Queer: Hats off to Luca Guadagnino for putting out two films in 2024 and maintaining the same pace for the foreseeable future: besides this year’s Challengers and Queer, he’s already completed the #MeToo thriller After the Hunt (from a script that “everyone” has been trying to get their hands on since 2022), cast Austin Butler in his modern day adaptation of American Psycho, and next winter, he’ll shoot Sgt. Rock, a project long stuck in Hollywood development. Challengers might’ve been too long (paraphrasing Paul Schrader: “There’s a great 100-minute movie inside this 142-minute movie”), but it was invigorating and the work of an artist with unmistakable preoccupations, eccentricities, hangups, and tendencies—in other words, everything that’s missing from contemporary American cinema.
Daniel Craig may make for a great William S. Burroughs (his brief appearance as an elderly “Lee,” one of Burroughs’ many literary stand-ins, is striking, because this is the image of the author we all know), and Guadagnino’s instincts and choices are exciting: he rolls the main credits over still frames set to Sinead O’Connor’s cover of “All Apologies,” the song used in all of the film’s trailers; 20 minutes in, he sets Craig’s Mexico City to the original recording of “Come As You Are,” letting the song play out in its entirety. Later, he uses “Marigold,” the one Nirvana song that Kurt Cobain didn’t sing, during a dinner conversation with Lee and the young man he falls in love with (Drew Starkey). Dave Grohl sings “Marigold;” I wonder if that song is priced at a discount next to all of the Cobain-sung songs in their all-too-small catalogue, and the many, many Foo Fighters songs that Grohl has recorded since.
Despite some neat choices, Queer never gains any momentum. Film critic Nick Newman hit it right on the head: “Like trying to start a fire by rubbing two pieces of rubber together.” It’s another long film, 10 minutes shorter than Challengers, but so much less engaging and far from exciting. Queer isn’t a failure, though: so much of the relationship between Craig and Starkey is without words, and I can’t deny that its nocturnal rhythms will hit many people right in the gut.
Edward Scissorhands: After Batman in 1989, Tim Burton could do whatever he wanted. The guy was on fire from the mid-1980s through the 1990s, leaping from distinctive, personal works like Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice to a nine-figure studio franchise without losing any of his proclivities. I assumed Edward Scissorhands preceded Batman, but it came out a year later, in 1990, two years before Burton would direct a successful sequel called Batman Returns. What surprised me most was how little happens: Johnny Depp plays the titular black sheep, and Dianne Wiest, an Avon lady, adopts him and tries to acclimate him to an exaggerated 1980s American suburbia. No doubt Burton and production designer Bo Welch looked to Joe Dante’s The ‘Burbs from the previous year, but both films suffer from a critical problem: their leads are really annoying.
It’s also undeniable that Johnny Depp’s near-mute scissor hand act—the ultimate outsider in a candy-colored suburban limbo—is immensely moving for many people. But it was all a one-note joke to me, tedious and half-baked compared to Burton’s similar 1988 Beetlejuice, a phenomenal film. The movie isn’t making fun of Edward, but so many of its jokes and scenes and setups are premised on his monosyllabic communication and the fact that his hands are giant scissors. Johnny Depp nuts got what they wanted, but I’d rather see Peter Sarsgaard in the role. Bo Welch’s extraordinary production design makes the movie engaging despite its shortcomings.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter and Instagram: @nickyotissmith
