TMW #21: The Brutalist, Presence and Flight Risk reviewed
The week's major movie releases rated, plus weekend-watch recommendations and the latest trailers
Happy Friday, film aficionados,
Today your devoted Wingman brings you reviews of cinema at its best, its worst and its somewhere in-between. We’re sizing up one of this year’s biggest awards contenders, Brady Corbet’s architect drama The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody; gingerly strapping ourselves in for Mark Wahlberg suspense vehicle Flight Risk; and determining whether there’s anything missing from Steven Soderbergh’s first-person spooker Presence. Have a read, and then share your own unique perspective in the comments.
We were not alone at the screening for Presence; a professional psychic was on hand to do readings in the bar beforehand. But we don’t need clairvoyance to tell you that a bright future awaits if you upgrade to a paid subscription to The Movie Wingman. You’ll get access to bonus film writings twice a week, plus the ability to comment. No flight risk whatsoever.
We’ll be back on Tuesday with more film-y features and fun. In the meantime, why not give us a like, a restack or, best of all, a recommend? We promise it won’t come back to haunt you.
Matthew (Jordan and Matt)
The Brutalist
18, in cinemas now
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Clocking in at a whopping 3h35mins (including a welcome 15-minute intermission at the halfway mark), Brady Corbet’s new American epic The Brutalist is a shoo-in for the year’s biggest film. Not at the box office – Avatar: Fire & Ash will probably make more in a single day than The Brutalist does in its entire run. But in narrative, thematic and visual scope, and – yes – bum-numbing runtime, it’s all-but-certain to tower above the competition.
Adrien Brody stars as László Tóth, a Jewish, Hungarian immigrant who flees post-war Europe for America in 1947. A visionary brutalist architect in his home country, Tóth believes the Nazi regime has erased his reputation and legacy until wealthy patron Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce) identifies his talent and hires him to construct a new community centre on his grounds. Lauded for his gifts by Van Buren and his high-society pals, but othered by those same admirers for the immutable fact that he is an outsider, as construction falters Tóth comes to recognise that the American Dream is built on a cracked foundation.
Opening with Tóth’s dizzying arrival to the United States through Ellis Island, and accompanied by the most overwhelming trumpet solo since Ennio Morricone popped off on the score for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the sight of an inverted Statue of Liberty sends a clear message. Elegantly structured around an exhilarating first-half rise and devastating second-half fall, its elliptical, decades-spanning story is a thrillingly vast and authentically cynical rendering of the immigrant experience.
Reportedly shot for under $10m, that paltry budget belies The Brutalist’s extraordinary narrative ambition and breathtaking visual scale. Shot using the VistaVision process – a 35mm format utilised on the likes of The Searchers and North By Northwest, but defunct since the early 1960s – it has the texture and principles of a film from another era. Co-written by Corbet (Childhood of a Leader, Vox Lux) and his real-life partner Mona Fastvold, the thematically rich script has the intimacy of a 70s character study as it unfolds against the most colossal of backdrops.
Some 23 years after being crowned the youngest Best Actor winner in Oscar history for his work in The Pianist, Adrien Brody (who’ll be defending said title from Timothée Chalamet’s Dylan-shaped contender in a matter of weeks) is as good as he’s ever been here, evincing the pain and euphoria of his complex realisation of the American Dream. The supporting line-up is just as strong – notably Van Buren’s stuck-up son Harry, played by a suitably snooty Joe Alwyn; Alessandro Nivola as Tóth’s amusingly Americanised furniture salesman cousin Attila; Felicity Jones as Tóth’s tragically intelligent, but osteoporosis-stricken wife Erzsébet; and Guy Pearce, perfectly cast as the outwardly charming and philanthropic, but inwardly ugly and prejudiced Van Buren.
Remarkably for a film that runs two full Casablancas – including an enforced halt – it’s paced in a way that the length is a non-issue. Such a strict division does invite comparison between the two halves, and there’s little question that the more straightforwardly enjoyable first half stands a head above the more challenging second. Partly this is inherent to the story demands of Tóth’s shifting personal fortunes, but there is one narrative misstep in the second half that lands out of nowhere and leaves a bad taste. Come the revelatory epilogue, however, it’s easy to forgive such an exquisitely constructed piece some flaws. (Jordan Farley)
In short: Brady Corbet’s architectural American epic is a towering achievement and early contender for film of the year. See it big.
Stay for the end credits? Only to hear more of Daniel Blumberg’s epic score (and if you’re not bursting for the loo).
Generating controversy Film Twitter outrage erupted last week over The Brutalist’s use of AI tools to tweak Brody and Jones’ Hungarian accents, and to generate background imagery for the epilogue. Corbet clarified the limited use cases in a response.
Presence
15, in cinemas now
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Three years after their previous collab, Kimi (and a month before their next one, Black Bag), director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp serve up another lean indoor thriller. The USP here is that events are presented exclusively from the POV of the titular ‘presence’, a spectral entity that glides unseen around a handsome suburban pad, keeping tabs on the troubled family who’ve just moved in: mom Rebecca (Lucy Liu), dad Chris (Chris Sullivan), son Tyler (Eddie Maday) and daughter Chloe (Callina Liang), who’s grieving the recent loss of her BFF. Soderbergh’s fondness for tweaking genre conventions is to the fore: there are classic bouts of bedroom-trashing paranormal activity, but often the entity seems like a diffident nosey parker, its intentions and identity intriguingly opaque. Sadly, Presence doesn’t quite manage to blow the doors off the haunted-house movie thanks to third-act reveals and reversals that don’t resonate or surprise as much as they should. Still, despite our detached viewpoint, Presence frequently draws us into its recognisable, volatile family dynamic, with strong performances all round (including Soderbergh himself - the entity’s true identity in his role as DoP/camera operator ‘Peter Andrews’). (Matthew Leyland)
Death note: Despite only recently partnering up, Soderbergh and Koepp go way back. The latter was keen for the former to direct his Death Becomes Her (1992) script, which would’ve resulted in a “very, very different” version, says Soderbergh. “I don’t know how you make that movie without any visual effects, but I would’ve figured that out.”
Flight Risk
15, in cinemas now
⭐☆☆☆☆
Early on in Flight Risk, there’s a moose rendered in CGI so blocky it might as well have been made out of Lego. It augurs the quality of what’s to come. Directed by Mel Gibson, this is a steep drop from his most ambitious pictures, but the premise isn’t without pulpy potential: Air Marshal Madelyn (Michelle Dockery) has to transfer criminal-turned-government-witness Winston (Topher Grace) to trial, against a ticking clock. Flying them in a rickety plane across the Alaskan wilderness is Daryl (Mark Wahlberg). “We should be there in about 90 minutes or so,” we’re told early doors, and Flight Risk mercifully makes good on that promise of a tight runtime. Good job, because there’s a limit on how much you can do with shifting loyalties, escalating revelations and fisticuffs in such a confined setting (the first major reveal being Wahlberg’s cap being knocked off to reveal a toupee and bald pate). Tonally, it veers more wildly than the out-of-control plane: there’s a lot of (unfunny) comedy, and the general ludicrousness of the set pieces further quashes any tension. A few literal phoned-in performances from the outside miss the mark, and add to the cheap feel. A plane wreck. (Matt Maytum)
Five more male actors who’ve braved the head-shave for a role: Christian Bale (American Hustle), Jeff Bridges (Iron Man), Glenn Howerton (BlackBerry), Hugh Jackman (Pan), James McAvoy (the X-Men series)
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