Movie Review: Murder By Decree (1979)

Genre: Crime Mystery  

Director: Bob Clark  

Starring: Christopher Plummer, James Mason, Donald Sutherland, Genevieve Bujold  
Running Time: 124 minutes  

Synopsis: In London of the 1880s, prostitutes are being murdered in the working class Whitechapel district by a killer known as Jack the Ripper. With the police unable to stop the murders, famous detective Sherlock Holmes (Christopher Plummer) and his assistant Dr. Watson (James Mason) agree to get involved. They consult with visionary Robert James Lees (Donald Sutherland), then connect with prostitute-in-hiding Mary Kelly (Susan Clark) and the mysterious Annie Cook (Genevieve Bujold), who is being held in an insane asylum. Gradually, the threads of a far-reaching conspiracy are revealed.

What Works Well: The fog-filled cobblestoned narrow alleys of 19th century London provide a rich backdrop for the intriguing premise of unleashing Sherlock Holmes' brilliance to tackle England's most infamous serial killing spree. The classy cast also includes David Hemmings, Anthony Quayle, and John Gielgud, ensuring quality in every role.

What Does Not Works As Well: The plot unravels into fragmented mass confusion in a hurry, ensnaring Freemasons, politicians, a Royal Family scandal, an unscrupulous doctor, a seditionist police investigator, underground revolutionaries, and many faceless villains. For long stretches the entire Jack the Ripper context is forgotten, and Sherlock's attempt to tie all the pieces together in the final scene disintegrates into a puddle of fantastical logic jumps, phony outrage, and magically assembled evidence.

Key Quote:

Sherlock Holmes: When people are frightened, they turn to God, and when they have no help from him, they look to the Devil.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

The Movies Of Genevieve Bujold

All movies starring Genevieve Bujold and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Anne Of The Thousand Days (1969)

Earthquake (1974)

Coma (1978)

Murder By Decree (1979)

Dead Ringers (1988)

Northern Borders (2013)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Northern Borders (2013)

A coming-of-age drama, Northern Borders features two veteran actors in grumpy roles, but otherwise struggles to justify itself.

It's the 1950s, and young Austen Kittredge II (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) arrives to stay at the rural Vermont home of his grandparents Austen Sr. and Abiah (Bruce Dern and Geneviève Bujold). The boy discovers a household devoid of love and grandparents who barely talk to each other. Austen Sr. enjoys hunting, reading and puttering around his workshop. Abiah looks after the house and her garden, and is attached to Egyptian mementos.

Austen Sr. reveals to his grandson the story of his first and long-lost love. The young Austen starts a friendship with schoolmate Theresa Dubois (Jacqueline Birgitte Hennessy) and meets his three aunts, including the black sheep Liz (Jessica Hecht), who may or may not have once robbed a bank. When electricity arrives in the area, Austen Sr. is eager to connect his workshop to the grid, but Abiah is worried about the impact to her orchard.

An adaptation of the Howard Frank Mosher book, Northern Borders is a small independent production, seemingly pulled together with funding from many private donors and with the participation of local students. Writer and director Jay Craven does make good use of rustic rural locations and secures big screen legends Bruce Dern and Geneviève Bujold for the two central roles. They add plenty of talent and serious presence, but cannot rescue an aimless script.

The film is made up of a collection of loose threads that may work well as book chapters, but struggle to define a narrative direction on the screen. The reasons why young Austen is sent to live with his grandparents remain a mystery. His friendship with Theresa is barely scratched. The enigmatic Liz exists in a void separate from all around her. Abiah's attachment to Egyptian artefacts surfaces at regular intervals but never contributes. Austen Sr.'s first and only love is an interesting backstory, but hardly justifies the lifelong silent mistreatment of Abiah, the mother of his three daughters (the sex must have been invigorating).

With two surly characters occupying the grandparent roles, the film settles down to a slow-paced study of long-term passive aggressiveness, young Austen pressed into service as a conversational go-between for two adults who should know better. With the same piece of music looping incessantly on the soundtrack and the film engaging in a spot of dumbfounding self-censorship, Northern Borders strays out of bounds.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Dead Ringers (1988)

A psychological drama with some gory elements, Dead Ringers flirts with unsettling topics related to anatomy, gynecology and identical twins behaving badly, but fades precipitously in the second half.

In Toronto, identical twin brothers Elliot and Bev Mantle (both played by Jeremy Irons) grew up sharing everything. Now successful gynecologists specializing in fertility treatments, they jointly run a clinic and live together in a sleek flat. Elliot is confident and brash; Bev is more introverted. The brothers are not beyond surreptitiously interchanging identities and sharing women. When Elliot starts seeing actress and clinic patient Claire Niveau (Geneviève Bujold), he offers Bev the opportunity to attend some of the dates. Claire is none the wiser that she is having sex with two different men.

Claire has unusual gynecological anatomy which Bev finds fascinating. Gradually Bev and Claire start to fall in love, creating a wedge in the close brotherly relationship. Claire also introduces Bev to drugs, and he is soon addicted to uppers and downers. Claire starts to suspect Bev is keeping some truths from her, and when secrets are revealed both brothers have to deal with grim consequences.

The first half of Dead Ringers sets up nicely. With Jeremy Irons in sparkling form acting opposite himself and director/co-writer David Cronenberg gradually unspooling a story of twins effectively sharing one psyche, the film appears pregnant with possibilities. With only a slight adjustment in hairstyle to differentiate the brothers, many scenes sparkle with initial identity doubt. Combined with an unhealthy obsession with women's reproductive systems and the instruments used in gynecological examinations and surgeries, Dead Ringers appears destined to soar.

Unfortunately, Cronenberg's cinematic vision stalls, withers and then just slumps in the second half. Claire is sidelined and essentially the film degenerates into a slow one-actor two-character descent into self-destruction and depression. Irons is never less than terrific charting the two brothers being slowly crushed as the world emotionally and physically closes in on them. But his talents are not enough, and Cronenberg runs out of ideas and into a series of discrete dead ends.

A sojourn to the gallery of an instrument-making artist is an excuse for some imaginative tools and surgery gore, Elliot's latest companion Cary (Heidi von Palleske) sleepwalks in and out of a few scenes, and the drugs occupy ever increasing screen space. None of the haphazard plot elements amount to much as the brothers' personal and professional lives unravel in unison and along a dreary linear path.

Within the narrative void and pretty visuals plenty of interpretations are possible, including the layered contradictions of immature men being simultaneously fascinated, perplexed and manipulative of the women who provide them with life. But Dead Ringers strips down too far, the fate of the brothers predictably conjoined and inexorably turning dark, just as surely as the energy seeps out of a film that starts smart but stumbles well before the end.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Anne Of The Thousand Days (1969)

A historical epic drama, Anne Of The Thousand Days delves into the politics and passions that shaped history in the English royal court.

It's the early 1500s, and England's King Henry VIII (Richard Burton) is desperate to have a son, but stuck in a loveless marriage with Catherine of Aragon (Irene Papas) who can no longer have children. The much younger Anne Boleyn (Geneviève Bujold) catches his eye, and he pursues her incessantly. Anne's sister is already pregnant with the King's child, and Anne has no intention of becoming another of his illicit lovers bearing him illegitimate children: she insists that she will only sleep with the King if he makes her his Queen.

Henry turns to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (Anthony Quayle) to convince the Pope to annul his marriage to Catherine, but to no avail. Henry's chief lawyer Thomas Cromwell (John Colicos) then convinces Henry to break away from Rome and install himself as the head of the church in England. He does so, paving the way to marry Anne. But their long-desired union is hugely controversial, and Henry's increasingly erratic behaviour causes more trouble ahead.

Directed by Charles Jarrott as an adaptation of the Maxwell Anderson play, Anne Of The Thousand Days is two and half hours of lavish historical drama and court intrigue. Handsomely staged with elaborate sets and costumes to recreate a long gone era, the film is a remarkably engaging story of a passionate clash driving politics and reorienting the course of history.

Aided by deliberate pacing, the story carries enormous potency, and indeed the liaison between Henry and Anne sowed the seeds for a major religious realignment and conceived one of England's most influential rulers. But at the personal level the film is about a man who cannot be denied meeting a woman who will yield only after extracting an extraordinary price. The private battle of wills spills into far-reaching matters of church and state, and the film traces the ripple effects from the palace to the courts, prison cells and guillotines.

Henry is portrayed on the margins of madness, the lack of a male heir driving him to the edge, his proclaimed love for Anne representing a yearning for any attractive young woman who may yield a son. The role perfectly suits Richard Burton, who maintains quiet control most of the time and unleashes Henry's frustrated rage only at strategic intervals.

Anne emerges as a most provocative character, a determined and intelligent woman who parlays her brief period of influence over a king into a potential dynasty for her future child. It's an exceptional display of burgeoning feminine power built on self-confidence and a refusal to acquiesce, and Geneviève Bujold pulls off the role with intense relish.

The supporting characters are vivid and add plenty to the unfolding drama. Cardinal Wolsey in his infernal red robes, the conniving Cromwell, the dour and set-upon Catherine, Anne's avaricious parents and the cerebral Sir Thomas More (William Squire) all play their role in animating the court and influencing crucial events.

Anne Of The Thousand Days is a colourful recreation of political machinations, the fierce desire for a male ironically unleashing the power of a female to control the present and rule the future.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Earthquake (1974)

A big scale disaster movie, Earthquake has some effective moments of destruction but is an otherwise sloppily constructed and cheese-filled exercise in tolerating aggravating stock characters spouting horrible lines of dialogue.

In Los Angeles, building engineer Stewart Graff (Charlton Heston) is having marital problems with his depressed wife Remy (Ava Gardner). A series of minor tremors create concern at the Mulholland Dam overlooking the city. At the California Seismological Institute a young staffer crunches the numbers and concludes that a major quake will likely strike the city within 48 hours, but his methodology is unproven. Meanwhile Stewart's boss and father-in-law Sam Royce (Lorne Green) promotes Stewart to President of their engineering company, but Stewart is more interested in pursuing young widow Denise Marshall (Geneviève Bujold).

The big quake does hit, effectively destroying Los Angeles. Stewart has to help Sam save employees from their partially destroyed office tower. Remy, Denise and Denise's injured young son Corry are evacuated to the basement of a supposedly quake-proof highrise. Others caught up in the mayhem are wannabe motorcycle daredevil Miles Quade (Richard Roundtree), short-tempered police officer Lou Slade (George Kennedy) and the financially strapped Rosa Amici (Victoria Principal). But just when it appears that the worst is over, there is more shaking to come.

Produced and directed by Mark Robson, Earthquake arrived at the peak of the epic disaster movie cycle of the early 1970s, with The Towering Inferno and Airport '75 released in the same year. Unfortunately gimmickry was already creeping into the genre as productions competed for viewers' attention. Unable to secure any relevant current stars to boost the box office, Earthquake resorted to something called Sensurround, a mammoth sound system designed to literally shake theatre seats with sub-audible "infra bass" sound waves.

Which is just as well, because what is on the screen is pretty awful. Earthquake underwent extensive post-production editing to tighten up the narrative, and the outcome is notably choppy. Other than the few minutes of special effects depicting the earthquake itself, the rest of the movie is two hours of badly-acted television-level drama. Despite a script co-written by Mario Puzo, the dialogue is cringe-worthy, the characters are stiff, and the attempts at drama and conflict border perilously near laughable.

The marital strife between Stewart and Remy plays like a particularly bad daytime soap episode, while Stewart's lusting after Denise is tawdry. Miles Quade disappears entirely from the ending of the movie, after wasting plenty of set-up time with a useless story about his ambition to be the next Evel Knievel. Walter Matthau appears under a pseudonym as an oblivious barfly, while George Kennedy plays a stock angry but good-hearted cop. Victoria Principal wages battle on two fronts: she fights against a frizzy hairdo that occupies half the screen, and fends off a deranged homicidal national guardsman (Marjoe Gortner) who stumbled in from another movie.

The only bits worth watching are the prolonged earthquake strike scenes, and the special effects range from reasonably impressive to amateurish. When an elevator crash ends with cartoon blood drops childishly superimposed on the image of mangled bodies, the splatter is literally on the screen for a genre that had nowhere to go but down.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.