Halloween 2026: October 2nd

 

Stigmata (1999)
 

It has been observed that horror fans, once they watch one installment of a film series, feel the need to watch the remaining entries, no matter how dire they may become. I am like this too, as the guy who reviewed all eleven "Children of the Corn" movies. It's an impulse I'm trying to fight, so as not to waste any more of the dwindling time I have left on this earth on excessively stupid bullshit. However, sometimes you have to complete the mission you start. "Stigmata" is not a part of a series. It is, however, the last remaining corner in a tetralogy of religious horror movies made around the turn of the millennium by major studios. M-G-M put this one out in September of 1999, Universal released "End of Days" that November, with Paramount's "Bless the Child" and New Line's "Lost Souls" following in August and October of the next year. None of these movies are good  but I have written about the other three already, so it is my destiny to write about "Stigmata" – a title I must always pronounce like Peter Murphy – as well.

Frankie Paige is a hairdresser, living in Pittsburgh, with no religious convictions whatsoever. She receives some rosary beads in the mail from her mom. After which, while in the bath, Frankie has an intense hallucination and awakens with deep punctures through her wrists. While on a train, Frankie goes into a disassociated state again and seemingly has her back violently whipped by invisible forces. Her case is brought to the attention of Father Kiernan, a Jesuit priest who investigates the validity of miracles for the Catholic Church. Kiernan believes Frankie may be demonstrating the stigmata, the miraculous re-creation of the five wounds Christ suffered on the cross. Frankie's state escalates, with her speaking and writing in Aramaic and the violent wounds on her body becoming more severe. Father Kiernan is concerned that, should her condition progress, she will die. His fears are further effected by an attempt by the Catholic Church itself to stop him from uncovering what Frankie's condition seems to be pointing towards...

“Stigmata” deserves some points for being a religious horror movie about Catholicism that isn't concerned with demonic possession, the Anti-Christ, or devil worshipers. Its horror arises from an easily observed but perhaps under-reported aspect of heavenly interaction: That they would probably be horrifying for a non-religious person to experience. This undermines my belief that the Old Testament is one long folk horror story. The idea of bloody, torturous wounds appearing on the body spontaneously certainly allows for lots of gory special effects too. Unfortunately, while the idea of “Stigmata” isn't without merit, it ultimately backs away from the elements that make its premise interesting. Rather than grapple with the idea that gospel revelations border on cosmic horror, “Stigmata” settles for its religious visions being intense but good intentioned. The tension in the story ostensibly comes from the threat of, should Frankie's stigmata conclude with a spear wound to the abdomen, she'll die. The original plan was that she would die at the end, perhaps raising questions about the price of martyrdom and why must such tortures be inflicted on a random innocent woman. Is that God's plan? If so, how does that reflect on this allegedly loving creator? But the script doesn't do that, ultimately draining any suspense from the material. 

“Stigmata” attempts to compensate by playing up the threat of the Catholic Church performing a cover-up of what Frankie's visions are bringing to light. The implication that the Catholic Church, as an institution, perhaps does things that do not benefit the well fair of their congregations would be a bold angle for a horror film to take. Especially a few years before certain information about the Church would become a news story. This idea is also backed away from before the end. The villains of the film are depicted as misguided but never dangerous, nor as representative of the Church's direction overall. Instead of being about how“miracles” might be more horrifying than awe inspiring, that God is kind of an asshole, or that the Catholic Church is an active participant in criminal cover-ups, “Stigmata” is one long advertisement for the Gospel of Thomas, a Biblical deleted scene that was formally denounced by the Vatican in 1945. And that's a lot less interesting, isn't it? 

The timidness of the script in addressing any of the genuinely intriguing ideas it presents still isn't the main reason I dislike “Stigmata” though. The film was directed by Rupert Wainwright, who came to fame for his music videos. Though Wainwright's music video work was with artist like MC Hammer or NWA, I think he was taking inspiration from different artists for this one. “Stigmata” is another late nineties horror movie that decided the grungy visuals, frantic editing, and quote-unquote “disturbing” imagery of the heavy metal and industrial rock videos of the time was the de-facto look for the genre. Aside from the largely washed-out and overcast palette of the entire movie, “Stigmata” often features harshly edited cut-away sequences. These, for one example, depict flickering close-ups on the bloody wounds of the main character, accompanied by harsh sounds on the soundtrack. It is, at best, a played-out style and, to be much more honest, very annoying. It is also the only real attempt at scares the movie has, making “Stigmata” even more of a tedious experience. 

With a script afraid to confront its own layers and its idea of scariness molded by Marilyn Manson videos, what does the film leave us to latch onto? Not much. Patricia Arquette makes for a decent enough lead. She's always been good at balancing physical intensity and a certain tenacity, that is both vulnerable and sexy. That makes her a good choice for a role like this. The scenes that largely revolve around her interaction with Gabriel Byrne as Father Kiernan are the film's best. The two have decent chemistry together, with a certain lightness in their interactions and the smiles they give each that I like. It made me wonder if screenwriter Tom Lazarus – fitting name for this project – hadn't conceive of the film as a romantic drama that he then converted into a horror movie. The relationship between the leads is the sole hint of heart in a otherwise trite motion picture. 

This still makes “Stigmata” the best of the religious thrillers released around the same time. It doesn't pile on the shitty CGI like “End of Days.” It's not as hilariously misconceived in its theatrics as “Bless the Child” nor as utterly lifeless as “Lost Souls.” It was also the most successful of the four films and, outside of Arnold Schwarzenegger sound boards, the only one people seem to remember any. I would not call it good though. Considering Wainwright's other horror credits include a lame remake and a mediocre TV episode, I suspect his heart was not truly in the game. But all these movies focus heavily on the most irritating visual cliches of horror at the time, without finding anything new of their own to say. [5/10]

Killed the Family and Went to the Movies (1969)

Matou a Família e Foi ao Cinema
 

The point of watching fifty horror movies made in countries other than my own, shoved into a two month period, is to broaden my cinematic taste and discover new faces, names, and styles than what my narrow American palette has been previously exposed to. Okay, so who is this Júlio Bressane guy then? He's an acclaimed Brazilian filmmaker, an active force in the country's underground cinema scene in the late sixties and early seventies. His work is experimental and anti-establishment. Okay, okay, that's cool. Every capsule biography of the guy I read mentions how he made six feature films in six months with his loose, improvisational, provocative style. Hmmm, you're starting to lose me, man. Do these movies have points or are they just art-school kids fuckin' around? Alright, alright, I'm gonna give this stuff a fair shot. Bressane kicked off his most productive period with 1969's "Killed the Family and Went to the Movies," which is considered a horror movie by multiple lists of highly regarded world cinema. I'll try it.  

"Killed the Family and Went to the Movies" concerns a young man who... Kills his family and goes to the movies. Specifically, it's a young man living in Rio de Janeiro who slices his abusive father and obnoxious mother's throats with a straight razor before leaving the apartment and visiting the cinema.  Actually, the movie is about two young women, Márcia and Regina, who batter one of their own mothers before shacking up in a desolate apartment over an unspoken amount of time, during which they shoot guns or drop a chicken in a bathtub while contemplating life and their feelings for each other. Actually, "Killed the Family and Went to the Movies" is a series of disconnected vignettes, contrasting conversations both philosophical and mundane with music and senseless acts of violence performed in a country experiencing turbulent times. 

"Killed the Family and Went to the Movies" is a title that places a shocking, life-changing act alongside an ephemeral leisure activity. Clearly, anyone who would murder their parents/spouse/children and then casually stroll down the street to watch a motion picture is disconnected from the consequences of their own actions. It brings to mind tabloid headlines about cold, emotionless psychopaths who leave an apartment full of dead bodies behind and later is caught yucking it up at the latest Jerry Lewis joint. By juxtaposing familicide next to the act of viewing a film, the title also brings to mind our own relationship to cinematic violence. Are people, possibly bored or distracted, watching a fictional depiction of murder on a movie screen any different than the sociopath imagined in the above scenario? Does putting a screen between us and horrible events make us dispassionate towards them? We are not prompt to act but merely to watch. Is this commentary on how the media is a tool of a brutal government, making us numb to the daily horrors occurring around us? Or does it speak to an overall sense of disaffection among the populace, so ground down by the hardships of modern life that they are rendered unable to feel anything, even when presented with deeply personal tragedy? Does society make all of us unfeeling killers, more likely to massacre the people closest to us and then shrug it off with a bag of popcorn and an extra large Sprite Zero? 

Well, it certainly means something. Most of the people at the center of "Killed the Family and Went to the Movies'" scenes are on the younger side. They strike the viewer as teenagers or college students. They don't seem to be working and have time to lay around and gaze into each other's eyes or silently listen to the radio while regarding a straight razor. The principal victims of the early scenes are their immediate authority figures, their parents, who seem disinterested or even hostile to their own offspring. Mom and dad senselessly argue with each other, watch the TV, make dinner, or nitpick their kids' lives. Does that make their eventual violent acts retaliation against the stifling conformity of the previous generation? The presentation of the film is rough, shot on grainy and monochromatic 16mm that was then blown up to 32mm for cinematic presentation. The dialogue strikes one as largely improvised, as do the multiple scenes of its characters singing along to music, mindlessly humming, or just hanging out. The acts depicted are destructive, senseless ones. Slashing dad's throat, beating your mom to a bloody pulp, or taking a bath with some plants and a chicken represent a breakdown of established order. The two girls also seem to be romantically inclined towards each other, making them outcasts in a conformist environment that criminalizes homosexuality. In that case, is the film's violence a rebellious activity? Is Bressane's film a punk rock rejection of the society created by the older generation? Unsurprisingly, also given the context of the title, the activities on-screen eventually move towards acts of self-destruction. When the world is this fucked-up, designed to constrain and consume you, why not burn it all down? This isn't senseless violence and unprovoked suicide, it's a bloody insurrection against the everyday forces meant to control us.

Okay. Maybe it is. Or maybe I simply lack the cultural context to truly understand what Bressane's film is getting at. One of the more chilling sequences of violence in the film is devoted to a man being restrained and tortured by several other guys in an apartment. They make vague references to some sort of information being uncovered, so presumably they are government secret police. Does this point towards “Killed the Family and Went to the Movies” being a reaction to the paranoia of living under a military junta? When your friends and family can disappear at any point, un-person-ed overnight, the threat of random violence has a different meaning. The film is at its most upsetting when centering its carnage against common-place settings. Many long scenes are scored to pop songs on the radio, another contrast between fluffy pop culture and bloody death. One scene has an assassin with a pistol sitting quietly before a corpse and what looks like some kids at a birthday party. At the same time, the film also escalates in its provocations until a sequence at the end that is predictable in its transgressions. Alright, so is this simply a primal scream, an explosion of anguish and horror at what was happening in Brazil at this time?

These are but three interpretations and more surely exists within Bressane's film. I imagine the queer content lends itself to further readings. The finale adds another meta loop to the material, the two girls discussing a film they just saw that seems to depict a version of what they are about to or just did. Assuming any of the reoccurring faces – which includes the screen debut of Renata Sorrah, who would go on to star in the Confused Math Lady meme – are meant to be the same characters from scene-to-scene. I've seen some reviews of the film that describe it as featuring the same actors playing different characters. “Killed the Family and Went to the Movies” is so detached from the people it's depicting that I didn't pick up on this. That's, ultimately, my big problem with the film. All the events are watched from a chilly, impersonal perspective. There's no emotional in to this story to me, making me wonder why I should care about these events. Perhaps that is my indifference to on-screen violence at work. Either way, the film's reputation among Brazilian cinephiles as an underground classic, so beloved and established it got an in-name-only remake in the nineties, is clearly secured. However, this one might be a step too removed for me to truly engage with it. I do think it qualifies as horror though, but maybe I prefer my Brazilian horror to feature Coffin Joe jabbing people's eyes out than this. [5/10]

 

 

Chillers: Something You Have to Live With
 

Usually, anthology shows pull from multiple literary source materials for their ideas. It's a lot easier to pick and choose the best, or most easily adapted, short stories from a selection of writers if you hope to build a compelling program. However, single author anthologies have cropped up over the years. Writers in this exclusive club include Zane Grey, ol' Ray of course, Stephen King, and Patricia Highsmith. You'd be forgiven for missing that the mother of Tom Ripley had her own TV show though. A French/English co-production, “Chillers” only ran for twelve episodes in 1990. I'm not sure it ever aired on U.S. television. It's rarely mentioned when the topic of Highsmith adaptations come up. A separate anthology series with a nearly identical title would air five years later. “Chillers” owes whatever little infamy it has to the Highsmith connection and Anthony Perkins serving as host, during the last few years of his life. That has been enough to get it a DVD release and, if I'm going to sample the show, the same year as watching all the “Psycho” movies seems like a good time to do it.

“Something You Have to Live With” revolves around married couple Jessica and Stanley, who have recently moved into a new home in the country side. After Stanley installs new locks on the door, he's called away to France to attend to his sickly mother. Jessica's only company is Cassie, the house cat. That changes when a man in a mask breaks into the house. He's strangely conversational, if vulgar, and repeatedly ignores Jessica's pleas for him to leave. After he cruelly snaps Cassie's neck, Jessica has had enough. She bludgeons him over the head with the oar she bought Stanley as a gift. She's quite surprised to find that the man is now dead. The police clear her actions as self-defense. Despite that, Jessica can't stop thinking about it. She begins to mention in passing, often at dinner parties and almost compulsively, that she has recently killed a man. 

There's an interesting undercurrent to “Something You Have to Live With.” Stanley is presented as largely incompetent in the first scene. He struggles to install a simple lock and, as the home intrusion makes clear, doesn't do it correctly. The burglar dismisses Jessica's husband as nu-masculine simply from looking at a photo. He also threatens to tie her up, commenting on the sexual connotations of the act at the same time. Tuesday Weld plays Jessica as clearly unsettled by the intrusion yet the sexual chemistry between them remains. Her obsession with the man after she kills him could suggest a few things. Is it merely guilt or trauma over killing someone? Or a lingering fascination over a more interesting man than her husband literally barging into her life? Her husband's reaction to her sudden impulse to continuously mention the homicide could be concern over his wife's well-being... Or it could be akin to a wife constantly mentioning an ex-boyfriend, to repeatedly remind of her partner's inadequacies as a man. No wonder he gets fed up of hearing about it.

It's an interesting promise, able to be played for dark humor or a slow sense of suspense. “Something You Have to Live With” attempts to go for both, not entirely successfully. It's a little better as comedy, if only because laughter is the natural reaction to someone busting out the “Remember when I killed a guy?” chestnut at every social gathering, no matter how inappropriate. However, the episode is not able to derive any tension from the slow build-up of resentment in the married couple's relationship. With Stanley being away for a big chunk of the episode, we never get a real sense of what this couple is like. The direction is fairly flat throughout. Tuesday Weld is a likable presence in the lead but her stunned quality becomes increasingly harder to take seriously as the episode goes on, leading to a shrug of an ending. Perkins is a decent choice to be a host but he isn't able to give “Chillers'” wrap-around segments any sense of identity, which an anthology series really needs. [6/10]

Friday the 13th: The Series: Badge of Honor
 

A rotund police detective, Russ Sharko, botches a sting operation, out of his thirst for vengeance against mobster Victor Haas. His actions get a fellow cop killed and Sharko thrown off the forces. That is when he randomly comes into the possession of the expected “Friday the 13th: The Series” cursed antique. It's an old west sheriff star, which causes the guilty to die upon contact. Meanwhile, an ex-boyfriend of Micki's named Tim shows up at Curious Goods. It turns out that Tim is an undercover cop, working to bring Haas down through official channels. Ryan is suspicious of the guy and, upon finding a gun in his bag, suspect he's up to no good. 

“Friday the 13th: The Series” obviously isn't an anthology series but the elasticity of its premise allows the show to jump into different genres fairly easily. Which makes me wonder if some of these episodes didn't begin life as spec scripts for other shows, retro-fitted to this program because someone had it laying around. “Badge of Honor” feels more like it would belong to an eighties cop show than “Friday the 13th.” Call it “Kill Street Blues” or “Toronto Vice.” The outfits Ryan and Micki wear through most of this one – a white sports jacket over a high-collared polo shirt? A red halter top with mint green jacket and micro-skirt? –  certainly made me think of Crocket and Tubbs' questionable fashion choices. All of which is to say that the many scenes here of an undercover cop making terse negotiations with a mob boss, while coke is being sliced into rails or strippers who pointedly do not take their clothes off, feel out-of-place in this show.  Director Michelle Manning would actually make two episodes of “Miami Vice” a year after this, so I'm guessing she was basically auditioning for the show. Her use of slow-motion or a sax-heavy score feel very mawkish and out-of-place here. 

Further alienating this episode from the show it is a part of is that Ryan and Micki, once again, feel tangential to the actual story being told. Here's another installment where events would have played out more-or-less the same without their involvement at all. The duo don't actually participate in the action until the last act, where they spend several scenes comically sneaking around behind the cops. Micki's past relationship with Tim is the only element actually dragging them into this plot. That subplot also feels weird. John Stockwell is a handsome enough guy, sure. It still feels weird for her to immediately start sucking face with an ex the minute he walks into the shop. Did I miss when she officially broke up with her lawyer fiance or have the show writers forgotten about that? Either way, the presence of another man still causes Ryan to be jealous. He is referred to as Micki's cousin, as if to remind us of how weird it is that he's so territorial around another man. 

Attempting to shoe-horn some typical cop show thrills into this episode is an odd fit for another reason. The horror elements here are two-fold: The curse sheriff's badge at the center of the plot causes its victims to contort and jerk around violently before expiring. The mechanics of “Friday the 13th's” MacGuffins usually require some sort of exchange, the wielder getting something in exchange for the murders. I guess Sharko already wanting revenge on these men is payment enough. Either way, the induced seizures look very silly. Sharko keeping his wife's corpse under a shower curtain in his bedroom is kind of fun though. Val Avery – also played a cop in “The Amityville Horror” and “Cobra” and a dozen other things – makes the guy such a pathetic, hard-drinking, sweaty old dweeb that it's hard to take him seriously as a vigilante. You would expect this premise to bend in an A.C.A.B. direction. A cop extra-judicially executing criminals is obviously treated like a bad thing. While the rogue detective suffers for his actions, he still gets the bad guy before the end so I don't think the script disagrees with what he does that much. Also, if you think Sharko is a funny name for a character, be prepared for how many times somebody named “Cooder” is brought up in this hour. [5/10]

 

OSCARS 2026: Sentimental Value (2025)

This is not a hard and fast rule, for nothing ever is, but: Once a director gets the Academy's attention, they tend to notice you again. The logic is sound as an Oscar nomination tends to make someone a lot more recognized. Norwegian writer/director Joachim Trier made a name for himself in his home country, and the international art house scene, with his earlier features. 2006's “Reprise” and “Thelma” were submitted to the Academy as Norway's official selection for Best Foreign Language Film with no success.  However, 2021's “The Worst Person in the World” finally got voters' attention, not only scoring an International Feature nomination but also one in Best Original Screenplay. His latest, “Sentimental Value,” signals Trier truly arriving at last, at least among the American awards show set. It's grabbed nine nominations, including one for Trier in Best Director, which is impressive for a movie mostly in another language. 

And all it took was Trier making a movie about the film industry's favorite topic: The film industry. Norwegian filmmaker Gustav Borg largely walked away from his wife and two daughters, Nora and Agnes, and the family home in Oslo. After his wife's death, he returns to the house with an idea: His latest script is inspired by his mother, a former prisoner-of-war who committed suicide in the home when he was seven, and he wants Nora to play the part. Though Nora is a successful stage actress, she refuses to do so. A chance encounter leads to an American movie star, Rachel Kemp, being cast in the role. This results in Netflix agreeing to fund the film, in contrast to the previous difficulty Borg has had getting budgets for his work. After spending time with Agnes, Gustav decides to cast his grandson in the film as well, straining his relationship with his other daughter. Rachel feels insecure about playing a role so clearly intended for Nora, pushing Gustav to reconnect with his estranged daughters. Overcoming all that baggage will not be easy.

The opening scene of “Sentimental Value,” overseen by an omniscient narrator, is not devoted to introducing any of the film's principal characters so much. Instead, it presents us with the family's home. Much of “Sentimental Value” takes place in this house, a handsome if plain two-story residence. It is where Gustav grew up, where his mother died, where Agnes resides, and where her son is growing up too. A few times, the film flashes back to a prior decade in this building, showing the little details of the home that have revealed themselves to the family over the years. Such as how the kids would ease drop on their mother's therapy session through a vent that runs from the second floor down to the first. These are like quirks to a human being's personality, distinguishing features that make a person and a place unique. If homes can be said to have personalities, they can also be said to have memories. And those memories are long. In its best moments, “Sentimental Value” shows how places stand as quiet observers of their own history. How arguments and exchanges would echo through these walls or how small incidents, like a dropped glass, can make an impression as much as the big events. Saying “the house is also a main character” is a cliché but “Sentimental Value” happens to use it well. 

To use another much abused literary cliché: If these walls could talk, they would surely have a lot to say about the overlapping generations that have made its rooms their home. Gustav and Nora do not get along. As parent and children often are, this might be because they have a lot in common. Both are stubborn and a bit self-centered but also overcome with doubts. Gustav fears that his industry has passed him by, that all his friends are dying, and that he's lost his insight. He suppresses these concerns with alcohol. Nora, despite her success, still has paralyzing bouts of stage fright and is currently involved in an affair with a married colleague. They are, in a sense, shadows and reflections of each other. Gustav's script is inspired by his late mother but he hopes to cast his daughter in the part, later casting his own grandson to play a role inspired by himself. Much of the central drama of “Sentimental Value” revolves around Gustav deciding to cast a movie star in the lead role instead, a person from outside the family having trouble integrating themselves into this web of relations and connections. A key dream sequence in “Sentimental Value” depicts Gustav's face morphing into his daughters and mother's face, back and forth, as shadows pass over them. Yes, if a house a memory, it would notice the way patterns tend to repeat themselves, how people can assume malleable roles back and forth across their own histories.  

Unfortunately, “Sentimental Value” is not a movie solely about the contrasting, and contradicting, ways parents and children and grandparents tend to mirror each other or how places connect different generations. We do not learn too much about the script Gustav has written that motivates much of the plot, aside from its inspiration in his own past. This is Trier hedging his bet: If a piece of writing is suppose to be moving art, that puts a lot of expectations on it. If the resulting script isn't as good as all the characters say it is, the entire emotional center of the narrative falls apart. This, however, becomes a problem when “Sentimental Value's” entire resolution hinges on someone being so moved by the writing. The meaningful climax of the film is a knowing, understanding nod between two people. Keeping the emotions subtle and understated is fine. However, it does make “Sentimental Value” feel a bit contrived during its most important stage. As if the screenwriter is saying “This script is brilliant, brilliant enough to change someone's mind, but, uh, I can't show it to you.” 

It is evident very early on that this project is Gustav's way to process the grief and guilt he feels over his own mother's suicide and his distant bond with his daughters. How grief can be transformed into art – also the topic of another 2026 Best Picture nominee – is a worthy subject. How a piece of fiction can be about multiple things at once is too. However, Trier's film falls a little short in exploring the complexities of that. The last act of “Sentimental Value” is disappointing, in the flat way it shows how the unspoken pain of a parent can strain any bond their child will develop with their own off-spring. Joachim Trier is twenty years older than me but “The Worst Person in the World” showed a keen understanding of the neurosis of the millennial generation. And if everyone else my age is a little like me too, that means their thirties have also included a lot of learning to understand their own parents. You learn more about yourself and realize Mom and Dad surely dealt with that too, likely with the fewer tools their time and place provided. “Sentimental Value” clearly touches on that but I wish it did so with more depth, instead of pushing the thorny business of forgiveness and reconciliation that comes after that realization in-between scenes. 

As far as a drama about one generation's Mommy Issues leading to Daddy Issues for the next and so on, “Sentimental Value” is keenly acted. You need an actor like Stellan Skarsgård in a role like Gustav Borg. You need someone who has lived more than a bit and can accurately convey the feeling of carrying a lifetime of regrets around behind sad but quiet eyes. He accurately brings to life the dynamic of a man who still hasn't figured out how not to piss people off by being himself but is desperately trying to get better. Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas are both very good as Nora and Agnes, saying much with an eye roll or nod. “Sentimental Value” is a film of emotions more understated than shouted, a mode both Reinsve and Illeaas excel at. As the outsider in the story, Elle Fanning has an interesting arc as someone floundering to insert themselves into a familial drama that previously existed without them. Fanning is wonderful, resisting making Kemp a spoiled Hollywood brat in favor of someone who chose acting genuinely out of a wish to understand other people. A scene where an interview disparages her latest movie, Skarsgård coming to her aide, shows Fanning can suggest a lot with only her eyes and face too. 

For a handful of moments, “Sentimental Value” becomes a quiet comedy about a clueless grandfather trying to connect with his iPad kid grandson, which ultimately has a rather sweet conclusion. That is a much more charming depiction of how art can bring people together than the resolution. I wish the film mined that element more, playing the weird tension that can only exist between parent and child for uncomfortable but honest laughs. Nevertheless, “Sentimental Value” is an expertly acted film that contains many interesting and fine ideas within. An artier movie told from the house's perspective – think something like Sodenberg's “Presence,” also from last year – probably would've been more my style but take out the film industry angle and I don't know if the Academy would have liked this one as much. [710]

Director Report Card: Danny Boyle (1997)

 

5.  A Life Less Ordinary

 

The director, writer, and producer trio of Danny Boyle, John Hodge, and Andrew MacDonald had considerable success with their first two efforts. "Shallow Grave" and "Trainspotting" were both breakout box office successes, critically praised, and remain beloved cult classics to this day. Surely their third collaboration would be a similar hit, right? I'm sure that was the thought process everyone had when putting together "A Life Less Ordinary," especially the producers at Channel Four Films who put up much of the money for the film. Sadly, lightning would not strike a third time. "A Life Less Ordinary" would sink at the box office, receive middling reviews, and has largely been forgotten in the years since. It seems to me the only time the film comes up at all is when people are looking back on Boyle's career the way I am right now. Which begs the question: What went wrong on this third go-around between this team? 

Celine Naville is the daughter of a mega-rich businessman but she's miserable in her personal life. Her controlling father has set her up on a string of unsuccessful relationships, the latest with a mildly unhinged dentist. Robert Lewis is a janitor working for her dad's company, who dreams of becoming an author of trashy novels. Upon discovering he's been fired and replaced with a robot, Robert kidnaps Celine. Celine seems more bemused than threatened by her kidnapper's actions, seeing this as a chance to get some money from her dad, run off and live her own life. Robert proves to be an incompetent criminal and often takes pointers from his captive. The two hide out together, bicker, and slowly warm up to one another. Incensed, Celine sends two bounty hunters after the pair, giving them free range to murder the man responsible for kidnapping his rebellious daughter and to bring her back.

That sounds like a fairly standard story line, doesn't it? While I don't think the two filmmakers have much in common, Danny Boyle's previous features had attracted some comparisons to the films of Quentin Tarantino and the many imitators that followed in his wake. I suppose the focus on memorable soundtracks, stylized dialogue, and gritty stories suggest some similarities. In the abstract, "A Life Less Ordinary" does sound like one of those "Pulp Fiction" knock-offs, a hyper-verbal love story of two rogues on the run together. There are shoot-outs and car crashes and lots of colorful dialogue. More than anything else, there is an overall kind of tonal smugness from the material that suggests a desperate desire to be observed as cool by the viewer. It was 1997 and such things were still somewhat in fashion, kind of, I guess. "A Life Less Ordinary" is a film about beautiful people with trendy haircuts doing daring and exciting stuff together, with a sense of humor about itself and a level of stylish excess that seeks to impress. 

Perhaps, however, Boyle and Hodge were aware of how ordinary this script might have seen in the indie film landscape of the time. This might explain why "A Life Less Ordinary" instead veers sharply into the realm of magical realism. You see, the bounty hunters after Robert and Celine aren't ordinary enforcers. They are, in fact, angels sent from Heaven to ensure that Robert and Celine fall in love. Because, it would seem, making people fall in ever-lasting love is something angels concern themselves with. It's an insertion of a fantastical element in a film that otherwise doesn't have any fantasy elements.

Such a swerve might have successfully spiced up material that the audience had seen before but you can't start out as the new neo-noir from the director of "Shallow Grave" and "Trainspotting" and instead introduce explicitly divine intervention. You got a ease into that shit. To bring the guy up again and risk making it seem like I only know one nineties director/screenwriter, "From Dusk Till Dawn" deliberately turning from a stylized crime thriller to gory, outlandish creature feature is a tonal shift that worked. "A Life Less Ordinary" doesn't do that. It introduces the angelic conceit within its opening minutes before moving towards its more grounded elements, the otherworldly subplot weaving in and out of the story throughout.

That points towards what is probably the biggest problem with "A Life Less Ordinary." I called the film a neo-noir. It seems like a reasonable description, what with a story about kidnapping and ransom and young lovers on the run and sketchy hired guns. However, "A Life Less Ordinary" is actually a comedy. It is, in fact, an excessively wacky comedy. Characters have wildly specific personality quirks. Robert is always talking about his trashy novel idea, which everyone dismisses with the exact phrases. Celine is introduced playing William Tell with a revolver and an apple on her butler's head. (A butler who, it must be said, has a stereotypically droll British demeanor which is eventually subverted by his violent actions.) Timothy Olyphant shows up as a wide-eyed hitchhiker who does handstands. There's random appearances from an eccentric local played by Maury Chaykin, who speaks in an oddly specific manner, seems gripped by a degree of religious mania, and may or may not hear voices from his dog. There's a robot and a musical number and a game show themed dream sequence and a magic bullet that harmlessly passes through someone's heart.
 

Do you see what I'm saying here? Hodge's screenplay heaps quirks atop quirks. Heaven is depicted not as a divine afterlife full of clouds and harps, angels wearing wings and halos. Instead, it resembles something more akin to an office building under pressure from the superiors above – in this case, Yahweh himself – to make quotas. Gabriel is not a dignified archangel concerning himself with blowing the horn at the end of days. Instead, he's a frustrated, grumpy pencil pusher played by Dan Hedaya at his Dan Hedaya-iest. Oh, what a delightfully silly contrast between the fantastical and the mundane! And, ya know, that could've been funny. I actually love it when stories contrast the supernatural with otherwise normal daily drudgery. However, “A Life Less Ordinary” is trying so hard to be wild and crazy that all the ideas start to blend together. I actually think that musical number is one of the film's better moments. It stands alongside embarrassingly bad ones, like a fist fight with Stanley Tucci as that crazy dentist. I suppose, if the film's problem could be diagnosed in as few words as possible, it would be that it's trying too hard.

An overly ambitious screenplay that slingshots around multiple different zany ideas brings with it an uncertain tone. In addition to everything else, “A Life Less Ordinary” is also a self-aware example of the romantic comedy genre. From the minute Robert and Celine are thrown together by fate, we know they are going to fall in love. The movie knows that we know this too. It is the angels' mission to make sure these two get together. This acts as a self-reflective reasoning for the familiar but improbable cliches of the rom-com genre. The unlikely circumstances that bring these two together are the results of a heavenly conspiracy. The big romantic gesture Robert does to win Celine back after the end-of-the-second-act schism is a poem written by one of those same angels. This is basically the movie saying that it knows these cliches are hoary nonsense, the angels acting a bit like the writers of the screenplay trying to engineer these scenarios. However, doing a crappy old cliché while pointing out that it's a crappy old cliché isn't actually a subversion. It's the same old lazy writing with an extra hat of unearned pretensions atop it.

We all know that romantic comedies follow these silly and unlikely plot points. It comes with the territory, like the teenagers running off to have sex in a really dangerous place in the slasher movies. The best rom-coms overcome this shortcoming based on the strength and charm of their leads. The lack of suspense in knowing that the boy and the girl will end up together is made up for by the audience truly wanting to see them succeed. That might be the biggest area where “A Life Less Ordinary” fails. If we really liked Robert and Celine, it would make a lot of the other problems the film has more forgivable. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Celine remains antagonistic to Robert and everyone around her for most of the film. Robert comes across as a bullied and indecisive idiot. When the two fall into bed together, it does not feel like an natural event of the story but rather a contrivance. That's because it basically is, a manipulation from above, which is why a nudging acknowledgement of tropes is generally less desirable than an unironic embracing of them.

The lack of chemistry between Celine and Robert isn't only the fault of the script. Ewan McGregor stars as Robert and he does fine in the role. Even at this relative early stage of his career, McGregor was already a total professional. His skills are not enough to make a protagonist pushed around by the whims of the plot have more depth than he does. However, he's a reasonably entertaining lead. When paired with Cameron Diaz as Celine, something feels amiss. Diaz, an uneven talent on the best of days, hits mostly false notes here. She comes across as somewhat flat in her delivery throughout much of the movie. Her attempts to add some emotional sincerity or pathos to the material come across as forced or phony. This is most apparent in the morning after the characters sleep together for the first time. Diaz goes for sexy smoldering when a degree of vulnerability would've done a better job at making this pairing seem more natural.

Ultimately, what is a rom-com without a central couple that we can become invested in? Not that romantic and not that funny either. That makes the increasingly crazy decisions the script goes in seem all the sweatier. That same instinct is apparent in the supporting cast. “A Life Less Ordinary” actually has an impressive crop of names in its credits. Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo are the angels on the couple's trail. Lindo's tough guy appearance is counteracted by a quiet, observational personality and the soul of a poet. Unfortunately, it comes across as yet another one of the movie's cloying bits than something more realized. Hunter, normally a reliable presence in any film, can do nothing but hopelessly ham her way through this material. That's actually the choice most of the secondary players made. Ian Holm as Celine's dad, Hedaya, Tucci and Tony Shaloub – whose role is especially inessential – grimace and flex their faces as cartoonish characters that never come across as anything more than annoying caricatures. 

Maybe it's only because so much of “A Life Less Ordinary” feels overburdened with its own desire to be wacky. However, the techniques Danny Boyle and his team utilized in his previous feature to electrifying effect come off as somehow both blander and more annoying here. Brian Tufano and Masahiro Hirakubo are back on cinematography and editing duties. The soundtrack remains hyper-specific and carefully chosen. However, the formula is off. A car chase sequence comes across as manic and overbearing, rather than energetic and captivating. The brief glimpses we get at that game show dream sequence are another excessive addition to a pot too full with ingredients already. By the end credits, where the story is resolved via stop-motion animated cartoon sequence, I was officially sick of “A Life Less Ordinary's” bullshit. The film represents the strengths of Boyle's previous two movies in a totally undisciplined and unbalanced form.
 

The first time I saw “A Life Less Ordinary,” I fucking hated it. I found its over-the-top sense of trying-too-hard whimsy unbearable. Based on how much I loved “Trainspotting” and “Shallow Grave,” perhaps I went in with overly high expectations. Either way, this was definitely not what I was expecting. Upon rewatch, I've upgraded my opinion from hatred to simply thinking the film is simply not good. Such a wild mismatch of tones and elements can still classify as only a fiasco, a wild miscalculation of all involved about what does and doesn't work together. However, that song and dance number actually isn't too bad. A quickly cut montage of Robert and Celine practicing tough-talking over the phone is pretty good. Buried, somewhere in this wild mishmash of ingredients, might have been a good film. This isn't it, however, and it would be a long time before Danny Boyle tried his hand at a romantic comedy again. [Grade: C-]

Director Report Card: Danny Boyle (1996)

 

4. Trainspotting

 

In at least one interview, Danny Boyle has described himself as a punk when he was a kid, which greatly informed the kind of stories he'd go on to tell. I have no idea how insular or wide-ranging the Scottish punk scene is but it produced another notable luminary. Irvine Welsh played in bands with names like The Pubic Lice and Stairway 13 before some run-ins with the law had him changing his way. He published his first novel in 1993, a non-linear collection of episodic incident in the lives of Scottish heroin addicts called “Trainspotting.” Andrew Macdonald read the book shortly after publication. Coming right off the success of “Shallow Grave,” he quickly lined it up as the next project for Boyle and John Hodge. Welsh and Boyle had complimentary sensibilities, it turned out. “Trainspotting” would become an even bigger critical and commercial success than the director's previous film.

In the Scottish city of Leith resides Mark Renton, a full-time drug addict and part-time petty thief who steals entirely to support his heroin habit. He calls a group of junkies and lunatics his only friends: The strangely suave but didactic Sick Boy, the child-like fool Spud, the violent and unpredictable Begbie, and the straight-laced Tommy. What follows is a series of attempts by Renton to kick his addiction, none of which prove especially successful. Renton's misadventures – which includes accidentally romancing a school girl – are soon interrupted by death, a run-in with the law, a nearly fatal overdoes, and a HIV scare. After finally getting clean, Renton ends up reunited with his old pack of pals to orchestrate a drug deal that could change all their lives.

If you're an obsessive film nerd in your thirties, you probably started getting into movies in the 2000s. That's right about when “Trainspotting” cult following burned its brightest. If you were inside a dorm room between the years 2000 and 2011, you probably saw the “Choose life!” poster on a wall or two. It's not too difficult to dictate why this motion picture was popular among the same crowd that sang the praises of “A Clockwork Orange,” the films of Quentin Tarantino, “Donnie Darko,” “The Boondock Saints,” and the like. Most of the characters in “Trainspotting” are well into their twenties and thirties but, narratively, the film still functions as a coming-of-age story. Renton is a self-obsessed man-child, held in a state of arrested development by his drug dependency. He quite literally lives with his parents for long stretches of the film. The title – left unexplained in the film – refers to the kind of niche hobby mostly practiced by unemployed men with a lot of free time on their hands. He begins the film dismissing the merits of maturity before coming around to embrace it at the end. Through the course of the story, he overcomes his addiction and grows up, which includes leaving behind his band of friends. That's a universal story and one that a lot of movie-watching twenty-somethings would relate to... 

But the so-called “Film Bro” crowd probably more responded to the litany of bad behavior the gang gets into. Upon release, some critics dismissed “Trainspotting” as another indie art house flick that was simply trying to be transgressive as possible. It's a somewhat understandable instinct. Obviously, this is a movie about drug addiction but it does not approach heroin only as a life-destroying disease. Instead of operating as a dour moral lesson on why you shouldn't do drugs, it also acknowledge that, ya know, doing heroin feels nice. That's why addicts start using in the first place, something Renton acknowledges in dialogue. That's far from the only streak of antisocial behavior in a movie spattered with human excrement, random acts of extreme violence, homemade pornography, accidentally becoming a statutory rapist, a dead baby, and shooting a dog in the balls with a B.B. gun. Dismissing “Trainspotting” as only a shock value movie is ridiculously short-sighted but I do think the movie is trying to provoke a reaction a number of times. 

There's no denying that “Trainspotting” is a grimy film. It does feature the nastiest bathroom ever put to celluloid. There are close-ups of needles going into arms and detailed depictions of how heroin is cooked and injected. The squalor of a junkie's den is on-screen multiple times. However, “Trainspotting” never wastes time moralizing about its topic. Addiction informs every minute of the film yet “Trainspotting” is not that concerned with the psychology of drug abuse, about the complicated economic and social factors that push someone to use junk. It's an extremely cruel statement to say that drug addicts use because they are selfish... Mark Renton is selfish though. “Trainspotting” is, in many ways, a movie about the main character repeatedly abusing himself and those around him. He steals a home-made sex tape of Tommy and his girlfriend, directly leading to the relationship falling apart. In his despair, when Tommy asks to try heroin, Renton provides it. He steals, he lets friends take the fall for him, he does pointedly bad things for little to no reason. The main thesis of the character is summed up during a moment where he clarifies that he cooked up some horse for a friend but only after making himself a needle full first. “Trainspotting” pointedly avoids making any grand statements about addiction or drugs. It certainly acknowledges that different people do drugs for many different reasons. The film doesn't say that drug abuse is selfish but it does suggest that drug abuse makes selfish people far more selfish. 

Alright, if Mark Renton is such an asshole, then why do we like him? There's a few reasons why but the primary one is that Irvin Walsh's prose – from which “Trainspotting: The Movie” draws a good deal of its memorable lines – is so invigorating. The “Choose Life” monologue became iconic for a reason. It's a poetic chunk of dialogue that flows almost like music, book-ending the film and reprised like a song's chorus. The thick Scottish brogues all throughout – sometimes they are so thick that it becomes almost impossible to understand what is being said – certainly go a long way towards making the dialogue sounds especially musical. The dialogue is stylized, with winding discussion about Sean Connery era James Bond movies or a drug deal being described as a restaurant order. It all has such a viable spark to it, an energy that propels the entire motion picture and is impossible for the audience to resist. 

That kind of cinematic dynamism is present in almost every aspect of the movie, largely because Danny Boyle and his team make sure of it. Much like his theatrical debut, the director makes sure “Trainspotting” hits the ground running. Rather literally, as the opening scene involves the protagonists running through the streets to the tune of Iggy Pop. An utterly hip soundtrack of classic pre-punk and electronic dance music propels nearly the entire film, giving it that youthful buzz that probably isn't dissimilar to a drug high of some sort. Masahiro Hirakubo's editing is fast-paced and kinetic, often scored to the musical choices. Brian Tufano's cinematography often approaches scenes from uncommon angles, further adding to the punk rock electricity that is evident all throughout. Part of why “Trainspotting” has attracted the cult following it has is exactly because it has such a powerful youthful drive from the opening minutes.

That kind of dynamite sense of movement was present in “Shallow Grave,” where it was often contrasted with distinctive architectural touches and perfectly composed frames. The director doubles down on this approach here. Individual shots in “Trainspotting” are works of art. Renton running below an apartment building painted in multiple bright shades or standing outside the Volcano nightclub with Diane show flashes of colors in the grey, industrial sprawl of the urban setting. This is contrasted, in an important sequence, with the width and flatness of the green Scottish countryside. That kind of vastness is apparent even within the tight interiors of the film, a kitten sitting alone on an apartment floor having the same sense of stillness as the other images in the movie. 

Being a movie about drug addicts that barely function within polite society also gives Boyle and his team permission to go on several elaborate flights of fancy. The first of which occurs early-on in “Trainspotting,” when Renton notoriously dives into the worst toilet in Scotland to retrieve some opium suppositories from an expansive ocean within. Up to that point, “Trainspotting” exists in mostly realistic setting up to that point, making this first imaginative burst totally unexpected. This opens the movie up to feature further unexpected bits of visual playfulness. Such as Renton's overdose being brilliantly portrayed by him actually sinking into the floor, the audience granted his perspective from within the ground multiple times. These are not merely examples of the filmmakers flexing their muscles to show off the quirky and cool visuals they can pull off. They also put us directly into the headspace of the characters, capturing feelings that can easily be expressed on the page on the big screen instead. 

These elaborate fantasy sequences are not only used to capture drug-fueled feelings of weightlessness. “Trainspotting” also features one of the more unnerving sequences I've seen outside of a horror movie before. Scored against a thumping electronic soundtrack, that goes a long way of elevating the sense of nervous unease, the audience suffers through Renton's detox fever dreams alongside him. A single bedroom becomes a prison, Renton screaming and raving against helpless messages from friends that can't reach him. This cuts back to a game show, previously defined as the ultimate example of banality (a comparison Boyle previously made in “Shallow Grave” too) that has become reflective of Renton's fears and anxieties. All the while, a dead infant – looking and moving like an awkward puppet and all the more uncanny because of it – crawls closer and closer. It's a moment that makes me squirm in the worst way, another example of how masterfully assembled “Trainspotting” is.

Sealing “Trainspotting's” status as a modern classic are a collection of unforgettable performances. Ewan McGregor makes this shit look easy as Renton, embodying the physical squalor the character lives in. Yet McGregor is uniquely gifted in making the rambling, musical inner monologue come across as especially engrossing and unforgettable. His charm goes a long way towards making us like a character that is otherwise despicable in a natural and sympathetic manner. Jonny Lee Miller makes meandering diatribes about the James Bond franchise surprisingly engrossing, displaying a kind of easy-going charm that still can't overcome the character's obvious unseemly side. Robert Carlyle is a terrifying, raging force of violence and intimidating that still seems like an actual human being that could exist. Ewen Bremner's unforgettable physicality as Spud defines the squirrely, off-beat character. If there's any flaw in “Trainspotting,” it's that the role of women are downplayed in a disappointing way. Kelly MacDonald as Diane has an immediate magnetism that demands your attention but the character never comes to life. 

But let's go back to that scene of Renton and the gang on the Scottish moors, gasping for breath when they are being prompted to bask in the natural beauty of it all. In this scene, Renton dispels any scene of pride in his own nationality. It proceeds the characters deciding to give up on going clean and getting back on heroin. I'm not Scottish, obviously, and have hopefully made it apparent by now that I'm woefully ignorant of what makes up the Scottish national identity. However, this moment certainly does seem significant. Is “Trainspotting” a contemplation on the Scottish state of being, some sort of commentary on life in the country during the drug-fueled eighties? Perhaps. Or maybe the overwhelming Scottishness of the cast, crew, and authorial voice simply makes it reflection of intrinsically Scottish ideas. Being something like the unloved middle child of the British Isles reflects in a national identity full of self-loathing and self-destruction. Or maybe it's like that everywhere. 
 

All of which is to say that “Trainspotting's” reputation as a film school favorite is largely entirely justified. It is still a powerful piece of filmmaking, propelled by a cinematic energy that is difficult denied. The script is sharp, darkly hilarious, endlessly clever, and a keen observation on human behavior. The performances are an incredible display of talent from all involved. The soundtrack is pretty damn great and the movie chugs along with an infectious drive that is equal parts grimy and intoxicating. I've never done heroin and, from what I've read, it's a high better described as euphoric and dream-like. “Trainspotting” isn't like that at all. It's a jolt, somehow still feeling fresh and exciting nearly thirty years after it was released. [Grade: A]

Director Report Card: Jake Schreier (2012)

Nobody likes to admit it but success in the entertainment industry does, indeed, seem to be about who you know more often than not. Take, for one example, the career of Jake Schreier. Schreier went to high school with Francis Starlite, the founder and namesake of indie electronic band Francis and the Lights. Schreier played keyboards in the band sometimes too, before directing a few music videos for the group. Starlite would end up collaborating with names like Frank Ocean, Chance the Rapper, and Kanye West. Otherwise known as some of the most successful and critically acclaimed musical artists of the last decade. That led to him directing music videos for those high-profile performers, probably leading to him making some extremely buzz-worthy commercials too. Schreier is also a co-founder of Waverly Films, a little filmmaking collective that included Jon Watts, among others. Watts has been extremely lucky himself, making the leap from micro-budget flicks to “Spider-Man” movies. I imagine being tight with Watts was a factor in how Jake got a job directing a big budget Marvel superhero flick, the most high-profile project of his career so far. Since I was going to review that one anyway, I figured I might as well look at Schreier's earlier features and give myself some added context. 

1. Robot and Frank

In 2000, the car company Honda unveiled a four foot tall robot named ASIMO, an obvious backcronym that supposedly stood for Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility. The smoothly designed, humanoid-shaped, bipedal automaton would quickly become well known for its ability to walk without any additional assistance from humans. (Assuming you don't count a digital map of the area being downloaded prior to the walk as “additional.”) ASIMO could walk up stairs, shake hands, turn door knobs, navigate obstacles, turn its head to listen to someone, and awkwardly dance. Humble as those accomplishments may seem, they were major technological advances at the time. Honda heavily promoted ASIMO too, the robot's visage – which brought an astronaut, a LEGO mini-fig, and an iPod to mind – becoming a common sight in commercials and various public spaces. ASIMO was a hit, people even loving the machine when it fell over. Though officially retired since 2022, ASIMO continues to cast a large shadow over the world of robotics and pop culture. 

For example: Around 2002, while both were attending the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Jake Schreier and Christopher D. Ford would collaborate on a screenplay and short film about a robot that happened to look a lot like ASIMO. It was Ford's thesis project and we don't know what grade he got on it. However, after Schreier became established as an in-demand director of commercials, we do know that the two would revisit the idea. It would evolve into “Robot & Frank,” Schreier's feature debut. Released in 2012, the film would win a decent amount of critical buzz. Through it all, the titular android's design would change little, the resemblance to ASIMO lasting into the final product. It turns out an equally cute and suitably futuristic robot can take a movie way further than simply across a room or up some stairs. 

Many years ago, Frank Weld was a cat burglar of some renown. An expert lock picker and safe cracker, Frank would become notorious for his high-paying jobs. The authorities caught up with him eventually though, Weld spending several years in jail. Now he's an old man, left by his wife and kids in a rural home, his memory and awareness of his surroundings starting to slip. Despite the changes in his life, Frank still feels the desire to pull off another big score. His son James, no longer able to check on him every day, buys Frank a live-in robot assistant to monitor his health and keep him out of trouble. Frank greatly resents Robot's presence at first before realizing the machine's built-in moral standards have nothing to say about stealing. The two snatch a rare book from a local library without getting caught. Revitalized, Frank next plots to rob the rich donners of the library. However, the police are starting to catch wind of his actions... More pressingly, Frank's own mind is starting to betray him, he is feeling more pressure from his kid and – most upsetting of all – he's growing attached to the picky, micro-managing machine that is now his partner in crime. 

There is, perhaps, no cinematic formula more versatile and reliably entertaining than a pair of mismatched misfits starting out antagonistic towards one another before slowly warming up to each other, learning to see the others' good attributes, and being best friends by the end. Whether they are a by-the-book veteran and a wild card renegade cop or an obsessive compulsive neat freak and a slacker, it's a narrative that has been making audiences chuckle roughly since human performances began. “Robot & Frank” does not resist these clichés in anyway. Frank is a crotchety old man, more than a bit of a smart-ass, and extremely set-in-his-ways. Robot is, well, a robot. He always speaks calmly, always moves slowly and considerately, and plans out everything he does with a specific goal in mind. Yet the two are more alike than they initially appear, Robot slowly showing a sly side of his own as Frank learns to appreciate the organization the machine brings into his life. By the end, the movie had successfully gotten me in invested in these two's relationship and had me nodding along or getting weepy eyed at all the right times. Sometimes, clichés aren't a bad thing, especially when they work in service of invoking a particular feeling in the viewer.

“Robot & Frank” tugs extra hard at the heart strings because the human half of its titular duo is an old man starting to lose his mind. Like most people in this situation, Frank doesn't want to acknowledge that there's something wrong. He insists that everything is normal, that his memory is fine, and his perception of reality has never been better. His kids and friends notice the truth, that his sense of time and place slips back and forth without warning, that he lives half-way in the present and half in his scattered memories of the past. For Frank, this is more than merely a loss of his ability to function and remember where he is. It's a loss of identity. He can't do the things he used to, the activities he wants to do. He's desperately holding onto the remains of a life that is slipping away, sometimes more aware than others that there's no going back now. He's long pass the point of no return and his brain is only going to get foggier from here. It's a very human tragedy, that we've seen play out many in reality many times before, and “Robot & Frank” approaches it in a touching, not overly sentimental way. 

For some of us, this hits a lot closer than others. Let me get a little personal here, guys. My mom had COVID in December of 2021. We are still only learning the long-term physiological effects that disease has on the brain but I can tell you that it can seriously effects the cognitive abilities of someone in their sixties. In the years since, I have seen my mom's memory slowly start to slip. She is much more repetitive now than she use to be, much more fixated on past events, and far less likely to remember a conversation we had five minutes earlier. Right now, she can still do ninety-percent of the things she's always done but it's all a grave omen of what is to come. Watching someone you love, the person who has been there your whole life, start to slip ever so slowly into senility is extremely difficult. It's also truly frustrating. Because I love my mom but she's stubborn and refuses to face what is blatantly obvious to everyone else. I want to do what's best for her but, at the same time, find my tolerance for her inability to recognize change difficult to handle at times. 

I bring this up because it's a feeling that “Robot & Frank” captures extremely well. Frank lives on his own and insists everything is fine, despite him constantly talking about going to a restaurant that has been closed for years and sometimes thinking his adult son is still in college. He pushes back on every suggestion they make. How do you help somebody who refuses to take your advice? This is best displayed when Frank's daughter attempt to live with him, struggling with the daily temper tantrums and refusals to get along. Such as grumpy spells about dinner or potato chips. It's all so real that I can only assume that screenwriter Christopher Ford went through some very similar events in real life. There's a delicate balance, of caring for someone you love deeply, respecting their boundaries, not getting frustrated with their mood swings, and not becoming overwhelmed with sadness at what you're seeing.

“Robot & Frank” suggests the best way to handle this transformation is absolute patience. Peter Sarsgaard voices Robot with a suitably zen like cadence, always calm and receptive. At the same time, the machine's nearly monotone vocal patterns can disguise a surprising sarcasm or even a manipulative side. He subtly guilts Frank into going along with his new schedule, making him feel bad about possibly causing the robot's purpose to go to waste. He pushes the old man out of the house and helps him, with a quiet and almost unintentional sense of humor. The natural dryness of the robotic delivery, his perpetually soft tone creating a dryness and almost condescending effect that is great for comedy. This is best displayed when Robot has to make idle chitchat with an even less advanced model of machine or his dead-pan reaction to the obviously illegal things Frank suggests. Sarsgaard is so good in the part that you might honestly be tricked into thinking Robot is played by a text-to-voice program like Siri, while also bringing a surprising amount of humanity to this distinctly inhuman co-lead. 

As much as “Robot & Frank” plays the inhuman half of its duo for soft laughs, the film is also not subtle about what the machine represents to Frank. The droid may use its non-threatening appearance and quietly sardonic voice to endear itself to the man. At the same time, Robot never hides what he actually is. He's a machine, with no soul or purpose beyond what he's been programmed to do. As the criminal subplot of “Robot & Frank” moves to the forefront, it's repeatedly brought up that Robot's digital memory could be used as evidence against Frank. That deleting his database absolutely is what needs to be done to protect the old man. This is clearly an obvious metaphor for Frank's own ailing memory and refusal to admit that he's in the early stages of dementia. The emotional climax of “Robot & Frank” is the man accepting that his life is going to change, that the person he was is slipping away forever, but that he is still worthy of love. The moment comes in the form of an embrace. It's better done than it sounds and I'm not going to lie when I say it got me a little misty-eyed. “Robot & Frank” manages to weave this metaphorical device into its narrative in a way that is natural and touching. 

Despite how heavy its topics can get and how whimsically light-hearted it sense of humor can be, "Robot & Frank" is neither an overly sentimental sap-fest nor a depressing slog. In fact, the movie is surprisingly suspenseful at times. When Frank gets back into the robbery business, and Robot tags along with him, it leads to a nicely tense and drawn out safe cracking sequence. In the second half, a suitably off-putting and patronizing Jeremy Strong emerges as the story's antagonist, the rich donor that lives near Frank's home. The script makes you wonder how aware Strong is of Frank's scheme to rob him. The same can be said of Jeremy Sisto, fantastically utilized in a small role as an enthusiastic police detective on the duo's trail. Because you are invested in Frank and Robot's journey, you care about if they can pull this off. Our hero being both an old man losing his memory and a wily schemer allows the script to pull off a nice balancing act, where Frank can be both a doddering old man people underestimate and also a tricky professional on his latest mission. Robot has a similar back-and-forth, the audience nicely kept in suspense over whether the machine's logical nature will help or hinder the heist.

It's funny that the flesh-and-blood title character would so happen to be played by a veteran star of stage and screen also named Frank. That's not the only thing that makes Frank Langella the ideal pick for this role. He has the age and gravitas necessary to pull off the part of an old man nearing the end of his life, with a world of regrets behind him and an uncertain future ahead. At the same time, Langella has always had a sneaky energy to him, a cocksure smile and mischievous glint in his eye that works great for an aging cat burglar. His chemistry with Robot is the heart and soul of the movie. Sarsgaard's vocals are sure and effecting while diminutive dancer Rachael Ma, inside the convincing suit, is properly stiff and mechanical while also suggesting an odd pathos with a slump of a robotic shoulder or a slight turn of the reflective, helmeted head. 

James Marsden appears as Frank's fed-up but understanding son utilizes the same avuncular sense of security and comedic exasperation that would be perfected in, of all things, the "Sonic the Hedgehog" movies. Liv Tyler appears as his crunchy daughter and I've always find Tyler to be a somewhat flat affected performer. This is true here as well, though that's suited to a slightly clueless but sweetly well intentioned character. Susan Sarandon is also adorable as the librarian Frank quietly romances throughout – a subplot that also suggests the push and pull between the old ways and dehumanizing tech – even if it leads to a last minute reveal that is a bit too obvious and maudlin for my taste. 

"Robot & Frank" is emotionally effective drama, cute comedy, a well organized crime caper but also surprisingly observant science fiction. All we know about the movie's setting is that it is the "near future." We see signs of a world that is changing, of technology a step or two removed from our own. In the decade since the film's release, the idea of long-distance video calls – that are often interrupted by bad weather and weird network hiccups – has already gone from sci-fi tech to everyday inconvenience. We see Frank's daily walks interrupted by weird little electric cars, something else that is becoming more common. The robots are, obviously, the most far out element. That they have such a commercial, smooth design and soothing, slightly patronizing voice already suggests the iPhone aesthetic that has taken over. Robot is more sophisticated than any Roomba that exists now but still feels well within the realm of possibility. The movie smartly creates a future world that seems very close to our own, subtly hinting at how technology has changed our everyday lives without losing sight of its emotional, human heart. Such as in the nodded-at-detail that robot workers are often protested against, for taking work away from flesh and blood people and seeming to diminish our overall humanity. Which also reflects the debate over AI tech that the globe is currently embroiled in. It goes to show that good sci-fi, like always, is usually nothing more than a smart exaggeration of the world that we are already living in.

A during-the-credits montage of real world robot footage, including a lot of the Japanese "soft" robot tech that is most indicative of the film's setting, further connects to this idea. As cute as that is, my favorite element of the ending is how nothing but a look from Langella suggests that the person Frank was will continue to survive, even if his body and mind is starting to fail him. Perhaps that is the central thesis of "Robot & Frank." That the indelible parts of our souls that make us human will always manage to find a way to co-exist alongside growing technology. Perhaps that tech, seemingly inhuman looking at first, can even aid it. The result is a film that made me chuckle, touched my heart, and also hints at bigger themes and ideas. It's a really good first film for Schreier, not ground breaking but an often charming and extremely well made feature. [Grade: A-]