Two studs and a dud this week.

Poor Things

An absolute on-brand delight from the often brilliant Yorgos Lathinmos, a Greek auteur who excels at making weird shit. Poor Things might just be his weirdest shit yet, based on a 1992 novel by the recently departed Alasdair Gray and adapted for the screen by The Favourite scribe Tony McNamara. It’s about a psychologically damaged mad scientist, Dr. Godwin Baxter (a prosthetic-covered Willem Dafoe), who comes across the corpse of a pregnant woman, Bella (Emma Stone), and decides to pop out her brain, replace it with the brain of her unborn baby boy, and then re-animate her. Curious and super horny, Bella goes on a journey to discover herself with a vulgar lawyer, Duncan (Mark Ruffalo), who acts as a stand-in for all men who pretend to be good dudes but are super controlling and insecure. Over 141 minutes, Bella makes friends and loses them, becoming an adult woman and, even more than that, a fully-fledged human being in the process.

Bella has been described as a Frankenstein child, but the character made me think more of Thandiwe Newton‘s performance as the re-incarnated slave child in Jonathan Demme‘s 1998 adaptation of the Toni Morrison novel Beloved. I’d be surprised if Stone didn’t come across this movie in her research for this project. I’d also be downright shocked if Stone doesn’t get an Oscar nomination. In a pretty impressive Oscar-winning career, this is her best performance yet. It’s so meticulously detailed that no matter how crazy and ridiculous the movie gets, we always believe her. She’s also hilarious; while not explicitly a comedy, Poor Things is funnier than any mainstream comedy I’ve seen this year. The fact it’s able to pull this off while functioning as a very serious-minded albeit obscure exploration of what it means to be a woman in any male-dominated society is impressive. Besides Stone, the whole cast is solid, with Ruffalo, in particular, standing out as one of the biggest movie dipshits in recent memory. This is also his best performance, a completely unaware, bumbling cartoon of a man that is a welcome change of pace for an actor most known for playing a lovable green giant.

Stylized almost as an 18th-century person would imagine the future, the movie takes place in a world that blends technology with a sort of magic absurdism. It looks like a middle school play in the best possible way. Poor Things is the only movie this year whose craft elements – the set, costumes, makeup/hair – give Barbie a run for its money. Regarding Yorgos‘ whole filmography, I still think The Favourite is his best work, but Poor Things runs a close second. The only reason I’m stopping short of calling it a total masterpiece is that the pacing could be better, and some scenes, especially in the brothel-set second half, go on far longer than necessary. Still, I doubt you’ll see any mainstream movie more unique than Poor Things this year. Bring your grandma! Grade: A- (In Theaters)

Maestro

For a movie that begins with a quote by Leonard Bernstein about the contradictory nature of art, Maestro has very little interest in the intricacies of the creative process. That is unless you count five-minute shots of the 100% not-Jewish Bradley Cooper in heavy schnauz prosthetics, weeping while conducting an orchestra, a deep dive into the creative process. I guess the quote could also be about the multiple sides of Bernstein’s character, but the way Josh Singer and Cooper write him and the way Cooper plays him, he’s the same character all the time – a dude so enamored by his own talent that all of his faults and strengths are merely an extension of that and ultimately exist to serve his own ego. I get we’re supposed to maybe not love this character, but are we supposed to be indifferent and bored by him? Carey Mulligan fares better as Bernstein’s wife, Felicia, playing a marginally more interesting character. She’s excellent, and to make a lame music analogy, she hits all the right notes, but this isn’t her best performance; it isn’t even her best performance this year. Her 7-minute appearance as Poor Dear Pamela in Saltburn was more compelling.

The punishingly overlong, non-comprehensive biopic is more interested in Bernstein’s relationship with his wife Felicia, which is unique, but most of their interactions are so overwritten and mechanized in an effort to be quirky and lovable. I didn’t find a lot of truth, nuance or relatability in these scenes, despite how well Mulligan played them on her end. It’s also about Bernstein’s affairs with men, which Felicia knew about but asked he pursue with discretion, at least for their children’s sake. At one point, he asks Mulligan if he can invite this twink he’s boinking up to their house for the summer and then tries to make it seem like it’s because their eldest daughter, Jamie (Maya Hawke), really likes him. Both Bernstein and Felicia’s characters are ultimately contradictory, just not in the way the creatives behind Maestro would like. They’re contradictory in that they’re poorly written and nearly impossible to empathize with beyond a surface level.

Maestro has a few bright spots; it’s certainly not the worst thing I’ve seen this year. The cinematography is gorgeous and better captures the texture and feel of movies of the Golden Age of Hollywood than almost anything I’ve seen. The film also exists as a hub for some of the best music ever written by Bernstein. One scene involves Bernstein, his lover, and a colleague arriving at his home, kinda tipsy, to the Jet’s Song from West Side Story. I may or may not have gotten an erection when that happened. The supporting cast is as solid as could be, with Matt Bomer, Josh Hamilton, and Sarah Silverman as Leonard’s sister Shirley. Interestingly enough, this comes just two years after Silverman blasted Hollywood for casting non-Jews in Jewish roles. Guess it doesn’t matter if you cast her in it.

Ultimately, Leonard Bernstein was a brilliant artist and fascinating human deserving of more than a desperate vanity project from a Hollywood star. Grade: C (Netflix)

The Iron Claw

It’s odd that so many theatrical real-life stories exist within wrestling, but so few have been adapted into theatrical motion pictures. Well, celebrated indie filmmaker Sean Durkin (The Nest, Martha Marcie May Marlene) set out to change that with his searingly emotional and carefully observed drama about one of wrestling’s most famous families. In a sport overflowing with tragic events, the supposed curse of this family is one of the most tragic. Mindhunter‘s Holt McCallany plays Fritz Von Erich, a failed (at least in his eyes) sportsman and former wrestling heel (that means villain in wrestlin’ speak) who is dead set on his children finishing the legacy he himself couldn’t complete. He has four sons – Kevin (Zac Efron), Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), David (Harris Dickinson), and Mike (Stanley Simons), all faces (that means hero in wrestlin’ speak), who Fritz has plans for, even against their personal wishes. One by one, the Von Erichs perish in devastating and often surprising ways that lend credence to the family curse theory. This is shown through the eyes of the eldest boy, Kevin, who is very well portrayed by Efron as an almost Shakespearean type of tragic character. Kevin has been forced to not only watch his brothers supersede him in terms of athletic achievements but also perish one by one. When asked by his eventual wife, Pam (a completely underutilized Lily James), what he wants, he says two things – 1) to be the heavyweight champion of the world in wrestling and 2) to be with his brothers. All of the performances in this movie are very good, but it is Efron who shines the brightest in the leading role. My only complaint about the film is that at 132 minutes, it needs to be longer. The big dramatic beats needed more interstitial space between them, and the characters needed more detailed and nuanced transformations as to what brought them to the big moments. I never say movies need to be longer, but a 3-hour director’s cut could have achieved that. This could have been a near masterpiece if we had an extra thirty or forty minutes of character and dynamic building between the four brothers and their self-obsessed, abusive dad. As it stands, it feels rushed, especially in the second half of the film which would have been much more bruising and effective with a little room to breathe. Grade: B (In Theaters)