Civil War

Director: Alex Garland
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Nick Offerman
Genre: Action/Drama
|Run Time: 109 min
Opens: 10 April 2024
Rating: NC16

It is a presidential election year in the United States and so political tensions are high, but really, when aren’t they? It’s either the best or the worst time for a movie about a second American Civil War to come into existence, and that’s what writer-director Alex Garland has given us.

It is the near future. The President of the United States (Nick Offerman) is into his third term, having disbanded the FBI and authorised airstrikes against American citizens within the country. The Western Forces, led by Texas and California, have seceded from the United States and a civil war is in progress. Lee (Kirsten Dunst), a prolific war photojournalist, is travelling from New York to the frontlines in Washington, D.C. She is accompanied by journalists Joel (Wagner Moura) and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), who mentored both Lee and Joel. Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a young aspiring photojournalist who looks up to Lee, insists on tagging along. The group will encounter various threats along the way as they get closer to the heart of the conflict.

Alex Garland, who has directed Ex Machina, Annihilation and Men, has proven that he’s good at establishing an atmosphere. Civil War is absolutely crawling with dread. This is an intensely visceral, haunting movie that efficiently establishes a terrifying reality without spending too long setting things up and explaining things. The cinematography by Rob Hardy emphasises both the uneasy desolation of empty roads and smoking buildings and the frenetic violence of the gunfights. Civil War constructs a state of unease that never lets up. There are set pieces that the audience can’t really enjoy in the same way that they might enjoy a similar sequence in a typical action movie because this isn’t meant to be mindless fun, and that tension is something Garland handles deftly. It’s an introspective movie that is fundamentally about the ethics of war journalism and the basic question of what we should or shouldn’t do in the face of violent conflict. The movie also addresses the idea of trying to pretend it all isn’t happening.

Civil War is a movie about a war, something inherently political, that deliberately holds the politics at arm’s length. Understandably, Garland doesn’t want to make a big show of support for either side and risk alienating his audience, in an environment where it seems like many people are actively looking for reasons to feel alienated. “We don’t need it explained. We know exactly why it might happen. We know exactly what the fault lines and pressures are,” Garland said at the movie’s premiere screening at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. We know that an alliance between Texas and California is unlikely, and so this feels like Garland trying to deliberately separate Civil War from present-day political reality. But then there is a tension between the movie being a cautionary tale and it being something more speculative and science fiction adjacent. We can’t say for sure if the movie is better or worse if it goes into more detail about the war and the belligerents, but there are times when it feels like the movie wants to be challenging but also to take the easy way out at the same time.

Civil War’s biggest strength is Kirsten Dunst. Her turn as a war photojournalist is wholly compelling and she conveys the character’s numbness, her practiced inoculation to trauma, with just a look.

Civil War falls back on archetypes, with Moura as the gung-ho character living for the excitement of it all, McKinley Henderson as the kindly mentor figure and Spaney as the young idealistic newcomer who’s about to have their worldview shattered. However, the writing and the performances ensure that these characters are more than just archetypes. We want to follow these characters and see them make it out even if we don’t agree with them all the time. Look out for Jesse Plemons, Dunst’s real-life husband, who makes quite the impact in a terrifying one-scene appearance.

Summary: Civil War is an effectively visceral, unsettling movie that paints a convincing portrait of a near-future America torn apart by war. As a photojournalist who has been numbed by her experiences in various warzones around the world, Kirsten Dunst is believably haunted and distant. Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny and Stephen McKinley Henderson round out the main cast, playing archetypical characters who also feel fully formed. Writer-director Alex Garland isn’t too focused on the surrounding politics and doesn’t give the viewer a whole lot of information about the specifics of the conflict, which can sometimes be frustrating but also means the focus is placed on the characters and their immediate experiences.

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars                        

Jedd Jong

Napoleon review

Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby, Tahar Rahim, Ben Miles, Ludivine Sagnier, Matthew Needham, John Hollingworth, Youssef Kerkour, Phil Cornwell, Édouard Philipponnat, Ian McNiece, Rupert Everett, Paul Rhys, Catherine Walker
Genre: History/War/Action
Run Time: 158 min
Opens: 23 November 2023
Rating: M18

In 2000, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator was widely seen as re-invigorating the historical epic genre. That movie is remembered for its lead performance from Russell Crowe, but also for an indelible villainous turn by a young Joaquin Phoenix, earning him his first Oscar nomination. 23 years later, Scott and Phoenix reunite for Napoleon, a historical epic of a different type.

Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix) rises to power in the wake of the French Revolution. He goes from a ranking officer in the French Army to establishing himself as one of the most powerful men alive. Napoleon leads the French army through multiple bloody battles all over the world. During a 12-year-long stretch that became known as the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon led military campaigns including the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, but also helmed an ill-advised invasion of Russia that was crippled by the harsh winter. The movie also tracks Napoleon’s tumultuous relationship with Joséphine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby), a key source of tension in their marriage being her apparent inability to bear him a son.

Napoleon works best when its actors are allowed to hold court. Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of the title character as a mumbling, petulant, often childish, egotistical man might be an oversimplification of the historical figure, but it is often engaging to watch. Vanessa Kirby ably goes toe to toe with Phoenix and her Joséphine is breathtaking and magnetic. There is an irresistible intensity and yet also a lightness to her portrayal of the character that makes the viewer wish she had more screen time. Scott says the movie’s four-and-a-half hour-long director’s cut features more of Joséphine. The screenplay by David Scarpa positions this as the central emotional thread of the story, and that’s when Napoleon is at its most dynamic.

Napoleon is filmmaking on a grand scale, with battle scenes featuring hundreds of extras on locations in the UK, France, Morocco and Malta. Director Ridley Scott is famed for his ability to efficiently marshal a large production and Napoleon does possess an appropriate visual grandeur.

Much has been made of the movie’s historical inaccuracy. This reviewer saw the film with his brother, a history major with a specialised interest in military history, and he seemed to be in physical pain at some points. “Why use all these resources to get everything wrong?” he asked, almost plaintively. Indeed, it seems like Scott has taken pride in the movie’s lack of fidelity to history, especially in terms of the tactics and the sequence of events in the battle scenes, when it seems like the main reason to make a movie about Napoleon is to try and re-create said battles.

“When I have issues with historians, I ask: ‘Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well, shut the f*** up then’,” Scott told The Times. In a separate interview, Scott responded to the French media’s negative reviews of his film by saying, “The French don’t even like themselves. The audience that I showed it to in Paris, they loved it.” So, this is clearly a man who, at 85, has run out of f***s to give, and it could be argued that he has earned that right. Liberties are taken with every movie based on true events, but there is a sliding scale. The frustrating thing about the historical inaccuracies in Napoleon, especially when it comes to the battles, is that they don’t seem to serve the story, when dramatic license is typically taken for that purpose.

There’s a reason why filmmakers are praised for an obsessive attention to detail – indeed, Stanley Kubrick had tried for years to get his Napoleon movie off the ground. Suffice it to say that Kubrick’s approach would have differed vastly from Scott’s – which is not to say that there isn’t tremendous technical ability on display. The movie’s version of the Battle of Austerlitz is exciting and terrifying, with cannonballs breaking the ice and causing men and horses to drown in freezing waters – even if it didn’t happen that way at all. The battle sequences are packed with gory detail (the Siege of Toulon features an exploding horse) but after a while, the gruesomeness becomes diffuse and loses its impact.

Ultimately, it feels like even at 158 minutes, the theatrical cut of the movie is rushing through history, trying to get through as many major events as possible, while still leaving out the Battle of Leipzig. Napoleon offers the opportunity for a filmmaker and his cast to try and get inside the head of the historical figure, but everything feels frustratingly surface-level, as sweeping and grand as things get.

Summary: Napoleon reunites star Joaquin Phoenix and director Ridley Scott 23 years after Gladiator. Phoenix’s interpretation of Napoleon as temperamental, impulsive, and petulant is a simplification of the historical figure, but it is engaging to watch. Vanessa Kirby ably goes toe-to-toe with him as Joséphine in a performance that will leave you wanting to see more (something the movie’s four-and-a-half-hour-long director’s cut reportedly has). However, Napoleon suffers from Scott’s apparent contempt for historical accuracy, meaning the spectacular large-scale battle scenes do not portray the tactics that Napoleon became known for, and are often entirely made up. More than that, the movie feels frustratingly surface-level, refusing to drill down and explore the historical figure’s motivations and psyche. At 158 minutes, things still feel rushed, like the movie is trying to cover as much ground as possible.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars                        

Jedd Jong

Killers of the Flower Moon review

Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Meyers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, Jason Isbell, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi
Genre: Crime/Drama
Run Time: 206 min
Opens: 19 October 2023
Rating: PG13

“This is cinema” – if you’ve spent any time in internet spaces occupied by cinephiles, you’ll have seen this quote attributed to Martin Scorsese, often used ironically to describe movies like Morbius. Yes, Scorsese has taken on the role of saving cinema from the clutches of comic book movies and franchise filmmaking, sentiments which have seen him celebrated by some and derided by others. Any way you cut it, a new Scorsese movie is an event, and Killers of the Flower Moon, recounting a dark chapter in American history, arrives after a great deal of anticipation.

It is the 1920s and the Osage Nation has become wealthy because of the oil deposits on their land in northeastern Oklahoma. Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns home from serving as a cook in the military overseas. His uncle is William Hale (Robert De Niro), a political boss and cattle rancher who has extensive business dealings with the Osage Nation. Ernest works as a driver and gets to know one of his passengers, Mollie (Lily Gladstone). Encouraged by his uncle, Ernest falls in love with Mollie and marries her.

In the meantime, there is a spate of 60 or more murders of Osage people, which the authorities do nothing about. Mollie’s sister Anna (Cara Jade Meyers) is among the people who are brutally murdered. After a delegation of Osage people, including Mollie, brings this to the attention of President Calvin Coolidge in Washington, D.C., the Bureau of Investigation (now the FBI) sends special agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons) to investigate. A criminal conspiracy involving the headrights to oil-rich land unravels, with Ernest caught in the middle of it.

Adapted from the non-fiction book of the same name by David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon is a cinematic event. There’s no denying Scorsese’s mastery of the medium and the movie is handsomely shot by Rodrigo Prieto, with Scorsese’s regular editor Thelma Schoonmaker returning. The movie combines the vast sweep of an old-fashioned western and the backroom scheming and machinations of a crime saga, something Scorsese is no stranger to.

There is a specificity to the time and place in which the movie is set, and the filmmakers are clearly taking great pains to do justice to this important story. The movie succeeds in part because its elements are so recognisable – it’s a story about greed. The manipulation and exploitation depicted in the film continue to happen in different forms, in different contexts around the world. The story has many moving parts but is straightforward. As drawn in the screenplay by Eric Roth and Scorsese, the characters are sometimes larger than life, but always feel like real people.

Much has been made of the movie’s epic 207-minute runtime. Yes, Killers of the Flower Moon feels long. It’s certainly not as much as an endurance test of the torture-heavy Silence, but it feels long. Could it have worked as a TV miniseries instead? Possibly, but watching it in one sitting does lend the movie a certain power that it might not have in another format. The movie is often absorbing, but stops short of being completely riveting, in part because there is no mystery – we don’t start out knowing all the details of the murders, but we know who is masterminding them from the beginning, so it isn’t suspenseful, but also doesn’t seem intended to be. An earlier draft of the script apparently had the Tom White character as the protagonist and that’s who DiCaprio had signed on to play, but it was rewritten to centre Ernest Burkhart instead and function more as a psychological drama than a detective thriller.

Killers of the Flower Moon features two of Scorsese’s frequent collaborators, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, both doing excellent work. DiCaprio plays a character who seems a little dopey and is unabashed about how much he loves money, which motivates him to act in unsavoury ways. There are times when DiCaprio puts on his “I’m acting!” face (you know the one), but other times when he convincingly inhabits the character.

This is one of De Niro’s best performances in recent memory. There is an admirable restraint here, such that he isn’t doing too much, and indeed doesn’t need to. William Hale is a glad-handing local politician who will stab you in the back while smiling at you, and De Niro plays this well. De Niro has said the movie depicts “the banality of evil,” and he effectively essays someone who acts in monstrous ways but goes about it routinely.

Lily Gladstone’s performance is a highlight of the movie. Many Hollywood movies about Native American history have sidelined their Native American characters, and while DiCaprio and De Niro are top-billed, Gladstone is as much a dynamo of the movie as they are. Her Mollie is outwardly frail, suffering from diabetes, but has a steadfastness and inner strength to her. Gladstone is quietly commanding as a woman who is surrounded by tragedy but never stops fighting. The relationship between Ernest and Mollie, and the question of if Ernest has ever truly loved his wife, is one that runs throughout the movie and is something that both DiCaprio and Gladstone play brilliantly.

Summary: Killers of the Flower Moon is another excellent movie by Martin Scorsese, who continues to demonstrate a mastery of the form. The period crime drama sees Scorsese reunite with frequent collaborators Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, who are both excellent, but it is Lily Gladstone whose quietly commanding performance is the highlight. The story of greed driving people to do terrible things is one that’s been told many times before, but the historical context makes this story worth telling. Over its gargantuan runtime, the movie is sometimes less-than-gripping, especially since it isn’t structured as a mystery. But it is a movie that compels the audience to follow along to see where all the terrible, cruel decisions the characters make eventually lead them.

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars                      

Jedd Jong

Babylon review

Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast : Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, Tobey Maguire, Max Minghella, Lukas Haas, Samara Weaving, Spike Jonze, Katherine Waterston, Eric Roberts, Olivia Hamilton, P.J. Byrne
Genre: Comedy/Drama/History
Run Time : 189 min
Opens : 19 January 2022
Rating : R21

In 2017, Damien Chazelle became the youngest person to win the Best Director Oscar at 32, for La La Land. If that film was a love letter to Hollywood, then Babylon is an epic drunk text to an ex, delving into Tinseltown’s past, partially set during the transition between silent movies and talkies.

It is 1927. Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) is an aspiring actress from New Jersey with an outsized personality and undeniable charisma. Manuel “Manny” Torres (Diego Calva) is a Mexican-American assistant who dreams of actually working in the movies. Both characters cross paths at a lavish party. Also present are dashing silent film star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt), jazz trumpeter Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo) and Chinese-American cabaret singer Lady Fay Zhu (Li Jun Li). The movie tracks their various paths over the following years as Hollywood is plunged into a turbulent, exciting period of change. The advent of synced sound causes silent movies to be phased out, with some silent movie stars struggling to make the transition. Meanwhile, the Hays Code is introduced, leading to strict censorship. Nellie becomes an overnight sensation and Manny eventually works his way through the studio ranks, and the film tracks them over the next several years as these former outsiders with a dream find themselves in the eye of the storm.

Babylon is an ambitious, sprawling effort, with a staggering 189-minute runtime to show for it. Chazelle has clearly thrown himself into making this movie, which is a plainly massive undertaking. There are times when Babylon handily sweeps the audience up along for the ride, and key to its hypnotic thrall is the way the movie works with the music. Oft-collaborator Justin Hurwitz creates a rousing, kinetic, jazz-laced score, which works hand-in-hand with the heady imagery. Babylon is long, but there is no shortage of outrageous events unfolding onscreen to keep audiences’ interest, with just enough to the main characters’ arcs to inspire a certain investment. 

In the opening scene, Manny and other characters attempt to haul an elephant up a hill, with disastrous results. This seems to be an omen for the following three hours. While there is much about Babylon that is engaging, it is also bloated, and Chazelle’s Herculean effort (mainly the fifth labour of Hercules)  in dragging this beast forward is often noticeable. Much has been made of Babylon’s depiction of Hollywood debauchery. The big party scene includes copious amounts of sex, drugs and jazz, with the aforementioned elephant tossed in for good measure. After a while, it feels like the gross-out shock humour, including all manner of bodily functions, is just there for the sake of it and it grows tiresome.

Babylon wants to be subversive and to shatter the idea of a time before the movie industry was wanton and depraved, but it winds up being a lot less insightful about its historical setting than it could have been. There’s a lot of movie here, but one can’t help but feel like not a lot is being said. The first two hours are more or less a knockabout farce, then the third hour careens hard into high drama and tragedy. It’s not like things aren’t set up, but it still is a jarring shift for a movie that is being billed as a comedy. Babylon owes a great deal to Singin’ in the Rain, but at least it isn’t trying to hide that. Comparisons have also been made to the porn industry drama Boogie Nights. By the time Babylon ends, it’s as if Chazelle is tearfully proclaiming “I just love movies!” but its ostensible awe at the magic of cinema is at odds with how gleeful it is about animal excrement and human vomit. 

Babylon has an excellent cast, with both Pitt and Robbie playing to their strengths as performers and leaning into their public personas as movie stars. Pitt’s character is an amalgamation of silent screen leading men like Douglas Fairbanks, John Gilbert and Clark Gable. He is a charming hard-partier and serial marrier who struggles with watching his star fade. A scene that Pitt shares with a withering entertainment journalist played by Jean Smart is especially affecting and well-acted. There is a goofiness that Pitt brings to the proceedings, but we also empathise with Jack as we glimpse the darkness beneath the glitzy surface.

Robbie’s performance as the ingenue, inspired by such actresses as Mary Pickford, Clara Bow and Joan Crawford, is fearless and mesmerising. Nellie is as talented and magnetic as she is self-destructive, and while neither Nellie’s nor Jack’s arcs are original ones, not least in movies about Hollywood, both Pitt and Robbie are excellent.

Mexican actor Diego Calva, who had a role in Narcos: Mexico, is arguably the movie’s breakout performer. While Manny is not the most interesting of all the characters in Babylon, Calva does imbue him with an earnestness and we get invested in the characters’ journey, especially when he rises to the position to make some consequential, possibly devastating decisions.

Jovan Adepo’s Sidney Palmer doesn’t get a whole lot of attention but is quietly one of the more compelling characters in Babylon. Unfortunately, the movie seems ill-equipped to comment on the role of Black entertainers in early Hollywood. It makes an attempt at it, but seems too preoccupied with extravagant displays of bad behaviour to delve into the issue.

Li Jun Li’s Lady Fay Zhu, a thinly-veiled allusion to Anna May Wong, is a badass but ultimately still plays into fetishistic, Orientalist portrayals of Asian women in Hollywood. The inclusion of minority characters could have served as an opportunity to take a close look at what it was like for non-white people in early Hollywood, but Babylon misses that opportunity.

There are plenty of moments for the supporting cast to shine, with Eric Roberts getting a few memorable scenes as Nellie’s father/manager. Tobey Maguire pops up late in the movie as an impish, devilish crime boss.

Summary: Babylon is a sprawling and ambitious ode to Old Hollywood, pulling back the curtain on its anything goes chaos. Unfortunately, the movie seems altogether too preoccupied with being “extreme” and pushing boundaries in its depiction of sordid depravity. The gross-out shock value moments threaten to drown out some legitimately arresting performances, with the casting of Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie being especially canny. There are impactful, resonant moments here, but they’re buried in the cacophony. Writer-director Damien Chazelle is in full ‘cheeky film student’ mode, telling a historical tale laced with all the shenanigans and outlandish behaviour to earn it an R21 rating. Babylon is an overstuffed, 189-minute-long behemoth, but it is also never boring. With its mixed-to-positive critical reception, it remains to be seen if Babylon will live on as a bit of a curio, or eventually become something of a cult classic.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Śakra (天龙八部之乔峰传) review

Director: Donnie Yen
Cast : Donnie Yen, Chen Yuqi, Cya Liu, Kara Wai, Wu Yue, Eddie Cheung, Grace Wong, Du Yuming, Ray Lui, Michelle Hu, Tsui Siu-ming
Genre: Action/Drama
Run Time : 130 min
Opens : 16 January 2022 (sneaks on 14 and 15 January)
Rating : NC16

Louis Cha, better known by his pen name Jin Yong, was one of the most influential authors in the wuxia (“martial heroes”) genre. His works have inspired numerous adaptations, and Donnie Yen adds to that list with Śakra, based on the 1963 novel Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils.

It is the Northern Song dynasty in the 1000s. Qiao Feng (Donnie Yen) is the leader of the Beggars’ Sect, a local hero who has won the respect of his peers. He is suddenly framed for murder and accused of being descended from the Khitan people. Forced to abandon his position as the leader of the Beggars’ Sect, Qiao Feng vows to discover the truth of his own heritage and he is shunned by his former allies. Qiao Feng meets A Zhu (Chen Yuqi), a maid who serves the Murong family. After he rescues her during an attack, she becomes the only person to still believe him. Qiao Feng and A Zhu travel across the land, with Qiao Feng seeking to make a new, peaceful life far from the Beggars’ Sect. Murong Fu (Wu Yue), A Zhu’s employer, schemes behind the scenes to revive the former Yan Kingdom. Qiao Feng must regain the honour that was stripped of him as he attempts to get to the root of this treachery.

Śakra is an ambitious epic that unfolds on a grand scale. The movie’s big selling point is its action sequences, choreographed by Yen and oft-collaborator Kenji Tanigaki. These sequences combine the elegant wire-fu that is often associated with the wuxia genre with the punchiness and brutality of more contemporary action cinema. Multiple sequences involve hordes of combatants and plenty of destruction of surrounding property. While there is some noticeable use of computer-generated effects, especially when the characters use superpowers including summoning fire or creating clouds of dust, it is nowhere near as egregious as in many Chinese action movies. There still is a tactility to the proceedings and the camera proudly shows off that it is Yen and the other actors doing their own stunts.

Yen is as charismatic and dashing as ever, striking a youthful figure at 59 – though it is perhaps a stretch to believe that Qiao Feng is in his 30s, as repeatedly stated. Qiao Feng is one of Jin Yong’s most beloved creations, and it might take a while for viewers who already have a favourite existing portrayal of the character to warm to Yen’s, but he commands the screen whenever he’s on it.

Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils is a lengthy novel with three main characters: Duan Yu, Qiao Feng and Xuzhu. In a similar way to how the 1977 movie The Battle Wizard focused on Duan Yu, Śakra focuses on Qiao Feng, attempting to streamline the story while keeping open the possibility of a sequel that might introduce the other two main characters. Unfortunately, Śakra struggles to coherently lay out the complicated web of characters. As impressive as the action sequences are, the dramatic scenes are often unwieldy and awkward. Tonally, the movie wants to fit in with the grandiose, over-the-top theatrics and melodrama associated with the wuxia genre, but also wants to be a little more grounded and relatable for audiences who aren’t already dyed-in-the-wool Jin Yong fans, and it does not quite pull this balance off. The movie’s pace is sometimes halting, as if it suddenly realises that it has a whole bunch of plot to get to after a protracted action scene.

Jin Yong has been called “China’s Tolkien” and in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Yen refers to Jin Yong’s work as being akin to Shakespeare, and says “wuxia is Chinese Marvel, except it has a lot [richer] history and culture behind it.” There is an intent to set up a franchise, with the ending leaving things open for the continuation of the story. All of Jin Yong’s works, apart from Ode to Gallantry, are connected to varying degrees, but they also span centuries, so it remains to be seen how far Yen’s ambitions stretch.

Summary: Śakra boasts explosive, elaborate action sequences that are as elegant as they are brutal. The movie also features Donnie Yen in fine form, directing and producing in addition to starring. It’s clear that Yen wants to do justice to the source material, Jin Yong’s novel Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, which has inspired numerous earlier film and TV adaptations. However, this movie’s world-building falters, and there seems to be a struggle to stay faithful to the source material while making something that will appeal to modern audiences accustomed to blockbuster franchises. While the production values of Śakra are considerably higher than that of the average TVB series, this story seems more suited to a TV format.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Don’t Worry Darling review

Director: Olivia Wilde
Cast : Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Olivia Wilde, Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, Nick Kroll, Chris Pine, Timothy Simons, Dita Von Teese
Genre: Thriller/Drama
Run Time : 122 min
Opens : 22 September 2022
Rating : M18

It’s the buzziest film of the year. You’ve read the breathless headlines. You’ve seen the memes. You might have even seen the edited video in which Harry Styles appears to toss a goat into Chris Pine’s lap. But what’s left when you strip away all the hullabaloo?

It is the 1950s. Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack (Harry Styles) are a married couple living in the company town of Victory, California. Jack works for the Victory Corporation, headed by the charismatic and enigmatic Frank (Chris Pine), who is married to Shelley (Gemma Chan). He is forbidden from discussing his top-secret job with his wife. Each morning, the men get in their cars and drive across the desert to the company’s headquarters, where they go about their top-secret work. The women, including Alice and her best friend Bunny (Olivia Wilde), live a leisurely existence, shopping, lounging around the pool and taking dance classes. However, Alice begins noticing that something is amiss after fellow resident Margaret (KiKi Layne) begins acting erratically. She is convinced that there is more to Victory than meets the eye, as she becomes increasingly disturbed.

This is director Olivia Wilde’s second feature film after Booksmart and it is a different beast from that coming-of-age comedy-drama. Don’t Worry Darling is ambitious and sees Wilde play with some intriguing components, even if they might not all go together well. The design elements of the film are eye-catching, and the sunny locations are unique, in a time when a lot of movies look a little muddy. Director of Photography Matthew Libatique, an oft-collaborator of Darren Aronofsky, does excellent work here. There are times when the film does feel Aronofsky-esque.

Don’t Worry Darling features yet another compulsively watchable Florence Pugh performance. It makes sense that she was cast off the strength of her performance in Midsommar, in which she also played a protagonist caught in outwardly idyllic but ultimately sinister surroundings. She fully deserves to be one of the most sought-after young actresses of the moment, and in Pugh’s hands, Alice is very easy to root for. It’s not necessarily the most layered or interesting role, even though the film sets her up as being a complex character, but Pugh does quite a bit with it.

Chris Pine is clearly enjoying himself as a cult leader-esque figure, charming yet undeniably sinister.

It takes quite a while to get there, but the movie’s final act is propulsive and entertaining, even if it isn’t a fully satisfying pay-off for the set-up.

Don’t Worry Darling is often awkward and inelegant, altogether too obvious when its dread should be creeping up on the audience, rather than bonking them over the head. It seems caught between arthouse aspirations and a pulpier, more visceral, throwback B-movie side. The movie also feels considerably longer than its 122 minutes, and it seems to spend a lot of time attempting to establish that Alice senses something is wrong, without really offering much in the way of subtle clues or carefully timed moments to throw the audience off. Once the big reveal happens, it’s hard not to question the mechanics of everything, and audiences might be a bit too busy parsing the logic (or lack thereof) to engage with the movie.

Harry Styles is miscast. His performance brings to mind one of Stephen King’s criticisms of Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining: the Jack Torrance character is supposed to start off as an ordinary family man and gradually unravel, but Jack Nicholson already seems deranged at the start of the film. It’s not quite the same thing, but Harry Styles has trouble playing unassuming, and seems to be simultaneously attempting to suppress his modern-day Britpop eccentricity, while also remembering that it is part of his brand.

I alluded to it up top, and it would be impossible to discuss Don’t Worry Darling without mentioning the inordinate amount of drama and controversy surrounding its production. From Wilde firing Shia LaBeouf, to being served divorce papers while presenting the film at CinemaCon, to the on-set relationship between Wilde and Styles, to the alleged rift between Wilde and Pugh, to LaBeouf saying he quit instead of being fired, to Styles allegedly spitting on Pine at the Venice International Film Festival, it’s been a lot. It is difficult to separate all this from the movie itself, and it may have influenced some critics who have been exceedingly harsh on Don’t Worry Darling.

Even if none of that had happened, it would already be intriguing that Wilde had decided to attach herself to a screenplay written by Shane and Carey Van Dyke, whose credits separately and together include the ‘mockbusters’ Transmorphers: Fall of Man, The Day the Earth Stopped, Titanic II and Paranormal Entity. Booksmart co-writer Katie Silberman rewrote the Van Dyke brothers’ script.

Summary: It’s difficult to separate Don’t Worry Darling from the flurry of behind-the-scenes controversy, but the movie itself is not quite the disaster that the general critical consensus is making it out to be. It could stand to be defter and more elegant, and perhaps it could have arrived at its exciting final act quite a bit faster, but Don’t Worry Darling has a pulpy quality to it and is sometimes entertaining. Florence Pugh does a remarkable amount of heavy lifting, almost enough to compensate for Harry Styles being miscast. It will be remembered more for the surrounding controversy than on its own merits, but there are things to recommend.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Nightmare Alley (2021) review

For F*** Magazine

Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast : Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Rooney Mara, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen, Holt McCallany, David Strathairn
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Run Time : 150 min
Opens : 13 January 2022 (Exclusive to Cathay Cineplexes)
Rating : M18

All of Guillermo del Toro’s feature films have included elements of horror or fantasy. One could be forgiven for thinking Nightmare Alley is the same, but it is not. This adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham’s novel of the same name, which was earlier adapted into a 1947 film starring Tyrone Power, is a neo-noir psychological thriller.

Stanton “Stan” Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) joins a travelling circus as a carny, doing odd jobs and studying how the various performers’ tricks work. Stan learns mentalism from Zeena Kurmbein (Toni Collette) and her husband Pete (David Strathairn), who perform a psychic act. In the meantime, he falls in love with Molly (Rooney Mara), whose act involves her pretending to be electrocuted. Stan is horrified at the way the carnival boss Clem (Willem Dafoe) treats the “geeks,” alcoholic, drug-addicted bums who bite the heads off chickens for paying spectators. Stan and Molly eventually leave the circus, establishing their own act. Psychologist Dr Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) attempts to expose Stan’s act, and he gradually falls under her spell, anguishing Molly. As Lilith draws on Stan’s skillset to stage an elaborate and deadly con, one question arises: is Stan innocent, or a willing co-conspirator?

Del Toro is known for being an atmospheric filmmaker, and Nightmare Alley is brimming with atmosphere. Gorgeously shot and designed, it evokes the feeling of noir movies in an affectionate, layered way. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen plays deftly with light and shadow, as the movie takes viewers from the grimy carny world to the gleam of Chicago high society. While Nightmare Alley is a marked departure from the kind of movies del Toro is known for, many of his trademarks are still present, and is reminiscent of Crimson Peak in many respects. The allure of the movie is that while it takes place in the real world, it feels as if the tendrils of the supernatural are creeping along the edges. Nightmare Alley is moody and deliberately depressing in a way that is somewhat surprising given the warmth present in many of del Toros’ other movies, but also fits the source material.

For all its atmosphere, Nightmare Alley is often challenging to engage with emotionally. It’s two movies: the first one at the circus with the carnies, the second in Chicago high society with the femme fatale psychologist. The movie is 150 minutes long, and while the set-up at the circus is necessary, perhaps it doesn’t require over an hour. Indeed, Cate Blanchett, who is second billed, makes her first appearance over a third of the way into the movie. Stan is maybe the first protagonist of this type in del Toro’s filmography: someone who is charming, but whom we are meant to suspect. It’s a far cry from the loveable but misunderstood monsters who often appear in the director’s movies. Suffice it to say, this is no The Shape of Water. Granted, it’s not a bad thing that del Toro isn’t repeating himself, but Nightmare Alley is sometimes straight-up nasty by design, which can be off-putting. Del Toro is sometimes criticised for relying too heavily on references to existing films and other media, and in Nightmare Alley, he is operating in full-on noir mode. Audiences who recognise the style and are registering all the little flourishes might find themselves held at arm’s length from the story.

Del Toro is a filmmaker whom actors often enthusiastically say they want to work with, so it is no surprise that the cast is stacked. Bradley Cooper is alternately sympathetic and slimy, playing a con artist who will make audiences wonder how much of what he’s up to is strictly for survival. This is a role that Leonardo DiCaprio was initially attached to, which makes sense. It starts out restrained, before becoming flashier.

Rooney Mara turns in a quietly sad, endearing performance as an innocent drawn into Stan’s web, while Cate Blanchett plays a textbook femme fatale with a knowing wink. Everywhere else one looks, there are character actors of a high calibre, including many who have collaborated with del Toro before. Willem Dafoe as an unscrupulous carny boss and Richard Jenkins as the wealthy mark of a con are the highlights.

Summary: An atmospheric, dark tale, Nightmare Alley is largely bereft of the warmth which lurks beneath the surface of many Guillermo del Toro movies. Stepping outside his comfort zone of supernatural horror and sci-fi, Nightmare Alley is a stylistic exercise in the noir genre. Unfortunately, the overlong movie often feels inert up until the very end, despite the best efforts of a talented cast. This is an intriguing but frustrating effort from the auteur, indicating interesting things to come, but straying from what has worked in his earlier films.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

West Side Story (2021) review

For F*** Magazine

Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast : Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose, Mike Faist, David Alvarez, Rita Moreno, Brian d’Arcy James, Corey Stoll
Genre: Musical/Drama
Run Time : 131 min
Opens : 6 January 2022
Rating : PG13

One of the most influential American musicals of the 50s, that was adapted into one of the most influential American movies of the 60s, now gets a new adaptation from one of the most influential Hollywood directors of the last 50 years. West Side Story, originally developed by Jerome Robbins with music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and libretto by Arthur Laurents, is back on the big screen under the helm of Steven Spielberg.

It is 1957 in Manhattan’s West Side. A turf war is raging between the white gang the Jets and the Puerto Rican gang the Sharks, both vying for control of San Juan Hill. Riff (Mike Faist), the leader of the Jets, and Bernardo (David Alvarez), the leader of the Sharks, are planning a big face-off between the two gangs. Riff promises that Tony (Ansel Elgort), the co-founder of the Jets who was recently released from prison, will be there. At a dance, Tony and María (Rachel Zegler) catch each other’s eye. María is Bernardo’s sister, and lives with Bernardo and his girlfriend Anita (Ariana DeBose). A potential romance between Tony and Maria will send the already-high tensions soaring. The stage is set for a tale of crime, community and forbidden love.

When it was announced that Spielberg would be directing a new adaptation of West Side Story, the common response was “why?” The answer is “because he’s Steven Spielberg and can do whatever he wants.” Beyond that, this adaptation justifies its existence, building upon the stage show and the earlier movie with an obvious affection for the source material, but also a sincere desire to dig deeper. Playwright Tony Kushner, who collaborated with Spielberg on Munich and Lincoln, set out to contextualise the setting of the story.

The themes of gentrification, the prejudice faced by immigrant communities and the underlying factors that lead to violent crime were all inherent in the source material, but one could argue they weren’t handled with much nuance. This West Side Story is a triumph of style and substance, a handsomely filmed and designed movie showcasing some of regular Spielberg cinematographer Janusz Kaminski’s finest work. It looks and sounds incredible, with the story rendered urgent and compelling. West Side Story is a cultural touchstone, often referenced and parodied, so the danger of approaching it afresh is that there’s going to be baggage. Spielberg and Kushner deftly navigate this, presenting something that feels at once fresh and classic.

West Side Story has often been criticised by Puerto Rican people for its stereotypical portrayal of Puerto Rican characters. The original creative team was, after all, entirely comprised of people who did not have the first-hand experience that would have made the story more authentic. There are pains taken here to paint in strokes that aren’t quite so broad, with Puerto Rican writer, director and choreographer (and protégé of Jerome Robbins) Julio Monge on board as a consultant. However, there still are Puerto Rican people who feel West Side Story is beyond salvaging, and this reviewer has no place to argue with their interpretation. For all its strengths, the movie also highlights the need for people from varied backgrounds to tell their own stories on platforms they have historically had limited access to.

There isn’t really any stunt casting going on here, which is one of the pitfalls of movie musicals. The star is Spielberg. Most of the key roles are filled by actors with considerable musical theatre experience. Former Newsie Mike Faist and former Billy Elliot David Alvarez, both strong dancers, are wonderful foils for each other. Ariana DeBose is a powerhouse and commands the screen.

Rachel Zegler is a revelation, radiant, endearing and possessing incredible vocal control. This is a rare, miraculous instant movie star-type performance. She already has roles in Shazam: Fury of the Gods and Disney’s Snow White remake lined up.

Unfortunately, the one big misstep here is the casting of Ansel Elgort. He is not a bad singer, having obviously put effort into trying to keep up with his much more musically experienced co-stars, but once he’s in a duet with Zegler, it’s all over. She runs rings around him, and this is on top of how Tony was always kinda boring to begin with.

Rita Moreno is one of the highlights of the film. The actress portrayed Anita in the 1961 film, and here, plays Valentina, a modified version of the Doc character who looks out for Tony. She sings “Somewhere” in one of the film’s most powerful moments.

One would think that getting the music right would be a priority for any movie musical, and yet, movies like 2012’s Les Misérables and 2019’s Cats have shown how things can go horribly awry. West Side Story is serious about its music – after all, the songs by Bernstein and Sondheim, including standards like “Tonight” and “Maria,” are evergreen and beloved. The musical arrangement by David Newman is both majestic and nimble, with composer/arranger Jeanine Tesori working with the actors on their vocals. The score is recorded by the New York Philharmonic with additional material by the L.A. Philharmonic, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. The sound editing and mixing shows the music off in all its glory, with the performers delivering some of the best-sounding singing in a movie musical in recent memory.

Summary: A purely cinematic experience, this new adaptation of West Side Story is as classic as it is dynamic. Featuring performances from musical theatre performers including Mike Faist, David Alvarez and Ariana DeBose and featuring a revelatory performance from young star Rachel Zegler, these are actors who are at home with the material and who more than do it justice. Rita Moreno provides an important link to the past, delivering a genuinely emotional supporting performance. West Side Story looks and sounds amazing, boasting enough thematic richness to justify its existence.   

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

The Marksman review

For F*** Magazine

Director: Robert Lorenz
Cast : Liam Neeson, Joe Perez, Katheryn Winnick, Juan Pablo Raba, Teresa Ruiz, Dylan Kenin, Luce Rains
Genre: Action/Thriller/Drama
Run Time : 108 min
Opens : 25 February 2021
Rating : PG13

Some might say comic book movies are the most prevalent genre now, but perhaps “Liam Neeson with a gun” is a close second. Here’s another one to add to the pile, and in case you weren’t sure if Neeson’s character wields a gun, it’s right there in the title.

Jim Hanson (Liam Neeson), not to be confused with the creator of the Muppets whose name is one letter away, is a rancher and retired U.S. Marine. His wife has died of cancer and his farm is about to be foreclosed upon. His property is along the Mexico/US border in Arizona, and he happens upon a woman named Rosa (Teresa Ruiz) and her son Miguel (Joe Perez) trying to cross the border, pursued by cartel members. Joe reluctantly embarks on a mission to get Miguel to family members in Chicago, all the while pursued by the cartel members, who are led by the deadly lieutenant Maurico (Juan Pablo Raba).

This movie makes very good use of Liam Neeson’s talents. He’s outwardly gruff but innately decent, a badass with a heart of gold. Neeson is a perfect fit for the neo-Western genre, and Jim is very easy to root for. The movie is sturdy and straightforward, and young actor Perez is not bad opposite Neeson. The Marksman is predictable but is solidly made and handsomely shot by Director of Photography Mark Patten, who has mostly worked in British TV.

For a movie in which the protagonist is relentlessly pursued, there is a crucial lack of urgency to the proceedings. The Marksman feels considerably longer than its 108 minutes. Director Robert Lorenz seems to be aiming for the stillness of a classic western, but instead it feels like the characters are just waiting around. When the action does happen, it is largely unremarkable.

The Marksman also strains to be apolitical to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, but the issue of people crossing the US/Mexico border illegally is an inherently political one. It wants to be grounded, but also doesn’t want to engage with reality too directly, which is sometimes to the movie’s detriment.

There are moments when Jim and Miguel display glimmers of personality, but the movie is mostly taciturn and doesn’t really let us get to know either character. It also trades in cliches, with Jim having a bog-standard backstory (retired military man whose wife has died). Katheryn Winnick plays Jim’s stepdaughter Sarah, who is ostensibly the female lead but is almost completely a non-entity.

Lorenz, the movie’s director, producer and co-writer, is a long-time producing partner of Clint Eastwood. This feels like something that Eastwood would star in, and perhaps Neeson works better because he is a warmer presence than Eastwood is, especially now. There’s a scene in this movie in which Jim and Miguel watch the Eastwood starrer Hang ‘Em High in a motel room, which Lorenz included as a nod to his mentor.

If you love Liam Neeson’s late-career action work, this is more of the same. It’s not the most exciting or the most compelling, but it does play to all his strengths, and does have an old-fashioned reliability to it.

Summary: A competent if only sporadically engaging neo-western, The Marksman sees Liam Neeson on fine late-career form.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Richard Jewell review

For F*** Magazine

RICHARD JEWELL

Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast : Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Olivia Wilde, Jon Hamm, Nina Ariadna, Ian Gomez
Genre : Drama/Biographical
Run Time : 2 h 11 mins
Opens : 9 January 2020
Rating : NC16

From director Clint Eastwood and writer Billy Ray comes a biopic about Richard Jewell, the man who called in a bomb threat and was vilified as a suspect. The film is based on the 1997 Vanity Fair article American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell by Marie Brenner, and the 2019 book The Suspect: An Olympic Bombing, the FBI, the Media, and Richard Jewell, the Man Caught in the Middle by Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwen.

It is July 1996 and the 26^th Summer Olympics are taking place in Atlanta, Georgia. Richard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser), a security guard working at Centennial Park, notices a suspicious knapsack that is found to contain three pipe bombs. He is initially hailed as a hero but is soon regarded as a suspect in the bombing by the FBI, with agent Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) strongly believing Richard to be the culprit. Tipped off by Shaw, Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde) breaks the story about Richard’s status as a suspect. The overwhelming media attention overwhelms Richard and his mother Bobbi (Kathy Bates). Richard turns to Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), a lawyer who worked at a public law firm where Richard was a supply clerk ten years ago, for help. Watson must help Richard clear his name and turn the tide of public opinion.

Eastwood has been directing movies for over 30 years and is a skilled technical director. Richard Jewell captures the 1996 Atlanta setting with enough authenticity – the film was shot on location at the actual Centennial Park. The scene in which Richard discovers the bomb is tense and gripping. Later, a scene in which Watson times a walk between the site where the bomb was placed and the public payphones where the bomber called 911 is stylishly cut with footage of sprinter David Johnson at the Olympics. Eastwood tells the story efficiently and it is abundantly easy to sympathise with Richard, even as the viewer grows frustrated at him for being easily manipulated and a bit too naïve.

Eastwood is not just a good technical director, but a good actors’ director as well. He draws excellent performances from his cast here. Paul Walter Hauser is a loveable, hapless figure as Richard Jewell – he is not especially bright, but the film attempts to give him some dimensions.

Kathy Bates is a warm presence as Richard’s mother Bobbi, who simply wants the best for her son and cannot bear to see him falsely accused and placed under such immense pressure. Rockwell is a go-to actor for slimy roles, so it is always nice to see him in largely noble parts. Watson is an honest salt-of-the-earth type but is also fiery and impassioned. Some of the film’s best scenes are between Hauser and Rockwell.

Any film based on a true story will have inaccuracies, and one or two of the real people portrayed in said film – or those who knew them – are bound to come out and speak against the way they were characterised in the movie. With Richard Jewell, the inaccuracies seem more calculated. It’s harder to view them as honest mistakes and easier to believe that Eastwood had an agenda going on. It is common for biopics to make a larger point and provide commentary beyond the specific subject matter, but it feels like Richard Jewell leans too far in that direction, reducing the story to a vehicle for Eastwood’s political views.

The film does a huge disservice to journalist Kathy Scruggs, who passed away in 2001 from a prescription drug overdose after dealing with depression and is not around to defend herself. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran an open letter by its editor-in-chief responding to how Scruggs and by extension the paper was portrayed in Richard Jewell. In the film, Scruggs is shown sleeping with a source for a scoop. The source, Jon Hamm’s FBI Agent Shaw, is a fictionalised composite character, but Scruggs was very much a real person. This propagates the insidious trope that women journalists trade sexual favours for tips. Authors Alexander and Salwen, whose non-fiction book was the basis of the movie, have firmly maintained that Scruggs did not sleep with an FBI agent to obtain information for her story.

In real life, Richard Jewell certainly was treated unjustly by both law enforcement and the media. However, the film goes out of its way to portray the media and the FBI as unscrupulous and out to destroy Richard’s life. Eastwood is remarkably unsubtle about this, and in order to simplify the story, creates two main ‘villains’ in Shaw and Scruggs. Wilde’s Scruggs is nigh-cartoonishly evil. In trying to clear the name of its title character, Richard Jewell trades in false accusations, something that is regrettable given the quality of the performances in the film.

Summary: Richard Jewell is the work of a skilled filmmaker but is also the work of a filmmaker with an agenda. It is worth seeing for the performances, especially Paul Walter Hauser’s, but this recommendation comes with the caveat that one should research the true story and not take the film’s version of events at face value. In going further than necessary to make the media and the FBI the villains of the piece, Eastwood comes off as dishonest and irresponsible, even though the film is well directed and strongly acted.

RATING: 3 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong