Updating this post to say that I support the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikers, and hope that the successes of Barbie and Oppenheimer will help convince the studio executives to acquiesce to the strikers’ demands.
Elemental (2023) – ***
There’s just enough of a good movie in Elemental to keep it from slipping into outright mediocrity, but those flashes of real quality also serve to highlight how lacking the whole package is. The best scenes center around Ember Lumen (Leah Lewis) and Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie) and their slowly developing relationship, which is hampered by the fact that she’s made of fire and he’s made of water, making so much as holding hands a dicey prospect. The scene where they are able to square the circle and hold each other – with the Power of Love, presumably – is genuinely lovely, and if it were the climax of a short, it would work perfectly.
But Elemental is a feature film, and at almost every turn it feels like a premise – let’s anthropomorphize the four classical elements – that was never properly developed into a story. Look at all the story beats which smack of lazy writing. Ember chasing after Wade makes absolutely no sense – not only is she leaving the family shop behind right in the middle of a big sale (on a day when she’s trying to prove she’s capable of taking over the place), but she’s trying to prevent a city inspector from doing his job, and in a manner which will certainly not help her case.
Later, when we learn there’s damage to the city’s infrastructure which threatens Firetown with flooding, Ember and Wade have to fix it themselves because he’s apparently alienated the Public Works Department. It’s handled as a one-off joke, but not only does it not make much sense – why should their irritation with Wade prevent them from addressing the issue? – but it’s a hugely missed opportunity to show how the city government neglects the needs of the fire people, who are quite visibly “othered” by the water, air, and earth people, which would accurately reflect the unfortunate reality of the world today (just look at what happened in New Orleans with Katrina) and strengthen the film’s rather wobbly allegory.
Like Zootopia, Elemental‘s attempts to draw parallels between its characters’ struggles with prejudice and intolerance and humanity’s struggles with the same are hampered by the fact that the differences between fire and water are so unlike the differences between different ethnicities. Just like there’s a good reason for rabbits to be wary of foxes, there’s a good reason for fire to be wary of water; fire can change water into steam, but water can only change fire into…not fire. You’re probably not supposed to think about it too much, but it’s hard to balance that with the thoughts the story is supposed to inspire.
For me, though, the story mainly inspired thoughts of all the clichés it deploys at every turn; the meet-cute, the forbidding parents, the awkward lies, the fallings-out, the reconciliations, and so on. Of course Ember feels obligated to take over her family’s shop. Of course she wants to do something else with her life. Of course she eventually will, because her family will learn the truth and accept it (rather easily, in fact). These beats can all be used well – and maybe I was just not in the mood to accept them – but here they make for an almost apologetically uninspired story.
The characters are pretty weak too, although the voice acting helps make up for it. Ember is a hard character to connect to, not least because we never really understand why, given how literally destructive her temper is, she hasn’t taken steps to get it under control (the fire people are heavily Asian-coded; why hasn’t she tried meditation?), but Lewis brings her inner conflict to sympathetic life. Wade is considerably more likable, if a bit lacking in the arc department, and Athie greatly adds to his sincere desire to do the right thing, his earnest love for Ember, and his charming propensity for showy tears. And as Ember’s father Bernie, Ronnie del Carmen nails both the lovable old-world papa and the fiercely prejudiced patriarch archetypes – though the film depicts the former side of him with rather more conviction.
Otherwise, the characters are fairly forgettable; obnoxious young Clod (Mason Wertheimer) has become infamous for being heavily featured in the marketing despite being a minor character who’s also unfunny and rather creepy (he’s in his early teens and hitting on the adult Ember), but aside from him and maybe Ember’s mother Cinder (Shila Ommi) the supporting cast are quite underwritten, just as the world of the film, despite the obvious care and expense put into the visual design, feels seriously underdeveloped.
It does at least boast a nice score by Thomas Newman and some excellent animation which brings the fire and water characters to organic life; a scene where Wade uses his water to focus Ember’s flame is another one of the relatively few moments in the film which really delivers on the potential of its premise. Take those few and only those few, and you might have a pretty good short. Instead, we got a watchable, occasionally beguiling, but generally underwhelming feature.
Score: 66
Speaking of shorts…
- What wasn’t a pretty good short was Carl’s Date (2023), which preceded Elemental. Apparently the last entry in a series of shorts in the Up universe called Dug Days, it has Carl Fredericksen (Ed Asner) agreeing to a date with a fellow senior. He’s very nervous at the prospect, having not dated in decades, and does things like dye his hair black and buy a mountain of chocolates. But Dug (Bob Petersen), despite some excessively canine advice, is able to convince Carl to just be himself. And that’s it – we don’t even get to see the date, just Carl’s bumbling attempts to get ready for it. They’re not very funny, though, and something about the timing feels off from the very start, making for a disappointing trifle whose only real value is as a reminder of how good Up is. Better than Lava, but still one of Pixar’s weakest shorts. Score: 54 – **
- The Kiss (1958) – A shy young man (David Brenner) has trouble connecting to women and thinks the book Art in Kissing will help. But in the end, he learns that sharing a good laugh goes a lot farther. A pleasant enough little piece, sluggishly paced at first (at 29 minutes it’s a bit long) and marred by an overly abrupt ending, but Brenner has an authentic awkwardness that, in a lovely scene in a Coney Island bar, melts into good humor. Instead of dialogue, it has Michael Colicchio’s charming, bluesy score; the glimpses of late 50s New York are historically interesting, as are the appearances of John Astin and Madlyn Rhue. An Oscar nominee, notable because writer/producer John Hayes would soon turn to exploitation films like Sweet Trash and Grave of the Vampire. Score: 70 – ***
- Tomato is Another Day/It Never Happened (1934) – James Sibley Watson is best known for his highly experimental shorts The Fall of the House of Usher and Lot in Sodom. But he made other films, including this bizarre little comedy which seems at least partly to have been a parody of talkies, written by Alec Wilder, who’d later focus on music (writing the scores for The Sand Castle and Open the Door and See All the People). It takes the archetypal scenario of a young wife (Frances Alexander Miller), her older husband (Jack Lee), and her young lover (unidentified) and goes full Ionesco with it; the wife and lover are more deadpan than Wes Anderson ever dreamed of, but how else could their hilariously unnatural dialogue be delivered? The husband is livelier, but also comically oblivious (until he turns vengeful on a dime) and matters descend into puns both visual and verbal. It doesn’t quite hit the bull’s-eye, and it’s easy to see why it was poorly received at the time (it was shown once, then shelved for decades), but it’s an admirable effort, and the version on the George Eastman Museum website includes a useful introduction and several minutes of outtakes, giving us an invaluable look behind the scenes. Score: 74 – ***
- The Flute of Krishna (1926) – Also part of the Eastman collection is this dance film, shot in experimental Kodachrome (very similar to two-strip Technicolor), featuring choreography by Martha Graham, albeit, as detailed in the included introduction, in the Denishawn style she would soon reject. It features Krishna (Robert Ross) dancing, first with a trio of maidens, then with Radha (Evelyn Sabin), with whom he shares a deeper connection. I’ll be honest, I’ve never been a particular fan of dance-as-narrative, and when you add in the hilariously dated Orientalism on display, it’s hard to see this as more than a curiosity, mainly for the use of color, heavy on the green and pink but pleasant enough to behold. Beyond that, it just feels like Kenneth Anger without the edge. Score: 64 – **½
- Two-Color Kodachrome Test Shots No. III (1922) – As the title would suggest, this is a series of shots used to test the capabilities of early Kodachrome, mainly featuring actresses Hope Hampton, Mary Eaton, and Mae Murray modelling various outfits ranging from period costume to modern fashion, capped by what seem to be still images of a neighborhood in L.A. Hard to really evaluate as a film, but there’s an easy-going charm to it; the actresses seem to be relaxed and in a good humor, and the color, within its limitations, looks very nice. And the music chosen – Frederick Delius’ version of the English folk song “Brigg Fair” – is lovely. Part of the National Film Registry. Score: 69 – ***
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987) – ***
On one level, I totally get it. You have an audacious premise – let’s tell the tragic story of Karen Carpenter’s life and how her battle with anorexia led to her death and have Barbie dolls play the principal roles. You take that premise and execute with a level of sincerity that allows your film to be both a satire of the zeitgeist which made Karen and her brother Richard stars and a sincere depiction of how disease destroyed an immensely talented young woman. You fill the soundtrack with popular music (from the Carpenters and others) without permission, leading Richard Carpenter, who already wasn’t happy with the film, to file a lawsuit which has kept the film from being legally available for over 30 years – and in spite of that, you have a director, Todd Haynes, who has since established himself as a major and enduring talent.
On paper, it’s irresistible, a strange, daring, affecting Film They Don’t Want You to See (although the fact that it’s easily available on YouTube suggests no one is trying very hard to suppress it these days), and the film maintains a strong reputation, being named one of Entertainment Weekly’s Top 50 Cult Films (how I first heard about it, I believe) and being well-regarded by critics (at least those few who’ve reviewed it) and casual viewers alike.
Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood. Maybe I’ve got too much else on my mind. (Look at the other films I’ve reviewed this week – I haven’t watched a lot that’s really clicked with me lately.) But Superstar didn’t really do that much for me, leaving me with the distinct feeling that, if it wasn’t for the legal sanctions against it, it would have nowhere near the reputation it does. Just look at George A. Romero’s long-lost The Amusement Park, which met with raves when it was finally made available – except from me. I absolutely get wanting to celebrate a piece of art that might’ve easily slipped out of our collective grasp forever. But in this case, I find myself underwhelmed.
There are moments I find truly powerful, especially in the film’s second half, when the pressures of her overbearing parents and career-obsessed brother, the obligations of her own career, and the great difficulties in countering (let alone overcoming) her anorexia become more than Karen can handle – note the repeated images of Ex-Lax boxes and bathroom scales. Notably, while we get hints of the recording industry’s manipulations and while her parents do treat her like a child, the film never really blames them for Karen’s sufferings; her illness is the issue – and in real life, it predated her stardom. Had she not been a star, she might well have suffered and died in total obscurity.
There are also effective quasi-documentary moments dealing with Carpenter’s career and with anorexia in general; interviews with various (live-action) people reveal a range of opinions on her and her work, and a mix of narration and oft-obscured on-screen text give us the facts in briskly trenchant tones:
…Anorexia can thus be seen as an addiction and abuse of self control, a fascism over the body in which the sufferer plays the parts of both dictator and the emaciated victim who she so often resembles. In a culture that continues to control women through the commoditization of their bodies, the anorexic body excludes itself, rejecting the doctrines of femininity, driven by a vision of complete mastery and control.
Less effective, at least to me, are the scenes which try and contrast the popularity of the wholesome Carpenters with the cynicism and corruption of the times; much is made of how they performed at the White House at Nixon’s invitation and how their careers peaked as “Watergate” was becoming a household word. But the juxtaposition isn’t really that illuminating, and the use of stock footage showing bombs falling and genocide victims being thrown into mass graves comes off as pretty facile satire. Again, maybe I just wasn’t in the mood.
But also, given the film’s brevity (at 43 minutes I just barely qualify it as feature-length), it rushes through the years without giving us that much insight into who Karen actually is; her passion for drumming, her failed marriage, and the massive disappointment of her solo album being shelved are all ignored or quickly glossed over. I’m not trying to criticize the film for not being what it might not have ever meant to be, but trying to understand why it left me cold.
It’s not that I think Superstar is bad; it’s hard to fully appreciate the craft on display given the low quality of the versions available, but it’s clear that great care was taken in building the tiny sets and making the tiny costumes, and that the songs (which I like, to be quite honest) were well chosen. I just don’t think it adds up to a truly great film, one really worthy of the adulation it’s received. Maybe you had to be there, when the Carpenters were in their heyday and the kind of soapy docudrama it’s clearly satirizing was a television fixture, to fully get it.
Score: 68
Barbie (2023) – ****
While explaining the relationship between Barbieland and the real world, and how one can travel from one to the other, Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) quips “Best not to think about it.” For the rest of the film, the exact nature of the energy exchange between the two worlds is hard to grasp; it seems to exist mainly on the level of a child’s imagination. But in this context, Barbie confronts issues of identity, mortality, and gender politics, and is full of distinctly adult humor that earned it a PG-13 rating. It makes for a very strange film that might seem like it doesn’t know what it wants to be – but the fact that it deals with characters who aren’t sure what they want to be makes it hard to dismiss on that front.
Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) lives a perfect life in Barbieland, being cheerfully greeted by everyone she encounters, partying every night, and having a friendly but sterile relationship with Ken (Ryan Gosling), who hopes for more but isn’t entirely sure what “more” might be. During one of these parties, Barbie casually asks “Do you guys ever think about dying?”, a concept her fellow Barbies cannot even compute, and the next day everything goes wrong for her – or at least more the way it does in the real world.
Sent to Weird Barbie, she’s told that somehow, someone in the real world is sending their negative energies through to her, and that she must find them to set things right. So off Barbie goes to reality, with the dogged Ken in tow, and she quickly discovers how messy the real world is and how Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), the girl she thought she was looking for, views her not as an inspiration but as a symbol of everything wrong with how society treats women. Ken, on the other hand, discovers the patriarchy (and horses) and decides to remake Barbieland in his own image.
Meanwhile, Mattel learns about Barbie’s appearance in the real world and determines to get her back in her box (literally). But one of their employees, Gloria (America Ferrera) – who also happens to be Sasha’s mother – helps her escape the CEO (Will Ferrell) and his henchmen, and they accompany Barbie back to Barbieland – only to discover “Kendom,” a ludicrously macho new world where all the Barbies are in thrall to the Kens. The day will have to be saved – but how?
The answer will probably/has already irritated a few commentators, as the film makes absolutely no bones about calling out the dispiriting standards women in the real world are held to – and it is tricky to square the blunt messaging on display with the defter commentary on the nature of reality and the personification of ideas. At times, it feels like the film was made not just for but by Sasha and girls like her, at once wise beyond their years and profoundly adolescent. (Sasha’s own arc in the film could’ve used a touch more development; once Gloria enters the picture she’s relatively sidelined.)
Director Greta Gerwig co-wrote the script with Noah Baumbach, and the film reflects their comic and dramatic sensibilities, being by turns giddily broad, satirically pointed, and sympathetically humane. There’s a lovely moment when Barbie, trying to plan her next step in the real world, sees an old woman at a bus stop (costume designer Ann Roth) and says, in all earnestness, “You’re so beautiful.” The woman replies, “I know!” Later, the bond developed between Barbie and the spirit of her inventor, Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman) helps to reinforce Barbie’s awakening to the value of simple humanity, even as it extends the film’s existential themes.
Those attitudes are also reflected in Sarah Greenwood’s production design and Jacqueline Durran’s costumes, which at once wittily reflect the absurd essence of Barbieland (and to a lesser degree that of our world) and display an enthusiasm and attention to detail that can only have come from the heart. The use of bright colors, playground settings, and overt artificiality make it one of the most visually intriguing films of the year.
Likewise, the actors embrace the complex balance of tones with aplomb. Robbie is perfectly cast, as the film capitalizes on her glamorous looks and her skill at showing the haunted inner life behind them, while Gosling’s own handsomeness and comic timing make him a wonderfully ridiculous Ken, especially when he tries to bare his soul but scarcely has the emotional intelligence to know what that entails. McKinnon is no less delightful as Weird Barbie, with her bizarre physicality (if they ever want to make another film of The Patchwork Girl of Oz, she’d be the perfect Scraps) and sympathetic snark. Ferrera quite ably plays our leading representative of human complexity, and Ferrell, Perlman, and Michael Cera as poor Allan stand out among an impressive, if sometimes underutilized, supporting cast.
While Barbie has its weaknesses (the “beach off” gag is about as cringe-inducing in the film as it was in the trailer), and while I think it does bite off a bit more than it can chew, it has more than enough going for it to make it worth seeing, from the wonderful opening scene (spoiled in the first teaser, but in a few months that won’t matter) to the hilarious final line. It’s not Little Women, but Gerwig brought a great deal of herself to this big-budget enterprise – thank Barbie.
Score: 87
Oppenheimer (2023) – ****
The paradox of Oppenheimer – fitting for a film about a paradox of a man – is that it contains less of Christopher Nolan’s shortcomings than Interstellar or Tenet – fewer clunky lines of dialogue, less dialogue lost to the sound mix – but is also absent some of the brazen ambition which made Interstellar great and Tenet…well, Tenet. That’s not to say it’s not ambitious, and certainly not to say it’s not a magnificently accomplished film within the parameters of the biopic, whose dreariest pitfalls it avoids even as it strides confidently along the rim of them. It’s a great film without question, one of the best of an already impressive year, and yet it falls just the tiniest bit short of being the best, at least on first viewing.
At three hours and with three interwoven story threads, Oppenheimer is tricky to summarize. Basically, one thread covers the career of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) from the 1920s, when he first learned about quantum physics from Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) to his teaching career and leftist affiliations in the 1930s, to his being recruited for the Manhattan Project by Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) and the development of the atomic bomb, to his being recruited to direct the Institute for Advanced Study by Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.).
Another thread covers his 1954 security hearing, where his character and past affiliations are ruthlessly picked apart by prosecutor Roger Robb (Jason Clarke) while Oppenheimer’s attorney Lloyd K. Garrison (Macon Blair) is stymied by the fact that, as this is only a hearing, the privileges normally afforded the defense are off limits to him. The third, set in 1959, focuses on Strauss’ perspective as a Senate hearing to confirm him as Secretary of Commerce for Eisenhower is derailed by his actions towards Oppenheimer, the full scope of which are only gradually revealed.
Jennifer Lame’s editing hopscotches between these timelines with great dexterity. The film’s 180 minutes don’t necessarily fly by, but the epic sweep of the story and its ultimate focus on Oppenheimer’s complex character (with a good deal of time spent on the similarly complex Strauss) allow one to be comfortably immersed and engaged all the way through. That, of course, is also a testament to Nolan’s writing, which ably conveys those complex personalities and the issues they grapple with, more naturally than many of his previous scripts, perhaps because he had real life (and the book American Prometheus) to draw on.
The acting most certainly helps. Murphy is masterful as Oppenheimer, giving us the arrogant genius, the doomed idealist, and the self-awareness of these roles which makes him all the harder to pin down; you can see where Edward Teller (Benny Safdie) is coming from when says he found Oppenheimer “exceedingly hard to understand. And Downey is comparably quicksilver as Strauss, who initially comes off as a principled man trying to thread the needle between Oppenheimer’s idealism and the demands of Cold War politics, until we come to see just how good he is at “playing the game.” They both deserve ample recognition for their work.
But there are riches to be found throughout the rest of the cast. Florence Pugh, as the tragic Jean Tatlock, powerfully conveys self-possession and self-destruction, while giving easily the most nakedly (literally) sexual performance in Nolan’s filmography to date. Emily Blunt isn’t given quite as much room to explore the complexities of Kitty Oppenheimer, but when she challenges her husband on his seeming weakness, or holds her own against Robb’s badgering, she shines.
Clarke (getting his best showcase in quite a while) is most effective as the obnoxious Robb, just as Damon is able to reveal Groves’ layers – he respects Oppenheimer’s genius but is frustrated by his maverick attitude – with the same aplomb as Safdie portrays Teller’s pomposity. Blair, Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, David Krumholtz as Isidor Rabi, and Dane DeHaan (using all his sneering deadpan) as Maj. Gen. Kenneth Nichols all add considerably to the ensemble, and the smaller performances of Branagh, Tom Conti (as Einstein), Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush, and Rami Malek as David Hill are worth mentioning. It’s a hell of a cast – and there’s one surprise cameo I idn’t mention.
Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography (which I didn’t get to see in 70mm, alas) is very fine, especially when Nolan allows himself a few idiosyncrasies (especially in the last hour), Ludwig Göransson’s score is richly varied (and I’d like to give it a listen on its own), the sound design makes cunning use of thundering sounds and sudden silences, the production design and costumes are on point throughout, and the visual effects, while not as extensive as in Nolan’s other work, are quite accomplished. It’s not necessarily an innovative film, but it’s a superbly executed one.
Oppenheimer offers one considerable room to think about how the ideals of science clash with the destructive ends its fruits are put towards, and how a man can be both conscientious and conniving, brilliant and blundering, invaluable one second and an impediment the next. That it is all in the main true (I’m sure it takes some dramatic liberties, but elements like the poisoned apple come right from reality) only makes it the more unsettling. I could wish it sought to break some new ground, but what it does do it does damn well.
Score: 90
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