Movie Review: Women Talking (2022)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Sarah Polley  

Starring: Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Ben Whishaw, Frances McDormand  

Running Time: 104 minutes  

Synopsis: At an isolated religious colony, women are subjugated, deprived of education, and regularly raped. Taking advantage of most of the men being away, a group of women gather to discuss whether they should stay and fight for better conditions or abandon their men and leave the colony. Those offering opinions include the pregnant (by rape) Ona (Rooney Mara), the angry Salome (Claire Foy), whose child has been assaulted, and Mariche (Jessie Buckley), who is married to an abusive husband. Kind school teacher August (Ben Whishaw) is the only man allowed to attend and record the deliberations.

What Works Well: Writer and director Sarah Polley demonstrates no shortage of artistic courage in adapting Miriam Toews' book to the screen. With just a few exterior interludes, this is a one-set drama staged within a barn, consisting exclusively of a should-we-stay-or-should-we-go debate. The option exploration is a gateway to revelations, some horrific, about an oppressive patriarchal community. A blanched blue-green-grey-brown palette reflects women robbed of their agency, the living conditions and hard choices resonating well beyond the barn.

What Does Not Work As Well: The film's intimate focus on a single passionate conversation is also a foundational cinematic weakness. Theatricality dominates, and the uneducated women exhibit remarkable discourse skills but without bothering to consider neither what "stay and fight" entails nor the practicalities of survival outside the colony. 

Conclusion: Rarely has a title so accurately reflected both the bravura and limitations of the content.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Nightmare Alley (2021)

A drama about greed, Nightmare Alley is gorgeously photographed but poorly paced and emotionally sparse.

In 1939, Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) burns the body of his dead father and drifts across the land. He finds work with the traveling carnival owned by Bruno (Ron Perlman), where the main attraction is a geek show. Stan meets Zeena (Toni Collette), who runs a clairvoyant act with the perpetually drunk Pete (David Strathairn). Stan eyes the communication codes used by Zeena and Pete as his ticket to riches, and convinces performer Molly (Rooney Mara) to partner with him in both romance and business. He ignores warnings about the dangers of dabbling in the afterlife.

Stan and Molly find success with an upscale clairvoyant act in big city hotels, attracting the attention of conniving psychologist Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett). She agrees to an uneasy scheme, providing Stan confidential information about her wealthy clients Judge Kimball (Peter MacNeill) and the tycoon Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins), while he dupes them with fake seances. Molly disapproves of Stan's greed and intrusion into the spirit world, but he pushes ahead.

Directed and co-written by Guillermo del Toro, Nightmare Alley is an adaptation of the William Lindsay Gresham book, previously brought to the screen in a 1947 Tyrone Power classic. Here del Toro switches to colour, and with the help of Dan Laustsen's stellar cinematography delivers stunning beauty. Every scene is a masterpiece of picturesque framing and angular tension highlighting a noir psyche, although the glossy visuals threaten to slip into postcard artificiality.

Beyond the rich artistry, Nightmare Alley is bloated and unbalanced. The relatively simple rise-and-fall story of one man stretches to a tiresome 150 minutes, and often focuses on the wrong elements. It's a full one hour into the movie before Stan and Molly leave the carnival, and in that entire time, Zeena and Pete's show is never once presented as an effective act inspiring Stan's ambition. Once Stan and Molly achieve success, they are denied the thrill of commanding a room and instead are immediately reduced to a bickering couple. Without a reservoir of trust and affection, the rupture of their relationship loses impact.

del Toro's favorite theme of monsters among us gets a good workout. The chicken-biting geek is a monstrous representation of comeuppance as a freak show with audiences marveling at how low a man can fall. Meanwhile, both Stan and Dr. Lilith struggle with insatiable urges for emotional domination and avarice, their monsters within engaged in dark battles of possession.

Cate Blanchett as Dr. Lilith adds a jolt of intrigue once she enters the movie about halfway through, finally presenting Stan with a soul more twisted than his own. But Lilith plays in a higher league: she is sophisticated, successful, and resourceful, while he is a scrappy small-timer with misguided delusions of grandeur. His initial victory in guessing the contents of her purse was never going to be anything more than beginner's luck, and she predictably designs his downfall with methodical relish.

In the lead role Bradley Cooper is adequate and charismatic without quite finding the necessary level of behind-the-eyes intensity. Rooney Mara is underutilized, and the rest of the cast includes small roles for Willem Dafoe and Mary Steenburgen.

Nightmare Alley is visually vibrant, but rarely visceral.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

The Hollywood adaptation of Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is filled with ambiance but otherwise cannot fully justify its existence.

In Stockholm, Millennium magazine investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is found guilty of libel for wrongfully accusing wealthy industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström of fraud. Mikael is carrying on an affair with his editor-in-chief Erika Berger (Robin Wright), but leaves her behind to accept an assignment from elderly business tycoon Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), living in the remote northern island community of Hedeby.

Mikael in unaware that his background had been thoroughly checked by young hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) on behalf of Henrik and his lawyer Dirch Frode (Steven Berkoff). Lisbeth is an extremely intelligent but deeply troubled ward of the state, waging a battle for survival against Nils Bjurman, her horrifically abusive state-appointed guardian.

Henrik wants Mikael to investigate the disappearance 40 years prior of his great niece Harriet. In return, Henrik promises to reveal the real dirt on Wennerström. Henrik also warns Mikael that the extended Vanger family includes plenty of squabbling relatives, long-held grudges, vendettas and a sprinkling of Nazi sympathizers. The Vanger clan includes Henrik's deceased brother Gottfried (Harriet's father) and Gottfried's son Martin (Stellan Skarsgaard), who now runs the business, while Henrik's other brother Harald is ailing but still clinging to his fascist views.

Mikael sets up shop in a cold cabin and starts delving into family archives, police records and old newspaper reports. He finds a cryptic code in Harriet's Bible, and Frode connects him with Lisbeth to help advance the research. Mikael and Lisbeth join forces, start a passionate affair, and gradually uncover a horrific trail of crime much more complex than they ever expected.

Directed by David Fincher and arriving two years after the Swedish version, this Girl With The Dragon Tattoo exists in the name of avoiding subtitles. It's otherwise difficult to understand the artistic logic of imposing Swedish accents onto Anglo actors and recreating the same movie. Michael Nyqvist as Blomqvist, Noomi Rapace as Salander and director Niels Arden Oplev did a terrific job the first time around. Fincher adds a bit more style, subtracts some heart and plot comprehension, and lands in the same place with less authenticity.

Nevertheless, plenty of impressive visuals are on display. From the Bond-inspired opening credit sequence to the stark, frigid landscape of Sweden's remote north, Fincher creates an environment where things happen at the speed of creeping ice, and secrets lurk beneath a family's dominant blanket of power and wealth. Back in Stockholm Lisbeth dances on the edge of madness, her survival instincts kicking into overdrive in her morbid battle of excessive brutality with Bjurman. The material is strong, and Fincher extracts a stunning punk performance from Mara, Lisbeth Salander a brilliant source of coiled and angry energy.

Fincher does however bungle the central mystery of Harriet's disappearance. Too many names and locations are thrown at the screen far too quickly, and Fincher moves on to capture the next frozen pond instead of allowing the plot and supporting characters to breathe and mature.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo does convey the layered impact of individuals victimized by power brokers, personal tragedies covered up by a veneer of civility. But despite the professional treatment, this remains a wholly unnecessary remake.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Side Effects (2013)

A neo-noir psychological crime drama, Side Effects enjoys a twisty tale but mediocre execution.

Young wife Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) is suffering from depression as she awaits the release of her husband Martin (Channing Tatum) from prison. The couple's lavish lifestyle had come to a crashing halt when Martin was arrested and locked up for financial fraud. Martin is freed after finishing his sentence and starts planning to reconstitute their life, but Emily is suicidal; she tries to kill herself by driving head-on into a wall.

She survives, and psychologist Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law) takes her on as a patient, eventually prescribing Ablixa, an experimental new anti-depressant drug. In researching Emily's background, Jonathan also connects with Dr. Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who had previously tried to help Emily. Ablixa appears to improve Emily's mood, but the side effects include sleep walking. Suddenly, a violent crime is committed, and Jonathan finds his life turning upside down and his career threatened with ruin.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Side Effects holds promise as an unexpected murder mystery laced with illicit passion, a devious conspiracy, and potentially a lot to say about the pharmaceutical industry, mental health and financial wrong doing. While the twists and turns maintain a decent level of engagement, the film's plot points start tumbling into each other. This is a movie that bites off large chunks and then refuses to chew.

At 106 minutes, the film is shorter than it needs to be for the amount of plot and characters packed in. Soderbergh may be aiming for the compact noir style of no scene longer than it needs to be and absolutely no unnecessary scenes, but he sells the narrative short. As the final third hurtles towards a conclusion, counter conspiracies unfurl at a pace too frantic to generate the appropriate level of appreciation. The rest of the noir elements are more about content than visual style. The story contains almost every foundational plank from crime to sex passing through the manipulation of a clueless man, but the aesthetics are relatively free of the more obvious noir stunts.

The film is hampered by an abrupt change of perspective. The first half is Emily's story, but about halfway through she is effectively marginalized and Side Effects becomes a lot more about Jonathan. While both characters are interesting, neither is provided with enough time or context to become truly rounded.

The cast is solid, with Jude Law controlling his more rascal-like tendencies and delivering an inviting performance despite the limitations of the material. Rooney Mara is the most memorable part of the movie, and Side Effects suffers as her prominence fades. Catherine Zeta-Jones is victimized the most by the film's too-sharp editing. Dr. Victoria Siebert could have been a fascinating character, but here she is reduced to a cartoon schemetress.

Side Effects promises forward momentum, but too often moves sideways.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Lion (2016)

A biographical drama, Lion shines the light on the plight of India's lost children, but as a film is limited in scope, intent and impact.

Saroo is a young child from a poor rural family in India. One day he joins his older brother Guddu on a train journey to find work, but the two brothers are accidentally separated at a train station. A disoriented Saroo ends up alone on a decommissioned train that finally stops in Kolkata more than a thousand miles away from his village. After surviving on the streets for a few months, he lands in a government-run shelter, from where he is eventually adopted by Australian couple Sue and John Brierley (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham).

More than 20 years later a grown-up Saroo (Dev Patel) relocates from Tasmania to Melbourne and starts a relationship with fellow student Lucy (Rooney Mara). He develops a strong desire to research and understand his roots, and with the help of Google Earth embarks on a long and difficult search to locate his childhood village.

Directed by Garth Davis and based on the book A Long Way Home co-written by Saroo Brierley, Lion is a well-intentioned effort hampered by over-inflated melodramatics. The story of a lost child is undoubtedly harrowing and carries an emotional punch. But the first part of the film plays out much like a documentary about the perils of child poverty in India, while the second half wallows endlessly in personal despair. At a running time of two hours, the film is stretched well beyond the limits of the material available to build an effective narrative, with both the first and second acts loitering for too long after the point is made.

The film does take a hard look at the tragedy of children lost on the streets of India, and young Saroo's distressing adventures in Kolkata are difficult to watch. There are marauding men scooping up streets kids to unknown fates, women luring young boys into the hands of predators, and the official overcrowded shelter best resembles a derelict prison with rampant exploitation by the guards. The abuses are all implied rather than shown on-screen, but enough is suggested to achieve the objective.

The second half gets bogged down, the lack of forward momentum obvious as director Davis and screenwriter Luke Davies struggle to capture Saroo's internal obsession with tracking his origins. An underdeveloped side-story involving the troubled second boy adopted by the Brierleys becomes a distraction rather than an enhancement, and Saroo's relationships with his mother Sue and girlfriend Lucy are dealt with in tentative snippets.

Dev Patel does his best with the limited material, but is confined to the single tone of internal grief for too long. Nicole Kidman is outstanding in a relatively brief role, and gets a couple of scenes to reveal the rich emotions of a remarkable mother deeply committed to a chosen mission in life.

Lion is reasonably worthwhile as an educational drama, but less successful as a cinematic experience.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Rooney Mara

All movies starring Rooney Mara and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Social Network (2010)





The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)





Side Effects (2013)





Her (2013)





Carol (2015)





Lion (2016)





Nightmare Alley (2021)

Women Talking (2022)

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

Movie Review: Carol (2015)

A dramatic romance, Carol is beautifully constructed and superbly acted, but also languid and rather thin in terms of plot and character development.

Christmas time, New York City, 1952. Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) is an aspiring photographer working as a clerk at the lavishly decorated toy section of Frankenberg's, a large department store. She meets Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett), who is buying a toy train for her daughter Rindy. The two women sense a mutual attraction, and Carol arranges a follow-up lunch, and then invites Therese to an evening at her luxurious home.

Therese has a boyfriend Richard (Jake Lacy) and is also fending off the advances of another friend Dannie (John Magaro). Carol is struggling in a failing marriage to Harge (Kyle Chandler), and is still friends with her former lover Abby (Sarah Paulson). When Harge decides that he has had enough and forcibly takes Rindy away from Carol, she invites Therese to join her on an aimless road trip, during which the attraction between the two women will grow and evolve.

Carol recreates a magical 1950s ambiance, both in a chilly Manhattan decked out for Christmas and on the road where Carol and Therese spend a large portion of the film in and out of second rate motels and nondescript diners. Director Todd Haynes creates rich sets filled with period details, and the film always offers a feast for the eyes.

Which is good, because the story of the love affair developing between Carol and Therese unfolds at a most leisurely pace. Based on the groundbreaking 1952 novel The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, Carol's narrative intentions are clear from the opening few scenes, and the film unfolds pretty much as can be expected. And while daring in a 1952 context, the lesbian love story is not original on the screen, with films like 1985's Desert Hearts having explored this territory before. There is not enough plot to occupy the two hours of running time, and Haynes pads the film with ponderous pauses and sometimes painfully slow scenes.

The available time could have been deployed to better round the characters. The current emotional conditions of the two women are presented as troubled, with Carol's home life a smoldering wreck and Therese's relationship with Richard suffering from asymmetrical commitment. Little else is offered by way of background, and plenty of potentially flavorful material is only hinted at but otherwise left unexplored, including Therese's family and the story of Abby's past liaison with Carol.

Both Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett deliver perfect performances that make the most of what is known about the two women. Mara brings out Therese's quiet curiosity and a vague sense of unease with what well-meaning but bland men like Richard and Dannie have to offer. Blanchett captures Carol as the jaded, rich woman, growing increasingly tired of conforming to the expectations of the Harges of the world.

Visually delightful but slow and starved of depth, Carol is aesthetically satisfying but otherwise emotionally predictable.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Her (2013)

A dazzling commentary on the ever more complex human dependence on computers, Her projects into the near future and finds the emotional lines between people and machines blurring into new realities.

In Los Angeles, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), a creative writer of love letters on behalf of customers who can't be bothered to express their own feelings, is ironically introverted, lonely, and suffering through the final stages of a painful divorce from Catherine (Rooney Mara), his lifelong sweetheart. Theodore's neighbour and aspiring documentary film-maker Amy (Amy Adams) is one of the few people he is comfortable talking to. When he installs a new, interactive and intuitive computer operating system who calls herself Samantha (voice of Scarlett Johansson), she becomes his constant companion, organizing his life, responding to his emotions, and helping him talk through his issues.

After Theodore's evening with a blind date (Olivia Wilde) goes sideways, Samantha starts to gain self-awareness and human-like passion, and the relationship between her and Theodore evolves into love. Amy also goes through a relationship break-up, and befriends her new operating system. As Theodore works through finalizing his divorce, complications in the relationship between man and operating system introduce a new layer of unexpected challenges.

Her is a subtle but brilliant extrapolation of the human-machine interface. Director and writer Spike Jonze takes a Siri-like presence and infuses her with the next level of emotional intelligence, able to read and interpret emotions, and react to them with empathy. Samantha becomes a companion, then a friend, then a lover, engaging in spectacular VOIP sex that Jonze turns into a masterpiece of visual simplicity to emphasize the rich vocal connection.

Samantha's self awareness creates a presence that allows Theodore to invest genuine emotions into a machine, Jonze tracing the human affinity for attachment to its logical next evolutionary step. Her opens up the question of what is love's true nature, and explores the potential for love to thrive in the absence of physical presence, although Samantha does not stop trying to find innovative ways to manifest herself as a physical, human presence in Theodore's life.

The film moves towards a reawakening hidden inside a relationship breakdown, Samantha proving to be much more astute than even Theodore could imagine. The operating system's mandate is to help, and Samantha not only uncovers Theodore's need to feel again but provides his emotional rescue, reigniting his passion for life.

Joaquin Phoenix is the singular visual focus of the film, most scenes consisting of Theodore conversing with Samantha, many in close-up with minimal movement. Phoenix conveys the sadness of a life at an ebb, stiff in his motions, uncomfortable in his skin, desperately pining for Catherine, his better half and lifelong companion. Jonze makes the most of Phoenix's craggy face, embellished with a robust moustache. Scarlett Johansson provides a voice to get lost in, her performance a rare example of an actress leaving a lasting impression without her character ever appearing on the screen. Amy Adams gets a small but crucial role, providing the parallel clues that other operating systems are busy helping their owners recover from loss in a variety of intricate ways.

With the quirkiness of the near future replacing Japan's cultural uniqueness Her achieves the tender, wistful feel of Lost In Translation, Johansson again playing one part of the essential, soul-saving relationship that can never be. Unconventional and thought-provoking, Her is a love story with byte.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Social Network (2010)

A compelling drama about the creation of Facebook, The Social Network is the first internet era business movie classic.

It's 2003, and Harvard freshman and computer wizard Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is smart, conceited, and has no friends. His girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara) dumps him, and in that same drunken evening he hacks into various Harvard student club databases and creates FaceMash: a website where guys can rate the photos of campus girls. By 4am the popularity of the site crashes the Harvard network.

Mark gains instant campus notoriety, and is soon approached by twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, also Harvard students, but from a rich, well-connected family. The twins invite Mark to help them implement a new website for Harvard students to connect with each other. Mark agrees to work with the twins, but doesn't follow through. Instead, a month later, he launches The Facebook, his own web site for social interaction. Mark appoints his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) as his 30 percent partner and Chief Financial Officer, in exchange for a $1,000 investment.

The Facebook takes off, and is soon the coolest new web site on campus. Eduardo pushes for its quick commercialization; Mark resists, wanting to keep the site free of advertising until he knows what it can become. Meanwhile, the Winklevoss twins are sure that The Facebook is based on their idea; eventually, they decide to sue for damages.

Mark and Eduardo meet Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the notorious and charismatic founder of Napster, the illegal music file-sharing website. Sean sees the huge potential in The Facebook (and recommends that the name be changed to just Facebook). Mark falls under Sean's spell, but Eduardo is repulsed by Sean's blatant narcissism. Mark follows Sean's advice and moves to Silicon Valley; Facebook explodes into an international sensation, and venture capital pours in with Sean's help. Eduardo is now out of his depth and out of tune with Facebook's potential. As the site reaches the one million user milestone, Mark and Sean force Eduardo out of the company by diluting his shares down to nothing in an underhanded deal. Eduardo launches his own legal action against his former best friend. All the lawsuits are a minor nuisance to Mark: he becomes the world's youngest billionaire.

The Social Network is a two-hour talkathon, and writer Aaron Sorkin delivers a screenplay that is more than capable of propelling the drama. Although the script is disappointingly silent about Zuckerberg's life before the fall of 2003, it is otherwise a masterpiece of storytelling through dialogue, and avoids all melodramatic cliches. Inter-cutting scenes at Harvard and San Francisco as Facebook is created with scenes of legal discovery as the lawsuits unfold, Sorkin creates drama through intellect rather than histrionics, and maximizes the sense of brainy realism that the film is built upon.

Working from the terrific script, the actors do their part. Jesse Eisenberg successfully projects a sense of inflated cockiness, single-mindedness, impatience with lower intellects, and the almost total absence of empathy. From the supporting cast Justin Timberlake is irresistibly fluid as the magnetic but uncontrollable Sean Parker. Director David Fincher is steady and unobtrusive, allowing the actors and dialogue to take centre stage.

The Social Network is the story of the modern economy, where on-line success can be achieved in hours, a global multi-billion dollar business is launched from a dorm room in a matter of days, and value is measured by coolness rather than widgets. But some things never change: a cut-throat attitude and unwavering self-belief remain more than useful attributes for success.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.