Movie Review: Passion (2012)

Genre: Thriller  

Director: Brian De Palma  

Starring: Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace  

Running Time: 97 minutes  

Synopsis: Advertising executive Christine (Rachel McAdams) claims credit for a marketing campaign developed by her protégé Isabelle (Noomi Rapace). Both women are sleeping with the corrupt Dirk, while Isabelle's assistant Dani has her own agenda. With career ambitions at stake, the feud between Christine and Isabelle escalates to public humiliations, blackmail threats, substance abuse, and ultimately, murder.

What Works Well: The murder sequence is effectively staged side-by-side with a ballet performance.

What Does Not Work As Well: Director and writer Brian De Palma attempts to roll back the years to the 1980's era of erotic thrillers, but this flaccid effort is almost laughably inept. Unfortunately both Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace are miscast and poorly served by an inane script targeting smoldering intrigue but only finding logic gaps and superficial glitz barely concealing budget limitations. Somehow the idea of a lesbian romance is here still treated as dangerous, but even more archaic are the repeated rounds of was-it-all-a-dream wake-up moments, and the long-lost twin trope.

Key Quote:

Christine (to Isabelle): You're shocked because I took credit for your idea. Honestly, I would expect you to do the exact same thing in my place. 

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Movie Review: Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (2023)

Genre: Comedy Drama  

Director: Kelly Fremon Craig  

Starring: Rachel McAdams, Abby Ryder Fortson, Kathy Bates, Benny Safdie  

Running Time: 106 minutes  

Synopsis: In 1970, 11-year-old Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) is upset when her parents Barbara and Herb (Rachel McAdams and Benny Safdie) relocate the family from Manhattan to New Jersey. Herb's mom Sylvia (Kathy Bates) stays behind in New York. At her new school, Margaret is befriended by classmate Nancy (Elle Graham), who rules over a small clique. While maintaining short conversations with God, Margaret navigates pre-teen topics including her first kiss, first crush, first period, and first bra. She also stumbles upon a religion-driven dispute involving Barbara's long-estranged parents.

What Works Well: The adaptation of Judy Blume's young adult book sparkles with the humorous awkwardness inherent in the maze of burgeoning womanhood. In the expansive suburbs Margaret finds a bigger world opening up, where relationships with others, discovering more about herself, and sharpening her own opinions become imperatives in the complex growing up process. Peer pressure, physical changes, and understanding parents as people all add to the challenge. Director and writer Kelly Fremon Craig uses breezy pacing to sprint across a lot of ground, helped immensely by a wonderful Abby Ryder Forston performance as Margaret. Rachel McAdams contributes to the warm glow of an anchored mother-daughter relationship. 

What Does Not Work As Well: While not all of Margaret's questions are answered, the beautifully executed ending is just another step in the journey, and perfectly consistent with the reality of life's untidy corners.

Conclusion: Growing up can be hard, weird, and oh so funny.



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Movie Review: The Notebook (2004)

A romantic drama, The Notebook weaves a lyrical spell with an appealing narrative structure bookending a destined love. Excellent performances and rich cinematography enhance the film's allure.

At a nursing home, the elderly Duke (James Garner) cares for a dementia patient (Gena Rowlands) by reading to her the story of a long-ago romance.

The events he recounts are shown in flashback, starting in the summer of 1940 at the resort community of Seabrook Island, South Carolina. At the carnival grounds, young lumberyard worker Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) is attracted to vacationing rich girl Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) and insists on a date. They eventually fall in love, but with summer ending and Allie's mother Anne (Joan Allen) believing Noah is not good enough for her daughter, the young lovers separate after a bad argument.

Noah heads off to war with his best friend Fin (Kevin Connolly), while Allie volunteers as a nurse and falls in love with recuperating soldier Lon (James Marsden), eventually agreeing to marry him. After the war, Noah embarks on a dream home renovation project with the help of his father Frank (Sam Shepard). Allie and Noah appear destined to remain apart, until she spots a newspaper article and sets out to discover if her first love was true.

An adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks book, The Notebook is well-made old-fashioned storytelling. Directed by Nick Cassavetes with an eye for blazing red skies and picturesque sunsets, the film draws strength from irony-free traditional themes of an everlasting love overcoming all obstacles, while late-in-life physical and mental ailments ensure no shortage of tears.

It's obvious early on that the elderly dementia patient is Allie and Duke is Noah, fanning the flames of their love until the very end. Veterans James Garner and Gena Rowlands bring earnest poise to life's twilight, Allie stranded in a lonely fog having forgotten her life, Noah persisting in sharing their eloquently written history, hoping to spark just a daily moment of remembrance. Combined with the tumultuous travails and separations of their young lives, this is a couple who earned their couplehood.

In the flashback scenes Cassavetes hits all the expected beats of courtship, with Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams contributing oodles of young charisma. Noah is from the rougher side of town, she plays hard to get, and they bring refreshing honesty to their feisty bickering. But there is no denying the certainty of their love nor the usual impediments blocking their road to happiness, from disapproving parents to world wars and rival lovers. Despite being apart they never lose sight of each other, in a soulful definition of a union meant to be.

At 124 minutes The Notebook does go on, although writer Jan Sardi has the excuse of delving deep into both the first and final chapters of an enduring bond. Noah and Allie may be two ordinary people, but they also embody the universality of extraordinary love.



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Movie Review: Aloha (2015)

A romantic comedy with convoluted but irrelevant sub-plots, Aloha never shakes the impression that a bunch of actors took a dream vacation and cobbled together a platitudinous project to write-off the expenses.

Army veteran and now private contractor Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper) returns to Hawaii to negotiate a land access agreement with a native chief. Brian is working for tycoon Carson Welch (Bill Murray), who is operating a satellite business with murky ties to the military. Air Force Captain Allison Ng (Emma Stone) is Brian's liaison, and he also reconnects with his ex-girlfriend Tracy (Rachel McAdams), now married to man-of-few-words Major John "Woody" Woodside (John Krasinsky).

The land negotiations go reasonably well, with Allison (who is one quarter Hawaiian) entranced by the natives' spiritual connection to the sky, whereas Brian remains more grounded. Allison's all-business facade starts to melt in the presence of Brian's charisma, but he is more intrigued by the potential of rekindling the passion with Tracy. But when the real cargo of Carson's latest satellite project is revealed, Brian has to decide where his loyalties lie.

A lacklustre outing by writer and director Cameron Crowe, Aloha meanders in and out of several storylines with no conviction. Riding on the laid-back star power of Cooper, Stone, McAdams, Murray plus Alec Baldwin in a glorified cameo, the plot has traces of romantic comedy, a barely-there side-story about evil corporations desecrating the sanctity of the land, and an overly familiar damaged and cynical man making half-hearted attempts to right past wrongs.

The talented cast and decent island scenery offer some enjoyment, and to give Crowe his due, he pulls out a final father-daughter scene that belongs in another, much better movie. But the rest of the narrative never justifies itself as a story that needed to be told. The script lacks wit and edge, and gets worse at it goes along, choking on cliches of women falling for a flawed man they want to fix in between unconvincing debates about spirituality and pragmatism. By the time a kid's photograph reveals a weapons secret and one guy with a laptop reprograms a satellite on the fly, all credibility is lost.

The big familial reveal is telegraphed in the opening five minutes and comes as no surprise among all the other no surprises. It is left to John Krasinski to try and salvage a few moments of humour as a stoic husband who says plenty by not talking. He's a man who knows who he is, whereas Aloha suffers from  both an identity crisis and impostor syndrome.



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Movie Review: Sherlock Holmes (2009)

A private detective thriller, Sherlock Holmes questionably thrusts the famous investigator into the world of non-stop CGI-enhanced action with a curiously dreary outcome.

In London of 1890, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and his friend Dr. Watson (Jude Law) apprehend serial murderer and black magic practitioner Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) just before he kills his latest victim. Blackwood is executed by hanging. 

Months later, Holmes is in an emotional funk due to lack of mental stimulation when his ex-lover and notorious swindler Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), working for a mysterious client, reappears and hires him to find a dwarf by the name of Reardon.

Holmes and Watson locate Reardon's murdered body in Backwood's coffin, the Lord having returned from the dead. With London thrown into a panic and Police Inspector Lestrade (Eddie Marsan) useless, Holmes and Watson uncover a massive conspiracy to topple the government, and have to race against time to stop the world from falling under the influence of a maniac.

The recreated London of the late nineteenth century is the star of Sherlock Holmes, director Guy Ritchie using blue-grey palettes to capture the bustling city in its muddy industrial glory. The visual candy and set designs often provide a welcome distraction from an otherwise bland exercise in dumbing down Sherlock Holmes for a mass audience by amping the thrills towards Roger Moore-era James Bond excess.

Ritchie and his three screenwriters do deserve credit for creating a protagonist faithful to Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, with Holmes a dishevelled, often irritated fiddler, obsessed by experimental concoctions and anything else his curious mind steers him towards when not occupied with crime solving. 

But this is also a private detective movie where prolonged and over-the-top brawls, shoot-outs, explosions and narrow escapes have to intrude into every third scene, and at 129 minutes, the film lugs around obvious bloat. The computer-enhanced set-pieces dominate and detract from any cerebral joy, indeed the detective's final analysis and detailed crime explanation a rushed muddle of nonsense.

Robert Downey Jr. interprets Holmes as athletic and resourceful once he overcomes the mental doldrums, but also a social victim of his sharp intuition. The dynamic between him and Jude Law's Watson veers towards excessively spiky, the script skipping past the foundation of their friendship and straight towards needling.

Visually captivating by needlessly busy, this Sherlock Holmes is more boisterously bare-knuckled than brainy.



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Movie Review: Disobedience (2017)

A romantic drama about a lesbian affair disrupting a conservative religious community, Disobedience explores modern misfits and misplaced morality but also suffers from plumbiferous pacing.

Upon hearing about the death of her father Rav Krushka, a respected leader in London's Jewish community, New York-based professional photographer Ronit Krushka (Rachel Weisz) travels back to London. Years earlier black sheep Ronit had left under a cloud after her gay relationship with Esti (Rachel McAdams) scandalized the community. Now Ronit is shocked to find Esti married to their childhood best friend Dovid Kuperman (Alessandro Nivola), the Rav's most loyal student and likely successor.

Ronit finds her family and the larger community as conservative, traditional and condescending as when she left. But the sparks between Ronit and Esti, now a schoolteacher, re-ignite immediately, undermining Esti's marriage to Dovid and threatening his ability to accept the promotion to fill the Rav's position.

Both the return of the prodigal daughter and the scandalous relationship are well-worn cinematic themes. In Disobedience director Sebastián Lelio, adapting Naomi Alderman's book and co-writing the script with Rebecca Lenkiewicz, adds in the layer of a modern-day community still adhering to traditional codes of morality and gender behaviour expectations to further pile pressure onto the lovers' shoulders. 

And here the lovers are not naive young things, but rather grown women with the ability to exert their independence. While Ronit moved away to define life on her terms, Esti stayed behind and acquiesced to a sham of a marriage, maybe half-convinced a union with Dovid is an acceptable suffocation of her sexuality to gain the acceptance of the community elders.

Ronit's re-emergence puts a comprehensive stop to any such misconceptions. The fire between the two women is instantaneous, and with Weisz and McAdams generating exquisite chemistry, Lelio beautifully stokes the tension between the resolute Ronit and a dazed but willing Esti. Their sensual lovemaking scene is a fine example of non-exploitive eroticism.

Although natural tension is generated by the sizzling romance upturning the harmony of an already grieving community, Disobedience is still an achingly slow experience. Drawn out to an almost excruciating 114 minutes, the film is easily 20 minutes longer than needed for what is ultimately a small and personal story. The padding is obvious in long moments of silence and interminable scenes of religious ceremony.

But with Alessandro Nivola delivering a measured and circumspect performance as the man caught in the middle, Disobedience maintains cohesion. An adept student of the Rav's essence rather than any judgmental trappings, Dovid grows increasingly aware a community can choose to live in the past, but disobeying the present is exceptionally difficult.

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Movie Review: Southpaw (2015)

A boxing drama, Southpaw piles on the genre cliches in thick layers, but features good production values and a willing cast, along with pounding ring action.

Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the undisputed and undefeated light heavyweight boxing champion. Both he and his wife and confidant Maureen (Rachel McAdams) were orphans who had nothing as children. Now they can afford a lavish lifestyle, a grand mansion and private school for their young daughter Leila (Oona Laurence). Billy does possess a quick temper and depends on Maureen to manage most of life's details.

His aggressive no-defence boxing style also means he takes severe punishments during his bouts, and his latest victory comes with significant facial injuries and a deep cut over his left eye. Maureen pleads with him to consider retiring, but his manager Jordan Mains (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson) is eager to line up a string of high profile money-making fights. A tragedy befalls the family, and Billy loses everything. He turns to down-to-earth trainer Tick Willis (Forest Whitaker) to rebuild his life and career.

A most traditional fall-and-rise story, Southpaw almost chokes on banality. All the elements are recycled from the rich history of boxing movies, and writer Kurt Sutter surrenders early and often to every possible obvious platitude and broad emotion.

Hope's name, his hardscrabble upbringing, inability to control his temper, and contribution to his own downfall and the loss of a perfect wife and child come straight from the big book of boxing bromide. The triteness continues throughout the second half, a long road to redemption that starts with cleaning toilets and passess through learning what matters in life all the way towards a rousing shot at reclaiming past glories combined with revenge in one fatty roll.

Stuck in a swamp of the mundane, director Antoine Fuqua does have excellent talent working for him in the form of Jake Gyllenhaal and Forest Whitaker. Gyllenhaal occasionally slips into his almost comatose low-key mode, but otherwise maximizes all the available compassion within the Billy Hope character to provide the movie with a beating heart. Whitaker takes the overly familiar grizzled-trainer-in-a-derelict-gym and gives him undeserved grace and regency.

Fuqua also brings admirable and often bloody intensity to the boxing scenes. Without fully avoiding Hollywood's propensity to portray every bout as non-stop punch-fest, the training scenes do give the strategy aspects some prominence. The same concentration of energy is carried to all of life's events between the bouts, every turn in Hope's fortunes amplified to eleven.

Southpaw is as predictable as a weigh-in brawl, but carries the shine of a boxing ring under the lights.

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Movie Review: Game Night (2018)

An adventure comedy thriller, Game Night generates plenty of laughs in the story of real crime (maybe) intruding on a fun night, but also carries on its plot acrobatics for too long.

Max and Annie (Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams) are a games-loving married couple, yet to have children. They regularly host game nights with their married friends Kevin and Michelle (Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury), as well as bachelor Ryan (Billy Magnussen), who always brings along a different stunningly hot date. Max and Annie pointedly exclude inviting creepy next-door neighbour Gary (Jesse Plemons), a widowed police officer.

Max's ultra successful brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) arrives in town and hosts the next game night, promising an epic experience. Max is psychologically cowed by Brooks, who wins at everything he does. For this night Ryan brings along the smart Sarah (Sharon Horgan) as his date to increase his chance of winning. Brooks describes the game for the night as a mock kidnapping adventure. When first an FBI agent arrives with a warning and then real thugs storm the house and abduct Brooks, the group believe it all part of the game, but gradually realize that something really bad is going on.

Co-directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein and written by Mark Perez, Game Night is an amiable madcap comedy, maximizing laughs from a frantic premise and making the most out of a willing cast. The game-gone-wrong theme is combined with just enough character conflicts to enhance the entertainment. Max and Annie are having trouble conceiving, and the issues blocking Max from letting go and embracing the next stage of life play a role in his relationship with the game and his inability to deal with Brooks' success.

Less successful is a contrived and prolonged argument between Kevin and Michelle, where he insists on finding out which celebrity she admits to once sleeping with. This subplot is at the level of a television sitcom and is never as funny as Perez seems to believe it is.

Also weak is the film's resolution, where the game and reality collide. Game Night does not quite know when to quit, and abstract criminal characters (real or not) like the Bulgarian (Michael C. Hall) and Marlon Freeman (Danny Huston) gate crash the party along with an assortment of real-or-pretend goons, leading to a disjointed tone and plot fragments all over the place.

But with Bateman and McAdams an appealing and well-balanced central couple, Daley and Goldstein do conjure up some terrific and hilarious set-pieces, including a small white dog drenched in blood and a game of catch with a precious Fabergé egg. And every scene featuring next-door grieving police officer Gary is a classic, with slow zooms used to maximize Jesse Plemons' on-the-edge-of-reason performance.

Game Night eventually overplays its hand, but provides worthwhile amusement along the way.

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Movie Review: The Family Stone (2005)

A Christmas family comedy, The Family Stone features plastic people, events and emotions. A strong cast salvages a few moments of merriment.

Christmas time is approaching, and New York City-based businessman Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney) and his new fiancée Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) travel to the Stone family home in Massachusetts for the Holidays. Meredith is highly strung, and is immediately a misfit within the Stone family dynamics. Everett's parents Sybil (Diane Keaton) and Kelly (Craig T. Nelson) are upbeat but dealing with Sybil's illness.

Meanwhile, Everett's siblings do little to make their guest feel welcome. Amy (Rachel McAdams) is the youngest and immediately harbours a bratty dislike towards Meredith; Thad (Tyrone Giordano) is deaf and gay and in a relationship with Patrick (Brian J. White), who is black; Susannah (Elizabeth Reaser) is pregnant. Only the laid back Ben (Luke Wilson) makes an effort to reach out. Meredith commits every social faux-pas in the book and grows increasingly frantic. She finally appeals to her sister Julie (Claire Danes) to ride to the rescue.

Directed and written by Thomas Bezucha, The Family Stone offers harmless entertainment filled with contrived situations all leading towards saccharine happily-ever-after resolutions with just a touch of seasonal melancholia. The film is undermined by an almost total absence of authenticity, with the cast struggling against a script seeking laughs but most often inducing groans.

Meredith's fish-out-of-water behaviour is sometimes funny but always unbelievably awkward. Stressed or not, a successful businesswoman should know better how to charm her way into a new environment, but here the script demands that she does nothing except practice aggressive foot-in-mouth. Equally, the adults of the Stone family behave like immature children around the new love of their eldest son and sibling.

The Family Stone is saved from a total loss by a willing cast. Sarah Jessica Parker plays against type and pulls off Meredith as a stuck-up and socially inept diva. Rachel McAdams gives young Amy an attitudinal edge, and Luke Wilson brings out the friendly black sheep of the family in Ben's observe-first, act-later approach to navigating his tumultuous family. Diane Keaton struggles for meaningful screen time, and Claire Danes ghosts into the movie as Julie with the preordained purpose of playing the romantic disruptor, because the script says so.

The Family Stone sometimes induces a tight smile, but rarely delivers a genuine note.

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Movie Review: About Time (2013)

A fantasy romantic comedy and drama, About Time holds promise but eventually gets itself into a hopeless multi-tonal mess.

In Cornwall, England, Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) turns 21 and is informed by his father (Bill Nighy) that the men in the family have the special ability to change their fortune by traveling back in time to any event they previously were part of. Tim has never been lucky in love, and so uses his newly found gift to try and improve his success rate with women. He is nevertheless unsuccessful in his attempts to woo Charlotte (Margot Robbie), the best friend of his free-spirited sister Kathy, better known as "Kit Kat" (Lydia Wilson).

After moving to London, Tim uses his time travel skills to help his father's friend and abrasive fledgling playwright Harry (Tom Hollander) have a more successful opening night. In the process he almost derails a promising relationship with Mary (Rachel McAdams), but then rescues his chances with her by doing more time traveling. Eventually Tim learns that there are limits to what he can and cannot change, and understands the true value of his special gift.

Directed and written by Richard Curtis, About Time starts with possibilities and an amusing attitude, mixing playful British eccentricity with droll fantasy elements. The early stages of Tim's experimentation with time travel are engaging, his clumsy but dogged pursuits of first Charlotte and then Mary full of understated charm and soft humour.

But unfortunately, About Time effectively unravels in its second half. New restrictions and rules on what is and is not possible with the time travel trick are introduced seemingly at random. Tim zips backwards and forwards in time at dizzying speed, and the film's emotional focus is hopelessly lost.

Curtis seems to have partial material for three different short stories, and he bolts them together inelegantly. After barely featuring as a character, Tim's sister Kit Kat suddenly becomes the new focus of attention, before a second jerky gear shift resets the emphasis on the relationship between Tim and his father. The narrative transitions are mishandled and in the process much of the initial charm evaporates, replaced by clumsy attempts at pathos. The film eventually settles for a couple of bland conclusions contradicting much of what Tim achieved with his hopping across time.

Domhnall Gleeson is passable as the slightly gawkish youth making his way in the world. Rachel McAdams, about 35 at the time of filming, mails in yet another perky but relatively trivial performance.

Well-intentioned but overambitious, About Time gets distracted in too many time zones.

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Movie Review: Mean Girls (2004)

A high-school comedy about girls fitting in, Mean Girls brings plenty of edgy attitude and delivers a funny, uncompromised story about the perils of the pack.

Sixteen year old Cady (Lindsay Lohan) has been home-schooled all her life, Now her parents have relocated from Africa to Evanston, Illinois, and Cady has to face the wilderness that is her local high school. She meets two happy independent-minded students in semi-Gothic Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and openly gay Damian (Daniel Franzese), but Cady is soon exposed to the most envied girl trio in the school: the pretty, fashionable, cool and snooty Plastics. Their queen bee is Regina (Rachel McAdams), and her clique consists of the submissive Gretchen (Lacey Chabert) and the quite dense Karen (Amanda Seyfried).

Regina sizes up Cady and gives her a chance to join the troop. Janis seizes the opportunity to use Cady as an informant to reveal the secrets of the Plastics. Cady starts to develop a crush on classmate Aaron (Jonathan Bennett), but learns that he's off limits because he was Regina's former boyfriend. It does not take long for Cady to be both horrified and seduced by the mean-spirited behaviour of the Plastics, and to learn that belonging means making difficult choices.

Directed by Mark Waters and written by Tina Fey (who gives herself a small but shiny role as a teacher with problems of her own), Mean Girls pulls no punches. Life in suburbia is portrayed as a hazardous jungle with the animals barely concealed beneath a veneer of civility, and Cady's challenge is to adapt to her new environment or be eaten alive. Waters keeps the laughs coming in a compact 97 minute package, and the humour is continuously juiced with the poison spewed by teenagers defining their turf and individuality to scare away the perceived competition.

Without fully escaping the limitations of the high school comedy genre, Mean Girls manages to stretch. Cady makes every mistake in the book, attempting to be nice, having a foot in a couple of camps, and trying to join the Plastics while simultaneously spying on them. She is of course doomed to fail in the most spectacular way, and Mean Girls gets the environment right: the long-established rules of place will dominate the individual, redefining social norms is bound to fail, and belonging to competing herds is not smart: it is treason.

Cady flirts with the dark side and demonstrates to herself how easy it is to transition from eager wannabe to a broadly despised pretender. To regain her balance she will need to learn to carve out her own niche, rather than try to change the evolutionary order. Fey does struggle a bit with the final chapter, as Cady's attempts at atonement are clumsily (and literally) run over by a bus.

Before Lindsay Lohan embarked on her career-destroying lifestyle, she was one of Hollywood's most promising young actresses, and here she proves why. Lohan finds the space for Cady to be both the smart outsider and the eager wannabe, grounded by a stable family-oriented upbringing but not immune to the seductive forces of cheap popularity. In contrast Rachel McAdams did use early roles like Regina as fuel for a successful career, and here she goes all-in as the embodiment of haughty entitlement. Regina has the perfect role model in her mom (Amy Poehler), a woman with all the money she needs to not care about what it means to be a parent.

Mean Girls is smart, sassy, real, rude, and often, a riot of laughs.

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Movie Review: Spotlight (2015)

A newspaper drama based on real events, Spotlight recreates the Boston Globe's investigation into child abuse by Catholic priests. With a quality cast in good form the film sustains a steady level of engagement, without fully breaking away from the constraints of a well known story.

In 2001, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) is hired as the Globe's new editor. He quickly authorizes the investigative Spotlight team, led by Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton) to dig into accusations that a Catholic priest named Geoghan was a serial sexual abuser of children, and that Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law (Len Cariou) knew about the incidents and did nothing. Robinson's team consists of reporters Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) and Matt Carroll (Brian d'Arcy James). Assistant Managing Editor Ben Bradlee Jr. (John Slattery) supports the investigation while warning that the Church will mobilize to push back against the newspaper.

Rezendes establishes contact with scrappy lawyer Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), who is fighting a lonely battle representing multiple former child victims of abuse by Catholic priests. Robinson and Pfeiffer pursue lawyers who have defended the Church behind the scenes to keep the abuse accusations away from public scrutiny. Gradually victims come forward to share their stories with the Spotlight team, and it becomes apparent that many more priests were likely engaged in abusing children. With the sensational exposé taking shape, the terrorist attacks of September 11 derail the publication schedule, and pressure mounts on Robinson to avoid rocking the boat of Boston's established society.

Directed by Tom McCarthy, Spotlight draws its energy from the familiar theme of crusading reporters committed to a cause. The film is an earnest treatment of a sensitive subject, and the script by McCarthy and Josh Singer covers all the angles, including victims, lawyers, priests, reporters and Boston's power brokers. Some want the truth, others justice, while the elite circles where the church, money and tradition intersect just want the whole story to be swept under the carpet.

Very much a galloping talk fest, the script does pack in a large number of names, referrals and sources with short roles, and it's sometimes difficult to keep track of all the players. There is even a subject matter expert only available over the phone, psychotherapist and priest researcher Richard Sipe (an uncredited Richard Jenkins) offering crucial insights based on years of research, but never seen in person. The few scenes of action try to generate drama from the mundane pursuit of documents in the bureaucratic maze of government offices, where the hours are short and the red tape thick.

Spotlight's best moments are when the reporters pause and allow the enormity of the emerging story to wash over them. Emotions flair between Robinson and Rezendes in a disagreement over timing, Rezendes and Pfeiffer discuss what the church meant to them, while Carroll finds the scandal residing closer to his home than he would like. Robinson has to face his own history as a reporter, a case of present-day success revealing yesterday's imperfections. McCarthy also ironically humanizes Baron by keeping him cold and aloof. More of these interludes would have made Spotlight even better.

The theme of an outsider having the courage to lift the lid over an established but corrupt order resides at the of the film. Baron is a Jew, a newcomer to Boston, and has a resume that suggests he won't stay long at the helm of the Globe. He is presented as a fascinating character but unfortunately drifts towards the edges of the film, his influence only tangentially hinted at while the focus resides with Robinson and his team.

Keaton, Ruffalo, McAdams and James get on with the job of portraying reporters without much fuss, Ruffalo getting the most animated role. The supporting cast is loaded with interesting performances. Liev Schreiber is cool and cold as Baron, Stanley Tucci ruffled and exasperated as the lawyer Garabedian (another self-aware outsider), and Billy Crudup makes a welcome appearance as Eric MacLeish, the slick lawyer with a scripted message and much to hide.

Spotlight celebrates the still relevant power of old-fashioned reporting to drag a tragic scandal into the open. The reporters get the satisfaction of a job well done, but the real beneficiaries are the unnamed vulnerable children of the future whose lives may have been made that much safer.

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Movie Review: Midnight In Paris (2011)

A fantasy romance inspired by the confluence of wistful time and divine place, Midnight In Paris finds Woody Allen at his best, crafting a love letter to a city rich with passion and history.

Successful Hollywood screenwriter Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) still dreams of becoming a respected book author. On vacation in Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams), Gil finds himself inspired by the city's rich heritage and starts to muse about living there permanently, an idea that Inez dismisses. With Inez enjoying sightseeing and partying with pompous professor Paul Bates (Michael Sheen) and his wife Carol (Nina Arianda), Gil starts to take midnight walks on his own.

He stumbles into an alternate reality of Paris in the 1920s, inhabited by the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. They interact with him naturally, inviting him to parties and Stein even offering to review a draft of his novel. Gil moves back and forth between Paris of today with Inez in the daytime and the 1920s on his own after midnight, where he eventually meets Pablo Picasso's lover, the mysteriously attractive Adriana (Marion Cotillard). She is also seeking her true destiny in the company of her contemporaries, and an impossible romance flickers to life.

Midnight In Paris celebrates the city's charming magic, and toys with the nostalgia of the past always glowing brighter than the reality of the present. It is among Woody Allen's best films, finding the sweet spot where his favourite themes intersect: troubled love enriched by an enchanting cityscape prompting an examination of a man's path in life.

The opening montage, showing iconic Parisian scenes, noticeably lingers on for a good minute longer than the usual introduction, Allen sending the message that the city is one of his main characters. And throughout the film, Allen bathes the Paris of the past and the present, whether at night or during the day, with warm, comforting hues dominated by reds and yellows. Even the rainfall feels mild and soothing, while the numerous bistros emit an ever welcoming glow at all hours.

And Gil is drawn into this mystique, finding in the city the perfect match for his romantic soul. Gil is most at home when walking the streets of Paris alone, and he gradually realizes that his connection with the city will define his happiness much more so than his relationship with Inez.

Allen, who also wrote the screenplay, does not bother to explain Gil's frequent sojourns into the past, allowing the time shifts to be as natural as the human imagination. The theme, however, is clear. The glorious past is an inspiration for the present and the future, but pining to live there is an emotional cul-de-sac. The past is always the present for its generation, with the business of living and loving a constant and dominant requirement. Wistful sentimentality is what yesterday feels like, but only from today's vantage point.

Midnight In Paris is populated by a perfect cast, Wilson creating in Gil an articulate man still seeking his place in life. McAdams breaks away from her traditional perkiness to provide Inez with a pushy edge, a modern woman trampling over her man's tender vulnerabilities. Marion Cotillard ghosts into the movie as Gil's muse, his most direct expression of love for the past, and also the signpost for the future.

Michael Sheen, Carla Bruni and Léa Seydoux have small but memorable roles in Paris of the present, while Adrien Brody (Salvador Dali), Kathy Bates (Gertrude Stein), Corey Stoll (Ernest Hemingway) and Tom Hiddleston (F. Scott Fitzgerald) have a ball bringing the past to life. Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Degas, Matisse, T.S. Eliot and Luis Buñuel are other celebrities of previous eras that cross paths in the dreamy mists of the night.

Embroidered with delicate humour, Midnight In Paris is a whimsical masterpiece.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: A Most Wanted Man (2014)

A contemporary counter-terrorism drama, A Most Wanted Man adapts the John le Carré novel into a serviceable film. While Philip Seymour Hoffman's final performance is a rich achievement, the rest of the film idles among too many characters stuck in a singular mode.

A mysterious Chechen man named Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) arrives illegally in Hamburg, Germany, and immediately attracts the attention of the authorities. Günther Bachmann (Philip Seymour Hoffman) heads a Hamburg-based anti-terrorist unit tasked with infiltrating terrorist cells, and he places Issa under observation. Günther is also interested in the activities of Dr. Faisal Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi), a seemingly distinguished Muslim leader who advocates peace while raising funds for charities. The problem is that a sliver of all the money raised by Dr. Faisal always seems to be diverted to terrorist causes. The CIA's Berlin station chief Martha Sullivan (Robin Wright) keeps a watchful eye on Günther's activities.

Günther takes a risk and resists the pressure to detain and interrogate Issa, and instead pursues the connections that can lead to bigger conspirators. Issa makes contact with Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams), a young lawyer who helps immigrants settle in Germany. Issa wants Annabel's assistance to approach the private bank controlled by Tommy Brue (Willem Dafoe), where Issa's father, a former Russian general, has parked a fortune that now belongs to Issa. With a large amount of money at play, Günther finds himself confronting a shadowy transaction that may be as simple as a young man distributing his father's wealth to charities, or as deadly as terrorist financing for the next big attack.

A Most Wanted Man is Philip Seymour Hoffman's final completed performance, and he is the main reason to watch the film. He delivers a tortured performance as Günther, a man uncomfortable with the new rules of war in the post-9/11 era. Hoffman wears Günther's emotional burdens like a heavy winter jacket, a master warrior of the spy world who has lost too many soldiers and yet tries to adhere to the old rules of patient observation, surveillance, nurturing informants and network infiltration.

But this is Hamburg, where the 9/11 plot was hatched and developed. Government types in Berlin are agitated and eager to quickly stamp out characters like Issa, and the CIA is all too willing to help by bundling people off to black interrogation sites. Günther has to fend off the rabid dogs demanding action while first ensuring that he does not lose Issa, and then proving that the patient approach can pay dividends. With Günther as the one character grappling with complex realpolitik trade-offs that could potentially cost many innocent lives, not to mention his career, Hoffman is flawless.

Unfortunately for the film, none of the other characters are nearly as complex. Issa, Annabel, Brue, Martha and Dr. Faisal are predictable and monochromatic, and in a case of too many characters causing a shortage of development space, none of them undergo any form of interesting evolution. The book provided breathing room for the relationship between Issa and Annabel to deepen, and rounded Brue with a complex backstory. Despite a two hour running time, this is all sacrificed by director Anton Corbijn and screenwriter Andrew Bovell, leaving Hoffman to fight a lonely battle to maintain momentum.

As can be expected with any le Carré adaptation, A Most Wanted Man is slow paced, more concerned with mood, gloom and pessimism than the traditional trappings of a thriller. The film delivers infrequent jolts of activity, but generally just soaks in a grey aura resigned to an eternal conflict between opposing forces locked in a shadow war. The causes, labels and tactics may change, but for men like Günther, with every skirmish a little piece of the soul dies a tortured death.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Rachel McAdams

All movies starring Rachel McAdams and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Mean Girls (2004)

The Notebook (2004)

Wedding Crashers (2005)

Red Eye (2005)

The Family Stone (2005)

State Of Play (2009)

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Morning Glory (2010)

Midnight In Paris (2011)

The Vow (2012)

Passion (2012)

About Time (2013)

A Most Wanted Man (2014)

Aloha (2015)

Southpaw (2015)

Spotlight (2015)

Disobedience (2017)

Game Night (2018)

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (2023)

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