thriller

BEAST: finally unleashed … and untethered

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Jessie Buckley in BEAST

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).  Moll 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 only revulsion.  Jessie 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.

Geraldine James in BEAST

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.

Stream of the Week: Mackenzie Davis in BAD TURNS WORSE

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BAD TURN WORSE
Mackenzie Davis in BAD TURNS WORSE

Because Mackenzie Davis brings such a magical quality to her title role in Tully, my video pick is an earlier starring role in a little-known indie.  That film is a fine first feature with a GREAT title for a contemporary noir thriller: Bad Turn Worse. It’s set in a nowheresville Texas cotton gin town. Three childhood friends have just graduated from high school, and two are looking to escape to college – Bobby (Jeremy Allen White) and Sue (MacKenzie Davis). Not sharing a speck of Bobby’s and Sue’s intellectual curiosity, Sue’s longtime boyfriend B.J. (Logan Huffman) doesn’t want them to go; B.J. is dreamy and testosterone-filled, but bone-headed and weak-willed, with a gift for making impulsive, destructive choices. Bobby is sweet on Sue, and she is starting to be repelled by B.J.’s immaturity and selfishness. Sure enough, B.J. does something which entangles them all in a lethal jam.

Pretty soon there’s a double cross within a double cross, with a love triangle overlay. Nobody can trust anybody else, and somebody is gonna have to die…

The young leads are good, but two veteran TV actors sparkle in supporting turns. Mark Pellegrino plays a ruthless and crazy-scary villain that no one should cross. Jon Gries (Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite) is hilariously deadpan as the corrupt Sheriff who tries to connect the dots for Bobby with metaphors – and Bobby’s dots just aren’t connecting.

Bad Turn Worse’s noir sensibility comes from 1) the amoral attitude that sometimes you gotta break the law and 2) the expectation that there can’t be a happy ending with all this treachery in play.

Bad Turn Worse is written by Dutch Southern and is the directorial debut of Simon and Zeke Hawkins. These guys have definitely proven that they can pull off a solid thriller. Bad Turn Worse is available streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

[Note: You can see Davis in a completely contrasting role, as a misfit wannabe singer-songwriter, in A Country Called Home.]

THOROUGHBREDS: which of these girls is the most sociopathic?

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THOROUGHBREDS

The psychological thriller Thoroughbreds is a witty and novel exploration of sociopathy.  The story is about two teen daughters of the Connecticut super-rich:  Amanda (Olivia Cooke – so good in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) and Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy).   Although the girls have known each other since early childhood, it turns out that Amanda’s mom, at her wit’s end, has paid for a “play date” with Lily.  This seems like a mismatch, but the two bond and then scheme to murder Lily’s odious step-father, Mark.

Amanda admits that she doesn’t feel emotions. That being said, she is very perceptive and self-aware about her lack of feelings.  Although she has an Asberger’s affect, she has learned to mimic emotional behavior.   Amanda has shocked the community with a disturbing act and has been socially ostracized.

Lily, on the other hand, is at first glance a normal teen – normal for the over-privileged, that is.  It turns out that she has her issues, too.  In the film’s biggest understatement, one girl says to the other, “empathy not your strong suit”.

Thoroughbreds is the writing and directing feature debut for Cory Finley.   Although it has its obvious similarities to psychological thrillers in the vein of Strangers on a Train, this film is not so much about the plot as an exploration of these two personalities   Finley has taken two types of sociopaths and combined them into a very original match-up.  For example, one of the girls is definitely a very high-functioning borderline personality – but she’s not the one who has been diagnosed as such.

As we are immersed in the story, we focus less about whether they’re going to kill Mark and more on which girl is more disturbed.

Both Cooke and Taylor-Joy deliver fine performances.  The late Anton Yechin appears in a very funny role as the Connecticut suburbs’ bumbling bottom-feeder.

Paul Sparks is excellent as the repellent step-dad Mark.  In Mark, Finley has crafted a character who excels in business and his many hobbies (riding, tennis, kendo), each of which he pursues obsessively.  He is the only character who has a very clear and accurate analysis of Lily’s personality.  Mark is the guy who outsiders would see as a high-achiever in many fields, even though he’s gone beyond the pale with his mega-rowing machine and monthly juice purges.  But once we see his domination and control of Lily’s mom and the creepy sexual undertones of his relationship with Lily, we want him to go.

I had been eager to see Thoroughbreds since I first watched this deliciously noirish trailer.  It was worth the wait.  Thoroughbreds is a very promising calling card by Cory Finley.

 

DVD/Stream of the Week: BLUE RUIN – fresh take on the revenge thriller

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Macon Blair in BLUE RUIN
Macon Blair in BLUE RUIN

Here’s an entirely fresh take on the revenge thriller. Blue Ruin, an audience favorite on the festival circuit in 2013, didn’t get a theatrical release, and I would have missed it entirely but for a suggestion from my friend Jose.

As the film opens, we are following a homeless man and observing his survival tactics; once we’re hooked, we learn that a traumatic incident led to his homelessness. Then we watch him methodically prepare for an entirely different mission. There is very little dialogue in the first 30 minutes. And then we have 60 minutes of lethal cat-and-mouse, with intense suspense about which of the characters will survive and how. As a thriller, this is first class.

What makes Blue Ruin so fresh is the lead character, who has been shattered by a tragedy in his life – and who isn’t at all confident about his ability to redress it. This ain’t a Charles Bronson or Liam Neeson type hunter-of-bad-guys. Instead, our hero is as scared and fragile as most of us would be if we were being hunted for our lives – and so we relate to him.

Macon Blair is superb as the protagonist. He’s entirely believable both as a damaged down-and-outer and as a man-on-a-mission. Man, I hope Blair gets cast in more movies – he’s just great here.

Devin Ratray, one of the execrable, buffoonish cousins in Nebraska, is very good in an entirely different role here – a slacker scarred by his war experiences who nevertheless remains very skilled.

Blue Ruin was written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier. He is responsible for the wholly original lead character and the intense pace of the film, along with the meticulously economical storytelling; the exposition never relies on even one extra word of dialogue.

Blue Ruin is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube and Xbox Video.

Cinequest: BERLIN FALLING

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Tom Wlaschiha and Ken Duken in BERLIN FALLING

In the intense German thriller Berlin Falling, Frank (Ken Duken) is a troubled vet hoping to reunite at Christmas with his estranged wife and kid.  But he picks up the hitchhiker Andreas (Tom Wlaschiha of Game of Thrones), who turns out to be any contemporary European’s worst nightmare (exactly what kind of nightmare is revealed at the end).  Andreas subdues Frank with a highly personalized threat and forces him him to engage in a horrific terrorist attack, complete with its own chilling Isis video.  It looks like there is no way out for Frank, and Berlin Falling ticks on like a time bomb to its uncompromising and violent conclusion.

With its comments on terrorism, immigration and xenophobia, Berlin Falling covers much of the same ground as this year’s German Oscar submission, In the Fade, but with a huge plot twist.  It’s the writing-directing feature debut for actor Ken Duken, who plays Frank.  It all works as a nail-biter, but it’s a bit exhausting.  I saw Berlin Falling at Cinequest.

Cinequest: THE LINE

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THE LINE

In the neo-noir Slovak thriller The Line (Ciara), Adam’s (Tomas Mastalir) life is about to be changed by history. The Schengen agreement, which opens the borders between the European nations, is about to be implemented. That’s a problem for Adam, who leads a crew of smugglers who sneak Ukrainian cigarettes through Slovakia to Austria and other European markets. First, there’s no longer going to be any market for smuggling anything out of Slovakia. Second, the border between Slovakia and the Ukraine is going to be hardened, so he’s no longer going to be able to source anything from the Ukraine. What was going to be his last big job goes awry, leaving him in hopeless hock to a ruthless Ukrainian gangster. So he’s going to have to take a chance on a very dangerous job.

We see Adam’s crew equipping vehicles with hidden compartments and making bribes at the border.  One crew member sends off a load of bootleg cigarettes with “Cancer is headed to Austria”.

Adam is one tough mother, a guy who is exceptionally tough even by the standards of movie crime bosses.  But he’s under increasing pressure, and that same pressure is incentivizing people he relies on to go sideways on him.  At its heart, The Line is a film about betrayal.

It turns out that Adam runs a business started by his mother (Emília Vásáryová), who is herself the most formidable and lethal granny since Livia Soprano or Lillian Gish in The Night of the Hunter.  There’s a great scene near the end where Adam and mom experience a shared memory of what happened to his father.

Adam’s wife (Zuzana Fialová) knows him very well.  She also knows when to hold her cards and when to fold them.

The Line keeps getting darker – and then even darker – until a major veer at the end.  It’s an effective character-driven thriller.

The Line was directed by Peter Bebjak, who acted in the best foreign film at the 2017 Cinequest, The Teacher.  The Line was Slovenia’s submission to this year’s Oscars.

Cinequest: LUBA

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Nicole Maroon in LUBA

Exploring the challenges of co-parenting with an addict, the realistic Canadian drama Luba is topped off with a ticking time bomb finish.  Luba (Nicole Maroon) is a struggling single mom whose estranged husband Donnie (Vladimir Jon Cubrt of Hannibal and Designated Survivor) is a crackhead.  Donnie really loves his son, and Luba tries to let her son create some memories with his dad.

Unfortunately, Donnie is helpless to his addiction  At his best, he is manipulative, sponging Luba’s last few discretionary dollars.  At his worst, he is dangerously irresponsible.  Then Donnie decompensates and goes lethally out of control.

In a futile attempt to make ends meet, Luba lives a hamster wheel experience, bouncing between multiple crappy waitress jobs and childcare that she can’t afford.  Her only emotional and babysitting support comes from other busy moms and from Donnie’s sympathetic mother.  Co-star Vladimir Jon Cubrt wrote Luba and completely captures the essence of Luba’s life – she’s trapped without any moment of relief or enrichment for herself.

Luba doesn’t have unrealistic expectations.  She just wants to pay the rent on time, have some adult male companionship, and, being Canadian, play an occasional pickup game of ice hockey.  Cubrt’s screenplay vividly brings alive another fundamental truth – the grinding impact of living with an addict’s roller coaster of self-sabotage.   Luba’s attempts at moments of normality keep getting hijacked by Donnie’s selfishness.  Repeatedly, respite suddenly turns into panic.  This is Cubrt’s first screenplay, but he has written three original stage productions for the theater company he founded in Toronto.

Luba is the first feature for director Caley Wilson.  This an authentic and relatable drama with an ending that works as a thriller. Cinequest hosts Luba’s world premiere.

Cinequest: HUNTING LANDS

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Marshall Cook in HUNTING LANDS

In the slow burn thriller Hunting Lands, Frank (Marshall Cook) is living a solitary life as a subsistence hunter in a forest cabin, a long pickup drive outside his northern Michigan hometown.  Frank is a guy with serious wilderness skills, loading his own ammo and field dressing the large mammals that he fells with a single shot.  He witnesses a serious crime in the woods and is immediately driven to make things right – but not in the way we expect.

Frank has nobody to talk to, and we see him silently triage the situation and begin a hunt for the perpetrator.  Silent observation comes naturally to a hunter, and we see him wordlessly patrolling the small towns in his pickup, as he tracks down his human prey.  We see what Frank sees, and one of the most pivotal characters is only seen in long shot until the last 15 minutes or so.

HUNTING LANDS
HUNTING LANDS

Hunting Lands is the first feature from writer-director Zack Wilcox, a story-teller who is thankfully willing to let the audience connect the dots.  Because Hunting Lands is only 83 minutes long, Wilcox can take his time watching Frank watch others.  Even as Frank is still and quiet, the audience is gripped by what he is going to do next.

An original character, Frank seems unusually self-aware for a hermit.  When he finally gets in a conversation, he turns out to be an articulate guy who understands and can explain why he has become a recluse.

Wilcox follows Billie Wilder’s screenwriting advice – “don’t hang around”; the ending is not even one second too long.  And Wilcox knows that a little ambiguity about what happens afterwards can pack a punch.

Cinequest will host the word premiere of Hunting Lands.

HUNTING LANDS

IN THE FADE: a moral choice in a revenge thriller

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Diane Kruger in IN THE FADE, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Diane Kruger gives a brilliant performance in the searing and emotionally devastating German thriller In the Fade.  Kruger plays a German woman whose husband and child are murdered.  Her life essentially disintegrates, as a whodunit carries on mostly beyond her.  Katja is not exactly the German Betty Crocker.   She’s tatted up and has married a Turkish Kurdish man who is a reformed drug dealer.  But her grief is universal, and so is her impulse for revenge.  Her husband’s attorney Danilo (Denis Moschitto) leads her on a quest for justice.  But she must decide whether to take justice into her own hands.  And how. And at what cost.  The final scene in In the Fade is unforgettable.

German writer-director Fatih Akin, like Katja’s husband, is the son of Turkish immigrants.  In In the Fade’s taut one hour, 46 minutes, he has crafted a pulsating page-turner.  It can’t be easy to keep the pace of a movie from grinding down when the protagonist is plunging into a puddle of grief, but Akin pulls it off.  The horror of the murder is not shown on-screen, but Akin funds a way to make it even more horrible than if we had watched it happen.  Akin has made a successful thriller here, not a “message movie”, but he also effectively addresses the topical issues of immigration, racism and terrorism.

Diane Kruger in IN THE FADE, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Diane Kruger won Best Actress at last year’s Cannes film festival for this performance.  She creates a fundamentally vibrant Katja, who must react to a horrific loss, and then to a series of indignities capped by brutal gut-punch from her mother-in-law.  This is a profoundly authentic depiction of grief.  When any chance for resolution is jerked away from Katja by a shocking injustice, Kruger takes Katja into steely resolve.

Kruger is an impressively versatile actress.  She’s equally good as an American detective with Asberger’s in the absorbing American miniseries The Bridge and as a whim-driven queen in the French costume drama Farewell, My Queen.

Denis Moschitto and Diane Kruger in IN THE FADE, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

In the Fade is filled with excellent performances. Besides Moschitto, I’ll point out

  • Johannes Krisch as cinema’s most despicable defense attorney, loathsome down to the prefunctory danke with which he ends each argument.
  • Hening Peker as the earnest-to-a-fault police investigator, doing everything rationally and by the book, but not in a way comfortable for our sympathetic victim, Katja.
  • Ulrich Tukur as a character who has found serenity in doing the right thing, difficult as it may have been.

In the Fade won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign language Picture last Sunday and
opens this weekend in San Francisco.

DVD/Stream of the Week: DEADFALL – dysfunctional families converge just in time for Thanksgiving

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Charlie Hunnam and Olivia Wilde in DEADFALL
Charlie Hunnam and Olivia Wilde in DEADFALL

Deadfall is a solid recent thriller that has flown flew under the radar. Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde are brother and sister running for the Canadian border after a casino heist. They wreck their car and split up. The brother sets off overland, leaving a trail of murderous carnage. The local cops are on the alert, including the sheriff’s deputy daughter (Kate Mara). Meanwhile, a bad luck boxer (Charlie Hannum of Sons of Anarchy and The Lost City of Z) is released from prison, impulsively commits another crime and is headed for his parents’ (Sissy Spacek and Kris Kristofferson) remote northern cabin. The sister hitches a ride with the boxer. Everybody converges at the boxer’s parents’ place for an extremely stressful Thanksgiving dinner.

An essential element of this thriller is that all of the families are dysfunctional. The siblings have survived a hellish upbringing, from which the older brother has rescued his little sister; unfortunately, he has emerged as a psychopath himself and has infantilized the sister. The relationship between the boxer and his father has been poisoned by a long-festering dispute. The sheriff resents and belittles his bright and highly professional daughter while doting on her idiot brothers.

The core of the movie is the evolving relationship between Wilde’s sister and Hunnam’s boxer. Neither knows that the other is on the lam. She cynically seduces him because he is useful. But then she starts to fall for him, and, by Thanksgiving dinner, her loyalties are uncertain.

Sissy Spacek is brilliant as the boxer’s mom, who must steer over the wreckage of the relationship between her son and her husband, and who must then serve a Thanksgiving dinner to a volatile killer who is holding a shotgun on the other guests. She is a great actor, and she’s as good here as in any of her signature performances.

The cinematography, characters, acting and the directorial choices by Stefan Ruzowitzky are excellent. What keeps Deadfall from being one of the year’s best is some trite, TV movie level dialogue along the way. Still, it’s a good watch. Deadfall is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and can be streamed from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Note: This is NOT the 1993 Deadfall, with Nicholas Cage even more over-the-top than usual.