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Amazon Prime, Reviews, Television

AMAZON TV REVIEW – THE ACT (2019) – another shocking American drama based on true events!

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AMAZON TV REVIEW – THE ACT (2019)

Created by: Nick Antosca & Michelle Dean

Writers: Nick Antosca & Michelle Dean, Dan Dietz, Robin Veitch, Lisa Long, Heather Marion

Directors: Laure DeClermont-Tonnerre, Adam Arkin, Christina Choe, Steven Piet, Hannah Fidell, etc.

Cast: Joey King, Patricia Arquette, Chloe Sevigny, AnnaSophia Robb, Calum Worthy, Dean Norris, Denitra Isler, Margo Martindale etc.

Original Network: Hulu (US) – Starz/Amazon (UK)

*** CONTAINS SPOILERS ***

Film & Television Photographer Brownie Harris

The capacity for human beings to lie and fake and forge simply knows no bounds. Clearly lying is bad, as it disintegrates trust in families, relationships and society in general. We should all strive for truth. But before one judges and jumps to conclusions there can be mitigating circumstances for lies. It could be a good lie. A lie that protects someone from the horrors of reality or a bad situation. It could be a falsehood which is worth denying in order to circumnavigate a tricky moment. This last example is a subjective decision though. But what if you’re not in your right mind? What if you have a mental illness? Does this forgive the darkest lies you tell or present? No, but it does explain why you’ve told such untruths.

Hulu’s exceptional true-life drama, The Act (2019), centres on a character who is both a liar and mentally disturbed. You would not know from the outside but Dee Dee Blanchard (Patricia Arquette) was a very troubled person. A seemingly loving single mother to a teenage daughter, Gypsy Blanchard (Joey King), Dee Dee unfortunately has to cope with Gypsy’s myriad of medical issues which leave her in a wheelchair and unable to feed herself. But Gypsy is actually incredibly healthy. Her mother has in fact been drugging and faking and benefiting financially from harming her daughter for years. Clingy, controlling and manipulative of her daughter’s every movement, routine and personal interactions, Dee Dee never wants her daughter to grow up. She wants a permanently powerless child and vicariously feeds off all the sympathy this brings. Yet Gypsy is growing up and she wants to do her own thing. Her body is changing and so are her desires. Something had to give.

Over eight brilliantly written and directed episodes, The Act (2019), unfolds as a powerful human tragedy. The story begins in 2015 with a serious crime; someone has been hurt. It then flashes back to when Dee Dee and Gypsy moved from hurricane hit New Orleans to Springfield, Missouri in 2008. Moving consummately back and forth in time the structure builds the drama very well. I genuinely couldn’t believe that someone would do that to their own child. Then, just when you think the story cannot twist any further the events take an even stranger and darker fall. Unsurprisingly, Patricia Arquette won an Emmy for her performance as the tragic faker, Dee Dee. Arquette inhabits the skin of this unhinged mother chillingly. But she’s not a scary monster, more one that subtly gets right under the skin. Joey King as Gypsy is equally brilliant as the co-dependent daughter, ultimately driven to extreme and shocking behaviour by her mother’s lies and twisted vision of love.

Mark: 9 out of 11

Amazon Prime, Films That Got Away, Reviews

FILMS THAT GOT AWAY #8 – DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE (2018)

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FILMS THAT GOT AWAY #8 – DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE (2018)

Written and directed by: S. Craig Zahler

Produced by: Sefton Fincham, Jack Heller, Tyler Jackson, Keith Kjarval, Dallas Sonnier

Cast: Vince Vaughn, Mel Gibson, Tory Kittles, Michael Jai White, Jennifer Carpenter, Laurie Holden, Don Johnson, Thomas Kretschmann etc.

Cinematography: Benji Bakshi

*** MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS ***

As a major fan of S. Craig Zahler’s first two film releases, namely Bone Tomahawk (2015) and Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017), I was really looking forward to another example of pulpy, slow burn and hard-bitten genre filmmaking with Dragged Across Concrete (2018). Thus, I was very upset when I found out the Mel Gibson and Vince Vaughn starring cop drama was not released in UK cinemas. I finally caught up with it on Amazon Prime and, while it was probably too long, it was a hypnotically powerful crime thriller.

Set in the city of Bulwark, the film opens with a lengthy preamble which introduces disparate characters whose paths are destined to cross later in the film. These include recent parolee, Henry Johns (Tory Kittles), grizzled-long-in-the-tooth-cop, Brett Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) and his younger, but equally cynical partner, Anthony Lusaretti (Vince Vaughn). Later, Zahler throws professional criminal, Lorentz Vogelmann (Thomas Kretschmann), and his dressed-in-black crew into the dark city soup. After a glacial set-up, the plot kicks in when Ridgeman and Lusaretti are suspended for what is perceived as a racially motivated attack on a suspect. Desiring a way out of the neo-noir and industrial decay, Ridgeman sets up a plan to steal from Vogelmann’s gang. Safe to say that given this is a Zahler film, we do not end up with a soft toy and candy apple ending.

Throwing a succession of anti-heroes at the audience and a litany of cursing and politically incorrect language makes Dragged Across Concrete (2018) a morally questionable film to experience. Do not watch if you are easily offended. Nonetheless, my feeling is Zahler, like Tarantino, is reflecting the world as it is rather than how it should be. Humanity is in the gutter and the only way out of it, in his mind, is to swear and fight and steal and kill. That isn’t to say that the characters are not empathetic. As Zahler’s hard-boiled dialogue is very poetic in places it draws you to them in a way Raymond Chandler used to do. Similarly, the performances from Gibson and Vaughn are brilliant. The scenes where they just sit in the car and eat sandwiches while staking out their quarry, are both hilarious and absorbing. Ultimately, it’s the lengthy second half robbery and final act ultra-violence which makes the film a pulsating and brutally rewarding experience.

Mark: 8.5 out of 11

Amazon Prime, Cinema, Reviews

THE REPORT (2019) – AMAZON FILM REVIEW

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THE REPORT (2019) – FILM REVIEW

Written and directed by: Scott Z. Burns

Produced by: Scott Z. Burns, Jennifer Fox, Danny Gabai, Eddy Moretti, Kerry Orent, Steven Soderburgh, Michael Sugar

Cast: Adam Driver, Annette Bening, Ted Levine, Michael C. Hall, Tim Blake Nelson, Maura Tierney, John Hamm, Douglas Hodge etc.

**CONTAINS REAL EVENT SPOILERS**

The Report (2019) is in the vein of recent films such as, Kill The Messenger (2014), The Post (2017), and Oscar winner, Spotlight (2015). It is based on true events and forensically documents a period of U.S. history which is both illuminating and engrossing. Adam Driver is cast as U.S. Senate staffer, Daniel J. Jones and given the task by Senator Feinstein (Annette Bening) to lead a team to investigate the 2005 destruction of interrogation videotapes. He begins the work in 2009 and is faced with six million pages of CIA materials to work through. It soon, unsurprisingly, becomes an obsessive and ordered job for Jones and it takes him years to ultimately finish the report.

I won’t give anymore away about the narrative events, but first and foremost this is a film about torture and admin. Writer and director, Scott Z. Burns cleverly structures the story between Jones’ researching the CIA materials and the actions of the Counter-Terrorist Centre staff led by the likes of Maura Tierney and George Fumusa’s characters. As the story proceeds, and details of extreme torture of terrorist subjects is revealed, Burns takes us further up the CIA food chain. Here we get a very damning critique of the horrifying lengths CIA operatives went to in order to secure information from suspects.

The Report (2019) is an engrossing film which I thought was going to go down the conspiracy thriller route or even the obsessive character breakdown study. There are elements of this, but essentially it is an extensively researched drama set in enclosed offices, in meetings, in Senate hearings, at desks and computer screens; all with flashes of interspersing violence. I’m not acutely educated in regard to American foreign policy and politics in general, but a potentially dry subject is made so engrossing by a fine script and brilliant cast. Adam Driver essentially goes to Washington, proving once again that he is one of the best actors around at the moment. Above all else though, the film stands as an impressive visual document and precis of the original seven thousand-page report by Daniel J. Jones.

Mark: 8.5 out of 11