Nightmare Alley
An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.
- Released: 2021-12-02
- Runtime: 150 minutes
- Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
- Stars: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, David Strathairn, Holt McCallany, Mark Povinelli, Jim Beaver, Romina Power, Paul Anderson, Tim Blake Nelson, Mary Steenburgen, Clifton Collins Jr., Lara Jean Chorostecki, Drew Nelson, David Hewlett, Troy James, Samantha Rodes, Peter MacNeill, Sarah Mennell, Mike Hill, Caleb Ellsworth-Clark, Dian Bachar, Matthew MacCallum, Linden Porco, Jesse Buck, Stephen McHattie, Bill MacDonald, Natalie Brown, Perry Mucci, Dan Lett, Catherine McGregor, Martin Julien, Tim Post, Will Conlon, Daniel Falk, James Collins, Lili Connor, Danny Waugh, Walter Rinaldi, Andrew Locke, Calvin Desautels, Derrick Moore, Grant Bradley, Dani Klupsch, Vikki Ring, Vanessa Botbyl, Michael Bridgeman, Charles Langille, Paul Taylor, Clyde Whitham, Romina Power
- Director: Guillermo del Toro
Comments
- Davalon-Davalon - 8 June 2024
A bit slow, a lot unbelievable, but some great twists.
The only reason my husband I watched this is that we could see it for free with my Amazon Prime plan. That said, I'm glad we did.
This movie is not for the faint of heart. For example, within the first few minutes, a deranged "geek," who is supposedly part of a carnival act (but is actually a drug-addicted prisoner) bites the neck of a live chicken -- after pretending to calm it. I almost threw up. Now, I had to double-check with the AHA to ensure that no animal was actually harmed, and in fact, it says that a robotic chicken was used. Nonetheless, it sure looked real and was enough to send me running from the room.
Bradley plays "Stan," a troubled drifter/grifter who end up at a carnival show and gets a job. He quickly learns the lay of the land, and, after he learns some tricks about mind reading from "Pete," (David Strathairn, superb) and bags "electric girl" Molly (Rooney Mara), he ends up "reading minds" at posh clubs in the big city.
Let's say that things go south when he meets icy psychiatrist "Lilith" (Cate Blanchett, always perfect).
The film often times seems stagnant or slow or too talky. There were lots of moments when I said, "But... why? Wait, huh? No, he couldn't have known that. Why did he do that?" But, as is often the case in movies, one overlooks things as long as one is entertained.
Visually, this film is a masterpiece. I mean, there's a scene where Bradley's ice blue eyes are lit like they're dual Hope Diamonds. And other moments where Cate is lit and she looks like Veronica Lake with a shorter bob. And her lipstick! It was like someone great-grandma kept a vintage tube of Elizabeth Arden's "Victory Red." I mean, it was astonishing.
There were any number of character actors and they were all outstanding. Perhaps the best one was Richard Jenkins, who plays the incredibly evil Ezra Grindle (what a fantastic name). But honestly, all of the character actors were fantastic; it was worth watching the movie just to see them (Mary Steenburgen does an unbelievable turn as a wealthy grieving mother).
The story goes places you think it's going to, then goes places that will shock you. There are moments where you'll say, "Oh, c'mon!" And other moments where you'll say, "Oh, my God!"
Again, not for the weak of heart. There's a lot of cruelty and violence and lying and cheating going on. Someone is going to get hurt. You might predict the ending, but, actually you probably won't predict it exactly. It's a great moment when it arrives.
Uneven, but spectacular moments. - Coventry - 30 January 2024
Couldn't you just have stayed at the Carnival, Stan?
Well, I guess I'll be collecting a lot of non-useful votes again with this review, but so be it. "Nightmare Alley" is the most astoundingly dull, ridiculously overrated, and unnecessarily overlong movie I have watched (or struggled through...) in a long, long time. Seriously, I'm probably missing the point again, but why does this have a 7.0 rating and almost exclusively praising reviews? Some people in Hollywood can turn whatever they touch into gold, regardless and unconditionally of what they do, and I reckon Guillermo Del Toro is one of them.
"Nightmare Alley" supposedly is a throwback/homage to film-noir cinema classics of the 1940s, and more specifically a reinterpretation of the 1947 movie with the same title and starring Tyrone Power. I haven't seen the original (yet) or read the novel on which it is based, but I did see more than enough film-noir classics from the era to know that Del Toro's movie can't hold a candle to them. The atmosphere is nowhere near as raunchy, the characters are nowhere near as intriguing, and those old black-and-white masterpieces certainly were not as boring.
Guillermo surrounds himself with talented casts, I'll give him that. Bradley Cooper is good, and Cate Blanchett is even better. Heck, even the entire stellar supportive cast - and especially the carnival posse - is genius, but what's the use when the script is uninteresting? Admittedly I wasn't too frustrated for as long as the plot took place inside a secluded Carnival community. The décors and several of the acts are fascinating, and the uncanny nature of the artists are fantastic. Del Toro's male muse Ron Perlman as the strongman, Toni Colette as the fortune teller, David Strathairn as the alcoholic and former illusionist, and - top of the bill - Willem Dafoe as the ultimate carny fraud. Dafoe depicts the type of creep who collects deformed fetuses in jars and unemotionally explains, while having a steak dinner, how to transform a weak-minded drifter into a circus geek. Cooper, a man with a dubious past, joins the carnival and works his way up from handyman to a master manipulator in the domain of psychic deception.
So far, so good. But then, Cooper's character Stanton Carlisle decides the carnival isn't good enough for his talents and persuades his girlfriend Molly to run off with him and perform independent shows. "Nightmare Alley" turns into a boring and intolerably slow-paced tale that not even Cate Blanchett nor Richard Jenkins can save. The dire traumas of rich and influential senior citizens, the mental mind games between Cooper and Blanchett, the growing uselessness and vulnerability of Rooney Mara's character ... it's all hopelessly dull and irritating. "The Shape of Water" was already vastly overrated, but this is beyond words. The true Del Toro, of "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Devil's Backbone" is gone forever.
