Film Shapes

Ridley Scott's latest film, following the underrated The Last Duel and the rated House of Gucci,  is a biography of Napoleon Bonaparte (probably no need for the surname). It traces his rise, post Madame Guillotine, through Robespierre's Reign of Terror, to his sweeping victories in battle and finally, to his exile. All the while, his romance with Josephine (Vanessa Kirby) frames the narrative. It's basically a grand historical rom-com, if you find yourself as tickled by the ripe dialogue as I was. Joaquin Phoenix plays the general with his usual weird panache and his delivery of some of these crackers is top fun. He tells an English foreign minister, "You think you're so good just because you have boats!" And to Josephine he proclaims that, "Destiny has brought me to this lamb chop."  Phoenix is on his regular top form but Kirby is brilliant as the enigmatic widow who allows herself to be wooed by the little guy. She puts her expressive eyes to good...

Ohhhhh, the humanity! I try not to pile on a film, especially if the people behind it mean well, and sure, everyone's entitled to a 5 nil drubbing now and then, but this one severely tested my patience. I haven't seen Hereditary or Midsommar , writer/director Ari Aster's previous two features, so I didn't know what to expect. Beau is Afraid is based on one of the director's shorts, Beau , from 2011, and how he went from a 7 minute runtime to an eyeball-burning 180 (or near enough) is pretty astounding. Possibly the most egregious issue is that it starts so well. The first quarter (and a smidge) of the film is darkly funny, clever and brutally promising. At the natural break point between the first and second acts, a thought popped into my noggin *There's nowhere to go from here* and I was unfortunately bang on. Oddly, it looks like there are four acts in the film, each one exponentially decreasing in quality. Joaquin Phoenix does his best with the material but...