In 2017 Kenneth Branagh delivered a new version of Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express” that was as big and bloated as a new crime dramedy, “Knives Out,” is sleek and entertaining. Both feature large ensemble casts and twists galore but director Rian Johnson manages to breathe life into the creaky whodunnit genre.
The action takes place in a small up-state New York town on an estate one character says resembles a “Clue” board. In the film’s opening minutes the dramatic theme song sets the stage for what’s to come… murder most foul.
Marta (Ana de Armas), caregiver to Harlan Thrombrey (Christopher Plummer), the best-selling mystery writer of all time, is shocked to discover his dead body in his office. Throat slit, knife on the floor beside him, the local police Det. Elliot (Lakeith Stanfield) and Trooper Wagner (Noah Segan) think it is a suicide but a private investigator, the silver-tongued Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), disagrees and says so in an accent as thick as gumbo. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he says to the family, “I would like to request that you all stay until the investigation is completed.”
The assembled family stick around, partially at Blanc’s request but mostly for the reading of the will. “What will that be like?” asks Marta. “Think of a community theatre production of the reading of a tax form,” replies Blanc.
As the investigation unfolds everyone seems to have a motive for killing the old man, from his children the imperious Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis) and the hair-trigger tempered Walt (Michael Shannon) to various others, including the spoiled-rotten grandson Ransom (Chris Evans), devious son-in-law Richard (Don Johnson) and alt-right troll grandson Jacob (Jaeden Martell). These are people who believe they deserve to be rich and won’t hear any talk to the contrary.
The mystery has more layers than a Vidalia onion but Blanc unpeels it, one tier at a time leading up to the film’s climatic reveal.
“Knives Out” mixes pointed jabs at the 1%–Linda started her company with a modest one-million-dollar loan from her father—with social commentary about class divisions in American life to form the backdrop of this engaging mystery. Add to that a collection of characters that would make Miss Marple suspicious and the game is afoot.
Leading the charge is Craig. As Benoit Blanc, the American Poirot, he rides the line between ridiculous and shrewd, chewing the scenery with an accent unheard since the days of Colonel Sanders television ads. His flowery language—”Physical evidence can tell a story with a forked tongue,” he says—gives Craig a chance to show off his comedic side mixed with a physicality that suggests he can get the job done if need be. It’s a dramatic (maybe that’s not the word but you see what I mean) and welcome shift from his grim-faced 007 role.
What begins as a melodramatic comedy in the vein of “Murder by Death,” gets a little darker as the true nature of the crime is presented, and then funnier again in its wild ‘n woolly resolution. It’s an old-fashioned set-up but slowly echoes of modern-day issues of immigration, deportation and white entitlement are introduced to add edge to the story.
Director Johnson, he of “Looper” and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” is having fun here, finding a perfect rhythm in the unveiling of the story’s details. We always learn just enough to carry us through to the next twist and it is an enjoyable ride.
For the Johnson family “Fifty Shades of Grey” is the gift that keeps on giving. First Dakota Johnson became a star playing the book’s lead character in the film adaptation. Now her father, Don Johnson, appears in “Book Club,” a tale of four women inspired by the erotic novel to spice up their sex lives.
Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen star as life long friends at different places in their lives. Diane (Keaton) is a recent widow, federal judge Sharon (Bergen) obsesses about her decades old divorce while sensualist Vivian (Fonda) plays the field and Carol (Steenburgen), a chef who wonders if her marriage is headed for the rocks.
The pals have been getting together for book club for forty years—starting with “Fear of Flying,” Erica Jong’s controversial 1973 portrayal of female sexuality. Their lives are shaken up when Vivian brings a new book over. “Ladies I’m not going to let us become those people who stop living before they stop living,” she says. “I would like to introduce you to Christian Grey.” “Fifty Shades of Grey,” the soft core look at hard core BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism), becomes the hit of their chardonnay soaked book club—“It says for ‘mature audiences.’” “That certainly sounds like us.”—stirring up some long forgotten desires.
Like the classic rock on the soundtrack “Book Club” is not ashamed of what it is. Predictable in the extreme, it’s a movie that understands its audience and never over reaches. Like I well-worn joke it sets up the premise, delivers a punchline and waits for the laugh. It’s comfort food, a lightly raunchy sitcom about finding love later in life. Ripe with double entendres, it’s a genial boomer sex comedy about the pleasures of listening to vinyl, connecting and reconnecting, about a generation gap and living life to the fullest.
“We’re sure not spring flowers,” says Carol. “More like potpourri,” replies Vivian. They are women of a certain age but in an industry that often ignores older women it is fun to see this quartet front and centre. Bergen wields her wit and delivery like a sabre. Steenburgen’s journey is more about her husband Bruce (Craig T. Nelson) but she brings much charm to the role. Fonda is the vulnerable sexpot, never allowing anyone to get too close (“I don’t need anyone,” she says. “That’s the secret of my success.”) while Keaton’s trademarked fluster and flap is on full display. Together they evoke “Sex and the City” for a different generation.
The men of “Book Club” are fine—Andy Garcia, Don Johnson, Richard Dreyfuss and Nelson—but it is the women, their connection and their groove that makes this movie so enjoyable.
Jennifer Lawrence once showed me a cell phone snap of herself dressed in a fierce black leather outfit.
She was hot off the success of her Oscar nominated work in Winter’s Bone and used the photo as part of her audition for a role that every actress of a certain age in Hollywood clamoured for in 2010.
She didn’t get the part of Lisbeth Salander, the pierced and inked computer hacker star of David Fincher’s remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo—the producers thought she was too tall—Rooney Mara did, but not before auditioning five times and beating out better known hopefuls like Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson and Anne Hathaway.
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was 2011’s big literary adaptation, ripe with star making possibilities and lucrative franchise potential. It didn’t pan out that way but Hollywood hasn’t given up on bringing bestsellers to the screen.
This week there are high hopes for Fifty Shades of Grey. Calling the story of college graduate Anastasia Steele and BDSM enthusiast Christian Grey a “literary” adaptation might be a stretch, but with 100 million books sold (including parts two and three) there are great expectations.
So, actors should be crawling over one another to star in the film, right? Think again. Unlike Dragon Tattoo, young Hollywood has not exactly been whipping themselves into a frenzy over Fifty Shades. Shailene Woodley apparently had no qualms about performing the film’s explicit bondage scenes, but was already tied up making the Divergent movies.
Emma Watson did have qualms. “Who here actually thinks I would do Fifty Shades of Grey as a movie?” she wrote on twitter.
In the end Dakota Johnson, better known as the daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith than for her work on the cancelled sitcom Ben and Kate, won the role and while it might make her a star there are dangers involved with a project like this. Just ask Elizabeth Berkley.
Berkley was a wholesome teen model and star of the sit com Saved by the Bell when a role in Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 sexploitation flick Showgirls left her career in tatters. As the untested star who bared her soul and body in a big budget film she took the hit for the film’s failure.
Almost twenty-years later she was still emotional about the backlash she suffered. After a performing an erotic dance on Dancing with the Stars she tearfully said, “it reconnected me to when I was just a young woman and took a risk creatively and did Showgirls. With that came a lot of doors being slammed in my face.”
Will Johnson be the next Berkley? According to ticket-selling site Fandango Fifty Shades of Grey is the fastest selling R-rated title ever, so Dakota may yet be spared a tearful breakdown in Dancing with the Stars in 2035.
Remember when Valentine’s Day was about fancy chocolates, dozens of long stemmed roses and Cupid targeting lover’s hearts with his trusty bow and arrow? With the release of the soft-core-porn soon-to-be-blockbuster, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” this year Cupid’s arrow isn’t aimed at the heart.
Based on the erotic thriller by E. L. James, the movie stars Irish actor Jamie Dornan as handsome C.E.O. and slap-and-tickle enthusiast Christian Grey and Dakota Johnson, the daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, as Ana Steele, a literature student sent to interview Grey, only to find herself under the spell of the businessman’s exotic proclivities.
According to the young, impressionable woman he is “polite, smart and really intimidating.” Showered with gifts like a first edition of “Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” she submits to his charms—he’s wealthy, good looking—allowing him to go all a-type on her, in and out of the bedroom.
“I exercise control on all things Miss Steele,” he says, a character trait he expresses through BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism). “I don’t do romance. My tastes are very singular.”
I’ll cut to the chase. There are sex scenes, there is nudity and yes, Virginia, there are whips and chains but don’t expect the smutty stuff from the books. Director Sam Taylor-Johnson has whipped the material into mainstream theatre shape, shaving the rough edges off the novel’s explicit kinky sex scenes.
The randy pair spend more time talking about their sexual liaisons than actually getting horizontal… or suspended… or anything else. They blabber and negotiate—“I’m not going to touch you,” he says. “Not till I have your written consent.”—yammering on about submission, domination and safe words till even the Marquis de Sade would nod off from boredom. But for all the talk, we never learn anything about why Grey is disposed to liberally mixing his pleasure with pain. “It’s the way I am,” he says. He doesn’t go to dinner or movies; he simply wants her to earn his devotion by being his submissive.
This is communicated simply, with a combination of “sweet” talk –“If you were mine you wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.”—and predatory behaviour that, if not for his billions, would land him in jail for stalking or worse. The psychological introspection on display here makes Dr. Phil seem like Friedrich Nietzsche.
Of the two leads Dakota Johnson seems ripped from the pages of the book. Her gamine innocence and girlish giggle convey the emotional rawness necessary for the character to work. She is naked, emotionally and physically—unlike her co-star who, for all we know, is as anatomically correct as a Ken doll—with a propensity for drunk dialling and permanently dewy look about her that betrays the confusion and attraction Ana feels toward Grey.
Dornan has the thankless role. His grim-faced Christian Grey is an unemotional cipher, a bubbling cauldron of unexplored trauma and Dornan plays him straight faced which much have been tough while delivering unintentionally hilarious lines—call it a domination comedy or dom com—like, “Roll your eyes at me again and I will take you across my knee.” His delivery is just as sexy as that time your cranky old grandfather said it to you when you were ten. His burning passion is conveyed by his intense gaze, which often looks clinical, as if he’s examining her naked body for irregular moles.
“Fifty Shades of Grey” feels like an elegantly made—the cinematography and score are top notch—night time soap opera. It’s a cliff-hanger—expect the inevitable sequel to pick up EXACTLY where this film leaves off—and the kind of R-rated movie that feels more like a cold shower than a hot romance.
