Month: March 2022

When astronaut Johnny Depp acts strangely after his return from space, his wife Charlize Theron worries about what happened while he was away and what that means for the twins she’s suddenly expecting. The tension feels quite forced as little bread crumbs are dropped throughout and never picked up. I’d hoped for more actual horror from the film and some chemistry between the two leads who are both surprisingly bland. Theron’s character makes stupid decisions throughout and her weird eyebrows are distracting. A more energetic, underused Joe Morton comes in for a short while to pull Theron along the right path, but he quickly disappears and the film is worse for it.   

Aml Ameen is a Harvard graduated, Nigerian born trader working on Wall Street, caving under the pressure of the job and his immigrant family’s expectations. When the tension brings him to process an illegal trade, his carefully structured life starts to break down. While the Black immigrant experience of the protagonist is a bit of a new one, the rest of the film regarding young traders and the pressure they feel isn’t. I found myself more interested in Hope Olaide Wilson’s role as the protagonist’s sister. Instead of balking against their family’s expectations, she maintains them and tries to be a bridge between the other family members, but her motivations for doing so are less clear.

I hadn’t intended to work through Robert Altman’s filmography, but somehow this is my third film of his in two days. Elliott Gould is a Los Angeles magazine writer and gambler whose addiction is hastened after a chance meeting with more experienced gambler George Segal. Through highs and lows, the determination of the duo for a big score never sways. The two men have good chemistry together and are natural in their individual roles. While the pair ends up in Reno, it’s otherwise interesting experiencing how gambling looks and feels in locales not famous for the activity.

Adapted from the classic Herman Melville novel, Gregory Peck is Captain Ahab, a whaling captain bent on revenge against the white whale who stole his leg. I have no idea how accurate it is to the source, but it does capture the main points of Ahab’s maniacal pursuit for his foe. The whaling scenes are quite impressive and the final battle is rather exciting, but even though he gave a solid performance, I think Peck’s casting might have been a mistake. I’m used to him playing intelligent, level-headed voices of reason, which might be why he doesn’t quite capture the captain’s spiral into madness. 

In this revisionist Western, Paul Newman’s Wild Bill Hickok looks to boost the appeal of his Wild West show by adding Frank Kaquitts’s Chief Sitting Bull as a guest star. Bill gets more than he bargained for as the Chief is neither an imposing, hulking figure nor an untamed savage for him to battle against, at least not physically, and has his own agenda with regards to joining the show. This is pretty much the film’s only gimmick and it’s a bit long for it. I always love seeing Newman, but in this instance, I would have loved to see more of Sitting Bull’s experience instead of the white people’s reactions to his actions. 

Alone in his New Jersey study, Philip Baker Hall’s Richard Nixon monologues to a tape recorder, detailing all the personal slights he has experienced through his life that led to the Watergate scandal. It’s an exhausting hour and a half where the President’s full paranoia, anger, and self-denial are laid bare. The dialogue goes off the rails so often that it’s sometimes impossible what tangent he will connect to next. Hall’s performance is astounding and exceptionally tiring to watch. He looks physically drained and ill by the film’s end.