More than Meets the Eye?

 

This kept popping up on my Acorn TV subscription. I love crime drama/mystery TV shows (from England, the US, Australia, Scandinavia) so I wasn't sure what to make of this. It looked more like a drama than a thriller, especially as the first couple of episodes very slowly explicate the plot and characters.

Well, if was worth the investment of time, as the storyline, characters, and acting are all superb. And, has been mentioned by other reviewers, the music is wonderful, and perfectly matched to the visuals and dramatic development.

I have recently been watching the excellent thriller, Hidden, which is also set in Wales, but is really an anti-Keeping Faith. And, there is nothing wrong with that. Hidden is more typical BBC, dark, even grim, with great writing and acting. But kind of hard to take sometimes. Faith, on the other hand fairly sparkles because it is set in the coastal area near Swanse which, at least at the times it was photographed, looks positively lovely.. What a contrast, and both shows deftly use the amazing Welsh scenery to great advantage.

Finally, I can't say enough about Eve Myles. I kept wanting to think that her character -- a working Mom married to her dream husband -- seemed a bit anti-Feminist, especially as the show makes great use of her natural beauty in its cinematography. Yet, as the show went on, and especially as it concluded its first Series, I realized that Faith is the epitome of a strong, intelligent woman working desperately to keep her family together in the face of unimaginable difficulty. Not defined by her Husband, or by Society, but by herself. What could be more Feminist than that?

A great show, and I am looking forward to watching Series 2.Slow burn, but worth the investment.

Great actress, great material

Sometimes the stars align for a film, as is the case with the legendary French actress, Isabelle Huppert taking the lead in Paul Verhoeven's in-your-face thriller, Elle. Both the story and the star are superbly matched, here.

It is almost cliche to say that Verhoeven is controversial. Hardly any of his English-language films, from Robocop to Basic Instinct did not generate strident conversations. Elle was not different -- is no different -- in its uncomfortable look at the role a strong-willed woman plays in a still male-dominated society.

A middle-aged CEO of a computer gaming company in Paris is attacked in her home. Not particularly unique, except that rather than reporting the rape to the police -- which, let's face it, probably wouldn't do any good -- she decides to take matters into her own hands and find the "perp" herself. She might have gotten more than she bargained for as the rapist begins taunting her, and without spoiling anything, when she finds out who it is it is not only surprising, but a bit anti-climactic.

Verhoeven and his lead actress use the unusual, but clearly-told story as a vehicle for interrogating issues of sexual predation, sexism in the corporate world and much else. Rather well, I think.

Deliverance in the Dakotas

 

Reviewers have been mixed on this one, and I also have mixed feelings.

Grandma and Grandpa search for their missing Grandson, suspecting he is being abused by his father. That setup propels the story forward nicely, but where it ends up, and where it ends is a bit problematic. Is "Let Him Go" a Thriller? A Drama? A Septuagenarian re-kindled romance? It doesn't seem sure, but it sure ends with a bang. Literally.

Casting Kevin Costner and Diane Lane seems like a good idea, and these two professionals are fine in the scenes they share - primarily just the two of them. The third reel features a sort of Deliverance-style rural horror show where British Actress Lesley Manville nearly steals the show as the "Ma Barker" style Matriarch.

You want the Gramps's to escape with the kid. Spoiler Alert: they might, and they might not. Again, how things evolve from relatively slow burn menace to something out of "The Untouchables" (DePalma's film, not the milquetoast remake of the French soaper).

If you love, or even like either Costner, or Lane, or both this is a good bet. If you like Lesley Manville you kind of have to see it. Otherwise, you might must pass.

Solid Thriller with a "Thunderheart"

 

What's not to like here? Val Kilmer, who has been quite reliable for a couple of decades, in a starring role in this multi-layered "based on true events" early 90s thriller. The great Sam Shepard playing an FBI agent -- gee, where have we seen that before -- and the always fabulous Graham Greene playing a Native American. And the latter is not type-casting.

Kilmer's young, cocky FBI agent is dropped into a steaming pile of crap when he is hand-picked to investigate a murder on a Native American reservation, because he has Native blood. Yep, its about the optics, and right there, the viewer could be wading into a hornet's nest unless he or she weren't in the sure hands of writer John Fusco and seasoned director Michael Apted. Which he or she is.

Their sure hands set the stage for a great murder mystery, and as that mystery is peeled layer by layer more is certainly reveled. Politics prevail, the history of terrible treatment of Natives by the US Government is sensibly but not melodramatically inter-woven. The lucky viewer even learns more about one of the worst in a long line of tragic events for Natives, Wounded Knee.

Leaving the politics out, though, Kilmer, Shepard and Greene are first rate, as is the great Fred Ward and many Native actors and actresses. And, by the way, the South Dakota scenery nearly steals the show. Brooding, powerful, gorgeous and very well-shot by Oscar-winner Roger Deakins.

It all starts with the title: its own infinite loop

 

I should start by saying that "The Endless" blew my mind the first time I saw it. I waited to review it until I had seen it a second time. Did it blow my mind, again? No, but that is not a qualitative statement. This time, I knew what to expect from this endlessly inventive indie sci fi flick and was able to savor it like an old wine or something.

The two filmmakers, Benson and Moorhead are among the most talented working in the US today. They join a long line of personal faves, including Brit Marling, Shane Carruth and Jamin Winans. Why do I say "talented"? Because they create highly interesting, though-provoking story lines and execute them with cinematic flourish. And apparently do it for a fraction of what it costs a big Studio to make a film. This Benson and Moorhead proved in the great "Spring" and they continue to do in "The Endless", which is not only the best film they have made but one of the best to come out in years.

At one level, "The Endless" concerns two brothers living near Echo Park in LA, one of whom longs to return to the "UFO Death Cult" that they both escaped from many years earlier. What a great set up for a plot - right away you know one wants to go back, and the other does not, creating a great tension to drive the rising action of the story. But most of all you really want to know about the UFO Death Cult. Really…

Of course, they do return to said cult which is located somewhere in the mountains above San Diego. And that is right about where the conventional nature of the story, and the storytelling starts to unravel. From weird atmospheric disturbances to telling recollections about the cult-members wanting to commit mass-suicide it quickly becomes apparent that nothing is what it appears to be. Or, if you buy that a strange “presence” is living in a shallow lake and causing space and time to warp, and creating an infinite loop that some characters can’t escape, well, then everything is exactly as it appears to be.

Here is where I need to warn those who don’t like ambiguity, or head trips in their films to stay away from “The Endless”. On the other hand, if you love to have your mind thoroughly f-ed with, then get thee to this film ASAP.

The brothers return to the wonderfully named Camp Arcadia where the members of the un-named cult are living. Benson and Moorhead use the ordinariness of the location, and the relative normality of the camp’s residents to ground the small but eerie details that begin to throw everything off the rails. One guy seems to be, well, just smiling all the time. You want to know why. The leader of the group who keeps insisting it is “not a cult” (important safety tip: if the apparent leader of a group of people says it is not a cult, it probably is) and saying the words with an almost Manson-esque smoothness. There is an odd shack that has a lock on it that looks like it was stolen from a Final Fantasy game. Again, you really, really want to know what it is in the shack.

What seem to be manipulative plot devices create a thirst on the part of the viewer to know “what the f is really happening here”. And when one, and then both brothers set out to try to figure that out, you get the true strangeness of the third reel. A dude who is living in a shanty, with his doppelganger hanging from a noose; a drug addict chained to the wall of his house, trying to get sober (an apparent homage to an earlier film, “Resolution”), and a character described in the credits as just a “late eighteenth century man” is running into the wall of his tent, over and over again as the old timey clock in a post keeps resetting and running for the same ten seconds.

And that is not even the weird part. If you want to know more, please, please watch “The Endless”. It is available on Amazon Prime Video for a nominal rental fee – which the film-makers deserve, by the way, for squeezing so much creativity into 111 minutes.

Magic is still kind of lame

 

No offense, but magic is kind of lame.

I respect those who practice it, but if you are really (really) into Magic you probably "aren't getting much tail". Many films have tried to make it cool, and this one tries perhaps a bit too hard. Christopher Nolan's excellent "The Prestige" was just cool because it had David Bowie playing Nikola Tesla. Yep.

"Now You See Me" tries very, very hard, using overblown, swooping camera movement, breathless dialogue breathlessly spoken by a, well, breathless cast. And some seemingly clever tricks that -- spoiler alert -- get explained. And the First Rule of Magic Club is that you never, ever explain the trick.

What almost saves "Now You See Me" is a pretty clever plot which, wait for it, is kind of a magic trick itself. See how I did that? Some unseen force has brought together a group of street magicians to form a lamely named group called The Four Horseman, which is mildly micro-aggressive because one of those men is a woman, played by Isla Fisher. This group includes characters played by Jesse Eisenberg (whose young-ish, brash sleight-of-hand artist is pretty much the epitome of "no really, magic IS cool" uncool), Woody Harrelson and Dave Franco, and is slated to perform three progressively more impossible acts, culminating in a complex, Apocalyptic bit performed on the rooftop of an abandoned building in, what, Queens?

Yep, that pretty much sums it up. What further saves the film is the presence of Adults in the room, in the form of Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. Wait, weren’t they together in a couple of Christopher Nolan films? The scene in the Voodoo Shop in New Orleans where Caine and Freeman have it out is an example of what happens when two great actors have pretty good material to work with.

Look, if you love Magic, you have to see “Now You See Me”. If you don’t love Magic, you should still see it, as it is entertaining and has, as they say in the Magic world, a “Turn” and then a “Big Reveal” at the end. If all of that is just tiresome to you, then pass this one by.

Serviceable "True Life" Thriller

 

I mainly watched this because it had Josh Hartnett, who I have loved in Penny Dreadful (yes, I was a bit late to that party), and also Jim Gaffigan. Also, I have been watching the great Canuck crime drama, "Cardinal" so I am a bit obsessed with finding out how things aren't always so peaceful in the Great White North.

Main plot of this "Based on True Events" story is a poor sucker junkie gets ensnared in what is basically one of the most ludicrous cases of Entrapment in history - or at least in Canadian History. This kid is just looking to get high, and the Jim Gaffigan character convinces him to fly to Thailand to score ten kilos of "H" as they so uncooly call it. This, all financed and supported by the Canuck version of the DEA, masterminded on the Government side by a rail-thin, specter of an agent, played by Stephen McHattie (who all of you X Files fans will recognize).

If it sounds implausible, it probably is, because the notes at the end confusingly indicate that maybe this all happened, maybe it didn't. Mainly, because apparently the Canadian Government has sought for years to suppress the truth. Except, the film was financed, in part, by Provencal bucks from the Government of Quebec. Oh, right, Quebec has been trying to secede from Canada for decades.

OK, back to the film. Everything here is pretty effective, pretty well-written and well-acted. Only problem is the time shift narrative only becomes apparent about a third of the way through, when you realize that you are watching a retrospective of historical events, and a current timeline of our pitiful junk getting ready to rot in a horrible Thai prison.

You'll have to watch to find out what really happens.