Author: Rudie Obias

Barber: The BRWC Review

Private eye movies like The Long Goodbye, The Thin Man, Klute, and others follow certain beats, such as taking a case, investigating, getting a new gadget from a “tech” guy, solving the case, and more. In between moments, you’ll find the private eye drinking hard liquor, breaking minor laws to get information, and following leads that end up nowhere. There’s usually a femme fatale that the private eye gets involved with, while she’s part of the bad guys at the center of the case. These tropes are comforting and battle tested with positive results.

However, in the film Barber — which was written by Fiona Bergin and Fintan Connolly (Eliot & Me) — Irish film director Connolly (Flick, Trouble with Sex) turns the private eye sub-genre on its head, while delivering a movie that’s tailor made for the socially conscious viewer. In some ways, it feels like a bizarro Irish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in tone.

Barber tells the story of Valentine Barber, played by Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones, The Dark Knight Rises), a private eye who’s hired to find the missing granddaughter of an affluent widow. Barber must also keep his family together — after coming out as a gay man to his wife — and business from falling apart due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The pandemic plays a hefty role in the movie because most characters are masked up, wearing face shields, and standing or sitting six feet apart, while signs posted around Dublin, Ireland remain a reminder of life during COVID. “Hey! Social distancing!,” Barber shouts at the police inspector who gets a little too close for comfort. The private eye was forced to resign from the police force after he was outed for his sexual orientation.

While the film is an old fashioned pot boiler with a lot of trickery and investigations, Barber looks to fit notions of hard-boiled detective work into 21st century norms. For example, Barber being openly bi-sexual makes older generations uncomfortable, but is presented as a matter of fact instead.

Moreover, the mystery of the missing girl ties into the #MeToo movement with inappropriate behavior being called out by victims and allies. Barber even calls out “Times up” when he confronts his homophobic former-boss. The film feels of its time, but does it casually instead of being shoehorned or virtue signaled. 

Overall, Barber is cool, charismatic, and well played by Gillen, while the film itself is subversive, clever, and sharp as a detective on their next case. It checks all of the boxes when it comes to a private eye genre film, as well as turning it upside down.

The single location and single character movie is hard to pull off. It requires a lot of charisma, focus, and overall interest for the running time of a feature film to be completely successful. Although movies like Locke, This Is Not a Film, Buried, and The Shallows have managed to mesmerize audiences, it’s a tough tightrope to walk—especially when you are confined to one location and all your attention is on one performer.

In the movie On The Line, director Oliver Pearn falls really short in accomplishing the feat, while his vision might have been better served as a play or podcast instead of a film. Let’s talk about it.

Written and directed by Pearn (in his feature film debut), On The Line is set on Alderney, United Kingdom, an island in the English Channel, in 1964. It follows Agnes, played by Victoria Lucie (A Night in 97, The Devil’s Machine), a new switchboard operator who serves as the lifeblood of the island connecting people through phone lines. Her day is pretty typical with residents looking to connect with businesses and family, while she even gets the occasional prank phone call. In fact, she even gets bored enough to listen in on other people’s conversations.

However, her day is thrown into panic and disarray when an elderly woman named Martha, voiced by Joanne Rogers, is trying to escape from a suspected kidnapper. Anges has to try to find her help by pinpointing her location and alerting the authorities on the island. It’s easier said than done since she has to coax information out of Martha without drawing attention from her would-be abductor.

Although On The Line is scrappy and resourceful, the filmmaker’s ambitions outweigh his execution in crafting a single location and single character movie. There’s just not enough there to keep an audience engaged, even with a short 73-minute running time. While Lucie is fantastic as Agnes, she’s underserved by the film’s story and direction.

Meanwhile, the filmmaking isn’t necessarily dynamic or strong, while the stakes don’t feel like the center of the world, or even the island. It should feel like it’s life or death with loads of tension and suspense, considering the subject matter, but it just left this writer lukewarm and ho-hum. The end result feels clumsy given that Pearn is a first-time director.

Nevertheless, Victoria Lucie is a breath of fresh air as Anges. She’s bright and charming as a new switchboard operator was the strongest part of the film, while it’s unfortunate that the film itself lets her down. But overall, if On The Line calls, you should hang up.

White Building: Review.

It’s not often that a film comes out that has a lot to say about the state of the world, but does so in such a rich and detailed story that’s charming and empathetic as it is swift and mannered. Cambodian director Kavich Neang’s film White Building is a very impressive display of the harsh realities of living day-to-day in working poverty, while daydreaming of a better life in stardom—as the film expertly weaves together textures, nuance, and a tangible sense of place and characters.

Written by Daniel Mattes and Neang and directed by Neang (Last Night I Saw You Smiling), White Building is a coming-of-age film that follows Nang, played by Piseth Chhun in his feature film debut, a young man who lives in a cramped and crowded apartment complex in Phnom Penh.

He dreams of being a famous dancer as a winner of Cambodia’s Next Superstar contest with his friends, but when a real estate company offers to buyout his home’s residents, his family has to choose to take the money and move, or stay in their home and lose everything.

Although the film is small in scale, it feels like the center of the world with energy, momentum, and life—as it bounces from rough reality and joyous dream sequences with ease. Neang drops you into the story, but after a few moments, it seems like you already know the characters’ motivations, desires, and responsibilities. The character Nang is ambitious, but not talented, while his friends placate him with trips into the city center to busk in restaurants to make money from tourists.

He hangs out, plays soccer, makes TikTok videos, and flirts with girls, all while dreaming of fame. However, it’s not meant to be and deep down inside he knows it. He’s torn between his dreams for himself and obligations to his family. Neang conveys so much ambition and disappointment in Nang, while Chhun offers a stellar performance oozing with both charisma and melancholy.

Throughout the film, we get a sense that there’s something larger happening in the background. The city is getting more and more urbanized with a lot of construction with high rises and luxury condos going up. This is reflected in the bigger story of self-eviction of Nang’s home. A real estate company nearly doubles their initial offer for residents, while some jump at the opportunity to move and others just want to stay in their homes. But, it feels like all of his construction isn’t for the people who already live there, but for new residents with heftier wallets and pocketbooks.

In addition, Nang’s father, played by Hout Sithorn (Same Same But Different), wants to hold out for more money. He’s bedridden from a toe infection that increasingly gets worse and worse, while he’s stubborn and prideful about leaving the place he’s called home for more than 40 years. There’s a heartbreaking subplot that involves his injury and lack of funds, which hits close to home for audiences—especially in America. It feels consistent with the rest of the film and its themes.

White Building is an excellent film that’s worth your time and attention—especially since it’s well-paced with a brisk 90-minute running time. The movie is well-constructed and thoughtful, while its characters and themes feel intimate and meaningful. It’s also smart and clever with something to say about the pitfalls and tough reality of Capitalism, lack of healthcare, and gentrification in urban settings. It’s highly recommended.

Meanwhile, White Building hits home video and streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Vimeo on Demand on September 12.

The Problem Of The Hero: Review.

Adapting a stage play into a movie is tough enough with so many lackluster examples out there, like Spinning Into Butter, Love’s Labour’s Lost, August: Osage County, and others. And then when you mix that in with historical drama, it gets even more difficult to manage fictionalizing past events.

The film The Problem of the Hero attempts to offer up the making of a stage play, Native Son, and the drama between its two writers Paul Green and Richard Wright, who wrote the bestselling novel, in which the play is based. In some ways, delivers on a sort of unconventional stage adaptation and the opposing viewpoints of two literary juggernauts. It’s a balancing act that’s thought-provoking and visceral—albeit a little muddy and flat.

Written by James A. Hodge & Ian Finley and directed by Shaun Dozier (all making their feature film debuts), The Problem of the Hero follows author Richard Wright (played by J. Mardrice Henderson) and playwright Paul Green (played by David Zum Brunnen) during the rehearsal before Native Son opened on Broadway in 1941. The two work together to be ready for opening day, but the pair are still at odds with how the play should end.

Throughout the film, the difference between growing up Black and White, nurture and nature, Communism and Capitalism, author intent and audience reception, Europe and America, Atheism and Christianity, condemning actions and the luxury of choice, and other themes. Moreover, whether the Broadway version will comfort or confront White people’s beliefs. The men feel like cyphers for these themes rather than characters. However, it seems like it’s the filmmakers intent since the structure feels didactic.

While the film itself has a simple story told in a series of flashbacks that are bookended with Green hearing news of Wright’s death at age 52, The Problem of the Hero feels almost an experiment in storytelling. The film seems to be more about its themes examined through the lens of pre-World War II American Racism, the subjugation of Black people, which is all told and blocked with the cadence and delivery of a stage play. In some ways, it feels like a Wallace Shawn film in tone, like My Dinner with Andre or A Master Builder.

In addition, the racism that Wright experiences is outside of the theater, as well as inside of it without overtness or supremacy. It plays out below the surface with microaggressions and gaslighting, even from his peers and allies.

Although The Problem of the Hero is enthralling, captivating, and effective at times, it feels like an overall homage to Richard Wright—pulling from his works like Native Son (both the novel and play) and White Man and Black Man. Dozier takes advantage of the film’s small scale to deliver something that feels larger than the sum of its parts, which is a big credit to Henderson and Brunnen’s stellar performances of Wright and Green as colleagues, rivals, and friends. Furthermore, the problem of the hero is there’s still no heroes in America.

Every now and then we get a movie that lives up to the promise of its title, such as Everything Everywhere All At Once, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and others. These films promise a lot with their titles and then deliver on the goods with hardly any missteps from beginning to end. The Australian horror picture Beaten To Death certainly lives up to the promise of its title and then some. And man, oh man, is this a bloody good time at the movies.

Written by Sam Curtain & Benjamin Jung-Clarke and directed by Curtain (The Slaughterhouse Killer, Blood Hunt), Beaten To Death follows the gruesome and shocking beating of Jack, played by Thomas Roach (who also starred in Blood Hunt), an unassuming man who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people in the Australian Outback.

It unfolds in a non-linear way, bouncing back and forth with the past and present, as it presents more and more information about this mysterious man, how he got himself and his dead wife Rachel, played by Nicole Tudor, into this situation, and if he’ll survive long enough to get through it all and find safety. Spoiler alert just based on its title, but he doesn’t.

In the grand tradition of Australian exploitation movies, including Wake In Fright, Razorbacks, Patrick, Mad Max, and others, Beaten To Death has a simple premise — one man’s survival in the criminal underground with people who live on the outskirts of society — that’s explored to its most logical conclusion — it doesn’t end well for anyone. 

While the film is loaded with bloody and brutal violence, it presents it in such a well-crafted piece of genre cinema. Director Curtain has such a strong command of the camera and editing that really feels artful and considered. The audience is placed into Jack’s outlook for survival that he overcomes so much for revenge. It’s almost as if violence places you in a dark place where you’ll do anything just to live and find safety — even kill.

In addition, the Outback gives it a sense of place, as a number of make-shift and dingy homes make up the backdrop. And with long stretches of wilderness, as Jack travels through rough landscapes, it feels that not only a backwoods family (also known as ​​“bogans” in Australia) is out to kill him, but also Mother Nature. 

Meanwhile, it’s a harsh, dark, and ugly film, in terms of subject matter, but photographed and edited with immaculate and sharp detail that make it hard to turn away from the screen, despite all the brutality on display. Curtain has a good eye for genre filmmaking. Beaten To Death is sadistic, gruesome, and smartly made and constructed, while it really pushes the limits of brutality in cinema. But beware, this movie isn’t for everyone, but the title alone is a warning to a potential audience.