Awards Season Round-Up Part 3

by Rob DiCristino

Here are some more thoughts on movies I’ve seen!

Ballad of a Small Player (Dir. Edward Berger)

Perpetual awards season darling Colin Farrell returns in perpetual awards season darling Edward Berger’s (All Quiet on the Western Front, Conclave) Ballad of a Small Player, a handsome but ultimately empty-handed noir that follows posh English gambler Lord Doyle (Farrell) — actually a white-collar Irish criminal called Brendan Reilly — on a downward tumble through the seedy back alleyways of the Macau casino circuit. Down on his luck and millions in the hole, Reilly’s in a race against the clock to make good on his debts before brokers like Dao Ming (Fala Chen) and private investigators like Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton) extract what he owes them the hard way. Farrell embodies a charming liar like Doyle as no one else can, of course, but Berger’s tonal schizophrenia denies him the opportunity to explore spiritual elements — Reilly suspects himself a cursed “white ghost” — that might have fleshed out his character. Without that, Ballad of a Small Player is about as chintzy and hollow as the calculating conman it chases around Asia.

Ballad of a Small Player is now available on Netflix.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (Dir. Rian Johnson)

I’m happy to concur with our own Joel Edmiston in his appreciation of Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man, a subdued, nearly gothic chapter in the Knives Out canon that finds gentleman detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) investigating the murder of an outspoken small-town preacher (Josh Brolin, still Hollywood’s most underrated Not-Leading Man), a crime allegedly carried out by the would-be successor (Challengers’ Josh O’Connor) who hated his guts. Veering away from the self-satisfied haughtiness that occasionally hobbled the original Knives Out — and the Too Online pontification that came close to dooming Glass Onion — Wake Up Dead Man lets its conscience be its guide, challenging Benoit Blanc to set aside his intellect and explore the more complex mysteries of faith. Johnson brings along the usual all-star ensemble — Glenn Close, Andrew Scott, and Mila Kunis stand out among them — but it’s his more agile, streamlined screenplay and O’Connor’s ability to pull the entire film into his gravity that make it perhaps the best Knives Out adventure yet.

Wake Up Dead Man is in U.S. theaters now and on Netflix December 12th.

Jay Kelly (Dir. Noah Baumbach)

“All my memories are movies,” says Jay Kelly (George Clooney) in Noah Baumbach’s gauzy new drama about an aging Hollywood superstar’s search for greater meaning and purpose. Never the best actor in his class — that distinction belonged to Timothy (Billy Crudup), whose reappearance in Jay’s life inspires this existential crisis — Jay has nonetheless built an empire on matinee idol looks and effortless charisma. His subsequent fame may have dulled Jay to the sacrifices made by his managers (Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, et al) and kids (Riley Keough and Grace Edwards), but that’s nothing compared to the simmering contempt he now feels for himself. Weaponizing Clooney’s self-awareness to delightful effect — its Babylon-esque ending is a bold risk that pays off — Baumbach’s effervescent film asks us to consider how a man adored by the masses can be a stranger to those he loves, whether a life spent making-believe can inspire any real wisdom, and — quoth Sylvia Plath — why “being oneself” can be such a hellish, terrifying proposition.

Jay Kelly is in limited U.S. release now and on Netflix December 5th.

The Chronology of Water (Dir. Kristen Stewart)

To put it most succinctly, The Chronology of Water is exactly the sort of debut effort you’d expect from an artist as unpredictable as Kristen Stewart: Based on the 2011 memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch, it’s a nasty little ball of righteous outrage, the story of a young swimmer (Imogen Poots in staggering performance guaranteed to be ignored by major awards bodies) who uses the written word to find solace after a lifetime of family trauma. Working from her own adaptation of Yuknavich’s memoir, Stewart stitches together a freshman effort of hazy, half-remembered, elliptical phrases, each one evoking the pain and poetry of personal discovery. It’s too much, at times, and it occasionally loses its way (as debut films tend to), but between its evocative imagery, Poots’ revelatory performance, and supporting turns from Thora Birch and Jim Belushi — the latter continuing his superb run of dramatic work as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest author Ken Kesey — The Chronology of Water proves that Stewart is as much a force behind the camera as she is in front of it.

The Chronology of Water will be in limited U.S. release on December 5th.

Wicked: For Good (Dir. Jon M. Chu)

I suppose someone at FTM should acknowledge this thing’s existence, right? Might as well be me! It couldn’t matter less what I actually think of it, of course — it’s dull, padded, visually inert, haphazardly plotted, the songs are ass, Jeff Goldblum is bored out of his mind, it “yadda yaddas” the fucking Wizard of Oz, it looks like hot garbage, etc. etc. etc. — because Wicked: For Good is less a movie than it is a cultural happenstance, a unit of content made to sell Oreos and give your mom’s Facebook friends something to post about. But you know what? I’m good with it! Movies have always been a commercial endeavor as much as an artistic one, and jackass critics like me were calling Jaws and The Godfather soulless, crowd-pleasing pablum back when they were released, too. I’m thankful that people are excited about a movie. I’m thankful that people are telling me what they think about a movie. I’m thankful that some little kid somewhere is having their first experience in a movie theater. And if you’ve read this far, you really should be, too.

Wicked: For Good is in U.S. theaters now.