Elyse

In 2020, catatonia might be viewed as a blessing.

(2020) Drama (Gravitas) Lisa Pepper, Anthony Hopkins, Aaron Tucker, Tara Arroyave, Fran Tucker, Julieta Ortiz, Griffin Thomas Hollander, Donat Balaj, Anthony Apel, Danny Jacobs, Everett Kelsey, Connor Garelick, Natalia Tucker, Susan Papa, Brittani Ebert, Riccardo Spinotti, David M. Jackson, Daisy Barber, Annette Dugan, Diana Arroyave. Directed by Stella Hopkins

 

Some movies are just slam dunks as far as critics are concerned. They are easy reviews to write; the words just flow. Some are much harder to articulate though.

This turgid melodrama stars Pepper as the titular character, a well-coiffed, well-dressed wife of a wealthy lawyer (A. Tucker), living in a gorgeous modern house where her adorable son (Hollander) is looked after by a solicitous nanny (Ortiz). But all is not perfect in paradise. Elyse suspects her husband – baselessly, it turns out – of having an affair with the nanny’s daughter Carmen (T. Arroyave) who works at her husband’s firm. She also has a very dysfunctional relationship with her patrician mother (F. Tucker).

At a dinner party, fueled by too much drink, she has a meltdown. Her husband, concerned over her increasingly volatile behavior, wants her to see a psychiatrist, a Dr. Lewis (A. Hopkins) who had some success with one of the other lawyers in his firm. Elyse agrees and actually develops a bond with him. However, not all is what it seems and to quote David Byrne, “You may ask yourself, is this my beautiful house?”

 

This is something of a family affair, with the director being married to one of the stars, and also related to two other actors by blood (her maiden name is Arroyave). There is also a mother/son team of actors playing mother-in-law/son-in-law here. That’s all very cozy, but it feels very much like this was cast largely from people the director knew and was comfortable with, rather than getting the best actors for the roles. It shows particularly in the lead roles where, with the exception of the one Oscar winner in the cast, the performances are uniformly stiff and uninspired.

But then again, the dialogue is truly dreadful. You can’t ask an actor to say a line like “This house is an empty shell…of vanished dreams” and expect him (Aaron Tucker, in this case) to make it sound like something a real human being would say. You know a film is going to be pretentious when the opening voice-over narration quotes The Wizard of Oz and you know that the film is about mental illness. I mean, Zoinks! Home viewers may end up banging on their TV in frustration as the first half of the film is in black and white with occasional splashes of color in a ham-fisted attempt at symbolism. Even when the main crux of the plot unfolds – it’s not a spoiler to say that Elyse is actually catatonic and in a mental hospital with Dr. Lewis trying to reach her and bring her back into consciousness – there is little to surprise the viewer and a whole lot to make them want to watch something else.

Still, Anthony Hopkins – who also produced the film and scored it – is a reliable factor and worth watching even in a bad movie, and trust me gang, the rating for this would be a hell of a lot lower if the Oscar-winning actor wasn’t present. Believe it or not, I take no joy out of trashing a film; I know that nobody goes into making a movie with the intent of making a bad one, but sometimes, despite the best intentions, that is exactly what is produced. However, Hopkins fans don’t have to feel bad about his lot – in a couple of weeks, his new film The Father will be coming out and that might well be one of the best films of a year that most of us will want to forget anyway.

REASONS TO SEE: Anthony Hopkins is always a treat.
REASONS TO AVOID: The dialogue is simply awful.
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity and some sexuality.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Director Stella Hopkins has been married to star Anthony Hopkins since 2003.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, AppleTV, DirecTV, Fandango Now, Google Play, Microsoft, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 12/10/20: Rotten Tomatoes: 40% positive reviews; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: A Woman Under the Influence
FINAL RATING: 4.5/10
NEXT: Farewell Amor

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The Estate

Dirty deeds done very expensively.

(2020) Comedy (Stone Lane) Christopher Charles Baker, Eliza Coupe, Greg Finley, Heather Matarazzo, Eric Roberts, Lala Kent, Allan Graf, Ezra Buzzington, Alexandra Paul, Cohen Prescott, Kyle Rezzarday, Aubyn Philabaum. Directed by James Kapner

 

It is said that the very rich aren’t like thee and me. Their outlook is much different and their moral compass always points towards where the money is. We like to think that they didn’t get rich by being nice; sometimes, those stereotypes aren’t far from the mark.

George (Baker) is the very gay son of Marcello (Roberts), a very rich man. He and his dad’s latest trophy wife Lux (Coupe) have been exiled to one of Marcello’s L.A. mansions on what they both consider a pittance of an allowance, enough money just to survive but not really enjoy their wealth. The two do a lot of commiserating about Marcello’s cruel penurious tactics.

At a dive bar where George is trying to pick up some random guy for sex (as is, to be fair, Lux), the two of them meet Joe (Finley). Joe claims to be a hitman living off the grid. The three of them hit it off and Joe offers to rid Lux and George of their mutual problem – Marcello. Of course, the problem is sex – both Lux and George find Joe very attractive and Joe swings both ways. The plan to take out daddy/hubby turns into a series of double and triple crosses as Joe turns out to be a whole lot smarter than either one of them thought.

This is meant to be a black comedy, and at times there is the sharp, biting humor that you would expect from one of those. Unfortunately, a lot of the humor is of the sit-com variety, kind of safe and not quite as outrageous as the filmmakers seem to think it is. Still, there are plenty of twists and turns and the kind of plotline that will make even the most jaded pessimist roll their eyes with delight.

The performances here are strong across the board, particularly from the esteemed veteran Eric Roberts who once again seems to be having more fun than just about anyone else in the film. Sadly, he’s not in the movie nearly as much as I might have liked but that’s a necessity of the plot. Not all that long ago, he would have been perfect for the role of Joe.

My biggest issue with the movie is that it tends to reinforce negative gay man stereotypes; the cattiness, the promiscuousness, the shallowness; while I’ve no doubt that there are gay men who fit that stereotype (it had to come from somewhere, after all), it doesn’t do the movement any favors to portray them this way. I don’t know if it is my liberal conscience being triggered, but I had less of an issue with the rich being portrayed as grasping, greedy and amoral. All in all, I think the film would have benefitted with fewer stereotypes.

I saw this movie while it was playing the Newport Beach Virtual Film Festival and the film is still making its way around the festival circuit. It’s likely to get picked up by an indie distributor and end up on VOD in the not too distant future, so keep an eye out for it then.

REASONS TO SEE: Eric Roberts gives it the old college try.
REASONS TO AVOID: Reinforces negative gay stereotypes.
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity, sexual situations and violence.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the first feature film as a director for Kapner.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/30/20: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet; Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Eat the Rich
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Hearts and Bones

Gerald’s Game

Carla Gugino is literally a captive audience.

(2017) Thriller (Netflix) Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Carel Struycken, Henry Thomas, Chiara Aurelia, Kate Siegel, Natalie Roers, Tom Glynn, Stu Cookson, Gwendolyn Mutamba, Ben Pronsky, Jon Arthur, Nikia Reynolds, Kimberly Battista, Michael Amstutz, Chuck Borden, Dori Lumpkin, Chad Kinney, Bill Riales, John Ceallach, Tony Beard, Victoria Hardway, Adalyn Jones. Directed by Mike Flanagan

It has been the year of Stephen King adaptations, with Dark Tower and It having already made their theatrical runs and 1922 recently released on Netflix. This adaptation is of particular interest because 1) Mike Flanagan, who has been impressive with Oculus and Hush, is in the director’s chair here and 2), this is one of King’s lesser works that was thought to be virtually unfilmable. How wrong they were.

One can see why that thought occurred however. The movie is mostly set in a single bedroom with the protagonist alone and immobile for the bulk of the story. There is also a kinky sexuality to it that in the current atmosphere is both timely and perhaps may incite a certain segment of the population to point their fingers and cry shrilly “Objectification! Objectification! Objectification!” We are, these days, gunshy about sex (particularly of the kinkier variety) on both sides of the political aisle.

The marriage between successful attorney Gerald (Greenwood) and his trophy wife Jessie (Gugino) has been troubled for some time now and the two decide to take a romantic trip to a beautiful but remote vacation cabin to try and heat things up. Gerald’s idea of romance is a lot different than Jessie’s however; he wants to handcuff her to the bed and enact a rape fantasy on his wife. At first she goes along with it, but as Gerald gets deeper into the game she freaks out and demands that he stop and free her. At first he is petulant, like a little boy who’s been told he can’t have a cookie. Then he does what most little boys don’t do – he has a heart attack and dies.

Slowly the realization comes to Jessie that she is in an absolutely terrifying predicament; she has no way to free herself from the stainless steel cuffs, no way to get food or water and she is sharing the bedroom with her husband’s corpse and a hungry dog who is desperate enough to enjoy some Gerald tartare. As panic begins to set in and she realizes that nobody can hear her screams, she begins to speak with the angels and devils of her better nature – her angels represented by a strong, self-possessed version of herself and her devils by Gerald himself. While Gerald mostly relates the scenarios in which she dies a horrible death, the alter-Jessie figures out ingenious ways to get water and eventually to concoct a desperate plan to escape – one that will take all of the actual Jessie’s willpower and courage.

But there is soon another player in the play; a deathly, spectral figure with a bag of bones who is stalking her after dark. She realizes that as the last evening falls that he will come for her in the night…and she will join her husband as potential puppy chow if she doesn’t escape before then.

The script follows King’s book pretty faithfully but it lacks the sense of dread and terror that King was able to weave in the book – but to be fair, not every writer is as talented at that particular skill as King is. In fact, very few writers are. Flanagan and his co-writer Jeff Howard turn this more into a suspense film than a supernatural thriller which is what King produced – but the Moonlight Man is excellently rendered, I’ll give them that.

I’ll also give you that this is the performance that I’ve been waiting for Gugino to deliver. It’s masterful as she captures both the strong, self-assured side of Jessie and the frightened, wounded and disregarded part of her. She spends nearly the entire movie in a negligee (and looks mighty fine doing it) but you never get a sense of her being exploited (although some may disagree); she’s a woman who is comfortable with her sexuality and one senses that if Gerald had actually had a romantic weekend getaway planned instead of a kinkfest, he’d have gotten plenty of action.

She and Greenwood actually work very well together. Greenwood is sixty-plus at this point but he looks a lot more buff than the overweight Gerald of the book; it’s possible that Gerald’s use of that Little Blue Pill may have been what done him in. The relationship between Jessie and Gerald is believable; these are people who feel like they’ve been together for awhile but have begun to diverge away from one another and neither one knows really how to get back on the same page – or if it’s even possible. They remain civil to one another but there is that undercurrent of tension between them that tells a story of frustrations not voiced and petty arguments that are.

There is a subplot about Jessie’s past about a terrible incident that takes place during a rare total eclipse that does a lot to explain her backstory. It’s sensitively handled and again is pretty timely considering the events of recent months but it might be a little disturbing for people who have a history of childhood sexual abuse.

All in all this turned out much better than I think most of us had a right to expect. It re-emphasizes that Flanagan is the genuine article, a master of horror films who tends to elevate every project he works on and this one is no exception. Not only is it maybe the best adaptation of King you’ll see this year, it is one of the better original films you’ll see on Netflix this year as well.

REASONS TO GO: Gugino gives a career-defining performance and she works very well with Greenwood. The plot is fiendishly clever.
REASONS TO STAY: The movie is not nearly as creepy as the book.
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity, a good deal of sexuality and some disturbing images and gore.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Dialogue and plot devices from the film reference such Stephen King books as Dolores Claiborne, Cujo and The Dark Tower.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Netflix
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/30/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 90% positive reviews. Metacritic: 76/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Girlfriend Experience
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
NEXT: More of Six Days of Darkness

The Wolf of Wall Street

Leonardo di Caprio knows he’s getting an Oscar nomination.

(2013) True Life Drama (Paramount) Leonardo di Caprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Matthew McConaughey, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jon Favreau, Jean Dujardin, Kenneth Choi, PJ Byrne, Jon Bernthal, Joanna Lumley, Cristin Miloti, Christine Ebersole, Shea Whigham, Katarina Cas, Brian Sacca, Henry Zebrowski, Ethan Suplee, MacKenzie Meehan. Directed by Martin Scorsese

We are all aware that there is something broken on Wall Street; it is often depicted as a kind of testosterone-infused drug-fueled locker room in which over-stimulated men essentially rob America blind. While there are plenty of honest stockbrokers, there is some truth to the notion that the culture of greed exists.

Jordan Belfort (di Caprio) is the poster boy for that culture. He starts off as an ambitious stockbroker, taken under the wing of a successful broker (McConaughey) who initiates him in the cult of screw you – making the customer money is not the first order of business. Getting his fees are. And keeping those fees coming in even if that means selling some poor schmuck stocks he can’t afford or worse, stocks the broker knows are going to lose money.

Belfort quickly realizes that the real money is to be made in owning his own firm and that selling penny stocks were a vastly underserved market in which the brokers can make a huge amount of money in a short amount of time. With partner Donny Azoff (Hill) Belfort founds Stratton Oakmont, a literal boiler room where brokers make high-pressure sales of penny stocks.

Belfort found that defrauding his clientele was far more profitable for him personally than actually working for it and soon finds himself with more money than he knows what to do with. Of course, men with more money than they know what to do with usually find things to do with it – drugs, prostitutes, a luxury yacht, a trophy wife. In Belfort’s case, the latter turns out to be Naomi (Robbie), a Jersey shore princess and model.

As Belfort’s shenanigans grow more egregious he and his firm attracts the attention of the FBI in the person of dogged agent Patrick Denham (Chandler). Constantly in a drugged haze of cocaine and Quaaludes, Belfort and Azoff decide to launder their money and use drug dealer Brad (Bernthal) and a loathsome Swiss banker (Dujardin) to do it. But as those who ride too high will tell you, the fall is inevitable and not very pretty when it comes.

Scorsese has delivered another masterpiece in his storied career. Frequent collaborator (this is the fifth movie they’ve done together) di Caprio is at his best. His manic portrayal of Belfort is almost certain to get an Oscar nomination later this month and is at the moment the odds on favorite to win the gold.

He is mesmerizing every moment he’s on the screen and this with a character that is basically a douchebag. He basically thumbs his nose at everything decent and does everything to the point where you could charitably call him evil and yet di Caprio is so good that we can’t turn away. Belfort is a train wreck of a human being and di Caprio keeps our eyes glued on him.

Hill also delivers what might be a superior performance to his Oscar-nominated turn in Moneyball. His Azoff is smarmy, smart but not as smart as Belfort and a bit cowardly. He is the kind of guy who wants to live the high life but doesn’t have the brains or the charisma to get it himself so he rides on Belfort’s coattails. At the end of the day, Hill makes this guy less of a rat and more of a flawed human being whose mantra of every man for himself informs his every decision.

I’ve noticed that conservative viewers tend to look at this movie as a liberal Hollywood hatchet job on Wall Street so those who tend to get their information from Fox News might want to give this one a skip. While the excesses here seem over-the-top, they are all documented – by the real Jordan Belfort himself. I must also add that while Belfort bilked his customers out of more than a billion dollars, he did go to jail for it. Some of the Wall Street bigwigs from established firms stole far more from their clients and damn near bankrupted our economy yet none of them are in jail. I guess it’s all in who you know.

Part of the downfall for Belfort is his drug use and that is depicted pretty graphically here. If the sight of di Caprio snorting a line off of a naked woman’s breasts is uncomfortable for you, if the idea of seeing the results of Quaalude intoxication makes you queasy, this might not be the movie for you. I must admit that a scene late in the movie in which Belfort and Azoff take some powerful Quaaludes that don’t have a reaction in the normal amount of time turns into one of the funniest scenes of the year. I have to admit I felt a little guilty about laughing at it; watching a drug addict having a seizure after an overdose sounds cruel but I suppose if you can’t laugh at someone who has to roll their way down a staircase and only able to communicate in a kind of hooting grunt, who can you laugh at?

Like some of Scorsese’s best films, there’s a hint of controversy involved and the movie definitely isn’t for conservative Wall Street apologists. However for everyone else, there is something to be said for watching someone playing so fast and so loose without a care for the consequences of his actions get his which leads to my next point; if I have one gripe about the movie it’s that there isn’t anything about the very real human consequences to Belfort’s clients. That aspect might illustrate the real tragedy of the Jordan Belfort story in that the people who paid for his crimes and continue to do so never really get a face.

REASONS TO GO: Di Caprio and Scorsese hit another one out of the park. Hysterically funny in places, heartbreaking in others.

REASONS TO STAY: Belfort is such a scumbag it’s really hard to identify with him let alone root for him.

FAMILY VALUES:  More drug use than you thought humanly possible, graphic nudity and sex, enough profanity to make Lenny Bruce blush and even a little violence for good measure.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Footage of the actual beach party in the Hamptons depicted here with the real Jordan Belfort can be found on YouTube.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 1/4/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 75% positive reviews. Metacritic: 75/100.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Boiler Room

FINAL RATING: 9/10

NEXT: The Punk Singer

Potiche

Judith Godreche is miffed that Catherine Deneuve and Karin Viard are so amused at her mannequin imitation.

(2010) Comedy (Music Box) Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu, Fabrice Luchini, Karin Viard, Judith Godreche, Jeremie Renier, Evelyne Dandry, Bruno Lochet, Elodie Freget, Gautier About, Jean-Baptiste Shelmerdine, Noam Charlier. Directed by Francois Ozon

Through the ages and across the continents women have had to put up with a second class status in nearly every culture. How far have we come in righting that wrong?

Suzanne Pujol (Deneuve) is the heiress to a successful umbrella factory in France. Her husband Robert (Luchini) is in charge of the factory and his autocratic tendencies have led his workers to a strike, egged on by the communist mayor and MP Maurice Babin (Depardieu) with whom Suzanne had a brief and torrid affair shortly after she was married.

She calls in a favor with Babin when angry workers take Robert hostage. He is not grateful in the least when he is released to the bosom of his family – the artistic son Laurent (Renier) who resembles a young Michael York and has been dismissed by his father as a non-entity, and Joelle (Godreche) who beneath her Farrah haircut hides a fear that she and her husband will divorce – and an all-consuming need to win her father’s approval, although again she is dismissed as just a girl.

When Robert suffers a heart attack, Suzanne is forced to take over the factory and resume negotiations with the workers. Not only does she give in to the demands which are remarkably fair, but she actually builds the business, expanding into new markets and updating the look of the umbrellas to add artistic flair and color. However, when Robert returns from his convalescence, he means to have control of his factory back (which is only his because he married the boss’s daughter) and doesn’t care what he does to get it back.

This is a light and frothy comedy, set in 1977 with all the camp and kitsch that it implies. Ozon has had a career that has spanned all sorts of movies, from comedies to suspense movies and dramas. Here, he affects a light, deft touch, basing this on a stage play that was written in that era. While he maintains the ‘70s setting, he has also updated the play somewhat to reference the social and political sensibilities of modern France.

It also doesn’t hurt that he has two of the giants of French cinema in his cast. Deneuve, in her late 60s, is still ridiculously beautiful and elegant. She plays the long-suffering Suzanne as a bit on the timid side to begin, doting on her children, supporting her husband and making a home. As she becomes more confident in herself, it is fun to watch her blossom and come into herself, a lovely butterfly.

Depardieu is an amazing actor who while no longer the lean leading man he was 20 years ago, still impresses. He wears his emotions on his sleeve and while he is somewhat cowed by Suzanne, he nonetheless stands up to her when she breaks his heart.

Viard, one of France’s most popular actresses, takes on a lesser role than she is usually used to but considering whom she’s supporting I imagine it wasn’t hard to convince her to do so – if she didn’t volunteer to begin with. She plays Robert’s put upon secretary who has also been the object of his philandering attention. She’s efficient and competent but like most of the women in the movie, disregarded.

The setting is note-perfect, from the scene where Depardieu and Deneuve do the Hustle at a nightclub to the bright colors and fonts of the graphics in the titles. The comedy is light and light-hearted and while there’s an underlying message of gender equality, it never gets in the way of a good time. Potiche isn’t the kind of movie that is going to be a game-changer; it has opened several film festivals here in the United States which is a bit mystifying, but it is still satisfying entertaining and way more funny than most of the comedies Hollywood will release this year.

REASONS TO GO: Any chance at seeing Deneuve and Depardieu (here in their 8^th pairing) is worth taking. Reasonably funny and note-perfect recreation of the 70s.

REASONS TO STAY: Fluffy and disposable at best.

FAMILY VALUES: There is a bit of sexuality but nothing overt. Lots of smoking though.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: In French, “potiche” is a decorative vase but it is also a slang term for a trophy wife.

HOME OR THEATER: While this will probably get a decent-sized release, chances are you have a better shot at seeing it at home which is just fine.

FINAL RATING: 7.5/10

TOMORROW: Holy Wars