Films/TV Reviews

My review of Don't Look Up

I remember Don’t Look Up at one point being one of my most anticipated films of 2021. It has a massive cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Meryl Streep, Timothee Chalamet and more. I also liked Adam McKay’s more recent dramatic work with The Big Short and Vice, and I was interested in him doing a full on satire with his latest film. However as it approached its release date, I had my doubts. The trailers weren’t the best and the reactions coming out of it weren’t exactly confidence inspiring. Still I gave it a chance and overall I’m prepared to say that I like it, though I completely understand why some people dislike it.

I do like the premise of the movie, with the lead characters trying to warn the world about a coming disaster while the world doesn’t listen, definitely works for a satire. It is a comedy, and while I wouldn’t say it failed, most of the humour didn’t work. There are funny jokes throughout but not as many as you’d hope for. I was generally entertained throughout, even if it was never that great in the first two acts, just a mildly funny comedy with very mixed satire (more on that later). The movie is around 2 hours and 20 minutes long, and it really didn’t need to be that long. I wouldn’t say that I was bored during the movie, but it all felt very drawn out and not a lot happens or is said to really justify that length, and the comedy and satire isn’t good enough to fully sustain things all the way through. I feel like on rewatch I’d find it harder to get through. Strangely enough, it gets into much more dramatic territory in the third act, and its surprisingly quite effective, and its far better than what came earlier. Looking back at the rest of the movie, it actually works much better as a terrifying and depressing end of the world downer (with darkly comedic elements) than a smart political and social satire. Another issue is that the tone is all over the place. McKay’s last two movies jumped between drama and comedy as well, but it feels messier in Don’t Look Up. Until the third act, it just can’t seem to decide whether it’s trying to be an apocalyptic drama and a mostly straight-faced satire, or a full on spoof. I think it needed to either be more straight faced about it or lean much further into absurdity.

While I enjoy the movie, the actual satire is one of the weaker elements unfortunately. One of the biggest criticisms I’ve seen of Don’t Look Up is that its very obvious and not subtle at all, much like McKay’s last two movies. And I’ll always stay true to my belief that its not inherently bad if a film is more obvious than subtle. Sometimes it is refreshing for a movie to be more direct about things. The problem is that a lot of the satire just feels a bit too obvious, in the sense that its too easy. For example, many of the characters are caricatures meant to represent types or groups of people, but they feel very overdone and a little lazy, the upbeat news anchors, the president and politicians who doesn’t know what they’re doing, dumb celebrities, etc., and McKay doesn’t do anything with them beyond the obvious. There’s nothing particularly daring or insightful said in this film, and the caricatures and not-subtle messaging makes the film hard to be engaging. I will say that some of the ways that people respond in the movie is like how people would respond in real life. However for every one of those moments, there’s moments where the satirising of aspects of today’s society isn’t quite right. An example is when Jennifer Lawrence’s character becomes a meme of sorts, but the memes that are very displayed are outdated top-text and bottom-text meme formats from the 2000s. It doesn’t break the movie or anything but moments like these go towards the film not fully succeeding at being a satire of today. While I wouldn’t say that the movie talks down to people and is condescending (although I can see why people would see it that way), there is a general sense of self-importance, and the feeling that they are more insightful and smarter than they really are. Part of that is the fact that the comet in the film is intended as a metaphor for climate change, and the movie is apparently meant to urge people to take it seriously. If we look at the movie from this perspective, Don’t Look Up really only spreads awareness that climate change exists and does and says nothing beyond that, at most its only preaching to the choir. Also when you really think about it, the comet doesn’t really make for a particularly good metaphor for climate change, especially in the context of the film (without spoiling anything). I wouldn’t normally look this deep into a movie like this, but McKay and his co-writer really seem to believe that they are saying something important about climate change, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

One of Don’t Look Up’s biggest selling points is its absurdly large cast, which is no doubt why so many people wanted to check it out in the first place. While I wouldn’t say that any of these actors are even close to giving career best performances in this movie, most of them are pretty good in their parts. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play astronomers who discover the comet heading for Earth and try to warn people about it. This is the third of DiCaprio’s more comedic performances after The Wolf of Wall Street and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he has shown himself to be surprisingly great at comedy. He’s also really good here at portraying his stressed and panic stricken character, and he especially has a great and notable rage sequence in the second half of the movie. Lawrence is also great and entertaining, she’s especially good in the scenes of comedy. DiCaprio, Lawrence and Rob Morgan (who is also great) are the best performances in the movie because they were the only performances and characters that actually felt somewhat grounded and felt like actual characters, in contrast to every other actor. When Meryl Streep showed up as the president, at first I thought she was phoning her performance, but I actually think she’s pretty good. I soon came to realise that most major actors in the cast play an over the top and obvious caricature, and so they all feel underutilised to a degree. With that said I think most of them actually work in their parts. The highlights for me were Jonah Hill, Timothee Chalamet, and Cate Blanchett, Ron Perlman is also a scene stealer in his 5 minutes. So while it is disappointing that this stacked cast weren’t really utilised to their fullest potential, at least most of them gave decent performances. Notice that I said ‘most’ instead of ‘all’, the sole exception is Mark Rylance, I have no idea what he was doing in this movie. Rylance plays a tech billionaire, and I definitely get the point of his character. He’s a riff on Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and every other rich tech CEO right now, and it makes sense for that kind of character to be in this movie. However, his performance is so weird and strange from his line deliveries and the way he decides to play the role, and not in a good way. I think the best way I can describe it as he’s trying to play Joe Biden playing Elon Musk. I know that everyone is an over-the-top caricature in this movie, but Rylance is on a completely different wavelength from the others that he feels completely out of place.

Adam McKay’s directing style in this movie won’t work for everyone. Most notable is the editing, which is very fast, messy, and often cuts to a lot of brief clips and images, similar to what McKay did with The Big Short and Vice. If you hated the editing in Vice, you’ll probably hate the editing in Don’t Look Up too. I will admit that I liked the editing in McKay’s unofficial political trilogy, but while I mostly liked the editing in Don’t Look Up, some of it got on my nerves a little bit at points. However, I will say that it actually does work very well in some moments in the third act and worked to give some parts some emotional punch to them. Editing aside, a lot of the other technical elements are strong. Linus Sandgren’s cinematography is great, for the most part its not really a movie that needs to be particularly well shot, but he does make the most of it when he can. Nicholas Britell is reliably great as the composer, and his score is one of the strongest parts of the film. Its definitely not on the level as his some of his other work like Succession or Vice, but its still great. The budget is absolutely insane at $75 million, and watching the movie, most of the film really didn’t need to have that large of a budget. With that said, the scenes involving large visual effects from comets to rockets were quite good.

Don’t Look Up is already proving to be incredibly divisive amongst people. If you really aren’t a fan of McKay’s style from his past two movies, I think that you’ll find his latest film to be a struggle. I can completely understand why some people are really disliking the movie. I don’t think it really succeeds, particularly as a satire, and even from a comedy standpoint it could’ve been better. Still, it has its moments (both comedic and dramatic), some of the technical elements are strong, and most of the performances from the cast are decent. I recommend checking it out at the very least.

thecinemacritic.wordpress.com/2022/01/13/dont-look-up-2021-review/

My review of The Tragedy of Macbeth

There are already plenty of adaptations of Macbeth out there, and it’s a little hard for me to get into any movies based on Williams Shakespeare’s work (mainly because of the dialogue). However, Joel Coen taking on the material had me highly anticipating his Macbeth movie, along with adding actors like Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. The Tragedy of Macbeth is an atmospheric, and moody Shakespeare adaptation, and with strong performances and direction.

There’s not really much to say about Macbeth’s writing since its still very much Shakespeare’s classic play. With that comes with the same confusing Shakespeare language and unless you’re very familiar with that kind of speech, it would probably be a problem for you. So if you’re going to watch it, its either best to watch it with subtitles on, or read up about the play beforehand to know what was happening. It was great getting to watch the movie in cinemas, but I do admit that I wished I had subtitles on. Thankfully, I knew the general plot having watched the 2015 Macbeth movie so I had an idea of where everything was going. I didn’t understand what was being said most of the time, but I expected that when I willingly watched a Macbeth movie. There really wasn’t anything new brought to the story thematically, it’s just the distinct style, but I guess that’s all that was needed.

There is a great cast involved. Denzel Washington is fantastic as Macbeth and delivers a powerhouse of a performance. Masterful, compelling, and a great on screen presence, its one of his best acting works I’ve seen from him. Frances McDormand is also really good as Lady Macbeth, she is in great command of every scene she’s in. Kathryn Hunter is also notable in her croaking, contortionist turn as the three witches, she is incredible in her scenes. Other actors like Corey Hawkins, Brendan Gleeson, and Harry Melling also play their parts very well, but its Washington, McDormand and Hunter that stand out the most.

As said before, Joel Coen directs this, and The Tragedy of Macbeth is very different from anything that the Coen brothers have done before. Its very bold and unconventional, it’s a technical marvel and one of the biggest strengths of the movie. The presentation is haunting, and the world portrayed here is very off kilter. The cinematography from Bruno Delbonnel is easily one of the best from 2021. In a way it is very minimalist but incredibly effective. You get caught up in its gorgeous black and white photography, with the German expressionism inspired and brutalist look, along with the 4:3 framing making the film feel very contained. The lighting, dense shadows, and the use of fog and smoke go towards giving it a haunting atmosphere. The sets are classic and old school, it felt like stage play sets with grandiose buildings. The editing is simple yet effective, and the transitions are seamless. The sound design is striking, and the score works incredibly well for the tone of the movie. An impressive part of the movie is that it manages to be both theatrical and cinematic. On a cinematic level it goes into the surreal with the memorable imagery. Yet it also works on a theatrical level, aspects like the dialogue heavy interactions, the long monologues, characters entering and exiting scenes, they all work together.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is very much an art film and a Shakespeare movie, so it definitely isn’t for everyone. But if you know what you’re getting into, I’d say that it is well worth a watch. It’s a superb technical achievement from the direction, cinematography and editing, and it has some excellent performances, especially from Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand and Kathryn Hunter. At the very least, it stands out as the Coens’ most distinct works.

thecinemacritic.wordpress.com/2022/01/15/the-tragedy-of-macbeth-2021-review/

My review of King Richard

I’ve been hearing about King Richard for the past months, especially in the lead up to awards season. I knew that essentially it was about Venus and Serena Williams and their father, who would be played by Will Smith (who was particularly getting awards hype). It looked like a typical sports biopic and while that mostly turned out to be the case, I thought it was pretty good.

It should be noted that this isn’t exactly a movie about Venus and Serena. King Richard is executively produced by both sisters and while the movie is about them to a degree, it is deliberately focused on their father Richard Williams, and how he helped their rise with his support and guidance. It does make it interesting to put it from the perspective of the father instead of the soon to be stars. As someone who knew about the two tennis players but didn’t know much about their stories, I found it interesting, and I was invested in what was happening. It is a sports biopic, but it is essentially a character study for the lead character, who is a complicated person. Despite it being a sports movie of sorts, it isn’t super focussed on the sports, and avoids most of the sports tropes. It is definitely firmly in the crowd pleaser category, and it’s a very effective feel-good movie. With that said its definitely not very special as far as biopics go. Its very by the numbers and cliché in many ways, there are conventional biopic tropes here and here, and there are big inspirational speeches and moments. There’s also dialogue that’s very unsubtle, especially about the sister being destined for greatness. Also it does seem very safe in parts, such as with the inner conflicts with Richard. With that said, it still has strong emotional beats and uplifting moments which really worked for me, so I was more than able to look past the sameness. King Richard is a very long movie at around 2 hours and 30 minutes, and after watching what I just saw, I thought that was a little excessive. With that runtime you would think that it would’ve focussed even more time on the sisters, but unfortunately that’s not the case. Even though I did like the movie and I wouldn’t say that I was that bored, the drawn out nature of the film turned out to be a determinant to it.

For as solid as the story and writing is, it’s really the great performances which make the film work as well as it does. Will Smith plays Richard Williams, and this very well could be the best performance of his career. Its a flawed and nuanced character he’s playing and fully invests himself into, and gives a commanding performance. It definitely doesn’t stop with him though, Aunjanue Ellis is great as Richard’s wife and the mother of the Williams sisters, and Jon Bernthal is really good as a tennis coach. There’s also Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton who play Venus and Serena Williams respectively, and they do great jobs at playing them. The second half has more of a focus on Venus, and Sidney plays her part very well.

The direction from Reinaldo Marcus Green wasn’t anything special, but competent enough by sports biopic standard. Its shot and edited quite well (length aside), and the scenes with tennis are well shot and given enough tension.

King Richard is a very familiar and typical inspirational sports biopic but its nonetheless quite good. I was invested in the story, it’s well made, and the performances from everyone were great and carried the film. I think it is worth watching at the very least.

thecinemacritic.wordpress.com/2022/01/19/king-richard-2021-review/

My review of The Card Counter

I had been hearing about The Card Counter for a while, it would be Paul Schrader’s next movie starring Oscar Isaac in the lead role. I liked Schrader’s writing work on Martin Scorsese’s movies like Bringing Out the Dead, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and I really liked his last directed movie First Reformed. So I was looking forward to what he would do with The Card Counter and he didn’t disappoint.

As you can probably predict already, The Card Counter is yet another character study from Paul Schrader about a lonely protagonist with degrees of self-destructive behaviours (like Taxi Driver and First Reformed) and is suffering with guilt and suicidal tendencies. You might say that the story is treading familiar ground and there are certainly similar themes especially when it comes to morality, but I found it compelling nonetheless. The film does a good job at getting into the mindset of his character, and we learn more about him and how he’s trying to leave behind a past he can’t escape. The plot might seem to meander a bit as it is about Oscar Isaac’s character going from place to place with Tye Sheridan playing cards and gambling while interacting with people, and we learn more about him during this. However I was invested in what was happening all the way through. Don’t watch the incredibly misleading trailer, the film is nothing like how it represents the movie and you’d be only doing yourself a disservice. Despite the title and about the main character being a gambler, it’s very much not that kind of movie. Essentially, The Card Counter is about consequences and guilt, with focus on the acts of torture during the War on Terror. It’s particularly about the problems that veterans face and the responsibility in systematic torture at Abu Ghraib prison, especially when it comes to Isaac’s character and how he was involved. The Card Counter is firmly a slow burner and is very meditative, so don’t expect that hour and 50 minute runtime to fly by. However I thought that pacing really worked for the film.

There’s a great cast in this movie, and everyone plays their parts well. Schrader’s next troubled protagonist William Tell is played by Oscar Isaac and this might be the best performance I’ve seen from him. He’s very believable and convincing, coming across as calm, mysterious and slick on the outside, but there’s clearly some stuff simmering beneath the surface. He’s superb in the part and carries the movie excellently. There’s also a really good supporting cast in Tye Sheridan, Tiffany Haddish and Willem Dafoe. Sheridan gives one of his best performances as a younger man who Tell tries to steer onto a better path. Haddish was a great counter to Isaac, she’s very different to him which makes their relationship so much more interesting. Dafoe is only in a few scenes but plays a critical role and as usual plays his part fantastically.

Paul Schrader directs, and his work here is great. He certainly uses familiar techniques, such as the voice over from the protagonist. It even has scenes of the protagonist lying in his bed or writing in a journal at a desk paired with a liquor of their choice (just like First Reformed). Nonetheless it fitted very well with this story. It’s a very well shot movie, I particularly liked the long takes, and some of the visuals could even be hypnotic and dreamlike. The two highlights for me were a long take passing through a prison with a fish eyes lens, and the other has Oscar Isaac and Tiffany Haddish at a light show which was visually stunning to watch.

The Card Counter is a stylish, layered and thematically rich character study. It’s excellently written and directed by Paul Schrader, and has great performances from the cast, especially from Oscar Isaac in the lead role. It’s definitely not for everyone, as I said it’s a slow burn character drama, not a fast paced ‘gambling movie’. However, if you’ve like some of Schrader’s other work like First Reformed, I think you’ll enjoy The Card Counter.

thecinemacritic.wordpress.com/2022/01/25/the-card-counter-2021-review/

Thanks for the review. I'll actually see it on Friday and share my thoughts also.

I've seen it on Friday and wanted to take some time to think of it but, honestly, I can't add much more than what you said in your review. Just a few:

- Cooper's performance will either work for viewers or not. It worked for me and, to be honest, it's better than some of his previous ones which earned him nominations. Don't agree with people who say he is miscast or too old for the part. In that time people looked usually older than their age (especially the ones who fell on hard times during Great Depression) so his looks is authentic.

- Blanchett is best part of the movie and she steals every scene with her character in. She looks like older version of Lauren Bacall's femme fatales from 1940s noir films. Her body language is hypnotic to watch. I agree with Lex that she should had more screentime.

- Rooney was believable as a sweet girl whose soul is not corrupted by greed. Everything she does is for love (and kind of to escape the non-perspective world of illegal carnivals). But even her patience will run out in the end. Script doesn't use Rooney's capabilities to full extent but everyone who watched the original version shouldn't be surprised much. It's good character/performance.

- Supporting cast: Dafoe and Colette are underused but Jenkins and (especially) Strathairn deliver both despite thir small screentime. Watch out for Mary Steenburgen's (Charlie's mom) cameo, she has one terrific scene.

- Passing: Yeah, it felt a bit slow at times ("no great sense of urgency" as one critic said) and the Ezra Grindle part in the second half lasts longer than needed. If del Toro used scissors and cut out 15-20 minutes it wouldn't hurt the movie at all in my opinion. But it's really not a big issue. I was never bored.

- Production design is 1st class. Major atractions are carnival world (in 1st half) and Art Deco style (in 2nd half), especially Lilith's office which is a world of it's own. Music was not that memorable to me but maybe minimalistic approach was exactly what Guillermo had in mind. Cynematography was standardly great, very much like The Shape of Water. Maybe the gritty style would've been better choice ? See the movie and decide for yourself.

Overall, I'll rate it with four (out of five) stars and for one reason. New version kind of improves on original but not that much that justifies making of a new adaptation (the same goes for new West Side Story). But even as a remake this belongs to Top 10 movies of 2021 and it's a good way to spend two hours (... and 30 minutes 🤫) of your life.

If NA was released on Netflix I'm sure the viewership (and awards prospects) would have been much larger. But, here it is... old-fashioned (but universal) movie made for grown-up audiences, released on the same day as most antcipated blockbuster of the year, during pandemic.