"Small Things Like These

  ☆☆½ 

Small Things Like These begins and ends quietly. It is quiet in the middle. It is quiet when it needs to be quiet, and it is quiet when it needs to be loud. It is made by filmmakers who must believe that much is said in the spaces between words. I surmise they believe that, because they've made a movie that is nothing but the spaces between words.

What sparse dialogue these is in Small Things Like These is largely whispered, or spoken in hushed grunts, in the tones saved for words that struggle to convey the meaning they intend.

Your appreciation of Small Things Like These will, then, depend on your patience for listening, carefully, to bits of dialogue, to watching long, wordless passages, and determining for yourself what is happening. There is a plot in the film, but it is non-linear, it is hinted at rather than conveyed, and it's filled with missing pieces of information that the filmmakers leave for us to determine.

Is that a flaw in the film? I found it so, but other critics have been more kind. They call it intense and understated. It certainly is the latter, so much so that there are times it can't be bothered with trivialities like exposition and character development. The movie reminded me of film courses I took in college, in which the professor told us that plot was an unnecessary device, that everything in cinema is conveyed through the mise-en-scène, the way the images are put together, the way the film flows.

I'm not sure I bought that theory then, and I'm not sure I buy it now. And yet, it's all the movie really gives us to go on. Cillian Murphy plays Bill Furlong, a stoic man of few words, a Catholic "coal man" who makes the rounds every day before going home to his wife and his five daughters. He cleans the grime off of him. He tries his best to make a living.

One of the places he delivers coal is the convent. It's a place where girls live—the kind of girls we used to call "wayward." Bill suspects some things about the place. Or sort of suspects. Maybe. We're not sure. He doesn't let on much. His wife suggests that whatever he might or might not think, some things are better left ignored. The Mother Superior at the convent is played by Emily Watson, and she's a woman with a lot to hide. One scene between Bill and the Mother Superior could have been an incendiary showdown between his suspicions and her defenses, but here, as everywhere else in the film, we're meant to pay attention to the quiet moments between the words. The glances. The half-smiles.

There's another story being told in Small Things Like These, which after some initial confusion we learn is the story of Bill himself growing up as a little boy.

What are we to make of these scenes with young Bill? That's impossible to know for sure. The movie presents them, then moves on. Even if you try to look between the spaces in these scenes, no answers are going to come your way—not even about what we see on the screen. How do these memories impact Bill as an adult? We're left to figure that out on our own.

Small Things Like These is not going to offer easy answers. It's not going to offer many answers at all. It's a glum story about a glum man who discovers something shocking—except it's not really about that, at all. The novel on which it's based is, I've read, about kindness and compassion, and it's been billed as the "anti-Christmas Carol." The movie is not successful in translating any of those ideas to the screen.

It isn't a failure, though. Small Things Like These does have good performances, leads us (with the final title card) to want to research what Bill finds on our own, and, once we have, to go and watch one of the documentaries made about this period of time. The topic is distressing, sordid and interesting. Small Things Like These is none of those things. As it moves from moment to moment, scene to scene, it's calm and intriguing, and after a while there's a clear sense it's building to something significant in its final moments.

But it doesn't. This movie isn't about that. It's about the meaning between the spaces of those final moments. It's about subtext. And it turns out that subtext isn't a particularly interesting idea for a movie.

Viewed November 16, 2024 — AMC Universal 16

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"Heretic"

  ☆☆☆½ 

There's so much right about Heretic, the new horror movie that doesn't cast Hugh Grant against type as much as it casts him against all good judgment — yet it's just one of the many, many things that work in this unique movie that comes dangerously close to redefining the concept of a psychological thriller.

But Heretic pulls its punches, setting us up for a final act that will blow our minds but delivering a final act that gets bloody and gory and ultra-violent and, at times, ultra-stupid. And yet, because the first two thirds are so terrific, and because that third act contains at least one cinematic trick that is among the best trick shots in movie history (yes, I know that's a big, big statement — it's a big, big shot), I want to be lenient with this film.

It's essentially a claustrophobic three-person exercise in tension that continually feels the need to open up the action. In a pretty ironic twist for a movie about the meanings of faith, Heretic doubts itself once too often. That's a shame, since confidence is its primary strength.

The setup is remarkably simple and no-frills: Two Mormon missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), follow up on leads as they try to preach their gospel, and visit the secluded (is there any other kind?) house owned by one Mr. Reed, an affable fellow who carries the embarrassed, halting charm of Hugh Grant. Good thing he's played by Hugh Grant.

He invites them in. They accept. Bad move.

Nothing feels right from the moment they step into the living room and smell the blueberry pie that Mr. Reed insists Mrs. Reed is baking in the kitchen. In fact, he says, the pie will be ready soon—so, while they wait, they should sit and talk.

Turns out Mr. Reed knowns a thing or two about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. More, it seems, than Sister Barnes or Sister Paxton. A lot more. About other religions, too. Just as things start getting really uncomfortable, the Sisters decide maybe it's time to leave. Mr. Barnes says he won't stop them. Needless to say, he's lying.

Tense, claustrophobic, uncomfortable and awkward, the first act of Heretic is nothing more than a setup, and it moves to a riveting half-hour stretch in which Grant takes center stage and takes Heretic into wild and fascinating directions. A long diatribe filled with histories of religion, pop music, board games and the very nature of belief is delivered with remarkable effect: In the midst of a horror film, the audience begins to think. (Or, I imagine, begins to get awfully antsy that nothing seems to be happening.) Heretic marks the first time I've come out of a horror film desperate to know more about music history.

Then, just when the movie has us in its thrall and can lead us down any path it chooses ... writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods take it to an ultra-bloody, violent place that doesn't let the interest flag even as it feels like a letdown. It also opens up some gaping plot holes and some flimsy narrative logic that never quite fits. After watching Heretic, I read one of those "the ending explained" articles, and it couldn't explain the ending. Or most of the last 20 minutes. I've worked it around and around in my head, and I can't quite make sense of some key questions about Heretic, though I won't give anything away by suggesting what they are.

It's worth seeing for yourself. Heretic is very much worth watching, even if the rabbit hole it promises viewers turns out to be pretty shallow and not nearly as topsy-turvy as might be hoped. Heretic tries a lot and achieves a lot ... just not quite enough.

Viewed November 10, 2024 — AMC Topanga

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"Juror #2"

 ☆☆☆☆½ 

Director Clint Eastwood's 42nd film may well be his last, and if that proves to be the case the 94-year-old filmmaker has saved one of his best for last—Juror #2 is a crackling legal thriller, one that could well be so familiar on the surface that Warner Bros. is barely releasing the film in theaters, eager to send it straight to streaming.

Missing this film in a theater would mean missing out on one of moviegoing's true pleasures: Watching a film with an appreciative audience. In recent months, we've had The Substance, Conclave and Speak No Evil has movies that rile up moviegoers. Sitting there in the dark, they become absorbed by the story, and in this case by the flawless filmmaking, and can't help themselves when the surprise twists come.

They do come in Juror #2, and in the packed auditorium the night I saw it, the audience gasped during a couple of key moments, laughed appreciatively at a couple of others, and it's that sort of audience participation (as opposed to the talking-and-texting kind) that helps clarify just why moviegoing is never, ever going to disappear.

Nicholas Hoult, who has long since moved past being "the kid from About a Boy" and grown into a compelling, Hitchcockian sort of "every man," plays a Savannah man named Justin Kemp, who obeys his summons for jury duty. His truthful answers to the stern judge (Amy Aquino) presiding over a murder trial make him the "perfect" person to serve on the jury. Or so everyone thinks. It turns out, Justin might well be the reason the victim in the case died.

That may seem like a spoiler, but it's revealed within the first 15 minutes or so of this tense courtroom drama, which also turns out to have a not-so-hidden deeper side.

Justin is married, with a baby on the way. He's a good man with a difficult past, and he really is unaware of his connection to the case when he is empaneled. As soon as he makes the connection, though, he's stuck: If he comes clean, he could be facing 30 or more years in prison. If he stays silent, he could condemn a man to murder even though that man is innocent — and he may be the actual culprit. 

And, of course, he can't tell a soul.

One of the people he can't tell is the local DA, played by Toni Collette — who, in a neat twist, played Hoult's troubled mother in About a Boy. Here, she represents the worst part of the criminal justice system, and Juror #2 isn't shy about its beliefs that it's a flawed and broken system. Sending a message is on the movie's mind, and the message is a bitter and angry one, but it's not the primary motivation. It wants, more than anything, to tell a good story—and it does.

The more Justin learns about the case, the more he realizes he's in the hottest of water. Not many people care if he gets burned—they need to make sure the state gets its man. It all leaves Justin in one of the most tortured legal quagmires since Paul Newman in The Verdict, yet Juror #2 is not a heavy drama. It's a fast-moving, engrossing thriller that also has quite a lot to say about the jury system and about the way conscience can weigh you down even when you try to clear your mind.

Eastwood has never shied away from infusing his films with deep, sometimes difficult (and sometimes juvenile) messages. This time, he gets it just right.

Warner Bros., for reasons that are entirely unfathomable, has determined Juror #2 will play best on TV, so it's giving the film only a very limited release to qualify for voting. If you can see Juror #2 in a movie theater, you won't regret it. Based on the effectiveness of this film, Warner Bros. owes one of its biggest directors a huge apology for botching what may be his last work. Whether it is or isn't, it's surely one of his best.

Viewed Nov. 2, 2024 — AMC Burbank 16

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