Quick Takes, April 2025

Sophie Thatcher in Companion

Drew Hancock's Companion, a Sci-Fi thriller, is a clever feature debut from the writer/director. For a B movie about sex robots running amuck, the film is surprisingly witty and well acted. Hancock's direction remains assured and arch even as the body count rises. Sophie Thatcher (Heretic, Yellowjackets) continues to show why she she is a rising lead. Jack Quaid is a suitably odious villain. In support, Lukas Gage, Rupert Friend, and Harvey Guillén serve the premise nicely.

Fans of the mini-series Adolescence should check out a 2021 feature from star Stephen Graham and director Philip Barantini that is also done in one continuous shot. Boiling Point pictures a London chef (Graham) whose life is coming apart at the seams. I'm a little ambivalent about the value of one shot features, but, as with Adolescence, the compelling performances help to obscure the project's melodramatic contrivances. Currently streaming on Tubi.

Bill Gunn's Ganja & Hess, from 1973, is an indie vampire flick that has deservedly gained cult status. The picture is not really a Blaxploitation film or a horror film, though elements of these two genres are among the many ingredients contained within, but a poetic meditation on Afro-American identity. The titular Dr. Hess Green (Night of the Living Dead's Duane Jones) is torn between the spiritualism of his African roots and American Christianity. His vampirism represents his psyche's alienation and bifurcation. Perhaps fittingly, an uneven film, but also a haunting one.

Mike Mills' Thumbsucker, from 2005, is a coming of age dramedy with, as the title implies a few quirks. An adaptation of Walter Kirn's novel (he also wrote the novel that the film Up in the Air is based on), Thumbsucker adroitly pictures adolescence as a time when the young try on varying personas while searching for their true self (or selves). Nothing earthshaking, but the accomplished cast is a treat: including Lou Taylor Pucci, Vincent D'Onofrio, Tilda Swinton, Kelli Garner, and Vince Vaughn. Keanu Reeves is perfectly cast as a New Age dentist.

Uberto Pasolini's Nowhere Special is a film of heart-tugging social realism, my bête noire, that snuck into US release a few years after it opened in Britain. James Norton plays John, a window washer and single father of a four year old boy, who must find caregivers for his son after learning of his impending death. Norton is adept at tracing the Kübler-Ross arc of his character, but is not roughhewn or sickly looking enough to embody his role. Little Daniel Lamont has big eyes, but no affect. The supporting players usually register and Pasolini knows where to place his camera, but this is is a dispiritingly tasteful movie about death. John's search for adoptive parents to raise his child brings forth the mildest of social satire. John eventually knuckles under and accept the guidance of kindly civil servants. Harrumph and blech!

J Lee Thompson's Taras Bulba is a misbegotten Cossack epic set in the 16th century. The look of the film is colorful, the film was shot in Argentina, but the dramatic impact is nil. At times, the film, thanks to Franz Waxman's rousing score, resembles a musical rather than a combat film. Yul Brynner even warbles a few bars. The main problem is the casting of Tony Curtis as the son of the title character who is played by Brynner. Now I was not a math major, but Brynner was only five years older than Curtis. Curtis is supposed to be eighteen or so when he leaves his homestead to go to college in Kiev and subsequently falls in love with a Polish princess. Curtis is just too old to play juvenile romantic ardor like he did in The Black Shield of Falworth. Both Curtis and Brynner get to show off their physicality in their roles, but flail when intoning the sententious codswallop rendered by a phalanx of screenwriters. Taras Bulba is inane, but not always dull. 

Gordon Douglas' Young at Heart is a 1954 vanilla musical adaptation of the 1938 film Four Daughters, though this time with one less daughter. Doris Day and Frank Sinatra are top-billed in this Warners film, but Sinatra doesn't show up till 45 minutes into the picture and the pair share only one duet. Day's numbers are as anodyne as the plot, but Sinatra gets to warble three classics: "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)", "Just One of Those Things", and "Someone to Watch Over Me". Otherwise. a negligible entertainment featuring Ethel Barrymore, Dorothy Malone, Gig Young, Robert Keith, and Alan Hale Sr.

Craig Johnson's The Parenting tries for a balance of comedy and horror. The film is never scary and rarely comic. A bland script strands such talented players as Lisa Kudrow, Brian Cox, Edie Falco, Parker Posey, and Dean Norris. The younger leads blend into the, admittedly nice, production design. Instantly forgettable.

Sinners

Michael B. Jordan as Stack and Smoke

I liked Ryan Coogler's new film, Sinners, his best and most personal film since Fruitvale Station. The film is a musical vampire flick set in the Mississippi of 1932. Michael B. Jordan, in his fifth film with Coogler, plays twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, who journey back to their home town after a lucrative sojourn in Chicago. They are set upon opening a juke joint, but soon must contend with the Klan and a passel of vampires. Jordan is a delight, fully relaxed in the heroic mythos of his dual roles. The production design is outstanding, handsomely evoking the period while also looking lived in. I particularly appreciated the supporting performances of Omar Miller and Delroy Lindo.

That said, I did not love the film. I dug the film's use of blues and folk songs (though the performers taking a writing credit on Wild Mountain Thyme seems a stretch), but thought Ludwig Göransson's score was as overbearing as his one for Oppenheimer. The female supporting roles Coogler has drawn for the film are ridiculously one dimensional. Also, I don't know how the vampires fit into the rather jumbled cosmology of Sinners. Jack O'Connell provides a vivid turn as the alpha vampire, but the creatures reason for being remain murky. Sinners is primarily a parable about Afro-American survival in the US with the sinners finding exultation Saturday night on the dance floor and solace at church on Sunday morning. The vampires are much more drawn to the music of the juke joint at night than gospel in the morning light, but there is no devil in a film that is full of the devil's music.

I think Coogler bit off more he could chew in Sinners, but salute him for his originality and daring in an era of corporate retreads. Sinners does contain one bravura moment where the musical performers in the juke joint conjure spirits of disparate musicians from the past and future who join in the jam, all links in the chain of the blues. The Buddy Guy cameo is also a nice touch. All in all, though, I prefer another recent film which merges music with the supernatural, The Devil and the Daylong Brothers. That picture is a B movie through and through, but is slightly more coherent and less bloated than Sinners.

The Count of Monte Cristo

Pierre Niney

Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière's The Count of Monte Cristo is by far the most accomplished version of the 1844 chestnut. Now that's saying something, since there have been around twenty film version of the Dumas' novel and over thirty television adaptations, including a 1975 television film starring the recently departed Richard Chamberlain. The nearly three hour length of this version allows the filmmakers the amplitude to fully capture the flavor and texture of this Romantic potboiler. Nearly all prior film versions have had to eliminate major supporting characters and incidents in order to get a running time of two hours or so. The 2024 film does eliminate some minor characters, but preserves many key elements, such as the subplot concerning an infant buried alive and Eugénie Danglars' lesbianism, that add extra richness to the film's splendid tableaux.

The director/writer/producers add one key character to the plot and it is a welcome addition that fits in with the colorful nature of the tale. This character adds transvestism and a shipwreck to a story replete with thrilling elements: duels, secret passageways, hidden treasure, disguises, sword fights, and a prison escape. The Dumas work is often thought of as escapism, but there is as much of a critique of French society in this tale as you will find in Balzac and Hugo. It is not insignificant that the three major villains of the piece represent three of the pillars of French culture and their attendant corruption: the justice system, the military, and capitalism. The villains are all superbly etched by their portrayers here, as are the female characters who are given a little more agency than usual while not being made to seem modern. Best in show is Pier Francesco Favino, a lauded Italian actor with little notoriety in this country, as Abbé Faria, Edmond Dantès savior in prison. 

Pierre Niney, best known in America for portraying the titular role in Jalil Lespert's Yves Saint Laurent, portrays Dantès with a little less romantic dash than usual and I think this is purposeful on the part of the filmmakers. Abbé Faria's parting advice to Dantès is an admonition to balance justice with mercy, advice Dantès generally ignores in his quest for vengeance. The reader and audience usually ignores this admonition because the recounting of Dantès' attaining his vengeance is so exciting. However, there is an implied criticism in Dumas' portrayal of Dantès' cold ruthlessness that this film retains which is often glossed over in other adaptations. This is just one of many reasons why this version of The Count of Monte Cristo rises well above similar handsome period pieces.