the question of Chris (Vicky Krieps) as she regularly wonders whether there's enough to her story to make a film. Perhaps that was the joke?

What initially attracted me to the idea of seeing this film were two things: 1. It has Tim Roth, of whom I've been a fan since Reservoir Dogs and have never been disappointed in whenever he's been on the screen. 2. The trailer presented the situation in a much more dynamic fashion, such that Chris' concerns seemed to be far more of a conflict arc that would need to be resolved. But it's actually much more of a Bergman approach (surprise!) in that the conflict is mostly within Chris as she struggles with certain elements of their living situation that don't have much to do with whether or not she's trying to write a screenplay. Indeed, Roth's role as Tony basically ends up being a sounding board for Chris and little else. He's supposedly the motivator for them being there, but he ends up being almost incidental to the story, as everything revolves around Krieps' character and the characters that she, in turn, creates who are then brought to life in the film. So, I didn't get much conflict and I didn't get much Roth, either.

There's nothing wrong with a story being simple. Some of the best films ever made have been quite small stories that the director explored with enough depth and feeling that they had much more impact than one might expect. As I mentioned Kurosawa, Rashomon is a perfect example of this approach. It's also a perfect contrast to much more complex (and in some cases, overwrought) stories like, say, Dune (just to pull a name from a hat.) 'Simple' doesn't mean 'simplistic.' Most of Bergman's stories were, on their face, fairly simple but it was his willingness to explore the deeper meanings of his themes and emotions of his characters that made them work. Director Mia Hansen-Løve, as you might expect, takes a similar approach here and ends it as soon as the emotional arc of Chris' experience is fulfilled. But the film's slow pace and length of two hours left me doing perhaps too much examination of those emotional themes and wondering if there was anything else to accompany them.

It's a well-made film and certainly something that Bergman fans will probably revel in. I just don't happen to be one of them and I think it kind of missed the mark for me, as a result.

Arrakis revisited

Dune is something of a landmark in the science fiction world. Most SF fans are aware of it even if they haven't read it or haven't sat through one of the film versions prior to Denis Villeneuve's 2021 effort. Consequently, almost everyone will have some kind of predisposition when they watch this version. Mine is colored by all four of the original novels (Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God-Emperor of Dune), David Lynch's 1984 film, the Sci-Fi Channel's limited series of 2000, and multiple sessions of the legendary board game from Avalon Hill (I even own an original copy. Woo! Nerd credit!) So, uh, the story is familiar to me. But one of my key departures from much of Dune fandom is that, despite it sharing the 1965 Hugo award for Best Novel, I've never been really impressed with Dune as a story. (In that respect, I think the book it shared the award with, Roger Zelazny's This Immortal, is better.) The writing is somewhat pedantic. The pace is slow. Character development that isn't demanded by the plot (e.g. Paul Atreides) is basically non-existent. But what made Dune into a landmark (and a franchise) is the exercise in world-building, which is phenomenal. Just like Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Frank Herbert drew heavily from history and the cultures of the Middle East to create a universe with an enormous backstory, languages, customs, traditions, and intricate political machinations that few others have matched and which certainly exceeded almost everything to that point in the SF genre. The Dune franchise exists because of the data dump that is the original novel. What makes it intriguing is that sensation of vast fields of unexplored territory that is only hinted at in most of the film and TV productions. Someone recently referred to this most recent film as "this generation's Star Wars", which is understandable because George Lucas did the same thing; creating a whole galaxy of history and peoples surrounding his B-movie Western about Luke Skywalker and a couple droids. But what that writer misses with that comparison is that Dune has been its own thing for over 50 years now, in the same way that Star Wars is still a thing for this new generation as it has been for the last couple. Yes, a whole new group of people will now be immersed in the concept of the kwisatz haderach, but it's been around for a while and, of course, given that it's basically a prophet/messiah concept, it's been around a long time before Frank Herbert, too.

First off, I think the decision to split the film into two parts was a wise one (Everyone is forewarned when the initial title comes onscreen as "Dune: Part One.") The novel is too long and too dense to be properly conveyed in two hours. Lynch argued furiously with Universal Pictures to include more of the tremendous amount of material that he had filmed so that the story wouldn't seem shallow. When they refused, thinking that SF audiences were too stupid to handle anything over two hours, he eventually took his name off the film, leaving the credit to the legendary Alan Smithee. But just as importantly, Villeneuve instead embraces the aesthetic and atmosphere of the novel; avoiding the 80s shine and glitz which distorted Lynch's work. While there are laser weapons in this film, the director heeds the book's insistence that they're quite rare and dangerous for the users, so we see a lot more visceral, hand-to-hand combat, which Lynch tried to sidestep with the ridiculous "sound weapons." And you can see right away that this is a Villeneuve film when he quickly demonstrates his trademark dialogue close-ups with very hazy backgrounds. It's a highlighting technique that shows up regularly in his films and which serves this story well because, in truth, most of the action is in the dialogue and personal interactions. Dune is a highly political story and that's not something that's normally explained at the end of a sword. If you really want to understand what's going on, you have to pay attention to who these people are and what they're saying.

Of course, what that often means is that the pace of the film gets a little laborious and the atmosphere is one of angst, especially in the scenes involving Paul. I never got to the point where I was doing the "move along" hand motion but Villeneuve takes his time with the emotion and drama of a number of different scenes. That's not a bad thing, per se, because the book is that way, too (and, really, much slower and more laborious) and if you're going to do the book justice, then you have to take your time. In truth, he still skips over a lot, as he doesn't bother to explain who the mentats (Thufir Hawat and Piter De Vries) are or why they exist or how Dr. Yueh circumvented his Imperial conditioning. One of my mild disappointments was actually how little screen time Piter (David Dastmalchian) gets as, even though his role wasn't large in the novel, one of the little pleasures of Lynch's film is Brad Dourif in that same role ("It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.") Also, one of the key moments of the novel is Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac) interacting with the Shadout Mapes and learning about Fremen culture and, of course, first discovering the betrayal occurring within his house. That's almost completely glossed over here and Stilgar (an almost-unrecognizable Javier Bardem) is given a more prominent moment to suggest that he feels a connection with the duke, which seems like a place where something hit the cutting room floor that might've been important for story coherence.

Visually, it's spectacular, as you might expect from both a 2021 sci-fi film and one by Villeneuve (Arrival being his most notable other example.) The sandworms are impressive, the shield fights are exciting (although I question just how slow a lot of the lethal strikes were moving in most of them), and the depictions of things as functional as the ornithopters are really well done. The dramatic moments of the landing ramps and various groups' arrival; the massive presence and implicit threat of the Guild transport ships; the overview of the sprawling Arrakeen; all great stuff. However, I will say that I was disappointed to not see a scene similar to the one Lynch opened his film with: the arrival of a navigator to talk about the Guild's involvement in the overall plot. (That element is replaced by Gaius Helen Mohiam (Charlotte Rampling) coordinating with Baron Harkonnen (the eversteady Stellan Skarsgård) on Giedi Prime.) The appearance of a navigator in Lynch's film was both a great representation of how they'd been described in the books and a reinforcement of how important the spice was to the empire and what it did to its constant users. It's a very visceral element of the working mechanisms behind the empire and it helped make the spice into something more than a MacGuffin. It escapes that here because of the time they spend showing its effect on Paul as he breathes it in out in the desert, but for all of this film, the emperor, the Guild, and pretty much every element of that political life outside the catfight between the Atreides and the Harkonnens is just background noise. Again, it's a data dump and some things are going to get sidelined for the sake of a two-hour (presumably four-hour, if the expected Part Two is ever announced) production, but there are certain things that make the Dune universe what it is and I've always felt that the Guild is a big part of that. All of those visual elements are underwritten by an excellent score by Hans Zimmer, which is another notch in his impressive track record. He keeps the majesty and mystery of what's happening foremost in your mind and weaves in plenty of sounds that many would identify with musical styles that touch on the cultures that are part of the story. On a technical level, the film is really well done.

Overall, I'd say it's a better version of the story than either the 1984 or 2000 productions; in part because of Villeneuve's style, which incorporates enough spiritual atmosphere to really let that part of the novel shine through. Herbert wasn't shy about mining cultures for inspiration. The term mahdi, used by the Fremen to label (and often dismiss) Paul comes right from the Arabic term, meaning "the savior" or "the guided one" and whom is an expected unifier of the world before the end times in Shia and Baha'i traditions. The novel is draped in a number of Islamic motifs and Villeneuve doesn't shy away from those spiritual trappings, even if he doesn't call them out as starkly as Herbert did. In the end, it's a worthwhile effort to try to deliver a new version of the story. I wouldn't consider it groundbreaking or compelling, as there are no performances that really stand out and I am irretrievably jaded as far as the story is concerned, but it's definitely worth your while if you're a Dune fan. Keep in mind, of course, that it's also only half the story, so perhaps my assessment will improve when (if) Part Two is released.

The song remains the same

As I've mentioned here a couple times before, one of my all-time favorite films is the director's cut of Blade Runner (no voiceover, ends in the elevator.) Among the many things that make it a favorite are: 1. It leaves unanswerable questions unanswered, rather than trying to resolve everything with a happy ending. 2. It asks those questions in a subtle fashion, rather than beating you over the head with them. The film we saw tonight, I'm Your Man, takes a similar approach to a very broad topic. Whereas Blade Runner posed the question of what it actually means to be human, I'm Your Man asked its protagonist (and, in turn, its audience) what it means to love and be loved. As most who've been in and out of serious relationships can tell you, there's no simple answer to that question or even why it often is asked, internally or externally, directly or obliquely, by other people and by oneself.

The premise isn't hugely innovative. A driven, mostly isolated anthropologist studying Sumerian cuneiform is asked to participate in a company's test run of androids that they're marketing as the "perfect companions." Her task from her superior at her university is to spend three weeks with one and then write a report about the experience. As Jaime noted tonight, it's pretty similar to any of a number of TV shows and films that have preceded it, including an episode of Black Mirror. But the screenplay is very clever and the performances of the two leads, Maren Eggert as the anthropologist and Dan Stevens as the android, are excellent, as they maintain a very light touch on a very heavy question, even in the more emotional moments of the film. In some ways, it's not too dissimilar from Blade Runner, in that the detached, seemingly machine-like person is often contrasted with the more warm and sociable machine who is programmed to do everything he can to make her happy; an emotion that she doesn't always find herself willing or able to embrace.

It is, of course, often difficult to define exactly what makes one happy, in the same way that it's difficult to define what love is. Alma (Eggert) is immersed in her work, in part because that's who she is and in part because she's been burned by some personal circumstances that make it more comfortable for her to approach life in a very defined, professional, and mechanical fashion. Those circumstances don't make her "happy", per se, but she's accepted them as comfortable, as opposed to the uncertainty which could be even worse. Tom (Stevens) is programmed to be her perfect man and to do everything that his algorithm dictates that would make her life better emotionally, but that's not necessarily the kind of love or relationship that she's looking for. Indeed, at one point, she tries to test his ability to take her emotional abuse because she feels like she needs the friction, the personal give-and-take, that many people define as the essential energy of their relationships. But Tom's only feedback is positive, no matter how much pressure she applies, which leaves her with an emptiness that no amount of tenderness and concern can fill.

Now, a lot of people would probably recoil at the idea of a "perfect" companion who exists solely to make one happy. But Alma runs into someone who's also been paired with an android and whom has never had a good experience interacting with other humans on an intimate level and that person is overjoyed at the prospect of staying with his companion. Is that person's sense of love any less valid than Alma's? Part of what she recoils from is Tom's irreducible good nature because it reminds her that he's a machine and not what she considers to be "human." But many people confronted with poor matches or unceasing stress and conflict might be happy to indulge in the continual support and care that comes from having a companion like Tom. In some ways, it's like having a pet who is always thrilled to see you and be in your company. Is that kind of love any less genuine than that with another human who typically has more complex wants, needs, and emotional states?

Again, these are deep questions and it would have been easy to slip into a maudlin story about missed chances or the failure of some people to appreciate what they have. But director Maria Schrader kept the film moving at a steady pace; not lingering on moments of dramatic import, but instead continuing to push us forward, even when Tom stops to spell out the underlying reasons for Alma's reactions like a physician diagnosing a broken bone. Many would probably react poorly to this, thinking that the machine's lack of a lighter touch to those moments demonstrated a lack of feeling, both on its part and the storytellers'. But I found it to be perfectly in tune with the story being told, not least because Alma's whole career was about trying to show the underlying beauty of functional script in clay from 5000 years ago. The message there was not only that humans from ancient times had emotions and conveyed them in writing, but also that the past is, in many ways, just like the future. The human condition doesn't stray too far from its origins, whether you're communicating with shaped mud or AI. In the end, as with most relationships, there are no simple solutions and everyone has to find their own answers for how they define them. Along the way, the film remains very funny and leaves us always eager to see what's next; kind of like a good relationship. Highly recommended.

Pacing and rhythm

I don't like musicals. Despite my distaste for them, I did sit down and try to watch 2016s "greatest movie evah", La La Land a few months after it had been declared the best movie of the year by a bunch of people in the business only too eager to tell us about how great it was to be in the business. I lasted about 15 minutes before walking out of the room. I was mildly reassured by a friend whose wife LOVES musicals who also couldn't stand it that I wasn't completely biased. I know my bias isn't omnipresent because I actually enjoy classical opera and have seen a few. Certainly, I'm drawn to the productions of composers I already like, such as Mozart, but the aspects that tend to annoy me about musicals don't have the same effect when it comes to the original art form, as it were. And that's what makes my reaction to Annette a little more unusual, since it's essentially a modern opera. Moreso than things like La La Land or West Side Story, there are no dialogue segues between the singing. It's all singing, all the time, just as in opera. Unfortunately, like most musical performances of whatever stripe, part of the entertainment is watching said performers actually singing, which means the storytelling is at a somewhat slower pace than most films. That means that you really need to be interested in the story and the emotional underpinnings that it rides upon... and I simply wasn't.

In the same way that I wasn't impressed by the trauma of life as an actor in La La Land, I wasn't particularly intrigued by the contrast between Henry McHenry (Adam Driver), abrasive stand-up comedian, and Ann Defrasnoux (Marion Cotillard), soprano. It seemed obvious that Henry's cynicism and general distaste for society wasn't going to mix well with Ann's prominent joie de vivre. Creating a child between the two was the Frankenstein's monster in the mix and she was smartly displayed as an automaton in that respect for most of the film, who exhibits the voice and innocence of her mother which only further contributes to Henry's discomfort and inability to understand others' desire to embrace life, rather than scorn it. In that way, the titular Annette becomes both the motivating factor and the quandary of the film, which is all very operatic.

But that basic, primal story isn't powerful enough to escape the turgid pace that the performances require. Instead of the reaction that I normally have to something like The Magic Flute, where the orchestral intro to another aria builds up excitement, I found myself frequently sighing in frustration at the fact that Henry was, once again, singing about his worldly disdain for everything that was happening around him. Driver is a capable singer, but not a compelling one, which doesn't help when he's the central figure in the film who has to constantly do that. Similarly, Cotillard, whom I almost always enjoy on screen, isn't generating thrills when she's carrying a tune and, because of the more dynamic role that Driver inhabits, she ends up being kind of a sideshow in the larger picture. The "pure" characters are Ann and Annette. But they're almost never the interesting ones, since the tragedy (and the crimes associated with that) center around Henry, who's played by the largely-less-interesting-to-watch-onscreen Driver.

Perhaps I was setting myself up to fail when it comes to appreciating the picture, because I did almost no research on it before we saw it. The trailer involves the most amusing bits and doesn't really indicate that this is a musical of any sort, other than Ann being a singer of some kind and their daughter following in her footsteps. So when the film opened and the cast did a Greek chorus thing, by immediately breaking into song and giving a meta look at the story as a whole, I was intrigued. That quickly changed to frustration when the next scene made clear that it was going to be this way throughout and I began to lose patience with the film's pace. I think the visuals were smart in that every scene was lit and staged in such a way that it was clear that they were all studio sets; presenting the "all of life's a stage" idea by demonstrating how this might be possible in the theater that was home to both main characters. In the end, I don't think there was any particular failing that stood out to me. It's just really not my song to sing.

The verdigris of choices

There's a genre of late Medieval literature known as the "chivalric romance." It was a way to tell what in modern times we would refer to as "fantasy"; colored with the transition from the legends of ancient times that once carried the weight of the word of god(s) while still emphasizing the mystery of the wilderness and the unknown, even as Western society lurched toward a greater understanding of the world around us with the advent of the Enlightenment and so forth. Sir Gawain and The Green Knight is one of those chivalric romances, as it incorporates a member of King Arthur's coterie of knights (understood to be myths even then) and plays on the idea that if you ride far enough into the hinterlands, there's no telling whom you'll meet and what might happen to you, even if it means meeting the person (headless or not) that you were intending to find in the first place. It's a pretty simple plot about honor, chivalry, and especially chastity, since even in medieval poetry, there's an acknowledgment that sex sells and always has.

The Green Knight is a modern retelling of the poem that veers away from that simple tale and expands it into an even broader examination of what it means to be honorable and to keep one's obligations and to know thyself, to paraphrase a certain writer. It's clear that writer/director David Lowery wanted to keep that air of the unknown, as most of the lighting (moody, shadowed), visual effects (mists, close-ups that leave the rest of the screen in a haze), and the pacing of the film lean heavily in that direction. If you've ever seen the last third of the film, Excalibur, where the land is in dire straits and the knights struggle against the darkness and the evil sorcery and fog of Morgan le Fay are extant in every corner, you'll know what I mean.

But there's a lot more going on here on a personal level than there was in Excalibur, which attempted to condense the Arthurian legends as a whole into a two hour film. We meet Gawain (Dev Patel) early on and are given the impression that he's kind of a wastrel who spends a lot of his time in a brothel, but one who knows that he should be aiming higher in life. His mother (Sarita Choudhury; credited only as Mother) is of the same mind and starts casting spells to guide her son, King Arthur's nephew, to that greater destiny. In this respect, I think they were making reference to Margause, Gawain's mother from the legends, who was Arthur's sister, but whom is often mixed up with Morgan (as in Excalibur) as a more menacing figure in the story. There are a couple tales that say that Gawain was the product of accidental incest between king and sister, so more son than nephew, but the film stops at basically identifying him as Arthur's favorite. Said favorite is the first to stand up and accept the challenge of the titular Green Knight, who takes his own beheading by Gawain with aplomb and saunters out, reminding him that the same blow will be returned in a year and a day.

From there we see that Gawain largely returns to wastrel mode before finally deciding that he better stand up and take his beheading like an honorable knight if he wants anyone to look him in the eye again. From there, we roughly follow the path of the poem, albeit with several side jaunts along the way, involving restoring a dead woman's body to her bed at the behest of her ghost, a talking fox, and a parade of female giants. We do eventually get to the strange castle with the test of honesty between Gawain, the hunting lord, and the horny wife, but it ends up having little to do with the Green Knight or the future that Gawain sees for himself if he fails his test of bravery.

In one respect, it's true that Lowery's story is more elaborate and, to some degree, more interesting than the original romance, which is a pretty simple lesson about the qualities that knights are supposed to value most. But the downside of that increased elaboration is that it kind of loses the thread of Gawain's famous green sash along the way. The story feels like it's being mysterious for the sake of being so. Certainly, the lesson carried by keeping one's word to the ghost of a woman whose house and bed you take advantage of is obvious. But also obvious is the suggestion to not trust anyone on the road when Gawain is ambushed by common thieves and loses the Green Knight's axe and the sash until they're mysteriously returned to him later. If Lowery's intent was to play up the "Lord works in mysterious ways" theme that inhabits the original poem and similar examples of the time, OK. But it might've been better served by excluding things like the giant parade and the animal Gawain has selflessly protected to that point suddenly reminding us of a very different film altogether. I don't mind ambiguity in the stories that I'm told. Having people develop their own perspectives on the story can be a really appealing thing, rather than having it spoon fed to you. But the best examples of that approach are those stories that draw into question what our hero should be doing at any given moment, rather than either presenting the obvious choice and simply making it strange or leaving the audience in the dark as to what the choice is in the first place.

In the end, the primary choice facing Gawain remains with him to the end: he is himself, whether he's trying to be a knight or imagining himself as king. There's a certain level of required honesty in that which gives the film its central appeal and makes Patel's character worthy of following the whole way through. (In other words, it's worth watching.) I just thought that some of the fantastical elements actually clouded that central lesson and a leaner, less-mystical story might have been the better way to approach it.

A lot of moves, but most of them brilliant

I'm a huge Steven Soderbergh fan and I know I'm far from alone. In fact, I get the feeling that many of his recent pictures have been made up of actors whom are also Soderbergh fans, not only because of the quirky, seemingly-insouciant way that he produces and directs his films, but also because he tends to focus on screenplays that give them a lot to work with. No Sudden Move is no different in this respect, as it boasts a star-studded cast in larger roles (Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Brendan Fraser, Jon Hamm) and smaller ones (Amy Seimetz, Ray Liotta, Bill Duke, Frankie Shaw), and has the twisting story that gives all of them their moment(s) in the spotlight. In brief, the film is about a bunch of gangsters trying to make some money while eagerly double-crossing each other at every turn and sweeping a bunch of "normal" people into their cloud, while the real gangsters that run everything from above simply wait for the dust to settle. That really doesn't do the story justice, but it's difficult to go into detail without revealing what should be experienced firsthand by anyone reading this.

Given my childhood origins, the setting of mid-50s Detroit is appealing to me from the outset. The fact that the story centers around people trying to press every lever they can to get ahead in a society described by one character as "You think you have power. You think you have influence. But you don't." As it turns out, that character is basically right because history tells us that he's right. But those characters don't know that and they play every scene like they have the world by the short hairs or are ready with a backup plan (or two or three) if their grip happens to slip. The script also weaves in the sordid history of Detroit's "urban renewal" (Black Bottom, etc.) and the rampant corporate corruption that still rules the nation (and soils the air.) This is a regular feature of Soderbergh's films, as he's never far away from dropping a statement or two into the otherwise fictional stories that he delivers. This one also carries little allusions to America's racial politics and their constant presence in the automotive industry (Big Corp's attraction to fascism springs to mind these days), as well as subtle hints to the sexuality that so many kept hidden at that time.

Another aspect that's been a regular feature of his career is the use of unusual equipment. Having shot films with only a Super 8 camera or with only an Iphone, this time he doesn't go quite that far, but does use a recurring format for most of the scenes around and inside the homes of the few "regular" Detroit inhabitants, which I can only call a "peephole cam", as it shades the corners of the screen and enlarges the center, just like it would if you were looking through a peephole in a door. I'm not sure if the intent was to represent the audience peeping into the lives of regular folk, while we were part of the vast conspiracy that the otherwise criminal element (both street and corporate) pursues throughout the story, but that's the closest I can come to figuring out what the purpose of that particular mechanic was. I have to say that it was kind of a distraction to the film overall, but it didn't quite reach the level of an annoyance. Maybe it's just because I wasn't in on the joke. But a lot of the characters could say that, too.

Don Cheadle does well as a man just trying to catch a break after a life gone wrong. Likewise, Del Toro handles his role as the unreliable gangster with aplomb, although I feel like he's become a bit typecast, as his role resembled something of a fusion of his parts in Traffic (another Soderbergh production) and Snatch. It's always good to be thought of whenever the right casting is needed for a specific role, but it becomes less so when those roles start looking and sounding the same. Similarly, Jon Hamm seems locked into "straight man" roles, whether they're genuinely straight/heroic/law-abiding or not. In contrast, David Harbour (of Stranger Things fame) is a semi-surprising joy as an imposed-upon accountant who's living the typical American, middle class home life, while carrying on an affair at the office and, when pressed to confront his boss for a document that will keep his family alive, announces every punch that he's about to throw with: "This is a punch." It's as effective a declaration as one might expect from a man who's never thrown one and who later reveals just how much of a lack of control he has over what's going on around him, especially in an excellent motel room scene with the partner of his affair, played by Frankie Shaw, who simply shines in her few minutes of screen time. Bill Duke also has several excellent moments with his usual penetrating-stare-above-lowered-glasses move.

I thought the production was really well done on a visual level. Those homes looked like they came right out of a lot of Detroit neighborhoods that are still standing today. Also, many of the city's landmark buildings looked appropriately spiffy as they were at that time. I wondered a bit about a couple details, such as the regular references to the "Big Four" of the auto industry. I've never heard anyone refer to anything but the "Big Three" (aka GM, Ford, Chrysler) and I'm pretty sure Packard-Studebaker was never large enough to be in that grouping. (Similarly, 1954 was the year that AMC was created and they were still never considered to be in the top tier.) I appreciated the mentions of the unjust removal of the Black Bottom and Paradise Valley neighborhoods, but wondered that they didn't cite the highway construction that was the official reason (removal of Black residents and businesses being the primary one.) But a tip of the hat to writer, Ed Solomon, for also being cognizant of Detroit's mob history, with the mention of The Purple Gang, although 1954 was long after they had any presence in the city.

But all of that detail can add to a perception that there's simply too much going on at any one moment. While I'm always interested in a complex story or one with multiple angles, there is a limit to all things. While it's a measure of respect for the intelligence of many of the characters that they can see multiple angles and seem prepared for most of what befalls them and have already mapped the routes around the bad spots (Soderbergh takes care to show Curt Goynes (Cheadle) setting up his backup plans, rather than using them as deus ex machina-style surprises), one occasionally has to wonder at the ability of any one person to cover that many angles and not be completely paranoid. I think Soderbergh does a good job in representing Goynes and Russo (Del Toro) as essentially friendless because of the lives they've chosen to lead, but I think it's fair to wonder just how much off-the-cuff scheming can go so right. Until it doesn't. So, I can't say this was Soderbergh's best crime/heist film (Out of Sight still probably takes that title) but it's definitely a solid example of his craft and well worth seeing.