As it seems, I'm back to old movies not having a better subject. "The Morning After" is not the best of the '80s, but it has some certain charm (+ obviously I've watched it more recently than the '80s so I can still remember what I've seen).
An alcoholic actress, beyond her prime, wakes up one morning, somewhere in a penthouse, near a dead body with a knife in his chest. Completely amnesic and with no recollection of meeting the late fellow, she decides to run away. Where running = flying out of town, but the whole thing happens to coincide with Thanksgiving so the plan fails due to lack of room in scheduled flights. So, having also her car picked up by the police, the only escape she finds seems to be a guy who struggles to start his wreck's engine in the airport parking lot and who's nice enough to offer her a ride back to the city. Leaving out the details, "the plot thickens" the second morning after another drinking night, when the dead body gets mysteriously teleported in the shower of her own house. Fortunately, the guy she met earlier, who we find out to be a former cop, offers to help the apparent murderer to find out how dead men can walk.
Probably half the movie's charm is given by the acting of Jane Fonda and Jeff Bridges in the lead roles, and the totally atypical romance story. For the rest, you can feel the direction of Sidney Lumet building up the suspense, even though it's not really among his best. Also, we don't actually have a perfect crime novel resolution, the last part becoming predictable enough about the solution of the mystery. Even so, the script with the comic nuances it has it's nice, and makes a watchable movie despite the age it shows sometimes.
Set in the Victorian London of the 19th century, "The Limehouse Golem" fits in the crime mystery genre, somewhere between Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle, maybe more close to the latter and his Sherlock Holmes.
The movie follows the investigation conducted by inspector Kildare of Scotland Yard concerning a series of murders in Limehouse, one of London's bad neighborhoods in the 1800s. The subject, adaptation of a book, has similarities with the case of Jack the Ripper, which is an obvious inspiration - from the setting up to the investigator and suspects, some picked out from the real figures of the time. The action thread intersects with a parallel case of poisoning a writer, and of his accused wife, this becoming basically the main lead in the investigation, both cases revolving around the same people.
I can't say that I liked the movie, but I have to give it credit for some aspects. The subject is convoluted enough to keep the mystery alive until the end, although you can reduce the number of suspects relatively fast. The director's approach is interesting and seems to put more weight on the artistic side (visuals, set decoration, etc) than on the concrete story. Sometimes, however, it feels rushed, and you lose track of what's going on. And if I got to the negative parts, there's a bit too much red paint in it. The grim scenes bring a strong contrast to the rest, but it doesn't feel really useful in the sense it's probably intended = to strengthen the same contrast between the personality of the murderer and the real image of the character ( no more spoilers :) ). As last remark for this entry, Bill Nighy seemed rather tired for the lead role, although again, maybe that's what was intended for the character to look like. Bottom line...
1. It's been a while since I'm trying to do a strict selection of what I watch - unfortunately time is limited, movies to pick from not. 2. "London Fields" was a guilty pleasure - where after watching I'd say it was more guilty and less pleasure. 3. IMDb gives it 4.3, Metacritic ranks at 16/100, and RottenTomatoes shows an epic 0% for this title, which should be more than enough as a red flag of "stay away!" - but Amber Heard has green eyes, and eventually I gave up resisting...
...in my defense: not before finding out that there is a director's cut, apparently a bit better than the initial version released a year ago. To be honest, I'm not sure what version I did watch, but from what I heard I tend to think it was the one which is at least a bit better edited. Meaning that we have some continuity in the action, which you can follow, compared to the chaotic development I heard it's present in the initial version. Now, about the contents of this action, oh well...
"London Fields" wants to be a neo-noir mystery set around a femme fatale: Nicola Six, who enter a bar some day, where she intersects her path with 3 guys, and has a vision of her own death at her 30th anniversary being cause by one of them. Only that she doesn't know who's the murderer... an American writer, temporarily moved in London, a drunk darts player, broke and heavily in debt, or a young banker, whose IQ seems similar with the degree of variation in his everyday life. In this context we have a love triangle getting shape (or better said a square), though without getting much sense. Or if there is one, the movie doesn't offer much reason to lose also extra time to look for it. The mystery part is at least partially shattered at a certain moment when you find out that one of the three guys doesn't have much to lose. The neo-noir part is also fading away quite fast due to the directing style, not having many scenes to support it. And still...
There is a certain action thread that the movie follows. Nicola struggles to get money from a guy to pay another one's debt, while the third is observing all of it. It's not very clear why she's doing that. As well as her reaction of accepting the cruel fate. Anyway, with the exception of Jim Sturgess, whose overacting is a bit too "over", the actors do a good job. Despite a gratuitous Razzie nomination, Amber Heard (with all the objectivity I can have) can act, and actually she does a good part here compared to others. There are also a couple scenes of what looks to be the "director's cut" that have some artistic sparkle in them in respect to editing/camera work. Shame though there are a couple more that cancel that. The major problem though is the story and the script - both having Martin Amis as author, who also signed a best-seller with the same name, 30 years ago.
As an objective conclusion, I don't know how the novel managed to gain success, but a bizarre mixture of romance with tons of darts thrown in, barely showing some clear ending, it's probably a good alternative only to a B series movie, instead of a sleeping pill. It can be worse though ("The Counselor" comes to my mind). At least here I didn't expect anything. Anyway, as another option of a mystery with a sort of a femme fatale central character, I reviewed a while ago "A Simple Favor". Much more clever, and overall much, much, much better.
Rating: 2 out of 5 ( objectively ;) - subjectively +0.5 :P )
I should've written this entry when this was still "fresh" for me = around two weeks ago = what I was afraid of - that my memory will start failing me - it's happening... and still "Bad Times at the El Royale" it's not a movie to forget. You can love it, or hate it, but completely forgettable.. not really.
El Royale - a motel with a firm that's more pretentious than the looks of it - it's an almost deserted establishment on the border of the states of California and Nevada. Literally. The California rooms are slightly more expensive at one extra dollar. The Nevada rooms, however, seem more attractive, but for other reasons than the price. Or at least that's what could conclude the only active employee, Miles Miller, the reception boy, when he suddenly finds 4 guests in the lobby. A catholic priest, a soul/jazz singer, a traveling salesman, and a hippie girl. With one exception, all seem to have a hidden agenda that brought them to the same place, and coincidentally at the same time. Obviously, I won't spoil the exception ;) ... Just that the movie begins with a short sequence, when years ago, an overly stressed guy gets a room, and buries a bag under the wooden floor, but he doesn't live long afterwards... Anyway, that's just one trigger for what comes after ;) There are more.
You might hate this, as I was saying. It's a long movie at its 2.5 hours, in which we also see a consistent part of the intro repeated from the perspective of the different characters. Stuff that might bore you. It wasn't my case. You might also love this, if you have enough patience and you're in the right mood. The subject escalates bit by bit. You don't get it all at once, and this was my catchy factor. It might seem similar in style with Tarantino. I liked it more, however, than "The Hateful Eight", which is probably the first example that might cross your mind given the isolated place and the small bunch that seem to look forward for each others demise. Talking about comparisons, I only found out after watching that's written and directed by Drew Goddard, and I can say in retrospect that you could feel some common elements maybe also with "Cabin in the Woods", starting with the fact that we find out pretty quick that all the rooms in the motel are under surveillance. But let's not overrate it - "Cabin in the Woods" it's still a bit above what we have here :) although, given the "surprise character" revealed towards the end, these to movies are getting closer ;)
If David Lynch would have made a hippie movie... it would've probably been called "Under the Silver Lake". Or maybe David Lynch made a hippie movie, but I can't really remember any right now (a really hippie one). What we have here is written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, whose "It Follows" I counted a couple years ago in the probably best horrors ever made. Not the case here. Not a horror... neither a best ever made..
A jobless guy without much of a perspective, outside being evicted due to late rent, finds something to kill his time by solving the puzzle of Silver Lake - an area in East L.A. apparently known for its hipster trend (at least Google says that). The enigma starts with a blonde girl living across the door who disappears over night. The chain of investigations gets us through various locations, with even more various characters - from a dog killer, to a paranoid graphic novels author obsessed of the urban legend of a killer nymph with an owl head, an eccentric millionaire disappeared in strange conditions and (spoiler) found in even more suspicious conditions, a composer who since a century ago embeds subliminal messages into all hits released on this planet, and others.
There are many parts in the movie that don't make any sense. At least not an obvious one, and not raising to a level that could intrigue you enough to search for one. I think I've seen some comments somewhere telling that it doesn't seem to have an end. I think it has, at least for the intrigue where it starts from. I don't know how satisfactory that might seem for some, but for me it was ok. What's after is just an epilogue. The reason though to watch the movie is, by far, the way it's visually composed. It's so good that the subject fades away. I don't even know how to describe it from that perspective. The trailer isn't really the best indicator. Let's just say it's very divers as camera work. Which anyway, you should see, not read about... ;)
"Loneliness probably kills more people than cancer" says a line from a "A Simple Favor". Probably the only trying to sound like "this was deep..." if you look at it after the movie and think how far it goes on what you just seen, and that's why it probably sticks to you. Besides that, this was fun!
Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) is a single mom living in the New York suburbs out of the life insurance of her late husband, dead in a car crash, and who spends her days with a cooking vlog and many parenting activities. Emily (Blake Lively) is the wife of a former success writer, lacking now any new novel ideas, which lets her as main provider for the family working as the PR head for an important fashion house. Therefore, her preference for drowning her daily existence in a Martini glass instead spending more time with her child, for whom she's unsuccessfully looking for a nanny. Lucky her... both kids go to the same school, and in a rainy day, Emily meets Stephanie. Starting with an invitation for a drink and some chit-chat, despite the apparently major difference between the two, we're getting to more often encounters + sharing secrets + Stephanie's offer to take care once in a while of her new best friend's kid. That's the "simple favor" = Emily must leave to Miami for a few days, her husband is in England to his sick mom, so help is needed. All nice and well... until when Emily does not respond anymore, and Stephanie's temporary nanny job seems to take a more permanent turn. The urgency brings the husband back home... police, searching, mystery.
Spoiler alert: Let me move a bit beyond the trailer this time and just say that the disappearance has an expected finale. We have a body. Emily is found dead, drowned this time in a lake, no Martini, but with some injected heroin. The mystery stays alive though. The apparent cause of death is an accident or a suicide. So apparent that we're not even said clearly which of those is considered, and it's obvious that we have more. Or to put it straight, who did it? :) And now the story starts ;) ...
There's some stuff on the plus side that I can't let unchecked. 1. The script and the story - maybe's the reason that we have a novel behind the movie, maybe not, but this was, by far, the best I've seen of this year (not that I've seen many). Let's say that a solid chunk of the mystery is solved somewhere at two thirds of the movie, giving you the feeling that... damn, that's it.... what's left to see? Well, there's more. Maybe not with such a strong twist, but trust me, there's still some story left to tell. 2. The soundtrack - exceptional; same style as Tarantino, Guy Ritchie or the last John Wick of combining the "dedicated score" with songs. As in the trailer we have a selection of French tunes, older or newer, which match perfectly the tone of the movie (I don't know if that connects somehow to "do you want to Diabolique me?" :) another line in the movie said by Stephanie to the just widowed husband, referencing directly the French film). 3. The acting - I must admit a reason that brought me to the cinema being the presence in the cast of both Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively. Objectively speaking, if the first maybe overacted just a bit, I think Blake Lively has here her best role of what I've seen by now ("The Age of Adaline" not included). Maybe the character also helps a bit, being more... complex, let's say, than how it seems initially.
I've read somewhere that "A Simple Favor" can be seen as a more light-hearted version of "Gone Girl", or something like that. It's a pretty good description, although besides the mysterious disappearance + some other common elements about the respective character (no more spoilers), the story evolves quite differently. The cat and mouse game there is a bit different here - first we start with three participants: the wife, the friend/nanny/whatever... and the husband. Second, we have indeed a comic nuance, which often moves towards sarcasm, and which has an excellent effect of keeping the general feeling more towards a relaxed zone a la "Midsomer Murders" meets "Wild Things", compared to Fincher's specific tension from "Gone Girl" where I still remember a shock build-up sequence. You also get here a "stronger" scene at some point but it's not even close to as disturbing the other was. So, overall, again, it was fun! :) + you might learn how to make a real Martini ;)
Since I don't really have time to reach the cinema these days, I said to catch back a bit on my older "to watch" list... and the oldest entry was "The Third Man", considered actually a "classic" from the glory days of the noir movie.
Somewhere in post-war Vienna, divided under the control of the Allied troops, we have Holly Martins arriving. An American writer of cheap novels, without a dime, responding to an offer made by a friend for a possible job. Surprise, apparently his buddy Harry Lime is at the cemetery, deceased in an accident just in front of his home. Unhappy with the official version of the events, Mr. Martins starts an investigation on his own in parallel with the one led by a British officer. It doesn't take long to find out that at the moment of the accident there were three men taking care of the body, contrary to the police report that mentions only two - that's where the title comes from. Unfortunately the answer to the question of who's "the third man" becomes predictable quite fast...
The movie includes also a romance, which on one hand fills a bit the gaps, but on the other creates a bit too many unnecessary lengths... After it becomes clear what's "the main twist", all the story gets a bit boring. Besides that, the score, which initially is interesting and catchy, it slowly starts to have more of a lullaby effect. Opposite to that, the camera work is quite ok, and keeps surprising you. Probably one of the best parts in the whole movie is the unexpected documentary value - you actually get to see the Vienna of that time. Unfortunately, my expectations of watching a hitchcockian thriller were quite far from what I saw. And having a subject more simple than it looks to be, I think it also harms the aging factor. Verdict: acceptable, but I think too overrated...
"Zootopia" is a breath of fresh air in the Disney world. Something that somehow manages to keep the limits on the moral side of the story without losing it into excess tear buckets. Besides that, it has a story. It really does ...
We have an anthropomorphic universe where animals (human race excluded) got to a level of civilization where they leave in peace in harmony. Liberte, egalite, fraternite ... or not. At least that's what Judy Hops finds out fast, as the first bunny in history to get an officer position in the town's police department. It's not a spoiler to say that all ends well and the principles of the French Revolution seem restored. Would be a spoiler though to tell how that happens. It's a police story that combines in a very interesting way a mystery and noir movie nuance with the humor and warmth of specific to an animation.
The movie has a very solid script - surprisingly for an animation where normally this is relatively light. We have a background story in the intro, there is a main story that's pretty self contained and wrapped up, and beyond that there comes a twist + a final part which develops after the apparent initial conclusion. It's really nice that the trailer doesn't say anything and keeps room for a surprise :), and all what's left for me to say is don't trust the ... :P watch the movie to see who ;)
Posts
