A few recent films.

 The Limehouse Golem (2016), directed by Juan Carlos Medina. Here is another Jack-the-Ripperesque murder mystery, a film reminiscent of a number of earlier films such as the Hughes Brothers’ From Hell (2011). In this one, the detective is John Kildare (Bill Nighy) who is unliked by his colleagues and superiors because he is not “the marrying kind.” He strikes up a relationship with the Music Hall star Lizzie Cree (Olivia Cooke) who is on trial for poisoning her husband. Meanwhile a series of grisly murders has taken place in the Limehouse district of London. Kildare thinks Lizzie’s husband, John (Sam Reid), is the Limehouse Golem, as the murderer styles himself, and he sets out to prove this and find an extenuating circumstance for Lizzie’s poisoning her sinister husband thereby getting her off from the gallows and proving himself capable of solving an unsolvable mystery, unsolvable because there appears to be no motive or pattern to the random murders. The plot is convoluted, just like the last sentence. I found the film a bit tedious, but it does have its moments. It also has a subtext of sexual tension, abuse, and repression that is important. Oh, and it has Karl Marx and George Gissing as two suspects in the unpleasant murders. 

Bombardment (2021 – The Shadow in My Eye), directed by Ole Bornedal. This Danish film is timely in that it recounts the story of an air raid gone wrong late in World War Two. Instead of bombing Gestapo Headquarters, some RAF planes drop their bombs on a school killing many children, teachers, and civilians. The planes saw smoke from a plane that had clipped a tower, lost a tailpiece, and crashed into the school. Anyway, the film presents this incident carefully. We get to know a few of the people involved from a trio of children, to a nun questioning her faith, a young Danish policeman who has collaborated with the Germans, the children’s parents, and a couple of British pilots.  The scenes after the bombing are excruciating. The devastating effect of war on the innocent is in full view here, reminding us, perhaps, of what is happening every day in present-day Ukraine. The children here are very good. I especially like their visits to the bakery where a Brothers Grimm-like shopkeeper terrifies the children because of the way she looks. The opening of the film is also powerful and distressing. This scene, in which a plane mistakenly shoots a car filled with women going to a wedding, sets up what is to come.

 

The Good Nurse (2022), directed by Tobias Lindholm. This film reminded me of Michael Mann’s The Insider (1999). Both films are thrillers without flash, without dramatic turns of violence, and both are about corporate malfeasance. The difference lies in focus. The focus in The Good Nurse is on the two main characters, Charlie Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) and Amy Loughren (Jessica Chastain), and the acting is subtle and effective. The low-key performances work well until Charlie’s burst of maniacal shouts of “I can’t, I can’t,” etc, etc. and so on and on. The examination of for-profit medical care is muted, but insistent. Much of the action takes place during the night shifts in a hospital, the characters stalking (well, at least one is stalking) dimly lit hallways. Perhaps the most precise word for the film is “procedural.” The insistence of the two detectives to carry out an investigation against obstacles stemming from the stonewalling hospital officials to the detectives’ bosses on the force is a welcome relief from the crooked cops we have in so many films. The two detectives are Danny Baldwin (Nnamdi Asomugha) and Tim Braun (Noah Emmerich). The story is, as they say, based on a true story. Conclusion: stay out of hospitals.

 

Belfast (2021), directed by Kenneth Branagh. Sentimental and nostalgic, yes; effective and even compelling, yes. This is a film about the early days of the Troubles in Northern Ireland told from the point of view of nine-year-old Buddy (Jude Hill). Buddy is a bright innocent wide-eyed kid who loves the movies – Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, One Million Years B.C., High Noon, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance all appear in snippets here. He also has an eye for schoolmate Catherine (Olive Tennant). Buddy’s family are Protestant and live in a neighbourhood where most families are Protestant. There are, however, a few Catholic families. Trouble begins when some young thugs attempt to burn out the Catholic families, and then barricade the street to keep the unwanted other away. Buddy finds all this somewhat bewildering, and he begins to be drawn in to the growing melee when the thugs loot a local grocery story. Buddy comes away with a box of soap and confusion. Meanwhile his parents begin to debate whether they should leave their country for somewhere else safer and calmer. The film begins in colour with shots of contemporary Belfast, but soon the colour drops away leaving us with a vivid monochrome courtesy of cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos. The monochrome is a stroke of genius. The hint of black and white underlines the ”either you are on our side or you are the enemy” mentality of the two sides of the conflict, but the muted quality (almost surreal) of the monochrome gives us the sense of mixture, of something soft amid the hardness of things happening in this Belfast neighbourhood. As a film about childhood in a place of troubles, this is absorbing.

 

Miss Meadows (2014), directed by Karen Leigh Hopkins. This is a distaff version of Michael Winner’s Death Wish (1974) and its clones. It is also cloying. Katie Holmes plays the eponymous Miss Meadows who clips through her suburban neighbourhood on tap shoes, talks to a blue bird, skips over a young girl’s hopscotch design, does a twirl or two, and shoots a bad guy in a pick-up (literally) truck. This is, mostly, the first scene. The film begins with a quirky sense of the surreal, but it cannot maintain this sense despite trying its best. Ultimately, what we have here is another valorization of gun culture and championing of the vigilante. Pass on by this one.