Rebecca Hall – The Magnificent 60s

The Prestige (2006) ****

Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer, 2023) revels in sleight-of-hand, if only by mixing up time frames, but even he isn’t intellectually smart enough to overcome the deficiency that ensured this picture failed to emulate the commercial success of all his other movies. And it revolves not around what you do to dupe an audience. An audience wants to be duped and isn’t so concerned if how the duping is achieved is never revealed, which is, of course, core to the business of the stage magician. Part of the success of this picture is that Nolan gives away stage secrets, even, if you were playing close enough attention, giving away the main reveal of one of the two dueling stage magicians.

But one of these revelations cuts so close to the bone the audience loses its sympathy for both the main characters, Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman). By the time we understand just how ruthless this pair are to the extent of risking marriage/romantic attachment for the sake of either getting one over on the opponent or maintaining the central deceit of their act, we have already become too squeamish to care overmuch. And the twists which come with increasing regularity which are supposed to take our breath away are defused by the ticking time bomb.

And the miscalculation pivots on who you can kill in a movie. Henry Fonda cold-bloodedly slaughtering an innocent child in Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) set a new high/low for onscreen barbarity, but that was excused because it demonstrated just what a villain this character was. Since then a virtual industry has grown up over inventing more creative ways in which people can be killed.

One of the standard ploys of the stage magician is to make a canary in a cage disappear in front of your very eyes only for said canary, minus cage, to reappear moments later to thunderous applause. Turns out the cage is collapsible and it vanishes into a space hidden in a table. The canary? It is squashed to death in the cage. It’s a different canary that magically reappears.

So all through the picture canaries are squashed, sometimes we see the cages being emptied of dead canaries, and workrooms filled with canaries waiting to be squashed.

What happens after this somehow pales into insignificance. Here we have a business that requires murdering God knows how many canaries every night of the year. It doesn’t take much intelligence among the easily duped moviegoer to work out how many canaries both magicians have ruthlessly despatched.

So when they get around to killing each other’s loved ones, or shooting off each other’s fingers or ruining each other’s acts, your stomach has already been turned and although the darkest of dark narratives has long been a theme of the movies, this, and not fitting into the exploitation B-picture genre where it would more comfortable reside, sucks the sympathy out from under the director’s feet and all his later sleight-of-hand, as ingenious as it is, counts for very little.

There’s certainly tragedy here and of the kind that only Shakespeare could conjure. In order to safeguard the integrity of his act – the secrecy paramount to its success – loving husband Borden is forced to pretend to his loving wife Sarah (Rebecca Hall) that he has a mistress, resulting in distraught wife killing herself. Though discreetly done, scarcely glimpsed in the final sequence, Angier has embarked on the murderous spree essential to concealing the mechanics of his famous trick, The Transported Man.

That it works at all, and splendidly to a large extent, is down to Nolan’s traditional time-shift sleight-of-hand and installing in the middle of this brouhaha the wise Cutter (Michael Caine) whose tempered diction brings the movie unexpected gravitas. When he speaks you tend to believe. The minute the other pair open their mouths you are suspect.

Just for his calmness Michael Caine (Interstellar, 2014) steals the picture from Christian Bale (Ford v Ferrari / Le Mans ’66, 2019) and Hugh Jackman (Deadpool and Wolverine, 2024). Rebecca Hall (Godzilla v Kong: The New Empire, 2024)and Scarlett Johansson (Fly Me to the Moon, 2024) are at opposite ends of the feminine divide, the former unable to cope with deceit, the latter manipulating it to her own ends. The director and brother Jonathan adapted the Christopher Priest award-winning novel.

Setting aside the canaries and the difficulties of presenting all-consuming obsession, this remains an intriguing work, possibly the darkest area into which the director ever ventured.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024) ****

Monster mash-up that delivers. Hollow Earth hits the target, a better parallel universe/ multiverse/monsterverse than all the other verses put together, not to mention it’s also of the versus inclination with any number of big beasties (I lost count to be honest) going head-to-head and super bonkers malarkey of giant apes riding prehistoric monsters. Plus, if you’re of a sentimental nature, and given that this week I’ve been hit from all side by tales of a maternal bent, whose heart would not give a whimper to see big bad Godzilla all curled up for the night in the Colosseum in Rome. Or for that matter Kong taking a paternal interest in a bad wee mini-Kong. Compared to the emotions stirred by these giants, boffin Ilene (Rebecca Hall) struggling with her maternal issues comes over as rammed-in and wishy-washy.

Having taken Mother’s Instinct to ruthless task for its illogical plotlines, I am happy to do a complete somersault and let the monster punch-up off scot-free for all its inconsistencies and coincidences because, heck you know it, fun always triumphs. Plus we’ve got a hippie vet Trapper (Dan Stevens) who, despite awkward accent and Hawaiian shirt, is loose enough to chill out straight-laced Ilene with podcaster du jour Bernie (Bryan Tyree Henry) on hand to add humor.

Throw in some Aztec/Inca-style ancient civilisation, the revival of another Japanese kaiju in Mothra, people who communicate with telepathy, all sorts of daft exposition, Godzilla snorting up radiation like it was coke, pyramids of various kinds, more rabbit holes than you could shake a bunny at, an ape that goes all Raiders of the Lost Ark with a whip made out of bones and full-on Planet of the Apes knockdown.

I’m not even going to bother with the plot, what I can remember of it, except to say Ilene and Trapper need to get Godzilla and Kong together to take on the giant ape villain and the monster he rode in on otherwise (guess what) (I think) the world as we know it (or at last this invented world) will cease to exist.

The humans do their best not to get in the way of the fun. Trapper is smart and glib and occasionally a genius and Ilene is smart but weighted down with maternity while the object of her affection is stuck with the where-do-I-belong trope and mostly stares off soulfully into the distance. It’s the monsters that bring the humanity. That little scamp of a baby giant ape takes some handling, always ready (literally) to bite the hand that feeds him while you gotta feel sorry for Godzilla having to tramp through all those cities that someone stuck in his way when all he wants is a nice nest close by a nuclear plant.

Plus we get ice ice baby. The bad ape’s chained prisoner blasts out ice instead of fire, like he’s an exile from the Night King, but at least he’s not like the latest Ghostbusters iteration that’s been heavily trumpeted in the trailer only not to appear till what seems like the last five minutes in order to give Bill Murray a weak punchline.

This was easily the best part of this week’s Quadruple Bill. I’m not even going to review Ghostbusters – it seems to have got lost in the family nonsense that’s infecting virtually every decent series, meaning we’ve now got to accommodate the size of casts that used to be an attraction in pictures like Lawrence of Arabia, but now feels like an overstuffed very threadbare cushion, and could we care less.

Adam Wingard (Godzilla vs Kong, 2021) directs though spare a nod for the CGI team.

Let’s hear it for these mean mothers.

The Night House (2020) ** – Seen at the Cinema

An overloaded atmosphere cannot make up for the lack of directorial killer instinct, resulting in a ghost story that leans more towards the preposterous than horror. Beth (Rebecca Hall), dealing with the suicide of her husband, begins to imagine a ghostly presence in her remote house on a lake. Left a very odd suicide note, she pieces together stranger aspects of his life, involving the occult and a photo on his phone of a Beth lookalike.

The picture divides very neatly into the entirely believable grief of schoolteacher Beth – she nips at a moaning parent, knocks back the brandy, makes inappropriate comments to her workmates and displays sufficient off-the-wall tendencies to alarm pal Claire (Sarah Goldberg) – and the various tropes that need to be knitted together to take the story into the ghost/horror realm, few of which work. Mysterious footsteps, sometime muddy, sometimes bloody, appear, harmless neighbour Mel (Vondie Hall Curtis) is presented as potentially malevolent, and music suddenly blares out in the middle of the night.

Had the story remained entrenched in Beth’s imagination, where she almost willed her husband either to be still alive or enough of a presence (as in Ghost, 1990) that she could touch or be comforted by, and gradually either became subsumed by grief or came out of it, it might have worked very well. But the minute it started to delve into the area of the unbelievable it became largely unbelievable. Even when it is obvious her husband is not at all what he once seemed, the picture just ignores the obvious.

And that is a shame. Even more so than Stillwater, reviewed last week, this is a thespian tour-de-force. Beth is scarcely off the screen and her ever-changing mood displays terrific acting skills. But just like Stillwater, it loses its way, going for plot instead of character, and the film cannot make up its mind whether she is going mad, or just mad with grief, or whether she is victim to unseen predator. There was only one genuine jump-out-of-your-seat shock and the introduction late on of elements of her backstory served to confuse rather than elucidate.

Rebecca Hall (Godzilla vs. Kong, 2021) can certainly hold the screen and hopefully this will lead to better roles in bigger films. None of the other actors are particularly noteworthy. Director David Bruckner (Netflix’s The Ritual, 2017) seems to be focusing on horror – Hellraiser is next – but whether he needs a bigger budget or a better script to scare the pants off an audience remains to be seen. Writers Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski (Stephanie, 2017) also appear to be specialising in this genre.

Current Cinema Catch-Up 1 – Nomadland, Judas and the Black Messiah, Godzilla vs. Kong

Before the pandemic and before I started writing this Blog I used to go to the cinema once a week on a Monday, normally catching a double-bill of my own choosing, and occasionally lucky enough to watch three movies in a day. Since cinemas re-opened in my neck of the woods in mid-May I’ve found it impossible not to return to my old habits. So here’s my first triple-bill.

Nomadland (2020) ****

Easy Rider meets The Grapes of Wrath except in both these cases the travellers had a distinct destination in mind. Like the title implies, the characters in Nomadland are going nowhere, and often just round, though somewhat contentedly, in circles. Deservedly winning Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actress Frances McDormand and Best Director Chloe Zhao, this not so much invests in diversity but in a world we never knew existed, of people who live out their lives in the backs of vans and trailers. In a previous generation, they might be deemed trailer trash, but that’s not the case here. They may be humbled but they are not unprincipled.

Recently widowed Fern (Frances McDormand) takes to the road after unemployment closes down her small town and temporary work at the local Amazon depot dries up after Xmas. Considering herself “houseless” rather than “homeless” Fern finds herself involved in a peripatetic community of like-minded individuals, some drifting due to circumstance, others wanting to live out their last years as sight-seers. It’s not a drama and it hardly even qualifies as a docu-drama because virtually nothing happens but it is an eye-opener, not just for the visuals but for the way it explores the inherent loneliness in society. Once she has a taste for the road, Fern spurns every opportunity to settle down. The characters encountered are definitely originals and have the feel of genuine nomads – Swankie and Linda May certainly are – the camera just happened to catch as it tracked by.

A true original with McDormand – her third acting Oscar after Fargo (1996) and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2107) plus another one as producer here – giving a tremendous performance as a passive individual surrendering, despite occasional indignity and hardship, to the joys of roaming.

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) ****

Rather than face a jail sentence. car thief Bill O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) turns FBI informant and infiltrates a Black Panther group led by Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya). Spurred on by FBI controller Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons), O’Neal’s work has disastrous consequences.

As a devastating expose of the criminal activities undertaken by the world’s highest- profile criminal-catching operation, the FBI, this is a first-class procedural type of picture, where, courtesy of the suspense created by director Shaka King (Newlyweeds, 2013), you find yourself rooting for O’Neal as he comes close to being discovered. But it is also grounded by an impeccable performance by Kaluuya (Queen and Slim, 2019) who portrays Hampton as a gentle soul, shy with women, but with a gift for public speaking that rouses a put-upon generation.

The Black Panthers are shown as instigators of genuine social reform, setting up medical programs etc, rather than just gun-toting rebels. Kaluuya won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor but in truth he steals the show from the lead Stanfield.

Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) ***

If you can make out what is going on in among all the noise and implausibilities then there is a halfway decent summer blockbuster to be enjoyed. The sci-fi gobbledegook spouted by scientist Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgard) leads Kong-whisperer Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) and Ilene (Rebecca Hall) into harm’s way, so far beneath the earth you are likely to poke up in Australia. Naturally, the two ancient behemoths go head-to-head while destroying everything in sight.