Tom Salinsky

I was lucky enough to find a cinema still showing Elvis after all this time, and so settled in to the Vue Westfield to watch this superior biopic, blessed with an uncanny central performance from Austin Butler, all wrapped up in Baz Luhrmann’s signature kinetic style. It’s easy to write off all of this frantic editing, multiple images, dizzying camera removes and dense soundtrack as “anything but subtle” but actually, it’s precisely this layering of sound and image which allows for a certain amount of subtlety, mixing in a few shots of the real Elvis early on, for example. But it is an onslaught, particularly the first half hour or so.

As it settles down, we get the basic beats (sorry) of the story, avoiding almost all of the Dewey Cox traps (but I did cringe when the young Elvis was offered pills in the back of a car) and sensibly focusing on a few key areas rather than pedantically ticking every available box. And with Butler’s astonishing physical performance and vocals which blend his voice with Elvis recordings, it’s an amazing recreation of what it might have been like to see the King live.

Using The Colonel to provide a Salieri-like framing device helps to provide context and some (unreliable) narration to move us from plot-point-to-plot-point, but whereas the title character is a near-perfect evocation, Hanks as Tom Parker is a pantomime villain version of the real person, and although Hanks can’t help but elicit sympathy, and exude warmth and charm, he appears to be a refugee from a different movie entirely, which is disappointing.

Casting is also an issue for The Fabelmans, which in many ways is a very fine film: detailed, engrossing, moving, warmly funny, cheeky and nostalgic without being cloying. Gabriel LaBelle is remarkable as the young wannabe filmmaker, being moved from town-to-town by his parents, and struggling to fit in. By and large, the story is told with nuance, suggestion and economy – with one odd exception being one scene towards the end (after the Ditch Day screening) where suddenly everybody just starts announcing their true feelings at each other with next-to-no provocation.

What’s odd is the casting of Michelle Williams and Paul Dano as Sammy Fabelman’s parents, in a story which is so concerned with Judaism. The debate is ongoing about the extent to which we want great actors to be able to take imaginative leaps to transform themselves vs the need for the kind of authenticity which only comes from casting actors whose lived experience matches the character, but it is odd how often the decision seems to come down against casting Jewish actors to play Jewish parts. Dano just about convinces as Sammy’s dad, but Michelle Williams, although finding the inner emotional life of the character very accurately, never remotely resembled any Jewish mother I’ve ever met (and I’ve met a few). Perhaps that’s why Judd Hirsch turns up near the beginning of the film, dines hungrily on any available scenery, and then leaves, having barely influenced the story in any way.

The final shot of the film, however, is absolute perfection. If this is Spielberg’s final work, as some say it was intended to be, it won’t be his masterpiece, but it is one I would happily revisit. I just wish the casting had gone differently.

Tár is one of those films built around a single actor. You sometimes hear directors saying “I wouldn’t have made the film if I couldn’t have got X to play the part.” Is that always true? I doubt it, but it probably is here. The intricacies of the performance is the whole point. Just as Lydia fanatically teases out details of classical pieces from her orchestra, so too does Cate Blanchett tease out details of this fascinating, complex, unlikeable, tyrannical, desperate, cruel, selfish and yet somehow relatable individual.

It’s lengthy, and it takes a while for anything to “happen”. I mean, stuff happens, but it’s not at all clear for a very long time what the actual point is, and I have to say, even now, I’m still not 100% sure what it’s trying to say. But like a number of other relatively plotless films which take place in very unfamiliar worlds (Gosford Park, The Hurt Locker, The Wolf of Wall Street) it’s the immersion in the details of the world that sustained my interest – although I’m not the least bit surprised to learn that it tried the patience of others.

But if all of the supporting players and the minutiae of a conductor’s life are the orchestra, then the soloist is of course Cate Blanchett who wrings every drop of nuance she can out of what could in lesser hands have been a wildly undisciplined caricature or a thin portrayal which couldn’t summon up the sheer charisma required to make the story work.

Women Talking has even less plot than Tár, and the most dramatic scenes all take place before the movie starts and are generally only described, or shown in brief flashbacks. But Sarah Polley’s unhurried and literate screenplay focuses on the rigour of the debate and the shifting moods of the characters. Essentially, this is Twelve Angry Men, restaged in a Mennonite Barn and where the stakes are far more personal.

Polley’s direction is also clear, unfussy and sensitive. She knows when to just let the words and the faces do the heavy lifting and when a little bit of an extra flourish will be helpful. And she has an absolutely crackerjack cast, led by Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Ben Whishaw, but also including a brief turn by Frances McDormand (who also co-produced) and a remarkable performance from Michelle McLeod as the fragile Mejal.

Polley’s control of tone is precise and when things take a turn for the melodramatic in the closing fifteen or so minutes, she’s able to prevent the story from tipping over into action movie or soap opera clichés, but instead remains steadfastly intent on the details of the character interactions, all the way to the incredibly moving final shots. It’s a deeply absorbing piece of work, and what’s delightful about this very strong slate of Best Picture nominees is that it’s hard to think of two movies more opposite in their aims, intentions, methods and influences than Everything Everywhere and Women Talking and yet they’re two of my favourite films of the year. (Top Gun Maverick I guess is the third leg of this stool, but that’s my least favourite of the ten nominees by some distance.)

Lastly, let’s look at All Quiet on the Western Front. Remakes of previous Best Picture winners are rare, but not unheard of (and we had another one last year with Spielberg’s take on West Side Story) but this is particularly interesting. Lewis Milestone’s 1930 film of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 novel had been conceived as a silent film, and traces of this earlier style of film grammar remain. It’s a testament to the studio’s desire to render the story as accurately and unflinchingly as possible, as well as the skill of the director and crew, that it has as much power as it does. When we watched it for our Best Pick podcast, we were all blown away (sorry) by the sheer force of the storytelling.

But this was a film about Germans in World War One, made by Americans in the inter-war period. The 2022 version is made by Germans, and is made not only with two world wars now in the history books, but also at a time when another conflict is raging in Europe. So, not only is there the opportunity to re-tell this story with the extra detail, sophistication and nuance which one would expect after ninety years of advances in filmmaking, but the time and nationality of the filmmakers gives it extra resonance.

There are plenty of changes from the earlier film, which was a pretty faithful rendering of the novel. Most obviously, this version is in colour, but this is no Technicolor fantasy. Director Edward Berger and cinematographer James Friend shoot it all in muted, muddy reds and fetid, billious greens. Milestone’s version kicks off with the rousing patriotic speech which inspires our young, callow heroes to enlist. Berger knows we won’t fall for that, and gives us the horrors of the battlefield right up front, with the dark irony that the jacket ripped from the shoulders of one unfortunate young soldier has the bullet holes patched up and is then given to the next new recruit.

Some of the episodes from the novel make it through intact, some are expanded or deleted. The most obvious omission is the sequence where Bäumer gets to go home briefly and discovers that he no longer fits back into civilian life. Instead Berger hints at his hero’s disassociation, and keeps him trapped on the front lines. He also gives us a window into the political dimension of the war, pitting Daniel Brühl’s Erzberger against Thibault de Montalembert’s Ferdinand Foch – whereas Remarque’s novel kept us in the trenches with the grunts. This leads to what I think of as an overreach, however, since the final death of Bäumer, instead of being the simple banality of the novel or the famous image of the first movie, is the product of an over-engineered ironic twist, which was such a shift in tone that I suspected it must have been based on a specific real event, but I’ve been unable to find any evidence of that.

However, the rest of the film is incredibly strong, with horribly convincing battle scenes, stripped of the grand tragedy of Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, or the fleetingly optimistic showmanship of 1917, but reminding me more of a more reserved, more European Platoon. And Felix Kammerer as Bäumer is superb, as the enthusiastic idealism of the early stretch is replaced by horror and revulsion, and finally a blank fatalism as he reaches the end. It’s clearly going to win Best International Feature, and although I’ve yet to see the other nominees, I suspect deservedly so.

The Best Picture nominees, along with the rest of the Oscar contenders, were announced a few days ago. Here’s my quick assessment of the runners and the riders…

All Quiet on the Western Front. Like Spielberg’s West Side Story last year, this is a remake of a previous Best Picture winner, but instead of this German World War One story being told by an American studio in the interwar period, it’s now being told by Germans at a time when no-one who fought in that war is still alive. It should be an interesting watch, it’s clearly going to win Best International Feature, and it’s Netflix’s big hope for this year, but will it be better than the transcendent 1930 version or just slicker?

Avatar: The War of Water. Living up to Cameron’s maximum that “more is more and too much is never enough” this lumbering epic reprises most of the biggest hits of its now ancient-seeming progenitor only soggier. I saw it on an IMAX screen and was frequently bored. The plot seems to hinge on a 3D-printed version of the badguy from the first film committing an enormous amount of army resources (including people) to his own personal vendetta. Who signed off on this? Apparently Kate Winslet is in this one, but I didn’t spot her.

The Banshees of Inisherin. Containing none of the exuberance of his awesomely entertaining In Bruges, this melancholy character study reminds me most of McDonagh’s bleakly moving The Pillowman which got me close to tears when I only read it – I’ve never seen it. Rather like Moonlight, this left me oddly unsatisfied when I first watched it, but it’s really clung on to me. With nine nominations total, including four for its cast, it’s a real front-runner for the big prize.

Elvis. Wouldn’t be the Oscars without some hefty biopics and this is one I missed at the cinema but am hoping to catch up with soon. Austin Butler has some stiff competition in the Best Actor stakes, but even with eight nominations total, given that its director hasn’t been recognised, I don’t think this is a major contender.

Everything Everywhere All at Once. Dazzingly original, hugely authored movie which manages not to lose sight of the simple human story at the centre of its bewildering whirlwind of images. Arguably a bigger achievement than Banshees, and remarkably it leads the way in nominations with eleven – including another four acting nominations for its largely non-white cast – but I suspect that the Academy’s innate conservatism will swing it back towards Banshees and I wouldn’t be dismayed if that’s what happened. This could be a Mank-like situation, where the most-nominated film walks away with very few awards (although this is a far better film than Mank).

The Fabelmans. I’ve been hearing about this film for almost a year and have yet to see it. Recently, Spielberg seems to have been doodling in the margins a bit. This might be the film which lets us see the director’s heart and soul a bit more clearly, which would be fascinating. Will report back soon.

Tár. Watched this last night on the TV. Cate Blanchett is sublime and Todd Field’s intricate screenplay creates the world of Lydia Tár through shrewd detail and subtle suggestion. For a film in which not a whole lot happens, you need to pay attention and when I did, it was utterly absorbing. Does it mean anything? Well, that’s something I’m going to need more time to consider.

Top Gun: Maverick. The film that saved cinema. Well, maybe not quite, but it is a precision-tooled entertainment machine with all the cold cynicism that that implies. With its sentimental nods to its ludicrous 1980s progenitor, its by-the-numbers boys-on-an-impossible-mission central concept, and its punch-the-air reversals of fortune, I can’t quite bring myself to hate it – in fact I admire its streamlined efficiency – but I find it vastly surprising that it’s in the conversation at all for Best Picture. Also nominated for its screenplay and for a handful of technical awards. It’s also Cruise’s most commercially successful movie by quite some distance, making around twice as much as the (far-better) Mission Impossible: Fallout.

Triangle of Sadness. Ruben Östland follows up the enthralling Force Majeure and the fascinating The Square with this messier (in every sense) outing which skewers the world of modelling and the super-rich. Arguably soft targets, but the insights are still strong and the middle section is as bravura as the opening is contained and acutely observed. Only the last act didn’t quite work for me, gradually coming into land instead of building and building to an explosive climax. With only two other nominations, even if one of them is for Östland as director, I don’t think this has much chance of winning Best Picture.

Women Talking. The one I know the least about, despite having chatted briefly to the costume designer at a fancy wedding earlier this year. I’m a huge fan of Sarah Polley and I can only imagine that this will be excellent, if not exactly a laugh riot. Will report back.

Elsewhere, both The Daniels and Spielberg certainly have a shot at Best Director, but I think this could be McDonagh’s night, in which case I can see him picking up Original Screenplay too, with Adapted Screenplay I think likely to go to Ishiguru for Living. Best Actor is hard to call, but I wouldn’t count out Austin Butler. Andrea Riseborough’s Best Actress nomination has survived, but I think the controversy will have badly hurt her chances, so this is probably Blanchett’s to lose. I’d love Barry Keoghan to win Best Supporting Actor and I’d be thrilled to see Stephanie Hsu walk off with Best Supporting Actress.

Check back here in March for the results.