Drama

The Nightingale (2019)

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Director: Jennifer Kent
Writer: Jennifer Kent

I have to start this with a word of warning: this is an extremely hard film to watch. It’s not just that it’s bloody. There are also several scenes of rape, and a shit-ton of racism. My understanding is that people have walked out of the film when it’s been shown on the festival circuit. That said, if you can tough it out, you’ll find a very powerful, well-made film.

1825: Claire (Aisling Franciosi) is a young Irish woman and former convict who is indentured to Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), the leader of an unruly group of British soldiers stationed in Tasmania. He refuses to release her from her servitude, and forces himself on her, angering her husband Aiden (Michael Sheasby), who confronts Hawkins and his men publicly one night. Once Hawkins’ misdeeds are uncovered, he loses the commission he was promised, and blaming Claire, he kills her family and leaves her for dead.

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The Irishman (2019)

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Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Steven Zaillian (screenplay)/Charles Brandt (source material)

It’s like a beautiful paint by numbers picture. It looks exactly like what it’s supposed to look like. Pretty, to be sure, but safe. There’s everything you would expect, but very little you wouldn’t. And for me, that’s what made it just a bit disappointing. It was long, although that in and of itself isn’t a reason to malign a film. Here, though, I just felt like we had seen all of this before from Director Scorsese and his merry band of gangsters in earlier films. What draws me to crime films is that glimpse into a world so unfamiliar, so if you want me to invest three hours, you’ve got to give me something a little different. I will say that it was worthwhile to see Joe Pesci cast against type as the calm, circumspect one. And Al Pacino FINALLY gets to play the loud boisterous guy for a change! (I kid, I kid!)

IMDb voters give it an even 8.0. I’ll go with a 7. There’s nothing really wrong with it, and maybe my expectations were too high going in, but it just didn’t “wow” me in the way that his previous films have. If you can spare the three-plus hours, it’s definitely worth a watch, but I don’t see myself going back to it again and again, like I do with, say, Goodfellas. (running time 3:29)

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019)

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Director: Quentin Tarantino

Writer: Quentin Tarantino

As usual with Quentin Tarantino films, I never seem to like them as much as others do. His movies always seem so self-indulgent, and this one seemed even more so than usual. As usual, QT fills the film, for better or worse, with pop culture nods to the time period. For me, too often, that just comes across as “stuff that Quentin thinks is cool.” A way of saying “look at how good I am at recreating 1969.” And I guess he is fairly good at it, but to what end? How many times do we need to see the cover of a TV guide, for example? Yeah, we get it—everyone had them back then. But all of that detail doesn’t quite make up for an aimless narrative and lack of character development. He spends more time demonstrating how well he knows the time period than he does giving us insight into the characters. And the other issue I have with it is that after all that effort to faithfully recreate the time period, he constantly reminds us that it’s NOT reality. He throws in an obviously fake dog food brand (“rat flavor?”) in among all the other, real products that are literally in just about every shot. And he once again plays with history. I won’t give any spoilers, per se, but I am about to hint at something, so skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want to read even a hint. He uses the horrific Tate-LaBianca murders by members of Charles Manson’s “family” as a way to increase tension in the film, but then, sadly, turns them into an odd sort of punchline at the end.

Okay, hints are over.

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Mine 9 (2019)

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Director: Eddie Mensore

Writer: Eddie Mensore

I thought I’d do a couple of shorter reviews for films that I watched this year, just to get them out there. I especially wanted to cover those films “off the beaten path,” so to speak. I thought I’d space them out with regular reviews. The first one is Mine 9, the story of a group of coal miners trapped underground with less than an hour’s worth of air. It’s a low-budget film, but it doesn’t look it. Dark and weary in tone, the film tells the story of these men willing to do anything (and I do mean anything) to survive. I found it a little hard to keep track of the individuals on occasion, but that didn’t really detract from the film. This one’s a well-acted nail-biter.

IMDb has it at a 7.4. That’s a little high, I think, but I’d be okay with a 6.5. Don’t miss the interviews with real miners during the closing credits. (running time 1:23)

Dragged Across Concrete

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Director: S. Craig Zahler
Writer: S. Craig Zahler

This is what I like to call a film of convergence. We’re introduced to two separate storylines, with the knowledge that at some point, those lines are going to meet, and—in this case—bad things are going to happen. The first storyline has to do with two cops, Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) and Lurasetti (Vince Vaughn) who get caught on camera roughing up a drug dealer and get suspended without pay. They both need money, so they decide to rob another drug dealer, an “out-of-towner.” Needless to say, in this genre of film, things don’t always go as planned. The second storyline introduces us to Henry Johns (Tory Kittles), a smart, small-time crook who just got out of prison to find his mom working as a prostitute to support herself and his wheelchair-bound little brother, Ethan. Also needing money, he lets an old neighborhood friend, Biscuit (Michael Jai White) talk him into signing on with a gang of psychotics looking to steal a bunch of gold.

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1917 (2019)

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Director: Sam Mendes
Writer: Sam Mendes, Krysty Wilson-Cairns

My problem with Sam Mendes has always been that I think he too often sacrifices story and content for style and form. He never passes up a chance to get that beautiful shot, even if he has to sacrifice the film to do it. He did it in the last two Bond films, and he does it here. Make no mistake, he does get beautiful shots, but we’re often so wowed by his technique that the story suffers. In 1917, he again attempts to wow us with his technical prowess, using a series of long takes, digitally woven together to appear as one long shot.

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Knives Out (2019)

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Director: Rian Johnson

I love a good, old-fashioned cozy mystery. Knives Out isn’t a good one, however. It’s a great one. Writer/Director Rian Johnson channels his inner Agatha Christie to bring us the story of a dysfunctional family who discovers, the morning after the family patriarch’s birthday party, that said patriarch lies dead, his throat cut, in what appears to be a gruesome suicide. But this is no ordinary patriarch; this is Harlan Thrombey, multi-millionaire mystery writer, played by Christopher Plummer. And it soon becomes evident that it may not be a suicide, thanks to the presence of Consulting Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, doing Sherlock Holmes, by way of Hercule Poiroit, by way of…well, someone with an outrageous southern accent).

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Chained for Life (2018)

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Director: Aaron Schimberg

I’m really working overtime on this one. It’s one of those films—which I personally love so much—that resists explanation, resists definition. But I’ll do my best because I really want you to see this one.

The film opens with a quote from Pauline Kael, written across the screen: “Actors and actresses are usually more beautiful than ordinary people. And why not?”

It’s clear quite early on that this film is satire, an examination of the expectations of beauty, the falseness of cinema, and the standards by which we treat those who don’t meet those expectations.

It’s another film-within-a-film (I just finished One Cut of the Dead), a film about a pretentious German (maybe) director shooting his first American film (Marked for Life) about a doctor who operates on the disfigured, trying to make them look “normal.” (Think Eyes Without a Face.) Herr Director (no, seriously…that’s what he’s called) has decided to cast actual disfigured people as extras in the film. The bus full of them arrives, introducing us to Rosenthal, a man with neurofibromatosis (Adam Pearson). He is paired up with Mabel Fairchild (the underrated Jess Wexler), an actress who plays Frieda, the doctor’s blind sister, in Marked for Life. Much like her character in the film, Mabel can’t make eye contact with Rosenthal. At least at first.

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Share (2019)

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Director: Pippa Bianco

The second film I watched today (after To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before) is another film about teens, but they couldn’t be more different. Share is darker, both in subject matter and in execution. In it, sixteen-year-old Mandy (outstanding newcomer Rhianne Barreto) comes to one night on her front lawn. She’s clearly been drinking, and taking stock of her body, she finds bruises and other signs that indicate that something physical must have happened to her earlier in the night. The trouble is, she doesn’t remember anything. The next evening, though, she gets bombarded by texts from classmates telling her how sorry they are and asking if she’s okay. She doesn’t know what they’re talking about until one of them sends a blurry video, taken by someone at the party she attended. In it, Mandy is unconscious and surrounded by several boys, one of whom has pulled down her pants, exposing her bare bottom. They’re laughing and making comments and then the video stops.

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To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)

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Director: Susan Johnson

When working within a genre, the target for a film generally seems to be “the same…but different.” I always take that to mean that while a film may seem familiar and comfortable, there’s a newness to it that makes us feel as though we’re watching that particular kind of film for the first time. I think Susan Johnson’s film To All the Boys I’ve loved Before gets it just right. A Netflix original, there’s nothing here that breaks new ground. Change the clothing and slang and this could be an ‘80s John Hughes film. (Sixteen Candles is even referenced in the film.) Yet it’s a heartwarming film that succeeds in spite of its devotion to the genre, rather than because of it.

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