Empire of Light: Sam Mendes has been making movies at a high level for 25 years and it took until his 9th film for him to make something where he feels completely lost behind the camera. While fine performances from Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward and postcard-perfect views of the British seaside town of Thanet captured by the great cinematographer Rodger Deakins provide him with some solid building blocks, Mendes-directing from a screenplay that was solely penned by himself for the 1st time-has absolutely no idea how to turn a story that involves mental illness, racism, abuse of power in the workplace, the power of movies (particularly in the communal setting of a theater) and outsiders developing an unlikely attraction to each other into something cohesive. The implementation of these themes/plot points outside of the budding romance between Colman and Ward's characters doesn't really make it past the rough thesis stage and it leads to a directionless story full of awkward transitions and abandoned story threads that aimlessly floats to the finish line without saying or emoting much of anything. It honestly feels like something that Mendes conceived during the COVID lockdown and rushed to shoot before he can finetune it. Considering how muted the response and box office earnings have been for Empire of Light, his next project seems very likely to be in the planning stage for much longer before the cameras roll.
Grade: C
Nanny: It's easy to see why Nikyatu Jusu has signed on to make her next 2 films with major studios after Nanny took home the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival. With her feature debut, Jusu crafted a confident, intelligent psychological horror-tinged character study centered around an undocumented Senegalese immigrant (Anna Diop) living in New York City who sacrifices raising her own child (Olamide Candide-Johnson) in order to make a living by being a full-time nanny for the child (Rose Decker) of a wealthy couple (Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Spector). It's a powerful exploration of the guilt a mother feels in leaving her child behind with the hopes of improving their life and how a child begins to view their nanny as a parent to fill the void left by the absence of their own parents (and vice versa)-a duality that Diop captures with rich detail and fierce conviction in her incredible performance-as well as how their employers take advantage of their status as undocumented immigrants when it comes to pay, hours and general treatment. The secondary aspects of the story-including the use of African folk tales that drive Nanny's horror elements and the romantic relationship Diop's character builds with a doorman (Sinqua Wells) who is also a single parent-are too underwritten to have the impact that Jusu intends, but the core of the narrative is such a fascinating, unique and haunting commentary on a real world problem that's able to minimize the fact that her storytelling reach hasn't quite matched her grasp yet.
Grade: B
The Whale: While Brendan Fraser, Hong Chau and Sadie Sink deserves ample kudos for giving strong performances that are coming from a place of sincerity, those efforts are moot in a movie that is more full of shit than the Chicago River when the Dave Matthews Band is in town. The top-billed trio along with the other key supporting players Samantha Morton and Ty Simpkins are all acting in service of one thing: Heavy-handed melodrama. It lingers over every scene like a predator stalking its prey and whenever something that resembles real emotional expression enters the fold, it strikes, kills it and quickly restores the natural order of contrived, bad faith-driven prestige soap opera that takes glee in pummeling the viewer into tears. Darren Aronofsky is among the last directors working in Hollywood today that I would've expected such a perverse display of forced sadness, misery and overwhelming selfishness masquerading as open-hearted honesty from, which makes the disappointment of this film that much greater.
Grade: C-
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