Nosferatu (2024) * * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Robert Eggers

Starring:  Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgard, Willem Dafoe, Ralph Ineson, Emma Corrin, Aaron Taylor-Johnson    

Nosferatu is Bram Stoker's Dracula with the names changed.  The original movie was released in 1922 by director F.W. Murnau and was remade over the years, including this version which is gray, dark, and effectively creepy for most of its running time.  While the atmosphere works most of the time, I found myself not caring that much.  Nosferatu held me at arm's length and the payoff isn't worth the buildup.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) had the same effect on me.  I haven't reviewed it, but this critique will suffice.  Its production values were top notch, and at least there were scenes where Dracula (Gary Oldman) reappears as younger and at least desirable to a young woman like Mina Harker (Winona Ryder), who is Dracula's deceased wife reincarnated.  In Nosferatu, the mistake is made to make Count Orlok (Skarsgard) so visually unappealing.  Orlok is a cadaver with a mustache and never transforms into someone his reincarnated love (Depp) should desire.  Torturing someone with vivid, horrifying dreams and visions is not a great way to convince someone to fall in love with you.  Besides, she's already married to the real estate representative (Hoult), who was sent to your dank castle in Transylvania to purchase land in Germany, 

The older version of Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 movie was old, but wasn't as decrepit as Count Orlok is here.   Oldman displayed an accent, but it wasn't unintelligible like Skarsgard's, who sounds like he's trying to speak English while having an asthmatic attack.  Ultimately, the first half of Nosferatu was more intriguing than the second half.  The closer we came to a resolution, the more boring it became.  

The Fire Inside (2024) * * *

 

Directed by:  Rachel Morrison

Starring:  Ryan Destiny, Brian Tyree Henry, Olunike Adeliyi

The Fire Inside is based on the true story of Olympic gold medal boxer Claressa Shields (Destiny), a teenager from Flint, Michigan who became the unlikely gold medalist at the 2012 London games, only to come home and find being an Olympian doesn't hold much weight when bills have to be paid.  This is not a boxing movie which ends in the Big Fight.  The gold medal match occurs halfway through the movie, with the obligatory training montage scenes before that.  

The Fire Inside isn't Rocky, although Claressa is surely an underdog with a fierce love of boxing that started when she was younger.  The opening scenes circa 2006 show her jogging before dawn to the local gym where Jason Crutchfield, himself a former boxer, trains.  Claressa, like Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby, asks to train to be a fighter.  Jason states he doesn't train girls, but after one round against one of her male counterparts, Jason agrees to train her.  Jason's attitude isn't rooted in sexism or misogyny, but the idea that in 2006, there weren't a lot of female boxers.  Women's boxing didn't become an Olympic sport until 2012, the year Claressa won gold. 

Claressa's home life is troubling, and boxing is her outlet and her passion.  Her mother is an aimless former drug addict.  Claressa admits to being raped when she was a young girl and she and her siblings frequently go hungry.  Jason has a loving wife and children, working steadily at the local cable company.  When Claressa wins the national title and travels to China for the Olympic trials, Jason can't afford to go with her.  Claressa loses her first bout there and squeaks into the Olympic draw, leaving her with self-doubt and resentment towards Jason for not being there. 

The rest is history.  Destiny is a convincing boxer and handles herself well, but the best performance in the movie is Henry's, who brings a steady dose of compassion, love, and strength to Jason.  He tries to be Claressa's manager and publicist when she returns home after winning gold, but finds the endorsements and money other Olympians gain aren't available to her.  A lesser movie would've blamed racism and sexism or even hinted at it, but The Fire Inside understands that sports agents are in the business for money, and there isn't much to be found for a female boxer back then, especially one like Claressa who is brutally honest in her interviews.  Claressa doesn't understand that she needs to play the game, and this doesn't sit well with her, but post-Olympic treatment isn't based necessarily on fairness.  The Fire Inside understands that and in some ways, it's refreshing.  

Mr. Brooks (2007) * * *

 

Directed by:  Bruce A. Evans

Starring:  Kevin Costner, William Hurt, Demi Moore, Dane Cook, Marg Helgenberger, Danielle Panabaker, Lindsay Crouse

Earl Brooks (Costner) is a successful Portland businessman who was just awarded by the city as its businessman of the year, but later that night, he murders two people in cold blood and burns his clothes in an incinerator.  We learn that Earl has killed many times before and has never been caught.  He is meticulous down to the last detail and troubled detective Tracy Atwood (Moore), who herself is caught up in a messy divorce, is frustrated by her inability to solve Brooks' murders.  

Mr. Brooks is a complex tale of a man at odds with himself.  On the surface, Earl is a family-oriented businessman whom no one can say a bad word about.  He isn't overly friendly and keeps to himself for good reason.  He thinks he has everything wired, until one day a young man named Mr. Smith (Cook) meets him at the office and provides compromising photos showing Mr. Brooks at the murder scene.  Mr. Smith, a voyeur, caught Earl in the act and blackmails him.  His price?  Take him along when Earl commits his next murder.  

Earl is guided by his imaginary alter ego Marshall (Hurt), who acts mostly as the devil on his shoulder.  He laughs off Earl's declarations that he won't kill anymore.  Earl's daughter Jane (Panabaker) also comes home saying she left school back east for fuzzy reasons and is also pregnant.  Earl and Marshall soon understand the truth of Jane's situation and Earl will have to go into the killing business again while trying to control the wildcard that is Mr. Smith.

Mr. Brooks is full of subplots and keeps a steady pace.  I'm sure I left a couple of other characters and plots out for the sake of brevity, but we find ourselves rooting for Earl to not be caught.  Why this dynamic?  It's rooted in the performances.  Costner's Earl Brooks is an intelligent man who loves his family, but also possesses the innate ability to kill.  Mr. Smith, well played by comedian Dane Cook, is a burgeoning psychopath looking for an outlet for his murderous desires.  We are also not without sympathy for Demi Moore's Tracy Atwood, whose job is to catch people like Earl Brooks and is not only dealing with a divorce, but a criminal she put away who escaped from prison and is coming for her. 

Mr. Brooks was supposed to be a trilogy, but its box-office failure prevented that from happening.  The movie serves its purpose as a standalone movie, but in the age of streaming, why not give us another couple of movies to see how the vision would play out?  

Y2K (2024) * *

Directed by:  Kyle Mooney

Starring:  Rachel Zegler, Jaeden Martell, Julian Dennison, Fred Durst, Kyle Mooney

It's apt, and not by design, that I'm reviewing Y2K on the 25th anniversary of New Year's Eve 1999.  The fear, that is covered in this horror thriller, is that all of humanity would collapse because computers and machines weren't adequately adjusted to account for the change from 1999 to 2000.  Planes would fall from the sky, bank accounts would be erased, utilities would cease to function, etc.  I was working an overnight shift on New Year's Eve 1999 and it went without incident.  This movie fantasizes that the change to 2000 brings about machines taking over the Earth and a group of teens led by Rachel Zegler and Jaeden Martell attempt to stop them.

The movie was released earlier this month and I'm getting around to reviewing it.  It's a mostly forgettable film but it has a keen sense of time and place.  I liked seeing dial-up internet, CD's, VHS recorders, and you could still go to a Blockbuster store to rent out your favorite movies on New Year's Eve.  Our heroes attend a party where the machines start killing the guests, and the survivors flee to the woods to plot their next move as planes fall from the sky.  The center of the machines' operation is the local high school.  The only reason I can see why this is so is so the kids won't have to travel far to achieve their objective. 

Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit appears as himself and everyone who comes in contact with him refers to him as "Fred Durst", as if he were Charlie Brown.  It took me a minute to recall from which group Durst came.  Hey, I just referred to him as Durst, which is one more time in the entire Y2K movie.  

Cocktail (1988) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Roger Donaldson

Starring:  Tom Cruise, Bryan Brown, Elisabeth Shue, Lisa Manes, Gina Gershon, Ron Dean, Laurence Luckinbill, Kelly Lynch

Don't expect much depth from Cocktail, a slick, superficially entertaining movie chock full of hawking of materialism then interrupted by a typical love story.   The romantic angle is not a convincing display of redemption for our protagonist Brian Flanagan (Cruise).  His change of heart feels like a screenplay requirement, but still, Cocktail is worth a couple hours of your time.  

Brian is a former military man who travels to New York to join the world of marketing and make millions overnight.  He has no college degree, so he enrolls in business school while working as a bartender in a small bar run by Doug Coughlin (Brown), who dispenses cynical advice as much as drinks.  Doug teaches Brian the ropes of bartending and apparently how to perform a juggling act with glasses, tumblers, and alcohol.  The customers who pack the place watch in awe and cheer even though it takes several minutes to actually get their drinks.  

Brian and Doug soon graduate to the "big time" of bartending, a flashy disco in Manhattan.  This leads me to wonder:  Did Doug sell his place?  If so, didn't he make out pretty well financially?  Brian and Doug soon fight over a woman Brian falls for, and Brian lights out for Jamaica, where he runs a small bar and hooks up with tourist Jordan Mooney (Shue), who seems like a humble artist on vacation, but we later learn comes from a rich family.   On a dare from Doug, who visits on his honeymoon, Brian picks up another rich woman at the bar and the betrayed Jordan flees back to New York, with the remorseful Brian following and trying to win her back.  Jordan is also pregnant, and Brian has to convince her and her disapproving father (Luckinbill) that he's a changed man.  

If you don't know how this turns out, you've never seen a romantic drama before, but Cocktail isn't made to break any new ground.  There isn't much deep about the performances, but they work in their own way, especially Brown, who views the world with the sole focus of getting rich or appearing to be rich.  Cocktail isn't boring and although it never even attempts to become something great, it still clicks enough even if you're not fully buying the premise or the outcome. 

Babygirl (2024) * * *

Directed by:  Halina Reijn

Starring:  Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, Sophie Wilde

I'll play amateur psychologist for CEO Romy Mathis (Kidman) and say that she is less interested in success than the danger of losing that success.  She's turned on by the possibility of having the rug pulled out from under her.  As Babygirl opens, she is having sex with her husband Jacob (Banderas).  It appears to be satisfying for both, but Romy then retreats down the hall and watches porn where a woman submits to a dominant man.  Romy is rich and powerful with a loving husband and family, but she soon finds she is attracted to intern Samuel (Dickinson), whose instincts tell him that Romy wants to be told what to do, and he tells her so in their first meeting.

Romy acts appalled by Samuel's candor, but soon she is meeting him in hotel rooms and engaging in role play and masochistic sex with the enigmatic Samuel.   As Romy delves deeper into the affair, Samuel begins dropping by her home and pushing the situation into Fatal Attraction territory.  Romy is of course fearful of exposure, not just because of the effects it'll have on her marriage, but the possibility of losing her job due to potential sexual harassment suits.  Samuel basically blackmails Romy into continuing their affair by threatening to ask for a transfer, which will surely cause questions to be asked.   The rub is:  Romy is also aroused and titillated by this possibility.

Nicole Kidman is a fearless actress who takes on challenging roles such as this.  She finds a way to touch on our sympathies even as she's being amoral and selfish, mostly because we are now involved enough to feel the same self-inflicted pressure she's under.  The setup and the first two acts are so tense and absorbing that the final act proves to be an unsatisfying payoff.   We surely didn't need a Fatal Attraction type of ending, and thank goodness we didn't get that, but Babygirl teems with compelling performances.  Dickinson and Kidman have palpable chemistry, and Banderas earns our sympathy as the cheated-on husband.  The movie just couldn't quite finish what it started because the tension is released suddenly by the rug being pulled out from under us. 

A Complete Unknown (2024) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  James Mangold

Starring:  Timothee Chalamet, Elle Fanning, Edward Norton, Boyd Holbrook, Scoot McNairy, Monica Barbaro

A Complete Unknown tells Bob Dylan's story from when he was a complete unknown traveling from Minnesota to New York and dropping in unannounced on Woody Guthrie's hospital room.   Bob Dylan (Chalamet) sings a song he wrote about Woody to Woody with Pete Seeger (Norton) sitting bedside.  Both are impressed, and Pete takes Bob into his home.  Soon, Dylan is performing in the folk clubs in Greenwich Village and a superstar is born.  

A Complete Unknown, directed by James Mangold, is not a standard biopic.  It focuses on the first four years of Dylan's career, culminating in the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where Dylan "went electric" to the shock and horror of the festival's arrangers and the fans.  This was only the tip of the iceberg of the unrest to come not just for Dylan but for American society.  We witness Dylan emerge creatively and find his voice as a singer and songwriter.   We also see him become a selfish, self-important prick to those who care for him.  The more he grew as an artist, the more insecure he became as a person.  Chalamet unabashedly captures this essence of Bob Dylan and fearlessly plunges forward.  He sings the songs and plays the instruments, and isn't merely a Dylan impersonator.  

Mangold, who also directed the great Walk the Line (2005) about Johnny Cash, also includes Cash (Holbrook) in A Complete Unknown as a Dylan admirer from afar who is fully supportive of Dylan's evolution from folk to electric rock.  Pete Seeger is not as gung-ho about the idea, and this causes a sad rift between he and Dylan.  The same goes with Joan Baez (Barbaro), whose fame is soon eclipsed by Dylan's as they begin an off-and-on, tempestuous personal and professional relationship.  Also present is Dylan's initial girlfriend Sylvie (Fanning), who confesses that she really knows nothing about her boyfriend.  

The movie isn't a Dylan concert, but there are plenty of performances of his famous early songs, and they serve to show a progression of Dylan's escalation in confidence, creativity, and popularity.  We see his character forming the more he performs.  Chalamet is an excellent singer, and so much so, we understand more from Dylan's music than even when he speaks, which is precisely how I imagine Dylan would like it. The movie sees much and sees through, and it's thoroughly engrossing.