It's hard not to admire the sheer ambition on display and the profound oddity of the story and performances. It's a big swing with a big budget (reportedly north of $80 million) adapting a major work of literature which tackles some of the most fundamental themes within American society. But it's also a hell of a good time if you're willing to give yourself over to the madness.
Blanchett is titanic, disappearing into a character consumed by ego and self-interest. Lydia Tár must be many things: a virtuoso pianist (Blanchett learned), a German speaker (she learned), a conductor (Blanchett’s physicality from behind the rostrum affronts the view), and someone capable of speaking as an absolute authority on matters of classical music.
Here, most of the affluent passengers exist as jokes themselves, with next to no time spent digging more deeply into their individual or shared psychologies. One couple is defined by their profession, another by her insistence on getting the crew to go swimming. And then they vanish, unexamined, until they're shown knee-deep in filth.
Violence is in the air in this film, even if it rarely comes to fruition.
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Blanchett is titanic, disappearing into a character consumed by ego and self-interest. Lydia Tár must be many things: a virtuoso pianist (Blanchett learned), a German speaker (she learned), a conductor (Blanchett’s physicality from behind the rostrum affronts the view), and someone capable of speaking as an absolute authority on matters of classical music.
Here, most of the affluent passengers exist as jokes themselves, with next to no time spent digging more deeply into their individual or shared psychologies. One couple is defined by their profession, another by her insistence on getting the crew to go swimming. And then they vanish, unexamined, until they're shown knee-deep in filth.
Violence is in the air in this film, even if it rarely comes to fruition.
It's hard not to admire the sheer ambition on display and the profound oddity of the story and performances. It's a big swing with a big budget. But it's also a hell of a good time if you're willing to give yourself over to the madness.
Davis is, at most, a shade removed from other contemporary American grifters. From Ray Kroc to Donald Trump to David Siegel, they all operate in vaguely the same way.
This both is and is not a film about dance and performance. More so than anything, it's about what it means to be alone for a long time and how glorious it is to finally feel energized, supported, and loved.
In diving deep into the heart of chaos and creation, they absorbed the energy of their surroundings and fed it into one another.
The film purports to make meaningful observations on the state of modern media, on our current political climate, on the age of disinformation. It doesn't. It serves the audience an enormous steak, well-done to the point of being burnt, and an abundance of sides, all of which are missing crucial ingredients.
Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley, a remake and reinterpretation of Edmund Goulding's 1947 film of the same name, opens with Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) dragging a tightly-wrapped corpse to the center of a room and lighting it on fire.
Whereas the majority of movies in theaters now take place in established cinematic locales (i.e., New York and Los Angeles), Red Rocket continues the project Baker started with 2015's Tangerine and 2017's The Florida Project by depicting those American communities typically left undiscussed.
What makes Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner's 2021 West Side Story revival so lovely and, at points, so magical is not the spectacle or the songs. It’s the distinct way in which Spielberg is able to capture joy on screen.
From the moment the MGM lion roars, you feel that you're in the hands of a master filmmaker producing yet another great work. Licorice Pizza fits neatly into a lineage of films alongside Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk Love, and Phantom Thread.
With each pronounced step Patrizia arrives over and over again to the adulation of countless male laborers in the area. It's as though they can't help but applaud and thank her simply for being there. The movie theater audience is no different. From first blush she arrests your attention and all you can do is smile and sit, almost unblinking, until she's done.
