Movie Reviews

‘Maria’ Review: Angelina Jolie’s Maria Callas Suffers at a Chilly Distance in Pablo Larraín’s Biopic

Published

1 year ago

August 29, 2024

‘Maria’ Review: Angelina Jolie’s Maria Callas Suffers at a Chilly Distance in Pablo Larraín’s Biopic

In Jackie and Spencer, Pablo Larraín removed any trace of starch from the historical bio-drama to examine, with penetrating intimacy, famous women in moments of extreme emotional distress played out in the glare of a global spotlight. Intimacy is the key factor lacking in the third part of the gifted Chilean director’s unofficial trilogy, Maria. Starring Angelina Jolie as revered operatic soprano Maria Callas over the final week of her life in Paris, the movie is like a glittering jewel in a glass showcase, inviting you to look but not touch.

That doesn’t mean it’s uninvolving or that Jolie’s technically precise interpretation isn’t impressive. But there’s a meta collision between a star whose celebrity has long eclipsed her acting achievements, making it all but impossible for her to disappear into a character, and a subject who constructed an imperious persona for herself, performing even when she wasn’t on a stage.

Maria

The Bottom Line

Sings but misses the high notes.

Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher, Valeria Golino, Haluk Bilginer, Stephen Ashfield, Valeria Golino, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Vincent Macaigne, Lydia Koniordou, Aggelina Papadopoulou
Director: Pablo Larraín
Screenwriter: Steven Knight

2 hours 3 minutes

Doubling down on icons brings a lot of weight for a role to bear. It results less in a kinship between actor and character than a twofold remove — an exercise in character study, a tad glacial and distancing, rather than a flesh-and-blood portrait.

The movie is beautifully crafted, of course, graced with sumptuous visuals from the great Ed Lachman. The cinematographer captures the City of Light in 1977 in soft autumnal shades highly evocative of the period and shifts into black-and-white or grainy color stock for Callas’ many retreats into memory. Lachman, who was Oscar-nominated for his breathtaking chiaroscuro work on Larraín’s last feature, El Conde, shot Maria using a textured mix of 35mm, 16mm and Super 8mm, along with vintage lenses.

The DP’s outstanding work enhances the refined contributions of production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas and costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini. The latter’s stunning gowns include chic ensembles worn at public occasions and exquisite costumes for Callas’ famed stage roles, some of which the singer is seen burning as she separates herself from the past.

“I’m in the mood for adulation,” Callas tells a Paris waiter when he suggests she might be more comfortable inside than at an outdoor café table. “I come to restaurants to be adored.”

Larraín and screenwriter Steven Knight, who previously penned Spencer, comply to a degree. Their film is an act of mournful worship for a diva who seems almost too arch, too cloaked in affectation to read as a vulnerable human being — even as her body is shutting down and she’s racked with insecurities about her voice while planning to sing again, more than four years after she last performed. Often, it feels like the filmmakers are scrutinizing Callas with the disorienting effect of a magnifying glass.

The balance doesn’t seem quite right when you feel more for the loyal household staff who love and protect her than you do for the woman lying dead on the carpet by the grand piano. That image opens the movie, preceded only by a slow pan around Callas’ stately apartment.

Knight employs the pedestrian framing device of an interview, with a TV arts reporter and cameraman coming to Maria’s home. The journalist’s name, Mandrax (Kodi Smit-McPhee in a thankless role), is a tipoff that he’s a product of Maria’s mind given that it’s also the name of the medication on which she’s most dependent — more commonly sold as Quaaludes in the U.S.

In what seems a ritual maintained for some time, Maria’s hyper-vigilant butler, Ferruccio (Pierfrancesco Favino), removes the pills from her dressing table and later from the handbags and coat pockets where she has stashed handfuls of them around the room. She has also stopped eating for days at a time, feeding meals prepared by her housekeeper Bruna (Alba Rohrwacher) to her poodles.

She becomes peevish about the dire warnings of her medic, Dr. Fointainebleau (Vincent Macaigne), that her heart and liver are completely shot and that the stress of attempting to perform plus the meds she would need to get through it risk killing her.

The dominant thread becomes not that grim final week, punctuated by abortive rehearsals with a gently coaxing accompanist (Stephen Ashfield), but the singer’s mental forays into her past, from her unhappy childhood with an exploitative mother (Lydia Koniordou) through her love affair with Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), whose aggressive charms instantly shoved her husband to the sidelines. Since the Greek shipping magnate eventually left her for Jackie Kennedy, there’s a satisfying full-circle completion with the subject of Larraín’s first film in the trilogy. But don’t expect a cameo from Jackie star Natalie Portman.

Maria’s memories are additionally crowded with her triumphs in the world’s most prestigious opera houses — Covent Garden, The Met, La Scala — flooding the movie with glorious music. The naked emotionality and piercing tragedy of the immortal operatic heroines is a poignant fit for Callas’ end-of-life story and a useful counterpoint to her studied poise and aloofness in this interpretation. The power of work by Verdi, Puccini, Bellini, Donizetti, Catalani and Cherubini goes a long way toward delivering the pathos that often seems muted by Larraín’s approach.

Passages from some of the most celebrated classical operas effectively supplant the role of a score. The soul-stirring choice of musical bookends for the film starts with Desdemona’s supplicant prayer, “Ave Maria,” from Otello, and closes with “Vissi d’Arte” from Tosca, in which a woman who lived for art and love feels abandoned by God. Opera enthusiasts will find much here to savor when the movie drops on Netflix at a date to be determined.

Commendably, Jolie undertook more than six months of rigorous vocal training for the part, also working on breathing and posture alongside specifics like accent. The singing we hear in Maria is a synthesized mix of star and subject. Arias from her prime are predominantly Callas recordings, but her voice in the 1977 scenes, older and rustier after years of vocal strain and a long absence from the stage, blends in a significant amount of Jolie. Neither lip-syncing nor karaoke, it’s a more intricate hybrid.

A number of striking moments use music to show memory and fantasy bleeding into Callas’ diminishing hold on reality. For instance, Maria strolling through the city with the Eiffel Tower in the background, in her mind marshaling a crowd of everyday Parisians singing the “Anvil Chorus” from Il Trovatore; or a full orchestra on the steps of one of the French capital’s grand historic buildings, playing in the rain while a throng of costumed geishas perform the “Humming Chorus” from Madama Butterfly. That ineffably moving passage of music, representing Butterfly’s calm vigil as she waits for Pinkerton’s return, adds emotional heft to the tragedy looming in Maria’s life.

Conflict surfaces when a music reporter for Le Figaro pulls a dirty trick and then confronts Maria outside the rehearsal auditorium with the view that her voice is irreparably ragged. But Knight’s script doesn’t capitalize on this as a moment of self-reckoning, instead limiting the scene to a distressing invasion of privacy.

The movie aims to depict a celebrated woman, whose life has been as much about sacrifice as reward, seeking to take control, to look back and see the truth as death approaches. But its moments of illumination are hazy. There’s little that comes close to the compassion and insight Larraín brought to his portraits of Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana, even though it’s very much of a piece with those movies.

The tenderness of a scene in which Maria’s sister (Valeria Golino) urges her to put her troubled childhood behind her (“Close the door, little sister”) inadvertently points up how few opportunities we are given to get on comparably intimate terms with the protagonist.

In fact, the most heartbreaking moment for me came at the end, when the film returns to the day of Callas’ death from a heart attack, aged just 53. A high-pitched shriek that at first sounds like some strangled note from an aria is revealed to have come from one of her poodles, the dog’s cry of anguish becoming a loud expression of the hushed sorrow shown by Ferruccio and Bruna (Favino and Rohrwacher are both wonderful) as they reach for each other’s hand for comfort.

Still, Maria is a far more daring and unconventional take on the final chapter of the legendary soprano’s life than Franco Zeffirelli’s boilerplate 2002 biopic, Callas Forever, starring Fanny Ardant. And Larraín’s film becomes retroactively more affecting when the lovely archival images of Callas over the end credits, full of vitality at the peak of her career, widen the perspective on her sad, accelerated decline.

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Movie Reviews

‘Greenland 2: Migration’ Review: Gerard Butler in a Post-Apocalyptic Sequel That’s Exactly What You Expect

Published

12 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

‘Greenland 2: Migration’ Review: Gerard Butler in a Post-Apocalyptic Sequel That’s Exactly What You Expect

Desperate migrants are forced to leave Greenland after a malevolent force makes their island uninhabitable. No, it’s not tomorrow’s headline about Donald Trump, but rather the sequel to Ric Roman Waugh’s 2020 post-apocalyptic survival thriller. That film starring Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin had the misfortune of opening during the pandemic and going straight to VOD. Greenland 2: Migration (now there’s a catchy title) has the benefit of opening in theaters, but it truly feels like an unnecessary follow-up. After all, how many travails can one poor family take?

That family consists of John Garrity (Butler), whose structural engineering skills designated him a governmental candidate for survival in the wake of an interstellar comet dubbed “Clarke” wreaking worldwide destruction; his wife Allison (Baccarin); and their son Nathan (now played by Roman Griffin Davis). At the end of the first film, the clan had endured numerous life-threatening crises as they made their way to the underground bunker in Greenland where survivors will attempt to make a new life.

Greenland 2: Migration

The Bottom Line

It’s the end of the world as we know it…again.

Release date: Friday, January 9
Cast: Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, Roman Griffin Davis, Amber Rose Revah, Sophie Thompson, Trond Fausa Aurvag, William Abadie
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Screenwriters: Mitchell LaFortune, Chris Sparling

Rated PG-13,
1 hour 38 minutes

Five years later, things aren’t going so well. Fragments of the comet continue to rain down on the planet, causing catastrophic destruction. The contaminated air prevents people from going outside, and resources are becoming increasingly scarce. But there are some plus sides, such as the bunker’s inhabitants still being able to dance to yacht rock.

When their safe haven in Greenland is destroyed, the Garritys, along with a few other survivors, are forced to flee. Their destination is France, where there are rumors of an oasis at the comet’s original crash site. And at the very least, the food is bound to be better.

It’s a perilous journey, but anyone who saw the first film knows what to expect. The Garritys, along with the bunker’s Dr. Casey (Amber Rose Revah), run into some very bad people, undergoing a series of life-threatening trials and tribulations.

Unfortunately, while the thriller mechanics are reasonably well orchestrated by director Waugh (Angel Has Fallen, Kandahar) in his fourth collaboration with Butler, Greenland 2: Migration feels as redundant as its title. While the first film featured a relatively original premise and some genuine emotional dynamics in its suspenseful situations, this one just feels rote. And while it’s made clear that the crisis has resulted in people resorting to cutthroat, deadly means to ensure their survival, the Garritys have it relatively easy. All John has to do is adopt a puppy-dog look, put a pleading tone in his voice, beg for his family’s help, and people inevitably comply.

To be fair, the film contains some genuinely arresting scenes, including one set in a practically submerged Liverpool and another in a dried-up English Channel. The latter provides the opportunity for a harrowing sequence in which the family is forced to cross a giant ravine on a treacherously fragile rope ladder.

Butler remains a sturdy screen presence, his Everyman quality lending gravitas to his character. Baccarin, whose character serves as the story’s moral conscience (early in the proceedings she spearheads a fight to open the shelter to more refugees despite the lack of resources, delivering a not-so-subtle message), more than matches his impact. William Abadie (of Emily in Paris) also makes a strong impression as a Frenchman who briefly takes the family in and begs them to take his daughter Camille (Nelia Valery de Costa) along with them.

Resembling the sort of B-movie fantasy adventure, with serviceable but unremarkable special effects, that used to populate multiplexes in the early ‘70s, Greenland 2: Migration is adequate January filler programming. The only thing it’s missing is dinosaurs.

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: A real-life ’70s hostage drama crackles in Gus Van Sant’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’

Published

24 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Movie Review: A real-life ’70s hostage drama crackles in Gus Van Sant’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’

It plays a little loose with facts but the righteous rage of “Dog Day Afternoon” is present enough in Gus Van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire,” a based-on-a-true-tale hostage thriller that’s as deeply 1970s as it is contemporary.

In February 1977, Tony Kiritsis walked into the Meridian Mortgage Company in downtown Indianapolis and took one of its executives, Dick Hall, hostage. Kiritsis held a sawed-off shotgun to the back of Hall’s head and draped a wire around his neck that connected to the gun. If he moved too much, he would die.

The subsequent standoff moved to Kiritsis’ apartment and eventually concluded in a live televised news conference. The whole ordeal received some renewed attention in a 2022 podcast dramatization starring Jon Hamm.

But in “Dead Man’s Wire,” starring Bill Skarsgård as Kiritsis, these events are vividly brought to life by Van Sant. It’s been seven years since Van Sant directed, following 2018’s “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot,” and one of the prevailing takeaways of his new film is that that’s too long of a break for a filmmaker of Van Sant’s caliber.

Working from a script by Austin Kolodney, the filmmaker of “My Own Private Idaho” and “Good Will Hunting” turns “Dead Man’s Wire” into not a period-piece time capsule but a bracingly relevant drama of outrage and inequality. Tony feels aggrieved by his mortgage company over a land deal the bank, he claims, blocked. We’re never given many specifics, but at the same time, there’s little doubt in “Dead Man’s Wire” that Tony’s cause is just. His means might be desperate and abhorrent, but the movie is very definitely on his side.

That’s owed significantly to Skarsgård, who gives one of his finest and least adorned performances. While best known for films like “It,” “The Crow” and “Nosferatu,” here Skarsgård has little more than some green polyester and a very ’70s mustache to alter his looks. The straightforward, jittery intensity of his performance propels “Dead Man’s Wire.”

Yet Van Sant’s film aspires to be a larger ensemble drama, which it only partially succeeds at. Tony’s plight is far from a solitary one, as numerous threads suggest in Kolodney’s fast-paced script. First and foremost is Colman Domingo as a local DJ named Fred Temple. (If ever there were an actor suited, with a smooth baritone, to play a ’70s radio DJ, it’s Domingo.) Tony, a fan, calls Fred to air his demands. But it’s not just a media outlet for him. Fred touts himself as “the voice of the people.”

Something similar could be said of Tony, who rapidly emerges as a kind of folk hero. As much as he tortures his hostage (a very good Dacre Montgomery), he’s kind to the police officers surrounding him. And as he and Dick spend more time together, Dick emerges as a kind of victim, himself. It’s his father’s bank, and when Tony gets M.L. Hall (Al Pacino) on the phone, he sounds painfully insensitive, sooner ready to sacrifice his son than acknowledge any wrongdoing.

Pacino’s presence in “Dead Man’s Wire” is a nod to “Dog Day Afternoon,” a movie that may be far better — but, then again, that’s true of most films in comparison to Sidney Lumet’s unsurpassed 1975 classic. Still, Van Sant’s film bears some of the same rage and disillusionment with the meatgrinder of capitalism as “Dog Day.”

There’s also a telling, if not entirely successful subplot of a local TV news reporter (Myha’la) struggling against stereotypes. Even when she gets the goods on the unspooling news story, the way her producer says to “chop it up” and put it on air makes it clear: Whatever Tony is rebelling against, it’s him, not his plight, that will be served up on a prime-time plate.

It doesn’t take recent similar cases of national fascination, such as Luigi Mangione, charged with killing a healthcare executive, to see contemporary echoes of Kiritsis’ tale. The real story is more complicated and less metaphor-ready, of course, than the movie, which detracts some from the film’s gritty sense of verisimilitude. Staying closer to the truth might have produced a more dynamic movie.

But “Dead Man’s Wire” still works. In the film, Tony’s demands are $5 million and an apology. It’s clear the latter means more to him than the money. The tragedy in “Dead Man’s Wire” is just how elusive “I’m sorry” can be.

“Dead Man’s Wire,” a Row K Entertainment release, is rated R for language throughout. Running time: 105 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Movie Reviews

Film review: IS THIS THING ON? Plus January special screenings

Published

2 days ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Is This Thing On?

Cinematic stories of disintegrating marriages are fairly commonplace—and often depressing emotional endurance tests, besides—so it’s interesting to see co-writer/director Bradley Cooper take this variation on the theme in a fresher direction. The unhappy couple in this place is Alex and Tess Novak (Will Arnett and Laura Dern), who decide matter-of-factly to separate. Then Alex impulsively decides to get up on stage at an open-mic comedy night, and starts turning their relationship issues into material. The premise would seem to suggest an uneven balance towards Alex’s perspective, but the script is just as interested in Tess—a former Olympic-level volleyball player who retired to focus on motherhood—searching for her own purpose. And the narrative takes a provocative twist when their individual sparks of renewed happiness lead them towards something resembling an affair with their own spouse. The screenplay faces a challenge common to movies about comedians in that Alex’s material, even once he’s supposed to be actively working on it, isn’t particularly good, and Cooper isn’t particularly restrained in his own supporting performance as the comic-relief buddy character (who is called “Balls,” if that provides any hints). Yet the two lead performances are terrific—particularly Dern, who nails complex facial expressions upon her first encounter with Alex’s act—as Cooper and company turn this narrative into an exploration of how it can seem that you’ve fallen out of love with your partner, when what you’ve really fallen out of love with is the rest of your life. Available Jan. 9 in theaters. (R)

JANUARY SPECIAL SCREENINGS

KRCL’s Music Meets Movies: Dig! XX @ Brewvies: As part of a farewell to Sundance, Brewvies/KRCL’s regular Music Meets Movies series presents the extended 20th anniversary edition of the 2004 Sundance documentary about the rivalry between the Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre as they chart different music-biz paths. The screening takes place at Brewvies (677 S. 200 West) on Jan. 8 @ 7:30 p.m., $10 at the door or 2-for-1 with KRCL shirt. brewvies.com

Trent Harris weekend @ SLFS: Utah’s own Trent Harris has charted a singular course as an independent filmmaker, and you can catch two of his most (in)famous works at Salt Lake Film Society. In 1991’s Rubin & Ed, two mismatched souls—one an eccentric, isolated young man (Crispin Glover), the other a middle-aged financial scammer—wind up on a comedic road trip through the Utah desert; 1995’s Plan 10 from Outer Space turns Mormon theology into a crazy science-fiction parody. Get a double dose of uncut Trent Harris weirdness on Friday, Jan. 9, with Rubin & Ed at 7 p.m. and Plan 10 from Outer Space at 9 p.m. Tickets are $13.75 for each screening. slfs.org

Rob Reiner retrospective @ Brewvies Sunday Brunch: Last month’s tragic passing of actor/director Rob Reiner reminded people of his extraordinary work, particularly his first handful of features. Brewvies’ regular “Sunday Brunch” series showcases three of these films this month with This Is Spinal Tap (Jan. 11), The Princess Bride (Jan. 18) and Stand By Me (Jan. 25). All screenings are free with no reservations, on a first-come first-served basis, at noon each day. brewvies.com

David Lynch retrospective @ SLFS: It’s been a year since the passing of groundbreaking artist David Lynch, and Salt Lake Film Society’s Broadway Centre Cinemas marks the occasion with some of his greatest filmed work. In addition to theatrical features Eraserhead (Jan. 11), Inland Empire (Jan. 11), Mulholland Dr. (Jan. 12), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Jan. 14), Blue Velvet (Jan. 19) and Lost Highway (Jan. 19), you can experience the entirety of 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return on the big screen in two-episode blocs Jan. 16 – 18. The programming also includes the 2016 documentary David Lynch: The Art Life. slfs.org

Death by Numbers @ Utah Film Center: Directed by Kim A. Snyder (the 2025 Sundance feature documentary The Librarians), this 2024 Oscar-nominated documentary short focuses on Sam Fuentes, survivor of a school shooting who attempts to process her experience through poetry. This special screening features a live Q&A with Terri Gilfillan and Nancy Farrar-Halden of Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah, with Zoom participation by Sam Fuentes. The screening on Wednesday, Jan. 14 at 7 p.m. at Utah Film Center (375 W. 400 North) is free with registration at the website.