Movie Review All of Us Strangers

All of Us Strangers (2023) 

Directed by Andrew Haigh

Written by Andrew Haigh 

Starring Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy 

Release Date August 31st, 2023 

Published December 4th, 2023 

Imagine returning to your childhood home as an adult and finding members of your family who have long since died, living there. They see the adult you that they never knew but they still recognize you and welcome you inside. You share laughter and memories and tears and promises are made about more visits. That's where the movie, All of Us Strangers from writer-director Andrew Haigh, begins. Adam, played by Andrew Scott, lost his parents when he was quite young. The harm from this traumatic loss has lingered through his entire life. When he returns to his childhood home and is greeted by his parents as he remembered them from youth, the confusion, heartache, and catharsis are bubbling over. 

If that's where the story of All of Us Strangers begins, you can't begin to imagine how it ends but I won't spoil that here. Adam is a deeply sheltered and broken man. As an adult he lives in an eerily empty apartment building in London. The lonely hallways are underlined by a scene where a fire alarm goes off and Adam retreats from the building surrounded by no one else. As he glances up to the building, there are so few people around that he is able to lock eyes with a neighbor who blew off the alarm and remained in the building. Adam knows he and his neighbor are communicating because no one else is around. 

That neighbor is Harry (Paul Mescal) who took their unique meet-cute, Adam glancing up at the building, Harry smiling and waving to him, as an invitation to meet Adam at Adam's apartment. After Adam has returned to the building, Harry is at his apartment door. He has a special bottle of whiskey and offers to share it with his lonely neighbor. The implications here are not subtle, Harry is openly flirtatious and Adam reluctantly so. Despite Harry's charm, Adam sends him away. That's not the last we will see of Henry however, as eventually, Adam's interaction with his late parents, played by Jamie Bell and Claire Foy, to take a chance on his own potential happiness. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Women Talking

Women Talking (2022) 

Directed by Sarah Polley 

Written by Sarah Polley 

Starring Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy, Frances McDormand, Rooney Mara, Ben Whishaw 

Release Date December 23rd, 2022 

Published December 22nd, 2022

Women Talking is directed by Sarah Polley with a script Polley adapted from a book by Marion Toews. The story is set inside a cloistered Mennonite community in 2010. After having endured sexual and physical abuse from the men in their colony for years, the newest assault has the women of the community questioning what to do to stop this from happening again. 8 women are assigned the task of determining what must be done, either staying and fighting the men or leaving and never returning, risking what they've been raised to believe would be God's wrath, eternal damnation. 

Regardless of the risks involved, a decision must be made and over the course of Women Talking we here the reasoning behind what must be done, staying and fighting or leaving. Each comes with its own peril. Fighting the men is going to be violent and result in grave harm or perhaps death. Leaving meanwhile, risks losing a place in the kingdom of heaven plus the fact that the women have no idea where they will go if they leave. 

That last bit is critical but you have to think about it for yourself. A less talked about aspect of abuse is economic or circumstantial abuse. This is abuse that occurs when one partner renders another partner helpless via their circumstances, physical, financial, et cetera. Essentially, because these women are cut off from the outside world, cut off from resources, they are left with no choice but to rely on their male partners. Leaving is a possibility but it comes with a grave uncertainty as to where to go and what will happen next. 

Add to that fact that these are women with small children or elderly women who've spent their whole lives in this community and it dawns on you just how massive this decision these women are making truly is. The competing emotions of anger, resentment, fear, uncertainty, the desire to be free of abuse and the years of indoctrinated servitude, these women are doing far more than just talking, they are facing a monolithic challenge. 

Among the eight women chosen to make this impossible decision are Ona (Rooney Mara), a rape survivor who became pregnant from her assault. Salome (Claire Foy), also a recent survivor who is eager to stay and fight. Mariche, a mother of several children who has suffered repeated abuse from her husband. Mariche wants to stay and cope with the problems though her coping seems to involve changing absolutely nothing about their circumstances. 

Click here for my full length review at Viva.Media 

Movie Review Season of the Witch

Season of the Witch (2011) 

Directed by Dominic Sena 

Written by Bragi F. Schut

Starring Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Claire Foy, Stephen Graham, Christopher Lee

Release Date January 7th, 2011 

Published January 7th, 2011 

Nicolas Cage has made some seriously awful movies, like Fire Birds, Bangkok Dangerous or Knowing. Despite the quality of his films though, Nicholas Cage has never been boring, until now. Season of the Witch is Nicolas Cage being boring. As a noble, god fearing Knight on a quest to save a village from an allegedly plague inducing witch, Nicolas Cage offers a stalwart hero so tediously heroic that nothing stands out about him.

Behman (Cage) and his loyal pal Felson (Ron Perlman, Hellboy) have been fighting on behalf of the church in the crusades for more than a decade when suddenly killing the innocent loses its taste. Abandoning their duty, the two set off for freedom but are waylaid at a village overcome by the plague. Found guilty of desertion, Behman and Felson are offered a choice; death by hanging or a Knightly quest. Not hard to guess that choice.

The quest has the Knights, along with a priest, a con man, a teenager and a widower, transporting ‘The Girl’ (Claire Foy), who is suspected of being a Witch, to a monastery where she is to be executed. Behman however, pledges that ‘The Girl’ will not be harmed unless she actually is a Witch, something that the priest, the Widower and the Con Man, simply cannot abide. In short order they will try to kill the Witch and face a dastardly fate. But, is it Witchcraft or worse?

The idea of Nicolas Cage, underneath yet another one of his famously odd hairdos, playing a 13th century Knight battling a Witch and a corrupt Church would seem to have potential for some classic Nicolas Cage weirdness yet somehow it never comes. Sure, Cage and Ron Perlman‘s casting alone, along with Dominic Sena‘s ludicrous modern action beats against a 13th Century background, are odd in their own right but Cage plays Behman with such stalwart, heroic intensity that he seems stunningly normal under the circumstances.

Cage plays Behman just as any other actor without Cage’s flair might have played him. Viggo Mortenson or Keanu Reeves could have played Behman and given just the same stolid yet gallant performance. Where is the weirdness? Where is that extra something behind the eye that makes Nicholas Cage unique? It’s shocking and disappointing to watch Nicolas Cage play a hero whose eyes aren’t bugged out and ready to leap from his fiery skull and instead are sleepily focused and determined.

If Season of the Witch wanted to be just another action movie the makers could have hired any other actor. They hired Nicolas Cage to bring the weird. It’s fair, in fact, to wonder if director Dominic Sena, who watched Cage bring the weird to his car junkie action flick Gone in Sixty Seconds, was also waiting for his star to emerge and thus ended up making a dull, straight arrow action movie when he had hoped he was making a Nicholas Cage movie.

Would weirdo Nicolas Cage make Season of the Witch a good movie? Likely not but, Nicolas Cage in a bad movie is at the very least always interesting. There is always so much to see when Nicolas Cage finds that odd beat he wants to play. In Peggy Sue Got Married Cage adopted a voice he compared to Gumby’s pal Pokey and nearly got himself fired because he wouldn’t drop the voice. In other films he channels Elvis Presley for reasons only he understands.

It’s weird and it can ruin a movie but it’s always intriguing as we search Cage’s face and manner for that little inflection, that idea that struck only him and reveals his fascination with a role. Sadly, in Season of the Witch that little flavor of Nicholas Cage, that revealing little tick or inflection, that idea that is solely his never emerges and instead we have a bored Nicolas Cage delivering a boring performance in a boring movie.