Anxiety Rules The Day For A24 and 'Dream Scenario'
#248: "Dream Scenario," "The Curse," "Mean Streets," "Slow West"
Edition 248:
Hey movie lovers!
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This week: A24 has a new anxiety-inducing fever dream out, this time starring the inimitable Nicholas Cage. Although on the cringe scale, that movie has nothing on Nathan Fielder’s new TV show on Showtime. I also knocked off an early Scorcese classic this week and reevaluated the best performances of Michael Fassbender’s career. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” our first real look at the much-talked-about Sydney Sweeney-Glen Powell rom-com.
Dream Scenario
Movies — artistic ones anyway — have always reflected society on a couple year delay. In the 1970s, for example, you’ll find a lot of movies about paranoia and a lack of trust in authorities in the wake of the Watergate scandal (Three Days of the Condor, The Conversation etc.). After 9/11, a lot of movies were made that challenged our sense of safety at home (Zodiac, No Country For Old Men, even The Dark Knight comes to mind).
It’s interesting then that the prevailing feeling in this first sweep of post-pandemic movies is anxiety. Look no further than Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid from earlier this year. In either case our protagonist, an “incel” (involuntary celibate for those who don’t watch cable news) feels powerless in his own life, racked with anxiety that causes each of their effort to only deepen their spin out of control.
In a lot of ways, anxiety is now A24’s brand. Sure, it still makes the thoughtful, character-driven dramas for adults that have built it into really the only independent production company with its own fandom (no one is a Lionsgate fan, or buying merch for New Line Cinema). Past Lives is my second-favorite movie of the year, and they’ve put out films from indie darlings like Nicole Holofcenter (You Hurt My Feelings), Kelly Reichardt (Showing Up) and Sofia Coppola (Priscilla).
But what we think of when we think of “an A24 movie” now is this creeping dread, replacing the weepy sentimentality (Moonlight, Waves, even Lady Bird) that defined A24 in the recent past. I can add to this anxiety list from the past two years Bodies Bodies Bodies, Uncut Gems and the less successful Men.
In Dream Scenario, the incel is played by Nicholas Cage, no stranger to metaphysical or fourth-wall breaking psycho thrillers (Face/Off, Adaptation, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent). He’s a college professor who, by some strange phenomenon, begins appearing in thousands of people’s dreams every night. A mild mannered beta male at first glance, Cage’s hero is underneath an egotistical striver who clings to his newfound fame for any kind of relevance. He can’t handle the pressure and eventually cracks, collapsing his entire life in the process.
This tone certainly lends itself to a fair number of cringe-inducing moments. As my brother once told me, “I don’t like watching movies where the guy makes nothing but bad decisions.” My brother would not like this movie.
However, it’s really well constructed by the relatively unseasoned Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli. Introducing the possibility of dream worlds allows the movie to play with reality, cleverly misleading a viewer into thinking something is happening in the story only to pull it back — not to eliminate stakes (“The Chewbacca Problem”) but actually to heighten them, because suddenly any possible outcome is on the table.
Each twist of the metaphorical knife in Cage’s back only ratchets up the tension on the thriller plot, leading to an earned if not entirely satisfying conclusion. And one layer down, the movie also has a lot of incisive commentary on modern life: the commoditization of everything, the forbidden fruit of fame, the tenuous relationship with one’s own dignity.
Cinematically, it’s not very showy. Cage’s performance takes up a lot of the oxygen, and he’s very good in the very vulnerable way that has re-endeared him to movie fans. He’s magnetic, but in no way heroic. Bit parts by Michael Cera (hilarious) and Julianne Nicholson give Cage obstacles to bounce off of, but the show is entirely his.
The trap of most of these thought experiment movies (“high concept movies”) is that it’s often a great idea on paper but can only fill enough material for a two-minute trailer. This one is exceptional because it pays off the excellent concept and then fills out a full-length feature with both a satisfying story and emotional investment. While not quite a movie of the year contender, it will sit firmly in the top quarter of my list when it’s all said and done. That’s high praise.
Something New
The Curse (Showtime): It’s a real shame that this show appears on Showtime, something like the 10th most important streaming service at the moment. Very few people will see it, though I do wonder if it found its home there only because any other more mainstream outlet may want to sand down the edges of its weirdness. Anyone who has seen Nathan Fielder’s other shows (“Nathan For You,” “The Rehearsal”) knows about his particular brand of cringe-comedy, taking it to the absolute limit, but this fully scripted fictional show adds a layer of prestige-y gloss offered by co-stars Benny Safdie and Emma Stone, the latter an Oscar winner who will almost certainly be competing on the awards circuit again this year for Poor Things.
Stone and Fielder star as one of those HGTV-style house-flipping couples who show a perfect life to the cameras but have a level of danger just below the surface that burbles up in several moments of the pilot. It’s a good show and more than that it’s an incredibly interesting show, one that I think would lend itself to water cooler conversation if it were on a more popular platform. Not sure whether it’s even worth mentioning here because I doubt many of you will watch it, but you should!
Something Old
Mean Streets (1973): The cool thing about one of our legendary directors releasing a major project, as Martin Scorcese has done with Killers of the Flower Moon, is that the weeks before and after become a retrospective on that filmmaker’s entire career. Conversations abound, and it’s the perfect opportunity to catch up on any classics you’ve missed.
For me that was Mean Streets, his first major film and the true coming out parties for Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, who play Italian American hustlers in Manhattan scraping together a living from various semi-legal activities. In the context of late period Scorcese, with his movies feeling weighty and confident, it’s fun to compare a young, scrappy director who’s eager to impress viewers with flashy filmmaking techniques and pop music.
A lot of the themes and dynamics made iconic by Goodfellas and Casino are evident right from the start, and this movie deserves plaudits of its own accord too. The story is slice of life, but as it develops its shape becomes more evident and by the end a viewer feels the weight of the anchor that De Niro’s screw-up is on Keitel’s upward mobility. Turns out this Scorcese guy was very good at making movies, even 50(!!) years ago.
Something to Stream
Slow West (Max): After writing in my review of The Killer that it was “the best performance of Michael Fassbender’s career,” I did some more thinking about his other favorites of mine to make sure I still believed the opinion. I do, but not enough people have seen this Fassbender-led western where he plays a strong silent type (go figure) protecting a young romantic (played by Kodi Smit-McPhee, who would eventually be nominated for a similar role in The Power of the Dog) across the American West in search of his love interest. The movie is very simple, and at just 84 minutes it’s about as lean as any modern thriller I can think of. It’s white hats vs. black hats and Ben Mendelsohn is great as the bounty hunter on their tail. A very solid little thriller!
Trailer Watch: Anyone But You
Rumors about reshoots had people thinking the Sydney Sweeney - Glen Powell romantic comedy was being pushed back to next year or, at the very least, lowered the temperature on the sizzling red carpet vibes the pair was giving off a few months ago. Now we’ve got a Dec. 22 release date and a trailer, which makes it look very much like those 90s rom-coms of old. Powell has incredible chemistry with all of his co-leads (girls or guys, it should be said), and Sweeney holds America’s attention for…other reasons, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the hype train fires back up over the next month or two.