Lisa Marie Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Nightmare Alley (dir by Guillermo del Toro)

Posted on October 1, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In March, CODA won the Oscar for Best Picture.

By May, I think most people had forgotten about it.

I point this out not to be snarky about CODA (which, for the most part, I found to be a well-made and sweet-natured movie) but to just point out that occasionally, the Oscar for Best Picture Of The Year does not go to the nominee that’s necessarily going to be remembered and watched by future generations. CODA’s victory is not a travesty, regardless of what some members of Film Twitter insisted. This isn’t like when Green Book won. It’s just that CODA seems to be destined to be remembered in much the same way that we remember Argo and Spotlight, i.e. a well-made and well-acted film that gets the job done but don’t necessarily stick around in your mind for long after you watch it.

In fact, looking back at all of the 2021 Best Picture nominees, the one that has really stuck with me is Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley.

Nightmare Alley tells the story of Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a drifter who, in 1939, gets a job with a carnival. Stan is running from his past. He’s haunted by visions and dreams of a dying old man and a burning farm house. When we first meet him, he avoids alcohol which is perhaps a good thing as getting drunk at the carnival just makes someone easier to exploit and, ultimately, the carnival is all about exploitation. The carnival’s owner, Clem (Willem DaFoe), specializes in tricking alcoholics into becoming opium-addicted “geeks,” who bite the heads off of chickens for gawking country audiences.

It’s not a glamorous life but it’s one that allows Stan to hide from his past. He comes under the tutelage of Madame Zeena (Toni Collette) and her husband, Pete (David Straithairn). They teach him how to give “cold readings,” and Stan proves to be an eager student. Pete tells Stan to never pretend to be able to speak to the dead and, from the minute that Pete says it, we can tell that Stan is already thinking about how much money he could make by doing just that. Stan also appears to fall in love with Molly (Rooney Mara), a performer whose act involves a fake electric chair. When Stan eventually abandons the carnival, Molly goes with him. When Stan finds success as a fake medium, Molly is his assistant.

Stan becomes quite a success in Buffalo, trading in his shabby clothes and his unshaven appearance for a tuxedo and suave mustache. With success comes arrogance and Stan soon ignore what Pete told him about pretending to be able to speak to the dead. When Stan meets a psychologist named Dr. Lillian Rith (Cate Blanchett), he gets involved in a plot to con a judge who is still mourning for his deceased son. It also leads to Stan meeting a corrupt and murderous businessman (Richard Jenkins). Ignoring Pete’s lesson sets off a chain of events that leads Stan right back to where he started.

There’s something wonderfully subversive about taking Bradley Cooper, a legitimate movie star who is probably one of the most personable and likable actors working today, and casting him as such a sleazy character. This isn’t a case, as in American Hustle or even The Hangover movies, where Cooper is playing a goof who gets in over his head. Instead, Stan is someone who uses his eager manner and his natural charm to cover up the fact that he’s hollow on the inside. Watching the film, you’re never quite sure as to whether or not Stan truly cares about any of the people who come into his life. Does he love Molly or is he just using her? Does he care about his friends from the carnival or is he just manipulating them into acting as a shield to keep out his former life? When he goes against Pete’s lessons about pretending to speak to the dead, is he motivated by greed or arrogance? Or does he truly want to believe that he’s somehow become the all-powerful psychic that he pretends to be? Stan becomes a success because he knows how to con everyone but eventually, he meets someone who is even emptier than he is. Ultimately, Stan cons himself. He tricks himself into believing that he’s more clever than he actually is and he ends up facing the fate that he secretly always knew was waiting for him. Cooper gives an outstanding performance as Stan. Both he and del Toro cleverly play with what audiences expect when they see Bradley Cooper onscreen. In the end, the film suggests that not even charm can ward off karma.

Nightmare Alley is work of what Lucio Fulci called “pure cinema,” one in which the imagery and the emotions generated by that imagery is even more important than the story itself. The sets, whether it’s the carnival or Dr. Ritter’s office or the Buffalo ballroom where Stan cons the wealthy, are large and ornate. The cinematography is gorgeous. The supporting performances are arch and witty. Cate Blanchett’s and Rooney Mara’s costumes are to die for. Nearly every shot feels as if it could have been lifted from a particularly vivid dream. Guillermo del Toro’s love of cinema is evident in every frame of Nightmare Alley. It’s a film that celebrates the grandeur and the power of imagination and also warns about the destructive power of hubris. Despite the fact that del Toro has gone on the record saying that there’s nothing supernatural about Nightmare Alley, it’s still a wonderful film for the Halloween season. The costumes are beautiful and the final third of the movie plays like an homage to the classic German expressionistic horror films, with Blanchett playing her role as a mix of Dr. Caligari and a classic noir feeme fatale. Nightmare Alley is a big, flamboyant, and unforgettable work of pure cinema and, looking back, it’s my favorite film of 2021.

It’s a film that stays with you.

The Firm (2009, directed by Nick Love)

Posted on May 13, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Dom (Calum MacNab) is a working class teenager living in London sometime in the 80s. (The music on the soundtrack is early 80s but the clothing and the haircuts are all late 80s so who knows what the specific year is supposed to be.) A chance meeting with the charismatic Bex Bessell (Paul Anderson) leads to Dom getting involved with Bex’s football firm. A supporter of West Ham United, Bex and his group of football hooligans travel across the UK, engaging in fights with other firms. Despite the fact that their lives seem to be structured around it, nobody in these firms seems to really care much about football. Instead, it’s all about the fighting.

At first, Dom is happy to be a member of the firm. It gives him something to do in his spare time and the other members of the group all seem to like him. Bex takes him under his wing and soon, Dom is even starting to dress like Bex. However, as Bex becomes more and more violent and grows obsessed with defeating Yeti (Daniel Mays), the leader of a rival firm, Dom starts to realize that he needs to find a way out.

The Firm is a loose remake of Alan Clarke’s 1989 film of the same title, which featured Gary Oldman giving one of the best performance of his career as Bex. The original version was a character study of Bex, who was presented as being a newly minted member of the middle class and who was addicted to the rush of being a weekend hooligan. The remake focuses on Dom, who was a minor character in the original. If the original was meant to be a socio-political critique of the UK in the 80s, the remake is a coming-of-age story that almost feels nostalgic. Dom eventually realizes that being a football hooligan isn’t for him but the remake seems to suggest that he’ll always value the memories.

The remake can’t really compare to the original, mostly because the remake doesn’t have Gary Oldman’s ferocious performance or Alan Clarke’s focused and gritty direction. Taken on its own, though, the remake is not bad. Calum MacNab is likable and relatable as Dom and Paul Anderson gives a good performance as Bex. Anderson doesn’t try to imitate Oldman but instead brings his own spin to the character. At first, Anderson’s Bex seems as if he’s considerably more buffoonish than Oldman’s Bex but, in the context of the remake, it works. In the remake, it’s easy to underestimate Bex but give him a strange look or say the wrong thing and he’ll headbutt you just as quickly the Gary Oldman did to anyone who crossed him in the original. The remake doesn’t have the original’s political subtext. Instead, director Nick Love focuses more on historical nostalgia, stylized fight scenes, and the camaraderie that Dom initially finds in the firm. The fights in the original were brutal and not always easy to watch. The fights in the remake are exciting, up until it becomes obvious that Bex is losing his mind.

The remake of The Firm doesn’t do much to improve on the other but, when taken on its own terms, it’s a watchable story of football hooliganism.

Insomnia File #43: Legend (dir by Brian Helgeland)

Posted on October 23, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If, last night, you were having trouble getting to sleep around two in the morning, you could have turned over to HBO and watched the 2015 British gangster film, Legend.

Tom Hardy is Reggie Kray. Arrogant, handsome, charming, and dangerous to know, Reggie is a club owner who is also an up-and-coming gangster in 1960s London. Scotland Yard has him under surveillance. The East End both fears and respects him. American gangsters want to do business with him.

Tom Hardy is also Ronny Kray! Ronny is the ugly twin, the one who lives in a trailer and has just been released from a psychiatric institution. Ronny is openly gay at a time when that was still illegal in the UK. Driven by jealousy of Reggie and a desire to prove himself superior to everyone who has ever judged or looked down on him, Ronny is determined to make sure that he and his brother become the top gangsters in London.

Together …. they solve crimes!

No, actually, they do the exact opposite. They commit a lot of crimes. Ronny is willing to shoot anyone in the head. Reggie tries to be a bit more respectable. He even attempts to run a legitimate nightclub. Reggie understand that sometimes, the threat of violence is more effective than violence itself. Reggie and Ronny are about as close as siblings can be, even if they do spend a lot of time beating each other up.

Frances Shea (Emily Browning) is the sister of Reggie’s driver, Frankie (Colin Morgan). She’s sixteen when she meets and falls in love with Reggie Kray. Reggie loves her too and he even marries her. (Of course, he has to do a stint in prison first.) Reggie swears to Frances that he’s going to go straight and that they’re going to have a normal life. Deep down, Frances know that will never happen so, while her husband and brother-in-law conquer London, she copes with pills. Lots and lots of pills.

For an American viewer like myself, British gangster films are always fun to watch because they’re just as violent as American gangster films but, at the same time, everyone’s always dressed impeccably and stopping in the middle of all the mayhem to have a cup of tea. Legend is based on a true story, which turns out to be both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. On the one hand, it’s fascinating to see the film’s recreation of London in the early 60s. On the other hand, the film never convinces us that we should really care about the Krays. This isn’t a case where, like the Corleones, the Krays are tragic figures who can’t escape their destiny. Tom Hardy does a great job playing Reggie and he’s an adequate Ronny but you can never quite escape the feeling that the two brothers are just — to use one of their own preferred insults — two wankers who aren’t really worth all the trouble. This is a film that you watch and you ask yourself, “Why should we care?” Beyond the novelty of the Krays being twins, the film really can’t provide an answer.

Still, I happen to be fascinated by the early 60s so I enjoyed the film as a historical recreation. Legend isn’t a bad film. It’s just somewhat underwhelming.

Previous Insomnia Files:

Playing Catch-Up With The Films of 2015: The Revenant (dir by Alejandro G Inarritu)

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Before I continue to catch up with reviewing the films of 2015 by taking a look at The Revenant, I want to ask a question and I request that you give this some serious thought. Is Jeff Wells just a troll or is he seriously a moron? Or maybe he’s both, that’s another possibility. For those of you who stay out of the darker parts of the internet, Jeff Wells is a film blogger who thinks that, because he voted for Obama, he’s earned the right to regularly use his column to disparage women. (Wells is the one who publicly complained that the lead of Diary of a Teenage Girl wasn’t, in his eyes, fuckable enough to be a compelling 15 year-old protagonist.) Jeff Wells tweeted the following about The Revenant:

"The Revenant" is an unflinchingly brutal, you-are-there, raw-element immersion like something you've never seen. Forget women seeing this.

— Hollywood Elsewhere (@wellshwood) November 24, 2015

And Jeff Wells hasn’t been alone in claiming that only men can truly appreciate The Revenant. On Overland, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas has an excellent post about this line of male critical thought. Now, speaking for myself, I liked The Revenant a lot more than Heller-Nicholas apparently did. But, at the same time, she hits the nail on the head when it comes to this idea that The Revenant is a film so intense and so full of agony that only men could possibly enjoy it. Much like her, I felt as if “critics” like Jeff Wells and Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers were personally challenging me, as a woman, to actually sit through The Revenant without running from the theater in disgust or hiding my eyes in terror.

And, quite frankly, that’s bullshit. Yes, The Revenant is intense and yes, I did have a bit of a hard time watching that bear maul Leonardo DiCaprio but, at the same time, how would Jeff Wells or Peter Travers handle being mauled by a bear? For that matter, how would either one of them handle being in a high-speed chase or being shot at? Would either one of them be able to outrun an explosion or do any of the other stuff that regularly happens in films that supposedly only appeal to men?

(For that matter, how would Jeff Wells or Peter Travers handle monthly menstrual cramps or giving birth or anything else that women have to deal with in the real world? I imagine they’d probably end up begging the bear to finish them off.)

And really, the whole point of The Revenant is that most human beings (regardless of gender) would not have survived being mauled by a bear or being buried alive or spending months exposed to the harsh wilderness or having pieces of their body start to decay. These are all things that happen to hunter Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) over the course of The Revenant and the film suggests that the only reason he survives is because he’s driven by a desire for revenge. When Glass’s fellow hunter, the gruff Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), decided to abandon Glass, he also murdered Glass’s son, Hawk. Still immobilized by his wounds, Glass could only watch as Hawk was brutally killed.

(Interestingly enough, Fitzgerald is like Glass in that he has also survived a terrible injury. Fitzgerald regularly wears a skullcap to hide the fact that he was scalped in the past. In many ways, Fitzgerald is almost a shadow of Glass. Glass has his son to remind him of what it means to be human but Fitzgerald has no one. And after Hawk is murdered, neither does Glass.)

Though the film focused on Glass’s struggle to survive until he could again track down the men who abandoned him, I have to admit that my main concern was with the character of Jim Bridger (Will Poulter). Bridger, after all, agreed to stay behind with Glass and Fitzgerald and to make sure that Glass received a proper burial after succumbing to his wounds. Bridger was not present when Fitzgeralnd killed Hawk and buried Glass alive and expressed remorse after being falsely told that Glass was dead. Still, The Revenant is a revenge flick and, as I watched, I found myself wondering if Glass would forgive Bridger or if he would take vengeance even on someone who was merely misguided. (If you’ve ever seen a 70s revenge flick, you know that even sincere remorse is usually not enough to avoid being punished.) Since the film continually asks whether or not Glass can survive without sacrificing his humanity, how he handles Bridger is one of the most important scenes in the film.

The Revenant opens with an absolutely terrifying sequence in which a group of hunters is slaughtered by a Native American tribe and it maintains that intensity through the entire film. DiCaprio, Hardy, and Poulter all give excellent performances and special mention should also be made of Domhnall Gleeson, who plays the upright but ineffectual leader of the hunting party and for whom 2015 was a helluva year. (Along with appearing in The Revenant, Gleeson also appeared in Brooklyn, Ex Machina, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. ) It’s not always an easy film to watch (though, for me, the close-up of a wound oozing puss was a lot more unsettling than that bear mauling Glass) and there’s a few scenes where director Alejandro Inarritu gives in to his more pretentious tendencies but, for the most part, The Revenant is never less than watchable.

The Revenant is currently an Oscar front-runner. Last night, it beat the highly hyped Spotlight at the Golden Globes. Personally, as good as the film is, I think there are a lot of films that deserve a best picture nomination more than The Revenant. It’s been a great year for film, after all. That said, I do think The Revenant is definitely an improvement on Inarritu’s previous Oscar winner, Birdman.

The Revenant is an intense and harrowing film that can be seen and appreciated (or, for that matter, disliked) by anyone. Don’t let anyone tell you differently!