Director: Jordan Peele
Runtime: 103 minutes
Ambiguity is the name of the game for so many horror classics, especially those involving a domestic setting (Rosemary's Baby). Is the central character really dealing with evil and/or the supernatural, or is it - to some degree - all in their head? That first act ambiguity is a powerful part of what helps so many movies land their big twists. And yet, it's not the only way. In the new film Get Out, we know something is "off" with the environment the protagonist wanders into. The question, then, revolves around the degree of maliciousness lurking beneath the placid surface. The answer, courtesy of Key & Peele's Jordan Peele, could not be more satisfying.
Peele's background (he started on MadTV before creating the aforementioned sketch show with Keegan Michael-Key) would suggest that his point of view is best limited to the short bursts provided by the late night format. Yet with Get Out, Mr. Peele has proven himself more than capable of taking a timely premise and stretching it to its appropriately absurd endpoint without losing steam.
So what, pray tell, is this thing about? Well, it all starts when Chris (Daniel Kaluuya, of Sicario and the "Five Million Merits" episode of Black Mirror) goes with his girlfriend Rose (Girls' Allison Williams) to meet her upscale parents (Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford). Some would suggest going in as cold as possible. I, through luck, read a draft of the script last summer. Yet even knowing where every twist and jump scare was located, I nonetheless found myself white-knuckling my way through....even as I was cringing or laughing hysterically. As others have pointed out, the story is essentially Look Who's Coming To Dinner crossbred with The Stepford Wives. But even with those obvious influences, it's hard to deny that Get Out is its own thrillingly unique piece of work.
In the past few years, the issue of race relations has been thrust into the American consciousness in uncomfortable ways. As marginalized voices utilize modern tools, our (by "our" I mostly mean white people) understanding of the degrees of systemic and cultural racism have been burst wide open. It's not just a matter of MLK vs. the KKK. It's all everything from flat-out declarations of racism to the understated, yet equally insidious, actions often referred to as micro-aggressions. You think the KKK is bad? Congratulations, but that doesn't mean you've never engaged in or benefited from other mutations of racism.
If all of this makes Get Out sound like a harsh lecture, fear not. It's entirely possible to enjoy Peele's story-telling based on thrills and scares alone. But I'd also argue that one's enjoyment would only increase by directly engaging with the assertions (both serious and tongue-in-cheek) of Peele's film. The subtext is not tacked on as a cheap play for socio-political relevance. It's a necessary part of telling this story, as outlandish as it becomes, well.
And what a story it turns out to be. After two acts of planting hints and making sinister suggestions, the homestretch arrives, and it's nothing short of a masterstroke of racially-charged satire. To call the film's finale "bonkers" would do it a disservice. It's certainly insane, but built so organically off of everything that came before that it all feels wholly earned. Peele's direction is nimble, even when dealing with exposition. His actors, meanwhile, are uniformly excellent. Mr. Kaluuya is effortlessly compelling as the story's anchor (one hopes this is the film that will catapult him onto the A-list), never more so than when undergoes a session of hypnotherapy with Ms. Keener. A marvel of directing, staging, and acting, the sequence hinges on Kaluuya's emotional nakedness in the moment, and he nails it, without ever straining for a false sense of dramatic importance.
But, at least for white audiences, the real shock here is Williams. Rose is much more than the cheerful girlfriend, and Williams handles the character's shifting allegiances without ever falling out of step with the carefully-balanced tone. Imagine Williams as her character from Girls, and the whole thing somehow becomes even funnier and dead-on. Marnie can be astounding in her lack of self-awareness. By contrast, Rose enables Williams to play a multifaceted character with an outside acknowledgement of her biases and prejudices. Rose may not always "get it," but Williams clearly does, and the results are riotously good. The old adage goes "art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." From a white viewer's perspective, it's through Williams that this notion hits home. I was tense, I laughed out loud, and yet somewhere deep down, I was left vaguely nauseous. We're meant to identify with the millennial, "woke" girl who has no issues whatsoever dating a black guy, and is embarrassed by her parents' forced hipness with black culture. By the end, those implications are deeply funny. They're also scary as hell.
Grade: B+/A-
Director: Mike Mills
Runtime: 118 minutes
It has taken six years for Mike Mills to make another film. When we last saw him, he delivered Beginners, a touching ode to his father, who came out after decades trapped in the closet. Yet even though that film was all about the father, one of the most intriguing peripheral characters was Georgia (Mary Page Keller), a stand in for Mills' mother. Now, over half a decade later, Mr. Mills is back to put Georgia (now named Dorothea, and sublimely portrayed by Annette Bening) in the spotlight she deserves.
Set in 1979 in Santa Barbara, 20th Century Women both exists as a maternal counterpart to Beginners while also standing firmly on its own. The film is just Mills' third full outing as a director, and his voice has only grown richer in the too-long gap between new work. Beginners charted a man's relationship with his father late in life (in which Mills got to be represented by Ewan McGregor; we should all be so lucky...). 20th Century Women, by contrast, takes the writer/director back to his childhood. Mills' new avatar is Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), the teen son of newly-single mom Dorothea. Aptly, the film opens with the never-seen father's car catching fire, thus firmly severing the last symbolic ties with the past.
As we're seeing a boy/young man in a highly formative stage, 20th Century Women uses Jamie's place in life to examine those around him. In some ways, it calls to mind another 2016 release - Moonlight - in that it traces a child's growth by embracing a nurture over nature (to a point) idea of how our complete adult selves form. We are largely blank canvases coming into this world, and the people present in our lives at critical moments of change affect our growth in ways both obvious and subtle.
And so, early on, Dorothea enlists photographer tenant Abbie (a wondrous Greta Gerwig) and childhood friend Julie (Elle Fanning) to help raise her son. "Don't you need a man to raise a man?" asks Julie. To which Dorothea, nonchalantly, replies, "...no, I don't think so." "I think you're what's going to work for him," she says at another point. And even though there is an adult male presence in the form of handyman William (Billy Crudup), the three women turn out to be more than up to the task, in their own ways. The film may set itself up as Jamie's coming-of-age story, but the true subjects are the richly drawn women who lead him through that evolution.
Early on, it's tempting to dismiss the set up as scattered. But as Mills settles into his story's rhythm, the film blossoms. Both as writer and director Mills has grown considerably. His tendency to intercut archival footage and stills into his own material, at times grating in Beginners, feels purposeful and elegant throughout this new endeavor. Mills' films are not necessarily about compartmentalization, but his framing and editing choices (as executed excellently by Leslie Jones) present memories as little moments to be treasured and isolated in curio cases. The lighting accents this notion as well, often capturing moments of stillness by isolating an overhead source of light, so as to catch the subject as if they were occupying a museum display.
Where Mills' figures differ from museum oddities, however, is in their vibrancy. The voiceovers frame the characters in the past, yet while on screen they are thrillingly alive, even at their most ordinary. 20th Century Women can be brittle and caustic, but there is an underlying warmth at the core that practically floods the screen. And yet, in that tremendous warmth also lies clear-cut honesty. Mills and his characters don't sidestep the painful realities of life, whether it's those experienced by a parent or a child. But in that honesty, the film finds its transcendent moments. Those slices of life can be as significant as addressing a childhood trauma, or simply flailing your arms as you try to dance along the music around you.
Grade: A-
Director: Martin Scorsese
Runtime: 161 minutes
Martin Scorsese has been grappling with his Catholic faith for his entire career, even when it seemed the least obvious. The intensity of his religious convictions, as well as the intensity of his questions and severe doubts, have manifested in ways both literal (The Last Temptation of the Christ) and abstract (Taxi Driver). Catholicism (or, in a sense, any faith) is the third pillar at the foundation of his filmmaking, seated right alongside masculinity and violence (and all of the intersections among the lot).
Though Scorsese remains an impeccable craftsman, often invigorating his material with dynamism of someone decades younger, he has recently started to run on fumes when dealing with story's beyond their basic text. The Wolf of Wall Street tackles excess, but to the point of becoming excessive itself. Even Best Picture winner The Departed, though powerfully acted and edited, comes up short when one looks for something to chew on beyond the bloody bodycount.
The apparent exhaustion of two of Scorsese's thematic pillars (well, for now) has left a clearing for capital F Faith to grab the spotlight all for itself. After an on-and-off journey of roughly 30 years, Scorsese has taken Shusaku Endo's novel "Silence" and brought it to life on the big screen. Here, the man who almost became a priest turns his camera to meet not just his maker, but the ideals and practices of those serving in his name. And, while not without its faults (largely at the outset), Silence ultimately proves itself to be a worthy landmark moment of the latter stages of Scorsese's career. Regardless of your religious persuasion (or lack thereof), there is a tremendous amount of value in the issues raised in this exhaustive and exhausting work of Catholic cinema. Though not the director's most polished or lush work, it more than compensates with its staggering devotion to crafting a drama filled with ideas about the earthly and the transcendent.
Yet much like the film's journey to the big screen, Silence is not without its hiccups. The earliest passages, concerning Jesuit priests Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garrpe (Adam Driver) seeking out a former mentor in 17th century Japan, come off as stilted. Despite some striking, simple visuals, Silence begins by playing things in a strangely safe manner. At times, it even seems shockingly amateurish. Even longtime Scorsese editor (and basically co-director) Thelma Schoonmaker isn't immune, and turns in some of her weakest work to date. Simple conversations change angles with a frequency at odds with such contemplative subject matter. And Mr. Driver, though an intriguing casting choice, can't quite master what is supposed to be a Portuguese accent (the Portuguese characters speak in English). Early on, a few lines escape his throat like a squawk from a goose raised in the Bronx. Garfield generally fares better, though even he is not without his stilted moments. It's not an auspicious beginning, especially for a film that is so clearly a labor of passion.
But the further the two Jesuits step into the so-called "swamp of Japan," the more Silence finds its footing. The beauty of Endo's novel, which Scorsese has wisely left intact, is its refusal to sugarcoat or simplify the conflicts at hand. And what conflicts they are. On the surface, Silence's tale involves priests administering aid to Japanese Christians living under persecution. In less enlightened times, such a socio-political conflict would have likely been sanded down to lift the Jesuits up as Christ-like figures. Scorsese includes such a moment, though it's hardly presented as sincere. Alone and starving, Fr. Rodrigues finds himself confronted with his reflection. After a moment, the face transforms into a familiar sight: a Goya painting of Christ's face which we've been shown as how Rodrigues imagines the Lamb of God in his prayers and meditations. Garfield, with his thin features and his hair grown out into a magnificent mane, makes a fitting vessel for this sort of transfiguration.
The moment, alas, does not come greeted with a moment of intervention or inspiration. Rodrigues bursts into unsettling, hollow laughter. In his manic, dehydrated state, he seems ecstatic with such a vision, but the tone and timing suggests the sort of madness one would find in a 70s-era Herzog drama. Yet Scorsese curtails the sequence before such madness turns hallucinatory. Rodrigo Prieto's images, even at their most painterly, have an air of reality to them. The staging thrives on ordinariness, rather than elaborately constructed tableaus.
All the better, then, to enable the film to cut to the heart of its conflicts. Somewhere towards the middle (I think) of the film, Silence shifts from acting as a drama about the faithful, and morphs into a searing interrogation of men of the cloth and their motivations. Rodrigues meets a number of foils among the Japanese, chief among them a translator (Tadanobu Asano) and the inquisitor Inoue (Issei Ogata). Though radically different in their approaches, the two men proceed to challenge not just Rodrigues' convictions and his mission, but the core of Catholicism itself, as well as its place in a country like Japan.
And it's here, when it's most bound to simple scenes of people talking, that Silence finally grasps the intangible profundity it's been reaching for the whole time. Asano and Ogata make excellent philosophical adversaries for Garfield's Rodrigues, with Ogata in particular relishing every word (among his most notable jabs: "the price for your glory is their suffering.") So many faith-based films use Christian conviction as a crutch, including this year's Hacksaw Ridge, which also planted Mr. Garfield at the center. With that baseline established, a film like Silence becomes all the more remarkable. Here is a drama with source material from a Catholic writer (albeit a Japanese convert, and not a European), directed by a passionately Catholic director, that avoids turning its protagonists into the one-note martyrs they secretly wish to be.
The most magnificent wrench of all, however, comes in the form of Fr. Ferreira (Liam Neeson, thankfully not even attempting the accent). In addition to administering to the persecuted faithful, Rodrigues and Garrpe have snuck into Japan to seek out their former mentor, who has been rumored to have renounced the faith and taken up life as an ordinary member of Japanese society. Ferreira's eventual return to the narrative (best left unsaid) gives Silence a final headbutt of ambiguity, heightening the specificity of the film's conflicts, while simultaneously making them all the more universal. Neeson, in his all-too-brief screen time, is nothing short of mesmerizing. In such quick moments, he conveys Ferreira's decades of work in Japan, and the toll it took on him. Ferreira's exploits could have easily been their own film, and the way Neeson takes the bones of Scorsese and Jay Cocks' script and turns it into its own meal is nothing short of astonishing. It's a masterful moment of teaching both for Rodrigues and the viewer, the complexity of which has stayed with me long after the lights went up in the theater.
In my four years at a Jesuit-led high school, one of the theological ideas that I remember most is that faith without room for doubt is not really faith, but merely blind obedience. That remarkably nuanced notion, standing in such stark contrast to the right wing extremists now posturing as 21st century moralists, has stayed with me even as whatever religion I had slipped away. And, whatever my personal beliefs now, that Catholic and Jesuit identity (hello, Catholic guilt, you old bastard) is still etched, however faintly, in my being. To see that same sort of depth is a monumental intellectual achievement, one that overrides the vagueries that somewhat plague the central role of Rodrigues (he is both an individual and a representative of the faith as a whole, though not quite to the degree where it feels possible to empathize with him enough). With such a long wait, it would be tempting to hold Silence to the standard that anything less than a masterpiece would be a letdown. To do so, I think, would be to dismiss the tremendous accomplishments on display. Rodrigues and Garrpe may find themselves starving, but their story is veritable feast of ideas, the strengths of which are made all the more powerful by their existence alongside the flaws.
Grade: B+
Director: Pablo Larrain
Runtime: 99 minutes
Though it features only the briefest moments of blood and gore, there is something so deeply immersive and unsettling about Jackie that made me queasy. The lives, legacies, and tragedies of the Kennedy clan have been in the public consciousness for decades. Movies, miniseries, plays, novels, and conspiracy theories about the Kennedys have congealed into their own industry, and that industry has taken hold as its own sub-genre of American culture (Kennedy Kitsch? Kennedy Camp?). Yet none have pierced through shield of the Kennedy mythos quite like director Pablo Larrain. A native of Chile, Mr. Larrain's English language debut, despite centering on American royalty, feels as fresh and urgent as his film's directly tied to his homeland's socio-political conscious.
Even though Jackie opens with a familiar framing device (the subject is being interviewed, with length flashbacks filling in the gaps), Larrain is quick to distance himself from decades' worth of mythologizing and hagiography. Before Jackie O (Natalie Portman, astounding) even appears on screen, the viewer is jolted by the otherworldly strains of the score. There are no patriotic tunes of either the upbeat or mournful variety. Instead, avant garde composer Mica Levi (who also wrote the haunting music for Under the Skin) floods the soundscape with a swirl of alien notes and tones. The score, which seeps out like a frozen, enveloping embrace, is disorienting to brilliant effect.
The Kennedy brothers (Jack is Caspar Phillipson, Bobby is Peter Sarsgaard) make their appearances throughout Jackie, but Larrain and screenwriter Noah Oppenheim keep the focus on the titular First Lady of Camelot. With whole life thrown into chaos, Jackie finds herself being unravelled at all angles, and Levi's music does an overwhelmingly powerful job of communicating her emotional discord. There are no elaborate swooping camera moves in Jackie, but Levi's music and Stephane Fontaine's images mix like vodka and Xanax. It's off-putting, then hypnotic, and climaxes with a sense of dissociation that leaves your nerves exhausted, your mind numb, and your innards hollow and tumultuous.
Jackie sustains its limited premise through its craftsmanship, but it's thanks to Portman that it transcends. It's a brilliant example that proves finding the right actor to play a historical figure goes beyond (and can even exclude) exact likeness. Portman's features have some glaring differences, and there appears to have been no use of padding or prosthetics to bridge the gap between artist and subject. Yet the instant those rounded words glide out of Portman's mouth, all doubt vanishes: it's her.
Of course, vocal inflections and the right hair do not a rounded performance make, and Portman and Larrain are well aware of this. Oppenheim's screenplay, aided by Sebastian Sepulveda's editing, positions the various flashbacks like an orchestra of mirrors. They reflect and refract, with Portman functioning as the story's anchor more so than the scenes involving the journalist (Billy Crudup). Even if everything had been handled with an emphasis on linearity, it would do nothing to diminish Portman's work, which takes Jackie O through so much complex emotional territory and distills it into a character both deeply empathetic and not quite of this world (often at the same time). In short, it makes Portman's Oscar-winning performance in Black Swan look like amateur hour.
The driving thesis of Jackie, which is pointed out early on, concerns reality's relationship with historical narratives and fairy tales. Portman, Larrain, and Oppenheim repeat the idea a few times (perhaps one too-many), but consistently find new ways to play it out in scenarios that feel possible and plausible, even if some liberties are taken in the name of drama. Did Jackie O ever try on a bunch of her clothes, sashay through the White House in a drug-and-booze addled stupor with the soundtrack to Camelot blasting out of the record player? I'm perfectly content never knowing the answer. Reality and history make strange bedfellows, and that discomfort lies at the heart of what makes Jackie sing so beautifully as a film. Larrain, whose dramas sometimes squander great set-ups on drawn-out, overwrought execution, could not have been a more inspired choice.
Larrain's perspective is a thrilling compliment to the American iconography on display, and he guides Jackie's journey with masterful control of timing and tone (Oppenheim's script includes some welcome moments of mordant and mournful wit). Few scenes this year will merge great writing, acting, and directing the way Jackie does when the First Lady appears to break the news of JFK's death to her children. It is mesmerizing, stomach-churning, white-knuckle intense, and ultimately shattering. Larrain's guiding hand, Portman's face, and Oppenheim's words (and silences) take two horrendous moments (one personal, one political) and blow them up to operatic proportions: The President is dead...My husband is dead...My husband the President is dead. Those unspoken statements hang there through all of Jackie, and their weight only increases with time. When Crudup's journalist asks Jackie if she has any advice, she replies, "Don't marry the President." After spending just over 90 minutes in Jackie's head, you'll understand why.
Grade: A
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Runtime: 124 minutes
All's murky in love and war, especially when you and your spouse have both spent time working the international espionage racket. So goes the world of Robert Zemeckis' Allied, which oscillates between Casablanca homage and grim antidote to Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Despite a twisty set up, generally strong production values, and solid performances, Allied comes up short when it's time to wrap up its mission.
While much of what we see on screen has a welcome Old Hollywood gloss, Zemeckis' recent love of visual effects starts Allied off on a distractingly modern note. A rather embarrassing opening shot follows a hilariously fake parachute landing into a desert landscape that's only marginally more convincing. Emerging from the fakery is Max Vattan (Brad Pitt), who has arrived in French Morocco to meet up with a French resistance operative to take out a Nazi ambassador in Casablanca. The operative turns out to be Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard, in full Golden Age glamor mode), who helps Max pose as her (fake) husband prior to the assassination. For Marianne, the trick lies in keeping the fakery of their work grounded in some kernel of authenticity.
It's notion that Cotillard pulls off beautifully, making it all the more frustrating that the film around her often fails do follow suit. Allied's sets and costumes are richly designed, but there is often a certain sheen to the imagery which goes beyond romanticism and into fakery. An early scene set in a Casablanca plaza looks the part at first glance, but the longer you soak it in, the more it appears to take place in a vacuum. Tilt the camera the wrong direction by just an inch or two, and the framework of the soundstage would make an unwelcome appearance.
Thankfully, things improve once the action moves back to England. Max and Marianne's fake relationship blossoms into a genuine one, and they settle down and have a baby. Then, right on schedule, the other shoe drops: British intelligence informs Max that Marianne may be a deep cover Nazi spy, and that he'll need to set up a trap to prove her innocence or guilt.
The answers that eventually come our way, courtesy of screenwriter Steven Knight, largely prove satisfying. Whatever quibbles one might have with the plot's internal logic, Allied boasts enough first rate design and star power to allow for comfortable suspension of disbelief in the moment. But while Knight's story is a fun guessing game, Zemeckis' direction often gets in the way. Allied's opening passages are punishingly slow, with the build up to the assassination taking up far too much time. The Casablanca scenes lay the necessary groundwork with clues and red herrings, but Zemeckis directs on autopilot through much of it. Spycraft lives or dies by the details, but in Allied, those details exist as exposition that need to be trudged through before getting on to the good stuff.
By the time Allied finally introduces the question of Marianne's innocence, you might be ready for the story to just end already. But wait, there's more! The superior second half, when finally given room to take off, is no faster than the opening, but it moves with more confidence and better sustains the intrigue. Act 1 is an overlong obligation, while Act 2 gets to the heart of the matter. Livening things up are short performances from a strong group of supporting performances filled out by the likes of Jared Harris, Lizzy Caplan (kudos for including an LGBT character), Matthew Goode, and Simon McBurney.
Without enough genuine character development to support the film's star power, however, the bulk of Allied never consistently catches fire. The twists, thankfully, give the story more heft by providing questions worth considering (as opposed to derailing the plot, which they easily could have). Allied's eventual conclusion is convincingly solemn, in large part thanks to Cotillard's multifaceted performance. The story's lack of focus, coupled with Zemeckis' lack of verve, leaves you with the feeling that you've just witnessed a halfhearted take on what could have been a tense mix of romance and thrills. At least Cotillard provides the fizz in an otherwise flat concoction.
Grade: C
Director: Tom Ford
Runtime: 116 minutes
It's perhaps not the greatest sign that the scene that has stuck with me the longest from Nocturnal Animals is the one that absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the plot. A mesmerizing series of grotesques set to Abel Korzeniowski's lush score kicks things off in a way that would make David Lynch proud. What follows, sadly, has the basic blueprints for a mesmerizing Russian Nesting Doll of a story, yet struggles to get beneath the artifice to something worth savoring. Fashion designer Tom Ford, in his second feature, continues to showcase his hidden gifts as a director (following the achingly beautiful A Single Man 7 years ago). And he's assembled a cast of talented actors to make it all sound convincing. But what gets in the way of Ford's Nocturnal Animals is Ford himself...or at least, his screenplay.
Adapted from Austin Wright's novel "Tony and Susan," Nocturnal Animals is either three stories in one or one story fragmented into three volumes. In the first, we meet Susan (Amy Adams), an art gallery owner trapped in an increasingly hollow marriage to a philandering Ken Doll of a husband (Armie Hammer). Susan is jolted from her sterile LA lifestyle when she receives a manuscript for a novel from her ex-husband Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal). As she reads through the draft (also titled "Nocturnal Animals"), she traces the connections between it and her relationship with Tony, which ended under less than pleasant circumstances.
What transpires is, on paper, a compelling slice of modern noir punctuated with heavy doses of a grimy Texas-set revenge thriller. Working with many of the same technical collaborators from A Single Man, Ford has crafted another luxurious cinematic experience, ranging from the aforementioned music to the chameleonic photography (and of course, the clothes). It looks the part, sounds the part, and even adds a few new tricks to Ford's directorial skill set. The dramatization of Tony's novel (in which Susan imagines Tony in the lead role) kicks off with a terrifically staged car chase on an empty West Texas road, and builds to a chilling climax.
But what's missing from Nocturnal Animals is the psychological acuity that gave such weight to A Single Man. There's a lot of external activity on screen, but precious little of it gets beyond the surface of the beautiful faces on screen. What transpires often enthralls in the moment, but dissipates soon after. You'll likely find yourself wanting to be investing in these people, but Nocturnal Animals too often refuses to even meet you halfway.
Credit then, belongs to the actors for filling out these roles as best they can. Adams, coming off Arrival, turns in another quiet, introspective performance. But while Arrival allowed the actress room to take her character on a journey, Nocturnal Animals too often relegates her to the same position as the audience: a watcher. She is pushed to the margins, and spends more time staring out of windows and taking off her (admittedly killer) reading glasses than she does contributing to the story.
Gyllenhaal, though occasionally pushed to go over the top, is also effective in both of his grief stricken forms, while Michael Shannon nearly steals the show as a sickly sheriff in Tony's novel. Taylor-Johnson is suitably menacing, though eventually his backwoods terrorizer schtick becomes repetitive. Actors like Hammer, Andrea Riseborough, and Michael Sheen do what they can with limited time, while Laura Linney makes the most of her 1 scene cameo as Susan's imperious mother.
Just about everything in Nocturnal Animals is at least watchable, and for large stretches it's perfectly engaging. But while the narrative's structural divisions are admirable, their proportions are all off. So much time is spent bringing Tony's novel to life that Susan's current existence and her past life with Tony feel like add-ons struggling to justify themselves. And yet, if you were to cut them out, Tony's novel on its own wouldn't be enough to justify a full film. Ford spends so much time figuring out how to cobble the story together that he seems to have neglected to make even the faintest point out of everything. For all of its beauty, it's the ugly imperfections that linger longest. Nocturnal Animals pretends to get its hands dirty, but upon closer inspection, there's never a speck of dust under its immaculately manicured fingernails.
Grade: B-
Director: Mia Hansen-Love
Runtime: 101 minutes
A deceptive mundanity permeates Things to Come, the latest feature from France's Mia Hansen-Love. The central character, philosophy teacher Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert), undergoes a series of disruptions to her everyday life, yet Hansen-Love refuses to portray any of them as end-of-world scenarios. Though it takes place over considerably less time, Things to Come in some ways recalls Boyhood. It's not entirely a shock; like Richard Linklater, Hansen-Love is fixated on people's various relationships with time, ranging from major life events to the connective tissue that fills up everything else. Yet from the mundanity of Things to Come emerges a whisper of transcendence. The ordinary is not inflated to become something greater than it is. Instead, it's handled with a mix of sensitivity and level-headedness that leads to something warm and wise.
Like Elle, another striking vehicle for Huppert (an actress continually finding new ways to be excellent), Things to Come technically hinges on a life-altering incident. But then it pulls back and forces its protagonist to cope not by putting all of their energy towards it, but by tending to it while still moving along with all else that adult life entails. Elle, with its violent rape and hints of sadomasochism, takes the darker, naughtier route. Things to Come, meanwhile, moves gently, thought not without purpose. Nathalie's life, turned upside down by her husband's affair, proceeds without too many major detours. She still has lunch with her kids, teaches class, counsels former protege Fabien (Roman Kolinka), and deals with her increasingly senile mother (Edith Scob).
Plenty of films have been made involving middle-aged men and women reinventing themselves, but few do so with the wisdom and lack of sentimentality on display here. Following the sprawling dance music saga Eden, Hansen-Love has scaled back her narrative ambitions, and emerged as a more precise storyteller. For a film composed of scene after scene of what amounts to daily life (with a few diversions), it moves with remarkable assurance and focus. It's not exactly hypnotic, but it's gently compelling in its honesty in a way that makes you want to get lost in it all. You may not share Nathalie's age, socio-economic status, or family set up, but her experiences touch on the universal without coming across as a series of bland boxes to be ticked off.
Then again, it's hard to be too bland when you've centered your movie on Isabelle Huppert. The actress is at her softest and gentlest here (compared with her ice-queen work in films like Elle, The Piano Teacher, White Material, La Ceremonie, etc etc), but she remains as galvanizing a screen presence as ever. The ups and downs of Nathalie's life are charted with the precision of an X-Acto knife, yet there's never a moment of the performance that comes off as overly calculated. Huppert has made a career out of playing characters with whom one can empathize, but not always sympathize. In the case of Nathalie, she has both, and the scenes in which her face, a mask of severity and poise, cracks, are breathtakingly moving.
So, as Nathalie moves from one moment to the next, Hansen-Love (who also wrote the beautiful script) follows her with an easy-going refinement that's all too rare in slice-of-life dramas. Even in the film's darkest moments, Hansen-Love keeps it all thrillingly alive. People bicker, people chat, people discuss philosophy, take care of their ailing parents, and sometimes they chase after their obese house cats...such is life (incidentally, between this and Elle, 2016 has been a fantastic year for those who enjoy Isabelle Huppert sharing the screen with felines). Things to Come manages to have it both ways: it celebrates the chance for reinvention, while still placing it in the context of the vast ocean of experiences and routines that define our every day existence. You don't need to be a philosophy expert to find something worth cherishing.
Grade: A-
