Movie Review: Blink Twice (2024)

Genre: Psychological Horror  

Director: Zoë Kravitz  
Starring: Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Alia Shawkat, Geena Davis, Kyle MacLachlan, Christian Slater  
Running Time: 102 minutes  

Synopsis: Catering waitress Frida (Naomi Ackie) and her friend Jess (Alia Shawkat) work a function featuring celebrity technology tycoon Slater King (Channing Tatum). He was embroiled in controversy and took a break from public life, buying an island and getting help from a therapist (Kyle MacLachlan). Frida and Jess are star-struck by Slater and his entourage, and he invites them to a fun getaway. On the island they meet fellow guest and reality TV show star Sarah (Adria Arjona), but what starts as a dream luxurious vacation soon takes a dark turn.

What Works Well: This rich-white-men-are-bad journey to hell is not short on themes. The ripe buffet of topics includes probing a culture obsessed with empty apologies; the mechanisms of sophisticated sexual abuse; the gap between forgiving and forgetting; confronting childhood trauma; celebrity obsession leading none-too-bright women to dangerous adventures in search of drinks-and-drugs good times; and the power of sisterhood. 

What Does Not Work As Well: Poorly paced, frequently bathed in darkness, overly ambitious, and lacking in likeable characters, the plot meanders for too long before finding a purpose. With competing mind-altering substances getting in each other's way, the evil intentions are revealed in defanged minimal impact snippets, courage deserting the project when needed most. The final act defaults to B-movie bloody revenge beats, and given the subject matter, the clumsy attempts at humour are misplaced.

Key Quote:

Slater: Are you having a good time?

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Movie Review: The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

A wild action thriller, The Long Kiss Goodnight never takes itself too seriously in the quest for the next narrow escape and ever-larger explosions.

In rural Pennsylvania, Samantha Cain (Geena Davis) is a school teacher, raising her young daughter Caitlin and in a happy relationship with boyfriend Hal. Samantha's new life started eight years ago, when she lost all her memories but found herself pregnant. Now a car crash jolts some memories loose, while low-rent private detective Mitch Hennessey (Samuel L. Jackson) uncovers clues about Samantha's past, and a violent prisoner spots Samantha on television participating in a small-town parade. 

Samantha and Mitch start piecing together her past, and connect with shadowy government official Nathan Waldman (Brian Cox), who warns Samantha she is in danger. Her previous identity was Charly Elizabeth Baltimore, a trained government assassin, and she is now the target of criminal mastermind Daedalus (David Morse) and his main henchman Timothy (Craig Bierko), who are involved in a domestic false flag terrorism conspiracy.

A disengage-your-mind thriller from the pen of Shane Black, The Long Kiss Goodnight has a clearly defined purpose: provide non-stop free-wheeling action at a dizzying pace, with all associated contrivances. High production values and sheer audacity help fulfill the limited promise despite derivative material and a paucity of wit and narrative edge.

Memory loss is one of the cheapest devices in the screenplay cookbook, and from that starting point Black does not hide his love of recycling. The cheap private detective, the former secret life as a government-trained assassin, the conspiracy to wring money out of government, the child in need of rescue, the difficult-to-kill cold-blooded bad guy, and even the countdown to the big explosion are all trotted out with almost numbing knowingness for Samantha to navigate.

The frequent shoot-outs, chases, incredible stunts, and detonations are well-staged by director Renny Harlin, and help distract from the sense of familiarity. Less helpful is the casting, and both leads appear uncomfortable. Asked to perform as suburban mom Samantha and efficient killer Charly, Geena Davis betrays her acting, not aided by an almost laughable voice transformation between the two characters. Samuel L. Jackson is essentially wasted as private detective Hennessey, his character reduced to tag-along status discharging throwaway lines.

The Long Kiss Goodnight entertains with overflowing energy if not originality.



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Movie Review: Ava (2020)

A routine action thriller, Ava boasts an impressive cast but mostly recycles tired professional assassin sub-genre cliches. 

Highly trained killer Ava (Jessica Chastain) works for a mysterious organisation and eliminates her latest target in France, but not before breaking protocol and conversing with her victim. She returns to Boston and reconnects with her sister Judy (Jess Weixler) and mother Bobbi (Geena Davis), as well as Michael (Common), who used to be Ava's lover but is now with Judy. Eight years prior Ava was an addict and abruptly abandoned Michael and her family when she discovered her father's infidelity. 

Now Ava is displaying signs of stress but her handler Duke (John Malkovich) maintains his trust and sends her on a new mission to Riyadh. Through no fault of her own this assignment ends in chaos, with Ava barely getting out alive. Duke's boss Simon (Colin Farrell) loses faith in Ava, unleashing a wave of violence.

Ava zips between several international destinations and always looks slick, director Tate Taylor never lingering in any one place for too long and often finding interesting camera angles. The above-average cast maintains interest without ever being challenged, Jessica Chastain (who also co-produced) suitably dour and ably supported by John Malkovich and Colin Farrell.

But the film's problems run deep. The Matthew Newton script adds little to the well-worn travails-of-the-assassin canon, and features a tediously high number of samey prolonged physical combat scenes. All are clumsily edited into incoherence and end with Ava just a bit bruised and bloodied despite receiving a barrage of heavy blows. The parade of bone crushing melds into a continuous stunt performer exhibition, the impact dwindling with each brawl.

Away from the action, and in a rare case of too much character depth, Ava is surrounded by a daytime soap opera family. Geena Davis is a welcome screen presence, but mom Bobbi is both a drama queen and a heart attack victim. Sister Judy is a highly strung musician quick to erupt into tirades, and Michael is moving from one sister to the next without leaving his gambling addiction behind. Dad was a philanderer and Ava herself is a recovering alcoholic, rounding off an all-in dysfunctional family. 

The domestic scenes exist in a separate, almost dumbfounding movie, and the attempt to bring Ava's two worlds together at a gambling den showdown exposes the script's fundamental brittleness.

Ava looks cool, but gets iced by mediocrity.



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The Movies Of Geena Davis

All movies starring Geena Davis and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Tootsie (1982)

The Fly (1986)

Beetlejuice (1988)

Thelma And Louise (1991)

A League Of Their Own (1992)

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

In A World...(2013)

Ava (2020)

Blink Twice (2024)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Fly (1986)

A gory science-gone-wrong horror film, The Fly is a dark and playful shocker from director David Cronenberg, with a small cast, a simple premise, and thoroughly disgusting special effects.

Science journalist Veronica "Ronnie" Quaife (Geena Davis) meets nerdy inventor Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), and he insists on showing her his latest contraption at his warehouse home: two large connected teleportation pods controlled by a computer terminal. An object placed in one pod can be disintegrated and molecularly recreated in the second pod. Initially Seth's device works only on inanimate objects, and an attempt to teleport a baboon fails miserably. But after Ronnie and Seth start an intense physical relationship, Seth improves the software and the pods become capable of transporting living organisms.

When Seth suspects Ronnie of rekindling a relationship with her boss and former boyfriend Stathis (John Getz), he sinks into a depression and launches the ultimate experiment: teleporting himself. The process seems to work, but unbeknown to Seth, a fly was in the pod with him during the teleportation. Soon, Seth starts to experience weird physical and emotional transformations.

A loose remake of the 1958 film based on a George Langelaan short story, The Fly is horror at the personal level. The controlled cast, consisting of just the three main characters, allows The Fly to quickly zoom into an intimate, throbbing scale. Ronnie and Seth are quickly swept into a sex-drenched romance, and the intensity of the experience unleashes Seth's creativity to the breakthrough that allows him to program the genetic recreation of flesh and life. The triangle of sex, science, and dangerous limits is central to many of Cronenberg's early works, and here he perfects it.

Once on the other side of his personal teleportation, Seth is initially an enhanced version of himself, his cells rejuvenated, his libido out of control, perhaps influenced by an insect's short life and need to procreate rapidly. But then the catastrophic consequences of a small fly in the pod (literally a bug in his system) become apparent, and Seth's transformational journey continues towards a hideous conclusion. He hangs on to a semblance of humanity for a long time, but in a desperate attempt to reverse his deterioration, he also grows ever more selfish, willing to sacrifice anyone to try and save himself.

By maintaining Seth's humanity while trapping him in a decaying body, Cronenberg both amplifies the horror and cleverly adds humour while exploring the pure lust for life. When Seth becomes self-aware of his predicament, he finds opportunities for glib comments while simultaneously wallowing in the loathsome habits of a large arthropod and trying to compute a way back to normalcy.

The makeup effects are a work of art, and were rewarded with the Academy Award. As Seth gradually suffers through his backwards evolution in the second half of the film, the pre-digital effects are slimy, gooey and flamboyantly repugnant. Away from the gore Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis make an attractive (at least in the first part of the film) couple as they translate their off-screen relationship into on-screen sizzle. Goldblum is dorky athleticism, Davis is curious journalism, and together they create a convincing passion that has to sustain them through the horror that befalls Seth.

Intense and morbid, The Fly buzzes into brilliancy.

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Movie Review: Beetlejuice (1988)

An afterlife comedy, Beetlejuice takes the side of a ghostly couple haunting their own home, and the new perspective generates plenty of clever laughs.

Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) are spending an idyllic vacation in their gorgeous but slightly spooky Victorian New England home. An unfortunate car accident leaves them both dead. They return to haunt their home, but their placid ghostly existence is disrupted by new owners. Bickering couple Delia and Charles Deetz (Catherine O'Hara and Jeffrey Jones) and their daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder) are an annoying presence, and Adam and Barbara start the process of learning how to create enough of a nuisance to drive away the new arrivals.

Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) is a hyper-kinetic rogue ghost, and he offers his services to the Maitlands as a specialist in scaring off the living. Delia starts to redecorate the place with the help of her insufferable interior designer Otho (Glenn Shadix), while Charles just wants to be left alone to relax. Lydia despises her parents and is into the dark scene, and this allows her to see and befriend Adam and Barbara. With scare tactics not really working, Adam and Barbara have to decide whether Beetlejuice is more of an asset or a liability, while Lydia has to accommodate two friendly ghosts into her lonely life.

Beetlejuice is briskly paced, funny, and with just enough self depreciation to maintain a light-hearted mood. Director Tim Burton creates a vivid alternative reality where ghosts are the rightful tenants and the living are the intruders, the ghosts experiencing their own sense of entrapment with massive earthworms preventing their leaving. Adam and Barbara also discover that the world of impenetrable user manuals and bureaucracy follows them to the afterlife, with the most imaginative scenes unveiling the world of the dead clogged with paperwork, bored secretaries, overburdened case workers and crowded waiting rooms experiencing long wait times.

Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis make for a cute couple, and their transition into ghosts is handled with a dry matter-of-factness. Winona Ryder steals the film as the dark, curious goth teen, her willingness to explore new dimensions allowing her to see spirits invisible to others. Ryder acts with eyes that are defiant, questioning and brave, and she gives Lydia the inner steel needed to tolerate her parents. Compared to the aggravating Charles and Delia, a couple of ghosts are easy.

Michael Keaton lets loose with a high energy, berserk role as Beetlejuice, a wound-up ghost covered with layers of decaying make-up and powered by the uniquely irritating sensibility of a desperate used car salesman. Beetlejuice's antics are the driving force behind most of the special effects in the film, state of the art for 1988 and still impressive in a modern context. A gigantic snake headed by Beetlejuice is the slithery highlight. He may be a loudmouthed and unmannered boor of a ghost, but Beetlejuice knows how to have fun among the living.

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Movie Review: A League Of Their Own (1992)

A comedy-drama that taps into baseball's rich vein of nostalgia, A League Of Their Own touches all the right bases and scores a resounding victory. Weaving a fictional story based on the true events surrounding the formation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during the Second World War, director Penny Marshall expertly keeps the focus on the human drama and allows the baseball to simply provide a rich canvass to paint on.

It's 1943, and with star baseball players heading out to war, the idea of a women's league is hatched by baseball's governors and their industrial backers, and a recruiting program is launched. Sisters Dottie (Geena Davis) and Kit (Lori Petty) are competitive amateur players and dairy farmers in Oregon. Dottie, a catcher, is more attractive, more confident and a bit better at everything than the scrappier Kit, a pitcher.

Spotted by a continuously wisecracking scout (Jon Lovitz), the sisters travel to the league tryouts in Chicago. Dottie and Kit are selected to play on the Rockford Peaches, one of four founding teams, along with the unattractive but powerful switch hitter Marla (Megan Cavanagh), the flirtatious "All The Way" Mae (Madonna) and the competitive and opinionated Doris (Rosie O'Donnell). A former beauty queen and several housewives, many with their husbands fighting the war, make up the rest of the team.

The inaugural coach of the Peaches is Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) a former big leaguer, but now a confirmed drunk. Dugan initially takes little interest in coaching the team, allowing Dottie to fill the void and provide leadership as the league struggles to attract attention. But attendance and interest pick up when the league starts marketing the flamboyant yet elegant Dottie as the Queen of Diamonds, and Dugan finally accepts the responsibility of managing the team. The Peaches need to overcome various conflicts during their first season, not least of which is the simmering rivalry between Dottie and Kit.

To borrow a sports metaphor, A League Of Their Own benefits from actors who accept their role on the team, none more so than Madonna thriving in a supporting role and delivering one of her best screen performances. Geena Davis, one year on from her triumph in Thelma and Louise, carries the main role with an intriguing combination of steel and grace, allowing Lori Petty the showier and edgier role of the younger sister who needs to try harder just to get out of her sibling's shadow. Tom Hanks makes an impact in a relatively small role as Jimmy Dugan, but gets to deliver, with perfect exasperation, the classic "Are you crying? There's no crying! There's no crying in baseball!" line.

Jon Lovitz as the scout Ernie Capadino gets nothing but an endless stream of sharply sarcastic lines to spout ("Are you coming? See, how it works is, the train moves, not the station."), and the only shame is that his role is too small.

A League Of Their Own captures an idyllic American mid-west during the Second World War era, with the Rockford Peaches covering endless miles of landscape on the team bus between games, and war-time patriotic posters on every wall.

Bookending the movie with scenes of the elderly Dottie travelling to the opening of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League section of the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, an event which turned into a player reunion, the screenplay by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandell strikes the perfect balance between drama and comedy. None of the comic moments are crass, and equally, most of the serious scenes avoid the descent into melodrama.

This is a story of ordinary girls embarking on an amazing, life-changing adventure by simply playing the sport that they love under extraordinary circumstances, and A League Of Their Own creates an extraordinary film out of their experience.

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Movie Review: Thelma & Louise (1991)

Thelma & Louise is a road movie, a fugitive movie, and a buddy movie. Callie Khouri's rich screenplay and director Ridley Scott manage to find the best qualities of all three sub-genres, and they impressively avoid most cliches. Thelma & Louise is never predictable, and it has become one of the standards by which movies in these genres are defined.

Louise (Susan Sarandon) and Thelma (Gena Davis) are best friends in Oklahoma, and both are at a dead-end in life. Louise is a waitress at a cheap diner; Thelma is a housewife being controlled and emotionally trampled by her uncaring husband Darryl. The two friends embark on a short vacation getaway in Louise's Ford Thunderbird. They stop at a roadside cowboy bar en-route, where Thelma meets and gets cozy with the womanizing Harlan. When he tries to rape the almost-drunk Thelma, Louise saves her friend then shoots and kills Harlan when he insults her. The women drive away from the scene, and from then on are fugitives wanted for murder.

Thelma and Louise head for Mexico, but Louise insists that they avoid driving through Texas, due to a dark incident in her past. Sticking to the back roads, they pick-up the drifter J.D. (Brad Pitt), who for the first time ignites Thelma's passion. Meanwhile, the police, including Detective Slocumb (Harvey Keitel) descend on Darryl's house to monitor his phone and try to trace the two women.

As the chase heats up, Thelma holds up a grocery store; the two ladies overcome an Arizona state trooper; and they repeatedly encounter and finally engage a tanker truck driven by an obscene chauvinist. But the noose gets tighter, and before they make it to the border, Thelma and Louise face a stark fork in the road.

As with all road movies, Thelma & Louise is really about the trip of self-discovery that the characters need to take. Thelma's transformational trip is dramatic: from a meek wife to a confident outlaw, Thelma finds her calling and is keen to make up for lost time in a hurry. Her trigger point is the night of passion with J.D., her sexual awakening corresponding to the start of a new, dynamic, vibrant, but likely fairly short life. Geena Davis has a lot of fun steering Thelma from the wife who does not dare tell her husband that she is leaving on a short trip, to the outlaw who stuffs a police officer in the trunk of his cruiser, but only after shooting air holes into it.

Louise goes through a more subtle, inward journey. Suppressing memories of a never-revealed trauma that occurred in Texas, what Louise refuses to talk about is the cause of the entire manic adventure. As events spiral out of control around her, Louise still refuses to confront her past: not with Thelma in the car, not with Detective Slocumb over the phone, and not with herself. She is a classic tragic hero, and her flaw colours her fate. Susan Sarandon delivers an anguished, introverted performance. With mayhem all around her, there is even more going on behind her eyes as she fails to come to terms with her scars but realizes that she is coming to terms with her life.

While each woman embarks on a separate emotional journey, they are in the car together, and the ups and downs of their relationship is the glue that holds the movie together. Thelma and Louise share moments of love, hate, frustration, fun, terror and sheer exhilaration with each other, and by the end of their trip their car is holding a lifetime's worth of emotions and memories.

Lushly photographed by Adrian Biddle to showcase the rural back roads of America, Thelma & Louise is a most fulfilling, poignant and memorable journey.

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