Quick takes on Suncoast and other films

Ridley Scott puts out some great action films, but even his fans have to admit he delivers more duds than hits. Unfortunately Napoleon is in the former category. Despite one of the best actors around (Joaquin Phoenix) this movie feels like a hodgepodge of events rather than a coherent story. It follows Napoleon Bonaparte’s life, from early soldier to emperor (twice!) to his fall from grace and subsequent death. I won’t get into the story, as you are either a history fan and know parts of it already, or you don’t care, but I will say that, knowing the Russian view of Napoleon’s wars (from reading and watching Tolstoy’s War and Peace), I don’t think I really learned much myself, and critics are swift to point out that this movie is full of inaccuracies anyway. Phoenix was good, as expected, and the battles were pretty epic, but the film is full of lurches forward followed by grinding halts; there’s no flow, and all of the characters (Napoleon included) are paper thin. Very average, when it should have been a lot more. ★★½

Another historical film (though a fictional one), but this one done so much better! The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan is the first in a two-part film series, a project that was one of the most expensive film productions out of France in 2023. The film begins with D’Artagnan, on his way to Paris in 1627 with dreams of joining the Musketeers, the highly skilled personal guard to King Louis XIII. Along the way he comes across a woman’s carriage being attacked and tries to save her, but he is shot at and left for dead. When D’Artagnan does get to Paris, he arrives to a city in the middle of a political storm. The King’s brother, as well as his military and religious advisors (Catholics all), are urging him to declare war on the protestants in France and, by proxy, England, but Louis is hesitant to do so after France’s long history of prior religious wars. At the same time, Louis XIII’s wife, Queen Anne, is having an affair with the English Duke of Buckingham, which will lead to an adventure by D’Artagnan at one point in the film, but I digress. In Paris, D’Artagnan falls in league with the famous Three Musketeers, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos, who live to fight for France, King, and each other. Amazing swordsmen, they are targeted by a Catholic Cardinal who hopes to weaken the King and stir up a war with the protestants. Athos ends up in jail over a crime he didn’t commit, setting off a chain of events with his comrades trying to prove his innocence, giving D’Artagnan a crash course in training along the way. The movie is gorgeously filmed and wonderfully told, with a real old-school kind of feel that hearkens back to classic swashbuckling movies of decades ago. Excellent cast too, with recognizable faces even if you don’t watch a lot of foreign films, such as Vincent Cassel, Eva Green, and Vicky Krieps. I can’t wait to hunt down part 2, which will explore the devilish Milady, D’Artagnan’s nemesis. ★★★★½

Suncoast is one of those unassuming yet highly charged films that can surprise you. A semi-autobiographical film from writer/director Laura Chinn, it recounts her life over a few months in high school. Doris (Nico Parker, who looks very much like her mother Thandiwe Newton) is living with her single mother Kristine (Laura Linney) as they prepare for the upcoming death of Doris’s brother Nate. Nate has been suffering from brain cancer and is now in a vegetative state; the end is near, so the family is moving him to a local hospice care facility. For Kristine, her life has revolved around Nate for years, and she has ignored Doris for the most part. Doris is a quiet girl in school, to the point that even her classmates don’t know her, but with her mother sleeping in Nate’s hospital room at night and Doris having the house to herself, she starts hosting parties for her classmates, making her quickly very popular. The hospice facility should be a quiet, peaceful place, but outside the place is crawling with protestors, as the facility is also housing Terry Schiavo in her final days, a story which, if you remember, made headlines back in the early 2000’s as her husband battled Terry’s parents in years-long court battles over the right to remove her from life support. One of the activists out front is Paul (Woody Harrelson), a quietly religious man who offers Doris his perspective on life and death, after losing his wife several years ago. Doris has a lot of pent-up anger at her mother and even her brother, through no fault of his own obviously, for dominating her life for so long, and Kristine needs to learn how to advance her own life once Nate is gone. It’s a complex situation, with no easy answers, and the film doesn’t try to provide them. It’s a tearjerker, but surprisingly not too heavy-handed. Lovely film. ★★★★

Will is an absolutely ridiculous film (and it’s not even a comedy!) about a Dutch policeman trying to do his job (?) during German occupation in World War II. Will is part of a new police force whose only real job is to accompany German soldiers to provide some legitimacy to their actions. Will and his fellow policemen are told to watch but do nothing. Will cannot do that, not when a German soldier is getting ready to shoot a Jewish mother and her daughter in the street. Will fights back the German, killing him. Will and his parter Lode stuff the body under a manhole cover and try to pretend it never happened, but of course the German S.S. will have their investigation. Sound good so far? It quickly deteriorates from there, with over-the-top villains and a head-spinning about of intrigue between the Jewish people and their protectors, and the Germans and German sympathizers among the Dutch citizens. After awhile I lost track of what Will was even trying to do. To make matters worse, the film never can decide what it wants to be. Is it a historical action film? An art film? I don’t know, and neither does it. ★

I was thinking Next Goal Wins might be a less PG version of a Disney family sports film (a la Million Dollar Arm, Miracle, McFarland USA, etc). Notion quickly dispelled when it started and the first actor on screen was Taika Waititi, who, as it turns out, wrote and directed. So I shifted my expectations to a zany comedy with a sports background, and that’s just about what it turned out to be. Based on a true story, it stars the great Michael Fassbender as Thomas Rongen, a down-and-out American soccer coach who takes the last job on the planet in order to keep coaching: turning around the American Samoa national soccer team. After having recently lost to Australia 31-0, the worst loss in international history, the team has practically given up hope of ever winning a match. Rongen comes in and starts working magic, getting them to learn defense and offense, and, of course, it only really starts to work when they are able to blend his ideas with traditional American Samoan values. For my tastes, the comedy distracted from what could have been a really great story. The better Waititi films are the ones that are funny, but where the laughs enhance rather than take away from the film (Jojo Rabbit, Thor Ragnarok). I had plenty of chuckles watching this film, but was left wanting more heart from it. ★★½

• TV series recently watched: Class Act (series), For All Mankind (season 4)
• Book currently reading: The Butlerian Jihad by Herbert & Anderson