True Detective - Night Country

Native Tongue

True Detective - 
Night Country
Season 4
HBO 2024
6 episodes

Warning: Some spoilers

After a strong opening with a supernatural atmosphere where a herd of deer are startled, True Detective - Night Country, shows itself as being more of a reboot than a continuation at first, although there are some marked references going back to the characters in the first season of the show (reviewed by me here). The opening also has strong similarities to John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing (reviewed here) as the whole thing is set in the fictional town of Ennis in Alaska, when a research team all go suddenly missing, after a big fright glimpsed at the start of the story. Also, to lend itself to the definite supernatural shenanigans going on, the whole thing is set from mid December through to early January, in the part of the year where the whole town is forever night. So, yeah, you won’t be seeing much daylight in this show other than the occasional flashback. 

And that’s another thing which marks this show out from the predecessors… it’s not being told in a fractured time narrative in any way, although there is a sense of looking back to a prior case. 

Enter Police Detective Liz Danvers played by Jodie Foster. When she finds the tongue of an old murder victim in the research station while everyone is missing, she realises it links up with a case with her old partner, now working for a different branch. That doesn’t stop that ex-partner, Evangeline Navarro, played by Kali Reis, from joining the investigation to try and help figure out how the two cases are related. Helping Danvers is her newish young sidekick Detective Peter Prior, played by Finn Bennett. Also among the cast are two actors who feel like they’ve been a bit wasted here. The great Christopher Eccleston plays an outranking superior officer who is not really on board with Danvers investigation but, it’s more like a series of cameos (he doesn’t even appear in the last, slightly extended episode).

And then there’s also Fiona Shaw as a native to the area, Rose Aguineau. Now I think this actress is great, especially after seeing her as the authority figure in Killing Eve (reviewed here, here,  here and here) but, again she’s more of a cameo, ‘five minutes and you’re done’, presence in each episode. That being said, her character, who knows the history and folklore of the area, is at least a more significant person and is even the one who, at the end of the first episode… and with the help of the spirit of her dead husband… finds the frozen bodies of the dead scientists, half mutilated and naked in the snow. 

Well, not all dead because, when the cops are trying to remove the bodies from the ice, one of the guy’s arms cracks off and that’s when we find out there was one survivor… when he starts screaming at this. And asides from the occasional goriness (head shot squibs are getting much better), there is much more an emphasis on the supernatural as accepted by the majority of the population there (except Danvers, naturally, who has to be confronted by it several times before she starts to accept things), giving this season a very different, horror movie vibe. But it’s also shot through with, often black, humour… for instance, after a retort is made to Peter about the way he does everything for Danvers, he finds himself asking, “Who’s Mrs. Robinson?”

So there’s a slow creeping dread going on throughout the entire show and, juxtaposed with the more realistic procedural story which the characters are wrapped up in, it makes for an interesting mix. And it’s well acted, especially by Kali Reis but also, of course, by Foster. In fact, Danvers is a deliberately unlikeable character and so it took me a while before I could start warming to her, as Foster brings out the person beneath the surface as the story continues 

That being said, all of the detectives on the case seem to be missing the one obvious question, filled with mystery, which I picked up on from a screen saver at the research centre early on in the first episode. If this place is supposed to have a highly advanced research team, why the heck are they watching films on a DVD player rather than a Blu Ray player? It makes no sense!

The ending is… ambiguous. A, mostly, human intervention reason for the deaths of all the scientists is given but there’s also room left for unexplained elements which could have… and probably did… contribute to the deaths. Even the final fate of Evangeline Navarro is left open to interpretation… is she in the final shot with Danvers or did she kill herself and then rejoined Danvers as her spirit (as seems to happen a lot in Ennis, it seems… the dead rarely seem to be resting). And, yeah, overall I liked this season, written and directed by a new show runner. I think Night Country and the first season rank the highest in my experience of True Detective, for sure. 

But, of course, like everyone else, I’m wondering when the next cast will be coming along for a sixth season. Well… rumours are I’m going to have to wait ’til 2027 to see the next story so, yeah, I’ll keep my eye on that, for sure.

Maverick (1994)

 

Place Your Brets

Maverick
USA 1994 Directed by Richard Donner
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: This review contains a big
spoiler about a character from the outset.

Maverick was a big budget reboot, by director Richard Donner and actor Mel Gibson (the director/actor team of Lethal Weapon fame) of the classic James Garner small screen character of Bret Maverick, who had been in many iterations of the show (you can read my reviews of the various variants of Maverick here). And it’s kind of open to interpretation to just who Gibson is playing in this one as he’s called Bret Maverick and, just like Garner used to, provides a voice over narrative as he goes along on his adventure... although I could have honestly done without the added swearing here because it didn’t seem quite right sitting in the Maverick universe but, hey ho, I guess the writers maybe imagined it was edgy or something.

The thing is, though, James Garner also plays a major role in the movie, as a Marshall called Zane Cooper, which I’m assuming is an homage to the two Western writers Zane Grey and James Fenimore Cooper. However, at the end of the film he is revealed to also be a Maverick, running an elaborate con with his son, Bret. Now, you can either take that as he’s playing Pappy (as he did once in the original show where he played both father and son in one episode) and Gibson is the original Bret or, like me, despite the lack of timing continuity between pretty much every iteration of the show in various forms, you can interpret it as he’s still playing Bret Maverick and also called his son the same name. Either way, this is a fairly affectionate nod to the original show (asides from the swearing) and is a nice addition to the original stories.

It has a stellar cast such as Jodie Foster as the main romantic lead (another con woman and this is not unusual for what would have been an episode of Maverick), Alfred Molina as a villain and James Coburn in another prominent role in the last third of the movie. There are also a lot of old time cowboy show (and Maverick show) cameo appearances by various actors such as Leo Gordon (Big Mike in the original show and also one of the original series' writers) and Doug McLure, not to mention lots of uncredited cameos too, including Garner’s brother turning up once again, plus some country and western singers too, for some reason.

One cameo moment is wonderful when Danny Glover, Gibson’s co-star from the Lethal Weapon movies, comes face to face with Gibson while robbing a bank... and the music suddenly goes into a dead-on parody of Michael Kamen and Eric Clapton’s score for the Lethal Weapon films. That’s very nicely done.

Another great uncredited cameo, larger but still short, is the inclusion of a character played by Margot Kidder. Of course, Kidder also played James Garner’s regular love interest in his post-Maverick TV show Nichols (which I reviewed here) and it’s nice to see the two sharing the screen together again (come to think of it, she also worked for this particular director in her most famous role as Lois Lane in Superman The Movie and its sequels).

And, getting back to the musical cameos... Randy Newman’s score for the film incorporates a heroic melody line for Gibson’s Bret character that is almost, but not quite, an instrumental version of the shows original theme and song. It’s like he’s been asked to do it straight but delete one note and change two others and I can’t quite understand why because, well, Warners would surely have owned the rights to the music from the original show. Maybe, going with the idea that this was actually the original Bret Maverick’s son, the composer decided to make it a variant, possibly intending to bring the full version of Garner’s theme back later for... the big reveal. That doesn’t happen but, it’s quite close and fans of the old show will certainly hear the old theme in it when Gibson does anything heroic here.

And it’s a nice film with some interesting scenes, nice action and a real suspenseful finish to the big poker game near the end of the movie. It’s also very humorous, in exactly the way the original show was although, certainly Gibson’s young Bret is more willing to pull his guns out, it seems, than the original character was. There’s a big problem with the film though... and I’m not just talking about the waterwheel on the ferry changing speeds between long shot and close up in one scene either...

I’m sure the various plot twists... Jodie Foster actually after Maverick’s money whenever she can thieve it, the James Garner reveal, the Indian who turns out to be an old pal of Bret... would have seemed fresh or at least unpredictable to the younger segment of the audience who were unfamiliar with any of the various versions of the show over the years. Old hands at Bret’s game though, through Garner’s always pitch perfect and immensely entertaining portrayal, will see a lot of the reveals coming way before they happen because they’ve become almost cliché by this point in the franchise. So, yeah, I think this movie appeals to two different audiences but, luckily, it holds it own quite well and at least meets the expectations of an older and more familiar crowd.

Maverick, the movie version, is a real hoot, to be sure and definitely one to watch. It doesn’t come close, it has to be said, to many of the earlier versions of the character but, that’s okay, Gibson does well in the part, as does Foster and they’re both helped out tremendously, in my opinion, by the presence of James Garner returning, effectively, to his roots here. A lovely, romantic Western flavoured with just a favourable dash of its powerful legacy of ingredients. One to watch.

Hotel Artemis

Tight Rules For The Job

Hotel Artemis
UK/USA Directed by Drew Pearce
UK cinema release print.

Wow. What a great movie.

I'm somewhat dismayed to find the one and two star reviews in abundance on the IMDB for this one. To be fair, these mostly seem to be from bizarre individuals who thought they were going to see some kind of mad John Wick style affair, for some reason but, in all honesty that’s not the kind of impression I took away with me when I first saw the trailer for this thing a couple of weeks ago.

Another thing I definitely didn’t realise from the trailer... but which hits you in some very obvious ways right from the outset of the movie, is that Hotel Artemis is very much a science fiction film in that it’s set in the near future in Los Angeles and, I have to admit, I did get a very slight Blade Runner vibe coming off it, although not quite so outlandish, in some ways, in its predictions.

What it really is, however, is something much older and traditional in its place in the history of cinema, I feel. This is like one of those old 1950s/60s criminal’s ‘hospital safe house’ kinds of movies which would show up in the guise of a film noir or, sometimes, a 1950s western siege kind of affair. In fact, I can very easily envisage the young, late 1970s version of John Carpenter making a very similar style of film to this if he’d had this script.

The film starts off with a bank job which goes wrong for one of the main, more heroic protagonists... Waikiki played by Stirling Brown... when his crew screw things up and his brother gets shot up quite badly. So he takes him to the special floor of the Hotel Artemis. That’s four guest rooms and a mini surgery embodying a ‘patch you up quick’ hospital run by The Nurse, played by Jodie Foster and her assistant Everest, played by David Bautista. It’s an establishment which has very hard, unbreakable rules such as not killing the other patients/guests, no smoking, absolutely no cops and, unless you are a paid up member to the place, you won’t be getting into her establishment and past her little arrival room. I say her establishment... she just runs the operation but it’s actually owned by the most feared crime kingpin in Los Angeles, Niagara, played by Jeff Goldblum. Oh, by the way, only the patient’s code names are used in the Hotel Artemis, named after the room they have been assigned to but, you do find out a few of their names as the movie progresses.

And what a movie it is... Nurse and Everest also have another couple of ‘guests’ staying there on the evening in question. Acapulco, played by Charlie Day and the absolutely drop dead gorgeous, professional assassin Nice, played by Sofia Boutella. This film is about the night where all the rules pretty much get broken and everything goes wrong for Nurse and Everest. Waikiki is in possession of something his brother stole when the job went south which belongs to Goldblum’s character and he will be dead if it’s caught on him (Niagara doesn’t take too kindly to robbery). Also, it becomes pretty clear that one of the other characters has another agenda attached to their stay at the Hotel Artemis. Plus, to make things worse, Goldblum’s son, played by Zachary Quinto, is heading in their direction to smooth the way because his father is injured and needing The Nurse’s services. And did I mention this all takes place when a huge riot over access to water is taking place in the streets of LA?

So yeah, all the early cinematic storytelling clichés are here in abundance but it’s all given a nice, fresh coat of paint by writer/director Drew Pearce on his first feature length movie and it’s a real treat for fans of genre cinema, that’s for sure. And fans of acting too...

Jodie Foster is beyond excellent, giving the confident but anxiety ridden (if she’s ever faced with the possibility of leaving the hotel) character a nice kind of shuffling gait to her run and helping flesh out the flashbacks to her dead son... which will of course, although she doesn’t realise it yet, tie into another character in the hotel. Goldblum, as usual, is great but David Bautista, who is someone I’ve had my eye on for a while, totally knocks it out the park again with a character which is a slight variant on the kind of person he played in Blade Runner 2049. I have a lot of time for this actor and putting him as a kind of double act with veteran actress Jodie Foster is an absolute stroke of genius. And then there’s Sofia Boutella, who impresses me more and more with her combination of smouldering looks coupled with the ability to make hand to hand combat look amazing and lethal without ever seeming empty headed in her approach to the characters she plays. I’m really surprised that Marvel haven’t tapped her yet to lend credibility as one of their super heroines in the current crop of Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, to be honest.

And it’s a really great juggling act of modern movie making. Invoking the feel of those old westerns and hard boiled classics, cross pollinating it with a science fiction setting and then throwing in some well choreographed action scenes into the mix too. I was truly impressed by this movie and would say it’s one of the more interesting of this year’s Hollywood style movies, in all honesty. In fact, I’m toying with the idea of seeing it again in a week or two when it gets a general release over here in the UK (I saw it at a Cineworld preview screening) and, certainly, am looking forward to a Blu Ray purchase when the time comes. It’s also got a really nice score by Cliff Martinez which utilises, if my ears were hearing right, some nice cimbalom melodies, often synonymous with the kind of dark, cold world of the 1960s spy thrillers. Alas, as far as I can tell, this score is only available commercially as a download rather than a proper CD release so, once again the movie music labels have let me down and I don’t get to hear what it’s like as a stand alone listen. Which is a great shame. I wish labels like Lakeshore, who publish the download version of the score, would stop doing this.

At the end of the day, the wonderful compositions and the beautiful, claustrophobic atmosphere evoked in Hotel Artemis make it one of the better cinema experiences I’ve had in a while and I’ve got nothing but good things to say about it. A hard recommendation from me with this one and, if you do go, stick around for a little scene just after the end credits start rolling... there’s possible wriggle room for a sequel if this movie had set the box office alight the way it should have. If you are a lover of cinema, especially sci-fi noir, then don’t let this one pass you by.

Money Monster

Wacking The Bankers

Money Monster
2016 USA Directed by Jodie Foster
UK cinema release print.

Okay.... so Money Monster has got to be one of the worst movie titles to come along in quite some time. Absolutely not something which would tempt me to go and see it at the cinema and, when you put the names George Clooney and Julia Roberts in the mix, much as I do like both those actors, it sends out big ‘stay away’ signals to me because, as great as these two are (and they are great at what they do), they tend to not very often make the kind of movies I would go and see. At least, not when they are working on a project together.

If you further add in the ingredient “Directed by Jodie Foster”, then you have another negative point stacked up against it. Sure, I also appreciate the acting skills of Jodie Foster (ever since seeing her in Bugsy Malone and Taxi Driver) but seeing large scale actors take on directing duties always sounds, to me, like they’re fiddling around with an experimental vanity project. Yeah, I know. It’s a terrible prejudice to have, for sure, but that’s my thinking.

However, despite all these potential hurdles, what got me into the cinema to see this thing was one of the few things that studios often tend to rely on but which rarely, in my experience, seem to actually work, one way or another. I’m talking about the trailer here. It was a good trailer which seemed somewhat hard hitting and which harkened back to a 1970s style of movie making, as seen in films like Network, it seemed to me. It was intriguing and it felt like it was going to say something really sly about the way people are manipulated by big corporations and, in a way, I guess it does.

Therefore, I was more than delighted when I saw this picture because, although it doesn’t quite have that 1970s vibe I was hoping for, and might not be quite as hard hitting or satirical as I’d have liked, it is a solid piece of cinema and all the cast and crew, in front of and behind the cameras, deserve a big round of applause for this one. It takes a subject which could, quite easily, be over in three quarters of an hour and pushes the boundaries to places where it doesn’t take you in the trailer, and which leaves a surprising amount of the last half an hour out of the equation.

The film tells the story of a day in the life of Clooney’s character Lee Gates, a financial personality for a TV channel, and the last show with his producer Patty, played by Roberts. In the middle of a live show where they are investigating the crash of a big company and the ‘shareholder’s fallout’, losing 800 million dollars, a victim of said crash, Kyle (played by Jack O’ Connell), takes Clooney hostage and makes him wear a suicide vest until he can get some answers. As the film goes down a semi-predictable route, the actual details that begin to emerge as Roberts and her crew are forced to investigate what really happened, as opposed to the cover story of a computer glitch, becomes what the real story is about.

Now although, as I said, I tend to avoid Clooney and Roberts due to some of the parts they take on, you can’t argue that these two are absolute professionals and they do their job to perfection here. As does Jack O’Connell playing the reluctant but hot headed antagonist/victim in the picture. The performances of all three, plus their brilliant co-stars, turns a somewhat clichéd but ultimately sound story into riveting drama and, of course, Foster makes a really good job of things too...

The director perfectly captures the ensuing chaos of a live show about to go on the air, not to mention the shenanigans that happen once the ‘terrorist’ of the piece enters the story. It’s a polished, fluid kind of rawness she captures, to be sure, but it is well covered with a lot happening on screen a lot of the time. The fact that she makes it so easy for the audience to follow everything that goes on speaks volumes about her skill at helming such a production. There is an impending sense of doom that starts to take a hold of you as the film progresses and, while it might be fair to say that there’s a certain amount of inevitability in terms of the final ten minutes of the movie, the fact that Foster can keep such a tight reign on the suspense while still managing to make you laugh at certain scenes within the ‘heat of the moment’, proves she knows her stuff, as far as I’m concerned.

Another aspect of it is that the cops in the story, who are supposed to be the good guys, almost come acrosss as the bad guys in the film. They are generally portrayed as inept a lot of the time, making the wrong calls and, when it counts, adding as much tension to the final outcome as possible. The police do not come out looking good in this one and one wonders if this is one of the agendas of the writers or director here. Either way, as the tension mounts and the story takes the viewer out of the studio environment which it stays in for the majority of the film (with occasional cuts to other characters involved in the investigation outside), the one group of people you really wish weren’t on the scene is the local police force. In some ways they become as much of an antagonist in direct contrast to Jack O’ Connell’s character becoming less of one as the running time moves inexorably towards its final solution. .. which I’m certainly not going to spoil for you here.

There have been a few of these kind of movies over the years, when powerful organisations are investigated due to the aggressive intervention of ‘the little guy’ but, at the moment, it’s in a minority amidst all the other kinds of movies playing at cinemas at the moment. It’s a welcome alternative to, and distraction from, the various super heroes and orcs showing across the country at the moment and this alone makes it worth your time to buy a ticket. Not the best film you’ll see at the cinema this year but certainly a pretty interesting one and if you like the actors involved in this one and are interested in seeing something which is, at the moment, a little bit different to anything else you are going to see out there, then Money Monster is definitely one to go take a look at. The pacing is pretty fast and the dramatic situations unfold at a rate of knots without killing the credibility of the situation. Not a bad evening out, if you get a chance.

Elysium

The Magnificent Heaven

Elysium
2013 USA
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Warning: Possible slight spoilers.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Neill Blomkamp’s last movie, his debut feature District 9, although I can acknowledge it was certainly quite an impressive film for all the right kinds of reasons and it’s no surprise to me that he’s got a couple of big names like Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in his follow up feature. Not to mention including the “seen him everywhere lately” character actor William Fichtner in the line up. So in terms of the acting he’s in safe hands here and, as you would expect, everyone in here more than pulls their weight, especially the actor who played the anti-hero main protagonist in District 9, Sharlto Copley, who here plays a very unpleasant villain.

And I have to say that I liked Elysium a lot more than that previous movie although, for sure, it can be almost seen as a companion piece. The worlds inhabited by both sets of characters on Earth is something of a dystopian vision and this also shows up in the style in which the movie is shot. However, since there’s not a great deal to criticise in Elysium and since this would be a real short review if I just said... “Elysium. Okay movie. Wouldn’t watch it again but good for a night out.”... then I’ll elaborate a little more, I think.

You’ve got some really good things going on here because we’re plonked down right into a future society with an established background for both Matt Damon’s Max character and his childhood sweetheart Frey, played charmingly by Alice Braga. Elysium, a space station world where the rich live in their perfect paradise (a metaphor for the world where those chosen favourites by the Gods go to in their afterlife, in certain ancient cultures) is already well established before these two characters are even born and being thrown together again in the mix of a storyline after having been apart from so long is quite poignant when you understand that their dream was always to go and live on Elysium.

However, they are not the chosen elite, they are part of the trodden masses who the rich and powerful look down on... not even that really. People are just things that live and die with no empathic response from the population “up there”. But things now come to a head because, once Max is accidentally exposed to a high dose of radiation, he embarks on a criminal data robbery from his old gang leader in order to get illegal passage to Elysium. Since he can barely stand, he is fitted with an exo-suit to make him stronger and has a data terminal spliced into him, in to which he has to steal and synch with the contents hidden in William Fitchner’s head. I don’t want to completely spoil the story for you but, when everything goes pear shaped, Max, Frey and the others find themselves heading to Elysium in... well... not the best company.

All the scenes on earth are shot with that same kind of gritty and jerky “reality viewpoint” which made District 9 a notable film to watch and the establishing footage initially shown of Elysium has a much more steady-cam, cleaner look to it... and this works really well. My one complaint being that the jerky camera work and editing style is also employed when our main characters are indulging in action sequences on Elysium too... which kinda annoyed me, it has to be said. It’s like the gritty realism is not really a harbinger of the duality of the environments portrayed in the movie... it’s more like a leitmotif for the inner chaos brought by the inhabitants of Earth and the way this bleeds out in to the world as they experience it. Which is a fair enough approach, I guess. I just maybe would have liked a more simplistic idea in terms of environmental rather than social expression.

Another gripe I have is the fact that the exo-skeleton suit that both Max, and later Sharlto Copley’s Kruger character, wear is really low tech. It looks like a pair of crutches and it’s not really believable that this would give our hero super strength. Yes, I understand it’s an Earth-tech, patched up version but that’s no excuse for the identical “frame” that Kruger wears, which he gets fitted on Elysium. So this kinda killed the mood for me a little.

That being said, the film has a certain gritty, brutality all its own and I suspect that this is why people will cotton on to this one so much. It’s easy to get sucked in and be inhabited by a movie when it’s hitting all your comfort zones with a big stick, I’m guessing. So, to be fair, it’s one of those movies where you really feel what’s going on (judging from the audience I saw it with the other night), rather than sit back comfortably and look at the way in which it is framed. It succeeds on this level really well.

One of the reasons it does succeed in this, of course, is because of the editing. Although the action sequences are chopped about quite aggressively, at a fast pace and with lots of changes of scale, it actually manages to capture what’s going on very well and although you may be numbed by the intensity of the various fight and chase sequences in the movie, you certainly shouldn’t have any problem with following what’s going on in them. It’s very carefully edited to produce a raw, in your face aesthetic while still preserving the sense of the overall scheme of things... Blomkamp really seems to know what he’s doing here.

There’s also a great and almost, at times, hypnotic score by first timer Ryan Amon, which is muscular and not unlike a solid Brian Tyler score... who is who I’d guessed had scored it until I saw Amon’s name in the end credits. The current retro trend of using short musical motif’s like Bernard Herrmann or Philip Glass is in full swing here but, who cares, it works and I happen to like those composers anyway. It’s a score I’ll probably get around to picking up sometime soon, I expect.

All in all, Elysium is over-the-top brutal fun for a certain kind of audience. The story is old and clichéd 1950s style science-fiction again, to be sure, but at least it’s treated with a certain degree of respect for its influences and Blomkamp certainly pulls no punches when it comes to manipulating the emotions of the audience. As a piece of hard hitting sci-fi, admittedly ramming its personal philosophies down your throat quite a lot, then it’s still a pretty impressive exercise in movie making and, while I probably wouldn’t watch it again, I’m certainly glad I’ve seen it the once at the cinema. Good work done here.

Carnage (2011)

Roman Quartet

Carnage 2011 UK

Directed by Roman Polanski

Screening at UK cinemas.

Okay... so here we have yet another movie called Carnage. As though we didn't already have enough movies called exactly the same thing. This one’s directed by Roman Polanski and co-written with him together with Yasmina Reza, who wrote the original play on which this movie is based, Le Dieu Du Carnage... which is possibly the title they should have gone for here (or at least an English translation of it, since it’s shot in the English language) instead of giving us a movie called the same name as many other movies called... well, you know... Carnage.

Now Roman Polanski has always been a director I’ve found a bit hit and miss. When he’s good he’s great, churning out some cool movies like Repulsion and The Ninth Gate. However... when he’s bad... you get junk like Frantic.

Roman Polanski isn’t much of a draw to get me into a movie these days, I have to say, but the four lead actors in Carnage are all particularly good at their craft with one name in particular, that of Christoph Waltz... who has been largely wasted in Hollywood roles like the lead villain in the recent disaster that was The Green Hornet since his stand out performance (a long way into a very long and distinguished career as an actor) in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.

Waltz is one of those actors who pretty much lights up the screen with his presence whenever he’s around. On top of this his three co-stars are Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly and Kate Winslet... so you know that no mater how bad the script is... you’re going to get some seriously interesting performances out of this people sharing the same scenes.

Luckily, in terms of dialogue at least, the writing fairly crackles, giving these four stalwart actors something really great to get their teeth into. It has to be pointed out though that, like a lot of movies based on plays, the piece does not greatly benefit from being translated into a work on film. Apart from an opening and closing sequence shot from the same angle, more or less, of a park, the whole movie is set in two rooms and two hallways from the same apartment, which is fine but, you really feel the confines of the camera trapped in the same sets in this one.

The four actors play parents of two children, one of whom has lost two teeth due to being hit in the mouth with a stick... which you see at the start in a small sequence that I expect was absent from the original play, which runs during the credits to Alexandre Desplat’s powerhouse score (which is only present in the opening and closing credits... there’s no room for music in the rest of the movie). The tone changes from pleasant and mannered to hostile and aggressive and lots of other things through the course of the play as one of the couples, played by Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz, keep trying to leave but constantly encounter excuses and distractions which force them to stay in the building... much like the darkly magical curse of social manners which force the inhabitants of the house in Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel to remain when they are desperate to depart... just not quite as much fun.

The film could best be described as a comedy of manners perhaps, rather than an exploration of the psychology of the four people trapped in the artistic space of the movie/play, but there is a certain level of fakery going on due to the confines of the environment and the plastic way in which every individual character gets their moment in the spotlight... which I found a little more distracting than I might normally find in something which has started off as a theatre piece. To be fair to Polanski, there are not that many “theatre into movie adaptations” which really escape the confines of their original setting and I’m not for the moment saying that there neccessarily should be. This artifice presented in this kind of way may be exactly the tone Polanski was after... I just feel that movies like Educating Rita did the whole stage to screen relocation a heck of a lot better than this particular movie did.

I’m not knocking the film though... it’s short and sweet and there are some laughs to be had from it. It’s not something I’d recommend that many people to see, to be sure, but it’s not a bad movie either and, frankly, when you get four actors who are this good trapped in a series of rooms together... well... you almost owe it to yourself to go and see what they come up with. And, to be fair to all involved, there were some nice shot compositions towards the end, on occasion, where the perspective was deliberately screwed by the juxtaposition of large and small elements sharing the same horizontal space... just not enough of that stuff to really hold my interest in it... at least not as much as the acting.

So Roman Polanski’s latest is not as great as, perhaps, it could have been but, honestly, I don’t know what kind of tone he was after so bringing up the artifice of the basic building blocks of the source material may not be the fairest way to go. A slight film but a fairly pleasant way to spend 80 mins... and Christoph Waltz is always worth watching.