The latest film releases include Mufasa, The Room Next Door, The Brutalist, and Nickel Boys. Weighing in are Alonso Duralde and Dave White, film critics and co-hosts of the movie podcast Linoleum Knife.
Mufasa
Disney’s photorealistic animation is a musical prequel to 2019’s The Lion King, directed by Barry Jenkins, with songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda. The story unfolds in flashbacks, showing Mufasa as an orphaned lion cub who’s lost and alone. Then, he meets a lion named Taka, who comes from a royal family.
White: “This is a very well put together film. The action sequences are impressive. The animals’ faces express emotion enough in the way that you need them to in order for you to feel anything for their various troubles. And I remember being 7 enough to know that animal peril was so great. I remember watching The Incredible Journey back then and being so excited and scared that the animals, are they gonna be okay? And that same tension exists here. So, no, it's not something I personally need as a very old man, but … it is a good example of mainstream animation from a corporate giant.”
Duralde: “This is an exemplary piece of corporate product, and far better than it had any right to be. The question is: Is this how Barry Jenkins should be devoting two plus years of his career? … I don't begrudge him getting a nice, big studio paycheck. But other filmmakers who are his peers, who have had his level of success at some point or other, get their big, crazy passion project.
… While Barry Jenkins did get the deep pockets of Amazon to make the brilliant Underground Railroad miniseries, this is the movie offer that stood out among all others, to make this prequel to a… CG-animated remake of a traditional animated film? He is devoting substantial energy to making this movie better than it could have been. But it's not special. There's no moment I think you look at and go, ‘Ah, yes, Barry Jenkins is the guy who made this happen.’”
The Room Next Door
Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s first English-language feature film stars Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton as two friends — one is dying of cervical cancer, the other helps her with end-of-life issues.
Duralde: “The ideas of disease and mortality and the dissolution of the body have become more and more of interest to Almodovar lately. Certainly, his film Pain and Glory is all about that, and he's carrying on with those things here. … I think ultimately this is a showcase for these two incredible actresses who are not only among the greatest living actors working in film today, but also are both legendary muses for queer filmmakers. … So they absolutely are on the same page with Almodovar to tell this story, and it's riveting and haunting. And I think, frankly, there's still something of a taboo about talking about end-of-life issues in Western culture, unless you live in Switzerland or one of those more advanced countries where the laws accommodate these decisions. And so I think this movie is touching on important issues, but at the same time, it's very much a human character-based drama.”
White: “He's always been, I think, concerned about the designed world of his characters, that atmosphere. And here, the characters and every single thing they touch are part of that design — every sweater, every blanket, every teacup, every fixture in a kitchen, the cool art on the walls. … And it is the most sobering topic that you can bring to a film — death and the question of what you will do, and how you will do it when you know it's coming … who will be by your side, how will it happen? … So I think this is a gorgeous film about the scariest thing that everybody will experience someday. And I'm always glad, really, to see Pedro Almodovar pop up every couple of years to guide us all through life.”
The Brutalist
This historical epic focuses on a Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and resettles in post-World War II America. The cast includes Adrian Brody, Felicity Jones, and Guy Pearce.
Duralde: “This is the kind of movie that we always complain doesn't get made anymore. It is a mid-budget — I think it was under $10 million — but epic scale, 70 millimeter, grandly portrayed film about … human beings, about the conflicts between art and commerce, about the conflicts between nation states, about reinventing oneself, about addressing trauma through art. These are big, heady topics, but they are given to us in a film that has an overture and an intermission. It is breathtaking spectacle, but never at the expense of genuine human conflict. It is absolutely one of this year's best films. … And it is also a film that I think really, really needs to be seen on the biggest screen possible.”
White: “[Director] Brady Corbet has taken the lives of various artistic geniuses of the modernist era, and told a story about what kind of place this country was then, and what kind of place it is right now. While watching it, I was thinking a lot about the Hungarian Jewish architect Marcel Breuer, who got out of Europe before World War II. Unlike the character in this film, Adrian Brody's character, Brewer came to the U.S., he designed lots of brutalist buildings here. … [This film is] about artists, and now they have to constantly negotiate with people with money, many of whom wish they had any kind of creative imagination or idea, but they don't, and so they use their bank accounts to control the people who do.”
Nickel Boys
Based on Colson Whitehead’s novel, this is about the survivors of an abusive reform school in Florida. The movie has also gotten praise for its visual style.
White: “This is set in the Jim Crow era South, early 1960s, two Black teenage boys — Elwood, played by Ethan Herisse, and Turner, played by Brandon Wilson — are sent to a reform school known for its racist brutality, and they are trapped there until age 18. So they live in a nightmare. … What makes this film so good is that [director] RaMell Ross tells this story … from the points of view of Elwood and Turner, you see what they see. So that's a major difference from films that deal with historical traumatic situations. The audience isn't put in a position of consuming that trauma from a distance. They're seeing it through the eyes of the people it's happening to. And that level of immediacy is its own narrative … the world is like this now. The structural and institutional racism of the past still exists. Some things have changed, but they've been replaced by other terrible scenarios.
So it is also an art film directly influenced by the history of earlier avant-garde filmmaking. And it's quite beautiful, not only because of cinematographer Jomo Fray, but because no human being can experience 24/7 misery. There are moments of light and respite and beauty, and the camera sees it when the characters do. This is one of the best American films of 2024, so do go see it when you think you're ready.”
Duralde: “I don't disagree with anything that anyone praising the film has to say about it. It does all those things, and it absolutely follows its aesthetic as far as it can and takes it all the way. That aesthetic got in my way. The POV of it all, the fact that we're seeing it through the eyes of these characters — was distancing for me. And I couldn't stop thinking about how this was being shot, what techniques were being used, the fact that a technique at all was being used. And it got in the way of my responding to the story and responding to the characters, and feeling this brutal and moving and powerful story. … There's a Soderbergh quote where he says there are directors who stand between the audience and the screen and wave their arms around. And all I saw in this movie was the waving. And that's me. And most people clearly disagree. And so I'm not going to tell anybody, ‘Don't go see this movie.’ But you might find yourself distracted by the technique, but most likely not, because most people love this.”