Film Freak Central

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

***½/****
starring Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Bertie Carvel, Brendan Gleeson
written for the screen and directed by Joel Coen

by Walter Chaw The Tragedy of Macbeth is a middle-aged lament of the childless, a haunted interpretation of Shakespeare that underscores my belief that the Coen Brothers--in this case, just Joel--are/is among our finest literary critics. Their O Brother, Where Art Thou? unpacks The Odyssey as a collection of regional tales and songs; their adaptations of No Country for Old Men and True Grit demonstrate a deep understanding of not merely the specific works being adapted, but Cormac McCarthy's and Charles Portis's entire bodies of work as well. The Big Lebowski, needless to say, is a brilliant and essential take on Chandler's The Big Sleep. That their planned adaptation of James Dickey's To the White Sea with Brad Pitt hasn't happened yet and doesn't look like it ever will is a genuine tragedy. (The relative failure of their Ladykillers remake suggests this skill may be limited to the transmutation between mediums.) For his solo debut, Joel Coen has taken a German Expressionistic approach, leaning heavily into long shadows and aestheticism that feels like mourning. The film falls somewhere between the mysticism of Kurosawa's Throne of Blood and Orson Welles's incantatory 1948 Macbeth, though it's less wild and windswept than either, reminding in this way of how steeped in superstition and the supernatural was Shakespeare--and how raw, even stripped down, the Scottish Play seems in comparison to the Bard's other histories.

Editor's Choice: The Year in Blu-ray (2021)

by Bill Chambers It was a pretty strong year for Blu-ray and another bad one for civilization, which is probably why an unusually high number of discs (Donnie Darko 4K, The Road Warrior, and Criterion's Citizen Kane, to name a few) fell victim to human error in 2021. I'm not dissuaded by this, I'm touched by the format's resilience in the face of adversity. One thing is for certain: the pandemic has not been kind to the hoarder of physical media--this hoarder, at least. It's led to short-stocked titles, import levies, fewer offers of review copies, and me not making one of these lists in 2020 because there was so much I missed. I don't think I expected to be back in the same boat 12 months later--or maybe, to paraphrase the world's greatest detective, I knew I would be, but I hoped I wouldn't be. I'm ignoring any pangs of FOMO this time around, though, because I did see at least 10 titles worth singling out, even if collectively they don't tell the whole story of the year in home video. Besides, any excuse to proselytize for physical media as the oil slick of streaming continues to submerge preexisting content delivery systems.

The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

½*/****
starring Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Neil Patrick Harris
screenplay by Lana Wachowski & David Mitchell & Aleksandar Hemon
directed by Lana Wachowski

by Walter Chaw I guess I wouldn't mind that The Matrix: Resurrections (hereafter Matrix 4) is so stupid if it didn't spend so much of its bloat trying to explain itself. Just let it go. If you're riding with the same plot as Space Jam: A New Legacy, own it--run with it, for fuck's sake. Exposition is always a delicate if necessary evil, but here it's particularly undignified. It's Glen from Raising Arizona explaining his Polack jokes. The plot of Matrix 4 is essentially that conversation with the guy who's way too stoned who has this great idea for a Matrix sequel. "Okay, okay, see, Neo is--haha--NEO is Mr. Anderson again and--haha, check it--he's like this programmer dude, real boring piece of shit, and he made a game back in 1999 called 'The Matrix', and yo, yo, yo, wait, wait... What if Trinity was The One, too?" You've heard of the concept of "raising all boats"? Well, an hour of deadening exposition devoted to explaining a plot this contrived, this smug and half-cocked, this simultaneously convoluted and simplistic, sinks the boat--sinks all fucking boats. Good poker players have confidence and chill; not only does Lana Wachowski have a real bad tell, she gives speeches about what she's holding. "Hi, I'm Lana, creator of The Matrix, and I'm drawing on an inside straight." Small wonder Lilly refused to participate in this boondoggle, leaving Lana to recruit their Cloud Atlas partner-in-crime David Mitchell as one of her co-writers. That either of these people kept their names on this is evidence of an almost majestic, feline confidence.

The Agony and the Ecstasy: An Interview with Lauren Hadaway

World-weary and wise and sharp as the crack of a pistol, Lauren Hadaway, after years as a top-shelf ADR artist, set a goal for herself to become a director. During the downtime between looping sessions on Justice League in 2017, she started writing the script for what would become The Novice, a semi-autobiographical film about a driven young woman joining her college crew team and finding in it an Everest she must scale just because it's there. Just because, nay, especially because, it's hard. The resulting film is as sharp and as driven as its creator, every frame composed not just beautifully but to tell a visual story of the protagonist's interiors. It's clear almost immediately that, more than a sports story, The Novice is about finding purpose through ritualized pain--and maybe a little bit or more about Hadaway overcoming self-doubt and enduring an unprecedented global event to see this project through to completion.

I began our interview by asking her about the process of coming through a difficult time.