FilM

Bound to torture

I went to see Fifty Shades Freed, the third, supposedly final and treacherously fatal cinematic blow of the Fifty Shades franchise. Hoping to keep a low profile I saw it on a Sunday morning. I was, of course, the only single guy sitting in a dark theater with couples of varying ages, primed for groping and sloppy, in-theater fellatio. (Hey, we all know what happens at these damn Fifty Shades screenings!)

So, this is the one where the protagonists Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) get married, creating an eternal bond for their patented strain of lovemaking that involves whips, handcuffs and shit dialogue.

When I sat down to take this fart to the face, I was thinking, “Say, you know what I want with my miserable, dick-killing softcore porn? Give me some car chases and kidnapping drama!” Actually, I wasn’t really thinking that. I was thinking something more along the lines of, “Help me. Help me, please. I want to go home. I want to go home now.”

I didn’t see Fifty Shades Darker, the Empire Strikes Back of the Fifty Shades trilogy. As I recall, I had a hangnail the week it came out, and my physician told me that extensive staring at Dornan’s naked ass and constantly changing facial hair would exacerbate it, so I took a pass. I did see the first one, Fifty Shades of Grey, an experience that had an adverse, lasting effect on my thyroid and circulatory system.

Apparently, in that “I’m sure it was just scintillating” second chapter, some character named Jack Hyde (Eric Johnson) was stirring up crap. He returns in this movie all cardboard-cutout angry at Anastasia for whatever she did in part two. (Whatever that was, I’m sure it consisted of her droning in whiny, bored tones.) He follows her around, at one point orchestrating a car chase between Anastasia’s brand new Audi and a Dodge Durango. Who do you think won that race?

While there is supposed to be a plot, Fifty Shades Freed is really just an assemblage of asinine, soul-decimating moments that leave a bad taste in your entire body. Here’s a quick starter list of some of the things Fifty Shades Freed totally ruined for me: Seattle, Audis, Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed” (Dornan sits down at a piano to sing this in a true WTF moment), David Bowie’s “Young Americans” (I heard it playing while Anastasia and Christian were eating steak), steak, butt plugs (actually, kind of OK having this one ruined for me), Dodge Durangos, Aspen, women, men, Mickey Mouse (He’s on my watch face, which I was constantly checking), Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith (they are Dakota Johnson’s parents, and I’m holding them personally responsible.), the color red, sexy architects, sonograms, and the English language.

The movie is set in Seattle. I wanted Mount Rainier—that gigantic, nasty looking, long-dormant volcano—to erupt. This franchise is selling a gazillion dollars in tickets. Surely, they could’ve spent an extra hundred million for a volcanic eruption sequence where Christian and Anastasia get buried in molten lava while playing with vibrators in their torture room. I would’ve upgraded my popcorn rating to a fair for that.

The movie is directed by James Foley, who helmed such classics as At Close Range and, for Christ’s sake, Glengarry Glen Ross. Let’s put this in perspective, the guy directed the Alec Baldwin “Brass Balls” speech, and now he’s directing Seattle-based butt plug mayhem. Oh, wait, check that, he also directed Madonna’s “Who’s That Girl,” so the seeds of suck were planted in the late ’80s. The bastard has come full circle.

Anastasia and Christian have a safe word, “red,” when things get out of hand in their little bondage palace nightmare. From now on, I will have a movie safe word. I think it shall be “jaws,” and I will repeat it aloud when I want a movie to stop. As for Fifty Shades Freed? “Jaws! … Jaws! … Jaws! … Oh, god, jaws! … Jaws!” Ω

“You may have a playroom, but Pee-wee Herman has a whole playhouse.”

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1The Cloverfield Paradox Originally planned for an April theatrical release date, the third Cloverfield movie got itself a surprise release on Netflix immediately following the Super Bowl. While I’m a big fan of the first two installments in the Cloverfield series, J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot production company have got to be kidding trying to call this a legitimate chapter in the Cloverfield universe. The Cloverfield Paradox was originally a project called God Particle, a standalone science fiction film directed by Julius Onah. Somewhere during production, Bad Robot decided to make it a Cloverfield film. How is it a Cloverfield film? A few short, badly constructed scenes shoehorned into the narrative, including a 10-second final shot that feels like a total cheat. They did this sort of last-minute tinkering when they made 10 Cloverfield Lane, and that resulted in a good movie. This one results in a muddled mess. The plot involves a space station trying to create a free power source to revitalize a struggling Earth. The crew (which includes Daniel Bruhl, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ziyi Zhang and David Oyelowo) accidentally zap themselves into another dimension. While they struggle in the other dimension to find their way home, the dimension they left behind is dealing with a new problem. The events happening back on Earth might’ve made for a better movie, but the one we get in space is an Event Horizon rip-off. It’s no mystery why Bad Robot avoided a theatrical run for this. It stinks. (Available on Netflix.)

4Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool Annette Bening is an amazing actress. Somehow, she failed to get an Oscar nomination for her bravura turn in 20th Century Women, and now she has been snubbed again for her beautiful, heartbreaking work as movie star Gloria Grahame in this moving film from director Paul McGuigan. Grahame’s later career was plagued with scandal, but you may know her from her roles in It’s a Wonderful Life and Oklahoma. Married four times and notorious for dating younger men, one of her last affairs involved actor Peter Turner (Jamie Bell), a man 30 years her junior, whose memoir this film is based upon. Grahame saw Turner in the final years of her life, when she was trying to keep her career alive doing theater in England. Diagnosed with cancer, her final years were confusing, tragic and sad, something the film does an effective job of depicting. Bening is convincing as Graham despite not looking much like her. She does just enough with her voice and mannerisms to convince you she’s Grahame without flat out impersonating her. Depicting the actress both before and after she’s sick, the movie basically calls for two kinds of performances, and she rocks both of them. Bell is terrific as the befuddled lover who must defy his lover’s wishes and call her family about the illness. This is another triumph for Bening. Someday, they will be watching a double feature of this with 20th Century Women, acknowledging that her work in those films is some of the more underrated, underappreciated work of this early 21st century. 4 Phantom Thread It seems the latest film from Paul Thomas Anderson finally did in actor Daniel Day-Lewis. One does get the sense that DayLewis tends to kick his own ass when he plays roles. A notorious method actor, he researched heavily for his role as a 1950s dressmaker and fashion maverick in Phantom Thread. Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis, amazing yet again) runs a tight ship when it comes to his dressmaking business. He works and lives alongside his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville), along with the occasional muse. When his latest muse starts interrupting too much during breakfast, she’s dismissed, and Woodcock goes on the hunt. He finds a new muse in Alma (Vicky Krieps), a waitress he quickly asks out to dinner, and then back to his place. Rather than pouring some wine and getting to know her better, Woodcock immediately—and literally—puts Alma up on a pedestal and starts building a dress on her. Alma goes from enchanted to mildly bewildered by Woodcock’s actions, but she sticks around and eventually moves in. Alma is not the standard Woodcock muse in that she wants more of his time and wants him to slow down. A scene where Alma hatches a plan for a romantic dinner for two proves to be the best in the film and a turning point in the movie. In the dinner scene’s aftermath, Alma does something that carries the film into the sort of weird, bizarre territory we’ve come to expect in an Anderson film (not quite as wacky as frogs falling from the sky in Magnolia, but still ...).

4The Post Perhaps the most important journalistic battle in American history gets the Spielberg treatment in The Post, starring a stellar cast that includes Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. The film explores the Washington Post’s decision to print the Pentagon Papers on Vietnam in 1971, a move that put the careers of people like paper owner Kay Graham (Streep) and editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks) in major jeopardy. Bradlee, who died in 2014, was a journalism giant. The movie starts in 1966 with Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys), a member of the State Department doing a study for Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood), in South Vietnam. Embedded with American troops, Ellsberg sees all sorts of atrocities and is a firsthand witness to the growing failure of American participation in the Vietnam War. His forecast about the war’s outcome is bleak, but McNamara and President Johnson—and two presidents before him— share a rosier, false version with the American public where America is finding great success overseas. The supporting cast includes Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, the legendary TV comedians of Mr. Show. It’s a trip to see them on screen together in a Spielberg production. Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Carrie Coon and Sarah Paulson round out the cast.

4Hostiles Director Scott Cooper’s Hostiles is an uncompromising, brutal Western. Christian Bale turns in another spellbinder as Capt. Joseph J. Blocker. Joe, a quiet, tired, jaded soldier, is spending the closing days of his military career in 1892 capturing and imprisoning Native Americans. He has fought many battles, seen many atrocities and committed many of his own. When aging and terminally ill Cheyenne Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) is granted freedom by the President of the United States, somebody who knows his dialect must be chosen to escort him and his family back to Montana. Cooper, who also wrote the screenplay, avoids sermonizing, and opts for a film that takes its sweet time delivering its message. The movie is far from predictable, and nobody in the cast is safe. That cast includes soldiers played by Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird), Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bad) and impressive, relative unknown Jonathan Majors. Rory Cochrane (Dazed and Confused) is a true standout as a longtime fellow soldier of Joe’s battling “the melancholia.” Rosamund Pike is excellent as a woman they pick up along the way, a devastated mother who has lost her entire family.

1Winchester Helen Mirren and Jason Clarke head a decent cast in what proves to be a ghost movie totally devoid of any real scares, personality or any real reason to sit down and watch it. The acting is terrible. The editing is sloppy, and the special effects are third rate. It’s all very surprising considering it was directed by Michael and Peter Spierig, brothers who put together the inventive science fiction thriller Predestination. Clarke plays Eric Price, a doctor addicted to drugs and alcohol. His wife died due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound via a Winchester rifle, a rifle he also took a bullet from but survived. (The script alludes to the notion that he was dead for three minutes before being brought back to life, so he might be able to see dead people.) Members of “the board” at the Winchester firearms company want Eric to evaluate the mental health of company owner Sarah Winchester (Mirren), hoping that the disgraced doctor will basically take their bribe, declare Sarah unfit to run her company, and strip her of company control. 02.15.18 | RN&R | 19