Eddington

 

Ari Aster has written and directed four feature-length films -- Hereditary, Midsommer, Beau is Afraid and his latest, Eddington.

To say Aster has a singular narrative voice is to oversimplify the, well, oddness of his cinematic vision. That's not to say his pictures are bad. It's more a case of being -- as is true of many other pictures by film auteurs -- uncompromisingly complex and not altogether clear in messaging and intent. None of Aster's four pictures -- at least to my mind -- is cheery. Aster doesn't do cheer, even though he has trenchant wit and unnatural attraction to tragic irony.

Eddington takes place in a small, dusty New Mexico town of a few thousand people, who represent to a great degree the diversity of modern America, especially its warriors and whack jobs.

As the picture opens, it is May 2020, and the residents of Eddington are squabbling about masking against Covid-19. Mayor Ted Garcia, an always-welcome Pedro Pascal, is complying with the governor's orders for masking in public as he works with the council to secure a new tech plant that could possibly bring ecological problems to the town which borders a Native American reservation.

Town Sheriff Joe Cross (Aster alum and apparent muse Joaquin Phoenix) opposes the masking measure and refuses to enforce the law that the mayor insists will keep citizens alive. This tete-a-tete leads to the weaving of a dozen or so other social and political issues into this tale of what is ostensibly a private dispute between two old adversaries. (The reason for the bad blood is revealed in the second half of the picture.) And this beef eventually leads to a showdown, but certainly nothing like any ever staged in a Western before.

At this time, protests in response to the Gerald Floyd killing have sprung up around the country. TV and social media are blazing with news footage, attacks and appeals, and even citizens of Eddington get into the mix. Public demonstrations and violence shake some Eddington residents and inspire others to want to stick it to the man.

At home, Cross is dealing with his emotionally fragile and unavailable wife, Louise (Emma Stone), and her conspiracy-addicted mother, Dawn (Deidre O'Connell). Slowly he gets drawn into their paranoia, which, in the end, turns out not to be too far off base.

Aster continues to display a unique genius and fills Eddington with winks-and-nods -- maybe a few too many for lazy audiences to fully register. The picture has a raw assurance that will surely please Aster fans even though it may not win him very many new ones. 

Superman (2025)

 

James Gunn's supercharged Superman will make a gazillion dollars for the DC Cinematic Universe by offering the diehard and ever-faithful a rejuvenatingly broad mix of action and comedy, heroics and villainy, a tiny bit of romance between the Man of Steel (David Corenswet) and the intrepid reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and an incorrigible flying dog.

The redoubtable Nicholas Hoult chews scenery as Lex Luthor, the alopeciated brains behind a military-industrial-complex-machine that is creating super soldiers that he hopes to sell to the U.S. for future battles with "metahumans," the most prominent being his archenemy Superman.

Other intrigues lie beneath the surface of this lunacy, but not for long as battles between good and evil take on increasing levels and dimensions of strangeness. It's all great fun, with guffaws mixed in with the earth-shattering punches.

Gunn has referred to Superman as an immigrant, which has riled some folks who, apparently, don't want politics mixed in with their comic book lore.

I suppose we should not show them the famous picture of George Reeves as Superman from the television series of the '50s, posed in front of the American flag.

 

Adolescence, Episode 3

 

Episode 3 of Netflix's Emmy-nominated miniseries Adolescence is essentially a two-player one-act that features Erin Doherty as psychologist Briony Ariston and young Owen Cooper as accused murderer Jamie Miller. Both Doherty and Cooper are nominated for their performances, which are, to use that criminally overused expression, "amazing."

The series features wonderful writing, direction and camerawork and is the story of the investigation into the death of a local school girl. A young classmate is arrested on charges of having followed her and stabbed her to death after a brief argument. Police used CCTV footage to identify the suspect, who is detained and examined by psychologists to determine his mental capacity, that is, what does he "understand."

For most of the episode, the psychologist and the boy sit across from each other at a table. She begins the session brightly, and the boy seems cooperative but when talk turns to definitions of manhood, the temperature in the room spikes, then ebbs, then spikes again, even as the space between the two characters gets tighter.

Jamie, clearly emotionally unstable because of the bullying he's suffered at school and on Instagram, grows increasing threatening and Briony steels herself against the tirade, holding fast to her professionalism while feeling enormous unexpressed pity for the child. The last five minutes in the episode are riveting and devastating .... and heartbreaking.

What a ride!

 

Trap

 

M. Night Shyamalan's latest thriller, Trap, is mind-bending poser like his previous pictures but not in the same way.

The biggest question this film poses is "What kind of movie was it meant to be?"

Trap -- which stars Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Shyamalan's daughter Saleka, and, inexplicably, Hayley Mills -- is set in Shyamalan's favorite location city, Philadelphia, during a Gen Z concert by superstar Lady Raven (Saleka).

Hartnett plays doting Dad and firefighter Cooper who takes daughter Riley (Donoghue) to the concert as a reward for outstanding work in the classroom. When Cooper sees the arena is overflowing with police and FBI he asks a concert merch vendor (a nice turn by Jonathan Langdon) and is told law enforcement received a tip the serial killer called The Butcher will be at the show.

The audience will discover pretty quickly that Hartnett is the suspect (though the movie never shows Cooper actually butchering anyone). The first two-thirds of the film is Cooper trying to evade the clutches of FBI profiler Dr. Grant (Mills) while not raising his fangirl-daughter's suspicions.

A master fabricator with an ingratiating smile, Cooper nearly pulls it off with some implausible scheming involving a gullible concert usher (Shyamalan in his obligatory cameo) and Lady Raven, herself.

The last act, which introduces Cooper's wife and Riley's mother Rachel (Alison Pill), is where Shyamalan's exposition goes off the rails and the narrative action becomes inert. In fact, what action there was happened mostly on the concert stage where Saleka (who wrote and performed original music in the film) holds court.

Overall, Shyamalan's script is weak in tension and emotional cohesion and clarity. Are we supposed to pull for the handsome Father of the Year who dismembered a dozen people or pray that the Swat team stomps him into the ground? Is Shyamalan's story about sociopathy, societal breakdown, parental dysfunction or the hidden perils of teen pop?

Some might say it doesn't matter, but I couldn't stop wondering which kind of picture I was watching, and that puzzlement made the talk and mugging on the screen a real distraction.

 

F1: The Movie

 

In traditional Hollywood terms, director Joseph Kosinki's $200 million racing baby, F1: The Movie, is a sure winner.

With the epic cinematic wattage of both star Brad Pitt and charismatic "It Boy" Damson Idris, a solid script with a trusted and familiar arc, and thrilling racing footage that is hypnotic and dramatic, F1 is destined to be a crowd-pleaser that will easily recoup the money poured into this sprawling, globe-trotting production.

Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a skilled itinerant racer who abandoned the circuit about 30 years before we meet him. A former team member / now team owner Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) offers Sonny, who was prodigious in his 20's but is now living in a van, an opportunity to drive regularly for him and, perhaps, rekindle his youthful fire. Sonny responds with hesitation but agrees to help his old friend dig himself out of a financial pit by putting some wins on the board.

Sonny, now 60, partners with Idris' Joshua Pearce, a young and gifted driver who is not looking to be mentored by a "never was." The early interactions between the two is what we would expect in the world of motorsport, and the slow melting of the ice between them is the heart of the picture.

Kosinki puts all of the pieces in place -- including a potential romance with chief car designer Kate (the wonderful Kerry Condon of The Banshees of Inisherin) and lets the picture's swift pace carry viewers along, delivering the goods in the movie's inevitable standoff with one of the picture's producers, British F1 driver Lewis Hamilton, whose face appears on camera only briefly.

It is to Kosinski's credit that the film doesn't wander too far off the track -- even though a few cars do in several heart-stopping scenes -- so we never lose sight of the intensity of Sonny's quest for ... well, that's not entirely clear, but one thing we know, it's not about "the money."