Yes, Kieran Culkin is exactly that. In A Real Pain, he plays the part of writer/ director Jesse Eisenberg's cousin on their way to Poland to honour their later Grandmother's escape from the holocaust. They could not be more different. One (Culkin in his Oscar winning supporting actor role) veering between lovable and embarrassing, someone you would deliberately want to avoid. The other so diffident and quiet. But more interesting was the group with whom they tour the "sights". So it worked as a kind of ensemble piece that is well written with a diverse cast. I didn't agree with the sniffy (but full page) review by Arjun Sajip in Sight and Sound Magazine. It worked for me.
I thought there was one important scene in Mickey 17 when Mickey (Robert Pattinson) in his seventeenth creation exploring a new plant, falls down a crevice but is abandoned by his crew (an eighteenth Mickey would be fine). But he is unexpectedly saved by the planet's indigenous inhabitants, the Creepers. Has something like this ever happened in the history of mankind? I don't think that this event is in the original book by Edward Ashton, but director and co- adapter Bong Joon Ho has told us something highly significant. It's 2054 when all this happens.
Well, what about Robert Pattinson. Not all the reviews were positive and, indeed, at the start I thought his lines had been dubbed. But no, just this weird accent. Then, according to Tom Shone in the Sunday Times: "Less enjoyable is Mark Mark Ruffalo as the mission's cult like leader". He is the villain of the piece, turning into a Trump-Musk composite later on. His wife, Toni Collette is a Lady Macbeth, urging him on. Naomi Ackie is different as Nasha, here in security. But didn't I just love Patsy Ferran (see previous post 8th April 2019) as the scientist Dorothy. There are lots of references to "capitalism, climate change, income inequality" etc. But it's all good fun.
Now Black Bag isn't really a fun movie. But Tom Shone (again) thinks that director Steven Soderbergh has made a movie for grown ups. But it's writer David Koepp that Wendy Ide in The Guardian says is the problem. I thought it was OK. Someone else called it "an original, sophisticated and entertaining studio" movie. A pretty theatrical film that actually starts at a dinner party for all the main characters. Now that seemed to me like it was the start of episode four of a serial. We had no real introduction to the characters, they are just there interacting strangely. They are all actually spooks. The dinner takes place in the home of leads Michael Fassbender (looking a little older now) and Cate Blanchett (almost unrecognisable).
The film turns out to be the hunt for the traitor in their midst. At 94 minutes, the film does not hand around. Absolutely no padding. Sight and Sound magazine says in it's five page spread "this is the kind of film studios are not supposed to be making.....this film exists in what is referred to as "The Dead Zone" which is mid level budget movies ($60 Million is a lot) with movie stars and made for grown ups". The cast are all fine. The most interesting part, for me, was later when they all face a polygraph test with quick fire cuts between each of them under interrogation. I could watch that again. The sets are equally good, the filming exquisite. And finally the music, David Holmes' jazzy score straight out of a Harry Palmer movie. Well, Fassbender does wear Michael Caine's big glasses.
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