Netflix And Chill: Runaway Jury (2003)

Note: I watched this film yesterday on UK Netflix, ready for thos review to be written today. Yesterday was the last day that Runaway Jury was available on the service here in the UK. Such is the fickle nature of streaming services.

Like many films from the '90s and 2000s, Runaway Jury now feels like a more comforting watch today than it did when first released. It's based on a John Grisham novel, coming along as seemingly the last major attempt to wring more money out of his legal thrillers (until they inevitably come back into fashion at some point), it has a fantastic ensemble cast anchored by two star turns from a couple of acting legends, and it delivers some tension and thrills without needing to shoehorn in any major action set-pieces.

Everything revolves around a trial that sees a woman trying to win a case against a firearms company. Nobody ever wins when they take on the gun industry, but some people hold on to the hope that this case could turn the tide. The one with the most hope is attorney Wendell Rohr (Dustin Hoffman), although that becomes harder to hang onto as he battles against tactics used by jury consultant Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman). Fitch and his team are bemused by one particular juror though, Nick Easter (John Cusack), and it soon becomes clear how important he is when they are contacted by a woman (Marlee, played by Rachel Weisz) who claims that she can deliver whatever verdict is needed for a big fee.

Adapted into screenplay form by Brian Koppelman, David Levien, Rick Cleveland, and Matthew Chapman, Runaway Jury is full of enjoyable lines of dialoge that are uttered with plenty of energy and power by leads clearly enjoying themselves in their roles. Director Gary Fleder may not put any stamp on the visual style of the film, but he does well to simply stay out of the way of his cast as they do their thing.

What can be said about Hackman that hasn't already been said many times over the years? The world of cinema was undoubtedly better while he was a part of it, and he's absolutely fantastic as the devious and relentless Fitch. Hoffman steps up his game for the scenes shared with Hackman, but he also spends a lot of the runtime focusing on his accent and trying to be almost childishly idealistic. Cusack is a lot of fun in what may well be the last film to make good use of the charm and wit that he used to have in every role, and Weisz enjoys herself in scenes that show her scheming and working hard to maintain an advantage against the powerful people she is dealing with. I won't go into detail on their characters, but the supporting cast includes the likes of Bruce Davison, Bruce McGill, Jeremy Piven, Cliff Curtis, Nick Searcy, Rhoda Griffis, Leland Orser, Nestor Serrano, Jennifer Beals, Gerry Bamman, Bill Nunn, Rusty Schwimmer, Orlando Jones, Luis Guzmán, and Dylan McDermott. If you don't recognise all of those names, trust me, you should recognise most of their faces.

Okay, it's not the best of the Grisham blockbusters (I think we all know that the "first wave" of movies adapted from his work gave us the best films), but this is a fantastic bit of entertainment. It's polished, it's intriguing, it has some obvious twists and turns that prove satisfying by the time everything is resolved, and the 127-minute runtime never drags, thanks in no small part to the feeling that you're never too far away from another great moment for Hackman, Hoffman, or Cusack. It's not one I think about too often, but it's one I am surprisingly happy to rewatch whenever the opportunity arises.

7/10

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Noirvember: Confidence (2003)

It sometimes strikes me as wild that Edward Burns had (has?) a decent acting career, to the point where he was considered a viable leading man for some movies that have very strong supporting casts. I don’t hate Burns, that would be far too strong a reaction, but he is never someone who I would consider a first choice for any movie role, even the ones that he wrote and directed himself. There’s just a whopping great lack of charm, which makes it even harder to accept him in his lead role here, playing someone supposedly smart and charming enough to lead a con team on a number of successful jobs.

Burns is Jake, the leader of a group who have honed their craft over a number of years. His crew includes Gordo (Paul Giamatti), Miles (Brian Van Holt), Al (Louis Lombardi), and even a couple of cops (played by Donal Logue and Luis Guzmán). Things get sticky when the team con someone out of a load of money that actually belongs to a crime boss named King (Dustin Hoffman). Coming up with a way to appease King isn’t easy, but Jake thinks he can manage it, with the help of a woman named Lily (Rachel Weisz). There are so many ways things could go wrong though, especially with federal agent Gunther Butan (Andy Garcia) snooping around.

If you have seen any con movie then you will know how this film plays out. I could easily name you a dozen con films right now that are better than this, but that isn’t to say that this is a bad film. Director James Foley and writer Doug Jung may feel as if they are just going through things mechanically, but the mechanics of any con movie can end up being the most appealing aspect. Knowing how things are playing out just keeps viewers closely onside with the con artists, which is satisfying enough when they are trying to get one over on someone who deserves to be fleeced. A lack of surprise in a con movie doesn’t automatically equate to a lack of enjoyment, not for me anyway.

With the exception of Burns, the cast all help to make this more enjoyable than it otherwise would be. Hoffman is an enjoyable villain, and just about manages to feel like a real threat, and both Giamatti and Weisz are easy highlights. There are more people to keep an eye on though, including Morris Chestnut, Tom Lister Jr, Robert Forster (sadly onscreen for seconds), John Carroll Lynch, and Leland Orser. Alongside the other supporting players already mentioned, it’s almost as if someone was savvy enough to realise that a lot of talent was required to compensate for the bland leading man.

Nobody here will put this at the top of their C.V. This is a lesser film in almost every department. It manages to avoid being bad though. That is mostly due to the cast, but it is also partly due to the innate charm of the con movie format, which always tends to appeal to me. You could even say that I’m a sucker for them.

6/10

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The Mummy Returns (2001)

Pretty much everyone returns for this enjoyable sequel to the 1999 supernatural adventure flick, and that's a large part of the appeal. Introducing a character named the Scorpion King (played by Dwayne Johnson, still being billed as The Rock at this point), it may suffer from trying to stir in a few too many new ingredients, but it certainly tries to keep the focus on simple entertainment throughout.

We start with a prologue that explains the origin of the Scorpion King and his army, then it's time to join the O'Connell family as they explore more ancient ruins. Rick (Brendan Fraser) and Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) now have a curious young son, Alex (Freddie Boath), with them. They find the Bracelet of Anubis, which locks on to the arm of young Alex when he tries it on. The bracelet shows him a vision of the modern location of the Scorpion King, where an oasis and pyramid now stand, and that means Alex is then of great interest to people once again trying to resurrect Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo). This includes his love, Meela AKA Anck-su-namun (Patricia Velasquez). Alex is kidnapped, the O'Connells end up in hot pursuit, and someone will probably end up fighting the Scorpion King, otherwise that whole prologue would seem a bit pointless.

It's Stephen Sommers once again taking on the writing and directing duties here, and he has a lot of fun with many of the action set-pieces. The Mummy Returns may be many things, but it's never dull. It is, however, just not able to recapture quite the perfect mix of fun and spookiness that the first film had. This is partly to do with the "let's throw more of everything in and that should be great" approach, and partly to do with the fact that the CGI on display here feels even worse than the CGI in the preceding film. Sommers clearly thought computers were already at a stage where they could create anything onscreen that he could envision. They weren't. The actual Scorpion King himself remains a real eye-sore, and comes along after an extended encounter with some fierce, undead, pygmy creatures that feels like a decent idea executed terribly (scaling back what viewers could actually see, and using some puppetry, would have made that sequence much more effective).

Fraser and Weisz continue to work really well together, and Weisz also gets to do a lot more fighting this time around (as well as take part in some poor flashback scenes that show her in a previous life). Young Boath does well enough, cocky enough until he is reminded of the fact that he is often in the company of adults who wouldn't think twice about actually causing him harm. Vosloo and Velasquez both do solid work, and The Rock makes a good impression before he's replaced by a 32-bit videogame representation of his character. John Hannah is also back, and still a lot of fun, as is Oded Fehr, and you get fun supporting roles for Alun Armstrong and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, playing villains, and Shaun Parkes, as someone who might be able to help the O'Connells.

Although it's more of a mess, in terms of both the attempt to bulk out the thin plot and the CGI, The Mummy Returns still offers up enough solid popcorn pleasure to be a worthy successor to the first film. A lot of that is down to the cast, but the familiarity, while not necessarily breeding contempt, works against it as much as it works for it. Many people, myself included, will always have a soft spot for it though.

7/10

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The Mummy (1999)

Hmmmm, I wonder why I had the urge to revisit this movie series after recently watching Jungle Cruise. Yes, the fact that Jungle Cruise reworked that formula so well put me in mood for some more entertainment in the same vein.

Brendan Fraser stars as Rick O'Connell (feeling for all the world like Rick Dangerous, a late '80s videogame creation based on a very well-known adventure icon). Rick is the daring, reluctant hero in Stephen Sommers' entertaining blockbuster centred around the titular creature of horror infamy and, for those not averse to bombastic fun, it ain't half bad. 

The plot sees Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Omid Djalili and others on their way to the legendary city of the dead, Hamunaptra, to find a significant treasure before anyone else (with the main competition being a party led by the sly Beni, played by Kevin J. O'Connor). And then someone accidentally wakes up Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) and everyone realises that there's more to fear in the desert than just sunstroke. 

There's nothing surprising here, nothing subtle and nothing all that believable but there is a fun action adventure with supernatural elements that should please many movie fans. Will it please fans of the old Universal classics (or even the Hammer versions)? Probably not, though it must be said that there ARE a lot of respectful little nods to past versions of the tale. Sommers directs with a focus on the sheer entertainment side of things, also emphasised in the script that he wrote, from the story worked on with Kevin Jarre and Lloyd Fonvielle.

Fraser and Weisz are two leads who fit perfectly in their roles, both very capable in different ways, and they are thrown from one set-piece to the next, with time spent here and there showing Vosloo's character growing in strength and powers. Nobody has to emote too strongly but everyone does a good enough job of acting beside the various practical and computer effects. We also get the likes of Oded Fehr, Jonathan Hyde and Erick Avari in the cast so there are at least some people on screen to do more than just run and fight stuff.

But never mind the acting anyway, there are booby traps, deadly scarab beetles and, of course, plagues - all rendered nicely enough, even if the pixel count gets uncomfortably high at times. This is a blockbuster,  and it delivers on that score. Maybe not quite the "Indiana Jones" for a new generation, it certainly tries hard with it's mix of thrills, humour and energetic action set-pieces. And the cherry on top is a typically appropriate score from Jerry Goldsmith.

8/10

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Black Widow (2021)

A solo, and some might say long overdue, outing for the one female who made up part of the original Avengers movie line-up, Black Widow should have been a chance to right some wrongs. Considering how the character has been used in the movies, and her final main sequence in Avengers: Endgame, allowing her to just have the full spotlight and kick ass without being filtered through the male gaze should have been an easy "win" for the film-makers. Yes, I have repeatedly used the words "should have" here.

Set just after the events of Captain America: Civil War, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) ends up travelling to yet another foreign city, this time looking to meet up with her sorta-sister, Yelena (Florence Pugh). Yelena has managed to get hold of an antidote to the brainwashing drugs that have allowed a powerful figure named Dreykov (Ray Winstone) to create what essentially amounts to an army of Black Widows. Enlisting the help of the people who acted as their main father and mother figures (Alexei, played by David Harbour, and Melina, played by Rachel Weisz), Natasha and Yelena aim to access a top-secret base and thwart Dreykov's grand plan.

Written by Eric Pearson, no stranger to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (having worked on Thor: Ragnarok and some of the enjoyable "one-shots", amongst other projects), and directed by Cate Shortland, who IS a newcomer to this kind of movie, Black Widow feels like a film shaped by far too many people who didn't have to put their name to the main credits. Although the main story is as described above, and there's a decent core exploration of what it means to become a family unit, it's also an obvious and clumsy set-up for Pugh to become a part of the MCU. And any scenes that show a female being controlled by a dangerous man just calls to mind the far superior Jessica Jones show, which debuted over five years ago. This makes Black Widow feel a bit irrelevant when some better writing and direction could have avoided that, because consent/control is a theme that I think will remain depressingly relevant for many years to come.

The other thing working against the movie is the fact that Shortland seems to be directing from a number of notes handed over by men. That's the only reason I can think of for the amount of shots that have the camera sitting low and looking up to focus on the backsides of either Johansson or Pugh. 

And then you have the accents. Johansson and Pugh do okay, with the latter struggling more at times. Harbour focuses more on fun than consistency, Weisz tries her best throughout, and Winstone . . . well, Winstone clearly gives up after his earliest scenes, settling on a blend of Russian and Cockney for the rest of his screentime. Aside from the accents, everyone works hard to lift up a script that is beneath them. It's difficult to imagine a superhero movie making effective jokes about the "superhero landing" after Deadpool already did it so well, but they try it here. It falls flat, especially when they then have characters DO the superhero landing without giving them good enough reason to do it. William Hurt makes a welcome return, once again playing Secretary Ross, and Olga Kurylenko fans will be disappointed to find that she's only visible onscreen for about a minute.

There are a couple of good action sequences, but none of them feel close to the quality of some of the superb action set-pieces that we have seen in these movies. That would be absolutely fine if this was a small-scale movie looking to keep things minimal and low-key. It's not. The stakes may seem smaller, in a way, but the big action moments throw far too much around the main characters, whether they are battling multiple enemies in close-range combat, evading a huge tank-like vehicle, using a helicopter to attempt a prison break, or plummeting through the air as they avoid, and use, the debris from a huge explosion.

I've seen people complain about the mishandling of a character named Taskmaster. Not being familiar with this character before this movie, I'd still have to agree. Taskmaster is an impressive foe in the first half of the film, and enjoyably unstoppable, but the third act reveal is surprisingly disappointing, leading to a finale that it's hard to really care about.

There's still a level of polish and professionalism here that makes it easy entertainment, and the music by Lorne Balfe deserves a mention, but this never once felt like an essential big-screen experience. And that's not something you can usually say about any MCU release. I'll end up buying it, the completist in me will demand that I do, but it's not one I will be in a hurry to revisit.

6/10

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Mubi Monday: The Deep Blue Sea (2011)

Perhaps most easily viewed as the antithesis of Brief Encounter, this look at love, marriage, sex, and loss oozes quality from start to finish. It might look dreary throughout, a deliberate choice, and the exploration of the main themes may be quite depressing, but it's a fantastic showcase for the talents of the oft-overlooked Rachel Weisz.

Weisz is Hester Collyer, a young woman stuck in a marriage to Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale) that doesn't satisfy her. This is her excuse for beginning an affair with Freddie (Tom Hiddleston), a dashing RAF pilot who is trying to make the most of his time after doing his part to help win the war. Unfortunately, Freddie isn't as committed to the relationship as Hester, although how much of Hester's contribution comes from love, how much is lust, and how much from a sense of duty is hard to tell, especially as her husband, who has refused to give her a divorce, does his bit to allow her a way back to her marriage.

Based on the play by the prolific Terence Rattigan, The Deep Blue Sea is directed by Terence Davies, who adapted the material for the screen, in a way that dances between the big outbursts and the quieter moments of sadness. It mimics the extreme highs and lows of such a relationship, and does so without inadvertently turning the whole thing into some kind of parody of this kind of thing. That's easier said than done, considering the oh-so-Britishness of it all, the difference between what characters try not to say in public and what they shout aloud in relative privacy, and the old-fashioned values at the heart of it (and, no, those values are not shown as necessarily being any good).

When I mentioned Weisz being oft-overlooked I was mainly referring to my own view of her, but I also don't see her praised enough by film fans when general discussions are taking place. That's a shame, because she's almost always very good. Her skill is particularly noticeable here, playing a woman who feels the need to supplicate herself as she tries to keep hold of a man she loves, even though he doesn't feel things as strongly as she does. Hiddleston works well in the opposite role, happily revealing a colder and more cruel persona as he tries to distance himself, all juxtaposed alongside the sweeter moments in which he uses his charm and attractive smirking ways. Beale also does very well, taking on the least interesting of the three lead roles and allowing his character to regain your sympathy once his initial anger has abated.

It would have been very easy to push everyone here to go bigger, to take every scene to a point at which it starts to hammer you over the head, but Davies is the right person for the material, keeping things nicely quiet and underplayed throughout, the occasional Hiddeleston outburst aside (and I don't think anyone can keep Hiddleston from having an occasional outburst).

8/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

Mubi Monday: The Favourite (2018)

We're very lucky to have Yorgos Lanthimos. He's been making consistently great cinema for the past couple of decades now, and I recommend everything that he's done (although there are still one or two I have yet to see from his filmography, with the big omission being Alps).

The Favourite, from a script by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, is another jet-black comedy, not as deliberately strange as The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (in terms of both content and acting style) but still far enough removed from the norm to be a heady brew of laughs, nastiness, and occasional bemusement.

Olivia Colman is a frail and petulant Queen Anne, a woman who allows herself to be manipulated by her closest friend, Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz). The relationship between the two women allows Lady Sarah to effectively rule over the country, by proxy, and that displeases some (especially Harley, played by Nicholas Hoult, a member of parliament trying to put an end to a war with France). Things start to change, however, with the arrival of Abigail (Emma Stone), a young woman who is a cousin of Lady Sarah, yet now seems a world removed from her due to a life of misfortune and hardship caused by her gambling father. Abigail sees an opportunity to get back all that she lost over the years, but she will need to ingratiate herself with the queen, push Lady Sarah out of her privileged position, and deal with the likes of Harley, a man happy to help or hinder anyone, depending on what they might be able to offer him.

Based on actual events, amazingly enough, The Favourite somehow works in every way that it can be viewed: comedy, political thriller, period drama. It works best as a mix of all three, obviously, but anyone who doesn't appreciate the other aspects of it should at least find one main strand they can appreciate. Lanthimos weaves it all together with an expert touch, allowing the more modern and unflinching presentation to play up the way in which all of the main characters are happy and quick enough to roll around in effluence, sometimes literally, as long as they know it's a way to eventually rise higher up than before. There are times when the more modern sensibility threatens to pull viewers out of the experience, but they aren't frequent enough to become a major issue.

The acting is equal to the material, with Colman already receiving plenty of deserved praise for her wonderful portrayal of Queen Anne. Weisz and Stone shouldn't be lightly dismissed though, and it's worth celebrating the fact that we get a film giving us three such fantastic portrayals of such enthralling female characters. Hoult has a lot of fun in his role, Joe Alwyn is fine as another gentleman who ends up involved in the scheming, and Mark Gatiss is fitting in his small role (almost a cameo, really).

Not for the prudish, The Favourite is a fascinating look at various people trying to influence one another in a variety of ways. It's about power, about reputation, about love, and it's about Lanthimos cutting further and further into the heart of things once again with the precision of a skilled surgeon.

8/10

You can buy The Lobster (still his best movie) here.
Americans can buy it here.

The Brothers Bloom (2008)

The more I see and hear of Rian Johnson, the more impressed I get. I saw Brick a few years ago and didn't know what to make of it before it just kept growing and growing on me. I enjoyed Looper even while discussing the many flaws that became obvious as the end credits began to roll (flaws that didn't stop me from buying the movie as soon as it was released on Bluray). And now I have been utterly won over by The Brothers Bloom, a charming con movie with a great cast and a taste for the theatrical.

Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody play the brothers, two characters who discover the art of a good con at a very early age. Ruffalo is the elder of the two, Stephen, and he loves to plan things so well that when they happen it's all real. His perfect con would be one that really unfurls itself in a completely natural way and one where everyone involved gets what they want. His brother Bloom, on the other hand, wants to put his conning days behind him. He's confused and unhappy, despite the exciting life he leads with Stephen and their near-mute accomplice, Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi). Stephen doesn't want to lose the company of his brother and so he comes up with that movie standard, one last big job. The mark this time around is Penelope (Rachel Weisz), a rich young woman with far too much time on her hands and not enough to hold her interest. Bloom, despite himself, warms to the idea and it's not long before he's in character once more and helping a beautiful woman to get some excitement in her life while losing some of her money. Because everyone should get what they want.

Over the years, a great con movie has ultimately become as hard to pull off as any actual con scheme. I suppose it can easily be argued that the con movie is always a con anyway, attempting to wrong-foot the viewer whenever possible, but still leaving them entertained and feeling good about having one pulled over on them (everyone gets what they want). The grandfather of the con movie is, of course, The Sting, but there are many other greats to check out, with personal favourites of mine being The Grifters (if you haven't seen it already then do so ASAP), Matchstick Men and House Of Games (the directorial debut of the great David Mamet). These movies all do a fantastic job, but they also add to the pile of references that movie viewers have to choose from, making each subsequent con movie that little bit harder to get right. People know what to look out for, they know to stay mistrustful of everything and they know how things have panned out in the past.

This is why writer-director Johnson excels with his own contribution to the subgenre. The Brothers Bloom seems to acknowledge right from the very beginning that the well-known history and film presence of cons can make it hard to come up with anything completely fresh, but then it ploughs ahead anyway and wins you over thanks to the performances, the style of the film and a real sense for the theatrical. Mark Ruffalo may play a character who wants to tell a great story, and wants that story to unfold as if it's a natural thing instead of a story being told, but he feels very much like an outlet for the director to voice his hopes and dreams. He's a storyteller in search of the perfect story, which is surely what every writer-director seeks throughout their career.

Mixing comedy and some drama with some wonderful characters and great set-pieces, The Brothers Bloom won't be for everyone, of course, but it's a beautiful, intelligent and cine-literate piece of work that I'm surprised isn't given more praise.

Brody and Ruffalo work very well together and are very believable as brothers, Rinko Kikuchi gets to play one of the coolest characters I can think of in the past decade and Rachel Weisz has one of the best roles of her career. Her character starts off as someone who may just be annoyingly quirky, but soon becomes someone with an infectious joy that viewers won't want to see come to any harm, physically or emotionally. There are fantastic little supporting turns from the likes of Robbie Coltrane, Maximilian Schell, Andy Nyman, Nora Zehetner (onscreen for one brief scene only) and Ricky Jay (narrating). And eagle-eyed fans of Joseph Gordon-Levitt can spot him in the background of a party scene during the first 10-15 minutes. He has no actual dialogue or role, he's just there, hanging out and being cool.

People judging a con movie by how effectively they were conned may rate this one lower than I did because, ultimately, it's not that surprising for most of its runtime. Clues are littered throughout the script and design of each scene. However, they may be missing one important factor. The con works. Viewers will find themselves, as I did, watching for the twists and turns and enjoying each revelation and when the end credits roll they'll realise that, actually, they just enjoyed a great story. Which is what Johnson intended and what left me with such a warm glow inside and an urge to buy the film as soon as possible. Everyone gets what they want.

9/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brothers-Bloom-Blu-ray-Adrien-Brody/dp/B003YUBZ66/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1364353176&sr=8-2