“Deep Water,” the new movie from Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, now streaming on Prime Video, is an erotic thriller in name only.
Neither erotic or thrilling, it lacks the smoldering energy of director Adrian Lyne’s previous work. Movies like “9 ½ Weeks” and “Unfaithful” established him as a steamer of screens, but that was then.
This is now. A better title for “Deep Water” may have been “Cold Water.”
Affleck plays Vic, a retired software developer who made a fortune designing a chip that helps drones locate and destroy targets. He spends his days with his daughter while his wild wife Melinda (de Armas), having grown bored of their routine, entertains herself with a series of very public affairs. For the most part Vic bites his lip but when one of Melinda’s flings winds up dead, face down in their pool, cuckold Vic becomes a suspect and their already tenuous situation comes closer to the breaking point.
Lyne, in his first film in twenty years, seems unable to tease out the tension from the love-hate story, sexual or otherwise. The repeated affair/disappearance cycle gets old fast and Lyne does little to make us care about any of them, Vic, Melinda or her unfortunate boyfriends.
I can say that Affleck has one of the best scowls in movies, but that’s not enough to hang an entire performance on. A Sad Affleck meme come to life, for much of the movie it appears he’s given up, Ben, not Vic. It’s as though he stopped caring after the first reel. Vic should display hidden reserves of resolve but Affleck’s performance is as inert as the film.
De Armas, so wonderful in “Knives Out” and “No Time to Die,” is reduced to an eye-batting subject for Lyne’s male gaze.
A tepid psychosexual cuckold tale with a side of murder and loose ends galore, “Deep Water” wastes its stars in a movie that does not rise to the challenge of exploring the story’s themes of morality, murder and marriage.
“Malcolm & Marie,” a two-hander starring Zendaya and John David Washington and now streaming on Netflix, is a pandemic movie. It was shot during lockdown, in one location under strict health protocols, but there’s no mention of a virus or masks. Instead, it crackles with anxiety, a feeling many are now all too familiar with.
Washington and Zendaya are the titular couple, an up-and-coming movie director and aspiring actress. Their romantic relationship is strained when he forgets to thank her from the stage during his new film’s premier. She’s not in the movie, but believes much of the story was borrowed from the more troubled moments of her life. It’s 1 am, tensions are running high as the gloves come off in an escalating power struggle.
Shot in luscious, grainy black and white, the study of a creator and his muse id first and foremost a showcase for the talent of its stars. Both drip charisma and deliver pages of complicated, emotionally draining dialogue with conviction and ease.
Malcolm is all bluster, a character prone to long diatribes about the politicization of art made by Black directors, the inability of film critics to judge his work fairly and, most importantly, why Marie is upset. He is blinded by ego and insecurity and Washington digs deep to summon his inner demons. His near constant stream of film references—Ed Wood, Ida Lupino, William Wyler, Elaine May and Barry Jenkins to mention a few—that may leave non-cinephiles looking to connect the dots.
Marie is just as fiery but more self-aware. Her frustration bubbles throughout but Zendaya brings layers to her. In the film’s first half she is glammed-up, wearing a sparkling red carpet-ready dress. Midway through she changes into lounge wear and with the change of clothes comes subtle changes to the character. She becomes more real, less guarded. It is a lovely, challenging performance from the recent Emmy winner.
“Malcolm & Marie” has a luscious sheen to the cinematography, some great lifestyle porn—their beachfront mansion is straight out of “Architectural Digest”—and terrific performances, so I have to wonder why I didn’t like it more. Director Sam Levinson provides both style and some substance but watching the movie feels like eavesdropping on a rehearsal for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Ripe with tension, anxiety and some good old-fashioned name calling, it’s an exercise in unfiltered self-indulgence that revels in its louder moments when, in fact, it works best when it is more subdued.
You can’t say you weren’t warned. “Assassination Nation,” the new film from writer-director Sam Levinson, comes complete with a long list of trigger warnings. Fragile Male Egos. Torture. Swearing. The list goes on. All, and more, are contained within this lurid look at life in a small town vexed by a computer hacker.
When Salem, Massachusetts high school seniors Lily (Odessa Young), Sarah (Suki Waterhouse), Bex (Hari Nef) and Em (Abra) aren’t in class they spend their time partying, chasing boys, sexting and sending thousands of Facebook, Instagram and twitter posts. When a computer hacker reveals the sexual peccadilloes of their town’s mayor and school principal it wakes up the sleepy suburb’s townsfolk. When the hacking continues, uncovering Lily’s cyber affair with an older man, and the deepest darkest secrets of many others, the town’s men band together to find the hacker. “The media is complicit,” they say. “People are laughing at us. We can no longer be helpless. If the government can’t save our law and order, we will do it ourselves!”
Most every hot button woes of modern life are either literally or metaphorically covered in “Assassination Nation.” Toxic masculinity, privacy concerns, desensitization to violence, mob rule, homophobia and racism for a start. It’s a Pandora’s Box of social ills, told through the prism of a satire that feels both exploitative and timely.
As the story goes on, shifting from edgy teen sex comedy to a manifesto of female empowerment it echoes back to the events of 300 years previous when rumours led to the demise of twenty of the town’s women. Blamed for their sexuality and treated as objects, the four women at the center of the story react against the righteousness and hypocrisy they say has become their town’s sickness.
“Assassination Nation” is in-your-face stuff, a movie that is part slasher flick, part call for revolution. “You may kill us,” says Lily after all hell has broken loose, “but you can’t kill us all.” It’s not always pleasant but it is never less than interesting.
