4.5 stars out of 5
First and foremost, this is not A Quiet Place III. Though it is a pretty quiet movie. The Quiet Girl, from Ireland, was one of the 2023 Oscar nominees for Best International Feature Film. It didn’t win, but it is terrific.
I’m not sure when the movie is set — late 70s? early 80s? — though I narrowed down the timeframe faster than I did for Women Talking. What we have here is a quiet girl, Cáit (pronounced “Cort”), living in rural Ireland with a white-trash family, or whatever the Irish equivalent of white trash is. Dad drinks a lot, mom is preggers again, money’s too tight to mention, and Cáit is prone to wandering off and hiding. Till the new baby arrives, they send Cáit off to live with an older couple, mom’s cousin, a few hours away.
What transpires is a sweet, slowly unfolding story about gaining and earning trust, not accepting your prescribed fate, carrying on after troubles… and that family is where you find it.
Young Catherine Clinch as Cáit has never been in anything before and she is marvelous. Again, she’s quiet, but gives little glances, small motions; she’s holding so much inside. In this life of ours there are loud, running-around, confident kids but if you were among the rest of us, you will connect with Cáit on a soulful level.
Carrie Crowley as foster mom Eibhlín oozes compassion and patience tempered by some underlying fatigue and sadness. Andrew Bennett is the foster dad (jimminy, he was the narrator in Angela’s Ashes; small country!) and you might say he’s The Quiet Farmer but he has an internal life too and a code to live by, and, well, just give him time. Michael Patric as her real da is sufficient though I kept wondering what Colin Farrell would’ve done with the role. Likely it would’ve been distracting.
Cheers to writer/director Colm Bairéad, only his second feature and nearly each piece perfectly placed. (Script is adapted from the novella Foster by Claire Keegan; will have to check out her work.)
Note to viewers (and I hope you will, soon): The movie is subtitled as they’re mostly speaking Gaelic. Interestingly, characters will switch off into English and then switch back; I didn’t know if that was less formal or what. But, interesting.
The film’s emotional intensity really snuck up on me, and as the end credits rolled I found myself weeping. Quietly.
Movie Review: The Quiet Girl
Movie Review: Creed III
3.5 stars out of 5
Are all the movies trying to make me feel old? Adonis Creed is Rocky’s young protégé, and now he’s retired too? Sheesh! We’ve now reached the Rocky III period in the life of Creed, where after his latest title defense, the wealthy, famous, happy-at-home champ hangs up his boxing gloves. But just when he thought he out, they pull Creed back in — to face an imposing challenger from the streets, Clubber Lang… uh… [checks notes] Diamond Dame Anderson.
Creed and Creed II both hovered in the very good/pretty good range, and the latest installment is no exception. In the first movie, we learned that young Adonis had been in a Los Angeles youth home, and that angle is revisited here. His buddy Dame was supposed to be the boxing phenom but ends up behind bars instead. (Was happy to see Spence Moore II, Dan on one of my fave recent shows A.P. Bio, playing teenage Dame in flashbacks.)
Flash-forward to the present, Dame is back in society and wants his long-delayed shot at the championship belt. (Jonathan Majors is much more intimidating as Diamond Dame than he was as Kang the Conqueror, and in a wild twist, Majors is an American actor, not British!) Creed feels guilty about how things went down back in the day so he helps out his childhood pal.
As in any series, it’s a comfort to see our old friends, and here we have Tessa Thompson back as Mrs. Creed, Phylicia Rashad as Mama Creed, The Wire’s Avon Barksdale as Creed’s trainer, and even Viktor Drago returns. Notably absent: no Michael Buffer as the ring announcer, and, no Rocky Balboa. Stallone is a producer on the film, and the character’s presence still hangs over the film, down to a Bill Conti musical cue.
Michael B. Jordan is again solid as Adonis Creed, and also sits in the director’s chair for the first time. (Not that it’s a competition, but Sly was directing by Rocky II.) Jordan does an adequate job behind the camera, even attempting an extended artful sequence. It’s not entirely successful, but I appreciate the effort. (An even less successful moment has Creed and Dame on opposite sides of a wall.)
I also appreciated that the movie wasn’t afraid to have several slower, thoughtful sections. A few people even walked out of the packed theater I was in; their loss! The screenplay deals with the specter of childhood trauma, the risk of bottling up memories and emotions, challenges of parenthood, and ever-present guilt without getting too heavy-handed. Without Ryan Coogler or Stallone as screenwriters this time around, it falls upon Ryan’s kid brother Keenan Coogler to co-write. Again, it’s mostly successful — I’d say this is just a notch below the first two Creed films. And I must admit, there was a key moment when I was really hoping Rocky would show up. I was craving that little extra excitement.
Of course it all leads up to the big fight, and of course I was cheering. As long as they keep making these movies, I’ll keep seeing them. (OK, please don’t tell Sly I skipped that last Rambo.)
Movie Review: Ant-Man and the Wasp—Quantumania
2 stars out of 5
It was a drizzly winter day on the Jersey shore and I had hours to kill. “Oh, I’ll see a movie,” I thought. Alas, Asbury Park’s art theater isn’t open mid-week in the off-season. I had no choice but to go to the mall multiplex. This, of course, was no problem for me. Being “high brow/low brow” is kind of my thing. Plus, I really liked the previous Ant-Man installment (though I had found part 1 to be mediocre at best).
Chapter 3 is, um, what’s that phrase, ah yes… not good. I have some free advice to the Marvel brass: Take a step back. How about one hero, one villain, and, I don’t know, the fate of a city at stake or something? This time-shifting, parallel-world, all-powerful-being nonsense is ridonkulous. Ant-Man and his crew fall through a portal into some alternate universe (the “Quantum realm”) and I was reminded of being a kid trying to watch that first Star Trek movie and the Enterprise is going through a big space cloud… and going through a big space cloud… and going through a big space cloud… and it was so BORING.
Paul Rudd and pals land, and in classic sitcom form, two of the characters are off on one adventure and the other two handle the B plot. How will they get home? How will they stop the Worst Dude in the Galaxy? And how will they overcome having a screenwriter who doesn’t seem to know anything about science, though the whole series is predicated on genius-level scientific knowledge? (“How does it work? Um… it’s like those two-way radios we used to build.”)
Plus they rip off Star Wars with a supporting cast straight outta the Cantina and also a bunch of Jawas. Human-wise, Rudd is Rudd. He gets some cute Rudd stuff to do in the beginning. Evangeline Lilly, who had lots to do in Part II, has not very much to do in this installment (and her hair scorecard is now Pt 1, bad; Pt. 2, good; Pt. 3, bad). I’m embarrassed for Michael Douglas, who seems like a terrific guy but is tarnishing his career with his money-grubbing run as Dr. Hank Pym. Michelle Pfeiffer at least gets a more substantial role this time around. Bill Murray shows up and tries to add some zing to his lines, but they dress him up in a silly space costume with a high collar that really showcases his neck fat, which I found pretty distracting. Jonathan Majors is supervillain Captain Kangaroo King Kong Bundy Voldemort… eh, he’ll get another chance as a baddie soon in Creed III.
This movie is too long and not much fun, but if — like me — you’re merely looking to kill time on a rainy day, I guess it’ll do. Find a theater with comfortable seats, recliners if possible.
Movie Review: Infinity Pool
4 stars out of 5
I can imagine Mike White handing this in as a stand-alone episode of White Lotus and getting immediately fired and banned by HBO. In Infinity Pool, writer/director Brandon Cronenberg gives us his own version of an existentially bored couple at a tropic resort, but because of that last name, you can probably guess this movie is pretty fucked up.
And can I just say, you know you’re old when you think, “Oh a movie by the son of one of my favorite directors; let’s see what the kid is up to” — and then you find out the “kid” is 43 years old. Sheesh!
OK, where were we, ah yes, tropical resort. Alexander “Please Let Me Get the Little Circle Above the A on the First Try” Skarsgård (editor’s note: not even close) is James Foster, an author with writer’s block hoping to find inspiration on a vacation funded by his supportive-but-don’t-push-me wife Em. They start hanging out with another couple, one half of which is flirty, alluring Gabi. She’s played by Mia Goth who in a real-life Cronenbergian twist, has been impregnated by Shia LaBeouf. Yick!
After a day and night of couple carousing, James finds himself in trouble with the law. And outside the gates of the resort, there is some rough island justice! (Police HQ looks a bit like the rundown government buildings in Papa Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future; it was interesting to see that this movie was filmed in Hungary and Croatia.) Gabi assures James that it can all be taken care of, swept away, which we soon learn is because everybody has a price.
Plot-wise, I’m going to stop right there, as to not spoil the fun. Maybe “fun” isn’t the right word? No, there is certainly some fun, and some dark laughs. Very dark. (Though not as dark as that chocolate my buddy brought back from Germany. Too dark! I digress.) But there is also some wonderfully disturbing content, insane visuals, hallucinatory freakouts, ultraviolence, scary shit, all dancing around some heady ethical questions to a soundtrack by the great Tim Hecker.
I was finding the movie really gripping… then I got a little bored by the “excess”… then Croney pushes the Messed-Up Meter deep into the red and totally won me back. All I can say is, David Cronenberg must be one proud papa.
Movie Review: Women Talking
3.5 stars out of 5
Well, I can’t say the title didn’t give me a heads-up. There is a lot of talking. Do you know that play A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking? Like, multiply that.
The more I read about the true story this is sort of based on, the more I wish this movie was a documentary, or at least “based on a true story.” There is an ultra-conservative, modern-world-shunning Mennonite community in Bolivia where the women were routinely drugged and raped. Holy shit, I want to know more about that.
Instead, this film is based on a novel, “an imagined response to real events.” Well, ok, we do get the basics (shifted to somewhere in the rural U.S., I suppose for relatability) but for me that disconnect created too much distance between reality and fiction, and as the story progressed I didn’t have the visceral reaction I would’ve expected. Or that the real events deserved.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good movie, well-made and well-performed (except Ben “Q” Whishaw, the token nice guy, whose character’s Whishaw-washiness got pretty tiresome). Frances McDormand is not in this nearly as much as the trailer led me to believe. We do get two different Girls With the Dragon Tattoos, Rooney Mara and Claire Foy. And as the women discuss their options — Should they stay or should they go now? Or, should they fight their attackers? — there are compelling topics raised for women in repressive cultures (who I don’t think have HBO Max? Not sure?) and for anyone in an abusive relationship. And different argument archetypes are well-represented: play it safe; let’s compromise; let’s burn it down; thoughts filtered through the young, old, and in-between.
There’s just so much talking.
It feels like a play, mostly in one room, for 104 minutes. When director Sarah Polley cuts away from that room, not enough interesting stuff happens before, wham, we’re back in the room. For more talking. It was in the title.
Movie Review: M3GAN
3 stars out of 5
Yes, I’m giving this E, uh I mean 3, stars. Like last year’s Barbarian, the filmmakers here are trying to do something a little different within the horror genre, and I appreciate that. Unfortunately, M3GAN’s filmmakers don’t try very hard. The result is pretty fun and certainly watchable, but ultimately forgettable.
So, we live in world with increasing artificial intelligence, with Alexa, Siri, yadda yadda, and what if toys became sentient and independent thinkers? That would be cool but maybe also kind of dangerous, don’t you think? Eh, let’s not worry about it and just see how it plays out, ok? OK!
Allison Williams, who seemed a lot more compelling on the small screen, is type-A tech wiz Gemma who suddenly becomes guardian of her dead sister’s daughter Cady. She’s not really cut out to be a mom, but maybe this robot doll she’s been working on could help out…. Gemma’s jerky boss gets a whiff of this cool M3GAN project and all he sees are dollar signs! This could be the hottest thing since, I don’t know, imagine a loaf of bread that you didn’t have to just rip hunks off to make sandwiches and stuff! That would be a real-game-changer, right? And M3GAN could be too so let’s rush into production willy-nilly without careful testing or whatever!
Also seemingly rushed into production is young Violet McGraw as Cady, who apparently is only capable of pouting. But not to single her out, because none of the actors here seem particularly good. Nor is the script, which in more talented hands could’ve been a clever cautionary tale about our addiction to smart machines, but instead is just a lazy “what if?” Likewise, the director keeps things moving along but never makes M3GAN truly terrifying. I was hoping for a real over-the-top conclusion but they just stick with light horror paint-by-numbers. And that number is E, dangit!, 3.
My Highly Subjective List of the Best Movies of 2022
It’s getting to be a bit of a drag for those of who like going out to the movies to see quality releases. Forced by finances, art theaters are devoting a chunk of their screens to big dumb Hollywood dreck. And many movies lucky enough to get a big-screen debut are quickly shuttled off to a streaming service. Nonetheless, I was able to cobble together a list of my favorite films from last year.
10) Decision to Leave What begins as a fairly standard detective story/neo-noir from Korean writer/director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) slowly builds and builds — plot-wise, emotionally, psychologically — to the level of a Shakespearean tragedy.
9) White Noise Noah Baumbach does an impressive job adapting Don DeLillo’s beloved satirical novel for the screen. Consumerism, media sensationalism, the medical establishment, and blended families all get skewered in a tale perfect for our pandemic times. Not much plot but lots of fun and smart laughs.
8) The Batman Robert Pattinson — leading a very strong cast — is terrific as tortured soul Bruce Wayne, and the filmmakers choose a wise path by placing the story in a realistic world with actual problems. (Imagine that!) Don’t worry, there’s plenty of cool action too. The result is, in my opinion, the best superhero movie in recent history.
7) Barbarian I don’t know if this is the first AirBnB horror flick, but I like the modern touches here, including a #metoo’d actor, police profiling, and more. Writer/director Zach Creggers takes reliable horror tropes and smartly shakes them up a bit. Cleverly constructed, scary as shit, and occasionally very funny, Barbarian kept me guessing.
6) Crimes of the Future At age 79, David Cronenberg has delivered perhaps his most f’ed up movie ever. Human evolution has sped up, with people growing new organs within and without themselves that have unclear functions. Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux are lovers and performance artists, making spectacle of these mutations for hipster crowds. Viggo is terrifically messed up, and Kristen Stewart is a delight as a government lackey fascinated by his world. Also there’s a cop story in here somewhere.
5) Funny Pages Owen Kline — son of Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates — has written and directed a self-assured feature debut which is by turns funny, sad, disturbing, and offbeat. And very Jersey. It’s a coming-of-age tale for Robert, ready to leave his comfortable home and high school in Princeton and pursue his gritty underground-comic dreams in Trenton. (WFMU and the Princeton Record Exchange also get nods.) Things don’t go exactly as planned for Robert, and people are strange when you’re a stranger, but it all allows him to grow.
4) Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio Paired with co-director/animator Mark Gustafson, del Toro gives us not only the clearly best family film of the year, but one of the overall best as well. Del Toro smartly picks and chooses from different versions of the Pinocchio tale, while also inserting his own twists, notably setting the story in early fascist Italy. (Even a wooden boy understands that Mussolini is a clod and war is for suckers.) The movie is flat-out gorgeous, and the voice talent is top-notch — Cate Blanchett, John Turturro, Christoph Waitz, Tilda Swinton, Ron Perlman, and especially Ewan McGregor as a certain charming cricket. But ultimately this is a story of fathers and sons, friendship, and the course of life itself, leading up to an incredibly heart-filled conclusion.
3) Moonage Daydream We perhaps didn’t need yet another David Bowie documentary, but director Brett Morgen found his own road in by focusing on identity — how Bowie thought of himself, and how he presented himself to the wider public. Morgen, with full access to the Bowie archives, follows his through line via incredible concert, interview, and news footage. Sit back and be transported.
2) The Banshees of Inisherin We start out with a funny, ultra-simple tale, with a rural Irish island playing as much of a part of any of the characters. It’s played out by a powerhouse cast: Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as the feuding friends leads, and also Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan. Things eventually take a darker turn (as things have been known to do), and we end up with an exploration of friendship, responsibility to others versus responsibility to ourselves, and nothing of short of the search for meaning in life itself.
1) The Fabelmans Steven Spielberg puts aside the sharks, space aliens, and big easy heart-tugs, and finds magic in his very own American suburban story: a boy growing up wanting to make movies. He tells it all — family strife, bullies, anti-semitism, girls, and that strong allure and safe haven of a camera — with humor, compassion, humility, well-earned insight, and an undeniable mastery of filmmaking. A perfect movie with an absolutely amazing ending.
Honorable mentions: Montana Story, Smile, Jurassic World: Dominion, The Bob’s Burgers Movie, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Worst movie: I had high hopes for Confess, Fletch — and hopes for Jon Hamm getting a movie series — but I confess that this was boring and too far-fetched.
New releases I saw this year: 32 (including 4 foreign films from 2021 not included in last year’s ratings: the excellent Happening, the very good The Worst Person in the World and Hold Me Tight, and the pretty good The Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy)
My best-of lists from: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017/16, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009
You can check out all my movie reviews by clicking here.
Movie Review: The Whale
3.5 stars out of 5
The film we’ve all been waiting for: Master storyteller Guillermo del Toro presents Pinocchio from the POV of the whale. Wait, this one is Brendan “Mummy” Fraser in a fat suit? Jiminy Crickets!
There was so much advance buzz about Fraser’s comeback performance (I think the last time I saw him was an uncredited role in Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star), that I’d forgotten this was a Darren Aronofsky film. I like Aronofsky a lot! Well, except for The Fountain, which was godawful, and Noah, which was pretty good but unnecessary. So, this was going to be extry good, right?
Um, no. Granted, Fraser does an amazing job and the movie is worth seeing just for that. (Would have been even more impressive if he’d truly put on all that weight — I mean, come on, a young DeNiro would’ve! Body Mass Index be damned!) He gives us the full gamut of emotions and feelings: frustrated, sad, frightened, determined, giving up, stubborn, sweet, optimistic, etc. There is also much physicality to the role and he nails it.
Unfortunately, Fraser is not supported by great material. This is where I felt a little cheated. Aronofsky usually writes the movies that he directs; this time it’s based on a play, with a script by that writer. And yes, it feels very much like a play: It is mostly set in one room (main room of the fat guy’s dingy apartment). Other characters enter and exit. Scene, fade to black, next scene. It just doesn’t seem to be a very good play. Our morbidly obese main character has a devoted friend who is thankfully a nurse (Hong Chau in a solid performance). A missionary comes by (Ty Simpkins not making much impression), and like a wacky neighbor, he keeps dropping in unannounced. Enter the estranged teen daughter (a very good Sadie Sink) who is resentful, nasty, rebellious, hurt. These four characters in search of a theme discuss health and religion and broken families and being honest and it doesn’t really get anywhere. I think I was supposed to well up with tears but I did not.
Fraser deserves an Oscar nomination; the film doesn’t deserve much more. (Will even be runner-up in Most Unpleasant Masturbation Scene of the year, after Funny Pages.) Watch The Whale at home or on a plane. I guess another positive is you’ll likely have small portion sizes at your next couple of meals.
New Year’s Resolutions 2023
1. Attend my first rodeo. Oh wait.
2. Bring back phrase “23 skidoo.”
3. Market computerized sex doll with tag line “Any USB port in a storm.”
4. Shamelessly promote the free indiepop show I’m presenting at Pet Shop, 193 Newark Avenue in Jersey City on Thursday, February 9, featuring the bands Joy Cleaner, the Human Hearts, and the Ekphrastics. Encourage people to “save the date.”
5. Look up the word “ekphrastic.”
6. Build car where the back looks like the front to really confuse the driver behind me.
7. Keep clicking Accept All Cookies until some damn cookies come out of my phone.
8. Pitch to HBO Max: Tales From the Cryptocurrency
9. In the 9th month, try not to do the same old things and really make it a deviated Septumber.
10. Remain humble.
11. Eat fewer Reese’s mini peanut butter cups. But, in the meantime, convince Reese’s that the foil-wrapped mini cups don’t also need that little brown paper wrap around them because it is *so* much work and we just want our freaking candy, am I right, people?!?
12. Finally deal with my uncle’s ashes, even though it’ll be very difficult gluing him back together.
• My resolutions for 2022
• My resolutions for 2021
• My resolutions for 2020
• My resolutions for 2019
• My resolutions for 2018
• My resolutions for 2017
• My resolutions for 2016
• My resolutions for 2015
• My resolutions for 2014
• My resolutions for 2013
• My resolutions for 2012
Movie Review: White Noise
4 stars out of 5
Don DeLillo’s White Noise, from 1985, is considered one of the great satirical novels of modern literature. I finally got around to reading it 3 years ago. In summing up my thoughts in my Goodreads review, I said that while I didn’t think it was a masterpiece, I found the book to be “wonderfully enjoyable.” And I’ll basically say the same about Noah Baumbach’s film adaptation: not amazing but really good, and a whole lot of fun.
Baumbo often comes across as a Woody wannabe and in that spirit he brings back many of his regular players: Adam Driver as the dad, Greta Gerwig as the mom, Dean & Britta singing in a campground, even LCD Soundsystem bust out their first new song in 5 years for the end credits. And while the set-up is pure Woody — Driver is an esteemed professor of Hitler Studies at the College on the Hill, hobnobbing with his academia colleagues (including André 3000!) — DeLillo’s story takes Noah on a more middle-class American voyage, skewering consumerism, blended families, the medical establishment, media sensationalism, etc. Baumbach keeps the mid-80s time frame, perhaps just to goof around with wardrobe and production design.
Same as in the novel, a plot twist brings an Airborne Toxic Event and resultant public panic to the region. (In this section of the film, Baumbach even gets to indulge his inner Spielberg.) And while this seemed more relevant during my 2019 read than during the book’s initial writing, try watching this health scare play out after 3 years of a global pandemic whydoncha!!
Driver does a nice job vacillating between being overconfident and terrified; he’s having a good time here. Gerwig has a crazy hairdo and is terrified but not confident while sadly trying to fit in as a pill-popping suburban mom. Of the multiple kids I’ll single out the strong performance by Raffey Cassidy as the sleuthing eldest daughter.
The novel didn’t really have a plot and neither does the movie but I think you’ll like it more than the older woman behind me who kept saying “What’s going on? This is weird!” There are some good laughs and things to think about and if you don’t want to drag yourself to the theater, it’s a Netflix production so you can soon watch it on your phone — that’s modern American convenience!
Jack Silbert, curator