At The Cinema - September 2014

A Walk Among the Tombstones – 7

You’ll like this movie if you like atmosphere, murder, and Liam Neeson

Finally, the worst summer of movies I can remember brings an adult movie.  The Liam Neeson renaissance continues with this murky tale of two creepy killers who kidnap and dismember young women.  Neeson plays Matt Scudder, a retired NYPD cop who is still carrying and flashing his old badge as an unlicensed private investigator and doer of favors for questionable characters. 

The movie begins on the day in 1991 that the heavy drinking cop Scudder stops drinking because of a shootout he gets involved in while inebriated. 

The movie jumps to 1999 when Scudder is now a PI.  It’s an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that leads Scudder to a client.  He’s a drug dealer whose wife was kidnapped and when he couldn’t pay all the ransom, the kidnappers chop her body up and leave it in a trunk.  It seems their business plan is to pick on drug dealers, and it is a lucrative if risky one.  If you are going to execute such a plan it certainly helps to be completely psycho and this pair fits the bill. 

Scudder immediately realizes what he is dealing with and the action ramps up.  If you’ve missed good old fashioned detective movies, this one is a throwback.  But rest assured The Maltese Falcon had no blood and gore like this one dishes up.  These are gruesome sickos and the climax is predestined to be a wet one, even if they go a little bit overboard with alcoholism imagery.

This is Where I Leave You – 7

You’ll like this movie if you like dysfunctional family comedies.

This is a star-studded affair about a father who dies leaving a wife (an enthusiastically enhanced Jane Fonda) who breaks the news to her 4 children (Tina Fey, Corey Stoler, Jason Bateman, and Adam Dryer) that the father wants them to sit chiva after his death, even though the family is not Jewish.  So why?  It’s called a plot device, just like the affairs three of the kids will cram into the next week.  Seven days of family togetherness would test a family with no drama.  This is not that family.

This script is a hodge podgy mess.  The direction is incoherent.  But stars are stars for a reason.  They command your attention, and make you believe.  So the crew yanks the laughs out of the material and you almost believe it all.  It’s not all bad. 

Here’s the fun I have at a movie like this.  I recently started binge watching a TV show called Rectify and was taken with an actress named Abigail Spencer who steals every scene she’s in.  Cool show and very promising actress.  She’s in this movie as Jason Bateman’s cheating wife and she’s POW!  I love spotting someone I think is a future star.

So I can’t wait to see what she does next. 

Just like, I can’t wait to see Carrie Coon (The Leftovers on HBO) in Gone Girl.

I can’t wait to see Jessica Chastain again.

I can’t wait to see what Brit Marling does next.

I wish Kate Beckinsale would get a great script

I wish Emmy Rossum would make a musical (preferably with Anne Hathaway and Anna Kendrick)

I wish Rooney Mara would do another Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie.

Scanning the Satellite

Parkland – 8

Parkland is the hospital in Dallas where both John F Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald were taken to try to save their lives.  This is a star studded docudrama that recounts those memorable 3 days in Dallas in 1963.  It’s a matter of fact re-telling and the details it reveals are fascinating.  Don't know why this movie was so under the radar.

And here's Abigail