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Juror #2 (2024)
Clint Eastwood’s possible last movie as a director (the man is 94 years old, people) was buried at the theater through a limited release by its studio, which is a shame because Juror #2 is a fairly solid adult drama with some grueling tension built right in. I was wondering how screenwriter Jonathan Abrams was going to make this premise work, where a recovering alcoholic and expectant father, Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), is impaneled on a jury for a murder case and discovers, over the presentation of evidence, that he might actually be the culprit. That same night, at the same location of where the supposed murder took place, is where Justin thought he hit a deer. What follows is a soul-searching account of one man being torn apart as far as what he should do. Does he let this other man take the blame so Justin can live out his life with his new baby and wife? Or does he come forward and admit his own firsthand knowledge of the events would present a very reasonable doubt for this trial? The movie becomes an extended balancing act of how long Justin can keep this secret and what angles he will work, trying to push the jury one direction or another through persuasive appeals. It’s familiar dramatic territory to anyone who grew up on 12 Angry Men, though with an extra high-concept twist. It’s a fairly straightforward drama that allows the story to take center stage and puts the focus on one man’s personal crisis. The acting is strong all around with Hoult (Nosferatu) being the predicted standout, showing the heavy weight of his guilt wirh every pained expeession. I think the ending does a disservice to the kind of movie that came before it, namely that it should be more definitive in its conclusion and provide a fitting resolution. This isn’t exactly the kind of movie that benefits from prolonged ambiguity, so the abrupt ending feels like a miscalculation and hampers a bit of the ending’s impact. However, Juror #2 is a good squirm session.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Million Dollar Baby (2004) [Review Re-View]
Originally released December 15, 2004:
Million Dollar Baby, much like its fledgling female boxing character, has come out of nowhere and made a considerable deal of noise. This little homespun film directed by Clint Eastwood didn’t have the glitz and sheen of other awards friendly movies, but now it seems that Eastwood?s own baby may clean up come Oscar time. Can Million Dollar Baby tackle the enormous hype surrounding it? Yes and no.
]Frankie (Eastwood) is a hardened boxing trainer too concerned for his fighters’ welfare to allow them to fight in championship bouts. He’s the kind of cynical old man that enjoys pestering a priest and causing him to unleash an F-bomb. Frankie and his longtime friend Scrap (Morgan Freeman) run a rundown gym and talk un-sentimentally about their older days as prize fighters. Then along comes Maggie (Hilary Swank), a 32-year old waitress who’s got nothing to believe in except her possibility as a boxer. She wants Frank to train her into the champ she knows she can be. He refuses saying he doesn’t train girls. She’s so determined she won’t take no for an answer. Frank finally agrees, especially after some help from Scrap, and starts to teach Maggie everything she needs to know to be a star pugilist. The two begin to open up to each other emotionally and Maggie seems destined to become a force in the ring.
Million Dollar Baby‘s greasiest attribute is its trio of knockout performances. Swank owns every second of this movie. She’s unremittingly perky, conscientious but also dogged, stubborn, and irresistibly lovable. Swank embodies the role with a startling muscular physique and a million dollar smile. Her performance is equal parts charming and heartbreaking. Maggie’s the heart of Million Dollar Baby and Swank doesn’t let you forget it for a millisecond. Come Oscar time, I’m sure she will be walking onstage to grab her second Best Actress Oscar in five years.
No one does grizzled better than Eastwood, and maybe no other actor has made as much of an acting mark by squinting a lot. Million Dollar Baby is probably his best performance to date, though for a good while it sounds like Frank has something lodged in his throat (pride?). Frank has the greatest transformation, and Eastwood brilliantly understates each stop on the journey until landing in a vulnerable, emotionally needy place.
Freeman once again serves as a film’s gentle narrator. There isn’t a movie that can’t be made better by a Morgan Freeman performance. His give-and-take with Frank feels natural and casual to the point that it seems improvised on the spot. Freeman unloads some great monologues like he’s relishing every syllable, chief among them about how he lost his eye. It’s wonderful to watch such a great actor sink his teeth into ripe material and deliver a performance that may net him a long-awaited Oscar (I think he’s due, and likely so will the Academy).
For whatever reason, Eastwood is hitting a directing groove in his twilight years. First came Mystic River, an ordinary police whodunnit made exceptional by incredible acting. Now Eastwood follows up with Baby, an ordinary sports film made extraordinary by incredible acting. Hmmm, a pattern is forming. The cinematography is crisp and makes great use of light and shadow to convey emotion. Eastwood’s score is also appropriately delicate and somber. The boxing sequences are brief but efficient.
Million Dollar Baby is a very traditional story that is at times surprisingly ordinary. Maggie’s the scrappy underdog that just needs a chance, Frank’s the old timer that needs to find personal redemption, and Scrap’s the wise old black man. Once again, an old curmudgeon takes on a rookie and in the process has their tough facade melt away as the inevitable victories pile up. Million Dollar Baby is a very familiar story but then again most boxing tales are fairly the same in scope.
What eventually separates Million Dollar Baby from the pack is its third act twist. You think you know where Eastwood’s film is headed, especially given the well-worn terrain, but you have no clue where this story will wind up. The plot turn deepens the characters and their relationships to each other in very surprising ways. You may be flat-out shocked how much you’ve found yourself caring for the people onscreen. It almost seems like Eastwood and company have used the familiar rags-to-riches underdog drama to sucker punch an audience into Million Dollar Baby‘s final 30 minutes. We’re transported into an uncomfortable and challenging position, and Eastwood won’t let an audience turn away.
Million Dollar Baby is not the colossal masterpiece that critics have been drooling over. For one thing, the group of antagonists is not nearly as textured as our trio of leads. They’re actually more stock roles that further enforce the ordinary story of Million Dollar Baby. Maggie’s trailer trash family is lazy unsupportive batch of stereotypes. The evil female boxing champ just happens to be a German who doesn’t mind playing dirty. One of the boxers at Frank’s gym is an arrogant showboat just waiting to be nasty while the teacher’s back is turned. Million Dollar Baby excels at showing depth and humanity with its lead trio, yet it seems if you aren’t in that circle you’re doomed to wade in the shallow end.
Eastwood shows that great acting and great characters you love can elevate a common framework. The package may be similar to a lot of films before about scrappy underdogs, but Million Dollar Baby lacks comparison in its genre when it comes to its enthralling acting and characters. The father-daughter bond between Frank and Maggie is heartwarming. The final reveal of what her Gaelic boxing name means may just bring tears to your eyes. The results are a very fulfilling movie going experience, albeit one that regrettably may not live up to such hype.
Million Dollar Baby has been showered with heapings of praise and become a formidable Oscar contender. The story treads familiar waters but its outstanding acting and deep and humane characters elevate the material. The film can’t match the hyperbole of critics but Million Dollar Baby is an ordinary but greatly satisfying ride led by compelling acting. The film hums with professionalism and seems to just glide when everything comes together magnificently, particularly in that last 30 minutes. Eastwood is hitting an artistic stride and it’s actually exciting to see what Clint will do next. Million Dollar Baby may not be a first round knockout but it definitely wins by decision.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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WRITER REFLECTIONS 20 YEARS LATER
Million Dollar Baby was its own underdog story that showed its strength when it mattered most, taking the 2004 Best Picture Oscar, as well as Best Actress for Hilary Swank and Best Supporting Actor for Morgan Freeman. It wasn’t even on many award prognosticators’ radar until the final month of the year. The odds-on favorite for most of 2004 had been Martin Scorsese’s Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator, a lavish recreation of Old Hollywood with the power of Harvey Weinstein behind it. After 2002’s Gangs of New York went 0-10 with its Oscar nominations, Weinstein vowed this would not happen again and that he would get Scorsese that first directing Academy Award, so no expense was spared with a $110 million-dollar budget, exceeding the previous highest Miramax budget from 2003’s Cold Mountain. The narrative was set, the power of Weinstein was behind it, and the context of Hollywood celebrating its own history has long been an appealing formula for an easy Oscar victory. Then came Clint Eastwood’s scrappy little boxing movie and it sucker-punched the established awards narrative, taking the top prize (Sorry Harvey, but if it was any consolation, The Aviator improved upon Gangs’ ratio, winning 5 of 11 noms).
Twenty years later it’s impossible to discuss the legacy of Million Dollar Baby without talking about the legacy of Eastwood as a director. He’s been directing movies ever since 1971’s Play Misty For Me. He initially stuck to what he knew, thrillers and Westerns, with the occasional passion project like 1988’s Charlie Parker biopic, Bird. It all changed for Eastwood with 1992’s Unforgiven, a searing deconstruction of the Western and masculinity and conveniently digested American myth-making that won Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood. From there, the flinty-eyed, gravelly-voiced filmmaker was seen as an Oscar favorite, though he was only nominated for Best Director three other times out of the twenty-five films he directed after. Eastwood’s been regarded as some higher-minded adult director, but looking over his long list of directorial efforts, the man has always kept to his preferred milieu of thrillers and Westerns with the occasional somber biopic. The more assumed Academy-friendly projects typically gained minimal traction, usually acting nominations like with Richard Jewell, Invictus, and The Bridges of Madison County. Sometimes they’ve just been complete artistic whiffs, like J. Edgar, Jersey Boys, or Hereafter.
The movies that got the most acclaim from Eastwood as director were the elevated genre movies, be they crime thriller (Mystic River), Western (Unforgiven), or sports underdog drama (Million Dollar Baby). The man has an inherent interest in genre movies. He may make a WWII drama from the point of view of the Japanese, completely in Japanese, but then next he’ll make a movie about being a “Get off my lawn” grumpy grandfather taking on street gangs. He made a movie about sending geezers into space, a juror realizing he may actually be guilty of the crime he’s intended to judge, and a corrupt president covering up his crimes (that guy wasn’t even a convicted felon upon inauguration -ha). The man is at his best when he sticks to what he knows, and when he can collaborate with writers who can get the best out of his instincts, the results can be exceptional. He’s a man interested in telling genre stories, and I can respect that. He’s notoriously spartan in his directorial approach with actors, typically only allowing two or so takes before moving on, a.k.a. the anti-Kubrick. The photography is so stark is might be confused for being black and white. There is a stripped-down-to-its-studs quality to the best of Eastwood’s movies, which is why deconstructionist examinations over genres can be especially rewarding. It allows for a larger space for characters to expand and grow and challenge our expectations, which is where Million Dollar Baby still works so well twenty years after it unexpectedly KO’d the awards circuit.
This is a Cinderella sports story balanced by an invigorating surrogate father-daughter relationship. Maggie Fitzgerald (Swank) is so eager to prove herself as a boxer, and we’re so happy to see her gain success and dignity, helping to give her trainer Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) a new sense of purpose. Everything is going right for this pair and it feels like the Hollywood movie we would all know and love, and then it all gets violently torn away when Maggie is injured in the ring and becomes paralyzed from the neck down. From there, Million Dollar Baby transforms from its sports movie formula and becomes something so much more meaningful and interesting and emotionally affecting. We’re constantly playing a mental contrast from before and after the accident. She’s so optimistic and bouncy and full of life. To see the joyous Maggie using her body to give her confidence and identity and overcoming adversity and intimidating more professional opponents through force of will, and then to see her bedridden, wheezing through a ventilator, and so deeply lost in her slack eyes, it’s something awful. She survived the injury but her spirit has been obliterated. Now, this isn’t a commentary on how disabled people cannot live fulfilling lives and might as well be euthanized. Maggie is the one who makes the choice to be euthanized and she will not be swayed, and this decision puts it to her coach, a lifelong Catholic, to demonstrate his love for his pupil through assisted suicide. To me, all that is WAY more dramatically interesting than if she had simply won the big title fight and proven all her many doubters wrong.
Swank rightfully won her second Oscar for Best Actress with a performance of such vitality and despair. At the end, when she’s stuck in that hospital bed, and she’s trying to chew off her own tongue so she can bleed to death, it’s such a devastating change from the chipper, optimistic scrappy underdog. Eastwood is gruff and growly and nearly unintelligible at points, but his reactions and his generosity as an actor help Swank achieve even higher acting greatness. Strangely enough, while Freeman is perfectly good in his Oscar-winning role, you could have cut him completely from the movie and affected very little, besides needing a new outlet for Eastwood to unintelligibly grumble towards.
It can feel like Million Dollar Baby is two different movies smashed together, one without an ending and one without a beginning. If you felt like you were plugged into that rousing sports underdog movie, I can understand feeling cheated by the rug pull. I feel like the version of this movie, by its end, is the one it wanted to be all along, and it’s using your emotional investment in these characters to make the decisions all the more grueling and tragic. Twenty years later, I think I enjoyed the moments before the accident a little less and the moments after the accident much more, and considering the ending seems like the whole point for Million Dollar Baby, that seems like an endorsement for its staying power two decades hence. It still has enough power today from the performances and where it pushes those characters. Million Dollar Baby is still a winner because it fit so well as a vehicle that Eastwood could elevate. He’s 94 years old and not likely directing too many more movies, but if anyone can keep making movies into their triple digits, it’s this man.
Nate’s Grade: A-
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Heretic (2024)/ Conclave (2024)
Recently, two religious-based, single-location thrillers have emerged from the confines of indie cinema, and this combination is so rare that I felt a unique opportunity to review them both.
Heretic is a chamber movie about two teen Mormons (Sophie Thatcher, Chloe East) proselytizing to a middle-aged man (Hugh Grant) one dark and stormy night. He invites them in and seems kind and welcoming, but looks can be very deceiving. He has some very strong opinions when it comes to the nature of belief, and he will test both of these young Mormons on the faith of their convictions as he puts them through a series of trials and lectures. That last part might stun people, but Heretic is actually at its best during its lengthy lecture sequences. It might remind people of a nattering Reddit atheist being unleashed, but the movie really comes alive when Grant is challenging the roots of their belief systems as well as the historical contexts of religions. The Mormon ladies push back as well, countering some of the arguments so it’s not so one-sided. There’s a clear point of view to the movie but I wouldn’t say it’s didactic. The thrills ratchet as the two women start to fret about what this man has in store for them, how they might escape from his labyrinthine house, and how to signal for help. Unfortunately, the revelations can never quite match the fun of the mystery of motivations, and once it gets into a really convoluted place of switcheroos, then I think it loses momentum. The performances are all outstanding, led by Grant’s magnetic about-face turn as a snide villain. The same self-effacing charms he worked so well in the realm of rom-coms have a new eerie manipulative quality, luring his prey into his fiendish trap. The end attempts to go a bloodier and more ambiguous route that I don’t know it earns, but by that time, even after stalling out for the last act, Heretic won me over by virtue of its creepy convictions.
Conclave is an electioneering movie that places the viewer in the middle of the fraught voting process to determine the next pope of the Catholic Church. Ralph Fiennes plays a cardinal tasked with leading the conclave, the gathering of Catholic cardinals who will stay until a nominee has won a majority of their secret votes. Except it’s all not so secret as multiple candidates are openly campaigning for votes, trying to persuade different factions to support their candidacy. Each round of voting without a winner resets the field of play and leaves sides scrambling to reclaim footing. The movie is surprisingly very easy to get into, a crackling political thriller about the behind-the-scenes machinations and politicking for the highest office in the Catholic Church. There is a bevy of twists and turns and plenty of juicy revelations and betrayals, as these holy men start acting a little less holy to eliminate their competition or sully their chances. The constant churning is enough to keep things unsettled and intriguing, but there’s also a larger question for our protagonist, a man of faith who told the prior pope that he wished to leave his faith only to be denied by the pontiff for reasons we aren’t quite sure. Why did this pope specifically pick him for this position? The movie also asks deeper questions about the nature of power and leadership, namely are the people actively seeking it the right candidates for the right reasons? The very end of the movie knocked me out with a twist that I dare say nobody will rightly see coming, but it made me want to applaud. Conclave is an intelligently crafted thriller with weighty ideas and engaging performances.
Nate’s Grades:
Heretic: B
Conclave: B+
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Nosferatu (2024)
Director Robert Eggers’ remake of a famous rip-off of the most famous blood-sucker in literature is a finely crafted and highly atmospheric drop into the past, as should be expected from Eggers (The Witch, The Northman). It doesn’t redefine cinematic vampires but rather puts the story through the contemporary lens of a toxic ex-boyfriend who refuses to relinquish what he feels belongs to him. The story should be familiar to most, even if they never watched the original 1922 silent film, nor its 1970s remake by Werner Herzog. Bill Skarsgaard plays the mysterious and threatening Count Orlock, a wealthy Transylvanian outsider looking to relocate to the big city in Germany, primarily to prey upon poor Ellen Hunter (Lily-Rose Depp), the “one who got away,” so to speak. He haunts her dreams and drives her mad, with Depp mesmerized and convulsing most convincingly. From there it’s a battle between Ellen’s husband (Nicholas Hoult) and an expert in the occult (Willem Defoe) over whose will will win out. Skarsgaard is fascinating and chilling and you too may want to imitate the thick-as-stew Count Orlock accent afterwards. The technical elements of this movie are masterful, from production design, to costuming, to the gas-lit and moody photography. Eggers is a deeply sincere filmmaker who translates his passions and madness onto the big screen with loving care. Nosferatu is gorgeous and unnerving, though I’m hesitant to say it rivals Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula movie for modern vampire artistic triumph and pure horniness. It’s a gussied-up B-movie with a deeply committed filmmaker to deeply realized genre filmmaking, and so Nosferatu is an entertaining remake that most vampire fans will be happy to sink their teeth into this holiday season.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Smile 2 (2024)
In 2022, thanks to genius viral marketing and the acknowledgement how deeply unnerving happy people can be, Smile was a surprise horror smash hit. Writer/director Parker Finn expanded on a previous short film and made serious money, which meant a sequel was a given. Finn returns to lead Smile 2 to even creepier genre pastures, this time following the mental demise of a pop star, Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) trying to make sense of this malignant curse. As much as I enjoyed the first Smile for its careful development and visceral intensity, I think Smile 2 might be even better.
From the opening sequence, it’s clear that we’re in the hands of a filmmaker that knows exactly what they’re doing. This is not merely another paycheck for Finn. He’s thought about how a sequel can build from its predecessor, stand on its own, incrementally build out the mythology, but mostly how to be an expertly made horror thriller designed to get under your skin. There were multiple sequences where I kept muttering variations of , “No,” or, “I don’t like that at all,” enough so that my wife in the other room would inquire what was directing these responses. Finn is tremendous at setting up the particulars of a scare sequence and allowing the audience to simmer in that anxious period of dread as we wait for something sinister to happen. He reminds me of James Wan and his ability to set up a nasty little scenario and then traps you inside awaiting the worst. There are sequences that compelled me to look away, not simply because they were overpowering, though the gore and makeup effects can best be described as impressively gross, but because the movie was finding different ways to make me uncomfortable, but in that good horror movie way. Finn’s camera makes what we should fear very clear, and his editing is precise. This is a movie that wants you to see the darkness and persistently worry about what’s coming just out of the frame.
One of my minor complaints with the first Smile was that there wasn’t much below its grinning surface. Sure, the entire premise of a curse that spreads through witnessing horrific acts of self-harm lends itself toward the discussion of how trauma begets trauma, but beyond that the first film was more reliant upon supreme craft and well-engineered scares. There’s nothing wrong with a movie that exists primarily as a thrill ride as long as those thrills deliver upon their promise. However, with Smile 2, Finn uses the character of Skye Riley as a beginning point to discuss the toxic relationships that come with fandom. It should be very obvious for every viewer that Skye is going through some serious issues. She’s overcoming addiction, physically rehabilitating her body as well as socially rehabilitating her image, and trying to learn all her new choreography for an intense world tour. This is a woman who could use a significant break. And yet, as the movie progresses, you start to sense that there is this large machinery around her that needs her to perform because that is how she makes them all money. Even her own mother-as-manager (Rosemarie DeWitt) can seem questionable as far as her motivations; is she pushing her child because she knows it’s what best for her to focus on for recovery, or is she pushing her because the tour pays for her lifestyle? As the movie progresses, the characters fret that Skye’s increasingly bizarre behavior is going to ruin the tour first and foremost, and concern for her actual well-being is secondary at best. All these people have their paychecks attached to this woman fulfilling her contractual obligations. You can also extrapolate the intense pressure the industry places on people with mental illness and self-destructive personalities to conform to standards that are unfair and often un-meetable. You might question why more pop stars don’t have head-shaving outbursts.
Because we know that the evil entity has the power to alter our sense of sight and sound, it means the viewer must be actively skeptical about what is happening. Is this really happening? Is this sort of happening but elements are different? Or is this completely a hallucination? It makes the plot the equivalent of shifting sand, never allowing us to be comfortable or complacent. This can lead to positive and negative feelings. It keeps things lively but it can feel like the plot never really moves forward, at least in a cause-effect accumulation. It can often feel like the movie is moving in starts and stops, and if you’re not onboard for the craft, the acting, and the scares, then the results can likely feel frustrating, especially when large swaths of time are canceled out. For me, I enjoyed the extra sensory game of keeping me alert because it led to a barrage of surprises and rug pulls, some of them admittedly annoying, especially losing what amounts to maybe an entire act of the movie, but also they were a definite way to keep upending the narrative certainty. This sneaky approach also very viscerally places us in the paranoid mindset of our protagonist, as we too are unable to trust our senses and tense up with certain unsettling auditory cues. Mainly, I was having too much fun with the devious twists and turns, and some wickedly disturbing imagery from the director, that I felt like it was an ongoing thrill ride through a funhouse of insanity that kept me guessing.
In a just world, Scott (Aladdin, Charlie’s Angels) would be at the front of the pack in the discussion for the Best Actress Oscar. This woman is put through the proverbial wringer and she showcases every frayed nerve, every degenerating thought with such verve and command. It’s essentially a performance of a woman completely breaking down mentally, but Scott doesn’t just go for broke, putting every ounce of effort into inhabiting the breakdown, she creates a character that reveals herself through the breakdown. It’s not just screaming hysterics and histrionics; there are different levels to her dismantling psyche, and Scott portrays them beautifully. I felt such great levels of dread for her because of how successfully Scott was able to anchor my emotional investment. She’s also portraying different versions of Skye, and some key flashbacks reveal just how toxic her former addict self was that she’s trying to put to rest. It’s a performance about metaphorical demons and literal demons haunting a woman, as well as guilt that is eating her alive. Scott allows us the pleasure of watching a first-class performance through her shattering.
There’s a curious motif to the movie that many will probably ignore but my wife and I fixated on, and so I feel the need to briefly discuss this so that, you too dear reader, can have this fixation as well. There are at least four scenes where Skye drinks a large bottle of water in a manner that can be best described as monstrously destructive. She drinks that bottle like a lost man in the desert finding his first drink of water. She attacks it. My best analysis is that this is a character detail about Skye’s addictive personality and sense of dependency, projecting the same all-consuming need onto water that she had previously for narcotics. One of the best laughs is when a doctor takes stock of Skye and says how dehydrated she is. Regardless, take in how desperately Skye Riley drinks and think about perhaps applying that technique next time you need a refreshing drink.
By its nightmarish conclusion, Smile 2 finds a fitting and satisfying end stop that promises a possible even bigger and more disturbing escalation for a Smile 3. Finn has established himself with two movies as a major horror filmmaker who can work within the mid-major studio system and still keep a perspective and integrity. I’m pleased that Smile 2 isn’t just more of the same old Smile, and in fact very few instances involve strangers with that signature facial expression. By the time you’re seeing the smile, it’s usually too late. I enjoyed the choice to find menace and darkness in a world of pop music brightness (the fake pop songs actually sound indistinguishable from what currently airs on the radio, bravo). I enjoyed the continuing tradition of casting famous Hollywood scions, like Jack Nicholson’s son playing Skye’s dead boyfriend (that family grin is uncanny, also bravo). What I really enjoyed was Scott’s uncompromising performance. Smile 2 has convinced me that Finn is the real deal, Scott might be one of our best modern scream queens and young actors, and to confirm introverted habits to avoid anyone who looks directly at me and smiles.
Nate’s Grade: A-
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Anora (2024)
The critically-anointed Anora is the indie of the year, winning top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the first for an English-speaking movie in over a dozen years, and poised to be a major awards player down the stretch, some might even say front-runner for top prizes. It starts like a deconstruction of Pretty Woman, with Mikey Madison (Scream 5) playing Anora, a stripper who recognizes the advantageous possibilities flirting with a young rich Russian scion, Vanya. He wants her to be his girlfriend, and over a sex-fueled week, he’s so smitten that he wants to make Anora his wife. This whirlwind relationship hits the wall, however, once Vanya’s family inserts themself into his life, determined to annul the hasty marriage at all costs.
The movie becomes infinitely better at the hour mark when the exasperated extended Russian family comes into the picture. You worry they might be menacing, as they don’t want this stranger with access to the family wealth, but they’re far more bumbling, and Anora transforms into an unexpected comedy. It certainly wasn’t an authentic romance. Clearly Vanya was a meal ticket more than a three-dimensional romantic interest. The kid is an immature, annoying dolt, so we know Anora isn’t legitimately falling in love with him. The scenes of them building a “relationship” could have been cut in half because we already understood the nature of the two of them using one another. The last hour makes for a greatly entertaining turn of events as the unlikely and bickering posse searches New York City for a runaway Vanya. The movie feels propulsive and chaotic and blissfully alive. Ultimately, I don’t know what it all adds up to. Anora isn’t really a sharply drawn character, but none of the characters are particularly well developed. The pseudo-romantic fantasy of its premise, becoming a “princess” of luxury, isn’t really deconstructed with precision. It’s an unexpectedly funny ensemble comedy at its best, but I’m left indifferent to what other value I can take away. It’s well-acted and surprising, but it’s a vacuous side excursion made into a full movie that somehow has bewitched movie critics into seeing more. Perhaps they too have become overly smitten with Anora’s surface-level charms.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Wicked: Part One (2024)
It’s shocking that it took this long for Wicked to make its way from the Broadway stage to the big screen. The musical, based upon Gregory Maguire’s novel, began in 2003 and while it may have lost out on the biggest Tony Awards that year to Avenue Q (it seems astonishing now but… you just had to be there in 2004, theater kids) the show has been a smash for over two decades, accruing over a billion dollars as the second highest-grossing stage show of all time. As show after show got its turn as a movie, I kept wondering what was taking so long with an obviously mass appealing show like Wicked. It’s the classic Hollywood desire of “same but different,” a reclamation project for none other than the Wicked Witch of the West, retelling her tale from her perspective. Well, Wicked’s time has eventually dawned, and the studio is going to feast upon its protracted wait. Taking a page from the YA adaptation trend that dominated the 2010s, they’ve split the show into two movies, separated by a full year, hoping to better capitalize on the phenomenon. I was wary about Part One being 150 minutes, the same length as the ENTIRE Wicked stage show, but having seen the finished product, and by “finished” I mean one half, I can safely say that Wicked is genuinely fabulous and deftly defies the gravity of expectations.
In the fantasy world of Oz, the green-skinned outcast Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) is looked at with scorn, derision, and fear. She’s always been different and never fully accepted by her father who blames her for her mother’s death and her younger sister Nessarose (Marissa Bode) being stricken to a wheelchair. Nessa is going to study at Shiz University with all the other up-and-coming coeds of the land of Oz, including Glinda (Arianna Grande), a popular and frivolous preppie gal peppered in pink pastels. Glinda desperately wants to be taken seriously and become a witch, studying magic under the tutelage of the esteemed Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). Instead, Morrible’s fascination falls upon Elphaba after she reveals her tremendous magical ability in a moment of extreme emotion. Now Elphaba is enrolled at the magic school and learning about the way of the world, and she’s stuck with Glinda as her roommate. The two women couldn’t be any more different but over the course of the movie, we’ll uncover how one became Glinda the Good and the other the Wicked Witch of the West.
At two-and-a-half hours long, again the length of both acts of the stage show, Wicked Part One only covers the events of the show’s first act, and yet it feels complete and satisfying and, even most surprising, extremely well paced. It’s hard for me to fathom what could have been lost to get the running time down as each scene adds something valuable to our better understanding of these characters and their progression and the discovery of the larger world. It’s a movie that feels constantly in motion, propelling forward with such winning ebullient energy that it becomes infectious. It’s also not afraid to slow things down, to allow moments to breathe, and to provide further characterization and shading that wasn’t included in the stage show. The adaptation brings the fireworks for the finale and raises the visual stakes and danger in a manner that feels exciting and compellingly cinematic. Considering the resplendent results, I feel I could argue that the movie is actually -here comes the heretical hyperbole, theater kids- an improvement over the stage musical. It makes me even more excited for a bolder, longer, potentially even more emotionally satisfying second part in November 2025.
One of my primary praises for 2021’s In the Heights was that director John M. Chu, who cut his teeth helming the Step Up movies, knows exactly how to adapt musicals to maximize the potential of the big screen. If you’re a fan of musicals, old and new, you’ll find yourself swept away with the scope and intricacy of these large fantasy worlds, the flourishes of costume and production design, as well as the creative choreography making fine use of spaces and the power of film editing. There’s a rousing dance sequence set in a library with shelves that rotate around the room, making the slippery choreography that much more immersive, impressive, and acrobatic. Even big crowd numbers are given the knowing framing and sense of scale to hit their full potential, from the opening rendition of Munchkinland celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch of the West complete with giant burning effigy that would make a Wickerman envious, to the introduction to the City of Oz where it appears every citizen has a jovial role to play in welcoming strangers to their enchanted capital city. Chu’s nimble camerawork allows us to really enjoy the staging and skills of the talent onscreen, bringing a beating sense of vitality we crave from musical theater writ large. Wicked is simply one of the best stage-to-screen adaptations in musical theater history and a joyous experience that allows the viewer sumptuous visuals.
At its core, the story of Wicked is about some pretty resonant themes like self-acceptance, bullying, the fear of what is different or misunderstood, and all of this is built upon an irresistible friendship between Glinda and Elphaba. The rivals-to-allies formula isn’t new but it is tremendously effective and satisfying, especially when both characters are as well drawn and deserving of our empathy as these two ladies. They’re each on a different meaningful character arc for us to chart their personal growth and disillusion with what they’ve been taught is The Way Things Are. One is starting from a disadvantaged position and gaining traction through an outward demonstration of power, and the other is beginning in a position of privilege and becoming humble and more considerate as she acknowledges the challenges of others in a manner that doesn’t have to reconfirm her enviable “goodness.” It just works, and both women are fantastic in their roles. I was on the verge of tears at several points and my heart felt as full as a balloon throughout because of the emotional engagement and heartwarming camaraderie between our two leading ladies. With all its razzle dazzle, Wicked is a story of feminine friendship first and foremost and emotionally rewarding to experience, with the soaring music as a bonus.
Let’s finally talk about the music, a key factor in the enjoyment of any musical, naturally. The music was written by Stephen Schwartz, the Oscar-winning composer for “Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas as well as “Believe” from The Prince of Egypt. I found his Wicked numbers to range from good to astoundingly good, with catchy ear-worms like “Popular” to the anthemic power and sweep of “Defying Gravity.” The cheeky and toe-tapping “Dancing Through Life” is a showcase for Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton) and benefits from the aforementioned creative library choreography. “I’m Not That Girl” is a heartbreaking ode to the girls who don’t think of themselves as enough, which is begging for a reappearance in Part Two. The only clunker is “A Sentimental Man” but that’s more the result of the deficiencies of Jeff Goldblum as a singer than the song. I await the reuse of themes and motifs that will make the music even more thematically rich in the eventual Part Two.
Count me as part of the skeptical throng when it was announced that Grande, who hasn’t acted in over ten years, was cast as Glinda. I’m here to say that she is uniformly great. The Glinda role is the more outwardly showy role and thus immediately more memorable. It’s the far more comedic role, in fact the main source of comedy in the show, and Grande has serious comedic chops. Naturally she excels with the singing and its purposeful miasmic bombast, but it’s the subtle comedic styling and the exaggerated physicality that impressed me the most, like a moment of her twirling on the floor as an added dramatic flourish. There’s one scene where she’s just marching up and down a hallway in full exuberance, kicking, dancing, and exploding with joy. I anticipated that Erivo (Bad Times at the El Royale) would be exceptional, and of course the Broadway vet is, as she brings such simmering life to Elphaba. There’s a strength in equal measure to her vulnerability, making the character fully felt. Erivo also delivers during the big moments, like the climax of the movie that can give you goosebumps in hiw it weaves together empowerment and defiance and self-acceptance. Together, the two women are an unbreakable pair of performers and heroes that we’ll want to see triumph over adversity.
After decades of belabored waiting, Wicked finally makes its journey from stage to screen and I must say it was worth every minute. The film, even at only one half, feels complete and richly realized, building upon the strong foundation of the stage show and its numerous winning elements and masterfully translating them to cinema, taking full advantage of the visual possibilities while also expanding upon the story and themes for further enrichment. While born in the early 2000s War on Terror Bush era of politics, Wicked’s themes of anti-immigrant fear-mongering as scapegoats still bears striking resonance today, as do the emerging warnings of fascism in Oz. If you’re a fan of The Wizard of Oz, musical theater, or even just grandiose spectacle that doesn’t dilute grandiose feelings, then step into Wicked and you too will feel like you’re floating on air.
Nate’s Grade: A
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Rebel Moon: Director’s Cut (2024)
What a rarity for a movie to potentially appear twice on my worst of the year list, and such is the destiny of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon, originally released in 2023 and the first half of 2024, and now with added lengthier director’s cuts. So what do you get in the newest “Snyder cuts” besides fewer hours in your day? Let’s tackle the opening sequence demonstrating the power and villainy of our evil empire as they invade a crumbling city in resistance. Within short order we’ve witnessed: 1) female priestesses being forcefully disrobed and having their breasts branded, 2) an adorable little CGI pet become a literal suicide bomber, 3) a son brutally beating his father’s brains out of his skull to spare their family only for them all to be massacred anyway. Yikes. While there is a little more world-building absent from Snyder’s prior cuts, like a religious sect that turns the teeth of their conquered victims into a decorative washboard, even the extra time, and it is literally hours over the course of the two parts, feels strained and still poorly developed to better understand the world, the characters, the conflict, the history, anything that could make Snyder’s hopeful franchise its own universe. Theres now a giant metal goddess whose tears fuel space travel. All right then. One of the more interesting characters, the samurai-esque loner robot, is given more material but he’s still just as inscrutable. There’s plenty more cruelty here, slow-motion head shots painting the screen in sticky viscera. There’s also plenty more breathless and awkwardly extended sex scenes, but hey, at least those are consensual, so there’s that. I’m just stunned why Netflix would want different versions of these movies when they’re ultimately all housed under the same banner. It sure feels like the “Snyder cut” brand is now an expected marketing ploy to be exploited for added publicity. After all, why watch one long slightly bloody poorly written sci-fi space opera, when you could watch TWO versions, one of which being even bloodier and more miserable? Will there be an even Snyderier Snyder cut, adding more scenes of side characters suffering and even more festishized gore in even slower motion? Will the whole movie just be played in slow motion, now requiring nine hours? Where does it even end, Netflix?
Nate’s Grade: D
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Emilia Perez (2024)
Movie musicals can be sweeping, invigorating, and at their very best transporting, They mingle the high-flying fantasies and visual potential of the cinema, and we’ve gone through many waves of kinds of musicals. Today, we’re in an outlandish world of the outlandish musical, an experience in ironic air 210quotes, where stories that you never would have thought could be musicals would then dare to be different and attempt to be musicals. The much-anticipated Joker sequel, Folie a Deux, dares to be a challenging jukebox musical of old favorites. The French movie Emilia Perez tells the story of a cartel leader that undergoes a sex change and tries to do good with her second life. Both movies are deeply interesting messes as well as experiences I don’t think work as musicals.
In contrast, Netflix’s Emilia Perez is like an entire season of a telenovela streamlined into a two-hour-plus movie that manages to also, for better or worse, be a musical. It is filled with many outlandish and provocative elements you would never expect to be associated with singing and dancing, like a sex change surgery center. This movie mixes so many genres and tones that at one point it feels like you’re watching a crime thriller about Mexican cartels and their manipulation of those in power, and then the next moment it feels like you’re watching an absurd rendition of Mrs. Doubtfire, where a spouse has adopted a new identity and uses this to spend time with their kids they otherwise would not be able to do so. It’s a wild film-going experience; I can’t recall too many musicals that use street stabbings in syncopation with percussion. Because of its go-for-broke ambitions and veering tones, Emilia Perez is destined to be a cult movie, some that fall in love with its bizarre mishmash of elements, but most will probably be stupefied by the entire experience and questioning why, exactly, this was made into a musical.
In Mexico City, Rita Castro (Zoe Saldana) is a savvy defense lawyer tired of living in the shadows of her buffoonish bosses that rely upon her writing prowess to win cases. Someone sees great potential with her, and it happens to be Manitas del Monte (Karla Sofia Gascon), the head of a dangerous cartel. He wants Rita to find the international means to finish the process of Manitas surgically becoming a woman. Under the gun, metaphorically and literally, Rita finds the doctors who will transform the dangerous him into a new her. Manitas then fakes their death, leaving his old life behind to start anew, including their children and wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez). Manitas becomes the titular Emila Perez, but rather retire in luxury, she wants to do good, and Emilia begins a non-profit organization that exhumes bodies, victims from the cartels, to provide closure for their widows and grieving families. Emilia then invites Jessi and their kids to come live in her estate, explaining she is a formerly unknown “aunt” to Manitas. Now Rita is trying to run Emilia’s organization, keeps Emilia from going too far in revealing her identity, and looking out for her own sake considering she’s one of the few that knows about a life before Emila Perez.
I know there will be hand-wringing and cultural tut-tut-ing about the movie’s implicit and explicit themes dealing with trans issues, exploring one woman’s exploration of self and securing the identity she’s always wanted through the lens of a lurid soap opera trading in stereotypes. It’s a lot of movie to digest, and while it feels entirely sincere in every one of its strange creative decisions, it’s also the kind of movie whose tone can invite snickers or derision, like the sex change clinic where a heavily bandaged chorus repeats words like, “vagioplastia” and “penoplastia.” It’s a movie with extreme feelings to go along with its extreme plot turns, but the whole movie feels like it’s trying to settle on a better calibrated wavelength of melodrama.
I think this could have been significantly improved by director/co-writer Jacques Audiard (Rust and Bone, A Prophet) had he embraced more of the movie’s outlandish reality breaking through. Too few of the musical numbers actually do something more than witness someone singing. The opening number, one of the best, involves Rita trying to compose a defense through the streets of Mexico City, while a crowd sweeps around her, often stopping to chime in as an impromptu chorus, sometimes setting up props for her use. It’s a great kickoff, the energy crackling, and I was looking forward to what the rest of the movie could offer. There’s only one other musical number that recreates this significant energy and engagement, a fundraising dinner for Emilia’s organization amongst the powerful members of society. While Emilia speaks at a podium, Rita struts around the floor, sashaying between the tables, and informing the audience about all the dirty deeds and skeletons of the assembled muckety-mucks. She’s literally manhandling the frozen participants, dancing atop their tables in defiance, and it’s a magnificent moment because of how it breaks from our reality to lean into the storytelling potential of musicals. These sequences work so well that it’s flabbergasting that Audiard has, essentially, settled for far less creatively for too much of his movie’s staging. The big Selena Gomez song is just her listlessly singing to the camera while shifting her weight while standing, like the laziest music video of her career. Why tease the audience with the crazy heights as a musical if you’re unwilling?
And now let’s tackle the music, which to my ears was too often rather underwhelming.It sounds like temp music that was intended to be replaced and never was. It’s lacking distinct personality, catchy or memorable melodies, anthems and themes, the things that make musicals enjoyable. The best songs also happen to be the best staged sequences, both involving Rita. These songs have a different vivacious energy by incorporating a hip-hop style of syncopation. “El Mar,” the song during the fundraising dinner, offers an infectious chorus adding extra percussive elements like people slamming fists down onto tables, listening to plates and glasses rattle. These are the moments that enliven a musical and convey its style and panache. Alas, too many of the songs lack that vitality, and can best be described as blandly competent and too readily forgettable.
It’s a shame because Saldana is giving her finest screen performance to date (to be fair, I never watched her Nina Simone biopic). The actress best known for being the strong warrior in sci-fi franchises like Avatar, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Star Trek plays an intriguing character with a rising fire of purpose and paranoia. Early on. Rita is ambitious but unhappy, practically dowdy in appearance, and she begins to come alive under her new role for Emilia. Saldana is electric as she sings and dances and slips effortlessly between Spanish and English, possibly to her first Oscar nomination. She’s the standout, which is slightly strange considering the role of Emilia Perez should be the breakout. Gascon, a trans actress, is quite good in such an outsized role, and gets to play her pre-transitioned identity as well under gobs of masculine makeup and tattoos. The fault isn’t with Gascon’s performance, the issue is that her character has such amazing potential but feels criminally underdeveloped. There is a world of issues of self-identity, culture, repression, shame, anger, jealousy, desire, to name but a few, that could be richly explored from the perspective of the leader of a deadly gang wanting to become a woman. The character is left too inscrutable for my tastes, leaving behind so much unobserved drama. As a result, even though the movie is literally named after her, Emilia Perez feels like a projection more than a character, and if that was indeed the point, then we needed more conflict about that friction.
Emilia Perez is a lot of things all at once; campy, ridiculous, sincere, crazy. It’s messy but it’s an admirably ambitious mess, one that even the faults can be the unexpected charms for someone else. I didn’t fall in love with this genre-bending experiment, although I found portions to be fascinating and others to be confounding. I don’t even think the musical aspects were finely integrated and explored, and so they feel like more of a gimmick, a splashy attempt to marry the high-art of musical theater with the perceived lower-art of grisly crime thrillers and melodrama. It earns marks for daring but the execution is haphazard and scattershot at best. There are moments that elevate the material, where the musical elements feel confidently integrated and supported with the dramatic sequence of events, providing an unexpected and rousing response. However, those moments are few and far between, and the absence only further cements what could have been. Emilia Perez might be your worst movie of the year, a grave miscalculation in tone and storytelling, or it might be a transporting and wild experience, one that can lock up multiple Academy Award combinations for its artistic bravura, a middle-aged Frenchman telling the story of trans empowerment through the guise of a Spanish-speaking musical framework. It sounds like so much and yet paradoxically I was left disappointed that it wasn’t more.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Daddio (2024)
A lengthy conversation playing out in real-time between two strangers who open up to one another over the course of one taxi drive from the airport. If it feels Richard Linklater-adjacent, that’s because writer/director Christy Hall (I Am Not Okay With This) has certainly been influenced by the chatty likes of Linklater, as she sticks us in the cab for the entire duration of that 90-minute ride and movie. We have Dakota Johnson as the fare, a woman returning home after visiting family with secrets and shame that she’ll reveal over the course of this cab ride. We have Sean Penn as the cab driver, a seen-it-all cynic who keeps pushing for more answers and conversation from his passenger. The problem with movies based solely around conversations is that the conversation has to be mesmerizing, exhibiting great care to impart artful and authentic character details that make us reconsider these people, and hopefully provide challenges to preconceived norms and ingrained perspectives that can foster reflective growth. Nobody wants to watch a movie about a trivial conversation over 90 minutes. The problem with Daddio is that it’s not really a two-way conversation; Penn acts more as an interrogator, slowly chipping away at the layers that Johnson’s young woman feels comfortable presenting publicly. The dialogue is fine but unremarkable, eschewing overly stylized verbosity for something more natural, but even with that choice the details we are granted are clumsy and minimal. Get ready for lots of protracted pauses awaiting texting replies. The acting is fairly solid throughout, especially Johnson since it is a whole showcase for her in that backseat. If we’re going to be riding shotgun on a 90-minute conversation, I guess I’m just looking for far more scintillating details, whether it’s from the characters, their conflicts, or just their gregarious dialogue. If we’re stuck with two people, let’s be stuck with two people we actually might want to share a cab with.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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