The Secret Agent (★★★★½)
Among the many magic tricks this movie pulls off is the impeccable set design, taking me to a time and place that, no matter my personal familiarity, feels organic.
Beyond the critical central performance of Wagner Moura, there are countless shots that convey the richness and strangeness of refuge from persecution; the strange bonds that form when you are displaced from comfort and when perverse incentives create dire enemies out of once-innocuous scoundrels.
It all builds to a frustrating truth – that real life continues after the movie ends and even the fumbling ineptitude of evil can only delay the inevitable. But on the other side of the coin is also the inevitability of the forces of good.
The Wolf Man (★★★)
I watched this on a long train ride and it was the right kind of movie for the moment. Claude Rains was perhaps my favorite role. The shots in the foggy forest are iconic.
I know there’s the lore that this movie was conceived to have you questioning the veracity of the werewolf story, but the screenplay really did little to have you pondering the question of man’s inner evil until a late-film monologue between Rains and Lon Cheney.
"Wuthering Heights" (★★★½)
I understand the satisfaction of engaging with theatrical adaptations of literature as a someone versed in the source material. I read Wuthering Heights for the first time in the weeks leading up to this movie so I could experience that satisfaction. And I did walk away with the feeling that having the original book so fresh in my mind made the movie less interesting. However, the cascade of smugness that English class nerds have unleashed on this movie is something else.
I don't think Emerald Fennell didn't "get" the book. I think she read the book in a certain mindset and an idea stuck with her. She then used her considerable talent to bring that idea to screen and I would say within the confines of her version of the story, it works! It's visceral. It ruminates on death from the outset. And it is invested in the idea that Wuthering Heights is ultimately a story told by people with bias and rooted in the ideas of what should be proper and what is transgressive. She also really wanted Cathy and Heathcliff to do the nasty. Multiple times. As a montage.
So, I dunno, maybe you do yourself a disservice when you walk into a work of film and decide you're going to use "accuracy to the agreed-upon themes of a book" as your enjoyment rubric. Seems like you're setting yourself up for a bad experience.
(Heathcliff should never be white, though).
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (★★★★)
This was great as a movie I caught on a whim in theaters on a Friday morning. Original characters participating in a sort of low-sci-fi adventure through the mundane that gets interrupted by the fantastical. Its biggest flaw is that it tends to focus its social satire on easy targets: mostly "kids and their phones." It's a spiritual cousin to Idiocracy in its disdain for common people and air of superiority.
However, when it finds a satirical idea, GLHFDD really commits, mining some effective dark humor from the most chilling of premises. There will be twists and if you've watched enough movies, you will predict them, but overall, this has stuck with me as one of those movies I would have loved picking up at Blockbuster and raving to my friends about.
See, now it's got me doing the schmaltzy nostalgia thing.
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