Guy Pearce Re-Watch: Hidden Gems

 

Hidden Gems of the Guy Pearce Career Re-Watch! 💎

Those who follow my Twitter account @ThereforeReview know that I have spent these pandemic years perusing through a Guy Pearce Career Re-Watch. I retreated to this happy place because Pearce can always be depended upon to turn in a great performance in often exceptional films. 

This countdown's order is more arbitrary, as it's worth seeking all of these hidden gems for their film quality and variety of Pearce performances. Though capable of breaking the internet from time to time, Guy Pearce is not the marquee actor cast to put butts in the cinema seats. Fortunately, he is the go-to actor for quiet gravitas as seen in the unique pieces here. 

Please click through to previously written reviews and videos at I Think, Therefore I Review, InSession Film or with the Women InSession Podcast and Keith Loves Movies for more in depth analysis along with these quick commentaries and countdowns.

9. The Hard Word – Crooked lawyers and corrupt cops facilitate heists carried out by conveniently release jailbird brothers in crime in this 2002 Australian who's who including Joel Edgerton (It Comes at Night) and Rachel Griffiths (Six Feet Under). It's tough to tell if this is about the crime or the comedy with turnabout circumstances, zany personalities, and backward Butcher Talk code suggesting humor while the dramatic prison visitations are very well done. Reflections on each side of the dividing glass accent the confrontations over who's screwing whom, and the camera accents the cleverness and crime realizations in the second half. Pearce is at times unrecognizable thanks to a bad fake nose that doesn't really move with his expressions. However his smart brother Dale slips into each disguise as needed. Though thematically uneven and not as taut as it should be with convoluted betrayals and unnecessary bad guys, literal runs with the loot and quirky characterizations keep this a bemusing late night heist. 

8. Dating the Enemy – The dated fashions, peppy ear worms, Valentine's Day cliches, and corny humor of this 1996 Australian body swap comedy starring Claudia Karvan and Guy Pearce takes me back to simpler times. Certainly part of me wishes there was more depth to the battle of the sexes explorations beyond his not being able to understand pantyhose and her zipper mishaps – women's locker room secrets and sleeping with your disappointing male best friend were ripe for more humor and sophistication. Likewise I also think our opposites attract exes should have switched back thanks to the unexplained wishes and moon magic and not because they had fulfilling sex while in each other's bodies. Learning what the other person wants and needs in a relationship and knowing how to give of yourself mind and body should have happened after they swapped back. Compared to American sex comedies the discourse is tame, played for all audiences without nudity or raunchy, shallow titillation. Our man realizes it sucks to be a woman not taken seriously who can't eat pizza every day while she has to do both their jobs. Fun performances anchor the preposterous mystic versus science of it all with walks, postures, and mannerisms reflecting the mind inside the wrong body voiceovers. The audience is along for the romantic ride, and I miss this kind of lighthearted, fanciful, charming little picture.

7. 33 Postcards – This 2011 international production also featuring social worker Claudia Karvan chronicles soon to be paroled inmate Pearce and his secret sponsorship of an orphaned Chinese teenager. Though naive and isolated from the real world for her age, young Lin Zhu (The Demon Hunter) runs away from her traveling choir to find her sponsor, getting in over her head in the Sydney chop shop scene. Some viewers may be bothered by the dated musical moments, dual languages, cultural mix ups, and slightly amateur English but our Mei Mei has a certain fearlessness – unafraid to ask for help whether people are friendly with the map or potentially taking advantage of her. Her positive outlook rubs off on others as the initial pen pal awkwardness gives way to making up for time served and loners realizing they don't have to be alone. Despite writing fanciful postcards filled with beachy Down Under fun, Pearce's inmate is actually pale, pasty, shaky, and squirrely small. He remains hunched with his hands in his pockets, fearful of re-entering the outside world after his ten year sentence. Immigration visas, bad relations, and parole red tape interfere as our would be father and daughter try to take care of each other, and tense prisoner harassment escalates to shower perils, shank chases, and children in danger. You know today a Hollywood version would be dark, scandalous, and cliché; however the youthful, personal moments here make for a simple, endearing little picture about finding your own family and making your own music. 

6. Hateship Loveship – Jennifer Jason Leigh (Possessor), Christine Lahti (Chicago Hope), and Nick Nolte (Cape Fear) are underutilized in this disjointed 2013 drama based on Alice Munro's short story. The slow paced plain and realistic bare mirroring the too old to be putting on makeup for the first time wallflower Kristen Wiig (Bridesmaids) may be boring and naive for some viewers. Fortunately, attention to detail in character clothing, cigarettes, and shabby motels sets off the misunderstandings as Guy Pearce becomes the erroneous, not so put together object of our shy housekeeper's affection thanks to a sneaky letter writing campaign by his daughter Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) and her snotty friend who doesn't get the comeuppance she deserves. Well timed country music lyrics accent the foolishness and elbow grease as the down and out, who's taking advantage of whom realizations come to light. Wigg is subdued in a strong dramatic turn – humbly anchoring the broken people and second chances. Today's audience may balk at her runaway devotion, but Joanna makes the best of the fix despite her sheltered honesty, his flaws, fatal pasts, and drug abuse. Pearce is grizzled, shaggy, and sickly, having served for his mistakes but continuing to use, steal, and lie. People can't change immediately, but this late bloomer starting over romance could be the positive healing they need. Our hard working gal has her own money and takes action to achieve what she wants in this lovely little piece for fans of the cast.

5. In Her Skin – Lovely landscapes, dancing, and original songs contrast dark skies, empty trams, and every parent's worst fear in this 2009 Australian true story starring Miranda Otto (Lord of the Rings), Guy Pearce, and Sam Neill (Dead Calm). A daughter hasn't returned home, and the number of days since the disappearance anchors episodic acts focusing on the parents, killer, and victim. Blasé officials see these cases everyday, but emotions are high for the family facing this awful new experience with frantic phone calls, television pleas, sobs, and swoons. Sensuality, nudity, love, and sex are also shown in different dynamics – the young bloom, ugly body dysmorphia, tenderness between couples, and brutally suggestive strangulation. Panning camera work, demented voiceovers, fantasy-esque flashbacks, and windswept distortions are spooky and slightly off kilter, getting viewers inside our killer's state of mind alongside disturbing letters, violent artwork, bullying, and a devious sense of empowerment with Electra undertones from the award-worthy Ruth Bradley (Humans). Today it's difficult for us to believe no one noticed or provided mental health intervention, but the performances carry the uncomfortable grief and realistically stilted shock in this intriguing psychological drama.

4. First Snow – Subdued psychic J.K. Simmons (Whiplash) warns sleazy salesman Guy Pearce he's on borrowed time in this 2006 parable waxing on fate versus destiny and self- fulfilling prophecy. Eerie, intense palm readings provide sports scores, highway warnings, and the titular ticking clock. Threatening phone calls, EKG check ups, amateur investigations, and screwed over business deals pepper angel on the shoulder girlfriend Piper Perabo (Coyote Ugly) versus paroled Shea Whigham (Kong: Skull Island) coming back to haunt our smooth talker. Dialogue and sounds often bleed into the next scene, and moments are intercut with flash forwards or past memories, visually mirroring the predestined plots. Low on the highway angles, rear view mirrors, up close windshields, choice zooms, and headlights match the rushed, coming and going, hitting the pavement metaphors while answering machine harassment, mail box threats, and gunshots build intensity. This is a bright picture with desert vistas, whiteouts, and spotlights, and our Jimmy often hides behind his sunglasses. He's said to have the gift of bullshit – smoking, slicking his hair, and mocking the ill-fated prediction before getting in over his head thanks to past mistakes, current paranoia, and increasing, gun toting isolation. Jimmy's appearance doesn't change, but this is a great character arc from Pearce, and his countenance is altered. His smile and wink become genuine as he mends fences, pays his bar tab, and faces his fate. However, putting things right becomes dangerous, escalating even as we know the full circle outcome of this taut character study.

3. Lorne – It's quite unsettling as the grizzled Guy Pearce sits across the campfire and looks directly into the camera for this 2016 fifteen minute, one man short from director Jesse Leaman (Mad Martha). He asks questions of us, his apparent visitor, for he's used to being alone, sullen, and with his rifle at the ready. His shabby hat and raspy breath indicate the cold desolate while gunshots punctuate the wilderness, and it's clear our forlorn, titular woodsman has been alone too long. Overhead angles show how small he is in the vastness, yet up close shots of Lorne's hands, face, mucky teeth, and dirty nails are uncomfortably intimate. Lorne's paranoid by our stare, wondering what his reflection looks like after this year of on edge isolation, and we don't want to go further into the dark forest with him. He curses and shouts into the void, apprehensive but prepared in the bush with tools and supplies – ready to die over something meaningful but not get killed in the wilds for nothing. He wonders if he's dead already, but the camera glances at his rifle as he talks about his father admiring its craftsmanship more than the dangers. Lorne misses his family and imagines they are there with tearful, introspective regret – realizing that there is only one thing left to do. Although I would have liked to have seen the rest of this story in full form, for fans of taut short films, this is a must see show reel of what Guy Pearce can do with nothing but the emotion on his face.

2. Spinning Man – Foreboding flashes, yellow tape, and photos of the deceased open this 2018 thriller starring Professor Pearce, detective Pierce Brosnan (GoldenEye), and wife Minnie Driver (Phantom of the Opera). The professors debate hypothetical opportunities with young students, but working out while the cheerleaders look leads to crushes, stolen glances, and unspoken flirtations as the camera lingers on a girl's smile longer than it should. Professor Pearce is cool about his alibi, yet other times he protests the police questioning for no reason. Paralleling police mirrors or the man made small and isolated in the frame visuals accent interrogations while careful editing matches the police interplay and family arguments. Classroom philosophizing and literal versus figurative plays on words build suspicion, for it's easy to talk one's way out of anything if the truth is subjective. Suspect lipstick and circumstantial evidence lead to awkward family trips, narcissistic blaming, and maybe maybe not memories. No one says what they actually mean and guilty perceptions create duality – for hiding suspect behavior may be as innocent as putting up missing posters for a child's pet you know to be dead or as bad as rationalizing a scandal that puts an entire university in jeopardy. This is a character drama rather than a tense a minute thriller with fine performances providing mature introspection as the lies come full circle.

1. Breathe In – This 2013 drama from writer and director Drake Doremus (Equals) about a would be romance between teacher Guy Pearce and student Felicity Jones (reunited with Pearce for the newly acclaimed The Brutalist) is not played as some steamy, tawdry affair. Superb classical piano and cello music, natural lighting, and intimate camera angles are vivid and authentic – taking time for the telling notes, lingering looks, and increasing contradictory lies that do not go unnoticed. We should hate cookie jar collecting, controlling wife Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone) as she quotes the negative logistics of her husband leaving a secure position for a city symphony chair. She always drives, often speaks for him, belittles his music as a loud hobby, and tells him no in front of others as if he's a teenager like their daughter. However, if Megan didn't smile, deflect, and hold fast to their seemingly idyllic home with scrapbooks and keeping up with the Jones barbecues; Keith's romanticizing of the struggling musician's life wouldn't buy their daughter a car. Young Sophie's Electra issues, on the other hand, are clear. She's brought her own copy of Jane Eyre and carries sheet music yet doesn't play now that her favorite uncle and musical mentor died. Her exchange semester in New York was a spur of the moment decision, and she immediately relates to Keith's despair in song. He drinks and smokes behind his wife's back, sitting on the empty swing set wondering what he has missed in life. Pearce's silent and still demeanor invokes a compelling melancholy– hiding a look of constant anywhere but here contemplation behind his glasses. The lid on the piano is closed no matter the emotional intimacy or sacrifices unsaid, and the painful glances are excellent alongside the shattered cookie jars and reckless teen angst. Nothing physical happens, but juvenile runaway plans lead to deception, cruelty, and consequences. Photo shoot bookends reveal how easy it is to feign happiness, and the superb performances carry the realistic relationships and bittersweet reflections. It's a pity this was released several months before Iron Man 3, for this is so little seen in comparison yet remains the better film.

Hysteria (2011)

Humorous Hysteria a Much Needed Conversation Starter

by Kristin Battestella

In 1880 London, Doctor Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy) joins Doctor Robert Dalrymple's (Jonathan Pryce) clinic for women. Granville works tirelessly, catering to his patients to the detriment of his hand until his wealthy inventor friend Lord Edmund St. John-Smythe (Rupert Everett) experiments with an electric duster that's actually a powerful, vibrating massager that makes the hysterical patients sing - literally. The demure Emily (Felicity Jones) catches Granville's eye, and Dalrymple hopes his protege and daughter will marry and secure his practice's future. Unfortunately, his older spitfire daughter Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal) advocates for the poor – butting heads with authorities who think she should be diagnosed with the titular medical condition. Granville must choose if he wants to idle in a safe practice or take a risk in helping Charlotte, who has no interest in his jolly machine.

A humorous montage of hungry, crying, depressed women wanting to kill the unfulfilling men in their lives opens this 2011 comedy directed by Tanya Wexler (Finding North). Unfortunately, be they young or old and whatever their problems, the baffled male doctors have diagnosed them all with hysteria. It's surgery for that overactive uterus or institutions for the permanently hysterical, which seems to be about half the women in London. The waiting room is packed as the trying to be sympathetic doctors one by one provide their ghastly, tiring women's medicine with manual stimulation. The patients are fully clothed, buttoned up, and veiled from view while the medically trained but nonetheless confused men calmly douse their hands in musk oil. They formally calculate the shortness of breath over the circular index finger motions, watch the clock, and take notes. The right hand is too cold, but the left takes too long without “completing the treatment.” No mentions of penis or anyone gaining pleasure parallel the inept male attitudes – Hysteria's not making a slight, just recounting the then misguided science. Rigid thrombus phrenology winks in the conversation accent the multi-layered humor as the whole idea toes the modern line between being unethical with your lady patients and just downright preposterous that this was the clueless norm. Here, women with an opinion are viewed as volatile, and men flustered over the forward ladies riding bicycles much prefer the easily smitten, gentile ladies under control. Fortunately, a wacky, spinning cleaning tool prototype with tingling, tickling vibrations massage the injured hand and just might hit the right spot. Our male inventors debate how something electrical and potentially dangerous could work on “a lady's most gentle areas,” but they put on the goggles as the generator flutters and the lights dim, astounded over the three paroxysms in five minutes. Marketing their device is a risky venture, but their hysteria cure is a success when women want to know what it is called so they can ask for it by name. Hysteria is not a traditional period piece but has a modern viewpoint moving at a quirky pace with montages, doors slammed in one's face, and bemusing visuals as all the ladies stare at the handsome doctors. While it would have been interesting to have a more dramatic telling, this is shrewdly impish rather than anything scandalous or torrid. Hysteria is a lighthearted tale of the women's experience inspiring a man to invention and profit framed in an obvious romantic comedy bend. The guy with the perfect girl really falls for the radical lady instead and it all comes out at a ball before a public resolution with his confession of love saving the day. At times, Hysteria also relies on millennial parallels and cliches with a woman talking of feminine revolutions or saying a man needs to walk a mile in her shoes. Such contemporary intrusions may seems uneven or ridiculous, however, the women here are punished by loans, fathers, and police with trials where the only line of defense is a doctor recommending the accused be sent to a sanitarium for a hysterectomy rather than prison. A woman cannot defend herself because she can only speak when spoken to by a man in charge, and the notion of a doctor simply talking to his lady patients to find out what other unsatisfied restrictions are happening in their lives is only briefly addressed. The upscale refuse to help the poor and the idea that all a woman needs is an orgasm to make her happy is a happenstance luxury while those with real medical needs can't afford treatment. Though the unjust statements are wrapped in humorous dressings, these Victorian dilemmas are not as far fetched as we'd like to think. We chuckle at Hysteria's story, but it's contemporary styling shows us that not much has really changed. We're still arguing over women voters and the female's right to be in charge of her own body, amirite? 
 

Hugh Dancy's (Elizabeth I) idealistic Doctor Granville can't get a job thanks to his outspoken confrontations with quack, so-called men of science who won't read the latest research and con their patients with placebo pills. Granville wants to help people with the emerging medical revolution, but he can't make his way in the world without help from wealthy, winking, experimenting friends such as Lord Rupert Everett (My Best Friend's Wedding) who jokes that the French use their tongues to aide female patients diagnosed with hysteria. Pleasure, however, has nothing to do with it, and Granville puts his duty to the practice above the randy maid's advances. He keeps his hand in ice and squeezes a ball to strengthen it as his appointment book fills with lucrative but exhausting patients. Of course, Maggie Gyllenhaal's (Frank) progressive and shocking Charlotte is a different kind of exasperating, arguing that all this hysteria would be unnecessary if husbands could just appreciate their wives' pleasures. Desperate to help the less fortunate, she takes the injured poor to see Granville against the wishes of her stubborn widower father. Jonathan Pryce's (Tomorrow Never Dies) set in his ways doctor refuses to give Charlotte her promised dowry to support her East End humanitarian causes – dowries are for marriage only and he's not wasting his own money on her efforts when they tarnish his upscale clinic. Charlotte embarrasses everyone by using her mind, proclaiming women won't stay in the kitchen or sit idle in the drawing room much longer thanks to new university options and suffragette protests. Her expecting equality in a relationship stuns one and all just as much as when she – gasp!– speaks of a friend's pregnancy at the dinner table. Such women without decorum just won't due, yet Charlotte's feisty makes Granville question his feelings for perfect English rose Felicity Jones (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story). A beautiful fiancee who knows her place, a partnership in a respected practice, and moneymaking royalties from his Jolly Molly massager should be everything Granville wants. However, he listens to his patients and sees things clearly once Charlotte's trial puts the need to respect women in perspective. 

 

It's both silly and scandalous, but the red velvet modesty curtains hide what's behind the medical stirrups – an elusive inner sanctum matching all this stiff upper lip decorum. Cheeky almost whimsical music accents those fancy frocks, feathered caps, furs, spats, and top hats peppering Hysteria's Victorian London. Damask wallpaper, carriages, and upscale private practices, however, contrast with early hospital crowding, dirty aprons, leeches, and arguing over sepsis. Sterilizing tools to clean away blood tainted with invisible infection causing germs does sound like some new kind of poppycock, doesn't it? East End settlement houses struggle with impoverished ideals while wealthy investors nonchalantly toy with newfangled equipment, unusual contraptions, early generators, and supposedly time saving inventions. The gizmos and gadgets add to Hysteria's charm, and the blu-ray edition offers commentaries, deleted scenes, making of features, and festival round tables alongside a documentary excerpt from Passion and Power: The Technology of the Orgasm. It's illegal to own more than six vibrators in some states? People don't not know what a clitoris is? In this sample from the 2007 feature length release, women authors and sexual experts recall life in the nineteen seventies when the man was the lion and it was a woman's job to please him. If she wanted pleasure, however, that made her a whore. Again, unfortunately, nothing has changed, has it? Hysteria took over seven years to make because no one would back such a risky movie by women, for women, and not just about women, but about women's sexuality. Today, however, I think a picture like Hysteria would be treated very differently, not swept under the rug, but sought out and embraced. Amen.

Then again, early in my first draft notes, I jotted this comment, and it's worth keeping:

If this is Rated R just because they talk about a woman's orgasm without showing any nudity or sex that is pretty shitty.

Indeed, Hysteria should be PG-13 at best. In fact, one would think it makes sense to discuss equal sexual pleasures in media and sex education rather than leaving the nitty gritty of the human sexual experience to the unrealistic presentations in pornography, which are designed to please men by degrading women rather than embracing equal opportunity thrills. What's with all the choke holds and women being so ecstatic over a shot of jizz in the eye? Why are our cultural depictions of sex designed for male gratification while the historical, amusing conversation about women's pleasure in Hysteria is restricted with a capital R? The female orgasm somehow still inspires fear yet western society encourages sexy advertising with a carefully crafted ideal of the sensual woman to stimulate men. Hysteria is worth seeing just to begin a healthy dialogue – illumining this mystique which is still perceived as something naughty and obscure rather than normal and natural. The lighthearted approach in Hysteria makes it easy to wink at the tingling and laugh at the shocks, intriguing those unaware to look up the tantalizing history behind the charm here.

Good, Bad, & Ugly Period Pieces

Recent Good, Bad, and Ugly Period Pieces

by Kristin Battestella

Some of these contemporary Victorian movies and period series are impressive with literary oomph and costumed flair. However others are unfortunately disappointing, polarizing, or unwatchable humbug.

Black Field – Lanterns, rifles, and two pioneer sisters doing what they have to do make for an upsetting opening to this 2010 eighty minute Canadian parable from writer and director Danishka Esterhazy. Bleak music, isolated vistas, and empty savannahs befitting the title set off the bare home, primitive details, and Grace said over such a paltry meal. This is a desperate, bitter existence with little dialogue beyond sad lullabies as these two girls fend for themselves. The accents, immigrants, and distant French towns mix – but the nearest farm is eighteen miles away and a handsome stranger wants to earn his keep at our isolated, all female station. Backstories are shared at the table, where this shirtless charmer admits he needs the Lord's mercy and forgiveness often and there's a certain attractive scandal at holding hands for prayer. The audience creates more saucy as several scenes imply each girl orchestrates a solo encounter with their would be protector – the camera doesn't reveal if something happened, however the household balance tips with jealousy and suspicion. Are these girls in over their heads with their farm and in need of a man to help? One has been forced to mother, but the younger is infatuated and ready to rebel despite wearing almost medieval clothes perhaps fashioned from her lone book of juvenile fairy tales. There are no “decent” jobs for women in town, and sans horse, this man is their only ticket to freedom. When one sister inevitably leaves, is it willingly or an abduction? The journey on foot is bleak with storms and an all natural palette mirroring their colorless lives, and the conflict increases without the unnecessary gory dream flashes and brief viewpoint breaks. Unable to help distant neighbors have too much work and too many mouths to feed, and nearby Mounties are in pursuit of a murderer as prejudice, injuries, and wilderness dangers build fear. The chess games moves to an even smaller, meager cabin with nothing but a sheet between rooms as the tables turn. Which sister do we believe as the division makes once good girls do bad things? Although some of the acting is slightly modern, the rivalry is similar to Far North and overall this first feature is well done. Did each girl get what she wanted and will they move on from this – or will the rift change them forever? While certain elements may be obvious, all the audience suspects is revealed in good time with well paced drama and a few unexpected twists. 

 

To Walk Invisible: The Bronte Sisters – This Masterpiece television movie shines the light on sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne as they escape into fiction away from the tolling bells, muddy streets, and embarrassing affairs ruining the family reputation. The ladies must keep up the mid-nineteenth century appearances with capes, bonnets, and frumpy frocks alongside the crestfallen parsonage, Yorkshire cold, and drafty period poor of the on location prairies and authentic settings. In an era when they are trapped by their womanhood and dependent on their hopeless male kin's hypocrisy, these sisters prefer dogs to people – tiptoeing over fears of publishing their poems and hidden creative passions burning fast and bright. Fiery readings of their explosive text contrast their plain, crappy circumstances, but the plot erroneously deviates in favor of the sniveling and tormented at being mediocre brother Branwell, meandering from the more interesting sisters destined for glory. The ladies want to publish and express themselves freely rather than bow their heads, not make eye contact, and sell themselves as mere governesses. However they argue over whether their writings are a private pursuit or something extraordinary worthy of publication – for men write and what they pen is judged, but a woman writing is herself judged. The sisters toil under pen names with panoramic seasonal transitions as they wait for acceptance, but childhood fantasy scenes and drunken dreams are unnecessary. On the go recountings of stories within stories walking faster with speed talking to match also become nonsensical, trying to create tension on top of the stilted brotherly angst when there is enough human interest in the literary struggle. The awkwardness of snatching a letter addressed to Currer Bell is fine drama – especially when it is an acceptance for two of the girls' works, but not the third and unscrupulous publication deals follow. At times the sisters can be cliché, with bossy Charlotte, fiery Emily, and a just sort of there Anne; but the personal insights deepen with rejection letters, buying more paper, old fashioned manuscript packages, first writings of their famous novels, and sitting by the fire for silent sustained writing time. Yes please! A proud father learning of his daughters' achievements make for delightful moments, and this is downright excellent when the ladies must stand up for their publication rights by revealing their identities – after being judged for their accents, stature, and gender. Of course the finale is bittersweet, but this is a charming companion piece to reading the Brontes or for inspiring budding young writers.

An Unfortunate Skip

The Invisible Woman – Ralph Fiennes (Coriolanus) directs and stars in this 2013 Charles Dickens biopic from Bafta winning writer Abi Morgan (Shame) focusing on the forty-five year old married author's affair with Felicity Jones' (Rogue One) eighteen year old actress Nelly Ternan. English coasts, Victorian silhouettes, lanterns, and carriages create a grand atmosphere with period decorum for the fine acting, but one needs to be familiar with the people or the Claire Tomalin source book to understand this slow two hours with an unnecessary flashback frame and more relationship awkwardness. When our lovers first meet, she is smiling at his son and he is socializing with her mother amid busy theater preparations and silly rehearsals restarts signaled with overly serious crescendos. The marital rifts, groupies catching his eye, well delivered dialogue, sense of Victorian protocol, and certain British properness can't completely build thanks to all the back and forth interruptions. While the filming nicely reflects the mood as she looks up to Dickens, he stares at her neck, and they turn away at their conflicted feelings; the unfortunately accurate twenty year age difference between the actors is too weird with unromantic fireside close ups and girly giggles too young to be sensuous. It is neat to see some early mass hysteria over a feisty, charismatic author commanding the crowds, even though this biopic may be trying too much with talk of debtor's prison, voiceover quotes on poverty and charity, and Dickens the social reformer intermixed with his side piece counting the donations. If he doesn't love his uncreative wife, what does he see in a talentless girl playing actress? There's no reason to love the troubled melodrama when the objective camera shows the creepy – she's hunched at the door as he is at her shoulder whispering to be let inside for a silent first touch. The eerily done up Fiennes is a fire and brimstone minister over his tempting flock, but the conflict between literary master and dirty old man is too disjointed with some chaste patty cake in the final fifteen minutes before an abrupt ending and a Victorian sense of shame confusing modern audiences. Tom Hollander (The Night Manager) as fellow libertine Wilkie Collins and concerned mother Kristin Scott Thomas (An English Patient reunion, hello!) are also totally underused, and more time may have been better spent on the terribly mistreated wife Joanna Scanlan (Getting On) – who seems like the real hidden lady. It's tough to look at this difficult subject matter objectively, and this unfocused, close to vest structure where not much happens doesn't help. Is this the tormented Dickens, Nelly's present reflecting on him, his wife's pain? Though interesting for biographers and sociology viewers or Fiennes fans and period propriety, this is simply frustratingly plain to watch.

Didn't Finish 'em!

Downton Abbey: Seasons 4 and 5 – Year Three of this Masterpiece series jumped the shark, and I quit watching then. The 2013 Fourth Season, however, is not a good place to join the show, as names and references from prior seasons are dropped or forgotten as needed, interesting personal developments below are pushed aside for the same above toil, and regardless of the Interwar happenings and historical opportunities, everything always come back to who Michelle Dockery's Mary will marry. Numerous maids, nannies, footmen, relatives, suitors, and royals come and go – wasting time before a typical and totally unnecessary rape as plot device trapping The Bateses (Joanne Froggatt and Brendan Coyle) with murder again. Each hour also has Allen Leech's Branson asking if he is truly upstairs or down, treading tires as said to be a writer who's never seen actually writing anything Edith (Laura Carmichael) literally has her romance disappear while she's kidnapping her baby from not one, but two adoptions. Past dalliances and present companionships for Granny Violet Maggie Smith, Penelope Wilton's Isobel, and Doctor David Robb are more interesting. All the supposedly progressive plots with Lily James' superfluous Rose meant to introduce the changing times, and it is the elder cast's reflections that better capture the aristocratic upheavals. More loud mouth recurring characters take up screen time in Series Five, which frustratingly repeats itself despite it being 1924. Are people who call this the Greatest British Drama Ever watching the same show I am? I bailed with a few episodes left as reading the summaries to see how Season Six ends was easier than the poorly paced and uneven storylines onscreen. Most scenes only last a minute or two, and intercut whimsical moments disrupt serious conversations – plots on homosexuality are cut short in favor of suspected gardeners stealing letter openers and secret heists over absconded royal love letters. The location, costuming, and period looks are the best part of the show, and such frocks, jewelry, tiaras, and dressing for dinner decorum wrapped in posh accents is what appeals to international audiences most. This era has an embarrassment of riches – I still believe they should have never left World War I – but everything here is really just like every other soap opera. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

War and Peace – 1805 St. Petersburg locales, Moscow estates, and lavish aristocratic balls set the scene for this 2016 adaptation anchored by the likes of Gillian Anderson (The X-Files), Stephen Rea (The Crying Game), Rebecca Front (Up the Women), and many, many more. There are numerous introductions, comings and goings from place to place, and explanations of who is who and how they are all related while arguing at the count's deathbed over his will. Similar names and a dash of foreign words will be confusing – viewers need to know the book and the history amid the marrying cousins, matchmaking, creepy siblings, and two faced nobility. The Regency costumes may not always be accurate, the younger ladies look like little girls playing dress up, the military uniforms are too big on the modern boys, and their tricorns look downright silly. Though the tiaras, furs, and feather fascinators are fun, they don't distract audiences from all the British accents overtaking this decidedly Russian epic. Weren't there any continental actors available? Despite the small television scale, ominous music, fog, canons, horses, and gunfire lift the battle action amid a fine religious undercurrent with church blessings and everyone crossing themselves. Unfortunately, it's tough to care about all these lookalike solider boys when they are so gung ho about the revolution yet can't see how they are being played. They run their mouths off and drum up their cowardly wounds – Sharpe was much more soldier-esque in comparison, and Brian Cox seems like he's in a different battle theater than the overly millennial princes, tsars, and REMFs looking for glory. The heady, flashy dreams, drunken saucy, shadowed nudity, whispered seduction, and male butts are unnecessary Tudors knockoffs as the bitchy little girls at home plot for love or money, and the back and forth editing between war action and at home intrigue creates uneven weight – maybe a more linear plot per episode would have helped balance the younger, weaker cast. I feel like I should like this more, but the atmosphere doesn't have that extra period timelessness. I got half way through, but there's no attachment to the numerous characters bottlenecking for the spotlight between all the try hard narrations. One might find it easier to just tackle the Tolstoy direct instead.

Quality Science Fiction Tales

Quality Science Fiction Tales

By Kristin Battestella

These recent and retro science fiction tales provide genre statements, epic adventures, and intergalactic visuals for some speculative but quality escapades. 

 

Narcopolis – Crime thrills and neo noir science fiction mix in this 2015 crowd sourced bender as CEO drug lords, corrupt officials, and noble but bottom dwelling cops vie for control in a futuristic world of legalized drugs and time travel. Pharmaceutical suppression, work cutbacks, and allotted utilities keep the public down in the city and looking for any kind of fix, and citizens are statistics, designated or unregistered people with unlicensed drugs deemed unworthy to have their victimizing investigated. Cop Elliot Cowan (Lost in Austen) begins as a typically angry lone wolf with a rap sheet and his own muddled history, but he's trying his best to protect his family – even if that means being late in giving his son a book for his birthday and distancing his wife from his work. The bleak concrete and desolate highway duty feel more grim reaper than cop as he catalogs dead junkies in a sort of mea culpa penance. We get the seedy mood without the unnecessary nudity, in your face music, nightclub strobe, and slo mo flashbacks of a rock bottom disaster. Fortunately, the cool effects are mostly reserved for future actions as people who haven't been born yet wearing watches that aren't yet invented pop through time thanks to freaky drugs injected through the eye. The how and why fantastics tie the suspect evidence and shady company dealings together, keeping the drug dystopia, contemporary crime, and paradox twists intriguing. However, the plot does drag, playing it safe or not going far enough as if this short premise is stretched too thin for a feature. 2044 to 2024 also seems too recent a time frame, with dated mobiles and skyping medical examiners also using convoluted, hi-tech DNA scans – and come on, today's millions of paperbacks are going to be scarce oddities seven years from now? The half-baked megalomaniac corporate villain should have remained unseen, and Jonathan Pryce (Tomorrow Never Dies) accents the touching generational aspects alongside Harry Lloyd (Game of Thrones) – who should have been used more. Why is he in so many movies for five minutes cameos? Tender moments in the final act raise the future risks, making wrongs right, and second chance escapes. Of course, the audience figures out the on the nose references to The Time Machine immediately, and the try hard gritty doesn't fully address the cult like power of this drug stranglehold – a suit at the top hiring the street peddlers to offer candy and magic to kids door to door is still the same drug trade in a new corporate uniform. However, the going through the motions numbness and corruption aggravating the situation for its own gain feels nineties throwback amid the sequestering control and corporate parallels certainly familiar today – a little twenty year reversal in itself. Although this isn't anything serious SF fans haven't seen before, the futuristic framing and genre statements make this an interesting little indie.

Quintet – This bleak 1979 tale – a rare science fiction outing from Paul Newman – is an icy, desolate two hours with snowbound civilization, small humans braving the bluster, birds a rare sight, scarce seal hunting, and memories of trees. Echoes, broken glass, icicles, and dangerous crackling sounds accent the ruined photos, damaged crystal chandeliers, shaggy beards, and bundled clothes. The information center no longer transmits, ten or twelve years have passed but who can be sure, children and pregnancy are uncommon, and water is everywhere but precious alongside lost life affirming opportunities and somber river burials. Despite his chilled exterior, Newman's Essex isn't unfeeling, however he doesn't initially realize just how high stakes the titular game is until the coercion, explosions, Latin oaths, slit throats, and assumed identities. He has a list of names due revenge, but the killings must play out within the Quintet rules. While promotions at the film's release included how to play brochures, today us not knowing the specifics on the mysterious sixth man in a five player game adds an interesting confusion to the high brow competition, and viewers must pay attention to the one man SF chess. At times, the game concepts fall flat and the trying hard statements on the cult-like mentality of the tournament don't quite come across. Like the solitary plodding and stilted chill it depicts, this is slow to start and the runtime could have been trimmed, but this shouldn't be a globe trotting, fantastic fun filled pretty people adventure game the way a modern movie would be, either. Mentions of five million people struggling in color coded sectors also don't quite register thanks to the small scale production, but prowling dogs, frozen carcasses, and on location filming at the abandoned Montreal Expo create realism. Director Robert Altman's (The Long Goodbye) decision to film with a foggy, Vaseline framed camera lense, however, misfires. The idea of the audience peering through the blurred trim of a frosted glass adds style while hiding cut production corners – the edging even mirrors the titular pentagon shaped symbolism that dominates the futuristic furniture and decor. Unfortunately, the execution is too noticeable and perhaps should have been used for indoor scenes only. Here hope is an obsolete word, and the desperate, arbitrary deceptions hit home the insensitive nothing else left to do but kill pointlessness – you bleed to stay alive and help decrease the population a little faster. Bitter tenderness and some tense shocks accent the cerebral tone as the intriguing melancholy escalates in the final act, and this somber, life imitating art statement is eerily prophetic in the notion of games and movies becoming social reality obsessions.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story – This 2016 offshoot set before the original Star Wars certainly has pleasant visuals, pretty planetary vistas, intergalactic cities, and epic island battles. However, the spectacle doesn't overtake the sad family separations, weapons coercion, labor camps, extremist leaders, and bleakness of life under the Empire. Such hopelessness remains the film's unifying thread amid ties lost and gained, near gone Jedi philosophies, competing rebellion tactics, doubts on whether a life like this is worth living, and where you take your stand when the line is drawn. Those seeking it can find modern political parallels in the cinematic tensions, but the personal attachments to the refreshing, multidimensional ensemble are more important. There's no romance between the leads, either, another fresh turn against the usually required movie matchmaking. Instead, these likable rogue heroes – including Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything), Diego Luna (Y tu mamá también), Riz Ahmed (The Night Of), Donnie Yen (Ip Man), and more – become their own reformed Han Solos. Even Alan Tudyk (Firefly) who's hidden behind the delightfully charming K-2SO droid remains memorable, and the audience wants these rebels from the Rebellion to succeed in their choice for hope regardless of the consequences, leaving their mark long after the picture assures the stolen Death Star plans make it to Star Wars as we know they would. Older stars such as Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal), Ben Mendelsohn (Bloodline), and Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland) anchor the nods to this galaxy far, far away alongside the returning Genevieve O'Reilly as Mon Mothma, Jimmy Smits as Bail Organa, and familiar hallmarks such as Yavin 4, X-Wings, and more surprises. There's even an “I have a bad feeling about this” quip – almost. Unfortunately, I'm hesitant about the digital revival of Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin. Absolutely positively, I love the deserved respect with such a critical role and careful attention to detail. The composite isn't out of place, yet, when you've watched enough of his movies, it just reminds you that this isn't really Peter Cushing. It's a great technical achievement, but being aware of the wizardry makes the moral implications of using a late actor's likeness on a body double a distraction. For all its impressiveness, a blurry hologram message or onscreen video communiques would have sufficed, and Star Wars footage is used to recreate the X-Wing squadrons. There's uneven, convoluted techno babble, too – with ridiculously simple flick the switch/press the button/insert the data tape, some poor dialogue, and confusing planet hopping. Rewrites, editing changes, missing scenes, and reshoots are apparent, however the realization that this is the Star Wars movie we didn't know we needed bests any technicalities. Between the Prequels and the now de-canonized Extended Universe, who knew there was room for an entire movie leading up to the hours before Star Wars? Where The Force Awakens understandably re-endears with similarities to A New Hope, I'm still surprised this mature and sophisticated catharsis is a Disney movie. The only real trouble with this Star Wars Story is where it goes in a viewing marathon. Always introduce with the Original and Empire, let Han Solo in carbonite stew and remind us why the Empire must be defeated with Sith and Rogue One before coming home with Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Let this be your bittersweet Jar Jar palette cleanser!

An Unfortunate Skip

Outcasts – Although this 2011 eight episode limited series opens with intergalactic intrigue, the promising science fiction falls prey to standard television trappings. This refuge from Earth isn't what the New Haven colony had hoped – while some are grateful to be alive, others see this bleak time for humanity as an opportunity for power. Older adults and younger characters alike have touching recollections of how Earth used to be, and the title fits for both those willfully exiled and those cast beyond the colony's walls. Unfortunately, the survival science versus planetary pursuits are slow, few, and far between – feeling like thinly disguised The Next Generation meets Earth 2 threads when not taking a backseat to teen angst or bar fights. Archaeological evidence and alien frequencies remain B plots behind killer husbands and Lost delays with little purpose or explanation, and their technology is embarrassingly all over the place – space travel and memory revisiting machines but no way to tell if a hurricane’s a coming? Unlikable personal twists undercut already superfluous characters who run around each week or play cards when they are supposed to be exploring the exiled clones, diamond oceans, and non-corporeal beings. Obvious religious charlatan/smirking narcissists and political coups underestimate the audience with glossed over critical points and unnecessary on the nose tensions. Despite fine special effects, planetary vistas, and a neo noir feeling with dark corridors and cramped spaceships re-purposed as pioneer housing, there’s not a lot of actual SF and the odd timeframe embraces no genre wonder. Show us the settlement start with viruses, explorations, and excised soldiers or move to another five years on with a firm outpost thrust with surplus arrivals and strife. Instead, two cops do most of the work amid one nurse and a murdering botanist, relegating the lack of pregnancy and reproduction issues as secondary to guest of the week Gilligan's Island fodder. Veteran performances from unstable and talking to ghostly aliens in disguise Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones) and the steely but surprisingly stiff and washed out Hermione Norris (MI-5) can't detract from this disappointing lack of focus, and when they say their planet is named Carpathia after the Titanic's rescue ship, well I just think of Vigo from Ghostbusters II.