Movie Review White Noise

White Noise (2022) 

Directed by Noah Baumbach 

Written by Noah Baumbach 

Starring Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle 

Release Date November 25th, 2022

Published November 18th, 2022 

Netflix 

I've never read Don Delillo's much heralded 1985 novel, White Noise. Others have told me it is quite brilliant. I'm told it has a visionary quality that makes it quite worthy of being adapted at any time. From what I know about White Noise, Noah Baumbach, director of intimate dramas about awkward families and spiky characters, would not be the most likely choice to direct this material. The story carries elements of science fiction, high minded satire ala Joseph Heller, and a borderline unfilmable obsession with death. Unfilmable in that most audiences won't find the theme one they want to watch play out in a movie. 

It's rather perfect that an iconoclast like Baumbach would choose something so seemingly impossible as his first big budget directorial effort. It's also kind of perfect that he's taken millions of dollars of Netflix money and made an indie movie on a blockbuster budget. White Noise is filled with showy, dramatic speeches, and wildly strange moments of action fitting of a director of esoteric human drama. White Noise is filled with numerous themes but none of which seems to stand out or find any satisfying resolution.

Adam Driver stars in White Noise as J.A.K or Jack Gladney, father of 5 children from 4 marriages to five different women. His new wife, Babette (Greta Gerwig), shares with Jack a despairing fear of death. What begins as a somewhat romantic, fatalistic conversation about how they can't live without each other and making the case that one should die before the other in order to save them from comparative states of horrific grief. 

Babette's fear of death manifests in her beginning to take an experimental drug that is supposed to relieve her of the fear of death. Instead, the drug just effects Babette's memory in general making her forgetful but still deeply in fear of death. For Jack, he expresses his fear of death through his work as a professor at the fictional College on the Hill, located somewhere in Ohio. Jack has earned fame in Academic circles for his intensive course, Hitler Studies, where he opines on the evils of the dictator and the culture that made him possible. 

At one point, White Noise comes to a complete halt for a dueling speech between Driver's Jack and his best friend, Professor Murray Siskind (Don Cheadle). In an incredible verbal dance, Jack and Murray each pontificate about the area of their expertise. Jack, of course, knows all about Hitler while Murray's unique field of study is Elvis Presley. The pair find strange and fascinating parallels between Hitler and the King of Rock N'Roll in each having attachment issues related to their mothers, their absent fathers, and their incredible ability to draw and compel a crowd. 

Neither Driver and Cheadler nor Jack and Murray are competing here. Rather, the pair is improvising a intricate dance of intellects that dovetail off of one another, building on each others points, coming to the point of interrupting each other but never seeming to steal the attention away. At one moment, Jack recedes into the crowd of gathering professors and students, mesmerized by their tete a tete and then he re-emerges in a different part of the crowd, rising from a crouch to take hold of the scene, and Murray steps back in awe to enjoy his fellow Professor's presentation. 

It's the best scene in White Noise and it is so good that I want to recommend the movie solely based on the quality of Driver and Cheadle's magnificent duet. I want to recommend it but I am not sure that I can. You see, what remains of White Noise following this bravura effort is far too strange, obtuse, and esoteric that I am not sure who the audience for this is meant to be. White Noise has director Baumbach tapping various styles from other directors from Altman to Wes Anderson to Mike Nicholas and Stanley Kubrick. The homage throughout White Noise is fascinating but I am not sure it adds up to anything in the end. 

I'm told that Delillo's novel actually thrives on trainwrecking the narrative into some inescapable place and leaping to a new narrative thread. White Noise, in fact, depicts an actual trainwreck that serves the purpose of shifting the narrative from quirky academic satire to an equally quirky survival thriller. The family is forced to flee from their home after a train is hit by a semi-truck carry flammable chemicals. The train was carrying toxic waste and the result is what the book and film call an 'Airborne Toxic Event.' Jack ends up being exposed to the Toxic Event and assumes that it is going to kill him but that is only used to underline his ongoing obsession with death. 

The Airborne Toxic Event portion of White Noise includes a chase scene and chaotic, end of the world preaching and then just peters out into the family returning home and going on with their lives. It's weirdly clever and provides yet another narrative trainwreck into another story, though slightly less successful than the actual trainwreck scene. The final act then becomes a domestic drama as Jack investigates Babette's experimental drug. I doubt that I can spoil the movie but I am nevertheless going to end my description there. 

White Noise is a particularly unsatisfying experience. On one hand, I love some of the ambition that Baumbach demonstrates. The stuff with Driver and Don Cheadle and Hitler and Elvis is genuinely riveting. Driver's performance is weird, as is Cheadle and Greta Gerwig's performances but they are entertainingly weird, they match the weird tone of White Noise. The acting is really first rate in terms of how it marries with the wild ideas of White Noise. That said, I can see where a more mainstream audience than myself, might be put off by the theatrics, the showiness, and the un-ironic bigness of these performances. 

I also love the film credits which encompasses the final scene of the movie to the very end of the last credit on screen. It's essentially a music video reminiscent of the wildly anarchic and inventive style of a Spike Jonze video. The lengthy choreographed sequence marries dancers and non-dancers a like in a series of coordinated movements that mimic and mock the daily mannered pleasantries of grocery stores in our obsessive consumer culture. Actual dancers glide amid the coordinated movements of shoppers, smiling, everyday consumers, going about the business of selecting their varieties of brands and filling carts to overflow with item after item. 

Consumer culture is among the many broad targets of White Noise though what point is being made about consumer culture is far too broad to determine. That really is the defining quality of the movie White Noise, it's a scattershot blast of vague commentary on modern life, some of it quite interesting and entertaining and quite a lot of it presented without much insight, humor, or meaning. I could excuse that as being just like life where not everything has a deeper meaning but that feels like a cop out by both me as a writer and critic and by the movie which appears incapable of settling on any kind of point. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Decision to Leave

Decision to Leave (2022)

Directed by Park Chan Wook 

Written by Park Chan Wook 

Starring Wei Tang, Park Hae Il, Lee Jung Hyung 

Release Date October 14th, 2022 

Published November 22nd, 2022 

To be released on MUBI in December, 2022

On the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast we had a moment involving the Chan Wook Park movie Oldboy that became part of our show lore. The premise of our show has me, a professional critic, my co-host Bob, a music critic, and our friend Josh, your everyday movie fan, talking about movies. We talk about all of the new movies of the week and a classic. Oldboy was chosen as our classic the same week that Spike Lee released his inferior remake. 

Myself and Bob were already huge fans of Oldboy while Josh had never seen it and knew nothing about it. As our conversation about the film progressed it slowly dawned on Bob and myself that Josh had missed an important plot point. There is a disturbing twist in the end of Oldboy and Josh had not picked up on it. Thus, to proceed with the conversation, we had to explain to Josh what the twist was and we did so delicately as to allow the twist to occur to him in real time. It's my favorite moment in the nearly 10 year history of the show. 

I only bring that up as an example of the subtlety and brilliance of director Park Chan Wook. Anyone could have missed the twist in Oldboy and still have enjoyed the movie as Josh did. It only deepened for him after we told him what he missed. Missed signals, misunderstandings, and the role of what we want to hear versus what we actually heard, each play a role in Park Chan Wook's new movie, Decision to Leave. This gorgeous looking murder mystery thrives in the thin margin between desire and truth. 

At the bottom of a mountain the body of a middle aged man is found. It appears to be an open and shut case, a climber falling from a significant height. Nevertheless, Detective Jang Hae Jung treats this like any other case, he will investigate it fully before he closing the case. Soon, what appears to be an open and shut case begins to take on new layers. Skin under the fingernails of the victim indicates perhaps they didn't fall but were pushed off of the mountain. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

The Menu

The Menu (2022) 

Directed by Mark Mylod

Written by Seth Reiss, Will Tracy 

Starring Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor Joy, Hong Chau, Nicholas Hoult 

Release Date November 18th, 2022 

Published November 18th, 2022 

Imagine Gordon Ramsey as a character written by Ari Aster and you get a sense of what The Menu is all about. Director Mark Mylod and screenwriters Seth Reiss and Will Tracy have given foodie culture a massive middle finger while honoring the humble food workers of the world from the celebrity Chef to the humble Soux Chef. A group of the fabled One-Percent are gathered at a high end experience restaurant on an island on the coast of a major city for what they think will be the high art equivalent of dinner. What they get is a severe comeuppance. 

Anya Taylor Joy is our entryway character, Margot, a young woman who received a last minute invitation to this high end dining experience. Her date, Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), is a food snob and was desperately in need of a date after his girlfriend broke up with him. Margot has no interest in Tyler's food snob nonsense, and is barely tolerating his need to photograph his food and pontificate about the delicacy of Chef Slowik's (Ralph Fiennes) technique in crafting a food experience. According to Tyler, the entire menu is a story and you have to eat to the end to get it. 

There are only 12 guests at this restaurant which is located on a small island where the Chef and his staff live and cultivate all of their food, growing, raising, butchering, and serving food that is all sourced on the island. The cost of this dining experience is said by Tyler to be $12,000. per person. You get the pretentious attitude for free, thankfully. This particular dining experience is extra special as the diners have been specifically chosen and include Angel Investors, a Famous actor, played by John Leguizamo, and a famed food critic who helped Chef Slowik break into the big time in the world of Food Culture. 

Each of the guests on this night at the restaurant known as The Hawthorne have been hand selected. Except for one. That would be Margot and in the first few minutes of arriving at the restaurant, the Chef wants to know why she is here. Then he wants to know which side she is on, the workers or the diners. These questions escalate through the night as the Chef's plan comes more into focus and the fear and dread of the diners  radically vacillates from the whole experience being a theatrical presentation to the genuine fear that someone or, perhaps, everyone here is going to die. 

This builds to a final bravura moment that you will not be able to predict, a deconstructed classic of a desert with a visual flair that is audacious and darkly hilarious. I won't spoil it, I don't think I could, but I won't over explain it. It's just a phenomenal final scene and one I want you to experience for yourself. Some of The Menu doesn't quite land, it can be rather hamhanded at times in terms of the motivations of Chef Slowik or obtuse about the villainy of the diners, but those are minor complaints when compared to how great the ending of The Menu is. 

Anya Taylor Joy continues to make terrific decisions in the roles she chooses. She has unusual taste and that is well reflected in a filmography that carries few traditional choice and a variety of fascinating oddities like The Menu. Joy could very well have played one of the Kitchen staff or the main Chef as she carries an imperious quality that would fit with those characters Having chosen to play the most traditional audience surrogate available in this story she's equally winning. The script gives her a juicy secret to play with and the story centers on her in a very unique way. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Disenchanted

Disenchanted (2022) 

Directed by Adam Shankman 

Written by Brigitte Hales, J. David Stern 

Starring Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, Maya Rudolph 

Release Date November 18th, 2022 

Published November 17th, 2022 

Disney Plus 

I'm growing concerned that Disney has somehow found an algorithm that determines the exact level of mediocre. Look at their recent spate of live action movies and you can see what I am getting at. From Jungle Cruise to Hocus Pocus 2, Disney has been able to craft movies so inoffensive, bland, mediocre and passably 'entertaining' that they simply pass through you like a fast food meal, not bad, but not exactly a memorable meal. 

Further evidence of this algorithmic mediocrity comes in their latest Disney Plus release, a sequel to the wonderful 2007 comedy, Enchanted, called Disenchanted. Bland, mediocre, passable, each of these benign phrases are perfectly fitting of this deeply run of the mill effort. Directed by a master of bland, middle of the road, mainstream mush, Adam Shankman, Disenchanted is not a bad movie, just a supremely bland, deeply unmemorable movie that fails to justify its existence. 

Where Enchanted was wildly inventive, a loving tribute to Disney Princess tropes, Disenchanted sends up fairy tale tropes with all the skill of someone taking up juggling for the first time. Using Disney created tropes from Cinderella, Snow White, Maleficent and any number of classic fairy tales, Disenchanted appears to have been made by people whose idea of satire is aiming a fire hose of every idea without hitting any specific target. 

Disenchanted picks up the story of former fairy tale Princess, Gisele (Amy Adams), living her happily ever after in New York City. It's been 10 years since she fell through a portal into the real world and met and fell in love with her handsome Prince, New York lawyer Robert (Patrick Dempsey). However, things are not the as Happy as the phrase Happily Ever After implies. Gisele has grown weary of the big city and her relationship with her adoptive daughter, Morgan (Gabriella Baldacchino) has grown strained. Morgan has become a movie teenager, a bland amalgamation of sarcasm and unfocused rebellion. 

In order to get her Happily Ever After back on track, Gisele asks Robert to move the family to the suburbs, specifically, a tiny hamlet called Monroeville. There, they buy what appears to be a run down former castle and set about a new ending for their story. Things do not go well and with everyone in the family at each other's throat, Gisele grows desperate for a magical fix to her problems. That magic arrives with a visit from her friends, Prince Edward (James Marsden) and his wife, Nancy (Idina Menzel). 

Visiting from Gisele's animated home world, Andalasia, they've brought a gift, a magic wand, to be given to Gisele and Robert's baby daughter. Once they leave however, Gisele decides to use the wand for herself. She wishes for her new home to be just like Andalasia and the next day, it's a full on fairy tale. Robert is now an adventurer, Morgan has become a Cinderella like figure, and, since Gisele is technically Morgan's stepmother, she begins to turn evil. A helpful scroll informs Gisele and us that if she doesn't reverse the wish by Midnight she will turn evil and all of Monroeville will remain in this fairy tale world. Oh, and that means destroying Andalasia for some reason. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.media

Classic Movie Review Moulin Rouge

Moulin Rouge (1952)

Directed by John Huston 

Written by Pierre La Mure, Anthony Veiller, John Huston 

Starring Jose Ferrer, Zsa Zsa Gabor 

Release Date December 23rd 1952 

Published November 15th, 2022 

Film Foundation Restoration Screening November 14th, 2022

Four films share the title Moulin Rouge in the past 90 years of cinema. The most famous, perhaps due to recency bias, is Baz Luhrmann's lavish 2001 musical starring Ewan McGregor. The previous movie titled Moulin Rouge was released in 1952 and was directed by the beloved and venerated director John Huston. Though known for his gritty thrillers like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre or the detective noir The Maltese Falcon, Huston was a true iconoclast who indulged any number of interests, including deep romanticism marked by longing and sadness. 

That longing, sadness and romanticism is certainly on display in Huston's take on Moulin Rouge. While other stories surrounding the legendary 19th century dance hall center on the bohemian revolutionary art and culture for which Moulin Rouge became a symbol, Huston's Moulin Rouge falls upon the tragic story of artist Toulouse Lautrec, a man whose fame came about after his time at the Moulin Rouge and because of the work he did promoting the Moulin Rouge with incredible posters he painted in exchange for being able to drink for free. 

In a flashback we see young Toulouse Lautrec as a notably spry teenager. Though known for his short stature, Lautrec was not born with dwarfism. An accident occurred that left Lautrec with a pair of broken legs that did not heal correctly causing his growth to be stunted. The injury and a series of romantic failures, briefly depicted in the movie, led to heavy drinking and a general avoidance of close relationships in favor professional friendships, rivalries and drinking buddies. 

The sad story then follows Lautrec into a brief relationship with an explosive and unpredictable sex worker, Marie Charlet (Colette Marchand). It's a relationship of convenience as Lautrec rescues Marie from being arrested and she comes to stay at his home. She tries to entice him into bed but he rejects her, not wanting to be her customer. The push and pull of emotions between Lautrec and Marie make up the middle portion of Moulin Rouge and it will resonate with anyone who has loved someone who did not love them back. 

Lautrec's soulful longing is undercut by his unsympathetic rage and cutting remarks toward Marie. The two fight and makeup with similar intensity but the relationship never progresses to the kind of intimacy that Lautrec desires but cannot fully express. Jose Ferrer's ferocious performance never states the obvious about Lautrec, how his low self-esteem and self worth caused him to believe he was unworthy of love. It's all brought forth by Ferrer in his fiery eyes and thin skinned reaction to any minor slight. 

Late in the second act we do see some growth from Lautrec. He finds success with his poster tributes to the Moulin Rouge and seems to begin a relationship with an independent young woman named Myriamme (Suzanne Flon). Sadly, his self-loathing short circuits any possible romantic relationship and Lautrec slowly destroys their relationship with his cruel remarks. Ferrer is remarkable in these scenes as he capably moves from intelligent and charming to cutting and cruel with minor shifts in his tone and a dismissive, angry gaze. 

Read my complete review of Moulin Rouge (1952) at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Resurrection

Resurrection (2022) 

Directed by Andrew Semans 

Written by Andrew Semans 

Starring Rebecca Hall, Tim Roth, Grace Kaufman 

Release Date January 22nd, 2022 

Published November 16th, 2022 

Resurrection is not a movie you watch passively, it's a movie you recover from having watched. The 2022 horror thriller starring Rebecca Hall is an intense and thoroughly enthralling experience. And all of that is due to the remarkable performance of Rebecca Hall. Beginning the movie as a confident, independent business woman and single mother before slowly succumbing to the abuse she suffered as a teenager, Hall is breathtaking, delivering one of the best performances of 2022. 

Margaret (Hall) is a confident and successful woman with a corner office, a beautifully appointed apartment, and a teenage daughter who she loves dearly. We meet Margaret as she is counseling one of her subordinates who is going through a rough time with a boyfriend. Margaret is thoughtful, understanding and very helpful in her advice. It's clear, at this point, that Margaret may have some experience in dealing with abusive men, her advice comes from a place of hard won experience. 

This veneer of success however, along with a rather mundane routine of sleeping, jogging, working and sleeping with a married man, begins to be upended when Margaret encounters her former abuser, David (Tim Roth), at a work conference. She only sees him briefly but it is enough to trigger a significant breakdown and panic attack. This is just the beginning. Soon, Margaret begins seeing David in other unexpected but also very public places such as a department store and a local park. 

Deciding to confront David, he immediately starts pressing her buttons. He claims to be there with Benjamin whom we learn is the baby the two had together more than 20 years ago. This is not possible as Benjamin is dead and it's strongly implied that David killed the baby. If that were the only implication, Resurrection would be a very different movie. As it is, the revelations from this point on, I don't wish to spoil. You must have this experience for yourself. 

Resurrection is a disturbing movie. Writer-Director Andrew Semans has a strong command of the terrifying things that abusers do to their victims and some may find it hard to sit through just how disturbingly real David's machinations are, on top of the outlandish notes that Roth brings to the character. The gaslighting, the grooming, the separation of the victim from their support system, all of these are seen or referred to as part of Margaret's past with David. 

Click here for my review of Resurrection at Horror.Media. 

Movie Review Falling for Christmas

Falling for Christmas (2022) 

Directed by Janeen Damian 

Written by Jeff Bonnett, Ron Oliver 

Starring Lindsay Lohan, Chord Overstreet 

Release Date November 10th, 2022 

Netflix 

We all love a good comeback story. As much as our culture tears people down and enjoys a downfall from a massive height, we do love seeing someone bounce back. Lindsay Lohan certainly qualifies as someone who fell from great heights. After having become a major celebrity and a leading lady, she began a descent that was scrutinized and poked fun at for years on end. Battles in the tabloids with her family, public accounts of bad behavior and a series of truly awful movies, had left Lohan at the lowest of depths in popular culture. 

Then, Lindsay went away. Pulling herself out of limelight and getting healthy was the best news. After having a brush with becoming another Hollywood tragedy, Lindsay has seemingly been welcomed back to the Hollywood fold. The announcement of a two picture deal with Netflix was met with excitement and old friends and co-stars like Jamie Lee Curtis cheered her on. That comeback has begun and, before we talk about the movie, we should note that viewing numbers for Falling for Christmas are reportedly quite good. 

That bit of kindness out of the way, Falling for Christmas is a bad movie. It's not egregious or even unwatchable, but it's not good either. This incredibly basic holiday movie blends together elements of the Goldie Hawn comedy Overboard, a bit of It's a Wonderful Life, and the production design of every Lifetime Christmas movie to produce a most mediocre of modern Christmas movies. It's not Lindsay's fault, she has some spark here, but the whole of Falling For Christmas fails the returning star. 

Falling for Christmas stars Lohan as Sierra Belmont, a wannabe influencer and daughter of a very rich ski lodge owner, played by veteran Soap Opera star Jack Wagner. Sierra has come to her dad's lodge to try and get out of taking an actual job. She wants to be an influencer like her flamboyant, yes that is a code word, boyfriend Tad Fairchild (George Young) whose life is dedicated to selfies, trending, and brand deals. 

Here we have the first major misstep of Falling for Christmas. The movie has a very 50 year old man view of what an influencer is. The description is very much coming from a person who is upset that influencer is a job that people claim to have. The writing team does nothing to hide how they've only ever heard Boomer buzzwords about what an 'influencer' is and they are mad about it. Thus, the idea of Influencers is treated with boomer contempt for those damned kids. 

Read my complete review of Falling for Christmas at Geeks.Media.