Vampires, Assassins, and Romantic Angst by the Seaside: Takoma Reviews

The Woman on the Beach, 1947

Scott (Robert Ryan) is a Coast Guardsman recovering physically and mentally from having been aboard a ship that was torpedoed. Coming out of his hospitalization, he starts to rush into a marriage with the sweet Eve (Nan Leslie). But soon after proposing, Scott encounters the lovely and sardonic Peggy (Joan Bennett) on the beach collecting driftwood. Peggy is married to Tod (Charles Bickford), a painter who was recently blinded during a domestic dispute with Peggy. A dangerous, fraught triangle soon forms between Scott, Tod, and Peggy.

Full of high drama, this story about obsession and identity seems to come to some dubious conclusions but holds interest with solid performances.

While I’m not entirely sure how much the messiness of the whole story was intentional, it does give the film some emotional realism. Scott might be physically recovered from his experiences, but he is not mentally well. His behavior is characterized by obsession and impulse. First, he pushes Eve into agreeing to marriage. Later, he will become obsessed with the idea that Tod is not really blind and will go to some extremes to prove it. He truly seems like a person who is flailing around, performing his idea of loyalty but endangering and harming others in the process.

Tod makes an interesting foil for Scott. Having lost the ability to paint as he once did, Tod has notions of becoming a writer. But whether for lack of talent in that department, or just the frustration and anxiety produced by his loss of vision, his genius with the paintbrush doesn’t seem to translate to the pen. He must also deal with the looming fact that as a painter he is now considered “dead,” something that drives up the value of all of his remaining paintings. Tod is bitter and angry, and he expresses his emotions via aggression toward Peggy and a needy desire to befriend Scott.

Peggy is the most challenging character. At times, she comes off as a pretty nuanced person. She admits to Scott the unflattering circumstances of Tod losing his vision. And while we see that Tod himself has a nasty, at-times violent temper, Peggy’s guilt over the hurt she’s inflicted on Tod keeps her loyal to him. Peggy knows that while they stay at the seaside, she will only be tempted by Scott and others. She repeatedly begs Tod to go back with her to New York, where they can renew their relationship, but he won’t have it.

I really went back and forth with how I felt about Peggy’s stand by your man act. On one hand, I did respond to the idea of her feeling guilt. On the other hand, Tod is so consistently abusive---physically and psychologically--that it was hard to root for her to stay with him. We see him hit her. We also watch an incredibly uncomfortable sequence where Tod wants to show off a painting, specifically a nude that he painted of Peggy. Tod is obviously in pain, but he’s so comfortable inflicting harm and embarrassment on Peggy that at a certain point her desire to stay with him became maddening instead of understandable.

Visually, the movie is incredibly dramatic. The sequence where Scott first catches sight of Peggy on the beach, she is eerily positioned amidst fog so that there’s something dream-like about it all. Later there will be showdowns on a cliff’s edge, on a boat out at sea, and a burning house. It’s a film where an orchestral score practically explodes every time Peggy and Scott launch into each other’s arms.

A good drama that doesn’t always seem sure about who it wants to center. The relationships and behavior are nicely complex, with solid performances.

In this scenario, you’d be the assassin.

Please don’t assassinate me…..

The Reckless Moment, 1949

Lucia (Joan Bennett) has a husband who, for work reasons, is often away for long stretches. Their college-aged daughter, Bea (Geraldine Brooks) is dating a sleazy older man named Ted (Shepperd Strudwick). One night, Bea and Ted have an argument in the family’s boat house, and the next morning Lucia finds Ted’s dead body. She does what any good mother would do and disposes of the body. Unfortunately for her, a blackmailer by the name of Martin Donnelly (James Mason) has some incriminating letters written by Bea, and he wants a huge stack of cash to keep quiet.

More effective as a domestic thriller than the romance it tries to wrestle to the forefront, this one keeps you on the edge of your seat with a series of twists and turns.

Part of the fascination I had watching this film came after about 10 minutes, when I suddenly realized that I’d seen it’s remake, The Deep End starring Tilda Swinton as the mother and Goran Visnjic as the enigmatic, sexy blackmailer. Despite knowing the overall arc of the film, I enjoyed noting the differences and how it unfolds its different twists and turns.

It’s interesting how time determines the details of the story. In the 2001 remake, the hinge of the blackmail is the fact that the main character’s son is gay, something that it’s implied the military-minded father would not be okay with. Here, it’s simply that seventeen-year old Bea has written some simmering letters to Ted. But what the film leverages well is the audience’s awareness that Bea was involved in Ted’s death. Lucia knows that anything connecting Ted to her daughter could prove their undoing, and so she must do anything to get those letters.

I really enjoyed the thriller aspect of the film. Mason’s Donnelly is a quiet, but insistent man. He is not overtly threatening, yet he frequently drops mentions of a man named Nagel, a much more brutal partner. He has no idea that Bea or Lucia are mixed up in Ted’s death. Lucia is surrounded by a rising tide: Donnelly’s blackmail and the police investigation closing in on her. Worse, Bea has no idea that she was involved in Ted’s death, and so Lucia must constantly give her knowing looks, trying to get her daughter to act with more caution.

And while it is slightly to the detriment of actually liking many of the supporting characters, the film really paints a picture of a woman who has been saddled with a very dependent household. At one point, Donnelly asks with some irritation, “Don’t you ever get away from your family?”. And honestly, it’s kind of absurd. This is a household consisting of Lucia, a live-in housekeeper named Sybil (an UNCREDITED Frances E Williams, which is some inexcusable racist garbage), Lucia’s father-in-law (Henry O’Neill), a nearly-adult daughter, and a teenage son (David Bair). And yet, somehow, they all (Sybil excepted) chase after Lucia like little lost puppies. They are constantly asking, demanding, whining, badgering. You can understand how this household works on a normal day, but with the added pressure of the blackmail pushes things quickly to the cliff’s edge.

The part that doesn’t work quite as well is the romance between Lucia and Donnelly. Given more time to brew, it could work. It worked in the remake. But here it simply feels rushed. All of a sudden Donnelly does this about-face from wanting to blackmail this woman to wanting to protect her. Because . . . she’s a good mom? Mason does a pretty good job of portraying a guy who has fallen for someone, but there’s something that simply doesn’t work. The film needed more intimacy between them, more moments of longing from Lucia.

As it stands, the film seems to chicken out because it wants to keep Lucia as a strongly moral character. If she were to show overt attraction---sexual or romantic---toward Donnelly, it would be a betrayal of her family-centered character. It’s too bad, because there are a few moments where the film is on the edge of acknowledging how hard it must be to have your partner--your sexual partner, your fellow parent, your emotional support--be away for so much time. But it always reverts back to framing her as the strong family woman who will do anything for her often-obnoxious brood. (In peak headache mode, her son comes home one day having learned a new song and plays it RELENTLESSLY over and over. That’s some domestic realism for you.)

A thrilling premise and engaging twists and turns keep this one interesting, even if the romance subplot doesn’t totally land.

Bulldog Drummond, 1929

Hugh Drummond (Ronald Colman) is a bored WWI veteran who puts an ad in the paper asking for an adventure. He gets more than enough excitement when Phyllis (Joan Bennett) comes to him asking for help saving her uncle, who is being held captive by the scheming Dr. Lakington (Lawrence Grant) and the devious Irma (Lilyan Tashman). Mounting a daring rescue mission, Drummond doesn’t quite count on how far the villains will go to reclaim their hostage.

This was a fun, frisky little comedy-thriller that gets by on the fun of its cast and premise, albeit with a plot that hangs a bit loose at times.

The plot and action borders on farcical, as Drummond gets some hotel rooms, goes and grabs the uncle, and then . . . comes back to the hotel and high fives everyone, before being surprised that the bad guys thought to follow them in a car.

But everything oscillates between being totally over the top---Tashman in particular seems to be made of big gestures and vamping---and silly, so somehow the movie generates its own brand of momentum. The film swings from flirty conversation to a short burst of action, back to conversations, then back to action. It works because it’s all coherent within its own world.

Colman makes for a dashing lead, and Bennet is appealing as the woman he’s helping. Each viewer’s mileage may vary when it comes to the secondary characters, like Drummond’s dopey sidekick, Algy (Claud Allister), who is the source of a lot of the film’s comic relief.

There are a few moments that do skew a bit dark for the generally light vibe of the film. The dispatch of one of the villains is particularly rough, albeit only seen in silhouette. There’s also a longer-than-needed sequence where a restrained Drummond is taunted by one of the bad guys who begins to rape an unconscious Phyllis in front of him. It’s gross to watch, but also kind of weird that only Drummond’s feelings seem to be considered. It just goes a step or two beyond what you’d expect from the tone of the film.

Overall, this is a light, fun comedy-thriller that’s well worth a watch.

The Son of Monte Cristo, 1940

Duchess Zona (Joan Bennett) is the rightful ruler of her people, but she is threatened by political scheming from General Lanen (George Sanders). Betrayed from within her own household, Zona makes a run for it with her faithful servant Mathilde (Florence Bates). Unable to make it out of the country, they are discovered by the dashing Edmund Dantes Jr (Louis Hayward), the son of the Count of Monte Cristo. Edmund goes undercover as a wealthy banker to get in with Lanen, all the while donning a disguise and using his swordsmanship to compromise Lanen’s plans.

This is a light action-romance that’s an inoffensive way to pass the time, needing better character development and more engaging plot points to muster up more interest.

Bennett is plenty lovely as the Duchess Zona, and Hayward is plenty dashing as Dantes. Sanders sneers and smugs his way through the film as the despicable Lanen. But all of these characters feel like they need to be turned up several notches. Zona’s defining characteristic is worrying and needing help. As the film tries to engage us with the blossoming romance between Zona and Dantes, there’s a disconnect because the characters themselves are not very engaging.

The film gets closest to its intended high spirits in the sequences where Dantes conspiratorially commiserates with Lanen, all the while Lanen being unaware that Dantes himself is the mystery man causing him so much difficulty.

The action scenes are kind of tepid. There’s a sequence toward the end where Lanen is trying to force Zona into marrying him that is all kinds of shades of the similar sequence in The Princess Bride. But, again, everything here is just a bit too muted. Zona doesn’t seem nearly as distressed, Lanen nearly as gloating, nor Dantes nearly as frantic as the sequence needs to hit those intense emotions.

Not a bad film, per se, just could have really used more lust, violence, or melodrama. This feels like the sugar-free version of the story.

There’s Always Tomorrow, 1956

Cliff (Fred MacMurray) is married to the lovely Marion (Joan Bennett), and has three children. But despite the affection he has for his family, they don’t seem to appreciate or connect with him very much at all. One day, Clifford gets a visit from his former employee, Norma (Barbara Stanwyck). Running into Norma again later while on a business trip, Cliff revels in spending time with someone who finds him interesting and exciting. But soon his children begin to suspect that he’s having an affair, and Norma and Cliff must reckon with what is becoming more than a friendship.

An excellent entry in the subgenre of dramas about people who one day wake up to find that their domestic life suddenly feels like a prison, this nuanced story excels by refusing to cast any of its characters as villains.

When a film works really well, it’s so easy to see how it could have all been rendered simplistic. It would have been so simple to make Stansyck’s Norma a seductress. On the flip side, it would have been so simple to make Bennett’s Marion a shrill shrew, driving Cliff away.

Instead, the film really shows the way that someone in a family can experience a kind of gentle, indirect alienation. It’s not that anyone in the film is overtly mean to Cliff. Rather it’s clear that he simply doesn’t seem to matter to them. When he returns home from work in the opening sequence, everyone else already has plans, and none of them involve Cliff. In his own household, Cliff feels like a third wheel, and it makes it very understandable why he would react with such fervor to someone finally giving him direct attention.

The thing about all of the adults here, and especially Norma and Cliff, is that they’re just so dang nice! Cliff is just a good guy. Norma is also seen to be sensitive and responsive. Beyond just caring about Cliff, Norma is able to see the dynamics within Cliff’s family and respond to all of the members of his family with compassion, even at the potential cost of her own happiness.

While there is obviously sexual attraction between Norma and Cliff, the film is incredibly wise to keep most of the focus on their friendship and eventually their romance. Were the movie to center on physical attraction, this would feel like a cliche story about a man who hits middle age and then feels the need to go out and have an affair. But all Cliff wants is some excitement and to be the priority for once. We might infer that the sex lives of two busy people with three children isn’t exactly on fire, but the problem at the root of Marion and Cliff’s relationship isn’t a lack of sex, it’s a lack of connection and intimacy. There’s a great sequence where Norma has Marion try on a lovely dress that she’s designed, and even says she’ll give it to her for free. Marion ultimately turns down the offer, noting that nothing could make Cliff sexually interested in her after so many years of marriage.

My one struggle with the film was in the framing of Cliff’s exclusion. I found myself questioning the degree to which Cliff himself had participated in it. For example, he seemingly had no idea that his daughter had a dance recital. And when he finds out, he doesn’t express an ounce of interest in it or ask to go along. Too often in marriages, women are expected to be in charge of scheduling and social arrangements, and it feels a little bit like Cliff hasn’t done much to engage with those aspects of his family’s life. It made me a touch less sympathetic because there’s this implicit assumption that Marion is in charge of all the kids’ schedules, but that she should totally rearrange everything when Cliff walks in the door wanting to go to the theater. I think it’s a dated aspect of the film that hasn’t aged too well, though it’s a very minor complaint because the rest of the family dynamics are very well sketched out.

This is a mature drama that tackles the idea of family alienation with nuance and compassion for all of the characters involved.

Creed, 2015

Adonis (Michael B Jordan) spent his childhood in and out of foster homes before finally being taken in by his father’s wife, Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad). Spending his weekends fighting in backroom bouts down in Mexico, Adonis finally quits his office job to focus on fighting full time. Reckoning with the fact that his father was the famous Apollo Creed, Adonis tracks down Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) to get him in real fighting shape. As he juggles a quick rise in profile, he must also balance a romance with neighbor Bianca (Tessa Thompson).

While I have something of a personal aversion to boxing films, I found this one to be full of heart and loved the performances and characters.

A film like this really depends on solid dynamics between the characters, and the movie really nails that element. Jordan has pretty great chemistry with all of the other cast members, so whether he’s hashing things out with Bianca, having a tense discussion with Mary Anne, or bantering with Rocky, it’s all good. There’s an overriding theme of family and identity and belonging, and it all gets a lift from how well the cast coheres with one another.

I admittedly don’t know much about the Rocky series, and I appreciated that the film worked perfectly well without needing much background. I’m sure it might be better for those who do have that background, but the story and themes come through very clearly.

A lot of the film is driven by the character of Apollo Creed, who only appears in the film via “archive” footage, but who looms over everything. Adonis is the product of an extra-marital affair, having never known his father. He is taken in by Creed’s wife, but his existence is kept a secret. As a fighter, to claim his father’s name would be to invite immediate scrutiny and comparison. He is trapped in a rough position, and the higher his profile rises, the more his father’s legacy looms. But it’s also his relationship to Creed that gets Rocky to agree to train him. All through the film, his relationship to his father is a double-edged sword.

The boxing sequences themselves are effective. Shot in an “on the ground” manner, they feel immediate and intense. They also work because of the character of Conlan (Tony Bellew), Adonis’s opponent in the climactic final fight. Conlan is an almost perfect foil for Adonis: both men struggle with their temper and their desire to fight. Their final fight is as much a battle of personalities and grit as it is a meeting of two different techniques. Conlan is more than just a one-dimensional villain, and it makes their showdown much more satisfying.

An engaging, rousing film.

Sebastiane, 1976

After daring to stand up to the Emperor, Sebastiane (Leonardo Treviglio) is reduced to the rank of private and banished to a remote troop on the coast. Once there he does find a sympathetic soul in Justin (Richard Warwick), who slowly falls in love with Sebastiane. But Sebastiane’s commander, Severus (Barney James) becomes sexually obsessed with him and torments Sebastiane for refusing to be with him. The more Sebastiane refuses to submit, the more intense Severus becomes in his punishments.

This overtly erotic drama-thriller simmers under a blunt sexual gaze and beautifully staged images.

I think that the perpetual nudity and sexual tension is what seems most striking at first, if only because it is so rare to see male bodies regarded with such a stark sexual perspective. But for me what really leapt off of the screen was the lovely imagery (though, yes, it does often overlap with the eroticism that’s embedded throughout). In one sequence, Sebastiane sits on a rock out in the water. The surface of the water is reflective, but where Sebastiane’s shadow falls, you can see through the water. Pushing the film’s theme of Sebastiane’s suffering as being sexual, we see the sky from the point of view of a disoriented Sebastiane who has been staked out in the sun for hours.

The film also does a pretty excellent job of showing the way that the performance of gender/bodies/power can easily trip into sexual context. Who is in the best shape? Well, that quickly can turn into who has the hottest body. Who is in charge? Well, all of a sudden you’re looking at who dominates who. Who is well-liked and charismatic? Well, now you’re just asking who everyone has a crush on. It’s clear in the film that many of the soldiers engage in queer flirting and sex acts out of boredom or lack of female company. But there are also several of the men, in addition to Justin, for whom the queer longing is genuine and not a result of their geographic and social isolation.

It’s in that portrayal of genuine queer love and lust that the film excels in both its erotic content and its more thriller-like aspects. On the romantic side, we get the tender relationship between Justin and Sebastiane. Justin tries to protect Sebastiane, and constantly tries to convince his friend to be less disobedient. Justin does this even when it comes at a cost to his own wellbeing. There are also soldiers Anthony (Janusz Romanov) and Adrian (Ken Hicks), who do seem to be in love with each other. A love sequence between Anthony and Adrian is probably the height of the romantic gaze on queer love. The camera doesn’t merely linger on the bodies of the men, but on the clear connection between the two of them.

It seems appropriate, if not a bit tragic, that Severus spying on Anthony and Adrian’s love-making is what seems to crystalize his own sexual obsession with Sebastiane. Severus seems convinced that he can break Sebastiane, and as the film goes on he is willing to go to more and more extreme lengths. There’s no question that Severus could rape Sebastiane if he so choose, but it’s pretty clear that physical domination is not what he’s after. (Or maybe not only what he’s after). He wants Sebastiane to say yes to him, but the more he tries to do so with force, the more contempt he finds in Sebastiane, who redirects his own desires into a kind of infuriating pacifism and endurance.

I had very few issues with this film. I didn’t care for some of the treatment of animals in the film, especially the rough handling of some of the pigs in the movie.

A unique film that would make a great “tragic queer things happening in military groups by the seaside” double feature with Beau Travail.

Jubilee, 1978

Queen Elizabeth (Jenny Runacre) is shown the future when John Dee (Richard O’Brian) summons the supernatural Ariel (David Brandon). And that future is bleak! The streets are ruled by violent young people, especially the volatile Amyl Nitrate (Jordan), pyromaniac Mad (Toyah Willcox), violent Bod (Runacre, in a dual role), and a hodge-podge of fellow punks. As they pursue their own interest, they must contend with the equally violent police and the far reach of powerful music producer Borgia Ginz (Orlando).

This might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I found myself totally on its frequency and enjoying the dark humor and pointed critique of it all.

There is a kind of rebellion that consists of pushing back against oppressive social and political structures. There is another kind of rebellion---a very teenage flavor, typically---that consists of pushing back against ANY structures just, you know, because. Shut up! You can’t tell me what to do!

The characters in this film represent a heady mix of both flavors of rebellion. This isn’t mere teenage restlessness. We see that there’s been a general breakdown of the society around them, and also the violence that comes at them in the form of murderous police. But their response to the chaos around themselves is to push back with an equal dose of chaos, dishing out plenty of pain to those who cross their paths.

Jordan makes a strong impression as Amyl, who thinks back wistfully on her time as a ballerina, but is now obsessed with writing her own history books. Amyl seeks to compress history, simplifying and drawing parallels. Her history lectures are a mix of youthful philosophizing (“Was Hitler really that bad? Or does it just seem that way because he was so recent?”) and teenagerish trolling (she devotes a mini speech to valorizing the crimes of Myra Hindley). In Amyl, we get the classic youthful contradiction of someone who is at times incredibly self-assured, and at the same time clearly very lost.

The film does a good job of leveraging the supporting characters to good effect. One of the punks, Crabs (Nell Campbell), has a bad habit of falling for guys and then taking part in their murders. In a visual, visceral scene, Crabs has sex with a young man she calls Happy Days (Gene October) entwined in a large sheet of red plastic sheeting before her roommates pounce on him and together they asphyxiate him with the plastic. Ian Charleson and Karl Johnson play a pair of incestuous, laconic brothers called Angel and Sphinx. A young Adam Ant plays a promising musical act known as The Kid.

But in addition to the engaging, tragicomic chaos of the street kids, there’s a plot thread that centers on Borgia Ginz, the music producer. Having seized control of all media production, Ginz holds a tremendous amount of power. Through him, the punk aspiring anarchy of the young people is commodified into music singles and concerts and merchandise. The teens want to escape the structures of power around them, but ultimately find themselves turning again and again to the oldest power structures: money and fame. It’s a criticism that’s still relevant today: people who rail against social structures but still adhere to those structures for comfort and safety. At the same time, and despite the characters being pretty despicable at times, there’s not a lack of sympathy for the teens. Sure, they’re a mess. But what else are they supposed to do? What other pathway have they been given?

There is a degree to which the film is a bit more subdued than you might expect. But there were plenty of plot twists and turns, or engaging visual moments that I stayed onboard with the film from beginning to end.

Om Natten, 2007

Mette (Neel Ronholt), Sara (Laura Christensen), and Stephanie (Julie Olgaard) are all young women seriously ill with cancer. As they bond with each other, they must also navigate the complicated relationships they have with their loved ones, and also their fears and anxieties about what their future holds.

This was a well-acted short that paints an agonizing portrait of dealing with deadly illness at a young age without quite managing to say much that’s new about such a situation.

The actresses all do a good job of showing the ups and downs of dealing with a serious, possibly terminal illness. They are constantly being torn between addressing what’s happening in the moment and thinking about the bigger picture. One of the women hasn’t told her parents that she’s ill, and you can sense that there’s almost a superstitious element to it. Sure, it sounds like they’ve had a bit of a bust-up, but maybe more it’s that calling them would make her situation real in a way that she’s hoping to deny.

At every turn, this is a pretty grim film. The doctors and nurses are shown to be only medium supportive, often telling the women that they need to just take their pills---morphine--and try to chill out. It’s an incredibly isolating scenario, and the only moments of lightness or hope come from the way that the women bond with one another, planning a New Year’s celebration amidst downturns in health and looming scary operations.

At times, though, the film slips into “the misery is the point” territory. The character who won’t call her parents has the most complete arc, but the other characters sometimes feel like they’re being used mainly to facilitate that character’s realization that she needs to reach out to her family. It’s not exploitative, per se, but it does sometimes feel as if the voyeurism of seeing these women at their most vulnerable isn’t balanced by what the film is trying to show us about their experiences.

The Holy Girl, 2004

Amalia (Maria Alche) is the daughter of a woman named Helena (Mercedes Moran) who works at a hotel where a medical conference is taking place. On the cusp of womanhood and trying to reconcile her religious devotion with her emerging sexuality, Amalia becomes fixated on a man named Dr. Jano (Carlos Belloso). This dynamic becomes incredibly complicated when Jano commits an act of sexual assault against Amalia at the same time that Helena is becoming attracted to him.

Anchored by a sensitive examination of the way that a young person is trying to reconcile seemingly incompatible elements of her internal life, the various plot strands don’t quite cohere in a satisfying way.

Much as she did in the film The Headless Woman, director Lucrecia Martel mines a great deal of tension and interest by immersing the viewer in the perspective of someone who is confused and not being helped all that much by the world around them. Amalia makes for a compelling protagonist, as she tries to simultaneously interpret the behaviors of the adults around her and make sense of the seeming contradictions between her religious beliefs and her physical desires.

The film does a pretty great job of drawing a clear line between the internal workings of the character of Amalia and the actions of the adults, especially Jano. From Amalia’s point of view, Jano’s public assault---in which he grinds up against her at a musical performance---is confusing, maybe a little bit of a turn on, and certainly a call to action. We see how Amalia tries to put Jano’s action into some sort of context, eventually landing on the idea that it’s her religious duty to “save” Jano. But the movie is completely unambiguous about what kind of person is and how wrong his actions are. And it’s this clear stance that makes Amalia’s turmoil all the more powerful. We can see that Jano is a creep, but Amalia is so wrapped up in trying to figure out what it all “means” that she over-corrects in trying to figure out how to help him.

At the same time that we’re watching Amalia figure out how to save Jano (and going “Oh, sweetie: no, baby. No.”), Helena’s attraction to Jano evokes a really different reaction. As an adult, you expect her to pick up better on his ick factor. Obviously the fact that he’s assaulted her daughter adds dramatic weight to all of their scenes together, but there’s a frustration in watching her pursue this guy who is wildly uncharismatic. While Amalia seems blinded by her lack of experience, Helena seems blinded by a kind of desperation.

Belloso’s performance as Jano is something of a secret ingredient to the film’s success, as it would have been very easy to make him a suave player. But instead he’s a relatively subdued character, the kind of bland that allows each woman to project her own ideas onto him. Because he’s such a blank slate, he can be whoever they imagine him to be.

Ultimately, however, the story didn’t quite cohere in the way that I hoped it would. The character work with Amalia is really strong, but the subplot with Helena and Jano feels like mere observation. There’s nothing wrong with observation, but contrasted against the strong work with Amalia’s character it feels aimless and a bit lacking. Too much time in the film is spent away from Amalia, and not enough of it feels worth leaving that character behind.

Strong performances and one great character arc, sitting in a film that doesn’t quite pull all of its threads together in a satisfying way.

The Boss, 2016

Michelle (Melissa McCarthy) is a high-flying investor who gets nabbed for insider trading. On leaving prison, her only ally is her former assistant, Claire (Kristen Bell) and Claire’s daughter, Rachel (Ella Anderson). As Michelle tries to get some traction back, she is sabotaged at every turn by her nemesis, Ron (Peter Dinklage).

This comedy has winning turns from all of its leads, but they cannot overcome an unfunny script that strands them in mean-spirited, repetitive sequences.

It should not have been hard for this film to be a really good time. McCarthy is hilarious and I find Bell to be one of the most charismatic people---in character or in person--ever. The supporting cast is talented and the premise, at its core, leaves space for plenty of slam dunk jokes. So why is this movie so deeply not good?

It becomes really clear about one act in that the film’s strategy is just to take, like, three jokes and recycle them for the whole runtime. Joke one is Michelle saying inappropriate things in front of children, usually Rachel’s scout troop. Joke two is Michelle and Ron having had a robust love/hate sexual relationship. Joke three, which appears in the last act, is wouldn’t it be funny if a man was willing to perform oral sex on another man as part of a heist?

Those three jokes make up about 80% of the humor in the film, and they aren’t funny the first time. Fundamentally, the movie can’t decide what it wants to do with the character of Michelle. Is she deep down a good person who was just wounded by a tragic childhood? Or is she actually a bad person? A lot of the humor comes from her going above and beyond just hurt person behaviors. I really didn’t care for a running joke where she bullies one of Rachel’s fellow scouts for being gay and “manly”. She mocks a person whose pet has died. She tells a recently bereaved man that his wife was a “whore”.

Meanwhile, Bell’s Claire is mainly used as a plot convenience, most often just standing in the background while Michelle says something terrible and then going “Michelle!” in a scolding way to absolutely zero effect. There’s a kind of cute subplot where she starts dating a smitten co-worker named Mike (Tyler Labine). One of the only genuinely fun parts of the movie involves Michelle critiquing the outfit Claire is planning to wear on their first date. When she reveals that it’s a nursing bra, it got a genuine out loud laugh from me. But we can’t have nice things in this film, and the last act is just Mike repeatedly arguing or offering or questioning a plan that involves giving a security guard a blowjob.

There are a handful of decent visual gags. I liked the touch of all of Michelle’s shirts being these ridiculously high turtlenecks. Michelle’s absurd teeth-whitening device is funny. But pratfalls eventually just don’t pop when they’re surrounded by such underwhelming characters and writing.

A very disappointing product from some actors I usually really enjoy.

The Crash Reel, 2013

Leading into the Vancouver Olympics, the big drama in the snowboarding world was the rivalry between Shaun White and Kevin Pearce. But before the Olympics take place, Pearce suffers a catastrophic head injury while training. This documentary examines Kevin’s path to stardom, his attempted recovery from his injury, and the bigger picture of the ethics of extreme sports.

This documentary is exceptional, managing to tell a clear, coherent story while alternating between the searing Pearce family dynamics and the bigger picture of risk and extreme sports.

The part of the documentary that hit the hardest for me was the stretch covering Pearce’s recovery in the hospital. It is both amazing and heartbreaking to watch him slowly emerge as his brain heals. For weeks and months, his family is by his side as he regains the ability to speak, listen, walk, and remember. The film is willing to take time to acknowledge how lucky Pearce is in his recovery, taking a few minutes to remember another young man who came into the hospital at the same time as Pearce, but who did not survive.

But what comes after Pearce’s physical recovery is just as harrowing. Once he regains the ability to walk, and once he’s had surgery to correct a lingering issue with his eyes, Pearce wants to get back on the slopes. This causes a tremendous amount of distress to his family, especially his mother and father and one of his brothers, David. David has Down Syndrome, and he has very complicated emotions watching his brother willingly go back into a sport that could leave him permanently disabled or dead. David has no control over his disability, and to watch someone make a choice to risk his brain health is particularly hurtful and anxiety producing for him. Pearce takes his family’s reluctance as a lack of faith, but it becomes clear that he’s not aware of some of his own limitations in the wake of his injury. The family gives the documentary crew wide-ranging access to their home and most personal conversations.

Zooming out slightly, the film does a great job of exploring the way that traumatic brain injuries can become an “invisible disability”. On the outside, Pearce looks fully recovered and is even very articulate. But scenes from therapy sessions and some of his private conversations reveal that he’s suffering from serious depression and mood swings. Later in the film, he meets another young man who looks totally recovered on the outside, but has some really serious lingering effects. This young man is unable to touch his elbow on command (“This one?” he asks, touching his foot, then his shoulder). Worse, he’s seemingly lost a good sense of his morality, telling a story about running over his little brother in a golf cart with a big smile on his face and saying terrible things to his mother.

Finally, the big picture thread of the documentary is about the ethics of the sports themselves. Most athletes don’t have insurance, or else their sponsors only cover them in very specific events (and don’t cover them at all for training accidents). As years have gone by, the dimensions of the sports have grown tremendously: a half pipe used to be 8 feet tall, but now can be 22 feet tall, meaning that someone who takes a bad jump can free fall as far as 40-plus feet before hitting the ground. As one of the interview subjects notes, people WANT to see gnarly wipeouts and crashes. For some fans, the idea that someone could get hurt or even killed is part of the appeal of the extreme sports world. Of course, this is all a sliding scale. How high is too high? How fast is too fast? People can die from just skiing down a normal slope and hitting a tree, so how do you make extreme sports safe? And what does “safe” even mean?

At first I had a hard time clicking with the people in this film. There are a lot of people in this crowd who give off bad-boy-rich-boy-spoiled-kid vibes. When people laughingly talk about trashing hotel rooms or having wild parties, my sympathy tends to drop significantly. But director Lucy Walker does such an amazing job of framing the way that these young people are vulnerable to a larger system, that whether or not I liked them, I still felt moved by their stories.

Whether you have an interest in snowboarding/sports or not, this documentary is a must-watch.

Cocaine Bear, 2023

A drugs drop goes terribly wrong, resulting in several gym bags full of cocaine dropping into a national park. Sari (Keri Russell) is trying to track down her daughter and her daughter’s friend who have played hooky to hike to a waterfall. Ranger Liz (Margo Martindale) is hoping to impress an inspector she has a crush on. And Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), in mourning over the passing of his wife, has been sent with his friend Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr) to retrieve the cocaine by his gangster father, Syd (Ray Liotta). Unfortunately for all involved, a local black bear has gotten into one of the duffel bags and is very, very high on cocaine. As the aggressive bear roams the forest looking for more drugs and more human snacks, the various characters must survive the wild animal and each other.

Despite a faltering final act and one or two subplots that don’t really work, I was charmed by this film and had a blast watching it in the theater.

This movie wants to be an on-purpose trashy film. And honestly, for the most part it worked for me. The movie won me over when the bear did a line of cocaine off of a man’s severed leg, and it had me on its side from that point on. Ehrenreich and Jackson Jr get the best writing and also the most interesting subplot. Ehrenreich wants out of the criminal life, and Jackson Jr is torn between supporting his friend and getting their job done. The two have good chemistry and rapport, and they also benefit from some of the better writing. Ehrenreich is the only character who gets anything resembling an arc, but it’s enough to pull the film through the weaker moments.

I also really enjoyed a sequence in which two paramedics (Kahyun Kim and Scott Seiss) arrive, totally unaware of what has been happening. (“They called us here for a concussion!” one of them wails, looking at a man whose head has been completely obliterated.) The whole scene is funny, and it culminates in one of the better comedy-action set-pieces in the film, all set to the bounce and bop of “Just Can’t Get Enough”.

The rest of the movie, outside of Eddie and Daveed, is passable, and at times kind of weak. The plot about Sari looking for the two kids (played by Christian Convery and Brooklyn Prince) falls pretty flat. I personally think that this comes down to some really weak writing, especially for the kids, and the young actors are left stranded with clunky dialogue that no real child would ever say. The adult actors have more experience navigating this kind of writing, but the children clearly are having a harder time getting around some of the language. There’s no character growth for Sari or the kids, and it feels like they get a full 10-15 minutes of screen time that would have been better spent with other characters. Isiah Whitlock Jr. plays a detective also on the hunt for the missing drugs, and he likewise gets very little in the way of an arc.

Fortunately, the film is just 95 minutes long. Whoever animated the bear deserves major props, because it looks great and has as much or more personality than the human characters. Whether it’s dancing in a rain of cocaine, “swimming” backward on the dirt toward a terrified Eddie, or glaring down at intruders into its territory, the bear is a winner every time it’s on screen.

There are definitely some weak moments and subplots here, but the plots that do work and a fantastic coke-raging bear keep the film moving.

The High Note, 2020

Maggie (Dakota Johnson) is an assistant for successful musical artist Grace Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross), but Maggie dreams of being a producer. Secretly doing remixes of Grace’s work, Maggie is constantly being shut down by Grace’s manager, Jack (Ice Cube). But when Maggie discovers a talented, relatively unknown artist named David (Kelvin Harrison Jr) and convinces him to let her produce his album, she starts to be pulled between her dreams and her obligations to Grace.

The characters and performances in this one are interesting and fun to spend time with, but the plot meanders before concluding in a distractingly contrived manner that is very unsatisfying.

There are really three different stories taking place in this film, and until the last act they weave into one another in a pretty neat way. There’s Grace and the crisis she faces as she must decide if she’s going to push to make new music or allow her manager to bundle her off to Vegas for a future of greatest hits tours. There’s the story of Maggie trying to realize her dreams of being a producer and the conflict that creates with Grace. And finally there’s the sweet romance that starts to blossom between Maggie and David as they work together.

For the most part, these plots mesh together pretty well. Grace’s mounting panic about her future and her relevance as an artist only amps up as Maggie starts to pull away, and as a result Grace becomes angry at Maggie and displaces a lot of her frustration onto the young assistant. Grace is surrounded by people whose main interest is Grace pulling in more and more cash, leading them to try and push her into decisions that are the most financially beneficial. This isn’t just Mark, but also a woman named Gail (a very funny June Diane Raphael) who is Grace’s “house manager”, which largely seems to consist of lethargically cleaning out the swimming pool and lusting after Grace’s fashion hand-me-downs. In her vulnerable state, Grace reacts poorly to Maggie’s honest, challenging opinions about where Grace should go with her music.

There’s also good interplay in the subplots about Maggie producing David’s album and their emerging romance. Maggie has led David to believe that she is a producer, not just an aspiring one, and so the closer they become, the more this deception-by-omission takes on weight and consequence. Johnson and Harrison Jr. have strong, subtle chemistry that suits their scenes well. Their ease with one another makes them seem well matched both professionally and personally.

There’s also a pretty strong supporting cast, including Bill Pullman as Maggie’s music loving father, Eddie Izzard as one of Grace’s contemporaries, and Zoe Chao as Maggie’s best friend.

But a weak ending can really ding a film, and I did not care for the last 20 minutes or so of this one. At all. We learn a piece of information that feels beyond contrived, and there’s an unnatural sense of contortion in the plot as it works to get all of its characters where it wants them by the end. While I appreciate a film where there are no overt villains, that means that the character arc must come to a satisfying place. And in that regard this one just doesn't stick the landing.

A good film with strong performances and characters, let down by an unsatisfying last act.

The Substitute, 2007

A wild high school classroom gets quite a jolt when a substitute teacher (Andrea Jublin) arrives and throws the classroom into even more chaos with his own erratic, unprofessional behavior.

This short comedy juggles two different concepts, neither of which pans out in a particularly satisfying way.

For about the first half of its run time, the film tries to get laughs out of the substitute saying or doing shocking things in the high school classroom. He flirts with one of the teenage girls, he makes sexist and homophobic remarks to the students, he bullies and embarrasses one student in particular. If you don’t guess in the first two minutes where this is going, well, maybe you’ll be surprised by a reveal that comes halfway through the film.

In the second half, the film contrasts the classroom ecosystem with a more corporate world. Here there are hierarchies, power struggles, and so on, but with a veneer of civilization. The main character gazes longingly across the street and into the rooms of the high school.

But . . . what is this movie trying to say about these kids or about this man? There’s a voiceover at the end of the film where the man waxes philosophical about the purity of high school, but that doesn’t at all match what we see of the high school or what the man tries to find in his adventure in the high school. By the time the film ends with a dedication along the lines of “to those who have trouble controlling their behavior”, I was totally lost.

I will give a shout out to the young man who plays a teen from whom the substitute steals an autographed soccer ball. He is very funny and goes all in with his performance.

The Mozart of Pickpockets, 2006

Richard (Richard Morgieve) and Phillippe (Phillippe Pollet-Villard, who also wrote and directed this short) are hustlers who are part of a crew who use fake IDs and staged scenes to rob people around town. When their compatriots are busted, including their fake ID maker, the two men are at a loss. Until, that is, a young boy (Matteo Razzouki-Safardi) begging in the street follows them home and shows his own special talent for slight of hand.

This is a darkly funny, well-paced drama comedy.

This short film puts its main characters’ positive attributes and flaws front and center, giving you equal opportunity to cheer the group on and facepalm when they make bad choices.

Morgieve and Pollet-Villard are charming as the lead duo, two men for whom short cons and theft are such an ingrained way of life that they can’t even conceive of not surviving that way. Razzouki-Safardi is, well, adorable. But the young actor also pulls off the ability to make his character seem at once sly and guileless, which is a charming and mystifying combination.

Once the men realize what a gift they’ve found in the young boy, they are not content to merely get by, and they come up with grander and grander plans to take advantage of his skills. This adds suspense to the final act, as you must wait to see if the men have pushed their luck just one step too far.

An engaging story that uses exactly the right amount of runtime.

Tanghi Argentini, 2006

Andre (Dirk van Dijck) is an office worker who has been wooing a woman named Suzanne (Hilde Norga) online, bonding over their mutual love of dance and specifically the tango. As the two prepare to meet for the first time, Andre has a serious problem: he can’t actually dance. Andre begs his colleague, Frans (Koen van Impe) to help him learn the tango, but can the two of them get Andre dance floor ready in two weeks?

This is a breezy, sweet short with a great plot and a neat ending.

The film starts with a pretty typical look at isolation of cubicle work, but soon turns into a cute look at a friendship that develops. Frans is at first hesitant to help Andre, but before long the two are shimmying past each other by the office’s filing cabinets. Whatever happens with Suzanne, it’s fun watching Andre and Frans bond over their shared mission.

This is the kind of film where, once it’s over, you realize how well laid out all of the elements were. The performances are fun and the whole thing is very heartwarming.

Definitely recommended.

The Tonto Woman, 2008

A woman named Sarah (Charlotte Asprey) has been returned from years of captivity with American Indian tribes, but has been left marked with facial tattoos and the community’s knowledge of her experience. Her husband (Richard Brake) has banished her to an isolated shack in the desert. One day a man named Ruben (Francesco Quinn) arrives to rustle some of her husband’s cattle, but instead finds himself captivated by Sarah.

This western short looks amazing and its lead characters are engaging, though the way that it pulls in the husband character at the end feels a bit contrived.

I can’t say enough nice things about how good this film looks, from the sets to the costumes to the makeup showing Sarah’s tattoos. There’s a great mix of grit and beauty that evokes a lot of great trappings of Western films and makes you feel at once that you’re at home in this world.

I also enjoyed the budding relationship between Sarah and Ruben. Sarah is used to men coming to gawp at her, both voyeuristically watching her bathe and just wanting to catch a sight of her and her marked face. But Ruben is genuinely interested in Sarah herself, eschewing his cattle rustling plans to woo her, despite hostility from the locals.

But once Sarah’s husband comes back into the picture, the plot and character work feel like they lose a bit of heft. The husband character simply isn’t very well developed, and the movie sidelines Ruben to show us the reinvigoration of a marriage that we have no reason to think highly of. This man has banished his wife to be lonely and spied on by random pervs, and then Ruben comes along to just facilitate saying “But she’s still hot, though, right?”.

So the ending might be a bit of a let-down, but with its amazing look and moving central story, this one is definitely worth checking out.

Department Q: A Conspiracy of Faith, 2016

Detectives Carl (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Assad (Fares Fares) are put on the case of a message found in a bottle from a child claiming to have been kidnapped. Finding the long-lost message just happens to coincide with the kidnapping of a brother and sister from a deeply religious household. As the detectives scramble to find the original victim and recover the most recent ones, the kidnapper (Pal Sverre Hagen) plays mind games with them.

This mystery-thriller is incredibly engaging when it’s in investigation mode, but when it tries to explore bigger themes it falls a bit flat.

The mystery aspect of this movie is incredibly interesting. I really enjoy mysteries where an old case and a new case overlap, and solving one leads to enlightenment about the other. The detectives are at once trying to find the writer of the original note and trying to save the children who have just been taken. Understanding what is happening hinges on figuring out the connection between the kidnapper, the original victim, the new victims, and the families involved.

The action itself is also pretty compelling, and this film has a much higher body count than I’d originally expected. Outside of the two leads, I really could never be sure who would survive. Characters who seemed to be key players would unexpectedly not make it to the next act. The film establishes early on that the kidnapper has probably killed at least one child, and so the fate of the kidnapped children was never obvious.

The performances are pretty good from all of the leads. There’s a kind of self-satisfaction that Hagen exudes as the kidnapper that makes him very menacing and very easy to hate as he goes about his actions. The two lead detectives have good chemistry. One of the better dynamics in the film is the fact that Assad is religious while Carl is not, and yet the religious communities/families with whom they interact assume Carl as their natural ally. I think the film manages to make some interesting observations about the way that insular communities can work, and the dangers of assuming who “your people” are in terms of where you place your trust.

What doesn’t work so well is the film’s attempts to examine the idea of faith via its villain. I mean, people can definitely have some wacked out ideas, but when the bad guy laid out his motivations and intentions, it just seemed really dumb. There’s a neat question through the film about what it means to have faith, who deserves our faith, and what a betrayal of faith looks like. If the family of the kidnapped kids gets help from the police, are they showing a lack of faith in God? Does faith or the lack thereof help when your job forces you to encounter depravity and cruelty on a regular basis? That’s all fine and interesting. But the villain’s ideas are cartoonish compared to these more nuanced questions, and it was honestly hard to take the character at all seriously once he’d given his big monologue.

And while your mileage may vary on this point, there was some silliness in terms of different characters having almost supernatural abilities to sneak up on others, sneak past others, go unnoticed, etc. Not awful, but something that ramps up in the last act.

A solid mystery that doesn’t quite stick the landing, but benefits from the suspense it holds through almost the entire runtime.