Director Report Card: Destin Daniel Cretton (2026)

 

7. Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Getting to direct a "Spider-Man" movie must be a real double-edged sword by this point. He's one of those superheroes that nearly everybody has strong feelings about. Thousands more kids grew up watching the cartoons and movies or playing the video games or with the toys than those that ever bothered to read a comic book. You're going to be judged and scrutinized by hardcore nerds and filthy casuals with spider symbol decals on their cars. At the same time, a film actually about Spider-Man – and not one of his villains or a blind lady he talked to a few times – is guaranteed to be a massive success. Also to consider is that the Marvel Cinematic Universe house style is so ingrained at this point that it's unlikely to make any filmmaker a household name. I'm sure Jon Watts and Marc Webb have done just fine for themselves. However, their stints with the web crawler did little to raise their profiles beyond earning the scorn of hyper-online nerds. These types of gigs are surely beneficial to the directors' bank accounts at the cost of any public artistic identity.

So you're Destin Daniel Cretton. You've directed some well regarded indies and two Oscar Bait dramas that didn't win Oscars. Marvel scoops you up to direct a project conceived during the period when every movie they were making, no matter how obscure the source character was, became a huge success... But the movie releases after the pandemic, when the air is fast running out of that balloon. I thought "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" was among the best of the studio's post-"Endgame" slate and it did okay at the box office. Nevertheless, a prospective sequel and spin-off series got lost in the corporate shuffle to re-right the ship and your leading man said some kind of weird shit online. You're going to direct the next "Avengers" movie but then you aren't, because that project's leading man got real-deal canceled and took the entire planned direction for the franchise with him. Your prestige mini-series about Japanese-American soldiers in World War II is slow to develop and another Marvel TV project – the shrinking number of people still watching those like it – is the only thing you've actually directed in the last four years. Your Disney corporate overlords offer you the next "Spider-Man," maybe to make up for the "Avengers" fiasco. Do you take the job? Of course, you do. "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" has opened to predictably enormous box office, so I'm betting Cretton is feeling fine about all this. But what of the film itself? Let us investigate further. 

Despite taking its subtitle from a controversial comic story line, "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" is not set in the aftermath of a deal with the devil and Aunt May is still dead. Instead, the new status quo established by "No Way Home's" ending has Peter Parker forgotten by all his friends and loved ones. He has focused his life entirely on being Spider-Man. While this has made the web head New York City's most beloved hero, it's left Peter feeling isolated. His spider powers begin to develop in strange ways, his body producing organic webbing and Peter going into rage fueled black-outs where he acts dangerously. Soon, a new threat emerges: A psychic presence that can inhabit any body and seems determined to break into the Department of Damage Control. This new villain directly targets MJ, who Peter still loves but who no longer remembers him. The Spider-Man is going to have to learn to control his new powers, consider the cost of reconnecting with those who have forgotten him, and unravel the true motive behind this enemy all at once.

Filmmakers keep saying they have a desire to make a "street level" Spider-Man movie. While the character is certainly involved in universe reshuffling shenanigans regularly, most of his villains are of more humble ambitions than world dominance. Of course, every superhero movie has to be an event now, meaning the last several appearance of the character have been crossovers or globe-trotting adventures. At various points in development, it was promised that "Brand New Day" would finally refocus on the neighborhood part of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. And for about a half-hour in the first half, it actually is that. There's a highly energetic montage devoted to showing encounters with a series of B-list villains, each one patterned directly after a classic cover. This is part of a longer first act, in which Spidey is directly in contact with the chief of police and simply stopping whatever petty super-crime comes along. Even after the mind swapping threat appears to centralize the story, this more casual energy remains for a while. This is, in fact, the pace and tone I've always wanted from a Spider-Man movie. Aside from the thrill of seeing, say, Tombstone on-screen, a Spidey who is always swinging in and out of other adventures works great for me. 

Of course, this is not meant to last for the entire runtime. Each of the MCU Spider-Man movies have been reluctant to let the character stand alone, bringing Iron Man, Nick Fury, or Doctor Strange into the plot. You would think that, of all of Marvel's characters, literally their most popular would be able to stand alone. Whether this is a result of the Byzantine contractual obligations between Disney and Sony that make these movies possible or simply a desire to establish this Spidey as thoroughly part of the cinematic universe, that trend continues in “Brand New Day.” The Punisher appears early in the run time and reoccurs throughout. Dr. Bruce Banner gets a conversation with Peter before his green, angry alter ego is spotlighted in a later action sequence. The mysterious antagonist of the film turns out to be exactly who everyone has speculated they would be, another very well-known  Marvel character re-debuting on-screen. The superhero supporting cast is so prominent throughout “Brand New Day” that it might as well have been called “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends” or “Marvel Team-Up Featuring Spider-Man.”

The stated goal of wanting to be a lower stakes story simply about the web-slinger, his civilian buddies and love interest, obviously conflicts with high-profile characters showing up. It also creates another tiring feeling, of sitting through a big budget superhero flick that is merely an extended preview of another big budget superhero flick that Marvel Studios' brain trust is presumably hard at work on. Can we not just enjoy a story by itself? Must every tights-wearing motion picture be a part of a massive web of crossovers and brand synergy? Ya know, Peter Parker swinging over to a college campus and getting some advice from Dr. Banner is one thing. That would be a fairly standard event in the pages of the comics. However, here this scene merely proceeds a showdown with the Hulk later on. Devoting the primary villain role to another hotly anticipated character is a more questionable decision, tying Spider-Man to a character he's not that associated with and promising more adventures – more corporate product we must consume – down the line. 

Of all the guest stars, the Punisher is one that gives me the most pause. The blood thirsty vigilante first appeared as a Spider-Man adversary, of course. I've not read every appearance the two characters have made together. I'm sure, at one point or another, they interacted in a more cooperative manner. However, it still feels a little weird to have Spider-Man bantering with a character that has been acknowledged in-universe to be essentially a mass murderer. Jon Bernthal and Tom Holland have some decently amusing chemistry. The contrast between the younger hero's irrelevant style and Frank Castle's gruffness is worth a laugh or two but, by the end, we are meant to have genuinely warm feelings about their relationship. Which feels like a kind of weird thing to do with such a hard-boiled character. The script never quite acknowledges that the Friendly Neighborhood hero is being all buddy-buddy with a brutal killer throughout, one presumably wanted in connection with hundreds of homicides. Perhaps I am simply too much of a nerd to overlook the disconnect here and the average theater-goer will be less bothered by this. 

That “Brand New Day” is so preoccupied with slightly distracting crossovers is all the more frustrating as the premise has an intriguing question behind it. Peter Parker has always been pulled between the duty he feels as a superhero and his devotion to his friends and family. In this film, he's essentially chosen his crime fighting over his love life, in an attempt to keep them safe from the consequences of being connected to Spider-Man. All he can do is watch from afar as his best friend and the girl he loves both easily move on without him. This addresses an anxiety perhaps all of us have felt: How vital are we to other people's lives? If we disappeared suddenly, would the people so important to us find us equally important to them? The push-and-pull between wanting those we love to be happy and move on and what value this assigns to our own existence strikes me as an extremely Spider-Man-like emotion to explore. 

This idea takes center stage in the film's middle section, when the focus turns to Peter and MJ's relationship. Tom Holland and Zendaya continue to have strong chemistry, making these moments even more compelling. The script, at first, seems like its sticking to its guns and isn't going to magically undo past events. The blank slate is indeed blank. Obviously, this is the emotional backbone of the entire movie. Frustratingly, that relationship is entirely sidelined during the actual climax, which basically removes MJ from the story all together. Instead, the script repeatedly focuses in on a much less compelling idea, asking Peter if he truly has to do this all by himself. This moves towards a more generalized struggle against grief and finding the strength to go on after such a loss. This is a much less interesting idea, that never quite squares with the story actually being told here and ultimately feels like a somewhat desperate attempt to connect Peter's story with that of the antagonist's. 

Another common enough Spider-Man trope is Parker's personal anxieties effecting his ability to fight crime. “Brand New Days” draws a little from storylines in which his spider side mutates further, this time as a manifestation over his fears of losing MJ for good. The sequel stops short of having Peter sprout extra arms or turn into a full-on human/spider hybrid. Instead, he merely wakes up in his own webs at one point and develops fully black sclera. This is disappointing in its own right, as it feels like this subplot never quite pays off. Further more, the way this is ultimately resolved really (excuse the pun) bug me. Spider-Man continues to struggle with a fear that he's losing control of his own abilities up until a pivotal moment where... He closes his eyes, thinks about it real hard, and seizes control. At which point, he suddenly has access to a whole new plethora of superpowers that give him the boost needed in a big fight scene. This, to me, feels like video game logic infecting Hollywood screenwriting. Peter Parker levels up, simply by progressing through events, and can now control that which he previously couldn't. It does not feel earned, like a proper pay-off to the hero's development, and simply has him being able to do these now because it's that time in the story. 

Writing like this, distressingly becoming more common in big budget cinema of late, undersells the idea that the story's deeper themes mean anything. How can we accept “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” as an actual reflection on grappling with loss, trying to stone-wall our personal pain, or anxieties that our loved ones will be fine without us if it all wraps up with some shonen fighting anime style power-up? That points towards a problem all blockbuster cinema has, in our increasingly corporate age. The last third of “Brand New Day” sees all of New York City rallying around their local hero, cheering for him to make a brave recovery. There's a lengthy montage of the character's distinctive red and blue web pattern appearing in all sorts of public contexts. At this point, the question becomes if the sequel isn't much more than a self-indulgent act of corporate self-promotion. Look upon this hyper-valuble I.P., mere mortal movie goers, and think about how much you love Product. Is the film's script built upon the nostalgic, emotional connection the audience has to the “brand” itself and not to the story its telling? 

It's entirely possible I'm overthinking this. That I've gotten too old and cranky to simply embrace a special effects driven spectacle for its own sake. Maybe my brain is too full of worries about corporate waste as the world faces down threats much more important than costumed villains. Popular films are ostensibly a reflection of the world they are made in. There are hints throughout “Brand New Day” of how fucked-up shit has gotten in America. A scene where a character is abducted off the street by black-clad government agents, shoved into a van, and un-person-ed in broad daylight is a (possibly questionable) reflection of ICE raids and anti-fascist protesters getting dragged off. The story bends towards an easily guessed twist, that the agencies we have designated with protecting us might be more interested in consolidating their own power instead. Of course, these ideas are never seriously confronted. As in past Marvel movies, the abuses of power by the government are dismissed as the acts of bad apples. Spider-Man stops the bad guy and they get arrested by the cops. He doesn't dismantle the architecture of systematic repression and control. Such short-falls are to be expected but it represents the film's unwillingness to actually make us care, to invest its world with the proper amount of reality. 

Which points towards another problem I have with “Brand New Day,” one that necessitates I enter Extremely Obvious Spoilers territory to address: Why is Jean Grey the bad guy in a Spider-Man movie? From the minute up-and-coming redhead actress Sadie Sink was cast in an undisclosed part, fans assumed she was playing the future X-Woman. The script reveals this is the case about half-way through, as if the filmmakers are admitting how obvious this would-be twist must be. While Miss Grey has been possessed by genocidal cosmic consciousnesses from time to time, she's not typically a villain. A viewer with a basic measure of comic book knowledge can anticipate that she's acting this way for a good reason. While the origins we're familiar with have been rearranged, it still presents an underwhelming reveal about what is really going on.

Sink is fine in the role. Her big blue eyes can convey a degree of pain and emotion that suits what her character is going through. I'm sure she'll do fine in the surely forthcoming “X-Men” movie Disney is working on right now. Occasionally, “Brand New Day” utilizes its telepathic villain for some exciting sequence. People rag-dolling for a second as another mind takes over their bodies is inconsistently portrayed, usually being used as visual shorthand to show us who is under Grey's control at that moment. (Which does remove some of what is supposed to make her powers frightening, the idea that this threat can be anyone at any moment.) However, the sequence where Peter has to outrun the body-hopping possessive entity across the streets of New York is well-done. It's certainly better than the CGI infused finale, that turns this into a city-wide threat with lots of explosive special effects also depended on the idea of a character suddenly gaining control over new powers. Again, I'm just left wondering why these events are being focused on over elements of the story that obviously mean a lot more to these characters and everything that came before. 

The answer to that question is obvious: Because it's a Marvel movie. Getting a soratonin spike out of the audience simply by putting a familiar name or face on-screen is what these films have increasingly been designed to do. It's frustrating because, occasionally, “Brand New Day” does prove to be compelling blockbuster film making in its own right. A highlight of Cretton's “Shang-Chi” were action scenes that balanced acrobatic martial arts with the expected CGI spectacle more often. There's some of that in Cretton's “Spider-Man” as well. Not only when Peter is swinging through the city or tossing webbing around to capture opponents. During several clever spots, the point-of-view itself inverts and swings around the action, truly putting the viewer in the center of this thrill ride. When battling a group of acrobatic ninjas or a free-fall struggle with the Hulk, I was able to get caught up in this. If I'm being especially generous, “Brand New Day” is better than most comic book adaptations of putting the visual dynamism of the four-color medium in motion on the big screen. If I'm being more honest with myself, these moments represents brief surprises in-between a lot of far less memorable lighting, blocking, and cinematography. 

And that brings me back around to the question of Destin Daniel Cretton's authorial fingerprint. I'm sad to say that you don't see much of his personality coming through the film. Learning how to square away personal trauma and continue on with your life is certainly a present theme in the film, as it was in his “Wonder Man' series as well. However, like I said, that often takes a back seat to the bombast. Cretton's other pet themes, of daddy issues and cultural integration, simply aren't present at all. In fact, aside from some of those “Shang-Chi”-like action scenes, the only move here that strikes me as indicative of Cretton's previous work is a soundtrack that's heavy on indie rock needle drops, especially during plaintive montages. That gave me some “I Am Not a Hipster” flashbacks. Otherwise, it's hard not to conclude that the “Short Term 12” auteur has been thoroughly swallowed up by the blockbuster machine. 

It is, in other words, just another Marvel movie. “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” has its moments, a splash of color or inventive action work that got my heart pumping. The cast remains likable. That opening act really did give me hope that this would be a proper day-in-the-life-of-Spider-Man adventure and not merely a teaser for the next massive crossover to come. Sadly, that's not the case. The mere sight of my childhood comic book collection being brought to life on-screen is not enough to subsist a whole movie anymore. This lack of novelty, the sense that the product itself has become the point and not whatever thoughts or feelings it might invoke, is what has made superhero cinema a lot less interesting to me lately. “Brand New Day” isn't bad. It's fine. Will I ever feel the need to watch it again? That's a question I have a much less certain answer to. Good luck with that "Naruto" movie, Destin. [Grade: C+]

 

Director Report Card: Chloe Zhao (2025)

 

5. Hamnet

There was a period after Chloe Zhao's first films became indie darlings, when she first signed a deal to direct “Eternals,” that cinematic taste-makers worried they had lost their girl. “NomadLand” had not yet been declared overrated, ya see. If someone who came up doing low budget dramas shifts to making a mega-budget blockbuster, the unavoidable assumption is that this is mostly what they will be making afterwards. The flurry of projects Zhao was attached to after “Eternals” seemed to see this through. She was making a sci-fi western version of “Dracula” and maybe a “Star Wars.” The humble filmmaker of “The Rider” was no more or so it seemed. Then “Eternals” under-performed by Marvel Cinematic Universe standards, many viewers agreeing that Zhao was not suited to CGI bombast. Her next film to actually get made was “Hamnet.” As an adaptation of an acclaimed book about a very famous historical figure was not exactly on the same micro-budget level of “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” or “The Rider.” However, it was obviously a lot closer to Zhao's foundational work than her swing at superhero shenanigans. While I'm sure some will still insist that transitioning to Oscar-friendly period dramas still means Zhao has lost her way, the consensus seems to be that Zhao is back in her comfort zone. 

William Shakespeare and his wife – usually named in the historical records as Anne Hathaway but sometimes called Agnes – had three children. Only one was a son. The boy's name was Hamnet and he died at the tender age of 11. Some years afterwards, the Bard wrote a play whose title and main character share a name with his deceased child. This has resulted in much scholarly speculation about whether “The Tragedy of Hamlet” was inspired by his son's death or an expression of his grief. Little else is known about Hamnet's life or his death, what took his life remaining a mystery. This has not stopped authors from expanding on the possible connection. Maggie O'Farrel's novel and now Zhao's film adaptation invents most of their narrative around these historical events.

Agnes is centered in this story, the daughter of a rich lord and a woman rumored to be a witch. Before her death, Agnes' mother passed her knowledge of folk remedies onto her daughter. The son of a glove maker, to pay off his father's debt, takes a job teaching Agnes' step siblings Latin. The two soon catch each others' eye, their courtship beginning. William and Agnes soon wed. Shortly afterwards they are blessed with a daughter, Susanna. Not long after that, the twins Hamnet and Judith arrive. As William becomes a successful playwright, he splits time between his country home and the city. Agnes has uncanny visions of her youngest daughter's death. When the plague rips through the area, Judith becomes ill and it seems her predictions are coming true. Hamnet, who has promised his father to protect his sisters and mother, crawls into bed. The next day, Judith is alive and Hamnet is dead. William retreats into his work, returning to London to produce a new play. Agnes is left alone with her grief. When she learns the title of her husband's next play, she is uncertain how to react but goes to see the debut performance nevertheless.

William Shakespeare's body of work is, probably, the most analyzed and studied pieces of fiction in all of the English language. Over the hundreds of years his plays and sonnets have been part of the canon, they've been considered, imitated, adapted, and deconstructed from seemingly every angle imaginable. Shakespeare has always been with us, as far as anyone living is concerned. When one name has cast such a long shadow for such a long time, it becomes difficult to think of him as a human being. He is The Bard, not a man, and therefore his work stands apart from the details of his personal life. Of course, every writer puts themselves into their work and there's no reason to suspect this would have been untrue during the reign of Elizabeth I. “Hamnet” forces us to consider Shakespeare as a living person whose plays reflect what he was feeling and living through. It is a clever way to bring the words of “Hamlet,” so ingrained in our literary culture as to appear stodgy, back to life.

“Hamnet” establishes its thesis moment fairly early on. Early in William and Agnes' courtship, he meets her at her favorite spot in the surrounding woods. His attempts at starting a conversation devolve into awkward stammering. Instead, Agnes suggests he tells a story. Billy Shakespeare relates a rendition of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, charming the woman before him. The myth is one of otherworldly devotion and passion that resists godly orders. In other words, the writer is telling a story in order to express how he is feeling. It is a symptom of the creative mind, I'm afraid, that this is sometimes the best way for us to get a specific emotion across. If you know what “Hamnet” is about, and you probably do if you're watching it, you can tell how this set-up will come back around later in the film. 

The legend of Orpheus and Eurydice isn't only one of undying devotion but also of loss and the underworld. This conversation pointedly takes place near a large hole in the forest ground, a gaping black maw that might as well be the entrance to the underworld spoken of in the Greek myth. A parallel is drawn later on between this pit and the gap in the stage setting from which the ghost of Hamlet's father enters and exits. Around this same location, Agnes' pet hawk is also later found dead. It's an emotion floating all throughout “Hamnet,” that the physical reality of death is never far from us. We see it again when Agnes recalls seeing the body of her mother as a little girl or when Judith is bored unbreathing, only to take her first breathe shortly afterwards. “Hamnet” is not exactly a grim reminder of our mortality and the inevitability of death. It's a more sentimental film than that. However, it is concerned with something alive becoming an empty shell. There is a degree of earthy rot inevitably within this reflection on grief. 

Agnes is introduced next to that deep hole in the ground, curled up in the fetal position among a world of vibrant green vegetation. It is one she returns to throughout the film. Her mother was said to have emerged from the woods, like a fairy or nymph. She works with herbs and plants, whispering incantations to them as she crushes them against a stone. Her pet hawk does not seem receptive to any other trainers. William, meanwhile, is first seen in a class room. His natural environment seems to be crouched around a writing desk. His work takes him away from his family often. When Shakespeare does enter into the forested realm that seems to have birthed Agnes, his interactions are a bit awkward and stumbling. These two do love each other and find common ground but they ultimately inhabit different worlds. They are inevitably going to process grief in different ways because, no matter how much they love one another, they walk different lives. 

Zhao plays with the suggestion that Agnes Hathaway truly was attuned to some witchy energy. She claims to be able to tell people's futures from holding their hands. She has visions of uncertain origin. The twins also pull pranks, like dressing in each other's clothes to fool their dad, hinting that they have some otherworldly link as well. Both mother and son seem to have glimpses of the future, when Agnes says she can see Hamnet “up on the stage.” Whether we can take any of these suggestions literally is a matter of interpretation. Agnes herself seems to doubt the sincerity of her own beliefs at times. When Will stares at a shadow puppet show depicting the arrival of the plague in England, it feels like he too is trying to gleam something deeper from what's before him. This is, of course, true of all art. We are seeing mere projections, that we can choose to take meaning from. While “Hamnet' is unambiguous about what it thinks “Hamlet” is about, perhaps we can read this idea into the film itself. This is simply what O'Flannel and Zhao think is what happens.

I wish “Hamnet” trusted its audience a little more than it does. When the titular lad perishes, we are greeted to dreamy visions of him stepping into a door way, seemingly drawn in by a shadowy figure. The climax of the film has Agnes in the audience at a performance of “The Tragedy of Hamlet.” When her husband steps out on-stage, in the role of the prince's ghostly father, she points out that it's as if Shakespeare switched places with his boy. Was it necessary to announce that? In general, “Hamnet” has a bad habit of spelling things out too much. Key lines, like “The rest is silence” and “To be or not to be?,” are uttered before appearing in the play, in far too cute of a coincidence. Ultimately, the emotional connection Agnes feels with the material on-stage is touching but, the minute the credits roll, ring a little false. Yes, Hamnet will live forever on-stage. But I bet Agnes Hathaway would have rather watched her son grow up. 

“Hamnet” is at its best when depicting that grief as a raw, ugly thing. Jessie Buckley foregrounds Agnes' otherworldly quality, with intensely staring eyes and a puckish grin. However, when her emotions boil over, Buckley holds little back. During the birthing scene, she wails towards the heavens, face glistening with sweat, eyes wild with pain. When it appears she's lost her babies, the look of trembling panic is beautifully raw. Paul Mescal has moments like that too, when in a drunken stupor and finding himself unable to put the right words down. His tears come in their own way later on, just as ugly and real. However, the two actors notably never cry in a scene together, making the separation in how these two characters process their grief all too apparent. If that finale works at all, it's thank to the sadness and acceptance Buckley and Mescal are able to get across through their eyes and faces. 

Another way “Hamnet” grounds the legendary figures it concerns in more human matters is by reminding us that William Shakespeare was someone's son too. The Bard's relationship with his dad is shown as combative. His father belittles him for not taking up the family profession of being a glover and for pursuing an intellectual career. I think every line of dialogue the character has includes some insult towards his eldest son. Agnes' dad wasn't great either, as he married a condescending woman after his first wife's passing. It's a bit too on-the-nose but the moment, when William finally confronts his father, does prove fittingly cathartic. If nothing else, the subplot touches on something I've been thinking about a lot, now that I'm in my thirties. Few parents are ideal but, perhaps, every generation tries to be better than the one that came before it. It is indicative of “Hamnet's” maturity, that it nods towards this idea. 

“Hamnet” sees an interesting blend of Zhao's neo-realistic style from her earlier work with something more brooding and dream-like. When depicting Agnes howling in the sprawling wilderness, an apocalyptic dream, or the kids performing an impromptu enactment of the witches' spell from “MacBeth,” I get the impression that the director might have a pretty decent folk horror film in her. Łukasz Żal, the cinematographer of Pawel Pawlikowski's last two movies and “The Zone of Interest,” photographed this one. He often assumes a similar God's eye view as what he did in those films, creating a somewhat distant approach to the characters. Zhao smartly pairs these with somewhat square, almost formal looking sets. The impression it gives is of a stage play, the characters performing before a backdrop. Another decently clever way to link together the various themes apparent in the film.

“Hamnet” is more polished than Zhao's previous dramas. I would say it is not even as grounded in its imagery and ambiance as “NomadLand” was. Perhaps that is inevitable, when discussing the leap from modern-set films about homelessness to a historical biography set in the 17th century. The performances are strong, the visuals are sharp, the score is solid. The script mostly makes the right decisions, at least in the ambitious themes it presents. Ultimately, like many films of this sort, it feels the need to be too tidy and cute in the way it wraps things up or links the creation of a work to the work itself. Nevertheless, it is evident that the flaws of “Eternals” was not because Zhao was a one-trick pony but likelier out of difficulty of fitting her quirks into the Marvel house style. “Hamnet” shows that she still has plenty of skills at her disposal, being a well made and occasionally powerful film. [Grade: B]

Director Report Card: Guillermo del Toro (2025)

13. Frankenstein

 

Like many a young monster kid, Guillermo del Toro had his life changed by James Whale's 1931 version of “Frankenstein.” He has described Boris Karloff's performance as his equavelent to witnessing a saint. Like many a monster kid who has managed to transfer into a successful film making career, del Toro also dreamed about making his own version of the often told tale. Since at least 2007, he's been talking up his epic “Miltonian tragedy” take on Mary Shelley's iconic story. (Which he has also called “his favorite novel of all time.”) Bernie Wrightson's beloved illustrated edition of the book was cited as an inspiration for what the creature might look like with del Toro's regular monster man, Doug Jones, being cast in the part. As with del Toro's adaptations of “At the Mountains of Madness” or “The Hobbit,” it also looked like his “Frankenstein” was destined to remain unfilmed.

That all changed when Guillermo got his Academy Awards for “The Shape of Water” and Netflix stepped up with the offer to fund his dreamiest dream projects. After making his equally long-discussed “Pinocchio” movie, del Toro's “Frankenstein” was on the docket next. As another life-long “Frankenstein” obsessive who also considers the Whale's film his favorite movie of all time, the idea of what del Toro might do with the material tickled my brain. What would an adaptation of the greatest monster story from our greatest modern lover of monsters look like? The director himself has talked about the pressure of adapting such a beloved, frequently filmed story. About whether he could live up to his ambition of making the greatest “Frankenstein” of all time. Well, now the film is done and available for all to see. Reactions have been divided. What do I, as simply another classic horror nerd on the internet, have to say? 

Unlike many past cinematic “Frankensteins,” del Toro's film follows the general outline of Shelley's novel relatively closely. A Danish ship captain attempts to lead his crew on a perilous journey through the frozen Northern corners of the globe. Their journey is interrupted by two figures on the ice. The first is the eccentric Victor Frankenstein, nearly consumed by the cold. The second is an inhuman creation with monstrous strength who pursues the doctor endlessly. Within the bowels of the ship, Victor relates his tale. Of his quest to conquer death by assembling a man from pieces of the dead and reanimating it. Of how he succeeded in his goals but created a monster in the process. Finally, how he and his creation devoted themselves to destroying each other. The Creature tells his version of events too, of how he was brought into this world, how he learned to read and interact, and learned about cruelty and being feared. 

Of all the many films to feature the name “Frankenstein,” only a few have earnestly attempted to adapt Shelley's words. The general concept of the novel has spread through pop culture so far and so wide that the “Frankenstein” legacy is both almost insurmountable seeming and also potentially worthless. Everybody thinks they know what “Frankenstein” is about, even if they actually don't, to the point that there's little novelty to doing it again. At the same time, every meaningful reinvention or run-through of the material must contend with those preconceived notions about the story. For whatever my opinion is worth, I believe del Toro does a decent job of synthesizing Shelley's book with his own ideas and the more iconic elements of what “Frankenstein” is that have emerged over the decades. The narrative is a rough approximation of the book while the director also incorporates lightning animating the monster, a stone tower reaching to the sky, and a Dr. Pretorius-like mentor to Victor into the story. Visuals like the creature crouching among a mill's massive turning gears or being shot very specifically in the eye seem like deliberate homages to the Universal and Hammer versions. 

Of course, the reason why “Frankenstein” has proven so endlessly adaptable for so long is that the themes of the tale are extremely mutable. Purists argue that “Frankenstein” is a reflection of Mary Shelley's specific thoughts and feelings as a young woman and mother to a dead child. At the same time, “Frankenstein's” ideas about creating and being created are as universal as they come. Every adapter zeroes in on the element that speaks the most to them. To del Toro, “Frankenstein” is a story about fathers and sons. Victor's foundational trauma is the death of his mother and being raised by a cruel, perfectionist father. Like many boys before and since, he is doomed to inherit the tendencies of his asshole dad when rearing his own offspring. Just like his dad whipped him with a switch when he was anything less than ideal, Victor smacks the creature around when it disappoints him.  Father and son grimly mirror each other in their quest for mutually assured destruction, on the path towards a resolution of sorts. 

This, to me, is as valid an interpretation of the text as any other. Not the least of which becomes these earthly themes have cosmic ramifications too. Del Toro's lapsed Catholicism often informs his work and its presence is unmissable in his “Frankenstein.” Victor prays to a grand statue of an archangel, which becomes a foreboding symbol throughout. The creature is raised into a crucifix pose as it is brought to life. Adam and Eve are mentioned and a purloined fruit is presented as a symbol of plucked innocence. As Colin Clive observed nearly a century ago, bringing a body to life makes Dr. Frankenstein a lot like God himself. As a hundred dissertations about the references to “Paradise Lost” within the novel have discussed, the Monster is rejected by his creator like Lucifer was rejected by his. He did not request his Maker to mould his clay nor solicit to be promoted from darkness. Neither did any of us. If Victor is God and we are all the Monsters, that means we are all the abandoned children of a father that brought us into this world without ever asking our opinion about it. This is how del Toro grafts his themes of Daddy Issues to Shelley's grander ideas about making and being made. It is an interesting take.
 

Classically, Victor Frankenstein is classified as a Byronic hero, a proud and brooding protagonist whose passions are so great that they inevitably seal his own fate. Frankenstein's quest to create life ensures the end of his own. Del Toro visualizes the irony of Victor and his Creation's link. As he stitched together a man from different body parts, the doctor slowly looses more and more of his own pieces throughout the narrative. This is also a rather heavy-handed visual metaphor for Frankenstein's dwindling humanity. The creature, meanwhile, is given a Wolverine-style healing factor that sees him recovering from any wound, no matter how fatal. In other words, the monster can take any and all abuse Victor dishes out but Victor is inevitably going to break. 

Adaptations of “Frankenstein” have often zeroed in on the homoerotic undercurrents of a story about man trying to remove the feminine from the procreative process. Of two males becoming obsessed with each other. Del Toro's rendition sees Victor actually attempting to rear his offspring, who acts like a giant ripped toddler in a swaddled diaper. He keeps him chained up in the bowels of the phallic castle before ejecting him from the stone womb into the cruel world via an orgasmic explosion. As the two become fixated on punishing one another and destroying each others' bodies, the rivalry takes on a sadomasochistic energy. In its earliest form, the creature is introduced in a kneeling posture. By the end, he refuses to be submissive and punishes his master instead, the power transition being fulfilled. Is “Frankenstein” not a weird incestuous gay BDSM fable? Is Victor Frankenstein not literature's first Dom Daddy? Maybe not but I don't think del Toro is ignorant of some of the images he invokes here. 

How much of that was intended by del Toro is debatable. However, other reoccurring themes of his are certainly present in his “Frankenstein.” Christoph Waltz appears as Harlander, the Dr. Pretorius-like figure that appears to fund Victor's unorthodox experiments. He is an arms manufacturer, a war profiteer, who sees Frankenstein's work as a way to heal his own ailing, syphilitic body. (Another image of flesh falling apart.) The monster is partially stitched together from bodies dug out of a war zone while other parts come from prisoners about to go to the gallows. In other words, this Frankenstein monster is rather literally an offspring of the military industrial complex. Whether than embed with free will by a God above, he is the result of the rich exploiting the poor and the senseless destruction of life on the battlefield. This ties into war as a wasteful, only destructive exercise as depicted in del Toro's “Pan's Labyrinth” and “The Devil's Backbone.” 

This idea also points to how the creature is destined to be an outsider, assembled from pieces of underclassmen who have already been discarded and destroyed. That leads to a characterization of the offspring as more victimized than victimizer. The observation that Frankenstein's creation is not born a monster but rather made one by a cruel and unaccepting world is the most surface level reading of Shelley's material as possible. Del Toro's telling is so laser-focused on this idea that it almost totally takes the monster out of Frankenstein's monster all together. The creature's bond with a blind man and his subsequent rejection by the other people in the cabin are maintained. Almost every other interaction the creature has with the outside world is excised. The creature's quest to take away everything his creator loves is almost entirely neutered, as Victor's bond with his family is very different here. Frankenstein's monster should be misunderstood. However, del Toro is so determined to make the creature an innocent that is a victim of others' cruelty – mostly his dad's – that it takes a lot of the blood out of the story. 

This represents the film's biggest weakness. Del Toro talks often of his love for the gothic romance as a literary genre. If “Crimson Peak” already bordered on a parody of the style, his “Frankenstein” is an even deeper embracing of baroque melodrama. The climax of Shelley's novel, of Victor's creation being with him on his wedding night, is greatly altered for this telling. The exact machinations of how that plays out border on the improbable and then ends with someone looking at the doctor and literally telling him he's the real monster. This proceeds an ending which is unsightly in its sappiness. To tell you the truth, I've always felt that Shelley's book had an abrupt and somewhat unsatisfying ending. Victor dies, the Creature ruminates on the nature of this relationship, and then he walks out onto the ice. Del Toro attempts to come up with a more fulfilling conclusion than this but layers on the weepy emotions instead. It takes a movie otherwise tailor-made to appeal to me out on a disappointing note. 

And what of Elizabeth, traditionally Victor's bride-to-be? Del Toro's reshuffling makes her the intended of Victor's younger brother, her relationship with the doctor more flirtatious and unrequited. In a move all too aware of its Freudian implications, Mia Goth is cast in both this role and as Victor's not-long-for-this-world mother. Much as Victor's mom is a perfect beacon of love and acceptance, whose death leads her son down a path of heartlessness, Elizabeth is a symbol of pure accepting love. She immediately sees the creation as the innocent he is. Bringing the promise of Goth's dual role to fruition, Elizabeth emerges as both a motherly figure and a romantic one to the monster. (Also robbing the movie of a purer example of a Bride of Frankenstein character, which is mildly disappointing.) A lot of very angry people have already pointed out how this treatment under-serves both Elizabeth's role in the story and the Monster's own sexism, in favor of a cuddlier reading. Accusations of sexism have been tossed around but I rather see it simply as making the story a lot flatter, less nuanced and complex than it could have been.
 

This “Frankenstein” is, undeniably, a handsome production. The costumes are gorgeous. Goth, in particular, gets to sweep through her scenes in a succession of colorful, intricately designed gowns. The production design is gorgeous. The elaborately carved caskets that Victor's parents are put to rest in are unforgettable. The sets, especially that towering lab with its vein-like tunnels and ventricular chambers, are impressive. Some have criticized the cinematography as murky or too digital. I think it looks pretty damn good, especially the use of light cutting through dark rooms. The make-up effects are subtle, the creature looking seamless in his undead assemblage but also like something that could actually exist. The performances are strong all around. Oscar Isaac is the right level of blustering ego and bruised desperation as the doctor. Jacob Elordi is extraordinary as the gentle golem of flesh and blood, the actor totally absorbed in the role of an outsider possessed of an animal rage. Christoph Waltz does exactly what you pay him for as the scheming but poetic Harlander. This is a lovingly assembled and acted film.

Ultimately, I have my qualms about this “Frankenstein.” I wish del Toro was willing to make his monster as much of a terror as he is a misunderstood victim. I was looking forward to seeing the director's take on the more alchemic origins for the creature presented in Shelley's writing, something that is reduced to a passing mention here. As grand as the ambitions are, the film ends up feeling rather cloistered instead, trapped so much within the interior worlds of its protagonists and their spurned feelings. One can't help but wonder if this would've been a stronger film if its director had made it twenty years ago, when his work was meaner. However, I also think there's a lot of good work on display here and plenty of interesting ideas. There's going to be many more “Frankenstein” movies made after this one. Another big budget studio take is scheduled to come out in a few weeks already. There's plenty of room for del Toro's interpretation of this age-old tale. For all its flaws, it is still uniquely his version. [Grade: B]

 

Director Report Card: Paul Thomas Anderson (2025)

 

10. One Battle After Another

 

The hardcore movie lover crowd have had nothing but bad things to say about David Zaslav, the much loathed president of Warner Bros. Discovery, and none of it was exactly unearned. However, I'll give the ignorant asshole this much: Probably out of a desire for some award season glamour, he did sign off on big budgets on not the most commercial projects from beloved filmmakers. At the end of the day, all the studio bullshit and behind-the-scenes drama doesn't matter. It's the movies that last. And Paul Thomas Anderson's next movie was always likely to last. He is a highly lauded auteur. When news broke that he would be making a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, much mystery surrounded it. There were some reports that it was an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's novel, “Vineland.” When the title was finally revealed as “One Battle After Another,” it was finally understood to be more inspired by the book than directly adapting it. After much scrutiny from the folks who treat movies like it's sport betting, “one Battle After Another” was ultimately deemed a box office flop. But who cares, because the movie is there forever now and a lot of people sure seem to love it. 

“Ghetto” Pat was once a member of French 75, a group of underground revolutionaries who pulled stunts like freeing detainees from a prison camp or blowing up cop cars. Pat was the explosive guy and Perfidia, his partner and lover, was a woman of action. They were doggedly pursued by Colonel Lockjaw who, despite his racist beliefs, was sexually obsessed with Perfidia. Pat and Perfidia would attempt to settle down, raising the child she gave birth to together, but she eventually went back on the run. Sixteen years later, Pat – now living under the name Bob Fergusen – is a burn-out who seems widely disliked by Willa, his mixed race daughter. She heads out to a concert with some friends. They don't know that Lockjaw is attempting to join a secret order of white supremacists. That Willa is his daughter, from a forced sexual encounter with Perfidia. That his membership in the Christmas Adventurers Club is threatened by him having a mixed race daughter, that he's leading a police raid into the city to find the girl. Soon, Pat is attempting to locate where the girl has been taken and find her before Lockjaw does. 

I wasn't a big fan of Anderson's previous Pynchon adaptation, “Inherent Vice,” finding it to be too shaggy and stoned-out in its humor to appeal to me. Comes with the territory with that, I know. Whatever you think about Pynchon, I think you can agree that the author has an ear for cool sounding code names. I haven't read “Vineland” and can't attest to how much of “One Battle After Another” is taken from it. However, the various code names and underground jargon in the film – Rocket Man, Junglepussy, Mae West, Lady Champagne – have that Pynchon-esque quality of being both absurd and... Kind of cool. The same is true of the film's preoccupation with the secret codes the French 75 members used to contact each other, which include a shout-out to the Hooterville trilogy. “One Battle After Another” is a movie with nuns firing machine guns, nun-chucks, skateboards, a dojo, bombs. This shit is, you could say, rad. It's all kind of silly and funny but it's also cool as fuck. 

But do you know what's definitely not cool as fuck? In “One Battle After Another,” the police and the government they work for are depicted as openly racist institutions. The authority figures are obsessed with punishing anyone darker skinned than them, every official action they make merely a flimsy justification to enforce their racist ideology. Ya know, like in real life. Immigrants are depicted as persecuted innocents, simply trying to live, a scapegoat totally outmatched by an infinitely powerful system. And violence against the government who enforces these rules is shown as never less than justified. I'm not smart enough to know if this actually means anything but a 130 million dollar studio movie starring A-listers preaching an openly pro-direct action message like that is surprising, at the very least. 

Like I said, the racist organizations in “One Battle After Another” don't pretend to have any deeper motivation for their relentless persecution of non-white people than preserving their own racial purity. And this is, it almost goes without saying, bullshit. When we meet Lockjaw, he's already lusting after Perfidia. Everything he ultimately does in the second half is motivated by his desire to cover up the fact that he has a mixed race child. In other words, this guy clearly doesn't actually believe the things he's saying. At least not so much that it overwhelms the horniness he feels for a black woman. It's also notable that the white supremacist cabal Lockjaw tries to join is called the Christmas Adventurers Club and says shit like “All hail Saint Nicholas!” This group is depicted as powerful. They have tentacles in all sectors of the government and are able to organize armed responses in minutes. They are a force to be reckoned with... But they are still fucking goofy losers. The film is simply reflecting reality here, as the grotesque absurdities of the Trump era have made it very clear how the most monstrously evil people often tend to also be clownish buffoons.

Lockjaw's uncontrollable lust for a woman of color does not seem to be an especially unusual status for an otherwise highly racist man. I suppose there is something in human nature, where we inevitably eroticize that which we have deemed forbidden. Lockjaw presents himself as a proud macho warrior man, wearing a tight shirt that shows off his guns. When he's around Perfidia, however, he seems to become sexually submissive. In the bedroom is the only place where the racist is willing to give up power. This is not the only example in the film. After Willa is born, Perfidia grows tired of motherhood, of being nothing but a parent now, and leaves. The parallels between the power imbalances and attempts to correct them in the characters' personal lives are impossible to untangle from their struggles for political power too. Maybe that's all it has ever been about. I don't know what that means exactly but it's an interesting observation. 
 

“One Battle After Another” presents Pat/Bob and Colonel Lockjaw as opposites, in many ways. One is a revolutionary, one is a cop and military officer, on opposite sides of the system as two people can be. They also have some things in common. Not only that they both have feelings for the same woman. Pat's relationship with his daughter is stressed. Willa has a nonbinary friend and her dad awkwardly struggles to understand the pronoun situation there. Later, while on the phone with another member of French 75, he expresses exasperation at terms like “safe space.” He is, in other words, an old man who is being left behind by a quickly changing world. As “woke” as an anti-government revolutionary is, he's still out of his depth among today's youth. Statements like these are not too dissimilar with the dismissive comments you'd expect a piece of shit like Lockjaw to say either. It's an interesting parallel, in how these enemies are united in their mutual old white guy-ness. 

One suspects that this is a very self-aware move on Paul Thomas Anderson's behalf. Pat is the story's protagonist. His perspective is the one the audience is aligned with. While you never can say for certain, one assumes that Anderson put a bit of himself into this guy. He's an old white guy too. That the film's hero is repeatedly mocked and humiliated for his own out-of-touch qualities shows that the director has no illusions about this behavior being admirable. Similarly, the younger characters in “One Battle After Another” have an energy and spirit beyond their elders. They are always racing around on skateboards, always energized to speak truth to power and to stand up for what is right. As the title indicates, and the ending further proves, the fight goes on. It never ends. Their parents fucked it up, they couldn't fix things, but maybe the kids will be alright. As bad as things are, maybe there's hope for the future after all. 

Ultimately though, it is intriguing that Pat is both the film's hero and a figure of mockery. Leonardo DiCaprio, once again, happily embraces a schlubby, dad-like image here that defies his years as a sex symbol. He spends almost the entire film in a bathrobe, with scraggly facial hair. He's perpetually stoned out of his mind and frequently frustrated with everything happening around him. It's really funny, DiCaprio having no problem playing the clown. He tumbles, falls, gets tossed around, and seems constantly annoyed by the serious questions being asked of him. “One Battle After Another” is not like “Inherent Vice,” where almost everyone in the story are stoned out of their gourds the whole time. Pat is the fool in a cast full of straight men, Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn act like distinctively in-control and cool minded individuals in comparison to Leo's stumbling around. It's an amusing set-up for a film, a guy forced back into action after spending thirty years smoking and drinking his brains away.

At the same time, “One Battle After Another” is regularly powered by Johnny Greenwood's high-strung score. It's made up of escalating notes. Scenes of Pat arguing on a pay phone with someone or fumbling around a dojo are obviously funny. At the same time, a mixture of his own incompetence and the pressure mounting around him means he could get caught. There's a feeling all throughout the film of the walls closing in, of the powerful forces at work in the government zeroing in on the radical heroes. The film explodes into violence frequently in the last third, which actually does little to alleviate this tension. It feels like another set of screws being put to the viewer. The film honestly made me feel rather anxious at times, Anderson and his team doing a great job of making the viewer feel the same jittery uncertainty that the hero is feeling.

It's not an unexpected tone from the director of “There Will Be Blood” or “Boogie Nights.” At the same time, you can almost see why – beyond the award season glamour – a profits-obsessed CEO would sign off on this movie. Is “One Battle After Another,” in fact, Anderson's go at making a proper action movie? From the inciting incident on, the film is in almost constant movement. DiCaprio spends most of the run time in literal pursuit of his daughter, often from the seat of a car. The last third features multiple shoot-outs, an explosion, an acrobatic car crash. The camera is often attached to the front of a moving vehicle as it spends along desert highways. In other words, there's a lot of what you'd call “action” in this movie and it's all very well executed. I don't think this is the director auditioning for a “Mission: Impossible” movie or anything but it's definitely somewhat, kind of abreast with that type of film making. 

As you'd probably expect from a Paul Thomas Anderson production, “One Battle After Another” is simply an excellent looking film. Michael Bauman is back as cinematographer, after gifting “Licorice Pizza” with its textured, deep look. He creates something similarly rich here. Individual shots stick in the mind. Kids on skateboards leaping across roof tops in the golden moonlight, fog behind them. A nun with a gun firing away in the dark. An erection bulging at the forefront of the frame. The editing, from Andy Jurgensen, is similarly precise. A shot of Willa sitting at a table, moments before a heavily armed squad marches into the room, is so perfectly constructed. The comedic timing and anxious mood are both created by cuts that are ideally arranged.
 

I don't think I liked the film quite as much as others did. While not on the level of grand cinematic shit-posting that “Inherent Vice” was at, “One Battle After Another” shares some of that shaggy-dog vibes with the other Pynchon adaptation. The ideas in the film are serious, the performances are very well done, the writing and construction are carefully place. But the silliness on the surface often suggests a looseness. For a film that's 164 minutes long, it certainly moves quickly though. Maybe if Anderson finally gets an Oscar for this one, he'll have another chance to make a film of this scale. If not, this is pretty damn good for his first strike at directing a big budget action flick. And, hey, maybe it'll radicalize some kids or at least teach young people to hate the fucking cops. Maybe there's hope for the future in the real world too, no matter if life is but one struggle after another, on and on until the end of time. [Grade: B+]

 

Director Report Card: Danny Boyle (2010)

 

13. 127 Hours

 

It is, by any definition of the word, an extraordinary story. I vaguely recall hearing the true life tale in or around 2003. Of how a rock climber had his arm pinned to a cave wall by a fallen boulder. How he survived for five days in a narrow crack in the Utah desert before realizing he was going to die of dehydration without desperate action. Using the weight of his own body against the rock wall, he shattered his forearm before slowly amputating above the elbow with a tiny pocket knife. How he then repelled down a 65-foot drop and hiked for seven miles, his bloody stump crudely tied off, finally being found by a vacationing family. Delirious, dehydrated, and bleeding badly, the man was air-lifted to a hospital, ultimately surviving the entire ordeal. The incident inspires either awe at the ability of the human spirit to endure or horror at how terrifyingly wrong things can go. Personally, it inspired me to never ever go hiking in the desert or anywhere else for that matter.  Either way, it's the kind of insane true story you're not likely to forget once you hear it. Naturally, such a tale of survival and resilience prompted multiple media appearances and a book deal. 

And, obviously, a movie. After Aron Ralston's autobiographical recollection of the event, "Between a Rock and a Hard Place," became a bestseller, Danny Boyle became fascinated with the story. He spent four years trying to develop a film based on the book, writing a treatment himself before passing it over to Simon Beaufoy to expand it into a feature length script. After winning Best Director and Beat Picture for "Slumdog Millionaire," Boyle had the necessary cache to make the film. In the context of his overall career, that feels like a very calculated move. A director gets a bunch of Oscars and his next project is an inspirational, based-on-a-true-story biography about the will to survive. In other words, certainly not the kind of movie that was going to dispel any notices that the guy who made "Trainspotting" had thoroughly sold out by this point, his punk rock spirit having given way to sentimental studio schlock and a hunger for more gold statues. "127 Hours" got plenty of nominations but few wins. Fifteen years after its release, the film does seem to be slightly better regarded among the edgy dickheads like myself than some of Boyle's other post-"Slumdog" work. 

By spring of 2003, mechanical engineer Aron Ralston was an experienced mountaineer, rock climber, and hiker. On the 26th of April, he left his home early in the morning without telling anyone of his plans. He drove south of the Canyonlands National Park into a mountainous range of desert. He was there to explore Bluejohn Canyon, a long and narrow channel in which sheer walls close in all around those inside. After diving into a hidden cave pool with two female hikers, and getting invited to a party the next night, Aron continues onward by himself. That is when an 800 pound boulder is dislodged, crushing his right arm and trapping him in the remote canyon. Knowing no help is on the way, and with little water left, Ralston tried everything he could to escape without success for five days. Documenting his experience with the camcorder he brought with him, he consigned himself to death before finding the strength to perform the act of bodily mutilation that would save his life.

Ralston's story is, without question, a bizarre and captivating one that can't help but be passed along. However, I don't think Boyle was attracted to the material because he was inspired by Ralston's willingness to survive or the grisly, "can you believe this shit?" facts of the matter. In interviews about the film, he described being inspired by Darren Aronofsky's “The Wrestler,” by a desire to follow one character in a similar super-focused manner. He also described “127 Hours” as an “action movie with a guy who can't move.” In other words, Ralston's story presented a technical challenge. How do you make a compelling cinematic work out of a story about a guy who is fixed to one spot? For five days, Ralston was wedged into a tiny cave. How do you translate that experience to the screen without it being visually tedious, keeping the isolation and desperation of the story without devoting the entire runtime to mostly stationary shots of one guy in one place? 

When presented with such a boundary, a filmmaker essentially has two steps they can take. First off, they can cheat. By which I mean they can venture outside the confines of the canyon Ralston was trapped in, via the power of flashbacks, memories, dream sequences, or focusing equally on his life before the accident as during it. This would basically violate the main promise of “127 hours,” that it would be primarily devoted to depicting the week he was down that hole with the big-ass rock on his arm. Boyle's film only does this a little bit. After all of fifteen minutes, Aron gets trapped under the boulder. At which point the film's title appears on-screen, signaling to the viewer that this story is actually beginning. We do get glimpses of his childhood and nights with an ex-girlfriend. The diversions outside of the canyon, however, are mostly composed of the dreams and hallucinations Ralston experienced while in this situation. They are in the film, primarily, to get the viewer further into the main character's head. We are seeing his thoughts and feeling illustrated, just as much as the physical reality of what he went through.

The other option – if the filmmaker has the foresight to realize that the caving accident is what this story is about, that the audience is interested in this and not the mundane details of Ralston's life before – is to fuck around with the camera as much as possible. One suspects that the very first shot Boyle conceived of when imagining the film occurs shortly after Aron realizes he's stuck. The camera rushes up out of the crevasse, as he screams for help, until the viewer is looking down from the heavens at this massive, jagged line in the ground in a vast and empty landscape. This is the first, truly blatant example in the film of Boyle pairing an otherwise stationary story with as much visual flashiness as possible. He sticks the camera inside the drinking tube of Ralston's water bottle on more than one occasion. The film begins with a montage spread across three sections of the screen, a technique the director also revisits a number of times. Two cinematographers worked on “127 Hours.” Boyle's regular Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak, who previously worked on “28 Weeks Later,” are both credited. One assumes that the movie's hyper-kinetic visual sense necessitated two directors of photography behind the camera. 

In a lot of way, this makes “127 Hours” a lot closer to the frantic style that characterized the rowdier, wackier moments in “Trainspotting” or “Shallow Grave” than the relative realism that kind of defined Boyle's post-digital work. The cinematography whips around from a number of perspectives. Some scenes are from an objective third point of view, as movies usually are shot, while a lot of others are from Ralston's point-of-view. The audience is sometimes privy to Ralston's thoughts via voice over. The longer underground he is, the more unstable his mental state becomes. This is depicted with an increasingly wilder sound design, emphasizing the off-screen sounds of a bird. The pain of the make-shift surgery is verbalized with a buzzer sound. The trademark chortling of Scooby-Doo is rendered sinister, in a clever way. The most extreme flights of fancy in the film are either when Aron dreams of a flood freeing him from the rock. Or it might be when he imagines himself on a talk show of sorts, Boyle once again revisiting the idea of using banal television as a contrast to the horrors of the story. 

What I'm saying is, yes, “127 Hours” doesn't feature elaborate camera angles and fantastical sequences simply because Danny Boyle realized he had to make the movie look cool or else risk making a boring movie. Attempting to replicate Ralston's delirious state of mind does give the filmmakers plenty of option to go a little crazy. On a more literal level, there is some precedence in the story for playing around with the frame of the image. The real life Aron Ralston has ascertain that “127 Hours” is a rather authentic recreation of what he lived through. The man video-taping himself – leaving a video journal of sorts behind, under the expectations that he was going to die and could only hope someone would discover it some day – is a matter of record. That means an element of a screen, the aperture screen of the cam-corder, is present in the story. The scenes of Ralston monologuing to the camera makes one imagine a fictionalized version of this story told as a found footage film, a fairly popular trend still in 2010. If nothing else, it's an organic way for Boyle and his team to incorporate a little bit of “28 Days Later's” digital look into this film.

I have no idea if Danny Boyle himself felt he had lost some of his edge a little over his last few movies. If he felt “Slumdog Millionaire” was a crowd-pleaser or that genre films like “28 Days Later” and “Sunshine” operated within certain fantastical limits. Either way, “127 Hours” does feel a little bit like an active attempt to re-capture the high energy and anti-social behavior of “Trainspotting.” In particular, this often feels like an attempt to stretch out the unsettling ambiance of the detox sequence from that movie for a much longer time. Clearly, the goal is to have as much of the movie occupy a feverish state for as long as possible, dreams and reality bleeding into each other, physical agony and a fear of death taking over the protagonist's mind. “127 Hours” can't sustain that kind of nervous emotion for a whole ninety minutes. However, it succeeds more often than not. If nothing else, the amputation scene feels properly frenzied and leaves a seasick feeling in your stomach while it is happen.

A big reason why “127 Hours” is able to build as much tension as it can – despite most people watching it being aware that Aron Ralston did not die in that canyon – is because of the music. Boyle must have been happy with the work A.R. Rahman did scoring “Slumdog Millionaire,” as they worked together on this again. Rahman's score often utilizes a simple, pounding bass chord, simulating both the drum of a speeding up heartbeat and invoking the sense that something unfortunate is about to happen soon. This motif reappears any time Ralston is making a serious attempt to make an escape, reminding the viewer what is at stake and how easily all of it can fall apart. When paired with fast cut images of Rolstan trying to rig a pulley up or water filling the canyon, it successfully puts the audience at unease. (The rest of Rahman's score relies on creating a dreamy ambiance or suggesting the wide and empty desert landscape. That's the mood the expected Oscar bait song, performed by an expectedly breathy Dido, operates in.) The very specifically chosen soundtrack choices also reminded me of Boyle's earlier, rowdier films. Bill Withers' “Lovely Day” has never been more genuinely uplifting and ebullient then here. 

While “127 Hours” strikes me as a mostly sincere effort to recapture the unpredictable grit of Boyle's earlier films, thematically it is still far more connected to the likes of “Slumdog Millionaire” than “Trainspotting.” Like the Best Picture winner, “127 Hours” muses on the nature of destiny and fate. In its opening scene, a peering camera makes sure to show us that Aron missed grabbing his Swiss army knife – which he later wishes he had when performing make-shift surgery on himself – by a matter of inches. Later, while considering the rock holding him down, he thinks about how the stone had been waiting for him for thousand of years. A confluence of events, whether by chance or fate, is what brings all of us to our destinations. However, much like “Slumdog Millionaire,” “127 Hours” does seem to suggest that we do have some pre-ordained fates ahead of us. Ralston, both in the film and real life, credits a vision of his future son with giving him the final push he needed to finally escape. Who is to say what the truth is or not but, at least within this film's universe, specific things can only happen as chain reactions of events in the past.

Another challenge specific to this true story is that, if adapted, it means mostly one person is going to be the only actor on-screen for the majority of its runtime. Recognizable faces like Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn appears as two hiker Aron befriends before his accident. Other actors appear in flashbacks and fantasies. However, for most of the movie, this is a one-man show for James Franco. Franco, multi-hyphenated artist of debatable merit and shitty person though he might be, does handle the task well. Franco has the exact correct level of cockiness you'd expect from a guy who'd go on a perilous hike without telling a single soul. An exhaustion and desperation is evident on Franco's face as the situation grows graver. If nothing else, he properly creates a protagonist that the audience can root for without ignoring the flaws and mistakes he has to make up for.
 

The moment “127 Hours” most resembles your standard, inspirational biopic is in its final minutes. That's when the real life Ralston puts in the expected cameo appearance during the pre-credits round-up of facts about his life since. It is noted that his accident did nothing to dissuade his interest in mountain climbing and extreme hiking, which is meant to play as a triumphant note. In real life, Aron's brush with mortality, in his own words, turned him into a bit of a cocky asshole. And then the next time he was in the news was him and his second wife getting arrested for smacking each other around. Compared to that, the film adaptation of his misadventure only scoring six Oscars nominations and no wins – compared to “Slumdog Millionaire” sweeping – feels like less of a drop-out. All of that aside, this one actually isn't bad. If Boyle was mostly interested because he wanted to see if he could overcome the built-in limitations of the material, I would say he did successfully navigate that roadblock in his own way. [Grade: B]