Women Talking

Year:  2022

Director:  Sarah Polley

Screenplay:  Sarah Polley, based on the novel Women Talking by Miriam Toews

Starring:  Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Ben Whishaw, Frances McDormand

Running Time:  104 minutes 

Genre:  Drama

In an isolated Mennonite colony women are drugged and raped over a period of years.  Their claims are dismissed by the colony's authorities as either supernatural attacks or "wild female imagination".  Until, that is one of the attackers is caught, and he promptly names the others.  The attackers are arrested and taken to the nearest city to stand trial.  The other men of the colony accompany them in order to pay their bail.  The colony elders order the women to forgive their attackers by the time they return in two days or be banished from the colony.  Left alone, the women debate how to proceed:  Should they stay and obey their orders?  Stay and fight the men?  Or leave and found a new colony?

Based on the 2018 novel by Miriam Toews, which itself was based on a real life incident that occurred in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia.  The film doesn't focus on the attacks, instead it focuses on the women's response, and most of the film is the debate on how they should proceed.  In fact men are more or less entirely absent from the film with the notable exception of August (played by Ben Whishaw), the gentle schoolteacher who was educated away from the colony, and takes the minutes of the meetings, because none of the women have been taught how to read and write.  In the novel he narrates the story, but in the film the voice-over narrator is the yet unborn daughter of one of the women. The other exception is Melvin (played by August Winter) a transgender man who was raped and refuses to speak except to the youngest children who he cares for while the women are debating.  However men and male violence is the spectre that haunts the entire film.  The women live in an extremely patriarchal society where they are completely subservient to the men.  The film doesn't really come down against the Mennonite way of life, none of the women want to abandon their faith they just want to interpret it in a better and more fair way.  The film has a muted, washed out colour scheme, that evokes old photographs from the 19th century.  It is briefly mentioned that the year is 2010, but the only vision of modernity is a census taker driving through the colony in an old truck, with a loudspeaker on the roof playing the song "Daydream Believer".  The film boasts excellent performances, particularly from Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Ben Whishaw.  This is a great film, wonderfully directed by Sarah Polley, who keeps the drama tight and intense, but provides enough brief glimpses of the world away from the meetings, so it doesn't feel to claustrophobic, and also lets up the tension with some flashes of mordant humour.  It's a moving and powerful piece of quiet rebellion.

Women Talking

Primal Fear

 Year:  1996

Director:  Gregory Hoblit

Screenplay:  Steve Shagan and Ann Biderman, based on the novel Primal Fear by William Diehl

Starring:  Richard Gere, Edward Norton, Laura Linney, John Mahoney, Alfre Woodard, Frances McDormand

Running Time:  130 minutes

Genre:  Thriller 

Chicago:  A beloved archbishop is brutally murdered in his apartment.  Shy, polite 19 year old altar boy Aaron Stampler (Norton) is found covered in blood, fleeing the crime scene, and is arrested for the murder.  Given the evidence and the lack of any other suspects, a conviction seems a certainty.  Ambitious, arrogant defence attorney Martin Vail (Gere) decides to defend Aaron, and becomes increasing convinced of his innocence. As he digs into the case to find evidence, Vail discovers some dark secrets.

This courtroom thriller, based on a 1993 novel by author William Diehl, is a genuinely gripping mystery, and elevated by strong performances and well-rounded characters.  Richard Gere is ideally cast as the slick, arrogant and often quite unlikeable lawyer, who nevertheless is redeemed by his strong belief in justice.  Edward Norton, in his film debut, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting  Actor for his intense performance as the tormented, stammering Aaron Stampler, who spends most of the film either in the courtroom or in a jail cell, verbally sparring with Gere or Frances McDormand, who plays a psychiatrist sent to analyse him.  Laura Linney really elevates what could be a one-note role as the attorney for the prosecution, who has a history with Vail.  Some of the various plot twists probably won't surprise many mystery aficionados, but the story moves along well, and there is plenty of real tension.  Director Gregory Hoblit, a veteran of TV dramas such as Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law and NYPD Blue, as well as the notorious '80s police musical Cop Rock, directs with style and keeps the plot moving along, even while the narrative diverges into more conspiratorial elements.  The script is clever with some sharp, witty dialogue.  

 Edward Norton and Richard Gere in Primal Fear

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Year of Release:  2021

Director:  Joel Coen

Screenplay: Joel Coen, based on the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Starring:  Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Bertie Carvel, Alex Hassell, Corey Hawkins, Harry Melling, Brendan Gleeson, Kathryn Hunter

Running Time: 105 minutes

Genre:  Drama, thriller, horror

After distinguishing himself in battle, the Scottish Lord Macbeth (Washington) encounters three witches (Hunter) who inform him that he is destined to become King of Scotland.  With the help of his ambitious wife (McDormand), Macbeth embarks on a treacherous and violent campaign to fulfil his destiny.

Directed by Joel Coen, working for the first time without his brother Ethan, this is a striking adaptation of one of Shakespeare's most popular plays.  Sticking closely to the text, the film is shot entirely on soundstages in crisp black-and-white, with stylised sets, turning it into a surreal nightmare.  Denzel Washington turns in a fantastic performance as Macbeth, charismatic and noble to begin with, before descending into murderous paranoia, while also conveying his guilt, self-torment and world-weariness.  Frances McDormand turns in a brittle, icy Lady Macbeth, who seems too turn into a living ghost as she falls apart.  Coen directs with assurance and imagination, making this version of the oft-told tale genuinely distinctive, particularly casting Kathryn Hunter as all three of the witches, she turns on a remarkable physical performance, sometimes seeming to portray the three characters in one body, while at other times, the other two witches appear as shadows or reflections beside her.  This is a superb addition to Shakespearean cinema.

 Macbeth (Denzel Washington) and Banquo (Bertie Carvel) in The Tragedy of Macbeth

The French Dispatch

Year of Release:  2021

Director:  Wes Anderson

Screenplay:  Wes Anderson, from a story by Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Hugo Guinness and Jason Schwartzman

Starring:  Bill Murray, Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Owen Wilson

Running Time:  103 minutes

Genre:  Drama, comedy

The French Dispatch, the foreign bureau of a Kansas newspaper, is based in the quirky city of Ennui-sur-Blasé, and presided over by formidable editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Murray).  When Arthur dies suddenly of a heart attack, the staff of the magazine prepare one final issue, which will serve as a memorial to Arthur and a farewell to the magazine.  It consists of an obituary, a travelogue feature, and three stories:  A murderer (del Toro) serving a life sentence for double murder proves to be a talented artist, with the help of a prison guard (Seydoux), and attracts the attention of a sleazy art dealer (Brody).  In the second story, an American writer (McDormand) becomes involved in a protest movement lead by a chess-playing revolutionary (Chalamet).  In the third story, a food writer (Wright) becomes involved in a kidnapping scheme while trying to write an article about legendary police chef (Park).

The film is an anthology and what we see is the final issue of The French Dispatch, which is clever and, to my knowledge, unique way of presenting a film.  It has a huge ensemble cast, which also includes Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Saoirse Ronan, Elisabeth Moss, Christoph Waltz and Anjelica Huston in small roles.  Set in a fictional city, in an undefined mid 20th Century setting, this is a delightful film, everything is intricately designed, and every frame is carefully composed.  The film moves from colour to black and white, there are spilt screen images, quirky captions,  and even a couple of animated sequences.  It feels like a delicately constructed piece of elaborate machinery, where any flaw in the thing and the whole would collapse.  Often when comedy is too carefully constructed and designed, it can work against the humour and feel airless, however this is a very funny film, although, as with most Anderson films, it is more whimsical and witty than hysterical.  The music by Alexandre Desplat helps invoke the Sixties French glamour, and the soundtrack features Charles Aznavour, Ennio Morricone, Grace Jones, Chantal Goya and Jarvis Cocker.  This is very much a Wes Anderson film and if you don't like his work, then this will likely not win you over, I do like his work and I enjoyed this film a lot. The cast is all good, and there is so much charm in this film that it is almost impossible not to be won over.  It's a love letter to journalism, sixties France and French cinema, and I was left wishing that The French Dispatch might put out some more issues.

The staff of The French Dispatch

Nomadland

Year of Release:  2020

Director:  Chloé Zhao

Screenplay:  Chloé Zhao, based on the book Nomadland:  Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder

Starring:  Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Linda May, Charlene Swankie

Running Time:  107 minutes

Genre:  Drama

In 2011, recently widowed Fern (McDormand) loses her job when the US Gypsum plant she has worked for for year shuts down.  This devastates her hometown of Empire, Nevada, for which the plant was the principal employer.  Fern hits the road, living out of her van, travelling the highways and byways of the United States, taking casual work to make ends meet and becoming part of an extensive, supportive community of fellow nomads.

Written, produced, edited and directed by Chloé Zhao, and based on a non-fiction book by journalist Jessica Bruder, this is a powerful, beautiful and meditative film.  It captures the beauty, camaraderie and freedom of Fern's lifestyle while not ignoring the rootlessness, loneliness and hardship of her way of life.  Many of the cast are real nomads playing fictionalised versions of themselves.  It has a real documentary feel, even with established actors such as Frances McDormand and David Strathairn, you forget that they are actors and see them as real travellers.  It has a slow, languid place, and doesn't really have a story to speak of, it follows a year in Fern's life as she travels around and takes various jobs, such as packing boxes for Amazon, working in a fast food restaurant, and doing odd jobs at a campsite among other things.  The film is full of beautiful images and bleak images, sometimes both beautiful and bleak at the same time.  It's a vision of America that you don't really see often, particularly not in Hollywood films.  Frances McDormand has given many great performances throughout her career, but she has never been better than here.  The film could be accused of not going into some of the darker aspects of the nomad lifestyle, but this is a minor issue.  This is one of the best new films that I have seen in a long time, and it is definitely worth seeing at the cinema, if at all possible.

 Frances McDormand in Nomadland 

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Year of Release:  2017
Director:  Martin McDonagh
Screenplay:  Martin McDonagh
Starring:  Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage
Running Time:  115 minutes
Genre:  Drama, dark comedy, crime

Mildred Hayes (McDormand) is a single mother who lives in the small town of Ebbing, Missouri.  Mildred is consumed with grief and rage over the brutal murder of her teenage daughter seven months previously.  Angry at the lack of progress in the official police investigation, Mildred hires three advertising billboards along a road into town and uses them to personally call out the town's police chief, Willoughby (Harrelson), as to why no arrests have been made.  This, of course, does not go down well with either the police or the townspeople, and Mildred soon finds herself a target.

This is something of a tragicomedy, dealing with seriously dark and disturbing themes and occasionally brutal violence, however it is also very funny, with some laugh out loud lines.  Frances McDormand dominates the film as Mildred Hayes, a tough, witty and angry woman, who does not care about what anyone thinks, but who still has doubts about her mission.  One of the strengths of the film is the way characters are introduced one way, and then are revealed to be more complex, particularly Woody Harrelson's turn as the troubled police chief.  The film raises some issues regarding police racism which it never really deals with, and some viewers may find the arc of Sam Rockwell's racist police officer hard to stomach.  However, this is certainly worth seeing, it's a dark but hilarious film, well-made with some fantastic performances.  It's a film about the corrosive effects of anger, revenge of violence, how it can become an endless cycle that consumes everyone and everything.

Frances McDormand and two of the Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Raising Arizona

Year: 1987
Director: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (uncredited)
Screenplay: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, Trey Wilson, John Goodman, William Forsythe, Sam McMurray, Frances McDormand, Randall "Tex" Cobb
Running Time: 94 minutes
Genre: Comedy, action,

Summary: H. I. "Hi" McDunnough (Cage) is a career criminal, with a penchant for robbing convenience stores, however he is so bad at it that he constantly gets caught. As time goes on he falls for the officer who processes him each time, Edwina "Ed" (Hunter), and they get married. Vowing to go straight, Hi embraces married life. However Ed is desperate to have a baby, but she is infertile and they are unable to adopt due to Hi's criminal past.
When they learn that local businessman Nathan Arizona (Wilson) has just become a father to quintuplets, Hi and Ed decide to steal one of the five babies to raise as their own.
They successfully kidnap one of the babies, but their new found family life is thrown into jeopardy when two of Hi's old friends from prison (Goodman and Forsythe) break out of jail and arrive at the McDunnough's home, as well as a deranged biker bounty hunter (Cobb) who is determined to find the missing baby.

Opinions: Child abduction is not exactly the most obvious theme for a light hearted knockabout comedy, especially one in which the abductors are actually the heroes, but the Coen brothers make it work.
The film is hyper-stylised and almost cartoonish, featuring sweeping camera movements, surreal moments and plenty of the Coens' trademark dialogue.
Nicolas Cage does some great work in the film. He is an actor who can be really good when he is in the right film and has a character that fits his over-the-top, manic style. He fits right in to the frenetic, bizarre world of this movie. However the film belongs to Holly Hunter who provides the film with it's heart. Genuinely well-meaning, if misguided, her character, which was written specifically for Hunter, anchors the whole movie.
The film is visually impressive, consistently entertaining, and very funny. The darker aspects of the premise are hinted at, but not really explored. Despite not being particularly successful when it was first released it has become something of a cult movie now.
The film gets a lot of comedy mileage out of the character's dialect (which was written as a blending of the local dialect and the character's assumed reading material - namely the Bible and magazines). As happens a lot with Coen brothers films, it's difficult to tell if they are celebrating or mocking the South, or maybe both at the same time.
The movie runs the risk at times of being too quirky for it's own good, but it gets by on sheer energy and the fact that it is always enjoyable and frequently genuinely charming. This was the Coens' second film and was written deliberately to be the polar opposite of their debut, the hard-edged, stripped down noir thriller Blood Simple (1984), and fans will be able to spot many of their tradmarks.
Over the top, exuberant fun, but with genuine heart, this is worth checking out.



Holly Hunter and Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona

Darkman

Year: 1990
Director: Sam Raimi
Screenplay: Sam Raimi, Chuck Pfarrer, Ivan Raimi, Daniel Goldin and Joshua Goldin, from a story by Sam Raimi
Starring: Liam Neeson, Frances McDormand, Larry Drake, Colin Friels
Running Time: 96 minutes
Genre: Superhero, action, horror, science-fiction, crime, thriller

Summary: Dr. Peyton Westlake (Neeson) is a scientist working on synthetic 'liquid skin'. However, one night Peyton is attacked in his laboratory by a mob led by vicious gangster Robert Durant (Drake) who enjoys cutting the fingers off his victims. Peyton's assistant is killed and the laboratory is blown up with Peyton inside. However, he survives, although he is horribly burned. After radical surgery in hospital, Peyton is left without the ability to feel pain, bursts of superhuman strength and also sudden violent rages. Escaping the hospital Peyton returns to his laboratory and resumes his work on liquid skin which allows him to impersonate anyone he chooses, as well as allowing him to appear 'normal' to his attorney girlfriend Julie (McDormand), who is also being romanced by billionaire tycoon Louis Stack Jr. (Friels). However, there is a severe drawback in that the liquid skin can only exist for a total of 99 minutes before becoming unstable and melting. However, Peyton now has the ability to take violent revenge against those who attacked him.

Opinions: This is a hugely entertaining superhero action movie with elements of horror, romance and humour. Director Sam Raimi brings the same energy and verve to this film that he brought to The Evil Dead (1983). The film was inspired by, and pays homage to, the Universal Studios horror films of the 1930s and also the pulp fiction heroes of the same period. The cast all perform very well, with Neeson in particular obviously having a great time in the central role. Horror fans will also want to look out for cameos from genre directors John Landis and William Lustig, as well as an appearance from Raimi regular and star of the Evil Dead movies, Bruce Campbell. Jenny Agutter also has a brief, uncredited role as a doctor in the hospital scene. The special effects are beginning to show their age now, but the action scenes are well staged and are genuinely exciting to watch. It's frequently very funny, but there are also some moments of real heart. Despite not actually being based on a comic-book the film does, at it's best, capture the feel and fun of them better than many other films. Admittedly there are very few surprises in the film, and you'll probably be able to work out what is going to happen well in advance. However, it is a well-paced, consistently entertaining action-thriller.
It's now become something of a cult film, and has been followed by, to date, two sequels.



Liam Neeson in Darkman