Movie Review: Regression (2015)

A dramatic thriller with horror elements, Regression enjoys an engaged cast and creepy visuals, but awkwardly shifts tones before stalling altogether. 

It's 1990 in the small (fictional) town of Hoyer, Minnesota. With unsubstantiated stories of evil satanic rituals making the news in various communities, detective Bruce Kenner (Ethan Hawke) investigates allegations by Angela Gray (Emma Watson) that she was sexually abused by her father John (David Dencik). He admits to the crime but has no recollection of specific events.

Professor Kenneth Raines (David Thewlis) suggests hypnosis to trigger "regression" and stimulate memory recall. The resultant interrogations ensnare police officer George Nesbitt (Aaron Ashmore) as part of a satanic cult holding sacrifice rituals. Angela's brother Roy (Devon Bostick), her grandmother Rose (Dale Dickey) and Reverend Murray (Lothaire Bluteau) may all be keeping secrets, and in his quest for the truth Bruce starts to experience disturbing nightmares and possible threats.

Regression is inspired by the wave of panic about satanic cults that obsessed an excitable corner of the news cycle in the 1980s and 1990s. With Ethan Hawke in a determined mood (although both Detective Kenner and Professor Raines appear out of place in a rural backwater), writer and director Alejandro Amenábar creates a suitable aesthetic, the grey small town providing a susceptible venue for spooky things. But Amenábar cannot quite decide on what story he wants to tell, the limited to non-existent character development and wayward narrative execution undermining any good intentions.

So the film starts with allegations of sexual abuse within a family, expanding to include the involvement of a police officer, and then descriptions of a (very) large number of Satan worshippers wearing dark robes and white make-up, gathering around various beds or in eerie sheds to kill animals and babies. At some point the number of cultists appears to exceed the town's entire population. But then Regression abandons the investigation and becomes more of a horror flick, Bruce succumbing to a series of scary incidents (real or imagined) and getting sucked into a mentally fragile state.

The final act snaps back sharply to a different place entirely, a rational if cinematically sterile resolution condemning multiple characters. Regression exposes overlapping agendas, most of them devilishly misguided.



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Movie Review: Little Women (2019)

An adaptation of the classic Louisa May Alcott book, Little Women is a coming-of-age tale with a focus on women carving out identities while grappling with personal and societal expectations and economic realities.

The film unfolds non-linearly across multiple time zones and locations. In simplified form, the March sisters are from a relatively poor Concord, Massachusetts family and growing up in the shadow of the Civil War. Jo (Saoirse Ronan) is fiercely independent and an aspiring writer. Meg (Emma Watson) loves acting and is a romantic at heart. Amy (Florence Pugh) is a painter and wants to marry well. The youngest Beth (Eliza Scanlen) is a talented pianist. With their father (Bob Odenkirk) serving in the war, Marmee (Laura Dern) instills in the girls a strong sense of service and selflessness.

The Marchs are neighbours of the wealthy and kind Mr. Laurence (Chris Cooper), whose grandson Theodore (Timothée Chalamet) becomes friends with the sisters and falls in love with Jo. She sets out to seek her fortune as a writer in New York, where she meets publisher Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts) and clashes with academic Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel). Amy heads to Paris for a cultural trip with Aunt March (Meryl Streep). Meg marries a struggling tutor and starts a family. But a sickness will pull the sisters back home to confront unexpected futures.

The sixth cinematic adaptation of Alcott's novel, the 2019 version is a sprawling and ambitious effort infused with a feminist edge. Clocking in at an overlong 135 minutes, writer and director Greta Gerwig takes her time to fully define the four sisters as rounded characters, and chases down their dreams, trials and tribulations on the path to womanhood. Along the way the sisters bicker, fight and support each other, all underpinned by warm foundations of familial love.

Gerwig structures the film as a dizzying jumping exercise, restlessly bouncing between various points of history in the lives of the four sisters. As a result Little Women rarely flows, some scenes spending a matter of seconds in one time and place before the next scene leaps to somewhere else with someone else at a different time.

But the fine work of the talented cast and the investment in characters does pay off in the final third, where the sometimes scattered narrative puzzle pieces start to come together. The film achieves poignant peaks of genuine emotion built on the discrete strengths and weaknesses of the March sisters, and Gerwig presents a satisfyingly wide array of personal achievements mixed with shades of disappointments, all built on honest passion.

While the emphasis on feminism is sometimes speechy and jarring, here it means the freedom to choose a future vision to pursue, and to defend that choice. And while no two dreams are alike, the sisters pragmatically understand their future, like their past, involves compromise and is not meant to be perfect. Gerwig also places admirable emphasis on economics as an essential part of future plans. Balancing the romantic pursuit of love, marriage's role as an economic benefit emerges as a theme.

Little Women enjoys stellar production design, the film recreating interiors and exteriors of the mid to late 1800s with an easy sense of place and time. This is a period piece unafraid to march into the open, as the March sisters stride into a post-war world with every intention to help define it.

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The Movies Of Emma Watson

All movies starring Emma Watson and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

My Week With Marilyn (2011)

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (2012)

Regression (2015)

Beauty And The Beast (2017)

The Circle (2017)

Little Women (2019)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (2012)

A coming-of-age drama, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower introduces serious issues to the typical high school milieu, but skirts almost all of the more challenging conversations.

In Pittsburgh, introverted and quiet Charlie (Logan Lerman) is starting his first high school year after a tough summer in which he coped with depression. After initially finding it difficult to make friends, Charlie connects with two senior students, the gay extrovert Patrick (Ezra Miller) and his step-sister Sam (Emma Watson). Patrick is in a secretive relationship with Brad (Johnny Simmons), while Sam is overcoming her promiscuous reputation, and working hard to get into college.

Charlie finds support from his English teacher Mr. Anderson (Paul Rudd), and also meets Patrick and Sam's friends Mary Elizabeth (Mae Whitman) and Alice (Erin Wilhelmi). But he develops a deep crush on Sam, who is unfortunately already dating Craig (Reece Thompson). Eventually Charlie starts an unconvincing relationship with Mary Elizabeth, but his heart is really elsewhere.

Directed and written by Stephen Chbosky as an adaptation of his own novel, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower aims for a wistful and low-key vibe, and often succeeds. With just a few humorous moments, this is a more-sombre-than-usual look at the trials and tribulations of high school life, although the characters' overall tone of optimism ensures the film does not descend into pathos.

Chbosky is clearly intent on portraying high school teens grappling with real problems, and weaves themes of loneliness, fitting in, loss of friends, depression, and abuse into the narrative. But the film never gathers the courage to tackle the issues head-on. A friend's suicide, an adult's abuse, a stint at a mental institute, a father's rage against his gay son, and a girl driven into frequent meaningless sex: all the key incidents happen off-screen, the topics are mentioned in about one sentence, checked-off, and summarily left behind.

What remains is much more standard fare coming-of-age material. Charlie has a hopeless crush on the impossibly perky but seemingly unavailable Sam from the minute he sees her; Patrick is extraordinarily friendly and helpful, and Mr. Anderson is just about perfect as the hip young teacher who spots and nurtures Charlie's love of reading and writing. The travails of friendships will go up and down in predictable cycles and end at just the perfect intersection of melancholy and effervescent.

The cast members are all dedicated to their roles and help nourish the film's emotions. Logan Lerman delivers a Michael Cera-type performance, but registers the least because Charlie is mostly a, well, wallflower. Ezra Miller gets to inject most of the energy, while Emma Watson is radiant but Sam is written to be a mythically flawless love interest.

The Perks Of Being Wallflower is not content to sit at the edge of the room, but neither is it willing to dance to the edgier tunes.

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Movie Review: Beauty And The Beast (2017)

A musical fantasy romance, Beauty And The Beast is a well-made but superfluous live-action remake of the 1991 animated classic.

In rural France, a cold-hearted Prince (Dan Stevens) is cursed by an enchantress and turned into a frightening Beast. All the staff members of his lavish palace are turned into furniture pieces and the castle itself is plunged into a frozen darkness. Years later Belle (Emma Watson) is a restless young woman growing up in a nearby village. Unlike everyone else in her community, Belle values her independence and thirsts for books and knowledge, while fending off the attentions of the insufferably narcissistic local hunk and ace hunter Gaston (Luke Evans). Belle's father Maurice (Kevin Kline) is eccentric but loving, although he has never told Belle how her mother died.

When Maurice takes a wrong turn in the forest and is captured by the Beast, the fearless Belle bargains for her father's freedom and replaces him as the Beast's prisoner. The candelabra Lumière (Ewan McGregor), the mantel clock Cogsworth (Ian McKellen) and the teapot Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson) are aware that the Beast's only hope to turn back into a Prince is to fall in love and have it reciprocated before all the petals fall off a magic rose. Encouraged by the staff-members-as-house-objects, a courtship ensues between Belle and the Beast, enraging the jealous Gaston.

Directed by Bill Condon, Beauty And The Beast enjoys a spirited Emma Watson performance and the expected dazzling CGI effects to bring plenty of furniture objects to life. The costumes, makeup and sets are stunning recreations of the animated aesthetics from 1991. Virtually a scene-for-scene remake, the live action version is undoubtedly polished but struggles to define its purpose. This version is over two hours of the same story told in the same way with the same songs, with many of the iconic scenes captured in the same style.

A story filled with talking, singing and dancing candles, clocks, dressers, teapots and harpsichords, not to mention acrobatic dishes and a flirtatious dust feather, is always going to be more imaginative in animated form. While young children will undoubtedly be enthralled by these objects coming to life in non-animated form, the film is more mechanical and less magical than the original.

A couple of new songs are added, but otherwise the well-loved original soundtrack comes back with spirited deliveries by the cast members. Apart from the studiously mission-oriented furniture items, Josh Gad as Gaston's sidekick LeFou adds some levity and gets some of the better laughs. Stanley Tucci and Gugu Mbatha-Raw are part of the furniture ensemble.

Thematically not much has changed. Belle was ahead of her time in 1991 and she remains here a spunky free thinker, standing up for herself, ignoring the naysayers and making her own decisions. The story continues to walk the fine line between celebrating non-superficial romance and confirming the power of the Stockholm Syndrome.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this Beauty And The Beast, other than it has literally all been done before.

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Movie Review: The Circle (2017)

A near-future technological thriller exploring loss of privacy, The Circle starts with some good ideas but quickly loses its way.

Mae Holland (Emma Watson) is thrilled to join social media giant The Circle as a customer service representative. Her best friend Annie (Karen Gillan) is a high powered member of the firm's leadership team, advising co-founders Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) and Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt). In her personal life Mae is drifting away from childhood friend Mercer (Ellar Coltrane), and trying to help her father Vinnie (Bill Paxton) deal with multiple sclerosis.

Mae enjoys her job although she finds the company's cult-like insistence on a high level of social media activity and participation at company events intrusive. She meets star software coder and fellow employee Ty Lafitte (John Boyega), who is keeping a low profile and is deeply suspicious of the company's ambitions to dominate and record people's lives. The Circle's latest tech innovations include mini cameras recording everything everywhere, but also medical advancements that help Vinnie. When Mae has a brush with death and is saved by The Circle's all-pervasive monitoring, she becomes a strong advocate for more intrusion into people's lives and freedoms.

Directed and co-written by James Ponsoldt and based on the book by Dave Eggers, The Circle imagines a bleak future where a social media giant is ready to fully eradicate privacy with a combination of mass surveillance, data gathering, storage, retrieval and analytics, and partnerships with government, all in the sunny name of worshipping the positive power of sharing. It's difficult to argue with the central premise that society is willingly surrendering privacy to the benefit of gigantic corporations. But after an encouraging start, The Circle hits all the wrong keys, and quickly dissolves into a dissonant mess.

Mae's transformation from an everyday millennial carrying healthy doses of cynicism and caring for her family into an advocate for subversive plots is unconvincing. She acquiesces in a zombie-like state to having every moment of her life live streamed, and later champions a really lousy digital version of global mob justice. Meanwhile, the characters of Eamon Bailey and Tom Stenton are throwbacks to another era when boomers presided over large corporations: today's tech giants are more likely to be owned and run by individuals two generations removed from Tom Hanks.

The thriller elements are particularly half baked. Mae and Ty run around empty cavernous underground tunnels that are supposedly extremely threatening because they will be filled with...more servers.

And ultimately The Circle stops being a movie and becomes a series of tedious Ted talks, Ponsoldt running out of ideas, money or both. The ending is a highly unsatisfactory mess. Annie cracks under unexplained pressure, Mae performs a couple more unexplained 180 degree turns, and an unexplained plot of secret emails is revealed, exposing...what, exactly?

Emma Watson and Karen Gillan do their best to inject energy into the film, and the more watchable parts are due to Gillan nailing the hyperstrung young executive relishing her part in ruling the world. Hanks generally sleepwalks through his few scenes.

The Circle attempts to tackle current and important online themes, but triggers error 404 instead.

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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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