Movie Review: Hit Man (2023)

Genre: Crime Comedy  

Director: Richard Linklater  

Starring: Glen Powell, Adria Arjona  

Running Time: 115 minutes  

Synopsis: In New Orleans, Gary Johnson (Glen Powell) is a college philosophy teacher who helps the police department on the side. He discovers a knack for posing as a fake hitman to intercept criminals seeking an assassin-for-hire, and achieves a high conviction rate much to the chagrin of Jasper (Austin Amelio), the officer he replaced. But an encounter with Madison (Adria Arjona), who is seeking to kill her abusive husband, takes a different turn when Gary convinces her to abandon her plans and flee the marriage instead. Gary and Madison subsequently start a torrid romance as he maintains the pretense of being a hitman, but when a real crime occurs, Gary faces awkward questions.

What Works Well: Loosely based on Gary Johnson's real life experiences, this is a wacky story of deception, stings, jealousy, romance, and crime. Glen Powell has plenty of fun in a variety of disguises and personas offering assassination services to a succession of low-lifes and desperados, cleverly complementing a running college lecture thread about the capacity for change and self-recognition. The many narrative currents include film noir shadings, allowing Adria Arjona to swirl between victim, schemer, seductress, and perpetrator. Austin Amelio adds menace as the highly-strung but still perceptive Jasper. 

What Does Not Work As Well: The script (co-written by director Richard Linklater and Powell) repeatedly shifts gears with notable clunkiness. Smart truth-is-stranger-than-fiction comedy yields to sizzling romance, before much more serious crime and convoluted deception take over. The characters struggle to convince through the transitions, the script driving events more so than coherent motivations.

Key Quote:

Gary Johnson: All pie is good pie.

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Movie Review: Speak No Evil (2024)

Genre: Suspense Horror  

Director: James Watkins  
Starring: James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy  
Running Time: 110 minutes  

Synopsis: While in Italy on vacation, American couple Louise and Ben (Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy) and their daughter Agnes befriend British couple Paddy and Ciara (James McAvoy and Aisling Franciosi) and their son Ant, who is unable to speak due to a tongue condition. Louise and Ben subsequently accept an invite to spend a weekend at Paddy's home in rural Devon. Louise finds Paddy's behaviour increasingly unsettling, but her concerns are dismissed by Ben, deepening a pre-existing rift between the couple. But when Louise senses Agnes may be in danger, her unease escalates to horror.

What Works Well: This remake of a Danish-Dutch film expertly builds tension through a patient but still ominous opening hour. Director James Watkins leverages an excellent James McAvoy performance to construct a milieu dripping with social awkwardness, where every action may have multiple explanations from friendly to hostile. Subtle gestures, throwaway comments, and quirky behaviours may just be the habits of exciting new friends raising a child with disabilities, or clues about dangerous strangers. The strained bond between Louise and Ben, and the insecurities harboured by their daughter Agnes, add to the spiderweb of emotional fractures. The time for panic, once it arrives, is well-earned.

What Does Not Work As Well: As is common for the genre, some contrived reasons are combined with suspect decision making to swerve past opportunities to escape the horror.

Key Quote:

Paddy: I know we can both be...

Ciara: ...a bit much.



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Movie Review: The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)

Genre: War Action  

Director: Guy Ritchie  

Starring: Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Alex Pettyfer, Cary Elwes, Henry Golding  

Running Time: 122 minutes  

Synopsis: In 1941, Nazi Germany's U-boats control the Atlantic Ocean and the United Kingdom stands alone in Europe. Winston Churchill (Rory Kinnear) authorizes a secret commando raid to blow up an Italian U-boat supply ship anchored off the East African coast. Hardened criminal Gus March-Phillipps (Henry Cavill) and Denmark's Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson) lead the mission, approaching their target by sea. Meanwhile, intelligence agents Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González) and Richard Heron (Babs Olusanmokun) are tasked with distracting the on-shore Nazi commander Heinrich Luhr (Til Schweiger).

What Works Well: Loosely based on the actual World War Two Operation Postmaster, this jovial romp is part throwback to mission-focused war movies, and part just-kill-all-the-Nazis video game style nonsense. Humour is never far from the surface, with the best laughs generated by insatiable killing machine Lassen. The quite brilliant Christopher Benstead music score is a most respectful salute to Ennio Morricone.

What Does Not Work As Well: The mindless entertainment sails dangerously close to a tick-box exercise, with most scenes soullessly borrowed from other movies. The characterizations are thin enough to disappear into the ocean, too much of the muddled action takes place at night, and the plot twists are simultaneously sketched-in and over-complicated. The sequences featuring Marjorie Stewart's seduction of Heinrich Luhr are a bad combination of prolonged and unconvincing.

Key Quote:

Anders Lassen: I'm not leaving until I have a barrel full of Nazi hearts.



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Movie Review: Wicked Little Letters (2023)

Genre: Dramedy  

Director: Thea Sharrock  

Starring: Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Timothy Spall, Gemma Jones, Eileen Atkins  

Running Time: 100 minutes  

Synopsis: It's the 1920s in the English town of Littlehampton, and aging spinster Edith Swan (Olivia Colman) receives a series of vulgar letters. Her father Edward (Timothy Spall) suspects the writer is their coarse next door neighbour and Edith's former friend Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley). Despite no evidence (other than her outspoken Irishness) linking her to the letters, Rose is arrested and charged. Police officer Gladys Moss (Anjana Vassan) suspects the wrong woman has been implicated, and initiates a surreptitious investigation.

What Works Well: The idyllic small-town setting of Littlehampton is quaint, and both Olivia Colman (repressed) and Jessie Buckley (unconstrained) deliver committed if monotonal performances. The story's foundations reside within actual (albeit bizarre) real events. One joke (German deployed to protect a child from profanity) lands well.

What Does Not Work As Well: The script delights in unleashing (in equal measures) obscenities and sanctimonious moralizing about the evils of a patriarchal society. The smug portrayal of all men as buffoons is tiresome, and the intellectual depth to probe the letter writer's emotional motivations is lacking. The anachronistic casting of non-white actors in white roles coupled with the avoidance of racial narrative themes exposes the shortcomings of color-blind casting. 

Key Quote:

Rose: Why would I send a letter when I can just say it?

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Movie Review: The Outrun (2024)

Genre: Drama 

Director: Nora Fingscheidt  

Starring: Saoirse Ronan  

Running Time: 118 minutes  

Synopsis: The story unfolds in two timelines. In the flashbacks, Rona (Saoirse Ronan) is a college student in London. She neglects her studies, moves in with her boyfriend, slips into a lifestyle of partying, and succumbs to alcoholism. In the present, Rona has moved back home to the remote and rugged Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland, where she reconnects with her separated mother and father. She secures a low-stress bird preservation job, but the urge to drink is never far away.

What Works Well: The beauty of the Orkney Islands provides a spectacular and unique backdrop for an otherwise standard journey of healing. Saoirse Ronan is magnetic in her portrayal of a young woman who has lost her way, and now experiencing her parents' dysfunction (mom has surrendered to religion, dad is bipolar) in a new light. Recovery passes through nature and solitude, but only after the desire to reclaim control emerges from the wreckage.

What Does Not Work As Well: This is a small human drama occupying limited emotional space, with barely sufficient material for 90 minutes. The unnecessary stretching towards two hours results in languid pacing, repetitive notes, and static scenery to obscure the sparse content.

Key Quote:

Rona (narrating): United Kingdom is an island off Europe. Orkney Islands is an island off United Kingdom. Westray is an island off Orkney and Papa Westray is an island off Westray.



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Movie Review: Woman Of The Hour (2023)

Genre: Crime Drama  

Director: Anna Kendrick  

Starring: Anna Kendrick  

Running Time: 94 minutes  

Synopsis: The story unfolds across several timelines. In 1977, serial killer Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto) pretends to be a photographer and murders a woman on the isolated plains of Wyoming. In 1971 he targets a flight attendant in New York City, and in 1979 he picks up a runaway teenager (Autumn Best) in California. In 1978, Sheryl Bradshaw  (Anna Kendrick) is a struggling actress in Los Angeles. She lands a role on the television gameshow The Dating Game as the eligible woman choosing one of three batchelor contestants, one of whom is Rodney. 

What Works Well: Anna Kendrick's directorial debut is a robustly assembled crime and suspense drama based on actual events. The chilling scenes of Rodney preying on vulnerable, isolated women are balanced by Sheryl's experience on the tawdry The Dating Game, where desperation is dressed up under bright lights and beamed into living rooms. The common theme is a society more than willing to exploit susceptible women but otherwise quick to delegitimize their concerns, enabling monsters to hide in plain sight. The 1970s are recreated in all the garish brown-orange wide-collars-and-broad-sideburns beauty of the decade.

What Does Not Work As Well: The focus on Sheryl is misguided, as she is at best a side presence in the bigger story, with another woman grabbing the initiative late in the third act. Unfortunately Alcala emerges as the most intriguing study, but his background and deeply damaged psychology remain unprobed. The frequent jumps in time demand some-assembly-required levels of attention.

Key Quote:

Rodney: Did you feel seen?

Sheryl: I felt looked at.



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Movie Review: Anora (2024)

Genre: Romantic Dramedy  

Director: Sean Baker  

Starring: Mikey Madison 

Running Time: 139 minutes  

Synopsis: New York City stripper and private dancer Ani (Mikey Madison) meets customer Ivan, the irresponsible son of a wealthy Russian businessman. He lives at a swanky mansion and invites Ani to become his paid-for girlfriend for a week, after which they fall in love and get married in Las Vegas. Ivan's parents are scandalized, and dispatch fixer Toros and goons Igor and Garnik to clean-up the mess. Ani has to fight for her right to stay married, and demands that Ivan confirm his love.

What Works Well: Director and writer Sean Baker boldly mixes plenty of raunchy sex, endless profanity, parties, drugs, broad comedy, suspect romance, and raw human emotions into a granular story. In this darker and much edgier version of Pretty Woman, the elements meld into an often compelling search-for-a-prince crashing into cross-ocean class realities. Ani (which she prefers to her full name Anora) is a sassy and savvy woman confidently wielding sex as a means to prosperity, and Baker's other magic ingredients include caring enough for Toros, Garnik, and especially Igor to unexpectedly round them into humans worth noticing beyond the fixer/goon archetypes. And as a bonus, Baker lands an ending that manages to be simultaneously crushing and hopeful.

What Does Not Work As Well: The running time is inexcusably long, and by a good 30 minutes. The scene introducing Igor, Garnik, and Toros is stretched from slapstick/screwball comedy to just exhausting, and the subsequent search for Ivan contains more padding than content. About half the movie shifts focus away from Ani and to the Russian/Armenian trio, resulting in tonal degradation.

Key Quote:

Ani (to Jimmy, the strip club manager): When you give me health insurance, workers' comp, and a 401k, then you can tell me when I work.



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Movie Review: Lee (2023)

Genre: Biographical Drama  

Director: Ellen Kuras  

Starring: Kate Winslet, Josh O'Connor, Alexander Skarsgård, Andy Samberg, Marion Cotillard  

Running Time: 116 minutes  

Synopsis: In 1977, renowned wartime photographer Lee Miller (Kate Winslet) is at her home in England answering questions from an interviewer (Josh O'Connor). Flashbacks reveal her story starting in France of 1938, where she gives up a modeling career and takes up photography. She starts a romance with artist Roland Penrose (Alexander Skarsgård) and they relocate to England, where Lee secures a job with Vogue magazine covering the homefront during World War Two. She befriends Life photographer David Scherman (Andy Samberg), and with D-Day looming, finally secures a reassignment to the front lines. In Europe, Lee's cameras capture the horrors of war, from badly wounded soldiers to the chaos of combat - and more.

What Works Well: A committed Kate Winslet portrays Miller as a woman determined to break down barriers, and traces an arc from the glamour of the pre-war French countryside to the grim sites of unimaginable atrocities. In the 1977 scenes, Winslet barely conceals entrenched trauma, smoking and alcohol repurposed from objects of picturesque pleasure to failing facades. Director Ellen Kuras finds intensity in the under-fire scenes in France, but bullets and explosions are also just a prelude to what awaits deeper in Europe.

What Does Not Work As Well: Despite a valiant effort, Winslet struggles to express the naive courage required for a woman in her early 30s to venture into war, defaulting to world-weary determination rather than young adventurism. By definition, this is the story of an observer rather than an instigator, and while Miller is admirably portrayed as an early feminist challenging man-made rules, the strength of the material resides more in the historic wartime milieu than within the photographer.

Key Quote:

Lee: There's so much life in a person's eyes. Right up until the moment that there isn't.



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Movie Review: Strange Darling (2023)

Genre: Suspense Horror  

Director: JT Mollner  

Starring: Willa Fitzgerald, Kyle Gallner  

Running Time: 96 minutes  

Synopsis: The story unfolds in six chapters, shown out of sequence. In a rural area, a woman (Willa Fitzgerald) is escaping from a shotgun-wielding man (Kyle Gallner), first in a car then on foot. She seeks shelter at the secluded farmhouse of aging hippie couple Frederick and Genevieve (Ed Begley Jr. and Barbara Hershey). In an earlier chapter, the man and woman plan to go ahead with a night of kinky motel room sex, although she is worried about her safety and asks him in advance if he is a serial killer.

What Works Well: Beyond the synopsis, not much more should be revealed about the devious plot. Director and writer JT Mollner delivers a finely crafted and mischievous story of murder and mayhem, featuring a frothy mix of sexual tension, chase thrills, tense searches, and bloody assaults, often delivered with minimal dialogue. Even the police officers, once they arrive at one scene of carnage, are convincingly flummoxed. Willa Fitzgerald's layered performance is devastatingly complex and among the most impressive by an actress in a horror movie. Giovanni Ribisi turns producer and cinematographer, his rich and patient compositions delving into the characters' souls but only ever showing what is necessary. The understated songs by Z Berg (including the spine-tingling Love Hurts  and Better The Devil) add inner thoughts and haunting textures.

What Does Not Work As Well: Although only a small part of the film, the threats of sexual violence are a difficult watch.

Key Quote:

The Woman: Do you have any idea the kind of risks a woman like me takes every time she agrees to have a little fling?

The Man: Never thought about it that way.



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Movie Review: The Order (2024)

Genre: Crime Thriller  

Director: Justin Kurzel  

Starring: Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Jurnee Smollett, Tye Sheridan  

Running Time: 116 minutes  

Synopsis: In the early 1980s, grizzled FBI Agent Terry Husk (Jude Law) relocates to Idaho and starts investigating white supremacist groups in the Pacific Northwest. Minister Richard Butler is running the Aryan Nations, but Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult) heads the more dangerous splinter group The Order. Inspired by The Turner Diaries, Mathews is focused on recruitment, training, and fundraising-through-crime to instigate a revolution. Husk, local police officer Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan), and FBI Agent Joanne Carney (Jurnee Smollett) start hunting down Mathews, but he is determined to fulfill his mission.

What Works Well: Based on actual events, this Canadian thriller excels in creating a downbeat mood of rural economic despair, with director Justin Kurzel finding an excellent balance between sharply executed action scenes and character-enhancing interludes. The dreary aesthetic creates fertile recruitment grounds for the charismatic Bob Mathews, and Nicholas Hoult's chilling performance captures a dead-eyed ability to manipulate the uneducated and blame others (mostly Jews and blacks) for all ills. Jude Law finds a career highlight in the well-written role of Terry Husk, this FBI Agent carrying physical scars and psychological burdens. The tension seeps in multiple directions, officer Bowen's wife (Morgan Holmstrom) eerily describing the unease created by the intrusion of serious law enforcement into this community. 

What Does Not Work As Well: Jurnee Smollett is not given much to work with as the other prominent FBI agent on the case.

Key Quote:

Bob Mathews: In every revolution, someone has to fire the first shot.



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