Caffeinated Clint
The Gentlemen
Like a quarter-glass of sun-scorched Jack, Guy Ritchie’s return to the gangster realm is a tasty offering – but it’s likely not something you’ll want a second drop of later.
Matthew McConaughey – the lone yank in an otherwise all-Brit production – plays the expatriate whose become wealthy from a mull empire in London. When word leaks that he’s ready to retire, friends and foes come out of the woodwork to cross and scheme him – hoping they’ll end up with his fortune. Hugh Grant plays seemingly smart, poised reporter who thinks he’s unravelled it all and serves as the film’s narrator.
Less to do with the fairly derivative plot, and more to do with the superb performances of its ensemble (with Matthew McConaughey and a reenergised Hugh Grant the MVPs), “The Gentlemen” is a vibrant, fun distraction that rests on its talent and wit to hold the audience’s attention for the duration of its near 2-hour runtime. And it does. Will you be revisiting this one as much as you did those well-worn VHS and DVD copies of “Snatch” and “Lock, Stock & Smoking Barrels”? Sure, if you’re an amnesiac who has only just woken up after slumbering through the late ‘90s comedic crime caper fad.
Three Christs
While not as diverting a remedial history lesson as “Awakenings” or “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, Jon Avnet’s ‘50s set dramedy “Three Christs” still holds attention, largely due to the heavenly performances of its choir of Christ wannabes and their unlikely shepherd.
Richard Gere disappears into the role of the determined, resident doc at the Michigan mental hospital who is intrigued by three particular patients – all of whom claim they’re Jesus Christ. Rather than simply subject the trio to confinement and electroshock, ‘Dr. Alan Stone’ conducts an intimate study with the men – Joseph (Peter Dinklage), Leon (Walton Goggins), and Clyde (Bradley Whitford) – where he hopes to wake them from their bizarre delusional states.
Sharing both an aesthetic, and at times, a tone similar to fellow ‘unique’ period medical offering “Masters of Sex”, Avnet’s film is a mostly well-designed, performed and crafted period piece that’s as much about enlightening it’s audience as it’s entertaining. Still, it’s a film where the performances overshadow the film’s indecisive script (the film’s latter half slightly more dull than the captivating build-up) – hard not to do, I suppose, when your four anchors – and to a smaller extent, backing players Kevin Pollak and Stephen Root – are virtuosos Gere, Whitford, Dinklage and Goggins.
Jojo Rabbit
When it hurts to laugh.
Make no mistake, Taika Waititi is a talented son-of-a-gun. He knows how to get a laugh, he knows how to write compelling characters, and he directs with flair. His films – “Hunt for the Wilderpeople”, “Thor Ragnarok” and “What We Do in the Shadows” – all have a certain fun, frenzied pace and welcome vigour to them.
“Jojo Rabbit” is no different – it’s witty, it’s peculiar, and it moves like a fuel-injected Monaro. But it also spotlights one of history’s most horrible, nightmare-inducing dictators as the wacky childhood friend of a young boy.
Waitii plays Adolf in young JoJo (Roman Griffin Davis)’s imagination. It’s a delusional bond that starts to tear when the army suspect the boy’s mother (Scarlett Johansson) is harbouring a Jewish girl in her home and Jojo realizes the Nazi party aren’t the likeable bunch he presumed them to be.
A logline that won’t just ruffle feathers, “Jojo Rabbit” is difficult to watch at times. Unlike, say, “Inglorious Basterds” – a film that welcomingly rewrote history and saw Hitler get his comeuppance before his time – “Jojo Rabbit” wants us to essentially warm up the mustached-maniac, at least for a while, so we can see the world through young Jojo’s. unfortunately, you just can’t – nobody is along for that ride. It’s easy to appreciate some of the comedy here, and the performances are admirable (Johansson is great), but the world’s not ready for ‘Drop Dead Fred starring Hitler’. And likely never will be.
