The Ace Black Movie Blog

Showing posts with label Scott Wilson. Show all posts

Monday, 16 December 2019

Movie Review: Junebug (2005)

A quirky drama and comedy, Junebug delves into the gulf between social classes and the untold secrets casting shadows on family dynamics.

Chicago art gallery owner Madeleine Johnsten (Embeth Davidtz) hears about eccentric Civil War artist David Wark living in rural North Carolina. She travels with her husband of six months George (Alessandro Nivola) to try and sign Wark to an exclusive contract.

George is originally from the area, and after visiting Wark the couple head to George's nearby family home, where his parents Peg and Eugene (Celia Weston and Scott Wilson) live with George's brother Johnny (Ben McKenzie) and his pregnant wife Ashley (Amy Adams). The Johnstens are simple rural folks, and Madeleine's sophistication is out of place. Johnny never finished high school, and he is brooding for vague reasons. Ashley is bubbly and excited about her forthcoming baby and tries to befriend Madeleine, who starts to learn she really knows little about her husband.

Appropriately featuring no music soundtrack and strategic pregnant pauses with no dialogue and no sound of any kind, Junebug is most interested in the quietness of what is left unsaid. Director Phil Morrison and writer Angus MacLachlan focus their drama on a base level of tension arising from unresolved conflicts and lingering dissatisfaction within families, including the chasms so deep and wide no bridging efforts need be attempted.

While Ashley puts on a happy face her hubby Johnny is not shy about fully displaying his doldrums. He may blame Ashley for evolving their relationship too quickly and preventing him from finishing high school, but may never quite say it. Johnny also resents his brother's transformation into a city slicker and landing the worldly Madeleine as a wife.

Meanwhile their mother Peg instinctively knows Madeleine does not belong in this family, but is careful about confrontations and instead tries to recruit the generally passive Eugene to do her awkward work.

And finally the family visit exposes the superficial relationship that passes for a marriage between Madeleine and George. She learns more about him in a couple of days than the prior 6 months, and although the sex is great they now both have reasons to doubt their compatibility. When Ashley goes into labour and Madeleine's courtship of the artist Wark is jeopardized, the vulnerabilities of their relationship are exposed with no words exchanged.

In her breakout role Amy Adams sparkles, especially in the film's first half. With Ashley genuinely excited and eager to connect with and learn from the refined Madeleine, Adams allows her character's genuineness to radiate with pure positive energy throughout the otherwise restive household. The rest of the cast members are suitably encased within the prevailing passive aggressiveness.

Cinematic exposés of family dynamics are often quick to resort to exaggerated histrionics and displays of loud emotion. Junebug is a refreshing rejection of theatrics. Morrison stays closer to real interactions, where the gritting of teeth is the norm, tense smiles are plastered on to get through the day, and difficult conversations are best avoided. None of this necessarily leads to satisfactory resolutions, but then life rarely comes with prepackaged tidy outcomes.

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Thursday, 25 July 2019

Movie Review: In Cold Blood (1967)

A crime drama, In Cold Blood accompanies two drifters as they commit a shocking multiple murder in pursuit of quick cash. The film deploys a detached style to drive home the atrocity's callous randomness.

Two ex-convicts on parole team up in rural Kansas. Perry Smith (Robert Blake) is a killer with a combustible temper. Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson) is more of a smooth planner, and has information from a former cellmate about $10,000 stashed in a safe on the farm of Herbert Clutter. Dick wants to steal the money and leave no witnesses, with Perry to do all the killing.

After driving 400 miles to the Clutter property, Smith and Hickock invade the house and kill all four occupants: Herbert, his wife Bonnie and two teenaged children Nancy and Ken. But there is no safe and no $10,000. Smith and Hickock take off with $43. Special Agent Alvin Dewey (John Forsyth) of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation leads the search for the fugitives, who cross the border into Mexico but are soon broke and heading back into the United States.

Filmed with a documentary ethos and in black and white, In Cold Blood adapts Truman Capote's classic true crime book in a chillingly soulless noir style. Director Richard Brooks also wrote the screenplay, and maintains focus on the psychology of killers methodically making their way to a rendevouz with murder, then wandering aimlessly, their pathetic lives adding layers of tragedy to the senseless killings.

The film's fixation on understanding as best as possible the killers' mindset comes at a cost. Despite Brooks' deliberate and faithful recreation of facts, the victims are shortchanged. The Clutters are barely afforded any meaningful screen time, and their friends and family are all but ignored after the crime. The investigative aspects of the film are procedural and relatively flat, John Forsyth as Agent Dewey not provided with much to work with. And at 135 minutes the film does go on, the final act over-narrated and utterly cold as Brooks accompanies Dick and Perry to their ultimate destination.

But what In Cold Blood does well is delve into the damaged soul of men intent on grabbing by foul means what they believe the world owes them, a philosophy proclaimed by Dick Hickock. He is psychotic enough to plan the murder of four people in search of cash, and smart enough to recruit the unstable Perry Smith to carry out the killings. Smith's recollections of a troubled and mind-twisting childhood catch a distorted echo in his father's perversely poetic perspective of a son's stature.

Brooks selected relative unknowns Robert Blake and Scott Wilson for the lead roles, and they reward him with performances fueled by the absence of empathy. The film's strongest stretch occurs in the post-crime nothingness, Blake and Wilson barely displaying any understanding of the horror they committed as they cross borders and blunder between locations, forever lost.