Silent Night is a holiday action movie mostly devoid of dialogue. After his son is killed by a stray bullet in a drive by shooting Brian(Joel Kinnaman) chases down the perpetrators and is shot in the throat losing his voice. He spends the next year preparing to exact his revenge.
Kinnaman is not a particularly good actor nor does he have much presence, he has yet to show the same promise he did in his breakout role in AMC's The Killing. He is certainly not a leading man and giving him no dialogue further hamstrings his already limited abilities. At his best he is passable like he was earlier this year in Sympathy For The Devil but without an actual star to play off of his performance is DOA. Much like No One Will Save You the lack of dialogue doesn't really work and feels very transparently like a script contrivance, its distracting, boring, and renders the characters less engaging. The supporting cast, inexplicably also burdened with no dialogue even though they are not mute, have little to do and don't make much if any impression.
The movie looks great, director John Woo hasn't lost his visual acumen and its a treat to have him release a US based movie, but the script is dog shit, regressive, and offensive. Its unclear where the movie is even taking place, it seems as if its in LA but then there are a bunch of Texas license plates so maybe its along the border somewhere? The depiction of Latinx organized crime as defacto slathering monsters is insane and racist. Similar to 2018's Peppermint this element of the plot is baffling and feels straight out of the Reagan era. There are things to criticize about 1974's Death Wish, the originator of this type of movie, but at least the baddies in it were somewhat generic(not to mention its a far superior film than almost all of its copy-cats). Once the action finally starts, which takes far too long, its not particularly interesting nor is Kinnaman particularly adept or fluid with its execution. For a holiday action movie look to 2022's Violent Night or 2020's Fatman.
An absolute waste of time.
Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.
Don't See It.
THG: TBoS&S is an action/adventure movie based on the Hunger Games prequel novel of the same name. Coriolanus Snow(Tom Blyth) is a teen(not the mustache twirling president he will become!) struggling with the economic situation to which his once vaulted family has fallen. In his latest class assignment he is tasked with mentoring a competitor in the hunger games. Who is he assigned? You guessed it! The female district 12 participant folksy singer Lucy Gray(Rachel Zegler)! Fireworks ensue!
Blythe is kinda pitch perfect as a young frustrated morally complicated aristocrat. You can see the ideals, the compromises, the necessities, the priorities all conflicted within him. Zegler puts on a twang and gets to sing a bit which is great and she too is able to get at that morale bargaining which is necessary. The support cast are all great- Jason Schwartzman as a young Lucky Flickerman, Peter Dinklage as Casca Highbottom a dean at the Academy, and my-oh-my Viola Davis as Dr. Volumnia Gaul is an absolute sensation. Davis just goes for it and it is a delight to watch, she steals every scene she's in.
Visually the film is rich, well made, great costumes and set design. It's actually really nice to re-visit this world and some of these characters even if, on paper, a HG prequel doesn't have much grab to it this really delivers. Its a bit overlong, the movie clearly ends and then there's another 40 minutes tacked on that feels like it could have been its own movie but still all-in-all a surprisingly engaging piece of entertainment. Maybe even more so given the last HG movie came out 8 years ago so there's enough room for this installment to actually breathe.
Well made, well acted, well constructed. A slick piece of popcorn entertainment.
Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.
See It.
Saltburn is a dramedy/thriller about Oxford first year Oliver(Barry Keoghan) who becomes infatuated with the rich/popular/handsome Felix(Jacob Elordi) and his crowd and semi-befriends him scoring an invitation to spend the summer at Felix's family estate the titular Saltburn.
Keoghan is miscast and out of his depth, Oliver never feels like an actual human being and more a collection of ticks and tactics that Keoghan employs. It is clearly A Performance. He has his same superhero build from The Eternals which is unnatural for his frame and which he is clearly not comfortable with so above and beyond the deliberately awkward performance his physicality is also stilted, one would presume part of the reason is that there are extended scenes of Keoghan naked none-the-less it serves only to make the performance less believable. The supporting cast, at least the younger individuals, come across as equally inauthentic, it doesn't help that all of them are 8-12 years too old for their roles, presumably the characters are supposed to be in their teens. Part of the issue is that the film is tonally inconsistent changing from scene-to-scene- is it comedy, farce, melodrama, thriller, magical realism- the film can't decide, wants to do it all and in so doing dilutes its intent. The veteran performers who have the smaller 'adult' roles are much more assured- Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Carey Mulligan- but this isn't about them and their ability to provide consistent characterizations and ride the tonal shifts doesn't trickle down to the younger cast who are the focus.
The film looks incredible with some beautiful sometimes provocative shots and sequences, but it is clear cool looking scenes and challenging images take priority over narrative/coherence. The score is inconsistent, sometimes pitch perfect and elevating the action other times dragging the viewer to a particular feeling by the ear. Other than Keoghan the big issue is the script, first and foremost it is transparently derivative it is The Talented Mr. Ripley meets Call Me By Your Name with a dash of Euphoria. Its influences are so glaring that it quickly goes past 'inspired by' to 'lifted from'. The motivations of Oliver(and Felix and his sister and cousin) are always opaque, there is very little context provided for any of the characters and their behavior is so varied its as if these things don't exist. As a result they are not people but kind of vacant decadent teen archetypes pantomiming prescribed plot beats. Further, the morals/messaging are so convoluted it is unclear what the point of it all even is, presumably that's the intent, to be thought-provoking, but the what's conveyed is an inert apathy.
Writer/director Emerald Fennell's freshman feature Promising Young Woman was a revelation, a knockout. This still shows ambition, shows tremendous talent, but has none of that thematic power or pointed characterization. Ultimately it is, like its subjects, a vacuous indulgent mess with very little to be entertained by or learned from.
Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.
Don't See It.
