from Roger Ebert: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/pain-hustlers-movie-review-2023

Pain Hustlers (2023)

by Robert Daniels October 20, 2023






It would be significantly easier to write about “Pain Hustlers” if it bordered some extreme of either great or terrible, good or disappointing. Instead, director David Yates’ star-powered opioid exposé is simply a boring chronicling of Liza Drake (Emily Blunt), a determined single mother whose marketing tactics sparked an epidemic. By playing with formalism, using faux documentary, and cranking out hedonistic scenes of excessive drug taking and partying, Yates aims to blend “Erin Brockovich” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.” But the director’s filmic language never offers quite enough sex, quite enough excess, quite enough of capitalism’s depravity. “Pain Hustlers” just doesn’t know how to commit.

Yates teases: He opens his film on a staged black and white documentary as a brash Pete Brenner (Chris Evans) explains his shock and disappointment that Liza would betray him. She begins as a mystery woman, an unlikely mother with a GED education who brought down an empire. When Yates switches away from the in-film documentary to the semi-fictional (“Pain Hustlers” is an inspired adaptation of Evan Hughes' non-fiction work The Hard Sell), world of the picture, Liza is living in her sister’s basement with her mother (Catherine O’Hara). During the day, she takes her rebellious daughter Phoebe (Chloe Coleman) to school; at night, she works as an exotic dancer at a strip club.

Wells Tower’s congested screenplay, a work of saucy punchlines left to sour, concerns the desperation Liza feels: Not only have Liza and Phoebe been evicted from her sister’s garage, but Phoebe is battling seizures stemming from a lethal medical condition. The pair move to a motel whose noisy environment and loud environment also carries the potential of future episodes. Liza needs a break, quick. It arrives when Pete appears at her strip club. They begin to talk. He likes her tenacity; she sees an easy customer. An impressed Pete offers her a job, promising her six figures in her bank account before the end of the year. If that sounds too good to be true, it is. Pete works for a floundering pharmaceutical startup founded by Jack Neel (Andy Garcia). They sell fentanyl, a drug they promise isn’t addictive and works better and quicker than the usual pain relief provided to cancer patients. A competitive market of other pharmaceutical companies, who keep doctors from prescribing the company’s medication, is the only reason they haven’t gotten off the ground. Still, for Liza, working on commission is better than nothing.

Blunt is really the only reason to watch “Pain Hustlers.” She gives a game performance, but poor creative decisions undermine her, like ill-considered freeze frames and unnecessary uses of voiceover. As a character, Liza is also too simplistic. Through her grit, she gets a doctor to sign a prescription for fentanyl (the doctor gets a kickback; the startup gets the upfront money; she receives a percentage). Once she gets one doctor hooked, Liza and Peter go about paying other doctors to switch over to prescribing their drug. The company quickly grows, and Liza rises from the motel to a swank condo within six months, with Phoebe attending an expensive prep school. Business is so good that not only does Liza buy her mom a new car, but she gives her a job at the startup, too. Liza succeeds because of her dedication: She truly believes she’s helping people in pain, and in some way, she connects their suffering with her daughter’s seizures. Blunt understands that throughline, pulling it out but never explicitly showing that undercurrent.

Outside of Blunt, no one else exceeds the daft material. When Evans first turned skeevy in “Knives Out,” the subversion of his Captain America image worked. But after “The Gray Man,” dipping back in the well here is overkill—especially because Pete is the weakest iteration of that character type. Evans is wasted in “Pain Hustlers,” with few memorable emotions and even fewer admirable quips. Garcia is mostly an afterthought; O’Hara appears stuck in quicksand. Snap, chemistry, verve, whatever you want to call it, is lacking with this ensemble.

Likewise, the visual and sonic language flops. Yates tries to pull off several dizzying montages of unrestrained partying, greed, and opulence without the panache to make them stick. We’ve seen Martin Scorsese do this so much better, with greater precision, with an alluring flair for the intoxicating elements of a frenzied and craven environment. In Yates’ hands, the same techniques and scenes of zealot capitalists cheering for cash at any cost feel desperately composed rather than uniquely edgy.

“Pain Hustlers” is better at understanding sincerity. Scenes where Liza sees former friends become addicts off her drug when the living speak about the loved ones they’ve lost to overdose, allow the film to find sure, empathetic footing. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of those scenes. Yates is caught between critiquing the inhumanity of this startup and luxuriating in its gaudiness.

Fair Play (2023)

from Roger Ebert: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/fair-play-movie-review-2023

Fair Play

by Marya E. Gates


After its splashy debut at Sundance in January led to a pricey acquisition by Netflix, Chloe Domont’s high finance romantic thriller “Fair Play” finally made its international debut at TIFF. The (mostly) two-hander, about the implosion of a secret relationship between two hedge fund analysts, has lost none of its urgency in the interim, largely because of a barn burner of a performance from Phoebe Dynevor and writer/director Domont’s impregnable vision.

We first meet Dynevor’s Emily, an analyst at a cutthroat New York financial firm, with her back turned to the jubilant attendees of a party. She’s out on a cold ledge alone, smoking a cigarette. Quickly, she’s joined by Luke (the always alluring Alden Ehrenreich), her co-worker and covert live-in lover. He whisks her into the party—his brother’s wedding—where his uncle calls her the “prettiest girl in the room,” then dashes off before Luke can say she’s much more than that. Emily is clearly not comfortable in this world, but her chemistry with Luke is off the charts. Before long, they’re in the bathroom having sex, her menstrual blood staining their wedding clothes. A ring tumbles out of his pocket, a hasty engagement is made, and their passion ignites.

The next day, the two awaken on their apartment floor, where they landed after more lovemaking. It’s 4:30 a.m., and the two are in lockstep as they prepare for the day, making coffee, getting dressed in their perfectly fitting power suits (and Em’s six-inch heels), only parting ways as they head to the train, a tactic to hide their relationship—which is against company policy—from the rest of the office. They’re equals at the firm, ambitious analysts, hungry for a promotion. When one of the portfolio managers quits in a theatrical and physical rage that results in a call to security, they’re both eager to take his place. Em hears a rumor it will be Luke, but when the opposite comes true, their carefully calculated careers—and romance—slowly go off the rails.

With subtle changes in dialogue and striking visual cues, Domont’s tightly structured script and deft direction show this relationship’s eventual total destruction. When Em is first called up at 2 a.m. to learn the news of her promotion, Luke stays up until she returns, worried she may have been assaulted. Later, he turns this on its head, accusing her of sleeping to the top. That first morning, the lovers were entwined as they slept together; in the next, they sleep rigidly in their beds, then Em alone on the couch, until one morning, Luke is nowhere to be found. Their rift becomes a literal chasm.

Scattered throughout "Fair Play" are breadcrumbs about Em and Luke's economically divergent backgrounds. They’re both Ivy Leaguers, but she’s from Long Island and got there through a scholarship. Once she entered the job market, she had to field sexism in ways Luke would never understand. Until he starts to weaponize this very sexism to undermine her. When Luke takes a course by a motivational speaker who barely hides his misogynistic techniques, he uses his newfound tools to take her down a peg. At one point, Luke says she dresses “like a cupcake,” a neg that needles her to start second-guessing not only her wardrobe but her business instincts as well.

Although they can both technically do this job and are equally committed to doing the work, it’s clear early on that her instincts, coupled with her work ethic, make her a better employee. And yet Luke clings to a sense of entitlement as if he’s owed this job and this life because he’s wanted it so badly for so long. This kind of entitlement is a luxury for Em, who has worked her ass off for as long as she can remember.

Along with her insightful examination of office politics and sexism, Domont also explores the dynamics at play in their relationship sexually. At first, their passion and carnal lust are equal; they’re partners in each other’s pleasure, with Luke going down on Em. But as her star rises at work, his resentment manifests in impotence, later in the power of withholding sex, and finally in force. Though the metaphor is occasionally heavy-handed, it's effectively employed to show how male violence is weakness, not strength.

Ehrenreich tackles Luke’s arc from supportive partner to maniacal foe with aplomb, but this is Dynevor’s film from start to finish. Her strength comes mostly from her reserve in public, only letting Luke see the looser her. But as the stress at work and home mounts, she must find ways to charm all the men in her life—without ever letting them know it.

Throughout most of the film, Dynevor holds her body rigid, towering in her sleek yet uncomfortable heels, only allowing her emotions to show in brief flashes of anger, joy, or stress across her face. This control over her expressions becomes harder as Luke’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic. Yet, even as she projects one version of herself, Dynevor's breakout performance shows the strain that this double identity takes on her through just a deep breath here, a hidden look of sorrow there, or a slight tremble in her response to a co-worker.

Em eventually lets loose in a fiery speech and scene that borrows heavily from the George Cukor classic “Gaslight,” starring Ingrid Bergman. Fans of that film that has launched a million misinterpretations will enjoy Domont’s steady grasp on how the phrase is not just rooted in a generic manipulation of someone’s reality but also the power dynamics of a couple and their private and public perceptions. Domont’s homage, in dialogue and blocking, is far more earned than most modern evocations of the term (which is, interestingly, never uttered in "Fair Play").

Domont’s perfectly calibrated script occasionally veers into the overly theatrical, its grand monologues and rigid back-and-forth dialogue not helped by the film’s limited and repetitive settings. However, her thrilling mastery of slow-burn tension, insightful examination of power dynamics in business and personal relationships, and creation of exceptional performances prove Domont to be a director with a singular voice.

Young Frankenstein

from Roger Ebert: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/young-frankenstein-1974


The moment, when it comes, has the inevitability of comic genius. Young Frederick Frankenstein, grandson of the count who started it all, returns by rail to his ancestral home. As the train pulls into the station, he spots a kid on the platform, lowers the window and asks, "Pardon me, boy; is this the Transylvania Station"?

It is, and Mel Brooks is home with "Young Frankenstein," his most disciplined and visually inventive film (it also happens to be very funny). Frederick is a professor in a New York medical school, trying to live down the family name and giving hilarious demonstrations of the difference between voluntary and involuntary reflexes. He stabs himself in the process, dismisses the class and is visited by an ancient family retainer with his grandfather's will.

Frankenstein quickly returns to Transylvania and the old ancestral castle, where he is awaited by the faithful houseboy Igor, the voluptuous lab assistant Inga, and the mysterious housekeeper Frau Blucher, whose very name causes horses to rear in fright. The young man had always rejected his grandfather’s medical experiments as impossible, but he changes his mind after he discovers a book entitled How I Did It by Frederick Frankenstein. Now all that’s involved is a little grave-robbing and a trip to the handy local Brain Depository, and the Frankenstein family is back in business.

In his two best comedies, before this, “The Producers” and “Blazing Saddles,” Brooks revealed a rare comic anarchy. His movies weren’t just funny, they were aggressive and subversive, making us laugh even when we really should have been offended. (Explaining this process, Brooks once loftily declared, “My movies rise below vulgarity.”) “Young Frankenstein” is as funny as we expect a Mel Brooks comedy to be, but it’s more than that: It shows artistic growth and a more sure-handed control of the material by a director who once seemed willing to do literally anything for a laugh. It’s more confident and less breathless.

That’s partly because the very genre he’s satirizing gives him a strong narrative he can play against. Brooks’s targets are James Whale’s “Frankenstein” (1931) and “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935), the first the most influential and the second probably the best of the 1930s Hollywood horror movies. Brooks uses carefully controlled black-and-white photography that catches the feel of the earlier films. He uses old-fashioned visual devices and obvious special effects (the train ride is a study in manufactured studio scenes). He adjusts the music to the right degree of squeakiness. And he even rented the original “Frankenstein” laboratory, with its zaps of electricity, high-voltage special effects, and elevator platform to intercept lightning bolts.

So the movie is a send-up of a style and not just of the material (as Paul Morrissey’s dreadful “Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein”). It looks right, which makes it funnier. And then, paradoxically, it works on a couple of levels: first as comedy, and then as a weirdly touching story in its own right. A lot of the credit for that goes to the performances of Gene Wilder, as young Frankenstein, and Peter Boyle as the monster. They act broadly when it’s required, but they also contribute tremendous subtlety and control. Boyle somehow manages to be hilarious and pathetic at the same time.

There are set pieces in the movie that deserve comparison with the most famous scenes in “The Producers.” Demonstrating that he has civilized his monster, for example, Frankenstein and the creature do a soft-shoe number in black tie and tails. Wandering in the woods, the monster comes across a poor, blind monk (Gene Hackman, very good) who offers hospitality and winds up scalding, burning, and frightening the poor creature half to death.

There are also the obligatory town meetings, lynch mobs, police investigations, laboratory experiments, love scenes, and a cheerfully ribald preoccupation with a key area of the monster’s stitched-together anatomy. From its opening title (which manages to satirize “Frankenstein” and “Citizen Kane” at the same time) to its closing, uh, refrain, “Young Frankenstein” is not only a Mel Brooks movie but also a loving commentary on our love-hate affairs with monsters. This time, the monster even gets to have a little love-hate affair of his own.

George Harrison: Living in the Material World

from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Harrison:_Living_in_the_Material_World

George Harrison: Living in the Material World is a 2011 documentary film co-produced and directed by Martin Scorsese, based on the life of musician George Harrison, former member of the Beatles. The film's release was coordinated with both a companion book and an album of Harrison's demo recordings. The film earned Emmy Awards for Outstanding Directing for Nonfiction Programming and Outstanding Nonfiction Special.
Premise

The film offers a biographical perspective on the life of musician George Harrison, from his early life in Liverpool, the Beatlemania phenomenon, his travels to India, the influence of Krishna Consciousness movement in his music, and his relevance and importance as a member of the Beatles. It consists of previously unseen footage alongside a wide range of interviews, including Olivia and Dhani Harrison.

After Harrison's death in 2001, various production companies approached his widow Olivia about producing a film about her late husband's life. She declined because he had wanted to tell his own life story through his video archive. Upon meeting Scorsese, she gave her blessings and signed on to the film project as a producer.

According to Scorsese, he was attracted to the project because "That subject matter has never left me...The more you're in the material world, the more there is a tendency for a search for serenity and a need to not be distracted by physical elements that are around you. His music is very important to me, so I was interested in the journey that he took as an artist. The film is an exploration. We don't know. We're just feeling our way through."

Throughout 2008 and 2009, Scorsese alternated working between Shutter Island and the documentary. Scorsese, his editor David Tedeschi, and a small army of researchers spent five years assembling interviews, music, film clips, photos, and memorabilia.

The documentary premièred at the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology in Liverpool on 2 October 2011. It was shown on HBO in two parts on 5 and 6 October 2011 in the United States and Canada and as a two-part Arena special on BBC Two on 12 and 13 November 2011 in the United Kingdom. It was first theatrically released in Australia on 20 October 2011

Paddington (2014)

from the Paddington wiki: https://paddingtonbear.fandom.com/wiki/Paddington_(film)

Plot

A grainy film shows a British explorer, Montgomery Clyde, who travels to Darkest Peru and discovers a new species of bear. Clyde befriends the two bears he finds and learns that they are able to grasp the English language. He leaves the country and goes back to his family in England, gifting his explorer's hat to the bear he has named Pastuzo.

Years later, a young bear in Darkest Peru announces that it is Marmalade Day. Him and his guardians, Lucy and Pastuzo, spend the day making marmalade. During the night, the three bears feel tremors and head towards an emergency bunker on the forest floor. Pastuzo doesn't make it, and the two other bears find his body in the morning, when the tremors have stopped. The younger bear is sent away on a cargo ship to London.

Finding himself lost and alone at Paddington Station, he begins to realize that city life is not all he had imagined - until he meets the kind Brown family, who read the label around his neck (which reads 'Please look after this bear. Thank you.') and offer him a temporary haven. It looks as though his luck has changed until this rarest of bears catches the eye of a museum taxidermist named Millicent Clyde.

Paddington, with the aid of Mrs. Mary Brown, searches for the explorer who came to Darkest Peru. He accidentally floods and sets fire to the Browns' house, and is criticised by Mr. Henry Brown, who thinks Paddington is a bad influence on Judy and Jonathan.

Paddington leaves in shame and looks for M. Clyde at every address that Mrs. Mary Brown could find. He finally finds Millicent Clyde, who says that the explorer was her father. She takes Paddington to the Natural History Museum, where she works as a taxidermist. She reveals to Paddington that she resents her father for not obtaining a specimen of Paddington's species when he went to Peru. Her family lost status and was relegated to a lower class in society. Millicent tells Paddington that she plans to correct her father's mistake and stuff Paddington so her father's discovery can be immortalised in the museum.

Mr. Curry warns the Browns of Millicent's plan, and they rush to the museum to save Paddington. They cause a power outage and help Paddington escape from Millicent's office. They meet on the roof where Millicent intercepts them. Paddington surrenders and asks for one last request - to eat a marmalade sandwich. Millicent grants his request and he throws the sandwich at Millicent, causing a flock of pigeons to fly at her and cause her to almost trip over the edge of the roof. Millicent regains her balance and prepares to tranquilize Paddington when Mrs. Bird, drunk on rum, bursts through a trapdoor which pushes Millicent off the roof. Hanging onto a flagpole far above the ground, Millicent is weaponless and defeated.

Paddington is welcomed into the Brown household as a new member of the family. Millicent is sentenced to community service at a petting zoo, her worst nightmare. Paddington writes to his Aunt Lucy, elated that he has finally found a home where he belongs.