We return once again to that most alluring and irresistible of urges. Though we may wander towards the sunlight dappled paths of nature or dare to indulge in the brief respite of slumber and dreams, we inevitably find that we cannot resist that most potent of desires, the desire to consume!
MOVIES
The Brutalist - Let’s skip all the brutally long runtime jokes and jump straight to the review. At well over three hours and even with a 15 minute intermission this movie, magically, unbelievably, doesn’t feel too long. It is enthralling from the first frame to the last. The acting and the world and the story are so fully realized that I was completely and willingly swept away. This is a modern masterpiece and I cannot say enough good things about it nor will I try. This is a pure cinema in every sense of the word and it feels like something from an older time of Hollywood. A time that gave us huge epics like Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia or perhaps even further back to Casa Blanca. The cinematography is masterful, the score is sweeping and the acting is unbearably beautiful. It is quite simply a movie you must see.
Adrien Brody as László Tóth, is like a tractor beam for your eyes and Guy Pierce continues being one of our generation's most underused and underrated actors. Felicity Jones, who comes in about halfway through the movie, does magic with her smaller role. In truth all the acting here is top notch. Every single person in this movie is magic.
The story itself, separated into three parts, is somewhat simplistic, an immigrant comes to America for a better life, but that is an oversimplification. László Tóth is a Holocaust survivor, an immigrant, a husband yearning to be reunited with his wife (and his orphaned niece), a drug addict, and a gifted architect. It is this last role that is the driving force of the movie. László’s efforts to utilize his talents in order to make a living are at first somewhat fruitful but quickly stymied by Guy Pierce’s wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren. Then, after a purgatory where Tóth works shoveling coal by day and indulging in a heroin addiction by night Van Buren finds him and pulls him back into his wealthy inner circle. Van Buren has discovered Tóth’s talents and commissions him to build a giant community center on his property. It’s here that the toils of Tóth’s life truly come to a boil and that boiling rages throughout the rest of the movie.
László fights all manner of impediments in order to see his visions through. Along the way he is reunited with his wife and niece, but discovers she is tragically handicapped due to osteoporosis and his niece is mute. The toiling continues and what unfolds is a tragic and beautiful epic story of love, loss, excess and artistic vision. It’s a magical rare film and I cannot express enough how everyone must see this movie.
And now a review of something much lighter!
Captain America - Brave New World - I was excited going into this one as I was hoping for something on par with Captain America - the Winter Soldier; a comic book movie very successfully cosplaying as a spy thriller with some excellent action. And with Brave New World in your title you better come correct. Well, we didn’t quite get there. There are some good things here, but a lot of stuff feels not fully formed.
Early on in the movie we are reintroduced to Carl Lumbly’s Isiaih Bradley character. We get a quick update to how poorly he was treated by the US govt after being given an early version of the Super Soldier serum: imprisonment, torture through medical testing and more. We quickly gloss over that as Sam asks Isiah to accompany him on a White House visit. At an almost whiplash pace Isaiah is mind controlled into an attempted assassination on Harrison Ford’ President Thunderbolt Ross. Isaiah is stopped and thrown back in jail. And it’s here that the movie could have gone down a different path. We could have had some sort of reckoning of the American justice system, especially with Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson being a black man. We don’t get any of that. Do I come to comic book movies for that? No, not really, but it could have created some good tense commentary wrapped in comic book colors.
If you don’t want that flavor from your popcorn movies then another route we could have gone down is one of body horror. We see Ford struggling with what we all know will be him transforming into the Red Hulk. The movie does a decent job of letting us know that Ross has issues with anger and flying off the handle. This setup didn’t get a good payoff though. This first transformation could have really seen him struggle with giving in to his worst impulses and embracing a change that finally gives him the pure physical power of the Hulk or conversely it could have shown him struggling to contain those impulses via having an extremely gruesome and painful physical transformation. Not only do we get very little of this we don’t really see much of his first transformation at all.
Mackie still has charisma to spare and this movie gives us a lot of it through his relationship with Danny Ramirez’s Joaquin Torres. The great Giancarlo Espositio is here as the nefarious Sidewinder and in another world (or a What If animated episode perhaps) Giancarlo and Mackie would have gone head to head and perhaps given us a better movie, but he’s pushed aside to bring back an old plot thread from the second Hulk movie from over 10 years ago. Again it’s not a bad movie, it’s fun, but it didn’t quite get to the heights that other Captain America movies have reached.
TV
Paradise - The great Sterling K Brown leads this Hmurder-mystery-thriller series streaming on Hulu. Plotwise, I won’t get into too much detail here as there’s a big twist at the end of the first episode, but I will say that I am hooked! The premise is something I haven’t seen before and it’s being played out in excellent fashion. Brown is anchored by a solid cast with James Marsden as the President and Julianne Nicholson doing an excellent job as a sort of tech bro. I am absolutely frothing at the mouth for each new episode and Episode 7 - The Day delivers so much intensity and emotion that I was absolutely swerving with emotions. Swerving! Don’t put this on your watch list, start it now!
The English - I remember seeing previews for this 2022 Western and being super interested. Well, I finally got around to watching it and man oh man did I fall into a slow burning love with this series. Set in 1890, it stars Emily Blunt as Cornelia Locke, an Englishwoman searching for revenge in the American Wild West. It also features a wonderful Chaske Spencer as Eli Whipp, an Indigenous Indian she meets along the way who becomes embroiled in her quest.
The rapport between these two holds the series together and I adore the both of them. They are each filled with secrets, but eventually they become an open book to each other. It’s an excellent decision by Hugo Blick the writer and director to give us plenty of time with these characters, both together and individually.
Locke is a strange character, she is skilled and determined, but at times, out of her depth. And we also learn she bears a terrible secret. Eli Whipp is a mix of contrasts as well. He carries a dark past that he openly admits to and he has no issues doing what it takes to survive. He could have easily been a hated character, but he is written and acted so well that you really come to love him, if not to completely understand him.
After the resolution of a somewhat overly complicated story our two leads find themselves at crossroads. While I don’t want to give away that emotional punch it’s expertly acted if somewhat convoluted. It doesn’t ruin anything though as again, I love both of these characters. This is just a beautiful series through and through.