Movie Review The Girl in the Spiders Web

The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018) 

Directed by Fede Alvarez

Written by Fede Alvarez, Steven Knight

Starring Claire Foy, Sverrir Gudnason, LaKeith Stanfield, Stephen Merchant

Release Date November 9th, 2018

Published November 9th, 2018

The Girl in the Spider’s Web stars Claire Foy as Lisbeth Salander, famed hacker and righter of wronged women. Lisbeth has made it her mission to rescue women in trouble and in the opening of the movie we see her hard at work. Lisbeth has infiltrated the home of a rich businessman who has just beaten his wife. The man had been in court just the day before and used his money and influence to skate on charges that he beat up two prostitutes. 

Now Lisbeth has come to make him pay for his misdeeds. We see her snare him in a trap, confront him with evidence of his crime and use her hacking skills to steal all of his money and split it between the women he’s abused, including his wife. Lisbeth uses blackmail to keep the man from doing any further harm to his wife and in short order, even if you didn’t already know Lisbeth Salander from her previous efforts as an avenging angel in other movies and books, you know her now. 

This opening sequence as crafted by director Fede Alvarez is a terrific study in character building. It cleverly allows us to create in our minds a backstory for Lisbeth without the necessity for dimwitted expository dialogue where characters read to the audience a laundry list of the character’s achievements to establish them in our minds. It’s a great example of show don’t tell, one that I wish the rest of the movie had adhered to. 

That’s not to say that The Girl in the Spider’s Web is filled with exposition, the film is quite good about remaining in the moment. There are however, a few of those laundry list scenes that are part of what keeps The Girl in the Spider’s Web from transcending from solidly entertaining suspense flick to something more fully engaging. Had the rest of the movie more closely resembled the off-kilter and brilliantly smart opening section, we could be talking about one of the better movies of the year. 

The story goes that Lisbeth Salander has been hired by a client, played by Stephen Marchant, to retrieve a computer program he created for the American government. To get it, Lisbeth will have to hack the National Security Administration and do it from halfway round the globe. This, as you can imagine from the talent she’s already displayed, will not be her biggest challenge. 

The hack goes off without a hitch but someone has caught wind of what Lisbeth is up to and aims to interfere. An organization that we come to know as The Spiders, wants that computer program and they will do everything short of killing Lisbeth in order to get it. But why not kill her? That appears to be a major flaw in the movie until you get to the reveal that the organization is merely an elaborate revenge ruse perpetrated by someone from Lisbeth’s past with an aim toward a revenge better served if Lisbeth is alive to see it. 

I’m being very generous in my description of the plot. It’s not quite as elaborate as I may have made it seem. That is because the trailers for The Girl in the Spider’s Web ruined much of the most suspenseful part of this movie. I won’t be specific so as not to spoil things for those who’ve managed to miss the film’s two trailers. I will only say that I can imagine the movie playing in a more exciting fashion if I did not have the information from the trailer that is played as a twisty reveal in the movie. 

The trailers are part of the reason why I only like The Girl in the Spider’s Web and not love it. I want to love it, I definitely love Claire Foy whose performance is riveting throughout. Foy is a brilliant actress of great instinct and intelligence. Her Lisbeth easily rivals Noomi Rapace’s original Lisbeth in 2009 and Rooney Mara’s slightly watered down Lisbeth in 2012. 

Foy crafts an angry, injured, but fierce character of great intelligence and ingenuity. Lisbeth could easily be a reductive caricature in the wrong hands. Some have called Lisbeth a goth version of James Bond minus the spy schtick. That’s not entirely unfair, in a commercial sense, I am sure Sony might embrace such simple, digestible distillation of the character. But Claire Foy makes Lisbeth so much more than that with her subtle and nuanced touches. 

Equally strong is Lakeith Stanfield whose Edwin is one of the more original takes on an American spy we’ve seen in a movie, mostly because Stanfield is not the typical kind of actor who is chosen for such a role. Stanfield’s unique energy, part geek, part badass, makes for a wholly original character and Stanfield plays Edwin on his own, very unique vibe. Had it not, again, been for the trailer spoiling the nature of his character, this role could have been even more exciting and intriguing. 

I really like and I do recommend The Girl in the Spider’s Web. The trailers do drain some of the suspense but what’s left is still strong enough for me to recommend it. I could offer a few other quibbles like the charisma free performance of the actor portraying Mikael Blomqvist, the pivotal co-star of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or the laundry list scene that introduces Stanfield’s Edwin, but they don’t ruin the movie. 

I do want to call attention to one other scene however. There is a scene near the end of The Girl in the Spider’s Web that is, to employ a pun only funny once you see the movie, breathtaking. You’ve seen a glimpse of this scene in the trailer but the actual, full length scene in the movie is nearly as strong as that opening scene I mentioned before. In terms of visceral effects, the scene is actually superior but that could be just because it tapped a very specific fear I have regarding breathing. 

Movie Review Table 19

Table 19 (2017) 

Directed by Jeffrey Blitz

Written by Jay Duplass, Mark Duplass 

Starring Anna Kendrick, Wyatt Russell, Stephen Merchant, Lisa Kudrow, Craig Robinson 

Release Date March 13th, 2017

Published March 29th, 2017

Undoubtedly someone will relate to the idea of being invited to a wedding where they are not expected to attend. At least, that is what the producers of the new comedy “Table 19” would like to think. The premise here is that several people have been invited to a wedding where they were just expected to pick a gift off the registry and send that in with their regards. Instead, each of these oddballs decides to attend the wedding and wind up at the table of misfit guests.

Anna Kendrick stars in “Table 19” as Eloise, the former Maid of Honor turned pariah after she was dumped by the Best Man who is also the Bride’s brother, Teddy (Wyatt Russell). Eloise has backed out of the wedding several times since the breakup only to show up on the day of the wedding with everyone concerned she might make a scene. To mitigate her potential meltdown, Eloise is placed as far away as possible, at Table 19.

Joining Eloise are a random assemblage of guests including Jerry and Bina Kepp, (Craig Robinson and Lisa Kudrow) business acquaintances of the Bride’s father, Jo (June Squibb), the Bride’s former Nanny, Renzo (Tony Revolori) an awkward teenager, and Walter (Stephen Merchant), a business associate of the Groom’s father. Walter is fresh out of prison and hoping no one knows about his prison stay or how he got there; why he came to the wedding or was invited is anyone’s guess.

“Table 19” has the appearance of a movie but not the story of a movie, at least not a good one. At times the film feels like each actor was given one idea for a character and then told to improvise some comic situation. Unfortunately, despite a very talented and game cast, no one, not even the lovely Anna Kendrick finds much beyond one note to play and that one note is rarely ever funny.

Stephen Merchant is a very funny and talented man but his Walter is an absolute comic dead zone. Walter’s one note is that he is just out of prison and hoping no one notices. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know how to lie properly so he keeps stumbling into awkward and contrived conversations that the makers of “Table 19” apparently believed were hilarious. They are not hilarious, tedious is the more apt description as Merchant plays the same awkward gag over and over until you wish his character would just leave the rest of the movie alone.

Craig Robinson and Lisa Kudrow have a slightly different problem, they are way more interesting than the one note characters they are given to play. As a married couple seemingly headed for a breakup, Robinson and Kudrow at times seem to border on a much better movie, a more European style character comedy where we might explore their marital problems with a wedding in the background. I kept dreaming of that far funnier movie while “Table 19” forced Kudrow to carry one joke through the movie, she has the same color jacket as the catering staff. Ha Ha.

And finally, there is Kendrick who should be the star here but is instead treated as a member of a wacky ensemble. Unfortunately, that ensemble isn’t funny or even all that interesting while Kendrick is her usual appealing self, her charisma and beauty calling for our full attention while the film forces us to endure her one-note table mates to ever more unfunny situations and dialogue.

I had high hopes for “Table 19.” Anna Kendrick, to me, is a genuine movie star and I wanted to see where she might lead this story. Sadly, the wacky, one note ensemble strands her in the role of straight-woman to a group of terribly unfunny side characters. There is a very funny Anna Kendrick wedding comedy trapped inside of “Table 19” trying to get out but is entirely thwarted by the filmmakers. 

The Bride's parents were right, these wedding guests should have just stayed home.

Movie Review: Fighting With My Family

Fighting with My Family (2019) 

Directed by Stephen Merchant

Written by Stephen Merchant 

Starring Florence Pugh, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Lena Headey, Nick Frost, Jack Lowden

Release Date February 14th, 2019 

Published February 13th, 2019 

As a longtime fan of the WWE I have known Saraya Knight from her earliest days in wrestling’s big leagues. I saw her win the very first NXT Women’s Championship. I watched live when she debuted on Monday Night Raw and won what was then called the WWE Divas Championship. I was also there when injuries and scandal nearly ended her career. Finally, I was there when she broke her neck and was forced to retire at the far too young age of 25. 

Saraya ‘Paige’ Knight has lived multitudes in her 26 years beginning her wrestling career at age 12 in Norwich, England, working for her mother and father’s very own promotion, WAW. As the story goes in real life and in the new movie on Paige’s life, Fighting with My Family, she never wanted to wrestle as a kid, that was her brother Zak’s thing. Once in the ring however, things changed and she fell in love with the business and began regularly wrestling against her mother, a successful wrestler in England for many years. 

Florence Pugh portrays Paige in Fighting with My Family. We watch as she wrestles against her parents all the while she and her brother Zac (Jack Lowdon) dream of getting a call from the WWE. That call comes when Paige is a mere 18 years old. Paige and Zac are invited to a WWE tryout while the WWE is in London in 2012. A trainer played by Vince Vaughn as an amalgam of many of WWE’s trainers over the years, named in the movie as Hutch Morgan, decides that only Paige has what it takes to go on to WWE’s Developmental system. 

This drives a wedge between Paige and Zac who had always been very close until this happened. Nevertheless, Paige accepts the chance to join the WWE and move away from her family to Florida where the fish out of water portion of the movie begins. Paige is not the prototypical WWE Diva. She’s up against models and athletes who didn’t grow up in the industry but were brought into it, the movie implies briefly, because of their looks. 

Part of Paige’s journey, surprisingly, is coming to respect the leggy blondes who are initially her antagonists. This is a welcome inversion of the classic trope. Our outsider hero has a journey here that is not as straightforward and heroic as it would initially seem. Fighting with My Family was directed by actor-comedian and writer Stephen Merchant, a rather brilliant comic mind who does well tapping both his comic and dramatic skills in Fighting with My Family. 

Fighting with My Family is not a serious movie by any stretch but it is grounded in a way that allows for the broad humor of wrestling to stand out against the mundane regular world. The juxtaposition between the broad and strange world of professional wrestling and the regular world outside of wrestling plays well for the most part, aside from characters played by the director himself and Julia Davis who play stock characters, whitebred outsiders who look down on the low culture of wrestling.

There is plenty to enjoy about Fighting with My Family including the wonderful supporting performances of Nick Frost and Lena Headey as Paige’s parents. These are wonderful actors playing wonderful characters. Frost and Headey appear to bring lifetimes to these two characters that we never see and yet they feel real and lived in. Their chemistry is remarkable, they are all in on the romance, the wrestling and the family. 

Florence Pugh is solid as Paige, though she lacks her swagger and lithe physique. As written, Paige is not the character we know from the WWE. Pugh plays the behind the scenes Paige as a shrinking violet, a homesick and cowed young woman, completely opposite of the wild child, charismatic, divas champion we would come to know and cheer for. There is a stock quality to the story of Paige learning to find herself, find her voice and her confidence. I don’t doubt that the real Paige went on that journey, but this is unquestionably the sanitized, safe for work take on that journey. 

Wrestling fans will undoubtedly recognize how compressed the timeline of Paige’s career is. In real life, Paige wrestled in America before her WWE debut in a company called Shimmer. She also was an overachiever in WWE Developmental where she won over the company brass enough to be picked to win the very first NXT Women’s Championship, months before her post-Wrestlemania 30 Monday Night Raw debut which is the culmination of Fighting with My Family. 

The film fails to mention that Paige was the NXT Women’s Champion when she she debuted on Monday Night Raw and many of the fans in attendance that night were fully aware of who she was when she went to the ring that night against Diva’s Champion A.J Lee, portrayed in the movie by current WWE superstar, Zelina Vega. The makers of Fighting with My Family would have you believe that she was some unknown wrestler getting a shot out of the blue. Then again, the movie would have you believe that Vince McMahon doesn’t exist and pull every string in the company or that a wrestler would make it to Monday Night Raw without seeing Vince first. 

An interesting thing about Paige is that her life after the events of this movie is way more interesting than her rise to fame. From the place where Fighting with My Family ends to today, Paige has gone through career threatening injuries, a sex tape scandal, a reportedly abusive relationship with a fellow wrestler, drug suspensions and eventually, a career ending injury to her neck that led to her having to find a whole new place in the wrestling world. 

That, however, is not a movie that Paige or the WWE would want to make. That’s a complex journey that has fewer of the warm fuzzy moments that Fighting with My Family is built around. That’s a gritty movie with much more humanity and frailty than the mythic, sweet and funny journey of self discovery that is Fighting with My Family. You can’t slap a PG 13 on that movie and mass market it to an audience of young wrestling fans. 

That said, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with not making that movie and instead making Fighting with My Family. Indeed, Fighting with My Family is a perfectly acceptable, if somewhat bland comedy and biopic. The supporting cast is wonderfully colorful and the world of WWE, though it is completely whitewashed, has a fun, mythic quality to it that, as a wrestling fan, I find entertaining. It’s the WWE of Vince McMahon’s fantasy world. 

By the way, for those wondering about Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s role in Fighting with My Family, much of what you see in the movie really happened. It was The Rock who informed Paige that she was going to be debuting on Monday Night Raw, a scene of wonderful comedy in the movie. There are some fudges in the timeline of Paige’s life in WWE and Developmental WWE but that scene really happened in a form similar to how it plays in the movie.