“A COMPLETE UNKNOWN” (2024, 140 min., directed by James Mangold) – In theaters now.
Ever been to a karaoke bar with really talented singers? “A Complete Unknown” is a lot like that. It’s completely exhausting.
James Mangold, director of everything from Wolverine movies to “Ford v. Ferrari,” has tackled the subject of mid-century folk music before. His 2005 film “Walk the Line,” about the life and music of Johnny Cash, made over $100 million, won Reese Witherspoon an Oscar and created a trend of musician biopics still going strong today – It was only last year that Amy Winehouse was captured in “Back to Black,” and films about Michael Jackson, The Beatles and Robbie Williams loom in the near future.
Mangold didn’t invent the wheel then and he hasn’t reinvented it now. “A Complete Unknown” is a handsome, immaculately designed portrait of the 1960s New York folk scene and a fine night of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Pete Seeger karaoke.
What else it is would be hard to say.
Read our reviews of “Nosferatu” and “Babygirl” here.
The performers are giving their all – an exceptional Ed Norton plays a sincere Seeger, Monica Barbaro embodies Baez and Timothée Chalamet makes for a weird, nervy Dylan – and their voices soar. Mangold clearly clocked the talent he had in his hands, as over two-thirds of his film is devoted to renditions of as many Dylan songs as they could fit in.
Somewhere around 40 different tracks are performed in the two-and-a-half-hour film.
The rough structure of the film follows the same formula scene to scene: an awkward, arrogant Dylan shuffles into a room. He performs a song he wrote. His captive audience stares at him with awe, envy and adoration. He dismisses their praise and walks out, or selects one of his two love interests, Barbaro’s Baez and Elle Fanning’s Sylvie Russo, for an impassioned night and a morning fight. They storm out, he goes back to writing. Rinse, repeat, occasional Pete.
Read our reviews of “Nightbitch” and “Musfasa: The Lion King” here.
The writing for Baez and Russo is particularly egregious in the film, only allowed the agency to abandon Dylan when the film isn’t ogling his irresistible displays of talent. We rarely see the women outside of Dylan’s orbit. Baez is a massively successful and fascinating figure in modern music, but you could get the sense walking out of “A Complete Unknown” that she only ripped off Dylan’s songs before being eclipsed by his innovating genius. Baez is too big a character in the Dylan story to be left out, but given too little to do for how much Barbaro is in the film or how charismatic she is onscreen.
Seeger is the only character in the film who makes it out with a compelling story. The sadness and pride Norton exudes gazing at Dylan as the folk movement dies and a radical reinvention is born should carry him every award show possible. Every scene he shares with Chalamet feels fuller than the rest of the film’s music videos, even if there are only a smattering of those moments.
The title says it all. Dylan is a hard man to understand. Rather than take an honest crack at it, “A Complete Unknown” decides to keep it that way. Any ideas the movie might have drown in the dark sunglasses its Dylan wears.
The times they are a-changing, the “A Complete Unknown” Karaoke Bar is happy to tell us.
It’s the mediocrity of music biopics that isn’t.
Rating: 2/5
“JUROR #2” (2024, 114 min., directed by Clint Eastwood) – Now streaming on Max.
Clint Eastwood is 94 years old and still directing movies. As if that isn’t amazing enough, his latest, “Juror #2,” is competent, sturdy and tough. It’s a film fit to stand trial, even if it isn’t guilty of greatness.
The premise is an all-timer: Nicholas Hoult stars as a young father called for jury duty. In the case, a man stands accused of killing his girlfriend. It doesn’t take Hoult long before he realizes he may have been involved in the woman’s death.
It’s a great idea for a legal thriller. It’s just that “Juror #2” isn’t all that thrilling.
Read our list of the best movies of 2024 here.
The movie is filmed in a bright, straightforward style. The dialogue is unmemorable but serviceable. The performances are solid and without flair. The boldest choice in “Juror #2” is Toni Collette using a Georgian accent. The movie is flat, down-the-middle entertainment. There may be twists, but they’re the corkscrew of a Twizzler gone stale: chewy, sure, but not particularly tasty.
It doesn’t help that Eastwood wrote a love letter to “12 Angry Men” inside of “Juror #2.” Scenarios from the 1957 film, the gold-standard of legal dramas, are grafted directly onto the jurors of Eastwood’s film. It’s a nice, clunky bit of homage for classic movie fans, but not much more. The ethical question “Juror #2” poses has about the same amount of iterative intrigue.
It’s fun to ask “what would I do in this situation?” at first, but when Eastwood reveals the truth of the case in the first 45 minutes, the next hour and change are left for Hoult to meekly evade the questions of his fellow jurors and look confusedly conflicted about his own response.
“Juror #2” is more fun than real life jury duty, but not quite the trial of the century. At least it’s nice to have Eastwood back on the stand one more time.
Rating: 3/5
CORRECTION: 4:52 p.m., Jan. 6 – An earlier version of this article had a grammatical error describing the relationship between Edward Norton and Timothée Chalamet in “A Complete Unknown.” It has been corrected.