The Weekly Gravy #108

Smile (2022) – ***½

CW: mental illness, suicide.

The malevolent entity in Smile – a being which takes the form of those around you and wears a malicious grin – is pretty damned creepy. But your chances of having it latch onto you are extremely slim. What’s not so unlikely is that you’ll hear the mentally ill, whether you count yourself one of their number or not, spoken of with scorn, ridicule, fear – anything but real sympathy. And before Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) has fallen into a living nightmare of her own, it’s well established how thoughtlessly cruel and dismissive the supposedly healthy people around her can be. Monsters may not be real, but human beings are bad enough.

When Rose meets with Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey), she tries to convince Laura that the evil spirit she’s convinced is following her isn’t real – a reaction Laura has anticipated, desperately insisting that ever since a professor committed suicide in front of her four days earlier, she has been haunted by these smiling bogeys. Laura then has a meltdown, and Rose turns to call for help – but when she turns back, Laura is wearing that hideous grin, and kills herself as Rose watches in horror.

Rose has been working long hours at her hospital, wearing herself thin and concerning her fiancée Trevor (Jessie T. Usher) as well as her ex, Joel (Kyle Gallner), a policeman who questioned her after Laura’s death. But when Rose begins to see the smiling people as well, it’s assumed she’s simply traumatized by Laura’s death, possibly conflating it with decades-old guilt over the death of her mother, as her therapist Dr. Madeline Northcott (Robin Weigert) suggests.

As Rose’s life rapidly descends into chaos, she discovers with Joel’s help that Laura was just the latest in a series of witnesses to suicide themselves committing suicide in front of a witness, extending a chain of trauma which can only be transferred (not broken) by killing another person in front of a witness. Rose is not inclined to kill, but she doesn’t want to die, and there’s no clear way out of her hideous dilemma.

Adapted from his short film Laura Hasn’t Slept by writer-director Parker Finn, Smile runs to nearly two hours, a shade long for the genre, and a few of the fake-outs, while helpful in showing just how much the entity can take over its victims’ minds, could have been trimmed; there’s only so many times the rug can be pulled out from under us. Besides, the film works best when it’s rooted in the very real horrors of trauma and human nature, which it conveys quite well.

It helps that much of the film adopts a plain, even spare aesthetic. Take the room where Rose and Laura meet, far larger than is necessary for the purpose, with mostly bare blue walls; one feels vulnerable and exposed. Or take Rose and Trevor’s house, likewise sparsely decorated, ominously isolated, and eerily sterile. Or take Rose herself, her hair in a tight bun, her eyes small and dark, her clothing anonymously professional, slight of build, with a high-pitched voice.

It all speaks to a desperate attempt to keep the chaos at bay, and as Rose’s life crumbles, she lets her hair down, dresses more casually, and one seemingly superfluous moment, tears into a burger. It would almost be liberating, if it weren’t so harrowing. But the real dichotomy is really between those who understand trauma and those who don’t, and Rose, caught up in a situation which defies explanation, finds herself painfully alone – which the entity doubtless relishes.

It’s unclear if the entity directs its victims towards witnesses who have trauma in their own pasts, but just as Rose found her mother’s body, Laura saw her grandfather die, and the man before her lost his brother in accident which his widow suggests he never fully got over. If so, it only adds to the complete malice of this force, whatever it is – and if there are sequels, we may learn more about it.

But those sequels would likely not feature Bacon, who’s a very convincing therapist and a comparably convincing victim of the entity’s unusual M.O.; she conveys distress but not helplessness. Aside from Gallner, who’s solid as the skeptical, faintly obnoxious, but ultimately decent Joel, the acting isn’t that noteworthy; Usher is strangely stiff, and aside from having the creepiest smile of all, Weigert is simply adequate. But Bacon is quite good enough to carry the film, and since she’s in just about every scene, she’s got to.

Much better is Finn’s direction, amply assisted by Charlie Sarroff’s unsettling cinematography (he uses some pretty basic tricks very well indeed), Lester Cohen’s crisp production design, and Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s fantastic score, which aims for a kind of ambient unease. (The sound design is also strong). They don’t quite raise the film to the level of greatness – Finn’s script isn’t quite sharp enough for that – but they make it another solid entry in a good year for the genre.

Score: 79

He drank PBR before it was cool – does that make him a super-hipster?

The Greatest Beer Run Ever (2022) – **½

People believe what they want to believe. Chickie Donohue and most of his friends and family in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan want to believe that the local boys fighting in Vietnam are defending our country, and that the negative news reports and protests are hurting their morale. Chickie wants to believe that taking a duffle bag of Pabst Blue Ribbon to Vietnam and tracking down his friends for a drink and a pat on the back will be a welcome gesture. Some, seeing Chickie’s casual attire and brazen behavior, believe he’s really a spy – which he goes along with when he finds out how many doors that opens.

And the people who made this film believe, or believe that their target audience believes, that while the Vietnam War was neither justified nor successful, our boys on the ground went and fought with good intentions – that Westmoreland and Johnson were lying, and our soldiers were their dupes. And while the film shows, through Chickie’s eyes, just how hellish this particular war was, it adopts a warily respectful stance throughout – which, for my money, does no justice to Donohue’s story.

Yes, the real Donohue actually took beer to Vietnam as a show of support for his friends and neighbors. He even wrote a book about it with columnist Joanna Molloy, which I might like to read. It’s the kind of true story that would make a good documentary (there was a short one made a few years back that I haven’t seen), and might have made a good film, but instead it’s the rare film directed by a Farrelly brother (Peter, coming off his Oscar-winning Green Book) that’s arguably too tasteful; there is some bad taste on display, but not the fun kind.

There is ample – dare I say, repetitive – bewilderment and even irritation from Chickie’s friends when he encounters them, followed, sooner or later, by a softening, an offering of warm, severely shaken beer, and a friendly parting. At one point, Chickie is described as being “too dumb to get killed.” But at another, he’s told “Your heart’s in the right place. It’s your brain I’m worried about.” Throughout, the film seems anxious to avoid offending anyone, whether it be the troops, their advocates, those who protest the war, or the war correspondents, chastised for telling the ugly truth.

Since Westmoreland and LBJ are seen only on television, the closest we get to an on-screen antagonist is an anonymous agent (Paul Sloan) who viciously interrogates a prisoner during a helicopter flight, then throws the prisoner to his death while the horrified Chickie watches. Later, the agent briefly pursues Chickie, possibly with lethal intent, but gives up pretty quickly. The film plays the waffling opinions of Chickie’s friend Danny (Hal Cumpston) for laughs, but its own divided nature – its desire to be a wacky caper set against the chaos of Vietnam and a moving drama that honors those who served – means the last laugh is on the film itself.

So far, I haven’t said much about the actual quality of the film. There isn’t much quality here, but there’s not much incompetence, either (aside from some of the tackiest looking flashbacks I’ve seen in a while). There’s not much of anything, because Chickie himself isn’t that interesting; he’s a well-meaning goof who grows up a little bit by the end. Zac Efron was a curious choice for the role; he’s adequate in the comedic scenes, but in the dramatic scenes he mostly falls back on a sad expression, except in a late scene where he cries unconvincingly. It’s a well-meant but ultimately unsuccessful performance.

And aside from him, no one makes more than a modest impression. Despite prominent billing, Russell Crowe’s turn as a grizzled war correspondent is mostly confined to the film’s third act; he’s by far the best thing about it, and had he been a consistent presence throughout, his experience would’ve made a welcome contrast with Chickie’s…well, “innocence” seems a generous term, but that’s the dichotomy Blake established. Matt Cook has a funny brief turn as the overly chipper Habershaw (he’s one of the few characters to strike the comic tone the film really needed to pursue), while Bill Murray has an odd small role as “the Colonel,” the owner of Chickie’s favorite bar, who not only supports the troops but argues that the American public doesn’t need to know the gruesome truth about the war.

As a piece of filmmaking, it’s mostly quite generic; the prisoner falling to his death to the strains of “Cherish” by The Association is effectively dissonant, and a scene where Chickie encounters a Vietnamese child (who’s terrified of him), set to Vashti Bunyan’s “I’d Like to Walk Around in Your Mind” sums up the gulf between his good intentions and the painful reality around him. Otherwise, it’s a pretty anonymous piece of cinema – not unlike Green Book, which at least had two very good performances to carry it.

Maybe what sums it best is the final joke in the closing text, which reassures us that the soldiers we actually saw in the film made it home, “And they all eventually quit drinking. Mostly.” Coming after a reminder of the hideous waste of life that was Vietnam, coming after the sad admission by one soldier that he now feels more at home in combat than at home, it’s all too fitting that we end on such a weak joke.

Score: 58

Bros (2022) – ***

This review comes with a few caveats. First, in the months leading up to its release, I got sick to death of the trailer for Bros (the green-band trailer specifically). It looked crass, it looked jam-packed with stereotypes, and it had the line “It’s like they injected steroids into Dumbledore” – a quip which is neither funny, especially fitting (the character in question has a neatly trimmed beard, quite unlike Dumbledore’s navel-length locks), or a good choice for a proudly queer romantic comedy, given J.K. Rowling’s transphobic sentiments. Second, I was slightly late to my screening and missed the first minute or so. Third, the only other people in the audience were very chatty – though they very much enjoyed the film.

Despite my growing weariness with the trailer (it got to the point where I would make a last trip to the restroom if it started playing before a movie), the highly favorable reviews motivated me to check it out – and knowing about the rather weak opening weekend (it opened in 4th place with less than $5 million) may have put me in a more sympathetic frame of mind.

The story follows Bobby Lieber (Billy Eichner, who co-wrote the script), a gay podcaster who is also part of the board for a museum of LGBTQ+ history in New York, one which is struggling to open between issues with funding and disagreements among the board members. Bobby has been single most of his life, professing to be happy with a long string of dating-app hook-ups. At a club he meets Aaron Shepherd (Luke Macfarlane), an estate lawyer who has likewise avoided monogamy for most of his life. But they find themselves not only attracted to one another, but connecting on an emotional level as well.

The hurdles to their lasting happiness include Bobby’s intense personality, insecurity, and fear of heartbreak, and Aaron’s continuing interest in other men (including an old crush who recently came out), fear of alienating his small-town family, and professional unhappiness; his dream was to be a chocolatier. But this being a romantic comedy, it should come as no surprise that Bobby and Aaron are able to make it work in the end.

The question is, will you want them to? For my part, I was at least rooting for Aaron; although he’s out, he struggles with conforming to a kind of performative masculinity that kept him from pursuing his culinary dreams – it’s a gentle enough arc to fit the tone, and on one level it’s highly relatable, but it’s also specific enough to the gay community not to feel watered down. Plus, Aaron is a likable, straightforward (no pun intended) fellow, thanks to Macfarlane’s immensely charming performance. He’s great.

The problem is Bobby. Or maybe the problem is Eichner himself, I’m not sure. Whatever the case, I found him an utter pill, a soapboxing, self-righteous, insecure, sulking, irritable, argumentative jackass, and while he does get some pushback throughout the film, we’re ultimately supposed to be on his side; in any case, aside from Aaron, who’s ashamed of his own request for Bobby to “tone it down” while dining with his parents (which goes about as well as you’d expect), none of the other characters are really developed enough to provide a real counterbalance to Bobby’s hectoring.

There are capable performers in the supporting cast who do what they can with, essentially, one-dimensional roles: Miss Lawrence as the gravely equivocal Wanda, Harvey Fierstein as the owner of a Provincetown bed-and-breakfast with decades of bittersweet memories, Dot-Marie Jones as the forceful Cherry (she gets possibly the best line: “Lesbians! DISPERSE!”), Amanda Bearse as Aaron’s perkily repressed schoolteacher mother, and so forth. But most of them get little more than schtick to work with.

But then, too much of the film is little more than schtick, or played for the quick laugh, rather than letting the scenes develop. The whole subplot about the museum falls victim to this; we get quick glimpses of its contents, including a bizarre haunted-house ride mandated by an eccentric sponsor (Bowen Yang) and a section featuring holograms of Ben Stiller as his Night at the Museum character, Amy Schumer as Eleanor Roosevelt, Kenan Thompson as James Baldwin, and so on, but it never feels like a real place, just a stage for gags.

The scenes focusing on gay sexuality have a bit more weight to them; one scene, with an awkward interloper, has the ring of painful truth, and a post-coital moment between Bobby and Joel (Jamyl Dobson), ruined by the revelation that Bobby was affecting a butch voice, works because Bobby’s awkwardness and Joel’s controlled indignation are so amusingly juxtaposed with a shared appreciation for Barbra Streisand. There are genuinely funny moments here, and even some really sweet ones, especially when Bobby is able to actually enjoy himself and appreciate, with Aaron, the value of really loving someone.

But Bobby can’t help himself, or Eichner can’t, and it hardly matters which, because he so often occupies center stage and so often makes a total ass of himself (and call me repressed, but maybe 12 is too young to see an orgy on stage, regardless of orientation) that I, at least, struggled to enjoy the film. If it seems like I’m still giving the film a pretty high score – or even giving it this score as a cheap joke, however fitting – well, I can see how it challenges our notions of what’s appropriate or acceptable; do I find it easier to like Aaron because he’s more traditionally masculine? Do I find it easier to dislike Bobby because he’s more effeminate?

Mainstream comedies rarely give us any food for thought at all, so I’ll take it. And while I think it’s been overpraised and its significance overstated, I won’t argue with those who embraced it. I’m glad it was made. I just hope the best is yet to come.

Score: 69

Vesper (2022) – ***

Vesper tries to bridge two similar genres – the YA post-apocalyptic saga and the bleak, brutal art-drama – which are not entirely incompatible, but to a large degree it retains the tropey predictability of the former without the narrative thrust, and the oppressively grim tone of the latter without the depth of character or theme. That makes it sound much worse than it is, but because so much in Vesper is genuinely strong, its shortcomings are the more frustrating.

Some time after an attempt at preventing environmental collapse wiped out most animal life and edible plant life on Earth (along with a large chunk of humanity), the elites live in enclosed “citadels,” doling out seeds to the have-nots living on the outside in exchange for the blood of children. (What this is used for, we never quite learn.) These seeds, by the way, are designed to be good only for one harvest.

Young Vesper (Raffiella Chapman) lives in the forest with her paralyzed father Darius (Richard Brake), who accompanies her by means of a drone he controls mentally, allowing him to communicate with and attempt to protect her – easier said than done, given Vesper’s strength of will. Darius’ brother Jonas (Eddie Marsan) is the local chieftain, and his soft-spoken ruthlessness is established early on, when he has one of his sons euthanize a “jug” (Melanie Gaydos), a bio-engineered artificial human who, according to Jonas, feels no pain. (The jug’s screaming and thrashing would suggest otherwise.)

Vesper, a skilled scientist despite her youth, is determined to override the seeds’ engineering and make them truly fertile; she’s successfully created a variety of plant life already. After a glider from one of the citadels crashes in the woods, Vesper finds the injured Camellia (Rosy McEwen) and brings her home, and despite Darius’ warnings that citadel folk are not to be trusted, Vesper hopes that Camellia can get her and Darius out of their dead-end existence.

Complications will arise, mainly in the form of Jonas, but the film ends, all things considered, on a hopeful note, and one which leaves the door open for a sequel, although it’s anyone’s guess if we’ll get one.

The world created here certainly bears further exploration. The plant life, so active, so vibrant, so dangerous as to be almost sentient, teems with possibilities. (It reminds one of Annihilation.) The world of the citadels, so scientifically advanced yet so hermetic, has yet to be explored – and we still don’t know what they need with the blood of children. And there’s more to learn about the mysterious “pilgrims,” who hide their faces, never speak, and scour the wasteland for scrap metal – and even in the final moments we only get a hint of what they might be doing with it.

And Vesper herself, a botanical prodigy in a world where bio-engineering seems to be the norm – look at the membranous bandages she uses, or the creeping fungus used to surveil a space (and poison or incapacitate those present – and a young girl (she’s about 13) who’s fended for herself against the dangers of nature and humanity alike, could easily be the protagonist of future stories, especially if Chapman is able to continue playing her.

But it would be nice if those stories went in a fresher direction than Vesper generally does. The tone is part of the problem; we’ve seen grim dystopias before, often with men like Jonas making them worse. To be sure, Marsan’s performance brings a welcome amount of nuance to a fairly stock character, but it’s still hard, even in the lighter moments, not to be on edge, waiting for him to screw our heroes over. There’s also a moment, late in the film, which seems to pile more sadness on us for no great reason – but it, too, could be setting up future stories.

Truth is, those lighter moments are some of the film’s most wholly successful. In one scene, Vesper and Camellia read an old book about animals, all long extinct, and Camellia mimics their sounds, with Vesper joining in – especially when they read about parrots and start repeating what the other is saying. It’s a silly, playful, warmly human moment. Or the scene where Vesper shows off the plants she’s bred, which seem almost to have personalities of their own.

But even the dark moments still have Feliksas Abrukauskas’ handsome cinematography (allegedly influenced by Rembrandt and Vermeer!), the fantastic, richly textured production design by Raimondas Dicius and Ramunas Rastauskas, Dan Levy’s atmospherically effective score, and the direction by Kristina Buožytė and Bruno Samper, whose previous outing Vanishing Waves wasn’t a favorite of mine, but which also demonstrated a good eye and imagination (even if it took at least a few notes from Inception). Their script, written with Brian Clark, is what keeps the film from really rising above, although it certainly has worthy ideas.

But with a good cast (Chapman and McEwen are both good and have an effective, if underexplored dynamic), those first-rate aesthetics (a special shout-out to the citadel’s security forces, who seem to wear some kind of skull masks – unless their faces have just been eaten down to the bone), and the possibilities of this world and these characters, it’s a film worth seeking out – just think twice before showing it to the Hunger Games/Maze Runner crowd.

Score: 76

It’s only Tuesday and I’ve seen four features – it’s time for some shorts!

• Laura Hasn’t Slept (2020) – This, of course, is the short that became Smile; I’m not sure if the Laura here is connected to the Laura Weaver in that film, but they’re both played by Caitiln Stasey and they’re both haunted by a smiling man who assumes different identities. Here, the haunting occurs in her nightmares, and she’s trying to get help from the chilly Dr. Parsons (Lew Temple). Much of what made Smile so compelling was added in the expansion, and the acting here isn’t quite as good (Stasey is effectively traumatized, but Temple is too self-consciously “off”), but it’s crisply shot, well designed, and does pull off a very creepy twist…deflated slightly by the overly ambiguous final beats. Worth a look if you can find it, but Smile is the more rewarding experience. Score: 74 – ***
• World of Tomorrow (2015) – Because Don Hertzfeldt’s fascinating short was nominated for an Oscar, I was able to see it theatrically, at the long-gone Tivoli; it’s now freely available online thanks to Hertzfeldt himself. If you haven’t seen it (and you should), it follows little Emily (Hertzfeldt’s niece Winona Mae) as she is given a tour of the far future by her clone-descendent (Julia Pott); much of the humor comes from the contrast of Winona Mae’s cheerful babbling and Pott’s crisply accented monotone, the perfect vehicle for future Emily’s bizarre melancholy (she falls in love with a rock, then a fuel pump). The animation is simple – the Emilies are barely more than stick figures – but Hertzfeldt imbues them with ample character, and the colorful, often abstract backgrounds are neatly realized. It’s funny, imaginative, and poignant, and I badly need to see its two sequels. Score: 89 – ****
• Fresh Guacamole (2012) – The shortest film ever nominated for an Oscar (100 seconds), this film by PES shows the making of a batch of guacamole, but with all the ingredients represented by their visual synonyms – instead of an avocado, for example, we have a military-green grenade with a pool ball for a pit. It’s cute, well-executed, and doesn’t outstay its welcome. You can’t really rate it that high – it’s just an extended visual joke – but you can absolutely appreciate it. Score: 75 – ***
• Western Spaghetti (2008) – An earlier film by PES, billed as “The FIRST Stop-Motion Cooking Film.” It’s the same gimmick as Fresh Guacamole, but not quite as developed; he makes a batch of spaghetti sauce using pincushions as tomatoes, pick-up sticks as dry spaghetti, rubber bands as cooked spaghetti, and so on. It’s clever but, again, a first attempt at a style he would later refine to greater effect. Score: 68 – ***
• Submarine Sandwich (2014) – More PES, and this time he actually appears on screen as a deli butcher assembling a classic sub with all manner of cured meats, mostly represented by sports-related objects – footballs, boxing gloves, baseball gloves – as well as a few clever surprises (I particularly liked his representation of oil-and-vinegar). Fresh Guacamole was probably the peak of this genre, but this is almost as good. Score: 74 – ***
• The Magic Machines (1969) – The full on-screen title is The Magic Machines and Other Tricks. This won the Oscar for Live Action Short and was nominated for Documentary Short; it’s a portrait of the artist Robert Gilbert, who creates kinetic art-machines out of scrap metal. The machines themselves are quite lovely and Gilbert’s craftsmanship is considerable (I’m reminded of Alexander Calder’s great mechanized circus in Dreams That Money Can Buy), and director Bob Curtis shows them off with some style. But Gilbert’s voiceover is pretty tiresome, full of well-meaning vapidities about peace and love and standing up against the powers that be (and a few comments that seem just a touch insensitive nowadays). I did like the music-box score, especially the use of “Over There,” but otherwise you’d be fine watching this on mute. Score: 69 – ***
• Too Many Cooks (2014) – Of course, I saw Too Many Cooks it was new (several times, in fact); didn’t we all? I even nominated the hilarious theme song for my own Best Song award, the only time I’ve nominated a short film for anything. It obviously doesn’t pack the same punch on, say, the eighth viewing as it does on the first, but it’s inventive, especially when it starts to warp its own reality (I especially love the anthropomorphic credits, whose own credits are screaming horizontal human beings), and William Tokarsky is so perfect as the sweater-wearing serial killer, that it continues to delight. Score: 87 – ****
• Sentinels of Silence (1971) – This is the only film to win the Oscars for both Documentary Short and Live Action Short; the rules would be changed to prevent this from happening again. It’s a tour of the ruins of ancient Mexico, from Teotihuacan to Uxmal, the title alluding to how little we know (or did in 1971) about the civilizations which built them. The sites themselves are, of course, quite stunning, and the cinematography, much of it done from a helicopter to give us the full scope of these sites, shows them off to good advantage. Orson Welles’ sonorous narration, written by director Robert Amram (the Spanish version was narrated by Ricardo Montalbán). thankfully avoids undue speculation, and Mariano Moreno’s sweeping score, while occasionally over-the-top, suits the grandeur of the material. Score: 85

Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2021) – ***

It’s easy enough to say what happens in this film, although I don’t want to say too much, because I myself didn’t quite know where it was going, right up to the final moments. It’s a lot harder to say just what the point of it is, although a few distinct themes do emerge over the course of the story. To be sure, many viewers will be tempted to check out well before it ends, but even if you’re left wondering just what you watched, you may find, as I did, that it has an odd fascination, partly owing to the atmosphere, and partly owing to the characters.

One night, during a full moon, Mona Lisa Lee (Jun Jong-seo) escapes from the mental hospital where she’s spent the last 12 years. She does this by staring into people’s eyes and psychically forcing them to do her will, whether it’s stabbing themselves in the leg, knocking themselves out, or handing her a bag of cheese puffs. She makes her way to nearby New Orleans and encounters Fuzz (Ed Skrein), who tries to put the moves on her (and gives her his shirt!), but when police officer Harold (Craig Robinson) recognizes her and tries to bring her in, she forces him to shoot himself in the leg and flees.

She then ends up at a burger joint, where she intervenes on behalf of Bonnie Belle (Kate Hudson) after another woman picks a fight with her. Bonnie takes Mona to the Bourbon Street strip club where she works, and after getting an insufficient tip for a lap-dance, has Mona manipulate the customer and his friends into handing over all their cash. She takes Mona back to her house and invites her to stay, despite the concerns of her young son Charlie (Evan Whitten).

Over the following days, Bonnie uses Mona’s psychic gifts to line her pockets, much to Charlie’s disgust; he and Mona begin to form a friendship of their own. And Harold tries to track down Mona and figure just who or what she is, but perhaps he should heed the fortune cookie he opened in his first scene: “Forget what you know.”

Certainly, there’s a theme of the misuse/fear of the miraculous/aberrant, as Bonnie uses Mona’s psychic gifts to make money and Harold tries to bring her under control as he would any other fugitive. Charlie, being something of a kindred spirit with Mona, is less inclined to use her, although he’s clearly happy when she uses her powers to humiliate one of his bullies. There’s also something of a karmic element to the story, as the cycles of personal action and external reaction sweep these characters along. But in the end, it’s as much a fable as anything, and if it’s not a great one – at 106 minutes, it’s a bit long in the tooth for how slight it is – it’s compelling in its way.

For me, a lot of that comes from how often it sidesteps our expectations. Not in a dramatic fashion, mind you, but the story keeps nudging itself in unexpected directions, and the characters keep revealing fresh facets of themselves. It still doesn’t add up to a really satisfying whole, but it’s hard to write it off.

While it doesn’t have the sheer visual splendor of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (which had the benefit of being shot in black-and-white), and it doesn’t create a world as original as that film’s Bad City, it makes solid use of the fluorescent lights and neon of New Orleans at night, achieving a seamy atmosphere into which it introduces flashes of humanity – and these give what might’ve been a shallow exercise in style (which admittedly could’ve used a touch more style) a measure of depth.

Mona, who might’ve been a simple enigma, becomes all the harder to pin down as the film progresses; she may, at the end, remain a bit too much of a mystery, but she’s not a blank for the other characters to project their needs onto, their intentions notwithstanding. Bonnie is a protective friend one moment and a craven exploiter the next, but neither is her “true” self; they both are. Nor is Harold simply a Good Cop or a Bad Cop; he’s a human being facing a situation he can’t control. Nor is Fuzz simply a lecherous creep; he proves genuinely helpful when his help is needed.

The performances are uniformly solid, if not outstanding. Jun, who was by far the best part of Burning, can’t fully rise above the limitations of the role, but she plays the notes she’s given with conviction. Hudson, coming off the hideous Music, reminds us of her talents by playing a character who’s not simply crass or obnoxious, but is definitely both of those things. Skrein brings a cock-eyed humor – even a bit of warmth – to his own very strange role, and Robinson finds the humor in Harold’s predicament while still playing it essentially straight. And Whitten is a thankfully natural and likable young actor who conveys Charlie’s resentments and basically kind nature very well.

Daniele Luppi’s offbeat score is probably the strongest element of the film, but even if it ends up less than the sum of its parts, most of those parts are at least worth appreciating. After impressing me greatly with A Girl Walks Home, Ana Lily Amirpour reputedly stumbled with The Bad Batch, which I’ve never seen; she doesn’t come near the heights of her first feature here, and I remain unsure as to just what she was trying to say with it, but for all that, I’m glad I gave it a chance.

Score: 71

Amsterdam (2022) – **½

In 1933-34, according to Major General Smedley Butler, he was in contact with a group of businessmen who wanted to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install himself as dictator. No charges were ever filed, and how far the so-called Business Plot actually developed before Butler went public with his allegations remains uncertain, but it’s an unsettling chapter in American history, especially when you consider how much support there was for Mussolini and Hitler in the States in the years leading up to World War II.

I mention all this because a fictionalized version of the Business Plot factors into Amsterdam‘s story, but it’s mostly relegated to the overstuffed final act; to get there, you have to sit through a whole lot of nothing, a whole lot of good actors in fancy costumes on expensive sets doing nothing especially memorable. I expected, given the harsh reviews, to dislike it more intensely than I did – especially given that it was written and directed by David O. Russell, whom there are many good reasons to dislike – but to so waste such a compelling bit of history and so able a cast on so trivial a film is nothing to be proud of.

The film is told mainly through the eyes of Dr. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), a World War I veteran who was grievously injured in combat, losing an eye and suffering injuries that leave him in constant pain, for which he concocts various narcotics. During the war, he befriended Black soldier Harold Woodman (John David Washington), and they befriended their nurse, Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie), spending some time in Amsterdam after the war recuperating spiritually, with Harold and Valerie falling in love, before Burt returned to his socialite wife Beatrice (Andrea Riseborough). Harold also returned to America and earned a law degree, working alongside Burt to help their fellow veterans. They both lost track of Valerie.

In 1933, Burt and Harold are hired by Elizabeth Meekins (Taylor Swift), daughter of their former C.O. Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.), to perform an autopsy on him after his sudden death. The autopsy reveals that Meekins was poisoned, but when Burt and Harold try to tell a visibly troubled Elizabeth, a man pushes her into the path of a car before accusing them of killing her. Now Burt and Harold have to clear their own names and find out who poisoned Meekins, in the course of which Valerie will re-enter their lives and they’ll join forces with Gen. Gil Dillenbeck (Robert De Niro), the film’s equivalent of Butler.

They’ll also deal with a whole host of characters, including Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy as Valerie’s soft-spoken brother and disapproving sister-in-law, Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola as a pair of NYPD detectives breathing down Burt and Harold’s necks, Michael Shannon and Mike Myers as a pair of friendly spies, Zoe Saldaña as a coroner with a yen for Burt, Chris Rock as Harold’s wise-cracking associate, and Timothy Olyphant as the murderer (whose impressive name, Tarim Milfax, is never spoken).

Clearly, we’re supposed to be invested in the bond between Burt, Harold, and Valerie. Their time together in Amsterdam is supposed to have been the happiest time of their lives, their separation is supposed to be poignant, and their reunion is supposed to be, the circumstances notwithstanding, a cause for celebration. But I just didn’t care, and never felt the necessary chemistry between them. It doesn’t help that Harold is a cipher and Valerie is a pretty generic free spirit (until she’s not, so she can free herself again); Burt at least gets a touch more development and narrates most of the film (Valerie narrates one scene for no clear reason), but even he holds our interest mainly because of Bale’s eccentric performance.

Although none of the cast disgrace themselves, most of them simply drift by, with only Taylor-Joy and De Niro making a really strong impression. Taylor-Joy brings a spark to her role few of her co-stars can match; her character is reminiscent of Magda Goebbels in her worshipful attitude towards the desired dictator, and her she relishes the prissy arrogance she’s given to play. De Niro, for his part, brings the right gravitas to his revered character, along with a dry wit and integrity that fit the stand for human decency and Constitutional values he takes at the film’s climax.

Otherwise, the best we get is the inherent watchability of these actors (like Riseborough and Shannon) or the occasional flicker of inspiration (Myers keeps it in check). And Swift fans need hardly bother, given that she does so little and makes so little impression, aside from a death scene which is laughably clunky in its staging.

But that’s Russell for you, isn’t it? The man made three consecutive films with a combined 25 Oscar nominations, and not one of those was for Cinematography. Here, working with the great Emmanuel Lubezki, he manages the occasional decent shot, but it’s hard to think of any truly memorable images or movements, except maybe for the repeated cuts to Bale in the climactic confrontation, during which he says and does virtually nothing. (It’s a scene which feels distinctly cobbled together in post.)

Of course, those three films were all nominated for Director, Screenplay, and Editing, and this film falls short in all three departments. It does have, given the period setting, very good sets and costumes, and Daniel Pemberton’s score is actively charming and tuneful; it’s by far the best thing in a film which otherwise fails to deliver on laughs, romance, tension, or drama. It’s not bad enough to mock, and the cast keeps it watchable, but it’s certainly not good enough for me to recommend in any sense. I used a voucher and saw it for free, but it cost 134 minutes of my life. And I was not duly compensated.

Score: 60