The Little Things (2021, John Lee Hancock)

There’s a point where Rami Malek gets exasperated at having to stake out suspected serial killer Jared Leto and it’s the most real moment of The Little Things because it’s been exasperating having to watch Malek stake out suspected serial killer Jared Leto. The scene’s somewhere near the end of the film’s second act but since Things plods along at an almost impossibly bad pace and Leto’s so terrible and so obvious and so godawfully terrible you can’t imagine he’s actually the main suspect in the movie and writer and director Hancock really can’t be so inept….

Anyway. It’s hard to keep track of where one is during the experience of The Little Things. The film’s final surprise—only surprise—comes at the end, when it becomes tragically, comically unaware of itself. But then every subsequent scene is so predictable you can call out the reveals; Hancock even packages them up so you get to unwrap them and feel rather satisfied Hancock really can’t pull one over. No matter what, there’s nothing he can do competently. At least the universe makes sense.

The first act of Things is not terrible. It’s definitely slow and it soon becomes clear Thomas Newman’s score is going to be at best grating, but Denzel Washington’s fine and potentially better and Malek’s impressive in his showy part. Washington’s a disgraced former L.A. sheriff’s homicide detective, Malek’s his replacement. They meet because Washington—now deputy in the sticks—comes to town on a contrivance and his old partner Chris Bauer (who’s great, albeit barely in the movie) is now Malek’s partner and there’s another contrivance or two to get them together at a crime scene, where Malek gets to see Washington’s detecting magic.

So… Little Things is terrible procedural. The movie’s set in 1990 because Hancock can’t figure out how to make it hold water without cell phones and social media so how could he possibly do it with any pertinent technology. Plus he needs a phone booth to make it work. Multiple phone booths. Couldn’t figure it out with out them. Seriously, there have to be murder mystery subplots from 1990 soap operas more engaging than this movie. The first act makes it seem like we’re getting slow burn Washington and Malek performances and a cerebral-ish murder mystery.

Nope.

We get Leto, hair greased up, wearing tummy padding (Washington starts with some but it inexplicably goes away once he changes out of his uniform into his “detective again” outfit), giving a performance so obvious he wouldn’t have gotten cast on “Barney Miller” much less “Night Court” as a scuz bucket.

But given the film’s supporting cast—someone really liked “The Wire,” in addition to Bauer, Michael Hyatt plays Washington’s old coroner pal. Terry Kinney’s in it as the ostensibly churchy captain, who hates Washington for some mysterious reason we’ll find out about in stylized flashbacks right up until the finale for that one surprise; Kinney wasn’t on “The Wire” but “Oz.” So someone liked HBO shows from the aughts. He doesn’t want Washington working with Malek or vice versa because Malek’s his new protege. Malek even goes to his church. Maybe. The movie’s got this whole “Washington’s not the right kind of Christian” thing going on and it seems entirely insincere.

Because you’re giving Things the benefit of the doubt—Newman’s music aside, it’s technically competent plus. Like, John Schwartzman’s photography is technically excellent. It’s excellent photography of boring shots because Hancock’s tediously obvious in his composition but it looks good. And Robert Frazen’s editing is… not incompetent. Frazen cuts for Malek’s performance for much of the film, which is a fine showcase (makes Washington a bit of a bystander but it’s not bad per se). Then Leto shows up and it goes to pot because it’s never clear we’re actually supposed to be taking Leto’s absurd character seriously. The Little Things is supposed to be a serious movie, right? Like… Leto’s not giving a performance for a serious movie.

He’s comically bad. And once it’s clear it’s not a problem for Hancock, well, it’d take a lot for Things to make an actual plop in the toilet.

But it does. Hancock’s got that monster reveal and big plop.

Big plop.

Hyatt’s good, not in it enough; ditto Kinney. Natalie Morales’s in it in the background to be a female character who Malek gets to act out around? It’s a weird thing. It’s a bad part. But it’s still weird why she’s around. Like, Hancock isn’t just bad at writing procedurals or coming up with reveals, he’s also bad at writing the people. Like… if it weren’t for Washington and Malek, Things would be even shorter on personality, which seems impossible but they really do a lot. Even though they’re never more than fine together. Their characters are too thin, the writing’s too bad, Hancock’s direction’s too tepid.

The Little Things is trite tripe but I suppose Leto does succeed in proving he can hit absolute zero in terms of worthless acting.

Destry Rides Again (1939, George Marshall)

There are a lot of great shots in Destry Rides Again, with director Marshall finding a lot of raw human emotion in a comedic Western; it starts with opening titles, which are a long tracking shot introducing the setting—the town of Bottleneck. The tracking shot is at night (cinematographer Hal Mohr’s black and white photography is gorgeous and never more than in low light or night exteriors, it’s just glorious) and the town is hopping with drunk cowboys shooting off their pistols in glee as they file in and out of the single saloon. Brian Donlevy owns the saloon, Marlene Dietrich is the headlining star, though we don’t find out about Donlevy right away. Initially, he’s just a guy losing at cards.

Only he’s got an ace in the hole—Dietrich. After she does her first song, she heads upstairs to help out, introducing some of the the supporting cast on her way. Marshall’s really big on continuous movement, whether a shot or between them, and Dietrich quickly establishes drunk Charles Winninger, devoted fan Mischa Auer, and town mayor Samuel S. Hinds.

Turns out Donlevy and Dietrich aren’t just a couple, they’re a criminally enterprising couple—they’re cheating ranchers out of their land to set up a toll road for cattle (when they cheat yet another victim, it’s hard not to just think, well, it’s capitalism)—and eventually sheriff Joe King’s going to have to do something about it.

Now King is just a regular sheriff, not a mythic Old West sheriff, though Winninger used to be deputy to one those—name of Destry—something he can’t stop talking about. At least when he’s conscious. If only they could get someone like Destry again.

Good thing there’s a Destry Jr. out there, James Stewart, who Winninger calls in Donlevy goes too far.

It takes twenty minutes before Stewart shows up (Dietrich is top-billed so character name in the title doesn’t matter here) and he’s not what anyone’s expecting. Not Winninger, not Donlevy or Dietrich, not new-to-town rancher Jack Carson… or his sister, Irene Harvey. Stewart’s an amiable fellow who tries to deescalate situations instead of shooting things up, speaking in Old West dad jokes.

Destry’s got a lot of things going for it—Marshall, Stewart, Dietrich, Winninger, Donlevy, all the other actors (especially Auer and Una Merkel)—so maybe all things—but the script is something spectacularly spectacular. Felix Jackson, Gertrude Purcell, and Henry Myers only have seventy-six minutes (starting when Stewart shows up—that first twenty mnutes is continuous action set in a night); they do a lot with it. There are full subplots for Winninger, Auer and Merkel (they’re a married couple), Dietrich (separate from Donlevy and Stewart; she’s got arcs with both of them too), and also Carson. Tom Fadden gets sort of half a subplot to himself before son Dickie Jones takes it over. Plus minor subplots for Harvey, Lillian Yarbo, and….

Everyone. Basically everyone who doesn’t die right away gets at least a minor subplot for the film to keep running to give the film its verisimilitude. It’s a short film with a limited setting (they leave town—and presumably back lot—once to go to a ranch), it’s got three big musical numbers, and the arcs for Dietrich and Stewart, Stewart and Winninger, and Stewart and Donlevy are all rather complex but they still make time for the background. Turns out to be particularly important for the twist in the finale.

Because the script is phenomenal. All of the great moments (save probably that opening title tracking shot) come through thanks to the script. Getting Stewart and Dietrich into the room in the right way, getting Stewart and Harvey their brief moments, a subplot change in the Dietrich’s style, the way Marshall holds on Donlevy’s bravado until the layers become visible—ditto Dietrich—there are a lot of great scenes.

But nothing compares to the deus ex machina. All of a sudden Marshall slows Destry down and zooms in hard on Stewart and demands an entirely different moment. The film—again thanks to the script and Stewart, Dietrich, and Winninger’s performances—all of a sudden needs Stewart to show a precise depth he’d only ever implied implying before. It’s classic movie magic in that way the ingredients all have to be right for the film to succeed so well and it’s breathtaking good. Marshall maybe seems a little lost during some of the musical numbers—he’s focusing on Dietrich whether he should be or not—but otherwise his direction is outstanding.

Destry is an exceptionally subtle yet often uproarious comedy, an always sultry and always sincere morality play, and an exciting action movie. It’s truly wonderful and rather charmingly casual about it.

Deluge (1933, Felix E. Feist)

If it weren’t for the “fallen woman” third act, Deluge would probably stay afloat at the end. Instead, it flops out in the really protracted finale, which involves a survivor camp deciding on a credit system in an effort to get capitalism back. It’s a real let down considering the second act is all about roving rape gangs and the first act has a giant flood devastating the planet, right after some text explaining what we’re about to watch is fictional because God promised not to flood us again so it can’t possibly happen.

The special effects at the beginning, save the running crowd composite shots, are pretty impressive. There’s maybe one shot they hold too long and the miniature becomes too obvious, but otherwise the effects are good. And they’ve got these great transitions where the foreground crumbles and then the static background turns out to be an effects shot just waiting to get started.

Sadly there are no effects sequences after the opening and it turns out we’re not following the various scientists we’ve met—Edward Van Sloan runs the Astronomical Solar Society (making him head A.S.S.), which actually tracks the epicenter of the earthquake circling the globe on its way east. Samuel S. Hinds is the weather forecaster who opens the movie, having no time for silly questions while the barometer is dropping to alarming lows. Whether they’re good or not, Van Sloan and Hinds at least command attention. Once the story moves on to its eventual protagonists… well, they aren’t good and they aren’t commanding.

The film introduces top billed Peggy Shannon real quick during the pre-disaster sequence. Got to get in a leg shot and the implication of toplessness right away because Deluge is Pre-Code and you don’t want to cheat the audience, apparently. Shannon’s a professional swimmer who gets grounded because of the apocalypse. Then she disappears from a while and the human action becomes Sidney Blackmer, wife Lois Wilson, and their two adorable kids. Right after they’ve said their prayers, Wilson realizes this storm isn’t going away anytime soon so she gets scared. Blackmer then decides it’s time to hide in the nearby quarry. The logistics turn into a very questionable parenting exercise.

Post-flood the happy family is separated. Blackmer is all by himself in a cabin while Wilson and the children end up in a settlement, where she catches the eye of leader Matt Moore. Shannon will also catch the eye of a willful survivor, in her case Fred Kohler, who at the very least isn’t going to let anyone else rape her except him and definitely no one gets to kill her. Turns out the rape gangs tend to kill off their victims too.

Thanks to her professional swimming, Shannon ends up with Blackmer, where they almost immediately shack up before Blackmer decides she’s more than just a warm body and he wants to marry her seeing as how his family is gone. Except Kohler’s on their trail.

Meanwhile, it’s been like a month and Moore has decided no women get to be single in the settlement and Wilson’s either got to take him as her new husband or get out of town. Moore’s the good guy, mind you; he’s doing Wilson a favor.

Frankly, once Deluge starts doing the post-apocalyptic rebuilding thing—simultaneous to it having no more action sequences—it starts going downhill. It’s initially interesting in how it presents all the men, good and bad, as potential rapists and murderers, but the resolution’s at best inert but mostly tedious and predictable. The movie also makes sure to remember to be occasionally racist, though I suppose not as racist as it could be, as it uses the one Black male survivor as a joke instead of a threat.

Also Nobert Brodine’s day-for-night photography is really bad and it’s important for it not to be. Good editing from Rose Loewinger, okay enough direction from Feist—(Ned Mann directed the special effects sequences)—but Deluge’s only ever got so much potential. And it ends up flushing all of it for the unimaginative, unbelievable melodrama finish. Though maybe the real problem is Blackmer’s an abject charm vacuum so it’s hard to believe Shannon or Wilson ever could have a thing for him, last man on Earth or not.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939, Frank Capra)

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington runs two hours and nine minutes, with the last thirty minutes and change giving star (but second-billed) Jimmy Stewart a big, long scene; sure, it’s intercut with various asides but as far as Mr. Smith Stewart is concerned, it’s a single long scene. Stewart’s had some significant scenes before, but nothing like the thirty minute finale. Stewart’s got a whole new arc just for those thirty minutes, with his previous arc more or less coming to an end right before.

Stewart’s a new junior senator, fresh to Congress, who’s finding himself running afoul of the established way of doing things and trying to preserve both his reputation and some admiration for Constitutional ideals when everyone around him just wants him to sit down, shut up, and go away. But of course Stewart can’t do any of those things, because he’s got to be a hero. Mr. Smith very impressively sets up Stewart for that role.

The film opens with the death of a senator from Stewart’s home state—the state’s never identified as its not important (ditto political parties, they exist but aren’t important to the tale)—and the other senator, played by Claude Rains, talking to businessman and newspaper owner Edward Arnold about who they can get appointed to put through a graft-filled bill. The state’s governor—an absolutely hilarious Guy Kibbee—doesn’t like Arnold and Rains’s pick and eventually goes with Stewart, based on his kids’ recommendation—Stewart runs the local boys club, “The Boy Rangers”—and he’s got such a good reputation Arnold and Rains have to agree.

It gets a little weird for Rains when it turns out Stewart is the son of Rains’s youthful best friend. Rains doesn’t want Stewart to know he’s a crook, so the plan is to keep Stewart occupied whenever Rains has got to do something shady in the Senate. Plus everyone figures Stewart is just a sap, including his new secretary, Jean Arthur. Arthur knows all about Rains and Arnold’s shenanigans but doesn’t let it bother her anymore; like everyone else who surrounds the politicians in DC, she’s a bit of a drunk. It dulls the disillusionment.

At least until she starts hearing Stewart talk all aspirational and it cuts through all the sludge to her conscious. Arthur’s got a whole arc too. Director Capra takes the greatest care with it; the scenes where Stewart starts getting to Arthur are precise and exquisite, in editing, composition, sound. Mr. Smith does a lot with all three, sometimes large scale—like when new-to-town Stewart takes a tour and finds himself wowed to the core at the Lincoln Memorial—sometimes small, like the Arthur stuff or when Stewart is reconnecting with Rains. Capra and editors Gene Havlick and Al Clark establish a rapid pace to their cuts right away, not just between scenes or in montages (Smith’s got a handful of them, all beautifully done, with some far more narrative than others) but between angles. They’re really fast cuts, usually going to a close-up, then right back out again once the sentence or reaction is finished. Sometimes it’ll cut out to a slightly different shot than before the close-up, with Capra getting a different angle on the characters and changing the narrative distance.

Even with the finale needing a different kind of cut, Havlick and Clark maintain a similar pace. It’s still fast, but with an added thoroughness; there are more characters to track in the finale’s single (mostly single) setting.

Stewart’s phenomenal, ditto Arthur, ditto Rains. Rains’s character development arc takes the longest to finish, while Arthur mostly gets done at the same time as Stewart with a little more as a postscript during the third act. And although Stewart’s character development is resolved by that long finale sequence, the spotlight is still on his performance. While the finale’s an unpredictable turn, Capra and screenwriter Sidney Buchman have clearly been setting Stewart up for something. He is Mr. Smith, after all.

Arthur’s arc also involves her friendship with fellow functional alcohol Thomas Mitchell, a DC reporter. They’ve got fantastic chemistry and Mitchell’s great. All of Mr. Smith’s supporting cast is great, with the best probably Harry Carew as the Vice-President (and President of the Senate). Most of his dialogue is expository, but Capra’s always cutting to him for reactions to the goings on with Stewart, Rains, and Arthur, and those reactions quickly become essential. A lot of Mr. Smith feels like Capra trying something and discovering it works perfectly and leveraging it, but that first attempt always seems experimental. Capra’s never hesitant or unsure; he’s bold and confidently so.

Also great in the supporting cast are Eugene Pallette, who manages to be always funny—usually laugh out loud funny—while maintaining some menace as Arnold’s fixer. Ruth Donnelly’s got a small part as Kibbee’s wife and she’s great.

Arnold’s perfect as the evil Mr. Big running a political machine but it’s sort of Arnold’s thing; it’s an Edward Arnold part.

Other technical highlights include Joseph Walker’s photography—the Washington location stuff, apparently done on the sly, is truly phenomenal. The way Walker lights it, Capra shoots it, and Havlick and Clark edit it, the Lincoln Memorial is just as alive as anyone else in the scene. It’s outstanding work.

And then also Dimitri Tiomkin’s music. It’s most important for Arthur’s arc and it’s always right on.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a clear star-maker for Stewart, gives Rains an excellent part to run with, while Arthur makes her part great even though she’s got a little less to do and some major constraints (it is the 1930s and she is a woman). All alongside Capra and his crew’s various and constant successes and achievements. It’s a spectacular picture.

The Hunt for Red October (1990, John McTiernan)

Sean Connery, who’s so important to the workings of Hunt for Red October he could easily be “and special guest star” credit instead of top-billed, has his last scene on the bridge of his ship, giving a very Captain Kirk read of a quote. It’s something about sailing and it’s got to break the cultural barrier and touch the audience too, which says something about the target audience.

The film has an Oppenheimer quote earlier so I thought maybe they’d do something with him again but no. Connery goes out on a Christopher Columbus quote, which dates the thing more than all the Soviet and U.S. Cold War stuff. Though there’s a funny part where Connery mopes to first officer and confident Sam Neill about how the decades-long submarine cold war hasn’t had any battles or memorials, just casualties. So I guess if there were battles and memorials… it’d be… good?

It’s unclear. We don’t get a lot into Connery’s character—that scene ends up being more of a showcase for Neill than anything else—but apparently the core of the character is he wants to fights with sticks and stones, not nukes. Or something. Maybe he’s sad about his wife dying. Everyone acts like he’s super sad about it, but Connery’s barely in the movie and there’s no character development for him.

Meanwhile, Alec Baldwin gets all sorts of pseudo-character development though he’s only around to bring the plot threads together. There are three main ones, with a couple splinters; first, there’s Connery, who’s either defecting from the USSR and giving the United States a fancy new Russian submarine because reasons or he’s lost it and is going to nuke the Eastern Seaboard. Then there’s CIA analyst, desk jockey Baldwin who flies from London to Washington on a hunch for something tangentially related but not enough; luckily the script’s perfectly comfortable being entirely contrived, so pretty soon Baldwin’s on an adventure. Then there’s Scott Glenn and Courtney B. Vance. They’re on an American submarine and they’re tracking Connery’s sub before Baldwin even gets to the plot.

I’d hope someone realized if they were taking it seriously, one of those four actors would have to be the protagonist but Red October does what it can do minimize its need for a protagonist. Sure, it’s Baldwin. But not really at all. And not just because Baldwin’s performance is goofy. And the range of Red October’s performances seem to be who can best combine macho and stoic, with silver fox Connery (it’s a stunning hairpiece) the obvious top dog. McTiernan’s direction of the actors is middling, with no one ever paying off as much as they should. Baldwin excepted because he’s so absurdly miscast. The part’s crap, sure, but McTiernan especially should’ve realized when the male action hero talks to himself during tense situations it needs to create at least an empathetic response.

Instead, Baldwin’s whiney and exasperating and artificial. He does get into his action sequence at the end, however. Shows more energy than anything else he does in the entire film. Rolling with enthusiasm. Literally.

Connery’s got no meat to the part but he’s pretty good. Likable for sure. Red October works with him being omnipresent but not overbearing. Neill’s almost good but the part’s too shallow. The only thing worse than no personality in Red October is some personality dump in exposition. Tim Curry actually makes out best as far as personality just because he’s only got to play annoying and screenwriters Larry Ferguson and Donald E. Stewart can do annoying.

Scott Glenn’s the best of the leads. Even he’s not particularly good, he’s just good for the circumstances. The movie doesn’t need good actors, it just needs competent ones. It’s about a Russian submarine nuking New York—maybe—the stakes are inherent.

James Earl Jones is fine as Baldwin’s boss. Ditto Richard Jordan as a government guy. Fred Thompson’s good, of course, as one of the places Baldwin goes on his quest to find Connery and the grail. Whoops, wrong movie.

Vance is really good, which isn’t easy because the movie makes fun of him for being a Black man who knows classical music and is good at his job. Anthony Peck’s great as Glenn’s first officer.

It’s a big cast and it takes a lot for anyone to be actually bad. Not when Baldwin’s running around making it seem like a car commercial on steroids. Though Joss Ackland’s pretty blah as the Russian ambassador. He’s only got two scenes so who cares.

Technically, Red October starts better than it finishes. McTiernan holds back on the big underwater submarine special effects sequences, making it seem like they’re going to be great. Only then it turns out they don’t have the torpedo composites down so all the best special effects are the submarine suspense ones. Even the peculiar “race through the underwater canyons” sequence has solid effects… it’s just a complete waste of time.

The movie hinges on something it hides from the audience to get from the second act to third so it’s not like Red October’s aiming particularly high anyway.

Basil Poledouris’s music is low mediocre. A big disappointment. Ditto Jan de Bont’s photography; it’s never particularly impressive but there’s some terrible lighting in important scenes—neither McTiernan and de Bont seem to have a handle on the submarine parts of the movie, which seems like it’d be important but whatever.

The Hunt for Red October is a long two hours and fifteen minutes. A compelling lead—any compelling lead—would probably help things quite a bit. It does pick up in the second half, which is quite nice. It’s not like the pace improving makes it obvious the first hour is boring… the first hour is very boring as it unfolds, so the speed-up is welcome and unexpected.

If Baldwin weren’t such a flat lead, who knows. But there’d still be lots of other problems. Like Terence Marsh’s occasionally anachronistic, occasionally silly production design.

Finally, doesn’t matter, but the sound editing and design is excellent.

The Pay-Off (1930, Lowell Sherman)

The Pay-Off opens with young lovers William Janney and Marian Nixon in Central Park, snuggle-napping on a bench in the middle of the night because they’re got to maintain their chastity. Everything’s about to change for them because Janney’s finally saved up enough money they can get married, only he talks about it too loud and criminal Hugh Trevor overhears so he’s going to rob the kid to teach him a lesson.

Now, before the holdup, Nixon wants Janney to get her a job working at the swank apartment building where he’s a handyman and I was kind of hoping for that turn of events—though, as it turns out, not really because Nixon and Janney are both pretty bad at the acting thing so it’d have been unpleasant—but Janney’s got a far better idea: follow Trevor and hold him up for their money back.

Trevor’s in said swank apartment building hanging out with the rest of the gang—Robert McWade, Walter McGrail–and the molls, Helene Millard and Lita Chevret. It’s just a regular night, waiting for the big boss, played by director Sherman, to get home, with Trevor and Millard worrying Sherman actually does care they’re shacking up—Millard used to be Sherman’s girl but he discarded her and she’s sure he really still loves her. We’ll find out he obviously doesn’t because when Sherman is overcome with emotion he flutters his eyelids uncontrollably and he never flutters for Millard.

Millard’s also somehow worse than Janney, which is an exceptional feat. Janney’s real bad.

Anyway. Janney and Nixon’s hold up goes wrong but Sherman’s curious why they’re doing it and they tell him the whole story about Trevor. Sherman feels bad and decides he’s going to make it up to the kids; they’re going to live him and they’re going to play “family.”

Now, Sherman’s just old enough to be a parent but only just so he’s more like a benevolent uncle. One whose daydream is something magics Janney away and Nixon realizes Sherman’s the only man for her. There’s a kind of good scene with Sherman and his butler, retired crook George F. Marion (in the film’s most likable, if not best, performance), talking in very vague terms about Sherman’s devotion to Nixon. It’s impressive how well they’re able to sell it especially considering the absence of chemistry between Nixon and Sherman and, well, Nixon and the camera.

Most of the movie—which runs an hour and five minutes—is going to be Sherman and Trevor bickering about who’s better to run the gang. Sherman’s a master planner—he comes up with the idea of a guy going into a jewelry store and saying “This is a hold up,” which district attorney Alan Roscoe calls the greatest criminal planning he’s ever seen—and Trevor’s a gunsel. He just wants to shoot everybody. Though Trevor spends all spent a lot of his time in a glitzy nightclub dressed to the nines whining about Sherman wanting to hang out with blue blood swells instead of him.

It’s all going to work out to a very simple morality tale and it’s kind of impressive Sherman, as a director and an actor, is able to distract from that eventuality and make it seem like The Pay-Off might go somewhere interesting.

The direction’s fairly bland—Sherman loves holding his medium shots while the dialogue exchanges play for minutes on end—but it’s rarely bad. Plus we get to see Sherman, as an actor, trying to figure out the part. No one else really worries about it because they’re all just caricatures and seemingly unaware they could expand, which makes Sherman a lot more interesting to watch than anyone else. Except Marion, who does get some added depth throughout because it’s funnier for him to have it than not.

Trevor’s fine. Especially opposite Janney and Nixon. Again, Millard’s terrible. McWade’s pretty good. Roscoe’s bad too. It’s an uneven cast.

Technically, solid photography from J. Roy Hunt, bad editing from Rose Smith.

The Pay-Off never pays off but it could be a lot worse (or better); it’s nearly worth it for Sherman’s ambitious but monumentally constrained performance.

The Call (2020, Lee Chung-hyun)

It’s unclear for a while but what The Call needs more than anything else is a great villain. It’s got its villains, starting with very bad mom Lee El, but she’s not great. She’s kind of one note too, with writer and director Lee cutting away from her when she’s going to be establishing the most character. The Call tries very hard to avoid getting too much into character development because it’s eventually going to be a thriller. It doesn’t start a thriller, it starts a weird mix of comedy, drama, and sci-fi, but it’s eventually going to shave off the laughs and dramatics and just be the thrills with sci-fi trappings.

As a director, Lee can do all the film’s tones—whether it’s Park Shin-hye and new friend Jun Jong-seo bonding over music and small talk or Jun getting temporary freedom (she’s got the very bad mom in Lee El) and going off to have a fun day trip to Seoul from she and Park’s more rural town. He can also do the harrowing thrills as Park’s mom, Kim Sung-ryung tries to escape a dangerous situation she’s found herself in without knowing. The last third of The Call isn’t real time, but it often feels like it, as we’re just watching Park wait for the next bad thing to happen.

Actually, we’re waiting for Park to get the next call. The Call‘s always all about the next time the phone rings.

The film starts with Park getting home to check on mom Kim as she heads into surgery. She’s staying alone in their big house and she’s left her phone on the train. She digs out an old landline portable phone and after the bad samaritan who found her phone trying to shake her down—which seems like it’s going to be a bigger subplot than it turns out to be—she gets a wrong number call from Jun. Jun’s terrified of mom Lee El, trying to get ahold of local shop-owning pal Jo Kyung-sook but gets Park instead.

It takes a while for the friendship to develop—initially juxtaposed with Park and Kim, then Park alone in the house and discovering some mysteries—but eventually they get to be phone buddies.

And the way Lee’s script leverages some obvious discussion topics, it should’ve been clear he wasn’t going anywhere with anything like character development. Especially after the supporting cast expands to include Park Ho-san, who’s got plenty of presence, but absolutely no character. Same goes for Oh Jeong-se as the neighborhood strawberry farmer, who’s friends with Park and has the potential for an interesting relationship with Jun, but it needs to be a thriller and so Lee rushes quite a bit, racing to the third act.

The Call’s third act, which is all about its twists and turns—in fact, so’s the shrug of an epilogue—is perfectly solid thriller stuff and the characters are incredibly sympathetic, but they’re only sympathetic because of the exceptional, insurmountable dangers they face. Not to mention child in danger stuff. Big time child in danger stuff. And Lee seems to know it’s too much and visually avoids it while doing all sorts of implying.

Most of the film’s action takes place at Park’s house. For a while it seems like a budgetary constraint, but then Lee takes the action to Seoul with Jun but then opens things up more with Park getting out too. Despite it being an effective thriller, Lee’s direction is best when it’s not playing thriller. There are so many constraints on the thriller stuff, which is all very intricately plotted, Lee just figuring out how to play the audience not tell a story.

The Call’s better when it’s got a story to tell and not just a puzzle to solve.

Park’s fine; she’s very sympathetic. Jun starts better than she finishes; the movie stops asking her to do different things and instead the same thing over and over just with different clothing choices and accessories. Kim’s good. Lee El’s fine. She’s kind of one note but it’s the part.

There are some questionable music choices but they’re intentionally going for a late nineties vibe at times so it’s not inappropriate just not great. Lee’s choices all make sense, they just could be better while still making sense.

The Call’s an effective, inventive—though maybe not imaginative—thriller.

Though the epilogue is pointlessly too much. It’s kind of a cop out, showing how easy it is to manipulate expectations but without any actual payoff because the movie’s over.

But, again, The Call definitely engages as it plays.

The Double (2013, Richard Ayoade)

The Double opens with a look at lead Jesse Eisenberg’s monotonous, solitary life. He takes the train to his job, where he’s worked for seven years and only one person has bothered to learn his name, he’s got a crush on a girl (Mia Wasikowska) at work who doesn’t seem to know he exists, and he takes care of his mother (Phyllis Somerville) in her retirement home, suffering her constant berating. Eisenberg’s meek, in a too big suit, apprehensive and nervous about everything, starting with two altercations on the train—where he watches Wasikowska (in the next car) try to find some momentary relief from her own monotonous, solitary life—and even when Eisenberg’s got a great idea at work, he can’t get boss Wallace Shawn to listen.

Everything changes when Eisenberg finally gets up the courage to ask Wasikowska to hang out; they’ve just gone through a traumatic event: Eisenberg saw Wasikowska’s neighbor jump off their building. Eisenberg’s trying to process seeing it, along with cops Jon Korkes and Craig Roberts’s peculiar questioning—they’re the local suicide cops, just for the neighborhood, as suicide is so common, which surprises Eisenberg. Meanwhile, Wasikowska turns out to have history with the dead man. She and Eisenberg talk through it at a local diner (Cathy Moriarty is fantastic as the rude waitress).

As Eisenberg finally starts getting the courage to pursue a relationship with Wasikowska, initially leading to more disappointments and failures, he quickly gets derailed by the appearance of a new coworker. Who just happens to look exactly like him (also, obviously, Eisenberg). Where the first Eisenberg is a terrified introvert, the second one is the opposite, a charming extrovert who’s able to ingratiate himself with all the people who don’t like the original model—not just boss Shawn, but even waitress Moriarty. The first Eisenberg quickly starts looking up to his double, inspired by the seemingly boundless confidence in the exact same physical model.

Making the two Eisenbergs pals so quickly and so well is one of the best moves in director Ayoade and co-writer Avi Korine’s script (based on a Dostoevsky novella); the film’s always got an uncanny tone, with Ayoade—with help from the crew, more on them in a bit—shifting that focus from the setting to the first Eisenberg’s investigation of the second, then to their friendship, and finally to exploring their unique relationship (after the dissolution of said friendship).

See, when the second Eisenberg, an accomplished womanizer, sets his sights on Wasikowska, things get serious for everyone involved leading to a series of harrowing events for the first Eisenberg, as he watches the world he already has no control over or say in slip away even more.

The film runs ninety taut minutes, with exquisite editing courtesy Chris Dickens and Nick Fenton, never giving the viewer or Eisenberg a chance to relax. Even during the most mundane and humorous sequences, The Double is ever anxious, ever discomforting.

While the whole film revolves around Eisenberg (and Eisenberg) and his performances are excellent, it’s a plum lead in a technically outstanding project. Ayoade and his crew—cinematographer Erik Wilson, editor Dickens and Fenton, music Andrew Hewitt, production designer David Crank, costume designer Jacqueline Durran—create a reality only ever seen through opaque lenses. Ayoade and Korine imply just enough in expository scenes to get the point across, then move on, but without ever overloading on the information.

Because work is rarely important, outside how it affects Eisenberg’s relationship with Wasikowska or boss’s daughter Yasmin Paige, who he’s supposed to be mentoring.

Wasikowska is good. She steps up when she needs to step up, after playing “The Girl” for the first half, and everyone else does fine. No one’s in it anywhere near as much as Eisenberg, obviously, but also Wasikowska. The supporting cast is memorable—with some fun cameos—and populates the background well.

The Double’s not entirely successful—the ending has a lot of momentum behind it and Ayoade’s trying not to get too literal but maybe he does get too literal or maybe he doesn’t get literal enough—but it more than accomplishes its rather high ambitions. Ayoade’s direction is quite spectacular, ditto the work of his crew. It’s a dreary, glorious hour and a half.

Death to 2020 (2020, Al Campbell and Alice Mathias)

“Death to 2020” has twenty credited writers. And its show creators aren’t among them.

Twenty writers.

It’s seventy minutes and the narration jokes either all flat or so many of them fall flat I can’t remember any not falling flat. Larry Fishburne is the narrator, it’s not his fault, they’re just not good jokes. They maybe should’ve identified what the writers worked on, like who wrote the narration, who wrote the stuff for Sam Jackson, Tracey Ullman, and Samson Kayo because it’s the best stuff.

So “Death to 2020” is a Netflix special—they make a few comical synergy placements but then also less obvious ones like Joe Keery having a part because he’s on “Stranger Things”—recapping 2020 with a bunch of actors pretending to be in the media or otherwise related. Ullman’s the Queen (I’d watch a whole show), Jackson’s a New Yorkerly Times reporter, Kayo’s a scientist, and so on.

The best performance is probably Hugh Grant—in a lot of makeup, presumably—as a British stuffed shirt documentary historian. He just doesn’t have the best material. There’s a whole bit about him confusing movies for reality and they never find the joke. They needed at least two more writers no doubt.

Lisa Kudrow’s the biggest disappointment as one of the white supremacist Barbie Republican talking heads. It seems like she’s going to be great and maybe Kudrow could’ve been great but the writing’s crap. Similarly, Leslie Jones is really funny as a cynical sociologist but the writing’s not good.

Kumail Nanjiani is fine as a tech bro. He’s kind of filler. Given all the events of 2020, you’d think they would’ve had to pad so much—especially when they basically skip the late summer—but they pad away.

Diane Morgan’s “most average person on Earth” is a little less funny when you start to wonder if the average person really is so obtuse. And making Cristin Milioti’s Karen into an actual Neo-Nazi seems a bit too much, like she doesn’t need to be sympathetic but funny Neo-Nazis… I mean, let’s not.

The funniest part of the seventy minutes is the end credits when they have the cast—in character—read 2021 predictions.

It’s not incompetent and there are some decent laughs… but it’s not, I don’t know, any good either. It’s like that “Tiger King” recap special only with a budget, without Joel McHale, and about 2020.

The Killer (1989, John Woo)

When The Killer introduces second-billed Danny Lee, it certainly seems like Lee’s arc is going to be the most important in the film. He’s a Hong Kong cop who starts chasing professional hitman Chow Yun-fat and gets in the middle of Chow’s fight with crime lord Shing Fui-on, with tragic results for everyone involved.

And while the film does track Lee’s perception of Chow over the film, it never tries to reconcile the Lee of the first act—who’s just shot a suspect dead on a crowded passenger tram, resulting in the death of a civilian—with the sidekick who has to figure out how to accept Chow into his moral system. Woo spends a lot of time on the burgeoning friendship between the two men, but only one of them is an unrepentant killer. Chow’s only ever in trouble because he cares when innocent people get killed. Lee just yells at the review board about he’s done it before and he’s going to do it again.

The internal character discrepancy doesn’t seem intentional—Lee’s cop seemingly just doesn’t believe in collateral damage, while it’s all Chow thinks about, whether it’s nightclub singer Sally Yeh or another bystander who gets shot while Chow’s trying to escape Shing’s goons. But it definitely adds something to the film, especially after Lee’s sort of revealed as an erstwhile alpha male who desperately wants to play sidekick to a real alpha (Chow). I’d be surprised if there’s twenty minutes of non-non-stop action in The Killer, but most of it is dedicated to Lee’s man-crushing.

All of the action is great. Woo’s direction, Fan Kung-wing’s editing, the sound, the music. Yes, the movie wouldn’t last more than two minutes of its present action if Chow’s guns weren’t on infinite ammo mode—the only time anyone ever runs out of bullets is for dramatic purpose, otherwise even when we watch Lee load a revolver with six shots, he’s got at least ten or more. I don’t think Lee’s revolvers ever actually run out of bullets, the scenes just end.

Lee’s pursuit of Chow also involves older cop, Kenneth Tsang, who’s Lee’s sidekick. The film juxtaposes Tsang and Chu Kong (Chow’s handler and best friend) as the two beta males–being a beta is whole arc for Chu—but also it turns out Lee’s not so much an alpha as a beta who just hasn’t found the right alpha. He thinks Chow’s the alpha. The Killer is technically a buddy action movie, but Lee and Chow don’t really do anything but kill bad guys together. And lots of them. When they team up, it’s thirty against two, whereas the earlier action sequences have Chow and Lee, independently, facing off against a more reasonable number. Like ten guys. Five to ten. You lose count. The goons rarely live for longer than a few seconds (save Shing and Ricky Yi Fan-wai, the super-hitman Shing has to hire to kill super-hitman Chow).

Meanwhile, Chow’s trying to help Yeh get a cornea transplant—he had to put a gun right in her face to shoot a goon—and it’s all tied up with Shing and Chu. The film’s cagey about Chow’s relationship with Yeh; it’s definitely protective and often seems romantic, but Woo intentionally keeps it opaque. And even though Yeh figures into the second act a whole bunch—she’s Lee’s pawn for a good portion of it—she doesn’t have much of a character. She’s a girl so she can’t participate in Lee and Chow’s gleeful chases, where they grin at getting to play with someone almost as cool as them. Well, at least until Lee realizes Chow’s the real deal.

Chu’s arc is probably the best in the film—it doesn’t avoid anything like Chow’s or Lee’s—with a couple great twists, which reveal layers to what’s come before. Great performance from Chu. Probably the best acting in the film. But it’s hard to say best performance in the film because Chow is transfixing. Yes, Woo showcases him to be transfixing but it works because it’s Chow. He’s inscrutable until you realize he’s not, which should make it harder on Chow (and Woo), but instead it’s just better once he’s revealed. The Killer doesn’t have a lot to be obvious about because it’s a pretty simple narrative with a lot of lengthy action sequences to eat up the run time, but its eventual sincerity is incredibly affecting.

Great music from Lowell Lo. The music does a lot of the heavy lifting on that sincerity. The music and Fan’s editing. The main song (sung by Yeh), which quite literally haunts her and Chow, is perfect.

The Killer’s outstanding. A little bit Western (especially the buddy flick aspect), a little bit noir, an unbelievably amount of blood squibs, it’s a spectacular, transcendent action movie.