In theory, prolific director Takashi Miike seems like a perfect fit for the world of gangters and corrupt cops of Bad Lieutenant. However, what looks good on paper doesn’t always turn out to be all that it should be. I was at the recent premiere of Miike’s Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo at TIFF, and the film led by Shun Oguri and Lily James…well, I’ll be nice and say it didn’t meet my high expectations.
Oguri stars as Tokyo detective Yabuki, a hard-drinking, drug-using, gambling addict who is tasked with finding the killer of a yakuza boss’s son. The woefully miscast James plays his American partner, an FBI agent with unclear motives.
Shotaro Mamiya and WWE superstar Liv Morgan complete the cast, but fans of the latter should go in without expecting much.
I can see why NEON wanted to make this movie. Abel Ferrara and Harvey Keitel’s 1992 set the bar for stories about corrupt, irredeemable cops, while Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage raised the bar with 2009’s Port of Call New Orleans. Who wouldn’t want to see the cultural specificity and ultra-violence that Miike brings?
Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo does not have a release date, but expect that to change soon.
Well well, if it isn’t the emotionally intelligent, compassionate and relatable version of Eat, Pray, Love…
And brought to us by accomplished cinematographer Rachel Morrison – and I mean accomplished, as she has some of my favourites under her belt: Fruitvale Station, Dope, Black Panther, and Mudbound, to name a few.
I wouldn’t usually think that having a feature film (her sophomore entry, after The Fire Inside, which just got watchlisted on my end) from a director of photography would really make much of a difference… but then there’s this still of the highly photogenic Margaret Qualley up on screen and that still of her expression just in an ordinary, everyday setting is so beautiful and real-time iconic that I felt the urge to grab my phone and take a snap of the big screen. Of course I didn’t (!) and I wouldn’t have even if I wasn’t in a packed premiere at TIFF, but this is one of the very few times among the thousands of times I’ve been in the cinema that I wanted to do this, send the snapped still to my loved one, caption it “this is where I am right now”, and let them know I am doing just fine in that moment.
I’m a huge proponent when it comes to plot, dialogue, story and vibes, but I often forget that none of that matters if you haven’t captured it clearly and brightly, and hopefully with a little flair. Although the expression “the cinematography was good” or “it looked good” are the most polite ways to say a movie sucked – something we might equally say about a film from a cinematographer-turned-director or multi-hyphenate here – I luckily don’t have to sugar-coat or lie about anything in this case; all of my most valued elements (script, characters, narrative) solidly underlie each stunning shot.
And maybe they were always there and I didn’t notice them before, but after seeing the [for shame] straight-to-streaming latest Bridget Jones installment, and how it’s such a mature romantic dramedy, that, in one’s 30s or 40s, our longtime friends and found family, and other things, places and people we’ve come to love, finally get their due recognition. There are so many young-and-hot romantic comedies, in which the happy ending is where the two end up together… and naively we’re left to assume that it’s forever, even given how young they are, and in this modern world. There are also geriatric romcoms, too, but their forever is a lot less time so we’re just happy they’ve got someone for what time they have left.
And I don’t know how popular this subgenre would be, but I love the depictions of first real romance found later in life. The two-way one. The reciprocated one. The one devoid of grooming or a grocery list of expectations and accommodations to suit at least one side. Yet still one where both know their likes and dislikes, their do’s and don’ts, the weight of the emotional baggage they carry… and yet their broken and uneven pieces fit together to make a whole. These later-found loves do exist; one of my most charming best friends only had his first “real” long-term relationship started at age 37 – despite dating hundreds of people beforehand – and one of my most intelligent professor friends over in Europe is downright giddy about finding true love in his 50s – after having done the whole marriage and kids thing in the decades before. Watching all of the young, hip and flippant Netflix-destined romcoms might cause us to be pessimistic about our own chances, whereas these great loves can, and do, happen, and better late than never.
Let’s break down my opening line here, as Love of Your Life being an elevated alternative to Eat, Pray, Love… and I would advocate for it being a replacement. Unlike the latter with its one-dimensional domestic dudebros (sorry Billy Crudup, it’s not your fault!) or alluring himbos at every destination, the men and women in Morrison’s take are all fleshed-out and nuanced – there are no shallow stereotypes nor are there any true antagonists. The hard conversations are not omitted so we can simply go on a fling, an easy vacation and international bender with Maya… when they force their hand, they’re both pivotal and healing. That exchange between her mother-in-law (Catherine Keener) and her just wrecked me – what a gut punch.
The title of this film has a double meaning depending on how you emphasize the words. On one hand, it’s the typical romantic “love of your life”, as in your soulmate, your partner, the great love you finally found. On the other hand, we come to find out it means the “love of YOUR LIFE”, as in your own life is so wondrous and worthy that you can very well enjoy it without that special someone, and all on your own. To love life for its and your own sake.
Both loves are vitally important.
As an extrovert with an anxious-avoidant attachment style, I can identify with Qualley’s hard-working and hyperindependent singleton, and the life she leads until she meets the great man she never expected to find. When I see her expressions of joy and wonderment while saying her vows and genuinely exclaiming how she doesn’t even understand how she lucked out, I get it – it’s really hard for people like me (or maybe you) to imagine arriving at a day like that.
And then we instinctively tense up, because, the movie is only halfway through. As they enter the pandemic era – a universally relatable collective trauma for which we all have our own stories – we brace ourselves for the rest of the runtime. In those pivotal moments, all you might be thinking is to hug your loved ones the moment you get home to them, or hold some part of them if they’re next to you.
But life goes on, before and after that connection with the person who defines so much of your life… but not all of it. When I was estranged from my mother for a few years – thankfully now we’ve reconnected – I had lost the person whose opinion and presence I had valued most in this world, and she was one of the few I loved freely.
My therapist asked me who would replace my mother as my personal anchor, and I decided after much thought and anguish that my anchor would be life itself: all of the arts, discovery, nature and places that brought me joy and relief every day I experienced them, and the ongoing curiosity of which of life’s new loves I might find in the coming days, weeks or years. My therapist thought this was a profound concept, since not many people choose this. But you know what, I’m not the only one to figure this out.
Qualley and Julia Cox’s wisened script guides their protagonist Maya into such an epiphany, that with or without that special someone, one’s life should be appreciated and full. Self-help books and cheesy Facebook shares have been saying this for years, but you really should love yourself first and lead a full life before you merge your life with someone else’s; your half must be substantial if you are together to become truly whole.
Love of Your Life reminds us to love our life before and after we’re with the love of our lives, if we get so lucky. And if we get so lucky, to love every minute of that love, too, and really live in those moments.
And long live mature romantic epics, in which love in its many different forms, can thankfully exist in every era.
Amazon MGM will release Love of Your Life in select theaters on October 7th before moving to Prime Video on October 14th.
Whether it’s Parasite or Squid Game, and now Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love, Korean filmmakers are more attuned than anyone to the economic disparity impacting the world. Eight years after his Oscar-winning drama, Burning, Lee returns with a moving portrait of two families on opposing ends of that divide, and asks whether these two sides can ever truly understand one another? What’s incredible about the film, a Grand Jury Prize winner at Venice earlier this year, is how vital it is in exploring the issues we are facing right now, all in a compelling drama that will have you hooked from start to finish.
The film centers on two married couples: laid off laborer Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) and his wife Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon), along with the well-to-do Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong) and her trust fund nepo-baby husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung). While attending the funeral for one of Ho-seuk’s “brothers” (the word he uses to describe his former co-workers) who appears to have committed suicide, Mi-ok encounters Ye-ji, a documentary filmmaker shooting a movie about the fired employees of SP Heavy Industries. Ho-seok and many others loss their jobs after a failed strike, and most of them are still grappling with it.
The women become fast friends, with Mi-ok acting as the central voice in Ye-ji’s film, talking about how the firings impacted her family. The camera is always on, even at moments that are incredibly awkward. Mi-ok seems to enjoy the attention and time in the spotlight, or perhaps she likes being around the luxurious life Ye-ji leads. She certainly can’t stop asking about the price of the filmmaker’s clothes, or getting star-struck over the Internet-famous Sang-woo, who she calls “cool” at one point.
Meanwhile, Ho-seuk is a complete wreck. An alcoholic who can only sleep when he’s had enough to calm his mind, he is utterly incapable of speaking about what happened on the last day of the strike. Nor can he stand to be in the presence of his former colleagues, a reminder of what he lost and who truly stood by his side when the chips were down. Even his new job doesn’t help, as it’s more dangerous and requires more manual labor than he was doing before. It feels like a humiliating step downward, and we wonder if Ho-seuk is destined to go the same route as the man whose funeral they attended.
Lee quietly traverses the same class divide of Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar winner, Parasite, and the longing and jealousies they both hold. In true Lee fashion, the tension builds steadily but slowly, perhaps taking too long to reach it climax. But the build is so delicious, and Lee has a lot to say, leaving nobody in the upper crust of society unscathed. Motivations, secrets, desires, and trauma swirl in every interaction. Ye-ji can’t convince Ho-seuk to participate in the documentary, so she invites him, Mi-ok, and their son Cheol to stay at their posh vacation home by the sea. It’s here that Ho-seuk finally lets his guard down, but it comes as Mi-ok finds herself drawing closer to Sang-woo, who seems receptive but is busy working out a lucrative business deal.
It’s here, during this trip, that Lee brings the real differences between them into sharper focus. Mi-ok sees their home as something she might read about in great books. Ye-ji, who gets chastised for wearing her expensive clothes to interview struggling ex-employees, has no concept of how naive she is. She thinks, because of her middle-class background, that she and Mi-ok are the same. It would be funny if it wasn’t so disturbing her lack of clarity on this, especially for a documentarian. On the other hand, Sang-woo has always seen Mi-ok and Ho-seuk as documentary subjects, not equals and certainly not friends. This comes to a head in a shocking outburst that, in the wrong hands, would’ve played as overdramatic and forced, but Lee’s guidance keeps the ship steady throughout.
When we finally see the violent events of the strike unfold, and why Ho-seuk is so traumatized by them, it’s a punch to the gut. Not because it is so unforeseen, but because of how timely it feels. AI and the reduction of manual labor is a recurring theme, but so are corporate takeovers and the government’s complicity in allowing its workforce to be destroyed. The scary thing about Possible Love is how timely it is. Yes, it works as a devastating work of drama, but also as a reflection of the global class divide that is only growing worse with no end in sight.
Possible Love opens in select theaters on October 23rd, followed by Netflix on November 6th.
When you’re as prolific as Takashi Miike, nobody expects them all to be winners. But surely, nobody would expect such a wild misfire as Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo to be stinking up the joint here at TIFF. A dull, neon-soaked nightmare and the poorest follow-up to Abel Ferrara’s 1992 classic, this taxing exercise is plagued with bad acting all across the board, including one that would be a career killer if it were to go viral. Uncharacteristically, Miike dials down the extreme violence while exploring Japan’s grimy underbelly, leaving even his most ardent supporters with nothing to look forward to.
Failing to fill the shoes of Harvey Keitel and Nicolas Cage before him, Shun Oguri gives a sleepy-eyed performance as the titular “bad lieutenant”, Yabuki. A hard-drinking, drug-using, gambling addict on the verge of losing his family, Yabuki often finds himself in a daze, waking up alone in a trashy alleyway, his feet in a dirty puddle of water. He’s been dreaming of a calming oasis of water deep in the woods, a reflection of his desires to wake up from the chaos that is his life. Imagine the iguanas that haunted Cage’s version, or the Christ-like visions seen by Keitel. But Yabuki is never that interesting of a character. Corrupt cops spiraling out of control is sort of what this unlikely franchise does best, and yet Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo can’t even manage to get that right.
The plot, or what passes for one, involves the Yakuza and the search for the killer of a crime boss’s son. There’s also the matter of the ex-Yakuza member recently released from prison who has begun murdering his loved ones and turning them into meatballs…literally, for the birds to eat. Yabuki is on the case, but he’s not alone. He’s got a partner, an American one, played by Hollywood actress Lily James.
I don’t know who suggested the demure, British Lily James for this role, she was attached even before Miike, but that casting agent needs a good talking to. James, doing her best to scowl and spit out her lines through gritted teeth, is the most unconvincing cowboy American cop stereotype put to screen since Chris Klein in The Legend of Chun-Li. She looks like she’s never held a cigarette in her life, much less smoked one. In the film’s one truly Miike-esque action scene in a club, James throws punches and kicks like someone afraid to break a nail. Oguri isn’t any better, and with much of the film sagging underneath the weight of its own dullness, it’s a scene that feels mandated by some producer who realized that nobody would ever pay to watch this.
For my fellow WWE fans eager to see superstar Liv Morgan in action…well, she’s definitely in the movie. That much I can tell you. Morgan is among my favorite WWE superstars and I hope better roles are there for her in the future. She does eat a lot of sushi and, at one point, has a brutal sex scene that some of her most fanatical supporters might get off to, but that’s about it.
There’s at least a little bit of fun to be had with Miike’s casting of the yakuza members. One of them, Jun Kunimura, played the poor, beheaded Boss Tanaka in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Miike knows his way around a solidly gritty gangster flick, and some of the film’s rare highlights is how Yabuki weaves in and out of danger from them, playing both sides of the law, stopping only to play ping-pong with a pair of young hookers who serve as the closest thing he’s got to actual friends.
The central characters in Bad Lieutenant are always seemingly irredeemable degenerates, broken men who maybe were good once, but were consumed by their own demons. We want to see them overcome it and be the heroes we know they could be. However, in Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo, there’s not enough to Yabuki for us to care. Miike seems checked out and unable or unwilling to bring the eccentric, stylish violence that he’s known for, and if you don’t have that, then what’s the point. Maybe next time, they’ll try something different: Nice Guy Lieutenant: Portland. Anything to get as far away from this as possible.
I can already see and hear it now: Julianne Moore, decked out in blue overalls with a little nametag on them, a toolbelt strapped around her waist, and belting out “The City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Can’t Spit Me Out)” before accepting her award at the next Oscars. It’s a fictional song, created by writer/director Jesse Eisenberg for the landlord character Miss Danielle in the fictional play “Nosy Neighbors” at the heart of The Debut. Eisenberg’s surreal screwball comedy is about as different from his acclaimed dramedy, A Real Pain, as one can possibly get. While that film found humor and hope in a Holocaust tour, The Debut is deliberately farcical and so funny it will make you lose your breath. And yet it’s Moore, who never plays for laughs but gets them, anyway, delivers a performance that ranks among her best, and think of the impressive ground that covers.
In The Debut, Moore plays another invisible housewife, not unlike the role she played in Far from Heaven years ago. Her character, Mona, isn’t trapped in the 1950s, however. She’s a modern wife and mother in New Jersey, but she’s practically invisible to everyone around her. That includes her disinterested husband (Patrick Fabian), who barely acknowledges her existence, even when out with friends, and expects dinner to be ready on time. Even their kids treat her like a ghost.
All of this changes when Mona tries out for a community theatre production of Nosy Neighbors, a ridiculous apartment comedy that recently had one of its lead roles abandoned by the star actress, played by Broadway legend Bernadette Peters in a cameo that shows she hasn’t missed a beat. Mona has never done anything like this before, and it shows. Her audition, a mousy singing attempt that unmoved director Jerry (Paul Giamatti) quickly cuts short, should have been the first and last. But Mona is determined, pestering until he gives her the role…mainly because nobody else tried out for it.
What follows is a powerhouse story of a woman breaking out of her shell and her comfort zone, and finding the inner thespian that was lurking within. There’s a key moment when the Mona we knew vanishes, and the new, bolder one emerges. It occurs when Jerry has Mona re-enact a key Miss Danielle scene where she’s only meant to say “The rent is due”, but she has to do it convincingly enough for him to actually pay. Mona, distraught at not knowing what to do to give the line its proper authority, devolves into a screaming fit of expletives from which it seems she can never return. But Jerry knows how to break an actor down and bring them back up, and Mona undergoes an incredible transformation in that moment, finding her voice in a scene that will have crowds roaring with laughter and appreciation. When Moore’s name is called for her sure-fire Best Actress Oscar nomination, this is the scene they will show that demonstrates her greatness.
Eisenberg never lets The Debut linger too long at a single emotional register. The film takes a sudden turn when Mona, who mimics stage actor behavior and language to hide her ignorance, gets a big ego over her newfound confidence, driving Jerry and the production to the brink of destruction. Moore is as brilliant as ever, finding the balance between Mona’s zany stage antics, and the timid woman just trying to find where she truly belongs in the world, perhaps for the first time. It’s a highwire act that Eisenberg pulls off, although there are some scenes, especially following Mona’s ascension, that linger too long and circle the drain. It’s understandable that Eisenberg doesn’t want to cut any of it because Moore is so goddamn good that to lose any of it would be a tragedy. The same goes for Giamatti, who finds the heart within the growling Jerry, a former actor of some note who never got to see his dreams fulfilled. Along with a strong supporting cast that includes Halle Bailey and Havana Rose Liu as two of Mona’s friendliest colleagues, and others plucked from the Broadway scene, The Debut has the frantic energy of a stage production that could fly off the rails at any moment.
Nobody will be shocked to know that Moor and Giamatti are fantastic. The surprise for me is Eisenberg, although I probably shouldn’t be. Throughout his career, he’s been an actor who has shown a capacity to excel at literally every type of performance. Even as a director, his films, which include When You Finish Saving The World (his first film with Moore) and the acclaimed A Real Pain, couldn’t be more different or more challenging. The Debut shows that is not only one Hell of a songwriter (he wrote all of the Nosy Neighbors songs himself), but a director capable of delivering absurdist comedy and affecting human drama in equal measure. You could fill an entire Playbill with praise to heap on The Debut, one of the best movies of the year.
A24 will release The Debut in theaters on December 11th.
It’s impossible not to see similarities between Martin McDonagh’s breakthrough dark comedy, In Bruges, and his latest bruising look at a complicated male friendship, Wild Horse Nine. Both films are about a pair of shady killers in an exotic land, taking in the sights, the people, and contemplating more death. Only in this case, the two men are undercover CIA agents who have killed and disrupted governments all around the world, an it is one of them who is staring death in the face.
Following In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh is a can’t-miss prospect every awards season. While most of his films have dealt with the relationships between men of violence, Wild Horse Nine has a solemnity to it that the others lack. McDonagh has often embraced a certain amount of chaos, but this one is more reflective and personal, but no less hilarious, reminding of John Michael McDonagh’s (Martin’s brother) 2014 spiritual comedy, Calvary.
Beginning in 1973 Chile, Wild Horse Nine follows CIA operatives Chris Carlisle (John Malkovich) and Lee Chesterfield (Sam Rockwell), just months ahead of the coup that would overthrow Allende’s democratically elected government. The duo are sent to remote Easter Island, where Chris has long wanted to visit the “big head statues, the Maoi, for spiritual reasons all his own. In reality, both men are carrying secrets. They’ve really been sent there by their boss, MJ (Steve Buscemi), so that Lee can ferret out a secret that Chris has supposedly been keeping, connected to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Chris is busy putting together his memoirs, which will reveal the deepest, darkest secrets of his time operating from the shadows.
Chris is also dying of cancer, while dementia eats away at his mind. He wants to get everything down before it all goes away, and Lee is helping him do that. The two men bicker and argue constantly, but there’s obviously love there. Lee comes across like a son looking up to his ailing father, or a caretaker with his patient. The two have an agreement; one that Chris has a tough time remembering. He keeps notes as reminders; one says “Don’t Trust Lee”, the other, “Remember that you’re dying.”
Wild Horse Nine doesn’t have the spurts of action, or strange fairy tale quality that In Bruges had. It operates on a slightly lower register; much of the film is simply Chris and Lee having funny, disturbing conversations. Chris is a chatterbox who openly reveals to a pair of Chilean students, Monica (Mariana di Girolamo) and Alicia (Ailin Salas), that they are CIA sent to destabilize the government. Lee can’t keep covering it up every time Chris does this, and yet it keeps happening. Something has to be done about Chris, and Lee is the guy to do it, even if he doesn’t want to.
If Rockwell did nothing but make movies with McDonagh, he would be the greatest actor in the world. He’s always been great, but he is on another level when working with McDonagh, even when his characters have nothing to say. It’s Malkovich who gets most of the best lines, like a terrific rant connecting successful democracies with queerness and quality cheese. Rockwell’s disbelieving reactions are great, but even better are when these expressions fade. The closer Lee gets to the fateful moment with Chris that he’s been dreading, the more we see how much he loves his friend and the man who has been like a father figure.
If there’s a problem I struggled with, it’s that Wild Horse Nine feels so much like McDonagh’s earlier work. There are scenes that could’ve worked just as well written for In Bruges, and some characters, such as Buscemi’s MJ, who feel like they were plucked directly from it.
It’s been so long since Malkovich has been this good that I forgot he had this in him. Chris is unpredictable to say the least, with lunacy and lucidity constantly at odds. The way he casually remarks about ugly operations in Guatemala, Cuba, and other places where he’s destroyed democracy, makes him a tough character to love. But Chris is also someone with a brilliant mind who has acted in “the greater good” all of his life, and now he’s angry at seeing that mind slip away from him. So if he gets a little nasty sometimes, we can sort of understand it.
Tom Waits makes the most out of a small, but important role as Chris’s estranged brother, now living off the grid in a trailer park in Monument Valley. Even though she only has one extended cameo, Parker Posey gets some of the biggest laughs as Lee’s wife, who spends their entire phone conversation talking about her various affairs and pondering if his job is putting her in danger, which it just might be.
Easter Island and the moai statues make for a postcard-worthy backdrop, a monument to longevity and strength as these two Americans, symbols of turbulence and impermanence, grasp wildly for meaning. As the title Wild Horse Nine suggests, there’s a bit an Old Western flair to Chris and Lee, like two aging cowboys witnessing the end of their generation and the birth of the next. A surprisingly violent finale, set near a horse’s decaying carcass, helps hammer home this theme wonderfully. At this point, McDonagh can do no wrong, and Wild Horse Nine is sure to have him showered with even more accolades.
Wild Horse Nine will hit theaters on November 6th.
Today, if anyone knows the name Ian Charleson, it’s for his leading role in 1981 Best Picture winner, Chariots of Fire…MAYBE for co-starring with Ben Kingsley in Gandhi, another one to claim the top prize. In Simon Stone’s heartbreakingly soulful Elsinore, Charleson hates being recognized only for these things or for the unforgettable theme music. He’s an actor, and always longed to play the ultimate role, Hamlet, on the big stage at the British National Theatre. As fate would have it, Daniel Day-Lewis would go storming off the stage in the middle of production, but much like the title character in Shakespeare’s iconic play, Charleson has his own questions of life and death to grapple with.
The openly gay Charleson had been diagnosed with HIV, but by 1989 when he was asked to step in to play Hamlet, he had full-blown AIDS. His friend and the play’s director Richard Eyre (played with tremendous empathy by Johnny Flynn) knew what was happening, but gave Charleson this chance to fulfill this dream. Charleson knows the physical toll this role will take on him, but he decides to risk it all despite stern warnings from his doctor, trailblazer Margaret Johnson, played by Olivia Colman.
I was trying to think of the last AIDS drama that I had seen. When the disease was still new and mysterious, and at its most deadly, these films were everywhere and they were always about death. Stephen Beresford’s screenplay is about life, and maximizing every day rather than wallowing in despair. It becomes increasingly difficult as Charleson watches the people he is closest to, such as his former love Georgie (Luke Thompson), get sick all around him.
Elsinore follows Charleson through all of the stages of grief, beginning when he sees the first physical signs of his decline. We also see his growing frustration with Hollywood and the crappy action movie roles he was being offered, when all he really wanted to do was act on the London stage. We see his interactions with other sick individuals in the gay community, including Derek Jarman (David Dawson), the iconic openly gay director who gave Charleson his first acting role. Beresford gets whimsical with his script enough to imagine an entirely different relationship for Charleson and Jarman, who battled over the former’s decision not to go public. For Charleson, being an actor is a powerful thing, but life can’t be allowed to intrude on the act of acting on stage.
There are other heartbreaking performances, but Elsinore is uplifted by a triumphant Scott who has the daunting challenge of playing Hamlet, arguably the most challenging role for any actor, and Charleson, who sees Hamlet as the last chance to truly leave his mark.
Even if the Bard’s famous soliloquy “To be or not to be” has little meaning to you (count me in on that one), you’ll want to bring some extra tissues when Charleson recites it while contemplating his own mortality. Charleson may have been disregarded as a Hollywood actor, but Elsinore and Scott’s tremendous, Oscar-worthy performance give him another chance in the limelight where he can be discovered by a new generation.
Focus Features will release Elsinore in select theaters on November 20th, with expansions to follow.
I’m happy to offer DC area readers the chance to attend tomorrow night’s free screening of Resident Evil, from Zack Cregger, director of Barbarian and Weapons!
SYNOPSIS: From the mind of visionary filmmaker Zach Cregger (Weapons, Barbarian) comes a thrilling — and terrifying — reinvention of the Resident Evil franchise. In an all-new story, Resident Evil follows Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier who unwittingly finds himself in an action-packed, non-stop race for survival as one fateful, horrifying night collapses around him in chaos.
The screening takes place tomorrow, Tuesday, September 15th at 7:00pm at Regal Majestic. If you’d like to attend, RSVP at the Sony Pictures site here. Please remember, all screenings are first come first served and you’ll need to arrive early to ensure seating. Enjoy the show!
Resident Evil opens in theaters and IMAX on September 18th.
I went into Faith blind, and I suggest you do too. It’s just my luck that this common practice of mine greatly enhanced my experience.
I guess you could call this experience…
Blind FAITH.
I know, I know… I’ll see myself out. And as I did, see myself out, of the theater, I made sure to tell James McAvoy and writer/director Paul Andrew Williams to their faces what a great thing they’ve done (Erin Doherty gives a humbling stupendous turn here too but I didn’t see her in the dark to tell her that as well).
When Paul Andrew Williams tells us in the introduction that he only penned the script just over a year ago, and it was only shot in January and February… my first thought was, well that’s okay it’s nice to support little indies and established celebrity side projects. If I had done even a smidge of research on Williams beforehand, I might have been biased by his past filmography which is mostly straight-to-streaming (formerly known as straight-to-DVD) horror flicks and Lifetime-adjacent dramas, but to avoid FOMO with my rush pass this year I’m not looking up anything, thereby suppressing any preconceptions while managing my expectations.
But fear not if you’re a more discriminant viewer, because I think that Williams has taken his diverse experience with backrooms horrors, campy thrillers and movie-of-the-week cheesy romance and blended it all together to make an interesting and intimate film of life-affirming substance, and to be honest, it nourished my soul.
The beauty and best asset of this film – from start to finish – is that you can’t pinpoint the genre at any point, and you don’t know how it’s going to unfold. The simple summary on Letterboxd or IMDB makes it sound like any other garden variety straight-to-streamer romance. Only a Wikipedia blurb clues you in to the supernatural slant.
I’m transfixed for the first hour watching masterclass actors McAvoy and Doherty simply talking and yet saying so much. From the sapiosexual meet-cute at the neighborhood pub trivia night to platonic family board games played out in the living room, I kept thinking of how real this budding relationship feels, and how immersive their exchanges are.
Who is this guy? My brain is racing trying to figure McAvoy’s Michael out, with amply experienced but confused senses trying to spot the dark red flags among all of the blazing green ones.
My intuition on one hand (or from one shoulder) tells me how he might be a genuinely kind man (they do exist!), a guardian angel, a curious Starman-type alien, someone in her past or future circling back to her via sci-fi mechanics…
But on the other shoulder or hand, he could equally be a disguised demon, incarnation of Lucifer, salacious ex-communicated priest, sociopathic conman, or reformed hitman overreaching for redemption.
Or maybe he’s just in the more typical middle of this spectrum from good to evil, like a conservative man with a “I Can Fix Her” mentality or a “nice guy” who’s actively subscribed to a misguided podcast on picking up women.
Yet Michael isn’t awkward or floundering in any way, and while we’re figuring out whether he’s being manipulative or methodical, we’re waiting for the ball to drop.
And boy does that ball ever drop. In a packed audience there were audible gasps, and there were surely tears based on the sheer amount of sniffles (and certainly from where I was sitting).
The ensuing oscillation between a highly personal thriller and tortured soul drama I found to be not just engaging, but invigorating.
Thematically, it exposes the great emotional risk of being a human in this life, and how when your whole world revolves around just one other person, their sudden disappearance means that your whole world can fall apart in an instant.
There’s no other agenda on my part here – if it seems like I’m selling you hard on this little flick, it’s because I am. It bravely walks a tightrope between wholesome and subversive, and that’s what I found refreshing.
So, I suggest you borrow a little of my blind faith and see Faith blind; when it inevitably winds up on your streamer suggestion list, put your phones down and watch it closely and with intent, and I hope you will have the same experience I have just had, because it was far from cheesy and felt low-key glorious.
Faith does not currently have a U.S. release date.
Zack Snyder’s long-awaited indie drama, The Last Photograph, is a complicated movie to come to terms with, especially if you’re a fan of his work as I am. But even though I do like what Snyder has done for the most part, I’m a realist about his stuff that doesn’t work, such as his disastrous Rebel Moon flicks for Netflix. A passion project that Snyder and writer Kurt Johnstad have been working on at least since 2011, the film is his most intimate and grounded yet. He deserves to be commended for that, and for the genuinely beautiful imagery that he shot himself as cinematographer. But all of his worst traits are there in abundance, too. Overlong, ponderous and deadly serious to a comical degree, it’s a film that feels more like a test run than a finished product. And considering this is the one and only screening here at TIFF, with no distribution on the horizon, that might be all it turns out to be.
Snyder teases you with what could be a great 100-minute revenge thriller, following ex-DEA agent Ethan Black, played by Stuart Martin (doing his best Hugh Jackman, beard and all). Ethan is on the hunt for the hunt in South America to find the men responsible for the brutal assassination of his brother and sister-in-law, and the kidnapping of their two kids. Ethan is emotionally distraught, not so much for the loss of his sibling, but for his brother’s wife, who he shared a passionate love affair with.
Fellow Rebel Moon actor Fra Fee plays Joseph Wallace, a drug-addicted photographer who was there to witness the killings, and took the final photograph of the woman Ethan loves. He was lucky to survive, but now he’s tagging along with Ethan on this dangerous mission, snapping photos of the death, violence, and butterflies (???) that surround them at every turn.
Hey, don’t ask me about the butterfly thing. Snyder couldn’t really explain the weird, constant presence of them in the Q&A that followed. I attribute it to Snyder doing what he thinks a prestige filmmaker, an auteur, might do. Much of The Last Photograph feels like Snyder’s attempt to prove he’s better than just the guy who makes things blow up real good. The dramatic scenes are sluggish and all of them demand to be edited down. The dialogue makes no sense and there isn’t a human being alive who would say some of it. Hilariously, the film begins with a topless woman having sex with Joseph while he shoots a photograph of a non-existent butterfly. There are maybe three women in the entire movie and all of them are topless at some point, and none of them can keep their hands off the nearest guy. Pretty sure Snyder didn’t imagine this one through the female gaze.
And yet, when Snyder stops the pretentious bullshit and gets down to doing what he’s best at, The Last Photograph is a killer revenge thriller and quest movie, with The Searchers a clear inspiration. Ethan and Joseph travel the deadly streets and jungles of South America, facing constant armed assaults from rebels and assassins. Not that any of them stand a chance against Ethan’s military training and righteous vengeance. Snyder’s no-bullshit approach to the violence, credibly brought to life by a game performance by Martin, pulls you into the story a lot better than exhausting conversations about the morality of being a war photographer in a war-torn land.
The first act is some of the worst stuff Snyder has ever done, but if you can get through it, the second act of The Last Photograph is quite compelling, especially for fans of his blockbuster work. The final leg stumbles again, however, with a payoff that falls flat and leaves you wondering what any of this was all for.
The Last Photograph is Snyder’s baby, and I’m sure he loves every single frame that he shot. There’s a good movie in here that’s maybe about an hour shorter, but nobody is going to convince him that’s what it needs. And you know what? I’m fine with that. Snyder should make the movie he wants to make in the way he wants to make it, but The Last Photograph is worse for it. And if I am part of the only audience who ever gets to see it, well, then so be it.
