There’s got to be a way do to a romantic historical drama from an epistolary foundation, but Vita and Virginia isn’t it. In fact, it may be a sort of guide of how not to.
This is a movie based on a play that was based on letters. Real letters by real life characters chronicling a real love affair and friendship that stretched over a decade between Victoria Mary Sackville-West aka Vita and Virginia Woolf. The former poised in a role of amorous seductress drew out Virginia out of her shy reticence, but eventually her (physically and emotionally) promiscuous ways proved too much for Virginia and that was that. According to the movie, anyway. In real life, there was also a matter of Vita getting all too close to the British Fascist movement and Virginia the pacifist not approving it. But then again, Nazis wouldn’t make for such a juicy story. Or at least, the juicy story this was meant to be before the director got her grabby mitts on it and turned it into the maudlin overwritten, overdirected and overwrought mess that is it. Every so often SNL does a parody that’s just right on the money. They’ve recently done one on historical lesbian dramas, look it up, it’s perfect. Inspired by movies just like this one, movies that even perfectly decent (Atherton) and excellent (Debicki) can’t save. They sigh, they look longingly, they sigh. They do dramatic readings of letters to each other straight at the camera. They prevaricate. They talk about books. They talk like books. Do writers really talk like their books? Did they? Virginia is deemed obscure, Vita-brash. They sigh some more, they juggle their infinitely understanding spouses. They talk about writing some more. Vita, interestingly enough, although now a much lesser-known author, at her time was outselling Virginia and yet considered Virginia to be a superior writer. That created for an interesting dynamic. But then Vita went and inspired Virginia to write her (arguably) greatest work, Orlando, and suddenly she became a properly selling literary success. And to think, I only know Orlando as a Tilda Swinton movie. Anyway, it’s frustrating, nay, quietly infuriating, to think how good this movie might have been. The passionate romance of two great minds…and two attractive bodies if that’s more your thing. But every potential fire here was effectively smothered by the ridiculously languid pacing and convoluted dialogue. Debicki wasn’t the first or even the second choice for Virginia, but she’s terrific in the role…and manages to embody Virginia perfectly and prosthetic-free unlike Nichole Kidman some years ago. Albeit distractingly tall. (Also, why? Virginia Woolf was, according to the internet, 5'7". Why is she constantly played by giantesses?) Actresses have been getting taller these days, but at 6’3” she is a proper giant. A very, very slim giant rendered curveless and board-flat by the 1920s garb that really only works for very specific bodies. She’s so tall, she’s practically long. She towers over the entire cast and, dramatically so, over her costar Atherton, who even in heels has to tippy-toe for a kiss. Not that there’s that much of kissing, there’s one sex scene, but all in all this romance is too talked out to sizzle. Anyway, Debicki’s great. She was great in Tenet too, though the movie itself was a disappointment. She’s got a marvelously expressive face and lovely nuanced subtlety to her. Particularly noticeable here, because Atherton’s Vita is so overt and obvious. But a height that great has got to be restrictive. Maybe that’s why Debicki isn’t more famous. In fact, now I can’t think of what she’s been doing between the hip-hop Gatsby silliness and this. And just as Gatsby had some unconventional music choices, so does this movie, but oddly and inconsistently. The score goes from very modern party music to something like proper classical time appropriate score. It’s almost as if the score doesn’t know what it wants to be. Which in that way perfectly suits a movie that is so characterized by wasted potential. Overall, a mess, not even a hot mess, really, just a mess of longing looks and languid latitudes. Surely, these ladies, these lovely letter writers, deserve more. It’s interesting, it was an interesting time, populated by interesting characters with wildly interesting approach to romance. Swinging 60s seems had nothing on the swinging 20s, but do we really get to know anyone? Much like Virginia wonders after Vita and her had finally consummated their passion, do we know someone more after an intimate experience? This movie certainly tried, really tried, to be that intimate experience for its audience. But unlike the letters simmering with restrained passion, this movie doesn't quite hit those notes.
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Megan Fox is an actress whose beauty seems to get in the way of her acting. Not sure if it’s her fault, but most of the time she’s on screen, she’s just kind of there, as a gorgeous prop. In fact, her best (most animated, certainly) performance might have been in the Love the Way You Lie video by Eminem and that was ages ago.
But here, in this tale of marital getaway gone terribly, terribly wrong, to Fox’s credit she goes all out. Mind you, at first the movie starts off as a wooden cliché of a scene with Fox finishing an extramarital affair with…well, wooden clichéd performance. It continues as we are introduced to her workaholic hubby she’s been sleeping around on, as he wines and dines her and takes her away to a remote snowed-in cabin for a fresh start. And then she wakes up and realizes that his idea of a fresh start is suicide, while handcuffed to her. Boom. Awesome as far as plot drivers go. Now she has to figure out a way to get out of her predicament, while dragging a corpse around. Her husband has thought of so many details too – there are no sharp objects to be found, her phone’s dead, the car’s gas has been syphoned. She is miles away from civilization, but sure enough civilization will find her. And not in a good “let me help you” kind of way either, but in a distinctly murderous one. The last F U from her dearly beloved, a freshly released criminal who attacked her years ago. So yeah, lots to contend with, all in the dead of winter, and Megan Fox does a great job. In a thoroughly committed performance she sheds her glamorous look for rags and her graceful gliding through scenes for all there all the time viscerally physical performance of a proper and thrilling struggle for survival. Credit where credit’s due, kudos and so on. Nicely done. All in all, sure, somewhat cheesy, somewhat predictable, but with enough exciting twists and enough taut suspense to maintain your interest. And just think, that body she drags around in the snow, that was some stuntman’s job, possibly a highlight of someone’s career. Crazy sauce. At any rate, as far as cinematic dissolutions of marriages go, this was a fun one and well worth a watch. When well-to-do white women get confused about the direction of their life, they’ll do whatever it takes, including giving over complete control to a therapist, provided the therapist is handsome enough and slick enough. And thus, without even so much as bare minimal research, the protagonist of this movie, Jenn, played by the seasoned genre actress Katie Siegel (Midnight Mass) signs up for hypnosis therapy with Collin Meade, the slickly charming Jason O’Mara. Sure enough, Meade turns out not to have Jenn’s best interests in mind and sure enough, soon turns he Jenn into a tick-tick-ticking device of subliminal triggers and pre-planted suggestions.
Jenn figures it out, but somewhat too late and has to deal with the various ramifications of this therapy gone so very wrong with no one at her side but a sympathetic cop. Meanwhile, the death toll climbs, as Jenn in a progressively terrible collection of baggy pants has to reckon with the mind she is no longer entirely in control of. So yes, it’s cheesy, most cinematic thrillers tend to be. I’m not sure why, they are usually perfectly fine on paper. But then again, it’s pretty entertaining, partially because of the committed performances by Siegel (a distractingly doppelganger looking actress, like several faces in one) and the perfectly smarmy O’Mara. Not great cinema, but fun enough, short enough and at the very least might have you reconsider hypnotherapy as an option. This was never going to be a quiet romantic weekend getaway. It was only ever meant to look that way. But then again, no one expected things to go quite like this…
Lisa (played by the original and second best to Rooney Mara Lisbeth Salander) and Lars (that bald dude) are a couple at the end of their marriage. Where other people might try marriage counseling or even divorce, these two thought it over and went with the murder option. What went so wrong there? Seems just like a series of disappointments staggered, from their respective careers never taking off (she’s a never-made -it actress, he’s a barely-there director) to Lisa’s affair. Now it’s time to end things. Only they both appear to have prepared for the same outcome. It would have been a duel to the death situation if only three prisoners on the lam hadn’t interfered. Yeah, imagine that, someone, three someones, would flee a Norwegian prison, allegedly some of the best prisons in the world. Anyway…they are out, they are hiding in Lars and Lisa’s cabin, and they are determined to take over. The only way Lars and Lisa can fight those three is by presenting a united front, which is understandably somewhat difficult, considering the circumstances. Now it’s a proper battle royal to the death, professional criminals of various degrees of intelligence and violence and an average mostly non-criminal (except for that tried to kill each other thing) citizens. Let the games begin. And boy, are the games fun. There’s a distinctly foreign sensibility to the proceedings, the violence is graphic but tempered with humor…this is technically a comedy, albeit a very dark one. It’s outrageous, over the top and executed with a sort of very charming, demented glee. In other words, it’s hugely entertaining. Who says romance is dead? Army of the Dead was a huge, loud and bombastic onanistic action flick. Something Zach Snyder specializes in. A movie that offers nothing but a soulless noisy diversion. A crime thriller with zombies that relied all too heavily on special effects, where characters were merely additional props.
Army of Thieves took the same premise and did it right, the multi-talented actor/director Schweighöfer infusing it with just enough European sensibility and overall soul and cleverness to create a perfect action thriller…it’s fun and funny and has a likeable protagonist you really care about, a bumbling safe expert recruited by and subsequently enamored by a gorgeous femme fatale played by the lovely actress of GOT fame. Does it still feature international locales, high-speed chases, exciting criminal adventures and all that? Yes, absolutely, plenty of it. it just does it right, not only providing an exciting backstory, but also contextualizing the experience for Sebastien as he is immersed into a brand-new world. It’s the classic fish out of water premise and Sebastien proves to be a surprisingly adaptable and charming fish. That’s the protagonist you want in movie. Dave Bautista, with his strangely brain-like skull skin and his imposing muscles, has a certain charm of his own, but he can only ever be a one, very specific type of action star/leading man. That which defines him also restricts him and so he’s kind of like a lesser Dwayne the Rock Johnson. The multi-talented lead and director of this movie has a lovely versatility that makes the entire movie sparkle. It’s a perfect anthesis to the American and specifically Snyder-esque approach to blockbusters. Charm over brawn wins the screen. I’d say let’s hope Schweighöfer never sells out and maintains his originality and integrity, but then again he did ditch his long-time love and mother of his two children to date the 15-year-his-junior starlet of Army of Thieves, so that ship might have sailed. At any rate, it isn’t often that a prequel or a spin-off leaves the original in the dust, but this one succeeds marvelously. This is the movie to make an action movie fan out of you. |
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