The Weekly Gravy #171

Maestro (2023) – ***

If Maestro were a film about a cigarette smoker, it would be exhaustive if not authoritative; the clicks of lighters and billows of smoke are a constant aural and visual presence. Occasionally, the smoker makes music as well, very fine music which existed before the film and will stand quite on its own after this film, which has so little to say about the music itself, fades from memory—which I’m convinced it will do.

The smoker in question is Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper), who was renowned as a conductor (the film really begins with him getting his big break in 1943, filling in for an ailing maestro) and a composer (the soundtrack is primarily made up of his work, and the subtitles on Netflix helpfully identify the various pieces), but also became a public figure thanks to the Young People’s Concerts, broadcast on CBS throughout the 1960s (these the film barely acknowledges).

We get some effective scenes of Bernstein at the podium, most notably a long scene where he conducts Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in his full-bodied style, eyes wide, mouth hung open in ecstasy, hair wild, sweat running down his face. And we get a few scenes of him playing his piano or discussing his craft. But we get more smoking than conducting, more parties than concerts, more small talk than any discussion of Bernstein’s theories or motivations.

But we do get plenty of time devoted to his marriage to the actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), and to the matter of his sexuality; his relationships with men, especially David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer) and Tommy Cothran (Gideon Glick), factor into the story, the latter relationship incurring Felicia’s reproach and causing them to fall out for a time – but they reconcile as she battles the cancer which eventually claims her life.

If the depiction of Bernstein’s musical career is frustratingly sporadic, the depiction of Felicia’s acting career is vanishingly brief; aside from fleeting references to rehearsals and one run-through for a television program, we learn almost nothing about her work or method. It’s kind of rich that the film depicts her frustration with Bernstein’s egotistical behavior yet has little interest in her as her own person.

The film falls short as a biography because it tells us so little about Bernstein as an artist or simply as a man. What motivated a Jewish artist to write a Mass? No idea; he announces that he’s written, we see part of a performance, and move on. How did he develop his style of conducting? No idea; we only get a handful of scenes of him actually conducting, and it’s only the Mahler scene – in a cathedral, no less – where he displays that frenzied manner.

But it also falls short as a film about a marriage, because we get so little insight into just how Bernstein reconciled (or failed to reconcile) his love for Felicia with his interest in other men, and Felicia’s own feelings about the matter abruptly shift from apparent contentment to bitter resentment, as the film abruptly shifts from the black-and-white of the first third or so to the full color of the rest, with no particular motivation. They abruptly fall out (in an absurdly on-the-nose single-take argument punctuated by a Snoopy balloon) and just as abruptly reconcile.

The biggest issue is with the script, by Cooper and Josh Singer, which is choppy and shallow, focusing less on what made Bernstein famous – and therefore a desirable subject for a major biopic – than on his sex life, and that in a pretty chaste manner. We’ve seen the story of the artist who indulges their ego and appetites at the expense of their loved ones before, and Bernstein was, going by the film, a fairly mild example.

Cooper’s direction does have moments of cinematic flourish, especially in that first act, as we get some sense of the excitement of his early professional life and touches like Bernstein and Felicia being drawn into a performance of On the Town – but even this doesn’t really illuminate much about their relationship, except maybe to hint that he’ll be drawn back to other men before long. Matthew Libatique’s cinematography is likewise fairly handsome (and at times acrobatic) in the early passages, but the better part of the film is respectably made without being particularly distinguished.

Cooper’s performance as Bernstein may well win him an Oscar, which wouldn’t be the most egregious win of recent years but wouldn’t be an inspired choice either. He certainly goes all-in on the role, from the accent to the boisterous physicality to the extensive and admittedly impressive makeup (you may remember the controversy over his nose), and I think he’s effective in the role – but not remarkable. Mulligan may or may not be nominated, but while she’s often effective as well, especially as Felicia is consumed by her disease, she’s undermined by the script and by an accent which tries to encompass her Costa Rican background, Chilean upbringing, and New York theatrical training – the key word being “tries.”

No one else is able to make a strong impression; not Bomer, not Sarah Silverman as Bernstein’s snarky sister, not Maya Hawke as his eldest daughter. They and many others float by in a vague parade of friends, colleagues, family, lovers, and interviewers; one especially bad scene has Bernstein being interviewed for a memoir, allowing for an info-dump on the career we’ve barely seen for ourselves. (A worse scene has Bernstein driving up to the camera, playing “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” just so we can hear R.E.M. shout “Leonard Bernstein.”)

It’s not a bad film, at least not objectively, but it’s a hollow enterprise, prestigious on the surface but with very little underneath. It’s not the best biopic about a chain-smoking philanderer this year, the best film about a queer conductor-composer of the last 18 months, or the best film to feature “It’s the End of the World…” – that would of course be Independence Day.

Score: 67

American Beauty (1999) – ***

On Words About Books, Ben and Nate use the phrase “pre-9/11 world” a lot, and if any film embodies it, it’s this one (Gabe Delahaye called it a “the very definition of a ‘pre-9/11 movie,’ if there is such a thing” in an article that seems to have disappeared); a quick Google search turns up articles with titles like “‘American Beauty’ as the Ultimate Boomer Opus,” “The Steady Cultural Demise of American Beauty,” “‘American Beauty’ Retrospective: How the Oscars Were Won, But A Legacy Lost,” and “American Beauty Was Bad 20 Years Ago and It’s Bad Now. But It Still Has Something to Tell Us.“

I didn’t go into American Beauty cold. I remember the ads from when it was in theaters and cringing at the line “I rule!” I remember the Oscar ceremony where it won five awards, and I remember my mom being annoyed when Kevin Spacey won Best Actor over Richard Farnsworth. I saw bits of the movie over the years, becoming familiar with images like Mena Suvari covered in rose petals, Wes Bentley and Thora Birch watching that video of the plastic bag, and Spacey lying dead in a rose-red pool of his own blood.

I knew what it was about, how it dealt with dissatisfaction, lust, alienation, self-loathing, materialism, pederasty, and the beauty of the everyday. I also knew that what I’d seen of the film failed to really impress me, and while I intend to finish watching all the Best Picture winners I’ve never seen before the next winner is chosen (only 10 to go!) I wasn’t really looking forward to sitting through it. That I didn’t hate it might be considered a pleasant surprise, but I didn’t especially like it, either.

There are certainly elements I admire. Some of the acting is truly fantastic – Annette Bening probably should’ve won her Oscar for playing Carolyn, whose obsession with status and appearances is farcically overwrought, yet oddly sympathetic. Wes Bentley wasn’t nominated for playing Ricky, possibly the only person in the film completely at peace with his own nature, but he has some superb moments, especially with Chris Cooper (also not nominated) as his hard-assed father, whose cruelty and bigotry are a mask for his own self-hatred. And Allison Janney, now best known for playing snarky cynicism, is quite affecting as the quiet, sadly dissociated Barbara.

Then there’s Spacey, whose performance is hard to separate from the allegations against him, the more so because Lester seems to be just as shallow and pathetic as Carolyn, just in a different direction; his petulant behavior, his outbursts at her and their daughter, his creepy fixation on Angela, his new fitness routine and purchase of a 1970 Firebird all point towards his being less a victim of suburban repression than a passive-aggressive loser.

Spacey plays it well, if not to an Oscar-worthy degree, but is that how we’re meant to view Lester? While it’s more of an ensemble piece than I’d realized, he still narrates the film and his death, coming right after the evaporation of his obsession, is the bow which ties the whole package together. His viewpoint is ultimately privileged, but he’s arguably the least interesting or sympathetic of the major characters. (Birch and Suvari are solid in their own rights, but they’re both hampered by the script’s shaky grasp of how teenagers talk.)

Clearly, I have many issues with Alan Ball’s Oscar-winning screenplay, but it’s the film’s own shallowness that frustrates me most of all. As a satire of suburban anomie, it settles for pretty obvious points – the overly manicured aesthetic, the obsession with social codes and material success, the lack of spiritual fulfillment – and in the process lets down the characters. Lester repeatedly mentions that Carolyn used to be happier, but how did she become so materialistic? Aside from one brief mention of her humble upbringing, we get no exploration of that.

As a study of American life in general, it’s not much more enlightening, with tropes like the homophobe who’s in the closet himself, the vapid corporate job for the protagonist to chafe at and the easy-going job he replaces it with (as if any public-facing job, especially in food service, would be easy-going), the clash between vapid, slang-slinging teenagers and their “weird” but ultimately far wiser peers, and the secret unhappiness of the outwardly successful.

But simply as a study of its own characters, it feels pretty thin as well, with one-dimensional arcs, characters incapable of having actual conversations, plot-convenient shifts in personality and behavior – Ricky is sometimes savvy and cool and sometimes awkward to a disturbing degree; his father will demand urine tests and beat him for the slightest perceived infraction, but lets him make hundreds of videotapes of God-knows-what – and a final revelation on Lester’s part that simply rings hollow.

Sam Mendes and Conrad L. Hall won Oscars for their direction and cinematography respectively, and the film is well enough staged and shot, but here too there’s a hollowness, a sense that the film isn’t really more enlightened or perceptive than its own characters. Lester’s fantasies, which contain some of the film’s most elaborate imagery, feel more like basic-cable softcore pornography than actual daydreams – which might have been the point, but the rest of the film – a visual misunderstanding right out of Austin Powers, the objectification of Suvari – gives me cause for doubt. (Thomas Newman’s score, however, is genuinely fine.)

Really, it feels like a film made by people whose notions of life came entirely from watching movies, and looking back on it, the film is focused on the wrong people; the Burnhams, whose unhappiness comes from the inability of yuppie values to fill the empty spaces in their souls, are far less interesting than the Fittses, who grapple with depths of anger, pain, despair, spiritual striving, and denial that make for infinitely more compelling drama. But American Beauty is more a comedy than anything – and now the joke is on the film itself.

Score: 68

Corpse Eaters (1974) – **½

I may be generous in giving so high a rating to Corpse Eaters, but what the hell, it’s Christmas Eve. And even if it weren’t, my expectations for a low-budget zombie film made by non-professionals in Sudbury, Ontario in the early 70s were not only met, but modestly exceeded. Sure, the story doesn’t make much sense and the film wastes large chunks of its brief running time, but there are enough redeeming factors here to merit my clemency.

We begin with an introduction, warning us about the goriness of the film we’re about to see and demonstrating the alert (a viewer recoiling in disgust, accompanied by a buzzer) that will precede the goriest scenes. The story proper begins at a funeral home, where the director is contacted with a rush job straight from the hospital – supposedly the victim of a bear attack. The director convinces the mortician to stick around and prepare the victim, then appears to go for a drive so he can soliloquize in voiceover about his contempt for his customers.

He returns to the home and looks over the mortician’s work, and this leads us into a flashback (not clearly established as such until much later) in which the victim (a young man), his girlfriend, his sister, and his sister’s boyfriend take a motorboat ride to a secluded shore. The ride is depicted at length, as is their interlude on the shore, where the young man and his girlfriend have something like sex; Molson beer is definitely spilled on her bare breasts.

Afterwards, they all go for a swim, then try to figure out what to do with the evening. The boys suggest spending the night in a cemetery, which the sister openly balks at (and to be sure, hanging out in a cemetery sounds more transgressive and exciting than it actually would be), but she’s outvoted, and they drive to a neglected cemetery connected to a ghost town.

At the cemetery, they discover an open mausoleum, and duck inside to escape the rain. They’re soon bored, and the young man suggests drawing a symbol in the dust on the sarcophagus, then reciting a Satanic rhyme to raise the dead. It works, and soon enough the dead attack them, killing the girlfriend (and, as the title promises, eating her) and wounding the young man. They flee to a hospital, where the young man dies on the operating table.

The sister breaks down on hearing of his death and is placed in a recovery room under sedation; she has nightmares of her brother rising from the dead, kissing her incestuously, and her becoming a zombie and attacking her boyfriend and a nurse, killing them both. We then return to the funeral home, where the director sends the mortician home and sits down to do some paperwork – drinking heavily as he does.

He’s awakened by a ringing phone, but no one is there; still drunk, he wanders into the chapel, where it seems as if the young man, and possibly the other decedents in the building, rise and attack him – it’s not entirely clear. We then see the director in a mental hospital, raving and struggling as he’s put in a strait-jacket (with no signs of being attacked), and he’s left in a cell as the film ends.

As we have it today, Corpse Eaters runs 57 minutes; reputedly, the original version was a bit longer, and the missing footage consisted of additional gore trimmed at the censors’ behest. I have to wonder if a plot point or two went missing along the way, or if the film was always meant to end with the open question of whether the undead had actually risen, or if the funeral director had simply gone mad, possibly as punishment for his arrogance.

The answer may well have died with Lawrence Zazelenchuk. Despite some searching, I haven’t been able to find out more about the film or its creator than the same set of facts, laid out here as well as anywhere. In brief, Zazelenchuk was a young man who owned the 69 Drive-In in Sudbury and had previously made several low-budget horror films, including Attack of the Brain Demon (which sadly appears to be lost). In 1973, he decided to make this film and premiere it at his own theater.

He produced, wrote, and did the makeup effects for the film; the script isn’t very good, but the makeup is suitably gruesome – and sufficiently convincing, at least in the low-quality version available. He didn’t direct, leaving that to one Donald R. Passmore and Klaus Vetter, who was also the cinematographer. Vetter is about the only person involved who seems to have had any other experience (he worked on a documentary about the 1976 Olympics), which might explain why the cinematography is actually somewhat effective, with some disquieting closeups and dramatic angles to enhance the mood.

Too bad the pacing undermines it; there are long shots of characters doing very little, or at least very little interesting, and it takes over half the film for the first attack to occur. The final scenes do achieve a nightmarish anti-logic – but that may have simply been a happy accident. The acting, at least, doesn’t hurt the film, and whoever plays the funeral director (the credits don’t say who played who) has a real presence; he’s smarmy and callous, but in a fun way. The music also helps, but it seems to have been “drawn” from other sources; the only one I could identify with Shazam was “Windswept Canyon” by Jean-Michel Jarre.

The original run in Sudbury was a success, but distributor Howard Mahler bought the rights as a tax write-off and never released the film; Zazelenchuk reputedly moved to Florida and drank himself to death, but even the date of his death remains elusive; this bloody little film is his only solid legacy. For that alone, I’m glad to have seen it – but it’s also worth a look for genre buffs.

Score: 58

Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983) – ***½

While A Christmas Story always reigned supreme in our household, we enjoyed the other major American Christmas film of 1983 (before anyone brings up Fanny & Alexander), not least because it gave a rare starring role to Scrooge McDuck, my mom’s favorite Disney character. And yes, we watched a lot of DuckTales when I was a kid. Woo-ooh.

But this year, it’s not only the 40th anniversary of this version of the Carol, it’s my first Christmas after having actually read Dickens’ novella. I’ve seen it dramatized countless times (I’m told it was the first play I was ever taken to), but I opted to finally read it, in the edition annotated by Michael Patrick Hearn – whom I was already familiar with through his writings on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and L. Frank Baum.

I’ll say more about the book in my next Monthly (ha) Gravette, but a point Hearn makes in his introduction stood out to me as I was rewatching this Carol:

Yet Scrooge is not so simple a character as first presented. One quality of his personality which anticipates the possibility of his redemption is his sense of humor.

Hearn, p. 33-34.

Hearn provides considerable additional examples of how Scrooge’s ultimate redemption is supported by the text, how he is not gaining new humanity but rediscovering what he had repressed. But in rewatching this Carol, this point is made from the start with Scrooge’s jokes, bitter though they may be (turning out the charity collectors because redeeming the poor from poverty would put them out of a job) and reinforced by Alan Young’s delightful vocal performance as the cantankerous old duck.

And once the visits from the spirits begin, as Hearn notes, “So little was needed to revive [the Christmas spirit]” (Hearn 36); Scrooge is delighted by the party at Fezzywig’s, devastated at his own rejection of Isabelle, shocked by the poverty of the Cratchits, heartbroken by the prediction of Tiny Tim’s death, and horrified by the prediction of his own lonely burial. His joyous embrace of the holiday upon awaking follows naturally from what the spirits have shown him.

Notably, along the way we get appearances from many other Disney characters (as, apparently, we do in their latest feature, the poorly-received Wish); Mickey is obviously Bob Cratchit, but we’ve got Donald Duck as Scrooge’s nephew Fred, Goofy as Jacob Marley (I would say Donald and Goofy should’ve swapped roles, but giving Marley’s exposition to Donald might’ve been a bad idea), and the three spirits are, respectively, Jiminy Cricket, Willie the Giant, and Pete (who gets some un-Dickensian dialogue).

And those are just the major roles: Mr. Toad, Ratty, Moley, Minnie Mouse, Daisy Duck, Chip and Dale, Lady Kluck, Uncle Waldo, Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow, Badger, and Cyril Proudbottom all appear. Most of them are only onscreen for a moment – and you have to look for some of them – but it’s a welcome touch, and those characters who have more to do have their roles tailored to them, none so much as Scrooge, who was literally born to play the role.

It’s a surefire story, well animated (of course), charming, funny, often moving – the burial of Tiny Tim, the final reprise of the lovely “Oh What a Merry Christmas” – and yet I confess this version has fallen just a hair in my estimation, which may have been inflated by nostalgia.

The biggest problem is that it’s simply too rushed. Fitting the whole story into 25 minutes is doable, but it takes 12 minutes for the first spirit to appear, and the three spirits’ visits are given only 10 minutes total, leaving just over three minutes for Scrooge’s rebirth and the final heartwarming ending. Obviously, the story was going to be simplified and compressed, but a little more time – or a more even distribution of the running time – might’ve made for a truly great Carol.

Nonetheless, it holds its own both as a celebration of Disney and an introduction to the Carol for younger viewers – and for those of us who remember seeing it as children, that final song and that tender final image of Scrooge and the Cratchits will always spark a little holiday spirit in our hearts.

Score: 85

Poor Things (2023) – ****

Just as Scrooge’s Christmas spirit was easily revived, so possessive jealousy is easily awakened in Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), who introduces himself as a sexual libertine and draws Bella Baxter out of her “father’s” loving prison and into the wider world – and especially that of sex. But as her curiosity expands beyond the bedroom, and beyond him, Wedderburn attempts to control her, with ever greater embarrassment to himself. It comes naturally to him, but then the urge to possess Bella – and the pathetic anger which follows when she insists on being her own person – comes naturally to most of the men around her.

And while her father, Dr. Godwin “God” Baxter (Willem Dafoe), challenges the natural order by grafting ducks’ heads onto dogs and dogs’ heads onto chickens, his efforts to control Bella as he would any other experiment are no match for her own nature; the desire to learn and grow triumphs over the desire to protect, which is awfully close to the desire to possess – especially for the subject of such protection. In such a situation, all concerned are poor things, but which more than the other?

I knew a second viewing would help me appreciate Poor Things better, and if I still rank it below Yorgos Lanthimos’ other three English-language films to date, that’s ranking it below three of the best films of the past decade. It’s a damn fine film in its own right, and a second viewing doesn’t just help one appreciate the wealth of visual detail, it helps one appreciate the nuances of the performances and the story.

I feared, based on the trailers, that the film’s stylized visual scheme – a kind of candy-colored steampunk aesthetic – would grow tiresome, but the funhouse-mirror reflection of fin de siècle Europe is in keeping with Lanthimos’ treatment of human nature throughout his filmography. From the distorted language of the sheltered children in Dogtooth, to the warped notions of romance in The Lobster, to the twisted morality of The Killing of a Sacred Deer, to the travesty of English history in The Favourite, Lanthimos has consistently depicted the world through his darkly deadpan sensibility.

Here, in collaboration with writer Tony McNamara, who adapted the novel by Alasdair Gray, he presents the quirks of human nature and society through the prism of Bella’s personal development. Once a pregnant woman who took her own life, Dr. Baxter transplanted the brain of Bella’s unborn child into her head, and as she learns anew how to be, how to behave, and how to speak, she challenges social norms, develops a voracious sexuality, and concurrently develops an equally voracious curiosity about the world – which, with a total lack of guile, she dreams of improving.

One of the glories of Poor Things is that it takes a premise which could have been the basis of the crassest farce – an adult with the literal mind of a child – and plays it for laughs without cheapening the humanity of the characters. We feel for Bella as she struggles with Wedderburn’s boorish behavior, we sympathize with her as she longs to cure the ills of the world with good intentions, and we laugh at and with her when she says “I must go punch that baby.”

In the early scenes, Stone plays the gleeful impulsivity of early childhood with a total lack of self-consciousness; in the middle of the film, she delivers the challenging dialogue – Bella often rattles off synonyms for the subjects of her sentences – as naturally as you could please; in the final act, as Bella solves the final mysteries of her own past and sets her desired future in motion, she builds perfectly on what we’ve seen thus far. It’s a very tough year for Best Actress, and I’m not sure if she’ll be my winner or not, but she does a tremendous job,

And she’s surrounded by greatness, with Dafoe beautifully balancing the comic grotesquerie and poignant humanity of Dr. Baxter (who was victimized by his own father for his experiments), Ruffalo relishing Wedderburn’s louche hypocrisy with every twitch of his moustache, Ramy Youssef balancing Stone and Dafoe’s eccentricities with unassuming charm as the mild-mannered Max McCandles, Kathryn Hunter stealing her scenes as the gravelly-voiced (and prodigiously tattooed) Parisian madam, Christopher Abbott showing up late in the game as a smug sociopath, and Hannah Schygulla providing a disarming little turn as one of Bella’s early mentors.

The technical side of things is no less impressive, with the wondrous sets – Dr. Baxter’s house, the streets of Lisbon, the cruise ship, the Parisian brothel – and the Gay Nineties-on-acid costuming, along with the fantastic makeup and Robbie Ryan’s superb cinematography (on second viewing I appreciated the use of fish-eye lenses far more) making for Lanthimos’ most visually ravishing film to date. Jerskin Fendrix’s whimsically twisted score makes it a delight to listen to as well.

I still have a few quibbles about the film – Jerrod Carmichael is slightly miscast, Margaret Qualley is underused, and the Alexandria slum sequence doesn’t quite land – but those are quibbles in a film which is not only hilarious (“furious jumping”) and insightful, but at its core warmly human and tenderly humane in its own way. Bella truly wants to make the world a better place, even after learning how cruel and ugly it can be, and the film leaves us optimistic about her chances. Given the decidedly uncomfortable endings to Lanthimos’ previous films, it’s a welcome sentiment to leave with.

Score: 93

The Iron Claw (2023) – ***½

Biopics where the participants – or at least some of them – are alive and well tend to have a certain set of problems. Some, like Straight Outta Compton and Bohemian Rhapsody, portray those still living as less dimensional and more positive than those who are dead; Eazy-E and Freddie Mercury are given more facets – and more flaws – than their colleagues, and it strikes a sour note because they’re not around to defend themselves. Others tend to smooth over the roughest edges of the story, as if not wanting to alienate the living by telling the whole truth, whether or not nothing but the truth remains.

That’s kind of the issue with The Iron Claw, a very good film that does a great deal right, yet struggles to come near true greatness, and a big part of why might be explained by writer-director Sean Durkin, who omitted Chris von Erich entirely from the story, saying in the Los Angeles Times “There was a repetition to it, and it was one more tragedy that the film couldn’t really withstand…I honestly don’t know if it would have gotten made.”

That last part is telling and reflects the film’s own struggle to be both an arthouse drama about a harrowing true story (an A24 film, in other words) and a mainstream biopic that could appeal to pro wrestling fans – even though they’d be familiar with a whole host of tragedies quite outside this film’s scope. But then, Durkin’s previous film The Nest had some of the same issues this one does; it was very well acted and solidly directed, yet something about it fell short.

Call it the Aronofsky Problem. I’ve struggled to embrace his films because there’s a certain detachment to them, even when they deal with visceral subject matter, that keeps me from feeling truly invested in them. So it is with The Iron Claw, which makes a point of keeping much of the horror off-screen – of the three major deaths in the story, two aren’t shown at all and we hear the third but don’t see it. It’s a choice, but one I think works against the film.

There are times when the restrained approach works, especially in Maura Tierney’s performance as Doris von Erich, who has long repressed her emotions and struggles to do so as her sons die and her husband continues to push them towards pro-wrestling glory. And as that husband, Fritz von Erich, Holt McCallany only plays up the anger and resentment in the ring, showing the pressure he puts on his sons, and his refusal to compromise his ambition for their sake, in a subtler, more natural fashion.

The other performances generally follow this pattern. Zac Efron is essentially the lead as Kevin von Erich (the only surviving brother), and his performance, outside of the ring, is that of an earnest man whose sincere love for his family, combined with the tragedies they face, leaves him so terrified of passing on the “von Erich” curse that he fears even to hold his own children. He overcomes this, but the tearful final scene shows how much pain and heartbreak he still carries.

As his tragic brothers, Harris Dickinson (as David) shows the natural charisma that put him ahead of Kevin in their father’s estimation, Jeremy Allen White (as Kerry) shows in his sad eyes all the pain he struggles to express in any healthy way, and Stanley Simons (as Mike) shows the unassuming nature of the brother who wasn’t really interested in wrestling and was physically devastated by an accident that left him unable to wrestle or to play the music he loved.

Arguably, Simons is best served by the film’s approach, as we get just enough to understand who he was before he was drawn into the family business, then enough to understand why his life fell to pieces. Dickinson and White are both quite good as well, but the film’s ellipses cut into their arcs; all three of these brothers married, and two of them had children, but their spouses and children aren’t even mentioned in Durkin’s script.

But we get plenty of Kevin’s family, and Lily James offers a solid turn as his wife Pam, who strives to be supportive but cannot indulge his fears of the family curse. I realize there’s only so much a feature film can fit in, but at 132 minutes, the film feels just long enough to make you wonder if it isn’t spending the time wisely – if Durkin shouldn’t have tightened it up more, to make the series of tragedies hit even harder because there’s less in between them to soften the blow.

Scene by scene, it’s not only well acted and well shot by Mátyás Erdély, but it’s thoughtfully directed by Durkin and evokes the atmosphere of pro wrestling in the 80s and of the Dallas Sportatorium, where the ambitious Fritz and his partners had to work to bring in top talent like Ric Flair (Aaron Dean Eisenberg), whose preening egotism is a stark contrast to the von Erichs. The production design, costume design, vintage TV graphics, and above all the kayfabe choreography all feel just right.

But then we come back to the family tragedy and the film’s attempts to introduce elements of the supernatural. They’re too sporadic to really land, and a climactic scene which on paper is absolutely devastating feels in practice like a self-conscious gimmick, well-meant but not really in keeping with the rest of the film. Perhaps that’s what comes from trying to tell a true story but not wanting to grapple with the full weight of it – it comes close, very close at times, yet falls just short of a KO.

Score: 82

The Color Purple (2023) – **½

I had been warned about The Color Purple by trusted friends – and when I say “trusted friends,” I mean people I expected to love this film if it was any good. I had some reason to believe it was good; despite much skepticism over the film’s late release, its underperformance at the Globes and its absence from the NBR and AFI lists, and the lack of reviews until December 19, when the reviews came, they were quite favorable.

Now, I’ll admit of a few caveats when it comes to reviewing this Color Purple. I haven’t read the book, I haven’t seen the 1985 film (I meant to see it before seeing this but didn’t get around to it), and I haven’t seen or heard the stage show this is adapted from. I knew enough of the story to know what would happen, but I’d never seen the story of Celie, Nettie, Sofia, Shug, and Mister play out in full before.

The opening number (after a smaller duet between young Celie and Nettie) let me know what I was in for. “Mysterious Ways” is a big, rousing number in which the girls and their “Pa” (Deon Cole) go to church, throughout which the townsfolk dance up a storm and Rev. Avery (David Alan Grier) hypes them up by repeating how “the Lord works in mysterious ways.” I knew then why the film wasn’t going to work for me.

First, there are the songs. mostly by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray. There are plenty of them throughout the film, ranging from big ensemble numbers like this to ballads like “I’m Here” to bawdy blues numbers like “Push Da Button” to tender duets like “What About Love?” There’s also “Miss Celie’s Blues,” added from the 1985 film, and two new songs, “Keep It Movin” and “Superpower (I),” both shortlisted for the Oscars.

And I don’t much care for any of them. I guess “Push Da Button” is all right, but the rest blur together for me; they’re slick, generic, interchangeable, and most do little to actually tell the story or develop the characters. “Mysterious Ways” doesn’t do much to establish the story or the setting; it’s just the characters going to church. The book begins with the ominous line “You better not tell nobody but God,” Pa’s threat to Celie regarding his abuse, and while Celie is visibly pregnant (by Pa) during this sequence, the spirited tone is at odds with the story, and in the wrong way.

There are other issues – the choreography is so over-the-top it borders on parody, and here as in the other ensemble numbers there’s no sense that the chorus is composed of characters; they’re just there to enter, sing, dance, and exit – but we might as well move on. There’s a lot of story to cover, and this Purple does it in 140 minutes, or 15 minutes less than the 1985 film, and when you factor in all the songs, it leaves troublingly little room for the story (spanning almost 40 years) and the characters.

Moreover, it leaves little room for nuance, and that’s a problem when your main character spends much of the story quietly enduring; this Celie (played as an adult by Fantasia Barrino) just isn’t a very compelling character, and one is rather more interested in her dynamic, self-possessed friends Sofia (Danielle Brooks) and Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson) and her cruel, hot-tempered husband “Mister” (Colman Domingo). When happiness finally comes for Celie, it’s more because of the kindness of her friends than by her own doing – and when she finally stands up to “Mister,” it feels false, because we’ve seen too little of that fire in her before.

Sofia isn’t very well served either; she’s enjoyably rambunctious early on, but the scene where she strikes the white mayor and is arrested is quite badly staged, and the key dinner sequence where Celie is freed from “Mister’s” grasp and Sofia is freed from her spiritual torpor falls flat because everything that leads up to it has been so rushed. Brooks is good (she was nominated for a Globe, and may be nominated for other awards), but the material undermines her.

Shug has a less dramatic arc, and Henson has the room to play her free-spirited sensuousness for all it’s worth, stealing her every scene even if the film really botches the lesbian relationship between Celie and Shug, following their rather lovely duet, staged like an Astaire-Rogers number, with kiss obscured by the light of a cinema projector. Given that the 1985 film was criticized for downplaying this plot thread, it’s really disheartening to see this version do the same.

Barrino was also nominated for a Globe, and she too may garner additional nominations, but while she has her affecting moments, she can’t overcome the whittled-down script (which feels like it was barely fleshed out for the screen), or the forgettable songs; I’ll admit to not really caring for her singing voice either, but that’s just me. The rest of the cast is a mix of decent (Corey Hawkins’ Harpo, Halle Bailey’s young Nettie) and underused; H.E.R., as “Squeak,” (aka Mary Agnes) according to the soundtrack takes part in exactly one ensemble number.

I have other quibbles (visualizing Nettie’s experiences in Africa makes one wonder why the film isn’t about her), but ultimately, I think the film’s problems lie with director Blitz Bazawule and screenwriter Marcus Gardley; the splashy numbers and the profoundly dramatic story too often feel at odds, and that story is told in such an abbreviated fashion that it doesn’t really work. Whether or not those issues plagued the stage version, it was their responsibility to make it work on the screen – and for my money, it doesn’t.

Score: 63

Ferrari (2023) – ***½

As with Aronofsky, I have something of a Michael Mann problem. I haven’t seen everything he’s done – and some of what I have seen I haven’t seen in years – but in general I think of him as being like Scorsese without the same sense of humor or the same depth of humanity. His films aren’t bad, but they tend to leave me a bit cold. And his biopics – this, Public Enemies, and Ali especially – struggle to find the cinematic narrative in the history they depict, and as a result feel somewhat baggy and meandering, even as the individual scenes are well done.

Ferrari has the advantage of a tight timeframe; at most it covers a few months in 1957, as Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) struggles with his company’s limited finances, prepares his drivers (he’s more interested in racing cars than selling them) for the Mille Miglia race, and deals with his crumbling marriage to Laura (Penélope Cruz), who’s still his business partner, as behind her back her maintains a home with his mistress Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley) and their son Piero (Giuseppe Festinese).

That’s a lot of professional and personal drama for one film to handle, and it can feel a bit like Being the Ricardos with racecars. That film, to its credit, did better by its supporting cast; here, outside of the Ferraris and Lina, the characters tend to be glorified extras. That includes Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone), his lover Linda Christian (Sarah Gadon), fellow racers Peter Collins (Jack O’Connell) and Piero Taruffi (Patrick Dempsey), and Ferrari’s various partners and rivals.

Even Lina tends to feel like an afterthought, but solid an actress though Woodley is, it would be hard for anyone not to be overshadowed by Driver and Cruz, and the script is similarly more interested in the volatile dynamic of Enzo and Laura than in the relative peace he enjoys with Lina.

Driver was a very strange choice to play Enzo; he’s 40 (and a boyish 40 at that) while Enzo was 59 at the time, and while he’s thicker around the middle and his hair is admirably grayed, the effect is far from seamless. And yet, even with a rather obvious accent, he does a respectable job, dishing out orders to his team with snarky command, negotiating his moments with the justifiably aggrieved Laura, showing some tenderness in his time with Lina and Piero, and when visiting the grave of his late son Dino, allowing himself a moment of heartbreak before briskly composing himself to go.

Cruz is even better as Laura (there’s a possibility she’ll get some awards attention; it would be merited), showing the devastation she feels, not only at Dino’s death but at her being diminished by her husband and mother-in-law (Daniela Piperno) in its wake. But she also shows the ruthless businesswoman who knows how to manage the company, the press, and the ostensible man in charge, and throughout she displays a dark sense of humor (“I told him to go fuck himself, then I took the phone off the hook”); she really is the heart of the film.

As noted, Woodley is decent, and Dempsey, while nearly unrecognizable under his own silvered head of hair, continues his character-actor era in solid fashion. But that’s about it – Gadon, an actress I’m fond of and haven’t seen much of in recent years, is incredibly wasted in a role which gives her a handful of inconsequential lines and a lot of brief silent scenes. One can only imagine what she might have brought to the role of Lina, which could have used a bit of her glamorous intensity.

The racing scenes are, of course, among of the film’s highlights, with excellent sound mixing and effects (ironically, the sound in at least one domestic scene was rather poor) and Erik Messerschmidt’s fine cinematography, which employs sweeping overhead shots, dolly zooms, and close-ups for punctuation – especially in one devastating moment which I hadn’t seen coming. Pietro Scalia’s editing likewise shines here, even if the rest of the film could’ve used some sharpening, though the issue there also lies with Troy Kennedy Martin’s script, even though it was apparently revised after his death in 2009.

They’re not necessarily better than the racing scenes in Ford v. Ferrari (a better film) and Grand Prix (not necessarily better but made without the help of computers), but they’re very well done indeed. So is the scene partway through where the principal characters attend/overhear an opera (La Traviata), and are drawn into memories of lost happiness, lost loved ones, and so forth. It doesn’t necessarily enhance the rest of the film, because again, Mann is better at cool detachment than emotional depth, but it’s a welcome sequence.

And that really sums up the film, which isn’t great, and isn’t the best of its kind, but it’s solidly made, solidly acted (and in one case, damn well acted) and has enough moments of technical and stylistic virtuosity and just enough darkness to cut through the biopic tropes to make it worth seeing – especially in a theater, where the racing scenes can be properly appreciated.

Score: 81

With this, I’ve seen all 10 films on the NBR list, and at present I’d rank them thus:

1. Killers of the Flower Moon
2. Poor Things
3. Oppenheimer
4. The Boy and the Heron
5. Past Lives
6. Barbie
7. The Holdovers
8. The Iron Claw
9. Ferrari
10. Maestro

There’s a drop after the top 5 (all of which are in my top 7), and a big drop from Ferrari to Maestro. But it could be worse.