film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Author: Matt Conway

  • The Phantom Of The Open: The BRWC Review

    The Phantom Of The Open: The BRWC Review

    The Phantom of the Open Synopsis: Amateur golfer Maurice Flitcroft achieves his late-in-life goal of participating in the British Open Golf Championship, much to the ire of the staid golfing community.

    The eccentric Maurice Flitcroft lives most of his life relegated to a dead-end job while supporting his wife and the aspirations of his three children. Despite his unpretentious existence, Maurice maintains a wistful spirit as he stargazes for a passion that will enlighten him. He soon finds that source through his spontaneous discovery of golf, but his journey is not the typical storybook tale of a vergining athlete. 

    Instead, Maurice finds himself in the British Open Golf Championship record books for scoring the worst round in the tournament’s history. His unlikely odyssey receives the biopic treatment in The Phantom of the Open. Like Maurice himself, the film charts its own path in sports movie lore. Director Craig Roberts and Screenwriter Simon Farnaby collaborate on an infectiously cheerful crowdpleaser that fits their underdog subject to a tee. 

    How can one man’s continual failure serve as a source of inspiration? For Roberts and Farnaby, the duo wisely eschew sports movie traditions by analyzing the winning spirit behind Maurice’s losing endeavor. Farnaby paints Maurice as a figure motivated by undying optimism – forgoing the hardened cynicism of the world around him as he continually pushes himself and his family to follow their dreams. For the Flitcroft clan, it’s less about achieving the grand prize than following your passions wherever they take you. That sentiment registers with surprisingly powerful resonance throughout The Phantom of the Open. 

    It would be easy for the premise to feel mawkish in the wrong hands. Fortunately, Farnaby and Roberts possess enough skill and sincerity behind the camera. Farnaby’s script paints a deft balance between Maurice’s optimism and the stuffy golf world that condemns him, often mining humorous gags at the two side’s dissident sensibilities. The juxtaposition also creates proper dramatic gravity onscreen, with Farnaby incorporating enough harsh roadblocks to embed his material in a sense of reality (Maurice’s mindset is constantly challenged by his pragmatic son Michael). 

    In terms of craft, Roberts incorporates more visual pop than your typical feel-good sports film. The director keenly shies away from the overworked theatrics of other melodramatic crowdpleasers. His even-keeled presence foregoes the rigid aesthetics and blaring score choices synonymous with the genre – a decision that allows the material’s strengths to speak on their own accord. Roberts’ embrace of subversive dream sequences and articulate perspective frames also imbues a creative spark as viewers get lost in Maurice’s mindset. 

    It would be hard to imagine The Phantom of the Open working quite as well without its Oscar-winning star. Mark Rylance effortlessly disappears into Maurice’s idiosyncratic persona, conveying the subject’s unique spark without overworking the real-life subject into a goofy caricature. After enjoying a career built from character actor efforts, it’s been a joy to see Rylance unleash his charisma and subdued techniques in leading roles (Rylance also shines in 2022’s The Outfit). Supporting players Sally Hawkins, Jake Davies, Jonah Lees, and Christin Lees skillfully round out the Flitcroft family through their lived-in rapport. 

    The Phantom of the Open delivers feel-good energy in droves. The film reinterprets the contrivances of sports films and biopics alike in a crowdpleaser that understands there are more important facets of life than winning the big game. 

    The Phantom of the Open is now playing in select theaters. 

  • The Forgiven: The BRWC Review

    The Forgiven: The BRWC Review

    The Forgiven Synopsis: While driving to a party at a grand villa, a wealthy couple on the verge of divorce (Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain) accidentally hit and kill a young Moroccan man who was selling fossils on the roadside.

    An elitist, alcoholic doctor kills a local Moroccan boy on his way to a socialite party. While his emotionally distant wife indulges in the splendor of the event, David undergoes a journey of personal reckoning when taking a trip with the boy’s mourning father in The Forgiven. 

    Challenging viewers with dour descents into humanity remains a specialty of writer/director John Michael McDonagh. The sibling of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Oscar-winner Martin McDonagh explores concepts with a similar blend of black humor and unrelenting dread. Underrated entries in his resume like The Guard and Calvary showcase John Michael as an auteur unafraid of taking viewers down unconventional and uncompromising narrative journeys. 

    With The Forgiven, McDonagh juxtaposes his gamut of pompous socialites against the impoverished Morrocan terranean they inhabit. The concept showcases an age-old conflict of class and morality, but the final product represents a frustratingly inconsistent experience. 

    McDonagh’s strengths are still on full display here. His viscerally tempered touch behind the camera serves as a perfect canvas for exploring the discontented sentiments simmering under the surface of his narrative. From the barren desert wastelands to the high-class luxuries of a villa centered amidst the emptiness, McDonagh skillfully allows his visual framework to speak volumes about the glaring class disparity taking center stage. 

    Like a conductor orchestrating a well-tuned ensemble, McDonagh also highlights the skills of his esteemed cast. Ralph Fiennes makes for a fittingly bitting and detached presence as David. His sharp tongue and dramatic gravitas are perfect tools for displaying the character’s initial disgust, with a slew of racist epithets and nasty one-liners highlighting accenting his utter distastefulness.

    Once his journey into the Moroccan heartland begins, Fiennes wisely tones the character’s brash tendencies down in favor of an insular exploration of David’s self-realization of his inherent emptiness. Fiennes’ pained odyssey through guilt and discovery acts as a promising dramatic center, while McDonagh’s vibrant supporting cast provides a source for some uncomfortable black comedy. Jessica Chastain, Christopher Abbott, Matt Smith, and Caleb Landry Jones all chew the scenery with deliciously sinister glee as the vapid elites basking in their carefree worldview.  

    I appreciate McDonagh for his continued pursuit of challenging, tonal-hybrid features. Unfortunately, The Forgiven struggles in articulating its interesting conceits. McDonagh’s thematic pulse vies for thought-provoking revelations without ever earning them, often relying too heavily upon formulaic plot devices and overwritten dialogue to convey his point (Viewers will likely predict the ending long before the final credits roll). Class divide is a commonplace thesis in mainstream movies now, so much so that a right-down-the-line depiction of inequalities and mutual disdain between the two sides do not feel that nuanced anymore. Even some of the typical McDonagh meditations, like karmic justice’s inevitability and humanity’s constant wrestling with its own misdeeds, end up landing dead on arrival. 

    The Forgiven’s dual narrative pathways also clash against one another. While I can see where McDonagh intends his acidic portrait of elites as a counter-balance to David’s descent into Morrocan culture, the two approaches end up fighting for screentime against one another. As a result, neither arc receives the substantive undertones needed to excel, which leaves the characters undertaking a flimsy and generic design despite the film’s dialogue-driven nature. I think The Forgiven boasts the bones of a good movie, but the lack of meaningful shading prevents the final product from reaching its potential.

    Competence and good intentions are not enough to save The Forgiven – an intriguing yet formulaic feature that gets lost amidst its intriguing idealism. 

    The Forgiven opens in theaters on July 1. 

  • Elvis: The BRWC Review

    Elvis: The BRWC Review

    Synopsis: From his childhood in Tupelo, Mississippi, to his rise to stardom starting in Memphis, Tennessee and his conquering of Las Vegas, Nevada, Elvis Presley (Austin Butler) became the first rock ‘n roll star and changed the world with his music.

    The storied legacy of Elvis Presley receives the Baz Luhrmann treatment in Elvis. Fans of Luhrmann already know he is a writer and director embedded in arresting kineticism, reinventing iconic literature like Romeo + Juliet and The Great Gatsby into vibrant portraits of his unique design. Some consider his aesthetics garish or meaningless, but I find his infusions of modernist verve to be a thoughtful presentation style for time-honored ideas. 

    The well-documented rise and fall of a musical era’s defining rockstar fits right inside Luhrman’s wheelhouse. With Elvis, the auteur focuses on the superstar’s ever-lasting mythos rather than a character-driven journey. Framed through the perspective of his sleazy manager Col Tom Parker, Elvis undergoes the meteoric highs and sobering lows of an artistic voice trapped inside the soulless cycle of commercial exploitation. 

    The end product is uniquely Luhrman in the best and worst sense. Roaring rockstar theatrics and ambitious thematic conceits take center stage in the writer/director’s latest – an enthralling albeit wildly inconsistent odyssey through Elvis’ trailblazing journey. 

    Stylistically, Luhrman operates right inside his comfort zone. Gyrating camera movements, intimate, sweat-dripped framing, and the aggressive splicing of cultural artifacts conjure an unhinged energy fitting of the star’s incendiary rise and fall. Luhrman also skillfully conveys the Elvis artistic renaissance through the lens of dynamic concert scenes. Equally evocative and vibrant, each concert embodies a rock star pulse while displaying the distinctive appeals of Elvis – a toe-tapping rockstar whose stylistic marriage of white and black musical sensibilities registered volatile reactions from the zeitgeist. 

    The musical phenom comes to life through Austin Butler’s star-making performance. It’s not just the thick Southern drawl and physical dedication that makes Butler such an enthralling force. Under his seamless physicality, Butler embodies Elvis’ transformation from a swaggering musician to a broken-down has-been. The actor conveys these juxtaposing states with naturalism and gravitas at every turn, heightening the film’s thesis as Elvis ultimately becomes a casualty of the Hollywood content machine.

    Most have levied criticism against Elvis for the presence of Tom Hanks as the controlling Colonel Tom Parker. I wouldn’t say this is an excellent Hanks performance, but the actor effectively serves his purpose as the Dutch agent who suffocates Elvis under his oppressive control. Elvis operates at its best when placing the duo’s dysfunctional relationship under the microscope. Luhrman’s uncompromising depictions speak volumes about the battle between art and commerce, as well as generations of other artists who became imprisoned by the broken ecosystem (a nod to Brittany Spear’s Toxic is the kind of visceral, on-the-nose artistry Luhrman is beloved for). 

    Other elements of Luhrman’s ambitious vision falter by comparison. Luhrman and his team of writers (Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, and Jeremey Doner) are cognizant of Elvis’ unique blend of white and black cultural influences. That said, the artist’s inspiration and the entertainment industry’s ultimate exploitation of black culture rarely receive proper nuance onscreen. A few generically-devised characters spouting clunky dialogue showcase a fairly half-hearted attempt at wrestling with one of the film’s more relevant ideals. 

    Like several of its biopic peers, the film also feels too clean in its celebratory depiction. Painting Elvis as a hapless victim of circumstance feels like a simplistic avenue for exploring the musician’s fascinating career. Troubling elements like Elvis’ underage marriage and his bizarre turn toward politics could have showcased some of the more damaging ramifications of his downward spiral. Instead, the final act drags to its inevitable conclusion while sprinkling in a heavy-handed helping of tributes (the nearly three-hour runtime is bloated and plodding at its worst moments).

    Elvis’ execution ironically endures the same unevenness as its titular subject. Despite the inconsistencies, Luhrman extracts a vibrant portrait that will please Elvis fans and newcomers alike. 

    Elvis is now playing in theaters. 

  • The Black Phone: The BRWC Review

    The Black Phone: The BRWC Review

    The Black Phone Synopsis: Finney Shaw is a shy but clever 13-year-old boy who’s being held in a soundproof basement by a sadistic, masked killer. When a disconnected phone on the wall starts to ring, he soon discovers that he can hear the voices of the murderer’s previous victims — and they are dead set on making sure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to Finney. Based on a short story of the same name.

    Growing up in the late 1970s, Finney tries to go about a normal adolescent lifestyle amidst several child kidnappings in his area. But, when Finney becomes the serial killer’s next victim, he must muster enough strength to fend off his sinister captor in The Black Phone. 

    Nightmarish thrillers centered around childhood abductions aren’t uncommon for the genre (Prisoners and Gone Baby Gone). Director/Screenwriter Scott Derickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill center The Black Phone as a story of self-belief amidst the loss of adolescent innocence. The Sinister creative team also maintains their core horror edge, drenching their dour material in the aesthetics and unrelenting misery of old-school genre pictures. 

    The Black Phone is a noble pursuit, but the final product stumbles into a wayward journey down the road of missed opportunities. Derickson and Cargill ultimately bite off more than they can chew in a horror exercise that sinks under its promising conceits. 

    Diehard fans of gnarly old-school horror films will find something to enjoy here. Derickson remains an auteur versed in the dark allures of haunting horror aesthetics – coating every frame in eerie shadows and drained color pallets in his depiction of a late 1970s canvas. Derickson could craft precisely executed jump scares in his sleep at this point. During each tense encounter, the director maneuvers his claustrophobic framing and edgy score choices with technical aplomb.

    Derickson and Cargill also don’t select their setting thoughtlessly. Along with aping the era’s filmmaking thumbprint, the duo firmly entrench The Black Phone in the zeitgeist of its era. Lost innocence, increased childhood abductions, and an explosion of violent cultural products linger as core tenants of late 1970s culture. Viewers can see glimmers of how the bleak narrative could serve as a relevant depiction of adolescents’ grim and oftentimes uncontrollable discovery of humanity’s cruelest implications. 

    Unfortunately, The Black Phone shows little interest in its meaningful undertones. Derickson and Cargill exhibit unbridled dedication to genre narrative devices – a choice that ultimately undercuts any profound implications the abduction story could possess. 

    The film seems deathly afraid to address any obvious real-world connotations behind the premise. Instead, Derickson and Cargill spoonfeed viewers a tired rehash of 80s horror plot tropes intermixed with goofy supernatural undertones. I don’t understand why the duo would select such a hard-hitting premise without any interest in what lies beneath the visceral horrors. The film ultimately settles for an inconsequential tale of underdog empowerment, which feels like a gross understatement of the subject’s inherent gravity. 

    The Black Phone never unnerves viewers as it should. As a horror exercise, the plodding narrative and hackneyed thematic sentiments prevent tensions from reaching a full boil. Finney and his captor’s cat and mouse game eventually morphs into a predictable escapade of routine horror machinations, with neither the narrative nor characters providing a particularly compelling presence to rally behind. Even the usually terrific talents of Ethan Hawke feel wasted here as the actor is stuck portraying a cartoonish interpretation of a menacing serial killer.

    Mileage will vary with viewers, but The Black Phone felt underwhelming at every turn for me. The lack of thematic intelligence and original ideas makes this one phone call that only horror diehards want to answer. 

    The Black Phone is now playing in theaters. 

  • Brian And Charles: The BRWC Review

    Brian And Charles: The BRWC Review

    Brian and Charles Synopsis: Brian (David Earl) is a lonely inventor in rural Wales who spends his days building quirky, unconventional contraptions that seldom work. Undeterred by his lack of success, he soon makes his biggest project yet – a functioning robot named Charles (Chris Hayward). 

    Inside his forlorn Wales homestead, the eccentric Brian works tirelessly as an inventor of different oddball creations. Oddities ranging from a porcupine-decorated handbag to a flying clock failed to gain much traction for Brian, but his luck soon turns when he transforms scraps into a functioning robot in Brian and Charles. 

    Fittingly enough, the final product of Brian and Charles shares a symbolic connection to its protagonist’s makeshift spirit. Director Jim Archer and writer/stars David Earl and Chris Hayward collaborated on a short film of the same name in 2017. Now given the theatrical treatment, the creative trio conjures a sincere celebration of its offbeat subjects in a rousing crowdpleaser. 

    Crafting an unabashedly quirky comedy comes with its own set of challenges. While cemented auteurs like Wes Anderson and Taika Waititi articulate compelling experiences from their distinctive perspectives, other filmmakers often drown under the cheekiness of their playful aesthetics (Jared Hess’ post-Napoleon Dynamite career is a prime example). 

    Thankfully, Archer, Earl, and Hayward imbue proper balance between quirk and humanity. Brian’s idiosyncratic personality is not an artificial facade – as the character’s slew of creations showcases an isolated loner expressing himself through his own imaginative spectrum. Ultimately, each oddball product reflects Brian’s quest for connection in the harsh world around him. Earl and Hayward deserve ample praise for grounding their screenwriting pursuits in real-world sentiments. The cracks of emotionality lying under the service prevent the inherent quirkiness from ever feeling cloying or artificial. 

    Brian and Charles still embodies a light-hearted embrace for feel-good comedy at its core. Once Charles comes to life, the two protagonists share a humorous rapport blended from slapstick pratfalls and goofy one-liners. The film never vyes too hard for uproarious laughter, often trusting the material and actors’ charisma as the canvas for several humorous chuckles. 

    Brian and Charles themselves make for an incredibly affable pair. Earl’s bumbling sincerity as Brian remains a constantly engaging presence to follow, while Hayward exhibits pure dedication to his role as the matter-of-fact robot. Watching the two characters slowly open their hearts to the grand world around them elicits some genuine tugs at the heartstrings. 

    That said, other aspects of Brian and Charles do not translate as well to the feature-length format. Earl and Hayward craft a narrative that’s over-reliant on formulaic indie devices. Whether it’s the manic-pixie-dream-girl Brian falls for or the one-dimensional bullies tracking his path, the script would be better off embracing a less hackneyed narrative approach. These are familiar flaws of a debut feature-length script, but I credit Earl and Hayward for righting the ship with their satisfying, feel-good conclusion. 

    In a summer dominated by noisy blockbusters, Brian and Charles dawns the affectionate glow of a warm-hearted embrace. The film’s silly comedy acts as a refreshing breath of fresh air – one I hope audiences get a chance to undertake on the big screen. 

    Brian and Charles is now playing in theaters.