Quick Reaction: Bob le Flambeur

My biggest thought while watching this 1950s French heist movie was how much I'd rather be watching Rififi again instead. This movie came out a year after Rififi, so it's probably no accident that they seem so similar. There's nothing in Bob le Flambeur that is as good as the Rififi heist though. If you have a limitless appetite for this brand of heist movie, Bob le Flambeur should whet your appetite. Be sure to watch Rififi first though. It's just better. I'm not sure what else to say.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Overlord

Premise: On the eve of D-Day, a group of soldiers stumbles onto a facility with some Nazi experimentation creating monsters.

I think JJ Abrams does it right when it comes to producing and directing. Here's the sense I get for what his day is like. He's sitting around and thinks "A monster movie, but shot like it's found footage", or someone comes up to him and says "people crash on an island and mysterious stuff starts happening". He investigates the idea for a bit. Maybe he writes or directs an early episode or initial draft, then he hands it over to someone else when he gets bored or gets offered a Star Wars. Basically, he takes fun ideas and sees if they can be turned into full ideas. It's the career that 13-year-old Abrams would be so proud of (and I mean that as high praise). I know it's way more complex than that. He's a shrewd businessman and willing collaborator. It's no accident that he's been able to maintain this Bad Robot empire, but it sure is fun seeing the public face of it all.

Take Overlord for example. I just imagine someone came to him and said "D-Day, but it's a monster movie". It's virtually impossible for that premise to not end up as an entertaining movie. Maybe Abrams himself didn't have an idea for it, but he produced it and left it with people who did. Overlord doesn't get much deeper than being a genre exercise. The characters felt more like red shirts than people. It's well-shot in a familiar but entertaining way. I sort of wish I could've gone into this blind, so I could've gotten a From Dusk til Dawn type of surprise. In fact, I'm starting to see a real similarity between JJ Abrams and Quentin Tarantino. They don't have the same taste, but they seem to be equally driven by what they enjoyed when they were younger.

This movie benefits from having a mostly unknown cast. The only actors I recognized were the leads, Jovan Adepo (The Leftovers, Fences) and Wyatt Russell (Lodge 49, 22 Jumps Street). Adepo is a hair too stoic for his role. It's also hard to buy Russell in a stressed-out role. They are fine, but you do get the sense that neither was the first choice for the role.

My biggest knock against the movie is an unfairly defined one. I found myself way too easily distracted while I watched this. Overlord is the kind of action horror movie that normally has no trouble keeping my attention. So, the fact that I kept finding distractions is a passive indictment. I think the movie is going for a pretty specific taste demographic that I'm just barely not in. I can see how the movie would be a lot of fun for a specific kind of movie fan. It didn't quite win me over though.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Shallow Grave

Premise: Three flat mates gruesomely hide the body of their fourth roommate after he ODs so they can keep his money. Then all three start to mentally deteriorate over concerns that they will get caught.

On paper, I should love Danny Boyle. Slumdog Millionaire is a crowd-pleaser. Sunshine has a fun idea and great cast. Trainspotting is a cool movie. Even Yesterday is pretty charming. I'm pretty indifferent about him though, if I'm being honest. Most of my Danny Boyle affection is tied to that opening stretch of 28 Days Later... and the fact that The Beach was some early HBO boobspotting in my middle school days. What tends to lose me with Danny Boyle is that he's a very visual filmmaker; often to excess. I always want to tell him to take a breath when I'm watching one of his movies. I find him exhausting.

Shallow Grave is his debut movie. Debuts are nice for excessive filmmakers, because they are generally working with a more limited budget. The schedules are tighter too, so they don't get to play around as much. (I'm looking at you Darren Aronofski and Pi.) That is certainly true for this movie. It's a simple enough movie - three flat mates find their new roommate dead with a bunch of money, gruesomely hide his body, keep the money, slowly go insane, and turn on each other. Boyle sneaks in some stylistic flourishes, but it's mostly just a thriller. Much of it is even confined to their flat.

It helps that the movie stars a young Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston. It has a young Kerry Fox too, but I don't know her from much. That core trio is strong. I really like the opening montage of them interviewing potential roommates, because it confirms that they are assholes from the beginning.

The movie lost me a bit in the middle. I didn't really buy Eccleston's decent into madness. It felt like it skipped a step somewhere. That's also where I felt the budgetary restraints more. That is a problem I run into with a lot of debut films. I know what the filmmaker can do when he has real resources later, so I can feel the limitations in this movie more than if it was my introduction to him. I have a good idea what the 2004 Shallow Grave would look like, which affects how I watch this version.

For those keeping track, I've said that I probably liked Shallow Grave more because it was made before Danny Boyle had the resources to overstylize it, and I've complained that the movie suffers because Boyle doesn't have the resources he does in his later movies. In other words, there's no making me happy. Or, this underlines the fact that there's no way to fully sell me on a Danny Boyle movie. Oh well.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend