REVIEW: “French Exit” (2021)

February 10, 2021 by Keith Garlington

Gazing over her forty-plus year career and considering the fifty movies to her credit, I’m not sure Michelle Pfeiffer has ever been handed a role this juicy. In the new dark comedy “French Exit” director Azazel Jacobs and screenwriter Patrick deWitt give Pfeiffer a deliciously surly lead character and a script that allows her plenty of room to unearth the character’s well hidden layers. It’s an odd and snarky concoction with a stabbing sense of humor and that ultimately stays afloat thanks to Pfeiffer’s fun performance.

For the unrefined (apparently such as myself), a ‘French exit‘ is when someone up and leaves an event or gathering without formally saying goodbye. The film’s title alludes to several things, all of which come into focus as the story moves forward. It’s something Frances Price (Pfeiffer) would know all about. The Manhattan heiress has soaked herself in New York City’s high society, blowing through her late husband’s fortune against the warnings of the family accountant. Now he hits her with the news that the money’s gone. “What did you think was going to happen? What was your plan?” the exasperated accountant asks. “My plan was to die before the money ran out. But I kept and keep not dying and here I am.” It’s a very Frances-like response.

Image Courtesy of Sony Pictures

As most of us do, Frances has a friend with an spare apartment in Paris. The friend named Joan (Susan Coyne) offers it to Frances so she can get away, clear her head, and have a place to stay until she can get back on her feet. Frances breaks the news to her son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) that the well has run dry and they’re moving to France. Malcolm is inexplicably hitched to his mother’s side despite being secretly engaged to a young woman named Susan (Imogen Poots). Frances doesn’t care for Susan and Malcolm doesn’t have the guts to tell his mother they’re getting married.

All of that sets up a story full of unusual turns, wacky encounters, and a final act that’s both head-scratching and slyly funny. Frances and Malcolm cross paths with a motley crew of side characters including a shady fortune teller (Danielle Macdonald), a neurotic neighbor in Paris (Valerie Mahaffey), and a private detective (Isaach de Bankolé) who’s hired but ends up sticking around. Oh, and a black cat named Small Frank who adds an ever stranger layer to the story. In some ways all of these characters give Frances a crash-course on how people live outside of her former social circles. They’re people she would have never spent a moment with in her former life, but now finds them enlightening in an unusual way. Or does she? It’s hard to tell.

Image Courtesy of Sony Pictures

It’s all a bit of a farce that doesn’t always work but it’s held together by Pfeiffer. Fashionably dressed to the hilt with her strawberry blonde locks sitting on the shoulders of her slender elegant frame, Pfeiffer embodies the defiant fading socialite. She’s brutally honest to a fault, impulsive, and also a bit twisted. Case in point, we learn that she’s the one who discovered her husband’s body after he died. But instead of immediately reporting it to the authorities she took a weekend shopping trip and called them when she returned. It’s a wacky little character detail that somehow fits Frances even though it doesn’t make much sense. And that emphasizes one of the film’s weaknesses. Several things in the movie’s back-end doesn’t make a lot of sense.

But back to Pfeiffer, what keeps her performance so compelling is the underlying sadness that she finds in Frances. Despite her icy could-care-less exterior, Frances is carrying more emotional baggage than she lets on. Jacobs and deWitt smartly latches onto their leading lady who is the film’s one constant. Both Pfeiffer and Frances fit right into the movie’s chief goal of addressing privilege and upper-class entitlement with a wry satirical bite. I just wish the rest of the movie fit as nicely. “French Exit” is set for a limited release February 12th before opening wide on April 2nd.

VERDICT – 3 STARS

REVIEW: “The Night” (2021)

February 9, 2021 by Keith Garlington

Iranian-American director Kourosh Ahari delivers a striking feature film debut with “The Night”, a cerebral slice of psychological horror that impresses as much with its style as it does with its ability to get under your skin. Set within the creepy confines of an old history-rich hotel, “The Night” does what so many other good horror movies tend to do – explore some engaging themes while keeping you thoroughly glued to the edge of your seat.

Babak (Shahab Hosseini, so good in the Asghar Farhadi’s 2011 Oscar winner “A Separation”) and his wife Neda (Niousha Jafarian) are a Los Angeles couple with a strained marriage. Despite sharing a beautiful infant daughter, there is a visible tension between them from the film’s earliest moments. Ahari and co-writer Milad Jarmooz don’t immediately tell us why. Instead they want their audience to listen, to follow their cleverly cryptic trail of clues, and to piece it all together ourselves. Oh, and they’re more than happy to send chills up our spines in the process.

Image Courtesy of IFC Films

Following a get-together at his brother’s house, Babak passes on an invitation to stay the night and decides to drive his family home. Never mind that he had a few drinks and shared a joint. After their GPS goes bonkers sending them driving in circles for an hour, a fed-up Neda demands they stop and find a hotel for the night. Their choice is the nearby Hotel Normandie (an actual hotel in LA), not quite Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel or Hitchcock’s Victorian Gothic Bates home, but with a similar eerie presence.

They’re greeted by veteran character actor George Maguire playing the nameless yet delightfully creepy night clerk working the front desk. Despite seeming completely vacant, the receptionist sets the family up on the top floor, room 414 to be exact. Worn out and equally tired of each other, Babak and Neda aren’t even settled in before they start hearing noises – giggles in hallway, the patter of running footsteps from above, and soon loud bangs on their door. First they think it’s someone harassing them. But as the night goes on Ahari shows that there’s something far more sinister than a pack of pesky kids.

Image Courtesy of IFC Films

The movie’s psychological edge really kicks in during the second half as Ahari gets us questioning what’s real and what’s a hallucination. A reappearing black cat, some unusual matching tattoos, a child’s voice softly calling “mommy” – just some the unnerving trickery to keep us guessing. At the same time DP Maz Makhani ratchets up the dread by using his camera to make the hotel a character. He slowly and methodically moves the audience from room to room, acquainting us with every shadowy corner and long spooky hallway. It’s visually striking and a key reason the movie works so well.

With a touch of Kubrickian flavor, “The Night” soon has its characters grappling with what’s inside of them as much as what’s inside the hotel. It’s here that the film’s themes slyly come into focus as does the richness of the story beyond the scares. Ahari uses every inch of his setting to immerse his audience and his characters in an atmosphere-rich environment and unloads in a final act full of chilling imagery and a steady feel of unease. “The Night” is streaming now on VOD.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

First Glance: “Coming 2 America”

February 8, 2021 by Keith Garlington

It’s hard to believe it’s been thirty-three years since Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall let loose in “Coming to America”. That John Landis comedy was a surprise hit that ended up being 1998’s third highest grossing film at the US box office. Over the years it has maintained its legions of fans mainly due to the great comic chemistry between Murphy and Hall. The two played an assortment of unforgettable side characters from so-bad-he’s-good singer Randy Watson, Clarence the barber, Reverend Brown, and several more.

But now get to “Coming 2 America” which last week released a brand-new trailer. This long talked about sequel sees Murphy’s Prince Akeem of Zamunda returning to New York City with his lifelong best friend and perpetual pot-stirrer Semmi (Hall) to find the son he didn’t know he had, a street-wise kid from Queens named Lavelle (Jermaine Fowler). Akeem takes his son back to Zamunda to teach him the royal ways, flipping the culture clash element that made the first film so much fun. The awesome supporting cast from the first film return along with some fresh faces. The storyline opens up some big questions and capturing the laugh-out-loud humor of the first film will be tough. Can it deliver like its predecessor? I don’t know but we’ll soon see.

“Coming 2 America” premieres March 5th on Amazon Prime. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or taking a pass.

REVIEW: “Malcolm & Marie” (2021)

February 8, 2021 by Keith Garlington

John David Washington and Zendaya have both seen their acting careers take major leaps forward over the past few years. The 36-year-old Washington’s big breaks have come a little later in life following his college and professional football career. Now he’s following in his father’s sizable footsteps especially after nabbing noteworthy leading man roles in Spike Lee’s “BlackKklansman” and Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet”.

The 24-year-old Zendaya started in the entertainment business at an early age, appearing in a number of kids television shows and movies. But her big screen breakout came in 2017 when she was cast in “Spider-Man: Homecoming”. Since then she’s appeared in “The Greatest Showman”, “Spider-Man: Far from Home”, and the highly anticipated remake of “Dune” (assuming it does eventually come out).

Image Courtesy of Netflix

The two stars come together in the new Netflix film “Malcolm & Marie”, an exquisitely shot chamber piece about a couple laying bare their tumultuous relationship over the course of a single fight-filled night. The film is written and directed by Sam Levinson who unquestionably has the commitment of his two lone cast members. But despite its charismatic co-leads, “Malcolm & Marie” devolves into an endurance test for the audience, one that grows more and more unlikable as it winds on.

Washington plays Malcolm, a filmmaker coming off a successful premiere screening of his new movie. Zendaya plays his girlfriend Marie who attended the premiere with him but was left with a sour taste in her mouth. The story begins with the couple arriving at a posh ultra-modern house provided by the production team behind Malcolm’s movie. Malcolm’s plan is to spend the night celebrating with his girl. So the first thing he does is grab a drink, cranks up some James Brown, and playfully dances from one room to another.

Marie is hardly as enthusiastic. She walks straight to the bathroom then to the kitchen where she puts on a box of mac-and-cheese to boil. Malcolm’s dizzying good mood leads to the first of two long-winded tangents about pedantic white film critics. A visually uninterested Marie listens to his rambling but clearly has something else on her mind, namely Malcolm forgetting to thank her during his speech at the premiere. While not mentioning her rightfully irks Marie especially since she believes she was the inspiration for his film, it just cracks the door for what becomes a night of fighting, fighting, and more fighting.

“I promise you, nothing productive is going to be said tonight“, Marie warns Malcolm before the venom starts to spew. Boy she wasn’t kidding. From there Levinson feeds us a steady buffet of profanity-laced tirades, meltdowns, and savage arguments with each of the two characters using long monologues to tear each other apart. It’s a toxic and unceasing back-and-forth that both Washington and Zendaya work hard to sell. But regardless of how convincing their performances are, it’s not easy to buy all that they’re saying and you can only take so much high-volumed vitriol before the characters become insufferable.

Image Courtesy of Netflix

Levinson’s script may drown us in animosity and resentment, but it does succeed in opening up his characters. Malcolm and Marie’s fights (and the occasional short breathers in between) tell us quite a bit about them, picking at scabs from their pasts and exposing their anxieties and insecurities. Then you have Levinson shooting on the experience of black filmmakers and the frustrations they feel when labeled, pigeonholed, and forced into categories because of the color of their skin. While equally loud and abrasive, these scenes do give us one of the few points of agreement between Malcolm and Marie – a shared disrespect for “Karen from the LA Times”, a white film critic indelibly entrenched in Malcom’s (and Levinson’s) headspace. But like everything else, even that turns into a disagreement between them.

“Malcolm & Marie” was filmed early into the COVID-19 lockdown on a minuscule budget, with a two person cast, one location, and a very limited crew (Zendaya actually did her own hair and makeup). The film offers up some alluring visual compositions, using the monochrome and the house’s walls of windows to do some interesting things with the camera. But regardless of how good the movie looks, by the end I was simply exhausted from the yelling. I was left cold and unconvinced of the central relationship. And I was left asking what was the point? Is it that love is hard? That love is messy? Both of those things are true, but I can’t help but think there are better and more bearable ways of conveying those themes. “Malcolm & Marie” is streaming now on Netflix.

VERDICT – 2 STARS

SUNDANCE REVIEW: “Eight for Silver” (2021)

February 5, 2021 by Keith Garlington

One of the biggest surprises coming out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival has been “Eight for Silver”, a gory old-fashioned horror movie that offers a fresh spin on the age-old werewolf story. The film comes from British writer-director Sean Ellis who is no stranger to debuting his films at Sundance. His latest film looks at the werewolf idea not so much as an individual curse but as a communal one. This novel perspective opens the door for Ellis to get into some meaty themes while still enjoying the sub-genre’s nuances.

The film opens on a World War I battlefield where French soldiers prepare to leave their trenches to storm a German fortification amid a hail of gunfire and mustard gas. Within seconds we’re moved to a medical tent where a surgeon removes lead from a wounded soldier’s abdomen. As the bloody extracted bullets clang into a pan, a final one looks much different than the others. “This isn’t a German bullet,” he says of the large pure silver slug gripped by his forceps. Oh how right he is.

From there Ellis travels back 35 years to the late 1800’s. He sets his story in Victorian England in the middle of a cholera pandemic, a little detail that fits the kind of atmosphere he’s going for. Seamus Laurent (Alister Petrie) owns a lavish country manor where he lives with his emotionally detached wife Isabelle (Kelly Reilly), their daughter Charlotte (Amelia Crouch) and their son Edward (Max Mackintosh). The wealthy and powerful Seamus is the leader of a group of property owners who have gobbled up most of the land in the area. It quickly becomes evident that Seamus is far more interested in tending to business matters than being a husband and father to his family.

One of the film’s more stinging themes considers the abuse of the lower class by the powerful and more directly colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and the mistreatment of indigenous groups. This comes to light after a caravan of gypsies set up camp on a patch of Seamus’ land. The Romani clan make a legitimate claim as the land’s original settlers and rightful owners. But Seamus and the other property barons will have none of it. They hire a group of mercenaries to intimidate the gypsies into leaving the area, but the confrontation turns violent. The impending savagery is captured in one of the film’s best shots. The static camera sits at a distance watching the twenty or so horseback riders approach the gypsy camp. It doesn’t move until the entire camp is ablaze.

Afterwards the mercenaries gather up the stragglers, executing them for their own amusement. Included in the barbaric purge is woman who uses her dying breath to place a curse the land. Days pass but then local children begin having the same nightmare, one that draws them to a grotesque scarecrow in the very field of the slaughter. Things get more disturbing from there. A child’s mangled body is discovered and Seamus’ son Edward is bitten by what’s believed to be the same ravenous creature. That same evening Edward begins having violent reactions before vanishing into the night.

All of that uncoils in the first thirty minutes or so and serves as a nice setup for Boyd Holbrook. The Kentucky-born actor sets aside his American accent for a well-tuned British one playing John McBride, a traveling pathologist who takes a personal interest in the strange goings-on around the area. Seamus calls on him to help find his son and track down who or what is responsible. McBride agrees but is soon butting heads with Seamus and other members of the local hierarchy over what’s really terrorizing their land.

From its earliest frames you can tell “Eight for Silver” is handsomely shot. It impresses both as a lush period piece and as gruesome gothic horror. Ellis serves as his own cinematographer and his camera plays an essential part in setting the film’s mood and creating its dread-soaked atmosphere. From his fog-cloaked exterior compositions to the cramped hallways of Laurent Manor. And Ellis makes a number of visual choices that payoff – his crafty his crafty use of light (or lack of it), his cold four color palette, the use of (mostly) practical effects.

When questioned about his qualifications by a skeptical landowner McBride explains “Our bodies speak even after death. I listen.” With “Eight for Silver” Sean Ellis gives him plenty to listen to. The movie has a good time tinkering with the werewolf mythos, changing it up in some cool and interesting ways while still embracing the gory goodness utilized in films like “An American Werewolf in London” and “The Howling”. And if you remember anything about this review let it be ‘AUTOPSY SCENE’. It’s unforgettable and I’ll leave it at that.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

SUNDANCE REVIEW: “Mass” (2021)

February 5, 2021 by Keith Garlington

“Mass” has generated a ton of well-deserved buzz following its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Writer-director Fran Kranz makes his feature film debut with this crushing close-to-home drama about two couples still coping with the loss of their sons years after a deadly school shooting. The film is driven by Kranz’s masterful script and four powerhouse performances. The material is heavy, the emotions are raw, and everyone brings the kind of honesty that a subject like this demands.

I can’t imagine taking on a topic like this was easy. But Kranz was compelled to tackle it following the Parkland school shooting in 2018. In penning the script he chose to focus on the aftermath rather than the shooting itself. In doing so he’s able to give time to the other victims – those who have had loved ones taken away from them through these senseless and unfathomable acts of violence. The characters Kranz gives us are so authentic they could be any number of real-world people who have been impacted by this stomach-churning trend.

The movie begins with the camera resting on a small town Episcopalian church. Inside, staff members led by the affable but slightly neurotic Judy (Breeda Wool), prepare one of their rooms for a meeting. Four chairs and a table are set up the center of the room. Water and snacks in the corner. A very businesslike social worker named Kendra (Michelle Carter) comes in and examines the room, rearranges the chairs, and scans for any emotional triggers. She’s well aware of what’s about to take place and she needs everything to be exactly right. Kranz doesn’t lay everything out right away, but he gives us clues to point us in the right direction. Essentially Kendra is a mediator bringing two sides together and the room is a neutral site where they can meet.

Just as Kendra has the room to her liking the first couple arrives. Jay (Jason Isaacs) and his wife Gail (Martha Plimpton) enter the church already looking worn down and emotionally spent. They’re there but reluctantly, seemingly following the advice of their therapist back home. “Don’t interrogate. Don’t be vindictive.” they repeatedly remind themselves. Within moments the second couple arrive, Richard (Reed Birney) and Linda (Ann Dowd), equally unsure about being there and a bit apprehensive. They too come with an incredibly heavy weight on their shoulders, one that forever connects them to the couple across the table.

Kendra leaves and the next 90 minutes are spent in the room with the four pain-ridden adults. After navigating through some awkward and uncomfortable small talk, Kranz and his characters start to unpack the real reason they have come together. Both families lost their sons in the same mass school shooting years earlier. Jay and Gail’s son Evan was among the many killed inside the school that day. For Richard and Linda the sobering difference is that their son Hayden did the killing.

In a remarkable show of restraint, Kranz keeps the conversations that follow firmly grounded and crushingly real. There’s nothing big or showy about them and there’s no waving to awards season voters. The closest he comes to a “big scene” is in a key moment with Gail, but it’s so deftly handled by Plimpton that you never second-guess it. That’s really the marvel of the film as a whole. You never second-guess any of it. Not the characters, not the interactions, not the emotions. Everything is rooted in truth. There’s not a hollow moment or a single false note.

It goes without saying that movies like this inevitably sink or swim on the backs of their cast. In “Mass” the four central performances are nothing short of magnificent with each screen veteran doing career-best quality work. Each performance is perfectly calibrated and distinctly personal to each particular character. Isaacs barely suppresses Jay’s frustration as he still tries to grasp the logic behind the shooting, quoting studies on the human brain while readily admitting he’s ill-equipped to understand them. Plimpton has less dialogue but her pained expressions tell us everything. Gail is holding so much inside of her that she could burst at any second. Dowd is so earnest in portraying a shattered woman tortured by her inability to reconcile the son she loved with the murderer he became. And Birney brilliantly balances Richard’s thinly veiled exasperation with his crippling sense of guilt.

“Mass” is a harrowing and emotionally draining chamber piece that may test your endurance. Kranz takes that into consideration, occasionally stepping out of the room to let us catch our breath. But despite the film’s challenging material, it doesn’t end without a ray of hope. It may just be a glimmer, but when dealing with something of such gravity and when the very notion of hope feels so foreign it’s a welcomed touch. And it works here because it feels genuine and it doesn’t undermine everything that came before it. It’s also fragile and far from guaranteed. By the end we still aren’t sure of what’s ahead for these four people or how their lives will play out. But that small sliver of hope gives us something to cling to.

In the end Kranz doesn’t pretend to have all the answers and he smartly makes his film about people rather than hot topics. There are references to the things that are often thrust to the center of these discussions – guns, violent video games, the internet. But the truth is something deeper has changed within our society. Something has polluted our ways of seeing each other, our ways of communicating. Our ability to respect, empathize, and show compassion has dulled. Why? We as a nation and a society are much like the four people in the church room. We don’t have an answers and we’re still looking. The key difference is they’ve been affected in the most devastating way imaginable and their experience should be an eye-opener for the rest of us.