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Nightmare Alley (2021)
The creative force behind the Oscar-winning Best Picture, The Shape of Water, has mounted another Best Picture nominee with his re-imagining of Nightmare Alley, a l the moody and grisly Hitchcockian-type noir thriller that doesn't answer all the questions it creates, but rivets the viewer with the chilling atmosphere created and first-rate performances by a remarkable cast.
This film is a remake of a 1947 film starring Tyrone Power, which I've never seen, but I'm pretty sure this version goes places that the 1947 film didn't. Stanhope Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is a slick carny with a knack for manipulating people, who joins a carnival where he immediately learns the basics of phony mentalism from a phony psychic (Toni Collette) and her husband (David Straithairn). After learning what he can he leaves the carnival with an attraction called the Electric Girl (Rooney Mara) and begins his own career as a mentalist, where he hooks up with an icy psychiatrist named Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) and begins a dangerous sting operation with her.
As he did with The Shape of Water, Guillermo Del Toro and his co-screenwriters create a bone-chilling atmosphere for this story that plays like a dream from the opening scenes. The atmosphere created for the carnival was especially squirm-worthy. A circus or carnival setting is normally associated with fun and entertainment and we definitely don't get that here. The carnival atmosphere created here is based on conning and frightening the customers, not entertaining them. What was more frightening was the way Stan slipped into it easily. Loved when the carnival manager, deliciously played by Willem Dafoe, that the carnival is a really good place for people who are running or hiding from something.
There's a bit of confusion after Stan leaves the circus because it appears that Stan goes from being phony mentalist to having some kind of psychic powers and that's never really explained. When he first meets Dr. Ritter, he is asked to identify the contents of her handbag and correctly pronounces she has a gun in it, which is never explained for this viewer's satisfaction. But I let it go as the pairing of Stan and Dr. Ritter, results in some unspeakable violence and the death of three people. And the deeper Stan goes into his off-again on-again mentalism, his moral barometer plunges to the point where we can't believe this is the same guy at the beginning of the movie, who was no prize himself.
Del Toro has mounted this story on a chilling but handsome canvas that has also earned the film Oscar nominations for Production design, costumes, and cinematography. Bradley Cooper gives the performances of his career and Blachett is positively bone-chilling as Dr. Ritter. It's an often ugly story, but totally mesmerizing.
The creative force behind the Oscar-winning Best Picture, The Shape of Water, has mounted another Best Picture nominee with his re-imagining of Nightmare Alley, a l the moody and grisly Hitchcockian-type noir thriller that doesn't answer all the questions it creates, but rivets the viewer with the chilling atmosphere created and first-rate performances by a remarkable cast.
This film is a remake of a 1947 film starring Tyrone Power, which I've never seen, but I'm pretty sure this version goes places that the 1947 film didn't. Stanhope Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is a slick carny with a knack for manipulating people, who joins a carnival where he immediately learns the basics of phony mentalism from a phony psychic (Toni Collette) and her husband (David Straithairn). After learning what he can he leaves the carnival with an attraction called the Electric Girl (Rooney Mara) and begins his own career as a mentalist, where he hooks up with an icy psychiatrist named Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) and begins a dangerous sting operation with her.
As he did with The Shape of Water, Guillermo Del Toro and his co-screenwriters create a bone-chilling atmosphere for this story that plays like a dream from the opening scenes. The atmosphere created for the carnival was especially squirm-worthy. A circus or carnival setting is normally associated with fun and entertainment and we definitely don't get that here. The carnival atmosphere created here is based on conning and frightening the customers, not entertaining them. What was more frightening was the way Stan slipped into it easily. Loved when the carnival manager, deliciously played by Willem Dafoe, that the carnival is a really good place for people who are running or hiding from something.
There's a bit of confusion after Stan leaves the circus because it appears that Stan goes from being phony mentalist to having some kind of psychic powers and that's never really explained. When he first meets Dr. Ritter, he is asked to identify the contents of her handbag and correctly pronounces she has a gun in it, which is never explained for this viewer's satisfaction. But I let it go as the pairing of Stan and Dr. Ritter, results in some unspeakable violence and the death of three people. And the deeper Stan goes into his off-again on-again mentalism, his moral barometer plunges to the point where we can't believe this is the same guy at the beginning of the movie, who was no prize himself.
Del Toro has mounted this story on a chilling but handsome canvas that has also earned the film Oscar nominations for Production design, costumes, and cinematography. Bradley Cooper gives the performances of his career and Blachett is positively bone-chilling as Dr. Ritter. It's an often ugly story, but totally mesmerizing.