Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

In his ninth feature film (he keeps count), Quentin Tarantino’s emphatic style is more comfortable in its own genre-soaked skin than it’s ever been. The camera doesn’t pan or tilt or dolly on its own so much as it seems to keep time with the late 1960s soundtrack. People kill each other to the bombastic harmonizing of Vanilla Fudge’s “You Keep Me Hanging On.” This is all to say that Tarantino, now 56, is never boring.

In the historical counter-factual fashion that is now characteristic of him, Tarantino imagines that Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and her husband, Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), have a next-door neighbor named Rick Dalton (Leonardo Di Caprio). Now in his late 30s, Rick did well as a TV actor in a 50s western called “Bounty Law.” And he’s still trying to be That Guy in 1969. Tarantino relishes the many Family Guy-style flashbacks to Rick kicking ass as the no-nonsense bounty hunter. QT is a serious disciple of genre schlock who always highlights the levity inherent in it.

Rick is simultaneously looking to branch out and convinced he’s washed up. The culture is about done with guys like him. He’s even apprehensive about saying hello to his stylish next-door neighbors, the “hottest director in Hollywood” and his glamorous, free-spirited wife. But the camera glides like Superman up and over the fence, into the sky, and from one property to another. The bravura camera move early in the film asserts Tarantino’s conceit visually. Can you believe it, he seems to say, the guy lives right next door.

As much time as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood takes to establish Dalton as its flawed hero, it is Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth who steals the film. In what is, for me, Mr. Pitt’s career-best performance, Booth is a kind of hero character for cinephiles, an archetype from a bygone time when we needed archetypes. His world-weary nonchalance seems to be his main superpower. The “real” Steve McQueen (a perfectly cast Damian Lewis) sits by a pool and gossips like a Hollywood dirt sheet writer about who’s dated whom. (Granted, that scene contains the film’s best one-liner joke.) Meanwhile, Booth, who is Rick’s stuntman and all-purpose fixer, does the things the movie stars pretend to do.

In Inglorious Basterds, Pitt’s heavily southern accented military man feels like a cartoon character. You witness Pitt jumping into the animation cell and exaggerating his movements. In Cliff Booth, though, Pitt is at ease. The way he sits, walks, smokes — there’s no detectable performance. Booth is a “cool guy,” but not one who’s going to argue with you about it. We’ve seen this fella before in Tarantino’s universe. Think Max Cherry and Jules Winnfield.

In recent years, I’ve noticed that Mr. Pitt, now 55 years-old and twice divorced from equally famous spouses, is remarkably at ease in interviews. It’s almost as if he’s spent twenty-five years or more having his name be synonymous with “handsome” and knows there’s not much to be done about it. This breezy, affable demeanor is so consistent that it might make a character like Cliff a lobbed pitch for Pitt. The film belongs to Booth. His employer goes through every stage of existential angst, while the stuntman seems to have made his peace with angst long ago, or maybe even made it his bitch. When it’s revealed, early on, that Cliff had a pivotal domestic incident in his past, we feel as if we already knew that. He’d been wearing it on his sleeve all along.

Once Upon a Time takes a good long while to find it’s story. Tarantino is content to film the classic cars and billboards of Hollywood in 1969 and shuffle us through his roster of favorite actors, fading each one in and out of the film like a well-prepared principal at an elementary school Christmas pageant. And why not? He has unfailing good taste in actors. Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern, Scoot McNairy, and the late Luke Perry all get a moment. There they are, and there they go.

There are flubs, though. Al Pacino feels somewhat like a stretch. Also, you could cut out half of Di Caprio’s scenes and not lose a whole lot of what the film is trying to do. Moreover, Margot Robbie’s much discussed portrayal of Sharon Tate ends up being more of a grace note in the film. There’s not much to the character. In Tarantino’s vision, Tate is not even a symbol for anything. She’s just a pretty girl who was lucky until she wasn’t. It was proper for Tarantino to have been asked at Cannes about the short shrift he gave both the character and Robbie.

Eventually, Cliff finds his way to the Manson Family’s dilapidated ranch, and we’re treated to some impressively tense scenes. The three sets of main characters — Cliff and Rick, Sharon and her friends, and the Manson clan — sort of circle each other for most of the running time. And even when the plot reaches its crescendo, they still don’t get much time together.

Despite all the hullabaloo, Once Upon a Time is not about “What If x, y, or z had never happened?” The Tate-LaBianca murders are of little interest to Tarantino, or to us, really. What it is is a film about the where and when, not the how and the who. And the filmmaker’s affection for the setting and time period leaps off of the screen more than any murder would, real or imagined.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — FOUR STARS

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Rated R

Sony Pictures Releasing

Heyday Films

Columbia Pictures

Bona Film Group

Visiona Romatica

161 mins.

High Life

High Life is almost an anti-science fiction movie, a work that has affection less for the visual character of the sci-fi genre than for what that imagery can yield toward such classic Denis themes as isolation and exploitation.

We begin, after all, on a slow-gliding shot of a garden. Which is itself the food source on an unremarkable looking spaceship that looks like a backup battery pack phone charger. Robert Pattinson, an actor I still find mostly a blank stare, carries the picture with that blankness. Denis’ best work has been with expressive actors who carry in them an element of essential strangeness, which makes High Life an outlier of sorts.

Pattinson is quite affecting as Monte, a prisoner on spaceship where prisoners are on a mission to a black hole. (The idea is to harness the black hole’s power for use as an Earthly energy source.) The prisoners think they’ll win their freedom, but the whole thing is a kind of perverse double-cross that ends badly.

Denis gives us the narrative out of order — itself a kind of double-crossing of story that allows her to brush past the sci-fi conventions and get to the oddities of humans in space.

The twist involves both Juliette Binoche and the sexualized science. Binoche’s character, coyly named “Dibs,” is running experiments on the death row prisoners.

Monte got convicted for, as a child, killing his best friend over a dog. And Monte certainly has the monotone and saltine pallor of someone who’s been on death row that long. By the time Denis’ stirring ending flashes before us, we’ve been sat alongside Monte long enough to have never actually seen his crime.Thus we feel a deep, unusual-for-Denis ambivalence toward what he and his companion may or may not be soaring into.

High Life — THREE STARS

Directed by Claire Denis

A24

110 min.

Us

Jordan Peele’s Us seems shaped by everything from Haneke to Hitchcock, from Almodovar to John Carpenter to, indeed, Polanski. But it’s Peele’s own wry aesthetic and penchant for dialogue that’s at once realistic and off-beat that sets his second film apart. So often in the film, which opens today, what’s most impressive is not the scares, many of which are well orchestrated, but the in-between moments of a family eating fast food for dinner, or a boring car ride to a summer home that features memorable diagetic music (there’s some of that Haneke).

Much praise has already been collected by Peele for his careful craft — and the film is impressively put together — but, as in Get Out, what sells the scares is that Peele is such a studious observer of the banality of daily life.

After a spooky flashback cold-open, Us begins as Haneke’s Funny Games does, with a somewhat idealized but recognizably human family driving to a vacation home. Again, Peele, who also wrote the screenplay, excels at this sort of exposition, which in typical horror films is excruciating. We find the Wilsons at ease with one another. There are jokes and banter. But the spooky aura of the cold open hangs in the air. Where Get Out had a more straightforward relationship to form, Us is more observant of its characters faces, the camera seeming to study, even probe, them. It moves its angles slightly in between shots. Scenes shot in broad daylight seem to be imbued with the coldness of midnight.

The central conceit of Us is hinted at with prefatory text across a black screen at the beginning of the film. As the trailer revealed, a family is haunted by bizarro versions of themselves. Where these versions come from and what they want is at once intellectually stimulating and cockamamie if you mull it over for too long. Peele’s penchant for allegory is a gift and a curse. One wonders whether he received studio notes to the effect of “Explain this in dialogue.”

Indeed there are tense, highly memorable scenes that are freighted with long, verbal explanations of What’s Going On. Not a crime in itself (Hitchcock does this all over the place in Vertigo). But too many details in terms of the Hows and Whys just serve to thicken the sauce needlessly.

Story aside, the picture belongs to Lupita Nyong’o. Her character, Adelaide, walks through life haunted by a childhood trauma — a shopworn horror trope Peele twists into something legitimately interesting. Nyong’o is a screen acting ninja of body language. When Adelaide tells her husband, Gabe (Winston Duke), about the childhood event, Peele writes her a dramatic monologue that borders on the maudlin. But it’s Nyong’o’s posture that sells it. She hugs her own elbows as if to protect a body she isn’t quite sure is hers.

The scares and the blood and the gore Us has on offer is better than most horror submissions these days, which tend to linger on the violence in a cheap, juvenile way that doesn’t interest Peele. In Us, the manner in which the characters commit their violent acts actually reveals something about them. (What a concept.) Of course, most discussions of the film will center around the meaning of it all.

Unlike Peele’s first film, Us is more ambiguous in its thematic destinations. The ideas of doubles, doppelgangers, shadows, and mirrors have a deep mythos all their own and can be read in any direction you like. The cognitive bias programmed in us by Get Out  is to see the film as, on some level, about Race in America. Put a gun to my head and I’d say I read Peele’s film — which is at bottom about a permanent and exploited underclass who are out of sight and out of mind — as an allegory for the prison system. The inmates are exactly like you, only in red jumpsuits. 

Us — THREE STARS

Directed by Jordan Peele

Rated R

Universal Pictures

Blumhouse

Monkey Paw

116 min.

Captain Marvel

Although it is a muddled and superficial film, Captain Marvel stars Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson, the latter of which is among the most watchable movie stars working today. Their tandem charms and relative comfort working within the Marvel aesthetic make the experience almost tolerable.

Directed by indie journeymen Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Marvel’s latest chapter in its never-ending story is almost unwatchable in its first reel. The titular character has about three names, thus we can stick with “Captain.” We meet Captain on her home planet, where she’s haunted by memories she can’t quite snap into focus. It’s a warrior society, and in its first third the film borrows from everything from Green Lantern to Superman to The Matrix and grows more tedious with every purloined almost-idea.

There’s an early covert mission Captain goes on with her fellow alien freaks that’s a mess of too-dark cinematography and meandering, uninspired direction. The formal maneuver of representing Captain’s repressed/erased memories of a past life through extremely on-the-nose editing gets old instantaneously. It’s also annoying. There was an opportunity here to do something interesting with the are-we-our-memories philosophical underpinnings of the story, the feminist subject matter, and the 1990s setting. But these elements are never explored, just simply presented.

It would have been great, for example, to see the 90s setting used to some thematic effect rather than simply mined for its obnoxiously obvious playlist. A Marvel movie that actually mimicked a 90s movie aesthetic would have been… well, it would have been as good as any idea in Captain Marvel. The film’s one actually worthwhile major theme — that Captain Marvel had been fighting on the wrong side of a war because she didn’t know who she truly was (literally) — is rendered in such an incurious fashion that the notion is wasted.

Larson navigates the character’s intensity and, remarkably for an alien, penchant for wry comedy more or less skillfully. Of course, the problem with a hero who literally doesn’t know her true identity is that whatever personality traits she might exhibit seem random. Which they are. Oh, is she also a swordsman of sarcasm? Sure, why not?

Larson gets by on her instincts, never really seeming to know, well, who this character is. (Compare with Robert Downey Jr.’s handling of Tony Stark in the Iron Man films; this is less a testament to Downey’s talents than it is to the fact that Tony Stark has character traits that make him recognizable in a literal crowd of superheroes.) Predictably, her best scenes are ones that resemble her own indie background — e.g., sitting at a kitchen table and reminiscing with an old friend, or engaging is semi-barbed banter with Nick Fury (Jackson).

To the extent that Marvel films exist as long-form trailers for the next Marvel film, Captain Marvel is about as effective as it gets. It has the perfunctory boisterousness and pointless swagger that only the finest (worst) trailers can effect. Sitting in the theater, one realizes that the reason the fans come out is the post-credits sequences, in which it becomes clear that the main attraction is never the film you’re watching but the one you’re meant to watch next.

Captain Marvel — TWO STARS

Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

Rated PG-13

Marvel Studios

Walt Disney Studios 

124 min.

The Best Movies: 2018 Edition

As usual, house rules apply. I consider these year-end lists as acts of subjective curation rather than mathematical proofs. It’s simply a list of what I loved in 2018, in ranked order. Nothing about these lists makes much sense anyway. So enjoy the madness.

10. You Were Never Really Here

YWNRH is at once quiet and emphatic — an apt description of Lynne Ramsay’s work in general — a film that doesn’t rise or fall but simply simmers the whole way through, always seeming to be on the verge of something, then holding back… until. Ramsay bottles the oddball verve of Jaoquin Phoenix and sells its wholesale in this poetic and gloomy character sketch of a ruthless hitman who really is a nice guy deep down, you know? Only a filmmaker of Ramsay’s caliber could make this adaptation work. And it works wonders.

9. Unsane

Utterly unpretentious as ever, Steven Soderbergh has a blast with the plot of Unsane. You might walk away thinking you’ve experienced a gripping (if a bit silly at times) and taut thriller about identity, mental health, and the true nature of madness. But I think to Soderbergh, it’s just a genre romp, something fun to do. He shot it on an iPhone. Claire Foy registers the year’s most underappreciated lead performance, not to mention the most awesome character name of the year: “Sawyer Valentini.”

8. BlacKkKlansman

A morally serious deconstruction of hatred (as well as a hymn to competency in our institutions) shouldn’t be this funny, but Spike Lee’s film is one of the funniest of the year. (As well as one of the most harrowing, to be sure.) It’s probably all the dunking on racists that’s done just in the minor mannerisms of Topher Grace’s portrayal of David Duke. Or it could be John David Washington’s mannered pronunciation of the word “white” (he really hits that “wh-” sound). Lee is never subtle. But we don’t live in subtle times.

7. First Man

Damien Chazelle’s biopic of Neil Armstrong is extremely un-biopic-y. Like its star, Ryan Gosling, First Man is downbeat and morose and utterly mesmerizing. La La Land won the box office over. This, a far better and more humane film, did not. It’s the first Chazelle film about which I’ve been unequivocally enthusiastic. The guy can do endings, I’ll give him that.

6. First Reformed

Ethan Hawke and Paul Schrader have teamed for, at the very least, the best plot twists this year. At best, Schrader’s brooding film acts out his love of Bresson and Dreyer more than anything he’s ever done. The wayward and damn-near insane Reverend Toller has a heart too pure for mainstream religion, and bad habits that make him fit right in. What the ending signifies, much in the tradition of Schrader’s European heroes, is up to you.

5. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

I don’t know what I was expecting when I heard the pitch for the Coen brothers’ latest movie. A series of western short stories that, truth be told, looked fairly cartoonish in the trailer. It is cartoonish. The titular character (Tim Blake Nelson) ascends into heaven playing a harp the way Bugs Bunny used to. But the trailer sells the film short. What the Coens’ inimitable brand of alchemy has created here is easily one of their best films. (“The Gal who Got Rattled” is my favorite, if you care.) And the best dialogue of 2018 is found therein.

4. America to Me

After screening at some festivals, Steve James’ latest documentary aired on Starz earlier this year. America to Me is a ten-hour docuseries that takes us inside Oak Park River Forest High School just outside Chicago. The racially diverse student body and faculty allow themselves to be followed (and followed home) by James and his crew. Where Frederick Wiseman might hang back and capture, James probes, asks questions, delves into the lives of the students and adults as they live through questions of race, class, and justice. It’s amazing how James, who possesses such a soft touch, has social conscience that hits hard.

3. The Tale

Jennifer Fox’s autobiographical film about coming to terms with having been sexually exploited as a child veers toward magical realism but is at its best when closer to the ground. The plain old matter-of-fact realism Fox achieves with her actors — particularly Laura Dern and Elizabeth Debicki — is searing and intense. Fox doesn’t spare us the details, which makes for a most uncomfortable film. (The actual molestation scenes were achieved with deft editing and the use of an over-18-years-old body double for the child actor, Isabelle Nelisse.)

2. Madeline’s Madeline

I bristle when I see Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline described as “art house fare” or “experimental cinema.” It’s the most narratively coherent movie I saw in 2018. A teenage girl (the scary-good Helena Howard) is part of an adult’s acting troupe that specializes in experimental theater. Its director (Molly Parker) thinks it’d be a great idea for Madeline’s real-life personal turmoil to be material for the troupe’s art. Typical descriptions point out that the lines between the troupe’s art and Madeline’s inner world “begin to blur,” but what blurs is our ability to play favorites with the characters. People don’t behave logically in this film, but somehow their surprises are what one would expect. It’s not artsy so much as it’s about artsy.

1. The Mule

Clint Eastwood’s reputation as a conservative firebrand has to be in some kind of jeopardy at this point. This is a film about, among other things, white privilege, the futility of the war on drugs, and the ways in which economic pressures can disintegrate families. It’s also the funniest film of the year. Eastwood’s casualness as a director, the ease with which things play out and the low-key feel of the images, mirrors his own demeanor as an aged actor, one who still has the singular grit and grimace of The Man With No Name.

Creed II

Ryan Coogler’s Creed was a clever and ultimately satisfying resurrection of the Rocky franchise, one that updated the formula without monkeying with it very much at all. That easygoing reverence for the source material wasn’t precious and was all about moving forward with its new hero, Donnie, son of Rocky’s first foe and eventual friend, Apollo Creed (played with singular pizzazz by Carl Weathers).

Creed II, directed by Stephen Caple Jr. with a script co-written by Stallone himself, is, for my money, a better film, one that finds the series’ sea legs with Donnie as a protagonist. It also connects more firmly than its predecessor with the prevailing theme of Rocky films: fathers and sons.

One of the detriments of the first Creed film was the lack of a compelling opponent for Donnie (Michael B. Jordan). (Perhaps the plot of Creed II should have been the plot of Creed I?) This time they get it right. Somewhat ham-fisted dialogue lets us know that there’s been a six-fight time jump between films. This film begins with Donnie, with Bianca (Tessa Thompson) and Rocky (Stallone) at his side, now challenging for the heavyweight title (the champ is played by former light-heavyweight titlist Andre Ward).

Like Rocky before him, Donnie’s success in the ring is attended by ennui and familial strife. It’s revealed that the mighty Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren), who was defeated by Rocky only after killing Apollo Creed in the ring, lives in Ukraine with his son, Viktor (Florian Munteanu). Viktor is a young, inexperienced fighter. But he has the benefit of his father’s training and resentments. It is revealed that after losing to Rocky, Ivan’s country turned its back on him, and his statuesque wife (Brigette Nielsen), Viktor’s mother, left them in shame.

Viktor also has the benefit of being big and scary looking, winning all of his handful of fights via devastating knockouts. In keeping with Rocky movie tradition, a slick promoter named Buddy Marcelle (Russell Hornsby, who is excellent with what little dialogue he’s given) sees an opportunity to make a superfight.

Can the newly crowned champion avenge his father’s death by defeating the son of his father’s killer? Pretty straightforward. Interestingly, Creed II swaps the cold war conflict of Rocky IV for what is essentially a familial dispute.

In the prior film, Coogler brought some degree of bravura camera moves to the Rocky franchise, which had until that point been conventionally shot. Caple at times mimics the style but without Coogler’s eye for shots. The fight sequences this time are less convincing, more choreographed seeming where Coogler used more wide shots that better resembled two fighters actually going at it.

Caple, though, is not without his tricks. The fight sequences are well timed and reliably surprising in how they play out. Once Donnie enters the ring with Drago, we really do feel the momentousness of it all.

Rocky’s reluctance to be in Donnie’s corner for a fight with Drago’s son is borne of the fact that Rocky failed to throw in the towel back in the day, which would have saved Apollo’s life. He doesn’t want history to repeat itself. Donnie feels this is simply his trainer and surrogate father having a lack of faith.

What Creed II cleverly achieves is that very dynamic — Rocky’s fear of repeating history, and his refusal to participate in the fight, actually repeats Mickey’s history with Rocky. Two consecutive movies have managed to literally recreate story aspects of the original films without it feeling stale or lazy.

Still, there is much to criticize in Creed II. Where Coogler’s film took its time in establishing its characters, this sequel leaves much under-developed. Drago & Son are actually fascinating, and the baggage they carry is somewhat more interesting than Donnie’s and Rocky’s. (If you play the movie from Viktor Drago’s point-of-view, it’s still a Rocky movie.) The dialogue is on-the-nose (as it was in the original films, admittedly), and the complications that arise in Donnie and Bianca’s efforts to build a family are of questionable wisdom.

Moreover, Rocky himself, and his strained relationship with his biological son, is dealt with in cursory fashion, making a key ending moment feel somewhat unearned. And yet —  Creed II impressed me. It is a beautiful exposition of the main themes of the franchise that, refreshingly, doesn’t worship the franchise.

Creed II — FOUR STARS

Directed by Stephen Caple Jr.

Rated PG-13

Warner Bros.

MGM

New Line Cinema

130 min.

Halloween (2018)

I appreciated the simplicity of David Gordon Green’s Halloween sequel, which uses a reboot title of plain old Halloween. Green is an above-average director, whose best work is found on the HBO television series East Bound and Down, and he’s not bad at striking an interesting tone, making so-so material watchable. (E.g., his film Joe starring Nicolas Cage.) With Halloween, Green brings back Jaime Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, now a paranoid prepper of a grandmother, and enlists none other than John Carpenter himself to reimagine the iconic theme music, which ends up being the film’s best attribute.

Strode, unsurprisingly, is traumatized by her experiences with the criminally insane serial killer Michael Myers, living as a J.D. Salinger-type hermit inside a fortress. Her daughter (Judy Greer) thinks Grandma Laurie is crazy and resents her PTSD-fueled emotional distance. Laurie’s granddaughter (Andi Matichak) longs for a closer relationship with Grandma while still resenting what seems to be an overabundance of caution. (Laurie lives alone, armed to the teeth.) Laurie’s paranoia has hardened her into what we take to be a not-so-great nanna.

Meanwhile Michael Myers, now as aged as Laurie, is locked up in the institution. Laurie’s relationships are frayed in ways that are established but not examined — would not Laurie’s family be more understanding, just a little? Having a serial killer stalk you is no joke. At one point Greer’s character insists that the world is a good place with good people in it. Usually characters that stupid die first.

It’s interesting how the culture of reboots and the nostalgia-drunk mentality that drives it has become as much of a commentary on itself as cash grab. Note how the movie begins on two obnoxiously bland characters who are summarily Janet Leigh-ed. They are documentarians who are “doing a podcast” about the Michael Myers killings of forty years ago. They visit Michael in the institution, shooting questions at him he doesn’t answer. They bribe their way into Laurie’s fortress to interview her. Laurie bursts their hipster bubble — there’s nothing to “understand” about Myers. Some people, as Donald Pleasance’s Dr. Loomis told us in 1978, are just bad. The brief interview scene is inert and pointless, with Curtis barely showing a pulse, but serves as a more or less well played commentary on the sort of movie the original Halloween was not. Evil killer, with a knife, loose in the neighborhood. That’s all there is to understand.

Even the competent Green, who co-wrote the screenplay with Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, knows that whatever innovations he can muster must eventually give way to the  obligatory series of Of Courses. Of course Michael escapes. Of course this is what Laurie had been preparing for. Of course he kills some innocent people in gruesome ways. Of course he seems almost supernatural in his abilities. Of course Myers’ new rampage brings Laurie’s frayed family closer together. Of course this culminates in a final showdown. Of course this all happens on Halloween night.

The twists and surprises Green serves up have the effect of jump scares, just cheap little moves that ultimately don’t add anything to the central story. Curtis, whose engine has always run cool as an actor, makes Laurie seem more disinterested than traumatized. Green has attempted to make a classic slasher film that doubles as a meditation on trauma and family and catharsis. It does neither impressively. I’m all for using genre films for such explorations, but in this instance it feels more like finding a fly in your soup. Carpenter’s original was great because such things were deeply encoded in subtext, not stuff about which characters openly argued. Halloween (2018) tells more than it shows, and what it does show we’ve seen too many times before.

Halloween (2018) — TWO STARS

Directed by David Gordon Green

Rated R

Miramax

Blumhouse

Universal Pictures

105 min.

A Star Is Born

The boredom that set in during my watch of Bradley Cooper’s retread of A Star Is Born came after the first hour or so, when our heroes have well fallen in love and the script, co-written by Eric Roth and Will Fetters with Cooper, must decide what will jeopardize paradise. That first leg of Cooper’s directorial debut, though, is well edited, with Cooper and Lady Gaga having a certain ease and collective charisma with one another onscreen that is appealing.

The film begins aurally. A stadium crowd clamors for a drunken Jackson Maine (Cooper), a not-quite-country singer whose demeanor suggests a lost Allman brother. We hear the crowd meld with the ringing in Maine’s ear. Like many rockers, he has a hearing problem (except his apparently dates back to childhood?). Already we feel like we’ve been here before with Jeff Bridges’ turn in Crazy Heart, a better movie in some respects. Cooper’s camera keeps us on the stage. The point-of-view character is not Jackson or his love, Ally (Gaga), rather, it’s The Performer.

After being dunked into what Maine’s life is like — drink, perform, stumble on to the next town — we meet Gaga’s Ally in a hilariously large bathroom at her job, some kind of banquet hall or large restaurant. Chambered in a stall, she argues with some boyfriend who clumsily proposes marriage over the phone. Ally wisely breaks up with him. Then she walks to the center of the room and engages in a primal scream. Gaga gives Ally a self-assurance that sometimes almost becomes a tough-guy sneer. When she’s not hauling garbage in food service, she’s an aspiring singer who performs in a drag queen bar, the only cis-woman so honored, we’re told. All this is handled more or less with directorial alacrity. Cooper is a careful director, backing his way into painterly shots without being too precious.

Maine leaves a gig and instructs his loyal driver to find a bar. When he finds it to be a drag queen spot, he reacts with vaguely woke equanimity. Hey, they serve booze, says his body language. Jackson is recognized by Ally’s friend (Anthony Ramos) who announces that his pal from work will perform presently. Drink in hand, Jackson is riveted by Ally Gaga’s table-walking rendition of “La Vie en Rose.” Shuffling through a thicket of starstruck drag queens — Maine signing a set of fake breasts is one of many cheap laughs had at a drag performers’ expense — he finally meets Ally, who is self-confident as a person, self-possessed as a performer, but somehow freighted with self-doubt as a songwriter. They flirt and are immediately off on an impromptu first date.

To my surprise, I bought the central relationship here. Cooper and Gaga engage in the sort of drunken-first-date banter that is realistic in its inanity. The over-share and over-praise one another. Although in every scene, someone eventually outright states the point of the scene, with dialogue stuffed with character backstory. Maine eventually has his driver stalk Ally, waiting outside her family home, where she lives with Andrew Dice Clay who plays her dad, to deliver her to Jackson’s next gig. In one of many twists we see coming a country mile away, their post-gig consummation is postponed due to Jackson passing out drunk. He is tucked in by another trusted handler, played by Sam Elliot, who, though used sparingly, is fiery with unspoken emotion and utterly believable.

Once the story shifts, as it must in every A Star Is Born iteration, from two artists falling in love to two artists dealing with the tribulations of their relationship in the context of one partner’s growing fame, Cooper loses the tight control that characterized the first third of the film. Where once the editing was impressionistic and judicious, things become tedious and long-winded. Whole conversations with side characters delivering minor background information are handled as if they carry essential information. As the eternal story wears on, and Ally goes from viral sensation to Grammy-nominated pop star, Cooper becomes too indulgent. The characters tend to say exactly what’s on their minds in a way that grows into stale predictability.

We already know she can sing, and in A Star Is Born she does so beautifully. (Cooper, on the other hand, is not a professional singer, which is evident not in the notes he hits or doesn’t hit but in the professional-musician confidence that his voice lacks. E.g., Gosling in La La Land.) But Gaga achieves a naturalism in the non-singing scenes that is, in fact, the thing that made me believe her as Ally. Gaga’s best acting moments are those when Ally is worked up about something, joking around in bar early on or becoming angry with Jackson while she soaks in a bath. You only see her acting in the smaller, quieter moments, particularly early on, wherein there’s no extreme emotion happening, just conversing at work, etc.

The film gives so much backstory to Jackson and Ally that other questions that pop up go unaddressed. Ally appears to be a tri-state area chick who performs in drag bars, whereas Jackson is a country-rock fusion singer from Arizona who wears a cowboy hat (although not onstage) and speaks with a low, rumbling twang. Do they share the same values? Additionally, would not their musical tastes not quite aligning be more of a problem, at the very least, a conversation? Such practical questions, the film seems tacitly to argue, are rendered moot when two people are “in love.”

The effect for which the film is shooting is one of alternately swooning and crying. But I found the second half of A Star Is Born to be maudlin. Cooper elongates the sad scenes with such melodramatic deliberateness that one feels almost assaulted. And with the exception of a tune called “Shallow,” the songs, some of which co-written by Cooper himself, are lyrically underwhelming. Of course, the Academy likes swooning and star-making and actors directing. The Oscar swamis have predicted that this thing will clean house on the awards circuit. The best thing one can say this time of year is that the Academy could do worse. Perhaps they will.

A Star Is Born — TWO STARS

Directed by Bradley Cooper

Rated R

Warner Bros.

137 min.

BlacKkKlansman

Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, a pro-law and order and anti-terrorism tract, is based on the true story of Ron Stallworth, a black Colorado Springs cop who figured out a novel way of infiltrating the Klan in the early 1970s. As is his wont, Lee immediately begins by mingling straightforward polemics with emphatic artistry. We begin on the famous Gone with the Wind crane shot, unaltered by Lee, before moving to a diegetic slide presentation by a racist (Alec Baldwin) that fixes that Klan’s point of view in a historical and cultural context.

Throughout the film, Lee (who co-wrote the screenplay with David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel, and Kevin Willmott) breaks the fourth wall and speaks to the now. These moments are jarring and are meant to be jarring. BlacKkKlansman is a kind of essay in narrative that predictably perceives a continuity of circumstance between past and present. Yet it resists platitudes and easy moralizing. It may be Lee’s most contemplative non-documentary film.

Stallworth (John David Washington) is the first black officer on the Colorado Springs department. Before gaining any real experience, he finds himself being put to use in the Criminal Investigations Division as an undercover sent in to collect intel at a Stokely Carmichael speech. Carmichael’s speech and the crowd’s reaction are depicted with expressionistic zest, focusing on faces in the crowd as much as the words of the speaker, who encourages the blacks of Colorado Springs to fight back against their oppressors. Stallworth, who we’ve already learned is a proud man who takes absolutely no shit, seems moved by Carmichael even as Stallworth is there in his capacity as an undercover “pig.”

Stallworth’s dual allegiances — pride as a black man  and pride in his job — is not dumped on us over and over but rather is simply set forth at the outset as a necessary tension. Lee accepts Stallworth’s double-consciousness, the Du Boisian term that is explicitly debated later in the film, without suggesting he must choose a “side.” In fact, the film seems to be nostalgic for a time when law enforcement was more pro-active in its disruption of hate groups. Stallworth is on the right side by being on both sides.

BlacKkKlansman works its magic beautifully in its first half, where the nuts and bolts of the operation are as fascinating as they are absurd. Often we move from a laugh-out-loud moment of ridiculousness to a sobering reminder of just how sick the Klan is. Sometimes these moments are one in the same, as when a particularly simpleminded Klansman childishly asks if he can touch a live C-4 explosive. One hundred percent of the comedy is making virulent racism look silly, with near constant dunking on the Klan members.

On a whim, Ron phones the local KKK chapter after noticing an ad in the newspaper that suggests they’re organizing locally. The inexperienced rookie unwittingly uses his real name on the phone call in which he uses his voice skills to “pass” as a racist white man interested in Klan membership. When it dawns on him that a black officer will have a difficult time blending in at a Klan meeting, the CID task force determines that Detective “Flip” Zimmerman (Adam Driver) will be the one to go in, while Stallworth will handle the over-the-phone stuff. Interestingly, many of the white cops are portrayed as accepting of Stallworth, joshing him only for being a naive rookie and not for his race; although other cops on the force are clearly hateful, referring to black suspects as “toads” if not worse.

The police, the film seems to argue, are imperfect and set in their ways (particularly in how they shelter and protect bad officers), but are integral to disrupting terrorism. Stallworth and his task force use cleverness and audacity and a lot of luck to infiltrate the Klan. The most interesting relationship in the film is not the romantic entanglement between Ron and a young anti-racist organizer named Patrice (Laura Harrier) but the relationship between Washington and Driver. It is revealed that Flip is Jewish, which, as Ron admonishes him, gives him “Skin in the game.” In the same way Ron’s elocution skills allow him to pass for white over the phone, Flip’s estrangement from his Jewishness has allowed him to coast as an officer without thinking much about the kind of hate the undercover operation has now ensconced him in.

When it becomes clear the local Klan chapter is planning a terrorist attack upon local black activists, Stallworth and his men must scramble to thwart the attack. All the while, Stallworth has also had a phone relationship with none other than David Duke, who is played with exquisite clownishness by Topher Grace. Grace never goes over the top but gives Duke a kind of pencil-neck aplomb that amounts to as perfect a lampooning of racism I can recall in a motion picture. “You’re darned tootin’,” Duke says over the phone, as if he were some sort of even more reprehensible version of Jerry Lundegaard.

As Stallworth carries on his telephonic friendship with Duke, he finds that the former “Grand Wizard” has dubbed himself the “National Director” of the Klan to make himself seem more mainstream. A key plot point has to do with Driver’s undercover “white Ron Stallworth” waiting to receive his Klan membership card in the mail. The members, hilariously, are sticklers for this. One must have his membership card in hand before one may participate in cross burnings and the like. The real, black Ron makes a call to the clueless Duke, who helpfully expedites the card’s arrival. We realize then that the Klan’s entire bureaucracy consists only of the sad little man Duke sitting in his office. “I can always tell a white man’s voice from a black man’s” Duke says. It could be a Mel Brooks sketch.

Ironically, the closer BlacKkKlansman gets to its violent climax the less riveting it becomes. The first half, in which the logistics and subterfuge of Stallworth’s operation is laid out in detail, is as watchable as any stretch of film I’ve seen this year. Lee’s film leans into serious points about what real lawlessness looks like and what its consequences are. The moments in which Lee explicitly connects the narrative to contemporary concerns are at once seemingly unnecessary and, well, quintessentially Spike Lee. It’s difficult to blame a veteran filmmaker for being himself.

BlacKkKlansman‘s coda includes footage of last year’s Charlottesville riots, in which a white anti-racism activist, Heather Heyer, was killed. The film is, in effect, dedicated to her. Footage of David Duke, filmed around the same time, sees the man himself endorsing Trump, and in doing so, providing the most forceful rebuke possible to the idea that Spike Lee sometimes lays it on too thick.

BlacKkKlansman — FOUR STARS

Directed by Spike Lee

Rated R

Focus Features

135 min.

Mission Impossible: Fallout

The Mission Impossible films are to storytelling what the Slam Dunk Contest is to the NBA Playoffs. It’s all spectacle because that’s what it’s supposed to be. No one watches the dunk contest thinking they’re going to see a full game.

So it goes with writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s Fallout, the sixth film in the franchise. The convoluted plot unfurls faster than even the smartypants characters can keep up with. This time Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) mission, and he chooses to accept it, involves keeping three orbs of plutonium from falling into the grasp of a terrorist syndicate of inchoate commitments. What’s really objectionable about these terrorists is that they’re beliefs are hilariously generalized.

Hunt and his homeboys, Luther and Benjy (Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg), must broker a deal to obtain the weapons before the terrorists, known as The Apostles, blow up the world. These terrorists are a mountain of ideological contradictions. It seems they’re anti-… belief systems? They think the public’s faith in the law, society, and religion is misguided. Greater disaster, they insist, leads to greater peace, or some such nonsense. The one thing you can’t take away from real-world terrorists is they have their principles. Not these guys.

But Fallout isn’t interested in ideas or principles. The film could make some kind of thematic move if it made the terrorists’ beliefs something realistic, but their grievances are so generic that this might as well be an alien invasion.

How then is Fallout so delectable an experience? All spy stories, to one degree or another, are about what patriotism and sacrifice mean. Hunt has sacrificed a lot for his work. McQuarrie’s screenplay establishes that early with a dream-fantasy sequence in which Ethan’s wedding is disrupted by disaster. Ironically, the only tiresome spots in the film are these moments, when our charismatic hero ponders all he’s lost for his work.

We don’t like Ethan because he’s had his personal life wrecked by the spy trade any more than we like John McClaine because he wants to get back with his wife. What we dig about these guys is their audacity. Contrary to every screenplay writing guru’s advice, I’ve long held that in the better action films it’s the artfulness of the action, not the relationships, that actually draws us in. The fact that Ethan has loved and lost is a common experience; guys crashing helicopters and jumping off of rooftops like Spider-Man is not.

And boy does he. For most of the film’s parade of preposterous contrivances of double-crosses and aliases and daredevil close calls Cruise is joined by Henry Cavill, a younger secret agent known for his lack of a soft touch. Cavill has been assigned to work alongside Ethan. The government trusts Ethan enough to get the plutonium but not enough to do so without supervision from a less experienced spy. Together, the two impossibly handsome stars dart from fight scene to chase scene to whatever chaos is happening and leave stacks of dead bodies in their wake. The most astonishing of these set pieces involves Cavill and Cruise jumping from a plane at dusk over Paris with cinematographer Rob Hardy jumping with them — with an IMAX camera strapped to him.

This literally awesome stunt is the centerpiece of Fallout‘s action. I, however, found the car stunts and chases more impressive. Cruise races through Paris on motorcycles, fishtails four-door sedans, jumps out of planes, and flies helicopters trying to stop these utterly uninteresting villains from engaging in nuclear terrorism. Tom Cruise’s sheer zeal for the stunts combines with his awareness of his own charms in a way that’s as mesmerizing as it is distracting. With every leap from a building or sharp turn taken on a motorbike, the fifty-six-year-old seems to ask “Isn’t it something that I’m willing to do all this?”

A bathroom fight scene goes on forever and is admirable for its realism. A shootout in a sewer is that rare darkly lit action scene that looks good and pays off in an interesting fashion. McQuarrie’s direction is restrained. The action moves fast, but the editing is disciplined, with lots of medium and wide shots that allow us to see the whole performances. That, alone, makes Fallout a high-quality action film. The so-called “emotional stakes” for Ethan feel set in place as more a convention of blockbusters than as a necessity of anything the film intends to achieve.

Mission Impossible: Fallout — THREE STARS

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

Rated PG-13

Paramount Pictures

Bad Robot

147 min.