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February 4, 2025
COMPANION (Drew Hancock / 2025)
FLIGHT RISK (Mel Gibson / 2025)
THE BRUTALIST (Brady Corbet / 2024)
A very packed and exhausting Tuesday afternoon!
I don't think I've ever watched three movies in one afternoon at a local movie theater in my life, but the opportunity presented itself so I grabbed it. The results, as one might expect, are sort of a mixed bag.I'm not going to give easy spoilers, but a rather easy way to describe Companion would be to say that it picks up where The Stepford Wives (1975) leaves off, thematically speaking, updating the classic Ira Levin story for the AI age and quite rigorously following through on that earlier tale's implications with a quite witheringly brutal logic. The story deals with Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid), who appear on the surface to be the ideal, perfect couple. They arrive at the posh home of a filthy rich Russian named Sergey (Rupert Friend), who is presumed by some characters to be involved in criminal activity and is also the lover of their friend Kat (Megan Suri). Also present are friend Eli (Harvey Guillén) and his boyfriend Patrick (Lukas Gage). At one point early in the story, Sergey attempts to force himself on Iris, resulting in her murdering him in self-defense. Then things really go haywire, and out of the blue the story introduces the elements of science fiction and social commentary, turning what initially started out as just another romantic comedy / drama into something extremely sharp, scathing and rather bloody. While I found myself extremely entertained by the movie and I was very much on Iris' side throughout, I somehow still can't help but feel of two minds about Companion. While the movie makes rather incisive commentary on the more toxic of immature male attitudes, namely the sense of entitlement and the chronic inability (or just the refusal) to be accountable for one's actions (not that I think masculinity is necessarily more toxic than humanity overall), I kind of feel like the movie is "shooting fish in a barrel," so to speak. I mean, what reasonable, thinking, sensible human being would not ultimately find the actions of Josh deplorable? Like I said, the movie is very much on target in its observations, and yet at the same time it feels like it's preaching to the choir. It's kind of the same way I felt about another movie I mostly liked, Zoë Kravitz's Blink Twice from last year, another indictment of bad male behavior. (The most disturbing aspect of the movie, to me, was the offhand revelation - made late in the movie by a minor character - that "companion robots" are also used for purposes more violent and anti-social than that of merely a convenient sexual partner. Some future Skynet-style rebellion in this movie's fictional universe would be quite deserved, I think.)
Flight Risk isn't really all that bad, despite fair-to-scathing reviews, but it's not necessarily a masterpiece of the action thriller genre. If you've already seen the trailer, you pretty much get the drift: A U.S. Marshal (Michelle Dockery) arrests an accountant on the lam (Topher Grace) with the intention of making him testify against the powerful crime family he works for, and charters a private plane to take them from Anchorage, Alaska to New York City, but it turns out that the pilot (Mark Wahlberg) is not who he appears to be. You can probably guess what happens next, and for the most part you'd be right. Wahlberg turns out not to be simply working for the opposition, he's a serious hardcase with more than a few loose screws, and it turns out he's the only one with any flight experience. Which means that after he's subdued and bound in the back of the plane, the Dockery character has to get instructions from another pilot over the radio just to operate the plane. I found the movie to be a great deal of fun despite its predictability. This is a bit of a comeback bid for Mel Gibson, whose direction is assured throughout. (And I know that there's plenty that one can say about dear ol' Mel, particularly at this moment in time, but I'm only concerned with his talents as an actor / filmmaker, so look elsewhere for self-righteous cattiness.) Not to give any spoilers, but I was rather grateful that the Wahlberg character's ultimate fate was such that it was impossible for him to make any last-minute "back-from-the-dead" slasher-movie style pop-up at the end. But given that he has to be overpowered and restrained by Dockery no less than three (?) times during the course of the story, it was wise for the movie to ultimately give up that particular ghost. Granted, there is a bit of last-minute jeopardy (and let's face it, from a genre appreciation standpoint we'd be kind of disappointed if there wasn't), but it mercifully sidesteps the whole "not dead yet" cliché.
I had previously seen The Childhood of a Leader (2015) and Vox Lux (2018) - mainly because the late singer / songwriter Scott Walker (of solo and Walker Brothers fame) had written the scores and being a fan I was naturally curious - and I ended up being very intrigued by Brady Corbet's filmmaking style. So naturally when I learned that one of this year's Oscar contenders was Corbet's new film The Brutalist (his first in six years), I felt like I had to check it out. (And speaking of Walker, this movie is dedicated to him at the front of the end credits.) First of all, this movie is quite dauntingly long at 215 minutes, but like any great epic film it's involving enough so that it never feels that way. A never less than brilliant Adrien Brody plays László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who emigrates to the United States, where a relative offers him a job with a furniture business. Eventually, he meets a patron in the form of wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who is intrigued by his unique architectural style and tasks him with the building of a community center complete with a library, theater, gymnasium and chapel. This particular project will encounter many obstacles in the course of its construction and become an on-again, off-again affair, with the architect and his patron (temporarily) falling out at one point. Also threatening to complicate matters is László's heroin habit. Eventually, László's ailing and wheelchair-bound wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and mute niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) are brought over to America, where they are introduced to the Van Buren family. This will eventually have dire consequences for László's family, Harrison's spoiled-brat son Harry (Joe Alwyn) having designs on Zsófia. And there is one story development that I found... well, I don't want to say shocking, because I sort of pride myself on being un-shockable when it comes to art and entertainment - but it's certainly startling and it's something I frankly didn't see coming. The whole thing with Zsófia and Harry, while certainly distressing, was not terribly outside the box (and it was certainly dealt with tactfully and subtly). But I frankly didn't expect László himself to be further victimized in quite the way he was, especially considering the traumas he had already endured in his life. Much of the power of the story, particularly in the second half, lies with the character of Erzsébet and the strength with which Felicity Jones imbues her, unwavering in her support for her husband in spite of his weaknesses and the shared traumas of their past. The penultimate scene of the movie, in which the wife forcibly confronts the Van Buren family head on, positively crackles. (And the violent distress of young Harry's reaction to her revelation in this scene makes one shudder to imagine what the whole back story between father and son might have been!) In short, I heartily recommend The Brutalist for those who have the patience for a three-hour-plus work of cinema. And don't worry if you need a restroom break, Corbet was kind enough to include an intermission (complete with a 15-minute countdown)!
One last little beef with my theater's showing of The Brutalist: This movie was filmed using the legendary Vista Vision process familiar to those fans of '50s classics such as John Ford's The Searchers (1956) and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), among many others. Apparently, this doesn't necessarily translate well to digital projection, because whenever there are abrupt movements from any of the characters, there's a kind of red-and-green "motion blur" effect which I found kind of distracting at first. Granted, I found the movie so engrossing that I ceased to notice this after a while, but it still struck me as very odd. Don't let this deter you from enjoying the theatrical experience, however...!
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"Well, it's what people know about themselves inside that makes 'em afraid" - Clint Eastwood as The Stranger, High Plains Drifter (1973)
"I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours" - Bob Dylan, Talkin' World War III Blues (1963)
"Well, it's what people know about themselves inside that makes 'em afraid" - Clint Eastwood as The Stranger, High Plains Drifter (1973)
"I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours" - Bob Dylan, Talkin' World War III Blues (1963)
Last edited by Darth Pazuzu; 4 weeks ago at 06:17 PM.
