Movie Review: Emilia Pérez (2024)

Genre: Musical Crime Drama  

Director: Jacques Audiard  

Starring: Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofia Gascon, Selena Gomez  
Running Time: 132 minutes  

Synopsis: In Mexico, lawyer Rita Castro (Zoe Saldana) is recruited by drug cartel leader Manitas (Karla Sofía Gascón) to arrange his transition to a woman. Rita travels the world and finds the right surgeon, allowing Manitas to fake his death and become Emilia Pérez. Manitas' wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) believes her husband is dead and relocates with her children to Switzerland. Four years later, Emilia reconnects with Rita and again asks for help: this time to move Jessi and the children back to Mexico, with Emilia pretending to be Manitas' distant cousin. Remorseful of her past, Emilia also launches a charity and finds love, but jealousy will challenge her happiness.

What Works Well: Director and co-writer Jacques Audiard creates an audacious hybrid of crime, regret, redemption, and subterfuge, all with musical underpinnings. The tone is serious, creating song beats that are more menacing than joyous, as the former cartel leader navigates a mazy money-can-buy-anything path towards fulfillment. The drama dives deep into emotional complexities at the intersection of survival and identity, including parental love clashing with selfishness and jealousy. Zoe Saldana as Rita (bitterly tempted by career shortcuts) and Selena Gomez as Jessi (raw and disoriented) deliver standout performances.

What Does Not Work As Well: The musical interludes only work in patches, and at their worst disintegrate into excruciatingly awful lyrics and painfully bad singing. The failure to demonstrate the scale of Manitas' pre-transition brutality artificially tilts sympathy towards a monster.

Key Quote:

Surgeon: So. Does your client have a name?

Rita: He desires to remain anonymous.



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Movie Review: Infinitely Polar Bear (2014)

Genre: Dramedy

Director: Maya Forbes

Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana

Running Time: 90 minutes

Synopsis: Boston, the late 1970s. Cam Stuart (Mark Ruffalo) and his wife Maggie (Zoe Saldana) are living near the poverty line with their two young daughters Amelia and Faith. Cam is also suffering from bi-polar disorder and is briefly institutionalized after a breakdown. Upon release he is stable enough to look after the girls while Maggie completes an MBA in New York. Learning to be a responsible father will not be easy for Cam, while his daughters have to deal with their dad's erratic behaviour.

What Works Well: Inspired by her personal childhood experiences, writer and director Maya Forbes gently reflects on growing up in a less than ideal household. Absurdities are underpinned by tender love between parents and children, and lingering affection between Cam and Maggie despite their strained marriage. Most of the experiences are seen through the eyes of Amelia (played by Forbes' daughter Imogene Wolodarsky), filtering serious adult issues through a forgiving lens. Mark Ruffalo brings childish angularity to the portrayal of a rapidly oscillating mind.

What Does Not Work Well: Bi-polar disorder is simplified to socially awkward and marginally eccentric behaviour, and the narrative is content with performing languid episodic circles around static character traits.

Conclusion: Mental health and poverty struggles receive worthwhile if undemanding treatment.

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Movie Review: The Adam Project (2022)

A science fiction time travel adventure, The Adam Project offers lukewarm entertainment with the requisite thrills, humour, and tender moments.

In 2050, time travel is a reality. Air force pilot Adam Reed (Ryan Reynolds) steals a fighter jet and travels back to 2022. He reconnects with his 12-year-old self (Walker Scobell), a 6th grader frequently bullied at school. Young Adam is mouthy, and his relationship with his mother Ellie (Jennifer Garner) has been strained ever since his father Louis (Mark Ruffalo) died in a car crash. Louis was a physics researcher who developed theories enabling time travel.

The older Adam is on a personal mission to find his wife Laura Shane (Zoe Saldana), a pilot who traveled back in time to prevent the evil Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener) from taking control of the time travel industry. With Sorian and her goons in hot pursuit, both Adams travel back to 2018 where they will try to convince Louis to stop the science of time travel before it starts.

Directed by Shawn Levy with four writers collaborating on the script, The Adam Project tries to be all things to all people, and the results are unsurprisingly middling. Ryan Reynolds delivers the expected snide comments, familial poignancy underpins the action, and Catherine Keener offers up the stock villain with evil ambitions to rule the world. For the easily impressed and attention-span challenged, CGI-enabled time travel thrills and bloodless combat action show up about every eight minutes. An invade-and-destroy-the-fort climax is a tired exercise in CGI excess.

None of this makes the film bad, just frustratingly manufactured and beset by whizz-bang flakiness. In the quiet moments between mashups of Star Wars, The Terminator, and Back To The Future, themes of loss, love, care, and absenteeism do break through. The cast is sufficiently talented to thrive away from the green screens, and the human-centred relationships between Adam, his parents, and his wife border on excellent. The older Adam imparting wisdom through a heartfelt chat with his unsuspecting mom represents a fine scene. The sacrifice Adam and his wife Laura are forced to confront adds soul to their adventure, hinting at the undefined yet keenly sensed bond of human familiarity transcending time and space. 

The Adam Project is noticeably numb when it mindlessly races to the next round of digital combat, and appreciably better when it pauses to reflect.

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Movie Review: The Words (2012)

A drama about the thin line between truth and fiction, The Words is a finely crafted story of success, guilt and self-justification.

Celebrated author Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) is delivering a reading of his latest bestselling novel The Words in front of a live audience. The book is about young New York-based author Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper), who achieves overnight success when his short novel becomes an unexpected literary hit.

For many years Rory and his wife Dora (Zoe Saldana) had struggled on meagre incomes, waiting for his career to take off, but Rory experienced nothing but rejections. After they honeymoon in Paris, Rory stumbles upon an old typewritten manuscript in an old satchel bag. Dora mistakes it for his work, he claims it as his own, and it turns into his big break. But the appearance of an old man (Jeremy Irons) threatens Rory's success, while at the reading event, young literary student Daniella (Olivia Wilde) tries to seduce Clay into revealing the true meaning behind The Words.

Co-directed and co-written by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, The Words is a clever story within a story within a story, with the multiple layers revolving around the creative process of putting words onto paper. The fictional Rory is the film's fulcrum, the manuscript he finds hides an old and deeply personal Parisian family tragedy of love found and lost, and the author Clay is the creator of both Rory's dilemma and the discovery that makes him famous.

Klugman and Sternthal jump around in time and alternate between the fictional world of Rory, the old man's haunting background and Clay's here-and-now reality, and easily manage to keep all three interlaced stories coherent. With one established author, one emerging author and one writer who never was, the film tackles several worthwhile themes, and poses some piercing questions about what constitutes success, the value of owning an experience, and the various guises of inspiration.

Rory feels he did not earn his fame and is undeserving of the accolades, and guilt will haunt him as he strides to the forefront of the literary world. The words he wrote are not his own, but they did fall into his laptop, unclaimed. The old man has to contend with his bittersweet experiences, hitherto only living within him, gaining widespread and unexpected exposure. And Clay conceives of this story perhaps as a mechanism to cleanse his soul, Daniella representing his interrogator as she probes the secrets underpinning the famous author's success.

Understandably, not all parts of The Words work equally well. The scenes in Paris are bathed in sepia tones and are a touch too emotionally utopian, while the interaction between Clay and Daniella is marginally forced. With Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana and Jeremy Irons all in fine form, the central story of Rory, Dora and the old man is the most powerful, and fortunately this is where the film invests most of its time.

Thought-provoking, nuanced and delicate, The Words shimmer off the page and onto an enjoyable screen experience.

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Movie Review: Vantage Point (2008)

A clever action thriller, Vantage Point rises above the routine thanks to a patient structure that reveals the twisty plot from the viewpoints of several key characters.

A diplomatic anti-terrorism summit is being held in the small town of Salamanca, Spain. Early in the public ceremony witnessed by large crowds and covered by the international media, United States President Harry Ashton (William Hurt) is shot twice by an unseen assassin; then two explosions rock the city, causing mass casualties and panic, and killing opinionated reporter Angie Jones (Zoe Saladana).

The events are presented from the perspective of multiple witnesses, including television producer Rex Brooks (Sigourney Weaver), secret service agent Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid), local police detective Enrique (Eduardo Noriega) and American tourist Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker). Gradually the threads of the conspiracy are revealed, and Barnes stumbles onto a much more complex plot involving layers of decoys, distractions and subterfuge.

Directed by Pete Travis, Vantage Point maintains a high level of energy thanks to slick production values, an intriguing mystery, and a puzzle-like structure. Although the rewinds and repetitions begin to become a bit tiresome about halfway through, there is enough juice in the story to maintain strong momentum.

The film's hook resides in the convoluted plot that is only gradually teased out of the multiple perspectives. Each retelling of the events at the public square pushes a bit deeper into the background and consequence, and it becomes apparent nothing is what it seems to be, no matter how many people witnessed the murderous atrocities. There are layers of deception and counter-deception at play, a chess game unfolding on the public stage but planned in the conspiratorial shadows.

The plot spends as little time as possible on politics and motives, and focuses instead on thrills and spills. An attack on a hotel is a smooth demonstration of one against many, while a long urban car chase recreates Bourne-style intensity but with less manic editing. Meanwhile the large explosion in the square is viewed from multiple angles but never loses its jarring impact. And the film finds a frantic yet tidy conclusion, all the vantage points coming together at the same time and place.

The ensemble cast shares the chapters, and gradually Dennis Quaid moves into centre stage. His character Thomas Barnes is provided with a brief background as a secret service agent still healing from the emotional scars of having taken a bullet to save the President's life during a previous assassination attempt. Given the fragmented scheme unfolding around him, Quaid does well to inject some character intensity into his scenes. Barnes' partner Agent Kent Taylor (Matthew Fox) and initially peripheral characters Veronica (Ayelet Zurer), Sam (Saïd Taghmaoui) and Javier (Édgar Ramírez) gain in prominence as more is revealed about the plot.

Vantage Point defines its ambition and stays within it, delivering a controlled multi-angled barrage of thrills.

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Movie Review: Live By Night (2016)

A crime drama, Live By Night carries plenty of style but also too much plot. The story of an Irish gangster carving his way through a life of crime is scattered and fails to build effective momentum.

In Boston of the 1920s, war veteran turned independent gangster Joe Coughlin (Ben Affleck) falls in love with Emma Gould (Sienna Miller). She's the floozy of gang lord Albert White (Robert Glenister), who is embroiled in a turf war with rival mobster Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone). Coughlin is of Irish descent, and the son of respected police captain Thomas (Brendan Gleeson). Joe is eventually betrayed and almost killed by White, but survives. After a stint in prison Joe joins Maso's gang and with his loyal sidekick Dion (Chris Messina) relocates to Ybor City, an immigrant dominated, crime infested neighbourhood of Tampa, Florida.

Joe establishes an alliance with the local Cuban gang and builds an impressive crime empire capitalizing on the illegal rum trade. He also falls in love and eventually marries Graciela (Zoe Soldana), the sister of a Cuban crime lord. Joe maintains an uneasy understanding with Ybor's Sheriff Irving Figgis (Chris Cooper), but their relationship sours when Irving's dim witted brother-in-law R.D. Pruitt (Matthew Maher), a member of the Ku Klux Klan, tries to muscle in on Joe's profits. Meanwhile, Joe tries to expand into the casino business, but there are more unexpected troubles in the form of Irving's daughter Loretta (Elle Fanning).

An adaptation of the Dennis Lehane book written for the screen and directed by Affleck, Live By Night has a lot going on and nothing going on. The drama motors on from Boston to Tampa, featuring a dizzying number of gangsters hissing at each other, but the film never grabs hold of a compelling narrative arc. This is the story of Joe Coughlin and he is the one constant, but Affleck plays the central character as a laid back soft spoken type, his obvious narration droning on as he disappears into the set. It's a problem when the assorted villains who enter and exit every other scene are much more colourful than the presumed protagonist.

The film is a demonstration of more is less. A dedicated focus on fewer story lines may have improved control of the material. Instead the overflow of plot and characters eventually overtakes the film, and plenty of seemingly important conversations and incidents start to happen off-screen. Joe's father appears magically at the right time and in the right place to intervene in a murder-in-progress. Joe seems to take over Ybor City in a remarkable hurry, and wins Graciela's heart even quicker. After a long build up, the resolution of the KKK problem is rushed. Major chunks of Loretta's story are summarily dealt with in a few words. Late in the film two adversaries become allies with barely an explanation. And even critical battlefield tactics are botched, Affleck choosing to talk about rather than demonstrate Coughlin's ability to influence goons in battle.

Affleck does have an eye for creating beautiful settings, and the film is awash in vivid colours and plenty of artistry. The camerawork is fluid, capturing bustling neighbourhoods and idyllic landscapes. And some of the climactic showdowns with the head baddies are well constructed.

A large cast supports Affleck's docile take on Coughlin. By far the most memorable is Elle Fanning as the enigmatic Loretta. In just a few scenes she demonstrates what intense charisma can accomplish, and the film would have hugely benefited from investing more in her story.

Live By Night may suggest an adventurous lifestyle, but this is a fragmented, surprisingly dull and ultimately unsatisfying experience.

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The Movies Of Zoe Saldana

All movies starring Zoe Saldana and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl (2003)

The Terminal (2004)

Vantage Point (2008)

Avatar (2009)

The Losers (2010)

Colombiana (2011)

The Words (2012)

Blood Ties (2013)

Infinitely Polar Bear (2014)

Live By Night (2016)

The Adam Project (2022)

Amsterdam (2022)

Emilia Pérez (2024)

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

Movie Review: Colombiana (2011)

A stylish but ultimately routine revenge action thriller, Colombiana has enough human drama to rise above the bottom drawer, but not by much.

In Colombia, hit-man Fabio wants out of the evil drug empire of Don Sandoval. But no one leaves the Don and lives to talk about it, and so henchman Marco and a team of goons are dispatched to eliminate Fabio and his entire family. This they do, with the exception of Fabio's young daughter Cataleya, who escapes and eventually makes her way to the United States where she is sheltered by the underground Colombian community in Chicago.

Years later Cataleya (Zoe Saldana) is a professional assassin, killing for money while on the side hunting down Marco and the still-powerful Don Sandoval empire to extract her revenge. Her mission is somewhat complicated by the CIA sheltering the bad guys, but she finally tracks them down, setting up an explosives-packed showdown to the death.

Zoe Saldana may well be the only reason to watch Colombiana, and she elevates the material with a reasonably affecting performance. In the character of Cataleya she combines athleticism with emotion, and determination with self-doubt. She does methodically mow down all enemies with ruthlessness and far-fetched ingenuity, but there are enough scenes of reflection, detached romance and reaching out to an FBI agent for Saldana to demonstrate talent beyond firing deadly ordnance.

Director Olivier Megaton is an expert in these story-thin, bullet-rich, stunt-filled movies, and attempts to keep a reasonable balance between wanton destruction and Cataleya's character development, although when in doubt, his will always throw in one more stunt. Megaton bathes Colombiana in rich, vivid colours, all the better to bring out the sweat beads of desperate men and the fiery red and orange of exploding missiles and grenades.

Created by Luc Besson's EuropaCorp film company, with Besson co-producing and co-writing the script, Colombiana aims low, but hits its target. That the target explodes goes without saying.

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Movie Review: The Losers (2010)

Neither smart nor sharp, The Losers at least succeeds in matching the expectations established by its title.

A US Special Forces team, led by Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), eliminate a high-ranking gangster in the jungles of Bolivia but veer away from their mission to save a group of children. Clay's team is summarily betrayed and left for dead by Max, their mission commander. Looking for a way back into the US, Clay is approached by the mysterious Aisha (Zoe Saldana), who offers a way for the team to get revenge on Max.

It is fair enough for a comics-inspired action film to veer far away from any semblance of reality with non-stop death-defying escapades if it offers up an abundance of matching fun and wit. The talent behind The Losers is too shallow to even come close to pulling off this trade-off. We are left with a succession of tired set-pieces, each progressively less interesting as a parade of mind-numbing cliches are trotted out: the special-ops team with each member a specialist; the rogue and brutal CIA man intent on starting his own war; the hard-drive that holds the secret to a conspiracy; and the final assault on the hide-out of the bad guys, complete with a ticking bomb of some sort.

Apart from some minor twists on a few of the stunts, it is difficult to find any ideas in The Losers that aren't recycled from numerous other films.

The cast singularly lacks charisma, and struggles against a bland script that neither looks for and much less finds any sparks. Dean Morgan as Clay is too serious compared to the ridiculous carnage going on around him, and the usually interesting Saldana gets no traction neither as the lady of mystery nor as the love interest.

The Losers is further proof, although none was needed, that comic book adaptations have long since found the rusted and fetid bottom of the barrel.

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Movie Review: Avatar (2009)

Watching Avatar in 3-D, the word that comes to mind is: game-changer.

In terms of technical achievement, Avatar redefines the benchmarks. Here is a whole new lush planet, Pandora, that comes to life at a level of detail that is orders of magnitude beyond anything seen in the Star Wars movies. Here also is a new virtual species, the Na'vi, who start out looking strange at 10 feet tall, blue and with tails, but end the movie as more familiar and more human than the earthlings.

And most of all, here is gorgeous 3-D technology being put to use to create life without gimmicks, without gizmos, and without spears or rocks being thrown at the audience. The 3-D is simply and brilliantly used to draw the audience into the movie and create a level of involvement never experienced before. Avatar is not a movie watched; it is movie experienced.

After his achievements with Terminator, Titanic, and now Avatar, director and writer James Cameron has cemented his place among the all-time giants of the movies.

The story of Avatar is powerful enough, but will certainly not win any awards for originality. It is a modern, science-driven take on the often-told narrative of invaders with a heavy foot trampling over a pristine land and disrupting the lives of locals. Substitute Pandora for North America and the Na'vi for natives; or allow the whole movie to represent US foreign policy in the Middle East -- it's all been done before.

The details here revolve around mining for the precious mineral called Unobtanium (clever name), which is only found on Pandora. The humans have established a joint scientific / military base to extract the stuff, but unfortunately the Na'vi keep getting in the way. The Na'vi combine ferocious but basic fighting skills with stealth, speed and oneness with nature to create a formidable obstacle in the way of the heavily armed but blunt human troops.

The science team (led by Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine) develops avatars in the shape of the Na'vi, to allow humans to take on native form and appearance. The objective is to better understand what it will take to move the Na'vi out of the way of the biggest Unobtanium deposit.

Jack Sully (Sam Worthington), a paralyzed marine who gains full mobility in his avatar, quickly becomes the focal point for both the scientists and the soldiers, as he is accepted by the Na'vi -- and falls in love with the daughter (Zoe Saldana) of the Na'vi chief. The ensuing conflicts that erupt between duty and love, aliens and natives, scientists and soldiers, science and nature, the physical and the spiritual, are all familiar, but are treated on an impressively grand and deeply satisfying scale.

Avatar is an immersive, breathtaking experience, and claims an undeniable place among the most major of milestones in movie history.



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