The latest film releases include Here, A Real Pain, Blitz, and Emilia Perez. Weighing in are Amy Nicholson, host of the podcast Unspooled and film reviewer for The New York Times, and Tim Grierson, senior U.S. critic for Screen International and author of This Is How You Make a Movie.
Here
In this fantasy/drama, based on a graphic novel also called Here, the camera stays in the same spot from the dinosaur age to the present day. It stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, who transform into their younger selves thanks to CGI.
Grierson: “The premise, the conceit, is that we are looking at the same parcel of land in Pennsylvania over the course of mostly 100 years. We do go back to the dinosaurs. We do go back to the age of Indigenous people in Pennsylvania, but it's mostly in the 20th century.
… It is a single locked camera. It is essentially at the side of the living room, and we are watching everything in one big master shot. It's almost like watching a play where the camera stays static, and the actors come in and out of the frame, come in and out of the living room. And we jump backwards and forwards in time, seeing different people who lived in the house, but primarily seeing Tom Hanks and Robin Wright.
And [director Robert] Zemeckis is a filmmaker who likes to be both very sentimental and also work with cutting-edge technology. And the de-aging, I think for the most part, looks okay. … I know we're just going to keep getting this type of technology in films, and I think it looks better than it has in the past.
… This is a movie that tries to bring a cliche to life — the idea that boy, time sure flies. … It is a film that touches on universal themes of regret, loss, disappointment, the passage of time. The problem is that none of the characters are very well-drawn. They’re chess pieces that Zemeckis is moving around the board to make these sentimental, nostalgic observations about life. It is better than Zemeckis’ his last two movies, which were The Witches and Pinocchio.”
Nicholson: “I do really admire the original graphic novel by Richard McGuire that honestly went through an even bigger gap of time. That book goes from 3 billion BCE to the future, to like 22,000 AD, and at least this movie has the restraint to stop in the present.
… The characters in this film feeling kind of fakey, it's a gamble that Zemeckis takes that I think doesn't quite pay off. The book doesn't put any focus on individuals. It's more about taking in all of time, all of the patterns of human behavior. And when you add characters to this movie, with a real story and a Death of a Salesman-like dramatics that they're throwing in, it skews expectations of what we're watching. It makes you feel like this should be more conventional. It should not be a conventional movie. It should be more about the grand scheme of history.”
A Real Pain
Two estranged cousins are reconnecting on a tour of Poland in honor of their recently deceased grandmother. Old family drama inevitably ensues. Jesse Eisenberg stars, directs, and co-produces.
Nicholson: “This is the second film directed by Jesse Eisenberg. There's two tracks to the story. One track … is about these cousins on this tour itself, and the different people have come together to walk through the sites of this tragedy. But then there's also this emotional main line of the story about these two cousins and their contrasting personalities. … Eisenberg is … anxious, introverted, always trying to do the right thing. Kieran [Culkin] is in ‘I can do whatever I want’ mode, his character is more rude and brutally honest, but also deeply emotional. He's the guy who can say, ‘Hey, freaks’ to a bunch of strangers, and they just all laugh and they think he's wonderful. And so this story becomes really brutal because … you're watching one person, David, watch his cousin break all these social codes that he's trying to live by, and then realizing that people like him better, and the frustration of that.
If you're a person … who can sometimes feel like you struggle to break through with strangers and create genuine bonds with people, this movie is just such a knife twist in the heart about that. But it's also intelligent enough to acknowledge that you don't really necessarily want to be Kieran’s character, Benji, either. … He's on this course of self-destruction, or maybe he is living a more meaningful life. And you toggle back and forth between these two things throughout the whole film.”
Grierson: “There is comedy in it. But when they get to the concentration camp, it's such a beautiful moment for these two cousins. … The movie never takes sides between the two characters. It sees the strengths and the weaknesses in each character and the way that they operate in the world. And so you have this beautiful dynamic between two cousins who are looking at each other in their adult lives and saying, ‘What do I have? What does the other person have? We're so different. Are they actually living a smarter, better life than I do?’ And it builds to one of the most moving, heartbreaking endings. This is, I think, one of the best films of the year.”
Blitz
Written and directed by Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave), Blitz depicts the World War II bombings of London through the eyes of a 9-year-old mixed-race boy (Elliott Heffernan) who refuses to go away to the countryside. Saoirse Ronan plays his mom.
Grierson: “I love what [McQueen] does, essentially mixing genres. He's making a war film in certain ways, but he's also making a family film, because it's mostly from the perspective of this child. … This gives Steve McQueen … this opportunity to examine the blitz from a very intimate perspective, but at the same time, McQueen is very observant about the ways in which there's a lot of danger within that society itself, especially for a child like Elliot Heffernan, who experiences racism along his journey. And the movie connects to the social interest that he has, and the way that he studies societies, and the way society operates. So if you can see it in the theater before it comes to Apple TV+, I would highly recommend it.”
Nicholson: “This is just a handsome, classically-made thriller that I've really admired a lot too. It takes the image that I had of London at this moment, ‘keep calm and carry on,’ and it just tugs at those seams a little bit. It doesn't say that was a lie, but it shows us the stress points and the divisions. And I think he does a great job making us understand that this bombing was dangerous in ways that I hadn't envisioned. … When you're watching this movie … you're on the ground, you're really feeling the terror and the devastation. You just can't help but think of the news today, the kids today, who are scared for reasons that aren't their fault. It's a period piece that could easily be taking place in the present, and I think that's as horrifying as anything.”
Emilia Perez
This Netflix Spanish-language musical is about a Mexican drug kingpin who fakes his death and gets a sex-change operation. It stars Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldana, and trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón.
Nicholson: “It is an ambitious mishmash that did not work for me. … Of all the different types of movie within this movie … the musical numbers are my favorite part. As for the themes inside of it, it's trying to say something about the act of transformation. It's also trying to touch on the effect that disappearing, as the cartel boss does, has on the survivors and the people left behind, which of course ties into so much of the pain in contemporary Mexico. There's still over 100,000 people, their whereabouts are unknown in that country, just from the last decade.
But I have to say, despite all of these actors giving their all … in huge stretches of the film, I felt like I didn't really know or care that much about anybody. None of the emotions of the characters really registered that deeply to me, and my own emotions never got engaged.”
Grierson: “I feel like it is a movie that wants to … say meaningful things that, in theory, I agree with. But I think the movie's architecture gets in the way of the performances. I think it definitely gets in the way of the characters. I also felt weirdly distanced from a movie that's a very impassioned musical. … The movie becomes more of an action thriller shootout in the last third. And I think the movie really goes off the rails during that period of the movie. It's hard because we're always talking about how we want movies that are really swinging for the fences and doing things that you don't see in most movies. And so while I appreciate this film because it is trying to do something different, and it's definitely not boring, but I just don't think it works.”