Movie Review: Rebecca (2020)

Genre: Romantic Drama Mystery  

Director: Ben Wheatley  

Starring: Lily James, Armie Hammer, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ann Dowd  

Running Time: 121 minutes  

Synopsis: It's the 1930s in Monte Carlo, and the personal assistant (Lily James) to Mrs. Van Hopper (Ann Dowd) meets and falls in love with wealthy widower Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer). They marry and settle at Maxim's Manderley estate in rural England. The new Mrs. de Winter learns that her predecessor Rebecca was adored before dying in mysterious circumstances, and finds the authoritarian housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas) protective of Rebecca's legacy. As Maxim grows distant, the new Mrs. de Winter has to uncover secrets of the past.

What Works Well:  The inherent strength of Daphne Du Maurier's story registers first as a romance then a mysterious drama, director Ben Wheatley generally avoiding suspense. The gorgeous sets are straight out of a glossy magazine, with colours popping into images of wealth. Kristin Scott Thomas perfects the tight condescending smile and resolutely commits to Danvers as a guardian of the past, while the new Mrs. de Winter's unsettling experiences reach a peak during a costume ball that veers into a gargoylian nightmare.

What Does Not Work As Well: Compared to Hitchcock's mood-rich version, the attractive locales here remain soulless, and the two main performers struggle for depth, never rising above the status of intruders from a different era. Armie Hammer lacks the necessary darkness to convey complex grieving, and Lily James is too obviously a misfit in Manderley's world. After a careful set-up, the final act is a jumbled rush, depriving the momentous revelations of any time for reflection.

Conclusion: Enjoyable vintage imagery but lacking the corresponding substance. 



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Movie Review: Crisis (2021)

Genre: Crime Drama

Director: Nicholas Jarecki

Starring: Gary Oldman, Armie Hammer, Evangeline Lilly, Greg Kinnear, Michelle Rodriguez

Running Time: 118 minutes

Synopsis: Three stories related to the opioid addiction crisis are set in Detroit and Montreal: DEA agent Jake (Armie Hammer) works an undercover operation to bring down ruthless gangs involved in pill distribution and manufacturing on both side of the border; addicted mother Claire (Evangeline Lilly) investigates the sudden death of her teenaged son; and university researcher Dr. Bower (Gary Oldman) is pressured to ignore lab results that could undermine approval of the latest opioid developed by a powerful pharmaceutical company.

What Works Well: Writer and director Nicholas Jarecki creates a competent companion piece to Traffic (2000), providing each story with sharply defined characters and a good share of screen time. Artificial constructs are avoided, allowing the three plots to only lightly interact. The enforcement, personal, and business angles provide a steady stream of punctuation marks in the form of action, shock, and dilemmas both ethical and financial. Armie Hammer, Gary Oldman, and Evangeline Lilly lean-in to their roles with requisite earnestness.

What Does Not Work As Well: Underdeveloped side-characters and messy loose ends (Claire's addiction; Jake's sister; Dr. Bower's numerous colleagues and foes) create a tangle of distractions. While the core subject matter still harbours potency, the narrative is barely distinguishable from daily headlines, and is delivered with enough mechanical efficiency to double down on the inherent intractability of the crisis.

Conclusion: Cold, cogent, and capable, but not creative



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Movie Review: Death On The Nile (2022)

Genre: Crime Mystery

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Starring: Kenneth Branagh, Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Annette Bening, Russell Brand

Running Time: 127 minutes

Synopsis: In 1937, legendary detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) is invited to the Nile river honeymoon cruise of Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer) and his new bride, the wealthy Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot). The newlyweds believe their lives are in danger. The large group of suspects includes Simon's vindictive ex-lover Jacqueline (Emma Mackey), as well as Linnet's business manager (Ali Fazal), heartbroken former lover (Russell Brand), and personal maid (Rose Leslie). 

What Works Well: A relaxed old-fashioned attitude permeates through this Agatha Christie adaptation, and the scenic settings are postcard perfect despite CGI fakery. Gal Gadot and Emma Mackey engage in a duel of fetching gowns, while director Kenneth Branagh and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos complement the vacation vibe with long, fluid takes. Poirot is humanized with a backstory starting in the Great War trenches and encompassing a great love, and is even afforded the flicker of a new romance.

What Does Not Work As Well: Too many dead bodies pile up on the boat before Poirot uncovers the plot, and the sailing is cluttered with many plastic passengers along for the ride with little likelihood of meaningful contributions (Annette Bening, Tom Bateman, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Sophie Okonedo, and Letitia Wright all meander onto the deck). Once finally revealed, the conspiracy is torpedoed by execution holes. While character diversity is forcibly wedged-in, local Egyptian culture is notably absent, and the 127 minutes of running time undermine crisp storytelling.

Conclusion: Despite pretty visuals, the boat lists under the weight of too many forgettable characters and far-fetched events.

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Movie Review: J. Edgar (2011)

A biography of the legendary FBI Director, J. Edgar sparkles in patches but otherwise wallows in the greyness of a secretive personality.

In a rather clumsy narrative device, most of the film's events unfold in flashback as Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) recounts key events to a young agent. In 1919, Hoover's mentor Attorney General Palmer narrowly escapes an assassination attempt. Placed in charge of finding the perpetrators, Hoover establishes his reputation at the Bureau of Investigation by clamping down on criminals he perceives as anarchists and communist agitators. Even as he matures Hoover remains deeply influenced by his domineering mother Anna Marie (Judi Dench). He romantically pursues secretary Helen Gandy (Naomi Watts) but she only wants to focus on her career and becomes his permanent confidential assistant.

The 1932 kidnapping of celebrity aviator Charles Lindbergh's baby son grabs the nation's attention, and Hoover argues for increased money and resources for a politically independent national crime fighting agency. In 1935 he is appointed the first head the new Federal Bureau of Investigation, and proceeds to create a professional organization using increasingly scientific methods to combat crime. New college graduate Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) is one of the agents recruited by Hoover, leading to a lifelong friendship - and more - between the two men. As his career progresses Hoover builds a collection of secret files, and uses his knowledge of sordid personal details to maintain his grip on power under a succession of United States Presidents.

Hoover was in charge of the FBI and its predecessor agency from 1924 until his death in 1972, a total of 48 years. Dedicated to crime fighting and an expert at consolidating power and navigating around politicians, Hoover was an enigma, a master at keeping and using secrets, and as such a most difficult man to decipher.

Director Clint Eastwood, working from a script by Dustin Lance Black, has a go at finding the human being behind the legend. Despite a mammoth length of 140 minutes, the film is only partially successful. Eastwood bathes the screen in the grey and pale brown of government bureaucracy, and initially gives about equal time to crime fighting and personal insights. But when tackling Hoover's character, J. Edgar first suggests an overbearing mother with her claws deep in her son's psyche then sinks too far and too deep into the mud of the relationship between Hoover and Tolson.

Rumours of Hoover's homosexuality have long swirled around his legacy, and here Eastwood portrays a deep friendship and long-lasting companionship, underpinned by Hoover resisting the expression of a present love, leaving Tolson more tortured than content until it's too late.

Regardless of how much truth resides in this version of the relationship between the two men, the lovers' subplot becomes the overriding obsession of the film, dramatically detracting from any other aspect of Hoover's life. In the film's final act professional machinations at the FBI are relegated to interruptive snippets, the crime fighting almost forgotten. And overall, after the Lindbergh case Eastwood generally loses interest in the FBI's activities and how Hoover shaped them in favour of some quick and dirty arrest recreations and conversations about secret files used to cow Presidents into staying out of Hoover's hair.

The film requires Hoover, his assistant Helen Gandy and Tolson to age about half a century, with a decision made to have DiCaprio, Watts and Hammer play the characters throughout. It's a huge ask from the makeup department, and they generally fail. DiCaprio can play young but as an old man is never anything other than DiCaprio in bad old man makeup. Hammer suffers mightily, his aging transforming him into a survivor of a cinematic zombie apocalypse, and that's before a severe health crisis befalls the character. Watts emerges with the least amount damage, her aging portrayed relatively realistically and with grace.

With unmistakable quality on both sides of the camera J. Edgar sustains its weight, but not without evidence of sagging.

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Movie Review: Hotel Mumbai (2018)

A recreation of the large-scale 2008 terrorist attacks, Hotel Mumbai portrays selfless bravery amidst unfolding panic and deadly coordinated mayhem.

It's November 2008 and 10 heavily armed and well-trained terrorists, all indoctrinated young men, arrive in Mumbai on an inflatable dinghy. In constant touch with their handlers through cell phones and earpieces, the terrorists split up to attack various predesignated targets.

At the lavish Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, chef Hemant Oberoi (Anupam Kher) and waiter Arjun (Dev Patel) are among the staff members and take pride in providing exceptional service. The guests include the wealthy and recently married Zahra (Nazanin Boniadi) and her American husband David (Armie Hammer), along with their infant son and nanny Sally (Tilda Cobham-Hervey). Vasili (Jason Isaacs) is a tough Russian ex-military type also staying at the hotel.

After killing scores of civilians at a train station terminal and other locations, a subgroup of the terrorists infiltrate the Taj and start randomly killing guests and staff, while seeking out foreigners as hostages. With local authorities outgunned and help slow in arriving, Hemant, Arjun and other staff members have to find ways to shelter and save as many guests as possible.

Based on real events, with chef Oberoi an actual character and the other featured guests and staff members amalgamations of real survivors and victims, Hotel Mumbai is an astounding achievement. Tense, harrowing, gripping and heartbreaking, often all at the same time, the film recreates with unblinking audacity the tragedy of a large-scale terrorist slaughter and conveys what it means to live through an unfolding hell.

With terrorist attacks aiming to inflict maximum damage an all too frequent occurrence around the world, Hotel Mumbai pauses and humanizes the scale and depth of the atrocities. The statistics become husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, infants and nannies, businessmen, backpackers and locals, and life-long employees dedicated to their guests and working to support their families. Each has a story and a life disrupted or terminated by human-inflicted terror.

And director Anthony Maras, who co-wrote the script with John Collee, insists on also defining the attackers and their loss of humanity. They are portrayed as indoctrinated and uneducated young men from rural areas, bewildered by the big city surroundings and fully in the grip of handlers providing continuous reassurance and brainwashing through earpieces. The promise of money to their families is part of the motivation, and Maras takes time amidst the carnage for an attacker to phone home and check on that commitment.

The film does not judge the official local non-readiness to deal with a well-planned attack, allowing the facts to speak for themselves as residents are left to fend for themselves for more than two days while a counter-terrorist force arrives from New Delhi. The brave attempts of a few out-gunned local police officers to provide help are highlighted.

With its numerous victims and relentlessly grim tone Hotel Mumbai is extraordinarily difficult to watch, but also an essential story of a barbarous bloodbath confronted by exceptional courage.

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Movie Review: On The Basis Of Sex (2018)

A biographical drama, On The Basis Of Sex recounts the story of the remarkable Ruth Bader Ginsburg as she starts challenging archaic laws preventing gender equity.

It's the late 1950s, and Ruth (Felicity Jones) is one of the few women first-year students at Harvard Law School. She clashes with the sexist attitudes of Dean Griswold (Sam Waterston) and Professor Brown (Stephen Root). Ruth is married to second-year law student Martin Ginsburg (Armie Hammer), who supports her career ambitions, and together they are raising baby daughter Jane. The couple deal with a health scare and relocate to New York City when Martin lands a corporate position specializing in tax law.

Ruth graduates first in class from Columbia, but because she is a woman corporate doors slam in her face, and she reluctantly accepts a professor position teaching sex discrimination and the law. By 1970 the anti-war and women's rights movements have translated into street protests, with Jane (Cailee Spaeny) an active participant. Martin notices a tax case involving gender-based discrimination against a male caregiver; he reignites Ruth's passion for practicing law, and she starts assembling a court challenge with far reaching implications.

Inspired by real events, On The Basis Of Sex has a terrific story to tell. The fight to free women's social rights from a myriad of discriminatory laws written by men and upheld by various court rulings over many years was a daunting undertaking. Ginsburg combined clarity of thought with astonishing determination to start the task of chipping away, and found the perfect opening in a case involving tax benefit discrimination against men.

As directed by Mimi Leder from a script by Daniel Stiepleman, the film does occasionally threaten to descend into standard-fare hagiography territory, and a few moments of gotcha triumphalism cheapen the narrative. Much better is the depth provided to Ruth's character. She is presented with well-rounded flaws, including an owly disposition and an inability to empathize and easily connect at a human level, traits that place her at odds with the teenaged Jane.

Also contributing to the film's appeal are supporting characters with key roles. Martin Ginsburg is much more than a supportive husband. He plays a crucial role as father and partner in legal strategy, the struggle for women's right much stronger when enlightened men join the battle. Mel Wulf (Justin Theroux) of the American Civil Liberties Union is another important part of the story, and helps to highlight the cross-currents of tension between pragmatism and academia.

On The Basis Of Sex earns respect for not shying away from several thorough but still accessible discussions of legal intricacies. Reversing the recent trend of biographies cowering away from explaining the relevant subject matter as in The Theory Of Everything and The Imitation Game, here Leder fearlessly wades into an admirable level of discourse about legal cases, briefs and process.

Felicity Jones as Ruth adopts an indomitable attitude of walking through walls until others suggest that maybe she needs to sometimes try and walk around. Her performance energizes the film, despite being short of nuance for stretches. Fighting discrimination On The Basis Of Sex required a new kind of warrior. Maybe Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not smile enough, but only because she was busy altering the course of history.

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Movie Review: Call Me By Your Name (2017)

A first-love romantic drama, Call Me By Your Name carries some emotion but is uneven, overlong and extremely slow.

It's the early 1980s, somewhere in northern Italy. Elio (Timothée Chalamet) is seventeen years old, preparing to while away the summer at the family villa. His academic father Mr. Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg), an archaeologist, hires graduate student Oliver (Armie Hammer) as his research assistant for six weeks.

A music lover, Elio is quiet and sensitive, and mildly resents giving up his bedroom for the confident, cocky and frequently dismissive Oliver. Both of them seek the company of girls, and Elio connects with Marzia (Esther Garrel). But gradually an undeniable attraction develops between Elio and Oliver, with the adolescent finally finding the encourage to instigate a relationship.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino with a screenplay by James Ivory, Call Me By Your Name takes two hours and twelve minutes to unfurl a simple and pretty basic love story between two men. This is a film all about the setting and the atmosphere, with endless near-static and lyrical images of fruit trees, scenic lakes, rural pathways and quaint villages. The film is often as enjoyable as flipping through postcards of the Italian landscape, and as cinematically exciting as watching paint dry.

When the actors are on the screen, Guadagnino still does not pick up the pace. It takes the best part of 90 minutes for the love between Elio and Oliver to finally emerge, and in that time the actors are occupied with many scenes of eating on the terrace, biking through the countryside, cavorting with local girls, playing the piano, reading weighty books and academic papers, and swimming. Call Me By Your Name is supposed to cover six weeks, but the film itself feels longer than that.

When the romance does finally blossom, it is noticeably unbalanced. It is clear why Elio would be enchanted by Oliver, and Timothée Chalamet's effective and expressive performance is by far the best thing about the film. But Oliver is much less believable, whether due to an underdrawn role that veers too far towards self-centred aloofness, or because Armie Hammer, at 31 years old, never comes to grips with the psyche of a graduate student falling for the seventeen year old son of his professor.

A late-in-the-day father-son talk resonates and finally injects the film with a much needed boost. But it arrives too little to make up for the preceding stultifying nothingness. Call Me By Your Name is a clumsily titled black hole, spinning slowly, killing energy and offering nothing in return.

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Movie Review: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

A lighthearted yet effective spy thriller, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is zippy, action-packed, and playfully funny.

It's the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War. The CIA's suave agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) extracts mechanic Gabriella "Gaby" Teller (Alicia Vikander) from East Berlin under the nose of the KGB's Ilya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer). But Solo and Kuryakin are then forced by their bosses to work together on a dangerous mission to track down Gaby's father, nuclear scientist Dr. Udo Teller (Christian Berkel), who has disappeared.

The superpowers suspect that wealthy industrialists and Nazi sympathizers Alexander and Victoria Vinciguerra (Luca Calvani and Elizabeth Debecki) have abducted Teller and are forcing him to develop a technique to mass manufacture nuclear bombs. Solo, Kuryakin and Gaby travel to Rome where Gaby's uncle Rudi (Sylvester Groth) works for the Vinciguerras. The spies have to infiltrate the network of evildoers, find Teller and guard against each other, while Gaby has her own agenda.

An attempted rebirth for the 1960s television series starring Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, the big screen return of U.N.C.L.E. combines action, humour and a good dose of personal rivalry. Directed and co-written by Guy Ritchie, the film stays true to the spirit of the original series. The story does not take itself too seriously, Solo and Kuyakin are both really good at what they do but also never quite friends, and the overall vibe of the sixties among the jet set is irresistible.

Ritchie conjures up several brilliantly kinetic set-pieces, always laced with a mean streak of humour. The frantic yet elegant opening escape from Berlin sets the stage and introduces Solo's ingenuity and coolness under pressure as well as Kuryakin's uncompromising persistence. Later a motorboat chase is elevated to sublime character-driven artistry, Kuryakin increasingly desperate on the water, Solo in a truck listening to romantic music while munching a sandwich, the two men apart but about to become professionally inseparable. An electric chair "glitch" is also a masterful display of background humour.

If one thing limits U.N.C.L.E., it's a lack of overall originality. The television series was always riffing on the James Bond tune, and the film, while undoubtedly polished to a modern shine, is obviously playing with a very old deck. From the foreign settings to the seduction of exotic women to the McGuffin of a disk at the heart of the chase, all the elements are overly familiar. Ritchie does his best to infuse style, including busy editing to play with micro level scene sequencing, but little that is new can be wrung out of the sophisticated spy sub-genre.

The performances are both slick and predictable, Cavill perhaps pitching for future consideration as Bond, while Vikander has the most fun with Gaby, the one character holding more cards that she initially lets on. Hugh Grant gets a small role as a master spy handler.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. may lack substantive innovation, but the film anyway has fun revisiting past glories.

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