If you’re a movie lover like me, you’ve been going to the movies a lot in the last two months. In the late fall and early winter season we’re bombarded left and right with “Oscar movies” that are releasing just under the wire so they can be top of mind for voters come award season. This also comes at the same time as the holidays when seeing everything is hard and writing about them afterwards is even harder.
Fret not though, because I still managed to see a lot of movies and I have some reviews to share. I’ll cover things in the order I saw them and I’ll condense them down a bit so we can stuff more reviews in here. So let’s go!
Wonka
Starring Timothée Chalamet as the titular chocolatier, this was a fun little musical that was full of both whimsy and heart. This really shouldn’t surprise you if you’re familiar with director Paul King who also made the Paddington movies. Despite adoring Paddington 2 though, I still went in with some reservations but quickly got over them as the movie got going. The supporting cast is great here too and I especially loved seeing Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa.
Chalamet as Wonka I thought was good, but not great. Having just watched both Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory before seeing this one I felt that, while charming and great in the musical numbers, Chalamet lacked the same weird and goofy energy that Gene Wilder and even Johnny Depp brought to the role. Overall it was just the least memorable of the three portrayals that I have seen. To contrast that with my friend Abby, she thought Chalamet was unbelievable!
Verdict
This was a sweet little movie that while it may not linger in my mind as long as the others, is still a great option for a little family trip to the theatre!
Ferrari
This was the next movie I saw and honestly I don’t have much to say about it. When the credits rolled, I felt pretty underwhelmed. I’m not a car guy at all, but I can enjoy movies about them for sure (I really enjoyed Ford v Ferrari a few years ago) so it wasn’t that.
The movie was directed by Michael Mann and starring Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari, two things which actually had me pretty excited for this one, but the issue that stood out to me was the time in which the movie focused on. The impression I got from the movie was that the more interesting things about Enzo Ferrari’s life happened either before or after the events this movie covers. For example, the characters in the movie talk about how big the Le Mans race is so I was expecting us to build to that, but instead it shows a smaller race with less stakes. Now it becomes clear later into the race why it was important, but up until that moment, I felt less invested in what I was watching.
Another aspect that didn’t work for me is the heavy focus on Enzo Ferrari’s relationships with his wife and mistress. I think I’m just over relationships in movies. I understand how important they are to us in the real world and how impactful they can be on our lives, but I’ve also seen so many movies that are either about relationships or a big part of the movie is about a relationship that I just find myself bored watching the same stories and beats over and over again. I mean when I was excited for the movie about Enzo Ferrari it wasn’t because I was looking forward to seeing two different sex scenes with him you know?
Anyway, as far as positives go, Adam Driver was great as Enzo Ferrari and the car sequences were brilliant, but Driver wasn’t enough to overcome the boring ground they opted to cover and the racing scenes were so few and far between that I just left feeling disappointed.
Verdict
I also saw this one with Kelsey who is definitely more of a car guy and was very keen for this movie and we both walked away with the exact same feeling. This isn’t an all encompassing biopic that covers the story of Enzo Ferrari’s life. It’s just a section in the middle and the time it covered just wasn’t compelling enough for me.
The car scenes were great though and Driver was good enough that it saves it from getting an extra thumbs down from me. If you’re on the fence about this one, I think you can skip it without missing much.
American Fiction
Holy moly did this movie come out of nowhere for me. I dodged every trailer and really only heard about it because Jeffrey Wright (who stars in the movie as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison) has been doing the press rounds for award season for his role in this movie. I went in expecting a very serious Oscar bait kind of movie and ended up watching one of the funniest movies of the year with some pretty cutting satire all bundled together in a family drama.
I want to say as little as possible because I knew exactly nothing about this movie before I saw it so I think you should too. To that end I would also not watch the trailer if I were you. I read reviews from disappointed people that said the trailer gives away a lot of beats and solid jokes and I agree.
Jeffery Wright is absolutely excellent in this movie. In fact the whole cast is perfect and everyone plays their roles so well. I especially loved Sterling K. Brown who plays Monk’s brother.
The script was amazing and the story unfolds in such an interesting way too. If you don’t know the story already, I never once knew exactly where it was all going, which is not a common experience in movies these days. Apparently this was adapted from a 2001 novel called Erasure and I’ve already downloaded the audiobook too which is a testament about just how much I liked this one.
Verdict
I really don’t have much more to say about this beyond encouraging you to go see it. I loved this movie and I am confident you’ll see it featured in my top ten list of 2023!
Maestro
Directed, co-written, and starring Bradley Cooper, Maestro is another biopic this time about Leonard Bernstein. Leonard Bernstein was a famous musician, conductor, and composer who most people would know for doing the music in the original West Side Story.
This one is weird for me because I think it’s a case of the parts being greater than the whole. I liked a lot about this movie, except the movie. Let me try to explain a bit here.
I thought Cooper was great as Leonard Bernstein, the direction was unique and interesting, and Carey Mulligan absolutely stole the show as Leonard’s wife, Felicia Montealegre Bernstein.
The only issue was that I just wasn’t engaged and invested in it as the movie unfolded. It could be a case of the same issue in Ferrari, where the relationship is a major plot point, but I don’t even think that was it. It covered somewhat familiar territory, but Cooper and especially Mulligan were so strong in the roles that I still cared about the relationship, but I just couldn’t find my way into this movie unfortunately.
Verdict
I don’t like hitting you with a shrug emoji for the verdict, but I really am torn on this one. I won’t totally cop out though and I will say that I wouldn’t really recommend this movie to most people. However, if you care about the subject, or want to see some great performances, you might find a way in and enjoy this one more than I did.
Past Lives
Past Lives is the first feature film from writer director Celine Song, a South Korean-Canadian who has lived in New York and worked as a playwright before this. It’s a semi-autobiographical film based on events from Song’s life. It stars Greta Lee as Nora Moon and Teo Yoo as Hae Sung. When they were kids, Nora and Hae Sung went on a date just before Nora’s family immigrated to Canada. Twelve years later, Nora ends up in New York and she and Hae Sung, who is still in South Korea, reconnect.
There’s more here than my little setup can provide without giving too much away, but this is a deep meditation on life, timing, choices, and the outcomes of those choices.
I definitely got into this movie and was very invested in the main characters. Song’s script was so touching and the chemistry of the leads made this feel so genuine.
The only thing I wanted more from this movie was a stronger gut punch so the emotions I built up could get more of a release. Perhaps in tune with the themes of the movie though, sometimes that’s just not what life is and maybe it doesn’t have to be.
Verdict
This is an easy recommendation from me. This is a thoughtful piece that packs a ton of feeling that is very worthy of your time. If that ending hits you a little stronger than it did for me, you’ll like this even more than I did!
May December
Alrighty, this is the last one for this roundup and I have more to say than I initially thought!
I was very excited for this movie early on purely because it got a lot of buzz out of the Cannes Film Festival. It was swiftly bought by Netflix (boo) which means it got a miniscule theatrical release before it hit streaming. Directed by Todd Haynes and inspired by true events, May December stars Natalie Portman as Elizabeth, a TV actor who is researching for her next role in a movie based on the story of Gracie (played by Julian Moore) who was caught at the age of 36 with then 13 year old Joe Yoo (Charles Melton). Gracie got pregnant and had their first child while in prison. After she was released, she and Joe got married and had two more children.
With the grim subject matter, the movie has a very weird melodramatic tone to it that is clearly intentional, but had me laughing at it pretty consistently, including a particular piano filled slow zoom and line about a hot dog shortage.
Anyway, this movie just sort of baffled me which, after reading some other reviews, might have been the point. The movie offers three different perspectives on the relationship between Gracie and Joe, through them and Elizabeth, and the approach here is an interesting one. Without giving anything away, this isn’t a textbook case of Portman’s character coming into Gracie and Joe’s life as some sort of moral audience surrogate and showing Joe that he is indeed a victim. Elizabeth is not interested in that approach either as she acts in ways that are odd (a word I use to intentionally be vague so as to not give too much away) as the movie progresses.
As I sat with the movie longer, I appreciated more about the performances, especially some of the more subtle moments from Charles Melton as Joe and the deliberate acting choices made by Natalie Portman.
One thing I struggled to come to terms with though was what the whole point of the movie was, but as I sat with the movie more I think I might have watched it wrong. How can you watch a movie wrong you might be asking, and fair question! By that I mean I think I viewed this movie as I watched it about Elizabeth and Gracie, when actually it’s supposed to be about Joe. I got so lost in these absurd worlds that Gracie and Elizabeth inhabit that I think I lost sight of the heart of the movie.
It’s like trying to read a book outside while fireworks are going off next door. Joe is played so softly and subtle in contrast to Gracie and Elizabeth that I couldn’t help but put my attention on them. Whether it’s the overly dramatic outbursts, awkward moments, or the heavy melodramatic tone, all of that is noise that distracts us from Joe as the the heart of the story and the real victim of everything going on.
The movie is not trying to simply say how what Gracie did was bad, both the audience and the movie itself understands that, but what I think it’s trying to tell is the story of Joe and how something like that could impact someone later in life. I might be trying to swim in a few inches of water, but maybe that is actually the point of the movie itself.
The real life scandal this is based on happened in the 90s and the tabloid press framed the whole thing not as predatory evil, but as two people and their forbidden love affair. Early on we see Elizabeth looking at headlines that establish a similar take for the fictionalised relationship in the movie. Like the real life Vili Fualaau, Joe is never looked at seriously or empathetically by anyone when he’s the victim and should be the main focus of the story. The kid they will cast to play Joe in the fictional movie isn’t the star, it isn’t about Joe and the trauma he experienced or the adolescence he lost, it’s about Gracie. Similarly, while I watched the movie, Joe was the third most important character to me. I was distracted by everyone else that I was too distracted to think much about Joe.
Verdict
I could be completely wrong about all of this, but that’s also the beauty of movies! Maybe your experience will be completely different from mine. Throughout the course of writing this review I actually evolved my feelings on it. I was going to be swooping in with a thumbs down, but as I started to really think about it, this whole theory dawned on me. I think I will actually rewatch this one too with that perspective and see how I feel.
Anyway, give this one a chance and let me know what you think of my little theory and how you interpreted the movie!
I’ll also take this one as a bit of a lesson not to just trust my initial impressions of a movie. Good movies don’t just end once the credits roll, they stick out in your mind as you digest them. It’s actually one of my favourite things about writing these reviews. Just by processing my thoughts and feelings through writing I’ve now changed a bad rating to a good one and good one to a bad one (sorry Napoleon).
Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for my ten favourite movies of 2023 coming soon.
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