Black Widow (2021)

Film: Black Widow (2021)

Stars: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, William Hurt, Ray Winstone, Rachel Weisz

Director: Cate Shortland

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Scarlett Johansson has been playing Natasha Romanoff since 2010 when she first appeared in Iron Man 2, the first female cinematic Avenger, and basically since that time we have been hearing "when is there going to be a Black Widow movie?"  After a near-decade of pressure from comic book fans, who pointed out repeatedly the boy-centric nature of all of the titles that had gotten their own stand-alone films, Johansson finally got to have a sendoff for the character (presumably this is her final moment with the role), by giving her her own origin story/adventure.  Black Widow comes in an interesting situation, though, as it is the film most famously delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic-it was supposed to be released in mid-2020, but was bumped back over a year as a result of Disney not wanting to risk the lost box office dollars.  As a result, Black Widow represents the longest gap the MCU has taken from theaters since 2010 (when she first came onto the scene), since we last checked-in with the Avengers cinematically with Spider-Man: Far From Home two years ago.  Since then, though, the franchise has expanded into three different television series, that, rightly or wrongly, clearly have impacted Black Widow and the way it's perceived by audiences.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in 2016, though we do see some flashbacks to Natasha aka Black Widow's (aka Scarlett Johansson) childhood, which puts it roughly at the Captain America: Civil War point in the MCU timeline (we have not had the Thanos snap yet).  The movie is about Natasha trying to take down Dreykov (Winstone), a Russian general who controls an army of female super soldiers, one of which was Natasha, and two more of which are her "pretend" mother Melina (Weisz) and her pretend sister Yelena (Pugh).  Joined also with their faux father Alexei, the Red Guardian (Harbour), the four team up to take down Dreykov, while also in the process working through the abandonment issues the two girls felt when their "parents" surrendered them to an assassin program.

Black Widow, as I mentioned above, is a movie that should have come out two years ago, and that honestly wears on the movie.  It's possible that this film will play better years from now if you watch all of the MCU films back-to-back (that happens-occasionally when films are seen in rapid succession & viewed as one long story, similar to a TV show, they play better), but now we're a few years out and Black Widow's moment-in-the-sun feels done.  Johansson's character died in Avengers: Endgame, so we have already said our goodbyes to her, and she has been replaced in the years since by other Avengers with more compelling back stories such as Scarlet Witch & Black Panther.  There's just not enough intrigue left around this character for us to care about this coda, and in a similar fashion to Spider-Man: Far From Home, these feel like movies that don't really keep us interested in the longer-game storylines of the series in the way that we cared about the Thanos 'Infinity Stone' chapters as a collective unit.  The only time, honestly, we've seen a real urgent need to continue these tales has been WandaVision (full confession: I haven't yet caught Loki though I will), and I stand behind my initial assessment that it may be worth moving on from this series if we don't start seeing some growth in the tales (or some better mysteries unfolding within the series).

That said, Black Widow has its fun moments.  Pugh steals the whole picture wholesale as Yelena, Black Widow's spunky younger sister.  She consistently wisecracks-the broken, petulant sister of a world superstar, and Marvel wisely is putting her centerstage in its upcoming series Hawkeye.  Harbour's accent work is really bad (he shifts out of his Russian accent way too often), and as a result his scene-stealing isn't quite as worthy.  Johansson & Weisz are two of the most consistent screen presences, with the former eternally understanding the assignment (few actresses are better today at totally enveloping their character into the fabric of a film without ever needing to steal focus quite like ScarJo) and Weisz is the fabulous badass who you know will always get out of everything.  There's a lot to like in the chemistry between the four, but it feels somewhat disjointed, and it's hard to care about them when we already know the titular character's destiny (and that this tale will have little impact on the future of the Avengers franchise).

OVP: Supporting Actress (2019)

OVP: Best Supporting Actress (2019)

The Nominees Were...

Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell

Laura Dern, Marriage Story

Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit

Florence Pugh, Little Women

Margot Robbie, Bombshell

My Thoughts: The Best Supporting Actor race we discussed on Monday (links to all past contests below) was pretty stagnant throughout the cycle-the winner was the same everywhere, and the nominees virtually were as well.  This was not the case for the 2019 Best Supporting Actress race, though.  While the winner remained the same (we'll get to her in a second), it's worth noting that there were some curveballs amidst the precursors, and considerably more names mentioned than we otherwise would've gotten from this slate of actresses.  But one name, our winner, remained constant and we'll start with her.

Laura Dern's work in Marriage Story was, like Brad Pitt, the culmination of a longtime star getting her "this is the time" awards run, and everyone latched on.  These runs sometimes are perplexing even if you like the stars ("really-for that performance?") but I think for Dern this feels about right.  This isn't her most iconic work, and in fact it borrows generously from Renata Klein (for my money her most singular role), but she gives so much with this characterization, casually heartless but never apologetic & willing to play with the dynamics of being a woman in a male-dominated field.  Occasionally the role feels out-of-place against the more humanistic work that Driver & Johansson are bringing to the screen, but this is a small complaint for an enjoyable bit of scene-stealing.

Margot Robbie might have gotten more love in a different year (she is right in that sweet spot of an actor who is going to get an Oscar in the next few years or never get one), and she completely steals Bombshell from her costars.  This is a weird compliment since one of Bombshell's best traits is how the makeup team ensures the actors inhabit their real-life counterparts (and Robbie is playing the only fictional character), but she makes Kayla both confident & realistically naive.  It's a tough role, possibly the toughest in the film, but she gives it her all.  And while the OVP only focuses on the film at hand (we don't take into consideration an actor being "overdue" or having a "good year"), I have to say I enjoyed her small part as Sharon Tate in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Scarlett Johansson finally ended her Oscars drought (she regularly showed up before this year on "Best Actors Never to Be Nominated") with a pair of nominations, and while this is very different from what she's doing in Marriage Story, I think it fits well with the Jojo Rabbit part.  Caring mother is a trope that Oscar latches onto, but this is a tricky role to play, as we have to see her character through the eyes of her young son Jojo, but also with enough hints about her real feelings & her concerns about herself & her son.  The red shoes scene wouldn't work in such a shocking way if she hadn't grounded us in what was taking place internally.

Florence Pugh, like Robbie & Johansson, was having a banner year in 2019, but we can only judge her on her work in the nominated film.  That's to her advantage, though, because while Midsommar was delicious, her scene-stealing work in Little Women might be a better testament to her skill set, finding complicated, ambitious women, and redefining them repeatedly as we watch their film.  Her Amy is the real reason that Little Women became such a touchpoint in 2019 for so many people-she shows the dignity of being the character defined by circumstance, not by passion, and moralizes a part that would've been very easy to just play as an antagonist or even soft villain.

Kathy Bates is an actress who has spent much of her career defying convention in a similar way to what Pugh does with Amy, which is why it's so disappointing that her Bobi Jewell is two-dimensional.  Bates is incapable of giving straight-up bad work, but if the script isn't demanding she give us someone super challenging, she occasionally just relies on her charisma & natural abilities without stretching the story.  That's what happens here-Bobi is sympathetic, and her big moment during the press conference is well-played, but she's too carbon copy, too cookie cutter, for me to really be invested in her arch.

Other Precursor Contenders: As I said up-top, there are more names here than we got in Supporting Actor, though Laura Dern wins everything.  The Globes skipped both Pugh & Johansson, here in favor of Jennifer Lopez (Hustlers) and Annette Bening (The Report).  SAG bumped Bates & Pugh, here picking Lopez & Nicole Kidman (Bombshell...the only time the Nicole-loving Globes have ever skipped a Kidman film performance that SAG went for), while the BAFTA's threw out just Bates in favor of Margot Robbie (who got a double nomination for both Bombshell and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood).  Lopez is famously the sixth place here, and I think that's probably right...but as that performance is so out-of-character for Oscar, I do wonder if Kidman might've been closer than what we're giving her credit for here.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I considered Lopez a lead for her performance, so we'll talk about her in this field next week for Best Actress.  One name I definitely would've included in this lineup, though, was Cho Yeo-jeong, whose work in Parasite is specific & my favorite in the film (though really all of the women of Parasite getting a collective trophy would've gotten no argument from me).

Oscar’s Choice: Dern was an easy win-Big Little Lies helped create a fanbase that might not have rallied in a different year, and she was able to best Robbie & Johansson, who I think would've been battling it out in a different season.

My Choice: With no category fraud to speak of (well done Academy!), I can go solely on performances here.  I'll give the trophy to Pugh as I think her work stands out best & brings the most to her film, with Dern, Robbie, Johansson, & Bates coming behind her in that order.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you with the consensus that this was Laura Dern's time, or are you willing to be contrarian over on Team Pugh?  Was ScarJo closer to winning this trophy or Best Actress last year?  And do you think Lopez would've gotten this nomination if she'd won the Globes (I still think her missing there was the sign we all ignored about how tenuous this citation would be)?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2019: Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Animated Short, Live Action Short, Previously in 2019

Past Best Supporting Actress Contests: 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

OVP: Little Women (2019)

Film: Little Women (2019)
Stars: Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothee Chalamet, Meryl Streep
Director: Greta Gerwig
Oscar History: 6 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Actress-Saoirse Ronan, Supporting Actress-Florence Pugh, Costume Design*, Score, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Confession time-I've never read Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.  Another, weirder confession-I've never seen any of the onscreen iterations of the film.  Not the one with Kate Hepburn.  Not the one with June Allyson.  Not even the one with Winona Ryder.  Somehow, despite all being "OVP" (we'll get to them all eventually), I'd never seen this story onscreen until I saw Greta Gerwig's recent iteration.  This also presents something of a challenge, because while I know enough about the story to be dangerous (weirdly due to that one Friends episode where Joey & Rachel read this book and The Shining), I don't know it by heart, and based on some of the reviews I've read, Gerwig's film takes a lot of different directions that aren't typical for interpretations of Alcott's story.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is not told in the traditional more linear fashion that past versions (and the novel) were told.  Instead, it jumps straight to the middle, and we get an array of flashbacks into the lives of the four March sisters.  We see Amy (Pugh) already in Paris with Aunt March (Streep), trying to pursue Laurie (Chalamet) after he's just been rejected by her sister Jo (Ronan), who is off trying to become a successful writer.  Meanwhile, Meg (Watson) is back home struggling to find a way to make ends meet with her poor husband, and we soon learn that she once had the opportunity to have a far wealthier end to her story.  And of course there's sweet, piano-playing Beth (Scanlen) off in the corner getting deathly sick.  Told back-and-forth, the film gives us backgrounds about these young women, as well as an indication of where they're going.

As I'm not familiar with the story, I was, while not confused, a bit perplexed.  Gerwig's film is clearly meant to be a companion piece to someone who is already a fan of this tale, not simply a "stand alone" story as if it's treated as such, it's kind of messy.  The film is charming, no doubt, and has enough of the original tale to make sense, but it has less impact when you are halfway to realizing Amy will marry Laurie and not Jo since that's the opening scenes for those characters, or that you have a strong indication that Beth is about to die from the film's beginning.  I am a firm believer that you shouldn't have to read the book to understand and enjoy the movie (they need to exist on different plains), so I am going to fault Gerwig's film a bit here even though others will claim this is totally acceptable.  As it is, the film is good, but it's not great, and that's because it feels kind of jumbled and without enough narrative stakes for the audience as written.

That said, she assembled an amazing cast and a slew of actors that likely saw Lady Bird and were willing to sign up for anything that Gerwig was willing to do after that.  Chalamet is sexy & spoiled as Laurie, but one has to assume that this is a character that feels pretty dismissible for fans of earlier iterations of the picture as you can't really root for such a man.  He re-teams here with his Lady Bird costar Saoirse Ronan, who plays Jo as an ardent feminist, someone who is more concerned to be what she said she's always wanted to be than, as the film progresses, who she might secretly wish to be.  The scene toward the end where she realizes that she might have made it work with Laurie is devastating, but I don't think Ronan does enough groundwork to make the rest of her character stick.  This is in contrast to Florence Pugh, who kind of steals the picture from the cavalcade of Oscar nominees as Amy.  She gives a character that could be easily discarded a verve and passion that you wouldn't expect, and along with Midsommar, shows that she's an actress that has arrived in 2019.

Midsommar (2019)

Film: Midsommar (2019)
Stars: Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren, Will Poulter
Director: Ari Aster
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I oftentimes get the question "what is your favorite genre of film?" which I don't love (because all genres can be good or bad), but I think that most of the time when people ask this question, they are using it as code for "do you like horror or not?"  Horror is the most polarizing genre of cinema, either getting people super excited or causing nervous hives.  I am somewhere in the middle-as I said, I have a taste for every genre, but as I live alone in a relatively large house, I do in fact have to be a bit careful about what kinds of horror I watch (I don't like to watch a slasher film and then spend the first twenty minutes I get home walking around with a hammer opening closets).  But Hereditary was a movie last year that I named as one of my Top 5 favorite pictures, and I couldn't ignore such a quick follow-up from inaugural director Ari Aster, particularly a movie that features Florence Pugh (so breathtaking in Lady Macbeth two years back).  What I found was a flick that was billed as a horror, but felt cerebral, more like a slow decay than an actual, proper horror.  It's a movie that's hard to categorize, to say the least, but let's give it a shot.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Dani (Pugh), who has recently suffered an unspeakable tragedy on the eve of what looked like a probable breakup with her boyfriend Christian (Reynor).  Her sister has committed suicide through carbon monoxide poisoning, but in the process has murdered her parents, essentially making Dani overnight an orphan, and forcing Christian to postpone their breakup.  He's still planning on doing it, though, and seems inclined to let distance be the key to their undoing, as he's accepted an opportunity to go to the home of his friend Pelle (Blomgren), along with his buddies Mark (Poulter) and Josh (Harper), the latter of whom wants to write about Pelle's isolated Swedish commune culture for a thesis.  Once they get there, they find a "free love" style community, isolated from all civilization, and slowly begin to see that this is hardly a utopia, but instead a violent cult under the guise of a flower child demeanor.  We see them indulge in ritual suicide, and slowly but steadily the six outsiders (Christian and his friends, as well as another two British hangers-on that accompanied a different member here) start to disappear.  All-the-while, Dani is becoming more and more enmeshed in the culture itself, eventually finding herself the "May Queen" in a horrifying final act of the film.

The crux of the movie is whether or not you hate Christian enough by the end of the movie to see him deserve the death he's going to get.  Like Aster's last picture, Hereditary is not shy on violence (there are scenes of disemboweled bodies, crushed skulls, and skinned bears), but its most damning aspects are psychological.  The film proves to clearly be on Dani's side, and while this might mark me as kind of a scrub (or someone who is distracted by how hot Jack Reynor is) I didn't side with her with such an extreme punishment.  Sure, her boyfriend was a tool for not breaking up with her when he clearly didn't have any interest in her, seeing himself as doing her a favor by staying with her long before her tragedy, but the film's ending has Dani, betrayed by a drugged Christian having sex with a random woman on the commune who seems to like his sperm (and wants it before he gets burned alive), essentially giving herself completely over to the commune and its cultures, having lost her mind from Stockholm Syndrome.  She seems happy that she's destroyed the final link she has to the outside world, and is ready to give herself over to this new life, but in a perverted twist of the beginning of the story, she's killed someone she loves as she's essentially ended her own life (she'll never escape this place), just like her sister, but taken others who trusted her down with her.

The movie is ambitious, and it almost works, but it stretches at places and doesn't have enough snap to some of the biggest reveals to make them hard to see coming (there might be surprises in how grotesque things can become, but it ends roughly where you'd expect it ending from the moment they fly to Sweden).  The film feels like the type that a director, fresh off of his critically successful first movie, makes where he's clearly got a immense amount of talent, but no one around him to say "no" or "this is too hazy."  He's got great instincts in casting-Pugh is excellent as Dani, trying to find an inner-rage and inner-struggle that is rarely on the page, and Reynor is superb as the hot, douche-y guy who you stick with because he convinces you (without saying so) that he's the best you're going to do (we've all dated that guy Dani).  But the film doesn't have enough shock and feels more inclined to gross you out than actually properly scare you or make a clean-line of a story; about the most surprising thing about the film is the amount of full frontal male nudity from lead actor Reynor.  It's impossible to compare a feature to a movie like Hereditary since Aster's first film was such a triumph, but as it comes so soon after it's also difficult not to do so.  Hereditary was a succinct and a clear vision, Midsommar is a movie that's "supposed to be murky" but doesn't show enough clarity once we've supposedly seen what's behind the curtain, even if it houses a number of compelling scenes.

Lady Macbeth (2017)

Film: Lady Macbeth (2017)
Stars: Florence Pugh, Cosmo Jarvis, Naomi Ackle, Christopher Fairbank, Paul Hilton
Director: William Oldroyd
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All right, I'm giving this a shot again.  I can't remember the last time I wrote a review on this blog, and I have been putting off a bunch of them for eons now, so I'm just going to plunk myself down at my computer and attempt to write as many as possible, being interrupted only sporadically to watch a movie in theaters (that I shall promptly review, of course, ending a vicious cycle!).  The first film I'm going to welcome back is conveniently enough the most recent one that I've seen in theaters, a bit of a summer surprise for me as it's not often you see a period film sneak into my local mainstream cinema (usually I have to crisscross about town to catch an art house picture).  Lady Macbeth, though, is a surprising study in claustrophobia featuring a hauntingly effective breakthrough performance by Florence Pugh.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place in 19th Century Scotland, on a quite farmland.  Katherine (Pugh), has largely been sold into marriage to a man who has no sexual interest in her (played by Paul Hilton, her husband Alexander seems to potentially be homosexual, though the film isn't entirely clear on that point).  The movie progresses with her husband and father-in-law (Fairbank) continually isolating her from the world, punishing her for not bearing a son for her husband even though he won't consummate the marriage.  One day, they are both sent away, and she strikes up an affair with the new stable hire Sebastian (Jarvis), which initially takes the form of a carnal affair but eventually she becomes obsessed with him, and intent on replacing her husband with this man who satisfies her desires and her loneliness.  Initially she starts out by murdering her father-in-law, then slowly her murders become more and more ruthless, eventually suffocating a young boy who adores her to stop him from stealing her inheritance.

The movie's central theme is pretty opaque-showing that we are rooting for Katherine to take down her situation, but then eventually we are meant to be horrified that she's more-and-more willing to kill for lust and greed, in order to keep her happiness in the same exact space it's meant to be, even though we as the audience know that while this world is desolated, it's not without influence from those in the surrounding countryside.  I think one of the best touches in the film is in fact the scene where Alexander returns after a long time away, and he chides his wife for her very open affair.  In our eyes as the audience, we see Katherine as being deeply alone outside of Sebastian and her maid Anna (Ackle), but the reality is that the staff gossips about her as if she's a celebrity, and that has made it to the nearby villages.  Katherine may be alone, but she's always being watched, something that informs her characterization and the staggering conclusion where she makes her lover pay for her crimes, thus ensuring that she survives but is ensnared by the loneliness she had long tried to destroy.

The movie isn't perfect by any means-the climax may be chilling, but it's easy to predict, and none of the supporting character's save for Ackle really go above being a cartoonish version of themselves.  No the real reason to see this is the triumphant star performance of Florence Pugh, who is making only her second film here and her first as a lead.  Pugh excites Katherine, and fully inhabits the character to the point where you can't turn away even when you want to do so; I loved the way that she plays her as if she herself is trying to understand what her role should be.  Katherine is sly, but she's new to this life, and Pugh doesn't play her as a Machiavelli until the moment where it counts.  It's a really rare performance that announces a star arrival, and considering she has two major roles coming up (a leading part in the new Stephen Merchant film and a supporting one in next year's Liam Neeson thriller The Commuter), I suspect hers is a name we'll soon be hearing a lot more.

Those are my thoughts on Lady Macbeth-how about yours?  Are you with me that the film is good, but Pugh herself is a breakthrough?  Or are you wishing they'd gone in a different direction (seeing the world specifically from Anna's viewpoint may have been an interesting turn for the picture)?  Share your thoughts below!