“Stillwater,” the new Matt Damon movie now playing in theatres, uses the bones of American exchange student Amanda Knox’s story as a starting point to tell a story of a father determined to prove his daughter’s innocence.
Damon embraces the role of Oklahoma oil rigger Bill Baker, a MAGA man whose wraparound shades are almost a character of their own. He’s rough ‘n’ tumble, prays before every meal and spends every dime he makes visiting his daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin) in prison in Marseille, France. She’s serving a nine-year sentence for the murder of her lover; a crime she says she didn’t commit.
Allison usually treats him with casual offhandedness—he wasn’t around much when she was a kid, and when he was, he was drunk—but this time is different. She hands him a letter, written in French, which he does not understand, with new evidence that she hopes will exonerate her.
When their Marseille-based lawyer tells Bill the letter and the new info is not enough to get a new trial, he launches his own investigation. Serving as translator is Virginie (Camille Cottin), who, along with her young daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvad), help him make his way through Marseille and provide the closest thing to a family he has known since his daughter went to jail.
“Refugees, zero waste,” says Virginie’s friend of Bill, “he’s your new cause.”
“Stillwater” is two-thirds of a good movie. The screenplay, co-written by director Tom McCarthy with Marcus Hinchey, Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré, darts back-and-forth, shifting focus between the various storylines. In the film’s first hour or so, the story skews toward Allison, Bill’s bumbling investigation into the new evidence and his burgeoning relationship with Virginie and Maya. But just as the story should heat up and head toward thriller territory, McCarthy suddenly veers away from Allison’s predicament. Abruptly, “Stillwater” becomes more interested in a presenting a character study of Bill, a man of few words and even fewer motivations. Damon is compellingly watchable in the role, giving Bill a deep inner life that isn’t always apparent on the surface—I guess still waters really do run deep—but the film feels sidetracked by the diversion.
“Stillwater” is wonderfully shot and the father-daughter relationship that develops between Bill and Maya is touching and authentic feeling but is let down in the film’s final act.
This is Spider-Man like you have never seen him before. “Cherry,” a new drug drama based on the novel of the same name by Nico Walker and now available on Apple TV +, features Tom Holland in his grittiest role to date.
The fresh-faced Holland is the unnamed title character, let’s call him Cherry for ease of explanation, an underachieving college freshman from an affluent family, head-over-heels for Emily (Ciara Bravo). Based on author Nico Walker, he’s a jittery collection of insecurities who finds a soul mate in Emily (Ciara Bravo), a young woman whose decision to move to Montreal to go to school sends him on a downward spiral. Impulsively, he quits school and joins the army.
Turns out Emily was bluffing, but it’s too late. They marry before he ships out, but he leaves the one good thing in his life behind for a tour of Iraq.
Woefully unprepared for the military, the death, despair and drugs take their toll and he returns to civilian life a hollow shell, riddled with PTSD. He finds comfort in drugs, and is soon swallowed up and spit out by Ohio’s opioid crisis. Financially drained and disenfranchised, he robs banks to support his heroin addiction, losing Emily and what was left of his self-respect.
It does not reveal a major plot point to let you know that “Cherry” was written while Walker was in jail, serving an eleven-year sentence. Negotiations for the film rights actually broke down when Walker, still behind bars, ran out of prison phone minutes. He’s out now, and is apparently using the money earned from the book to pay back some of the money he stole.
But back to the film.
Directed by the Russo brothers, the dynamic duo behind a good chunk of the Marvel Cinematic Universe—”Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “Captain America: Civil War,” “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame”—the movie is a departure for them. Like their other films it’s slick and stylish, but there’s a darkly humorous tone that’s been absent their best-known work. It’s the spoonful of sugar that makes the tragic events of the main character’s life palatable but make no mistake, this isn’t a comedy. While the Russos find the funny in some very bad situations, this is a bleak film. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve already seen everything that’s going to happen,” Holland’s character says, “and it’s a nightmare.”
It’s also a rather long film. At two-and-a-half hours it luxuriates in the ambitious set-up of the story, creating a vivid sense of the character’s search for purpose in a life that feels cut adrift. The early moments feel acutely observed, but as the movie gets grittier the visual flair overwhelms the story, engaging the eye but not the brain. Ideas of toxic masculinity, the destructive nature of opioids and he very nature of war are soon abandoned in favor of a more standard crime biopic approach.
Keeping us interested is Holland, who grounds the high-flying coming-of-age story with a career best performance that never loses sight of the film’s basic premise, that this is a young man, out of his depth in almost every way.
“Cherry” is ambitious and raw but the scope of the story is too wide to be truly effective.
We’ve all heard the term Stockholm Syndrome. It refers to a hostage situation in which the captees come to sympathize or even identify with their captors. We’ve seen it in films like “Dog Day Afternoon,” “V for Vendetta” and even “King Kong.” But why is it called Stockholm Syndrome? Director Robert Budreau found out when he stumbled across “The Bank Drama” by Daniel Lang, a 1974 New Yorker article about a 1973 Swedish bank heist and hostage crisis that gave name to the phenomenon.
Ethan Hawke plays Lars Nystrom, a Swedish national raised in America. When he steps inside one of Sweden’s main banks, the Kreditbanken, armed with a machine gun and some bad intentions, he’s disguised, resembling Dennis Hopper circa “Easy Rider.” Gun blazing he orders everyone out of the bank save for tellers Bianca Lind (Noomi Rapace) and Klara Mardh (Bea Santos).
His plan is simple. He will hold the two women hostage until his best friend, legendary bank robber Gunnar Sorensson (Mark Strong), is released from jail, delivered to him and the two friends, with hostages in tow are allowed to leave in a Mustang GT. They’ll drive to a nearby dock, release Bianca and Klara, sail to France and never be seen again. If he doesn’t get what he wants he tells police he will kill the hostages and shoot his way out of the bank.
What the police don’t know is that Lars is all bluster, all talk and no walk. He’s never shot anyone and isn’t about to start now. Bianca, the more valuable of the hostages because she is a wife and a mom, senses Lars’s soft heart and begins to feel for his plight, even though he is the architect of their dire situation.
“Stockholm” has a bit of a damp fuse. The elements are all in place for a terrific thriller but they never gel. Hawke is a hoot as the more nerve than brains instigator and Rapace captures the compassion and desperation necessary for us to believe she could help the man holding her for ransom. The rest of the cast, Strong included, take a backseat, personality and interest wise.
Budreau mixes and matches Bianca’s rational perspective with Lars’s irrationality in a true opposites attract not-quite-love story. They are the spark that keeps “Stockholm” interesting.
In real life Richard Wershe Jr. lived twenty lives all before the time he could legally have a drink. As a teenage FBI informant he lived the high life before it all came crashing down. A new film, “White Boy Rick,” details his rise and terrible tumble.
14-year-old Wershe Jr. (Richie Merritt) a.k.a. White Boy Rick, lives with his father Rick Sr. (Matthew McConaughey),and older sister Dawn (Bel Powley) across the street from his grandparents (Bruce Dern and Piper Laurie) in 1980s Detroit. Despite the newly launched “Just Say No to Drugs” campaign crack is everywhere, seducing many in his neighbourhood.
Sr. is a small time dealer in illegal guns with aspirations of one day opening up a legit business. Before he can do that, however, Jr. is convinced to become an undercover agent for the FBI. If he snitches on local drug dealers, they say, the feds will leave his father’s operation alone. The teenager takes the deal and soon is dealing cocaine and rolling in cash. His run comes to a sudden end when he becomes a victim of the war on drugs. Arrested for drug possession of an enormous amount of cocaine the feds drop him like a hot potato and he is sentenced to thirty years behind bars.
There’s a lot going on in “White Boy Rick.” The main thrust of the story, Jr.’s rise and fall, is muddied by the addition of side characters. They’re often entertaining—particularly in the case of the grandparents—or unexpectedly touching—Powley nicely portrays Dawn’s fragility and descent into addiction—but feel like after thoughts in an already busy movie.
Newcomer Merrit and McConaughey have great chemistry. Merrit, found at a Detroit casting call, isn’t quite up to the emotional heights necessary for us to care about him but fares better when he’s required to swagger around the screen.
While overstuffed, “White Boy Rick” does give McConaughey a chance to act as anchor, deftly portraying his desperation for the American Dream while keeping his family together in the only way he knows how.
“White Boy Rick” nicely captures the grit of 1980s Detroit and makes a powerful statement of the failure of the war on drugs but despite the multi-pronged story and dramatic turns in Jr.’s life it never completely grabs our attention.
With “Good Time” Robert Pattinson may finally have put a stake through the heart of his most famous character. The man formerly known as “Twilight’s” sexy vampire sheds Edward Cullen’s glittery to play the reckless brother of an imprisoned man. The former heartthrob has taken creative risks before in his work with David Cronenberg but with the gritty “Good Time” has finally found the kind of critical reaction his ex co-star Kristen Stewart has been basking in for years since their franchise flew off into the night.
The action in “Good Time” stems from two brothers, Nik and Constantine Nikas, played by co-director Ben Safdie and Pattinson respectively. They live with their grandmother, but fledgling criminal Connie’s main job is looking out for Nik who struggles with a learning disability. “It’s just you and me,” Connie says. “I’m your friend. Alright?”
The ill-advised bank robbery goes south when a paint bomb hiding in the cash explodes covering them in red dye and landing Nik in jail. Connie plots to get raise the $10,000 bail needed to spring his brother out of Rikers Island hospital. “I’ve got to get him out of there before something bad happens,” says Connie. “He could get killed in there.” As the night grows longer Connie’s situation becomes complicated and dangerous.
Co-directors Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie are not action directors. They shoot in tights close ups, building tension instead with a propulsive electronic score by Oneohtrix Point Never (a.k.a. Daniel Lopatin) mixed with tightly edited visuals. The result is anxiety inducing, occasionally darkly funny and unrelentingly grim. There is an “After Hours” vibe to “Good Time”—the action takes place in one evening escalating with every passing moment—but it’s violent and intense, the opposite of a feel good movie.
Pattinson embodies every scuzzy synapse of Connie. Nonviolent, kind hearted even—“ You’ve got to change this. I don’t want to see them justify this,” he says after watching a TV show were police violently take down a suspect.—but dangerous Connie is compelling because of his desperation. As the situation spirals out of control Connie, driven by need to protect his brother, makes mistake after mistake.
You can practically smell him cigarette breath and flop sweat in a career high that really captures the late night desperation of a man on a mission.
Also strong in a role that amounts to little more than an extended cameo, Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Connie’s girlfriend, an hysterical woman just a step or two away from the reality of the situation. In her brief time on screen she makes an impression, adding to the story’s chaotic feel.
“Good Time” is the movie equivalent of a panic attack, nasty around the edges and rattling to the brain.
