Michael Showalter (Mr. "I Want You Inside Me" himself) has turned into a very solid filmmaker, here crafting a fun, if by-the-numbers and patchy biopic that's his highest profile venture since his surprise hit The Big Sick. It's an extremely typical rise-and-fall tale that sadly, as is often the case these days, probably should've been told as a mini-series. It plays like a highlight reel and it's main strength is the acting on display. As we all know by now, this was the role which finally gave Jessica Chastain, who burst from seemingly thin air ten years ago (remember 2011 when she was in EVERYTHING?), her Oscar, and she does indeed deserve it. Somehow, she manages to find the dignity underneath the often garish and nearly-grotesque costumes and Oscar-winning makeup.
I'm often a little dubious of a film winning for makeup that, on the surface, appears to just be the simple application of lipstick and eyeliner (Bombshell comes to mind), but Showalter often shoots Chastain in close-up and the transformation is very impressive. On a side note, a BTS featurette on Bombshell shows the subtle but intricate work that went into those makeup effects as well, so it's obviously an artform that deserves respect in both the extreme Rick Baker-type creature effects as well as the more humanistic approaches.
Garfield and the rest are all fine, but it's definitely Chastain's show all the way. On an amusing side note, a friend of mine is the parishioner in the beginning who says “She peed her pants. Praise the Lord!”
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