Category Archives: Crime

West Side Story

West Side Story                5 stars

We’ve had a few movie musicals hit the theaters in the past year to great acclaim such as In the Heights and Tick Tick Boom. But December brought us the big one, Steven Spielberg’s remake of the classic 1961 West Side Story. This updated version has all the same memorable musical numbers of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim performed to perfection. Add to it the free flowing dance numbers done by ethnically correct actors and an updated take on the racial tensions between the white gang called the Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks and you have a sure hit on your hands. The Romeo and Juliet story brought to the blighted streets of New York requires a young cast and it was filled out with very talented actors. They include Rachel Zegler as the love struck Maria and Ansel Elgort (of Baby Driver) as her lover Tony who have some great chemistry between them. The gang leaders, Bernardo (David Alvarez) and Riff (Mike Faist) bring their race hating contempt to reality in their roles. Ariana DeBose as Anita, the girlfriend of Bernardo has some very energetic performances in “America” and her preaching to Maria about the dangerous path she is taking. Of course the presence of Rita Moreno cannot be missed with the specially created role of Valentina made for her. She was the original Anita in the 1961 version sixty years ago. At the age of 90 she shows that she has still got it. Other than the music I could not remember that much of the original movie (based on the Broadway musical), but the story of the doomed lovers in the setting of a racially tinged gang war is something that is relevant across multiple eras. I hope it is finding a wide audience.

Alice

Alice                                      4 suns

An imaginative film that I thoroughly enjoyed was Alice. Alice (Keke Palmer) is a house slave on a southern plantation where she is owned by a cruel white man who maintains discipline through pitiless beatings. One day Alice has had all she can take and makes a run for freedom, only to find herself in modern 1973 America where she meets a kind truck driver named Frank (Common). This blending of time periods is not a case of time travel but represents a southern plantation that kept its slavey practice in place for more than 100 years. In this story Alice quickly catches on to the changes made in America transforming herself in the style of Pam Greer of the blaxploitation films of the seventies. What a cultural statement! The film is an excellent portrayal of the struggle of Black Americans against oppression across eras of American history. During the Q&A, the filmmakers talked about how there have been actual cases of people kept in slavery up to the 1960’s but they did not go into details about how this happened. It would be interesting to learn more about it.

892

892                                         4 suns

892 was the winner of the U.S. Dramatic Ensemble Cast Special Jury Award. It is a fairly straightforward story concerning a desperate former U.S. marine who has decided to hold employees of a bank hostage so that he can receive what is owed to him by the VA. I thought it seemed a little slow moving for a hostage taking drama. There were few action scenes and most of the film dealt with the negotiations between the marine and the police negotiator. But by the end I realized that this was a representation of an actual event which explains a lot, especially why such a subject was chosen. The acting performances were especially superb including John Boyega of Star Wars as Brian, the marine and Michael Kenneth Williams as the negotiator in what would be his final film role. This film is very unlike one from last year called Prime Time, also about a hostage situation, but was more dramatic and tension filled. Of course that one was a fictional story. 892 serves as a reminder about how our obligations to those who serve often go unfilled.

Nightmare Alley

Nightmare Alley                                                4 ½ stars

Four years after creating the weirdly romantic film about a woman and her fish man lover, The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro brings us a gritty, lurid film based on the 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham that shares the same name, Nightmare Alley. When you see the famed Mexican director’s name associated with a film, you know you are in for something unusual and disturbing. We can sense that this is a story of betrayal and doom. We first meet Stanton Carlisle, a man down on his luck in 1939 as he is burning a body inside an old house. The mysterious Stanton played by Bradley Cooper in one of his best roles to date manages to get hired at a carnival by the boss (Willem Dafoe). The carnival features a very seedy collection of freaks and sideshow performers in scenes that capture the feel of the depression. Stanton is immediately drawn to the carnival’s mentalists Zeena (Toni Collette) and Pete (David Strathairn) and finds he has a gift for reading people, eventually leaving and creating his own act, teaming up with another of the performers, Molly (Rooney Mara), whose beauty makes her stand out from the carnival freaks. As the pair perform their craft in high end clubs, Stanton encounters Lilith Ritter, a wealthy psychoanalyst whose clientele includes politicians, judges and business tycoons. Cate Blanchett plays the role expertly as her very presence commands our attention. She was born to play roles like this. Soon enough this pair devises a plan to separate the elite from their money with an elaborate scheme that is bound to lead to ruin, (though I won’t say whose). The film gets the feel of forties film noir movies that is aided by an astounding collection of gifted A list actors. Nightmare Alley was previously made into a movie in 1947 starring Tyrone Power, but I am sure del Toro did it with a much bigger budget. I am expecting it will receive a few Academy Award nominations later this week.

Death on the Nile

Death on the Nile             3 stars

In Death on the Nile, Kenneth Branagh makes his second outing as the famous detective, Hercule Poirot, having previously solved a killing in 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express. This time the Agatha Christie hero is isolated on another means of transportation, a river boat on the Nile River in 1937 Egypt, where while on vacation a dead body is discovered among the many passengers on board. But before all this we first are introduced to some of Poirot’s backstory where we learn of his experiences in battle in the Great War and how he came to wear that unmistakably large mustache. This is followed by his encounters with many of the characters at a London night club that include Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer), a masculine playboy who steams up the dance floor with his fiancé Jacqueline de Bellefort (Emma Mackey). He meets ultra-rich heiress Linett Ridgeway (Gal Gadot) there who is also Jacqueline’s best friend. Fast forward to the previously mentioned scene in Egypt at a high class hotel, we find that Simon has ditched his girlfriend and is now on his honeymoon with his new love, Linett. There are many other associated individuals at the hotel all with connections to Linett, but the shocker is when Jacqueline shows up to the party, uninvited. It is in these circumstances that our detective, Poirot, must interrupt his vacation and join the guests on the Nile riverboat, in order to keep the newlywed couple safe. It is only then that the first of the dead bodies appears, against the backdrop of the spectacular desert scenery of Egypt that could be from a movie of the forties or fifties. This being a movie based on an Agatha Christie novel, there are many suspects all with a possible motive for murder that must be investigated. Most of them are destined to stand around a lot until they are interrogated by Poirot while the viewer puzzles over who the killer could be, or yet another murder happens. While the production quality is high and we are treated to some very interesting cast members (including Annette Bening and Russel Brand) some of the social interactions seem more appropriate to our present than the 1930’s that the movie is set in. Of the two Poirot movies of Branagh, I liked this one better than Murder on the Orient Express. But for a superb murder mystery, you would do even better with 2019’s Knives Out.

The Outfit

The Outfit           4 stars

Writer-director Graham Moore of The Imitation Game has created a tense well-crafted crime drama in The Outfit, starring Academy Award winner Mark Rylance as Leonard, a soft spoken tailor who operates a tailor shop in 1958 Chicago where he makes finely crafted suits. That is, a shop that is also frequented by shady gang figures who use a drop box inside to pass thick envelopes with mysterious markings and who also will have Leonard make new suits for them. Rylance is very low-key as Leonard who stays intensely focused on his craft and only wants to be able to survive the night when the mobsters become aware that there is a “rat” in their midst who is informing a rival gang of their comings and goings. The movie is unique in that the entire story takes place within the rooms of the shop, most of it in a single night filled with suspicion and murder. Two of the gangsters are played by Dylan O’Brien and Johnny Flynn who speak with convincing Chicago mobster accents. Simon Russell Beale is equally effective as the mob father figure, Roy Boyle, who wants to get to the bottom of the evening’s events, even if he has to kill someone. Zoey Deutch appears glamorous in 1950’s wardrobe as Mable, the receptionist, who is treated like a daughter by Leonard. (Deutch is the daughter of actress Lea Thompson.) The show really belongs to Rylance who gives a fascinating performance of a man who must always keep his wits about him even with a gun pointed at him. There are many lies and misleading stories being told so, the audience too must stay focused on who said what to who and who really knows the truth. I chose to see the movie based solely on seeing the trailer and am glad I made that choice.

MaXXXine

MaXXXine           3 ½ stars

In a throwback to slasher flicks of the 1980’s, director Ti West brings us MaXXXine, a story of blood, lust and murder set in 1985 Hollywood. Although there are a few suspects, MaXXXine is not really a murder mystery but a test to see how much blood and brutality the audience can endure. It can also be seen as a portrayal of how cruel the entertainment industry can be to those who seek their fortune there as untold numbers have learned. For the third time West teams up with star Mia Goth, the scream queen of the 21st century. Previously, they made X and Pearl in 2022. Goth plays Maxine Minx, an established porn actress with a very southern accent seeking greater stardom so she auditions for a role in a new film. The film, The Puritan II, seems like the ideal vehicle and the film’s director (Elizabeth Debicki) sees something in Maxine and gives her the role. But in this time of VHS tapes and St. Elmo’s Fire, there is a darkness looming. A serial killer called the Night Stalker has been hunting starlets and the police are nowhere in the search for the killer. There are flashbacks going through Maxine’s mind about killings, so we know she has a dark past. We also can see that she can be a fearsome force such as when she confronts a would-be attacker and bashes his testicles with graphic effect. A few times we catch glimpses of a masked, glove wearing figure wandering the porn parlors. Maxine is confronted by an old gumshoe (Kevin Bacon at his creepiest) who explains that he has a client who is demanding to meet her, but she wants nothing to do with this offer. Shortly, some of her friends in the industry turn up dead with horrible burns in the shape of satanic symbols. Though she is asked by police detectives (Bobby Canavale and Michelle Monaghan) for cooperation in finding the killer, she refuses, opting for protection offered by her agent (Giancarlo Esposito). Like any good slasher movie there must be a final confrontation between the film’s star and the killer where the bodies fall, and body parts get chopped up and bloodied. In this respect MaXXXine delivers very well even though it takes a while to get there. It feels very much like the genre it imitates. Along the way we even get to see some famous movie sets put to good use including a certain iconic sign in the Hollywood Hills.

The Duke

The Duke                             4 stars

If the bloody fighting of The Northman or the zany comedy of Everything Everywhere All at Once isn’t for you, perhaps you should try the British comedy, The Duke. Jim Broadbent, the character actor of so many fine films gets his chance at a starring role as Kempton Bunton, a friendly out spoken man who resents the fact that the government expects people to pay for their over the air TV shows and tells the TV police his views when they track him down in his rundown apartment. (I know that they do this in England as I heard about it from a British fellow once.) Kempton and his wife (Helen Mirren) are still aching from the death of their daughter many years earlier. We find out early in the light-hearted comedy that Bunton went on trial for theft. Eventually he concocts a bizarre plan to steal a famous painting of The Duke of Wellington from The British Art Gallery and hold it for ransom, demanding that the government make television free to the elderly. As if this isn’t bad enough, he involves his son in the half baked plot as well. This low key type of comedy with likeable characters should appeal to a wide range of audiences. Sadly, the director, Roger Michell, won’t be making anymore like this as he passed away last year. The movie was actually based on a true story that happened in 1961. It was the only successful robbery of the Art Gallery in history. If you enjoy British comedy you can’t go wrong with The Duke.

Robot & Frank

Robot & Frank                   4 stars

For a simple yet elegant story about aging we go back ten years to 2012’s Robot & Frank starring Frank Langella as Frank, an elderly man living alone who spent time in prison for some heists committed in his younger days. Frank has two adult children who he wasn’t exactly a model parent to, but son Hunter (James Marsden) who looks after him on occasion has decided that Frank needs the assistance of an in home robot that can cook, clean and care for Frank. Frank soon figures out that the talking robot can also be commanded to assist him in committing burglaries so starts a new project training the robot to commit crimes and getting it to tell him the chances of success. It’s a pleasing comedy-drama that is driven by the excellent acting skills of Langella whose versatility has been featured in roles such as President Nixon, Chief Justice Warren Burger, Perry White in Superman Returns and Count Dracula in his long career. The movie was directed by newcomer Jake Schreier, who followed up with Paper Towns in 2015. I was very entertained by this comedy. Look for Susan Sarandon as the town’s librarian and Law & Order’s Jeremy Sisto as the sheriff.

The Bikeriders

The Bikeriders                   4 ½ stars

Mike Nichols’ The Bikeriders (in theaters now) is an homage to the biker films of the sixties, and a remembrance of a culture long gone. The biker club, The Vandals, based on a real gang from Chicago in the sixties, is a collection of misfits, young to middle-aged, working-class men who only belong to each other. We commonly see them in bars at night or in open fields during the day dressed in their grimy clothes and jackets drinking beer. Their jackets sport rebellious patches such as the extended middle finger and German crosses. They are outlaws in a sense as the cops fear them, but they rarely commit any real serious crimes, preferring their typical brawling and riding through small towns. Occasionally, they are seen on the road, riding in a pack somewhere in the Midwest. While it’s not a traditional drama it does have characters you can really feel for, that seem very real. The movie is told in a narrative form with a photographer named Danny Lyons (Mike Faist) interviewing various members and taking their photos. It is based on actual interviews the real Danny Lyons did with club members and their wives and girlfriends in making his photo-anthropology book, The Bikeriders. In the movie the story is narrated by Kathy (Jodie Comer of Free Guy and the TV series Killing Eve) as she relates her story to Danny, about how she met and fell for Benny (Austin Butler of Elvis), a young heartthrob and member of the Vandals. She soon marries Benny, but in a sense also marries the gang, finding her life intertwined with other members. Chief among them is Johnny (Tom Hardy of Inception and Mad Max: Fury Road), the gang’s leader and close friend of Benny. The three of them create a great ensemble of characters whose fates are interconnected. Comer mastered an upper Midwest accent and gives an honest performance of someone attracted to a world she doesn’t really understand. Butler, coming off his roles in Elvis and Dune, Part 2, is a man of few words, but can communicate with a look and a glance with his eyes, a la James Dean. Hardy is his iconic self, a real tough guy, a Marlon Brando type, who can fight when needed, but is aging and realizes his time as leader is fast running out. With the high drama in this story, you can expect there to be tragic consequences. The cinematography is quite arresting with the many outdoor scenes of the Midwest and an impressive collection of classic cars and motorcycles. The outstanding score includes many familiar songs by artists such as The Animals, The Shangri-Las, Bo Diddley and Cream. Nichols is well known for his previous excellent movies including Take Shelter, Mud and Midnight Special. The Bikeriders may be his most classic film yet.