Summer-Fall 2020 Movie Preview - Part 1

I have the feel that what I'm doing now is like opening a shop of winter coats in the middle of Sahara, with an ad-sign near writing: "There will be a next ice age!". But after all, the nights are cold in the desert, so... keeping the analogy (probably totally inappropriate), maybe we'll have some movie releases this year, no matter if in cinema or directly on streaming. There are finished productions after all, even though there's nothing certain about their premiere date. Anyway, I decided to stick with my usual timing for these entries set at the calendar of seasons change. After all, I'm doing this as a short entry since quite some time with just 3 titles. But let's see if we find that many in what's left for this summer...

Disney seems to be decided to keep the release date for "Artemis Fowl" in June, using its own streaming platform. We'll see how fast will it move beyond that. About the movie... not even "Harry Potter" was on my favorites list, so even less the bunch of replicas in the same area of fantasy coming in a wave started more than 15 years ago. There are exceptions, but just a few, and I doubt "Artemis Fowl" will get there. But it's also about taste. I prefer the "classic" genre of fantasy = LoTR, Merlin, Stardust... anyway, again, we don't have many options for this summer.

However, in July - not postponed yet, we have "Tenet", one of the most expected movies of this year. Christopher Nolan returns to SciFi, and even more, to time travel/parallel universes. For me, but again it's a matter of taste + some personal obsessions ;), it's enough to have a good movie in this area to save a couple months with no titles.

In August the number of movies that didn't have their release date postponed rises, or better said, the movies that had their date postponed for August. We have "Wonder Woman 1984", "The New Mutants" and "Antebellum" as main titles. Since I'm not really into movies, X-Men and any derived stuff is pretty much the same, let's stick with the last one. There's not much in the trailer, but among the rest we have a hint here too of a time travel story. Now... nobody says that a release date can't be postponed twice, but let's be optimistiv.

Ok, so for the Summer months we managed to find something. Let's see how we can deal with the Fall.. next time ;)

A Good Woman Is Hard to Find (2019)

Let's get over the marketing title. If you count the characters in the movie, the second part of "A Good Woman Is Hard to Find" fails the statistics (or otherwise said, you'll find one good woman in the movie, one good man seems harder...). Anyway, other interpretations of the title in other contexts might lead to more complicated discussions :). So let's better leave the headline aside, and get into the story...

Sarah Collins is a widow with two children, living somewhere in Northern Ireland. Sarah struggles to find out who killed her husband, murdered in a nearby park a few months before the movie starts. The police seems to ignore her desperate requests to press on with the inquiry. Add to that the lack of money, one of the children traumatized by the loss of his father, and an unfriendly environment, where even the local shops employees are hostile. We have, therefore, a context where getting through the day requires being tough. Much more than Sarah's softness, who's barely able to counter the nagging of her own mother. On top of everything, one day she's assaulted by some low-life dealer who's forcing his way into her house and decides he'll hide his stolen drugs there. Physically threatened by the guy, mocked by the police, and scared by the perspective of losing the custody of her children, Sarah gives in and becomes an involuntary accomplice. And things get worse... until Sarah snaps.

The whole picture I just described is maybe too grey to make you want to see the movie. You can add to that also some pretty gory scenes, and also the trailer which won't offer much. The bad advertising stops here. Ignore all. Trust me, you should see the movie. I didn't expect to have the surprise I had given all the above context.

It's by far the best acting of a female lead I've watched in the last couple of years. Sarah Bolger (the main actress) basically runs the whole show. It's hard for me to find another recent example where the acting + obviously also what's in the script, to make you root for and empathize with the character the way it happens here, even after she's crossing some limits (if the axe in the poster didn't tell much...). Probably the effect is given by the entire sequence of unfortunate events, which the poor woman is forced to endure, sequence that gradually increases the impact the movie has on you.

Despite the gloomy and tensed mood it starts with, the movie lets you breathe. It's relatively well dosed with tension release moments, and except of a couple scenes that force the limits a bit, in general it's not exactly hard to watch, despite of the above description.

For a festival movie, which I don't even know it got distributed in cinemas, clearly with a reduced budget, the production level is ok. Don't expect much, but the editing, the sound, the image and whatever else we have on the technical side, support the story quite well. On the negative side: the ending is maybe a bit anticlimactic (spoiler: no axe :P), but in some way it makes it more believable like that...

Rating: 4 out of 5

Anthropoid (2016)

I don't know how I'm getting there, but I'm again discussing a movie based on real facts, despite my strong belief that the main reason to lose two hours with a film is to escape real life. "Anthropoid" describes an operation conducted in 1942, having as target the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the number 3 of the Nazi hierarchy at the time. It's the only thing I watched this week, so that's the topic of today.

I won't teach a history lesson here. In a couple words, this assassination was the only event of this kind that was successful during WW2 vs. a high rank official in the Reich. The action was planned and executed by a small group in the Czech resistance, Heydrich being assigned to Prague at the time to coordinate the occupancy of Bohemia and Moravia, and earning his nickname of "The Butcher". The historical analysis makes debatable to this day the utility of the assassination, considering the harsh reprisals in balance with the elimination of the main architect of the Holocaust, but let's leave the historical analysis for historians.

About the movie: it's split in two by the assassination, which takes place around half of its running time, between the planning and the outcome. It's a pretty accurate description of the facts if you compare them at least with what Wikipedia gives, where the details that are not that easy to grasp. In this context it's actually good that we have some tiny additions like two romance stories to compensate a bit, which anyway don't impact much the realism of the story. The two main agents deployed by the exiled Czech government to execute the mission - roles made by Cillian Murphy and Jamie Dornan - are very convincing, with an interesting nuance at some point of switch between certainty and anxiety. Besides that, the movie is quite good on the technical side, especially on editing. Even though it might not look so out of reality as the "Valkyie" operation that barely failed in removing Hitler from power, it has its own degree of spectacular which would put it normally in the action movies category. Unfortunately though, even the exaggerated facts seem to be mostly based on true facts, which finally makes you look at the movie a bit different than on an action film. Anyway, it definitely delivers on the impact side...

Rating: 4 out of 5

Jack Strong (2014)

Again I didn't have much time for movies this week, and I decided to vary a bit. "Jack Strong" is mostly a Polish production, having a historic fact as subject. Ryszard Kuklinski, aka "The Seagull" aka Jack Strong, was a colonel in the Polish army during the cold war, who sick of the Soviet domination and apparently scared by the increasing chances for a WW3 decided to give the Americans everything he could get from Kremlin.

The movie is a spy story in the most classic sense, where classic doesn't mean James Bond by Ian Fleming, but more something like John LeCarre or Frederick Forsyth, only that there's no literature here but a real case. This might make it seem slow in the beginning, until Kuklinski decides to spy for the West, but it slowly gains some dynamic once the tension rises after the Russians find out they have a leak. I'd even say that while in the first part seemed a bit boring, in the end I got to think that the dynamic of the actions spoils the realism of it.

There are some elements that are clearly added extra to what happened, but overall the movie is surprising authentic and credible, starting with the people, cars, furniture, even the weather (= when the winter was really winter), all specific for that time. Even though it romances a bit the history of the main character, it has some documentary value too. Clearly it's a better option than the average Hollywood action movie, but also clearly it's not the most engaging production ever. Depends on your mood.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Gemini (2017)

Again I'm not really in the mood, I don't have much time, and neither a proper subject for the weekly entry. There's, however, a movie that I watched last month, which is far from a masterpiece but I found it underrated (at least for its IMDb score), so I guess it deserves some attention. "Gemini" is a crime mystery, more close to the classic type than it might seem in the beginning, even giving some glimpse of neo-noir. Anyway, the story: Heather is a successful, but moody actress, who delegates most of her problems to her personal assistant, Jill. After an evening with some sort of tensed resignation from an ongoing production, followed by some alcohol, pestering paparazzi, and an annoying fan, Heather remembers that her assistant owns a gun, which she requests for personal protection. With some reserve, Jill decides to grant her wish, and also spends the night in Heather's house, saying goodbye the next morning and returning around lunch, when... surprise, she finds her boss' disfigured corpse with the empty gun nearby. Fingerprints: only Heather and Jill. And so, the mystery begins...

At some point, it reminded me a bit of "A Simple Favor", especially since the title might sound as a spoiler close to what's there for who saw it, but (spoiler of a spoiler) in the end there's not much alike. The subject seems to get tangled in a complicated intrigue, and the development creates more and more potential for that, but what you get is a quick solution and the movie ends, leaving you waiting for some apparently clear but not given answers. Even though the end might be disappointing, overall it's quite engaging, the acting is ok and in particular Lola Kirke (Jill) was an interesting presence. For more, check "A Simple Favor" ;)

Rating: 3 out of 5