Tár

 Year:  2022

Director: Todd Field

Screenplay:  Todd Field

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kaur, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, Mark Strong

Running Time:  158 minutes

Genre:  Drama

Lydia Tár (Blanchett), an acclaimed American conductor, prepares for a live recording of Mahler's Fifth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.  While living in Berlin and rehearsing the orchestra, Tár receives a series of increasingly disturbing communications from a former lover, who blames Tár for blacklisting her from various orchestras.  Meanwhile Tár becomes attracted to young Russian cellist Olga (Kaur).  However, as the pressures on Tár mount up, her personal and professional reputation is threatened by allegations of sexual impropriety.

This intense psychological drama is basically a character piece, portraying composer Lydia Tár, a driven, charismatic, talented, ruthless woman who is capable of both great kindness and extreme cruelty.  Cate Blanchett, who is on screen for pretty much the entire film, gives possibly her best ever performance.  Classical cellist Sophie Kaur plays Olga, the latest object of Tár's affections.  The film opens unconventionally, with most of what would usually be the closing credits, being placed at the beginning of the film, with only the cast and music credits at the end.  The film focuses entirely on Lydia Tár, even when she is not on screen, scenes are filmed as if from her point of view,  and she is a fascinating monster, accused of abusing her position to seduce young hopefuls with promises of plum roles in the orchestra, and cruelly vindictive to anyone who crosses her, as well as ruthlessly discarding friends, lovers and colleagues, when they are no longer of any use to her.  In Berlin she seems to lead two lives, living with her wife Sharon (played by Nina Hoss) and their adopted daughter Petra (played by Mila Bogojevic), while keeping a furnished flat which she uses for composing and rehearsals.  Despite being dominated by Cate Blanchett's performance, the rest of the cast are all excellent.  Staring as an actor, with roles in films by Woody Allen and Stanley Kubrick among others, this is only writer/director Todd Field's third film as a director and his first in 15 years.  Slow-moving, with a stylish, almost documentary style look, contrasted with surreal dream sequences, and an increasingly fragmented editing style, matching Lydia Tár's increasingly disintegrating sense of reality.  This is a great film.

Cate Blanchett in Tár
   

Nightmare Alley

Year:  2021

Director:  Guillermo del Toro

Screenplay:  Guillermo del Toro and Kim Morgan, based on the novel Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham

Starring:  Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen, David Strathairn

Running Time: 150 minutes

Genre:  Thriller

In 1939, Stanton "Stan" Carlisle (Cooper) is on the run from a shady past when he finds refuge in a travelling carnival, befriending fortune teller Zeena the Seer (Collette), her alcoholic husband (Jenkins), Clem (Dafoe) who runs the carnival's "geek show" and exhibition of "human oddities", and Molly (Mara) whose act consists of her being electrocuted.  Learning the secrets of the inner workings of the carnival, and particularly the tricks behind pretending to be clairvoyant, Stan approaches Molly with a proposition that they work the scam together on wealthier marks.  Two years later, Stan and Molly are successfully working their act for the wealthy elite of New York City, when Stan is approached by Dr. Lilith Ritter (Blanchett), who has her own idea for a scam, but as the stakes are raised to more dangerous levels it becomes increasingly unclear who is playing who.

Guillermo del Toro is probably best known for his work in the horror and fantasy genre, most notably Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and The Shape of Water (2017), this however is not a supernatural or a fantasy film, although it is pretty horrific at times.  This is a modern day film noir, in fact the novel by William Lindsay Gresham has been filmed before in 1947, in the heyday of the film noir.  This film presents a throughly bleak portrait of human nature, almost everyone in the film is working some kind of scheme, or con, although some more innocent than others.  Bradley Cooper is good as the silver tongued charmer who hides very dark secrets and is capable of occasionally lashing out with shocking violence.  Cate Blanchett plays psychologist Lilith Ritter as a classic femme fatale all blood-red lipstick and golden gowns.  Toni Collette plays the smalltime carnival fortune teller who teaches Stan the tricks of the trade.  Rooney Mara plays the innocent, wide-eyed Molly who becomes the conscience of the film and, crucially, the only one perceptive enough to see where they are headed.  Willem Dafoe has a ball as the cruel Clem who keeps a caged man as the sideshow "geek", forcing him to bite the heads off chickens.  The twilight world of the carnival is brilliantly evoked, all mud and dirt and broken-down seedy glamour.  Del Toro is a master of disturbing but beautiful images, and he evokes a cold, bleak world, even New York is wintery streets and palatial but sterile hotel rooms and offices, The film has a complex, twisting plot, punctuated by occasional, brief, shocking bursts of violence.  While it may be too bleak for some viewers, it is a striking latter day film noir, and one of the best new thrillers that I've seen in a long time.         

Bradley Cooper and Rooney Mara in Nightmare Alley

Thor: Ragnarok

Year of Release:  2017
Director:  Taika Waititi
Screenplay:  Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost, based on the comic-book character Thor created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum. Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins
Running Time:  130 minutes
Genre:  Fantasy, science-fiction, action, adventure, superhero, comedy

Two years after the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), the Asgardian Thunder God Thor (Hemsworth) is hunting, unsuccessfully, for the powerful Infinity Stones, but is tormented by dreams of Ragnarok, the end of Asgard.  Returning home to Asgard, he finds his trickster half-brother Loki (Hiddleston) in charge and his father, Odin (Hopkins), missing.  With Loki's aid, Thor manages to track Odin down to Earth, where he reveals that he is dying and that his death will allow his first-born child, the Death Goddess Hela (Blanchett), to escape her imprisonment and seize control of Asgard. 

This is the third Thor movie, and the seventeenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the shared universe centered on movies based on Marvel Comics characters.  This film is very light in tone, and often very funny, playing more as a comedy than a straightforward action adventure superhero film.  The cast all seem to be enjoying themselves, Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston are both very good comic actors and they bounce off each other very well, Cate Blanchett goes full on panto villain as the evil Hela, and Jeff Goldblum is hilarious as the intergalactic warlord, who rules a planet where Thor and Loki find themselves trapped on.  To add to the fun, Mark Ruffalo reprises his rule as the Hulk , and Benedict Cumberbatch has a brief appearance as Doctor Strange.  The film manages to balance the humour with enough drama to give scenes some emotional heft if needed, and sometimes comedy makes drama all the more affecting. The film is definitely too long,and the humour doesn't always land, but this is still a fun and funny comedy adventure.

Chris Hemsworth in Thor: Ragnarok