Thanksgiving weekend in the US must be a major moving going time because every year there's a large number of big films arriving for it. We get them when they do. Most started Wednesday. This year's list is especially big with Ridley Scott's Napoleon epic and Disney's self-celebratory Wish going head to head. Disney needs it to hit big. But look at the list: several films rate high and will be competition. And also notice the much smaller Indigenous-themed film from Canada I've included.
Napoleon: 3 stars
Wish: 3
May December: 4
Dream Scenario: 3 ½
Saltburn: 3
Fallen Leaves: 4
s-yéwyáw / AWAKEN: 3 ½
NAPOLEON: This is a passable history lesson that Ridley Scott, the director, and David Scarpa, the writer, have assembled here. But it feels incomplete and as a movie it feels more than a bit dry, like a reconstruction, not a drama that illuminates a powerful man's psyche. Yet, that is what is needed here. Napoleon is just too enigmatic a figure. Like several filmmakers in the past, Scott doesn't manage to get very close to him. He's insecure, ambitious, afraid of being seen as just a Corsican ruffian, but what else? The path to the height of his power, emperor of France, conquerer of much of Europe, is explained in only sketchy detail.
As a person, played cool and icy by Joaquin Phoenix, he's arrogant, with a grandiose view of himself. “I am the first to admit when I make a mistake. I simply never do,” he says. Where's that from? Not explored. More defined is the relationship with his wife, Josephine, played by Vanessa Kirby and for sure the most vibrant character in the film. She's compliant and careful, needing to preserve her status but also able to argue, humiliate him and make him feel jealous. His character doesn't benefit from shadings like that, though he does seem to be more than a bit immature. He is offered power, takes it and the film shows the result with a number of battle scenes, including the thrilling but cold and icebound Austerlitz. Waterloo is a bit mis-represented (according to my understand of it) but as a group the battles are stunning. The whole film feels like the historical epics we got quite often years ago. Maybe the gaps will be filled in a much longer version that will stream on Apple TV+ sometime in the future. (For now, In theaters) 3 out of 5
WISH: Disney's signature melody, When You Wish Upon a Star, is the inspiration for this, their latest animated feature. Stick around, you'll actually hear it played in an extra scene tacked on to the end credits. Before that you'll get a story about looking up at the stars and making your wish. It serves as a celebration of the company's glorious past with allusions to many of its best films as well as a firm statement of where it is now. Too bad though, that as the writers delivered on those aims they skimped on getting us connected to the characters. The story feels manufactured for a purpose.
Even then, it's a pretty good one. A teenage girl named Asha wants her grandfather to get his wish and heads off to the king's palace to state his case. The king, who is also a sorcerer, has the power to grant wishes but Asha, in applying to become his apprentice, finds out he doesn't deliver. He just collects them, lets them float like bubbles in a dome and makes a big show of granting one now and then. Asha, the rebellious teen that she is, decides to expose him.
She's joined by a yellow thing that's come down from the stars and among other skills can make animals talk. That includes Asha's pet goat who gets the kids in the audience chuckling. The rest of the story is quite mature and political about ousting a power-hungry autocrat and supporting the community he deceives. As Chris Pine voices him, he's the most dynamic character in the film. Asha, voiced by Oscar winner Ariana DeBose, is sweet and daring. The two each get a vibrant song among the generally forgettable lot. She puts power into “This Wish” and he belts out “This is the Thanks I Get.” The directors and the writers worked on Frozen. This one isn't a match. (In theaters) 3 out of 5
MAY DECEMBER: Tabloid infamy is the subject here and Todd Haynes with his ability to find both the good and the lurid in such things is the director. And better yet: two fine and natural actors are in the lead as women trying to figure each other out. Julianne Moore (who incidentally starred in an early Todd Haynes film 21 years ago) plays a former school teacher who at age 36 carried on with one of her students, a 7th-grader. That would make him 13 at the time. It's based on a case that actually did happen and caused a tabloid frenzy. The teacher went to jail for it and after she got out, lived with him for some 20 years. Same in the film. The teacher had a baby behind bars. She married the student; they have children about to graduate from highschool and are long past the scandal.
Enter Natalie Portman as a TV actress about to resurrect it. She'll play her in a movie and is doing research to learn about her character. And how she feels now about what she did. Turns out she's cool with it but does bristle at a few of the questions. Gradually we get hints that she's a controlling, assertive type and blunt. She feels no guilt but there's evidence, including a letter from years ago and insight from her former husband, that casts some doubt on that.
Natalie has a great scene talking to a class of school children about acting. She says she prefers stories about “moral gray areas” (what a meta comment that is) and also how sex scenes are done (foreshadow alert). There's clumsy symbolism with caterpillars that will become Monarch butterflies but generally this is a subtle and not at all tawdry contemplation of beating off shame and guilt. (In theaters) 4 out of 5
DREAM SCENARIO: Here's a very clever rumination on fame, the joy and the dangers. Clever? But it's weird. Well, imaginative, I'd say. A college professor, played by Nicolas Cage but not in his usual manic method, tells a story in class about a character who appears in his dreams. When a student repeats it on the internet and it goes viral, people report that he's started appearing their dreams. Millions say they've seen him there. No, it makes no sense, but it's fun, funny and Cage is having a great time with it. He gives his best performance in some time.
The prof is a minor academic. He's looking for a publisher for a book he hasn't even written yet, on ants. Now he becomes a celebrity. Michael Cera is part of a group at a promotional agency trying capitalize on that fame. Doing Sprite commercials is their best suggestion. But what is good can turn bad. Those dreams that people are having start turning scary and menacing. They're nightmares. The film is about the effect the subconscious has on our lives. I think. It's directed by Kristoffer Borgli but notice the producer: Ari Aster. His films Beau is Afraid and Midsommar got into the surreal to talk about life. Like this one does. Very well. (In theaters) 3½ out of 5
SALTBURN: It feels like this has drawn on two movies. It starts like Brideshead Revisited and then switches to The Talented Mr. Ripley. However, derivative as it may be, it is also highly engrossing. Take a chance. It's from Emerald Fennell who you might remember played Camilla in The Crown and Midge in Barbie and as a writer-filmmaker won an Oscar (best original script) for her first film, Promising Young Woman. While that was a revenge fantasy that got violent, this also gets mean as a young man gets mixed up with and wants to join the super rich.
Barry Keoghan plays a student, a high-achiever but something of a nebish, at Oxford in the year 2006. He becomes attracted to an impossibly handsome classmate (Jacob Elordi, who plays Elvis in the current film, Priscilla) and is flattered when he invites him to visit his family home, a palace-size house in the country. He meets the dad, Sir James Catton, played by Richard E. Grant, his wife played by Rosamund Pike, relatives, a friend played by Carey Mulligan, and a very stiff butler. (Four of these actors have been Oscar nominees). The student wants to join this class of people and the rest of the film shows his efforts. No spoilers here but his character is revealed to be far different from what we've seen. That's too sudden and not believable. Still, it's worth watching for its sharp observation of the privileged classes. (In theaters now/Prime Video soon) 3 out of 5
FALLEN LEAVES: Aki Kaurismäki from Finland made a film I loved about 12 years ago: Le Havre about an illegal immigrant getting help from a stranger. Going back further, he made three films about working-class people struggling with making a living and improving their lives. Here's a fourth, unofficial but in the same vein. Two lonely people meet and we see their efforts to find happiness.
The man, Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) drinks too much because he's got a boring job in a factory. The woman Ansa (Alma Pöysti) has just been fired from her job at a grocery store because she gave some expired food to a homeless man. They meet at a karaoke bar where friends have taken them and start a relationship, tentatively. They see a movie, which since it's a Jim Jarmusch comedy about zombies serves as an in-joke and a shout out by the director. Chaplin is clearly an influence too and there's a contemporary touch, recurring radio news about the Ukraine war. But mainly there's their soulful quest for love. She won't abide an alcoholic, she announces. He loses the phone number she gives him. So how can they meet again? The film is charming, has been at festivals (it opened Vancouver's) and is now in theaters in six cities across Canada, with more to come. 4 out of 5
s-yéwyáw / AWAKEN: If you're in Vancouver you could catch this contemplation of what Indigenous societies in Canada need to recover. If not, watch out for it. Toronto already saw it once at a festival and it's sure to screen again and elsewhere. It's about BC but could apply anywhere. It's about healing and what the elders have to say.
What to recover from is well known: separated from their land, banned from carrying on some of their cultural practices and almost turned non-Indian at residental schools, they need to revive their traditions. The solution proposed here by three Indigenous people, musician and medicine woman Ecko Aleck, wellness coordinator and filmmaker Alfonso Salinas (who has some Mayan and Aztec ancestry) and storyteller Charlene SanJenko, is simple. Listen to the elders. Hear what their life used to be like and get back to the same. Largely that means getting back to the land and to the ways of nature.
The film by Liz Marshall features them, their ideas and three elders with stories. Barbara Higgins wrote a whole book about her life and tells how she initially avoided but was then captured to be sent to residential school. Somebody talks about the trauma of colonialism and “genocide.” Elder Terry Coyote Aleck describes what his life was like at residential school and directly names an abuser. One activist works to re-organize canoe building and travel which he says is central to Indigenous culture. Drums (“lost to us for many years”) are played. With these people at least you feel what “awaken” means. (VIFF centre starting Saturday, at the Raven's Cry Theatre in Sechelt on December 13th and 14th and soon touring in BC) 3½ out of 5
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