Movie review by Greg Carlson

Following a 2019 premiere in the Un Certain Regard program at the Cannes Film Festival, director Kantemir Balagov’s second feature has made the Oscar shortlist as Russia’s entry for Best International Feature Film. A historical drama photographed in a palette of unexpectedly vibrant hues that expands well beyond the desaturated grayscale so commonly associated with recently made WW2 stories, “Beanpole” plunges into the horrific aftershocks and physical and psychological traumas resulting from the Siege of Leningrad. Named after imposing nurse Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), “Beanpole” belongs equally to Vasilisa Perelygina’s Masha.

Not everyone will warm to the audacity of Balagov’s juxtaposition of personal hellscapes and gorgeous, artful compositions. The dominant presence of ruby reds and emerald greens heralds the kind of color-theory possibilities identified by Donald Spoto when he contemplated Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo.” For some, Balagov’s technique is an affront to the realities of life during and after wartime — a grotesque display capitalizing on abjection. Others will most certainly see warmth and humaneness in the way the director seeks to understand how so many figure out how to function after nearly everything of their peacetime world has been erased. The former might claim that the movie is misery porn. For the latter, “Beanpole” resonates with haunting particularity.

Sometimes working against its ambitious agenda, the film’s 130-minute length rewards the most patient viewer with a series of bombshell payoffs in the later sections for ideas that Balagov establishes in the enigmatic opening of the film. The director withholds certain key pieces of information for maximum impact, but he also activates privileged viewership, involving the watcher by sharing secrets some characters don’t know. The most potent example of the latter constitutes a spoiler if rendered in detail. It’s a heartbreaking, even excruciating, long-take close-up that results in a tragedy.

The complexity of the characterizations of Iya and Masha, each of whom deals with her demons in distinct ways regularly in conflict with the other, is perhaps the movie’s biggest asset. Iya, placid and quiet, copes with the lasting challenges of a concussion and its related seizures. Masha, no longer able to have children, convinces Iya to become her surrogate. Masha’s more demonstrative and extroverted nature, accompanied by a well-practiced smile and willingness to take decisive action, masks her own pain. A riveting dinner table scene at the home belonging to the parents of Masha’s boyfriend Sasha (Igor Shirokov) will illuminate how Masha survived an 872-day invasion.

Masha and Iya, sometimes on purpose and occasionally by accident, are locked in a codependence that threatens to spiral out of control. Balagov, still in his 20s, works with the confidence and maturity of a much older veteran. The director shares screenplay credit with Alexander Terekhov, and “Beanpole” masters the unseen, the unspoken, and the “presence of absence” in the way it unpacks the toll of ongoing armed conflict through a kind of metonymic expression of experience. It is hard to say whether Balagov believes as much in hope and healing as he acknowledges the madness and sorrow of war, but he makes certain we see the scars that mark the two protagonists.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Even without the dark shadow of the pandemic, economic instability looms large in “Nomadland,” Chloe Zhao’s third feature. Already an award season favorite sure to pick up steam en route to multiple Oscar nominations, Zhao’s film affirms the moviemaker’s auteur bona fides ahead of her leap into the higher financial stakes and shareholder expectations of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The cosmic scale and scope of “Eternals,” an effects-heavy comic book movie with a 200 million dollar budget, seems several solar systems away from the intimacies of “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” and “The Rider,” but once you see “Nomadland,” it is easy to understand why Kevin Feige and company would be eager to collaborate.

Two-time Academy Award winner Frances McDormand — who could very easily become a three-time Academy Award winner for her performance in “Nomadland” — is the key ingredient to Zhao’s mainstream arrival. McDormand, as always, fully commits to her character while retaining the essential traits we have come to identify with her screen persona. Fern has lost so much, including a spouse, a home, a job and even a zip code, that she elects to ditch most of her worldly possessions in favor of a customized van she uses to connect the dots to seasonal and short-term gigs, including a stint in an Amazon distribution and fulfillment center.

The road movie comes in all genres and styles, and Zhao’s appreciation for exteriors and landscapes stretching across multiple states results in a photo album of stunning images that we drink in along with Fern. There is an inherent thematic tension between the untethered freedoms of life on the move and the isolation and loneliness of long stretches behind the wheel, and Zhao and McDormand have a feel for how Fern’s circumstances should be explored.

Zhao communicates the nexus of that freedom/loneliness conflict and the feelings it inspires by taking us from the desert to the plains, the ocean to the Badlands. The latter location has drawn comparisons to the visual poetics of Terrence Malick, and Zhao’s affinity for the legendary artist is evident in the gorgeous cinematography of partner Joshua James Richards, who shot both of Zhao’s previous films.

One of the great pleasures of “Nomadland” is the consistently shrewd and perceptive manner in which Fern’s hidden depths and flinty pragmatics defy expectations. At one point, fairly early on, Zhao teases the viewer with an irresistible abandoned dog that in so many stories would surely become the protagonist’s companion. The duration of the wide shot while we wait on Fern’s decision is exquisitely agonizing. Zhao uses it to send a clear message to the viewer.

Zhao’s signature working method — the use of non-actors and the collection of massive amounts of footage that will be carefully shaped in post-production — is not entirely left behind with the addition of a big star. A significant number of the performers in “Nomadland” are indeed real-life travelers, and admirers of Zhao’s previous movies will recognize the filmmaker’s patience and curiosity in the artful way in which listening to the voices of others is something to be respected and honored.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Talented hyphenate Emerald Fennell, the season two “Killing Eve” showrunner, unleashes one of the most audacious and provocative films of the year with “Promising Young Woman,” the writer-director-producer’s feature debut. A pitch black commentary on the unrelenting and insidious misogyny that keeps a tight grip on the culture even in the face of head-on confrontation and critique, Fennell’s uproariously funny film showcases a powerhouse Carey Mulligan in what could very well be her career-best performance. Together, Fennell and Mulligan make for a dream team — determined collaborators  in sync and on the same page from first frame to last — and the result is a buzzworthy movie worth all the buzz.

Audiences have been waiting on “Promising Young Woman” for what seems like forever. The Sundance premiere screenings, accompanied by the laughter and gasps and cheers of enthusiastic viewers in packed auditoriums — when that was still, gloriously, a thing that happened — anticipated solid returns and terrific word-of-mouth for the originally planned April release date set by Focus Features. But then, the global pandemic. And now, finally, a Christmas Day reservation in cinemas hurting for product and customers. If there is a silver lining, “Promising Young Woman” will now attract a greater share of attention as a bold bit of “Wonder Woman 1984” counterprogramming.

As movie theaters were shutting their doors last spring, the “Promising Young Woman” trailer was scorching eyeballs with its head-spinning premise. Mulligan’s Cassandra narrates in voiceover, “Every week, I go to a club. I act like I’m too drunk to stand. And every week, a nice guy comes over to see if I’m okay.” The fierce reckonings that follow are a lacerating repudiation of the Nice Guy, the wholly self-entitled and manipulative complainer ready to curse and threaten any potential romantic interest who doesn’t reciprocate. In this particular context, the Nice Guy is anything but. For more information, one can go down a Reddit rabbit hole at r/niceguys for hundreds of cringeworthy, real world examples.

Fennell imagines Cassie’s surroundings in vivid, candy-colored hues and pastel tints. The effect is redolent of the witch’s gingerbread and pastry house in the tale of Hansel and Gretel — an alluring facade masking something sinister. The more we learn about the protagonist and her motivations and history, the more we admire Fennell’s perspicacity and her refusal to make the kinds of easy choices common to the genre/milieu. Mulligan fills Cassandra with measures of self-deprecation/self-loathing and with the righteous indignation and anger necessary to pull back the curtain on her evolving position as sometime prey, sometime predator.

“Promising Young Woman” writes a fresh new chapter in the rape-revenge saga on the big screen, a complex filmography made all the more challenging by the cinema’s skill at rendering lurid, action-oriented visuals. In “Rape-Revenge Films: A Critical Study,” Alexandra Heller-Nicholas notes, “Confusion about the relationship between rape and its artistic representation is historically entrenched, and existed long before the introduction of the movie camera.” Fennell explores this terrain with the skill and depth of both filmmaking veteran and social scholar, guiding viewers to places so surprising and unexpected that her film will stay with you for a long, long time.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

David Fincher lays down plenty of track on the great big electric train set of “Mank,” the filmmaker’s return to the director’s chair after “Gone Girl” in 2014. Depending on one’s interest in the evergreen legend of “Citizen Kane” and the politics of classic Hollywood, mileage may vary, but Fincher’s detailed visual style and an invested performance from Gary Oldman — not to mention the talents of several entertaining supporting players — combine to form yet another purely speculative chapter in the cottage industry of films toying with the mythology of one of the most venerated motion pictures ever made.

Sole screenplay credit on “Mank” is given to Fincher’s late father Jack Fincher. Many have already pointed out that the movie’s focus on Herman J. Mankiewicz erroneously downplays and minimizes the extent to which the script of “Citizen Kane” belonged as much to Welles as it did to Mankiewicz. Traced to Pauline Kael’s controversial — and discredited — essay “Raising Kane,” the rumors favoring Mankiewicz as the real architect of the screenplay known for a time as “American” get another lift here. Tom Burke’s Welles does not loom large.

The presence of and roles for women in this male-dominated industry unfold as one might expect: all of the female characters with speaking parts exist in relation to Mank. Amanda Seyfried’s Marion Davies, in large measure due to the depiction of her surprisingly chummy relationship with the writer, fares better than long-suffering spouse “Poor Sara” (Tuppence Middleton). The film’s most sustained conversation between two women is a literal kitchen sink exchange in which nurse/housekeeper Fraulein Frieda (Monika Gossmann) spills the beans to secretary and scribe Rita Alexander (Lily Collins) that Mankiewicz personally intervened to save a village of one-hundred from Nazi persecution.

Rabid “Kane” devotees will have no problem dismissing the fanciful constructions and historical revisions. Their eyes will feast instead on the multiple “Kane” allusions and rhyming shots, the most obvious of which are built around flashbacks to Mankiewicz’s friendly visits to William Randolph Hearst’s castle in San Simeon. Using digital tools to reconstruct the still jaw-dropping analog techniques advanced by Welles, cinematographer Gregg Toland, and the rest of the talented RKO 281 production team, Fincher maintains his well-established pursuit of technical perfection. He even includes amusingly anachronistic cue marks — which he previously honored in “Fight Club” — to add to the 20th century Old Hollywood verisimilitude.

As biopics go, “Mank” is simply not in the same league as “The Social Network.” In both cases, however, it is the artfulness of great storytelling rather than historically-based journalism that produces the most cinematically satisfying results. The same could be said for Fincher’s only other fact-based feature, “Zodiac.” The secondary plot in “Mank” revolves around the writer’s interactions with powerful men behind desks and next to fireplaces (Arliss Howard is particularly good as an emotional Louis B. Mayer). Landing on the California gubernatorial election of 1934 between conservative Republican Frank Merriam and author Upton Sinclair (the movie doesn’t bother to include third party Progressive Raymond Haight on the leaderboard), “Mank” probably spends more time than necessary defining the protagonist’s own crisis of conscience within the corrupt and decaying dream factory.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Filmmakers Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker step gingerly into the minefield of serious media considerations of the infamous dictator with their new documentary “The Meaning of Hitler,” a Doc NYC world premiere available to stream through November 29. Acutely aware of the likelihood that they might be “contributing to the Nazi cinematic universe,” the married directors use the film to draw comparisons to contemporary nationalism, populism, and authoritarianism while revisiting many of the biographical markers of Hitler’s rise and fall. Using the 1978 book of the same title by Sebastian Haffner (the pen name of journalist Raimund Pretzel), Epperlein and Tucker enlist a variety of on-camera guests to map out a reminder and a warning.

Even as Donald Trump sulks and broods — and lies — about his loss in the national election, “The Meaning of Hitler” alludes to certain parallels between the two men. Savvy use of mass media tools to amplify propaganda may be more frustrating today, given the proliferation of troll farms and disinformation campaigns, but Hitler’s discovery of his gift for public oratory got an electronic assist from the Neumann CMV3 — a cylindrical microphone that acquired the nickname the “Hitler Bottle.” Sequences like this one, in which Epperlein and Tucker illustrate the seductive ability of the popular device to translate emotion by intercutting footage of the Beatles’ performance at Shea Stadium, keep viewers off balance.

And pairing vision with sound, the filmmakers use the hidden-in-plain-sight influences of Leni Riefestahl on Hollywood to address some of the most seductive designs favored by Hitler in the construction of his image. It is certainly not the first time that side by side comparisons have linked the medal ceremony that ends “Star Wars” with the symmetry in uniform carefully arranged at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally in “Triumph of the Will.” “The Lion King” also pops up, as well as a series of clips that — expectedly — checks off “The Producers.” Sarah Silverman’s interview with Conan O’Brien, in which she appears in full Hitler costume, is a newer entry in the comic renditions of Hitler.

In the end, “The Meaning of Hitler” lands somewhere between an exploration of Hitler as phenomenon and Hitler as person. Unfortunately, some of the movie’s most intriguing scenes veer from their intended goal. A visit to examine a Hitler-painted watercolor is introduced by the famous “Citizen Kane”-inspired tribute at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” The filmmakers do not ask the question of whether these artworks should continue to be protected. Much more effective is a montage of dramatized scenes of Hitler’s suicide, accompanied by a compelling argument that almost all of those movies bestow upon him a kind of dignity not afforded to his victims.

I am not sure whether giving ghoulish Holocaust denier David Irving so much screen time helps or hurts the efforts to shine light. Thankfully, Deborah Lipstadt, the victor in Irving’s notorious libel suit, also appears in the film. Novelist and writer Martin Amis is a droll addition to the lineup of talking heads, unleashing several acidic barbs when Trump is mentioned. But historian Saul Friedlander, now in his late 80s, is the movie’s most eloquent observer. Friedlander clearly gets what Epperlein and Tucker have set out to do, and never fails to offer poignant and reasoned thoughts on Hitler’s durable popularity.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Channing Godfrey Peoples makes a noteworthy debut as feature writer/director with “Miss Juneteenth,” a 2020 Sundance Film Festival premiere now collecting early — and well-deserved — award season accolades including, among others, a Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director nomination from the IFP Gotham Awards. The film provides lead performer Nicole Beharie with all the room she needs to shape Peoples’s central creation Turquoise Jones into one of the year’s most unforgettable characters. And it doesn’t hurt that Beharie is surrounded by such a gifted supporting cast. The result is stirring and sharp.

Depicting her home town of Fort Worth with a native’s level of observational clarity, Peoples adds her film to a list of revered titles that have come to represent different geographical and cultural parts of Texas. Closer to the interpersonally intimate “Tender Mercies” and “Places in the Heart” (and even “Paris, Texas”) than to several genre icons that have become synonymous with the Lone Star State, “Miss Juneteenth” paints a vivid portrait of the nation’s thirteenth-largest city. But like all great movies, the core of the story is universal.

Peoples juggles several conflicts, including a romantic triangle placing the protagonist between her employer Bacon (Akron Watson), a mortician who runs the funeral parlor where Turquoise holds down her second job, and Ronnie (Kendrick Sampson), the auto mechanic who is the father of Turquoise’s teenage daughter Kai (Alexis Chikaeze). The heart of the narrative, though, explores the complex contours of the mother-child relationship. Turquoise’s intense and borderline obsessive focus on Kai’s participation in the Miss Juneteenth pageant resonates in every scene in the movie.

With a flair for economy in dialogue, Peoples trusts viewers to gather all necessary information to understand the motivations of the heroine. A previous Miss Juneteenth winner, Turquoise faces constant reminders that she never lived up to the promise of the crown. Her own mother’s alcoholism, partially hidden behind the depth of religious faith, alludes to just one set of possible sacrifices made by Turquoise not that long ago. The multi-generational divide also works as a cautionary warning to Turquoise that history could repeat itself if she pushes Kai too hard.

The competition of the Miss Juneteenth pageant, with a scholarship on the line, builds in a certain degree of anticipation for the viewer, and Peoples exploits several small crises ahead of the main event to heighten the tension. Will Turquoise be able to get enough cash together to acquire the special dress she believes will give Kai an edge? Will Ronnie fulfill his promises? Will Kai stick with the plan to perform Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman” in the talent showcase? Some of the outcomes are expected while others surprise, but none strain credulity or undermine the solid foundation Peoples meticulously constructs.

One of the most rewarding dimensions of “Miss Juneteenth” is the insightful manner with which Peoples guides the viewer through the world of the pageant itself. Cognizant of how outsiders might react to some of the old-fashioned and deeply ingrained expectations about femininity and womanhood that may now seem out of place, Peoples does not shy away from interrogating questionable details and traditions. But the pageant also represents Juneteenth and its historical importance, and the filmmaker recognizes her opportunity to educate viewers. That she does so with such subtlety and grace speaks to a real talent.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Sofia Coppola’s delightful distraction from national affairs sees the writer-director returning to her sweet spot: the tiniest whiff of autobiography in a story that, to paraphrase James Stewart’s Macaulay “Mike” Connor in “The Philadelphia Story,” eavesdrops on “the privileged class enjoying its privileges.” A mashup of thematic terrain explored in the cross-generational partnering of “Lost in Translation” and the father-daughter bonding of “Somewhere,” “On the Rocks” notches another exemplary Bill Murray performance in the actor’s latest team-up with Coppola.

“On the Rocks” delays Murray’s grand entrance as playboy/art dealer/epicure Felix by sketching the weary routines of Rashida Jones’s Laura, a successful writer and devoted New York mom pulling inequitable domestic duty with a pair of young kids to cover for the frequent absences of workaholic husband Dean (Marlon Wayans), whose promising tech startup requires dinner meetings, business trips, late nights, and lots of hours away from the nest. Marital woes and worries are exacerbated by the proximity of Dean’s chic colleague Fiona (Jessica Henwick). Laura suspects that her husband might be hiding an affair, and papa Felix encourages the thought.

In a well-explored literary and cinematic tradition, comedies of suspected infidelity lean heavily on tropes including misconstrued clues/evidence of cheating as well as poor or nonexistent communication within otherwise strong relationships. While we all know that some simple and straightforward talk would clear things up in an instant, our nervous protagonists must run the gauntlet before arriving at the almost always happy conclusions. From Preston Sturges’s “Unfaithfully Yours” to Masayuki Suo’s “Shall We Dance?,” the format accommodates a large number of pathways.

Coppola has always shown an affinity for mixing laughter and introspection, and “On the Rocks” successfully deploys the strategy. The amateur stakeouts and sleuthing of the used-to-be-fun Laura and the rakish Felix — who insists on “getting ahead” of Dean’s possible liaison by teaming up with Laura to spy — snowball into increasingly ridiculous predicaments, but the gags are a front for an earnest and heartfelt exploration of the challenges we face when addressing a parent as a person who has dreams and desires that exist independently of the complete attention we desire. And since Laura worships her father, the pain he has caused comes with an extra sharp sting.

Observed through the lens of their differences, Jones plays the more challenging role — Laura’s insecurities about her own marriage and the constraints and responsibilities of motherhood contrast with Felix’s inveterate, age-inappropriate flirtations with seemingly every woman who crosses his path, allowing Murray to pour on the charm as a mansplaining, alpha-male relic of a fast-dimming era. And yet, when Felix sneaks Laura down the hall at an acquaintance’s party to share a moment gazing at a privately-held Monet, we see what Laura sees in him.

Surely, Coppola is playing with some subtext to circle around the recent shifts and changes in attitude toward the sexual entitlement of powerful men in Hollywood. And what elevates “On the Rocks” is the filmmaker’s position that Laura’s love for her dad, in spite of Felix’s sexism and narcissism and the impossibly easy manner in which he glides from one enchanting experience to another, outweighs all of the things about him that she cannot abide.