thriller – Page 6 – The Movie Gourmet

DVD/Stream of the Week: THE AURA – smart enough to plan the perfect crime, but is that enough?

January 22, 2019 by movie gourmet

The Aura is a brilliant 2005 neo-noir from Argentina that I wasn’t familiar with until the Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller, programmed it into the 2017 Noir City film festival. The 2019 Noir City opens this weekend.

The Aura is about a taxidermist who leads a boring life, but fantasizes about the Perfect Crime. He is perpetually cranky because he is so dissatisfied, but he resists getting out of his life rut. It’s not easy to be his friend (nor, apparently, his wife). Unexpectedly, he finally finds himself in position to participate in a major heist.

He is epileptic (the movie’s title is from the sensation just before a seizure); he and we never know if and when he will pass out from an episode, a particularly dangerous wild card in a thriller. He also has a photographic memory, and that can help him if he has the nerve to go through with the crime.

The taxidermist is played by one of my favorite actors, Ricardo Darin (Nine Queens, The Secret in their Eyes, Carancho, Wild Tales) . I like to think of Darin as the Argentine Joe Mantegna. Darin can expertly play a slightly twisted Every Man, and he excels at neo-noir.

The rest of the cast is excellent, especially Walter Reyno as The Real Thing criminal, Alejandro Awada as the taxidermist’s long suffering only friend and Dolores Fonzi as the intriguing woman in the woods.

Sadly, writer-director Fabián Bielinsky died at 47 after making only two features – the wonderful con artist film Nine Queens (also starring Darin) and The Aura. Those two films indicate that he was a special talent.

Darin’s taxidermist is smart enough to plan a Perfect Crime, but professional criminals have that sociopathic lack of empathy needed to carry out crimes. Does he? Does he get the money? Does he get the girl? Does he even escape with his life? It’s a neo-noir, so you’ll have to watch it to find out.

By the way, the dog in this movie is important. Watch for the dog at the very end.

The Aura is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon and Hulu.

Stream of the Week: LOST SOLACE – a psychopath afflicted by empathy

August 13, 2019January 8, 2019 by movie gourmet

The Canadian psychological thriller Lost Solace takes a highly original premise and turns it into a pedal-to-the-metal thriller. It’s an astonishingly successful debut for director and co-writer Chris Scheuerman.

Co-writer Andrew Jenkins stars as the psychopath Spence, whose life is devoted to exploiting women, stealing their stuff and emotionally devastating them to boot. Spence is remarkably skilled and seems unstoppable until he unwisely ingests a recreational drug – he starts suffering hallucinatory episodes that are intensely emotional. Here’s the brilliantly original core of Lost Solace – having the occasional fit of feelings and empathy really gets in the way of being a coolly cruel psychopath.

Spence targets the emotionally fragile rich girl Azaria (Melissa Roxburgh). Melissa is burdened both by the care for her violently psychotic brother Jory (Charlie Kerr) and by years of verbal evisceration by her prick of a father, Chuck (Michael Kopsa). Able to peg Spence as a scumbag, Jory offers Spence a share of his inheritance to kill Chuck. It’s a plan hatched by a psychotic – what could possibly go wrong? Add an ambitious physician (Leah Gibson) who is eager to cash in on a cure for psychopathy, and we’re off to the races.

Scheuerman is an economical story-teller who lets the audience connect the dots. Spence doesn’t even speak until well into the movie. But Scheuerman spins a great tale, and as he reveals his characters, we see that Chuck may be every bit as fiendish as Spence and that Betty the doctor, may be just as greedy. There’s plenty that can unravel Spence’s Perfect Crime, and that’s what keeps us on the edges of our seats.

Andrew Jenkins is completely believable as both the supremely confident Spence and, later, as the Spence determined to steel his way through his unexpected confusion. The rest of the cast is exceptional, too, especially Kopsa and Gibson.

Lost Solace was my personal favorite at Cinequest 2016 and can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Stream of the Week: CUSTODY: the searing essence of domestic violence

November 13, 2018 by movie gourmet

Thomas Gioria in CUSTODY. Courtesy Kino Lorber.

In his searing French thriller Custody, writer-director Xavier Legrand paints the most elemental and realistic depiction of domestic violence that I’ve seen. Custody begins with a child custody hearing over an almost 18-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son. Neither kids wants anything to do with the dad, and there’s more than a hint of spousal abuse in their past, but the court awards the father weekend visits with his son.

The father (Denis Ménochet) is acting very reasonably at the custody hearing, of course, but we soon see signs of the need for domination and control that is the core of domestic violence. He can’t bear not knowing where his ex-wife (Léa Drucker) lives. He needs to be the “winner” in every transaction. With naked entitlement, he says “I get an extra hour because I picked you up an hour late”. Too vile even for his own parents, the father is an insistent stalker.

Especially through the eyes of the son (Thomas Gioria in a miraculous performance), Legrand helps the audience understand the traumatization of family violence. Every family member lives with dread of the father surprising them like a bogeyman. The boy takes on responsibility to protect his mom and sister by keeping the dad away from them – it’s an emotionally wracking burden that no child should bear. The mom is not a hero or a feminist icon – she just wants to survive and not be a victim.

Intimate partner violence is about power and control. In Custody, the father doesn’t react physically until the movie’s midpoint, and he doesn’t touch another character until almost the end. But, without hitting anyone, he is successful in terrorizing the family. By buzzing the mom’s doorbell in the middle of night, he proves that he really is a terrorist. And his lethality emerges in the thriller ending. LeGrand says that the thriller aspect of Custody comes organically from fear.

Léa Drucker and Denis Ménochet, in CUSTODY. Courtesy Kino Lorber.

Every performance is excellent, and Menochet’s has received plaudits. But the child actor Thomas Gloria goes places you don’t expect a child to go; his performance is stunning. Menochet discusses his performance and Gioria’s in this Inside Picturehouse interview on YouTube.

As the sister, Mathilde Auneveux delivers a mesmerizing performance of Proud Mary at her birthday party. She is clearly distracted by at least one event in her life, but which is it?

In Custody, Legrand has also filmed the most perfectly shot pregnancy test scene ever.

Custody is the remarkable first feature from Xavier Lagrand. The story grew out of his Oscar-winning short film with the same actors, Just Before Losing Everything. Custody won Legrand the Silver Lion (Best Director) at the Venice film festival. I saw it at Silicon Valley’s Cinema Club months before its release.

Custody can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Stream of the Week: REVENGE – the web is spun

October 23, 2018 by movie gourmet

In the Norwegian suspense thriller Revenge, the slightly creepy Rebekka (Siren Jørgensen) appears at a hotel on a remote fjord under the false pretense that she is a travel writer. The hotel is otherwise empty because it is off-season (think The Shining). She ingratiates herself with the hotel’s owner Morten, the most economically and socially significant person in town, and his wife (Maria Bock). It turns out that twenty years before, Morten date-raped Rebekka’s little sister, leading to her suicide. Now Rebekka wants to exact vengeance.

Revenge becomes a tick-tock suspenser as Rebekka deliberately lays her trap. We’re able to see some, but not all, of the web that she spins, which will put in jeopardy Morten’s reputation, marriage, business and his very health and survival. Can she pull it off? And how lethal will her revenge be?

It’s the first feature for Kjersti Steinsbø, who adapted the screenplay and directed. She has created a real page-turner here. In one very effective touch, it turns out that one of the characters knows FAR more than we initially suspect.

Revenge is uniformly well-acted, but Anders Baasmo Christian, as Bimbo the bartender, is exceptionally good. Just keep your focus on Bimbo. There’s more there than initially meets the eye. And Bimbo’s relationships with both Rebekka and Morten are very conflicted and complicated.

The ending is satisfying, and Morten’s ultimate fate is unexpected. Revenge was one of the world cinema high points of the 2017 Cinequest. Revenge can be streamed from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

SEARCHING: more than a gimmick

May 19, 2020October 4, 2018 by movie gourmet

I regret that I’m a latecomer to the thriller Searching, which has been in theaters for a while – this is a damn good movie. A Silicon Valley engineer David (Jon Cho) has been single-parenting his daughter since the death of his wife when 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 drama Locke, claustrophobicly 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” .)

Stream of the Week: BEAST – finally unleashed … and untethered

December 10, 2018September 18, 2018 by movie gourmet

The psychological thriller Beast is set on the British Channel Island of Jersey, where the young woman Moll lives with her affluent family. Moll (Jessie Buckley) is the disregarded and put-upon step-sister in her own family – ignored except when being assigned the task de jour. Only the local cop is sweet on Moll, which brings her revulsion. Moll is dramatically rescued from a bad situation by the scruffy, somewhat feral, dreamy-eyed Pascal (Johnny Flynn). Moll and Pascal fall in love.

It turns out that Moll has within herself confidence, strength and passion – all long and cruelly suppressed by her mother. Pascal pulls Moll from her horrid family and unleashes, for better and for worse, Moll’s true persona. So this is a pretty fair romance to this point, but I did mention that Beast is psychological thriller. A serial killer has been prowling Jersey, raping and murdering young women and girls. The police suspect…Pascal.

Now we experience some unsettling ambiguity. Does Moll protect Pascal because she thinks him innocent? Or because she thinks that he’s the murderer? In his impressive first feature, writer-director Michael Pearce finally reveals something in Pascal’s past that gives us pause. And, even later, we learn something about Moll’s past, too. Holy shit. And we’re off on a roller coaster, wondering what Moll is going to do next and why, all the way to the shocking ending.

Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn in BEAST

The reason that Beast works so well is the stunning performance of Jessie Buckley. As an audience, we’re always drawn to Buckley’s Moll, at first understanding and relating to her defeatedness, inner rage and lust. But then Buckley keeps us from knowing exactly what’s going on inside, although we learn to accept that it sure is unpredictable. Buckley is Irish, and her singing career was launched on an American Idol-type show in Britain. She’s since acted in some British Isles television series. She is an incredible force of nature in this role.

Veteran actress Geraldine James gets the juicy role of the controlling and oppressive mother, her every remark filled with manipulation, shaming and the inducement of guilt. The mom is by FAR the least sympathetic character – and this story also has a serial killer in it. Johnny Flynn is very good as Pascal.

But it’s Jessie Buckley’s performance and Michael Pearce’s story that should bring you to see Beast. It’s a heckuva ride. You can stream Beast on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

LET THE CORPSES TAN: an exercise in style

August 29, 2018 by movie gourmet

A scene from LET THE CORPSES TAN, courtesy of Kino Lorber

Neo-noir and Spaghetti Westerns converge in the hyper-violent and stylized Belgian thriller Let the Corpses Tan.

Written and directed by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, this is a contemporary thriller that pays loving homage to the Sergio Leone canon. Tight closeups on characters’ eyes aren’t just for the big showdowns in this flick. They even use two Ennio Morricone musical cues from 1969 and 1971. A pivotal character even smokes cigarillos like Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name in the Leone movies.

Let the Corpses Tan is set in a compound of ruins atop a Mediterranean cliff, occupied by an oversexed artist who hosts visitors. Besides a writer, she’s hosting three mysterious out-towners. They turn out to be criminals who, with their shady lawyer, have pulled off an armored car heist and are flush in gold bars. Just as they are ready to sneak away, the writer is surprised by his estranged wife, her kid and her nanny. Then two cops happen upon the residents, and a gun battle explodes.

There’s only one road out of the compound and two groups of criminals and two groups of the non-criminals occupy various shelters in the ruins. It’s a standoff because no one can escape – or escape with the gold. They are forced to hunt each other in a lethal and claustrophobic game of cat-and-mouse, including even the guy caught without any clothes. Under life-and-death pressure, allegiances become malleable and the double crosses and side-switching begin.

So do the casualties. Sam Peckinpah would wince at some of the gore and splatter, and Let the Corpses Tan lives up to its deliciously brutal title.

As exhaustion mounts from the siege, various characters have vivid fantasies. Let the Corpses Tan gets very, very trippy. One breast milk crucifixion fantasy is like nothing I have seen or could have imagined. Eventually, there’s a Death character in female form, at one point a urinating Death.

There’s one interesting character. The artist/hostess is basically a goddess of carnality. She is played by Elina Löwensohn (from 1994’s Amateur with Isabelle Huppert), and Löwensohn’s eyes are voracious.

Let the Corpses Tan is essentially a soulless exercise in style, more interesting than gripping. It’s a visual stunner, though, and the Leone references are fun.

Fairuza Balk, Ryan Merriman (rear) and Rick Ravanello in DOSE OF REALITY

I’m sure that you’ve never seen this week’s video pick because I don’t think it got a theatrical release. It’s the indie thriller Dose of Reality, which I saw at Cinequest in 2013.

Dose of Reality packs wire-to-wire intensity and a surprise ending that no one will see coming. A woman is found in a bar’s restroom after closing time, apparently beaten and raped, but unable to remember by whom. Two bar employees are the only possible suspects. Both deny it, and the woman launches a series of searing mind games to determine her attacker.

Fairuza Balk (American History X, Almost Famous) commands the screen as the woman. Her character, starting from a place of utter victimization, becomes totally dominant over the men. The most interesting of the guys is played by veteran TV actor Rick Ravanello (106 acting credits on IMDb). Ravanello’s eyes have an uncommon capacity to credibly take the character through dimness, cunning, tweaked impairment, guilt and terror.

It’s a plenty compelling movie for the first 75 minutes, but Dose of Reality is all about the Big Surprise at the end – which is a shocker on the scale of The Crying Game. Afterward, I was able to reflect back and identify at least four clues in the story, but every one of the 250 audience members at Dose of Reality’s Cinequest world premiere was rocked by the surprise on first viewing. Actor Ravanello recounts that when he first read the script, he got to the end and blurted “No Fucking Way!”. It’s a success for writer-director Christopher Glatis.

Dose of Reality is available to stream on Amazon.