We’re in that weird, transitional part of the year where the summer blockbusters have died out, but the prestige Oscar-bait is still being held back for another month or two. August and September are a crapshoot when it comes to whether the films will be of quality, since it’s normally when the studios release movies they’re clueless about handling or marketing. But heading into September we have a few interesting choices, including a remake of a classic from a modern master, an auteur’s newest provocation and a darkly funny romcom—also a remake! Let’s take a look.
First off, we have Caught Stealing, the new film from Darren Aronofsky, a brilliant filmmaker who has spent most of his career trafficking in heady miserablism with a dash of healthy misanthropy. He’s given viewers the hopelessness of drug addiction in Requiem for a Dream, the existential horror of other people in Mother!, the fear of mental illness and obsession in Black Swan and don’t even get me started on the unintentional misery porn of The Whale. I love several of his movies, but holy hell, they’re hard to revisit.
Caught Stealing initially seems like a departure as it’s based on an intensely fun page-turner by the great Charlie Huston and the film’s trailers made it look like a fast and loose riff on Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. The film follows Hank Thompson—played by Austin Butler, fully embracing his seemingly effortless movie star persona—a former high school baseball prodigy who, after a horrific injury, is now an alcoholic bartender in 1998 Manhattan. When his liberty-spike-sporting neighbor Russ pulls him into some shady dealings with Hasidic hitmen, Russian mobsters and an adorably bitey cat, Hank’s life goes from disappointing to dangerous overnight.
While Caught Stealing is most assuredly a departure from Aronofsky’s earlier work, there still runs beneath the surface a deadly serious undercurrent that gives even the wackiest moments a violent weight. That said, the film moves like a rocket across period NYC—look for the quick shot of Kim’s Video—and includes a few madcap and exciting sequences more propulsive than anything I’ve seen in his earlier work.
But Aronofsky struggles tonally to keep the film either as breezy or brutal as he wants it to be. What initially feels like a goodnatured crime caper ends up as a savagely violent and nasty thriller. I’m struggling to decide if that’s a feature or a bug, and to really understand Aronofsky’s intentions.
However, The Roses pulls off that tonal dance effortlessly, frontloaded with wonderfully nuanced work from Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch as Ivy and Theo Rose, who after one of the most sexy and charming meet-cutes I’ve seen in cinema, get immediately married and fall deeply in love. She’s a chef, he’s an architect and they eventually have two precocious and strange children. If you’ve seen Danny DeVito’s The War of the Roses from 1989, you’ll know exactly where this is going and it’s nowhere good. Ivy and Theo grow to despise each other and things get dark, funny and dangerous.
I hate to say it, but The Roses actually works better than the original, with Cumberbatch and Colman having such a gorgeous and homey chemistry that you genuinely want them to fix their problems and not destroy each other’s lives. As funny as the film gets, the Roses are so grounded as characters that it reminded me of my own failed loves and I found it emotionally authentic as well as hilarious. It subverts the cartoonish violence of the original and becomes easily one of the finest comedies of the year.
Finally we have Highest 2 Lowest, Spike Lee’s loose remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 masterwork High and Low. I don’t want to share too much about the story other than to say it follows Denzel Washington—working with Lee for the first time since 2006’s underrated Inside Man—as a wealthy music executive who gets caught up in a kidnapping scheme.
Is Highest 2 Lowest as good as High and Low? Not even close, but nothing ever could be because Kurosawa was always working on a different level than any other filmmaker. Still, it shows Lee more energized behind the camera than I’ve seen him in years, using all of his tricks with editing, score and performance to craft a genuinely compelling film. I have nothing but respect for Lee even attempting a remake of such a stone classic. The movie doesn’t have quite the same thematic depth as High and Low, but is one hell of an entertaining ride, nonetheless.
That’s the perfect description of all three movies this week, actually. They are rides of differing quality and destinations that emphasize enjoying the journey more than getting caught up in where the train stops. All three are worth the trip, regardless.
Caught Stealing
Grade: B
The Roses
Grade: B+
Highest 2 Lowest
Grade: B
