Monthly Roundup – October 2017

31 Tuesday Oct 2017

Tags

Action, Biopic, Chanel Cresswell, Comedy, Dean Devlin, Dean Israelite, Drama, Dutchboy, Edward H. Griffith, Fantasy, Gavin Boyter, Geostorm, Gerard Butler, International Space Station, Jack Lee, James Dunn, Jillian Bell, Jim Sturgess, Joan Collins, Joan Crawford, Josh Helman, Leslie Arliss, Louis J. Gasnier, Lucia Aniello, Michael Baumgarten, Miss Tulip Stays the Night, Murder, My Name Is Lenny, Mystery, No More Ladies, Power Rangers, Reviews, Robert Montgomery, Romance, Ron Scalpello, Rough Night, Scarlett Johansson, Sci-fi, Sparks and Embers, Sunset Murder Case, The Guest House, The Living Ghost, Turn the Key Softly, Weather satellites, William Beaudine, Yvonne Mitchell

Miss Tulip Stays the Night (1955) / D: Leslie Arliss / 68m

aka Dead by Morning

Cast: Diana Dors, Patrick Holt, Jack Hulbert, Cicely Courtneidge, A.E. Matthews, Joss Ambler

Rating: 6/10 – a crime writer (Holt) and his wife (Dors) discover that a weekend break in the country is no guarantee that murder won’t come calling to disturb them, and so it proves when the garrulous Miss Tulip (Courtneidge) is found dead in the cottage; an amiable if too leisurely paced murder mystery, Miss Tulip Stays the Night relies on hoodwinking the viewer from the start and keeping a vital piece of information all to itself until the end, but as a vehicle for Dors it isn’t quite as successful as may have been hoped originally, as the actress is too often sidelined in favour of having Holt attempting to solve the mystery before the police do.

Power Rangers (2017) / D: Dean Israelite / 124m

Cast: Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott, RJ Cyler, Ludi Lin, Becky G, Elizabeth Banks, Bryan Cranston, Bill Hader, David Denman

Rating: 4/10 – five teens discover the remains of a space ship buried in a hillside, and also find that they have been chosen to defend the Earth from an evil alien called Rita Repulsa (Banks), something that means wearing colourful outfits and playing with super powers; as if the likes of the Transformers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchises hadn’t already shown that there is a dwindling audience for this kind of thing, Power Rangers goes ahead and makes the same narrative mistakes as its confederates, and only makes a decent fist of things when it’s focusing on the inter-relationships of the teens, and not the frankly ridiculous storyline that needed four writers to work on it.

Sunset Murder Case (1938) / D: Louis J. Gasnier / 60m

aka High Explosive

Cast: Sally Rand, Esther Muir, Vince Barnett, Paul Sutton, Lona Andre, Mary Brodel, George Douglas, Reed Hadley, Kathryn Kane, Dennis Moore, Henry King

Rating: 4/10 – when her policeman father is murdered, a showgirl, Kathy O’Connor (Rand), decides to pose as a fan dancer at a nightclub in an effort to find out who killed him; Rand’s presence is the only interesting thing about this deadly dull drama that stops too often for musical interludes, and which seems to run longer than it actually does, making Sunset Murder Case a disappointing exercise that lacks for thrills and any kind of appeal that might make it look or sound better.

The Guest House (2012) / D: Michael Baumgarten / 82m

Cast: Ruth Reynolds, Madeline Merritt, Tom McCafferty, Jake Parker, Jennifer Barlow

Rating: 3/10 – wild child Rachel (Reynolds), stuck at home for the weekend after splitting up with her boyfriend, gets to know her father’s new employee, Amy (Merritt), when she comes to stay in the guest house…and not just as a friend; a low budget insult to any lesbians who happen to watch this farrago, The Guest House is ludicrous in the way it depicts lesbian lovemaking, and ludicrous in the way that writer/director Baumgarten could have ever thought that his script was even halfway adequate enough to make this worth watching – and that’s without the two terrible performances at the movie’s centre.

Sparks and Embers (2015) / D: Gavin Boyter / 88m

Cast: Kris Marshall, Annelise Hesme, Waleed Akhtar, Valda Aviks, Sean Baker, Len Trusty

Rating: 4/10 – five years after they met while stuck in a lift, Tom (Marshall) and Eloise (Hesme), meet up again just as she’s on the verge of leaving London to go off and marry another man, making this Tom’s last chance to win her back after their relationship has ended; a movie that wants so much to say something profound about love (but doesn’t know how to), Sparks and Embers wastes its two co-stars’ time, and the audience’s, on a story that lacks any kind of spark, and which sees the couple wandering along London’s South Bank, aimlessly back and forth, and oddly, at different times of the year, which is no mean feat when Tom has just forty-five minutes to persuade Eloise not to leave.

My Name Is Lenny (2017) / D: Ron Scalpello / 91m

Cast: Josh Helman, Michael Bisping, Chanel Cresswell, Charley Palmer Rothwell, Nick Moran, John Hurt, Rita Tushingham, Frankie Oatway, George Russo, Martin Askew, Jennifer Brooke

Rating: 4/10 – the story of British bare knuckle boxer Lenny McLean (Helman) as he tries to deal with the demons that still haunt him from his childhood, while also trying to keep his marriage from falling apart, and defeat main rival Roy Shaw (Bisping) – and all at the same time; a raucous, cheaply made biopic that has a good sense of the period it’s set in, My Name Is Lenny is undermined by Helman’s decision (supported no doubt by director Scalpello) to portray McLean as a constantly gurning nutjob with all the self-awareness of, well, someone who’s taken too many punches to the head, and a number of violent scenes that are there to make the movie more interesting (though only briefly) than it actually is.

The Living Ghost (1942) / D: William Beaudine / 61m

aka Lend Me Your Ear; A Walking Nightmare

Cast: James Dunn, Joan Woodbury, Paul McVey, Vera Gordon, Norman Willis, J. Farrell MacDonald, Minerva Urecal, George Eldredge, Jan Wiley, Edna Johnson

Rating: 5/10 – when a wealthy businessman disappears only to return in a semi-comatose state that no one can explain, ex-detective Nick Trayne (Dunn) is persuaded to investigate; eerie goings-on coupled with a lot of broad comedy makes The Living Ghost more entertaining than it has any right to be, particularly as the script flits from one ill-thought out idea to another, and the more than competent Dunn is left to carry the picture on his own, a situation that isn’t any good for him or the audience.

Turn the Key Softly (1953) / D: Jack Lee / 78m

Cast: Yvonne Mitchell, Terence Morgan, Joan Collins, Kathleen Harrison, Thora Hird, Dorothy Alison, Glyn Houston

Rating: 7/10 – three women – lovelorn Monica (Mitchell), selfish Stella (Collins), and good-natured Granny Quilliam (Harrison) – are released from prison on the same day, but though all three have plans to stay on the right side of the law, temptations put them all in jeopardy of landing right back where they started; a nimbly executed drama that poses some unexpected questions about the likelihood of prison being a place of reform, Turn the Key Softly benefits from the performances of Mitchell, Collins and Harrison, and by an assured use of London as a backdrop to the action.

No More Ladies (1935) / D: Edward H. Griffith / 80m

Cast: Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Charles Ruggles, Franchot Tone, Edna May Oliver, Gail Patrick, Reginald Denny, Vivienne Osborne, Joan Fontaine, Arthur Treacher

Rating: 5/10 – lovesick Marcia (Crawford) finally lands the man of her dreams, committed Lothario Sherry (Montgomery), only to find that being married hasn’t dampened his ardour for the company of other women; though the script is by Donald Ogden Stewart and Horace Jackson, neither man can make this turgid tale of jealousy and vengeful scheming as credible as it needs to be, and despite the best efforts of Crawford and Montgomery, it fails to impress, leaving only Ruggles and Oliver to elevate the material, and then merely by being present and on fine form.

Rough Night (2017) / D: Lucia Aniello / 101m

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Jillian Bell, Zoë Kravitz, Ilana Glazer, Kate McKinnon, Paul W. Downs, Ryan Cooper, Ty Burrell, Demi Moore

Rating: 6/10 – when five friends get together for a bachelorette party, they don’t plan on the male stripper they’ve hired ending up dead, or how difficult it will be to dispose of the body without anyone finding out; an uneasy mix of sweet-natured girl power and the kind of gross-out material that always makes for an equally uneasy combination, Rough Night features a great cast as the five friends (McKinnon is on good form as usual), but often leaves them stranded while the next set up is… set up, making this a comedy that relies on too much exposition to be truly effective, and which is only occasionally funny – though when it is, it is funny.

Geostorm (2017) / D: Dean Devlin / 109m

Cast: Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Andy Garcia, Ed Harris, Alexandra Maria Lara, Daniel Wu, Eugenio Derbez, Amr Waked, Adepero Oduye, Robert Sheehan, Talitha Eliana Bateman, Richard Schiff

Rating: 5/10 – when a satellite system (called Dutchboy) that controls the Earth’s weather starts to malfunction, causing all sorts of catastrophes, it’s up to warring brothers Jake (Butler) and Max Lawson (Sturgess) to save the day, and to uncover the person behind it all – which might just be the US President (Garcia); despite having a ton of sincerity poured all over it, Geostorm is still as silly and as earnestly po-faced as you’d expect, with Butler in full-on macho mode, Sturgess doing perpetual anguish, Cornish wondering if her career will survive this, and all in support of a number of disaster porn episodes that, frankly, have lost the ability to impress thanks to all the other disaster porn movies that have come before it (some of which writer/director Devlin will be all too familiar with).

Kidnapping Mr. Heineken (2015)

10 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

1982/3, Alfred Heineken, Amsterdam, Anthony Hopkins, Daniel Alfredson, Drama, Jim Sturgess, Kidnapping, Ransom, Review, Ryan Kwanten, Sam Worthington, Thriller, True story

aka Kidnapping Freddy Heineken

D: Daniel Alfredson / 95m

Cast: Jim Sturgess, Sam Worthington, Ryan Kwanten, Anthony Hopkins, Mark van Eeuwen, Thomas Cocquerel, Jemima West, David Dencik

In 1982, five friends working and living in Amsterdam – Cor Van Hout (Sturgess), Willem Holleeder (Worthington), Jan ‘Cat’ Boellard (Kwanten), Frans ‘Spikes’ Meijer (van Eeuwen), and Martin ‘Brakes’ Erkamps (Cocquerel) – are struggling to keep their construction business from going under. They don’t have any appreciable capital so the banks won’t lend them any money. But Cor has an idea (a New Year’s resolution in fact): to do something big, something that will see them all become immensely rich. That idea leads to a plan, and the plan is to kidnap the owner and founder of the Heineken brewery empire, Alfred ‘Freddy’ Heineken (Hopkins).

Needing to pull off this coup quite quickly, the five men begin to plan their abduction and how they will keep the ransom – $35m – and avoid being caught. They begin to watch Heineken to learn his routine, and to figure out the best time to grab him. They also realise that in order to look like professional kidnappers they’ll need to have some money behind them. So they rob a bank, and get away with enough cash to bankroll the abduction. At a shed owned by Jan, they construct soundproof cells where they can keep Heineken (and Ab Doderer (Dencik), his driver), and which are hidden behind false panelling.

The kidnapping is successful and the five men wait for the ransom note to be found by the police. They hole up at Jan’s shed, taking it in turns to check on Heineken and Doderer, and to wait for the ransom to be paid. But time passes, and after three weeks they’ve heard nothing. Willem is all for sending the police evidence that they will harm Heineken if the ransom isn’t paid, but when it comes to it he can’t do it. Another demand leads to the police and Heineken’s company agreeing to pay the ransom money, and the group successfully attain it. They stash most of it in buried tubes out in the forest, but in the days ahead they become more fearful and paranoid that the police will soon be snapping at their heels, and their long-term friendships begin to fray at the seams.

True stories – in the movies at least – usually come with the disclaimer that certain scenes, characters and/or dialogue have been fictionalised or conflated or created for dramatic purposes. This we know, and it’s always the problem with telling a true story: just how much of what you’re seeing is really true. The answer, of course, is absolutely none of it. It doesn’t matter if its’s based on a true story, or has the backing and involvement of the people it concerns or portrays, every single movie that’s based on a true story, or real events – what you’re watching is never going to be exactly what happened. And while we all know this deep down, still we take for granted that what we’re seeing actually happened, as if the writer(s), director(s) and cast have a special way of recreating past events exactly as they happened.

Sadly for Kidnapping Mr. Heineken, if that were the case, then it might help obscure or erase the movie’s most fundamental problem: it’s not in the least bit convincing or dramatic enough to work. A belated English language remake of The Heineken Kidnapping (2011), the movie is a tired, tangled piece that features five men who don’t seem to have anything in common except they take to kidnapping with apparent ease, especially when it comes to abandoning their consciences (not one of them offers any objections to the idea). And there’s an incredible naïvete about their decision that’s never properly addressed; none of them have a criminal background but they take to being criminals as if it were the most natural, and easiest, thing in the world.

With the movie establishing an awkward tone from the start, the middle section does little to rescue things, as Heineken gets the chance to be belligerent and caustic to his kidnappers on a regular basis, and they all sit around wondering why the ransom hasn’t been paid. Five more glum-looking faces you’re unlikely to see for quite some time, as the movie – scripted by William Brookfield from the book by Peter R. de Vries – fails to add any tension to proceedings, even when Willem wants to get violent. It gives rise to an odd feeling, that neither Brookfield nor Alfredson have made any connection to the story, and are telling it out of some sense of obligation.

The same can be said of the cast. Sturgess, usually a sharp-minded presence on screen, here seems held back by the vagaries of the script, in particular with regard to Cor’s relationship with his girlfriend Sonia (West), which appears to be of minor importance during the abduction but assumes a disproportionate relevance in the movie’s final third. Worthington continues to make audiences wonder why he gets so much work, giving a performance that’s so stiff you expect him to seize up at any moment. And Kwanten, thanks to one of the scruffiest wigs seen in ages, will have viewers trying to work out who he is (in real life) rather than how good his performance is. But spare a thought for Hopkins, playing yet another supporting performance and having to go from assured patriarch to rambling mental patient in the space of a competently edited chase sequence.

The story of Alfred Heineken’s kidnapping was a major news story at the time – in Holland at least – and is notable still today for the ransom being the largest ever paid for an individual, and for the fact that some of the money has never been recovered. The movie cites this at the end, along with the fates of the main characters (two of which may come as a very big surprise). But by then you’ll be less than interested, and just as relieved as Heineken probably was at being rescued from it all.

Rating: 4/10 – plodding, uninspired and plain dull for long stretches, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken is a movie that lacks commitment from its cast and crew, and ambles along with all the urgency of a downhill racer missing his skis; broadly factual (ironically, de Vries, who was an advisor on the movie, subsequently refused to watch the movie, citing numerous discrepancies between the movie and what really happened), this is a movie that gives new meaning to the words defiantly turgid.