Nightmare Alley

Year:  2021

Director:  Guillermo del Toro

Screenplay:  Guillermo del Toro and Kim Morgan, based on the novel Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham

Starring:  Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen, David Strathairn

Running Time: 150 minutes

Genre:  Thriller

In 1939, Stanton "Stan" Carlisle (Cooper) is on the run from a shady past when he finds refuge in a travelling carnival, befriending fortune teller Zeena the Seer (Collette), her alcoholic husband (Jenkins), Clem (Dafoe) who runs the carnival's "geek show" and exhibition of "human oddities", and Molly (Mara) whose act consists of her being electrocuted.  Learning the secrets of the inner workings of the carnival, and particularly the tricks behind pretending to be clairvoyant, Stan approaches Molly with a proposition that they work the scam together on wealthier marks.  Two years later, Stan and Molly are successfully working their act for the wealthy elite of New York City, when Stan is approached by Dr. Lilith Ritter (Blanchett), who has her own idea for a scam, but as the stakes are raised to more dangerous levels it becomes increasingly unclear who is playing who.

Guillermo del Toro is probably best known for his work in the horror and fantasy genre, most notably Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and The Shape of Water (2017), this however is not a supernatural or a fantasy film, although it is pretty horrific at times.  This is a modern day film noir, in fact the novel by William Lindsay Gresham has been filmed before in 1947, in the heyday of the film noir.  This film presents a throughly bleak portrait of human nature, almost everyone in the film is working some kind of scheme, or con, although some more innocent than others.  Bradley Cooper is good as the silver tongued charmer who hides very dark secrets and is capable of occasionally lashing out with shocking violence.  Cate Blanchett plays psychologist Lilith Ritter as a classic femme fatale all blood-red lipstick and golden gowns.  Toni Collette plays the smalltime carnival fortune teller who teaches Stan the tricks of the trade.  Rooney Mara plays the innocent, wide-eyed Molly who becomes the conscience of the film and, crucially, the only one perceptive enough to see where they are headed.  Willem Dafoe has a ball as the cruel Clem who keeps a caged man as the sideshow "geek", forcing him to bite the heads off chickens.  The twilight world of the carnival is brilliantly evoked, all mud and dirt and broken-down seedy glamour.  Del Toro is a master of disturbing but beautiful images, and he evokes a cold, bleak world, even New York is wintery streets and palatial but sterile hotel rooms and offices, The film has a complex, twisting plot, punctuated by occasional, brief, shocking bursts of violence.  While it may be too bleak for some viewers, it is a striking latter day film noir, and one of the best new thrillers that I've seen in a long time.         

Bradley Cooper and Rooney Mara in Nightmare Alley

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

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