Movie Reaction: Belfast

Formula: Roma ^ The Troubles

 

I’m going to jump right in with the obvious comparison. The further into Awards season we get, the more we’ll hear about Belfast and Roma both being semi-biographic films from auteur directors filmed in black and white. Roma was about Alfonso Cuaron’s childhood in Mexico City from the perspective of his nanny. Belfast is Kenneth Branagh’s film about his childhood in Belfast during the Troubles. I suppose this is the new WWII/Holocaust when it comes to the Oscars. Every director’s got one and they all get love. Isn’t that kind of what Cold War was too? And, much like the WWII Oscar bait, it looks like I’m going to be annoyed by the trend while ending up enjoying the films.

 

Belfast centers around Buddy (Jude Hill): a 10-ish year old boy living through the Troubles. His happy life is turned upside down when a group of Protestants attack the Catholic homes on his street. His parents (Jamie Dornan and Caitriona Balfe) are struggling with money. I don’t fully understand the tax system in Northern Ireland, but it sounds like the tax man has been really screwing them despite his dad seeming to have a pretty good job. Unfortunately, the job is in England, so he can only come back and visit every couple weeks. Due to the turmoil in Belfast, Buddy’s parents contemplate a move elsewhere, even though Belfast is all they’ve ever known. In particular, this would mean leaving Buddy’s delightful grandparents (Judi Dench and Ciaran Hinds) behind. There are some harrowing moments in the film, but this is mainly a family drama. And I like it as that. The film is very much framed from Buddy’s child POV. The fact that I don’t understand the ins-and-outs of Irish legalities helped in a way, because I would occasionally be as lost about the things Buddy’s overhearing as he is. 

 

This is definitely a performance movie. Hill is a very capable child actor. He didn’t blow me away. Mostly, he was good enough to not be a distraction and to let me pay attention to the adults. That’s not a knock on him. That’s just what the movie needed. I’m so curious to see how this Oscar race plays out, because Balfe, Dornan, Dench, and Hinds all have arguments for Supporting nominations. My money is on the grandparents, because Dench and Hinds get some of the most heartwarming moments. I never thought I’d like Dornan this much after blasé work in the 50 Shades movies. Over the last year though, he’s really won me over. I remain positive about the odd charms of Wild Mountain Thyme. He’s great fun in Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, even though the movie wore on me. And he’s excellent in Belfast too. Much more natural than I’ve seen him. Balfe gets a variety of modes to play in. It’s a Mama Bear performance. Stern when needed. Gentle at other times. She gets plenty of autonomy too, which mom roles don’t typically have. I love the sweetness of this cast and how they play off each other.

 

Branagh stops just short of being pretentious with the movie. Sure, the black and white is a little much. This habit of filmmakers making something black and white to be taken more seriously is getting old. Otherwise, Belfast doesn’t play like a self-serious movie. It’s a brisk 1h45m when it easily could’ve navel-gazed into 2 hours or more. There’s a lot of humor in the movie, normally from the child-like perspective of things. I particularly enjoyed Buddy’s attempts to understand the Catholic traditions. As someone raised Catholic, seeing non-Catholics trying to understand things about Catholicism like they actually make sense is always a pleasure. This isn’t a film that I needed, but I’m pleased to have seen it anyway.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Quick Reaction: Dragon Lord

Look. I took a week off work, watched a bunch of movies, and didn't keep up with my Reactions as I watched them. I'm super behind, and some of these movies just aren't getting the time that I like to put into them. Dragon Lord is one of them. Guess what? It's a Jackie Chan movie and I had a lot of fun watching it. It's got the stunts and ambition I want from it. I had a great time watching. It does start oddly. I found out later that they moved the sequence intended for the end to the beginning, which explains why the movie starts so abruptly. I do appreciate how many of these movies are dubbed. I have no problem with subtitles, but dubbing does mean that my eyes are looking at the stunts and not the dialogue at all times. That's nice.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Quick Reaction: Aftermath

The less said about this the better. Normally if I start a movie, I finish it because of the sunk cost fallacy. If nothing else, it's a movie to add to my seen tally. Some of the only movies I've stopped midway through look a lot like Aftermath. And I should've stopped Aftermath too. It's not helping anyone by continuing to watch, because the less interested I am, the less I'm paying attention and the less I actually recall. Like, it's been a couple days and most of what I remember is that this ends up being a lot like The Boy. Within a couple scenes, I was already checked out. I'd love to know a little more about the production of this, because the first several scenes have some truly awful ADR. It almost seemed dubbed - Suspiria-style. It really makes me appreciate sound mixing. Because this sounds like they shot outdoor scenes, added clean dialogue later (which is a common enough process), but did very little to stop it from sounding like a booth recording slapped over the other audio. I don't know. Aftermath is a slightly better cast Hallmark Mystery movie. If that's your thing, enjoy.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

 

Delayed Reaction: Miss Sloane

Premise: A lobbyist uses all her D.C. know-how to get a gun-control bill passed.

 

Sometimes, I like to talk about what I'm now calling "fluffer movies". These are movies that make you appreciate another movie even more. I thought of it after seeing Sylvester Stallone’s Lock Up and realizing that it made The Shawshank Redemption look even better. Well, it's not quite a "fluffer movie" situation, but I did a double feature that really made Miss Sloane look great. Right before this, I watched the British whistleblower drama Official Secrets. It's a fine move, but a little dull and a little outside my familiarity. Being based on a true story really limited the number of flourishes they could add. Then, I follow it up with this fictional DC drama that lets Jessica Chastain chew up every scene in all of her hyper-competent glory. It was the shot of adrenaline I needed.

 

This movie isn't perfect by any means. It's a little too wonky at times. Even if I give it a lot of rope, much of it strains plausibility. It might be too sensational for its own good. However, it sure was fun to watch. I love a movie about someone who is really good at their job completing a really difficult task. And no one looks better at their job than Jessica Chastain. Who, male or female would I want to cast to seem better at their job? Maybe Rosamund Pike with a sharp haircut or Billy Crudup in a thousand-dollar suit. The list is short.

 

This movie gives her so many people to spar with. Mark Strong and Michael Stuhlbarg fit right in. The film navigates between whether Gugu Mbatha-Raw is a protege or a prop wonderfully. I even like Alison Pill sneaking in for some good moments.

It's hard to imagine being in a better headspace for this movie than I was in. This isn't a great movie but it sure is a watchable one. In an era where people still watched cable, this is definitely a movie I'd get sucked into one or twice a year on TNT.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Quick Reaction: Official Secrets

I think this movie would make a lot more sense if I was British. I feel bad for all these American thrillers other countries have had shoved down their throats for years, because they really assume the audience knows the agency structure going in. I'm sure Official Secrets is a well written examination of the interworking and competing structures in the UK government, but I often felt myself lost. Even just figuring out who the GCHQ were was tough. Then, when Kiera Knightley as Katharine Gun is facing legal repercussions, I struggled to grasp what it all meant. I'm not a complete idiot. I understood the broad strokes, however it's fair to say this movie was made with a more British audience in mind. I had a hard time getting to that final level to understanding the stakes. It's a fine political drama. All the performances from a ton of familiar faces such as Knightley, Matt Smith, and Rhys Ifans are exactly what they need to be. This is a nice British counterpart to Cate Blanchett's Truth, which went similarly ignored by everyone.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: The Voyeurs

Premise: A couple become obsessed with the neighbors in the apartment across the street who never close their windows.

 

It's hard for a movie twist to lose me as completely as the one in The Voyeurs. I was fine with a Rear Window-style thriller about a two people getting dangerously involved in their neighbors' lives. It's a common and effective premise. There are actually many ways to do it. Rear Window and The Lives of Others are very different movies despite both being about surveillance. The Voyeurs was hardly the best of this kind of movie, but it held my interest. Sydney Sweeney and Justice Smith are fun as they sleuth around for ways to get involved in the lives of Ben Hardy and Natasha Lui Bordizzo. It definitely earned its erotic thriller bonafides. I'd be lying if I said that aspect wasn't part of the appeal.

 

Then the twist happened, and I was ready to turn the movie off right there. So, Hardy and Bordizzo were just putting on a show, secretly tracking Sweeney and Smith's interest in watching them. They turn it into an art show about a generational lack of respect for privacy. I could rant for pages about how that doesn't make sense. How could they be so sure Sweeney and Smith would become obsessed with them? There is no way they could've been certain about how clever Sweeney and Smith would be about the sleuthing. None of this would work if they didn't set up a laser pointer as a listening device. Then there's the plausibility of Hardy and Bordizzo pulling all this off unnoticed. Something like the scene of Hardy choking is very involved for not even being that certain that anyone is looking. There's a Truman Show aspect to this that isn't addressed. Then you stack on the fact that they actually killed Justice Smith to look like a suicide. That is a crazy escalation. If they were going to go that big, I'm disappointed the movie didn't get even bigger earlier.

 

I suppose the end is devilishly satisfying. The central quartet all play their roles well. Sweeney channels some of her White Lotus character toward the end, which she's very effective at. I don't really buy a couple that looks as collectively good as Sweeney and Smith becoming so obsessed with another couple anyway. I know it's lazy to think that pretty people can't snoop. However, if I was Smith dating a Sweeney, I can't imagine being that interested in some other couple.

 

Side Rant: Real talk for a moment. Obviously, the listening device stuff was wrong, but is it really so wrong to watch your neighbors like that? Hardy and Bordizzo have huge, always opened windows facing a multi-story apartment complex. By any definition, that's not a reasonable expectation of privacy. I guarantee other neighbors were watching them too. I don't know how sincere the movie was being about the vision of the art exhibit, but little about their message about privacy makes sense to me. Ugh. Then there's them making a point about no one reading the terms and conditions on contracts. Very original. I really hope there's more satire in this movie than I'm picking up on.

 

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Quick Reaction: Touch of Evil

You'd think for how much I love Citizen Kane that I would be quick to praise any of Orson Welles' work. It turns out that isn't the case. Touch of Evil is fine. The opening tracking shot was definitely built up too much. It's an impressive shot, especially by 1958 standards. I didn't feel the tension building from it the way people always talk about. I also think I'm not that hot on film noir. I like some of the Humphrey Bogart stuff and Double Indemnity, but lately I've been underwhelmed by both Touch of Evil and The Killing. My appetite must not be that insatiable for the genre. Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, and Orson Welles are all quite good in the movie. I appreciate how it uses the US/Mexican border a long time before filmmakers began to fetishize it. I can't technically complain about anything in the movie. It just didn't draw me in.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: False Positive

Premise: A woman suspects that something isn't right with her pregnancy and her husband and doctor are in collusion about it.

 

This is an elemental horror concept. Perhaps pregnancy isn't that familiar to me in a lot of ways, but I can relate to enough of the idea of something growing inside me that could be good or could be bad. I'm more familiar with the abstracts like the feeling that your body is not your own. There are some horror movie ideas that do all their work with the pitch. Teeth is a good example. Or Humana Centipede. Those cause shudders just as ideas.

Most of the work in False Positive is done just by knowing what kind of movie it is. In that way, it is effective. In most other ways, not so much. It doesn't help that it's so easy to compare it to Rosemary's Baby. False Positive does attempt to thrown in a little body horror and hallucinations to shake things up, but it's not enough. The movie is exactly what I expected it would be from beginning to end. That's a shame because there was a lot of room to do something truly wild.

 

I mean, the cast is great. Ilana Glazer shifts into a serious role nicely after mostly being known for comedies*. Per The Leftovers, Justin Theroux fits well in circumstances where the connection to reality is tenuous. I really enjoy older Pierce Brosnan. He's still so handsome, but he wears his age. He looks like an old James Bond more than other former Bonds. In a way, this movie needs the doctor to be played by someone who used to look so good in a suit. He's not a mad scientist in the traditional sense. He's a man who for his entire life has gotten away with things because he's so handsome. He's the most essential casting in the movie, even though it doesn't know how to use him a lot of the time.

 

*Let me be very superficial for a second. Ilana Glazer doesn't look right with straightened hair. She has great, crazy hair. Even when it's straightened in this, it's like it's fighting to be curly again. And maybe that's a purposeful choice in the movie. Perhaps the hairstyling is making a point, but it sure was distracting to me the whole time.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Summer of '84

Premise: A teen boy and his friends suspect their police officer neighbor is actually a serial killer.

 

This movie is a really pleasing mix of several things without being a master of any. It's fair to assume this got a greenlight thanks to Stranger Things. It has some similarities with the 80s setting and its homage to genre without specifically copying anything. Instead of Sci-Fi, this is a horror thriller. It doesn't hit hard on the scares though. It's kind of a vibe movie.

 

I'm a fan of how quickly the movie got to certain plot points. Davey (Graham Verchere) tells his parents that he believes his neighbor is a serial killer really early. When they go into Officer Mackey's (Rich Sommer) house and discover his basement dungeon, they get out easily. I was fully expecting false tension from Mackey returning and chasing them down. I didn't even know how to comprehend Davey bringing the evidence to the police and them immediately believing him. So many movies manufacture more doubt and play games, that I've learned to accept those annoyances as part of the deal. It's cool to see this movie reject so many of the contrivances. The last act ramps up really nicely too. It's a shame they couldn't've found a way to put some of that kind of excitement in the middle, since it does drag a bit. The movie never quite figures out what to do with the fact that the audience figures out that Mackey is the killer in the first 10 minutes. I think the filmmakers expect the audience to assume that. They could've played more games with that then.

 

In the end, Summer of 84 is a good bit of weaponized nostalgia that doesn't feel cheap. The surprises are more in the pacing and plotting decisions than in traditional thrills. It edges right up against satire while managing to stay sincere. A really satisfying movie.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

Quick Reaction: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

I'm probably doing the Halloween franchise wrong. I've seen the original and Season of the Witch, which doesn't really fit in the franchise. I still haven't gotten to Halloween 2, although my understanding is that it's a lazier sequel that doesn't deepen the mythology much. Halloween 4 drops Jamie Lee Curtis and picks up with Danielle Harris' Jamie Lloyd. They do what they can to deepen the mythology in the movie and then end with Harris killing her foster mother. It's still a slasher at heart though, yet it's a reheated version. This is such an odd franchise The first movie is a stone-cold classic, yet people keep trying and failing to to continue the formula. They tried a new protagonist. They brought Jamie Lee Curtis back when they realized she was also the face of the franchise. They tied to mix in some post-Blair Witch found footage. The got Rob Zombie to fully reboot it in his image. The latest run has thrown out all the sequels and been pretty successful as a relaunch. It's clear that, like Michael Myers, this franchise will never truly die. Many of the sequels are like The Return of Michael Myers: pretty anonymous.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend