WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, WEST SIDE, HARLEM AND POINTS BEYOND...

There's been a lot of bashing of 2021 leading up to the New Year. I certainly wouldn't deny that it's been a rough 12 months, ending with passing of the great Betty White; still I'm loathe to speak too harshly of a year which has allowed me, my family, and, however precariously, my beloved country to survive, at least to fight another year.

So here's to a superb 2022. And here's my Top Ten list for the rather inauspicious movie year just past:

1. In the Heights--On balance, I don't think that any new movie I saw this year left me feeling as invigorated as this version of Lin-Manuel Miranda's pre-Hamilton musical about life in Washington Heights. Olga Merediz shines as the Abuela.

2. West Side Story--Yeah, I was skeptical too, but it really works.

3. Summer of Soul--Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson's documentary, pieced together from film of the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969, features thrilling outdoor concert footage of Sly and the Family Stone, The 5th Dimension, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, The Staple Singers and Gladys Knight and the Pips, to name only a very few. Does anything more need to be said?

4. Belfast--Some of the sentiment doesn't register, and it's worth remembering that writer-director Kenneth Branagh's childhood point of view as a Protestant (the only point of view available to him, of course) was a good deal cozier than the Catholic point of view. Still, this is a warm, touching and beautifully-acted memory play, enriched with Van Morrison songs.

5. Nightmare Alley--The first half is livelier than the second half, but this lower-depths carny melodrama packs a final punch that the 1947 original didn't.

6. Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time--Made over more than 30 years, this documentary chronicle of the author and his friendship with director Robert B. Weide seems uncommonly intimate.

7. Zola--Probably the first movie ever based on a Twitter thread, Janicza Bravo's tale of a young stripper realizing she's been lured into a sex trafficking ring is tense and grimly funny, and it rings disturbingly true.

8. The Mauritanian--This near-Kafka-esque drama about the Gitmo-ing of Mohamedou Ould Salahi and the legal battle to free him is blood-boiling, as it should be.

9. Spider-Man: No Way Home--This all-star line-up of villains--and Spideys!--is a deep dive into the endlessly re-booting Marvel "Metaverse"; really it's an elaborate and pretty amusing joke on the common, obsessive nerd need to make every version of a pop franchise jibe with every other version of a pop franchise.

10. The Amusement Park--Completed in 1973 but not premiered until this year, George Romero's hour-long allegorical drama on the abuses suffered by the aged, produced by the Lutheran Society, has true emotional impact. It's a fine time capsule of a western Pennsylvania amusement park in the early '70s, too.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Dear Evan Hansen would both have made the list if they were as good overall as their lead performances. Other flicks that, however uneven or trivial, I'm not sorry I sat through this year: Joel Coen's version of Shakespeare's Scottish Play; A Quiet Place Part II; Godzilla vs. Kong; Cruella; Spencer; Werewolves Within; Flag Day; YouthMin: A Mockumentary; King Richard; Sam & Mattie Make a Zombie Movie; Don't Breathe 2; The Green Knight; The Tender Bar; Old; Blue Bayou and the slightly maligned Cinderella, among others. I should also note that there are movies I haven't caught up with yet, including Licorice Pizza and The French Dispatch, that might well have altered this list.

ALLEY WHOOP

Opening this weekend...

Nightmare Alley--"Geek" has now become roughly analogous to "nerd" or "extreme enthusiast." But the term once had horrific connotations; it was carny slang for a sideshow performer who would do ghastly acts--bite the heads off of live chickens, for instance--usually to feed an alcohol or drug habit. The bottom rung of show business (I almost wrote "the bottom rung of humanity" but then I remembered the 45th President and his cronies), this revolting occupation was the jumping-off point for William Lindsay Gresham's classic lower-depths novel Nightmare Alley (1946).

An atmospheric if softened-up movie of it was made in 1947 with Tyrone Power as Stan, the newbie carny who looks at the geek and knows he could never fall to such a degraded level. Bradley Cooper plays Stan in this gorgeously stylized new version from the great Guillermo del Toro, working from an adaptation he co-wrote with Sunset Gun maven Kim Morgan.

Stan, a drifter running away from something awful, makes himself useful as a laborer to a desolate midwestern carny. Soon he's learning the tricks of fortune-telling and mind-reading acts, which here are so talmudical that earning an honest living seems like it would be far easier. He learns how to calm down an angry cop, and how to dispose of a geek who's outlived his usefulness, and where to find a new one. 

And the work brings out Stan's creative side; soon he's designed a spectacular new "electric chair" act for the lovely Molly (Rooney Mara). He's also taught a weird sort of hustler ethic; the veteran fortune-teller Zeena (Toni Collette, magnificent as ever) warns him against doing a "spookshow," that is, actually faking a manifestation of a departed loved one.

This first half, set in the carny amongst its disreputable but mostly warm and likable denizens, is darkly delightful, visually sumptuous and full of terrific, potent acting and pungent dialogue. As with both the novel and the earlier film version, the second half, in which Stan leaves the carny to start a higher-end mentalist scam--and foolishly ignores Zeena's advice--is less engaging. His scenes as the hapless fly in the parlor of a lacquered, satanic psychoanalyst (Cate Blanchett), though entertaining enough, border on camp, and are a little oppressive after the buoyant, motley first act.

Still, this is a rich and absorbing melodrama. Actors seem to thrive in front of del Toro's camera, and alongside the leads and the wondrous Collette, scene-stealers here include Willem Dafoe as the candidly heartless boss, Ron Perlman as an avuncular carny and, perhaps best of all, David Strathairn as Pete, Stan's washed-up, gently rueful mentor. Even in the second half, there's a splendid quick turn by Mary Steenburgen, and Richard Jenkins is scary, and briefly piteous, as the cold-hearted tycoon for whom Stan puts on his spookshow.

Finally, a word should be said for Paul Anderson, as the geek. He plays the part to the hilt, yet without hamming, and with a dreadful glimpse of the human being he was.