East of Wallis a difficult film to classify. It defies pigeon-holing and slotting. Classification. It's not a documentary, because it's scripted. It has real people playing themselves (with two actorly exceptions), so it's not exactly fiction, even though it fits the bill of being "based on a true story." Even if it isn't. But, it could happen. That it doesn't goes a long way in explaining the nature of the real people involved. So, that's fiction "becoming" fact. In an interview with NPR, director Kate Beecroft, describes her film as "docufiction" filmed on location, sometimes documentary style "on the fly" with the actual people who live the daily lives depicted in the film. To paraphrase "Dragnet": "The names you are about to see are true. The story has been changed to project the innocent."
Tabatha Zimiga has lived on her husband's family horse farm for years after his death. She's raising three kids, a lot of horses—training them in a style similar to "Buck" Brannaman—and taking in strays...animals and kids, teens who through issues with their parents (addiction, incarceration, incompetence or indifference or just plain delinquency) live on the Zimiga farm working the land and the animals, and working on themselves.
I first heard of Zimiga and her South Dakota ranch on the news...probably PBS Newshour because I've lost interest in network news...and her unconventional approach to caring for all her charges. Tatted and head-shaved, she defies the conventions of ranch-owner, her property a collection of paddocks and mobile homes--horses and people house similarly--and she scrapes by a living training horses and selling them at auction, while also keeping her revolving door of kids fed, clothed and sheltered...and schooled. She's had sufficient life lived to understand...but not necessarily sanction...teen drama, keeping a wary eye on behavior, both human and equestrian. She has enough drama of her own.
Unlike most cowboys, she has an internet presence, posting on TikTok, showing off the kids' riding skills as well as the dexterity of her horses, all good marketing tools for showing off the animals before the weekend auction day.
Director Beecroft uses those videos to show the day-to-day, connecting and interlacing bits of story-fabric, providing background on the various interactions, all revolving around the hub of Tabatha, going to court seeking conservancy for new members of her makeshift brood, keeping truancy to a minimum, dealing with the slights and jolts of everyday ranch life...and not talking about the death of her husband, who committed suicide years before. This is one of the threads running through East of Wall because it affects her daughter Porshia (a really impressive performance) who aches to remember him as he was her mentor and taught her how to ride.
One keeps looking for artifice and the film is remarkably free of it—there are only two actors, Scoot McNairy (he played Woodie Guthrie in A Complete Unknown) and Jennifer Ehle who plays Tabatha's mother Tracey (her resume is so impressive and I've seen her in so many things that the way she insinuates into the role is, frankly, startling) but you can "sense" the actors from everybody else—even the makeshift stuff feels completely natural in this day and age of corporate takeover. But, when the real people playing their real selves (though fictionalized a bit) are on-screen, it's a truly eerie feeling. You feel like you're watching a documentary, despite the occasional beautiful landscape shot. Movies do a really good job of faking real. East of Wall isn't faking.
That becomes readily apparent during Tabatha's drunk monologue about finding her dead husband, which is one of the most riveting one shots I've ever seen. Raw, profane, and bitter, all expressed through a haze of repressed regret, it's a jaw-dropping sequence, repeatedly challenging the sense of reality and drama in an audience's mind. Sort of like real life.
Some have gone so far as to say the film is a modern "take" on the Western (if we're still pining for categorization). I'm not so sure one could call this a traditional Western per se, but if John Ford's entries are, in the end, about the struggles of making a community in a wasteland, then East of Wall certainly fills that bill.
I was worried about this one. The original "Naked Gun" series (the ones that starred Leslie Nielsen as Lt. Frank Drebin) came out of of the Z-A-Z team—the guys that made the original Airplane!—they would be David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, who had a free-wheeling style of evergreen comedy and an impeccable sense of timing that made their movies work, despite production values that would have been suited for a Hallmark movie. That stuff's tough to duplicate—just ask anyone who saw the non-Z-A-Z sequel, Airplane 2, which was a desperate cash-grab and desperately unfunny despite writers credits by two of the geniuses behind "The Simpsons".
"The Naked Gun" films came out of a Z-A-Z TV series that lasted all of six episodes (before being cancelled) called "Police Squad!" and I remember it as being fitfully funny and not quite up to par with the laugh-a-minute styles of Airplane! or their "Elvis-fights-the-Nazis" follow-up, Top Secret! The ideas were good, playing with the tropes of television and especially cop shows, but they were slightly hampered by 1980's TV censorship and the comedic pace never matched their movie work. That changed eight years later when they revived the concept for feature films and everything went up a few notches.Three "Naked Gun" films were produced between 1988 and 1994, the last only having David Zucker involved with the writing. The complete Z-A-Z team acted as producers. There'd been talk about doing a fourth "Naked Gun" movie with Nielsen, but nothing came of it. His death in 2010 put the stopper in it.
Now, thanks to producer Seth McFarlane's clout, there's a new one, the duplicate-titled The Naked Gun, featuring Liam Neeson as Frank Drebin, Jr., the son of Leslie Nielsen's character, and he's a chip off the old blockhead. Not the most original of concepts, but Neeson does such an amazing job of playing it absolutely straight while still nailing the comic timing that it's a pleasure to see him make the Nielsen transition from drama to high comedy with nary a misstep. The review for the movie at RogerEbert.com stated that it is "legitimately" Neeson's best screen performance, and one comes out of The Naked Gun actually believing it, so deft is his way of fusing comedy with the deadly-serious "I have skills" intensity that he brought to his "action-star" phase.
What's the plot? Who cares? Surely, you don't think the efficacy of a "Naked Gun" entry lies in the carefully crafted screenplay. No, this is a matter of throwing all kinds of shit at a fan—which became a literal joke in Airplane!—and seeing what sticks. But, loosely, it's about a tech billionaire (Danny Huston, who's sounding more and more like his Dad every movie), who's into breaking things and starting from scratch...including populations. Somehow, Junior Drebin gets involved in all this, as well as getting involved with the sister (Pamela Anderson, who's actually quite good) of an "accident" victim.
One is struck by how good the movie looks, with lots of mood-lighting and leaning into noir styles (as opposed to the Z-A-Z approach of key lighting everything, lest you miss a joke in the shadows, and also aping the style of its inspiration, "'M' Squad"). That's a bit of a shock, but seeing as this one is a couple generations removed from its source, it's a good shock.
Is it funny? Comedy is always subjective (he hedged)—one man's laugh-riot is another's snooze-fest—but, the first hour or so provided some genuine howlers and some inspired bits of business...then right about the time director Shaffer cuts to a shot of the house band of the villain's "Bengal Club" (and does nothing with it), the movie coasts to the end, wasting joke opportunities, occasionally perking up, but seemingly on comedy auto-pilot until the end. That wouldn't be so discouraging if the first two acts weren't so darned good.
Hopefully, there'll be more. It's refreshing to find a movie that's funnier and sillier than watching the nightly news.
Well, it's different. Uncomfortably so. But, that's not necessarily a bad thing. A roller-coaster ride from start to finish, Gunn manages to channel the 'Big Blue Boy Scout" aspects of the character that has always been a part of it—but, without the Hollywood temptations to mock them, contemplating "Bad Superman" or the brooding "misunderstood Christ-like alien" of the past films (complete with a lazily slavish devotion to the 1978 Christopher Reeve film—although this one does have a couple character call-backs from it...and the marchable John Williamstheme)—while also dusting off some cliches, tossing others, and embracing some of the bizarre aspects that lie deep in the character-archives of the extended DC Comics Universe.
Gunn likes the bizarre. He cherishes it. What others might find childish and puerile, he uses with giddy delight. AndSuperman(2025) leaps into all that in a single bound. Well, actually, too many bounds to count. It's a dense movie that will leave many in the dust, but doesn't take itself so seriously...or iconically...that some of the details don't matter much. Not when you're dealing with sci-fi tech and concepts that verge into "woo-woo" territory almost constantly.Pocket Universes? Check. Manufactured black holes? Okay. Unexplained and unexplainable kaiju? Sure. Getting insurance for anything in the city of Metropolis? Okay, that one's a bit much, with all the mayhem that's tossed at the beleaguered city every few minutes in this film.
Gunn tosses out the destruction of Krypton—how many times have we seen it?—but keeps the red trunks because...the red trunks embarrassed other film-makers...but embraces the tendency of creating mass-destruction set-pieces. There is a scene deep in the film where Supes and Lois Lane are having a heart to heart, while in the far background, members of the "Justice Gang" are battling a "dimensional imp" with clubs and green-energy baseball bats. It's a risk that the serious conversation will be overwhelmed by the goofy action in the background. But, it's also a salve about things getting too grim 'n gritty...this time.
Who are this "Justice Gang"(not to be confused with the "Justice League")? Well, it's a little "inside baseball", but, here goes—they're Earth Green Lantern Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion)—in the comics, this sector of space has 3—Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), a scientific genius who actually has ethics, and Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), whose origin story has had so many complications even DC comics hasn't decided what it is. Anyway, they're a weird choice for a super-team—but, director Gunn likes weird and even preposterous. But, they're in marked contrast to Superman: these guys want action. In an earlier kaiju fight, "The Gang" want to just kill it; Superman wants to put in an Intergalactic Zoo. He's in marked contrast to the "grim n' gritty" and adrenaline-junkies that mark most superhero movies. It's a stark contrast from the Zack Snyder/Christopher Nolan films. But, then, Supes' himself is a stark contrast.
Gunn starts the movie in media res...no back-story, no explosive origin...with Superman suffering "his first defeat", falling into an Antarctic snowscape after being uppercut by "The Hammer of Moravia", a mecha-Hulk villain out of an autocratic country with a history of invading countries. Evidently, it's pay-back for Supes interfering with one of those invasions. He thought it the proverbial "right thing to do," but when interviewed by Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan—she's great!), he is flummoxed when he is accused of an illegal act, not sanctioned by the U.S. government. Politics doesn't play into the Kryptonian's thinking, nor does race, color, or creed...like it has since the character's first publishing in 1938. He has human values, raised by as rural a couple (Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Howell) as you can imagine, but who have the moral fiber and strength to raise a kid who could fry their entire farm with an angry look, But doesn't. More importantly, wouldn't.
Who's behind the daily slings and arrows Superman has to deflect when he could be doing something else? Why, Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult, at full arrogance-mode), of course—maybe the movie people haven't read enough Superman comics...he has other enemies, but they seem to be stuck on Luthor the same way the Batman movies are stuck on The Joker—but, he's back to being a scientific genius (albeit a sloppy one) and tech-bro...not a crooked real estate developer this time...who hates the Kryptonian with a passion ("Super...'man'. He's not a man. He's an 'it'. A thing with a cocky grin
and a stupid outfit, that's somehow become the focal point of the entire
world's conversation.").
Lex wants the Kryptonian's reputation...and he wants his power. If he can't have them, no one will, so he either wants to tarnish Supes' image...or kill him. Because that's how you climb that ol' megalomaniacal ladder, not by winning hearts and minds, but by making people lose theirs.
So, though it may still a very fantastical comic-book world in this one, it sure echoes our times...the way the comics version of Superman periodically does since his debut in 1938. Its a different world, where anybody could use their phones to film you changing clothes in a phone booth (if there WERE phone booths, and isn't that ironic?), where information, good, bad or indifferent, is faster than a speeding bullet. Where anybody with a grudge or a cause can, at the very least, bloviate like they're doing a TED talk. And lie through their teeth like they were telling Truth. More people have more access to the power of technology, but use it in the worst ways.
What differentiates Gunn's Superman from all the iterations that have come before is that he's a good guy despite the "powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men." He knows he's an alien, but when given the old Nature versus Nurture question, he lands with a thud on the latter. He assimilates, and tries to be 110% human to compensate. He doesn't mope, he doesn't question his fate, he's not tempted to abuse his power or even be snarky about it. It's the old comic-book Superman, but without Warner Brothers messing with it to make the character "more hip" for "modern" audiences. Gunn keeps the character pure, but surrounds him with the goofy, the childish, the arrogant, and the just plain bad. To mark the contrast.
Gunn leans into the humanity, but an outsider's view of it, seeing the good, the hope, the striving, and the yearning to be free and wanting to be that. I see an awful lot of internet blather about moments of "cringe" in this Superman, particularly this speech:
That is where you've always been wrong about me, Lex. I am as human as
anyone. I love, I-I get scared. I wake up every morning, and despite not
knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other, and I try to
make the best choices that I can. I screw up all the time, but that is
being human, and that's my greatest strength. And someday, I hope, for
the sake of the world, you understand that it's yours too.
Good Lord. Maybe it's "cringe" because he admits he makes mistakes, but we could use a lot more of that these days, but that would take character, humility, honesty, and a whole lot of other things missing in this PR-saturated spin-zone we call a world.
For a time now, I've been grousing (and boring friends) about certain notable politicians and corporate Masters of the Universe, by describing each one as an "Anti-Superman." Why? Superman (so the old TV show announced) "fights a never-ending battle for Truth, Justice, and the American Way." But, now its an every-day, non-prosecuted occurrence 180° in the other direction with these guys. There's no relationship with Truth (which has never been so degraded and discarded), Justice, which is consistently delayed and dismissed...and as for The American Way? It's the way of the thug-gangster, that icon of American pop-culture (until it affects us personally).
And common decency is becoming more and more uncommon.
No wonder the last Superman movies were so grim, gritty and stewed in their own existential juices so much. We don't need that kind of inspiration.
We need this Superman. A Superman who can push against a falling skyscraper, but also push against the inexorable fall of civilized behavior or civilization itself, and not break a sweat or crack with angst. And leads...by example...for the good. The common good.
"Look for the Blood and the Smoke! That's Where We Are!"
Warfarejust drops you into it. The film, written and directed by Alex Garland(Ex Machina, Civil War) and Ray Mendoza (who lived it) tells the story of an insignificant little troop deployment of Navy SEALS in Ramadi, Iraq in 2006 to lend support to a Marine operation nearby (in fact only 300 meters away!). Standard stuff. In and out. No mess no fuss.
They come in under cover of darkness, enter a strategically placed household, subdue the inhabitants, isolate them, put them out of operations' way, then monitor for any suspicious activity among the locals, any amassing, any weapons sightings, any what we call in the U.S. "assembly." Just basically "watch the backs" of the Marines. The radio contact is "5 by," they are well-armed and well-ammo'd, and they have a bird's eye view of the area from aerial surveillance that can track any warm body that comes into view. And they're frequently being updated on the mission status. Everything is nominal. From that point on, the movie runs in "real time."
Alpha One pumping up before the mission.
On top of that, they've punched a hole in the outer wall of an upstairs bedroom for Elliott Miller (Cosmo Jarvis), their lead sniper, to lay prone on a mattress for hours on end, peering through the telescopic sight of his M110 SASS rifle to take out anyone or anything that seems suspicious or out of place at a market across the street. It's maximum concentration for minimum movement, but you can't be too careful. Anything suspicious could be prelude to an attack on them, and if you have to pull a trigger to prevent yourself or your troop from dying, that's the job.
Of course, when the clock is ticking and you're just waiting for the sortie to be over, everything looks a little suspicious. But no shots are fired. Sure, they're being watched...by people who duck so they're not being watched...and the aerial view shows there might be some amassing on the roofs, but things are merely heightened anticipation and they can be Bradley'd out of there within minutes. It's going to be fine.
Until a grenade is dropped through that sniper's nest hole into the bedroom where Miller and another SEAL are positioned. They're able to move quickly and out of the blast-radius, but the resulting explosion instantly turns the monitoring mission into an evac mission. Miller's left hand is bleeding, but treatable if they can get him back to the base quickly and so Bradley tanks are called while the crew sweats the minutes it will take to get them out of there. They are under attack, after all. And the sooner they can get Miller out the better. But, even with the best equipment American tax-dollars can buy, they are still trapped in a house (along with the civilians) and targets. They're surrounded.
And things will only get worse.
The legal disclaimer ("This is a work of fiction", etc. etc) at the end of the movie is unlike any I've seen. I didn't have time to write it down and I haven't found anything that quotes it on the internet, but basically it says it's based on a true incident that was parsed from several interviews (and Mendoza was part of the SEAL team) and any inaccuracies are entirely due "to memory." And, indeed, Miller—who's a real guy—has no recollection of the incident, even though he lost a limb, received severe burns and lost the ability to speak. In part, Mendoza wanted to make the film for him and dedicated it to him.
And from what I've been reading online, a lot of Iraq vets are saying that it's brutally accurate. If true, it is harrowing what we put our fighting men through, even if the the mission depicted was only in a support capacity. There is no safe place in a war-zone (for anybody) and no action taken does not attract a reaction. And with the sophistication of the weaponry, the destruction is catastrophic. It makes you wonder why anybody does it? Why do governments launch wars knowing that the end-result is winning rubble and destroyed infrastructure? What is "gained" by that? But, over the last couple years, that's all we've seen on a day-to-day basis, escalating destruction and death over cratered territory. For what?
I've also read some online critiques that the film is "pointless." Hardly. Not if the portrait it paints is as accurate as has been said and the filmmakers have accomplished their goal, ignoring the jingoism, the cliches, the false melodrama and cheap theatrics in the name of creating drama. It's dramatic enough without inserting fudged ironies into it. The conflict is real without back-story and motivation. The real motivation is living through it, plain and simple. You can say that "war is hell", but Warfare makes it look like insanity. And as director Sam Fuller used to say the only glory in war is surviving it. Giving it to us straight, while we're sitting in our comfortable theater seats, is hardly pointless...especially if it makes us think twice.
The most telling part of Warfare is when the echoes die and the dust settles and the SEAL team gone, and the family of the occupied house come out of hiding and see the slippery blood-trails and multitudes of cartridges on the floor, the holes in the wall, and devastation left behind. Then, there's a shot of the street that moments before was a killing field as villagers come out of their doorways, some armed, some not, walking past body-parts through the smoke that has been left behind. Mendoza has enough wherewithal to include them in the aftermath of the destruction, and one can't help but think that somewhere they're thinking the same thought as you.
One hopes there won't be a sequel.
But hopes...and prayers...are ultimately...useless. And...finally...comes the realization that that is the one word that accurately describes the unholy act of war.
The Alto Knights tells the story of theLucianomob family that went from bootlegging during Prohibition to gambling, and controlling criminal activities in Manhattan's Lower East Side. It concentrates on the relationship betweenFrank Costello, Luciano's consigliere and Vito Genovese, the gang's underboss, who grew up as friends but became bitter rivals once they achieved higher status in the Mafia. And it covers the time from when Costello ran the mob to the helter-skelterApalachin meeting, the "mob convention" so flagrant that even the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover finally had to admit that organized crime actually existed (why he never had before has been an unexplained mystery).
If you've seen The Godfather, the story will have echoes of the same gun-fire—author Mario Puzo used details and scrambled them for his novel—but, at one point, Genovese (who'd been put in charge of Luciano's mob after its head was sent to prison for running a prostitution operation) fled to Sicily to avoid a murder charge, and was replaced with Costello. Costello and Luciano had deep contacts with New York politicians, and, with Costello in charge, it was easier to get away with murder.
But when Genovese returned to America in 1945—witnesses to the murder had been very conveniently murdered before any trial could take place—the re-patriated mobster assumed that Luciano would put him back in charge, but, instead, Costello kept himself as the mob's boss, making him an enemy in the mercurial, less steady Genovese's eyes and for the rest of their lives the two stayed bitter rivals.
The film chronicles that rivalry—from Costello's point of view, so it's more than a bit prejudiced—picking through pages of Mob history back and forth in time in flashback, beginning with the most obvious example of their rivalry, the botched assassination of Costello by Genovese's son on his Dad's orders (Genovese was never said to be subtle). It's that act that convinces the more strategic Costello to retire from the mob, but not without some manipulation of the volatile Genovese. Of course, it's all from Costello's self-sympathetic view of things. But, the film also has Genovese'swild divorce trial,the killing of Costello's hand-picked successor Alberto Anastasia,the Senate hearings of Estes Kefauver, and that ill-fated Mob convention.
Pileggi and Levinson keep it moving and some of the set-pieces are nicely conceived, with the director sometimes evoking Edward Hopper paintings (as he has done in the pas) this time with the aid of 81 year old cinematographer Dante Spinotti.
So, since he's all over the movie, is De Niro any good? I mean, at playing two different characters in the same movie? Yeah, it's quite the show. Early on in the movie De Niro takes pains to separate the two personas—his Costello is more soft-spoken and cagey-eyed, while his Vito Genovese spits out his dialog and has a nervous energy (it's almost like De Niro is doing an impression of Joe Pesci). And the few scenes where the two characters are together and De Niro is literally beside himself, it's something of a wonder as the dialog flows naturally but the two characters interrupt each other, react to the others' accusations and gives the impression that, hey, this is two different guys here having a rather diffident conversation with each other (but it's the same actor doing both parts!). I have no idea why they did this (I've read that it was Warner CEO David Zaslav's), but it's an amazing to see.
And, really, who is De Niro going to play against? Who has the caliber to go toe to toe with him? Pacino, maybe (but they've made a pact that they're not going to do anything together unless it's really good). Alec Baldwin would have been an interesting choice and quite capable. But, watching De Niro play two different characters...with two different energies...is a fascinating exercise. That he pulls it off (despite never fully convincing us that it isn't a "twins" act) impresses. "Molto rispotto."
But, any gangster movie is going to have that weird quality of upside-down absurdism (Costello wants to retire and lead a "normal" life...really?), which Levinson, with his comedy background, leans into heavily. The thing that's missing is any sense of moral outrage. These were gangsters, after all. Their day-to-day illegal activities are mentioned ("just business") and prominent assassinations are portrayed (because "if it bleeds, it leads"), but like Levinson's Bugsy, there isn't the sensibilities of penance being paid that you'd find in Catholic filmmakers like Scorsese or Coppola. For the criminal record, Genovese died in prison, while Costello died in his retirement penthouse at the Waldorf Astoria. A lot of their victims, we'll never know.
Snow White (and the Height-Challenged, but Competently-Abled and Platonic POSSLQ's)—There, That "Woke" Enough For Ya?
The
seven dwarfs were each on different little trips. Happy was into grass
and grass alone … Happy, that's all he did. Sleepy was into reds.
Grumpy, too much speed. Sneezy was a full blown coke freak. Doc was a
connection. Dopey was into everything. Any old orifice will do for
Dopey. He's always got his arm out and his leg up. And then, the one we
always forget, because he was Bashful. Bashful didn't use drugs. He was
paranoid on his own. Didn't need any help on that ladder.
George Carlin
Disney made the first Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the mid-1930's, and gosh, "not much has changed". I'm being sarcastic, of course. It premiered during The Great Depression, Hitler had not yet attacked Poland (but the Japanese had invaded China). And the world was about to evolve, rendering the tropes of "Snow White"—the biases, the weak role of women, the "princessy" thing, the deus ex machina of the necessity of a rescuing handsome prince—all of that would age as gracefully as an Evil Queen into a Crone. It's almost unfathomable that, at the time, Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was something of a revolution in the animated art-form. It was the first cel-animated feature film (the ads announced it "in multiplane technicolor"), and the first animated feature ever made in the United States. At the time, Disney was discouraged by business partners, other Hollywood moguls, and potential backers that a feature cartoon just couldn't "work," for diametrically opposed reasons: either it couldnt hold an audience's attention for longer than the accustomed 7 to 10 minute running time, or the length would simply exhaust them (and in fact, at the time, the young Disney company depended on the more robust RKO Studios to distribute the film to theaters—Disney is still very much around; RKO is not). It's release and success changed everything, and despite its calcified ideals, it remains a classic of the form, still topping recent 10 best lists for animated films. And, in fact, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it as one of the very first 25 films for preservation in the National Film Registry in its first year in existence in 1989.
So, why remake it? To make money, of course (one does have to go back to the mine...and the well). And maybe, aesthetically, as a way to "update" it for a new generation not born in the previous century. Then, also, there's the legal matter that the original 1937 film is going to become part of the public domain in 1933. There is that. Plus, there has been an awful lot of competition lately from other versions of the exact same story: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) and its Snow White-less sequel (2014), Tarsem's Mirror, Mirror (2012), Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997). Of the Grimm fairy tales, it is the most adapted for film. And Disney's version is iconic. Were it not for the 1937 film, one doubts the other versions would exist.
Now, the optimal movie-going experience is to go in without prejudices or expectations (I mean, if one is doing it "right"). However, as this is a remake, you can pretty much throw that out the window. This puts me on an even par with about every single movie reviewer or internet hack, as the grousing, bitching, and over-dramatic moaning about this release has reached new levels of "hair-on-fire." Me, I wanted to see what they could do to make it less of a dinosaur of the Depression-era (I mean, the first feature came out before Gone With the Wind!), how much of the classic songs were retained, and if the new film-makers—Marc Webb, primarily, he of the Andrew GarfieldSpider-mans, the films (500) Days of Summer and Gifted, and I'm something of a fan—could make their third act top the action scene of the dw...oh, let's call them "colliers", shall we? (nobody can argue with that unless they're being trenchantly snippy)...chasing the evil crone who poisoned Snow White to fall off a cliff. And if they could balance the light and dark as effectively as old Walt did back in the day (the thing that's always impressed me about Disney is that he could scare of the tar out of his intended audience of children, and in such a way that he'd gain the cynical respect of their parents).
So...how is it? Actually, quite good, better than I was anticipating.
To my points, it is still quite a dinosaur and of another time, but, this iteration of Snow White(andDisney's Snow White, if there were any questions) still tries to be relevant to the times, even if it can't quite distance itself from the ghosts of the earlier version, rooted as it was in what was being done in films of the time, still taking cues from Broadway, vaudeville and musical theater. Even more than the first one, you can smell a song coming on, and there are far more of those song-breaks than previously.
How are those songs? Genuinely good...and smart. Yes, they trot out "Heigh-ho" (and damn if that song doesn't still work) and they've done a buff-and-polish on the lyrics, using it as an introduction to the various...colliers. "Whistle While You Work" is revived, also with new lyrics, some of them quite surprisingly funny.*Some of the lyrics make use of modern idioms, which is momentarily jarring, but it passes. "I'm Wishing" (the first of the now de rigeur Disney "I Wish" songs) is pitched, replaced with a new one "Waiting on a Wish", and "Some Day my Prince Will Come" has been been tossed for all sorts of reasons, the primary one being the story's lack of an actual prince, handsome or otherwise. Instead, there is a roguish thief (Andrew Burnap), living with his band of cut-throats out in the forest, having been banished from the kingdom.
And there are a bunch of new ones. One song in particular stands out, as it makes a point of calling out the story's short-comings and considers the world at large (much more than the film's opening "world-building" number "Good Things Grow") and that there might be bigger fish to fry than Snow's deposition and loss of status, and that is the ingeniously titled "Princess Problems":
Self-aware and brings up a point that if you're living under an evil regime, there might be some people suffering worse than you. I found that refreshing—but, then, I've never been concerned with the "plights" of royalty.
How about that ending, which was visceral and exciting (if a little too much an easy fix)? Well, I can't say this one's that exciting, although it does work in a story-logic kind of way and I like how, metaphorically, the Queen (Gal Gadot) is dispatched by her own narcissism. It just doesn't get the heart pumping as much, but then Disney animators have always had a penchant for making dramatically hysterical resolutions.
Okay, you want to know about the casting. Let's start with Snow White. As far back as my review of Spielberg's version ofWest Side Story, I've thought that Zegler seems to have been genetically engineered to be a Disney princess with eyes too big for her head just like she was animated that way (it's a Disney design trope to draw big eyes in order inspire warm feelings like you were looking at a baby). So, she looks preternaturally perfect for this. And the thing is, Snow is a tough sell—just as Maria in West Side Story is—where the character is just so cutesy—and not in a self-aware way—you want to sit her down on a tuffet and tell her to wise up and stop being such a victim. Snow in this has a bit more grit and certainly is more expressive than the plasticene-rotoscoping allowed in the 1937 version. And she's not a sap...or a simp. I like that. Plus, Zegler's singing voice has always been astounding and she belts out the songs the way every Disney princess should, full-throated but with enough character to make her more relatable when she drops the arias.
And Gal Gadot is great as the Evil Queen. I don't know what she's done to deserve this "bad-Kevin-Costner" phase of her career, But she trods the thin line between camp and making her Evil Queen a serious threat, which is what she should do. It's the same tactic Michelle Pfeiffer takes when playing villains: be evil but show you're enjoying it, like any good autocrat. There's one moment when Gadot's Queen snaps her head in fury at the huntsman (Ansu Kabia) ordered to kill Snow White and I swear she did it in a mere film-frame of time that was jolting. And the theatricality she throws into her musical numbers threatens the set-rafters, CGI or not.
So...uh...how are the "colliers?" I must admit, I was a bit taken aback by them, but then they don't have the rubbery cartoonishness of their animated ancestors. They're a lot more starchy and have a bizarre facial structure that makes them all-jaw—they look like hummel figurines you'd find in a some rural backyard in Ochsenwerder (Hey, why didn't we just call them "gnomes" in the first place?) and they're the same attribute-centric personalities they were in the 1937 version ( rejected contenders at the time were Hoppy, Jumpy, Baldy, Hickey, Stuffy, Burpy, Tubby and Dizzy). After awhile, you get used to them, although the character of Dopey kept reminding me of Alfred E. Neumanof Mad Magazine fame.
Those are quibbles. I find the 2025 to be a fairly successful effort to make a problematic—if beloved—part of history a bit more "present". It's certainly nothing—nothing—to engender the vitriol I've been seeing online. Look. I'm as evil as they come when I see something bad and write something snarky. But, then, I don't have an "agenda" other than a critical one and I certainly don't make a living at it, amping up my outrage as a cottage industry). I don't know what they're "on" or "on about" but it's not there in the movie.
Children (as I witnessed) will be delighted by it. "Bro's" who haven't grown up...won't (Hence, the film's low IMDB score perpetrated by basement-dwellers who haven't actually seen it, as IMDB has no way of checking veracity). There's a big difference between having prejudices (as I had) and agendas.**
So, the new truncated Snow White is good, sometimes incrementally better in places and a good effort, but it is hardly revolutionary. And so nobody should treat it as if it is.
* Even if it can't quite shake the specter of how the song was satirized and mocked by—of all things—Disney's own Enchanted. Sometimes, you just have to hand it to the Mouse-house for being so smart, clever, and self-aware:
** Oh, one little piece of advice to the "bro's" out there who swamped IMDB with negative scores—don't do the job "too well" or the basic law of averages will point out the obviousness of the ploy.Live by the aggregate, die by the aggregate.
