A (relatively) slow month for movie watching, especially when compared to last month’s deluge of end-of-year screenings, February still saw me watching some excellent cinema. Debut features, director departures from the norms, and one of the best films of 2023, this month at the movies…
The Beekeeper
The Beekeeper is a strong contender for the “it’s February, what else are you going to watch?” film of the year. A tired John Wick retread starring Jason Statham as a retired “Beekeeper”, a secret government operative tasked with keeping the world a just place, coming out of retirement of his kindly landlord is scammed out of millions of dollars. An obviously dumb action flick, I’m not here to nitpick the numbing plot nor the nonexistent characters. There are many films if it’s ilk that I love, including the aforementioned John Wick franchise. The problem here is with execution, and it’s a major problem.
This is a gruesome film, the violence constant and unabetted. At the same time, the script is so winking and joke-filled that it’s like watching someone grin through a car crash. Statham, someone not renowned for his acting prowess but who still is able to carry a film, sleepwalks through the entire film. The one-liners are weak and boring, the action scenes uninspired copycats of much better films. Jeremy Irons and Josh Hutcherson both give fun performances as the man-child tech bro villain and his reluctant protector, but The Beekeeper is such an unstoppable, nearly omnipotent force that all tension is robbed from the fight scenes. We never see him hurt, never see him struggle, the conclusion ultimately feeling inevitable and dull. Throw in an FBI side plot that is useless at best, tedious at worst, and the film just isn’t fun enough to justify its giddiness and not serious enough to justify its grittiness.
Cronos
Guillermo del Toro has gathered somewhat of a divisive reputation over the years. While many are likely to agree that Pan’s Labyrinth is his best feature and that his films generally always hold some interesting ideas, he nonetheless tends to have a love him or leave him relationship with audiences. While he is visually deeply imaginative and his stories often contain deep layers of metaphor, his earnestness and eagerness can lead to a heavy-handed nature in his dialogue and scripts. In his debut feature, Cronos, the negative aspects of his work tend to overwhelm the picture, but there is still plenty of silver linings here that hindsight allows us to see his untapped potential.
The film follows an elderly antiques dealer who discovers an ancient mechanical device that allows eternal life, but with a price; a deep thirst for blood. On top of the internal struggle he faces with whether or not he can pay this price for life, another man and his henchman nephew pursue him, wishing to take the device for themselves. The film is very obviously a first-time feature, and a very cautious one as well. Whether budgetary or visionary restrictions, the story does not feel lived in enough to fill the entire runtime. It’s only with a singularly standout scene in which Jesus (Federico Luppi) discovers his need for blood that we can see what del Toro would do in the feature. A lurid and disgusting scene of gracious depravity, that scene alone is worth visiting this flawed but interesting effort.
Drive-Away Dolls
When the Coen Brothers separated (under comfortable and brotherly conditions), the world awaited to see what each brother may have brought to their respective projects. In 2021 Joel Coen released The Tragedy of Macbeth, a stark, black-and-white adaptation of William Shakespeare, using the traditional text from the play. A bold and haunting portrait of the classic tale, it shared many characteristics with their more serious work such as No Country for Old Men and True Grit. Three years later, the younger brother Ethan debuts his solo work with Drive-Away Dolls, a madcap road film that weaves between Burn After Reading and Intolerable Cruelty when compared to the Coen canon but is never able to hit the comedic stride of those previous efforts.
This is a film I actively await revisiting. Following a pair of lesbian friends Jamie and Marian (Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan) as they take a road trip to Florida. Unbeknownst to them, the vehicle they have taken for this trip carries a secret briefcase that a group of witless criminals are after. As the friends engage in various activities (mostly involved in getting laid), their pursuers close in. A classic Coen comedy, I can see this film working much better on a rewatch. A send-up to 1990’s road comedies, this can feel a little half-baked in terms of plot, and most characters never get a full chance to shine, but there is more than enough meat on the bone to get an enjoyable evening out of this film. Qualley is a stand-out, her handling of the pitter-patter style of Coen dialogue reminiscent of the best moments from Raising Arizona. Add in bit parts from heavy hitters such as Pedro Pascal and Matt Damon and this film is already blossoming into something great in my memory.
Maestro
I don’t know anything about Leonard Bernstein. I know so little about him that I accidentally typed ‘Leonard Cohen’ multiple times while writing this review. He’s a stalwart of American exceptionalism that has barely if ever graced my thoughts north of the border. After watching Maestro, the purported biopic of the conductor, I can say I still know nothing of him. Bradley Cooper has displayed a deep adoration for the man and the music he created, and there are moments in his performance, glimmers under the intense shine, where this comes through. But for the most part this film comes off as a bloated, disconjointed mess that has nothing to say about the creator, the creative, or the burden that comes from a public life forced to be hidden.
Focusing on the marriage between Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), the film attempts to paint the doomed marriage as Bwewrnstein’s unadorned muse. Throughout it’s said multiple times how much he loved her, how much she affected his work, and how he loses his way without her (even if he is allowed to be more of himself as a gay man). But the film states these things in dialogue, never once showing us the impact she has on her. The two never seem to enjoy each other, the two leads never having a convincing scene of chemistry despite trying incredibly hard to. That’s the main issue with this film: it tries so hard to convince you it’s important. The dialogue is on the nose and pompous, the performances tear-streaked and cloying, the direction ineffectually manipulative. Cooper fails completely in showing us why this story needs to be told, and at this point I still doubt it did.
Nyad
As the Oscars approach, dutifully I have begun a catch-up of films not quite good enough to draw my attention before, but not quite bad enough to be disregarded from the critical realm entirely. Nyad, the inspirational sports biopic, is the perfect encompassment of this. A film bolstered by some wonderful performances, but weighed down completely by it’s uncompelling narrative and uninspired direction. Following swimming legend Diana Hyad as, at the age of 60, she decides to retry her famously failed swim from Cuba to the state of Florida. Surrounding herself with a team of true believers (until they are pushed too far), the film seeking to an inspiring tale of dedication ends of treading water.
Co-directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin had previously collaborated exclusively in the world of documentary, bringing us the fantastic features Free Solo and The Rescue. With Nyad, we feel them desperately wishing there was enough true footage of this journey to not have gone the narrative route. The opening of the film (the most dynamic part of it) featured many real clips from Nyad’s early career. This opening was the most inventive, most innovative the film got, and the further into the film we get the further it is bogged down with what ultimately is an interesting tale told, but a dull tale watched. Whether there is a visually interesting way to film someone swimming for hours at a time across an open ocean or not, this film does not discover one.
Additionally, while Jodie Foster gives a standout performance (as she does), Annette Bening never seems to truly hold her character down, and through flashbacks we are shown an unnecassary and distracting backstory. Relating her childhood trauma to her desire to complete this final grand act never works, the frayed connective tissue widening the emotional gap that already exists in the film. We never feel let down by a failed attempt, never feel her frustration. And while these two actors are given plenty to do, and Rhys Ifans gives a great supporting turn, the rest of the crew we meet along the way are faceless and characterless. A story purporting to be about this crew pulling together to make the impossible happen never feels like they even knew each other’s names. A film forgotten easily come the sunlight of the following day.
Poor Things
Yorgos Lanthimos has quickly established himself as an arthouse favourite of the past decade. The Greek director burst onto the international film scene with his unflinching and obtuse drama Dogtooth (2009). By 2015 he had moved to the English language world and produced some of the funniest, creepiest, and most unique films of the latter half of the 2010s. Through The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and The Favourite audiences became acquainted with Lanthimos’ skewed worldview. This trend continues with Poor Things, his 2023 feminist Frankenstein fairytale.
Following Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a full grown woman who has a baby’s brain implanted in her, we see her go on an adventure of physical and emotional discovery. Along the way we meet bizarre and forever unique characters, including her “father” Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), her caretaker-turned-fiance Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), and a horny and duplicitous cad Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). The film brazenly explores Bella’s sexual maturation through both hilarious and graphic sex scenes, while also highlighting the exploitative nature of all the men in her life who claim to love her. As Bella’s mind expands with knowledge and experience, the men around her try even harder to limit and control her.
Though the metphor the film is blatantly playing in does at times seem to be stuck in a rather repetitive cycle, the perofrmances from the cast and the sharp script begs the audience to never become complaicent. Stone is wonderfully bizarre in this film, her entire body becoming a tool for emphasizing Bella’s state. Ruffalo puts in one of the best performances of his career, abrasive and pathetic in equal measures, chewing every piece of scenery and leaving us wanting more.
Shock Corridor
Samuel Fuller’s 1963 film Shock Corridor follows an ambitious journalist Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) as he gets himself committed to an insane asylum in order to solve the murder of a patient. As Barrett gets to know the patients and staff, his mental state slowly begins to deteriorate, as the man and the character he is playing slowly blur into one. His unwavering drive to win the Pultzer causes him to disregard the fears of his girlfriend, who has been pretending to be his sister so he can be committed under charges of incest. As he gets closer and closer to the truth of the murder, his sanity begins to fade, and the pursuit of adoration will soon cost him more than he had ever considered.
At the time of release, this was a groundbreaking film, a lurid teardown of society that touched on many hot-button topics. Incest, racism, lynchings, and mental depravity are all tools used by Fuller to make the film as daring and outrageous as the times would allow. But the depths that it delves into are never as grimy as one would want when watching this. It’s not leering enough to be a true grindhouse exploitation, pulling back from the edges a little too much, robbing scenes of the punches needed in this material. We feel this pull back, can sense the moments Fuller is playing it safe and when he feels he can push buttons. It’s a delicate balance, and Fuller is never able to balance it completely. While shocking for it’s time, it lacks the outright audaciousness to remain as relevant to modern audiences.
Topsy-Turvy
I love films about creation, about the artistic process and what inspires people. It’s petty and dumb and cheesy to say that art is important, and that the well that artists draw from is raw and unyielding. Petty, dumb, cheesy, and true. In Topsy Turvy, the extravagant period piece by Mike Leigh, we see this process from the ground up. Following famed opera duo Gilbert and Sullivan (Jim Broadbent and Allan Corduner respectively) from the trenches of writer’s block through to the completion and performance of one of their greatest works The Mikado, the film is a precious, delicate look at creation, dedication, and collaboration.
Every scene is so gently made, so gracious in how it approaches our characters and story. A film about a piece of art that could easily be considered racist or a cultural appropriation instead reveals the love and detail Gilbert and Sullivan held fro the Japanese culture they wished to present. While their methods may not have been the most appropriate at times, their desire to respect the culture is deeply felt. It’s the respect of culture and art that makes this film a warm blanket, a bath of wonder. Broadbent and Corduner are stellar as the at-times embittered duo, but the ensemble cast includes notable performances from the likes of Timothy Spall, Shirley Henderson, Kevin McKidd, and many others. A brillaint, loving film that, much like last year’s Showing Up from director Kelly Reichardt, is a must-see for all artists and art lovers.