American Made tries to smuggle political satire and an indictment of Reagan-era greed into a breezy caper with moderate success. Its efforts to provide context, through either voiceover narration or snippets of archival footage, prove insufficient for conveying the repercussions of Seal’s actions; Nicaragua and Columbia appear mostly from an aerial view, their inhabitants invisible except the cartel leaders. You couldn’t dream of a more suitable vehicle for subverting Tom Cruise’s ‘80s grifter persona, though. The images of him scrutinizing stacks of money and casually talking in front of a Confederate flag sum up this country better than any newspaper op-ed. Needed more Jesse Plemons!
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Ophelia 2018
I forgot that they inexplicably whisper much of the dialogue, which is unfortunate because Semi Chellas’s script brims with wordplay and sharp language even as it leaves Shakespeare by the wayside. (Those who want Shakespeare have no shortage of faithful adaptations to choose from.) Daisy Ridley and George MacKay are magnetic, though, especially opposite each other. One catches glimpses of the original characters in their modernized performances like eyes behind a mask. Still kind of regret letting the reviews dissuade me from watching this in theaters and beholding the costumes in their full splendor.
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Ziegfeld Follies 1945
Was seeing Fred Astaire dance with Gene Kelly worth seeing Fred Astaire pretend to be Asian? Hmm...
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Full Moon in New York 1989
Sylvia Chang, Maggie Cheung, and Siqin Gaowa reflect the complex loneliness of immigrant life in the flashes of doubt, anger, and longing that flit across their faces, but disjointed writing and editing reduce their efforts to puzzle pieces. It’s quite a feat to make a basic character drama so opaque. (The inaccurate subtitles didn’t help, plus, despite being Chinese American, I turned out to be pretty clueless about the movie’s political and cultural background.) I’m now desperate to see a production of Macbeth with Asian actors (the three women here, perhaps?) that uses the original dialogue.
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