The Weekly Gravy #87

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022) – ***

Because they came out within a few weeks of each other and both have comically grandiose titles, I sometimes twin this film with Everything Everywhere All at Once, and on further reflection, they’re not apples and oranges. In Unbearable Weight, Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) wants to make a movie with his idol, Nicolas Cage (playing a fictionalization of himself), and as they hash out a plot, we see that Javi really wants to make a character-driven film about his friendship with Cage, but Cage (under pressure from the CIA) tries to wedge a kidnapping into the story, as a “hook” to bring casual viewers into the theater. That there’s an actual kidnapping in this film, instead of allowing the meta-fictional and bromance elements to be the whole of the film, is perhaps itself a meta-commentary on how quirky projects like this one must make concessions to popular appeal. (That Unbearable Weight has hardly set the box-office on fire suggests making such concessions is no guarantee of success.)

The thing is, Everything Everywhere has its own action/thriller elements, as the rampage of an oblivion-seeking antagonist across the multiverse serves as an action-packed allegory for the troubled relationship between a mother and daughter, both of whom find their lives unsatisfactory. Indeed, the strained relationship between this film’s Cage and his teenage daughter Addy (Lily Sheen) is a significant part of this film’s story. But where Everything Everywhere properly balanced action beats and character beats, having something for everyone without letting anyone down, Unbearable Weight doesn’t really stick the landing; it’s an enjoyable film, but one wishes it had stuck either to the characters or the plot—and I think I’m not alone in preferring the former.

There are some funny moments when Cage, under the direction of exasperated CIA agents Vivian (Tiffany Haddish) and Martin (Ike Barinholtz), attempts to play at spy-craft, but arguably the scenes would’ve been funnier had there been more of a contrast between Cage’s movie-star assumptions and the reality of the situation, which is instead on a par with your typical splashy spy thriller. But for the most part, the kidnapping/thriller elements are quite generic and excessively dark for such a film – we get major characters dying, without any attempt to play it for laughs, and it just doesn’t fit with Cage sobbing his eyes out to Paddington 2.

When the film sticks to being a love letter to Cage and his screen persona, it works quite well, with amusing references to his extensive filmography (Guarding Tess gets an extended shout-out, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is openly praised), a total embrace of his singular style, and even the occasional presence of his younger self (played by Cage under his birth name of Nicolas Kim Coppola, with comically obvious de-aging), who berates, motivates, and even makes out with him. It may be something of a Birdman rip-off, but it gives us even more Cage, which is hardly a bad thing.

No, Cage is in wonderful form here, and Pascal is quite fun as the fanboy with more money than sense; when the two of them are simply allowed to run wild (they do acid and find themselves on the run from imagined enemies), the film lives up to its silly potential. And even the scenes with Addy and Cage’s long-suffering ex Olivia (Sharon Horgan) have value, not just for their performances but for how it allows Cage to be vulnerable, both by virtue of his love and by how his need to be the center of attention has worn them down.

But then we get back to the thriller elements and the film just goes a bit flat. Not that it’s ever bad; it’s smoothly made, has pretty locations (many in Dubrovik, Croatia, which I recently visited – I didn’t really recognize any of the locales), has a capable cast and made me laugh a fair amount. But there’s a better film here, one that’s entirely true to itself – though at least this film is always true to its legendary leading man.

Score: 75

Petite Maman (2021) – ***½

I missed Céline Sciamma’s acclaimed Portrait of a Lady on Fire in theaters, but thought pretty well of it when I finally watched it on DVD. Although her follow-up didn’t make quite as big a splash (it was eligible for last year’s Oscars, and will count towards my own rankings for 2021), it was still up for a number of Foreign Film awards, and came in 2nd at the NSFC for Best Picture. So when it came to my local independent cinema, I wasn’t about to miss out. And thanks to its brisk running time, I was able to fit it into my Saturday schedule without breaking a sweat. I rate it a bit lower than Portrait, but it’s a very charming little movie.

8-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) has just lost her grandmother. With her mother (Nina Meurisse) and father (Stéphane Varupenne), they clear out the grandmother’s home – the mother’s childhood home – and one morning, the father informs Nelly that her mother has left, but doesn’t explain exactly where she’s gone or why. While exploring in the nearby woods, Nelly meets Marion (Gabrielle Sanz), also 8, who invites Nelly to her house – which looks an awful lot like Nelly’s grandmother’s house.

That Marion will turn out to be Nelly’s mother at the age of 8 is not really played as a twist, nor is any explanation given for how Nelly has managed to bridge time this way – nor, when Nelly tells Marion what is going on, is any time wasted with disbelief or attempts to prove her assertion one way or the other. Allowing the characters to accept the fantastical premise without argument was one of several wise decisions Sciamma made; this is a fable about looking back, looking ahead, and looking out for each other, and the film never pretends to be anything more.

Another wise decision was casting the Sanz sisters, who give wonderfully natural performances. Some of the best scenes in the film simply show Nelly and Marion having fun – making pancakes, acting out a romantic melodrama, taking a raft and paddling out to a ziggurat in the middle of a lake (it’s the kind of thing I would do, if I had a raft), and building a little hut in the woods – a hut the adult Marion mentions early on, presumably long gone; when we first see the young Marion, she’s in the process of assembling it.

There’s no artifice in Joséphine or Gabrielle’s performances, which is a credit to them and to Sciamma’s subtle direction and straightforward script, the exact point of which is slightly obscure, but the attitudes and atmosphere of which are warmly evocative of childhood, nostalgia, friendship, and familial devotion. The cinematography by Claire Mathon and the editing by Julien Lacheray are quite in tune with Sciamma’s vision; it’s a deft little film which never strains for effect. (Also worth noting: the low-key coziness of Lionel Brison’s production design.)

If I don’t rate Petite Maman higher, it’s because it simply didn’t affect me the way it seems to have affected its most passionate advocates (not unlike Portrait, which I quite liked but didn’t love). It’s a charming, sweet little film, a very good film for introducing a child to foreign-language cinema, and at 72 minutes, a very easy watch indeed. I don’t quite see a great film here, but that shouldn’t change the fact that I saw a very good one.

Score: 83

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2021) – ***½

It would make even more sense to compare this film to Everything Everywhere, since it deals directly with the multiverse concept – and I will – but a good part of film also made me think of Star Trek: Generations, and to a lesser degree Inception, that part being Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch’s (Elizabeth Olsen) determination to use dark magic, and the ability of America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) to open portals between different universes, to live permanently in the universe where she is the devoted mother of two young boys (Julian Hilliard and Jett Klyne). Is it so different from Dr. Soran’s attempt to hijack the Nexus (or Picard’s vision of family life) in Generations, or Mal’s tragic determination to rejoin the children who existed only in a dream (a dream which felt like decades) in Inception?

As in Generations, the hero is tempted by the possibility of an idyllically happy life; Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) broods over having let Dr. Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) go; early in this film, he attends her wedding, happy for her but haunted by what might have been – and when he encounters another version of Christine in another universe, and learns what transpired between her and that universe’s version of himself, the emotional fallout of that revelation alone would be enough to ruin your day, if you weren’t also trying to prevent a witch from killing a young girl so she can rip the fabric of reality entirely to suit her own desires.

But Multiverse of Madness generally holds the characters’ emotions as secondary to the reality-warping horrors which transpire, including a malevolent squid (bitter over being cut from the film of Watchmen. no doubt) who tries to capture America before Strange and Wong (Benedict Wong) give him the old Polyphemus treatment, a multiverse-spanning montage which includes an animated universe and one populated by living paint, and in the third act, what amounts to an homage to director Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films, which I must admit came as a delightfully gross surprise.

There are other nifty touches throughout (I really enjoyed the battle between two Stranges which used weaponized music), mostly thanks to Raimi’s direction, which has a bit more personality than most Marvel films can claim. Not that he does anything truly revelatory, but the film’s visual language is more evocative and more varied than most of its kin, with production design and visual effects that justify the mammoth budget. Michael Waldron’s script likewise doesn’t tread much new ground, but there are neat ideas (the notion that dreams are a window into different universes intrigues me especially) and some effective character beats.

There’s also the assumption that the viewer has some familiarity with the series WandaVision, which I didn’t, and even if I’d been able to see the entire first film (I didn’t, for reasons I’m totally not still irritated about), I’m not sure I’d have remembered Michael Stuhlbarg’s character; as it is, his brief appearance here is a waste of a fine actor. The rest of the cast do pretty well, especially Olsen, who arguably should’ve been even more the center of the film than she is, and there’s a welcome appearance from Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier – albeit a rather different Xavier than he played in the existing X-Men series.

All told, Multiverse of Madness doesn’t amount to much outside of a pretty enjoyable two hours in a universe we’re presumably familiar with, with characters we presumably enjoy spending time around. On that level, it most certainly delivers – but compare it to Everything Everywhere, which puts much more weight on character and emotion, which has the freedom of a stand-alone film (and a comparatively independent production), and you see the difference between a rather good franchise picture and a great original. One satisfies, but the other inspires.

Score: 82

Sleeping Beauty (1959) – ****

As with Lady and the Tramp, I think this was only my second time seeing this film, after a long-ago daycare screening. However, while I barely remember seeing Lady, I distinctly remember seeing Sleeping Beauty…and being bored to tears by it. Going back to it, it’s not so hard to see why: compared to a lot of Disney, it’s quite restrained and formal, with gorgeously crafted but highly stylized imagery reminiscent of medieval illustrations, and a comparatively slow pace – until the climax, there’s not much action, but there’s a lot of dreamy longing, gentle humor courtesy of the fairies, and lush music courtesy of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty ballet (arranged by George Bruns, who was nominated for an Oscar, the film’s only nod).

You know the story, yes? When the Princess Aurora is born, she is betrothed to Prince Phillip (who wrinkles his face at the sight of his bride-to-be) and given the gifts of beauty and song by the fairies Flora and Fauna. Before their companion Merryweather can give her gift, the evil Maleficent arrives, ostensibly upset at not having been invited to the ceremony. She curses Aurora to prick her finger on a spinning wheel on her 16th birthday and die, but after she leaves, Merryweather alters the curse; Aurora will instead fall into a sleep, from which true love’s kiss will awaken her.

To protect her, the three fairies take her to a cottage in the woods and raise her – without the help of magic – under the name Briar Rose, and Maleficent’s henchmen search for her in vain (because they’re searching for a baby; they’re too stupid to know babies grow up). On her 16th birthday, the fairies send Aurora into the woods while they prepare her birthday surprise, and she encounters Phillip with the help of her animal friends. They fall in love instantly, unaware of their betrothal.

Meanwhile, the fairies have botched their preparations and resort to using magic – in the process alerting Maleficent’s raven to Aurora’s whereabouts. When she returns to the cottage, the fairies reveal her true identity, which devastates her; they take her to her parents’ castle, where she and Phillip are to be officially reunited, but Maleficent uses her magic to lure her into a room where she pricks her finger on a spindle, falling into a deep sleep.

The fairies, horrified by what has happened, put the entire kingdom to sleep until Aurora is awakened, and set off to find Phillip, having learned the truth about him and Aurora. But Maleficent has captured him, planning to set him free only when he is a very old man (a wonderfully petty scheme). The fairies rescue him, but the battle to save Aurora has only just begun. (Though you can guess how it ends.)

It’s interesting how much of this Sleeping Beauty represents a battle between magical figures played out with human pawns. Maleficent must go to considerable lengths to finally get Aurora to prick her finger, putting her in a trance and commanding her to touch the spindle, while Phillip prevails only because of the fairies’ help, even in the final confrontation against Maleficent in dragon form. And while Maleficent places the initial curse on Aurora (for what seem petty reasons), the fairies take an awful lot of liberties, including putting an entire kingdom to sleep rather than reveal their failure to prevent Maleficent’s curse coming true.

It’s also interesting how a rather inane running gag – the debate over whether Aurora’s gown should be pink or blue – is made relevant to the story; Flora and Merryweather magically argue the point, sending showers of magic out of the cottage’s chimney, which catches the raven’s eye. And the debate continues right to the end of the film – benevolent though the fairies may be, they have the means to influence our lives, which adds a layer of complexity to a seemingly simple fairy tale.

Of course, it can be enjoyed simply as a fairy tale, with a beautiful princess – and while Aurora is a somewhat passive character, she’s got a charm and wit that keeps us invested – a handsome prince (and Phillip is fairly likable as well, especially in his byplay with his horse Samson), a wicked villain who relishes her villainy (“Me, the mistress of evil!”), and some light-hearted comic characters for support. The fairies aren’t the most memorable comic characters in Disney history, but they’re cute (and Merryweather has unmistakable lesbian-aunt energy. Tell me I’m wrong).

It can also be enjoyed as a beautifully crafted film, with one of the best love songs in the Disney canon (“Once Upon a Dream”) and some of the best animation the studio ever put out – possibly the best since Fantasia, which it rivals for sheer range of color and stylistic ambition, but with a starkness reminiscent of what UPA was doing around this time. Major kudos to Eyvind Earle, who masterminded the look of the film; it would be a long time before a Disney film would look this good again (although there are several reasons for this).

Side note: is it just me, or are there some subtle visual nods to The Wizard of Oz here? There’s a shot of the fairies approaching Maleficent’s castle that screams Oz, and Maleficent herself isn’t so far from the Wicked Witch of the West.

I don’t know if Sleeping Beauty will ever be a favorite of mine; I don’t connect to the characters as much as I’d like, the comedy is charming but not that funny, and the climax, as striking as it is, is over too quickly for how impressive a villain Maleficent has been up to this point. It’s on the low end of ****, and that’s more for the sheer beauty of it than anything else. But it is a very good film, one which survived a well-intentioned attempt to give its villain a sympathetic motivation (which just doesn’t fit the Maleficent seen here) and that film’s middling sequel.

Score: 87

365 Days: This Day/365 Dni: Ten Dzień (2022) – Dreck

If 365 Days: This Day were playing in the background at a higher-end strip club, it would fit perfectly; the glossy cinematography, the glamorous locations and characters, the surfeit of montages, the soundtrack of generic pop and slow jams (with a few classical needle-drops that easily outshine the original pieces), and the exceedingly simple storyline make for the kind of film that doesn’t reward careful attention. There’s no humanity creeping around the edges, no subtle touches to reward the insightful viewer, nothing beneath the slick surface. What you see is what you get, and that’s not saying much at all.

After an opening which renders the ambiguous ending of the first film moot (and glosses over the fallout in the first sign of this film’s exceedingly lazy storytelling), Laura (Anna-Maria Sieklucka) marries her mafioso beau Massimo (Michele Morrone), and for a time, everything seems hunky-dory; her best friend Olga (Magdalena Lamparska) gets engaged to Massimo’s right-hand man Domenico (Otar Saralidze), she and Massimo have lots of sex, and he gives her a clothing line to run so she can actually do something instead of languishing in luxury and living it up with Olga.

But before long, Laura finds Massimo insufficiently attentive, and is soon tempted by the handsome new gardener, Nacho (Simone Susinna). After seeing what she thinks is Massimo cheating on her, she runs off with Nacho to his suspiciously palatial home, and they embark upon an affair – but he’s got a secret, and so does Massimo: he’s got a twin brother who’s in league with a rival family! Everything culminates in an ending which doesn’t look good – but leaves the door open for the third film, coming later this year.

Whether or not I subject myself to that third film depends in part on how the 2022 crop of bad movies is. Even if I counted Aline for this year (and I still haven’t made up my mind on that one), this easily sinks beneath it; Aline was crap, but it was ambitious crap made by someone who believed in what they were doing. This Day is just cashing in on the success of its predecessor, itself cashing in on the success of the source novels by Blanka Lipińska, themselves cashing in on the success of Fifty Shades of Grey, which began as Twilight fan-fic. The result is almost nihilistically insubstantial.

It takes nearly half the film for any kind of plot to kick in, and in between brief spells of dialogue to advance the minimal story we get more montages of picturesque places, photogenic brooding, and sex – and if there’s anything that renders the film unredeemable, it’s the total lack of erotic charge. Not because the scenes are relatively tame (though that doesn’t help), but because there’s no humanity to them, no emotional weight, no sense of discovery or connection, just a lot of humping gyrations, overwrought kissing, and contorted faces.

What I wouldn’t give for one of the characters to fart, or stumble, or do anything unexpected and human in the midst of all this; hell, there’s more chemistry between Laura and Olga than between her and Massimo. But there’s never more than the very faintest suggestion of anything other than gymnastic heterosexuality here; even Massimo’s “Christmas present,” a very slightly kinkier than normal night with Laura, goes nowhere unusual. (God forbid she should ever be the dominant one.)

There’s certainly nothing besides the sex to recommend the film; what story there is by turns confusing (whatever happened to Laura’s clothing line?) and ludicrous (secret twin brother!), the characters are unlikable ciphers (Massimo is a brutish dolt, Laura is but a pawn of the plot), the performances can’t make up for any of that (the tri-lingual dialogue doesn’t help), and there’s nothing like the kind of cinematic style which would compensate for all these shortcomings; it’s slickly done, but as hollow as a car commercial.

The first film was garbage, but at the very least, it had a tiny bit more of a story, gave its actors slightly more to work with, and had an unsettling premise that you could be disgusted by. I say “at the very least,” and mean it; I rated that film a 22 and described it as existing in “a realm of glossy ignominy.” This film sinks even deeper into that state, and if I rate it very low indeed – lower than any new film in almost seven years – I feel almost as if I’m rating it too high. But then, to be much worse would require ambitions the film fails to realize, and it never risks even that much.

Bring on Part 3!

Score: 10

Witness for the Prosecution (1957) – ***½

I love a good courtroom drama, and the 1957 Best Picture lineup had two all-timers – this film, and 12 Angry Men. Ironically, given their enduring status as classics – 12 Angry Men is the #5 film on the IMDb’s Top 250 , and Witness is currently #64 – neither received a single Oscar, and only earned a combined nine nominations – as many as Peyton Place received. (As it happens, Peyton Place also went home empty-handed.) Still, getting nominated at all is no mean feat, and while I’m not sure I felt as strongly about Witness as I hoped, there’s no question it’s an entertaining film from a team of old pros.

Sir Wilfrid Robarts (Charles Laughton) is a renowned barrister in London, under orders from his doctors to take only undemanding cases and to obey his doting nurse Miss Plimsoll (Elsa Lanchester) as he recovers from a heart attack. But then his colleague Mayhew (Henry Daniell) approaches him for advice; his client, Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power) is the prime suspect in the murder of a wealthy widow, and has no alibi save the testimony of his wife, Christine (Marlene Dietrich). When it’s revealed that the widow left the struggling Leonard £80,000 in her will – which he insists he knew nothing about – his case looks rather hopeless.

That, of course, is enough to prompt Sir Wilfrid, who’s been chafing at the restrictions placed upon him, to take the case. And once in the courtroom, he relishes cross-examining witnesses, objecting to the prosecution, and sneaking sips of brandy with his medication. But there’s something about the case which doesn’t sit right with him – and it might just be the question of Christine’s motivations, which are carefully concealed behind a dignified façade.

To say more would risk giving away the revelations which were so carefully protected at the time of the film’s release – and which had been spoiled for me well before I saw the film in full, having caught the ending on TV years earlier. And dare I say, it hinges on a bit of subterfuge which is a little too obvious in retrospect? Maybe the unaware viewer will be caught off-guard, but for me, the twist requires an otherwise savvy character to drop their guard for the sake of the story – a quibble, perhaps, but one which weakens the film for me.

That’s not to say it’s not a very good film, because it is. Adapted from an Agatha Christie play, it’s sharply written (for the most part), with witty dialogue, most notably the banter between Sir Wilfrid and Miss Plimsoll (allowing Laughton and Lanchester, married in real life, to bounce off one another), but also the sniping between Sir Wilfrid and Myers (Torin Thatcher), the prosecutor. (Oddly, the script wasn’t nominated.) It’s solidly directed by Billy Wilder – not Hitchcock, as some fans reputedly believed – well edited, well put-together, inserting flashbacks of Leonard’s meeting the murdered woman and meeting Christine in war-torn Germany without disrupting the narrative flow.

And it’s very well-acted; Laughton and Lanchester were nominated, and Laughton is certainly a joy to behold, snarking brilliantly at everyone around him but vulnerable in his frustration at a case that seems “too neat, too tidy, and altogether too symmetrical,” while Lanchester is fun as the prissy Plimsoll, struggling mightily to control the willful Sir Wilfrid, finally coming to understand what the old boar really needs. But Dietrich wasn’t nominated, and that’s a shame, because she must balance enigmatic glamour and melodramatic passion, and does so quite well (if not seamlessly). And though Power was felt to be too old, at 43, for the role of Leonard, that sense of overgrown boyishness serves the feckless character, and he might well give the best performance of his career.

Add to that a number of solid smaller turns from veteran players, including Una O’Connor as the murdered woman’s intensely suspicious housekeeper, and you’ve got a film that works in just about every department. I just find myself wishing I loved it more than I do; for whatever reason, it never quite rises to that higher level for me, simmering at that level of skillful quality without reaching the boil of true greatness. But maybe it’s the type of film which grows with repeat viewings, once the twists are known and the details can be fully appreciated.

Score: 84