'The Iron Claw' Serves Up More Than Just Beefcakes
#256: "The Iron Claw," "All Of Us Strangers," "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," "St. Vincent"
Edition 256:
Hey movie lovers!
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This week: The boys are lookin’ beefy in the professional wrestling tragedy The Iron Claw. I guess you could say the same, in a different way, about All Of Us Strangers. I let you into a little hidden corner of the cinephile world with a wild, weird live experience and pass along a hidden gem on Netflix. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” the showrunners behind “Game of Thrones” are about to debut their new show.
The Iron Claw
The first, last and in many people’s minds the only legacy that The Iron Claw will have is how ludicrously ripped Zac Efron got to play the 1970s professional wrestler Kevin Von Erich. We have to talk about it, because the movie itself is well aware of this, starting its opening scene with Efron lying in bed on his side with each of his basketball-sized pecks stacked on top of each other, eventually unfurling for a nice morning run wearing nothing but boxer-length shorts. Perhaps it’s important to get this out of the way early, because it’s the only thing viewers would be looking at for the first five minutes anyways. Better to lean into it.
My sincerest hope is that viewers are able to acclimate to this force of nature in time to appreciate what is, by far, the best acting performance of Efron’s career. This movie, which might appear on its surface to be about a bunch of oiled up beefcakes fake fighting each other in the pre-WWF days of professional wrestling, is actually a layered tragedy with real ideas about the world.
Efron is one of five brothers, the pride and joy of an alpha male father who pushes them all to achieve the dream in the ring that he himself never could — a world heavyweight championship. Think like Todd Marinovich, but on steroids (literally). This “toxic masculinity,” as we’d call it today, leads to numerous tragedies that result in what many called “the Von Erich curse” (I’ll let the movie explain more).
My point is yes, this movie does seriously kick ass in its wrestling scenes, and its 1970s and 80s vibes are immaculate, but this is a full-bodied movie that has a lot more to offer than gigantic deltoids.
It helps a lot the other brothers are played by “The Bear” star Jeremy Allen White — whose own muscles have been in the spotlight this week with his new Calvin Klein campaign — plus rising star Harris Dickinson (a stud) and newcomer Stanley Simons. Together they bring a Richard Linklater-like energy to their scenes together, making it incredibly easy to buy that this group is closer than normal families. Holt McCallany (some may know from “Mindhunter”) is a perfect casting for the dad. And though I can’t believe she’s still taking thankless girlfriend roles, I’m never mad to see Lily James pop up in any movie (though her chance at superstardom seems to have come and past).
When you stop to take stock of the movie landscape, you realize how few pure tragedies exist anymore. This is a sad movie, and it makes no concessions or short cuts about that tone. Most viewers need to be coaxed into that kind of story, and the successful versions of it are able to build such empathy in viewers for their characters that they’re willing to take the journey no matter where it leads.
I’m here to say that The Iron Claw earns that empathy. Without immediately going back and inserting this into my 2023 rankings, I can tell you it would be a top 15 movie pretty easily. I have to think that despite this movie’s modest success, writer/director Sean Durkin is worthy of a significant leveling up the next time out. I can’t wait to see what he’ll do.
Something New
All Of Us Strangers (Theaters): It takes a while to figure out what All Of Us Strangers is, exactly. Is it a queer love story between Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal? Yeah kinda (and an explicit one at that). Is it a reflection on the trauma of losing your parents as a child? Sure. A story about a guy having a psychotic break from reality? Seems that way. An exploration of personal identity? Well yeah. The truth only kicks in during the final 5-10 minutes of the movie, which I won’t spoil here other than to say it’s about the power of human connection.
Certainly, it’s an emotional roller coaster ride no matter what it is. Teetering on a razor’s edge between reality and surreality, a viewer doesn’t know what’s real and what to believe (reminiscent of the dementia drama The Father). It takes skill for a filmmaker not to lose the thread, and writer/director Andrew Haigh pulls it off in a way that left many in my screening sniffling and reaching for tissues. In what may be a dream, or a psychotic episode, or some sort of supernatural time warp, Scott’s protagonist meets his dead parents in the flesh, now the same age as him, and proceeds to reconcile 20 years worth of therapy into a handful of on-screen minutes. It’s heartbreaking and triumphant simultaneously, soul-crushing and hopeful. Scott is a brilliant and rangy actor, a generous scene partner for the charisma machine that is Mescal, as well as Jamie Bell’s father character, and this might be my favorite Claire Foy performance (saying something) as his mother.
It’s clear to see this movie as an acting showcase for its principal stars, who didn’t catch the awards wave (potentially due to a botched release, but what do I know) and won’t expect any kind of commercial bump, but will make quite an impression on the small audience it finds.
Something Old
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975): This is, of course, the urtext of cult classic movies, having stayed in limited theatrical release non-stop for going on almost 50 years. To describe the premise of this movie is a waste, because it’s mostly illegible, a fever dream of dance sequences, sight gags and absurd shock humor.
This is no ordinary theater-going experience. This week was the first time I’d seen the movie because I wanted to do it right — people dressed up in costumes, full shadow cast performing the movie live, yelling back at the screen, people throwing things, spraying water guns, and at one point even a strip tease. If you’ve never gone to one of these before, you need to. It’s wild, and wildly profane (fair warning). If you’re a first timer, you might end up with someone drawing a “V” on your cheek in lipstick (for “virgin”), and if that’s too lowkey, you may also get “SLUT” written across your forehead, as I did.
On the whole it’s two hours of complete overstimulation, mixed with a feeling of “Is this really happening right now? Is this real life?” Hopefully you can find a rep theater doing a midnight screening near you, just once, to check this corner of the cinephile world off your bucket list.
Something to Stream
St. Vincent (Netflix): The charms of this hidden gem indie are so obvious, and yet so disarming, that one cannot help but go along for the ride of Bill Murray’s dead beat drunk loser, on whom the babysitting duties of a middle school-age boy are foisted by an overworked Melissa McCarthy (in a rare understated, serious performance). As you might expect, the precocious kid softens the curmudgeon while he provides the father figure the kid needs to grow up.
This is not revolutionary stuff, but the scene-level writing is way way better than you’d probably expect, and the direction is solid (Theodore Melfi would go on to direct Hidden Figures). Plus, Murray is fantastic, and the cast of surrounding characters is several magnitudes higher than it needs to be: Naomi Watts as a lady of the night slash girlfriend, Terrence Howard as a loan shark, Chris O’Dowd as a school teacher, even a young Greta Lee (a soon-to-be Oscar nominee for Past Lives) in a thankless bit part. This movie is a perfect example of overdelivering on modest ambition, and considering its heartwarming, potentially even tear-inducing conclusion, I can’t think of too many people I wouldn’t strongly recommend this movie to.
Trailer Watch: 3 Body Problem
It’s a down time for movie trailers, because anything being promoted now is set to release during Dumpuary, a month whose whole purpose is to sneak something bad out with no one noticing. Meanwhile on the TV side, several of the shows that were being held during the Hollywood strikes due to actors’ inability to promote them are debuting, including a new season of “True Detective” on HBO and what I’ve heard is an excellent detective show on AMC, “Monsieur Spade.”
This is an even bigger deal, because it’s the first new show from David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, otherwise known as the showrunners for a little show called “Game of Thrones.” This new show looks epic, it looks expansive (and expensive), and though this trailer does little to explain what the show is about (the best kind of trailer), Eiza González has long been ready for her star turn. It’s a must-try!