“But isn’t it time we stopped accepting in film criticism an anti-emotional, phony rationalism which we know to be not just harmful, but absurd, in any other context? Isn’t it time we plucked up our courage and allowed our hearts as well as our heads to go the pictures?”
Raymond Durgnat (Films and Feelings) 1971
Search This Blog
REVIEW: Enola Holmes
Inspired by the children's book series by Nancy Springer, Netflix's new film, Enola Holmes, turns the spotlight onto the younger sister of the famed detective as a new mystery thrusts her into an insidious conspiracy that compels her to take control of her own life and leave her own mark. The film's greatest achievement is reaffirming that lead actress Millie Bobby Brown of Stranger Things is indeed one of the most promising up and coming talents around and can seemingly step into any role with enthusiasm, but beyond that there's little about this film to celebrate.
Enola Holmes lives alone with her mother, Eudoria (Helena Bonham-Carter), away from the pursuits of her much older, much more accomplished older brothers--the snooty Mycroft (Sam Clafin) and the ever-charming, ever famous Sherlock (Henry Cavill). Enola enjoys the attention of her mother until Eudoria vanishes without warning. It is this disappearance that summons her older brothers back to the estate to see their little sister taken care of. Traditional Mycroft wants to see her initiated into a proper finishing school that will stamp out the eccentricities Enola has inherited from her mother, leaving Enola with no choice but to set off on an adventure to find her mother, and maybe herself as well.
Brown holds her own against more seasoned actors like Cavil and Clafin, which is unmistakable from her very first interaction with them. The dynamic between these three leads is vibrant but unfortunately unmatched by most of the remaining cast members, most notably Louis Partridge who plays the young viscount at the center of the sinister plot as well as Enola's love interest. Even the luminous Helena Bonham Carter feels oddly restrained in a surprisingly incidental role.
Inherent in a film about the unknown little sister of a literary icon such as Sherlock Holmes are feminist undertones. This film grabs onto those undertones and brings them to the forefront of this story. The surging movement for women's rights in late 19th century England serves as the backdrop for this young woman learning what she is capable of. And, for the most part, the movie is clever about how this female empowerment manifests itself. Here's a film where corsets and flowers are just another tool within our heroine's arsenal. The movie still calls out some forms of traditional femininity as inherently restrictive (finishing school is framed as purgatory) but the movie also isn't afraid to let Enola look beautiful in a dress.
Yet for a branch of the Sherlock Holmes mythology, the plotting of the film isn't terribly clever. Various topics and talking points are tossed out through expository dialogue, very few of them satisfactorily explored through action. Moreover, the plot is unfocused and incohesive. Enola answers the call to find out what happened to her mother, but her attention is quickly diverted by a mildly charming boy thrown into Lordship after the mysterious death of his father, leading to an entirely different plotline with only the most tenuous of links to Eudoria's disappearance.
More frustratingly Enola's place as the younger sister of the famous Sherlock Holmes plays almost no part in the narrative. The movie tries driving home a point about how Sherlock's pursuit of fame and excellence has made him neglectful of his family and especially Enola. Various characters call him out for having left her unsupported, claims which are made doubly confusing by the rapport he and Enola demonstrate so effortlessly, even early on in the film. One character reprimands Sherlock for not truly knowing his sister immediately after a scene wherein Enola effortlessly recounts intimate knowledge of her brother, his favorite meals and board games and such.
It's unmistakable that between her two brothers she much prefers Sherlock over Mycroft, but Mycroft's failings are never given the same weight for some reason. It's not as though there was no potential for any number of genuinely fascinating plot formations, but the film makes use of none of these, such that the film might have been cleaner without that distraction.
In the end, the film is a parade of Millie Bobby Brown's boundless talent that leaves a trail of intriguing but underdeveloped ideas struggling to keep up.
Last month, Variety ran a piece observing, “Hollywood Can’t Survive Without Animation. So Why Won’t the Industry Respect It?” by Clayton Davis, who reported , “In the nearly five decades that domestic grosses have been tracked, an animated film has finished the year as the No. 1 release just seven times, beginning with Disney’s 'Aladdin' in 1992. Now the medium is having an unprecedented run, with 'Inside Out 2' and 'Zootopia 2' topping the last two calendar years (a first for animated movies to lead the box office for two consecutive years) and the latter becoming the highest-grossing animated film ever domestically. 'The Super Mario Galaxy Movie' is leading 2026 so far and is the only film to cross $1 billion. Setting aside the 2020 and 2021 pandemic seasons, which emptied theaters of family films, animated features have made up about 20% of the year’s 10 top-grossing releases over the past decade. And yet, the artists who make these movies have rarely...
The secret weapon of The Looney Tunes has always been their natural eloquence with meta-textuality. Seriously. Go rewatch "Duck Amuck." It's high art. That trick isn't really new here in a landscape where "self-awareness" is just generally baked into the fabric of most millennial media. But Coyote vs Acme nonetheless feels cut from a very different cloth. I don't even know if that's from anything extra this film does so much as what it doesn't do. This movie never feels like it's trying to prove how much smarter it is than the audience. It doesn't feel smug or self-promoting. Like, it takes a different kind of self-awareness to look at how many times a certain Wile E. Coyote has tried to get his hands around a certain speeding bird and ask if maybe the poor guy, who has literally tried everything under the sun, has just had the odds stacked against him. It takes a certain kind of movie to decide that this dude just needs so...
I haven't historically considered myself a "Star Wars" kid. And to be clear, I take no pride in saying that or anything. I respect the property and what it's given to pop culture. But I do feel like it's worth mentioning in this review that I didn't really go into Jon Favreu's The Mandalorian and Grogu thinking I had much of what I'd call nostalgia for this movie to exploit. And yet watching this movie, I found myself hearkening back to the things about Star Wars that caught my attention as a kid. For me, that was the gladiator-style match in "Attack of the Clones." This film offers quite a few roller-coasters along those lines. And as far as the creature designs go for the monsters in these arenas, they were quite good. I wasn't trying too hard to anticipate which were computer-generated and which were puppeted, but the aesthetics of both the Jim Henson era and the Spielberg era sat very well here in this vessel....
So, January 2012: Disney is rereleasing their 1991 animated masterpiece, Beauty and the Beast into theaters, and in 3D format, and I'm able to coerce a friend into seeing it with me. This was a big deal because, as with most of the Disney movies we'd call "classic," Beauty and the Beast had its day in theaters before my time, and this was an opportunity to experience the movie in its proper element, and maybe imagine what it would have been when the legendary tunes by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken graced the public for the first time. My larger circle was none-too-impressed with my choice. Didn't I know that the movie was already on DVD? That I could just watch it anytime in the comfort of my own home without having to pay for another ticket? How could I be so careless with my finances? (Incidentally, many of these same friends would pay top-dollar to see the Beauty and the Beast remake five years later on opening weekend ...) ...
Way back in my film school days, I had an interaction with a favorite cousin whom I had not seen in some time. This opportunity to reconnect saw our first interaction since I had been accepted as a film student, and so he asked me what basically everyone asks me right after I tell them I’m studying film, “So, like what’s your favorite movie, then?” When approached with this question, at least by associates who are not necessarily film buffs, my default response is usually something I know has been on Netflix in the last year. (Though if I had to pick an answer ... maybe Silver Linings Playbook .) I think this time I said James Cameron’s Titanic . He then had a sort of illuminated reaction and followed up with, “I see, so you like … old movies.” My response to this was something in the vein of, “Well, yes , but NOOOO …” Steven Spielberg being a 29-year-old on the set of Jaws In academic circles, t he demarcation between “c...
In the 1950s under the threat of nuclear warfare, Hollywood premiered such exercises as The Day the Earth Stood Still or War of the Worlds where an alien power would pass judgment on humankind, holding its fate in its hands. Here in the 2020s under the shadow of such threats as climate change, Hollywood sends to be our judge ... beavers. Let me back up ... Daniel Chong's new film from Pixar Animation, Hoppers , sees Mabel (Piper Curda), a college student whose self-appointed mission is to preserve the glade where she used to find sanctuary with her now deceased grandmother. Her biggest opponent is hometown boy and beloved mayor, Jerry (Jon Hamm), who has designs to plow over the glade in order to open his new freeway--estimated to save travelers four whole minutes of commuting. Mabel gets her golden opportunity when she uncovers secret technology pioneered by her professor which allows a human to rem...
Maybe. The answer is maybe. Not wanting to be that guy who teases a definitive answer to a difficult question and forces you to read a ten-page essay only to cop-out with a non-committal excuse of an answer, I’m telling you up and front the answer is maybe. Though nations have long warred over this matter, the film itself does not answer once and for all whether or not Joel Barrish and Clementine Krychinzki find lasting happiness together at conclusion of the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Min d. I cannot give a definitive answer as to whether Joel and Clementine’s love will last until the stars turn cold or just through the weekend. This essay cannot do that. What this essay can do is explore the in-text evidence the film gives for either ...
Disney has relied on branding for their box-office since Walt himself started using fairy-tales as a launching pad. Flash forward 80 years, and the branding wars have escalated not just within the Disney company, but the industry all around. Disney's Jungle Cruise walks the line between original and remix, and not just because it's adapted from a theme-park ride. This film, a pastiche of adventure flicks over the last 60 years, absorbs the best from its sources of inspiration but falls just short of congealing them into something truly groundbreaking. Tales a mythical tree of life have beckoned explorers since it bloomed into legend hundreds of years ago. This catches the interest of explorer Lily Houghton who makes it her mission to find the tree, first to distribute its gifts to the world and second to keep it from the hands of less benevolent seekers. Her success hinges on joining forces with the gruff Frank Wolff. He'll ferry Lily and her brother, McGregor, across th...
The first note I made for this film is that I knew a bunch of cowboys growing up. But I regretfully did not know any who were just so willing to burst into song. I thought then that I knew what I was getting into with this movie. But I could not anticipate what this story would try to feed me. The movie sees Amziah King, a good-natured beekeeper, smalltown musician, and all-around good dude, sorting through some business deals as he happens to reunite with his former foster-daughter, Kateri. Crossing paths again allows them to mutually rediscover what they gave to each other as two people who lifted each other up. But when King's entire stock is stolen at the worst possible moment, Kateri gets to step-up and defend what is theirs. Amziah King is McConaughey at his most endearing. His ability to put the viewer at ease is the film's greatest trick. I've heard some buzz about this being his best performance ever. I'd...
Anytime I’m getting ready for a new musical film, I generally try to put off listening to the soundtrack until after I’ve seen the movie. It’s just my way of ensuring that I experience the narrative in its full context upon its important premiere viewing. Most of the time I’m good about sticking to this, but nowhere is this feat harder than with the arrival of each new Disney musical. I tried really hard with Encanto , but with Lin-Manuel Miranda writing for Disney, what can I say (except "You're Welcome"...) So, why am I talking about Disney musicals? W hen I premiered my Jungle Book essay earlier this year, I decided that going forward I was ready to expand how I talked about Disney. Owing to Disney fans constantly having to justify their fandom, a lot of Disney discourse tends to be purely defensive. Disney fans only ever get to use their platform to try convincing the cool kids that--for the last time!--it's okay for adults without kids to go to...
Comments
Post a Comment