Opus

Ayo Edebiri (Theater Camp, Bottoms, The Sweet East, and multi-award winner for the TV show The Bear) continues her streak of first-rate, wide-eyed performances even when the material she's got to work with is mediocre. Her ability to breathe life into an underwritten character in an underdeveloped movie (as she does here) and to fit herself into a very specific directorial vibe (as she also does here) will serve her well in the future. I imagine she will continue to be cast in a lot of half-baked indie productions until she lands one that's truly special. Opus is the feature directorial debut of former GQ Magazine editor Mark Anthony Green. I would have hoped for a more cutting and enlightening exploration of celebrity culture and toxic fandom from someone who has spent so much time writing about larger-than-life personalities. Unfortunately, his screenplay somehow feels both like something that might have seemed quirky and perceptive 25 years ago and derivative of pretty much every subpar A24 movie of the past few years.

Edebiri plays Ariel Ecton, a young magazine writer invited, along with her boss, to be part of an exclusive audience with a legendary pop star (John Malkovich) who has been off the grid for thirty years but has mysteriously reappeared with a new album. Sequestered on a remote desert compound surrounded by the star's cult of smiling sycophants, Ariel tries to navigate a scene she knows is shady while also trying not to look naive in front of the more experienced journalists, played by Juliette Lewis, Murray Bartlett, and others I've never heard of. It's not surprising Green couldn't attract stars of appropriate stature to give this elite group some credibility, as the roles are paper-thin. Malkovich is an odd choice for a legendary pop star; he plays him as a kind of an aging David Bowie if the space oddity had not, in reality, turned out to be such a down-to-earth guy in his later years. The songs credited for Malkovivh's character by Nile Rodgers and The-Dream kind of work and go a long way towards making him somewhat credible as a great pop artist, but we, perhaps wisely, don't hear a lot of his music. I wish Malkovich would do more movies; his screen presence is missed, especially in serious roles—of which this is certainly not one.