Andrew Burnap and Rachel Zegler in Snow White
SNOW WHITE
Garsh … so many thoughts on a live-action Disney reboot that, in all honesty, is barely worth a single thought. In honor of the support staff whose collective moniker has been dumped from the original Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs title, here are a septet of paragraphs on director Marc Webb's and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson's Snow White, accordingly themed to each individual Dwarf.
1) Doc. Let's be honest: Disney was inevitably going to make a live-action version of their first-ever, Oscar-winning animated feature. So let's look at this rationally, as the one Dwarf whose name isn't also an adjective would. In 2025, there's no way the same studio that has given us no end of courageous, impetuous heroines over the past four decades was going to follow the 1937 template and offer a simpering, helium-voiced cutie idly dreaming of a prince and wistfully cleaning up after a cadre of older, shorter roommates. By the same token, Disney couldn't jettison everything that made its predecessor iconic, so at least a few of the precisely rendered characters and less egregious plot points would have to remain. That means we get a bump in agency for Snow White, but an Evil Queen seemingly unchanged after 88 years. We get a courtly romance, but one that takes a back seat to an empower-the-citizenry narrative. We lose “Someday My Prince Will Come,” but keep “Whistle While You Work” and “Heigh-Ho.” A delicate balancing act, and …
2) Sneezy. … one I'm fundamentally allergic to. Blessedly, aside from the Dwarfs whom we'll touch on eventually, there are no outright hideous updates to the material here; no one's gonna make you listen to Daveed Diggs and Awkwafina rapping, or force you to endure Tom Hanks as a singing Geppetto. Yet there's no net gain in trading one set of clichés for another, and every live-action Disney update – even the solid ones, such as Kenneth Branagh's 2015 Cinderella – falls victim to this practice. While Snow White may no longer be a chirping dullard, designing her as a prototypically feisty dullard is hardly an improvement. Same with turning Snow White's vacuous prince from 1937 into a floppy-haired bandit who projects just as little in terms of personality. And what's the point in making our heroine theoretically sharper and more hip to real-world problems when she's still gonna ignore the warnings of parents from the beginning of time and accept and eat food presented to her by a witchy stranger? Disney may “reinvent” their classics, but they can never reinvent them quite enough, which just makes director Webb's Snow White …
3) Sleepy. … exhausting. Because while we haven't been specifically here before, we've certainly been here before. I'm not exactly sure when the blueprint for the current Disney-musical model was established. (Was it only 1989, with The Little Mermaid?) But by now, even children around the age of five should be able to recognize the format that's been unsubtly pounded into the new Snow White by composers Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, Jack Feldman, and Lizzy McAlpine: the “Belle”-esque opener (“Good Things Grow”) for a town full of busy, chattering extras; the “I want” song (“Waiting on a Wish”) in which our heroine demonstrates her yearning and pluck; the villain's lament (“All Is Fair”), a bleakly comic ditty usually rife with tongue twisters and samplings of perversion; the destined-lovers-squabbling number (“Princess Problems”); the destined-lovers-getting-real number (“A Hand Meets a Hand”); the customary reprise of either one or some combination of all these tunes. No one who knows the Snow White story, at least as far as Disney's deliberately non-Grimm take goes, will be surprised by the narrative here. No one who's heard previous compositions from the Disney's Great American Songbook could think the Pasek/Paul/Feldman/McAlpine offerings are in any way equals, and they barely rise to the level of "generically appealing." That said ...
4) Bashful. … I will admit, with some embarrassment, that I involuntarily grinned at the introductory notes to “Whistle While You Work,” and might've gotten a tad misty-eyed when I heard the initial “Heigh-ho-o-o-o-o!” echo. This is why those at the Disney brain trust are bastards: They do know how to get you. (Sometimes.) I'll even more shyly cop to enjoying the presentation of a few bits that shouldn't have worked at all. The scene of the Dwarfs working their coal mine is hyperactive and strange – they have magic powers now?! – but also choreographed with considerable zip, and the updated lyrics, introducing us to the team one by one, make something über-familiar feel surprisingly fresh. And even though, due to the studio's aggressive PC-ness of recent years, I half-expected the prince's climactic kissing of the unconscious Snow White to be preceded by a Dwarf yelling “Where's the consent?!”, her reawakening still boasts a fair amount of fairytale wonder. It also accounts for one of numerous lovely reactions by Snow White portrayer Rachel Zegler …
5) Happy. … who is easily the best, cheeriest reason to see Webb's remake. True, she's not doing anything that she didn't do, to far greater end, as Maria in Spielberg's West Side Story, and despite her role here obviously not allowing for it, I missed the shades of melancholy and danger Zegler brought to 2023's Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. But while it remains hard to gauge her range, Zegler has the right spirit for her assignment, and her vocals are, of course, divine; the 23-year-old's dazzling soprano, and the clear joy she takes in sharing it, make even that drippy “I want” number work. Whatever Zegler's charisma is composed of, I wish she had shared it with co-star Andrew Burnap, whose vocals as the prince are decent enough, but who proves to be a thunderously uninteresting, abjectly forgettable scene partner. (Not helping Burnap's cause: This prince is now named Jonathan, which seems almost a cruel way of reminding audiences that, in Wicked, this same sort of role was far more ticklishly played by Jonathan Bailey.) Yet our winning, properly cast female lead still isn't enough to offset the many, many issues …
6) Dopey. … the most annoying being that the movie is so routinely dumb. (Also dumbly routine, but one problem at a time.) I tried my best to ignore minor idiocies, such as the queen's decision to not lock the thieving Jonathan in the dungeon, but rather tie him to the front gate as an example to others – a foolish plan considering he was unguarded and Snow was able to untie his ropes in about five seconds flat. But if the filmmakers were gonna “modernize” this Disney heroine, couldn't they have modernized her get-up? When Snow went on her (intended-to-be-fatal) apple-picking expedition wearing that instantly recognizable, godawful-ugly ensemble with the poofy shoulder pads and insensible shoes and banana-hued skirt – a color that not even Demi Moore in The Substance looked good in – she seemed almost deranged. Had this gal never been in a field before? Also, why keep Snow's ability to communicate with animals and birds intact if that talent wasn't ever going to come in handy? Why did Gal Gadot agree to play the queen if the bored-seeming performer wasn't going to have any evident fun in the part? Why outfit Jonathan, a de facto Robin Hood, with a troupe of Merry Men and Women for apparent comic relief and only allow one of them to speak? Why give the Dwarfs the newly invented ability to turn coal into glowing rubies when it remains unclear whom all that drudgery is for, and who gets the riches (it's not the queen and certainly not the neighboring townsfolk), and why some of that booty wasn't used to build the boys a better house? For these and other reasons, Snow White left me …
7) Grumpy. … grumpy, particularly with whatever CGI “wizardry” was used to create the Seven Dwarfs. I'm not entirely sure how to describe these beings, but the word “abomination” keeps coming to mind. In regard to the pre-release controversy, I understand why Peter Dinklage considered the possible employment of vertically challenged actors in the roles offensive, and also why less-famous vertically challenged actors objected to potentially losing high-paying gigs. Snow White's Doc, Sneezy, Sleepy, Bashful, Happy, Dopey, and Grumpy, however, really are something, by which I mean they're close to unwatchable. Although their “Heigh-Ho” harmonizing is delightful, these Uncanny Valley garden gnomes, with their faces that almost look like those of famous actors, are unremittingly creepy, their slapstick shenanigans not half as amusing as the film seems to think they are. And I loathed the pushiness behind the conception of Dopey, who looks like Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman but acts like a silent take on Harry Potter's Dobby, which is simply intolerable. It turns out that, unlike in 1937, the reason Dopey can't talk isn't because he's stupid, but because he's bashful … and don't we already have a Dwarf for that? Disney's 21st-century Snow White is mostly just generically bad. I hated it, though, for making the one-time sweetest Dwarf a manipulative figure of pity, and you get zero points for correctly guessing whether this “lovable” mute will eventually speak in a moment of heart-tugging sentiment. Disney will never stop being shameless. Speaking on behalf of generations of fans, though, I truly wish they'd stop being insulting.
THE ALTO KNIGHTS
Like most of you, I'd presume, I've seen a lot of gangster films. Yet after decades of sticking with this genre through thick and thin, I can't think of a weirder tale of warring Mafiosi than The Alto Knights, which really shouldn't have been anything close to weird.
Its director is Barry Levinson, whose 1991 Bugsy was the very model of a gangster flick you could take your mom, or even your grandma, to. Its screenwriter is Nicholas Pileggi, who not only wrote GoodFellas and Casino, but the nonfiction books from which both Scorsese films were adapted. One of its producers is the legendary Irwin Winkler, whose credits among many Scorsese collaborations include GoodFellas and The Irishman. And its star is Robert De Niro, who, ya know, knows his way around this terrain. The reason his latest is so nutty, however, lies in that “star” mention, because it should actually be a plural “stars,” given that De Niro plays both leads: cool, confident crime boss Frank Costello, and excitable, reactionary crime boss Vito Genovese. No, the two men weren't related. In real life, they didn't even look anything alike. Yet here we are, with camera trickery allowing De Niro, for no conceivable reason beyond the stunt, to spend more than a few scenes acting opposite himself. For what it's worth, he's terrific in both roles. But did anyone beyond De Niro actually need or want this to happen?
The Alto Knights is unquestionably an old man's movie. (De Niro is 81, Levinson is 82, Pileggi is 92, Winkler is 93.) And if the film boasted more narrative drive, it might've been one of those entertainments your somewhat-shady uncle forces the whole family to watch together after Thanksgiving dinner – a less-memorable Godfather; Part II with more than an hour shaved off and double the De Niro. But it's still pretty good, largely because we're told a (mostly) true Mafia story that I don't recall hearing about before. The short of it is that 66-year-old Costello, New York City's acknowledged don in 1957, wants out of the business, and that decision rankles 60-year-old Genovese, who's in danger of losing his position of power if Costello doesn't name him successor. After Genovese arranges a hit on Costello – a gunfire attack by a hired goon (Shōgun's Cosmo Jarvis, unrecognizably bloated here) that Frank miraculously survives – we get an hour of what led these former best friends from the old neighborhood to such opposite positions. After the assassination attempt, we get an hour of how the pair move forward, Costello still wanting to get out alive and Genovese still demanding the throne. Considering Levinson's (hopefully intentional) methodic pacing, I can't exactly call The Alto Knights thrilling cinema. But its admirable presentation and factual basis at least ensure that it's engaging cinema, with just enough “Really?” factoids to make you want to learn more about this period of internal warfare that effectively ended the Mafia's unchecked reign in 20th-century America.
Still: Why two De Niros? I know Pesci's retired – as Genovese, De Niro is effectively delivering a Pesci-in-Casino performance – and I'm not sure we needed another vehicle for De Niro and Pacino. But wasn't there some other, potentially revelatory actor that might've taken on one of the leads instead? Lithgow? Bridges? Jeremy Irons, maybe? Considering that he's never really not De Niro on screen, Levinson's one-man band does a fine job of physically and verbally differentiating his kingpins; at no point are you confused about which character you're watching. But you're also never unaware of the fraudulence behind the conceit. Debra Messing, Kathrine Narducci, Michael Adler, James Ciccone, a sensational Michael Rispoli, and others are providing the semi-heightened genre portrayals we expect, and to varying degrees, you buy them all. With De Niro, though, you're forever conscious of the gimmick, and your knowledge is exacerbated every time the actor launches into one of his traditional, likely non-scripted rants that turn a couple of sentences into a verbal aria. “He wanted me killed! That's what I'm sayin'. He wanted me killed. And why? Why would he want me killed? Why? Why? He wanted me killed and I don't know why. That's what I'm sayin'.” The Alto Knights is completely acceptable, even enjoyable gangster stuff. With only one De Niro around, though, it might've lasted one hour instead of two.
NO OTHER LAND
A family emergency (all good now!) required a hasty trek to Chicagoland on Monday morning, which is why these reviews are landing a couple days later than usual. If I were feeling some regret about not composing them sooner, it's not because I presumed readers were clamoring for my takes on Snow White or The Alto Knights. It's because I really wanted to get word out on how marvelous the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land is, fearing that its current booking at Davenport's Last Picture House would prove to be a one-week-only deal. (On the Sunday afternoon I attended, there was all of one fellow patron in the auditorium with me.) But gloriosky and hallelujah: This supremely affecting and intelligent work by directors Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor is sticking around the venue for (at least) one week more. You shouldn't miss it. Not just because it's superb, but because if you don't see it in a theater, you might not, in the foreseeable future, have the chance to see it at all.
A collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian journalists, No Other Land, with its mostly hand-held footage taken between 2019 and 2023, is principally focused on the forced displacements in, and systemic destruction of, the occupied West Bank region of Masafer Yatta. Adra, a Palestinian activist, is horrified and incensed by the loss of homes and community centers, and commits himself to documenting the atrocities. He finds an unexpected ally in Abraham, an Israeli journalist aghast at those enforcing the court order stating that Masafer Yatta is now, legally, an Israeli military firing zone. Roughly 75 percent of the film constitutes video and phone records of the demolition that takes place over a four-year period. The other 25 percent constitutes the deeply moving, deeply conflicted friendship that develops between Adra and Abraham, who are equals in terms of their goals but achingly unequal otherwise. Abraham, as Adra reminds him, can always go home. Adra, as the days mount to years, no longer has a home – or rather, not one that he in any way recognizes – and can't travel anywhere without fear of arrest or worse.
Despite, and partly because of, its Academy Award win for Best Documentary Feature and numerous additional accolades over the past year-plus, to say nothing of the film's subject matter, I was expecting No Other Land to be a brutal sit. All credit to the quartet of directors for ensuring that it's not. To be sure, there are galling and shocking scenes aplenty, as when youths are forced to quickly evacuate their school before bulldozers tear the building down, and we witness two scenes of protesters shot at point-blank range – one of the hits, if I'm remembering correctly, proving fatal. And you can't remove from memory the sight of so many women and children (and a fair number of men) weeping at the effective erasure of their communities, their homes annihilated, their only option to live in nearby caves. Yet if there's an underlying theme to the directors' presentational M.O. here it's “resistance,” and Adra, Abraham, Ballal, and Szor continually find the relief, the joyful strength, in resistance.
It's there in the journalistic exhilaration Adra and Abraham feel as they speed toward another area of strife, in the community shared by Masafer Yatta residents as they make do and laugh (as much as they're able) and attempt to rebuild … . It's even there in the kids choosing to lose themselves in games played on their iPhones. No Other Land is heartbreaking and, depending on your leanings, enraging. It's also, for all of its sadness, oddly hopeful, which may be more than can be said of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself. At one point, the Israeli Abraham expresses disappointment that one of his submitted videos has only received a paltry number of views. It's the Palestinian Adra who counters that Abraham shouldn't be expecting effect, or even basic awareness, so quickly – that every step they make toward international understanding of the crisis is a slight, sometimes very slight, step toward progress. Every interchange between these two both hurts your gut and sates your soul. (Abraham and Adra express so much mutual affection and appear so spiritually connected – so sensitive to one another's plights and heritage – that when Adra asked his friend “When are we going to get married?”, it felt less like a hypothetical about their individual future lives than the suggestion of a Happily Ever After neither we nor they saw coming.)
For reasons both understandable, given the hot-button issue, and incomprehensible, given the acclaim and awards, No Other Land remains without a U.S. distributor, meaning it's incredibly unlikely that you'll find the film on streaming services or DVD any time soon. (Just like the Taylor Swift concert movie, of all precedents, this Oscar winner from three weeks ago is being distributed independently, yet strictly at independently owned venues – thank you, Last Picture House!) Please take the opportunity, then, to catch this remarkably powerful, humane achievement while you can, and hope that PBS or even YouTube finds a way to ultimately get it to those who might otherwise miss it. In the meantime, it's a miracle this film is being released at all. See it on the big screen. See it with a group. And be prepared to talk about it all night long.
