Remakes! Legendary returns! Song! Dance! Exclamation points! It’s all in the new Screening Room Podcast, where we talk through the pros and cons of Bohemian Rhapsody, Suspiria, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, The Happy Prince, The Other Side of the Wind and Beautiful Boy, plus a slew of new home releases.
Listen to the full podcast HERE.
by George Wolf
After several false stars and a midstream director change, the long-awaited Queen/Freddie Mercury biopic lands as a celebration of one legendary band and one bravura performance.
Rami Malek is a certified powerhouse as Mercury, the former Farrokh Buisara, the uniquely gifted performer and iconic presence who became of rock’s most enduring frontmen.
Mercury’s extravagant persona lent itself to caricature, but Malek has none of it. His is a true characterization, eerily mirroring the singer’s appearance, elegance, movements and, with help from both original Queen music and Mercury soundalike Marc Martel, his incredible voice.
Malek’s performance stands out all the more from the void left by Queen’s surviving band members. As executive producers, they’ve whitewashed themselves into more reaction shots and less actual human beings.
It’s one of several ways the film plays it safe and settles for a crowd-pleasing greatest hits package. Directors Bryan Singer and an uncredited Dexter Fletcher work wonders with the performance pieces (the thrilling recreation of Live Aid is worth paying for IMAX), but soften the sharp edges of rock hedonism enough for a PG-13 rating. And rock and roll ain’t PG-13.
The biggest missed chance comes in the relationship between Mercury and his muse for the song “Love of My Life,” Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton). From their first scenes together, Malek and Boynton fuel the emotional core of the film, creating an absence felt whenever screenwriter Anthony McCarten (Darkest Hours) broadens the focus, which is often.
Factual liberties are taken, timelines are sometimes carelessly misrepresented (“We Will Rock You” was not written in the 80s), and there’s a totally needless gag from Mike Myers, but whenever Bohemian Rhapsody is most unsteady, Queen’s music is there for a bailout.
It’s still great. And so is Malek.
by George Wolf
Those of a certain age hear the title Beautiful Boy and most likely think of the John Lennon song, a sweetly poignant ode from father to son. It’s used to touching effect in the film that shares that title, an utterly heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful adaption of separate memoirs by David and Nicolas Sheff.
David was the proud father, a successful writer who dreamed of great things for his bright, ambitious son. Instead, Nic became an alcoholic and drug addict who offered his family countless promises of recovery that always fell empty.
Two masterful performances drive this film to its emotional heights, keeping it steady the few times it teeters on slopes of undue manipulation.
Steve Carell makes David an instantly relatable mix of unconditional love and crestfallen confusion. As Nic’s addiction batters David’s homelife with his wife (Maura Tierney) and two young children, flashbacks to sweet memories with a younger Nic outline the bond between father and son that only grew after David’s split with Nic’s mother (Amy Ryan – also stellar). Carell makes it feel real with a thoughtful, often understated turn full of quiet detail.
And people, if last year didn’t hip you to the immense talent of Timothee Chalamet, he’s back to seal the deal with a performance certain to be hailed come Oscar time.
Just when you’re comfortable with the authenticity of Nic’s slide into addiction, Chalamet digs deeper to find the shattering center of a soul at war with dependence and desperation. Though his baby-faced smile stays miles away from meth addict ugliness, Chalamet finds a raw humanity that makes Nic a walking wound, and makes us feel part of the frayed parental bonds. His scenes with Carrell – where Nic tries taking advantage of his father’s love only to turn on him moments later – find two actors in complete sync, revealing a crushing humanity that hits you hard. Bring tissues.
There are two important stories here, and they only falter when it feels some intimacy from each has been shortchanged to make room for the other. Director Felix Van Groeningen (The Broken Circle Breakdown), collaborating on the screenplay with Luke Davies (Lion), merges the dual memoirs for a series of episodes that resonate best when given room to breath, free of any heavy-handed reminders about how quickly children grow up.
Beautiful Boy illustrates a vital, shattering cycle of addiction, rehab and relapse, often beautifully. Through first-hand insight and two towering performances, it finds a thread of hope in the ashes of a family’s nightmare.
by Hope Madden
The Other Side of the Wind—how pretentious is that title? It’s supposed to be, of course, because it’s an Orson Welles film and he’s a genius. His latest, released more than 30 years after his death, explores his genius and the changing paradigm of the Seventies film industry.
Retrieved from hundreds of hours of footage filmed over 10 years, The Other Side of the Wind was meant to be a comeback or sorts from an idolized auteur whose funds were drying up in the face of a changing cinematic aesthetic.
It’s about an idolized auteur with dwindling funds who’s trying to launch a comeback in the face of a changing cinematic aesthetic.
Yes, Welles was meta before meta was even a thing.
Esteemed director, Jake Hannaford (John Huston) is to screen his new film at his 70th birthday party to an audience of cinefiles, sycophants, film critics, hangers-on, freaks and industry insiders.
The event becomes an ingenious satire of 70s moviemaking, and watching it more than 30 years after the fact gives the entire spectacle a time capsule appeal. It’s like a trainwreck you cannot turn away from.
Welles pokes fun at the pretentiousness of then-cutting edge filmmakers and their neurotic relationships with self-loathing, arrogance and idol worship—usually using directors from the period, acting as stand-ins for, well, themselves.
He doesn’t seem to have much respect for the films being made at the time, either. As Hannaford’s film unspools, one in-the-know viewer yells: “The reels are out of order!”
To which the projectionist replies, “Does it matter?”
Nope. It does not. Welles’s film-within-a-film is an unendurable, plotless hippie hallucination—a perfect parody of much of the arthouse output of the era. It’s as if Welles, by way of Hannaford, is asking: Is this what I have to do to get a movie made?
As well and as wildly as the movie-making satire plays, at the heart of this film is humiliation on exhibition. Hero worship is hollow, commerce is still king and a man who can’t pay can’t play.
The whole thing is just a big ball of Seventies.
by Hope Madden
Let’s say your birthday falls in December and as a lovely gesture your family took you to The Nutcracker Suite every year to celebrate, and every year you remembered again that you had no idea what the hell the ballet was about. Suppose, then, that Disney decided to make it into a movie and you thought that maybe now, with some narrative, you could figure this shit out.
Well, you would be disappointed. But if you went to see the ballet and thought, damn, there is too much dancing here, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms might be for you.
Mackenzie Foy is Clara, a young lady who dreads enduring the first Christmas without her mother. She doesn’t even want to go to the big party thrown by her godfather, Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman in a really bad wig). But her dad (Matthew Macfadyen) drags her, along with her brother and sister.
After that, things begin to feel familiar, although they rarely feel like The Nutcracker. The film becomes an inverted exploration of childhood and adolescence. Like Alice in Wonderland meets The Wizard of Oz meets Hunger Games.
Helen Mirren plays lord of this disused amusement park overrun by rats and clowns, though, and that is hella cool. Meanwhile, Keira Knightly shamelessly steals scenes as Sugarplum. Both are fun in a film that desperately needs a bit more of it.
Joe Johnston (Captain America: The First Avenger) and Lasse Hallstrom co-direct. That checks out. Johnston brings a rather workmanlike attitude for spectacle, while Hallstrom—whose credits range from the Oscar-winning Cider House Rules to the unwatchable A Dog’s Purpose—brings an eye for manicured beauty and an utter lack of whimsy.
Do you remember watching the ballet as a child? The spooky, eye-patched uncle? The 7-headed rat? It is seriously creepy, and at the same time, there is wonder in every dance whether you understand the storyline or you don’t.
There are lovely moments peppered through this visually elegant picture, but there is no passion, no danger and no excitement.
And weirdly enough, very little Tchaikovsky almost no dancing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXfxLIuNJvw
by Hope Madden
“Why does one run toward ruin? Why does it hold such fascination?”
Oscar Wilde, by way of writer/star Rupert Everett, wonders these potent lines partway through The Happy Prince, director Everett’s biopic of the infamous decadent/undeniable genius.
Everett’s tale flashes backward and forward but mainly focuses on the period between Wilde’s 1897 release from prison and his death in 1900. A rather bleak time in a very rich and colorful life, but Everett’s execution never forgets the heights, and his performance is haunted with the fall.
Upon his release, Wilde finds support with sometime lover and literary agent Robert Ross (Edwin Thomas) and writer/friend Reginald Turner (Colin Firth – delightful, especially when his character is not the focus of a scene). But Wilde cannot or will not deny his desire for Alfred “Bosie” Douglas (Colin Morgan).
It is a perfect vehicle for a film that lays bare this particular genius and that rumination on running toward ruin. Only a few years earlier, Wilde’s ego required recompense from his lover’s father, who’d libeled him. Wilde’s suit, however, only uncovered his own then-illegal dalliances and instead of recompense he found himself facing hard labor.
And yet, even with emotional support from his friends and financial support from his wife jeopardized by the decision, Wilde joyously takes Bosie back and the two travel to Naples to misbehave.
Everett’s film more than forgives Wilde’s wildness, though it doesn’t go so far as to fully admire it. His lead performance is colored by an understanding of the difference between living lustily when you have everything, and when all that you once had is forever out of reach.
As a writer and director, Everett tries too hard to use Wilde’s short story The Happy Prince to create a running metaphor, perhaps suggesting that Wilde’s end, like the story’s, reaches transcendence. It’s a tough sell, passing off the short’s image of voluntary self-sacrifice as analogous to Wilde’s fall from grace.
Otherwise, though, the first-time filmmaker delivers a vision edged with the melancholy of a brilliant mind never again able to see the world as bountiful and beautiful. It’s as touching as it is resonant, and nothing in The Happy Prince articulates this tragedy as beautifully as Everett’s performance.
It’s a performance simultaneously full of life and of death. You see the enormous loss, but more than that, the deflating ugliness of this world etched on Everett’s face, echoing in his every gesture.
Everett’s instincts behind the camera come as a nice surprise. With more than 70 acting credits to judge by—many of them quite fine, some even awards contenders—the real surprise is that he had this performance in him.
We talk through Gerard Butler’s place in cinematic history, Jonah Hill’s place as a filmmaker, and Alex Honnold’s place as a crazy person as we break down Hunter Killer, Mid90s and Free Solo. We also run through the best and worst in new home entertainment.
Listen to the full podcast HERE.
by Hope Madden
On a scale from Gerard Butler to 10, how bad is Hunter Killer?
It’s not London Has Fallen bad. Or Gods of Egypt bad. It’s not Geostorm bad, but what is, really?
But is it any good?
Well, no. Don’t get loony. I’m just saying, it could be worse. You know, because Gerard Butler stars.
That doesn’t make him the worst actor in history. It’s just that he’s not especially talented and he makes impressively awful films. And yet, the king of January inexplicably gets a prime October release with this one, playing Captain Joe Glass.
He’s not an Annapolis guy, but that doesn’t mean he can’t successfully lead his first crew through Arctic waters to save the President of Russia from a botched coups attempt.
If you’re worried about subtitles—well, you’re clearly not familiar with the work of Mr. Butler. No, fortunately the Russians only speak Russian when it doesn’t matter if we understand what they say. The moment the dialog is important they switch (sometimes mid-scene) to English. How lucky is that?
I’m sure we’d never be able to follow this plot otherwise. It’s not like every scene is telegraphed in advanced.
Director Donovan Marsh’s film is not unwatchable. It’s shallowly packaged derivative entertainment, boasting passable water scenes and hand-to-hand action choreography that’s entirely adequate. It’s the drama that will make you wince.
There are three primary focal points. Firstly, the drama back in DC, where level heads try to outmaneuver war mongers. Gary Oldman plays a monger.
Everybody follows up their Oscar with garbage. Don’t fret for Gary.
Common plays one of those level heads. This is literally Common’s third film in three weeks. The prior two—The Hate U Give and All About Nina—were both very good. Nobody bats 1000.
The second dramatic focus takes place on the ground—thank God, because honestly, without the small military unit landing covertly on Russian soil with their drones, swagger and witty banter, this movie would never leave a confined area and you would feel even more trapped by it.
The highest drama is, of course, hundreds of feet underwater with noble everyman Cap. Glass. You know what he has? A level head.
Just not, you know, a ton of talent.
One of the year’s boldest films and certainly among its most impressive directorial debuts makes its way to your home this week. Also, a lackluster sequel. Not that we’d judge you depending upon your choice.
Click the film title for the full review.
The Screening Room breaks down the new Halloween, talks through The Oath and the new YA The Hate U Give. Plus, we’ll run through what’s worth watching in new home entertainment releases.
Listen to the full podcast HERE.
