A so-so helping of Jack Ryan

Like many burnt-out CIA agents, Jack Ryan (John Krasinski) wants to be left alone. But CIA agents, don't retire -- not in movies. So at the beginning of Jack Ryan: Ghost War, Jack is lured back into action by his boss, James Greer (Wendell Pierce). Screenwriters Krasinski, Aaron Rabin, and Noah Oppenheim bring the series to a close with a movie that alternates exposition and action in roughly equal measures. Jack's joined by colleague Mike November (Michael Kelly) on a supposedly routine mission turns into a complicated globe-threatening plot that teams Jack with Emma Marlow, a British intelligence agent played by Sienna Miller. Both are trying to locate a rogue agent (Max Beesley) who runs a group that wants to revive Starling, a deep-cover operation that believes dirty fighting is essential if those who would crash the gates of western civilization are to be quashed. Moving from Dubai to London, Ghost War bids goodbye to  characters, who -- before the end -- affirm their camaraderie, good-guy warriors who want to make a better world. The clash between decent operatives and those who go too far gives the movie a patina of seriousness, but overall Ghost War feels like a formulaic, mildly serviceable wrap-up. Ghost War is not playing theatrically, but is being released on Prime Video.

Kevin Costner’s Western has its virtues

   

  In a perceptive article in Variety, critic Owen Gleiberman assessed the lackluster opening weekend of Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga -- Chapter 1,  $11 million for a three-hour Western that cost $100 million to make. Chapter 1 is only the first part of what Costner conceives of as a four-part movie. Chapter 2 releases in August.

     Not a fan of the movie, Gleiberman likened Horizon to fare we might see on TV, calling it  "the seedbed for a miniseries." Although he admired Costner's courage and commitment (the actor/director spent a reported $38 million of his own money on the production), Gleiberman went on to say that the movie teaches the following lesson:

       "Don't turn movies into television."

       Initial box office returns appear to be proving Gleiberman right. 

       But Costner's gamble on the form was interesting and perhaps justified. Audiences, after all, have grown accustomed to watching lengthy novelistic series on small screens; it's reasonable to think they might embrace the form if it were successfully transposed to the big screen.

        Or maybe not. Most miniseries are presented in digestible one-hour segments. Pause buttons allow for bathroom breaks, and concessions are no further away than the refrigerator.

         So, a quick Q&A on Horizons.

         Q. Did it deserve to be widely panned, as it was after premiering at last May's Cannes Film Festival?

          A. No. We've all seen plenty of catastrophes on the big screen. Horizons isn't one of them.

          Q. Are some of the criticisms of the movie justifiable?

          A. Of course.

          Q. Is Horizon a commercial folly -- considering cost and possible returns?

          A. Not my concern.

          Q. Can you summarize your reaction?

           A. Horizon held my interest, kept me from looking at my watch, and included enough tension to build a series of mostly involving mini-dramas.

         Beyond that, Horizon proves adventurous -- albeit not always in expected ways.

      The movie, or more accurately, its form tends toward abstraction. I don't mean to suggest that those who see the movie won't be watching gritty characters who operate in realistic settings. Nothing about Horizon feels avant-garde. 

       I'm talking about the way Costner breaks his Western opus into chunks. Presumably, upon the movie's completion, all these fragments will cohere in ways that justify the "American Saga" part of the movie's title. Perhaps we'll emerge with a comprehensive picture of the forces that helped shape the American West with all its rawness, fiber, decency, and deceit.

      I agree with those who've pointed out that it's difficult to watch Horizon without thinking about Costner's treatment of Native Americans. He did, after all, direct Dances With Wolves, widely hailed for recognizing a Native American perspective.

      One of Costner's most gruesome scenes occurs early and involves Apaches. A band of warriors attack a settlement, ravaging those they view as invaders of their land.

      Although the movie's Apache attack could have been lifted from an older, less sensitive era of moviemaking, Costner -- who wrote the screenplay with Jon Baird -- adds nuance by including a scene in which an aging chief warns the Apache warrior (Owen Crow Shoe) who led the assault that he's fighting a losing battle. 

    A later raid on a peaceful Native American village provides an example of bloody white brutality: Greedy marauders collect scalps for money.

    The movie's structure might be called partially successful. Like clumsy couples on a dance floor, the episodes in Horizon sometimes bump abruptly into one another. Some episodes are better (and more compelling) than others, and I sometimes forgot characters by the time they reappeared.

      It's also possible that the movie has been overpopulated with characters. A mother (Sienna Miller) and her daughter (Georgia MacPhail) survive the early-picture Apache attack. Soldiers (Danny Huston and Sam Worthington) help depict the cavalry as  incapable of protecting so much open terrain. 

      After roughly an hour, Costner appears as Hayes Ellison, and the movie takes on a more conventional Western tone. A hard-bitten horse trader, Ellison kills the brother of an outlaw who's then intent on revenge. In the process, Ellison becomes the protector of a flirtatious prostitute (Abbey Lee) who has taken charge of another woman's two-year-old boy.

     That's a lot for one movie, and I haven't even mentioned Matthew Van Meyden (Luke Wilson), the leader of a wagon train that becomes another source of small dramas, one involving a tender-foot Brit and his wife.

      But the overriding theme seems to be the settlement of the West, which the movie sees less as a matter of cowboy grit or settler pluck than as a wave of history breaking across the land, leaving plenty of carnage in its wake. 

     When the movie opens in 1859, a nameless white man and his assistant are seen surveying a remote patch of land. Two Native Americans observe, and a point is made in schematic form: The untamed West is about to be carved into discreet chunks of property. 

      I suppose we should be uneasy about judging a movie that has yet to finish. It's also possible that "good" -- how I'd describe Chapter 1 -- might not be enough for a movie with so much epic ambition.

      Still, in my view, Costner does more than enough to get us to the next chapter. Horizon gives us a version of the West that stems from Costner's knowledge of the genre. The movie often matches the seriousness of its intentions, and Costner doesn't indulge in mythologizing romanticism or cynical deconstruction. The movie acquires its forward motion from the broadness of its sweep.

      I hope the remaining chapters of Horizon  -- unlike this installment -- will be made available to critics in every market before their release. Chapter 1 was not screened for critics in my city.

    So to get back to where we started... Sure, the opening weekend was far from glorious, but it's possible that by the time he's done, Costner will have made a movie that will look quite different.

     What some now see as a misbegotten labor of love may, in time, be viewed as a laudable achievement. After the first helping, Costner left me rooting for the latter.

Bob's Cinema Diary: 6/12/19 -- Amerian Woman and Halston

American Woman

Grating in the early going, Sienna Miller's performance as an abrasive single mom and grandmother trying to scrape by in a small Pennsylvania town eventually finds its rhythm. American Woman provides Miller with an opportunity to play a woman who faces a cascading series of problems. When we meet Miller's Deb Callahan, she's having an affair with a married man (Kentucker Audley and trying to be a mother to her daughter (Sky Ferreira), a 17-year-old who already has a child of her own. Constantly at odds with her family (an older sister played by Christina Hendricks and a disapproving mother Amy Madigan), Deb faces a life-changing tragedy. Her daughter vanishes. Fearing the worst, Deb blames Tyler (Alex Neustaedter), the irresponsible teen father of her daughter's child. The movie then leaps ahead -- eventually by at least a decade -- to find Deb trying to take care of her grandson (her daughter remains missing) and living with an abusive lout (Pat Healy) she must get out of her life. Deb eventually takes up with a younger man (Aaron Paul) who seems really to love her and who makes a fine surrogate father for her now-teenaged grandson. Director Jake Scott gives the cast plenty to work with, as the movie moves toward its inevitable conclusion: Deb's emergence as an independent woman. Miller's roller-coaster performance hits strong notes. Hendricks does well as a loving but sensible sister who's married to a man (Will Sasso) who provides the one thing that Deb's life always seems to lack: continuity. Nicely rendered moments of reconciliation have an impact, but overall American Woman suffers from an overload of woe. Moreover, its title suggests ambitions that never are quite fulfilled.

Halston

Director Frédéric Tcheng's documentary follows the career of a fabled fashion designer whose work dominated nearly three decades: from hot pants to evening dresses sculpted from a single piece of fabric. Halston benefits from the arc of the designer's high-profile life. Born Roy Halston Frowick, Halston turned himself into a single-named icon who made a remarkable ascent. He began as a hat designer at prestigious Bergdorf Goodman and eventually created a brand of his own. Making use of interviews and footage from the glam world Halston inhabited, Tcheng brings us into Halston's orbit, which includes models and celebrities such as Liza Minnelli. Every story of a remarkable ascendance needs a steep decline. Halston has a doozy. Late in his career, the designer decided to enter the world of mass-marketing, partnering with J.C. Penny to open the doors of fashion to ordinary women. Feeling abandoned, Halston's high-end followers began to desert him. A variety of corporate maneuvers followed and Halston's empire eventually crumbled. When he died of AIDS in 1990, he was 57. In the whirl of success, drugs, and achievement that Tcheng shows us, Halston remains something of a mystery, a galvanizing figure who never fully emerges. But if you're a sucker for a rise-and-fall story or you're interested in fashion, Halston won't disappoint.

When a search becomes a destiny

The Lost City of Z brings a real sense of adventure to the screen.

These days, the movies give us lots of synthetic adventure, including gargantuan comic-book creations for a generation of couch potatoes. It's been a while since anyone tried to serve up any real adventure. Credit director James Gray with doing just that in The Lost City of Z, the amazing story of a 20th Century explorer who journeyed deep into the Amazon jungle in search of an ancient city he dubbed "Z" and which others called El Dorado.

Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) was a British army officer who was sent to Latin America to help chart the border between Brazil and Peru. During his mapping expedition, Fawcett became convinced that he had found archeological evidence of a lost civilization that was far more advanced than anyone believed possible. European prejudice against Latin America's non-white indigenous populations preferred to see savages, not innovators.

Basing his movie on David Grann's 2009 non-fiction bestseller, Gray tells a story that shifts between England and the Amazon -- with a brief stop for some compelling war footage. Fawcett served as an officer in World War I; he was wounded during a vicious trench battle.

Populated with stuffed-shirt Brits, Amazonian tribesman, and Fawcett's loyal crew, the movie proves a stirring adventure that opts for credible realism rather than over-inflated drama.

Joining Hunnam -- quietly fierce in his commitment to finding the lost city -- is a nearly unrecognizable Robert Pattinson, who plays Henry Costin, one of Fawcett's crew. On his last expedition to the jungle, Fawcett also was accompanied by his son Jack (Tom Holland). A fine Sienna Miller portrays Fawcett's wife, a woman who wanted to participate in an Amazonian mission but wound up staying home. She cared for the couple's three children and endured a life of committed loneliness. She supported her husband's dreams.

At one point, tension erupts between Fawcett and arctic explorer James Murray (Angus Macfadyen), a man who initially supports the search for the lost city but who becomes a liability when he faces the jungle's heat and hardships.

Gray (We Own the Night, Two Lovers and The Immigrant) never before has worked on such a large scale. With support from cinematographer Darius Khondji, Gray gives the jungle sequences vigor and excitement that surpasses the scenes in England, a location to which the movie periodically returns.

I have to admit, though, at times I found myself yearning for a more rapturous approach to the movie's imagery. Maybe that's more my problem than the movie's. The British interludes tend to disrupt the adventure but that may be the point. We share Fawcett's impatience about returning to the jungle.

When Fawcett encounters an opera company in the middle of the jungle, viewers may be reminded of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, another Amazon-based movie about doomed obsession.

But Hunnam (Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak) makes an interesting choice: His Fawcett is not a man of febrile passions; he's a man of mettle, and he approaches adventure as a kind of solemn duty. It's his reason for being.

Fawcett eventually loses his heart to the jungle. The jungle, however, isn't the most accommodating of lovers, a reality that underlies the movie's best sequences: Arrows of tribesman raining down on the explorers' raft, an encounter with head hunters and the crew caught in torrents of onrushing water.

At one point, Miller delivers the line that underscores Fawcett's ambition and perhaps the movie's, as well. She cites Robert Browning's poem, Andrea del Sarto, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?"

Despite references to Britain's imperial racism and slavery, I'm not sure that Gray attains the thematic heights that a film such as this could have reached. But his grasp proves strong: As the story of a man who consistently risked his life in search of a city only he believes existed, Lost City serves up more genuine excitement than most of its artificially inflated competitors.

A gangster epic that falls short

Ben Affleck tries his hand at a large-scale, Prohibition era movie.

In Live By Night -- Affleck's second adaptation of a novel by author Dennis Lahane after 2007's Gone Baby Gone -- the director broadens his reach with a gangster story that begins with crime in Boston and moves to Prohibition rum-running in Florida.

But once Live By Night leaves Boston for Tampa, Fla., the movie goes South, as well, losing both focus and authenticity. Put another way, Live By Night represents a step backward from Affleck's work in both The Town and in Argo.

In look and in scope, Live by Night qualifies as a big, rambling gangster movie with Affleck at its center. Affleck plays Joe Coughlin, an ordinary guy who returned from World War I determined never to be bossed around again. As a result, Joe becomes an outlaw, probably not the occupation his police official father (Brendan Gleeson) had in mind for his son.

Joe quickly gets crosswise with Albert White (Robert Glenister), the head of the Boston's Irish mob. How could it be otherwise? Joe has been carrying on an affair with one of the mobster's mistresses (Sienna Miller). Joe's in love with Miller's Emma Gould. Let's just say she's more pragmatic about the relationship.

After a stint in jail, Joe winds up in Tampa where he takes over the rum-running business for the head of the Boston Italian mob, one Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone). Joe has two ambitions: to support himself and to avenge himself on Albert White, who also has moved to Florida.

Back in Boston, White not only nearly beat Joe to death; he also took out his rage on Emma.

Joe's romantic life moves on when he falls for the sister of a Cuban rum runner (Zoe Salanda). His crime dealings also put him in contact with the local sheriff (Chris Cooper), a man who claims to be incorruptible but who ignores the criminals who thrive in his midst, as well as the local chapter of the KKK, which is lead by a sneering sadist named RD Pruitt (Matthew Maher).

In all matters violent, Joe receives help from his pal Dion (a bulked up Chris Messina).

If all this weren't enough, an additional subplot introduces the sheriff's daughter (Elle Fanning), a young woman who's corrupted before turning to evangelism.

Affleck loads up on gangster glamor, vintage cars and a variety of locations that create the impression that the movie wants to enter the big-time gangster pantheon.

Affleck also doesn't skimp on gun play and harsh violence, which he punctuates with double-barreled blasts of portentous dialogue about fate, justice and the way things tend to come back to haunt a person in unexpected ways.

As Joe, Affleck appears in nearly every frame, but this is one of his more subdued performances, maybe because he's also overseeing the logistics of a large-scale production with a big cast and tons of atmosphere, much of it confined to a crime-riddled section of Tampa during the 1930s.

Intermittently intriguing, Live by Night doesn't pack the intended wallop. Its ideas seem to grow artificially from a story that badly needed paring down. In the end, Live By Night feels more like a well-appointed imitation of a gangster epic rather than the real thing.

Lame drama, but food looks great

Burnt features Bradley Cooper as a narcissistic chef.

Someone needs to explain to me why I should want to spend time with an obnoxiously narcissistic chef who's trying to make a comeback in London after having undermined a skyrocketing career in Paris.

But wait, maybe the answer has something to do with the fact that said chef is the main character in a movie called Burnt, and he's played by a fashionably bestubbled Bradley Cooper.

Burnt, the plot of which I've just described, can't rise above its many problems even with Cooper portraying a culinary hotshot who thinks he's better than everyone else -- and probably would be if it weren't for the drug and alcohol problems that derailed his rise.

Turns out the best thing about this John Wells directed movie, set in the upper echelons of London's foodie culture, is the food, photographed with glossy slickness by cinematographer Adrinao Goldman.

When the camera focuses on the meals that Cooper's Adam Jones prepares, the movie has the allure of a beautifully photographed gourmet magazine, and it affords us a glimpse into the kitchens of the kind of gastronomically praised establishments that serve up minuscule portions for astronomical prices.

Is there an unwritten rule that all highly praised food must never touch the edge of any plate?

Wells supplies the kitchen scenes with the heat and bustle you'd expect, and I'd have been content if food preparation -- complete with tension, yelling and the occasional dress-down -- had completely wiped out the plot.

The screenplay by Steven Knight (Locke, Redemption) doesn't have much to offer once it convinces us that Jones' character is a jerk.

Because he's a talented jerk, others -- Sienna Miller as a saucier with a big future and Daniel Bruhl as a gay Maitre-D -- tolerate Jones and try to help him, even when they're frustrated by him.

Additional support comes from Omar Sy (The Untouchables), as a sous chef whose business in Paris was ruined by the then drunken Jones, and Matthew Rhys , as a rival restaurateur who also dislikes Jones intensely.

Subplots involving Jones' indebtedness to drug dealers and the late-picture introduction of one of his former lovers (Alicia Vikander) add little to an undernourished script.

Functioning as a kind of garnish, Emma Thompson appears as a doctor hired by Jones' employer to monitor his blood-alcohol level, and, occasionally, to offer sage advice.

Celebrity chefs Marcus Wareing and Mario Batali are credited with having served as consultants on the movie, so the kitchen environment presumably has some authenticity.

Truth be told, I'd rather watch the two of them work than be force fed another helping of Burnt.

If you're hungry for a more appetizing food movie, and haven't seen Chef, well ... there's always Netflix.

Eastwood's poweful 'American Sniper'

Chris Kyle's story speaks of battle and the toll it takes.

Navy SEAL Chris Kyle was credited with 160 confirmed kills in Iraq. If "probable" kills -- those without a witness -- are added, Kyle's number rises to 255. He has been called the most deadly sniper in U.S. military history.

In director Clint Eastwood's America Sniper, a sobering big-screen version of Kyle's autobiography, Kyle says he felt no remorse about those unlucky enough to find their way into his rifle sights.

He tells us his regrets involve an inability to protect even more American combatants. Other SEALs and marines called him "Legend." They felt safer when Kyle was on the job.

I don't know how you'll feel about Kyle's warrior ethos, but I do know that Eastwood -- with Bradley Cooper hitting a bullseye in the starring role -- tells Kyle's story without doing much by way of moral posturing. By giving us Kyle's story straight, Eastwood puts the burden on us.

We must decide what we think about SEAL culture, the combat mission in Iraq, and the toll that combat takes on the those who fight and the loved ones who support them.

American Sniper is that rare action movie that rivets our attention while leaving us with plenty to think about.

It's also staggering to realize that Eastwood -- now 84 -- took on the arduous task of making an intensely realistic combat movie. As he often has done in recent work, Eastwood skillfully explores the impact of violence on the spirits of those who inflict it.

Although, American Sniper doesn't exactly break new ground, it's a powerful, unflinching look at the life of a committed warrior operating under especially difficult circumstances. Kyle completed four tours in Iraq. He shuttled back and forth from the U.S. In the process, he lost his taste for ordinary life.

Kyle became increasingly isolated from his wife (Sienna Miller) and kids. When he was home, he felt guilty for not being with his comrades in arms. The problems of civilian life seemed embarrassingly trivial to him. He missed the high-stakes atmosphere of combat.

As a patriotic man, he felt that as long as shots were being fired at Americans, he should be there.

Eastwood portrays the fight in Iraq with a ground-level realism that only a gifted director could achieve. Disciplined and tense, American Sniper is another summary work for a star whose movie career seldom has strayed far from violence.

Make no mistake, American Sniper is not Unforgiven, Eastwood's 1992 anti-revenge saga. American Sniper fully immerses in Kyle's point-of-view, which reduces the world to those who prey on others and those who need protection.

Kyle believes that being a protector qualifies as a high calling, perhaps the highest calling, something he learned from his dad during his Odessa, Texas childhood.

Whether you agree with Kyle doesn't matter. Had Eastwood made a different movie (one that spent more time wringing its hands about the futility of the war), he could not have taken us so deeply into Kyle's world. It's a place we need to visit, and we have a responsibility, I think, to sort through our feelings about it.

Eastwood puts us on rooftops with Kyle as he waits for targets to emerge. He's poised for kills that he believes are absolutely essential. In the context of vicious combat, he's most probably right.

The first of Kyle's kills involves targets that immediately put him on a strange moral edge: He shoots a kid who's carrying a bomb and a woman who picks up the same bomb after the kid is killed.

Not surprisingly, Kyle wonders whether this is what his harsh SEAL training was all about. He's quickly assured by a fellow SEAL that the bomb he kept from exploding surely would have killed at least 10 marines.

The calculus of war can be that simple. But warriors are also human, and even when they're not aware that it's happening to them, the toll of combat settles on their shoulders.

Toward the latter part of his career, Kyle began to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. An incident at a backyard barbecue in Texas proves harrowing, and it takes Kyle a while to decide that he wants to rejoin society, something that he accomplishes by using his marksman's skills to help others scarred by war.

If I had read Kyle's autobiography prior to knowing he was to be the subject of a film, Cooper might have been last person I'd have thought of for the lead role.

Cooper, after all, is the guy from the Hangover movies, an actor who only began to emerge as a major talent in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. Here, Cooper bulks up to play a good-ole Texas boy whose emotions can't always support his view of the world as a place where bad people prey on the weak.

Cooper keeps Kyle likable throughout, and does an exceptionally fine job of showing that Kyle's patriotism was real and sincere. Kyle believed he was acting for his country. He couldn't imagine doing otherwise. You probably wouldn't want to argue with him about that.

Still, a bit of shading creeps into Jason Hall's screenplay. One of Kyle's colleagues in combat eventually begins to question the war. When he's killed, Kyle tells his wife that the man's doubts about the Iraqi enterprise caused his death. He lost focus. He entertained doubt.

To me it sounds as if that man was coming to his senses, but not everyone will see it that way. Kyle certainly didn't.

Kyle's story clearly establishes the gulf between those who've been fighting the U.S's wars and those who've been pursuing normal life at home. These days, war is a specialized warrior's enterprise. Much of the home front remains oblivious to it.

For those who don't know how Kyle's story ends, I won't say more. But the conclusion of Eastwood's movie vividly demonstrates that for many soldiers, war doesn't stop when they leave the battlefield.

Eastwood knows that when doors of violence swing open, they never entirely can be shut. In American Sniper, he again brings us face-to-face with that disturbingly important truth.

A look at 'Vogue' that sticks to the surface

Anna Wintour. Does she know something we don't?

Those who worship the gods of fashion undoubtedly will find The September Issue revealing, absorbing and perhaps -- providing they're of generous spirit -- insightful. As one who never has genuflected at fashion's altar, I found this documentary about the production of Vogue's massive September issue (the 2007 edition) to be a flat pancake of a movie that never convinced me of its relevance.

Prior to seeing the movie, all I knew about the fabled Vogue editor Anna Wintour, I learned from watching The Devil Wears Prada, a movie in which Meryl Streep turned bitchiness into an art form playing an editor who supposedly resembled Wintour.

After seeing The September issue, I didn't know much more. In fact, I felt as if I might know less.

Wintour certainly talks authoritatively, and she clearly runs Vogue, but her sphinx-like half-smile seems to mask ...well... who knows what.

As is the case with most very important people these days, Wintour's significance seems directly related to cash flow. Wintour can spot fashion trends, make or break designers and generally facilitate the movement of clothing into the closets of women around the world. And if you want to know something about contemporary values, consider that Vogue's massive September issue -- '07 was a record breaker -- probably outweighs the collected works of Emanuel Kant.

Oddly, Wintour may be one of the least interesting people in the movie. The work of the magazine's creative director, Grace Coddington, seems more accessible, and Coddington conveys none of Wintour's goddess-among-us qualities. She occasionally disagrees with Wintour -- something lesser mortals evidently avoid -- and she doesn't seem to believe that all of human evolution builds toward a well-displayed fall line.

Director R.J. Cutler evidently was allowed to roam the halls of Vogue without fear of intervention, but his documentary lacks a strong point of view, relying instead on eavesdropping and on interviews from designers such as Oscar de la Renta, Vera Wang and Jean Paul Gaultier. Andre Leon Talley, a Vogue editor whose personal wardrobe seems as plush as that of a pasha, makes the boldest fashion statement in the movie.

Perhaps to show Wintour's beneficent side, Cutler includes testimony from American designer Thakoon Panichgul, whose talent Wintour recognized early. (Panichgul has developed into a top-ranked name in global fashion.)

I can't say that I was bored by The September Issue -- which at one point travels to Rome for a shoot with actress Sienna Miller -- but I never was convinced that there's something terrifically intriguing beneath the surface of a magazine that's devoted to surfaces. Take that as a fault of the film, not of the people who assemble Vogue. I wanted to know more about almost all of them.

For her part, Wintour remains beyond reach, someone who seems to know something the rest of us don't; I only wish the film had done more to show us what exactly that might be.