The Ten Commandments (1923)
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Screenwriter: Jeanie Macpherson
Starring: Theodore Roberts, Leatrice Joy, Richard Dix, Rod LaRocque, Nita Naldi

It is impossible to watch the first 45 minutes of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 silent epic The Ten Commandments without your mouth hanging open in awe. The sheer artistry on display is astounding, from the art direction, to the cinematography, to the technical effects. Helmed by one of cinema’s most successful and influential pioneer directors, The Ten Commandments offers the very best of what movies can be, and 100 years later stands as a testament to the innovation and technical achievement of the early days of moving pictures, a reminder of the shoulders that artists today stand upon. According to The Film Foundation, it was Paramount’s highest-grossing film for 25 years. While DeMille’s 1956 remake of the film starring Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner is probably the version best remembered by audiences, thanks in part to ABC’s yearly tradition of airing the film the week before Easter, the original 1923 version is just as spectacular and worthy of praise and appreciation. At times bewildering and heavy-handed, The Ten Commandments is a sprawling morality tale that often loses the plot, but nevertheless offers us a fascinating glimpse into the primitive days of filmmaking, as well as the ideals and expectations of post-war America.

The Ten Commandments begins with a title card that explains how the modern world considered the laws of God to be “old fashioned,” but following the bloodshed of the first world war, that same world, now bitter and broken by death and destruction, “cries for a way out.” What follows is a 45 minute prologue retelling the Exodus from the first testament of the Bible, in which Moses (Theodore Roberts) leads thousands of enslaved Israelis from Egypt. But when the Pharaoh’s son cannot be revived by his Gods, Ramses (Charles De Roche) chases after them. Moses parts the Red Sea, goes to the Mount to receive the ten commandments and inflicts the wrath of God upon the Israelis when he returns, because they have forsaken God while Moses was away and are now worshipping a golden ram. The sinners pay for their disobedience; they are struck down by lightening.

Fans of the 1956 version might be a little bit confused about what happens next.

As the frame fades to black, the film jumps ahead to modern day, where the devoutly religious Martha McTavish (Edythe Chapman) is telling the story of “The Ten Commandments” to her two sons, John (Richard Dix) and Dan (Rod La Rocque). While John is a lowly carpenter and content to remain so, Dan has big plans for his future; plans that do not include respecting the teachings of God, much to the horror of his mother. Dan and John soon fall in love with the same girl, Mary (Leatrice Joy), which sparks a chain of events that lead to a deadly conclusion.

This last half of the film is a morality play about the dangers of falling from God’s grace, which the film never lets you forget. The dialog is so over the top it borders on self-parody. It’s way too on the nose and beats you over the head with its message. It’s hard not to laugh when Martha, horrified that Mary and Dan are listening to music and dancing on Sunday, dramatically smashes the record against her giant bible. As Shawn Hall pointed out in The Everyday Cinephile, “The choices of the characters are dictated by the morals the filmmakers are trying to teach the audience, not their inner motivations and desires.” Modern audiences, who are overwhelming less religiously minded than they were 100 years ago, might have a difficult time swallowing the film’s black and white morality, but this part of the film didn’t fare very well with audiences at the time of its release either, who saw it as a downgrade from the breadth and scope of the prologue. According the The Film Foundation, Variety at the time called it simply “ordinary.”

There’s a reason why, in DeMille’s 1956 remake, the Exodus and parting of the red sea serves as the climax of the story. It’s the most exciting part. Starting the 1923 version with this sequence, DeMille set his audience up for disappointment. There’s just no matching its insane spectacle and technical prowess. According to The Film Foundation, the sets for the prologue were built by 500 carpenters and 600 painters and decorators. The sets, including a 120 feet tall temple, were massive. This was a hugely expensive production, and it still looks expensive after all these years. It’s also worth noting that several scenes in the prologue were in color, including the parting of the red sea and the fire used to hold back the Egyptian chariot riders. According to The Musuem of Modern Art, DeMille used several techniques for adding color during the silent era including tinting, spot-coloring and techicolor. If anything, The Ten Commandments dispels one of the pervasive myths about older films: that they were all in black and white, and that color did not happen until decades later. These scenes thankfully remain in tact, thanks to restoration done by the George Eastman Museum, which used DeMille’s personal 35mm copy as one of the sources.

It would be unfair to say that the second half of the film, which overstays its welcome, isn’t entertaining and engaging, despite how seemingly mundane it is. There are several sequences of note, worthy of the same praise given to those within the prologue. The destruction of the church near the end of the film is stunning, as is the scene in which Mary takes the elevator up to top of the Church’s roof. This part of The Ten Commandments is also elevated by its lead performances, especially Dix’s. He is so deeply charming and handsome as John; his unbuttoned vest and buttoned up shirt, sleeves rolled up to the forearms, could probably make anyone see the light and convert. Several actors in The Ten Commandments eventually made the leap to talkies, and Dix notably became a big-box office draw for RKO in the 1930s and was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in 1931’s Cimarron. The performances are nuanced and natural, which might come as a shock to modern audiences who might still hold false beliefs about how acting in silent films was generally over the top and goofy. While it’s true that screen acting was still in its infancy in 1923, and some of it was over the top, a lot changed between when the first pictures were released and the filming of The Ten Commandments. In the early 1900s, the craft of screen acting evolved at lightning speed, becoming more naturalistic, and it’s wonderful to see a glimpse of that evolution in The Ten Commandments.

Will Hays was officially named head of the newly formed Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America in 1922, and his primary job was to quell dissent among Hollywood’s critics when it came to censorship and the increasing moral ambiguity of its stars. In the early days of filmmaking, various censorship boards in the United States would cut anything and everything that did not meet societal standards of decency and propriety from films, so it is worth noting that the Paramount did not cut a single second of The Ten Commandments (per The House of Fradkin-stein). This is astonishing considering there is a frame in which Miram, Moses’ sister, gets her breast fondled in full view of the camera. It’s interesting that, while on the surface, The Ten Commandments is preoccupied with telling us a moral tale in showing the downfall of Dan McTavish, the film also shows a lot of decidedly ungodly things including murder, adultery, and greed in great detail. As author and professor William D. Romanowski pointed out, “A devout Episcopalian and Bible literalist, DeMille was also a consummate Hollywood showman with a keen sense of audience desires.” Known for baiting the censors, one has to wonder if DeMille was trying to have his cake and eat it too.

It is a miracle that The Ten Commandments survived past the early 1900s. As Eva Gordon explained in her biography of forgotten silent film star Theda Bara, no one really cared about preserving silent films (the earliest of which had become obsolete far before talkies arrived) until it was too late. By the 1930s, the fragile nitrate film stock was already disintegrating or bursting into flames. Fox Films, which later became 20th Century Fox, lost all of their silent films in a vault fire. But The Ten Commandments is one of the lucky ones. It prevails as one of the Hollywood’s most dazzling epics. Even today, it surpasses some modern blockbusters in technical and artistic achievement. The runtime may be bloated and the second half suffers because of its one-dimensional characters and uninspiring narrative, but The Ten Commandments remains one of the best spectacles in Hollywood history, a film that paved the way for a generation of epic storytelling to come.

Score: 21/24

Recommended for you: Read More Retrospective Reviews

Wonka (2023)
Director: Paul King
Screenwriters: Simon Farnaby, Paul King
Starring: Timothee Chalamet, Calah Lane, Keegan-Michael Key, Paterson Joseph, Olivia Colman, Matt Lucas, Matthew Baynton, Tom Davis, Hugh Grant

Willy Wonka is an enigma. In Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), the original adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1964 novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” we don’t learn much about him, other than his desire to find an heir to his candy empire, as well as the cruel delight he takes in teaching naughty children a lesson. Wonka is charming and a little unhinged, paranoid from all of the years he has spent locked away in his factory, making sure no one gets their hands on the secret to his out-of-this-world sweets. With a devilish smile and a playful yet devious twinkle in his eye, actor Gene Wilder infuses Wonka with dimension, but we never dig too deep. He’s a nut that we never quite crack, and he works as a character because of that. There’s a reason why the original novel is called “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” after all – at the end of the day, it’s Charlie’s journey. Wilder’s performance hints at the layers inside of Wonka that we don’t need to unpeel, but nevertheless know are there. Wonka, the spiritual prequel to the 1971 musical classic, helmed by Paddington director Paul King, does unpeel those layers, but what’s found underneath is a deeply disappointing origin story that lacks the magic and edge that the original (and even Tim Burton’s 2005 remake) has in spades. Touted as a fun-for-the-whole family Christmas classic in the making, Wonka simply doesn’t have enough sparkle to ever hope to achieve that distinction.

Despite its tagline, which insists we will find out how “Willy became Wonka,” Timothée Chalamet’s version of the famous candy maker and magician doesn’t actually become anything. He just kind of already is.

The film begins with Willy, bright-eyed and bursting with optimism, atop a ship mast, where he begins his “I Want” song, “Hatful of Dreams”. Willy arrives in an unnamed city, fresh off the boat, ready to share his chocolate with the world, as his mother (Sally Hawkins) always hoped he would. Willy is earnest and determined, living on nothing but a dream. But the Galeries Gourmet is not what Willy initially imagined it would be. Instead of spreading his creations, he faces opposition and sabotage from three greedy chocolate makers, including Arthur Slugworth (Paterson Joseph), who will soon become his arch-nemesis. Willy then gets tricked into indentured servitude because he cannot read and fails to read the small print on his contract with Mrs. Scrubitt, played by Olivia Colman doing her best over the top Madame Thénardier impression. Aided by Noodle (Calah Lane), a fellow indentured servant and orphan who becomes Willy’s assistant, as well as the rest of the workers, Wonka bids to outsmart the trio and earn the freedom of himself and his friends.

Timothée Chalamet might be the only saving grace in the film, contrary to early assumptions that he may have been miscast. At times he’s charming, funny and endearing, but his performance is constantly in flux and dependent on the material and direction he’s given. When his jokes don’t land, his performance falls flat, even though he is clearly committed to the bit. Thankfully, he doesn’t try to do an impression of Gene Wilder, but he also doesn’t make the character enough of his own to really stand out. This isn’t his fault; he isn’t given much to work with.

All of the obstacles Willy encounters are external. Whether it’s Mrs. Scrubitt’s dishonest business practices, the antics of the greedy chocolatiers, or Hugh Grant’s Oompa-Loompa hijinks, the plot is always happening to Willy. He is almost entirely a reactionary character, and this is a problem in a movie that is supposed to be an origin story, the story of how he became who he is. It would have been nice if he actively participated in the narrative…

Willy’s desire to share his inventions with the world just as his mother hoped is sweet and admirable, but it simply isn’t enough to drive what we see. The writers, King and Paddington 2 co-writer Simon Farnaby (who also appears in Wonka as Basil), were backed into a corner considering Willy Wonka is a recluse by the time we meet him in the original movie. Telling that story would certainly be more interesting, but not very uplifting, so the filmmakers sidestep it entirely. As a result, there doesn’t seem to be any connection between Chalamet’s Wonka and Wilder’s.

Demystifying a character that works the best when we don’t know everything about him is a non-starter (as proven in Star Wars spin-off Solo), but the filmmakers didn’t give much thought to the supporting characters either. Lane and Chalamet work well together, and their friendship is a bright spot in the movie, but most of the supporting characters are so thinly drawn they barely register as real people. As for Hugh Grant’s Lofty, an Oompa Loompa who has been stealing Willy’s candy because he was excommunicated from Oompa Land until he can get back all of the chocolate that Willy stole, he’s surprisingly in very little of the film. The motion capture is jarring and unconvincing, but at least Grant’s contempt for the role, which he has expressed in several recent interviews, doesn’t show on screen.

Wonka, like the original film adaptation, is a musical, but not a very good one. The songs, written by Neil Hannon, King, Farnaby, and Joby Talbot, are unremarkable and lack passion, which is a shame considering Hannon’s exceptional work with The Divine Comedy. The songs in Wonka, especially Willy’s “Hatful of Dreams,” pale in comparison to those written by Howard Ashman, the songwriting genius behind the iconic tunes of The Little Mermaid (1989) and Beauty and the Beast (1991). By comparison, “Hatful of Dreams” lacks interiority or reflection. Perhaps the biggest faux pas in this regard is how Willy’s desire to sell chocolates in the hopes of reconnecting with the spirit of his late mother is barely mentioned. Songs in musicals should, in theory, take place when characters are so full of emotion that words no longer feel enough. And then, they must dance when singing doesn’t feel enough. But nothing drives the songs in this movie and they don’t feel needed. They are boring and directionless. Chalamet’s voice is fine, if a little weak and thin in places, but it’s worth noting that his best performance is when he sings “Pure Imagination”, a song not originally written for this film.

Wonka also strips away any of the melancholy or dark comedy found both in the 1971 movie and Roald Dahl’s overall work. The 1971 film feels a lot like “Alice in Wonderland” in that it is a dreamlike and slightly menacing descent into a magical world, but Wonka smooths all those edges out. As a result, the movie is sickly sweet and above all, nice. Which is ironic, because while the filmmakers were busy adding uplifting lyrics to “Pure Imagination” and simplifying the orchestrations, themes, and social commentaries of the 1971 film, they also made time to make several offensive and outdated fat jokes, aimed at Keegan Michael Key’s Chief of Police, who is dressed in a ridiculous fat suit and gets fatter and fatter the more he indulges in the sweets the greedy chocolate makers use to bribe him with. Using fatness as a shorthand for gluttony and greed, and having an actor who is not fat perform fatness, is hurtful and mean-spirited. It’s hard to believe such an antiquated trope is included in a film made in 2023 – especially one made about the wonderful taste of sweet treats – and it sours the viewing experience. For all of the niceness this movie tries desperately to exude, it makes sure to keep one of the only things from the original film that actually needed updating.

If Wonka is trying to say something, it’s hard to know what that something is. The film plays with themes of oppression, poverty, and greed, but doesn’t do much with them. It would be a losing battle to assume that Western filmmaking would trust its young audience enough to sprinkle in some adult themes, but it is equally weird to mention them in passing and not engage with them. Believing in your dreams and sharing those dreams with others should feel like magic, but the film doesn’t allow us to know these characters enough to genuinely care about them or their dreams.

The sets also leave something to be desired. When Wonka first unveils his factory in the original film, it’s a technicolor dream, calling to mind the reveal of the land of Oz in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. It is bright and colorful and a little surreal. Wonka feels like a step down in comparison, and the filmmakers’ decision to set a good chunk of the film in the Galeries Gourtmet makes the world of Wonka feel like it’s just floating in space surrounded by nothing. It is small and claustrophobic.

Prequels bait us with the promise that we will get to see some of our most beloved characters become the people we love and remember from our childhoods. In Wonka, Willy may be younger and brighter and less mad than he will soon become, but if you are counting on the film to show you how that happens, you will be very disappointed. Instead, Wonka is a barely passable movie musical that is so sugary it ends up choking on its own sweetness.

Score: 12/24

Recommended for you: ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ (1971) Earned a Spot in Joseph Wade’s 10 Best Films of All Time

Little Women (1933)
Director: George Cukor
Screenwriters: Sarah Y. Mason, Victor Heerman
Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Paul Lukas, Edna May Oliver, Douglass Montgomery, Jean Parker, Frances Dee

“Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott, first published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869, has been adapted for the screen seven times over the last 100 years. In 1933, following two silent films in 1917 and 1918, George Cukor, who would later go on to direct such classics as The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, and 1954’s A Star is Born, directed the first sound adaptation starring Katharine Hepburn. Cukor’s overly sentimental version of the novel was just what Depression-era audiences needed during a period marked by uncertainty and poverty. The film was a critical hit as well, and was nominated for three Academy Awards, winning Best Adapted Screenplay. Hinging on Hepburn’s superb performance, Little Women takes Alcott’s novel about four sisters coming of age during and after the American Civil War and remakes it for a Depression-era audience nostalgic for family values and desperate to relive a simpler time.

Little Women follows the March sisters – Jo (Katherine Hepburn), Amy (Joan Bennett), Meg (Frances Dee) and Beth (Jean Parker) – as they make the transition from adolescence to adulthood, against the backdrop of the Civil War. With their father away fighting for the North, the March sisters do their best to help their Mother (Spring Byington), who they affectionally call Marmee, keep the house in order. They all have their own hopes and dreams: Amy wants to become a famous painter, Meg longs to find love and marry, Beth yearns to stay right where she is and play her piano, and Jo dreams of traveling and writing great tales of romance and adventure. Together, they experience first love, marriage, and eventually tragedy.

All of the screen adaptations of “Little Women” offer a window into the time they were made. Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 adaptation, for instance, put a strong emphasis on Jo’s writing and her search her independence during a time when women weren’t really allowed to be much more than wives and mothers. Greta Gerwig’s Little Women deconstructed the narrative, commenting on the very act of telling stories and how they help us to immortalize those we love. 1933’s Little Women is interesting because it doesn’t deconstruct the story as much as it twists it to fit the ideals of a country ravaged by The Great Depression, which began in 1929 and eventually affected the global economy. It threatened jobs and livelihoods, and it forced people out onto the streets. Because of this, Little Women is dripping with sweetness, with Cukor putting a strong emphasis on family values and domesticity. The Civil War is nothing more than a set piece, rarely mentioned in great detail, so that the March sisters’ trials and tribulations can be a stand in for the struggles of those living through current times.

It is also worth mentioning that the film was made only a year before the Hays Code began to be strictly enforced. Several Hollywood scandals, including the rape and murder of a Virginia Rapp by silent film actor Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and the still unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor, as well as the increasing moral panic over sexually suggestive themes in movies, led to the creation of the code in 1930 by studios desperate to get various religious groups and the government off its back. Given how tame and conservative it is, it’s not hard to see how Little Women might have been a breath of fresh air for certain audiences.

The script is pretty sparse and it speeds through plot points breezily, never stopping to really consider the consequences of any of them. There aren’t really any consquences in the film at all, just things that happen and then we quickly move on. The film doesn’t dwell on unpleaseantness very long, or at all, even when there is a major death towards the end of the film. Because of this, the March sisters – save for Jo – are all interchangeable and never really get a chance to shine on their own. Meg’s courtship and eventual marriage to Laurie’s (Douglass Montgomery) tutor Mr. Brooks (John Lodge) is sidelined, and Amy’s trip to Europe and her marriage to Laurie happen almost completely off screen.

The only character that truly gets the spotlight is Jo and it’s hard to complain when she’s being played by Katharine Hepburn, whose own outspokenness and firery personality mirror that of Jo’s. One can’t help but to think of Hepburn’s own defiance of Hollywood and society at large when she’s playing Jo, particularly her habit of wearing trousers before it was “okay” for women to do so. But modern audiences might be taken aback by Hepburn’s portrayal of Jo because she doesn’t resemble the version of Jo seen in later adaptations. Both Winona Ryder and Saoirse Ronan, who played Jo in the 1994 version and the 2019 version, respectively, exhibit a kind of passion and wit that just isn’t in Hepburn’s portrayal. Because these versions go to great lengths to showcase Jo’s stubbornness and her anger, her refusal to conform to society’s expectations, they make Hepburn’s Jo feel watered down, her fire extinguished. Even Hepburn’s own voice, so distinctive and loud, is softer and meeker in Little Women.

This is, of course, not Hepburn’s fault. The story doesn’t allow for her to really let go, to emotionally revel in any kind of emotion that isn’t happy and grateful and content. Meg is going to marry Mr. Brooks? That’s inconvient, but it turns out fine. Amy is going to Europe with Aunt March instead of Jo? That’s fine too, afterall, Amy deserves it more. Beth dies? Well, it’s sad, but she’s looking down on them and smiling from heaven, so that’s fine too. Every time Jo encounters an obstactle, a moment that should move the story along and change her in some way, she simply accepts what’s happening without much care. The movie seems to be saying, very loudly, everything is okay. It’s fine. It’ll be fine.

Little Women may not strike at the hearts of modern audiences the way it did with audiences during the turmoil of the 1930s. It may feel too simple, too clean. Too okay. For those who desire conflict and darkness and pain, this movie offers none of that. But for others, those who may need an umbrella during a sun shower, or a hand to hold when theirs is empty, 1933’s Little Women might be exactly what they’ve been looking for.

Score: 20/24

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2023)
Director: Francis: Lawrence
Screenwriter: Michael Lesslie, Michael Arndt
Starring: Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Hunter Schafer, Josh Andres Rivera, Peter Dinklage, Jason Schwartzman, Viola Davis

Everyone loves a good origin story. Whether that origin story is worth telling is a different matter entirely.

When The Hunger Games was released more than a decade ago, its massive success (both with fans and at the box office) opened the floodgates for countless other young adult dystopian adaptations. We got The Mortal Instruments, I Am Number Four, Ender’s Game, Divergent, The Fifth Wave, and The Maze Runner, all of which failed to garner the same praise as The Hunger Games had. Though this trend didn’t make it out of the mid-2010s alive, The Hunger Games series has continued to endure thanks to the quality and consistency of the performances, writing, directing, and production design across all four films. Its themes of war, rebellion, oppression, and the power of love, are more timely than ever.

It was inevitable that Hollywood would eventually circle back to The Hunger Games, especially considering the new trend that has emerged in recent years: nostalgia. In the years since The Hunger Games series ended, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Ghostbusters have all been resurrected to varying degrees of success, each new entry seemingly struggling to justify its reason to exist. But The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes somehow manages to escape the same fate. Based on the 2020 prequel novel of the same name by “The Hunger Games” author Suzanne Collins, the film stands on its own, reigniting the same spark that made the original films so popular, without ever using those films as a crutch.

In Songbirds and Snakes, we return to the world of Panem 64 years before Katniss Everdeen stepped into the arena. The country is struggling to rebuild following the war, the dark days are barely behind them. The Hunger Games is in its 10th year, but Head Game Maker Dr. Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis) is struggling to figure out how to get people to keep watching her sickening reality show. Amid this, a young Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), years before he will become the powerful and cruel dictator we know him to be, is desperate to save his family from financial ruin. Though his father helped to create The Hunger Games, his suspicious death left the family penniless. Coriolanus lives in a constant state of possible eviction with his grandma’am (Fionnula Flanagan) and older cousin Tigris (Hunter Schafer), who will go on to become a stylist for the games and later an ally to Katniss in the resistance against The Capitol.

At the academy, Coriolanus is informed that there will be one more test before graduation: seniors must become mentors in the upcoming games. “Your job is to make them into spectacles, not survivors,” Dean Highbottom (Peter Dinklage) tells them. Coriolanus ends up being paired with Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), a fiery tribute from District 12 and member of the Covey, a traveling musician troupe. Lucy Gray doesn’t have much in the way of fighting skills, but she is a performer and the arena becomes her stage. She also has a habit of slicing snakes on people that have wronged her. When Coriolanus and Lucy Gray form an unexpected connection, he ends up risking everything to make sure she makes it out of the games alive, but the threat of rebellion in the districts and Coriolanus’ ambition begin to tear them apart.

Songsbirds and Snakes works for a couple of different reasons, chief among them being the fact that almost the entire production team behind The Hunger Games returned to make it. Francis Lawrence, who took over for The Hunger Games director Gary Ross with Catching Fire (2013) and stayed until the end of the series (2015), returned to direct, along with producer Nina Jacobson. Returning production designer Phillip Messina and cinematographer Jo Willem manage to recreate the look of the original series to ensure that it feels as though no time had passed between the final instalment and this prequel, while still giving the film its own visual flair. While The Hunger Games is not tame by any means, the luxury and gloss of The Capitol’s state of the art technology gives everything a glossy sheen. In Songbirds and Snakes, everything is primitive and wild: the arena is a crumbling concrete dome, there is no late night talk show, no fancy training center or tribute living quarters, everything feels rough and unpolished and ten times as dangerous. The color pallet, although reminiscent of the original films, is decidedly darker. The production and costume designers took obvious inspiration from the 1940s, and particularly Nazi Germany, especially in regards to the battle rifles used. While The Hunger Games used analogue technology as a jumping off point for its futuristic designs, Songbirds and Snakes takes that to another level. It’s easy to see how this Panem will eventually becomes that one, decades later. The film is one of those rare big-budget spectacles that actually looks as expensive as it is.

The Hunger Games succeeded in part because the novels were adapted with care, the filmmakers making sure to keep important details and characters and moments that made the story work in the first place. The narrative wasn’t tossed into a blender and then thrown up on screen. Suzanne Collins’ rich world building remained in tact throughout the four original films, and the same goes for Songbirds and Snakes. Every film in the original series is nearly 1 to 1 to its novel counterparts. Fans eager for another faithful adaptation will not be disappointed. Songbirds and Snakes stays almost entirely true to the spirit of the novel.

Despite the pressure of being the first entry in a widely popular franchise in nearly decade, Songbirds and Snakes is not trying to replicate the story beats of The Hunger Games. Suzanne Collins crafted an intriguing origin story for her main villain, and that is partially responsible for this, but the filmmakers can also take credit as they didn’t feel the need to replicate moments from the original series or reference characters and events that haven’t happened yet (in the timeline of their in-film world). The closest they get to a wink and a nod is when Lucy Gray tells Coriolanus that the plant she’s holding is Katniss. Of course, those looking to have a little bit of the original series injected in their veins will not be disappointed either. Composer James Newton Howard knows exactly when to employ his Mockingjay theme. The structure of the film is also different and not just a carbon copy of the previous films, which almost always ended in the arena or in some type of explosive battle. Songbirds and Snakes takes the opposite approach. The first half of the movie is spent preparing for and executing the games, with the latter half dedicated to the unravelling of Coriolanus and Lucy’s relationship. Although, the movie does lose some steam once the games are over.

As far performances go, Songbirds and Snakes has a strong main cast that helps elevate the material and convey the complex inner lives of our characters even when it’s not necessarily found on the page. In addition to an impeccable American accent and a really good blond wig, relatively unknown English actor Tom Blyth manages to step into the shoes previously worn by the prolific Donald Sutherland with ease, although he doesn’t quite have Sutherland’s flair for the dramatic. But he’s just as charismatic to watch, and although he makes the character his own, it is not hard to believe that he is the younger version of a character we already know. He has a similar face and a similar voice, but there’s a hint of humanity in him that he has all but abandoned when we see him in The Hunger Games. In Songbirds and Snakes, there’s a vulnerability to him, but there’s also a darkness lurking just below the surface and Blyth balances that very well. Rachel Zegler is perfectly cast as Lucy Gray, brimming with charm and confidence. It should be no surprise that Zegler has a fantastic voice, thanks to her screen debut as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. Josh Andres Rivera is an absolute scene stealer as Sejanus Plinth, classmate of Coriolanus whose sympathy for the rebel cause becomes his ultimate downfall, and Hunter Schafer, who burst onto the scene as Jules on the HBO series “Euphoria”, is enchanting as Snow’s cousin Tigris, although her talent does feel wasted on such a small part. Jason Schwartzman (Asteroid City) is absolutely hilarious as Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman, first television host of the games and presumed relative of Caesar Flickerman, who was played by Stanley Tucci in the original. His one liners in the midst of children killing each other highlights just how crass and and out of touch the people in The Capitol are. His performance never feels forced or over the top, as Tucci’s sometimes did.

All in all, Songbirds and Snakes is a worthy entry into The Hunger Games canon, offering a rich and intriguing peek into the past. It’s not as emotionally satisfying as the original series, but with only one film as opposed to four, that’s a difficult height to reach. Still, in an industry overrun with remakes, prequels, sequels, and reboots, Songbirds and Snakes understands how capturing the magic of a series so many already love is easy, you just have to tell a really good story.

Score: 22/24

Bottoms (2023)
Director: Emma Seligman
Screenwriters: Emma Seligman, Rachel Sennott
Starring: Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri, Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, Miles Fowler, Marshawn Lynch

If Not Another Teen Movie and Heathers had a baby, it would no doubt be Bottoms, the hilariously violent 2023 teen sex comedy from director Emma Seligman.

Starring Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott, the latter of whom co-wrote the script and last worked with Seligman on her 2020 feature debut Shiva Baby, Bottoms follows Edebiri and Sennott as lesbian losers Josie and PJ whose status as “ugly, gay and untalented” has knocked them to the very bottom of the social food chain. Even worse, Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittney (Kaia Gerber), the two cheerleaders they’re obsessively in love with, barely acknowledge their existence. When a rumor starts that Josie beat up Isabell’s quarter-back boyfriend, Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine), PJ takes their newfound badass reputation as an excuse to start a self-defense “fight club” in the hopes that Brittney and Isabel will join and finally love them back because, as PJ points out, “That’s basically the point of feminism.”

The most enjoyable thing about Bottoms is its commitment to being completely nonsensical. The world of Bottoms doesn’t resemble anything like planet Earth. It’s an alternate reality where kids beat the shit out of each other at pep rallies, swords appear out of nowhere, and teachers are almost non-existent, save for Mr. G (Marshawn Lynch), who writes this on the chalkboard: ‘Who invented feminism? A. Gloria Steinem B. a man C. another woman.’ At one point, when PJ and Josie are in class, there’s a football player in a cage, out of focus and in the corner of the room, and not only is it not explained, no one even comments on it. It’s not even clear what year the film is set. The only time a cell phone appears on screen, the person holding it is also holding a phone book.

The fact that Bottoms is set in this bizarre space, this kind of heightened reality and camp that feels nothing and everything like being in high school, is one of the film’s strengths. It isn’t bogged down by at-the-moment references to TikTok that would have dated the film before it even came out. It operates on its own completely absurd logic that makes even the most far-fetched plot elements work. The film also calls back to Y2K and early 2000s fashion, which is currently back in style, with Eunice Jera Lee’s costume design creating a look that feels both current and reminiscent at the same time. While the film has been touted as firmly planted in Gen Z culture, Bottoms looks and feels more like raunchy, over-the-top comedies like Bring It On than a true depiction of adolescent life in 2023.

Bottoms can be painfully relatable though, like when the members of the fight club, who are all women, sit around and talk about being sexually assaulted with the same kind of mundane boredom you’d associate with recounting what you had for dinner. Small-town America’s very real obsession with high school football is actual life and death that culminates in a bloody showdown made all the more incredible with the help of Charli XCX and Leo Birenberg’s 80s-style synth score. The film also has some truly gratifying needle drops, like Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated,” which will have elder millennials everywhere frothing at the mouth.

Bottoms is also stacked with a likable, hilarious cast led by Sennott and Edebiri, whose real-life friendship allows them to riff off of each other endlessly and with ease. Both Sennott and Edebiri, the latter of whom broke into the mainstream in the Hulu original series ‘The Bear’, have proven themselves to be rising stars, and Bottoms is a showcase of their evolving talents. Ruby Cruz, Nicholas Galitzine, and Marshawn Lynch are all strong supporting players, but it’s Havana Rose Liu who is the real scene stealer. Liu is both hilarious and endearing.

Bottoms is a truly laugh-out-loud rollercoaster ride from start to finish that already feels like a classic. It delights in riffing off teen sex comedies of the past, while also being unapologetically queer and current. Bottoms joins other genre classics like American Pie, Superbad, and more recent entries like Blockers, as a memorable satire about surviving high school that packs a serious, bloody punch.

Score: 23/24

Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023)
Director: Emma Tammi
Screenwriters: Scott Cawthon, Seth Cuddeback, Emma Tammi
Starring: Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Mary Stuart Masterson, Matthew Lillard

Five Nights at Freddy’s has had quite the opening weekend. According to Forbes, the family-friendly horror-comedy based on the popular survival horror video game series of the same name has set the record for highest opening day sales of any video game adaptation ever. With a domestic box office of $78million, it is also the biggest horror debut of 2023, outperforming movies from more recognizable franchises like Scream VI, which grossed just over $44million in its opening weekend, and Saw X ($18.3million). For a video game series that spans 13 games and over two dozen books, with countless hours of YouTube videos dedicated to explaining the still expanding lore, it’s not hard to see why audiences have responded so strongly. Passionate fans will no doubt get a kick out of seeing the video game come to life on the big screen, collecting all of those Easter eggs like their lives depend on it, but if you strip all of that away and take the film for what it is, Five Nights of Freddy’s fails in translating to the screen what made the video game so unnerving and popular in the first place.

With its convoluted, confusing plot and uneven tone, the film fails in striking that perfect balance between horror and comedy and camp that made recent releases like M3GAN so successful and refreshing.

In the film, Josh Hutcherson plays a version of the main character from the first game, Mike Schmidt, whom the filmmakers attempt to humanize by giving him a very unnecessary backstory. His younger brother, Garrett, was kidnapped when they were children and Mike has struggled with that loss ever since. He spends most of his time popping sleeping pills that induce lucid dreams of the day his brother was taken, convinced they hold the key to figuring out what happened to him. Things go from bad to worse when Mike gets into an altercation with a customer at his mall security job and is in danger of losing custody of his younger sister Abbey (Piper Rubio) to his estranged Aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson).

Out of options, Mike seeks help from a very suspicious career counselor (Matthew Lillard) who offers him a night security job at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, an abandoned family fun restaurant that shut down in the 1980s after five children mysteriously disappeared. The job is simple: stay vigilant and keep people out. But Mike soon learns that the giant animatronic animals that inhabit the vacant building come alive at night. In the game, the player must keep watch over the security cameras, careful not to miss when something moves, and they must decide when to use the lights and close the doors, knowing full well that their power supply is limited. It’s scary, and the game uses that fear to get the player to panic and to use too much power. The player only breathes a sigh of relief when the clock strikes 6 a.m. But in the film, Mike just… sleeps through most of the nights. He barely watches the security cameras, barely pays even the slightest bit of attention to his surroundings. It’s this indifference that makes the film such a slog to get through. The stakes could not be lower. Five Nights uses analog equipment as set dressing, a nod to the games, without stopping to figure out how that technology could be used to unsettle its audience.

The film doesn’t even seem that interested in the animatronics themselves, which should be its selling point. They’re rarely used to scare us. And, because we’re not frightened of them, seeing them on screen becomes less and less impactful as the film goes on. Instead, the Five Nights at Freddy’s chooses to focus on Mike and his family drama, which takes up the entire first act of the movie. Mike’s need to uncover the mystery of his little brother’s disappearance and his desire to keep custody of his sister are two narrative threads that don’t fit together and it often feels like Hutcherson is in an entirely different movie. He tries in vain to give Mike some depth, but with such a weak script his efforts don’t make that much of a difference.

Five Nights at Freddy’s might delight fans of the video game series who like when movies reference things for two hours straight, but it will probably be confusing to casual fans or those who’ve never played the games. The movie seems to assume that the entire audience is made up a rabid fans because the filmmakers don’t even bother to delve into the horrifying history of the restaurant itself or the children who disappeared. The movie doesn’t set things up because it assumes you’ve done your homework. But it’s hard to understand why they wouldn’t take advantage of the nostalgic 1980s setting, with the pinball machines and wacky colors. Instead, the movie opens with a security guard being murdered by the animatronics, which serves no purpose other than being a glorified cameo for Youtuber Markiplier, which the creator ultimately couldn’t film due to scheduling conflicts. The sequence is still in the film though, so poor Elizabeth Lial is tasked with trying to explain the creepy history of Freddy’s halfway through the movie via the clunkiest of dialog.

Five Nights at Freddy’s is a movie that fails to do much of anything. It isn’t scary. It isn’t funny. And it isn’t campy. Instead of letting go and giving in to the absurdity of the premise, the filmmakers took themselves entirely too seriously and failed to capture what was so special about the games. The nods and references to the video game series that started it all might be enough to please some long-time players, but fan service can only get you so far.

Score: 8/24

Remakes get a bad reputation, but they can sometimes be a chance to breathe new life into outdated, tired material. They may even be an opportunity to say something that wasn’t said before, to offer a new perspective, to build on the foundations of the original. Films like The Thing (1982) and Scarface (1983) are examples of this in action.

On the other hand, remakes sometimes feel like repeats – a mere reiteration of what we’ve already seen. The 2013 remake of the 1976 horror classic Carrie, both based on Stephen King’s debut novel of the same name, belongs to the latter group. While the 1976 version is still horrifying and spellbinding more than 40 years later, the 2013 remake offers little in the way of innovation and creativity. It retraces every step the original already took, sleepwalking to its conclusion, never stopping to come up with anything new or noteworthy. We’ll discuss all of this and more in this edition of Original vs Remake.

Stephen King’s 1974 debut novel “Carrie” changed his life. Though it wasn’t considered a bestseller at the time, “Carrie” sold well enough for King to quit his teaching job and focus full-time on writing. It was enough to launch his career and revitalize the horror genre, bringing it out of the shadows and into mainstream success. The 1976 film adaptation of the novel, directed by Brian De Palma and starring Sissy Spacek in the title role, did a similar thing for audiences. The film was a widespread commercial and critical success, with Spacek and her on-screen mother Piper Laurie both receiving Academy Award nominations for their performances. Carrie remains one of the best Stephen King adaptations of all time.

The original 1976 film spawned several more iterations from an ill-received 1999 sequel to a 2002 made-for-television movie, and even a musical (originally staged in 1988). “Carrie” wasn’t adapted again until 2013. The film was directed by Kimberly Peirce, with Chloë Grace Moretz taking over the title role and Julianne Moore cast as her devout mother.

Both films revolve around a teenage girl named Carrie White, whose sheltered and deeply religious upbringing by her mother, Margaret, leads to intense bullying at school and a complete ignorance of the world around her, as well as her own body. When Carrie gets her first period at school, and is convinced she is dying because she doesn’t know what it is, all of the girls make fun of her and humiliate her. Soon, Carrie discovers that a power inside of her has awakened, and as that telekinetic power grows, Carrie begins to come out of her shell.

Of course, we all know how that ends. Prom. Pigs blood. Total destruction. While the story may be essentially the same across both films, they each deal with the source material in vastly different ways when it comes to writing, directing, and performance.

The original 1976 film is atmospheric and unnerving, aided by a truly terrifying score composed by Pino Donaggio, a frequent collaborator of director Brian De Palma. The film is hazy and colorful, the prom dripping in glitter and stars, Carrie’s home cloaked in shadow and covered in Catholic imagery. There isn’t any gore and there’s practically no bloodshed at all – aside from the obvious. Because blood is symbolic, it represents Carrie’s awakening and her ultimate destruction, it is used to excess only twice: when Carrie gets her period and when Carrie is drenched in pig’s blood as a prank by cruel Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen) and her boyfriend, Billy Nolan (John Travolta). In its restraint, it is striking and shocking. In contrast, the 2013 Carrie leaves little to the imagination. Carrie’s destruction of the gym is filled with blood and gore, but it’s not very effective. It shows more, and to a horror enthusiast who enjoys a good death the explicit carnage might be a welcomed addition. Chris gets a particularly gruesome death, with her face smashing through the windshield of her car, but the scene is shot in such a way that it does little to inspire fear or disgust. Carrie does destroy more of the town, as she does in the novel, but the 1976 version’s choice to have her destroy only the school – the center of adolescent life – holds more weight, it means more.

Of course, the original 1976 film has the distinction of being directed by Brian De Palma, a master of suspense and style, whose decades-long career includes gems like the aforementioned Scarface, Phantom of the Paradise, and Body Double. Carrie is elevated beyond its script, which is unremarkable but competent, due to De Palma’s distinct visual prowess. His use of split screen and split dioptre gives Carrie a distinct visual style. De Palma’s ability to create suspense is also what makes Carrie so breathtaking to watch – knowing the bucket of blood is hanging there, just waiting for it to fall and praying that it doesn’t; screaming at the screen for Sue (Amy Irving) to get there in time to stop it. Even the way the locker room scene is shot in slow motion, the way it is sensual and carefree, and then, suddenly, blood begins to drip between Carrie’s legs – it feels like a punch to the gut.

Peirce, known for her 1999 debut Boys Don’t Cry, doesn’t seem to have the same visual flair as De Palma and the 2013 Carrie suffers because of it. It doesn’t have a consistent vision, which might not be completely the director’s fault. The film underwent reshoots, and the script (originally written by Roberto Augirre-Sacasa, creator of CW’s ‘Riverdale’), was re-written by Lawrence D. Cohen who wrote the 1976 version. Having Cohen do rewrites essentially turned the film into a bargain brand version of De Palma’s, with Cohen reusing whole scenes and chunks of dialog, including the insult, “Carrie White eats shit,” which no teenager in 2013 would ever say. The elements that were added, such as Margaret White having a job, are few and far between, and the only attempt at modernizing the story is when Chris takes a video of Carrie in the locker room and posts it online.

The 2013 adaptation of Carrie falls short when it comes to performances as well. Portia Doubleday and Gabriella Wilde are fine, if one-dimensional and boring as Chris and Sue respectively. Ansel Elgort, in his film debut, is a perfectly OK Tommy Ross, but Alex Russel certainly doesn’t have the on-screen charisma of Travolta, making Billy Nolan essentially a noncharacter. None of that would really matter though if Chloë Grace Moretz stuck the landing as Carrie. Unfortunately, the former child star, known for her roles in Kick-Ass and Let Me In, falls flat too. There is something about Moretz that makes her utterly unbelievable as a girl who has been bullied her whole life and abused by a religious bigot. Sure, she keeps her head down and she wears frumpy clothes and her hair is frizzy, but none of that is enough to convince us that Moretz is the character she is trying desperately to be. When Carrie begins her destruction of the gym, Moretz’s body movements are stiff and awkward. You’re never that scared of her, and being scared of her is supposed to be the whole point.

Sissy Spacek on the other hand, is utterly terrifying. Spacek is able to tap into Carrie’s naivety, her loneliness, but also her strength and power. Once that blood falls on her, she transforms in the blink of an eye. Her eyes are piercing and unblinking – completely devoid of emotion. That scene, that moment, is still one of the most horrifying things ever put to screen. While Moretz is always doing too much, Spacek knows that the true terror is in doing almost nothing at all. A simple head turn and the doors swing closed. A wave of her hand and the gym explodes into flames. In her stillness, Spacek is formidable.

It’s not a surprise that the 1976 adaptation of Carrie is superior to the 2013 adaptation in every aspect. From the production design to the cinematography and everything in between, De Palma crafted a horror masterpiece that still holds up today. The 2013 Carrie failed simply because it tried to mimic the success of a movie that was already made, only without any of its heart. By doing so, instead of going back to the source material and finding inspiration in King’s original novel and updating that material for a modern audience, the filmmakers ended up making something that is, frankly, a total waste of time.

My parents nurtured my love, especially my mother whose knowledge of old movie stars seemed limitless. I started going to see movies in theaters around four years old when I saw Toy Story 2. My parents took me to see everything from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones to the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films. Nothing – not even an R rating – stopped me from watching a movie I wanted to see, and my parents quickly learned that parental controls on the TV were futile. When I was younger, my favorite movies were epic adventure movies from the late 90s and early 2000s. I went through an unfortunate Russell Crowe phase that involved repeated watches of Gladiator and Master and Commander. As I got older, I found my niche in literary adaptations, off-beat indies and the beautiful violence of Jane Campion.

In this list, you’ll find just a few of the movies that made me who I am. From fairy tales and Jane Austen to epic romances and animated classics. They are movies I watched during the formative years of my life, movies that influenced the kind of person I grew up to be. They’re movies I could watch a million times – and trust me, I have – and never, ever get bored. The movies on this list remind me of why I fell in love in the first place.

I don’t know if these are the best movies ever made, but they certainly made me. These are the 10 Best Films of all Time.

Follow me on X (Twitter) – @ManicMezzo

10. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

“We are what they grow beyond. That is the burden of all masters.”

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Review

Star Wars has been a part of my life for a long time – for as long as I can remember. My fourth birthday was Star Wars-themed and my godmother dressed up as Darth Vader for the occasion, much to my horror. I was obviously thrilled when The Force Awakens was announced, but I left the theater feeling empty. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why it bothered me so much. It was just missing something.

The Last Jedi has divided fans and critics for years, but for me the film is the only recent Star Wars film or television show that has made me feel something. That has made me remember why I even liked Star Wars to begin with. Rian Johnson made a film that didn’t solely rely on nostalgia, a film that wasn’t so heavily, painfully self-referential. It was trying to pave the way for the future of the franchise, not just hide in its past. The Last Jedi doesn’t do it perfectly, but I admire the effort. I admire the risk it took.

I also really love Mark Hamill’s performance in this film. I think it’s one of the best performances of his career. He was famously unhappy with Luke’s arc in this movie, and as someone who’s played his character for decades his initial feelings are understandable. But he didn’t let them affect his performance. He really gave it his all and it shows. It’s such a beautiful send-off for him and for Luke. I will always take this movie and his performance over the robotic, deepfake Luke of ‘The Mandalorian’. I will always love The Last Jedi because it gave me something real.

I’ll never get over my disappointment with how the sequel trilogy ended, but The Last Jedi will always be a reminder to me of what we could have had.

Recommended for you: Star Wars Live-Action Movies Ranked

9. Ever After (1998)

“A bird may love a fish, Signore, but where would they live?”

“Then I shall just have to build you wings!”

Ever After, starring Drew Barrymore, is a retelling of “Cinderella”, set in 16th-century France and featuring actual historical figures like King Francis and Leonardo da Vinci. It’s the kind of film you watch when you’re sad and you need something to believe in. It’s lush, romantic and funny. Ever After is on this list because it’s a love story and those have always been my favorite.

I grew up during the early 2000s when the ‘not like other girls trope’ was running rampant in media. I remember being ashamed that my favorite stories were love stories, and that I shouldn’t want to explore them. After all, girls were made for more than love and I felt like I should want more for myself.

Luckily, I grew out of that phase and now I revel, without shame, in all things romance. Ever After holds a special place in my heart because it has everything I could ever want in that department and I think it’s one of the best fairy tale adaptations of all time. There’s a sense of innate justice in Ever After, that good things happen to good people and bad people eventually get what’s coming to them, which makes me cling to this movie. Real life isn’t like this, real life is messy and unfair. But with Ever After, I can leave the real world for a bit and spend some time in a fairy tale.

The Age of Innocence (1993)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenwriters: Jay Cook, Martin Scorsese
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder

Martin Scorsese is a prolific filmmaker, known for making movies infused with violence and passion, filled with characters who live outside of the law and the rules of society. From classic gangster pictures like Goodfellas to movies about corruption like The Departed, to the violence of Taxi Driver and the unrestrained wealth, privilege and power in The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese has made a career out of exploring the extremes of human nature, the catharsis of explosion. In a lot of ways, The Age of Innocence, released in 1993, is an outlier in Scorsese’s filmography. It is not about acting with abandon, but about restraint, discretion and control. It is not about the mean, dirty streets of New York and the bowels of society, but instead about high society, about people trapped in very beautiful, gilded cages, desperate to scream, yet unable to. In other ways, The Age of Innocence is, in Scorsese’s own words, the most violent movie he has ever made.

Adapted from Edith Wharton’s classic novel of the same name, The Age of Innocence stars Daniel Day Lewis as Newland Archer, an affluent lawyer caught between his impending marriage to the respectable, mild-mannered May Welland (Winona Ryder) and his desire for her cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer). Set in the 1870s, during a time in the United States of great economic growth, industrialization, and a growing divide between the new world and the old often referred to as the Gilded Age, The Age of Innocence explores a world of rituals and class. The film was a great success for Scorsese, proof of his emotional intelligence and range as a filmmaker. It received numerous accolades, including the Oscar for Best Costume Design and the BAFTA for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Miriam Margolyes. In Scorsese’s hands, The Age of Innocence is a masterclass in visual cinema, more than your typical costume drama, one of the best page-to-screen adaptations of all time.

Like the rose that blooms in the center of the screen in the beginning of the film, The Age of Innocence is beautiful – until it draws blood. Scorsese uses the color red throughout the movie as a kind of shorthand for romance, desire, and destruction. It’s bold and searing, much like Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948). Red velvet drapes hang from the walls, signifying that a dinner party and a blood bath are essentially the same thing to these wealthy society folk. The color also plays a substantial role in the costuming as well. When Ellen makes her social comeback at a party hosted by the extremely wealthy Van der Luydens (Alexis Smith and Michael Gough), she does so in a form fitting red silk dress. Ellen is the embodiment of the desires Newland tries to ignore. She is unconventional, trying desperately to rebel against a rigid, unforgiving society. In contrast, May is typically dressed in white, highlighting her innocence and her unblemished reputation.

But there is something sinister lurking beneath May’s naïve, soft-spoken exterior. Winona Ryder’s performance is deeply layered and probably one of the most complex in the film, which no doubt contributed to her earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. There is something hidden behind May’s wide-eyed, girlish face, something knowing and intuitive. While Newland continuously describes May as being young and impressionable, Ryder is subtly steering us in a different direction. What she says is not what she means, and Ryder is able to capture that dissonance effortlessly – where her character ends up in the end is the most satisfying bate and switch. Day-Lewis and Pfeiffer are deliciously tragic in their mutual pining for one another. Their obvious romance, their painful longing, puts every modern onscreen pairing to shame. It would be easy to see May and Ellen as mere archetypes rather than real people, and they are to a certain extent, but Ryder and Pfeiffer imbue them with vibrant inner lives.

Though this love triangle is at the center of the drama of The Age of Innocence, Martin Scorsese often moves his camera away from them in favor of the things that surround them. Particular attention is paid to the food, the silverware, the artwork, the furniture – the utter wealth and decadence. Appearances are everything. Things are more important than people. It’s a striking contrast to the laidback, sneakers and hoodies depiction of the uber rich of today. A certain level of spectacle is to be expected in period dramas, but Scorsese uses this spectacle to say something, and that subtext is everything.

Gilded Age New York is a character in the film, and the way Scorsese makes it come alive speaks to his understanding of the novel. The Age of Innocence is an internal story, it is told through stolen glances and near touches and almost kisses. The voice of the narrator is important, and Scorsese opts to keep that narration, beautifully delivered by silver screen star Joanne Woodward. Whole chunks of text are taken right from the novel, and it is delightful because Edith Wharton’s writing is spectacular. It would be a crime to do away with the original text or change it in any substantial way, and Scorsese knows this; The Age of Innocence is quite literally the novel come to life.

Adaptations are tricky and it isn’t easy to figure out how to translate something to screen. Do you keep the story exactly as it is? Is there any fun in that? Or do you move the pieces around so much that you make something completely different and new? There doesn’t seem to be one correct answer, but in this instance, Scorsese and writer Jay Cocks opted to change virtually nothing and it works.

In a 1993 interview with Charlie Rose, director Scorsese described the violence of The Age of Innocence as refined emotional and psychological violence. It is just as powerful and deadly as a bullet from a gun, and because Scorsese understands that, the film is incredibly affecting and devastating. It is a romantic tragedy brought to life by one of the best filmmakers of all time and, thirty years after its initial release, deserves a spot among his most accomplished works.

Score: 24/24

Recommended for you: Where to Start with Martin Scorsese

In addition to his live-action roles, Reeves has lent his voice to numerous animated works, including Toy Story 4, and even appeared as himself in The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run. In the 1990s, Reeves also played bass guitar in the alternative rock band Dogstar.

Despite his impressive body of work, a common refrain from critics and audiences repeated throughout the years is that Reeves is actually a bad actor, who can’t play anybody but himself. That he’s stiff and awkward and even dumb. Though Reeves has certainly missed the mark a few times in his career, most notably with his role as Jonathan Harker in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, to dismiss his entire filmography would be a waste of an incredibly talented and versatile actor who has proven himself time and time again.

So where are you supposed to start with an actor like Keanu Reeves? We at The Film Magazine have put together a shortlist of three particularly special films that best showcase Reeves’ strengths and his range as an actor, as well as his creative evolution over the years. This is Where to Start with Keanu Reeves.

1. My Own Private Idaho (1991)

Released the same year as Point Break, which laid the groundwork for Reeves’ eventual ascent to action stardom, Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho introduced Keanu Reeves to adult audiences. The film, partly based upon Shakespeare’s plays about Henry IV and Henry V, stars the late River Phoenix as Mike Waters, a street hustler who suffers from narcolepsy, searching for love and purpose in Portland, Oregon. Reeves plays his best friend Scott Favor, a fellow street hustler and prodigal son of Portland’s mayor, who accompanies Waters on a cross-country road trip in search of his mother.

In My Own Private Idaho, Reeves is cocky, arrogant, elusive, and endlessly charming. He rides a motorcycle, wears a leather jacket. He doesn’t have to try to be cool – he just is. He’s the kind of guy who will never love you as much as you love him, the kind of guy you’d follow around forever if you could. While Phoenix gives an incredibly vulnerable and heartbreaking performance, it’s worth noting that Reeves is the one who has the burden of spouting Shakespeare, something he does really well. It’s over the top and theatrical, and it’s in those moments that you can really see Reeves’ versatility.

His onscreen partnership with Phoenix, someone he was close friends with in real life, adds to the authenticity of both their performances. Acting is, fundamentally, about reacting, and that’s something Reeves does particularly well. This is perhaps best showcased in the campfire scene in which Mike confesses his love for Scott. It’s a really vulnerable scene and relies almost entirely on Reeves’ ability to listen to his scene partner. You can see the wheels in his mind turning, the way his eyes, alight with fire, watch Mike intently. Reeves doesn’t have to say anything. You know how he feels just by looking at him.

My Own Private Idaho is a really wonderful entry in Reeves’s early career and it’s a great choice if you’re looking for something quiet, poignant, and haunting.

2. Speed (1994)

Keanu Reeves was not the first choice to play bomb disposal specialist Jack Tavern in Jan de Bont’s Speed (1994). According to Esquire, the studio first asked Stephen Baldwin of all people. Fox even went through several other actors before finally settling on Reeves, who hadn’t yet become a household name. It would be six years before he’d star in the groundbreaking dystopian sci-fi The Matrix, and his then-recent performances in the costume dramas Dracula and Much Ado About Nothing weren’t well received by critics. But Speed was a turning point for Reeves. Aside from becoming a huge summer blockbuster, the film made him into an action superstar and a bona fide leading man.

With Speed, Keanu Reeves changed what it meant to be a Hollywood action star. “Unlike the impossibly ripped celluloid supermen of the ‘80s like Schwarzenegger and Stallone, Reeves looked human, vulnerable, and life-size,” wrote Chris Nashawaty.

Jack Tavern is badass and heroic and it’s really easy to see why Sandra Bullock’s Annie falls in love with him by the end. His presence is comforting and steady, and he’s never patronizing even when Annie struggles to maintain control of a bus that will blow up if it goes below 50 miles per hour. Speed is as slick and action-packed as it is romantic, and Reeves sells every moment of it.

3. John Wick (2014)

If Speed was a turning point for the career of Keanu Reeves, 2014’s John Wick was his unofficial comeback.

More than a decade after Matrix: Revolutions was released, and following a string of critical and commercial disappointments, Reeves reclaimed his rightful place in Hollywood, reminding us all of what a true movie star looks like.

In the first instalment of this sleek action series, Reeves stars as the titular assassin, who, after a peaceful retirement, is dragged back into the underworld of crime after a group of Russian gangsters, led by Losef Tarasov (Alfie Allen), kill his dog and steal his car. Motivated by revenge and still grieving the death of his wife, Wick embarks on a pulse-pounding, action-packed quest for retribution. The film is often credited with revitalizing the genre and has since grown into an immensely successful franchise.

John Wick is a man of few words. He speaks with his body. The action in the film feels grounded and weighty. When John is wounded, when his gun jams, when he takes a life, we feel it. And it’s all because of how much control Reeves has over his physicality, how in tune he is with his body. Even as the series goes on and action sequences become more elaborate with each new chapter, Reeves makes it all feel real.

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As an actor, Keanu Reeves can transform seamlessly into everything from lovable idiot to cocky playboy, action hero to romantic leading man with a simple raise of an eyebrow or the turn of a phrase. He is vulnerable and human. He’s a generous scene partner, always listening and always watching. More than anything, Keanu Reeves represents the best of what cinema can be, and even though his skills are often overlooked he nevertheless continues to captivate. Critic Angelica Bastien said it best, “… Keanu is more powerful than actors who rely on physical transformation as shorthand for depth, because he taps into something much more primal and elusive: the truth.”