Category Archives: Drama

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery           4 stars

Rian Johnson brings us the return of Benoit Blanc, the world’s greatest detective in Glass Onion. The sequel to Johnson’s 2019 hit Knives Out finds Blanc (Daniel Craig) at the scene of a gathering of wealthy friends at a private Greek island owned by entrepreneur Miles Bron (Edward Norton) that includes a giant glass enclosure that Miles calls the Glass Onion. This time the friends are there for a game of whodunit prepared for them as an amusement for one weekend. There we find Bron with his old pals that include Claire (Kathryn Hahn), the governor of Connecticut, Lionel (Leslie Odom, Jr.), an engineer at Bron’s company, Alpha, Birdie (Kate Hudson), a model and “social influencer” who can’t avoid making accidental racial slurs, Duke (Dave Bautista) a YouTube channel host who promotes conspiracy theories among other popular subjects on social media and Andi (Janelle Monae), Bron’s old business partner who dropped out of the business after Miles screwed her over. All were brought here by solving an elaborate box filled with puzzles that revealed the invitation. That is; except for Blanc, who seems to have shown up for mysterious reasons. Bron refers to this group as The Disruptors, but I prefer Blanc’s name for them: the shitheads. Since this is a classic murder mystery we eventually get to a point where bodies start dropping and everybody present seems to have a motive for wanting someone dead. At this point I have to be very careful about not revealing too much of the plot. The situation is well written following the rules for a murder mystery. All of the characters are suspects and we gradually find out more about them and events that happened in the past like as Blanc says, the layers of the onion are peeled back until we reach the center. Each of the actors brings out notable aspects of their character like Norton’s Miles who only cares about himself and Monae’s Andi who has a mysterious air about her. I think I preferred the original Knives Out slightly more, but this one will certainly keep your interest and keep you guessing until the startling conclusion.

Missing

Missing                 2 stars

For my first 2023 release I saw Missing. Just five years ago the groundbreaking film “Searching” brought us a mystery told in the unique way of viewing images on computer screens and surveillance cameras as a father goes searching for his missing daughter. Now filmmakers Will Merrick and Nicholas Johnson have made Missing, using a similar approach to story telling about a mother (Nia Long) who goes missing while on a vacation to Columbia with her new boyfriend, leaving 18 year old daughter June (Storm Reid) to try to find what happened to her with only a little help from the FBI. June, however, is quite accomplished at using social media and various online apps, making use of them to find clues as to what happened to her mother. She has clever ways to break into the boyfriend’s online accounts and find previously hidden details about him. And she is aided by a Columbian freelance investigator by way of Taskrabbit who is very helpful, leading to even more discoveries. About every 20 minutes or so a new startling revelation is discovered that completely changes June’s perception of some person or other including her mother. The movie feels like the ultimate in Things Are Not as They Seem genre as we follow things further and further down the rabbit hole. Unfortunately, this movie goes beyond the breaking point, with events that are just too much to be believed. I wanted to like the movie but by the end I felt that it had gone too far with the various twists with too much for me to accept. I am betting others will be disappointed by the ending. For a better treatment of this type of online mystery, go back and see 2018’s “Searching”.

Aftersun

Aftersun              3 stars

I picked Aftersun to watch because I saw that one of the stars of the film, Paul Mescal, is up for the Best Actor Academy Award for his role. I would say he does give a good performance, but in a movie that is well understated, telling a story that leaves much to the imagination of the viewer. The entire movie follows Mescal as Calum at about 30, a young father taking his eleven year old daughter, Sophie to a resort hotel in Turkey for a few days. We watch as the two do typical father daughter things like hang out at the hotel swimming pool, play a game of pool, go to the beach and do some Karaoke. We pick up a few details like we know that Sophie lives with her mother in the UK and we surmise that Calum doesn’t have a lot of money. Some of their trip is caught on video camera which is important because years later the adult Sophie is looking back on the occasion, but says nothing about that trip. We have the feeling that things did not go well for Calum in his life. He obviously cares about his daughter, but he is too young and not prepared for fatherhood. In the movie no details about his life before or after the vacation are shared. We really only see this short time that Calum and Sophie share in the hour and a half runtime of the movie. We will have to be satisfied with the writer/director’s (Charlotte Wells) choices in leaving out the background of these characters in this, her first feature film. Some of this information I had to glean from movie reviews as I was left wondering after only watching the movie. Mescal gives a good performance but I can’t help but think what other male performers were passed over for this nomination.

Emily the Criminal

Emily the Criminal            4 stars

I saw this surprise of a movie during my return flight from Sundance, but had not written about it before. When I saw the awards coming its way I thought I should correct that. While completely fictional it represents the situation that many young people find themselves in today’s economy where one cannot escape their past. Emily (Aubrey Plaza of Parks and Recreation) has a load of student loan debt and needs a good job. The trouble is she has a minor record that keeps coming up in job interviews, thus preventing her from reaching her goals. (Background checks can follow you everywhere.) She has to take menial service jobs in the gig economy that allow the employer to take advantage of the workers. So what is she supposed to do? The answer is in the title. She meets a Lebanese man (Theo Rossi) who runs a theft ring where the participants make purchases using stolen credit cards and fake id’s. Emily gives it a try, has some success at it and is undeterred even when getting beaten up a bit in the process. Things escalate when she finds that she is actually good at it and rises in the ranks of this criminal enterprise leading to some dangerous experiences. The movie has an interesting premise, perhaps taking it in an implausible direction, but it is entertaining and keeps your interest mainly due to Plaza’s excellent performance as Emily. Most of her roles have been in comedies, but here she shows that she is equally talented in dramas. The movie received nominations for both Best Lead Performance (Aubrey Plaza) and Best First Feature (Aubrey Plaza and John Patton Ford) at this year’s Film Independent Spirit Awards. I am glad I gave it a try.

Living

Living                     4 ½ stars

A long time ago a masterpiece of a film called Ikiru was created by Akira Kurosawa about a Japanese bureaucrat in the 1950’s who has found out that he is dying of cancer. I never saw that groundbreaking film but feel that much of its feeling has been recaptured in the British remake Living. Bill Nighy (of Love Actually) stars as Mr. Williams, the London bureaucrat in the Public Works department in Oliver Hermanus’s film. The opening sequence looks so much like an early 50’s film you at first wonder if it is a long lost treasure from that era. The first scenes move slowly and feature very stilted conversations among the bureaucrats that convey how repressed British society is at this time and Bill Nighy is the perfect actor to portray a man hiding his emotions. When the cancer diagnosis is made we can hardly tell what effect it has on him. We follow him as he explores various avenues of spending his final months like going out on the town to strip clubs and having lunch with a young woman he used to work with. Ultimately, he decides to make a difference by doing some good for the community, seeing a project to construct a playground to completion, all the while keeping his condition a secret. The slow pace of this film may turn some viewers off, but the challenge the filmmakers took on pays off mainly due to the talents of Nighy in what is probably one of the best roles of his thirty plus year career. I don’t know if he will receive an Oscar for the performance but he certainly deserves his Best Actor nomination.

Creed III

Creed III               4 stars

Creed III finds Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan, returning as the star but also directing) retired from his world championship and now the owner of his own boxing gym ad quite well off with his music producer wife Bianca (Tess Thompson) and young daughter. It is the third in the series and the first that his mentor, Rocky Balboa does not appear in. The story starts with the young teenage Adonis at a group home with his buddy Damian who is making it in the boxing world when things take a bad direction and the two of them get caught up in an act of violence. Skip ahead about eighteen years and Creed is preparing world champion Felix for his next title match when a figure from the past, Damian (Jonathan Majors) appears at his door. Having just gotten out of prison, it soon becomes clear that Damian is interested in more than getting reacquainted with his boyhood friend. He has dreams of reaching his goal of becoming a champion and will stop at nothing to get it including exploiting Creed’s feelings of obligation toward him a well as cheating in the ring. Creed is warned that trouble awaits if he follows this path, but that matters little to him. Tragic events follow in a movie that is also about race in addition to being a boxing film. It is about two connected lives that took very different paths because of a single event involving young black men and the justice system. Inevitably, the film goes to the final confrontation between the two fighters in a showdown of a fight that is filmed like it is disconnected from the real world around them. The fight scenes are not as good as in the first Creed movie, but how could they be? That was a legendary film. The events surrounding these two characters may seem implausible in the real world making it quite a stretch, but it is entertaining to see these two talents and very well-conditioned actors performing together.

Causeway

Causeway           4 stars

I viewed another Oscar Nominated performance in Causeway, the recent movie by director Lila Neugebauer available on Apple tv+. This low budget drama stars Jennifer Lawrence (of The Hunger Games fame) as Lynsey, a soldier recently returned from duty in Afghanistan after suffering a brain injury in an IED attack. At first the movie is about her rehabilitation in New Orleans, seeing doctors and caregivers and going through physical therapy and the frustration  of trying to regain physical function. But it is also about her forming a bond with James (Brian Tyree Henry of Atlanta), a local Black auto mechanic who has suffered his own trauma (though not war related) who sees someone suffering and is in need of a friend. Lynsey also has her mother, but she is very self-centered and of little use in Lynsey’s recovery. The two find that despite their widely different backgrounds there is a connection between them though it gets a bit rocky along the way. It’s a straightforward story without complicating flashbacks that owes a lot to the great acting skills of Lawrence and Henry. Brian Tyree Henry is honored with a deserved Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

The Quiet Girl

The Quiet Girl    5 stars

The Quiet Girl is the third award winning movie featuring the Irish I have seen this year, the others being The Banshees of Inisherin and Aftersun. This one actually deserves more attention than it received having been nominated for Best International Feature at The Academy Awards. The film is the first by writer/director Colm Bairead and is one of the most emotional ones I have seen lately. We meet Cait (newcomer Catherine Clinch) a girl of 9 or 10 who is painfully shy and who obviously has a tough life both at home and school. At home she lives with her parents and five siblings on a farm where money is short as is any empathy. Her father is both a drunkard and a gambler and not much of a farmer either. He even complains about how much his children eat. Now her mother is pregnant with the sixth child. The parents agree that in order to make things more manageable, Cait should spend a few months with a relative on a distant rural farm where she can be cared for until the baby arrives. There is no explanation of why her and not any of the other children. The relatives are an older couple and are obviously better off financially than Cait’s family. The woman, Eibhlin (Carrie Crowley) provides attention and care to young Cait like she has never had before. The man, Sean (Andrew Bennett) is at first aloof but then warms up to her, allowing her to help out on the dairy farm and challenging her to run to retrieve the mail as fast as she can. They even buy her new clothes and shows. Cait is still shy through this, clearly a cry for help, but gradually she becomes more talkative, using the dialect of Gaeilge. (Fortunately, the entire movie uses subtitles.) Eventually, we learn of events from the couple’s past that bring these people closer together. It is never forgotten that this arrangement is temporary which makes the ending of the film a truly memorable and emotional moment. The Quiet Girl should especially be seen by anyone who is a parent as well as a wider audience. It could have easily received a nomination for Best Picture. I hope that we see more from director Colm Bairead in the future.

Human Flowers of Flesh

Human Flowers of Flesh                2 stars

German director Helena Wittmann’s new movie Human Flowers of Flesh has been described as an exercise in elusiveness, with a procession of predominantly maritime imagery (Clayton Dillard). The film is about a woman who lives on a yacht with her crew who sails from Marseilles to Algeria where she becomes fascinated with the French Foreign Legion and then decides to travel to the headquarters of the Legion. I know this from reading the Imdb description of the film as I was not able to discern it from watching the movie. There is very little dialogue in the film itself and what little there is consist of short snatches of conversation among the crew about myths, the work on the ship and the collecting of letters and samples of plant specimens. The woman whose name we rarely hear speaks even less, but does spend much time swimming in the sea. The film focuses mainly on some spectacular images of the sea and marine life. There are some extended shots of a snail crawling a short distance and a long shot of microscopic creatures moving about the screen. The writer/director may be saying something about life being adrift with so much time spent at sea, but I find that very hard to tell from watching the movie one time. I don’t object to a movie having very little plot, but I at least expect to learn something about the characters and what motivates them. We don’t get much of that here. I very much liked Wittmann’s earlier film, Adrift, about a couple on a wrecked yacht trying to survive. But Human Flowers of Flesh left me very confused.

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant                         4 stars

If you have seen any of Guy Ritchie’s earlier films you know that they are action packed and have a style all his own. His movie The Covenant that includes his name in the title certainly lives up to his standards. This time we follow the exploits of an army sergeant, John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) and an Afghan interpreter, Ahmed (Dar Salim) as Kinley and his squad are tasked with hunting down IED factories somewhere in the wilderness of Afghanistan. It is 2018 so it is near the end of the war and Kinley is dedicated to this near impossible task with the threat of a Taliban attack at every turn. Ahmed is there because he is drawn to the job for the money and the promise of a visa to the US for him and his family. He also hates the Taliban for killing his son. As the pair face this challenge they learn to rely on one another despite the great cultural differences especially when they are being hunted by every available Taliban fighter in the area. The characters are not based on any particular men, but their story is symbolic of how the American military came to rely on the Afghan interpreters who were promised relocation to America and safety from the Taliban. The real meaning of the film’s title comes later when Kinley is sent back to the US with his family after being severely wounded, but feels the responsibility to get Ahmed and his family out of Afghanistan. He personally endures the frustration of dealing with government red tape and finally hires high priced mercenaries to help find Ahmed who has gone into hiding and get him to safety. The movie is thrilling as a war movie should be and full of harrowing scenes, and also shows the dedication of an American soldier and the loyalty to his fellow man. This is one that comes highly recommended.