Review: Widows (2018)

* * * 1/2
Director: Steve McQueen
Starring: Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell

Widows is more than the movie that you might be expecting, which stands to reason since it's directed by Steve McQueen, who is known for art films (Hunger, Shame, 12 Years a Slave) rather than crowd pleasers. Widows is, perhaps, the happy medium between the two. It's a heist thriller of no small amount of skill, filled with tension and action and reliant on some of the familiar tropes of the genre, but it's also a character piece about four women who are underestimated by everyone around them. Only three of them are widows (there is a fourth widow, but she takes a different path), but they are all women that the men around them take for granted can be walked all over. Now is the time of year when the studios release the last of their great big blockbusters for the year and the last of their great big award hopefuls, which might leave little time left to catch up on films that have already been in release for several weeks, but Widows is a movie worth making the time for.

Review: The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

* * 1/2
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman

"It's a metaphor." Flesh for flesh. He's not saying it's right, necessarily, but it's the only way he can see to balance the books and make them both whole. Yorgos Lanthimos' latest film is built around a long standoff between a teenage boy driven by righteous certainty and a middle-aged man who thinks he can put off the inevitable, with three other lives caught in the middle. The Killing of a Sacred Deer is neither as bonkers as 2009's Dogtooth nor as darkly delightful as last year's The Lobster. In truth it's a little bit of a slog, relentless in its brutality and building little narrative momentum as it puts its characters through the paces of psychological torture. I wouldn't say that I hated it, and I certainly wouldn't say that it isn't a skilled piece of work, but by the time it was finished I was definitely ready for it to be over. If you're going to see it I recommend seeing it cold and knowing as little about the plot as possible, so consider this a spoiler warning.

Review: The Beguiled (2017)

* * *
Director: Sofia Coppola
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning

The effect that he has is immediate. It's a change - a charge - in the air, a fear that pulsates through the house, something that at once repels and attracts. He's a volatile presence, a grenade tossed into a room, and yet everyone seems surprised when the situation finally explodes. A hothouse melodrama adapted from the novel of the same name, The Beguiled makes excellent use of Colin Farrell's capacity for soulful villainy and Nicole Kidman's for icy ferocity, but ultimately ends up being slightly less than it perhaps could have been. It's a handsomely mounted film (Philippe Le Sourd's cinematography, in particular, stands out for its atmospheric contribution) and well-acted all around, but it tends to strike symbolic poses more often than it actually uses its narrative to really say anything, resulting in a good movie that never quite reaches greatness.

Review: The Lobster (2016)

* * * *
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz

Having seen Yorgos Lanthimos' Oscar nominated 2009 film Dogtooth, and having a general idea of what this film is about, I was prepared for The Lobster to be weird. I don't think anything could really have prepared me for how sublimely bonkers it actually is. I'm not sure anything I could say about it could properly express just how bizarre and funny it is. Allow me to say this: the premise, in which the characters live in a world that demands that all adults be romantically paired and where anyone who finds themselves single must find a new partner within 45 days or be surgically transformed into an animal, turns out to be the most normal thing about it.

Review: Fright Night (2011)

* * *
Director: Craig Gillespie
Starring: Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, Toni Collette

What could the sweetly offbeat comedy Lars and the Real Girl and wicked horror remake Fight Night possibly have in common? To my total shock, a director (weirder still, Lars was preceded by Mr. Woodcock, and Fright Night was followed by this year's Million Dollar Arm - could four films be any less alike?). Craig Gillespie is the director in question, a filmmaker who isn't yet a "name" but is apparently quite versatile. Fright Night (a remake of the 1985 film of the same name) is not a great film like Lars (which was, and remains, one of my favorite films from 2007), but it's a pretty good movie, darkly funny, gory, and entertaining as hell. I guess that makes Colin Farrel one for two where remakes are concerned.

Review: Dead Man Down (2013)

* *
Director: Niels Arden Oplev
Starring: Colin Farrell, Noomi Rapace, Terrence Howard, Dominic Cooper

Dead Man Down begins with an intriguing premise and then proceeds to bury it under layers and layers of plot until you can no longer see it. It has two capable actors in its central roles, who sometimes spark separately and apart, but whose performances are ultimately suffocated by the burdens of the narrative. There's a good movie in here somewhere, somewhere deep, deep down where there is one good plot, instead of several lesser ones struggling to come together. As it is, Dead Man Down is a generic, somewhat forgettable thriller.