Blog Archives - Ian Thomas Malone

Friday

14

February 2025

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COMMENTS

‘Captain America: Brave New World’ review: a disappointing paint by numbers slog

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

The announcement of Robert Downey Jr.’s return to the MCU for Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars last July was a not-so-subtle admission of the mess that stands before the most powerful franchise in cinema. It doesn’t take a genius on the level of Tony Stark to figure out what went wrong. It’s easy to point the finger at the multiverse, or the departures of the MCU’s original core, but Marvel possesses one of the deepest benches in popular culture, as well as the bank account to hire anyone they want.

The simple reality is that the stories have been bad. Plenty of the films have spent too much time looking at the past to bring anything new to the table. Others try to compensate for a lack of innovation by introducing new characters, without having the space to give them anything interesting to do. Captain America: Brave New World delivers on the promise first established at the end of Endgame. After a rather unnecessary six-episode build-up in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) finally gets his turn with the shield. Unfortunately, his film doesn’t have anything to say.

Brave New World barely acknowledges the events of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Aside from the inclusion of Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) and Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), viewers would miss absolutely nothing if they skipped the Disney+ series. The 35th feature film in the MCU instead possesses a bizarre infatuation with the second film in the franchise, 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. When William Hurt originally reprised the role of Thaddeus Ross for Captain America: Civil War eight years after his debut in The Incredible Hulk, he remarked that he felt it was a completely new iteration of the character. Now, eight years after Civil War, and with Harrison Ford taking over for the late Hurt, Brave New World wants to hone in on intense specifics from his first appearance sixteen years ago.

The plot of Brave New World is fairly boilerplate. Captain America and his team are dispatched to stop the illegal sale of adamantium (the metal in Wolverine’s body, not to be confused with vibranium, found in Wakanda) procured from the Celestial that popped up in the middle of the Indian Ocean back in 2021’s little-loved Eternals. After a brief skirmish with associates of the Serpent Society leader Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito), Sam and Joaquin are invited to the White House by Thaddeus Ross, now the President. At Sam’s insistence, Isaiah is also brought along as a way to make amends for the U.S. government’s detention of him for thirty years, experimenting on him in a fashion that evokes the Tuskegee Airman.

Isaiah and several others are brainwashed into an assassination attempt on Ross, who is trying to put together a coalition to stop the arms race over the adamantium. Sam spends most of the film trying to prove Isaiah’s innocence, even though American intelligence is presumably aware of the existence of super-powered villains capable of mind control. The lack of motive for why an old man and several other random assailants would want to kill the president is only superficially addressed.

Mackie is a very confident leading man. Sam’s rapport with Joaquin and Isaiah is a little forced, evoking nodes of Wilson’s brotherly banter with Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan, relegated to a cameo after major supporting roles in every other Captain America), but Mackie does a remarkable job filling the void left behind by Steve Rogers. Unfortunately, despite having five credited screenwriters, no one seems interested in giving this Captain America a story that lives up to the first three, too often cribbing off the themes from The Winter Soldier, often regarded as among the best of the MCU.

Brave New World is never as incoherent as other post-Endgame releases such as Thor: Love and Thunder, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Quantumania, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, or The Marvels. It’s also just not a fundamentally compelling film. Director Julius Onah crafts a few solid action sequences, but Sam shows off his best choreography in the first fifteen minutes. The rest of the narrative is a lot of build-up with no real payoff.

Despite a budget of close to 200 million, the MCU has rarely felt smaller than Brave New World, which often feels like an episode of The West Wing without any of the quippy writing or coherent plot progression. The special effects look ugly. A confrontation between the American and Japanese navies lacks any stakes, coming across as decidedly cheap. The MCU once found a way to weave dozens of character’s storylines into a single film. Now we have to watch Thaddeus Ross whine about his daughter Betty (Liv Tyler), who won’t see him because of the events of a film from 2008 that many in the audience are bound to have forgotten about.

Part of the issue is that Brave New World seems to settle on a villain-by-committee strategy. Esposito, a highly skilled practitioner of the art of the bad guy, is given practically nothing to do. The film instead looks to The Incredible Hulk’s Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) to be the puppet master pulling the strings. Like Esposito, Nelson shows up ready to play. He’s just not given much to work with. Ross’ long-awaited transformation into Red Hulk is quite pathetic. Ford looks lethargic throughout the entire film, understandably bored out of his mind.

Captain America: Brave New World is far from the worst MCU release of the post-Endgame era. It’s also not a very good movie. The film doesn’t have much of a natural flow, possibly the result of extensive reshoots, or possibly just its over-reliance on a film that came out sixteen years ago, before Disney even owned Marvel. The Incredible Hulk has aged well in a way, perhaps owing to the fact that it didn’t have many obligations to the broader continuity in the then-nascent MCU. For a film that was ostensibly given the runway to do its own thing, Brave New World has no idea what it wants to be.

Friday

31

January 2025

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COMMENTS

‘Emilia Perez’ review: trans people may consider detransition after sitting through this abomination

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

There is a certain obligation that many pieces of transgender media feel to explain the trans identity to a wider audience. We’re more than a decade removed from having trans characters in film and television that are more than just dead bodies for the likes of Law & Order: SVU or CSI, yet plenty of cisgender people know very little about our community. For trans artists and those seeking to include trans people in their own stories, the inherent need to hold the audience’s hand playing ‘trans 101’ can be extremely frustrating.

The film Emilia Perez spends very little of its time diving into the identity of its eponymous trans character (Karla Sofía Gascón), a Mexican cartel kingpin who enlists Rita (Zoe Saldana), an attorney, to help her undergo a steal gender transition. Emilia, previously known as Manitas, transitions in stealth under the dead of night in Thailand, a highly unrealistic proposition fundamentally rooted in decades-old preconceptions of trans people. After having every procedure under the sun in one fell swoop, Emilia misses her family, having shipped off her wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and kids to Switzerland to avoid retribution from rival gangs.

Inexplicably, she sends for them to join her at her Mexican estate, posing as her former identity’s aunt to a family who has precisely zero idea that their new benefactor is actually their father/husband. Director Jacques Audiard seems to operate under the utterly clownish impression that trans people shed our entire prior identities, fully integrating into the cis way of life after a weekend in Bangkok. Emilia Perez contains what is very likely the worst song ever written about gender dysphoria, guaranteed to make any trans person regret the life decisions that might cause people to associate themselves with this trainwreck.

It’s unclear why Emilia Perez is a musical. The songs are all terrible and add nothing to the experience beyond padding an excruciating 132-minute runtime. Audiard doesn’t know how to film musical numbers either. Somehow, against all odds, Gomez, a professional singer, sounds just as terrible as Saldana and Gascón, not that anyone could put lipstick on the lyrics that somehow made it into a professional film.

Saldana and Gascón’s chemistry provides some intrigue to the film’s anemic second half, which takes a four-year jump after Emilia’s gender confirmation procedures. Rita is more of the lead than Emilia, but Saldana doesn’t have much to work with for her character. Rita is unfulfilled at her job and upset at being a bachelorette in her forties. The fact that she supposedly became immensely rich after arranging Emilia’s surgeries is cast aside, for whatever reason.

Audiard’s gross incompetence squanders a brilliant premise. Trans people rarely get to play fun roles like drug kingpins. Emilia’s transformation from cartel overlord to nonprofit benefactor is poorly explained and inconsistent. Most trans people will tell you that gender-affirming care does not lead to a complete 180 in character and personality. If Audiard knows a single trans person other than Gascón, it doesn’t come across in his superficial narrative that cares little about its subject beyond her medical procedures. Judging solely by his film full of racist stereotypes, it’s unclear whether Audiard, a French native, knows any actual Mexican people either.

Cis people might be fooled by some of Audiard’s attempts at compelling drama. One of Emilia’s children notes that she smells like their father once did, aside from her off-putting perfume, another trans stereotype. A change in body odor is one of the most immediate effects of hormone replacement therapy. Somehow, this child, who never indicates that he sees a physical resemblance between Emilia and his father, picks up on what would be an unlikely medical anomaly, unless we’re to believe that Emilia keeps using the same deodorant.

Audiard’s pathetic depiction of trans issues belies Emilia Perez’s more glaring issues. This is a profoundly bad movie. The music is awful. The screenplay never dives deeper than its superficial surface. Trans people might be embarrassed that this film was made, but cis people won’t have a very good time either.

Wednesday

29

January 2025

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‘The Brutalist’ review: Adrien Brody carries an uneven odyssey

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews

One of the great beauties of the artistic process is the way that the act of creation can help you drown out everything else going wrong with your life. The reconnection with one’s craft can bring the soul back from oblivion, or it can doom an obsessive heart inside a prison of its own making. The film The Brutalist takes its audience on an odyssey through one man’s grief and his efforts to hold on to what’s left of his humanity.

László Tóth (Adrien Brody) is a Hungarian-Jewish architect who arrives to America in 1947 after surviving the Buchenwald concentration camp. Separated from his wife Ezrsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), László finds work at his cousin’s furniture shop. An expensive commission by a wealthy businessman Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn) for his father Harrison (Guy Pearce) gives László a chance to put his Bauhaus education to work in a suitable setting. Harrison’s angry reaction to his son’s surprise renovations causes strife between László and his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who has already angered László with his assimilation into American culture and conversion to Roman Catholicism.

Harrison seeks out László a few years later, now working menial labor, to make amends and to hire him to design a community center that he intends to construct as a tribute to his late mother. Harrison also pulls strings to have Ezrsébet and Zsófia approved for immigration. László quickly butts heads with Harrison’s team, bristling at any suggested changes and repeatedly clashing with Harry, who resents the Tóth’s presence in his life.

Director Brady Corbet’s most impressive feat is how he makes 215 minutes fly by. The Brutalist is exhausting, but never boring, wasting little of its mammoth runtime. Lol Crawley always keeps things interesting with his fantastic, dreamy cinematography. Even in well-trodden territory, Corbet manages to carve out a fresh perspective on the horrors of that era.

Brody completely loses himself in his lead role. László is a proud man with great depth. Brody captures the essence of a soul that spent too far much time in survival mode, totally immersed by his rare second chance to redefine his own legacy, even at the expense of everything he thought he held dear. Few people who lose everything get a chance to taste the peak of the mountain once again.

The film does fall short in a few crucial aspects. Corbet doesn’t really know what to do with Jones, who doesn’t make an appearance until part two, after a lengthy built-in intermission. Ezrsébet is very charming, befriending everyone in her husband’s extended orbit. There’s tension between the two as a result of Ezrsébet’s decision to hide her health problems from her husband, now confined to a wheelchair from osteoporosis brought on by malnutrition from years of living in famine. The introverted László can wax poetic about the beauty of architecture, lacking that same chemistry with his own wife.

Corbet has such tunnel vision for László that he undersells the rest of the cast. Despite his best efforts, Pearce fails to elevate Harrison into much more than a cartoon villain. We see snippets of his jealousy toward László, who possesses the artistic talent he desperately craves, but his scenes are one-note and repetitive. The depiction of the architectural process leaves a bit to be desired. We see László’s vivid descriptions of his passion for his work, but we rarely see the application of his craft. There’s too much telling and not enough showing.

The shortcomings of Corbet’s storytelling abilities are best apparent through an epilogue tasked with significant heavy lifting for a narrative that had three and a half hours to set up its third act. The Brutalist is a deeply frustrating piece of art. Like its protagonist, you can see the meticulous effort that went into every frame. You can also see the tunnel vision of a mind that may have benefited from additional voices in the room.

Corbet’s vision grapples with Emerson’s timeless saying, it’s not the destination, it’s the journey. A person like László, whose life was filled with unthinkable horrors, might understandably be fixed on the destination as a way to triumph after years of hardship. As for the audience enduring the odyssey that is this film, there’s no question that the journey matters more than the rather underwhelming destination.

Monday

27

January 2025

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‘Sing Sing’ review: Colman Domingo is a tour de force in this quietly gem

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

As America sinks deeper into a fascist theocracy, it’s worth frequently pointing out how little our government seems to care about anything that can be found in the Bible. From Hebrews 13:3 to Matthew 25:39-40, the Good Book is pretty clear regarding how we should treat our incarcerated. Prisons are supposed to be about rehabilitation, not the contemporary idea of using the criminal justice system to exploit the labor class.

The film Sing Sing is based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program at the eponymous correctional facility in upstate New York. The RTA is a non-profit that stages theatrical productions for inmates across ten facilities. Many former RTA alumni make up the cast of the film, playing fictionalized versions of themselves.

The narrative follows the production of a light-hearted time-traveling comedy. Divine G (Colman Domingo) recruits new member Divine Eye (Clarence Maclin, playing himself), who initially dismisses the therapeutic value of the troupe. Divine G, incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit, struggles under the weight of his upcoming clemency hearing, as well as his desire to use the stage to work through his own demons.

Director Greg Kwedar uses a soft touch for much of the film’s 105-minute runtime. The plot is warm and uplifting, allowing the cast to shine through their fantastic chemistry with each other. Few films manage to make their audiences feel like they’re in the room with the performers, an inviting sense of flow to the narrative.

Domingo puts forth what might be the strongest performance of his career. The pain never quite leaves Divine G’s face, even as he spends the bulk of the film trying his best to help others. At one point early on, Divine G notes to Divine Eye that the RTA is all these people have, a reality of the bleak nature of incarcerated life, but there’s such a richness to their sense of community. Amidst all the darkness of life behind bars, the innate human need for connection shines through.

Prison films are not exactly known for their uplifting nature, which is perhaps Sing Sing’s crowning achievement. Our society fails the incarcerated at every level. While our government turns its back on its imprisoned except in times of exploitation, these men never gave up on each other. There is always light, even in the darkest hour. Anyone questioning the sheer power of the arts should look no further than this quietly powerful gem of a film.

Wednesday

15

January 2025

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COMMENTS

‘Sonic the Hedgehog 3’ review: a little overstuffed but easily the best installment in the franchise

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has become quite the anomaly in the entertainment realm. Amidst a landscape where television shows take years in between seasons and many major films take half a decade to get off the ground, Sonic has consistently put out a new installment every two years. Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that, against all odds, the films somehow manage to get better each time.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 continues the modern trend of major franchises prioritizing the introduction of new characters over established stalwarts. Shadow the Hedgehog (Keanu Reeves) is a beloved figure in Sonic lore, making his debut in Sonic Adventure 2, the swan song for the Dreamcast, Sega’s final piece of hardware. The Dreamcast’s entire original demographic is old enough to have kids of their own, a reality never lost on the filmmakers.

The plot is fairly cookie-cutter, if not a little overly complicated. Shadow wakes up from fifty years in suspended hibernation to seek revenge on the Guardian Units of Nations (G.U.N.) that put him there. Team Sonic, now composed of the titular hedgehog (Ben Schwartz), Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey), and Knuckles (Idris Elba) are summoned by G.U.N. Director Rockwell (Krysten Ritter) to stop Shadow from wreaking havoc on one of their facilities. Shadow quickly overpowers all three, while a surprise attack casts suspicion on G.U.N. as an organization, causing Team Sonic to form an uneasy alliance with arch-nemesis Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey).

While the narrative often throws a little too much chaos energy into the mix, director Jeff Fowler does an excellent job juggling the film’s many moving pieces. 3 corrects many of the mistakes of the second film, particularly its over-emphasis on the human characters. James Marsden and Tika Sumpter largely take a backseat role, while Jim Carrey performs double duty as the Eggman and his grandfather Dr. Gerald Robotnik, the head of Project Shadow who spent the last fifty years imprisoned. Carrey’s character work is particularly powerful, elevating the script above its mostly juvenile ambitions.

Reeves brings ample emotional depth to Shadow, without much of the forced humor that was dumped on Knuckles in the last film. Fowler takes his time building up the newcomer over the course of the 110-minute runtime. That does come at the expense of the titular hero, who largely plays second-fiddle to Shadow and the Robotniks. There’s an interesting subplot concerning teamwork within Team Sonic that doesn’t receive as much attention as it deserved. Tails and Knuckles aren’t given enough to do, perhaps to be expected with the amount of principal characters.

The script shows some legitimate improvements over the last two. There are a few pop culture references too many, but plenty of the jokes land. The filmmakers are clearly aware of how many adults are in the audience. There’s a lot of humor that no child would possibly understand, and a few fun references to Sonic lore.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is not exactly great art, but Fowler deserves a lot of credit for competent blockbuster filmmaking. 3 is a major improvement over the first two. The franchise juggles the space between mainstream appeal and children’s fare quite well, even if it’s a little too preoccupied with low-hanging fruit. Beyond that, consistency is something sorely lacking across the modern entertainment sphere. Sonic may not fully capture the Sega zeitgeist, but it’s certainly an enjoyable time at the theater.

Monday

13

January 2025

0

COMMENTS

‘Small Things Like These’ review: Murphy shines in a subtly unsettling drama

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

History is full of horrifying events that beg the simple question, how did anyone let this happen? Storytelling helps unpack the complexities. Heinous injustice doesn’t merely operate in the shadows, but often in plain sight. Plenty of communities would rather sweep things under the rug than dare to disrupt the status quo.

The film Small Things Like These centers its narrative around the Magdalene Laundries that operated in Ireland for most of the 20^th century. The Magdalene Laundries functioned as asylums for unwed pregnant women, where women were forced to work as indentured servants under inhuman conditions. The Laundries were highly secretive, preying on vulnerable populations to meet their labor demands.

Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) is a hardworking coal merchant working in the small town of New Ross in the 1980s, raising five daughters with his wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh). While delivering coal to the local convent, Bill finds a young pregnant girl Sarah (Zara Devlin) who was locked in a shed overnight in the freezing cold. Bill’s effort to get to the bottom of why a young girl would be kept outside to freeze offered no reassurances, as Sister Mary (Emily Watson), Mother superior of the convent, resorts to bribery in the obvious cover-up.

Director Tim Mielants opts for a no-frills approach to his carefully constructed slow burn. Bill doesn’t say much, but Murphy speaks volumes with every facial expression. Occasional flashbacks to Bill’s childhood poverty provide the closest thing the film has to character development. For a man who spent his life trying to reveal as little as possible about himself to his community, Murphy paints an entire portrait of Bill through his eyes alone across the 98-minute runtime.

Enda Murphy’s screenplay possesses ample room for silence, following the lead of Claire Keegan’s sparse novella of the same name that provided the source material. In cases of abuse, it’s often what people don’t say that really matters. The panopticon of Sister Mary’s empire leaves little space for the voice of a single dissenter.

Mielants’ work cares little for the theatrics of filmmaking, giving great dignity to the horrors he depicts through his refusal to bend toward sensationalism. The only entertainment value to be found in Small Things Like These comes from the masterclass in subtlety that Murphy puts on for the duration of the narrative. It’s not an easy watch, but there’s ample grace to be found in the way he earnestly presents his material.

One of humanity’s great tests is the way we respond to injustice that doesn’t directly affect ourselves. Looking the other way is easy, especially when the oppressor has a tantalizing reward for those willing to play by their rules. Doing the right thing rarely pays off in the same way. Small Things Like These is a powerful reminder of the quiet evil all around us.

Thursday

19

December 2024

0

COMMENTS

Queer captures Burroughs’ essence, alongside all of his shortcomings

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews

Much like his novels, William S. Burroughs is difficult to unpack. The elder statesman of the Beat Generation, Burroughs cemented his legacy with his 1959 novel Naked Lunch, one of the last American books to face a censorship trial. Unlike his contemporary and friend Allen Ginsburg, who also had the merits of his work debated in court, Burroughs remains a divisive figure in the literary canon, his eloquent prose and innovations frequently undercut by his meandering plotting and excessive repetition. The legend of Burroughs is as much the product of his outsized public persona and the high esteem from figures such as Ginsburg and Kerouac as his actual bibliography.

The novel Queer sat untouched for more than twenty years after it was originally written alongside Naked Lunch and Junkie, the two most noteworthy works of Burroughs’ career. A combination of Kerouac and Burroughs’ own literary agent helped the novel see the light of day. Believed to have been originally written as a companion piece to Junkie, the novel struggles to stand on its own two feet without a healthy understanding of the eccentric writer’s broader ethos, a challenge that director Luca Guadagnino struggled with mightily throughout his film adaption of the book.

The film Queer follows Burroughs’ avatar William Lee (Daniel Craig) as he bums around in Mexico City, spending his days drinking and admiring young men passing through the area. Lee quickly falls for a mostly-closeted GI named Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), who gradually falls for his repeated attempts at seduction. The two drink, hook up, and eventually search for drugs, as the typical Burroughs plot usually goes.

Guadagnino brings his typical stylistic A-game. The sets are gorgeous, if not a little sterile for the likes of Burroughs. Craig disappears into the role, putting forth a valiant effort to give the work some semblance of a soul. Craig understands the oversized sense of stature that Burroughs brought to the world, even if he can’t quite replicate it.

Burroughs was not much for resolution. His novels defied all semblance of literary form, a reality that complicates all attempted adaptations of his work. Films generally benefit from some sort of structure.

Guadagnino delivers an adaptation that captures the essence of Burroughs’ style and elegance, along with all of his shortcomings. Queer is a beautifully empty narrative. Guadagnino’s fatal mistake is the film’s runtime. 137 minutes stretches the novel’s thin plot past the point of tedium. Whatever goodwill Guadagnino and Craig built up in the first hour is long squandered by the absolute disaster of a third act.

Burroughs the man was full of charisma and charm that was often lost in translation when it came to his written work. Guadagnino and Craig do their best to bring his colorful world to life, but a successful film almost certainly would have required them to do a lot of his work for him. After a while, as was often the case in Naked Lunch or Junkie, the desire to check out becomes too tempting to ignore throughout this luscious slog.

Monday

25

November 2024

0

COMMENTS

Conclave is a gripping thriller undercut by a lack of confidence in its own story

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews

Rituals either have meaning, or they don’t. The process of selecting a new pope feels fairly ridiculous, following certain rules and traditions that have been in place for more than a thousand years. Many of those customs, such as the sequestering of the College of Cardinals were established in the 1200s to prevent corruption, a reality that may seem strange to generations who have grown up with seemingly endless scandals affecting the Catholic Church.

The film Conclave centers its narrative amidst the secrecy of the Vatican. Based on the 2016 novel of the same name, the film follows the election of a new pope, and all the politicking that entails. Led by Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), the conclave quickly devolves into a standard power grab, with various factions jockeying for support, most belonging to various shades of extreme conservatism. The sweeping liberal changes enacted in the Second Vatican Council are still met with swift opposition some sixty years later, with many cardinals supporting the return of the Latin Mass among other pillars of the old church.

Director Edward Berger is far more concerned with atmosphere than plot over the course of his narrative. The tight pacing and gorgeous cinematography from Stéphen Fontaine keep a steady undercurrent of suspense as the cardinals work through their ballots. The sets provide a suffocating sense of beauty, the panopticon of the Vatican never straying from the forefront of the story. With its many secrets and imposing disposition, the building itself starts to feel like a character after a while, an impressive feat of filmmaking.

While Fiennes keeps a tight grip on the reins of the narrative from his perch in the lead role, Conclave is often undercut by its script. The film struggles with character development, particularly the supporting players. For the most part, Cardinal Lawrence’s own motivations receive only scattershot attention. A late third-act effort to correct this falls a bit flat without the proper investment in its characters.

For an institution as mysterious as the Vatican, Berger isn’t all that interested in peeling back the layers. Conclave loves its scandals. Characters deliver eloquent soliloquies on the troubles of the world full of Aaron Sorkin-esque platitudes. Absent from the narrative is the nitty gritty work of politics. The film deploys a few stunts too many in a desperate attempt to wrangle in its unwieldy plot.

With a brisk runtime of 120 minutes, Berger creates the perfect pressure cooker for Conclave to triumph in its final act, but the landing just doesn’t stick. Conclave builds up so much goodwill, only to seemingly turn its attention away from its own story in favor of commentary on the state of the real world. The many cliches betray a lack of confidence in the film’s own story, and the characters that are so captivating for much of the narrative.

Fiennes’ orbit is a genuinely interesting place to spend time in. The level of detail in the cinematography and set design is so exquisite that you can’t help but wonder why the script wasn’t given the same attention. Conclave is a genuinely intriguing thriller that falls just shy of the label of masterpiece. A film with first-rate acting and some of the best cinematography all year shouldn’t need to resort to cheap stunts to propel its narrative.

Friday

8

November 2024

0

COMMENTS

Classic Film: Last Year at Marienbad

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Time waits for no one. People, on the other hand, wait around for plenty. People put off their dreams, sometimes for legitimate reasons, often simply because the timing isn’t quite right, whatever that means. Miserable relationships endure, not because anyone thinks the situation might improve, but because change is scary, and the cold dark unknown feels more intimidating than the familiar devil.

The 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad (Original French title: L’Année dernière à Marienbad) structures its entire narrative around the psychology of lust, tossing out all conventional notions of narrative and structure. A man (Giorgio Albertazzi), staying at a grand palace that had been converted into a hotel, sees a woman (Delphine Seyrig) he claims to have met the previous year. The woman, who came to the hotel with a second man (Sacha Pitoëff), possibly her husband, denies knowing him, particularly his claims that she asked him to wait a year before they could run away together.

Director Alain Resnais uses the beautiful baroque architecture of the hotel as a backdrop for Albertazzi’s seductive narration, creating luscious, dreamy visuals of a passionate vacation fling that constantly overwhelms the senses, even before you consider the additional psychological layer of whether the man is telling the truth. Screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet frequently uses repetition in the constant voice-overs, further muddying the waters between reality and the dream. Skepticism toward the man’s claims eventually gives way to the undeniable charm to be found in the labyrinth that is Albertazzi’s storytelling capabilities.

The mathematical strategy game NIM plays a large role in the narrative. The second man frequently exerts his dominance over the rest of the hotel guests with his commanding performances in the game. The surface-level simplicity of Nim is a point of frustration for many, the game itself boiling down to a matter of mathematics, with no one able to develop a strategy to end the second man’s streak. Life itself can often appear simple on paper, until we have to step outside our heads and go about the messy labor of achieving our dreams in a world that has its own ideas.

Despite the film’s ample avant-garde trappings, a nonlinear narrative where no one has a name, Resnais’s work is eminently accessible. The taut 94-minute runtime gives the film plenty of space to forge its unique identity without exhausting the audience. The dreamy cinematography functions as an extension of the screenplay, keeping everyone engaged even as the narrative wades into obtuse territory.

Resnais constantly plays with the framing of the camera, creating the illusion of a dreamlike state. There is often some distance between the narration and the events unfolding on screen. The other guests at the hotel often feel like mannequins, heightening the sense of a cat and mouse game between the man and the woman, on top of the power dynamic already at play with the second man’s dominance at NIM over everyone else.

The whole film plays out like the visual manifestation of the illicit fever dream being described by the narration. Affairs are often described as intoxicating. People don’t have affairs out of logic or sensibility. They do it for the thrill. Resnais eloquently captures that sensation, bringing his audience along for the ride.

The difference between love and lust often boils down to the hunt. Anyone can have a fantasy. The barriers to acting on such carnal desires are not particularly rigid, especially in a hotel the size of a palace. Unhappiness, on the other hand, can be a rather imposing panopticon. The mind can concoct all sorts of reasons to stay miserable, some more logical than others.

Does truth matter in the realm of passion? Resnais has a beautiful way of deconstructing reality, challenging the way we think about the world through the romance of desire. As uncomfortable as it is to say, facts don’t really have much business in the realm of love. Romance is inherently a buy-in. It seems ridiculous to say that it doesn’t really matter if someone was telling the truth about having met you a year before, but people don’t fall in love based on logic. How we feel is what really matters.

All of that might sound ridiculous, but the great triumph of Last Year at Marienbad is the way that Resnais makes the absurd seem palatable when contrasted with the alternative that is reality for the woman. None of us would be comfortable admitting that we’d fall for a man who told us things we knew to be untrue. Plenty of us would also feel uneasy admitting that we’re staying in loveless relationships because we’re too afraid of the alternative, yet we all know someone currently mired in that reality. For a film that offers nothing in the way of answers, there is so much clarity to be found in Resnais’ work.

Tuesday

5

November 2024

0

COMMENTS

Now on Substack!

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog

Great news. ITM has started a Substack. Going to do a weekly column on dating, politics, popular culture, etc. The first two weeks are already up. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an article.

Are You Not Entertained? by Ian Thomas Malone

If you’re not having fun on dates, what’s the point?

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