“Cruella” - A tale of two Emmas.

For years, Disney has been trying to recapture the magic of beloved classics, either by remaking them or attempting to reimagine them, and mostly failing. Alice in Wonderland, Dumbo, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Maleficent, and more. I get that people have enjoyed some of them, especially The Jungle Book, which completely ruined the ending of the story, but it’s only been successful in that they have made a ton of movies, not that people have truly loved the films. Don’t believe me? Sing the new song they added to the Beauty and the Beast remake. Nope, that’s from the original. So is that. Now you’re just embarrassing yourself.

When I learned that Cruella de Vil was getting her own live-action origin story film, my brain immediately went to Maleficent, a decidedly bad attempt at a villain origin story that tried to make someone whose name literally means evil into a misunderstood princess. Gross. The good news is Disney finally managed to get a live-action villain origin story right in Cruella.

(Mild SPOILERS ahead to talk about how Disney almost kept their losing streak alive.)

The movie definitely starts off on the wrong foot, with the same cliches as every other Disney film. Zero points if you guessed that it starts with a little girl named Estella…whose mom dies. Seriously, what is wrong with Disney? It’s supposed to be THE family-friendly company and they can’t get ten minutes into a film without killing off a parent or two. And to top it off, this initial chain of events sure stunk like Disney trying to turn another villain into a misunderstood princess. A villain whose alter ego not only means evil, but literally contains the words cruel and evil. Remember, the original Cruella wanted to murder ninety-nine puppies to make a coat. I promise - nobody wants to see Princess Estella.

And the way they kill Cruella’s mom off was a terrible scene…at first. The way the scene initially plays out is so unbelievable it almost made me turn off the film. My wife and I looked at each other like we had microwaved fish. The scene felt like Disney was so aware of its reputation for patri/matri-cide that it was trolling us. But, I am nothing if not a glutton for movie punishment, so I pressed on, fully expecting the film to devolve into a nostalgia-filled train wreck. And I am glad I did because I have never been so glad to be so wrong about a film.

The first act ends with young, now-orphaned Estella meeting a couple of London street urchins named Jasper and Horace. We jump ahead ten years thanks to a montage of their pickpockets and thefts, and the second act begins with Estella (Emma Stone) complaining that she is somewhat bored with their current lifestyle. Sensing this, Jasper gives her a birthday present - an employment acceptance letter at a high-end fashion store called Liberty that Estella has been obsessed with for years. You see, Estella fancies herself a fashion genius and just wants a chance to prove herself. All she has to do now that she has the job is prove her worth. The job is janitor, but that’s just a minor detail. After finally hitting the end of her toilet-scrubbing, floor-cleaning, garbage-dumping rope, she goes full Mannequin on a window display and the movie finally starts.

At the same time Estella’s display is discovered, in strolls the owner of Liberty, one Miranda Priestly. Whoopsie, I mean Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson). Much of the rest of the story plays out in such a way that it’s clear which movie the writers had just watched, but they do a good job of threading the needle between homage, plagiarism, and Prada.

The Baroness is what Miranda Priestly would have become if Miranda lacked a conscience. Yeah, the Baroness is that nasty. And Thompson owns the Baroness the way Meryl Streep owned Miranda. The Baroness is a delightful mix of cunning, viciousness, and heartlessness wrapped in a ball of wry humor of which only a few actors are capable. And Emma Thompson is one of them. It’s what made Hela and Loki so delightful and what Maleficent so clearly lacked. That mix of characteristics is what brings Cruella to full fruition and also what pushes Emma Stone to make Cruella just as memorable as the Baroness.

Having a great actor like Thompson around always pushes the rest of the cast to be better, but having Stone there too is like a rookie ball player filling in on an All-Star team. The two play off each other so well, each trying to out-villain the other. I particularly enjoyed the way Stone balanced what was almost two roles - Estella, who was just trying to make her mom proud, and Cruella, who was trying to burn the Baroness to the ground. With those two tossing a gem, the rest of the cast had no choice but to raise their game, so much so that Jasper (Joel Fry) and Horace (Paul Walter Hauser) almost managed to steal the show. Almost.

This Jasper and Horace were much better than their original, animated predecessors. Instead of clumsy, dopey oafs, they were three-dimensional characters that provided heart to balance out the villainy. And let’s not forget the Baroness’ valet, John, played by Mark Strong. I mean, is Mark Strong ever not good? Even as a secondary character in this film, Strong commands your attention when he is on screen. He’s just so very Mark Strong.

As for the rest of the production, there is plenty to praise beyond the acting and story. The costumes and makeup were exceptionally good, at times really capturing the essence of 1970’s London. The same can be said for the music, which was as perfectly chosen as in Guardians of the Galaxy. As for the story itself, I was very surprised when the film revisited Cruella’s mom’s death scene to explain why it initially came off as so unbelievable. Just like I was surprised the film didn’t pile on a bunch of forced call-backs to 101 Dalmatians for cheap nostalgia. Not that there aren’t call-backs, but they are subtle and clever. All of which is to say, I finally walked out of a Disney live-action retread without a foul taste in my mouth. Thank you, Emma. Thank you, Emma.

Rating: The first movie of the pandemic era in which I can say don’t ask for any money back, but you should still wear a mask when you go to the theater.

“1917” - Can you handle the truth?

If you are into war movies, there are two major ones from which to get your fix. By now, you probably already saw Midway and, depending on what city you live in, might have seen 1917 as well. If not, you are waiting with bated breath for January 10 to get here, which is when 1917 rolls out everywhere. And, I sympathize with you because Midway was not what one might describe as good. Rather, it is what one might describe as “definitely a movie,” or even “the opposite of how to make an interesting movie.”

War movies tend to be really good when the plot is narrowly focused on a specific event. For those of you who have seen neither Midway nor 1917 (or their associated previews), one is focused on a specific event and the other covers several events that take place over a significant amount of time. Based on title, you would assume Midway is the specific one. There was only one Battle of Midway during WWII, so the movie has to focus on that, right? Conversely, 1917 is an entire year of the Great War, in which at least three major battles were fought. Surely, the film will give us a look at the horrors of that year, including the Battle of Cambrai, which was the first time battle tanks were used on a massive scale. If you haven’t already guessed, the opposite is true of both films.

(Side note: Midway should have followed in Dunkirk’s footsteps, but chose to follow in Pearl Harbor’s footsteps. Even worse, Midway didn’t even have great special effects. But enough about Midway; that is not why you are here.)

If you have never seen pictures or heard first or second-hand descriptions of WWI battlefields, think of your worst nightmare, feed that nightmare into a meat grinder, then double it. What little we were taught about WWI in school probably included trench warfare, covered the deployment of new weapons like airplanes, machine guns, and tanks, and briefly described the space between opposing trenches (no-man’s land) as a mess of barbed wire and land mines and thousands of flying bullets and artillery shells. Maybe, just maybe, you had a teacher who also mentioned the bodies that littered no-man’s land, but probably only in the context of a lot of men dying whenever one side would order its men to charge the other side’s line. They never got into the facts that retrieving bodies from no-man’s land was next to impossible, the massive use of modern artillery and chemical weapons left a maelstrom of craters filled with people/poison soup, or that many of those suicidal charges involved horse-mounted cavalry. The point is do not eat any food while watching 1917.

That is not wood floating in the river next to him.

1917 corrects the error of American history classes by showing us that nightmare. British Lance Corporals Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) are ordered to make their way nine miles forward to warn a 1600-man brigade that is unwittingly marching into a trap. Like them, our immediate question is how they make it a dozen steps before being mowed down. Don’t worry, their commanding officer (Colin Firth) assures them. Aerial surveillance shows the Germans have retreated to lines further back and that the duo can cross no-man’s land safely. The surveillance is also how they know about the trap. Pshaw (or bollocks), we say in unison with Lieutenant Leslie (Andrew Scott). Leslie tells them where they can cross the barbed wire (directions which include “cross through at the horse”), while simultaneously assuring them they will die. Oh, and don’t fall into the craters because we know they are half-filled with water and nobody knows how deep they are. This is half of the recipe for the movie-long tension that begins the moment the men peek their heads above the rim of their trench.

You want to go out there on purpose?

The other half, as my Ruthless colleague John has discussed, is the lack of film cuts throughout the film. Director Sam Mendes wanted to build the tension and realism by putting the audience into the trenches, no-man’s land, and gutted towns with Schofield and Blake and removing cuts is a great way of doing that. You probably have never consciously noticed that a cut allows you take let your breath out or blink your eyes, artificially releasing a bit of tension and momentarily pulling you out from whatever film you are watching. About five minutes into 1917, I realized there had not been a cut yet (for reference, the average length of a shot is 2.5 seconds) and that my eyes were really, really dry. I did my best to look for them, but it was really difficult once the meat grinder was on full display. There are plenty of clever ways to hide cuts, but they just weren’t there. What was there were Black and Schofield crawling through mud, barbed wire, and craters filled with rancid liquids, rats, and body parts and rotting faces glaring at them for having the audacity to not also be dead. Oh, and the horses the dead rode in on.

Cut me a break already.

Since Mendes did everything possible to make the film appear as one long cut, the tension almost never breaks. Like the two corporals, we are expecting bullets to fly at any moment. For one of them to step on a land mine. For an artillery shell to explode. For Germans to be around every corner. Even worse, and just like in life, nothing happens when you expect it to, instead happening out of sync. If I chewed my fingernails when I got nervous, I would have nothing left below the elbows.

Like Saving Private Ryan and other great war films, 1917 works because the war is the setting instead of the plot. We can experience the war by observing it with Blake and Schofield. For this film and for our benefit, they channel the experience of the entire Allied army.  As they navigate the obstacles of the war to accomplish their mission, not only do we see all of those things we learned about in school (tanks, trenches, biplanes, artillery, death), but we see all of the things no one told us about. The simple plot of two men risking their lives in a suicide mission for the greater good is a far better story than trying to cram half of WWII into a two-hour Midway, I mean movie.

Rating: Do not ask for any money back and don’t forget to unclench.