Recent Viewings, Part 2

[lester1/2jr]

Dark Mirror (1946) - This was a little ridiculous, but enjoyably so. It's one of those dual role movies, but the actress, Olivia De Havilland, wears the same outfit for both twins she plays and it's confusing. One of them killed somebody at the start the movie, which isn't shown and it's the beginning of the confusion. As police investigate the murder, they/ she go to be studied by a psychiatrist who studies twins and he can't figure anything out either.

I've always liked Olivia de Havilland. She's pretty and a good actress I mean what more do you want? I guess it's just the fact that there have been lots of movies/ shows/ etc with this gimmick in the intervening years so it seems less clever and more random. Besides of that, the story is solid and works well enough as a crime drama. 



4.25 /5 watched on Plex which is like tubi but not as good

[LordGraal]

Black Bag (2025)

One of those ensemble cast movies but for me it was only average.  Pretty good performances overall particularly from Michael Fassbender and Marisa Abela.  Although occasionally the delivery sounds wooden and very cliched in a typically British spy thriller way.  There's too much quick-fire reactionary dialogue that we hear a lot of these days in an attempt to portray intelligent/tense dialogue.  But it all comes across as clever-clever.  I liked the style it was shot in and there are some good scenes. I kept with it to the end as it just about kept me engaged.  It's a dialogue heavy film and quite short at 93 mins which is one reason how I stuck with it.

6/10 I think.

[M.10rda]

THE PERFECT COUPLE (2024):
I came for Liev Schreiber (well, I came because Madame was watching this and I saw that Schreiber was in it) but I stayed for the one-and-only greatest onscreen performer in cinema history, Isabelle Adjani, who receives her own "Guest Starring" credit separate from the main cast, as she should, even though she's in all six episodes with everyone else. Besides Adjani (and Schreiber, one of my favorite contemporary actors since his gonzo performances in mid-90s schlock like PHANTOMS and SCREAM 2 in spite of him rarely getting to appear in good projects, including this one) there's very little reason to recommend this 360-ish minute mini-series that easily could have worked ideally as a two-and-a-quarter hour feature.

Schreiber and Nicole Kidman are disgustingly wealthy people hosting the wedding of one of their adult sons, which is interrupted by the mysterious murder of one of the guests. The first four hours are almost entirely consumed with tiresome soap operatic relationship melodrama (a character in 2024 actually delivers the hoary old chestnut about looking them in the eyes and telling them that you don't want this and if you do they'll leave you alone forever) before the police investigation finally shifts into high gear in hours 5 and 6. Actually you could just start watching Episode 5 and you would miss absolutely nothing essential to the plot. It took four or five writers to accomplish this somehow, though only one director, who also gave the world BIRDBOX and (rather improbably) was not produced by Reese Witherspoon. 

For lack of much plot, I spent a lot of time contemplating how PERFECT COUPLE portrays age, likely in the service of its female lead. Schreiber and Kidman's characters have been together for 30 years. Schreiber is 57 presumably playing his age, and still looks (as he always has) like what would happen if Eddie Deezen successfully completed the Charles Atlas fitness program (though Schreiber has curiously assumed David Mamet's hair and glasses for this role). Kidman is 57 and her character could in theory be 48 but presumably no younger, and in most close-ups she's starting to look like she's reprocessed by AI, like you fed some photos of Ann-Margaret and Jane Fonda from 1960 into your computer and told it to generate a youthful Nicole Kidman and it just looks unnatural. To contribute to the unheimlich quality, Schreiber's young mistress (supposedly the age of his son's fiancee) is played by Meghann Fahy, who is 35 but looks like a well-lit 40 year old morning show host, presumably to not overshadow Kidman. And then there's Adjani playing Schreiber's former mistress. Adjani is 70 and has clearly had some work done, but still looks like Isabelle Adjani which is to say an unearthly beauty like few others, and there's no way Kidman will look like Adjani in 13 years or ever. This is where one's mind wanders when one is forced to stare at glamorous people having affairs and applying moisturizer instead of trying to solve a murder.

Also with Dakota Fanning (very good in an underwritten role), Jack Reynor as an even bigger piece of crap than he played in MIDSOMMAR, Sam Nivola (son of Alessandro and Emily Mortimer) playing the exact same role he played in WHITE LOTUS S3, and Michael Beach as the police chief, who made me remember how good ONE FALSE MOVE was and how I should rewatch it some day.

3/5 because Adjani
TBH if Isabelle Adjani stabbed me in the face with a shrimp knife for six hours I'd give the experience a 3/5. Actually if Isabelle Adjani stabbed me in the face with a shrimp knife for six hours and someone filmed it I'd probably have to go the full 5/5.

[Dr. Whom]

Isabelle Adjani is 70? Now that makes me feel old.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Kill Bill, Vol. 1" (2003)
Uma Thurman is "The Bride," a former assassin  who wakes up from a 4 year coma and embarks on a mission of vengeance against her former allies who put her there.
Quentin Tarantino's artsy ode to '70s Kung fu flicks has a killer cast, impressive stunt work, and loads of gory ultra-violence. I've never been a particularly huge fan of QT's work but I enjoyed this one and will be checking out the sequel soon.

[RCMerchant]

^ It's not really a sequel at all- it's just part 2. Parts 1 and 2 are one whole movie.

[M.10rda]

It's also all a bit of a letdown. How could he ever follow up the House of Blue Leaves?

Isabelle Adjani is 70. That doesn't make me feel old, oddly, 'cause she looks like an ageless vampire. Also 'cause I already felt old.

[lester1/2jr]

Match Point (2005) - Scarlett Johanssen was about 20 and looks incredible in this movie. That's really the only selling point. Besides of that, it's like Lifetime tried to make a Woody Allen movie with a European setting. The story is solid enough, but it's boring and just really lacks the color and character of Allen's better efforts.

A guy from humble beginnings gets a job as a tennis instructor at a ritzo country club and tries to parlay it into a ticket to high society. Johanssen is the oil in the ointment: the super hot fiancee of the guy who is his new snooty friend and yadda yadda

Who are these people anyway? going to the f**king opera and so forth. The incidental music is also opera and is ostentatious and distracting, if pleasant enough I guess. The ADL should have protested this movie for promoting stereotypes about English people.

2.5 /5 You can't help but hold a director like Woody Allen up to higher standards

edit: most reviews are more favorable

[M.10rda]

Never fear, it's totally okay to criticize Woody Allen! 

MATCH POINT eventually gets interesting but it takes entirely too long. Indeed, tough for me to care for at least three-quarters of the running time. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is not a compelling actor imho.

[lester1/2jr]

Scarlett Johanssen is

[M.10rda]

Sometimes! I'm hot and cold with her. A good rule of thumb for ScarJo is... the redder the better. 

[Rev. Powell]

ASSASSINATION NATION (2018): A hacker is loose in the medium-sized town of Salem; when hundreds of residents find their personal secrets shared on 4Chan, 18-year old Lily is shamed, then blamed. Some will enjoy the final act bloodbath, though it's a wait; this heavy-handed satire probably should have trusted in its B-movie energy over its messaging. 2.5/5.

[M.10rda]

ASSASSINATION NATION (2018): this heavy-handed satire probably should have trusted in its B-movie energy over its messaging. 2.5/5.

Your reaction totally makes sense. I really liked it, but I am a sucker for heavy-handed satire and b-movie messaging.

[LordGraal]

Black Bag (2025)

One of those ensemble cast movies but for me it was only average.  Pretty good performances overall particularly from Michael Fassbender and Marisa Abela.  Although occasionally the delivery sounds wooden and very cliched in a typically British spy thriller way.  There's too much quick-fire reactionary dialogue that we hear a lot of these days in an attempt to portray intelligent/tense dialogue.  But it all comes across as clever-clever.  I liked the style it was shot in and there are some good scenes. I kept with it to the end as it just about kept me engaged.  It's a dialogue heavy film and quite short at 93 mins which is one reason how I stuck with it.

6/10 I think.

If anyone is interested I rewatched it and enjoyed it much more so it's a 7 now.  Guess I need to be in the right mood for this type of film.  Pierce Brosnan is very good in it as well.

[M.10rda]

CLOSED CIRCUIT (2013);
A figuratively and literally explosive opening sequence quickly promises a highly relatable conspiracy thriller/courtroom drama for 21st century survivors. This one's got it all - surveillance anxiety, deep state paranoia, authentically well-founded criminal justice outrage, etc. It's a short film (a little over 90 minutes) but the first 40 or so take their sweeeeeet time bringing the ingredients to a simmer. Once the water's bubbling I did get swept up in the excitement, but the film refuses to deliver the kind of movie payoff that one expects from watching a lot of movies. Instead we get a highly plausible ending where innocents suffer, the bad guys get away with everything, and the protagonists just have to suck it up and slink into the shadows in the hopes of survival. That's a sort of admirable (and certainly realistic) ending but after a terrible frustrating week, not the one I needed from a movie!

There are two larger, less subjective problems with CLOSED CIRCUIT, though. The first directly reflects its poor management of its limited screen time. Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall play the two defense attorneys unraveling a long chain of M15 malfeasance and the majority of the film is one or both of them unpacking dense exposition about the case, peppered with persistent sequences of one or both walking nervously through lonely environments, glancing about furtively, etc. Amidst all this walking and glancing and unpacking, the filmmakers decided these two needed a meet-uncute/battling bickersons type romance ala ADAM'S RIB or something, which, in this kind of otherwise well-intentioned and well-informed political flick, was profoundly unnecessary, irritating, and tone def. (Julie Stiles - remember her?  - even shows up for 2 or 3 scenes to suggest that Bana has some options.) Getcher priorities straight, screenwriters.

The other issue, unfortunately, is Bana himself. He broke through in 2001 giving one of the first (and maybe still one of the best) Great Screen Performances of the new millennium as Mark "CHOPPER" Read. To slice it a little differently, his performance as Chopper was better than Tom Hardy's performance in/as the almost identical BRONSON from ten years later and for that matter Bana's performance as Chopper is probably better than any Tom Hardy performance. But there are lots of good or at least interesting Tom Hardy performances and, a quarter-century on, Bana's still just got CHOPPER to his credit and f*ck-all else. It's true Bana's been in a lot of bad movies and played a lot of bad roles, which might or mightn't have been within his control - though Hardy makes a lot more of his stoopid VENOM material than Bana made of Ang Lee's HULK. In CLOSED CIRCUIT, Bana has a role that is often dry and thankless and no fun, but in one or two moments he comes alive just enough to suggest what a really hungry, inspired actor could do in this kind of movie. The rest of the time Bana just looks earnest yet bored. He was probably bored - but his boredom makes the film boring for the viewer, too.

3/5
Dramatic compensation: the incredible Jim Broadbent is incredible as usual and incredibly loathsome as one of the bad guys, and similarly great (or great-ish) British actor Ciaran Hinds (from PERSUASION, GAME OF THRONES, and many other places) is present a lot, following Bana around and saying little but at least looking quite professionally less bored!