Academy Fight Songs

My thoughts on Christy, Die My Love, Nuremberg and Train Dreams

Bait & Treacle

After having found herself smack dab in the middle of the culture wars this past summer, Sydney Sweeney now finds herself on an entirely different battlefield with Christy, a film that checks off so many boxes on the Oscar bait checklist that it feels at times as if it had been generated in a lab specifically to win awards. The film tells the true story of Christy Martin, a young woman from a West Virginia mining family who discovered that she was good at boxing and, known as The Coal Miner’s Daughter, became the first prominent name to be associated with the sport of women’s boxing, even landing on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1996 after winning a widely seen fight on the undercard of a highly publicized Mike Tyson/Frank Bruno championship match. However, while succeeding on a professional level, her personal life was considerably more tumultuous. She was a lesbian, much to the disapproval of her mother (Merritt Weaver), and fears that the sports world won’t accept a lesbian female boxer, leading her to both marry her older manager, Jim Martin (Ben Foster) and to publicly taunt opponents about their sexuality, particularly chief rival Lisa Holewyne (Katy O’Brien). More troubling is that Jim proves to be a monster (which you might have picked up on once you saw who was playing him), not only emotionally and physically abusing his wife over the years but managing to convince Christy’s own family to take his side when she reaches out for help. Once the evidence of his lousiness becomes too much to bear, Christy makes plans to leave him at last, even reaching out to Lisa for support, which leads to a final confrontation that might be the reason that you have heard of her even if you have never followed the boxing game before.

The story of Christy Martin is undeniably intriguing and offers filmmakers any number of potentially interesting areas to explore, particularly in regard to the inner conflict that she must have felt in trying to convey a overly feminine presence (including lots of pink) within a sport considered at the time to be overly masculine while at the same time masking her own sexuality in order to get ahead. As a result, it is particularly disappointing to discover that director David Michod and co-writer Mirrah Foulkes have seemingly gone out of their way to present it according to the standard sports biopic playbook as she goes through her rise and fall—the film does shift gears in the final section as the tensions between Christy and Jim build to a sequence of hideous domestic violence but even those scenes have a whiff of the familiar to them. As for Sweeney, who is a much better actress than people sometimes give her credit for, she turns in a performance that is perfectly fine on the surface, both in and out of the ring, but which never quite convinces in the end. In every scene, you see her making an enormous effort to make it all work but but all you feel is the effort—there is never a moment when she truly settles into the character in a convincing manner. (This is especially evident in her scenes with O’Brien, who is so strong and believable in her appearances that you began to wonder how much more convincing it might have been if she had played the lead role.) Meanwhile, good actors like Foster and Weaver are stuck in one-note roles that they are unable to make into anything interesting and while the story does end on a triumphant note (since the real Christy Martin has been out hyping the film, that hardly falls under the aegis of a spoiler), this overlong rendition will most likely leave you shrugging in the end. That said, if you are in the mood for a film recounting the true story of a pioneer in the world of women’s boxing that is dramatically interesting and refuses to deploy the familiar narrative tropes, may I point you instead to seek out last year’s The Fire Inside, which told the story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields, who became the first woman to ever win a gold medal in Olympic women’s boxing in 2012, in a raw, surprising and undeniably authentic manner that puts the more conventional likes of Christy to shame

.Meanwhile, Die My Love finds Jennifer Lawrence going through a physical and psychological wringer that makes the one she endured in the bizarre misfire mother! look like a walk in the park by comparison. In it, she plays Grace, a writer and expecting mother who, as the film opens, is moving with her husband, Jackson (Robert Pattinson), to a remote home in Montana where his uncle lived and died in a particularly awkward manner and which is next door to the home occupied by his dementia-stricken father (Nick Nolte) and increasingly frazzled mother (Sissy Spacek). Although the plan is that she will work on a book during her alleged free time after the baby arrives, the reality is that she is plunged into a sever case of postpartum depression that is exacerbated by her drinking, the incessant crying of the baby and Jackson’s frequent work-related absences and bonehead moves like bringing a constantly yapping dog into the family without saying anything before hand. As time goes on, Grace’s tenuous grip of reality begins to slip even further as she begins to conjure up fantasies involving a mysterious motorcycle rider (Lakeith Stanfield) while at the same time indulging in moments of brutal self-harm while Jackson, who is more clueless than overtly rotten, despairs as to what to do regarding the wife that he still loves but no longer fully understands.

Based on the novel by Ariana Harwicz, the film was directed and co-written by Lynn Ramsay, a filmmaker who specializes in presenting viewers with intense mood pieces told firmly from the perspective of characters in the midst of deep psychological turmoil—sometimes to great effect, as in her powerful Movern Callar, and sometimes not, as in her bizarre and sadistic misfire We Need to Talk About Kevin. The impressionistic approach that she and co-writers Alice Birch and Enda Walsh utilize is not particularly subtle in any way—when it deploys an image that is meant to be symbolic, it makes damn sure that you know it—and viewers expecting a more straightforward drama may find it all to be a little too overheated and perplexing for their tastes. This approach does invigorate material that might have otherwise come across as mere soap opera, though there are points where the storytelling gets a little too muddled for its own good, particularly in a turn in the final section that tries to suggest that Grace’s issues with herself and Jackson were there long before she gave birth. And yet, while the film is certainly no walk in the park, it is definitely gripping throughout, as Ramsay slowly increases the tension throughout so that the mere sight of Grace pushing her baby in a stroller down a road is more authentically chilling than anything that I have seen in any straight-up horror movie released this year. As for the performance by Lawrence, it is a genuine stunner as she delivers the kind of high-wire acting that few actresses would even dare to attempt—Gena Rowlands’s legendary turn in A Woman Under the Influence is perhaps the closest analogue—as she somehow manages to find the right step every time as she runs the emotional gamut from tantalizing sexiness to raw anger to ironic humor to confusion as her mental state erodes (sometimes all in the context of the same scene) in a way that never feels like you are watching someone “acting.” Although in a less overtly showy role, Pattinson is also very impressive in a performance that finds him taking just as many bold risks as Lawrence and pulling them off as well. Die My Love may not be the kind of movie you want to relax with on a Saturday night but it is a powerful, raw and visceral look at a woman struggling to keep a hold of her sanity as the twin sensations of pleasure and pain threaten to overwhelm her from within and one that will not be easily forgotten after seeing it

.James Vanderbilt’s Nuremberg, on the other hand, is a far more straightforward drama based around one the most significant events of the 20th century, the Nuremberg trials held in the wake of WWII designed to hold imprisoned Nazi higher-ups accountable for their crimes against humanity, the biggest of which is none other than Hitler’s own second-in-command, Hermann Goring (Russell Crowe. . .yes, Russell Crowe). While Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon) tries to figure out a way of prosecuting a case of such magnitude with the eyes of the world squarely on him, even going so far as to essentially blackmailing the Pope in order to get a much-needed endorsement from the Catholic Church, ambitious army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) is brought in to keep tabs on the mental state of the defendants, primarily to ensure that they don’t commit suicide before going to court. After his first interactions with Goring, Kelley becomes convinced that he can somehow crack the question of what could possibly drive some human beings to do unthinkable acts and, if so, turn it into a best-selling book, leading to a series of scenes in which the two characters, both narcissists in their own respective ways, subtly try to outwit each other as the trial date looms ever closer.

Although the ads make it look like a serious and somber observation of perhaps the most famous and significant criminal trial in world history, one that indeed contains certain parallels with current-day events, it is clear right from the start that Vanderbilt really wants to provide viewers with an old-fashioned dramatic powerhouse, complete with rabble-rousing scenes and showy performances to help make the darker elements seem more palatable. Some of this does actually work, particularly the performance from Crowe, who does a good, if sometimes hammy, job of presenting Goring as a man with a certain degree of undeniable surface charm that only barely masks the combination of narcissism and malevolence that lies just beneath. Unfortunately, Malek is not nearly as convincing as Kelley, coming across as goofy and unsure throughout and leaving the Kelley-Goring conversations that make up the bulk of the film feeling like an acting school exercise between a fully prepared veteran and someone thrown into the mix at the last second. There are other elements that Vanderbilt has clearly added in an attempt to make things more palatable (such as a recurring bit involving Kelley performing magic tricks) that feel cheesy enough on their own but which come across as particularly appalling when the film, during the trial section, stops to present roughly five minutes of actual newsreel footage of the horrors found behind the walls of the concentration camps, a jolt of searing reality that ends up making the crowd-pleasing elements surrounding it seem even more hollow. As an examination of how a seemingly normal civilization could slide so quickly into fascism and a not-so-subtle reminder that it could all easily happen again, Nuremberg has an undeniably noble message to convey at its core. As a movie designed to deliver that message in an entertaining manner, though, it proves to be a bit of a misfire that too often drains the inherent drama of its subject in order to make it more multiplex-friendly and winds up doing it a disservice in the process

.Train Dreams is a film that is as visually ravishing as it is utterly inert from a dramatic perspective and boy, it is ever visually ravishing. Covering the period ranging from the 1890s to the late 1950s, the film tells the story of Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), a man who makes his living as a logger for a railroad company in the Pacific Northwest. This is a hard life, to be sure, but it is one that a loner like Robert, who was orphaned as an infant, seems oddly suited to do. Unexpectedly, he meets a woman named Gladys (Felicity Jones) who is as friendly and outgoing as he is close to the vest and the two soon fall in love, get married and have a daughter. In his own quiet way, Robert is overjoyed by this turn of events but it is tempered by the fact that his job requires him to leave the cabin that he and Gladys have built in the woods for their family and miss out on seeing his child grow up. Sadly, it doesn’t last and when an unthinkable tragedy occurs, Robert is left to deal with his feelings of grief and guilt—he believes that his inability to prevent the murder of a co-worker by a mob has somehow cursed his soul—as he tries to move on with his life in an ever-changing world.

In adapting Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella to the big screen, director Clint Bentley is trying to create a kind of intimate epic that juxtaposes soaring visuals, courtesy of cinematographer Adolpho Veloso, with a portrait of a solitary man trying to make sense of his life over the course of several decades. While the film is indeed gorgeous to look at in every scene, it never quite comes alive from a dramatic standpoint. Although Edgerton is quite good as Robert, channeling the man’s pain and confusion with just the occasional subtle gesture, the problem is that the character just is not particularly interesting and the incessant super-folksy voiceover, courtesy of Will Patton, that is constantly trying to point out his hidden depths only serves to underscore just how much of a blank he really is. Because of its combination of visual beauty and lack of a traditional narrative drive, the film will no doubt be compared to the works of Terrence Malick but Bentley’s attempts to copy Malick’s abstract approach never quite works and at times veers closer to being condescending than enlightening, especially in the final section. Although made with no small amount of ambition and undeniably beautiful to look at throughout (an element that will sadly be lost on viewers who will be catching it at home on Netflix), Train Dreams is ultimately a bit of a bore, a pseudo-profound examination of the human condition that never quite manages to connect on the kind of genuine emotional level with viewers that might have allowed it to work.