ANGEL HEART

1987

Usually the Independent Film Channel will run a Halloween horror movie marathon and I was overjoyed to see that this movie was on their schedule. I’ve only seen Angel Heart maybe two or three times since I saw it in it’s original theatrical run back in ’87 and I got myself ready on my couch with my goodies wondering: could it still have the same effect on me after all this time? My happy answer is: YES. Angel Heart remains one of my personal favorites because it is photographed so well, the performances are all outstanding and it combines the private eye and supernatural genres flawlessly. It’s a hell of a movie and given the subject matter, I mean that quite literally.

Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) is a private detective in 1955 New York and he’s definitely not Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. When we first see him he looks like he’s coming off a three-day binge. He’s contacted by a lawyer named Winesap (“Law & Order” regular Dann Florek) who represents a strange foreign gentleman named Louis Cyphre (Robert DeNiro) who wants Harry to find out if a 1940’s crooner named Johnny Favorite is still alive. When asked why, Cyphre simply states that Johnny Favorite owes him collateral for “certain services”. Harry is suspicious as all hell, but hey, Cyphre’s $5,000 check is good and Harry takes the case.

He would have been better off sticking to his divorce cases. Very shortly, Harry is up to his unshaven neck in a mystery that he rapidly realizes may cost more than his life to solve. The trail of the singer Johnny Favorite is a blood-soaked one that leads from a really strange church in Harlem to the voodoo haunted bayous of New Orleans and it occurs to Harry as he continues on his quest that the solution to the mystery may be more frightening than the mystery itself. But he goes on because it becomes more and more apparent that his very soul depends on him discovering the secret of Johnny Favorite.

Angel Heart has so much to recommend it; I hardly know where to begin. The performances are absolutely first rate. Mickey Rourke may have given the best performance of his career in this movie and many people cite his “I know who I am!” scene near the end as his finest. Robert DeNiro is not only sinister but also quite humorous in his role. Look closely at him in this movie because there are not only visual clues to his identity but the way he plays it and his appearance is a homage to the director Martin Scorsese and given what we find out about Louis Cyphre, it may give you a chuckle. Lisa Bonet (Epiphany Proudfoot) is really amazing in this movie. It’s such an incredibly different role and persona from what she was playing on “The Cosby Show” that even though she caught some flack for it, it gave her unshakable legitimacy as a serious actress.

If you recall anything about Angel Heart it’s probably because of two scenes Lisa Bonet has this movie. The first is a voodoo ritual scene and the second is a sex scene with her and Mickey Rourke. I’m not going to spoil either of these scenes for you in describing them save to say that I admire Lisa Bonet for taking such acting risks in scenes that could not have been easy to shoot but they do indeed contribute to the story and are not added for shock, although the sex scene is definitely not for the squeamish. In fact, there is a lot in Angel Heart that is not for the faint of heart. Most people say ‘horror movie’ and they think of “Friday The 13^th” or “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. When my friends and family ask me what horror movie should they rent for a Friday or Saturday night viewing I usually recommend either “Night Of The Hunter” (which should absolutely not be seen by yourself unless you’ve got nerves of steel) or Angel Heart.

The bottom line is this: if you have seen Angel Heart then you’re probably nodding your head in agreement while you’re reading this. If you haven’t seen Angel Heart then I recommend that you rent it the very next time you raid your local video store. Get yourself the movie goodies of your choice. Put the DVD in your player and turn off the lights. And then prepare yourself for one of the most frightening movie experiences ever put on screen. Yeah, Angel Heart IS that scary.

113 minutes

Rated R

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Manhattan Murder Mystery represents one of the last few gasps of creativity before Woody Allen’s career descended into self-parody (before he rebounded with Matchpoint). Made in 1993, Allen would follow up this murder mystery caper with a few bright spots (Bullets Over Broadway, Everyone Says I Love You, Deconstructing Harry) though, more often than not, he would spend the rest of the 1990’s, and much of the 2000’s producing disappointing dreck (Celebrity, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Anything Else). Manhattan Murder Mystery isn’t his strongest film, but it is one of his most entertaining.

Woody Allen and Diane Keaton (together in over a decade) star as Larry and Carol Lipton, a middle-aged couple who both feel they are in a rut with each other. Larry is a book editor and Carol is an aspiring restauranteur. They befriend an elderly couple in their building (Jerry Adler and Lynn Cohen), and are thrown into a whodunit when the wife dies suddenly. Carol, spurred by the monotony of her life, feels the wife’s death is suspicious, and views the husband as the prime suspect. Encouraged by a close divorced friend, Ted (Alan Alda), who has the hots for Carol, she begins to investigate. Jealous of Ted’s amorous interest in his wife, Larry, reluctantly participates in the case, as well. A sensuous author, Marcia Fox (Angelica Huston) also joins in on the adventure.

The film is a trivial bit of fun as well as a nostalgic homage to the b-movie noirs of the 1950’s. The story was actually a subplot originally meant for Annie Hall, but it didn’t make it in the final cut of the Oscar-winning classic. Expanded, the story isn’t as memorable, funny or profound as the older film, but still offers reliant laughs. The mystery plot is surprisingly stable and engaging.

The cast is ideal. Allen does his patented nebbish role and now he can do it in his sleep. Alda is appropriately slimey, playing against type. Huston also offers a sexy performance, as well. Keaton subbed for Mia Farrow at the last minute, because the latter had to drop out due to the marital discord at the time. While the legal horror may have been disastrous for his personal life, it did wonders for his movies, because Keaton is a find, playing beautifully off Allen. They click together and work off each other in perfect harmony — it’s wonderful to see two such great clowns bouncing off each other; Allen does well playing the straight man to Keaton’s comic foil.

Manhattan Murder Mystery won’t be listed in the Allen canon, but it is a great reminder at how reliant a quip-writer Allen really is.

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The world of 28 DAYS LATER will be very familiar to those of us who have watched End Of The World classics such as the George Romero DEAD TRILOGY, ON THE BEACH, THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL and THE OMEGA MAN.  People are fascinated by the idea of the World As We Know It Coming To An End.  And 28 DAYS LATER does a truly awesome job of not only convincing us of the reality of what we’re watching, it makes us think about the destructiveness of human nature.  There is nothing in the movie that does not occur save through human arrogance and failure.  Arrogance in our stubborn belief that we can control forces best left alone and failure through our refusal to maintain belief in our better instincts.

                28 DAYS LATER starts off like that great classic sci-fi film, THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL. Remember that one?  The first 20 minutes or so of that movie had Harry Belafonte wandering through an eerily deserted New York, looking for people and not finding a living soul.  That’s the exact same situation that confronts the main character of this movie.  Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up in a hospital with no memory of how he got there and after unplugging himself from the various machines he’s been hooked up to and finding clothes, Jim leaves the hospital and wanders into a London that seems devoid of people.  Jim desperately tries to find out what has happened and runs into a pack of red-eyed humans who act like total homicidal maniacs.  He is rescued by Selena (Naomi Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley) who inform him that 28 days ago, England was consumed by a plague called Rage which turns those Infected by it into murderous maniacs who only want to kill.  There is no cure.  There is no hope that anyone will find a cure.  The only thing left is to survive and slay.

                Even in this horrifying situation, there are those with hope.  Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his daughter Hannah (Megan Burns) join up with Jim and Selena (notice I didn’t mention Mark?  Don’t ask what happens to him. Not pretty, yo) and decide to get out of London.  Frank has picked up radio signals from the north from an Army outpost that promises food, shelter and safety from the roving packs of Infected who dominate London.  And they leave London on a road trip to Hope that leads right into Hell.

                28 DAYS LATER has been compared to George Romero’s zombie movies and to be honest, there are several scenes and plot elements that appear to have been lifted straight from DAWN OF THE DEAD.  I’m thinking of the scene in the supermarket that mirrors the mall-shopping scene in the Romero movie and the whole second half of the movie where our heroes are at odds with the military who they were hoping would keep them safe.  In fact, that’s an entire subplot in itself of the movie: how our reliance on institutions and people we have been programmed to believe will keep us safe turn on us and devour us.  The most frightening monsters in 28 DAYS LATER are not The Infected as we are led to believe. No…the REAL monsters in this movie are the human beings like us.  As we watch what they are driven to in order to survive, you gradually realize something that is truly scary: it’s the so-called normal humans who are doing the most frightening things to each other.

                The casting of 28 DAYS LATER is inspired.  Since the cast is made up of actors who are mostly unknown, there’s an added air of realism to the film.  We’re not watching Julia Roberts and Benjamin Bratt in a big budget Hollywood blockbuster here.  And the movie is filmed with hand held cameras in a realistic, documentary-like fashion that draws you into the reality of what is going on.  I’ve attended few movie screenings that were as silent as 28 DAYS LATER.  It was as if the entire audience was holding its breath.  It’s really an amazing movie experience when you watch it in a theatre.  Naomie Harris is particularly good as Selena and she demonstrates in one brutally violent scene that she is a sista that is out to survive.  It’s a remarkable scene and you’ll know what I’m talking about when you see it.  Cillian Murphy is also quite good as Jim and one of the most horrifying things about the movie is watching as he rapidly adapts to this new world he’s woken up to.  In fact, I don’t think there is a bad acting job in this entire movie.  28 DAYS LATER hooks you right from the start and you just sit there and are just assaulted by the raw realism that an unthinkable situation is presented.  Is 28 DAYS LATER worth your time and your money?  Hell YES.  Go see it and prepared to be stunned by a literate horror movie that in light of our world today doesn’t seem all that all far away from where we are now.

                28 DAYS LATER isn’t as gory or as bloody as you might have been led to believe.  In fact, BAD BOYS II had more disturbingly violent scenes than this movie.  The violence in 28 DAYS LATER is quite appropriate to the subject matter and supports the story and characters.  There IS a scene where the characters debate giving drugs to an underage character that I found slightly questionable, but that’s my only main quibble with the movie.  Otherwise, go see it and have a good time being scared outta your ya-ya.

112 Minutes

Rated R

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There are very few movies that can successfully keep an audiences attention strictly with dialog and even fewer directors who can consistently do it.  Paul Thomas Anderson is certainly a director who has shown his abilities with dialog and it all started with this film. 

An older gambler named Sydney (Philip Baker Hall) finds a younger man named John (John C. Reilly) sitting outside of a diner.  He invites him inside for a smoke and a cup of coffee.  John is hesitant about accepting, but Sydney wins his trust.  In the conversation that follows, we learn that John’s mother has just died and he tried to win $6,000 to bury her, but lost his money in the process.  Sydney offers John the opportunity to learn how to make money at a casino and they make their way to Las Vegas.

Now, in a conventional film, Sydney would be a two-timer who had ulterior motives up his sleeves.  I mean, how else would the plot move forward?  Not this film though.  Hard Eight just keeps on showing us Sydney talking to John and showing him how to take $150 dollars, make it seem like $2,000, and get a free room at a casino.  This sequence is so precise in its dialog and action that it seems too easy to actually pull off.  But it works nonetheless because we have become invested in what these characters say to each other and why they are spending time together at all.

Why is it that Sydney is helping John for no reason?  That plot twist comes later.  It’s two years later in Reno when a young waitress named Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow) serves drinks to Sydney in a bar area of another casino.  Sydney appears to have lived in casinos for almost his entire adult life by the way he carries himself, lights his cigarettes, and plays KINO for hours.  Clementine flirts with all of her customers because it is an unwritten rule for casino waitresses, but Sydney explains that she doesn’t have to with him.

John shows up at Sydney’s table with a shady character named Jimmy (Samuel L. Jackson) and introduces them.  After a few moments,
Sydney makes a remark about Jimmy and if he works in a parking garage, but Jimmy explains that he does consulting work as a security guard inside the casinos.  These two will never see eye to eye throughout the picture.  That night Sydney takes Clementine under his wing, similar to how he took in John, and tries to show her the ropes.  He lets her stay in his hotel in John’s bed and gives her some clothes.  When she asks if he wants to sleep with her, Sydney responds by saying, “You should know the answers to those kind of questions before you ask them.”  He is a straight shooter and says exactly what is on his mind.  There is never a moment that Sydney appears to hold back or lie to anyone. 

The next day, John takes Clementine shopping and the story begins to take a few turns that are surprising.  What comes out of the remaining third of the film is revealing of why Sydney and John act the way they do towards each other.  Both of them are trying to fill voids in their lives and seem to have found the right person to fill them with.  The final image of the movie is so telling of how Sydney has spent his life because he has been covering up secrets that nobody will ever know.  Not because they can’t find out, but because he doesn’t want them to find out.

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Most of the perspective in The Third Man is from Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton), which is why much of the film is off-kilter and twisted. Visual technique tricks are used to convey a sense of imbalance on the part of the characters, techniques like canted frames, redundant shots, exotic locales, and use of shadows. When Martins is first introduced, he happens to saunter right under a ladder propped up against his friend’s building in Vienna. This reflects Martins’ down-to-Earth persona, showing a non-superstitious, practical character that is only interested in facts and justice.

However, the straight forward path is not really open to Martins. He has not seen his friend, Harry Lime, in some time; Martins is in odd surroundings and among strangers; he does not know what post-war Vienna is capable of turning a man into. Because of this, the western writer is left with a mystery that keeps twisting upon itself, which is shown to the audience by the canted, or slanted frames. The shots symbolize Martins’ off balance mental position. When Martins gets drunk, he sees Lime, but when he chases after, Martins is only chasing Lime’s enormous shadow. His seeing and chasing a known dead man further pushes the envelope of Martins’ sanity. When Martins and Lime are in the Ferris wheel, Martins starts out with one idea, and when they come out, Lime may have convinced him of another. The audience can also see the view changing outside the window as their box rotates.

In the same vein as the warping of perspectives, there is the redundancy of the chase scenes. At first Martins gets chased around, through a building, and down a pile of rubble. Later in the film, Lime gets chased down the same pile of rubble, proving that their positions have switched. Lime’s character is constantly conflicted; he is a greedy crook, willing to kill or drive insane for his own profit. However, he is still Martins’ childhood friend, and Anna Schmidt’s lover. He is the only person Schmidt’s cat likes. He seems intelligent, clever, and charismatic, but he is also a crook and a murderer. Lime’s personality is reflected in the Ferris wheel, because his personality and justifications are constantly changing. These fluctuations catch up with him in the end, however, in the final chase sequence. The twisting labyrinth of sewer underground is a come-to-life map of all the lies Lime has told, and he is being closed in upon on all sides. In the end, Martins shoots his friend out of mercy rather than malice.

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Hitchcock not only connotes the figure of a portly, balding English gentleman that often pops up at odd times in movies, but also evokes particular images, sounds, colors, and especially feelings that we associate especially with him. My mother and father often chide us kids for our pooh-pooh attitudes about The Birds. “That was scary stuff when we were kids,” they tell us. For some reason, I just can’t muster too great a fear for seagulls. I do, however, have an innate suspicion of nuns because of Vertigo. The romances in Notorious or Rebecca are cool enough to keep from getting sappy. The humor of Cary Grant getting forcibly sloshed in North by Northwest, or eluding French police in To Catch a Thief, crackles with dry wit.

Hitchcock’s final movie, Family Plot (1976) continues with Hitchcock’s usual MO, but there is something different in it. Hitchcock’s later films seem to be sillier than his earlier work. The number of times Harry’s body in The Trouble with Harry gets buried and exhumed in only one day is an example of the absurd situations in which the characters entrap themselves. However, at least with Trouble the romantic leads were similar to Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine in their cool repartee. However, what makes Family Plot so loveable is that Barbara Harris and Bruce Dern are anything but cool and collected.

In one memorable scene, the bad guy tampers with Blanche’s (Harris) car as George (Dern) is driving. The accelerator becomes stuck and the brakes won’t work. They don’t discover the problem until they’re barreling down a busy mountain road. As Blanche criticizes his driving, George does his best to dodge vehicles, steep drop-offs, and (not least) his girlfriend’s flailing limbs. In a frenzy, Blanche even grabs a hold of George’s tie as she twists madly in her seat. It is the funniest scene I’ve ever seen in a Hitchcock film. It is as if he simply said to Harris, “Act scared,” and to Dern, “Keep driving.”

In Family Plot, Blanche is a phony psychic who teams up with her con-man boyfriend to find the long-lost heir for Blanche’s millionaire patroness. The story gets crazier the closer the pair comes to finding the prodigal nephew, considering he’s a villainous jewel thief.

As intriguing as the plot is, the relationship between Blanche and George is even more entertaining. They often talk about sex–either in suggestive euphemisms or by yelling at one another–because Blanche wants some and George is too tired. They are adorably banal.

George’s crazy red hair, sticking straight up, and his voice, vaguely reminiscent of Fozzy Bear, contrasts him with the smooth Cary Grant of To Catch a Thief, clever con-man detective though he may be. Blanche is endearing, and often acts more like a little girl than a grown woman.

Overall, the jewel thief villain and his gorgeous girlfriend side-kick are more akin to Hitchcock’s usual romantic leads, but that’s what makes the movie so wonderful. Blanche and George are milestone characters that exemplify Hitchcock’s switch from classical Hollywood, with its illusions of perfection, grace, and sophistication, to the more modern approach to cinema, with clumsy down-to-earth leads. Blanche and George are no longer characters the audience idolize and admire, but they are the type of folk viewers can identify with.

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I went to “Stay” expecting to find yet another “Secret Window,” “Identity,” or “Hide and Seek.” The few seconds of preview I saw promised another disappointing psychological thriller, whose endings rarely thrill the audience. However, the twists the film throws out gets the audience emotionally and physically involved with the ever-shifting characters on screen.

In typical psycho-thriller style, the film takes the audience on the usual rollercoaster of sights and emotions. The images director Marc Forster (“Finding Neverland,” “Monster’s Ball”) shows, and the transitions from scene to scene, give the impression of a disorienting hallucination. The audience is rarely certain where they are, or why they are there. At one point, Dr. Sam Foster (Ewan McGregor) walks out of a crummy, slip-shod nurse’s office into a beautifully marbled rotunda. The unexpected set changes throw off the viewers’ sense of being grounded in a certain place.Forster uses the symbol of staircases constantly. It gives the audience a feeling of being trapped in the Escher labyrinth staircase drawing, which exists even in the fourth dimension. There are many different stairs in the movie: a blue fiberglass lobby staircase, a tightly constructed stone spiral, and a gritty, urban emergency stairwell. While on one hand a means of conveyance, making it possible to get from one floor to the next, stairways also signify monotony with one step looking just like the next, which gives the impression of no movement at all.The images in this movie sync with the sound effects in order to provoke mental and physical responses from its audience. The music or sounds effects do not swell prematurely in order to cue the viewer as to what is about to happen. Low, staccato notes do not warn of sharks or dangers, high, graceful notes do not mean love is blooming. Instead, the music, sounds, and volume, throng precisely in the dramatic, climactic moments, resulting in a heightened level tension and fear from the audience.The best part about the movie is its reflexivity. The director seems to making fun of the pulp movies that have come out of the latest psychological mind-bending craze. Clues are in the open, and are not subtle, or reserved for a second viewing. The director uses the obviousness of the repeated details to confuse the viewer, who then starts making assumptions about the film’s twist. “What’s the catch?” The viewer keeps asking herself. Even when characters, lines, sets, and scenes make no sense, we still struggle to find the deeper meaning. Furthermore, the “twist” is not pulled out of nowhere, as in “Hide and Seek,” but is logically threaded throughout the film. The very title makes absolute sense but the end of the film.

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Starring: Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neil McDonough, Brian Geraghty

Ok, so I was one of about 8 people that watched this film, I’m sure.  I was so dumbfounded by the direction this movie took, that I am still not sure what kind of genre it really fell into.  It was kind of funny, because the other people in the theatre were all the types that you would expect to see in a movie with Lindsay Lohan.  They were all 15-19 years old, and all girls, and several of them walked out of this movie, because of the gore in it.  First off, if you are a young guy that grew up fantasizing about Lohan, then this movie is both a dream come true, and a nightmare, because it has her doing a convincing job as a stripper ( a role that may become a reality if she doesn’t slow her personal life down, and get some better roles), and then there’s a pretty hot scene where she’s being a slut and hooking up with her love interst in the movie…but then you also have very grotesquely shown, not needed scenes where they show Lohan being tortured, and maimed!  The scenes were so graphic, and really not in keeping with the previews for the film, that many of the teens in this movie walked out midway through.  I, for one, was even a bit turned off by the gore, and feeling pretty bad for my date, who was squirming because she doesn’t like gore at all.  I wish this movie would’ve been advertised properly, that’s all I can say about that.  The plot was interesting, original, but weak.  I thought the acting stunk, and the lines stunk even worse.  The gore didn’t have to be in the movie in order to sell the story, to the degree that it was.  Finally, in the end, you are left feeling like you watched a show of ‘Ripley’s Believe it or Not’.  Well, believe it…this movie blows, and if you value your sanity, you’ll pass on it.  I’m thinking of suing the people who made this movie, for their false advertising…maybe I’ll win!?  After all, those guys that sued over ‘A Knight’s Tale’ won, and I actually liked that one.   Heh!  No, if I was going to sue over the misleading advertising of a movie, it’d be a tie between ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ and ‘Bridge to Terabithia’….both those movies were soooo not what they claimed.   Email me and ask me about those if you’d like, before you take your kids!  Well…back to the movie I’m actually reviewing….’I Know Who Killed Me’  is reminiscent of Lohan’s dying career….. don’t watch it, it’s a car wreck!  I give it 1 star, and that was only for the sexy scenes with Lohan half naked. 

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Starring: Hilary Swank, David Morrissey, Idris Elba, AnnaSophia Robb

Well, I liked this movie, even though it kind of had an anti-christian sort of slant to it.  I don’t want to ruin the ending for you, but in the end it wasn’t an anti-christian movie…and there really was nothing biblical about it.  It was a strange movie, forsure, and it’s not for kids.  They’re not going to get it, and it’s only going to give them nightmares.  It reminded me a lot of ‘Skeleton Key‘ in the feel of it, and the weirdness of it.  A lot of people I talked to didn’t like this movie, and I can kind of understand it.  Overall, it was kind of weak on character development, and the storyline was scattered.  It also ran kind of long.  I give it two and a half stars out of five.

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Starring: Margarita Levieva, Justin Chatwin, Marcia Gay Harden, Christopher Marquette

This movie was lame, with a capital ‘L’!  I was very disappointed in this one.  At first, I thought I’d like it, but then it just got stupid.  What kind of movie has a man’s ghost falling in love with his killer?  crazy!  Stupid!  Stupid!  Stupid!  Really… I don’t know what else to say…. only thing worth watching this movie for, is the girl who kills the main character…she’s really hot…but not worth falling in love with if she kills you… that’s
forsure..  Oh.. I almost didn’t even include this movie in my list, it’s so bad…. I give this movie one and a half stars…..a good showing, mainly because of the hot new actress in it….  :)  You can take your kids to this one, but they’ll probably be as confused as I was.  :P

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Starring: Halle Berry, Bruce Willis, Giovanni Ribisi, Richard Portnow

This movie was a let down.  It started out really good, and I won’t ruin the end for you, but I figured it out about halfway through, but convinced myself that surely they wouldn’t be that stupid with such big stars in the movie..however, they ‘were’ that stupid with it, and well….. I was not happy at all.  The movie was made well, and had some good actors in it…. that’s about all the good I can say about this movie.  I give it two stars out of five.

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Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton

From the same people that brought you ‘Shaun of the Dead‘, a funny movie, this one was lacking quite a bit.  First off, I think they couldn’t figure out if they wanted to do a horror film, a mystery, or an action packed thrill ride.  They kept switching genres throughout the whole film.  It had some actually pretty gory scenes, that kind of reminded me that they had made a Horror film before, and I think that truly is their passion, but then they tried to get all campy and enter the action genre quite a bit as well.  Also, there was the ‘mystery’ going on, with the murders in the town, that took on a dramatic murder mystery type tone, somewhat like that movie ‘The Reaping‘.  There were some funny moments, there were some good scenes, and lines, but overall I thought this movie sucked and stunk of all the bad things about british films, and had none of the good qualities from them.  I give this movie one and a half stars out of five, for having such a disappointing, and stupid ending!  Kids?  sure … why not?  maybe they’ll get the director’s vision, cause I sure didn’t.  kidding… I wouldn’t let kids under 12 see it because there are some graphic death scenes in it.

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Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling, Rosamund Pike, David Strathairn

Excellent Movie.  Yet another of the many examples of a mediocre movie script, with a lot of really good actors behind the roles, to make a decent movie.  I thought Anthony Hopkins played his role perfectly, and just like in Silence of the Lambs, you almost admire his character’s evil resolve.  On the other hand, there wasn’t a whole lot of originality in the movie’s plot…not even in the twists.  I don’t want to give away anything for you all, but I guessed most of it pretty early on in the movie.  It didn’t matter to me, though,
because I still enjoyed watching it all play out.  The characters were just that good.  I’ll give it three out of five stars, mainly for the acting.  Kids for this movie? not sure… I guess it wasn’t too bad, but I think most of it will go over their heads under 12.

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Francois Ozon’s 8 femmes (8 Women) is a fluffy pastiche of various genres that work surprisingly well. An Agatha Christie-style whodunit, there are also elements of Douglas Sirk-inspired melodrama, slapstick comedy and Hollywood musical. The cast is a Francophile’s dream come true: three generations of France’s most accomplished actresses, all playing up to, or confounding their public personas. Headlined by legends such as Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant and Danielle Darrieux, the cast looks like it’s having a great time in this clever tuneful mystery.

The plot is classic paperback mystery: a man is murdered and the eight prime suspects are stuck in a large mansion, and soon accusations fly. Each woman has a motive to kill Marcel, the man of the house, a vaguely rich financier. Was it Gaby (Deneuve), his beautiful and glamorous wife? Or possibly his neurotic and spiteful sister-in-law, Augustine (Huppert)? Maybe his sexpot sister, Pierrette (Ardant)? Each woman, including the man’s two daughters (Virginie Ledoyen and Ludivine Sagnier), a penny-pinching mother-in-law (Darrieux) and a pair of domestics (Emmanuelle Beart and Firmine Richard) has a motive and opportunity to kill Marcel, and the tomboyish daughter, Catherine (Sagnier) plays detective, interrogating her companions. As appropriate for a film like this, there are plot twists that involve betrayal, lust and love and the ending is fittingly a surprise.

Ozon usually makes films with more substance (see his classic, Under the Sand), though it would be a mistake to call this complete fluff. The plot is riddled with cliches and plot elements: it’s not enough that the women are trapped in the house with the killer, but there’s a snowstorm, and the phone line’s dead. Each plot twist is accentuated by the melodramatic soundtrack. This is all done, of course, with tongue-firmly in cheek. Ozon isn’t interested in making a great film noir — instead, he’s crafted a wonderful homage to aspects of film he finds appealing. While comparisons to Robert Altman’s Gosford Park, are tempting, it’s more fitting to compare 8 femmes  to George Cukor’s 1939 all-star classic, The Women. Ozon employs the same kind of cattiness and bitchiness as Cukor did, and given the distance irony allows, the viewer can revel in the jokes without worrying about any charges of misogyny.

Because the film is so self-aware, it’s wonderful that Ozon found a group of actresses “in” on the joke. Each performs her part well but departs from her comfort zone — instead the women adopt a stylized way of acting, most comparable on television soaps. They do not play for laughs, remembering to keep the emotions true, but they fit very well into Ozon’s artifical setting. It would be difficult to choose standouts, but, predictably, the older actresses outperform the younger ones. Deneuve is glorious fun, sending up her image as an ice queen. She looks stunning. Huppert also is wonderful, submerging her good looks under twitchy mannerisms and howling histerics. Darrieux, still a looker, steals her scenes as the dotty, though extremely manipulative matriarch.

Aside from the cast, the musical numbers are the most notable aspects of the film. Each cast member gets her own solo number to strut her stuff. It’s safe to say that no one in this film will moonlight as pop stars (though Deneuve has already been in a number of muscials), and the amateurish way the ladies perform their ditties adds to the humor of the film - none of the actresses mug through the numbers.

8 femmes isn’t Ozon’s best work, though it’s still miles ahead of most of Hollywood’s output. The musical numbers, the staginess and the melodramatic moments lend themselves to the general irony of the film, but by the end, the story turns surprisingly touching and poignant, as the director allows for small bursts of truth to peek out from the layers of synthetic gloss.

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