Movie Review Empire of Light

Empire of Light (2022) 

Directed by Sam Mendes 

Written by Sam Mendes 

Starring Olivia Coleman, Michael Ward, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Tom Brooke 

Release Date December 9th, 2022 

Empire of Light stars Olivia Coleman as Hilary Small, a cinema employee in a seaside English town. Hilary's life is a drab routine of taking tickets and having sex with her married boss, Mr. Ellis (Colin Firth), though he has no plans to leave his wife. Hilary's life is changed forever with the arrival of a new employee at the cinema. Stephen (Michael Ward) is a handsome young man whom Hilary instantly falls in lust with. However, since he's so young, she assumes he will have more interest in one of her younger co-workers. 

Much to her surprise, Michael takes to Hilary right away. The two have a terrific conversation which lead to Hilary showing Michael her favorite secret spot in the Cinema. The gorgeous art-deco cinema used to have more than 2 screens. A third screening area, which also included a dance floor and lounge, has been left to rot. Hilary likes to go there and smell the sea air from the lounge seats. It's also become a de-facto smoking spot for the employees. 

At first, the banter between Hilary and Stephen is just friendly but it soon takes on a flirtatious air. As their bond deepens via their conversations, Hilary gains the courage to stand up to Mr. Ellis and end their affair. This however, is a tenuous decision as Hilary harbors a dark secret. Mr. Ellis brought Hilary back after she had a mental breakdown a year ago. He's essentially her sponsor, the reason she's able to work and not be in a hospital. 

The burgeoning romance between Hilary and Michael is threatened as Hilary's mental illness returns to the fore and her relationship with Mr. Ellis sours further. Meanwhile, the cinema has earned a remarkable opportunity. The cinema will play host to the premiere of the movie Chariots of Fire, a film that went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1981. The premiere will be attended by celebrities and politicians and would be a huge boost for business. 

Meanwhile, in the background, racial issues are also coming to the fore. Hilary witnesses Michael being harassed by skinheads, his life threatened. Later, a race riot breaks out and Michael's life is once again placed in peril as is the cinema itself which gets caught up in the brief, violent white nationalist uprising. It seems that even society itself is conspiring to keep Michael and Hilary from being together. The dramatic crux then of Empire of Light is whether or not the central couple can overcome the personal and societal roadblocks in front of their unlikely romance. 

Olivia Coleman is a radiant actress of limitless talent. That said, the part of Hilary is a tad broad and leans into an actors worst instincts. Director Alan Ball allows a little too much room for Hilary's mental illness to be played broadly. A scene where Hilary has fully reached the end of her rope goes off the rails and Coleman's hysterics in the scene don't feel legitimate, they play like someone's broad idea of a mental breakdown. 

Hilary's mental illness and the raging racial tensions that also play throughout Empire of Light don't work well together. They feel like two different movies grated together. Then there is an overarching notion of the magic of the movies which has promise but never really gains momentum. A big part of the movie unfolds when Hilary actually takes the opportunity to watch a movie and has a very special experience. This feels completely apart from the rest of the movie as well. The choice of movie is perhaps meaningful, but the idea is underdeveloped. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review Living

Living (2022) 

Directed by Oliver Hermanus 

Written by Kazuo Ishiguro 

Starring Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp, Tom Burke 

Release Date December 25th, 2022 

Published December 9th, 2022 

Living stars Bill Nighy as Mr. Williams. His name is kept very formal as a reflection of how he's lived his entire life by the standards of formality. Mr. Williams is the head of a non-descript Public Works office in a big English city, never identified. He's known among his employees as a quiet yet authoritative man. He manages the office efficiently, never makes waves and just tries to keep his part of this bureaucracy from gaining any kind of attention. 

Mr. Williams' arrival at work everyday is like clockwork, as is his end of the day routine. He rides the train to and from work but stays apart from his employees so as to maintain his authority. He appears to have done this job all his life without ever making much of any impact. Stacks of papers top every desk, each a request that Public Works kicks from one part of bureaucracy to another, as if their product were making sure nothing ever changes. 

Naturally, the life of Mr. Williams is about to change drastically. In an uncharacteristic moment, Mr. Williams rises from his desk one day and announces that he will be leaving early. We will come to find out that this is do to a doctor's appointment. At this appointment, Mr. Williams is told that he has maybe six months to live. The following day, Mr. Williams' clockwork arrival at work doesn't happen. He tells no one and simply doesn't show up. 

Instead, Mr. Williams has removed his life savings from his bank and has traveled to a seaside location in order to find someone who can teach him how to live. Encountering a drifter cum author, Mr. Sutherland (Tom Burke), Mr. Williams tries out a night of debauched partying and what happens from there will reveal a great deal about both Mr. Williams and Mr. Sutherland. This sequence is lovely and sad and brilliantly revealing. It's a bravura sequence in a terrific movie. 

Two more characters exist in this story and their story underlines the story of Mr. Williams. Alex Sharp plays Mr. Wakeling, a new man in Mr. Williams' department.  The name ,Mr. Wakeling, it's as if his name is intended to demonstrate that he lingers in the wake of others, carried along by the tide. Not a bad metaphor for a for a young man at the start of a new and confusing journey. Sharp gives Mr. Wakeling a wide-eyed eagerness that soon mellows into a healthy competence at his job and a general good nature. 

Mr. Wakeling stands out as he is immediately taken with a fellow co-worker, Miss Harris (Aimee Lou Wood). Miss Harris has also caught Mr. Williams' eye though it's not a creepy infatuation. Mr. Williams admires the life he's witnessed from Miss Harris, her positive attitude and warmth. She makes the office a little brighter and in her he sees someone else who might be able to help teach him what it is like to be alive after having spent so many years merely functioning. 

That's the magic of Living. Bill Nighy's performance is about learning to live and choosing the people who can guide you on that journey. It's a somber reminder of the ways you make an impression on people whether you are aware of it or not. Miss Harris made the world a little brighter without knowing she did it and, even from his cloistered space a functioning cog in a bureaucratic wheel, Mr. Williams noticed it, admired it, and comes to praise it with hopes of learning more from it. 

That's a beautiful idea and it is well explored in the patient and thoughtful direction of Oliver Hermanus and the insightful script of Kazuo Ishiguro. Hermanus adopts a look for Living early on that evokes 1950s Hollywood, and the work of director Nicholas Ray, that incredibly humanistic director, brilliantly known for his interior dramas. Like Ray, Hermanus uses interiors to reveal his characters. For instance, Mr. Williams' well dressed and mannered persona juxtaposed against the rowdy, grimy, seaside pubs, home to the debauched and delightful, Mr. Sutherland's of the world. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review The Mean One

The Mean One (2022) 

Directed by Steven LaMorte

Written by Steven LaMorte, Flip Kobler 

Starring Krystle Martin, David Howard Thornton, Chase Mullins 

Release Date December 9th, 2022 

Published December 8th, 2022 

The Mean One is a fully unauthorized horror parody of The Grinch that skirts the law by never actually saying the word 'Grinch.' How willing you are to accept this is a strong measure of how you will take this movie. The film takes the concept of How the Grinch Stole Christmas and turns The Grinch into a monster who accidentally murder's Cindy Lou's mom while he steals Christmas. Thus a begins a long term effort to destroy Christmas by killing anyone who exhibits even the faintest form of Christmas cheer. 

The Mean One, aka The Grinch, is played by Terrifier 2 star David Howard Thornton who essays yet another brilliantly physical and silent performance. He's a truly incredible physical performer, even as much of his performance in this very silly film is a parody of Jim Carrey's 2000's live action Grinch, crossed with a little bit of Art the Clown. It's mimicry but, at times, it's quite darkly funny mimicry. Thornton is the best thing about this very silly, extremely low budget horror flick. 

As mentioned, The Mean One proceeds from an accidental murder. Cindy Lou, played as an adult Krystle Martin, interrupts The Grinch as he is stealing Christmas. Her mother enters the scene to protect her daughter and accidentally dies. Years later, The Grinch has been stealing Christmas from this small town, and killing to do so, while Cindy and her father fled the town. Returning years later to sell their home, they find a town that has banned Christmas and harbors The Grinch as a deep dark secret. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media 

Movie Review The Whale

The Whale (2022) 

Directed by Darren Aronofsky 

Written by Samuel D. Hunter 

Starring Brendan Fraser, Hong Chau, Sadie Sink, Samantha Morton 

Release Date December 9th, 2022 

Published December 7th, 2022 

One of the biggest anxieties in my life is having food on my face. It's a fear of humiliation, I get triggered by being embarrassed. Logically, intellectually, I know this is not something worthy of serious concern and that it is an unavoidable fact of life, food on your face is normal, wipe it off and move on. But, my brain won't let it be that simple. Thinking of this aspect of my anxiety has me triggered. My eyes are welling up and I can sense that if I linger further in this space, I will become quite inconsolable. 

I've rarely seen this type of emotional reaction, this type of triggered anxiety in a movie. It's quite difficult to capture this kind of internalized emotional struggle, the rigorous internal battle to stop yourself from crying over something not worthy of crying about. The Whale comes the closest I have seen in some time of seeing this kind of emotional turmoil, a roiling mass of embarrassment and shame, on screen. Brendan Fraser's Charlie captures this feeling in all of its internalized horror. If only the rest of the movie were capable of capturing anything remotely as genuine. 

Charlie is a dangerously obese man who gets by as a literature professor at an online college. The shame over his weight causes him to conduct his classes with his camera on, using only his voice to instruct his class. Charlie's only friend is his caregiver, Liz (Hong Chau). They were friends before she became his caregiver. In fact, Liz is intrinsically linked to Charlie's past. She was connected to Charlie's late boyfriend, a man whose death changed both of their lives. 

Throughout The Whale we will slowly unpack Charlie's backstory as a man who was once married and had a daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), who he would like to reconnect with. Charlie was pushed out of Ellie's life after he fell in love with one of his male students and embarked on a new life with this man. Ellie doesn't know that Charlie had wanted to be in her life but wasn't allowed to be. She only knows that he appeared to choose being with this man over being her dad and she harbors a deep, and justifiable resentment. 

Much of the plot of The Whale centers on Charlie trying to reconnect with Ellie before his weight problem, and his unwillingness to get help for it at a hospital, takes his life. Ellie, however, proves to be far more difficult to reconnect with than he imagined. Ellie's bitterness has hardened into an almost sociopathic cruelty. Despite Charlie's attempts at dressing up her cruelty as a kind of blunt curiosity, Ellie is rarely anything less than bitter to a toxic degree. 

This toxicity is explored in her relationship to a strange young man named Thomas (Ty Simpkins), who is insinuating himself into Charlie's life. Thomas claims to be a missionary from an extreme offshoot of Mormonism called New Life. He goes door to door with literature and, after meeting Charlie, and seeming to save his life, Thomas makes it his mission to save Charlie's soul before his weight kills him. Thomas is harboring a deep, dark secret that Ellie will spend some time drawing out of him. 

This is the portion of The Whale that is the most poorly developed. The idea appears to be to establish Ellie's empathy and care, qualities that she has worked hard to hide. How they choose to portray this is strange, misguided, and simply doesn't track with what we see on screen. In fact, it takes a late monologue from Charlie to explain that what Ellie did was kind and helpful. Realistically, it appeared she was trying once again to do something cruel, and it happened to turn out well. 

Find my full-length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review: Violent Night

Violent Night (2022) 

Directed by Tommy Wirkola 

Written by Pat Casey, Josh Miller

Starring David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Leah Brady, Alexis Louder

Release Date December 2nd, 2022 

Published December 2nd, 2022 

I've long had an aversion to Christmas themed horror movies. I'm a big fan of the innocence of Christmas. I love that I was part of maintaining my Goddaughter's belief in and love of Santa Claus which has continued long after many other kids lost their sense of magic. Santa Claus is sacred to me and thus I have a strong distaste for movies that score points on making Santa look bad. It's one of the rare places in popular culture where I become a pearl clutching media watchdog. I worry about little kids who might see Santa portrayed as a murderer and lose their sense of his magic. 

Thus, my initial reaction to hearing about the new movie Violent Night, was a pit in my stomach. Here is a completely mainstream movie that was set to place Santa Claus, played by Stranger Things star David Harbour, an actor beloved among a relatively young audience, in a bloody, violent, horror movie context. I was more than just skeptical of Violent Night, I was worried that it could be a watershed moment in the horror portrayal of Santa Claus. That makes this review a bit of a catharsis for me as my worries have been allayed by seeing the movie. Violent Night may place Santa in a violent and bloody story but at least he's the hero in this story. It's a little thing, but it made it easier to take and even enjoy. 

Violent Night introduces us to a Kris Kringle who has lost his smile. As we meet Santa on Christmas Eve, he's getting very, very drunk before heading out for his night of delivering presents to kids. Meanwhile, the gears of the story begin to turn as we meet the Lightstone family. Dad, Jason Lightstone (Alex Hassell), and mom, Linda (Alexis Louder), are spending Christmas together for the sake of their daughter, Trudy (Leah Brady). Mom and Dad have split up but Trudy is hopeful they can be reunited. In fact, mom and dad are at the center of Trudy's Christmas wish for her family to be whole again. 

The family is reuniting for one final Christmas with the uber-rich Lightstone family. Jason is planning to abandon the family business and has concocted a convoluted plan. Also attending the Lightstone family Christmas are Jason's greed addled sister, Alva (Edi Patterson), Alva's airhead, movie star boyfriend, Morgan Steele (Cam Gigandet), and Alva's influencer son Burt (Alexander Elliott. Overseeing the whole Christmas get together is the imperious mother of the Lightstone clan, Gertrude (Beverly D'Angelo), a corrupt businesswoman who may or may not have $300 million in cash stored in her basement. 

That would explain why the Lightstone Family Christmas is overtaken by terrorists led by Jimmy Martinez (John Leguizamo), codename Ebenezer Scrooge. Jimmy and his team infiltrated the family Christmas under the guise of caterers and are in place for a violent takeover once the family is all in the same room. What they don't know is that someone else is crashing Christmas, a drunk Kris Kringle is has dropped in and it's no surprise that Jimmy and his entire team are on Santa's naughty list. 

Read the complete review at Geeks.Media 

Classic Movie Review Jeanne Dielman 23 Commerce Quay 1080 Brussels

Jeanne Dielman 23 Commerce Quay 1080 Brussels (1975) 

Directed by Chantal Akerman 

Written by Chantal Akerman 

Starring Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Jacques Doniol Valcroze 

Release Date May 14th, 1975 

Published Unknown 

Jeanne Dielman stars Delphine Seyrig as the title character, a housewife, mother and sex worker named named Jean who lives in Brussels. Jeanne's life consists of a very specific routine. She has sex with anonymous men in the afternoon, for exactly the length of time it takes for potatoes to properly boil. The men pay her and leave and she cleans up in the shower before finishing the preparation of dinner just in time for her son, played by Jan Decorte, to arrive home. The following day we see more of the routine as Jeanne wakes before her son, makes breakfast and shuttles him off to school. She makes the beds, cleans up around the house and for maybe an hour, she watches the baby of her chatty neighbor. 

Then Jeanne runs errands. She may stop for a cup of tea but then it is back home for her client, her shower, dinner and a clipped and brief conversation with her son. And on, and on, and on, the routine is laid out with some of the most mundane tasks of Jeanne's life, such as her shower routine or the peeling of potatoes, or the attempt to have one nice cup of coffee. These scenes play out in real time, of sorts and you are asked to either observe the mundane nature of these actions or let your mind wander into these scenes and find a story or a way to amuse yourself. 

Through the forces of visual filmmaking director Chantal Akerman tells us that the protagonist of Jeanne Dielman is a sex worker. We see her with an older man, they are familiar but not particularly intimate. He says he will see her next week as he hands her a handful of bills. There is no need for us to have seen them have sex or make the arrangements for the sex act, a hand full of bills and minor pleasantries, in the hands of a great filmmaker, can be all it takes to tell a story that introduces a character. 

Then it is off to the bath. This isn't presented in a way that caters to the male gaze, Jeanne is seated in the tub, mostly obscured, this about the act of cleaning, not eroticism. This extends to a jump cut when it is time for Jeanne to get out of the bath. The jump cut from Jeanne seated in the bath, to Jeanne nearly finished dressing is visually important here. The jump cut prevents ogling or fantasizing. The way Jeanne cleans up after work is intended to show you how this is just an aspect of her job, the lack of specific nudity, the jump cut, are a visually dynamic reminder that this isn't intended as anything other than part of a work a routine.  

Jeanne's life is an example of the expectation of extreme patriarchy, the expectations placed on a woman in an extreme idea of patriarchy, one where a woman's life is dedicated to what men want or expect. The casual misogyny of this idea is portrayed in a conversation between Jeanne and her son, Sylvaiin (Jan Decorte). He says, "If I were a woman, I could only make love with someone if I were deeply in love." She replies, How could you know? You're not a woman." Sick burn. He doesn't appear to know that his mother is a sex worker, he's reacting to the rather matter of fact way she referred to her late husband, his father. He doesn't understand yet that men like him have dictated to women like his mother who their sexual partners should be, how a woman is intended to cater to the needs of men, regardless of their desires. 

Click here for my full length review

Movie Review Darby and the Dead

Darby and the Dead (2022) 

Directed by Silas Howard 

Written by Wenona Wilms, Becca Greene 

Starring Riele Downs, Auli'i Cravalho, Chosen Jacobs 

Release Date December 2nd, 2022 

Published November 30th, 2022 

Darby and the Dead posits the story of a child being able to speak to the dead as something non-traumatic. By the logic of this movie, Darby gained the gift of speaking to the dead following a near-death experience as a young child. That same day she also lost her mother though she didn't get to talk to her after death. Since that young age, Darby has made it her mission to help the dead move on to the afterlife by wrapping up their unfinished work on Earth. 

This entails talking to living family members and facilitating reconciliations or resolving disputes. A final goodbye or an I'm sorry or an I love you, is often all it takes to help the dead to their final resting place. But, what if someone dies and has no idea what their unfinished business on Earth is? That's the case for High School Queen Bee, Capri (Auli'i Cravalho) dies in truly stupid fashion while bullying Darby. As a ghost, Capri has no idea what her unfinished business is supposed to be. 

This means that she must convince Darby to help her, despite Capri having treated her poorly while she was alive. Her first idea is that she needs a spectacular Sweet 16 party. Capri is convinced that if she has an epic party in celebration of her that this will send her off to the afterlife. However, for Darby to pull this off, she will need to convince Capri's popular girl entourage, still mourning their Cheer Captain and friend, to throw this amazing party. 

Obviously, these popular girls are not about to listen to dorky Darby tell them to have a party for Capri. So, Capri sets about turning Darby into a popular girl. This includes a makeover montage and convincing Darby to become a cheerleader, something she used to do before her mother died. After a lot of convincing, involving annoying the heck out of Darby with insistent yakking, Darby agrees and the plot of Darby and the Dead works through the gears of teen movie clichés. 

Click here for my complete review of Darby of the Dead at Geeks.media