The latest film releases include Wicked, Gladiator II, and The Piano Lesson. Weighing in are Christy Lemire, film critic for RogerEbert.com and co-host of the YouTube channel Breakfast All Day, and Tim Grierson, senior U.S. critic for Screen International and the author of This Is How You Make a Movie.
Wicked
As the prequel to The Wizard of Oz, this explains how two frenemies became Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. It stars Arianna Grande and Cynthia Erivo, who famously won a Tony, Emmy and Grammy for her work in the revival of the Broadway musical The Color Purple. The cast also includes Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, and Peter Dinklage. The director is Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians).
Lemire: “It is two hours and 40 minutes long, and is only part one. It ends where intermission would be in the Broadway show. So part two comes out November of 2025. … Ariana Grande is Glinda, the pretty, blonde, popular, mean girl. And Cynthia Erivo is the green-hued Elphaba who has been ostracized and bullied her whole life, but she has this Carrie-like rage that manifests itself in being able to move stuff. The two of them are forced to room together, and then realize that they really see each other for the first time in a way that nobody else ever have.
It is a musical. This razzle dazzle is Jon M. Chu’s bread and butter. … When it is about the big, splashy production numbers and the songs that you know, it is spectacular. I liked a lot about it.
When it tries to wedge in these heavier themes of authoritarianism … it's not quite so effective. It makes these tonal swings that are a little awkward between the fun and the spectacle, and then the more serious messages it's trying to convey.”
Grierson: “I think that one of the best things about part one is that it launches you into, ‘Oh, I'm curious to see how some central conflicts will play out in part two.’ It suffers, in general, from the CG overkill, all over the place. [This] movie’s more, I would say, gaudy than really magical.
I think Erivo is really, really good in this, probably because I think that character is better. Ariana Grande is a little more one note, because I find that character a little more one note. It feels like a lot of setup to get you ready for part two, which comes out next year. And I think it's very important to tell people that. … You don't have to stay through the end credits. There is no hidden scene or anything like that.”
Gladiator II
It’s been 24 years since the original five-time Oscar-winning Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe, was released. Director Ridley Scott returns with Paul Mescal as the gladiator and Denzel Washington as the former slave who befriends him. This sequel follows Lucius, who lives a peaceful life until Roman soldiers invade, kill his wife, and force him into slavery.
Grierson: “I liked the first Gladiator back in 2000, which of course, won Best Picture and also Best Actor for Russell Crowe. I think this one is not as good. … It’s more thematically complex. It's more narratively complex.
Paul Mescal’s character, Lucius, has been taken prisoner and been forced to become a gladiator who is essentially part of a stable of gladiators that is owned and operated by Denzel Washington's character. … And what Lucius … really wants is revenge against the Roman general who enslaved him, and that person is played by Pedro Pascal, and he is not a straightforward villain.
… This movie, I think, suffers from a couple things. Number one, it really misses Russell Crowe. … He really he became a movie star by playing that role. … Paul Mescal, who I like a lot, I think he's been in great stuff … I don't think that he entirely embodies that heroic, stoic, masculine ideal that Russell Crowe made effortless in the first film. I also don't think this movie has as captivating a villain as Joaquin Phoenix was in the first film. … Denzel Washington is quite good, and you can tell that he's having fun playing a schemer. The gladiatorial combat is more outlandish, I would also say ridiculous. … This movie is a mixed bag.”
Lemire: “I don't even love Gladiator. I see why it won Best Picture, and I see why it's beloved and quoted and infinitely meme-able a quarter century later. It was a solid, old-fashioned, sweeping historical epic that harkened to a certain big studio filmmaking. This is also solid like that.
But … what Paul Mescal is doing here is not as interesting as what Russell Crowe did, and it's not on the page. What's happening with Paul Mescal’s character and Pedro Pascal's character is that they’re dividing the purpose that Russell Crowe, as one human being, served. So Paul Mescal is the gladiator who becomes a star, and Pedro Pascal is the general who is noble, whose men will fight and die for, they're both boring.
… I love what Denzel is doing. Here he is chewing the scenery as this gadfly man-about-town fixer. And when Ridley Scott leans into the wilder aspects of these characters and of this place, it is a lot of fun, and it's quite gripping. But when it's just the solid gladiatorial stuff, it's like, eh, we've seen this.”
The Piano Lesson
This film adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play is produced by Denzel Washington and stars his son, John David Washington. The story centers on siblings Berniece Charles and Boy Willie, who fight over the fate of a piano that is intricately carved with the faces of their ancestors. Boy Willie wants to sell it and buy the land once owned by their former slave masters. Berniece Charles wants to keep the heirloom in the family.
Lemire: “I don't know that this ever escapes the trappings of it having originally been a play. A lot of it takes place in just a couple of rooms in this house, this African American family that is struggling to emerge from the Depression. … The words almost take up space within this house because it's so dense, the dialogue, and so energetic. But it is undeniably stagey, but it is entertaining while it's happening. And there's one scene where folks are just talking around a table, and just a rhythm catches hold, and it builds to a song, and it builds and it builds, and it's quite emotional. And so there are great moments here. You have to be skilled technically as an actor, I think, to wrap your abilities around this dialog. But I never forgot that I was watching a play.”
Grierson: “It helps, I think, that several of these actors were in the 2022 revival, and so they know these characters, they know these roles. … The ghost of the white man, who once enslaved this family, they think is in the house and may be connected to the piano. And so there is a supernatural element in the film. … The play-ness of it, the theatrical roots, I don't think entirely hurts the film because the dialog is so lively and so lived in. … I think the film's ceiling is pretty low because there is an inherent theatricality you can't entirely get past. But I think as a play … as this idea of a family wrestling with a very difficult past, it's very engaging.”