Too much polish, not enough nerve

  Few 2022 movies are as impeccably crafted as director Sam Mendes's Empire of Light. Set during the Thatcher years of the 1980s, the movie focuses on the Empire Theater.

 Once a proud movie palace, the aptly named Empire stands for a time when both movies and Great Britain had a more exalted profile than they did in the 1980s, not exactly a high point for either reality or fantasy.

   It should be stated at the outset that the movie offers another bravura performance from Olivia Colman. Colman excels as a mentally disturbed woman who manages The Empire, joylessly submits to the sexual advances of her sleazy boss (Colin Firth), and develops a relationship with a young black man (Michael Ward) who lands a job at the theater.

    Empire of Light wants to pay tribute to the powers of cinema  while telling telling the stories of the people who work at a place where the downtrodden masses once sought glamor and escape.

     So given all this polish and craft, why does Empire of Light fail to get where it might have gotten?

     The most obvious reason involves Mendes's issue-laden screenplay, which sketches its way through racism, the rise of right-wing street punks, as well as sexual abuse and mental illness. 

      Colman's Hilary has a troubled past that's reflected in the uneasiness of Colman's demeanor. A solitary figure who has been stabilized by lithium, Hilary develops a relationship with Ward's Stephen, who's acutely aware of the racial climate in the surrounding town. 

       At one point, Hilary shows Stephen the upper stories of the Empire building, which once housed a ballroom but has become a refuge for pigeons. It's as if she's sharing a forbidden secret with him: It cements their connection.

      Hillary will invest more in the relationship than Stephen, but he's kind and genuinely concerned about a woman who's much older than he is.

      Nicely calibrated performances, including from Hannah Onslow as one of the theater's employees, Tom Brooke, as junior manager, and Toby Jones, as the movie's projectionist, have a strange consequence. They add to a feeling that Empire has been over-groomed, notably by cinematographer Roger Deakins' wondrous images and production designer Mark Tidesley carefully appointed sets. (A real theater in the seaside town of Margate was used for filming.)

      It would be unfair to say that any sense of urgency suffocates under the weight of production design, but only Colman shatters the movie's often decorous surfaces, most notably in a scene in which Hilary (sans lithium) crashes a gala opening of Chariots of Fire, a premiere that Firth's character regards as pivotal in the re-establishment of the theater's cultural and social primacy. 

        Hilary becomes an uninvited intruder on the stage, where she recites Auden and generally makes a large crowd feel ill at ease. Something real and disturbing overtakes the palace of fantasy and, in the case of Chariots of Fire, any feeling of reassurance that picture might have offered.

       It may be inadvertent, but Empire of Light works less as a  tribute to the transporting power of cinema, an old-hat subject anyway, than as testimony to the power of an actor to unleash something volcanic, nervy and difficult to categorize.

     Even in a movie that can't leap over the high bar it sets, Colman continues to amaze.

        

       

Critics' Choice goes to 'Once Upon a Time'

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood won four awards at the Critics Choice Association's 25 annual Critics' Choice Awards, the most of any 2020 nominee. In addition to best original screenplay, best-supporting actor and best production design, director Quentin Tarantino's movie took top honors for best picture.

As a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, I vote in the movie segment of the Critics' Choice awards, which also honor outstanding work in television.

In this compressed awards season, it's notable that the Critics' Choice Awards were given out on Sunday, the night before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was slated to announce 2020's Oscar nominees. Stay tuned.

Here, though, are this year's Critics' Choice winners:

BEST PICTURE
Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

BEST ACTOR
Joaquin Phoenix – Joker

BEST ACTRESS
Renée Zellweger – Judy

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Brad Pitt – Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Laura Dern – Marriage Story

BEST DIRECTOR (TIE)
Bong Joon Ho – Parasite
Sam Mendes – 1917

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Quentin Tarantino – Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Greta Gerwig – Little Women

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Roger Deakins – 1917

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Barbara Ling, Nancy Haigh – Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

BEST EDITING
Lee Smith – 1917

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Ruth E. Carter – Dolemite Is My Name

BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP
Bombshell (Lionsgate)

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Avengers: Endgame

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Toy Story 4

BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS
Roman Griffin Davis -- Jo Jo Rabbit

BEST ACTION MOVIE
Avengers: Endgame

BEST COMEDY
Dolemite Is My Name

BEST SCI-FI OR HORROR MOVIE
Us

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Parasite

BEST SONG (TIE)
Glasgow (No Place Like Home) – Wild Rose
I’m Gonna (Love Me Again) – Rocketman

BEST SCORE
Hildur Guðnadóttir – Joker

And, if you like numbers, here are totals for movies that won more than one award:

ONCE UPON A TIME … IN HOLLYWOOD - four
Best Picture
Best Supporting Actor – Brad Pitt
Best Original Screenplay – Quentin Tarantino
Best Production Design – Barbara Ling, Nancy Haigh

1917 – three awards
Best Director – Sam Mendes (Tie)
Best Cinematography – Roger Deakins
Best Editing – Lee Smith

AVENGERS: ENDGAME – two
Best Visual Effects
Best Action Movie

DOLEMITE IS MY NAME - two
Best Costume Design – Ruth E. Carter
Best Comedy

JOKER – two
Best Actor – Joaquin Phoenix
Best Score – Hildur Guðnadóttir

PARASITE -- two
Best Director – Bong Joon Ho (Tie)
Best Foreign Language Film

Immersive '1917' captures chaos of war

Director Sam Mendes, with a mighty assist from cinematographer Roger Deakins, takes an audience on a harrowing World War I journey.

World War I has inspired any number of great movies: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), The Grand Illusion (1931), Paths of Glory (1957) and director Peter Jackson's recent documentary They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) to name a few.

That long-ago war remains of particular interest to filmmakers because it provides directors with advantages. As a pre-Nazi war, battle depictions can be brutal without demonizing the enemy. In World War I, soldiers from both sides can be portrayed as ordinary men who happen to be wearing different uniforms, making the insanity of war seem even more pronounced.

On top of that, the war marked a kind of end of global innocence, a prelude to even worse depravities -- although it's difficult to think of any form of combat more grueling and awful than the trench warfare of the so-called War to End All Wars.

Now, director Sam Mendes, fresh off two recent Bond movies, has entered the World War I fray. I'm betting that every review you'll read will make note of the fact that Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins have created the illusion that their movie is unfolding in real-time. They skillfully create the impression that the movie consists of a single sustained shot, a gambit that isn’t without payoff. We can't escape the surreal horror that Mendes and Deakins create in their effort to portray the ferocity of battle.

1917 qualifies as one of those movies for which the script could have been written on the back of a napkin. The screenplay by Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns focuses on two British soldiers (Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay) who are sent on a mission that takes them out of muddy trenches into the terrifying No Man's Land that separates them from another battalion of British soldiers.

The men are ordered to stop the nearby battalion from launching a massive attack because British intelligence has learned that the Germans lie in wait. The Germans plan to slaughter the advancing Brits.

Mendes makes just enough effort at character development to keep the movie from hollowing out. Chapman’s Blake is eager to execute the mission because his older brother serves in the battalion that's about to be decimated. MacKay's Schofield was selected to accompany Blake before either soldier knew what they were being asked to do.

The more reluctant of the two, MacKay's character senses that they've been given a mission they’ll be lucky to survive.

Once the men depart the relative safety of their unit, the movie becomes an episodic account of their travails -- which include a stop in a abandoned, rat-infested German bunker, an encounter with the pilot of a German plane that has been shot down and a brief visit to a ravaged town where Deakins creates images of fiery devastation that border on madness.

It's not the movie's single-shot illusion that proves most indelible; it’s the haunting imagery of 1917: mutilated bodies strewn across the devastated terrain, a solitary cow grazing outside an abandoned farmhouse; and an encounter that one of the men has with a French woman who's hiding with her infant as chaos rages around her.

Mendes wisely doesn't explain how the combat we're seeing fits into a larger picture. Neither of these two soldiers knows anything but the daily grind of attempting to survive.

And although Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch appear in cameo roles, reliance on faces that may be less familiar to big-screen audiences enhances the movie's authenticity. We plunge into the action without the distractions of star turns.

At times, 1917 threatens to become an edge-of-the-seat action movie, particularly in a sequence involving swirling rapids. Is Mendes trying a little too hard to sustain excitement?

Perhaps, but 1917 qualifies as an impressive piece of immersive cinema with plenty of white-knuckle moments and an undisguised appreciation of the courage of men who learned not to dwell on the horrors they were witnessing, at least not in the moment. We know, of course, that as time passes, harrowing sights will remain vivid in the memories of the men who saw them. Some of them will haunt us, as well.

Bond is back, but where's the fun?

Daniel Craig is serious as a clenched fist, but at 148 minutes, Spectre is a Bond too long -- and a bit boring, as well.

Remember when Bond movies were fun?

With a wink at the world and a playful attitude toward 007's legendary sexual prowess, Bond movie etched themselves into pop-cultural immortality -- which in this instance means 53 years of entertainment.

Now comes Spectre, the 24th film in the series that will not die. No expense has been spared to fill Spectre with action, exotic locations and IMAX-worthy scale.

But this time, a dizzying pre-credit sequence -- set during the Day of the Dead in Mexico City -- proves the most exciting part of the movie.

Amassing a crowd of extras reported to number about 1,500, director Sam Mendes guides Daniel Craig's Bond through an escapade that finds 007 scampering over roofs and elbowing his way through crowds of revelers in skeleton costumes. He finally hops onto a helicopter for a white-knuckle battle with an ugly villain.

The movie's opening gives you the feeling that this edition of Bond is going to blow the roof off the theater, thanks in part to spectacularly good design: Mexican rhythms, the traditional Bond theme and an amazingly fluid camera blend in ways that let you know that some very talented people are at the controls.

It's an opening that's tough to match -- and director Mendes, who directed the far better Skyfall -- never tops it.

Mendes seems to have approached Spectre with the same dutiful seriousness that infects Craig in his fourth outing as Britain's most legendary spy.

Many critics applauded the dark hues that Craig brought to the Bond series when he took over the job in 2006's Casino Royale. Craig made Bond credible in a post 9/11 world -- or so the argument went. Glowering menace seemed preferable to nonchalant ease.

Is it possible that this approach has worn out its welcome?

Let's look at some of the elements:

-- Lea Seydoux (Blue is the Warmest Color) comes across as a more life-sized Bond girl than some, but Bond movies tend to be at their best when nothing about them seems life-sized or attainable.

-- Monica Bellucci plays an intriguingly sexy widow, but she's not around long enough to spice things up.

-- And the Bond villain? Christoph Waltz picks up the bad-guy cudgel as the head of Spectre, the organization that's threatening the world.

Poor Waltz. He'll never top the terrifyingly polite SS guy he played in Inglorious Bastards. Here, he again opts for understatement, which may have been his only choice, but he's neither frightening nor arch enough to fill the bill.

-- Ralph Fiennes brings near-actuarial sternness to the role of M.

-- Ben Whishsaw holds his own as the inventive Q, the character in charge of the movie's gadgetry.

-- Naomi Harris, who plays Moneypenny, might be the closest the movie gets to finding a good, old-fashioned Bond beauty. She takes care of Bond business with no-nonsense efficiency and welcome traces of worldly wit.

Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema leans toward a sepia-tinged palette that reinforces the movie's more-or-less serious tone, a tone which -- by the way -- a cluttered plot can't really support.

As for Craig: He's brusque, sometimes raw in his expression of emotion. He gives Bond the force of a blunt blow to the head.

There also are suggestions that Bond is an assassin who never really has thought much about what he does, an interesting attempt to give the character some existential lift, but is this really what we want from Bond?

Look, many of the important elements can be found in Spectre: action, killer clothes, romantic dinners on speeding trains, globe-hopping and one ogre-like villain (Dave Bautista's Hinx) who rises to the occasion, something accomplished only intermittently by this overly long helping of Bond.

For James Bond, life gets harder

Does Bond still have it? An exciting Skyfall puts the question to a staunch test.

As an iconic movie hero, James Bond has died many deaths, only to be reborn in new guises for new times. Once known for his impeccable style and unquestionable taste in martinis and women, Bond recently has settled into a recessionary mode -- at least as far as his erstwhile playboy image is concerned.

In Skyfall -- his third Bond movie -- Daniel Craig has become an even blunter, more stoic Bond. In a time when drones target terrorists, when small units of highly trained Navy SEALs can seem more effective than entire armies and when shadowy villains seem more interested in lethal disruption than in global conquest, the single-handed bravado of Bond might seem as out-dated as the preposterously ambitious villains of 007's big-screen formative years.

Skyfall continues Bond's march into the future -- and more. It entertains, chastens and finds its own distinctive voice.

In keeping with this new spirit, Skyfall features an amusingly sly villain, a former MI6 agent played with wily, seductive ease by Javier Bardem, who adds to the gallery of classic villains he began creating with Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men.

Despite his casually expressed cruelty and the threat he poses to British intelligence, Bardem's Silva isn't the only enemy Bond must face. Bond also must do battle with time. He's forced toward introspection as he wonders whether he's truly up to the task of combating the evil Silva and preserving the integrity of MI6. The devious Silva threatens to expose a raft of agents on the Internet. He must be stopped from executing a cyberterrorist assault on secrecy.

But even here, the Bond series faces adaptive pressures. Is Silva out to conquer the world as a result of a maniacal lust for power? Not really. He's more disgruntled employee than global threat. And as we eventually learn, he has good reason to be upset.

To fulfill its mission of creating a more human Bond, the series has brought on a director whose reputation hardly hinges on action. Sam Mendes (best known for American Beauty, Road to Perdition and Revolutionary Road) doesn't skimp on action set pieces, but he brings a welcome sense of dramatic grounding and psychological heft to the proceedings.

The trick, one supposes, is to balance innovation with tradition. There are beautiful women (Naomie Harris and Berenice Marlohe), an appearance by Bond's Aston Martin DB5 and a prologue that has Bond toppling onto a speeding train, as well as a bit in which the world's most famous spy races a motorcycle across rooftops in Istanbul. But Skyfall remains as much about propelling Bond into the 21st century as it is about delivering the winking thrills of yesteryear.

Maybe that's why Skyfall's most weirdly flirtatious scene takes place when the blond, soft-spoken Silva captures Bond and taunts him with homoerotic advances. For his part, 007 remains unfazed.

The need for redefinition pervades just about every aspect of the movie. M, the fabulous Judi Dench, is under threat from a bureaucrat (Ralph Fiennes) who thinks it's time for her to retire. The venerable Q has been replaced by a youthful version, played here by Ben Whishaw. Gadgetry seems to have been kept to a minimum.

Even the movie's climax feels a bit shrunken. The action eventually shifts to Bond's boyhood home in Scotland, where an old mentor (Albert Finney) is enlisted to help beat back Silva and his minions, who put the house (not fondly remembered by Bond) under severe assault. You get the idea: The scale of the picture exceeds the grandeur of its themes.

This being the 50th anniversary of the indestructible Bond franchise, it's fair to say -- as I already too much have -- that Skyfall is committed to entertaining while perpetuating the series. It continues the exciting, often intriguing and clever retooling of the Bond mythology, but what's really at stake isn't the continued existence of a weary, threatened world, but the future of Bond himself.

Physically powerful and much less prone to puckish humor than any of his predecessors, Craig may just carry Bond into the future with will, muscle and a severely knotted brow. Bond, as you'll notice, accepts each new assignment "with pleasure.'' It's to Craig's credit that we feel as if there also will be equal amounts of pain.