Dolores Claiborne

Year of Release:  1995

Director:  Taylor Hackford

Screenplay:  Tony Gilroy, based on the novel Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

Starring:  Kathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judy Parfitt, Christopher Plummer, David Strathairn, Eric Bogosian, John C. Reilly, Ellen Muth

Running Time:  131 minutes

Genre:  Thriller

New York journalist Selena St. George (Leigh) returns to her home town on Little Tall Island, Maine, when her estranged mother, Dolores Claiborne (Bates), is accused of the murder of her elderly employer (Parfitt).  This is not the first time that Dolores has been in trouble, since 18 years earlier she was accused of murdering her abusive husband (Strathairn).  Obsessive police detective Mackey (Plummer) who investigated the earlier murder is determined to see Dolores behind bars whatever it takes.  As Selena looks into the case, she finds herself forced to return to a past which she has spent her life trying to bury.

The 1992 novel Dolores Claiborne is an unusual one for Stephen King with an absence of his usual supernatural elements and also being written as a single long monologue in the voice of Dolores.  This is one of the unjustly forgotten Stephen King adaptations, an intelligent and dark psychological thriller, moving between the past and present.  While the past is photographed in luscious vivid colour, the colour in the present scenes is washed out, tinged with blues and greys.  This story focuses almost entirely on the female characters.  The key relationship is between the estranged mother and daughter.  Dolores has been alone pretty much for eighteen years, living outside of town, her only "friend" if you want to call her that, is her demanding, caustic employer, Vera Donovan (played by Judy Parfitt), who at the time of her death is very sick, unable to move about, and her and Dolores have a complex love-hate relationship built on mutual need.  Selena is a successful journalist but a depressed alcoholic, who medicates with numerous pills, she works for a manipulative editor (played by Eric Bogosian) who has been having an affair with her, and it is suggested that he assigns stories based on who he happens to be sleeping with.  Kathy Bates is possibly best known for starring in a previous Stephen King adaptation, Misery (1990), and she does make use of her persona from that film here.  Because we are familiar with her as the unbalanced Annie Wilkes from Misery we, like Selena and Mackey, are almost primed from the start to believe Dolores is guilty, and the film plays on our expectations and assumptions as it goes along.  Jennifer Jason Leigh is fantastic as the brittle, damaged Selena, her pale face almost translucent framed by her black hair and all black clothing, like a marble statue, strong but on the verge of shattering.  English actress Judy Parfitt plays the ruthless and very rich Vera Donovan, whose relationship with Dolores is more complex than it first appears.  Christopher Plummer is as good as ever as the oily police detective, who will do anything to convict Dolores because he views his failure to convict her 18 years ago as the "one that got away".  David Strathairn is sleazy and sweaty as Dolores' monstrous abusive husband, but he is also not without. degree of charisma.  Ellen Muth, making her screen debut, does very well as the 13 year old Selena.  The film is cleverly written, with an intelligent and witty script.  Set in Maine, as most Stephen King stories are, but filmed in Nova Scotia, the story takes place in a broken, desolate little town, bleak and wintery in the present scenes, and ripe, but poisonous in the memories of a remembered summer.  the film does occasionally suffer from some very mid-90s technical effects, but these are kept to a minimum.

Written and directed by men, based on a book by a male author, this is a film about women, there are really no sympathetic male characters, with the possible exception of John C. Reilly as the gentle town cop, a film about the relationship between mothers and daughters, between the past and present, and it's about women trying to find their own place in the world and freedom in their own ways, from men, from their past, and from their personal demons.  It's a troubling and powerful film, that deserves to be better known.          

Kathy Bates and Jennifer Jason Leigh in Dolores Claiborne

Stan & Ollie

Year of Release:  2018
Director:  Jon S. Baird
Screenplay:  Jeff Pope
Starring:  Steve Coogan, John C. Reilly, Shirley Henderson, Danny Huston, Nina Arianda, Rufus Jones
Running Time:  97 minutes
Genre:  Comedy, drama, biography

It's 1953, sixteen years after legendary comedy double act Stan Laurel (Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (Reilly) were at the height of their fame.  In the hopes of raising backing for a comeback film that Laurel is writing, based around Robin Hood, the estranged duo reunite for a grueling tour of Britain.  However, the pressures of the tour soon start to put strain on Laurel and Hardy's relationship and Hardy's increasingly fragile health.

This is a touching, gentle film that pays an affectionate tribute to the genius of Laurel and Hardy.  It is also very funny.  Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly (acting under heavy make-up) are pitch perfect as Laurel and Hardy, nailing their physical comedy style, as well as their appearance and mannerisms.  Shirley Henderson is good as Hardy's wife, Lucille, and Nina Arianda is hilarious as Laurel's blunt but loving wife Ida.  It's a film about friendship, comedy and the value of art.  It's great not only for fans of Laurel and Hardy, but  also anyone interested in the world of show business.  A refreshingly sincere and affectionate film, this is a bittersweet tribute to a bygone era. 

Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C. Reilly) are Stan & Ollie

We Need to Talk about Kevin

Year:  2011
Director:  Lynne Ramsay
Screenplay:  Lynne Ramsay and Rory Stewart Kinnear, based on the novel We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Starring:  Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly, Ezra Miller, Jasper Newell, Rocky Duer, Ashley Gerasimovich
Running Time:  112 minutes
Genre:  Drama, crime, family

Lionel Shriver's best-selling novel We Need to Talk about Kevin has been a mainstay of book groups and commuters on buses and trains throughout the world since it's first publication in 2003, and this film adaptation has been in development since 2005.

The story deals with a Columbine style high school massacre from the perspective of the mother of the perpetrator.  Eva Katchadourian (Swinton) is a successful New York based travel writer and photographer until she is forced into domesticity in a bland New England town when she falls pregnant.  The film moves back and forth through time from the aftermath of the massacre, where the shattered, isolated Eva has become the town hate figure, to her tortured relationship with teenage son Kevin (Miller), who she resents right from the get-go, and who regards her with little more than open contempt and hatred.  All the time her amiable husband, Franklin (Reilly), doesn't see anything wrong with Kevin and can't understand why his wife is seemingly unable to bond with her child.

The film opens with Eva as one of a writhing mass of bodies at the Spanish La Tomatina festival in which participants hurl tomatoes at each other for fun.  The colour red becomes an important element in the film, from the mass of people covered in pulped tomatoes at La Tomatina to the vivid splashes of red paint that her neighbours throw at her house after the massacre and the red and glow of the police car and ambulance lights.  The tomato festival serves as a reminder of the free, exciting lifestyle which Eva loses when she falls pregnant.  In a key later scene Eva hides from the mother of one of her son's victims, by hiding behind a wall of cans of tomato soup. 

The film features a superb performance by Tilda Swinton in the lead role, her face a mask of savage, barely restrained emotion, and in the scenes set after the massacre, she becomes haggard, dead-eyed and almost ghost-like.  Ezra Miller is also impressive as the sociopathic Kevin, full of sneering contempt and hatred.  The movie poses the question of how much Eva herself is responsible for her son's actions.  However Kevin would probably test the patience of even the most loving, easy-going mother.  However, the film suggests that Eva and Kevin are not that dissimilar, they even look a lot like each other, to the extent of wearing very similar shirts.

Kevin remains an enigma throughout the film.  It's never revealed why he does what he does, and it is one of the film's strengths that it does not provide answers where there are none.  This is a striking, dark and powerful film boasting great perfomances and a powerful visual style from acclaimed Scottish director Lynne Ramsay.  Although it's probably not the best pick for family movie night.

Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly in We Need to Talk about Kevin