Jeff "Jmunney" Malone's Self-Styled "Expert" Thoughts on Movies, TV, Music, and the Rest of Pop Culture
February 19, 2025
Cinema, Movie Reviews Adrien Brody, Alessandro Nivola, Antonio Saboia, Barbara Luz, Brady Corbet, Clarence Maclin, Colman Domingo, Cora Mora, Emma Laird, Felicity Jones, Fernanda Montenegro, Fernanda Torres, Flow, Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha, Gints Zilbalodis, Greg Kwedar, Guilherme Silveira, Guy Pearce, I'm Still Here, Isaach de Bankolé, Joe Alwyn, Luiza Kosovski, Maria Manoella, Marjorie Estiano, Michael Epp, Olívia Torres, Paul Raci, Raffey Cassidy, Sean San José, Selton Mello, Sing Sing, Stacy Martin, The Brutalist, Valentina Herszage, Walter Salles Leave a comment
CREDIT (Clockwise from Top Left): A24; Janus Films/Screenshot; Sony Pictures Classics/Screenshot; A24)
I did some awards season catch-up at the cinema in the past few weeks, and I’m going to digest all of that right now. Each of the movies in this roundup is nominated for multiple Oscars; a couple of them are even up for Best Picture. So here are some quick-hit reactions in which I answer the question: Am I glad I watched this movie during awards season?
August 19, 2021
Cinema, Movie Reviews David Bruckner, Evan Jonigkeit, Rebecca Hall, Sarah Goldberg, Stacy Martin, The Night House, Vondie Curtis Hall 1 Comment
The Night House (CREDIT: Searchlight Pictures)
Starring: Rebecca Hall, Sarah Goldberg, Evan Jonigkeit, Vondie Curtis Hall, Stacy Martin
Director: David Bruckner
Running Time: 107 Minutes
Rating: R for Creepy Sequences and Salty Language
Release Date: August 20, 2021 (Theaters)
Can we ever really know the people closest to us as well as we think we do? Not when there’s a demonic possession lurking around your home! (Which is what I think The Night House is saying.) Rebecca Hall plays Beth, a high school teacher who lives on her own in a lake house now that her seemingly well-adjusted husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit) has killed himself. And honestly? That’s some spot-on casting. Hall excels at doing her damnedest to remain mentally put-together while suddenly becoming beset by all-consuming skepticism. We can believe that she will never give up on the search for the truth but also that she is too flummoxed to ever see it clearly. It’s a purposely erratic approach that might be too maddening for some audiences, but for my money, Hall holds it all together sufficiently, and director David Bruckner has plenty to offer in the creeps department.
For most of its running time, The Night House appears to be hurtling headlong towards a clear explanation for all the strange goings-on. Why does Owen shoot himself in the head? What’s the meaning of the enigmatic note he left behind? When Beth is dreaming, what’s the deal with the alternate dimension she seems to be entering and its attendant mirror image house? And what about that mysterious woman (or women?) Owen was surreptitiously hanging out with who looks just like Beth? Is this some sort of Vertigo situation? The best I can figure is that Owen has fallen prey to some sort of evil supernatural entity that is now threatening Beth’s life. But I’m not entirely sure if that’s correct. That vagueness can be frustrating for some, but I appreciate it to a certain extent, because it means that this is nowhere near your standard devil-made-me-do-it story.
The easiest metaphorical read is that Beth is a victim of all-consuming depression, but her situation resists easy interpretation. She offhandedly mentions past mental health struggles without going into too much detail, and while she seems distressed now, she doesn’t come off as particularly depressed. More like obsessed, which is certainly understandable in light of her husband’s suicide. Ultimately, The Night House is writing its own new language of psychological anguish, in which Beth’s waking hours lose all their stability, while her subconscious is beset by a creatively disruptive force. It ends exactly where it needs to without having to definitively clear up the mystery.
The Night House is Recommended If You Like: Vertigo, Insidious, possibly The One I Love? (I haven’t seen it, but the premise seems to have some similarities)
Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Nightmares
December 4, 2018
Cinema, Movie Reviews Brady Corbet, Jennifer Ehle, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin, Vox Lux, Willem Dafoe Leave a comment
CREDIT: NEON
This review was originally posted on News Cult in December 2018.
Starring: Natalie Portman, Raffey Cassidy, Jude Law, Stacy Martin, Jennifer Ehle, Willem Dafoe
Director: Brady Corbet
Running Time: 110 Minutes
Rating: R for School Shooting Violence, Drug Use, and Staten Island Accented-Profanity
Release Date: December 7, 2018 (Limited)
There is a scene about midway through Vox Lux in which pop star Celeste Montgomery (Natalie Portman) is at a diner with her daughter Albertine (Raffey Cassidy, who also plays the teenage Celeste), expounding about how the press is always hounding her, and it turns into this incomprehensible rant about the misbegotten state of the world. She sounds like someone who watched Fight Club too many times as a teenager, specifically the scene in which Tyler Durden espouses his whole philosophy. But the causes of Celeste’s unique psychology can actually be traced to much more intense external forces. The armchair nihilist philosophizing is just gravy.
The adult Celeste is the product of two adolescent experiences that no teenager is naturally wired to perfectly handle. Both of these types of experiences on their own can, and have, resulted in long-term negative effects for many people. But together they produce … well, they produce Vox Lux. Celeste’s journey begins by surviving a shooting at her middle school, which is obviously traumatic enough to produce scars that last a lifetime. During her recovery, she writes a song to create some love out of the violence, and it ends up becoming a huge hit and leads into a full-on pop music career. But teenage stardom is not ideal for most people, and Celeste does not buck that trend. Fast-forward to the present day, in which at 31 years old she is emotionally still a child.
The culmination of Celeste’s story is hardly surprising, but director Brady Corbet makes it entrancing even at its most disturbing. This is a truly singular whirlwind of a person, and even knowing how messed up her personal life is, we can see how she remains compelling through and through to the public at large. The final 15 minutes or so take place at her new tour’s kickoff performance at her hometown of Staten Island. Considering the series of crises on the way to getting her to the stage in one piece, I thought that this moment was going to end with her collapsing or otherwise failing to finish the show. But instead, she is a wonder to behold, as bedazzling as any modern pop star at the top of her game. This triumph is even more stunning considering the struggle leading up to it. Celeste becomes more admirable while simultaneously remaining as much of a cautionary tale as ever. She remains a symbol by holding up the weight of circumstances that are so much heavier than any one person could possibly bear.
Vox Lux is Recommended If You Like: The Spectacle of Pop Music, Black Swan, Staten Island accents, Actors playing the same characters 20 years apart
Grade: 4 out of 5 Losses of Innocence
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