Review: 'Nightmare Alley' puts Guillermo Del Toro's sumptuous filmmaking to work on a classic noir tale of carnies and con men

Few directors understand how to use the movies as a time machine as well as Guillermo Del Toro, and his latest, “Nightmare Alley,” is a deeply engrossing trip into the noir world of the Great Depression.

It’s in the depths of economic and emotional despair that finds Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) setting a match to his rural home and hitting the road. He lands eventually with a traveling carnival, getting a quick job because he’s got a strong back. The carnival’s boss, Clem Hoatley (Willem Dafoe), gives him a place to sleep amid the pickled fetuses and other oddities in Clem’s collection.

Stanton is a quick study, picking up the secrets of carnival life from his new colleagues. He befriends the carnival’s resident psychic, Zeena the Seer (Toni Collette), and learns to fill in for his partner, Pete (David Straithairn), who is sometimes too drunk to deliver the coded clues for the mentalist act. Stanton also comes up with a new set for Molly Cahill (Rooney Mara) and her “Electric Girl” act — leading to a romance with Molly, who agrees to run away with Stanton for something better.

The movie flashes ahead two years, and finds Stanton and Molly performing an upscale version of Zeena and Pete’s mentalism act in ritzy hotel cabarets. The act draws the attention of a psychiatrist, Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), who’s checking out Stanton’s gifts of clairvoyance on behalf of a rich client, the prominent Judge Kimball (Peter MacNeill) and his wife (Mary Steenburgen). 

Against the advice he learned in the carnival — a warning not to turn the act into a “spook show,” by making the marks think you’re really communing with the departed — Stanton manipulates the Kimballs to tell them what they want to hear about their son, who was killed in the Great War. This leads Stanton to a partnership with Dr. Ritter, to set up her patients for psychic readings, using the information she collects from her patients to sell the act. With Ritter’s help, Stanton meets the ultimate mark, the reclusive and unstable tycoon Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins).

Del Toro and his co-screenwriter, Kim Morgan, adapt a classic novel by William Lindsay Gresham (which spawned a 1947 movie version, starring Tyrone Power as Stanton) and distill the dark heart of film noir. Deploying a strong behind-the-camera team — including cinematographer Dan Laustsen and costume designer Luis Sequeira, from his 2017 Oscar-winning “The Shape of Water” — perfectly captures the detailed world of con artists and marks, being taken for dimes at the carnival or thousands of dollars in the palaces of the wealthy.

The movie is blessed with an outstanding ensemble cast, including Del Toro’s personal good-luck charm, Ron Perlman, as the carnival’s strongman, Bruno. Cooper gives a riveting performance, his eyes darting as Stanton constantly works out the angles of his next con. He plays deftly off of his three leading ladies: Collette as the jaded carnival performer, Mara as the ingenue, and Blanchett as the shrink who recognizes a fellow manipulator when she sees one.

“Nightmare Alley” is another case of Del Toro — as he’s done with “The Shape of Water,” “Crimson Peak” and so many other movies — building a fully realized world that draws us in with its seductive menace. The movie is like the funhouse in Clem’s carnival: A hall of mirrors that fascinates us with what we can see inside.

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‘Nightmare Alley’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong/bloody violence, some sexual content, nudity and language. Running time: 150 minutes.

Review: 'The Novice' is a harrowing, stylishly told story of a dangerously intense rowing student.

Writer-director Lauren Hadaway makes an impressive debut with “The Novice,” a college sports drama whose raw intensity and visual punch will make a lot of people take notice.

Already, the Independent Spirit Awards have noticed, honoring the film with five nominations — including best picture, director for Hadaway, editing for Hadaway and Nathan Nugent, and two performances: Isabelle Fuhrman in lead, and Amy Forsyth in support.

Fuhrman plays Alex Dall, a freshman at a small private university, who’s intensely focused on her major in physics until she finds something to get more intense about: Rowing. Alex signs up for the novice-level crew team, and discovers some of the young women are there for fun and others — namely Jamie Brill (played by Forsyth) — are gunning to make varsity, because it means a full-ride scholarship.

Alex and Jamie become friends and rivals as they practice on the ergonomic rowing machines, each trying to beat the varsity rowers’ records. When they’re both offered a chance to practice with the varsity, they become carpool pals, and Alex listens to Jamie complain about the “silver spoon bitches” who are attending the university on their parents’ wealth.

And, as if physics and rowing aren’t stressful enough, Alex also starts a passionate romance with Dani (played by the one-named model-turned-actress Dilone), a physics TA who also sings with a college band. The two meet in fall semester, when Dani is grading Alex’s physics tests — but the relationship heats up in the spring. “I said I don’t date my students,” Dani says. “But you’re not my student any more, are you?”

Hadaway, who rowed for Southern Methodist a decade ago, brings a painful authenticity to Alex’s rowing experiences — something a viewer feels in every cramp, every bead of sweat, every blister on her palm.  She also has worked as a sound editor in Hollywood, which shows in the fierce sound mix, which captures and amplifies Alex’s obsessive focus.

Fuhrman, who was chilling as a 10-year-old in “Orphan” (2009), graduates to stardom-level attention in “The Novice.” Fuhrman embodies the exhilaration and pain of trying to compete at a high level, and how that kind of passion can curdle into something darker and dangerous. 

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‘The Novice’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 17, in theaters. Rated R for language, some sexuality and brief disturbing material. Running time: 94 minutes.

Review: 'Swan Song' showcases a strong performance by Maheshala Ali, in a thoughtful look at death with a science-fiction twist.

A soulful performance by Mahershala Ali bolsters “Swan Song,” a thoughtful take on the familiar science-fiction trope: What would you say if you met your own clone?

Ali plays Cameron, a graphic designer living in the near future, with a loving wife, Poppy (Noemie Harris), and an 8-year-old son, Cory (Dax Ray). Cameron also is dying, but he hasn’t told Poppy yet. Instead, he has met with Dr. Jo Scott (Glenn Close), whose company is offering an alternative: Creating an exact duplicate of Cameron, down to the molecular level, and transferring his memories and mental abilities into the clone.

As with any science-fiction story, writer-director Benjamin Cleary (who won an Oscar for his 2015 short film “Stutterer”) has to establish the ground rules. Dr. Scott tells Cameron that he can’t tell Poppy about the clone, or the deal is off. Also, the clone — who’s called Jack while in the transition stage — will have his memory of meeting Cameron wiped, so the clone ultimately will never know he’s not the original.

Cleary creates a fluidly paced, sleekly designed film that makes room to explore the philosophical questions of such a medical breakthrough. What should a dying man think of the replica created to replace him? Is it OK to replace yourself if your family doesn’t know the difference? And if a man argues with his doppelgänger, is he really just arguing with himself?

Ali’s dual performance finds subtle but real differences between the original Cameron and the copy, and both are compelling as they discuss how and why Cameron is making this decision. Harris gives an achingly tender performance as Poppy, whose past experience with grief goes far in explaining why Cameron is considering being cloned. And Awkwafina gives a strong, serious performance as Kate, a dying woman who got cloned, so she’s been where Cameron is going.

None of the logistical or philosophical questions about cloning are particularly fresh — not to anyone with a solid grounding in science fiction. What makes “Swan Song” worth a look is the way Cleary and Ali tackle those ideas, with quiet emotion and genuine curiosity.

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‘Swan Song’

★★★

Opens Friday, December 17, in theaters, and streaming on AppleTV+. Rated R for language. Running time: 112 minutes.

Review: 'The King's Man' tries to stage a thoughtful anti-war drama within a famously violent franchise, with mixed results.

Fans of director Matthew Vaughn’s 2014 spy comedy “Kingsmen: The Secret Service” may get lured into the prequel “The King’s Man” expecting the same manic violence and sharp humor — and walk away disappointed that those qualities only emerge in fits and starts.

Instead, Vaughn and his co-writer Karl Gajdusek have attempted to use the franchise as a Trojan horse, delivering a tenderly rendered father/son drama about a pacifism in the face of wartime evil. It’s a jarring juxtaposition, and one that doesn’t come off as tedious and a bit pompous.

The story centers on Orlando Oxford (Ralph Fiennes), an English nobleman working as a diplomat to head off a war looming in Europe in 1914. The impetus for the war, it’s explained, is a longtime rivalry among three royal cousins, all grandchildren of Queen Victoria: King George V of the United Kingdom, Czar Nicholas II of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. (In a devilish touch, all three monarchs are played by the same actor, Tom Hollander.)

Lord Oxford is an avowed pacifist, having lost his wife Emily (Alexandra Maria Lara) to a sniper in the Boer War in South Africa in 1902 (shown in the movie’s prologue). Oxford’s vow to his dying wife was to never let their son Conrad see war — which becomes difficult when Conrad (Harris Dickinson) reaches adulthood and wants to do his duty by enlisting in the Royal Army.

In an effort to block Conrad’s plan to go to war, Oxford reveals a secret: He has organized his own intelligence network, deploying his valet Shola (Djimon Hounsou) and maid Polly (Gemma Arterton) to gather information from the servants of world leaders from Moscow to Washington.

Oxford’s expertise leads King George to send Oxford as an emissary to Moscow, to urge Czar Nicholas to stay in the war against the Kaiser’s Germany. To do so, Oxford must counteract the mystical influence of the czar’s chief advisor, the mad monk Rasputin (Rhys Ifans). Oxford’s confrontation with Rasputin, aided by Conrad and Shola, is one of the few bursts of the outlandishly staged action in which the original “Kingsmen” film excelled.

In confronting Rasputin, Oxford starts to piece together a larger conspiracy at work. Vaughn has already let us in on that conspiracy, with a mysterious leader known as Shepherd sending out such well-known minions as Vladimir Lenin and Mata Hari. The ultimate confrontation with Shepherd should be a thrilling capstone, but fizzles into an unremarkable action finale.

It’s intriguing to watch Fiennes, so often cast as an over-the-top bad guy (hello, Voldemort), working here as a genteel, thoughtful hero, a character who struggles to maintain his pacifist ideals as the Great War unravels across Europe. The performance feels out of place in a franchise that made its reputation with exploding heads set to the 1812 Overture (which gets a callback here).

Yes, it feels contradictory for a critic, someone who usually demands movies deliver something fresh and new, to ding a franchise movie that stretches into uncharted territory. Certainly, it’s to Vaughn’s credit for trying a new approach to the franchise’s themes of urbane English figures thwarting attempts at global conquest — especially after the misfire of “Kingsmen: The Golden Circle,” which threw all of the first movie’s sensibility out the window for Americanized mayhem. However noble Vaughn’s intentions with “The King’s Man,” the film itself doesn’t deliver on what it promises, either as an action movie or a wartime drama.

We get a brief glimpse of the Kingsmen Agency in the movie’s final minutes — and a couple of surprising casting choices to set up yet another sequel. That movie, if it gets made, could be what Vaughn was going for all along, and might eventually justify the time and effort he squandered on this one.

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‘The King’s Man’

★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, December 22, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for sequences of strong/bloody violence, language and some sexual material. Running time: 131 minutes.

Spoiler-free review: 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' is a twisty action movie that pits Tom Holland's Peter Parker against villains from across the franchise's multiverse

With the third installment of their collaboration putting Peter Parker onscreen, actor Tom Holland and director Jon Watts work a good amount of magic in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” — thanks to the borrowed cache of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and past iterations of the famous wall-crawler.

To get everyone up to speed without spoiling anything that isn’t in the marketing campaign or in the previous films, a recap: Peter Parker has been outed as Spider-Man, thanks to the vengeful muckraker J. Jonah Jameson (J.K Simmonds, in a role he first played in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” trilogy). Jameson, now an Alex Jones-style conspiracy theorist, has framed Spidey with the murder of Mysterio (seen in “Spider-Man: Far From Home”), and being a public figure is a drain on Peter’s personal life — and his relationshp with his girlfriend, Michelle Jones-Watson, aka MJ (Zendaya).

In an attempt to get his life back, Peter goes to Dr. Steven Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), last seen together at Tony Stark’s funeral at the end of “Avengers: Endgame,” to ask if he can turn back time or something. Strange offers to cast a spell to make people forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man — but the spell goes awry and doesn’t take. But something else does happen: Suddenly, the multiverse opens up and delivers former enemies of previous “Spider-Man” movies at our Peter’s doorstep.

Some of them, like Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina) and his robotic tentacles, you’ve seen in the trailers. Others are a surprise, and I wouldn’t want to deprive anyone of the excitement of seeing who shows up to the party. Needless to say, it’s an old-school monster mash, and a chance for Holland and Watts to show how they stack up against the actor/director teams of before — Raimi and Tobey Maguire in their “Spider-Man” trilogy of the early aughts, and Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield in their two “Amazing Spider-Man” films.

Screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Summers, who also wrote the first two Holland/Watts chapters, pen a twisty, tightly plotted story that gives every character their moment without feeling too crammed — not an easy trick in movie that clocks in just shy of 2-1/2 hours. The only major stumbles are in the mid-credit and post-credit scenes, when the franchise overlords have to impose their corporate will to whet appetites for the next movie while we’re still digesting the one we just saw.

Holland has now played Peter in more movies than either Maguire or Garfield have — three with “Spider-Man” in the title, plus “Captain America; Civil War” and two “Avengers” movies — and has made the role his own. He’s showing Peter’s maturity, as he finally comes to terms with what it means to be Spider-Man, taking to heart the character’s motto, uttered here by Marisa Tomei’s Aunt May, that with great power comes great responsibility. Holland’s Peter — with his friends MJ and Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) in his corner — proves he’s strong enough to face any villain from any universe, and keep Spider-Man swinging for more movies to come.

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‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sequences of action/violence, some language and brief suggestive comments. Running time: 147 minutes.

Review: 'The Hand of God' is Paolo Sorrentino's sensuously gorgeous love letter to his boisterous Naples family.

In his latest movie, and arguably most personal one, “The Hand of God,” Italian director Paolo Sorrentino introduces audiences to his sprawling, boisterous family — and puts a teen version of himself at the center, trying to figure out what to make of it all.

The opening scenes, which show the many uncles and aunts who gather for weekend meals at the Schisa family’s home in Naples, may make a viewer feel like they’re visiting your significant other’s family for the first time. There are so many faces to encounter, names to remember, and quirks to associate with those faces and names, that you may feel overwhelmed. And by bombarding us with so many relatives, Sorrentino is perfectly capturing what being part of a family is all about.

After a bit, things settle down, and Sorrentino imparts a fair amount of information. The main character is a teen, Fabietto (played by Filippo Scotti — which, I think, is how you say “Timothee Chalamet” in Italian), who’s fairly quiet, at least in comparison to his loud family. His dad, Saverio (Toni Servillo, the star of Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty”), is kind and laughs easily, mostly at the pranks that Fabietto’s mother, Maria (Teresa Saponangelo), likes to pull on neighbors and relatives. Together, his parents are still deliriously in love, whistling a tune to each other that’s their coded love language.

There are many others, though the one who sticks out in Fabietto’s recollections is his buxom aunt, Patrizia (Luisa Ranieri) — if only because of one time, when his parents were breaking up a domestic disturbance between Patrizia and her jealous husband, Franco (Massimiliano Gallo), that Fabietto saw his first naked breast since he was weaned.

The era is important: It’s the mid-1980s, a time notable in Sorrentino’s memory because his local soccer team, Napoli, signed a player who some consider the greatest who ever lived: Diego Maradona. (The title refers to Maradona’s infamous goal for Argentina, aided by an uncalled handball foul, in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England.) 

The first hour of the film is a delight, a slightly manic run of boisterous family gatherings, where Fabietto mostly observes the gentle insults and sharp banter among his relatives. At the midway point, though, there’s a family tragedy, and Fabietto’s world is plunged into despair. “Reality is lousy,” Fabietto declares, as he decides he wants to become a filmmaker so he can create a reality more to his liking.

The reality Sorrentino creates here is sumptuous and sensuous, whether the cool bay where the family goes swimming or the decaying Neapolitan buildings where you might find a fully lit chandelier sitting askew on the floor. It’s also a reality brimming with fascinating characters, most notably the upstairs neighbor, The Baroness (Betty Pedrazzi), who teaches Fabietto about the mechanics of sex, and the cantankerous director (Ciro Capano), who hates fans and shouts at Fabietto to find his inspiration.

“The Hand of God” becomes, in Sorrentino’s loving hands, the Italian vacation you’ve always wanted to take, with the most interesting people you could find for company.

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‘The Hand of God’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 10, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City), available for streaming starting December 15 on Netflix. Rated R for sexual content, language, some graphic nudity and brief drug use. Running time: 131 minutes; in Italian with subtitles (or dubbed on Netflix).

Review: 'I Was a Simple Man' is a beautiful, moving tale of a man dealing with his regrets and ghosts as he reaches the end of his life

Beautiful and elegiac, writer-director Christopher Makoto Yogi’s “I Was a Simple Man” is a profoundly moving ghost story about a man reflecting on his regrets as he prepares for the end of his life.

Steve Iwamoto, in only his second screen appearance, gives an elegantly spare performance as Masao Matsuyoshi, a Japanese-American living in Hawai’i. He’s an old man, facing down some unnamed illness that will likely kill him sooner rather than later. He lives alone, sometimes helping his perpetually unemployed son, Mark (Nelson Lee), who says he talks to the family’s ghosts.

Masao has two other children: Henry, who lives on the mainland and is only present as an annoyed voice on the phone; and Kati (Chanel Akiko Hirai), who lives in town, on the other side of the island, and visits occasionally and reluctantly — leaving Masao’s care, toward the end, to his grandson, Gavin (Kanoa Goo).

In an important way, though, Masao is not alone. He’s visited by the ghost of his wife, Grace (played by “Crazy Rich Asians” star Constance Wu). Grace has been gone some 60 years — she died on the day in 1959 when Hawai’i became the 50th state — and most of Masao’s regrets stem from what happened after Grace died.

Yogi shows us those days in flashback, with Tim Chiou playing Masao in 1959, and Kyle Kosaki playing him in 1941, opposite Boonyanudh Jiyarom as a young Grace. Past and present collide frequently in Yogi’s telling, one informing the other to paint a full picture of Masao’s life.

It takes a few minutes for a viewer to recalibrate their bearings to Yogi’s thoughtful, deliberate pacing. “Time moves differently out here,” Gavin remarks late in the film, long after the viewer has reached that conclusion. Within those slower rhythms, though, Yogi lets us appreciate the beauty of Hawai’i and the literally haunted mood it casts over Masao’s final days and his eventual peace.

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‘I Was a Simple Man’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, December 10, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated, but probably PG-13 for mature themes and some sexuality. Running time: 100 minutes.

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This review originally ran on this site on January 29, 2021, when the movie premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Don't Look Up' is an end-of-the-world comedy that loses its subtlety as it takes aim at too-easy targets

Director Adam McKay’s broad-brush political satire “Don’t Look Up” asks the question we all have avoided asking for the last two years: What would happen if the wrong people were in charge when it appeared as if the world was about to end?

That’s the scenario set in motion when Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), an astronomy doctoral candidate at Michigan State, one night sees something new in the night sky: A comet. The good news is that, as its discoverer, the powers that be name it Comet Dibiasky. The bad news is that when her professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), does the calculations for the comet’s trajectory, the inescapable conclusion is that the comet will hit Earth in six months, obliterating humanity.

The question for Kate and Randall becomes: Who do we tell? And who will believe us?

The answer to the first question is Dr. Clayton “Teddy” Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), chief scientist for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office — and, as the movie points out, that’s a real thing. On Teddy’s say-so, Kate and Randall are flown immediately to Washington, D.C., to tell the president their findings.

That’s where the real trouble starts for our Michigan astronomers. The president, Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep), is a know-nothing blowhard more concerned with her approval rating, and her scandal-plagued Supreme Court nominee, than the imminent end of everything. Same goes for her chief of staff, her son Jason (Jonah Hill), a bro-dude nepotism hire. Where on Earth does McKay get the ideas for these wacky characters who couldn’t possibly have any basis in our recent reality?

Next stop is the press, which comes with its own sets of problems. The reputable papers are too cautious to take the threat too seriously. Meanwhile, Kate and Randall go on a morning cable-news show, where the oppressively perky hosts (played by Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry) are too interested in the latest romantic problems of a pouty pop star (played by Ariana Grande) then in a killer comet. When Kate loses her cool on live TV, she becomes fodder for a thousand internet memes.

Other characters work their way into the mix, including a tech company CEO (Mark Rylance) who talks like a cult leader, a politically incorrect war hero (Ron Perlman), and Randall’s no-nonsense wife June (Melanie Lynskey), who sees her husband’s personality change in the middle of the media storm.

McKay, who co-wrote the story with journalist and political activist David Sirota, has plenty to say about the inability of our current political leaders to cope with a genuine, non-partisan crisis — whether it’s a comet or climate change — as well as the media’s shortcomings, or celebrity-driven culture, and our constant seeking of quick solutions from our technology gurus.

There are some nuggets of sharp humor throughout the movie, from DiCaprio’s panic attack before going on TV to Lawrence’s character’s running obsession with the perplexing behavior of a top Pentagon general (Paul Guilfoyle). And both Streep and Blanchett nail their character’s parallel strains of self-centered blonde cluelessness. 

But what this Oscar-laden line-up — DiCaprio, Lawrence, Streep, Rylance, Blanchett and McKay himself (for adapted screenplay for “The Big Short”) all have statuettes at home — seems to be missing is a sense of how to make this doomsday satire consistently funny. The key is to emphasize the terror of the world’s end to the absurd degree, the way Stanley Kubrick (“Dr. Strangelove”) or Douglas Adams (“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”) did with slashing wit.

“Don’t Look Up” suffers from not being absurd enough, because the surreal truth of American politics outpaced the incredulity of fiction sometime around the 2016 election. It’s hard to laugh at scenes so similar to ones that were making you cry when they played out on CNN.

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‘Don’t Look Up’

★★

Opens Friday, December 10, in theaters; available for streaming starting December 24 on Netflix. Rated R for language throughout, some sexual content, graphic nudity and drug content. Running time: 145 minutes.