French Exit (2021)

Score: 3 / 5

Michelle Pfeiffer is one of the best character actors of her generation, usually combining her age-defying beauty with cold, distant cruelty. Naturally, this often eases her into villainous roles, ones that ooze gilded sensuality from balustrades of wealth as she climbs (or descends) steps of social strata. And so is the case in French Exit, a rare comedy that capitalizes on Pfeiffer's unique sense of luxurious detachment. If produced onstage, it would almost certainly be labeled as a farce: its absurd contrivances remind me more of Frank Capra or Noel Coward than of anything in Pfeiffer's list of credits. Even the first episode of Schitt's Creek was more confident in embracing farce than this movie. Apart from Pfeiffer's character, everyone else feels like a caricature meant to swirl around her and inform little of the story or themes apart from the weirdness of her life.

Frances Price is newly broke. A Manhattan heiress and socialite, some years widowed, she has been raising her son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) much as she herself behaves. Indifferent to the restrictions of the lives of others, she -- in an early introductory scene -- plucks her son out of boarding school with a rebellious smirk, defying the headmaster and tempting Malcolm to indulge his whims. But she's playful and engaging, probably more with her son than she was in her marriage. Time leaps forward quickly to Malcolm as a young man, swaddled in his privilege (Hedges is deliciously disassociated from his character), secretly engaged to his girlfriend (Imogen Poots). Suddenly -- and this is the inciting incident -- Frances is slapped with the reality that she and Malcolm have blown through their entire fortune.

Of course, that's what happens after probably two decades of living it up without any new income. Frances can't even pay her housekeeper the $600 of her wages. Instead, she starts to crack, drinking her last reserves of good wine as she sharpens knives in a dark kitchen; Malcolm's latent fear in seeing her thus is a wealth of humor for us, but it reminds us that dramatic renditions of this scenario would probably result in some kind of violence. Not so here, where the characters seem to be keenly aware that they are clichés -- Frances drily says as much to her friend Joan (Susan Coyne) -- as sad, rich white people who are no longer rich.

Thankfully, Joan offers her empty Paris apartment to her newly homeless friends, and so Frances and Malcolm embark on the titular French "exit." They take few possessions with them, but they intentionally bring Small Frank, their formerly stray black cat, whose green stare and deliberate movements suggest alarming sentience (spoiler alert: the cat is evidently Frances's husband reincarnated). Paris doesn't seem to fix the relational problems Frances and Malcolm have, but they are soon jolted out of their self-pitying stupor by Madame Reynard (the hilarious Valerie Mahaffey), an eccentric expat who seems to think her own first name is "Madame." Her bubbly energy almost entirely disguises the fact that she is actively reinventing herself, and her eagerness to forge kinship with Frances is endearing when it's not a little cringey. Frances is initially cruel to her, determined to ward off any real emotions, and so when Madame Reynard simply replies, in a voice that only slightly breaks, "I'm ... lonely," she immediately breaks any ice left between the women.

Other, poorer attempts at human connection become the driving motifs of the film, often helped by the production design. Though it seems to take place in the present day, characters often use pay phones or send postcards to communicate, and their stilted language reminds me more of George Bernard Shaw or David Lindsay-Abaire than of real-life speaking patterns. Other characters fly in and often stay in the apartment, including Danielle Macdonald as a sad fortune teller on the transatlantic ship who psychically knew Small Frank wasn't just a cat, a private investigator (Isaach de Bankole) Frances uses to locate Small Frank when he disappears, and even Malcolm's recent ex-fiancée shows up again with her new boyfriend. By the time Joan checks in on her friend and discovers her apartment has become a bizarre hostel, the movie careens wildly toward its simple, silly, and sweet ending. It's not a rollicking comedy the whole time -- although when a seance results in Tracy Letts doing voiceover as Frances's deceased husband, I almost lost it -- but it's got some cool ideas on its mind.

The Father (2021)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Easily the most immersive movie to depict the inner life of someone with dementia, The Father is finally available for the masses to view. Critics hailed it as Anthony Hopkins's best work yet long before he won the highly contested Best Actor Oscar, and yet so few of us had been able to see it for ourselves. And, indeed, he does showcase some of the best acting of the year and of his lengthy career. With impossibly precise technique, he imbues his 80-something-year-old character (also named Anthony) with the vim and vigor of someone who will certainly not go gentle into his good night, whose charisma and charm match his toxic volatility. You get the distinct impression that he was a man of his time, and was never an easy man to be with, even before the dementia set in. And yet his wit and passion for life still seek outlets, and so he seems to crave the attention of various people passing through his London flat.

And while Hopkins is astonishing here, I can't help but feel the movie as a whole is being overlooked by critics and audiences with stars in their eyes. Writer/director Florian Zeller, in adapting his own play, fully puts us in Anthony's world. It must be said, he occasionally allows us moments of insight and pain by shifting our focus to Anthony's daughter (an awesome Olivia Colman), and various other characters played by Rufus Sewell, Mark Gatiss, Olivia Williams, and Imogen Poots; all are excellent here. But, locked as we are within Anthony's mind and flat, the film forces us to experience a world at once familiar and alien.

Production designer Peter Francis (The Children Act, King Lear) and editor Yorgos Lamprinos work hard to subtly change the flat in every scene, quietly shifting our sense of reality along with Anthony's. The tiles of the kitchen backsplash change colors; rooms will be messy or tidy in juxtaposed shots; the layout of rooms doesn't ever seem to make logical or architectural sense. In an inspired bit of casting, Olivia Williams sometimes enters and introduces herself as Anthony's daughter; she looks a bit like Colman, and the film never gives us certainty as to which is which. When Poots shows up as the new at-home caregiver, Anthony is almost randy with excitement before we learn that he was abusive and perhaps violent with the previous maid; after offering her an aperitif, his melancholia takes over and he muses about her resemblance to his other daughter.

As the scenes progress, Anthony (and the audience) isn't ever sure if his lived experience is real, or a memory, or perhaps a fantasy. Is it indeed his flat, or is he living with his troubled daughter? Is his daughter married to a weary and sour man, or did she recently fall in love with plans to move to Paris? Does he have a son-in-law, or did he? Or are there two now? As characters enter and exit, looking vaguely alike, usually irritated that Anthony cannot identify them, we never know who is who, or what is real, making each fleeting moment vital. The urgency of our attempting to understand it all comes from our desire for self-contained plots and YouTube videos to explain the connections; Zeller's film eschews that, and dares us to feel the pain of not having closure, or even comprehension.

Precious few movies are as complex and confusing as they are compelling and compassionate, and The Father gets it all right. It reminded me often of the rare movies that deal with these issues -- chief of which, Still Alice and Relic, would make an interesting (and depressing) triple feature -- and how effective they are when not dripping with sentiment. The sense of danger, of desperation, of fear make these movies all the more tragic; they also, I think, suggest hope and comfort in ways that are far more profound than you would find in a Hallmark special. But be sure to bring tissues to this one.

Black Christmas (2019)

Score: 1.5 / 5

The first thing you need to know about the newest iteration of Black Christmas is that it shares almost nothing with the earlier versions. In each, a handful of sorority sisters try to make their holiday break merry while being stalked and murdered in their own house. That's where the similarities stop. While the 1974 original and 2006 remake feature the deranged killer Billy (at least, we assume that's him), whose strange obsessions result in festive bloodshed, this new version completely tears away from this tradition. We are now dealing with a cult of masked and robed men, a fraternity seeking to put campus women "back in line." Sure, some of the murders feel vaguely similar, especially the initial icicle stabbing, but by the halfway point we know full well who the killers are, their motives, and their M.O., and so the familiarity is forced out.

The second thing you need to know about the new flick is that it is not a Christmas movie. I mean, it takes place during holiday break, but the holiday setting and decor is purely incidental. What this Black Christmas is is a renewed salvo of the gender-based war on male-dominated horror movies (something I wasn't really sure we were in, but writer/director Sophia Takal apparently thinks otherwise). The frat brothers, led by a misogynistic professor (Cary Elwes) at historically sexist Hawthorne College (and yes, Takal, you did just alienate your literary audience members with the misreading of Scarlet Letter), have discovered black magic and a way to let their founder possess them. It's a cheap and surprisingly stupid ploy to pull, one that lessens the imminent threat of rape culture and gender-based violence on college campuses. These boys are capable of evil all on their own, without adding the bizarre and unspecific dark arts to the mix.

The third thing you need to know about the new flick is that the first half is actually quite entertaining. While the movie's scares aren't generally effective, the comedy and drama are utterly engrossing. Rapid-fire dialogue reveal the woke girls' complete disdain for the boys on their campus, building the culture of Hawthorne College didactically while distinguishing girls based on their experiences. One has a dutifully respectful boyfriend who is quite content supporting these women. One seems happy to flirt boys and leave them cold, knowing they're all trash. One was raped at a frat party recently. They pull together some really strong scenes of sisterhood-building and even perform a hardcore anti-rape version of "Up on the Rooftop" in front of the rapist frat boys in skimpy holiday outfits. It's all quite empowering, until it's suddenly not; that is, when they're home and the boys attack.

The final thing you need to know about this movie is that it's one of the biggest disappointments this year. I loved the dialogue in the early scenes, and I would rewatch these scenes again happily. It's the movie's abysmal payoff I can't stand. By the big middle-of-the-movie turn, consisting of cultish robed murderers invading the sorority house, I had completely checked out. It stopped being a feminist college movie and started being a schlocky slasher with little to no artistic purpose or merit and the gall to be intellectually insulting to boot.

Green Room (2016)

Score: 4 / 5

You say you never expected a movie pitting cowboys against aliens. I say I never expected a movie pitting rock musicians against neo-Nazi skinheads. But here it is, and it's awesome.

A wry, witty first act sets up the film to be something between dark satire and absurdist thriller. Our protagonists, "the Ain't Rights" band members, find themselves wandering the Pacific Northwest on their down-and-out tour. A seemingly fortuitous opportunity arises, and the band go to a remote bar deep in the woods. Upon recognizing its clientele as neo-Nazis, the band provoke the crowd before performing their concert, and then prepare to depart. They accidentally find a murdered woman in their green room, and immediately find themselves held at gunpoint by the bouncers, who confiscate their phones. The night quickly explodes into violence and ushers in a surprising bloodbath that lasts a better part of an hour.

If you know me at all, you know I don't handle body horror well, and as soon as we see bones break or skin tear, my mind turns to mush. I wasn't expecting it, so you can be sure my consciousness was in question for most of this film. From what I can recall, the both the story and its characters are thin: It's a strange sort of reverse-home-invasion plot featuring little more than adrenalized bodies ready to be "cut the fuck up" (as Jada Pinkett Smith says in Scream 2).

The interest here is in the excellent presentation of the proceedings. It's not exactly an unknown story, and between the genre and its tropes, the film could be a big yawn. Director Jeremy Saulier pulls the film taut, keeping everything clear and clean in a world of little but gore and grime, and indulging in the smallest of visual pleasures. Machetes and pit bulls and fire extinguishers and shotguns and pocket-knives are all used with indiscriminate violence as the players launch themselves upon the others. There's not a moment when Saulier himself gets caught up in the horrors and the frenzied kinetic action, rather keeping a calculated and distinctly rhythmic eye on everything. His unnerving sense of atmosphere and pace keep things totally accessible and even believable; even the obvious spectacular, shock-value scares are truly shocking because we can believe in the horrors we're witnessing.

Anton Yelchin and Patrick Stewart play the respective leaders of the opposing factions, and together they carry the film. Sean Porter's cinematography and Julia Bloch's editing keep these two men at the center of our attention, and they help focus a film that could have easily sunk into confused waste. Instead, they and director Saulier craft a fierce, fevered foray into hell that raises questions about savagery and brutality, and when fighting back can be the only worthwhile response to the same.

IMDb: Green Room