‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ Review: Shakespeare in the Dark

December 21, 2021

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The Tragedy of Macbeth (CREDIT: Alison Cohen Rosa/A24)

Starring: Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Corey Hawkins, Brendon Gleeson, Harry Melling, Bertie Carvel, Alex Hassell, Kathryn Hunter, Moses Ingram, Ralph Ineson, Sean Patrick Thomas, Stephen Root, Brian Thompson, Richard Short

Director: Joel Coen

Running Time: 105 Minutes

Rating: R for Bloody Swordplay

Release Date: December 25, 2021 (Theaters)/January 14, 2022 (Apple TV+)

When reviewing a new Shakespeare adaptation, especially one of the Bard’s most popular productions, it makes sense to ask: what makes this version different? So as Joel Coen goes solo to take on The Scottish Play, what uniqueness has he brought to the table? Well, he did cast his wife Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth, so that could potentially be some fertile ground for psychoanalysis. Or maybe not! She’s already been in plenty of his films, and I’m willing to guess that this isn’t the first time that a director’s wife has been cast in something Shakespearean. Denzel Washington certainly brings some more melanin than usual to the title role, but ultimately that’s neither here nor there. He’s Denzel Washington after all, so why not cast him in one of the most dramatically hefty parts in all of English-language drama?

Overall, one word comes to mind when trying to identify The Tragedy of Macbeth‘s uniqueness, and that word is: surreal. I don’t know if that’s what Coen was specifically aiming for, and I in fact wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t a consideration at all. But no matter how it happened, it showed up. One huge reason for that is the dialogue itself; it’s strange to speak in iambic pentameter all the time, after all. On top of that, the geography within the castle walls never quite makes visual sense. Instead, it’s like a maze that the characters are perpetually stuck within. Combine that with Bruno Delbonnel’s stark black-and-white cinematography, and the whole film comes across as a dream that curdles into a nightmare. And as so often happens when I see a movie that lacks bright colors, I nodded off throughout, which only added to the sense that I slipped through some parallel dimension or underworld.

One more element that really stands out is Kathryn Hunter’s performance as the witchy weird sisters. She contorts herself into seemingly inhuman positions, which is a wise acting decision, considering that her characters are meant to be somewhere in between human and supernatural. I didn’t ask to see a huge disembodied toe stuck between someone else’s toes, but now I won’t be able to forget it. Nor will I be able to forget the shot of the one sister standing over a pool that reflects back the other two sisters. This is a striking Shakespearean adaptation, is what I’m saying.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is Recommended If You Like: Claustrophobia, Cruel fate, Maximum weirdness

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Usurpers

‘American Underdog’ is an Okay Football Movie and a Down-the-Middle Christian Movie

December 17, 2021

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American Underdog (CREDIT: Michael Kubeisy/Lionsgate)

Starring: Zachary Levi, Anna Paquin, Dennis Quaid, Chance Kelly, Cindy Hogan, Ser’Darius Blain, Adam Baldwin, Bruce McGill, Hayden Zaller

Directors: Andrew and Jon Erwin

Running Time: 112 Minutes

Rating: PG for Mild Adult Situations

Release Date: December 25, 2021 (Theaters)

Is American Underdog The Great Evangelical Christian Movie we’ve all been waiting for? Not quite, but it does promise a decent amount of inspiration. Plenty of professional athletes have attributed their success to God, and Kurt Warner is one of the most successful to ever do so. He was named Super Bowl MVP in 2001 and eventually made his way into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but he took a uniquely circuitous path to the big time. He went undrafted out of a college that’s not exactly known for producing NFL talent, got a job stocking grocery shelves just to get by, and then tried at hand arena football just as his dreams were starting to slip away for good. That’s when he landed on the radar of the St. Louis Rams, a struggling franchise willing to take a chance on a guy that everyone else had written off as too old to be a rookie. And even after all that, he was still just a backup. But not for long, as the Rams’ starting quarterback got injured in a preseason game.

You might think it would be a little odd seeing 41-year-old Zachary Levi playing Warner throughout his twenties, but fortunately Shazam! did us the favor of establishing his overgrown kid bona fides. Besides, world-class athletes are often so physically imposing and metaphorically larger-than-life that they can easily appear to be ten years older than they actually are. So Levi sells that part of the role, but what about the Christianity aspect? I certainly believe that Warner lives his life dedicated to God and that he became especially committed to his faith when he meets divorced mother of two Brenda (Anna Paquin). But does that aspect of his life make for an interesting movie? I’ll say this: it could’ve been more interesting. There are some hints at internal existential struggles, particularly when Brenda’s parents die in a tornado. But we never feel the full weight of how the Warners can reconcile a merciful god with a cruel world. We just kind of learn that they in fact do do that.

But what about the football? It’s not hard to make the career of Kurt Warner exciting. His years with the Rams were nicknamed “The Greatest Show on Turf,” and they certainly featured some of the most dynamic offensive playmaking in the history of the NFL. I love touchdowns much more than I love concussion-causing tackles, so I’m reasonably happy with a highlight reel of this nature. But does American Underdog say anything that the real licensed game footage doesn’t already say? As with the Christianity, the answer is a resounding … “maybe”? There’s a running theme about how Kurt is resistant to the strictures imposed by his coaches. Did he possibly revolutionize football by scrambling out of the so-called “pocket” and thereby opening up the game to untold possibilities? Perhaps! The movie doesn’t really give us a definitive answer either way.

Oh well, at least there’s Dennis Quaid really enjoying himself (and relishing a chicken sandwich when we first meet him) as Rams coach Dick Vermeil, who’s in his sixties during the film’s events but even more of an overgrown kid than everyone else. Maybe American Underdog should have just been a Warner-Vermeil buddy comedy – and not even necessarily primarily about football! Just spitballing, but perhaps they could solve pigskin-related crimes in the St. Louis area. Billion dollar idea here for the taking, folks.

American Underdog is Recommended If You Like: Real life sports footage mixed with fake movie scenes, Inspirational kids with disabilities, Honky tonk bars

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Touchdowns

‘Sing 2’ Sure Features a Lot of Singing! Is it Too Much? Let’s Find Out

December 16, 2021

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Sing 2 (CREDIT: Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures)

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, Taron Egerton, Bobby Canavale, Tori Kelly, Nick Kroll, Halsey, Pharrell Williams, Nick Offerman, Letitia Wright, Eric André, Chelsea Peretti, Bono, Garth Jennings, Adam Buxton, Jennifer Saunders, Peter Serafinowicz

Director: Garth Jennings

Running Time: 112 Minutes

Rating: PG for Threats of Grievous Bodily Harm

Release Date: December 22, 2021 (Theaters)

In Sing 2, Bobby Canavale voices wolf/media mogul Jimmy Crystal, who’s basically the lupine version of the studio executive that Graham Chapman played in Monty Python‘s “20th Century Vole” sketch. He says that he wants to see something “big” and “different,” but really that’s just code for “I’m impossible to please!” When we first meet him, he’s auditioning a menagerie of potential acts for his next live show, and they all look pretty unique to me. I mean, have you ever seen a lemur sing Billie Eilish’s “Bury a Friend” while doing gymnastics or a trio of ducklings nailing Eminem’s “My Name Is” while dressed like Dick Van Dyke-style chimney sweeps? Maybe Jimmy Crystal has, because he immediately dismisses them with a “been there, done that” attitude. So what does he want? Guaranteed cash flow, I assume, because just about the only thing that excites him is the mention of legendary lion Clay Calloway (voiced by Bono), a rock icon-turned-recluse who nobody’s heard from ever since his wife died. And for some reason, plucky koala impresario Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) has promised that he can book Calloway.

Moon and his musical crew are basically in the business of putting on the sort of live musical spectacular that you’d see at Las Vegas. They perform a jukebox medley of all sorts of hit songs along with a vague storyline. At the beginning of Sing 2, they’re putting on something inspired by Alice in Wonderland, but they’re eventually told to come up with something original, so resident librettist pig Gunter (Nick Kroll) crafts a space opera about traversing the planets of War and Joy. That sounds like a pretty great show to me! They don’t need a giant cat voiced by one of the most famous rock stars of all time to make it work. I mean, I’m not saying that they should get rid of Bono, but I understand the over-the-top theater kid appeal of this endeavor with or without him.

The other major thought about Sing 2 that I want to express has to do with its inclusion of U2 songs. Quite a few are featured, and the implication seems to be that in the Sing universe, every single U2 song is a Clay Calloway song, which suggests a whole host of metaphysical implications that I’m not sure writer-director Garth Jennings is prepared to grapple with. (Or maybe he is! And if so, I’d love to hear his thoughts.)

Anyway, this is all pretty lightweight, but I can’t deny that my ears pricked up and my heart swelled at some key moments. The voice cast has been assembled for good reason. Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson, and Taron Egerton all know how to sing. And I’m particularly invested in Tori Kelly as nervous elephant Meena, because she’s a 100% Certified Cutie (Kelly, that is, not Meena, although I don’t judge if you’re into cartoon pachyderms). Halsey joins the fun with a full-on Joisey accent, while Kroll, Eric André, and Chelsea Peretti deliver an acceptable amount of funny. It’s bright, it’s buoyant, and my only major disappointment is that the Minions didn’t show up again after they appeared for the Illumination production logo.

Sing 2 is Recommended If You Like: Relentless soundtracks, Cartoon characters embodying clichés about evil media moguls, Elephant trunks holding ice cream cones

Grade: 3 out of 5 Big Leagues

At the ‘Nightmare Alley,’ the Circus Gets Pretty Dark

December 15, 2021

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Nightmare Alley (CREDIT: Kerry Hayes/20th Century Studios)

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, David Straitharn, Holt McCallany, Mark Povinelli, Mary Steenburgen, Clifton Collins Jr., Tim Blake Nelson, Jim Beaver

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Running Time: 150 Minutes

Rating: R for Some Gunfire and a Little Hanky Panky

Release Date: December 17, 2021 (Theaters)

If you can’t trust circus folk, who can you trust? Actually, if Nightmare Alley is to be believed, carnies are the only people who can be believed (well, most of them anyway). It’s everyone else who’s trying to pull one over on you. This movie is two and a half hours long, which is to say: it takes Bradley Cooper’s Stanton Carlisle way too long to realize the truth about Truth. That’s probably because he’s fooling himself.

The movie itself is pulling a trick on us as well. Considering its spooky title, and its writer-director, we’re primed for some horror, or at least something supernatural. But instead it’s a full-on noir thriller, with all the moral prisons, femmes fatales, and cigarettes to prove it. We first meet Stanton burning away his past, quite literally. Then he wanders into the local big tent, and it’s unclear if he actually has any plans for anything at this moment. Only later do his machinations come to the fore. He gets roped into a job, which at first pays him a mere 50 cents (it would have been a dollar if he hadn’t snuck into the geek show), but then that’s followed up by steadier employment at the next town, and soon enough he’s one of the top mentalists around. That trajectory eventually leads to him teaming up with a psychologist (Cate Blanchett) for a con to bilk some big, big money out of a rich man (Richard Jenkins) who’s overcome by Stan’s promises that he can commune with the dead. But of course, there’s enough doubt and double-crossing in the air for everything to go sideways.

By the end of the whole plot, Stan essentially circles back to his original destitute and anonymous status quo. I was struck by both the futility and durability of his con man nature. The Universe, or the Fates, or God or whatever, or simply the randomness of existence has decided that his deception can go only so far. And while his reach exceeding his grasp might send him down to rock bottom, he’ll find a way to survive in the gutter if he has to. But why not do it a little differently? If Stan were a real person, and he were my friend, I would remind him that he seems happiest when he’s just hanging out with the circus crew. He found a family, but the genre that he lives in has ensured that he’s a nowhere man who’s never fully at home anywhere.

Nightmare Alley is Recommended If You Like: Hucksters, Snow, Trenchcoats, Biting heads off chickens

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Cold Reads

‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Actually Presents Many Ways Home, What with the Multiverse and All

December 14, 2021

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Spider-Man: No Way Home (CREDIT: Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures)

Starring: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jacob Batalon, Jon Favreau, Marisa Tomei, Alfred Molina, Benedict Wong, Jamie Foxx, Willem Dafoe, J.K. Simmons, Thomas Haden Church, Rhys Ifans, Tony Revolori, J.B. Smoove, Hannibal Burress, Martin Starr, Angourie Rice

Director: Jon Watts

Running Time: 148 Minutes

Rating: R for The Usual Punching and Stabbing, Perhaps a Little Darker Than Usual

Release Date: December 17, 2021 (Theaters)

Hey, it’s our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man back on the big screen! Or maybe, that should be our friendly neighborhood Spider … Men? (Hey, wasn’t there another recent movie that asked that same question? With so many years of comic book history to draw upon, you can be multi-universal in multiple ways.)

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‘Don’t’ Look Up’ Might Make You Scream, Except That Its Characters Are Doing Enough of That Already

December 13, 2021

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Don’t Look Up (CREDIT: Niko Tavernise/Netflix)

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, Mark Rylance, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Ariana Grande, Scott Mescudi, Himesh Patel, Melanie Lynskey, Michael Chiklis

Director: Adam McKay

Running Time: 138 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: December 10, 2021 (Theaters)/December 24, 2021 (Netflix)

Timothée Chalamet should have been in all of Don’t Look Up.

Or at least like 75% of it. I’m thinking the ideal situation would be that he’s a main character, but he’s barely in the trailer, if at all. So when he shows up, you think he’ll hang around for just a few scenes, but instead he gradually just takes over the whole affair. A miniature version of that is what actually happens in the Don’t Look Up that we did get, as he shows up about 2/3 of the way through and plays a fairly large part from that point forward.

What I’m trying to say is, instead of recreating the broad reality of people yelling at clear and present disaster, Don’t Look Up probably would’ve been better off primarily focusing on the peculiarities of random skater boys rolling through the apocalypse.

Grade: Look Up About Half the Time

P.S. ‘Benedetta,’ I Love You

December 10, 2021

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Benedetta (CREDIT: IFC Films/Screenshot)

Starring: Virginie Efira, Daphne Patakia, Charlotte Rampling, Lambert Wilson

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Running Time: 131 Minutes

Rating: Unrated

Release Date: December 3, 2021 (Theaters)

What do you do when you have a crush on a nun? If you’re like me, you write a review about her movie. I don’t know if Benedetta’s visions of the Messiah are genuine, but I’m pretty sure that this particular bride of Christ does indeed have superpower. If she says something’s gonna happen, then it’s gonna happen! Definitely be careful around her. She’s quite dangerous, and a bit more wrathful than I would recommend. But oh boy, if she’s on your side, you know you’ve got something special in store.

Grade: Bullseye in the Stigmata

‘National Champions’ Presents Its Melodramatic Case for Student-Athlete Compensation

December 9, 2021

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National Champions (CREDIT: Scott Garfield/Courtesy of STX Films)

Starring: Stephan James, J.K. Simmons, Alexander Ludwig, Lil Rel Howery, Tim Blake Nelson, Andrew Bachelor, Jeffrey Donovan, David Koechner, Kristin Chenoweth, Timothy Olyphant, Uzo Aduba

Director: Ric Roman Waugh

Running Time: 116 Minutes

Rating: R for Big Boy Executive Language

Release Date: December 10, 2021 (Theaters)

National Champions is certainly timely, as the subject of student-athlete compensation has made its way up to the Supreme Court, and players are now permitted to financially benefit from their name, image, and likeness. But I don’t imagine that this conflict will play out in real life anywhere near as operatically it does in this movie. That’s not a criticism! I’m in the theater to be entertained, not to confirm that they get all the facts straight. And for the most part, I was thrilled, amused, and riveted.

Stephan James is at the center of it all as star quarterback LeMarcus James. James (the actor) played Jesse Owens in his breakthrough role, so he’s building up a bit of a resume of athletes who take a historical stand. LeMarcus is a senior playing his last college game in the looming title bout who’s also the presumptive number one pick in the upcoming NFL draft. But he’s calling an audible, as he announces that he’s boycotting the game unless and until the NCAA agrees to recognize varsity athletes as employees and pay them accordingly. He’s got about three days to convince his teammates and his opponents to join him, while also ducking out of the way of his coach (J.K. Simmons), various college football administrators and executives, and the NCAA’s ruthless outside counsel representative (Uzo Aduba).

Director Ric Roman Waugh and screenwriter Adam Mervis (adapting his own play of the same name) have painted a massively cynical portrait of the state of college athletics. Some of their tsk-tsking is well-founded, but my god, is it breathtakingly overwrought. It kinda has to be, considering that pretty much every line of dialogue frames everyone’s decision in life-or-death stakes. This could be a formula for unbearable soul crushing, but thankfully the premise has to allow at least a hint of optimism to poke its way in throughout. That lightness helps us realize that the ridiculousness of all the melodrama is a plus, as laughing at the moral righteousness of this exploitative system is a healthy reaction.

One other noteworthy observation before I go: several real-life athletes and sportscasters appear as themselves, which would add some authenticity, but that’s undercut by the lack of real-life branding. The teams in the championship game are from fictional schools, and ESPN (or any other sports network for that matter) is never once mentioned. I’d argue that the fakeness is weirdly the right choice (though I imagine it actually wasn’t a choice at all); this isn’t the real world after all, but a slightly heightened version of it.

National Champions is Recommended If You Like: Over-the-top line deliveries, Sports movies without any sports, Kristen Chenoweth performances without any singing

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Salaries

‘Red Rocket’ Puts It All on Display, and To That I Say: ‘Okay!’

December 8, 2021

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Red Rocket (CREDIT: A24)

Starring: Simon Rex, Suzanna Son, Bree Elrod, Brenda Deiss, Judy Hill, Brittany Rodriguez, Ethan Darbone, Shih-Ching Tsou, Marlon Lambert

Director: Sean Baker

Running Time: 128 Minutes

Rating: R for Getting Physical

Release Date: December 10, 2021 (Theaters)

Adult entertainment – or “pornography,” if you will – has become much more democratized and much less stigmatized in this here 21st century. And overall, I think as a society we’re better off for these developments. Greater openness means that the people who have been involved in the industry are much less likely to find their livelihoods ruined by alienation and/or abuse. Instead, they’re more likely to be seen as the human beings that they are. And that’s certainly the truth in Red Rocket, the latest from the very humanistic writer-director Sean Baker.

This is the down-and-out saga of Mikey Saber (Simon Rex), a formerly bigshot porn star who’s squandered whatever fortune he once had, so he takes the bus back to his sleepy Texas hometown and tries to weasel his way back into living with his estranged wife Lexi (Bree Elrod) and mother-in-law Lil (Brenda Deiss). The ladies initially want nothing to do with him, but he wins them over when he starts to make plenty of bank selling weed. Meanwhile, he’s looking for an angle to get back in front of the camera. The best plan he can come up with for doing that is by romancing the local teenage donut store cashier, who everybody calls by her nickname Strawberry (Suzanna Son). The age of consent in Texas is 17, so Mikey’s in the clear legally, but he’s transgressing pretty much every other ethical consideration. And yet despite everything, I found myself hoping that things would work out for him.

A lot of that has to do with the pitch-perfect casting of Rex, whom you might remember as a 90s MTV VJ or for playing Dorkus Supremes in the Scary Movie flicks. (He also even had his own short-lived pornography career when he was struggling for cash in his much younger days.) His specialty is underdogs who endure the full weight of the cosmos hilariously crashing into them, and yet they hop right back up smiling and ready to take it all again. A lot of Mikey’s tragedy is of his own making, but he still has that same never-say-die Rex-ian energy.

Objectively, I can’t approve of about 75% of what Mikey does in Red Rocket. Indeed, I can’t approve of how close he gets to Strawberry, even if she is genuinely charmed by him. Nor can I approve of the way he yanks Lexi hither and thither; she’s hardly perfect herself, but nobody deserves a runaround like that from their spouse, estranged or otherwise. And I certainly can’t approve of the way he abandons his neighbor in one crucial climactic moment that blows up the whole story. And yet, I still want to know: what’s next for Mikey Saber?

Red Rocket is Recommended If You Like: “Bye Bye Bye,” Pop culture footnotes, The underdog

Grade: 4.5 out of 5 Strawberries

‘Being the Ricardos’ Has Some ‘Splainin’ to Do

December 7, 2021

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Being the Ricardos (CREDIT: Glen Wilson/Amazon Content Services LLC)

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, J.K. Simmons, Nina Arianda, Tony Hale, Alia Shawkat, Jake Lacy, John Rubinstein, Linda Lavin, Clark Gregg, Nelson Franklin, Robert Pine, Christopher Denham

Director: Aaron Sorkin

Running Time: 125 Minutes

Rating: R for Language That the Censors Usually Don’t Allow You to Say

Release Date: December 10, 2021 (Theaters)/December 21, 2021 (Amazon Prime Video)

What is Being the Ricardos all about? I mean that both in terms of this movie’s plot and in the ontological sense. If Aaron Sorkin is to be believed, it’s a combination of kinda-sorta being exposed as a Communist, marital strife, and a fight to control the creative direction of I Love Lucy. Any one of those topics would be enough to center a movie around. But in the movie that we’ve got, they’re all kind of fighting for attention. I suppose these matters can all co-exist, but they don’t do so particularly gracefully in this case. The relationship and professional conflicts feel genuine but standard-issue, while the red scare pretty much fizzles out immediately. (Maybe that was the point?)

It must be said that Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem really don’t look or sound anything like Lucy and Desi. This did not bother me at all! In fact, I think I prefer this anti-accuracy approach in a biopic. These aren’t the real people after all, but representations of those real people. So why not make them characters of their own that can stand outside the historical document? Alas, I suspect that Kidman and Bardem actually were trying to achieve something close to mimicry. It all kind of gets stuck in the unremarkable middle.

One thing about this movie that I did kind of like is the series of interviews from some unspecified future date that serve to frame the 1950s scenes. Tony Hale, Jake Lacy, and Alia Shawkat play a few of the Lucy writers, while their older versions are filled in by John Rubinstein, Ronny Cox, and Linda Lavin, respectively. The check-ins with the senior crew are a little surreal (probably accidentally [or perhaps not?]), thanks to how little is explained about their circumstances. Like, where are these people? What year is it supposed to be? (None of the real-life versions are still alive anymore.) Is this supposed to be for some sort of documentary? Are they being held hostage? I DON’T want to know the answers to any of these questions!

Being the Ricardos is Recommended If You Like: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Wahhhhs

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