Tell No One

Guillaume Canet, 2006

IMDB

3/5

Francois Cluzet (The Intouchables, Little White Lies, French Kiss) leads this French murder-mystery thriller as Alexandre Beck, a pediatrician that is desperately searching for answers 8 years after his wife was murdered. On screen, you see two different Alexandre's. The first one is the guy who is in deeply in love with his wife. Spending time in the French countryside, they consume wine and laugh and swim in a local swimming hole. The second Alexandre is the guy who has endured years and years of grief. Constantly seen on screen with a cigarette in his mouth, he is a man that is not willing to give up on his wife. Not really interested in moving on, sort of stuck in this phase of non-existence. Zombie-like, floating through the day to day routine.

Then, suddenly, on the 8th anniversary of her death he is surprised by a mystery email in his box. This email opens a Pandora's box of sorts; between himself, the police, and a group of criminals connected to her murder. What transpires is an intense story, where you spend most of the film alongside Alexandre as he searches for answers.

Tell No One is a complex, suspenseful thriller that has you feeling unsettled for a good portion of the film and provides some solid climactic twists. Along the ride it causes you to become uncertain of everyone involved in some way, especially with the themes of corruption and influence that are involved. Just like every great foreign film, as of Fall 2015 it is getting an American remake that will likely not be as good as the original. Disappointing, but not surprising. Hopefully it won't cause this one to slip away. At the very least, hopefully someone like David Fincher picks it up because it feels like something in his wheelhouse.

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst

Andrew Jarecki, 2015

IMDB

4/5

Andrew Jarecki is a filmmaker who isn’t afraid to venture into the darkness. He doesn't appear to be affected by the fact that you may be disturbed by his work, perhaps even put off. His 2003 documentary Capturing the Friedmans captures the unraveling of the Friedman family whose patriarch is charged with child molestation. He has a unique vision in the way that he approaches the Friedman family. He doesn't just lay out an indictment on a family accused of some of the worst acts you can be accused of. He lets you decide for yourself. With his HBO docu-series The Jinx, it’s not much different. Many of us, probably mostly Northeast Americans, are familiar with the Durst family. Most of us have at least heard of Robert Durst, wealthy eccentric man who is accused of slaying his wife and possibly others. We often convict public figures subconsciously, sometimes simply based on appearance. Sometimes people look guilty. Sometimes people look creepy. Durst is certainly a suspicious figure. He doesn't express emotion. He doesn't smile, he doesn't kid around. He doesn't appear to show a longing for his missing wife.

Jarecki has already explored the Durst family in his 2010 feature film All Good Things, starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst. The film is very much based on the real life events surrounding the Durst family. That film, while okay, was clearly not the right vessel for Jarecki whose strengths are really apparent in the documentary realm. But the one thing the film did is land him his interview with the real life Durst who saw the film and felt it gave him fair treatment. This is probably the opportunity of Jarecki's career, and this documentary series will certainly be the most talked about piece of work of his for years to come.

The series explores the insulation of wealth. It examines class structure in our country. It's a study on our imperfect judicial system which sometimes doesn't get it right. Episode one grips you, episode 4 shocks you. Episode 6 has you on the edge of your seat with your jaw dropped. You have to sit there and spend some time with this enigma of a person. Jarecki took a controversial mystery and put his artistic touch on it. Recreation of crime scenes, interviews with frustrated friends and family members, ex-police officers and investigators. He does some true investigative work. He can be accused of being predatory and baiting, but he also needs to be credited with giving Robert more of a benefit of a doubt than most filmmakers would be willing to do. He also is in front of the camera quite a bit, at times very uncomfortably. Confronting Douglas Durst and asking for an interview on the night of a big dedication dinner is a ballsy move. It’s almost like walking into Trump Tower and interrupting the Donald’s dinner and asking for a job. Even the interviewing process with Robert must be an uncomfortable one. The tension spills off the screen. Even if you are already aware of the outcome of the series from what you have seen in the headlines, it’s still worth the complete viewing. Your jaw will drop. Your eyes will be open wide.

This series broke some new ground. Instead of someone like Michael Moore placing pieces in an order that fits his ideology, Jarecki does some real investigative work that spans several years. The headlines and the finale are a little conveniently timed, there must have been some behind-the-scenes orchestration and collusion. It’s hard to debate that Jarecki ambushes Durst in the end for some self-serving reasons, but he had to do it right? And when all is said and done, we need to remember that at the very foundation of all of this is a medium of entertainment. And the trade off is closure for some of the family and friends of the victims. So a cold case finally gets some real answers. And that is worth it, right?

Vanilla Sky

Cameron Crowe, 2001

Can I Stream it?

5/5

Publishing empire heir David Ames (Tom Cruise) struggles to put the pieces back together in his life after a horrible automobile accident with lover Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz)

Cameron Crowe is an interesting filmmaker, having taken many directions over the course of his career. He pursued his heart with Say Anything. He pursued his love of music (and of course his own history of journalism for Rolling Stone) with Almost Famous. He pursued personal reflection and personal unraveling in Jerry Maguire. He mistakenly tried to make a more populist kid-pleaser picture with We Bought a Zoo, but that feels like a film that didn't ultimately become what he had originally envisioned. But Vanilla Sky is his most interesting work, his most ambitious work, his most under-appreciated. It's already such a bold move taking one of the biggest actors in Hollywood at the time (Cruise), and disfiguring his face. That aside, he also demanded a big performance from Cruise who really did deliver. There are so many elements at work, some of them so obviously personal to Crowe. The way that this movie looks at love and death, memories, blossoming love. It hasn't been done exactly like this before. The effect of our memories on our subconscious. The impact of dreams. The toxic elements of our life that we fall into. Societal structure, technology, it's really all there. People often criticize this film for being too convoluted, confusing. That's actually quite surprising, because the reveal at the climax really does lay everything out there. The film really builds and builds, getting more complex. The final moments on screen our so powerful and emotional. It should have you questioning your own life, your own existence.

Gone Girl

David Fincher, 2014

Can I Stream it?

3/5

Adapted from the popular book written by Gillian Flynn, the film is about husband Nick Dunne (Ben Afflect), suspected of murdering his missing wife Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike).

Fincher sets the tone early in the film with his distinctive style. A starkness, Reznor's ambient score echoing in the background. A low grade tension is present. When we are introduced to Affleck's character, he is already a man of questionable morals. Affleck seems to always be just tolerable enough in front of the camera in terms of his range when it comes to his acting abilities. He's never going to be a energetic force. Fincher seems to get the most out of Affleck with the Nick character, always making you feel suspicious of him. Gone Girl is largely a meditation on America's obsession with killer culture and celebritizing the monsters. We live in a culture where actual wife killers like Scott Peterson get a plethora of media attention. Men like Peterson, or Charles Manson, go on to receive love letters while sitting on death row. We also live in a culture where questionable suspects are tried and convicted by the court of public opinion before actually having set foot in an actual courtroom. These themes are at play, but it's not simply a straight-up satirical piece like Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. It's a blood-soaked mind-game that looks at relationships and the roles we play. The head games some are forced to engage in. The way the people around us look at us, judge us. The conclusions we jump to with such conviction. If the film were in other hands, it probably wouldn't have worked out so well. And although by the conclusion it feels like the film had multiple endings already, Fincher manages to keep everything in control.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Wes Anderson, 2014

Can I Stream it?

4/5

Wes Anderson has some of the most recognizable features to his body of work: quirky sensibility, recurring actors (Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray are the recurring ones here), well-defined color patterns and arrangements, prominent score. In Budapest he revisits some familiar themes. Love separated by an age gap like in Rushmore. Ed Norton playing a person of authority, here as a police officer, tracking down a target as he did in Moonrise Kingdom as Scout Master Ward. There's the mentor / protege dynamic just like we saw in Rushmore between Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman's Max and Herman characters. And there's the dysfunctional family theme, as seen in The Royal Tenenbaums.

The multiple story threads are all built around a murder-mystery plot. When Madame D. is murdered, Gustave is framed for the murder by certain family members of Madame D who are angry that Gustave was included in her last will and testament. Most of the film is Gustave attempting to clear his name while also guarding the valuable "Boy with Apple" painting that was bequeathed to him. There isn't one bad shot in the film. Everything is perfectly framed. Everything is neatly packed in the distinctive Wes Anderson universe. The set design is most similar to his past work in The Life Aquatic with some obvious stage pieces but also some remarkable use of stop motion (the slalom pursuit down the snowy hill is one of the most memorable sequences in the film). It's some of Anderson's most gory & violent work (you don't expect dismemberment, and also manages to make the tired gunfight sequence artful), but it's also some of his most exciting. Anderson gets great use of Fiennes. It's easily some of Anderson's best work, and the somewhat-complicated story never becomes disorienting.