The Fire Inside

Rachel Morrison's The Fire Inside is an uplifting and provocative sports movie that, like sports themselves, is about more than competition -- even though it is about winning and losing. 

Singer / actress Ryan Destiny stars as the real Olympic gold medal boxer Claressa Shields, who under the tutelage of her devoted coach Jason Crutchfield (the always enjoyable Bryan Tyree Henry) rose above the challenges of urban distress in her hometown of Flint, Michigan, to stardom in a male-dominated sport.

The screenplay by writer / director Barry Jenkins, who won an Oscar in 2017 for Moonlight, is by-the-numbers in plotting and structure but goes beyond a run-of-the-mill recitation of overcoming adversity and landing the killer blows over cheers and a triumphant soundtrack. In fact, half of the story is about life after getting the medal. It asks, "What comes next?" -- especially for women in unconventional arenas, even those at the elite level.

Sheilds, at 17, was juggling a fractured, dysfunctional family to which she was committed, being the person best positioned to make a difference in their fates. Despite her coach's attempts to help Claressa temper her expectations and set aside disappointments, she grew increasingly bitter, feeling she was being unfairly penalized for being female -- which, of course, she was.

Ryan Destiny's scowling fierceness conveys Shield's intensity in and out of the boxing ring for most of the picture. When she finally moves beyond self-defeating fixations, her face blooms and radiates, which is the point of the movie, I think.

Female athletes are not free to "brutal" ... they must in the end be "beautiful"  or they will be denied the benefits of their achievements. 

As Claressa says with her usual unvarnished candor, "That's bullshit." 

Nosferatu (2024)

Robert Eggers has directed only four films, but his list of pictures for which he served as a director of art or production or both is much more substantial. This might explain the extraordinary visual impact of his movies -- The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman, and his latest, a wonderful remake of the silent classic Nosferatu (1922)

Eggers' auteurism pays homage to the work of masters like James Whale (Dracula), Jean Cocteau (Beauty and the Beast) and Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) while retaining a bold originality, especially in the worlds he creates. I suspect Eggers felt especially free to experiment with the familiar Dracula story in his crafting of the narrative for his Nosferatu. 

Eggers turns the tale of the undead predator sideways. As played with shadowy menace and pounds of prosthetic make-up by everyone's favorite beastie Bill Skarsgard, Eggers' ancient bloodsucker is a victim of grave misfortune (pun intended). The Transylvanian Count Orlok is entrapped by the beautiful Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), a young woman who is married to the handsome Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), a clerk for a dodgy real estate agent named Knock (pronounced Ke-nock) who is also Orlok's ravenous toady (Simon McBurney). 

Ellen is barely aware of the power she has over the haunted Count Orlok, but warns Thomas not to go on the mission to the count's castle, an assignment he'd received from Knock. Danger awaits, she warns, having developed clairvoyance and somnambulance. Her condition draws the attention of a local master of the occult (Willem DaFoe), who is convinced she's possessed by a demon but eventually concludes it's Nosferatu.

As we know, Thomas arrives at the count's castle, falls under the vampire's spell but escapes and finds his way back to Ellen, just as Orlok arrives, having devoured the crew of the ship that brought him from Transylvania. Orlok means to move into a delapidated castle and claim Ellen as his own. His plan does cannot withstand the light of day, however.

Eggers Nosferatu is marvelously constructed -- as one might expect from a director with his gifts -- but the writing is also quite grand. Theatrical. Shakespearean. The picture is as delightful to hear -- especially Skargard's guttural intonations as Orlok -- as it is to see. Those early 19th-century streets, overstuffed interiors and diaphanous gowns (watch for the dust rising off of DaFoe's robe as he is patted on the back) gives testament to Eggers eye for telling detail.

It's a feast (pun intended) for the eye and ear.

A Complete Unknown

 

The rootlessness that comes from pride and calamity threading through Bob Dylan's 1965 hit single "Like a Rolling Stone" also courses through James Mangold's biopic "A Complete Unknown," a phrase from the chorus of the aformentioned song.

The picture features another transformative performance by Timothée Chalamet as the youthful Dylan, who we meet when he has just arrived in New York City, seeking an audience with his hero, the ailing social justice songwriter Woody Guthrie (Scoot Mcnairy). It was during his first visit with Guthrie at the psychiatric hospital where he is receiving treatment for Huntington's disease that Dylan met Guthrie's close friend, singer and activist Pete Seeger (Edward Norton in wonderfully assured performance), who would become the early Dylan's champion, recognizing the taciturn singer's talent immediately and ushering him into the vibrant musical underground that would launch his career.

It was during these early days of playing coffee houses and old haunts that Dylan met Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), the celebrated folk singer who would have a storied, fiery romantic and creative relationship with Dylan, and the young painter and civil rights worker here named Sylvie Russo but based on Dylan's actual girlfriend Suze Rotolo (Elle Fanning). It was she who posed with Dylan for the cover of his "Freewheelin'" album.

In Mangold's compelling recreation of Dylan's nascent musical exploration, these women are alternately mates and muses, confessors and competitors, and "Bobby," a charming but unreliable companion. He's an unapologetic, preternaturally gifted user.

Mangold tracks Dylan's emerging brilliance along with his emotional and professional evolution, culminating in his "switched-on" appearance at the formerly acoustic Newport Folk Festival in 1965. In the picture, which is based on Elijah Wald's Dylan Goes Electric!, the act, familiar to pop culture mavens, reflects Dylan's need to rebel, the changes in contemporary music and the shifting underground folk scene of the late '50s and early '60s.

As delivered through Chalamet's remarkable portrayal, Dylan is driven to be an iconoclast, growing increasingly dissatisfied with the expectations held by Seeger, his manager Albert Grossmen and record producer James Hammond (Dan Fogler and David Alan Basche, respectively), all of whom have their own agendas -- some noble, some commercial. 

The picture doesn't reveal the reason for Dylan's self-absorption and perennial coldness but neither of these qualities dims his creative spark or his need to push himself to higher creative levels while pushing away those closest to him. He was enigmatic then and continues to be at age 83.

A Complete Unknown is not as thoroughgoing in its story as some would like, but it has enough narrative heft -- and wonderful musical performances -- to satisfy even the most critical of audiences.