Movie Review: Lady Chatterley's Lover (2022)

Genre: Romance  

Director: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre  

Starring: Emma Corrin, Jack O'Connell, Joely Richardson  

Running Time: 127 minutes  

Synopsis: In England, Connie Reid (Emma Corrin) marries Sir Clifford Chatterley (Matthew Duckett) just before he heads off to World War I. He returns paralyzed from the waist down and unable to engage in sexual activity. The couple settle at Chatterley's lavish Wragby estate, and Clifford encourages Connie to discreetly get pregnant to produce an heir. When nurse Mrs. Bolton (Joely Richardson) arrives to look after Clifford, Connie is freed to explore her passion, and stumbles upon gamekeeper Oliver Mellors (Jack O'Connell), a war veteran with a broken marriage. Connie and Oliver embark on a torrid affair, with unexpected consequences.

What Works Well: The adaptation of the scandalous 1928 D.H. Lawrence novel is a visually rich romance, drawing beauty from secluded English countryside settings and a sense of wealth and privilege at the Chatterley estate. But loneliness and resentment also reside here, and act as triggers for Lady Chatterley to search for a lustful adventure. The sex scenes are frequent and daring, with Emma Corrin and Jack O'Connell generating heat as a couple from opposite sides of the social divide finding common ground (and almost all the sex takes place on the ground).

What Does Not Work As Well: Away from the sex and nudity, the pacing is languid and borders on sleepy, and the emotional tones are repetitively whiney. The transition from animalistic lust to wholesome love is unconvincing, as the script fails to traverse the canyon between satisfying physical needs and complementing lifelong desires. Side themes related to the residents of the nearby village (dependent on the Chatterley wealth), Clifford's drive to mechanize his coal mines, and his lack of empathy for miners, remain at the fragment level.

Key Quote:

Clifford: I've always cared for you, Connie.

Connie: Yes, cared for me. In the same way you care for your books and for your radio, but never in the ways I need you to.

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Movie Review: Sinners (2025)

Genre: Supernatural Drama Horror Thriller  

Director: Ryan Cooglar  

Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O'Connell, Delroy Lindo  

Running Time: 137 minutes  

Synopsis: In Mississippi of 1932, twin criminal brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) return from a stint in Chicago determined to open and operate a juke joint for the black community. Their 17 year-old guitar-playing cousin Samuel (Miles Caton) is the star attraction, over the objections of his preacher father Jedidiah (Saul Williams). Old-timer Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) and singer Pearline (Jayme Lawson) are the other recruited performers. Smoke reunites with his estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Musako) and Stack tangles with ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), but all seems to be going relatively well on opening night until evil personified in Remmick (Jack O'Connell) crashes the party.

What Works Well: Writer and director Ryan Cooglar conjures up an endlessly entertaining and imaginatively artistic wild genre mash-up, most reminiscent of From Dusk Till Dawn. While vampires, violence, blood, gore, and a high body count (all accompanied by a mean humour streak) dominate the second half, the more serious themes established in the opening hour underpin the mayhem. These include music as a cross-generational influence carrying enormous power, crime as a gateway to hell, and the lure of selling black culture to the wrong power brokers yielding decadence. Bathed in visual beauty and decorated by sensational musical numbers, the storytelling benefits from patient pacing anchored in memorable characters and a strong sense of time and place.

What Does Not Work As Well:  Although Michael B. Jordan is excellent, more could have been done to differentiate the twins. Mary's backstory suffers from neglect relative to her intended influence, and a Ku Klux Klan tertiary sub-plot is awkwardly bolted on. The value of the meandering ending is debatable

Key Quote:

Jedidiah: You keep dancing with the devil... one day he's gonna follow you home.



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Movie Review: Back To Black (2024)

Genre: Musical Biography  

Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson  
Starring: Marisa Abela, Jack O'Connell, Eddie Marsan, Lesley Manville  

Running Time: 122 minutes  

Synopsis: In London, teenager Amy Winehouse (Marisa Abela) comes from a modest working class family and is blessed with a throwback singing voice. She has a close relationship with her grandmother Cynthia (Lesley Manville), while her taxi driver father Mitch (Eddie Marsan) fancies himself a crooner. Amy is more into jazz and writes emotional songs inspired by her addictions to men, booze, weed, and bulimia. On the cusp of success, Amy takes a break from music and falls into a turbulent relationship with bad boy Blake (Jack O'Connell), providing the inspiration to write songs for her next album, Back To Black. 

What Works Well: This impressionistic portrait of a troubled artist succeeds in capturing the fountain of artistry at the intersection of talent, passion, environment, and character. Writer Matt Greenhalgh and director Sam Taylor-Johnson maintain an intense focus on Amy, allowing her to own her success as an uncompromising anachronistic revivalist of jazz music and 1960s glamour, and just as fully embrace all the fault lines of her tragedy: attraction to bad boys, substance abuse, and a wicked temper. With the musical highlights seamlessly weaving through the narrative, Marisa Abela does her own singing and embodies Amy in a hauntingly honest performance punctuated by searing line deliveries. The recreation of early 2000s London fashions adds organic texture.

What Does Not Work As Well: Some of the jumps in time and place are uncoordinated, leaving a few side characters (including Amy's mother and a roommate) stranded. The running time is slightly padded, but the origins of Amy's demonic addictions deserved more attention. 

Key Quote:

Amy: I need to live, my songs.

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Movie Review: Seberg (2019)

Genre: Biographical Drama

Director: Benedict Andrews

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Jack O'Connell, Anthony Mackie, Vince Vaughn

Running Time: 102 minutes

Synopsis: In the late 1960s, actress Jean Seberg (Kristen Stewart) is attracted to the black civil rights movement and starts a passionate affair with activist Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie). She also donates to the Black Panther group, prompting the FBI to intrude into her life with agents Solomon (Jack O'Connell) and Kowalski (Vince Vaughn) mounting surveillance. Seberg's marriage to Romain (Yvan Attal) crumbles and she experiences paranoia, but refuses to betray her beliefs even as the government ramps up pressure. 

What Works Well: The opening act captures the whirlwinds of an era dominated by social turmoil, sucking in an idealistic but troubled and naive actress eager to gain publicity and satisfy carnal urges. The unchecked ability of a powerful government agency to tamper with a citizen's life is portrayed with cold detachment. The set designs and outfits capture a late 1960s vibe, and Kristen Stewart owns the narrow range between sullen and angry.

What Does Not Work As Well: The second half of the film stalls, with Seberg stuck in a dark emotional space and the unformed side-stories of the FBI agents intruding into the spotlight. Precious little background is revealed about Seberg to explain her activism and mental health issues, and selective scrubbing reduces civil rights leaders to polite cocktail party fundraisers. In any event, the black power plot driver unceremoniously fades away.

Conclusion: Occasionally potent portrait of a celebrity wading into trouble, but falls short of the intended searing social commentary.

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Movie Review: Money Monster (2016)

A hostage thriller, Money Monster addresses the collision between television celebrity business advice and the real world where investment decisions can have ruinous implications.

Lee Gates (George Clooney) hosts the weekly live Money Monster show on cable television where he dishes out stock investment tips in a glib flash-and-dash format. The more grounded Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) is his producer, and she stitches the show together despite Lee's often juvenile antics. During live filming, the stage is invaded by Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell), a deeply disturbed man waving a gun. He forces Lee to put on an explosive vest and insists that the cameras keep rolling.

Kyle is upset that he followed Lee's advice on a previous show and invested all his life savings in the stock of a company called IBIS Global Capital, run by CEO Walt Camby (Dominic West), who has now disappeared. IBIS stock promptly tanked when the company lost $800 million due to a so-called algorithm glitch. Live on-air, Kyle rails against the corrupt system. With Patty communicating through his earpiece, Lee regains his composure and tries to buy time by trying to find answers as to what really went wrong with the stock. The solution to the mystery of the missing millions passes through IBIS Chief of Communications Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe), as well as an algorithm expert in Seoul, hackers in Iceland, and a miners' strike in South Africa.

Directed by Jodie Foster, Money Monster works well when it's within the confines of the television studio. With an unstable Kyle hijacking the show, Lee's world flashing before his eyes and Patty trying to maintain some semblance of control, Foster constructs a taut story that gives a face to the victims of stock market machinations and exposes the shallow world of television punditry. The film maintains a steady current of tension, with the aggressor's instability invading the carefully crafted world of slick marketing, and just the right drizzle of humour injected to keep the drama in check.

The script (co-written by Alan Di Fiore, Jim Kouf and Jamie Linden) works its way to the uncomfortable foundations of the modern system of capitalism. Honest blue collar working men like Kyle are the recession victims, and their only mistake is trusting the make-believe world of charlatans like Lee Gates, a modern-day snake oil salesman. Walt Camby is revered for creating wealth by transferring money using inexplicable software, and while he is the celebrity of the business world men like Kyle simply pay the price in wrecked lives.

The parts of the film away from the studio are not as impressive. Foster takes brief sojourns to Asia, Europe and Africa to underline the interconnected modern world of global finance, but these scenes end up being mere snippets. The final third breaks out of the studio completely with the quest for answers spilling into the streets of Manhattan, and the film starts to unfortunately resemble a contrived Bruce Willis type action film.

The two central performances are excellent and never flag. George Clooney and Julia Roberts, despite sharing few scenes together, exude smooth star charisma and confidence. Clooney's wattage translates perfectly to the cocky personality of Lee Gates, forced through the hostage ordeal to see himself as others see him. Roberts' calm performance allows Patty to emerge as the one voice of reason is a world gone quite mad in pursuit of riches and revenge. Jack O'Connell is suitably unhinged, giving Kyle depth as a man seeking apologies and answers, but not without faults of his own.

In a world where money is virtual and no questions are asked as long as wealth is created out of thin air, Money Monster has no heroes, just victims and charlatans.

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Movie Review: Unbroken (2014)

A wartime biopic, Unbroken recounts the admirable true survival story of Olympic athlete Louis Zamperini, but fails to move past the never ending series of agonies.

The son of Italian immigrants, Louis Zamperini (Jack O'Connell) is heading towards a useless life until he channels his energy into athletics with the help of his brother Pete (Alex Russell). Louis becomes an Olympic middle-distance runner while still in college, and competes at the 1936 Berlin Olympics while settings his sights on the 1940 Tokyo games. World War Two interferes, and Louis finds himself in the Air Force serving as a bombardier in the Pacific theatre. Out on a rescue mission, his plane crashes into the ocean, and Louis is stranded on a raft with fellow airmen Mac (Finn Wittrock) and Phil (Domhnall Gleeson).

A brutal 47 day ordeal follows, with the trio battling a shortage of food and water, shark attacks, strafing from a Japanese war plane, and ocean storms. Louis survives and is finally taken prisoner, confined to a tiny cell on a Japanese-held island, and eventually transferred to a Tokyo prison camp. The sadistic warden Mutsuhiro "The Bird" Watanabe (Miyavi) relishes the opportunity to degrade an Olympian and ruthlessly picks on Louis, regularly administering beatings and other forms of humiliation bordering on torture. There is some relief when The Bird is transferred to another facility, but with the war coming to the doorsteps of Tokyo, there is yet more suffering ahead for Louis.

Zamperini's tale is harrowing, and director Angelina Jolie does an excellent job of chronicling the incredible ordeal that he had to survive. Unbroken is grim, unrelenting, and at 137 minutes, close to oppressive. It achieves the objective of celebrating a human spirit with a remarkable ability to bend but never break, while laying bare the brutalities that men can impart on each other in the name of war.

But a movie needs more than one scene of suffering followed by another scene of suffering, and here Unbroken falls short. Once the pattern is set on the raft, the film wallows in a wide open ocean of misery. There are precious few breaks for humour, humanity or meaningful dialogue. The 47 days on the raft appear to pass in real time, and Louis' subsequent experience in various Japanese camps is no less harsh. The script (co-written by Joel and Ethan Coen) makes its point and pounds away at it to exhaustion. The successive agonies experienced by Zamperini begin to merge into an indistinguishable blob, in a case of more is less.

Unbroken also suffers from a central character who is primarily a passive victim. Once the plane falls out of the sky, Zamperini is rarely in a position to influence events around him: he has no decisions to make and no moral dilemmas to confront. Instead, bad things happen and he just rolls with the punches (often literally) with the sole aim of surviving to see another day, much as young Jamie Graham does in Spielberg's Empire Of The Sun.

Jack O'Connell grits his teeth and gives Louis the pluck needed to stare down every impulse to fold and give in, but the actor has few scenes of human interaction to work with. Japanese musician Miyavi, in his acting debut, makes for an intimidating villain, worthy of hate. The rest of the characters enter and exit the film as almost interchangeable faces, wallpaper in Zamperini's journey through the hell of war captivity.

Jolie's directing is functional, with the cruel surroundings recreated in convincing fashion, from the desolate ocean to the Japanese prison camps and finally a coal mine where the prisoners are used as slave labour. Jolie gives the film a stark, soiled look, war's forgotten backdrops a grimy hell with no chance for glory.

Unbroken is a well-designed obstacle course of survival, but that is all there is.

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