Archive for category: Spotlight

A small movie, like the best Vermeer paintings, and if not a similar masterpiece, one that told a fun story with clarity and the borrowed beauty of all the Vermeers. Just showing close-ups of the paintings in the Rijksmuseum exhibition would have been worth the admission price, but beyond the final show were two subplots involving two contested paintings. While the Rijksmuseum ultimately accepted both as authentic, in one case over the opinion of the National Gallery in Washington, the film left me with serious doubts about the other, a work owned by Thomas Kaplan, who was among the many participants skillfully shown. The movie increased my appreciation of Vermeer, which is hard to do.

Willem Dafoe  couldn’t leave because he was locked inside a billionaire architect’s apartment after an art theft went awry, but what was my excuse? The film’s premise discouraged any hope of a happy or good ending, but surely something interesting would happen? It turned out to be nothing more than a Greek/Belgian/German art-house production that, perhaps for obscure art-house reasons, was set in New York and starred an American actor. Was it a comment on the obscenely rich? the value of Art? the need for human connection? Architecture and Design? Man’s ingenuity? the human body? Where most films leave me wondering, where and when do the characters go to the bathroom?, this movie, unfortunately, spelled it out.

As movies showing the horror of war go, this is hard to beat–more realistic and thus more powerful than 1917. In fact, that is perhaps the sole purpose of the film. There are characters, but we are told nothing about them, any more than we know about the pawn or the knight on a chessboard. The wastefulness, uselessness and stupidity of World War I trench warfare hits even harder when we have read that morning of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers locked in similar combat. What a species are we! My only complaint, and it’s not insignificant, is that the 2-1/2 hour film is a half-hour too long. I kept identifying welcome and appropriate endings, only to have the camera find one more battle, one more wound to the gut to show. [Although a Netflix film, this needs to be seen on the very wide screen of a movie theater.]

This is all Emma Corrin – and you certainly see all of Emma Corrin. She is gorgeous and affecting as a young woman consumed by her own sexuality. By contrast, the two men in her life are underdrawn, or poorly drawn; and the larger themes involving gender, class and society, that I expect are developed more fully in D.H. Lawrence’s novel, are given short shrift. The costumes, settings and characters are a reminder that Downton Abbey is just over the hill. And there is Emma Corrin.

It’s obvious early on, despite Javier Bardem’s suavity, that the “good” in the title is meant ironically. His badness, however–again, maybe due to Bardem’s inherent charm–never seems that bad: how would you react to a maniac setting up with a bullhorn and banners in front of your front door, and the personal attention he gives to the plant manager who continually screws up seems wildly excessive if the only goal is a regional corporate award on top of a dozen others already won, including “the Oscar of scales.” The pleasures of the movie are in the individual performances, not the story, which left me cold and confused.