5 stars out of 5
I’m not much of a Shakespeare buff, but MacBeth is my boy, yo! We read it in junior year of high school, and with my pals Steve, Rob, and Ken, made a related video project entitled Late Night With David MacLetterman. Two years later, I was lucky to see Christopher Plummer as MacBeth in Pittsburgh. So, of all Shakey’s works, I know this play the best.
As a result, I was less intimidated by the prospect of seeing a new filmic adaptation. Especially because it was directed by one half of my beloved Coen brothers, Joel.
And yet… hearing that Shakespearean language can be a struggle. I’ve seen several, ahem, lesser productions of the Bard’s oeuvre, and I usually have to refer to hastily googled synopses to have any idea what’s going on. Joel Coen is credited as the screenwriter here, so I was thinking, maybe he smoothed it out for me.
He did not.
And yet… not a problem! Coen is such a skillful filmmaker, with such a remarkably talented cast, that I was able to follow this from nave to the chops, and was riveted throughout.
Along with Nightmare Alley, this is the second great neo-noir of the season. MacBeth is the classic noir protagonist: He gets a taste of success and becomes greedy for more, by any means necessary. As the story progresses, his moral deficiencies are laid bare. Denzel Washington knocks it out of the park, immediately becoming an Oscar favorite for me. He seamlessly takes the character from humility to insecurity to bravado to paranoia and at last, to madness. We see on Washington’s face the inner torment he struggles with more and more, as guilt asserts itself. In a career of excellent performances, this is one of his best.
Then there’s Lady MacBeth (a.k.a. Lady Coen), Frances McDormand. With fresh eyes, I’d argue that Willy Shakes underwrote the character a tad. Still, she definitely makes an impression. When MacBeth is nervous and unsure, Lady Mac eggs him on to follow his worst instincts. She’s the cold-hearted schemer behind the scenes, a Dick Cheney, a Steve Bannon — history is littered with them. And when Big Mac starts to snap, she glares at him to keep it together. McDormand too pulls out all the stops. Her eyes light up like a pinball machine when she learns MacBeth is the man who would be king. Yaaaasssss queen!! She’s carnal, calculating, and finally, koo-koo. (If I had a nickel every time a woman said to “unsex me here.”)
Brendan Gleeson is suitably royal as good king Duncan, and you always know there will be fun when fellow Coen returnee Stephen Root emerges from a desk in the basement.
The cinematography and dramatic lighting are masterful. (This is how black and white is supposed to be done, Branagh.) The sets are spare and suggest a theatrical production except, you know, better. Coen composer Carter Burwell ups his game with a powerful score. The film is scary (oh those weird sisters!) and exciting and there’s not an ounce of fat. (Unlike so many bloated current flicks, Coen keeps it tidy at 105 minutes.) I am still eager for the next full-length, one-story offering written for the screen and directed by the Coen Bros. — come on, fellas, it’s been six years since Hail, Caesar! — but in the interim, this will do quite nicely.
Movie Review: The Tragedy of MacBeth
Aquarium Playlist, 1/4/22
EPISODE #468: MOTOWN
Theme suggested by contest winner Marian Steffens.
The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
Kiwi Jr. — “Maid Marian’s Toast”
Smokey Robinson & the Miracles — “(Come ’Round Here) I’m the One You Need”
The Supremes — “Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart”
The Four Tops — “You Keep Running Away”
Martha Reeves & the Vandellas — “I’ll Have To Let Him Go”
The Temptations — “(I Know) I’m Losing You”
Gladys Knight & the Pips — “Any Girl in Love (Knows What I’m Going Through)”
The Contours — “Whole Lotta Woman”
Mary Wells — “When I’m Gone”
Marvin Gaye — “You’re a Wonderful One”
The Spinners — “Truly Yours”
Edwin Starr — “If My Heart Could Tell a Story”
The Marvelettes — “Girls Need Love and Affection”
The Isley Brothers — “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)”
The Jackson 5 — “The Love You Save”
Stevie Wonder — “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever)”
Jack Silbert proudly records the Aquarium podcast in Hoboken, NJ.
New Year’s Resolutions 2022
1. Stop meddling in friends’ lives, focus on medaling in the Winter Olympics.
2. Create a set of lower-case numbers.
3. Start letter-writing campaign for a Grey Poupon Groupon.
4. Add a plus after my name.
• Resolutions 5 and 6 unavailable due to covid protocols.
7. Realize that my nervousness about not getting felt up by the ex-New York governor was only Andrew FOMO.
8. Build a giant foam O.
9. Set up monthly recurring option to reduce the balance on my car, which for those of you not “up” on tech terms are known as auto auto payments.
10. Launch my one-man show, Hal Holbrook Tonight!
11. Publish my academic paper “Why Texans Don’t Know the Middle of the Alphabet: Remember the LMO”
12. Fly into space with Scrooge McDuck.
• 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 2015
• My resolutions for 2014
• My resolutions for 2013
• My resolutions for 2012
Movie Review: Nightmare Alley
4.5 stars out of 5
During pandemic days, or shall I say nights, I’ve really upped my watching of Eddie Muller’s Noir Alley offerings on TCM. One film I haven’t caught — or didn’t even known about till today — is 1947’s Nightmare Alley. Which is probably for the best, as I strolled into 2021’s Nightmare Alley remake without any preconceptions beyond my fandom for Guillermo del Toro.
Del Toro gets to indulge a clear love of noir — the lighting, camera angles, heavy music, etc. — while combining it with his established fondness for freaks, this time in a carnival setting. At the beginning I worried that the whole “backstage at the old-timey carnival/circus freak show” thing was cinematically played out, featured in recent years in everything from Tim Burton’s Dumbo to American Horror Story. But a storyteller as gifted as del Toro can make an old concept (not to mention an old movie) his own, especially with an A-list cast. Bradley Cooper leads the way as a mysterious but game drifter willing to work his way up in Willem Dafoe’s (occasionally) traveling show. Cooper initially seems good-natured and eager to learn the tricks of the trade. But this is noir, so we soon learn that he’s greedy and looking for shortcuts to the big time as a mentalist. It’s a good role for Cooper: being the mid-American nice guy is something he can do in his sleep, but he gets to sink his teeth into the darker core of this character.
Dafoe has the perfect face and voice for the mostly on-the-level but “come on kid this is carnival life” boss. Also around the tents we have subdued, innocent Rooney Mara, kind-faced veteran mentalist Toni Collette and her booze-slowed partner David Strathairn, and strongman Ron Perlman. Once Cooper convinces Mara to run off to the bright lights of the big city for their own two-person act, we meet femme fatale Cate Blanchett, smiling socialite Mary Steenburgen, the always great and initially unrecognizable Richard Jenkins as a man of wealth and taste, and my boy Holt McCallany (Mindhunter, Lights Out) as Jenkins’ muscle.
As the drama revs up, so does del Toro’s bravura filmmaking, and Nightmare Alley is a thrilling, beautifully-constructed neo noir.
Movie Review: Drive My Car
4.5 stars out of 5
When my Golden Books picture book The Christmas Aliens was published in 1998, my friend Dave wrote a joke review on Amazon proclaiming it the “best book since Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase.” I’d never heard of Haruki Murakami but soon picked up that novel and was entranced. Two-plus decades later, when I learned this movie was based on a Murakami short story (one I haven’t yet read), I knew I had to see it. I am pleased to report that Drive My Car is perhaps the best movie I’ve seen this year.
There is a lot going on in this film and it fills 3 hours comfortably. The basics: Kafuku (played with subtlety by Hidetoshi Nishijima) is an actor and director, married to Oto, a screenwriter. He is diagnosed with glaucoma, threatening his ability to drive his beloved car. Also troubling for him: Oto is unfaithful. Something bad happens. And we haven’t even seen the opening credits yet.
The bulk of the film is set later, in Hiroshima (!), where Kafuku has been hired to direct a production of his specialty, Uncle Vanya. They want Kafuku’s innovative method of casting actors who speak different languages. (For his audiences, subtitles are projected on a screen.) So characters communicate in Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, even sign language, with some English thrown in from the crew. Kafuku is staying on an island an hour outside the city; the festival staff inform him they’re required to hire a driver to transport him in his beloved car. (Curb Your Enthusiasm fans will get an unintended laugh when he meets the driver.)
Over the course of the movie they deal with control and the loss of it, death, guilt, love, sin, fame, stoicism, youth vs. experience, surrendering oneself, the difficulty of communication and the satisfaction of overcoming that, etc. The director/co-writer Ryûsuke Hamaguchi deftly interweaves sections of Uncle Vanya (during rehearsals, and also played on tape during Kafuku’s commute) to mirror what’s going on in Kafuku’s life and mind.
What maybe impressed me most of all about Drive My Car was a maturity of thought, a realization that over time we can admit our errors and, with luck, move on. It’s a lovely, quiet, thoughtful film that I highly recommend.
Movie Review: Licorice Pizza
4 stars out of 5
In the ongoing battle of the Andersons, Wes served first this year with The French Dispatch, but Paul Thomas has returned serve strongly with Licorice Pizza. Interestingly, both films are actually more collections of scenes rather than cohesive plot-driven narratives. And where Wes’s was studied and precise, P.T. throws it all out there — joyfully so — and wins this match.
I can’t say enough about the leads, Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim. As you likely know, Cooper is the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, and in terms of sons of deceased actors in 2021 movies, he wipes the floor with Michael Gandolfini. Cooper effortlessly shifts moods: enthusiastic, happy, sad, cocky, determined, conniving, disappointed, jealous, lovestruck, often with a sense of wonder in his eyes. Watching this incredible debut performance, I became thrilled by the notion that we have decades of another Hoffman to look forward to (assuming he continues working — there’s nothing else listed on his IMDb page, arrrrggghhh!!).
Then there’s Alana Haim of the popular sister act HAIM and how is it possible they’ve been around for NINE YEARS already? How old am I, fer crissakes? This is her debut as well, and she pretty much matches Cooper in the acting department. Her “Alana” does not suffer fools, especially foolish young Gary Valentine (Hoffman), and she’s built a sturdy emotional fortress around herself. Yet occasionally she shows us a glimpse of vulnerability. Add in that Haim is s-e-x-x-y in a nerd-magnet sort of way and very comically gifted, and, well, I’d watch these two actors do anything.
Which P.T. Anderson basically lets them do, setting them loose in the obstacle course of 1973 Los Angeles. Here they deal with young vs. old, fame vs. obscurity, the greater good vs. personal gain, religion, fads, phoniness, platonic relationships and the insane jealously that often results, etc. etc. etc. And oh we also get Waitress from Sunny as Gary’s stage mom, and Sean Penn as a fading action star, and Tom Waits as who the hell knows but it’s vintage Waits, and Bradley Cooper as actual-person Jon Peters, and no spoilers but there are names in the credits that will make you smile from ear-to-ear. P.T. then places them variously in a runaway truck, on a nighttime golf course, at Shabbat dinner, in the — wait, is that the campaign office from Taxi Driver?? — and on and on. What a rush!
OK, so there isn’t really a plot beyond “will they or won’t they” and Alana coping with their zany age difference. But there are big laughs and sweetness and groovy tunes. So go enjoy yourself at the movies, you’ve earned it!
Aquarium Playlist, 12/28/21
EPISODE #467: NEW TO ME IN 2021
The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
Bat Fangs — “Talk Tough”
Katy Kirby — “Cool Dry Place”
Wizard Brain — “In the Morning of the Sun”
Erotic Novels — “Five Years Later”
Old Lady — “Buff Coupe”
Little Hag — “Get Real!”
Nylon — “No Bother”
Jackson Pines — “Now or Never”
Anika Pyle — “Blame”
Savak — “Green and Desperate”
Saw in previous years, obtained records in 2021:
Early Riser — “Skeleton”
Constant Insult — “Best Seller”
Grace Bergere — “A Little Blood”
Graham Norwood — “Ago”
Sensational Country Blues Wonders — “Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar”
Disq — “How Are You”
This Is the Part Where You Help Me — “Baited Colony”
Heavy Lag — “Ditch My Shadow”
Hate Club — “Eat More”
Cup — “Tokyo Night Janitor”
Jack Silbert proudly records The Aquarium podcast in Hoboken, NJ.
Movie Review: Red Rocket
3.5 stars out of 5
Red Rocket is the new film from Sean Baker, writer/director of The Florida Project. I really liked the vibe and strong sense of place in that movie, and the great performance from Willem Dafoe. (What I didn’t like: There were so many SCREAMING KIDS in the story.) With this follow-up, Baker cements his understanding of the not-working class, swapping a run-down Florida motel for the scrubby outskirts of Texan oil refineries. Simon Rex stars as Mikey, back in town from Los Angeles, showing up at the door of Lexi (Bree Elrod) because he has nowhere else to go. Baker deftly allows the backstory to unfold slowly: Turns out Mikey is married to Lexi, and also he is a porn star, and also [no spoilers].
This is being marketed as a comedy and there are many laughs, but there’s a real underlying sadness at play. Mikey is a charmer and a low-rent hustler, a grown-ass man tooling around town on a bicycle. Rex plays him with a Bill Murray-esque energy and a vague effeminate quality that undercuts his proud hetero-studliness. It’s the kind of character that, against your better judgement, you root for, until you don’t anymore. Because Mikey is a user of anyone who shows him kindness: Lexi, worshipful neighbor Lonny, on-the-edge-of-18 Strawberry (Suzanna Son) who works at the donut shop. The 2016 presidential race hangs in the background here and it’s fitting, as we learned that a big percentage of the country, like Mikey, only cares about themselves.
While Dafoe was The Florida Project’s moral center, this movie really doesn’t have one, so it’s pretty bleak. There’s a real lonesomeness too, captured nicely in shots of empty nighttime streets in the dull glow of refinery lights. Lonny and Mikey, disconnected from the rest of the world, usually drive on the access road instead of the highway.
Structurally, the first two thirds of the movie doesn’t have much plot, and then the final third has too much. With one twist I became much more involved in the story and yet with the next I felt somewhat distanced. And without a strong ending, Red Rocket fizzles out a bit.
Movie Review: Spider-Man — No Way Home
3.5 stars out of 5
I thought we could get some peace and quiet while the Avengers are still off in disintegrated-into-ash land. But nope, the new Spidey flick starts yanking favorite old baddies from the Multiverse (registered trademark Zuckerberg Industries), and I bet the hack screenwriters were kicking themselves for already using Homecoming as a title for an earlier installment. Hey, it’s Alfred Molina from the days when these movies weren’t such cynical money-grabs! And Willem Dafoe! And, uh, that guy from Wings! And Jamie Foxx, was he in a Spider-Man movie?!? Oh yeah, one of those crappy Andrew Garfield jobbers.
There are a bunch of thrilling, well-executed action sequences in this, so if you like that sort of thing, you’ll likely enjoy the movie. And if you’ve bought the “Marvel Universe” hook, line, and stinkers — all the films, all the shows — then you’ll have extry fun connecting all the dots. But for the rest of us, you not only get that sneaking suspicion that you’ve seen it all before; in this one they actually laughingly elbow us in the ribs, confirming that we have seen it all before! And will probably see it again, and again, and again.
Tom Holland, Zendaya, and the heavy-set kid are again believable and likable as young pals, this time applying for college. There is some decent humor and in-jokes. But again it feels like the movie was plotted out by a focus group of 8-year-olds, and that Holland’s people insisted that he doesn’t have to wear a mask a lot, even when that doesn’t make any sense. Cumberbatch’s jokey Dr. Strange still doesn’t ring true to me. And brace yourselves for a lot of Psychology 101 in the back stretch. I can’t get too upset: the sweet-spot demographic for these movies is teenage-and-below, and for that crowd I think life lessons on the importance of friendship, self-awareness, and self-worth are a worthy addition. Bottom line, I enjoyed this movie, but all the multivitamin multiverse stuff was a nagging reminder how much better and cooler Into the Spider-Verse was.
Personal highlight: As Peter Parker is returning to school, we hear “Scraper” by Liquid Liquid. So while all the nerds were waiting for the obligatory bonus scenes in the end credits, I was waiting to see the names Sal Principato, Dennis Young, Scott Hartley, and Richard McGuire up on the big screen. Awesome!
Aquarium Playlist, 12/21/21
EPISODE #466: NEW TO ME 2021, LIVESTREAMING
The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
Sex Clark Five — “Streams” [OPENING THEME]
Charlotte Rose Benjamin — “Party City”
Sarchasm — “Wither (in D)”
Miss Grit — “Buy the Banter”
Savan DePaul — “Mist Burns”
Basement Revolver — “Wax and Digital”
Cheerbleederz — “Staying Up Late”
Sweetie Darling — “Black Coat”
Molly Ringworm — “Be Mindful”
Wares — “Tall Girl”
Sunflower Bean — “Puppet Strings”
Amy O — “Planet Blue”
Pale Lights — “Streamlining” [CLOSING THEME]
Jack Silbert proudly records The Aquarium podcast in Hoboken, NJ.
Jack Silbert, curator