It’s been nearly two years since the COVID-19 pandemic transformed the way the world does everything, from washing one’s hands to watching movies. Before the outbreak, the aptly named “No Time To Die” was supposed to open on April 10, 2020. By the time it finally reached screens more than 18 months later, audiences were asking themselves whether it was worth it — whether the communal theatrical experience was a gamble they were willing to take.
What was the first movie you saw back in theaters? Was it “In the Heights”? “Dune”? Or maybe you’re still holding out for “West Side Story.” Remember the good old days, when the decision of whether to see a movie on the big screen was simply a factor of cost: paying the babysitter, plus the price of tickets and concessions, versus waiting a few months to rent it on demand or buy the Blu-ray?
Owen Gleiberman’s Top 10
Owen Gleiberman’s Top 10
1. Spencer
A movie, or at least a memorable one, tends to be about the inner lives of its characters. In too many films today, though, the characters have inner lives that are thin, scannable, mystery-free. But Pablo Larraín’s entrancing drama is a lightning rod that channels the inner life of Princess Diana — the jolt and sparks of anxiety and melancholy that have turned her, during a Christmas weekend with the Royal Family, into a Royal Nervous Wreck Without a Cause. Kristen Stewart, transforming herself, does a tremulously acerbic and precise recreation of the Di personality (the halting elegance, the shyness jostling with the coquettishness of fame). But that’s just the ground floor of her performance. She takes the audience on a flesh-and-blood journey in a movie that’s at once a diary, a soap opera, a horror film, and a rigorously speculative drawing-room biopic. It’s a much more close-up experience than “The Crown.” It is also, at moments, like “The Shining” rewritten by Edith Wharton. Di, for all her privilege, is trapped in a dead marriage that makes her feel like a caged bird, and since that marriage is part of England’s infrastructure she thinks there’s no key. She finds it on the hunting ground, in the most moving scene in any film this year. She frees herself and, in doing so, rocks the old world order. “Spencer” is a tale of despair and transcendence that celebrates the true meaning of being royal.
2. House of Gucci
If you think it’s a high-camp hoot, you may not have taken in what’s onscreen. Ridley Scott’s supremely entertaining and revealing drama about the Machiavellian machinations that brought down the Gucci fashion dynasty certainly has scenes where you chuckle at the audacity of what you’re seeing — the greed, the backstabbing, the revenge (and oh, in this movie, is it ever served cold). “House of Gucci” is a knowing high-trash Godfather Lite, and one should feel free to giggle at Jared Leto’s comically pathetic Paolo, the Fredo of the family, even as Leto makes him a weirdly layered buffoon. But Lady Gaga, as Patrizia, who marries into the Gucci clan and tries to take it over, is at once lusciously devious and earnestly exacting playing a conniver in over her head, who we root both for and against. And Adam Driver and Al Pacino give pinpoint performances as the Gucci entrepreneurs who see their empire cut out from under them. “House of Gucci” is a study in the cruelly shifting whims of power. It’s also something we don’t see nearly enough of anymore: a movie for adults that’s extravagantly serious fun.