Review: Red Sparrow (2018)

* 1/2
Director: Francis Lawrence
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton

Red Sparrow is a film that dares to ask: how many rape scenes is too many? If you've heard the term "male gaze" but aren't sure exactly what it means and would like to see a visual example, then this is the movie for you. Ostensibly a spy thriller, albeit of the most predictable, slow-moving, and needlessly convoluted kind, Red Sparrow is really just a perfunctory means of festishizing violence towards women, even though it seems to see itself as an empowerment narrative. It's a 140 minutes which would be reduced to about 15 if you excised all the scenes demonstrating, suggesting, or referencing sexual assault, coercion, harassment, or what the film characterizes as prostitution but which more closely resembles slavery. Hollywood: you can do better than this. You can do better with respect to films and you can do better by someone as talented as Jennifer Lawrence.

Review: Midnight Special (2016)

* * * 1/2
Director: Jeff Nichols
Starring: Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver

In just a decade and a handful of movies, writer/director Jeff Nichols has become one of the most consistently interesting and consistently good American filmmakers working today. His debut, Shotgun Stories, is an underseen but critically beloved movie about the feud that arises between two sets of half-brothers after their father dies, which he has followed up with the intense apocalyptic drama Take Shelter, and Mud, a drama about a teenage boy having his romantic illusions about what it means to be a man shattered. Now comes the supernatural thriller Midnight Special and, later this year, Loving, a drama about the landmark US Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia. If Loving is even half as good as Midnight Special, then 2016 will be an extremely good year for Nichols, indeed.

Review: Jane Got a Gun (2016)

* *
Director: Gavin O'Connor
Starring: Natalie Portman, Joel Edgerton, Ewan McGregor

Gene Siskel had a pretty simple test for determining the relative value of a film: is the end product more interesting than a documentary about the same actors having lunch? A film with a production history as famously fraught as Jane Got a Gun can simply never pass that test. I bet a documentary about the goings on behind the scenes of this film would be fascinating. It was developed and originally set to be directed by Lynne Ramsay, but she walked off the project before shooting could begin on the first day, resulting in both a lawsuit and Ramsay being replaced by Gavin O'Connor. The role of the main character's ex-lover was originally set to be played by Michael Fassbender, with the villain to be played by Joel Edgerton. However, when Fassbender dropped out, Edgerton was recast into his role and Jude Law was brought on board to play the villain. Then, when Ramsay walked, Law went with her, as did original cinematographer Darius Khondji. Bradley Cooper was then brought in to replace Law, Mandy Walker stepped in as cinematographer, and Edgerton and Anthony Tambakis were hired to rewrite the script that had been prepared by Brian Duffield. Finally, Cooper withdrew and Ewan McGregor came aboard to take his place. All that fuss and the result is really nothing to write home about, with Jane Got a Gun ending up being, at best, an okay B-western, and, at worst, a messy mix of the original vision plus all the subsequent visions of the story.

Review: Black Mass (2015)

* * 1/2
Director: Scott Cooper
Starring: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton

Black Mass is one of the more curious films of 2015 in terms of its pop culture trajectory. When the trailer came out, people seemed to be abuzz and ready to declare that Johnny Depp was back, after years spent in the wilderness of schticky, make-up dependent characters, to being a serious, risk taking actor (never mind that this role also requires him to wear a lot of makeup, this is a serious role, after all, not a wacky one). Then the film came out and reviews were decent and there was some talk about an Oscar nomination for Depp, but no one seemed particularly excited about the film, and then it just sort of seemed to fade away. Having now seen Black Mass, I can sort of understand why. It's a fine movie, in the way that gangster movies living in the long shadow of Goodfellas can be fine, and Depp gives his best, most engaged performance in some time, but the film has a fatal flaw that keeps it from being anything more than so-so: it has tailored itself to fit the character played by the star instead of the character who is the story's true protagonist, and as a result struggles to tell a story.