Adam Driver IS 'Ferrari;' Sydney Sweeney And Glen Powell ARE In Love; George Clooney LOVES An Underdog Story
#253: "Ferrari," "Anyone But You," "The Boys In The Boat"
Edition 253:
Hey movie lovers!
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This week: It’s the last movie dispatch of 2023! I’m closing it out with three very different movies — a heavy-hitter prestige movie from another octogenarian master in Michael Mann, an old-school rom-com with a pair of young stars, and a super straightforward sports movie directed by George Clooney. Enjoy!
COMING ON NEW YEAR’S EVE: EVERY 2023 MOVIE I WATCHED THIS YEAR, RANKED.
Ferrari
It’s quite fitting that our last featured movie of 2023 is a nice confluence of several of the year’s most important trends. It’s another movie from an octogenarian master filmmaker in 80-year-old Michael Mann (who made Heat, Collateral, The Insider), it’s a historical “Great Man” biopic (a la Oppenheimer, Napoleon or Maestro), and it’s a movie at least in part about an inanimate brand (like Barbie, Air, The Beanie Bubble etc.).
During the time of this movie, set in 1957, the Ferrari brand was synonymous with its founder, Enzo Ferrari. He casts a giant shadow both culturally (Ford v. Ferrari came out just 4 years ago, F1 popularity has boomed) and literally — he was 6-foot-2 during a time and place when that would’ve felt massive. Those huge shoes are filled by Adam Driver, also 6-foot-2 yet whose presence in this movie feels like 10-foot-2.
This is the best acting performance of the year, bar none. Driver, with the help of high waisted suits and Italian sunglasses, doesn’t quite transform into the man (much will be said about his accent) but certainly captures his overwhelming and relentless spirit. His physicality dominates the movie and makes it impossible for a viewer to take their eyes off of him. Unlike Napoleon or Maestro, the gravitational pull of his sun is strong enough to hold up the whole solar system of the movie around him.
As with all these Great Man myths, it’s quite easy to see the director as the man behind the curtain. In this line of thinking, Enzo is Mann, a hard-charging perfectionist control freak who is constantly let down by the people he’s forced to trust to carry out tasks on his behalf. He’s worshiped, but also feared.
Unlike those other movies, however, this biopic doesn’t try to tell the grand span of 30+ years of Ferrari’s life. It sticks him right at a crisis point, when his business is on the brink of insolvency and his home life is a mess, and tells an entire story through that microcosm. This fixes the problem of feeling like you’re speeding through a Wikipedia page of historical events, and allows us to dig deeper into each set of problems.
In both cases, Enzo’s method looks a lot like flying by the seat of his pants. The spine of the story is his attempt to win a 1000-mile race across Italy, using the glory to raise additional money to save the business, while balancing lives with two separate families. The movie is effective at making each racing scene feel intense and high stakes, up to and including one of the most visceral and truly shocking visuals in any movie all year near the climax. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of room for epic monologues from Driver about the single-minded pursuit of greatness, and arguments with each of his wivess about the unique requirements of his genius.
Mann’s hyper-masculine stories often don’t leave much room for female characters, which is mostly true here too, but Laura Ferrari is given some agency thanks mostly to a powerhouse performance from Penélope Cruz. The dialogue scenes between Cruz and Driver are as exciting if not more exciting than any intense race scenes. The mistress has no such luck, left mostly to mope and whine. It doesn’t help that Shailene Woodley is incapable of fooling us into thinking she could be an Italian woman, a casting choice that holds the movie back somewhat.
Still, this imperfect movie produced some of the highest highs of any movie this year. Mann has a way of making his stories feel epic and important, and obviously abundantly stylish, which more than makes up for a meandering plot. Bottom line, any time there’s a performance like the one Driver is giving here, it simply has to be seen.
Anyone But You
If it’s not too late to consider two entries into this year’s awards race, I’d like to enter Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell’s performances…not in their new rom-com Anyone But You but on the promotional circuit. If their so-called fake romance truly is an act, they are Oscar-worthy actors. These steamy co-appearances on red carpets, junkets and every single internet gimmick show you can think of raised not only their own celebrity profiles but that of their movie, which was in theory a long shot to recover its $25 million budget, but surprised with a $10 million opening.
As with all romantic comedies, the success of the movie depends entirely on the chemistry of the two leads (which is why the fake romance is such an effective marketing technique). To be fair, no movie characters could ever be as charming as the real-life Powell and Sweeney, but on-screen they do a good enough job of simulating what we can only imagine off of it.
The rest of the movie is built to give the viewer enough eye candy to not really worry about much else. The setting, on a beach in Australia, is gorgeous. The outfits, the makeup, the lighting, the supporting characters, all beautiful.
This seems like one of those paid vacation movies for the cast and crew, similar to something like Mamma Mia, and that joy translates on screen. The plot is classic, Hallmark-style rom-com to the core, and one has to almost respect how much they commit to the bit all the way down to the running into each others’ arms and spinning cinematography of them kissing at the end. If you’re a fan of cheesy romance, this is a more expensive, more star-studded, more beautiful version for you to enjoy. And it gave us two new A-list movie stars for the future.
The Boys In The Boat
Many people don’t realize just how consistently George Clooney has worked as a director over the past 20 years, releasing one project every three years on the dot beginning in 2002 (then ‘05, ‘08, ‘11, ‘14, ‘17, ‘20 and ‘23, interrupted only by an extra in ‘21). That’s a long resume! The reason for the surprise is simply that Clooney’s projects aren’t all that memorable. There are a couple pretty good ones (The Ides of March, Good Night and Good Luck.) and a couple stinkers (Suburbicon, The Monuments Men) but for the most part his projects are just…ho-hum.
With The Boys In The Boat, an adaptation of a best-selling book about the 1936 University of Washington rowing team, he’s put together the most straightforward sports movie in years. Every element of the movie is placed just as it should be, like checking the boxes on a formula. Think Miracle, Hoosiers or Glory Road. That formula exists for a reason, because it works, and make no mistake this movie works as a faithful telling of the story and entirely capable of raising one’s heart rate during climactic races. It’s just that there’s no authorial flair, either visually or in in the storytelling, to spice up this classic underdog tale that is far more impressive in real life than on the silver screen.
Anyone leaving the theater will be talking about the team, rather than the movie itself. If I were a more generous movie-watcher, maybe I’d say this is Clooney’s intent, to be such a humble and generous filmmaker that he competently presents a story whose characters deserve glory while he himself will get none. He does seem to love this vision of the American dream, where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps and affirm the triumph of the human spirit etc. etc. I’ll let you watch the movie and see if you buy it.
Coming NYE (Sunday)
My sixth annual list of every movie released in 2023 that I saw, ranked!
The total number will be down somewhat this year, around 75 instead of 90, but the main reason for that discrepancy was sparing myself from many of those Netflix movie-of-the-week types that I knew would rank outside the top 50+ anyways. It was a very good movie year and I saw everything that “mattered.” When compared to past years, I think I have the fewest number of carryovers I’ve ever had (a.k.a. those movies released at the end of the year that I haven’t watched by 12/31). I can’t wait for you to see it and argue with me about where I went wrong! Talk to you then.