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thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

thedullwoodexperiment

Tag Archives: Affair

The Aftermath (2019)

04 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Affair, Alexander Skarsgård, Drama, Germany, Grief, Hamburg, James Kent, Jason Clarke, Keira Knightley, Literary adaptation, Review, Romance

D: James Kent / 108m

Cast: Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgård, Jason Clarke, Martin Compston, Kate Phillips, Flora Thiemann, Jannik Schümann, Fionn O’Shea, Alexander Scheer

In the winter of 1946, Rachael Morgan (Knightley) comes to Hamburg to be with her husband, Lewis (Clarke), who is a colonel in the British Forces. They are to live in a requisitioned house on the outskirts of the city, the home of an architect, Stephen Lubert (Skarsgård) and his teenage daughter, Freda (Thiemann). Though Lewis has a great deal of respect for Lubert – and for the ordinary German people – Rachael is less than friendly. She has a reason: their son, Michael, was killed in a bombing raid when he was eleven. But as Lewis spends more and more time trying to track down the members of a group of fanatical Nazis called the 88’s, Rachael becomes more and more reliant on Lubert’s company, and while Lewis is away for a few days, she and Lubert become much closer. The pair make plans to leave Hamburg together, and when Lewis returns Rachael determines to tell him their marriage is over. But danger lurks in the wings: Freda has unwittingly aided a member of the 88’s, Albert (Schümann), in targeting Lewis for assassination…

Put Keira Knightley in a period costume, and she shines. It’s as much a cinematic given as Tom Cruise doing a dangerous stunt (though without the broken ankle). With a gift for interpreting closeted emotions and their eventual impassioned expression, Knightley is always the best thing about the movies she makes, and The Aftermath is no exception. Based on the novel by Rhidian Brook, the movie takes full advantage of Knightley’s skills as an actress, and provides viewers with a central character whose sense of morality, and her sense of loyalty, is challenged by the (somewhat staid) attentions of a man she sets out to hate, but who, in time honoured romantic fashion, she later falls in love with. That this happens at all is predictable enough, and there are many clues to tick off along the way, from the less than convincing reunion between Rachael and Lewis at the train station, to Lewis’s inability to talk about the death of their son, to the meaningful stares Rachael and Lubert exchange whenever anyone isn’t looking. With Lewis playing the absent, work-focused husband, it’s left to Rachael to occupy her time by having an affair and hoping for a better life. It’s the crux of a movie that feels as familiar, and therefore as empty, as many before it.

And so, it’s left to Knightley to rescue the movie from its self-imposed doldrums and minor soap opera theatrics. In many ways the movie doesn’t deserve her, because she seems to be the only one who’s trying. There’s a scene where Rachael breaks down and talks about her son that is truly heartbreaking for the depth of the despair and the grief that Knightley expresses. And that scene sticks out like a sore thumb because there’s no other scene to match it for its emotion, and its power, and its impact. Likewise, Skarsgård and Clarke are left in her wake, playing monotone versions of characters we’ve seen a hundred times over, and unable to make them look or sound like anything other than broad stereotypes. With the narrative offering nothing new, and Kent maintaining a steady but too respectful pace, the movie fails to excite, and remains a placid affair about a – well, placid affair. The wintry locations at least add some visual flair to proceedings, and the recreation of bomb-ravaged Hamburg is effectively realised, but these aspects aren’t enough when the main storyline should be passionate and convincing, instead of moderate and benign. Thank heaven then for Knightley, and a performance that elevates the material whenever she’s on screen.

Rating: 6/10 – a movie that means well, but which starts off slowly and stays that way (and despite an attempt at adding thriller elements towards the end), The Aftermath is rescued from terminal dullness by the force and intensity of Keira Knightley’s performance; a period romantic drama that at least gets the “period” right, this is a cautious, overly restrained tale that allows the odd flourish to shine through from time to time, but which in the end, doesn’t offer enough in the way of rewards to make it more than occasionally memorable.

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The Front Runner (2018)

12 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Affair, Drama, Gary Hart, Hugh Jackman, J.K. Simmons, Jason Reitman, Literary adaptation, Miami Herald, Politics, Review, True story, Vera Farmiga

D: Jason Reitman / 113m

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J.K. Simmons, Alfred Molina, Mamoudou Athie, Bill Burr, Oliver Cooper, Chris Coy, Kaitlyn Dever, Molly Ephraim, Ari Graynor, Mike Judge, John Bedford Lloyd, Mark O’Brien, Sara Paxton, Kevin Pollak, Steve Zissis

1984. Senator Gary Hart (Jackman) of Colorado loses the Democratic presidential nomination to Walter Mondale. Four years later, Hart is the front runner in the race for the presidency, ahead in the polls against Republican candidate George H.W. Bush, and on course to put a Democrat back in the Oval Office after Ronald Reagan’s eight-year tenure. While campaigning in Florida, Hart attends a party held by a political associate of his, and there he meets Donna Rice (Paxton), a university graduate who is interested in working for Hart’s campaign as a fundraiser. Later, a reporter at the Miami Herald, Tom Fiedler (Zissis), receives an anonymous call informing him that Hart is meeting Rice at his home in Washington. Deciding to follow Rice to Washington, she is seen in Hart’s company at his home, and appears to have stayed there overnight. The Herald publishes an article exposing Hart’s “affair”, and in the ensuing days, the senator has to decide whether he should fight the accusation and continue with his campaign, or abandon his hopes of becoming President altogether…

Based on the book All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid by Matt Bai (who also co-wrote the screenplay along with Reitman and Jay Carson), The Front Runner is an odd mix of political drama, cautionary tale, and media morality discourse, but it’s also a mix that doesn’t entirely work because it doesn’t examine these aspects in any meaningful or deliberate way. It’s true, Hart targets the media as the authors of his downfall, and makes several pointed remarks about how intrusive they’ve become in order to break a story, but rather than providing a precise examination of the way in which newspaper reporting was beginning to morph into what we’re familiar with nowadays, the movie instead opts to have several reporters look sheepish when challenged, and bleating about the public’s right to know when polls clearly showed they weren’t that interested. The movie also has a problem with the nature of Hart’s relationship with Rice. As both parties stated then (and since) that they weren’t having an affair, and no conclusive proof was ever found, the whole issue is inferred in much the same way that the Miami Herald originally reported it. As a result, the movie has a gaping narrative hole in it, one that it never overcomes.

But with all this, what truly matters is whether or not Hart’s story is actually worth telling… and on this evidence, the answer has to be No. Despite an impressive performance from Jackman that paints Hart as a man whose surface charm hides an arrogant, self-righteous personality, the movie struggles to make his downfall anything like the tragedy it’s aiming for. When he’s not putting all the blame on the media, he’s pitiful and apologetic to his long-suffering wife, Lee (Farmiga), admitting his culpability to her but not to anyone else; this makes it hard to feel sympathy for someone whose sense of personal morality is so badly compromised. Elsewhere, the movie shifts and turns uneasily in its attempts to make itself politically and socially relevant to today’s climate (feminist issues form the basis for a subplot involving Rice’s treatment by Hart’s campaign team), and Reitman shapes too many scenes that are meant to be impactful, but which fall short because they lack the necessary energy or power. Judged against the current political climate in America, the “details” of Hart’s fall from grace seem almost whimsical now in their simplicity, and The Front Runner doesn’t offer the required insights to make it more compelling or effective.

Rating: 6/10 – to paraphrase Bob Dylan, “the times they were a-changin'”, but though this is touched on in The Front Runner, like much else it touches on, the movie raises many more questions than it can answer, and often feels like a beginner’s guide to Eighties political naïvete; with a large supporting cast that’s given little to do that might improve matters – Athie and Ephraim are the exceptions – the movie casts a wide net but its catch isn’t as substantial as it should have been, and it’s only occasionally absorbing.

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Siberia (2018)

05 Sunday Aug 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Affair, Ana Ularu, Blue diamonds, Drama, Keanu Reeves, Matthew Ross, Mirny, Pasha D. Lychnikoff, Russia, St Petersburg, Thriller

D: Matthew Ross / 105m

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Ana Ularu, Pasha D. Lychnikoff, James Gracie, Veronica Ferres, Molly Ringwald, Dmitry Chepovetsky, Rafael Petardi, Eugene Lipinsky

Brought to St Petersburg by the promise of a high-figure deal, diamond merchant Lucas Hill (Reeves) arrives to find his Russian business partner, Pyotr, has vanished, and with the single blue diamond he was meant to give Lucas to help initiate the deal. The buyer, a shady businessman named Boris Volkov (Lychnikoff), allows Lucas two days in which to bring him the sample and the other twenty blue diamonds that make up the deal. Learning that his partner is waiting for him in the Siberian town of Mirny, Lucas flies there, only to learn that his partner has moved on again. With bad weather keeping him there, Lucas, who is married, begins an affair with café owner, Katya (Ularu); he also gets to know her fiercely protective brother, Ivan (Chepovetsky). Returning to St Petersburg, Lucas manages to find the sample diamond and discovers through bringing Katya to him, why his partner was in Mirny: he left another sample diamond there, but this one is a fake. As Lucas begins to piece together the details of the deal Pyotr was arranging, he comes to realise that his life is in danger – and so is Katya’s…

It has to be acknowledged that Keanu Reeves, away from the John Wick series (and any possible mention of a third Bill & Ted movie), appears to be much in demand and works steadily as a result. However, his choice of movies leaves a lot to be desired, and for every good movie he makes, there’s a five-to-one ratio of movies he makes that aren’t. Siberia definitely falls into the latter category. It starts off well enough, but that’s just the first ten minutes, with Lucas arriving in St Petersburg (to a cheery welcome from Ferres’ desk clerk), and learning that he’s already well on the way to being shafted by all and sundry. Thankfully, Lucas can speak Russian, a fact that doesn’t stop everyone around him talking in their native language as if he can’t understand them. This is one of many narrative decisions made by Scott B. Smith’s irritating screenplay that hinders the flow of the material, but none more so when the movie morphs from nascent crime thriller to fully fledged romantic drama within a handful of scenes. This development is too absurd to be credible: Katya is literally the only woman we see in Mirny, and she tells Lucas they might as well have sex because everyone else will think they’ve done it anyway.

So the middle third of the movie is taken up with scenes of Lucas and Katya having sex at every opportunity – bear in mind he’s only there for two days – and then having more sex when she’s in St Petersburg. The couple’s emotions are created to order, there’s little chemistry between them, and their pillow talk is of the “do you know why I like blue diamonds?” variety. As if this aspect of the movie isn’t bad enough, the shady business deal involving passing off fake diamonds as real never really holds any weight or plausibility, though Lychnikoff’s smiling dirtbag (while still its own kind of stereotype) is mesmerising in a callous, offhand manner that works better than it should. None of this is even remotely believable, and it all leads to a violent showdown that only goes to prove that the makers had painted themselves into a corner in terms of a credible outcome. Ross, making only his second feature after the much more accessible Frank & Lola (2016), fumbles things badly throughout, and the movie’s wayward tone undermines any serious attempts at drama – or thriller elements – that the script might be aiming for. There’s an obvious joke about being sent to Siberia, but on this occasion it’s too ironic for comfort.

Rating: 4/10 – another dire entry in the Reeves resumé, Siberia adds up to a collection of scenes and characters that feel like they were assembled by someone with only a rough idea of how to put a script together; definitely one to avoid unless you’re a committed Reeves fan, and even then you should think twice.

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Wonder Wheel (2017)

23 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

1950's, Affair, Coney Island, Drama, James Belushi, Juno Temple, Justin Timberlake, Kate Winslet, Review, Romance, Woody Allen

D: Woody Allen / 101m

Cast: James Belushi, Juno Temple, Justin Timberlake, Kate Winslet, Max Casella, Jack Gore, David Krumholtz

At one point in Wonder Wheel, Mickey (Timberlake), a lifeguard at Coney Island (and the movie’s narrator), gives Ginny (Winslet), the married woman he’s having an affair with, a book of plays by Eugene O’Neill for her birthday. Once upon a time, Ginny was an aspiring actress, until she met and married a drummer. That relationship ended when she had an affair, and now she’s in the process of cheating on her second husband, ‘Humpty’ (Belushi), a carousel operator. Ginny works as a waitress in a restaurant on the boardwalk; she’s already unhappy in her marriage, and has a young son from her first marriage, Richie (Gore), who likes to set fires. She’s struggling to hold onto her hopes and dreams, and Mickey’s attentions are a way for her to do that. Fast approaching forty, and trapped in a marriage of convenience, Ginny is desperately looking for happiness. But a book of O’Neill’s plays? How much more of a clue as to whether or not Ginny will find the happiness she seeks does an audience need?

Woody Allen’s latest is one of his serious movies, a drama that starts off by showing the surface glamour of Coney Island in the 1950’s, before quickly going behind the scenes and revealing the hardships and the despair that exist just a short distance from the lights and the attractions. ‘Humpty’ has a daughter, Carolina (Temple), who left home five years before to marry a gangster. Now she’s back, having left him but also having been “marked”; she’s hoping her established estrangement from her father will mean no one will look for her there. But when Carolina meets Mickey, Ginny sees her chance for happiness coming under threat. Ginny’s desperation increases, and her behaviour becomes more erratic than usual. Unable to help herself, Ginny begins to alienate everyone around her, and when the opportunity arises to do the right thing, the decision she makes has profound, and irreversible, consequences. It’s a simple premise, confidently set up and handled by Allen, but also one that feels more like an abandoned stage play than an original screenplay. This also means the movie has the look of a theatrical production at times, and Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography stutters back and forth between interior and exterior scenes with all the dexterity of an artist who can’t decide on natural or artificial light.

But production issues aside, this is Winslet’s movie through and through. Ginny is an emotional trainwreck, only taking responsibility for her actions when it will bring her sympathy, and defending herself by attacking others. She’s an ersatz Blanche DuBois, hurting instead of loving, and Winslet gives a driving, intense performance that is in many ways out of place within the movie because it overhadows everything else that Allen comes up with. And Winslet is on such tremendous form that her co-stars have no choice but to run to keep up. Belushi and Temple are good in roles that aren’t quite as well developed as Winslet’s, but Timberlake is the odd man out as Mickey. He never looks comfortable in the role, and in his scenes with Winslet, the gulf between them is highlighted every time. In the end, Allen elects to leave many of the sub-plots and storylines unresolved, especially the one involving Richie, which goes nowhere and seems included just to pad out the running time. Otherwise, the movie’s open-endedness proves unexpectedly satisfying, and though this may not be a prime example of Allen’s more recent output, thanks to Winslet’s superb performance, it’s a movie that deserves a look, if for no other reason than that.

Rating: 7/10 – featuring Winslet on incredible form, Wonder Wheel tells its story as if it had been written in the 1950’s but has been given a modern day makeover; the milieu has been lovingly recreated by production designer Santo Loquasto, Allen remains a dependable if unexciting visual artist, and for once the romance doesn’t have such a pronounced age gap.

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The Only Living Boy in New York (2017)

11 Saturday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Affair, Callum Turner, Cynthia Nixon, Drama, Jeff Bridges, Kate Beckinsale, Marc Webb, Pierce Brosnan, Review, Romance, Writing

D: Marc Webb / 89m

Cast: Callum Turner, Jeff Bridges, Kate Beckinsale, Pierce Brosnan, Cynthia Nixon, Kiersey Clemons, Bill Camp, Wallace Shawn, Tate Donovan, Anh Duong, Debi Mazar, Ben Hollandsworth, John Bolger

Pity poor Thomas (Turner). He’s the quintessential college graduate who can’t work out what he wants to do with his life. His father, Ethan (Brosnan), is a brusque senior editor at a publishing firm, and his mother, Judith (Nixon) appears to be a nervous soul who surrounds herself with people from the arts in order to offset her nervous disposition. Thomas has been discouraged by his father from becoming an author, and he doesn’t seem to have a fall-back career to help him move forward. Instead he spends time with his best friend Mimi (Clemons). He’s in love with Mimi, but his love isn’t reciprocated. One day, Thomas meets W.F. (Bridges), who’s just moved into his building. They strike up a friendship, and soon Thomas is sharing his woes and actively seeking advice from his new-found friend. Soon after, while Thomas and Mimi are out together one evening, they see Ethan in the company of another woman. From this, Thomas decides to find out who the woman is, and to stop any affair she and her father may be having.

The woman is Johanna (Beckinsale), a freelance book editor who has been working on and off with Ethan over the past year. Thomas tells W.F. about his father’s affair, but instead of being equally outraged or supportive of Thomas’s efforts to sabotage the affair, W.F. questions his motives, asking him if he, Thomas, wants to sleep with Johanna instead, and making it plain that this is the reason why Thomas wants to put an end to the affair… Of course, this is all true, and in the way that only the movies can offer, Johanna proves receptive to Thomas’s advances and they begin their own relationship. It’s at this point in the movie when it’s likely that many viewers will throw their hands up in the air and cry, Wish Fulfilment! It’s also the moment when the movie, struggling already to make us care about Thomas or any of the other characters, throws in the towel and decides to play out its insubstantial narrative with all the emotional finesse of an after hours drinking contest.

It’s always hard to work out just who qualifies as the potential audience for a movie like The Only Living Boy in New York, with its self-torturing central characters, middle class aspirations, mock intellectualising (W.F. quotes Ezra Pound at one point), and lazy approach to character building. Oh, and let’s not forget the usual number of occasions where people talk in riddles and never… explain… themselves… fully. It’s hard to understand just why so many of these movies get made, especially when the aim is to try to make these tortured souls and their mock-important lives relevant to the average viewer. Even if this is exactly the social milieu that you inhabit, and even if many of the characters on display reminded you of people you actually know, would you still be interested in watching them whine about how hard done by they are, or how sad or lonely or misunderstood they are? (It’s probably very unlikely.) So if even the people this truly relates to aren’t likely to engage with this particular story, why should anyone else?

Granted, some viewers might be attracted to the movie by the talent involved. Actors of the stature of Jeff Bridges and Pierce Brosnan will always garner interest in any movies they appear in, but on this occasion, they’re at the mercy of a script that challenges the audience to be emotionally involved at nearly every turn. No matter how good the performances – and Brosnan is very good (which is really nice to see after some of the movies he’s made in recent years) – if the script isn’t up to it, or isn’t as compelling as it should be, then no amount of acting experience can compensate for a story that carries little or no emotional weight. And Allan Loeb’s screenplay has exactly that problem: it’s dry and superficial, and any sympathies for Thomas et al. can only be arrived at by a huge amount of effort on the viewer’s part, and an effort that isn’t rewarded at any point during the movie. Even when the movie tries to be clever with the introduction of a back story that, once mentioned, gives away a large chunk of the plot, it stumbles on looking for a payoff that won’t feel forced or intrusive (hint: it doesn’t succeed).

Following on from the much more engaging experience that was Gifted (2017), director Marc Webb does his best to make the various plot developments more interesting than they are, but too often finds himself trying to coax some much needed animation into the material, and struggling to provide any sense that all this is happening in the real world and to “real” people. He’s not helped by Turner’s less than stellar performance, his interpretation of Thomas unnecessarily making viewers wonder just why Johanna would sleep with him, or why Mimi – in a plot “twist” that can be seen coming from space, let alone a mile away – eventually decides she really does love him. It’s a role that unfortunately exposes Turner’s limited range as an actor, and especially in his scenes with Bridges, and it sometimes he does more harm to the movie than even the script. Bridges is good value as always, Beckinsale is trapped by a character arc that is actually one long downward spiral, Nixon does anxious (and should be on medication) because that’s the only thing we know about Judith, and Clemons shows flashes of inspiration as she attempts to make Mimi more than just the best friend whose knowing comments get ignored by the main character.

In the end it all builds to a confrontation that lacks energy, emotion, and purpose (except to help wind things up quickly). An awkward, and unnecessary, coda undermines everything that’s gone before, and is so dramatically redundant that it’s like a slap in the face to the viewer. It reinforces the notion that whatever message the movie is trying to make, whether it be about relationships and how hard they can be, or finding one’s way in the world (by sleeping with your father’s mistress; always a good starting point), or even selecting a career based on what you know you can’t do, the movie itself hasn’t fully made up its mind what that message is, or even if it’s sure about it. In that way it’s a lot like Thomas himself: confused, hoping for inspiration to strike, and held back by so many missed opportunities to do the right thing.

Rating: 4/10 – a glossy snapshot of a semi-privileged lifestyle that proves as empty as the shallowness of the characters and their wretchedly expressed desires, The Only Living Boy in New York is pretentious on one side, and wilfully obtuse on the other; a tale that lacks passion despite its use of affairs and sexual exploitation, it’s another exercise in trying to make middle class angst interesting when we’ve seen it waaaaay too many times before.

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Lady Macbeth (2016)

06 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Affair, Cosmo Jarvis, Drama, Florence Pugh, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Literary adaptation, Lust, Naomi Ackie, Paul Hilton, Review, William Oldroyd

D: William Oldroyd / 89m

Cast: Florence Pugh, Cosmo Jarvis, Paul Hilton, Naomi Ackie, Christopher Fairbank, Golda Rosheuvel, Anton Palmer

Rural England, 1865. A harsh time and place to live if you’re a woman, and especially if you’re a young woman entering into a marriage with a man you don’t know, and all because you were part and parcel of a land sale. That’s the fate of Katherine (Pugh), a farmer’s daughter who finds herself the wife of local landowner, Alexander Lester (Hilton), and living in his father’s house. Forbidden to go outside the house and expected to maintain a strict schedule in relation to running the house, Katherine is less than happy with the way her life is playing out. Her husband won’t even fulfill his duties in the marital bed, content instead to make Katherine strip naked and face the wall while he pleasures himself. And as if his indifference wasn’t enough, it’s compounded by her father-in-law’s ironic disapproval at her not being able to provide a son and heir. All the company she has is that of one of the servants, Anna (Ackie), who is the epitomy of subjection.

It’s only when both men leave on separate business trips that Katherine is able to explore the surrounding countryside and take back some aspects of the life she used to enjoy. She also encounters Sebastian (Jarvis), one of her husband’s workers. She’s attracted to him immediately, and he notices this. Soon after he comes to the house to see her, and though she rebuffs his advances at first, she succumbs readily and the pair embark on an affair. When her father-in-law (Fairbank) returns, he is aware of the unseemly relationship between Katherine and Sebastian, and he quickly berates her for it. Treating her even more harshly than he did before, and giving Sebastian a beating, Katherine determines to ensure that her affair can continue. To this end, the old man meets an untimely end, and Katherine installs Sebastian as the de facto man of the house. Some time passes, and then Alexander does return home, and though he knows about his wife’s duplicity, his plan to deal with her doesn’t go as expected…

Alexander’s return is the culmination of the movie’s second act, and it comes at a time when Katherine’s natural character has become somewhat exposed through her actions and her baser emotions. The viewer is beginning to understand that beneath the lustful, all-encompassing passion she feels for Sebastian, there lurks something that’s a little more sinister, and a little more discomfiting. Flashes of this have been seen up until now, but if this transposed Lady Macbeth of the wild English countryside (the movie was shot in Northumberland, and is an adaptation of the novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov) has anything to say about its central character then it’s simply this: beware of how you treat her, for she isn’t one to forgive. Now whether this is due to madness brought on by an aversion to solitude, or is part of her natural temperament and she will do anything to protect herself, that’s down to the viewer to decide. But what the viewer can be certain of is that Katherine will go to whatever lengths she deems necessary to maintain the life she wants. And this we discover at the end of the second act, and well into the third, where her sense of self-preservation becomes entirely twisted and goads her into doing something truly horrible.

All this passion and reckless abandonment of the accepted social norms and proprieties of the period is underlined by the stark severity of life in the Lester household, a place of cold, airy rooms – well-lit, but encouraging little warmth – and the even chillier nature of its male inhabitants, whose sense of puritan endeavour involves mocking and restraining the lives of others. It’s into this unforgiving patrician, and God-fearing environment that Katherine finds herself thrust without the benefit of any say in the matter. It’s this unfairness of place and position that allows Katherine to gain the viewer’s sympathy, and when she embarks on her affair with Sebastian, it’s good to see her find true affection – and love – even though it’s obvious there’s not going to be a “happy ever after”. And so it proves, with the patriarchal society she struggles against continuously, circling round her like hawks, ready to swoop down and punish her for her perceived impudence and “whorish” behaviour.

With the milieu firmly and unforgivingly established – there’s no better evocation of the social shackles Katherine is forced to endure than the sight of her sitting on a divan waiting for her husband to come home – director William Oldroyd is free to encourage and draw out a mesmerising performance from the twenty-one year old Pugh that is one of the most poised and impressive of 2016. She lets the audience know exactly what Katherine is thinking and feeling throughout, and reveals a maturity of approach to building the character that is even more extraordinary when you consider that after The Falling (2014), this is only her second feature (it also makes her next appearance in The Commuter (2018) seem like something of a backward step). So good is she that sometimes, and no matter what else is going on in a scene, the viewer is drawn to her like a moth to a flame. Passionate or icy-cold in her dealings with the other characters, Pugh ensures that Katherine remains endlessly fascinating, and a character you can love or hate or sympathise with or fear with equal intensity.

Pugh is ably supported by Jarvis as the easily manipulated (at first) Sebastian, his initial devil-may-care attitude more and more eroded the deeper he becomes embroiled in Katherine’s refusal to give up on their affair. There’s an element of Mellors from Lady Chatterley’s Lover about the characterisation, but as the story progresses that too fades away, and it’s not long before, like him, you can see that it’s not going to work out well for him. Ackie is on equally good form as Anna, the maid who retreats into silence when it all gets too much for her to deal with, while Hilton and Fairbank, though good in their roles, are a little too one-note – unrelentingly nasty, that is – in their portrayals (though this is down to the script than any intention of their own). Still, Oldroyd holds it all together by tightening the increasing suspense of just how far Katherine will go, and with cinematographer Ari Wegner ensures that the wild, sprawling moorland serves as a fine backdrop to the emotional upheavals occurring within the Lester household.

Rating: 8/10 – a gripping, emotionally charged tale of lust, madness and murder, Lady Macbeth is anchored by a superb performance from Pugh, and a chilly atmosphere that soon becomes as claustrophobic for the viewer as it is for the characters; a violent tragedy of emotions, it’s a movie that carries a rigorous beauty about it, and which remains absorbing from start to finish.

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A Dangerous Method (2011)

14 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Affair, Carl Jung, Catch Up movie, David Cronenberg, Drama, Historical drama, Keira Knightley, Michael Fassbender, Psychoanalysis, Sabina Spielrein, Sigmund Freud, True story, Viggo Mortensen

D: David Cronenberg / 99m

Cast: Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Vincent Cassel, Sarah Gadon

A movie examining the intellectual and professional battle between Carl Jung (Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Mortensen) may not be the most obvious choice for David Cronenberg to direct, but there’s long been a psycho-sexual element to his movies that fits in quite easily with Jung and Freud’s combative attitudes about notions of sexual repression (though even they may have balked at some of the ideas Cronenberg came up with during his Seventies output). What emerges though is a movie that concentrates as much on the machinations of the mind as it does on the pleasures of the flesh.

The movie opens in 1902, with the arrival of Sabina Spielrein (Knightley) at the Burghölzli, a psychiatric hospital in Zurich. Sabina displays extreme manic behaviour and contorts her body into uncomfortable positions as an expression of her illness. She is placed in the care of a young doctor, Carl Jung. He begins treating her using various techniques including dream interpretation (though mostly he just asks her how certain events in her childhood made her feel). Sabina responds to the treatment and soon she makes a breakthrough in understanding the root cause of her mania. Wishing to be a psychanalyst (the term Jung uses), Sabina begins to help Jung with his research. Soon, he begins corresponding with Freud, and before long they have a mentor/pupil relationship despite some of the differences in their approach to psychoanalysis (the term Freud uses).

When Freud recommends Jung treat one of his patients, Otto Gross (Cassel), the man’s indulgence of his sexual desires and his insistence that sexual repression is at odds with living a normal, healthy life, serves to make Jung confront his desire for Sabina. They embark on an affair, one that Jung’s wife, Emma (Gadon), tolerates, while Jung himself continues his professional and personal relationship with Freud. However, at the same time that their friendship begins to deteriorate over their different opinions about psychoanalysis, Jung is struck by guilt and seeks to end his affair with Sabina. She involves Freud on her behalf but while he sympathises with her (and more so because Jung has lied to him about the affair), he is unable to intervene. Soon, he and Jung end their relationship, and Sabina strikes out on her own as a psychoanalyst.

Adapted partly from the book, A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr, and partly from screenwriter Christopher Hampton’s play, The Talking Cure, A Dangerous Method is a beautifully shot movie (by DoP Peter Suschitzky) that features a marvellous, deftly arranged score by Howard Shore (based on leitmotifs from Wagner’s Siegfried), and a richly detailed recreation of early 20th century Europe (some parts of which didn’t need to be de-modernised at all). It’s also a movie that outlines and explains in simple terms the differences between Freud and Jung’s different approaches to psychoanalysis, while at the same time doing so in a way that maintains the mystique that surrounded their differing approaches (and for many people, still does). It’s all down to Hampton’s intelligent, precise screenplay and Cronenberg’s effortless way of telling the story. There’s not a wasted scene or moment in the whole movie.

Cronenberg shows a sure hand throughout, and as the inter-relationships between Jung and Freud, and Jung and Sabina, and eventually Sabina and Freud, begin to grow more and more intense, he allows the viewer a glimpse inside the mind and the motivations of each character, whether it’s Jung’s fear of professional repudiation, or Freud’s unyielding pragmatism, or even the enjoyment Sabina derives from being humiliated. These are characters, real life people, that we can understand and, to a degree, sympathise with. They were all involved in the creation of a field of medicine that has since been of benefit to millions upon millions. That they had their own problems shouldn’t be a surprise, anf thanks to Hampton’s erudite and very adroit script, those problems are fleshed out with tremendous skill, and in Cronenberg’s hands, delivered with impeccable attention to professional and emotional detail. Jung may have been more willing to explore other avenues relating to the way in which our subconscious works, but even Freud’s rigid demeanour and intellect are presented credibly and with no small amount of rigour.

The director is aided by a trio of superb performances. Mortensen, playing older, gives Freud a shrewd gravitas, appearing always thoughtful, always seeking to understand the impulses that drive everyone around him (and especially Jung). It’s a role that requires the actor to appear ruminative for long stretches, passively observing and deducing, and Mortensen carries it off with his usual skill and ingenuity. He’s also the source of much of the movie’s dry, offhand humour. Mortensen is such a thoughtful, articulate actor that his presence acts almost as a guarantee of quality, and working with Cronenberg for the third time – after A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007) – he renews that acquaintance to incredibly good effect. As Jung, Fassbender gets the lion’s share of the narrative, and gives a detailed, insightful performance that shows the doubts and concerns that Jung had in terms of his work, and his marriage, and his relationship with Sabina. It’s a well rounded portrayal, not lacking in emotional precision, and gives the actor a chance to impress in a role that requires much of the character’s feelings to be expressed internally, as befits both the period and contemporary public expectations.

How different then for Keira Knightley, who right from the very beginning has to provide an hysteric performance, one that pushes her as an actress and one that pushes the audience’s acceptance of her as a dramatic actress (there’s no doubt that Knightley can act; it’s just that it gets easily forgotten when she’s also a celebrity). She brings a passion and a commitment to the role of Sabina that is powerful and uncomfortable to watch in her early scenes, and even though she gets “better”, the character’s mania remains there, just under the surface and ready to release itself at a moment’s notice. Here, Knightley’s angular features are used to strikingly good effect as Cronenberg keeps her looking as if every moment is a struggle to continue to be “normal”. She and Fassbender work well together, and their scenes are some of the most potent in the whole movie.

As a movie dealing with the birth of psychoanalysis as we know it today, the arguments for and against the theories of Jung and Freud are presented in a way that makes them both intriguing, and elusive, in terms of their true efficacy. Both men were convinced their own approaches were the correct ones, but the movie doesn’t side with either of them, leaving the viewer to make up their own minds as to which man is “right” and which man is “wrong”. Cronenberg orchestrates these discussions with admirable finesse, and if some scenes seem too clinical or distant from the heated passions they’re depicting, it’s in keeping with the notion that Jung and Freud, and even Sabina, were first and foremost observers, and that their own lives were just as worthy of inspection (or introspection) as anyone else’s. And perhaps even more so.

Rating: 8/10 – a vivid and captivating examination of the ways in which early forms of psychoanalysis drew on the experiences and sentiments of its practitioners, A Dangerous Method is absorbing and exhilarating in equal measure; with Cronenberg handling the material so sensitively and without over-simplifying things, it’s a movie that stands out for being about complex ideas as to what makes us tick, and isn’t just a vapid exploration of carnal desires. (14/31)

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Notes on a Scandal (2006)

04 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Affair, Bill Nighy, Cate Blanchett, Drama, Judi Dench, Lesbian, Literary adaptation, Patrick Marber, Review, Richard Eyre, St George's School, Student/teacher relationship, Zoë Heller

Notes on a Scandal

D: Richard Eyre / 92m

Cast: Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, Philip Davis, Andrew Simpson, Michael Maloney, Juno Temple, Max Lewis, Joanna Scanlan, Tom Georgeson, Julia McKenzie

Adapted by Patrick Marber from the novel by Zoë Heller, Notes on a Scandal should be sought out for three reasons: the acting masterclasses given by Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, a superb, unsettling score by Philip Glass, and the script itself, a beautifully constructed piece that delves into some very dark corners indeed, and which still allows itself the luxury of including a mordaunt sense of humour.

The story centres around two outwardly very different teachers in a London comprehensive school, St George’s. Dench is Barbara Covett, a history teacher who is approaching retirement. She’s never married, doesn’t have a significant other, is respected but not liked by the other teachers, and adopts a disdainful air that keeps everyone at a distance. Blanchett is Sheba Hart, a much younger art teacher who lacks Barbara’s experience and thick skin. She’s married to an older man, Richard (Nighy), and has two children, Polly (Temple) and Ben (Lewis). Sheba is the kind of teacher who often finds themselves out of their depth, and it’s on one such occasion that Barbara comes to her rescue.

Grateful to her, Sheba begins a friendship with Barbara that sees the older woman visiting Sheba’s home more and more often. Sheba effectively becomes Barbara’s protegé, although there is still a wide gulf between them, stemming mostly from Barbara’s dislike of Sheba’s middle-class lifestyle. One evening, Barbara waits for Sheba to attend a school drama performance, but Sheba is late. Barbara goes in search of her, and discovers Sheba having sex with a pupil, Steven Connolly (Simpson). Shocked, and feeling betrayed, Barbara confronts Sheba. The younger woman pleads with Barbara not to tell anyone. To Sheba’s surprise, Barbara has no intention of telling anyone – because they’re friends (though Barbara does insist Sheba end the affair immediately). Barbara sees her chance to become closer to Sheba, or destroy her if Sheba doesn’t agree to spending more time with her.

NOAS - scene3

But Steven won’t be put off by Sheba’s pleas to stop the affair. He continues to see her, and Sheba allows their relationship to continue (though she keeps this a secret from Barbara). But it’s not long before Barbara discovers Sheba’s duplicity, and when she attempts to blackmail Sheba into spending time with her – to be with her at the expense of spending time with her family – Sheba has no choice but to put her family first. Angry and spiteful, Barbara seizes an opportunity presented to her by another teacher, Brian Bangs (Davis), and it’s not long before Steven’s mother is at Sheba’s house and the whole affair is revealed.

Richard leaves Sheba in order to have time to think about their relationship, and unable to face being in their home without him, asks Barbara if she can stay with her for a few days. Barbara quite naturally agrees, but a chance discovery leads to Sheba finding out the true extent of what their friendship means to Barbara, and how their relationship has been manipulated by Barbara from the beginning. With the future of her marriage looking uncertain, and facing jail because Steven is only fifteen, Sheba has no option but to confront Barbara over what the older woman has done.

NOAS - scene1

Simply put, Notes on a Scandal is gripping stuff. Patrick Marber’s script hustles and bustles with undisguised hostility towards its two central characters, revealing their darkest traits and baser instincts with a scalpel-like precision that flays their more self-serving attributes to the metaphorical bone. Both Barbara and Sheba have their secrets, and both struggle to keep them hidden, but Marber won’t allow them any such luxury. As they interact with each other, lying and obscuring the truth about themselves, Barbara and Sheba become more and more unlikeable as the movie continues. Barbara’s domineering, manipulative demeanour is barely hidden at times, but she covers it well enough to fool Sheba, whose self-centred moral nihilism means she can’t see when someone has seen through her own carefully constructed façade.

The two women become involved in a one-sided battle, one-sided because Sheba doesn’t realise that Barbara wants nothing less than complete capitulation, and on her terms alone. Sheba is to be the sacrifice to Barbara’s vanity, another in a (conceivably) long line of hand maidens to Barbara’s idea of friendship. (The viewer may deduce that Barbara is a lesbian because of her intentions toward Sheba, but Marber’s script is too clever for that; instead, Barbara is more asexual than sexual, and is horrified at the suggestion – made by Sheba late on in the movie – that her motives lie in that direction.) Sheba, however, is very definitely a sexual creature, one who defines herself and her existence by the way in which she is found attractive and desired (once, after they’ve had sex, Steven tells Sheba she is “fit”, and Sheba positively glows under the praise). Both women are confused about love, Barbara seeing it as a kind of managed companionship, and Sheba as a validation of her sexual appeal. These confusions amount to huge fault lines in both their personalities, and when they eventually clash, the end result is force majeure.

NOAS - scene2

As noted above, this is a movie that features two very impressive performances, and there’s not even a hair’s breadth between them in terms of how good they are. Dench is icy and abrupt as Barbara, calculating and insidious, a woman used to being respected (and feared even) and getting her own way. Dench doesn’t shy away from examining Barbara’s less savoury characteristics, using Marber’s script to highlight the way in which she expects everyone around her to fit in with her ideas and prejudices. Dench is also good at portraying Barbara’s emotional sterility through a succession of expertly judged expressions, all testifying to the void in both her heart and her feelings.

Blanchett has what feels like the more compelling, emotionally wrought role, but Sheba is a pleasure seeker, and can only justify her actions in ways that are meant to elicit sympathy for what she sees as her unexciting lifestyle. It’s interesting that she was one of Richard’s students when they first met (though she was twenty and not fifteen when he seduced her – or she seduced him; which it is we’re not told), and she does use this as an attempt to excuse her behaviour and the affair, but Richard quite rightly decries this, leaving Sheba unable to gain any sympathy or acceptance for what she’s done. Blanchett embraces the complex neediness that infuses Sheba’s personality and doesn’t shy away from portraying the character’s selfish obsessions and somewhat childish naïvete. Like Barbara, Sheba is used to getting what she wants; the only real difference between them is that Barbara has grown used to being on her own, whereas it’s a situation that scares Sheba unreasonably.

Acting as an extra layer of emotional intensity, Philip Glass’s insistent, urgent score ramps up the tension as the story unfolds. It acts as an unseen musical narrator, underscoring (if that’s an appropriate analogy) the drama as it heads towards a necessarily downbeat ending. Coordinating this and the performances of Dench and Blanchett, director Richard Eyre, along with DoP Chris Menges, uses his theatrical flair to keep the movie both visually and dramatically exciting, and he teases every nuance and vicious piece of brinkmanship out of Marber’s acerbic screenplay. With great supporting turns from Nighy, Davis and Simpson, as well as some equally adept editing by John Bloom and Antonia Van Drimmelen, this is an exceptionally well crafted movie that still stands out ten years after it was released.

Rating: 9/10 – with human frailty and arrogance brought to uncomfortable life by two of today’s finest actresses, Notes on a Scandal has enough positive attributes for two movies; richly detailed and endlessly fascinating, it’s a movie whose value is unlikely to deteriorate or become degraded by repeat viewings, and which remains a remarkable convergence of talent.

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Monthly Roundup – January 2016

31 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Acting, Affair, Antonia Scalari, BP, China, Cholera, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, Drugs, Edward Norton, Floodtide, Freebasing, Giulio Marchetti, Giuseppina, Gordon Jackson, Historical drama, Italy, Jack Lambert, James Hill, John Curran, John Laurie, Literary adaptation, Marina Zenovich, Naomi Watts, Oscar winner, Petrol station, Richard Pryor, Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic, Romance, Rona Anderson, Ship design, Shipyard, Short movie, Stand up comedy, The Clyde, W. Somerset Maugham

Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic (2013) / D: Marina Zenovich / 83m

With: Richard Pryor, Jennifer Lee, Rashon Khan, Thom Mount, Whoopi Goldberg, Bob Newhart, Patricia von Heitman, David Banks, Skip Brittenham, Paul Schrader, Stan Shaw, Robin Williams, David Steinberg, Rocco Urbisci, Lily Tomlin

Richard Pryor Omit the Logic

Rating: 6/10 – a look back over the life and career of Richard Pryor featuring comments from the people who lived and worked with him; if you’re familiar with Pryor and his work then Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic won’t provide you with anything new, but its concise, straightforward approach is effective enough, even if there’s an accompanying lack of depth to the way the material has been assembled.

Floodtide (1949) / D: Frederick Wilson / 90m

Cast: Gordon Jackson, Rona Anderson, John Laurie, Jack Lambert, James Logan, Janet Brown, Elizabeth Sellars, Gordon McLeod, Ian McLean, Archie Duncan

Floodtide

Rating: 7/10 – an eager to succeed shipyard worker (Jackson) earns both the respect of the shipyard owner (Lambert) and the love of his daughter (Anderson, who Jackson married in real life), as he climbs the ladder from metal worker to ship designer; the kind of cottage industry movie that Britain made in abundance in the late Forties/early Fifties, Floodtide has a great deal of charm, and an easygoing approach to its slightly fairytale narrative.

Giuseppina (1960) / D: James Hill / 32m

Cast: Antonia Scalari, Giulio Marchetti

Giuseppina

Rating: 9/10 – on a slow, sunny day at an Italian roadside garage, young Giuseppina (Scalari) finds that life isn’t quite as boring as she thinks; an Oscar-winning short, Giuseppina is a total delight, with minimal dialogue, some beautifully observed caricatures for customers, and a simple, unaffected approach that pays enormous dividends, and makes for an entirely rewarding experience.

The Painted Veil (2006) / D: John Curran / 125m

Cast: Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Toby Jones, Diana Rigg, Anthony Chau-Sang Wong

The Painted Veil

Rating: 7/10 – bacteriologist Walter Fane (Norton) takes his wife Kitty (Watts) to China as punishment for an affair, but in combatting an outbreak of cholera, discovers that she has qualities he has overlooked; previously made in 1934 with Greta Garbo, The Painted Veil (adapted from the novel by W. Somerset Maugham) is a moderately absorbing, moderately effective romantic drama that never quite takes off, but does feature some beautiful location photography courtesy of Stuart Dryburgh.

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D.W. Griffith Double Bill – The House of Darkness (1913) and The Mothering Heart (1913)

24 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Affair, Asylum, Charles Hill Mailes, Claire McDowell, D.W. Griffith, Drama, Lillian Gish, Lionel Barrymore, Marriage, Mental illness, Review, Silent movies, Walter Miller

House of Darkness, The

The House of Darkness (1913)

D: D.W. Griffith / 17m

Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Claire McDowell, Charles Hill Mailes, Lillian Gish, Christy Cabanne, Robert Harron, William Elmer

In an asylum for people with “disordered minds”, a young nurse (McDowell) is wooed by one of the doctors (Barrymore). Their courtship leads to marriage, and a happy one at that. Meanwhile, one of the inmates, an older man (Mailes) who has clearly seen better times, wanders around quite calmly and with a dazed expression that speaks of his confusion. But when he suddenly turns violent, and for no apparent reason, he has to be physically restrained. As he struggles against the orderlies restraining him, the sound of a piano being played nearby by one of the other nurses (Gish), proves successful in calming down the old man, and returning him to his former docile state.

The hospital staff make a note of this, and the nurse is encouraged to play the piano whenever the man shows signs of aggression. However, it isn’t long before the man has another psychotic episode; in the process he escapes from the grounds of the asylum. He attacks two men in a park, and manages to wrest a gun from one of them. With orderlies and the police in pursuit, he flees the park and eventually finds himself outside the home of the recently married nurse and doctor. He breaks in, and discovers the nurse there by herself…

House of Darkness, The - scene

An interesting, well-made movie that shines an unexpectedly sympathetic spotlight on the mentally ill, Griffith’s even-paced, non-melodramatic portrayal of the “insane” (only once is the old man referred to as a lunatic), The House of Darkness is a perfect metaphor for the mind of a man with mental health problems. Without a strait-jacketed or gibbering madman in sight, this is still a powerful cry for a better understanding of those whose minds have betrayed them, and is remarkably “modern” in the way in which the old man’s mania is dealt with (even if it is based on the idea that “music hath charms to soothe the savage breast”).

With Barrymore and McDowell reduced to supporting players once their marriage is established it falls to Mailes to be the focus of the movie, and he gives a poignant, affecting performance that belies his usual role as a patrician elder, and also serves as a reminder that silent movie acting wasn’t always all declamatory hand gestures and facial gurning. Mailes has the viewer’s sympathy from the start, and even when he goes berserk, there’s always the sense that he can’t help what he’s doing and that he still deserves our understanding. Griffith, by now such an assured presence behind the camera that every shot and every camera placement provides information for the viewer to react to, keeps things from being too dramatic, and lets the story unfold with a grim fatalism that is thankfully derailed in the movie’s climax.

With the script having been written by the appropriately named Jere F. Looney (or unfortunately named, depending on your point of view), The House of Darkness is a solid, unspectacular yet moving account of madness and the burden it bestows on those affected by it. And in its own way, it’s as much an affecting drama as it is a gripping thriller.

Rating: 8/10 – a good example of Griffith subverting his audience’s expectations in terms of the movie’s approach to the subject matter, and bolstered by a great performance by Mailes, The House of Darkness is both illuminating and inspiring; a small-scale triumph and as relevant now as it was back then.

Mothering Heart, The

The Mothering Heart (1913)

D: D.W. Griffith / 29m

Cast: Walter Miller, Lillian Gish, Kate Bruce, Viola Barry, Charles West

A young woman (Gish), romantically involved with a young man called Joe (Miller), allows herself to be persuaded to marry him. They move into their new home but money is tight, and Joe is weighed down by his lack of success at work. His new bride earns extra money taking in ironing, and she’s pleased to do so, believing that it will only be a matter of time before her husband begins to earn better money. After a period where he returns home each night feeling more melancholy than the last, he finally has some good news: a welcome bonus. Joe wants to celebrate, and he tells his wife to get dressed to go out, but what she has to wear is neither new nor fashionable.

They go to a nightclub where Joe attracts the attention of a woman (Barry) sitting at the next table. His wife becomes aware of this and insists they leave, but a chance encounter with the woman leads to Joe neglecting his wife and spending more and more time with her, and in the same nightclub. When she finds out what he’s doing, she resolves to leave him. When she does, Joe is only momentarily upset, and continues to spend time with his new flame. His wife, meanwhile, goes back to living with her mother (Bruce), and without telling her husband that she’s expecting their child…

Mothering Heart, The - scene

By the time of The Mothering Heart, Griffith was looking ahead to making feature length movies, but this didn’t mean that he was restless or putting any less of an effort into his short features. Here he pulls no punches in highlighting the pitiful surroundings of the young married couple, and contrasting them with the gaudy excesses of the nightclub, with its ornate furnishings and impeccably attired clientele. Through this juxtaposition he shows just how easy it is for young men to forget what’s really important in their lives, and how it can just as easily drain the love of a young bride for her husband. It’s a simple tale, and while Griffith’s approach is simple as well, he also makes Joe’s deception and its consequences tremendously emotive.

Of course, he’s aided immeasurably by Gish. It’s a little hard to credit, but at the time the movie was made, Gish was still only twenty, but in the scene where she first suspects her husband is deceiving her, she finds a glove in his coat pocket. At first she’s glad to find it, thinking it’s a present from him, but when she realises there’s only one, her expression begins to change from happiness to disappointment, all there for the audience to see as she stares into the camera. It’s a bravura moment, and beautifully crafted, as her faith in her husband is taken from her in a matter of seconds.

For all its passion and heartfelt melancholy, The Mothering Heart is also quite a restrained movie in terms of its look and the way in which Griffith uses fixed camera set ups throughout. This is a movie that is content to observe its characters and their actions, and its no frills approach adds beautifully to the carefully constructed mise en scene, the simple story allowed to be the focus and with little in the way of any distractions or irrelevancies (except for the nightclub dancers, that is).

Rating: 8/10 – with a tremendous performance by Gish, and assured, impressive direction from Griffith, The Mothering Heart is one of the very best of his American Biograph movies; powerful and moving, and visually striking, it’s a movie that rewards on far more levels than you’d expect, and paints a sobering portrait of young love undone.

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Mini-Review: The Boy Next Door (2015)

14 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Affair, Drama, Jennifer Lopez, John Corbett, Murder, Neighbour, One night stand, Review, Rob Cohen, Ryan Guzman, Stalker, Stalking, Thriller

Boy Next Door, The

D: Rob Cohen / 91m

Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Guzman, John Corbett, Ian Nelson, Kristin Chenoweth, Lexi Atkins, Hill Harper, Jack Wallace

Claire Peterson (Lopez) teaches classic literature at her local high school. She’s separated from her husband, Garrett (Corbett), due to his having had an affair, and lives with their son, Kevin (Nelson). When high school senior Noah Sandborn (Guzman) moves in to look after his ailing uncle (Wallace) next door, his good looks and chiseled physique prove distracting to Claire, and she finds herself becoming attracted to him. With Garrett making every effort to win back Claire’s trust, he and Kevin go off fishing for the weekend. Noah creates an excuse for Claire to come and see him, and when she does, he seizes his chance and they have sex.

The next morning, Claire realises she shouldn’t have slept with Noah and tells him it was a mistake. Noah becomes angry, and his behaviour reveals a darker, more sinister side, one that sees Claire at risk of losing her family, her job, and possibly, her life. As she tries desperately to keep their one night stand a secret, Noah insists they should be together, and warns Claire that if she doesn’t agree to be with him, he’ll let Kevin or Garrett watch the video he made of them having sex. But when the brakes on Garrett’s car fail while he and Kevin are in it, Claire realises that Noah will stop at nothing in his attempts to have her, and that she needs to do something to protect both her and her family.

Boy Next Door, The - scene

It’s hard to say which is the worst thing about The Boy Next Door: it’s either Rob Cohen’s tired, uninspired direction, or the unappealing, highly derivative script by Barbara Curry, or even the various below-par performances. There’s nothing here to recommend the movie to an audience, and very, very little that warrants the kind of attention lavished on it by the producers (who include Lopez herself), so amateurish in execution is the final product. This isn’t even a movie-by-the-numbers; instead it’s just an absurd, lazy, painfully bad B-movie given spurious credibility by the involvement of Lopez, and the inclusion of a sex scene that is about as erotic as peeling potatoes.

Why this movie was made will remain a mystery that not even Scooby-Doo could solve, but given the talent involved, it should have had at least a thin veneer of respectability to help make it more palatable, but it’s clear that no one thought that this was relevant or necessary. Lopez looks embarrassed throughout, Guzman is there to get his shirt off as often as possible, while everyone else waits for their scenes to be over so they can go and do something more challenging (it’s a career low point for everyone concerned). If any proper evidence was needed as to the movie’s ridiculous attempts at drama, it would be the aftermath of a scene where Noah beats up a bully, and fractures his skull in the process: the police are never involved, and he further threatens the school’s vice principal without any reprisals there either. Like Noah, the movie is mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

Rating: 2/10 – so bad it’s truly difficult to watch without wondering if something this terrible shouldn’t have a laughter track, The Boy Next Door might be aspiring to trash movie status, but it’s hard to tell thanks to how terrible it is; a daunting prospect even at ninety-one minutes, only Randy Edelman and Nathan Barr’s cliché-lite score makes any real impression, but even then you’ll have forgotten it within a couple of hours.

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Careful What You Wish For (2015)

24 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Affair, Dermot Mulroney, Drama, Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum, Isabel Lucas, Lake Lure, Murder, Nick Jonas, Paul Sorvino, Review, Thriller

Careful What You Wish For

D: Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum / 91m

Cast: Nick Jonas, Isabel Lucas, Paul Sorvino, Dermot Mulroney, Graham Rogers, Kandyse McClure, Leon Pridgen, Kiki Harris, David Sherrill, Kevin L. Johnson

Doug Martin (Jonas), along with his mother and father (Harris, Sherrill), live in the small town of Lake Lure. During the summer, Doug works at a local bar with his best friend, Carson (Rogers). Carson’s aim is to find Doug a girl (or girls) he can make out with, but Doug hasn’t had much success with girls in the past, plus he also finds Carson’s approach too desperate, not to mention off-putting. Focusing on his work, Doug’s rather staid life is thrown for a loop when new neighbours move on next door. Elliott Harper (Mulroney) is a self-made millionaire with a trophy wife, Lena (Lucas). Doug is instantly attracted to Lena but keeps his distance, watching her when he can. Lena notices him but appears unperturbed by his behaviour.

One day, Doug is in his room when he hears a cry from the road outside. He rushes out and finds Lena standing beside her car, scared of something inside. It turns out to be a spider; Doug gets rid of it and Lena thanks him. Later that night, he finds Lena waiting outside his home, sheltering from the rain having locked herself out. She persuades him to help her get back in by breaking a basement window. In the Harpers’ kitchen, Lena seduces Doug and they have sex several times during the night. The next morning, Lena tells Doug that he can’t tell anyone about what they’ve done in case Elliott finds out.

At the same time that he and Lena take every opportunity to be together, Elliott employs Doug to help him renovate a sail boat he’s recently purchased. One day, the three of them go out on the boat and Doug sees bruising on Lena’s face. A succession of minor injuries culminates in Lena calling Doug from the hospital to come get her. Now completely afraid, Lena gives Doug an untraceable mobile phone so they can be in contact with each other. A little while later, Lena texts Doug saying she’s done something terrible. When he goes with her to her home, he finds she’s killed Elliott by smashing his head in with a fire extinguisher.

Convincing Doug that the police won’t believe it was a case of her defending herself, Lena lets him come up with the solution: to take Elliott’s body out on his boat, make it look like the head trauma happened there, and then set fire to the boat. But when Elliott’s remains are discovered, and it becomes clear that Lena stands to inherit ten million dollars from her husband’s death, the arrival of an insurance investigator, Angie Alvarez (McClure), begins to make life very uncomfortable for both of them.

Nick Jonas in Careful What You Wish For

If you’ve read the above synopsis, then by now you’re probably thinking something along the lines of “The wife’s up to no good” or “”It’s all a big frame up”, or even “Jesus, are they still making these kind of movies?” The correct response to all three suppositions is “Yes”, but the most important thought you could possibly have about Careful What You Wish For is: “Why am I watching this in the first place?”

Sadly for the efforts of all involved, the choice of title and tagline lend themselves far too easily to rejoinders such as “Careful what you wish for – you might get it”, or “His second mistake was reading the script”, or some such variation. It’s not that the movie is bad – which it is – it’s that this is a movie that doesn’t have one original idea to offer, and throws in one of the most badly handled “twists” in recent memory, all in service to a plot that was probably old before the movies were invented, and which has been done to death ever since. The question then becomes, not why is this movie so bad, but why was this movie made in the first place?

It’s hard to believe that the makers of Careful What You Wish For thought that their movie could be successful given it’s a rehash of a story told so often before that as soon as Lena makes her first appearance – the now hackneyed shot of a tanned, sandalled foot as its owner gets out of an expensive car – the rest of the movie falls into place, ticking all the required boxes and ending up like the cinematic version of predictive text. What doesn’t help is that everything is so deliberately signposted, it wouldn’t be too unfair to say that a blind person could see what was going to happen.

So with a screenplay by Chris Frisina that doesn’t allow the viewer to be anywhere near one step ahead, it’s left to Rosenbaum’s patchy direction (one minute she’s interested in what’s going on, the next she’s busy draining the tension out of the whole movie), and the performances of Jonas and Lucas to rescue things. But neither of them are up to the task. Jonas (yes, he is one third of the Jonas Brothers) is clearly trying to step up from being a teen heartthrob and gain some credibility as a serious actor. However, he’s got some way to go, particularly in scenes that require some degree of confrontation where he just looks uncomfortable (and the movie takes every opportunity for him to be shirtless or flashing his behind). Worse though is Lucas, whose wooden performance is, in places, simply embarrassing.

With only some pretty visuals and the performance of Sorvino to recommend it, the movie is further encumbered with a score by Josh Debney and the Newton Brothers that’s allowed to overwhelm certain stretches of dialogue, and which isn’t even that rewarding to listen to. Rogier Stoffers’ photography is proficient but bland, and the pace is often too slow for the thriller elements to have the proper effect. All in all, this is the kind of movie that’s been done better elsewhere, but not quite as poorly as it’s been made here.

Rating: 3/10 – dreary and hopelessly obvious, Careful What You Wish For is a movie that doesn’t seem to want to impress anyone at all, and which remains unconvincing throughout; if an hour and a half of tedium is what you’re looking for, then step right up – but don’t say you weren’t warned.

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Panic (1970)

30 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Affair, Aldo Monti, Alma Delia Fuentes, Ana Martín, Anaesthetic, Anthology, Drama, Horror, Joaquín Cordero, José Gálvez, Julián Soler, Mexico, Review, Yellow fever

Panico

Original title: Pánico

D: Julián Soler / 85m

Cast: Ana Martín, Ofelia Guilmáin, Joaquín Cordero, José Gálvez, Susana Salvat, Alma Delia Fuentes, Aldo Monti, Carlos Ancira, Pilar Sen

In Panic, a young woman (Martín) flees from another woman (Guilmáin) who is dressed in pink and carrying a knife. At first, the young woman manages to avoid her by escaping into the woods, but the woman in pink pursues her. At one point the young woman thinks she’s evaded her but the woman in pink reappears. In between periods of running through the woods, the young woman has flashbacks to an earlier time when she was brutally attacked by five men. With three men trying to block her escape, the young woman is eventually caught up with by the woman in pink, and a struggle to the death ensues.

In Soledad, two men, Carlos (Cordero) and Abel (Gálvez) are in a village that has fallen victim to an outbreak of yellow fever. Having buried the last victim – who proves to be Abel’s wife (Salvat) – they get in their boat and head down river and away from the plague zone. When their boat capsizes and they find themselves stranded in the swamp, Carlos is unable to deal with the idea that they’ll most likely perish there. He begins to go mad, and in the process, reveals that he was having an affair with Abel’s wife. Distraught at what he’s done, and for betraying his friend’s trust, Carlos implores Abel to kill him. They fight, but in the struggle, Carlos stabs Abel, killing him instantly. Carlos buries his friend in a shallow grave, and as the loneliness and despair take over, he discovers that Abel isn’t as dead and buried as he should be… and that he wants revenge.

In Anguish, scientist and inventor Tiberius Hansen (Monti) has perfected a narcotic that can double as a powerful anaesthetic. Just a few drops will render a patient motionless and unable to feel pain for five hours, but they will be aware of everything that’s happening to them during that time. When an accident leads to his drinking some of his new discovery, Tiberius collapses. His wife, Melody (Fuentes) discovers him apparently dead in his laboratory; the doctor (Ancira) she calls examines Tiberius, and not finding a heartbeat or any other signs of life, pronounces him dead. With Tiberius having made it clear he didn’t want a wake, Melody and the doctor press ahead with the funeral, aiming to have Tiberius buried as soon as possible…

Panico - scene

The availability of Mexican horror anthologies is notoriously bad, with many gems of the genre proving as rare as the proverbial hen’s teeth, but Panic – available on DVD and via YouTube – has managed to buck the trend, and is well worth watching. Like many of its European counterparts, it’s a a mix of the weird, the unexpectedly poetic, and the bizarre.

This applies in the main to the first segment where the young woman is seen to have problems distinguishing fantasy from reality, both before and after she’s chased through the woods by the woman in pink and her murderous intentions. The young woman (who’s name we never learn) is seen cradling a doll before the woman in pink arrives on the scene, and the maternal way in which she’s so carefully holding the doll hints at the young woman’s “problems”. Several chase sequences later, the two women fight it out, and even though one emerges the winner, there’s a twist in the tale that is both unanticipated and satisfying. There’s a lot of cutting away to shots of the trees, a pool of brackish water that acts as a birthing metaphor, and a heavy reliance on Martín’s ability to look panicked like an animal caught in a car’s headlights. It’s a very straightforward segment, but powerfully shot, with no dialogue until the very end, and then in a scene reminiscent of the ending of Psycho (1960).

The longest of the three tales, and also the one most requiring its audience’s patience, Soledad is an entry that wouldn’t have gone amiss in a Tales from the Crypt-style portmanteau. With its two men trapped by circumstance, Abel’s frequent returns from the dead are handled superbly, but it’s the long, very slow build-up as they travel along the river that’s likely to sap the viewer’s will and have them reaching for the fast forward button. The tradition of very tight close ups is in operation here, with both men’s eyes so near to the camera you can almost count their eyelashes. These shots herald flashbacks to the two men kissing Abel’s wife, albeit with vastly differing results. Once they’re stranded, Cordero’s descent into madness is handled with the era’s usual dismissal of restraint, while Gálvez’ determined looks are put to good use – better use, perhaps – when he rises from the grave. Both men keep matters credible and there’s a fight (again in a pool of dirty water) that is a testament to Cordero’s commitment to the role as he’s dunked time and again. Here, Soler loses his grip on the pace from time to time, and Cordero’s performance borders on the annoying, but ultimately it’s worth it for Gálvez’ effortless turn as a man betrayed by his best friend.

In the last segment, Anguish, the protagonist’s desire to do good backfires on him with potentially life-threatening consequences as his family and his doctor do their best to speed up his funeral. This is the segment that finally introduces some consistent dark humour into proceedings, with its flashes of occasional wit and honesty. Hansen is a hoot as the man doomed to be buried alive unless either his wife can respond to his telepathic instructions, or the anaesthetic will wear off in time. Monti, reduced to providing a voice over for the most part, plays it straight, even when he’s railing against the unfairness of his situation. Fuentes matches him for sincerity, her pale features adequately representing the features of a woman who’s lost the love of her life (whatever the doctor intends). Mostly setbound, this segment is the most fully realised of the three, and remains the most entertaining, rounding off the movie in no small style, and with one last joke to tell.

Overall, Soler directs with a view to making the horror more subtle than usual, although the first tale is infused with weird imagery and close ups of a screaming Guilmáin. It’s a proto-slasher tale, and its rural, woodland setting is well shot and lit by DoP Gabriel Torres. The same can be said for the second tale, with its outdoor locations hinting at various menaces at every turn, and some impressive nightmare imagery. The last tale proceeds as expected, and Soler makes the most of scripter Ramón Obón’s layering of the humour, making Tiberius’s dilemma more amusing than horrific – not necessarily a good thing in a horror anthology – but the acting and the pace suit the story and that last joke should definitely raise a laugh.

Rating: 7/10 – with its over-extended middle segment, and low budget origins proving a handicap in certain scenes, Panic is still an enjoyable horror compilation; with a good sense of its limitations and strengths, the movie evokes ideas of loneliness, despair and resignation, adding some unexpected depth to each tale, and making them slightly above par for this sort of thing.

NOTE: There isn’t a trailer available for Panic.

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When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (2013)

01 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Actress, Affair, Bogdan Dumitrache, Bucharest, Corneliu Porumboiu, Diana Avramut, Director, Drama, Movie, Rehearsal, Relationships, Review, Romania, World Cinema Month

When Evening Falls

Original title: Când se lasă seara peste Bucureşti sau Metabolism

D: Corneliu Porumboiu / 85m

Cast: Diana Avramut, Bogdan Dumitrache, Mihaela Sirbu, Alexandru Papadopol

Paul (Dumitrache) is a writer/director making his latest movie. He hasn’t worked with his lead actress, Alina (Avramut) before, but he likes to challenge her over her interpretation and understanding of the script as well as her personal opinions on topics such as shooting on film as opposed to digitally. One day during the movie’s production, Paul fakes a stomach problem and lets his producer, Magda (Sirbu) know that he can’t work; instead he meets up with Alina. They rehearse a scene where Alina’s character gets out of the shower, and as she gets dressed, overhears a conversation involving the male lead character. She and Paul discuss the various reasons for her behaviour during the scene, and try and pin down the various actions that will be involved. Afterwards they have sex.

As the day progresses they have lunch at a Chinese restaurant, and much later, they run into Magda at a hotel where some of the cast are staying. Magda isn’t happy with the male lead’s behaviour from the night before, and she’s also unhappy with Paul because she doesn’t believe his assertion that he’s seen a doctor and had an endoscopy carried out. Afterwards, Paul and Alina continue to block out the shower/dressing scene, going over it time and again in their efforts to fine tune the motivation of Alina’s character. Later, they eat out at another restaurant, where they are joined briefly by Laurentiu (Papadopol), one of Paul’s fellow movie makers. He mentions that Alina has the look of Monica Vitti about her, but Alina doesn’t know who that is. Paul is surprised, and when they leave they talk about the differences between theatre – which is Alina’s professional background – and cinema.

The next morning they meet up before heading for the day’s shooting location. There, Paul gives Magda a copy of the endoscopy exam to watch with a doctor called to the set. Despite some irregularities, the doctor is satisfied, though Magda remains convinced Paul has falsified the recording, though she can’t figure out why. And in a conversation with a makeup lady, Alina reveals its her last day on the production.

When Evening Falls - scene

The so-called Romanian New Wave has been responsible for a number of stark, minimalist movies in the last ten years, most of them poignant, subtle explorations of the effects of Communist rule on the lives of everyday people. Some movies, such as The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu (2005) and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), have found an international audience and been critically applauded. And Porumboiu himself has been feted for his previous movies, including Police, Adjective (2009). Here, he adopts a rigid, formal approach to what is essentially a diffused romantic two-hander, as Paul attempts to both impress and manipulate Alina into giving the performance he’s looking for, and in the process, foster a relationship that, deep down, he knows will only be temporary.

Beneath his rigorous, intellectual demeanour however, Paul is a fraud: pompous, insecure, and insincere. He wants Alina to appear naked in his movie and uses the notion that she’ll be thankful fifty years on that she’ll have a permanent reminder of her youth and beauty. Alina turns the tables on him, though, and shoots down his argument by asking the simple question, what makes him think people will be watching his movies in fifty years’ time? It’s a lovely moment, Paul’s presumptuous ideas punctured without a trace of animosity, and showing just who has the upper hand in their relationship. As the movie progresses, and Paul’s continued attempts to gain some measure of control become less and less effective, Alina reveals more and more of the determination and poise that have been there all along, but which Paul has been too blinkered to notice. The moment when Alina reveals she’s never heard of Antonioni (let alone Monica Vitti) is a wonderful indication of how unconcerned she is by Paul’s cinematic posturing.

Both Avramut and Dumitrache excel in providing well-considered, measured performances, making even the blandest of Paul and Alina’s interactions more intriguing and suggestive than they appear on the surface. Avramut keeps Alina’s face in repose for most of the movie, deflecting Paul’s advances with cool detachment and engaging with him on her own terms. Dumitrache evinces disappointment and dismay, giving Paul the air of a man for whom this isn’t his first experience of being out-manoeuvred by his leading lady. Their relationship is one full of delicate cuts and thrusts, and Porumboiu directs their subtle feints and ripostes with a careful eye for the casual gains and losses inherent in such an unsatisfactory affair.

Unexpectedly absorbing as it is though, the movie does a visual aesthetic that could be off-putting to certain viewers. Porumboiu’s adoption of rigid camerawork and single shot set ups, while keeping things at a distance, actually works to force the audience to pay attention to what’s being said, and the way in which Paul and Alina move around each other, as if in a dance, reaps its own dividends. Particularly effective are the neutral backgrounds Porumboiu places his characters in front of, their non-committal colours and broad expanses reflecting the disinterest Alina and Paul really have in each other. It’s only when Paul and Magda run into each other in the hotel lobby that the environment changes, becoming more decorous and richly detailed. It’s a refreshing change for the viewer, but as Alina leaves them to it and Magda displays her anger, it becomes an indication that Paul’s personality needs an impersonal surrounding in order for him to feel comfortable, and to have a degree of control that reassures him (under Magda’s withering gaze Paul reacts like a chided schoolboy).

Rating: 8/10 – surprisingly emotional beneath its stringent visuals, Where the Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism is deceptively simple and subtly rewarding; less a meditation on the nature of movie making (though with nods in that direction), and more an examination of two people using each other out of convenience, Porumboiu’s movie is an unexpected pleasure.

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All Relative (2014)

29 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Affair, Comedy, Connie Nielsen, Drama, J.C. Khoury, Jonathan Sadowski, Marital problems, Relationships, Review, Romance, Sara Paxton, Weekend fling

All Relative

D: J.C. Khoury / 85m

Cast: Connie Nielsen, Jonathan Sadowski, Sara Paxton, David Aaron Baker, Al Thompson, Erin Wilhelmi, Liz Fye

Harry (Sadowski) is still getting over the break up with his fiancée – after a year has gone by. He’s continually encouraged to meet new women by his best friend, Jared (Thompson), but he’s afraid to take the plunge. One night, while out bowling with Jared, Harry meets Grace (Paxton); they hit it off but when he walks her home she reveals she’s seeing someone. They part as friends. Later that evening, Harry is in a hotel bar having a drink when he meets Maren (Nielsen). She’s in New York for the weekend and interested in “having fun”. They have sex in her room, but agree that it’s all purely physical. Over the course of the weekend, Harry tells Maren about Grace and she encourages him to call her. Harry and Grace meet up but she still treats him like a friend. When Harry is next with Maren, Grace texts him urgently and he goes to her, but not before Maren has made clear her disappointment with Harry’s reaction.

A month later, Harry and Grace are on their way to meet her parents. He’s nervous as Grace’s father, Phil (Baker), owns the architectural firm where he’s applied for a job. But his nervousness turns to outright dismay when Grace’s mother turns out to be Maren. With cracks in Maren and Phil’s marriage apparent from the beginning, and both Harry and Maren worried that one of them will tell Grace about their weekend together, the visit becomes bogged down by arguments and misunderstandings. When Harry is persuaded to stay over he finds himself giving marital advice to both Maren and Phil in which he preaches the values of listening and honesty – two things he’s not doing with Grace. When he finally decides to tell Grace about his time with her mother, Maren pre-empts him and sends Grace a text from his phone that ends their relationship but without mentioning their affair.

Unaware of what Maren has done, Harry is told by her as well that Grace no longer believes in his commitment to their relationship and she has ended it. Harry goes back to New York City, but doesn’t give up on Grace, or their relationship, and does his best to win her back.

All Relative - scene

There’s a point about two thirds into All Relative where Maren and Phil sit down and discuss their marriage and where it’s all gone wrong. It’s a long scene, well acted by Nielsen and Baker, but not as dramatic as it’s meant to be, and it’s a good example of the movie’s inability to make the serious parts of the script really dramatic, and to make the humorous parts really comedic. It’s an awkward mix, made more awkward by the movie’s frankly unbelievable sequence of events once Maren and Grace’s relationship is revealed. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but writer/director Khoury clearly hasn’t worked out how to make Harry’s predicament even remotely credible. And with a conclusion that feels more like a compromise than a realistic outcome, All Relative deprives the viewer of a fully rewarding experience.

Which is a shame as the movie could have been a lot sharper and a lot wittier. The initial scenes between Harry and Jared are handled with a pleasant whimsicality that bodes well for the rest of the movie, and Harry’s bashful approaches to Grace are cute without being overly cringeworthy. It’s all pointing to an enjoyable rom-com with an indie slant, and with the introduction of Maren, an indie rom-com with a slight hint of danger: will Harry have to choose between the two new women in his life?  Alas, any edge is pushed to the kerb as the movie enters farce territory with Maren’s reaction to Harry’s arrival. Nielsen’s performance teeters on the overblown at this point (and is a good indicator as to why this is her first “comedy”), but the script, on its way to being completely schizophrenic in tone, helps her out by reining in her outlandish attitude, but only by making her a relative figure of sympathy. As the movie progresses, Maren veers between being cunning and manipulative, and sensitive and thoughtful, but this inconsistency hurts both the character and the movie.

However, Maren’s uncertain personality is nothing compared to Harry’s unnecessary insistence on being truthful. Only in the movies would someone take another person at their word if they said, let’s be completely honest about everything. Harry’s need to reveal all about his fling with Maren often feels like the character can’t get by without the occasional bit of self-flagellation; here, his need provides the movie with what little real drama it can muster, but it feels forced purely by virtue of its repetition. It also leaves Harry sounding like an emotional misanthrope, as if by being completely honest he’ll be better than everyone around him (even if he doesn’t say this outright). Sadowski looks uncomfortable throughout, as if he’s realised that Harry is a bit of a dumbass and he’s decided to act accordingly (to be fair, the script does paint him that way).

With only Grace and Phil given anything remotely reminiscent of a believable personality or character, All Relative falls back too many contrivances and there-for-the-sake-of-it moments to make it all work. Khoury relies heavily on his cast to make the material more effective but alas they can’t, and while Paxton and Baker come out of things with their reputations intact, sadly, Nielsen and Sadowski give mannered, uneven performances that are often uncomfortable to watch. The movie is also quite bland in its look and feel and there’s no appreciable zing to proceedings, events and occurrences happening with what appears to be a frightening lack of consideration or interest on Khoury’s part (and that’s without taking the viewer into account).

Rating: 4/10 – let down by a script that can’t decide what kind of movie it wants to be, All Relative staggers along without making the audience care about its characters or what happens to them; too awkward to work effectively, the movie runs aground with indecent haste and never recovers its forward momentum.

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Better Living Through Chemistry (2014)

30 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Affair, Control freak, Cycling, David Posamentier, Drugs, Geoff Moore, Michelle Monaghan, Olivia Wilde, Pharmacist, Pharmacy, Prescriptions, Review, Sam Rockwell, Unhappy marriage

Better Living Through Chemistry

D: Geoff Moore, David Posamentier / 91m

Cast: Sam Rockwell, Olivia Wilde, Michelle Monaghan, Norbert Leo Butz, Ben Schwartz, Ken Howard, Harrison Holzer, Ray Liotta, Jane Fonda

Another slice of American small-town life, Better Living Through Chemistry introduces us to pharmacist Doug Varney (Rockwell).  Doug is married to Kara (Monaghan) and they have a twelve year old son, Ethan (Holzer).  Kara is too absorbed in her work as a fitness instructor to pay Doug much attention and they haven’t had sex for ages, while their son is getting into trouble at school.  At work, Doug has just taken over his father-in-law’s pharmacy business but is dismayed to find the sign isn’t changing from Bishop’s Pharmacy to Varney’s Pharmacy.  Browbeaten and ignored by the people closest to him, Doug continually finds it difficult to stand up for himself, or make any lasting changes in his life.  Seeing no way out of his predicament, he coasts along resignedly… until he meets Elizabeth (Wilde).

Elizabeth has recently moved to town with her husband, Jack (Liotta).  She takes a lot of pills and drinks a lot of alcohol and tells Doug about her troubled marriage.  They begin an affair, during which Doug takes one of Elizabeth’s pills, the first time he’s ever taken any drug, prescribed or otherwise.  Gaining a liking for how drugs can make him feel, Doug begins to make his own, mixing various pills in order to maintain and then boost the wellbeing he’s experiencing.  The drugs boost his confidence, and this in turn, helps him address matters at home.  He reconnects with Ethan, and devises a plan to beat Kara in the annual cycling race she has dominated for five of the last six years.  And as well as juggling work, his home life, and his affair with Elizabeth, Doug also has to deal with a routine investigation by DEA agent Carp (Butz), that might uncover his misuse of his stock.

Doug and Elizabeth’s affair becomes more serious and they plan to leave town together, but Elizabeth has signed a pre-nuptual agreement, and Doug will lose what little he has in a divorce.  They decide to bump off Jack by making a slight change to his prescription.  Elizabeth leaves town to establish an alibi, and Doug arranges for Jack’s medication to be delivered by assistant Noah (Schwartz).  But their plans go awry, and in a way neither of them could have foreseen…

Better Living Through Chemistry - scene

A bittersweet drama with comedic episodes woven into the movie’s fabric, Better Living Through Chemistry is an enjoyable though perilously lightweight movie that benefits tremendously from Rockwell’s confident central performance.  There’s little here that’s entirely new but co-writers/directors Moore and Posamentier have done a good job in bringing together and exploiting both the humorous and the dramatic elements.  The movie switches focus with ease from scene to scene, offering different moods at different times, but there’s nothing forced or contrived about the way events unfold, or how the characters react to or deal with them.

This is largely due to the script, which (as mentioned above) only occasionally strays towards depth, but does have a few things to say about love and marriage (even if we’ve heard and seen them many times before).  Where it does do well is in its ability to upset the audience’s expectations.  After the cycling race, Doug and Kara have sex, and it’s the most satisfying sex they’ve had in ages, but it doesn’t presage a sea change in their relationship.  Instead, it reinforces Doug’s decision to leave Kara for Elizabeth.  It’s this kind of twist in the tale that the movie does so well, and this and some other surprises stop it from being entirely predictable.

Unfortunately, the characters are mostly one-dimensional, especially as written, but thankfully the cast are more than up to the challenge of breathing life into them.  Rockwell excels as the mild-mannered pharmacist turned would-be killer for love (you’ll never look at him in the same way again after seeing him in a leotard), and carries the movie effortlessly, making Doug an everyman character we can all sympathise with and root for.  Wilde has the glamour role, and carries it off with ease, subverting expectations as to Elizabeth’s motivations at every turn.  Monaghan has the least developed role but still manages to make Kara a shade more interesting than if she was just a hard-nosed bitch, and in minor roles, Liotta (providing what amounts to a cameo) and Butz add flavour to the proceedings.  The oddest role goes to Jane Fonda who not only narrates the movie as if she’s been witness to everything that happens, but also appears briefly at the end, and is listed as herself in the end credits.

With its well-chosen cast and its carefree approach to recreational drug use, Better Living Through Chemistry is neither a cautionary tale nor an exposé of small town secrets.  At its heart it’s a look at one man’s road to emotional self-recovery, and on that level it works splendidly.  But without any appreciable depth to proceedings, the movie misses out on being as effective as it could have been.

Rating: 7/10 – a charming movie given life by its well-chosen cast (it’s hard now to envision first choice Jeremy Renner in the role of Doug), Better Living Through Chemistry often comes close to letting itself down but just manages to avoid doing so; an undemanding movie, but still a winning one for all that.

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