Rupert Friend Archives | Deep Focus Review

Jurassic World Rebirth

Brian Eggert — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 23:28:48 +0000

Listen to the audio version of this review. Jurassic World Rebirth further proves that Steven Spielberg invented the visual language of modern blockbusters, and other filmmakers merely speak in it. Rather than create something new, director Gareth Edwards spends 134 minutes paying homage to Spielberg and his 1993 original, Jurassic Park. But more than just the masterful first film based on Michael Crichton’s book, or even its now-six sequels, Edwards also nods to Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) in a recapitulation of iconic Hollywood imagery. No slouch himself, Edwards—the helmer of Monsters (2010), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), and The Creator (2023)—devises almost nothing new here. What seems new stems from recycled ideas that never really worked in the first place, such as genetically altered mutant dinosaurs. Rather than take the time to stretch his talent, Edwards falls back on the same reverence for Spielberg that directors Colin Trevorrow and J.A. Bayona displayed in Jurassic World (2015), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), and Jurassic World Dominion (2022). And yet, even though Edwards’ visual nods to Spielberg and Rebirth‘s story autocannibalize the Jurassic series, it manages to be more purely entertaining than the last […]

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The Phoenician Scheme

Brian Eggert — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 16:38:09 +0000

Note: This review of Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme was originally posted on May 24, 2025. The film arrives in theaters in wide release on June 6, 2025. Wes Anderson’s last few films have operated similarly to his latest, The Phoenician Scheme. They hum along in his predictably fastidious, parodiable manner, deploying both random asides and narrative-driven scenes with the same attention to detail. And oh, what detail. Anderson and his team of designers in the production, costume, and graphic departments give every corner of the frame equal attention, ornamenting everything so meticulously that almost nothing stands out—the cinematic equivalent of Jackson Pollock’s all-over painting method or panoramic compositions in photography. Anderson and cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel present tableaus that flatten the screen image, directing our attention nowhere and thus everywhere. The narrative almost feels secondary to Anderson’s consideration of the image’s totality, brimming with fascinating touches and layered meanings. This quality enriches and hinders The Phoenician Scheme, an amiable if not-quite-essential entry in Anderson’s filmography. Consider the credits sequence, which features a shot looking down from above—recalling Brian De Palma’s early scene in The Untouchables (1987), where Al Capone gives an interview while receiving a shave. In Anderson’s film, set in the […]

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Companion

Brian Eggert — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 05:34:36 +0000

Reviewing Companion presents a minor dilemma. Do I write about the twisty experience beyond the first fifteen minutes and explore its themes, even if that means diving into spoiler territory? Or do I play the game, write around its ideas, and say nothing in this review? Since the most fascinating aspects of writer-director Drew Hancock’s darkly comic sci-fi thriller involve reveals later in the story, consider yourself warned that I plan to talk about some of them, albeit without giving away the whole story. Then again, perhaps I shouldn’t worry about revealing too much. Warner Bros.’s marketing hasn’t bothered trying to keep the movie’s secrets. And a few days before seeing Companion, I looked up the runtime and found that Google’s one-sentence logline gave away a major secret. Moreover, while most movies play better without knowing much about them in advance, this one might benefit from learning the setup beforehand. Either way, once it’s over, its unmistakable warning against misogyny hiding beneath the surface of nice guy behaviors will doubtless strike a chord with many viewers. Just last week, Steven Soderbergh’s superb ghost story, Presence, featured a one-of-the-good-ones teenage boy who turned out to have a penchant for date-rape drugs […]

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Asteroid City

Brian Eggert — Sun, 11 Jun 2023 16:32:32 +0000

Note: After debuting at the Cannes Film Festival last month, Asteroid City will be previewed at a special Alamo Drafthouse screening on June 12 before its wide release on June 23, 2023. Wes Anderson has become a jewelry maker, fashioning pretty objects with creative facets, decorations, and polish that invite distanced appreciation. Like pieces of jewelry, Anderson’s latest films contain little innate emotion, only the suggestion of it. They are fine works of art, to be sure, but like a ring to its recipient, they seem to rely more on the sentimental value that the spectator brings than an inherent emotional draw. This quality of Anderson’s work has only become more heightened in recent years. His peculiarities, aesthetic fastidiousness, and capacity for moving material may have reached their height nearly a decade ago with, arguably, his best work, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). That film matched its considerable style with emotional weight and a theme that argues in favor of art for art’s sake. But Anderson has struggled to find anything new to say in his recent stylistic exercises, Isle of Dogs (2018), The French Dispatch (2021), and his latest, Asteroid City. The film is an articulately cut, arranged, and designed […]

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The French Dispatch

Brian Eggert — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 23:31:41 +0000

The French Dispatch is Wes Anderson’s billet-doux to The New Yorker magazine. His tenth feature is also his latest in a long line of odes to French cinema. Like any of his other films, it’s an imaginative, meticulously designed, and intentionally constructed objet d’art. It’s a pretty thing that one stands back from and reflects, “Isn’t that a pretty thing.” Every moment contains boundless details that have been labored over by Anderson and his team of artists, designers, and craftspeople, and much of their work points to particular writers or movies. The effort that goes into each frame is staggering. Adopting the structure of a magazine, the film is composed of several articles or stories. It plays like an anthology, weaving characters galore and nimble plotting together into an intricate and deliberate pattern. Anderson shoots in his usual style that makes everything look contained in the frame, like a beautiful stage made from miniatures, moveable walls, and fabricated spaces erected with fabulist flair. The French Dispatch would doubtless win the blue ribbon prize in a competition for the best living diorama. But it’s deficient of a particular element, some might say an essential requirement, of narrative cinema: emotion. Afterward, I […]

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The Death of Stalin

Brian Eggert — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 19:13:12 +0000

The Death of Stalin opens with a sequence that perfectly articulates its exploration of how fear leads to the absurd. In the Stalinist Soviet Union of 1953, during a concerto broadcast over Moscow radio, pianist Maria Yudina (Olga Kurylenko) plays a selection from Mozart. At the same time, a radio programmer (Paddy Considine) receives a call from Joseph Stalin himself, played Adrian McLoughlin. With strict orders to call Stalin back in precisely 17 minutes, the programmer scrambles to determine whether the countdown started 30 seconds or a minute ago, fearing that if he should return the call late, he will be another name on the totalitarian ruler’s dreaded kill lists. When he eventually calls back, the programmer gets instructions to have a recording of the performance ready for pickup, which is a simple request, except the concert wasn’t recorded. Thinking fast, the programmer convinces the orchestra and pianist to play again for Stalin’s recording, this time with louder applause from an audience he wrangles off the street. Compelled by a desperate fear, he completes the recording, which is delivered to Stalin, who never hears it. Yudina included a harsh note along with the recording, and upon reading it, Stalin collapses. Merciless and riotously funny, The […]

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The Zero Theorem

Brian Eggert — Sun, 07 Sep 2014 00:00:55 +0000

Terry Gilliam’s The Zero Theorem takes place in a world that looks like a potential future, conceivably where we’re headed in about twenty years. Huge skyscrapers and blimps look down from above on bustling, graffiti-lined city streets where minicars buzz along without slowing for pedestrian traffic. On the sidewalks, plastic florescent clothing styles pop with bright patterns and see-through coverings, and wispy gel hairstyles resemble Katsushika Hokusai’s ocean waves. Huge video billboards for “The Church of Batman the Redeemer” blare overhead, while a personalized ad for financial services streams alongside people as they walk. Workplaces segment employees into frantic little cubicles where they punch away on controllers and operate a videogame-like process with no discernable objective. At night, parties rage on under animal costumes and bouncy dancing to loud electronic music, everyone tuned in and isolated on their glowing tablets and smartphones. Sexual intercourse takes place online through wires in a convincing cyber reality to avoid any threat of disease. And though this oppressive world seems years ahead of where we are now, if you asked Gilliam, he’d probably say his film is set in the present day. In 1985, Gilliam released Brazil and presented a modern world of Orwellian […]

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The Young Victoria

Brian Eggert — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:22 +0000

The Young Victoria covers a timeframe from 1836 to 1841, a brief but important section in the life of its subject, Queen Victoria. The plot drifts back and forth between romance and some minor political intrigue of the era; don’t expect the romance to get too juicy or the politics to become too bloody, though, as the PG rating wouldn’t allow it. The problem is, the film never knows on which story it should settle, as it’s too busy being a by-the-numbers period piece. Aimless though it may be, the film’s director Jean-Marc Vallée shoots the costumes and the architecture with a sharp eye, even if the characters filling them don’t always keep our attention. Beginning a year before Victoria (Emily Blunt) is crowned, the film opens with her mother, the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson), and the household’s top adviser, Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong), plotting to make Victoria sign papers that would make them regents—the powers behind the throne. The death of King William (Jim Broadbent) approaches, and they must act fast if they intend to wield the young sovereign’s future power. But Victoria refuses to sign and she’s crowned Queen, though she’s placed into a position that’s […]

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Chéri

Brian Eggert — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 05:00:05 +0000

Michelle Pfeiffer’s role in Chéri demonstrates how well she’s aged, not only in the physical sense, which is true enough but also in the sense that she adapts with her roles appropriately. In other words, she acts her age, which conveniently enough is exactly what this film is about. She commands her characters with the same confidence and intelligence now that she did twenty years ago, except her characters are getting older and reflecting upon their age. Like Pfeiffer, they’re taking it rather well. Based on the 1920s books Chéri and La Fin de Chéri by French novelist Collette, herself a controversial figure and openly sexual being, here’s another film by director Stephen Frears (The Queen) that sparkles with sumptuousness and class. It’s a lush production relying mostly on the acting wiles of Pfeiffer, who reteams with Frears after Dangerous Liaisons in 1988. Pfeiffer tests her offscreen persona in a role that, by the end, suggests her sex appeal won’t last forever. But it’s a role that displays her aptitude for playing intelligent, complicated women (see The Age of Innocence). And instead of praising cougars as so many films do nowadays, it portends that such a relationship can be damaging […]

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