New Year Round-Up: Being the Ricardos, The Matrix Resurrections, Don't Look Up, Nightmare Alley

The New Year is approaching and if you want to spend the weekend watching movies, I've got a slew of reviews for you that span genres, time periods, and all levels of absurdity. Strap in, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Being the Ricardos: As someone who grew up adoring I Love Lucy, I have very mixed feelings about this movie. Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, it is definitely very Sorkinian with the dialogue and the finale flourish that was laughably over-the-top. There's a whole bit about how to interpret "cut the flowers" that is played to death and feels like something right out of The West Wing. But thankfully, this is a story about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and here, they are played by Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem. I'll confess, I was not fully on board with this casting at the beginning, but by the end, the chemistry between these two actors won me over. While the opening scenes felt like they were trying really hard to push the volatility and tempestuous romance between these two, the film gradually gave their relationship room to breathe and made it much clearer what drew these two people together and ultimately pushed them apart.

The Kidman performance is OK. I'm still not a huge fan of her American accent, and her attempting to do a Lucille Ball accent on top of that sometimes dives into caricature. However, there are moments in the movie where they recreate classic I Love Lucy episodes, and my God. In black and white, you can see how accurately the hair and makeup folk have transformed Kidman to look like Lucy, and she perfectly captures those facial expressions and physical comedy routines. When she was crushing grapes, I had to remind myself that that was actually Kidman on screen. On the other hand, while I did not think Bardem looked anything like Desi Arnaz, he absolutely sold me on his magnetic personality. The scene where he is singing Babalu in a night club and banging that drum was all I needed to buy this performance hook, line, and sinker. And the supporting performances from Nina Arianda and J.K. Simmons, who play Vivian Vance and William Frawley, are spot on, capturing some intriguing behind-the-scenes drama that I would almost prefer to be the focus of the film.

So overall, it's a mixed bag. Good performances and excellent attention to detail in terms of costumes, production design, hair, and makeup. The script is peak Sorkin, but it avoids the pitfalls of a birth-to-death biopic by taking place during one eventful week when Ball was accused of being a communist and had to deal with managing that while also filming the show. You get a lot of insight into how the show was run (with the wonderful Alia Shawkat playing Madelyn Pugh, a female writer on the show who I would have LOVED to know more about), and flashbacks into the Ricardos' romance. It's all told very effectively, albeit without much nuance. There are flashes of brilliance throughout this film, but overall, it's a fairly middle-of-the-road offering that will be of especial interest to Lucy fans or anyone who enjoys learning more about classic TV and this time period. It's light entertainment and perfect for a quick weekend watch.

The Matrix Resurrections: Do you love The Matrix and then don't care that much about the sequels? Well, this is the movie for all of us who feel that way. Director and co-writer Lana Wachowski has honed in on everything we loved so much about that original 1999 film, but updates it for everything we have learned in a post-Matrix society. It is such a meta, self-referential, twisty, Mobius-strip-like piece of art, and all you have to do is sit back and enjoy the ride from start to finish. 

The movie kicks off twenty years after the original, with the premise that Neo (Keanu Reeves) is back in a new version of the Matrix, with his memories suppressed by the machines, taking blue pills to keep him compliant. However, he still has faint recollections of his past, and as a successful video game designer, he has created a game called The Matrix, with characters that recall Morpheus, Trinity, and all the rest. As the movie begins, a new band of outlaws are trying to extract Neo and red pill him back into consciousness, and the movie almost feels like a shot-for-shot remake of the first film. It's all very glorious and fun, but then the action kicks into high gear and we start getting into multiple layers of Matrix-y machinations.

This movie captures all that existential angst of the original, with some added political commentary about the nature of "facts" and how people choose to believe in their own reality or cannot handle breaking out of their bubbles. The addition of Neil Patrick Harris as Neo's therapist and Jonathan Groff as Neo's business partner allows for some fun dynamics (and perhaps some questionable commentary on the point of therapy), and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II reliably crushes it as the new Morpheus who is always dressed to kill. Jessica Henwick is an excellent new cast member as Bugs, the woman who helps lead the charge to free Neo and throughout the film, you'll enjoy cameos from folks from the sequels (yes, sadly you do need to watch the entire trilogy to get yourself properly situated in this movie). There are numerous flashbacks to the prior movies and overall, it is such a loving homage to the trilogy's past while also successfully bringing this story into the 21st century. I wanted more Carrie-Ann Moss, and by golly, I got it in the third act, which became an absolute Trinity-fest. So consider this fan fully serviced. This movie may not satisfy everyone, but if you're looking for a Matrix sequel that makes the ethos of the original feel contemporary and fresh, this resurrection is what you seek. 

Don't Look Up: Much like Aaron Sorkin, Adam McKay is a filmmaker with a very distinctive style. And over time, that style has become one that I have grown to dislike. As such, this film is one that I cannot really recommend, although it does boast an incredible cast and contains a lot of promising elements that could have been excellent in the hands of a different director.

The premise is that a comet is going to hit Earth in six months and wipe out all of human existence. The astronomers who discover this (played by Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio) try to alert the American President (Meryl Streep), who is not thrilled about the timing of this discovery as the midterms are approaching and her party will lose power if they bum everyone out with this apocalyptic news. Therefore, the astronomers consult newspaper reporters and go on a morning talk show (co-hosted by Tyler Perry and a thoroughly unrecognizable Cate Blanchett) to try and get the word out via the media. However, they lack "media training" and in the segment before them, a pop star (played by a cleverly cast Ariana Grande) gets engaged to her on-again-off-again boyfriend, which the public is much more excited about than two boring scientists talking about the end of the world.

This is a movie about how the world lacks any kind of attention span particularly when it comes to scientists and their doomsday predictions. It reflects our decades-long apathy and inability to deal with all the revelations about climate change and how we are destroying our planet, or even our more recent inability to pay attention to public health experts with every new Covid variant. It's a depressing look at the way that politics, media, and science intersect, and all the barriers to getting life-saving and planet-saving information across. It's an important story, and in the hands of a different filmmaker, it could be impactfully and masterfully told. But in McKay's hands, there's a lot of smarm, corny dialogue, and supercilious posturing that makes me question, who is the audience for this? He makes movies that mock conservative right-wing people, so only liberals will watch them. But if you're a liberal, you already know all this information and what he's trying to sell you. So he'll selling a message to people who already know it, and frankly, he's not selling it any way that feels more sophisticated than a Funny or Die sketch. 

As far as I'm concerned, the true star of this film is Francine Maisler, the casting director, because she has found exactly the right actors for all these parts, either leaning into their public image, or cleverly subverting it to give you a quick giggle. But the overall plot and dialogue leaves much to be desired. Watch this movie if you want to be angry with humans and feel like we're all just screwed. But I'll bet you already feel that way, so why bother? 

Nightmare Alley: Directed by Guillermo del Toro, who co-wrote it with his wife Kim Morgan, this is exactly what you would expect from a del Toro movie. Based on a novel by William Lindsay Gresham that was previously adapted in 1947 as a film noir, this is a sumptuous work of art with a great deal of symbolism and intricate production design imbued into every frame. It looks gothic and spooky, shadowy and vivid, and an all-star cast consisting of people like Bradley Cooper, Toni Collette, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Richard Jenkins, Willem Dafoe, and more ensures that you're treated to many compelling performances. 

Set in the 1940s, this is the story of a man named Stanton "Stan" Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) who takes a job as a carny with a traveling carnival. Initially he is a man of few words, just soaking up this new world and getting to know all the other carnies and their acts. However, as he learns more about these different sideshow performers, he starts to harbor ambitions of developing his own act as a mentalist. The film follows the progress of his growing ambitions, and the greed that leads him into increasingly dangerous territory. While the script mostly telegraphs everything that happens and contains a lot of tropes (when someone flips over a tarot card in a movie like this, isn't it always going to be The Hanged Man?) it is still a fun ride and never dull. While it could have done with some judicious editing, this is an entertaining movie that has a lot to say about the cyclical nature of human existence and how our past always comes back to haunt us.

I recommend the film, but after you watch it, I highly recommend listening to this episode of WTF with Marc Maron where he interviews del Toro and discusses this film in spoilerific detail. It offers an excellent insight into del Toro's process as a filmmaker and precisely what he thought about this story and the visual aspects he wanted to bring out in its telling. When del Toro goes, "I subscribe to incompetence and greed being the forces that run this world," I chuckled and knew that this is why I enjoy watching this man's films. They may be low on subtlety but they sure as hell make up for it with visual panache and an ability to find the humanity in monsters and the monsters in humanity.