Tag Archives: Revenge

"Night Comes On" by Jordana Spiro (2018)

first feature

Night Comes On
Tightly knit, compact, homogeneous, and yet provides space for our imagination
Great direction!
Cast: Dominique Fishback, Tatum Marilyn Hall, John Earl Jelks, Max Casella
Director: Jordana Spiro
Writer: Jordana Spiro, Angelica Nwandu
Music: Matthew Robert Cooper
Director of Photography: Hatuey Viveros Lavielle
Editor: Taylor Levy

“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” by Martin McDonagh (USA, 2017)

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

An exceptional success at mixing comedy and drama / Rich representations of minorities, excellent dialogues

Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, Caleb Landry Jones, Kathryn Newton, Clarke Peters
Director: Martin McDonagh
Writer: Martin McDonagh
Cinematographer: Ben Davis
Editor: Jon Gregory
Composer: Carter Burwell

“The Gift” (Joel Edgerton, USA 2015)

The Gift

The script hesitates between a few genres (horror, thriller) before opting for a bully-victim relationship that loses much of its dramatic content along the way. An identical indecision hovers over who is the main character of the movie: Simon (Jason Bateman)? Robyn (Rebecca Hall)? Gordo (Joel Edgerton)?

Cast: Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, Joel Edgerton, David Denman, Beau Knapp, Allison Tolman, P. J. Byrne, Busy Philipps, Wendell Pierce, Katie Aselton
Director: Joel Edgerton
Writer: Joel Edgerton
Director of Photography: Eduard Grau

“The Salesman” (Asghar Farhadi, Iran 2016)

The Salesman
Victim of an intruder, a woman not only suffers a psychological trauma, but has also to deal with her husband who seeks vengeance because his honor and status have been shattered.

Cast: Shahab Hosseini, Taraneh Alidoosti, Babak Karimi, Farid Sajjadi Hosseini
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Writer: Asghar Farhadi
Cinematographer: Hossein Jafarian
Composer: Sattar Oraki
Editor: Hayedeh Safiyari

“The Unfaithful” (Vincent Sherman, US 1947)

the-unfaithfu

Director: Vincent Sherman
Writers: David Goodis (original screenplay), James Gunn (original screenplay)
Actors: Ann Sheridan, Lew Ayres, Zachary Scott

Same year, same director, same actress, same infidelity theme as precedent movie (Nora Prentiss) but this one with a more traditional approach. As in Nora Prentiss, a film noir with no real bad guy (or bad girl), except for the greedy Martin Barrow (Steven Gearey).

Eve Arden steals the show, a feminine counterpart to George Sanders.

“The Dressmaker” (Jocelyn Moorhouse, Australia 2015)

the-dressmaker

Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
Writers: Rosalie Ham (novel), P.J. Hogan
Actors: Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth

A film over bullying with very intelligent aspects and many contrasts, but some very weak points as well.

A few remarks (SPOILERS ahead):

  • The main personage, Tillie, has been bullied and chased away when she was a girl, but comes back as a strong woman wanting to have her revenge. However, at the contact of the people at the origin of her sufferings, she turns weak and is bullied again (for ex., the scene when the teacher closes the door of the church on her).
    Other interesting personages: the mother, the policeman…
  • There’s an impossible chain of events: within one afternoon, Tillie learns that the man she hates is her father, that the boy she’s supposed to have killed is her brother, that she eventually didn’t kill him… and then, just after all this, she crowns her day by making love with the man she loves for the first time … and he then stupidly kills himself afterwards!!!
  • For me, the most annoying was the music: David Hirschfelder had made a musical patchwork in which we hear Ennio Moriccone, Johann Söderqvist, Bruno Coulais, and a few others. The final effect is that the music fills the movie with gratuitous references instead of sustaining its narrative. For example, whereas the imitation of Ennio Morricone nicely fits what the camera shows and how it shows it, the (over)use of the music of Les Choristes (The Chorus) makes no sense at all.