Netflix And Chill: Ava (2020)

It feels as if everyone lately has been wanting a shot at portraying a highly-skilled assassin, very possibly due to the great success of a certain Keanu-led franchise, but not all of them manage to do enough to stand out from what has fast become a very crowded field. Ava is a film that not only doesn't stand out, it becomes so well-camouflaged by the cliches and tired tropes it is wearing that it's pretty much the John Cena of the skilled assassin movie sub-genre.

Jessica Chastain is the titular Ava. She is very good at her job, killing people, but has started to wonder what people have done to prompt her being hired to put an end to them. This makes Ava a potential liability, despite the fact that she still (literally) executes her orders. Her "handler" (Duke, played by John Malkovich) still has faith in her though, but others want her retired. And retired means dead.

Writer Matthew Newton seems to think that anyone watching Ava will not have seen any other movie like this, which is the only explanation for a script that is so consistently lazy from start to finish. Ava is given three defining characteristics - her questioning nature, her history of addiction, and her deadly skillset - and some messy family tension (with a mother in hospital and a sister now dating her ex-boyfriend), but she never feels like a fully-realised lead character. It isn’t as if we cannot accept assassins who are defined just by how good they kill people, but there isn’t enough information given to us to explain why Ava has started to ask more questions, or why she has kept such strong connection to her family while still in a job that would seem to make that a very risky proposition.

Director Tate Taylor manages to get everything onscreen competently enough, helped by the fact that Chastain is as committed to the physicality of the role as you would expect, but he doesn’t ever do enough to elevate the script. Some fight scenes are decent, some have to be over-edited. Sadly, none of the moments of straightforward drama work, with characters chopping and changing their moods, depending on what exposition is required or how any scene is leading everyone towards the inevitable climax.

Chastain is good in the central role, even if she isn’t quite good enough to make the film worth watching, and Malkovich excels in a supporting cast that also includes Colin Farrell (good value), Geena Davis (always welcome in any movie), Jess Weixler, Common, Diana Silvers, and a badass Joan Chen. Nobody does a bad job. They’re just stuck dealing with that lame script that leaves them hung out to dry.

On the plus side, the pacing isn’t bad, the runtime clocks in at just over 90 minutes (from opening scene to the start of the closing credits), and you can, with some hard work blocking out the worst elements of the script, accept it as a mildly diverting action thriller. I would always be ready to recommend 100 other movies ahead of this though, easily.

4/10

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Netflix And Chill: Ma (2019)

It's kind of heartening to know that the standard "insert noun - from hell" thriller movie has never really gone away. It's just been dressed up in a variety of ways, from the many TV movies you can see in the schedules (with a hell of a lot of them featuring Eric Roberts, if you want to watch someone stalked by their doctor anyway) to the slick, mainstream outings that start deceptively tame before letting things go enjoyably crazy in the finale.

A departure for both director Tate Taylor (who has The Help as arguably the best-known film in his filmography) and writer Scotty Landes (although he also wrote the pretty poor Deadcon, released the same year), Ma is all about Sue Ann (Octavia Spencer), a woman who finds herself in the company of some teens when she buys alcohol for them. She sets things up in a way that gains the trust of the teens, turning part of her home into a bit of a party area, and becomes more and more reliant on their friendship, Or so it seems. While initially fun and strange, the teenagers soon realise that they should maybe distance themselves from Sue Ann AKA Ma. She seems particularly interested in Maggie (Diana Silvers) and Andy (Corey Fogelmanis), but she also may have some reason for recapturing a youthful experience that she seems to have missed out on.

Ma is ridiculous, yet it's also a lot of fun. A large part of that is thanks to the performance from Spencer, pitched perfectly between the believable and the absurd. We've all probably known that one "cool" adult who would prefer teenagers to drink in their home than out in the streets. Ma is just portraying herself as that kind of person, until she keeps pushing her way into the lives/phones of the young revellers.

Silvers and Fogelmanis do just fine in their roles, and McKaley Miller is a lot of the fun as the first person to become wary of Ma, calling her out directly. But there's more fun to be had here with the rest of the experienced adults populating the cast. Juliette Lewis plays Erica, Maggie's mother, and does well with her small role. Luke Evans is Andy's father, Ben, and has a past with Ma that makes him wary of her behaviour, and Allison Janney is Ma's boss, quick to notice when she is becoming more distracted in the workplace.

It gets awkward at times, and may certainly cause a cringe or two, but Ma generally strikes just the right balance to keep it entertaining throughout. You get a backstory teased out throughout the proceedings, you get one or two developments that you know are going to become vital in the third act, and you get some enjoyably over the top acts of crazed rage before the end credits roll. In fact, considering the motivation of the main character, and the attempted bodycount, this could easily be considered a slasher movie. Fans of that subgenre would expect some more blood and guts though, but you may be pleasantly surprised by this anyway.

7/10

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Mubi Monday: Booksmart (2019)

Booksmart is a fun film, full of energy, that easily sits alongside a number of other teen comedies from the past few decades. Unlike many of those, it was directed and written by women, and also features two wonderful female lead characters (played by Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever).

The set-up is quite simple. Molly (Feldstein) and Amy (Dever) have made a number of sacrifices as they aim to get the grades required for their favoured colleges. But Molly hears a number of people talking about their future plans, which leads her to the realisation that a lot of people had the same aim, they just managed to maintain a better life-work balance throughout high school. Determined to use their last night to make up for years of missing out, Molly and Amy set out to find the location of the hottest party being attended by everyone else in their school year. And so begins a night that will see the young women test their limits, test some drugs, and test their friendship.

Although very much female-centric, Booksmart works brilliantly because it is very much focused on the teen experience, the years spent under intense pressure to please so many people (peers, parents, teachers) before you learn that it's best to just please yourself. Molly and Amy start the movie thinking that they have to live their lives a certain way, which becomes less and less true as they become more comfortable just being themselves.

The script, written by Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel, and Katie Silberman, is arguably the best work that any of them have done. It's smart, full of scenes that have an honesty at the heart of them, and very funny. And one sequence involving a pair of Barbie dolls is hilariously surreal in a way that recalls the anarchic silliness of Better Off Dead... (an '80s teen movie that remains woefully underseen).

Olivia Wilde does a great job in her feature directorial debut. She has a number of shorts to her credit, and has obviously been able to observe the film-making process during her many acting jobs, but this is an accomplished and assured first feature, undoubtedly helped by her industry connections (it's hard to imagine the likes of her partner, Jason Sudeikis, or Will Forte and Lisa Kudrow taking on supporting roles otherwise, although you could also argue that a good enough script would have won them over).

Feldstein and Dever are great in their roles, with the former bringing more of the energy into most scenes while the latter is having a more difficult time adjusting to a new level of social interaction and self-identity. Molly Gordon does great work in her small role, Skyler Gisondo and Billie Lourd are wonderfully over the top as two rich kids who find it easy to buy company, but not so easy to make real friends, and Diana Silvers has a couple of very funny scenes as a partygoer who ends up seeing Dever in a more vulnerable state than either would have wanted, and Jessica Williams gets to play a supercool teacher who is rooting for our leads throughout.

Although this is typically rambunctious stuff on the surface, Booksmart excels, like all of the best teen movies, because there's a lot more to it. And a large part of it is truth. As silly as many moments seem, it also nails the maelstrom of feelings that can rush through any teenager's mind every time a major decision has to be made. That decision could be about higher education, or it could about what to wear to a party. It could be about love or lust, or it could be about how far you go to support a friend. Every one is just as important as the other. Well, that is how it feels at the time. Booksmart nails that feeling, and more.

9/10

The movie will be available here.
Americans can get it here.