Classic Movie Review: Nightmare Alley (2021)

In the late 1930’s, Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) a man with a gift for patter, and a dark past, walks into a carnival. Stan is hired by Clem Hotely, (Willem Dafoe) and Stan’s first job is disposing of the carnival geek. (Paul Anderson) Stan quickly learns the grift of mentalism from Madame Zeena (Toni Collette) and her alcoholic husband Pete. (David Strathairn) Stan is seduced by Zeena and gives Pete wood alcohol, which results in Pete’s death, but Stan’s real object of affection is Molly (Rooney Mara) who does an act involving electricity. Stan tells Molly how to jazz up her act with an electric chair and keeps the carnival open by trying Molly’s act on a gullible sheriff, Jedidiah Judd. (Jim Beaver) Stan says he has an idea for a two-person act, and two years later Molly and Stan are performing Pete and Zeena’s mentalist act in an upscale nightclub in Buffalo, New York.

Stan and Molly are doing their act for the crowd when a female psychiatrist, Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) interrupts Stan, and dares him to tell Lilith what she has in her purse. Without flinching, Stan answers. Rightfully impressed, Lilith introduces one of her wealthy clients, Judge Kimball. (Peter MacNeill) Stan grifts Kimball, and makes large amounts of money, unaware that he’s being conned, Kimball introduces Stan to another wealthy and influential man, Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins) who is mourning the death of his lover. Despite warnings from Lilith, that Grindle is a dangerous man, Stan starts to grift him. Molly is starting to have misgivings about the con and about Stan in general, but she goes through with the idea of posing as Grindle’s dead lover. What happens when Stan and Molly try to pull off this elaborate con game? Does the dangerous Mr. Grindle fall for it, or does he catch on?

This is a fantastic remake of a noir film, about a slick carny who uses people to his own advantage, until he meets people who he can no longer control. The question is not only if he gets his comeuppance, but who gives it to him and how he gets it. Stan goes from trying to con local yokels at a carnival to trying to con sophisticated people with money and power, and hoping for the same result. All the elements of a great noir film are present, a shady character trying constantly to prove he’s the smartest guy in the room. His innocent but willing accomplice, and the femme fatale. Put all that together with an ending that comes full circle and this is yet another near perfect film

Bradley Cooper gives one of the best performances of his career in this film. One minute he’s a fast-talking, smooth-talking sweet-talking showman, the next minute he’s a ruthless, cold-hearted sadist, and the change comes over him like the flick of a switch. It would be very surprising is he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for this role. Cate Blanchett is also excellent playing the femme fatale. She plays a role very much like Lauren Bacall would play in these noir films. Doctor Ritter is cold, distant, usually unattainable to men like Stan, and yet she probes him and learns his innermost thoughts. It’s a complex role, and Blanchett plays it perfectly. Willem Dafoe plays a tightly wound carnival owner who warns Stan about several things, and looks and acts mean enough to follow through.

Rooney Mara plays a naïve accomplice, who’s a little too naïve, and Del Toro’s fault, because he co-wrote this film. Toni Collette plays mentalist Zeena, and starts out very interesting and becomes less so as the movie goes on. Richard Jenkins does a phenomenal job as Ezra Grindle, who seems calm and demure at first, and then he starts t unravel. It’s an incredible range of emotions displayed by Jenkins in a short time.

The direction is magnificent, the pacing is slow but purposely so, so all the elements of the film can come together. Some of the scenes are downright surreal, the colors are bright and happy, yet the context is creepy and menacing, with demons, circles and eyes dominating the symbolism. Del Toro seems to emphasize the carny aspect of this movie, so this film is much more than an average noir film. It’s a long film, but beautiful to look at, the viewer can’t take his/her eyes off the film, this is in part thanks to Danish cinematographer, Dan Lausten, who’s worked with Del Toro before on Crimson Peak, and the Shape of Water, where he was nominated for a lot of Best Cinematographer awards. Del Toro gets excellent performances from his cast and has a thrilling set piece. Del Toro absolutely puts his own spin on the noir genre.

Nightmare Alley: No bull from Del Toro

Movie Review: Motherless Brooklyn (2019)

In the 1950’s, Lionel Essrog (Edward Norton) is a detective investigating the murder of his mentor Frank Minna. (Bruce Willis) Minna was undertaking a secretive corruption investigation involving some of New York City’s most powerful politicians, but he was shot before could finish it. So now, it’s up to Lionel to pick up Minna’s investigation, and try to find out who killed his boss. Using Minna’s notes, Lionel tracks down Laura Rose, (Gugu Mbatha Raw) a crusading lawyer fighting urban renewal. Posing as a reporter, Lionel talks to an idealist named Paul (Willem Dafoe) who says the real power in the city is Parks Commissioner, Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin) a developer, who doesn’t mind displacing a few minorities to see his vision realized. Moses has more than a few secrets as does Paul, but where does Laura fit in, and can Lionel find all the answers, and solve the murder of Frank Minna?

First, and foremost Motherless Brooklyn is a period piece. that makes the storytelling difficult as it is, but the story is a long, meandering story that tries to reinvigorate the noir genre of filmmaking. It tries to combine the film Cotton Club with a Bogart type detective, except that Lionel is not a tough guy, he’s a sensitive guy with Tourette’s Syndrome, unfortunately Lionel is not given many character traits, besides Tourette’s and an eidetic memory, so there’s not much to make the character memorable. The other characters are similarly one dimensional. Motherless Brooklyn could actually be a conscious or unconscious biography of Robert Moses, the master builder of modern New York city. One of the main characters is named Moses Randolph, he is Parks Commissioner, and he’s bullying the mayor for more power. Even if Motherless Brooklyn was a story about Robert Moses it was sloppily told, with a half-hearted romance, and it limps to an anticlimactic finish.

The acting is sub-par. Edward Norton is a good actor, who hit his peak in Fight Club and American History X, but with Lionel, he goes to the well too often with the Tourette’s Syndrome. If he was trying to engender some kind of sympathy for Lionel, it doesn’t work. The Tourette’s utterances after almost every sentence becomes grating, and actually works against him and makes him less likeable. Gugu Mbatha Raw’s character Laura is central to the plot, but her character has very little to say or do, besides be a lukewarm love interest, and that’s not much. Bruce Willis is in this film for a thankfully short time, his whatever charm he had seems to have faded with his looks and he’s not a good enough actor to play character roles. Willem Dafoe can’t help but play a bad guy even when he tries to play an idealist, and that’s what happens here. Alec Baldwin does a passible job as a power-hungry parks commissioner, who wants to be a prime mover in modernizing the city. Baldwin’s voice starts as a guttural groan, and then returns to his normal speaking voice. There are more than a few similarities to another power-hungry New York developer, but he’s done such good comedy work on 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live, that it’s difficult to take him seriously, even when he’s playing a serious role.

Second-time director Norton makes the mistake many actor/directors make. He thinks that none of the screenplay that he wrote should be edited, so what the viewer ends up watching is a slowly paced, labored piece of filmmaking, that takes forever to come together, and once all the plot points come together, the ending is hardly worth the wait. He doesn’t get inspired performances from his fellow actors, and so the project Norton worked so hard to bring to the screen ultimately falls flat.

Motherless Brooklyn: Not the rebirth of noir that was hoped for.

Movie Review: Aquaman (2018)

Tom Curry (Temuera  Morrison) rescues a woman during a vicious hurricane.  The woman is Queen Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) Queen of Atlantis.  Together Tom and Atlanna have a child and name him Arthur  (Tanui Kirkwood, Tamar Kirkwood, Denzel Quirke, Khan Gulder, Otis Dhanji, Kekoa Kekumano) Arthur is raised on land,  until as a man (Jason Momoa) Arthur fights off two pirates, Manta (Yahya Abdul Mateen) and his father Jesse (Michael Beach) saves a Russian submarine, and leaves Jesse to die and Manta swearing revenge.  Arthur is perfectly content to stay on land and fight the occasional pirate, until he’s visited by Mera (Amber Heard) who warns Arthur that his half-brother, King Orm (Patrick Wilson) is planning to unite Atlantis and fight the surface dwellers.  Mera also tel;s Arthur about a magical trident that will make him ruler of Atlantis. Will Arthur go under the sea with Mera, and fight Orm to rule Atlantis?

I stopped watching superhero movies for a while because they became too redundant, too similar to each other.  Aquaman embodies all the problems that have befallen the superhero genre for years now.  Aquaman is a bloated artifice of a film filled with scene after scene of cgi special effects, mindless fight scenes, mindless catch phrases, mindless chase scenes, and a Hollywood favorite, mindless explosions.  It borrows heavily from the sibling rivalry element between Thor and Loki, in the Thor films, and the first impression that we get of Aquaman is that he’s willing to save RUSSIAN sailors from pirates, and the pirates are black.  Thanks Hollywood was this story produced by an oligarch?  Is this your idea of inclusion?  Making the villains African? After a very, very long exposition filled with pedestrian dialogue, the ending is no big surprise.  Aquaman is a HUGE disappointment.

The acting makes Aquaman worse.  Jason Momoa is a good actor for a wrestler.  He’s not a wrestler?  Then he’s a bad actor. His mangled readings of the simplest catchphrases made the movie even more unbearable than the cliché ridden script.   Amber Heard, best known as Johnny Depp’s ex-wife will remain best known as Johnny Depp’s ex-wife.    Her wooden line readings only rival Momoa’s for their lack of emotion.  Nicole Kidman does her Birth of Venus Routine and disappears for most of the movie.  Lucky her, the audience probably wished the same.  Hopefully, Nicole was well paid for this dreck.  Willem Dafoe was a pretty good villain in the Spiderman movies, but he is a bland hero in this movie.

James Wan is known for his horror movies, this movie is so bad it’s scary.  The pacing is so slow, it is glacial.  He keeps flashing back and forward between Arthur’s childhood and adulthood, which interrupts the narrative flow, there are no good performances in this film, he shares the blame for that, and the movie is ENTIRELY too long, a lot of this movie should have ended up on the cutting room floor.

Aquaman:  Drowning in bad writing, acting and direction.