Netflix And Chill: Fathers & Daughters (2015)

I am not surprised that Fathers & Daughters was written by someone, Brad Desch, who has no other screenplay credits to his name. It feels very basic in the way the predictable storyline is plotted, and ultimately relies on the talent of the two main stars. What is more surprising is the fact that director Gabriele Muccino is no newcomer. He's done a number of movies in a very similar vein, and a number of his previous films are much better than this one.

Russell Crowe plays Jake Davis, a writer and a loving father who loses his wife in a car crash that also leaves him with some health issues that impact his everyday life. He's also now the single parent of young Katie (Kylie Rogers), but there are other people who don't think that is the best situation for both of them. In the here and now, viewers get to see Katie (now played by Amanda Seyfried) making her way through life, her father absent for reasons to become clear before the end credits roll, and making her way through a number of one-night stands. Until she meets Cameron (Aaron Paul). Happiness may be belatedly coming back into her life, but will she be able to deal with it?

If you like Seyfried and Paul then this movie should work for you. They both try hard to compensate for the weak material with performances that deserve a better movie around them. Crowe, on the other hand, settles into a performance that makes use of far too many familiar "ACTOR" tricks, whether he's angrily defending his ability to look after his young daughter or dealing with the problematic tremors afflicting him post-accident. Diane Kruger is disappointingly underused, but Bruce Greenwood excels as her partner, and the man who has the money and willingness to be diplomatic in offering to welcome young Katie as a permanent resident of their home, and it's good to have Octavia Spencer, Quvenzhané Wallis, and Jane Fonda doing well enough with their limited screentime to make it easier to enjoy things in between moments that have Crowe overdoing things.

Things are quite jarring when you move between watching scenes with a main character as an innocent young girl and then scenes in which she's a woman using sex as some band-aid for a deep well of pain, but the rest of the film is very standard and manipulative stuff. Desch seems to have spent less time writing a full screenplay and more time stringing together a whole load of dialogue and moments he's picked from many superior movies, Muccino thinks that he can rely on his cast to lift everything out of the doldrums, and the cast are too restricted by the material. There are intermittent highlights for fans of the supporting players, but not enough to make this more worthy of your time ahead of at least a hundred other melodramas that people could recommend to you.

4/10

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Filmstruck Friday: Klute (1971)

Donald Sutherland plays John Klute, a detective who is hired to try and trace the whereabouts of a missing man. The only clue he has are some rude letters to a New York prostitute (Bree Daniels, played by Jane Fonda). As Klute tries to make progress with the case, he becomes more closely connected to Bree, wandering further into her world and finding out more about a woman who has spent most of her time maintaining a barrier between herself and anyone around her.

Written by Andy and Dave Lewis, this is a film that is part detective story and part character study. Despite the main character, and some enjoyably frank conversations about sex and why people shouldn't feel asahmed about doing something they enjoy so much, it's not made to be any kind of erotic thriller. It's simply a detective story that looks at some very different attiitudes to sex while bringing together two main characters who seem to be polar opposites of one another. That's not to say that the content lacks any kind of sexual frisson, not at all. Every time Fonda is onscreen there's an aura emanating from her frankness and confidence that perfectly shows why her character would be so greatly desired by her clientele.

Director Alan J. Pakula, a man with one hell of an impressive directorial filmography to check out, allows viewers to get lost in the midst of this potential blossoming relationship. We spend an awful lot of time watching Fonda go about her day, either speaking to her therapist or shopping or being with clients, and then see the immediate comparison to Sutherland's much quieter character. Despite his name being used as the title of the movie, Klute is always secondary to Bree, and the main detective strand is always secondary to the exploration of the different attitudes of the leads.

In case you couldn't tell already, both Sutherland and Fonda are fantastic. The latter is the definite highlight but it's unfair to completely overlook how well Sutherland does in an atypically understated performance. Elsewhere, Charles Cioffi does okay in a small role and Roy Scheider adds another great role to his roster (I am slightly embarrassed that I only ever knew him from the masterpiece that is Jaws for a number of decades).

Falling slightly between the likes of Chinatown and Blow Up, with a dash of onscreen self-awareness and self-analysis that would suit a character in a Woody Allen movie, Klute is not a film you should be overly concerned with categorising. You should just seek it out and find out why so many others have already heaped lots of praise upon it. Disappointing finale aside, this is well worth your time.

8/10

Klute can be bought here.
And I am sure other places have it, but I don't see many opportunities. Click the link and buy whatever you like, it all works for me.