Movie Review: Flightplan (2005)

Genre: Thriller  

Director: Robert Schwentke  

Starring: Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, Sean Bean, 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: Knight And Day (2010)

A humorous spy action thriller, Knight And Day demands brain dis-engagement then provides a fun dose of non-stop adventure.

June Havens (Cameron Diaz) restores classic cars for a living. While catching a flight to attend her sister's wedding, she bumps into Roy Miller (Tom Cruise). On the plane he subdues a team of assassins and crash lands into a cornfield. June realizes Roy is a CIA agent and she is now mixed-up in his wild world.

Roy has seized a small perpetual energy battery developed by genius scientist Simon Feck (Paul Dano), to prevent his evil ex-partner agent John Fitzgerald (Peter Sarsgaard) from selling it to an international arms dealer. But Fitzgerald has convinced his boss CIA Director Isabel George (Viola Davis) that Roy has gone rogue. In the globe-trotting adventure that ensues, Roy has to keep June and Simon safe while revealing Fitzgerald's motives and ensuring the battery does not fall into the wrong hands.

Directed by James Mangold and written by Patrick O'Neill, Knight And Day is a glitzy frolic. While undoubtedly entertaining as an almost old-fashioned star vehicle for Cruise and Diaz, this is also an artificial and relatively soulless exercise, often overpowered by special effects and lacking in anything resembling character depth.

The plot is a classic and most basic MacGuffin escapade, a new and barely explained perpetual energy battery enough of a device to instigate numerous chases around the globe. The logic holes are glaring, but the set-piece highlights are plentiful and spiked with humour, including the fight on the plane followed by a raucous crash landing, a stunt-filled freeway chase and shootout, and a re-invention of the running with the bulls. All are well executed despite erring on the side of bloat, Mangold using a running joke about Roy drugging June to get her out of jams as a shortcut to not even bother with some of the narrow escapes. Cruise again throws himself into the stunt work to enhance the awe factor.

In terms of performances, Cruise and Diaz are celebrities enjoying themselves while trading on their pre-established personas and unburdened by the need to act. So little is revealed about Roy and June they may as well be glossy magazine cut-outs thrown onto the same page. Paul Dano, Peter Sarsgaard, and Viola Davis are wasted with even broader sketch strokes.

Knight And Day has all the planes, trains, automobiles, and motorcycles to create a festival of flashy kinetics, the toys plentiful even if the heart is missing.



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Movie Review: Night Moves (2013)

A crime drama, Night Moves accompanies young environmentalists veering towards an act of terrorism to protest corporate greed and disregard for nature.

In Oregon, activist Josh (Jesse Eisenberg) volunteers on an organic produce farm. His friend Dena (Dakota Fanning) works at a spa, and they join forces with ex-Marine Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) to plan an eco-terrorist attack on a hydroelectric dam. Their objective is to raise awareness about climate change and the harmful impacts of dams on wild fish habitats, without causing casualties.

Dena comes from a rich family and provides the cash to buy a motorboat. The trio then have to purchase enough ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a controlled substance, to create the bomb. Despite careful attention to detail in planning the nighttime explosion, not everything will go according to plan, resulting in serious rifts between the three conspirators.

Moody, dark, and slow, Night Moves explores misguided idealism. Director Kelly Reichardt co-wrote the script with Jonathan Raymond, and adopts a tight focus on three people, allowing the greater issues to simply exist as background context. With deliberate pacing and sparse content, the film feeds on the intensity of deluded adults meandering into a major crime. The Pacific Northwest milieu is suitably moist and dour, but while the rain forest is the source of beauty, the film's low budget is also exposed, particularly in an embarrassingly static driving scene.  

The mostly off-the-grid existence of Josh, Dena, and Harmon is devoid of grand speeches or debates. They function either alone or within a close-knit community of like-minded individuals, and have crossed the line from living sustainably to a yearning for dramatic yet misguided action to wake up the world. 

For the more susceptible and fragile Josh and Dena, the absence of parents and family members is notable, while Harmon's military background affords him greater swagger. Night Moves is most compelling in the lead-up to the attack as a tense dynamic develops between the three conspirators, Dena improvising with tenacity to secure the bomb material, the trio then forced to smooth out an unexpected wrinkle on the night of the bombing.

Energy seeps out of the final act. Reichardt is only interested in the aftermath of the crime from the perspective of the criminals themselves, and Night Moves traces grim disintegrations at the individual and friendship levels. The physical consequences of the terror attack are described in abstract terms, and the subsequent investigation plays no part in the narrative. When disparate coping limits inflict internal depletions, external interventions are superfluous.



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Movie Review: Human Capital (2019)

A drama featuring several storylines ensnaring two families, Human Capital explores class divisions and the twin pursuits of wealth and happiness. The multi-pronged narrative is handicapped by diffused focus.

After an awards banquet for high school students in upstate New York, a waiter is the victim of a hit-and-run accident on a country road. Events involving the Hagel and Manning families before, during, and after the fateful night are then revealed.

Real estate agent and recovered gambling addict Drew Hagel (Liev Schreiber) befriends wealthy and successful hedge fund manager Quint Manning (Peter Sarsgaard). Despite being financially stretched, Drew borrows $300,000 to invest with Quint and hides the transaction from his pregnant wife Ronnie (Betty Gabriel), a psychiatrist. The subsequent return on investment is not what Drew expected.

In parallel, Quint's wife Carrie (Marisa Tomei), a former B-movie actress, is feeling neglected. She convinces Quint to buy a heritage theatre as a side-project to support the arts. She is then romantically pursued by the theatre's tweedy artistic director Jon (Paul Sparks). The final story features the Hagels' teenaged daughter Shannon (Maya Hawke), who remains friends with the Mannings' son Jamie (Fred Hechinger) after they break up. She then starts a torrid romance with small-time drug dealer Ian (Alex Wolff), one of Ronnie's patients. On the night of the hit-and-run, the two families are seated at the same table, and seething financial and personal tensions contribute to tragedy.

An adaptation of the Stephen Amidon novel directed by Marc Meyers and written by Oren Moverman, Human Capital enjoys a strong opening propelled by complex Liev Schreiber and Peter Sarsgaard performances. The appetizing first chapter carries a looming darkness into the superficially idyllic suburbs, as nothing good can come from the unbalanced friendship between the recovering gambling addict and the oily hedge fund manager. Drew's pursuit of a quick financial windfall has all the predictable outcomes of a non-swimmer wading into the deep end of the pool.

But momentum stalls with the disposable middle episode featuring Carrie's disgruntlement, and the final act defaults to a bland teen angst mystery, new characters like Ian and his seedy uncle introduced late and in shorthand. As Meyers focuses more of his attention on the least interesting hit-and-run whodunnit drama, the victim's story is carelessly neglected, its absence a gaping black hole.

The common themes are disgruntled souls, misplaced priorities, and dashed hopes and dreams. And within all the social classes, children are left behind as their parents focus on monetary wealth. The material contains kernels of interest, Marisa Tomei and Maya Hawke invest heartily in their supporting roles, and with more commitment to each of the characters three separate movie-length narratives can be imagined. Instead Human Capital embarks on a choppy downward journey, every subsequent deposit reducing the yield.



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Movie Review: Very Good Girls (2013)

A coming-of-age drama, Very Good Girls explores friendship, secrets and early sexual adventures but barely offers anything new.

In New York, best friends Lilly (Dakota Fanning) and Gerri (Elizabeth Olson) would like to lose their virginity before heading out to college. Lilly's home environment is tense and her parents Edward and Norma (Clark Gregg and Ellen Barkin) barely communicate. Edward (Clark Gregg) is caught having an affair and soon leaves the house. In contrast Gerri's household is warm and loud, enlivened by her animated father Danny (Richard Dreyfuss). Lilly woks for the summer as a tour boat guide and has to fend off the lecherous advances of her boss Fitsimmons (Peter Sarsgaard).

At Brighton Beach Lilly and Gerri meet hunky ice cream seller David (Boyd Holbrook) and they both set their eyes on him. Gerri openly states she wants to pursue David; Lilly is more coy, seeking a seduction without telling Gerri. Soon both young women are in various stages of involvement with the same guy, straining their friendship.

An independent production written and directed by Naomi Foner, Very Good Girls is low on energy and lacking innovation. The laid-back and carefree attitude suits the last-summer-before-college vibe, and both Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olson radiate youthful enthusiasm growing into adulthood with just the right dash of trepidation. But even for the sparse 91 minutes of running time, the material is thin and familiar, the characters quickly confined to uncommunicative territory spiked by obfuscation to serve the script's agenda.

The initial strong bond between Lilly and Geri is only sketched-in (a propensity for tearing off their clothes in public a hasty substitute for playful trust), leaving their friendship susceptible to the corrosive side-effects of a race for achieving womanhood behind secretive curtains. The scenes of young love and mutual seduction between Lilly and David are not helped by his predictably moody but vacuous character (he is the walking cliche of an aspiring street artist who wants to visit Europe). When their budding love affair hits the first rock of mistrust, the intended emotional impacts don't register.

The trio of Ellen Barkin, Richard Dreyfuss and Demi Moore (as Gerri's mother) roll back the decades and add veteran star power despite underwritten roles. Vaguely amiable without carving out an identity, Very Good Girls pout and plot but fade towards the back of a crowded class.



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Movie Review: An Education (2009)

A coming of age romance, An Education enjoys a bright central performance and an excellent sense of time and place, but suffers from internal inconsistency and abrupt shifts in focus.

The setting is suburban London in 1961. Jenny Mellor (Carey Mulligan) is almost 17 years old and in her final school year, striving to secure a coveted admission to Oxford. She meets the much older and exceptionally charismatic David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard), who introduces her to his glamorous friends Danny (Dominic Cooper) and Helen (Rosamund Pike). David sweet talks Jenny's parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour) into allowing their daughter to join him on trips, first to Oxford then to Paris.

Jenny is dazzled by the good life of swanky restaurants, classical music concerts, luxury hotels and cool jazz clubs, although she is also exposed to David and Danny's questionable morals. Her increasingly serious romance with David starts to impact her school performance, much to the disappointment of teacher Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams) and headmistress Miss Walters (Emma Thompson).

Based on Lynn Barber's memoirs and directed by Lone Scherfig from an eloquent Nick Hornby script, An Education sparkles with wit and charm. Capturing a society on the cusp of revolutionary change as the war generation of Jenny's parents hands the baton to their more adventurous offspring, the story of first love is mostly familiar but enlivened by the cultural buzz of a new decade's gateway.

But Hornby and Scherfig also adopt a passive and rather bewildering non-judgemental stance on what is also a troublesome story of grooming. Although Jenny at 16 has reached Britain's age of consent, David's actions are the definition of creepy manipulation of an impressionable young woman as he toys with her emotions and plays her parents for fools, lies and embellishments the fake currency he freely hands out. That David transparently exposes Jenny to some of his shady business practices and may actually fall in love with her is flimsy justification. 

At 24 but passing for 17, Carey Mulligan is a revelation, expressing with understated and patient elegance the frustrations, joys and responsibilities of emerging adulthood. But she does fall foul of an internal lack of consistency: Jenny is portrayed as smart, articulate and possessing phenomenal self-awareness and the ability to calmly debate with adults. In short, exactly the type of young woman who should have seen right through David's sleazy antics. Peter Sarsgaard does his part, shielding a predator behind a seducer's easy smile and jet-set lifestyle.

The final chapter grinds the gears with a jerky shift away from romance and the school-of-life towards the value of a traditional education, Miss Stubbs and Miss Waters suddenly gaining prominence. An Education is full of lessons learned, some more smoothly delivered than others.



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Movie Review: Shattered Glass (2003)

A biographical drama, Shattered Glass explores the high-stress world of deadline-driven journalism and the perils of hyper-charisma.

It's 1998 in Washington DC, and Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen) is a cocky young reporter at the prestigious New Republic magazine. He is an invited celebrity guest at a college journalism class, advising starry-eyed students on career success. Affable and good natured, Stephen is popular among his work colleagues, including fact checkers Caitlin (Chloë Sevigny) and Amy (Melanie Lynskey), and well-liked by respected editor Michael Kelly (Hank Azaria).

But Glass has a tense relationship with Charles Lane (Peter Sarsgaard), who takes over as editor when Kelly is fired. Glass then writes an entertaining piece about the antics of a young hacker at a recent convention. Adam Penenberg (Steve Zahn), a reporter at fledgling online publication Forbes Digital, wonders how he missed the event and starts fact checking, finding many holes in Glass' story. The errors are brought to Lane's attention, who initiates his own probing and starts to doubt Stephen's credibility.

The unveiling of Stephen Glass as a fraudster with a flair for writing fiction and passing it off as journalism shook the haughty world of the esteemed but small-circulation New Republic (established: 1914), a photo-free publication targeting world leaders and fully invested in the power of truthful words. His downfall was also an early reputational boost for start-up online publications, and exposed the hazards of relying on easily fabricated "reporter's notes" for fact checking. 

With misinformation at the core of the Glass controversy, director and writer Billy Ray meticulously researched the facts and assembled Shattered Glass as a close-to-the-truth drama, with fairness to actual people a prime objective. Ray resists the temptation to delve into Glass' childhood and upbringing in search of character-shaping clues. While the context is notably absent, the young man is presented as others saw him, a charming, full of life, natural storyteller and entertainer garnering immediate likeability. He is also an expert at self-deprecation and cleverly positions himself as a victim when needed to elicit sympathy and support.

The film gains strength from the contrast with Charles Lane. Dour, humourless and saddled with taking over as editor from the popular Michael Kelly, the relatively inexperienced Lane finds a potentially explosive controversy ticking in his lap when the Forbes Digital journalists start asking questions Glass cannot answer. Gradually Lane takes over the heart of the film and Ray deftly steers the narrative towards a reluctant and unpopular leader grappling with a toxic crisis.

Hayden Christensen is adequate in the showy lead role but stays close to the few notes between seeking the centre of attention and whining when challenged. Peter Sarsgaard is more stoic, his performance appropriately subdued but with gathering strength behind watchful eyes.

Within the remarkably efficient 94 minutes Ray creates an energetic milieu, the timeline-driven vigorous magazine culture providing a crackling, always-on-the-move dynamism. Despite the high pressure job Glass also insists on pursuing a law degree, the burn-both-ends-of-the-candle mentality either an excuse for sloppiness or a corroboration of recklessness. Unchecked and misdirected, the zest of youth can upend legacies.

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Movie Review: Jarhead (2005)

A war movie almost devoid of war, Jarhead is more interested in exploring the soldiers' psyche and crushing sense of alienation during the long wait for action.

It's 1988, and laidback Anthony Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) enlists with the US Marines to follow in the footsteps of his father, a Vietnam War veteran. After struggling to adapt to the military culture and the rigours of training, Swofford finds a home with the Scout Sniper program under the tutelage of Staff Sergeant Sykes (Jamie Foxx). He is eventually paired with spotter Alan Troy (Peter Sarsgaard).

After Iraq invades Kuwait in August 1990, Swofford's unit is among the first to be deployed to the desert to protect Saudi Arabia's oil fields in Operation Desert Shield. Long days, weeks and months of abject boredom follow, the men struggling to control their pent-up aggression as they wait for the start of combat operations, with Swofford gradually sinking into depression.

An adaptation of Swofford's memoir directed by Sam Mendes, Jarhead is an unyielding journey towards physical and psychological frustration. The absence of action is far from an obvious war movie topic, but Mendes and screenwriter William Broyles Jr. extract remarkable potency from the internal struggle to stay sane. This is a story about waiting, and the crushing fog of restlessness descending on men primed for action being ordered to essentially do nothing in the middle of nowhere.

The first act features the typical military training culture shock and drill sergeants screaming insults at raw recruits. With Swofford introduced as smarter than the average recruit and therefore less easily adaptable to strict military regulations, this material is potent but familiar from the days of An Officer And A Gentleman and Full Metal Jacket. In Jarhead, the training does lead to deployment, but this is where the film takes a left-turn. 

The American troop build up in the desert started in early August 1990, and combat operations erupted in the middle of January 1991, by which time close to 700,000 American soldiers were in the field. Jarhead recreates what five and half months of inactivity can do to soldiers. Endless repetitive training and hours to kill invariably decay morale and enthusiasm, as Swofford and others turn on each other and lose discipline and sharpness.

They also become obsessed with what their girlfriends and wives must be up to back home, the limited communications feeding an insidious sense of abandonment. Swofford reads between the lines of his girlfriend's letters and a scratchy phone call to conclude that she is undoubtedly cheating on him. Other wives are graphically unambiguous in how they message their men.

When the push to liberate Kuwait finally gets underway, the war ends within literally hours of starting, adding to the retrospective sense of unfulfilled expectations. The ground troops are reduced to chasing a war being won by airpower well ahead of them. Here Mendes excels in capturing lyrical landscapes of an asymmetrical battle, Sykes, Swofford and the other men coming across an Iraqi army literally and figuratively pulverized in place. The recreation of hell-on-earth courtesy of burning oil fields and black rain is visually stunning.

Jake Gyllenhaal captures one man's disbelieving descent into the alternate reality of military life. Gyllenhaal ensures Swofford is never comfortable in uniform, and serves more as an incredulous observer surviving rather than actively participating in the gung-ho life. The rest of the all-male cast members do their best to provide definition to the many enlisted men, with limited success.

Jarhead exposes the unglamorous and unheroic side of war, where dreams of bravado meet an unlikely foe in the shape of wretched tedium.

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Movie Review: Lovelace (2013)

The sad story of the porn industry's first celebrity, Lovelace is cautionary tale of exploitation and abuse. The film is cleverly constructed but lacks any emotional breakthroughs.

It's 1970 in Florida, and 20 year old Linda Boreman (Amanda Seyfried) is living with her oppressive parents Dorothy and John (Sharon Stone and Robert Patrick). Her rebellion is enabled by the sleazy and much older Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard), who claims to maybe own a strip joint. Soon they get married, Chuck teaches Linda all about oral sex, and she is remarkably good at it. Claiming money pressure, Chuck pressures Linda into the pornography industry and Lovelace is created.

They connect with producers Anthony Romano (Chris Noth) and "Butchie" Peraino (Bobby Canavale), director Gerard Damiano (Hank Azaria) and co-star Harry Reems (Adam Brody). Over a matter of six days in 1972, Damiano films Deep Throat, a relatively artistic porn film capitalizing on Linda's abilities. The film becomes an unexpected breakout hit among mainstream audiences and helps to kick-off the porno chic trend. Linda becomes a household name and travels in celebrity circles, including a meeting with Playboy's Hugh Hefner (James Franco). But behind the surface glamour there is a very dark side to Linda's life involving rampant abuse by the domineering Chuck.

Co-directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Lovelace is a worthwhile companion piece to Boogie Nights. While the Paul Thomas Anderson film rides the breezy waves of pornography's golden era, Lovelace dives beneath the surface to poke at the visible bruises. Lovelace is too emotionally detached and conflicted in its messaging to be the better film, but it nevertheless places on record the horrific price paid by the performers exploited to serve a sordid industry.

As for the film, Epstein and Friedman do try something different. The first half breezes through Lovelace's rapid transition from rebellious young woman to porn celebrity. There are hints suggesting the hell created by Traynor, but without details. The second half retraces some of the same steps and fills in the blanks, exposing the oppressive brutality of his treatment and the degradation she faced. It's a thought provoking structure forcing a comparison between public image and private agony, but Lovelace also emerges as an unbalanced film, hitting discordant notes and mainly moving sideways.

The denouement shifts focus to Linda years after her brief foray into the industry, fighting to reclaim her dignity and identity by publishing a book. It's another shift in cinematic gears, and while the loop is closed, the film is tonally fragmented.

Lovelace delivers one devastating scene, in the least expected context. At her lowest point Linda flees back to her childhood home, and her encounter with her mother is a study of the void exposed by mutually unmet expectations.

Amanda Seyfried displays excellent breadth to convey first adventurous naiveté and then a gradual awakening to abuse. Peter Sarsgaard is fully committed to the role of Chuck Traynor, and sustains the required menace.

Lovelace tells an important story with competence but at the expense of dramatic flair.

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Movie Review: Empire (2002)

A routine crime drama, Empire tramples on exceedingly familiar gangster land territory and offers little in the way of originality.

In New York City, Vic Rosa (John Leguizamo) is a young and charismatic drug lord, leading a gang with control over a patch of the South Bronx. Vic and his lieutenants get involved in turf skirmishes with rival gangs from adjacent districts, although all the local dealers are supplied by the same drug import queen, known only as La Colombiana (Isabella Rossellini). Vic is dedicated to his girlfriend Carmen (Delilah Cotto) but also desperate to move up in the world.

He spots an opportunity to build a more legitimate fortune when he meets slick Manhattan investment banker Jack Wimmer (Peter Sarsgaard), who is living the rich life with glamorous girlfriend Trish (Denise Richards). Jack offers to cut Vic in on mysterious investments with promises of quick returns, and soon the money is rolling in. Vic and Carmen move into a swanky Manhattan apartment, but with the stakes getting higher, Vic discovers that leaving his old life behind isn't as easy as he thought.

Empire was an initially modest sub-studio effort aimed at Hispanic audiences. But gradually the profile of the cast expanded and the film, directed by Franc Reyes, saw a wider release. No one really needed to bother. While the movie carries some style and is competently assembled, this is a rehash of all the well-known gangster film themes, familiar since the early 1930s.

Every character is a cliché, every line of dialogue predictable, and the narration by Vic is oh-so- bland. Empire is not violent enough to cause a stir, nor groundbreaking in its portrayal of how gangsters, criminals and their molls think, act and react. It's a mercifully compact 90 minutes of lined up and knocked down platitudes.

Reyes does achieve some good aesthetic contrasts between the ramshackle street gang existence of the South Bronx and the glistening allure of Manhattan's high life, so at least Vic's quest to buy himself an upgrade is coherent. But the ease with which the supposedly whip-smart Vic gets seduced by Jack's ill-defined investment schemes introduces a severe central character contradiction.

John Leguizamo gives it his all in the central role, but often seems to be trying too hard. Peter Sarsgaard glides through the film with a glazed look of disinterest. The rest of the cast earnestly labour against the tight confines of characters who live and die within strict definitions.

Empire in not inherently deficient; just entirely derivative and utterly unnecessary.

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Movie Review: Jackie (2016)

A drama focusing on the week after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Jackie is the personal story of a wife and mother forced to grieve in front of the entire, shocked world.

A week after the assassination, Life reporter Theodore H. White (Billy Crudup) is summoned by Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman) to the Kennedy's Hyannis Port, Massachusetts estate for a private interview. In flashback, the events immediately before, during and after the harrowing assassination in Dallas are presented from her perspective.

Jackie has to contend with the sudden death of her husband, her young children losing their father, making funeral arrangements with the leaders of the world attending, and the incoming Johnson administration, all while adjusting to the end of her life as First Lady. She uses the interview to help shape President Kennedy's legacy as an idyllic Camelot-like brief but shining period in US history.

Directed by Pablo Larraín, Jackie focuses on the other victim of November 22, 1963. While the nation lost a leader, a woman lost her husband and her life as she had planned it came to an appalling end. The film intercuts interview scenes, with Jackie and Theodore sitting face to face and staring straight at the camera, with flashbacks to the events of the past week. Jackie's imperative to gather herself in a calculated manner while in the glare of the world's spotlight translates somewhat to the film, and a sense of theatre sometimes stands in the way of human warmth. The machinations behind Jackie planning JFK's funeral procession also receive inordinate attention.

The film is otherwise an intense personal experience, delving into the soul of a woman still processing a massive shock, forced to transition instantaneously from a world of elegance to cleaning the blood and brains of her husband from her face and pink Chanel suit. The interview scenes reveal a steely-eyed but still shaken former first lady intent on framing her husband's tenure in the best possible light. Theodore takes the brunt of her decompressing attitude, as she unloads her emotions with a mixture of haughtiness and raw anger at the injustice befalling her family.

The flashbacks look slightly to the side of world-shaping events, Jackie the unwilling secondary character in a tragedy that kills her husband, his bloodied head in her lap, and forces her to witness a change in administration and the inevitable pressure to move out of her White House all while maintaining poise in front of her children and the world.

Natalie Portman is excellent in a controlled performance, and is ably supported by Crudup as White and Peter Sarsgaard as Bobby Kennedy. John Hurt appears as a pragmatic priest comforting Jackie as she processes her losses.

Larraín uses Jackie's redecoration of the White House, as featured in a groundbreaking February 1962 television documentary special, as a framing device to emphasize her passion for history and understanding of the continuum represented by successive Presidents. Misconstrued as a vanity project, Jackie wanted to bring to life the real men behind the legends who occupied the people's building.

Now she has to hurriedly add her husband, prematurely, to the ranks of leaders who contributed to nation building. His youth, enthusiasm, love for the arts and sense of idealistic optimism leads Jackie to the Camelot metaphor, ironically helping to create a legend out of a short-lived presidency. As one former first lady departs centre stage, the power of the media to shape a national narrative emerges from the margins, in readiness for more turmoil in the decades ahead.

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Movie Review: Kinsey (2004)

A biographical drama about the scientist who revolutionized the understanding of sexuality, Kinsey treats its subject with well-rounded respect, revealing the man's determination and faults. The film is an efficient recounting of a unique career, suffering only slightly from some character repetitiveness.

At Indiana University in the 1930s, insect researcher Professor Al Kinsey develops an interest in researching human sexuality. In flashback, Kinsey's background is revealed. Born to a strict father (John Lithgow), Kinsey refuses to follow the path of engineering and chooses biology instead. He pursues an interest in the migration and evolution of gall wasps, and meets and marries Clara McMillen (Laura Linney). His early sexual experiences with his wife as well as his bisexuality contribute to his curiosity about human sexuality as a science. The current texts in circulation are religious and moralistic nonsense disguised as fact.

Kinsey recruits his students including Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard), Wardell Pomeroy (Chris O'Donnell) and Paul Gebhard (Timothy Hutton) to form the core of a research team. Supported by university president Herman Wells (Oliver Platt) and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation represented by Alan Gregg (Dylan Baker), Kinsey and his researchers fan out across the country interviewing thousands. The research findings, first published in the late 1940s, shake the foundations of American society. The former insect professor becomes a celebrity and household name. But a backlash also awaits, and Kinsey's singular obsession with the pure science of sexuality takes a personal and professional toll.

Directed and written by Bill Condon, Kinsey clocks in at under two hours and wastes no time on padding. This is a disciplined, focused film, stylishly divulging the man, the mission and the consequences. Enough background is added to create context without getting lost in side quests. Condon captures the clever simplicity of Kinsey's observational and interview methods, and then the ground shift of awakening unleashed by the resultant research.

Al Kinsey is presented as a visionary, a pioneer and a flawed man, inheriting a lot of more from his intolerable father than he wishes to admit. The scenes of Kinsey's early life are interspersed throughout the film with a light touch, colouring childhood influences in subtle shades. Kinsey the adult becomes dogmatic about his science the way his father was about his brand of religion. After demonstrating a propensity for diving deeply into a narrow topic with his improbable gall wasp obsession, he locks onto sexuality as pure science, reducing human intercourse to a subject stripped of emotional, psychological or societal resonance.

Liam Neeson contributes to the film's appeal, owning the role and settling quickly to embody the scientist as beady-eyed, stubborn and sure of his stance as others recoil in shock when the covers are thrown off to reveal exactly what is going on in the national bedroom. Neeson's intensity helps to ride out the more repetitious scenes, Condon overemphasizing his main character's obtusely stubborn traits. Laura Linney excels as his wife Clara "Mac" McMillan, first astounded by her husband's liberal views of sexuality and then embracing what freedom may mean to her and her marriage. Peter Sarsgaard as Clyde Martin is the most prominent of the researchers who bring Kinsey's research methods to life both professionally and personally.

Kinsey emerges as a dispassionately cold proponent of understanding human coupling for the sake of reckless exploration and personal satisfaction, and eventually pushes too hard and too fast. For all the good that the research achieved, this is a story of the quixotic renegade shoving society two steps forward but one step very much backwards: support seeps away, damage is caused within the team, and a shocked nation reaches the point of too much information. Scientific advancement can be a messy and imperfect path.

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Movie Review: The Magnificent Seven (2016)

A remake of the 1960 classic, The Magnificent Seven is a serviceable western with plenty of stellar action but little depth.

After the Civil War, the small town of Rose Creek is being terrorized by mining tycoon Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) and his army of hired guns. Bogue is exploiting the surrounding land for gold and kills at random to scare the townsfolk off their farms. After losing her husband to the wave of terror, Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) goes looking for mercenaries to push back against Bogue. She stumbles upon warrant officer Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), and he agrees to help.

Chisolm assembles a group of six other men: gambler Joshua Faraday (Chris Pratt), sharpshooter Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke) and his sidekick knife expert Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee), frontiersman Jack Horne (Vincent D'Onofrio), Mexican outlaw Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and Comanche warrior Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier). The seven men quickly eliminate Bogue's guards from Rose Creek, and set about fortifying the town's defences as Bogue plans a massive retaliatory attack with hundreds of men.

Directed by Antoine Fuqua, The Magnificent Seven gallops onto the screen with all guns blazing, a western with a predetermined focus to litter the screen with bloodless dead bodies while making seven stars look cool. The one reason for this version to exist is as an update with modern day stars, and Fuqua easily ticks that box with a diverse multi-ethnic cast, and adds a generational range for good measure. Washington is a healthy-looking 61, Martin Sensmeier is about half that, and the seven represent all the major ethnic group that built America.

The gun play and masculine violence is frequent and in traditional Fuqua style builds its way to overwhelming. Almost every other scene, and for some stretches every scene, features men killing other men. Several scenes end with multiple dead bodies decorating the dusty streets, raising concerns about the availability of enough pine boxes and grave diggers to clean up each subsequent mess. The flying bullets and stylish dispatching of bad guys is undeniably fun but also callous, as despite the 133 minutes of running length the film spends very little time providing context, background or humanizing back stories.

The final battle seems to last for about an hour, an all-out orgy of death complete with explosions and a Gatling gun spraying bullets with wild abandon. In an almost perfect example of quantity over quality, Fuqua parks his intentions firmly on the side of sheer numbers making up for the lack of depth. But there are only so many scenes of extras and stuntmen swan diving into death that the brain can absorb, and the film becomes an endless highlight reel where little stands out.

The script provides enough panache and the actors do well with what they have. Washington glides through the film as coolness personified, while Chris Pratt provides most of the animated energy and enjoys by far the best character resolution.

The 1960 version was an ode to the end of an era, gunmen questioning their purpose in life and aware of history closing their chapter. The 2016 version has little time for thoughtful pursuits, just snazzy style: there are hundreds of bad guys to kill, and a kill rate per minute that needs to be maintained.

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The Movies Of Peter Sarsgaard

All movies starring Peter Sarsgaard and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Dead Man Walking (1995)

Boys Don't Cry (1999)

Empire (2002)

Shattered Glass (2003)

Kinsey (2004)

Flightplan (2005)

Jarhead (2005)

Rendition (2007)

An Education (2009)

Knight And Day (2010)

Lovelace (2013)

Very Good Girls (2013)

Blue Jasmine (2013)

Night Moves (2013)

Jackie (2016)

The Magnificent Seven (2016)

Human Capital (2019)

The Lost Daughter (2021)

The Guilty (2021, voice only)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.