FILMS

film roundup

KEITH UHLICH

Nightmare Alley

Nightmare Alley (Dir. Guillermo del Toro). Starring: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Rooney Mara. This remake of the 1947 Tyrone Power-starring noir set in the world of carnies and con artists is clearly a labor of love for cowriter-director Guillermo del Toro. Bradley Cooper plays Stanton Carlisle, a down-and-out drifter who learns the duplicitous methods of being a medium while hunkering down at a traveling sideshow. He falls for the sweet-natured Molly Cahill (Rooney Mara), then runs off with her to the big city where they reinvent themselves as high-society psychics. Eventually they catch the attention of the manipulative psychiatrist Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), who plots with Stanton to fleece millionaire Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins) out of a small fortune. But who is the joke really on? Del Toro has a good grip on the oppressive, tragedy-suffused mood of the piece and he revels in the eye-catchingly detailed production design of Tamara Deverell. Yet there’s some crucial bit of soul missing that makes this feel, in its way, like one of the P.T. Barnum-esque hustles it’s attempting to deconstruct. [R] HHH West Side Story (Dir. Steven Spielberg). Starring: Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Ariana DeBose. Several of the most thrilling sequences in the films of Steven Spielberg have been musical—think of the Busby Berkeley-esque opening of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or the transcendent juke-joint-to-church climax of The Color Purple. So it’s a delight to see him tackle a full-on song and dance movie, and of a truly storied property, at that. You know the basics: Two rival gangs, the white Jets vs. the Puerto Rican Sharks. A forbidden love story, riffing on Romeo and Juliet, between Tony (Ansel Elgort) and Maria (Rachel Zegler). Music by Leonard Bernstein. Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. All that plus a muchawarded, as well as divisive, 1961 movie adaptation by Robert Wise. Spielberg makes this version his own from frame one, with the pointed thematic help of screenwriter Tony Kushner (who sets the story against the backdrop of gentrifying 1957 NYC) and the visual aid of his great cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, whose camera whirls among the performers (Mike Faist’s Riff and Ariana DeBose’s Anita are MVPs) with its own dancer’s dexterity. [PG-13] HHHH1/2 France (Dir. Bruno Dumont). Starring: Léa Seydoux, Blanche Gardin, Benjamin Biolay. Down a shot every time Léa Seydoux weeps in Bruno Dumont’s France and you’ll be plastered within a half-hour. Though France de Meurs, the ambitious and fashionable reporter who Seydoux plays, is initially a steelier sort, tossing barbs at President Emmanuel Macron (via a clever integration of real-life archive footage into Dumont’s heightened fictional context) and smugly hosting an evening newshour that, in its various topical hysterias, wouldn’t be out of place on Fox. A chance accident with a young immigrant opens some new emotional reserves, though it would be simplistic to say they’re entirely compassionate ones. Empathy is just as ruthless a means to an end, and if you’re familiar with Dumont’s cinema, you know that his characters aren’t exactly the repentant sort. What they are, instead, are icons of ambiguity, their true motives cloaked, like France (character and country), by something provocatively inscrutable. [N/R] HHH1/2

The Matrix Resurrections (Dir. Lana Wachowski). Starring: Keanu Reeves, CarrieAnne Moss, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Don’t call it a reboot, it’s been here for years. The Matrix, that is—that virtual penal colony (the subject of a series of big-budget spectaculars made between 1999 and 2003) that uses humanity as an unwitting energy source for sentient machines. This exceedingly fun and achingly romantic fourth installment initially goes the meta route of films like Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, positing the story of sacrificial savior Neo (Keanu Reeves) and his immortal beloved Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) as a real-world work of art that has had a profound effect on society. In truth, it’s all just another version of the Matrix itself, a prison for Neo and Trinity, whose deaths in the third film are rendered moot, though the unfairness and cruelty of their “resurrections” resonate profoundly throughout as they both work hard to be reunited. This is a splashy film of serpentine ideas and earnest emotions, though director Lana Wachowski makes it much easier to embrace than to ridicule. [R] HHHH n

interview

A.D. AMOROSI

The Reimagining of BEST COAST

An interview with Bethany Cosentino

BETHANY COSENTINO AND BOBB Bruno have, for over a decade, put the best into Best Coast with its alarmingly lush harmonies, haunting lead vocals, a lonely but lively braid of interpersonal lyrics, and neatly arranged melodies ripe with the spirit of their beloved home base, Los Angeles. Something snapped, however, with its fourth studio album, Always Tomorrow, in February 2020. Rooted in Cosentino’s necessary

break from the world—of mental health issues, newfound sobriety, heartbreak—Always Tomorrow was Best Coast’s most intense album yet, with its greatest diversity in sound. More metallic. More rage. More wisdom.

Sadly, due to Covid, Best Coast didn’t have the opportunity to tour or hype Always Tomorrow. The album sat as a beautiful testament to the heights of what Best Coast songwriters Cosentino and Bruno could do when pushed to a newer edge and shadowy outlooks.

Now, in the era of Kanye West’s Donda where no new album is ever truly finished, evolving instead with whim and opportunity, Best Coast has just re-released and expanded Always Tomorrow into a deluxe version with new songs, old songs, covers, and head, finally, out on tour with a gig stop at Philly’s Union Transfer on January 29.

Same question I ask anyone returning to a touring situation after so long being away from it: how does it all feel?

I’m really excited. I mean, of course there is some trepidation, stress, and anxiety leading up to it. The world is a very different place now, and Covid is still with us. But, I think that there is a light and an energy that needs to be provided for people who choose to go to shows.

I MOVED TO NEW YORK AT 21 to go to college and stayed for like maybe a year. I REALIZED THAT I DIDN’T WANT TO BE IN NEW YORK or go to college. I WANTED TO GO HOME AND START A BAND.

That they need, we all need.

Yes. I feel as if, by this point, attendees need it all as much as we do. It is such a release and an energy exchange. I’m excited to get out to tour this record even though it is two years old by now.

Well, this is a very different time in your life than when you first released “Always Tomorrow,” and even more different than the circumstances immediately preceding its release. Upon the album’s release, you were honest, even blunt, in your discussion of getting sober and dealing with mental health issues. I also know that Trump’s presidency caused you grief. How does the message of “Always Tomorrow” change now that you’ve changed, life has changed, and politics have changed?

I think a huge takeaway from the whole experience is how much things can change in a year or even in a month. I feel as if in the time spent since the album came out—since Covid, and since our original tour for this got canceled and we had to come home—I feel as if I have expanded and evolved. When I listen to the new album now or read interviews and see what I had to share then, it’s all still me— just a different version of me. I think that, for a minute there at the beginning, I was sad and depressed. That was really hard for me. I was grieving the loss of making a record, working long and hard on it, and going on our first headlining tour in five years—it’s not a personal attack. It was a universal experience. But it took a lot not to let it swallow me whole. With time, I was able to see that I could be all sorts of people, be one person one month, then another person another month, and that is a very cool and very beautiful experience. Ultimately, this is all it means to be a conscious human being. We’re all constantly evolving, changing. And I don’t know that these changes and evolutions would have happened without the necessity of standing still because of the pandemic .

Touring, recording, doing interviews, and social media—the business of being an artist doesn’t allow for much personal headspace.

Right. With Covid’s quarantine, however, there was no choice for me other than to evaluate all of this stuff.

Considering what you just said, talk about the decision to re-release “Always Tomorrow,” and expand it with additional tracks and musical moments. With that, “Always Tomorrow” becomes more of a living, breathing organism and furthers its feelings. One thing that has come from the Covid experience for me, for artists in general, is

Bethany Cosentino lead singer and Bobb Bruno jam for fans at the Project Pabst Denver event on May 21, 2016 in Denver, Colorado. Photo credit: Thomas Cooper.

how to make things work. The album was two years old when we decided to tour in 2022. There simply isn’t the same spark as when you just finish putting together an album and go out to promote it. So, we thought on our toes. We didn’t want to record a new album yet. But we weren’t ready to let this one get

swept under the rug because of circumstances beyond our control. We didn’t want to forget it. So our label, Concord, is cool and asked us to consider a deluxe edition of Always Tomorrow. There are new songs written during the pandemic while we were in that period of personal revaluation. There are a few b-sides—songs we had recorded and released solely for Record Store Day—included in the new package. There’s a cover of Sheryl Crow’s “If it Makes You Happy,” that we recorded during a Sirius XM session; we like to do that song live. It’s stuff from pre-Covid, during Covid, post-Covid, and it all belongs together in a before and after fashion. band, up through Always Tomorrow, I would write all of the music, then I would send it to him, ask him to finish it off, or make it sound a certain way, give him lists of inspirations and references. During Always Tomorrow, I was struggling with writers’ block. So I asked for help to come up with music and have him

send it to me to write lyrics and more melodies. What happened at that moment he was sending me back all the thoughts in my brain and making them work—that’s what I

Sometimes IT CAN FEEL DISJOINTED playing a song AS A 35-YEAR-OLD woman that I initially wrote in my bedroom at age 22. But I’m NOT TRYING TO TAP SO HARD INTO WHO I WAS AT 22 or even 34. I DON’T FEEL A NEED TO REPLICATE that feeling.

Let’s go back to the start of Best Coast and bring it into the present: what similar spark from your band’s beginning exists betweenyou and Bobb still?

We have an undefinable connection that will always exist no matter what we do together. You can see that in the way we’ve always collaborated. At the beginning of the

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