Meek's Cutoff

Year of Release: 2010

Director:  Kelly Reichardt

Screenplay:  Jonathan Raymond

Starring:  Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton, Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson

Running Time:  104 minutes

Genre:    Western, drama

This film is set in 1845 during the Oregon Trail, a small group of settlers throw in with disreputable guide Stephen Meek (Greenwood), who claims that he knows a short cut through the Oregon High Desert.  As a journey of two weeks becomes five, tensions among the group increase, as food, water and other supplies start to run low.  Things come to a head when the group kidnap a lone Native American (Rod Rondeaux), and try to force him to show them where they can find water.

This meditative, slow burning Western may not be to everyone's tastes, but if you stick with it, it casts a surprising spell.  The film is beautifully photographed, with long still shots, often depicting the characters in the middle distance, dwarfing them among the grandeur of the landscape.  The cast is note perfect, and it rings the changes with the traditional Western by staying mainly with the women, left out of the main decisions and debates which are held at a remove with the sound muted.  Very little really happens in the film, with it being mostly characters trudging through a beautiful but bleak landscape with occasional muttered discussing and arguments.  It tried my patience at first, but after I had got used to the film's rhythms and pace I really got into it, and, if you go along with it, it is really absorbing.  

  

Michelle Williams in Meek's Cutoff 

The Sweet Hereafter

Year of Release:  1997
Director:  Atom Egoyan
Screenplay:  Atom Egoyan, based on the novel The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks
Starring:  Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, Maury Chaykin, Tom McCamus, Gabrielle Rose, Alberta Watson, Caerthan Banks, Arsinee Khanjian
 Running Time:  112 minutes
Genre:  Drama

In the small rural town of Sam Dent, British Columbia, a school bus crash kills fourteen children.  Lawyer Mitchell Stevens (Holm) arrives in town to persuade the grieving townspeople to hire him to represent them in a class action lawsuit against the town and the bus company.  While some people accept his offer, others are more reluctant and some overtly hostile, as the town's various dark secrets come to the surface.  Meanwhile Stevens is haunted by his troubled relationship with his estranged drug-addict daughter, Zoe (Banks).

This is a deeply powerful and genuinely moving film.  As with many Egoyan films, it uses an unconventional structure, moving back and forth in time, with crucial events and information revealed out of sequence.  Ian Holm gives a devastating performance as the lawyer, who is revealed to be much more than just a sleazy ambulance-chaser.  The heartbreaking scene where he tells a story from his daughter's childhood is possibly the best moment in Holm's distinguished career.  The film has a large ensemble cast all do well, particularly Sarah Polley as troubled fifteen year old Nicole, who survives the crash but is left disabled.  The tone of the film, despite it's subject matter, is more like a dark fairy tale than gritty realism, with repeated references to Robert Browning's retelling of The Pied Piper of Hamlin, and a haunting, medieval-influenced score by Mychael Danna.

      Sarah Polley and Ian Holm face up to The Sweet Hereafter

The Post

Year of Release:  2017
Director:  Steven Spielberg
Screenplay:  Liz Hannah and Josh Singer
Starring:  Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys
Running Time:  116 minutes
Genre:  Drama, thriller

In 1971, the struggling Washington Post newspaper is owned by heiress Katherine Graham (Streep) with editor-in-chief Ben Bradlee (Hanks).  Graham has inherited the paper following the suicide of her husband, and has severe doubts as to her ability to run a paper, while Bradlee constantly sees the paper being left behind by other, larger newspapers, and is determined to break a big story.  When they become aware of a leak of thousands of pages of Top Secret documents from the Pentagon relating to America's involvement in the Vietnam war (the so-called "Pentagon Papers"), they are forced to decide whether or not to publish, even if it means severe consequences.

Based on a true story, this is definitely part of the "newspaper drama" subgenre, full of serious looking people running around corridors with files and large boxes, chattering typewriters, bustling newsrooms and stirring speeches about the integrity of the press.  Apparently the film was made while Spielberg was waiting for the special effects to be completed for Ready Player One (2018).  The echoes with current events cannot be ignored, at a time when the press and the veracity of news seems to be constantly under fire, this is a film about why journalists and editors cannot allow themselves to be bullied by governments and politicians.  The villain of the piece is then-President Richard Nixon who appears very briefly seen from the back through the White House windows, ranting and growling threats.  It's an intriguing film, which tells an interesting and relevant story with a real sense of urgency.  The performances are excellent, especially from Meryl Streep, who plays someone who is kind of in both camps.  She is someone who is very much part of the Washington establishment, she is friends with many of the politicians, many of whose careers, as she well knows, will be ruined by the publication of the Pentagon Papers.  She is also someone who is perpetually patronised, overlooked and belittled by people who are technically her employees.  An early scene shows her at a board meeting where the all-male board talk over her, ignore her and sometimes repeat exactly what she's just said. 

Compulsive viewing at The Post               

Exotica

Year of Release:  1994

Director:  Atom Egoyan

Screenplay:  Atom Egoyan

Starring:  Bruce Greenwood, Don McKellar, Mia Kirshner, Elias Koteas, Arsinee Khanjian, Sarah Polley

Running Time:  103 minutes

Genre:  Drama

This dark, multi-layered drama focuses on the staff and clients of a Toronto strip-club called Exotica:  Lonely accountant Francis (Greenwood) is obsessed with a young exotic dancer, Christina (Kirshner), which arouses the jealousy of the club's resident DJ, Eric (Koteas), who is also in love with Christina.  Meanwhile Francis becomes involved with pet-store owner Thomas (McKellar), who runs a smuggling operation based around trading rare animals.

Back in the mid to late 1990s, Atom Egoyan was one of the leading lights of Canadian cinema, and this was the film that really made him a star director.  As with many of his films, various initially apparently unrelated stories, set in the past and present, interweave and coalesce into a whole towards the end.  The film conjures up a distinct feel right from the opening shot, as the credits play over a long tracking shot of a variety of hothouse plants and flowers while Mychael Danna's memorable, sinuous, Indian-influenced score plays and the opening line: "You must ask yourself, what brought them to this point?"  The decor in the Exotica club is full of images of jungle plants.  The film was marketed initially in some places as an erotic thriller, which conjures up images of the kind of cheap movies that come on late-night cable with dull plots and a couple of soft-focus sex scenes, and Exotica  really isn't that at all.  Given the fact that it is set in a strip club obviously there is a fair amount of nudity, mostly in the background, and there is a powerfully sensuous atmosphere in the film, but it is not a sex movies, nor is it really a thriller, although there are thriller elements in it.  It's a well-constructed film, with some great performances, and a fantastic soundtrack (including the best use on film of the late, great Leonard Cohen's song "Everybody Knows").  Not all the various storylines are resolved in the end, but it remains a haunting, powerful and deeply rewarding exploration of grief and desire.       

      Mia Kirshner and Don McKellar in Exotica

Disturbing Behavior

Year: 1998
Director: David Nutter
Screenplay: Scott Rosenberg
Starring: James Marsden, Katie Holmes, Nick Stahl, Bruce Greenwood, William Sadler
Running Time: 80 minutes
Genre: Thriller, horror, science-fiction

Summary: Shortly after the death of his brother, teenager Steve Clark (Marsden) moves from Chicago to the pictureque coastal town of Cradle Bay with his parents and younger sister (Katherine Isabelle). Shortly after enrolling at the local High School, Steve befriends intelligent outsiders Gavin Strick (Stahl), U.V. (Chad E. Donella) and Rachel Wagner (Holmes). Steve also notices the elite group of attractive, preppy, high-achieving students known as the "Blue Ribbons". It turns out that the Blue Ribbon members have been brainwashed into losing their individuality and becoming model students, and a side-effect of their conditioning triggers homicidal rages should they become sexually aroused. Before long, the Blue Ribbons set their sights on removing Steve and friend's rebellious tendencies.

Opinions: This film is pretty much typical of late '90s teenage horror fare with it's attractive cast and wise-cracking script the film turns out almost as a blend of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and the TV series Dawson's Creek (1998-2003) (of course the film stars Katie Holmes who was a regular on Dawson's Creek). It also bears a very strong similarity to the 1999 film The Faculty which also dealt with mind control and high school. The film's director, David Nutter, is probably best known for directing episodes of moody horror/science-fiction shows such as The X-Files and Millennium, and he incorporates some of those show's trademark gloomy visuals here.
The cast are efficient and engaging enough, if not particularly impressive, and events move at a quick pace and rarely get dull. Despite this however, the film still feels like a TV show episode expanded to feature length. It also has a number of minor but distracting little continuity errors throughout, stuff like someone will have a hand on someone else's shoulder but the shoulder that the hand is on will keep switching from shot to shot. Granted these aren't exactly show-stopping errors, but they are slightly distracting.
The movie makes for a fun enough distraction for an hour and a half though.
Several scenes were cut from the film, apparently against the director's wishes, including a love scene between James Marsden and Katie Holmes (which was present in the film's theatrical release) and an alternate ending.


Katie Homes and Nick Stahl in Disturbing Behavior