Out of Sight (1998, Steven Soderbergh)

Right up until the third act, Out of Sight has a series of edifying flashbacks, which reveal important facts in the ground situation; almost enough to set the start of the present action back a few years. The film starts in flashback, which isn’t immediately clear, and then the series of consecutive flashbacks builds to inform the opening flashback. The film opens with George Clooney getting arrested for a bank robbery, the film proper starts two years later when Clooney’s planning a prison escape.

Or does it, because it’ll soon turn out there’s something from two years before the start of movie with the arrest and it’s really important.

We—the audience—get to know Clooney more through the flashbacks than the present action. In the present action, outside having a strained friendship with ex-wife Catherine Keener (in a fun credited cameo, the film’s got a bunch of both), we don’t learn anything about Clooney except he really, really likes Jennifer Lopez. Lopez is the U.S. Marshal who happens across Clooney’s prison break and he takes her hostage, only for her to outsmart one of his partners, played by Steve Zahn, and escape.

So the movie is Clooney and his partner, Ving Rhames, trying to pull off one last job while Lopez is after Clooney because of professional pride and a bewildered enthusiasm, while Clooney is trying to flirt with Lopez. At no point does Out of Sight not embrace the fantastical nature of their attraction; Clooney’s a weary career criminal, Lopez is a gun enthusiast who likes beating the shit of out bad guys when they deserve it, and she can’t figure out if Clooney deserves it. Those deliberations lead to some inevitabilities, some more tragic than others. All of them wonderful. Clooney and Lopez’s chemistry, under Soderbergh’s lens, Anne V. Coates’s cuts, Elliot Davis’s photography, David Holmes’s music, Scott Frank’s script… is singular. Lopez is great in Out of Sight, while Clooney’s just very, very good. But Lopez is just as singular as their chemistry. And it’s her movie… right up until the third act turns out to be a poorly engineered addition on the actual plot.

If Out of Sight is about Lopez’s Three Days of the Condor with Clooney, it’s pretty great. There’s not enough of a finale scene between the two of them; it’s like Soderbergh and Frank split it up, but what the film’s already established is Lopez and Clooney need to spend more time together, not have more scenes together with a lot less time. It’s a strange bummer because it’s this very obvious rising action and they screw it up. But it’s pretty great. And it’s Lopez’s movie. Obviously.

But if it’s about Clooney’s last big score, which conveniently involves the exact same cast of characters as appear in the flashback so there can be all sorts of neat reveals as the runtime progresses… Out of Sight is a fail. It’s a high fail. But it’s a fail. There’s just not enough of a story to it. Soderbergh’s direction is always great, but Frank’s writing isn’t as invested in the homage to seventies crime thrillers thing Soderbergh is doing. It’s underprepared. Beautifully shot, with some great dialogue, but this aspect of the film feels artificially constrained. Because the actual protagonist in the crime arc ends up being Zahn’s in-over-his-head stoner. Zahn’s fine. He’s not great. He needs to be great for it to work. So even if it weren’t a problem character in the narrative, it’d also be a problem performance. But a fine one. There aren’t any bad performances in Out of Sight, just great ones, good ones, middling ones, and concerning ones (i.e. was Isiah Washington’s terrifying sociopath just his real personality). Soderbergh gets really good performances out of the cameos too (with the exception of Michael Keaton, pointlessly crossing over from another Elmore Leonard adaptation, Jackie Brown). There aren’t a lot of comic moments in the film and Soderbergh clamps down hard on all of them. Keaton’s scene has Dennis Farina elaborately messing with his head in pseudo-polite conversation. Farina’s sadly the least of the good performances. There’s also no meat to the part.

Luis Guzmán gets a good small part in the first act. He’s good. Rhames is good, Don Cheadle’s real good, Albert Brooks is good. Really nice performances from Viola Davis and Nancy Allen, like Soderbergh goes out of his way to showcase their acting. It’s very cool.

Though no one’s real super cool. Out of Sight’s careful with its potential crime glorification. Clooney’s a tragic figure, he just also happens to be George Clooney. Lopez finds herself in his attempt at a fantasy world, one where he lets himself get distracted by their chemistry, then reality—Cheadle and Washington are vicious killers—crashes in. Only not because Lopez isn’t part of the movie in the third act.

It’s also never close. Like. Sight runs a nimble two hours and there’s never a moment you think it’s actually going to work out as well as it should. The third act is a disaster if anyone but Soderbergh and crew are pulling it off. They leverage Lopez and Clooney’s chemistry to get across the finish line; it’s craven.

It’s also real good. It’s a usually faultlessly executed motion picture and Lopez is phenomenal.

Mystic River (2003, Clint Eastwood)

Mystic River is at all times a very American tragedy. Eastwood approaches it as such, both as director and composer (it’s Aaron Copland levels of romanticized, you eventually just have to go with it because Eastwood’s committed). But it’s also really just MacBeth in Bah-ston. A very, very cynical one. There’s not a single moment in Mystic River where a character doesn’t disappoint themselves, well, almost any single moment. At least, there’s never a single moment where a character doesn’t disappoint themselves or others. There; covered.

So it’s this “Bah-ston can be legitimate Americana too” crime tragedy mixed with an overwhelming sense of personal failure, starting from the first scene, which is a flashback to three tween boys playing street hockey in Boston of (late seventies) yore. Because they’ve been raised to unquestionably not challenge adult authority—or male bonding rituals—one of them ends up abducted and assaulted for four days before escaping. The other two friends go to see him when he gets home, but since he’s “damaged goods,” they fall off.

They grow up and become state police detective Kevin Bacon (state police means he’s not a Boston cop because they’re dumb), ex-con gone straight Sean Penn, and then there’s Tim Robbins, playing the abducted kid grown up. The only one of three who doesn’t have a real story is Bacon, who’s got some nonsense about his wife leaving him for a mystery reason and then calling him on the phone and not talking. I’ll spoil the stunt cast on the wife because it’s the film’s only completely obvious problem—Tori Davis isn’t good. Like. She can’t even convincingly hold a phone to her ear in close-up. It’s a thin subplot, so thin Bacon and partner Laurence Fishburne’s buddy cop antics are better and they’re incredibly muted for realism’s sake. Eastwood always positions Fishburne like he can walk off with the movie unless he’s boxed in (because Fishburne’s one of the natural protagonists; the film has many, just none of the three leads), only Bacon can’t hold up his end because his character’s thin. He doesn’t get to chomp away at his part like Penn or Robbins, who consume the film like it’s a whole chicken and they’re competing to see who can eat the most bones.

The three reunite over tragedy—someone murders Penn’s daughter, a just okay Emmy Rossum (Eastwood and Phyllis Huffman do a great job casting the film except for the kids—and the Wahlberg brother who can’t stop grinning like a jackass he’s in a real movie without his brother; the film at least needs to explain Robert Wahlberg’s goon is the comic psychopath one). The audience already knows Robbins saw her the night she died and then he came home really late covered in blood and told Marcia Gay Harden he beat up a mugger.

It hasn’t been an easy marriage for Harden and Robbins—though he’s a seemingly an outstanding dad to tween age son Cayden Boyd, something Harden doesn’t ever seem to acknowledge. If it turned out Boyd were a Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf kid, it would actually make more sense. With no changes to the film whatsoever. But he can’t hold a job and he’s just, you know, “damaged goods.” The first act of the film, covering the ground situation after the initial tragedy… it’s kind of an indictment of the culture it’s presenting. Of the Americana. Eastwood and production designer Henry Bumstead don’t Catholic it up–there’s not even a priest in it—there’s religiosity and the importance of it in the character’s lives, but the only imagery is in Penn’s tattoos. It’s got to be broader than a specific denomination. More universal. Also, from the one church scene, you can tell Eastwood could give a shit. He lets kids be cute or whatever, but otherwise, he’s out of church faster than Homer Simpson.

Because Mystic River is all about the pace. It’s got to keep moving to stay ahead of the story rolling downhill faster and faster. Because another thing Eastwood and screenwriter Brian Helgeland do to keep the melodrama down is artificially constrain the amount of information presented to the audience. Characters have obtuse conversations so as not to spoil a surprise later. At one or two points, people read lists like they can’t possibly have skipped ahead to see the relevant information. And somehow, thanks to Eastwood’s pacing and the actors, they can get away with it. Right until the third act, River stays ahead of that story boulder.

It comes to a weird resolve, where they do a sequence juxtapose and Eastwood can only figure out one of them—though the other has the wanting youth performances—and then it turns out he figured out the wrong one; it wasn’t even the important one. Not really.

Then comes the initially cruel but then just the driest, most hopeless cynicism in the world and all of a sudden it works again. It’s an amazing last few minutes save from the film, leveraging the excellent pace, plus some great acting and intriguing reveals. Part of the artificial information constraint is to allow for secret after secret. Everyone in Mystic River lies. Almost everyone in Mystic River is easily manipulated. Eastwood and Helgeland find the mundane tragedies of people who seemingly have spectacular ones. Without every losing their pace.

There are stumbles, but the pace is always great.

Best acting is Tim Robbins, then Sean Penn. It’s the script’s fault; Robbins just gets better material. They cast for obvious because most of the actors are playing caricatures; it might’ve been better if they’d mixed it up, who knows. Then it’s Marcia Gay Harden and Laurence Fishburne, with Kevin Bacon coming in sixth. He’s excellent—but being excellent isn’t enough and Fishburne’s actually got less than even Bacon and does more. Laura Linney’s also great but she’s not on the list because she never get to run a scene. Ditto uncredited guest stars Eli Wallach, who’s awesome, and Kevin Conway, who’s real good but not awesome. Wallach is one of the two times Mystic River lets itself have any fun (the John Carpenter’s Vampires nod doesn’t count because it’s not fun it’s heartbreaking); the other time is this hilarious joke Penn thug buddy #1 (Kevin Chapman) tells. Chapman and thug buddy #2 Adam Nelson are both fine. Grinner Wahlberg makes three. He’s not fine.

Mixing up the leads, not revealing too much to the audience, not wasting time intentionally misleading the audience, there are a lot of places where Mystic needs some tinkering but it’s still really damn good.

The acting—and Eastwood’s emphasis on the acting—is glorious. Mystic misses its mark, but it’s an often magnificent try.

The Match Factory Girl (1990, Aki Kaurismäki)

The Match Factory Girl is a hyper-focused character study. It opens with the visually fascinating process of a match factory before introducing lead Kati Outinen. Technically protagonist, obviously more subject. She quite noticeably doesn’t talk for the first twenty minutes or so, which says more about her situation than her character—no one’s interested in what Outinen has to say.

She works, rides the bus home reading romance novels, then cooks and cleans for mother Elina Salo and stepfather Esko Nikkari. When she’s feeling adventurous, she goes out to the neighborhood dance hall and waits in vain for a man to ask her to dance. Then it’s back to work, back to the romance novels, back to cooking and cleaning; she even gives her paycheck to Salo and Nikkari ostensibly for rent, but they clearly don’t work. We don’t get any exposition laying it out, but when we meet Outinen’s brother, Silu Seppälä, he’s got a couple informative lines.

Director Kaurismäki’s script fills in very little on Outinen’s ground situation; outside Seppälä, there’s a little bit implied about the relationship between Outinen and Salo, done through set dressings and lingering shots, not dialogue. From the start, when Outinen’s just moving through her days, Kaurismäki juxtaposes those silent activities against television news coverage of Tiananmen Square. Heavy contrast between events in the world and Outinen’s despondently mundane existence.

At least until she decides she’s had enough and she’s going to get something for herself. She gets a pretty dress, which leads to trouble at home—and establishes the financial situation Salo and Nikkari, as well as some of the extent of the abuse Outinen has been suffering at their hands—and then to Outinen breaking bad. Of course, Outinen’s breaking bad is just, you know, going out and having a bigger beer than usual at a night club and not the local dance joint.

At the night club, Outinen meets greasy yuppie Vesa Vierikko; after a night together, she thinks they’re dating, he does not. Lots of complications ensue.

Match Factory Girl doesn’t even run a full seventy minutes, so when Kaurismäki veers off the predicted trajectory for the third act, it all of a sudden becomes a (muted) thrill a minute. We’ve spent the entire film seemingly understanding at least Outinen’s capabilities but as her environment becomes more and more hostile to her… she goes a different route. The story’s always tragic in one way or another, but Kaurismäki takes it to new heights (depths?) of tragedy by the end.

Outinen’s fantastic. She’s good throughout but the big character “change” in the third act is entirely through her performance whereas Kaurismäki’s direction has been doing a lot of framing until that point. It’s still a character study at the end, just with Outinen running the show instead of Kaurismäki and… oh, he edited it too. So Kaurismäki. Timo Salminen’s photography is excellent but it’s all about the editing when it comes to how Kaurismäki crafts the narrative distance.

The supporting cast is all good. But they’re all entirely in support of Outinen, even when she’s not in the shot with them—which only happens a few times.

Exceptional work from Outinen and Kaurismäki. It’s amazing what they can do in an hour and nine minutes.

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.

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.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992, Brian Henson), the extended version

There’s a lot great about Muppet Christmas Carol: obviously the Muppet performers (their first outing after Jim Henson died—Rowlf is silent in memorial), Brian Henson’s fine direction, Jerry Juhl’s inventive script, strong special effects, Val Strazovec’s production design, Michael Jablow’s editing, the Paul Williams songs (the repetition even helps); but what makes it so special is Michael Caine as Scrooge.

By the end of the movie it ought to be Michael Caine and the Muppets’ Christmas Carol because he’s been so spotlighted for the previous seventy-five minutes or so. Caine breaks pretty early on in the night, Scrooge-wise. The film opens with him being mean to nephew Steven Mackintosh, Bunsen and Beaker (collecting for charity), the odd cute Muppet, then Kermit (as Bob Cratchit) and the office staff.

But he’s never too mean. He’s intimidating, he’s callous, but he’s ignorant of his cruelty in some ways; he’s kind of a libertarian a bit. Like he’s a blowhard, which his peers figure out, and then Christmas Carol is just all about him realizing he needs to alleviate suffering with his fortune. Incidentally, A Christmas Carol—the source material—is really depressing in 2020 when the story is 175 years old and there’s basically never been a redeemed Scrooge in reality. The genetics of Kermit and Miss Piggy’s kids in the movie are more realistic than the core tale.

Caine’s Scrooge cracks the first time during the Christmas past sequence (though maybe not in the theatrical version) and then the rest of the film and Christmas ghosts aren’t about him realizing Christmas is good, actually, but he’s bad, actually, and his bah humbug attitude about Christmas is just a symptom.

The Tiny Tim scene where Caine just stares at the puppets and tears up is fantastic. Henson drags it out, he and Jablow changing the intervals on the reaction shots to Caine, and it’s just this great expression work from Caine. His reactions to his emotions have their own arcs, with this amazing verklempt period for the end of Christmas Present and all of Christmas Future. Henson, Juhl, and Caine turn it into a character study, with the familiar Muppets doing a lot more in the supporting cast department.

Gonzo and Rizzo narrate the film, which is hilarious and one of the film’s best “Muppet” instincts. They have the right personality clash to make their antics particularly funny. Because there aren’t many laughs in the rest of it. It’s a tragedy and all. Even the songs—which have some really funny lines—are always sincere and often solemn. Outside Gonzo and Rizzo, the playfulness is quite muted. It’s a very nimble film; Henson’s able to control the mood just right.

So the special effects should get a callout because they have so much to do with the mood. The Ghosts of Christmas aren’t traditional Muppets—well, maybe Ghost of Christmas Present but even then not exactly; the Ghosts are their own specific characters outside the Muppet movie aspect of Christmas Carol, which is all the more ambitious and all the more successful. Henson and company found the right formula here.

Though it all hinges on Caine’s performance. Including him singing. Somehow Muppet Christmas Carol makes singing Michael Caine an absolute delight.

Other highlights include Statler and Waldorf’s cameos—including young age make-up on them—Jerry Nelson as the Ghost of Christmas Present, and Meredith Braun as young Scrooge’s love interest. Braun’s only it for a scene and a half but makes a singular contribution.

Well, if you’re watching the extended version, anyway.

Muppet Christmas Carol is most assuredly sensational, inspirational, celebrational, and, indeed, Muppetational.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016, Taika Waititi)

I kept waiting for something to go wrong in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. The first act is this exceptionally tight, efficient narrative—but with time for montage digressions as director (and screenwriter) Waititi gently examines lead Julian Dennison as his life goes through a pastoral upheaval.

Dennison is a tween on the edge of teen and has been bopping around the foster care system his entire life. He’s at his last attempt at a home placement—Rima Te Wiata is going to take him; she just happens to have a farm on the edge of the New Zealand bush (New Zealand bush being rainforest). So city boy to the wilderness.

We also meet intense but not empathetic child services worker Rachel House (and her suffering flunky Oscar Kightley); they’re going to both be important later on. Especially for absurdist—but good absurdist—humor.

And then there’s Sam Neill; he’s Te Wiata’s husband who she didn’t tell child services about (but they don’t care, apparently). He’s a gruff, tough, farming guy who’s not into the foster dad thing but loves Te Wiata. Waititi leans heavy on making Neill mysterious in the first act, but we soon find out the social awkwardness around Dennison isn’t just for dramatic impact; Neill’s an odd duck. It’s a particularly choice part because no matter what, there’s a hard limit to how much Neill’s going to have to do. The character’s got insurmountable constraints, which gives Neill and Waititi a lot of room to flex without having to worry about breaking through.

Also it’s not Neill’s movie. It’s Dennison’s movie.

Waititi splits Wilderpeople into chapters, with the first playing more like a short subject, complete with its own epical structure. The chapters end up working out, especially in the second act, which has Neill and Dennison thrown together by tragedy, on the run from House while trying to do right by Te Wiata.

Most of the film takes place over uncounted miles of New Zealand rainforest, with occasional stopovers at ranger stations or whatever, and Waititi makes the bush feel like a consistent, familiar setting without it actually ever being the same spot. Except when he does one of the really cool, digitally enabled composite shots—the camera pans in a circle, capturing the characters in the space at different times. Sometimes because they’re lost, sometimes because they’re found, sometimes because they’re on the run. Usually there’s great music accompanying it. If there’s not great music, then it’s just great sound. Wilderpeople, technically, is pristine work.

So while Dennison and Neill play fugitive—no one-armed references but a great Terminator one (though nothing compared to a First Blood riff, which is out of nowhere but absolutely phenomenal because Waititi makes it absurd, hilarious, and also exactly what the scene needs). Waititi’s rather good with the asides and outbursts. They always end up fueling something new in Wilderpeople, even at the very end.

The film’s a bit of a character study grafted to a wilderness adventure, complete with faithful dogs, stupid hunters, and bush folk vs. city folk wisdom. Oh, and Dennison having his “I like girls differently now” moment, after he meets Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne. Ngatai-Melbourne’s only in it for a bit but she’s fantastic and gets to show Dennison’s able to maintain the high level of acting even without the precise structuring of his scenes with the foster family. Dennison’s great, full stop, but Waititi’s also made a film where it’s so strong on everything else it could get away with him being one note.

He’s not, which surges Wilderpeople ahead.

Along the way, we find out more about Dennison, Neill, and Te Wiata while they’re finding out about each other and themselves. Maybe if Te Wiata and Dennison weren’t so good in the first act when they’re doing their getting to know you scenes, Neill would be able to steal some of the thunder but he’s very much there to give Dennison a frequent foil. It’s an exceptionally well-acted film, with Waititi’s direction of those actors as integral as the performances to its success.

The third act falls apart a bit because of course it falls apart a bit; once the film hits a certain scale, it’s inevitable the conclusion is going to be rough. Waititi holds it together through a bit of a too fast segue to the superior epilogue.

Wilderpeople’s fairly great. Waititi’s direction, his script, Dennison, Neill, Te Wiata, House, Ngatai-Melbourne, editors Tom Eagles, Yana Gorskaya, and Luke Haigh—lots of spectacular work on display.

Emma (2020, Autumn de Wilde)

If IMDb is correct, there have been only ten other adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma, and I’m including the modernizations. So it’s not so much Emma is oft-adapted, maybe just it’s got a very memorable story. Memorable enough even I was anticipating how—oh, wow, it’s director de Wilde’s first feature. Like, remember when music video directors were a punchline when they went to features?

Anyway, even with my limited Emma knowledge, I was able to anticipate—gleefully—how de Wilde and screenwriter Eleanor Catton were going to adapt the twists and turns. Because once Emma arrives, so to speak, which probably happens with the appearance of Tanya Reynolds as odious vicar Josh O'Connor’s new good lady wife, there’s no longer a question of whether or not the film will be a success. Instead, it’s a question of how successful it will be. And de Wilde, leads Anya Taylor-Joy and Johnny Flynn, Catton, they seem to peak Emma. Like, it’s hard to imagine how you could do the film better given Taylor-Joy is basically a villain for much of the film’s run time. Not exactly and it’s all very complicated, but watching Taylor-Joy manipulate the worlds around her for her own amusement and questionable pursuit of perfection… she’s not a hero.

It’s what makes her eventual friendship of social cruelty with Callum Turner so effective. He’s encouraging her worst compulsions and doing so for his own benefit. The film sets Taylor-Joy and Turner up as alter egos of sorts, with him using his powers of handsomeness, cleverness, and wealth for selfish purposes, Taylor-Joy uses hers for altruistic ones. But she gets to determine the altruism. The film doesn’t emphasize these parallels and inversions, it just presents them plainly, unspoken. The young, rich, and unmarried in nineteenth century England are have their lane and they aren’t going to deviate. I suppose there’s also a parallel with Flynn, older than Taylor-Joy and Turner, who was once young, is still rich and still unmarried.

Did I just describe the obvious themes of the novel, because when I was watching the film, I finally “got it.” Taylor-Joy’s arc is fantastic in this film. De Wilde and Catton have this very rich backdrop for her to act in. It’s not just getting to see her in the gorgeous production—production designer Kave Quinn, costume designer Alexandra Byrne, and set decorator Stella Fox do exquisite work. There’s a scene where notoriously private Flynn gives a tour of his house to his friends, showing off his various art treasures and the camera can never be slow enough on the pieces, with de Wilde and cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt so gorgeously showcasing. As the characters are all reacting to this art around them, being able to see the art so beautifully rendered makes for an entirely different scene than if it were just the drama of the characters.

But the film is a comedy of manners. The narrative twists and turns are only consequential because of the strict cultural norms the cast finds themselves in. It’s very layered, with the characters being very constrained in what they can do and stay. Again, de Wilde and Catton do an excellent job of establishing the rules without any big exposition dumps. Instead, we pick it up from Taylor-Joy’s friendship with latest matching making victim but also apparently first real friend, Mia Goth, or from Taylor-Joy’s dad (a truly wonderful Bill Nighy) in his whining about their social obligations, or from the supporting cast as they fret to one another; Flynn has, of course, the most to say about the cultural norms but also the most restraint. If Flynn’s going to say something about how people are behaving, it’s going to have to be egregious. He’s got all the wisdom and knows it, whereas Taylor-Joy thinks she can bend wisdom to fit her knowledge.

Taylor-Joy and Flynn are the most important performances. They make the film. It’s hard to imagine anyone doing a better job with this material than Taylor-Joy and Flynn. Taylor-Joy becomes sympathetic through Flynn’s approving eye, but her character development is all her own. Outside that approval, in fact. The ending does something really lovely—and lightning fast—reorienting how to read that character development throughout too. de Wilde and Catton always keep some distance from Taylor-Joy, even when we’re seeing her in distress, and are then able to move in for the ending and really leverage the work Taylor-Joy’s done along with some narrative echoing to earlier in the film.

Who’s better, Taylor-Joy or Flynn? It’s a toss-up. Taylor-Joy’s always excellent but she gets more material. Until all of a sudden Flynn gets more material and it seems like he’s even better. But with the third act, the scenes functionally depend on Taylor-Joy and her performance so… Taylor-Joy. Flynn’s still great (and contributes the end credits song, which is adorable).

The supporting cast is all outstanding. Turner’s an excellent rich heel, Goth’s great as the friend; Goth gets a great third act showcase. Nighy’s great as the dad, who’s a hypochondriac. Lots of laughs for Nighy with that detail. Including Chloe Pirrie as Taylor-Joy’s married with children older sister, who’s caught the “bug.” Suffering husband, Oliver Chris (also Flynn’s brother), is hilarious with all his reactions. Then there’s Gemma Whelan as Taylor-Joy’s former governess, first matchmaking victim, and only friend. She’s good. Not in it a lot, but when she’s in it, she’s really good. The baked-in character relationships, the established ones, they’re all really well-done. Rupert Graves is good as her new husband. Miranda Hart’s great in a really important and complicated part. Amber Anderson, as the analogue Taylor-Joy rejects, is good. O’Connor and Reynolds are wonderful.

De Wilde’s direction—composition, performances—is superior. All the technicals are great—wonderful music from David Schweitzer and Isobel Waller-Bridge—Blauvelt’s aforementioned photography and Nick Emerson’s editing are superlative.

Emma is an absolute delight.

Twilight (1998, Robert Benton)

Unfortunate bit of trivia to start us off—Twilight is supposed to be called The Magic Hour, but just around the time of release, Magic Johnson’s high profile (and quickly cancelled) TV show had the same title and they changed the movie’s title. Titles are both important and not. They definitely establish a work’s intention—you may know nothing about something but once you see the title, you ostensibly know something. The problem with Twilight’s title change is two-fold. While, sure, Twilight is The Magic Hour as far as a time of day when Los Angeles looks particularly hot and haunting, but Twilight also carries with it some implications given the film’s all about being old and dying. Whereas The Magic Hour does not carry those similar implications.

So about a hundred and fifty words to say, you most likely know it as Twilight, but it will always be The Magic Hour to me.

Twilight opens with Paul Newman having a beer at a Mexican resort, then another. He’s on the trail of seventeen year-old Reese Witherspoon; she’s run away with inappropriate older boyfriend Liev Schreiber. We get a little of the Newman charm as he extricates Witherspoon from Schreiber, but things soon go wrong; Newman’s passive gender expectations get him shot.

Fast forward two years and Newman’s living above the garage of seventies Hollywood stars Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon. Newman does odd jobs around the house, plays cards with Hackman, flirts with Sarandon, bickers with their daughter… Witherspoon. Hackman felt bad for wounded Newman and gave him a place to stay. Then Hackman got sick and they needed Newman around. The inciting action is Hackman asking Newman to run an errand… which may or may not have something to do with Hackman’s simultaneous news—his cancer is back and he’s not going to be doing anymore treatment, which is pissing off Sarandon.

What unfolds is a mess of dreams and nightmares. Newman’s got his own dreams and nightmares, but he’s wading through everyone else’s. There are the older folks’—retired ex-cops James Garner and M. Emmet Walsh, who’ve gone on to the private sector with differing results; Newman’s old cop partner, Stockard Channing, who’s got commonalities with the old ex-cops but very different dreams; Giancarlo Esposito’s Newman’s de facto old partner from private investigating days, still starstruck at the possible glamour of the profession. You’re in Hollywood, even if you avoid it, it’s a magical place where dreams come true. Even the obvious villains—Margo Martindale’s blackmailer, for instance, or Schreiber—are just mired in the cultural magical thinking. The script—by director Benton and Richard Russo—does an exceptional job layering in all that subtext. Essential in getting that subtext across is Piotr Sobocinski’s lush, deliberate photography, Elmer Bernstein’s lush, deliberate score, Carol Littleton’s lush, deliberate editing, and David Gropman’s… no, not lush and deliberate, but sharp yet functional production design. Twilight is very much about people in their chosen environments. The difference between locations speak volumes about the characters who live in them, who visit them, as well as the setting in general.

Because Twilight is exceptionally smart.

And should’ve gotten whatever title it wanted.

(The Magic Hour).

Anyway. Great performances. Benton and Russo’s script provides just the right amount of foundation, Benton’s direction stretches the canvas—all the mixed metaphors—and the actors then inhabit and expand. Should’ve gone with some kind of sculpture thing.

The best performance, just in terms of pure unadulterated success, is Martindale. She’s magnificent. But the most successful with the least is Esposito, who seems to be taking what ought to be a caricature and turning it into the film’s realest person. Witherspoon’s got some really good moments, ditto Schreiber. But it’s all about the older adults—though Newman, Hackman, and Garner are a decade and a half (at least) older than Sarandon. It’s all about the complicated relationships Newman’s forged with Hackman, Garner, and Sarandon; as the film progresses, we find out more and more about Newman before the opening mishap in Mexico. Twilight’s a Raymond Chandler story about seventies Hollywood done twenty years later with Hollywood stars playing type and against but also a character study. Kind of more a character story. It’s not really an L.A. movie only because Benton doesn’t dwell. He’s all about the locations, but showcasing the action occurring in them.

Because even though Benton does a great job with the supporting actors—Sarandon the most-it’s all about Newman. It’s not clear in the first scene—the Mexico flashback—because Newman’s got on sunglasses, but the film’s all about his performance. About how the events wear on him, how he reacts to them. Benton makes his cast sit in their emotional states—freezing them, just for a second or two—and shows how the pressure is crushing them. Not the pressure of their failures or successes, but the Hollywood dreams.

Again, should’ve been called The Magic Hour. Or something else entirely.

Hackman and Sarandon are both great. Garner’s got this wonderful flashy ex-cop turned studio security turned old codger part. He’s really enthusiastic about taking that extra reaction time. Hackman seems used to it, Sarandon’s different—but Garner’s visibly (albeit reservedly) jazzed; the performance does a lot to establish Garner’s place in the story, which is more often than not offscreen. Hackman and Sarandon, Garner, they’re places Newman visits. Sometimes for a long time, but he’s always a guest in those places. It’s very a Chandler-esque narrative.

Because Twilight is very much within the genre constraints of a mystery, which is the only thing wrong with it—Russo and Benton are careful never to strain said constraints too hard; they’re too respectful of genre. But what they do—what the film does—is magical enough.

Because it should’ve been called the damn Magic Hour.

This post is part of the James Garner Blogathon: He Thrilled in Them All hosted by Gill from Realweegiemidget Reviews.

Pale Flower (1964, Shinoda Masahiro)

Pale Flower opens with lead Ikebe Ryô narrating his first day out of prison. Not what he does—we get to see what he does—but how he feels about being out, what he notices. He’s killed a man, been in prison for three years, and nothing has changed in Tokyo. The dead man’s absence doesn’t matter, Ikebe’s absence doesn’t matter. Ikebe’s indifferent to existence, particularly his own; so what better thing to do with one’s time than the endorphin rush of gambling. Oh… right: Ikebe also talks a little about the thrill of killing. Not anything to get a rush—dope’s out, for example—but almost anything. Ikebe’s looking for a (relatively) safe rush, whether it’s from gambling or hooking up with lady friend Hara Chisako. Hara’s in a bad situation—abused by a now senile stepfather she now cares for, romantically pursued by a civilian at her office, she too is looking for a rush, one only bad boy (again, relatively speaking) Ikebe can provide.

But Hara doesn’t offer Ikebe that same rush. Especially not after he goes gambling and discovers things have changed a little since he’s been gone—there’s now a girl (Kaga Mariko) in the gambling scene. At first, Kaga just slightly piques Ikebe’s interest—he’s busy trying to adjust to the new yakuza ground situation. Ikebe went in for killing one of Tôno Eijirô’s men, on boss Miyaguchi Seiji’s orders. Only there’s a new player in town and Tôno and Miyaguchi have had to team up, something not all of Tôno’s men are all right with; they want to avenge themselves on Ikebe, which ends up providing Ikebe with his only steady acquaintance. Foolish young yakuza Sasaki Isao tries to take on Ikebe and botches it, leading to Sasaki having to apologize (multiple times) and Ikebe taking Sasaki under his wing. Of course, since Ikebe doesn’t do much besides gamble, it just means he and Sasaki play cards a lot.

Most of Ikebe’s time—and Pale Flower’s runtime—is spent with Kaga. She wants a bigger game, bigger thrills, and Ikebe lines it up for her. She’s something of a mystery; besides getting her name and having some suspicions about her day life, Ikebe doesn’t find out much and doesn’t care. He’s protective of her, worries about her, but is also a little awestruck. As the film progresses and the pair reveal more of themselves to each other, it becomes clear just how much they’re alter egos, bound by the thrill seeking. One of director Shinoda’s great successes with Pale Flower is not making it icky as Ikebe’s concern goes from paternal to romantic. He goes from mild disapproval of youthful, apparently wealthy Kaga’s excesses to longing for them, even as his obligations to Miyaguchi make it hard if not impossible for their relationship to continue. Or, at least, to intensify.

When Hara finds out about Kaga, she gets extremely jealous without ever understanding the nature of the relationship, which is an excellent, subtle device for Shinoda to examine it as most of the time spent with Kaga and Ikebe is about the thrills. There are the exquisite gambling sequences—Shinoda could care less if the audience understands the gaming being played (at one point, Ikebe asks Kaga if she understands a new game and she says she’ll figure it out on her own as she plays; the audience has to do the same as they watch)—and then a fantastic, out of nowhere car race. Shinoda’s direction, Kosugi Masao’s photography, Sugihara Yoshi’s editing, and Nishizaki Hideo’s sound design sit the viewer next to the leads, encapsulating their visceral experience of the moments. The down time, when Ikebe sits around his sparse apartment with pals Mikami Shin'ichirô and Sugiura Naoki, is just treading water until he can get to the next game with Kaga.

There’s also the completely silent Fujiki Takashi, a half Chinese yakuza dope addict psychopath; Fujiki interests both Ikebe and Kaga, but for different reasons. For Ikebe, Fujiki presents a threat to Kaga’s attention. Dope’s the easy thrill and Kaga’s too young to understand why easy thrills are wrong. Ikebe’s jealous of Fujiki before he and Kaga even discuss him. And since the exposition is always delayed about ten minutes in Pale Flower, Ikebe’s got to convey the character development in his performance. Shinoda and the crew help, obviously, the way they present Ikebe and his experience of the situations, but Pale Flower doesn’t rush to explain anything. Explanations are overrated anyway, something the film all of a sudden forgets in the epilogue.

After a flawless finale, Shinoda and co-screenwriter Baba Masaru jarringly sync the calmly delayed exposition to scene. Worse, they do it with narration. It makes sense, there’s not enough time left in the film for the traditional delay, but it’s also a needless gesture. Pale Flower needs to be five minutes shorter or five minutes longer.

Great performances all around—Ikebe, Kaga, Hara. Bosses Tôno and Miyaguchi are awesome together, these almost adorable old men as they determine the fates of those around them.

The plotting is excellent; Pale Flower’s expansive but concise. Shinoda’s got these specifically directed sequences with different styles but the same tools used to create them. The car race, for instance, looks and feels entirely different than the foot chase, but it’s the same tone, it’s the same filmmaking techniques applied. And the narrative distance is the same. It’s almost always about Ikebe’s experience of the moments; when it’s not, it’s about Kaga’s and Ikebe’s experience of observing her experience of them.

It’s phenomenal.

It just needs to be a little shorter, or a little longer. Pale Flower’s an objective lesson in the trickiness of epilogues.