For the week of July 9th, Paramount Home Media Distribution is bringing John Krasinski's hit thriller A Quiet Place to Blu-ray. Here's the truth: the film disintegrates the second you apply even a soupçon of logic to it. While I can roll with the premise that vicious monsters are hunting human flesh, the film's post-apocalyptic surroundings beggar more belief than I have. For one, given what we know about these beasts (human-sized crabstrosities that hunt through echolocation), it seems improbable that they'd be able to take over the planet so quickly, especially considering the third-act revelation about their one weakness which, suffice to say, is something they'd confront in a pitched military assault. And we know such battles have occurred from the newspaper clippings John Krasinski's character keeps around his workstation. Furthermore, no origin story makes sense for these creatures. If they're aliens from another dimension, then how did they get here (they convey no intelligence beyond quite literal blind rage), and if they're genetic experiments gone awry, then what were scientists hoping to achieve with them in the first place? To his credit, Krasinski begins the film after the invasion has ended so we don't have time to consider such matters, but even that approach can't excuse the decision to have him and his on-screen (and off-screen!) wife (the great Emily Blunt) conceive a child, considering that babies pose maybe the greatest situational awareness threat in a world where harsh/discordant sounds draw lethal attention (and no, seeing the way the two have planned to soundproof the crib doesn't make Krasinski and Blunt seem any less stupid). And here's where I've egregiously buried the lede: I almost wholeheartedly recommend A Quiet Place. For all its logistical inconsistencies, the film proves maniacally effective when you're watching it. Working with the wonderful DP Charlotte Bruus Christensen (who's quickly becoming one of those cinematographers that can justify a viewing through her presence alone), Krasinski paints in gorgeous widescreen images, framing the mayhem with a simple austerity. If John Ford ever directed a monster movie, it would look a lot like A Quiet Place. Most importantly, Krasinski gets so much mileage out of the sound design. You lean in a little closer to the human characters when they're signing at one another. Krasinski and Blunt are predictably terrific, but young Millicent Simmonds steals the movie as their eldest daughter - she's deaf herself, and that reality grounds A Quiet Place in the best possible way. Best of all, when the film wants to frighten us, the jump scares never play like a cheat. We get lulled into the quiet, so that any deviations land like depth charges. Krasinski also deserves props for sticking a flawless John Carpenter ending. Our audience exploded into applause at the final, perfect audio cue - I imagine yours did, too.
Martin Liebman's Blu-ray review noted that "this is a microcosm film in which the family unit is all that matters. It's not how they have adapted, not how they have survived, not where they are, not what they have, not of which they dream that matters: it's only that they're together, that they're all-in to come through, or at least survive as long as they can. The film deliberately leaves the backstory vague and the family's future prospects hazy. It's concerned with their immediate survival. There's no starting point and there's no end in sight. It's about the everyday in a new world, and it doesn't matter how or why it has come to be as it is. The audience will quickly attach to the family with an emotional current that's born of tragedy and developed with time and of watching as the only thing that has not deteriorated is the love they share for one another...The film's action scenes are tense and tight, personal and intimate. The juxtaposition of deadly creatures and frightened, silent individuals where the only defense is sometimes stillness and silent prayer makes for terrifying imagery."
From Lionsgate Home Entertainment comes the political docudrama Chappaquiddick. I wish director John Curran made films that didn't feel so much like homework. Like his earlier Stone and The Painted Veil, Chappaquiddick is dutiful, stolid...and more than a little dry. You get the sense that in each case, if the central narrative weren't so compelling, Curran would have a hard time maintaining active viewer interest. Chappaquiddick has a particularly compelling hook. We're with Senator Ted Kennedy (a gently miscast Jason Clarke - he doesn't really attempt the Kennedy accent) during the worst moment of his life: the 1969 Chappaquiddick car accident that killed former Bobby Kennedy staffer Mary Jo Kopechne (a very affecting Kate Mara) and torpedoed any lofty political aspirations Teddy might have had. I say "might" because screenwriters Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan paint the youngest Kennedy as a near-buffoon who chafes under the expectations of his domineering father (Bruce Dern, giving a near-wordless performance that's the best in the film). Chappaquiddick suggests that on the night of the accident, Teddy had been in a self-pitying drinking bender - he all but confesses to Kopechne that he never wanted to be in politics - and that most of Teddy's actions towards political self-preservation after Kopechne died stemmed more from Joe Kennedy Sr.'s fearsome influence. To wit: in the film's best scene, Teddy calls his father to confess what he's done, but the elder, stroke-afflicted Kennedy only wants to croak out one word of advice - "alibi." Like I said, compelling stuff, particularly once Joe Kennedy summons a damage-control team that includes none than former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (the great Clancy Brown). But I credit history more than Curran's handling of the material. Other than Maryse Alberti's exceptional digital photography (she gives the material the slightly faded texture of old still images, and I love how she'll often let you see more of her human subjects in the widescreen frame so that they appear dwarfed by their surroundings), Curran can't rise above "solid HBO movie." We get little sense of build - everything, even before Kopechne's death, plods along with the same brooding inevitability. You wish Curran had chosen a bolder tone. There's a version of this story that plays like jet-black comedy. Teddy seems incapable of handling this situation like a functional adult (he insists on wearing a ridiculous neck brace to curry favor for himself at Kopechne's funeral; he takes a break from his advisors' machination so that he can fly a kite), and in a manner that reminded me of Armando Iannucci or the Coen Brothers. Or you go the cynical-thriller direction. I kept wondering how David Fincher would handle this same script, how he'd make us complicit in hoping, along with McNamara and Co., that maybe the moon landing (which occurred the same weekend) would absorb media attention away from Teddy. But Curran plays everything straight down the middle, and the film suffers for it.
In his Blu-ray review, Jeffrey Kauffman wrote that the film "makes abundantly clear...that the Kennedys themselves were only too aware of how they were viewed by the public at large, and in fact part of the film's interest is in seeing some of the 'backstage drama' in the wake of the accident that left Ted (Jason Clarke) injured (supposedly, anyway) and Mary Jo Kopechne (Kate Mara) dead. While Chappaquiddick may elide certain elements of the story, one thing it makes almost depressingly clear is Ted's lack of 'vigor' (to use a favorite word of his presidential brother) in responding to the tragedy, either the night or it happened, or indeed in the initially subsequent days. In the film Kennedy is portrayed as only too aware of what the situation will do to his reputation (and by default, to his extended family), and seems to be more concerned about that aspect than the 'little' fact that a woman died. Chappaquiddick is frequently an arresting (no pun intended) character study, though what kind of 'character' Kennedy is may be debatable, as evidenced by his first reaction after the accident: 'I'm not going to be president.' Clarke really does a quite convincing job with a perhaps inherently unsympathetic role, and he is surrounded by equally good performances by Ed Helms as cousin Joe Gargan, Jim Gaffigan as U.S. Attorney Paul Markham and Bruce Dern as paterfamilias Joseph Kennedy."
In his latest film, the remarkable character study Lean on Pete, writer/director Andrew Haigh does something so subtle we almost don't notice it. For the first half of the first, he shoots everything in long masters and medium shots. This choice creates an effect of uncanny naturalism. Like Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves, we feel like we've intruded on a life already in progress, specifically that of fifteen-year-old Charley (Charlie Plummer, in one of the greatest kid performances I've ever seen). By any normal metric, Charley would seem to be in some kind of distress: Charley has stopped going to school so he can run odd jobs for a seedy horse racer (Steve Buscemi) and when he's at home, he's the de facto adult to his layabout father (Travis Fimmel), a sweetly feckless drunk who's more like a big brother to Charley than anything else. But Haigh's shooting style is so easy and gentle that we assume Charley has managed to cope, or at least doesn't realize the full measure of his predicament, and so we're moved when he forms an attachment to the title character, a stubborn race horse who seems calmer around Charley than anyone else. And then everything goes to hell. I knew very little about the film going into it, so I'll tread lightly, but suffice to say, circumstances force Charley to go on the run with Lean on Pete, and Haigh's style becomes more restless. He and DP Magnus Jønck move the camera around more aggressively, mimicking the frenzy roiling around Charley. For all intents and purposes, Haigh roots us inside his young protagonist; it's been a long while since I've had this subjective a viewing experience. If it seems clichéd that by running away with Pete, Charley could somehow find happiness, then Haigh thinks so, too. He never lets us forget that Pete is an unpredictable wild animal, and I was reminded of Chloé Zhao's great The Rider in terms of how Haigh casts the bond between human and horse. Pete brings Charley some kind of connection, but we're never sure how much of that bond is real or how much of it Charley wants to be real, and long stretches of that second half watch as Charley struggles to lead Pete, and all the while the animal is otherwise answering to its own instincts. In those moments, Charley seems most alone, and it's almost more than we can bear. At almost every instance, Plummer resists the temptation to court our sympathies or drown in pathos; he does such fiercely internal work that hardens every time we expect tears. A wrenching, vital piece of work.
Finally, Sony Home Entertainment is offering a 4K edition of director Antoine Fuqua's The Equalizer just in time for the sequel. This reimagining of the cult 1980s TV show stars Denzel Washington as Robert McCall, a home-improvement-store worker whose unassuming demeanor hides something far more lethal: he's a former government agent who specialized in wetwork, and that skill set gets reactivated after McCall intervenes in the life of a troubled young woman (Chloe Moretz). However, anyone expecting another Man on Fire is going to be sorely disappointed. There's no inkling of greater nuance or spirit in The Equalizer, and while its lack of ambition isn't necessarily a fault, its rote approach to action and violence certainly is - The Equalizer plays like a late-period Charles Bronson programmer, with moments of graphic, ugly brutality acting as the sole reprieve from the long stretches of functional exposition and unconvincing theatrics. Washington tries his best to ground his character in something resembling normal human behavior, but at the end of the day, he's just playing a righteous cipher, and no amount of dry understatement and references to classic literature (his Robert McCall is an insomniac who's always reading books that just happen to thematically pertain to his own life) can give this action hero any real depth. Still, at least Washington comes out of this thing with his dignity – Moretz is patently unbelievable as a hardened teen prostitute, and Marton Csokas chews so much scenery as The Equalizer's repellent Big Bad that one worries he's going to start gaining weight. The biggest offender is Fuqua, unfortunately. The best I can say for his work behind the camera is that he makes The Equalizer look good, although having Academy Award-winning DP Mauro Fiore at the ready probably doesn't hurt (unlike Fuqua's chintzy hit thriller Olympus Has Fallen, The Equalizer looks like a real movie rather than an excuse to get Louisiana tax credits). But his sense of pace is all off. Ultimately, he's making a popcorn thriller, but at almost two-and-a-half-hours long, The Equalizer lumbers along like a more somber affair, except that Fuqua's staging of the action scenes is so needlessly gory that we can't take it seriously.