The Perfect Host

The Perfect Host; psychological drama / crime, USA, 2010; D: Nicholas Tomnay, S: Clayne Crawford, David Hyde Pierce, Megahn Perry, Helen Reddy

Los Angeles. John Taylor robbed a bank in collusion with his girlfriend Simone, a bank teller who told him she needs money for her disease. Getting rid of his car and having a wounded foot, John randomly rings in front of a mansion and asks to come inside, claiming he was robbed. He is received by Warwick Wilson who claims to be preparing a dinner for his guests. John drinks his wine and falls unconscious. When he wakes up, he is tied up, while Warwick turns out to be a psychopath who just imagines he is having guests in his empty kitchen. John wakes up the next morning outside on the street and finds out Simone plans to leaves the city with the money, without him. He confronts her at the parking garage and takes the money, but the money is taken away from him by Warwick, who is a police lieutenant. Some time later, a detective receives a photo of Warwick and John together, and Warwick invites him for dinner.

This unknown independent film by Nicholas Tomnay is a surprisingly well made and clever blend of crime and psychological drama, playing with the always intriguing concept of a prey and predator switching roles in a plot twist. "The Perfect Host" from the title is played by the excellent David Hyde Pierce as the psychotic Warwick, who isn't as innocent and weak as it first seems. There are some creative details here (for instance, the desperate John randomly picks a mail box of a mansion, finds a letter inside signed by some Julie, and then rings the doorbell, claiming to be Julie's friend who lost his luggage at the airport and needs help) and each ten minutes in the first half offer some new twist or surprise to keep the story interesting and unusual, whereas the cinematography is aesthetic. In one of these surprises, Warwick imagines he is having guests at the table in his kitchen, only for the next scene to reveal him talking to himself, with only the confused John looking at him, revealing his deranged nature. However, after 45 minutes, the story kind of loses its surprise effect, and thus the rest is rather solid, but underwhelming, without any clear major pay-off to Warwick's psychosis. A final plot twist could have been that he is even imagining to be a police lieutenant, but that is contradicted when John hears his associate via walkie-talkie and the detective receiving John's photo, which undermines this theory. There was not that much depth to Warwick's character, and some moments are a bit contrived (why did Warwick apply fake wounds on John's face? Why did he simply release John?), yet "The Perfect Host" manages to be a slow-burning psychological crime-drama with the two leading actors carrying up the story for 90% of its time, on only one location.

Grade:++   

The Boys (Season 1)

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Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn); action / black comedy, USA, 2020; D: Cathy Yan, S: Margot Robbie, Ella Jay Basco, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, Ewan McGregor, Chris Messina, Ali Wong 

Gotham City. After Joker broke up with her, Harley Quinn finds a new assignment: a little girl, Cassandra, stole and ate a diamond intended for crime boss Roman Sionis, aka Black Mask, so he orders Harley to get it back. Harley finds Cassandra, but actually becomes her friend. In the meantime, Detective Renee Montoya, singer Dinah Lance and Helena Bertinelli, aka The Huntress, also have a bone to pick with Sionis, so they reluctantly team up with Harley. Sionis orders his men to get the diamond any way they can, even threatening to cut out Cassandra's stomach, but luckily Harley is able to stop them and kill Sionis. Later, after Cassandra defecates the diamond, Harley escapes with her from Montoya, Dinah and Bertinelli.

The 2nd film in which Margot Robbie played Harley Quinn, "Birds of Prey" is weaker than "The Suicide Squad", but better than "Suicide Squad". It is a patchwork, using a convoluted narrative obfuscation of a rather simple story in which Harley has to save a girl who ate a diamond from criminal Sionis, which makes it slightly forced at times, but it still has enough virtues to offer a good fun, especially in some meticulously choreographed martial arts and fight sequences, where the creative work of the stuntmen rises to the occasion. The story is at times almost banal (the villain Sionis is presented almost exclusively as a one-dimensional bad guy, with one nasty sequence where he orders his henchmen to torture and execute three people hanging upside down; the hyena plays no role in the story, indicating the screenplay needed at least one more re-write), but the director Cathy Yan is still able to be playful on the field of directing, enriching the film. For instance, in one sequence, as Harley is running away from Detective Montoya through a market, she randomly spots other people who create obstacles for her, as the camera zooms in on their faces and shows their name and grievance ("Name: Roller Dummy. Grievance: Broke her nose."; "Name: Ralph Murray. Grievance: Fed his brother to a hyena"). In another comical sequence, Harley, in disguise, enters a police precinct and says: "I'd like to report a terrible crime". The police officer asks: "What crime?", and she replies with: "This one!", as she reveals a gun that fires some sort of a red ball at the officer, knocking him out. The best moment happens at a brilliantly choreographed fighting sequence at a warehouse, where a big henchman with a long beard is holding Harley by her neck, but she takes a lighter and lights his beard on fire, causing him to recoil in panic: genius. These kind of stylizations and anarchic humor fit very well with Harley's crazy persona, helping sway this film towards something better than it was fated initially.

Grade:++

I, Daniel Blake

I, Daniel Blake; drama, UK, 2016; D: Ken Loach, S: Dave Johns, Hayley Squires, Brianna Shan, Dylan McKiernan

Newcastle. After recovering from a heart attack, woodworker Daniel Blake is faced with a bureaucratic heart attack: his doctor forbids him to work, but the British Government's Department for Work and Pensions refuses to pay him social welfare and orders him to get back to work. Daniel appeals, but has to wait in the meantime without any income. He becomes friends with Katie, an unemployed mother of two who moved from London. Daniel helps her repair stuff at her new home. Katie finds work as a prostitute and refuses to quit even after Daniel tells her to. Computer illiterate, Daniel has a difficult time at the employment center and attends a CV workshop. While seeing a lawyer to help him in his case, Daniel suffers a heart attack at the toilet and dies.

The movie that secured Ken Loach a second Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, "I, Daniel Blake" is a standard, schematic and grey social drama, but it has moments of freshness due to the humorous, energetic and measured performance by comedian Dave Johns in the title role. The director Loach often copes with his didactic preaching of themes "eating" his entire story, style and creativity, and some of these flaws are apparent even here, especially in the banal, unsatisfactory and abrupt ending which feels as if it is creating some sort of apotheosis of tragedy for the title hero broken by the system. Nonetheless, Loach crafts a film that is as unglamorized from Hollywood idealism as possible, establishing a realistic and grim picture of everyday working class, who are just one health problem away from bankruptcy. The best bits in the film are those where Daniel does something funny or rebellious which makes him stand out: for instance, in one sequence at the unemployment office, when he spots the unemployed single mother Katie with her two kids treated poorly by an official, even though they are new in town, Daniel stands up: "Who's first in this queue?" A man answers: "I am". - "Do you mind if this young miss signs on first?" Daniel then points with his finger: "Now you can go back to your desk and let her sign on and do the job that the taxpayer pays you for! This is a bloody disgrace!" An official warns Daniel that he is making a scene, but Daniel insists: "She's out of the area. She's just been a few minutes. Can you not let her sign on?" In another wonderful scene, Daniel is ordered by the unemployment office to attend a CV workshop, where a man holds a lecture: "Costa Coffee advertised 8 jobs. Do you know how man applications they got from that? Over 1,300. So, what does that mean?" Cue Daniel not missing a beat: "We should all be drinking a lot more bloody coffee... Well, if you can count, it's obvious. There's not enough jobs. Fact." An ambitious, intelligent and humane film about the madness of bureaucracy in modern times and ever growing financial crisis which is taking a toll of ordinary working people, whose lives keep shrinking.

Grade:++

Raining Stones

Raining Stones; drama, UK, 1993; D: Ken Loach, S: Bruce Jones, Julie Brown, Ricky Tomlinson, Gemma Phoenix, Tom Hickey

Northern England. Bob, an unemployed man, and his friend Tommy steal a mutton on a meadow to try to sell it to a butcher, but he warns them that only sheep meat sells. Indeed, they earn little trying to sell  meat at a pub. Even worse, Tommy left the keys in Bob's van, which gets stolen. Bob, a devout Catholic, is desperate because he needs 105£ to buy a dress for his daughter Coleen's First Communion. His wife Anne tries to help by applying for a sewing job, but is fired. Bob tries a job as a bouncer at a night bar, but is fired. Bob borrows money from a loan shark, Tansey, who arrives one day at Bob's home and forces Anne to give him her wedding ring and other valuables to repay Bob's debt. When Bob returns back home and hears what happened, he becomes angry, takes a wrench and follows Tansey. Bob attacks Tansey at the parking garage. Tansey flees in panic in his car, hits a concrete pillar and dies. Bob confesses everything to a priest, but he advises Bob to not tell anyone and resume his life. Bob enjoys Coleen's First Communion.

Ken Loach's parable on people who take desperate measures to find a solution out of their desperate situation, "Raining Stones" is both emotional and 'rough', never allowing to present the working class in idealized fashion. Loach's often screenwriter Jim Allen shows a lot of sense for the mentality of these people, so much that the viewers can easily identify with them, whereas they both find a wonderful support in the main actor Bruce Jones in the role of Bob. The protagonist is presented as a flawed hero: he wants the best for his little daughter Coleen and her First Communion, but is too 'rustic', clumsy and heavy-handed in his choices. A lot of freshness arrives from the surprising humor, which livens up the rather grey mood—in one sequence, Tommy tells Bob this joke: "Did you hear about that kid from Liverpool in the bloody wheelchair they took to Lourdes? ... And when he came out of the water, they all had a look at his legs. And his legs were still twisted. But the wheelchair had two new tires on it!" In another sequence, while Bob wants to buy an old van, Tommy has this exchange with the seller: "How many owners has it had?" - "Owners! Only one!" - "Who was it, Ben-Hur?" Everything here is dirty, raw and difficult, to be as a close to the experience of reality as possible, whereas Loach never preaches nor falls into sentimentality—the advice and reaction of the priest in the finale, when Bob confesses what he did, is a true surprise of pragmatism. The structure of the storyline feels a bit episodic, random and aimless, some moments seem fake (for instance, the illogical sequence where the daughter just let's the loan shark into their house, who demands money from the mother, even though he never presents Bob's document with borrowed money), whereas some characters deserved better treatment, for instance the underwritten role of Bob's wife Anne. Still, even though Anne's presence is sparse, she has one of the most poignant, philosophical lines in the film that say a lot about people feeling trapped by determinism and rigid fate: "It's funny how we start off, ain't it, with all these big ideas. And then you realize that things aren't going to change. I'll live and die in that flat, and nobody will ever know."

Grade:+++

Sorry We Missed You

Sorry We Missed You; drama, UK / France / Belgium, 2019; D: Ken Loach, S: Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Stone, Katie Proctor

Newcastle upon Tyne. Manual laborer Ricky decides to try out a new job as a delivery driver who delivers boxes with items that people ordered via internet. His boss Maloney tells him he is "self-employed", but that he must pay a 1,000£ for a van. Ricky thus works 14 hours a day, 6 days a week. His wife Abby had to sell her car to afford Ricky's van, so she now takes a bus to work as a home care nurse. Their teenage son Sebastian is a troublemaker who one day steals spray cans from a store, so Ricky takes away his mobile phone. When Ricky's van keys vanish, he assumes it was Sebastian and slaps him, but it turns out it was their 13-year old daughter Liza Jane. One day, Ricky is attacked by three thugs who steals his boxes. Since Maloney will not reimburse him for the lost barcode scanner nor pay for his recovery, an injured Ricky drives off the van to continue work.

Ken Loach's penultimate film, social drama "Sorry We Missed You" is almost a shock therapy to all those idealized Hollywood films showing middle class work as pleasant and comfortable. The protagonist Ricky assumes he will get an easy job as a delivery driver, but he suddenly faces sobering problems along his way: a customer says he didn't order anything; a parking enforcement officer threatens to write him a fine for parking with his van in the middle of the street; Ricky has to urinate in a bottle because he has nowhere to stop with his van; he works 14 hours a day, six days a week... Loach simply poses an uncomfortable question—is there any dignified type of work left for the ordinary middle class? The film is a bit didactic and too schematic, presenting everything a bit too rigid and standard, since Loach often avoids cinematic technique or some more creative style to focus on the sole story and present reality as grey as it is, without any "make up", but the insight it shows into work over-exploitation and lack of any social welfare or solidarity creates some strong messages that make you think. Loach luckily never preaches, and instead just let's the story take its flow. Some of the best bits are when the characters' personalities come across as more important than the theme: in the best moment of the film, parents Ricky and Abby are arguing in their bedroom during the night, while all of a sudden they hear the knock on their door—it's their daughter Liza Jane, who tells them: "Stop it! No fighting!"

Grade:++

The Impossible

The Impossible; disaster film, Spain, 2012; D: J. A. Bayona, S: Naomi Watts, Tom Holland, Ewan McGregor, Samuel Joslin, Oaklee Pendergast, Geraldine Chaplin

December 2 0 0 4. Maria Bennett travels with her husband Henry and three children Lucas, Simon and Thomas to Khao Lak, Thailand, for a vacation. They enjoy their stay at the hotel and spend the Christmas there. On 26 December, the Indian Ocean earthquake causes a tsunami which reaches the shore and sweeps away the hotel and the guests. Badly wounded, Maria is able to find Lucas and a boy, Daniel, and climb up a tree in case of another tsunami. Locals find them and transport them to a hospital. Henry finds that his mother's bed is taken over by another patient, and cannot find her, until the staff leads him to her, who has undergone surgery, but is stable. Henry, Simon and Thomas also survived, and manage to find and reunite with Maria and Lucas in the hospital. They are then evacuated to Singapore. 

One of the first film depictions of the catastrophic 2 0 0 4 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami which killed 228,000 people along the wider area of the Bay of Bengal, based on the real-life experiences of survivor Maria Belon, "The Impossible" is an intense, terrifying and strong blend of disaster and survival film. The director J. A. Bayona takes care of the authenticity, allowing for the story to contemplate about the notions of fragility of life under threat from random disasters of the harsh, cruel universe, whereas the leading actress Naomi Watts is excellent as Maria. The film does not waste time—the tsunami occurs already 14 minutes into the film, and this segment is its most impressive accomplishment: tourists are happily walking along the swimming pool, when all of a sudden Maria's paper is carried away by the wind and stops at a glass wall, as she and others turn around to randomly see palm trees falling down along the horizon. Cue to a random 12 ft tall wave of dirty, brown water which simply sweeps everything in sight, from tourists to the hotel building. It all just happens in 20 seconds, and they simply don't have time to react at all. Maria hangs on to a tree, and the water stream is all around her, she let's go to try to swim after her son Lucas, but she is pierced when she is carried by the water into a random tree branch. This whole sequence is incredible and one wonders how they managed to film it. The rest of the film is the aftermath segment, which encompasses the remaining 2/3 of "The Impossible's" running time, but it is of lesser intensity and falters a bit in interest. Having Maria and Lucas wait at the hospital is simply not that engaging, which is why the director even uses the cliche of father Henry almost not finding Maria in her hospital bed and is just about to leave in the truck when something happens, which is banal. The storyline clearly needed some better written dialogue or cinematic inspiration for support in this post-tsunami segment. Nonetheless, "The Impossible" is a valuable depiction of the disaster, showing how it looked like and what its effects were. If there is one villain here, then it is chaos; if there is one protagonist, then it is life trying to survive and live in peace and stability.

Grade:+++

21 Grams

21 Grams; drama, USA, 2003; D: Alejandro González Iñárritu, S: Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, Benicio del Toro, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Melissa Leo, Danny Houston

Jack, a former convict who now turned into a Christian preacher, accidentally hits a man and his two daughters on the street with his car. Jack panics and drives off, leaving the three there to die. The deceased man's wife, Cristina, is now both a widow and a mother who lost her two children. Her late husband's heart is transplanted into Paul, a mathematics professor. Paul finds out about the life of his donor and makes contact with Cristina, starting a relationship. This, however, means the end of Paul's relationship with Mary, who wanted to have a baby with him. Cristina persuades Paul to kill Jack, but he let's him go. Jack later enters into their apartment and demands to be shot, but in the chaos, Paul shoots himself and dies. Jack turns himself to the police, claiming he shot Paul, but is let go because the investigation finds out it is a lie.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 2nd feature length film, and his first in the US, is a contemplative, ambitious and artistic achievement, but the problem is that it is basically a melodrama—just with better cinematography and presented in nonlinear narrative. The dialogue and plot points are bland and standard, thereby making the storyline limited, without much creativity. Another problem is that Inarritu already used this trick of disjointed narrative, with scenes being shown randomly out of order throughout the film, in his better debut "Amores perros"—and peculiarly, even in his next film, "Babel". The aesthetic images are thus applied as a "make up" to try to improve the routine story, and this works, actually. However, the main highlight are the three excellent lead actors who give outstanding performances, playing their roles with enthusiasm even in the most pale scenes. The standout among these three standout actors is Naomi Watts, who gives another stunning performance as Cristina, finding herself in a peculiar situation where she has a relationship with Paul, who has the transplanted heart of her late husband. The character of Jack (Benicio del Toro) is also fascinating: he was an ex-convict, reformed, became a Christian pastor who tries to convert juvenile delinquents (he is even ready to engage in a physical fight with one punk to convert him!) and implement religious teaching literally (when his son slaps his daughter, Jack forces her to "turn her other cheeck", i.e. allow her brother to slap her other hand), perpetrated a hit-and-run accident, and now lost his faith (and purpose in life) again. The vague ending feels incomplete and unfinished, leaving the whole point of "21 Grams" somewhat elusive, yet Inarritu shows his talent by making it more enlightened than expected.

Grade:++

Dinosaurus!

Dinosaurus!; science-fiction adventure, USA, 1960; D: Irvin Yeaworth, S: Ward Ramsey, Alan Roberts, Kristina Hanson, Gregg Martell

Engineer Bart and his team are triggering underwater explosions along the coast of a Caribbean island to clear the seafloor to build a harbor. Accidentally, they stumble upon a frozen Brontosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the sea and pull them out on the shore. Bad idea: a lightning bolt hits and awakens said dinosaurs, and they now roam the island. A Neanderthal is also awakened and becomes friends with kid Julio. The local 'island master' Hacker wants to kidnap the caveman and sell him to an exhibition. The Brontosaurus sinks in quicksand; the caveman dies by holding up the beam of a collapsing mine while Julio and Betty, Bart's girlfriend, escape. Bart uses an excavator to push the T. Rex into the sea.

"Dinosaurus!" once again proves that there are so few dinosaur movies, and even fewer of them that are good. A silly oddity, Irvin Yeaworth's film is a harmless 'guilty pleasure' that indulges the human fascination with giant monsters, but it aligns with one unwritten rule: in these kind of movies, human characters are often bland and boring, while only the scarcely shown dinosaurs are interesting. Indeed, already in the opening, the viewers sense that the main (human) protagonists are not only one-dimensional, but also wooden and stiff: engineer Bart and his team are launching underwater explosions off the coast, while Betty for some reason is heading with her boat right towards them, even though they are waving a red flag to not go near them. Didn't she hear all those explosions just a minute ago? Why didn't they close the coastline around them while they are blowing up the seafloor? When Bart arrives with his boat towards her, she suddenly starts taking her clothes off, revealing a swimsuit, saying: "I'm going down to Davy Jones' locker for my mother's portable icebox, in which I had stashed all sorts of goodies for you guys to eat, and which I intend to eat whether you're hungry or not." Whoever wrote this dialogue needs to have it read back to him. Would a woman really dive deep into the sea to get food from a sunk refrigerator on the seafloor? Is she that hungry? How about going to a supermarket? The rest of the movie is equally as strained and illogical, but the dinosaur sequences, created thanks to stop-motion animation, are a bit better. At 28 minutes into the film, there is an elegant camera pan from the head of a lying Brontosaurus up to his tale, which moves. The battle between the T. Rex and Bart operating the excavator is solid, a forerunner to Cameron's battle between the Alien Queen and an exoskeleton in "Aliens", whereas the comical moments involving the caveman are at least partially amusing: for instance, the caveman sees food on a table through the window, but is surprised that he cannot touch it because of glass, and when a woman with a wacky facial mask sees him, they are both scared from each other and run away. 

Grade:+

The Friend

The Friend; drama / comedy, USA, 2024; D: Scott McGehee, David Siegel, S: Naomi Watts, Bing, Sarah Pidgeon, Carla Gugino, Bill Murray, Noma Dumezweni

New York City. Iris, a writer, is surprised when she is informed that, following the suicide of her mentor and ex-lover Walter, she is assigned to take care of his giant Great Dane dog, Apollo. Iris is stressed because her superintendent doesn't allow dogs in her apartment, so she wants to get rid of him, but nobody is ready to adopt the dog. Walter's daughter Val helps her out. Iris decides to drive Apollo to Michigan dog shelter, but then changes her mind and decides to register it as an emotional support animal. Upon the advice of a psychologist, she writes a story where she confronts Walter about his suicide, scolding him for not talking it through with others. Iris stays at Walter's Long Island beach house for the summer with Apollo.

Based on the eponymous novel by Sigrid Nunez, "The Friend" is a peculiar film contemplation about suicide, accepting loss and processing emotional turmoil in the allegorical depiction of the heroine Iris taking care of a big dog. It has several jokes based on suicide, ranging from Samuel Beckett's quote: "The day you die is just like any other, only shorter", up to something a character who committed suicide, Walter (Bill Murray), said: "The more suicidal people there are, the less suicidal people there are." Nonetheless, except for that, "The Friend" is surprisingly measured, respectful and emotionally honest, showing the aftermath of friends of someone perpetrating suicide. Still, the film doesn't have that much of an inspiration, creative lift-offs or ingenuity to justify this complex concept. It is too light and thin, but it once again confirms that Naomi Watts is an excellent actress who is able to carry a film and make something more out of it: the highlight is definitely her emotional reaction in front of the psychologist in the finale, where she processes her own grief and makes her own closure by writing a story where she confronts the dead Walter about why he perpetrated suicide. It is not clear if she had a more romantic or formal admiration towards Walter, which leaves the writing lacking. Still, the dog, Bing, is amusing: he first starts out as a nuisance and troublemaker sleeping on her bed, but then she realizes he is also in grief, and thus becomes a comfort for her. 

Grade:++