Week Ending 8/23/24
The greenback boogie
I caught my first TIFF film this week, so the next few Fridays will be light on reviews as a result of spending most of my time with embargo titles. There are a couple today. There should be a couple next week. It all depends on how many festival screeners hit my inbox and how busy work gets.
In the meantime, I’ve spent the past month or so binging SUITS for the first time. It turned out to be a much more enjoyable show than I anticipated. The first season is a bit rough around the edges as the writers spend most of the episodes figuring out the characters (it doesn’t help that it’s very Mike-centric and he’s possibly the worst character of them all), but seasons two through five really hit their stride with cogent plot arcs and stakes that carry over from finale to premiere nicely.
Season six takes a dip. Rather than ruin why, I’ll just say that I’m glad the show knew it couldn’t go on forever with Mike’s secret being a secret. I just wish the consequences that result felt less like an obligation than a good use of time. The whole endeavor ultimately becomes about getting back on-track. They painted themselves into a corner and realized they needed to escape to continue. Thankfully, season seven is a decent step in the right direction.
Then come seasons eight and nine: also pretty good. They are a bit of a soft reboot with an influx of new characters forced by Meghan Markle leaving to become a royal. The tone and plots are right in-line with the ethos of the show, though. If anything, they prove that the show was never about Mike becoming a lawyer, but Harvey becoming a decent man.
I applaud everyone for giving us two-thirds of a great finale too. I only wish they cut to black before running around like chickens with their heads cut off during the final ten minutes with unearned stakes, ham-fisted celebration, and rushed closure. You can leave things open-ended without it being incomplete. This was the perfect opportunity to do so and the marker was right there. Oh well. Executives love to refuse to trust their audience.
Onto a rewatch of JUSTIFIED so I can finally catch CITY PRIMEVAL.
What I Watched:
THE OTHER LAURENS
[L'autre Laurens]
(limited release)
At one point during Claude Schmitz’s THE OTHER LAURENS (co-written by Kostia Testut), a police detective (Rodolphe Burger’s Alain) tells his partner that their current state of affairs is “like a bad movie.” You don’t think too much about those words at the time, but that meta commentary epitomizes the whole better than anything else on-screen. Not because the film is bad. It’s not. But because it’s so all over the place that you cannot help feeling as out of sorts as Burger’s character. This thing is supposed to be about a young woman (Louise Leroy’s Jade) begging her P.I. uncle (Olivier Rabourdin’s Gabriel) to find out who killed her father/his brother. It ends up becoming a lot more than that.
What’s so captivating about the project is that all the other stuff that gets added ultimately arrives from nowhere. Jade’s shady stepmother (Kate Moran’s Shelby) invites an old friend (Edwin Gaffney’s Marine Scott) sans context until the script demands we know it. Shelby and her late-husband François are seemingly wealthy and yet a local motorcycle club (led by Marc Barbé’s Valéry) are constantly present as though they own the large estate instead. Add the inept cops (Alain and Francis Soetens’s Francis) searching for a missing person to an entire other group of characters that we’re introduced to in the prologue before not seeing them again until the third act and it’s all a massive shell game towards an uncertain finish.
Because we’re asked to care about Gabriel and Jade for the first two-thirds of the runtime. She’s just lost her father. He’s just lost his mother (and brother, but he’s not at all concerned about him). Jade is desperate to have someone in her corner, knowing that François’s demise wasn’t as simple as the papers make it. Gabriel is empathetic enough to want to help her if only to reconnect because she reminds him of her mother, someone we sense he knew more than just as an in-law. So, we enjoy their odd couple pairing. We even start to wonder if there’s more than meets the eye courtesy of stalkers, threats, and obvious deceit. Eventually, however, plot firmly steals the wheel away from any and all character development.
This move makes us wonder what the point of investing in those two was in the first place. They inevitably become as expendable to the story as the rest so Schmitz can play within multiple genres while rapidly progressing through revelations that most filmmakers would linger upon for greater impact. They still have a major role in the overall tale, but there’s no need to be bothered with the details when their place is better suited for pulling us forward towards an entertaining if extremely streamlined, bow-tied conclusion. The film’s idiosyncrasies (like having English speakers and French speakers talk in native tongues without us fully knowing who understands what) become the real intrigue.
Do we stop caring about what might happen to Gabriel and Jade? No. We just stop worrying about guessing since the ride takes over. Our investment pivots from them to the convoluted machinations that finally start clicking into place for a wild climax leaving plenty more bodies covered in blood than souls left breathing. It’s much funnier than you might expect from the subject matter (and don’t believe it isn’t intentional either considering the weirdest random bit of dryly comic WTF energy arrives during the credits to ensure we know nothing was left to chance) and a lot darker as a result too. Because it was never about finding justice. It’s about using and abusing others for personal gain only to discover you get what you deserve in the end: nothing.
- 6/10
PLACE OF BONES
(limited release & VOD)
Remote doesn’t begin to describe the home of Pandora (Heather Graham) and her daughter Hester (Brielle Robillard). The closest town is ninety-five miles away. All their neighbors have left. And the land is so dry that the latter throws rocks onto the dirt to go through the motion of planting seeds so as not to disappoint her deceased father’s wishes of always doing her chores. Meat hasn’t been on the menu in days and the mush they eat instead is barely keeping them whole. So, when a gunshot suddenly rings out in the distance, we’d be forgiven for thinking they won’t stand a chance at survival.
This is our introduction to Audrey Cummings 1876-set western PLACE OF BONES (written by Richard Taylor). Hester goes inside to sleep with the “big knife” under her pillow while Pandora keeps watch with her revolver on the porch. When no one interrupts them by sunrise, they assume their isolated sanctuary has remained undisturbed. But it’s not long before Hester stumbles upon a barely breathing thief bleeding out by her father’s grave. Whether a conscious Calhoun (Corin Nemec) would spell trouble or not, his mere presence puts them in danger due to a gang of bad men hunting him for vengeance.
The film is thus mostly the lead-up to an inevitable gunfight. It’s the easy-to-underestimate Pandora against the difficult-to-rattle Bear John (Tom Hopper). If she can acquire some rifles, her trio might stand a chance. If his oft-distracted cohort comprised of men who act on impulse rather than intelligence don’t sour his plans, he’ll be leaving with a saddlebag full of stolen cash. But before either gets their chance to walk away alive, a bloodbath must ensue courtesy of an expert tracker (Gattlin Griffith’s Cherokee Jack) and an infinite supply of stubbornness on both sides. It’s a decent little suspense-filled affair.
Most of the appeal lies with Graham and Nemec verbally sparring for the duration as a woman of conviction and a man of greed. The two give us a lot to chew on as we wait for Bear John’s crew to arrive (his own actions conversely begging us to ignore their one-dimensional evilness by making us endure empty examples). Talk about the necessity of money and/or pride tells us that neither Pandora nor Calhoun will back down until they’re either dead or the last one standing. They’re an effective pair that gives the otherwise straightforward plot intrigue even if the whole progresses pretty much exactly as it must.
Taylor and Cummings do try and throw a curveball at the eleventh hour to remind us how the proceedings have more or less distracted us from the question of how Pandora and Hester have been able to survive this long, but I wonder if that revelation could have helped spice things up by coming out earlier. Because while it retroactively colors everything that came before it to earn a wry, if fleeting, smile, it doesn’t change the fact that it all actually unfolds with much less excitement.
- 6/10
Cinematic F-Bombs:
This week saw THE DARKEST HOUR (2011), SMASH HIS CAMERA (2010), and THE UNION (2024) added to the archive (cinematicfbombs.com).
Joel Kinnaman dropping an f-bomb in THE DARKEST HOUR.
New Releases This Week:
(Review links where applicable)
Opening Buffalo-area theaters 8/23/24 -
BETWEEN THE TEMPLES at North Park Theatre (select times); Regal Transit
“You almost can't imagine how the rest of the film will match that prologue because it feels so meticulously constructed as a self-contained gag to introduce its tone and characters, but there's really zero drop-off afterwards.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
BLINK TWICE at Dipson Flix & Capitol; AMC Maple Ridge & Market Arcade; Regal Elmwood, Transit, Galleria & Quaker
THE CROW at Dipson McKinley, Flix & Capitol; AMC Maple Ridge & Market Arcade; Regal Elmwood, Transit, Galleria & Quaker
THE FORGE at Dipson Capitol; AMC Market Arcade; Regal Elmwood, Transit & Galleria
MARUTHI NAGAR SUBRAMANYAM at Regal Elmwood
STRANGE DARLING at Regal Elmwood, Transit, Galleria & Quaker
VAAZHAI at Regal Elmwood
Streaming from 8/23/24 -
HELL HOLE – Shudder on 8/23
“[Arguing] to keep the specimen alive inside an unwilling host perfectly parallels the ongoing abortion issue. It's a fantastic layer of subtext that gives what is ultimately a low-budget creature feature a lot more merit beyond cheap thrills.” – Full thoughts at The Film Stage.
HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA - CHAPTER 1 – Max on 8/23
INCOMING – Netflix on 8/23
THE KILLER – Peacock on 8/23
THE SUPREMES AT EARL’S ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT – Hulu on 8/23
TÒKUNBÒ – Netflix on 8/23
UNTAMED ROYALS – Netflix on 8/28
Now on VOD/Digital HD -
ART OF A HIT (8/20)
THE CLEAN UP CREW (8/20)
CRUMB CATCHER (8/20)
EVIL DOES NOT EXIST (8/20)
“The narrative concerns itself with its characters more than plot. [Hamaguchi] presents them as opposing forces with the potential for common ground against a wholly different entity: Mother Nature.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
GREEN BORDER (8/20)
INSIDE OUT 2 (8/20)
THE MOUNTAIN WITHIN ME (8/20)
ODDITY (8/20)
“How McCarthy exposes his truths is more effective than the plausibility and narrative soundness of them, but I'd rather that than the other way around.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.
SIGHT (8/20)
CATCHING DUST (8/23)
GREEDY PEOPLE (8/23)
PLACE OF BONES (8/23)
Thoughts are above.
THE SECRET ART OF HUMAN FLIGHT (8/23)
“Mendoza does a nice job making the film look better than its budget constraints and Orenshein's script gets to the heart of love and loss in both its goofy and sad moments.” – Full thoughts at HHYS.