Latest news with #Aster
Winnipeg Free Press
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
COVID-era tale sure to leave you unsettled
Nobody goes to an Ari Aster film to feel comfortable. The American writer-director's tortuous new anti-western — which premièred at Cannes to a divided response — is profoundly uncomfortable. Having proven himself a master of unease in Hereditary, Midsommar and Beau Is Afraid, Aster is now presenting a pitch-dark satire of our polarized era that is itself provocatively — and often pointlessly — polarizing. Along with discomfort, Aster can also be counted on for technical craft, atmospheric dread and interesting work from A-list actors. Ultimately, though, Eddington is a risky thought experiment that goes wrong, its incitements dragging out into overlong incoherence. Set in rural New Mexico in May 2020, in the uncertain early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the story starts with a showdown between town mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal from The Last of Us) and county sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix, who worked with Aster on Beau Is Afraid). Ted supports the public health measures he hopes will keep the community safe. Joe, meanwhile, refuses to enforce the state mask mandate, citing individual freedom, and pretty soon he's driving around in one of those SUVs plastered with red, white and blue 'patriot' stickers and slogans. What might feel jarring to some viewers — many fans of A24 movies skew left — is that Joe, at least initially, is presented as the most sympathetic character and the one whose point of view we follow. He's a devoted husband to his wife, Louise (Emma Stone), who's living with an anxiety disorder, and he's dealing with an extremely online mother-in-law, Dawn (The Penguin's Dierdre O'Connell), who has fallen into a rabbit-hole of internet conspiracy theories. Ted is coded as liberal (and of course played by the supercool Pascal), but seems to be in bed with big developers and wealthy tech guys who are planning a data centre that will suck up the town's water and energy. He comes off as a phony, a hypocrite, and — even worse, in 2020 — he's a toilet-paper hoarder. Anyone ready to seize on Eddington as anti-'woke' should be warned, though. Aster is actually playing with viewer expectations, engineering the audience's emotional reactions to work at cross-purposes to their ideological beliefs, deliberately messing with reflexive political responses on both sides of the spectrum. Through his characters' complicated feuds, he's demonstrating that what can seem like principled political stands are often covers for personal grievance and psychological turmoil. He also switches up audience assumptions and allegiances several times — Joe is going to do some truly terrible things — as the story devolves into an increasingly violent and hallucinatory hellscape. Things take another turn after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, as the Black Lives Matter movement spreads across the country. One of the town's few Black residents is Michael (Empire of Light's Micheal Ward), a sheriff's deputy working to quell the protests on the town's main street, while the protesters are mostly middle-class white kids, constantly announcing the burden of their privilege and making speeches about not having the right to make speeches. A24 photo Joaquin Phoenix (left) as county sheriff Joe Cross and Pedro Pascal as mayor Ted Garcia in Eddington At this point, the town of Eddington starts to feel like the toxic epicentre of America's social and political dysfunction. There's a charismatic creep of a QAnon-style cult leader (Austin Butler). There are progressive purity tests. There are the alienating effects of tech, the constant drip of social-media disinformation and incentivized online outrage. Everybody is constantly filming everybody else, which is initially touted as transparency but soon feels more like surveillance. And just in case the viewers are having any doubts about the inescapably angry and screwed-up state of America, there's a literal (!) dumpster fire. Aster is toying around with each side's worst prejudices about the other side, while simultaneously asking us to see everyone as human beings. That's a tricky stance. While it gets some support from Phoenix's emotive and oddly vulnerable work, Pascal and Stone are given less to do and end up feeling less like people and more like symbols. Eddington does function extremely well as a document of the COVID era. Aster calls up the industrial-sized bottles of hand sanitizer, the drive-up testing stations, the ordeal of grocery shopping and the awkward, socially distanced outside gatherings. He tracks the confusion and resentment and rage rushing into the pandemic's vacuum of anxiety and isolation. While the initial shootouts between Ted and Joe involved iPhones, we eventually end up outside the town's Pistol Palace, hurtling suddenly towards a deranged ending — gory, grotesque and psychologically unsettling. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. The narrative descends into surreal darkness, a vision of American history as an endless cycle of gun-fuelled retribution, with masked characters firing into the night, not even sure who their enemy is. A24 photo Micheal Ward (as Michael) has his hands full as a sheriff's deputy working to quash protests in Eddington. Aster is presenting an elaborate and ambitious conceptual setup, but in the end, the film lacks the discipline to pull it off. At one point, Joe says, 'We need to free each other's hearts.' Eddington might be hoping to free us, but its disjointed, stretched-out narrative and inflammatory images might just further entrench us. Alison GillmorWriter Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto's York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Eddington': Instant Oscar predictions for Ari Aster's latest
Over the course of only four feature films, writer-director Ari Aster has quickly gained a reputation as one of the most daring filmmakers working today. And with his latest, Eddington, opening in theaters, Aster has set his sights on our very recent past to expand what the hell happened to all of us during COVID. But for as big of a splash as Aster has made since Hereditary, his films have yet to earn a single Oscar nomination. Could that change as he continues his shift away from arthouse horror and further into the world of social satire? More from Gold Derby Watch 'Superman' crush 'Smurfs' and 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' at the weekend box office From 'In the Heat of the Night' to 'E.T,' Streisand to 'Severance': How Alan Bergman soundtracked Hollywood Here's a look at the instant Oscar odds for Eddington. Original Screenplay If any branch is geared toward rewarding Aster's massive creative swings, it's the writers, and the early predictions data supports that premise. Eddington's highest ranking category in Gold Derby's Oscar nominations predictions so far is easily Best Original Screenplay (in 13th place), and it makes sense. Eddington is playing with genre and speaking to the moment in a way that may not correlate with a high Cinemascore, but could engender admiration from Academy members in the writers branch. Aster is managing to make risky and creative films, and those efforts are often the ones awarded in the Screenplay categories. Oscars Nominations 2026 Best Picture Best Director Best Actress Best Actor Best Supporting Actress Best Supporting Actor Best Adapted Screenplay Best Original Screenplay Contender Odds 0. Sinners 91.4% 1. Sentimental Value 87.7% 2. Jay Kelly 79.3% 3. Marty Supreme 64.1% 4. It Was Just an Accident 59.9% 5. After the Hunt 39.1% 6. Rental Family 9.3% 7. Materialists 5.1% 8. Black Bag 3.6% 9. The Secret Agent 3.0% 10. Ella McCay 2.9% 11. Eddington 2.5% 12. A House of Dynamite 2.5% 13. F1: The Movie 1.7% 14. The Smashing Machine 1.6% 15. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You 1.5% 16. Blue Moon 1.0% 17. Father, Mother, Sister, Brother 1.0% 18. Anemone 0.9% 19. The Phoenician Scheme 0.8% 20. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey 0.8% 21. Twinless 0.6% 22. In Your Dreams 0.4% 23. The Mastermind 0.3% 24. Roofman 0.3% 25. Eleanor the Great -- See All Predictions Supporting Actress This one can be summed up in two words: Emma. Stone. And after two Best Actress Oscars, her mere presence inserts a movie into the awards conversation. The performance is a typically strong one from Stone, in a role that has her playing in the wilder end of modern human behavior. Stone is currently sitting at 17th in Gold Derby prediction ranking, but that could quickly change as Eddington rolls out, depending on how word of mouth spreads. It's certain to be a polarizing film, but support could coalesce around a presence as well known and liked as Stone's. Oscars Nominations 2026 Best Picture Best Director Best Actress Best Actor Best Supporting Actress Best Supporting Actor Best Adapted Screenplay Best Original Screenplay Contender Odds 0. Elle Fanning 80.9% 1. Ariana Grande 80.4% 2. Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas 43.9% 3. Ayo Edebiri 42.2% 4. Teyana Taylor 41.9% 5. Wunmi Mosaku 36.0% 6. Gwyneth Paltrow 35.3% 7. Laura Dern 30.5% 8. Jennifer Lopez 22.0% 9. Glenn Close 10.3% 10. Mari Yamamoto 5.0% 11. Hailee Steinfeld 4.7% 12. Regina Hall 4.1% 13. Tilda Swinton 3.8% 14. Mia Goth 1.9% 15. Emily Watson 1.8% 16. Emma Stone 1.7% 17. Kerry Condon 1.3% 18. Rebecca Ferguson 1.0% 19. Jamie Lee Curtis 1.0% 20. Felicity Jones 1.0% 21. Karen Gillan 0.9% 22. Alicia Silverstone 0.8% 23. Greta Lee 0.7% 24. Emily Mortimer 0.7% 25. Margaret Qualley 0.7% 26. Chase Infiniti 0.6% 27. Nina Hoss 0.5% 28. Sissy Spacek 0.5% 29. Zoey Deutch 0.5% 30. Chloe Sevigny 0.4% 31. Phoebe Waller-Bridge 0.4% 32. Kirsten Dunst 0.3% 33. Gaby Hoffmann 0.3% 34. Samantha Morton 0.3% 35. Regina King 0.2% 36. Lauren Graham 0.2% 37. Kate McKinnon 0.2% 38. Gemma Chan 0.2% 39. Kerry Washington 0.1% 40. Ilfenesh Hadera 0.1% 41. Allison Janney 0.1% 42. Alana Haim 0.1% 43. Imogen Poots 0.1% 44. Radhika Apte 0.1% 45. Zoe Kravitz 0.1% 46. Safia Oakley-Green -- 47. Kerry Condon -- 48. Vicky Krieps -- 49. Juno Temple -- 50. Erin Kellyman -- 51. Jessica Hecht -- See All Predictions Actor A four-time nominee and one-time winner, Joaquin Phoenix is another actor whose credit will always draw at least some awards curiosity. He has gone without a nom since winning his Best Actor in 2020 for Joker, and at this early stage of the conversation, Eddington doesn't appear to be the most likely film to get him his next. Phoenix sits at a distant 30th in the Best Actor rankings, mostly based on reads of the trailer and the film's premiere at Cannes, so like Stone, his awards future will depend on Eddington's reception and whether it can capture the conversation. Oscars Nominations 2026 Best Picture Best Director Best Actress Best Actor Best Supporting Actress Best Supporting Actor Best Adapted Screenplay Best Original Screenplay Contender Odds 0. Jeremy Allen White 81.4% 1. Timothee Chalamet 77.1% 2. Michael B. Jordan 66.3% 3. George Clooney 48.8% 4. Leonardo DiCaprio 48.2% 5. Jesse Plemons 41.3% 6. Wagner Moura 21.0% 7. Colin Farrell 15.0% 8. Dwayne Johnson 13.9% 9. Paul Mescal 10.6% 10. Brendan Fraser 10.1% 11. Daniel Day-Lewis 5.5% 12. Oscar Isaac 5.0% 13. Denzel Washington 4.2% 14. Tom Hiddleston 2.4% 15. Josh O'Connor 1.1% 16. Joel Edgerton 1.1% 17. Brad Pitt 1.0% 18. Tonatiuh 0.8% 19. Chris Evans 0.8% 20. Ethan Hawke 0.8% 21. Idris Elba 0.8% 22. Dylan O'Brien 0.7% 23. Hugh Jackman 0.7% 24. Colin Farrell 0.7% 25. Benicio Del Toro 0.6% 26. Paul Mescal 0.5% 27. Rami Malek 0.5% 28. Austin Butler 0.4% 29. Channing Tatum 0.4% 30. Michael Fassbender 0.4% 31. Joaquin Phoenix 0.4% 32. Daniel Craig 0.3% 33. Benedict Cumberbatch 0.3% 34. Guillaume Marbeck 0.1% 35. Sky Yang 0.1% 36. Vahid Mobasseri 0.1% 37. Andre Holland -- See All Predictions Supporting Actor Who doesn't love Pedro Pascal? We actually have an answer to that: Nobody. The man is a certified star on the big and small screen and a four-time Emmy nominee. Some awards body somewhere is going to give this man a major trophy. Though, it doesn't seem like it will be for Eddington. Gold Derby users predicting Best Supporting Actor have Pascal in Eddington 27th place — notably ten spots behind Pascal in The Materialist. Oscars Nominations 2026 Best Picture Best Director Best Actress Best Actor Best Supporting Actress Best Supporting Actor Best Adapted Screenplay Best Original Screenplay Contender Odds 0. Stellan Skarsgard 84.8% 1. Jeremy Strong 69.9% 2. Adam Sandler 66.2% 3. Delroy Lindo 59.9% 4. Sean Penn 50.8% 5. Andrew Garfield 45.5% 6. Miles Caton 14.3% 7. Mark Hamill 14.1% 8. Stephen Graham 8.4% 9. Jonathan Bailey 8.3% 10. Diego Luna 5.8% 11. Akira Emoto 4.7% 12. Jack O'Connell 4.4% 13. Jacob Elordi 3.9% 14. Andrew Scott 2.7% 15. Robert Pattinson 2.4% 16. Pedro Pascal 2.0% 17. Takehiro Hira 1.7% 18. Benicio Del Toro 1.7% 19. Josh O'Connor 1.2% 20. Damson Idris 1.1% 21. Christoph Waltz 1.0% 22. Michael Shannon 0.8% 23. Josh O'Connor 0.8% 24. Russell Crowe 0.6% 25. Pedro Pascal 0.6% 26. William H. Macy 0.6% 27. Stavros Halkias 0.6% 28. Javier Bardem 0.5% 29. Billy Crudup 0.5% 30. Benjamin Pajak 0.4% 31. ASAP Rocky 0.4% 32. Michael Stuhlbarg 0.3% 33. Adam Driver 0.3% 34. Peter Dinklage 0.2% 35. Woody Harrelson 0.2% 36. Matt Smith 0.2% 37. Andrew Scott 0.2% 38. Austin Butler 0.2% 39. Andy Samberg 0.2% 40. Gabriel Basso 0.2% 41. Tracy Letts 0.2% 42. Tom Bateman 0.1% 43. Chiwetel Ejiofor 0.1% 44. Sean Bean 0.1% 45. Kevin Kline 0.1% 46. James Sweeney 0.1% 47. Ebrahim Azizi 0.1% 48. Richard E. Grant 0.1% 49. Chiwetel Ejiofor -- 50. LaKeith Stanfield -- 51. Samuel Bottomley -- 52. Aubry Dullin -- 53. Liev Schreiber -- 54. Josh Brolin -- 55. Nick Nolte -- 56. LaKeith Stanfield -- See All Predictions Best of Gold Derby Everything to know about 'The Batman 2': Returning cast, script finalized Tom Cruise movies: 17 greatest films ranked worst to best 'It was wonderful to be on that ride': Christian Slater talks his beloved roles, from cult classics ('Heathers,' 'True Romance') to TV hits ('Mr. Robot,' 'Dexter: Original Sin') Click here to read the full article. Solve the daily Crossword
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Is the making-of ‘Apocalypse Now' doc the greatest ever? Plus the week's best movies
Hello! I'm Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies. Writer-director Ari Aster has refashioned himself from a maker of art-house horror films like 'Hereditary' and 'Midsommar' into a more overt social satirist with 'Beau Is Afraid' and his latest film, 'Eddington,' which opens this week. Pointedly set in the spring of 2020 in a small town in New Mexico — a moment when uncertainty, paranoia and division over the response to COVID were maximally disorienting — the film's story concerns a sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) who tosses his hat in the ring to run against an incumbent mayor (Pedro Pascal). Each spouts their own complicated, spiraling rhetoric as the race between them becomes more intense, and they seem swept away by circumstances much larger than they can understand or control. In her review of the film Amy Nicholson wrote, 'Aster's feistiest move is that he refuses to reveal the truth. When you step back at the end to take in the full landscape, you can put most of the story together. (Watch 'Eddington' once, talk it out over margaritas and then watch it again.) Aster makes the viewer say their theories out loud afterwards, and when you do, you sound just as unhinged as everyone else in the movie. I dig that kind of culpability: a film that doesn't point sanctimonious fingers but insists we're all to blame. 'But there are winners and losers and winners who feel like losers and schemers who get away with their misdeeds scot-free. Five years after the events of this movie, we're still standing in the ashes of the aggrieved. But at least if we're cackling at ourselves together in the theater, we're less alone.' Carlos Aguilar spoke to acclaimed cinematographer Darius Khondji, a former collaborator of David Fincher, James Gray and the Safdies, about working with Aster for the first time on 'Eddington.' 'Ari and I have a common language,' Khondji said. 'We discovered quite early on working together that we have a very similar taste for dark films, not dark in lighting but in storytelling.' The 1991 film 'Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse' is widely thought of as among the greatest behind-the-scenes documentaries ever made. Directed by Fax Bahr with George Hickenlooper from documentary footage directed by Eleanor Coppola, the film explores the epically complicated production of Francis Ford Coppola's 'Apocalypse Now.' A new 4K restoration of 'Hearts of Darkness' will have a limited run at the American Cinematheque beginning Sunday, with Bahr in-person for multiple Q&As. When Eleanor Coppola went to the Philippines in 1976 with her husband and their three children for the production of his hallucinatory Vietnam War saga 'Apocalypse Now,' he enlisted her to shoot doc footage in part to save on additional crew and also to give her something to do. Drawing from Eleanor's remarkable footage, surreptitious audio recordings she made and her written memoir of the experience, 'Notes: On the Making of 'Apocalypse Now,'' 'Hearts of Darkness' becomes a portrait of the struggle to maintain creativity, composure and sanity amid chaos as everything that could possibly go wrong seemingly does. Military helicopters are redeployed during takes, star Martin Sheen suffers a heart attack, monsoons destroy sets, Marlon Brando is immovable on scheduling and the ending of what all this is leading toward remains elusive. 'I think it's really held up and survived,' said Bahr of the documentary in an interview this week. 'It works as a complement to this extraordinary film that Francis produced. Of course, ['Apocalypse Now'] would be what it is without this, but I do think for people who really want to go deeper into the 'Apocalypse' experience, this is really a necessary journey to take.' When 'Apocalypse Now' first premiered at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, Francis Ford Coppola infamously said, 'The way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment and little by little we went insane.' The years between the lengthy production of 'Apocalypse Now,' its turbulent release and the subsequent years before the 'Hearts of Darkness' project came to be likely eased the Coppolas into participating with such candor and full-fledged access. 'I think having almost 10 years after 'Apocalypse Now' was helpful,' said James T. Mockoski, who oversaw the restoration for Coppola's company American Zoetrope. 'It would've been a much different documentary when it was supposed to come out. It was supposed to support the publicity and the marketing of the film at that time. 'Apocalypse' was very difficult, as we have seen, obviously. I don't know how much they would've had the hunger to revisit the film and go right into a documentary. It was a rather difficult, challenging time for them. And I think 10 years gave them a perspective that was needed.' 'He gambled it all and he won,' said Bahr. 'And what I hope we really achieved with 'Hearts' was showing the despair that really all artists go through in the creative process. And even though you go there, if you keep at it and your goal is true then you achieve artistic greatness.' According to Mockoski, Francis Ford Coppola has seen his own relationship to the documentary change over the years. While at times unflattering, and certainly showing the filmmaker racked by doubt and in deep creative crisis, 'Hearts' also shows him as someone, improbably, finding his way. 'It's a very hard relationship with the documentary, but he has grown over the years to be more accepting of it,' said Mockoski. 'He doesn't like the films to ever be shown together. If anyone wants to book it, they shouldn't be on the same day. There should be some distance. And he doesn't really want people to watch the documentary and then just figure out, where's Francis and what is his state of mind at this point? They're two separate things for him. And he would rather people watch 'Apocalypse' just for the experience of that, not to be clouded by 'Hearts.'' In his original review of 'Hearts of Darkness,' Michael Wilmington wrote, 'In the first two 'Godfather' movies, Coppola seemed to achieve the impossible: combining major artistic achievement with spectacular box-office success, mastering art and business. In 'Apocalypse Now,' he wanted to score another double coup: create a huge, adrenaline-churning Irwin Allenish spectacle and something deeper, more private, filled with the times' terror. Amazingly, he almost did. And the horror behind that 'almost' — Kurtz's Horror, the horror of Vietnam, of ambition itself — is what 'Hearts of Darkness' gives us so wrenchingly well.' 'What 'Hearts' is great about is that it shows you a period of filmmaking that's just not seen today,' said Mockoski. 'You look at this and you look at ['Apocalypse'] and there's just no way we could make this film. Would we ever allow an actor to go to that extreme situation with Martin Sheen? Would we be allowed to set that much gasoline on fire in the jungle? Hollywood was sort of slow to evolve, they were making films like that up from the silent era, these epic films, going to extremes to just do art. It just captured a moment in time that I don't think we'll ever see again.' Having premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and screened only a few times since, Quentin Tarantino's 'Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair' will play twice daily at the Vista Theater from July 18-28. Clocking in at over 4 hours and screening from Tarantino's personal 35mm print (complete with French subtitles), it combines the films known as 'Kill Bill Vol. 1' and 'Kill Bill Vol. 2' into a single experience with a few small changes. The main difference is simply taking it all in as 'The Whole Bloody Affair,' an epic tale of revenge as a woman mostly known as 'The Bride' (Uma Thurman in a career-defining performance) seeks to find those who tried to kill her on her wedding day. (I'll be seeing the combined cut for the first time myself during this run at the Vista.) Manohla Dargis' Los Angeles Times reviews of the two films when they were first released in October 2003 and April 2004 still make for some of the most incisive writing on Tarantino as a filmmaker. Dargis' review of 'Vol. 2' inadvertently helps sell the idea of the totalizing 'The Whole Bloody Affair' experience by saying, 'An adrenaline shot to the movie heart, soul and mind, Quentin Tarantino's 'Kill Bill Vol. 2' is a blast of pure pop pleasure. The second half of Tarantino's long-gestating epic, 'Vol. 2' firmly lays to rest the doubts raised by 'Vol. 1' as to whether the filmmaker had retained his chops after years of silence and, as important, had anything to offer beyond pyrotechnics and bloodshed. Tarantino does have something to say, although most of what he does have to say can be boiled down to two words: Movies rock. 'In a world of commodity filmmaking in which marketing suits offer notes on scripts, this is no small thing. Personal vision is as rare in Hollywood as humility, but personal vision — old, new, borrowed and true blue to the filmmaker's inspirations — shapes 'Vol. 2,' giving it texture and density. Personal vision makes Tarantino special, but it isn't what makes him Quentin Tarantino. What does distinguish him, beyond a noggin full of film references, a candy-coated visual style and a deep-tissue understanding of how pop music has shaped contemporary life, affecting our very rhythms, is his old-time faith in the movies. Few filmmakers love movies as intensely; fewer still have the ability to remind us why we fell for movies in the first place.' '2046' in 35mm Showing at Vidiots on Friday night in 35mm will be Wong Kar-wai's '2046,' the 2004 follow-up to his cherished 'In the Mood for Love.' Loosely connected to both 'In the Mood for Love' and Wong's earlier 'Days of Being Wild,' '2046' stars Tony Leung as a writer in late 1960s Hong Kong who has encounters with a series of women, played by the likes of Maggie Cheung, Faye Wong, Gong Li, Carina Lau and Zhang Ziyi. (He may be imagining them.) Fans of Wong's stylish, smoky romanticism will not be disappointed. In her original review of the film, Carina Chocano called it 'a gorgeous, fevered dream of a movie that blends recollection, imagination and temporal dislocation to create an emotional portrait of chaos in the aftermath of heartbreak.' 'Lost in America' + 'Modern Romance' On Tuesday and Wednesday, the New Beverly will screen a 35mm double bill of Albert Brooks' 1985 'Lost in America' and 1981's 'Modern Romance.' Directed by, co-written by (with Monica Johnson) and starring Brooks, both films are fine showcases for his lacerating comedic sensibilities. A satire of the lost values of the 1960s generation in the face of the materialism of 1980s, 'Lost in America' has Brooks as an advertising executive who convinces his wife (Julie Hagerty) to join him in quitting their jobs, selling everything they own and setting out in a deluxe RV to explore the country, 'Easy Rider'-style. In a review of 'Lost in America,' Patrick Goldstein wrote, 'Appearing in his usual disguise, that of the deliriously self-absorbed maniac, Brooks turns his comic energies on his favorite target — himself — painting an agonizingly accurate portrait of a man imprisoned in his own fantasies. … You get the feeling that Brooks has fashioned an unerring parody of someone who's somehow lost his way in our lush, consumer paradise. Here's a man who can't tell where the desert ends and the oasis begins.' 'Modern Romance,' features Brooks as a lovelorn film editor in Los Angeles desperate to win back his ex-girlfriend (Kathryn Harrold). In his original review of 'Modern Romance,' Kevin Thomas wrote, 'You have to hand it to Albert Brooks. To put it mildly he's not afraid to present himself unsympathetically.' In a 1981 interview with Goldstein, Brooks said, 'As a comedian it's really my job to be the monster. People either love me or hate me. If I wanted to be a nice guy, I'd make a movie about someone who saves animals.' (Brooks would, of course, go on to appear as a voice actor in 'Finding Nemo' and 'Finding Dory.') 'The Little Mermaid' For the next installment of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.'s ongoing series at the Egyptian, there will be a screening on Thursday, July 24, of 1989's 'The Little Mermaid' with directors Ron Clements and John Musker present for a Q&A moderated by Carlos Aguilar. 'The Little Mermaid' received LAFCA's inaugural award for animation, the first of its kind among critics groups.
USA Today
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- USA Today
In 'Eddington,' Ari Aster revisits the 'living hell' of COVID-19
Some people made sourdough starters to get through the COVID-19 lockdown. Ari Aster wrote a modern Western. Five years ago, when a pandemic and safety protocols further divided a politically tumultuous America, 'I was just living in hell and I thought I should make a movie about that,' the director says of his new drama 'Eddington' (in theaters now). 'It felt like things were poised to really explode in a new way. And to be honest, that feeling has not left since. But at that moment, it suddenly felt like, 'OK, I haven't experienced this before.' 'I just wanted to get it down on paper and describe the structure of reality at the moment, which is that nobody can agree on what is happening.' Aster's filmography is full of horror ('Hereditary,' 'Midsommar') and comedic absurdity ('Beau Is Afraid'), and with 'Eddington,' he revisits the absurd horror movie we all experienced in real life. Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox Set in New Mexico during 2020, the movie centers on the fictional town of Eddington, which turns into a hotbed of bad feelings and controversy when awkward local sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) decides to run for mayor against popular progressive incumbent Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). Their feud turns increasingly personal and spills onto social media and the streets, and the situation ultimately grows explosive, bloody and downright bonkers. Some scenes are a stark reminder of the time: For example, Sheriff Joe moseys into a grocery store without his mask – as an asthmatic, he's not a big fan of personal protective equipment – and gets an earful from Ted and his fellow residents. To build his narrative, Aster took a lot of notes during lockdown, 'living on Twitter and taking a lot of screenshots,' he says. The director went so far as to create multiple Twitter accounts, so he could create 'different algorithms' for varying ideologies. Aster built a cast of characters to run that gamut. Joe's malleable wife Louise (Emma Stone) falls under the sway of both her conspiracy theorist mom (Deirdre O'Connell) and the charismatic leader (Austin Butler) of a QAnon-type cult. And when George Floyd protests make it to Eddington, they involve a Black police deputy (Micheal Ward) and a teen boy (Cameron Mann) doing some performative activism to woo a girl he likes. 'It is a satire," Aster says, but the real object of criticism is social media and 'the maligned forces that have harnessed that technology to get us here and to divide us.' 'I wanted to make a film that was empathetic to all the characters. It's just that it's empathetic in multiple different directions and some of those are opposition.' Since the pandemic, there have been movies set during COVID-19, but 'Eddington' is the most high-profile project to really explore how it isolated neighbors from each other, literally and politically, and exacerbated an existing culture war. 'We haven't metabolized what happened in 2020 or how seismic COVID was. One reason for that is that we are still living through it,' Aster explains. 'That was an inflection point whose consequences are very hard to measure, but they're huge. And it's an unpleasant thing to look at. And the future is a scary thing to look at right now." Aster acknowledges he's desperate for a vision of the future that's "not totally defined by the dread that I'm feeling. I wrote this movie in a state of anxiety and dread, and that dread only continues to intensify." While many navigated the COVID-19 lockdown by binge-watching 'Tiger King,' Aster had a different ritual to find his happy place. Quarantined in New Mexico, where Aster has spent much of his life, he found a 'pretty comforting' routine of walking to a park and reading a book for two hours in the morning and returning in the afternoon for another hour or so. 'I really liked that. That, I already have nostalgia for,' he says, laughing. While Aster did end up having a couple of rounds of COVID-19 ('Not fun'), there are very few sick people in 'Eddington.' One character has the coronavirus at the beginning, at least one other character has it by the end, but that's it. Instead, 'I'll just say there are a lot of viruses in the movie. A lot of things going viral,' he says. He points out that another key subplot of 'Eddington' is the artificial intelligence-powered data center being built just outside of town. 'The movie is about a bunch of people navigating one crisis while another crisis incubates, waiting to be unleashed,' Aster says. An idea for a sequel percolates in his mind, yet Aster would like to just live in a less-weird time, please. 'It's gotten incredibly weird. And with AI rushing toward us with the possibility of AGI (advanced AI that would match human thinking) and then maybe even superintelligence, things are only going to get stranger and stranger,' Aster says. 'The human capacity for adaptation is amazing, and things become normal very quickly, especially once they become wallpaper – all of this has become ambient. 'It's just important to remind ourselves, like, 'This is strange.' How do we hold onto that and maybe challenge it?'
Euronews
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Film of the Week: 'Eddington' - Get ready to be polarised
Ari Aster may have made a name for himself with lauded horror offerings like Hereditary and Midsommar but his latest film may be his most terrifying: a COVID pandemic-set dark comedy that doubles up as a counterfeit satire. And while that may seem like too much of a stretch for the filmmaker, Aster – for all his faults – may be the perfect candidate to express the bracing horror of a time whose reverberations are still felt five years on. Set in the titular New Mexico town in May 2020, we meet Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix). He's the town's soft-spoken and asthmatic sheriff who's got a lot on his mind. His mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O'Connell) has been living in his house for weeks and has gone conspiracy theory loopy. There's his wife Louise (Emma Stone), who's busy getting swoony over a cult-like internet guru Vernon (Austin Butler) when she's not busy nursing past traumas – an unspoken one of which appears to be linked to Eddington's smooth-talking mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). Then there's the COVID-19 to contend with... Frustrated by the commitment to mask mandates and social distancing, Joe decides to present himself to the local election, vowing to unseat Ted – who is clearly in the pocket of big tech. But even if Joe launches his campaign with good intentions, seeking to restore a sense of good old-fashioned community and decency, he soon finds himself out of his depth when it comes to dealing with civil unrest in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests and a comically small bunch of eager teenagers lighting their social justice torches. These include staunchly liberal white youth Sarah (Amélie Hoeferle), who starts a relationship with Ted's insufferable son Eric (Matt Gomez Hidaka) - much to the chagrin of 'woke' curious Brian (Cameron Mann). The powderkeg is set. The fuse has been lit. Congratulations on getting this far in this review, because as you can tell, there's a lot to unpack. Eddington deals with lockdown paranoia, government distrust, the pitfalls of doomscrolling, the rabbit hole of online conspiracy theories, white privilege, big tech, truther madness and social justice extremism... It's exhausting. Except it isn't, because for all its themes, Aster's anti-Western isn't interested in saying anything to deep; Eddington is first and foremost a tragicomic snapshot of a time that truly messed with everyone's brains, no matter on which side of the political spectrum you might be on. It's a theatre-of-the-absurd portrait of a microcosm that comes to represent a broader and broken America. That doesn't mean it isn't overstuffed and scattershot, especially for anyone in the market for a more pointed satire. However, the movie plods along as an entertaining, anti-escapist hellscape that's undoubtedly Aster's funniest film to date. At the centre of this picture is the downward spiral of Joe, a doting husband and an earnest citizen. And while not a COVID denialist, he's in denial about a lot of things. He is the typical tragic fool, who exemplifies how the road to (blood-soaked) hell is paved with good intentions. Phoenix is excellent, as is Darius Khondji's cinematography and Aster's meticulous peppering of well-observed pandemic details and visual payoffs. From QAnon-style stickers with grammatical errors to social media progressives lecturing those who have far more skin in the game (literally), a lot of this feels uncomfortably identifiable. And no side is spared, as everyone looks unhinged by the end thanks to Aster taking equal shots at both the antivaxxer MAGA crowd and misguided uber-liberals. While many will justly assert that Aster has nothing vital to say here and that his film only shallowly depicts a sense of hopelessness through surface satire, Eddington is a fake satire. "FAKE SATIRE!" It parodies, certainly, but is significantly more focused on offering a sly yet biting missile aimed at a lie we've all been sold: that digital culture and social media would lead to the progress of interconnectedness. It is actually a radicalising force which distorts reality and successfully divides. We knew that already? Well sometimes (read: often), it's worth reiterating. To no surprise, Eddington will polarise. The neat trick is that the film is stronger for it, as varied audience responses will mirror that aforementioned sense of division. Granted, it could have worked better as a taut 90-minute showdown between Phoenix and an ultimately underused Pedro Pascal - but then again, all films can be accused of underusing the internet's favourite, cinematically ubiquitous mustachioed daddy – but the way it delivers its brand of bleakness could lead it to becoming a cult film down the line. An imperfect, definitely overlong but never dull cult film that isn't billed as a horror movie... But it truly is. Eddington is out in cinemas now.
