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Callum Turner, Austin Butler, and a B-17. (Apple TV+)
With seven years as an editor for Air & Space / Smithsonian, may it rest in power, under my belt, I was the only man for the job of telling you which real American historical figures are played by real English and Irish actors. My Vulture recaps of Masters of the Air, showrunner John Orloff’s long-delayed Apple TV+ adaptation of Donald L. Miller’s nonfiction history book, are here.
Wherein a reflection on the 1989 film Batman and composer Danny Elfman’s substantial contribution thereunto belatedly attempts to reckon with two sexual assault claims filed against him. I don’t think Elfman is an ideal subject through which to continue the eternal can-one-separate-the-art-from-the-artist debate for many reasons, but I was asked to reframe the piece that way. I hope that some of what was initially fun about it survives.
Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal venture out into the world. (Parisa Taghizadeh/Searchlight Pictures)
I didn’t get to see Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers at a festival or an advance screening last year, so I’m calling it the first great movie of 2024. My Washington City Paper review is here.
Two-hander* PCHH episodes are somewhat rare, but I was glad to be able to take part in one with pal Linda Holmes about Michael Mann’s new biopic Ferrari. That it was just the two of us allowed for some discussion of how the movie fits into the 80-year-old auteur’s filmography that we might not have gotten to with a larger panel.
Other critics who on the whole love Mann’s work as much as I do have taken more from this picture than I did. As you’ll hear, I found it to be surprisingly staid and conventional, coming from the guy who’s only other biopic was Ali, 22 years ago, and whose prior feature — almost nine years ago! — was Blackhat, a little-seen thriller that was at least as exciting as it was disjointed. In my City Paper review, I called Ferrari “a sensible sedan of a movie,” which I think fits. Good movie, but I don’t think it’s even as exceptional as Ali, never mind Heat or The Insider or Thief. As always, I’m open to revising my opinion upward upon a second viewing.
*I still don’t get why two-actor plays are called “two-handers” instead of “four-handers.”
Sandra Hüller has a dream house next to hell in The Zone of Interest. (A24)
Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin was my favorite film of 2014 (though it was released outside of the U.S. a year earlier). My review of his even-more-challenging follow-up, The Zone of Interest, is here. I wrote, erroneously, that the movie was in black-and-white. It’s not, but monochrome was how I remembered it. That’s definitely the strangest mistake I’ve ever made in (digital) print.
Reacher locked his keys in the car again. Just kidding; Reacher doesn’t have a car. Or any keys. (Brooke Palmer / Prime Video)
I’m recapping the second season of Reacher, the first-nameless Amazon adaptation of Lee Child’s hilarious series of novels about a hyper-competent, mountain-sized ex-military vigilante hobo, for Vulture. Truly, this is a labor of love. I yield to no man in my admiration for Christopher McQuarrie’s 2012 feature Jack Reacher, but this is a different beast. A larger, less expensive one.
Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in Poor Things.
My Washington City Paper review of Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, one of 2023’s most rewarding films, is here.
Once more into the breach. (Apple)
Sir Ridley Scott, the tireless 85-year-old director of two sci-fi landmarks, a classic feminist road movie, one Best Picture-winning epic and a lot of other stuff, has notched another middling megaproduction with Napoleon. My Washington City Paper review is here.
