What I’ve Caught Up With, February, 2024 Part 1:
Film: Angels and Insects (1995)
A very upsetting period drama puts naturalist William Adamson (Mark Rylance), nearly destroyed by a shipwreck on his return from the Amazon, in the home of a benefactor (Jeremy Kemp). He becomes enamored of the man’s daughter, Eugenia (Patsy Kensit), but forms a more intellectual bond with the estate’s nanny, Matty Crompton (Kristin Scott Thomas). The drama and romances are played over the top of William and Matty crafting a book on an ant colony behind the estate. It’s a wildly underseen film, perhaps not as good as I think it is, but I find it very affecting, tragic, and in the end, quite uplifting.
Film: She Said (2022)
When the #MeToo movement started, there was a sense that it was going to snowball and keep going. She Said is specifically about the case built against movie producer Harvey Weinstein by reporters Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan). It’s reminiscent in many ways of Spotlight from a few years ago, and not simply because it takes place in large part in a news office. The revelation here is not the work that went into tracking down the story, but the depths of depravity of Weinstein and the decades of abuse this case represented. This probably should have gotten more play as a film, and honestly, I’m a little surprised by the lack of Oscar play this got.
Film: Coma (1978)
A medical thriller, Coma involves a conspiracy to supply human organs to the black market. Essentially, patients go in for minor surgery and have an adverse reaction to the anesthesia and never wake up. Dr. Susan Wheeler (Geneviève Bujold) starts to investigate when her best friend becomes comatose in a routine operation, and is eventually assisted by her boyfriend, Dr. Mark Bellows (Michael Douglas). This more or less goes in the direction you expect—it feels like a medical version of Douglas’s movie The China Syndrome in a lot of ways. It’s a decent thriller, and there is a tremendous horror moment in a freezer filled with bodies. It features a great cast, including Richard Widmark and Rip Torn as well as early film roles for Tom Selleck and Ed Harris.
Film: Forty Guns (1957)
This is a pretty standard Western involving a woman (Barbara Stanwyck) who runs a county with an iron hand. While her brother (John Ericson) runs roughshod over the locals, a marshal (Barry Sullivan) and his brothers (Gene Barry and Robert Dix) ride into town. There’s a lot here that feels like a sort of budget Gunfight at the OK Corral, with the marshal and his brothers serving as a sort of poor man’s Earp brothers, down to more or less what happens to them. This is toward the end of Stanwyck’s career, but before her stint on The Big Valley on television so it serves as kind of a lead-in to Stanwyck on horseback. It’s not great, but it’s short and Barbara Stanwyck is always worth your time.
Film: Compliance (2012)
In what seems like a modern day retelling of the Stanley Milgram experiments from 1948, Compliance is an ugly story that is legitimately based on a true event. A young woman (Dreama Walker) working at a fast food establishment (a McDonald’s in the actual story) is accused over the phone of stealing from a customer. The store’s manager (Ann Dowd) complies with everything she is told to do by the “officer” on the phone—strip searching, forcing a young girl to be watched by men, and more. And, naturally, some of those men are going to be happy to follow the instructions of the cops into some disturbing and illegal places. This is filmed as tastefully as possible, and based on what happens, that wasn’t easy to do. Compliance is a good reminder that we seem to be wired to follow authority and we probably shouldn’t be.
Film: The Limey (1999)
I’m not sure what the fascination is with British gangster pics, but that’s what The Limey is. Wilson (Terrence Stamp) finds out his daughter has died in LA under mysterious circumstances, and so he goes to find out what happened to her. What he finds is a music producer named Valentine (Peter Fonda), who is clearly dirty and well-protected. That’s pretty much it—it’s a straight revenge picture as Terrence Stamp works his way through California looking for answers. Like the old saying about life, this is nasty, brutish, and short. Lesley Ann Warren and Luis Guzmán round out the cast for what is a simple exercise in quick, effective violence.
