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Posts Tagged ‘Michael Stuhlbarg’

SHORT TAKES: “After the Hunt,” “Eternity”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 11, 2025| 1 Comment »

Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri

“AFTER THE HUNT” My rating: B (Prime)

138 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The latest from the prolific Luca Guadagnino (“Challengers,” “Call Me By Your Name,” “Bones and All,” “Suspiria”) is an academic “Rashomon,” a she said/he said puzzle populated by presumably smart people who do some really dumb things.


“After the Hunt” opens in the off-campus apartment of Yale philosophy professor Alma (Julia Roberts) and her psychiatrist husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg).  They’re hosting a soiree for friends, colleagues and students, and just about everybody is conversing in pompous academia speak.  They’re really, really irritating.

Among the partiers are Alma’s colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield), the kind of guy who puts his feet up on other folks’ furniture while waxing eloquently on existentialism.  And then there’s Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), a grad student in philosophy (and daughter of one of the university’s biggest donors); everyone expects her Ph.D. dissertation to make a big splash.

“After the Hunt” centers on an accusation of sexual assault.  The day after the party Maggie confides to  Alma that Hank drove her home and, well, you know. (Actually we don’t know, because Nora Garrett’s screenplay is so fiendishly effective at suggesting things without actually getting down to the nitty gritty.)

But here’s the thing.  Maggie is gay and may be secretly infatuated with Alma. And she recently uncovered evidence suggesting that Alma and Hank have been having an affair behind Frederik’s back. (Again, it’s suggested.Maybe it was just intense flirting.)

So perhaps the accusation of assault is a way to eliminate a competitor for Alma’s affections.

Hank, it turns out, is his own worst enemy.  He’s evasive about just what went on with Maggie.  And in his defense he says that he has accused Maggie of plagiarizing material for her dissertation.  This may be her way of discrediting him before he can go public with his suspicions.

Alma is caught in the middle…no matter what she does one of these two will see it as a betrayal.  In fact, Maggie submits to a newspaper interview in which she scorches Alma for her lack of support.  Could racism be a part of it? (Maggie is black, you see.)

Pile on top of that Alma’s disdain for the self-righteous entitlement exuded by many of her students, and you can see a career collapse coming down the road.

And then there’s her health issues…Alma only recently returned to class after a health crisis and she’s coping with pain that has her doubling up in a fetal position.  So she does something really dumb…she steals a prescription pad from the desk of her psychiatrist friend Kim (Chloe Sevigny) and fakes a script for opiates.

“After the Hunt” (a cryptic title I’m still trying to figure out) manages to be gripping even while withholding key pieces of information.  This has not a little to do with Roberts’ performance, which gos from haughty to wretched wreck. She can look great or ghastly. 

But everyone is solid, especially Stuhlbarg’s husband; Guadagnino seems to turn to this actor whenever he needs someone to represent non-flashy decency.

Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, Callum Turner

“ETERNITY” My rating: C (In theaters)

114 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

I really wanted to like the end-of-life romcom “Eternity,” but in the end it just made me want to rewatch Albert Brooks’ “Defending Your Life.”

In this supernatural love story from David Freyne an old man chokes on a pretzel and awakens on a train pulling into the afterlife. Larry (MilesTeller) finds he’s back in his 30-year-old body.  His afterlife counselor (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) informs him that he must pick an eternity to reside in.  

Turns out heaven has multiple destinations, from a beach world where  it’s always sunny to library world (apparently not a very popular eternity).  The trick is that once you’ve chosen, there’s no changing your mind.

Anyway, the newly dead must spend their first week at a sort of gigantic trade fair in which all the various eternities have set up booths to distributed enticing pamphlets and show fun-filled videos.

Some of this is kinda cute.

The film’s main plot, though, concerns the arrival of Larry’s wife Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) and a major complication.  Joan’s first husband Luke (Callum Turner) has been hanging around in limbo for 70 years (he died in the Korean War), awaiting Joan’s arrival.

And now Larry and Luke must compete to see which one of them Joan will choose as an enternal partner.

Quite the conundrum…and one that Freyne and co-writer Patrick Cunnane can’t really finesse.

Part of the problem is that “Eternity” is nearly 30 minutes too long; after a while it starts to feel like an eternity watching it.

| Robert W. Butler

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SHORT TAKES: “Sisu,” “Black Bag,” “The Amateur”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Jorma Tommila

“SISU” My rating: B (Peacock)

91 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The Finnish actioner “Sisu” feels like a Road Runner cartoon directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Not that it’s funny, exactly.  Jamari Helander’s film is crammed with gloriously gruesome mayhem meted out by a silent fellow who, like the beep-beeping star of those old Chuck Jones cartoons, survives every attempt on his life, absorbing punishment after punishment.  

The violence is utterly outlandish, but presented with such a straight face (and with so much stage blood) that we get caught up in the whole silly premise.

It also helps that the Wile E. Coyote of the piece is a platoon of goonish Nazis.  Nature’s perfect bad guys.

We first see Astami (Jorma Tommila) in the vast treeless plains of Lapland.  Accompanied only by his dog, this heavily scarred fellow with a white beard is prospecting.  One day he finds a vein of gold so rich that he soon has a couple of backpacks crammed with fist-sized nuggets.

Up to this point we don’t really know whether this is taking place in the present or the distant past.  Then we’re introduced to a unit of retreating Germans. Okay…so World War II.

Basically this is an elaborate chase.  The Nazi commander (Aksel Hennie) takes Astami’s gold and leaves him for dead. Figuring the war is lost, the German plans on using the treasure to build a new life.

But it turns out that Astami is a Finnish national hero, a sniper/survivalist who before leaving the war behind racked up hundreds of kills. 

Now he wants his gold back. He goes after the Germans like some sort of Scandinavian Terminator.

Along the way he will be shot, nearly blown apart, set on fire, hanged and drowned. He’ll even survive a plane crash.

 You can’t keep a good Finn down.

Oh…and with the Germans is a truckload of Finnish women being used as sex slaves.  Astami makes sure that before it’s all over the ladies will be well armed and ready for vengeance.

Among the film’s “huh?” elements is the dialogue, which drifts unexpectedly between English, German and Finnish for no obvious reason.

Then there are the many virtues of “Sisu” (a Finnish word that roughly translates as “unstoppable”):  drop-dead gorgeous cinematography, spectacular fight coordination and especially the slow-burn performance of Tommila, who doesn’t say a word until the final scene but commands the screen every time a camera (or gun) is pointed at him.

Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender

“BLACK BAG” My rating: B+ (Peacock)

93 minutes | MPAA rating: R

About the highest praise I can give Steven Soderbergh’s “Black Bag” is that it is of John le Carre quality, a spy thriller less about violence than about the toll the business of espionage takes on the human soul.

Michael Fassbender (who seems to be in every movie) is George Woodhouse, a Brit intelligence agent who after a legendary field career is now holding down a desk. His specialty is rooting out double agents.

David Koepp’s script is set in motion when George is given a list of five fellow agents suspected of selling secrets to Britain’s enemies.  

Just one problem: One of the suspects is George’s wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett). The big question: If it turns out that Kathryn is a turncoat, will George serve  his country or his heart?

After much preliminary sleuthing, George decides to hold a dinner for the potential traitors (the others are played by Tom Burke, Regé-Jean Page, Naomie Harris and Marisa Abela). 

It’s borderline Agatha Christie (everyone assemble in the dining room where the killer will be revealed) but thanks to the intricacies of the screenplay and a fistful of great actors playing duplicity to the hilt, “Black Bag” becomes a hold-your-breath thriller.

And then there’s the title. “Black Bag” refers, of course, to black bag operations, meaning an assignment so secret that you must keep it from your friends and loved ones. While superficially about rooting out a mole, on a deeper level this film is about living in an environment where no one — not your boss, your best friend or your lover — can be trusted.

Amazingly, all this is there in Fassbender’s quietly contained performance.  Like Le Carre’s George Smiley, George is a bespectacled straight man with a volcano of suppressed and rarely-expressed emotion smoldering within. 

Now that’s some acting. 

 

Rami Malek, Caitriona Balfe

“THE AMATEUR” My rating: B-(Hulu)

122 minutes | MPAA: PG-13

The Rami Malek starrer “The Amateur” has little of the depth of “Black Bag,” but as a sort of underdog espionage yarn it’s diverting and generally satisfying.

Malek is Heller, who writes top-secret computer code for the CIA.  He’s essentially a nerd, but he does have a deeply satisfying marriage to Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), whose job requires her to travel internationally.

On one such trip Sarah becomes a hostage when terrorists take over a London hotel.  She is executed in front of the television cameras.

Heller is crushed. Then  he wants to get even, badgering his boss (Holt McCallany) to undergo field training so that he can track down the terrorists. The bigwigs figure this hopeless amateur will soon tire of the whole business.

Uh, no.

One of the virtues of Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli’s screenplay (based on James Hawes’ novel)  is that it tricks the viewer in the same way Heller tricks his handlers.  Just when you think the jig is up and our man is going down, the film reveals that Heller has been way ahead of us all the time.

His bosses — who secretly organized the illegal terrorist action that took Sarah’s life — find they can’t keep track of Heller as he galavants around Europe because the computer programs designed for that purpose were written by Heller himself. He knows all the loopholes.

“The Amateur” has a deep supporting cast (Laurence Fishburne, Jon Bernthal, Julianne Nicholson, Caitriona Balfe, Michael Stuhlbarg) and the direction by James Hawes keeps the yarn chugging along.

As for the Oscar-winning Malek, this film will undoubtedly come to be regarded as a toss-off in a career of some depth. But as toss-offs go, it’s enjoyable enough.

| Robert W. Butler

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“CALL ME BY YOUR NAME”: Summer of discovery

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 18, 2018| 1 Comment »

Timothee Chalamet, Armie Hammer

“CALL ME BY YOUR NAME” My rating: A-

132 minutes | MPAA rating: R

“Call Me By Your Name” could be categorized as a coming-out story, but that’s oversimplifying things… like saying “Citizen Kane” is a movie about the newspaper business.

Director Luca Guadagnino (“I Am Love,” “A Bigger Splash”) and screenwriter  James Ivory (yes, the director of “Howards End,” “A Room with a View” and the Kansas City-lensed “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge”) are painting on an intimate canvas here, yet their adaptation of Andre Caiman’s novel is an epic of mood and emotion.

It’s about youth, sexual awakening, family love and the warm glow of summers past. It’s enough to make you swoon.

Set in the summer of 1983, “Call Me…” chronicles a lazy but significant six weeks for 17-year-old Elio (an unbelievably good Timothee Chalamet).  The son of an American father and an Italian mother, he’s been raised in Italy with all the intellectual stimulation he can handle. He’s smart, multilingual and maybe some sort of musical prodigy.

Enter Oliver (Armie Hammer), the American grad student hired by Elio’s professor father (Michael Stuhlbarg) for a summer of research on Roman statuary. Oozing a big grin, Yankee self-confidence and nonchalant studliness, Oliver makes a big wave among the town’s young women.

Initially this visitor strikes Elio as arrogant. But Oliver also stirs something else in Elio. Not that Oliver seems at all receptive…if anything he appears oblivious.

Interestingly enough, it’s Elio’s father and mother (Amira Casar) who first notice the slow-burn sexual sizzle that’s been introduced to their household…not that they comment on it directly. But their sidelong looks speak volumes. (They must be the most understanding movie parents of all time. Atticus Finch could take lessons from them.)

(more…)

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“THE POST”: Do the right thing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 11, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Meryl Streep, Tracy Letts, Tom Hanks

“THE POST” My rating: B+ 

115 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Steven Spielberg’s powers as a storyteller are so secure that not even the miscasting of one of “The Post’s” two leads can do much damage to the narrative.

This sprawling effort — it begins with a firefight in Vietnam and winds down with a firestorm over the Second Amendment — hits the ground running and rarely slows down for a breath. It’s like a Spielberg master class in taking a complicated story and telling it cleanly and efficiently.

And like other major movies about real-world journalism — “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight” especially — “The Post” could hardly be more timely.  With a president who shows every indication that he’d love to roll back freedom of the press, this film is so relevant it hurts.

The subject, of course, is the 1971 scandal over the Pentagon Papers.  That massive study, commissioned by LBJ’s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, looked at American involvement in Vietnam going back to the Truman administration. It revealed that the experts had always known a land war in Vietnam was unwinnable — but had plowed ahead anyway, sacrificing billions of dollars and countless lives on what amounted to political face-saving.

The papers showed that the Johnson administration had systematically lied to the public and to Congress so as to continue the war.

McNamara suppressed the study; the public only learned of its existence when one of its authors, Rand Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys), made an illegal copy of the top secret document and passed it on to The New York Times.

Today  The Washington Post sits at or near the top of American newspapers (thanks to its reporting on the Watergate Scandal in 1972-’73).  But in 1971 The Post was at best a regional paper…and not a very good one.

Its new editor, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), was pushing it toward greatness, but still felt himself outclassed by the journalistic aces at The Times. He was particularly concerned about rumors that The Times was about to scoop The Post (and every other news outlet) with a major story.

That big story was the Pentagon Papers. No sooner had the first in a series of articles been published than a federal judge — at the behest of the Nixon administration — enjoined The Times from printing additional material.

Bradley’s Post, however, was under no gag order. Working back channels Bradley got his hands on another copy of the papers and prepared to publish even more revelations on the pages of The Post.

(more…)

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