Movie Review: Murder Mystery (2019)

Genre: Crime Comedy  

Director: Kyle Newachek  

Starring: Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Terence Stamp, Gemma Arterton, Luke Evans  

Running Time: 97 minutes  

Synopsis: New York City beat cop Nick Spitz (Adam Sandler) pretends to be a detective to impress his wife Audrey (Jennifer Aniston), a hairdresser. While traveling on a cheap European vacation, they meet the dashing Charles Cavendish (Luke Evans), who invites them to a yacht off Monaco. Nick and Audrey are misfits in the company of Charles' ultra wealthy uncle Malcolm Quince (Terence Stamp), his new young bride, his useless son, his former bodyguard, the bodyguard's bodyguard, a glamorous actress (Gemma Arterton), a racing car driver, and a Maharajah. When a murder is committed, Nick and Audrey are prime suspects and have to solve the crime to clear their names.

What Works Well: A breezy, never-too-serious crime comedy that rides good chemistry between Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. A murder-most-foul Agatha Christie whodunnit ambience, plenty of fish-out-of-water vibes, and a few good laughs complement the two stars. The glitzy European locations are attractive, and the efficient running time keeps the action humming.

What Does Not Work As Well: Killing off most of the suspect list (and they die early and often) is not the most clever way to maintain mystery and investigative momentum. Other than Nick and Audrey, the characters are superficial stereotypes, and of course the plotting is frivolous and less than interested in any logic.

Key Quote:

Audrey Spitz: What's that?

Charles Cavendish: That is the Quince dagger. Chinese steel, jewels from across the Orient. A gift to the family from Marco Polo. Or so the legend says.

Audrey Spitz: God. Nick's grandmother gave us a toaster from Sears. Or so the legend says.

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Movie Review: Summerland (2020)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Jessica Swale  

Starring: Gemma Arterton, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Courtenay, Penelope Wilton  

Running Time: 99 minutes  

Synopsis: After a short prologue set in 1975, most of the movie takes place in the early 1940s, in a small village near Dover, England. Alice Lamb (Gemma Arterton) is a local writer and researcher of folk legends involving women, and is mostly shunned by the community for being single and anti-social. Alice is forced to host Frank (Lucas Bond), a child evacuee from the London Blitz, and despite herself forges a connection with the boy. In flashbacks, Alice recalls her one great love with Vera (Gugu Mbatha-Raw).

What Works Well: The scenery is beautiful, and matches the lyrical evolution of Alice from angry and lonely to caring and connected. Gemma Arterton delivers a forceful central performance filled with unapologetic purpose, but also shines in moments requiring sensitivity. Director and writer Jessica Swale adds sprinkles of humour, and introduces the one narrative twist with a deft touch. The story takes place on the sidelines of World War Two, but the conflict casts a long shadow upon dynamics in an idyllic small community.

What Does Not Work As Well: The flashbacks to an interracial lesbian relationship, plus strong currents of anti-religious and pro-feminist sentiments, are wedged into the wartime context with heavy-handed clumsiness.

Conclusion: The post-bitterness journey is sweet, but also burdened.



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Movie Review: Rogue Agent (2022)

Genre: Crime Drama

Directors: Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn

Starring: James Norton, Gemma Arterton

Running Time: 116 minutes

Synopsis: In Britain of 1993, bartender Robert (James Norton) claims to be an undercover MI5 agent and recruits three college students to spy on suspected IRA activists. He then wraps up the mission in a rush and extracts the informants out of college. Nine years later, Robert is working at a luxury car dealership and starts a romance with corporate lawyer Alice Archer (Gemma Arterton). She falls for his charms, but then starts to suspect he may not be entirely truthful.

What Works Well: A British production inspired by the true story of Robert Freegard, Rogue Agent underlines the powers of deception and malevolent subterfuge. Working with no-nonsense grey weather colours and grounded perspectives, directors Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn (along with their co-writer Michael Bronner) portray with emotional detachment seemingly smart people falling prey to the methodical plotting of a charming psychopath. James Norton's smarmy smile and ready explanation for every question is a chilling portrayal of mendacity.

What Does Not Work As Well: The pacing is slow, particularly in the evolving romance between Robert and Alice. In contrast, the investigative elements in the final third are sloppy and far-fetched, leading to a fortuitous climax. Ultimately, little is revealed about the inner-workings of a twisted mind.

Conclusion: A cautionary but cold probe of cruelty.



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Movie Review: Vita And Virginia (2018)

A love affair among erudite elites, Vita And Virginia recreates an era of burgeoning sexual liberation among progressive women, but remains rather dreary and glacially paced.

Within England's literary circles of the 1920s, successful author Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton) is married to diplomat Harold Nicolson (Rupert Penry-Jones) but openly pursuing romantic and sexual pursuits with others. Her behaviour scandalizes her wealthy and prim mother (Isabella Rossellini). Undeterred, Vita sets her eyes on the more critically celebrated but less popular author Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki), who is married to publisher Leonard (Peter Ferdinando) but also free to have affairs.

Vita is determined, all-consuming and possessive while Virginia is fragile and more circumspect, but she eventually succumbs to Vita's overtures. Their romance is passionate but interrupted by Vita's travels to accompany Harold to overseas postings. The love affair leads to literary inspiration, and Virginia starts to write Orlando: A Biography, based on Vita.

An adaptation of the 1992 play by Eileen Atkins, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Chanya Button, Vita And Virginia successfully wriggles out of its stage origins and conveys a sense of time and place. The sets, costumes and hairstyles offer understated visual delight, while the relatively nonchalant attitude towards open marriages and same-sex affairs, at least among this aristocracy of writers, is also well-drawn.

But the narrative content is sparse, not helped by the two lead actresses reading letters into the camera, a device that may work on stage but quickly deflates on the screen. Pacing management is also a problem, Button dedicating the first half to Vita's slow motion pursuit of Virginia, and the second half to Virginia using the affair as inspiration for Orlando, the creative process of writing never the most exciting of cinematic topics. 

With the convergence then the divergence dominating, the actual romance is squeezed into a few minutes in the middle, essentially over as soon as it starts, Vita demanding more than Virginia can provide. With a staid mood dominating, Vita And Virginia fails to capture the thrill of love.

Whether historically accurate or not, the dialogue is weighed down by literary cleverness, Vita and especially Virginia communicating with well-thought out elegance in every line. The women's chic prose places them on a pedestal to be admired, undoubtedly eloquent but knowingly distant.



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The Movies of Gemma Arterton

All movies starring Gemma Arterton and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Quantum Of Solace (2008)

Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time (2010)

Runner Runner (2013)

The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)

Their Finest (2016)

Vita And Virginia (2018)

Murder Mystery (2019)

Summerland (2020)

Rogue Agent (2022)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Their Finest (2016)

A wartime drama and romance with sprinklings of comedy, Their Finest is an attractive period piece although the small story struggles for resonance.

It's 1940 in England, World War Two is raging and London is subjected to almost daily German bombing raids. Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) finds work as a propaganda short film script writer in the Ministry of Information. She meets fellow scribe Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) and veteran actor Ambrose Hilliard (Bill Nighy), who is not yet accepting his days as a leading man are over. Meanwhile, Catrin's husband Ellis (Jack Huston) is a struggling artist with a physical disability, dealing with the humiliation of not being able to support his wife.

After the Dunkirk evacuation, government officials seek a morale-boosting story as a basis for a feature film. Catrin interviews two sisters who reportedly heroically sailed to the Dunkirk beaches and helped rescue soldiers, but finds the truth to be more mundane. Nevertheless to save her job Catrin embellishes the tale of nationalistic bravery, and with Buckley's help joins the team developing the film.

The fictional story of a colourful band of characters conceiving and filming a wartime propaganda movie is a pleasant enough experience. Director Lone Scherfig, adapting the book by Lissa Evans, effortlessly adds a pinch of dry humour and a dash of romance, muted as it is by the tumultuous clouds of war. The period details bring to grey life an England under siege, London's residents dusting themselves off, tending to the wounded and then carrying on with their lives until the next set of bombs rain from the sky.

With all able-bodied men off to war, Catrin represents women striding forth to join the workforce in large numbers. Their Finest includes mostly sideways but still telling references to the societal role of women past, present and future, as Catrin is increasingly empowered by the newly discovered and paycheque-triggered sense of value and independence. Gemma Arterton delivers a suitably stoic performance as a representative for both her nation's resilience and her gender's emergence.

But this is ultimately an individually-scaled story stretched perilously close to its load limit. The film runs up to two hours, and to get there Scherfig slows the pace down and includes plenty of ultimately repetitive scenes. The side story of the actor Ambrose Hilliard, his agent and the agent's dog and sister occupies a disproportionate amount of time and expands into a clumsy distraction, as does the involvement of a government minder nosing into the creative process.

The unconventional romance steadies the narrative. As Catrin unpacks her domestic situation with Ellis, her attraction to Buckley is slow to unfurl, and is constructed on a foundation of workplace banter and mutual respect. And in a world turned upside down by war, Their Finest deserves credit for charting some unexpected twists for the lovers to navigate in a unique time and place, the rules first suspended then rewritten.

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Movie Review: The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)

A zombie apocalypse thriller with a difference, The Girl With All The Gifts offers intellectual horror in a dystopian setting. From a familiar premise, the film progresses towards richly thought-provoking but still blood-soaked territory.

In England, Melanie (Sennia Nanua) is among a group of children securely imprisoned at a government military base under the command of Sergeant Parks (Paddy Considine). Miss Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton) teaches the kids, while Dr. Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close) is the resident researcher. The children are all infected with a fungus that wraps around their brain and turns them into smell-triggered flesh-eating zombies, but as the second infected generation, they are displaying human traits and the ability to think.

Melanie appears to be particularly smart and forms a bond with Justineau. Meanwhile Caldwell believes she is close to finding a vaccine, and just needs access to Melanie's brain and spine to complete her research. When the base is overrun by rampant zombies, Melanie, Justineau, Caldwell and Parks along with a few other survivors escape and must navigate the hostile countryside to reach a devastated London.

A British production directed by Colm McCarthy and written by Mike Carey (adapting his own book), The Girl With All The Gifts takes the zombie sub-genre to new places. Without sacrificing the blood, gore and horror of an entire country swarming with flesh eaters, the film pushes past the typical survivors' ordeal and delves into "what next" for the zombie species. With Melanie bringing to life the most sympathetic zombie ever to grace the screen, and a child no less, Carey takes the narrative towards questions about who deserves to live, and why.

The film's set designs are astounding. Initially the story is confined to the bowels of a military base where the children are either confined to their cells or strapped to wheelchairs and shuttled around by heavily armed guards. Once the small protagonist group flees the zombie invasion and sets out to reach potential salvation in London, an imaginative vision of a destroyed civilization is brought to life, and a metropolis empty of humans and occupied by zombies in metamorphosis is chilling.

Despite the stunning visuals, the true strength of The Girl With All The Gifts lies with the characters. With Melanie clearly a bright spark navigating around her flesh eating tendencies while working to understand her role in the world, Justineau, Coldwell and Parks are a phenomenal triangle surrounding the girl, stressed by the struggle for personal survival and no less a task than protecting humanity. Justineau and Coldwell display opposite sides of the same human ideal, the educator displaying a natural nurturing tendency while the researcher is intent on sacrificing Melanie for the greater good.

Sergeant Parks starts as the most cold hearted member of the surviving team. Initially more aligned with Coldwell in treating the children as creatures not worth keeping alive, his is an immensely satisfying evolution, as the soldier starts to understand and appreciate what Melanie brings to survival in the wilds of a destroyed civilization.

McCarthy and Carey conspire to push hard on preconceptions as the film enters its final third, and succeed in undermining the natural order of evolutionary supremacy. With the zombies displaying symbiosis with nature and a capacity to amplify their killing power by harnessing primary elements, all ingrained notions of humans in their most familiar form holding an innate right to rule are toppled.

The Girl With All The Gifts is willing to break all the archaic rules, with the strength of anarchic logic.

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Movie Review: Runner Runner (2013)

A drama thriller set in the world of gambling, Runner Runner deals a potentially intriguing hand but folds early.

Richie Furst (geddit? played by Justin Timberlake) is a financially struggling mature student at Princeton. Richie was on the fast track to Wall Street wealth when the 2008 financial crisis destroyed his prospects. Now he makes money on the side by channeling fellow Princeton students to online gambling sites. Threatened with expulsion, Richie tries to win his entire tuition playing online poker on the Midnight Black site. He loses everything, but not before spotting signs of a sophisticated cheating scam.

Richie travels to Costa Rica and confronts Ivan Block (Ben Affleck), the charismatic head of the Midnight Black online gambling empire, with proof of the scam. Impressed, Ivan offers Richie a job, and the money starts pouring in. Richie meets and starts a relationship with Rebecca (Gemma Arterton), one of Ivan's associates, but also starts to get exposure to the dark underbelly of Ivan's business, including massive extortion of local Costa Rican officials and dodging threats from FBI Agent Shavers (Anthony Mackie).

Directed by Brad Furman, Runner Runner has the kernels of a good story, even carrying echoes of no less a classic than Gilda. The film looks slick, capturing the vivid decadence of life with the super rich operating marginally legal but massively profitable gambling businesses from off shore havens. Furman mixes glitz and glamour with earthy Costa Rican surroundings, and Runner Runner is nothing if not a colourful and visually immersive experience.

Furman also deserves credit for avoiding the temptation to suddenly turn Furst into any kind of action hero. Runner Runner remains reasonably grounded in reality, and the thriller elements are drawn from a battle of wits and influence, rather than the more typical surge into cheap action.

But little else works. Timberlake offers bored and unnecessary narration, and the story only starts off with promise. It is quickly apparent that little will actually be explained, and so the nature of Furst's job with Block is incoherent, the relationship between Rebecca and Ivan is barely sketched in, and Richie has a couple of buddies who seem to be essential to the story but hardly register. Richie's father (John Heard) pokes his head into the margins of the story, seemingly from a whole other movie.

The deeper the film gets into the sub-plot of grafting local politicos, FBI Agent Shavers' hissing agenda, and the inner workings of Ivan's business and his grand plan, the less useful information is provided. By the time the third act arrives and true colours start to be revealed, it's impossible to care about any of the characters.

The performances are predictably stoic. Timberlake maintains the same tone throughout, Affleck mails in an easy turn as the slick mover and shaker, and Arterton is never quite sure what her role in the movie really is.

Runner Runner starts with a decent sprint but quickly runs out of steam.

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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.

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