Diabolical Danger

With a tale that almost sounds like it is right out of the movies, All the Money in the World, Ridley Scott’s 2017 buzzing biopic on the Getty abduction of 1973, was hit hard when star Kevin Spacey got wrapped up in the ever-growing series of sexual assault allegations. . . about one month before the film’s release. In comes Scott’s original choice, acting icon Christopher Plummer, who, with the help of a few returning actors, re-shot the entire role in only four short days – thrusting him into the Best Supporting Actor race at this year’s Golden Globes. . . and likely the Academy Awards. Despite all of the headlines that have pushed people’s attention away from the motion picture itself, it is an engaging piece of cinema. The plot revolves around 16 year old J.P. “Paul” Getty III (Charlie Plummer), the grandson of eccentric billionaire oil baron J. Paul Getty (Christopher Plummer), who is abducted late one night off of the streets of Rome.

Hangry: bad tempered or irritable as a result of hunger; also the title of the most recent short film from UK Indie writer/director Daniel Harding. Fusing classic horror elements with a modern twist (and adding a few dashes of macabre humour), a posh British couple, Clarey (Sophie Dearlove) and Boyd (Neil James), are taking a trip away from the stresses of their big city life, though, along the way, get lost in the countryside. Both a bit peckish, a surly, ornery attitude begins to seep into their conversation – I am quite sure we have all been there before.

After a much lauded rebirth of the Star Wars franchise with 2015's The Force Awakens (directed by J.J. Abrams), it is understandable why the 2017 sequel, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, this time written and directed by Rian Johnson (Looper), is one of the most anticipated films of the year. To keep your mind at ease, I will attempt to keep this one mostly spoiler free. Picking up almost immediately after the 2015 offering ended (the first time a Star Wars film has done this), the remaining Resistance fighters are being mercilessly tracked soon after a First Order fleet has attacked their planetary base. Led by the unifying Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), she must try to navigate them away from General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson). By her side is the fast talking, wild-card hero fighter pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), who is no less spontaneous. Finn (John Boyega), having recovered from his injuries, has his own secret mission with Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) – a new addition to the franchise.

As three volunteering women rush aboard a river-boat that takes children from underprivileged families on an annual daytrip, they receive an unexpected letter from one of their friends explaining that she has left their quaint little city behind with one of their beloved husbands in tow, putting each into a state of crisis. This is the suspenseful hook for the 1949 romantic drama A Letter to Three Wives, written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The letter writer is voice over narrator Addie Ross (Oscar winner Celeste Holm) – the sultry, well connected dame is never shown, and the husband she has run off with is also left in the dark until almost the very end. Doing their duty as good citizens, Deborah Bishop (Jeanne Crain), Lora Mae Hollingsway (Linda Darnell), and Rita Phipps (Ann Sothern), three longtime friends, take the kids on the cruise and stop off to have a picnic, each flashing back (at a moment when they are not busy) to a time in which their significant other may have shown their true colours in regards to Addie.

Indie darling Greta Gerwig makes her solo writing/directorial debut with Lady Bird, a coming of age film that has been building strongly towards the 2017-2018 Awards season. . . earning an almost unheard of rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Many of the plot points will sound familiar when it comes to a coming of age tale – teen angst, strife between mother and daughter, obsession with sex and losing your virginity, first love, applying for colleges, joining the school theatre club, crushes on teachers and other such things; though, it is not these things that are truly important, but rather the honest, realistic voice in which it is told.

Long before Zac Efron and his fraternity bros started terrorizing new parents Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne in the 2014 comedy Neighbors, there was another movie with the same name, a superlative 1920 short from the great Buster Keaton (one of his first four shorts on his own). A tale of star crossed lovers, The Boy (Buster Keaton) and The Girl (Virginia Fox – originally one of Mack Sennett’s Bathing Beauties, she would marry major Hollywood mogul Darryl F. Zanuck, retiring from the business just a few years later) are madly in love, though the fence that separates their tenement apartments might as well be topped with barbed wire and armed with snipers, as their families despise each other – a feud rivalling the Montague’s and Capulet’s. Both fathers are especially involved in keeping the pair apart, though The Girl’s giant sized Father (Joe Roberts) is a much bigger threat than The Boy’s equally diminutive dad (played by Buster’s own father, Joe). Early each morning, they slip notes through a hole in the fence to communicate.