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Review: Does Brendan Fraser give a great performance in ‘The Whale’? It’s complicated.

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Review: Does Brendan Fraser give a great performance in ‘The Whale’? It’s complicated.

When the digital camera seems to be at Brendan Fraser in “The Whale,” what does it see? It sees a person named Charlie who weighs 600 kilos and is slowly expiring from congestive coronary heart failure in a colorless Idaho residence. It additionally sees a well-recognized Hollywood face hooked up to a most unfamiliar physique, enacting the type of dramatic, prosthetically enabled transformation the film trade likes to slobber over.

You may discover these two photographs to be of a bit — an intuitive fusion of performer and position that reaches for, and typically achieves, a state of transcendent emotion. Or chances are you’ll discover them grotesquely at odds: the character whose each groan, wheeze and choking match means to encourage each empathy and revulsion, and the actor whose sweaty dramatic exertions are calculated to elicit reward and applause.

Let’s render that reward the place it’s due. There’s extra to Fraser’s efficiency than his exertions, simply as there may be extra to Charlie than the corporeal shock worth that the film frontloads him with: The opening scenes discover him frenziedly masturbating to homosexual pornography on his sofa, then doubling over with searing chest pains. It’s rather a lot for an actor to come back down from, however in a grueling chamber piece that tends to wield a dramaturgical cudgel, Fraser makes an attempt, and largely achieves, a symphony of unusual grace notes. He reveals us Charlie’s struggling, but in addition his sweetness; his grief, but in addition his good humor.

He laughs simply, although additionally with nice problem. He can mope and rant, however caught on the proper second, he’s an out-and-out charmer, a affected person listener, a superb storyteller. He teaches a web-based faculty writing class, hiding his overweight body from his college students (his webcam’s damaged, he tells them), however giving full voice to his love for phrases, his eager understanding of the pleasures and potential manipulations of language. His favourite piece of writing is an essay on Moby-Dick — the precise whale of the title — that he usually reads or calls for that somebody learn to him, a tool whose ludicrous backstory Fraser nearly makes convincing. And after some time, as doorways slam, stress mounts and Rob Simonsen’s rating broods and surges, you may really feel a curious tingle of recognition. Charlie, in any case, is a personality in a Darren Aronofsky film, which suggests he’s destined for a crucible of struggling that, nonetheless emotional and non secular in nature, exacts its most grievous torments within the flesh.

That’s to not counsel that he’s kin to the tortured performers of “The Wrestler” and “Black Swan,” who pushed their athleticism to brutish extremes, or the strung-out children from “Requiem for a Dream,” even when Charlie is aware of the ache of a special type of dependancy. The variations lengthen past the truth that Charlie is generally immobilized, solely often rising from his sofa to stumble, with a walker, towards the fridge or the toilet. (At occasions the digital camera, wielded by Aronofsky’s common collaborator Matthew Libatique, virtually appears to mock Charlie, transferring round him with an ease and agility that he can’t muster.) There’s additionally the truth that, in distinction with most Aronofsky characters, Charlie is born of one other author’s creativeness: Like quite a lot of research in confinement, “The Whale” relies on a play, this one written and tailored for the display by Samuel D. Hunter.

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However whereas we could also be confined with Charlie, we aren’t alone with him. “The Whale,” straining to each honor and break freed from its supply materials, unfolds over a number of consecutive days, throughout which Charlie receives a collection of tourists. Their common appearances directly modulate the drama and expose its artificiality, none extra clearly than Thomas (Ty Simpkins), an earnest younger Christian missionary who turns up at Charlie’s door at a seemingly opportune second. He’s there to save lots of this man’s soul, and in addition to facilitate a load of exposition regarding Charlie’s late accomplice, Alan, whose premature dying hastened his personal downward spiral. Thomas can also be there to harass Charlie’s tough-loving greatest pal, Liz (an exquisite Hong Chau), a nurse who stops by each day to deliver him meals, examine his vitals and nag him to take higher care of himself. She is aware of that Charlie doesn’t want faith; he must go to the hospital.

Hong Chau within the film “The Whale.”

(A24)

However Charlie refuses, citing a scarcity of medical insurance and the final hopelessness of his trigger. Which doesn’t imply he has nothing to dwell for, judging by his concerted latest renewal of ties together with his 17-year-old daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink). Nearly 9 years in the past, Charlie deserted Ellie and her mom, Mary (a briefly seen Samantha Morton), to be with Alan. {The teenager} who now sits earlier than him is greater than a resentful youngster; she’s the personification of spite, vindictive and verbally abusive. Sink’s emotional ferocity is spectacular, however Ellie, as written, quantities to at least one indignant word struck with relentless, finally misapplied pressure. As a personality, she’s about as delicate because the ultra-dim lighting — not simply realistically dim however fastidiously, oppressively dim — that suffuses Charlie’s residence, an all-too-literal embodiment of his internal darkness.

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“You’d be disgusting even should you weren’t this fats,” Ellie snarls on the man she refuses to acknowledge as her father. And her ugly phrases discover a painful echo within the query that Charlie at one level asks Thomas: “Do you discover me disgusting?” It’s a query the digital camera appears to foist in flip upon the viewer, most emphatically when it reveals us Charlie, in a depressing fury, devouring and vomiting up a complete pizza. It’s unsurprisingly disagreeable to observe, not least as a result of Aronofsky appears to be shoving the digital camera in Charlie’s face with one hand whereas wagging his finger at us with the opposite. His query may immediate your personal: Is that this uncooked, unvarnished scrutiny of a tough topic tilting into exaggeration, even exploitation? If we’re disgusted by what Aronofsky reveals us, is that our fault or his?

Or is it Fraser’s? I’m reluctant to counsel it, and never simply because I’m as fond as anybody of an interesting, long-underappreciated actor returning to prominence, after a number of years’ absence, within the trade that made, broke and allegedly abused him. However I’m additionally reluctant to fall into the default crucial sample of lauding an actor for what works a few film or a efficiency and blaming a filmmaker for the whole lot that doesn’t, particularly because it simply feels just a little too straightforward. Film performances are sometimes extra collaborative achievements than we (or actors themselves) care to confess, and a efficiency as reliant on exterior wizardry as Fraser’s — on the unusual, seamless alchemy that welds an actor’s expressive instruments to an array of digital and prosthetic tips — doesn’t come into being with out a director’s agency hand on the wheel. What’s good and dangerous concerning the efficiency is unquestionably the accountability of actor and director each.

Sadie Sink in a scene from "The Whale."

Sadie Sink in a scene from “The Whale.”

(Niko Tavernise/A24)

The film’s crudest moments, those during which Charlie’s physique is handled as not only a matter-of-fact bodily actuality however a dare-you-to-look-away spectacle, have already raised respectable questions and accusations of fatphobia — a debate that tends to come up each time a Hollywood actor packs on some synthetic kilos. Typically this sort of transformation is finished for comically villainous impact, whether or not it’s Colin Farrell’s Penguin in “The Batman” or Emma Thompson’s imposingly evil Miss Trunchbull in “Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical.” However do these prosthetic encumbrances really feel kind of low cost when utilized to somebody like Charlie, who isn’t a violent caricature however a sympathetically drawn human being? Is the grindingly self-conscious realism of a film like “The Whale” a extra empathetic gesture or a crueler, uglier one?

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To return to the query on the outset: When the digital camera seems to be at Brendan Fraser in “The Whale,” what does it see? I believe it sees a superb actor giving a well-meaning, erratically directed and infrequently touching efficiency in a film that strives to wrest one thing uncooked and truthful from a narrative that’s all bald contrivances, technological in addition to melodramatic. But when “The Whale” is a bizarre conflation of the unflinchingly sincere and the unbearably phony, Charlie’s personal sincerity is simple: “Inform me the reality,” he says and reiterates on a number of events, whether or not he’s urging his college students to write down from the intestine or partaking Thomas in a genial theological debate. As he demonstrated in his latest “Noah” and “mom!,” Aronofsky is a skeptic who’s extra keen than most to satisfy God midway.

And God, on this film, absolutely has rather a lot to reply for: hypocrisy, homophobia, despair and suicidal ideation, for starters. But when we will consider God as synonymous with goodness, and I believe we will, then he additionally appears to show up extra usually than anticipated — not simply when Thomas comes thumping on the door with a Bible in hand, but in addition each time Liz returns. Hong, not for the primary time proving herself a film’s secret weapon, provides maybe “The Whale’s” most interesting, least compelled efficiency. Whether or not she’s scolding Charlie, passing him a meatball sub or snuggling subsequent to him on the sofa, Liz lays naked her uncertainty: Ought to she be attempting to save lots of her pal or making his final days as joyous as she will be able to? It’s OK that she doesn’t know. It’s sufficient that she sees him and loves him — and extra absolutely, finally, than the film round him can handle.

‘The Whale’

Rated: R, for language, some drug use and sexual content material

Operating time: 1 hour, 57 minutes

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Enjoying: Begins Dec. 9 at AMC Burbank 16; AMC Burbank City Middle 6; AMC the Grove 14, Los Angeles; AMC Century Metropolis 15

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The Idea of You first reviews: Anne Hathaway-Nicholas Galitzine’s rom-com debuts with 100% Rotten Tomatoes score

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The Idea of You first reviews: Anne Hathaway-Nicholas Galitzine’s rom-com debuts with 100% Rotten Tomatoes score

Anne Hathaway, known for her slice of life romantic movies had been involved with serious and pathbreaking stories lately. Fans were eagerly waiting her return in light-hearted love stories for quite some time. The actor has finally made her comeback with Michael Showalter’s rom-com The Idea of You. The movie is being hailed by critics after its premiere at SXSW for its feel-good moments and sparkling chemistry between Anne and actor Nicholas Galitzine. The initial first reviews of the film has got it a stellar response on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb. (Read more: The Idea of You OTT release date: Catch Anne Hathaway’s sizzling chemistry with Nicholas Galitzine)

The Idea of You starring Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine is soaring high in its first reviews.

Anne Hathaway shines in feel-good romantic comedy

The Idea of You scored 100% on Rotten Tomatoes on the basis of five reviews so far. A positive review by The Hollywood Reporter read, “The Idea of You functions best as a carefree treat — a feel-good romantic comedy that delivers some laughs and bursts with the magnetism of its lead. That it manages to wiggle in some lessons about self-discovery is merely a bonus.”

Hindustan Times – your fastest source for breaking news! Read now.

The Idea of You is a coming-of-age story on self-awareness

IndieWire lauded Anne’s acting prowess in its critique and wrote, “What makes the character fascinating and unique is how she is not trying to recreate her younger years or reclaim her lost youth. Instead, Solène is just finding herself in this new stage of her life, learning what she wants, and growing into her new self. Life doesn’t end on motherhood, let alone end on 40. There is still plenty of time to find yourself, find love, get a heartbreak and push yourself into more. Hathaway captures this with incredible vulnerability, but also a self-awareness and confidence in what she wants that makes Solène excel at both the comedy and drama of the story. Early on, Hayes says people don’t really know him, they know the idea of him. By the end of this adaptation, we get the full picture of this romance and the two people involved.”

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Anne Hathaway owns every scene in Michael Showalter’s rom-com

While appreciating the storytelling and characters, Variety in its review was quoted as, “The film version finds a solution that honors Lee’s intentions — the way Hathaway’s character puts any number of priorities ahead of her heart — while providing a more satisfying sense of closure for their on-and-off relationship. Galitzine, who played it so proper in Amazon’s Red, White & Royal Blue, turns up the emo charisma while relaxing his body language, letting the puppy dog eyes and tattooed torso do the talking (though the English accent doesn’t hurt). Still, this is Hathaway’s movie, and she owns it: independent, desirable and never, ever desperate. Solène’s a cool mom to Izzy, and when it comes to Hayes … ‘I could be your mother,’ she tells him. ‘But you’re not,’ he fires back. Wouldn’t want to get the wrong idea.”

The movie has also got a stellar 6.2 Score on IMDb. Anne will next be seen in David Lowery’s epic American melodrama Mother Mary.

The Idea of You is scheduled to release on Amazon Prime on May 2, 2024.

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‘She Looks Like Me’ Review: Family Secrets and Public Scandals Brush Shoulders In a Scattered Documentary

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‘She Looks Like Me’ Review: Family Secrets and Public Scandals Brush Shoulders In a Scattered Documentary

A tale of disability, abuse, expectations and family secrets, “She Looks Like Me” from director Torquil Jones has a headstart on most documentaries, given its subject matter’s winding twists and turns. Some key details end up obscured — there’s enough real-life material here to fill an entire miniseries — but the film has an alluring atmosphere, and is rife with enough intimate re-enactments, to be occasionally absorbing.

Dreamlike hymns echo off the walls of an ornate church in the movie’s opening scenes. These have little thematic bearing on the story, but they make for a vibrant aesthetic, appearing and reappearing during moments of quiet reflection. A now-adult Jen Bricker — a woman born without legs — narrates the broad strokes of her childhood, from her adoption in rural Illinois, to the way her parents and three older brothers raised her to believe she could do anything she wanted. Old photos and home videos paint a portrait of a precocious young girl, for whom interests like baseball, basketball and gymnastic tumbling weren’t insurmountable hurdles, but temporary challenges that she would inevitably overcome. However, when she finds herself drawn, as a seven-year-old, to the career of famous teenage gymnast Dominique Moceanu — to whom she bears an uncanny resemblance — family secrets begin to unravel.

While “She Looks Like Me” begins as a tale of Jen’s upbeat resilience and her curiosity about her biological family, its narrative becomes quickly bifurcated. It’s as much about Dominique’s childhood too. She occupies an entirely different world, to which Jones whisks us away by zooming into the corners of the Bricker family’s footage, to find TV screens playing broadcasts of Dominique competing. As Jen eagerly dotes upon the older athlete, she imagines a perfect life for her, but the truth is much darker, and is soon revealed once the movie switches perspective and begins telling Dominique’s story.

The actual connection between the two young girls (now women in their thirties and forties) isn’t all that hard to parse given the details laid out, and the movie is quick to reveal it too. However, despite Jen’s desire to meet her inspiration, “She Looks Like Me” bides its time and delays this tale of search and potential meeting, in favor of telling the stories of its two subjects in great detail. On one hand, it digs into the depths of Dominique’s rigorous upbringing by her gymnast parents, a pair of Romanian immigrants to the U.S. whose customs, according to Dominique, led to a culture of silence. This went hand in hand with an abusive environment on the USA Gymnastics team (a scandal that would eventually become public). On the other hand, it follows the ups and downs of Jen’s story after she leaves home for college, and brushes up against a world that isn’t prepared to treat a disabled woman with the amount of respect she has for herself.

Bodily insecurity is a major part of both women’s stories, from the expectations foisted upon young female gymnasts, to the surprising (and amusingly frank) admissions from Jen, whose self-image issues, it turns out, have little to do with not having legs. As Jen takes up a physically grueling passion of her own — aerial acrobatics — Jones and cinematographer Andrew White present graceful re-stagings of moments from her career, which make deft use of shadow and spotlight, and veer into rousing territory.

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However, the further “She Looks Like Me” goes on, the less it’s able to completely balance its competing narratives. Jen’s tale remains personal and familial. Meanwhile, as Dominique’s half of the movie becomes about her public advocacy, its framing becomes less intimate, widening its scope to include public figures like Simone Biles, rather than family members. This leaves a number of pressing questions unanswered when the two women’s lives finally intersect — questions Jen claims to have pondered as a child.

In pushing these elements into the backdrop, “She Looks Like Me” ends up skimming the surface of an emotionally explosive story, and rushes through its more discomforting beats, to arrive at payoffs that feel only semi-earned. Despite these flaws in its construction, the film proves riveting in isolated moments, enough to make it an intriguing watch, even though two women’s final steps toward much-needed catharsis unfold mostly off-screen.

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Argylle (2024) – Movie Review

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Argylle (2024) – Movie Review

Argylle, 2024.

Directed by Matthew Vaughn.
Starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Henry Cavill, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, John Cena, Samuel L. Jackson, Sofia Boutella, Toby Haycock, Rob Delaney, Jason Fuchs, Jing Lusi, Alaa Habib, Alfredo Tavares, Tomás Paredes, and Richard E. Grant.

SYNOPSIS:

A reclusive author who writes espionage novels about a secret agent and a global spy syndicate realizes the plot of the new book she’s writing starts to mirror real-world events in real-time.

During a Q&A for her latest entry in her spy novel series Argylle, a reader asks if Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard, giving a performance that, without spoiling anything, demands physicality that she capably pulls off) is also a real spy, much like how James Bond author Ian Fleming and others were. She shoots down the theory, assuring the fan that she is a regular person who puts much research into her writing.

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Directed by Matthew Vaughn, this is an adaptation of the recently released book of the same name (written for the screen by Jason Fuchs), which is penned by a seemingly unknown woman named Elly Conway. There is a massively unhinged conspiracy theory that it is a pseudonym for Taylor Swift, something that I don’t believe for a second and that Matthew Vaughn has gone on record denying, but there are so many silly plot twists here that if the worldwide pop sensation did show up at some point here, somehow it would have fit right in.

Remember that none of this necessarily means Argylle is a smart film. Elly Conway, the character, just also happens to be a writer in the narrative here, finding herself wrapped up in danger and hunted by a nefarious spy organization similar to the one in her stories (there are four books in the fictional universe, and one she is currently writing.) Elly thinks she has the ending of her fifth novel in the series all figured out, ready to send it to print with a cliffhanger ending (Henry Cavill is who she visualizes as Agent Argylle, with John Cena portraying his sidekick Wyatt), except it turns out she will have to keep the story going as there are good and bad spies tracking her who believe that her mind and wherever she takes the story next is the solution to finding the real-life master list of scandalous details regarding career criminals.

While riding the train to visit her mother (Catherine O’Hara), a bearded, unkempt, and invasive but otherwise well-meaning man named Aidan (Sam Rockwell) sits down to read one of Elly’s novels before informing her that he is a spy despite his rugged appearance and that she will have to follow his lead to escape a horde of bad guys. The film immediately launches into a refreshing, creative burst of action that sees Sam Rockwell’s average dude spy battling several generic henchmen, while Elly occasionally sees her Argylle, Henry Cavill, engaged in the same combat, all of which feels like a challenging feat in editing and choreography to pull off, not to mention pleasingly stylistic. 

Would I have preferred if the narrative was far less intentionally stupid and more interested in deconstructing spies as characters and the default, handsomely charming appearances we give them in our minds? Sure, but Matthew Vaughn is still having playful fun during these action sequences, juxtaposing not only fantasy and reality, but Elly and the audience’s perception of what and who a spy can be. Regarding visual flair, it also fits in as a constant reminder that her fiction is coming to life.

However, Argylle is unquestionably a nonsensical movie with so many outlandish reveals that one of the twists is essentially a common trope just so the film can do a hard reset on who and what these characters are and want. From there, several more twists occur but with different characters in the action while inside an entirely different subgenre. The most that can be said is this: it is frustrating that even when everything is seemingly revealed about Argylle, Elly, Aidan, and the rest of her spy characters (played by an ensemble made up of exciting names such as the aforementioned John Cena, Ariana DeBose, and Samuel L. Jackson), it also feels like nothing is learned about any of them as people. Bryan Cranston also leads the rogue spy organization with an army of assassins searching for Elly, who brings his impeccable comedic skills to the villainous character.

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Certain story beats that Matthew Vaughn goes for just feel impossible to properly land amidst all this insanity. There is also no denying that Argylle sags in the middle when it is doing that reset, entering the realm of seemingly endless exposition. Once past that, Matthew Vaughn is alert to how nuts this all is, with characters even commenting so. 

Vaughn also uses this to his advantage to crank the action up to further outrageously gonzo levels, such as a sequence where a character skates with knives placed underneath their shoes, shooting hordes of enemies, or one that incorporates impressively choreographed dance moves and brightly colored smoke bombs into a thrilling shootout. Like most Matthew Vaughn films, there is also an upbeat licensed soundtrack playing to the violence. Admittedly, there is also some shoddy CGI, including a truly rough-looking car chase opening.

Argylle most definitely isn’t Matthew Vaughn’s strongest work as a storyteller, lacking the raw emotional hook from something such as Kingsman: The Secret Service or the political subtext found within X-Men: First Class, but he knows how to take something preposterous and amplify what makes it immensely fun. There are certainly some mixed thoughts to be had here, but there is one glaring positive: bold, bonkers action. He knows how the plant a character trait and pay that off later with some ludicrous and electrifying set pieces. 

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

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Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

 

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