The media and social satire enriched with horror and thriller elements “Alfred Morettis Opus” is Mark Anthony Green's feature film debut. The mid -thirties made a half -hour short film (“Trapeze, USA”) in 2017. Otherwise, he worked as an editor and fashion expert of the Lifestyle magazine GQ. As such, he interviewed stars like Jay-Z, Lenny Kravitz, Daniel Kaluuya, Jared Leto, LeBron James or Tom Ford. Inspired by his own experiences as a journalist and encounters with famous people, Green tries to hold a mirror with his cinema debut, the media world and all of us. He wants to show how we tolerate or even celebrate the bold, sometimes ethically more than doubtful to almost criminal behavior of certain people just because they are famous and/or rich.
The work, which looks better and more original films, relies too much on a beautiful surface and too little on a coherent substructure. Yes, “Alfred Morettis Opus” looks great and offers some nicely staged scenes. Convincing arguments, so that someone is serious about their own behavior, are not reported. When going out of the cinema hall, the very spongy and generic statement of the film should be forgotten again by the majority of the audience. Reminder remains as much as a mixture of real pop icons such as Elton John, David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Prince, which was overrung in stupid costumes, John Malkovich.
John Malkovich is enjoying the eccentricity again.
The ambitious Ariel (Ayo Edebiri) has been working as a junior editor for a large music magazine for three years. Nevertheless, she has not yet been allowed to write a real story for the sheet – which she is very frustrated. Surprisingly, she receives one of just six invitations to the premiere of the new album of the Kultumwehten 1990 pop star Moretti (John Malkovich). The charismatic had withdrawn from the public for almost 30 years. But now he apparently is planning his comeback.
Together with her boss Stan (Murray Bartlett) Ariel travels to Morettis very secluded property, where she meets the other invited journalists (Juliette Lewis, Melissa Chambers, Stephanie Suganami and Mark Siversen). Sealed by it, the star leads a life like a cult guru. While everyone else is enthusiastic about the exclusivity and eccentricity of the event and quickly remove any journalistic distance, Ariel quickly becomes scary. It decides to risk a look behind Moretti's facade of luxury, fame and dubious genius …
In the footsteps of better role models
A considerable number of cinema guests should consider “Alfred Morettis Opus” early on whether they already know this film. The rest is probably the question of whether it is credible that from six entertainment journalists reporting about mainstream issues, nobody has seen a film from the hit “Blink Twice”, “Midsommar”, “The Menu” to “Get Out” and suspects what is coming?
In the past few years there have really been more than enough of such works in which a few people have been invited to luxurious property, which were cut off from the outside world, only so that they can be done to terrible things there. Director Mark Anthony Greens “Opus” is the next in this series and has nothing really substantial to add this thriller subgenre. Since it quickly becomes clear how everything will develop, it is correspondingly tiring to wait for the chose to finally get going.
Ayo Edebiri does her best!
It takes 36 minutes for the first time to make a hint in this direction. But instead of really getting started and showing us what he is obviously doing with great fun on the bike with his guests with his guests, follows bizarre skips for another half hour. These fill Green and the “Con Air” star, among other things, with a weird playback and dance performance, an eternally long, in relation to the punch line at most, amusing joke about a fictional encounter with Muhammad Ali and Chuck Norris as well as the minute-long breaking out oysters in a poorly illuminated yurt.
After all, the long waiting for the resolution does not even pay off for the audience. In the end there are only a few awkward outbursts of violence – primarily here amber Midthunder (“Prey”), as a cult that belongs to Moretti, can make it clear briefly that she is part of the cast. A chase on Quads is at least staged so neatly that it creates some tension. The journalists, who are in the artist's sights, ignore Moretti's troubling behavior, but apparently deliberately too long and turns out to be simply stupid for the final. As a result, the satirical sharpness of its part of the plot goes completely flute.
Ayo Edebiri deserved a better film!
The attempt to submit a kind of course correction in relation to the motifs of the Malkovich figure two years after the main story after the main story after the main story of the main story seems even more constructed than the one previously seen and only reinforces the frustration. This is a shame about “The Bear” favorite Ayo Edebiriwhose committed appearance would have deserved better material. At least she succeeds in emotionally pulling us to the side of her figure drawn by the script, despite the emptiness of the film.
Morettis from Beyoncé and Rihanna-Producer/Songwriter The-Dream composed and actually sung by Malkovich are a pretentious, pseudodadaistic techno pop. The songs seem calculated and stabilized that they might even mutate into medium -sized hits as part of the current mass taste. However, a persistent world career, as they have put the figure on the figure above decades, should hardly be possible.
Conclusion: “Alfred Morettis Opus” looks appealing and has a good cast. But the mix of satire and thriller does not go beyond entertaining moments and approaches. The less original and his ideas, which are very thin, and also inconsistently implementing film is a smooth disappointment in the end.