Tag Archives: Christie Robb

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The Glitter and the Gold

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Downton Abbey

by Christie Robb

Like a proper English tea, the Downton Abbey movie delivers a little bit of everything with a light, elegant—sometimes even whimsical—touch.

A royal visit to the titular estate in 1927 provides the inciting incident that reunites fans of the popular TV series with the Crawley family and their domestic staff. The film starts with a lengthy show recap (for those who haven’t anticipated the film by binge-watching all six seasons). It then squeezes at least half a season’s worth of drama into a two-hour runtime.

No spoilers here, but expect familiar Downton themes delivered in unexpected ways: violence, illness, romance, jealousy, snobbery, inheritance issues, reputation anxiety, surprise Crawley cousins, and buffoonery provided by a certain sad-sack ex-valet.   

Unlike the excellent series finale that neatly wrapped up every character’s storyline, the film does not focus equally on all the main characters. Director Michael Engler returns from the TV version, and the film reads more as a continuation of the story than an extended epilogue, much like an extra-long Christmas special without the holiday bit.

Still, the Downton movie’s production values are a tad higher, providing extended drone shots of the impressive house and grounds. There are more sets, showing us previously unseen rooms inside the Abbey, a bit more of the village, and a neighboring, even fancier abode that hosts a ball.

The ensemble cast slips effortlessly back into their former roles, highlighted by the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith) and Isobel Merton (née Crawley, Penelope Wilton) and their delicious repartee full of sniping and droll bon mots. 

This is definitely a film made for fans of the show, as a newbie would probably be completely lost even with the recap. But for those who spent 2011-2016 devouring the show like a warm scone fresh out of the oven, the movie is a delightfully unnecessary, but very welcome, treat.

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A Series of Infuriating Events

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Official Secrets

by Christie Robb

Director Gavin Hood grounds the shitshow that was the 2003 Iraq invasion in the intimate true story of the British Intelligence whistleblower, Katherine Gun (Keira Knightley).

Gun comes across an NSA email directing the British government to spy on smaller nations in the UN Security Council in order to blackmail them into voting for war. Attempting to avert an unjust war and save lives, Gun leaks the document to the press. But in doing so, she’s in violation of the Official Secrets Act.

The Observer’s front-page story, based on the email, makes international headlines. Unfortunately, it’s almost immediately delegitimized when an office drone tragically runs the article through spell check, changing the Americanized spelling of “favorite” to the British “favourite”—causing speculation that the entire email was a fake planted by the then-popular antiwar movement.

Gun confesses to the leak and is arrested, throwing her life into chaos. Knightley spends most of the film believably portraying a woman constantly on the edge of throwing up as she is bullied relentlessly by the state.

The film is praiseworthy in the way it covers a civilian taking a moral stand against a corrupt state.

Unfortunately, it’s also a bit unfocused, splitting attention between Gun,
her lawyer (Ralph Fiennes), and reporter Martin Bright (Matt Smith). Director Hood (Eye in the Sky, Ender’s Game) never manages to create a single narrative out of his multiple threads, making it tough to remain invested with any one particular storyline.

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Heart of Darkness

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Cold Case Hammarskjöld


by Christie Robb

Initially an exploration of the suspicious death of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961, Mads Brügger’s documentary Cold Case Hammarskjöld takes a sharp turn down a rabbit hole into the lengths taken to maintain white supremacy in Africa. 

In a meta move, Brügger makes himself and the process of creating the documentary as much of a focus as Hammarskjöld and the film’s elderly interview subjects. Brügger’s a bit of a fop—dressing in the same clothes affected by the “villain” of the film and occasionally sporting a pith helmet. In much of it, Brügger looms over a black female secretary explaining the twists and turns of his years-long investigation.

You are never unaware that the narrative is being shaped by a white male European.

Which, of course, is much of what the film is about—who gets to shape the story. And the story is both about what really happened to Hammarskjöld (pilot error or multinational assassination conspiracy) and the story of who gets to script the future of Africa. 

The looming is an interesting move, but tends to slow down the pace of the film. Much of the information is presented twice—in the style of a more conventional documentary and via Brügger’s pontification to the secretary. 

With such a breadth of information to cover, the film would have benefited from a bit less artifice and a bit more contextual information. Still, it’ll stay with you, prompting some serious thinking about the intersections of political and corporate interests and what people will do to maintain power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTtuZmcojc

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A Masterpiece It Is Not

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Leo Da Vinci: Mission Mona Lisa

by Christie Robb and Emmy Clifton

During the recent heatwave as a bid to keep everyone entertained and out of the sun, I asked my upcoming Kindergartner, Emmy, to help me with my latest movie review.

Mom says…

Even a cup of ill-timed afternoon coffee was barely enough to keep me from nodding off during director Sergio Manifo’s animated adventure. The premise was interesting, centered around a teenage Leonardo Da Vinci who brings mechanical contraptions into being in  15th century Italy. But as we passed the 10 minute mark with no inciting incident, I realized we were in trouble.

Eventually we get it. Leo’s friend Lisa’s farm has been vandalized. The crops are destroyed. And without them, Lisa’s dad can’t pay the mortgage and she’ll have to be married off to the anemic son of their nobleman landlord.

The film has a little bit of everything: jokes that don’t land, phoned-in voice acting, questionable gender stereotypes (girls are described as “moody” and cry to get their way), characters who lack development, painful musical numbers that appear out of nowhere, exposition dumps delivered through dialogue, and a romance that makes Anakin and Padme’s in Attack of the Clones look nuanced.

But my favorite thing by far is the closing song. I’ll leave you with some of the lyrics:

When I am here with you

I’m a fish inside a creek

And I don’t know how to speak

Maybe a mobile phone would help

Kid says…

I enjoyed it more than the Little Mermaid, but less than Frozen. Leo was my favorite character. He did the fun stuff. Lisa, the girl, was ok. I’d watch it again. It was kind of scary in parts. Why does everything end up a skeleton in this movie?

Mom’s Verdict:

Emmy’s Verdict:

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Rocking Behind the Curtain

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Leto

by Christie Robb

Entrancing, Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto layers a variety of stylistic flourishes over the relatively simple plot—a love triangle between a rising rock star, his mentor, and the mentor’s wife.  Set in 1980s Leningrad, I was thrown off-balance from the first.

When it comes down to it, I don’t know all that much about rock and roll. I know even less about the Soviet Union.

So, it was a bit of a surprise to see OG hipsters playing a show to a crowd of fans. But then I noticed that the fans were sitting politely in their seats and that men in suits patrolled the performance hall ready to put down any display of unruly behavior—piling on a sweet-faced girl who sedately held up a small poster with a hand-drawn heart on it.

This is a country where, if you are going to play, you first have to have your lyrics analyzed for ideological appropriateness.

The rising star Viktor Tsoi (Teo Yoo) and his mentor Mike Naumenko (Roma Zver) were both real people fronting the influential bands Kino and Zoopark, respectively.  A statement contained within the credits informs that the plot was based on Naumenko’s wife Natalia’s (Irina Starshenbaum) memories. However, there is also a character credited as “sceptic” who often breaks the fourth wall to explain to the viewer that “Sadly, this did not happen.”

 Shot in moody black and white, with emotional pops of color, periodically animation creeps in to punctuate the more fraught moments. There’s also the occasional song and dance number in what is roughly a biopic—featuring covers of Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger”, and Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.”

Weird, occasionally wandering, Leto, provided a glimpse into the experience of artists living in a gritty, austere world that I’ve not thought much about before, but probably will now.

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Gimme an A! A! R! P!

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Poms

by Christie Robb

At a time when movies are pushing three hours, it feels weird to want one to run longer, but at just over an hour and a half, Poms feels way too short. It’s like a long SNL sketch.

A female-centric comedy about a retired teacher aching for one last shot at her childhood dream of becoming a cheerleader seems like a good option for Mother’s Day weekend—especially for the Boomers and their kids. The cast looks solid: Diane Keaton, Jacki Weaver, Pam Grier, and Rhea Perlman. Poms coming “from the studio that brought you Bad Moms” appears promising.

But it’s all just perfunctory.

Director Zara Hayes and writer Shane Atkinson, both TV veterans making feature debuts, introduce characters via montage and then give them little to do or say.

People become strange antagonists, set on denying the senior cheerleading squad practice/performance time for no discernible reason. Folks burst into tears or have 180 degree shifts in perspective simply because the plot demands it.

Still, Keaton’s performance of a woman striving to live in the moment while hiding terminal cancer is effective. The chemistry between Keaton’s snarky Martha and Jacki Weaver’s bubbly Sheryl is cute. And when they are performing, the women look like they are having a nice time.

You just wish that there was more of a story there, more character development, more cheerleading even. The cast is way too good for this.

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Portrait of an Empty Cup

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Diane

by Christie Robb

There’s a meme, “You can’t pour from an empty cup. Take care of yourself first.” Writer/director Kent Jones’s Diane is a character study of a woman in need of self-care. Her cup has gone bone dry.

The 70-ish widowed and retired Diane (played by the phenomenal Mary Kay Place) spends her days in service to others. She plays cards at the bedside of a cousin dying of cervical cancer. She brings casseroles to friends recovering from illnesses. She serves macaroni and cheese at a soup kitchen. And she returns again and again to the disheveled apartment of her drug addict son, incurring his abuse as she begs him to return to the clinic for treatment.

But when asked how she is doing, Diane responds with a pat response of, “I’m fine,” deflecting the conversation away from herself.

Over time the distractions disappear, giving Diane a lonely space to focus on herself. But that space exposes a shameful memory from her past that she’s kept busy trying to avoid by performing penance.

Place’s performance is raw and layered. The cracks she reveals in Diane’s polite self-sacrificing façade are natural, relatable and quietly devastating. And most of this is delivered by way of a slight change of facial expression or a shift in body language.

She anchors the film, and it emerges as an effective study of the everyday failures and secret shame that most of us carry with us as we drive about in our lives trying to do better this time.





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Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

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The Hummingbird Project

by Christie Robb

Director Kim Nguyen’s contributes a meditation into the nature of success in the modern world.

Wall Street traders and cousins Vincent and Anton Zaleski (Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgard) resign from their jobs as high-frequency traders and embark on a quest to build a ramrod-straight fiber-optic cable joining the servers of the Kansas and New York stock exchanges. The objective: to make stock trades a millisecond faster than their competitors and make millions in the time it takes for a hummingbird to flap its wings.

Obstacles block their path—mountains, swamps, health issues, reluctant property owners, and a vengeful ex-boss played by Salma Hayek.

The technobabble in the film feels like it is based-on-a-true story. But, it isn’t. Eisenberg plays Vincent as a monomaniac. He’s almost as focused on his line as Ahab is consumed by destroying Moby-Dick. Skarsgard disappears into the role of Anton, contorting his height into an excruciating stoop and delivering a genius-on-the-spectrum performance that is nuanced, funny, sad, and kind of inspiring.

The Hummingbird Project is often beautifully shot, with frequent use of slow motion footage. However, it struggles in focus. It could easily have been tweaked into several different movies. One can imagine editing it into a comedy like Office Space. It could have been Hitchcockian corporate thriller by expanding Hayek’s role. Or it could have shone more of a spotlight on the relationship between characters to flesh out what seems to be the movie’s purpose: questioning whether racing for wealth is really a better use of time than downshifting to spend time with the people around you.

As it is, the movie tries to be too many things and ends up being an ok entry rather than a good one.

 





For Your Queue

I Don’t Want to Go Out – Week of March 18

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A couple of excellent options this week in home entertainment. The year’s best super hero movie expands its home release to DVD, and the strangely underappreciated Mary Poppins Returns comes home (so get that bedroom cleaned up!)

Click the film title for the full review.

Mary Poppins Returns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3jsfXDZLIY

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse





For Your Queue

I Don’t Want to Go Out—Week of February 25

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The best animated film of 2018 swings into your living room this week, along with (if you’re smart) an instant cult classic. Other biggies of 2018 make their way home this week, so let us help you sort this out.

Click the title for the full review.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Border

Ralph Breaks the Internet

Mary Queen of Scots

The Possession of Hannah Grace