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March 28, 2024, 09:11:30 AM

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Nightmare Alley (Guillermo Del Toro 2021)

Started by surreal, January 22, 2022, 10:18:40 PM

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surreal

Saw it this morning, I've been waiting for this for a while as the whole movie looked amazing and creepy, plus del Toro is rarely completely disappointing.

Basic premise, Bradley Cooper joins a carnival/fairground in 1940/41.  This is the tail end of the traditional carny era I'd guess, when things were starting to change.  He gets involved with the "mystic" side, mind-reading and mesmerism, and gets very good at it and it spins out from there.  Difficult to give much more detail without revealing to much of the plot.

Very well made, looks gorgeous, lots of period detail.  Great cast - cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, David Strathairn, Ron Perlman...

Mostly really enjoyed it - it is 2h 30m and it did start to drag in the middle and could lose about 20 minutes but I didn't see the ending coming until it was right on top of me, which was good, I was caught up in the whole story.  I think it is based on a book and has been adapted before quite a while ago.  It ended up feeling a bit like The Prestige, and I guess taking cues from tv show Carnivale and Todd Browning's Freaks to a small degree.

One of the more unusual things I'll see this year I think.  8/10 from me YMMV

Trailer: https://youtu.be/Q81Yf46Oj3s

Blumf

It's being absolutely plastered all over TV ad breaks. Makes me suspect it's not up to much, but that's likely unfair.

Is it worth comparing it with the original?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Alley_(1947_film)

surreal

#2
To be fair it does feel like a very old fashioned movie, the ending is not very slam-bang but does feel earned yet inevitable so maybe it is more of a Ray Bradbury kind of tale.  It bombed at the US box-office as it was released in December, but I think it deserves better.  Mark Kermode really loves it too judging by his review.

I saw a review comparing with the original.  Apparently del toro went back and adapted the book again, rather than a remake of the movie.

C_Larence

Quote from: surreal on January 23, 2022, 08:31:23 AMIt bombed at the US box-office as it was released in December

Not just December, but Disney pushed it out on the same day as Spider-Man: No Way Home.

The book it's based on is great, one of my favourites, published in 1946 so it's very of the time and feels really authentically full of sleaze and grime.

Brundle-Fly


I'm usually furious at any film over ninety minutes but this just flew by.

Shaky

Enjoyed this very much, and it's great to see Del Toro move away from creature features (even with the little nods here and there). Never been a fan of Cooper but he was excellent in this, and Blanchett was just electric.

Keebleman

I enjoyed it, it looked fantastic, but I was a long way from loving it.  The characters change personality from one scene to the next based on what the plot requires, and nothing of first half Bradley Cooper suggests what we find in second half Bradley Cooper.

And Cate Blanchett, terrific performance but I couldn't work out what her character wanted, or rather why she wanted it or how she achieved it.  If we assume that at the end of the story things have fallen just the way she wanted them to, then she has powers that go way beyond the level of 'super'.

Noodle Lizard

I just watched it last night as well. I thought it was a load of old bum, but I rarely get on with Del Toro's films (and the ones I do like I haven't seen for a while). Bradley Cooper begging a bit too hard for an Oscar there, so I'm glad I woke up to the news that he hadn't been nominated.

Admittedly, the stuff at the carnival was all more or less fine. It really started to drag after that, and his plot became so convoluted and ridiculous that I couldn't sympathise with anything that was going on. Everything was telegraphed oceans away ("Here's my nice alcohol, I keep it right next to the dangerous poisonous alcohol that will definitely kill an old alcoholic", "Here, scheming lady called Lilith, keep all this money in your safe so my missus doesn't nag me" etc.) I haven't seen the original or read the book, so I don't know how much of this is Del Toro's fault specifically, but it's a problem I've had with his other films too and there's really no excuse even if it is a pastiche or homage.

I wish Willem Dafoe and Toni Collette had been in it more.

A more personal gripe that might not matter to many others: as a fan of magic and mentalism, that aspect of it really got on my tits. It spends an inordinate amount of time at the beginning exposing a bunch of secrets/methods mentalism acts use, but then proceeds to have Cooper's character giving completely bogus explanations for guesses that would never pay off (the police sheriff, the gun in the purse), the implication being that he's just "really got at reading people" or some such nonsense. He is later, of course, completely unable to use this virtually supernatural skill when it would be inconvenient for the plot. I don't know what annoys me more - the fact that people will leave thinking they understand how mentalism works now, or that they'll think some people really are skilled enough to discern what's in your handbag just by looking at your sadness. Probably both. Annoying either way.

ProvanFan


zomgmouse

Watched this last night and I think I liked it more than I thought I would based on what people had said but also less than I could have given the talent involved. I definitely made the mistake of comparing it both with the 1947 version and with the book. Somehow neither really captured the flow/arc of Stanton's rise and fall. Not sure why the Del Toro version had such a slow ramp into his time at the carnival - part of what made the book intriguing and what the 1947 version got right was the immediate dunking into that world. And then neither of the adaptations seems to have leaned into the spiritualism angle very much. Del Toro did a better job of integrating the thematics as a whole but I think the 1947 one had more of the bite and cynicism to it. Hard to say why I wasn't as enthralled by either adaptation. Wasn't a huge fan of Bradley Cooper in the lead role here either - I think whoever played it needed more of a boyishness to it but a boyishness that has room to get coarsened and sullied. In the book he's even a virgin at the start. And then the
Spoiler alert
post-apparition spiral
[close]
seemed to be a little mishandled by both as well. But again all of this is just me drawing perhaps unfair comparisons with the source text which I quite enjoyed.

QDRPHNC

Watched this last night, haven't read the book or seen the original adaptation.

Spoiler alert
Really liked it up until the murder of the rich guy and everything that followed. I didn't understand Cate Blanchett's motivation at all - when she started recording his "session", I thought we were in for some Shutter Island type reveal that the whole thing had been a delusion, but she just wanted to ruin his entire life for... embarrassing her once?
[close]

Spoiler alert
And the very last part... felt like it was straining to close a loop that really didn't need to be there and didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. By any measure, Stan was nothing like a washed-up "geek", he was a talented, charismatic, successful man (whatever the moral or ethical issues of his line of work, he was exceptionally good at it). I think it was meant to feel like a profound ending, but I just found it pointless.
[close]

Great cast, looked amazing, I liked Bradley Cooper for the first time ever, David Strathairn isn't in enough stuff, it was nice seeing Mary Steenbergen pop up (although her last scene unfortunately came off as comical to me) and it was fun seeing the place I used to live across the street from (and the hill I used to go running up and down) in the movie:




thugler

It looked great, and is probably one of his better films, but way too long and the characters motivations didn't make much sense. Could probably have lopped at least half an hour off it without losing much.


Mister Six

I'm usually a sucker for del Toro's work, but I thought this was piss awful. As lovely as the sideshow sets were, and as great as the cast was, that opening circus section should have been 15-30 minutes, tops, not over an hour. As far as I can tell, it existed purely to set up the last line of the film, which was so obvious and inevitable that the second half of the film seemed to slow down the closer it got to the climax.

The actual meat of the film was in the mentalist show/con-man section, but that felt crammed in by the runtime, and populated with 2D characters doing the bare minimum to advance the plot. What was psychiatrist lady's motivation for everything she did? Why did the henchman guy put his faith so much in his awful boss? Come to think of it, why was Bradley Cooper even bothering with the con? what's his actual motivation? Is it money? Is it success? Is it wanting to impress Cate Blanchett? The business about him killing his dad seems pretty much incidental to everything, too.

Also, I'm not clear on what the objection is to doing the "Ooh, the spirits are here talking to you, Janet" thing over the already ethically dodgy "I sense Janet is worried about her health" schtick with the written cards.

I didn't know about the novel or previous adaptation before I read this thread, and I can see how this story might work better in prose, where you have more access to the character's thoughts and where there's less time pressure than in a feature film.

Reading the synopses on Wikipedia, it seems like this version is more of a remake of the 1949 film than a new adaptation of the book (which doesn't seem to feature Zeena, and in which his post-carnival stage show is as a religious spiritualist figure. And there are a bunch of differences in the 1949 flick that sound like they would make for a superior film:

  • Stanton tries to seduce Zeena to get the handbook from her, but she refuses as she feels guilty for her previous cheating on Pete leading him to become an alcoholic - this makes Stanton a more active (and actively criminal, setting up his future cons) protagonist;
  • After Pete dies, Zeena is forced to teach Stanton the secret code so that he can be her assistant - this makes his extended involvement with the carnival more interesting and essential to the story (as it is, he could have just filched the book and run off);
  • Stanton pursues Molly while working as Zeena's assistant - it's unclear from the write-up whether he's Zeena's lover at this point, but if he is, that builds his character and makes his alliance with the psychologist more plausible;
  • When Stanton and Molly's relationship is found out, Bruno the strongman forces them into a shotgun marriage (his character in del Toro's version is basically meaningless, and nothing comes of Bruno attacking him - it also makes his betrayal of Molly more plausible);
  • Now married to Molly and ostracised by the carnies, he decides they should run off and do their own thing (more dramatically interesting than them just taking off because he has some vague idea that Molly deserves "better", although I guess del Toro is trying to make him more likeable before the time-jump? But that makes his later heel turn less convincing);
  • Stanton seeks out Lilith because he's troubled by causing Pete's death, rather than her being hired by the mayor or whoever he was (rounds out Stanton's character a bit more; gives Lilith a more plausible control over his character);
  • Lilith appears (in the synopsis) to be the mastermind behind the scam, not Stanton, after learning of his mentalism skills, and uses her tapes of his confessions to blackmail him, at which point he slinks off (which makes her a more plausible manipulator looking for cash rather than some supervillain with a weird murder/suicide plot in mind).

What a shame that he'd use up his Oscar chips on a remake of an adaptation. I wonder if there was pressure on him to get something turned around ASAP before the buzz from Shape of Water completely died away?

Glebe

Finally got around to watching this the other night... I wasn't expecting anything great after the mixed critical reception, so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it - for the most part.

Great cast, great performances, the sets are incredible and it's beautifully shot. My gripe is the third act, where it kind of fudges things a bit. Reckon they should have fleshed out Cate Blanchett's character a bit.

Still, it's definitely worth a look.