thriller

THE OUTFIT: no one is just what they seem to be

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Photo caption: Mark Rylance in THE OUTFIT. Courtesy of Focus Features.

The Outfit is a satisfying period crime thriller with some big surprises. We’re in 1956 Chicago, and the accomplished actor Mark Rylance plays a very proper British maker of bespoke men’s suits, who allows local gangsters to have a secret drop box in the back of his modest shop. He and his assistant (Zoey Deutch), a young woman from the neighborhood, ask no questions.

Astonishingly polite, he does insist that everyone knows that he has been a Savile Row cutter, the more skilled artisan who cuts the fabric for men’s suits, not a tailor, who sews on the buttons.

The gangsters who own the drop box, however, come under a triple threat – the FBI, a competing mob and an inside rat. There’s an incriminating audiotape out there somewhere, which becomes the Macguffin in this story. Circumstances converge to trap our hero and his young assistant in the shop, where murderous gangsters are certain to do them in.

But, no one is just what they seem to be, and major plot twists tumble forth.

This is the directing debut for co-writer Graham Moore, who won a screenwriting Oscar for The Imitation Game, which starred Benedict Cumberbatch as mathematical genius Kenneth Turing. This time, Moore sets the entire film, every single shot, inside the same interior location; that makes for economic filmmaking, and the claustrophobia heightens the tension.

Mark Rylance is perfect as the very contained and ever civil craftsman plunged. into a desperate situation. Rylance, one of Britain’s seemingly endless stream of superb actors, came to broad attention (and to mine) in 2015 with the Thomas Cromwell historical series Wolf Hall and Bridge of Spies wth Tom Hanks. Since then, he’s starred in Dunkirk, The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Don’t Look Up.

Zoey Deutch is likewise excellent as the saucy shopgirl with her own secrets. She was the best thing in the raucous comedy Zombieland: Double Tap, in which she practically reinvents the Dumb Blonde.

The rest of the cast is good, too. Simon Russell Beale, known for playing erudite Englishmen, gets to play a mid-century Chicago hood.

Don’t confuse this film with the 1974 neo-noir The Outfit with Robert Duvall, Linda Black and Joe Don Baker (which is also good). The 2022 The Outfit is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.

on TV: ASHES AND DIAMONDS: a killer wants to stop

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Photo caption: Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Coming up tomorrow night on Turner Classic Movies, a masterful director and his charismatic star ignite the war-end thriller Ashes and Diamonds, set amidst war-end treachery. It’s one of my Overlooked Noir.

It’s the end of WW II and the Red Army has almost completely liberated Poland from the Nazis. The future governance of Poland is now up in the air, and the Polish resistance can now stop killing Germans and start wrestling for control. Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) is a young but experienced soldier in the Resistance. His commanders assign him to assassinate a communist leader.

Maciek is very good at targeted killing, but he’s weary of it. As he wants out, he finds love. But his commander is insisting on this one last hit.

This is Zbigniew Cybulski’s movie. Often compared to James Dean, Cybulski emanates electricity and unpredictability, Unusual for a leading man, he often wore glasses in his screen roles. He had only been screen acting for four years when he made Ashes and Diamonds. Cybulski died nine years later when hit by a train at age forty,

Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Andrzej Wajda fills the movie with striking visuals, such as viewing Maciek’s love interest, the waitress Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska), alone amidst the detritus of last night’s party, through billows of cigarette smoke. Wajda’s triumphant signature is, literally, fireworks at the climax; the juxtaposition of the celebratory fireworks with Maciek’s emotional crisis is unforgettable.

Ewa Krzyzewska in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Wajda adapted a famous 1948 Polish novel into this 1958 movie. In the adaptation, the filmmaker changed the emphasis from one character to another.

Ashes and Diamonds was the third feature for Andrzej Wajda, who became a seminal Polish filmmaker and received an honorary Oscar. US audiences may remember his 1983 art house hit Danton with Gerard Depardieu.

Ashes and Diamonds can be streamed from Amazon and AppleTV. It was featured at the 2020 Noir City film festival.

Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

MAMA WEED: it’s always fun when Huppert gets outrageous

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Photo caption: Isabelle Huppert in MAMA WEED. Photo courtesy of Music Box Films, ©Photo Credit Guy Ferrandis

In the French comic thriller Mama Weed, Isabelle Huppert plays Patience, a woman beset by money troubles stemming from the care of her aged mother.  She embraces an increasingly bizarre and risky solution.  Mama Weed starts out droll and blossoms into madcap.

Patience, having been born in colonial Algeria, is fluent in Arabic.  Her day job is as the translator for a French police unit that wiretaps Arabic-speaking drug dealers.  She learns that the cop are about to take down the son of her mom’s beloved caregiver, and she tips the kid off. That results in her gaining the possession of a ton and a half of somebody else’s hashish.  Patience disguises herself, enlists some dimwitted street dealers and seeks to monetize her haul.   Did I mention that she is dating her boss on the Narc Squad?

Her own employers are now throwing all their resources toward catching this mysterious new dealer, whom they don’t know is sitting in their midst.  The original owners of the hash, a murderous lot, are also hunting her down.

She’s more and more at risk, but the story gets commensurately funnier.  She adopts a retired drug-detecting police dog.  One of her client drug dealers is ravaged by the Munchies in a kabob shop.   Much of the humor is centered on the experience of Arabs and Chinese in contemporary France.  One central theme is the cynical principle that money makes world go round.

Mama Weed also recognizes how we value the caregivers who take loving care of our elderly parents; those folks can become more dear than family.

I’ll watch anything with Huppert in it, although it’s hard to top her electrifying performance in Elle. Of course she’s a great actress, having been nominated 16 times for an acting César (France’s Oscar).  But here’s her sweet spot – no other actor can portray such outrageous behavior with such implacability as Huppert.  She is probably the least hysterical actor in cinema. 

Mama Weed opens in theaters in July 16 and on digital on July 23.

ECHOES OF VIOLENCE: turnabout is fair play

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Michaella Russell in ECHOES OF VIOLENCE. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

In the well-crafted revenge thriller Echoes of Violence, a woman (Michaella Russell) entangles an Everyman (Heston Horwin) to help her escape a series of deadly hit men (the first one is played by Chase Cargill). Loyalties change and lethal new skills (and a novelty weapon) are revealed as her position pivots from defense to offense.

The woman has been done a very evil wrong, and she’s clawed herself to some degree of safety, she launches a campaign of vengeance. Michaella Russell is a compelling enough screen presence to drive the story.

Russell is South African and, in real life, found navigating the US immigration system to be fraught with frustration. That experience (not as horrific as in the movie) inspired Nicholas Wood to make the villain an immigration attorney.

The venerable Frank Oz is effective in a turn as the main villain’s even more monstrous father.

Echoes of Violence is the second feature for writer-director Nicholas Wood and demonstrates that he can bring originality to a genre film.

I screened Echoes of Violence for its world premiere at Cinequest, and it made made my Best of Cinequest 2021; you can stream it during the festival for only $3.99 at Cinequest’s online Cinejoy.

CARVER: will he be undone by a woman? or by his own obsession?

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Victor Rivas (center) in CARVER. World premiere t Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Select Films.

In the neo-noirish Spanish thriller Carver, a guy named Ernesto takes on the alter ego of Carver in the wee hours. Carver strides through Ernesto’s gritty urban neighborhood in dressed in a ridiculous, homemade superhero costume. He has no super powers, but is driven to make things right, vigilante-style. A sexy, stoned woman of uncertain reliability engages his interest. Will she bring him down?

Ernesto (Victor Rivas) seems otherwise a normal, salt-of-the-earth guy . He lives a quotidian existence, monitoring a supermarket’s security cameras by day and presiding over his family’s evening meals. But when his wife and kids are ready for bed (and this is Spain, so it is LATE), he heads out on the streets, to his wife’s increasing displeasure.

Why? He’s not a wannabe hanging judge; he’s pretty merciful to the shoplifters that he catches at his day job. But he has this need to personally patrol the streets to keep kids and single women safe. It’s odd behavior, and he does so with an almost child-like naivete; we wonder what emotional trauma might have damaged him.

At first, as he fails to spot her manipultiveness Victor is no match for the femme fatale Alicia (Mar Del Corral) , who is channelling Brigid O’Shaughnessy. Then he begins to appreciate just how unhunged she may be.

This is the first feature for writer-director Evgeny Yablokov, and this character-driven thriller is an impressive calling card.

There are many film actors named Victor Rivas. The star of Carver is not one of the more famous one, but a mournful-faced stage actor in Madrid, who has played Kierkegaard.

Not everybody will be satisfied with the ending of Carver, but I thought it was perfect.

I screened Carver for its world premiere at Cinequest, and it made my Best of Cinequest 2021. You can stream it during the festival for only $3.99 at Cinequest’s online Cinejoy.

CINEJOY LAST SUNRISE: racing into darkness

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LAST SUNRISE

In the gripping Chinese sci-fi thriller Last Sunrise, we’re in a super-hi tech future, powered almost totally by solar energy – which doesn’t look as blissful as it sounds.  As befits a dystopian story, there’s a disaster, and this one is just about the worst one conceivable – the death of our Sun.

Wang Sun (Zhang Jue) is very serious astronomy nerd with no apparent non-scientific interests.   He doesn’t really know Wu Chen (Zhang Yue), although she lives in a neighboring apartment, and it doesn’t appear that she’s ever thought about anything profound.  When the catastrophe happens, the two are forced on the road together in a race for their lives.

Last Sunrise is real science fiction about a plausible (and inevitable) future occurrence, and it’s about real ideas.  This isn’t just blowing stuff up in space, which too often passes for sci-fi today.

Losing the sun is pretty bad – it gets dark, the temperature is plunging and humans are running out of oxygen.  There may be refuges, but there’s little remaining battery power to fuel people’s escapes.  Of course, it doesn’t take long for social order to break down.  Last Sunrise becomes a ticking bomb thriller as the couple tries to find a refuge in time.

Of course, with no sun lighting the earth and moon, it is very dark and many more stars are visible.  The f/x of the starry skies in Last Sunrise are glorious.

The two leads are appealing,  especially Zhang Yue, whose Wu Chen is revealed more and more as film goes on.

The life-and-death thriller is leavened by witty comments on the consumerist, hyper connected culture (pre-disaster).  There are very funny ongoing references to instant noodles.  And Wang Sun, who is a bit of a hermit, doesn’t appreciate how devoted he is to his digital assistant ILSA (not Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, just ILSA).

This is the first feature, an impressive debut, for director and co-writer Wen Ren.  Cinequest hosted the North American premiere of Last Sunrise, the sci-fi highlight of the festival and is streaming Small Time in CINEJOY through October 14.

SEARCHING: more than a gimmick

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John Cho in SEARCHING

In the thriller Searching, a Silicon Valley engineer David (Jon Cho) has been single-parenting his daughter since the death of his wife. The daughter, now sixteen, doesn’t come home.  Has she run away?  He she been abducted?  Is she even still alive?  Searching is a ticking clock thriller as David and the investigating police detective Vick (Debra Messing) race against time to solve the case.  There are several red herrings, a couple major plot twists and one mega-surprise.

Here’s what is really different about Searching – the movie is entirely on the character’s screens – those of his computers, but also on smartphones, television, a security video and a live funeral cam.  The sixteen year-old flashbacks are shown on a sixteen-year-old version of Windows desktop.

This is NOT a “gimmick movie”. It is a complete movie that writer-director Aneesh Chaganty has chosen to tell through this device. For example, Chaganty barely gives a glimpse of the comments on on-line news reports – and no character comments on them – but the audience finds them maddening and suffers the indignities along with David. In the same vein, I also enjoyed the recent teen horror Unfriended, also told on a computer screen, and the claustrophobic drama Locke, set in the driver’s seat of an auto.

Detective Vick asks David, “Who is your daughter and who does she talk with?”, which puts the spotlight on the movie’s theme.  He’s her dad, and he was certain that he knows his daughter – but he finds out that, as a teenager, she has developed into an entirely new and unrecognizable person.  Obviously, that revelation brings him enormous guilt to go along with the shock, but he throws himself into the search by grabbing her laptop and hacking her social media.  As any good Silicon Valley parent, he opens a spreadsheet and starts filling it with what he finds out from the trail she has left online.

John Cho’s performance is pretty much perfect.  Of course, he’s already achieved popular success in two movie franchises – as Harold in the Harold and Kumar stoner series and Sulu in Star Wars.  Here, he gets a full-out, adult dramatic role and knocks it out of the park.  Cho modulates David’s increasing tension and desperation through the story, and he is perfect in the flashback scenes, too.

Aneesh Chaganty is a San Jose native.  Although he says that only two percent of the movie was actually filmed in San Jose, Searching really nails the vibe of Silicon Valley in 2018.  Locals will unmask the very slight name changes to recognize the Sharks, the SJPD, Oakridge Mall, Evergreen/Silver Creek Highs and more.  (The only egregious misstep is one character referencing Highway “101” in LA-speak as “the 101” .)

Searching can be streamed from Amazon (Starz channel), iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

THE HANDMAIDEN – gorgeous, erotic and a helluva plot

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THE HANDMAIDEN
THE HANDMAIDEN

After a few minutes of The Handmaiden, we learn that it’s a con artist movie. After 100 minutes, we think we’ve watched an excellent con artist movie, but then we’re surprised by a huge PLOT TWIST, and we’re in for two more episodes and lots of surprises in a gripping and absorbing final hour. It’s also one of the most visually beautiful and highly erotic films of the year.

Director and co-writer Chan-wook Park sets the story in 1930s Korea during Japanese occupation (Japanese dialogue is subtitled in yellow and Korean dialogue in white). A young heiress has been secluded from childhood by her guardian uncle, who intends to marry her himself for her fortune. A con man embarks on a campaign to seduce and marry the wealthy young woman to harvest her inheritance himself. The con man enlists a pickpocket to become handmaiden to the heiress – and his mole. I’m not going to tell you more about the plot, but the audience is in for a wild ride.

The Handmaiden takes its time revealing its secrets. Who is conning who? Who is attracted to whom? How naive is the heiress? How loyal is the handmaiden? Who is really Japanese and who is really Korean? What’s in those antique books? What’s in the basement? Is the uncle perverted or REALLY perverted? And what legendary sex toy will show up in the final scene?

THE HANDMAIDEN
THE HANDMAIDEN

Chan-wook Park’s 2003 US art house hit Oldboy is highly sexualized, trippy and disturbing. The Handmaiden is much more mainstream and accessible than Oldboy, but its sexuality packs a punch.

Gorgeous and erotic, The Handmaiden is one of the most gloriously entertaining films of the year. You can order the DVD from Netflix or stream it on Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

From SFFILM: ROJO – bobbing in a sea of moral relativism

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Benjamin Naishtat’s ROJO. Courtesy of SFFILM.

The San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM) was set to open tomorrow before it was cancelled for the COVID-19 emergency, so in tribute, here’s a film from SFFILM’s 2019 program.

Rojo is Argentine writer-director Benjamín Naishtat’s slow burn drama.  Rojo is set just before the 1970s coup that some characters expect – but no one is anticipating how long and bloody the coup will be.  Several vignettes are woven together into a tapestry of pre-coup moral malaise.

A prominent provincial lawyer Claudio (Darío Grandinetti) is invited to participate in a scam. There’s a scary encounter of lethal restaurant rage. It looks like Claudio, bobbing on a sea of moral relativism, may well remained unscathed, but the arrival of crack detective becomes a grave threat.

As Claudio weaves through his life, his society shows signs of crumbling. There’s a failed teen seduction, an emotional breakdown at a formal reception and a natural metaphor – a solar eclipse.

It’s funny when the audience finally connects the dots and understands who the character nicknamed “the Hippie” is. And Naishtat and Grandinetti get the most out of the scene where Claudio finally dons a toupee.

We know something that the characters don’t know – or at least fully grasp – how bloody the coup will be. Watch for the several references to desaparecido, a foreboding of the coup. Argentina’s coup was known for the desaparecidos – the disappeared – thousands of the regime’s political opponents went missing without a trace, having been executed by death squads. In Rojo, a very inconvenient madman dies and his body is hidden, there’s a disappearing act in a magic show, and a would-be boyfriend vanishes.

This is a moody, atmospheric film that works as a slow-burn thriller. I saw Rojo earlier a year agoat the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM). Rojo made my list of 10 Overlooked Movies of 2019. Stream from Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

GONE GIRL: 2014’s best Hollywood movie

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Rosamund Pike in GONE GIRL

In the marvelously entertaining Gone Girl, Ben Affleck plays Nick, a good-looking lug who can turn a phrase. At a party one night, he’s on his A game, and he snags the beautiful Amy (Rosamund Pike). She’s smarter, a good rung on the ladder more attractive than he is, has parents with some money and is a second-hand celebrity to boot. Not particularly gifted and certainly not a striver, he knows he’s the Lucky One. He has married above himself, but he doesn’t have a clue HOW MUCH above until she suddenly disappears.

Based on the enormously popular novel by Gillian Flynn (who also wrote the screenplay), Gone Girl is the mystery of what has happened to Amy and what is Nick’s role in the disappearance. Plot twists abound, but you won’t get any spoilers from The Movie Gourmet.

This is Rosamund Pike’s movie.  Her appearance is so elegant – she looks like a crystal champagne flute with blonde hair – that pulling her out of the Victorian period romances that she was known for and into this thriller was inspired. And Pike responds with the performance of her career. She’s just brilliant as she makes us realize that there’s something behind her eyes that we hadn’t anticipated, and then keeps us watching what she is thinking throughout the story.

Gone Girl is directed by the contemporary master David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en, Zodiac, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). Here, Fincher has successfully chosen to rely on Flynn’s page turner of a story and the compelling characters, so Gone Girl is the least flashy of his films, but one of the most accessible. I’ll say this for Fincher – I can’t remember a more perfectly cast movie.

Kim Dickens (Treme, Deadwood) is superb as the investigating detective – this time almost unrecognizable as a brunette. Tyler Perry is wonderfully fun as a crafty celebrity attorney. The previously unheralded Carrie Coon is excellent as Nick’s twin sister (she’s gone on to cash in on the Avengers franchise). Missi Pyle does such a good job as a despicable cable TV personality that I thought I was actually watching a despicable cable TV personality. And David Clennon and (especially) Lisa Banes positively gleam as Amy’s parents. (Carefully observe every behavior by the parents in this movie.)

Just like the thug in The Guard who forgets whether he had been diagnosed in prison as a sociopath or a psychopath, I had the ask The Wife, who turned me on to this passage from Psychology Today. It’s useful to read this because, although you don’t realize it for forty-five minutes or so, Gone Girl is also a study of psychopathy.

Psychopaths … are unable to form emotional attachments or feel real empathy with others, although they often have disarming or even charming personalities. Psychopaths are very manipulative and can easily gain people’s trust. They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, and will appear normal to unsuspecting people. Psychopaths are often well educated and hold steady jobs. Some are so good at manipulation and mimicry that they have families and other long-term relationships without those around them ever suspecting their true nature.

When committing crimes, psychopaths carefully plan out every detail in advance and often have contingency plans in place. Unlike their sociopathic counterparts, psychopathic criminals are cool, calm, and meticulous. Their crimes, whether violent or non-violent, will be highly organized and generally offer few clues for authorities to pursue. Intelligent psychopaths make excellent white-collar criminals and “con artists” due to their calm and charismatic natures.

Gillian Flynn changed the story’s ending for the movie. The Wife, who is a big fan of the novel, didn’t mind. Gone Girl is recommended for both those who have and have not read the book. I understand that there’s more humor in the movie, as we occasionally laugh at the extremity of the behavior of one of the characters.

It all adds up into a remarkably fun movie and one that I was still mulling over days later. Gone Girl was the best big Hollywood studio movie of 2014 (not counting releases from the prestige distribution arms of the major studios). It’s now available to stream on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Redbox.