Movie Review: Feast Of Love (2007)

Genre: Romantic Drama  

Director: Robert Benton  

Starring: Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear, Jane Alexander, Selma Blair, Radha Mitchell, Alexa Davalos, Fred Ward, Margo Martindale  
Running Time: 97 minutes  

Synopsis: Portland is the setting for a series of loosely connected adventures in love and heartache. Coffee shop owner Bradley (Greg Kinnear) is devastated when his wife Kathryn (Selma Blair) leaves him for another woman. He seeks advice from his mentor Professor Harry Stevenson (Morgan Freeman, also narrating), who is still traumatized by the sudden loss of his son. Bradley's employee Oscar (Toby Hemingway), a recovering addict with a violent father (Fred Ward), starts a romance with Chloe (Alexa Davalos), and although they have little, they dream of a better life. Bradley finds a new love with real estate agent Diane (Radha Mitchell), who is also having an affair with a married man (Billy Burke).

What Works Well: The adaptation of Charles Baxter's book provides thoughtful and mature perspectives on the ups and downs of love, lust, loss, dreams, hopes, and physical attachment. Allison Burnett's screenplay features flawed but likeable characters navigating shifting emotions, saddled with life's luggage, and buffeted by surprises. Director Robert Benton rarely dawdles on any one couple, and finds moments of levity to lighten the mood. A stellar cast adds a spark even in minor roles.

What Does Not Work As Well: The ambition to explore several worthwhile stories bumps against the reality of a modest running time, resulting in several characters disappearing for long periods and a general under-development of themes. Fred Ward's angry-at-the-world father is a stock villain, and the trauma of loss suffered by Professor Stevenson and his wife (Jane Alexander) is covered in the broadest of strokes.

Key Quote:

Bradley (to Harry): God doesn't hate us, Harry. If he did, he wouldn't have made our hearts so brave.

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Movie Review: 2 Hearts (2020)

Genre: Romantic Drama  

Director: Lance Hool  

Starring: Jacob Elordi, Radha Mitchell, Adan Canto, Tiera Skovbye  

Running Time: 100 minutes  

Synopsis: Two initially separate stories unfold in different time periods. In the present, Chris (Jacob Elordi) starts college and meets fellow student Sam (Tiera Skovbye). They both volunteer for a campus security program, and eventually their relationship becomes serious. In the 1950s, Jorge Bolivar (Adan Canto) is the scion for a family-run rum business. He suffers from a serious lung condition and defies the odds to live into his thirties. While helping to relocate the business from Cuba to Miami, he meets and falls in love with airline stewardess Grace (Radha Mitchell). Eventually, the stories of Chris and Jorge merge. 

What Works Well: Based on actual events, this is a heartwarming and uplifting double romance, sensitively handled by director and co-writer Lance Hool. The two stories are never groundbreaking but always engaging, and the drama glides seamlessly between the two timelines, cleverly concealing the connection until the third act. Chris and Jorge are refreshingly real, their journeys bumping against typical family issues including parental expectations and medical challenges. Both romances feel organic and credible for their eras.

What Does Not Work As Well: The writing and acting is always earnest but sometimes confined to  television levels of blandness, with both Sam and Grace presented as perfectly wholesome partners for their men. The third act is effortlessly tear-inducing, and drifts towards sustained emotional melodrama. 

Key Quote:

Chris (narrating): The truth is we're all just one connection away from something incredible.

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Movie Review: The Frozen Ground (2013)

Genre: Crime Drama  

Director: Scott Walker  

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Vanessa Hudgens, John Cusack, Radha Mitchell, 50 Cent  

Running Time: 105 minutes  

Synopsis: In Anchorage of 1983, prostitute Cindy Paulson (Vanessa Hudgens) escapes from the clutches of brutal rapist Robert Hanson (John Cusack). Local officers do not pursue charges, but State Trooper Jack Halcombe (Nicolas Cage) investigates similarities to unsolved disappearance and murder cases of other women across Alaska dating back to the early 1970s, all circumstantially connected to Hanson. Without enough evidence to secure a warrant, Jack tries to convince Cindy to cooperate, but she just wants to disappear into the sex trade. Meanwhile, Hanson hunts down more victims.

What Works Well: Based on actual events, this is a grim procedural emphasizing dogged police work and the struggles of marginalized victims. Director Scott Walker leverages a stark Alaska entering the grips of winter to create an overbearing sense of gloom, whether on remote icefields or within the city's seedy corners. Nicolas Cage loads the weight of invisible suffering onto tired but determined shoulders, and the toll of the investigation on Halcombe's marriage to Allie (Radha Mitchell) adds a layer of emotional exhaustion. John Cusack is chilling as the seemingly soulless antagonist finding fertile hunting grounds in a milieu of strip clubs and prostitution rooms.

What Does Not Work As Well: Within the limited running time, the focus is split three ways between Halcombe, Cindy, and Hanson. All are afforded tantalizing glimpses of intriguing but not fully realized depth. Cindy's repeated capacity to escape into trouble becomes a tiresome distraction.

Conclusion: A suitably cold view of evil preying on society's most vulnerable.



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Movie Review: Phone Booth (2002)

A single-setting suspense thriller, Phone Booth is a compact psychological sniper drama, although the one-note premise unsurprisingly bumps up against obvious limitations.

In Manhattan, Stu Sheppard (Colin Farrell) is a cocky and fast-taking publicist, happy to obfuscate his way through life. Married to Kelly (Radha Mitchell), he is also romancing waitress Pam (Katie Holmes) and calls her regularly from a phone booth near Times Square to avoid cell phone records.

But today Stu answers a call at the booth from a mysterious Caller (Kiefer Sutherland), who threatens Stu's life with a sniper rifle. The Caller wants Stu to reveal his infidelity to Kelly, and apologize for all his other transgressions. After the Caller shoots dead a pimp interfering with the call, the police descend on the scene, as do Kelly and Pam. Captain Ed Ramey (Forest Whitaker) has to try and untangle a dangerous situation.

Written by Larry Cohen and directed by Joel Schumacher, Phone Booth was filmed in ten days and in sequence. The film's events take place in real time, Stu's ordeal wrapping up in 81 minutes, and the desired mood of taut efficiency is effectively sustained. Schumacher's agitated camerawork adds to the disorienting sense of suspense caused by an unseen foe.

The basic theme of repentance and owning up to a pattern of nefarious behaviour is compelling, but also dragged out as Cohen struggles to keep Stu in the phone booth. The plot details surrender to illogic, most obviously to keep Kelly and Pam in danger, and some of the dialogue exchanges meander towards superfluous profanity in search of cheap shock value.

But Colin Farrell stands up to the role's rigours and carves a sweaty path from slick to desperate and frantic, literally holding the film in his hand. On the other end of the line Kiefer Sutherland's voice suggests a worthy villain. Unfortunately the script affords him God-like powers until the moments that matter most, and the duel between the two men deserves better motivation than Stu's small-scale sleaze. 

Without withstanding much scrutiny, Phone Booth answers the call.



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Movie Review: Man On Fire (2004)

A revenge action thriller centred on a child kidnapping, Man On Fire is gripping, violent, and stylish.

With Mexico City experiencing a high rate of abductions for ransom, businessman Samuel Ramos (Marc Anthony) and his wife Lisa (Radha Mitchell) hire Creasy (Denzel Washington) as a bodyguard for their young daughter Pita (Dakota Fanning). Creasy is ex-military, but now has a drinking problem. He remains friends with Paul Rayburn (Christopher Walken), a former colleague who runs a security firm.

The dour and despondent Creasy gets off on the wrong foot with the talkative and curious Pita, but they then establish a deep bond of friendship. When heavily-armed kidnappers do target Pita, Creasy is unable to save her despite killing four assailants and being shot several times. While he recuperates, Samuel and lawyer Jordan Kalfus (Mickey Rourke) handle the ransom negotiations. But with corruption reaching the highest levels of the police force, the deal goes bad. Creasy vows revenge on all those who harmed his young friend.

Directed by Tony Scott from a Brian Helgeland script adapting A.J. Quinnell's 1980 novel, Man On Fire is a standard revenge story spiced-up by strong character development, hyperactive cinematography, and star power. While the man-on-a-mission-wasting-bad-guys premise offers little that is new, here the people are made to matter with smart pacing choices.

The first hour patiently introduces the flawed and self-aware Creasy, the smart and precocious Pita (short for Lupita), and the connection between them. At first she irritates him but then he helps her develop competitive swimming techniques and becomes a friend and trusted mentor. Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning invest genuine humanity into the roles, adding a potent emotional punch to the subsequent violence.

Once the killing starts it does not stop, Creasy working his way up the criminal food chain from foot soldiers to mid-level operatives, corrupt officials and finally the masterminds. He is calm, methodical and outwardly emotionless, dismantling a shadowy organization consisting of thugs and sleazoids hiding behind uniforms and officious titles. All the bad guys call themselves professionals, but Creasy demonstrates what the term really means. The usual methods of torture are deployed to expeditiously extract the necessary information in time for the next rocket-propelled grenade to impart the required damage. And along the way a conspiracy twist is revealed, adding internecine venom.

Creasy is helped by a couple of locals to balance out the Mexican portrayals. Rachel Ticotin is reporter Mariana Garcia Guerrero, eager to expose government corruption and incompetence, and Giancarlo Giannini plays Miguel Manzano, a federal police director willing to provide assistance in exchange for the right perks.

The Mexico City locations add vibrant authenticity, while Scott's insistence on manic visual flair and demented editing borders on nauseating but achieves the intended kinetic buzz. Man On Fire is both cool and blazing.



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The Movies Of Radha Mitchell

All movies starring Radha Mitchell and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Pitch Black (2000)

Phone Booth (2002)

Man On Fire (2004)

Silent Hill (2006)

Feast Of Love (2007)

Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

The Frozen Ground (2013)

London Has Fallen (2016)

2 Hearts (2020)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Silent Hill (2006)

A horror ghost story, Silent Hill toys with a few decent ideas but cannot escape it's video game roots.

Sharon Da Silva (Jodelle Ferland) is the young adopted daughter of married couple Rose (Radha Mitchell) and Christopher (Sean Bean). Sharon sleepwalks, has nightmares about a place called Silent Hill, and draws frightening sketches while in a trance-like state. Rose's research identifies Silent Hill as an abandoned coal mining town in West Virginia, suffering from a long-burning underground fire and now considered a ghost town.

Against Christopher's wishes Rose drives Sharon towards Silent Hill. Along the way she tangles with police officer Cybil Bennett (Laurie Holden), then a car crash separates mother from daughter and Sharon disappears into the abandoned town. As she desperately tries to find her daughter Rose starts to encounter monstrous beings and horrifying imagery of violence and death in alternative dimensions, while Christopher teams up with police detective Thomas Gucci (Kim Coates) to try and find his family.

An adaptation of a 1999 survival horror game, Silent Hill is too repetitive and CGI dependent. Long stretches are consumed by Rose exploring spooky hallways and rooms within intimidating buildings, only to be attacked by a succession of pixel-created monsters. Given that Rose's death or incapacitation would mean the early end of the film, the lack of any real threat defangs the film's horror elements.

Director Christophe Gans compensates to some extent with reasonably impressive visuals and set designs, and if Silent Hill fails to deliver meaningful scares, it is at least good to look at. The abandoned town with fire burning underneath and ashes falling continuously from the sky is a spooky achievement.

Elsewhere distraught dad Christopher's parallel quest to try and find his wife and daughter is utterly useless, and it was an afterthought awkwardly added to the script to bolster the male content. Back in town, Rose gradually uncovers a mystery involving a bullied child, witch hunters, religious fanatics and a demon, with Deborah Kara Unger and Alice Krige joining the fun to try and explain a muddled narrative.

If there is a theme, it relates to fundamentalists creating their own hell as a happy place to justify their own existence. Radha Mitchell does the best she can within the confines of the material, and finally breaks out into kick-ass motherhood mode to end the nonsense.

Silent Hill is not entirely without merit, but this town needed more plots and fewer wandering corpses.

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Movie Review: Pitch Black (2000)

A science fiction horror thriller, Pitch Black (later re-released on DVD as The Chronicles of Riddick: Pitch Black) introduces the character of Riddick in a solid if patchy adventure on a hostile planet.

Deep in space, an interplanetary merchant ship is damaged by a comet storm. With the captain killed, docking pilot Carolyn Fry (Radha Mitchell) crash-lands the stricken craft onto the surface of a seemingly deserted barren planet. The survivors include convicted murderer Richard B. Riddick (Vin Diesel), who is being transported by his captor bounty hunter William Johns (Cole Hauser). A Muslim Imam (Keith David), his children and a mysterious boy Jack are among the others who emerge from the wreckage.

The survivors stumble upon a small but abandoned outpost set-up by a geological expedition years prior, with a dropship in near-working condition. They also encounter monstrous killer creatures who live in caves deep below ground and can only survive in darkness. Riddick initially takes the opportunity to escape, but then strikes an uneasy deal with Johns to help the group survive. Fry believes they can repair the dropship and use it to escape, but the group discover that an eclipse will engulf the planet in darkness, giving the predatory creatures an opportunity to emerge and feast.

A mix of low-budget Aliens and humourless Tremors, Pitch Black may lack funding and fundamental originality, but makes up for it with better than average character dynamics. Riddick is an impressive anti-hero, a reluctant prisoner with a troubled background happy to kill on demand but with a humanity throbbing somewhere deep in his damaged soul. His surgically modified eyes, allowing him to pierce through the dark but needing shades for the light, is a nice touch. Riddick also gets to deliver a few deadpan lines of dialogue.

Providing the counterbalance to Riddick are three other survivors also worth knowing. Johns tries to pass himself off as the law, but he is less than he pretends, with weaknesses of his own. Fry, with Radha Mitchell in excellent form, is the reluctant leader, haunted by the decisions she had to make during the crash landing. And the Imam is another neat addition, a Muslim cleric and father introducing an uncommon tone.

But director and co-writer David Twohy has other challenges, probably budget-related, that cause a few stumbles. Much of the action is in the dark and not very clear, and some of the dialogue is mumbled and drowned out by the sound effects. The computer-generated creatures, mostly indistinct cousins of the Aliens, are a study in quantity not amounting to quality.

Still there are a few impressive visuals and the use of colour is inventive, Twohy and his cinematographer David Eggby creating a stark, scorched planet environment perfect for a severe survival test. And several of the death scenes are suitably sharp and brutal.

Pitch Black was Vin Diesel's breakout role, and also launched the intermittent Riddick franchise, a welcome reminder that movies are not totally dependent on comics for hero inspiration. Pitch Black could have used more polish, but nevertheless lights up with gory thrills and impressive heroics.

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