Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to a different edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
Two recent roundtables. For the Envelope, Michael Ordoña led a conversation with six actors, covering all the pieces from working with directors to thoughts on mortality. Joining him were Austin Butler for “Elvis,” Paul Dano for “The Fabelmans,” Brendan Fraser for “The Whale,“ Jonathan Majors for “Devotion,” Bill Nighy for “Living” and Adam Sandler for “Hustle.”
Anousha Sakoui and Ryan Faughnder spoke to a gaggle of six executives concerning the state of the business in Hollywood for Company Town. Participating were Abhijay Prakash, president of Blumhouse; Jim Burtson, president of CAA; Stacey Snider, co-founder and CEO of Sister; Charles D. King, founder and CEO of Macro; Nina L. Diaz, president of content and chief creative officer for Paramount Media Networks and MTV Entertainment Studios; and Tony Vinciquerra, chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment.
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Irene Cara remembered. On Dec. 21, American Cinematheque launches a series to have a good time the profession of Oscar-, Golden Globe– and Grammy–winning singer and actor Irene Cara, who recently died at age 63. Screening within the series shall be Alan Parker’s 1980 “Fame,” Adrian Lyne’s 1983 “Flashdance” (in 35-millimeter) and Sam O’Steen’s 1976 “Sparkle.”
Contained in the L.A. Film Critics vote. The Los Angeles Film Critics Assn., of which I’m a member, voted on their picks for one of the best movies of the 12 months, with “Tár” and “Every thing In all places All at Once” tying for best picture. Justin Chang and Glenn Whipp continued their recent tradition of giving some insider insight into the outcomes.
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‘Avatar: The Way of Water’
Directed and co-written by James Cameron, “Avatar: The Way of Water” is a sequel to the highest-grossing film of all time, the filmmaker’s 2009 “Avatar.” (No pressure.) The film returns to the spectacular planet of Pandora, picking back up with the family of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a human who has develop into a part of the Na’vi people, who must fight human invaders trying to strip the natural resources of the planet. The solid also includes Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, Zoe Saldaña, Cliff Curtis, Stephen Lang and more. The film is in theaters now.
For The Times, Justin Chang wrote, “Even coming from a filmmaker used to setting intimate relational sagas against large-scale tragedy, the tenderness and occasional sentimentality with which Cameron invests this drama of family conflict and survival feels unusually personal. It might probably also feel a bit thinly stretched at three hours, but even that seems more an act of generosity than indulgence on Cameron’s part; his attachment to this family is real and in time, so is yours. Audiences expecting propulsive non-stop motion, somewhat than the director’s customary slow construct, could also be surprised to seek out themselves watching a leisurely saga of overprotective parents and rebellious teens, biracial/adoptive identity issues and casual xenophobia. … Like its predecessor, ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ is each an environmental cautionary tale and a madly effective opportunity to root against our own kind; by the point the third act kicks in, you’ll be screaming for human blood.”
Ryan Faughnder wrote about what the movie might mean for the business of movie exhibition, partly because Cameron himself has said the movie will have to be among the many highest-grossing movies of all time simply to turn a profit. As Cameron was reported to have said on the film’s world premiere in London, “Tonight will not be just a few recent ‘Avatar’ film. It’s concerning the cinema itself.”
For the Recent York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, “Cameron’s embrace of the idealism of adolescence, of the capability for moral outrage in addition to wonder, is the emotional heart of the movie. … I’m curious, and inclined — as I used to be in 2009 — to offer this grand, muddled project the good thing about the doubt. Cameron’s ambitions are as sincere as they’re self-contradictory. He wants to beat the world within the name of the underdog, to have a good time nature via essentially the most extravagant artifice, and to make all the pieces recent feel old again.”
For Rolling Stone, K. Austin Collins wrote, “‘The Way of Water’s’ structural backbone is something of a lost art, though, not since it’s some work of complex genius, but because, despite designing a story spread across multiple movies, Cameron still seems intent on making each chapter stand alone as if there won’t be one other. There’s something engagingly desperate about it. The movie proceeds in large, breathy movements, with expansive set pieces urging us forward and a morass of huge human emotions keeping it afloat amid all of the detours and details. The pieces click together on regular character beats, the type that may reel you in even in case you know what’s going to occur. Renegades gonna renegade; lovers gonna love; a compelling movie knows that you just’re clued in and makes you must see it occur, anyway.”
For the Washington Post, Ann Hornaday wrote, “If wanton destruction punctuated by moments of psychedelic visual splendor and Recent Age-y philosophizing is your bag, ‘The Way of Water’ provides loads of value. … The motion in ‘The Way of Water’ is ultimately overwhelming, betraying an uncomfortable truth about Cameron: He might preach environmentalism and balance, calling on Indigenous peoples for his or her gentle worldviews and material culture. But at heart, he’s just as aggressive and all-commanding because the bad guys he portrays with such oorah swagger. Because the annihilation reached its punishingly fevered pitch at a recent screening, the crashes and rumbles and explosions weren’t just deafening, they were palpable to the purpose that I wondered who was kicking my seat. Then I noticed: It was James Cameron all along.”
For Vulture, Bilge Ebiri wrote, “Cameron has at all times been an artist divided: equal parts gearhead and tree hugger, swaggering stud and soft-focus softie. That’s the key of his success as a showman. … Cameron’s divided self finds its fullest expression on Pandora not simply because he can create vast recent worlds and matrices of spiritually interconnected beings but additionally because he can fight battles he can’t fight elsewhere. For even here, he’s ultimately telling an Earth story. He channels his (and our) inchoate rage on the devastation of the natural world, and he delivers a fantasy of revenge — albeit one set on an odd shore in a distant galaxy, one which just happens to appear like a heightened, trippy version of our own.”
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‘The Quiet Girl’
Written and directed by Colm Bairéad, adapting a brief story by Claire Keegan, “The Quiet Girl” tells the story of a young girl named Cáit (Catherine Clinch), who is distributed to live for a summer within the countryside with distant relatives. Ireland’s entry for the international feature Oscar, the film is in theaters now.
For The Times, Robert Abele wrote, “Every thing on this heartfelt tale is made with the deepest sincerity, and gently filled with soulful portrayals and wonderful imagery. … The important thing takeaway from ‘The Quiet Girl’ is how rare cinematic depictions of on a regular basis, unadorned sympathy are without the common narrative’s machinery of motive. I’ll admit to considering, on first viewing, that there was too little to ‘The Quiet Girl,’ that an absence of incident was an indication of willful preciousness. A second, closer look disabused me of that. It could be higher to view this positive film as deceptively small, revealing its own distinctively filigreed array of the gentle and good in all that meaningful silence.”
For the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw declared, “already it feels to me like a classic,” while adding, “In one other form of movie, a lazier kind, all this stillness and rural beauty, seen by an enigmatically silent child who’s accustomed to vanishing invisibly into the landscape, could be the ominous foretaste of something horrible or violent to come back just before the ultimate credits. But ‘The Quiet Girl’ is doing something gentler than this, in addition to realer and truer. It’s a jewel.”
For Variety, Jessica Kiang wrote, “At a stretch, we could see in Cáit’s reticence some kind of analogy for her native Irish tongue — there’s a certain eloquence in having such an inarticulate character speak a language that was, and still is, in peril of being silenced. However the unwavering focus of Bairéad’s impressively controlled debut feature doesn’t really allow for much subtext, nor for much surprise. Even that doesn’t really matter: Though you may foretell the best way the story must end right from the moment Seán bids Cáit a curt goodnight without even turning his head from the TV, the cumulative power of ‘The Quiet Girl’ implies that when that ending duly comes, it’s remarkably moving. For all of the things that may be lost within the quiet, sometimes people can find one another there.”
‘The Runner’
Directed by Amir Naderi, the 1984 film “The Runner” has been rereleased, bringing back certainly one of the primary movies from the Iranian Recent Wave of the post-revolution era. Set within the Southern port city of Abadan, the story follows an 11-year-old orphan named Amiro (played by Madjid Niroumand, who now lives in California) as he goes concerning the day by day business of living with an irrepressible spirit. The film is in theaters now.
For The Times, Robert Abele wrote, “‘The Runner’ is sweetly kinetic, vigorous, at times even operatic, but additionally paradoxically unsentimental. … ‘The Runner’ hardly looks like an artifact, its artistry only burnished over time through Firooz Malekzadeh’s deeply textured cinematography and Bahram Beyzaie’s faultless cutting. But you may see why — within the unblinking honesty descended from Italian neorealism, with its nonprofessional casting and social trenchancy, combined with the private expression paying homage to French Recent Wave — ‘The Runner’ hit international film audiences of the time like a newly discovered color in a spectrum that features Buster Keaton, Vittorio De Sica and François Truffaut.”
For the Recent York Times, J. Hoberman wrote, “In effect, the movie naturalizes the urban environment. The sunshine is commonly dazzling; the array of bottles floating within the harbor is bewitching. While acknowledging that each object in Amiro’s world has its price, ‘The Runner’ has a subtle fairy-tale quality. … Paradoxical to the top, ‘The Runner’ concludes with a near-silent tumult of fireplace and ice, and a way of triumph founded on the conclusion that the adult Amiro made this movie.”
Reviewing the film upon its original release, The Times’ Kevin Thomas (celebrated in Quentin Tarantino’s recent book, “Cinema Speculation”) said that the film is “a piece of astonishing power and ease,” also noting, “It dares to suggest that for the dispossessed, life in Iran is as hard because it was under the Shah. Yet it is feasible to see why the film got by the censors in Iran, for it ostensibly offers hope, extolling the implacable determination of its appealing little hero Amiro (Madjid Niroumand) to survive and even higher himself, learning to read and write. Yet its stunningly ambiguous finish, involving Amiro and his pals in a foot race, is ready against a blazing oil field that invites symbolic criticism of the Khomeini regime.”