Heading into the Thanksgiving weekend, you can celebrate with a horror comedy bearing the name of the holiday and the promise that there will "be no leftovers," or you can get an overstuffed "history" lesson on Napoleon from Ridley Scott.
'Thanksgiving'
Let's start with a new film to be thankful for.
In the 2007 film "Grindhouse," a fake trailer promised: "This holiday season prepare to have the stuffing scared out of you."
Sixteen years later, Eli Roth has finally delivered the actual film "Thanksgiving," and it’s a holiday horror treat. Christmas and Halloween have a slew of horror films set on their holidays, but Thanksgiving only has Roth's film and a $3,500 indie project shot in less than two weeks called "ThanksKilling." In that film, the killer is a homicidal, axe-welding turkey with it's memorable line, "Gobble, gobble, motherf—ker!" A line that was thought of before the script was even written. "ThanksKilling" was reportedly shot in 2006, a year before Roth's faux trailer debuted. I just needed to give "ThanksKilling" a little shoutout.
"Thanksgiving" is the third fake "Grindhouse" trailer to get a movie spinoff. The others being Robert Rodriguez's "Machete" and Jason Eisener's "Hobo With a Shotgun." All three have made the transition to the big screen with inspired success.
In Roth's case, he carefully recreates all the key moments in the trailer from the mascot turkey getting decapitated in the Thanksgiving parade to the cheerleader on the trampoline (although, I did prefer the trailer version of her demise). But while the events of the trailer are faithfully adhered to, Roth trades in the gritty '80s grindhouse visual style for something much slicker and more modern, which does make me a little sad.
But the brilliant addition Roth brings to the feature film is the backstory to the killing spree. He opens in Plymouth, Massachusetts with a Thanksgiving meal interrupted by the need to kick-off a Black Friday sale early at the local department store. An increasingly unruly horde pushes at a barricade held back by just a pair of overwhelmed security guards.
The scene quickly turns gruesome as greedy shoppers are incited to riot when they see the daughter of the store's owner and her high school friends getting early access.
The genius of the opening rampage is that there are no monsters or serial killers, just a mob of ordinary folks hopped-up on the rabid consumerism of Black Friday, and willing to trample and kill each other over the possibility of getting a waffle iron. For anyone who has watched real scenes of Black Friday mobs, you know the horror is real and well worth skewering with horrific humor.
But a year later, there IS a serial killer in town, and he's out to get revenge on those he deems guilty of causing the Black Friday mayhem. He chooses to wear the mask of local historical icon John Carver, the first mayor of the Plymouth Colony. As Roth has noted in interviews, when history hands you a name like that you have to use it for your slasher film.
I have to confess that I have not been a fan of anything Roth has done since his 2005 film "Hostel," so I was gleefully surprised by "Thanksgiving." He is a different director, and it is a refreshing revelation. He finds a vigor and satiric bite that’s been missing from his work for a long time, and that's something to be grateful for.
He designs clever, holiday-inspired kills and serves up a horror comedy to delight genre fans. But be aware, there's a lot of gore and the deaths are mostly punchlines rather than anything meant to elicit real emotion. I find this to be perfect holiday cheer, but I know it's not for everyone.
"Grindhouse" proves to be a gift that just keeps giving. Now if we can just a a movie from Edgar Wright’s fake trailer for "Don’t!" I will truly feel thankful.
'Napoleon'
And now for something completely different.
Ridley Scott has toyed with history before. In "1492: Conquest of Paradise" he tackled a sort of Christopher Columbus bio, and history plays a significant role in his films "The Last Duel" and "Kingdom of Heaven." But while Scott might have a visual flair for these period stories, he seems less able to connect us emotionally to his characters or narratives.
Based on Scott's recent public dismissal of French critics, the director seems to be channeling a bit of his main character's arrogance. In fact he's been channeling that vibe for awhile as his recent string of films (particularly "The Last Duel" and "House of Gucci") have deservedly drawn criticism. But Scott, still riding on some deserved laurels for his earlier work, has zero tolerance for complaints about his films.
His "Napoleon" actually starts off on a strong note. It opens with Napoleon (played with scowling gloom by Joaquin Phoenix) displaying his strategic acumen to turn a siege to the advantage of the French and displaying Scott's ability to stage action. The other highlight of the film is a strikingly shot battle on ice that captures the brutality of war but in a visually stylish manner.
But as the film progresses through its nearly three-hour run time, it never finds a balance between the epic and the intimate, and I walked away feeling like I have not gained any insights into Napoleon or what made him tick. And the film tries to cram so much history and battle into the film that it all becomes a blur. Granted, this period of French history is packed with betrayals, coups, political upheaval and more, so it is a genuine challenge.
As a teenager, I read a fascinating biography of Napoleon by Vincent Cronin that attempted to capture his complexity. It may have been a somewhat romanticized portrait, but it was compelling and provided fascinating insights and speculation into what might have driven Napoleon to his spectacular rise and then led to his equally spectacular fall. I had also heard rumors of a possible Napoleon film with Al Pacino, and that has always stuck in my memory as dream casting. So perhaps I came to Scott's film with expectations that he could never meet.
But Scott and Phoenix gave us a Napoleon that was almost a caricature in depicting his petulance and making height jokes. And I am not sure what's up with Phoenix as well as Leonardo DiCaprio (see his performance in "Killer of the Flower Moon") with their severely downturned mouths and almost monolithically dour demeanors. In "Napoleon," Scott even gives us scowling face-off between Phoenix's Napoleon and Rupert Everett's Duke of Wellington.
Scott's recent fondness for casting very American actors such as Phoenix, and in "The Last Duel" Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Adam Driver as very European characters seems problematic. Phoenix fares moderately better than the trio in "The Last Duel" but none of them seem well-suited to their roles. In Phoenix's case, I just could never believe him as a commander of vast armies and was never convinced of the love between him and the Empress Josephine.
Ian Holm has played Napoleon in a trio of very different projects. He's a footnote in Terry Gilliam's time-hopping "Time Bandits," he is defined by the women in his life in a British series "Napoleon and Love," and he is both Napoleon and his double in the wonderful "The Emperor's New Clothes." I would take any one of those performances as more enlightening and enjoyable to watch than Phoenix's.
One of the greatest films never made was Stanley Kubrick's planned Napoleon biopic. Kubrick's intensely detailed research in preparation for the film is chronicled in the book "Stanley Kubrick's 'Napoleon,'" which I highly recommend checking out if you can find a copy. Steven Spielberg is trying to recreate something based on Kubrick's plans. I'm not sure he's the right person for the job, but I would be curious to see what comes of it. I also recommend Abel Gance's silent film "Napoleon."
But I can't recommend Scott's "Napoleon." Despite occasional visual spectacle, it fails as history and as biography and even as just an entertaining piece of cinema.
