Tesla

Director: Michael Almereyda
Year Released: 2020
Rating: 3.0

"Open interpretation" of the life of inventor Nikola Tesla (Ethan Hawke) goes over his feuding with Thomas Edison (Kyle MacLachlan), siding with George Westinghouse (Jim Gaffigan) in the alternating current versus direct current debate, getting into trouble for building a giant coil and eventually succumbing to how own egomania ("Every human being is an engine").  I'm a little tired of the 'traditional' biopic, so it's nice to see Almereyda try to take a more creative approach (inspired, I'm guessing, by Derek Jarman and Mark Rappaport): he uses J.P. Morgan's daughter Anne (Eve Hewson, who could be Imogen Poots' twin) for narration, has Tesla at a karaoke bar singing a Tears for Fears song and concocts scenarios that never took place.  It's not for everyone, and appreciation depends on one's accepting Hawke as a Serbian futurist and tolerance for a little, ahem, 'exaggerated' acting.