Tag Archives: Mystery

Skybound (2017)

06 Monday Aug 2018

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D: Alex Tavakoli / 81m

Cast: Scarlett Byrne, Gavin Stenhouse, Rick Cosnett, Morten Suurballe, Tyler Fayose, Carla Carolina Pimentel, Jerry Coyle

For their first date together, Matt (Cosnett) decides to take Lisa (Byrne) on a cross-country flight from The Hamptons to Malibu in his parents’ private jet. Joining them are their friends, Odin (Fayose) and Roxy (Pimentel), and by a twist of fate, Matt’s brother, Kyle (Stenhouse), with whom Lisa had a brief relationship the year before. At first the flight is uneventful but as they approach Chicago air space, a sudden electrical failure affects some of their systems, including the warning signal that alerts other planes to their presence. When Matt tries to rectify things he discovers they have a stowaway, Erik Harris (Suurballe). When Erik tries to take over the jet, Kyle ends up being shot before the stowaway can be overpowered. Needing to land and seek help for Kyle, they aim for Chicago but soon find dozens of other planes waiting in the sky as well, and all with the same problem warning signal problem. They decide to travel on, and the further they fly, the more they come to realise that staying skybound is their best option, as whatever has happened below the clouds is likely to mean their deaths if they land…

The debut feature of writer/producer/director Tavakoli, Skybound is a low-budget disaster movie that often belies its constrained production values, scattershot dramatics, and unlikely characters. It’s also a disaster movie that plays as a mystery for much of its running time, as Tavakoli makes a stab at increasing the tension of the situation and whether or not Matt and everyone else will survive the journey. But though it’s often stodgy in its execution, with some really tortured dialogue to complement the wayward character motivations, Tavakoli also manages to keep it all chugging along with a rude energy that flags on occasion but which also ensures a surprising level of enjoyment. Make no mistake, Skybound is exactly the kind of movie for which leaving your brain at the door is a prerequisite, but somehow – and against all the odds – it’s never tiresome or overstays its welcome. What it is, is a movie that revels in its implausibility and never apologises for it. It also piles on a number of WtF? moments that should hurt it irreparably, but which just add to the enjoyment of it all. Tavakoli may not be the best movie maker in the world, but here he does more than enough to hold the viewer’s attention.

The mystery elements are played to the fore, with Suurballe’s villainous stowaway employed as a narrative red herring, but the character’s presence does add a further layer to the riddle of what’s happening on the ground, and as more and more information is gathered, Tavakoli does a good job of delaying the big bad reveal. When he does, it proves to be less far-fetched than expected, and more credible than some of the other hypotheses that his characters come up with, especially those who’ve seen 2012 (2009). It all culminates in a last ditch effort for survival that relies on a level of narrative absurdity that is so absurd that you can only go with it or give up. But again, in a weirdly effective way, Tavakoli knows what he’s doing, and though it all depends on one character’s unexpected mathematical smarts and the most ridiculous act of self-sacrifice seen in many a recent disaster movie, it’s still carried off with a flair and a level of self-aware chutzpah that you have to applaud its creator’s audacity. And with low-budget disaster movies, how often can you say that?

Rating: 5/10 – bad movies can sometimes be really bad and still be enjoyable, and despite its many drawbacks, Skybound is one of them; a flawed production to be sure, but if given the right amount of leeway, it’s a movie that brings its own unexpected rewards, and one that has no right to be as entertaining as it is.

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Monthly Roundup – July 2018

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

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Hereditary (2018) / D: Ari Aster / 127m

Cast: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd

Rating: 7/10 – following the death of her mother, miniaturist artist Annie (Collette) and her family begin to experience strange phenomena that hint at supernatural forces at work around them, and which appear to be malevolent in their intentions; this year’s critics’ favourite in the horror genre, Hereditary does boast a superb performance from Collette, and creates a fervid atmosphere in its first half that is genuinely unnerving, but this is a movie where the sum of its parts isn’t equal to a satisfying whole, and what should have been a tense, psychological thriller becomes a grandstanding Rosemary’s Baby for the new millennium, an outcome that robs it of much of its impact.

Mrs. Pym of Scotland Yard (1940) / D: Fred Ellis / 64m

Cast: Mary Clare, Edward Lexy, Nigel Patrick, Janet Johnson, Anthony Ireland, Irene Handl, Vernon Kelso

Rating: 7/10 – the predicted deaths of two members of a Psychic Society leads Scotland Yard to assign their lone female detective, Mrs. Pym (Clare), to the case in an effort to track down the victims’ killer; a boisterous little crime caper with a delightful performance by Clare (in her only starring role), Mrs. Pym of Scotland Yard retains a freshness nearly eighty years on that some movies can’t manage after eighty days, a feat that can be attributed to Ellis’s sprightly direction, a handful of engaging secondary performances, and a script – based on stories by Nigel Morland and adapted by Ellis and Peggy Barwell – that knows when to be amusing and when to be dramatic, and when to be delightfully daft (which, thankfully, is often).

Backlash (1956) / D: John Sturges / 84m

Cast: Richard Widmark, Donna Reed, William Campbell, John McIntire, Barton MacLane, Harry Morgan, Robert J. Wilke

Rating: 7/10 – while searching for his father’s killer, Jim Slater (Widmark) crosses paths with a woman (Reed) who may be connected to his father’s death, and who may be able to provide him with information that will lead him to the man responsible, an outcome that, when it happens, isn’t as straightforward as he’s been led to believe; a tough, muscular Western with psychological and film noir elements, Backlash is also a taut, uncompromising revenge tale that doesn’t pull its punches and which takes a sudden narrative turn halfway through that puts a whole different spin on Slater’s journey, something that Widmark handles with his usual aplomb, and Sturges – who would go on to helm Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) and The Magnificent Seven (1960) – handles the twists and turns with confidence and no small amount of directorial flair.

Skyscraper (2018) / D: Rawson Marshall Thurber / 102m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Neve Campbell, Chin Han, Roland Møller, Noah Taylor, Byron Mann, Pablo Schreiber, McKenna Roberts, Noah Cottrell, Hannah Quinlivan

Rating: 4/10 – the world’s tallest building, The Pearl, is ready to open but needs a final sign-off from security analyst Will Sawyer (Johnson), but when terrorists set the building on fire, Sawyer has a greater problem: that of rescuing his family who are trapped above the fire line; there was a time when a movie like Skyscraper would have been a must-see at the cinema, but this Die Hard meets The Towering Inferno mash-up (scripted by Thurber) is a soulless, empty spectacle that can’t even put Sawyer’s family in any appreciable peril, wastes its talented cast by having them play one-dimensional stereotypes, and which uses Sawyer’s disability as a narrative parlour trick whenever the plot needs it.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) / D: Ol Parker / 114m

Cast: Lily James, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgård, Colin Firth, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Dominic Cooper, Andy Garcia, Jeremy Irvine, Josh Dylan, Hugh Skinner, Jessica Keenan Wynn, Alexa Davies, Celia Imrie, Cher, Meryl Streep

Rating: 7/10 – with the reopening of her late mother’s hotel just days away, Sophie Sheridan (Seyfried) is worried that everything won’t go according to plan, while the story of how a young Donna Sheridan (James) came to own the hotel in the first place, plays out simultaneously; if you liked the first movie then you’ll definitely like Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, another love letter to the music of ABBA, and a movie that has no simpler ambition than to charm its audience at every turn and provide fans with as good a time as before, something it achieves thanks to generous dollops of good-natured humour, a talented cast giving their all, and an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach that works wonders on what is very familiar material indeed.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) / D: Christopher McQuarrie / 147m

Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Sean Harris, Vanessa Kirby, Angela Bassett, Alec Baldwin, Michelle Monaghan, Wes Bentley

Rating: 9/10 – a mission in Berlin to retrieve three plutonium cores leads Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF team into a high stakes race-against-time chase across the continents as they try to avert a terrorist attack orchestrated by the followers of arch-nemesis Solomon Lane (Harris); number six in the franchise, and Mission: Impossible – Fallout is the best entry yet, with hugely impressive action scenes, the strongest plot so far, and a surprisingly emotional core drawn from the interactions of the characters that puts this head and shoulders above every other action movie you’ll see this year – and who would have bet on that?

I Feel Pretty (2018) / D: Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein / 111m

Cast: Amy Schumer, Michelle Williams, Tom Hopper, Rory Scovel, Adrian Martinez, Emily Ratajkowski, Aidy Bryant, Busy Philipps, Lauren Hutton, Naomi Campbell

Rating: 5/10 – when an insecure woman, Renee Bennett (Schumer), who works at an international cosmetics company suffers a blow to the head, she wakes seeing herself as beautiful and capable of achieving anything – but in reality she looks exactly the same; what should be an immensely likeable shout out to the power of self-belief, I Feel Pretty is hampered by the bludgeoning approach of the script (by directors Kohn and Silverstein), and the incredible ease with which Renee powers her way up the corporate ladder, aspects that are at least more palatable than the way in which the men are treated as accessories, something that, if the roles were reversed, would likely cause an outcry.

The Vanishing of Sidney Hall (2017)

22 Sunday Jul 2018

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Original title: Sidney Hall

D: Shawn Christensen / 120m

Cast: Logan Lerman, Elle Fanning, Michelle Monaghan, Kyle Chandler, Blake Jenner, Nathan Lane, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Margaret Qualley, Janina Gavankar, Tim Blake Nelson, Darren Pettie

A publishing phenomenon, Sidney Hall (Lerman) writes a first novel called Suburban Tragedy that is nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; he’s only eighteen when he starts writing it. By the time he’s twenty-four, he’s written a follow-up, State of Execution; both novels sit atop the New York Times Best Seller list. But Sidney isn’t happy. His past, and in particular, the source of inspiration for Suburban Tragedy, haunts him. He has married his teenage sweetheart, Melody (Fanning), but is unable to resist the attentions of his publisher’s daughter, Alexandra (Qualley), leading to an affair. As time passes, Sidney becomes more and more reclusive, until he disappears altogether. Soon after, a spate of arson attacks in bookshops and libraries, where the only books burnt are Hall’s, attracts the attention of a police detective (Chandler). Tracing the arson attacks across the Midwest, the detective becomes convinced that the perpetrator is Hall himself. But why would he do such a thing, and why disappear in the first place? What could have made Sidney Hall throw away everything he’d achieved?

Non-linear stories such as The Vanishing of Sidney Hall have two benefits: they can tease out important plot points in a way that keeps the viewer intrigued and wanting to know more, and they can reshape a movie’s storyline to ensure a greater emotional or dramatic impact when the mystery (whatever it is) is finally revealed. Shawn Christensen’s second feature aims for both, and is moderately successful as a whole, but makes one fatal flaw that stops the movie from achieving the goals Christensen has set for it: it makes Hall himself too miserable – and unrelentingly so – for the viewer to feel much sympathy for him. While the roots of his melancholy lie in a terrible tragedy that he feels responsible for, it’s a long time before the movie reveals this. And by the time that it does, and those all important plot points have been left as clues for us to piece together, the movie has become lethargic and banal. A late-on reveal feels forced (and less than entirely credible), while key moments are replayed without ever adding any greater emotional or dramatic impact. At the same time, the movie’s structure is both its best and worst component.

Something of a labour of love for Christensen, the movie often wears its heart on its sleeve, and though Hall is the kind of tortured literary genius we’ve seen so many times before, the co-writer/director surrounds him with a number of supporting characters that often prove more interesting. Sidney’s mother (Monaghan) is the kind of toxic parent who blames their child for being born and ruining their life, while his English teacher (Abdul-Mateen II) is so desperate to ride Hall’s coat-tails to literary success that his neediness is embarrassing. These are stories that, on their own, could comprise a number of separate movies, but Christensen keeps them in Sidney’s orbit, satellites bouncing off his celebrity, and feeling hard done by because of it. In the end, Sidney’s determination to punish himself pushes everyone away from him (hence, in part, his disappearance), but the script always makes it feel deserved. As the complex literary genius, Lerman is a solid presence, better at playing him as a teenager than as an adult, while Fanning offers strong support as the love of his life. There are good performances throughout, and the movie is beautifully photographed by Daniel Katz, but in its themes and ambitions, it lacks the overall cogency needed to make it all gel.

Rating: 6/10 – a worthy attempt at portraying the devastating effects of one tragic event on a young man’s much deserved success, The Vanishing of Sidney Hall falls short thanks to its title character’s unnecessary (and hard to condone) self-flagellation; with its insistence on breaking the story down into bite-size chunks of culpable exposition, it’s also a movie that says a lot but forgets to add enough substance to back it all up.

Most Beautiful Island (2017)

19 Thursday Jul 2018

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D: Ana Asensio / 79m

Cast: Ana Asensio, Natasha Romanova, Caprice Benedetti, David Little, Nicholas Tucci, Larry Fessenden, Anna Myrha, Ami Sheth, Brian Kleinman

Luciana (Asensio) has come to New York following a personal tragedy that occurred in her home country of Spain. She’s an illegal immigrant, sharing an apartment she can’t afford because she can’t get a permanent job (she doesn’t have a social security number, or a work visa), and when she’s unwell, dependent on the ministrations of a doctor (Little) who’s willing to provide her with medicine. Luciana has a friend, Olga (Romanova), with whom she occasionally works on cash-in-hand jobs. When Olga tells her that there’s a party where the girls can earn a lot of money for one night’s work, and it’s not that kind of party, Luciana agrees to go in Olga’s place when she’s asked. At a Chinese restaurant she’s given a padlocked purse and told to go to another address. There she finds other women (like her they’re attired in high heels and little black dresses), and Olga. While she tries to discover just what kind of party she’s a part of, one by one the women are chosen and led into another room, a room that many of the other women are frightened of…

When writer/director/actress Ana Asensio moved to New York City in 2001, little did she realise that a party she would work at, one that was “dangerous and illegal”, would help form the basis of her debut feature, the taut, award-winning thriller Most Beautiful Island. It’s perhaps a good thing that she did attend that party, because out of it, Asensio has fashioned a compelling, darkly unsettling movie that begins somewhat predictably, with Luciana travelling to the offices of Dr Horowitz to cajole him into giving her the medicine she needs, and then to Luciana arriving home to find a final reminder about the rent she owes. So far, an unremarkable exploration of the likely experiences of an undocumented immigrant, and one that will have viewers most likely wondering what further obstacles she will have to overcome. But Asensio isn’t interested in pursuing this kind of immigrant story; we’ve seen these kinds of trials before, after all. Instead, she takes Luciana, and the viewer, on a different kind of journey, with a very different kind of trial at the end of it, one that is expertly constructed and which relies on very little exposition.

Asensio creates a heavy sense of increasing dread from the moment Luciana arrives at the Chinese restaurant and is told she can’t take her shoulder bag with her, one that contains her personal effects. The inference is clear: without it she becomes anonymous, and if anything were to happen to her, who would know? The padlocked purse provides a further sense of mystery (when the contents are finally revealed, the moment provides a frisson of sick surprise that’s hard to ignore), and the gradual revelation of the party’s raison d’être is paced with great skill by Asensio’s confidence behind the camera, and Carl Ambrose and Francisco Bello’s incisive editing skills. This is a movie that grows uneasier to watch as it goes on, and the use of Fessenden and Tucci as crypto-villains cleverly adds to the anxiety Asensio builds up, while Benedetti’s role as the party’s organiser – all surface glamour and reptilian emotions – is hard to tear yourself away from. Asensio herself is a winning presence, deftly portraying her character’s desperate need for money without resorting to melodrama or making Luciana’s predicament more than it is. She also makes a handful of telling comments about the plight of female illegal immigrants, but this is no feminist polemic. Instead it’s a quietly impressive thriller that lingers in the memory, and a remarkable debut from its creator.

Rating: 8/10 – with only a small handful of awkward moments that serve as a reminder that this is Asensio’s first feature, Most Beautiful Island is still an intense, powerful experience that makes the most of its low budget and constrained production values; Asensio is definitely a movie maker to watch out for, and on this evidence, her next feature can’t come soon enough.

Bees Make Honey (2017)

13 Friday Jul 2018

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D: Jack Eve / 85m

Cast: Alice Eve, Wilf Scolding, Joshua McGuire, Anatole Taubman, Trevor Eve, Hermione Corfield, Ivanno Jeremiah, Joséphine de La Baume

It’s Halloween 1934, and glamorous socialite Honey (Eve) is hosting her annual Halloween costume party. But this year’s event is tinged with bitterness and revenge, for on the same night the year before, Honey’s husband was killed, and the killer never caught. Tonight, Honey has invited everyone who was there the year before on the assumption that one of her guests was the murderer. Enlisting the help of newly appointed police Inspector Shoerope (Scolding), Honey is determined to uncover the killer’s identity, and see justice done. With the party well under way, Shoerope begins his investigation and soon finds that there a number of possible suspects, from local real estate broker Mr Conick (McGuire), to German businessman Herr Werner (Taubman), and even Shoerope’s own Commissioner (Eve). Matters are further complicated when it’s suggested by one of the guests that Honey isn’t being as honest with Shoerope as she seems, raising the possibility that his investigation is a means to a far different end than justice. But as the evening continues, various clues fall into place, and Shoerope discovers that there’s more to the murder of Honey’s husband than either of them could have imagined…

Something of a family affair – Alice and Jack Eve are siblings, while Trevor Eve is their father – Bees Make Honey is a period murder mystery comedy-drama that flirts with a lot of ideas as to how to present its story visually, and then decides to include them all. And so we have a movie that throws in all manner of cinematic trickery as if someone has opened a Pandora’s Box of visual effects (leaving Hope cowering at the bottom). When a movie is this visually erratic, it’s too often a sign that the material isn’t as lively as the makers have intended, and for long stretches, this is the case with Jack Eve’s honest yet overwrought pastiche of Thirties drawing room mysteries. A huge – and this is no understatement – part of the problem is the dialogue, which is meant to be clever and dazzlingly erudite, but which causes further problems for many of the cast, lumbered as they are with lines such as, “But one can never repeat the past with complete sincerity. There’s is always the possibility, if not inevitability, of a fleeting fancy throwing a spanner in the works.”

There’s also an anachronistic use of music, with the likes of The Libertines’ What a Waster, and The Clash’s Lover’s Rock littering the soundtrack as literal counterpoints to the action, but all these incidences do is to jar the viewer out of whatever temporary mood the material has just got them into. With such a lack of focus, it’s a shame also that any mystery is undermined by a massive visual clue given away when the murder is committed at the movie’s beginning. These and other directorial decisions made by Eve make the movie a stop-start affair that never really gels or fully entertains as the high-spirited romp it could (and should) have been, and viewers may find themselves hitting the fast-forward button more than they’d like. The cast are game, however, and muddle through in support of their director, though Trevor Eve is clearly having fun with a role he wouldn’t normally be asked to play. By the end, a kind of weary acceptance sets in, allied to the knowledge that the movie isn’t going to raise its game any higher. There’s a good idea in there somewhere, but this sort of murder mystery has been done too often before, and to much better effect.

Rating: 4/10 – when a movie tries to make an apple-bobbing competition one of its highlights, you know there’s a problem, and in this respect, it’s one of many that hamper Bees Make Honey from being a success;  one to approach with caution, it’s a movie that never settles on a through line, or maintains a consistent tone – unless not maintaining one was the original idea.

Monthly Roundup – June 2018

01 Sunday Jul 2018

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Borg McEnroe (2017) / D: Janus Metz / 107m

Cast: Sverrir Gudnason, Shia LaBeouf, Stellan Skarsgård, Tuva Novotny, Leo Borg, Marcus Mossberg, Jackson Gann, Scott Arthur

Rating: 7/10 – the rivalry between tennis players Björn Borg (Gudnason) and John McEnroe (LaBeouf) is explored during the run up to the 1980 Wimbledon Tennis Championships, and the tournament itself; with a script that delves into both players’ formative years (and if you think Borg is a terrific choice for the young Swede then it’s no surprise: Bjōrn is his dad), Borg McEnroe is an absorbing yet diffident look at what drove both men to be as good as they were, and features fine work from Gudnason and LaBeouf, though at times it’s all a little too dry and respectful.

The Ferryman (2018) / D: Elliott Maguire / 76m

Cast: Nicola Holt, Garth Maunders, Shobi Rae Mclean, Pamela Ashton, Philip Scott-Shurety

Rating: 4/10 – following a suicide attempt, a young woman, Mara (Holt), finds herself experiencing strange phenomena and being pursued by a mysterious hooded figure; an ultra-low budget British horror, The Ferryman is let down by terrible performances, cringeworthy dialogue, and a patently obvious storyline, and yet it’s saved from complete disaster by a strong visual style that’s supported by a disconcerting soundtrack, an approach that first-timer Maguire exploits as often as possible.

Red Sparrow (2018) / D: Francis Lawrence / 140m

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Charlotte Rampling, Mary-Louise Parker, Ciarán Hinds, Joely Richardson, Bill Camp, Jeremy Irons, Thekla Reuten, Douglas Hodge

Rating: 6/10 – Ex-ballerina Dominika Egorova (Lawrence) is recruited to a secret Russian organisation that trains her to use her body as a weapon, and which then uses her to expose a double agent working in the heart of the Soviet system; a movie made up of so many twists and turns it becomes tiring to keep track of them all, Red Sparrow is an unlikely project to be released in the current gender/political climate, seeking as it does to objectify and fetishise its star as often as possible, but it tells a decent enough story while not exactly providing viewers with anything new or memorable.

Spinning Man (2018) / D: Simon Kaijser / 100m

Cast: Guy Pearce, Pierce Brosnan, Minnie Driver, Alexandra Shipp, Odeya Rush, Jamie Kennedy, Clark Gregg

Rating: 4/10 – when a teenage student (Rush) goes missing, suspicion falls on the professor (Pearce) who may or may not have been having a relationship with her; with arguably the most annoying character of 2018 propping up the narrative (Pearce’s commitment to the role doesn’t help), Spinning Man is a dreary mystery thriller that has its chief suspect behave as guiltily as possible and as often as he can, while putting him in as many unlikely situations as the script can come up with, all of which makes for a dismally executed movie that can’t even rustle up a decent denouement.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) / D: J.A. Bayona / 128m

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, James Cromwell, Toby Jones, Ted Levine, Jeff Goldblum, BD Wong, Geraldine Chaplin, Isabella Sermon

Rating: 7/10 – with the volcano on Isla Nublar about to erupt, a rescue mission is launched to save as many of the dinosaurs as possible, but it’s a rescue mission with an ulterior motive; clearly the movie designed to move the series forward – just how many times can Jurassic Park be reworked before everyone gets fed up with it all? – Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom concentrates on the horror elements that have always been a part of the franchise’s raison d’être, and does so in a way that broadens the scope of the series, and allows Bayona to provide an inventive twist on the old dark house scenario.

Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. (1946) / D: Spencer Williams / 61m

Cast: Francine Everett, Don Wilson, Katherine Moore, Alfred Hawkins, David Boykin, L.E. Lewis, Inez Newell, Piano Frank, John King

Rating: 7/10 – making an appearance at a club on a Caribbean island resort, dancer Gertie La Rue’s free-spirited behaviour causes all sorts of problems, for her and for the men she meets; an all-black production that takes W. Somerset Maugham’s tale Miss Thompson and puts its own passionate spin on it, Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. overcomes its limited production values thanks to its faux-theatrical mise-en-scene, Williams’ confidence as a director, a vivid performance from Everett that emphasises Gertie’s irresponsible nature, and by virtue of the relaxed attitude it takes to the themes of race and sexuality.

Wagon Wheels (1934) / D: Charles Barton / 59m

Cast: Randolph Scott, Gail Patrick, Billy Lee, Monte Blue, Raymond Hatton, Jan Duggan, Leila Bennett, Olin Howland

Rating: 5/10 – a wagon train heading for Oregon encounters trials and hardships along the way, including Indian attacks that are being organised by someone who’s a part of the group; a middling Western that finds too much room for songs round the campfire, Wagon Wheels takes a while to get going, but once it does, it has pace and a certain amount of B-movie charm thanks to Scott’s square-jawed performance, and Barton’s experienced direction, benefits that help offset the clunky storyline and one-note characters.

Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018) / D: Sam Liu / 77m

Cast: Bruce Greenwood, Jennifer Carpenter, Scott Patterson, Kari Wuhrer, Anthony Head, Yuri Lowenthal, William Salyers, Grey Griffin

Rating: 6/10 – in an alternate, Victorian-era Gotham City, the Batman (Greenwood) has only recently begun his efforts at stopping crime, efforts that see him cross paths with the notorious Jack the Ripper; though kudos is due to Warner Bros. for trying something different, Batman: Gotham by Gaslight doesn’t always feel as if it’s been thoroughly thought out, with too much time given over to the mystery of Jack’s real identity, and a sub-plot involving Selena Kyle (Carpenter) that seems designed to pad out a storyline that doesn’t have enough substance for a full-length feature.

Batman vs. Two-Face (2017) / D: Rick Morales / 72m

Cast: Adam West, Burt Ward, William Shatner, Julie Newmar, Steven Weber, Jim Ward, Lee Meriwether

Rating: 6/10 – when a laboratory accident turns Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent (Shatner) into arch-villain Two-Face, Batman (West) and Robin (Ward) soon end his criminal activities, only to find themselves battling all their old adversaries – but who is manipulating them?; what probably seemed like a good idea at the time – have West and Ward (and Newmar) reprise their television roles – Batman vs. Two-Face is let down by a tired script that does its best to revisit past TV glories but without replicating the sheer ebullience the 60’s series enjoyed, making this very much a missed opportunity.

Stratton (2017) / D: Simon West / 94m

Cast: Dominic Cooper, Austin Stowell, Gemma Chan, Connie Nielsen, Thomas Kretschmann, Tom Felton, Derek Jacobi, Igal Naor

Rating: 4/10 – a Special Boat Service commando, John Stratton (Cooper), teams up with an American military operative (Stowell) to track down an international terrorist cell that is targeting a major Western target – but which one?; the kind of action movie that wants to be packed with impressive action sequences, and thrilling moments, Stratton is let down by a tepid script, restrictive production values, poor performances, and despite West’s best efforts, action scenes that only inspire yawns, not appreciation.

SnakeHead Swamp (2014) / D: Don E. FauntLeRoy / 86m

Cast: Ayla Kell, Dave Davis, Terri Garber, Antonio Fargas

Rating: 3/10 – a truck full of genetically mutated snakehead fish crashes, releasing its cargo into the Louisiana swamp land, where they soon start making their way to the top of the food chain; another lousy SyFy movie that mixes mutant creatures, endangered teens, a muddled voodoo subplot, and sub-par special effects to less than astounding results, SnakeHead Swamp might best be described as a “no-brainer”, in that it doesn’t try very hard, FauntLeRoy’s direction is rarely noticeable, and the cast – even Fargas – don’t come anywhere near making their characters credible or realistic, all of which is down to a script that should have been rejected at the title stage.

Lavender (2016)

28 Thursday Jun 2018

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aka Trauma

D: Ed Gass-Donnelly / 92m

Cast: Abbie Cornish, Diego Klattenhoff, Lola Flanery, Dermot Mulroney, Justin Long, Sarah Abbott, Liisa Repo-Martell, Peyton Kennedy

1985 – Jane Ryer (Kennedy) is the sole survivor when her family is murdered in their remote farmhouse; she’s found covered in blood and holding a cutthroat razor. Twenty-five years later, Jane (Cornish) is married to Alan (Klattenhoff), and has a young daughter, Alice (Flanery). She runs a photographer’s studio that showcases the pictures she takes of often abandoned rural properties, and is plagued by lapses in her memory. A stay in hospital following a car accident reveals Jane has several skull fractures from when she was a child, but she has no memory of being injured. She also comes to learn that one of the farmhouses she has photographed is one that she owns, even though she has no memory of it, or an uncle, Patrick (Mulroney), who has been paying the taxes on it and maintaining it. Drawn to discovering what happened when she was a child, Jane, Alan and Alice decide to meet Patrick and stay at the farmhouse. Soon, Jane discovers that the house is the source of a series of supernatural occurrences that relate to the murder of her family all those years before…

From the outset, with Patrick being informed of the deaths of his sister’s family and the horrific aftermath being presented in a series of tableaux, it seems as if Lavender isn’t interested in offering viewers another generic rural ghost story. But that opening sequence, culminating in the discovery of a clearly traumatised Jane, unfortunately marks the beginning of the end in terms of originality. Jane’s plight, going from being forgetful to being plagued by supernatural events and visions, is played out in too flat a manner for it to be entirely effective. While the script – by director Gass-Donnelly and Colin Frizzell – takes its time in revealing the details of just what happened in 1985, it does so in a measured, unhurried way that robs the movie of any appreciable pace or momentum. This doesn’t even allow for a slowburn approach to the material, and instead, has the opposite effect, making the viewer wish some scenes would hurry up, while wishing others wouldn’t repeat motifs and experiences that Jane – and we – have already witnessed over and over. As a result, the central mystery is treated with sincerity but lacks verve, and the characters are forced to repeat conversations and actions that harm the movie’s narrative structure.

When presenting supernatural events on screen, many directors and screenwriters adopt a kind of “kitchen sink” approach, and throw in scares and jolts and all sorts of shenanigans because they might look good (or cool), and because even a cheap scare can be a winner. Lavender has a number of these moments, such as when adult Jane and her younger sister, Susie (Abbott), hide under a sheet in the stables. As something wicked comes nearer – cue heavy footfalls – Susie urges Jane to run, and when she does the sheet becomes more voluminous than it should be and when she finally escapes from it, she’s in the middle of a field. The juxtaposition between the expanse of the field after the confines of the sheet works well, but in terms of dramatic effect, it makes no sense (we already know Jane’s mental state isn’t the best). Gass-Donnelly works hard to give the movie a tense, unnerving atmosphere, and employs a grimly portentous score from Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld to help matters along, but the material is too thinly stretched in places, and too flatly handled, for their efforts to be successful. By the time things pick up for the climax, and some energy is injected into the proceedings, some viewers might have already taken their leave.

Rating: 5/10 – with the performances proving merely adequate (Cornish, though, makes a virtue of appearing blank-faced), and the script veering off at odd tangents at odd moments, Lavender is a lukewarm psychological horror that doesn’t follow through on its initial promise; tiresome in places, and with a central mystery that shouldn’t come as a surprise when it’s exposed, the movie struggles to be consistently interesting, and passes on several opportunities to better itself.

2036 Origin Unknown (2018)

27 Wednesday Jun 2018

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D: Hasraf Dulull / 94m

Cast: Katee Sackhoff, Ray Fearon, Julie Cox, Steven Cree, David Tse

In 2030, the first manned space flight to Mars reaches the surface but is destroyed by an unknown force. Six years later, the company behind the flight, United Space Planetary Corporation, has scaled back the involvement of human personnel in its space flight programme, and has entrusted its missions to an artificial intelligence called ARTi (Cree); some employees have been retained as supervisors, though. One of them is Mackenzie ‘Mack’ Wilson (Sackhoff), and she and ARTi have been tasked with investigating the fate of the earlier mission. Mack has a personal connection: her father was the lead astronaut. Sending a reconnaissance probe to the Martian surface, Mack and ARTi are shocked to find a mysterious cube-like structure. News of this is fed back to Mack’s sister (and high-ranking USPC executive) Lena (Cox), but instead of seeing it as an incredible discovery, she downplays the news and behaves in a way that makes Mack worry about the true parameters of the investigation. And when two things happen – a link is discovered between the cube and ARTi’s design, and the cube disappears (only to reappear somewhere completely unexpected) – Mack becomes convinced that her search for the truth has been severely compromised…

The second feature from visual effects supervisor Hasraf Dulull, 2036 Origin Unknown wears its heart on its sleeve right from the opening frames. This is a cinematic love letter to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), with imagery cribbed from that movie’s Star Gate sequence, and an AI creation that may or may not be as infallible as it seems. Add in further imagery and ideas from 2010 (1984), and you have a de facto homage to the finest science fiction movie ever made (and its laboured sequel). Now this would probably have been a good thing if Dulull – who also wrote the script – had been able to concoct a coherent and/or credible story in the first place. Instead, he’s created something of a sci-fi monster in celluloid form, with an awkward, poorly assembled storyline, some of the most confusing and confused exposition heard in a sci-fi movie for some time, and pretty visuals that barely compensate for the dramatic liberties taken elsewhere. Dulull may have had good intentions when he began writing his screenplay, but somewhere along the line no one pointed out that the awful dialogue, the one-note characters, and the unconvincing scenario, didn’t add up to anything meaningful.

Take one example of how confused Dulull’s plotting becomes as the movie plods on from one “revelation” to another: the connection between ARTi and the cube is given centre stage at one point, but why or how that connection has been made remains unexplained, even after there’s a scene that explores the idea (but in as little detail as possible). Other unexplained anomalies abound – the importance of magnetism in relation to the cube, the involvement of government spook Sterling (Fearon), and why Mack has to bear so much responsibility for the death of her father. These and other issues arise too often for comfort, making the movie an uncomfortable watch for anyone used to seeing intelligent sci-fi, and not this amalgamation of other directors’ greatest hits. Despite this, the ever-watchable Sackhoff maintains her ability to make even the worst of material sound better than it has any right to be, and there’s good support from Cree as the slightly supercilious ARTi. The visuals are clearly designed to be the movie’s standout feature, and Dulull’s background in visual effects ensures their effectiveness, but it’s a shame that more attention couldn’t have been given to the hazy material.

Rating: 4/10 – a frustrating foray into the arena of mystery sci-fi, 2036 Origin Unknown is a hodge-podge of half-formed ideas and possibilities that are hampered by a muddled, perplexing screenplay; and don’t believe the poster: the “origins of our existence” aren’t explored at all.

The Night of the Wild Boar (2016)

07 Thursday Jun 2018

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Original title: La noche del jabali

D: Ramiro Tenorio / 71m

Cast: Catalina Zahri, Fernando Kliche, Renzo Briceño, Gastón Salgado, Spyros Papadatos

A writer of romantic fiction, Claudia Moratti (Zahri), travels to the southern most area of South America, and the small town where her partner, the horror novelist Guillermo San Román (Papadatos), grew up. Guillermo’s novels were each inspired by a series of murders that took place in his home town, and specific details of the crimes were always included in his books. Claudia has come looking for answers to the question, did Guillermo commit the murders? The local police chief, Benno (Kliche), seems to think so, and is determined to find evidence that he did. Claudia begins her own investigation, looking through Guillermo’s novels and research materials, until she is faced with the serious possibility that he at least had a hand in the murders. The discovery of another body complicates matters as Guillermo has been dead for a year, having committed suicide. With suspicion falling on both Mario (Briceño), who looks after Guillermo’s home, and Sebastian (Salgado), who helps him, Claudia has to work out who is lying to her, and who is hiding a terrible secret. Things come to a head when she discovers materials in Sebastian’s home that point to him being the killer…

The debut feature of writer/director Ramiro Tenorio, The Night of the Wild Boar is that unfortunate beast, the poorly thought out thriller. It begins well, creating a vivid sense of mystery and a tainted atmosphere for its backdrop. Claudia’s arrival is met with the usual customary suspicion in these cases, with Mario offering her glowering looks, and Benno wasting no time in voicing his opinions about Guillermo’s likely guilt. It’s a strong set up, and even though there are few suspects, each – and including the police chief – appear to have their own fair share of secrets, and each of them could be the culprit. With Claudia feeling like she’s made a big mistake in going there, and her interactions with everyone adding further confusion to the notion of Guillermo’s possible guilt or innocence, Tenorio tightens the screws somewhat, making Claudia – and the audience – feel uncomfortable and more unsafe the more she finds out. But having done a fine job in setting up the central mystery, as well as introducing the suspects, Tenorio then goes ahead and spoils things by having Claudia find copies of Guillermo’s novels and his notes and his research – in his home.

At this stage – and bearing in mind these files have lain untouched for a year – Tenorio’s grip on the narrative begins to unravel, and further developments start to collapse in on one another as the script leads the way to the kind of overly melodramatic conclusion that tests the movie’s internal logic, and makes Claudia’s presence from the beginning entirely problematical. With a relatively short running time as well, the need to wrap things up neatly becomes paramount, but the answer to the mystery of the dead girls is awkward and unconvincing; it feels like a fait accompli. Visually, though, the movie is often lovely if a little gloomy to look at, and Nick Deeg’s cinematography highlights the rugged beauty of the area, while also providing the movie with a sense of unyielding claustrophobia that can feel unnerving. The performances are good, though hampered at times by the demands of the material, and Tenorio handles several tense scenes with aplomb, but remains unable to make up for the way in which the movie sheds any credibility it has built up in favour of a denouement that doesn’t make any sense when judged against what’s happened so far.

Rating: 5/10 – a movie with a lot of early promise that is abandoned thanks to an increasingly muddled script, and a couple of very bad directorial decisions, The Night of the Wild Boar could have been a solid, efficient little thriller; a decent premise finds itself wasted, while moments such as Claudia revealing a personal secret, or a cryptic conversation between Benno and Mario, only add to the confusion.

NOTE: The trailer below doesn’t have English subtitles, but it still provides a good sense of the movie’s atmospheric and slightly uncomfortable nature.

Monthly Roundup – May 2018

02 Saturday Jun 2018

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Enemies Closer (2013) / D: Peter Hyams / 85m

Cast: Tom Everett Scott, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Orlando Jones, Linzey Cocker, Christopher Robbie, Zachary Baharov, Dimo Alexiev, Kris Van Damme

Rating: 5/10 – when a plane carrying drugs crash lands in the waters off King’s Island it’s up to ranger (and ex-Navy Seal) Henry Taylor (Scott) to stop mercenary Xander (Van Damme) and his men from retrieving the cargo; a bone-headed action movie with a flamboyant performance from Van Damme, Enemies Closer is saved from complete disaster by Hyams’ confident direction and cinematography, a script that often seems aware of how silly it all is, and an earnest turn from Scott that eschews the usual macho heroics expected from something that, in essence, is Die Hard on a Small Island.

From Hell to the Wild West (2017) / D: Rene Perez / 77m

Cast: Robert Kovacs, Alanna Forte, Charlie Glackin, Karin Brauns, Robert Bronzi, Sammy Durrani

Rating: 3/10 – a masked serial killer sets up home in a ghost town in California, until a Marshall (Kovacs) and a bounty hunter (Bronzi) team up to end his reign of terror; a low budget horror with an interesting premise, From Hell to the Wild West is let down by poor production values, terrible acting, the kind of Easter eggs that stick out like a sore thumb (Bronzi was a stunt double for Charles Bronson, and his character name is Buchinski), a threadbare plot, and occasional stabs at direction by Perez – all of which make it yet another horror movie that’s a chore to sit through.

Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell (2018) / D: Don Michael Paul / 98m

Cast: Michael Gross, Jamie Kennedy, Tanya van Graan, Jamie-Lee Money, Kiroshan Naidoo, Keeno Lee Hector, Rob van Vuuren, Adrienne Pearce, Francesco Nassimbeni, Paul de Toit

Rating: 4/10 – Burt Gummer (Gross) and his son, Travis (Kennedy), are called in when Graboid activity is discovered in the Canadian tundra, and threatens a research facility; number six in the series, Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell marks a serious downturn in quality thanks to dreary plotting, cardboard characters, and absentee suspense, and supports the notion that the franchise should be put to bed (even though there’s a TV series on the horizon), something that not even the continued presence of Gross can mitigate against, or the producers.

The Debt Collector (2018) / D: Jesse V. Johnson / 96m

Cast: Scott Adkins, Louis Mandylor, Vladimir Kulich, Michael Paré, Tony Todd, Rachel Brann, Esteban Cueto, Jack Lowe

Rating: 5/10 – a financially strapped martial arts instructor, French (Adkins), takes on a job as a debt collector for a local gangster, and finds himself elbow deep in unexpected violence and the search for someone who may or may not have swindled one of the debtors on his list; though breezy and easy-going, and replete with fight scenes designed to show off Adkins prowess as an action hero, The Debt Collector gets bogged down by its neo-noir-style script, and a plethora of supporting characters that come and go without making an impact, or contributing much to the story.

Air Hawks (1935) / D: Albert S. Rogell / 68m

Cast: Ralph Bellamy, Tala Birell, Wiley Post, Douglass Dumbrille, Robert Allen, Billie Seward, Victor Kilian, Robert Middlemass, Geneva Mitchell, Wyrley Birch, Edward Van Sloan

Rating: 6/10 – a small-time independent airline finds itself being sabotaged by a rival airline in its attempts to win a transcontinental contract from the government; a mash-up of aviation drama and sci-fi elements (Van Sloan’s character operates a “death ray” from the back of a truck), Air Hawks is the kind of sincerely acted and directed nonsense that Hollywood churned out by the dozens during the Thirties, but it’s enjoyable nonetheless, with eager performances from Bellamy and Kilian, nightclub scenes that don’t feel out of place at all(!), and a knowing sense of how silly it all is.

Supercon (2018) / D: Zak Knutson / 100m

Cast: Russell Peters, Maggie Grace, Ryan Kwanten, Brooks Braselman, Clancy Brown, John Malkovich, Mike Epps, Caroline Fourmy

Rating: 3/10 – at a TV/artists/superhero convention, a group of friends decide to rob the promoter and at the same time, stick it to an overbearing TV icon (Brown) as payback for the way they’ve been treated; somewhere – though buried deep – inside the mess that is Supercon is a great idea for a movie set at a fantasy convention centre, but this dire, uninspired comedy isn’t it, lacking as it does real laughs, any conviction, and consistent direction, all things that seemed to have been “refused entry” at the earliest stages of production.

The 15:17 to Paris (2018) / D: Clint Eastwood / 94m

Cast: Spencer Stone, Alex Skarlatos, Anthony Sadler, Judy Greer, Jenna Fischer, Ray Corasani, P.J. Byrne, Thomas Lennon, William Jennings, Bryce Gheisar, Paul-Mikél Williams

Rating: 6/10 – the true story of how three friends, two of whom (Stone, Skarlatos) were American servicemen, tackled and overcame a gun-toting terrorist on a train bound for Paris from Amsterdam in August 2015; with the terrorist incident being dealt with in a matter of minutes, The 15:17 to Paris has to pad out its running time, and does so by showing how the three friends met and grew up, and their progress through Europe until that fateful train ride, a decision that works well in introducing the trio, but which makes this in some ways more of a rites of passage-cum-travelogue movie than the incisive thriller it wants to be.

The Mask of Medusa (2009) / D: Jean Rollin / 73m

Original title: Le masque de la Méduse

Cast: Simone Rollin, Bernard Charnacé, Sabine Lenoël, Thomas Smith, Marlène Delcambre

Rating: 5/10 – a retelling of the classical story of the Gorgon presented in two parts; Rollin’s final project, The Mask of Medusa is much more of an experimental movie than you’ll find amongst his usual work, but it has a starkly defined approach that allows the largely idiosyncratic dialogue room to work, and the austere nature of the visuals has an unnerving effect that works well at times with the narrative, but it’s also an experience that offers little in the way of intellectual or emotional reward for the viewer, which makes this something of a disappointment as Rollin’s last movie.

Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017) / D: Victor Salva / 101m

Cast: Stan Shaw, Gabrielle Haugh, Brandon Smith, Meg Foster, Jordan Salloum, Chester Rushing, Jason Bayle, Ryan Moore, Jonathan Breck

Rating: 3/10 – the Creeper targets anyone who comes near the truck he collects his victims in, as well as the members of a family he terrorised originally twenty-three years before; set between the first and second movies, Jeepers Creepers 3 suffers from tortuous sequelitis, with Salva stretching the franchise’s time frame out of whack, and failing to provide viewers with the scares and thrills seen in the original movie, something that, though predictable, doesn’t bode well for the already in gestation Part Four.

Navy Blue and Gold (1937) / D: Sam Wood / 94m

Cast: Robert Young, James Stewart, Florence Rice, Billie Burke, Lionel Barrymore, Tom Brown, Samuel S. Hinds, Paul Kelly, Barnett Parker, Frank Albertson

Rating: 7/10 – three new recruits to the United States Naval Academy (Young, Stewart, Brown) battle their own individual problems, as well as trying to make the grade; a patriotic flag waver of a movie, and cinematic recruitment drive for the US Navy, Navy Blue and Gold features likeable performances from all three “cadets”, the usual soap opera elements to help keep the plot ticking over, and Barrymore doing yet another variation on his crusty old man persona, all of which, along with Wood’s erstwhile direction, ensure the movie is pleasant if undemanding.

Bedelia (1946) / D: Lance Comfort / 90m

Cast: Margaret Lockwood, Ian Hunter, Barry K. Barnes, Anne Crawford, Beatrice Varley, Louise Hampton, Jill Esmond

Rating: 7/10 – a woman (Lockwood), married for the second time, comes under the suspicion of an artist (Barnes) who believes her husband (Hunter) is likely to end up dead – just as her first husband did; a clever piece of melodrama from the novel by Vera Caspary, Bedelia doesn’t quite ratchet up the suspense as it goes along, but it does offer a fine performance from Lockwood as a femme with the emphasis on fatale, and occasional psychological details that help keep Bedelia herself from appearing evil for evil’s sake.

Peter Rabbit (2018) / D: Will Gluck / 95m

Cast: James Corden, Rose Byrne, Domhnall Gleeson, Margot Robbie, Sam Neill, Elizabeth Debicki, Daisy Ridley, Sia, Colin Moody

Rating: 7/10 – when the farmer (Neill) who continually tries to stop Peter Rabbit (Corden) and his friends stealing from his vegetable garden drops dead, so begins a war of attrition with his grandnephew (Gleeson); as a modern updating of Beatrix Potter’s beloved characters, purists might want to stay away from Peter Rabbit, but this is a colourful, immensely charming (if occasionally cynical) tale that is both funny and sweet, and which falls just the right side of being overwhelmingly saccharine.

Insidious: The Last Key (2018) / D: Adam Robitel / 103m

Cast: Lin Shaye, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson, Kirk Acevedo, Caitlin Gerard, Spencer Locke, Josh Stewart, Tessa Ferrer, Bruce Davison, Javier Botet

Rating: 6/10 – Elise Rainier (Shaye) is forced to come face to face with a demon from her childhood, as it targets members of her brother’s family; another trip into the Further reveals signs of the franchise beginning to cannibalise itself in the search for newer, scarier installments, though at least Insidious: The Last Key has the ever reliable Shaye to add a layer of sincerity to the usual hokey paranormal goings on, and one or two scares that do actually hit the mark, but this should be more way more effective than it actually is.

Deadpool 2 (2018) / D: David Leitch / 119m

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz, T.J. Miller, Leslie Uggams, Karan Soni, Brianna Hildebrand, Stefan Kapicic, Eddie Marsan, Rob Delaney, Lewis Tan, Bill Skarsgård, Terry Crews

Rating: 8/10 – everyone’s favourite Merc with a Mouth is called upon to protect a teenage mutant (Dennison) with pyro abilities from a time-travelling half-man, half-cyborg called Cable (Brolin); any worries about Deadpool 2 not living up to the hype and being a letdown are dispensed with by more meta jokes than you can shake a pair of baby legs at, the same extreme levels of bloody violence as the first movie, and the opening title sequence, which gleefully advertises the fact that it’s directed by “one of the directors who killed the dog in John Wick”.

Vapors (1965) / D: Andy Milligan / 32m

Cast: Robert Dahdah, Gerard Jacuzzo, Hal Sherwood, Hal Borske, Richard Goldberger, Larry Ree

Rating: 7/10 – set in a bath house for homosexuals, first-timer Thomas (Jacuzzo) ends up sharing a room with married man, Mr Jaffee (Dahdah), who in between interruptions by some of the other patrons, tells him a disturbing personal story; an absorbing insight into both the freedom of expression afforded gay men by the confines of a bath house, as well as the personal stories that often have a tragic nature to them, Vapors is a redolent and pungent exploration of a milieu that few of us will have any experience of, and which contains content that is still relevant today.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) / D: Ron Howard / 135m

Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Emilia Clarke, Woody Harrelson, Paul Bettany, Joonas Suotamo, Donald Glover, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Thandie Newton, Jon Favreau, Linda Hunt

Rating: 6/10 – Han Solo (Ehrenreich), a pilot for the Imperial Empire, breaks away from the Empire to work with smuggler Tobias Beckett (Harrelson) in an attempt to rescue his lover Qi’ra (Clarke) from their home planet – but it’s not as easy as it first seems; a movie that spends too much time reminding audiences that its main character has a chequered history, Solo: A Star Wars Story is a series of admittedly entertaining action sequences in search of a coherent story to wrap around them, but hamstrung by a bland lead performance, and another round of secondary characters you can’t connect with.

Prankz. (2017) / D: Warren Dudley / 71m

Cast: Betsy-Blue English, Elliot Windsor, Ray d James, Isabelle Rayner, Sharon Drain

Rating: 3/10 – six vlogs, two of which were never uploaded, show a footballer (Windsor), his girlfriend (English), and his best friend (James), playing pranks on each other, until a planned prank backfires with horrific consequences; an object lesson in how not to make a found footage horror movie, Prankz. is low budget awfulness personified, and as far from entertaining, or scary, or credible, or worth your time as it’s possible to be, which is the only achievement this dire movie is able to claim.

Ibiza (2018) / D: Alex Richanbach / 94m

Cast: Gillian Jacobs, Vanessa Bayer, Phoebe Robinson, Michaela Watkins, Richard Madden, Nelson Dante, Anjela Nedyalkova, Jordi Mollá

Rating: 3/10 – tasked with clinching a business deal in Barcelona, Harper (Jacobs) not only takes along her two best friends (Bayer, Robinson), but falls for a DJ (Madden) whose next gig is in Ibiza – where she determines to find him, even if it puts the deal in jeopardy; a romantic comedy that is neither romantic or funny – desperate is a more appropriate description – Ibiza is so bad that it’s yet another Netflix movie that you can’t believe was ever given a green light, or that Will Ferrell and Adam McKay stayed on board as producers once they saw the script (or what passes for one).

Bastards (2013)

01 Friday Jun 2018

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Original title: Les salauds

D: Claire Denis / 100m

Cast: Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni, Julie Bataille, Michel Subor, Lola Créton, Alex Descas, Grégoire Colin, Florence Loiret Caille, Christophe Miossec, Yann Antoine Bizette, Laurent Grévill

Following the death by suicide of his brother-in-law Jacques (Grévill), supertanker captain Marco Silvestri (Lindon) returns home at the behest of his sister, Sandra (Bataille). Sandra is convinced Jacques killed himself because of his involvement with successful businessman Edouard Laporte (Subor), though she has no proof. Marco moves into the apartment above Laporte’s, and begins a relationship with his mistress, Raphaëlle (Mastroianni); she lives there with their son, Joseph (Bizette). While Marco investigates Jacques’ death, he also discovers that his teenage niece, Justine (Créton), is in hospital having tried to take her life. He also learns that she has been sexually abused, but she won’t reveal who by. As his relationship with Raphaëlle becomes more intense, evidence seems to support the idea that Laporte is the person who assaulted Justine. Proof of what happened comes in the form of video footage, but it complicates things for Marco, and matters are further exacerbated when Justine runs away from the hospital where she’s convalescing, and Laporte tells Raphaëlle that Joseph is going to live with him…

A dark and moody thriller that, in Denis’s customary style, plays with notions of time and space and its characters physical connections to both, Bastards is a deliberately downbeat movie that is like taking a bath in multiple levels of corruption and moral culpability. Marco is a nominal hero, the nearest we get to a crusader looking for the truth, but even he’s not above behaving selfishly or violently in order to get the answers he’s looking for. He’s still the most sympathetic character in the movie – and that includes Justine, who is lost to both her family and the audience through her actions – but Denis, along with co-screenwriter Jean-Pol Fargeau, ensures Marco isn’t above reproach for his actions, even though he’s doing his best to unravel the mystery of Jacques’s death, and Justine’s assault. He’s a good man with good intentions, but his actions are often as unsavoury as his nemeses. Lindon plays him with a taciturn, no-nonsense approach that hides deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy and failure, the self-imposed distance between him and his family causing guilt to be the driving force behind his actions. Lindon is a strong masculine presence, powerful and stocky in a blunt, uncompromising way, and his casting is one of Denis’s best decisions.

There’s good support from Mastroianni as the compromised Raphaëlle, and though Subor is perhaps a little too reptilian for Laporte, he’s still an appropriately chilling figure (a moment where he takes Joseph’s hand in his is uncomfortable for the implication that goes with it). Denis has crafted an adroit though straightforward thriller that teases out its characters’ secrets and motivations in revelatory moments that are impactful dramatically if not quite promoting an emotional response in the viewer. Combined with the way in which the movie is assembled – Annette Dutertre’s editing, overseen by Denis, allows for scenes that feel disjointed and at times, out of place – this is as much an intellectual movie making exercise as it is a polished if gloomy thriller. It’s still a movie to admire in terms of its construction and the way it unfolds, but the lack of sympathetic characters makes it difficult to engage with, or care about the outcome, which is meant to be shocking, both for what is revealed, and for what it means overall. That being the case, the movie falls short of reaching its full potential, and remains a triumph of style over content.

Rating: 7/10 – not one of Denis’s best movies, but still intriguing to watch nevertheless, Bastards has a distinctly grim atmosphere to it, and a nihilistic streak that adds to its intensity; not entirely successful, but even a below par Denis movie is better than ones made by some movie makers operating at the top of their game.

Bottom of the World (2017)

26 Saturday May 2018

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D: Richard Sears / 85m

Cast: Jena Malone, Douglas Smith, Ted Levine, Tamara Duarte, Kevin Owen McDonald, Jon McLaren, Mark Sivertsen

While on their way to LA and travelling through the South West, young couple Scarlett (Malone) and Alex (Smith) find themselves staying at a hotel overnight where they appear to be the only guests. At one point, Alex sees a man in a hoodie (McDonald) outside their room, looking up. When they leave the next morning, the man is there again. Back on the road, Scarlett becomes ill and they turn back, staying overnight at another hotel. The same thing happens again the next day, but this time, Scarlett disappears while Alex is in the hotel bar. When he tries to find her he meets the man in the hoodie who takes him out into the desert where he tells Alex there are bodies that he’s buried there at a certain spot; he then vanishes. Certain that Scarlett is with a locally based evangelist (Levine), Alex tracks him down to his church, but their confrontation offers more questions than answers, and Alex is forced to accept (or deny) that his trip with Scarlett has all been a dream when he wakes up and finds he is married to Paige (Duarte), and his next door neighbour looks exactly like Scarlett…

Early on in Richard Sears’ mystery mindbender of a movie, Scarlett asks Alex what’s the worst thing he’s ever done. His reply is boring, and no match for her tale of her mistreatment of a severely brain damaged cousin that she was meant to be looking after when she was younger. It’s a disturbing account, and feels somewhat out of place so early in the narrative, but it’s key to the events that transpire once Alex finds himself searching for Scarlett and then trying to decide if his life with her or his life with Paige is his true reality. With elements of both seeping and bleeding through and into each other, Alex’s quest for “the truth” becomes something that threatens to undermine his sanity. Through it all though, Brian Gottlieb’s script keeps bringing Alex back to Scarlett’s grim admission, and the mystery of her complicity – real or not? – becomes an obsession. It also leads Alex (and the viewer) to question the veracity of his memories, and the nature of his relationship with Scarlett. In his “dream” were they running away from a guilty truth, or toward one?

The answer(s) aren’t all forthcoming. Gottlieb’s script isn’t entirely successful when it comes to explaining just what exactly is going on, and while a fair degree of ambiguity is necessary to keep the scenario intriguing, a couple of narrative corners require a “one bound and he was free” approach to resolve matters. This leaves some moments feeling contrived and less than completely credible, and though Sears keeps things resolutely cryptic through a combination of hallucinatory visuals and an unsettling soundtrack, too much comes across as forced and/or unnecessary (Alex obsessing over the one black pea in a can is a case in point). So while the mystery of Scarlett’s story is eventually decided on, it’s at a disservice to the characters, who are required to behave bizarrely just to match the requirements of the plot. Playing two roles, Malone is a captivating presence as Scarlett, and ice cool as the more traditional femme fatale Alex has for a neighbour. As the tortured and conflicted Alex, Smith copes well with a role that could have been too arch and mannered for comfort (though it’s a close call at times), while Levine provides brief but effective support, and Adrian Langley’s apposite cinematography creates two distinct worlds for the price of one.

Rating: 6/10 – there are echoes of David Lynch here that aren’t as successfully integrated as they might have been, and the fusion of dream and reality doesn’t always gel, but there’s enough in Bottom of the World to make it worth watching; a valid attempt to create a waking nightmare, it nevertheless relies too heavily on the kinds of narrative “claim jumping” that requires too many occasions where belief has to be tempered thanks to narrative necessity.

Kuleana (2017)

16 Friday Mar 2018

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D: Brian Kohne / 95m

Cast: Moronai Kanekoa, Sonya Balmores, Kristina Anapau, Stefan C. Schaefer, Augie Tulba, Marlene Sai, Branscombe Richmond, Mel Cabang, Vene Chun, Kainoa Horcajo, Steven Dascoulias

Hawaii, 1971. Nohea (Kanekoa) has returned home from Vietnam minus his left leg from the knee down, and with an uncertain future. He’s under pressure to sell the land his family has lived on for generations, and his grandmother (Sai), the current family elder, isn’t well enough to stop him. Things become even more complicated when his Aunt Rose (Anapau) appears to have committed suicide. Rose was married to a property developer who came from the mainland, Victor Coyle (Schaefer). In 1959, their adopted daughter, Kimberly, and Nohea’s father (Horcajo), disappeared. Victor accused Nohea’s father of kidnapping Kimberly, but as no trace of them was ever found, both are now presumed dead. Rose’s death brings the past and the present into sharp focus as Nohea tries to make sense of what happened twelve years ago, while also trying to fit back into a life and a culture that he’s lost his connection to. With Coyle intent on buying up as much land as possible for his own financial gain, and Nohea being drawn into Rose’s death, Kimberly’s sudden reappearance brings even further problems.

Kuleana is the Hawaiian word for responsibility. It’s a word that hangs heavy over writer-director Brian Kohne’s second feature, a sincere, culturally sensitive drama that unfolds patiently and with quiet skill. It’s a movie that focuses on the characters first and the drama second, but which also ties them together so that as the twin stories unfold in both 1959 and 1971, the characters drive the events that happen much more than they react to them. Pitched against a backdrop of the continued homogenisation of Hawaiian culture by US influences – Coyle’s development plans inevitably make no room for maintaining any traditions or beliefs about the land – the movie shows how the erosion of cultural values was taking its toll. Nohea’s conflicted struggle to make sense of his own future is reflected in the attitudes of his uncle, Bossy (Chun), who supports Coyle’s plans, and The Moke (Richmond), an enforcer for a local mobster (Cabang) who finds it increasingly difficult to put aside his tribal roots. By showing the political and social divisions that were prevalent at the time, Kohne ensures the movie is more than about the mystery surrounding Rose’s death, or if Kimberly’s return will complicate matters.

Kohne gets his message across clearly and concisely, and makes the most of a limited budget. Dan Hersey’s cinematography highlights the natural beauty of the Maui locations without making them look like picture postcard versions of themselves, while Adi Ell-Ad’s fluid yet measured editing ensures the narrative plays out in confident style and at a good pace. The performances are good, with Kanekoa giving an understated yet compelling portrayal of a man trying not to be at odds with his heritage, while Balmores carries the weight of the wrongs done to Kimberly with a steely determination. As Coyle, Schaefer is stuck with the one character who doesn’t have an arc but who does have a bad wig, and Anapau, as Rose, doesn’t get the opportunity to do more with her pivotal role than is absolutely necessary. This is due to the demands of the main storyline, and is therefore unavoidable, but Rose is one character we could have spent more time with. Kohne adds some magical realism into the mix to good effect, but scores even higher with his choice of Willie K and Johnny Wilson for the score. Their efforts, combined with a soundtrack that includes a poignant use of Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale, add an emotional layer that complements and enhances the material from beginning to end.

Rating: 8/10 – despite some story elements that are either prosaic and/or predictable, Kuleana is an involving, credible drama that ensures its Hawaiian cultural backdrop is just as important as its central storyline; if this is an example of what can be achieved by Hawaiian movie makers working “at home”, then let’s hope that there will be many more opportunities for them to do so in the future.

Strange Weather (2016)

11 Sunday Mar 2018

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D: Katherine Dieckmann / 91m

Cast: Holly Hunter, Carrie Coon, Kim Coates, Shane Jacobsen, Glenne Headly, Walker Babington, Craig Boe, Ransom Ashley, Susan Gallagher, Choppy Guillotte

Still grieving seven years after her son, Walker (Ashley), committed suicide at the age of twenty-four, Darcy Baylor (Hunter) learns that a friend of her son back then, Mark Wright (Jacobsen), appropriated a business plan that Walker had come up with, and has made a success of the idea. Wright has even used a childhood memory that Walker had that illustrated his original concept for a chain of hot dog restaurants. Darcy decides to head down to New Orleans – where Wright has opened a chain of Hot Dawg sites – to confront him and find out why he did what he did. She’s accompanied by her best friend, Byrd (Coon), and along the way they learn things about Walker’s last day, and particularly the last few hours before he died, that brings into question the perception that he killed himself. When Darcy reaches New Orleans she has far more questions than she started out with, but when she finally confronts Wright, she learns that the answers she’s seeking aren’t as cut and dried as she expected…

In assembling Strange Weather, writer/director Katherine Dieckmann has made a movie that combines an examination of personal grief, a mystery, and a road trip, and in such a way that the viewer never quite knows where each element is leading them, or if any of them will be resolved satisfactorily. In portraying the residual grief that Darcy feels, Dieckmann shows how hollow her life has been, and how difficult it’s been to move forward when so many unspoken questions have been holding her back. Dieckmann also shows how Darcy’s grief has kept her going at the same time, and how she’s used that grief as a form of emotional support. It all makes Darcy a flawed yet interesting character, and unpredictable as well, as evidenced by her taking the gun that Walker killed himself with, on her journey to New Orleans. Dieckmann also keeps the mystery surrounding Walker’s death ticking over in the background, ever present and fueling Darcy’s need for the truth, and Byrd’s reasons for going with her. As the road trip takes them inexorably to the Big Easy, it serves as a conduit for the truth, and as a reckoning for the grief that Darcy feels so intensely.

Darcy is played with impeccable artistry by Hunter, an actress who just keeps getting better and better, and who portrays the pain and sadness that Darcy feels so adroitly that you can’t help but be moved by the determination she shows in getting the answers she needs. Hunter shows both the character’s inner strength and her unacknowledged vulnerability, and gives a performance of such subtlety and range that Darcy’s actions, even those that are somewhat questionable, retain a credibility that makes her all the more sympathetic. The supporting performances are good too, but Hunter is in a league of her own, and Dieckmann wisely leaves her to it (when someone like Hunter is this good, it’s best just to step back and make sure the cameras are rolling). The movie is honest and sincere in its approach to the material, and while a couple of plot developments do feel a little forced (and lifted from a daytime soap opera), by continually returning to Darcy’s dogged quest for answers to questions she hasn’t formulated yet, the movie remains a fascinating, if low-key, journey into the world of a mother who just can’t find it within herself to close the door fully on the death of her son… and who is proved right in not doing so.

Rating: 8/10 – an impressive performance by Hunter is the bedrock of a movie that is effective in terms of its examination of the nature of overwhelming grief, and which offers unexpected insights at several points along the way; David Rush Morrison’s cinematography provides a rich colour palette for the characters to appear against, and there’s a terrific soundtrack courtesy of Sharon Van Etten that complements the material in a rewarding and unforeseen manner, making Strange Weather the kind of movie that deserves a wider audience.

Monthly Roundup – February 2018

28 Wednesday Feb 2018

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‘C’-Man (1949) / D: Joseph Lerner / 77m

Cast: Dean Jagger, John Carradine, Lottie Elwen, Rene Paul, Harry Landers, Walter Vaughn, Adelaide Klein, Edith Atwater

Rating: 5/10 – a US Customs agent (Jagger) finds himself looking for the killer of his best friend (and fellow Customs agent), and the person responsible for the theft of a rare jewel – could they be the same man?; an odd noir crime thriller that betrays its low budget production values, ‘C’-Man is short on character but long on action, and is fitfully entertaining, though the performances vary wildly and the script contains some very po-faced dialogue, making it a movie you can’t really take your eyes from – and not in a good way.

When We First Met (2018) / D: Ari Sandel / 97m

Cast: Adam Devine, Alexandra Daddario, Shelley Hennig, Andrew Bachelor, Robbie Amell

Rating: 3/10 – Noah (Devine) falls for Avery (Daddario) and winds up in the friend zone, but thanks to a magic photo booth, he gets the chance to go back and change their relationship into a romantic one; a dire romantic comedy that struggles to be both romantic and funny, When We First Met can’t even make anything meaningful out of its time travel scenario, and is let down by a banal script and below-par performances.

The Phantom (1931) / D: Alan James / 62m

Cast: Guinn Williams. Allene Ray, Niles Welch, Tom O’Brien, Sheldon Lewis, Wilfred Lucas, Violet Knights, William Gould, Bobby Dunn, William Jackie

Rating: 3/10 – a reporter (Williams) tries to track down the titular criminal mastermind when he targets the father of his girlfriend (Ray), but finds it’s not as simple a prospect as he’d thought; an early talkie that shows a lack of imagination and purpose, The Phantom struggles from the outset to be anything but a disappointment, what with its unconvincing mix of comedy and drama, its old dark house scenario, and a clutch of amateur performances that drain the very life out of it at every turn.

Black Panther (2018) / D: Ryan Coogler / 134m

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Sterling K. Brown, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Andy Serkis, Florence Kasumba, John Kani

Rating: 7/10 – the king of outwardly poor but inwardly technologically advanced Wakanda, T’Challa (Boseman), faces a coup from an unexpected source (Jordan), while trying to work out whether or not his country’s scientific advances should be shared with the wider world; though Black Panther does feature a predominantly black cast, and speaks to black issues, this is still a Marvel movie at the end of the day and one that adheres to the template Marvel have created for their releases, making this an admittedly funny and exciting thrill ride, but one that’s also another formulaic entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Atomic Blonde (2017) / D: David Leitch / 115m

Cast: Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, John Goodman, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, James Faulkner, Roland Møller, Sofia Boutella, Bill Skarsgård, Sam Hargrave, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Til Schweiger

Rating: 6/10 – in the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, a spy (Theron) must find a list of double agents that are being smuggled into the West, a task complicated by the involvement of the Americans, the Russians and a number of other interested parties; an attempt to provide audiences with a female John Wick, Atomic Blonde does have tremendous fight scenes, and a great central performance by Theron, but it’s let down by a muddled script, an even more muddled sense of the period it’s set in, and by trying to be fun when a straighter approach would have worked better.

Beauty and the Beast (2017) / D: Bill Condon / 129m

Cast: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Josh Gad, Kevin Kline, Ewan McGregor, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Nathan Mack, Audra McDonald, Stanley Tucci, Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Rating: 5/10 – the classic fairy tale, and previously a classic animated movie, is given the live action treatment by Disney; if the latest installment of a certain space opera hadn’t been released in 2017, Beauty and the Beast would have been the number one movie at the international box office, but though the House of Mouse might point to this as a measure of quality, the reality is that Watson was miscast, the songs lack the emotional heft they had in the animated version, and the whole thing has a perfunctory air that no amount of superficial gloss and shine can overcome.

The Case of the Black Parrot (1941) / D: Noel M. Smith / 61m

Cast: William Lundigan, Maris Wrixon, Eddie Foy Jr, Paul Cavanagh, Luli Deste, Charles Waldron, Joseph Crehan, Emory Parnell, Phyllis Barry, Cyril Thornton

Rating: 6/10 – a newspaper reporter (Lundigan) gets involved in a case involving a master forger (the Black Parrot), an antique cabinet, and a couple of mysterious deaths; an enjoyable piece of hokum, The Case of the Black Parrot gets by on a great deal of understated charm, a whodunnit plot that doesn’t overplay its hand, and by having its cast treat the whole absurd undertaking with a sincerity that is an achievement all by itself.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) / D: Kenneth Branagh / 114m

Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Tom Bateman, Lucy Boynton, Olivia Colman, Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Josh Gad, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Derek Jacobi, Marwan Kenzari, Leslie Odom Jr, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sergei Polunin, Daisy Ridley

Rating: 5/10 – the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh) is faced with a complex mystery: which one of a dozen passengers killed an infamous kidnapper, and more importantly, why?; yet another version of the Agatha Christie novel, Murder on the Orient Express strands its capable cast thanks to both an avalanche and a tepid script, leaving its director/star to orchestrate matters less effectively than expected, particularly when unravelling the mystery means having the suspects seated together in a way that clumsily replicates the Last Supper.

The Boss Baby (2017) / D: Tom McGrath / 97m

Cast: Alec Baldwin, Steve Buscemi, Jimmy Kimmel, Lisa Kudrow, Tobey Maguire, Miles Bakshi, James McGrath, Conrad Vernon, ViviAnn Yee, Eric Bell Jr, David Soren

Rating: 6/10 – when seven year old Tim (Bakshi) finds he has a new baby brother, Theodore (Baldwin) – and one dressed in a business suit at that – he also finds that Theodore is there to stop babies from being usurped in people’s affections by puppies; a brightly animated kids’ movie that takes several predictable swipes at corporate America, The Boss Baby wants to be heartwarming and caustic at the same time, but can’t quite manage both (it settles for heartwarming), and though Baldwin may seem like the perfect choice for the title character, he’s the weakest link in a voice cast that otherwise sells the performances with a great deal of enthusiasm.

Game Night (2018) / D: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein / 100m

Cast: Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler, Billy Magnussen, Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Jesse Plemons, Danny Huston, Michael C. Hall

Rating: 5/10 – when a group of friends led by Max (Bateman) and Annie (McAdams) are invited to a game night at the home of Max’s brother, Brooks (Chandler), the evening descends into murder and mayhem, and sees the group trying to get to the bottom of a real-life mystery; like an Eighties high concept comedy released thirty years too late, Game Night has a great cast but little direction and waaaay too much exposition clogging up its run time, all of which makes a couple of very funny, very inspired visual gags the only reward for the viewer who sticks with this to the end.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

15 Friday Dec 2017

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D: Yorgos Lanthimos / 121m

Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Barry Keoghan, Raffey Cassidy, Sunny Suljic, Alicia Silverstone, Bill Camp

In Yorgos Lanthimos’s follow up to the multi-award winning The Lobster (2015), he teams up again with Colin Farrell to tell a story adapted from Iphigenia at Aulis by the Greek playwright Euripides. Lanthimos is an idiosyncratic writer/director, and his approach to movie making can often seem experimental and/or challenging. That’s certainly the case here, as he shines a light on the aftermath of a man dying during surgery, a man that Farrell’s character, cardiothoracic specialist Steven Moore, operated on. Steven is part of a traditional nuclear family – wife Anna (Kidman), teenage daughter Kim (Cassidy), younger son Bob (Suljic) – is well respected by his peers, and appears to have everything he could need. The only odd thing about his life is his relationship with a teenage boy called Martin (Keoghan). They meet in coffee shops, and though Martin at first seems as if he could be some kind of outpatient that Steven is treating, his openly expressed neediness is at odds with Steven’s more reserved demeanour.

Martin begins to visit the hospital instead of waiting for their meetings outside. He appears without warning, and his beahviour becomes increasingly erratic. In an effort to placate him, Steven invites Martin to his home for dinner. Over time, Martin ingratiates himself into Steven’s family, and wins the affection of Kim. A reciprocal arrangement sees Steven going to dinner at Martin’s home, where he meets Martin’s mother (Silverstone). The evening doesn’t go well, and it prompts Steven to start ignoring Martin’s calls and attempts to meet up. Then one day Bob wakes to find he’s paralysed from the waist down. Soon he’s refusing to eat as well, but despite the best medical treatment that Steven can arrange, there is no physical reason found to explain what’s happening. And then, during choir practice, Kim too loses the use of her legs, and she and her brother find themselves in hospital, in the same room, and facing the same outcome: death.

In adapting Iphigenia at Aulis, Lanthimos has taken the central theme – what would you do if you had to kill a loved one to avert a greater number of deaths – and made it into a psychological thriller that proves difficult to engage with from the very start. Beginning with a close up of a beating human heart that’s been operated on, this is as close as the movie gets to displaying anything like the same kind of “heart” to its characters. As a result, Steven, Anna, Martin et al become chess pieces to be moved around a board of Lanthimos’ design, and with no greater ambition than to reach the endgame. What doesn’t help is the emotional constraint the movie adopts, particularly with Steven, where his dialogue is largely clipped and/or neutral in its relation to other dialogue in any given scene. This makes Steven something of an emotional cipher, physically present in the moment, but otherwise withdrawn or remote from the people around him (he’s more present with his children but then only when they’re doing what he expects of them). And even when he does display any real emotion, such as during a row with Anna, his responses are childish and inappropriate; he’s a man approximating what it is to feel anything.

Steven is also a dissembler, hiding the facts about his relationship with Martin from everyone else until matters dictate he reveal the truth. This should lead to a point from which the audience can begin to have some sympathy for his predicament – in order to save the lives of everyone in his family he must choose to kill one of them deliberately, to make a sacrificial offering as atonement for his sins – but thanks to Lanthimos’ determination to continue on and make Steven’s predicament a tragic one, the movie becomes instead a visual treat if not one that is likely to stir any feelings beyond impatience or apathy. The how and the why of his children falling ill is explained fully and with no room for misunderstanding, but despite this the actual source of their illness remains illogically set up and maintained. As an act of revenge it has its merits (as Euripides knew), but it’s introduced in a way that robs it of any merit as a narrative device; the audience is expected to go along with it because the script doesn’t offer any alternative. It also leaves the inter-relationships between the likes of Martin and Kim, and Steven and Anna – and most notably, Anna and Matthew (Camp), one of Steven’s colleagues – feeling contrived and under-developed.

There are times when it seems as if Lanthimos is more interested in mood and tone than he is in characterisation or narrative meaning, but what this does mean is that the movie has such a strong, consistent visual aesthetic that it compensates for some of the more wayward decisions made in regard to the plot. Each shot is lovingly framed and lit by DoP Thimios Bakatakis, and there are moments of quiet beauty, such as the very high, overhead shot of Anna and Bob that sees them about to leave the hospital after Bob has been allowed to go home, only for him to collapse. The camera stays fixed in place, maintaining its distance, as Anna desperately tries to rouse him. There are other moments where the cinematography excels, but these moments aren’t always in service to the narrative, unless Lanthimos’ intention really is to keep the viewer at a distance, and make it more difficult (than it is already) to engage with the characters.

In the end, and despite Lanthimos’ best efforts, this is a movie that relies on its main character behaving inappropriately and oddly in spite of the gravity of his situation, and Keoghan giving the kind of performance that is technically impressive – and that’s about all. As the movie spirals down towards a scene that is likely to have viewers laughing when they should be horrified, the nature of the material reveals itself to be a carefully constructed farce rather than the psychological mystery thriller that it appears to be (though whether or not this is Lanthimos’ intention is still debatable). Watched as such, the movie makes more sense and is more enjoyable, but if taken at face value it’s more likely to alienate viewers than entice them in with the offer of a probing, insightful melodrama. More simply put, and despite a handful of good performances, it’s a movie that looks very good indeed on the surface, but which lacks the necessary substance when you look more closely.

Rating: 6/10 – an arthouse thriller that takes a step back from its central plot before it’s even begun, The Killing of a Sacred Deer strives for eloquence and meaning, but falls short because of its detachment from the material; Farrell et al are left stranded sometimes by Lanthimos’ approach to the movie’s subject matter, and there are too many occasions where the viewer’s response will be one of bemusement or disbelief at what they’re seeing.

Black Snow (2017)

09 Saturday Dec 2017

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Original title: Nieve negra

D: Martin Hodara / 91m

Cast: Ricardo Darín, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Laia Costa, Federico Luppi, Dolores Fonzi, Andrés Herrera, Biel Montoro, Liah O’Prey, Mikel Iglesias, Iván Luengo

Upon learning of his father’s death, Marcos (Sbaraglia), along with his pregnant wife, Laura (Costa), travels to his home in Patagonia to settle his father’s affairs and sell the family home. But he encounters an obstacle to his plans in the form of his older brother, Salvador (Darín). Salvador still lives in the family home, and has no wish to move to somewhere new; nor is he tempted by gaining a share of the sale price that’s being offered by a local lawyer, Sepia (Luppi). He makes it clear that he wants to stay because of a tragedy that befell the family when he and Marcos when children, and their younger brother, Juan (Luengo), was accidentally killed during a hunting trip. Their father (Herrera) blamed Salvador for Juan’s death, and ever since, Salvador has lived a life of solitude and penitence, while Marcos has made a life for himself elsewhere, and their sister, Sabrina (Fonzi), has battled with mental health issues connected with the death of her younger brother. As Marcos does his best to persuade Salvador to change his mind, the truth about what happened when Juan was killed begins to surface, and secrets long buried come back to haunt the brothers, and send them down a path towards bloody conflict…

With family tragedies – and the inevitable dark secrets that seem to go with them at every turn – fuelling so many movies over the years, Argentinian thriller Black Snow has its work cut out for it before it’s even started. But while it doesn’t offer anything that’s particularly striking or original, it does have the benefit of its Patagonian setting, and a strong cast whose performances contribute greatly in making the viewer overlook how predictable it all is. It also takes great care through the various flashbacks that pepper the narrative, in revealing just enough about what happened the day Juan died, but without giving the viewer too much information to help them work out the why. Sharp-eyed and -eared viewers – or just those who have seen one too many of these kinds of thrillers – will be able to work out who did what, but this doesn’t spoil anything going forward, and the script – by director Hodara and Leonel D’Agostino – works hard to concentrate on the characters and their fractured relationships instead of making it all about the mystery surrounding Juan’s death.

Away from that central mystery, there is still much to keep viewers occupied, from the sad fate of Sabrina, her brother’s death having scarred her to the point where she’s retreated from the world, to the legacy that their father has bequeathed them all, one that encompasses unhappiness and emotional distance. Marcos initially seems to have succeeded in avoiding the effects of their father’s legacy but his marriage shows signs that this isn’t the case, and as the movie progresses and he fights to maintain his own fragile equilibrium, whenever Laura challenges him about his behaviour or what happened all that time ago, you can see the façade that he’s so carefully hidden behind for so long begin to slip. For his part, Salvador is reticent and unhappy with Marcos’ attempts at further marginalising their shared tragedy, and the idea of selling their childhood home fuels the anger he’s kept at bay in the intervening years. And when Marcos finally goes too far, both brothers’ actions have unforeseen consequences.

The snow-covered mountains of Patagonia serve as an effective backdrop for the icy interactions between Marcos and Salvador, and the wintry weather also helps to highlight the simmering emotions that both brothers are trying to keep in check. (That said, a scene where Marcos’ and Laura’s car ends up stuck in a snowdrift, and they remain there until nightfall, sees a mistral-like wind suddenly spring up, and then just as quickly disappear once they reach safety.) It’s all shot by DoP Arnau Valls Colomer with a view to increasing the sense of isolation that these characters are experiencing, both within themselves, and as a result of where they are. Hodara takes care to make sure all this isn’t shown in a way that could be construed as heavy-handed, and as he teases out the various strands of the narrative, the overall effect is maintained and built on until those same strands are pulled together into an ending that offers both closure and ambiguity.

The final shot may have some viewers feeling that they’ve had the rug pulled out from under them, but there are clues that support the ending, and in terms of the narrative and what’s gone before, there’s a psychological underpinning that works well in supporting it. It’s also a moment that leaves you wanting to see what happens next, something that doesn’t always happen in this type of thriller, and if there is to be a sequel of some sort (though it’s unlikely), and if Hodara and his very talented cast do return, then the story really needs to be locked in before everyone’s on board. On the evidence here, though, the cast would be the least of Hodara’s worries. Darín, as usual, gives a terrific, detailed performance of a man living under a terrible shadow, but who is still able to retain an innate dignity despite what he’s done (which isn’t as straightforward as it seems). As his unwanted nemesis, Sbaraglia exudes a callous disregard for others that shows Marcos is more self-serving than he would ever admit, or want others to realise, and it’s in his scenes with Costa that this becomes more and more evident. Rounding out the main cast, Costa too is good in a role that seems like it’s going to be yet another “female character ignored by the plot” arrangement, but Laura proves integral to said plot, and Costa makes her determined and not at all vulnerable – which is a nice change.

The pace of the movie is measured, with the aforementioned flashbacks layered into the narrative at appropriate points, and the tone of the movie is suitably dark and gloomy, infused as it is by references to fratricide, mental illness, abuse, and emotional pessimism. It’s not a cheerful, sanguine movie by any means, but it tells its story in a way that maintains interest and keeps its central mystery exactly that – a mystery – until the final fifteen minutes. There are times when the material feels a little strained, and Hodara and D’Agostino seem to have painted themselves into a corner in terms of allowing the story to unfold organically, but these instances don’t hinder the movie too much even though they are noticeable, and the story is strong enough to press on without suffering any “ill effects”. A compelling thriller then, and one that has more than enough going on to attract even the most casual of viewers.

Rating: 8/10 – a neat psychological mystery that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to trick the viewer or string them along until a big twist is revealed, Black Snow is a confident, darkly agreeable movie that works hard to make its characters credible and their story more believable still; another winner from South America, and further evidence that movies from that part of the world deserve a wider platform on which to shine.

NOTE: The trailer below doesn’t have English subtitles, but it does enough without them to give you a good idea of what the movie is about, and its themes.

Monthly Roundup – October 2017

31 Tuesday Oct 2017

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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).

Thelma (2017)

20 Friday Oct 2017

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D: Joachim Trier / 116m

Cast: Eili Harboe, Kaya Wilkins, Henrik Rafaelsen, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Grethe Eltervåg, Vanessa Borgli

Selected as Norway’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at next year’s Oscars, Thelma is a curious mix of genres that starts off slowly but which quickly gathers momentum as it examines the life of its titular character (Harboe), and explores the mystery that surrounds a series of strange phenomena that occur around her. It’s an often beguiling movie, a drama that shifts its narrative focus from time to time in order to wrong foot the viewer, and to keep them guessing as to the true nature of said strange phenomena. As well as a drama it’s a psychological thriller, a romance, a muted horror, and these are all wrapped up in a mystery that draws them together to provide a slow burn experience that is increasingly effective even when it seems that it’s not going to offer much in the way of anything really new.

Thelma is a student who has moved to Oslo to complete her studies. She’s quiet, a little removed from the other students, but otherwise there’s nothing to distinguish her outwardly from anyone else. She’s studious, speaks to her parents (Rafaelsen, Petersen) regularly, and doesn’t drink or smoke because of her religious beliefs – which are really her parents’ beliefs. Her father is a doctor, and her mother is in a wheelchair following an accident that we don’t get to know about until near the end of the movie. Thelma allows herself to be instructed by them in how to behave socially, and if she deviates in any way from the pattern her life is fitting into, then they behave suspiciously about her motives and actions until she can reassure them. More important still, she has to take the medication her father has prescribed for her since she was a child.

Things begin to change when she notices Anja (Wilkins), a fellow student. A mutual attraction develops between them, and as their relationship becomes more intimate, Thelma begins to experience strange dreams and reveries that hark back to her childhood. Increasingly confused and concerned about these experiences, Thelma submits to various medical tests but they prove inconclusive while adding to the stress she’s increasingly feeling. Her fear and uncertainty also leads to her breaking many of her parents’ rules, but the consequence of this is that her relationship with Anja begins to suffer. Needing to find some answers to the visions she’s experiencing, Thelma finds that those answers are much closer to home than she could have ever expected. (The audience will already have garnered as much from the movie’s opening scene, where a young Thelma (Eltervåg) has a rifle pointed at her by her father while he decides whether or not to pull the trigger.)

Trier is a director who likes to introduce an uncomfortable tension into the most mundane of circumstances or moments, and Thelma is no different. Thelma’s quiet, modest demeanour is reflected in the way that Trier presents the world around her, an equally quiet, modest part of Oslo that acts as the perfect backdrop for a story that slowly reveals a darkness both inside its main character and lurking around her almost like a living thing. Thelma herself is a young woman who’s almost a blank slate when we first meet her, but as the movie progresses we begin to find that she’s also a young woman who has modest personal ambitions, and who wants to break away from the religious yoke that’s been imposed on her by her parents. But this religious yoke has a reason behind it, as does the medication she takes, and as the mystery of the strange phenomena that happen around her begins to take shape and Thelma is revealed to be much more of a danger to herself and others – particularly others – Trier increases the tension within the narrative, and keeps the viewer unwittingly on the edge of their seat. You might be able to work out what’s going on, and Trier isn’t too concerned if you do, but what he does so well is to draw in the viewer and make them eager to see where Thelma’s story is going to end.

It’s clear that the movie is heading toward a tragedy, but along the way, the movie adds further tragedy to the mix, making Thelma’s emotional awakening something to be feared rather than admired. There are echoes of Carrie (1976) here, as Thelma learns something startling and frightening about herself, and there are moments of dread that are powerful and disturbing. Trier orchestrates these moments with an efficient disregard for Hollywood or mainstream conventions, and mounts them with a clear-eyed focus on the emotional traumas that arise from them. These moments carry an impact that becomes more oppressive with each reverie or actual occurrence, and by the movie’s end, Trier has successfully reached a pitch that highlights the full nature of the tragedy hidden in Thelma’s childhood. But as bleak and as uncompromising as the movie gets toward the end, Trier is able to offer the viewer a measure of hope amidst all the misfortune that befalls Thelma and the people around her.

As Thelma, Harboe – making only her second feature in a leading role (take note, BFI staff) – gives a studied, sympathetic performance that bodes well for the actress’s future. Her open gaze and gauche approach to the character works well in the opening scenes, and as Thelma begins to find herself, Harboe gives full expression to the blossoming that the character undergoes and the mixture of happiness and disorientation that she experiences; it’s like watching a teenage girl slowly coming to terms with becoming an adult, and all that that entails. Wilkins is an ethereal presence at times, with a wistful look that is enticing, and in their scenes together, she and Harboe exhibit a natural chemistry that makes their characters’ relationship all the more credible. Visually, the movie is quite austere, though deliberately so, with Jakob Ihre’s cinematography perfectly matching the emotional astringence shown at the movie’s beginning, and then subtly changing to then match the more emotional and dramatic elements seen later on. There’s also a somewhat disconcerting but effective score courtesy of Ola Fløttum that provides a further layer of unease to Trier’s poignant love story and Thelma’s journey of self-discovery.

Rating: 8/10 – some of Trier’s inspirations for Thelma will be obvious, but he uses them in such unexpected and unforced ways that they always feel suitable to the material and not just for show; a movie that gathers an inexorable momentum as it goes, this is the kind of intelligent psychological romantic horror thriller that doesn’t come along too often, but which you’ll be glad to have seen now that it has.

Voice from the Stone (2017)

29 Friday Sep 2017

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D: Eric Dennis Howell / 90m

Cast: Emilia Clarke, Marton Csokas, Caterina Murino, Remo Girone, Lisa Gastoni, Edward George Dring

There’s a whole other sub-section of the movies where English or American actors and actresses take roles that are shot in foreign locations with a foreign crew, and often their presence is there to ensure a decent enough showing in the international market. A lot of these movies, however, don’t always get the exposure they need, and head straight for DVD or VOD. Some manage to get into cinemas but they rarely make much of an impact, and often see out a week’s residency without too much fuss and bother. One such movie is Voice from the Stone, which since its world premiere at the Minneapolis-St Paul International Film Festival on 20 April this year, has made it onto the big screen in only five countries so far (six if you include its appearance at this year’s UK FrightFest). So how does this movie fare against all the others?

Without deliberately invoking this blog’s favourite i-word, Voice from the Stone proves largely disappointing, and for a number of reasons. The basic premise is ideal for setting up a semi-Gothic mystery thriller, but somewhere along the way, Howell’s interpretation of Andrew Shaw’s screenplay (itself an adaptation of Silvio Raffo’s novel La Voce Della Pietra), jettisons the idea of playing the obvious mystery elements – is grief-stricken son Jakob (Dring) really hearing the voice of his dead mother, Malvina (Murino), in the walls of his Tuscan villa home? – in order to focus on the nature of grief and the (not too) dark places it can lead us to. There’s Jakob’s grief, the grief his father, Klaus (Csokas), is dealing with, and then to a lesser extent, there’s the grief that Verena (Clarke) is feeling. Verena is a nurse who tends to sick children in their homes, and each time her work is done, it becomes harder and harder to leave, such is the emotional connections she makes as part of her approach to caring for the children in her charge.

Jakob was with his mother when she died, and had stayed by her bedside almost all throughout her illness. Since then he hasn’t said a word, whether through choice (as an expression, excuse the pun, of his grief), or something more sinister. The fact that he listens to the walls, and seems to be hearing his dead mother’s voice, is excused by his father as the boy’s way of dealing with his sadness. But Verena sees it as much more dangerous to Jakob’s emotional health, and in an initially oblique way, begins to challenge his behaviour. She’s encouraged in this by Lilia (Gastoni), Malvina’s mother, who is confident that Verena can get Jakob to talk. But although Verena slowly begins to make headway in bringing Jakob out of his grief, the dynamic within the villa starts to shift around her, and she finds she can no longer trust all that she believed when she first arrived…

Annoyingly, Voice from the Stone sets itself up as a slow-paced, methodical thriller that’s big on atmosphere and rich in emotional detail. However, while it never promises startling revelations along the way, what it does do is morph ever so slowly into a static drama that can’t make much of the few dramatic incidents that the script sets up. A visit to the family mausoleum should be disquieting but avoids making an impact by having its heroine behave as if she’s seeing ghosts that aren’t there, and a potentially frightening dream sequence is undermined by the way in which it’s staged. And despite Clarke’s best efforts, the character of Verena doesn’t convey the necessary depth that would allow the viewer to care about her predicament. The same is true of Csokas’ one-minute-guarded, the next-minute-approachable reading of Klaus, a grieving husband whose personality and demeanour lacks consistency, and who occupies a kind of there-when-the-script-needs-him-to-be middle ground that keeps the character from engaging with the viewer.

Shaw’s screenplay becomes increasingly erratic the longer the movie goes on, and there are a couple of jarring shifts in the narrative, along with a dramatic development involving a piece of sculpture that Klaus is working on, that nudges the story along but so unconvincingly you might be wondering if there’s a reel missing. There’s also a “surprise” that some viewers will have spotted a mile off, and which, when it’s revealed, has all the impact of being slapped with a damp tissue. As for the mystery of the voice in the walls, the script settles for being ambiguous when it needs to be more definitive (otherwise it’s a mystery with no payoff, and how much fun are they?). And the ending, when it comes, proves just as underwhelming as what’s gone before, though it does at least avoid throwing in a cheap twist to round things off or to try and set up a potential sequel.

With Shaw’s screenplay suffering from a number of fatal flaws, matters aren’t helped by Howell’s turn in the director’s chair. Only his second feature since From Heaven to Hell in 2002 (check out its cast), Voice from the Stone soon proves itself to be a challenge that Howell, a former stuntman, isn’t able to overcome. There are too many scenes that are flat and drearily composed, and the flow of the movie is stalled time and time again by decisions made in the editing suite, decisions that stop the movie from gaining any traction when it needs to, and stop it from being anything other than a chore to sit through for much of its running time. Clarke tries her best to get a good grip on the character of Verena but is unable to because her character makes too many random, unsupported choices, while Csokas is left to fashion a performance from too few clues and too few insights. And Dring, as the silent Jakob, can only frown a lot or remain passive, something he does well, but it’s not necessarily a recommendation of his performance, rather a drawback he can’t defeat. The movie is also unattractive to watch for the most part, too often dimly lit (even the exteriors) and attempting to provide itself with some atmosphere by doing so.

Rating: 4/10 – undercooked and underwhelming, Voice from the Stone is a movie that offers little in the way of satisfactory viewing, and only occasionally rises above the mundane handling of the material; a thriller that doesn’t thrill and with a mystery that’s never solved one way or the other, this is one for Emilia Clarke completists only, or viewers willing to give it the benefit of the doubt – though it would be hard to understand why.

Old-Time Crime: The Rogues Tavern (1936) and Lady in the Death House (1944)

23 Saturday Sep 2017

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The Rogues Tavern (1936) / D: Robert F. Hill / 70m

Cast: Wallace Ford, Barbara Pepper, Joan Woodbury, Clara Kimball Young, Jack Mulhall, John Elliott, Earl Dwire, John W. Cowell, Vincent Dennis, Arthur Loft, Ivo Henderson, Ed Cassidy, Silver Wolf

Wise-cracking detective Jimmy Kelly (Ford) is in a hurry to marry ex-store detective Marjorie Burns (Pepper), but has to cross the state line in order to do so. The pair end up at the Red Rock Tavern late one night waiting for a justice of the peace to turn up. Soon, one of the other guests, a man named Harrison (Henderson) has been killed, his throat ostensibly ripped out by a dog (Silver Wolf) that roams around the outside of the inn. When a second murder occurs, Kelly takes charge of the situation, but finds few clues to help him. A third murder, plus the arrival of another guest named Wentworth (Loft), makes things even more confusing, but it’s not long before the inn’s owner, wheelchair bound Mr Jamison (Elliott), points Jimmy in the right direction, and it becomes clear that a conspiracy is in progress and that the guests are all potential murder victims of an unknown assailant. But is that assailant someone who is already there at the inn?

There were literally hundreds (if not thousands) of murder mysteries set in old dark houses during the Thirties and Forties, and they all followed a very predictable formula: a group of people are brought together (some might know each other, most will be strangers to each other) at a remote location, soon their numbers will begin to dwindle as one by one they’re killed off, and one of the assembled guests will prove to be a detective (or amateur sleuth) who will solve the mystery in the last reel (and may even get to sock the villain on the jaw in the process). Along the way there will be the usual amount of red herrings, obvious characters who must be the villain but who will turn out to be innocent, and a leading lady acting as the hero’s annoying, always-getting-into-trouble girlfriend (or if he’s a newspaperman, then she’ll be a rival journalist trying to figure out who the murderer is before he does).

The Rogues Tavern follows that formula very carefully, with its stranded characters arguing amongst each other as the wily murderer picks them off one by one, and the screenplay – an original by Al Martin – seeks to keep the viewer guessing at every turn, and doing a pretty good job of it. The first two murders are blamed on the dog (who looks about as frightening as Lassie), but when it’s in the same room as (nearly) all the others and a third murder is committed, then it’s clear that the movie has something else up its sleeve. This is eventually revealed in the final reel, where the murderer’s identity is uncovered, they laugh maniacally while explaining their dastardly plan for everyone, and are overpowered by Kelly appearing at the last second to save the day. Before then secrets are exposed, Marjorie does her own sleuthing (which pays off), Kelly gets socked on the jaw more than once (and not by the villain), and the inn is revealed to be one big death trap.

Despite its unprepossessing scenario and overly familiar set up, the movie is a sprightly example of what could be achieved on a meagre budget. Hill – who would go on to direct Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (1938) – refrains from using too many wide shots and keeps things tight, giving the movie an occasionally claustrophobic feel, an effect that’s helped by the camera staying close to the characters and capturing as many close ups as it can. The cast, many of whom are veterans of this type of movie, play their parts with agreeable gusto, while Ford makes for an enjoyable leading man, his easy-going demeanour and vaudeville background ensuring Kelly isn’t the genre’s usual earnest young hero. Pepper is stranded in blonde-bimboland but acquits herself well, and there’s an opportunity to see silent era star Kimball Young in a small but pivotal role that shows off the skills that, by that stage in her career, were criminally under-used.

Rating: 6/10 – despite its familiar setting and occasionally dodgy line readings, The Rogues Tavern is an entertaining old dark house mystery thriller that offers a handful of surprises to sweeten the experience; there’s comedy too amongst the thrills, and the whole thing is a delightful reminder that not every low budget, minor league thriller from the Thirties was a poor excuse for entertainment.

Lady in the Death House (1944) / D: Steve Sekely / 55m

Cast: Jean Parker, Lionel Atwill, Douglas Fowley, Marcia Mae Jones, Cy Kendall, John Maxwell, Robert Middlemass, George Irving

The tag line for Lady in the Death House says it all really: “Condemned to die…by the hand of the man I love!”, and only in a murder mystery from the Forties (oh, okay, and maybe the Fifties as well) would a scenario such as that one even exist. The movie begins with Mary Kirk Logan (Parker) on her way to the electric chair for the murder of a blackmailer. She’s just written a letter to a friend, criminal psychologist Dr Charles Finch (Atwill), who recounts both the details of the letter, and the case, to a group of journalists. We see Finch first meet struggling scientist Dwight Bradford (Fowley), and then they in turn meet Mary. Bradford and Mary soon fall in love but there’s a sticking point to their relationship: in order to make ends meet and further his research into reviving dead tissue, he has a second job as the state executioner (you can see where this is going, can’t you?). Mary won’t marry him while he’s a sanctioned killer, but before they get a chance to patch things up, Mary is sent to prison, and it’s down to Finch and Bradford, aided by Mary’s younger sister, Suzy (Jones), to prove her innocence before she’s executed.

Despite the absurdity of its romantic conundrum, Lady in the Death House is a neat, compelling little murder mystery that packs a lot into its short running time, and is far more rewarding than it has any right to be. A lot of its appeal has to do with the presence of Parker and Atwill, two actors who rarely gave disappointing performances and who should have had much bigger careers than was actually the case. Parker was a very talented actress, and it shows here as she resists the urge to make Mary’s situation one that many other actresses would have decided was ripe for unrestrained melodrama. It’s this very restraint that makes her role all the more sympathetic and credible. Atwill is at his most charming and relaxed, carrying the weight of so much exposition with an ease that most other actors would have wilted under. Like Parker, he divests his character of any melodramatic tendencies, something that for the time wasn’t the norm. When they share a scene together, it’s like a mini acting masterclass, and their performances stand out from those around them.

They’re helped immensely by Harry O. Hoyt’s focused screenplay – from a story by Frederick C. Davis – which culminates in a race against time to keep Mary alive. Bradford has a crisis of conscience along the way, but by then it’s too late for the character, who proves to be the movie’s one weak link. Fowley was a capable actor for the most part, but here he’s cruelly exposed by the constraints of a character who can’t or won’t give up his job as state executioner for the woman he loves (because the script says he can’t or won’t). Whenever it’s brought up, Fowley adopts the look of a man suffering from extreme emotional torment and remains quiet, frowning in apparent pain and wishing he was elsewhere. It’s not Fowley’s fault, but Bradford’s avoidance of the subject makes the character appear wilfully stupid.

That one issue aside though, the movie has a consistent, well developed pace that Hungarian-born director Sekely maintains through using effective cutting to provide a sense of urgency. His use of light and shadow is also much more effective than is usual for this kind of movie (see above image), and though this is a Producers Releasing Corporation production – a company more usually associated with so-called Poverty Row releases – it doesn’t look as washed out or as bland as many other movies made on such a small budget. The mystery elements are cleverly and plausibly established (even if there’s a clear miscarriage of justice at the heart of Mary’s trial that’s likely to have modern day audiences yelling at the screen), and the identity of the murderer, and their motive, is revealed in an equally acceptable and plausible way. On the whole, this is a low budget thriller that’s had a lot more attention paid to it than you’d usually expect.

Rating: 6/10 – good performances from Parker and Atwill, and confident direction from Sekely, help tremendously in keeping Lady in the Death House from becoming a pedestrian retread of every other innocent-facing-certain-death mystery movie; a largely polished exercise in small-scale thrills, it may not strike a chord with everyone, but for those who enjoy this sort of thing, there’s plenty to keep them happy.

Wind River (2017)

13 Wednesday Sep 2017

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D: Taylor Sheridan / 107m

Cast: Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Graham Greene, Gil Birmingham, James Jordan, Jon Bernthal, Kelsey Asbille, Martin Sensmeier

The Wind River Indian Reservation is situated in Wyoming’s Wind River Basin and occupies an area of nearly three and a half thousand square miles. It’s surrounded by the Wind River Mountain Range, the Owl Creek Mountains and the Absaroka Mountains, and temperatures can drop to a point where rapid breathing of the cold air can cause death by pulmonary haemorrhage. It’s also a place where the lives of its Native Americans are blighted by a persistent drug problem and sense of aimlessness amongst its youth. These points are all worth bearing in mind when considering the merits of Wind River, the latest movie written by Taylor Sheridan, and his first as a director. Sheridan is responsible for the screenplays for Sicario (2015) and Hell or High Water (2016), two very impressive movies indeed thanks to his contributions, and this, his latest, is equally as impressive (if not more so).

This is a movie where the locations are just as important as the characters themselves and the tangled narrative that they inhabit. The backdrop for a tale of rape and murder that takes place on tribal lands, Sheridan takes the inhospitable nature of the reservation in winter and uses it as a way of examining the issues affecting the tribes people who live there, and to provide an unforgiving environment against which the plot unfolds. It begins with an eighteen year old called Natalie Hanson (Asbille) as she flees across the snow, panicked and bloody. Eventually she collapses and lies still, and remains there until she’s discovered the next day by US Fish and Wildlife agent Cory Lambert (Renner). Lambert reports his discovery to Ben (Greene), the tribal chief of police, and he in turn alerts the FBI. Their response is to send rookie agent Jane Banner (Olsen), who arrives completely unprepared for the harsh winter weather, and who has no awareness of, or background in, Indian affairs.

Banner hopes that an autopsy will prove that Natalie’s death was murder but the cause of death, pulmonary haemorrhage, won’t support that contention. Unable to bring in a full FBI investigative team, Banner decides to enlist Lambert’s help in finding out what caused Natalie to be so far from the nearest shelter. They learn from her brother, Chip (Sensmeier), that Natalie had a new boyfriend, a security guard at a nearby oil drilling site. Lambert discovers the track of a snowmobile that leads up into the mountains. He and Banner follow the track and find the naked body of a male that’s been ravaged by the local wildlife. Eventually, Banner and Ben, along with a few local deputies and members of the tribal police visit the oil drilling site on the pretext of wanting to speak to Natalie’s boyfriend, who they now know is called Matt (Bernthal). But the security guards that greet them begin behaving suspiciously, and while Banner staves off an armed confrontation between them all, Lambert is up in the mountains where the male body was found, and where he also finds a snowmobile track that leads down to the oil drilling site…

Wind River is a tough, uncompromising thriller that doesn’t stint on the emotional lives of its characters, even allowing the viewer a glimpse of the life that Natalie could have enjoyed if she’d lived, and it’s this approach that helps to anchor the murder investigation that drives the movie forward. Lambert agrees to help Banner because his daughter also died of exposure in the snow three years before, and he wants to assuage his feelings of guilt at not being able to save her. Lambert uses his skills as a tracker to piece together the events that led to Natalie’s murder, and with step he takes, Renner’s thoughtful, subdued performance allows the viewer to see his sadness slip slowly from his shoulders until he’s in a position to offer advice to Martin (Birmingham), Natalie’s father, that is both affecting and heartfelt. Aside from his supporting role in Arrival (2016), Renner hasn’t exactly been best served by the roles he’s taken over the last few years, but his portayal of the taciturn Lambert is one of his best, and a reminder that when he’s given the right material he can be very good indeed.

Sheridan is also careful to make Banner not just a fish out of water, but someone doing their best in a situation that isn’t ideal for them, but which is pushing them beyond their comfort zone. From arriving unprepared for the harsh weather conditions to the point where she begins to understand both the environment and the social climate of the reservation, Banner visibly grows as a character, and Olsen also reminds viewers that she is one of the best actresses of her generation. Displaying a tough determination, and a commitment to finding the truth, Sheridan and Olsen use Banner’s inexperience as a way of bringing out the clues and the details of Natalie’s murder and making them as fresh for the audience as they are for her. Though Lambert is nominally the lead character, and discovers said clues and details, we still see the bulk of the investigation through Banner’s eyes, and we also see the effect that it has on her throughout.

But while Sheridan concentrates on the characters, even to giving us brief moments that tell their stories concisely and effectively, he doesn’t lose sight of the mystery he’s created and the narrative structure that allows it to unfold at a pace that doesn’t disappoint in terms of detail or leaves the viewer feeling as if they’re being led by the nose. Given the bleak (yet beautiful) nature of the environment, it’s unsurprising that there are some harsh, and somewhat brutal outbursts of violence, and the fate of one character has a pleasing, Old Testament eye-for-an-eye feel to it, but again it’s all in keeping with the milieu that Sheridan has created, and there’s an appropriate sense of nihilism that infuses the movie and keeps any sentimentality at bay, particularly in relation to the fractured outlook of its young Native Americans.

Behind the camera, Sheridan has enlisted the aid of a number of collaborators whose contributions add further lustre to the quality of the movie, and without whom this may not have been as successful. There’s Ben Richardson’s rich, detailed cinematography that also highlights the vastness of the Wind River Basin and its austere, wintry beauty, and a beautifully expressive score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis that is both unobtrusive and eerily soulful at the same time. These collaborators, along with production designer Neil Spisak and editor Gary Roach – and many more – all help make the movie a hugely rewarding and outstanding feature debut for its writer.

Rating: 9/10 – a near perfect combination of mystery thriller and cleverly mounted character-driven drama, Wind River succeeds on so many levels that it would be churlish to say otherwise; Sheridan just keeps on getting better and better, and he draws out terrific performances from his two leads, making this one of the more worthwhile movies out there, and deserving of far more awards than just Sheridan’s Un Certain Regard Director Award at Cannes this year.

Contratiempo (2016)

07 Thursday Sep 2017

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aka The Invisible Guest

D: Oriol Paulo / 106m

Cast: Mario Casas, Ana Wagener, Jose Coronado, Bárbara Lennie, Francesc Orella, David Selvas, Iñigo Gastesi, San Yélamos

Early on in Contratiempo, murder suspect Adrián Doria (Casas) is caught out in a lie by the defence attorney, Virginia Goodman (Wagener), who has been hired to keep him out of prison. Having recounted the circumstances in which he came to be accused of the murder of his lover, Laura Vidal (Lennie), Doria is surprised to find that Virginia isn’t convinced that he’s told her the whole truth. It’s only when she shows him a newspaper article about a young man who is missing that the certainty of his story begins to waver, and the viewer begins to realise that they can’t trust anything that they’re being told. The basic premise – Doria and Laura are coerced into meeting up in a hotel room to hand over money to a blackmailer who knows about their affair, only for Laura to end up killed by an unknown assailant and all the evidence pointing to Doria – is soon expanded on to involve a car accident, a cover up, the aforementioned missing young man, grieving parents, a locked room mystery, and a race against time to get Doria’s story “straight” before he’s called before a judge in a matter of three hours.

The events that have led to Laura’s death are recounted in detail as Virginia goads and cajoles Doria into remembering the details of what happened, and tries to put together a defence that will see the charges against him dismissed. She’s taken his case as a favour to his lawyer, and has a one hundred per cent success rate in keeping her clients out of jail. As the story unfolds, and with revelations coming thick and fast, director Paulo’s script keeps the viewer guessing as to the truth of Doria’s recollections and also Virginia’s assertions when she believes he’s lying to her (often she already seems to know more about the case than Doria has revealed). Paulo has assembled a tale that continually keeps shifting, as each retelling of events adds further layers of uncertainty and mystery to proceedings, and Doria’s guilt – did he kill Laura or was she really the victim of someone who was able to escape from their locked hotel room? – becomes clearer and then more obscure and then clearer again as the truth changes from scene to scene.

Paulo is able to do all this thanks to his tightly constructed script, which packs in so many twists and turns and narrative sleights of hand that the viewer is in danger of missing the most important moments of all, the ones where Doria’s story trembles on the precipice of exposure, but pulls back just in time while also revealing elements of the wider truth that will ultimately be revealed in the final fifteen minutes. It’s an impressive juggling act, one that stumbles only occasionally as Paulo weaves tangled thread after tangled thread in his efforts to bamboozle the viewer and keep things up in the air. Along the way he maintains an enviable level of tension, but it’s not just through the convoluted script, but also thanks to the performances.

As the morally compromised Doria, Casas plays it deadly straight throughout, protesting Doria’s innocence of Laura’s murder with a great deal of conviction while also providing enough doubt for the viewer to be questioning both his motives and his innocence. Casas brings a much needed sincerity to the role, and proves more than capable of investing Doria with a degree of wounded pride in conjunction with a surprising vulnerability when the script requires it. He’s matched by a fierce, uncompromising performance by Wagener as the defence attorney whose zero tolerance for ambiguity or avoidance (“Your testimony has holes, and I need details”) drives the narrative forward as she pursues the truth no matter what it means for her client. Between them, the two actors play an exacting game of cat-and-mouse that sees them engage in the kind of verbal sparring that keeps audiences engrossed and the material flowing inexorably to its one-last-twist conclusion.

But even though Paulo has gone to a lot of trouble in littering his script with more red herrings than it seems possible to include, fans of this kind of mystery thriller will realise what’s going on pretty much right from the start. However, this awareness doesn’t detract from the consistently clever and successful attempts to wrongfoot the viewer in terms of why things happen as they do, and who is responsible for it all. Paulo examines much of what occurs from different perspectives and different angles, and in doing so, manages to add unexpected emotional layers to the story that help to anchor the characters’ motives and reinforce the credibility of certain scenes that might otherwise have fallen short in terms of their effectiveness.

By the time all is revealed, Contratiempo has proven to be a gripping, provocative thriller that never lets up in its efforts to keep the viewer guessing, and it does so with no small amount of skill and confidence on Paulo’s part. He’s aided greatly by Xavi Giménez’s chilly, atmospheric cinematography, and Balter Gallart’s austere production design (this is a movie that eschews bright colours in favour of muted browns and dulled pastels), and these elements all join to make the movie feel appropriately suspenseful in a dour but thankfully arresting fashion. Casas and Wagener are terrific adversaries, and there’s good support from Coronado and Lennie, both of whom provide sympathetic performances as the father of the missing young man and Doria’s unlucky mistress respectively. It’s all rounded off by an unobtrusive yet effective score by Fernando Velázquez, that adds to the overall ambience and sense of subdued menace that the movie promotes throughout.

Rating: 8/10 – a couple of forced narrative moments aside, Contratiempo is the kind of thriller that demands the viewer’s complete attention, and rewards that attention over and over; if there’s ever a Hollywood remake, rest assured it will not be as entertaining or as assured as this version is.

Monthly Roundup – August 2017

31 Thursday Aug 2017

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The Feathered Serpent (1948) / D: William Beaudine / 61m

Cast: Roland Winters, Keye Luke, Mantan Moreland, Victor Sen Yung, Carol Forman, Robert Livingston, Nils Asther, Beverly Jons, Martin Garralaga

Rating: 4/10 – while on vacation in Mexico, Charlie Chan finds himself drawn into a mystery involving murder and the search for an ancient Aztec temple; the penultimate Charlie Chan movie, The Feathered Serpent is as disappointing as the rest of the entries made by Monogram, but does at least see the return of Luke as Number One Son after eleven years, though even this can’t mitigate for the tired, recycled script (originally a Three Mesquiteers outing), and performances that aim for perfunctory – and almost achieve it.

The Black Camel (1931) / D: Hamilton MacFadden / 71m

Cast: Warner Oland, Sally Eilers, Bela Lugosi, Dorothy Revier, Victor Varconi, Murray Kinnell, William Post Jr, Robert Young, Violet Dunn, Otto Yamaoka, Dwight Frye

Rating: 6/10 – Charlie Chan investigates when an actress is found murdered, and discovers that her death relates to another murder that occurred three years previously; the second Charlie Chan movie proper, The Black Camel keeps the Oriental detective in Honolulu (where creator Earl Derr Biggers based him), and at the forefront of a murder mystery that has more twists and turns and suspects than usual, and which proves an enjoyable outing thanks to good supporting turns by Kinnell and Young (making his debut and irrepressible as ever), and a more relaxed performance by Lugosi than most people will be used to.

I Am Your Father (2015) / D: Toni Basterd, Marcos Cabotá / 82m

Narrator: Colm Meaney

With: David Prowse, Marcos Cabotá, Gary Kurtz, Robert Watts, Marcus Hearn, Jonathan Rigby, Robert Prowse, James Prowse

Rating: 7/10 – Spanish movie maker Marcos Cabotá hits on an idea to tell the story of the man behind the mask of Darth Vader, and to restage Vader’s death scene with Prowse finally acting the part as he’s always felt he should have done; a likeable documentary, I Am Your Father is a tribute to Prowse’s continued commitment to the role of Darth Vader, and along the way paints Lucasfilm in a very poor light for mistreating him during shooting of Episodes V and VI, and blackballing Prowse since 1983 (over his “revealing” Vader’s death in Return of the Jedi), but the movie is let down by a haphazard structure, and not being able to show the re-shot scene (no doubt thanks to Lucasfilm).

White Coffin (2016) / D: Daniel de la Vega / 71m

Original title: Ataúd Blanco: El Juego Diabólico

Cast: Julieta Cardinali, Eleonora Wexler, Rafael Ferro, Damián Dreizik, Fiorela Duranda, Verónica Intile

Rating: 5/10 – when a young girl (Duranda) is kidnapped by a mysterious cult, her mother (Cardinali) discovers that not even death is an obstacle to getting her back; five features in and Argentinian horror maestro de la Vega still can’t assemble a coherent script to accompany his homages to Seventies Euro horror, making White Coffin a frustrating viewing experience that offers too many moments of unrealised potential, and leaves its cast adrift in terms of meaningful or sympathetic characterisations.

Bad Santa 2 (2016) / D: Mark Waters / 92m

Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Kathy Bates, Tony Cox, Christina Hendricks, Brett Kelly, Ryan Hansen, Jenny Zigrino, Jeff Skowron, Mike Starr, Octavia Spencer

Rating: 6/10 – against his better judgment, alcoholic ex-criminal Willie (Thornton) teams up with his old friend Marcus (Cox) to steal two million dollars from a charity at Xmas time, which means donning a Santa suit once more; more defiantly scurrilous and offensive than the original, Bad Santa 2 benefits from Thornton’s ambivalent attitude as Willie, a plethora of cruel yet hilarious one-liners, and a great turn by Bates as Willie’s mother, but it also fails to pull together a decent plot, contains too many scenes that fall flat, and can’t quite replicate the energy of its predecessor.

Baires (2015) / D: Marcelo Páez Cubells / 82m

Cast: Germán Palacios, Benjamín Vicuña, Sabrina Garciarena, Juana Viale, Carlos Belloso

Rating: 4/10 – gullible Spanish tourist Mateo (Vicuña) parties with the wrong crowd in Buenos Aires and finds his girlfriend, Trini (Garciarena), threatened with a sticky end unless he transports drugs back to Spain; a thick-ear thriller Argentinian-style, Baires is mercifully short but dreary in its set up and cumbersome in its “thump a villain every five minutes” approach to tracking down the chief villain(s), all of which leaves little room for sympathetic characters, a credible narrative, or anything more than flat-pack direction from Cubells.

Two Men in Manhattan (1959) / D: Jean-Pierre Melville / 84m

Original title: Deux hommes dans Manhattan

Cast: Pierre Grasset, Jean-Pierre Melville, Christiane Eudes, Ginger Hall, Glenda Leigh, Colette Fleury, Monique Hennessy, Jean Darcante, Jerry Mengo, Jean Lara

Rating: 6/10 – when the French UN delegate disappears in New York, the job of tracking him down is given to a reporter (Melville), and a photographer (Grasset) who has his own agenda; practically dismissed by French critics on its first release, Melville’s ode to New York and film noir, Two Men in Manhattan is a nimble yet forgettable movie that prompted the writer/director to move away from the Nouvelle Vague movement he’d helped to create, leaving this as an enjoyable if predictable drama that could have done without Melville’s awkward presence in front of the cameras.

Death in High Heels (1947)

17 Monday Jul 2017

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D: Lionel Tomlinson (as Tommy Tomlinson) / 48m

Cast: Don Stannard, Elsa Tee, Veronica Rose, Denise Anthony, Patricia Laffan, Diana Wong, Nora Gordon, Bill Hodge, Kenneth Warrington, Leslie Spurling

A cheap and cheerful murder mystery – told by the lead detective in flashback – Death in High Heels is a “quota quickie” designed by Hammer Films (who had been dormant as a production company since 1937) as a way of reviving the company name and helping to fill the gaps in cinema schedules. Made on a shoestring, its tale of murder in a Bond Street dress shop is a perfect example of the material that Hammer looked to release at the time, and though it seems unremarkable at first glance, acts as a snapshot of the period, and what could be done on a micro-budget.

As already mentioned, the movie is set (largely) in a dress shop and is narrated by Detective Charlesworth (Stannard) as he recounts a tale of murder, jealousy and ambition. The dress shop is called Christof’s, and it’s owned and run by a man named Frank Bevan (Warrington). He employs a staff of seven: two supervisors, Agnes Gregory (Rose) and Magda Doon (Laffan); a designer, Mr Cecil (Hodge); three dress models, Victoria (Tee), Aileen (Anthony), and Almond Blossom (Wong); and a cleaning lady, Mrs ‘Arris (Gordon). Eight very different people all together, but with seven of them all united about one thing: their dislike of Miss Gregory. Sharp-tongued and unfriendly, Miss Gregory has earned the enmity of everyone at one time or another. She has attached herself to Bevan though, and when Magda is put in line for a promotion ahead of her, Miss Gregory does her best to get the job instead. When Bevan changes his mind, and gives the job to Miss Gregory, Magda’s unexpected death (which follows soon after), leads to a murder investigation.

The cause of death is poisoning, and by an acid that was brought into the shop by Aileen and Victoria in order to clean a hat. Most of it was spilt on the floor and then cleared up by Mrs ‘Arris who was supposed to have left it in an envelope on a table. But the envelope disappears before Magda’s death, and no one will admit to taking it. Everyone is a suspect, but Charlesworth quickly deduces that Magda wasn’t the intended victim, it was Miss Gregory, the poison added to her lunch but eaten by her rival instead. As his investigation continues, Charlesworth learns that some of the staff have secrets that may or may not be reasons for trying to kill Miss Gregory, and as he sifts through a web of lies and deceit, two main suspects emerge… but did either one of them try to poison Miss Gregory?

The answer is nowhere near as obvious as you’d expect, though it’s not really the point of this fast-paced little thriller, which seeks instead to shine a light on post-War Britain and the social imperatives of the period. Bevan is the haughty self-made man who enjoys the prestige that goes with having titled clients and a shop in London’s exclusive Bond Street. Miss Gregory has ideas above her station as well, and behaves badly towards the others because she rides on Bevan’s coat-tails and presumes an intimacy with him that allows her to feel superior to everyone else. Aileen’s “young man” is “very grand” and it’s her ambition to be as grand as he is, even though she’s from a working class background, the same background as Mrs ‘Arris. Mr Cecil is something of an hysterical ninny, a man whose sense of self-worth is reinforced by his mother. Only Magda and Victoria seem comfortable in their own skin, as even Almond Blossom’s aloof nature seems to be a cover for an unfortunate prior experience with Bevan. All this is neatly laid out in the nineteen minutes before Magda’s death, and all this has a bearing on the nature of Charlesworth’s investigation.

Inevitably, the secrets the characters have been trying to hide are revealed, and just as inevitably they prove predictable and of no relevance to the murder. But Christianna Brand’s screenplay, adapted from her novel of the same name, makes good use of the distrust amongst the characters, and even if to contemporary eyes there doesn’t seem to be anything too striking about the inter-relationships and the society in microcosm approach to the staff and their foibles, nevertheless, someone watching this seventy years ago would have recognised much of the social dynamic on display. They would have felt comforted by it to some degree, and even now the movie has that ability to reassure the viewer as to its intentions. Familiar territory then, and all the better for it; and despite some awkward line readings, it holds the attention and balances its various storylines with ease.

Though the performances range from arch (Wong, Rose) to overtly theatrical (Laffan), there’s still the sense that everyone is familiar with the material and knows what to do. Stannard gives a carefree performance that is amusing and relaxed, while Tee is confident and direct, and in their brief scenes together, a good foil for his breezy attitude. Tomlinson, whose first feature this was, keeps the camera as agile as possible given the confines of the sets, and uses his previous experience as an editor to give the movie a sprightly feel that adds to the pleasant nature of the material as a whole. It’s not a movie that will rock anyone’s world (not that it was ever meant to), but as a calling card to the rest of the British movie industry that Hammer was back and here to stay, it has to be judged a success.

Rating: 6/10 – it’s too easy to be dismissive of a movie like Death in High Heels, and too easy to ignore its obvious virtues, but anyone willing to give the movie the benefit of the doubt will be pleasantly surprised by its jaunty nature and effective character building; the low budget and sparse production values do hinder things, and some unnecessary narrative leaps and bounds in the second half don’t help, but overall this is a solid, agreeable mystery that deserves a wider audience. (16/31)

NOTE: Unsurprisingly, there isn’t a trailer for Death in High Heels.

Monthly Roundup – June 2017

30 Friday Jun 2017

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Attack of the Killer Donuts (2016) / D: Scott Wheeler / 85m

Cast: Justin Ray, Kayla Compton, Ben Heyman, Michael Swan, C. Thomas Howell, Fredrick Burns, Kassandra Voyagis, Chris De Christopher, Lauren Compton, Alison England, Michael Rene Walton

Rating: 3/10 – Johnny (Ray) works in a donut shop, while his mad scientist uncle (Swan) works in his basement lab cooking up a formula that – surprise! – will eventually turn donuts into flesh-hungry, bloodthirsty… donuts; bottom of the barrel stuff that aims for kitschy fun but misses by a mile, Attack of the Killer Donuts wears its sugar-coated heart on its sleeve, but is too awful in its execution to make up for its many, many, many faults, or the fact that it’s run out of steam before the first victim is put out of their misery (unlike the audience).

Before the Flood (2016) / D: Fisher Stevens / 96m

With: Leonardo DiCaprio, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Al Gore, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, John Kerry

Rating: 8/10 – actor and UN Messenger of Peace on Climate Change, Leonardo DiCaprio explores the ways in which the world is still refusing to acknowledge the effects of greenhouse gases and the need to switch to renewable energy; DiCaprio is a passionate environmental activist who has access to many of the “big players”, and his targeted globe-trotting highlights the natural disasters that are occurring all around us, all of which makes Before the Flood a worthy successor to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (2006), and an important, and sadly necessary, acknowledgment that we’re still not doing enough to turn things around and ensure our collective futures.

Dough (2015) / D: John Goldschmidt / 95m

Cast: Jonathan Pryce, Jerome Holder, Phil Davis, Ian Hart, Pauline Collins, Andrew Ellis, Malachi Kirby, Natasha Gordon, Melanie Freeman, Daniel Caltagirone, Andy de la Tour

Rating: 7/10 – an aging Jewish baker (Pryce) takes on an apprentice (Holder) whose second job as a drug dealer leads to the bakery’s sales going through the roof when an unexpected ingredient finds its way into the dough mix; a genial, inoffensive movie that features winning performances from Pryce and Holder, Davis as the kind of smarmy business developer who belongs in a pantomime, and a pleasant sense of its own shortcomings, Dough is a cross-cultural comedy drama that is amusing for the most part but which lacks the substance needed to make it more engaging.

Grief Street (1931) / D: Richard Thorpe / 64m

Cast: Barbara Kent, John Holland, Dorothy Christy, Crauford Kent, Lillian Rich, James P. Burtis, Larry Steers, Lloyd Whitlock

Rating: 5/10 – there are plenty of suspects, but just who did kill less than popular stage actor Alvin Merle (Kent), and why?; a locked room murder mystery where everyone with a motive is assembled Agatha Christie-style at the end to reveal the murderer, Grief Street is a brash, enjoyable whodunnit whose villain will be obvious to anyone who’s seen more than a handful of similarly plotted movies, but the movie more than makes up for this thanks to spirited performances from its cast, and Thorpe’s relaxed directing style.

The Outer Gate (1937) / D: Raymond Cannon / 63m

Cast: Ralph Morgan, Kay Linaker, Ben Alexander, Eddie Acuff, Charles Brokaw

Rating: 5/10 – when an up-and-coming employee (Alexander) is sent to prison for embezzlement, his employer (Morgan) is the first to believe in his guilt, but when the truth is revealed and he’s released from jail, the employee sets about getting his revenge; directed by Cannon in a crude, rudimentary way, The Outer Gate is nevertheless a movie that plays to the strengths of its gosh-you-won’t-believe-it screenplay, Morgan’s low-key, passive performance, and a surprisingly grim fatalism, all of which make it more intriguing than it appears to be on the face of things.

High Voltage (1929) / D: Howard Higgin / 63m

aka Wanted

Cast: William Boyd, Carole Lombard, Owen Moore, Phillips Smalley, Billy Bevan, Diane Ellis

Rating: 4/10 – when a bus load of passengers is stranded thanks to heavy snow, they take refuge in an abandoned church, only to find they’re not alone; a dialogue heavy drama made in the early days of the Talkies, High Voltage is a well acted if dreary experience that tries hard to make itself interesting but falls short thanks to its focus on (already) stereotypical characters and the period’s need for a neat, everything-wrapped-up-satisfactorily ending.

CHIPS (2017) / D: Dax Shepard / 101m

Cast: Michael Peña, Dax Shepard, Vincent D’Onofrio, Rosa Salazar, Jessica McNamee, Adam Brody, Isiah Whitlock Jr, Kristen Bell, Justin Chatwin

Rating: 4/10 – rookie motorcycle cop Jon Baker (Shepard) is teamed up with newly transferred Frank Poncharello (Peña) in the California Highway Patrol, and soon finds himself tracking down a bunch of dirty cops led by veteran Ray Kurtz (D’Onofrio); forty years on from its origin as a TV series, CHIPS is given a big screen reboot thanks to fanboy Shepard, but is only moderately successful in its efforts to drag the show kicking and screaming into the 21st century, leaving it completely dependent on how you feel about Shepherd and Peña as a comedy duo, and its less than inspired script.

Motive for Revenge (1935)

23 Friday Jun 2017

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D: Burt P. Lynwood / 60m

Cast: Donald Cook, Irene Hervey, Doris Lloyd, Edwin Maxwell, Le Strange Millman, Russell Simpson, John Kelly, Edwin Argus, Billy West, Wheeler Oakman, Fern Emmett

During the Thirties, crime dramas were a staple ingredient of the moviegoer’s diet, with studios falling over themselves to supply a waiting public with as much product as they could possibly want (and then a lot more besides). Of course, these crime dramas ranged in terms of the production values afforded them, the quality of their scripts, the skill of their directors, and the abilities of their casts. At the independent end of the ladder, these kinds of movies were made fast, cheaply, and with no further ambition than to get into cinemas as quickly as possible, and make as much money as possible before settling into obscurity. Often they were entirely forgettable, with plots and storylines and characters that blended into one, and the kind of resolutely upbeat endings that look and feel entirely cheesy and unrealistic to modern viewers.

Motive for Revenge is exactly that kind of crime drama. Made on a shoestring budget by Majestic Pictures, the movie suffers from an absurd, mind-boggling screenplay that makes you wonder if writer Stuart Anthony was on some serious medication when he wrote it, the kind of absentee direction from Lynwood that could imply he wasn’t even on set during the shoot, and enough woeful acting from its cast to make the viewer wince every few minutes (or sooner, depending on your tolerance). The movie crams a lot into its short running time, but hardly any of it makes any sense, and even more of it will have the average viewer shaking their head in disbelief. Viewers familiar with this type of movie, however, should derive some measure of appreciation for the efforts of all involved in putting this movie together. Because, against all the odds – or maybe in spite of them – Motive for Revenge is much more enjoyable than it seems.

Again, the screenplay is mind-boggling. Barry Webster (Cook) is a bank teller who decides to rob his own bank in order to provide a luxury lifestyle for his wife, Muriel (Hervey). He does this because his mother-in-law (Lloyd) keeps making nasty comments about his lack of money and ambition. Unable to tell his mother-in-law to take a hike, he steals enough money to go on a spending spree with his wife before he’s caught and sentenced to seven years in jail. At first, Muriel tells Barry she’ll wait for him, but it’s not long before a fellow inmate is showing him a newspaper headline announcing her impending divorce from Barry. Then she marries jealous businessman, William King (Maxwell). It’s not a happy marriage, but it’s too late to back out. Meanwhile, Barry falls in with the wrong crowd in jail and when he’s released he uses them to plot his revenge against his ex-wife and her new husband. He goes to their home, and during a confrontation in which all three have guns in their hands, King is killed. Barry goes into hiding, Muriel attempts to take the blame for her husband’s death, and the movie gets sillier and sillier (except for a pretty good speedboat chase that’s marred by some awkward looking model work at the end).

There’s a lot more to it, but despite all its shortcomings, and faults that practically leap off the screen in their efforts to draw attention to themselves, the movie has a certain energy and presence about itself. Yes, the direction is awful, and yes, there’s enough wooden acting going on to give the viewer secondary splinters, but even with all this, the movie has a rough charm that makes up for all its failures. The early scenes zip by at a fair old lick as it sets up the movie’s second half and the murder mystery – just who did shoot William King? (You’ll never guess) – that will become the focus of the remainder of the movie. But along the way the characters all behave strangely, with some motivations and decisions made seemingly at whim, or out of the blue (you get the sense that Anthony was making it all up with no idea of how to piece it all together). And yet with all that, the movie retains a strange, almost hypnotic appeal. You have to keep watching just to see how silly it can get.

On that level, it doesn’t disappoint. Cook and Hervey act like a married couple who spend most of their time avoiding each other, while Maxwell, as the paranoid, controlling second husband, adopts a perma-scowl throughout and chews on his lines as if he didn’t like the taste of them. There’s solid, unspectacular, but also deathless support from the wonderfully named Millman as a District Attorney who won’t look further than Muriel for the killer, and there are “comic” interludes featuring Kelly and Argus as the cops’ answer to Dumb and Dumber. These interludes aren’t as funny as some of the more unintentional comic moments in the movie, especially if they involve Cook having to walk and talk at the same time, but they do break up the otherwise po-faced narrative. With the benefit of over eighty years of hindsight, Motive for Revenge is easily the kind of movie that will be overlooked by casual viewers, and dismissed by afficionados of this sort of thing. But that would be unfair, as the movie – and quite perversely – has a way of worming its way under your defences and making an impact. You won’t necessarily want to see it a second time, but as an example of a movie that shouldn’t make any kind of an impact at all, it’s well worth seeking out.

Rating: 3/10 – unashamedly bad, Motive for Revenge is not a minor gem or in need of critical reappraisal, but a good old-fashioned Thirties crime drama that is strangely entertaining, and despite its seemingly best efforts to appear otherwise; a movie where looking past the obvious brings its own unexpected reward, it’s a rare occasion where a movie somehow manages to transcend its low-budget origins and decides, in the words of Madonna, to “strike a pose and let’s get to it”.

NOTE: There is currently no trailer available for Motive for Revenge.

Shimmer Lake (2017)

21 Wednesday Jun 2017

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D: Oren Uziel / 86m

Cast: Benjamin Walker, Rainn Wilson, Stephanie Sigman, John Michael Higgins, Wyatt Russell, Adam Pally, Mark Rendall, Rob Corddry, Ron Livingston, Angela Vint, Isobel Dove

A low-key yet bristling thriller, Shimmer Lake – another title that is atmospheric yet has little relation to the main plot of the movie – tells its story in reverse. And so we see Andy Sikes (Wilson) in the basement of his own home, and yet he’s clearly trying to avoid being discovered. Upstairs is his brother, Zeke (Walker), the town sheriff. Soon we realise that there’s been a bank robbery, and Andy is involved, along with two other men, Ed Burton (Russell) and Chris Morrow (Rendall). It transpires that Andy has  the money from the robbery, and Zeke is certain that he’s planning to meet up with Ed. He also has to contend with two FBI agents, Walker and Biltmore (Corddry, Livingston), whose approach to the investigation and the hunt for the three men appears less than serious. When they find the body of Judge Dawkins (Higgins), a wider conspiracy involving the death of Burton’s son begins to come to light. Later that night, having avoided being seen, Andy meets up with Ed’s wife, Steph (Sigman), but their meeting doesn’t go the way Andy had hoped.

The day before, Dawkins demands the return of an incriminating tape from Burton, Morrow’s role in the robbery is revealed, Steph deliberately injures herself before talking to Zeke and the FBI agents, and further details of the conspiracy are revealed. The day ends with the death of Dawkins and Andy coming into possession of the money. The previous day, Chris is lured out of hiding by Steph, and the two meet at a motel. Dawkins appears, anxious to secure the return of the tape. Steph has the money from the robbery and she makes Dawkins hide it until it’s safe. Andy hears that Zeke was shot during the robbery, and the FBI agents arrive in town. And on the day before that, all the various threads that have spun out along the ensuing days are shown their origins as we learn what happened during the robbery.

It’s easy to like the structure that first-time writer/director Oren Uziel has employed in telling his tale of small-town corruption, greed, and revenge, but while Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) is an obvious reference point, sadly – and despite the best of intentions – Shimmer Lake doesn’t match it for inventiveness, style, or sheer narrative trickery. Part of the issue is the pacing, with stretches of the movie feeling as if they’ve been played out beyond their natural length. The early scenes involving the FBI agents are tonally at odds with the rest of the movie, as if Uziel doesn’t trust their inclusion unless they’re cracking wise and providing fleeting moments of comedy. This makes them seem like idiots in a movie where everyone else is being resolutely serious. As the movie progresses and they appear less and less, it’s a minor blessing for the material that they do so, and the tone improves immensely.

But if there’s one main, altogether obvious, problem with Shimmer Lake, it’s the lack of any characters to sympathise with or root for. Zeke is a laconic, quietly thoughtful sheriff who lacks any charisma, and thanks to Walker’s laidback performance, often looks bored by having to mount an investigation in the first place. His deputy, Reed Ethington (Pally), is someone who manages to stay just this side of “dim-witted”, but it’s a close-run thing. Andy is shown initially as panicked, which might have provoked some sympathy, but as the movie reveals more and more of his past, we discover he’s a bit of an arrogant prick, and any sympathy dissipates. Chris is an obvious patsy, Steph is the Lady Macbeth character amongst it all, Ed is the “mastermind” who can’t tell an 8 when he sees it, and Dawkins is the devious bank manager whose private “foibles” act as a catalyst for the bank robbery itself (there’s a back story involving the death of Burton’s son, and this is ostensibly the reason for everything that happens, but Uziel refers to it as a motivator far too often for it to maintain any effectiveness).

What we’re left with is a thriller that spends too much time explaining itself, and not enough time posing a broader mystery than the one we can see in front of us. In telling a reverse-linear story, Uziel does well to hide the various inter-connections and relationships that drive the story backward (forward?), but by the time all is revealed, the viewer is unlikely to care too much, and a last-minute revelation (which is meant to be clever in a “ah-ha-you-didn’t-see-that-coming” kind of way), lacks the impact needed for audiences to say to themselves, “now it all makes sense”. Instead, Uziel presents us with a patchwork of moods, tones, dramatic elements, comedic soundbites, and an unconvincing milieu where Zeke and Reed are the only cops in town, and Andy’s daughter, Sally (Dove), can hear the phrase “fat, f*cking bastard” and then apply it to Reed within the very next minute.

Despite the talented cast, and Jarin Blaschke’s often brooding cinematography, what we have here, ultimately, is a movie whose clever approach doesn’t amount to much, and will in all likelihood, frustrate and annoy anyone who watches it. The test of a good reverse storyline is if it plays just as well – or better – if you watch from end to beginning (or beginning to end – you get the idea). Shimmer Lake is certainly a movie that tries its best, but there are few rewards here for the casual viewer, and for die-hard fans of this particular sub-genre of thrillers, too much will remain obvious no matter how much time Uziel has spent in obscuring things. Like so many thrillers with a clever central conceit that isn’t as rigorously applied as it needs to be, Shimmer Lake is more of a disappointment than a triumph.

Rating: 4/10 – what could have been a tense, nail-biting experience is reduced to that of a tepid, unfocused drama, and though Shimmer Lake takes some narrative risks, they’re not enough to make things any more rewarding; shallow at times, and with a casual disregard for any empathy that might be shown towards its characters, the movie is yet another feature that looks good on the surface but lacks the necessary substance underneath to keep audiences hooked until the end.

Spotlight on a Murderer (1961)

18 Sunday Jun 2017

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D: Georges Franju / 92m

Original title: Pleins feux sur l’assassin

Cast: Pierre Brasseur, Pascale Audret, Marianne Koch, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Dany Saval, Jean Babilée, Georges Rollin, Jean Ozenne, Philippe Leroy, Gérard Buhr, Maryse Martin

Comte de Kerloguen (Brasseur) is dying. He knows it, his housekeeper knows it, his lawyer knows it, even his stable hand knows it. But the rest of his family don’t. So when the fateful moment arrives, the Comte does what all good patriarchs do: he hides himself away in a secret room in the family chateau, a place that nobody knows about and where his body is unlikely to ever be found. When his lawyer assembles the family to inform them of the Comte’s disappearance, he has odd news for them. While the Comte can be declared legally dead, his actual disappearance means that his estate can’t be divided amongst his family for another five years. And until that time, the family are fiancially responsible for the upkeep of the chateau.

Naturally, this doesn’t sit too well with most of the family, but as most of them don’t have the wherewithal to maintain the chateau, when Micheline (Saval), the girlfriend of youngest son Jean-Marie (Trintignant) suggests they make the chateau a tourist attraction and charge people to visit the place, the idea is adopted tout suite. But as the plan goes ahead and amongst other things, the building has a speaker system installed, a series of unfortunate “accidents” sees death take the lives of some of the family, until it becomes clear that one of them is determined to be the sole beneficiary of the Comte’s  estate in five years’ time.

The third feature from director Georges Franju, who had made the creepy Eyes Without a Face the year before, Spotlight on a Murderer reunites Franju with thriller writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac in their tried and trusted tale of a family being riven from within when greed prompts one of them to dispatch the others in order to be the sole claimant of their wealthy antecedent’s estate. The key phrase here is “tried and trusted”, as this is a movie that does its best to employ a sinister vibe once the deaths begin to mount up, and all to direct attention away from the flaccid nature of the plot. Said vibe is employed to good effect, but the material itself is riddled with longueurs, and the pacing is awkward, with some scenes ending abruptly as if the team of Boileau-Narcejac haven’t thought them through fully, or don’t have so much to say.

It’s a problem, too, that the storyline, even for 1961, is “old hat”, with the script attempting to emulate or outshine previous old dark house mysteries. But thanks to a tepid script and Franju’s erratic commitment to the narrative, the movie lacks the necessary inventiveness to place it over and above the myriad of similar features. There’s only one moment that manages to overcome the indifference of the rest of the material, and that’s when the chateau’s speaker system picks up someone moving through the rooms. At first, there are only three people in the control room, and all three wonder the same thing: where is everyone else? And within a minute, everyone appears with them, leaving the audience in a quandary: if everyone is there, then it can’t be the murderer, can it? Or maybe, just maybe, the Comte isn’t as dead as we’ve all thought? Viewers who are paying attention will know the answer to this quandary, but for a brief couple of scenes the movie steps up a gear and becomes a real mystery thriller, complete with an atmosphere of dread.

The characters suffer too, being archetypes painted with broad brush strokes, from Koch’s earthy cousin, Edwige, to Audret’s easily exploited paranoiac, Jeanne. On occasion we get to learn a little bit more abut them all, but it’s never enough to help the viewer sympathise with them for more than a few minutes. The various deaths – aside from one – lack the impact needed to tighten the tension, and the whodunnit aspect of the tale generally takes a back seat to the trials and tribulations of the main characters. A blatant visual sleight-of-hand endeavours to wrong foot the viewer but again, does so only if the audience isn’t paying attention.

Spotlight on a Murderer wasn’t as well received as Eyes Without a Face, and it’s easy to see why. Regarded as a minor Franju movie by critics at the time, the movie has picked up its supporters over the years, but it remains a curio in terms of its gloomy mise en scene, and its place in the director’s career. There’s also the matter of Maurice Jarre’s less than inspired score, which tries to prop up the periods where the camera tries to make the chateau look menacing and/or atmospheric. The cast are competent enough, with Saval’s wild child girlfriend proving one of the movie’s few stellar accomplishments, while Franju sees fit to embrace rather than reject the scene where the murderer is apprehended (and which, amazingly, includes two moments of physical slapstick along the way). All in all, it’s a movie that proceeds in fits and starts and never really settles into a convincing groove – which is a shame, as there is clearly the potential there to make a movie that resonates and inspires dread to a much better degree.

Rating: 5/10 – despite the pedigree of its director, writers and cast, Spotlight on a Murderer is only a mildly successful thriller that squanders a lot of its running time with soap opera elements that feel out of place, and which don’t advance the plot in any meaningful way; proof again that even the most highly regarded of movie makers don’t always get it right.

NOTE: Alas, there isn’t an available trailer for Spotlight on a Murderer.

Monthly Roundup – May 2017

01 Thursday Jun 2017

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USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage (2016) / D: Mario Van Peebles / 130m

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Tom Sizemore, Matt Lanter, James Remar, Thomas Jane, Brian Presley, Yutaka Takeuchi, Johnny Wactor, Adam Scott Miller, Cody Walker, Weronika Rosati, Currie Graham

Rating: 4/10 – five days after it delivers the atomic weaponry that would be used against Japan, the USS Indianapolis is torpedoed and sunk, leaving around three hundred crewmen hundreds of miles from land and at the mercy of starvation, dehydration and worst of all, marauding sharks; the true story that gave rise to that monologue in Jaws (1975), USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage betrays its low budget and scaled back production values at almost every turn, and lacks the necessary intensity to make it work properly, though it does allow Cage the chance to give a slightly better performance than we’ve recently been used to.

His Lordship Goes to Press (1938) / D: Maclean Rogers / 80m

Cast: June Clyde, Hugh Williams, Leslie Perrins, Louise Hampton, Romney Brent, Aubrey Mallalieu

Rating: 4/10 – an American journalist (Clyde) travels to England to write a story about farming, and while she’s en route, insults an Earl (Williams) who decides to teach her a lesson, one that involves his posing as a farmer on his own estate; what could and should have been a light-hearted romantic comedy gets bogged by the mechanics of its plot, and two lead performances that aren’t as interesting to watch as those of the supporting cast, all of which, unfortunately, makes His Lordship Goes to Press easily forgettable.

Scooby-Doo! Shaggy’s Showdown (2017) / D: Matt Peters / 79m

Cast: Frank Welker, Grey Griffin, Matthew Lillard, Kate Micucci, Melissa Villasenor, Carlos Alazraqui, Gary Cole, Kari Wahlgren, Stephen Tobolowsky, Max Charles

Rating: 7/10 – the latest outing for the Mystery Gang sees them head out west to a small town haunted by the terrifying ghost of Dapper Jack – who just happens to be one of Shaggy’s ancestors; one of the better entries in Warner Bros. ongoing series, Scooby-Doo! Shaggy’s Showdown is sharp, funny, has an intriguing storyline, and throws in more suspects than usual, making it slightly more difficult than usual to spot the villain (though you might argue it’s the person who gave the go ahead for two songs to be included).

Love Is the Perfect Crime (2013) / D: Jean-Marie Larrieu, Arnaud Larrieu / 110m

Original title: L’amour est un crime parfait

Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Karin Viard, Maïwenn, Sara Forestier, Denis Podalydès

Rating: 7/10 – Marc (Amalric) is a literature professor at the University of Lausanne who first becomes embroiled in the disappearance of a student, and then finds himself falling in love with her stepmother (Maïwenn); Amalric’s arrogant but often childish professor is matched by Viard’s casual malevolence as his sister, and while Love Is the Perfect Crime plays out like a mystery (that’s actually quite easy to solve), it’s really a drama about one man’s initially unwitting, then complicit attempt at self-destruction, a storyline that offers much in the way of subdued Gallic charm.

Contract to Kill (2016) / D: Keoni Waxman / 90m

Cast: Steven Seagal, Russell Wong, Jemma Dallender, Mircea Drambareanu, Sergiu Costache, Ghassan Bouz, Andrei Stanciu

Rating: 3/10 – a Mexican drug cartel helps Arab terrorists smuggle weapons and personnel into America, but they don’t reckon on CIA/DEA agent John Harmon (Seagal) and his team interfering with their plans; Contract to Kill is a Steven Seagal movie, with all that that entails, including Seagal himself reciting dialogue as if he was reading it off the back of a cereal box, the same tired, poorly edited actions sequences we’ve seen a dozen times or more in the past, and a plot that makes no coherent sense no matter how closely you examine it.

Aloha Scooby-Doo! (2005) / D: Tim Maltby / 74m

Cast: Frank Welker, Casey Kasem, Mindy Cohn, Grey DeLisle, Ray Bumatai, Tia Carrere, Teri Garr, Mario Lopez, Adam West

Rating: 5/10 – when Daphne (DeLisle) gets the chance to be a clothes designer for a company based in Hawaii, inevitably the rest of the gang go with her – and find themselves investigating the mystery of the ghostly Wiki Tiki; not the best movie in the series (the villain is so obvious it’s almost insulting), Aloha Scooby-Doo! strives to have Daphne in a bikini as often as possible, struggles to make its central mystery interesting, features little Tiki monsters that are funny rather than scary, and direction by Maltby that makes you wonder how involved he was throughout.

Personal Shopper (2016)

24 Wednesday May 2017

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D: Olivier Assayas / 105m

Cast: Kristen Srewart, Lars Eidinger, Sigrid Bouaziz, Anders Danielsen Lie, Ty Olwin, Nora von Waldstätten, Benjamin Biolay, Audrey Bonnet, Pascal Rambert

Maureen Carmichael (Stewart) is an American living in Paris whose twin brother, Lewis, has recently died of a heart attack, the result of a congenital defect that Maureen has as well. The pair made a pact when they were younger that if one of them died, the other would wait to receive a sign that the deceased had passed on to an afterlife. Maureen is committed to doing this, and she stays for a night in a chateau that her brother purchased before he died. She experiences strange phenomena while she’s there but isn’t sure it was Lewis that was causing it. She returns to the chateau again and this time she has a supernatural experience that is terrifying, but which doesn’t seem to involve her brother.

At a loss as to whether or not she should stop waiting for a sign from Lewis, Maureen focuses on her work as a personal shopper to a celebrity called Kyra (von Waldstätten). Maureen spends her time in exclusive boutiques, handpicking clothes and shoes and accessories so that Kyra always appears glamorous and ahead of the fashion game. In many ways it’s a thankless role, but it pays well enough for Maureen to continue waiting for Lewis to “get in touch”. One day, after dropping off some items for Kyra, Maureen receives the first in a series of mysterious text messages from an unknown sender. The texts tease her into thinking that she may be conversing with a ghost, or some kind of mischievous spirit, as the sender seems to know a lot about her and the trips she’s making.

The texts also prompt Maureen into doing something that Kyra has forbidden her to do: namely, wear the clothes and outfits that Maureen has chosen for her. One night, Maureen dresses up as Kyra, an act that is emotionally fulfilling but which also has unexpected ramifications. A visit to Kyra’s apartment reveals a shocking surprise, as does a rendezvous with her anonymous texter, all of which leave Maureen wondering if she knows anymore what is real and what isn’t.

Part ghost story, part thriller, part reflection of celebrity culture, and part exploration of the nature of grief, Personal Shopper is a movie that comes laden with purpose and promise, a Gallic hodge-podge of ideas and themes that sometimes mesh seamlessly together, but which also prove frustratingly obtuse when clarity would have been a better approach to take. The narrative moves awkwardly at times between its trio of storylines – Maureen searching for proof of her brother’s existence after death, Maureen co-opting Kyra’s identity for her own as an outlet for her grief, Maureen dealing with her phone stalker – but at least gives each storyline equal weight, and provides Kristen Stewart with her best role yet. It’s a movie that attempts to say much, and for the most part it does so with skill and determination, but any messages it wants to send – like it’s unknown texter – don’t always have the depth to match their weight.

In exploring the nature and the need of Maureen’s sense of loss, Assayas keeps the focus on Maureen’s belief in an afterlife, used as much as a reason for her to persist as to exist, and as a doleful foreshadowing of the scenes where she’s plagued by text by an unknown admirer. These two storylines blend well together, and Assayas is on firm ground when he plays up the supernatural possibility that Maureen is in touch with a spirit (albeit one that seems remarkably human still). He exploits Maureen’s naïve gullibility, and Stewart’s guileless performance anchors the character’s desperate need to believe that her brother isn’t just dead. But while the question of the mystery texter’s identity is rarely in doubt – the clues are there – Assayas does what so many other directors have done in recent years, and shows the texts on Maureen’s phone, often holding the shot while we wait for each bait and response. If these scenes are meant to provide some much needed tension, then Assayas has badly misjudged his own sense of what works and what doesn’t, as they only serve to derail the narrative and undermine the visual acuity of the rest of the movie.

Ironically, the storyline that doesn’t work so well is the one that concerns Maureen’s job as a personal shopper. Offering a jejune commentary on modern celebrity culture, Assayas predictably makes Kyra a “monster”, and Maureen just a cog in the machine that keeps it all going. Despite her reservations about the job, Maureen is keen to remind the people she buys or borrows clothes from that she is the same size and shape as her employer, but affects a “best not” approach when encouraged to try on any of Kyra’s outfits. When finally, at the urging of her mystery texter she tries on one of these outfits it leads to an expression of physical pleasure that is impactful by virtue of its being so unexpected. But having Maureen dress up as someone else and finding fulfillment isn’t something that resonates as much as perhaps Assayas intended. Instead it’s a moment where narrative conviction gives way to unnecessary dramatic licence.

The muddled question of which is Maureen’s dominant personality aside, Personal Shopper is also a mystery that operates on two levels, with the supernatural aspects handled well but losing importance as the movie progresses, and the identity of the texter taking centre stage by the movie’s midpoint but fizzling out once Maureen makes her shocking discovery. By dovetailing these two elements, Assayas does make the bulk of the movie intriguing (until he reveals the truth behind everything), and while as mentioned before, they’re the movie’s strongest components, this is largely due to the atmosphere that Assayas creates around them, rather than any intensity that might arise naturally out of the material. It’s the same for the thriller elements that come into play late on: on a technical level they’re handled extremely well, but they lack a connection to what’s gone before and remain adrift from the rest of the material as a result.

Stewart gives easily her best performance so far, inhabiting the twin worlds of Maureen’s passive/more passive existence with skill and intelligence. Hers is a powerful study of a woman whose connection to the real world is as remote as the probability that her brother will make contact with her. It’s a trenchant, incisive portrayal, and Assayas exploits Stewart’s commitment to the character every chance he gets, shooting in close up wherever possible and getting the actress to express every trace of Maureen’s internal confusion. It’s Stewart’s movie, and she takes full advantage of the opportunity given to her. But unfortunately she remains, like the audience, subject to the narrative whims of the material, and Assayas’ random allocation of depth and importance to the material as a whole. This is definitely a good movie, but lurking somewhere inside it, there’s a potentially great movie that, like Lewis, is just waiting to be heard from.

Rating: 7/10 – a movie that is likely to leave many viewers scratching their heads in their efforts to derive satisfaction from its messy screenplay, Personal Shopper is a case of a movie taking two steps forward and then one step back in its approach to the material; Assayas and Stewart work extremely well together, but the French auteur has fashioned better movies in the past, and even though he won the Best Director award at Cannes (tying with Cristian Mungiu), this is not the best example of what he can achieve.

Monthly Roundup – March 2017

01 Saturday Apr 2017

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Fist Fight (2017) / D: Richie Keen / 91m

Cast: Ice Cube, Charlie Day, Tracy Morgan, Jillian Bell, Dean Norris, Christina Hendricks, Kumail Nanjiani, Dennis Haysbert, JoAnna Garcia Swisher, Alexa Nisenson

Rating: 3/10 – meh; lame on levels you wouldn’t have thought possible (Bell’s character wants to have sex with a pupil – and doesn’t think it’s wrong), Fist Fight is a virtually laugh-free exercise that wastes the time of everyone concerned, and its unsuspecting audience.

I.T. (2016) / D: John Moore / 95m

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, James Frecheville, Anna Friel, Stefanie Scott, Michael Nyqvist

Rating: 3/10 – meh; lame on levels you wouldn’t have thought possible (Brosnan’s character is a tech mogul who doesn’t know the first thing about the tech he’s promoting), I.T. is a virtually tension-free exercise that wastes the time of everyone concerned, and its unsuspecting audience.

Collide (2016) / D: Eran Creevy / 99m

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Felicity Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley, Marwan Kenzari, Aleksandar Jovanovic, Christian Rubeck, Erdal Yildiz, Clemens Schick, Johnny Palmiero

Rating: 6/10 – Hoult’s backpacker finds himself mixed up with rival gangsters Hopkins and Kingsley, and using his driving skills to stay one step ahead of both of them; the focus is squarely on the action, which is a good thing, as Collide‘s plot is as all over the place as the various cars Hoult throws about on German autobahns, but when it’s bad it’s Hopkins intoning “I’m the destroyer of worlds” bad.

Jimmy the Gent (1934) / D: Michael Curtiz / 67m

Cast: James Cagney, Bette Davis, Allen Jenkins, Alan Dinehart, Alice White, Arthur Hohl, Mayo Methot

Rating: 7/10 – in an effort to woo back his former secretary (Davis), Cagney’s brash racketeer attempts to put a classier spin on his finding “lost” heirs business, and finds himself mellowing when a case challenges his compromised ethics; worth watching just for the pairing of Cagney and Davis, Jimmy the Gent is a typically fast-paced, razor sharp romantic comedy that may seem predictable nowadays but is nevertheless a minor gem that is effortlessly entertaining.

Kong: Skull Island (2017) / D: Jordan Vogt-Roberts / 118m

Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John Goodman, John C. Reilly, Thomas Mann, Corey Hawkins, Toby Kebbell, Tian Jing, John Ortiz, Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Richard Jenkins, Terry Notary

Rating: 5/10 – an expedition to a mysterious island in the Pacific yields dangers galore for its participants – Jackson’s crazed Army Colonel, Hiddleston’s ex-SAS captain, Larson’s anti-war photographer, Goodman’s duplicitous government official et al – not the least of which is an angry hundred-foot gorilla called Kong; while Kong: Skull Island may be visually arresting, and its action sequences pleasingly vivid, the lack of a decent plot and characters with any kind of inner life makes the movie yet another franchise-building letdown.

The Rezort (2015) / D: Steve Barker / 93m

Cast: Dougray Scott, Jessica De Gouw, Martin McCann, Elen Rhys, Claire Goose, Jassa Ahluwalia, Lawrence Walker

Rating: 4/10 – after a viral outbreak that turned its victims into flesh-hungry zombies is contained, an island resort opens that offers survivors the chance to hunt down and exterminate zombies with little or no risk of harm – but the resort is targeted from the inside and a group of holiday makers find themselves becoming the hunted; a strong idea that runs out of steam by the halfway mark, The Rezort leaves its cast stranded with a standard “run from this place to the next and look desperate” approach that drains the movie of any tension and makes it all look as generic as the next zombie movie.

Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday (1939) / D: Walter Forde / 90m

Cast: Gordon Harker, Alistair Sim, Linden Travers, Wally Patch, Edward Chapman, Philip Leaver, Kynaston Reeves

Rating: 7/10 – a seaside holiday for Inspector Hornleigh (Harker) and his trusty sidekick, Sergeant Bingham (Sim), leads inevitably to a murder case involving an inheritance and a criminal outfit who target their victims with the unwitting aid of döppelgangers; the second of three movies featuring Harker’s irascible policeman and Sim’s less-than-sharp second-in-command, Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday is a simple, easy-going, undemanding bit of fun that manages to combine drama and comedy to good effect, and which still holds up nearly eighty years later.

Inspector Hornleigh Gets on It (1941) / D: Walter Forde / 87m

aka Mail Train

Cast: Gordon Harker, Alistair Sim, Phyllis Calvert, Edward Chapman, Charles Oliver, Raymond Huntley, Percy Walsh, David Horne

Rating: 7/10 – despite being sidelined from regular detective work through a stint investigating thefts at an army barracks, Hornleigh and Bingham find themselves on the trail of Fifth Columnists; the last in the short-lived series, Inspector Hornleigh Goes to It is as sprightly and entertaining as the previous two instalments, and allows Huntley to make this priceless observation: “One of them’s tall, bald, looks intelligent but isn’t. The other’s short, sour-faced, doesn’t look intelligent but is.”

Omega Rising: Remembering Joe D’Amato (2017) / D: Eugenio Ercolani, Guiliano Emanuele / 69m

With: Joe D’Amato (archive footage), Luigi Montefiori, Michele Soavi, Claudio Fragasso, Rossella Drudi, Antonio Tentori, Carlo Maria Cordio, Mark Thompson-Ashworth

Rating: 3/10 – Aristide Massaccesi (aka Joe D’Amato)’s career in movies is assessed by some of the people who worked with him closely when he first started out; at sixty-nine minutes, Omega Rising: Remembering Joe D’Amato is a documentary that feels like it lasts twice as long, thanks to Ercolani and Emanuele’s decision to let their interviewees ramble on at length (and usually about themselves instead of D’Amato), and a random assortment of clips that don’t always illustrate what’s being talked about.

Get Out (2017)

17 Friday Mar 2017

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D: Jordan Peele / 104m

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel, Lakeith Stanfield, Stephen Root, LilRel Howery

Chris Washington (Kaluuya) is a young, gifted photographer whose work is beginning to be noticed. He’s also black and in a relationship with Rose Armitage (Williams), who is white. Invited by her parents to come stay for the weekend, Chris is anxious about meeting them, fearing they might be uncomfortable with their daughter dating a black man. But Rose reassures him, and tells him that her parents haven’t a racist bone in either of their bodies, and if he could have, her father would have voted a third time for Barack Obama. They set off, but along the way their car collides with a deer, causing some damage but not enough to stop them from reaching Rose’s parents’ home. Once there, her parents – Missy (Keener) and Dean (Whitford) – greet them both warmly, but Chris is perplexed by the odd behaviour exhibited by the Armitages’ housekeeper and gardener, Georgina (Gabriel) and Walter (Henderson), who are both black.

Later that evening Chris meets Rose’s brother, Jeremy (Jones), whose behaviour is provocative and aggressive. He also continues to observe Georgina and Walter behaving strangely. When Missy persuades Chris into sitting with her, he finds that she’s hypnotising him, and he ends up in the Sunken Place, a limbo he can’t return from. At least, that’s what he believes, as he wakes the next morning, confused about what’s happened to him but finding his smoking habit is now cured. He also finds his mobile phone has been somehow disconnected from its charger. At an annual get together that the Armitages hold for their friends, Chris is surprised to see another black man arrive with a much older white woman. But the black man behaves just as oddly as Georgina and Walter, even going so far as to grab Chris and yell at him to “get out”. Chris voices his suspicions that there is something sinister going on, and Rose agrees to leave with him. But when Chris discovers evidence that makes him scared for his life, leaving proves to be far more difficult than he could have ever imagined.

Ever since its debut at the Sundance Festival back in January this year, Get Out has attracted a lot of attention for being a horror movie that takes a satirical look at contemporary racial attitudes in the good ole US of A. The movie certainly paints a satirical portrait of white liberal hubris that’s hard to ignore, but its basic premise – once it’s revealed – plants the movie firmly in paranoid thriller territory. So while there are some standard horror tropes on display, they take a firm backseat to the mystery that is carefully developed by first-time writer/director Jordan Peele, and which proves far more satisfying for its Twilight Zone stylings than for any horror trappings Get Out may be trying to appropriate.

This isn’t to say that the movie is unsure of just what kind of a movie it wants to be, far from it. It’s just that appearances can be deceiving, and Peele instills his tale of racial profiling and assimilation with so many genuinely unsettling moments that mistaking Get Out for a horror movie is only natural – and that’s without its ultra-violent, cathartic final fifteen minutes. But in terms of Peele’s acidulous look at the state of racism in modern day America, the movie is on much firmer ground. Chris’s fear that Rose’s parents won’t approve of him reflects the lingering sense of outrage over miscegenation that still resonates within the US. Despite all the advances made since the Civil Rights movement in the Sixties, Peele is saying these attitudes still prevail, subconsciously perhaps, but then that’s the point: they’ve never really gone away, and they never will. Whisper it if you must, but racism is endemic to the American psyche.

That’s a pretty blatant way of putting it, but Peele is much more subtle than that, and finds various clever ways of getting his message across. This allows the movie to flesh out its subplots – notions surrounding the nuclear family, self-determinism, and social acceptance – unencumbered by the need to be forthright or didactic. Peele is confident enough in his central narrative that he can give these subplots their due, while also playing around – successfully – with the movie’s tone. It starts off as a relationship drama, slightly anecdotal, but set up in such a way that Rose’s parents seem like just another liberal white couple with awkward yet good intentions. The introduction of Walter and Georgina and their odd behaviour allows the thriller elements to begin to take centre stage, and Peele handles the growing uncertainty of what’s really happening with a sureness of touch that’s surprising in someone making this kind of movie for the first time.

Following on, the movie descends into paranoid conspiracy territory, with Chris’s fears amplified by each successive clue he discovers, and with each one serving to reinforce his paranoia. And then we’re in full-on horror mode, as Peele pulls out all the stops to give the viewer a rousing, blood-soaked resolution. Peele displays complete control over the material, keeping each tonal shift feeling organic and unforced. And he keeps the irony spread throughout the movie, allowing it to show itself and act as a counterpoint to the serious nature of the overall material. But Peele’s comedic background won’t be denied either, and there are times when the movie is flat out funny. This is largely due to the inclusion of Chris’s friend Rod (Howery), a Transport Security Administration (TSA) officer who acts as the movie’s comic relief. Again, it’s a measure of Peele’s confidence in his material that he unites these disparate elements and makes them mesh together to such good effect.

But while there is much to recommend Get Out, Peele does drop the ball at times, with some scenes feeling unnecessary or out-of-place – the car-deer collision and its racist cop aftermath, a telephone conversation between Rose and Rod – and his command of the camera (one of this movie’s key strengths) failing him at key moments. But these don’t harm the movie insomuch as they draw attention to themselves when they occur, making for a handful of jarring moments that crop up here and there. At all other times, Peele and his crew, including DoP Toby Oliver, editor Gregory Plotkin, and production designer Rusty Smith, combine to make Get Out one of the boldest and most assured first feature’s for some time.

Peele is aided immeasurably too by his talented cast, with the UK’s Kaluuya giving a measured, yet nervy performance, perfectly displaying the disquiet Chris experiences and the misgivings Chris feels during his visit. As Rose, Williams is all sunny smiles and reassuring glances, though her character also possesses a wicked sense of humour. Keener and Whitford bring an understated menace to proceedings, but Jones is once more on barely restrained psycho duties, leaving Henderson and Gabriel to add real unease to their portrayals. And then there’s Howery, stealing the movie with a succession of one-liners, all of which lead up to a bona fide final line classic: “Man, I told you not to go in that house.”

Rating: 8/10 – a multi-faceted racial drama/horror/mystery hybrid with satirical overtones (and undertones as well), Get Out is one of the more polished and convincing thrillers you’re likely to see in 2017; well thought out, constructed and delivered, its writer/director deserves all the praise that’s been coming his way, and if he wants to give up his comedy day job and make more movies like this one, then that will be absolutely fine.

A Cure for Wellness (2016)

10 Friday Mar 2017

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D: Gore Verbinski / 146m

Cast: Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth, Ivo Nandi, Adrian Schiller, Celia Imrie, Harry Groener, Tomas Norström, Ashok Mandanna, Magnus Krepper, Peter Benedict

An early contender for Most Disappointing Movie of the Year, A Cure for Wellness held so much promise that it was perhaps inevitable that it wouldn’t hold up under close scrutiny. The return to live action moviemaking of Gore Verbinski after the less-than-stellar The Lone Ranger (2013), the movie looked like it could be many different things all at once, and while that’s not usually a good sign, Verbinski’s skill as a director meant that the movie had a better than average chance of being a success. And with no other feature in 2017 looking as if it could match the movie’s style and sense of mysterious intrigue, it seemed equally inevitable that, whatever reaction it received, it was destined for cult status.

While it’s a little early to be certain if A Cure for Wellness will achieve cult status, right now one thing that can be said is that if you make it all the way through to the end, then your own status as a tenacious, determined individual is assured. Put simply, the movie has a similar effect that a stay at the mysterious wellness centre has on its patients: it slowly drains the life out of anyone watching it, and they end up a dried out husk (it’s one of the movie’s more clumsy revelations: that patients at the spa are dying from dehydration). Verbinski has attempted to make a gothic mystery, but in doing so, has forgotten that if you’re going to put people in mortal jeopardy, then the mortal jeopardy has got to be very frightening indeed, and the nature of the mystery has got to be fully explained and not rendered unintelligible thanks to its being unintelligible in the first place.

The mystery itself is quite a simple one: what’s going on at a secluded spa in the Swiss Alps? But on the back of this, Verbinski and screenwriter Justin Haythe have fashioned a tepid melodrama that twists and turns in an effort to be intriguing, but which unfortunately, is more likely to leave viewers irretrievably puzzled instead of satisfied. As the viewer slowly learns the deep, dark, terrible history of the area, and how its legacy is still being felt two hundred years later, the movie hints at even darker, more disturbing things going on behind the spa’s public façade. And to help the viewer unravel the mystery, we have DeHaan’s venal financial consultant, a man we know almost from the start to be duplicitous and corrupt. He’s our anti-hero, unsympathetic for the most part, and someone we wouldn’t want to identify with in a million years. It seems, though, that DeHaan knows this, and he doesn’t try to make the character likeable, or misunderstood, or deserving of anything other than our immediate mistrust. But that’s at the beginning; sadly though, very little of that changes as the movie wearyingly moves on.

In making DeHaan’s character, Lockhart, so unappealing, the movie lacks a central figure for the audience to care about (even when he’s strapped into a dentist’s chair with a drill about to do something horrible to him; the audience won’t be cringing because he’s the one in the chair, but because they’re imagining themselves in the chair). Lockhart is the intended fall guy, the patsy, and for long periods – and this is a movie that delights in long periods – his fate seems assured. Sent to retrieve his firm’s AWOL CEO, Pembroke (Groener), Lockhart encounters obstacle after obstacle until he’s reassured he can see his boss later that day. But a car crash leaves him with a broken leg and no immediate way of leaving the spa. And when he finally sees Pembroke, the man is initially reluctant to leave, though he does eventually agree he should return (there’s some nonsense about an imminent business merger and financial irregularities to be pinned on the CEO, but it’s all irrelevant to the main plot and serves merely as a contrived way of getting Lockhart to Switzerland).

The best laid plans rule comes into play at this point, and Pembroke is supposed to have suffered a relapse and retracted his decision. Lockhart becomes intrigued by the spa’s history – aided by a conveniently interested and knowledgeable patient, Victoria Watkins (Imrie) – and begins to piece together its tortuous past. He also becomes intrigued by the presence of Hannah (Goth), the youngest patient there by at least thirty years, and in the words of the spa’s director, Dr Volmer (Isaacs), “a special case”. Lockhart begins to suspect that Volmer is conducting clandestine experiments on the so-called patients, and that the water everyone drinks is contributing to the ill health that they’re all experiencing. As he begins to piece together the truth of what is happening, and Hannah’s role in it all, he makes another, more startling discovery, and soon finds his own life is in serious jeopardy.

There’s a lot more to the movie than the previous two paragraphs can cover, and that’s part of the problem; it tries to be so many different things, and never settles on one thing for good. As the plot unfolds, stranger and stranger things occur and are witnessed, but not with any sense that said stranger things might be meaningful, or dangerous necessarily to Lockhart’s health. There’s a scene late on where Lockhart is trapped (barring his head) in what looks like a reconstituted iron lung. He’s roughly intubated and live eels flow down into his body. If this was a normal, reality-based incident, Lockhart would die from the experience; in the aftermath however, Verbinski has DeHaan play him like he’s experiencing time dilation, or has taken one too many downers. And then, just as suddenly, he’s over it, because the movie needs a rousing climax – not that it gets it; it gets perverse body horror instead – rather than its anti-hero staring into space until he dies.

A Cure for Wellness is a movie that its creators have made inaccessible and obscure in terms of its narrative, and the tangled history of the spa and what happened on its site two hundred years before. Some viewers will manage to work out what’s going on and why, but it won’t make any difference if they’re right or wrong. Verbinski and Haythe are less concerned with making it all appear real than they are in trying to instill a palpable sense of dread into the material. But with too many scenes outstaying their welcome, or failing to advance the plot in any way, what the viewer is left with is a movie that often looks stunning – Eve Stewart’s production design deserves every superlative you can think of – but which doesn’t know when to shut up shop and say “that’s enough already”. By the time it reaches its faux-Hammer finale, the movie has lost any intensity it may have had, and Verbinski’s handling of the last ten to fifteen minutes lacks the necessary impact to make it work properly. It’s less “Oh my God!” and more “Oh my, is that the time?”

On the performance side, DeHaan enters into the spirit of things with obvious commitment (and no small amount of personal discomfort in some scenes), but even though he brings a great deal of sincerity to his role, it doesn’t help the viewer connect with Lockhart in any meaningful way, and when he does suffer at the hands of Volmer or others, there’s no emotional investment there on the viewer’s part. As the probably devious Volmer, Isaacs is a calmer presence than DeHaan, his urbane manner contrasting with DeHaan’s more aggressive portrayal, but all that is thrown away by the demands of the finale’s Gothic excesses. And as the ethereal Hannah, Goth gets to act all mysterious and coy in a performance that matches the part, but which isn’t allowed to develop beyond Hannah’s being a very curious damsel in distress. All three make the movie more palatable thanks to their involvement, but ultimately all three are just pawns moved about in awkward ways by Verbinski’s unconvincing approach to the material.

Rating: 5/10 – bloated and stagnant for long stretches, A Cure for Wellness looks impressive from the outside, but is fatally hollow on the inside; part psychological drama, part horror, it’s a movie whose storyline never really gels or feels organic, and which relies too heavily on its visuals to be anywhere near as effective as the thriller it’s meant to be.

Mini-Review: The 9th Life of Louis Drax (2016)

11 Saturday Feb 2017

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D: Alexandre Aja / 108m

Cast: Jamie Dornan, Aiden Longworth, Sarah Gadon, Aaron Paul, Oliver Platt, Molly Parker, Terry Chen, Julian Wadham, Barbara Hershey

Narrated by the title character, The 9th Life of Louis Drax introduces us to a nine year old boy who is always having near-fatal accidents. His ninth involves a cliff-top fall into the sea while on a picnic with his parents, Natalie (Gadon) and Peter (Paul). While Louis (Longworth) is rescued but trapped in a coma, mystery surrounds his father, who is missing, and his mother, who may or may not be telling the truth about what happened. While the police (Parker, Chen) investigate, Louis’s care falls under the remit of pediatric coma specialist Dr Allan Pascal (Dornan). He believes that Louis can recover in time, even though there are no signs to support this, Louis having been diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state.

Over time, Pascal finds himself growing closer to Natalie, while also delving into Louis’s past medical history, including his visits to a psychiatrist, Dr Perez (Platt). It soon becomes clear that there is a mystery surrounding Louis’s accidents, and letters begin appearing that seem to have been written by Louis – which is impossible. Meanwhile, in his coma, Louis is discovering truths about his life that he has been aware of but has suppressed. As the mystery begins to unravel, both Pascal and Louis come to realise that strange forces are at work, and that neither will remain unaffected by them.

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If you know nothing about The 9th Life of Louis Drax before settling down to watch it, then the direction that it takes in telling its story may baffle you or seem inexplicably weird. This will be due to the dreamlike fantasy world that Louis inhabits inside his coma, a place where a gravel-voiced sea creature acts as a guide in allowing Louis to understand his past, and what it means for the present. It’s these scenes which are both fascinating and frustrating in equal measure, though, as Max Minghella’s adaptation of the novel by Liz Jensen uses these scenes to explain – at length – what has been going on, and why. While they are necessary in terms of the plot, their presence does, however, make the movie a more sluggish beast (much like the sea creature itself) than it needs to be.

Indeed, the pacing is a problem throughout, with a rapid compendium of Louis’s previous eight “lives” given a Jeunet-esque run-through, before the movie settles down to tell a (mostly) more conventional story. But it only ever really convinces in terms of the relationship between Louis and Peter, while Pascal’s attraction to Natalie feels very much like a tired, hoary old plot device that’s never going to go anywhere (and despite a last-minute reveal that will either have you groaning or grinning – or both). Likewise, Louis is another of those precocious pre-teens whose grasp of human dynamics and adult language only occurs in the movies. The performances are adequate – Gadon’s Natalie though, looks culpable right from the start – but the movie itself is a pedestrian affair that lacks pace and energy, and struggles to make you care about Louis or the people around him.

Rating: 5/10 – some arresting visuals aside, The 9th Life of Louis Drax is a slow, unengaging movie that tries to present its story as a puzzle-box mystery, but fails to make it anything more than a run-of-the-mill thriller; with Aja seemingly unable to elevate the material to the level it needs to reach to be effective, this has to go down as a missed opportunity, and yet another movie that doesn’t do its source material any justice.

Poster of the Week – Julie (1956)

28 Wednesday Dec 2016

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At first glance, the poster for Julie appears to lack anything that would make the movie a must-see, but that would be doing it a disservice, because while it does seem like it’s not even trying, there’s much more going on than you might be aware of.

A thriller where Day’s terrified wife tries to escape the murderous clutches of her husband (played by Louis Jourdan), the poster adopts a psychological approach to the plot that actually makes the movie a more enticing prospect than it actually is. First, there’s the image of Julie and husband Lyle shown in the top left hand corner. There’s a possibility that they’re enjoying a romantic clinch, but upon closer inspection it’s clear that Day is trying to resist Jourdan’s “advances”. It’s all you need to realise that something’s not quite right between them, and it acts as a kind of shorthand for the central dynamic that the movie will expand on.

But where the poster really excels is with its depiction of Day running – for her life – along the zigzag line that dominates the poster (even more so than Day’s shocked face). With her efforts to escape Jourdan precipitated by that dangerous embrace, the poster shows her running away from him, and getting further and further away, but it also highlights her fear and distress at the situation she’s found herself in. Her body language makes it all too obvious. This is the crux of the movie: Julie’s attempt to escape from Lyle, to save herself, and the poster and its kinetic imagery perfectly encapsulates the urgency of the character’s need to find safety.

Less successful – or necessary – is the inclusion of Day’s face and its shocked expression. There’s a phrase: “over-egging the pudding” that applies perfectly here, as Day’s head takes up too much room on the poster as a whole, and almost takes attention away from the clever inclusion of the fleeing Julie and her descent of the zigzag line. She looks like she’s just been told something so shocking that she doesn’t know quite how to respond to it, and while it’s easy to understand the image’s inclusion, it dampens the carefully constructed impact of the rest of the poster.

For the rest of the poster, it’s business as usual, with the four main cast members listed on the left and Day’s name given a slight twist to differentiate her from everyone else (black lettering not green). The title is given a pleasing orange tone to temper the awkward font used, and there’s the unsurprising highlighting of Arwin Productions, Doris Day’s own production company. And only then do writer/director Andrew L. Stone and producer Martin Melcher get a look in.

Lastly, there’s the tagline, a question designed to pique the potential audience’s interest, and one whose answer can be construed as “something bad” (as though the images of Day running for her life weren’t a big enough clue). It’s the kind of question that will always get people thinking, and hopefully intrigued enough to watch the movie. Overall it’s a poster that successfully advertises the movie it’s been tasked with promoting, and it does so in a far more subtle, and impressive way than this one:

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Come and Find Me (2016)

02 Friday Dec 2016

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D: Zack Whedon / 112m

Cast: Aaron Paul, Annabelle Wallis, Garret Dillahunt, Dean Redman, Zachary Knighton, Enver Gjokaj, Terry Chen, Michael Kopsa

The Black List is an annual survey of the “most liked” motion picture screenplays not yet produced. 2012 was a pretty good year, with screenplays for the likes of Arrival, John Wick, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and Hell or High Water all making the list. But so did the screenplay for Come and Find Me, which just goes to show that the Black List doesn’t always get it right.

Written by Zack Whedon (brother of Josh), the script aims for being several things at once: a romantic drama, a thriller, and a mystery. In addition, it seeks to include meditations on what it is to really know someone, and the permanence of love. It’s an ambitious script, and one that has clear intentions to be more than just another run-of-the-mill why-has-my-girlfriend-suddenly-disappeared-when-we-were-so-happy-together? style of movie. Signs of these intentions can be seen throughout Come and Find Me’s drawn-out running time, but however effective these elements may have been on the page, it’s Whedon the director who sabotages any chances they had of being just as effective on the screen.

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At the beginning, Aaron Paul’s graphic web designer, David, gets on a bus where he spots an attractive blonde (Wallis). When she gets off the bus, so does he. He follows her. Eventually she turns and asks him bluntly if he’s following her. David looks appalled, says no, and carries on past her. Soon, she is following him until they reach a house that they both claim is where they live. David opens the door, the woman goes in without being invited. Inside they find a photograph that shows they know each other… Now, at this point, viewers who have seen way too many movies will know exactly what happens next. But for anyone who hasn’t seen way too many movies, this is an exciting start: how can two people live in the same house and apparently not know each other? Is this going to be some kind of variation on The Lake House (2006)?

Well, no, it isn’t. If Whedon had written a mystery drama that evolved from this opening sequence, and had kept the mystery unfolding piece by tantalising piece then Come and Find Me would have been an entertaining, enjoyable movie. But instead, he explains away this early “mystery” and goes in a different direction altogether – but one we’ve seen in the movies, and on television, and in books and plays, time and time again. And he doesn’t bring anything new to the table, or find a way of presenting his tale with any kind of visual flair or panache.

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After watching Come and Find Me for a while – say, twenty minutes – the average viewer will be wondering if the bland shooting style, with its dour lighting scheme and flat imagery, is going to continue throughout. Well, it does. Whedon’s framing is a major letdown (which makes you wonder if DoP Sean Steigemeier had any say in the matter), and he constantly shoots from a low angle, as if this will add to the drama unfolding on screen. But all it does is prove annoying and distracting, and make the average viewer wonder if Steigemeier’s back was okay, what with all this low level camera work. With its drab interior design adding to the movie’s visual problems, even when it heads out into the countryside, Whedon and his crew do their best to downplay any of Nature’s beauty. A shot from the top of a hillside looking toward a row of other hills should be a jaw-dropper; instead it’s literally, just a backdrop.

But even that isn’t the worst of the movie’s problems under Whedon’s stewardship. The central mystery, once it’s explained, proves to be underwhelming, but there’s still a long way to go as David engages in a less-than-riveting series of bluff and counter-bluff in his efforts to bring the bad guys to… to… well, actually, we never know if he’s looking for justice, revenge, a combination of the two, or something else entirely, as Whedon doesn’t think to tell us. Throughout, David has one motivation: to find out what happened to his girlfriend, Claire. But he does so in such a ham-fisted, you-won’t-believe-he-did-that kind of way that it’s a wonder he gets as far as he does. He’s a passive-aggressive victim who’s never as ahead of the game as he thinks he is, and as a result, and despite Paul’s best efforts, he remains unsympathetic throughout.

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Paul is a good choice for the character of David, but like so much of the movie, is undermined by Whedon’s inexperience in the director’s chair. Everyone else is a supporting character, and though the likes of Dillahunt and Gjokaj do their best with less than challenging material, there’s no chance than anyone is going to stand out from the crowd. Even Wallis, whose role is largely seen through a variety of flashbacks, gets to be less than a fully fledged character and more of a cypher; or more awkwardly, a McGuffin.

When it comes to first-time writer/directors, Whedon is another in a long line of movie makers who believe they can get it right on their maiden attempt, but often the opposite is true. Such is the case with Come and Find Me. Perhaps there should be a moratorium on first-time writer/directors. Perhaps directors shouldn’t make their own scripts until they’ve been directing for a while, and have worked on other writers’ scripts. Perhaps then they’ll have a better understanding of how to assemble a movie without undermining it at the very same time. Who knows? It might lead to them making better movies.

Rating: 4/10 – leaden, and with an ending that will leave most viewers slack-jawed through disbelief, Come and Find Me is a misfire on almost every level; lacking a clear purpose, or any depth or subtext, the movie plods along, then stumbles along, then plods along again etc. in its quest to be an absorbing mystery thriller, when it’s plain to see that it’s so far from that ambition as to be in a different universe altogether.

The Dressmaker (2015)

28 Monday Nov 2016

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D: Jocelyn Moorhouse / 119m

Cast: Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth, Hugo Weaving, Sarah Snook, Kerry Fox, Shane Bourne, Alison Whyte, Caroline Goodall, James Mackay, Sacha Horler, Gyton Grantley, Julia Blake, Barry Otto, Rory Potter

It’s Australia, and it’s 1951. The tiny rural town of Dungatar sees the return of Myrtle “Tilly” Dunnage (Winslet) after having been sent away as a child twenty-five years before for the suspected murder of Stewart Pettyman (Potter), the son of town councillor Evan Pettyman (Bourne). She’s back for two reasons: to look after her mother, Molly (Davis), who is suffering from dementia, and to discover the truth about what happened twenty-five years ago (Tilly doesn’t remember). The townsfolk aren’t exactly pleased to see her, with only Sergeant Farrat (Weaving) treating her fairly. Unconcerned, Tilly goes about caring for her mother, while also stirring things up around town, appearing in sexy, haute couture gowns and turning the heads of all the eligible and not-so-eligible men, and in particular, Teddy McSwiney (Hemsworth).

With the townsfolk treating her with suspicion and disrespect, she lets them know that she can make any of them bespoke dresses or outfits. Her first customer is young bride-to-be Gertrude Pratt (Snook). Going against her mother’s wishes, Gertrude is over the moon with the dress Tilly makes for her, and it’s not long before most of the women in town have followed suit. Pettyman employs the services of another dressmaker, Una Pleasance (Horler), but her efforts aren’t anywhere near as successful. Meanwhile, Tilly begins a tentative relationship with Teddy, while her mother’s memory improves, and her investigation into what happened to Stewart Pettyman starts to gather momentum.

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Along the way, town secrets are exposed, simmering animosities boil over, and Tilly’s skills as a dressmaker serve as a way of exacting revenge for the way she was treated as a child. Answers are revealed, lives are changed irrevocably, a tragedy ensues, and Dungatar’s entry into a local Eisteddfod affords Tilly the opportunity to carry out her ultimate revenge.

An adaptation of the novel by Rosalie Ham, The Dressmaker is a mixed bag indeed. Combining drama, comedy and romance, and mashing them all together (sometimes in the same scene), it’s a movie that is likely to divide audiences into two camps: those who prefer to have their revenge dramas played entirely straight throughout, and those who prefer to have their comedies unspoiled by dramatic stretches that restrict the belly laughs found elsewhere. Your tolerance for this mash-up will depend very much on going with the movie’s very particular flow, as Moorhouse and her co-screenwriter, husband P.J. Hogan, have embraced both the jaundiced drama and the wicked comedy inherent in Ham’s novel.

The result is a movie that’s tonally uneven and switches focus from comedy to drama and back again with unrestrained abandon. Moorhouse concentrates on the humour during the first hour, and gifts Davis with some great lines, some of them throwaways that make you wish the actress had made more comedies before this. When Tilly tells Gertrude the cost of the dress she wants made, Gertrude remarks that the cost is “outrageous”. Quick as a flash, Molly says, “So’s your bum.” Davis’ timing is simply brilliant. There are other moments that are equally as funny, and the cast can be seen to be enjoying themselves tremendously during these scenes. But all good things must come to an end, and the movie’s second half slowly sheds the comedy in order to concentrate more fully, and with more necessity, on the drama.

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But as well as shedding the humour, the script also sheds the shading and carefully orchestrated character beats, and leaves the viewer overwhelmed by increasing levels of melodrama. As well as the tragedy already alluded to, there is madness, murder, and extended bouts of retribution. There’s so much in fact, that Moorhouse struggles to find a way of making it all feel organic, with most scenes feeling forced by the need for resolution of the various subplots involving the townsfolk. By the time Tilly leaves Dungatar behind, the viewer may well be heaving a sigh of relief before laughing in gratitude at her final line of dialogue.

Thankfully, the movie’s flaws are more than compensated for by the performances. Davis steals the movie as the raddled, alcoholic, dementia-suffering Molly. It’s possibly the least glamorous role you’re likely to see for some time, but Davis is superb in it, caustic and sharp despite the dementia, and effortlessly dominating the scenes she’s in. Alongside her, Winslet gives another impressive performance, expressing Tilly’s determination and anger at how she was treated as a child, and yet also displaying an uncertainty and a mistrust surrounding her memories of her childhood. There are moments where Winslet is called upon to point up the character’s emotional fragility, and she does so in such an honest way that it’s entirely credible.

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In support, Weaving is a delight as the crossdressing Sergeant Farrat, fey on the one hand, sturdy on the other, and a hoot as Rudolph Valentino. Hemsworth does enough to avoid giving an entirely wooden performance, but against Winslet still looks like a complete amateur. Further down the list there are good roles for, and good performances from, the likes of Kerry Fox as the acid-tongued schoolteacher, Bourne as the philandering town councillor, Blake as the ailing wife of the town’s doctor (Otto), Snook as the initially vapid but later viperish Gertrude, and Grantley as Teddy’s brother, Barney, who holds the key to what happened to Stewart Pettyman.

As befits a movie concerned with dressmaking, the costumes, designed by Marion Boyce and Margot Wilson, are fantastic, beautiful creations that flatter and enhance the female cast they were made for in exactly the way they were meant to flatter and enhance the characters. Winslet gets to show off her curves in a variety of figure hugging outfits, and there’s one scene where the dress she wears is – in terms of the time in which the movie is set – a precursor to the one worn by Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita (1960). And the overall look of the movie is like that of a Western, with Tilly “riding” back into town as an avenging angel á la Clint Eastwood in Hang ‘Em High (1968) or Pale Rider (1985). There are other references to other movies, some quite easy to spot, and some more subtly placed, but these don’t detract from the movie at all, but do add to the fun that can be had (in the first hour).

Rating: 7/10 – on balance, The Dressmaker‘s imbalance in terms of its storyline and tone should make this at least an awkward or unfulfilling watch, but somehow it’s a movie where it works more often than it doesn’t; with a standout turn from Davis, ravishing costumes, and a spare visual sense that suits the material, this is one of those movies where it’s unlikely for two different viewers to come to a consensus – but strangely, that’s one of its strengths.

Arrival (2016)

10 Thursday Nov 2016

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D: Denis Villeneuve / 116m

Cast: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Mark O’Brien, Tzi Ma

Louise Banks (Adams) is a linguistics professor whose private life has recently been shattered by the break up of her marriage and the death of her daughter from cancer. Getting by but still grieving, Louise is as unprepared as the rest of the world when twelve huge spaceships suddenly appear one day in different locations around the globe. Soon, though, she is approached by the US military – in the form of Colonel G.T. Weber (Whitaker) – to aid in communicating with the aliens on board the ship that hovers over American soil in Montana. The best in her field in terms of linguistics and translations, Louise joins Weber’s team along with mathematician and scientist Ian Donnelly (Renner).

In Montana, Louise and Ian are advised that the most important question is, What do they want? Later, they ascend into the ship – called a “shell” by the military – and have their first encounter with the aliens. A symbol is written on the screen that separates the aliens in their atmosphere from Louise and Ian et al in theirs. Using it as the basis of the aliens’ language, Louise soon deduces that the symbol doesn’t just translate into one word, but into many. From then on she is able to determine much more of how the aliens communicate. Meanwhile, at the other arrival sites, particularly in China, suspicion and distrust of the aliens’ intensions are leading to veiled threats of attack on the shells, while violent unrest occurs around the globe.

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Louise begins to have visions of a little girl, who in various ways helps her to understand more of what the aliens are communicating. When she translates a symbol and the meaning is “Offer weapon”, it causes the CIA agent in charge of the whole operation in Montana, Halpern (Stuhlbarg), to order an evacuation. But Louise insists they should stay, to keep faith with the aliens, and to complete the mission to find out why they are here. She returns to the shell by herself, and by coming into direct contact with the aliens, Louise learns why they have arrived, and why she’s having visions of the little girl, a revelation that has a profound effect not just on her, but on her understanding of her marriage and also, her daughter’s death.

There’s a dearth of good, old-fashioned, serious sci-fi in the movies right now – in fact, it’s been that way for some time – but Arrival is here to redress the balance. Playing with notions of time and memory and the nature of happiness, the movie is a thought-provoking treatise on what it is to mourn a life while discovering at the same time that that life has much more to offer even though the person has passed away. It’s a bit of a mindbender at times, but Villeneuve confidently handles the narrative twists and turns of Eric Heisserer’s script – itself an adaptation of the short story Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang and heavily reworked by Villeneuve himself – so that the viewer can still grasp the subtleties of what’s happening and why.

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Along the way, said viewer is treated to an intelligent story and plot that packs an unexpectedly emotional wallop towards the end, as the various strands of Louise’s life are brought into sharp relief, and the aliens’ reason for visiting Earth is revealed. Louise herself is brought to life by Adams in a performance that acts as a reminder that, away from the DC Extended Universe, she is still one of today’s finest actresses. As the emotionally distant Louise, Adams shows just how removed she is from everything going on around her – at first. But as Louise slowly begins to unravel the complex patterns of the aliens’ language, she begins to reconnect with herself and everyone around her; and particularly Ian. Adams is the movie’s chief ingredient for success, her succinct, subtle portrayal of Louise proving layered and intuitive, and deeply moving come the movie’s end.

But while Adams’ performance is the bedrock upon which the movie supports itself, there’s so much more to recommend it. Though she plays the central character, and the rest of the cast have essentially supporting roles, the likes of Renner and Whitaker still manage to contribute well-rounded and credible characters that are necessary to the plot, while even Stuhlbarg’s paranoid (and potentially one-note) CIA agent fits in to the overall set up without feeling extraneous or unnecessarily villainous. Villeneuve also allows each character to display their own fears and concerns, and a corresponding sense of wonder, at being in such close proximity to the aliens and their craft.

Visually, the movie is a gloomy-looking, though consistently well-thought out viewing experience, with Villeneuve choosing to dial down on any bright colours and in doing so, adding texture to the narrative. The aliens operate in a cloudy grey environment and “write” using appendages that produce a black inky substance that is surprisingly vibrant, while at the military base, the various comms rooms and private quarters also lack for vivid colours, with only computer screens providing any brightness to offset the gloom. Villeneuve is making a conscious choice here: the bleak, low-lit hive of activity reflecting the interior of the aliens’ ship, as if to insinuate that there is a greater level of connection between “us” and “them” than is immediately apparent.

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The visuals are more than ably supported by a distinctive sound design that unnerves far more than it reassures, and which also includes a suitably eerie and mournful score by Jóhann Jóhannsson, Villeneuve’s go-to composer. Keeping the viewer on edge as Louise deconstructs the alien message, the visuals and the sound design combine to create a haunting, other-worldly feel that is not only entirely appropriate given the nature of the story, but also serves to highlight the idea that if we aren’t alone in the universe, then ideas of melody and tone may still hold but are likely to be interpreted in completely different ways.

Ultimately though, it’s Villeneuve’s confident handling of the material that impresses the most. He’s not afraid to take his time in telling the story, and doesn’t drip-feed all the relevant information at regular points in the narrative. Instead he lets the story unfold at its own pace, revealing key plot points quietly and without the usual fanfare required in other sci-fi movies, and the result is a measured, affecting tale that contains a major twist, one that perhaps for the first time, is allowed to play out over much of the movie’s running time, rather than just suddenly and without warning, and which in its simplicity and emotional effectiveness, elevates Arrival over and above any other sci-fi movie you’re likely to see this year (and probably for some time to come).

Rating: 9/10 – a beautifully constructed movie with a clever, intelligent script, superb cinematography from Bradford Young, an intense soundtrack, heartfelt performances and all held together by a director at the top of his game, Arrival is a must-see movie that is less about why the aliens are here, and more about why we are here; quite simply, one of this year’s best movies.

Complete Unknown (2016)

20 Thursday Oct 2016

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D: Joshua Marston / 91m

Cast: Rachel Weisz, Michael Shannon, Michael Chernus, Azita Ghanizada, Omar Metwally, Frank De Julio, Condola Rashad, Kathy Bates, Danny Glover

What if you could just up and walk away from the life you were living, and go and be somebody else, assume a different identity and create a history for yourself to go with that identity? And what if you could do that over and over, changing your name and your looks every so often, and living a new life each time? What would be the rewards of doing such a thing? What would be the downside? And even if you could, why would you do it in the first place?

This is what Rachel Weisz’s character, Jenny, does. The movie opens by introducing us to some of the identities she’s adopted in the fifteen years since she left her home and family and friends behind and became someone else. She’s lived in Australia, been a magician’s assistant in China, and an ER nurse somewhere in the US. Currently she’s a biologist who’s part of a team that have discovered a previously unknown species of frog in Tasmania. Her name is Alice Manning, and her work has brought her back to New York, where she comes from originally. Looking to reconnect with her past she tracks down Tom (Shannon), a land reform advocate on a mission to have environmental protection clauses inserted into the legislature. As we learn later on, Tom is Jenny’s only link to her past since the death of her father, and despite the time and distance she’s put between her first life and her current one, she still has a need to affirm its existence.

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Adopting a softly, slowly approach, Alice gets to know Tom’s work partner, Clyde (Chernus). She dazzles him, and when it comes time for Tom’s birthday, Clyde invites her along to the birthday party as his plus one. Once there, Tom becomes suspicious that Alice isn’t Alice, but the Jenny he remembers. As the party continues, Alice admits to changing her identity when she wants to. Some of the guests are impressed, others think it’s a horrible idea because of the lies involved. Tom remains bemused, certain and yet uncertain that Alice is Jenny. He tries to tackle her about it, but her answers offer confirmation and non-confirmation at the same time. It’s only when they all go to a club to spend the rest of the evening dancing that Tom becomes convinced that it’s Jenny and not Alice. When she leaves, in a hurry to get away suddenly, he follows her and gets her to admit to her deception.

What follows can best be described as a cinematic chamber piece, as Alice and Tom walk the streets debating the rights and wrongs of Jenny’s “lifestyle”, encounter Kathy Bates’ Nina who is out walking her dog, and who subsequently has a fall, and her husband Roger (Glover) when they help her back to her apartment. Further discussion around why Jenny left follows, and eventually, Tom tells her he wants to see how she moves on to the next identity. Having experienced some form of emotional epiphany, Tom returns home to his wife, Remina (Ghanizada)… and on the cusp of a revelation, the movie ends.

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Fans of very slow-paced dramas will enjoy the last half an hour of Complete Unknown, as the script – by director Marston and Julian Sheppard – winds down in terms of pace, interest, and credibility. It’s here that Marston sheds any notion that he knows where the movie is going, and the viewer is left wondering if there has been any point to the movie at all. Tom and Alice/Jenny’s relationship is the key focus by this time, but it’s not as dramatic as it should be, and Marston is unable to create any drama or sense of heightened feelings as the emotionally distant duo fret over each other’s pain, but only for a short period before they move on. For both there are meant to be “lessons learned”, but it’s hard to tell if any “lessons” have been doled out. Jenny can’t explain with any precision why she does what she does, and Tom is so tightly wound-up at times that it’s hard to work out if he’s mad at Jenny for disappearing all those years ago, or because his marriage is about to go through a potentially very rough patch.

Throughout the movie, Marston fails to explain things in a way that isn’t confusing to the viewer, or problematical for the characters. Jenny/Alice’s motivation for leaving behind her original life remains spurious at worst, and unsatisfactory at best. And more importantly, the script never sells the viewer on the reasons for Jenny/Alice wanting to return to her roots, undermining her previous determination to avoid any confrontation from her past. Similarly, Tom’s steely-eyed persistence in wanting to know why Jenny left so abruptly, is shown as being immediate and close to the surface, the dynamic of which seems absurd given the passage of time. Are we really meant to believe that he hasn’t moved on after fifteen years? And if we are, then why doesn’t the script explain why?

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It’s these dramatic exclusions that hurt the movie most, draining it of the few mystery elements it’s set up at the beginning. The result is a dry, mannered, unconvincing movie that fails to provide depth for its characters to build on, and lacks the necessary desire to fill in the multitude of gaps in the narrative. Marston doesn’t really know where his movie is going to, and he’s curiously unable to make sense of Jenny’s need for reinvention, or the mechanics of it (toward the end, Tom challenges Jenny over her ability to change her identity, and tells her he wants to see how she does it; she takes him to her apartment and packs a bag – and that’s it).

Against this, Weisz provides a thankfully intuitive performance that goes a long way toward helping the viewer engage with the material, but even she can only do so much. Shannon is largely passive throughout, his face a blank canvas that gives little away, and his default manner one of bewilderment. In their scenes together there’s precious little spark to help explain the feelings they had for each other, and why it’s so important for Jenny to see Tom again, and the distance between them is another aspect of the production that Marston is unable to do anything about.

Rating: 4/10 – questions of identity are left hanging in Complete Unknown, and what could have been an absorbing, insightful examination of one woman’s need to be different versions of herself, is abandoned in favour of a trite, vaguely rewarding trawl through poorly constructed dialogues that leave everything open for interpretation; a slowburn movie that treats its central character like a cypher (because it can’t do anything else with her), Marston’s micro-drama is unlikely to generate the interest it needs in order to find an audience willing to forgive its indolence.

The Automatic Hate (2015)

23 Saturday Jul 2016

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The Automatic Hate

D: Justin Lerner / 97m

Cast: Joseph Cross, Adelaide Clemens, Deborah Ann Woll, Richard Schiff, Ricky Jay, Yvonne Zima, Vanessa Zima, Catherine Carlen, Caitlin O’Connell

What do you do when someone you’ve never met before – or more appropriately, never knew existed – suddenly appears and tells you they’re related to you, that you’re cousins? That’s the situation that Davis Green (Cross) faces at the beginning of The Automatic Hate, an indie drama that asks the question, should family secrets stay secret for the good of everyone involved?

When Davis’s cousin Alexis (Clemens) comes calling out of the blue, his relationship with Cassie (Woll) is going through a rough patch. Cassie is distant yet emotional, and conversation between the two is awkward. When Alexis reveals that she is the daughter of his uncle Josh (Jay), Davis is understandably confused because up until that moment he didn’t know he had an uncle. And when he tackles his father, Ronald (Schiff), over this surprising news, all he gets in return is, “We never talk about him”. As you might expect, Davis isn’t exactly satisfied with his father’s response, but can’t get any further answers.

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Partly to find out why there’s such a hatred and division between his father and his uncle, and partly to give himself some space from Cassie, Davis decides to seek out his extended family and to try and discover why such a serious rift began in the first place. He travels to upstate New York and learns that he has two other cousins, Annie (Yvonne Zima) and Amanda (Vanessa Zima), and in turn meets his uncle. Josh at first believes Davis has been sent by Ronald to spy on him, and insists Davis should leave. But the mystery of the rift, and Alexis’s increasingly romantic attentions keep him there; he finds himself responding to Alexis’s almost desperate attraction to him, and he stops responding to Cassie’s texts and calls.

The discovery of some old home movies by Davis and Alexis shows the two brothers as much younger men, and in the company of a young woman. One scene shows Josh and the young woman holding hands. Davis deduces that the rift is the result of a romantic triangle, and that Josh stole Ronald’s girlfriend from him. But this development has to be put on hold due to the death of Davis’s grandfather (and the brothers’ father). Despite the differences between the two men, Davis convinces Josh to attend the funeral, which is to be held near to a summer house owned by the family. The family unites at last, but tensions are high, and matters are made more difficult for Davis by his relationship with Alexis and the unexpected presence of Cassie. And then the mystery of what happened all those years ago is revealed…

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Fans of indie dramas will be pleased with the nature of Justin Lerner’s latest feature, and in particular with the way in which he sets up the main storyline, which isn’t the mystery at the heart of things, but the relationship between Davis and Alexis. From the moment they meet there’s a clear attraction between the two, but Lerner keeps them apart for quite a while, with Davis’s loyalty and commitment to Cassie as his reason for not acting on his newfound feelings. It’s during this period that the movie moves in parallel with events from the past, and there are tonal and emotional references that infuse both past and present. Lerner, along with co-writer Katharine O’Brien, keeps things low-key, but with hints of the greater drama to come, and the opening forty minutes sees the movie establish a setting and a mood that is very effective.

But then the family comes together, and the movie feels obliged to step up a gear. The ensuing drama, heightened as it is by the revealing of family secrets and the kind of dinner table confrontations – physical and verbal – that have a habit of destroying any attempt at familial accord, is an uncomfortable change of approach and the movie suffers as a result. Alexis’s behaviour in particular is a cause for concern, as the script allows her full rein to express her feelings for Davis. But she does so in such a way that most viewers will be thinking, “Uh oh, watch out Davis!” And how their relationship develops from then on also weakens the movie, leaving the final scenes to limp unconvincingly to the end credits, undoing so much of the good work that’s gone before.

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But while the final twenty minutes prove disappointing due to the script’s need to provide viewers with an unequivocal ending to the problem of Davis and Alexis’s relationship (and the decision it makes regarding their relationship), there are still plenty of things to recommend the movie. Along with Lerner’s confident handling of the material, there’s a clutch of effective, carefully modulated performances with Clemens and Jay stealing the honours from everyone else. Clemens – yet another Australian actress making the successful transition to US movie making – is vulnerable and disturbing in equal measure as Alexis, and exudes an unspoken menace at times that gives her character an edgy, dangerous quality that is both attractive and unnerving at the same time. Jay is equally good as the estranged uncle, resigned, implacable, and dignified in the face of Schiff’s angry brother. He’s an actor you can always rely on, and here he gives one of his best performances, allowing the enmity Josh feels to be expressed in dismissive looks and carefully loaded comments.

And of course, there’s the mystery itself, the movie’s McGuffin. Lerner is canny enough to provide clues that point in one direction while also maintaining the sense that nothing is quite what it seems (the home movie footage, if watched closely, is both explanation and red herring). When it is revealed it packs a punch that doesn’t dissipate easily, but it’s not allowed to overwhelm what follows. Lerner switches focus quickly, and the movie becomes oppressive for how it prompts reactions amongst the characters, and some bitter outpourings. Again, it’s not an entirely successful transition but one of the movie’s strengths is that it doesn’t always do what the audience may be expecting it to.

Rating: 7/10 – with much to recommend it, The Automatic Hate is a worthy indie drama with good performances, a (mostly) well constructed script, and a director firmly in control of the material if not the narrative; tense on occasion, with flashes of mordaunt humour to offset the latter half’s overwrought drama, the movie is on firmer ground as a study of the ties that bind family members, and is especially effective at exposing just how fragile those ties can be.

Monthly Roundup – June 2016

30 Thursday Jun 2016

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Manglehorn (2014) / D: David Gordon Green / 97m

Cast: Al Pacino, Holly Hunter, Harmony Korine, Chris Messina, Skylar Gasper

Manglehorn

Rating: 5/10 – in the wake of a failed romance that has left him heartbroken, locksmith A.J. Manglehorn (Pacino) decides to try again with bank teller Dawn (Hunter), but his personality puts obstacles in his way; despite the obvious talent involved, Manglehorn is a chore to sit through, as the character himself – as Dawn discovers – isn’t someone you want to spend too much time with.

The Brain (1962) / D: Freddie Francis / 83m

Cast: Anne Heywood, Peter van Eyck, Cecil Parker, Bernard Lee, Jeremy Spenser, Maxine Audley, Ellen Schwiers, Siegfried Lowitz, Hans Nielsen, Jack MacGowran, Miles Malleson, George A. Cooper

The Brain

Rating: 5/10 – a fatal plane crash sees a millionaire businessman’s brain kept alive by pioneering scientists, one of whom (van Eyck) finds himself searching for the person who caused the plane crash when the businessman’s brain communicates with him; an erratic sci-fi thriller that gets bogged down whenever it concentrates on the murder suspects, this adaptation of Curt Siodmak’s novel Donovan’s Brain has a great cast and a terrific premise, but is let down by Francis’ pedestrian direction and a style that wants to evoke film noir but can’t because the script hasn’t been written that way.

A Certain Justice (2014) / D: James Coyne, Giorgio Serafini / 96m

aka Puncture Wounds

Cast: Cung Le, Dolph Lundgren, Vinnie Jones, Briana Evigan, Gianni Capaldi, James C. Burns, Robert LaSardo, Jonathan Kowalsky, Sean O’Bryan, Eddie Rouse

A Certain Justice

Rating: 4/10 – Iraq veteran John Nguyen (Le) returns home and becomes embroiled in a fight against big-time drug dealer Hollis (Lundgren) when he saves a hooker (Evigan) from the violent attentions of Hollis’ men; as a showcase for Le, A Certain Justice works well enough, but this is still a muddled actioner that cuts narrative corners more often than it doesn’t, and sees Lundgren adopting a wig and ponytail that makes him look like an aging hippie instead of a menacing crime boss.

Woman on the Run (1950) / D: Norman Foster / 77m

Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dennis O’Keefe, Robert Keith, John Qualen, Frank Jenks, Ross Elliott, J. Farrell MacDonald, Victor Sen Yung, Steven Geray

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Rating: 7/10 – when store window designer Frank Johnson (Elliott) witnesses a gangland execution he goes on the run, leaving his estranged wife (Sheridan), the police, and a persistent reporter (O’Keefe) trying to track him down before the killer does; a cleverly written film noir based on Sylvia Tate’s original story, Woman on the Run may have a misleading title but it features hard-boiled dialogue, bruised relationships, and atmospheric location work, all of which means the movie is an under-rated gem and deserves a wider audience.

The Battle at Apache Pass (1952) / D: George Sherman / 82m

Cast: John Lund, Jeff Chandler, Susan Cabot, Bruce Cowling, Beverly Tyler, Richard Egan, Jay Silverheels, John Hudson, Jack Elam, Regis Toomey

The Battle at Apache Pass

Rating: 6/10 – peace on the frontier with the Apache nation is threatened by the divisive tactics of Indian Affairs agent Neil Baylor (Cowling) and unsanctioned raids by Geronimo (Silverheels); based around two historical events – the Bascom Affair in 1861, and the title encounter in 1862 – The Battle at Apache Pass is an enjoyable Western featuring good location work in Monument Valley, beautiful photography, and Chandler (as Cochise) and Silverheels reprising their roles from Broken Arrow (1950).

The Phenom (2016) / D: Noah Buschel / 88m

Cast: Johnny Simmons, Ethan Hawke, Paul Giamatti, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Yul Vazquez, Louisa Krause, Paul Adelstein, Elizabeth Marvel, Marin Ireland

The Phenom

Rating: 5/10 – Hopper Gibson (Simmons) is a talented pitcher who has a shot at the big leagues but suffers a crisis of confidence, one that threatens his future; well acted but dour and uninviting, The Phenom plods along in such a low-key manner that some viewers may well decide they don’t care enough if Hopper overcomes his slump, and may also decide to watch something else instead.

A Place to Go (1964) / D: Basil Dearden / 86m

Cast: Rita Tushingham, Mike Sarne, Bernard Lee, Doris Hare, Barbara Ferris, John Slater, David Andrews, William Marlowe, Michael Wynne, Roy Kinnear

A Place to Go

Rating: 5/10 – an ambitious young man who wants to get away from Bethnal Green gets involved with a local racketeer (Slater) and a young woman (Tushingham) at the same time, and much to the consternation of his parents (Lee, Hare); a slice of life, East London style, this kitchen sink drama is enjoyable enough but is hampered by a dreadful performance by Sarne and some weak plotting, but still has enough to recommend it, particularly the (deliberately) sad sight of Lee’s character trying to impress as an escapologist.

Shadows on the Stairs (1941) / D: D. Ross Lederman / 64m

Cast: Frieda Inescort, Paul Cavanagh, Heather Angel, Bruce Lester, Miles Mander, Lumsden Hare, Turhan Bey, Charles Irwin, Phyllis Barry, Mary Field

Shadows on the Stairs

Rating: 4/10 – a killer strikes in a boarding house where everyone comes under suspicion; a leaden whodunnit shot in a pedestrian style, Shadows on the Stairs is typical of the period with its mix of drama, comic relief in the form of Hare and Irwin as bumbling policemen, romantic triangles, and occasional flashes of social comment, but it all adds up to a movie that betrays its stage origins at every turn.

Moonwalkers (2015) / D: Antoine Bardou-Jacquet / 107m

Cast: Rupert Grint, Ron Perlman, Robert Sheehan, Stephen Campbell-Moore, Tom Audenaert, Jay Benedict, James Cosmo, Eric Lampaert, Kevin Bishop, Erika Sainte

Moonwalkers

Rating: 4/10 – in 1969, the US military sends unstable CIA agent Kidman (Perlman) to London to contact Stanley Kubrick with an offer to film a mock moon landing (in case the real mission goes wrong) – but he ends up working with a would-be rock band manager (Grint) instead; uneven and often groan-inducing, Moonwalkers takes a great idea and tramples all over it with a mix of psychedelia, undercooked comedy and inappropriate violence, leaving just a few knowing nods and winks in relation to the period to provide anything of interest.

Trailers – American Pastoral (2016), The 9th Life of Louis Drax (2016) and Keeping Up With the Joneses (2016)

30 Thursday Jun 2016

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For his feature debut as a director, Ewan McGregor could have (probably) chosen any project he wanted, but not one to shirk a challenge, the actor has decided to film Philip Roth’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel (it’s been in development for over a decade, and Jennifer Connelly is the only person still on board from back then). So, no pressure there, then. But the trailer reveals, albeit in a disjointed fashion, that McGregor appears to have found a way of coherently presenting the various social and political upheavals of the period (the Sixties), and without sacrificing any of the personal or emotional effects these events have on the characters involved. With David Strathairn cast as Roth’s alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, and a supporting cast that also includes Molly Parker and Peter Riegert, McGregor has found himself in very good company indeed, and if his direction, allied with John Romano’s screenplay, is as good as it looks (and thanks to DoP Martin Ruhe it looks beautiful indeed), then this could be a strong Oscar contender come next February.

 

In The 9th Life of Louis Drax (it’s never Johnny Smith anymore, is it?), a young boy’s fall from a cliff and subsequent coma opens up a mystery that will involve his parents (Sarah Gadon, Aaron Paul) and his doctor (Jamie Dornan). Liz Jensen’s 2004 novel was due to be adapted by Anthony Minghella before his untimely death in 2008, but now it’s been adapted for the screen by his son Max, and with the formidable talent of Alexandre Aja in the director’s chair. The trailer is sufficiently twist-y enough for clues to Louis’s “condition” to be given in one second and then overturned in another, and the movie’s success is likely to depend on how well the mystery is maintained before answers have to be revealed. The cast also features the likes of Oliver Platt, the ubiquitous Molly Parker, and Barbara Hershey, and seems to have got a firm hold on the supernatural thriller aspects of the story, so this should be as satisfying – hopefully – as it looks.

 

Whatever you want to say or think about Keeping Up With the Joneses, there’s little doubt that this mix of action and comedy about a suburban couple (Zach Galifianakis, Isla Fisher) who discover that their new neighbours (Jon Hamm, Gal Gadot) are international spies, is exactly the kind of moderately high concept idea that the Hollywood studios love to put their money behind. The trailer offers perhaps too many laughs (and hopefully not all the best ones), while downplaying the inevitable action sequences, but whatever the finished product gives us, let’s hope that director Greg Mottola’s quirky sense of humour is front and centre, and the chemistry between each couple adds to the fun to be had. If not we’ll just have to chalk it up to a good idea gone bad, or to put it another way, a movie that you switch off from once it’s started.

Monthly Roundup – May 2016

31 Tuesday May 2016

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Max (2015) / D: Boaz Yakin / 111m

Cast: Josh Wiggins, Thomas Haden Church, Lauren Graham, Luke Kleintank, Robbie Amell, Mia Xitlali, Dejon LaQuake, Jay Hernandez, Owen Harn

Max

Rating: 6/10 – after his handler is killed in Afghanistan, Max goes to stay with his handler’s family, and helps expose a plot to supply arms to a Mexican cartel; a feature that ticks every box in the “family movie” canon, Max is enjoyable enough but is also too lightweight to make much of a sustained impact, even though the cast enter wholly into the spirit of things.

They Came to a City (1944) / D: Basil Dearden / 78m

Cast: John Clements, Googie Withers, Raymond Huntley, Renee Gadd, A.E. Matthews, Mabel Terry-Lewis, Ada Reeve, Norman Shelley, Fanny Rowe, Ralph Michael, Brenda Bruce, J.B. Priestley

They Came to a City

Rating: 6/10 – nine individuals find themselves in unfamiliar terrain and on the outskirts of a vast city – and have to decide if they’re going to stay there; J.B. Priestley’s play is as close to a socialist tract as you could have got during World War II, and while They Came to a City betrays its stage origins and is relentlessly polemical, it has a stark, overbearing visual style that is actually quite effective.

Crazy About Tiffany’s (2016) / D: Matthew Miele / 86m

With: Jessica Alba, Katie Couric, Amy Fine-Collins, Fran Lebowitz, Baz Luhrmann, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Jennifer Tilly, Andrew & Andrew

Crazy About Tiffany's

Rating: 6/10 – a documentary charting the rise and rise of Tiffany’s, the jewellery store made even more famous by Truman Capote and Audrey Hepburn (who he despised in the role of Holly Golightly); a tremendously indulgent puff-piece for the company, Crazy About Tiffany’s is redeemed by some fascinating anecdotes, and the faint whiff of pretentiousness given off by most of its customers.

Queen of the Desert (2015) / D: Werner Herzog / 128m

Cast: Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Damian Lewis, Robert Pattinson, Jay Abdo, David Calder, Jenny Agutter, Holly Earl, Mark Lewis Jones, Christopher Fulford

Queen of the Desert

Rating: 5/10 – a biopic of the explorer and writer, Gertrude Bell (Kidman), and how she  won the trust of numerous Middle Eastern tribes at a time when British colonialism was  looked upon with distrust and contempt by those very same tribes; not one of Herzog’s best (or Kidman’s), Queen of the Desert suffers from being treated as history-lite by the script, and never quite being as courageous in its efforts as Miss Bell was in hers (and not to mention a disastrous turn by Pattinson as Lawrence of Arabia).

Zombie Cheerleader Camp (2007) / D: Jon Fabris / 85m

Cast: Jamie Brown, Chris White, Nicole Lewis, Jason Greene, Brandy Blackmon, Daniel Check, Terry Chandeline Nicole Westfall, Micah Shane Ballinger

Zombie Cheerleader Camp

Rating: 2/10 – when cheerleaders attend a summer training camp, they’re unaware that a squirrel exposed to toxic waste will be the catalyst that turns them and a group of horny males into flesh-eating zombies; all you need to know is that Zombie Cheerleader Camp was made at the extreme low budget end of movie making and features camera work that’s so bad it’s almost a challenge to find a well-framed shot anywhere in the movie (and then there’s the “acting”…)

Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre (2015) / D: Jim Wynorski / 84m

Cast: Dominique Swain, Traci Lords, Christine Nguyen, Cindy Lucas, Amy Holt, John Callahan, Corey Landis, Skye McDonald, Chris De Christopher

Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre

Rating: 3/10 – fracking causes the release of an unspecified number of prehistoric sharks into the Arkansas waterways, and this jeopardises the escape of several women prisoners from a work detail; yes, Sharkansas (actually filmed in Florida) Women’s Prison Massacre is as bad as it sounds, and yes it is as cheesy as you’d expect, but it’s also one of the tamest and most annoying of all the recent shark-related movies we’ve had foisted upon us, and not even the talents of low budget movie maestro Wynorski can rescue this from the bottom of the barrel.

The Whip Hand (1951) / D: William Cameron Menzies / 82m

Cast: Carla Balenda, Elliott Reid, Edgar Barrier, Raymond Burr, Otto Waldis, Michael Steele, Lurene Tuttle, Peter Brocco, Lewis Martin, Frank Darien

The Whip Hand

Rating: 6/10 – a journalist (Reid) on vacation stumbles across a mystery involving a lake where the fish have all died, and a nearby ghost town where the remaining locals aren’t too friendly, and he finds himself prevented from leaving; a well-paced but forgettable effort from master production designer Menzies, The Whip Hand starts off well but soon ties itself inside out in trying to be a confident thriller, an ambition it fails to achieve thanks to untidy plotting and thin characterisations.

The American Side (2016)

23 Monday May 2016

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The American Side

D: Jenna Ricker / 102m

Cast: Greg Stuhr, Alicja Bachleda, Camilla Belle, Matthew Broderick, Robert Forster, Janeane Garofalo, Grant Shaud, Harris Yulin, Joe Grifasi, Stephen Henderson, Kelsey Siepser, Robert Vaughn

Some movies give the impression that they should be longer, that their proper running time has been truncated during the editing and post-production process. These movies seem to be saying that there’s something missing, an element that would enable the movie to be better than it is, sharper, clearer, more dynamic, more interesting, funnier, darker, better focused all round. And then there are the movies where that same impression is made, but no matter how much you may think that a longer cut might be the answer, the truth is, it wouldn’t make a difference.

Such is the case with The American Side. It’s ostensibly a modern noir thriller, with many familiar elements to ground it in that particular genre. There’s a grizzled, world-weary private detective, Charlie Paczynski (Stuhr); a damsel in distress, Nikki Meeker (Bachleda), who knows too much and whose life appears to be in danger; a femme fatale, Emily Chase (Belle), who may or may not be on the side of the bad guys; two competing businessmen – Borden Chase (Broderick) (Emily’s older brother) and Sterling Whitmore (Forster) – either of whom could be the main bad guy; and a McGuffin in the form of a mechanical design by Nikola Tesla that could be used as a weapon. In some respects its noir business as usual, and while these familiar elements should allow for a degree of comfort in navigating the twists and turns of the script, in reality they’re only used to reel in any curious – potential – viewers.

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Once the movie gets started, most viewers could be forgiven for thinking that The American Side, with its early murder of a minor character and Charlie’s determined attitude in finding their killer would be the kind of investigation that leads to corruption in high places, and the private detective realising that he can’t trust anyone. Alas, here, this is only partially true, as Charlie trusts one too many people in his quest to find his friend’s killer, and a wider conspiracy begins to make itself felt. Charlie also comes across as a little too gullible, a fact that doesn’t help him with his investigations, and which leads to his being easily fobbed off or deflected by everyone around him. And as the mystery deepens, the script – courtesy of director Ricker and star Stuhr – becomes an erratic mix of noir beats and muddled plotting.

It begins simply enough, establishing Charlie as a low-rent private eye who works out of a bar and who uses a stripper, Kat (Siepser), to help catch cheating husbands, who he then blackmails so that he receives payment from both the errant husband and the suspicious wife. It’s not a particularly lucrative business, and Charlie isn’t the most likeable of guys, but he gets by. But when Kat is killed by a man they both believe will fit the brief of cheating spouse, Charlie finds himself looking for a college professor called Soberin (Yulin) who’s mixed up in a plot to build a directed energy weapon designed by Tesla.

Sadly, what up til now has been a fairly straightforward, if gloomily shot movie, becomes a puzzle that goes off in various different directions, many of which lack a purpose other than to make things even more mysterious or inexplicable. Charlie’s own investigation sees him (traditionally) one step behind everyone else, but even when he does get up to speed the viewer is left with the sense that he’s only pretending to understand what’s going on, and in reality still doesn’t have a clue as to who’s doing what, and why. It’s not even that the plot, such as it is, is unusually complex. It’s that when explanations are forthcoming, and motivations are revealed, they just don’t make any sense. The viewer is left scratching their head and wondering if they’ve missed something.

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Ricker and Stuhr’s intention seems to have been a pretty simple one: combine basic noir components with a low-budget indie sensibility and stir together accordingly. But there’s something missing from the recipe, and the movie ends up sacrificing clarity in favour of providing uneven twists and turns, some of which feel awkward and contrived rather than organic. As the plot unfolds, some narrative decisions prove so unwieldy that you begin to suspect the script is a first draft that no one got around to looking at for errors or inconsistencies. It’s a shame as there’s the germ of a great idea here, and Tesla was enough of a maverick inventor for any movie maker to “have fun with”, but Ricker and Stuhr use him sparingly as a character, preferring instead to refer to him constantly as an under-appreciated genius who knew what was best for the world.

One of the movie’s main distractions is the continual referral to Niagara Falls and its history. The Falls are used as a backdrop – Charlie catches up with Soberin there – and events there in the past serve as clues to what Tesla was up to with his directed energy weapon, but this inclusion leads to more questions than the script can answer, and it makes for at least two unsatisfactory moments at the movie’s climax (which is also set at the Falls). This fascination also explains the movie’s title: no one has gone over the Falls from the American side and lived. (Alas, this isn’t a metaphor for anything that happens in the movie.)

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By making so much of the movie incomprehensible, or just plain confusing, Ricker and Stuhr have undermined their own project in such a comprehensive manner that the cast have no other choice but to make the best of it. Stuhr is a relaxed, no frills actor who’s not quite hard-boiled enough to make Charlie the anti-hero the script wants him to be, and he serves as the stooge in too many scenes where he should be in control. Bachleda’s role is underwritten, Belle struggles to keep her character on the right side of believable, while Broderick has his own problems with the kind of arch, mannered dialogue that even the most inexperienced of actors would run a mile from.

Under Ricker’s purview, The American Side ends up being a cumbersome, cruelly ill-considered movie that evinces little sympathy for its characters, and which proves very difficult to care about beyond a superficial level. It’s not a bad movie per se, just one that takes what should be a simple storyline and plot, and buries both of them under a pile of unnecessary implausibilities and contradictions. And it’s a movie where continuity screams excised scenes, as Charlie suffers head lacerations that happen entirely off camera and without being referred to by anyone. Somewhere there’s a longer cut of this movie, and someone needs to release it. Only then will the movie have a real chance of impressing its audience.

Rating: 5/10 – a film noir wannabe that neglects both its storyline and its plot, The American Side is so preoccupied with prolonging its inherent mystery that it can’t resist keeping it’s distance from the viewer; as a result everything suffers, and the movie never recovers from Ricker and Stuhr’s apparent insistence on filming their script as is.

The Lady in the Car With Glasses and a Gun (2015)

24 Sunday Apr 2016

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The Lady in the Car

Original title: La dame dans l’auto avec des lunettes et un fusil

D: Joann Sfar / 95m

Cast: Freya Mavor, Benjamin Biolay, Elio Germano, Stacy Martin, Thierry Hancisse, Alexandre von Sivers, Olivier Bonjour

Mousy secretary Dany (Mavor) works for businessman Michel Caravaille (Biolay). She has undeveloped fantasies about their relationship becoming something more than just employer and employee, but Michel is clearly uninterested. When he tells her he needs a report typed up urgently, she tells him it will take her all night. As he needs it first thing in the morning he tells her she can do the work at his home. After a quick stop at her home for some things, they arrive at Michel’s home where she is given a room to work in, and meets his wife, Anita (Martin).

The next day, and with the report completed, Michel asks Dany to drive himself and Anita to the airport, and then take the car, a magnificent Thunderbird, back to his home. Dany drops them off but decides that, with the weekend ahead of her, no one will know if she drives the car out to the coast (she’s never seen the sea), and as long as she gets the car back before Michel and Anita return. But as she makes her way through the French countryside, Dany finds herself meeting people who say they’ve seen, and talked to her, earlier on. This angers Dany, especially when the staff at a gas station are more concerned with her having been there before than in paying credence to the attack that was made on her in the toilets, and despite her receiving an injury that she didn’t have “before”.

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At a hotel Dany finds again that she’s recognised by the staff. She also meets an Italian who calls himself Georges (Germano). Dany allows herself to be seduced by Georges, but the next day she finds he has stolen the Thunderbird. Desperate to get the car back she enlists the aid of a truck driver and his friends on the CB network to find out where Georges has got to. But when she tracks him down to a seaside town, events take an even more disturbing turn, and Dany discovers that she’s now connected to a murder.

Adapted from the novel by Sébastien Japrisot, Joann Sfar’s third feature is a twisty, Gallic thriller that looks cool, plays it cool, but becomes quite heated in the last quarter of an hour, as its tricksy, mysterious narrative unravels thanks to one massive mistake made early on in the movie’s construction. It’s not hard to work out what’s happening, or who’s responsible, but the why is kept under wraps until quite near the end. By the time all is revealed though, Dany’s journey from subdued, submissive secretary to not quite defenceless stooge-in-the-making has taken one too many “unexpected” turns for it all to work properly or credibly.

Which is a shame, as for much of its running time, The Lady in the Car With Glasses and a Gun is an entertaining mystery movie, sometimes feeling a little surreal, sometimes a little like experiencing a mild hallucinogen, but always keeping the audience a little off-kilter. This helps the viewer identify more closely with Dany and her escalating problems, as the script by Patrick Godeau and Gilles Marchand does its best to retain a semblance of “normality” while putting its heroine through the emotional wringer. Each successive encounter with someone who’s already met her leaves Dany questioning what’s going on but this isn’t some Twilight Zone fantasy that she’s experiencing; instead it’s a much more sinister world she finds herself dealing with, and as the script keeps Dany on the back foot, it strives to keep the viewer in suspense at the same time.

TLITC - scene1

That it doesn’t fully succeed is due to the somewhat generic nature of the mystery itself. It’s unlikely that Dany is going mad, and to be fair, the movie doesn’t take that tack, but in putting her in situations where things aren’t as clearcut or as straightforward as they should be, Sfar and the screenwriters portray a secondary world where nothing is obvious, and expectations should be abandoned. Once Dany veers off the main road back to Michel’s home and heads for the seaside, it’s almost as if she’s entered some kind of alternate reality, a dream world perhaps, and the movie tries hard to maintain that illusion for as long as possible. And until Dany meets Georges, it succeeds quite well in creating that kind of atmosphere.

In a lot of mystery thrillers, the introduction of a man who is sympathetic to the heroine’s troubles, and wants to help out, usually leads to a romance between them that’s borne out of tackling those troubles. And at first it seems as if Georges is there to fulfill that role, but even though they end up in bed together, the audience will already know that Georges isn’t to be trusted (Germano’s performance practically screams “con man”). By removing this small amount of hope, the audience begins to understand that this movie may be more nihilistic than they expected. And as Dany gets further and further into trouble, so it proves.

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Sfar is a competent director, certainly able to elicit strong performances from his cast – Mavor, perhaps best known as Mini from the TV series Skins (2011-12) is very good indeed as Dany – but the movie’s tone is wayward, and the ending feels rushed, as if the movie had to come in at a certain running time and a less hurried denouement would have ruined things. He’s also never quite sure as a director with where to place the camera, leaving the movie looking and feeling a little awkward in its presentation of certain scenes, such as Dany’s romantic fantasies, and when he feels the need to vary the camera angles when Dany’s in the car. And he fumbles the revelation of what’s been happening (and why), leaving the viewer unsure if he/she heard right, or if there’s something more to be added. As it is, the revelation is unnecessarily complicated, and relies too much on coincidence to work effectively, a problem Sfar doesn’t have the experience to solve.

But as already mentioned, the movie does look cool, thanks to Manuel Dacosse’s sterling cinematography. The movie has an autumnal, melancholy feel to it that Dacosse highlights through the use of some unfussy yet effective lighting, and a subdued colour palette. And it’s a movie that gets progressively darker in terms of light and shade as Dany’s problems worsen. This makes the movie intriguing to watch on a visual level, and helps make up for some of the failings elsewhere. But all in all, it’s a movie where style and substance aren’t on an equal footing.

Rating: 6/10 – while there’s much to admire in The Lady in the Car With Glasses and a Gun, it’s narrative isn’t rewarding enough to overcome the pitfalls it finds itself creating; Mavor has the look of a troubled innocent, and is the glue that holds the movie together, but her performance alone isn’t enough to overcome the movie’s various narrative problems.

Midnight Special (2016)

12 Tuesday Apr 2016

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Midnight Special

D: Jeff Nichols / 112m

Cast: Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Jaeden Lieberher, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver, Bill Camp, Scott Haze, Sam Shepard, Paul Sparks, David Jensen

It’s only taken writer/director Jeff Nichols four movies to become a movie maker whose projects carry an enormous weight of expectation. First there was Shotgun Stories (2007), then there was Take Shelter (2011). He followed that up with Mud (2012), and now he brings us Midnight Special, a tale about an eight year old boy who may be an alien, or an emissary from God, or something else completely. It’s a measure of Nichols’ success that he’s taken what could have been an awkward, unconvincing story – in lesser hands – and made it into an articulate, gripping tale that’s also exciting and thought-provoking.

The movie begins with the police searching for a missing child called Alton Meyer (Lieberher). He’s been abducted from a religious compound known as the Ranch. It’s head, Alton’s adoptive father, Calvin Meyer (Shepard), wants him back, and within the next four days. But Alton – who has to wear blue goggles during daylight hours – has been abducted by his real father, Roy Tomlin (Shannon), and he, along with his friend, Lucas (Edgerton), are trying to keep Alton safe and also get him to a certain place in four days’ time. There, something momentous will happen, but neither Roy nor Calvin Meyer knows what it is; and at this point, Alton doesn’t know either.

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The FBI, and the NSA – in the form of agent Paul Sevier (Driver) – are also trying to find Alton, as they have become aware that he has been including coded intelligence in the sermons he’s written for Meyer. But Alton has other gifts, and one in particular, connected to his sight. When Ray decides to stop off at an old Ranch member’s home, that particular gift almost causes the house to shake apart. From there, the trio drive to the home of Alton’s mother, Sarah (Dunst), but not before an incident at a gas station reveals that Alton’s heat signature is similar to that of a nuclear bomb. Now a foursome, they travel on to the location that Alton must reach, however, they’re unaware that two members of the Ranch, Doak (Camp) and Levi (Haze), are tracking them with the intention of kidnapping Alton and returning him to the Ranch.

Before they are able to, Alton, who has been getting sicker and sicker, and has to avoid direct sunlight, tells Roy that he can no longer continue to keep hidden from the sun. Roy exposes Alton to a sunrise, and it has an extraordinary effect: he can now walk about unaffected in daylight, and knows exactly what he needs to do and why he needs to be in a certain place at a certain date and time. As he tells Roy: he doesn’t belong here.

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Whether or not Alton makes it to his rendezvous is, ultimately, neither here nor there. What’s important is the journey he makes getting there, and the way in which he and his parents, and Lucas, make it there. One of the strengths of Nichols’ impressive and layered screenplay is the way in which Roy’s parental determination to not let anything stop him from getting Alton to his rendezvous, sometimes presents itself as unfeeling and harsh. When he and Lucas encounter a state trooper, Roy is unequivocal: he tells Lucas to shoot him. Roy doesn’t care about anyone else, only Alton, and his zeal and willingness to put moral certitude aside makes him one of recent cinema’s more interesting and intriguing characters. Shannon is perfect for the role, morally absent when he needs to be, but a committed, loving father as well, and fully able to show these two sides of Roy’s character without any sense that he’s a Jekyll and Hyde personality and able to call on either side when necessary.

What’s also important is that Roy believes in Alton, albeit in a different way from Calvin (he and his followers believe that Alton’s rendezvous is also the time when they will all be judged by God). He believes in his son, wholeheartedly, and even if what he knows is incredibly far-fetched. If it wasn’t for the light that can stream from Alton’s eyes when he’s exposed to sunlight, the viewer would be hard pressed to believe in the same way as Roy does. Nichols doesn’t keep the viewer in the dark for long (no pun intended), and any doubts are dispelled when Elden (Jensen), the ex-Ranch member has to have “another look”. From then on, Alton’s gifts/abilities/powers are assimilated into the narrative in a way that both explores them and allows them to drive events forward. As the otherworldly Alton, Lieberher does a fantastic job of balancing his closeted childhood with his increasing awareness of the skills he really possesses (he reads a lot of comic books and at one point asks about Kryptonite as if it were real).

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Nichols orchestrates all this with a tremendous amount of flair, even as he keeps a tight rein on the more overt sci-fi elements of his screenplay. The subplot involving the Ranch members sometimes comes across as more of an afterthought, or late addition to the script, while the inclusion of Sarah doesn’t give Dunst much more to do than look concerned and hesitant. And there’s one very important question that Nichols leaves right until the very final shot to explain (in many respects it’s the most important question). But with such a high level of confidence on display, Nichols can be forgiven a couple of narrative faux pas, and his handling of the action sequences is bracing and not at all derivative (a major feat in itself). The whole thing is beautifully shot by Nichols’ regular DoP Adam Stone, and there’s an insidious, disorientating score courtesy of another Nichols’ regular, David Wingo.

Rating: 8/10 – Nichols continues his run of impressive features with a movie that asks what it is to be human, and comes up with some unexpected answers in the process; Midnight Special is an intelligent, original, and supremely well executed sci-fi drama, as well as a fantastic example of what can be done with a well constructed script, a more than willing cast, inspired direction, and all on a modest budget.