Shudder Saturday: Lizzie (2018)

 

"Lizzie Borden took an axe

and gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done,

she gave her father forty-one."

Is it even possible to write something about Lizzie Borden without quoting that macabre little rhyme? I think not.

There are a couple of reasons why I decided to watch Lizzie this week, and place the review here. First of all, it's a good story of intrigue and murder. Lizzie Borden surely remains the most famous, alleged, axe murderer in history (unless I am forgetting any other obvious choices). Second, although I have not loved all of the movies that she has been in, I have started to enjoy different performances from Kristen Stewart in recent years. She's actually been as eclectic in her choices as her past co-star, Robert Pattinson, but has received not a quarter of the praise. Is she his equal? I am not going to say. All I know is that my opinion on her changed after seeing her performances in a couple of Olivier Assayas movies (Personal Shopper being a real highlight) and enjoying her flair for the comedy in Charlie's Angels.  With the upcoming Happiest Season (a LGBTQ+ Christmas movie featuring Stewart in a lead role), it's clear that she has been picking and choosing her projects based on an instinct that has allowed her to both enjoy her post-Twilight career and show some more sides of her personality. 

Stewart plays Bridget Sullivan, a new member of staff to the Borden household in this tale. The titular Lizzie is played by Chloë Sevigny. Things start with the discovery of a hacked corpse, and then it is time to wind back and look at the days and weeks leading up to the murders, with the two main victims being Abby (Fiona Shaw) and Andrew Borden (Jamey Sheridan). You have standard family tensions, chemistry between Lizzie and Bridget, and creepy, predatory, abuse from Andrew. There's also an ongoing dispute over the potential family fortune, something that John Morse (Denis O'Hare) wants to keep an eye on.

Written by Bryce Kass and directed by Craig William Macneill, with neither individual having many other full movies to their credit, it's easy to see why Lizzie was viewed as quite an easy tale to make into a solid little biopic/crime drama. Most people tend to be familiar enough with the story, it doesn't need a whole lot of fancy bells and whistles, and there's the enduring allure of it being an "unsolved crime", mainly thanks to how things were handled in the immediate aftermath.

The thing is . . . Lizzie doesn't sell any of that angle. It settles for being a salacious telling of the crime that people think they already know. Want to know that Lizzie definitely committed the crimes? Sure thing, here you go. Blood on her clothing? Hell no, we'll make her naked. A look at the various conflicting and cocked-up evidence that wasn't properly used? Nope. But look . . . naked woman with axe. This is a film that seems to have been written from a basic notion of the crime, everything that has been assumed for years by people who haven't read even a little bit more on the case. I COULD be wrong, but they even seem to get Lizzie Borden's age wrong when the end title card notes her death years later.

Sevigny is very good in the main role, and Stewart works well enough alongside her. They may not give their best performances, but they're saddled with a script that wants to make this nothing more than a fairly standard tale of sex and violence. Shaw and Sheridan also do good work, with the latter having to play up every bad part of his character until he's almost a pantomime villain by the third act (if pantomime villains were also a bit rapey), and O'Hare is fun in his scenes. Kim Dickens isn't given much to do, playing Lizzie's sister, Emma, and the same goes for Jeff Perry, playing Andrew Jennings, the defense attorney for Lizzie.

Considering the various aspects, this isn't a bad film. The acting is good, the look and feel of the film works, even if it tries to make the most of the budget by being made up of mostly interior shots (which is fine, considering the story showing us the growing tension within one household), and it does a good job of depicting the actual act of the murders. It's just a shame that the script feels so sloppily put together, and takes no interesting turns.

5/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews

Gone Girl (2014)

Gone Girl is a good film. At times it's a very good film. It also turns out to be the weakest one yet from director David Fincher. It's as if the opportunity to direct this came along when he wanted to coast slightly, matching his style and meticulous craftmanship to material that never really seems to deserve it. This is, let's be honest here, daytime TV movie stuff, given some added spice and edge to make it more of a talking point.

Ben Affleck plays Nick Dunne, the husband who goes home one day to find that his wife (Amy, played by Rosamund Pike) has gone. He calls in the police, and soon finds that he is the main subject of their investigation. As the evidence starts to pile up against him, Nick begins his own investigation. And he starts to suspect that perhaps he didn't really know his wife at all.

Written by Gillian Flynn, adapting her novel for the big screen, this is a film that seems to think it's always one step ahead of the viewer. It's not. Yes, there are one or two moments that will wrong-foot those wondering whether they are watching a real version of events, or something created by either of the main characters, but even those moments are easy to dismiss if you pay close enough attention to what's going on. There are a couple of BIG shocks, I guess, but even those are so heavily signposted that their impact is sorely muted.

Thankfully, none of the weaknesses in the source material cause any problems for the cast. Pike and Affleck deliver two fantastic performances, with the former able to enjoy a real variety of roles (depending on how she is being viewed by others) and the latter making the best use yet of that certain smug quality his detractors often accuse him of having. I've never had a problem with Affleck, but even those who tend to dislike what they view as his persona may end up liking his turn here, seeing him turn on charm for the sake of cameras and crowds while constantly having a large finger of suspicion pointed in his direction. Kim Dickens is great as the cop determined to crack the case, and Patrick Fugit tries his best alongside her, despite the fact that he seems trapped in a state of perpetual adolescence. Carrie Coon is the twin sister of Affleck's character, and very good she is in her role, Tyler Perry impresses as a hotshot lawyer willing to act in defence of a man who is starting to look guilty as sin, Neil Patrick Harris is an ex-lover who may or may not have information, and both Sela Ward and Missi Pyle have fun playing two TV celebrities, both with differing approaches but the same aim.

There's also the bonus of having Fincher at the helm, even if he IS on auto-pilot (or so it seems). The cool colour palette, the music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the slow and steady camerawork, the pitch-black humour. I seem to spend half of my time saying that familiarity breeds contempt with the other half of my time appearing to be a bloody hypocrite when I say that familiarity can often be an easy, comforting layer used in movies. This movie falls in to the latter camp.

It's not often that a film can overcome weak source material. This one manages it. But there's only so much that can be done, which is why it ends up being merely a good film, as opposed to a great one.

6/10

http://www.amazon.com/Gone-Girl-Blu-ray-Tyler-Perry/dp/B00Q5996EQ/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1419685676&sr=1-2&keywords=gone+girl