I don't know if my subconscious was guided by some late problems to choose "Anatomie d'une chute"/"Anatomy of a Fall" as subject for the current entry, but what is certain is that I don't have any other subject left that I've seen this winter, for which I could give a higher rating. Besides that, I also don't have the time today, in the last day of this February (luckily it's a leap year), to put something on the blog for this month too. This movie has the advantage that it can be summarized quickly. We have a german writer, in a remarkable interpretation of Sandra Huller, relocated in a mountain area in France, together with her husband a son left almost blind after a former accident. The woman gets charged as a suspect when her husband is found dead following a fall from one of the floors of the chalet they're living in. What follows is a trial revealing the background of a disfunctional family, untangled, at least as it seems to be, in the end by the son who proves a surprisingly mature objectiveness in analysing the case. Cinematographically, the movie doesn't really stand out. Maybe the editing raises a bit more above the average. However, it's a production that overall can be perceived as... consistent, or better said, heavy, concerning the analysis of a family's life. What's contradictory though is that sometimes is too thin - besides the appearances, there are some parts where it is superficial compared to what can, unfortunately, exist in reality. What's certain is that's good to be watched as warning. But I get to contradict myself on what I was saying years ago about a movie being meant to remove you from reality, at least for a couple of hours :) Maybe I'll get back with something more optimistic next month ;) It depends up to where the falls go.
If I should make a top for the discrepancy between the feel a trailer leaves you with and a movie, for what I've watched in the last two-three years, "Fast Charlie" would probably come up somewhere among the top positions. Now well... the impression is subjective after all, both concerning the trailer, and the movie.
At least the subject you can get partially from the two minutes attached at the end of this entry. Charlie Swift (Pierce Brosnan) is a "fixer" for a criminal outfit from.. Biloxi, Mississippi (fact: the city has less than 50k inhabitants). Which organization, after 30 years of dominating the territory under the rule of the "godfather" Stan Mullen (James Caan in his last part), becomes the target of a "hostile takeover" by a young gangster who decides to eliminate everybody close to the leader. The story is predictable if you look at the trailer, Charlie escapes and seeks revenge. What's not that predictable is that this action thread is less major than it looks to be, and the movie is actually quite far from the typical standard B-series payback action thriller. First, we have plenty of nuances of black comedy. Second, we also have another set of more fine nuances of slow drama with insertions related to the late midlife chrisis of the main character. In some way, it feels a bit like the movies of Martin McDonagh ("In Bruges", "Seven Psychopats", etc.), but it's not really on par with these. However, you can feel there's a novel behind it = the story is not as thin as it mai seem at a first sight. We also have romance insertions and others, leaving the main thread somehow in background as I said.
It's not a movie that I could recommend besides the reasons written above. The actors do their job fine. The director (Phillip Noyce) does his job fine - the movie progression keeps you there, you don't feel any unnecessary length. Still, especially from a technical point of view, there's nothing remarkable about it. Maybe just the final minutes when you get a visual/audio arrangement meant to get a final thumbs up from you. Otherwise, it feels more like a made for tv movie, from which you expected a bit more. In the end it probably depends a lot of your mood. And in my case it came up in a moment when what I can do is to say again :) the impression is subjective.
I ignored for a while "Don't Worry Darling", simply for the reason it was bashed by critics + neither the scores on IMDb, RT, etc. didn't help it. I was wrong. Not that I wouldn't know that lately it's better to be skeptical about the aforementioned ratings.
The movie is set sometime close to the '50s, taking place in an isolated community - "Project Victory", somewhere in an oasis at the edge of the desert, where the life seems stuck to the typical American stereotype of the period = each couple has a home with a backyard and each housewife tends to the house chores for the entire day waiting for the beloved husband to return from work. The "work" seems to be a top secret engineering project coordinated by Frank, the community leader, which is developed at a couple miles away from the settlement, in a place more restricted than Area 51. The plot is centered on a couple formed by Alice and Jack, their idilic life starting to shake after she begins observing that some things are not as fine and well as they seemed to be. Beginning with another wife who miraculously survives an inexplicable suicide attempt to a plane dissapeared without a trace after an apparent crash that passes by ignored by everybody. The mystery advances with the rhythm of a psychological thriller, in which Alice slowly becomes the pariah of the community due to the unnecessary tension she creates around. Somewhere at around three quarters of the movie we get our answer for the whole thing. What I can say without spoiling anything is that I didn't expect "the twist" I got this time. My mind went more towards something like military experiments at the beginning of the Cold War. It's not that. Still, unfortunately, the answer the movie offers come either too early or too late - therefore, probably some reason for the harsh reviews it got.
Even if there are some parts that might disappoint a bit, these definitely aren't on the technical side where the movie is top notch - from camera work and production design that provide an excellent support for atmosphere of the middle 20th century to the soundtrack that mixed together with the rest gets you the vibe of an erie episode from "The Outer Limits". The actors are a bit overshadowed by Florence Pugh's performance in the title role, but still, you could say her role is already enough for what the movie needs. The ending is indeed unpolished. However, concerning the criticism on having nothing new in the main twist, I'd be curious to see which movie that turns towards SciFi really brings something new, especially counting probably less than 5 I've seen released for the big screen this year within the genre. And actually, I could say there is some originality even just for the psychedelic contrast placed on top of the retro look. To conclude, I don't know what did or who upset Olivia Wilde, also directing this besides having a side role, to get such an avalanche of bad reviews. For what I can say the movie's not a masterpiece, but definitely above average.
With that I'm also closing more-or-less metaphorically the year of 2022 in a note of "don't worry" :) = I can hope for a more "retro" careless time with a density of entries more close to the blog's origins. Obviously, I'm delusional.. Anyway, Happy Holidays! ;)
I had a theory that Guy Ritchie makes one-two good movies followed by a bad one, and the most recent, "The Gentlement" was one I liked. So, I had my second thoughts about "Wrath of Man". After I finally watched, I'm wondering if I got too picky, or if it wouldn't have been better to merge it in the same entry I wrote last month with "Pig" and "Nobody"...
Yet another revenge movie. It's actually a remake of a French film from 2004. It starts with an intro where an armored van is robbed, the guards are killed during the incident, as well as a kid in the area, a collateral victim. Fast-forward to the moment when a mysterious fellow is hired as a guard by the same security firm. It becomes obvious fast enough that the guy has his own agenda. After that, we're slowly getting more details, leading to the motivation, revenge for his son, the collateral victim above. There are other background elements of the man in the title that we're given one by one as the action evolves, but as usual I won't spoil the most engaging part of the story.
The problem with "Wrath of Man" is probably in the script, which.. I don't know... it's a bit too "theatrical". I can't find a better term now. The density of lines that are surpass the realistic level in the dialogue seemed too high for me, some exchanges being close too stupid. Maybe there's some intention for that, as a relief for the darkness we have in the rest, but it still feels exaggerated. Especially since the dark feeling is probably the plus side of the movie; both visually and mostly the audio support very well the tension we get from the story development. It's like having one of David Ayer's movies ("Harsh Times", "Street Kings", "End of Watch", etc.), which are usually very harsh, over which you're getting the the typical English humor of Guy Ritchie. The result is fine, but there's still something that doesn't fit well there.
It's been a while since I'm counting the length when selecting a movie for watching. It's probably not the best criteria, but it's practical when the allocated time for this starts after 1 AM. "Till Death" is a short movie, otherwise I probably wouldn't have watched it. It would've been a loss. Not that we're talking about a masterpiece, but it was surprisingly original.
What we have here is a more peculiar revenge story, which rapidly turns into a survival movie. Moving 10 years back, we find Emma (Megan Fox) as victim of a violent robbery attempt, ending up marrying the young attorney who's sending the attacker behind bars. Years pass, and he's advancing his career to owning a successful law firm, but their relation gets cold. The movie actually starts when Emma's ending an extramarital affair, just before her marriage anniversary. Her husband organizes a "gift" for this occasion in the form of a romantic evening in a vacation house by a lake, but that's just a prequel for what follows. He decides to put a bullet to his head the following morning, after handcuffing himself to his wife. Well, I already said something you don't get from the trailer :) Something else we don't see there is how elaborate is the sick payback plan. Light spoiler - eventually we find that the deceased probably experienced some "remorse" after sending his wife's attacker to jail and decides to end his life only after the guy's release, leaving him some diamonds as compensation. The clause for getting into possession of these, however, is not that simple.
All the context and whatever else the trailer provides might seem a bit unrealistic, but the the movie slowly delivers small parts that add sense, turning the action in a tensed race for survival. That's actually the catchy factor here - the action is unpredictable enough, although you might not expect that. Emma must deal with the isolated house during a cold winter, carrying a dead heavy husband, who's brain was passed before the bullet by all kinds of thoughts on how to make the "separation" from his wife harder to accomplish. And I can say that either Megan Fox fits perfectly to the role, or she took some acting lessons since last time I saw her in a movie ( I know I'm mean :-) ). Not the last thing: although we clearly have a macabre element, and despite what the trailer might suggest, the violence level in the movie is probably at a third of the average "The Walking Dead" episode. So, to conclude, I think the movie is quite underrated. It's not so easy these days to find a complex enough story, starting from a complicated idea - how to survive a post-mortem revenge - within a thriller that respects its genre = more tension, less VFX.
I don't remember exactly when I've seen "The Invisible" for the first time, but it probably was more than 13 years ago, before writing my first blog entry. At that moment I liked it a lot. My memory is not so good though to write based on that impression, but I've refound it on TV recently, by chance. What I can say after my 2nd watch is that either my standards went up a lot, or it's harder for me to get impressed by drama, but even so I still find a movie a bit underrated.
What we have here is a mix-up between a teen romance and a thriller, with drama accents that you can feel (spoiler) in not the most happy ending ever. Nick Powell is a fresh high-school graduate, coming from a wealthy family, aspiring towards a career as a writer, and willing to escape from his mother's close watch to continue his studies in London. At the same school, Annie Newton has the complete opposite profile: poor disfunctional family, a bunch of unorthodox activities in order to make some money: from loan sharking to stealing cars and others, and a future that most likely looks to lead behind bars. The paths of the two intersect after Annie is denounced by her boyfriend pissed of being cut off from the spoils of a jewelery robbery, but somehow Nick ends up as the one suspected of informing the police. So, Annie decides to pay the "bill" helped by her partners in crime, and Nick ends up in a coma, thrown at the bottom of a sewer and becoming "the invisible". Precisely, he's trapped somewhere between life and death, giving him the opportunity to walk among the living and to observe what he left behind, until he becomes aware that he's still alive. After that we're getting in a race to save his life, where, predictable enough, the role of who brought him to this state shifts completely.
The movie is a remake of a Swedish production, which I didn't see and it might be better. Here, the target is clearly set somewhere similar to "Twilight", released during the same years. Probably this age range contributed also to why I liked it better when I've seen it first, despite being already older than this target. Indeed, I can't deny now that are many parts where the story is at least hardly believable. Besides that, the approach for the SciFi part is very... "economic" let's call it, in the sense that pretty much all Nick's interactions with the environment in his "ectoplasmic" state are presented as effectively taking place, with a sort of flashback succession where nothing really happened. Given the potential confusion degree of the approach, I'd say that the movie is very well edited. Still, you can't deny that some VFX might have been more.. natural in this context. Probably all these lead to the low rating it has on pretty much all the movie sites it's indexed on. However, the movie has something in how it's put together so that if you can ignore the above, it builds up an emotional load that grows on you until the end. It's either that, or the fact that when I've watched it for the first time I had an instant crush for Margarita Levieva who has the leading part of Annie :), or it just has a nostalgia effect for years with less stress, but for me it's still something like a...
A while ago I've seen "Good Time", written and directed by the same Safdie brothers as "Uncut Gems" is. It seemed terribly overrated and so fit to a narrow niche, that I was convinced another movie by the same guys can't be much different.
I wasn't wrong. "Uncut Gems" is likewise annoyingly hysterical from beginning to its end, featuring the same type of a main character - an unscrupulous guy struggling to solve a problem by creating another one. The character in "Uncut Gems" is a loud jeweler from New York, addicted to gambling, probably the role of a lifetime made by Adam Sandler, way above any acting he did in the usual light comedies he played in. The movie is tracking some days of his unhappy life, being constantly chased by loan sharks, and trying to get back on his feet by auctioning an uncut gemstone, all these while he can't withold from placing more bets. The action is quite dense, catching also a glimpse of his family issues, the unorthodox collaboration with a forger, and other stuff. Unfortunately the movie is also too dense in screaming, almost any dialog ending in some conflict. At some point, as I was saying, it gets annoying and also tiring at the same time.
It's not a spoiler to say that the story doesn't end well. It becomes so obvious that the guy gets from worse to much worse that the only unknown is how much worse it will get. And here, the ending is clearly better than "Good Time". In all this descending spiral, you feel at some time that there are exits, but each one is missed. The final one is the cherry on top. I think I had like three possible versions, none good, which crossed my mind during the last 15 minutes, which again try to deceive you with some glimpse of a light at the end of the tunnel. But I had the surprise of a different closure. I guess the only possible one able to save the movie, which I can't say I liked. However, the ending is forcing me to be objective and I also can't say it's a bad film. Now... I really shouldn't spoil more of this part. It's just something like probably would be the feeling when a neighbor drilled holes in the walls for an entire day and he gets a power cut. It's a sudden "silence", a short lived one that doesn't give much time to reflect on it. But you get a "L'Amour Toujours" on the end credits to complete it in case you need anything else. It never crossed my mind to listen carefully to the lyrics of this song until watching "Uncut Gems".
"The Two Faces of January" felt like a deja vu from the first 10 minutes, and it didn't take long to figure out the reason behind that is "The Talented Mr. Ripley". After all, both movies are based on novels written by the same Patricia Highsmith. I didn't read any of the two, but the character construction seemed similar, as well as the type of action, the time setting, even the chosen locations although in one we're set in Greece and in the other in Italy - both cases are of sunny areas on the Mediterranean shore.
Since "The Talented Mr. Ripley" is not exactly among my favorite movies, neither "The Two Faces of January" felt much better. All the action revolves around a couple visiting Greece, Chester and Colette, where he's an ex broker from New York who fled with his investors money. Found by a private investigator, who dies following a short quarrel, Chester is forced to find an escape route and employs a young American guide to help him with that, Rydal, who's nothing but a small crook. So, we have sort of love triangle forming, where you know from start that the story won't end very well.
I have to admit that I don't remember very well "The Talented Mr. Ripley", but as I said the deja-vu feeling was there. Still, at the moment I watched that, it felt more credible than what we have here, which looks more like a B version of the same genre. The only part that I remember quite clearly in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" was the sudden unexpected stop after the final scene. For this I have to give credit to the current movie which has a decent closure. That's pretty much all about it.
I'll stick to "based on a true story" setting for this week too. "The Infiltrator" is yet another movie set in the context of the high cocaine traffic period of the '80s dominated by Pablo Escobar and the Colombian cartel.
The story here, as the title says, is an infiltration action within the criminal organization led by a US customs agent under cover. The movie is dense, mixing the two parallel lives of the protagonist. The first, a quiet existence with his family, besides the second, under constant threat posing as a business man offering his services for laundering millions of dollars coming out from the drug sales. In brief, we have all the ingredients of the genre, interceptions, informers, assassinations, etc., the final hystorical significant consequence being the fall of BCCI, the seventh commercial bank in the world at the time, and apparently one of the main financial institutions involved in the transfers of funds to the Colombian organization.
The movie has all the required elements for a top title, with the exception of somebody to know how to combine these properly = the direction fails, or at least that's what I felt. It gives the impression of an unfinished product. Although the subject offers a lot, the narrative is not properly balanced, sometimes seeming either exaggerated or superficial. The actors cast are doing their job well, with Bryan Cranston visibly trained for the role here by the part he played in "Breaking Bad". However, at some times you feel a bit of overacting, and again it's rather more the fault of the direction where it looks like saving on the number of takes shot for a scene.
To wrap up, I can't end this without making a quick reference to a long series in the same line with what we have here. We can start with "Donnie Brasco" from '97, where Johnny Depp acts as an undercover FBI agent infiltrated in the New York mafia, and we can continue with "Blow" from 2001, with the same Johnny Depp as a smuggler working for the Colombian cartel. In "Kill the Messenger" from 2014, Jeremy Renner plays a journalist who investigates the CIA involvement in the drug traffic of the time, and in "American Made" from 2017, Tom Cruise is Barry Seal, another smuggler working for the same group turned informer, a character who we briefly meet here too. The list can be much longer, but I reduced to titles directly linked with the subject in "The Infiltrator". Where's my point, is that neither of the above is a bad movie, but out of all I think only "Kill the Messenger" would rank below "The Infiltrator". To conclude: if you like this one, you should better check the other three ;)
I missed the classic novel by H.G. Wells, having the same title as the current movie, "The Invisible Man", from my teenage readings. However, after seeing "Hollow Man" 20 years ago, I found out that the book is a gritty horror. Not that it has much in common with any of the two movies, although both are placed in the same genre by IMDb.
The subject, both in the movies, and from what I heard also in the book, has one common element = obviously, the invisible man, a researcher who manages following an experiment to reach that particular state of being. Unfortunately, he doesn't take advantage of the situation in a positive way, in all cases being corrupted by mental issues. In "Hollow Man", and again from what I heard in the book, the reason is not being able to reverse the experiment. I don't remember much more of the movie besides the fact that it had cool effects for that time and that I liked it, and about the book, as I said, I didn't read it. In the latest version of "Invisible Man" the story runs somehow different. The experiment is actually a suit created by a genius in the optical field, Adrian Griffin, suit that's obviously removable = the effect can be reversed. The optical genius however has another issue, more likely an obsession of total control over his wife, Cecilia. Obsession that manifests among others by installing cameras and security systems transforming the family residence into a jail. The result is that the desperate wife decides to escape one night, taking temporary shelter in cop's house, a friend of her sister. The trauma is deep enough though to keep her confined inside, frightened to make a step out until she finds out that her, now ex-husband, killed himself...
The trailer tells us how things evolve further. The movie has, if I counted well, something like three wannabe twists, out of which well... to be fair, one is not that predictable. Besides that, pretty much everything is predictable. Maybe except a couple actions that don't really connect. Fortunately, the movie is dynamic enough to not get you bored, but what saves it is especially the way it's made. Indeed, it builds a tense feeling that drives it towards horror, although I'd classify it more as a thriller - this effect is, however, rare enough to appreciate it (yes, I know that not longer than a month ago I had "The Guest" on my blog, exceptions happen). I'd also add a plus for avoiding excess violence. Pretty much all of it is what you see in the trailer, except one scene that's more bloody. One more thing to mention is the art direction/set decoration/location setting for the choice made regarding the Griffin residence. The large estate, placed somewhere on the sea shore, the interiors, even the fence, all together seem to get an actor's role at some point. I wouldn't go up to comparing with the Overlook Hotel in "The Shining", but it's still somewhere in top 10 estates to be noticed in movies.
Out of "Hollow Man" version 2000 and "The Invisible Man" version 2020, I finally think I'd go for "Memoirs of an Invisible Man" version 1992. Which is based on another book that mixes SciFi, action and comedy that doesn't have any connection with Wells' novel or the horror genre. Funny enough, it's directed by John Carpenter ("Halloween", "The Fog", "The Thing", etc.). But again, I don't remember much of it, besides the good impression it made to me when I've seen it. Maybe I'm nostalgic for more peaceful times... Although, if I look at the trailers, ignoring the aging effect. Well, judge for yourself...
For the first 20-30 minutes "The Guest" looks like an average thriller. David Collins, just left home by the US Army after being sent to Afghanistan, pays a visit to the family of a former friend, Caleb Peterson, killed in action. It's more than obvious from scene 1 that the guy doesn't have the best intentions, and the first night he spends at the Petersons turns into a longer stay. David has a particular talent in getting close to each of the family members, either taking the role of the lost son, or resolving the issues the little brother has at school. Everything seems to be a cheap clone of many other movies (the one that pops into my mind now is "The Gift") where you can see a grim end coming where the very friendly stranger turns into a very dangerous villain. Well... the ending is indeed predictable. How we get there though...
After a first part that doesn't announce anything unusual in the expected line of above, besides maybe the fact that it sets a slightly retro feeling via its soundtrack (lots of synth there), there comes the moment when what we have here gets a different color. And the moment is a phone call to the military base took by Caleb's sister, who's the only one not to trust David completely. The phone call transfers us to an instant start of an armed operation meant to neutralize the danger, and we realize that David is not exactly the average character with mental issues. Actually David is not David, but let's not spoil the entire story.
And like that, from the start feeling of a low-budget "The Gift", at the end I was left between "Firestarter" and "Halloween" (the originals). It doesn't really have the supernatural element of the first, and also it's not really crossing the horror line of the latter, but it definitely has the feeling of a '70s-'80s thriller (a good one), and it's not only the retro score. I've seen Dan Stevens (the main role) before, but since I don't remember where, he probably seemed to me as just an extra cast member type-of-actor, while here he's probably comparable with Rutger Hauer in "The Hitcher" for the villain-esque value he brings to the character (just to put another '80s reference on the list). We also have a bit of dark dry humor, hardly noticeable, in just a couple scenes - but which you find very seldom these days in the recent productions of the genre, which either don't have any or they choose a much more open comic stance as tension relief element. Overall, the movie was a nice surprise, although I was disappointed by the ending = obviously it would've worked with less violence + I was expecting a twist that didn't come up, but there's room for a sequel ;)
I think that I've watched "The French Connection" (and its sequel) like 3-4 times until I was 14-15 years old. I remember nothing. Just that at that time I liked it, and for a while was my first reference for Gene Hackman. When I heard for the first time about "The French" I didn't get that's set in the same context. I only understood that when I've seen the English title: "The Connection".
A bit of trivia. The period: '60s-'80s; the path: Turkey - South of France - New York; the context: one of the best organized networks specialized in heroin traffic. In brief, opium growing was still legal in Turkey at the time, the raw product was shipped to Corsica and Marseilles, and then refined as final drug and exported in the USA. The history of "the connection" goes back in time before WW2, involving a bunch of interconnected clans. All the story has obviously many episodes that fit to a movie, and "La French" just picks one of these, toward the end of the period, when after years the DEA in the US and the French police were slowly getting close to an end with disbanding the network. And like that we get to know Pierre Michel, a judge in Marseilles specialized on juvenile matters. One day he gets a promotion to organized crime, and obviously the first case he gets is the "La French" problem. Not for long though. After some success in his investigation leading up to the mayor's office he's quickly taken off the case. That's the extremely brief summary for the first part of the movie. For the second, I wouldn't give any spoilers...
...But unfortunately the beginning of the movie it's telling you almost too clearly where all this is going. Anyway, the build-up of the action is relatively slow, surprisingly calm and realistic for the subject it has. Especially since the production design helps a lot = everything looks really authentic for the time it's set in (the cars, the music, the locations, etc.). The script drives you from work matters to their effects in the personal life, so we have also quite some drama packed in, which sort of saves the movie of extra senseless action scenes (it doesn't mean we don't have action). On the other hand, the characters, who are real persons - Pierre Michel (Jean Dujardin) and Tany Zampa (Gilles Lellouche), the local drug lord - are taken to the level of some sort of sort of extremely gritty cold war, stuff that somehow seems a bit artificial. But well... it's a movie, it's not meant to put you to sleep :) Finally, I could say it's a solid movie, but I can't say it left me such an impression to motivate re-watching it 3-4 times as with "The French Connection". However, I'm not 15 years old anymore, and I neither have the time I had back then ;).
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...
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" ;)
"The Mule", as many of Eastwood's movies, especially after year 2000, is a slow one. I was actually expecting a slow burner, pretty much the same as "Gran Torino", but it's much more calm than that and doesn't have the same impact in the end.
The movie is mostly based on a real story, changing some names and locations. Earl Stone, an old florist specialized in lilies growing, goes bankrupt. To save his last working family connection, the relation with a niece soon to be wed, whom he promised covering some costs, he accepts to run an errand. So he does a transport with his truck. Strict rules: not allowed to see what he's carrying, no direct contact at delivery, he must throw away his phone afterwards. The first run is a success and the payment is enough to even upgrade his car, so the old man decides to continue. Obviously, it doesn't take long for him to figure out he's a drug mule, but the runs keeps going on with larger quantities. Sufficient enough to not be able to move back from it and also to hit the top list of mules tracked by the DEA...
"The Mule" is not an action movie, although it doesn't lack it completely. It's mainly a drama, a large part of it being focused on Earl's tries to make peace with his family. At the same time it's also a reflection over life, or better said over the possibility of changing it even at the age of 90. I can't say I wasn't a bit disappointed by an anticlimactic ending that doesn't close completely all the subject threads, but 1) probably it would've forced the real story otherwise and 2) as I was saying it has a calm that it keeps up to its end, which is somehow comforting, and that's probably the main reason to recommend it.
"Cop Car" is a bizarre movie, from the title to the end of it. Two kids, of about 10 years old, who ran from home, find an abandoned police care near a field. Despite manifesting a level of intelligence that seems similar to "dumb & dumber" in the kindergarten years (the comparison's not mine, but I don't remember where I heard it), the two kids manage to start the car, make a couple laps with it, hit the road through a fence, reach over 100 speed and get alive out of this. But they don't get away from the owner of the vehicle... a local sheriff involved in some really unorthodox stuff, from dumping a corpse in the woods to dumping some bags of drugs in his toilet. We don't get a clear image of what's going on. What's certain is that he's a bad guy who wants his car back. Especially because of what's hiding in the trunk.
The movie runs relatively quiet for its first half, the action level rising towards the end. I liked the dynamic = lately I appreciate a moderate dosing of the tension . The cast is small in size, Kevin Bacon clearly being the star here in the sheriff's role. The camera work is nice and the score has a minimalist sound which seemed familiar, but I don't know where I heard it before.
I said that "Cop Car" is bizarre starting with its title - which might be related with what we see on screen most often, but still seems picked like... well, what's the first idea for naming the movie? The main issue though is the contrast between the kids actions. They either shine in their capacity to handle things, or they make you wonder why the script says 10 years instead of 5 (and that's not as positive remark). Or looking at tit from a different perspective, if such an improbable sequence of events can take place, maybe we should play the lottery more often. Anyway, it's an ok thriller, no lengths in it, and can get you away from the daily issues for a bit of time.
I had the opportunity to see 3 movies at NIFFF this year during a short 2 days "vacation", which actually, if I think now on it, was more like a one day, but... unimportant :) ... More important is to deviate a bit from the main topic, which is the movie, but I feel that I must do it: what is NIFFF? A festival of "fantastic" film, organized yearly in Neuchatel, Switzerland, since 2001, where by chance I lived for around 4 years. My first contact with NIFFF was in 2011, when I didn't get at first how a small city with around 20000 people got to host an international film festival. And not any festival, but as far as I know one of the few events that brings together a unique niche combination of fantasy & sci-fi & horror & weird indie movies + a section dedicated to Asian Cinema. Actually, at a first sight, being there, NIFFF doesn't really look like a very big event at least in respect to the public numbers (comparing with other festivals). However, despite I'm less and less intersecting with NIFFF, mostly when I have the chance to merge it with a work trip in the area, just to give a hint of its amplitude: in 9 days it has around 60-70 movies grouped on various themed sessions, and this doesn't count documentaries, shorts, open air classics like "Alien" or "Pulp Fiction", seminars, workshops and other associated events. Over time NIFFF had guests like George R.R. Martin, Kevin Smith, and even John Carpenter in a concert. Now, given the genre of the typical NIFFF movie, you're never guaranteed you'll see a masterpiece. Probably the indie sci-fi & horrors is the niche with the most junk produced, so it's somehow expected to stumble on that here and there. On the other hand, there are also very good movies. You have something for every taste, and compiling such a diverse schedule in an otherwise relatively narrow niche is one of the festival's organization strengths. NIFFF gave me the opportunity to have a first watch of "Cabin in the Woods", "Dead Snow 2", "iNumber Number", "Jeeg Robot", or now "First Love". Which takes us back to our movie ;)
"Hatsukoi", the original title, is something of a Japanese action-thriller (we don't have only sci-fi & horror at NIFFF), directed by Takashi Miike. Probably known especially for some of the most hard to watch Asian movies, such as "Audition" or "Ichi, the Killer" (didn't see any of these), he is quite a prolific director having more than 100 movies since '91. I didn't see many of these, and some I found pretty bad ("13 Assassins", "Sukiyaki Western Django"). Still, recently, on an intercontinental flight, not having better options I got to see "Blade of the Immortal", which was quite ok. So I decided to give it a shot, although lately I'm not really that fond of excess violence on screen. The semi-ironic intro that the actual director did on the NIFFF stage, when presenting his film as a very light one made people smile. Not that surprising, we have a beheading in the first minute or so. Overall, however, the movie is watchable. There's nothing extreme in it. Let's call it: "Tarantino level" for blood & gore :)
Leo is a young boxer diagnosed with a brain tumor and not much left to live after a knock-down. In parallel with that, Kase, a lower ranked member of a yakuza clan, sets up a plan together with a corrupt cop, for hijacking a narcotics delivery. The guilt is supposed to be brought upon the rival Chinese triad and on Monica, a prostitute on drugs who has periodic visions of her abusive father's ghost. And such a vision messes up the whole plan, the girl literally running at a moment of karmic synchrony in the arms of Leo. Who just got a reading by a fortune teller predicting him excellent health + thinking on other people's wellness for success in life. Not being convinced at all by the first part, and the second not really in line with his boxing job, the guy ends up as a sort of bodyguard for the rest of the movie. The nice part is that the story unfolds on multiple threads, and the part that you might thing to be a classic version of a "damsel in distress & her knight in shining armor" doesn't get the complete focus. We have an excellent dark humor, most of it resulting from Kase's attempts to move over with his plan, where nothing works according to agenda.
It's the type of movie where spoiling too much of the action ruins it, and I think I wrote enough :) What's left to say is that behind all the bullets, swords, blood, and maybe sometimes a bit of an acid humor, with the romance not getting that much screen time (but being there though), there's still some sort of warmth in the movie, which you can feel from the beginning to the end. And that gives it a big plus, at least compared with what I've seen from Miike. Since I was mentioning Tarantino above, maybe it looks a bit like a "True Romance" in Japanese version. Just a bit. That would be all. Unfortunately we don't have yet a trailer per se, and for now the movie is still in limited release moving through festivals, but I guess it will get out also mainstream towards the end of the year. For now, long live NIFFF! ;)
I didn't have much time for movies this week. Actually, since a while I'm pretty much stuck with TWD and "sleeping pills" made in Hong Kong, where I didn't catch anything to worth an entry. The most recent seen title outside these categories would be "Safe", a leftover in an old "to watch" list, 7 years already from its release date... Time flies by.
The synopsis could directly reference "Mercury Rising", but in a more action packed version I guess. I'm not remembering anything else from "Mercury Rising" besides that Bruce Willis had to protect a gifted boy tracked by some bad guys from NSA for breaking some code, and also that the movie was pretty bad. In "Safe", Jason Statham has to protect a gifted girl tracked by some bad guys from the Russian mafia, the Chinese triads, and from NYPD for being the only one who knows some very long number - also a code in the end, and the movie was so & so. "The hero" here is some former mysterious agent in the US security structures, who became a cop, who became a MMA fighter, who became homeless, who (almost) became suicidal in a metro station, where he has a sudden revelation that all this career chain ends better with a bodyguard position.
Unfortunately the kid character in "Safe" is very under-used in the story, not having almost any effective involvement in the action in respect to the capacity she possesses, even though this is the main reason why everybody fights for her. On the other hand, although you might think that "Safe" is just another 1h30m of mindless action, it's not really like that - indeed, we have a quite a bunch of bullets fired, and Jason Statham displays all his kung-fu skills, but besides that we do have a story where new elements are dropped with a reasonable frequency to keep you from getting bored. Overall, it works well for a light summer movie...
Sorry, I'm not in the mood for writing. But out of respect for the only "drug" that helped me through the time to "move on", I decided to try marking a movie recommendation for this week too. The only option that comes to mind right now is "Searching", watched about 3 weeks ago. A single father, loses his 16 years old daughter, who is gone missing after an evening with a study group. And so the searching starts, with a dedicated support from the police. But the police doesn't seem to keep up with the parent's detective abilities. The most original part of the movie is that is almost entirely shot via a computer screen. Besides that, we have an ending twist that's a bit forced, but the story is catchy enough to keep you watching. That's all for today.
My first reaction after about 15 minutes of "The Negotiation" was a sort of deja vu of "The Negotiator", a movie that was released 20 years ago (damn, I'm getting old...). Deja vu that got even more intense after about 30 more minutes. It's not exactly the same story, but we have plenty of common elements. Let's get back though to minute 0...
The movie begins with a female negotiator of the Korean police who interrupts her day off to solve an incident with two hostages. Fail. We continue not longer after, when the same negotiator is summoned from her vacation where she was sent after trying to quit the job. A Korean arms dealer helds hostage a small group of people somewhere in Thailand apparently, and asks precisely for her presence to carry the discussions via a video stream. The negotiation doesn't really progress well, but I won't spoil much. What I can say, is that the situation escalates to a higher and higher level, and we soon find out that the guy doesn't want money. His immediate scope seems to get high positioned people in front of the camera and compromise them in from of the rest of the police involved in the action.
Unfortunately, the description above might sound a bit more promising than the movie goes. It's not a bad one, but it's predictable. Moreover, up to some point I really had the impression that the actress playing the lead female role, doesn't really do a good job. Up to some point = when even her opponent describes her as a weak negotiation, too emotional and a bad liar = maybe that explains the acting... I don't remember much of "The Negotiator" of 20 years ago, but the last time I've watched that it definitely created a better impression than what we have here on a topic that is quite similar. And somehow unexpected, from the vague memories I keep on that, I think it was maybe more... dramatic and gritty let's say than this one, stuff that's typically reversed in a Hollywood vs. Asian cinema comparison. But well, there are exceptions...
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