THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY3, 2020 79
NEWYORKER.COM
Richard Brody blogs about movies.likely you are to end up as a plaything
of fate. In short, the movie is baiting
us, praying that we will take offense,
and challenging us to flinch. First per-
son to whine is a wuss.
No wonder so many members of the
cast have an air of confusion. McCon-
aughey, usually a fount of confidence,
looks somewhat baffled and beached
as Mickey, and I regret to report that,
in the part of his foulmouthed wife,
Michelle Dockery is no more plausi-
ble than she was as the cool-tongued
Lady Mary, in “Downton Abbey.” As
for Henry Golding, it’s hard to take
him seriously as a gangster when he
comes across as slightly less frighten-
ing than a spring lamb. So who does re-
deem this unsavory tale? Colin Farrell,
for one, who plays a trainer at the gym,
radiating energy like sweat. Watch him
in a café, when somebody pulls a knife
on him. He swats it aside as if it were
a paper napkin.
Above all, we have Hugh Grant,
whose hilariously fruitful middle age
shows no sign of decay. Having been a
model of uxorious devotion, aghast with
gallantry, in “Florence Foster Jenkins”
(2016); a thespian avenger, in “Padding-
ton 2” (2017); and, on TV, a party po-
litical leader enmeshed in his own lies,
in “A Very English Scandal” (2018), he
now sinks his teeth into the role of
Fletcher with understandable glee. The
thing to remember here is that Grant
is no friend of the British tabloids, which
he has successfully sued for defamation;
when they were accused of hacking pri-
vate phones, he became a prominent
voice in the chorus of complaint. The
full force of his venom, you feel, feeds
into his portrayal of Fletcher, a profes-
sional snoop, from the smoky shade of
his spectacles and the snivelling mewl
of his accent to his pitiful goatee, which
could well be a cheap disguise. Grant,
in other words, has fun with his own
loathing, transforming it into a minor
work of dramatic art, like a mason carv-
ing a gargoyle. That takes class.T
o say that Nicolas Cage seems un-
hinged in his new movie, “Color
Out of Space,” is to give nothing away.
Many moons have waxed and waned,
after all, since Cage last gave a perfor-
mance that could accurately be described
as hinged. No longer content with alarm-
ing us, he now takes himself by surprise,
much as Peter Lorre—a previous mas-
ter of the wild-eyed—used to give him-
self the shivers. What distinguishes the
latest Cage freak-out is the care with
which it’s paced; not until halfway
through does he start to lose his hinge,
and, even when his face is sprayed with
blood, he keeps his glasses on, as if hop-
ing to settle down with a book. Oh, and,
if you’ve always wanted to watch him
milk an alpaca, your time has come.
Cage plays Nathan Gardner, a lov-
ing family man. He lives in the woods
with his wife, Theresa ( Joely Richard-
son), and their children. The oldest is
Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), whose
hobbies include pagan rituals. Then
comes Benny (Brendan Meyer) and,
last, young Jack—played by Julian Hil-
liard, who has already starred in “The
Haunting of Hill House” (2018) and
will appear later this year in “The Con-
juring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It.”
I hope he gets plenty of fresh air.
One night, a meteorite lands out-
side the Gardner residence. It glows aviolent purple-pink, a hue that proceeds
to spread over the entire movie, infect-
ing both flora and fauna, as well as the
visions that explode in the characters’
minds. Audiences, I predict, will be di-
vided between the elderly, who came
of age in the nineteen-sixties and will
view the film as an act of regroovifica-
tion, and fortysomethings who used to
be fans of My Little Pony and still have
a special place in their hearts for Twi-
light Sparkle—the pinky-purple nag
par excellence.
The movie springs from an H. P. Love-
craft story of the same name, which is
considerably scarier, stealthier, and more
scientifically detailed than what we ob-
serve onscreen. The director is Richard
Stanley, who is best known for having
tried, for three or four whole days,
to take charge of “The Island of Dr.
Moreau” (1996), before the strain of
coping with Marlon Brando and Val
Kilmer became too much. In the new
film, we glimpse Brando on TV, which
suggests that Stanley may never be able
to exorcise him, although “Color Out
of Space” is sufficiently festooned with
lunatic excesses of its own. The cat
named G-spot, for instance. The fingers
that are chopped instead of carrots
(“Dinner’s ready!”). The adult and child
who get fused together, like vertebrae,
back to back. The tomato-hurling scene.
The strangely Trumpian hand gestures
to which Nathan resorts in his psyche-
delic rage. And the moment when he
shouts at his daughter, “I’ve had it. With
your drama. L avinia.” Really? Where
does she get it from, I wonder? THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2020 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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