Tag: Rachel Weisz

The Favourite (2018, Yorgos Lanthimos)

Essentially, The Favourite gives each of its three stars an act to shine. Rachel Weisz gets the first act, Emma Stone the second, Olivia Colman the third. They all appear throughout, but the script’s surprisingly segmented with its narrative perspective. Surprisingly because it means the first-act protagonists (Weisz and Stone) are accessories in the third act. However, since the film is about the Queen of England (Queen Anne, reigned 1702-1714), Queen Colman taking over for the finish works.

Though, not really.

Colman is the miserable queen, and Weisz is her best friend and (obviously secret) lover. The act breaks come when Stone, Weisz’s fallen cousin, comes to the palace for a job and discovers their romantic relationship. Weisz doesn’t like Stone because Weisz is a rather mean person. It initially seems like a classist thing, but it runs deeper, especially after Colman realizes she can make Weisz jealous by hanging out with Stone. Stone at least likes Colman’s rabbits; Colman has one for each baby she lost as the royal broodmare (seventeen).

Throughout the second act, as she feels threatened, Stone starts devising a plan to usurp her cousin and regain her good standing. Luckily, opposite politician leader Nicholas Hoult (shockingly good) wants Stone to spy on Weisz, and Stone likes Hoult’s bro, Joe Alwyn, so they can work something out.

Of course, once Weisz feels threatened, she’s got to react. Weisz’s interests are far more vested than Stone’s; Weisz’s husband (Mark Gatiss) is a general off fighting the French, and Hoult doesn’t want any more money to fight the French. But Stone’s fighting for survival, something even after her life’s endangered, Weisz doesn’t seem to realize. And the film’s not very sympathetic about. The second act’s all for Stone, and it’s entirely a villain arc.

Director Lanthimos shoots the first two acts with fish-eye lenses, forcing the audience to engage in the filmmaking artifice, making the period piece feel much more real. He also does long takes of his leads—mostly Stone and Colman, as both have realization arcs. In contrast, Weisz is never wrong about the personal relationship stuff, something the film also doesn’t acknowledge. There’s still fish-eye in the third act, but much less, and for visual effect rather than something to help the character development along. Favourite’s finely directed, but it’s clear in the second act, Lanthimos doesn’t have any more tricks up his sleeve. His style doesn’t build throughout.

Excellent natural light photography from Robbie Ryan. The whole film looks great, but the outdoor scenes and the candle-lighted ones are particularly spectacular. Also excellent editing from Yorgos Mavropsaridis, who occasionally breaks into intricate montage sequences during scenes. Not many, but a few. Lovely work.

The music’s booming classical (while Weisz described Favourite as an All About Eve-type picture, Lanthimos is very much doing Barry Lyndon avec femmes), and the sound design’s superb. The costumes and production design (Sandy Powell and Fiona Crombie, respectively) are fantastic. Favourite looks and sounds great.

Best performance is Colman, then Stone, then Weisz, which is a surprise since Weisz is so good in the first act. She just loses the movie to Stone, who’s increasingly fantastic until the script infantilizes her. Then only Colman’s left without serious constraints, and she has a marvelous showcase. Still not as good as it ought to be (the third act pretends The Favourite has been a character study of Colman from the start, which it very much has not been).

The script, by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, is clever with good dialogue, which is enough given the cast and crew, but lacking.

Still, The Favourite’s one heck of a good picture, with some phenomenal acting and filmmaking.

Black Widow (2021, Cate Shortland)

Black Widow gets a lot better after the first act. Mostly because the prologue—set in 1995 Ohio where tween-who-will-be-Scarlet-Johansson Ever Anderson lives with her All-American family (little sister Violet McGraw, mom Rachel Weisz, dad David Harbour)—is almost classy enough. With better music and a more patient, less blandly jingoistic look at Americana, it’d be potentially great; Widow’s got a handful of scenes where the actors’ performances break its commercial bounds and its potential all of a sudden seems boundless, but the prologue is about the only time the filmmaking’s there. Even with the weak score and anemic filmmaking—though, it takes place in Ohio so it is kind of appropriate it’s flavorless. And it answers the question of Johansson never having a Russian accent even though the character’s Russian.

Except then it turns out she’s not about to be bitten by a radioactive black widow and they’re actually Russian sleeper agents and they’ve got to get out of town. It ends up being a really effective sequence thanks to the acting, Anderson in particular, and the action set piece out of a James Bond movie.

Almost all of Widow’s action set pieces seem like they’re out of a James Bond movie. There’s even a scene where we find out Johansson—grown-up—loves James Bond movies. Loves Moonraker. So, like, laughably bad taste but the reference also sets the film’s targets appropriately. I’ve actually never seen Moonraker; I don’t know if Widow ends up homaging it with any of the sequences. The movie’s got a very Bond villain in Ray Winstone, but only on the surface. Winstone’s repugnant villain isn’t flashy at all. He’s just an evil son of a bitch. At the beginning of his villain monologue I wondered why—well, I wondered why they didn’t get a single Russian actor for the four new Russian parts–but I also wondered why he wasn’t flashy. No scenery chewing. Ray Winstone can eat a couch, but not here. Because he’s just a repugnant son of a bitch. Take out the Bond villain hideout and he’s the realest Marvel villain maybe ever.

After the too long opening credits (flashbacks to Anderson’s assassin training intercut with her happy Ohio life), it’s post Captain America 3 and William Hurt is hunting down Johansson. But since it’s the first act, she gets away for now and runs off to… well, somewhere. But then gets attacked by a costumed supervillain called “The Taskmaster” who can duplicate any fighting style he sees, which is comics accurate. Why they decided to make him look like an extreme sports version of early eighties Batman villain “The Sportsman” (not Sportsmaster, Sportsman)… well, I assume budget. Since most of the characters aren’t actually superheroes, but they all have costumes and then they have multiple ones because action figures, it’s often Johansson fighting a bad guy who looks like a mid-eighties Darth Vader rip-off.

Like almost out of the Dolph Lundgren Masters of the Universe movie. Throw in the uninspired (being complimentary there) fight choreography and cinematographer Gabriel Beristain shooting everything through a yellow pee filter, it seems like Widow’s going to be a slog.

But then Florence Pugh shows up—playing little sister grown-up—and it starts getting better. Pugh and Johansson aren’t great together from the start. Pugh’s great. Johansson’s outacted—though the script’s particularly not great for that portion of the film. Once Harbour and Weisz show up in the present action, however, everything starts to balance out nicely. Minus some joyless flashback reveals and more disappointing fight scenes.

Best performance is Pugh or Harbour, then Weisz. Johansson ends up doing pretty well, even though the movie—her single solo outing without any of the boy Avengers comes eleven years after she first appeared in the part and is, due to big developments in the boy movies, a flashback story. Though there’s room for more because the epilogue is nonsensical and entirely played for a fun Bond-esque moment.

Shortland’s direction is middling. She’s better with the actors than the action for sure, but even then it takes until Harbour shows up to get the energy right. She does all right with the tension, however, which is important since Johansson not really be in danger is part of the film’s conceit. After all, she’s fine for the movies you’ve presumably already seen. But it works even in the prologue. Shortland’s good at finding the humanity in the characters. And the actors run with that humanity admirably.

There were a couple surprising omissions—not including the big, intentional plot hole—and it seems like they could definitely gin up a sequel. And even it were as contrived as this outing, it’d be welcome one. Johansson and company (emphasis on the company) work really well together.

The Fountain (2006, Darren Aronofsky)

If you were to tell me I was going to react the way I did to The Fountain, Aronofsky’s dream project, I wouldn’t have believed you. While The Wrestler succeeded, Aronofsky didn’t write it. All my experience with his screenplays is negative.

In terms of how the film works, The Fountain is somewhat singular. It’s a rather straightforward narrative masquerading as a sci-fi event picture. It’s insane to think anyone would have given Aronofsky seventy-five million dollars to make this picture (with Brad Pitt, no less, who couldn’t have handled the acting). Hugh Jackman has to be three different people who are occasionally the same person, but don’t know about the other people, but are aware of the other people. It’s probably Jackman’s best performance.

I sat and waited for The Fountain‘s ending to fail, since the whole thing is about the ending. It never does.

Aronofsky’s direction is fantastic, as he incorporates special effects into his shots and to the way Jackman’s character experiences those special effects. Simply because what happens to Dave Bowman doesn’t matter to anyone but Dave Bowman and the viewer, The Fountain and its treatment of Jackman’s experiences is the first film to do it in this manner since 2001.

It seems like a great waste of budget to have these big space scenes with only one character experiencing them.

The Fountain is an experience for the character and the individual viewer. It’s hostile to the idea of an audience or communal reaction.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Darren Aronofsky; screenplay by Aronofsky, based on a story by Aronofsky and Ari Handel; director of photography, Matthew Libatique; edited by Jay Rabinowitz; music by Clint Mansell; production designer, James Chinlund; produced by Arnon Milchan, Iain Smith and Eric Watson; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Hugh Jackman (Tommy), Rachel Weisz (Izzi), Ellen Burstyn (Dr. Lillian Guzetti), Mark Margolis (Father Avila), Stephen McHattie (Grand Inquisitor Silecio), Fernando Hernandez (Lord of Xibalba), Cliff Curtis (Captain Ariel), Sean Patrick Thomas (Antonio), Donna Murphy (Betty), Ethan Suplee (Manny), Richard McMillan (Henry) and Lorne Brass (Dr. Alan Lipper).

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Constantine (2005, Francis Lawrence)

Until the last minute, which introduces the idea Keanu Reeves is going to be narrating the film (which doesn’t start with him and has a number of scenes without him), I was going to say nice things about Constantine. I wasn’t even going to point out the son of the devil who’s coming to Earth is doing it through an illegal immigrant from Mexico. I wasn’t going to mention how Tilda Swinton seems to be the go to androgynous actor. I was even going to say something nice about the music, but the end credit music, which comes right after that lousy voiced over narration, it’s awful.

It’s definitely one of Reeves’s better performances. He never once comes across like Ted.

Rachel Weisz is terrible–I can’t believe she’s won an Oscar–but Shia LaBeouf is mildly amusing as the sidekick and Djimon Hounsou’s solid in a smaller part. Peter Stormare has a good cameo as Satan. Swinton’s awful.

Lawrence does a pretty good job directing, which I found odd since he did such an awful job with his Will Smith as a scientist movie–maybe that one was just too unbelievable. There’s some nice Panavision composition, but Lawrence shoots LA like it’s New York, which isn’t bad at all, but is peculiar–as compared to Sam Raimi, who shoots New York like LA.

The special effects are all right, the movie moves at a decent pace. It’s totally fine until the last minute, like I said, when it flops.

My Blueberry Nights (2007, Wong Kar-wai)

I wonder what the reaction to My Blueberry Nights would have been if it were Wong Kar-wai’s first film instead of just his first English language film. Everything I’ve seen in way of critical reaction is polite, when it really ought to be anything but. My Blueberry Nights suggests a filmmaker for sale–nothing in Wong’s other work ever even suggested he’d write such an atrocious screenplay. He usually goes a long way to cast a film well, but here… Norah Jones is utterly incapable of acting. It’s more amateurish than a carpet commercial on a UHF station. The frequent use of her music is annoying as well–it makes the whole thing seem like nothing more than an advertisement for her.

It doesn’t help the opening also relies heavily on Jude Law. Law’s better than Jones, but his abject lack of character is a significant problem. Wong seems to want to imply character depth and apparently for no reason other than style. Even David Strathairn, spitting out the awkward dialogue, does nothing but remind of the superior filmmakers he’s worked with. Comparing this film to Sayles or–and I think this comparison is more intentional–Jarmusch reveals just what’s missing in My Blueberry Nights.

Wong’s always told these wonderfully subtle stories about people–even with all the style, they’re very quiet and reserved. Here, there isn’t even a story, there’s a blurb. An easy synopsis. Some catch phrases and keywords to describe the film.

Besides the awkward transitions, Wong’s composition is excellent. His use of Panavision is nice, Darius Khondji’s colors are lush and vibrant–especially the blues–the music, always something Wong uses to good effect, is poorly chosen. It’s kind of loud, rather obnoxious and definitely obvious.

It’s pretty clear what’s going on with the film. It’s hip. It’s Wong Kar-wai making a film for, I guess, what he perceives to be his English-speaking audience–a bunch of illiterate hipsters.

What’s particularly offending about the film is how much worse it gets as it goes. There’s voiceovers from Law and Jones–and if Jones can’t act a scene, listening her trying to narrate one is even worse. There’s some dumb title cards informing the viewer how long it’s been since the first scene in the present action. But the more interesting story is left untold (Jones hops from New York to Memphis after some long period of time). Wong has no sense of his characters here and he’s trying to make a movie about America, but somehow has almost no sense of it.

What Wong’s doing isn’t pretentious, it’s just bad. The acting’s bad, the plot’s bad, the dialogue’s bad, the music’s bad. If he had good actors, it’d still be bad. The creative impulse behind My Blueberry Nights decidedly lacks any artistry.

I don’t think any other director has ever had such a plummet in quality moving from one film market to another. I used to wait for Wong to make an American film… and now I’m left wondering if he’ll ever be able to make a good film again. My Blueberry Nights is so appalling, it’s hard to believe he ever will again–and I certainly hope he never does another English language project.

Runaway Jury (2003, Gary Fleder)

I thought there were no anti-conservative Hollywood films for a long while after 9/11, so I guess Runaway Jury went under the radar. It appears to have been a significant bomb and, watching it, it seemed strange to see John Grisham’s name on screen. It’s been a long time since adaptations of his novels have been blockbusters… about as long as it’s been since Michael Crichton’s name was on blockbusters.

Runaway Jury went under my radar because I figured it wasn’t going to be very good and it isn’t. The plot’s unbelievable and annoying in its false complexity. Director Fleder and his four credited screenwriters play it like Coppola never succeeded in making Grisham good with The Rainmaker and… eh. Fleder is a mediocre director. His composition isn’t bad, he likes dumb editing and he shoots New Orleans poorly. Someone had a New Orleans guide book for the shoot and Fleder barely let the city, it being one of significant character, do anything. There’s more personality from the city in the background dialogue than in Fleder’s shots. But he’s not as bad as I assumed.

The acting is questionable. Dustin Hoffman can’t keep his New Orleans accent, Gene Hackman is playing a goofy bad guy from one of his 1990s movies–though the scene with Hoffman is nice, since Hackman lets loose with some Lex Luthor style fun lunacy (even though Hoffman just stands there). John Cusack is fine, playing John Cusack once again. Rachel Weisz is okay, if occasionally dubious in her emoting.

The best thing about Runaway Jury is the supporting cast–Guy Torry, Luis Guzmán, Nick Searcy, Cliff Curtis, Bill Nunn, Leland Orser and Bruce McGill. Joanna Going suffers from a bad accent as well. The supporting cast almost makes Jury feel like it’s a big event movie (like The Rainmaker). Almost.

The Constant Gardener (2005, Fernando Meirelles)

With two major exceptions, The Constant Gardener is defined by what it is not rather than what it is… It is not a thriller, it is not a mystery, it might not even be a narrative. It is a (justified) condemnation of Western pharmaceutical companies–with Western government’s express permission–treatment of sick African peoples. It’s also a masterfully made film; Fernando Meirelles probably makes two errors throughout. Besides the wonderful cinematography, the editing is exquisite (possibly the first time I’ve ever described editing with that word). But, mostly due to the presence of Ralph Fiennes and some physically realized daydreams, The Constant Gardener comes off a lot like The English Patient, only relevant.

The film, rather interestingly, so inhuman, so vile, a James Bond villain would be taking notes. These villains–played wonderfully by Danny Huston and Bill Nighy (Huston’s just magnificent)–are, of course, members of the British government. While the film could be an exploration of evil men who do evil things but still play cricket with their children in filmic moments meant to bring attention to that contradiction, it is not.

The first forty minutes are Rachel Weisz playing Joan of Arc. It’s possibly Weisz’s best (or only good) performance, but since she is playing the finest human being ever to walk (or possibly levitate above) the earth, Meirelles would have to be incompetent to not get such a performance out of her. And Meirelles is far from incompetent. He gets more humanity out of Fiennes, with his stylized cinéma vérité in domestic situations, than anyone else ever has. Following Weisz’s death (it’s not a spoiler, the film opens with it then awkwardly goes into flashback for forty minutes), Fiennes takes over on his investigation into her death. His investigation being the most boring investigation I can ever remember seeing in a film. It’s long and boring and predictable (there is no mystery to be solved really) and the film’s filled with scenes for edifying the audience in regards to what’s going on in Africa with drug companies.

I would have said it was a preaching-to-the-choir film, but then I remembered when it was out and I know a lot of dumb people who went to go see it, so hopefully it did inform. Hopefully it did make some really ignorant people realize what’s going on.

But as a film? As a story? Meirelles goes so far as to mimic a bunch of English Patient shots. Like shots from the poster.

Without the politics, The Constant Gardener would have been–well, it wouldn’t have been. But all there is to the film is the information and the emotional effect of seeing it. Weisz’s death, the supposed impetus, is as useless as the miscarriage her character suffers for no reason other than to introduce a character, a mystery, and kill some time, make the audience feel even sorry for Joan of Arc.

Pete Postlethwaite shows up for a bit and it’s nice to see him. Gerard McSorley is good.

The film does succeed (I mean, I’m referring to it as a film, aren’t I?) on some levels–and maybe it succeeds on all the ones it’s trying to succeed on–but it’s lack of narrative ambition is startling and somewhat distressing.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by Fernando Meirelles; screenplay by Jeffrey Caine, based on the novel by John le Carré; director of photography, César Charlone; edited by Claire Simpson; music by Alberto Iglesias; production designer, Mark Tildesley; produced by Simon Channing Williams; released by Focus Features.

Starring Ralph Fiennes (Justin Quayle), Rachel Weisz (Tessa Quayle), Danny Huston (Sandy Woodrow), Bill Nighy (Sir Bernard Pellegrin), Pete Postlethwaite (Lorbeer), Hubert Koundé (Dr. Arnold Bluhm) and Gerard McSorley (Sir Kenneth Curtiss).

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