Sometimes Always Never (Triple Word Score)

This is the most English photo you will ever see.

(2019) Dramedy (Blue Fox) Bill Nighy, Sam Riley, Jenny Agutter, Alice Lowe, Tim McInnerny, John Westley, Oliver Sindcup, Louis Healy, Elia Grace Gregoire, Alan Williams, Ethne Browne, Alexei Sayle, Andrew Shim, Kadrolsha Ona Carole. Directed by Carl Hunter

 

Absence may make the heart grow fonder; it can also leave a massive hole. Sometimes, when someone exits from our lives, carrying on isn’t an option.

Alan (Nighy) is a retired tailor. Fastidious in all things, his great obsession is Scrabble; he loves words, and has an enviable vocabulary. During a particularly tense game, his 19-year-old son Michael walked out the door, never to return. Michael hasn’t made any attempt to make any sort of contact in the intervening years.

Now, he has been called to the Midlands to see if a body that has been discovered there is that of his lost son. Driving him there is his remaining son Peter (Riley). The car ride is quieter than it should be; Alan is more interested in playing online Scrabble than in conversing with the son who has remained, but it is frustrated that he can’t seem to communicate with his father.

While spending the night before seeing the coroner in the morning, Alan and Peter meet an older couple (McInnerny, Agutter) whom Alan maneuvers into a game of Scrabble; as it turns out, they’ve been called to view the same body, having a missing 19-year-old son of their own.

When the body proves to be not Michael, Alan goes to stay with Peter and his wife (Lowe) and son (Healy). He also suspects that the person he’s playing online Scrabble with and is eerily familiar strategy may be Michael, reaching out in his own way.

The humor is bone-dry and the overall tone is droll; this is a quintessential English movie for which Nighy is ideally cast. Nobody, but nobody does droll as well as Nighy. Riley has been a terrific actor for decades; it’s absolutely criminal that he isn’t a bigger star than he is. Once again, he does an inspiring turn here as a son who is frustrated with a father who seems to have more affection for the son that ran away than he does for the sun who is still there. He feels as if he is continually finishing in second place to the memory of Michael, and its an observation that has some merit.

First-time feature director Hunter, who has up to now primarily worked in the documentary field, utilizes this late 70s-set dramedy with bright colors and the somewhat dodgy hair and fashion of the era. Despite the era this is set in, the film still fields strangely modern. There is a period when Nighy is absent from the film, and the movie does lose momentum. Riley does his best, but he isn’t given the kind of material that Nighy is here. There is a third-act reveal that’s not entirely unexpected but still effective. Watch for it.

There’s a bit of Wes Anderson in the influences here and that’s not a bad thing. The movie is pleasant enough, but nothing that is going to particularly excite anyone – and it may be a bit too British for American audiences who may prefer a little less “Keep calm” and a little more “stiff upper lip.”

REASONS TO SEE: Nighy is perfect for the droll, dry tone.
REASONS TO AVOID: The balance between comedy and drama doesn’t quite work.
FAMILY VALUES: There are some sexual references as well as some adult thematic material.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: During the course of  the film, Alan remarks that Marmite is not available in Canada. In fact, it is readily available there and has been for some time.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Virtual Theatrical Release
CRITICAL MASS: As of 6/15/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 85% positive reviews; Metacritic: 68/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Royal Tenenbaums
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: The Infiltrators

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Sightseers

What girlfriend wouldn’t make her boyfriend feel inferior with one of those?

(2012) Horror Comedy (IFC) Steve Oram, Alice Lowe, Roger Michael, Tony Way, Monica Dolan, Jonathan Aris, Eileen Davies, Aymen Hamdouchi, Tom Meetan, Kali Peacock, Kenneth Hadley, Stephanie Jacob, Christine Talbot, Richard Lumsden, Dominic Applewhite, Sara Stewart. Directed by Ben Wheatley

Everyone’s idea of a vacation is different. Some choose to travel, see different cultures and different places. Others want to go out and experience the gusto – get out there and go hang gliding, rock climbing or snorkeling. You know, the Type A personality stuff.

Tina (Lowe) and Chris (Oram) are far from the latter. Chris is an aspiring writer who is taking a trip in his caravan (RV to us yanks) to England’s Lake District to write a book on his travels there. Tina, his girlfriend, is a dog lover of epic proportions although she is mourning the accidental death of a beloved pet – a death her hypochondriac overbearing mother (Davies) blames her for and never fails to take the opportunity to remind her of it.

Mum is also trying to talk Tina out of taking the trip with Chris. Not because she’s got any real concern for her daughter, but that it might be inconvenient for her not to have Tina waiting on her hand and foot. If Leona Helmsley ever sponsored a motherhood award, Tina’s mom would win hands down.

So away they go in their RV to see the sights – a tram museum, a pencil museum, ruins of an abbey and the English equivalent of a state park. At first it’s the ideal trip. Tina feels as close to Chris as she’s felt to anyone – this might be The One. But there are some troubling qualities beginning to surface. He hates to be questioned, for one thing. He has a pretty explosive temper, for another. For a third, he’s a serial killer.

But he’s not just your average, ordinary run-of-the-mill psycho. He has rules. He only offs those who deserve it. Of course, his idea of those who deserve it might be a wee bit…stringent. For example, a lout who drops an ice cream wrapper on an antique trolley – he’s GOT to go, son. Uppity upper crust sorts who treat Tina condescendingly? So long, senor.

However far from being repulsed by this behavior, Tina attempts to join in and messes it all up. She goes after a bride who gives Chris a drunken smooch. Hasta la vista, baby.

Wheatley is an up-and-coming director who has a couple of pretty cool films already on his resume (Down Terrace and Kill List) and has been announced to be directing a couple of highly anticipated films coming down the pipeline (A Field in England and Freakshift as well as the HBO miniseries Silk Road). I agree with the praise being lumped on him – the man knows how to make a movie full of subtleties as well as being over-the-top – in the same movie.

Chris and Tina are so bloody ordinary that you can’t help wonder why they didn’t become serial killers earlier. Both of them have a different sort of ordinariness. Chris is a bit of a lummox from the surface but he’s actually quite clever and meticulous. Tina, who seems to be much more organized at first glance is rather more chaotic. One of the joys of the film is watching Tina and Chris switch places as the film progresses.

Lowe and Oram have some real chemistry and it goes a long way – right up until the final twist which is so organic, so unexpected that it’s a thing of beauty. I’d walk a hundred miles for an ending like that – they are quite infrequent in movies these days. The hardest thing for a writer to do is write a good ending.

The humor is a bit irreverent and some scenes will make you squirm while you laugh. It’s not that the gore is excessive – it isn’t but there’s enough there to be effective – but the situation might just make you go “am I really laughing at that?”

Chris and Tina do some rather unspeakable things. When you look at the acts themselves you might just recoil in horror but overall the two of them are lovable losers, enough so that you root for them in spite of yourself even though Chris has anger issues and Tina can be a shrill little harpy when she wants to be.

To top it all off there’s some beautiful cinematography of bucolic  landscapes, RV parks and quaint towns. I’m not sure I’d want to go to the pencil museum but I might just to buy the Big Pencil – a.k.a. Big Scribbler – in the picture above. But what can I say? The allure of oddball tourist attractions is like catnip to me.

This is the kind of movie that comes at you from every direction and you never know what they’re going to do next. Lowe and Oram deliver enough likability that when their characters go off the rails, you’re still invested enough in the that you don’t give up on them. Maybe you even get the vicarious thrill of giving a few sorts what you wish they’d get and might even deserve. I love hearing Chris rationalize that murdering these undesirables reduces the carbon footprint – so in fact serial killing is green. Which is what I hope this film sees plenty of.

REASONS TO GO: Offbeat and funny. A black comedy taken to extremes.

REASONS TO STAY: The foul deeds of the leads may be too much for some to generate any sympathy for.

FAMILY VALUES:  There is plenty of violence and some gore. There’s also quite a bit of sex and some nudity. There’s a fair amount of foul language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Screenwriter Tim Macy also wrote the short story that the movie is based on.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/10/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 82% positive reviews. Metacritic: 66/100; critics clearly didn’t like this film a whole lot.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Natural Born Killers

FINAL RATING: 8.5/10

NEXT: The Place Beyond the Pines