Since Mike Schulz, Dave Levora, and Darren Pitra last spoke, Schulz has seen a bunch of stuff. The sheer volume of viewed material, therefore, necessitates a lightning-round approach to their discussion. But not before Levora recommends to Schulz Netflix’s Blue Eye Samurai, which does sound compelling, and Schulz touches upon his Best of/Worst of list for 2023.

Moving on:

• Maestro, directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Matt Bomer, Maya Hawke, and Sarah Silverman, is streaming on Netflix. A well-wrought disappointment, focusing on the marriage of Leonard Bernstein, portrayed by Cooper, and his wife, Felicia Montealegre (Mulligan), and how LB’s bisexuality complicated their lives. Marital dramas are all well and good, but, since the film’s subject composed the music for (among other works not even touched upon) West Side Story, there’s really on so much of that one can take, sad to say. A viewer wants a sense of the nature of the subject’s accomplishments, which separate them from every other person on the planet whose relationships need work.
  
• Migration¸ an animated adventure comedy directed by Benjamin Renner and featuring the voices of Kumail Nanjiani, Elizabeth Banks, Keegan-Michael Key, Awkwafina, and Danny DeVito, is as super-fast, clever, funny, and done, much like Schulz’s observation of it. Onward!
  
• Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, directed by James Wan and starring Jason Momoa, Patrick Wilson, Amber Heard, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Randall Park, Dolph Lundgren, Temuera Morrison, Martin Short, and Nicole Kidman, Schulz found it “generically bad,” a painful pronouncement for any film, if you think about it; but, since we’re talking about a super-hero film, that sounds like the kiss of death. Considering the film’s box office take-in ($272.3 million) versus its budget ($205–215 million), Lost Kingdom appears to have been smooched up and down with bloody lipstick traces.
  
• Anyone but You, directed by Will Gluck and starring Sydney Sweeney, Glen Powell, Alexandra Shipp, GaTa, Hadley Robinson, Michelle Hurd, Dermot Mulroney, Darren Barnet, and Rachel Griffiths, is an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing — yeah, yet another one. Levora made the mistake of assuming his wife and her girlfriends wanted to see this for the Shakespeare of it all. Nope. Since she’s an English teacher, she feels honor-bound to watch every adaptation of Shakespeare’s works that come out. She makes it sound like a goddamn chore. Were her friends as stone-faced in their resolve to get this over with? Hearing this was particularly painful for Schulz, who produced a Prenzie Players production of Much Ado about Nothing, and found out about the adaptation only after he began watching the film. If the girls were of a mind about the film as Schulz, though, then they should have found it to be “insanely clever,” “really filthy,” “cleverly plotted,” with just the right amount of Shakespeare to make the buffs swoon over the spin Gluck takes with classic characters. Levora, however, reports that they enjoyed it enough, but perhaps not enough for the expense of seeing it. Best wait for it to stream, apparently.
  
• The Iron Claw, directed by Sean Durkin and starring Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Maura Tierney, Holt McCallany, and Lily James, was “as sad as you would expect, but not as sad as it should have been,” according to Schulz. The film concerns the tragedy of the Von Erich wrestling clan, whose six sons either died way too soon, committed suicide, or got to remain behind to witness it all (Kevin, the last man standing). Durkin reportedly refused to include Chris Von Erich’s story in his script because the story was already enough of a bummer, and one more tale of suicide presumably would. . . have. . . sunk the story. . .? This sounds like the kind of tentativeness that ultimately hobbles one’s ability to engage with the film. It doesn’t help that Efron, as Kevin, is here doing the best that he can to convey the trauma of his character, but still lacks a certain empathic quality that enables audiences to forget they’re looking at Zac Efron and believe that it’s really Kevin Von Erich up there, the sad soldier. Way to compound the tragedy there, Durkin. . .
  
• Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and starring Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, Jerrod Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter, Hanna Schygulla, Margaret Qualley, and Vicki Pepperdine, was one that Schulz loved — and when he says he’s in love, you know he’s in love, L-U-V. Emma Stone plays a combination of Eliza Doolittle from My Fair Lady and the Bride of Frankenstein, brought to life by Dr Godwin Baxter (Dafoe) with an infant’s mind (that of her day-old child). As Bella Baxter/Victoria Blessington (Stone) develops, she learns some disturbing truths about the reality of the subjugation of women (a subject, one pauses to point out, that was the life’s work of Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of the 1818 novel Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus). Schulz found Mark Ruffalo “astoundingly funny” as Duncan Wedderburn, Bella/Victoria’s escort who just can’t keep up with his charge. Sounds like a winner, regardless of how many awards it eventually takes in.
  
• The Color Purple, directed as a musical by Blitz Bazawule and starring Taraji P Henson, Danielle Brooks, Colman Domingo, Corey Hawkins, Gabriella Wilson “H E R”, Halle Bailey, Louis Gossett Jr, Phylicia Pearl Mpasi, Ciara, Jon Batiste, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and Fantasia Barrino. Schulz doesn’t think it works as a movie — not like, say, 1985’s The Color Purple, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover, Oprah Winfrey, Margaret Avery, and Adolph Caesar — because, like musical versions of already-existing film adaptations, a lot of subtlety and nuance must be jettisoned in order for the fifteen songs to get squeezed in. As well-acted as this film is, every musical number becomes its own little movie; and too many of those audiovisual shifts in gear probably accounted for the headache the film gave him.
  
• Ferrari, directed by Michael Mann and starring Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell, and Patrick Dempsey, suffered the same problems as Cooper’s Maestro biopic, as Mann chooses to focus on one small aspect of the life of Enzo Ferrari (Driver), particularly his relationships with his wife, Laura (Cruz), and his mistress, Lina (Woodley). Since the film covers one fateful summer in the life and career of Ferrari, it shouldn’t be looked at with the totalizing gaze that would have been rewarded by Maestro, had that film succeeded. Mann’s subjects are, invariably, about male obsessions, and his cinematic stand-in here is Adam Driver with a bad Italian accent. Mann’s recreation of the horrific 1957 Mille Miglia race, which claimed the lives of eleven people, five of whom were children, is a “chilling” piece of work, in Schulz’s view. Had Mann tried a more panoramic approach, like Martin Scorsese’s 2004 The Aviator, another film that had zippy transportation-technology in its viewfinder, it would have placed the scenes with Cruz complaining about being cheated on and Woodley about why Enzo won’t acknowledge his bastard son within a more manageable context, rather than foregrounding their bitching/moaning and irritating viewers who’ve seen those situations on screen too many times and want something. . . different. More! MORE, dammit!
  
• Leave the World Behind, directed by Sam Esmail and starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha’la, and Kevin Bacon, is on Netflix, which is where Schulz is content to leave it. Levora cites an e-mail from Schulz warning him not to see it. Esmail’s film is reportedly one of the most viewed films on its platform, and everyone else Levora knows who’ve seen it liked it. But Schulz felt that every single scene in it was phony — one of those “If Julia Roberts doesn’t smile anywhere in a scene, you know things are serious”-type affairs. The theme of the film emerges within the first ten minutes, and Esmail spends the remaining time hammering the point home again and again, as if he were told by his producers that his audience would be mentally impaired and that he’d have to continuously remind them or else they’ll wander out of the room. God, that sounds torturous. It’s moments like these when one feels cursed to have been born with a brain.
  

As for previews, consider the following:

• Night Swim, directed by Bryce McGuire (his feature-film début) and starring Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, Amélie Hoeferle, and Gavin Warren, concerns a haunted swimming pool. Ahem. Moving on. . .
  
• Society of the Snow, directed by J A Bayona and starring Enzo Vogrincic Roldán, Matías Recalt, Agustín Pardella, Tomas Wolf, Diego Vegezzi, Esteban Kukuriczka, Francisco Romero, Rafael Federman, Felipe González Otaño, Agustín Della Corte, Valentino Alonso, Simón Hempe, Fernando Contigiani García, Benjamín Segura, Rocco Posca, Luciano Chatton, Agustín Berruti, Juan Caruso, Andy Pruss, Santiago Vaca Narvaja, Esteban Bigliardi, Paula Baldini, Federico Aznarez, Alfonsina Carrocio, Silvia Giselle Pereyra, Virginia Kaufmann, Felipe Ramusio, Blas Polidori, Emanuel Parga, Iair Said, Louta, Carlos “Carlitos” Páez, and Maximiliano de la Cruz, is streaming on Netflix and stars a bunch of people, which sounds about right, since it involves the the Uruguayan 1972 Andes flight disaster. Sounds a lot like Alive, doesn’t it?
  

“Maestro,” “Migration,” “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” “Anyone but You,” “The Iron Claw,” “Poor Things”, “The Color Purple,” “Ferrari,” and “Leave the World Behind”

Reminiscences on the 2023 Movie Year