Eileen (2023)

Director: William Oldroyd

Cast: Thomasin McKenzie, Shea Whigham, Marin Ireland, Anne Hathaway

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. I probably went into the day of the screening a little bit more during my review of Don’t Change Your Husband (1919). A perfect movie day, even if the movies themselves were not my favorite.

Did I Like It: I’ve been watching a lot of noir lately, and the rhythms become all too comfortable. That also probably puts me probably in the wrong headspace for any film that trucks in a lot of the noir tropes, but then tries to subvert them.

I’m on board with nearly every element of this film. Hathaway slithers through the film with barely contained chaotic energy. She doesn’t get nearly enough credit for her ability to vamp through a movie, largely because she’s only been really allowed to flex that muscle in forgettable or mildly disappointing movies like The Witches (2020) or The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Her chemistry with McKenzie is electric, then sexy, then a perfect synthesis of unsettling and revolting. It’s very nearly a perfect amalgamation of all the elements that made those noir films so great, but with the added feature of not being weighed down by the Hays Code, allowing the film to be unrelentingly unflinching.

But some of the fun of movies like these is the palpable tension that comes with the world closing in on the main character who have wandered off the straight and narrow path. Here, though, the movie doesn’t so much concludes as it just stops. One might be able to make the argument that the movie isn’t about the escalating ring of murder surrounding the characters, but more about Eileen’s (McKenzie) shedding the elements of her life that are holding her back*, but it also leaves the entire affair a little unbelievable. There’s no way this girl doesn’t get picked up for murder before she gets past the Massachusetts border.

*A quick scan of a summary of the source material indicates it doubles down on that notion, which may ironically enough make this film better than the novel upon which it is based.

The Witches (2020)

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Cast: Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Stanley Tucci, Chris Rock

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Oddly enough, had 2020 turned out like some kind of normal year, I probably would not have felt much of an impetus to watch it, but as I apparently have already paid for the movie with my HBO subscription, then I might as well take the plunge.

Did I Like It: So let us begin with the headline. The new remake of The Witches is not the earworm the original adaptation of the film became. It will likely be forgotten pretty quickly as everyone associated with the film has done better work before and will likely to better work in the future.

And that’s not the worst thing in the world.

I actually applaud the film for not trying to re-create the “girl trapped in a painting” scene featured in both the book and the original film. It’s the most memorable part of that previous movie, and any attempt to recreate it is a fool’s errand. When the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children displays a tableau with child statues in the hotel, I did wonder if there were actual kids trapped in those figures, though.

Changing the setting to the American south of the 1960s is a dollop of inspiration, adding a layer of more banal—and unsettlingly real—evil to the proceedings. It would have been nice for that subtext to have been brought to the surface just a bit more, but keeping the setting in England and Norway would have been simply more of the same.

This new film also tries to correct for past mistakes, by (spoiler alert) keeping the hero (Jahzir Kadeem Bruno as a child and new mouse, Chris Rock as his older self) a mouse at the end of the story. Sadly, this film can’t quite pull the trigger on the bittersweet quality of Roald Dahl’s work. In the book, it’s clear our hero will only live for a few more years, to say nothing of the realization that poor Bruno Jenkins (Codie-Lei Eastick) was probably killed by his mousephobic parents. Here, it looks like our hero may live far longer than any other mouse, and Bruno gets to join him and Grandma (Spencer) in their witch-hunting adventures. Perhaps the truly downer endings in children’s literature will never find their way out of the pages of books. Only the bookish kids can be trusted with the reality that sometimes bad things happen.

The rest of the movie is, unfortunately, a litany of disappointments. 

I’m as certain as I can be without a confession to this effect, but it sounded not only like Alan Silvestri phones his score in, but that the entirety of his orchestrations were culled from deleted tracks he wrote for any number of Avengers movies.

It’s always nice to see—or at least hear—Kristen Chenoweth in a film. And yet, her role as another human transformed into a mouse before the events of the film feels too forced in before it turns out she isn’t going to be given anything to do. A girl-mouse is a fine enough idea—why not make the hero female? Only boys can plaintively wail “Grandma!” and do the legwork of getting the mouse-maker formula into the witches’ soup?

Interstellar (2014)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine

Have I Seen It Before?: I’ve finally gotten around to see my big blind spot in the Nolan catalog.

Did I like it?: One needs to open any review of a Nolan movie by reminding oneself that there are few better craftsman working today than Nolan in terms of pure cinema. Only one man could pull Batman out of the cinematic depths, and his craft makes his one of the few films that managed to play in this rinky-dink town in 35mm.

So why does this movie not work for me as well as some of his other entries? The most obvious reason would be that I neglected to see it in the theaters, the venue for which Nolan ideally intended it. He’s steeped this film so firm the tradition of Kubrick, and if there is one thing I’ve learned from these reviews, it is that all things Kubrickian are best enjoyed on the largest screen possible.

Then again, my less than thorough acceptance of the film may have something to do with the fact that—as I write this review—we’re all spending at least some part of our day contemplating wearing masks and wondering how long our food supplies will last.

It may be the wrong time to take the film in, but it is a testament to the skills of Nolan that I think another chance is warranted. And the film itself does recommend itself to that second viewing. It’s meticulously designed, often visually stunning (if, again, derivative of Kubrick and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and acted with a far greater range of emotion than most movies that involve space travel and (spoilers) a magic bookshelf, and the sheer amount of surprises in the cast kept things lively throughout.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy

Have I Seen it Before: Sure.

Did I Like It: Look it’s a Batman movie that doesn’t rely on certain characters mother’s being named Martha. What’s not to like? I’ll tell you.

I ultimately don’t think Nolan had a plan going into this one. Maybe he didn’t really want to make a third film in his series, but he really really didn’t want to make any more movies, so he scrambled for a rousing conclusion. It forges together some of the bigger Batman comic plot lines that weren’t covered by Nolan’s two previous movies, Knightfall, No Man’s Land, and The Dark Knight Returns, but the blending doesn’t quite come together. It all fits together not as smoothly as it did in the previous entry, 2008’s The Dark Knight. In the attempt, to many plot lines rise to the top.

Too many plots. How did Bruce Wayne get back into Gotham after escaping Bane’s prison, especially when it is well-established that he’s broke by this point in the movie? And where and with whom is Miranda Tate/Talia al Ghul at various points in the third act?

While people moan and wail about the deep, unforgiving chasm that separates Bale's Batman voice from his Bruce Wayne voice, he seems utterly restrained* when compared with the Sean Connery and Darth Vader forged in a blender that is Bane (Hardy). Several years have separated this particular screening from its premiere, but the first moment he speaks on that airplane, it’s one of the most bizarre sounding things that has ever been committed to film, compounded by the deep realization that Bane’s words clearly were modified deep into postproduction, as he didn’t sound quite so ridiculous in the early trailers for the film released in 2011 and 2012. 

Speaking of that airplane sequence, let’s get into what absolutely, unassailably works about the movie. The stunt work is legit. Nolan—although he couldn’t possibly have had the screenplay he hoped for—is one of the last great filmmakers working in studio films these days. I can’t imagine that there is not a single frame of 

Also, where Bane leaves one wanting, Anne Hathaway never fails to impress as Selina Kyle/Cat Burglar who is never explicitly referred to as Catwoman. The role has had so many distinct portrayals over the years, but Hathaway manages to tap into a realistic cat burglar vibe, while also embracing the soul of the character. As it’s always a little bit shocking how strange of a creation Bane is, it’s equally impressive how good she is, when there was plenty of room to be mediocre.

One might be tempted to be more forgiving of the film, viewing it through the same prism as Return of the Jedi (1983) or The Search for Spock (1984), thinking it suffers only because it follows the best-ever movie in the series. Tragically, while there are some things to truly like, and by no means do I think Christopher Nolan’s reputation as a shaper of popular entertainments will have ended up suffering because of it, The Dark Knight Rises ultimately has too many glaring flaws to work on it’s own account.

And I might feel pretty bad about that, but somewhere lurking in the future of this franchise is Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), which accomplished the herculean task of making even Joel Schumacher look like Akira Kurosawa.

*Except of course when he’s talking to himself on a rooftop after Selina Kyle departs. I don’t know who he thinks he’s doing that for, but it certainly isn’t part of maintaining his secret identity.