Movie Review: Hold The Dark (2018)

Genre: Drama Thriller  

Director: Jeremy Saulnier  

Starring: Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Skarsgard, James Badge Dale, Riley Keough  

Running Time: 125 minutes  

Synopsis: In the remote village of Keelut, Alaska, Medora Slone (Riley Keough) summons published author and wolf hunter Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright) to track down and kill the wolf who devoured her young son. The terrain is treacherous, the locals suspicious, the daylight hours short, and the wolves a constant threat. But then Russell stumbles upon a shocking discovery, prompting the return of Melora's husband Vernon (Alexander Skarsgard) from the Iraq War. Vernon's friend Cheeon (Julian Black Antelope) and police Chief Donald Marium (James Badge Dale) also get involved as violence erupts.

What Works Well: The adaptation of the William Giraldi book allows a foreboding mood of dark isolation to hang heavy in the air. Keelut may just as well be located in the middle ages, and this is a place where outsiders are unwelcome, the sun only dares to appear for a few hours each day, and humans need animal instincts to match the unforgiving environment.

What Does Not Work As Well: Beyond the setting and ambience, not much else connects. The trudging narrative lacks a central focus, the primary perspective meandering from Medora to Russell then onto Donald and Vernon, with Cheeon also grabbing a bloody moment in the spotlight. Russell is the most constant presence, but he is just a reactive observer. The theme of locals being as one with nature (and specifically wolves) as a survival imperative, setting them far from civilized behaviour, emerges with crusty layers of soulless opaqueness.

Key Quote:

Cheeon: When we're killed, the past is killed. When kids are killed... that's different. When kids are killed, the future dies. There's no life without a future.

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Movie Review: Jay Kelly (2025)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Noah Baumbach  

Starring: George Clooney, Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson, Stacy Keach, Emily Mortimer, Greta Gerwig, Isla Fisher, Jim Broadbent, Riley Keogh  

Running Time: 132 minutes  

Synopsis: Jay Kelly (George Clooney) has enjoyed a 35-year career as a movie star. He wraps-up filming on his latest production, and his manager and life-long friend Ron (Adam Sandler) expects Jay to quickly transition to his next project. But a chance encounter with Timothy (Billy Crudup), a former friend from acting school days, forces Jay to re-evaluate his life. Having neglected all his family relationships, he takes off to Europe with Ron and publicist Liz (Laura Dern) to get reacquainted with his daughter, but forging genuine human connections does not come naturally to a lifelong actor.

What Works Well: Reflecting aspects of star George Clooney's reality, this is an introspective, thoughtful, yet also peppy and often humorous examination of choices. The script (cowritten by director Noah Baumbach and co-star Emily Mortimer) is neither judgmental nor moralizing, and avoids pat resolutions. Achieving and sustaining movie star fame meant Jay was never a good father, and he gained much more from his friendship with Ron than he ever reciprocated. Decisions and actions are presented as realities and trade-offs rather than rectifiable regrets, and Jay's reflections are rich with in-the-moment dilemmas, awkwardness, and poignancy. The superlative cast includes Stacy Keach as Jay's father, Patrick Wilson as another actor managed by Ron, Jim Broadbent as a mentor, and Riley Keogh as one of Jay's daughters. Many of the supporting characters are provided with well-rounded lives to add depth, texture, and context.

What Does Not Work As Well: The running time is longer than it needs to be.

Key Quote:

Jay Kelly (acting a death scene): That's the crazy thing...everything you thought you were...isn't true.

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Movie Review: The Devil All The Time (2020)

A sprawling multi-generation epic, The Devil All The Time is an intersecting drama engrossed in themes of faith, moral corruption, crime and revenge.

While serving in the Pacific during World War Two, Willard Russell (Bill Skarsgård) has a harrowing encounter with a dying Marine. After the war Willard returns home to the rural West Virginia - Ohio border region and marries Charlotte (Haley Bennett). They have a son Arvin and Willard turns to religion to help combat his war-induced demons. His mother Emma (Kristin Griffith) had wanted him to marry Helen (Mia Wasikowska), who instead weds travelling fake healer Roy (Harry Melling) and they have a daughter Lenora.

Tragedies disrupt Arvin and Lenora's young lives and by 1957 they have both moved in with Emma to be raised as step-siblings. In 1965 Lenora (Eliza Scanlen) is suffering high school bullying due to her devout nature, while Arvin (Tom Holland) tries to protect her. Ahead of them are challenging encounters with sleazy Reverend Preston Teagardin (Robert Pattinson), murderous couple Carl (Jason Clarke) and Sandy (Riley Keough) Henderson, and Sandy's brother, corrupt sheriff Lee Bodecker (Sebastian Stan).

An adaptation of the 2011 novel by Donald Ray Pollock (who contributes the narration) and co-produced by Jake Gyllenhaal, The Devil All The Time settles down for a captivating 138 minutes of fluid character-driven storytelling. Breathing deeply from the rustic milieu of small backwater communities where religious fervour obscures reason with startling outcomes, director and co-writer Antonio Campos conjures up overlapping arcs spanning 20 years in the lives of memorable people.

Evil intentions skulking within religious verbiage and outlaw acts stemming from good intentions are the combustible fuel mix. From the moment he stumbles upon a badly wounded soldier nailed to a battlefield cross, Willard then his son Arvin confront a succession of moral dilemmas where the wrong action may be the right thing to do. In a time and place with limited other resources, faith is the most readily available route promising some version of salvation, but here malevolence awaits, charlatans lurking to exploit the vulnerable.

With about 10 influential characters and numerous events to cover, Campos maintains a superb level of intensity by deploying brisk pacing, spikes of gore and a dash of cogent flashbacks to reveal fate's invisible hand at work. From an early 1945 scene at a diner where both Carl and Willard meet their future brides all the way to the final showdown in the shadow of a once-standing cross echoing back to the war, The Devil All The Time carries the sly winks of the past, present and future huddled together. 

The ensemble cast members share the screen time with laudable efficiency, exploiting their moments to maximum effect and quickly establishing inherent conflicts. Harry Melling is suitably unhinged as Roy, his spider jar trick a highlight only until he surpasses his own derangement. Robert Pattinson as a predator disguised as the new preacher in town emits a stench powerful enough to waft right off the screen, while Bill Skarsgård and Tom Holland convince as successive generations of the same conflicted man.

The Devil All The Time is also everywhere and in everyone, some souls succumbing, others resisting by perilously outflanking evil.



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The Movies Of Riley Keough

All movies starring Riley Keough and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Runaways (2010)

Magic Mike (2012)

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

American Honey (2016)

Logan Lucky (2017)

Hold The Dark (2018)

The Devil All The Time (2020)

The Guilty (2021, voice only)

Jay Kelly (2025)

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

Movie Review: American Honey (2016)

A social drama, American Honey is a road trip through the eyes of lost and damaged youth. The film has a lyrical quality, but also wallows for too long in one emotional place.

In a nondescript Oklahoma suburb, teenager Star (Sasha Lane) looks after two children who are not her own, and tolerates sexual abuse from their white trash father. A chance encounter with a group of teenagers packed into a van, including the charismatic Jake (Shia LaBeouf), prompts Star to suddenly change her life: she deposits the kids back with their parents and joins Jake and the team.

The group is a magazine crew, teenagers who travel from city to city duping customers into buying subscriptions to magazines they don't need. Their leader is the business-minded Krystal (Riley Keough), while Jake is the group's best-seller and also Krystal's lover. But Star and Jake are attracted to each other, and as she is exposed to his much less than honest selling tactics, she cannot help falling for him, triggering Krystal's seething rage.

Inspired by a New York Times article about magazine crews and directed and written by Andrea Arnold, American Honey is more of an experience than a film. While the handheld camerawork, boxy 1.37:1 aspect ratio and improvised dialogue evoke a low-budget documentary style, the plot does not have much to offer, and the characters are who they are essentially from start to finish.

Rather than dazzle with incident, the film aims to immerse in feelings, and to some degree Arnold succeeds. This is fly-over America as seen by listless youth happy to smoke, drink, get stoned, and spend untold hours squished into a van. Work consists of lying to people, and the nights are confined to downtrodden motel rooms. Compared to whatever it is they are running from, for these young people this is the good life.

Intriguing as this lifestyle is, Arnold eventually bumps up against the limits of the material, and does not help herself by prolonging the film to a mammoth 163 minutes. Despite a quite mesmerizing performance by newcomer Sasha Lane, only so many back-in-the-van scenes can pass by before they all start to meld into each other. Not helping matters is the utter disregard for any of the characters outside of Star, Jake and Krystal. Packing the van with about seven other teenagers (mostly non-professional actors) and then proceeding to ignore them is a puzzling construct.

Star's journey of self-discovery frequently saves the day. In a succession of episodes shadowing Jake or on her own with prospective magazine customers, she confronts, challenges and often breaks her limits in search of money, sex, love and some sense of definition. Her individual trip nests within the overall city to city trek, providing the often sad perspective of a young woman adopted by a surrogate family of equally lost souls and taking on the world with no guidance.

Arnold leaves out any judgments or questions about how it has all come to this. These youth have no past they are willing to speak of. More worryingly, on this evidence their future prospects appear just as dim, despite the naive dreams they whisper to each other in the dark of night.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.