Archive | November, 2024

Gladiator II

21 Nov

Ridley Scott takes a stab at a sequel 24 years after Crowe, but going not quite as deep

Not sure that “Gladiator,” the Oscar-winning sword-and-sandal revenge epic starring Russell Crowe, needed a sequel, but the fates, furies and a cadre of calculating Hollywood studio execs have deemed it so with a clear, hopeful eye on a box-office bang-up. It’s not on par with its 2000 predecessor, but the script by David Scarpa, who collaborated last year on “Napoleon” with director Ridley Scott (still cranking them out well into his 80s), does connect the dots smartly with blood and purpose. We find ourselves 20-something years since the events of the last film that concluded with the death of Crowe’s Colosseum warrior, Maximus after killing hedonistic, self-interested Emperor Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) and, in theory, restoring the voice of democracy to the senate and the people. What’s happened in the interim is anything but: Rome is run by two foppishly fey brothers, Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger), man-boys with a penchant for mascara, bloodshed and monkeys. Taking a step back, it’s eerie to realize how much that paradigm feels all too close and reflective of our new now – earmarking the struggle for democracy as pervasive throughout humankind’s brief, short history.

G2 begins with the siege of Numidia (Northern Africa) by Roman legions led by general Marcus Acacius (Pedro Pascal), a dutiful soldier whose political ideals don’t align with those of the decadent, indulgent twin emperors, though he seems all-in on the expansion of the republic. Galleons crash into a seawall, flaming boulders are catapulted, arrows fly and swords get crossed. The resistance is fervent and game, led in part by a farmer-military tactician named Hanno (a beefed up Paul Mescal, of “Aftersun” and “Foe”) whose wife (Yuval Gowen) likewise straps on the lorica segmentata and joins the fray, but Marcus and his troops overwhelm the seaside city easily. Caught by an arrow, Hanno’s wife is one of the casualties. As a result – just as it was with Maximus – a blood grudge ignites and becomes the film’s plot-driving fire: revenge or death. 

Given the title and what came before, the action heads back to Rome, where Marcus is feted for his feat while Hanno is shackled and thrown into the gladiator pool overseen by Denzel Washington’s Macrinus, a former slave turned gladiator turned backroom fixer and ultimately, shrewd political manipulator. Rhinos, killer baboons and sharks (yes sharks, they flood the Colosseum for one such contest) join the endless legion of hulking Master Blasters the ill-equipped gladiators have to confront. Akin to the Maximus arc, Hanno becomes an arena sensation for his fortitude, smartly engineered victories (baboon biting not withstanding) and fanciful beheadings. But as this is old Rome, the real violence is what goes on behind gauzy veils in unofficial councils where schemes within schemes are hatched. Macrinus, who seems to have a J. Edgar Hoover-sized file on everyone in town, plays the ends against the means, promising Hanno his shot at Marcus if he can survive long enough; Marcus, angered by mass corruption and injustice, weighs an insurrection to return Rome to its starving masses. Marcus’ wife, Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), the sister of Commodus and Maximus’ love-interest in G1, it turns out, has blood ties to Hanno (the movie tries to obfuscate this point until midway in, but the plot twist – which I won’t tip – is as clear as day, early on).

The machinations feed and play off each other with Shakespearean overtones. Washington’s performance even feels like a kitschy extension of his 2021 performance in “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” He chews the screen while Mescal simmers, seethes and burns. This is Mescal’s first big studio film, and while he’s up to the task, his Hanno doesn’t have the gravelly gravitas of Crowe’s Maximus; he’s mono-focused whereas Maximus seemed to legitimately play the long game. As Marcus, Pascal is dour and soulful in the thin, thankless part that is mostly tinder fanned to fuel the plot. It’s Nielsen, classic and captivating, who shines with a bigger part to play. It’s her uneasy and evolving relationship with Hanno that becomes the film’s emotional epicenter.

Like “Napoleon,” there’s a lot packed into “Gladiator II.” Not all of it sticks. The overly sexualized identities of the two emperors (and others), gets far too close to the hyperbolic tipping point (think “Caligula”) and stokes the embers of gender politics that so roiled and divided our nation two weeks ago. Then there’s the matter of seemingly unlimited access to Hanno in his cordoned-off jail cell between contests, where Lucilla and Marcus continually score covert meetings despite the emperors’ forbidding. As far as history goes, Nielsen and Mescal’s characters were true historic figures, as was Commodus, but the plotlines and narrative in the two “Gladiators” are all historical fiction. It’s too bad we can’t turn the page like Scott and Scarpa and rescript this moment.

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Short Takes

16 Nov

“Memoir of a Snail” and “A Real Pain”

‘Memoir of a Snail’ (2024)

Not a claymation curio for the whole family, nor a sequel to “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” (2021). No, this very dark and adult animated tale of twins separated after the death of their father and placed in foster care has edgy, plot-driving incursions into swinging, fat feeding, pyromania and religious zealotry. The film is wickedly funny at times but tenderly bittersweet, with deeply realized characters. The casting, an inspired all-star slate from Down Under,  pairs “Succession” star Sarah Snook and Kodi Smit-McPhee (“Power of the Dog”) as Grace and Gilbert Pudel, fraternal twins born with health issues and bullied at school. Mom died early and dad, a street performer who struggles to keep the family afloat, succumbs a few years later; Grace and Gilbert get placed with families at opposite ends of Australia. Much of the film is told through the longing letters between the two, desperate to reunite. Neither is in an ideal situation. Gilbert lives with Calvinist religious zealots who want to “pray the gay out” and abusively employ him as indentured labor on their apple orchard. Grace lives pretty much on her own in a nice house, because her absentee foster parents are swingers and darting constantly out to key parties or nudist retreats. Her bestie is an 80-year-old firecracker named Pinky (a brilliant Jacki Weaver), whose tale of how she earned the nickname and a sidebar about having sex with John Denver in a helicopter are uproarious delights. Directed by Adam Elliot, making a strong impression with his second feature, “Memoir of a Snail” is agile in construct and scrumptious to behold – “The Nightmare Before Christmas” good. The “shell” theme about the personal baggage we all carry around with us and how we withdraw or put up walls is a bit thinly etched, but the movie’s sibling bond is strongly felt. It’s like the dark, loving embrace of Tim Burton done with the edgy verve of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. It’s also one of the best films you can see in a theater now.

‘A Real Pain’ (2024)

Another film featuring a “Succession” star (in addition to Sarah Snook in “Memoir of a Snail” and “The Apprentice,” starring Jeremy Strong in an Oscar-worthy turn, now on Amazon Prime). Kieran Culkin stars opposite Jessie Eisenberg (“The Social Network”) as Benji to his David, cousins who sojourn to Poland to visit the house their Holocaust-surviving grandmother lived in and connect with their Jewish roots. The two are cut from vastly different cloths; Benji is slack, conflicted and seemingly adrift, whereas David is rooted (married, with a child) and tightly wound. We never get the full details of their stateside profiles, but they don’t much matter and you can fill in the blanks easily given their dynamic. The pair signs onto a Holocaust tour led by an amiable guide (Will Sharpe) who, along with a survivor of the Rwandan civil war (Kurt Egyiawan) examining the toll of genocide in other parts of the world, are the only two who do not have personal, Jewish ties to Poland. In the group too is Jennifer Grey of “Dirty Dancing” fame as a middle-aged woman going through a tough divorce. Benji sidetracks the group regularly with his raffish whims – posing for photos at a statue of liberating soldiers as if part of the platoon, or requesting that the guide dig into the souls of Holocaust victims and tell their story rather than just reciting their names from a register. He becomes something of the group’s mercurial class clown, though many of his politely peevish plays are sparked by seeds of genuine emotional intelligence. He’s an amiable lost boy and clearly one subject of the film’s title. As youths, he and David used to be closer, but given time, space and the arc of life, have grown apart, so “the pain” refers also to Benji’s loneliness and the pair’s fraying over the years as well as the inherent trauma of digging into the atrocities of the past. The film, written and directed by Eisenberg, has a talky, European meandering feel to it, a bit like those Linklater films that paired Ethan Hawke with Julie Delpy – people who care deeply for each other yet who talk around a topic. Eisenberg also avoids making the Holocaust a didactic distraction with leaden exposition. It’s present in every frame, but “A Real Pain” is a character study first. Eisenberg, cutting just his second feature, does a solid job of balancing the tale with the looming shadow of world-changing events. It’s a journey of revelation and reconnection that works on the strength of authentic, awkward chemistry between its two leads.

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Short Takes

8 Nov

“The Wild Robot,” “Don’t Move” and “Woman of the Hour”

‘The Wild Robot’ (2024)

A very “Wall-E”-esque pleaser with something to say about humans, machines, emotional intelligence and environmental stewardship. Marrying all that together is an AI ’bot named Roz (voiced by Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o, “12 Years a Slave,” “Us”) whose shipping container is tossed overboard during a storm, marooning her on a remote island with rich Northeastern biodiversity (pinewoods, bears, beavers, geese and possums) that feels right out of Camden, Maine. Roz is a home helper droid made by a megacompany like Amazon to perform tasks such as making beds, building sheds, shearing sheep and so on. Borrowing a page from Isaac Asimov, the semihumanoid robot (think a rounder C-3PO with spindly arms and legs) has a “do no harm” rule – or close enough. Stranded in a humanless remote, Roz reprograms herself to learn animal lingo and learns that the fauna refer to her as “the monster.” In the awkward dance of finding a task to do, tragic happenstance has Roz becoming the mother imprint for a runt gosling named Brightbill (Kit Connor). The to-do then teaching the hatchling how to forage for food, swim and ultimately fly, because the fall migration is around the corner. Other geese don’t think Brightbill is long for this world and bully him, while hanging close to Roz is Fink (“Mandalorian” Pedro Pascal), a fox posing as a knowing adviser when his true intent is a fast meal. Roz’s transmitter to HQ keeps dropping out or breaking, which ultimately brings to the island a maintenance droid (Stephanie Hsu, “The Menu”) that’s not a fan of Roz developing emotionally. Issues of AI and the environment are at the fore, without pulling focus from the central core bonding of Roz, Fink and Brightbill. The animation, as orchestrated by Oscar nominee Chris Sanders (“Lilo & Stitch,” “How to Train Your Dragon”) is well-envisioned and robust and likely to earn him another nod (though it’ll have some real competition from the Latvian gem “Flow” that just played The Brattle). But the heart of the film is castaway Roz, a tin woodswoman who becomes emotionally aware.

‘Don’t Move’ (2024)

Nice-guy serial killers seem to be all the rage. Already this year we’ve had bad dad Josh Hartnett in “Trap,” and “Dating Game” contestant Rodney Alcala in Anna Kendrick’s impressive true-crime-adjacent debut “Woman of the Hour.” Now we get this tale of cat-and-mouse survivorship in which a grieving mother hiking the California mountains (Kelsey Asbille) stands at a ledge contemplating a jump and is talked down sort-of by a dashing, passing-by dad-guy (Finn Wittrock, so fun as one of the two DIY hedge fund knuckleheads in “The Big Short”). Everything’s cordial until they get to the trailhead parking lot and Wittrock’s Richard tases Asbille’s Iris. Iris is zip-tied, tossed in the back of his car and told that he’s going to take her to his cabin, braid her hair and add her to his list of female bodies at the bottom of the lake. Iris gets free and nearly overpowers Richard, and that’s when he hits her with his Plan B: She’s been injected with a paralyzing agent that’s 20 minutes away from kicking in. The film, directed by Brian Netto and Adam Schindler, moves in unpredictable turns as others – a police officer and a fellow cabin owner – cross paths with Richard and Iris. The tension remains high even if elements of the underlying story don’t quite work, including the how and why for Richard’s predilection. Asbille, controversial for her claims of Native Americans origins to shore up her casting as an Indigenous person in the hit series “Yellowstone,” is a bit too glamorous in the part but still compelling, doing much with her large, luminous eyes and trembling lips because, at one point, that’s all she got. It’s not bad, but if you’re on Netflix, “Woman of the Hour” is the better way to spend your time. 

‘Woman of the Hour’ (2023)

Actress Anna Kendrick makes her directorial debut with this chilling true-crime-adjacent serial-killer thriller set in the late ’70s. Like this year’s “MaXXXine,” it revels in the era’s scummy kitsch and skewers its rampant misogyny. The main event is a “Dating Game” show segment in which a young, aspiring actor named Sheryl Bradshaw (Kendrick) is a reluctant contestant, having signed on at the behest of her agent. If you’ve never seen “The Dating Game” or other indelible shows of the time such as “The Gong Show” and “The Newlywed Game,” they’re peppered with innuendos, evoking a degree of cringeworthiness that’s captured well by Kendrick and writer Ian McDonald. Bachelor No. 1 is a bit of a blockhead who can’t answer a question confidently, No. 2’s not much better, but at least he doesn’t trip over his tongue. Then there’s No. 3, who cleans up, masterfully playing off Sheryl’s wit and verve and turning his adversaries’ miscues to his advantage. He’s also Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto), who that year would be arrested and convicted of the murder of six women – and implicated in as many as 130 murders. Of course, he’s Sheryl’s pick. Kendrick and McDonald transform a rote, straight-ahead story into an ever-shifting collage of terror and charm, with cutaways showing Alcala helping a flight attendant move into her apartment, taking snaps of a lonely pregnant woman abandoned by her boyfriend at a national park, and a beach party photo shoot. I don’t need to tell you how these encounters go; it’s how Kendrick decides to shoot and navigate the grimness that matters, as it’s done with subtle, unconventional style and great, visceral affect. Zovatto is a great casting choice and performer, and his Alcala is a natural charmer with a brimming undercurrent of malice – echoing Philip Seymour Hoffman in some of his roles, or Vincent D’Onofrio in “Full Metal Jacket” (1987). Kendrick, not far from her refuses-to-be-a-victim persona of “A Simple Favor” (2018), has some feminist zing as Sheryl, going off script in the final round to ask the bachelors, “What are girls for?” You know Alcala’s a killer early, giving many of his scenes – with his prey, or in the offices of the Los Angeles Times, where he freelances as a photographer – a delectable unpredictability and creepiness. It’s an ambitious and impressive debut for Kendrick, and one that should bear greater casting opportunities for Zovatto.

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Anora

1 Nov

‘Pretty Woman’ for a darker age of Russian oligarchs and goons

Sean Baker, who caught fire with “Tangerine,” the punchy 2015 trans dramedy shot on iPhones, and scored with follow-ups “The Florida Project” (2017) and “Red Rocket” (2021), nabbed the Palme d’Or at Cannes for this Cinderella tale about a sex worker whose fortunes change when she hooks up with a freewheeling ne’er-do-well with limitless financial resources. “Pretty Woman” (1990) this is not, though. Given it’s a Baker film, fairy-tale endings are strictly verboten.

The title character (Mikey Madison), who insists on the moniker “Ani,” works at a Brighton Beach strip club where many of the pole dancers have such control and skill you wonder if they couldn’t make the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team. Ani, who dabbles as an escort, has Eastern bloc roots and can manage her way in Russian; one night she meets a raffish, well-off Russian named Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) whose boyish good looks beg Timothée Chalamet comparisons. Ivan lives in a seaside manse and hasn’t quite mastered English, which, besides Ani’s sensual skill set and large luminous eyes, is key to why they click. In the majority of their scenes, he speaks in Russian and she retorts in tough Jersey girl “tawk.” His regular English miscues endear him to her (and us) and he pays her $15,000 for a weeklong excursion to Vegas where vigorous sex and raucous, all-night parties in a posh, VIP suite are a daily routine.

It’s all blissful indulgence that feels bottomless, but reality steps in. Turns out that big house is really Ivan’s parents’ U.S. pied-à-terre and Ivan is due back in Russia, his lack of citizenship a ticking clock on his stay. When Ivan explains this to Ani, the two opt for Plan B and get hitched. It’s here that the tenor of the film shifts. Alerted to their son’s marriage to a sex worker, Ivan’s parents (Aleksey Serebryakov and Darya Ekamasova, both fantastic and the very definition of oligarch) dispatch their stateside fixer, an Armenian cleric named Toros (Karren Karagulian), to collar Ivan, secure an annulment and ship their son home on the chop-chop. Toros enlists Russian enforcers (Vache Tovmasyan and Yura Borisov), but when they show up to the gated estate, Ivan flees. Much of the rest of the movie becomes a “Hangover”-like quest to track down Ivan as Toros and his goons head out into the seedy New York night with a reluctant Ani, who proves to be more than a handful as she breaks noses and shatters priceless relics.

As compelling as “Anora” is, the film is long and bears a tinge of tinny hollowness that annoyingly never gets filled – until perhaps the final scene. It feels authentic and has an earned, gritty sheen, but much of the onscreen action feels scripted instead of character driven. The performers more than earn their pay, especially Madison (a Manson girl in “One Upon a Time … in Hollywood”); this film could not be made without her ability to flip on a dime between vulnerable and fierce. Eydelshteyn holds the prepubescent party boy note well, serving as plot catalyst. Karagulian brings a comical, resolute puckishness to his part, reminiscent of F. Murray Abraham in “Scarface” (1983) without the worminess. More nuanced and robust is Borisov as Igor, the more hands-on muscle who lives with his nana and, despite his low-brow occupation, is a sharp reader of souls and often as compassionate as he is intimidating. Like Ivan, he butchers the English language; for him too, Ani is there to bridge the gap. The evolution of their relationship is the ember that smolders throughout. Thematically “Anora” is not that far from “Tangerine” and “Red Rocket,” focusing on angles of the sex industry and those caught in it seeking to find their next stage in life.