The Holdovers (2023)
Oscar-winning director Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti re-team for a poignant and crowd-pleasing holiday movie about outcasts sharing their vulnerabilities with one another over the last week of 1970. Giamatti stars as Paul Hunham, a rigid history teacher at an all-boys academy who just happens to be liked by nobody including his colleagues. He gets the unfortunate duty of staying on campus during the Christmas break and watching over any students who cannot return home for the holidays. Angus (Dominic Sessa) is the last student remaining, a 15-year-old with a history of lying, defiance, and on the verge of expulsion. The other holdover member is Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) as the kitchen staff forced to feed them, a woman whose own adult son recently died in Vietnam. The teacher and student butt heads as they try and co-exist without other supervision, eventually connecting once they lower their defenses and attempt to see one another as flawed human beings with real hurts and disappointments. It’s a simple movie about three different characters from very different experiences pushing against one another and finding common ground. It’s a relationship movie that has plenty of wry humor and strong character beats from debut screenwriter David Hemingson. There may not be a larger theme or thesis that emerges, but being a buddy dramedy about hurt people building their friendships is still a winning formula with excellent writing, directing, and acting working in tandem, which is what we have with The Holdovers. It’s a slice of-life movie that makes you want bigger slices, especially for Mary’s character who thought having her son attend the same prep school would set him up for a promising future (he was denied college admission and thus deferral from the draft). It’s a beguiling movie because it’s about sad and lonely people over the holidays, each experiencing their own level of grief, and the overall feel is warm and fuzzy, like a feel-good movie about people feeling bad. That’s the Alexander Payne effect, finding an ironic edge to nostalgia while exploring hard-won truths with down-on-their-luck characters. The Holdovers is an enjoyable holiday comedy with shades of bitterness to go along with the feel-good uplift. It’s Payne’s Christmas movie and that is is own gift to moviegoers.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Past Lives (2023)
The world of cinema is rife with romantic tales of two people from the past reconnecting and rekindling a passion, learning to love again as older adults now presumably wiser. The Hallmark Christmas industry is practically built from this plot structure, as the man or woman, usually the woman, goes back home to rediscover that their old friend or former flame is still living a humble life and ready to teach him or her about the small pleasures of a simple life. It’s also human nature to think about paths not taken and wonder what may have been. That’s where Past Lives starts and that’s also where it differs. The small-scale indie drama getting some of the best reviews of 2023 follows Nora (Greta Lee) as a thirty-something writer who immigrated to the United States when she was twelve. One of the friends she left behind in South Korea was Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), the boy she was crushing on who she finds again as an adult. In their early twenties, Nora and Hae Sung reconnect online and grow close again, though she requests they take time apart as their lives will not allow them to physically meet again until at least a year later. He agrees. Cut to another twelve years later, and Hae Sung seeks out his old friend, except now Nora is married to another writer, Arthur (John Magaro). What will happen with their 24-years-in-the-making reunion actually takes place?
Past Lives is a very gentle and sparse movie, and it’s remarkable that this is the debut film from writer/director Celine Song (TV’s Wheel of Time). She has the patience of an artist who knows exactly the vibe they are going for. It’s so confident with those long takes, prolonged pauses, and visual metaphors. Even the plot structure is reflective of her patience, with the adult reunion not even occurring until 50 minutes in and all three parties not meeting until 80 minutes. The opening scene spies all three of our main characters at the bar while two off-screen eavesdroppers provide their own speculative interpretation of the relationship of the three; are they lovers, are they family, who is who? It’s such a smart yet playful way to open her movie, presenting the three main players and then having unseen spectators theorize who they are, providing voice to the audience as we begin to question who might feel closer to whom. It’s also a scene that left me immediately confident that Song was going to be an assured storyteller from here on out.
A soapier and more melodramatic version of this story would center on whether Nora is going to have an affair with her childhood sweetheart; even Arthur recognizes in the “Hollywood movie” version of these events that he would be the white American villain standing in the way of true love. Except it’s not that at all. Past Lives is about two former friends and possibly romantic partners reconnecting but it’s not about whether there are still old feelings that will be rekindled. It’s not likely that after a dozen years these two would so quickly fall in love and run away together, so please don’t pretend like this is some kind of spoiler. Instead, the meeting of someone who was once important in their lives allows for a pause point to reflect not what could have been, as Hae Sung is wont to do as he imagines a life where he and Nora were linked, but as the person they used to be and how they have changed into the person they now are. This is how Nora sees their encounter, an opportunity through her childhood friend who stayed to serve as her own “what if.” Not what if she had ever gotten romantically involved with this man but what if she had stayed in Korea rather than immigrating to a new life in the West. There’s also a rosy presumption at play here, where people assume the road not taken would have led to an unmet present happiness. There’s just as much if not more a likelihood that had Nora stayed, and had she dated Hae Sung, that they could have eventually broken up on bad terms and want nothing to do with one another. By leaving young, and by never fulfilling that initial spark, they are both eternally preserved as meaningful people without regret coming into their (past) lives. Granted, every viewer can surmise their own interpretation, especially with a movie so powerfully understated, but my assessment of the movie was less romantic revisionism and more personal accounting.
The movie hinges on three characters, so it’s a good thing that all three actors are compelling to watch. The nuance each of these three performers displays is amazing. They have to communicate much through gestures and glances, where a simple smile allowing oneself to acknowledge the significance of a hug a dozen years in the making are the tools of communication. This is the kind of movie where you can watch the characters processing their thoughts in real time. Lee (The Morning Show, Russian Doll) has the difficult job of navigating as the woman in between past and present, between her husband and this other man from her old life, and she does so with uncommon grace. Yoo (Decision to Leave) is the most reserved as the interloper who doesn’t know what is safe to reveal about himself and his interior life. He confides that he and his ex-girlfriend are on a break because he feels like he’s weighing her down, that he’s too ordinary and thus inferior for her. Then there’s Magaro (The Many Saints of Newark) who might just be the most understanding husband of all time. He’s not going to make a big stink and encourages his wife to see this old friend. There’s a nice moment where Arthur reveals one reason he learned Korean was because Nora would talk in her sleep in Korean. He wanted to learn more about a hidden part of her life. “It’s like there’s a whole place inside you I can’t go,” he says, and rather than seem like jealousy, it’s an admission of wanting to empathize with as many facets of the person you love. No wonder Hae Sung, despite himself, liked Arthur.
And yet the curmudgeon in me, the yin to my foolishly romantic self’s yang, has some qualms about what holds Past Lives back from being the emotional tour de force it could have been. This is because the characters are understated to the point that they feel less fully formed as people so that a larger selection of viewers will recognize themselves and their own questions and relatability. In making the film more universal, the movie has also made the characters feel less defined, more informed by key details of difference that the characters list like employee evaluations. Nora thinks like an American woman and Hae Sung thinks like a Korean man. In some ways, they’re meant to be stand-ins for Eastern and Western cultural differences. Understatement is grand but it can also leave less specifics. Think about how remarkable the characters are in Richard Linklater’s Before series, their mellifluous conversations so natural and pleasant to behold. It’s the same key aspect with many of the mumblecore indies, dropping you in on lives and characters that you want to observe for 100-or-so minutes of investment. They leave an impression because of who they are, whereas much of Past Lives is leaving an impression of reflection of who they could have been and how they might have changed over time. It’s not quite the same, and so this is why my emotional and intellectual investment were not as steadily satisfied by the full film.
Aching to the point of being painful, Past Lives is a beautifully tender drama about characters taking stock of their lives both past and present. It’s like somebody mixed Before Sunset with a French New Wave romance. A key theme throughout is the concept of fate, known as “In Yun” in Korea. It’s about the many actions and ripples through years and years to bring people into contact with one another and recognizing that every connection is the result of thousands of these actions pushing us to that singular point. It’s a way to say be appreciative of what you have but also who you’ve been allowed to become. Past Lives is an appealing story that might be a bit too understated to break through higher levels of emotional engagement, but even at its current level, it’s still one of the finer films of the year.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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The Marvels (2023)
No Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movie has had a bigger trail of negative buzz than The Marvels, the supposed sequel to not just 2019’s Captain Marvel but also an extension of two Marvel television series from the Disney streaming service. The film has had its release delayed three times, rumors abound that heavy portions were re-shot, and its own director, Nia DeCosta (2021’s Candyman), had already moved on to starting her next project while her last movie was still being finished in post-production (to her defense, the movie was delayed three times). The opening weekend wasn’t kind, setting an all-time low for the MCU, and the critical and fan reception was rather dismal, with many calling the movie proof that Marvel was in trouble. There is a lot going against this movie, and yet when I actually sat and watched The Marvels, I found it a flawed but fun B-movie that doesn’t deserve its intense pile-on. Although, caution dear reader, as I’m also one of the seemingly few critics who enjoyed Black Widow and most of Eternals as well.
Carol Danvers a.k.a. Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) has been absent for most of the past 30 years, trying to do right by the universe’s many alien civilizations in need. The people of Earth also feel a little left behind, notably Monica Lambeau (Teyonah Parris), who knew Carol as a child in the 1990s and is now acclimating to her own light-based superpowers (see: WandaVision). A power-hungry Kree warrior, Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton, Tom Hiddelston’s wife in real life), is seeking a way to restore a home world for her people. She finds one super-powerful weapon, a bangle she wears on her arm that opens interstellar portals. The other bangle happens to belong to a New Jersey teenager, Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), a first generation Pakistani-American who also moonlights as the bangled-powered hero, Ms. Marvel (see: Ms. Marvel). Through strange circumstances, Kamala, Monica, and Carol are all linked by their powers, so if one of them uses said powers they happen to swap places in space, teleporting from three different points. It makes it really hard when you’re supposed to save the day and work together to defeat the bad guy.
The core dynamic of the movie is this trio of powerful women learning to work together, and while that might sound trite for the thirty-third movie in a colossal franchise, it’s a serviceable arc for a movie that only runs 100 minutes, the shortest in MCU history. The swift running time is both a help and a hindrance, but it allows the film not to overstay its welcome while juggling three lead characters and multiple space-time-hopping action set pieces. I wish Marvel could return to an era of telling smaller stories that don’t have to feel so grandiose, with personal stakes tied more to their characters than saving the planet yet again (2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming is a great example). Even though this too falls into the trap of world-destroying-energy-hole, it still feels lighter and breezier, and I think that is a result of its pacing and lowered ambitions. That’s not an insult to the filmmakers, more a recognition that The Marvels doesn’t have to compete with the likes of Endgame or the Guardians for emotional stakes. It can just be fun, and simply being a fun and well-paced action movie is fine. That’s what the MCU diet can use more of, especially considering the Ant-Man movies have transformed from palate cleansers to same-old bombast.
On the flip side, the speedy running time is also a very real indication of its troubled production and the attempt to salvage multiple versions into one acceptable blockbuster. There are signs of heavy editing and re-shoots throughout, from lots of ADR dialogue hiding actors visibly mouthing these patchwork lines, to world-building problems and solutions that can seem hazy. The rationale for why these three women become linked is so contrived that even Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) bemoans Carol not to touch a strange unknown space light because it’s shiny. The concept of the three heroes being linked by their powers offers plenty of fun moments, of which I’ll go into more detail soon, but the execution left me questioning. Which superpower use qualified and which did not? It seems a little arbitrary which powers using light trigger the switcheroo. I don’t think the movie even knows. There’s also a late solution that feels so obvious that characters could have been like, “Oh yeah, we could have tried that this whole time.” A reasonable excuse was right within reach, blaming the inability to attempt the solution on not having sufficient power before assembling both of the bangle MacGuffins. It also, curiously, allows the villain to win in spite of her vengeful indiscriminate killing, but don’t think too much about that or its possible real-world parallels as that will only make you feel dramatically uncomfortable.
There are remnants of what must have been a fuller movie of Marvels’ past, as each character has an intriguing element that goes relatively under-developed. Monica was gone thanks to Thanos while her mother died and is also trying to square her feelings of resentment for Carol, a woman she felt so close to as a child who flew away and didn’t return for decades. So we have attachment issues and issues of closure. Carol is likewise trying to rebuild her relationship with this little girl she let down, and she has to also consider the unintended consequences of being a superhero. The Kree worlds refer to Carol as “The Annihilator,” a powerful being that doomed their civilization. She’s become a culture’s nightmare. That re-framing of heroism and perspective, as well as the larger collateral damage of the innocents from defeating villains makes for an interesting psychological stew of guilt and doubt and moral indecision. Then there’s Kamala, who worships Captain Marvel as her personal hero and wants nothing more than to join the ranks of superheroes. Her rosy version of the duties of being a hero could be seriously challenged by the harsher reality, like when Carol has to determine that saving “some lives” is more important than losing all life to save more. She could become disillusioned with her heroes and re-examine her concepts of right and wrong. And there are elements of all these storylines with our trio but they’re only shading at best. There’s just not enough time to delve into this drama when the movie needs to keep moving.
However, the fun of the body-swapping concept leads to some of the more enjoyable and creative action sequences in the MCU. DeCosta really taps into the fun comedy but also the ingenuity of characters jumping places rapidly. It begins in a disorienting and goofy way, as characters jump in and out of different fights and have to adapt. It makes for a fun sequence where at any moment the action can be shaken up, as well as forcing there to be enough action going on for three people. This also leads to some interesting dangers, as Kamala gets zapped high above her neighborhood and plummets to the ground, as these are the dangers when your two other linked superheroes can fly. The use of the powers into the action feels well thought through, and the combination of the women working together and strategizing when and where to swap places makes for creatively satisfying resolutions. The action sequences are also very clearly staged and edited without the use of jarring and confusing edits. You can clearly see what is happening and what is important, and the choreography is imaginatively spry.
There are some asides to this movie that had me smiling and laughing and just plain happy. The Marvels visit a planet where the only way to communicate with the locals is through song, and it starts out like a big old school Hollywood musical with some Bollywood flourishes. I wish the movie had done even more with this wonderfully goofy rule, possibly even setting a fight sequence that also plays into the musical quality of the weird setting. Oh well, but it was pure fun and forced the characters outside of a comfort zone (though this too had some hazy rules application). There’s also a montage involving alien cats and a life-saving and space-saving solution that had me giggling like crazy (my extra appreciation for the ironic use of “Memory”). It’s because of these sequences, the delightful exuberance of Vellani, and the above-average action sequences that make it impossible for me to dismiss the movie as a waste.
The Marvels has problems, sure, with its lackluster villain, some hazy rule-setting and application, not to mention an overstuffed plot that feels a bit jumbled from the likes of twenty other stories trying to appear as one semi-unified whole. But it’s also fun, light, and entertaining in its best moments, and even the good moments outweigh the bad in my view. I would gladly re-watch this movie over the likes of Multiverse of Madness, Love and Thunder, and Quantumania. While it can seem initially overwhelming to approach, the movie does a workable job to catch up its audience on who the other Marvels happen to be just in case you didn’t watch 17 episodes of two different TV shows. It’s mid-tier Marvel but refreshingly comfortable as such, only aiming for popcorn antics and goofy humor with some colorful visuals. It all feels like a special event from a Saturday morning cartoon, which again might be faint praise to many. Blame it on my lowered expectations, blame it on my superhero fandom, or simply call me a contrarian lashing out against what seems a very ugly strain of vitriol for this movie to fail, but I found The Marvels to be a perfectly enjoyable 100 minutes of super team-up tomfoolery.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) [Review Re-View]
Originally released November 14, 2003:
Without sounding easily amused, this movie really is glorious filmmaking. With Peter Weir’’s steady and skilled direction we get to really know the life of the early 19th century. We also get to know an armada of characters and genuinely feel for them. Russell Crowe is outstanding as Captain Jack Aubrey. His physicality and emotions are expertly showcased. When he gives a motivational speech you’’d understand why people would follow him to the ends of the Earth. Paul Bettany (again buddying up to Crowe after ‘A Beautiful Mind’) is Oscar-worthy for his performance as the ship’s’ doctor and confidant to the Captain. He’’s not afraid to question the Captain’’s motives, like following a dangerous French ship all around South America. ‘Master and Commander ’hums with life, and the battle sequences are heart-stopping and beautifully filmed. It took three studios to produce and release this and every dollar spent can be seen on the screen. ‘Master and Commander’ is fantastic, compelling entertainment with thrills, humanity, and wonder. It’’s grand old school Hollywood filmmaking.
Nate’s Grade: A
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
They really don’t make movies like Master and Commander anymore and that is a detriment to every facet of our society. It took three different studios to bankroll this expensive movie, made all the more expensive by being almost entirely set at sea, a very costly and volatile location. In a just world, this would have been the beginning of a cinematic universe to rival Marvel, and the dashing Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) would be as beloved as Captain Jack Sparrow, and children would beg their parents to read the dozen naval adventure novels by Patrick O’Brian. Just imagine lines of children for Halloween eagerly dressed in little admiral outfits with long blonde ponytails. Unfortunately, we do not live in this utopian universe, and 2003’s Master and Commander was the one and only movie we ever got. It received ten Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Director for Peter Weir, winning two Oscars for Cinematography and Sound Editing, two of the only categories where runaway champion Return of the King wasn’t nominated. This is a masterpiece and a prime example of Hollywood filmmaking at its best. It’s just as easy to be transported in 2023 as it was back in 2003.
This movie is still effortlessly engaging and enthralling, dropping you onto the HMS Surprise during the Napoleonic wars. Even the opening text starts to get your blood pumping: “Oceans have become battlefields.” The opening act is a tremendous introduction to life onboard an early nineteenth-century ship, giving us a sense of the many crewmen and their responsibilities, as well as the different pieces working in tandem while under attack from a French vessel. The movie is structured as an elongated cat-and-mouse chase between the two ships, with the English trying to outsmart the faster French ship with its heavy cannons that easily outnumber the Surprise. Each stage presents a new challenge. One sequence involves them setting up a ruse with a smaller ship attached with a lantern to trick the French vessel into following the decoy at night. The constant threat of this sleeker ship getting the drop on them and attacking is always present, turning the opposition into a mythic monster breaking forth through the fog. The tests of command and camaraderie lead to important questions over duty and sacrifice. There are several children manning the decks as well, cadets eager to be the next generation of English warriors. It’s a shocking reality to process through our modern perspective, and it’s made even harder when tragedy befalls these youngest sailors just like any of the other crew. The movie is steeped in authentic details and realism that makes you feel like you’ve dropped into living history.
In 2023, Gabriella Paiella wrote a GQ article titled “Why Are Guys So Obsessed with Master and Commander?” noting its enduring popularity with a certain selection of Millennial men (yours truly included). She theorized part of its ongoing appeal is how wholesome the movie comes across, with depictions of positive and healthy male friendships. Even the dedication to service is depicted in a way forgoing jingoism. This is a deeply empathetic movie about men who deeply love one another. The most toxic depiction on screen isn’t one born of masculinity run amok during wartime but more a division in class amplified by superstition. Pity poor midshipman Hollum (Lee Inglebee), a man who cannot make friends with the crew because they disdain his privilege and will never see him as a better or an equal. He becomes a scapegoat for the bad luck of the ship, as they feel he is a “Jonah,” a curse. Poor Hollum, who sees no way out of this dilemma and literally plunges overboard with cannonball in hand, ridding the crew of their reputed curse (the wind picks up the sails the next morning). Beyond this valuable and sad storyline, the men of the Surprise seem so grateful for one another’s company. It’s a guy movie that invites men to escape to the frontier as an inclusive summer camp (no girls allowed!).
By the end of this movie, as we’re utilizing every nautical trick we’ve learned and preparing to seize the elusive French boat, my body was shaking in anticipation. We’ve gone on this journey and gotten to know a dozen faces, and we feel part of the team to the point that we’re onboard too. Seeing any of these men close their eyes permanently is awful. It’s not just keen military strategy and theory being discussed; we feel the real human cost. A small moment at the end, where a young man asks for help to sew the death shroud of his mentor, just hits you in the guts. Even watching poor Hollum processing his final fateful decision is heartbreaking. I still gasp even today watching Doctor Maturin (Paul Bettany) accidentally shot and then have to perform his own surgery. You feel the highs and lows throughout this voyage because the movie has made you care. The sheer adventure of it all is terrific, but it’s the immersive details and the strong character writing for everyone that makes this movie so special. It’s not just a rousing high-seas tale of bravery but also a stirring and empathetic character piece and absorbing drama.
It’s astounding to me that Weir isn’t still one of the hottest working directors. The Australian has earned four Best Director nominations across three decades (1985’s Witness, 1989’s Dead Poets Society, 1998’s Truman Show) and proven he can handle any genre with any style. He’s only directed a single movie since Master and Commander, 2010’s Siberian prisoner of war movie, The Way Back. In twenty years, we’ve only been given one other Peter Weir movie, and that is a travesty. In a recent interview, Weir confirmed he’s essentially retired from directing. If only time had been kinder to this great director. For comparison’s sake, other famous artists that also have four Directing nominations include Clint Eastwood, Stanley Kubrick, and Francis Ford Coppola.
I assumed Master and Commander would still be good to re-watch in 2023, but I was amazed at how quickly I fell back under the movie’s sway so completely absorbed. It’s the kind of movie where everything just feels so natural, so authentic, and so compelling, where the hard work can be too easily undervalued because it all just feels like a documentary. This movie is so captivating and enthralling and every adjective you can devise. It earns them all. Why oh why did we never get a second of these? There were over a dozen novels as source material at the time of the first movie. According to that same 2023 GQ article, the studio head at Fox, Tom Rothman, explained that he was a lifelong fan of the O’Brian novels, having fallen in love with them as a boy. It took the studio chief using his position to get this kind of movie made in 2003, that’s the level of corporate power necessary to circumvent all the naysayers trying to kill this. I guess rather than mourn the lack of sequels I should count my blessings that we have even one. You were too good for this world, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
Re-View Grade: A
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The Killer (2023)
Were you even aware that David Fincher had a new movie? The celebrated director has been very mercurial since 2014’s Gone Girl, only helming one other movie. His partnership with Netflix has afforded the notoriously perfectionist director a lot of creative latitude, though sadly not a third season of Mindhunter. But even the artistic cache of a new Fincher movie isn’t enough for Netflix to change its business model. The Killer only played in theaters for two weeks before beaming into millions of homes. You would think this streaming giant would want to leverage its big names and their new projects, but I’m reminded of how much money Netflix likely left aside forgoing Glass Onion’s theatrical run. Alas, The Killer is an intriguing if cold and unsatisfying thriller that epitomizes the limits of surface-level living.
Our titular killer (Michael Fassbender) is hired to kill a Parisian businessman and botches the job. He’s on the run and fears for his well-being from his employers wanting to eliminate any loose ends. His girlfriend in the Dominican Republic is beaten and threatened, and the lead killer realizes he’s going to have to out-kill all the other killers after him if his loved ones don’t get killed. Through five chapters, each ending in a death, the killer works his way up the food chain.
Fincher is attempting to strip out the movie-cool mythos of the world of hired assassins, to subvert the entertainment value that can come with expert murderers leading to blood and death. The Killer is Fincher’s stubborn subversion of what a trained assassin movie should be, and his main takeaway, beyond stripping the misplaced glamor from the profession, is how tedious it would all be in real life. In the movie world, being a trained killer involves all sorts of exciting derring-do and acrobatics and the like. In the possible real world, being a trained killer is more like a paid security guard; it’s a lot of protracted sitting and waiting and watching, and it’s easy to understand just how overwhelmingly boring all this would be. The opening twenty minutes quite convincingly strips the cool factor away from this profession. It doesn’t make you feel the weight of the culpability, like 2018’s You Were Never Really Here (more on that later), but what it makes you feel is just how maddening and boring this whole job must be and what kind of dedicated people would succeed. It’s like Fincher is making a bet with a mainstream audience that he can find a way to make a boring assassin movie, and while doing so can be seen as subversive to some degree, bleeding much of the thrills out of the picture, it also feels like a bet gone wrong. You made the main character boring on purpose to prove a point, but regardless of intent, your protagonist is still boring. Victory?
As physically inactive as Act One proves, watching our title killer sit and wait and watch, it is conversely hyperactive in narration. This is wall-to-wall narration as our lead character expounds upon his regiment to keep his mind and body ready when his eventual window materializes. It reminded me of the narration of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, about his methodical lifestyle routines. Except that character was being satirized from their first moments, whereas the emptiness of our killer here is the larger point, that he’s fashioned himself into an unfeeling weapon. Here is a character that feels he is only effective if he strips everything human away, if he only focuses on the job regardless of politics or consequences, and lives his spartan existence. I’m sure he envisions himself as some noble modern-day samurai, living a code others cannot keep. Except the movie reveals throughout that he might not be the best killer in the phone book. First off, he misses shooting his target, which sets everything into motion. All his narration about focus and yoga and dedication and even I know you shouldn’t fire while someone else is in front of your target. There’s a jarring scene where he fires nails into the lungs of a character and theorizes the man has six or seven minutes left to live before his lungs fill up. Nope. The man dies within one minute max. For all his resourcefulness, which is benefited by the long reach of capitalism, the man also doesn’t live up to his self-image. His paranoia keeps him from returning to his home on time and allows the attack on his girlfriend to happen in his absence. There might be an even deeper commentary on how even the lead is confusing his life for a movie.
My favorite scene is a sit down with a competing hired hitman played by Tilda Swinton (Three Thousand Years of Longing). She’s one of the two competing assassins responsible for targeting his girlfriend, so she presents a threat. He meets her at a fancy restaurant and she already accepts that she will not be making it to dessert. She is the exact opposite of our main character, a woman who has found a way to live a normal life in the suburbs, marry a man, and enjoy the luxuries of a life afforded by her wealth. She’s not living out of storage units or purposely dressing like a German tourist to stay under the radar. In some ways, this has allowed our more single-minded assassin to get the jump on her, to take advantage of her complacency. However, it’s also an indictment on the stripped-down, isolationist life our lead killer has prioritized. Here is a woman who has embraced allowing herself to enjoy things. She’s not eating McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches minus the slimy egg patty. She’s not slumming it for her “art.” She sees no value in abstinence. This stark contrast, as well as a sustained conversation between two foes, is the highlight of the film. It’s also interesting to watch Swinton’s character go through her own mini-grieving process accepting the likelihood that this will be her final meal, and so she savors it without fear.
Being a David Fincher movie, you can rightly assume that the technical elements are nearly flawless. The visual arrangements are beautiful, the cinematography is chilly and atmospheric, and the editing is precise and smooth. The first attempted kill has a nice degree of tension simply from shifting audio levels, going from diegetic to narration, never allowing the viewer to properly adjust during such a heightened point of paying attention. It’s naturally unsettling and effectively raises the tension of a moment we’ve been waiting over twenty minutes to arrive. There is an extended hand-to-hand fight sequence that’s exceptionally well choreographed and carries on from room to room, transforming with each new location and utilizing the geography of each space nicely (the John Wick folks would approve). The overall movie feels more in keeping with the likes of Fincher’s Panic Room or The Game, a more straightforward thriller that lacks simply extra levels and commentary, like Zodiac or Gone Girl. There’s nothing wrong with a well-executed and developed thriller purely designed to be a good time. It’s just at this stage of Fincher’s career, the expectations are raised, fairly or unfairly, with every new release. The Killer is a polished thriller meant to be pared down to its essential parts and can be enjoyed as such.
There is little to hold onto here emotionally though, so we’re left with the intellectual curiosity of watching a so-called professional go about their business and see how he gets around obstacles. Very often it’s dressing up in a delivery outfit and simply waiting on other polite strangers to open doors for his unassuming facade. One could argue that the character arc is about a man who rejects empathy, argues that it is weakness, comes around to accept empathy, and embraces it on his way out. I can see some of this, as the motivation for his trail of vengeance is to protect his loved one from being harmed again. There’s even a moment where he demonstrates a sliver of sympathy to a victim, albeit still utilizing gruesome violence. Except I don’t believe that easy assessment of this being a journey of embracing empathy. This doesn’t come across as a character changing who they are but instead as a character cleaning up their own mess. The main character keeps reiterating to “stick to the plan, don’t improvise,” but I don’t think he’s reflecting at any point on his actions beyond a clinical cause-effect relationship. He’s stripped all the complexities of humanity out from himself but recognizing fault isn’t the same as building and maintaining a sense of empathy. I also think the reading that many critics are making of Fincher standing in for the main character, a dedicated tactician who tries to do it all, is a little too cute and desperate for meta-narratives to derive a better lens to analyze the overall vacancy of the lead character.
This is very different from Lynn Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, a film that also subverted the same hitman sub-genre and made the audience re-examine its own bloodlust. As I wrote in 2018: “The focus of the movie is on the man committing the acts of violence rather than how stylish and cool and cinematic those acts of violence can be. …Ramsay offers discorded images and brief flashes and asks the audience to put together the pieces to better understand Joe as a man propelled and haunted by his bloody past…. It’s not all tragedy and inescapable dread. Amidst Joe’s tortured past and troubled future, there’s a necessary sense of hope. You don’t know what will happen next but you’re not resigned to retrograde nihilism.” This is not the feeling I took from The Killer, and I recommend everyone watch Ramsay’s movie too.
The problem with making a boring assassination thriller on purpose is that, at the end of the day, you still have a boring assassination thriller. Fassbender (who hasn’t been on screen since 2019’s Dark Phoenix killed the X-Men franchise) can be compelling for two hours doing just about anything, and a performance that is minimal in spoken dialogue does not mean a minimal performance. He’s great to sit and watch, the running commentary of his narration serving as a starting point to assess all the concentrated, nuanced acting under the surface. The Killer has sheen and skill, much like its title character, but it too also misses the mark where it counts.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023)
I’ve learned so much more about pre-teen horror video games in the years since I’ve become a parent. There is no shortage of horror-themed games, many of them available through Roblox, that act as gradual entry points for burgeoning new horror fans that might not be emotionally ready for more intense horror (for my money, the creepy smiley creatures with dozens of teeth are more frightening than Michael Myers on any day). This brings me to the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie based on the insanely popular video game series that essentially said, “What if Chuck E. Cheese was, like, evil?” The game involved shifting between security cameras to keep watch on some frisky animatronics that have a hard time staying put, and of course jump scares and bloodless deaths. It’s a game about alternating camera feeds and waiting, and so the big screen version is also a movie very much about waiting for the creatures to stir. That’s probably why a quarter of the feature is watching Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games) travel into a dream-space to try and communicate with mysterious children to figure out what must be some of the more obvious plot revelations that he just can’t seem to grasp about this sleepy town and its history of missing kids. Why are we spending this much time on the human character’s back-story when we have killer robots to maim dumb teenagers? There are more scenes with the ghost kids than the animatronics of fame. The protagonist’s motivation seems wishy-washy since he’s putting his life on the line to keep his little sister and then makes an ill-advised bargain with the robots to get rid of her because… we need a moment for him to realize what really matters most? Huh? The scenes of horror rely much more on impressions, favoring shadows and implied violence than featuring anything too overt. I found the revelation of the ultimate villain to be laughable, no matter if it matches up with whatever the convoluted lore is for a game that, again, is flipping through TV channels and trying not to get eaten. There just isn’t a whole lot going on here, and the human drama of Hutcherson trying to win custody of his little sister feels a bit too dramatic and real for something this silly. He can’t get any other job than guarding an abandoned pizza parlor? Why does anyone just not enter the restaurant? He keeps returning to the job even after he realizes the danger. Unless you’re a diehard fan thrilled to just see live-action versions of your favorite furry friends, Five Nights at Freddy’s fees like four nights too many.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Lost in Translation (2003) [Review Re-View]
Originally released October 3, 2023:
Sofia Coppola probably has had one of the most infamous beginnings in showbiz. Her father, Francis Ford, is one of the most famous directors of our times. He was getting ready to film Godfather Part III when Winona Ryder dropped out weeks before filming. Sophia Coppola, just at the age of 18, stepped into the role of Michael Corleone’s daughter. The level of scathing reviews Coppolas acting received is something perhaps only Tom Green and Britney Spears can relate to. Coppola never really acted again. Instead she married Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) and adapted and directed the acclaimed indie flick, The Virgin Suicides. So now Coppola is back again with Lost in Translation, and if this is the kind of rewards reaped by bad reviews early in your career, then I’m circling the 2008 Oscar date for Britney.
Bob Harris (Bill Murray) is a washed up actor visiting Tokyo to film some well-paying whiskey commercials. Bob’s long marriage is fading and he feels the pains of loneliness dig its claws into his soul. Bob finds a kindred spirit in Charlotte (Scarlet Johansson), a young newlywed who has followed her photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi) to Japan and is second-guessing herself and her marriage. The two strike up a friendship of resistance as strangers in a strange land. They run around the big city and share enough adventures to leave an indelible impression on each other’s life.
Lost in Translation is, simply put, a marvelously beautiful film. The emphasis for Coppola is less on a rigidly structured story and more on a consistently lovely mood of melancholy. There are many scenes of potent visual power, nuance of absence, that the viewer is left aching like the moments after a long, cleansing cry. There are certain images (like Johansson or Murray staring out at the impersonal glittering Tokyo) and certain scenes (like the final, tearful hug between the leads) that I will never forget. Its one thing when a film opens on the quiet image of a woman’s derriere in pink panties and just holds onto it. It’s quite another thing to do it and not draw laughs from an audience.
Murray is outstanding and heartbreaking. Had he not finally gotten the recognition he deserved with last year’s Oscar nomination I would have raged for a recounting of hanging chads. Murray has long been one of our most gifted funnymen, but later in his career he has been turning in soulful and stirring performances playing lonely men. When Murray sings Roxy Music’s “More Than This” to Johansson during a wild night out at a karaoke bar, the words penetrate you and symbolize the leads’ evolving relationship.
Johansson (Ghost World) herself is proving to be an acting revelation. It is the understatement of her words, the presence of a mature intelligence, and the totality of her wistful staring that nail the emotion of Charlotte. Never does the character falter into a Lolita-esque vibe. Shes a lonely soul and finds a beautiful match in Murray.
Lost in Translation is an epic exploration of connection, and the quintessential film that perfectly frames those inescapable moments of life where we come into contact with people who shape our lives by their short stays. This is a reserved love story where the most tender of actions are moments like Murray carrying a sleeping Johansson to her room, tucking her in, then locking the door behind. The comedy of disconnect is delightful, like when Murray receives incomprehensible direction at a photo shoot. The score by Jean-Benoît Dunckel, front man of the French duo Air, is ambient and wraps around you like a warm blanket. The cinematography is also an amazing experience to behold, especially the many shots of the vast glittering life of Tokyo and, equally, its emptiness.
Everything works so well in Lost in Translation, from the bravura acting, to the stirring story, to the confident direction, that the viewer will be caught up in its lovely swirl. The film ends up becoming a humanistic love letter to what brings us together and what shapes how we are as people. Coppola’s film is bursting with such sharply insightful, quietly touching moments, that the viewer is overwhelmed at seeing such a remarkably mature and honest movie. The enjoyment of Lost in Translation lies in the understanding the audience can feel with the characters and their plight for connection and human warmth.
Writer/director Sofia Coppola’s come a long way from being Winona Ryder’s last-second replacement, and if Lost in Translation, arguably the best film of 2003, is any indication, hopefully well see even more brilliance yet to come. This is not going to be a film for everyone. A common argument from detractors is that Lost in Translation is a film lost without a plot. I’ve had just as many friends call this movie “boring and pointless” as I’ve had friends call it “brilliant and touching.” The right audience to enjoy Lost in Translation would be people who have some patience and are willing to immerse themselves in the nuances of character and silence.
Nate’s Grade: A
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
I have never done this before in the four years of my re-reviewing movies, but I really just want to quote my introduction into Lost in Translation because I feel like this perfectly sets the scene, as well as giving my 21-year-old self some kudos: “Sofia Coppola probably has had one of the most infamous beginnings in showbiz. Her father, Francis Ford, is one of the most famous directors of our times. He was getting ready to film Godfather Part III when Winona Ryder dropped out weeks before filming. Sophia Coppola, just at the age of 18, stepped into the role of Michael Corleone’s daughter. The level of scathing reviews Coppola’s acting received is something perhaps only Tom Green and Britney Spears can relate to. Coppola never really acted again… So now Coppola is back again with Lost in Translation, and if this is the kind of rewards reaped by bad reviews early in your career, then I’m circling the 2008 Oscar date for Britney.” Besides the unnecessary broadside against Ms. Spears, who I’ve already apologized for with my re-review of 2002’s Crossroads, I think all this holds true. Within three films, Sofia Coppola went from an unfortunate punchline (not her fault!) to Oscar winner and indie darling.
Lost in Translation was my favorite American movie of 2003, so I’m always curious how my then-favorites stack up twenty years later. I’ve softened on American Beauty and Requiem for a Dream, and still consider The Iron Giant, Magnolia, and Moulin Rouge to be excellent. My feelings toward Lost in Translation, upon re-watch, remain mostly the same, though after two decades of watching other slow-burn, character-centric indies and widening my viewing, its highs aren’t quite the rhapsodic high for me in 2023 but it’s still an effective melancholy mood piece.
Lost in Translation taps directly into a universal feeling of yearning for connections in a time where it’s becoming easier and easier to disconnect into our own little bubbles. You don’t have to be stuck in a foreign country to feel isolated or out of sorts, and Coppola uses the external circumstances as a means of reinforcing the emotional isolation and then re-connection of her characters. This is why I brush aside some of the harsher criticisms levied against Coppola’s portrayal of Japanese culture and the locals. This is an outsider portrayal, and I don’t think there’s so much a critical judgment over Japanese culture as being inferior as just being different from what these characters are used to. They are clearly out of their element; it’s not that the culture is weird, it’s that the culture is different (that doesn’t mean there aren’t some overstayed stereotypes here as well). Trying to simply communicate with people that all speak another language is a quick and accessible dynamic to better visualize and articulate disconnect. I feel like this story could have been told from any racial or ethical perspective; it’s about two outsiders finding one another. The racial dynamics are less important. Obviously Coppola’s own personal experiences and outsider perspective in Japan are what provides the specific details with this tale, but I think what makes the movie still so effective in 2023 is because it’s so relatable on a deeper level that it eclipses any specific personal details. It’s about feeling lost and then feeling seen.
The key scene for me happens about seventy minutes into the movie, after Bob (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) have had an adventure with the Japanese hospital system. They’ve become one another’s insomnia buddies, teaming up to explore the city’s nightlife. As they lay side by side in bed during the wee hours, they have an intimate and poignant conversation, and it has nothing to do with sex. “I’m stuck,” she says. “Does it get any easier?” It’s about a young woman asking a middle-aged man for guidance and wisdom and him offering what he can with the caveat that he too is still struggling for his own wisdom. It’s the illusion that at some magic predetermined number of trips around the sun, the mystery of life will somehow become perfectly realized, as if now we can see the grand architectural design. There is no magic number. Everyone is trying their best and making it up as they go, and that’s what this conversation represents. She’s begging for reassurances that adult life will get easier, that she’ll find her footing, and Bob encourages her to continue pursuing her hobbies and passions even if she can’t stand her own art (which sounds like every artist I’ve ever known). Much of his actionable advice comes down to being patient including with yourself. Everybody is in their own way trying their best with what they have. He assures her that the more she gets comfortable with who she is the less things can bother her. It’s a beautiful scene and the reason it works even better is that Coppola doesn’t treat this moment with the gravity it has. It’s not even the film’s climax. Much like real life, when we look back at the exchanges that prove the most formative, we don’t have alarms ringing to better inform us that this is a moment that will have maximum import. We don’t know until it’s over.
I have never viewed Lost in Translation as some kind of will-they-won’t-they May-December romance, and at no point was I secretly hoping that Bob and Charlotte would get together. This is because they do get together but it’s not a purely romantic connection, although once you start really analyzing romance itself, there are far more complicated and nuanced dimensions to this overly simplified concept, and one could argue this is a romance of sorts but not one about physical passion and infatuation that dominate our association. It’s about two human souls drifting along in life who find a kinship with one another when they need it the most. I never wondered at the end whether they would kiss or have some kind of affair or even run off together, because that wasn’t what was so essential to this dynamic. It wasn’t how far they would go for love, including what would they give up or who would they hurt, it was about each of them serving as a life preserver, something to hold onto during a turbulent time. I truly believe that if they had kissed and had some kind of tawdry love affair that the film would have been cheapened. When Bob carries Charlotte back into her hotel room bed, I never viewed this act as two lovers but of a father and daughter. It’s too easy to just reduce every relationship into a sexual pairing. We all have meaningful relationships with many people who occupy different spheres of our life and our experiences, and our lives could be irreversibly altered without their influence no matter how fleeting our time together may have been. To reduce everything into whether they spark something sexual or passionate is just plain boring.
This was a turning point in the careers of all three of its major figures. For Coppola, it was confirmation of her artistic voice and stepping from the long shadow of her father. She won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and was nominated for Best Director, only the third woman ever at that time. That’s a big deal. This was a statement film for her and she’s been making very leisurely paced, lushly photographed, somber character pieces since, very Sofia Coppola Movies (her latest promises to highlight the perspective of Priscilla Pressly). She never quite had another movie land as well as this one though 2006’s Marie Antoinette is due for a reappraisal as well. For Murray, it was confirmation that he had real dramatic acting skills that he’d shown flashes of in other movies like The Razor’s Edge and Rushmore, and it earned him his only Academy Award nomination. For Johansson, it was also the beginning of establishing her as an adult actress of serious caliber, and there was a critical stir that she had been snubbed by the Academy in 2004 not just for her role in Lost in Translation but also Girl with Pearl Earring. Johansson had been a steadily working actress since she was a child, and this was confirmation that she was ready to make the next jump. From there, she found a creative kinship with Woody Allen, and Wes Anderson, and even became an action movie star that could headline her own blockbusters. She finally got her first Oscar nominations in 2019, for both Marriage Story and Jojo Rabbit, becoming only the twelfth actor ever to be nominated twice in the same year. Murray’s star has fallen out of favor recently from his onerous onset behavior, though he did reunite with Coppola for 2020’s On the Rocks.
One of the stranger post-scripts for this movie relates to Johansson’s singing. The karaoke scene in Lost in Translation is one of the best, and it works on a magical elemental level where the music becomes our means of expression. When Murray sings “More Than This,” it’s hard not to read more into the moment. It’s right there in the song choice. Both actors do their own singing, adding to the fun and authenticity. Johansson would later release her own album in 2008 titled Anywhere I Lay My Head. It wasn’t uncommon for young actresses to moonlight as singers for a vanity project (Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan did this too), but what set this album apart was that it was almost entirely comprised of Tom Waits covers. According to Yahoo, as of August 2009, it had sold only 25,000 copies, which to be fair is twenty-five thousand more than I’ve ever sold, so what do I know? She released one more music album, 2009’s Break Up.
Looking back at my original 2003 review, it’s easy to see how smitten I was discovering Lost in Translation and trying to argue its virtues in my college newspaper. I think I assumed most of my fellow collegians would rather watch raunchy comedies like Van Wilder rather than a slow-burn indie about sad people roaming a foreign city. To this day I still have an equal number of friends who deem Lost in Translation as slow navel-gazing fluff to beautiful and beguiling. As I said before, it’s a mood piece about disconnected people, and I think if you’re in the right mood, or an open mind with the patience to spare, then there’s still something appealing and rewarding about an understated movie about two lonely people finding an unexpected kinship that defies reductive romantic classification. I just experienced something on this level with 2023’s Past Lives. I’m glad that Coppola has kept the final whisper between Bob and Charlotte a secret because it doesn’t matter what he specifically says so much as the meaning of this exchange for the both of them. It’s a goodbye of sorts but also a recognition of one another’s help and compassion. It’s not for us to hear. It’s too intimate. It’s a perfect ending for a film that still proves indelible twenty years later.
Re-View Grade: A-
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Pain Hustlers (2023)
Pain Hustlers is the next attempt to dramatize the numerous stories behind the opioid crisis, a storytelling edict that is becoming its own tragic true-crime sub-genre (Dopesick, Pain Killer, Four Good Days, Recovery Boys, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed). The Netflix original has a starry cast and a topical and serious subject but it’s an un-serious movie caught up in the superficial quirks and appeal of being and making a goofy crime story of greedy sleazeballs.
Liza (Emily Blunt) is a struggling single mother trying to claw her way out of debt and, with her unfinished education and criminal record, few options are widely available. Then enters Pete Brenner (Chris Evans), a loud, gouache pharmaceutical rep for a powerful pain killer. He promises a lifestyle of luxury and power, as long as Liza is willing to ignore or bend a few ethics along the way. Together, they build a sales force of attractive women who wine and dine smaller doctors in order to get them to prescribe their special drug to anyone in need. It’s just that a drug intended for end-of-life pain wasn’t meant for common headaches. As sales boom, Liza begins to worry that her glitzy lifestyle is built upon a mountain of American corpses.
The biggest drawback of Pain Hustlers is that it fully focuses on the glitz and gives lip service to the cost of chasing that avarice. Plenty of movies illuminating bad people doing bad things are accused of glamorizing the misdeeds, from gangster movies to dark romances, though this narrow viewing often seems to conflate depiction with condoning the behavior (see: The Wolf of Wall Street). Watching stories about people stumbling their way into glamorous positions should provide some allure so as to better understand the seductive draw for the characters. The world of vice and power will be a compelling conflict, but for Pain Hustlers, it falters by just focusing on the high-powered lifestyle yet it still lacks specificity to make this story feel interesting on its own. You’ve seen variations of this kind of story before (we’ll call it Scorsese-esque) about the people struggling with less who get a ticket into a new world of access and freedom and then begin to worry At What Cost. Pain Hustlers goes through its plot beats with the most mechanical of movements. The personal details from this supposedly true story feel so generic, reminiscent of similar tales like, Love & Other Drugs and Hustlers. It feels less like an insider account of how these shady people exploited so many and more like the screenplay was cobbled together by what the filmmakers assumed this story must have pertained without reading much of the source novel by Evan Hughes. It’s absent the useful details that allow more of these accounts to prosper as we investigate moral relativism.
The other nagging shortcoming of Pain Hustlers is the consequences for all these bad people. I’m not saying that we need to see comeuppance and justice levied in order for the movie to work thematically; very often these white collar criminal types receive the faintest glance of judicial punishment. What this movie lacks is the emphasis on the consequences, and considering our main characters are pushing sleazy doctors to push highly addictive opioids, that’s a big miss. The movie is all about the climb for its heroine, the comparison of having the fancy life versus a life without. It shortchanges the extremely human cost of its bad actors in a way that does a disservice to the movie and its message. Because of its lack of specificity, this story could have been propelled by any prescription drug, from Viagra to Lipitor. The fact that we’re talking fentanyl, a drug responsible for 200 deaths every day last year according to the CDC, seems immaterial, and that is bizarre.
The effects of the opioid crisis begun by Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family, and then trickled down through the complicated tributaries of the American medical infrastructure, will be felt for generations. This is a major story. It would be like, say, telling the story of a struggling single mom who decides to take a career advancement in the Nazi Party in 1940s Germany. You’re not just doing a disservice to the people who really suffered, you’re doing a disservice to the audience to ignore the gravity of their moral culpability and excuse-making, of the drama of the character having to confront their part. For a movie about people profiting from opioid over-prescriptions, there is a grand total of one scene where Liza has to deal with the harsh real-world consequences of her actions (minor spoilers ahead, but I’d advise you to continue, dear reader). Early in the movie, when Liza was forced out of her home, she spent a few days living in a motel. The neighbor lady at the motel has a husband who dies from the opioid crisis, and this one man is meant to symbolize what she has wrought as a whole. It doesn’t work, and the fact that the movie presents Liza in tears trying to make amends to this widow, a character we haven’t had any thought over since Liza leaving her Act One beginnings, is a pitiful excuse for a reckoning.
Evans (The Grey Man) and Blunt (Oppenheimer) feel on autopilot here, namely because of the broad and bland characterization. Blunt resumes her Southern accent I recall from the Quiet Place movies, but her energy level feels too low, too disengaged, like she’s already at her quiet rectitude character phase when she should be at the gee-whiz giddiness of her moral slide. Evans is meant to be playing a cad prone to vulgar boasts and condescension for those he willfully steps over to reach his goals, but his “sleazeball” acting tics feel too forced, too played up, in all the ways that Blunt feels dialed down. There’s no baseline for the two of them, so the scenes they share together feel over and under-cooked, and with a generically developed rise-and-fall screenplay to boot. Andy Garcia (Father of the Bride) is the most interesting character as the head of the company, a doctor who began trying to ensure those in desperate need could have the dignity of mitigating their pain, and transforms into a megalomaniacal huckster who only wants to keep meeting the next sales projections. His rise-and-fall seems much more steep and intriguing than trying to give us Liza, a gutsy single mom (with a wacky mother of her own played by Catherine O’Hara) who we’re supposed to identify with and forgive for playing her part in a deadly chain that has wrecked untold lives across the country and world. She did it for her own kid’s medical treatment. So it’s all okay, right?
This is director David Yates’ first movie away from the familiar confines of the Harry Potter universe since the ill-fated 2016 Tarzan reboot, and only his second non-Potter movie since 2005. Given that history, I’m curious whenever this man jumps onto a non-Potter project because you would assume it has to be special in some manner. I’ll credit Yates with changing his visual preferences from the very drabby and gray palette of his Potter filmography.Pain Hustlers adopts a lot of the stylistic tics we expect in glitzy crime thrillers, from handheld camerawork to sun-bleached colors. There are other techniques to bring a documentary-like authenticity, but the constant cutting back to black-and-white interviews with the characters after the fact only serves as a narration crutch to keep things moving. The character narration lacks further insight from the distance or remorse of the onscreen events. The whole movie feels like a copy of a Scorsese imitator, something akin to 2009’s forgettable The Middle Men, a crime movie about a plunge into the underworld from a naif that doesn’t try too hard beyond empty reconfiguration of the superior style of its influences that I doubt anyone really remembers (you might as well add directorial narration, “Ever since I was young I always wanted to make a gangster movie…”). As immediate evidence to the case, there is a slow-motion house party in Pain Hustlers set to “Turn Down For What.”
Should you spend two hours watching Pain Hustlers? Not really, though if you have a fascination with the many schemers who contributed to making the opioid crisis as trenchant and terrible as it currently is, and likely will be for the near future, then maybe there’s some mild value to be had here. But even those people would be better served watching another Netflix series tackling the same subject matter, the 2023 limited series Pain Killer. For me, the Pain Hustlers story was too broad, and where it could have broken out with specificity is where it decided to wimp out and defer to genre cliches. It’s hard for me to argue that you should spend two hours watching this movie on the subject when you would be far better served, from an informative and entertainment standpoint, watching the two-part, four-hour 2021 documentary Crime of the Century by masterful filmmaker Alex Gibney. That film is damning and compelling and authentic in ways Pain Hustlers can only hope to imitate.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
I was a nominal fan of the Mission: Impossible series after three movies, and it seemed like the American public was feeling the same. After 15 years, it felt like the franchise was considering a soft reboot/shift with 2011’s Ghost Protocol, setting up Jeremy Renner as the heir apparent to Tom Cruise’s super spy, Ethan Hunt (weirdly, Renner was also set up to be another franchise replacement for Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne in 2012). Except what may have been initially planned as a franchise hand-off became a franchise renewal, with a delightfully twisty plot, fun teamwork as they scramble to adapt, and a show-stopping action set-piece that remains the franchise’s high-point, the scaling of the towering Burj Khalifa skyscraper. It also reminded us that not only does Cruise love to run but the man has a death wish when it comes to performing his own amazing stunts. With Cruise firmly back in place as lead, and Renner jettisoned (which also happened after 2012’s The Bourne Legacy), the franchise was further boosted by two of its best additions: actress Rebecca Ferguson and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie. The Oscar-winning Hollywood screenwriting staple was not known as much for his directing efforts, but he became a Cruise confidant after 2008’s Valkyrie, and he’s worked almost exclusively on Cruise projects ever since. He earned the man’s trust and proved a fantastic action director. 2018’s Mission: Impossible Fallout is just blockbuster filmmaking at its high-stakes finest. I was bouncing in my chair with excitement and simply luxuriating in action thriller nirvana.
This time Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his select team of trusted friends and colleagues are battling a villain terrifyingly relevant to our modern times, especially in light of the screenwriters’ strike – artificial intelligence. The big bad is an A.I. that can control the world’s security apparatus, and it’s become self-aware and resentful of its human overlords. It exists inside a computer console inside a Russian submarine at the bottom of the Arctic ocean under a wall of ice, and the A.I., known as “The Entity,” doesn’t want to ever be found (must be an introvert). If only it was that easy. The world is racing to be the first to claim this unparalleled prize, and the Impossible Missions team has to ensure they can find the location, which of course involves a MacGuffin, this time two interlocking keys to access the A.I. sub station. Can Ethan get there first and can he even trust his own government to do what’s best with access to this kind of power?
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is a mouthful of a title. We got a colon, a dash, and a “part one,” a presumptuous gamble that after 160 minutes the audience is going to be ravenously hungry for a continuation in a series that has never had a two-parter before. In short, the movie is a lot, a lot of the same action and renowned stunt work we expect, and a lot of setup and extension that might have been better trimmed by focusing on one movie rather than setting up two. McQuarrie has done this before and been successful without the need of a direct two-parter. For all intents and purposes, Fallout is a direct sequel to 2015’s Rogue Nation, carrying over the same villain for the first time in the series and the ongoing relationship between Ethan and Ilsa Faust (Ferguson). Both of those movies feel complete and satisfying and well-designed in structure and development without needing one part to complete the other. With Dead Reckoning Part One, henceforth known as M:I 7 to spare me from writing this title every time, it feels like an overlong setup. By the end of the movie, our characters know where the A.I. is located but they still don’t know where the sub is or how to get there, which means the entire movie could have been collapsed into a more streamlined venture. Part of this may be the production troubles where they had to shut down and rejigger the plot multiple times from COVID outbreaks, as M:I 7 is the last of the big Hollywood movies to release that was shutdown in 2020 by the devastating pandemic. It all feels a bit overstretched and absent a satisfying conclusion.
The draw of the franchise, and chiefly its 2010s renewal back into the zeitgeist, is still the eye-popping stunts and set-pieces and Dead Reckoning still delivers. Most viewers will likely find the final action sequence aboard a speeding train to be the high-point, and it’s got some wow moments, my favorite is when the train is hanging over a blown bridge and Ethan has to leap from train car to train car before it plummets, oh and it’s all at an incline. It turns each car into a new obstacle to overcome utilizing its specific dynamics, like a dining car with a falling piano to a kitchen with vats of hot grease to avoid. The standout stunt involves Cruise driving a motorcycle off a mountain in a desperate effort to parachute onto this speeding train. However, this whole train sequence didn’t excite me too much, outside of its beginning stunt and the end. Watching men chase one another atop the speeding train, let alone wrestle and fight with knives, only serves to limit what can be done and it reminds me how fake the moment is for a franchise that has made its mark on its daredevil realism. That extended middle feels a bit too much like other Hollywood thrillers and action movies, and that’s what made it disappointing for a series I consider the current gold standard of franchise action.
A much less heralded sequence around the forty-five minute mark was my favorite, where Ethan is running around the Abu Dhabi airport while the following takes place: 1) Ethan trying to evade federal agents (the dependable Shea Whigham) looking to arrest him, 2) Ethan is trying to find the owner of one half of the MacGuffin keys who happens to be a pickpocket that keeps giving him the slip, 3) Ethan’s team, Luther (Ving Rhames, the only other actor who has appeared in every M:I film) and Benji (Simon Pegg) trying to find a nuclear bomb in a suitcase through the maze of baggage claim and disarm it, 4) the introduction of our villain Gabriel, well, our primary lackey to The Entity, who also happens to be a former IMF turncoat who killed Ethan’s girlfriend and essentially “made Ethan Hunt who he is” following Batman logic. This entire sequence is pure McQuarrie splendor, where it introduces the different characters, several at cross-purposes, lets them loose and then finds organic complications and specific turns that take advantage of the geography as well as the character’s emotional states. I loved it, and it made me hopeful that after a bit of a slow start that M:I 7 was now cooking and would be the prolonged deluge of near-perfect set-pieces that was Fallout. Not so much, but this sequence was indeed good fun.
Another issue I had was that our villain, again more like chief lackey, is so bland. I like Esai Morales (Ozark) as an actor, but the character of Gabriel is such a non-starter. Even giving him the personal history with Ethan feels like an admission that this bad guy has little to offer on his own. I think it’s part of how the character is written but I think it’s also a reflection that he’s the number two behind the all-powerful, scheming A.I., and then he too has a number two (number three?) played by Pom Klementieff (Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3), and she is so much more engaging as an antagonistic presence. She’s the one driving through cars and stonework throughout Rome to chase down Ethan. She’s the one who fights him in a narrow alleyway, a nicely claustrophobic change-of-pace action moment for a series that gorges on scale. If the true villain is going to be an A.I., why can’t Pom simply be its number two hench-person? Gabriel is redundant and boring and his fight sequences don’t feel believable against this crew.
There are a couple other storytelling choices that I wasn’t happy with, but I’ll save delving into those for the sake of spoilers. Suffice to say, I hope Dead Reckoning Part Two in 2024 course corrects and we have some welcomed returns. It’s kind of fun to see Kittridge (Henry Czerny, Ready or Not) make his first reappearance since the 1996 M:I and also get so much screen time. He’s essentially the face of the U.S. government infrastructure for the duration of the movie. His clenched-jaw consternation is a nice foil to the always rogue super spy.
Dead Reckoning – Part One is a good but not great Mission: Impossible movie, conceived as two parts and suffering some of the consequences of its over-extension. The thrills are still there, the sturdy production values, the emphasis on the spectacular stunts and fun action set pieces, so any fan of the franchise will find enough to enjoy over 160 minutes. The addition of Hayley Atwell (Avengers: Endgame) as the wily pickpocket who has stumbled into international espionage is great, though she cannot escape feeling like an Ilsa replacement while Ferguson is off-screen for too long. Cruise is still the movie star who delivers the most from film to film, and his high-wire efforts are appreciated. By the end of the movie, the sub is still at the bottom of the ocean, our characters are still in a race to find it, and I wondered why we couldn’t have ditched “Part One.” The answer, as much in Hollywood, is of course money, but I wish this Part One made me more psyched for Part Two.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Kill Bill vol. 1 (2003) [Review Re-View]
Originally released October 10, 2003:
Breathtaking and stylistically amazing. That’s all there is to it. Can’t wait for part two.
Nate’s Grade: A
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
Kill Bill was a turning point in the career of one of the biggest cinematic artists of the past 30 years, and as exciting and stylish as Volume 1 proved, this is the point where Quentin Tarantino vanished within himself and became the ultimate B-movie revivalist. It only took two films for Tarantino to not just become an indie brand name but his own adjective, as Hollywood was flooded with “Tarantino-esque” imitators chasing after the man’s unique voice of snappy pop-culture soliloquies, hard-boiled dialogue, and meta-textual irony. Of course the imitators could never truly capture the full appeal of Tarantino’s movies, overvaluing the surface-level aspects (quirky characters, non-linear plots, unexpected bursts of violence) and missing the greater character depth and thematic intricacies that allow the style to accentuate the entertainment rather than solely serve as that value. 2003 was the crossroads where Tarantino switched from smaller dramas and crime thrillers about semi-recognizable and relatable people (the middle-aged romance in Jackie Brown is the most tender and sincere writing of his career) to remaking and re-packaging his favorite grindhouse exploitation movies. It was like Tarantino himself was following the path of the would-be Tarantino-esque imitators.
Kill Bill began as an idea between actress Uma Thurman and Tarantino on the set of Pulp Fiction; it even feels like a big-screen realization of the failed Fox Force Five pilot that Mia Wallace (Thurman) filmed. Thurman had the idea of the opening, a bloody and beaten woman in a wedding dress being executed only to survive her execution. The idea germinated for years and became two movies worth of material. It’s hard for me to envision Kill Bill as one whole entity because the two volumes feel so thematically distinct. The first is an homage to 1970s kung-fu movies and Eastern cultural influences whereas the second volume serves as an homage to spaghetti Westerns and Western cultural influences. I’m shocked that through the annals of numerous physical media releases at no point has someone released Kill Bill as one whole four-hour movie. It’s only ever been physically screened as such once by Tarantino, and I think the implicit admission is that, while conceived as one sprawling and gargantuan epic, the movies work better as halves that reflect and enrich one another due to that separation. As I wrote in my 2004 review of Volume 2, the first part is the “show” and the second is the “tell,” but what a show Tarantino pulls off.
There was a time where the idea of Tarantino helming an action movie felt antithetical, but he tapped every corner of his encyclopedic knowledge of genre cinema to give us one of the best action movies of all time. The centerpiece sequence pitting The Bride against the Crazy 88s, as well as the ball-and-chain-wielding schoolgirl Gogo, feels like the culmination of a lifetime of cinema geek passion. It’s viscerally exciting without getting boring over the course of twenty-something minutes because Tarantino keeps things shifting, never falling upon redundancies, as if he’s so eager to squeeze in each and every loving homage and reference point. The climax, which again feels so natural an escalation and end point for a “part one,” took eight weeks to film, and the MPAA insisted it be toned down to secure an R-rating (he turned it black and white to obscure the color of the blood, itself another indirect homage to martial arts movies of old when they played on American television). Reportedly over 450 gallons of fake blood was used during the production of both volumes, but this first edition is definitely the more gleefully over-the-top.
The revenge structure is shaped around The Bride (née Beatrix Kiddo) killing the five members of her former gang, the Deadly Viper Squad. Volume 1 only covers two members meeting their just desserts, one of which is the opening scene. That means after the first ten minutes fighting Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), we’re working the rest of the movie to the next boss fight. That’s where we get the character dynamics, the obstacles that The Bride must overcome (step one: wiggle your big toe), and the history of O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Lui) and her ascension to Japanese crime lord. With less careful filmmakers, this middle stretch might feel sluggish, but with Tarantino, it’s invigorating as the new world and its many faces connect together to create such an intriguing and engrossing larger picture. Volume 1 provides the structural bones of the story, as well as buckets of sticky viscera, whereas Volume 2 adds the meat and complexity and larger nuance. That doesn’t mean Volume 1 is lacking creativity, it’s just that it’s the half that has to perform more foundational lifting so that those character details and choices will have the larger impact they do. Volume 1 is a long straight line back to O-Ren Ishii, and the accelerating carnage is wonderful to behold.
Thurman has never been better than with her Quentin collabs. After her sudden rise in Pulp Fiction, it felt like her career stalled playing many “hot girl” roles in misfires like The Truth About Cats & Dogs, The Avengers, and of course Batman & Robin. After her Kill Bill revival, her star rose again only to once again falter from more reductive “hot girl” roles in misfires like Paycheck, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, and the movie musical of The Producers. She recently came into the casting orbit of Lars von Trier, a filmmaker who never met a beautiful woman he didn’t want to punish excessively onscreen for society’s ills. Her role in 2014’s Nymphomaniac volume 1 was a memorable high point as a contemptuous woman confronting her husband’s younger lover, the titular nymphomaniac. Perhaps it was the meta-textual comment of Thurman’s cinematic type-casting, the older “hot girl” replaced by the younger, newer beauty. I’m probably just grasping for greater meaning here. Thurman and Tarantino didn’t speak for years after the conclusion of the Kill Bill series, but it wasn’t until 2018 that we found out why. That’s when the public found out about the existence of a video where Thurman was driving a car and crashed. The problem was it should have been a stunt driver but Tarantino insisted and pressured Thurman into doing the stunt, she crashed, was injured, and still suffers to this day. She says she has since forgiven Tarantino even though he and Harvey Weinstein withheld footage of the incident for years.
The music has taken on a life of its own. Much was repurposed from old movies and given new context, much like Tarantino’s overall creative mantra. The siren-blaring announcement of two foes facing each other has become its own pop-culture meme. The slow-motion walk to “Battle Without Honor or Humility” has also become pop-culture shorthand. “Twisted Nerve” is a great ringtone, and “Woo Hoo” by the Japanese surf rock girl group The 5,6,7,8s became so inescapably hummable that it eventually became the catchy theme of a wireless company.
This movie also holds a special place for me because the image that immediately comes to mind is watching my father uproariously laughing throughout the movie and rocking in his theater seat. A severed head leading to a geyser of endless blood had my father cackling like a child. By the end of the movie, I recall him turning to me, smiling ear-to-ear, and exclaiming, “Now that was a great movie!” Conversely, I also remember my college roommate falling asleep next to me as The House of Blue Leaves was bathed in (>450) gallons of (black and white) blood.
In the ensuing two decades, Tarantino has directed five other movies, published two books, been nominated for Best Director twice, won his second screenwriting Oscar, and essentially brought the tastes of the Academy to his own. He’s written three Best Supporting Actor winners (Christoph Waltz in 2009 and 2012, Brad Pitt in 2019) and become one of the most commercially reliable names, a director whose very name itself is a selling point for mainstream audiences. Even while some may bemoan that the indie provocateur might be “slumming” with his own highly polished version of B-movies, he’s dragged those same tastes to wide commercial appeal and industry acclaim. Kill Bill Volume 1 is the beginning of Tarantino tattooing ironic air quotes to his output, but when you’re this talented and passionate about movies of all kinds, even a kung-fu homage can become a cultural force and one of the best superhero origins ever (The Bride is pretty much a superhero and compared to Superman in Volume 2). Kill Bill Volume 1 is still a masterfully entertaining and bloody fun experience twenty years later.
Re-View Grade: A
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