Movie Review: Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

Subtitled: A Knives Out Mystery

Genre: Murder Mystery  
Director: Rian Johnson  

Starring: Daniel Craig, Josh O'Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, Jeremy Renner  
Running Time: 144 minutes  

Synopsis: Young priest and former boxer Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor) is assigned to an upstate New York parish where Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) presides over a small congregation. Jud finds Wicks' behaviour intentionally boorish, and meets Wicks' loyal assistant Martha (Glenn Close) and regular attendees including lawyer Vera (Kerry Washington), her adopted son and failed politician Cy, despondent doctor Nat (Jeremy Renner), a fading author, and a cellist with a health ailment (Cailee Spaeny). When a murder is committed, local police chief Geraldine (Mila Kunis) and renowned private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) investigate.  

What Works Well: The second sequel is both more intimate and more ambitious. Writer and director Rian Johnson finds a brooding church setting to host personal agendas and broader societal commentary, and wisely de-emphasizes detective Blanc in favour of a conflicted main protagonist in Father Jud. Carrying heavy luggage from the past (he killed a man in the boxing ring) and confronted by the spooky history of his new parish and an unhinged Monsignor Wicks, Jud stumbles upon a compelling mystery. Josh O'Connor and Josh Brolin are effective counterpoints across compassion and delusion, and beneath the murder plot resides clever discourse about the role of organized religion, from comforting those in need to raising the sword in battles real and imagined.

What Does Not Work As Well: The running time is undisciplined in an attempt to cram in a few too many sub-stories. Beyond the main characters, most of the cast members never move beyond "making up the numbers". 

Key Quote:

Father Jud: You're right. It's storytelling. The rites and the rituals. Costumes, all of it. It's storytelling. I guess the question is, do these stories convince us of a lie? Or do they resonate with something deep inside us that's profoundly true, that we can't express any other way except storytelling?

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Movie Review: The House Of The Spirits (1993)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Bille August  

Starring: Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Glenn Close, Vanessa Redgrave, Winona Ryder, Antonio Banderas  

Running Time: 146 minutes  

Synopsis: The setting is Chile, starting in the 1920s and spanning three generations. Esteban (Jeremy Irons) works hard to earn his fortune, and after his intended bride tragically dies, he marries her psychic sister Clara (Meryl Streep). Esteban rises to become an influential landowner and then a politician, but his sexually repressed spinster sister Ferula (Glenn Close) is a source of constant irritation. With socialism threatening Esteban's conservative ruling class, his daughter Blanca (Winona Ryder) falls in love with peasant revolutionary leader Pedro (Antonio Banderas), adding strife to the household.

What Works Well: This adaptation of Isabel Allende's novel is a never-dull gallop through 50 years of a family's ups-and-downs. A country's evolution and the rise of the working class provide a crackling context for Esteban's trajectory from hardworking labourer to powerful landlord, culminating in an unexpected encounter with humility. The women in his life are a source of tragedy, love, pleasure, frustration, joy, and anger, converging into difficult-to-learn lessons about what matters. Clara's subtle supernatural abilities provide a magic sparkle in an otherwise grounded milieu, while the visuals capture both beautiful landscapes and meticulous indoor sets.

What Does Not Work As Well: The South American soul of the story is degraded by the Anglo-American dominated cast, while the packed-in incidents allow limited opportunities for reflection. The narrative flow appears initially unsure whether to place Clara or Esteban at the drama's centre.

Key Quote:

Ferula: I set my curse on you, Esteban! You will always be alone! Your body and soul will shrivel up and you'll die like a dog!



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Movie Review: Crooked House (2017)

Genre: Crime Mystery  

Director: Gilles Paquet-Brenner  

Starring: Max Irons, Stefanie Martini, Glenn Close, Terence Stamp, Julian Sands, Gillian Anderson, Christina Hendricks  

Running Time: 115 minutes  

Synopsis: In 1950s England, Sophia Leonides (Stefanie Martini) asks private detective Charles Hayward (Max Irons) to investigate the death of her grandfather Aristide, a wealthy Greek tycoon. Sophia believes Aristide was poisoned, and the suspects include his new young wife and former Las Vegas showgirl Brenda (Christina Hendricks), his ex-sister-in-law Lady Edith (Glenn Close), his son Philip (Julian Sands), and daughter-in-law Magda (Gillian Anderson). Charles' investigation is complicated by memories of his brief wartime fling with Sophia, and growing interest in the case by Scotland Yard's Inspector Taverner (Terence Stamp). 

What Works Well: This classy adaptation of the Agatha Christie whodunnit benefits from brisk pacing, lavish locations, and a colourful cast of suspects. As a relatively low-key but still astute investigator, Charles Hayward doggedly reveals a complex web of motives, conspiracies, illicit affairs, and interpersonal jealousies, casting suspicion in all directions. Even Aristide's younger grandchildren, the astute pre-teen Josephine (who observes and writes everything) and the cynical teenager Eustace (who is unafraid to ask the boldest questions), get involved in the machinations, along with their tutor. 

What Does Not Work As Well: Too many characters within the Leonides mansion vie for the same screen time, and many have to settle for shorthand representations. Given the complexities within this family, the ending is rushed, and although the gather-all-the-suspects-in-a-room climactic scene is mercifully avoided, Charles' sleuthing efforts also don't amount to much.

Key Quote:

Josephine: The murderer is never the one you initially suspect.

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Movie Review: The Paper (1994)

Genre: Dramedy  

Director: Ron Howard  

Starring: Michael Keaton, Robert Duvall, Marisa Tomei, Glenn Close, Randy Quaid, Jason Robards  
Running Time: 112 minutes  

Synopsis: In Manhattan, Henry (Michael Keaton) is the dedicated Metro editor at the scrappy Sun newspaper. He is embarrassed when his team fails to cover a late-night and seemingly racially-motivated double-murder. Nevertheless Henry is being interviewed for a role at the prestigious Sentinel paper, a career move encouraged by his pregnant wife Martha (Marisa Tomei), a former reporter. Meanwhile Henry spars with rival editor Alicia (Glenn Close), who is dealing with personal financial issues, and managing editor Bernie (Robert Duvall), who has health concerns. When two innocent black youths are arrested in the double murder case, Henry sacrifices everything to uncover the truth, but he only has a few hours before the next edition goes to press. 

What Works Well: Taking place over roughly 24 hours, this is a madcap, high-energy, multi-storyline, humour-infused celebration of newspaper office dynamics. A malfunctioning air conditioning system, complaints about office chairs, petty coverage of parking disputes, career decision points, personal and family pressures, debates about which stories to cover, and the scramble to obtain photographs, all get in the way - or provide fuel for - the business of uncovering the truth and reporting on the biggest stories of the day. Ron Howard maintains a remarkably firm grip on the barely organized chaos, and an excellent cast invests in the disparate characters inhabiting the newsroom.

What Does Not Work As Well: A few too many long tracking shots within the newsroom creep into the final cut, and some of the attempts at humour degenerate into unbecoming physical slapstick or just pure shouting.

Key Quote:

Henry: A clipboard and a confident wave will get you into any building in the world!



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Movie Review: Evening (2007)

A romantic drama, Evening boasts a stellar cast but chokes on a labored story intent on squeezing recycled emotions out of dreary characters.

In the present, the elderly Ann (Vanessa Redgrave) is near death, spending her last hours at home in bed being cared for by daughters Nina (Toni Collette) and Connie (Natasha Richardson). Nina is surprised when a semi-hallucinatory Ann recalls a man called Harris as her first love. Flashbacks reveal a seminal weekend from 50 years ago.

In the 1950's, Ann (Claire Danes) travels to a swanky Newport mansion to attend the wedding of her best friend Lila (Mamie Gummer). Ann reconnects with Lila's brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy), a frequently drunk aspiring writer who has harboured a crush on Ann since they were in college. Buddy introduces Ann to his friend Harris (Patrick Wilson), a handsome doctor. She is immediately smitten, but her romantic pursuit is complicated when she learns both Buddy and Lila may also be in love with Harris.

An adaptation of the book by Susan Minot, Evening is pretty as a postcard and just as disposable. Minot wrote the script with Michael Cunningham, and what may have worked on the page as thematic permission to seek self-kindness is cruelly exposed on the screen. Director Lajos Koltai exploits Ann's transitioning mental state to wedge trite mystical moments (stars, butterflies, a night nurse dressed in an angelic gown) into a stultifyingly inert narrative.

Despite the presence of an all-star cast of women (Glenn Close and Meryl Streep also have small roles), the characters are consumed by ruinous judgment, overheated dialogue, and lethargic pacing circling the same miserable laments for two hours. The most incurable problems ironically stem from the men. Buddy is allowed to wreck multiple scenes as the obnoxious drunk heartbroken young man, and his exit, while meant to be tragic, is cheerworthy. Worse still is Harris, the doctor supposedly igniting everyone's passion reduced to a stone-faced non-presence with the personality of a brick wall.

Meanwhile back in the present, Nina (the free spirit) and Connie (the responsible homemaker) bicker according to the rules of stereotypical cinematic sisters, with an unexpected pregnancy thrown in to satisfy the circle of life. Vanessa Redgrave spends the entire movie in bed babbling about one weekend in her life and trying to separate reality from fantasy. Her fever dreams were undoubtedly more entertaining than this Evening.



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Movie Review: Four Good Days (2020)

An addiction drama, Four Good Days is an intense story of a mother and daughter navigating a crisis. The performances are excellent, but the cinematic scope is limited.

After a one year absence, 31-year-old heroin addict Molly Wheeler (Mila Kunis) shows up at the suburban house of her mother Deb (Glenn Close), pleading for help. Molly has been living on the streets but wants to again try to get clean. Deb has been through this many times and knows her daughter is a prolific liar. Against the advice of her husband Chris (Stephen Root), Deb nevertheless accompanies Molly to the clinic and a 14th attempt at detoxification.

This time Molly is offered a shot that would block her body's heroin urges for a month, but to avoid severe medical complications she can only take the shot if she remains clean for four more days. Deb agrees to take Molly into her house and watch her for the four crucial days. Mother and daughter start to reconnect, but every hour feels like eternity for a craving addict and her distrustful mom.

Inspired by a true story and Eli Saslow's newspaper article, Four Good Days tries hard but cannot quite shake a television movie-of-the-week small-scale feel. Director Rodrigo Garcia co-wrote the screenplay with Saslow, and dutifully hits all the expected notes of frustration, lack of trust, exhaustion, mind games, and blame percolating within a family ravaged by addiction. It's all heartfelt and rings true, but the story never rises above the familiar.

In the two central performances Mila Kunis and Glenn Close add a quality gloss. Kunis dances on the edge of despair and self-hate, while Close is grounded but not beyond falling for the euphoria of false hope. Other characters do interact with Molly and Deb, including Deb's husband Chris and Molly's ex-husband Sean, but this is essentially a two-character movie.

At regular intervals Garcia reveals past mistakes and personality traits as factors possibly contributing to Molly's surrender to drugs. Deb had fled a dysfunctional marriage, leaving her fragile daughter emotionally alone and disoriented. Already an anxious teen, substance abuse filled the vacuum of abandonment and worry. In keeping with the film's generally subdued stance, the finger pointing is mostly self-administered. Other revelations expose the horrors of a descent into a pathetic life where the only thing that matters is securing the next hit, but the lowlights are described rather than shown.

The aesthetics are suitably stark and flat, any sense of optimism crushed by the impressive strength of a brain in crisis. Four Good Days is a start, but the recovery timeline is riddled with doubt.

 

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Movie Review: Hillbilly Elegy (2020)

A drama about working class family struggles and the challenges of a tumultuous upbringing, Hillbilly Elegy enjoys fine performances and a rich, though-provoking narrative.

The events predominantly unfold in two time frames. As a law student at Yale, J.D. Vance (Gabriel Basso) is supported by his girlfriend Usha (Frieda Pinto) as he goes through the stressful intern placement interview process. His sister Lindsay (Haley Bennett) calls from Ohio with news their mother Bev (Amy Adams) has overdosed and is hospitalized.

In flashbacks J.D. recalls his turbulent upbringing. His grandparents Mamaw and Papaw (Glenn Close and Bo Hopkins) moved from ramshackle roots in rural Kentucky to Middletown, Ohio, but life for young J.D. was always tough. His single mother Bev was unstable, moving from man to man, getting into opioids and losing her nursing licence. Abusive towards J.D. but also loving and supportive when lucid, Bev was always an accident waiting to happen. Mamaw provides a place of refuge and has to decide whether to intervene to give J.D. a chance at a better life.

Now J.D. drives back to Middletown to help Lindsay deal with the latest overdose crisis, his mother's behaviour again threatening to derail his future.

Based on real events as recounted in Vance's 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy is a clear-eyed look at the vicious cycle of poverty, lack of education and abuse entrapping the disadvantaged. Without glamourizing or belittling the resultant hardscrabble life, screenwriter Vanessa Taylor and director Ron Howard also seek the strength instilled by family ties, and Bev's struggle to improve despite deep-rooted flaws.

Mostly steering clear of stand-and-gawk storytelling and resisting the strong temptation to give up on exasperating behaviour, Taylor's script focuses on origins, good and bad, forging J.D. into who he is. His upbringing meant he grew up in a hurry and faced decisions no child should be forced to make, but his mother and grandmother, sometimes despite themselves, also charted his tricky path to Yale. And so J.D. defends his family in front of slick suited lawyers at the risk of being perceived a bumpkin. With Lindsay's help he digs deep to find the good in Bev, looking past the in-progress self-destruction to the potential for a better future.

The rags-to-respectability journey is mostly composed of familiar elements, but Howard finds a pleasing rhythm between the current and flashback scenes, and delivers a coherent package in just under two hours. Flashback snippets to different experiences (Mamaw and Papaw as a younger couple, J.D.'s stint with the Marines) are less relevant. 

Amy Adams and Glenn Close deliver dedicated, intense performances. Adams is sometimes nothing less than scary in finding the suddenly unhinged moments of a mother unleashing fury at her son. Close redefines crusty, her face etched with years of struggle and no shortage of determination, the obvious creases hiding the still unknown agonies Mamaw endured with an abusive drunk of a husband. In a less showy role, Gabriel Basso succeeds as the level-headed anchor remarkably still capable of forgiveness. 

A story of potential hiding within suffering, Hillbilly Elegy differentiates between acknowledging grim shortcomings and accepting their permanence.



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Movie Review: Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

A costume drama set in the haughty world of the ridiculously wealthy, Dangerous Liaisons is a visually gorgeous story of immoral activity fueling gender wars among the idle rich.

It's pre-revolution Paris in the late 1700s, and Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil (Glenn Close) is a rich and conniving widow who gets her pleasure by manipulating others. She attempts to convince notorious seducer Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich) to sleep with her young and innocent niece Cécile de Volanges (Uma Thurman), a covenant-educated virgin, as revenge against Isabelle's former lover Bastide, who abandoned Isabelle and is now set to marry Cécile.

Vicomte refuses, as he is focused on enhancing his reputation by seducing Madame Marie de Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer), a married woman with morals beyond reproach. Isabelle is impressed with the bravado of his quest, and promises to sleep with Vicomte if he succeeds in corrupting Marie and provides a written letter as proof. But Vicomte's pursuit of Marie is compromised by the gossipy Madame de Volanges (Swoosie Kurtz), Isabelle's cousin and Cécile's mother. As revenge, a furious Vicomte agrees to deflower Cécile and redoubles his efforts to have Marie fall in love with him.

As an incendiary exposé to support peasant revolutions, Dangerous Liaisons serves its purpose. The adaptation of Christopher Hampton's play, based on the Pierre Choderlos de Laclos book, is singularly obsessed with vindictive and lustful elites, idle and libidinous women and men with no better purpose than to plot sexcapades. Hampton's script is brought to life by director Stephen Frears in a lavish production, and the stellar cast shines amidst ostentatious costumes, cleavage and castles.

While none of the principal characters are remotely likeable, the dialogue exchanges between Isabelle and Vicomte reveal two sides of one coin, a female and male version of the same surreptitious behaviour trading in sex and deploying bribery, blackmail and subterfuge as needed. Vicomte can flaunt his reputation and indeed publicly work to enhance it, while by nature of women's social stature Isabelle is more discreet. She works by influencing others and nudging them towards ruin. At her most vulnerable moment Cécile turns to Isabelle for advice, and the aunt encourages her niece to embrace rape as a learning experience and seek multiple lovers.

Despite the seemingly frivolous attitude towards seduction, the film steers towards unexpected love intruding on intrigue. Vicomte can only break through Marie's barriers by falling in love with her, a condition he labels temporary, but Isabelle knows better. And Isabelle herself is sideswiped by intense jealousy, her facade penetrated upon learning another woman can emotionally preoccupy her man. The outcomes are well deserved, as Frears revels in moving his two protagonists towards emotional troughs of their own making.

Glenn Close occupies the centre of chicanery with an impressive performance, her sly smiles, pregnant pauses and sideways glances riding the line between outward social respectability and continuous conspiring. She is matched by John Malkovich riding through the field of conquests on nothing but unshakeable confidence in his seductive powers.

Although the scenes of verbal sparring between Marie and Vicomte are unconvincing and repetitive, Michelle Pfeiffer is surprisingly affecting as prey, while Uma Thurman is a doe eyed victim. In addition to Kurtz, Keanu Reeves as a naive artist caught up in the sex plots and Mildred Natwick as Vicomte's aunt round out the cast.

Dangerous Liaisons is an irresistible study of virtue making way for subversion, with predictably calamitous consequences.

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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: The Wife (2017)

A drama about the secrets hidden behind success, The Wife focuses on the patient woman behind the celebrated man, and finds an intriguing story that goes well beyond moral support.

It's 1992, and celebrated author Professor Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce) is announced as the Nobel Prize winner for literature. Along with his wife Joan (Glenn Close), Joe is ecstatic, although their brooding son and fledgling writer David (Max Irons) remains grumpy. They travel to Stockholm for the award ceremony and associated galas and press events. Also attending is journalist Nathaniel (Christian Slater), who is constantly rebuffed in his attempts to write Joe's biography.

The trip starts to expose cracks in the relationship between Joe and Joan, and in flashback their history is revealed. In 1956 he was an already married young college professor and she was his student and a budding writer. Once they married she supported him despite a series of infidelities. Back in the present, communication between David and Joe all but ruptures, Joe is distracted by young event photographer Linnea (Karin Franz Körlof), and Nathaniel keeps probing, looking for the real story behind the famous writer and his outwardly supportive but tight-lipped wife.

Directed by Björn Runge, The Wife is an adaptation of the Meg Wolitzer book, written for the screen by Jane Anderson. The film is a multi-layered dual character study, peeling away the years on a complex relationship to finally reveal its core. With an exhilarating Glenn Close performance full of controlled nuance, The Wife offers delicious intrusion into the life of a seemingly perfect established couple.

Relevant themes abound, and the changing expectations embedded in the dutiful wife's role is the dominant thread running through the film. During her student days Joan meets author Elaine Mozell (Elizabeth McGovern), and her disheartening comments about the prospects of a female author getting any respect or attention carry a heavy influence. Joan grew up accepting her function as the winds beneath his wings, but close to 40 years later her self-esteem demands something different and society expects no less.

Also prevalent throughout the narrative is Joe's evolving treatment of Joan, from early entrancement to taking her for granted and airily belittling her role in his success. Throughout, she does nothing except maintain her poise, despite his serial cheating. It's only once the award festivities get into full swing and Joe's hubris registers new levels that she decides to take a stand, prompted in no small measure by Nathaniel's interference. It is one challenge for Joan and Joe to maintain the delicate balance of their relationship as a professor and his wife; quite another for a Nobel Prize winner to maintain composure while caught in the glare of the spotlight.

The treatment of the interaction between David and Joe does not work as well. David's sullen mood is inconsistent with joining his parents on a celebratory trip, and for an intelligent couple, both Joe and Joan appear inept at communicating with their son about his writing. Runge and Anderson also short-change the subplot with photographer Linnea, who is treated more as a convenient device than a person.

The Wife is a pointed exploration of the power behind the pen, and the inevitable expiry date of every compromise built on duplicity.

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Movie Review: 5 to 7 (2014)

A romantic drama, 5 to 7 explores a perfect love that just happens to thrive in the most imperfect of circumstances.

In New York City, Brian (Anton Yelchin) is a fledgling writer in his early twenties still waiting for his first publishing break. In front of the St. Regis Hotel he spots Arielle (Bérénice Marlohe), and it's love at first sight for both of them. Arielle is French and nine years older than Brian, which he does not mind. But with the relationship quickly turning serious, he is shocked when she reveals that she is contentedly married to diplomat Valéry (Lambert Wilson) and the mother of two young children.

Arielle educates Brian about the French custom of accepting affairs within marriage, as long as all parties are discreet and respectful, with the extramarital couple traditionally only meeting from 5 to 7 in the afternoon. Brian adapts to the concept, proceeds with the affair within the rules, and even gets to meet Valéry, his lover Jane (Olivia Thirlby), and Arielle's two children. The unusual arrangement completely rattles Brian's father Sam (Frank Langella), but his mother Arlene (Glenn Close) is more understanding. Brian's career catches a break, but as he falls ever so deeply in love with Arielle his delicate romantic arrangement starts to teeter.

Written and directed by Victor Levin, 5 to 7 benefits from exploring a romance with a few relatively original twists. While the New York City setting is familiar, Brian and Arielle navigate around differences in age and culture, her marital status and quite progressive views about the role of love and lovers in life. For long stretches Levin sustains interest not so much because of the love story, but because of where the romance fits into Arielle's life.

Despite the affair unfolding through Brian's eyes, Arielle emerges as a much more compelling character, and Bérénice Marlohe makes the film her own. Seemingly effortlessly, Arielle juggles the role of lover, mentor in affairs of the heart, wife and mother, and Levin succeeds in creating a captivating and stylish woman who can make a young man believe in alternative passion arrangements.

Less convincing is the concept of Arielle falling in love with Brian. Whatever charms the struggling writer possesses to turn the eye of a sophisticated woman are left off the screen, and Brian remains a rather whiny if infatuated young man. Anton Yelchin is dewy eyed but also miscast, unable to elevate the role beyond the star-struck American.

Brian's parents provide the comic relief and a contrast in bridges across the cultural divide. His mother Arlene is more than willing to give the liaison with a married woman every opportunity to thrive. His father Sam remains skeptical, barely tolerating Arielle's Frenchness, let alone the age difference and her marriage. Glenn Close and Frank Langella make for a fine married couple thriving in their eccentricities.

5 to 7 unravels in its final third, and the last 15 minutes are dominated by narration, Levin defaulting to describing rather than showing emotions. A great love can survive a lot, but it finally trips on a writer with too many words at his disposal.

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Movie Review: Paradise Road (1997)

A World War Two prison camp drama, Paradise Road places western women under the custody of brutal Japanese captors and then cues up every well-worn prison camp cliché.

It's early in 1942 and British-controlled Singapore unexpectedly falls to the advancing Japanese army. Western women and children are hurriedly evacuated by sea out of the city, but Japanese air force bombers catch up with their vessel and sink it. Survivors swim to shore and find themselves on the island of Sumatra. They are soon captured and imprisoned by the occupying Japanese troops.

The women at the camp include stubborn British diplomat's wife Adrienne (Glenn Close); kindly missionary Margaret (Pauline Collins); American socialite Topsy (Julianna Marguiles); German Jew Dr. Verstak (Frances McDormand); young Australian nurse Susan (Cate Blanchett); and the beautiful Rosemary (Jennifer Ehle), whose husband is also interned in a nearby prison for men.

Life in the women's prison camp is tough, with the sadistic Japanese guards often deploying torture and intimidation to control the women. They are forced to work as slaves in the fields, while medical supplies and food are scarce. To lift the women's spirits, Adrienne and Margaret decide to organize the women into a choir. The singing gradually brings the women together, but the war appears endless and there are more agonies to come.

Directed by Bruce Beresford and inspired by real events, Paradise Road is a story of survival under enormous physical and emotional stress. While the women's ordeal is undoubtedly harrowing, this life-as-a-prisoner-of-the-Japanese-is-hell territory has been very well explored in previous movies, and Beresford struggles to add anything new. The prisoners' greatest act of defiance is creating a choir; brave and moving as their actions were, women sitting and singing is not terrific material for a movie experience.

To fill the seemingly endless two hours of running time, Beresford defaults to a tired formula of alternating scenes of mistreatment with long sequences of the women...talking. The Japanese guards all demonstrate vicious behaviour and do the usual amount of screaming and foaming at the mouth. The talking scenes contain the expected mixture of bonding, mistrust and encouragement. As is typical of the subgenre, when prisoners are given little to do except play victims, the drama never gains traction. Big fights break out over a bar of soap. There are apparently children in the camp but they are rarely mentioned. A dog is also among the survivors, and gets a few tangential mentions as a drain on scarce resources.

The performances are solid but unspectacular. Frances McDormand comes closest to etching a memorable character, but only because the heavily accented Dr. Verstak is portrayed with almost cartoonish stand-offishness. At the end of the film little that is original is learned about any of the women; their personalities are sketched in during the opening lavish banquet scene at the luxurious Raffles hotel, and then barely evolve.

Paradise Road leads to hell, but it's a disappointingly familiar place.

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The Movies Of Glenn Close

All movies starring Glenn Close and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The World According To Garp (1982)

The Big Chill (1983)

The Natural (1984)

Jagged Edge (1985)

Fatal Attraction (1987)

Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

The House Of The Spirits (1993)

The Paper (1994)

Paradise Road (1997)

Air Force One (1997)

Evening (2007)

5 to 7 (2014)

The Girl With All The Gifts (2016)

The Wife (2017)

Crooked House (2017)

Four Good Days (2020)

Hillbilly Elegy (2020)

Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

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The Movie Star Index is here.