NYFF52 Opening Night Review: Gone Girl (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


[A disclaimer: Though I saw Gone Girl at an Atlanta press screening, I'm posting it alongside the rest of my coverage of the New York Film Festival since it is tonight's opening night gala selection. It opens in theaters across the country Friday, October 3rd.]

Among director David Fincher's movies, Gone Girl might end up ranking as well executed a puzzle film as The Game. It sounds like a simple statement, but there's a lot to unpack in it. Like The Game, Gone Girl is excellent, trashy fun; no more, no less. It's hard to see how Gone Girl, based on Gillian Flynn's bestseller, will have much of a chance for any major awards outside of the technical categories with one glaring exception, Rosamund Pike, whose part here is star-making. More on that later. As in Fight Club, Gone Girl is so dependent on its plot intricacies that one can't write much about it without giving something away. So trust me. This review will tread carefully. Finally, even for those who have read the novel, Fincher constructs Gone Girl in such a way that, like Zodiac, and again Fight Club and The Game, multiple viewings shall yield more and more rewards for the viewer.

Movie Review: A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


The last time we saw private eye Matthew Scudder, he had a sunnier disposition and resembled Jeff Bridges. This was in his first film appearance, 1986's nasty 8 Million Ways to Die (Hal Ashby's muddled final movie, written by Oliver Stone and a pseudonymous Robert Towne). Nearly 30 years on, Liam Neeson plays the detective in the unbelievably grimmer A Walk Among the Tombstones. It's a serviceable throwback to cult detective thrillers from the 70s like The Long Goodbye or Night Moves, movies with a flawed antihero at the center of a mystery that's really just an excuse to meet a cast of quirky supporting characters. So who better to direct it than Scott Frank, screenwriter for a number crime films based on literary potboilers and chock full of such eccentrics: Get Shorty, Heaven's Prisoners, Out of Sight, and the never-aired pilot for Hoke.

TV Review: Top of the Lake Episodes 6 & 7: Die to Yourself

by Tony Dayoub

Top of the Lake wrapped up with a special 2-hour airing of its final two episodes last week. And you may be asking why it's taken so long for me to post a recap. I apologize, but I wanted to give everyone a chance to see the series finale before I speak about some of the show's revelations freely. More importantly, I wanted to re-watch Top of the Lake in its entirety in order to gain better perspective on what I discovered was its excellent, airtight construction. So if you haven't watched the series conclusion yet, read no further as this is the final spoiler warning I'll offer.

TV Review: Top of the Lake Episode 5

by Tony Dayoub

The Sundance Channel has wisely decided to wrap up Top of the Lake next week, airing its last two episodes on Monday night. Hopefully, this might stave off some of that Are-we-there-yet feeling which creeped into this week's episode. I've championed the series so far, despite criticism from some quarters that the mystery has been too drawn out. After all, the point is hardly the puzzle concerning the missing Tui Mitcham (Jacqueline Joe). When pressed, I'm sure even the most naïve viewer could tell you beat for beat the way in which Top of the Lake's plot will unfold. What makes a show such as this so rewarding is the unique alchemy between the cast of characters populating Laketop, Paradise, and the police force investigating Tui's disappearance, which we find out in this episode occurred two months ago. Perhaps that story point explains why this episode felt so static, not just from a story standpoint but in terms of exploring the central characters.

TV Review: Top of the Lake Episode 4 - Triggering History

by Tony Dayoub

A conventional noir begins to take shape in this week's episode of Top of the Lake. It's a hallmark of such detective thrillers that the very thing that makes their heroes strong enough to have unique insight into the central mystery is often their Achilles' heel. Detective Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss) seems less in control of than ensnared by the web of deceit surrounding pregnant 12-year-old Tui Mitcham's disappearance from the small town of Laketop. Al Parker (David Wenham) correctly diagnoses Robin when he judges her as too close to the case because of her personal history, specifically the rape she survived in her teenage years.

TV Review: Top of the Lake Episode 3 - The Secret Inside

by Tony Dayoub

There were few if any major developments in this week's installment of Top of the Lake. And if some of the reactions to my review last week are any indication, this may not bode well for the show's popularity. Television has trained viewers to expect a continuing series of escalating revelations. But few realize that these manipulative hooks are contrivances. Fortunately, Top of the Lake is a closed miniseries with no need to solicit an audience in order to get renewed for another season. It's unfolding at just the right pace, with even more disregard for the MacGuffin at its center—the disappearance of Tui Mitcham—than its predecessor Twin Peaks had for the solution to its question of who killed Laura Palmer. Top of the Lake realizes that its central puzzle is simply an excuse to delve into the mysteries that define its characters. And this week's episode makes the most of it.

Where is Tui?

by Tony Dayoub

It's that time of year just before the summer blockbuster season when I find it hard to get my butt into a theater seat. For every surprise like The We and the I (which has, unfortunately, yet to open around the country) you get two entirely predictable movies like Olympus Has Fallen (opening Friday) or Oz: The Great and Powerful, a film so dull I can't even think of what to write about it. So it's not unusual that some promising television series start appearing during this lull to take advantage of the open playing field. Game of Thrones and Mad Men, two outstanding cable shows, return in a few weeks. David Mamet's Phil Spector, starring Al Pacino and Helen Mirren, debuts this weekend on HBO. And now the Sundance Channel has realized the virtues of airing their own scripted original programming starting with Top of the Lake, a 7-episode miniseries created by Jane Campion and Gerard Lee (who last collaborated on 1989's Sweetie).

Deathtrap (1982) Debuts on Manufactured-on-Demand Blu-ray... That's Right, Blu-ray.

by Tony Dayoub

In a move which came to quite a surprise even to loyal fans of Warner Archive, the most prolific of the MOD (manufactured-on-demand) DVD labels, two of their most recent releases have debuted on Blu-ray. Gypsy (1962) had previously been released in anamorphic widescreen on DVD. In my opinion, the more interesting title is Sidney Lumet's clever Deathtrap (1982), which had only been released on full-frame DVD back in 1999. Based on a stage play by Ira Levin, Deathtrap's theatrical roots show fairly prominently. Literally a drawing room mystery, it's mostly set in one large, open study. The script is rife with mordant humor, and has a teeny-tiny cast anchored by Dyan Cannon (Heaven Can Wait), Christopher Reeve (playing against type while at the height of his Superman popularity), and Michael Caine, during one of his most fertile acting periods. The witty esprit-de-corps between the three actors is perhaps the best reason to recommend the film, a minor Lumet movie with a cult following due to this very reason.

Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

by Tony Dayoub

I was one of many who wondered about the wisdom of remaking a film which was an international phenom only one year after it played domestically. After all, there was no way a prudish Hollywood version would be able to dive into the depths of the type of depravity that the Swedish adaptation of Stieg Larsson's novel sinks the viewer into. As was the case with the American remake, Let Me In, though, David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo goes all in and maybe even further in both sexual explicitness and thematic scope. Surprisingly, it also provides further insight into Fincher's growing preoccupation with the breakdown of secrecy as a result of the increasing advances in information brokerage.

Now It’s Dark

From prose to poetry: the Blue Velvet: 25th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray

by Tony Dayoub

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Blue Velvet, surely one of the most significant films of the last 25 years, is something rather ordinary for a movie with so many shocking and memorable images. It is the opening shot. Not the saturated opening shot of the red roses against the white picket fence of the film proper, mind you. I mean the fade up into the image of blue velvet flapping as if being blown by some mysterious wind. Composer Angelo Badalamenti’s timpanists roll right into the plaintive violins of his main theme, paving the way for a solitary clarinet repeating their melody. Initially, the clarinet’s crisp intrusion into the lushness of the violins is as transgressive as that of the film’s main character, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) into the nightmarish beauty of his sleepy hometown, Lumberton. But eventually, the clarinet blends in with the violins, achieving a harmonic unity not unlike the one the naïve Jeffrey does when he gets simpatico with the twisted underbelly of his innocent-looking small town and its frightening denizens.

UPDATED: Blue Velvet 25th Anniversary Blu-ray Giveaway

by Tony Dayoub

One of my all-time favorite films, Blue Velvet, is now available for the first time ever on Blu-ray. A week from today, I should have a review up at my other outlet, Nomad Editions: Wide Screen, where I'll focus on the 50 minutes of lost footage that appears on the disc as a bonus feature.

To celebrate this release, I am happy to give away a free copy of the new 25th Anniversary Blu-ray (courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc.) to each of the first FIVE people who can correctly answer a question related to the bonus footage (hint: if you go back through some of my recent tweets you can easily find the answer). But first, the rules:

Underrated: John Hawkes in Winter's Bone

by Tony Dayoub

Embodying the danger, mistrust, sadness, hopelessness, provincial territoriality, and concern with kin found amongst all of the criminal colluders in Debra Granik's bleak Winter's Bone is Teardrop, the bitter crank dealer played by John Hawkes. That Hawkes steals every scene he is in despite playing every one of them opposite young Jennifer Lawrence (who has been rightly getting all of the notices a budding star-in the-making gets) is not necessarily such a big surprise. Hawkes has been a working character actor for just over twenty years now. It is how little mention is made of his work here which prompts me to address it.

Movie Review: The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009)

by Tony Dayoub

This time it's personal.

During the mid-eighties, at the height of the suspense genre in America, when audiences would develop an attachment to a star like Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson over a span of several movies in some series of crime thrillers, this seemingly ubiquitous tag line usually resided somewhere on the poster for the sequel, implying we were going to find out more about our hero's background in the sophomore movie since we enjoyed the character so much in the first. The truth is I can only find one real reference to this tag line in cinema, and that is for the fourth entry in the Jaws series, Jaws: The Revenge (but it felt widespread enough that Back to the Future Part II makes a small joke about it with a Jaws 19 poster that reads "This time it's really really personal"). A sequel starring large-scale central characters inevitably turns inward to examine its own protagonists, let the audience know what makes them tick. So it's not unexpected that The Girl Who Played with Fire would follow suit, justifying the use of such a tag line by turning its focus on the enigmatic Lisbeth Salander. The second part in this Swedish suspense trilogy digs deeper into the pierced, emo-looking, kickboxing, computer-hacking basket case so intriguingly played by Noomi Rapace in the earlier The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009). But does it find anything there to sustain our interest?

Movie Review: The Ghost Writer (2010)

by Tony Dayoub

In The Ghost Writer, the British Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), a former prime minister under attack for playing crony to the U.S. and its interests in the Iraq War, is beset by protesters who attack him for aiding and abetting the torture of Muslim POWs. While contending with the suspicious death of writer Mike McAra who was ghosting his memoirs, Lang rides out the tempest in Cape Cod with his wife, Ruth (Olivia Williams); his assistant and possible mistress, Amelia Bly (Kim Cattrall); and new to the mix, the unnamed ghost writer (Ewan McGregor) who replaces McAra.

The Year 2001: Counting Down the Zeroes - Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)

David Lynch's Mulholland Drive began life as a TV pilot for ABC, the same network which aired Twin Peaks - Lynch's greatest mainstream success. It would be interesting to see how each show would fare in today's television landscape, one where serialized shows like Lost have succeeded, in part because ratings expectations are much lower and cable's serials lead the pack in competing for viewers' attention. In any case, the TV network was not ready for a mysterious drama set in Los Angeles where the central MacGuffin was two women's search for one's forgotten identity. So Lynch did something similar to what he did for the European theatrical release of the Twin Peaks pilot. He fashioned a lengthy ending, tying up the open-ended plotline, and got the rights to release the film theatrically. Naomi Watts plays Betty, a stereotypical Midwestern woman who moves to Hollywood to become an actress. Naive and overeager, she is determined to prove herself in the corrupt industry town. Meanwhile, a woman receives a head injury in a car accident on Mulholland Drive. Dazed, she finds her way into the apartment that Betty is moving into. Betty runs across the enigmatic accident victim in her very own shower, a woman struggling to remember her identity who starts calling herself Rita (Laura Elena Harring) after spotting a poster of Gilda in Betty's apartment. Subplots and seemingly unrelated characters intrude on the central plot. No doubt these were to be coherent subplots on the prospective TV series. One such storyline involves rising movie director, Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux), whose luck turns for the worse after being threatened by two heavies seeking to cast one Camilla Rhodes (Melissa George) as the star of his next picture. These plots would have continued and tied in to the main story had Mulholland Drive gone to series. Instead, Lynch uses them to fold the movie in on itself, tying Camilla and Adam to Rita in the film's climax, bringing up questions of identity and reality versus surreality, themes that recur often within Lynch's work, but are distilled here to their purest form. One can almost see the invisible line that Lynch draws at the point where Mulholland Drive departs from its relatively conventional TV origins to the surreal realm in which he frequently wanders. It is about an hour and a half in when the movie metamorphoses from a neo-noir Nancy Drew to a haunting exploration of the obsessive ardor Diane Selwyn (Naomi Watts again) feels for Camilla Rhodes (Laura Elena Harring again). Diane awakes into a nightmare of a life, as if the first part of the film was a desperate dream formed by her fragile mind to put things right in her sad existence. Whereas Betty and Rita make love after bonding over the mystery of Rita's identity, Camilla rebuffs Diane, choosing director Adam instead. The promise Betty displayed as an actress in the first part has evaporated, with Adam giving the lead role in his film to Camilla rather than Diane. Identities transmute into new ones. The real merges with the surreal in the most necessary way yet for a Lynch film. The director even finds moments to comment on the part he plays as a master of ceremonies in these proceedings, as evoked by the stage magician that helps usher in the tonal shift at the point of departure in the film. Consciously or not, Lynch refers to other works of his including those that have yet to be: once, when he enlists Rebekah Del Rio to sing her version of Orbison's "Crying" (Blue Velvet's iconic scene where Dean Stockwell mimes to Orbison's "In Dreams"); once again, when the electrical surges of the magic show help to transmogrify Betty into Diane (Lost Highway, Twin Peaks); and finally, when the actress' descent into madness foreshadows the insanity of Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) in Inland Empire (2006). Mulholland Drive is the apotheosis of Lynch's filmography, transcending its humble TV beginnings to become one of the best films of the decade. This post was first published at Film for the Soul for its continuing series on the best movies of the 2000s, Counting Down the Zeroes, on 5/17/09.

DVD Review: Diva and The Red Violin - A Classic and a Cult Favorite are Rereleased for a New Audience

by Tony Dayoub



Lionsgate Films' new Meridian Collection debuted in May. It is intended to showcase foreign films in newly remastered editions with more extras than previously available on DVD. The first two films to launch the collection are the classic Diva (1981) and a cult favorite, The Red Violin (1998).


In Diva, Jules (Frédéric Andréi), a postal worker, secretly records a famous opera singer's performance. The tape is in high demand since the performer, Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez) has stated she would never allow any recordings to be made of her voice. When the recording is switched with a tape exposing the leader of a prostitution ring, a chase involving the police and the underworld ensues, with the postal worker caught in the middle.

Directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, this classic film was at the forefront of a movement of filmmakers, like Luc Besson (Nikita), and Leos Carax (Les Amants du Pont-Neuf), collectively known as the "Cinema du Look". Panned by critics upon release, the film was accused of being pleasing to the eye, but ultimately shallow. Americans were having similar reactions to Paul Schrader's American Gigolo (1980), and Michael Mann's Thief (1981). Taken all together, it may be true that these films would ultimately inspire the Michael Bays of the world to stimulate moviegoers visually with no regard for complexity in story. But Beineix, cinematographer Philippe Rousselot (who would go on to greater acclaim with some well-known films like Dangerous Liaisons), and production designer Hilton McConnico were essentially pioneering the a neo-noir. Visually expressionistic like its antecedents, the film now had the luxury of introducing color into film noir's palette. It still, however, limited the hues, focusing on the high contrast as the earlier noir films did, but in monochromatic blues and yellows instead of black and white. The neon sheen of this film and its American counterparts predates, and no doubt influenced, later fare such as Scarface (1983) and Miami Vice (1984).

The Red Violin is a triptych revolving around a violin that is being auctioned to high demand. After a prologue depicting the violin's "birth", a framing story follows an appraiser (Samuel L. Jackson), through the auction house's authentication process. The viewer is then treated to a "biography" of the musical instrument. Three stories, set in different countries and periods, give us a glimpse into the violin's "life", and its mystical ability to curse all who own it. The complex structure of the story centers around the dual mystery of whether this is the actual Red Violin everyone in the film has been pursuing, and why the legendary instrument is red.

This cult favorite has a wonderful Oscar-winning score by John Corigliano, and features passionate performances by Jason Flemyng, Don McKellar (who also cowrote the screenplay), and Greta Scacchi. While not a true classic on the level of Diva, The Red Violin has an aura of beauty and mystery that rewards both the new and repeat viewer.

These two films are definitely worth adding to your collection, and a step in the right direction for Lionsgate. I can't wait to see what the next films in their Meridian line will be.

Stills provided courtesy of Lionsgate Home Entertainment.