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The Alto Knights (2025)
The Alto Knights, from the creative team behind famous mafia movies like Bugsy and Goodfellas, feels like a dozen mob movies thrown into a blender: recognizable elements mashed together but lacking a cohesive vision and distinction. There’s also a major creative choice that makes little sense, mainly Robert De Niro plays two different roles. I assumed they would be twins or at the least brothers but no they are actually two different, unrelated people, Frank Costello and Vito Genovese. Why? I understand the appeal to De Niro fro an acting standpoint, as well as the potential marketing hook, but what about this makes sense for the viewer? What about this movie made it better by having one actor portray the two main characters? It made it harder for me to keep track, and that’s before there’s flash-forward interviews from an older Frank as well. The story is mostly set n the 1950s New York following the rivalry of two childhood friends-turned-mafia bosses but it feels so haphazard and jumbled, with story events crashing into one another but minus a clear sense of progression and consequence. It’s a strange experience to watch a movie with murders and marriages and the dissolution of personal relationships through paranoia and greed, and yet The Alto Knights lacks energy and direction. It’s hard to follow why these two guys are worthy of their own movie or even what their role in the larger mob ecosystem was, so watching scene after scene creates a “So what?” question. Unless you’re a non-discriminating fan of all mafia movies, The Alto Knights is the disappointing residue at the bottom of the mob blender. But hey you got extra De Niro!
Nate’s Grade: C
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Frankenstein (2025)
One of the reasons Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein has been so richly relevant two hundred years later is because of her thought-provoking themes and concepts, which still prove potent with each new malleable reinterpretation from the newest creative caretaker. It’s the “be careful what you wish for” adage combined with man’s hubris and our self-destructive impulses to play with things we don’t fully understand. It’s also a monster story that asks us to reconsider the perception of who the monster may truly be, and under writer/director Guillermo del Toro, the answer is always and forever man himself. This isn’t a surprise from the same filmmaker who gave us Hellboy and The Shape of Water. The man identifies with the monsters more than other people. The man turned his astounding stop-motion animated Pinocchio movie into a deft Frankenstein allegory, so the famous story has been on his mind for quite some time. It’s been an obvious influence, and now that he’s gotten his chance on his own imprint, it’s hard not to see elements of del Toro’s other movies everywhere. It creates this bizarre echo chamber of creative influence where the movie can feel derivative at times even though the source material was an influence on those other del Toro works. It’s just the nature of finally tackling the influence later in his career. It reminds me of 2012’s John Carter, based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ highly influential sci-fi series, and yet because it took 100 years to leap to the big screen, it couldn’t help but seem derivative of the same popular movies that were inspired by it. This is a convoluted way of saying del Toro’s Frankenstein is a much better Guillermo del Toro movie than a Frankenstein adaptation.
You probably know the story well enough to recite it yourself. Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is obsessed with conquering death after his own mother’s demise in childbirth. He gathers the parts of criminals and dead soldiers to reanimate into a new being, a Creature (Jacob Elordi) of superhuman strength and regeneration who cannot die. Victor’s cruelty punishes the Creature and disowns it, setting the stage for a showdown between dysfunctional father and son and the havoc caused by recklessly playing God.
There are deliberate decisions that mitigate some of the more compelling characterization of the novel. With del Toro’s version, Victor is the clear-cut villain. There’s some setup given to his strict childhood where his domineering father (Charles Dance) would quiz him and physically abuse Victor if he failed to recite the correct answers to his medical questions. Dear bad dad was doing this, you see, out of a belief that good doctors need to know intuitively because any hesitation could cost lives. When we witness Victor abusing the Creature in the same manner, we’re meant to see the connection between abusive fathers confusing disappointment with defiance. In the original story, Victor abandons the Creature on the night of its birth and then it’s gone. In this version, Victor imprisons the Creature, keeps him chained, attempts to train him, grows frustrated, and then tries to destroy the evidence. That’s a little more diabolical than simple morning-after regrets. This Victor can also be viewed as a forefather of incels the way he projects his romantic feelings onto Elizabeth (Mia Goth) and then gets huffy when she doesn’t return them. There are other deaths later in the story that are directly attributed to the Creature that are now Victor’s doing, which continues to squeeze out moral ambiguity from Shelley’s novel. If the Creature is purely innocent and Victor is purely villainous, that makes the relationship between father and son, Creator and Creature, far less meaningful and layered. It’s so obvious that another character, in their literal dying words, says to Victor, “You are the real monster.” It all becomes an ongoing cycle of bad fathers and the Creature ultimately trying to reach forgiveness. Even if the Creature ultimately finds that, is this Victor even worthy of redemption?
Another significant feature of del Toro’s retelling is, how do I put this delicately, the inherent magnetism of the Creature, a.k.a. Sexy Frankenstein. Elordi (Saltburn) is a tall, lithe actor to begin with with classical Hollywood features, but there was a conscious choice to portray this figure in a certain light, a sexy light. You might find parts of you that are suddenly alive while watching the character onscreen. That’s why even though he’s a literal assembly of corpses the makeup effects are very minimal and less intentionally grotesque or monstrous. The delicate lines around his body make me think of a cross between the Engineers in Prometheus and the body paint of that Gotye music video “Somebody I Used to Know.” The gentle makeup is meant to further convey the Creature as a sensitive figure; granted, he’s also capable of ripping the jaw off a wolf. By swerving away from the Creature’s physical deformities, the movie is also inadvertently downplaying the isolation that he felt that led to such rage and resentment. Is this man that hideous that some good woman couldn’t love him as is? The movie is already presenting Elizabeth as someone who sees through to his gentle nature, and she certainly also seems more than a little attracted to what he’s got going on. This Sexy Frankenstein reconfirms del Toro’s penchant for identifying with the monster, the outcasts, the underdogs. However, Sexy Frankenstein also takes something away from the horror and cost of the creation if he’s just going to be another brooding, misunderstood Byronic hero. Still, there are definitely worse pieces of meat you could be watching, so enjoy monster sweethearts.
With all that being said, del Toro’s Frankenstein is still a sumptuously made and entertaining Gothic spectacle. The production design is immense and immersive with del Toro’s knack for perfect details to create such a lived-in sense of mood (never enough giant stone face edifices). I loved Victor’s models of human torsos that looked almost like ballet dancers at rest; granted, ballet dancers having their skin peeled back by dozens of hooks. I just wanted to spend as much time as possible soaking up these sets and this heightened Gothic realm. It’s the kind of world where Victor’s laboratory needs to be an opulent abandoned castle complete with a pit in the middle of the floor plan that goes through several floors to a sewar/aqueduct basement level. There’s even what appears to be a water slide out of the estate, and the Creature gets to escape it in the most fun way. The movie is gorgeous with del Toro’s signature orange/green color palette bathing his universe. Even if the story isn’t quite reaching the heights it could, the visuals are always sterling and inviting. There’s also a surprising amount of gore, which maybe shouldn’t have been that surprising. I don’t know if we needed as much of the Arctic framing device, which itself was structured as a series of letters in the novel. It’s a platform for del Toro to demonstrate the Creature’s physical prowess and get some quality big-screen bloodshed flowing. I don’t know if we needed to keep cutting back throughout the whole running time like it’s a Christopher Nolan movie. Regardless, if you’re a general fan of monster movies, there’s going to be plenty here to proverbially sink your teeth into and savor on that super Netflix budget.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein gave birth to science fiction in 1818 and the James Whale movies from the 1930s gave birth to some of cinema’s most iconic and lasting images and influences. There’s quite a legacy for anyone who wants to put their own stamp on the material, so it helps that Guillermo del Toro has quite a legacy himself, a career built upon the dark recesses of a verdant imagination (I’ll always lament what could have been his version of The Hobbit movies, alas). His Frankenstein has all the hallmarks of a classic del Toro film experience, from the impeccable technical qualities, to the celebration of the mythic and Gothic, to the sympathetic portrayal of the outsiders condemned by a society too square to accept them, and an unironic emotional undercurrent that can approach self-parody. It’s a little long, a little ungainly in its shape, and a little too simplistic with its themes and characterization, but it can also be fittingly transporting and romantic and easy to feel that swell even if it’s all too familiar. For my money, the best Frankenstein adaptation is still the 1994 Kenneth Branagh version, flaws and all.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Freaky Tales (2025)
Watching Freaky Tales, an ode to 1980s Oakland California, punk, rap music, and grindhouse cinema, is like washing in someone else’s nostalgia. It’s a fun throwback experience but it doesn’t amount to much more than transitional diversions that won’t have the same appeal. This is an anthology movie following the events of a few nights in 1987 Oakland with criss-crossing characters told out of order. Given the abbreviated nature of the stories, you either have to make a strong impression with the characters, have memorable and surprising adventures, or have an intricate connection to the different stories that allows the narrative to keep reforming. Otherwise it’s a collection of shorts that don’t really add up to much else. While entertaining in spurts, there isn’t much more to Freaky Tales. The first story involves a punk rock club defending themselves against neo-Nazi bullies. It centers on a budding romance and works well with an exuberant, youthful energy and the theme of a vulnerable community standing together against hate is easy to root for especially when it results in bloody and maimed Nazis. The second story is the weakest and follows a female rap act trying to make the most of a stage show. The third story involves a mob enforcer (Pedro Pascal) trying to make a clean break and coming to terms with his past after a tragedy. It’s a story more memorable for some unexpected cameos and turns rather than supplying an antihero worthy of Pascal. The final story involves a professional basketball player seeking vengeance against the men who killed his family in a burglary-gone-wrong. It’s the most entertaining and ridiculous segment, especially as the pro player reveals the extent of his martial arts and mind powers. While each segment doesn’t quite overstay its welcome, none of the segments feel essential or cleverly integrated with the rest of the tales. As a result, Freaky Tales feels like gonzo campfire stories that don’t exactly go anywhere; pleasantly silly but missing out on greater fun.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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A Complete Unknown (2024)
I’m not really a Bob Dylan fan. While I can appreciate several of his songs, it’s his voice that has always put me off. An entire movie about the mystique of Dylan and his rise through the 1960s folk scene was never going to be too appealing for me. So keep all of that in mind as I tell you that A Complete Unknown is a thoroughly fine movie with the not-so grand insight that this famous troubadour might just be a talented prick. The end. Director/co-writer James Mangold returns to the musical biopic sub-genre almost twenty years after his Walk the Line (a non-Joaquin Phoenix Johnny Cash has a cameo in this movie too, securing the Boomer Music Cinematic Universe). It all feels very stately and staid and reverent and, especially during its climax, hopelessly quaint. The conclusion is over whether or not Dylan will play music at the Newport Folk Festival that the fuddy-duddy programmers demand. Will he go electric? Will he play traditional folk? Will you care? I suppose it’s about people trying to control and define this idiosyncratic artist who wants to be himself, whatever that may be, whatever feathers may be ruffled by the traditionalist gatekeepers of the folk music scene. This celebration of artistic integrity and creative revolution would mean a little more if I got a better understanding of Dylan as a person. Blessed with audience foreknowledge, we already know he’s going to be successful and that his creative impulses will be rewarded. Timothee Chalamet does a fine Dylan impression and recreates the famous songs with an impeccable nasally impersonation. For my money, I’d rather this have been a Pete Seger (Edward Norton) movie about his passing of the torch from one generation of folk artists to another and recognizing that the culture and peace movement were moving beyond him. Regardless, if you’re a Bob Dylan fan, there’s plenty to like, especially many extended jam sessions. If you’re looking for more than a handsomely recreated Best Of album, you might need to read a book instead.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Y2K (2024)
The premise for Y2K is ripe for fun. It’s a nostalgic retelling of that turn-of-the-millenium anxiety over computers getting confused, and the movie says what if technology had turned on humans at the stroke of midnight that fateful New Year? Add the lo-fi chintzy, quirky style of co-writer/director Kyle Mooney (Brigsby Bear) and it’s a setup for some strange and amusing techno-horror. It’s structured like a teen party movie with our group of high schoolers (Jaeden Martell, Julien Dennison, Rachel Zegler) trying to step out of their comfort zones and live their best lives… around machines trying to eviscerate them. The tonally messy movie lacks the heart and specific world-building weirdness of Brigsby Bear, instead relying upon the genre cliches of the high school movie, including the unrequited nerd crush and the pretty popular girl who’s more than what she seems. While watching Y2K, I kept getting the nagging feeling that this movie should be more: more funny, more imaginative, more weird. It’s quite uneven and veers wildly from set piece to set piece for fleeting entertainment. I chuckled occasionally but that was it. I enjoyed the villainous robot assembling itself with assorted junk available, and it’s hard not to see this as a general statement about the movie as a whole. It’s a bit lumbering, a bit underdeveloped, a bit formless, blindly swiping nostalgia and junk to build some form of an identity that never materializes beyond its parts. Y2K won’t make me bail on Mooney as a filmmaker but it’s a party worth missing.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Queer (2024)
Based upon Beat writer William S. Burroughs, and by the creative team behind this year’s Challengers, Queer is a gay romantic drama equal parts desire and desperation. It also happens to be a confounding artistic misfire and one of the more head-scratching Oscar-bait entries of late.
Set in the 1950s, William Lee (Daniel Craig) is a middle-aged writer living in Mexico City and looking for companionship. One day he meets Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey, Outer Banks), a young Army expat who he can’t stop thinking about. Lee circles the man, flattering him and throwing affection his way, and eventually the two of them get involved in a relationship, though Allerton is quick to proclaim he is “not queer.” Can they find something lasting or meaningful and work through their own doubts and personal hang-ups?
What really hinders this doomed romance is that it never feels special for either of the participants, at least something to remember through the ages. Unrequited romances in an era where people could never act out their passions because they were considered inappropriate or obscene are their own sub-genre of movies, the Romance That Could Not Be. I initially thought that Queer was going to be a gender flip of 2015’s Carol, Todd Haynes’ film about two gay women trying to carry on a covert relationship through glances and finger touches. Queer is not Carol, and I wasn’t even a big fan of Carol. For starters, even though the setting is in 1950s Mexico City, it doesn’t at all feel like any of the characters are being forced to repress their authentic selves. I’m unfamiliar with whether or not Mexico was so accommodating to gay foreigners, but from a narrative standpoint, it saps the story of conflict on a social scale. If society accepts these men carousing around the neighborhood for homosexual hookups, then what’s halting our gay couple for achieving happiness cannot be external, it must be internal. That means we need to know much more about these characters because we can’t just blame the pressures of society keeping these men apart and/or repressed. The problem with this approach is that the story keeps both of these characters too far at a distance to fully understand them, including any faults that might ultimately lead to their falling out or parting ways.
The burden of romances that are meant to be so powerful they leave a mark, good or bad, is that you need to feel that ache and power so that it feels tragic they could not work out, that they will be haunted by the memory of what they had and what could have been. With Queer, I can’t understand what drew either of these men together beyond lust and inertia. Eugene is an enigmatic blank of a character, a young G.I. who doesn’t consider himself queer. That’s as much as you’re going to get about this man as he’s mostly held as a desirous placeholder, something for our older character to yearn over, but he already feels like a half-remembered, overly-gauzy nostalgic memory of a person even in the present. He’s just kind of there. He doesn’t say much, he doesn’t do much, but he’s reciprocal, and I guess that’s something. The character of William Lee is a writer living abroad, ostensibly writing and publishing with financial freedom. His life abroad is essentially an ongoing vacation where he gets to casually drink, stroll about, and find younger men to warm his bed. Now if Lee had all these things but, because of his middle age, he was seen as less desirable, that these young men only used him for their own gratification and then abandoned him, then we have a scenario where he might find someone who can fulfill what he is missing, who can be different from the others. I don’t know what either of these men see in one another because they’re both so terribly underwritten. It makes it hard to care or become emotionally invested in these men and their connection.
Then the movie just collapses entirely in its meandering, abstract, and generally mystifying second half. I figured the movie would be these two men leaning into their feelings and daring to act them out, becoming infatuated with one another, and that’s really only the first half. Then Lee gets the idea to travel to South America to look for a rare plant believed to offer telepathic powers. Now clearly there’s some metaphors here about the desire for connection and understanding, and you would think the motivation would be spurred by being denied these aspects. Instead, Lee and Eugene seem to lack any real challenge to being together, nor is there any pertinent threat that Eugene will leave him or that there is any competition for his affections. There’s not really a conflict present that can keep them apart; even Lee’s drug addiction plays such a minimal part. I suppose it’s meant to convey the character’s dependency issues, but then present a parallel where Eugene is his new drug, his new obsession, and chasing it leads to his self-destruction. That’s not what we get. We get a boring couple going on a weird vacation. This journey south becomes one very tedious expedition into extended trippy visuals and sketchy symbolism like vomiting out one’s heart. It was at this point that my wife had lost all patience with the movie and just wanted it to end. I couldn’t blame her. Even if the story and characters were lacking for the first half, they’re just abandoned completely in that second half. The movie is actively challenging you to disengage with it when it already gave me little to hold onto.
The main headline for Queer was that this is Craig’s big awards gamble, and he is good, but absent the material to really explore the complexity of his character, the performance is limited because Lee is so archetypal. He’s the middle-aged lush, the sad gay man looking for love and connection in an era that was not kind to said pursuit, and yet in Queer he’s not really persecuted, he’s not really challenged, and he’s not really explored in any meaningful manner. Craig has a few moments where he showcases the vulnerable heartache at the edges of this man, giving you a glimpse of a tortured soul that would have been worthy of being explored with more development. Alas, as the movie descends into its second half abstract, Lynchian morass, I gave up my attempts to find meaning and depth and just became morbidly curious where this all could possibly lead. The conclusion is meant to evoke some sense of tragedy and regret, but Queer failed to make me interested in these two men being together and it failed in making me interested in them at all. At two hours, the biggest struggle of Queer is the patience of the audience to keep watching.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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Snack Shack (2024)
The coming-of-age sub-genre is a familiar and well-worn formula, but with the right filmmaker and voice, it can become refreshingly alive once again, like hearing your favorite song covered by an exciting different artist. Snack Shack is an exuberantly charming movie about one summer with 14-year-old best friends who are constantly running money making schemes and hustles. They overbid to run the concession stand at their community pool, but the best buds are entrepreneurial whizzes and turn the snack shack into a smashing success. There’s plenty of familiar genre elements, from bullies, parents they’ll have more appreciation and understanding from at summer’s end, parties and self-discovery, crushes and jealousies that will test their limits of loyalty; there might not be anything new during these 110 minutes, but it’s the nostalgic authenticity and verve from writer/director Adam Carter Rehmeier (Dinner in America) that makes the movie shine. The movie is practically bristling with details that feel so well-realized and genuine. You’ll enjoy spending time in this world and with these characters, reliving the summer of 1991 in Nebraska. Gabriel LaBelle (The Fabelmans) is fantastic as Moose, more the live-wire, always-smiling, charismatic smooth-talker of the two friends. Every second he’s onscreen makes you inch closer to the screen. I don’t think some of the downer plot turns late in the movie feel like a fit and are there to form the Hard Truths experiences meant to shake the innocence of youth. For a movie this jubilant and sunny, it feels like an abrupt tonal swerve that’s more deferential to genre expectations than the previous vibe of the movie. Despite some minor missteps, the good times cannot be thwarted and Snack Shack is a funny and refreshingly retro peon to being young.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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The Bikeriders (2024)
For a four-year period, writer/director Jeff Nichols is a filmmaker who appeared on my Best of the Year list three years, including making my top movie of 2011, Take Shelter. He’s a filmmaker I highly prize, so an eight-year gap from Nichols is an extended leave that makes me personally sad, though his latest movie, The Bikeriders, was delayed by a year after Disney decided to sell it rather than release it for the 2023 awards season. It’s a pretty straightforward drama about a Chicago motorcycle club in the 1960s. It’s all about a group of men that really don’t know how to express their feelings, so it comes out as drinking and fighting and general rebellion against outside authority. These social outsiders find kinship under the leadership of Johnny (Tom Hardy), an unstable man with his own code of honor and retribution. Our narrator is Kathy (Jodie Comer), a plucky woman who falls for a reckless biker, Benny (Austin Butler). There are plenty of interesting moments and sequences, like the rejection of wannabe new members too eager for approval for institutional violence. The changes the club undergoes through the mid 1970s are interesting, especially as the rules of the club begin to fray with the influx of new members and drug addictions, and the challenges to leadership we know will eventually end in tragedy and a betrayal of what the club was intended to be. Regardless, it feels like the movie has all the authentic texture and period details right but is missing a stronger sense of story. It’s more a collage of moments that doesn’t add up to a much better understanding of the three main characters. It’s more like a mood mosaic than engrossing drama, so if you have a general interest in retro motorcycle culture or the time periods, then maybe it will cover the absences in character. I found The Bikeriders to be a good-looking coffee-table book of a movie, more recreation than investment.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Nickel Boys (2024)
This might be the most immersive and biggest directorial swing of the year. Director/co-writer RaMell Ross adapts the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead about a reform school for juveniles more like a prison during the Civil Rights era. Ostensibly, the Nickel Academy is an institution that is meant to teach moral lessons and responsibility through outdoor labor. In reality, it’s a school that benefits from labor exploitation and has no intention of fulfilling its promise that students can possibly leave before they turn eighteen. This is even worse for African-Americans, as the school is also segregated and the students have to endure the racism of the administrators and other white juvenile delinquents who still want to feel superior to somebody. It’s a cruel setting destined to spark risable outrage, especially knowing that our main character, Elwood Curtis, is a victim of profiling and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, a star student selected to take college classes at an HBCU. The big artistic swing of Nickel Boys is the choice to tell the entire movie through first-person perspective, with the camera functioning as our protagonist’s eyes and ears. As the camera moves, it is us moving. It makes the movie intensively immersive, but I had some misgivings about this storytelling gimmick. It limits the resonance of the central performance as we can’t see the actor and his expressions and emotions, which I found frustrating. Ross also decides to do this same trick twice with a second character who befriends Elwood. Now we can see more of our main character, through this other person’s eyes occasionally, but it’s also like having to re-learn the visual vocabulary, and switching from viewpoints was distracting for the immersion and to recall whose eyes were whose at any moment. There’s also flash-forwards to adult Elwood that only served to muddle the tension. There’s enough genuine drama in this setting that I wish Nickel Boys might have been a more traditionally-made drama. Still, it’s a fine movie, but the aspect that will make it stand out the most is also what I feel that holds it back for me from being more profoundly affecting.
Nate’s Grade: B
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The Brutalist (2024)
The indie sensation of the season is an ambitious throwback to meaty movie-going of the auteur 1970s, telling an immigrant’s expansive tale, and at an epic length of 3 hours and 30 minutes, and an attempt to tell The Immigrant Story, and by that we mean The American Story. It’s a lot for any movie to do, and while The Brutalist didn’t quite rise to the capital-M “masterpiece” experience so many of my critical brethren have been singing, it’s still a very handsomely made, thoughtfully reflective, and extremely well-acted movie following one man trying to start his life over. Adrien Brody plays Laszlo Toth, A Jewish-Hungarian survivor of the Holocaust who relocates to Pennsylvania in 1947. He starts work delivering furniture before getting a big break redesigning a rich man’s library as a surprise birthday gift that doesn’t go over well. Years later, that same rich man, Harrison Lee (Guy Pearce), wants to seek out Laszlo because his library has become a celebrated example of modern architecture. He proposes Laszlo design a grandiose assembly that will serve as a community center, chapel, library, gymnasium, and everything to everyone, standing atop a hill like a beacon of twentieth-century civilization. Everything I’ve just written is merely the first half of this massive movie, complete with an old-fashioned fifteen-minute intermission.
The second half is about crises professional and personal for Laszlo; the meddling and compromises and shortfalls of his big architectural project under the thumb of Harrison, and finding and bringing his estranged wife (Felicity Jones) to America and dealing with the aftermath of their mutual trauma. I was never bored with writer/director Brady Crobett’s (Vox Lux) movie, which is saying something considering its significant length. The scenes just breathe at a relaxed pace that feels more like real life captured on film. The confidence and vision of the movie becomes very clear, as Corbett painstakingly takes his time to tell his sprawling story on his terms. I can appreciate that go-for-broke spirit, and The Brutalist has an equal number of moments that are despairing as they are enlightening. I was more interested in Laszlo’s relationship with his wife, now confined to a wheelchair. There are clear emotional chasms between them to work through, having been separated at a concentration camp, but there is a real desire to reconnect, to heal, and to confront one another’s challenges. It’s touching and the real heart of the movie, and it easily could have been the whole movie. The rest, with Laszlo butting heads against moneymen to secure the integrity of his vision, is an obvious allegory for filmmaking or really any artist attempt to realize a dream amidst the naysayers. The acting is terrific across the board, with Brody returning to a form he hasn’t met in decades. Maybe his career struggles since winning the Best Actor Oscar in 2003 have only helped imbue this performance with a lived-in quality of a soul-searching artist. Pearce is commanding and infuriating as the symbol of America’s ego and sense of superiority. The musical score is unorthodox but picks up a real sense of momentum like a locomotive, thrumming along at a building pace of progress. The only real misstep is an unnecessary epilogue that spells out exactly how you should feel about the movie rather than continuing the same respect and trust for its patient audience. The Brutalist is an intimidating movie and one best to chew over or debate its portrayal of the American Dream, and while not all of its artistic swings connect, the sheer ambition, fortitude, and confident execution of the personal and the grandiose is worth celebrating and elevating.
Nate’s Grade: B
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