Demanding Smart Movies

Three recent movies Bombshell, Knives Out, and Uncut Gems, different as they are, share the trait of sharp, funny, overlapping lines of dialogue. They demand -- and reward -- close attention.

[Photo collage: (top) Kevin Garnett, LaKeith Stanfield, Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems, written and directed by brothers Josh and Benny Safdie; (center) the principals of Knives Out, including Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, and Jamie Lee Curtis, written and directed by Rian Johnson; (base) Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie in Bombshell, directed by Jay Roach, written by Charles Randolph]

Uncut GemsMy friend Susan said of Uncut Gems, "I'm glad I've seen it... and I'm glad I don't have to see it again." Adam Sandler portrays a jeweler who gambles on sports, on the sale of a gem, on what he'll get pawning merchandise. He plays one bet off another to stay one step ahead of the heavies collecting what he owes. When you think he can't get himself into deeper trouble, you think wrong.

Though the story is simple, the presentation is hectic. For much of the movie, the Safdie brothers interweave at least two conversations at once, a phone often making a third. Early on, we struggle to untangle the threads of dialogue. But Sandler draws us in with his virtuoso performance, playing off interlocutors who each clamor to get something different from him. He stalls, cajoles, harangues, threatens, sweet-talks, and pleads, pivoting in an instant from crestfallen to cocksure. It's exhausting and unforgettable.



BombshellBombshell dramatizes how some women at Fox News became allies to expose sexual harassment by the company's founder Roger Ailes. Screenwriter Charles Randolph and director Jay Roach keep us off-balance as a character conversing with others on screen will sometimes turn aside to the movie audience. The energy is high, especially early in the movie, as Newscaster Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) gives the movie audience a backstage tour of Fox, highlighting different floors in a scale model of the office building to explain the Fox's hierarchy. When a man passing by comments on her skirt, she tells us, "He's not horny, just ambitious." Actual Fox broadcasts on monitors in the background often illustrate what characters say in the foreground, as when two male co-anchors on TV banter suggestively with their female colleague just as an employee explains that Fox uses titillation and fear to hook audiences.

As Ailes (John Lithgow) feels under attack, he and his supporters isolate his accusers. The challenging playfulness of the early scenes gives way to sober scenes that unfold the painful consequences of Ailes's abuse, to the women involved, to their families, and to Ailes's own wife.



Knives outFor the murder mystery Knives Out, intricate obfuscation of a simple story is really the point. After a wealthy mystery novelist (Christopher Plummer) has apparently committed suicide, the movie toggles between past and present. In the present, detectives question each member of the novelist's family about the party on the night of the death; in flashback, we see snippets from the day of the party, so we know how each suspect is lying, and just how each family member despises the others. This interplay of past and present, verbal lies and visual truth, overt text and subtext, complicates the storytelling. Credit writer-director Rian Johnson: what a plodding affair it would have been to see the events unfold in a straight narrative line.

Friction among the characters generates sparks, fun for the actors and for the audience. Jamie Lee Curtis as the outraged eldest daughter spits nails trying to maintain command of the situation. All of the anxious family meet their foil in Daniel Craig's private investigator. His patrician southern drawl makes us suspect that Rian Johnson, naming the detective "Benoit Blanc," owes as much to "Blanche DuBois" as to "Hercule Poirot." Chris Evans plays the family's scapegoat, both devil-may-care and ne'er-do-well, who cheerfully antagonizes everyone. He shows a sympathetic side when the patriarch's young nurse "Marta Cabrera" (Ana de Armas) falls under suspicion. De Armas, vulnerable and forthright, seems to be the one genuine person on screen. We know that for a fact, because she throws up every time she tries to lie.


Rian Johnson and his collaborators pay homage to film mysteries of earlier decades. A cast of stars playing characters who all have motives to murder in a tightly-controlled location inevitably reminds us of Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and The Last of Sheila. Decorative displays of knives recall Deathtrap. There's a life-size sailor puppet that replicates one in Sleuth. And, as Sleuth was inspired by playwright Wiliam Goldman's playing puzzle games at Stephen Sondheim's town home, the detective here sings a little of Sondheim's song "Losing My Mind."



ConclusionSome movies go straight to the heart. In these movies, the path to the heart is a labyrinth.

My blogposts of related interest:
• Murder on the Orient Express figures prominently in my essay What David Suchet Saw: Christ in Christie (10/2014)
  
• Sondheim's Murder Mysteries (06/2014) connects the Broadway composer with Sleuth, Deathtrap, and his own screenplay for The Last of Sheila
  
• The screen writer for Bombshell wrote The Big Short about the 2008 financial collapse; I reflected How to Turn Misery to Comedy (12/2015)