Netflix And Chill: The Other Woman (2014)

A rom-com that is very much an anti-rom-com, The Other Woman is a fun time with a solid trio of lead actresses who all seem to be having fun playing off one another.

Cameron Diaz is Carly Whitten, a successful attorney who believes she may have found a special man in Mark King (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Unfortunately, there's a big problem. He's married. Carly finds this out when she attempts to surprise him at his home, which then leads to her forming an unlikely, and initially very unwanted, friendship with Kate King (Leslie Mann). The two eventually realise that there's also another woman in Mark's life, which then connects them to Amber (Kate Upton) and turns them into a united trio determined to make Mark pay for his lies and bad behaviour. Revenge is a best served cold, and most things tend to feel colder when there's a lot less money in your bank account, which is what the ladies have in their sights.

Whatever I write here could be taken as a positive or a negative by people who already have their mind made up on this film. It's the kind of thing that is easy to dismiss, but also the kind of film I like to recommend to those who don't mind straying away from their usual choices. Men may assume this is going to be unbearable, although I know I am making my own assumption there, and women may pass over it in favour of any number of movies that received bigger and better marketing, but this is a perfectly enjoyable way to pass 109 minutes, thanks in no small part to a number of people having fun with the comedy.

Diaz may not be one of the comedic strengths, she just doesn't work as well here as she has in other comedies, but she's very good as the smart and powerful woman who ends up in an awful position, and then ends up formulating a plan to help a woman avoid some painful consequences of inadvertently being married to a scheming cad. Mann is hilarious though, very funny in almost every scene, and the perfect choice to sugar-coat the bitter pill at the heart of this. Upton also does well, very sweet and silly to immediately offset the potential extra jealousy that she brings to the situation. Coster-Waldau knows his place, and he sets himself up brilliantly for the many punchlines making use of him, and there are enjoyable little turns from Don Johnson and Nicki Minaj. Taylor Kinney may not be doing much, but he's there to catch the eye of Diaz, despite being the brother of Mann's character (which could make things even more complicated . . . or maybe not).

Writer Melissa K. Stack generally does better with the situations and set-pieces than with the dialogue, but the screenplay feels improved by director Nick Cassavetes having that game cast. Everyone knows what they're doing, both behind and in front of the camera, and it's the kind of entertainment that often seems bad to people who haven't truly seen how much worse things can get in various sub-genres. 

The pacing is great, the tone stays light enough even as it dances around a subject that could have turned things much darker, there's a good dose of female empowerment, an enjoyable soundtrack, and a huge dog that is used just enough to create an extra couple of laughs before being placed in the background as the central plot strand develops and moves resolutely towards a VERY satisfying finale.

6/10

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Shudder Saturday: Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever (2023)

While I didn't expect much from this belated sequel to Nightwatch, I knew that I had to give it a watch. Considering that it managed to get back so many people from the original, both behind and in front of the camera, I suspected that it might at least be decent. This was tempered by the fact that I wasn't the biggest fan of the first film though.

In a major twist, worthy of the films themselves, Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever is actually a better film than the original film. That one may have made a name for writer-director Ole Bornedal, and may have provided a great platform for actors Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Kim Bodnia, but this feels like a more assured, and arguably slightly darker, wander through the same territory.

Time has passed for everyone. Some have survived, but one or two haven't. Emma (Fanny Leander Bornedal, daughter of the writer-director) misses her deceased mother, and she also sees the constant toll that the weight of past events has on her father, Martin (Coster-Waldau, reprising his role). Emma decides to retrace some footsteps from decades before, taking a night watch job that allows her to get a bit closer to, and to find out a bit more about, the killer who almost destroyed her parents just under three decades ago.

While this is far from perfect, it's a film that absolutely excels in the times it gets everything just right. Bornedal may lead the cast of newer, younger, characters for the majority of the runtime, but there's enough time spent with Coster-Waldau's character, and a returning Kim Bodnia, to allow viewers to see the repercussions of major trauma rippling through the lives, and forever altering, the survivors of a deadly killing spree. I would say that Bornedal just about gets the right balance, providing a film that is part character study and part tense thriller. I would also say that he delivers something more consistent and intense this time around, showing the development of his skillset that has also been on show in a variety of other projects over the years (from the slick horror of The Possession to the dark comedy of Small Town Killers).

Bornedal is pretty good in the lead role, and certainly does well enough to carry the film along on her shoulders while everything is put in place to wind together for a brilliantly entertaining finale. Coster-Waldau and Bodnia are both able to get back inside their characters with ease, the former being much more outwardly changed by the events of the first film, and Ulf Pilgaard also returns for a number of crucial scenes. Paprika Steen and Sonja Richter are very good, Casper Kjær Jensen is entertaining as the potential villain who seems too obvious to be the real villain, and that's about it. There are other people filling out the cast, but they're uninteresting, and all blur into one another, while viewers wait patiently to rejoin the more captivating central characters.

Maybe it's all down to my expectations, considering how many years I spent misremembering Night Watch as a much better movie, but I ended up being really impressed by this. I would (tentatively) recommend it to those who liked the first movie, and I'll be interested to hear back from anyone who enjoyed it as much as I did.

7/10

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Shudder Saturday: Nightwatch (1994)

I remember Nightwatch being quite highly praised when it was released. A Danish thriller from writer-director Ole Bornedal, it was a film that I soon felt I had to see. So I did. I saw it many years ago, and I saw the 1997 remake (also directed by Bornedal, but with Ewan McGregor in the lead role). I remember quite enjoying both versions of the tale, but nothing remained in my memory decades later. Rewatching this film now, it's understandable.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays a law student named Martin. Martin gets a job as a night watchman as the Forensic Medical Institute, where one of his main duties is checking on the morgue. That morgue is about to gain a number of new residents as a serial killer stalks the streets of Copenhagen, but that doesn't really bother Martin, who is often busy distracting himself with an escalating game of dares that he and his friend, Jens (Kim Bodnia), are engaged in. It does start to bother him, however, when strange things start happening in the morgue, and when the victims of the killer start to show evidence that could incriminate Martin.

Although it's a decent enough little thriller, arguably a little more macabre than most, it's hard to watch Nightwatch nowadays and figure out how it gained such a solid reputation when it was first released. No one element disappoints, and the casting is a big plus, but it feels as if it's a slim, and surprisingly dull, plot padded around a couple of decent set-pieces. The grand finale is decent, and finally adds some genuine tension, but it also seems a bit ridiculous (even in relation to other slick thrillers in this vein).

Coster-Waldau makes for an appealing lead, and Bodnia is a lot of fun as the friend who keeps getting him in trouble with escalating dares and pranks, but I wish the likes of Sofie Gråbøl, Lotte Anderson, and Ulf Pilgaard had been given better material to work with, especially when two of those people are much more heavily involved in the third act. Rikke Louise Andersson is a highlight, in the role of Joyce, but her involvement with the two leading men feels like it could have been spun off into a very different, and potentially more interesting, movie.

Don't get me wrong though, I certainly didn't hate this. It's a decent and dark thriller. It's just a film that always seems to pick the least interesting direction when so many scenes provide a crossroads for the narrative. Maybe I had my viewing experience this time around impacted by that first viewing many years ago, but I wasn't ever fully invested in the characters, I didn't sense any ambiguity when it came to the potential killer, and it really dropped the ball when it came to delivering on the potential of the central premise.

Good, but not great, and I'm surprised to find that it has maintained enough of a legacy that we now, three decades later, have a sequel, also written and directed by Bornedal. I guess you already know what I will be watching at this time next week though.

6/10

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