Movie Review: Flightplan (2005)

Genre: Thriller  

Director: Robert Schwentke  

Starring: Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Sean Bean, Greta Scacchi, Greta Scacchi  

Running Time: 98 minutes  

Synopsis: After the sudden death of her husband David, grieving American aviation engineer Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) and her young daughter Julia board a flight carrying David's casket from Berlin to US. Partway through the flight, Kyle wakes up from a nap to find Julia missing. Her frantic search efforts attract the attention of the flight's air marshal Gene Carson (Peter Sarsgaard), as well as Captain Rich (Sean Bean). No one recalls ever seeing young Julia board the flight, raising doubts about Kyle's mental wellbeing.

What Works Well: Jodie Foster is always worth watching, and she infuses the first half with enough frazzled parental concern to maintain interest. The potential for grief to cloud a mother's grasp on reality offers intriguing psychological possibilities, briefly made more tasty with an incident of racial profiling.

What Does Not Work As Well: Once the plot reveals its secrets, the film succumbs to terminal turbulence courtesy of an exceptionally inane conspiracy, combining pretzel-like Machiavellian convolutions with Boeing-sized plot holes. As the logic-free final act approaches, all attempts at explanations are summarily ejected, leaving the cast struggling in vain against depressurized thrills.

Key Quote:

Captain Rich: I am responsible for the safety of every passenger on this plane...even the delusional ones.

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Movie Review: Nyad (2023)

Genre: Sports Drama

Director: Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Starring: Annette Bening, Jodie Foster, Rhys Ifans

Running Time: 120 minutes

Synopsis: In 2010, Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) is turning 60 and still rejecting mediocrity. A record-setting open-water swimmer in her younger days, Diana had one failed attempt to swim the 110 miles between Cuba and the Florida Keys when she was 28. No one has ever successfully completed the 53-hour swim, and now Diana decides to try again. Her best friend Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster) reluctantly agrees to act as coach, and they recruit crusty mariner John Bartlett (Rhys Ifans) and his boat as their support vessel. Diana is strong-willed, but overcoming exhaustion, dehydration, hallucination, sharks, jellyfish, and manowars will be a near-impossible challenge.

What Works Well: Based on real events, the story of Diana's incredible determination to attempt a daunting physical challenge at age 60 packs considerable power. The Julia Fox screenplay wraps the swimming quest in a cozy blanket of friendship between Diana and Bonnie, while a father's dream and a potent trauma from Diana's years as a young competitor surface in impactful snippets. Annette Bening succeeds in turning a self-absorbed and single-minded character into someone worth cheering for, while Jodie Foster (the best friend destined for a secondary role) and Rhys Ifans (the grizzled Cuba-Florida water currents expert) offer able support.

What Does Not Work As Well: Only so much drama can be squeezed out of scenes featuring a woman in the water, and a shorter running length would have helped with the pacing.

Conclusion: A long but rewarding swim.



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Movie Review: The Mauritanian (2021)

A legal drama based on true events., The Mauritanian explores the plight of detainees rounded up during the war on terror, and held at Guantanamo Bay with no access to due process.

Two months after the terrorists attacks of September 11, 2001, Mohamedou Slahi (Tahar Rahim) is arrested at the behest of the United States while attending a family wedding in his home country of Mauritania. In his past he had trained with Al-Qaeda and had recently received a phone call from his cousin using Bin Laden's satellite phone. 

Slahi is held without charge at the American Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba. By 2005, Albuquerque-based lawyer Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster) accepts his case and starts proceedings to force the government to reveal evidence against him. Around the same time, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch (Benedict Cumberbatch) is appointed to prosecute Slahi on charges that he was one of the main organizers and recruiters of the terrorist attacks, with the US administration seeking the death penalty. 

Hollander and her assistant Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley) visit Slahi and encourage him to write his history so they can mount a defence. Meanwhile, Couch's attempts to assemble meaningful evidence is challenged by layers of governmental secrecy. Both Hollander and Couch will be startled by what their investigations will uncover.

Based on Slahi's book Guantanamo Diary and directed by Kevin Macdonald, The Mauritanian is an exquisitely constructed drama exposing a descent to ethical bankruptcy. Through the story of one man, the screenplay by M.B. Traven, Rory Haines, and Sohrab Noshirvani indicts an inept administration that started with clumsy extrajudicial detention then veered to the torture tactics of tinpot regimes.

A multi-pronged approach towards shocking revelations adds narrative zest. Slahi's story unfolds through letters to Hollander from his prison cell, while Couch is independently readying his case under pressure to secure a conviction. The death penalty requires a high bar, and Couch is dogged in pursuing the necessary evidence, just as Hollander ardently believes in basic principles of justice. With flashbacks filling in Slahi's ordeal, the quests of the two lawyers merge with artistic elegance.

The film is designed to illicit fury, and succeeds through measured pacing and a commitment to rich storytelling. Macdonald strides towards the abyss of interrogatory behaviour, and by the time the torture tactics take centre stage for a harrowing ten minute sequence, the impact is amplified through character depth. 

At 129 minutes, the running time is on the longer side. A side-bar about another Guantanamo inmate originally from Marseilles could have used a trim, while all opposing viewpoints, including the pressures experienced by those authorizing torture, are absent.

Tahar Rahim finds the ambiguity within a man harbouring a chequered history, still finding balance despite the abrupt cancellation of his freedom. Jodie Foster rolls back the years to deliver a steely performance as a lawyer fiercely protective of her profession's fundamentals. 

Righteousness matters most during the severest crises. In the brutal conflict between terrorists and their pursuers, The Mauritanian humanizes the cost of inhumanity.



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Movie Review: Elysium (2013)

A science fiction allegory of the global immigration crisis, Elysium offers an initially compelling vision but quickly unravels.

In the year 2154, Earth is in a decrepit and diseased state. The wealthy have fled to the Elysium space station where they enjoy a life of luxury with advanced health services. In Los Angeles, Max (Matt Damon) is an ex-convict trying to go straight and working at the Armadyne factory constructing security robots. On Elysium, power-hungry Defence Secretary Jessica Delacourt (Jodie Foster) colludes with Armadyne CEO John Carlyle (William Fichtner) to reprogram the space station's software and install her as President.

A workplace accident results in Max needing immediate advanced medical care available only on Elysium. He partners with human smuggler Spider (Wagner Moura) in a plot to kidnap Carlyle and use his knowledge as leverage to gain access to the space station. But Jessica activates Earth-based undercover agent Kruger (Sharlto Copley) to disrupt the plan. Max is soon on the run and in possession of information vital for the future of humanity.

Writer and director Neill Blomkamp does not try to camouflage his metaphorical references. Elysium is a straightforward extrapolation of current-day population movement tensions, with the disadvantaged willing to undergo hazardous journeys for the promise of better opportunities, and human smugglers happy to prey on the weak. The wealthy are mostly white and living in flawlessly idyllic homes, while the scrappy earthlings are predominantly brown and occupying shantytowns. Fashions and haircuts will apparently barely evolve in 150 years.

But despite good intentions, a willing Matt Damon and some slick visuals, Elysium (in Greek mythology, a paradise-like home of the blessed after death) is quickly perforated by too many self-defeating weaknesses. Jessica's coup d'état plot is hastily conceived and barely explained, Jodie Foster's robotic performance registering a career low. The main MacGuffin is world-altering software completed by one man in a matter of minutes then subjected to the complication of brain implantation instead of simple transmittal or uploading.

Blomkamp's short-cuts and internal inconsistencies are frequently exposed. Human smuggler Spider is somehow able to decipher massive amounts of arcane code without even looking at the screens displaying gibberish. Some illegal spaceships are allowed to land at Elysium while others are unceremoniously blown out of the sky. And somewhere along the line, a political power grab becomes a potential pathway to citizenship and medicare for one and all.

In a plastic attempt at a backstory, Max is provided with a friend-from-childhood Frey (Alice Braga) and her sick child, who both mostly exist to get in the way. With the more interesting and powerful villains exiting early, Max is left to tangle with Kruger and his henchmen to save humanity. He need not have bothered: this paradise is lost.



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Movie Review: Stealing Home (1988)

A coming-of-age drama and romance, Stealing Home straddles a fine line between rich narrative and nostalgia overload in a wistful tale of broken dreams and first love.

As he carefully prepares for his next game, appreciating everything about the day, thirtysomething minor league baseball player Billy Wyatt (Mark Harmon) reflects on his life. Six months earlier his baseball career was washed-up and he was living in a scuzzy motel when his mother Ginny (Blair Brown) called to inform him of the suicide of Katie Chandler (Jodie Foster), his childhood babysitter, muse and first crush. 

Billy rushes home to Camden, New Jersey and in a series of flashbacks to his formative years recalls the adventurous, free-spirited Katie believing in him as a baseball star-in-the-making. As a young man approaching college Billy (William McNamara) and his best friend Alan Appleby (Jonathan Silverman) were enjoying life and Billy was attracting the attention of the Philadelphia Flyers when a family tragedy strikes. Katie helps Billy and Ginny emotionally recover and pick up the pieces of their lives. 

Once home after Katie's suicide, Billy reconnects with Ginny and the grown-up Alan (Harold Ramis) and puzzles over why Katie left her ashes in his care.

Deliberately playing all notes in the minor key, Stealing Home touches upon every aspect of nostalgic Americana. Baseball, first love, loss of virginity, idyllic and isolated beachfront locations, 8mm family films, the bond between best friends, a life-altering tragedy, and the fall from grace that must precede emotional atonement: all are woven together in the story co-written and co-directed by Steven Kampmann and William Porter.

Almost overburdened by a sense of contrived machine assembly, Stealing Home just about wriggles out with enough charm. The multiple nested flashback format and soft colours work surprisingly well to create the requisite dreamy mood. Most of the key events occur in the seminal post-tragedy, pre-college summer, with Billy and his friend Alan surrounded by family, friends and sexual firsts. Alan lusts after classmate Robin Parks, but she has other plans involving Billy. Later in the summer, older woman Lesley represents Alan's every wet dream. The multiple sexual awakening side stories threaten to distract from Billy's primary arc, but also serve to enrich his character.

At the heart of the film is the relationship between Billy and Katie. She is introduced in flashback only after her suicide is announced, with Jodie Foster bringing to life a young man's fantasy cool babysitter who could become so much more. Initially the six year age difference is a hurdle, but once Billy is seventeen Katie becomes both enchanting and enticingly available. From his vantage point her spirit is enterprising, fearless, selfless and ultimately seeking more than her world can possibly offer.

Baseball as Billy's destiny and natural calling permeates his past, present and future, although the film only visits the diamond on a couple of occasions. Billy is an intrepid base runner willing to steal bases at game-defining moments, his audacity a salute to the woman who believed in him more than she ultimately believed in herself.



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Movie Review: Carny (1980)

A drama set in the world of a small-time touring carnivals, Carny lacks plot but is rich in characters and mood.

Frankie (Gary Busey) and Patch (Robbie Robertson) are members of The Great American Carnival. Frankie plays The Mighty Bozo, a dunk-tank antagonist, while Patch collects the money and helps run the business. The carnival includes the typical assortment of rides, rigged pay-per-play games, a strip show and several sideshows exploiting various physical conditions, with scams aplenty to maximize profit. One evening bored teenager Donna (Jodie Foster) attends with her boyfriend Mickey (Craig Wasson). She quickly establishes a connection with Frankie, runs away from home and joins the carnival.

As the ramshackle tour moves from town to town, Donna comes between Frankie and Patch. She tries to make herself useful by joining the strip show, a trial that goes awry. At every small town Patch has to bribe the right officials to ignore the carnival's more sordid corners. When he tangles with an exceptionally oily businessman demanding more than the usual payout, the consequences are severe.

Directed by Robert Kaylor, better known as a documentarian, Carny is co-written and co-produced by Robertson, much better known as The Band's lead guitarist and main songwriter. And this non-traditional partnership is largely responsible for a unique look and feel. Carny defies any easy categorizations, and is a movie to be experienced rather than analyzed.

Despite the 1980 release date Carny owes more to the 1970s in being character driven, soaking up atmosphere and proceeding with blissful disregard for conventional narrative structures. Kaylor allows his cameras to roam, always finding the more interesting perspectives and capturing the pathetic nighttime energy of a touring event scrapping for survival. There is nothing glamorous about this neon-drenched life on the road, except that it is a life on the road, where what happened yesterday can be disregarded because something else will happen somewhere else today.

At the core of the non-events is a ten year mostly unspoken friendship between Frankie and Patch, the barely-in-control-brawn and the calm-and-collected brains, Frankie in the cage generating fury and Patch outside exploiting the anger. The one theme of the film is the struggle to maintain a functional connection between two men when a woman arrives on the scene, with the added tension of Donna being - maybe - just on the right side of 18, and a runaway.

Gary Busey has rarely been better - or more fearsome. The opening sequence of Frankie applying face makeup to transform into The Mighty Bozo is hypnotizing, and Busey's manic energy in the cage jumps off the screen. Robbie Robertson is an ideal counterbalance, tall, lanky, almost too laid back as he thinks through every situation. Jodie Foster's Donna is a perfect disruptive presence as she tries to find her place into the carnival's routine, the young woman's burgeoning sexuality so much fuel on an already unstable fire.

In addition to Wasson, the supporting cast includes Elisha Cook Jr. as the resident grizzled veteran, Meg Foster as the game maiden who unleashes Donna's inner tiger, Kenneth McMillan, and Fred Ward.

Carny glides towards a climax where the carnival also bares its teeth as a house of horrors. It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt, and then a different set of rules apply.

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Movie Review: Contact (1997)

A science drama, Contact is an intelligent story about the passion to search for a connection with alien beings, and the implications once the unthinkable becomes true.

As a young girl, Ellie Arroway (Jena Malone) was encouraged to pursue astronomy by her father Ted (David Morse). The grown up Ellie (Jodie Foster) graduated from MIT and developed a passion for seeking signals transmitted by aliens. While on assignment at an observatory in Puerto Rico, Ellie establishes a rapport with fellow scientist Kent Clark (William Fichtner), and has a brief but passionate affair with Christian philosopher Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey). The Puerto Rico assignment is eventually shut down by National Science Foundation Director David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt), who does not believe that searching for alien signals is worthwhile research.

Ellie finds private funding through the Hadden Corporation, led by the extremely rich but dying tycoon S.R. Hadden (John Hurt), and establishes her team at the Very Large Array (VLA) of massive listening satellite dishes in New Mexico. After months of effort Ellie stumbles onto a signal transmitted from the Vega star system. Her discovery unleashes a global frenzy, with the White House getting involved in the form of Chief of Staff Rachel Constantine (Angela Bassett) and National Security Advisor Michael Kitz (James Woods). Then Ellie's team uncovers more: the alien signal contains a coded message and reams of advanced data including the blueprints for an advanced, massive machine.

Directed by Robert Zemeckis and based on the novel by celebrated astronomer Carl Sagan, Contact is a spiritual successor to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Although neither as fantastical as Kubrick's epic nor as fuzzy as Spielberg's opus, Contact brings its own attitude to the search for intelligent life: a science-first stance, a willingness to take a pragmatic look at how politics will interfere with any major discovery, and a deliberate eagerness to delve into the debate about the role of religion when the time comes for human interaction with another species.

The film excels at maintaining a clear-headed, science-based perspective through the eyes of Ellie, including the frustrating chase for funds, clashes with superiors, disappointing initiatives that lead to nothing, and long hours, days and years of research sustained only by hope and belief that a breakthrough must be just around the next frequency.

And when contact is made and Ellie shakes the world with her discovery, Zemeckis takes his time to capture the frenzied reaction. From President Clinton (masterfully weaved into the film) and his army of White House suits to religious zealots, and passing through the journalists and talking heads on the cable news networks and Chevrolet Vega enthusiasts, the world will react to alien communications in unpredictable ways, and Contact imagines the outpouring of emotion and insanity with plenty of colour.

Some parts of the film don't work as well. There is a serious sabotage incident that appears far-fetched and ultimately neither adds to nor deletes from the story. As the machine is being built at enormous cost, Zemeckis dials back the curiosity factor and does not even attempt to explain how it may be expected to work. And the personal scenes between Ellie and Palmer too conveniently and quickly devolve into a complicated relationship that mirrors the tension between her science and his religious philosophy.

Jodie Foster is at the core of the drama, and allows Ellie to not only be a bright and fiercely determined scientist, but also a human being with faults. She has to check her anger and attitude at meetings, and is too honest when it matters least. As Sagan intended, Ellie carries with her the struggle of women scientists to stand alongside the men, and more than once Ellie has to swallow her pride and plan a recovery after men brutishly shove their interests ahead of her rights. The supporting cast is adequate, but none of the men around Ellie achieve much depth.

The film ends with a journey sequence driven by spectacular special effects, and a conclusion built on sober reflection. The search for evidence finds belief and the intrinsically faithful find evidence. The quest to find answers will continue, built on advancements measured simultaneously in light years and milliseconds.

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Movie Review: Panic Room (2002)

A women-under-siege suspense thriller, Panic Room is a competently delivered film with a committed Jodie Foster performance and fluid directing from David Fincher. Despite all the polish, many predictable elements of the home invasion sub-genre do creep in.

Recent divorcée Meg Altman (Foster) and her mouthy 11 year old daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) purchase a swish four-story townhouse in tony Upper Manhattan, previously owned by an ailing millionaire with secrets. The home features a reinforced panic room designed to protect occupants against home invaders. On their first night at the home, Meg and Sarah are awakened by three intruders: Junior (Jared Leto), Burnham (Forest Whitaker), and Raoul (Dwight Yoakam).

Meg and Sarah make it into the panic room and lock themselves in. But Junior and his crew are after money hidden in a safe within the panic room. With Meg unable to call for outside help and the invaders struggling to break into the panic room, a tense standoff ensues. As the night progresses, Meg learns that Junior has a connection to the previous owner of the house, while Burnham's occupation places him at an advantage in trying to gain access to the panic room. Raoul, meanwhile, is a violent wildcard, and Sarah suffers from a condition that will make it even more difficult for her to survive the ordeal.

With the well-worn premise easily describable in three words, it's up to Fincher to create an entertaining drama and stretch proceedings while maintaining interest over almost two hours. He digs deep into his bag of tricks and finds enough pizazz to give Panic Room a decent shine. With the townhouse itself stepping in as the alternative star of the film, Fincher adopts a philosophy of fluid camera movement and long takes, often simulating the point-of-view passing through walls and ceilings. The break-in scene is a masterpiece of assumed continuity, the cameras tracking the invaders' movements outside the house, testing multiple entry points at various levels before finally achieving access.

In terms of content, the film settles down to the two women in the room gathering their courage and trying to plot an escape or a rescue, and the three men outside the room trying to breach the panic room's defences. That there is bickering on both sides of the wall is a given. Meg and Sarah are dealing with the debris of Meg's divorce and are often barely civil with each other. Junior is obsessed, Burnham is circumspect and Raoul is simmering with the threat of violence. The men are the furthest thing from a well-oiled criminal trio, and the fissures between them are established early. The squabbling throughout the house allows the David Koepp script to delve into the characters during the frequent lulls in action, and the film finds a modest balance between suspense scenes and background context.

The final act reverses occupancies and powers into more mindless action territory, as the guns and sledgehammers swing into action, an additional character is brought into the house, there are typical Ramboesque heroics, he's-still-not-dead! surprises and bodies that start to pile up. In short, the more calculable, less cerebral elements are brought to the fore. And as is usual for this fare, the bad guys find ways to become especially incompetent when it matters most.

Jodie Foster delivers a grim performance filled with reluctant courage, giving Meg the inner fortitude to fight on all fronts. A young Kristen Stewart matches Foster, and does her part to create inner family tension while also hinting at the maturing young woman within the girl trapped in the panic room. The three invaders are brought to life with a good mixture of hesitancy and menace by the quite watchable Leto, Whitaker and Yoakam.

Panic Room may not find too many new corners to explore, but the film at least looks good treading over the reasonably familiar real estate.

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Movie Reviews: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

A single-mom drama directed by Martin Scorsese, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore earned Ellen Burstyn a Best Actress Academy Award. The film is a compelling if uneven look at a determined woman tackling life below the poverty line.

In New Mexico, Alice (Burstyn) has to deal with her difficult husband Donald, a delivery driver. Their preteen son Tommy (Alfred Lutter) cannot stand Donald and shows him no respect. But as bad as things are, life gets worse when Donald dies in a car crash. Left with no source of income, Alice packs up Tommy and their meager belongings into the car and heads to Monterey, with a vague plan to relaunch a long abandoned singing career.

Forced to make money along the way they stop in Phoenix, where Alice finds work singing in a decrepit bar and gets involved with the seemingly charming Ben (Harvey Keitel). But he also turns out to be bad news. On to Tucson, where Alice accepts a demeaning job as a waitress at Mel's Diner. She gradually makes friends with fellow servers Flo (Diane Ladd), a sharp-tongued survivor, and Vera (Valerie Curtin), who is meek and clumsy. Meanwhile, the long suffering Tommy falls under the influence of tomboy and trouble-seeker Audrey (Jodie Foster). When Alice meets David (Kris Kristofferson), she has to decide whether she can ever again invest in a relationship with a man.

A relative oddity in Scorsese's portfolio, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is a woman's perspective on America's oft-forgotten underbelly of poverty, where life is a daily struggle and the trade-offs often reside between domestic strife and starvation. The film mixes road trip drama with some comedy and plenty of humanity. Not all the scenes work, and there are clunky passages with vaguely unconvincing fluctuations in mood and emotions. But overall, this is an emotionally satisfying story fueled by genuine passion.

This is also a quintessential 1970s film, where every scene is given its due, the focus is on the reality of settings, movements and actions. When Alice pounds the sidewalk to find a job, Scorsese pounds the sidewalk with her, and every shady character she meets, every bar she enters, and every door that slams in her face is coloured in. With the Arizona sun bathing the unattractive locales a sickly yellow and orange, the result is a film that burns its way into the memory.

Far from Scorsese's typical world of gangsters and male camaraderie, Alice is underpinned by just the one genuine relationship: Alice and her son. Tommy is forced to grow up in a hurry, and his incessant and perceptive questions challenge Alice to explain her actions, and more poignantly, her feelings. And every decision that Alice makes has an impact on Tommy. When her choices are bad or she stretches herself too thin, it is Tommy who suffers. Audrey's confident audacity becomes Tommy's refuge, and a potential gateway to a world of trouble.

Burstyn initiated the project and brought it to up-and-comer Scorsese, and Alice became his first major studio production. With the success of The Exorcist having confirmed her status among the top echelon of actresses, Burstyn commands the film and funnels the various societal implications of the women's movement into her character. Alice is resourceful, determined and indeed indomitable. But in a society quick to take advantage of the seemingly weak, she is also vulnerable and often forced to decide between unappealing options to stave off loneliness or financial ruin.

At the unlikely destination of Mel's Diner Alice finally starts to find a semblance of the community she is desperately looking for. The crusty Flo, the sympathetic Mel himself, and the intriguing David are not necessarily easy to like. But with the passage of time Alice starts to form the meaningful bonds needed to evolve from individual to society. Alice may still not be sure where she is living, but she at last begins to understand what makes a home.

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Movie Review: The Beaver (2011)

A mental illness family drama, The Beaver boasts excellent performances and tackles its grim subject with laudable sensitivity, but ultimately veers towards awkward maudlin territory.

Toy company executive Walter Black (Mel Gibson) is struggling with severe depression. His wife Meredith (Jodie Foster) and two children, including teenage son Porter (Anton Yelchin), try to cope as best as they can. Porter, who wants nothing to do with his sick father, runs a high school side-business writing essays for other students in exchange for money, and is approached by popular cheerleader Norah (Jennifer Lawrence) to write her valedictorian speech.

After being kicked out of the house by Meredith, Walter sinks into the abyss and attempts suicide. He fails, and in an alley dumpster stumbles upon a beaver hand puppet. Adopting an English working class accent, Walter starts to communicate through the beaver, giving the stuffed toy a personality and regaining his ability to function. Things initially look up and Walter moves back home and inspires his company to find success with a new beaver-themed toy. But as Porter starts to get to know Norah's secrets, the beaver puppet fully takes over Walter's life, and his mind is pushed into its darkest corners.

Directed by Foster, The Beaver is a worthwhile exploration of an important subject matter, made more real by Gibson's well publicized battles with alcoholism, manic-depression and public self-destruction. Despite some unnecessary narration that attempts to inject a trace of misplaced humour, for the most part the Kyle Killen script makes interesting choices. Walter's depression is presented as an incapacitating disease, and the hand puppet as an alternative form of communication that helps to separate Walter from himself, allowing him to confront many of his demons. The parallel story of Porter doing his best to escape his father, struggling with his own creeping black clouds and discovering that even popular kids like Norah have a lot to hide, adds a creditable multi-generational dimension to the drama.

While the first two thirds of the film are assured, the final act starts to unravel. Meredith is too demanding, the beaver is too controlling, Porter's world disintegrates and Norah's issues as a rebel with a sad past hiding in cheerleader clothing are just too convenient. Then Walter and the beaver engage in a battle of wills that barely avoids unintentional comic status, only to be followed by violent plot developments out of the schlocky horror drawer. The film never recovers and defaults to a yawn of an ending.

But despite the film's loss of direction, the performances are consistently good. Mel Gibson dominates as Walter and is exceptional in bringing to life a hand puppet with a unique personality of its own. Foster is believable as a wife struggling to hold herself and her family together in the face of a husband's dissolution, while Anton Yelchin is suitably dour as Porter, wanting any fate other than like father, like son. Jennifer Lawrence, one year before her 2012 breakout in The Hunger Games and Silver Linings Playbook, gives Norah plenty of depth and personality beyond the standard troubled potential girlfriend role.

A case of an intriguing idea provided with decent execution, The Beaver has a lot of good things to say but not the legs to necessarily walk all the talk.

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The Movies Of Jodie Foster

All movies starring Jodie Foster and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

Taxi Driver (1976)

Carny (1980)

Stealing Home (1988)

The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)

Maverick (1994)

Contact (1997)

Panic Room (2002)

Flightplan (2005)

Inside Man (2006)

Carnage (2011)

The Beaver (2011, also Director)

Elysium (2013)

The Mauritanian (2021)

Nyad (2023)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Inside Man (2006)

A multilayered bank heist drama, Inside Man is a slick thriller with an intricate plot, plenty of twists and a clutch of interesting characters.

Disguised as painters, a heavily armed gang led by Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) take control of a bank in Manhattan. All customers and staff are held as hostages and forced to wear painters' overalls, making it difficult to differentiate between hostages and criminals. Police captain John Darius (Willem Dafoe) and his men secure the area and set up a command post, while detectives Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) and Bill Mitchell (Chiwetel Ejiofor) arrive to take control of the negotiations. Eventually Frazier establishes contact with Russell, who first demands food and then a plane, and threatens to kill one hostage per hour if there are any delays.

Respected businessman Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer) owns the bank, and quickly contacts exclusive "fixer" Madeleine White (Jodie Foster) for help. Case wants Madeleine to secure the contents of his personal safety deposit box at the bank before it falls into the wrong hands. Madeleine uses her connections with the Mayor and forces Frazier to cooperate with her. With Russell seemingly in no rush to end the ordeal and always several steps ahead of any police action, Frazier begins to realize that this is not a typical bank robbery. A much bigger game is being played, and none of the normal rules apply.

Perhaps Spike Lee's most traditional outing as director, Inside Man is an excellent film about an exceptionally perfect bank robbery. This is glossy, star-propelled entertainment, mixing bursts of action with mounting tension and an unfolding creative mystery that reaches back to shady bank dealings during Europe's darkest hours.

Inside Man starts off with a chaotic Dog Day Afternoon vibe but quickly moves in a much more cerebral direction, Russell proving to be the antithesis of Sonny. Against the aggressive backdrop of a mass hostage taking by a seemingly brutal gang, the movie settles down to a triangular battle of wits and willpower between Russell, Frazier and White acting on behalf of Case.

Lee ever so gradually peels away the layers of the story to reveal the complex hidden agendas, dropping hints to the emerging puzzle by intercutting the action at the bank with frequent flash forwards, the frustrated detectives Frazier and Mitchell interrogating the mixed-up witnesses and suspects at the end of the ordeal. This is no ordinary robbery, and it's even difficult to separate the victims from the perpetrators. In the context of Case's history and Russell's real objectives, the blurring of the line between aggressor and casualty emerges as a central theme.

Despite the high intellectual content of Russell Gewirtz's script, Inside Man leaves a few key questions unanswered. The relationship between Russell and Case is never explained: how Russell came to know about Case's dark secret, and his motivation for exposing Case, remain unresolved mysteries. The gang members supporting Russell are also ill-defined, and never properly emerge as people from behind the painter overalls and face masks.

The sterling cast lends authority to all the key roles, with Washington and Owen perfectly cast as the detective under a cloud facing up to the criminal holding all the cards with attitude. Foster is appropriately frosty as a high powered puppet master, although the role of Madeleine White is perhaps the most forced aspect of the film.

The film starts with Dalton Russell talking to the camera inside a cell, in what proves to be an unusual confinement. It's the first clue that Inside Man has the inside track towards an astute enigma.

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Movie Review: Taxi Driver (1976)

A descent-into-hell psychological drama, Taxi Driver slowly drives along the path towards emotional carnage. It's a hypnotic journey, where one veteran's disgust with modern society methodically spirals downwards into an uncontrollable need to violently lash out.

Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is a former Marine now living alone in New York City. Unable to sleep, he takes a job driving a taxi on the night shift. Unlike other drivers, Bickle accepts fares to the most dangerous corners of a decaying, crime-infested New York. Already disgusted with the scum that crawls on the sidewalks, his nightly exposure to the pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers and gangs intensifies his sense of social isolation. His only acquaintances are other taxi drivers, including the larger-than-life "Wizard" (Peter Boyle).

As he drives around the city, Bickle spots Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a beautiful political aide working on the presidential campaign of Senator Palantine, and fending off the unsophisticated advances of fellow worker Tom (Albert Brooks). Bickle's attempts to get to know Betsy are promising at first, but the relationship collapses on a movie date when he takes her to the wrong type of theatre. Bickle also builds an unlikely interest in Iris (Jodie Foster), a very young prostitute who goes by the street name "Easy" and is fully controlled by her pimp "Sport" (Harvey Keitel). Bickle buys several illegal guns and spends time on target practice. His emotional isolation turns to quiet rage, and his painfully twisted brain conjures up plenty of possible targets.

Today it is called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but screenwriter Paul Schrader wrote Taxi Driver before the label existed, and there has rarely been a more powerful screen examination of a mind spinning away, ever so slightly and imperceptibly to others, from its normal orbit towards the darkest of dead-ends.

Travis Bickle never stops functioning in society, does not reveal himself as blatantly mad or potentially violent towards others, keeps on working and almost normally interacting with others. Meanwhile he gathers a lethal arsenal and convinces himself that people need to die, to serve some purpose that only his damaged brain can fathom. It's his relative social normalcy prior to his emotional disintegration that is the disturbing core of his story.

Director Martin Scorsese and cinematographer Michael Chapman bathe New York with the sickly light of all-pervasive neon cutting through the night, with Bickle's yellow taxi adding to the garish surroundings and propagating the artificial glow. The daytime scenes, primarily portraying Betsy's world, are mostly filmed in bright sunlight, the New York of normal people oblivious to the infestations that take hold at night. Bickle's small and lonely apartment is a depressing place, the ramshackle furniture and claustrophobic walls doing nothing to improve his mood.

Ironically for a role in which he portrays a driver, Robert De Niro delivers the performance of a passive passenger unable to change the destructive course that his brain is on. Never outwardly animated, most of what Bickle is suffering occurs behind De Niro's eyes, with the building lunacy only beginning to ooze out when he is alone, most notably in the quietly disconcerting "You talkin' to me?" sequence in front of his mirror.

The other inhabitants of Bickle's world are quite distant, with Betsy and Iris existing in opposite corners of his universe. Betsy is completely out of Travis' league, the only surprise being how long it takes her to realize that the thrill of hanging out with a mildly charming taxi driver has an extremely limited shelf life. Shepherd gives Betsy a bored urban career girl vibe, a wickedly attractive woman who can have any man she likes and is therefore impulsively attracted to the unknown represented by an infatuated loner.

Iris has no idea that she is already at the bottom of life's barrel, Foster filled with wide-eyed innocence, and the film reaches a mortifying highlight when she slowly dances with Keitel's pimp, fully believing that he is her protector and that their relationship represents love.

Bernard Herrman's melancholy jazz score seeps loneliness from every pore, providing a mesmerizing, even encouraging, companion in the exploration of gloomy physical and emotional places best left alone. It was Herrman's final movie soundtrack, and Scorsese dedicated the film to the composer.

Taxi Driver responds to the call, picks up on time, and triumphantly drives to a cinematically resplendent destination.

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