Tag: Mr. Robot

[#2019oscardeathrace] The Wife (2017)

Director: Bjorn Runge

Cast: Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce, Christian Slater, Max Irons, Harry Lloyd, Annie Starke, Elizabeth McGovern

Screenplay: Jane Anderson

99 mins. Rated R for language and some sexual content.

  • Academy Award Nominee: Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role [Glenn Close] [Pending]

 

The Wife is a movie that has slipped by unnoticed by the public and, if not for the nomination of Glenn Close (Fatal Attraction, Father Figures), it may have disappeared entirely. I was well-aware of the love that has been thrown her way for this performance, so I hunted down a copy of the film knowing very little about it. The question being lobbed around by film pundits and critics is whether or not Close was nominated for her performance in the film or her career.

Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce, Tomorrow Never Dies, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote) has just been informed that he is to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. His wife, Joan (Close) is overjoyed for her husband, and the two depart for Stockholm. As the ceremony draws closer, Joan confronts her choices in her life that led her to this point as she is pursued by a frustrated biographer, Nathanial Bone (Christian Slater, True Romance, TV’s Mr. Robot), searching for the couple’s secret.

The question of whether or not Close’s performance is worthy is a simple one: it is. Now, I wouldn’t say she gives the best performance of the year, but hers is a role filled with emotion and visual flair. She acts with her eyes in a sometimes muted performance that flows with regret and frustration in what could be called a late mid-life crisis as the secrets of her past come forth. It’s an incredibly moving story marred by historical and cultural shifts. I felt myself emotionally broken watching Joan as she discovers what she’s been missing with her own life. I won’t get into specifically spoilery territory but it is something to watch her bare her soul.

Merit should also be given to Pryce and Slater for their terrific turns. Slater is engaging and secretive, always holding his cards close. His performance is similar to the small bit he played in Interview with the Vampire. Pryce, though, is multi-layered, a man with regrets of his own who has seemingly lost touch with himself and doesn’t see the world through a realistic lens. His isn’t a likable character for the most part, but his is definitely an understandable character. What’s fascinating about the duality between Pryce’s Joe and Close’s Joan is just how close they are to each other while being two sides of the same coin. There are shades of both husband and wife in each of us.

Outside of the production design and sets, there isn’t a whole lot of technical flair to the film. Director Bjorn Runge (Daybreak, Happy End) tends to let his focus stick to the characters. The screenplay from Jane Anderson (Olive Kitteridge, Packed in a Trunk: The Lost Art of Edith Lake Wilkinson) is elegant and slowly burns to an intense and emotional finale, one that stayed with me long after leaving the theater.

The Wife isn’t flashy or visually evocative in the way that so many films are. It is beautiful and nuanced and the type of film that most people aren’t likely to see. That shouldn’t take away from the story and the characters which are well-performed and heartbreakingly realistic. This is a film I would implore you to see as soon as you can.

 

4/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

0

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Rami Malek, Lucy Boynton, Gwilyn Lee, Ben Hardy, Joe Mazzello, Aidan Gillen, Tom Hollander, Mike Myers

Screenplay: Anthony McCarten

134 mins. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, suggestive material, drug content and language.

IMDb Top 250: #136 (as of 1/11/2019)

 

There’s two major schools of thought one can go down with a biopic. The filmmaker can choose to hit all the major notes on the subject’s timeline, capturing important milestones from the life, or there’s the biopic event film, where one major event is focused on. When it comes to Freddie Mercury, a man larger than life, you really have to hit all the notes, or as many as you can fit.

Bohemian Rhapsody is the story of Queen, but in many ways, it’s the story of Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek, Papillon, TV’s Mr. Robot), an artist lost too soon. Freddie did not come from an artistic upbringing, and he found himself in the right place at the right time when Smile, a band he’d been interested in, needed to replace a lead singer. Brian May (Gwilyn Lee, The Tourist, The Last Witness) and Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy, Only the Brave, Mary Shelley), the remaining members of Smile, joined up with Mercury and, alongside John Deacon (Joe Mazzello, Jurassic Park, G.I. Joe: Retaliation), became Queen.

Bohemian Rhapsody is a more stylized, less historically accurate version of the Freddie Mercury and Queen story, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. It’s led by an unstoppable turn from Malek, an actor who positively embodies Mercury’s many mannerisms with elegance, grace, and without parody. It’s a tough role to disappear in, and Malek proves to be up to the task.

It is Mercury’s relationship with Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton, Sing Street, Apostle) which proves to the most important of the film. Freddie is an eccentric man, to put it lightly, and he perhaps wants more than he can have, but he finds as the story progresses that he is unable to make up for his wants, and Mary’s emotional needs are struggling to be met. It’s a complex relationship brought forth quite nicely in the film.

The Queen portion of the film is undoubtedly the most fun, even if it isn’t 100% accurate. Seeing some of the craziness that went into some of the best music ever put to record is a wonder, and it doesn’t hurt that the film has a kickass soundtrack.

The major problem of the film is its direction, which sometimes feels a little VH1 and without some of the style that you might associate with a band like Queen. There’s something dated about the film, and I’m not referring to the actual events of the film.

Bohemian Rhapsody succeeds as entertainment, and that’s its Number 1 goal. I was smiling from ear to ear for most of the film, and that stayed with me for days afterward. It’s a hell of a fun film with a heart, but it’s made for Queen fans. Those of you that aren’t (and I imagine there’s at least three of you out there) will find little to enjoy outside the incredible performances.

 

4/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

 

 

For my review of Bryan Singer’s X-Men, click here.

For my review of Bryan Singer’s X2: X-Men United, click here.

For my review of Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, click here.

For my review of Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse, click here.

 

For more Almighty Goatman,

4

[31 Days of Horror Part V: A New Beginning] Day 18 – Carrie (2013)

Director: Kimberly Peirce

Cast: Chloe Grace Moretz, Julianne Moore, Judy Greer, Portia Doubleday, Alex Russell, Gabriella Wilde

Screenplay: Lawrence D. Cohen, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

100 mins. Rated R for bloody violence, disturbing images, language and some sexual content.

 

Many people know the love I have for the novel Carrie. There have been three adaptations of the classic novel (the original film even had a sequel), most recently in 2013, directed by Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry, Stop-Loss). That’s the one we are talking about today.

Carrie White (Chloe Grace Moretz, Let Me In, November Criminals) is a troubled girl with a difficult life at home. Her mother Margaret (Julianne Moore, The Hours, Kingsman: The Golden Circle) is a religious fanatic who believes the very birth of her daughter to be one of the most sinful acts in her life. At school, Carrie is not popular. When she experiences her first period, she is tortured and ridiculed by her female classmates, led by Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday, Youth in Revolt, TV’s Mr. Robot). Many of the girls later feel terrible about their actions, including Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde, The Three Musketeers, TV’s Poldark), who devises a plan to make things right with Carrie. Chris, though, devises a plan of her own, that will push Carrie to the breaking point. What the girls don’t know is that Carrie White has an amazing gift, one that she cannot control. This gift has incredible and horrifying potential that will forever alter all their lives.

This is a film that brings to life a classic argument among film criticism. The crew, including director Peirce, claim that this incarnation of Carrie is a re-imaging of the classic Stephen King novel. Unfortunately, this film is very little more than a scene-by-scene remake of the original film. It even uses the original screenplay by Lawrence D. Cohen with added updates and a few tweaks by Riverdale creator Robert Aguirre-Sacasa. It just feels hollowly made. It’s difficult to blame the studio for interfering (the film was notoriously heavily re-edited after poor test screenings, cutting somewhere around 45 minutes from the finished product) because of just how much the movie feels like a retread of the original.

Moretz and Moore are terrifically cast as daughter and mother White. Peirce fills the rest of her cast with the hottest young stars of 2013, including Ansel Elgort in his first film roll as Tommy Ross, Sue Snell’s boyfriend. Elgort does a pretty nice job as Ross as well.

The film is well shot and features some truly impressive camerawork. What muddles the final product is the atrocious CGI (it didn’t look very good in 2013 either). Some of it is truly cheap-looking. The movie didn’t need some of the more stylish CGI, so I don’t understand the need to use it, especially in the last third of the film.

Carrie is fine, but it beckons to be compared to Brian De Palma’s superior film from decades back. It features some fine performance work but there are some technical issues with marr the film’s watchability. It’s too bad, because there are shades of incredible here, but it just feels too similar, and in that way, unnecessary.

 

2.5/5

-Kyle A. Goethe

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑