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The Brutalist (2024)

Well-made Oscar-bait epic, overlong but well-acted, especially by the excellent Adrian Brody, who's used to this sort of thing from The Pianist, 20 years back. The film tries hard to sell us the hideousness of brutalist architecture as youthful ingenuity and progress, as opposed to the barren, intentionally-ugly, soul-crushing concrete prison cells it actually delivered in the real world. It also briefly tries to do the same for free jazz, too, which is similarly abrasive on the senses in reality.

One gets the feeling there is vaguely political motivation behind the subject, being focused on a left-wing "art" movement (the Bauhaus school), the never-more-divisive topic of immigration, and, to a lesser extent, Jewish history - I presume to strengthen and promote the connection of the last two in the viewer's mind at a time when the deluge of people from Muslim cultures entering western societies has massively increased the division and rates of antisemitism in all left-wing political movements.

The other characters are competently-acted but thinly-drawn and terribly shallow, and Guy Pearce seems more of a caricature of a wealthy robber baron than a real person. Though the details of the world and situations are painstakingly-reproduced, nothing in them seems believable.

There's a number of explicit sex scenes that don't seem to serve any purpose, and appear to be there just for flavour. The same goes for drug use. There's a brief moment in the last quarter that combines the two and some violence to boot, setting up the ending of the film, and is the most stupidly-heavy-handed part of the whole affair: completely out of character, out of the blue, and apparently all out of ideas.

The film it mostly reminds me of is P.T. Anderson's The Master, a similarly-meandering period drama similarly partly-saved by the performance of Joachim Phoenix. That film's not one of my favourites either, but it holds together quite a lot better than this.

All in all, an imposing and sturdily-constructed monument that doesn't seem to have any meaningful or important story to tell but succeeds in taking up a vast amount of time and space and money to do it. An awkwardly-shaped empty building made almost at random, with no clear purpose in mind.

4/10

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Blonde Venus (1932)

A fun start, with witty dialogue and a bunch of nubile young actresses skinnydipping, but otherwise quite a glum and unglamorous entry in the Dietrich/Sternberg catalogue. Dietrich is uncomfortably cast against type as a dutiful wife and mother and Herbert Marshall often seems too dowdy and stiff to be someone she would fall for.

It's unusual in that it begins with boy-meets-girl-gets-married-has-child, and then the [mis]adventures of the tale begin as girl-goes-back-on-stage-to-make-money-to-help-boy-get-medical-treatment. I think maybe the problem is partly that Dietrich's character doesn't seem all that interesting until she steps on stage, and so it feels as though what is thrilling about her there is simply a performance by a much duller person, whose domestic affairs we are made to follow for the great majority of the film when we'd rather spend time with the creature in the spotlight.

The film is disjointed in tone with some sluggish stretches, and seldom plays to the strengths of any of its cast, which include Cary Grant and Sidney Toler (Charlie Chan), in small and ill-fitting roles. It does feature Marlene in the gorilla-suit singing about voodoo, which is timestoppingly iconic, but other than that and some occasionally nice photography, it's one of the most lead-footed and least magical of all its makers' collaborations.

5.3/10

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Morocco (1930)

Richly exotic and evocative early-talkie, the second of the seven classic Dietrich/Sternberg films made in the nineteen-thirties. This one stars a gruffly-handsome young Gary Cooper as a soldier in the Foreign Legion, besotted with Dietrich's newly-arrived cabaret singer. This is the one in which she wears the famous tuxedo and gives the girl in the crowd the still-startling lesbian kiss. Classic Pre-Code stuff.

There are some stunning shots in this film, both of the environment the story is taking place in and of the people, one in particular: Marlene Dietrich aged terribly, and very quickly, but in those seven Sternberg films, for a very short time she really was the most luminous goddess the silver screen ever created, and I doubt there is better black & white portrait photography in all the rest of cinema.

The story itself is really about the changing fortunes and balance of power in love, and of an aloof, cynical and haughtily-independent woman slowly becoming its slave. It has a palpably erotic charge in the smallest of things: a tossed flower, a held glance, the knowing delivery of lines in a song. But there's a weight and meaning to all of them; a deeper understanding of what they will take from all involved; the murders, death, debasement and desolation that accompany need and adulterous lust, and this helps the film transcend some occasionally stilted dialogue. The painstakingly-placed details that work create an overall feeling much greater than the flaws that don't.

Beyond the shots of Dietrich, the key repeated image is of the Moroccan women following the soldiers they have fallen for into the desert when they leave, perhaps to their death. It's a powerful symbol for the hold and consequences of love that feels mythical, timeless and unforgettable, much like the film itself.

8.4/10

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Werewolves Within (2021)

Northern Exposure meets An American Werewolf In London: A bashful new park ranger arrives in a quirky, snowbound small town just as bloody murders are beginning to pile up in the neighborhood.

We get fun banter and likeable leads in Sam Richardson and the criminally-alluring Milana Vayntrub, and the first hour is really good, even though there's not much in the way of special effects, with most of the attacks happening offscreen.

After that though, it progressively starts to fall apart, with some maddening gaps in characters' reasons and motivations (what happened to the guns?) and the mystery really doesn't play fair at all, leading to a far-too convoluted and badly-written ending we give up on caring about. A pity, because other than that, it's an entertaining, low-budget mixing-up of genres that could have been a big cult hit.

6/10

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I think I would say, high to low:

1930s 1980s 1970s 1990s 2000s 1920s 1940s 1950s 1960s 2010s 2020s

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Heart Eyes (2025)

Fun and clever mixing up of the horror and chick-flick/romance genres, which I don't think I've ever seen done before. It works well as a spoof of both, while also faithfully ticking off the boxes of each to genuinely satisfy both audiences. No big stars onscreen, but it moves along at a clip and never gets boring. A silly but ingenious experiment that mostly comes off great.

7/10

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Best. Gif. Ever!!!

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Captain America: Brave New World (2025)

Not nearly as bad as I was expecting, given the state of Marvel the past few years: Anthony Mackie has screen presence and does his best with the somewhat threadbare material he is given, and all the reshoots appear to have toned down or removed the political lecturing that was so ill-judged in the preceding TV show and the original script.

But it's still rather a mess: the title no longer seems to refer to anything in the story, which seems much more like a long TV episode than a feature film. The great majority of the dialogue is simply exposition, with characters only opening their mouths to say stuff to keep the audience appraised of what has previously happened, rather than building great moments and story in the here-and-now.

Some good hand-to-hand and aerial fight scenes, but the framework holding them together is haphazard and chaotic, with characters and situations coming and going so quickly they have no time to establish any meaning for the audience. Even if that aspect could have been fixed, the whole thing is still built upon such a flawed and unpopular premise - The Falcon becoming Captain America - as well as a flawed and unpopular TV show, that it was pretty much doomed from the start. The Red Hulk bit the trailers and posters promised is over and done with in no time at all, and the resolution to that silly and unconvincing.

Still, as I say, it's better than I expected, and a bunch of people have clearly worked very hard to rescue and redeem something good from the rubble of the original film they set out to make that tested so badly with test audiences. They kinda failed, but I appreciate their efforts.

★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆

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That horse got DEI'd.