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Monthly Roundup – January 2018

31 Wednesday Jan 2018

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Awakening the Zodiac (2017) / D: Jonathan Wright / 100m

Cast: Shane West, Leslie Bibb, Matt Craven, Nicholas Campbell, Kenneth Welsh, Stephen McHattie

Rating: 4/10 – no one knew it at the time but the notorious (and uncaptured) Zodiac killer filmed the murders he committed, something cash-strapped couple Mick and Zoe Branson (West, Bibb) discover when they come into possession of one of the reels, and then find themselves and those around them targeted by the Zodiac killer himself; there’s the germ of a good idea lurking somewhere in Awakening the Zodiac, but thanks to a sloppy script, wayward direction, and an indifferent approach to the Zodiac killer himself (by the end he’s just a generic movie-made serial killer), this never gets out of first gear, and settles for trundling along and signposting each narrative development with all the skill and style of a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest.

Home Again (2017) / D: Hallie Meyers-Shyer / 97m

Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Michael Sheen, Candice Bergen, Pico Alexander, Jon Rudnitzky, Nat Wolff, Lake Bell

Rating: 7/10 – when middle-aged fledgling interior designer Alice (Witherspoon) splits from her unreliable husband (Sheen), the last thing she expects to do is allow three young men trying to break into the movie business to move into her guest house – and then become romantically involved with one of them (Alexander); it’s hard to criticise Home Again because despite it being almost drama-free and the very definition of innocuous, it also just wants to give audiences a good time, and on that very basic level it succeeds, but it’s still possibly the most lightweight romantic comedy of 2017.

Downsizing (2017) / D: Alexander Payne / 135m

Cast: Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Kristen Wiig, Rolf Lassgård, Udo Kier, Søren Pilmark, Jason Sudeikis

Rating: 5/10 – the answer to the world’s population crisis is revealed to be shrinking people to the point where they’re five inches tall, something that sad-sack occupational therapist Paul Safranek (Damon) agrees to with alacrity, but being small proves to be no different from being normal-sized, and soon Paul is having to re-think everything he’s ever thought or believed; a closer examination of Downsizing (under a microscope perhaps) reveals a movie that contains too many scenes that pass by without contributing anything to the overall storyline, and a satirical approach to the idea itself that lacks purpose, and sadly for Payne fans, his trademark wit, making it all a dreary, leaden experience that goes on for waaaaaay too long.

Family Fever (2014) / D: Nico Sommer / 71m

Original title: Familien fieber

Cast: Kathrin Waligura, Peter Trabner, Deborah Kaufmann, Jörg Witte, Jan Amazigh Sid, Anais Urban

Rating: 7/10 – when two sets of parents get together for the weekend at the request of their respective children (who are a couple), none of them are able to deal with the fallout that comes with the revelation of a secret that threatens the security of both marriages; a German comedy/drama that doesn’t always go where the viewer might expect it to, Family Fever revels in the awkwardness and frustration felt by its quartet of main characters, and though it sadly runs out of steam in the last fifteen minutes, by then it’s done more than enough to provide plenty of wicked laughs and affecting drama.

Coco (2017) / D: Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina / 105m

Cast: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach, Renee Victor, Jaime Camil, Alfonso Arau

Rating: 8/10 – Miguel (Gonzalez) is a young boy whose family has rejected any kind of music in order to focus on selling shoes, which leads him into all sorts of trouble in the Underworld on Mexico’s Day of the Dead, trouble that could also mean his never returning to the land of the living; right now you’re never quite sure how a Pixar movie is going to work out, but Coco is a treat, its mix of clever character design, beautifully rendered animation (naturally), heartfelt storylines, and memorable songs making it one to savour time and again… though, be warned, you will be in tears towards the end.

Darkest Hour (2017) / D: Joe Wright / 125m

Cast: Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, Stephen Dillane, Ben Mendelsohn, Ronald Pickup, Nicholas Jones, Samuel West

Rating: 8/10 – it’s 1940 and Great Britain is faced with a challenge: who is to lead them against the fast-approaching menace of the Nazis, and if it has to be Winston Churchill (Oldman), then what can be done to undermine him and his authority?; the answer is quite a bit – for the most part – but history is firm on Churchill’s success, and so Darkest Hour, while featuring a superb performance from Oldman, has no choice but to succumb to retelling events that have already been retold numerous times before, and in doing so doesn’t offer the viewer anything new except for a number of very good performances and assured, and surprisingly sinewy direction from Wright.

Message from the King (2016) / D: Fabrice du Welz / 102m

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Luke Evans, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, Natalie Martinez, Arthur Darbinyan, Lucan Melkonian, Diego Josef, Tom Felton, Chris Mulkey, Jake Weary

Rating: 5/10 – when his younger sister dies in suspicious circumstances in Los Angeles, South African cab driver Jacob King (Boseman) travels there to find out who caused her death and why – and exact revenge; a throwback to the kind of blaxploitation movies made in the Seventies, Message from the King at least refers to King as an angry brother in the traditional sense, but the movie’s plot is hollow, and the likes of Evans and Molina are wasted in roles that might have seemed fresh (again) in the Seventies, but here feel like caricatures for the movie to focus on in between bouts of King exacting his violent revenge.

The Commuter (2018) / D: Jaume Collet-Serra / 105m

Cast: Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Jonathan Banks, Sam Neill, Elizabeth McGovern, Killian Scott, Shazad Latif, Andy Nyman, Clara Lago, Roland Møller, Florence Pugh

Rating: 4/10 – ex-cop turned insurance salesman Michael MacCauley (Neeson) is approached by a mysterious woman (Farmiga) on his train home and tasked with finding a complete stranger who’s also on the train – what could possibly go wrong?; everything as it turns out, with The Commuter going off the rails soon after, and never getting back on track, something confirmed (if there was any doubt before then) when the script throws in an “I’m Spartacus/I’m Brian” moment (take your pick), as well as reminding everyone that Neeson really is too old for this kind of thing.

The Post (2017) / D: Steven Spielberg / 116m

Cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys, Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Jesse Plemons, David Cross, Zach Woods, Pat Healy

Rating: 9/10 – the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the level of deceit the US government had perpetrated on its citizens about its involvement in Vietnam, is explored through the days leading up to the Washington Times‘ courageous decision to publish despite the threat of imprisonment for treason that the White House was prepared to enforce; Streep is publisher Kay Graham, Hanks is legendary editor Ben Bradlee, and Spielberg is on excellent form, giving The Post a sense of immediacy and potency that other historical dramas can only dream of (and the relevance to today’s US political scene doesn’t even need to be made obvious).

The Open House (2018) / D: Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote / 94m

Cast: Dylan Minnette, Piercey Dalton, Patricia Bethune, Sharif Atkins, Aaron Abrams, Edward Olson, Katie Walder

Rating: 3/10 – a recent widow (Dalton) and her mopey son (Minnette) get away from their grief and their problems at a house that’s up for sale – and find strange things going on there right from the start; an awful thriller that just refuses to make any sense or make either of its two main characters sympathetic, The Open House does everything it can to make you look away… and not in a good way.

The Party (2017)

02 Saturday Dec 2017

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D: Sally Potter / 71m

Cast: Patricia Clarkson, Bruno Ganz, Cherry Jones, Emily Mortimer, Cillian Murphy, Kristin Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall

A small, intimate dinner party to celebrate becoming the Shadow Minister for Health – what could possibly go wrong? Well, when a movie begins with one of its characters answering the front door and aiming a gun at the new arrival, the answer must be: plenty. But we’re coming in at the end – naturally – and in order to understand just what has brought this threatening moment to pass, we must allow ourselves to be brought back in time, to an hour or so before, and into the company of Bill (Spall), an elderly man sitting in a chair drinking red wine and looking as if he’s only physically present, and not mentally or cognitively. His wife, Janet (Scott Thomas), is in the kitchen preparing food. Her mobile phone keeps ringing; people are calling to congratulate her on her promotion. Soon, Janet and Bill are joined by April (Clarkson), a long-time friend of theirs, and her current boyfriend, Gottfried (Ganz).

It’s not long before further guests arrive. Martha (Jones) has known Bill since their college days; her partner, Jinny (Mortimer), is expecting their first child. Later, Tom (Murphy), a banker, arrives without his wife, Marianne, who works in the same department as Janet and is one of her colleagues. While Martha and Jinny talk in the walled courtyard that passes for a garden, Tom behaves nervously from the moment he arrives. He rushes into the lavatory and snorts a couple of lines of cocaine and reveals he’s carrying a gun. Composing himself as best he can, he joins the others who are busy discussing everything but Janet’s promotion. April seeks to address this by raising a toast to Janet, but her ploy is over-shadowed by Jinny announcing that she is expecting triplets. But even that news is over-shadowed when Bill reveals that he is seriously ill and hasn’t long to live…

A biting, acerbic comedy of bad manners, the latest from Sally Potter – Orlando (1992), The Man Who Cried (2000) – is a bruising slugfest of a movie, with its characters giving and receiving no quarter in their efforts to maintain (or retain) a sense of their own importance. From the moment April and Gottfried arrive and she mentions that their relationship is over, the mood is gleaned and it’s just a matter of waiting for the inevitable verbal assaults to find their targets (April sets the ball rolling by telling Gottfried to shut up every time he says something). As the movie progresses and we discover the cracks that exist in the relationships of all the couples – even Tom and Marianne – we also see the desperation and the fear that has propelled them into causing these cracks. We learn that Janet is having an affair, and that Bill has no idea about it. But we sense an unhappiness in him that matches hers, what with her continual references to Bill having given up his career to support her own career in politics. The cost to Bill may be more than Janet is aware of: Bill doesn’t just look unwell, he looks positively beaten.

Potter, who wrote the screenplay as well, delves quickly and easily into the lives of everyone, and shows how the dynamics within each relationship shifts and changes with every personal and private confession and revelation that ensues. Janet is devastated by Bill’s news about his health and vows to quit her position within the Shadow Cabinet. Tom is aghast at the sympathy Bill is receiving (for reasons that come to light in time), while Gottfried slips free of April’s yoke and uses his knowledge as a spiritual healer to help Bill come to terms with his impending mortality. April remains stubbornly cynical of everyone else’s motives and opinions, while Martha and Jinny come to a crossroads in their own relationship. Accusations and recriminations fly thick and fast as secrets are revealed and self-preservation becomes the order of the day. By the end, and the opening of that front door, everyone’s lives – with the possible exception of Gottfried – will have been challenged, and changed as a result.

This being a Sally Potter movie, The Party is chock-full of endlessly quotable dialogue, from April’s withering retort, “Please tell me you’re not meditating, Gottfried. Pull yourself together”, to her observation of Martha: “You’re a first class lesbian and a second rate thinker. Must be all those women’s studies.” Clarkson is terrific as a self-confessed realist who can spot a weakness of character from a mile off, and she delivers April’s barbs with an unimpressed, deadpan attitude that is at once fearsome and hilarious. Scott Thomas is also terrific, never quite allowing the viewer to think that Janet’s always behaving like a dyed-in-the-wool politician, while Spall does a mean vacant stare that’s as unnerving as it is impressive (especially later in the movie). Rounding out the cast, Murphy does agitated with aplomb, Ganz is great as someone who thinks Western medicine is “voodoo”, and Jones and Mortimer spar over Martha and Jinny’s commitment issues in ways that add depth to both characters, and overcomes the impression that they have a peripheral involvement with the main storyline.

If all this sounds too heavy, or overly dramatic, rest assured The Party is bitingly funny, and is a black comedy par excellence. Tightly controlled by Potter working at the height of her writing and directing powers, this is short of running time but full of beautifully observed moments that are in service to a fairly straightforward (and predictable, if you look too closely) narrative. The decision to shoot in astonishingly crisp black and white gives the movie a sleek, distinguished feel that works surprisingly well for a movie that could have been adapted from a stage piece (kudos to DoP Aleksei Rodionov), and Potter is helped enormously by some stategic and humorously clever editing choices courtesy of Anders Refn and Emilie Orsini. There’s also a great soundtrack that includes an inspired (if a little predictable) use of Henry Purcell’s When I Am Laid in Earth (Dido’s Lament). All in all, this is a farce wrapped up in a tragedy wrapped up in a cautionary tale, and making the point that you never know what’s waiting for you right around the corner.

Rating: 8/10 – a stellar cast have a great deal of fun with one of Potter’s more approachable screenplays, and the result is a spirited, enjoyable movie that maintains a waspish vibe throughout and piles on the agony for its characters with glee; not to everyone’s tastes though, The Party may seem shallow and derivative at first, but once it gets going it has plenty of trenchant things to say about the nature of trust, and the need to be recognised for who you are in a relationship.

NOTE: The Party is the 15,000th movie that I’ve seen (so far), and it gives me great pleasure to be able to review it here on thedullwoodexperiment. I’ve been doing this for a little over four years now, and to reach such a landmark and to be able to celebrate it here, and with the wider world, is truly incredible. Here’s to reaching 20,000 sometime in 2030!

My Old Lady (2014)

27 Saturday Feb 2016

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My Old Lady

D: Israel Horovitz / 107m

Cast: Kevin Kline, Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas, Dominique Pinon, Stéphane Freiss, Noémie Lvovsky, Stéphane De Groodt, Sophie Touitou

When impoverished American Matthias Gold (Kline) inherits a Paris apartment from his late father, he has no idea that his plan to sell the apartment for several million euros will be stalled by the presence of Mathilde Girard (Smith), the woman who has lived there as a kind of sitting tenant ever since the death of her husband forty years before (she’s now ninety-two). As well, Matthias discovers that the terms of his father’s arrangement with Madame Girard means that he has to pay her a monthly stipend. In France, this arrangement is known as viager, and it also means that the apartment, which consists of three floors and a large garden, can’t be sold until Madame Girard’s death.

Luckily, Matthias has a back-up plan, in the form of François Roy (Freiss), a Paris businessman who is interested in buying the contract for the apartment, and despite Madame Girard’s presence in the property. This means little in real terms for Madame Girard, whose life will be unaffected if the contract is bought by someone else. However, it means a great deal to her daughter, Chloé (Thomas), who also lives in the apartment, and would be left homeless in the event of her mother’s death (what Matthias doesn’t know is that Roy’s plan is to demolish the apartment building and build a hotel in its place).

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Matthias and Chloé are at odds over the situation, and find themselves clashing. Curious about her, Matthias follows her one day and discovers that she is having an affair with a married man, Philippe (De Groodt). Having been “persuaded” by Madame Girard to pay rent while he stays there, Matthias uses this information to blackmail Chloé into letting him stay rent-free. In the meantime, he’s been selling off items of furniture to local antique dealers in order to have some money. While searching the apartment for more items to sell, he finds a number of photographs that point to a much closer relationship between his father and Madame Girard than he ever suspected. In turn, this leads to further revelations that neither he, Madame Girard, or Chloé were ever aware of, and which have a profound effect on them all.

From the poster above (and from the trailer below), you’d be forgiven for thinking that My Old Lady is likely to be a bit of a genial romp, a comedy with heart that features a sprightly Maggie Smith running rings round a clueless Kevin Kline as she outmanoeuvres him time and again as he tries to oust her from the apartment. And initially, that’s exactly the kind of movie it is (except that Smith isn’t as sprightly as you might expect). Kline does a good job of looking exasperated and confused, Smith is polite and excessively punctilious, and the scene is set for a (one-sided) battle of wills, with humour aplenty and generous dollops of heart-warming sentiment served up throughout the movie as Matthias and Madame Girard learn to respect and like each other.

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But writer/director Horovitz – adapting his stage play That Old Lady for the screen – has other ideas. It soon becomes apparent that Horovitz has a different tale to tell, one that includes humour as pathos only, and which at times, makes for a darker, more gruelling story than is first apparent. As Matthias begins to unravel the truths behind his parents’ marriage, and where Madame Girard and Chloé fit into it all, Horovitz takes the viewer on a journey into one man’s personal despair, and the way in which he finds redemption. There’s a long stretch where Matthias unburdens himself of a terrible event that happened when he was younger. It’s a scene that causes the viewer to hold their breath as Kline delivers a masterclass in dramatic acting, highlighting the depth of Matthias’s pain and the emotional devastation it’s caused him, and the effect it continues to have on him.

At first, this scene seems out of place, especially in terms of the movie’s tone, and subsequent scenes lack the power it contains (and some viewers may find the rest of the movie a bit of a letdown in terms of a lack of similar intensity), but it’s a cathartic moment, one that allows the viewer to understand both Matthias’s often crass, uncaring manner, and one that allows the viewer to connect with a character who seems motivated entirely by his own selfish needs. Chloé, who is present during the scene, has her own burdens, and this allows her to purge her resentments as well, as it becomes clear that she’s always known the truth about her mother and Matthias’ father. Both actors are superb, imbuing their characters with a common, tragic sadness that has hampered both their lives for so long, and to such terrible effect.

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Rather than being an out and out comedy, My Old Lady is a compelling drama that focuses on serious topics such as emotional dysfunction, parental neglect, suicide, social occlusion, and inappropriate self-respect, and deals with each one without a trace of flippancy. But it is funny in places, and there are some good visual gags thrown in at odd moments to leaven the drama, as well as some very good reparteé between Kline and Smith that shows neither of them has lost their sense of comic timing.

Clearly at ease with the material, Horovitz blends the comedy with the drama to refreshingly good effect, and takes the viewer on a journey that in meteorological terms, starts off bright and sunny, becomes increasingly cloudy, then very stormy before rays of sunshine start to break through the dark clouds and disperse them. As mentioned briefly before, the last twenty minutes cuts corners in its attempts to wind up the narrative, and some viewers may feel that scenes have been excised in an attempt to bring the movie down to its current running time. But this is a minor disappointment in comparison to what’s gone before, and Horovitz and his trio of outstanding lead performers should be congratulating themselves on a movie that doesn’t shy away from dealing with some very serious matters indeed.

Rating: 8/10 – an intelligent, unexpectedly gripping movie that may put off some viewers (though that would be the wrong reaction to it), My Old Lady is a must-see for fans of serious drama; Kline and Thomas are superb, and Horovitz uses the Paris settings to add a melancholy tone that aids the movie tremendously.