Thumbnails Oct 23

by Tony Medley

Treason (9/10): 5 episodes. TV-MA Netflix. Young Adam Lawrence (Charlie Cox) is suddenly thrust into becoming the head of MI6 when his boss is poisoned. Things go immediately downhill when his prior relationship with Kara (Olga Kurylenko), a Russian spy, is resurrected. What results is a complicated triangular relationship involving them and his wife, Maddy (Oona Chaplin). Suddenly personal relationships and the future of the country are all intertwined. How good is this? I stayed up until 3 in the morning watching all the episodes.

Who is Erin Carter? (9/10): 7 episodes. TV-MA. Netflix. When Erin Carter (Evin Ahmad), a British teacher in Spain, stumbles upon a robbery in a supermarket with her daughter, Harper (Indica Watson), her life turns upside down. There’s a lot about her backlife that she hasn’t told her perplexed husband, Jordi Collantes (Sean Teale). Thus begins a fascinating thriller as we slowly learn about her and why people are out to get her. Shot in Barcelona, Ahmad and Watson give award-quality performances.

Dumb Money (7/10): 104 minutes. R. The Gamestop story has become legendary on Wall Street. It was stock of a mall videogame store that was used by a savvy amateur investor, Keith Gill (Paul Dano), to make millions by investing his life savings in it and then posting about it. Several other amateur investors followed his lead and the stock soared. On the other side were some major hedge funds who were shorting the stock. Gill and his investors caused a “short squeeze” that threatened to bankrupt the pros. Based on the book “The Antisocial Network” by Ben Mezrich and well directed by Craig Gillespie it is enhanced by fine performances by Dano, Shailene Woodley, Pete Davidson, Vincent D’Onofrio and others.

The Equalizer 3 (5/10): 130 minutes. R. Director Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington have had a fertile relationship with some reasonably entertaining movies. Alas, this time Fuqua brought his trademark grisly violence but forgot a believable story.

They telegraph that what you are about to see is nonsense by an opening sequence that is utterly absurd, and that continues throughout the film. Robert McCall (Washington) is that hoary character, a vicious government assassin who is turning over a new leaf and wants to be a normal guy. Wounded from his last encounter he comes to an Italian village and takes on the local Mafia.

Written by Richard Wenk, that might make for a good film, but the problem is that this film makes no sense whatsoever. There are no believable relationships; McCall is never seen to be in any danger even though he constantly puts himself into ludicrous situations, always emerging relatively unscathed.

I guess there’s supposed to be some non-romantic chemistry between Washington and Dakota Fanning who plays a US government agent, but that totally fizzles. Exacerbating the lack of verisimilitude, Washington has put on a lot of weight and it’s a real stretch to think this guy could engage in combat with young physically imposing men and generally escape to fight again.

Filmed in southern Italy, the two things good about it are the scenery and cinematography (Robert Richardson). But the denouement is so ridiculous that what came before just validates the idea that Fuqua really didn’t have any idea where to go with this, so he just put in all his graphic violence and winged it.

The Re-Education of Molly Singer (3/10): 120 minutes. R. Molly Singer (Britt Robertson) is a frivolous young lawyer who is fired by her law firm for her incompetence and lack of dedication, but then hired to re-enroll in her alma mater to make a man of her former boss’s inexperienced son.

Jennifer Lawrence starred in a similarly-themed film earlier in the year, No Hard Feelings. The latter comedy had verisimilitude this one sadly lacks. This is so silly and preposterous, it’s agony to sit through. It has about as much substance as an Archie comic book. Its depiction of the lives of college-aged millennials is hopelessly frivolous. They can’t be this shallow, can they? Its only saving grace for me is the appearance of Wendie Mallick, who was a mainstay on the almost forgotten, but very funny, 1990s HBO sitcom “Dream On.” Intensifying its annoyance is the woke casting now required of all Hollywood films.

Make Me a Star (8/10): 86 minutes. 1932. NR. TCM. I saw this early one morning and I had never heard of it. Starring Stuart Erwin and Joan Blondell, it is a touching tale of an inexperienced, unsophisticated Midwesterner who comes to Hollywood to become a serious western star. Joan Blondell takes pity on him and puts him in a movie to make fun of his naïveté when he thinks it’s serious. This is a touching film that had me from the start with “don’t blink or you’ll miss them” cameos by many of the big stars of the day like Gary Cooper and Maurice Chevalier.