Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening star as a couple whose marriage is disintegrating. Spacey plays an advertising executive whose midlife crisis manifests itself in an obsession with the best friend of his teenage daughter.
It’s compelling and disturbing stuff that ponders suburban ennui and the meaning of life.
It’s a baffling film. The set pieces featuring the songs are expertly created and Spacey inhabits the role brilliantly. But things come slightly unstuck with the “magical realist” element of him talking to his younger self. There’s no attempt to describe his rise to fame, but there’s lots about his health problems and his ambiguous parentage.
John Goodman and Bob Hoskins are on screen too much. Brenda Blenthyn is excellent as his mother. Kate Bosworth is underdeveloped as Darin’s wife. It’s suggested that she drinks too much but the question of alcoholism is never explored further.
In terms of storytelling it’s disappointingly shallow and inconclusive, despite moments of brilliance.
A serial killer embarks on a sequence of murders, each of which marks one of the seven deadly sins. Detectives Somerset and Mills (Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt) try to catch him before he can complete the full cycle.
It’s brilliantly shot, in a noirish manner. The constant rainfall, the grim urban settings and the claustrophobic streets all add atmosphere. Unexpectedly, and presumably for contrast, the film’s tense climax happens in wide-open spaces in bright sunlight.
Gwyneth Paltrow plays Mills’ wife and is clearly going to have a more important function in the story. Kevin Spacey plays the “intelligent” killer – possibly partly influenced by Anthony Hopkins as the intellectual Hannibal Lector.
The closing section is slightly far-fetched in the way that the killer is allowed to dictate the terms to the detectives. But it’s still a tense and compelling story that escalates to a satisfying conclusion.
Adapted by David Mamet from his own 1984 play, this is a remarkable film that transfers amazingly well to the screen.
The plot deals with four real estate salesmen engaged in conning their clients. Although the details of the con are never fully explained, the real point is the relationships between the characters and the way they talk to each other as their situation intensifies across two days. These dynamics are explored with unusual intelligence.
I’ve never known so much swearing in a film. Also, there is a huge amount of dialogue with machine-gun-fire speech between the characters as they interact. Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris and Alan Arkin are all superb, in their own ways, reflecting the tension that goes with their illegal work. And Alec Baldwin is more powerful than usual, playing a motivational salesman sent to inspire the others.
A pre-teenage boy called Trevor (Haley Joel Osment) is inspired by his new school teacher Mr. Simonet (Kevin Spacey) and his alcoholic mother Arlene (Helen Hunt) to start doing more good in the world. He creates a scheme based on passing on kind deeds, which ends up having a profound effect on others around him and beyond.
The film works because you can believe in the characters, who are given depth and complexity. In particular, Spacey and Hunt are credible as emotionally (and in Simonet’s case physically) scarred adults doing their best to hold things together.
It’s different enough to be thought-provoking, unpredictable, touching and memorable. My only real criticism was that it seemed a little too easy for Arlene to stop drinking after she decided to do so.
David Gale (Kevin Spacey) plays a university professor and anti-capital punishment campaigner who finds himself on death row. A journalist improbably called Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet) is sent to meet him and conduct his final interviews. Through their conversations, she begins to unravel what really happened in the crime he is accused of. We see those events unfold in flashback.
It’s a tense and exciting story that’s slightly spoiled by the last five minutes, which offers one unlikely twist too many. As soon as you start asking questions about the plot logic, it collapses.
Spacey and Winslet are both excellent, as is Laura Linney as Gale’s friend and colleague.
The film makes some good points about the evils of capital punishment, although you can’t help thinking that those points would be stronger still without the final twist. A simpler, more believable plot would have worked so much better.
It’s a fast-paced thriller that’s a little trashy but nevertheless exciting. A surprising number of helicopters feature, with James Bond-like copter chases providing some of the action. Unlike Contagion, it’s not especially illuminating in regard to the Covid-19 pandemic. The focus is more on the military response to the problem rather than individuals’ experience of it.
Script-wise it could have been stronger, but there’s so much happening, so quickly, that you don’t really notice.
When a management division head (Stanley Tucci) is fired from a Wall Street investment bank, he passes a memory stick to a junior banker (Zachary Quinto). It turns out that he has uncovered the perilous state of the company. The matter is escalated up through the ranks of bosses played by Paul Bettany, Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore and Jeremy Irons.
Set in a 24-hour period, the film builds its drama from the human situation alone. There are no car chases or guns, no explosions or fights. It examines the ethical issues of the company selling off worthless packages in order to save its own privileged few.
Spacey is brilliant as seemingly the only employee with a conscience, not coincidentally making him the one character you can emphasise with. Bettany is highly watchable as the (possibly suicidal) head of credit trading.
It’s very nicely shot, too: lush and stylish in a way that really understands the faceless aesthetics of the corporate world.
