2022 - December
The Thin Man (1934) 4/4
Uncut Gems (2019) 4/4
Tár (2022) 4/4
The Last of Sheila (1973) 4/4
In the Bedroom (2001) 4/4
Little Children (2006) 3.5/4
Perfect Blue (1997) 3.5/4
Violent Night (2022) 3.5/4
Election (1999) 3.5/4
Decision to Leave (2022) 3.5/4
Unfaithful (2002) 3.5/4
Contact (1992) 3/4
Holy Spider (2022) 3/4
Arbitrage (2012) 3/4
The Town (2010) 3/4
Maigret (2022) 3/4
The Kennel Murder Case (1933) 3/4
Executive Decision (1996) 3/4
Brothers' Nest (2018) 2.5/4
See How They Run (2022) 2.5/4
The Weekend Murders (1970) 2/4
Out of Blue (2018) 2/4
Fatal Attraction (1987) 2/4
Separate Lies (2005) 2/4
Windows (1980) 1.5/4
Non-Stop (2014) 1.5/4
Murder Mystery (2019) 1/4
The Calling (2014) 1/4
Uncut Gems (2019) 4/4
Tár (2022) 4/4
The Last of Sheila (1973) 4/4
In the Bedroom (2001) 4/4
Little Children (2006) 3.5/4
Perfect Blue (1997) 3.5/4
Violent Night (2022) 3.5/4
Election (1999) 3.5/4
Decision to Leave (2022) 3.5/4
Unfaithful (2002) 3.5/4
Contact (1992) 3/4
Holy Spider (2022) 3/4
Arbitrage (2012) 3/4
The Town (2010) 3/4
Maigret (2022) 3/4
The Kennel Murder Case (1933) 3/4
Executive Decision (1996) 3/4
Brothers' Nest (2018) 2.5/4
See How They Run (2022) 2.5/4
The Weekend Murders (1970) 2/4
Out of Blue (2018) 2/4
Fatal Attraction (1987) 2/4
Separate Lies (2005) 2/4
Windows (1980) 1.5/4
Non-Stop (2014) 1.5/4
Murder Mystery (2019) 1/4
The Calling (2014) 1/4
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- DirectorBen AffleckStarsBen AffleckRebecca HallJon HammA proficient group of thieves rob a bank and hold an assistant manager hostage. Things begin to get complicated when one of the crew members falls in love with her.06-12-2022
The titular town refers to Charlestown, a neighbourhood of Boston which, if the opening titles are to be believed, is the bank robbery capital of the world. "Heisting banks is a trade in Charlestown," says an FBI agent. It passes down from generation to generation like a genetic disease. That vicious circle is the hell in which the lead characters of Ben Affleck's "The Town" are trapped. An unspoken understanding of violence, of belonging to a criminal community, the Irish omerta as one of them puts it and indeed this is a very Irish movie. It nails that musty atmosphere of a multi-generational family that sticks together and has "their own way" which usually leads further and further to disaster. In that sense, the pigheadedness of the bank robbers in "The Town" is not a million miles away from the pigheadedness of the farmers in Jim Sheridan's "The Field".
Doug McRay (Ben Affleck) is the perfect example of that Irish sense of familial loyalty. His father was a bank robber, a legend in his own lifetime, and, we imagine, his father before him. Now Doug has his own crew, whom he calls his brothers, and who are married or soon to be married to Irish women and who will have children who'll carry on their tradition.
Except that Doug wants to get out. There's serious "heat" on his crew after a near escape from their latest job. Furthermore, he's only just gotten clean, ditched the life of coke and booze, and is now looking for something more. He may be the quintessential Irish bruiser, a tough guy who'd rather die than let his brothers down, but his heart is just not in it anymore.
Doug's way out presents itself in the form of Claire (Rebecca Hall), a beautiful bank manager whom Doug's crew takes hostage during a particularly intense job. At first, Doug gets close to her in order to find out whether she can identify them but the two quickly fall in love.
Doug and Claire's love story is the heart of the movie but its core is the outstanding supporting cast. Jeremy Renner plays Jem, one of Doug's brothers, a childhood friend who finds the idea of Doug leaving unacceptable mainly because he realizes that he himself will never be able to leave. Another anchor weighing Doug down is his ex, the alcoholic prostitute Krista played in a tour-de-force performance by an unbelievably good Blake Lively. Doug is the only person Krista can hang on to for help and if he leaves she will be adrift, left alone with her daughter who may or may not be Doug's.
This is where "The Town" stands out from most other heist movies you may have seen. The portrayal of the community tieing Doug down is equal parts fascinating and devastating as it becomes obvious that the ties they impose on each other are the ones weighing them down. All this toxicity is hidden behind brash Irish pride and a false sense of belonging. Anyone who dares break out of lockstep is cast out and declared a rat. One such person is Dino Ciampa (Titus Welliver) who grew up among the bank robbers and criminals but went on to become an FBI agent. No matter how loudly Doug and his crew talk of brotherhood and belonging it's easy to see who chose the better path in life.
Sadly, "The Town" gets bogged down in genre cliches far too often. There's the irascible determined cop (Jon Hamm), the psychotic mob boss pretending to be the paragon of society (Pete Postlethwaite). There's the doomed one last job, the exciting gunfights and car chases, and double-crosses and twists. When it goes into heist movie mode, the film starts spinning its wheels. That's because the characters are the most interesting and fleshed-out aspect of "The Town", a heist movie which is far more interesting when it's quiet and low-key.
Even though the action scenes are genuinely exciting and well-executed, the film never quite finds the right balance between the drama and the action. I feel this is mainly because the heist stuff is far too predictable and cliched to be in a movie as intelligent and heartfelt as this.
There are three cuts of "The Town" out there but none of them really find the right balance. The extended cut has a lot more character development but it feels more bloated and aimless. The theatrical cut flows better but lacks some of the complexity. Ultimately, the best version is probably somewhere in between.
What all three versions have in common is that they ultimately end with an unsatisfactory whisper rather than a bang. The climactic heist is terrifically well shot but "The Town" should have focused more on its characters in the third act than on plot machinations and shootouts. A lot of what makes the film a fascinating watch disappears as the heist cliches take hold.
Ultimately, "The Town" is not as good an Irish drama as "Mystic River" nor is it as good a heist movie as "Heat", a masterpiece it clearly aims to imitate. However, it has its own charms mainly the well-written dialogue and some superb performances of which Renner and Lively are the absolute stand outs.
3/4 - DirectorBenny SafdieJosh SafdieStarsAdam SandlerJulia FoxIdina MenzelWith his debts mounting and angry collectors closing in, a fast-talking New York City jeweler risks everything in hope of staying afloat and alive.06-12-2022
Howard Ratner is a ball of nervous energy. A fast-talking, speed-walking, mile-a-minute neurosis on legs rat-tat-tattering his way towards imminent disaster. His whole body seems to oscillate with nervous energy making him incapable of standing still. Not that he really has the time to take a break. His whole world is constantly teetering on the edge of disaster. Howard is way over his head in gambling debts, his life is on the line, and he is always making last-minute plans to get even the briefest stays of execution.
"Uncut Gems", directed and written by The Safdie Brothers, seeks to emulate Howard's energy. It's jittery, exhilarating, and ludicrously fast-paced. The camera never stands still, the editing is intentionally messy, and the pace is whiplash-inducing. Just listening to this film causes anxiety. There are no silences, just constant shouting, swearing, arguing, pleading, betting, lying, cheating, dealing... until the cacophony of voices becomes the film's nerve-wracking soundtrack. It's about as oppressive as a movie can possibly be. Like a high school bully, it runs you into a corner and then relentlessly picks at you. I found it to be a great time!
But then I have a taste for such movies. "Uncut Gems" reminded me of a lot of my old favourites. There are definite whiffs of Cassavetes here, "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie", some Lumet, some Scorsese, a touch of Altman, a lot of Abel Ferrara with the pacing of "One, Two, Three", and even a hint of Daniel Algrant's obscure but impressive "People I Know". That's all to say that "Uncut Gems" seems to have been tailor-made for me and indeed it's one of the most consistently entertaining and exhilarating movies in recent years.
Recounting the plot would be a fruitless endeavour but most of it can be summed up in one of Howard's lines. After a particularly nasty turn of events, he cries on his mistress' shoulder repeating "Everything I do is not going right". Yeah, it's one of those movies in which everything our protagonist touches turns to excrement.
I'll give you a typical beat in "Uncut Gems". Howard owes a lot of money to a bookie named Arno (Eric Bogosian). In order to pay him back, he pawns a priceless ring he took from a basketball player and then bets that money so that he can both pay Arno off and get the ring back. He wins and he wins big! He goes to tell Arno that he has his money only to learn that Arno stopped his bet in an act of ignorant spite.
Such self-double-crosses happen every few minutes in "Uncut Gems", a comedy of errors in which everyone keeps digging holes for everyone else and then falling into them themselves.
Howard, of course, is the biggest offender as he never seems to be able to walk away from a bet, a risk, the merest possibility of more. As the film goes on it becomes increasingly obvious that despite all his whining, Howard is having the time of his life. He is a compulsive gambler and an adrenaline junky and he actually derives a bizarre kind of thrill from having his life on the line.
He is played by Adam Sandler in a performance which again proves what a fantastic actor he can be. Sandler displays an incredible range here, making Howard both a loveable fool and a despicable, manipulative sleazebag at the same time. He has complete control over the character in this insane, fast-paced thrill ride. With the slightest gesture, he changes our entire perspective on who Howard is. It's an astounding performance, not only a career-best but also the year's best.
The rest of the cast is entirely on par with Sandler which is almost miraculous considering that the Safdies have packed the film with debutants. People like Kevin Garnett and The Weeknd play themselves turning in surprisingly natural, relaxed, and utterly believable performances. A far cry from the usual awkward celebrity cameos. An absolute standout is Julia Fox in her first film role as Howard's mistress and confidante. She has the energy and the charisma to go toe-to-toe with Sandler effortlessly. The cast is rounded out with several reliable professionals such as Idina Menzel, LaKeith Stanfield, and Eric Bogosian but it's Fox and Garnett who steal the spotlight.
I don't doubt that "Uncut Gems" will have its detractors, those who find it too crass or too anxiety-inducing. I, personally, as a huge fan of Cassavetes and intense, exhilarating, in-your-face films in general, absolutely loved it! It's a blast, a consistently entertaining, frequently hilarious, and wonderfully executed movie which puts you into the uncomfortable shoes of a man gambling with his life.
4/4 - DirectorKyle NewacheckStarsAdam SandlerJennifer AnistonLuke EvansA New York cop and his wife go on a European vacation to reinvigorate the spark in their marriage, but end up getting framed and on the run for the death of an elderly billionaire.07-12-2022
For anyone who loved "Uncut Gems" and was riding that Adam Sandler high, "Murder Mystery" is a rude awakening that reminds us that as talented as Sandler is he'll always fall back on making crass, unfunny comedies. This is the kind of dumb material that is well below anyone involved in it. OK, it's not as annoying as "Zohan" or "Jack and Jill" nor is it as aggressively awful as... well, pretty much every comedy Sandler's ever made, but that's low praise indeed. Actually, the best thing that can be said about "Murder Mystery" is that at its best it is merely mediocre and bland as it humourlessly and witlessly spins its wheels through the mud of Netflix's low-brow content.
The extreme lack of effort involved in its conception is astounding and it's evident from the very start. The set-up of the story involves Audrey (Jennifer Aniston) and Nick's (Adam Sandler) wedding anniversary. She wants a trip to Europe, he's bought her an Amazon gift card. They have a fight and the next day they're on a plane to Europe. Just like that! No explanation of how Nick, a cop on the beat, can afford such a trip. Not even a scene in which Nick wins the trip in a lottery or is given the tickets by a friend who can't go. Or why not have the two of them be mysteriously invited on the trip which would at least be in keeping with the theme of the film?
But no, they are just on a trip to Europe (as if Europe is a country) where they just happen to bump into Charles Cavendish (Luke Evans), an ultra-rich chap about whom we never learn anything more besides the fact that he's ultra-rich. After a brief chat on the plane, he invites them to a yacht trip around European harbours. Again, no explanation for why this total stranger invites two other total strangers on a trip. No mystery, not even an attempt at logic. He just invites them and they just accept.
At first, I thought this mysterious act of generosity would somehow later come into play but it doesn't. It's not part of a sinister plot nor has he, as I initially suspected, fallen for Audrey which would have at least constituted some kind of motivation.
So Nick and Audrey are now on a yacht full of rich people which, as it turns out, belongs to Charles' uncle, the billionaire Malcolm Quince (Terence Stamp). The purpose of the trip is for Malcolm to announce who the heir to his fortune will be. Why? Who knows. He's not dying, he seems to be in good health, and he could have easily (as one of the characters even points out) told them over the phone. But then there wouldn't have been a movie.
To cut a long story short, Malcolm announces he's cutting everyone out of his will and seconds later he's dead. Who done it? Who cares. The pool of suspects includes a bunch of comedic caricatures none of whom are particularly funny or fleshed out. Of course, they all believe Nick and Audrey are the killers and the two of them have to team up to clear their names... or something. Not that there's much sense or much of a mystery to "Murder Mystery" just a series of inane gags.
The jokes which are thrown at us incessantly divide into three categories. The first kind is fish out of water jokes which revolve around Nick pointing out how the lives of these millionaires are different from his own life as a New York beat cop. Walking around the three-story yacht he points out "My friend Eric Lamonsoff has a boat. We go fishing. He's got a Boston Whaler. But this is gigantic." Some joke, eh?
The second kind of joke involves Nick saying inappropriate things. That's about as well as I can describe this particular height of humour. Example: one of the suspects is a colonel who's lost his eye and his hand in a bombing. While relating the tale of how it happened, another passenger remarks that the colonel didn't lose just his hand and his eye that day. "Did he also lose his dick," asks our comedic lead. Hilarity ensues.
The third type of joke and the most common is repetition. That's it. Most of the dialogue consists of Sandler or Aniston repeating each other's lines as if saying them again somehow makes them funny. "Who stole my M&Ms" - "I stole your M&Ms". "You question everything I do" - "Everything you do is questionable." And so on. I suppose this is the writer's idea of how couples bicker but it's hardly "Bringing Up Baby" now is it?
The supposedly all-star cast is compiled mostly of people who were successful once but are now vaguely familiar. Terence Stamp plays the pater familias because they couldn't get Christopher Plummer. Gemma Atkinson plays an exotic movie star because they couldn't get Penelope Cruz. David Walliams plays the rich man's son because they couldn't get someone funny. In fact, none of them is given much of a chance to be funny as their characters are paper thin and their dialogue is inane and informative. The only remotely charming presence in the cast is Adeel Akhtar, another actor whose talent far exceeds the material, and whose performance is the best thing in the picture. Not that there was much of a competition.
"Murder Mystery" is the best Adam Sandler comedy since "Click". The fact that it is barely watchable, dull as ditchwater, and completely unfunny just goes to show what a tragic mess his career has become.
1/4 - DirectorPatrice LeconteStarsGérard DepardieuJade LabesteMélanie BernierIn Paris, a young girl is found dead in a Parisian square, wearing an evening dress. Commissioner Maigret will try to identify her and then understand what happened to the victim.07-12-2022
Gérard Depardieu takes up the pipe to play the indefatigable commissaire Maigret. He is such an obvious casting choice with his understated intelligence, gentle wit, and hulking physique that it's a wonder he hadn't played the part before. At age 73, he is quite obviously too old for the part. He spends most of the movie leaning or sitting down and the few times we see him walk he seems barely able to amble along. But this seems to be how director Patrice Leconte has reimagined the character anyway.
His Maigret is an old man, easily tired, contemplating his mortality. He is introduced while in the middle of a doctor's appointment. He's in fine physical health we're told but the weight of the world seems to be on his shoulders. No, this Maigret is not alright. There's something severely wrong with him, a kind of emptiness eating him from the inside. He's dying and he's aware of it.
Another obvious fit for a Maigret movie is director/writer Patrice Leconte who had previously made the superb Simenon adaptation "Monsieur Hire". This is not an easy movie to watch. It's so weighed down with sorrow that it becomes downright oppressive. It plays out in vast open spaces cluttered with garbage - long discarded, broken things, once useful now forgotten and in the way. His Paris resembles a post-apocalyptic wasteland which, like the one in Richard Lester's "Bed Sitting Room", bears certain signs that it was once inhabited by a civilization.
A clue as to Leconte's artistic intentions is hidden in a sombre and impactful scene in which Maigret interviews an elderly Jewish man (André Wilms) looking for a daughter he'll never find. He sits in his office surrounded by antique chairs stacked on antique desks and wrapped in cobwebs and dust. "When you lose your child you lose everything," he says, "There's nothing left. Only the night."
The plot follows Maigret as he investigates the death of a young woman found stabbed and discarded on the street like a piece of trash. He doesn't know her name or anything about her but slowly, by following the smallest clues, he pieces together her entire personality. Before he even identifies her he can say things like "she would never do that" with absolute certainty.
He finds this out by talking to various people, some of whom knew her, some of whom didn't, and some of whom are lying they didn't. These people include an actress who isn't an actress living her life on sets opening fake doors, a rich and arrogant man who lives with his mother and relies entirely on her platitudes, a judge obsessed with his pet fish, and a pharmacist who issues drugs based on her customer's faces.
The performances are excellent especially that of Jade Labeste as Betty, a poor girl Maigret encounters on the streets and whom he is determined not to allow to suffer the same fate as the girl whose death he is investigating. Labeste's charismatic, world-weary performance is the standout of the film and has a certain classical quality that reminded me of the French cinema of the 1960s. I can't wait for her to lead a film all on her own.
These small characters are the most important and their plights and the world they inhabit together are at the centre of the film. In that sense, this is one of the most accurate Simenon adaptations. What Leconte's film doesn't manage, however, is the delicate balance between character study and thriller.
Simenon knew that his psychological treatise needed a solid motor in the form of a mystery plot to keep the readers interested and the story on track. Leconte, in building up the characters, far too often lets the plot fall by the wayside. The result is a film which is intriguing and atmospheric but frequently aimless, uneven and taxing on its audience's patience.
He has little interest in the whodunnit aspect of the story which results in "Maigret" lacking a solid framework and, more importantly, a sense of narrative propulsion. Consequently, the pacing suffers, feeling alternatively too slow or too fast depending on Leconte's interest in the given scene. Exposition is quickly dealt with and the plot frequently gets muddy.
In "Maigret", I admired the ambition more than the result and the whole is less than the sum of its parts. The production design, the idea, and the performances are all superb but the film collapses under its own weight. It's a dour, depressing, hopeless sit without a strong narrative to buoy its heady artistic intentions.
3/4 - DirectorMichele LupoStarsAnna MoffoIda GalliGastone MoschinA family goes to a British estate to hear the reading of a will and while there they are murdered one by one.09-12-2022
The wealthy Carter family gather in a quintessentially English manor house for a reading of the will of their estranged and quite recently deceased patriarch. His body is not yet cold in the ground and his family of money-grubbing vultures is already eyeing the goodies. But, as often happens in these stories, the old codger gets the last laugh as he leaves everything to his poor cousin Barbara (Anna Moffo) who nursed him in his final days.
Then the killings start! One by one, the Carter family is offed in a variety of ways and the job of finding the killer falls to the clumsy but quite brilliant local policeman Sgt Thorpe (Gastone Moschin).
The set-up is that of a classic British cosy whodunnit but "The Weekend Murders" is actually an Italian production, directed by Michele Lupo leading to a frankly bizarre mixture of "Midsomer Murders" and Giallo. As someone who is a massive fan of both genres, "The Weekend Murders" should be a shoo-in but I have to confess that this spoof did very little for me.
Most reviewers point to Agatha Christie as an obvious influence, but "The Weekend Murders" feels more like an Edgar Wallace adaptation. For one, the protagonist is a police officer, something that almost never happens in Christie's novels. For two, the mystery revolves around a series of increasingly improbable misdirects and double-crosses. Far more importance is given to the techniques the murderer employs than fleshing out the suspects.
Speaking of which, the characters are an entirely deplorable bunch. A group of snooty and rather one-dimensional stereotypes who, in the hands of these indiscriminately overacting Italians, come across as far more grotesque than they should. The biggest appeal of a well-constructed Agatha Christie mystery is the characters and their motivations. "The Weekend Murders", on the other hand, gives us a group of uninteresting pawns with a single, obvious motivation.
Finally, the mystery itself is not all that intriguing. Most of it involves bodies piling up with very little actual detecting from our protagonist. As the motive is obvious, what we're really left with is merely waiting for the number of suspects to whittle down enough for us to make an educated guess. That said, the final twist is actually a pretty good one. It would have been even better, however, if there were any actual clues as to the murderer's identity. As it stands, pretty much anyone, the cops included, could have been named as the killer.
But it is undeniable that "The Weekend Murders" is a neat little curio. First, because it anticipated by several years the trend of comedic whodunnits such as "Death on the Nile" or "The Last of Sheila". Secondly, and most interestingly, the mixture of Giallo and British murder mysteries is utterly fascinating.
Watching bronzed Italians playacting British lords is goofy enough but when you combine an Edgar Wallace plot with Michele Lupo's over-the-top directorial style you enter absolute bizarro land. Every shot is either at a Dutch angle or some kind of zoom. Snap zooms are most common and the film even begins with a hilarious scene in which after a body is discovered, the camera snap zooms on every character's shocked reaction.
The result is a film that has a downright nightmarish quality. What you're looking at is an English manor house but it is populated by chiselled men in natty suits. Everyone is speaking in RP English but is clearly dubbed and, for some reason, every shot is slightly off-kilter.
Adding to the dreamlike quality is the script which is weird even by Giallo standards. One of the main characters is Georgie (Christopher Chittell), a chap who behaves and whom everyone treats like a small child but is actually a 22-year-old man. Not only does he have a bizarre sense of humour which leads him to play a series of decidedly unfunny pranks but he also, at one point or another, attempts to rape most of the female characters in the film. He jumps them wearing a silk stocking over his head and attacks them until he begins hallucinating that they are his mother. And everyone treats this like something absolutely normal!
Another goofy scene sees the arrival of nephew Ted (Giacomo Rossi Stuart). He rolls up to the manor house in a sleek sports car and announces that he has brought with him his new wife. Cue the funky music as Pauline (Beryl Cunningham), a black woman, steps out of the car. Then we get a series of snap zooms on the utterly shocked reactions of his family members.
There's good stuff in "The Weekend Murders" most of it revolving around the clever police sergeant and his egotistical boss, the idiotic Inspector Grey (Lance Percival). In fact, most of the comedy does land rather well and the film is, for the most part, quite witty both as a spoof of murder mysteries and as (admittedly tame) social commentary.
But this film is just plain too bizarre for me to enjoy. Michele Lupo's direction is stylized but it would be hard to call it artful or atmospheric. He's definitely no Mario Bava. The script, written as all Gialli were by a committee, is nonsensical and not particularly intriguing. Much like the German Edgar Wallace adaptations, it is decidedly trivial, shallow fare without much mystery or logic.
There's no denying that "The Weekend Murders" is fascinating but I can't say I enjoyed it for all the right reasons. The comedy works but as a mystery it falls flat and as a whole it never comes together.
2/4 - DirectorAlexander PayneStarsMatthew BroderickReese WitherspoonLoren NelsonA high school teacher meets his match in an over-achieving student politician.10-12-2022
"Some people say I'm an overachiever, but I think they're just jealous. My mom always tells me I'm different, you know, special. And if you look at all the things I've accomplished so far, I think you'd have to agree."
This is how Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) introduces herself to us. She is indeed an overachiever, the kind of goody-two-shoes, little miss perfect, hand-in-the-air kind of student whom nobody likes. The students hate her for her priggishness, her strictness, and her faux bubbly personality. The teachers shudder at her overbearing ambition.
She is embodied by Reese Witherspoon, one of those lucky few actors who seem to be naturally captivating. She is absolutely pitch perfect as Tracy Flick with her spotless schoolgirl skirt and her tightly tied hair bun. She's as sharp and as dangerous as a shark except that she bares her teeth by aggressively smiling and everyone who stands in her way seems to end ignominiously while she walks away with a halo around her head.
"It's not like I'm a lesbian or anything. I'm attracted to the person. It's just that all the people I've been attracted to happen to be girls."
On the opposite end of the school stereotype spectrum is Tammy Metzler (Jessica Campbell), a moody trouble child, chronically unambitious and underachieving, happy to live her life smoking cigarettes and making out with her girlfriend Lisa (Frankie Ingrassia). But things aren't so easy in high school and Lisa, unable or unwilling to admit her sexuality, dumps her for her brother Paul.
Tammy is played by the late Jessica Campbell, a promising young actress whose career sadly went nowhere. Watching "Election" it is hard to understand why since her performance here is much like Whitherspoon's spot-on. She does a great job of portraying the hard-done-by Tammy, a rebel without much of a cause, the high school student who unlike Tracy or her brother Paul, just hasn't found her place in the world yet.
Speaking of Paul (Chris Klein), he enters the film thusly: "I was so mad at God when I broke my leg at Shadow Ridge over Christmas break." Delivered in the hilarious monotone voice Klein gives the character, every single line is comedic gold.
Paul is the high school jock, dumb as a box of rocks but well-intentioned to a fault. He bears no ill will to anyone or any particular ambition. He's just here to party and play sports, not necessarily in any particular order. But since he's broken his leg recently, sports is out of the question. Maybe he would be more depressed if he didn't have his new girlfriend Lisa by his side. He doesn't quite understand how come Lisa is suddenly attracted to him (I mean, she was his sister's friend, right?) but hey, Paul is not the kind of guy to overthink a situation.
How do these three disparate characters intersect? Well, the title is a dead giveaway. There's a student body president election going on and, of course, Tracy Flick is running unopposed. Still, that doesn't mean that she doesn't have to run a campaign. "You know, Coca-Cola is by far the world's number one soft drink," she explains in her precocious way, "and they spend more money than anybody on advertising."
This doesn't sit well with election supervisor Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick), a frumpy history teacher who has dedicated his entire life to teaching and all he got in return was a grey suit and a boring suburban life. There's a superb montage sequence at the beginning of the film in which he's seen teaching the exact same material in the exact same way through years and years. All that changes is that his hair is slowly going grey.
Jim hates Tracy. He can't stand her enthusiasm, her ambition, and the undoubted fact that she's going to go farther than he ever could. So he decides to sabotage her election chances. He convinces Paul to run against her. The popular jock seems to be the shoo-in until Tammy joins in as well. Hoping to spite Paul for stealing her girlfriend, she unexpectedly becomes the election favourite when delivering an explosive speech ending with her campaign slogan of "Who cares?".
A school election seems to be such an easy target for satire, comedic low-hanging fruit, and yet the beauty and brilliance of "Election" is that it never makes the easy jokes or takes the obvious paths. A lot of this, I suspect, has to do with the writer Tom Perrotta, a proven keen observer of suburban lives and troubles who breathes life into all of the stereotypical characters who inhabit the movie.
Here is a film which proves that even cliched characters can be fascinating. Although they can all be placed into neat categories ("the nerd", "the rebel", "the jock", "the teacher" etc.), all the characters in "Election" are more complex than they seem. Nobody here is an obvious villain or an obvious good guy and the grey areas are immediately obvious when Tracy's affair with her married and much older teacher (Mark Harelik) turns out to be the most honest and loving one in the whole movie.
The film is directed by Alexander Payne who strikes a fine balance between broad comedy and sincere drama. The film is highly stylized with visual references, comedic music cues (the theme from "Navajo Joe" plays whenever Tracy comes face to face with her opponent Paul), and physical gags. However, Payne never skimps on character development and by the end of the film, you grow to understand all of these people if not exactly like them.
"Election" is alongside "Ordinary People" the best high school movie I've ever seen. It is especially good at analyzing the delicate relationship between teachers and their students. It is a movie that's consistently funny and goofy while never compromising its heart or depth.
3.5/4 - DirectorClayton JacobsonStarsShane JacobsonClayton JacobsonKim GyngellTwo brothers' murder plans go somewhat sideways in this Australian dark comedy.18-12-2022
Two brothers, Jeff (Clayton Jacobson) and Terry (Shane Jacobson) arrive to their childhood home on bicycles wearing orange hazmat suits ("dressed like fucking pumpkins"). Their plan is anything but simple but as Jeff points out "failing to plan is planning to fail". He's the older brother and very much acts like it, sheparding the younger, meeker Terry along like a parent would a shy kid at a play date.
Anyway, Jeff has the checklist and is in charge of ticking it off. The list contains such instructions as "clean", "call mum", and "synchronize watches" all leading up to the big task at hand which is murder. The intended victim of this meticulous plan is Rodger (Kim Gyngell), the brothers' stepfather whom they resent partly for replacing their late father and partly because he intends to sell their childhood home once their strict mother (Lynette Curran) dies of cancer.
Now, a very important point which I haven't mentioned is that both of the brothers are well in their 40s but act like petulent kids. They are played by real-life brothers Shane and Clayton Jacobson and their interactions are the best part of the film. Two of them, back in their childhood home (the titular nest), digging up the past soon reduces them to squabbling children.
Jeff tries to keep the plan on track. He's brought pee bottles, scrubs all the surfaces he touches, and has a satellite phone. Terry is less certain in his convictions and seems to be going along for no other reason than the fact that Jeff is his big brother. But why are they here? Why are they really planning to kill Rodger? This question, which the brothers themselves can't give a clear answer to, ultimately proves to be the undoing of their perfect plan.
Like I said, the performances of the two brothers is the best aspect of the film and the first half, which plays out as a slow, meticulous, yet very darkly humorous two-hander is superb. Clayton Jacobson is also the film's director and he gives the proceedings a gloomy, melancholy tone curiously fitting for a movie which ultimately boils down to a family drama.
Where the film eventually unravells, however, is the second half which becomes a whole lot more conventional. I've seen plenty of black comedies but I've only liked a few of them as the balance between comedy and tragedy is a fragile one and there are only so many ways to make getting whacked over the head funny. "Brothers' Nest" is written by sitcom writer Jaime Browne who promises a lot in the film's wonderful set-up but then fails to deliver on his promises.
The brothers' motivation which is so cleverly teased in the beginning is the first disappointment. The second disappointment is the series of revealtions about their personal lives which are cliched and predictable. The final (and biggest) disappointment comes at the very end when the film climaxes with a slasher twist and an explosion both of which seem oddly out of place in a film that had been so low-key and smart up to then.
"Brothers' Nest" has been predictably compared to the Coen Brothers but that comparison is not quite deserved. The reason the film works at all is down to the first-rate cast, some moody, careful direction, and a terrific soundtrack. The script, however, is much more in line with such wacky but shallow capers as "Big Nothing" which is precisely what Jaime Browne delivers in the film's ending.
2.5/4 - DirectorTom GeorgeStarsKieran HodgsonPearl ChandaGregory CoxIn the West End of 1950s London, plans for a movie version of a smash-hit play come to an abrupt halt after a pivotal member of the crew is murdered.18-12-2022
There is a scene in "See How They Run", a film centered around an attempt to adapt Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" into a film in which the movie's director and the movie's screenwriter argue over the director's insistance on including a murder in the opening scene of the film. The writer is ardently opposed as it's totally out of keeping with the rest of the story. Now, if you've ever seen or read "The Mousetrap" you'll now that the play does begin with a murder!
In another scene, the same director and the same writer tussle again, this time about the ending. The director wants the film to end with the policeman wielding a gun. The writer points out that it's silly because British policemen don't carry guns. Well, again, "The Mousetrap" does end with the policeman wielding a gun, so the tally reads two-nill for the Hollywood director.
This is indicative of the fact that "See How They Run" doesn't take place in any discernable reality whatsoever which is a shame since the West End of the 1950s was a fascinating, colourful place and far more interesting than the watered-down, stereotypical portrayal of it in this film.
Where it does take place is an alternate 1953 in which there is no racism or sexism. A 1953 in which an openly gay black man is the toast of the town and a WPC can lead a murder investigation and talk back to her superiors. It's the kind of period movie in which the period is only an excuse to dress up in nice clothes and speak in quaint accents. Again, this is a shame since the plight of the homosexuals in 1950s England is a much underexplored territory (Basil Dearden's "Victim" comes to mind) and some antagonism would have made the WPC in question a far more interesting and complex character than she is.
It's strange for a mystery to avoid getting down and dirty, however, since it's a genre that rests entirely on crimes committed in part out of prejudice and hatred. The result is a rather toothless film which is a pleasant and quirky sit but will evaporate from your brain as soon as you've seen it. It's also a satire which doesn't seem to know its source material at all relying instead on exaggerated cliches and false impressions to make its jokes.
The jokes in question are either old-hat vaudeville routines ("What part of France are you from?" "Belgium.") or knowing wink-wink references that get old pretty soon ("The inspector's a real hound!"). The writer Mark Chappell seems to lay a lot of faith in the idea that the surname Cocker-Norris is funny 'cause it sounds a bit like cock 'n' arse... It's not. Especially after you hear that gag for the third time.
What the writer has forgotten to do, meanwhile, is to come up with an interesting whodunnit plot. After the first murder, which is, I must admit, deftly staged, very little happens and there's no real sense of mystery. There are no clues, no red herring, no investigative work until the second murder which occurs far too late in the film's plot to truly matter. The revelation, once it comes, is goofy, improbable, and completely against the rules of fair-play mysteries. Now, if you're gonna break those rules, do it cleverly and with a reason (like Agatha Christie herself).
OK, I've ragged on "See How They Run" enough. In truth, it's not an entirely meritless film but most of its pleasures come from the excellent cast who manage the elevate the mediocre jokes into something worth sitting through. Especially good are Tim Key, David Oyelowo, Adrien Brody, and the criminally underused Shirley Henderson and Lucien Msamati as Agatha Christie and Max Mallowan.
Of course, most of the film is carried by its wonderful stars, Sam Rockwell and Saoirse Ronan who are charismatic and likeable throughout. They have terrific chemistry and I'd gladly sit through a sequel just to see them reprise their parts as the bumbling police inspector and the enthusiastic WPC.
2.5/4 - DirectorAlbert S. MkrtchyanStarsAleksandr ZuevMaryana PoltevaStanislav ZhitaryovA detective investigating a suicide case, finds himself involved in strange affairs of a family!18-12-2022
"Contact" begins with the discovery of two corpses. A smothered child lying beside his mother who had cut her wrists. It's a good indication of things to come in this bleak, bizarre horror film and if such imagery disturbs you I'd advise you to switch your telly off.
Enter Andrei Krutitsky (Aleksandr Zuev), a police inspector and all-around tough guy whose job it is to get to the truth behind this disturbing murder/suicide. He interviews the woman's husband who tells him that the true killer is her father who apparently has been visiting his daughter daily, convincing her to commit suicide. The catch is that the father has been dead for 10 years.
Andrei, of course, doesn't believe a word of it and instead concocts a theory involving the Russian mafia impersonating dead people. That is until the husband himself turns up dead and the woman's sister, the alluring Marina (Maryana Polteva) begins experiencing similar visitations.
"Contact" is a strange and amateurish movie. The acting is awkward and mechanical, the editing is choppy and without regard for continuity, and the cameraman's reflection is often visible in cars and mirrors. And yet it all seems to work together to create the nightmarish, bizarre atmosphere that permeates the entire film.
How come? Well, there is a great deal of imagination behind "Contact", an uncommonly disturbing and eery horror movie written by Andrei Gorynov and directed by Albert Mkrtchyan, neither of whom had made anything similar before or since. For one, the premise of dead relatives coming back to convince their loved ones to commit suicide because death is so much better than life is absolutely superb. True, not much is made of this and the idea remains completely unexplored in the film, but its realistic, barebones approach actually works in its favour. They say that the scariest thing is the unknown and "Contact" never tries to explain its intriguing premise.
Second, despite a truly amateurish execution, Mkrtchyan exhibits genuine visual inspiration. There are some memorably scary shots in this film of sweaty faces, grinning corpses, disembodied reflections in teapots, and creepy, formal photos on gravestones that are unsettlingly familiar to everyone on this side of Europe. Furthermore, there are several scenes in "Contact" that are absolutely effective. Especially good is a scene in the cemetery which I won't spoil save to say that it's one of the cleverest ghost scenes I've ever seen. Mkrtchyan excels in these minimalistic, almost documentarist scenes where not much happens but which are thick with atmosphere and dread.
This is a uniquely Russian horror movie, fatalistic and dour. From the very opening scene, hand-held and underlit, you get the feeling that there are no happy endings in the world of "Contact". Much like the "Final Destination" movies, the characters here are constantly moving towards a predetermined fate and every time they avoid its grasp they merely delay the inevitable.
Unlike the "Final Destination" films, "Contact" is not played for laughs. This is a serious, bleak, hopeless, and deeply disturbing film which echoes the times it was made in. Set in crumbling apartment blocks, overgrown cemeteries, outdated factories, and abandoned building sites, this is a curious example of a socialist realist horror film.
"Contact" is a very atmospheric and effective film and I enjoyed it very much but I'd be amiss not to mention some of its many flaws. Being something of a pioneer in its field, Mkrtchyan occasionally resorts to over-the-top tricks that seem out of place in what is otherwise a very low-key movie. Two particularly bad scenes include a deeply misguided and badly executed fight scene in which three flamboyant thugs attack our hero for no apparent reason and a scene in which a ghost wrapped in a white sheet approaches the camera menacingly.
The latter is the most egregious as it illustrates a problem I have with the overall film. The ghosts, the threat is far too corporeal. We see it as a ghostly entity, we see its POV (a fish-eyed lens on a handheld camera), and we hear its voice. I found that the film is most effective, instead, when the threat is more ethereal and when it surrounds our leads like ill fate.
3/4 - DirectorCarol MorleyStarsMamie GummerToby JonesBri CollinsWhen Detective Mike Hoolihan is called to investigate the shooting of leading astrophysicist and black hole expert, Jennifer Rockwell, she is affected in ways she struggles to comprehend.18-12-2022
"Out of Blue" is the kind of movie that can keep a straight face while having its characters repeat the phrase "we are all stardust". It's spacy, poetic, and romantic and if you don't gel with its jive there's no way you'll enjoy it. It's the latest film from Carol Morley, the director of "The Falling" and "Dreams of a Life", two films I absolutely loved, so I thought this noirish psychological thriller would be right up my alley. I went along with it up to a point, but it sadly lost me around the same time it lost its narrative focus and became lost trying to pick up all the stardust it threw around in its first act.
The plot, based on a novel by Martin Amis, follows Mike Hoolihan (Patricia Clarkson), a tough-as-nails, down-to-Earth New Orleans PD Detective who, as her partner proudly announces at a crime scene, "never gets affected". But there's something unusual about the latest case she's working on, the murder of a young astrophysicist Jennifer Rockwell (Mamie Gummer), a member of the influential and wildly rich Rockwell family. Found shot in the head at the observatory where she worked, her murder reminds Mike of the murder of her mother.
Mike Hoolihan sets out to catch the guy nicknamed The .38 Caliber Killer, a serial killer who seems to be back after close to 40 years of silence. Her suspects include Jennifer's powerful father Colonel Tom Rockwell (James Caan), her boyfriend and colleague Duncan Reynolds (Jonathan Majors), and her seedy boss Ian Strammi (Toby Jones) who has the best alibi ever uttered on film. He spent the night of Jennifer's murder at his favourite student's house discussing Schrodinger's cat.
Much like Amis' novel, Carol Morley's film tries to integrate astrophysics into the neo-noir plot of the film. There is a lot of talk about parallel universes, black holes, and stardust, but how it all comes together is anyone's guess. In the end, there's a killer and there are family secrets and astrophysics or not the big reveal is entirely human.
It doesn't help that Morley's script seems to deal exclusively with physics cliches. Besides the aforementioned feline, such familiar phrases as "everything's relative" and "the dark is merely an absence of electromagnetic waves" are thrown around by characters who are supposed to be physicists but sound like they're reading motivational posters.
It's not only the physics dialogue that sounds stilted and artificial, however. When Mike runs into a nosey journalist at her AA meeting she spouts this beauty: "Of all the AA meetings in this city, you had to walk into mine". This would be an acceptable though corny joke to make, but all the lines in "Out of Blue" are delivered dead straight without irony which makes it sound like a pretentious student film.
Pretentious is a word that knocked about in my mind while watching this film mainly because it seems like all the talk of astrophysics is merely there to beef up a terribly thin story. A massive problem with "Out of Blue" is that the central mystery is not terribly interesting and it is very easy to pick out the killer among the film's awfully small pool of suspects.
The wheels of the bus definitely come off by the time the third act rolls around and by that time any notion of pacing has been thrown to the wind. Without an interesting plot, the film frequently feels meandering, like it's wandering through a labyrinth of its own making. We watch Mike as she interrogates suspects, attends AA meetings, has David Lynchian dreams, and debates astrophysics but all these disparate threads never seem to come together into a streamlined, coherent narrative. Consequently, there was no sense of dramatic momentum and my eyelids began to feel heavy as the film droned on.
"Out of Blue" is a curiously flat movie which is a surprise after the stylish, bold, artful films that Carol Morley is best known for. The film seems to be aiming for a noirish atmosphere but Conrad W. Hall's cinematography is far too bland and overlit to generate any mood. The cheap-looking production design doesn't help as it fails to capitalize on the New Orleans location. The police station looks like it was knocked together in a high school gym and the smoke-filled strip joint lacks both smoke and shadows.
The sole mood maker in the film is an excellent score by Clint Mansell which somehow feels out of place in a movie as flat-looking and lacking in noirish atmosphere as this. Where are the coloured lights? Where are the deep, stark shadows? Where are the silhouettes? Why does everything look so cheap?
Finally a word on Patricia Clarkson, a fine actress who seems out to sea in this role. She is supposed to be playing a tough workhorse detective but she never generates the steeliness and the swagger necessary for such a role. With her awful wig and ill-fitting leather jacket, she seems more like she's posturing. Much like everyone else, she can't make much of the awkward, pretentious dialogue she's given.
There are interesting parts in "Out of Blue", I must admit, but their sum is significantly lacking. With its convoluted script, stilted dialogue, flat cinematography, and serious pacing issues, this film is the one thing Carol Morley's films have never been before - a bore.
2/4 - DirectorSatoshi KonStarsJunko IwaoRica MatsumotoShinpachi TsujiA pop singer gives up her career to become an actress, but she slowly goes insane when she starts being stalked by an obsessed fan and what seems to be a ghost of her past.19-12-2022
A wonderfully clever match-cut early on in the film perfectly encapsulates the duality of character that is at the heart of Satoshi Kon's "Perfect Blue". The film begins with a performance by a J-pop group CHAM made up of three perfectly made-up female singers in beautiful gowns doing minutely choreographed dances. One of the girls, Mima (Junko Iwao) is singled out by the camera and framed singing her heart out into a microphone. Then there's a jump cut to her, dressed in her everyday clothes, without the stage makeup and costumes, buying a cabbage in a supermarket.
Here in lies the central duality in the film - that between Mima the pop star and Mima the real person who decides to follow her dreams, leave the world of music and become an actress. Her agents, the sleazy Tadokoro (Shinpachi Tsuji) and the motherly Rumi (Rica Matsumoto) get her a bit part on a gory serial killer TV show that requires her to do a fairly graphic nude scene.
Her fans from the J-pop days are, as can be expected, not happy with Mima's transformation and begin to turn away from her in droves. A blog appears online, written in first person as a kind of diary, whose author purports to be the real Mima. The author claims she is being forced into leaving music and asks for help from her fans. Unfortunately, a particularly crazed fan obliges and the people responsible for the creation of Mima's TV show start turning up murdered.
Meanwhile, Mima is having an identity crisis of her own. Unable to distinguish what it is she wants out of life and what it is her managers and her fans want out of her, she begins having hallucinations in which her former self, still dressed up in stage make-up and costume from before, comes to taunt her. "You're no longer a pop idol. You're a filthy woman now. Nobody likes idols with tarnished reputations."
As Mima's own psyche begins to crack, torn up over the question of who Mima Kirigoe really is, a real human being or some kind of a celebrity construct owned by her fans and her managers, the film slowly but surely slips into a kind of Giallo-esque psychedelia. Harutoshi Ogata's editing, in particular, acquires a stream-of-consciousness style whereby you're never quite sure whether what you're seeing is really happening or are we actually witnessing Mima's nightmares.
Satoshi Kon wrestles with these themes and plotlines admirably and does so by stretching the limits of what an animated movie can be and can do. "Perfect Blue" challenges and disperses the notion that cartoons are only for children. It tackles extremely adult ideas in an unflinching and intelligent manner. Kon's direction, in particular, is dazzling and full of originality and cleverness. He uses the tools afforded him by animation to put us inside Mima's tortured psyche. Scene transitions, in particular, are cleverly done and in the later portions of the film very few scenes change with a mere cut. Often, Mima herself seems unaware that she is being whisked from one scene to the next as the fourth wall begins to crumble and metatextuality seeps into the already surreal narrative.
The performances are excellent. Especially that of Junko Iwao who gives Mima the right amount of wide-eyed idealism and naivete without making her an annoying ingenue. Also, I would be amiss to mention the eye-catching kill scenes which are more subtle and inventive than you'd imagine but still succeed in being just as graphic and impactful as anything Dario Argento ever shot.
A special mention must be made of Masahiro Ikumi's spectacular score which mixes la-dee-da J-pop ballads with an intense, invasive electronic score reminiscent of Tangerine Dream's film work and even some unsettling experimental musique concrete. This fractured soundscape fits perfectly with the film's narrative style.
"Perfect Blue" is definitely rough around the edges. The animation itself is cheap and lacks full-motion fluidity. The story also suffers somewhat in the surreal third act during which it becomes impossible to determine what is real and what is a hallucination. However, it is also a dazzlingly clever and imaginative film which uses and pushes the limitations of its own budget and format to create a truly trippy, affecting experience.
3.5/4 - DirectorTodd FieldStarsCate BlanchettNoémie MerlantNina HossSet in the international world of Western classical music, the film centers on Lydia Tár, widely considered one of the greatest living composer-conductors and the very first female director of a major German orchestra.19-12-2022
Before we even meet Lydia Tar (Cate Blanchett), a world-famous conductor, we hear the host of a Q&A session read out her lengthy and notable biography. This goes on for minutes, far longer than it perhaps should in a more conventional movie. It is Todd Field preparing us for what is such a deliberately paced, cleverly observed, and utterly engrossing experience that it deserves to be called Hanekeian.
In the audience, during the sacred reading of the biography, Lydia's personal assistant Francesca (Noémie Merlant) mouths along. She knows all the words to that particular song! Meanwhile, Field focuses his camera on a mysterious redhead in the back row. We never see her face, just that striking red hair flowing down to her shoulders as she intently watches.
A few scenes later, we watch Lydia give a class at Julliard where she challenges a music student (Zethphan Smith-Gneist) after he declares that white male cis composers are not really his thing. Well, she believes that she is challenging him. What she is in fact doing is bullying. In her loquacious, supremely self-confident manner she obliterates and humiliates him on stage until he gets up and storms out of the room.
This is Lydia Tar's public persona but who is this woman really? She has a vaguely European name but speaks with an American accent. She is extremely eloquent but always ends up saying nothing. ("The narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring kind of conformity" is a typical Tarrism).
That particular mystery is unravelled slowly throughout the film and Field does it so subtly, so smoothly that we are not even aware it is happening until well over an hour has passed.
What we do find out early on is that she lives and works in Berlin with her wife Sharon (Nina Hoss) and adorable daughter Petra (Mila Bogojevic) where she is currently rehearsing a major performance of Mahler's 5th. This is the big finale to her cycle of Mahler performances and it is being recorded by Deutsche Gramaphone!
But there is so much more going on in the background, bubbling and slowly coming to the fore as the film slowly shows its cards. In that very first Q&A scene, there is a lot of talk of Mahler and Bernstein but Brett Kavanaugh also gets a namecheck. Slightly later in the film, Lydia's mentor (Julian Glover) laments over what has happened to Jimmy Levine and Charles Dutoit. Someone makes a Placido Domingo joke.
Also obvious is that Lydia and Francesca's relationship is much more complicated than that of a boss and her assistant. In an early montage, Lydia is choosing photos for a CD cover as Francesca rubs her bare foot along Lydia's. Sharon pretends not to know but a few knowing looks and a stiffness when certain names come up say otherwise. A particular name Lydia is desperate to keep out of her life is Krista Taylor, a young conductor, a former lover, and a dashing redhead.
Todd Field's new film is a methodical one and it takes a very long time to show its hand. To betray its surprises would be to do it disfavour. Meanwhile, Field slowly builds the world around Lydia one scene at a time. The aforementioned Julliard scene is a tour-de-force, a long, concentrated, and deviously subtle oner which just lets Lydia drone on and on until it becomes clear that her public persona is merely a crumbling performance.
She compares herself to Leonard Bernstein, the great American educator, but Bernstein strived to make music accessible and understandable to everyone. Lydia's way of controlling everyone around her is vagueness and obfuscation. She cannot give a straight answer. She is an artful, expert manipulator who, as Sharon herself says, has never had a relationship that wasn't reciprocal.
Oh yes, Lydia Tar is a despicable character and yet we are sad when her world comes tumbling down. This is due to the wonderful, revelatory, complex work from both Field and Cate Blanchett who gives her performance of a lifetime here. Sure, we must praise her for playing the piano and conducting in the film but the quiet moments when Lydia is alone in her giant, sprawling, modern, cold apartment is when she truly shines because Lydia can only be herself when she is alone and when there is no one around she is compelled to manipulate.
In fact, the whole cast is superb, like an orchestra playing in unison and at the same level. I was especially impressed by the performances of real musicians Field cast in not-so-minor roles. Sophie Kauer is a revelation as a new cellist in the orchestra whom Lydia takes a fancy to. Also wonderful are Fabian Dirr as the orchestra's union representative and Dorothea Plans Casal as the orchestra's first cello whom Lydia always overlooks in favour of her new fascination.
"Tar" is a far more complex film than any review can encapsulate. It is the year's finest character study, the year's finest comedy, the year's finest horror movie... Well, it's the year's finest film to put it simply. As the film moves along, Field takes us into uncharted territory. Lydia is haunted by ghosts of her past and "Tar" slowly morphs into a deliciously creepy, surreal journey into its lead's fractured mind.
Like all truly fascinating movies, "Tar" is not perfect. Todd Field never quite catches all the balls he throws into the air in his unwieldy third act. But "Tar" is what most films nowadays really aren't. It's fascinating, it's original, it's slow, it's methodical, and by god it's complicated. I loved every frame, every note, every performance. Bravo to all!
4/4 - DirectorTommy WirkolaStarsDavid HarbourJohn LeguizamoBeverly D'AngeloAn elite team of mercenaries breaks into a family compound on Christmas Eve, taking everyone hostage. However, they aren't prepared for a surprise combatant: Santa Claus is on the grounds, and he's about to show why this Nick is no saint.20-12-2022
I've noticed recently a renewed interest in "alternative Christmas films" - unusual and often violent takes on the old feelgood genre. Tired of the likes of Tiny Tim, elves, and good cheer, film buffs of the 2020s prefer to turn to such films as "Gremlins", "Black Christmas", and "Die Hard" for their seasonal joy. It's a trend that comes 'round at least once a decade and has most recently given us such films as "Krampus" and "Better Watch Out".
Now comes "Violent Night", directed by Norweigan gore schlocker Tommy Wirkola which takes the cake on premise alone. It's essentially "Die Hard" but instead of Nakatomi Plaza it's set in an isolated mansion and instead of a retired cop the action hero is... Santa Claus himself.
Taking a few cues from "Bad Santa", however, this is not your usual Coca Cola jolly old fat man. This Santa (David Harbour) is a depressed alcoholic pissed off at the kids of today who have been spoiled by capitalistic ideas of Christmas. He's also a former viking able to take on a small band of home invaders and crush their skulls.
The home invaders are led by the aptly nicknamed Mr Scrooge (John Leguizamo) and they've taken the ultra-wealthy Lightstone family hostage in order to steal money from their secret vault. Yes, it's the plot from "The Pacifier" and, if memory serves me well, even "Richie Rich" but with a delicious Christmasy twist. Along with the family, they inadvertently trap Santa in the house as well. After his reindeer are scared away by the gunfire, he's added the bandits to his naughty list.
Harbour is terrific as the slobby, drunken Santa. He strikes just the right note realizing that for a man to become a disappointed wreck he must be an idealist at heart. Unlike Billy Bob Thornton's Bad Santa, Harbour's Santa Claus is actually one of the last true believers. This allows Harbour to go as far over-the-top as he wants in portraying Santa's drunken antics and still remain loveable. I laughed very loudly at the scene in which Santa vomits from his sled right onto a granny's head. It's very low-brow humour but, boy, does it work!
And just as the premise of a drunken Santa starts to get old - the action kicks in. Surprisingly, "Violent Night" is one of the best action movies I've seen in a while. Not only are the fights and the shootouts well choreographed and dynamically shot, I was also really impressed by how visceral all the violence is. Wirkola doesn't only go for shock tactics here, the injuries, the punches, and the shots land with a thud here and each one is deeply felt and geniunly impactful. Despite the overall silliness of the premise, this is a film that takes its action scenes very seriously.
Unlike "Die Hard" and even "Krampus", "Violent Night" integrates Christmas into its violence. Ornaments get broken over people's heads, stars are shoved in bad guy's eyes, and Santa wraps his wounds with gift paper. I love all the Santa tech and how it gets used, as well. He carries around with him a bottomless sack full of presents which he uses to fight the bad guys, except that the catch is that he can only pull out things that kids have wished for.
OK, so "Violent Night" is very funny and it's also an exciting action movie. Isn't that enough? Well, apparently for Tommy Wirkola and writers Pat Casey & Josh Miller it wasn't. To my complete and pleasant surprise, this violent, goofy movie is also a wholesome, feelgood Christmas film! I am the first to admit that I was shocked that I left this film with tears in my eyes and a Christmas carol in my heart. Sure, lots of skulls are crushed in the process, but "Violent Night" made me believe in Santa once again.
In the end, I have to make a brief comment on just how good the cast is. What makes the film work is that everyone plays every single moment in it completely straight. There is no hint of cynicism, mugging for the camera, or general goofiness in the performances which absolutely sells the story. Besides Harbour, I was immensely impressed with John Leguizamo, who is a geniunly menacing and sinister villain here and the actors who play the Lightstone family. I complained when I watched "Krampus" that I hated all the characters. The Lightstones in this film are absolutely worse people but Beverly D'Angelo, Alex Hassell, Cam Gigandet, Alexander Elliott and especially Edi Patterson make them charismatic, funny, and if not likeable than at least entertaining.
This film is a Christmas miracle! It's a violent, wildly entertaining, and hilarious movie that runs on Christmas overload. In fact, I'm happy to report that "Violent Night" is the best Christmas movie I've seen since "The Muppet Christmas Carol" which is not a sentence I thought I'd ever write. Merry Christmas!
3.5/4 - DirectorMichael CurtizStarsWilliam PowellMary AstorEugene PallettePhilo Vance, accompanied by his prize-losing Scottish terrier, investigates the locked-room murder of a prominent and much-hated collector whose broken Chinese vase provides an important clue.20-12-2022
Philo Vance is one of the few significant detectives from the so-called golden age of mystery that I was not familiar with. Having now seen "The Kennel Murder Case", unanimously agreed as his finest cinematic outing, I can't say I'm a fan. There's nothing particularly wrong or obnoxious about Mr Vance, it's just that, unlike his contemporaries like Charlie Chan or Nero Wolfe, he doesn't seem to have much of a personality. He's a natty dresser and has a gentlemanly demeanour but beyond those surface-level traits, he's a cypher coasting instead on a typically charming and charismatic performance from William Powell.
The film was directed by the great Michael Curtiz who directed more than 150 feature films in his career. This is not one of his outstanding endeavours despite some inventive visuals. I was greatly impressed by the model work in this film. It takes place almost entirely in two neighbouring buildings and there are several genuinely amazing shots where the camera moves from one to the other. Similarly impressive is just how dynamic Curtiz's direction is. He never allows the camera to merely linger on long dialogue scenes. Fluid movements and quick edits keep the film continuously interesting to look at even though most of it is decidedly talky.
What I didn't like about Curtiz's direction is the dizzyingly fast pace he imposes on the proceedings. The film absolutely zips along which is not ideal for a murder mystery of this kind. Based on a novel by S.S. Van Dyne, "The Kennel Murder Case" is a very clever and very complicated locked room mystery. Curtiz's pace, however, never allows us to properly pause and take account of the facts. Along the way, in the hurry, a lot of very important facts get missed or confused and, by the end, I have to admit I was becoming quite overwhelmed by the wealth of information being relentlessly thrown my way.
An additional 25 minutes or so would also allow the film to flesh out its characters more. As they stand, the suspects in the film are very difficult to distinguish. Not only do most of these white, upper-class, clipped-accented men look and sound alike but they also lack any distinguishing character traits. The women don't fare any better as the only way to tell apart the dead man's niece from his mistress is by the fact that the former is played by Mary Astor. If you didn't recognise the lady in question you might think the film revolved around an incestuous relationship which is something I don't think S.S. Van Dyne would have liked.
The muddlingly fast pace is a shame mainly because the story is so good. It concerns the murder of a man no one seems to have liked whose body is found in a locked room with a gun in its hand. Suicide? Everyone thinks so except for Philo Vance, gentleman detective. The eventual solution does not reach the heights of John Dickson Carr but it is devilishly clever and convoluted. I very much enjoyed the way Curtiz shot the summation scene as well.
I do, however, must say that I think these kinds of mysteries work much better on the page where you get a fair chance to work it out for yourself. The best authors like John Dickson Carr even provide you with maps of the murder scene! On screen, however, they often boil down to the detective walking around the locked room looking puzzled. A 70-minute movie simply cannot replicate the attention to detail and careful exposition of a 300-page novel.
In conclusion, I don't think "The Kennel Murder Case" is such a masterpiece after all. My main gripes are with the pacing which doesn't allow for the mystery or the characters to properly develop and the character of Philo Vance himself. I just don't find him particularly interesting despite a terrific performance from William Powell. However, the story is top-notch and the production is head-and-shoulders above most similar mystery films of the time.
3/4 - DirectorStuart BairdStarsKurt RussellHalle BerrySteven SeagalWhen terrorists seize control of an airliner, an intelligence analyst accompanies a commando unit for a midair boarding operation.21-12-2022
As I was starting to write this review, instead of typing "Executive Decision", I started to write the title of the film as "Die Hard". OK, I suppose that's an obvious reference but it's hard to argue with your subconscious.
It is a testament to the staying power of "Die Hard's" simple yet effective formula that almost a decade later, Hollywood was still churning out big-budget movies made in its image. Still, rather than calling this movie a "Die Hard" rip-off, I prefer to refer to it as "Die Hard" with exceptions. How come? Let me explain.
The villains here are a group of machine-gun-wielding heavies led by a sinister foreigner played by a classically trained British actor. Except, this time 'round, they're Islamist extremists. The British actor is David Suchet, Poirot himself, playing the fanatical Nagi Hassan in what is a baffling yet fortuitous casting choice. If a thriller is only as good as its villain, then "Executive Decision" stands a great chance. He lends this goofy caper a menacing gravitas and a really captivating bad guy to root against.
The plot revolves around an intense hostage situation except, this time 'round, they're trapped in an aeroplane. The setting is the tight quarters of a Boeing 747 35,000 feet above the ocean. Unlike "Die Hard", "Executive Decision" gains a lot of mileage from the sense of acute claustrophobia. In what is its biggest innovation, this film is surprisingly not wall-to-wall action. In fact, besides a James Bond-like pre-credits sequence, there's no action in the film at all until the climactic shootout. This is a suspense picture, more Hitchcock than McTiernan, where all the thrills come from the imminent threat of being discovered.
Our heroes are hiding in the vents and tight passageways of the plane, sneaking around so the bad guys can't get them except, this time 'round, they're a group of highly trained marines led by the tough-ass Colonel Austin Travis (Steven Seagal) and accompanied by an intelligence man Dr David Grant (Kurt Russell).
The film was written by Jim and John Thomas, the guys who wrote "Predator", and seeing their names on the credits should let you know what to expect. This is not an intelligent thriller that's going to try and elucidate us on the intricacies of religious terrorism. It's also not a character-driven movie in which our heroes and villains will be fully fleshed-out individuals.
What it is, however, is expertly crafted entertainment. Notice how the writers and director Stuart Baird continually ratchet up the tension by increasing the stakes every ten minutes or so. The situation inside the plane keeps changing so that our heroes keep having to overcome different obstacles. Meanwhile, on the ground, a group of admirals and generals led by the Secretary of Defense (Len Cariou) have a difficult decision to make. The plane has a dangerous bomb on board which could take out the entire eastern seaboard. If it so much as goes near US soil it will have to be blown out of the sky along with its 400 passengers.
The plot doesn't really make much sense and a lot of what happens depends on luck and coincidence. But the film is so well orchestrated and so well shot by experienced editor Stuart Baird that it ticks along like clockwork on the bomb. It's exciting, it's full of tension, and by god, it's a lot of fun!
Besides an excellent villain, I also really like the rag-tag group of soldiers. Their characters are stereotypes but the charismatic cast makes them work. Especially good, to my surprise, is Seagal. Baird really knows how to use him well. For one, he doesn't speak very much. Instead, he is kept in the shadows, in long-shot, looking cool and brooding in his army fatigues. He is surrounded by such capable character actors as John Leguizamo, Joe Morton, and BD Wong and they do say that the role of the king is played by his entourage.
The real star of the picture, however, is Kurt Russell. What I like about his character is that he is not the nerdy pencil pusher we're led to believe he is. Once the going gets tough, he takes up a gun and knows how to use it. He is level-headed, cool in a crisis, and quickly earns the respect of the soldiers around him. Still, I must confess I didn't particularly like Russell's performance. He seems a little checked out here, lacking his usual humour and charisma.
But never mind, the film would probably work with anyone in the lead. With a rip-roaring score by Jerry Goldsmith and some very suspenseful set-pieces, this is one of the more entertaining if utterly ludicrous "Die Hard" follow-ups.
3/4 - DirectorAli AbbasiStarsAlice RahimiDiana Al HussenSoraya HelliA journalist descends into the dark underbelly of the Iranian holy city of Mashhad as she investigates the serial killings of sex workers by the so called "Spider Killer", who believes he is cleansing the streets of sinners.21-12-2022
Ali Abbasi's new film opens with a memorable crane shot which shows the titular killer driving along on his rickety old motorcycle towards the city of Mashhad. As the camera flies towards the night sky we see illuminated city roads converging towards and wrapping around the holy shrine of Imam Reza. Shining in the night, the roads give the city the look of a spider's web. That's when the title "Holy Spider" comes on the screen.
The shot is so evocative and so absolutely right that it pretty much tells the whole story right away. The film is based on the real-life case of a serial killer nicknamed The Spider Killer who killed 26 prostitutes in turn of the century Iran. Abbasi uses this case to portray the world in which such murders could go on for so long. A world so wrapped up in religion, in talk of purity, holiness, and faith, that it cannot see these women as human beings. A world so immersed in ancient dogma that it seems centuries behind what we have come to think of as civilisation.
The film follows the exploits of Rahimi (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi), an investigative journalist sent from Tehran to cover the case. Rahimi is a modern woman in an Islamic country. Her hair is cut short but it has to be covered by a shawl. She wears jeans and branded t-shirts but only underneath a jilbab. We're introduced to her as she's trying to check into a hotel. The manager looks at her suspiciously and then confers with his colleague. "She's an unmarried woman," he says before refusing to rent her a room.
As soon as she shows up in Mashhad, Rahimi faces a wall of indifference. "Why should they do anything to catch him," she muses to the local news editor Sharifi (Arash Ashtiani), "when he's cleaning up their streets for them."
The police, represented by the sinister Rostami (Sina Parvaneh) is not particularly interested in pursuing the case. He's more interested in bedding the hot young reporter - one way or the other. The public is even worse. At worst, they support the killer and at best, they regard his victims as a mere inconvenience. "Why did he have to dump her corpse at my farm," says one man, "now no one will want to buy my fruit"!
One of the best scenes in the film sees Rahimi and Sharifi visiting a local religious leader. "This is a social issue," he says proceeding to explain that if there was less poverty there'd be less prostitution. Still, of course, the opinion of Islam on prostitution is clear but it's just an opinion - not an order. The implication is clear, the victims are the problem and not the killer.
This is all quite familiar material. Obstructive bureaucrats, religious zealots, misogynistic cops... "Holy Spider" in these scenes runs the gamut of stereotypes taking its inspiration from "Zodiac" to "Prime Suspect". The setting is new and the context of Islam, a particularly fierce and dogmatic religion, lends the film urgency and gravitas, but that doesn't change the fact that I've seen this film before many times.
Far more intriguing are the scenes focusing on the killer himself, a local builder named Saeed (Mehdi Bajestani), a war veteran, a father of two, and a loving husband. He's bought into all the propaganda from the glory of god to the glory of dying for your country. "I wish the war wasn't over," he laments, "Some of my comrades became martyrs, some lost a body part, some returned to their families in coffins. Why didn't I become anything?" Has he now found a way to partake in the glory?
But there's a kinkiness to his crimes and as much as he hides behind excuses of purging the streets from infidels, he still gets a kick out of his dirty work. There's a deeply disturbing scene in which he has sex with his unsuspecting wife next to the hidden corpse of one of his victims.
Mehdi Bajestani is utterly captivating as the titular killer and his performance offers fascinating insights into how a vicious, perverted killer and a beloved family man can be the same person. Bajestani's layered, careful, compelling performance is the most original and memorable part of the film.
The two storylines finally converge in the film's last and best third. As Saeed is brought to trial, the public outside chants his name. He has finally achieved the glory of which he dreamed and Abbasi rightfully asks what kind of a society would celebrate a serial killer.
"Holy Spider" is not a subtle movie. Abbasi hammers his message and criticism of Iran and Islam into every single shot. While I understand and appreciate the outrage this makes the movie more didactic than I can personally stomach. Combined with the cliched and predictable procedural structure which sees an underdog investigator doggedly pursue leads, I didn't quite appreciate this movie as much as I thought I would.
And yet, quite a lot of its parts are worthy of praise. I appreciated the empathy Abbasi shows for the victims. They are not merely cannon fodder in this film. Each of them is given a distinct character and a backstory. The first woman we meet, for instance, is prostituting herself to support her child. She takes drugs to numb the pain of her existence.
"Holy Spider" is also an atmospheric, effective thriller with a first-rate score by Martin Dirkov and some eye-catching cinematography from Nadim Carlsen. The night scenes in which the killer prowls on his motorcycle through the holy city are especially moody and memorable.
I just wish that all of this good work was put in service of a better script. One which didn't feel the need to recycle the formula of so many lesser procedurals that came before it and which found a way to tell this shocking tale without employing the stereotype of the indefatigable investigator battling obstructive officials.
3/4 - DirectorTodd FieldStarsTom WilkinsonSissy SpacekNick StahlA New England couple's college-aged son dates an older woman who has two small children and an unwelcome ex-husband.22-12-2022
The title of Todd Field's "In the Bedroom" has multiple meanings and our perception of it changes in each of the film's acts. The best definition of it, however, is given at the very beginning when Matt Fowler (Tom Wilkinson) is showing a young boy how a crab trap works. The inside of it, he explains, is called a bedroom because only two crabs can live inside it. If a third crab gets in, something bad will happen. "You know the old saying two's company, three's a crowd," he asks the enraptured boy who nods. "Well, it's like that".
The boy is the son of Natalie (Marisa Tomei), a divorced housewife, who is the new girlfriend of Matt's college-aged son Frank (Nick Stahl). Their relationship is a loving one as Field goes to great pains to show us. Frank loves Natalie's two kids and Natalie has fallen for Frank's wide-eyed idealism and kindness.
Frank's mother, a music teacher named Ruth (Sissy Spacek), is not particularly thrilled with the relationship. She likes Natalie but complains to Frank that he should have his head in his studies and not in... well, Natalie. However, there's clearly more to her disapproval.
The third crab in the picture is Richard (William Mapother), Natalie's abusive ex-husband who just won't leave her alone. He talks a lot about his children and how he wants to see them but his interest in Natalie is more proprietorial than familial. She smiles, thinks up excuses for his behaviour, and tries to move along, but her demeanour changes when he's around. She stiffens, becomes cautious, and twitches at his every move.
Then the title begins to make sense. The three crabs find themselves alone in a bedroom, a gun goes off and Frank is dead. Richard is carted off to jail, Natalie goes to live with her mother, and Matt & Ruth are left alone to pick up the pieces.
"In the Bedroom" hits all the familiar notes about grief, guilt, and the loss of a child but does it with such precision, accuracy, and understated emotion that it is impossible not to get wrapped up in it.
The way Todd Field tells this story is absolutely gripping. He has the patience and confidence to let it unfold slowly, at such a deliberate pace, in fact, that you are often not aware that anything is happening until the situation explodes. He wraps the movie up into a tangible atmosphere of melancholy but without ever allowing the simmering tension beneath the gentle smiles of this marriage to die down.
This is a film of subtle looks and gestures. Especially good are the scenes showing how Ruth and Matt's friends behave around them after the tragedy. Every word is measured, every laugh laden with guilt... Consequently, this is what you might call an "actor's picture". It's a pretty dumb phrase but it applies here mainly because so much of the emotion and the story is laid on their backs.
Thankfully, the cast is superb. Every last one of them from the five leads to the briefest of cameos. I was especially taken with the local bridge operator (Don Lewis) whose life seems to consist entirely of running in circles while raising and lowering an insignificant little crossing.
Sissy Spacek, one of America's most underrated actresses, is absolutely astounding. She has few lines in the film but loads every silence with unforgiving rage and simmering resentment. She is magnetic on screen and makes unforgettable a role with which most other actresses would fade into the background.
But it is Tom Wilkinson who carries the film as the quiet, understanding, decent Matt Fowler. This is one of those low-key, generous performances that rarely get the praise they deserve. He is the beating heart of this film and I was with him and his pain all the way through.
"In the Bedroom" is familiar, yes, but it is so well done, so thoughtful and empathetic that it makes you forget that you know where it's going.
4/4 - DirectorJulian FellowesStarsTom WilkinsonEmily WatsonHermione NorrisA couple's marriage is complicated by the introduction of a third party.22-12-2022
We open a shot of the idyllic British countryside. A row of charming stone houses outlined by perfectly cut lawns on the edge of a green forest. Down the road comes an old codger bicycling away home where, we suppose, he is being waited for by a loving wife and a warm meal. Bang! Suddenly, and almost comically, a rushing car swerves towards him and knocks him into the dewy grass.
Cut to James Manning (Tom Wilkinson), a successful London solicitor seeking solace in the calm of Buckinghamshire. While away in his country hideout his sole concerns are cricket and a pesky lavender hedge. But James is also a stickler for detail. He's the kind of man who reads the fine print, a chap his work colleagues describe as a "mountaineer clinging on for dear life to every tiny detail".
On the eve of his wife's little dinner party, he notices a nasty scratch on the car of Bill Bule (Rupert Everett), a local playboy and son of a lord. Like a pin-stripe suited Miss Marple, James snoops around and discovers that it was indeed Bill's expensive SUV that killed the old codger on a bike. But that's not all, like every husband who goes peeking in a melodrama, he discovers more than he's bargained for. At the wheel that night was no other than his wife, the bored housewife Anne (Emily Watson) who's been conducting an illicit affair with the swanky Bill.
"Separate Lies" works as a kind of upmarket soap opera with all its deceit, affairs, and murders. It's deliciously sordid but with just enough of a pedigree so that it doesn't make its fans feel lowbrow. It's Jerry Springer for the art crowd.
As a serious drama, however, which is what I suspect its makers were aiming for, it falls apart almost from the word go. You see, this is not a subtle film nor a particularly layered one. It doesn't help that its prestigious cast play their roles as if they're in a pantomime. Tom Wilkinson, with his buttoned-up shirts and sensible suits, is the fuddy-duddy husband. Emily Watson, with her quivering bottom lip, is the horny duplicitous wife. Then there's Rupert Everett who sneers and lounges his way through the film being so obvious and despicable as a charlatan that I found it impossible to believe Watson's character fell in love with him. Their affair, however, is so obviously telegraphed that Wilkinson, who has no idea for the first third of the film, should have his eyes checked.
This is the directorial debut of Julian Fellowes and therein, I suspect, lies the rub. He doesn't so much direct this film as cover it with all the style and sensibility of a television director shooting a football match. His staging is dull, his shots rudimentary, and his actors look like they don't really know what they're doing. A sharper, more experienced director could've turned "Separate Lies" into a tawdry but entertaining melodrama. Fellowes drains it of all its excitement.
This is also not one of his best scripts. The plot, based on a novel by Nigel Balchin, rests uneasily between Agatha Christie and Barbara Cartland. The bigger problem is the characters all of whom are completely unlikeable and frankly dull. James is a bore, Anne is lying and conniving, and Bill is an unpleasant and spoiled brat. So whom do we root for? Whom are we invested in? Who are we interested in? No one.
Still, I was sort of enjoying "Separate Lies" for most of its thankfully short runtime precisely for the reasons I outlined above. It has a soap-opera-ish appeal to it. A voyeuristic pleasure. What rather ruined it for me is the ending, the final 15 or so minutes, which is not only sentimental and utterly undeserved but also a complete anti-climax. Every good soap opera storyline has to end with a bang. Someone dies, someone goes to prison, or someone gets divorced. Julian Fellowes, who I suspect didn't realize he was making a soap opera, ends his film as if it was a thoughtful drama which it most definitely isn't.
2/4 - DirectorHerbert RossStarsRichard BenjaminJames CoburnJames MasonA year after Sheila is killed by a hit-and-run driver, her wealthy husband invites a group of friends to spend a week on his yacht playing a scavenger hunt mystery game. The game turns out to be all too real and all too deadly.23-12-2022
Written by the unlikely duo of Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins, "The Last of Sheila" is simply the finest, most devious, and most campily entertaining cinematic whodunnit. It mixes the puzzles of an Agatha Christie novel with the torrid trashiness of a Harold Robbins potboiler and adds liberal dollops of the kind of witty banter that makes you wish Sondheim had written screwball comedies instead of musicals.
The plot begins, as they always should, with a murder. A hit-and-run accident, actually, which claims the life of a temperamental starlet named Sheila on the eve of a dinner party. Exactly a year after, her sleazy producer husband Clinton (played extravagantly by James Coburn) invites the same six people who attended the fatal dinner party to a week-long shindig on his luxury yacht also, ominously, named Sheila.
The cast is a spectacular one and worth praise. Richard Benjamin is the grovelling screenwriter, James Mason the lounge lizard director, Dyan Cannon plays the powerhouse agent, and Raquel Welch is, of course, the glamorous actress arriving in toe with Ian McShane as her parasite boyfriend. Finally, there's Joan Hackett as Tom's mousey wife Lee, the seeming outsider in this group of Hollywood duckers and divers.
Much like those fabulous all-star casts in Agatha Christie adaptations, the actors here are all game and approach the material with good humour. Their repartee is sizzling, their screen presences charismatic, and they themselves tremendous fun to watch. They take Sondheim & Perkins' clockwork script and turn it into glorious entertainment.
Once on board, the little guilty party find themselves playing a live-action version of Cluedo. Clinton has come up with a game which will last week long. The game involves following a series of clues each night to find out one secret about someone on board. If you've lived through 2016, you know this already sounds like a bad idea but things become sinister when it is revealed that the final secret, the one towards which the game is building, is the identity of Sheila's killer.
The reason Sondheim and Perkins wrote "The Last of Sheila" is that they both had a passion for murder weekends. I hope theirs were just as cleverly orchestrated but with less bitterness and blood. The film, consequently, has the feel of one such game. It is a deviously constructed puzzle box, nothing more, nothing less. A pleasant, wickedly diverting sit during which clues and hints are given so that an astute viewer can piece the mystery together before the characters.
"The Last of Sheila" is fair-play to the end and if you rewatch the picture you'll find that every clue is provided with what in retrospect seems painful obviousness. I've rewatched this film several times now which is something I rarely do, especially with mysteries. I enormously admire just how delicately and precisely Sondheim and Perkins craft their mystery. Even though they never wrote anything like it again, I would not hesitate to call them masters of the genre.
There's not much here for those desiring depth and drama, but for a mystery hound like myself, there is no more perfect a movie. Picturesque locations, a tangible atmosphere, a fascinating puzzle, and a cast of seven brilliant actors having fun with some absolute zinger lines. As directed by Herbert Ross, the film moves along at a pace so precise and right that you'd swear it was measured by a Swiss watch.
4/4 - DirectorW.S. Van DykeStarsWilliam PowellMyrna LoyMaureen O'SullivanFormer detective Nick Charles and his wealthy wife Nora investigate a murder case, mostly for the fun of it.23-12-2022
"Say, listen, is he working on a case?"
"Yes, yes!"
"What case?"
"A case of scotch."
Those are lines from "The Thin Man" and if anyone wanted to write a glowing recommendation of this charming comedy classic they wouldn't have to do anything more but compile only some of the best zingers from the witty script. Written by Hollywood legends Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, the scribes behind "Easter Parade" and "It's a Wonderful Life" (among others), this film boasts some of the fastest, smartest, and funniest dialogue of a time when fast, smart, and funny dialogue was the only dialogue on offer.
It helps, no doubt, that the repartee is handled by William Powell and Myrna Loy, an on-screen pairing whose picture can be found in the dictionary right next to the word chemistry. When they're together the screen sizzles. Such rhythm, such romance, such precise physicality, they are the equals if not the betters of such more famous screen partners as Tracy & Hepburn and Fred & Ginger. Instead of dancing, however, Powell & Loy light up the screen with their barbs.
There is a mystery plot going on behind the gags but, honestly, who cares? Stephen Fry once described "Gosford Park" as a whodunnit where nobody gives a hoot who did it and the same can be applied to "The Thin Man". It's not that the mystery is a bad one but it's just that nothing can top dialogue this sharp being delivered by actors that good. I'd watch these two read the Miranda rights to one another and I bet they'd make it funny... and romantic.
The third star of the picture is Asta the cutest terrier you've ever seen. He's a charisma machine and will elicit coos from even the staunchest of dog haters in the audience. Whenever the film is short of a punchline, all the director has to do is cut to a reaction shot of Asta. That makes it funny.
The director is W.S. Van Dyke, an economical director and not much of a stylist. His shots are flat, plain, and utilitarian but the picture is dynamic enough from the sheer force of the performances. Van Dyke's direction is dull and could have maybe sunk a lesser comedy but here it hardly matters.
The story is based on a novel by Dashiell Hammett and it features the requisite tough guys, dumb cops, and thugs with guns. Nevertheless, the film feels more like a cosy mystery with its puzzle box plot and husband & wife detective duo.
Powell plays Nick Charles, a retired private detective, and Loy plays his excitement-hungry wife Nora. When an old friend of Nick's disappears mysteriously and his disappearance is then followed by the murder of his secretary, Nora and pretty much everyone in town conspires to get Nick to solve the case.
Nick, however, is much more interested in that case of whiskey I mentioned earlier. The drinking in "The Thin Man" is a running gag that runs a marathon over the 90-minute runtime. Both Nick and Nora will down any drink within their eyesight before the beverage's rightful owner can even pay the tab. I've never bothered to count the drinks in this film but I never knew so much business could be done with cocktail glasses.
"The Thin Man" is a delight pure and simple. There's little to its constitution but pure joy and rollicking humour and that's all you need. Loy and Powell are superb, the story rolls along amiably, and the dog is adorable - that's all you need to know, now go get a drink and watch the movie.
"I read you were shot 5 times in the tabloids."
"It's not true! He didn't come anywhere near my tabloids."
4/4 - DirectorPark Chan-wookStarsPark Hae-ilTang WeiLee Jung-hyunA detective investigating a man's death in the mountains meets the dead man's mysterious wife in the course of his dogged sleuthing.24-12-2022
Police detective Hae-Joon Jang (Park Hae-il) is a man of reason. He dresses elegantly but wears running shoes. His job requires it. He records every thought, every clue, every observation on his smartwatch. He is a clean man. Clean cut. Every decision he makes is strictly logical. In fact, the film establishes him as such a perfect cop that you know by the end of the film his very essence will come apart.
This shattering begins to take effect when he and his impulsive younger partner (Go Kyung-Pyo) take on an investigation into the death of a mountaineer. He is found at the foot of a particularly difficult mountain to climb, a mushroom-shaped behemoth nicknamed Oil Peak due to just how slippery it is. Reason tells him this was an accident until he meets Seo-Rae (Tang Wei), the climber's Chinese wife whose bruises tell a different story.
Hae-Joon is an obsessive man to the point where he cannot sleep from the pressure unsolved cases place on his mind. The walls of his neat apartment are lined with photographs of unsolved murders and soon a photo of Seo-Rae joins them. He starts staking out her apartment at night, watching her as she has her dinner, her last smoke before bedtime... Unwittingly, he begins to fall in love with her and his feelings seem to be entirely reciprocated.
This is a familiar plot. So much so that I wonder if it hasn't been lifted wholesale from some film noir that's a particular favourite of director/writer Park Chan-Wook. He and his co-writer Chung Seo-Kyung weave an engaging and emotional story about the obsessive love between a detective and a potential murderer but ultimately bring little new to the genre. With a few trims (the film is 140 minutes long) and some exploitative sex thrown in, the script could have easily been filmed during the neo-noir craze of the 90s.
Still, much like Park Chan-Wook's American projects, even though "Decision to Leave" is decidedly predictable it is still a handsomely made and fully fleshed-out thriller. I was particularly impressed with how Chan-Wook integrates such modern conventions as mobile phones, smartwatches, texting, phone calls into the narrative and how he makes them visually interesting. The characters in "Decision to Leave" spend a lot of the runtime on phones but every scene has a new visual twist.
Indeed, the directing and the acting are consistently impressive. Park Hae-Il does a wonderful job of suggesting the emotional turmoil going on inside a man whose exterior is as impenetrable as a stone wall. Tang Wei, meanwhile, is the quintessential femme fatale. There's just the right balance between vulnerability and danger to her performance. Also wonderful are the various kooky supporting characters who pop up throughout the film. Especially funny are Hae-Joon's partners who continually encounter difficulties in climbing up and down steep ledges.
"Decision to Leave" is a long film and some may find its predictable story a bit of a slog. As a connoisseur of both neo-noirs and Park Chan-Wook's dynamic, inventive direction, I found it a treat. It feels very much like a 1990s erotic thriller had it been directed by a genuinely artful, inspired, and witty filmmaker.
3.5/4 - DirectorJaume Collet-SerraStarsLiam NeesonJulianne MooreScoot McNairyAn air marshal springs into action during a transatlantic flight after receiving a series of text messages demanding $150 million into an off-shore account, or someone will die every 20 minutes.25-12-2022
It's still utterly baffling to me that Liam Neeson, a fine actor who spent his youth playing weepy leads in romantic movies and social dramas, became an action hero in his sixties. Largely uninterested in shoot-'em-ups, I hadn't seen any of these films until "Non-Stop" and judging by the quality of this preposterous aeroplane thriller, I guess I won't be seeing any of them afterwards either.
Neeson here plays Bill Marks, an air martial assigned to a New York-London flight. Despite being one of only two men on the plane authorized to carry a gun, no one seems to trust him one bit. The pilot treats him like an annoying drunk, his grumpy boss brings up his alcoholism every time they talk on the phone and his partner considers him paranoid and delusional.
Once in the air, Marks receives a text from an anonymous number. "Transfer 150 million USD to this account", the text says, "or I will kill a passenger every 20 minutes". At first, Marks considers this text a bad joke but then passengers do start to die. You'd think at this point people would start to take the air martial seriously but they don't. His boss takes his badge away and the pilot tells him to sit back and enjoy the ride. So, Marks will have to find the killer all by himself. And how exactly is he going to do that? Well, pretty much by roughing everyone on the plane up until someone confesses.
Bill Marks is a terrible movie protagonist. He is absolutely horrible at his job, completely incompetent as an investigator and stiff as a board as an action hero. Instead of conducting his investigation calmly and methodically, he runs around the plane waving his gun about and beating up everyone who doesn't comply. He behaves like a crazed hijacker and then wonders why everyone around him is panicking. He directly causes more deaths than the bad guy and continually accuses, terrorizes, and physically abuses innocent people for no apparent reason.
Bill Marks is the true villain of this film. A rude, abrasive alcoholic disliked by his colleagues, who treats the people he's supposed to protect like cattle. His actions lead to a revolt by the passengers during which I was rooting for him to get killed. He's the kind of cop who gives cops a bad name. The kind you see on YouTube compilations featuring shouting, violent boys in blue on a power trip abusing their power. When he, for no real reason, ties a man's hands and then proceeds to drag him around the plane, I decided I could no longer be on his side.
The villain, on the other hand, seems to be some kind of supernatural being. Somehow they always seem to know not only what Marks is doing but also what he is going to do. They predict his future actions so precisely that they are able to determine when he is going to kill his next victim (and yes, that is our supposed hero whom I am referring to as a killer). The villain is so omnipotent and omnipresent that it becomes laughable. They are like one of those killers in a slasher film who is able to teleport from one victim to the next in a matter of seconds. Not only that, but the villain is able to open bank accounts, communicate with the highest-ranking TSA operatives, and hack mobile phones all while being completely imperceptible on a crowded aeroplane.
Now think of how an aeroplane looks. It's a tube. One long corridor. This means that there's not much action you can do on it. The bad guy has no place to hide and if the hero goes from one end of the plane to the next, he can't miss him. This limits all the action scenes in the film, until the very end, to Liam Neeson needlessly beating up innocent people. When they try to complain, he bends their hands behind their backs and breaks their noses. Now that's a hero!
"Non-Stop" is shockingly dumb. It's the kind of movie in which mobile phones are magical items that can do anything the bad guy wants them to do. It's the kind of movie in which people get killed and nobody seems to care. It's the kind of movie in which a shootout on a plane results in only the bad guy getting killed. There's no intelligence here, no emotional weight, no real drama, and consequently no entertainment. It doesn't help that Liam Neeson, who used to be a good actor, is a charmless hunk here, a charisma vacuum who can't salvage his horribly unlikeable character.
1.5/4 - DirectorAdrian LyneStarsMichael DouglasGlenn CloseAnne ArcherA married man's one-night stand comes back to haunt him when that lover begins to stalk him and his family.26-12-2022
Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) is an up-and-coming New York lawyer. He's respected in his firm, on his way to becoming a partner, and is married to a beautiful and loving wife Beth (Anne Archer) with whom he has a cutesy daughter (Ellen Latzen). So what's he doing having an affair? It's the first of a series of interesting questions "Fatal Attraction" asks only to give disappointingly obvious answers to. The film motivates Dan's infidelity through a series of scenes in which he's shown to feel cramped in his (not so) tiny apartment and in his happy family. He's just not yet ready to settle down into being a middle-aged family man.
A much more interesting motivation presents itself in the form of his best friend, another lawyer named Jimmy (Stuart Pankin), who, it is implied, also cheats on his wife. A culture of infidelity and misogyny that Dan is a part of is hinted at but sadly never explored. The kind of callous sexual gamesmanship we would eventually get to see in "In the Company of Men" would have provided a much more interesting motive. Instead, Dan stubs his toe and has to forgo having sex with his wife one night because his daughter wants to sleep in their bed. Big deal!
The other woman is Alex Forrest (Glenn Close), an editor in the publishing company Dan represents. The two first share looks at a business party and then meet again on a rainy day. Beth's trip to visit her parents provides a good opportunity and the two share a steamy night together. This being an Adrian Lyne film, the backlit sex scenes are weirdly acrobatic and not all that sexy but certainly memorable.
However, Alex wants more than good sex. She is lonely, in love with Dan, and, as we learn steadily through the film, completely mentally unbalanced. She begins stalking the Gallaghers, calling their home incessantly, showing up to Dan's office uninvited, and, in the film's most quoted scene, boiling his daughter's pet rabbit!
I don't think a protagonist necessarily has to be likeable, but in a thriller like this, it is never good to feel that the lead character absolutely deserves everything he gets. Why is it that I am fully behind Michael Douglas' murderous character in "A Perfect Murder" and yet I can't stand Dan in "Fatal Attraction"? Mainly because Lyne here seems to want us to sympathise with Dan. We're supposed to like him, to feel sorry for him, to forgive him this one mistake. Well, I didn't.
"Fatal Attraction" is based on "Diversion", a much more interesting short film written and directed by James Dearden. In that film, the husband is a less hypocritical character. He's a remorseless cheater and manipulator and Dearden never tries to absolve him the way Lyne does. This provides a much better balance between him and his lover. It's also a more low-key movie which never stoops to the lows of bunny boiling. Instead, it relies on psychological suspense and has a much more effective climax which is nothing more than a close-up of a ringing telephone.
"Fatal Attraction", instead, is a nasty little shocker full of jump scares and goofy scenes in which Glenn Close pops her head out of the shadows as Michael Douglas walks by. It's a freakshow in which we're never invited to sympathise or understand this woman. The film treats her like a female version of Jason Vorhees. A mindless threat for Dan, the cheater, to overcome. Glenn Close, it must be said, does a good job playing Alex but her character has no substance. She is Hollywood's idea of "crazy", yet another example of the movies treating psychological issues as ample breeding ground for cheap thrills.
In contrast, the woman in "Diversion" (played with a much more human mix of attractiveness and neediness by a terrific Cherie Lunghi) is not forced into over-the-top screaming scenes or face-twisting close-ups. The threat she presents to the husband is not that she's going to stab him but that she is going to call his wife and ruin his perfect illusion of a happy little home. That I find much scarier than a knife-wielding movie maniac.
As you might have gathered, I didn't particularly enjoy "Fatal Attraction". It's a mindless and predictable thriller, full of cheap jump scares punctuated by an awful, screeching score by Maurice Jarre from his unfortunate synth phase. It's also much too long and features the most inappropriate and idiotic ending for a movie with this subject matter.
2/4 - DirectorNicholas JareckiStarsRichard GereSusan SarandonBrit MarlingA troubled hedge fund magnate desperate to complete the sale of his trading empire makes an error that forces him to turn to an unlikely person for help.26-12-2022
Robert Miller (Richard Gere) has a lot of problems and no time to solve them. He's a hedge-fund manager, a billionaire, who's gotten there by cooking the books. Now, there's a 400 million dollar hole in his company's finances and he has to find a way to plug it. At the same time, he's facing an audit by an independent party interested in buying him out, so he has to work fast.
His other problem is his needy mistress Julie (Laetitia Casta). "You'll never leave your wife," is just one of the recognisable movie lines she utters. The moment those words pass her lips you know who she is. It's not, of course, that Robert is worried about his wife finding out. She already knows and even if she wasn't really alright with his infidelities, she gets to drown her sorrows in his millions and all the lauded fundraisers she throws with his money. No, Robert is more worried about the tabloids finding out and potentially scaring away the interested buyers.
Then a car crash happens. Robert is at the wheel, Julie is in the passenger seat. For just a second, he dozes off and the car veers off the road landing on its roof. He gets out alive with a nasty cut on his stomach, she is dead with a nasty cut across her throat. He reaches for his phone, types in 911... and then changes his mind with his finger on the dial button. Think about the tabloids!
OK, so the plot is essentially what if Bernie Madoff was the one driving at Chappaquiddick? It's a good idea and the film turns into a pacy thriller once a determined cop (Tim Roth) gets involved. He quickly connects Julie with Robert but since they were driving in her car he can't place him at the scene. But this guy doesn't give up that easily. He has a chip on his shoulder. "Twenty years we've watched these guys," he tells a prosecutor, "They out-lawyer us, they out-buy us. I'm sick of it. Where's the consequence? The guy did it. He does not get to walk just because he's on CNBC."
From there, the film turns into a game of speed chess where Robert is not so much trying to survive as buy himself enough time to get everything in order. He needs to keep the cops off him long enough for him to sell the company but in order for that to happen he has to keep the auditors from finding out about his creative bookkeeping. And just when he thought there couldn't be more problems haunting him, Brooke (Brit Marling), his daughter and business partner, starts snooping around the books herself.
In some ways, "Arbitrage" feels like a prototype for "Uncut Gems". Both films feature a charismatic, interesting lead trying to plug holes in a sinking ship except that "Arbitrage" never reaches the levels of manic intensity the Safdie Brothers film has. It goes the opposite route, focusing on quiet moments, subtle character beats, and the minutiae of Robert Miller's wheeling and dealing.
The so-called Oracle of Gracie Square is played by Richard Gere in one of his career-best performances. He nails the superficial charm and charisma these guys have, the way they look you in the eye and shake your hand as if they actually mean what they're saying. He nails the concerned father routine, the speeches about loyalty and family, and the way he manipulates people by paying them off. "World events all revolve around five things," he says, "M-O-N-E-Y." Robert has a saying for every opportunity which is a nice touch.
Where the film loses me a bit is when screenwriter and director Nicholas Jarecki surrounds such a good lead with such soft, unbelievable supporting characters. People who flock around money, who turn a blind eye to their crimes as long as the honey tap remains open, are vultures. Jarecki, however, presents a more idealistic vision.
Maybe I'm just a cynic but I could not believe in such characters as the innocent, wide-eyed daughter who works on Wall Street but has no idea how it works (I bet she'd be shocked to find out there's gambling in Casablanca as well). I couldn't buy the sudden change the wife character takes when she suddenly turns into a weepy momma bear. I also didn't buy the character of Robert Miller's helper who refuses to take his money. Why? Because he's a good guy. Yeah, right...
I especially couldn't believe the film's ending which revolves around these characters having scruples. None of these people has scruples. None of them has integrity. None of them cares a damn about morality. As the film itself says, only money matters and as long as there's money coming in I don't believe for a second any of these people would turn against Robert Miller.
The only character who is nearly as interesting as Robert Miller is surprisingly the angry cop. He enters the picture as a stereotype but Jarecki takes him to some really dark places. I admire that he didn't bend over backwards to make this character likeable and that he had the guts to make the one person fighting against the system as corrupt as the system itself. Sadly, I didn't particularly like Tim Roth's performance. He is too broad and tries too hard to come across as a New York tough guy. The act doesn't work, especially since his accent is more Dublin than New York and his idea of being a tough guy is to manspread a lot.
"Arbitrage" is engaging, extremely well acted by Gere, and occasionally manages to be an intriguing character portrait. My problem with it is that it simply isn't as sharp and as truthful about the money world as it pretends to be. It softens its characters too much in order to make its thriller twists work without realizing that the thriller plot is its least interesting aspect.
3/4 - DirectorAdrian LyneStarsRichard GereDiane LaneOlivier MartinezA New York suburban couple's marriage goes dangerously awry when the wife indulges in an adulterous fling.27-12-2022
I notice a theme running through some of Adrian Lyne's films which is people who have achieved the American dream - success in their work, a loving family, a kind of security - and then realized just how boring it can be. Afraid of becoming stale, settled and afraid, I think, most of all of ageing, they flirt with the idea of adultery. His major hit "Fatal Attraction", a shoddy shocker in my opinion, shares this theme with "Unfaithful", a film Lyne made 15 years and 3 films later. Unlike "Fatal Attraction", however, "Unfaithful" is a grown-up, smart film made by adults for adults. It has private detectives, cops, and a murder, but it never stoops to cheap tricks or jump scares to produce its thrills. Instead, it fascinates us by having its characters make all kinds of mistakes and then simply letting us observe their behaviour. It is a quiet, intelligent, slow-paced film which explains why it never achieved the success of its overrated predecessor.
It is based on Claude Chabrol's masterpiece "The Unfaithful Wife", one of my favourite films of all time. I won't compare the two films because it's an unfair comparison that most movies would lose except to notice that Lyne takes a wider, more emotional view of the same story. Whereas Chabrol's film focused only on the husband, building up suspense from the gradual process of him learning about his wife's infidelity, Lyne gives equal space to all three sides of the love triangle.
In fact, the wife, Connie, gets the most attention. She is played by Diane Lane who imbues what could have been a rather unsympathetic character with intelligence, sensitivity, and yes, sexiness. She is absolutely splendid in this film and is its beating heart.
The first half of the film chronicles her budding relationship with Paul (Olivier Martinez), an unbelievably gorgeous bookseller whom she meets by chance on the streets of New York. They conduct an illicit affair in his brownstone penthouse which has a kind of rusty romanticism. Unlike Connie, who has become a proper suburban housewife, sowing costumes for the school play and running local events, Paul is shown to be a reckless adventurer. A chancer whose motto is "there is no such thing as a mistake. There are things you do, and things you don't do".
It is not difficult to see what attracts Connie to Paul. Besides looking like he's walked off the pages of a Calvin Klein magazine, he treats her like the hottest girl he's ever met. Their affair is sweaty, physical, and exciting. They make love in coffee shop toilets, at the cinema, and in the elevator. In good old-fashioned Adrian Lyne style, their sex scenes are graphic and weirdly athletic. They are some of the best Lyne has ever shot and one in particular, Connie and Paul's first, is an absolute masterpiece.
Meanwhile, Connie's loving husband Edward (Richard Gere) slowly grows suspicious. Connie is careful but he notices a shift in her behaviour, her moods. She seems distant, guilty, and their sex life suffers. It is a smart move on behalf of Lyne and his screenwriters Alvin Sargent & William Broyles Jr. to show Connie and Edward's marriage as a perfectly happy one. The problem doesn't lie in their relationship, it lies inside Connie's feelings. We get the feeling that as happy as she should be, she feels there's more to life than sitting at home and raising their son.
The men surrounding Connie are the film's big weakness. They are simply not as interesting or as complex as her and whenever the film focuses on them it becomes less convincing and duller. Edward is severely underwritten. He lacks a personality or a backstory and Lyne never manages to draw him into the film until the midway point when he finds out about the affair. Richard Gere does the best he can, I really love seeing him in these kinds of roles which are less glamorous and immediately likeable, but there's only so much he can do with a character as empty as this.
Paul, on the other hand, suffers from being a cartoonish stereotype. He's a typical Hollywood Latino lover (but with a French accent) to the point where he jars with the rest of the movie which is low-key and realistic. Olivier Martinez is appropriately sexy in the film's steamy love scenes but he's not much of an actor and he doesn't give Paul any complexity or a character beyond his good looks.
These problems undoubtedly take away from the film but Diane Lane is so good and Adrian Lyne's slow, methodical approach gives her just enough room to carry us through some of the duller, more predictable scenes. I especially enjoyed the film in its quieter moments when it focuses on thoughtful close-ups. There are also some marvellous montage sequences where we see the spouses go on with their daily routine trying their best to pretend nothing is happening. Legendary editor Anne V. Coates does some of her best work here and especially good is a sequence set to Brad Mehldau's melancholy jazz cover of Radiohead's "Exit Music (For a Film)". Also first-rate is Jan A.P. Kaczmarek's score which further adds to the film's engrossing atmosphere of sadness and loss.
"Unfaithful" is an unexpectedly sad, melancholic movie. It carries throughout it a threat of imminent loss of a family's happiness and love all for the sake of a few thrills. And yet, we do sympathize with Connie and understand her which is Adrian Lyne and Diane Lane's greatest trick. This is why the film works and never stoops to the levels of cheap melodrama or soap opera. There is a real complexity and honesty about Connie's character and we are fascinated to see where her story will go.
3.5/4 - DirectorJason StoneStarsSusan SarandonGil BellowsEllen BurstynDetective Hazel Micallef hasn't had much to worry about in the sleepy town of Fort Dundas until a string of gruesome murders in the surrounding countryside brings her face to face with a serial killer driven by a higher calling.27-12-2022
"The Calling" is an astoundingly boring movie. A dull trudge through cliches so corny and worn that you can't even see them in big-budget movies anymore. They have been relegated where they belong which is in bargain-bin straight-to-DVD movies and TV schlock. But none of those movies has the right to have and then utterly waste as good a cast as "The Calling", an unbearably difficult movie to sit through without wishing to imitate one of its most gruesome scenes and slit your own throat.
The plot follows a murder investigation in a sleepy Canadian town where a depressed and drunken police detective Hazel (Susan Sarandon) believes a serial killer is operating. Well, of course, there is a serial killer and, of course, no one believes her so she and her small band of determined but goofy cops have to catch him all on their own. (Why, by the way, are small-town folk always goofy in bad movies such as these?) And wouldn't you know it, the serial killer is a Christian fanatic who is on a mission to kill twelve terminally ill people (because, as one character figures out way too late in the film, there were twelve apostles!) in order to resurrect Jesus Christ himself.
A mix-up between "Fargo" and "Se7en" sounds like it could be great fun but someone forgot to tell director Jason Stone that thrillers should be exciting. His direction here is so bland, so dull, and so lacking in urgency that even the humorous scenes are a bore. I was only impressed by the fact that Stone somehow manages to make even Susan Sarandon who is normally a charisma nuclear reactor boring beyond belief.
The film is based on a novel by Michael Redhill but the plot is so familiar and so unoriginal that is hard to believe the script wasn't merely cobbled together out of deleted scenes from such films as "Se7en", "Taking Lives", "Copycat" etc. etc. We get our requisite dysfunctional cop, the creepy monotone serial killer, the obstructive bureaucrats, the overeager rookie (who is played here by an almost 40-year old Topher Grace), the gruesome corpses and so on until your eyes bleed from boredom.
As I mentioned earlier, the film has a great cast but the script doesn't give them anything to do. Every line is exposition, every scene a tired rehash of some serial killer trope, and none of the characters has discernable personalities. Susan Sarandon sleepwalks through her scenes without even trying to imbue her detective with any kind of humanity. She looks resigned to the movie's awfulness.
The other cops are played by Topher Grace (whom, for some reason, everyone treats like a child) and Gil Bellows. The serial killer is a genuinely creepy but underused Christopher Heyerdahl as is Ellen Burstyn as Sarandon's mother, a completely useless character. Finally, Donald Sutherland pops up in two scenes to bore us all with a lecture on Christian sects. (By the way, which Catholic priest doesn't know what "libera nos, domine" means?)
I've overused the word boring in this review but that's exactly what "The Calling" is. I can't remember the last time I was this bored by a movie. Not only is it painfully unoriginal but Stone and writer Scott Abramovich don't manage to wring any drama or suspense out of these cliches. The movie looks and feels flat and dull and with its glacial pacing and bored-looking cast it limps along to an anticlimactic ending.
1/4 - DirectorGordon WillisStarsTalia ShireJoe CorteseElizabeth AshleyA weird woman admires and spies on her shy mousy neighbor with a telescope.28-12-2022
Here's a movie that looks like a million dollars that I wouldn't pay five bucks to see. It is called "Windows" and it's photographed by the iconic cinematographer Gordon Willis. True to his reputation, every frame of this movie is a work of art, ready to be framed and hanged in any New York snob's apartment. It is a really striking film visually, bold and suggestive like a series of paintings painted almost exclusively with deep blacks but with occasional and entirely unexpected streaks of colour running through it. I just love to look at this movie.
Unfortunately, "Windows" was also directed by Gordon Willis, his first and thankfully last excursion into directorial waters. Pretty much immediately he sinks under the weight of an aimless script from Barry Siegel and a lugubrious, at times hilariously slow pace which sees actors pausing... and waiting... before and between every sentence they speak. There are long scenes where we watch characters as they move around rooms, get out of cars and walk into buildings, get out of buildings and walk into cars... There's a lengthy scene in which we watch our two leads watch "Now, Voyager" on TV. Willis shows us the entire ending of that classic film before simply moving on to the next scene. This is not padding, however, the kind of which you often see on TV. It's an intentional stylistic choice on Willis' part, I suspect in order to make the film feel weightier and more profound than it really is. It doesn't work.
The film begins with a pretty disturbing rape scene even for the 1980s in which Emily (Talia Shire) is raped while a knife is held inside her mouth by an unseen thug. The film seems to develop into a thriller as her attacker returns for another, pretty shoddily executed, jump scare in which he reaches between her chained front door like a Romero zombie. But this is not really a thriller. Less than 20 minutes into the film, Willis shows us that the rape was orchestrated by Emily's overbearing friend Andrea (Elizabeth Ashley).
The narrative now suddenly shifts to her as we find out that Andrea is psychotic and deeply in love with Emily. She spends her days spying on her friend through a telescope while listening to a tape recording of her rape. She is desperate to make Emily love her back and will do anything to achieve that.
I actually think this shift is a clever one. It's an original idea to have a movie begin like a De Palma shocker only then to turn into a character portrait of the villain. The problem here is that Siegel's script is so thin and unconvincing that there's nothing to portray. Andrea's character is virtually non-existent. Despite a series of monotonous monologues she delivers to her psychiatrist, we don't really learn anything about her and consequently, we never become interested in her as a character.
On the other side of the story, Emily begins a relationship with the cop assigned to her case (Joe Cortese). The scene in which he asks her out right after taking her statement is both wildly inappropriate and quintessentially 1980s. Neither of them is an interesting character either. Emily is another underwritten, uninteresting character. Besides her stammer, she has no real defining characteristics and since she spends the entire movie in what appears to be a deep state of depression (who can blame her!) Talia Shire never gets a chance to build a charismatic or likeable character. We sympathise with what she's going through but we never meet or grow to care for her.
Maybe this script could have worked in a sense had it been directed like a lurid piece of exploitation trash. Willis, on the other hand, treats like Strindberg. He slows the pace to a crawl and intently focuses on his actors' performances. This is a huge mistake since all of the actors look deeply uncomfortable with the awkward, static delivery that has been imposed on them.
"Windows" was pulled from theatres almost immediately following a savaging from critics and gay rights activists. It has since attained a toxic reputation. When viewed with fresh eyes, however, it is not really that bad. It is slow, flat, and eye-wateringly boring but Willis' photography is astounding and the portrayal of Andrea is not as insensitive as it may seem to those who've only read about the movie. The problem with this picture is not that it's an exploitative treatment of lesbianism (it's not). The problem with the picture is that it's an overly sincere and "arty" treatment of a thin and dumb script which never generates any interest in its characters or excitement for its story.
1.5/4 - DirectorTodd FieldStarsKate WinsletJennifer ConnellyPatrick WilsonThe lives of two lovelorn spouses from separate marriages, a registered sex offender, and a disgraced ex-police officer intersect as they struggle to resist their vulnerabilities and temptations in suburban Massachusetts.31-12-2022
"Paul and I were having sex the other night and I drifted off right in the middle of it. But when I woke up and apologized he said he hadn't even noticed."
This throwaway bit of dialogue uttered near the beginning of Todd Field's "Little Children" perfectly encapsulates the kind of lives and the kind of marriages the film is about. It's yet another satirical view of the boring, repressed, trapped lives of American suburbanites which consist of taking care of children and wishing they were young, free, and careless once again. It's old material but Field is a brilliant filmmaker and "Little Children" offers a sharp, hugely empathetic, and relentlessly funny take on familiar themes.
I especially like the scenes which examine the politics of the playground. It's only a small patch of greenery amid a sprawling web of alike New England houses but it is a microcosm of its own. It's ruled over by three bored housewives one of whom says the lines I quoted above while the other two nod and agree that it happens. Like gargoyles, they are a permanent fixture of the neighbourhood. They know everyone's secrets and amuse themselves by commenting on and judging their lives.
They get their little sexual thrill by observing from afar a handsome man they nickname The Prom King. He occasionally visits their domain with his cute son. None of the three women ever talk to him but they can't stop talking about him, hypothesizing about his job and his marital status and dreamily imagining themselves next to him.
This routine goes on uninterrupted until a new housewife joins the playground. Her name is Sarah (Kate Winslet) and she comforts herself that she is not like the others. After all, she has a masters in English literature and is quite a bit more stylish and less frumpy. But she is painfully aware of the possibility that she is just another suburban bore who just hasn't accepted her fate yet.
In a daring and subversive act of defiance of the playground rules, she goes over and actually talks to the Prom King. His name is Brad (Patrick Wilson), he's a lawyer, or at least he will be once he manages to pass the bar exam. Meanwhile, he's a househusband, taking care of his son while his beautiful and successful filmmaker wife Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) provides for the family.
Every evening, after Kathy comes home, he walks over to the public library where he tirelessly pours over his textbooks. At least, that's what he tells his wife. What he actually does is watch a group of kids skateboard while procrastinating about his quickly disappearing youth and his feelings of inferiority as the man of the house.
So, Sarah and Brad begin an affair. Not everything is quite as simple as that sentence but you know that's where the film is going. Except, in a move not surprising for a Todd Field film, their affair is not the centrepiece one may think it will be. The film, instead, unfolds into a complex tapestry of the nightmare that is adult life. The responsibilities, the consequences, the relationships, and the sacrifices.
There are many colourful, intriguing characters in "Little Children" besides Sarah and Brad. A particularly unexpected one is the thoroughly despicable child molester Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley) for whom the film shows an incredible amount of empathy. It's the film's most startling element and I commend the filmmakers for never succumbing to the convention of either trying to paint Ronnie as a misunderstood victim or a caricatured monster.
My favourite character is his mother, May (Phyllis Somerville) who is fully aware of how disturbed her son is. Still, she loves him unconditionally and holds out hope against all improbability that he will change and become "the good boy" she knows he can be.
Ronnie is released from prison and moves into the neighbourhood much to the chagrin of Larry (Noah Emmerich), a former cop dismissed from the force after accidentally killing an unarmed kid. In order to distract himself from his own guilt and loneliness, he goes on an all-out crusade against Ronnie plastering the neighbourhood with his picture and staking out his house at night.
If there is a major flaw in "Little Children" it's that the disparate plot strands never come together into a coherent narrative. Field never quite wrangles all the characters into any kind of shape which becomes clear by the third act which feels more like a meandering collection of scenes than a climax.
But what scenes they are! The film is based on a novel by Tom Perrotta whose distinctive authorial voice shines through the film. He's a master at zeroing in on the most unusual, bizarre elements of everyday life and then making them relatable. His characters are kooky, irrational, and stereotypical but he has such a deep understanding of them that they leap off the page as fully fleshed-out, complex, and recognisable human beings.
Todd Field does a great job of emulating Perrotta's witty style on screen. "Little Children" has quite a different style than Field's other films. It is funnier and livelier with an almost surrealist edge. Look at the scenes following the neighbourhood football night league. The hilariously epic shots of sweaty, towering suburbanites who gather every week to imagine themselves as Olympic athletes while their wheelchair-bound coach shouts homophobic slurs at them through a bullhorn. You'll never find scenes like that in "In the Bedroom".
As deliciously funny as "Little Children" is there's a melancholic tone of sadness running throughout it. That's the Todd Field touch. All of these characters act like idiots because they are deeply dissatisfied with how their lives turned out. Sarah wanted to be an academic, Brad had dreams of a football career, all Larry ever wanted to be was a cop, and May hoped her boy would grow into a decent man. Now that their hopes have been quashed, all they have left are these flights of fancy and petty little obsessions to wile away the long summer days.
Like all the Todd Field films, "Little Children" features an ensemble of superb performances. Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Haley, and Noah Emmerich are the film's leads (or at least the closest this film has to leads) and deserve to share the credit for the film's success with Field and Perrotta. However, my attention was often drawn to the miniatures that are peppered throughout this movie. Small roles played with astute precision by brilliant and often overlooked character actors.
I already mentioned the wonderful, scene-stealing turn by Phyllis Somerville as Ronnie's mother. I'd also like to mention other great actors who show up for a scene or two such as Jane Adams who appears in one of the film's most memorable and most shocking scenes as a date Ronnie's mother arranges for him. Another great small character is Sarah's husband played by Gregg Edelman who spends his days locked up in his office sniffing the panties he bought from a porn star online. Last but not least, there's a solid turn from Jennifer Connelly as Brad's rarely-seen wife. There's a close-up towards the end of "Little Children" which I won't spoil but which is one of the best bits of acting Connelly has ever done in her rich career.
"Little Children" is not quite as emotional and riveting as "In the Bedroom" nor as disturbingly form-bending as "Tar" but it is still sharply observed, funny, sad, and deeply sympathetic which is the quality that I enjoyed the most. This is not the kind of satire that mocks its characters. It pulls for them, rooting that they do manage to escape the prisons of their existence even if it does know that they never will.
3.5/4