Movie Review: The Life Of Chuck (2024)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Mike Flanagan  

Starring: Tim Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mia Sara, Mark Hamill, Jacob Tremblay  

Running Time: 111 minutes  

Synopsis: The plot unfolds in reverse chronological order, starting with Chapter Three. School teacher Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his ex-wife Felicia (Karen Gillan) experience the end of the world, but with weird billboards and posters proclaiming "Charles Krantz: 39 Great Years!". In Chapter Two, Chuck (Tom Hiddleston) is an accountant attending a conference. He encounters a drummer busker and dances up a storm, joined by the recently dumped Janice (Annalise Basso). In Chapter One, Chuck is an orphaned boy being raised by his grandparents Sarah and Albie (Mia Sara and Mark Hamill). Sarah teaches him to love dancing, while Albie encourages Chuck to pursue accounting as a career.

What Works Well: Adapting a Stephen King short story, writer and director Mike Flanagan unfurls a simple narrative with a deep commitment to the essence of being human. Chuck's whimsical journey sparkles with insights, sometimes subtle, at other times profound, linking one (and every) individual with the greater universe. Inspired by Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar and Walt Whitman's I contain multitudes, Chuck is nobody important and everybody who has ever lived, loved, lamented, and experienced unexpected moments of sublime perfection on the uncertain path to a singular certainty.

What Does Not Work As Well: The middle chapter could have been longer beyond the centrepiece dance sequence, and the childhood chapter may have benefitted from a proportionate trim.

Key Quote:

Chuck: I will live my life until my life runs out.

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Movie Review: Sleeping Dogs (2024)

Genre: Neo-Noir Crime Thriller  

Director: Adam Cooper  

Starring: Russell Crowe, Karen Gillan, Marton Csokas  

Running Time: 112 minutes  

Synopsis: Roy Freeman (Russel Crowe) is a retired cop undergoing experimental treatment for dementia. He is summoned by a death row inmate who claims to have been wrongly convicted for the murder of university professor Dr. Joseph Wieder (Marton Csokas) ten years prior. Despite his frail mental health Roy starts to investigate, catching up with his ex-partner Remis (Tommy Flanagan) and re-examining the case evidence, leading to recently deceased author Richard Finn (Harry Greenwood). His unpublished memoir chronicles a romance with ambitious graduate student Laura Baines (Karen Gillan), who was helping Wieder with his research. Freeman's doggedness to uncover the truth ruffles feathers, with unexpected consequences.

What Works Well: A modern film noir, complete with a femme fatale, naked ambition, murder most foul, multiple overlapping motives, infidelity, the whiff of crooked cops, events from long ago haunting the present, and memory loss fueling doomed quests. Director and co-writer Adam Cooper keeps the plot purring with a steady drip of new revelations, and Russell Crowe wears the exhausted and mentally spent cop with the ease of a classic trench coat.

What Does Not Work As Well: The perspective shifts a couple of times, with a long flashback to the Richard Finn/Laura Baines relationship dislodging Roy from the film's centre. The main twist is not difficult to spot, and once the plot discloses all its secrets, it also loses logical coherence.

Key Quote:

Laura: Must be one of the benefits of your condition. Can't remember the bad times.

Roy: Can't remember the good times either.

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The Movies Of Karen Gillan

All movies starring Karen Gillan and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are reviewed below:

The Big Short (2015)

In A Valley Of Violence (2016)

The Circle (2017)

Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)

Sleeping Dogs (2024)

The Life Of Chuck (2024)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Gunpowder Milkshake (2021)

A wild action thriller, Gunpowder Milkshake is a stylish, over-the-top battle fest celebrating girl power. 

Samantha, or simply Sam (Karen Gillan), is an assassin for a shadowy organization known only as The Firm. Her latest job ends in a bloodbath, and one of her victims is the son of powerful gang boss Jim McAlester. 15 years earlier, Sam's mother Scarlet (Lena Headey), also an assassin for The Firm, had to disappear after one of her jobs ended badly.

Nathan (Paul Giamatti) is Sam's handler, and he issues her next assignment, to retrieve money stolen by an accountant. She arms herself with guns provided The Firm's "librarians" Madeleine (Carla Gugino), Florence (Michelle Yeoh), and Anna May (Angela Bassett). 

After Sam kills the accountant, she learns he only stole the money because a vicious gang held his young daughter Emily (Chloe Coleman) hostage. She gets involved to save Emily, disobeying Nathan's orders. With McAlester seeking revenge and The Firm turning against her, Sam is in a lot of trouble, but Nathan provides some support by arranging a surprise reunion.

Gunpowder Milkshake features many good girls with many big guns (and assorted other weaponry), battling many bad guys with just as many big guns (and assorted other weaponry). Director and co-writer Navot Papushado crafts a feminist action extravaganza bathed in surreal neon and ultra-abstract sets, channeling Tarantino, Woo, and Leone with unfettered passion.

The plot is almost irrelevant, providing just enough of a string to hang the thrills on. The dialogue scenes focus on establishing a sorority of women, mother-daughter bonds, and surrogate parent relationships. Sam is the node around which her mother, the three librarians and Emily revolve, creating three generations of strong and morally sound women battling to rid the world of men either faceless, evil, or both.

The levels of violence and the action set-pieces are wildly enjoyable at the cartoonish level. The exquisitely choreographed highlights include a hospital battle between Sam and three goons, her arms paralyzed by a serum while the villains are compromised by laughing gas and a previous altercation. This is quickly followed by a cat-and-mouse parkade duel with young Emily (eight and three quarters of a year old) at the wheel. Papushado leaves the best for last, a linear, slow-motion beauty of a single-shot gun-down at a supposedly neutral diner.

At 114 minutes and with next to no genuine narrative depth, the energy does start to flag. A battle at a library goes on, and scene after scene of bone-crunching combat with the women mowing down an army of men get repetitive. But with cool attitude to spare, Gunpowder Milkshake is unapologetically always craving the next explosive slurp.



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Movie Review: In A Valley Of Violence (2016)

A budget western, In A Valley Of Violence seeks a Spaghetti Western vibe but offers a clunky and feeble script stacked with overly familiar elements.

Mysterious drifter Paul (Ethan Hawke) and his dog Abbie are heading to Mexico to escape a dark past full of violence. They tangle with a drunk preacher (Burn Gorman) before riding into the small and sparsely populated town of Denton. Local hardhead Gilly Martin (James Ransone) resents Paul's presence and earns a humiliating punch in the face for his troubles.

Gilly's fiancee Ellen (Karen Gillan) and her younger sister Mary-Anne (Taissa Farmiga) run the local hotel. The talkative Mary-Anne takes a liking to Paul, but he is mostly silent and brooding. Gilly's father is Marshal Clyde Martin (John Travolta), and he asks Paul to quietly leave town. But the deeply insulted Gilly and three goons catch up with Paul to seek revenge, resulting in plenty of bloodshed.

The opening credit sequence is an effective and nostalgic ode to Spaghetti Westerns enlivened by a Jeff Grace music score. The dog Abbie is exceptionally well trained and steals every scene she is in. But these are just about the only positives offered by In A Valley Of Violence.

Writer and director Ti West appears to be operating with limited resources, the entire film effectively constructed from about a dozen scenes, most of them achingly prolonged well past the point of effectiveness to scratch out a 99 minute feature. The town of Denton consists of 10 residents, background extras an out of reach luxury in this valley.

Also lacking is any sense of originality. This is a straightforward revenge western where the bad guys are bad, the good guy is escaping a dark past, and the dog angle is lifted straight from John Wick. The writing is rudimentary, West quick to snatch at unearned epic moments. The humour is welcome and sometimes sharp, but also uneven and as the climax approaches, the attempted laughs clash with the prevailing tone.

Ethan Hawke is decent within the confines of the material despite a scattershot backstory consisting of vaguely defined incidents. John Travolta is unsure what to do with the role of a Marshal with one wooden leg and one dense but dangerous son. James Ransone is shallow as the villain of the piece, and both Karen Gillan and Taissa Farmiga are treated as irritating afterthoughts.

In A Valley Of Violence is the place to find tired western cliches in search of a better project.

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