Movie Review: Reptile (2023)

Genre: Crime Drama

Director: Grant Singer

Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Alicia Silverstone, Justin Timberlake, Eric Bogosian, Frances Fisher 

Running Time: 136 minutes

Synopsis: In New England, real estate agent Summer (Matilda Lutz) is brutally murdered. Detective Tom Nichols (Benicio Del Toro) questions Summer's boyfriend Will Grady (Justin Timberlake), who runs a successful real estate agency with his mother Camille (Frances Fisher). The other suspects include Summer's ex-husband Sam Gifford (Karl Glusman); and Eli Phillips (Michael Carmen Pitt), a neighbour who holds a grudge against the Gradys. DNA evidence appears to identify the perpetrator, but Nichols and his wife Judy (Alicia Silverstone) uncover clues pointing to a more insidious conspiracy.

What Works Well: The measured and well-marinated crime mystery unfolds at a deliberate pace, anchored by a weathered Benicio Del Toro performance and enriched by well-rounded characters and background depth. Director and co-writer Grant Singer colours-in life's details, including Tom's shady career background, his square dancing hobby, kitchen renovations project, complicated relationship with other detectives (including Eric Bogosian and Domenick Lombardozzi), and quietly tempestuous reactions to Judy's flirting. Short and sharp action sequences punctuate an otherwise cerebral focus on people and places.

What Does Not Work As Well: The substantial time invested in mood and details does not extend to the broad-brushed plot fundamentals. As Nichols pushes deeper into the web of deceit, the criminal roles and responsibilities remain blurry and hampered by absent antagonist voices, ultimately undermining the carefully constructed narrative foundations.

Conclusion: Elaborate packaging overwhelms less-developed substance.



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Movie Review: Black Snake Moan (2006)

A southern Gothic tale, Black Snake Moan mixes sex addiction, depression and the blues into a vigorous brew of unconventional salvation.

In rural Tennessee, Rae (Christina Ricci) is a sex addict barely keeping her life together with the help of boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake), who suffers from anxiety. But as soon as he leaves to join the National Guard, she succumbs to all her wild urges for instant sex and drugs.

In the same community, small-scale farmer and former blues guitarist Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) is emotionally distraught when his wife of 12 years Rose leaves him after having an affair with his brother. The local preacher R.L. tries in vain to entice Laz back to the church congregation.

After a wild night Rae is assaulted and dumped by the side of the road. Laz stumbles upon her limp body and provides refuge to tend her wounds. Once he realizes he has a sex addict on his hands, he chains Rae to the radiator for her own safety, and to try and extract her demons.

Mixing the literal with the metaphorical but remaining grounded in the reality of poverty, abuse and emotional dead-ends, Black Snake Moan embraces without judging. Writer and director Craig Brewer creates two broken individuals and generates warm sympathy for both. Rae and Lazarus are fragile products of an unforgiving society adept at grinding down spirits and crushing innocence, whether early or late in life.

The film is uncompromising. Foul language is rampant, Rae's sexuality unconstrained, and a couple of violent incidents are stark. Most of the characters have limited social skills to converse in anything other than shouting and seething threats. Into this cauldron Brewer tosses a reversal of slavery image with a Black man chaining a white woman to his radiator, and from the depths of his sense of betrayal, Lazarus self-defines a fiery mission to cure woman of what ails her.

A decadent white woman forced by a Black man to confront her sins and forsake her base urges is a scathing commentary on the state of the union, but Brewer provides pinches of humour and emotional space for both Laz and Rae to pull back from the combustible brink. Laz recoils from the depth of his abyss; Rae pauses to consider her triggers and the sanctuary Laz offers; his guitar and the expressive blues emerge as a possible unifying antidote to stave off the worst of what ails them.

Christina Ricci burns the screen as a young woman desperately trying to bury her past by excavating her present, and Samuel L. Jackson conveys pain, disappointment and no shortage of imagination with an economy of words and actions.

The black snake slithers to where damaged souls reside, and bites with the enticing venom of arduous redemption.



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Movie Review: Runner Runner (2013)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Movie Review: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

A folk music character drama with comic shadings, Inside Llewyn Davis explores the Greenwich Village music scene of the early 1960s through the story of one struggling musician having a really bad week.

It's New York City in 1961. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a marginal folk singer who occasionally performs at the Gaslight club. Llewyn is penniless, homeless, sleeps on friends' couches, and has still not recovered from the trauma of his performing partner's suicide. Llewyn accidentally lets loose the house cat of his friends the Gorfeins, then learns that his recently released solo album is selling poorly or not at all. His week gets much worse when he finds out that his married friend Jean (Carey Mulligan) is pregnant, and the child may or may not be his.

Llewyn gets no help from his agent, but does get a break from Jean's husband Jim (Justin Timberlake), who connects him with singer Al Cody (Adam Driver), and the trio record a novelty space-themed folk song. Desperate for cash upfront, Llewyn forgoes any future royalties. He decides to travel to Chicago to personally meet legendary producer Bud Grossman (F. Murray Abraham). On the way he shares a surreal car trip with overbearing jazz musician Roland Turner (John Goodman) and lyricist/driver Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund). The meeting with Grossman does not go as planned, and Llewyn starts to question his dedication to a career in music.

Directed by the Coen brothers Joel and Ethan, who also co-wrote the script with Scott Rudin, Inside Llewyn Davis works best as a dark comedy that probes at the heart of dreams of music success. The mood is bleak, the prospects poor, and its quickly apparent that everyone other than Llewyn Davis is already aware that he has a bright future behind him. Still he persists, ignoring with increasing difficulty the signs that it may be time to pack it in.

Despite the preponderance of humour, the film sets an overall sad mood reflective of artists struggling to make ends meet. Washed-out colours dominate, both mimicking and mocking Llewyn's life of couch surfing in nondescript apartments while scratching out a living by borrowing money and bumming cigarettes from any available source. The film also resonates with the messiness of real life by keeping several threads loose. The novelty song royalties are a tantalizing decision point, a side-story of a former girlfriend, now in Akron, is left dangling on an exit ramp, and Jean's pregnancy presents another imperfect puzzle to grapple with.

While the film runs an efficient 105 minutes, the plot is quite slight and the Coens at times do struggle to find something else to go wrong for their unfortunate protagonist. The return trip from Chicago includes an unnecessary midnight shock on an isolated snowy stretch of road, there is an obvious side-trip to visit an invalid father, and the film is littered with a few too many complete renditions of folk songs that eat up minutes and slow the film right down.

Much better is the segment with John Goodman as the boorish fellow traveller to Chicago Roland Turner, a bellicose know-it-all who can't stop talking, and is both exceedingly annoying and extremely funny. In keeping with the film's disposition, both Turner and his side-kick Johnny Five are unceremoniously ejected from Llewyn's journey.

Oscar Isaac delivers a break-out performance and effortlessly holds the film together. His interpretation of Llewyn captures the uneasy co-existence of determination to persist with gradual realization that maybe he's just not good enough to make it. Isaac unleashes quiet intensity and cynical resignation in equal doses

When everything that can possibly go wrong does so and them some, including that troublesome cat repeatedly escaping and at the most inconvenient times possible, it may be time to take stock. But a week will pass before Llewyn Davis sees the writing on the back alley walls of Greenwich Village.

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Movie Review: Trouble With The Curve (2012)

An affecting father - daughter drama set within the world of baseball scouting, Trouble With The Curve has plenty of spirit and wisdom, although the edges of the story are a bit too tidy.

Gus Lobel (Clint Eastwood) is a legendary old-school scout, working for the Atlanta Braves. With age catching up to him and his eyesight beginning to fail, Lobel nevertheless insists on scouting the old way, eschewing computers and spreadsheets in favour of hours spent in minor league ball parks to get a true sense of what a player is capable of. Gus has a strained relationship with his daughter Mickey (Amy Adams), a lawyer striving to make Partner at her firm. Pete Klein (John Goodman) is the Braves' head of scouting and appreciates Gus' instincts, but even he starts to consider not renewing the contract of the veteran scout.

With the entry draft fast approaching, Gus is assigned to scout top prospect Bo Gentry, an obnoxious power hitter. Pete asks Mickey to accompany Gus for a few days, to make sure that the old man's failing health does not get him into trouble. Reluctantly, Mickey agrees and joins her dad on the road trip. Among the troop of scouts also keeping tabs on Bo is Johnny Flanagan (Justin Timberlake), a former pitcher whose career ended early due to injury. Johnny and Mickey hit it off, but Gus resents Mickey's presence. As they travel between the small ball parks of the Carolinas, Mickey tries to get her father to open up and address the issues that ruined their relationship, but Gus is not the type who can easily communicate. As the trip winds down, both Gus and Mickey find their careers hanging in the balance, and their futures may hinge on properly assessing Bo's true potential.

Trouble With The Curve concludes with all loose ends tied-up into pretty little bows, all the conflicts and future uncertainty settled into happy packages. The more mean characters get what they deserve, Gus and Mickey define their destiny, and a silent, humble pitching prospect suddenly emerges as the real thing, as discovered by the genuine talent spotters. The Randy Brown script (surrounded by a bitter controversy related to its true origins) turns sharply towards the land of fairy tales, and forgoes any attempt at a more mature denouement.

But what precedes the final 20 minutes is much better. The tale of an old school father and his modern daughter provides plenty of material for a rich examination of generational gaps and parental responsibility. Gus' unwillingness to talk about the past or get with the future leaves him vulnerable to be left behind by work and family. With failing health, all he has to rely on are his skills and instincts, irreplaceably assembled from years of hands-on life experience. Eastwood, at the remarkable age of 82, creates in Gus Lobel a lovable curmudgeon, abrasive, impatient and set in his ways. He is also funny, convinced of his ability, and confident that he still has what it takes to assess young talent.

Well paced by producer-turned-director Robert Lorenz, Trouble With The Curve inhales deeply from the essence of minor league baseball. Intimate ball parks, back country roads, crammed bus trips, expectant parents, small, never-renovated motels, and roadside diners make up Gus' world, and it's where he is most comfortable.

Surprisingly at first, Mickey also fits easily into this milieu, temporarily but effortlessly trading in the shiny corporate glitz for garish bed sheets and smoke-filled beer joints, much to her Dad's disgust. A chip of the old block despite his protestations, America's most precious pastime will provide the final opportunity for father and daughter to reconnect. Amy Adams as Mickey has the feistiness to take on Eastwood's Gus, and doggedly pursue relationship repairs in the face of all his dismissive grunting. The truth, once revealed, recasts the heroes and villains of her life, and Mickey's short road trip to keep an eye on Gus turns into a major fork in the road of life.

Trouble With The Curve has a bit of trouble with the ending, but is an otherwise smooth pitch.

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Movie Review: Friends With Benefits (2011)

Friends With Benefits places sex at the front end of a romantic comedy, and builds a deeper relationship in spite of a commitment by the main characters to avoid one. It's a successful and agile approach to the genre, helped along by appealing leads who give the impression of having loads of fun.

New York executive recruiter Jamie (Mila Kunis) convinces blogging whiz-kid Dylan (Justin Timberlake) to accept the job of artistic director with GQ magazine, and to relocate from Los Angeles to Manhattan. Jamie and Dylan become friends, but they are both coming out of recently collapsed relationships. Lonely and unwilling to get emotionally entangled, they agree to have regular sex for pure physical pleasure with no commitments.

As they get to know each other better, Dylan meets Jamie's free-spirited mother Lorna (Patricia Clarkson), and discovers that Jamie does not know who her father was. Jamie joins Dylan on a trip to Los Angeles and meets his dad (Richard Jenkins), struggling with worsening dementia. Dylan and Jamie begin to genuinely care for each other, but this threatens the foundation of their care-free friendship-with-casual-sex relationship.

Friends With Benefits makes the bold decision to bring the sex and foul language to the forefront, and is all the better for it. Jamie and Dylan talk awkwardly about sex, share energetic but still artistic sex scenes, and Jamie's foul mouth is cleverly worked into her personality. The result is a film about relationships and sexuality that is not coy about its central subject matter.

Kunis and Timberlake make for an attractive couple, with an easy chemistry and steady spark. Jamie's flighty mother and Dylan' suffering father provide for sufficient if predictable complexity to their characters, and Jamie's unlikely career as a headhunter is a refreshing change from the typical caterers and cute corner bakery owners who have dominated rom coms for far too long.

Kunis is the more dominant screen presence, her acting a tad theatrical but never less than entertaining. Timberlake delivers an understatedly charming performance, poking some fun at his real life persona and politely allowing Kunis to hog most of the spotlight when needed. The supporting friends are rather sparse, with only Woody Harrelson as GQ's gay sports writer registering an impact. Emma Stone has a tiny role as Dylan's ex-girlfriend.

Friends With Benefits is director Will Gluck's follow up to the terrific Easy A (Stone's break-out movie, and again with Clarkson as the mother), Gluck beginning to demonstrate a flair for punching up established genres. He also co-wrote the script, full of edgy one-liners and spiced with barbed inter-coastal jibes.

Friends With Benefits does not reinvent the romantic comedy, but does deliver a flirty and handsome example of how good the genre can be.

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Movie Review: Bad Teacher (2011)

An adult comedy of bad manners in the class room, Bad Teacher showcases Cameron Diaz's talent and little else. After establishing the basic premise, the film fizzles into a trite search for whatever passes as a happy ending.

Golddigger Elizabeth Halsey (Diaz) is a middle school teacher, doing the bare minimum for her students while desperately seeking a rich husband. Recently dumped by an affluent fiancée, Elizabeth is broke and desperate to find a man to look after her expensive tastes. Meanwhile, at school, she smokes pot, drinks, and teaches nothing: she just shows her students an endless stream of movies. Fellow teacher Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch) is over-enthusiastic about delivering a good education, and as a result clashes early and often with Elizabeth, while gym teacher Russell (Jason Segel) is interested in dating Elizabeth, but he does not have the wealth that she craves.

New teacher Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake) is spineless but appears to come from a rich family, and is therefore immediately an attractive option. Elizabeth learns that Scott's former girlfriend had large breasts and becomes obsessed with collecting enough money to augment her own. When Elizabeth finds out that there is a financial reward for the best teacher in the county, she hatches a plan to steal the official state test questions to help her students succeed, setting in motion a chain of events that will land both her and Amy in a heap of trouble.

Funny only in patches and unnecessarily crude in parts, Bad Teacher has a thin veneer of talent. Cameron Diaz shines in an over-the-top, brassy and sexy performance, packing into Elizabeth Halsey every imaginable nightmare teacher trait. Diaz allows herself to have fun with a wildly exaggerated comic character, and she gives Bad Teacher its only lift.

Otherwise, there isn't much to celebrate. The script is unable to build on the personality of the central character, and veers into jerky transformations, Elizabeth suddenly eager to deliver a proper education in a desperate attempt to win cash, and even less convincingly discovering a talent for mending young broken hearts and the potential charm of the non-wealthy. Justin Timberlake fails to make an impression, Jason Segel is his usual irritating self, and Lucy Punch has the thankless task of playing Amy as the anti-Elizabeth, although Amy's concealed stress triggers hint at a deliciously damaged personality that deserved more screen time.

Director Jake Kasdan, son of Lawrence, capably demonstrates that he has a long way to go to match his dad's illustrious achievements.

Bad Teacher gets a C for sputtering entertainment mixed with disappointingly lackadaisical effort.

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