Movies
This movie belongs with Carol in the sort of unexpected 2015 micro-genre of "films about women who work entry-level jobs at department stores in 1950s New York and find themselves along the way." Unlike Carol's constant, icy throb of danger, however, Brooklyn is an uncommonly nice movie, even more uncommonly so when you consider that it's also a movie about the American immigrant experience. What's more successful about this film's niceness, though, is the fascinating way that it treats almost every character with warmth and understanding, which gives this film the curious and weirdly compelling position of having its protagonist confront a decision with both no right choice and no wrong one—whether she picks Ireland or America, the implication is that things will work out mostly fine, save for a few melancholy sacrifices. It's a tribute to the caliber of the acting (Saoirse Ronan at least doubles the life given to her character by the screenplay) and the general tenderness of the direction that any of this registers dramatically at all, much less come together as a moving period drama. Grade: B+
The movie looks gorgeous, certainly getting its money's worth out of cinematographer Bradford Young, who imbues every shot with images and color (my goodness, the colors just pop in this movie)—so it's a shame that the aesthetic is propping up a story that feels so small and stagey. Not that the story of a Nigerian couple's struggle with infertility isn't worth telling; it's just that the particular way its screenplay dramatizes it is a bit droll and airless. Grade: B
A bizarre, arresting movie with gorgeous imagery and mythical, mystical overtones, but it's also cripplingly slow and thus strangely inert. I'm not certain what it is that makes the similarly slow Tarkovsky filmography so riveting and this one occasionally dull; maybe Soviet myth and Christian mysticism are just more on my wavelength than Thai Buddhism. Maybe I'm just a bundle of irreconcilable urges and preferences. That said, this movie's surrealism is occasionally exquisite—the son turned into a red-eyed monkey is sublime, as are all of the vignettes of Boonmee's past lives. Bonus points for the coolest movie poster of the decade. Grade: B+
So, this is apparently what Peter Jackson was doing before Lord of the Rings: making true-life dramas about murderous teens. That's putting it glibly—there's a lot to be said for the amount of compassion and energy with which this film imbues its sensationalist premise, and the fact that the climactic murder (spoilers?) and subsequent legal fallout comes across as much as a tragedy as a crime is a testament to just how successfully human this movie is. Not that this sort of thing was entirely without precedent in '94: there's a lot of Sam Raimi in the camerawork, and the lurid subject matter, the stylization of violence, and the identification with social outcasts is very much in step with '90s alternative culture. Still, even within that scene, Heavenly Creatures is uniquely off-kilter, so much so that you've got to wonder what was in the air the day that a major studio decided to give the director of this film the keys to their multi-million dollar juggernaut franchise. Grade: A-
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