Greg and Tom have taken off their historian hats for a minute and have suddenly become — movie critics? Close but not quite!
This week we’re giving you a ‘sneak preview’ of their Patreon podcast called Side Streets, a conversational chat show about New York City and, well, whatever interests them that week.
In honor of the Academy Awards, the Bowery Boys hosts pay homage to the great Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert while looking at five award-worthy films with strong New York City connections:
— Anora with its captivating south Brooklyn locations
— A Complete Unknown, taking us back 1960s Greenwich Village
— Wicked, a spritely interpretation of the Broadway musical
— The Brutalist, an epic about more than just architecture
— Saturday Night, a frenetic tribute to the comedy-show icon which turns 50 years old this year
NOTE There are light spoilers (especially to locations used in some of these films) but nothing that will ruin your enjoyment of these movies.
The Current War, an epic detailing the battle for electrical power in the 19th century, was supposed hit theaters in the fall of 2017. But its distributor was the Harvey Weinstein Company and its release date was delayed by more important matters.
The film depicts the technological and financial war between Thomas Edison (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) and George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) to power the United States with electricity — Edison championing direct current (DC) while Westinghouse promoted alternating current (AC).
Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch) lights up Menlo Park / Lantern Entertaiment
The film is a bonanza for history lovers — and a bit of a bust for regular film goes and probably an offense to fans of real science on the screen. Gomez-Rejon presents a series of sumptuous, even breathtaking historical recreations — from Menlo Park to Niagara Falls — with a sharp visual style.
Many scenes reminded me of Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick; at its most ambitious, it was Eduard Muybridge by-way-of Brian DePalma.
The Current War gives us images we’ve rarely seen in cinema before — the lighting of lower Manhattan via the Pearl Street Station, the hauntingly lit grounds of Menlo Park, the triumph of the Chicago World’s Fair. (Obviously, at the Ferris Wheel, I gasped aloud.)
Westinghouse (Michael Shannon) in the corridors of Pittsburgh high society / Lantern Entertaiment
The film is so busy checking off the boxes of actual history that it sometimes forgets to make its principal characters interesting. To be fair, there’s so much going on. But Cumberbatch’s Edison hangs from bullet points about Edison’s life that never feel like they add up to the actual man. Shannon provides Westinghouse with more contemplation and carriage.
Tom Holland‘s hanging around too as Edison’s young assistant Samuel Insull. Comic book movie fans, if you’re keeping track — that’s Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, the Beast and General Zod in one movie.
The film’s fatal flaw is its failure to adequately visualize the core conflict — the battle of direct current vs alternating current. You know, the war of The Current War.
If you didn’t know what distinguished these two forms of electrical delivery before the film, it’s doubtful you’ll understand them afterwards. Scientific concepts can be difficult to translate onto film — finance shares the same problem — but the movie doesn’t really try.
Okay, but after all that — history buffs, please seek out this film! The worlds it creates are ravishing, often thrilling. The sense of gaslit rooms, the wonder of Victorian decor drenched in electric light. THE FERRIS WHEEL.
We have spoken about this subject many times on our podcasts. In fact, you can stitch the film’s screenplay together from listening to these past episodes of the Bowery Boys and The First:
