Movie Review: The Good Nurse (2022)

A medical drama, The Good Nurse uncovers evil lurking where patients are most vulnerable.

In a prologue set at a Pennsylvania hospital in 1996, a patient suffers an unexpected seizure and dies despite desperate resuscitation attempts, with nurse Charles Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) watching on.

In 2003, Charles joins the ICU night shift staff at Parkfield Hospital in New Jersey. He establishes a friendship with nurse Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain), a co-worker and single mom hiding a heart condition. She needs a transplant, but will only be eligible for health insurance after a full year of employment. Charles promises to help her reach that milestone.

Elderly ICU patient Ana Martinez dies unexpectedly. Detectives Baldwin and Braun (Nnamdi Asomugha and Noah Emmerich) investigate and encounter stonewalling by hospital administrators and lawyers, but uncover Charles' suspicious history of working at nine different hospitals and always departing under a cloud of silence. When another ICU death occurs at Parkfield, Amy suspects Charles of involvement and becomes the one inside source helping the investigators.

Based on actual events, The Good Nurse adapts Charles Graeber's true-crime book with more proficiency than artistry. Writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns pens a human-centred script focused on Amy's harried life, allowing Charles to emerge as a spectral shadow of death, a cold, efficient, and troubled killer lacking coherent motives. Director Tobias Lindholm embraces sickly hospital greys and greens, with subdued lighting to represent bleary night shift fatigue.

Some traction is achieved within this milieu, both Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne bringing admirable intensity to their roles, but with Cullen's guilt a matter of public record, dramatic tension remains limited. Lindholm stretches out the machinations to the two hour mark, and despite leveraging the twin horrors of a murderous nurse and a system more interested in avoiding lawsuits than saving lives, the third act is occupied with half-hearted motions pointing at foregone conclusions.

Amy's dilemma is amplified by initially perceiving Charles as an ally helping to relieve her work load, sympathetic to her serious health issue, and befriending her kids. Wilson-Cairns offers precious little else about Charles (he hints vaguely at the traumatic death of his mother), leaving the drama with a murky antagonist. The Good Nurse engages thanks to the source material's potency, but the missing shifts are also noticeable.



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Movie Review: The Trial Of The Chicago 7 (2020)

A courtroom drama based on real events, The Trial Of The Chicago 7 explores a legal assault on democratic principles by regressive but camouflaged ideology.

August 1968 is approaching and various groups of anti-Vietnam War protesters plan to descend on Chicago for the Democratic Party National Convention. The Mayor's office responds with a large police presence and a National Guard deployment. Five months later, the Nixon administration assumes power and new Attorney General Mitchell directs federal prosecutor Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to prosecute seven activists for the events of August 1968 on charges of cross-state conspiracy to invoke violence. 

With Judge Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella) presiding, the defendants include Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong) of the Youth International Party, Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) of the Students for a Democratic Society, and Dave Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch) of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. They are represented by defence counsel William Kunstler (Mark Rylance). Bizarrely thrown into the same courtroom is Black Panthers leader Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), but without a lawyer to represent him.

From the outset the trial proceedings descend into farce, with Judge Hoffman obviously prejudiced against the defendants and taking every opportunity to exasperate Kunstler. And over the long trial duration, underlying tensions between Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden bubble to the surface.

While delving into events from a different societal era, The Trial Of The Chicago 7 provides piercing commentary on the misuse of power as a cautionary tale applicable in a modern context. Writer and director Aaron Sorkin deploys his usual sharp dialogue exchanges and witty retorts to enliven infamous court proceedings from the late 1960s, but the contemporary message hides in plain sight: one vindictive Attorney General and one intolerant judge are all it takes to threaten basic freedoms and destroy lives.

The script generally excels in both words and dynamism, skipping from pre-convention preparations straight to the trial, then circling back to the Chicago clashes between police and protesters in often gripping, tension-filled flashbacks as part of the testimony. The fine margins between protests and riots are defined by the briefest of words and actions and become key turning points in activist history.

But with the charges clearly trumped up and the judge on a one-man quest to pervert justice, this is starkly delineated right and wrong storytelling. The few arguments between Abbie Hoffman (revolution through dope and hippies!) and Tom Hayden (revolution through politics and policies!) don't disguise the absence of meaningful intrinsic moral dilemmas. Sorkin also displays a tendency to twiddle the manipulative knobs to eleven, and on a few occasions the music soars to schmaltzy registers while the courtroom histrionics abandon theatre in favour of opera.

The ensemble cast members contribute plenty of talent but enjoy few opportunities to shine. The defendants are efficiently drawn, although the characters are static. Mark Rylance as the lawyer Kunstler carries the heaviest dramatic weight, while Frank Langella's Judge Hoffman is the pantomime villain. Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the lead prosecutor starts strong but fades almost into insignificance, while Michael Keaton contributes a small but key role as a prominent defence witness. Important female roles are conspicuous by their absence.

It may be too well-intentioned, but The Trial Of The Chicago 7 nevertheless carries timeless lessons about the slippery slopes threatening all democracies: the system only functions when the guardians care enough to protect it.



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The Movies Of Eddie Redmayne

All movies starring Eddie Redmayne and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Good Shepherd (2006)

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)

My Week With Marilyn (2011)

Les Miserables (2012)

The Theory Of Everything (2014)

The Danish Girl (2015)

The Trial Of The Chicago 7 (2020)

The Good Nurse (2022)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Danish Girl (2015)

A drama loosely inspired by real events, The Danish Girl is the story of artist Einar Wegener who underwent a pioneering sexual transformation to become Lili Elbe. The film features remarkable performances from Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander, but suffers from slow pacing and a narrow focus.

It's the mid-1920s in Copenhagen, and landscape artist Einar Wegener (Redmayne) is celebrated in cultural circles. His wife Gerda (Alicia) is also an artist but still struggling to establish herself. Einar starts to display a strong emotional attraction towards women's clothing, and Gerda encourages him to model for her in a dress. She then helps Einar attend a social party as a woman, and the persona of Lili emerges. A physical encounter with a man called Henrik (Ben Whishaw) causes confusion and resentment, with Einar and Gerda unsure whether Henrik is attracted to Lili as a woman or Einar as a cross-dresser.

Einar starts to feel more comfortable as a woman, and gradually Lili becomes the more dominant presence. Gerda's career takes an upturn when her contemplative paintings of Lili find a market, but with her marriage in turmoil, she turns to Einar's childhood friend Hans (Matthias Schoenaerts) for help. Lili consults with a succession of doctors to find a pathway to happiness, and finally starts to work with doctor Kurt Warnekros (Sebastian Koch) on a potential groundbreaking sex reassignment surgery.

Directed by Tom Hooper, The Danish Girl takes quite a few liberties with the story, but remains an affecting and well-intentioned film. Einar's transformation to Lili is portrayed as difficult, courageous and slow, a journey of self discovery made more challenging by the artists' public profile and happy home life. The film is a quiet and considered human drama, and unfolds with plenty of tenderness. It is also visually appealing, the artistic social circles of Copenhagen and later Paris of the 1920s recreated with understated elegance.

However, the film is also quite slow and singular. The pacing is anemic, scenes often stretched thin and well past their usefulness as Hooper struggles to find enough material to fill two hours. The Lucinda Coxon script is also unable to branch into any real breadth. The secondary characters hover around Einar and Gerda in a state of undefined animation. Lili's clumsy interactions with Henrik and later Hans' blatant pursuit of the vulnerable Gerda are fragments of sub-plots that fail to properly progress.

The two central performances are excellent. Eddie Redmayne seamlessly evolves with his character from Einar to Lili. And as Lili, Redmayne is perfect in continuing the transition from a stiff man learning to emerge as a woman, and then gradually as a confident woman who can no longer imagine functioning as a man. Alicia Vikander is excellent in strong support, The Danish Girl also the story of an astute wife grappling with a seismic shift in her life's expectations. Vikander keeps Gerda balanced between tentatively supportive and understandably bewildered, always keeping an eye on her own happiness and never dropping into sappy self-sacrifice territory.

An essential story of individual and societal progression, The Danish Girl is sometimes poignant but also ponderous.

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Movie Review: The Theory Of Everything (2014)

A biopic about scientist Stephen Hawking, The Theory Of Everything is a romance highlighting a couple's unglamorous struggle against a vicious disease before Hawking achieved fame for his theories about space and time.

At Cambridge University in the 1960s, a young Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) is an awkward but brilliant physics student. He gains an interest in the origins of time, and starts a romance with Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones). Just as Stephen is setting his research direction and getting serious about Jane, he is diagnosed with a motor neuron disease, a condition that will atrophy his body but keep his brain intact. He is given two years to live. Jane insists on marrying him anyway, and they start a family which eventually grows to include three children.

Stephen's condition does not prove to be fatal, but he gradually loses control of most of his muscles, although he keeps on working and developing groundbreaking scientific theories. Jane holds the family together as best as she can, but with Stephen permanently confined to a wheelchair, she finally realizes that help is needed. Local church choir leader Jonathan Jones (Charlie Cox) volunteers to share the physical and emotional load, and he and Jane develop feelings for each other. Meanwhile, tarty nurse Elaine Mason (Maxine Peake) starts to play a larger role in Stephen's life. With the help of revolutionary computer-assisted technology Stephen writes and publishes A Brief History of Time, achieving scientific celebrity status but also fundamentally changing the household dynamic.

A mass entertainment biographical film about Stephen Hawking was never going to be about theoretical physics, and The Theory Of Everything steers as far away from the topic as possible without ignoring it all together. The film is based on the book Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Wilde Hawking, and so has it roots in an exploration of the family man rather than the scientist. The smatterings of physics and astronomy that do make it into the film revolve around the most superficial conversations about black holes and the origins of the universe, with most of subtext invested in whether the role of God in the creation of the universe can be consistent with emerging scientific theories.

With the science that made the man pushed to the edges of the story, The Theory Of Everything settles down to portray a romance, a familial struggle against disability, and finally two people drifting apart as Hawking's work propels him into the spotlight of what passes as celebrity in the scientific community. Many of the film's elements are familiar from previous fare such as A Beautiful Mind (scientist battles illness with help from wife and achieves peer recognition) and My Left Foot (artist battles handicap and achieves fame). The Theory Of Everything never reaches the emotional heights of Ron Howard' classic, but neither does it get consumed by the disability angle. Director James Marsh finds the space where real people live and struggle to stay alive and relevant, and creates a film that quietly celebrates the human spirit.

Eddie Redmayne gets half a film to act and half a film confined to a wheelchair, severely contorted and with limited ability to verbally communicate. He provides Hawking with a sparkling humanity and humour that transcends his deteriorating physical state. As storytelling the film does suffer from the main subject slipping first into incomprehensibility and then immobility, but Redmayne's greatest feat is keeping a glint in the eye as a reminder that while the body is almost totally failing, the brain is fine, beavering away to theoretically ponder the mysteries of the cosmos.

With a central character who gradually descends into a non-communicative state, the emotional centre was always going to be held by Jane, and the film is a tribute to the woman who saved Hawking from himself, gave him the will to live, and supported him through the years of obscurity. As often is the case when playing opposite a dominant physical performance (Jennifer Connelly in A Beautiful Mind, Tom Cruise in Rain Man), Felicity Jones has the more difficult role to remain relevant and grounded, and her performance is a joy. From college student to hardened wife balancing her needs with an impossibly demanding husband, Jones shines as a woman who devotes her life to her love but remains on the real side of saintliness.

The Theory Of Everything uncovers the man behind the theories, and more importantly, the great woman who fell in love with a broken man and saved his soul.

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Movie Review: My Week With Marilyn (2011)

Another sacrifice at the altar of Marilyn Monroe obsession, My Week With Marilyn offers a captivating Michelle Williams performance, but not much else of interest.

It's 1957, and Marilyn Monroe (Williams), the biggest movie star in the world, arrives in London to film what would become The Prince And The Showgirl, a lightweight comedy with Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and Sybil Thorndike (Judi Dench). Amidst the predictable media storm, young Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) lands a job as Third Assistant Director on the production, essentially an errand boy to satisfy Olivier's whims. Clark is eager and enthusiastic, and starts a tentative relationship with wardrobe assistant Lucy (Emma Watson). Meanwhile, his position on the set provides him with a front row seat as the production stutters to a start.

Monroe is with her newly minted third husband Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott), but their relationship appears cold. She is much more dependent on her acting coach Paula Strasberg (Zoë Wanamaker), whose role is to protect Monroe's fragile self esteem. Olivier's wife Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormond) is gracious enough but keeps a wary eye on her husband. With filming in turmoil and Monroe's frequent late arrivals to the set infuriating Olivier, Miller abruptly abandons his new wife and heads back to the US. Monroe turns to Clark for comfort, the superstar and the third assistant director raising eyebrows as they start to spend time together, despite the objections of Monroe's business partner Milton H. Greene (Dominic Cooper).

My Week With Marilyn is based on two (!) books by Colin Clark chronicling his limited interaction with Monroe, and the movie cannot shake the nagging sentiment that this is one temporarily starstruck man milking a short experience for all its worth. And while there may be an interesting story here about the ease with which hypercharisma can distort reality, director Simon Curtis does not help by portraying the time that Marilyn and Clark spent together as an almost mystical ideal romance.

This may have been how a mesmerised Clark remembered events; it simply comes across as one man emotionally drowning within the allure of an incredibly beautiful but deeply troubled woman, and mistaking her ability to influence all men for something resembling a whirlwind relationship. More pointedly exploring the difference between what Clark felt and what actually happened would have made for a much more interesting movie.

Instead we get a princess and the pauper fairy tale, complete with the prolonged montage sequence of the couple touring Windsor Castle and Eton College, and then skinny dipping. At best Monroe was furious that her husband abandoned her, desperate for company, irrational due to constant pill popping, and found the most naive sap to baby sit her ego. But the Adrian Hodges script treats the week as a magical coming together of two souls, and the saccharine taste just doesn't convince.

Stretching the shallow events of one week to a respectable movie length means that every detail is prolonged past its reasonable level of importance. Ironically, the scenes revealing the struggles of filming a movie with an erratic Marilyn are more interesting, Curtis capturing the continuous tension created by an unstable star, frequently late to the set and trying to pretend that the role requires great insight and preparation, while in fact she sleeps off her latest fistful of pills.

My Week With Marilyn does offer an affecting Michelle Williams turn as Monroe, or at least she nails the mannerisms of Monroe's public persona. Williams immediately erases the line between actress and subject, and dances along all the octaves of a highly strung, enormously talented, and incredibly famous woman, struggling with self confidence at one end of the scale and effortlessly deploying her irresistible sex-drenched charms at the other.

Branagh is less successful as Olivier, never appearing at ease in the role and unable to shed the act and find the actor. Judi Dench brings plenty of class as Sybil Thorndike, but she effectively disappears halfway through the film. Redmayne is firmly stuck in family theatre territory, where the fact that he is acting - almost always with a smile! - overshadows everything else that he is trying to convey.

Williams alone makes the film worth watching, and her performance raises the production from cheap television movie to a tolerable film experience. Never mind My Week With Marilyn; the 100 minutes with Michelle are what matter.

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