Movie Review Napoleon

Napoleon (2023) 

Directed by Ridley Scott 

Written by David Scarpa 

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby 

Release Date November 22nd, 2023 

Published November 27th, 2023 

Napoleon stars Joaquin Phoenix as the legendary French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte. Once merely a soldier, Napoleon is driven by an iron will to become the leader of all France. What drives Napoleon? What experiences made him such a single minded, obsessive leader, clinging with all of his might to power? That's the heart of what Ridley Scott is after in Napoleon and its questionable whether or not he got there or not. The film is wildly accomplished, technically superb, but it lingers a great deal and some of the lingering aspects leave you wondering what the point of it all is. The lack of a point may be the point. 

We meet Napoleon Bonaparte during the French Revolution. Marie Antoinette is dragged from the royal mansion of France and taken to the gallows. France lines up behind the revolutionary Robespierre but he's soon deposed as well. As Bonaparte helps quell another coup attempt, the power vacuum in France sweeps up more leaders until the tip of the French sword, Napoleon himself takes the reigns. It was a very fast rise to power but given the lack of leaders, the spineless neophyte politicians and remaining royalists, it's no wonder that a dictator willing to get his hands bloody would eventually take hold. 

Written off as a brute, Napoleon uses force to establish dominance and cunning to win on the battlefield. Regardless of what the bourgeois aristocrats of France think, Napoleon commands an army while they can merely command words. As Napoleon's power grows, he seeks companionship and finds it in a former aristocrat whose husband was beheaded in one of the many revolutions. Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) is a snakelike woman capable of slithering into any man's bed. She makes plain that she has a history and that if Napoleon has a problem with that, as so many men do, he should look elsewhere. 

Her forceful sexuality and allure are more than enough for Napoleon to overlook her potentially scandalous background. The two are married and Napoleon leaves to conquer the known world. We see him in various parts of the world, most notably Egypt where France attempted to destroy the ancient pyramids and Napoleon came face to face with Egyptian royalty in the form of a disinterred Mummy whom Napoleon cannot help but compare himself in terms of stature. Napoleon wishes to be as venerated as the Egyptian leaders were, but he first must deal with his cheating wife and a series of toady politicians looking to gain his favor. 

Find my full length review of Napoleon at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Beau is Afraid

Beau is Afraid (2023) 

Directed by Ari Aster

Written by Ari Aster 

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Nathan Lane, Parker Posey, Amy Ryan, Patti Lupone 

Release Date April 21st, 2023 

Published April 21st, 2023 

What if what Beau sees as the world around is really his internal life, externalized? This is the kind of question that toys with you when you watch a film from the remarkable, ungodly talented writer-director Ari Aster. The director of the twin masterworks Hereditary and Midsommar, Aster is a masterfully detailed and thorough director with a tone for tone and atmosphere that may just be unmatched in modern cinema. The thesis statement for my claim is Beau is Afraid, a film where atmosphere and tone stand in for just about anything you might find familiar as a film narrative. 

Beau is Afraid stars Joaquin Phoenix as Beau, a stunted, edgy, angst-riddled mess of a human being. Beau inhabits a universe where a criminal known as Stab-Man wanders the streets nude and stabbing people while building an astonishing body count. The streets are littered with filthy oddballs and just plain corpses strewn here and there by a society of haves and have nots we will only ever get a minor sense of. The point is not to make a direct comment about man's inhumanity to man, but to offer you the sight and let you make up your own mind about what is presented. 

Besides, the corpses in the street and Stab-Man aren't really things that Beau is interested, unless he's leaping over a corpse to escape the Stab-Man, and then, suddenly, these things really, really matter. The story kicks off when Beau's mother, played by the legendary Patti Lupone, is expecting Beau to get on a plane to come and see her. We've learned that Beau is not high on the prospect of seeing his mother. He tells his therapist, Dr. Jeremy, that though he loves his mother, the visit fills him with the kind of anxiety that must be treated by a high end drug that MUST be taken with water. 

You don't want to know what might happen if you take these pills without water. Regardless, as Beau is getting ready to leave his apartment, his bags and keys are stolen. Being a spineless simp for his mother's withheld affections, Beau tells Mom that he will still try and make his plane, even as he no longer has a bag or keys to his apartment, or his boarding pass, and she feigns telling him that its fine if he doesn't come, with the strong subtext being that he doesn't love her because he's not coming. 

Beau is a character to whom life happens. Beau doesn't have experiences, he has experiences inflicted upon him by an uncompromising world bent on making him do things he doesn't want to do. It's all related to his strange upbringing, the weird and uncompromising relationship with his mother, the absence of his father, and a bizarre relationship to women with deep oedipal roots and a self-loathing based fear that is not expressed but that Beau wears like a second skin. 

The trip to see his mother is the beginning of a journey for Beau that will somehow combine elements of David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Homer's Odyssey. If that combination elements, shot through the incredibly prismatic mind of Ari Aster, appeals to you, Beau is Afraid is a must see movie. If however, you are not completely on board for some of the weirdest, most shocking, and distressing moments ever brought to the big screen, then, perhaps, this not the movie for you. 

Find my complete review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review: Two Lovers

Two Lovers (2009) 

Directed by James Gray

Written by James Gray 

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw, Elias Koteas

Release Date February 16th, 2009 

Published May 12th, 2009

Ever since Joaquin Phoenix's meltdown earlier this year on David Letterman and then subsequent you-tube videos, I have been dreading his movie Two Lovers. It was unfair of me to feel that way about the movie. However, it was equally unfair of ....Phoenix.... to burden the film with his antics.

Now, I have seen the film and I feel as if I owe all involved an apology. Two Lovers is a quiet, observant and human drama about a lost soul and the people so willing to find him if he'll let them.

Joaquin Phoenix is Leonard in Two Lovers. When we meet him he is attempting suicide and not for the first time. He survives a plunge into ..Hudson Bay.., thanks to several bystanders but refuses medical care, preferring to wander home in the cold. Leonard is living with his parents, Reuben and Ruth (Moni Moshonov and Isabella Rossellini), and they've been witnessing his behavior ever since his engagement fell apart.

Whiling away the days snapping black and white photos and working at his family dry cleaning business, Leonard's life is changed after meeting two very different women. Sandra (Vinessa Shaw) is the daughter of Leonard's dad's new business partner. Their parents would love for them to get together, as they are soon to merge their businesses.

It's not an arranged marriage however; Sandra is really attracted to Leonard, even to his obvious damage. The other woman who enters Leonard's life is Michele (Gwyneth Paltrow). Michele lives across the courtyard in their shared apartment building. One day as she is seeking a hiding place from an overbearing admirer, she happens upon Leonard and takes advantage of his kindness. He is smitten at first sight but she is clearly, to us, a beautiful blonde fantasy.

Director James Gray reveals his story at a leisurely pace allowing us to observe Leonard and overcome our reservations about his mental state. 2009 has been flush with male performances that are more creepy than quirky and we fear right away that Leonard is just the latest creep. As the story evolves however, Leonard becomes a slightly odd fellow but endearing.

By the end you are rooting for him in ways you never imagined at the beginning. That we can still root for him as he pines for Michele and spends time with Sandra is something quite remarkable. Characters who vacillate as Leonard does can grow tiresome but there is something in the almost childlike, innocent way that Leonard pines that allows us to forgive him.

Some have argued that having one man compete for the affection of Vinessa Shaw and Gwyneth Paltrow is a little far-fetched. Those are people judging Gwyneth Paltrow and not her nuanced and troubled performance. Paltrow's Michele is supposed to be a figure of fantasy and she exists that way throughout. The reality of someone like Michele is far more interesting and well explored in Two Lovers.

Michele is like a virus that infects Leonard, one he cannot shake. She uses him, humiliates him, dashes his hopes and he comes back for more because he simply cannot help it. The fantasy of Michele is so alluring that in the final act even we begin to buy in.

Sandra is not as well fleshed out but that isn't such a bad thing. Vinessa Shaw gives her enough presence and warmth that she is never the girl Leonard might settle for but the one he may or may not really love. She's viable and real and her love for Leonard is as honest as his for Michele.

Two Lovers truly succeeds in its final moments where director Gray and co-writer Ric Menello find just right note of surprising elegance to end on. Two Lovers is moving and cathartic for anyone who has longed for a fantasy at the ignorance of reality. An extraordinary, honest, human drama, Two Lovers is among the best of the year.

Movie Review: The Sisters Brothers

The Sisters Brothers (2018) 

Directed by Jacques Audiard

Written by Thomas Bidegain, Jacques Audiard 

Starring John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Rutger Hauer, Riz Ahmed

Release Date September 21st, 2018

Published September 28th, 2018

The Sisters Brothers stars John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix as Eli and Charlie Sisters, bounty hunters for a man known as The Commodore (Rutger Hauer). Currently, they are on the trail of a chemist named Herman Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed) who is wanted by The Commodore because he claims to have a formula that makes panning for gold as easy as picking up rocks out of the stream.

Ahead of the brothers, also on Warm’s trail, is John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) a detective who works for The Commodore and acts as tracker for the brothers who do the hard part of kidnapping, torturing and often killing the people The Commodore sets them after. This chase however, is a little different. Morris is wavering over whether he wants to do his job and turn Kermit over or join up with him and runoff. 

As for the brothers, Eli is thinking of this run as his retirement. He’s fallen for a school marm and wants nothing more than to return home and open a store. Charlie, on the other hand, only concerns himself with the job and getting very, very drunk. Charlie likes killing people as a profession and hopes one day that he can become The Commodore so he can order other people around to kill on his behalf. 

Much of that plot description is inferred from scraps of dialogue in The Sisters Brothers. This an eloquent and brilliant movie for what is not said as much as what is said. The characters indicate things about themselves and we sort of fill in the blanks based off of their characters. Each character is so wonderfully colorful that you can’t help but want to fill in the blanks and get to know them more.

John C. Reilly is perhaps the standout as Eli, the practical, yet tougher of the two brothers. Charlie makes up for his slightness with risk taking while the quieter Eli is genuinely the kind of guy you can look at and know not to mess with him. Deep down he’s a man who wants to be a respectable gentleman but as we come to see as the movie plays out, he’s a skilled and menacing killer when he needs to be. 

Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance will divide audiences. Gyllenhaal chooses to play John Morris with a quirky vocal affectation that gives the impression of being pompous without being insufferable. Morris is a thoughtful character, a pragmatist and a dreamer in one. He never really wanted the life he has and appears to have a longing to be a writer rather than a detective, a skill he claims is honed and mastered, even as Warm figures him out with relative ease. 

As for Riz Ahmed, I enjoyed how little is made of his ethnicity. It speaks to the way people could get by in the west for a time before civil society brought the class system to the west and with it the inherent racism of such. I don’t believe the invention Warm has come up with for getting to the gold is real but it is used brilliantly in the film’s tremendous third act which travels unexpected places among the four lead characters. 

The Sisters Brothers was directed by Jacques Audiard, a French director who also co-wrote the screenplay with his frequent collaborator Thomas Bidegain. Audiard’s best known film is likely 2005’s A Prophet which was nominated for a foreign film Oscar that year. That film was a wrenching drama about Arab man desperately alone in a French prison and slowly drawn into servitude for a French criminal. Like The Sisters Brothers, the film is unpredictable and uncompromising. 

Audiard loves his characters and he especially likes following his characters to unpredictable places. You may think you know where his stories are headed but he’s ready for you in the end. The ending of The Sisters Brothers will undoubtedly divide audiences who may want something more conventional and western-like. Remember, this is a mood piece, it’s about tone and character and the violence in the story extends from circumstance as much as it does from these remarkable characters. 

The Sisters Brothers is one of my favorite westerns of recent memory. It’s a moody, atmospheric piece with strong violence but stronger characters. It’s a bloody western but also a witty one with smart characters and an unpredictable, perhaps a bit strange story. The story unfolds in a conventional fashion but nothing of these characters is typical or easily predicted. The film is funny and yet, when it needs to be brutal, it can be brutal. 

One last note about The Sisters Brothers, it has one of the best musical scores of the year. Alexandre Desplat provided the score for the film and it is an elegant and sparse mood piece that fits brilliantly into the narrative of the movie. The deep strings and stark piano riffs are absolutely gorgeous, especially early on as the story is developing and the music reflects the sun drenched mountains and dry deserts of the film's stark visuals. It's completely engrossing and I was lucky to be listening to it as I wrote this review. 

Movie Review Joker

Joker (2019) 

Directed by Tod Phillips

Written by Tod Phillips

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy

Release Date October 4th, 2019

Published October 3rd 2019

Joker stars Joaquin Phoenix as the sad, damaged, mama's boy Arthur Fleck, who will one day in the near future snap and become the deranged criminal mastermind known as Joker. When we meet Arthur however, he's working as a sign twirling clown and it appears the world has it out for him. Not only is Arthur robbed of his twirling sign, he winds up beaten silly by the thieves and then told that he needs to pay for the broken sign. 

At home, Arthur's mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), insists that he check the mail incessantly for a response from Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), her former employer whom she insists will come to their rescue and get them out of their impoverished hovel of an apartment. That letter never comes, while Thomas Wayne appears to be entering the political arena, running for Mayor of Gotham City and promising to rid the streets of the criminals and the trash. 

Arthur doesn't care much for politics, everyday life is a challenge enough for Arthur whose dreams of becoming a stand up comic are made poignant and tragic by his long term neurological issue. Arthur has a condition, likely developed from a head trauma, that causes him to laugh inappropriately and uncontrollably and rarely when called for. His condition renders his dream of becoming a stand up comedian darkly ironic and eventually humiliating. 

Arthur is obsessed with many things but one that stands out is the Murray Franklin Show. Murray Franklin (Robert DeNiro) is the Johnny Carson of Gotham City, a television lifer who uses Sinatra's That's Life as a catchphrase and calling card. The two cross paths in person when Murray begins showing a video of Arthur's failed stand up gig and poking fun at Arthur. At this point, Arthur has lost his job, has murdered three men on a subway car after they attempted to beat him to death, and has gone off the medications that keep his delusions in check. 

This is what Murray does not know when he decides to book Arthur on his talk show and let the kid show he's a good sport by taking Murray's jibes in stride and in person. This is the final set piece of Joker and by far the strongest and most shocking element of the movie. If the rest of Joker had the power and fierceness of this moment, which fuses Joaquin Phoenix's real life talk show persona with the spiraling terror of the Joker persona for an extra kick of discomforting energy. 

Unfortunately, it's all downhill from here. Joker is an empty exercise in nihilism and troll culture. As directed by Todd Phillips, Joker mocks the audience by being all things to all audiences while not having a meaning of its own. The film uses a structure involving an unreliable narrator and the device is so clumsy that by the end, the filmmakers can use that unreliable narrator as a gimmick to deflect any reading of the movie, rendering the whole an empty shell and robbing the power from Joaquin Phoenix's performance. 

If you want to see Joker as a call to violent uprising against the rich, you can read it that way. If you want to see Joker as a critique of what is lacking in American healthcare, you can read it that way. If you want to read Joker as a critique of the policies of the Trump administration or as the ballad of the incel community or the most savage take-down of the policies of Elizabeth Warren, you can probably find all of that in Joker as well because the movie has no meaning of its own. 

I get that perhaps the movie intends to pose Joker as a mirror held up to society to reflect whatever society wants to see but I can't see what is intended to be entertaining or even interesting about such a taunting and trolling of the audience. Most people probably won't mind because the movie, and especially Joaquin Phoenix, looks cool while all that is going on, but the cool factor wore out pretty quickly for me once the cop out of an ending arrived and the unreliable narrator wiped most of the movie away in one fell swoop. 

I don't hate Joker, much like another nihilistic and childish swipe at those who choose to believe in things, Team America World Police, I just don't care. I find such intellectual dishonesty and trolling exhausting and thus I find Joker and the discourse surrounding it wearying. I no longer care. I suffered this movie and its arrogant, aggrandized taunting and I am glad its over.

Movie Review Inherent Vice

Inherent Vice (2014) 

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Written by Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Katherine Waterston, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short, Jena Malone

Release Date December 12th, 2014

Published December 10th, 2014 

Professor Matthew Strecher defines magic realism as "what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe." In the case of the movie "Inherent Vice '' Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is that thing that is too strange to believe. Doc is a doped up Los Angeles Private Detective who stumbles on a massive government conspiracy involving drugs, the feds, the Justice Department, the mob, black power and white supremacists and all of it tied to his ex-ol lady Shasta Fay (Katherine Waterston). 

Putting together the pieces at the center of the conspiracy in "Inherent Vice" is like listening to a stoner tell you his theory about the Kennedy Assassination, it sounds completely plausible but the story teller is a tad unreliable. The conspiracy in "Inherent Vice" breaks down like this: the government works with drug dealers who introduce dope into the hippie communities of Los Angeles, get them hooked and then use government subsidies to build facilities to help clean up dopers who want to get clean, all the while brainwashing the soon to be former hippies to send them back to society as upstanding citizens. 

The term vertical integration gets dropped more than once in "Inherent Vice" and it refers to a rather devilishly ingenious bit of business. Think of a sugar company that also sells toothpaste, or what if the tobacco companies began opening cancer treatment centers. Here, drug dealers run rehab clinics that are a government front for converting hippies from drug addicts back to upstanding citizens. It sounds rather outlandish but as posited by director Paul Thomas Anderson, based on the novel by Thomas Pynchon, it plays out in a way that's quite believable as something that may have in fact taken place in 1970. 

The last person anyone would believe could uncover such a massive conspiracy is Doc Sportello. He is the perfect catalyst for this story because he simply doesn't seem like he could function on a daily basis, as high as he is, and yet he's quite competent and even insightful in uncovering what he seems to uncover. And yet he's not the most reliable witness as he literally has a magical voice in his head, Sortilege (Joanna Newsom)-her name is literally Latin for 'Magic'- who acts as our narrator and the curator of Doc's memories which slowly, hazily begin to form this conspiracy into a believable, even logical form. 

If you met Doc and he attempted to tell you this story about the government, drug dealers, the mob. white supremacists and black power, you would never for a moment believe him and that's kind of the point. The plot, the conspiracy, it's all very believable but Doc isn't. Doc invades this conspiracy, invents it before our eyes simply by witnessing it and yet we can't really believe much of any of it because Doc is the one telling the story. That's a remarkably devilish narrative trick and one Paul Thomas Anderson pulls off with great style and panache. 

The setting for the conspiracy is very real but that Doc Sportello, of all people, would be the one to uncover it is simply too impossible to believe. No matter how many times Doc turns out to be right about something we're still talking about a guy who's been stoned for years and has a magic voice in his head. How wonderful it is for this conspiracy to pulse with such life and then have a character like Doc, our hero, be the one who compromises its very truthfulness. In another movie this would be played as tragedy as an innocent character becomes disillusioned by events out of his control. 

Doc is far too gone to be disillusioned, the moment he finds a piece of the conspiracy that he can chalk up as a win and walk away, he takes it. That minor victory comes in the form of Coy Harlingen (Owen Wilson), a former doper who was being used by the government to turn up hippies to be reformed in dope clinics run by drug dealers. Rescuing Coy is the one thing Doc manages to accomplish in the film and for him that will be enough of a happy ending. Doc, you see, is as aware as everyone else that he's neither reliable nor believable enough to tell this story and have anyone believe it. 

Did you know that 'Inherent Vice' is an insurance industry term that refers to a hidden defect in a physical object that causes it to deteriorate because of the fundamental instability of its components? That's a pretty great description of who Doc is to us, the audience for his story. Doc, because of his years of drug use, is fundamentally an unstable and thus unreliable narrator of events. Sure, the story is sound, even logical, but because it's Doc telling the story we can't help but be skeptical. 

That's part of the genius of the movie, we love Doc and we're wildly entertained by his journey but we don't take any of it very seriously because it's Doc. Paul Thomas Anderson thus gets to lampoon early 70's corruption without the hassle of an actual target for rage or disillusionment. We get all of the fun of being a cynic while also being stoned out of our heads enough not to get down about it. 

Movie Review Reservation Road

Reservation Road (2007) 

Directed by Terry George 

Written by John Burnham Schwartz, Terry George 

Starring Mark Ruffalo, Joaquin Phoenix, Jennifer Connelly, Mira Sorvino

Release Date October 19th, 2007

Published October 26th, 2007

Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Ruffalo engage in a suffering contest in the hit and run drama Reservation. Directed by Oscar nominee Terry George, Joaquin Phoenix stars as Professor Ethan Learner whose son is killed in a hit and run accident. The driver of the blue SUV that drove away into the night after killing the 10 year old boy was Dwight Arnow, a lawyer who was simply driving his son home after a game at Fenway Park. Dwight is divorced and at the time of the accident was answering yet another cell phone call from his ex-wife wanting to know when their son would be brought home.

Leaving the scene of the accident and returning home, Dwight hides his damaged car in his garage. He heads to work the next day in an attempt to pretend nothing is wrong. Meanwhile, Ethan is dealing with the police and finding that there is little that he can do besides suffer. Growing ever more frustrated with the glacial pace of the investigation, Ethan decides to hire lawyers to keep the fire burning under the police. In an unlikely, ironic twist Ethan hires Dwight’s law firm and Dwight’s boss assigns the case to him. Now Dwight is in a perfect position to get away with his crime except that his client is more diligent and determined than most and it’s clear some sort of confrontation must ensue.

Directed by Terry George and adapted by George and author John Burnham Schwarz from Schwarz’s award winning novel, Reservation Road stretches credulity to continuously place Dwight and Ethan on a collision course. As the film begins we are treated to a moving drama about loss, guilt, sadness and despair. Unfortunately, as the story is stretched and twisted to place Dwight in Ethan’s employ and interconnect them in other unlikely ways, the film slowly evolves into a weak suspense thriller. Dark, soulful performances by Phoenix and Ruffalo are wasted as George and Schwartz succumb to the mainstream pressure to make this story something it is not.

Reservation Road should not be a suspense thriller. This is a movie about sadness and loss, fathers and sons, guilt and innocence and the random nature of life. Things that happen in an instance can change lives forever. These are extraordinary themes, more than enough ammunition for a great drama. Combined with a cast of Oscar nominees and winners, Jennifer Connelly and Mira Sorvino join Phoenix and Ruffalo, the themes of Reservation Road should be more than enough to fill a very good movie. Sadly, the crass, commercial pressures of the movie business act upon Reservation Road and turn this moving drama into something people can chomp popcorn to.

Step by step as the film turns away from its dramatic core, it becomes more and more ludicrous and overwrought and it is truly, truly ashamed. With a little more care and concern, Reservation Road could have been something extraordinary.

Movie Review: You Were Never Really Here

You Were Never Really Here (2017) 

Directed by Lynne Ramsey 

Written by Lynne Ramsey 

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Judith Roberts, Alessandro Nivola

Release Date April 6th, 2018

Published November 14th, 2018 

You Were Never Really Here is an ugly masterpiece. Writer-director Lynne Ramsey takes us into the dark and twisted mind of an uncomfortably sympathetic killer. Joaquin Phoenix’s Joe is undoubtedly a bad man, a cold-blooded killer but who he kills here matters and makes him relatable in the most skin-crawling, discomfiting ways. The story is dark and mean and gritty as is the direction and design of the film and it all comes together to make one of the most engrossing and enervating movies of 2018.  

We meet Joe in the wake of his latest set of murders. Wielding a ball-pein hammer, Joe has murdered several men and is wrapping up his nasty work by erasing any trace of himself that may be at hand at the scene. Joe has been unleashed like a nasty pitbull upon a group of child pornographers and he’s done his nasty business put them out of their nasty business. Joe rescues children but he does so outside the law and he does so with severe brutality. 

Joe himself, we will come to find, was the victim of much abuse as a child. That abuse shaped Joe’s compassion and desperate need to protect the innocent via his almost mindless brutality. Yet it also formed him into a dutiful and loving son to his impaired mother (Judith Roberts). What happened to Joe’s mother has become part of his very being down to his choice of weapons of destruction but I will leave you to discover the connections. 

Joe’s latest job is set to pay him nearly half a million dollars. In any other movie this would create a desperate need for escape via financial freedom but if Joe cares about money he doesn’t let on. Joe’s job is to rescue the daughter of a State Senator who has gone missing and may have fallen victim to human traffickers. Joe does his brutal work but something goes wrong in the aftermath and now Joe is on a track for revenge. 

That last line of my plot description is deceptive. A track for revenge would be what happens in another, lesser movie. What Lynne Ramsey does with this aftermath and seeming notion of vengeance is something you will need to witness for yourself by seeing this remarkably bleak and fascinating movie. The film is dark and gritty and yet carries an ironic soundtrack filled with often bubbly forgotten pop songs that manage to underline how stark the story and characters of You Were Never Really Here are. 

You Were Never Really Here is not a movie for all audiences. The film is blood-soaked and grim with a dark irony that will turn off those with more mainstream sensibilities. Don’t go looking for typical thriller beats in this movie or well-worn suspense tropes, You Were Never Really Here is a grim character study turned Greek tragedy. If that notion is unappealing to you perhaps you should consider going to see The Equalizer 2 in theaters this weekend. I’ve heard it’s a corker but one with a familiar beat and a Denzel Washington performance you can dance to.

That’s just not the vibe of You Were Never Really Here. That doesn’t, in itself, make it superior to something more mainstream and conventional like The Equalizer, just more artful and experimental. Far less classically ‘entertaining’ to be sure but if you are on it’s intellectual wavelength and dig the dark and gritty, you are going to adore You Were Never Really Here for it’s bold, unconventional approach to the thriller genre. 

Movie Review: The Village

The Village (2004) 

Directed by M Night Shyamalan 

Written by M Night Shyamalan

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, Bryce Dallas Howard, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver 

Release Date July 30th, 2004 

Published July 19th, 2021 

The Village is a real trip, an at times exceptionally well acted, epically misguided story of outsiders with a deep, dark secret. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix as Lucius and Bryce Dallas Howard as Ivy. Despite a slow start, the film slowly evolves as a mysterious 19th century romance with a twist of horror movie monsters hanging over it. The couple are residents of a colony that is cut off from the rest of the nearby towns by a forest populated by monsters who live in a delicate detente with the residents of The Village.

The town elders, led by William Hurt as Ivy’s father, Edward Walker, have raised their families in fear of the creatures who are fed a sacrifice of animal flesh on a weekly basis. Residents of the Village are not allowed to enter the forest and must not wear the forbidden color, red, which is said to set off the creatures. As we join the story, the monsters are believed to be raiding the town at night and causing a panic.

In the midst of the panic, Lucius begins to spend more and more time looking in on Ivy and her family and while he is a character of few words, Joaquin Phoenix as an actor communicates all we need to know about Lucius, he’s in love with Ivy and shows it by becoming her de-facto protector. For her part, Ivy is far more open and vocal about her feelings and these two approaches collide in the best scene in The Village in which they eventually declare their love.

I had forgotten about The Village since seeing it on the big screen in 2004. This led to a wild viewing experience in which I was convinced that I completely disliked it and then shocked to find myself deeply invested and enjoying it during this rewatch. No joke, I was riveted by the performances by Joaquin Phoenix, Bryce Dallas Howard, William Hurt and the supporting players including the brilliant Brendan Gleeson and Sigourney Weaver.

Then the third act hit and my memory came rushing back. Now I remember why I hated The Village back in 2004. The third act of The Village is a complete trainwreck. From the moment that Joaquin Phoenix is knocked into a plot device coma to the reveal of the big twist well before the actual end of the movie to the nonsensical and self indulgent ending, The Village goes completely off the rails.

The next section of this review of The Village goes into spoilers so if you still haven’t seen The Village and want to remain unspoiled, jump off now and come back after you see the movie, it’s on Netflix. We’ll be here when you get back.

The big twist of The Village is despite the setting in a village that even the tombstones indicate exists in the late 1800’s, the movie is actually set in modern America 2004. The monsters that provide the oppressive atmosphere of the first two acts aren’t real. The town elders portray the monsters as a way of keeping their families from trying to leave the village and find out about the modern world outside the forest.

William Hurt, it turns out, is a secret billionaire who, with the help of the elders, created The Village as a way of escaping the crime of the modern world that had tragically taken the lives of members of every family in town. This ‘twist’ is deeply problematic in numerous ways. For instance, why convince everyone they can’t wear red? Why make red a plot point at all? It never becomes important, especially after Hurt admits to making up the rules along the way/ 

At one point, after the creatures are revealed as not real, Bryce Dallas Howard, whose character is blind, is seen to have wandered into a field of red flowers and tense music plays and you’re baffled as you know there is no danger and she knows there is no danger and yet the movie wants the scene to be suspenseful because of the monsters. The monsters that, by this point, he's already revealed as fake. Why would we be afraid in this scene?

Why didn't the elders simply declare themselves Amish and create a colony based on those values? Why the elaborate ruse about the outside world? I get that they want to frighten the children into never leaving but there has to be something simpler than goofy-looking woods' monsters to convince people from leaving. This just seems like a lot of unnecessary work to hide a secret that doesn't need much hiding.

Shyamalan directs the third act of The Village as if he hadn’t revealed the twist ending at the start of the act. The movie straight up has William Hurt admit the elaborate lie to Bryce Dallas Howard and then sends her on a journey through the now completely safe woods that is then played as if there were still real monsters on the loose. When Howard finally makes it out of the woods it appears Shyamalan wants us to be surprised that we are in modern day America.

That would be fine if he didn’t tell us that before she ever actually left the village. The only real tension is that Howard’s Ivy is blind and must find her way through the forest alone and blind. This is something she manages quite well under the dire circumstances but raises the question of why Hurt didn’t just go himself. He gives some nonsense about how he vowed to never leave the village and yet he reveals the lies about everything to his blind daughter and then encourages her to leave the village on her own? Blind, going into the woods alone. At the very least, that’s awful parenting.

The Village stinks because it wastes two acts of a really compelling drama on a twist that wasn’t a twist and a series of nonsensical story beats that the script undercuts by revealing everything far too soon. We get the secret about the fake monsters and the modern day setting before Ivy leaves into the forest. The film has an action beat left courtesy of Adrien Brody’s offensive burlesque of a mentally challenged man but that’s not what we have been building toward.

We were promised a twist ala The Sixth Sense and what we got instead was a third act that would come to define the worst traits of M Night Shyamalan, his tendency toward convoluted and overwrought twist endings and big plot moments. In the third act, Shyamalan abandons the strength and heart of the film, the love story between Joaquin Phoenix and Bryce Dallas Howard in favor of nonsense action movie chases and a twist that he spoils himself before it can surprise us.

It’s a shame because there were two thirds of a really compelling movie in The Village.

Movie Review Buffalo Soldiers

Buffalo Soldiers (2001) 

Directed by Gregor Jordan

Written by Gregor Jordan, Eric Weiss, Nora Maccoby 

Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Anna Paquin 

Release Date July 18th, 2003 

Published November 11th, 2003 

We have been waiting for quite awhile now for film adaptation of Robert O'Connor's caustic military novel Buffalo Soldiers. The film version is one of the last films delayed by the tragedy of September 11th.

It gathered dust on the shelves of Miramax because of its decidedly unpatriotic look at military life. The soldiers of Buffalo Soldiers are not the patriotic stick figures trotted out for numerous war movies dating back through all of Hollywood history. These soldiers are drug dealers, murderers, racists and pimps. So it's not surprising that after September 11th and subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that the film stirred enough controversy to be dumped into limited release and essentially disowned by it's studio.

This decidedly nihilistic look at military life on a German base in peacetime stars Joaquin Phoenix as PFC. Ray Elwood. From his smirking demeanor, he looks like any other acerbic rebel of a number of different military movies. However, on closer inspection, Ray Elwood is no one liner spouting caricature but rather an amoral drug-dealing, wheeler dealer with few if any redeeming qualities. Bill Murray-lovable loser type this is not. 

Ray runs the military base from the office of Colonel Berman (Ed Harris). As Berman's assistant, Ray can requisition any and all material goods and what he can't get he can trade for on the black market. Ray is also the best drug cook in the military, a skill that landed him in the military when a judge offered him the choice of the army or jail. Ray acquires and prepares heroin for the base's top drug dealer, a military police officer played by Sheik Mahmoud Bey.

Elwood's operation is thrown into jeopardy when a new top Sergeant (Scott Glenn) decides to put Elwood out of business. A former Vietnam veteran, the top sergeant has a reputation as a killer. This doesn't stop Elwood from pressing the Sergeant's buttons, even going as far as dating his daughter Robyn (Anna Paquin), a wild child in her own right, who introduces Elwood to ecstasy. The rivalry between Elwood and the Sergeant is the crux of the film.

From a story standpoint, it's interesting to consider what it must have been like for our military for the number of years between Vietnam and the first war in Iraq. Aside from the minor skirmish here and there, our military guys had a lot of time on their hands, and you know what they say about idle hands. Try idle hands with access to a lot of weapons and drugs.

The problem with Buffalo Soldiers however, is that it never establishes a rooting interest. Phoenix's Elwood is nearly charming enough for us to buy into his anti-hero bit. However, he just doesn't quite have the offhand charm of a good movie scoundrel. The performance is all too earnestly nihilistic to care about.

Director Gregor Jordan seems to go out of his way to separate Buffalo Soldiers from obvious genre movies. He isn't making straight drama or comedy but he seems to go out of his way, especially to avoid comedy. The film’s funniest moments come from Ed Harris playing against type as the bumbling Colonel Berman.

Imagine Stripes as envisioned by Chuck Pahlaniuk and directed by David Fincher and you get an idea what Buffalo Soldiers is going for. It's a take it or leave it portrait of questionable behavior, death, machismo, and murder. No one liners, no forced perspectives or lessons to be learned. Buffalo Soldiers is more of an interesting concept than it is a great movie.

Movie Review Signs

Signs (2002) 

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Written by M. Night Shyamalan

Starring Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Amanda Breslin

Release Date August 8th, 2002

Published August 4th, 2002 

I Can't Believe He Did It Again! Director M. Night Shyamalan, for the third consecutive film, has managed to twist audiences to his will with yet another twisted film that shocks and surprises. In Signs Shyamalan plays his audience like a violin and makes us like it in what is the best film of 2002.Taut, perfectly paced, and filled with breathtaking moments, Signs is yet another extraordinary signpost in the increasingly brilliant career of M. Night Shyamalan. 

Signs stars Mel Gibson as Father Graham Hess, or rather just Graham Hess. As we come to find out Graham has lost his faith in God and left the church. Now living on his farm with his two kids, Morgan (Rory Culkin) and Bo (Amanda Breslin) and his brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), Graham seems to be slowly adjusting to life without faith. Then, not 10 minutes into the film we are thrust into a story involving the mythical urban legend: the crop circle.

To Graham it seems local idiots have vandalized his corn. It isn't until TV new coverage reveals that the crop formations aren't just in his cornfield, they are global. Interestingly enough the crop circles are merely the hook; the real story takes off well after we've seen our last crop circle.

Shyamalan adopts a sort of pop culture version of Hitchcock, aping the master’s style with his impressive film score that evokes some of Psycho and The Birds. Like Hitchcock, Shyamalan knows that the audience need not see anything to be scared, in fact, what the audience imagines is likely far scarier.

Mel Gibson is solid as always playing Graham with depth and feeling, never allowing the character to drift off into action hero mode but also not allowing him to be weak. Shyamalan once again shows his brilliant eye for casting children, with Rory Culkin proving to be the class of the Culkin family. And little Angela Breslin, whose wide-eyed deadpan delivery is used to both great dramatic and comedic effect.

One of the film’s most surprising elements is its sense of humor, which is perfectly timed and never takes away from the suspense. Shyamalan is beginning to show a pattern in his filmmaking style. A simplicity of storytelling that is so understated you barely notice it. He simply and artfully weaves together subtle realistic drama against outrageous backdrops. 

In the Sixth Sense it was ghosts, in Unbreakable it's comic book superheroes and in Signs it's.... no no, I am not going to be the asshole who ruins the fun. You will have to see it yourself in what may be the best film of the year.