OSCARS 2025: Flow (2024)

Could the average rube off the street find Latvia on the map? Probably not and this is the kind of thing I tell myself so I don't feel so bad about being totally unfamiliar with Latvian cinema. Until relatively recently, I can't say the cultural output of the Baltic states was something I thought about much at all. Excuse my ignorance. Not many of the films made over there make it over here. Certainly not many of the animated films, of which there are only a handful. Nevertheless, one such animated motion picture from Latvia has made plenty of waves – pun intended – this award season. When I first saw “Flow,” I loved it but figured it was a long shot in the Animated Feature category at the Oscars, not being made by Disney, Dreamworks, Ghibli, or any of the other studios the Academy usually nods at. After picking up a Golden Globe, however, “Flow” managed to be nominated both in this category and Best International Feature. Now the scrappy little indie is the frontrunner in the former slate. You love to see it.

In a forested landscape, a cat encounters by a pack of dogs, including a friendly yellow lab. The chase is interrupted by a sudden flood. The cat and dog return to a home, surrounded by large statues of felines. The water level starts to rise again shortly afterwards. Our furry protagonist is only saved when a boat, piloted by a capybara, arrives. The Labrador isn't far behind. Soon, this motley crew are joined on their journey by a secretary bird and a ring-tailed lemur. The animals float through the flooded world, observing more strange ruins, encountering other creatures, and eventually arriving at a temple of some sort. There, a revelation occurs.

"Flow" is distinctive from most animated movies about animals having an adventure by two factors. First off, these critters do not speak, wear clothes, or tell jokes. Personality traits do emerge but they still act a lot more like actual beasts than cartoon creatures usually do. (This includes all of their meows, barks, squawks, and grunts coming from actual animals.) Secondly, there are no human beings in "Flow" at all. There are structures, homes and temples, and we see statues – religious idols? – here and there. However, no people appear. When combined with the unpredictable and frequent flooding, which leaves the landscape totally changed each time, "Flow" gives the impression of being set in a post-apocalyptic world at the mercy of climate change. If this was the intention, however, there's certainly no indication of this being our world. While the anxieties of rising oceans are obviously a part of the story's DNA, "Flow" most clearly takes place in a fantastical world that only resembles the Earth we know in fleeting ways. The presence of whale-like creatures that are more like legendary sea monsters than real cetaceans further establishes this as an otherworldly setting. 

I don't think we are meant to think too seriously about this setting and how it came about. That's because "Flow" is clearly a fable, in which the animals and what happens around them represent truths about human nature. This world is unpredictable, massive floods happening spontaneously. Much the way our planet is a chaotic place where life upending change can occur at any moment. How each animal responds to this disaster seems to correspond to different human reactions to the unpredictable nature of life. The cat always searches for higher ground, running from the problem until it can't run anymore. The dog is always happy and blissfully unaware, pushed about by events because he has no attachment to any of it. The lemur collects trinkets and objects, desperately clinging to physical belongings despite everything else being washed away. The capybara, meanwhile, steers the boat, floating above the flood waters, and "going with the flow," as it were. The secretary bird is an exile, attempting to protect the other animals when it can. That includes saving the cat from a flock of other birds, who shatter his wing for this rebellion. The ascension that occurs in the final act gives one feelings of a sort of nirvana being reached. Does that make "Flow" a Buddhist parable, about how one should never expect certainty from an ever-changing world but should always protect most precious life, until enlightenment is finally achieved and we escape the repeating cycle of creation and destruction? 

That's one way to interpret this story and, the more I think about it, increasingly feels like the intended reading. The great thing about fables, though, is that their metaphors are mutable. Making speechless animals the stars of this tale, to me, seems to suggest that we are all at the mercy of our base desires. The first thing that happens in the film is the cat catches and eats a fish. It seeks shelter from the flood. Food and survival are the most primal of all instincts. When the pack of dogs chase after the cat, those animals are simply following their nature as well. After the flood waters recede, there's a touching scene. The Labrador spots his pack once again. While he's tempted by their howls and barks, he ultimately stays behind to help the diverse group of creatures that have become his new clan. In other words: Our beastial drives are part of us and push us forward. Cat eats fish. Dog chases cat. We seek out others who are like us. However, these instinctual forces are not our only choice. We can form meaningful bonds with other living things and protect life from destruction. This, as the secretary bird's path shows us, is how we find a world that is more than physical, that is spiritual as well. Very zen and touchy-feely, I know, but I think this is all true. 

If you aren't looking for philosophical subtext or deeper meaning, "Flow" can still be enjoyed as a simple adventure story. The film was made with open-source software Blender, meaning the animation isn't as smooth or flashy as your average big budget studio animation. I've seen a few reviews compare "Flow's" look to an older video game cut scene, which is valid. However, its visuals are still quite striking in their own way. The animal characters move in surprisingly realistic ways, being as cute and expressive as your own pets. "Flow's" stakes are high, about survival, and its feline protagonist is often in mortal danger. However, the film has such a laid back and contemplative mood, functioning like an exciting and compelling but ultimately serene experience. The soothing musical score certainly gives that impression. Moreover, telling this story without words means it can be appreciated by anyone, ultimately speaking to universal ideas. 

"Flow" was directed by Gints Zilbalodis. He was also a producer on the film, co-wrote the script, edited it, and is co-credited with Rihards Zaļupe for the music. The film took five and a half years to be completed, furthering the idea that this was a passion project for Zilbalodis. That "Flow" was made with free software by such a small team, with one guy doing double duty in so many departments, confirming it as a scrappy indie effort. In other words, it's the kind of filmmaking we should be celebrating: Innovative, entertaining, smart, insightful, and representing the artistic vision of committed individuals. "Flow" works as both an involving mood piece, an adventure that people of any age or demographic can enjoy, and a surprisingly deep fable with lots to say. I'm glad it's been so well received by a global audience, hopefully allowing more opportunities for Latvian animators and filmmakers in the future. [9/10]

OSCARS 2025: The Brutalist (2024)

I suppose every filmmaker, once they have a bit of clout to their name, desires to make a proper epic. The likes of "Lawrence of Arabia," "Barry Lyndon," or "Apocalypse Now" are inevitably the kind of massive myth-making that, when experienced on the biggest screen possible, transport your mind and fire the imagination. Most directors never get the chance, as three hour-plus historical melodramas are expensive and not what most studios think audiences want to see. Brady Corbet has won some praise for "Vox Lux" and "The Childhood of a Leader" but he hardly seemed prestigious enough to get the blank check necessary to make an enormous film. I suppose someone – people at fourteen different production companies and financers – saw potential in Corbet and Mona Fastvold's script for "The Brutalist" though. Despite the commercial potential of a 215 minute long gloomy drama about architecture and drug abuse seeming grim, the risk has paid off. "The Brutalist" has done well at the box office, thus far tripling its (admittedly modest, as far as epics go) 9.6 million dollar budget. The film has since received the validation all cinematic endeavors of this scale aspire to, by being nominated for ten Academy Awards. 

László Tóth, Hungarian Jew and Modernist architect, barely survives the Buchenwald concentration camp. He immigrates to the United States, his beloved wife Erzsébet and niece Zsófia unable to make the journey. He travels to Philadelphia, staying in touch with Erzsébet via letters. Tóth nurses a heroin addiction, the aftermath of an injury to his face, but is taken in by his cousin, Attila and his Catholic wife. They get a job redesigning the library in local millionaire Harrison Lee Van Buren's mansion. Harrison is initially aghast at the change, refusing to pay László, leading to his cousin kicking him out. After some time of homelessness and whatever work he can find, László is contacted again by Van Buren. The rich man has come around to loving the library after realizing the architect's artistic standing. Van Buren takes Tóth in and commissions him to build a massive community center and chapel. Being friends with a millionaire also allows Erzsébet and Zsófia, the former wheelchair bound and latter mute, to journey to America. Tóth's temperamental nature and artistic perfectionism soon has him butting heads with the Van Burens, his drug habit creates problems with Erzsébet, and the immigrant family in general find their new home hostile to outsiders. 

Having now seen it, I'm not surprised that "The Brutalist" was well received by the Academy. It's a film about many things but frequently touches upon one of Hollywood's favorite topics: An artist struggling to express himself against the narrow-minded money people who finance his work. Tóth's extremely ambitious designs for the building are immediately scrutinized by Van Buren's associates, who demand minor changes to the plan. Such alterations enrage László, who is unwilling to compromise his vision for any reason and cuts his own pay to allow the original plans to go through. "The Brutalist" handles this idea better than most films on the topic. Mostly because Tóth's work – inspired by a number of real life modernist architects – truly is impressive. When the library, with its circular design and striking chair in the center, is assembled, I did actually gasp a little. The plans for the community center and chapel include the detail of the shape of a cross reflecting onto the altar from the sunlight above. The glimpses we get of the finished building do provoke an emotional response. It's genuinely impressive stuff, filmed with the proper amount of awe. 

Moreover, "The Brutalist" also acknowledges something else: So-called "geniuses" are often assholes. Tóth's unwillingness to make any concessions to his artistic vision makes him argumentative and belligerent. The indignity of removing a few feet from the structure pisses him off to the point that he punches out the other contractor working on the gig. When talking with customers, his demeanor is generally unmoving and confrontational. He's implied to be a bit of a womanizer, seeing a prostitute and dancing with other women while married to Erzsébet. I know there's a lot of debate about personal responsibility when it comes to addiction but László never seems to consider fighting his drug habit for the benefit of his family or those working for him. He is, most charitably, a complicated person. In more general terms, he's a bit of a prick. Does his genius justify his behavior? Is the architect producing brilliant work – as a way of processing his own trauma, the ending makes clear – a fair trade for him being a jerk to everyone around him and neglecting his family? “The Brutalist” makes no clear statement either way, making it a much more complex rumination on the nature of d-bag brilliance than “A Complete Unknown,” for one example. 

This is merely one of many questions “The Brutalist” raises. In a lot of other ways, it's primarily a movie about the immigrant experience. It's not a positive depiction. Upon moving into his cousin's business, László notices Attila is doing everything he can to disguise his accent and has converted to Catholicism for his wife. He is a Jew that has assimilated totally into the native culture, something László – who attends temple several times throughout the film – has no interest in doing. While at a fancy Van Buren dinner, he talks with two American Jews and points out that his religion and heritage is merely one element that makes him an outsider in this country. His accent, his nose, the way he conducts himself marks him unavoidably as a foreigner. This is in contrast with the Van Buren family, who are all tall, stout-chested, blonde men. A key moment has Harrison's son telling Tóth that they “tolerate him.” Van Buren was incensed that these strange men – among them, a black guy – where in his home until he realized Tóth was a respected artist who could bring prestige to his reputation as a distinguished man of the arts. Yet his mere presence among rich, powerful, Aryan Americans will only be tolerated – not accepted nor embraced – for as long as he is useful to them. 

It's a not at all subtle metaphor for the treatment of all immigrants by American culture as a whole. The American dream is referenced throughout, no more powerfully than in Tóth seeing the Statue of Liberty after making it across the ocean. The idea is that anyone can come to this country, with nothing but their name, and become successful. The much grimmer reality is that American is as segregated by class and power as any other place. László is homeless for a stretch, those waiting outside dismissed when the soup kitchen closes for the day, and that's where he meets Gordon, a black immigrant and a fellow heroin addict. This is another person who is kept around by those that perceive themselves as proper Americans only when it suits them. The Tóth family's luck come down entirely to the whims of an impulsive millionaire. When the building project is abruptly called off after a train crash, László, his wife and niece are left practically back where they began. The vulnerable – of which immigrants from any place surely are – must always walk a careful line, dare they displease their so-called masters higher up in the social hierarchy. 

If only the treatment of immigrants as accessories to the rich and powerful, to eventually be discarded, ended there. After a spat with Harrison's son – in which he says some lewd things about his niece – we are treated to a sinister shot. The rich young man looms in the distance over Zsófia as she climbs out of a pool in a swimsuit. It is never addressed but the implication of sexual violence floats in the air, the young woman making an ideal target without the ability to speak. “The Brutalist” eventually takes it a lot further than that. Harrison seems the most tolerant of  László's eccentricities throughout, welcoming him into his home and inviting him to his fancy parties. When in Italy, he stumbles across the architect in an intoxicated state, any veneer of respectability the Hungarian might have had no longer apparent to Van Buren. What happens next is a disturbing literalization of one of the film's central thesis: The rich and powerful will fuck over the poor without a moment's notice, caring more that their perception as important and right over another human being's need for autonomy. 

Ultimately though, there is something like a hopeful ending. When László is first shown photographs of buildings he designed in Europe, he is deeply touched. He had no idea that they survived the war or that evidence of their existence was still around. This is a man who puts everything into his art, whose creations are an extension of his life. The closing monologue lays it down that the building Toth is trying to finish throughout the film is him expressing his experiences in the Nazi death camps. By the future flung ending, that building is still standing. Harrison Van Buren, however, the man who paid for it, is nowhere to be seen. (A conclusion  Corbet takes in a hauntingly ambiguous direction.) No matter how much power and influence the rich wield in life, a building – an artist's expression of their own life and feelings, a piece of themselves that they have put into another form – will outlive them. 

Not that “The Brutalist” has a simply rosy perception of legacy. “The Brutalist” takes place over several time periods, neatly broken up by act breaks. The epilogue, taking place long after the rest of the film, has been hotly debated. Eventually, the Tóth family settles in... Israel. I certainly don't think Corbet and his team were unaware of Israel's controversial position in the world. The layer of irony is detected when an especially clichéd line of dialogue wraps up the film. All throughout “The Brutalist,” we see outsiders coming to a new country, in search of freedom and happiness. Instead, they find themselves excluded and mistreated. It's the story of the Jewish diaspora in many ways. However, the creation of the Zionist state – and the displacement of another persecuted group of people by former outsiders who now find themselves in a seat of power – seems to be a cruel climax to this arch of history. “The Brutalist” more than hints at this, with the Tóth's family experiences in the Holocaust becoming the foundation for another development all together. A commercialized one, at that. That makes the ending hard to read as pro-Israel but instead a criticism of the country's policies.

A lot of heady ideas are floating around inside “The Brutalist's” three and a half hour runtime though. Corbet has stated that the film is about “human complexity.” And László and Erzsébet's relationship is certainly complex. They are so close as for Erzsébet to claim some sort of supernatural, mental connection. She seems aware of all his indiscretions and forgives him. His wife certainly isn't spared from his temperamental moods. As with many relationships, such tensions are resolved in the bedroom. The details of the Tóths' sex life aren't kept from us and they further shed light on the shaky, codependent relationship they share. Feeling as if you share a soul with someone means you share all their bad qualities too, which “The Brutalist” brings to the forefront in its last act. Like the drugs he takes,  László's bond with his wife feeds into him and keeps him alive as it slowly drains him away too. Once she's gone, he's left an unspeaking invalid in a wheelchair too.

All the personal turmoil of “The Brutalist's” journey is conveyed through its grand cinematography. The very first thing the film does is announced it's presented in VistaVision, in the tradition of many grand films of the past. Lol Crawley's cinematography captures wide vistas of incredible beauty. Whether that be the rolling mountains of the Italian countryside, the towering skyscrapers of New York, or the green hills of Pennsylvania, they are all presented with a sense of vastness. This extends to the repeated shots in the film of moving down a road, letting us know that we are in for a story about the journey. As epic as the cinematography can be, the camera also focuses on intimate moments too, of faces in dark rooms and bodies in sleazy buildings. The impression is a film that stretches the personal out as far as the glorious expanses of the world, connecting to the theme of art transforming interior feelings into large physical places. 

It's a very textured film, in other words, and that extends to the performance. Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones both give into the subtle and the substantial as they express these characters. László's anger is apparent in little actions, in how Brody clicks a cigarette lighter shut. Jones adapts a physical frailty to Erzsébet but her face and eyes remain unwavering and steely, suggesting this woman is a lot stronger than she appears. Guy Pearce, meanwhile, makes Harrison Van Buren a construct of outer nobility that suggests something broken within. His mother holds such a sway over him that he left his wife for her and later dedicates a massive building to her. We never know exactly what Van Burren's hang-up with his mom were. That his son and daughter seem disturbingly more like husband and wife than siblings suggests rich people getting up to incestual freakiness inside the walls of their mansions. Nevertheless, Pearce brings a committed power to the illusion Van Buren creates of himself and subtly shows the darkness within. 

“The Brutalist” is epic filmmaking not only in its visuals, runtime, and distance. Its ideas are massive and complicated, with many thoughts on the Jewish condition in the 20th century, the artist's relationship with his art, and the plight of journeying from one land to another. I doubt there's a more ambitious film nominated at this year's Oscars. The film has been criticized for using A.I. technology to finetune the Hungarian accents of its stars. This, to me, is probably the kind of thing this technology should be used for and certainly not the same as the plagiarism and anti-human ugliness of generative A.I. Either way, the controversary has been enough to take some of the award season shine off a motion picture that is likely to be looked back on as an impressive creation of its own, long after the glow and buzz of Oscars season has faded away to history. [9/10]

OSCARS 2025: No Other Land (2024)

Since I was a kid, I can recall hearing people – including my Jewish relatives – describe the on-going conflict between Israel and Palestine as the continuation of an old war that has been raging for centuries, a fight between irreconcilable ideologies that can never be resolved. It's often phrased in Biblical terms, as if the maps were the same two thousand years ago. It's a wide-spread lie and a ridiculous one. Israel is younger than my grandparents, the details of its creation available to anyone with access to half-decent history books. A list of Israeli war crimes committed in Palestine can be found easily. Here in the social media and cell phones era, documented evidence of such crimes have become increasingly common. Here comes more of just that, in the form of an Oscar-nominated documentary. “No Other Land” filmed before the most recent escalation of violence in the Middle East, it is nevertheless more documentation of an illegal occupation and American tax dollars at work. 

Filmed over a five year period, “No Other Land” is primarily the work of Basel Arda and Yuval Abraham. Basel is a native resident of Masafer Yatta, an area in the West Bank. He's been documenting the Israeli army forcing out the local inhabitants, seizing their land, and destroying their home since 2022. Yuval is an Israeli journalist and filmmaker, against the military occupation of Gaza and sympathetic to the Palestinian's plight. Together, they begin to more thoroughly show the families torn apart by the army, the violent suppression of local protests, and the resilience of those surviving being displaced. 

“No Other Land” is an on-the-ground documentary. It gives those of us in more privileged countries a first-person perspective of what is happening in Masafer Yatta. What is captured on-camera is often heart-breaking. We see families forced to stand back and watch as their homes are literally torn to pieces by bulldozers. Displaced families are forced to live in caves, the camera showing us their desperate attempts to make inhospitable furnishings more like home: A TV hanging on a cave wall, a kid playing with a little toy top, a kitten fed a last bit of water. These deeply sad moments are framed by more bracing ones. A protestor is shot on-camera, eventually being left paralyzed. In the second half, Basel is beaten and dragged off by soldiers, his camera recording it all as it happens. It puts us in the shoes of those living under the rule of an occupying army. 

What we see, recorded by Basel and Yuval's cameras, is infuriating. We are told that the army needs this land, for a place to train their soldiers. The army places papers on homes and structure, notifying them that their land is being seized and will be destroyed. This extends even to a children's playground. Now, what is the strategic value of doing that? Why engineer such animosity and hatred among people, as we see the soldiers bullying and screaming at any and all protestors? Obviously, it is cruelty for cruelty's sake, punishment being dealt out by entitled imperialists. We see a clip of Yuval being interviewed on Israeli television, arguing for the humanity of the displaced Palestinians. The Zionist co-host insists that the people in Masafer Yatta are on land that belongs to their military. It's so frustrating to see anyone look at such obvious injustices and side with the oppressors. 

As a piece of cinematic journalism, “No Other Land” is certainly motivating. That it is partially the creation of someone in Israel is also interesting. Yuval is an outsider in Masafer Yatta. He often has to explain his position, that he's not a Zionist and hopes to bring attention to the plight of those living under the occupation. One of the repeated interviewees openly questions if Yuval is a spy, a thought that may or may not be sarcastic. It's absolutely a noble cause. However, the handful of scenes devoted to Yuval and Basel's conversations feel out-of-place. Not to say that such personal moments don't have their place in a narrative film. However, hearing Yuval talk about how his writing about the conflict receive middling reactions on social media or discussing how he feels about what he sees feels inessential to what the film is documenting. Anytime a filmmaker inserts themselves into a documentary, it does raise questions about their motivations.

Concerns about the inevitable egotism of the filmmaker worming its way into their work aside, “No Other Land” is obviously important filmmaking. First and foremost, because many people have political motivation to deny that these things happened. Whatever thoughts you may have about Hamas or actions carried out by Palestinian forces, there's nothing in my mind that justifies what we see being done in this film. As the “No Other Land's” epilogue points out, all of this was before October 7th, 2023. Predictably, things have only gotten worst since then. I'm well aware that “No Other Land” was shot, edited, and presented with a specific goal in mind. It is, effectively, propaganda. But come on. You don't need to be Palestinian to see what's going on in Gaza and abroad is a sickening travesty. Criticism of Israel is not criticism of the entire Jewish culture, despite what some might say, and having survived one genocide does nothing to justify another. Anyway, I'll wrap this up simply by saying that “No Other Land” is the definition of filmmaking as activism and shows the power of what pointing a camera at injustices can accomplish. [9/10] 

OSCARS 2025: The Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts

The Only Girl in the Orchestra (2023)

Many things inspire people to make a film. Usually, it's a story they are so passionate about telling that they simply have to get it out there. Sometimes, it's a form of activism, of bringing attention to a topic they believe deserves more eyeballs on it. Other times, you make a movie about someone simply because you love and admire them. This was clearly the motivating factor for Molly O'Brien when directing “The Only Girl in the Orchestra.” The thirty-three minute documentary is about O'Brien's aunt, Orin O'Brien. She was the first women hired to play in the New York Philharmonic. Leonard Bernstein personally selected her to play the double bass in the orchestra. The film is largely devoted to showing O'Brien's life as a recent retiree, while also discussing her career, the path that brought her to it, and how she navigated the difficulties of being a woman in a man-dominated profession.

You learn a few things from “The Only Girl in the Orchestra.” You learn about the condescending way O'Brien was treated throughout her career, especially when a newspaper article about her is read and it discusses her appearance and status as the sole woman there more than her ability as a musician. You learn that Orin O'Brien is the daughter of George O'Brien, a star during the silent era and a regular in John Ford's films who is best remembered now for Murnau's “Sunrise.” Her mother was Marguerite Churchill, also a successful actress who I recognize from “Dracula's Daughter” and “The Walking Dead.” Mostly, however, what we learn from the film is that Molly O'Brien loves her aunt. And that's nice. We see Orin get misty eyed as her piano is dissembled and carried out of her decaying apartment. She teaches and plays the bass with students and reminiscences about her life and career. 

It's all very pleasant. Orin seems nice. She's so humble that she actively asks what makes her worthy of being the subject of a movie. She shares multiple anecdotes about how it is the job of someone in an orchestra to work together with the group and not stand out. She is fine with that, finding it incredibly rewarding. Does any of that make for a compelling documentary? Sometimes. I like the fly-on-the-wall shots of Orin moving through her apartment or playing the bass. She's obviously an exceptionally talented woman. The film never really gets into where the drive, discipline, and passion someone must have to succeed in any creative field must come from though. It's simply a half-hour with a pretty cool old woman. Which isn't bad, by any means, but I do have to wonder why the Academy felt the need to single it out. [5/10]

Incident (2023)

In 2014, Chicago police murdered Laquan McDonald by shooting him in the back sixteen times. They later claimed McDonald lunged at them with a knife but body-cam footage proved otherwise. Following this, laws were changed so that any recordings of a violent police incident would be released to the public after sixty days. In July of 2018, a barber named Harith “Snoop” Augustus was also murdered by Chicago police. Harith had a Conceal and Carry License and had a legally purchased gun in a holster on his person. Police saw the object through his shirt. They stopped him and physically attempted to grab him. Augustus fled and was fatally shoot in the back. The killing was captured on film by surveillance cameras and body-cams. Bill Morrison's “Incident” assembles this footage into a thirty minute film, allowing a viewer to see the mundane events leading up to the killing, the murder itself, and what the cops did and said afterwards.

In other words, “Incident” shows us a police cover-up happening in real time. Using a split screen structure and on-screen subtitles, Morrison's films uses recordings to give us as much of an objective recounting of events as possible. We see the only interaction the police had with Augustus before attacking him: He walked by them and scratched his back. We see the cops leap at him violently and without cause when he attempts to show them his Conceal and Carry license. Most damning, we see and hear what happens after they kill him: Immediately, the cops start lying and making excuses. They claim shots were fired at them. They say Augustus was reaching for his gun. They flee the crime scene. When the cops realize they are being recorded, they begin to speak more carefully before turning the cameras off. 

This makes “Incident” a stark and distressing documentation of not only how police officers get away with killing innocent people but the mindset that turns them into murderers. The female officer who reached out to grab Augustus unprompted, on-camera, melodramatically states that she feared for her life. Minutes later, she's downgraded her concerns to being scratched on the arm, as if that justified murdering a man. The officer who shot Augustus is repeatedly reassured that he did nothing wrong, that he did “the right thing.” Notably, one of the first things the cops do after killing the innocent man is remove the holstered gun from the body. If “Incident” doesn't make you want to picket in front of your local police department, I don't know what will. It is such a clear recording of the way law enforcement in this country are trained to see any person of color as a violent threat, to react with lethal force to absolutely anything, and how they carry themselves with a mind set that justifies the crimes they commit and allows them to get away with it. I hope Harlith Augustus' family – his daughter was five at the time of his death – achieve some sort of peace in their lifetime, because I know his murderers will never face proper discipline for what they did. [9/10]

I am Ready, Warden (2024)

The co-director of “St. Louise Superman” returns to the Best Documentary Short Subject category with “I am Ready, Warden,” a film that makes us a fly on the wall of the death penalty debate. Eighteen years ago, John Henry Ramirez stabbed Pablo Castro 29 times outside a gas station in Corpsi Christi, Texas. He fled to Mexico for four years, fathering a child, before being apprehended and sentenced to death. While in prison, he discovered religion and did everything he could to be remorseful about his crime. The order of execution has been stayed three times before. An attempt by the Attorney General to downgrade Ramirez' sentence to Life in Prison did not succeed. In the days leading up to the man's execution, filmmaker Smriti Mundhra interviewed Ramirez, his son, the anti-death sentence activist who became his godmother, and the now adult son of the man he senselessly killed. 

I am against the death penalty, first and foremost, because I do not believe that an unjust system can deliver justice. Moreover, I don't believe that the taking of one life is balanced by the taking of another. “I am Ready, Warden” forces us to ask some difficult questions. Ramirez never asks for forgiveness for his crime, considers what he did a hideous act, and accepts his fate. However, he has clearly changed a lot in eighteen years. I don't know if I believe becoming religious is enough to prove someone has become a better person. Yet Ramirez has clearly thought about what he did. I don't think that redeems him for his crime. At the same time, I don't think taking a father away from one son, because he took another son's father away years before, is right. What does that achieve? Now two men are dead, more wounds are made and none from the past have been healed. “I am Ready, Warden” gives time to Pablo Castro's son, who doesn't have any interest in forgiving the man who killed his father. Nor should he and I wouldn't expect anyone in that situation to. However.. Is this the best way to insure some sort of moral equality has been done? 

If nothing else, the film is determined to put these events in context. It details Ramirez' own damaged childhood, abandoned by his father and physically abused by his mother. It describes how he grew up in an environment of drugs and violence. As senseless as the murder of Pablo Castro was, it didn't happen in a vacuum. Every action sends out a ripple and Ramirez was, perhaps, as much a victim of past mistakes as Castro's son was. “I am Ready, Warden” is soundly an anti-death penalty film but it doesn't preach either. It simply presents these difficult facts and asks us to come to our conclusions, if one murder justifies another. More in-depth films have been made on this topic. “I am Ready, Warden” is simply a microcosm of one such case among many but I did find it to be powerful. [7/10]

Death by Numbers (2024)

Mass shootings are so commonplace in America now that learning a survivor has gone on to become a filmmaker is sadly unsurprising. “Death by Numbers” is about and written by Sam Fuentes. She is a survivor of the Parkland high school massacre, which currently holds the grim record of deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. (Until it is inevitably eclipsed, because America is incredibly fucked-up.) In the years since the tragedy, Fuentes has done what she can to cope with the trauma by writing poetry and becoming an anti-gun violence activist. “Death by Numbers” shows her, in 2022, still healing from the mental scars. This comes to a head as Fuentes is summoned to the trial of Nikolas Cruz, the shooter. She is eventually chosen as the representative of all the victims, given the chance to speak directly to the person that killed seventeen of her classmates and teachers and injured sixteen more.

“Death by Numbers” is a film that ultimately operates in two modes. The first is more expressionistic, showcasing Fuentes' writing. Her poetry and journals are read in voiceover against a number of images, including scenes from “Meshes of the Afternoon.” This represents the survivor attempting to make sense of what she lived through and the motives of the man behind the violence. Nikolas Cruz defined himself as a white supremacist and coldly, cruelly made proclamations of wanting to be the world's deadliest school shooter. As if it was some sort of game. That Fuentes was in a Holocaust Studies Class during the shooting seems like an especially pointed, deliberate act on the killer's' behalf. It's such an utterly senseless and despicable act that there's no getting your brain around it. Fuentes' writing puts it in the context of hate speech and terrorism, which the film contrasts with images of Hitler, Nazis, and Alt-Right agitators. A twenty minute short doesn't have the room to put Cruz' acts in the context of the culture of hatred and violence that birthed him. What film could grapple with that subject fully? These are clearly Fuentes' personal attempts to comprehend the event and should be understood as such.

The other half of “Death by Numbers” is a more traditional documentary, following Fuentes as she's called to testify at Cruz' trial and eventually faces him in the courtroom. We see the trial play out, Fuentes' teacher and many of her classmates called forward to recount the details of the worst days of their lives once again. This is, obviously, extremely upsetting to watch. Whenever Cruz appears, his face is marked out, presumably to deny him any fame or power over his victims... But the views we do get of his blank, remorseless eyes are still chilling. Watching “Death by Numbers” after “I am Ready, Warden” is an interesting experience, both films dealing with whether the death penalty amounts to justice. Sam is against it herself and I agree with her. I don't believe that any person or act exist out of context. Cruz' public defender, without excusing his horrendous crimes, points out that he's clearly mentally ill and the result of an abusive background. At the same time, it's hard not to relate to the families of the victims. They exit the courtroom, shaking their heads in dismay after Cruz was only sentenced to life without parole. Sam Fuentes claims that her passionate speech to her attempted murderer, being forced to face the consequences of his actions, is a far more fitting punishment. However, seeing the clear shadow these events will cast on the lives of Fuentes and the other victims, and how inhumanly cruel the shooter seems, it's hard to feel victorious about how any of this plays out. This makes “Death by Numbers” a messy, upsetting, unsatisfying watch. But what else could it be? Sam Fuentes is doing what she can to make peace with what happened to her and others, like any of us would in her circumstance. That makes “Death by Numbers” a powerful piece of art taken from an extremely personal perspective.  [7/10]

Instruments of a Beating Heart (2024)

Let's have something more light-hearted now, shall we? In a Tokyo public school, the students of the first grade class are preparing for a big end-of-the-semester event: A performance of “Ode to Joy,” everyone in the class playing a different instrument. Little Ayame ends up getting assigned the cymbals. She feels an immense amount of pressure to perform well, receiving encouragement and scolding from her various teachers and class mates. Ema Ryan Yamazaki's film watches as Ayame prepares and catches other snapshots from the first grade class, as the kids get ready for this special time in their lives.

After three documentary shorts dealing with extremely serious and upsetting topics, I'll admit “Instruments of a Beating Heart” was a nice change of pace. This short is simply adorable throughout, devoted to watching some sweet kids being themselves. The students of this first grade class are a very sensitive lot. One of them starts to get a little weepy eyed because they are worried about whether their classmates will make it into the band. Ayame is maybe the most sensitive. At her young age, she's already feeling pressured to perform to a certain standard. A heartbreaker of a moment has a teacher reprimanding her for not memorizing her part in front of the class, which reduces the poor girl to tears. This leads to such a touching moment, when another teacher consoles her and says that if Ayame is scolded, she will be too. It's hard to imagine an interaction like this happening in an American school for so many different reasons – none of which are the fault of teachers or students – so it's nice to see young people so in-touch with their emotions and professionals so prepared to help them navigate it.

Catching such genuine, touching moments on-camera – examples of reality playing out in front of our eyes – is what the documentary genre is all about. “Instruments of a Beating Heart” doesn't break any new ground and, at only 23 minutes, feels a bit long. There's only so much story to be mined from this material. Nevertheless, this is about as sweet and adorable as you'd expect a class of first graders to be. As someone who always felt an enormous pressure to prove themselves running counter to being generally unprepared, I related so much to Ayame's struggles here. Luckily, the short has a happy ending. Sometimes all you need is a protagonist you can root for trying to overcome a challenge and succeeding in doing so. [7/10]

OSCARS 2025: Nosferatu (2024)

Robert Eggers certainly has an instantly recognizable style. His fascination with folklore, historical details, tendency to cook multiple themes into his work, and a droll sense of humor has made him among the most easily imitated of the modern wave of horror directors. Having such a distinct approach has also made him divisive, some finding his commitment to historical accuracy dorky or inauthentic somehow. From most accounts, the guy has always been like this. As a boy, he was such an obsessive fan of F.W. Murnau's “Nosferatu” that he adapted it as a school play. In other words, making a new “Nosferatu” movie has been a lifelong ambition of his. We've heard rumors of such a project for years, Anya Taylor-Joy or Harry Styles being attached at various points. After being in and out of development for a long time, Eggers' vision of “Nosferatu” finally solidified into an actual movie. The public's appetite for classic monsters and gothic horror seems to unpredictably come and go. However, the new “Nosferatu” would become a surprise box office success last December, spawning internet memes along the way, and re-introducing a new generation to this story. Now, despite being part of the genre rarely acknowledged by the Academy, it's nominated for four Oscars. 

Eggers' remake does not stray far from Murnau's film nor the Bram Stoker novel that proceeded it. The classic narrative is maintained: Thomas Hutter is a real estate agent in Wisburg, Germany, circa 1838, recently married to a troubled young woman named Ellen. He receives an assignment to travel to an obscure castle within the Carpathian mountains, in order to finalize a purchase of a derelict property in Wisburg. The buyer is Count Orlok and he is, obviously, a vampire. He imprisons Thomas and travels, via boat, to Germany, bringing the plague with him. A sickly Hutter, having survived and made the journey back home, teams up with the owner of a near-by insane asylum and a professor of the occult to save his wife from the thrall of this vampiric count. What Eggers adds is a new subplot about Ellen, haunted by otherworldly visions her whole life, having a prior history with the vampire... Which the undead count hopes to rekindle, whether she likes it or not. 

The Academy has nominated Eggers' “Nosferatu” for its cinematography, costumes, production design, and make-up. This speaks to the exactness the director and his team bring to the film in fulfilling a very specific image. “Nosferatu” is a gorgeous shadow show. The historical details in the costumes and sets are clearly meant to capture as accurate a version of Germany in the middle 1800s. This is paired with a highly stylized visual approach, the film rich with darkness and shadows. The film swings between naturalistic lighting in interiors that range from cozy to forebodingly sterile to sternly controlled expressionistic swings. The latter invokes a dream-like ambiance, visible in moments where Hutter, in all but a dream state, seems to float into a carriage. Multiple times throughout the film, cinematographer Jarin Blaschke – Eggers' go-to D.P. since “The Witch” – often employs an observing, smoothly moving approach. As if we, the audience, are also floating just outside the film and watching these events play out. It's all so perfectly arranged, the remake successfully unfolding like a gothic dreamscape. 

“Nosferatu” doesn't employ this style simply because it looks cool and successfully updates the classic horror visuals for the modern age. (Though it does do both of those things.) Bram Stoker's novel is a story of Victorian suppression, of polite and pure English maidens being at the mercy of a distinctively foreign monster. Count Dracula's attacks on Mina and Lucy invoke episodes of sleep paralysis, of a phantasmic incubus appearing at the girl's bedside to enforce his appetite on them. Or, worst yet for the morals of the day, awaken lust within them. How much of this was intentional on Stoker and how much was simply invoking folkloric traditions is hotly debated to this day. Whatever the case, Eggers' “Nosferatu” makes this the central thesis of the story. From the very first scene, Ellen is entuned with otherworldly forces. She invites in a comforting spirit, to bring her peace from the things she sees and feels and dreams about. Instead, she gets Count Orlok, a monster who physically uses her body. The Victorians, and presumably their German equivalents, insisted on keeping their lower needs in the shadows, pushing them into the subconscious. Our animal sexual urges are older than the spoken word, inevitably linked to ancient and pre-Christian beliefs. This means that lustful desires, the dreams and nightmares our sleeping mind weaves, and the occult are all one and the same. It's far from a new observation but it is a powerful one.

That's hard for Ellen, who wants to be a proper lady. She discusses her father finding her, naked in the woods, and accusing her of being "sinful." She's been shamed her whole life for the connection she has with the spiritual world. Throughout the film, she flies into hypnotic states, often gyrating wildly, spreading her legs, and lasciviously rolling her tongues around as if in orgasmic throes. Professor von Franz, the Van Helsing stand-in, accurately identifies these episodes as oracle-like states of higher being. (Both Ellen and von Franz are associated with cats, showing their feline-like intuitive links to the occultic realm.) This frightens Ellen, who has been told to suppress her otherworldly abilities as she suppresses her natural sexual desires. As she suppresses the latent queerness that is implied to be shared with Anna, the Lucy parallel. Presumably the same undercurrent of queerness that leads the Count to feed on Hutter, his body pumping and trembling as he does. It is also her power. Eggers' “Nosferatu” centers the Mina stand-in as the story's heroine, who ultimately destroys the vampire by embracing the tendencies she's been told to deny her entire life.

Many adaptations of the “Dracula” story play up the Count's connection to an unleashed libido by, simply put, making him hot. He seduces the maidens into his arms and they often get into it quickly enough, if they don't outright desire him to begin with. Eggers does everything it can to make Count Orlok a grotesque horror. (Which hasn't stopped the monster fuckers of the internet from lusting after him.) He also resists the commonly employed tactic of making the Harkers'/Hutters' marriage a sexless one, in order to make the vampire into the more attractive option. Thomas loves Ellen. He desires her. The two kiss passionately throughout and he goes through Hell to be with her again. When she is at her most desperate moment, writhing in a mad state, he loves her still. That is very honorable. However, Thomas Hutter is still a man. He is still of the world of man. Ellen hates Orlok. She wants to be with her husband. However, unavoidably, there is something about her that only the vampire can understand. “Nosferatu” is not a love story, at least not between the heroine and the monster. That doesn't stop its bloodsucker from having a certain irresistible allure. 

This speaks to another element of the film. Throughout the story, its male heroes employ logic as often as they can. Dr. Sievers is a man of science, who is reluctant to embrace the supernatural explanation. Harding, Hutter's friend and Anna's husband, eventually has his patience stretched pass the breaking point and dismisses any announcement of the paranormal. This stands in contrast to Ellen, with her somnambulant fits of mania, and Anna, who is at least willing to entertain the possibility of the otherworldly. Even their daughters identify a “monster” in their bedroom, which Harding sets out to slay. The men of this story want to impose the walls and barriers of their city on the natural world, shown beautifully in the contrast between the boxed-in visuals of Wisburg and the wide vistas of the Carpathians. What method has been more effective in taming the wild, the subconscious, than the forces of capitalism? The need to provide for his wife, to be a good worker, is what ultimately sees Hutter signing over Ellen to Orlok, like Judas trading Christ for silver. He instinctively feels it is wrong but does it anyway, to serve the order he has been told is the proper path. Women remain more in-tune with their emotional states while men are told to deny all emotional needs and strictly be practical. That's another reason why all the guys in the film are powerless to stop the ancient threat of Orlok, something only a woman can do.

Eggers' “The Witch” more-or-less kicked off the modern folk horror revival. This obviously means that his “Nosferatu” draws a lot more from classical Slavic legends about vampires than Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee. Count Orlok, as presented here, is a festering corpse. His sickly pale body is covered with tumorous growths and bony protrusions. His mere presence seems to feel wrong to everyone around him, Hutter being visibly disturbed simply by being in the same room with the Count. His easily imitated method of speech – truly, the Bane voice of 2024 – includes a constant wheezing rasp. Orlok is death incarnate. He controls the storms, manipulates the shadows, and brings with him the plague. The film is doing everything it can to dispel the modern notion of the sexy, romantic vampire. This Dracula is a deformed, hideous monster who himself denies an ability to feel love. Human emotions is beyond him and it's hard to imagine that he was ever human. Eggers has put a strictly folkloric vampire on the screen, including showing us Romani rituals for dealing with the undead. 

Bill Skarsgård, buried under mounds of make-up and adapting a wild accent, is unrecognizable as the vampiric count. This Dracula does not go to the theatre or don evening wear. He has a bushy mustache, accurate to the source material, and wears rigorously researched Hungarian attire.  He seemingly can only occupy the shadowy netherworlds of nightmares. At the same time, there is something tragic about him. When we do see Skarsgård's eyes, like Max Schreck's before him, they are wide and glaring... And sad too. Orlok is as drawn towards Ellen as she is to him. His methods are vile, eating babies and insisting spiritual contracts be fulfilled. However, as he dies to the morning crow of the cock, his story feels a bit inevitable too. The inhuman hunger that is his entire reason for being ultimately destroys him, like so many have been destroyed by their need for sex, companionship, and to have a desire fulfilled. 

As much as has been written about Eggers' commitment to period accuracy, his “Nosferatu” is undeniably a work of expressionism too. The performances are theatrical and high-strung. Lily-Rose Depp writhes wildly throughout the film, reminding us more than once of Linda Blair in “The Exorcist.” Willem Dafoe barks the script's most baroque dialogue, screaming towards the rafters in utter delightful fashion. Nicholas Hoult spends the entire movie bathed in flop sweat while Simon McBurney, as the Renfield stand-in Herr Knock, gloriously hams it up as a raving lunatic. This exaggerated style unavoidably bends towards humor at times. Ralph Ineson as Dr. Sievers is repeatedly a source of dry comedy, responding with understated horror to what he witnesses. The full-born sexuality of the vampire's invasion results in some snickering chuckles, strictly from the contrast between the stately setting and what is being done and said. Lots of people are coming in lots of different ways. I don't know how any one can accuse “Nosferatu” of being stuffy or lifeless, when it's overflowing with red-blooded theatricality in its acting. That adds a suitably bigger-than-life feeling to the film, matching its dream-like visuals and the Revelations-esque atmosphere to the scenes of Wisburg being consumed by the plague.

The story of “Dracula” has been told a hundred times before and will be told a hundred times again. This isn't Hoult or Dafoe's first brush with the material. It's not even the only “Nosferatu” movie that came out last year. However, when I re-read the book not that long ago, the movie I saw in my head was startlingly similar to Eggers' “Nosferatu.” While the remake has as many vocal deniers as Eggers' other work, I was obviously always going to love this. Motion pictures like this are what made me fall in love with the medium. It's nifty that the Academy noticed its artistry and I'm happy that the zoomers liked it too. It's a gloriously gothic retelling, as fascinating and intense as Herzog and Murnau's takes before it. Dracula and all his disciples will live forever, this film being proof once again that the story can always be reinvented and reinterpreted in exciting ways. [9/10]

OSCARS 2025: A Complete Unknown (2024)

He's one of those artists so venerated and respected that he's sometimes spoken of more as a saint than as a mere musician. Music critics and pop culture scholars continue to consider Bob Dylan one of the defining artists of the 20th century. That reputation surely has nothing to do with boomers mythologizing everything that made them feel important and socially conscious back in their youths. Considering that, it should be unsurprising that Bob Dylan would eventually receive the biopic treatment, that highest testament to someone being deemed a historically significant figure. That movie was called “I'm Not There” and it attempted to put a fittingly iconoclastic take on the life of a famously iconoclastic artist. It was well reviewed but the Academy didn't love it, only nominating Cate Blanchette's gender-bending take on the singer. Now, twenty years later, the “Walk the Line” guy decided we needed another movie about Bob Dylan. “A Complete Unknown” is a far more traditional biopic than the previous one. Academy voters, playing directly into every conception we have about them, loved this one a lot more than “I'm Not There,” nominating it in eight different categories. 

In 1961, little Bobby Zimmerman arrives in New York City with nothing but the clothes on his back and the guitar in his hand. He's there to visit his idol, Woody Guthrie, recently hospitalized because of his Huntington's disease. The young singer impresses Guthrie and Pete Seeger, another folk singer. Seeger is so taken with this stranger that calls himself “Bob Dylan” that he invites him to stay in his home. Dylan soon becomes part of the city's folk scene, moving in with a girl named Sylvie, meeting Joan Baez, and getting a record deal. Collaborating – and beginning an affair with – Baez leads to Dylan building a following. By 1965, he is a certified superstar. Dylan is frustrated though by the pressures of his record company, the rest of the folk music community, and his fans simply wanting more of the same. He contemplates a move towards electric music, alienating, frustrating, and impressing those around him.

As I said above, “A Complete Unknown” is James Mangold returning to the musician biopic genre that he previously touched upon in “Walk the Line.” In fact, Johnny Cash is also a character in this story, depicted as a pen pal of Dylan's. (He's played by Boyd Halbrook, not Joaquin Phoenix, denying us a springboard for the Sixties Singers Cinematic Universe.) Cash's life was full of the kind of angsty back stories and substance abuse that usually occupy movies like this. Dylan's life was too but, either out of a desire not to repeat himself or to distinguish this film from “I'm Not There,” Mangold limits his focus strictly to Dylan's rise to fame and his famous decision to break away from the folk scene by “going electric.” This means Dylan's story is paired down to one of an artist struggling for the freedom to express himself however he wants. The main conflict of the story comes from his dissatisfaction with being boxed into the label of a folk singer by the corresponding scene. Dylan is depicted as a totally independent free spirit, not afraid to piss people off in the name of being true to his artist's heart. 

I'm not shocked that the Academy would be taken with a story such as this, being a whole bunch of self-satisfied artist types. “A Complete Unknown” stubbornly refuses to elaborate too much on Dylan's back story. He talks about traveling with a carnival, which Baez declares to be bullshit. His real name is only referenced in one scene. Instead, Dylan is defined almost entirely by his drive to do his music, his way. He cheats on Sylvie – based on his real life girlfriend, Suze Rotolo – with Baez. This doesn't stop him from acting like a prick around her, despite her giving him the idea to record his own music. While on tour with Joan, he walks off-stage after getting bored of playing the same songs. He is openly contemptuous of all the wannabe folkies he inspired. The climatic decision to add electric guitars and organs to his music is outright rejected by the people around him, Dylan caring more about his personal expression than pleasing people. Which is admirable, sure, but did he have to be such a conceited dick about it?

A better movie wouldn't make excuses for Bob's asshole-ish vanity and egotism. “A Complete Unknown” pretends not to, certainly drawing attention to how much Bob annoys the people around him. Joan Baez dismisses his obvious pretensions. Sylvie gets fed up with his philandering. Pete Seeger is depicted as a bumbling father figure, too nice to outright tell Bob no. The implication that Dylan merely cashed in on the actual social movements of the sixties, using political strife as a way to launch his career, lingers in the background. However, all of that is dismissed every time Bob actually performs. His music is shown as innately brilliant, the man coming across as a performer with an unavoidable sway over his audience. When he becomes a pop icon, people practically chasing him down in the streets and women throwing themselves at him, it's depicted as a natural reaction to his brilliance. Bobby wants nothing to do with that, because he's too fucking cool to be praised, but that doesn't change the utter admiration the film has for him. 

In other words, “A Complete Unknown” implicitly claims that any and all of Dylan's obnoxious rock star antics were totally justified by his genius. Everyone else becomes mere players in the story of Dylan self-actualizing as the defining artist of his time. Monica Barbaro plays Baez with a generous sense of being sick of this guy's bullshit. Elle Fanning gets one heartbreaking moment as Sylvie, when she realizes she's not the only woman in her boyfriend's life. Edward Norton puts on his chummy, normcore routine as Seeger to some success. Yet all of these performances and characters are never truly fleshed out, existing only as accessories to the grandness of Bob Dylan: The Great American Songwriter. This is also evident in Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash's depictions. The former is never more than the idol that inspires Dylan and, of course, thinks he's so great too. The latter is clearly drinking too much at this time but it's never considered if that might possibly be affecting his support of Dylan's tactics. All falls before Dylanism, the most important thing in the world.

An approach like this possibly, maybe, could have worked if “A Complete Unknown” included an utterly brilliant, once-in-a-generation central performance. If “Bob Dylan,” as a character in this film, actually did seem to be a mind-blowingly revolutionary artist, maybe the disconnect would bother me less. Timothée Chalamet is good in the lead role. He dutifully adopts Dylan's mumbly-mouthed method of speech. He sings and strums the guitar in a convincing simulation of the bard's style. He captures the mannerisms of Dylan, especially once the second half of the film begins and Bob has thoroughly created his disaffected hipster persona. However, never once was I absorbed by what Chalamet is doing. He's so clearly acting, showing off his own abilities as a professional less than he is embodying a character. This suits the movie's distance from Dylan, as it refuses to dig too deep into his personality outside of his drive to do his own thing. Would've been nice if we could have gotten some insight into what about the social change of the sixties inspired Bob, why he chose to write those words in that way. Instead, we have to be satisfied with Chalamet mirroring how the man sounded and moved.

“A Complete Unknown” is not totally your standard musician biopic, as it foregoes the standard rise-and-fall-and-rise again structure. The film heavily foreshadows the motorcycle crash that would almost end Dylan's life but stops shy of including it. “I'm Not There” is a much more self-reflective look at Dylan's philosophy as an artist and much more willing to call him on his own ridiculousness. “A Complete Unknown” largely lacks that attribute, coming across as more of a movie about Bob Dylan for people already convinced of Bob Dylan's greatness. I'm more agnostic about the guy and his music, if that wasn't obvious, and I ultimately found the film's self-aggrandizing ways a bit tiresome. Not a bad movie but the mystical allure of Dylan remains slightly beyond me. [6/10]

OSCARS 2025: Better Man (2024)

2024 was a great year for Hollywood's most underrepresented minority: Computer-generated apes. The Academy passed up a chance to have the Visual Effects category be entirely dominated by digital primates, leaving out “Godzilla X Kong” and “Gladiator II's” shaved baboons. However, it is still a slate heavy with talking chimps and flying monkeys this year. Probably the weirdest example of 2024's most delightful trend was “Better Man,” a biopic about Robbie Williams in which he's portrayed as a damn dirty ape. Strangely, the main question the film prompted in the United States was not “...why?” Instead, “Better Man” got us bloody yanks to ask “Who the hell is Robbie Williams?” I have a long enough memory to vaguely recall “Millennium,” Williams' sole hit over here, but I had no idea he was some sort of pop phenomenon in his native U.K. Paramount paid a pretty penny for the film, the latest in a long line of attempts to Make Robbie Williams Happen in the U.S., only to see it flop. Nevertheless, the audacity of its premise caught the attention of critics and film nerds, who have had kinder things to say about it than they ever did Williams' music. 

When Mr. Robert Williams was but a young chimp, he lived in a poor part of Stoke-on-Trent with his beloved Nan, hardworking mother, and his entertainer father. Dad was often absent and Robbie became determined to win his attention by becoming a song-and-dance ape himself. He learns of an open audition to put together a boy band, seeing it as his one shot at fame. Robbie wins the talent agent over by being a smart-ass rapscallion, becoming the hairiest member of pop group Take That. The quintet soon becomes a sensation in England but Robbie is frustrated by the pressures of stardom and playing second banana to the group's assigned leader. He develops a massive drug habit to quiet the lingering thoughts of failure in his brain. Robbie's monkey business gets him kicked out of Take That but he sets off on a solo career, writing his own songs and becoming more popular than his band mates. He's a superstar now but still feels like a fuck-up, doing more drugs and pushing away his loved ones. Can this primate performer defeat his own self-doubt, overcome addiction, and evolve into an upright human man? 

Before you can discuss anything else about "Better Man," you have to address the chimpanzee in the room. The film resembles the standard musician biopic in many ways, what with its story of a talent emerging from nothing, becoming a star, tumbling into sex and drugs, and surviving to win more respect. Except, of course, for its subject being portrayed as an anthropomorphic P. troglodyte. The other characters never acknowledge this creative choice and the film always treats Robbie as if he's human. It must symbolize something then. Is it a reference to how Williams felt like a "dancing monkey" for his manager and record label? Or perhaps a literalization of how his snorting and boozing makes him into a beast? The film was sold with the tagline "Fame makes a monkey of us all," suggesting "Better Man" is about the dehumanizing nature of stardom. Williams himself justifies the choice by saying he's "always felt less evolved than other people." The truth is the monkey means all of these things and nothing at all. It's an elaborate but hollow charade, the viewer projecting any meaning onto it that they want. Which is also, I suppose, a good metaphor for the relationship between the pop star and their fan following. 

The real reason, I believe, that "Better Man" depicts Williams as an upright tschego is mostly to distinguish it from every other rock star biography. Robbie Williams' story isn't especially unique among pop singers who grappled with fame, family, and substance abuse. The required sequence of Robbie in rehab and detoxing almost feels like an afterthought. Instead, the choice allows director Michael Gracey to go on all sorts of bizarre flights of fancy. The film is more a traditional musical, with imaginative song and dance sequences breaking out at any moment. The visuals are often hyper-stylized, the camera swinging through rapidly edited montages that represent Williams' state of mind. Making the pop idol into a hairy hominid actually isn't the film's sole fantastical element, as it often explodes into dream-like set pieces. Such as Robbie crashing his sports car and being pulled down by spectres of his voracious fan girls. Or Take That prancing through the streets and progressing through an entire career's worth of custonms and dances within one song. "Better Man" embraces the surreal life of being a celebrity by becoming a series of expressive music videos. 

The film's most frantically realized sequence is a show stopper number in which Robbie has a bloody sword fight with past versions of his pop star persona. This includes ones depicted earlier in the film and references to some of his music videos, such as a skinless ape or one in KISS make-up. That is a cumulation of "Better Man's" most effective creative choice. Any time Robbie performs, he sees visions of himself-as-ape sneering at him, telling him he's a loser, a phony, destined to fail. As someone cursed with a mixture of depression and OCD, this is an extremely accurate depiction of negative self-talk. A lot of rock biopics stumble over making the inevitable drug-induced bad behavior seem like anything but childish self-pity. By visualizing Robbie's struggle with his own doubts and fears, you actually understand why he's always drunk, high, strung-out, or fucking. It turns the voices off and distracts him from his own crushing, inescapable feelings of never being good enough. 

The film depicts the secret to Williams' success being his blokey, sarcastic wit. He's never above telling people to fuck off, making a clown of himself, or doing and saying whatever outrageous thought comes into his simian skull if it'll entertain people or get some attention. "Better Man" follows this lead, Williams' contributing a voice over narration often laced with fourth wall breaking jokes and confessions. He describes himself as a narcissistic twat in the first scene, the script going along with this often self-deprecating approach. That might have been enough to distinguish "Better Man" from every other rock star story, though I agree that the computer generated monkey was the real stroke of genius. The film is certainly a far wartier warts-and-all depiction than most. Its primate protagonist puts a Tony Montana sized amount of coke up his nose, looks ridiculous in a series of campy costumes, and is reduced to a long-limbed junkie before the end. Unlike your average rockography, "Better Man" never has much pretensions about the value of Williams' music. He only wants to make people smile, to give 'em a larf. This goes a long way towards making the film more interesting than it probably would've been otherwise. 

Which isn't to say that "Better Man" is a parody or non-sentimental. It's certainly very funny – such as in a hilarious scene when Robbie argues with his childhood best friend while snorting lines and vacuum sealing his sequined body suit – and glib in a lot of ways. However, the story of Williams' emotional journey is played totally straight. His relationship with his grandmother, who eventually sinks into senility, aims right for the heart. Similarly, his child-like pleas to be seen, loved, and accepted are never laughed at. Perhaps because the rest of the film is so willingly nutty, these emotional strokes usually work fairly well. I'll admit, the plight of sad chimpling Robbie being bullied by school mates and unloved by his absent dad got to me. However, pairing Darwinian antics and debauchery with heartfelt emotions only goes so far. The subplot about Robbie's relationship with his dad never quite convinced me. The elder Williams is depicted as opportunistic, capricious, and self-centered. When he tries to literally pull a crashed-out Robbie from a lake, he shouts mean but totally accurate statements as his dad. However, the film concludes with an emotional reconciliation between father and son. The idea is that every important person in our lives had a hand in making us who we are, whether they behaved badly or not. Maybe this is my own Daddy Issues talking here but I had a lot more trouble accepting that Mr. Peter Williams was worthy of forgiveness for abandoning his boy than that a motion-capture bonobo could become Britain's biggest pop star. 

Well, maybe the love story between Robbie and Nicole Appleton, of all girl group All Shine, could have been a bit more fleshed-out. I have no previous familiarity or built-in fondness for the songs in the movie but they are all pretty decent. As far as overproduced pop nonsense goes, they seem fun. The nominated visual effects are indeed impressive. The CGI artists did a great job making Robbie's chimpy facial features and eyes surprisingly expressive. While it cannot escape the pitfalls of the genre, "Better Man" does manage to be a musician biopic not quite like any other. It's visual flash-bang, willingness to get wacky, and off-hand approach to its subject makes the standard arc wildly entertaining. Which is a statement that Robbie Williams, both the man and the monkey, would probably approve of. [8/10]