The Ace Black Movie Blog

Showing posts with label Alfred Molina. Show all posts

Saturday, 28 June 2025

Movie Review: A Family Man (2016)

Genre: Drama

Director: Mark Williams

Starring: Gerard Butler, Gretchen Mol, Alison Brie, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina

Running Time: 108 minutes

Synopsis: In Chicago, Dane (Gerard Butler) is a high-performing workaholic at a headhunting agency, habitually ignoring his wife Elise (Gretchen Mol) and their children. He routinely uses unethical tricks at work, but still cannot find a position for unemployed aging engineer Lou (Alfred Molina). The agency's boss Ed (Willem Dafoe) is retiring and encourages cut-throat competition between Dane and Wilson (Alison Brie) to determine his successor, but a family crisis threatens to derail career ambitions.

What Works Well: This work-versus-family drama probes the pressures of being the sole income provider, and the dangers of being sucked into the take-the-next-work-phone-call-at-any-hour ethos. Gerard Butler creates a worthwhile character out of Dane, who has evolved into an unlikable and selfish man never available to his family, and disturbingly comfortable with maliciously manipulating lives and careers for personal gain. The plot's maturity registers in the respectable time it takes for the family crisis, once it strikes, to seep into his consciousness.

What Does Not Work As Well: The script displays a tendency for repetition, providing several examples of Dane's immoral work practices, and replaying the same argument with Elise more than once. Alison Brie is underused, and the dramatic moments in the final act quickly creep from sensitive to schmaltzy.

Key Quote:

Lou (to Dane): Every family has its issues. But you only have one family.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Friday, 17 May 2024

Movie Review: Not Without My Daughter (1991)

Genre: Drama Thriller

Director: Brian Gilbert

Starring: Sally Field, Alfred Molina

Running Time: 116 minutes

Synopsis: In 1984, American Betty Mahmoody (Sally Field) is living in Michigan with her Iranian-born husband Moody (Alfred Molina) and their young daughter Mahtob. Although Betty feels Iran is unsafe, Moody is desperate to visit his relatives and they embark on a two week trip. They find Moody's family consumed by zealotry, but Moody anyway announces his intentions to stay permanently in Iran, effectively abducting his wife and daughter. Betty desperately seeks to flee the clutches of her increasingly fanatical husband, but insists on not leaving her daughter behind.

What Works Well: Based on actual events as chronicled in Betty Mahmoody's book, this is a tense real-life thriller driven by fervor, a version of kidnapping, and a cacophonic culture clash. Director Brian Gilbert recreates the chaos of street-level Tehran as a fully animated and disorienting milieu, and Sally Field embraces the challenge of portraying a woman discovering inner strength after her life is stolen. Equally effective, Alfred Molina embarks on a brooding descent into cultural backwardness.

What Does Not Work As Well: The running time could have been trimmed or rebalanced to avoid repetitive notes within Betty's ordeal. Almost all the secondary Iranian characters are wooden cut-outs: neither the angry extremists nor the kind helpers are defined or justified in any meaningful way.

Conclusion: Prisons without bars may be the most difficult to escape from.

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Wednesday, 1 June 2022

Movie Review: Before And After (1996)

A choppy crime and legal drama, Before And After flounders in search of logic and focus.

In a rural Massachusetts community, pediatrician Dr. Carolyn Ryan (Meryl Streep) is married to industrial sculptor Ben (Liam Neeson). Their life is shattered when their son Jacob (Edward Furlong) becomes the prime suspect in the murder of local teenager Martha Taverner. Jacob, who is now missing, was the last person seen with the victim.

Carolyn is convinced it's all a misunderstanding. But Ben finds and destroys apparent evidence of foul play he finds in the trunk of Jacob's car. When the young man is apprehended, Carolyn and Ben hire lawyer Panos Demeris (Alfred Molina) to mount a defence. Not satisfied with evidence tampering, Ben fabricates a fake narrative to try and secure a not guilty verdict for his son.

An adaptation of a Rosellen Brown book, Before And After features a decent small-town mood, and the occasional spark in conveying a family in turmoil. As the narrator pondering the life-changing impact of a sudden crisis, daughter Judith (Julia Weldon) adds a peripheral but important observer's presence.

But otherwise, this drama barely rises above routine television fare, the Ted Tally script several drafts away from cinematic quality and never settling on a compelling theme. Stooping to the level of an asinine story, director Barbet Schroeder fails to leverage the talent at his disposal. Meryl Streep is caught in material well beneath her standards and delivers a disengaged, almost comatose performance. Liam Neeson oscillates between concerned father and outright boor working hard to make a bad situation worse.

Schroeder builds up to legal showdowns but never enters the courtroom, engaging instead in pre and post theatrics. Other structural problems arrive early then multiply. Ben never pauses to think whether the evidence in his son's trunk may vindicate rather incriminate, while prime suspect Jacob remains silent when it suits the script, then suddenly decides to spill the beans. Still thinking he is the smartest person in the community when plenty of clues suggest otherwise, Ben concots a web of lies that would never survive rudimentary examination. By this bewildering point, father, mother, son, and lawyer carry divergent agendas and different versions of the same events into the legal proceedings.

The one consistent thread is a dad's complex and misplaced devotion expressed through ill-advised acts and short-tempered confrontations. Guilty or not, with Ben as a father Jacob is already doomed.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Saturday, 7 May 2022

Movie Review: Chocolat (2000)

A tender drama with sprinkles of humour and romance, Chocolat is a playful story about the winds of change.

The setting is 1959 in rural France. Life in the small riverfront village of Lansquenet centres around the church, and the mayor Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina) ensures long-held traditions are respected. Free-spirited expert chocolatier Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche) and her young daughter Anouk drift into town. Vianne rents vacant premises in the town square from the crusty Armande (Judi Dench) and dares to open her chocolate shop in the middle of Lent.

The Comte is not impressed by the unmarried mother causing a stir in his community, but Vianne sets out to win hearts through her chocolate creations, and befriends Armande, who is on bad terms with her daughter Caroline (Carrie-Anne Moss). Vianne also helps Josephine (Lena Olin), who is stuck in an abusive marriage. The arrival of a band of river gypsies led by Roux (Johnny Depp) further disrupts the town, and Reynaud increases his efforts to drive those he deems undesirable out of town.

An adaptation of the Joanne Harris book, Chocolat is a whimsical experience. Director Lasse Hallström and writer Robert Nelson Jacobs craft a fairly predictable but still enjoyable light-hearted drama with a fairy-tale ethos. Aided by winning performances and an isolated but still vibrant locale, Vianne's adventures carry transformational themes into intimate encounters.

While never overbearing, serious issues infuse the drama with substance, with a focus on women at life's various stages. The elderly Armande is clinging to vivacious ideals despite a serious health crisis, while Josephine is the community's prospective outcast, a woman veering towards irrationality due to abuse. Both stories use poignancy to affirm a woman's right to break loose of expectations, especially when suffering.

More broadly, Vianne representing secular modernity clashing with religious traditions. She shuns local conventions, and later Roux joins her as a free spirit equally dismissive of the old ways. Although Vianne makes no attempt to bridge the divide, Hallström unquestionably - and rather simplistically - aligns his sympathies with the winds of renewal, and portrays the Compte as an antagonistic relic.

But delving deeper, Vianne's chocolate recipes and backstory are derived from ancient Mayan traditions, and so also carry the weight of history, but from a different culture and another corner of the world. Chocolat becomes an intriguing contrast between two keys to the heart, both mystical, but at least superficially incompatible.

In addition to the central stories featuring Armande and Josephine, Vianne's chocolates help one couple regain a sexual spark, and encourage one man (and his dog) to pursue a romance with a widow (Leslie Caron), both side-stories adding moments of levity. The performances merge with the impish mood, Juliette Binoche setting the tone for the women-dominated cast by knowingly investing in confections as gateways to the soul. Chocolat tilts to the sweet side, but is nevertheless irresistible.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Thursday, 17 December 2020

Movie Review: An Education (2009)

A coming of age romance, An Education enjoys a bright central performance and an excellent sense of time and place, but suffers from internal inconsistency and abrupt shifts in focus.

The setting is suburban London in 1961. Jenny Mellor (Carey Mulligan) is almost 17 years old and in her final school year, striving to secure a coveted admission to Oxford. She meets the much older and exceptionally charismatic David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard), who introduces her to his glamorous friends Danny (Dominic Cooper) and Helen (Rosamund Pike). David sweet talks Jenny's parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour) into allowing their daughter to join him on trips, first to Oxford then to Paris.

Jenny is dazzled by the good life of swanky restaurants, classical music concerts, luxury hotels and cool jazz clubs, although she is also exposed to David and Danny's questionable morals. Her increasingly serious romance with David starts to impact her school performance, much to the disappointment of teacher Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams) and headmistress Miss Walters (Emma Thompson).

Based on Lynn Barber's memoirs and directed by Lone Scherfig from an eloquent Nick Hornby script, An Education sparkles with wit and charm. Capturing a society on the cusp of revolutionary change as the war generation of Jenny's parents hands the baton to their more adventurous offspring, the story of first love is mostly familiar but enlivened by the cultural buzz of a new decade's gateway.

But Hornby and Scherfig also adopt a passive and rather bewildering non-judgemental stance on what is also a troublesome story of grooming. Although Jenny at 16 has reached Britain's age of consent, David's actions are the definition of creepy manipulation of an impressionable young woman as he toys with her emotions and plays her parents for fools, lies and embellishments the fake currency he freely hands out. That David transparently exposes Jenny to some of his shady business practices and may actually fall in love with her is flimsy justification.

At 24 but passing for 17, Carey Mulligan is a revelation, expressing with understated and patient elegance the frustrations, joys and responsibilities of emerging adulthood. But she does fall foul of an internal lack of consistency: Jenny is portrayed as smart, articulate and possessing phenomenal self-awareness and the ability to calmly debate with adults. In short, exactly the type of young woman who should have seen right through David's sleazy antics. Peter Sarsgaard does his part, shielding a predator behind a seducer's easy smile and jet-set lifestyle.

The final chapter grinds the gears with a jerky shift away from romance and the school-of-life towards the value of a traditional education, Miss Stubbs and Miss Waters suddenly gaining prominence. An Education is full of lessons learned, some more smoothly delivered than others.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Saturday, 11 March 2017

Movie Review: The Da Vinci Code (2006)

The most famous book of its era comes to the screen, and The Da Vinci Code is magnetic and muddled in equal measures.

While on a trip to Paris, symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is summoned to the Louvre, where Police Captain Bezu Fache (Jean Reno) is presiding over the gruesome murder scene of Jacques Saunière. Although he was killed by the assassin Silas (Paul Bettany), before dying Saunière left cryptic clues potentially implicating Langdon. Fache's interrogation is interrupted by detective Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), who claims to be Saunière granddaughter and helps Landon escape the Louvre and set out on a wild hunt to find the real killer.

By sequentially solving Saunière's art-related puzzles, many involving the works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Langdon and Neveu conclude that Saunière was a grand master of the Priory of Sion, a secretive organization dedicated to protecting one of the most explosive religious secrets in history. Langdon connects with his old colleague Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen) and starts to piece together a murderous conspiracy involving the someone called the Teacher working with Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molina) of Opus Dei to either find or destroy the Holy Grail. Neveu's family history increasingly becomes part of the story.

The adaptation of Dan Brown's runaway bestseller was always going to be a challenge, and director Ron Howard nearly buckles under the pressure. Seemingly overawed by the material, Howard delivers a bloated 149 minutes consisting mostly of characters debating undoubtedly compelling and competing versions of religious history, punctuated by a few implausible action scenes. What was exciting on the written page often becomes rather mundane on the screen, as the cerebral puzzles central to Brown's thrill ride only partially translate to a captivating visual experience.

The Akiva Goldsman script tries hard but is only successful in patches. He stubbornly refuses to shed any of the book's complexities. Every character and every twist and turn contained within almost 500 pages are crammed into the film, and the result is almost incomprehensible to anyone who has not read the book (admittedly, that's a small number). Despite the long running length, the film struggles for balance: most of the talk is about history, but when it comes to explaining the here-and-now conspiracy, Goldsman and Howard leave behind scattered fragments of a difficult to follow plot.

And yet The Da Vinci Code survives despite itself. There is enormous power in Brown's imaginative story, and the underlying strength of the material holds the drama together. Extrapolating the implications of the purported mission of the Priory of Sion and the supposed clues hidden in Da Vinci's Last Supper is a mind bending experience, and with help from an excellent Ian McKellen performance, Howard handles these scenes well. Paul Bettany is the other stand-out performer, providing the killer Silas with an intriguing mix of tortured pathos and grim determination.

Simultaneously astute and awry, The Da Vinci Code is a puzzle of partially perfected promise.

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Wednesday, 23 December 2015

Movie review: Species (1995)

A science fiction horror film inspired by Alien, Species competently transforms the premise to a murderous hybrid alien on the loose in Los Angeles, but suffers from plastic characters and routine execution.

A secret government space exploration lab has made contact with a seemingly friendly superior alien race. The aliens transmit an ingenious DNA sequence, and scientists under the direction of Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley) mix the code with human genes to create a girl they call Sil (Michelle Williams). When she starts experiencing painful nightmares, Fitch decides to exterminate Sil with cyanide. She breaks out, escapes the facility and makes her way to Los Angeles. Killing when cornered, Sil quickly grows into a woman (Natasha Henstridge), and starts seeking men to procreate with.

Fitch assembles a team of experts to hunt down Sil. Press (Michael Madsen) is a specialist in exterminating inconvenient fugitives on behalf of the government, and he is joined by Dan (Forest Whitaker), who has special empathetic powers, while Stephen (Alfred Molina) and Laura (Marg Helgenberger) are scientists. With Fitch they track Sil to Los Angeles, where she is leaving a trail of corpses in her pursuit of the perfect man to mate with.

With the monster effects created by H.R. Giger, the similarities with the Alien universe are numerous. Here again the alien is close to indestructible, seeks to breed, and uses humans to grow. When the Species alien beneath the skin is revealed, it may as well be the close cousin of the critters battled repeatedly by Ripley and company. Even the black-green tone and spaced title font on the film poster is derivative.

Species is never less than moderately exciting as an action movie with good, yucky special effects, and the occasional gory scare. But director Roger Donaldson, working from a Dennis Feldman script, is unable to do much with the premise. A fundamental problem resides with the characters of Fitch and his team members, who are underdeveloped, quite simplistic and generally unsympathetic. With no human protagonists worth investing in, Sil herself emerges as the most compelling character. And as a half-alien in a strange world, there is plenty for her to learn and then manipulate to gain the advantage over humans, LA style. Most appropriately, she picks up most of what she needs to know by watching television.

Sil's journey from frightened child to irresistible schemer is helped by newcomer Natasha Henstridge saying little and happily trading on her looks and sex appeal. She may be an alien in heat, but she is also in frequently naked human form, and the combination of seductive vulnerability and killer instinct becomes the driving force of the film.

But too often, the film defaults to stock humans-chasing-alien. A routine, prolonged, seemingly interminable climax in cave-like sewers below Los Angeles, trying hard to simulate a distant planet environment, sucks the remaining energy out of the film. Ironically, Species is at its most compelling when the alien is above the surface, disguised as just another California blonde.

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Movie Review: Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time (2010)

A video game adaptation, Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time contains some promise but also suffers as an overproduced spectacle occasionally trounced by excessive special effects.

The Persian Empire's kindly King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup) adopts scrappy street kid Dastan as his own child. Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal) is raised as a brother to the king's sons, heir to the throne Tus (Richard Coyle) and the intense Garsiv (Toby Kebbell). 15 years later, Tus, his brothers and their uncle Nizam (Ben Kingsley) lead the Persian army on their latest military campaign. They debate whether to sack the mystical city of Alamut. Spies working on behalf of Nizam uncover evidence that Alamut is manufacturing and supplying weapons to Persia's enemies, convincing Tus to attack and defeat the city. Dastan's group of unconventional and highly athletic warriors are instrumental in forcing open Alamut's well-defended gates.

The victorious Persians come face to face with the defeated and exceptionally beautiful Tamina (Gemma Arterton), Princess of Alamut, but find no evidence of weapons being manufactured. Instead, Dastan realizes that an evil conspiracy is at play, and the real objective of the attack is to seize a magical dagger powered by the sands of time, which can unwind history. Dastan finds himself in possession of the dagger but accused of treachery and on the run with Tamina. He needs to clear his name, save Persia from a dark fate and help Tamina safeguard her destiny as the guardian of the dagger.

Transforming a video game into an engaging film is always a challenge, and this effort from Disney gives it a good go while staying within reach of the young adult core target market. The characters are fleshed out, a fairly complex plot is created, and themes of family, the bond between brothers, benevolence, honour and destiny are woven into the narrative. The relationship between Dastan and Tamina is also at least interesting, and the two take their time to transition from foes to allies to lovers.

Director Mike Newell also delivers plenty of attractive visuals, making good use of the desert, and finding some stylish, dramatic shots of silhouetted warriors. The camera work often echoes the trademark fluidity of the original games.

But the film stumbles when the CGI special effects kick in. While the Prince's remarkable jumping and running skills are already overplayed, Newell loses all perspective when it comes to several scenes of mass combat, which are barely coherent, and fall over the cliff of credibility when countless merciless Hassansins (secret mercenary assassins) enter the picture. Worse still are sequences of carnage with terrain and buildings disintegrating in so much incomprehensible rubble. The computers are overclocked to render over-the-top images tumbling over each other, and the end result is a mess of graphics that make little sense but all the same swallow up the characters.

The film also struggles with a dagger-and-sand story that gets ever more finicky as the film rushes to its climax, with Tamina revealing new angles on the mysteries of the small dagger and mountains of sand in frustratingly small increments and just when it suits the plot.

Other than being too white and speaking in bewildering English accents while representing Persians and Asians in the desert, the performers are adequate. Gyllenhaal and Arterton make for an attractively dreamy couple, while Alfred Molina steals the scenes he's in as an unlikely tax-evading entrepreneur specializing in, of all things, ostrich racing.

Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time is reasonably bloodless and harmless entertainment, but nevertheless an opportunity missed due to an over reliance on hard drive speed and not enough faith in character strength.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Wednesday, 11 November 2015

Movie Review: Frida (2002)

A biopic of Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo, Frida is filled with passion and deeply-felt human emotions. Salma Hayek shines in the central role, but the script does suffer from some wayward targeting.

As a young girl in Mexico, Frida (Hayek) develops a crush on painter, communist and hopeless womanizer Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina). After getting caught up in a severe bus crash, Frida's life hangs in the balance, and she suffers severe injuries to her back and legs. After many months she eventually recovers enough to resume her life, dedicating herself to painting and reconnecting with Diego. They get married, with Frida understanding that Diego can never be faithful, but he promises to at least be loyal to her.

Frida does not hide her bisexual tendencies, and establishes close relationships with Diego's ex-wife Lupe Marín (Valeria Golino) and sultry mutual friend Tina Modotti (Ashley Judd). With Diego's star rising in the art world, the couple enjoy a stint in New York, with Diego winning a commission from Nelson Rockefeller (Edward Norton). But Frida suffers another personal tragedy, and Diego does manage to hurt his wife with his exceptional inability to resist any woman. A bizarre encounter with none other than Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush), now a fugitive from the Russian revolution that he helped to inspire, completes the inspiration for Frida's works of art.

Directed with panache by Julie Taymor, Frida is a singularly engaging film. The Latin lust for life positively jumps off the screen, and even the most secondary of characters display an ardent desire to contribute. The mix of art, politics and sexuality is captured by Taymor in an intoxicating broth, and Frida benefits from an unabashed, proud and outspoken posture. Frida, Diego and their circle have little time for apologies, justifications or requests for permission: they dive into life with purposeful commitment, and the biography buzzes with the energy of people worth knowing.

At just over two hours, the film is packed with incident and never flags as entertainment. Taymor constructs Frida's life around several tragic milestones, starting with the harrowing bus crash, and tracks her evolution from fledgling classical artist to a woman able to capture life's agonies in surreal, grotesque and captivating images. Life throws plenty of challenges Frida's way, and she navigates through them with a headstrong determination to embrace each obstacle and remain in charge, no matter what. With short but plentiful scenes the film builds and maintains momentum consistent with a woman who throws back twice as hard.

The film does steal some focus away from its main character. Although the story is recounted from Frida's perspective and her emotions remain at the core of all events, much of the second half of the film does centre on Diego, and at least as much time is invested in his character development and artistic achievements. His unwillingness to compromise his politics and his inability to refrain from casual sex dominate large segments of screen time, with Frida reduced to victim, observer or both. While her life with Diego clearly influenced Frida's art, the film tilts the balance more towards Diego as the source of inspiration and less on Frida as the artist who drew stimulation from a fascinating man.

Salma Hayek is excellent at every stage of Frida's life, and allows the character's flaws, vulnerabilities, strengths and desires to meld into a complete person. Alfred Molina matches Hayek scene for scene, and although Diego's arc is simpler, Molina is able to demonstrate that an overweight and outspoken frumpy man can exert an inexorable and long-lasting force on women. Antonio Banderas gets a small role as a member of Diego's intellectual circle.

The film's visual aesthetic is frequently inspired by Frida's paintings, and Taymor cleverly weaves the artwork into the narrative scenes without drawing attention to them, allowing the sometimes gruesome beauty to speak for itself. Life inspires art, and Frida is a worthy celebration of a fascinating artist's tumultuous journey.