How Could I Resist Ya?

Year: 2018

Director: Ol Parker

Cast: Lily James, Amanda Seyfried, Cher

Run Time: 1 hour 54 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

I don't wanna talk about things we've gone through, but as a reviewer it's kind of my obligation. The 2008 Mamma Mia! is a frankly disastrous film adaptation of a shallow but fun stage musical based on the songs of Swedish disco supergroup ABBA. Nevertheless I love it, for reasons almost entirely separate from the movie itself. And I couldn't help but be excited for its ten-years-later sequel, for the twin reasons that it's a movie that should never have existed (the type of thing I'm unduly fascinated by) and that I love the ABBA discography, and going deeper into it is far more rewarding than just skimming off the top of ABBA Gold like the last film did (for more of my thoughts on that, check out my first contribution to one of my favorite film sites: Alternate Ending). Also Cher. But I could have never predicted what I actually got, and I'm all the more dazzled by that. Let's jump in.

Because if there's one thing that's incredibly safe and comfortable to do in those outfits, it's jumping.

That history book on the shelf is always repeating itself, which is how we got this belated sequel in the first place, but the notes of Here We Go Again's plot are still somewhat unfamiliar for this particular glittery universe. We meet up again with Sophie Sheridan (Amanda Seyfried) on the eve of the grand re-opening of her mother's hotel on the Greek island of Kalokairi. It has been a year since Donna Sheridan (Meryl Streep) has passed, of causes unknown (though the random screengrab of her white-knuckling a glass of wine that's hanging on the wall might offer some clues), and she and one of her three dads Sam (Pierce Brosnan) are still heartbroken over it.

Those happy days, they seemed so hard to find, but never fear! Our old pals are back to play, including Sophie's beau Sky (Dominic Cooper), her other two dads Harry (Colin Firth) and Bill (Stellan Skarsgård), and her mother's glee team Rosie (Julie Walters) and Tanya (Christine Baranski). Joining them are Andy Garcia as the hotel manager Fernando (gee, I wonder when that'll turn out to be important) and Cher as Sophie's absentee grandmother Ruby. As Sophie tries to navigate into the newest stage of her life, she finds that her story is mirroring that of her mother's way back when in 1979, as played out by Lily James alongside younger versions of Rosie (Alexa Davies) and Tanya (Jessica Keenan Wynn) as she flirts with and beds future dads Bill (Josh Dylan), Sam (Jeremy Irvine), and Harry (Hugh Skinner).

Although it's possible she didn't know they were three separate people, because they all look more or less exactly the same.

It was like shooting a sitting duck to make a Mamma Mia! movie that I'd actually enjoy, whether it was incredible, terrible, or anything in between. But the absolutely terrific thing about Here We Go Again is that it edges up against incredible, at least on the admittedly very adjusted scale that comes from being in continuity with Mamma Mia!. 

Having the time of your life is obviously the movie's biggest priority, and there are certain aspects in which the movie fails as a whole in its efforts to achieve this. For one thing, the narrative is completely inert. Sure it has more thrust and structure than the previous entry, but that's like saying you have more character drama than a Transformers movie. It's not exactly an achievement. Most of the movie, at least in the present day scenes, is just about people sitting around waiting for a party (which I could relate to, having gotten to the theater an hour early). And the flashback sequences are slavish retreads of the exact material implied by dialogue and lyrics from the original (the "walk along the Seine" line from "Our Last Summer" even gets a totally superfluous nod). And yet, the way the film connects Sophie's experience with her mother's miraculously achieves a sort of tenderness and genuine emotion of which I would have previously thought this franchise completely incapable.

But I won't feel blue like I always do, because this movie has so much more to offer than a mere story. For one thing, it has a director who actually seems to know how movies are made. The first time the camera moved in a scene, I almost jolted out of my seat, because that never happens in the original. Mamma Mia! just plunks down on a tripod and lets its cast of high wattage stars do their karaoke. In Here We Go Again, Ol Parker's camera roves around the set, snatching glamorous and sometimes even glorious images from the tumult of turquoise and glitter. It's entirely refreshing and allows the manic energy of the material to be captured in a way that actually highlights and accentuates its key components rather than sitting back from the material and letting its gaudiness shine through.

The picture clear, everything seems so easy to Parker, who crafts a musical theatre spectacle like his life depends on it. It helps that he doesn't have to rely on the A-listers who wander in and out of the present day portion like they're in one of the Netflix seasons of Arrested Development. He has the freedom to keep them around as their schedules allow, toss them a few bones here and there (thankfully, not too many are caught by Pierce Brosnan, who has not taken singing lessons in the intervening decade), and focus his best on the young, relatively unknown cast in the 1979 sequences. Because their characters are attached to the famous people, he knows audiences will still care, and his casting could focus on actual talent and not star wattage. And they sure are (mostly) talented! Some of the boys sing a little too emphatically, like they're worried they'll be fired if you miss a single syllable, but the production numbers (especially "Waterloo" and "Why Did It Have to be Me?") are lovely little trifles with grand choreography that utilize every little element of the setting and create imaginative dreamscapes that remind one of the best of classic movie musicals.

Although, as much as I love the song "When I Kissed the Teacher," what compelled them to include such a track in 2018 is still a mystery to me.

Would you laugh at me if I said I cared for Lily James' outfits more than most human beings? Costume designer Michele Clapton knows how to make the human body look cinematic, and Lily James is the perfect canvas for some of the best movie costumes of the decade, perfectly flowy and retro yet effortlessly modern and stylish at the same time. But I digress. This is a musical, let's talk about some more music! Here We Go Again resists temptation to repeat too much of the original soundtrack (of the canonical songs that appear in the actual film and not the credits, we just get "Mamma Mia," "Dancing Queen," an expanded "I Have a Dream," and a blissfully brief reprise of "S.O.S." with the rest of the songs being relegated to the instrumental score during dialogue scenes), and pulls some truly special, unexpected tracks like "Andante, Andante" and "Angel Eyes," two songs I love so much I could't help but thrill with delight.

All my sense had gone away, but I can still admit that there are certain... flaws in more than just the plot. There's still a bit of abrupt song introductions and flat singing (Brosnan and Cooper being the worst perpetrators), Seyfried is sleepwalking so hard you can practically see the drool, and Cher is a lot of things but she's not particularly convincing, as much as I love the fact that she's here at all. And it's a little hard to ignore the fact that they seem to have forgotten that Colin Firth's character is gay (the biggest mention of his character's sexuality is secreted away in an end credits stinger), and that the glitz and glamor of this musical about rich tourists ignores the economic plight of the Greek people they use as props (the film has one scene about fishermen being out of work, and it's used as an excuse to get a character a boat). I'm not saying they're bad for not mentioning it, I'm saying they shouldn't have introduced the concept in the first place if they were going for full musical theater fantasia, because it introduces a bit of a rankling cognitive dissonance.

But the destination makes it worth the while, because - especially in the second half - Here We Go Again is actually genuinely funny as well as entertaining spectacle. The script is much stronger this time around, building gags and character dynamics out of the thin air that was the original characters. Plus, Baranski and Walters (and their younger counterparts) are given some material that's actually quite dirty instead of innuendo so subtle that Christian Grey would even be scratching his head. So, let's add this all together. Terrific, non-obvious ABBA songs, actually talented cast members, solid humor, a director with a head on his shoulders, colors that pop, and a heartfelt emotional throughline? Are you sure this is a Mamma Mia! movie?

Knowing me, knowing you, it's the best they can do.

TL;DR: Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is surprisingly tender and terrific.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1591
Reviews In This Series
Mamma Mia! (Lloyd, 2008)
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Parker, 2018)

Popcorn Kernels: Best Picture Contenders, Vol. 1

In which I once again attempt to sit through all the nominees for Best Picture, knowing full well that the presence of Darkest Hour shall surely prevent me from accomplishing this goal. Here are two of those efforts.

The Post

Year: 2017
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Bob Odenkirk
Run Time: 1 hour 56 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

When the Washington Post gets ahold of the Pentagon Papers, which expose a decade of government secrets, they must decide whether or not to publish them, which could potentially shut down the paper and send them to jail.

Look, I admitted that Spotlight was good, even though it's preposterous that it won Best Picture. And I dislike the state of the country as much as any reasonable American. But as timely as The Post is, it will never feel like anything other than Spotlight 2 (and in fact, it was co-written by one of the co-writers of Spotlight, if it wasn't already watered down enough for you). And as much as director Steven Spielberg has proven time and again he's a genius, we all have our bad days. The Post is such a huge waste of everyone's time and effort that it's not even funny.

Not that it was meant to be funny. The film finds Spielberg in intensely sober-minded Oscarbait mode, with only one scene (the best scene in the movie, involving a little girl selling lemonade) providing a moment of levity in this grandiose, self-important, completely arid awards season trifle.

The Post has a cruelly inflated sense of its own relevance, tying the problems of the past to current affairs in the most blunt, obvious way possible. Look, I'm all for arguments in favor of the free press, but they don't have to be couched in a series of artless, implacable zooms while characters monologue about how important the themes of the movie are. It hardly pretends to be dialogue, it's just one long essay mummifying an admittedly important historical event.

It's honestly rather clumsy, constantly framing Meryl Streep in drifts of men to pointedly remind you that she's not in a woman's space, all while the dialogue revolves around her being a woman in a man's space. It's very pointedly a message movie, and while shots like that can work - I'm thinking of Clarice Starling in the elevator at Quantico in Silence of the Lambs - it's forced down your throat so hard you start gagging before the fifteen minute mark.

It's just kind of a generally lousy movie, bookended by its worst scenes (a shoehorned-in Saving Private Ryan moment in Vietnam and a hilariously terrible Marvel-esque coda involving the world's worst Richard Nixon impersonator frantically waving his arms like a caffeinated mime and not even attempting to time his movements to the actual Nixon recording posing as dialogue) and endlessly unspooling trite, uninspired dialogue in between ("That picture makes me sad," exclaims Sarah Paulson, hopelessly drowning in a nothing role).

There's just no feeling involved here, it's all lecturing. And considering that The Post contains two of the world's most charismatic movie stars, it's astonishing how this could have even been accomplished. Meryl Streep is fine, as always, but she's snoozing through a role she could play with both hands and feet tied behind her back. And Tom Hanks is acting SO. HARD. But no matter how much he rakishly props his leg up on desks or undoes his sleeves, he's straining through an inexplicable old timey radio host accent that just drips with insincerity.

The Post was never going to be a great movie. It could only have ever been a acceptably Important prestige picture. But the way it fails its actors and the audience so substantially is frankly shocking. The music (John Williams, again visibly bored) seems to actively rebel against the tone of the film, the script is begging for attention yet barely there, and the coterie of strong performers (including, randomly, a handful of comic actors like Zach Woods and David Cross) is given nothing to do but be conduits for a firehose stream of flop sweat. One to miss.

Rating: 4/10

Dunkirk

Year: 2017

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

We follow a fighter pilot, a civilian ship, and some ground troops through the effort to rescue the British military from the beach at Dunkirk during World War II.

Dunkirk is about as boldly experimental as a big budget blockbuster can get. But the thing is, experimentation leads to failure about half the time. Not that Dunkirk is a failure; what it gets right outweighs what it gets wrong, but its open risk-taking comes with some very odd choices that don't quite work.

For one thing, take the peculiar dilation of time that occurs over the course of the film. One story elapses over a week, one over a day, and one over an hour. The film cuts between these stories simultaneously, and they overlap at certain key moments. But the way they are presented doesn't really allow for any more insight or intrigue than if they had just been shown chronologically. And the landing of a fighter plane is dragged out over the course of what feels like half an hour of excruciatingly long screen time, milked for all it's worth in the film's biggest patch of jingoistic militarism.

Luckily, that doesn't seem to be the prevailing sentiment over the rest of the film. Dunkirk is a film that is above all else about the terror and constant, oppressive violence of war (despite the conspicuously pulled punches of its PG-13 rating), doled out by an omnipresent enemy that is literally never shown, except in the form of bomber planes that whistle by periodically. It eschews character arcs and even dialogue at times (especially in the sequences on the beach, it plays out more like a silent film, which fortunately prevents Harry Styles from screwing anything up) in favor of this all-important, nerve-rattling atmosphere.

And there is absolutely no denying that this is an utterly gorgeous motion picture. Between what are probably some of the best airplane action sequences ever filmed, Nolan provides us bleakly stunning, expansive vistas that blast your corneas with the sheer wideness of devastation and desolation on this beach. The single distracting thing about the visuals is that - at least on the home video release, I can't speak to the theatrical - it has been decided that the aspect ratios switch between the footage shot on 70mm and 65mm. The black bars constantly blotting out the huge screen-filling vistas are hugely distracting and an entirely odd choice.

Much more thoroughly satisfying is the soundscape, which is as harsh and alarming as you would expect any good war picture to be, slashed through with Hans Zimmer's droning, atonal, staccato score that ratchets up the tension to an unbearable degree.

It's a good thing that Dunkirk is so visually and aurally stunning and goes all in on those elements, because most of the dialogue sequences are the worst parts of the movie. Whether its generals dumping piles of exposition on the top of your head or Mark Rylance spouting nothing but affectless patriotic quotes for the better part of an hour, these scenes are generally worth much less of your time than the tense beach sequences - especially a scene where bullets begin to blast through the hull of a ship where stowaway soldiers are waiting for high tide.

I'm not usually a fan of war movies, and I wouldn't say I'd ever want to watch this again, but I'm glad I saw it in the first place. If you've already seen Lady Bird, Get Out, and The Shape of Water, this should certainly be next on your Oscars checklist.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1306

Skeletons In The Closet: Best Actress 2016

Every year I try (and mostly fail) to catch every film nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and I will continue that tradition this year. But I also want someone to root for in the Performing categories as well. But here's the thing. I don't have the patience to sit through quite that many Oscarbait movies, so I've decided to Brennan up the joint and run a new experiment: I will watch a horror film starring each of the Best Acting nominees to honor the performances they gave long before they made the A-list. 

Let's conclude this project with mini-reviews covering the female performers being honored at this year's ceremony.

Skeletons in the Closet: Best Actress Nominees

Isabelle Huppert

Nominated for: Elle

Paul Verhoeven is back, baby! Isabelle Huppert is garnering awards nomination for playing the title character Elle, a woman who seeks to get back at her rapists.

Skeleton in the Closet: ...Elle?

Yeah, the closest Huppert has ever come to starring in a horror movie is Elle itself, so we're gonna give her a pass on this one. Darn foreign actresses swooping in with their prestige picture histories!

Ruth Negga

Nominated for: Loving

Ruth Negga is a shiny new face in the awards crowd, but the Irish actress has been working since the mid-2000's. Before she played the role of Mildred Loving, one half of a couple that challenged the country's notion of interracial marriage, she appeared in an early direct-to-DVD film from I Am Not a Serial Killer's Billy O'Brien that challenged almost nothing about the horror genre.

Skeleton in the Closet: Isolation (2006)

Director: Billy O'Brien

Cast: Essie Davis, Sean Harris, Marcel Iures

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Five people find themselves trapped on a secluded Irish farm with a genetic experiment gone wrong.

I was excited to check out Isolation. It’s a film from a year and a country I don’t often visit in my horror travels (2005 and Ireland). Plus, in addition to starring Ruth Negga in an oddly major role considering she’s billed fifth in a cast of six, it features an early appearance by The Babadook’s Essie Davis. With that knowledge, I was down to clown with Isolation until what to my wandering eyes did appear but the director’s name, Billy O’Brien. That might not mean anything to you, but to me it meant that I would shortly be sitting through a film by the man who just last year perpetrated I Am Not a Serial Killer, a widely praised film that rubbed me the wrong way so hard it flayed the skin from my bones.

I’m pleased to report that Isolation is much more entertaining than I Am Not a Serial Killer, though it suffers many of the same problems. It’s an exciting concept with a clear driving conflict that is instantly muddied with an excess of inscrutable detail and a mega-grim atmosphere. Instead of being a full-tilt creature feature with crazy mutant cows, Isolation asks you to take out your pencil and notepad and memorize three different stages of mutagenic development, a multitude of inconsistent behavior patterns, and the late addition of a viral aspect that actively argues against the parasitic ideas that were being developed the whole time.

In short, it’s overcomplicated but it also makes no damn sense. Also, I’m guessing they didn’t hire a geneticist to consult on this script, because almost none of this is medically possible, even in this quasi-real world that asks for your suspension of disbelief. Why can’t these people just be fighting a gross thing with sharp teeth? It’s a direct-to-video horror movie, not a TED Talk.

I will give Isolation this though: It’s hella gross. As an effects spectacle, it stretches its budget to the limit to create some truly vomitacular creepy crawly moments. That’s by far the best thing the film has to offer other than its cast, which is packed with future names all avoiding embarrassing themselves. Ruth Negga is asked to portray a profoundly boring character who exists solely to set up a predictable twist and whose backstory only gets more confusing the more she explains it, but she manages to keep a handle on those twitchy, disparate impulses in the script. I wouldn’t watch Isolation again, but I’m not physically angry about sitting through it, which is certainly a step up.

Rating: 5/10

Natalie Portman

Nominated for: Jackie

Natalie Portman's triumphant return to the Academy Awards sees her bringing to life one of American history's most tragic and iconic figures: Jackie Kennedy. But before that, she already won herself an Oscar for Best Actress in one of Oscar's most horrifying entries in recent memory...

Skeleton in the Closet: Black Swan (2010)

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Cast: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel

Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A ballerina obsessed with perfection gets the lead role in Swan Lake, which leads her on a journey of sexual discovery and psychotic splintering.

Black Swan is a film that’s overloaded with ideas, some of which are crowded out by bigger, brassier ones clawing for attention. It’s a head-trip arthouse picture whose every fevered thought spills out onto the frame like a Jackson Pollock canvas. It’s a sublimely messy, unrealistic, on-the-nose exploration of its themes, and at times it might seem so simplistic it’s almost juvenile (the black and white outfits representing corruption of purity would be obvious if this was the first film you’d ever seen). But boy if it doesn’t stick in your memory like a shard of glass.

A shabby little shocker masquerading as an art film, Black Swan possess some of the most chilling, intimate body horror this side of David Cronenberg. I’ve always said that the smaller a gore scene is, the more impactful it tends to be, because it’s easier to relate to a paper cut than a decapitation. Black Swan is a series of paper cuts, taking tiny powerful jabs at your sense of security with infinitely memorable horror sequences, including one involving a hangnail that I’ve thought about nearly weekly ever since I first saw this film back in 2011.

These moments are sheer perfection, and they’re worth every second of Vincent Cassel’s obnoxious, incessant repetition of the theme in rapturously clunky dialogue. Black Swan is a deeply unsettling motion picture that rocks you out of your seat with kinetic camerawork, boldly uncanny imagery, and Natalie Portman’s whiplash-inducing performance. Much like her character Nina Sayers, she’s better at portraying the pure, weak, almost voiceless side of her personality, but she grounds the performance enough that the darker, violent side rises organically form it.

Black Swan isn’t a perfect movie, but it never lets itself be anything other than unadulterated pop lunacy. It’s a beautifully crafted ode to a broken mind, and while its narrative is occasionally just as broken, it’s nevertheless a captivating, exhilarating experience.

Rating: 8/10

Emma Stone

Nominated for: La La Land

Emma Stone is another youthful face in this year's Best Actress slate, but she had a fairly long period of B-level fame before hitting the big time with the likes of Easy A and Crazy, Stupid, Love. Before she played Mia, a Hollywood actress with big dreams, she had big dreams of herself that led her to a horror-comedy with a mighty silly name...

Skeleton in the Closet: Zombieland (2009)

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A nerdy outcast attempts to navigate a zombie apocalypse, following a list of survival rules he has come up with.

Zombieland is the American Shaun of the Dead. That’s an easy comparison, but it’s true. It’s a hyper-stylized romantic comedy zombie romp with a little less wry British humor and a lot more bombastic American personality. This is not a bad thing. There’s room in my heart for both films, and the way they’re presented is so fundamentally different that they almost feel like they’re in entirely separate genres despite their similarity on paper.

Zombieland is a sarcastic, geeky, Americana-fueled road trip comedy with explosive gore, big laughs, and an inimitable stylization. It’s always funny, mostly sweet, and occasionally flat-out terrifying. That’s a lot to heap on one film, so let’s break it down a bit.

The defining structure of Zombieland is the list of rules curated by Jesse Eisenberg’s character Columbus, both as a recurring visual gag and as a reflection of his arc as he transitions from a closed-off neurotic to a true blue hero. It takes the genre-skewering centerpiece of Scream and runs with it, having the rules appear in big block letters on the screen, often interacting directly with the events of the film. It’s a fun, organic visual gimmick that knows exactly how long it can go without getting stale.

If that were the only funny, clever element in the entire film, Zombieland would still be a triumph. Fortunately, it’s not. It’s an expertly cast film that uses its sharp script (by Deadpool scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick) as just a jumping-off point for the creation of four unique characters who are more or less the sole focus of the film, which in spite of its elaborate setpieces is a remarkably small-scale character piece.

Jesse Eisenberg is a great snippy, nervous anchor for the film (before that was pretty much all he was ever asked to play), Woody Harrelson is an effortless redneck badass caricature who never loses his humanity, and Abigail Breslin gives one of those haunting child performances where the terrors they’ve lived through are reflected in aged eyes beaming from a fresh face. But I suppose we’re here to talk about Emma Stone, who also gives a terrific performance. So terrific, in fact, that you almost don’t notice how flatly the character is written. She is only ever meant to be a romantic foil for Eisenberg, and the very real, very human pain she shares with her sister is almost entirely due to her performance, which builds out an entire life from a tissue paper characterization.

In fact, the film’s frequently icky treatment of its female lead is essentially the only reason it doesn’t get top marks. I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and say that the movie is narrated by Columbus, and thus is necessarily colored by his perceptions of the world and his weird attitudes toward women. But her arc is still a little too sweaty geek fantasy-y to be entirely comfortable. However, beyond that, Zombieland is an excellent comic thrill ride, and a tiny miracle of Hollywood filmmaking that a story this intimate and kooky made it to the big screen.

Rating: 9/10

Meryl Streep

Nominated for: Florence Foster Jenkins

If Meryl Streep isn't in this category, Oscar voters are drowned in molten gold. But I'm especially excited to see her this time around, because before she played notably atrocious real-life singer Florence Foster Jenkins, she showed off another side of aging stardom...

Skeleton in the Closet: Death Becomes Her (1992)

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Cast: Meryl Streep, Bruce Willis, Goldie Hawn

Run Time: 1 hour 44 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Two feuding debutantes take a potion that gives them eternal youth, so their plots to murder each other go hilariously awry.

Death Becomes Her, over the course of its twenty-minutes-too-long run time, is about fifteen different movies. Not all of them are great, especially the bizarre action-thriller feint it makes during the closing act. But it takes such joy in its own construction, it’s hard to look away from even in its rougher patches.

How a dark comedy this high concept ever came to be I’ll never know, but I respect the dickens out of the team that committed themselves to making it a reality. As a slapstick effects spectacle, it hasn’t aged especially well, but this nevertheless contributes to its cartoonishly hyperbolic tone, and that tone is well served by director Robert Zemeckis’ almost absurd attention to detail. 

One scene in particular stood out to me on this viewing: Goldie Hawn explaining to Bruce Willis her plan to assassinate his shrewish wife, played by Meryl Streep. This plan is visualized in a series of playful cutaways that blend the present and the future, showing Hawn voicing her explanation as she performs those actions onscreen, eventually culminating in a roaring flame reflected in his glasses, as their violent urges reach a crescendo. This is a man who truly knows what he’s doing when creating a heightened cinematic reality

And boy is it fun to play in that reality. Death Becomes Her really is quite hilarious when it wants to be, even when it’s shooting for obvious Hollywood satire. The cast is pitch perfect, including – perhaps especially – Bruce Willis as the nebbish Ernest Menville, maybe the best role of his entire career (and certainly his best comic role). Hawn and Streep have a wicked, mercurial chemistry that allows you to feel their relationship even as it’s not particularly fleshed out by the script. It’s always nice when Streep steps out of the prestige drama wheelhouse so we can bask in her considerable comic chops.

Yes, Death Becomes Her has a flabby mess of a plot, but during those sequences of darling slapstick that oh so frequently nudge into full-tilt body horror, it’s like the movie has gulped down its own youth potion, and every blemish is blasted away for a few moments of pure, glamorous perfection.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 2254

Q2 Review Purge: Volume 3

You saw this coming, didn’t you? Underestimate my backlog once, shame on me. Underestimate my backlog twice, shame on YOU. Here’s the third and final (?) set of mini-mini reviews as I reboot my system and get back on track.

All About My Mother

Year: 1999
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Candela Peña
Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

After her son dies, Manuela travels to Barcelona to tell his father, helping an aging actress, a transgender hooker, and a pregnant nun along the way.

You might not be able to tell from that synopsis, but All About My Mother is pure Oscarbait through and through. There was a period in Almodóvar’s career where he was on his hands and knees begging for the Academy to take him seriously, and this film is smack dab in the middle of it. Naturally, it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Always the staunch Oscar contrarian, I must contest that All About My Mother is far from the director’s best work (winners are rarely as good as their competitors, as evidenced by the fact that his masterpiece Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown lost to Pelle the Conqueror). Although there is some delightful comic relief from the talented transgender actress Antonia San Juan, the movie takes itself way too seriously.

While Almodóvar admittedly crafts some stunning imagers and weaves in a tapestry of parallels between the film’s wide variety of mothers, trying to find the line between reality and fiction, All About My Mother is one of Almodóvar’s few films that feels typical. It might push the envelope with its depiction of gender and sexuality, but it’s just an Oscar tearjerker, yanking its characters through sad sad situations so they can spout elegant monologues at the drop of a hat. Obviously it’s far from a bad movie (I don’t think Almodóvar has made one of those), but it just doesn’t make an impression, which is usually what he’s best at.

Rating: 6/10


Talk to Her

Year: 2002
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Rosario Flores, Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti
Run Time: 1 hour 52 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Two men become friends at a hospital while caring for their loved ones, who are both in comas.

If you thought All About My Mother was Oscarbaity, wait till you get a load of Talk to Her! A movie so wildly overbearing that even the Oscars were a little put off, shuffling it into the Best Original Screenplay category, it’s by far the least funny Almodóvar movie I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot at this point. What I admire most about the director is his ability to draw comedy from even the most dire of situations, but here he sets all that aside and doubles down on the sincerity, to muted effect.

It lacks the serene beauty of All About My Mother, though if anything its intricate web of metaphor is even more complex. The film is about transition and metamorphosis, two disparate halves coming together to form a whole. It maybe goes without saying that this theme results in the most f**ked-up Almodóvar relationship yet: the friendship between the lover of a female bullfighter and the lonely stalker of a beautiful young dancer. The queer overtones prevalent in his filmography are almost entirely absent, stripping away all veneer to showcase a story about two people bonding.

Unfortunately, Talk to Her trips over itself in the third act, pointlessly extending the plot for some melodramatic waffling. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence in Almodóvar’s work, but when it lacks so much of his signature style, it also lacks the charm that allows you to cling to the bull’s back. Talk to Her bucks and you go flying, which is an extremely disappointing outcome.

Rating: 6/10


The Lives of Others

Year: 2006
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Cast: Ulrich Mühe, Martina Gedeck, Sebastian Koch
Run Time: 2 hour 17 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

An East Berlin secret police agent tasked to bug the apartment of a suspected dissident finds himself wrapped up in the man’s life as he listens from the attic.

Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and those who make historical movies are almost always talking about the present. It’s no mistake that The Lives of Others came out during the time of the Patriot Act and America’s surveillance controversy. And it’s certainly no mistake that the film is set in 1984.

The Lives of Others is a thriller about sitting down, about the sociopolitical intrigue that can change lives and enact deaths without stepping out from behind a desk. It’s a terrifying snapshot of a bleak reality that has existed, does exist, and will exist. In essence, it’s a very German film.

However, despite its dour setting and even more dour production design, dripping with greys and mottled greens, The Lives of Others is a story of hope. About the flowers that can grow in the cracks of the concrete. This is thanks in large part to Ulrich Mühe, whose stony visage captures every last chink in his armor as he learns that the people he has been victimizing are actual human beings. The Lives of Others is a terrifying film about bureaucracy and a reassuring one about humankind. It’s not often that something like that comes from a film set in historic Germany (unless Spielberg is involved), and The Lives of Others is a powerful break from the mold.

Rating: 8/10


Star Trek

Year: 2009
Director: J. J. Abrams
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg
Run Time: 2 hours 7 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

The Star Fleet rebel James T. Kirk finds himself on a stranded student vessel facing the alien threat that killed his father.

I know it’s a popular joke to make fun of J. J. Abrams’ use of lens flares, but I’d never until now experienced them for myself. The legends were true. Star Trek 2009 is an ocular freak show. People have counted, there’s literally a lens flare every 12 seconds on average. It’s like standing on the red carpet at the Oscars for two hours. Every single heroic shot is marred by these hideous distractions. They even go off in quiet, indoor scenes with no discernible light source. The lens flares will make your eyes water far more than any of the drama.

But there’s a movie beneath all that digital tampering, so let’s talk about it. As an origin story for a franchise I have not one shred of nostalgia for, it does a decent job of telling its own story. This could be a movie about James T. Bumblefart overcoming great odds as a cadet, and it would still be a coherent, engaging yarn. And there would be even less reason for Zoe Saldana to be there, because Uhura’s extremely discomfiting romance with Commander Spock happens entirely backstage.

As an exercise in J. J. Abrams crashing his CGI action figures into each other, Star Trek is a fun popcorn adventure, if a little beholden to the Star Wars standby of having important battles take place over yawning chasms. There’s only one scene that reaches the dizzy heights of summer fun I was hoping for (Bones follows Kirk, injecting him with a variety of wacky vaccinations to stabilize him as he attempts to deliver an important message) as the film tends toward the over-serious, but it’s never dull.

And Chris Pine is honestly a terrific choice, giving young Kirk a frat boy braggadocio that puts his flaws on his sleeve while retaining his natural charm. Star Trek’s a swing and a hit, even if it’s not a home run. Those lens flares can rot in Hell.

Rating: 6/10


Mamma Mia!

Year: 2008
Director: Phyllida Lloyd
Cast: Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Amanda Seyfried
Run Time: 1 hour 48 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

A young woman wants to invite her dad to her wedding on a Greek Isle. Only she doesn’t know which of three men it is, so she invites them all. Then they sing a bunch of ABBA songs.

The Mamma Mia! title card appears as a young girl runs screaming through a cloud of sparkles. That should pretty much tell you all you need to know about it. Mamma Mia! is loud, stupid, deranged, and I love it from the bottom of my heart.

While Mamma Mia! attempts to harness the glittery camp of attending a Broadway musical or a disco show, it frequently swings over the top into wholly unintentional bad-good delight, then back around the horn again into genuine fun. It spins around and around again between these two registers like a gymnast on the horizontal bars, afraid to let go and stick the landing. And stick the landing Mamma Mia! doesn’t, backloading about 90 ballads that suck the energy out of the third act, leaving it so ravaged that not even “Take a Chance On Me” (the most perfect pop song of the 70’s) can resuscitate it.

But despite its sputtering denouement, I love both angles from which Mamma Mia! approaches its content. For all the too-bright lighting that makes every location look like a sitcom set and the herky jerky variance in quality between the celebrity singers (Meryl Streep is at the top with a shockingly good belt, and Pierce Brosnan flounders at the bottom, sounding like Fozzie Bear in the middle of getting his tonsils removed) there’s a genuinely good vin running through it all, like the Greek chorus that resurrects an ancient form of theater to great effect, the bubblegum disco magic of “Super Trouper,” or the beach party sizzle that underscores “Lay All Your Love On Me.”

At the end of the day, Mamma Mia! is a movie that makes me sublimely happy. It is great and it is terrible, frequently at the same time, but it never stops being tremendous fun to watch.

Rating: Please don't make me do this. 7/10? 9/10? 5/10? 9/10. Don't hold me to that.

Last Night

Year: 2010

Director: Massy Tadjedin

Cast: Keira Knightley, Sam Worthington, Eva Mendes

Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A wife and husband both find themselves faced with the opportunity to cheat while he’s away on a business trip.

Last Night is one of those ponderous indie dramas that’s so excessively low key it would easily have been a TV movie. Or a commercial. With minimal sets, a tiny cast, and an abundance of agonizing close-ups, there’s nothing that screams “feature film.” To be frank there’s nothing to look at whatsoever.

Much like Looking: The Movie, Last Night is mostly composed of a string of conversations rather than any real incident. This is fine, especially when the conversation is as thought-provoking as it is. But the inhuman frankness and eloquence of these conversations make it screamingly apparent that the dialogue is Written. Luckily the actors that perform this series of treatises are well suited to the job.

Keira Knightley and Guillame Canet are a better match than Sam Worthington and Eva Mendes (though Mendes shades a surprising amount of depth onto a thankless sex symbol role), but for the most part Last Night is well-delivered, if coldly intellectual drama.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1882
Reviews In This Series
Star Trek (Abrams, 2009)
Star Trek Beyond (Lin, 2016)

Mamma Mia! (Lloyd, 2008)
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Parker, 2018)

Do The Harlem Shake

Appropriately enough for my spring cleaning period, two of the films I watched this week are very perfect, equally strange echoes of one another. They both deal with the topic of urban education in Harlem, but one focuses on the plight of the white teacher and was directed by master of horror Wes Craven, and the other focuses on a black teen and was based on the novel Push by Sapphire.

Music of the Heart

Year: 1999

Director: Wes Craven

Cast: Meryl Streep, Angela Bassett, Cloris Leachman

Run Time: 2 hours 4 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

A newly divorced single mother takes the only job she can get – teaching violin to underprivileged kids in a Harlem elementary school.

Music of the Heart is a very special film. It’s the only film in Wes Craven’s career that isn’t horror or a thriller, and I’m immensely pleased he was given the opportunity to make it, even if he did have to strong-arm the producers by threatening not to make Scream 3 (although a world without Scream 3 isn’t necessarily a bleak prospect). This film is but a taste of the world that could have been if Craven hadn’t been pigeonholed as a horror director by the one-two punch of The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes. Frankly, as a fan, I can’t say I’m sorry it worked out the way it did, but at least this film proves that the man was capable of expanding his horizons.

Unfortunately, that expansion was channeled into a heartwarming biopic, which might just be my least favorite form of cinema after straight-up snuff films. I would have preferred to bestow this movie with a full-ledged review, as I would with any Craven work, but this genre is just too daunting a prospect for the little ol’ horror nerd that I am. That said, the film itself is pretty decent, though woefully generic in the wake of thematically similar flicks like Freedom Writers, Stand and Deliver, Take the Lead, and even Danny DeVito’s Renaissance Man (a film I secretly love). 

Craven’s horror upbringing is totally buried (save for one instance in which the classic Vertigo shot – where the background seems to stretch into infinity behind a character – is reversed, with profoundly mystifying results), replaced with fluttering birds and warm, rosy lighting. The film spends a great deal of time cycling through an It’s a Small World-type array of every conceivable urban conflict and occasionally goes alarmingly far out of its way to be Meaningful, but as a low-key character study it excels.

Meryl Streep’s Roberta Guaspari is no airbrushed white savior to these Harlem kiddos. She’s a cracked and broken, immensely weak-willed woman with more character flaws than there are heads in Hannibal Lecter’s pantry. She’s not some perfect Barbie doll whose only flaw is Caring Too Much. This ain’t a Hillary Swank picture, and this ain’t that part of a job interview where they ask “what’s your biggest weakness?” There’s no sugar-coating off this rude, brash, selfish, scared, desperate woman who finds her inner strength through the course of a ten-year teaching career (the time jump in the film is startling at first, but it picks up fast).

Streep is excellent, it must be said, though you can figure one can just assume that at this point. Cloris Leachman (as her mother) seems a little lost in the words at points, but she’s hardly in the film long enough to really matter, and she’s bolstered by its supporting cast including a tough-as-nails Angela Bassett, a proudly subtle Gloria Estefan, and the second-creepiest Culkin brother, Kieran. But Streep is the cream of the crop with her unflinching, raw portrayal of a woman on the brink.

Craven’s typical sense of humor is also at play in Music of the Heart, allowing it to flow smoothly without becoming a dour, didactic treatise. There’s perhaps a bit of an overemphasis on full performances of musical pieces, without which the pace would be snappier and the run time blissfully shorter, but the film never stops being fun, which is much to Craven’s credit.

I’m happy such a singular film exists in the great master’s oeuvre. As a genre devotee I can’t say I’ll ever have the urge to watch it again, but Music of the Heart is a dashing and competent piece of filmmaking. What more could I ask for?

Rating: 7/10

Precious

Year: 2009

Director: Lee Daniels

Cast: Gabourey Sidibe, Mo'Nique, Paula Patton

Run Time: 1 hour 50 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

An impoverished, illiterate, overweight Harlem teen attempts to get a basic education while literally everything bad happens to her.

Lee Daniels will not be getting an invitation to my fantasy dinner party. My guess is that he’d more or less immediately start screaming about the hypocrisy of enjoying oneself while there is still turmoil in the Middle East. That said, a personality like that instantly lends itself to Oscarbait filmmaking, and Daniels’ audacious visual style make Precious a tremendously satisfying watch, even if it is never a truly enjoyable one.

For starters, he uses one of the simplest tricks in the book to lay a foundation on which to build his film: a realistic, faux-documentary filming style. Shot largely on handheld cameras that zoom in and out in the middle of shots and occasionally receive an obstructed view of the proceedings, this aesthetic puts the audience right there in Precious’ universe, almost subconsciously implying its authenticity. At intervals, Daniels goes overboard and one gets the impression of being yoked to a catnipped ferret as it runs back and forth around the room, but for the most part it’s not intrusive, in the style popularized by shows like The Office or Parks and Recreation.

With this structure in place, precious builds a mighty empire of daring aesthetic decisions. Many of these revolve around Precious’ fantasies of a better life, the sleek glitziness of which is captured by blissfully still, traditional camerawork. These frequent fantastical intrusions into her daily life can be subtle (a glamorous younger photo of her abusive mother coming to life to coo soft words to her daughter) or alarming (Precious escapes into a staccato fantasy world while being molested by her father – whee…), but they are always aesthetically confident and deeply impactful. These additional touches lessen as the film goes on, but presumably it’s intentional, although the film does lose some of its sparkle from there on out.

Precious is a film dominated by its visual schema, because as a plot there’s almost nothing to it. Something bad happens to Precious, she tries to make a positive change, something worse happens to Precious. Lather, rinse, repeat. The ambiguous ending isn’t nearly as dour as it could have been and – again – the lack of closure is certainly an authorial choice, but this is a film that can’t escape a thick cloud of Importance. It’s certainly an important story to tell, but one absolutely must be in the mood to receive it.

You see, the world where Precious lives, the world where beautiful white people are incessantly pumped into the living room through her TV, is our world, a fact which the film’s entire being endeavors to drive home. In addition to the gritty documentary aesthetic, the actors make great sacrifices to drive the point home. Gabourey Sidibe – hardly a traditional movie star – suffers abuse at the hands of everyone around her, painting Precious as a sort of social turtle, drawing back into herself and speaking almost inaudibly when she feels uncomfortable. Her performance is infinitely varied and certainly breathtaking.

The performers that surround her are likewise tremendously brave, and I don’t mean in the sense that they forgo movie star makeup, though they do. Mo’Nique (who plays Precious’ mother) overcame a childhood of repression to therapeutically portray a gut-wrenching, subtly human, yet startlingly evil role, Paula Patton channels her inner frustrated teacher, and Mariah Carey doesn’t sing a note. That’s true dedication.

Precious is a tough watch, it is a daring tirade, and it is overwhelmingly an actor’s movie. As a showcase for pitch-perfect film technique, it is untouchable, though as a story – even an Important one – it’s a little too unfocused to be truly special.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1377

Grim Fairy Tales

Year: 2014

Director: Rob Marshall

Cast: Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick, James Corden

Run Time: 2 hours 5 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

The transition from stage to screen is not an easy one. Musicals rely on the energy of the audience, so pre-packaging a living and breathing live show into one endlessly reusable piece is a tricky endeavor. Sometimes it's a successfully thrilling conversion (Little Shop of Horrors, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), sometimes it's downright repugnant (Bye Bye Birdie, The Phantom of the Opera), and sometimes it's a magnificently slapdash spectacle of glitter and misguided cameos (Rock of Ages, Mamma Mia!). Into the Woods, adapted from Steven Sondheim's 1986 stage show, is a little bit of all three, though it survives on the strength of one of the most effective celebrity casts in recent memory.

I'm definitely not being biased by Chris Pine's hair. Definitely.

Into the Woods combines several different fairy tales into one dark, cohesive tapestry about coming of age, parenthood, exploring the world outside one's humdrum life, and learning to accept responsibility. The cast of familiar characters includes Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) and Prince Charming (Chris Pine), who meet at a ball under magical circumstances against the wishes of an Evil Stepmother (Christine Baranski); Jack (Daniel Huttlestone of Les Misérables) and his Beanstalk of Opportunity; Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), who encounters a Wolf (Johnny Depp) on the way to her grandmother's house; and Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy), trapped up in her tower patiently waiting to let her hair down for the right Prince (Billy Magnussen).

When a childless Baker (James Corden) and his Wife (Emily Blunt) learn of a curse placed upon their household by the Witch (Meryl Streep) next door, they set off on an adventure to find four magical objects to reverse the spell before three nights pass. On their journey, they split up and regroup and encounter various other characters making their merry way through the woods. It's basically one of those chase scenes from Scooby Doo, with characters popping in and out of closets and running into one another all across the forest.

Also like Scooby Doo, there's a creepy live action dog.

As a medium for showcasing the syncopated rhythms and delicate wordplay of Sondheim's compositions with crispness and clarity, Into the Woods is an unequivocal success. Although the cast is star-studded, many of them have previously proven themselves as vocal talents in films or on the Great White Way: Meryl Streep and Christine Baranski in Mamma Mia!, Anna Kendrick in Pitch Perfect, Lilla Crawford in Annie... And Johnny Depp? Well, he really isn't in very much of the film.

And the newcomers are of a piece startlingly suited for the challenge. Emily Blunt has a clear, chirpy voice that isn't tested by overly-challenging pieces, and Chris Pine has a rich, dreamy baritone that really needs to be taken advantage of in larger roles. Or at least televised karaoke pajama parties.

The film shines brightest during its first half, during which the fairy tales are enacted in fairly traditional, but uniquely overlapping nature. The cheerful chaos of the characters' various collisions is upbeat and energetic, mixed with some highly theatrical (and occasionally suspension of disbelief-shattering) lighting, staging, and costume design, especially in the otherwise unprepossessing Wolf sequence.

I mean, it's hard to make the Little Red tale look drab. *coughcoughAmandaSeyfried*

The actors feel most comfortable when they're embracing the "Whee! It's a musical!" aspect of these scenes. Not that any of them are untalented in other registers, but fairy tale characters rely on broad stereotypes and tonally the performers can find their match with ease. Chris Pine is dashing, Anna Kendrick is woebegone, Lilla Crawford is brash and outgoing. Wham bam, thank you ma'am. 

The sheer amount of fun they must be having just pours from the screen. Every one of the film's best sequences comes from this pure joy: the sprawling and fantastical opening number, Cinderella's spritely dash from the Prince, Little Red's encounter with the Baker, and the dashing, hilarious, campy idiocy of "Agony," the Princes' duet and the unimpeachable high-water mark of the entire show.

I suppose I would be remiss if I neglected to mention Meryl Streep's Oscar-nominated performance as the Witch, but there's not much there to talk about. Streep is a treasure, of course, but her old crone is not much more than an over-the-top, crack-addled spinster. To be fair, that's what the role calls for, but she's not exactly punishing herself to find the core of her character. But she has a superb belt and knocks all of her songs out of the park and that's more than I could ever ask for.

A superb belt, yes, but a superb dress and wig, too.

However, once the film makes a drastic tonal shift into the darker side of the fairy tale universe, the film loses its mooring. The performers strain to find purpose and the music dries up, becoming both less frequent and more self-serious. It is here that the Disneyfication of the show takes full effect as the film shies away from the original show's more morbid plot points.

The third act drags like an anchor as the company tones down the death, sex, and violence, removes some key scenes entirely, and plods on through to its now unmotivated conclusion. Frankly, the final third is an unholy mess, pushing a stone over the film's well of lively buoyancy and letting it die an ignominious subterranean death.

The film strains to reach the finish line and sputters, coughs, and dies three feet from the ribbon. The finale song, cut down to a wanly fading overdubbed monstrosity, is more like a funeral knell than a full-circle denouement. 

But all in all, the film ain't half bad. If you can stomach the unappetizing finale, Into the Woods is worth your time, especially if you've never expereinced the joy of seeing the show staged live. Despite its watered-down ambitions, it really is the next best thing. The cast is remarkably game to bring the songs to life, the setting is charmingly serene, and the music will be playing in your head all week. Maybe just take a nap when you hit the 90-minute mark.

TL;DR: Into the Woods is a lively fun musical that is brought down by a tampered-with finale.

Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1058

Bad Habits

Year: 2008

Director: John Patrick Shanley

Cast: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams

Run Time: 1 hour 44 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned.

I have promised Sergio that I would watch Doubt with him since possibly the first microsecond of our relationship, but have managed to delay it a year and a half down the line. Now, any frequent reader of this blog knows that dramas, especially religious period dramas are absolutely not my forte, although I'm a big Meryl Streep fan (if you're not, thank you for visiting this blog from your home dimension, because you don't exist in mine).

But some higher power decided that I should labor on Labor Day, so Sergio and I decided to make the most of the preceding day (which was, appropriately, Sunday) by sitting down and achieving this hard-won dream. And you know what? I didn't hate it.

I mean, it's hard to hate someone so fashion-forward.

Doubt tells the story of Catholic school principal Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep). Her stern, old-fashioned ways have no place in the modern cultural climate of 1964 (what's more modern than Meet the Beatles! and My Fair Lady?), or so thinks Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a more progressive priest who performs such sacrilegious acts as (gasp!) listening to "Frosty the Snowman" and (my stars!) forgive errant altar boys.

One such altar boy, Donald Miller (Joseph Foster) becomes the source of a whirling controversy by nature of 1) being the first black student accepted into the school and 2) Sister James' (Amy Adams) early suspicion that his relationship with Father Flynn might have dipped into impropriety. Sister James is caught in the crossfire as Sister Aloysius attempts to bring down Father Flynn with all her might for what she perceives to be a case of molestation.

And that's about it. Doubt is based on the play of the same name by John Patrick Shanley (also the film's director) and retains much of the same presentational limitations of the form, especially the musty, fussy, staging typically exhibited by off-Broadway plays full of ambiguity and religious metaphor.

Nope, nothing Jesusy here, move it along.

Doubt is a film about the power of words, and is thus filled to the brim with conversations: Conversations between Aloysius and her nemesis, Father Flynn, conversations between Aloysius and her unwitting mentee Sister James, and conversations between Aloysius and Donald's mother (Viola Davis), sometimes lasting ten minutes or more. To mix it up a bit, there are brief interludes for Father Flynn's lengthy sermons and Sister James' classroom lectures.

For a film this strapped for alternative content, it is absolutely crucial to feature a host of terrific performances, which it thankfully receives through the deity-channeling vessels known as Steep, Davis, and Hoffman, in that order. Adams is terrific, but too green to make an impression when pitched against these three giants. In the hands of people like, say, Keanu Reeves or Jessica Alba, the film would undoubtedly be a dismal failure.

Obviously thanks to its overwrought intellectual content, it teeters on that knife's edge for general audiences, especially those with no particular interest in religion. But for those who appreciate the art and craft of cinema, Doubt is a near textbook example of filmmaking done right, even if the story is a bit slack at times. 

The use of cinematography (especially judicious use of canted shots), color design (color is eked out only in very strict measures), and delicious lighting schemes allow the sufficiently invested viewer to interpret subtextual meaning and symbolism (even beyond the obviously religious) in a more immediate and rewarding way than many films of its ilk.

 You know what they say... Those who can't do, cant.

Doubt is full of resonant themes to be parsed out by any viewer with a keen eye and a willingness to meet the material halfway. Those who don't wish to can't be blamed, especially because the plot is so achingly measured and sedate. But for those willing to go the distance, Doubt provides some terrific performers at the top of their game and an interesting cinematic text to study.

TL;DR: Doubt faces the constant threat of receding into dullness, but survives on the strength of terrific performers and a strong cinematic style.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 720