Greyscale was so important to telling Passing that Hall reportedly refused to even look at the footage in color. Images courtesy Netflix.
9/10 Rebecca Hall’s directorial debut is here in Passing, and it’s a doozy.
Harlem, 1920s- Reenie Redfield (Tessa Thompson), a black woman nervously passing in a white part of town, runs into her childhood friend, Clare Bellew (Ruth Negga). Bellew, who is also black, passes in her private life, effectively living as a white woman and even taking a virulently racist husband in John (Alexander Skarsgård). Clare Bellew misses her Harlem roots and develops an immediate attraction to both Redfield and her husband, Brian (André Holland), and progressively begins to invade their lives as one of many white tourists in the historically black neighborhood.
This type of mirror shot, with body language beautifully expressing character even in stills, is at the heart of Last Night in Soho. Images courtesy Universal Pictures.
7/10Last Night in Soho is a delightful, great-looking, easy-watching horror movie about sex slavery and the inability to escape the hidden sins of the past. It’s a strange watch.
Soho, London- Bright-eyed freshman Ellie Turner (Thomasin McKenzie) relocates from a small town near Redruth, Cornwall to study at the London College of Fashion. Turner, who is inspired by the youth culture and aesthetics of 1960s London, dreams vividly that she is Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), a socialite who relocates to London in the ‘60s to become a star in the city’s nightclubs. Turner eagerly blurs Sandie’s identity into her own, living a double life in which she sleeps as much as she can and uses Sandie to build her personal style, but their dreams become nightmares as Sandie’s manager/boyfriend, Jack (Matt Smith), enslaves her to sell her for sex. As she experiences his crimes first-hand, Turner becomes aware that a much older Jack (Terrence Stamp) still haunts the Soho bars.
4/10 I still remember the sinking feeling after the credits rolled on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, after the movie had finished slowly funneling into a shameless, point-by-point remake of the original film, endlessly creative when looking for excuses to revisit the old but bankrupt and timid when asked for fresh ideas. How much more hollow would it have felt to realize immediately that this would be the model every reboot would follow moving forward?
Summerville, Oklahoma, summer 2021- Callie Spengler and her children, Trevor and Phoebe (Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard and Mckenna Grace), ditch Manhattan for an abandoned Oklahoma mining town, partially to avoid eviction and partially to settle the affairs of her estranged father, Egon, who earned fame in the 1980s as a Ghostbuster but suddenly left the group decades earlier. Callie navigates her feelings of being abandoned by her father, Trevor fools around the town acting out against his newfound poverty, and Phoebe investigates the seismic activity shaking the town.
Ugh, why does it have to look so flat and sad and boring! Images courtesy Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
4/10Eternals has long been built up as a shift in direction for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and boy, is it ever. There’s a new production mentality, a new story mentality, new story directions and relaxed series rules. It’s more of a lateral move than a step up, the series’ signature terrible action scenes and visual design is still here, but instead of being the point like in Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, they now feel like vestigial organs that could eventually be shed.
Eternals’ marketing painted a deceptive picture of its plot and I’m not sure what is or isn’t a spoiler, you’ve probably already seen it anyway, whatever. Consider this a spoiler review.
***
In the beginning, the celestial Arishem (David Kaye) sends eight angel-like immortal beings, dubbed “eternals,” to Earth, where they protect the indigenous population from wild alien predators called deviants. They arrive 5000 B.C. in Mesopotamia and take their sweet, sweet time, partying with humans and embedding themselves into our myths and legends. When they finally finish getting rid of the deviants in 1521 A.D., they split and hang around the globe while they await further orders, but after the mass destruction and restoration related to Thanos and the Avengers, the emergence, which will destroy the planet, begins, and the eternals must reassemble to stop it.
1/10Dune is not a complete film. It is a deliberately incomplete film, and despite what writer/director/producer Denis Villeneuve will tell you, the decision to only make half of it was made at the story’s expense, not its benefit.
The Galactic Padishah Empire, 10191- The emperor has reassigned fiefdom over the planet Arrakis from House Harkonnen to House Atreides in a transparent attempt to consolidate power by triggering a war between the richest and most powerful houses in his empire. Arrakis, a desert planet informally referred to as Dune, is the only source of the spice Melange, the most important logistical, medical and religious substance in the universe, meaning the planet is a great source of wealth to its rulers, but it also poses incredible danger from the heat, the indigenous Fremen population and the great sandworms that shape the desert. Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), knowing the Harkonnens will soon attack, seeks to build an alliance with the Fremen, whom the Harkonnens brutally suppressed, while his son, Paul (Timothée Chalamet), at the confluence of several destinies, studies the politics of the situation.
