The Horseman

Viewers be warned!  This is an Australian revenge film, so prepared for some pretty graphic violence.

The film starts in the middle of the story, where one man (Peter Marshall) is beating another to find some information. Pretty soon, we discover Christian is in search of some answers about the death of his daughter; he thinks she fell into the wrong crowd and they got her mixed up in drugs and other seedy behaviors. He believes she has been soiled by these men so goes after them one by one, torturing them for information as well as hurting them for hurting his daughter.

Christian’s search takes him around the country and he picks up a runaway, Alice (Caroline Marohasy), who claims she is just hitch-hiking to visit a friend. He gives her a ride, perhaps seeing a vulnerability in her that he instinctively wants to protect as it coincides with his current grief. Neither gives the other much detail of who they really are and where they come from and for most of the film Alice is oblivious to what Christian has been doing.

Circumstances separate them and bring them together again, until the people Christian is hunting down come after him.

Free event: The Manchurian Candidate

Back to Frank Sinatra films at the Northbrook Public Library. For a change of pace, a serious film, The Manchurian Candidate. A Korean War POW is brainwashed to become an assassin.

The Manchurian Candidate
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
1:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Northbrook Public Library
1201 Cedar Lane
Northbrook, IL 60062

Free event: The French Connection

April looks like a good month for free screenings.  Another good pick this month is being hosted by Chicago's Harold Washington Library Center. The French Connection, starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider, is part of a program celebrating director William Friedman. The story is a police action/thriller based on a true story.

Related events include a screening of The Exorcist on April 9, and the director himself speaks at the library on April 16. Mark your calendars!

The French Connection.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
6:00 p.m.
Harold Washington Library Center
Cindy Pritzker Auditorium
400 S. State Street

Side Effects

Side Effects' plot ended up not being exactly what I had read about. The main character ends up not even being the character played Rooney Mara, but Jude Law (at least I think so, thus why he has top billing and probably also due to his seniority as an actor).

Rooney is Emily, who is anxious that her husband (Channing Tatum) is being released from prison after some creative insider trading. He quickly gets back into old habits which she wants to get away from, and it appears she has had depression in the past for a couple reasons. She tries to commit suicide, bringing her to the attention of a new doctor, Dr. Banks (Jude Law). He is sympathetic and tries to put her on different anti-depression medications, and goes so far as to speak to her old doctor, Dr. Siebert (Catherine Zeta Jones) about her past history, who mentions to him a new drug called Ablixa.

As is (probably) prevalent in the industry, a drug company approaches Dr. Banks and his colleagues to promote a different new drug. Dr. Banks takes this paid endorsement due to various financial needs but is open with his patients about his paid participation when he asks them to go on the test trials.  The film shows one patient eagerly taking advantage of having a drug provided free.

Meanwhile, Emily mentions a friend has tried Ablixa with good results, so Dr. Banks, who has tried other drugs like Zoloft for her with no success, prescribes that for her. It is pretty successful in lightening her mood, but the side effects include bouts of sleepwalking where Emily acts out things and has no memory of doing so. During one of these bouts Emily does something tragic, which puts Dr. Banks' reputation in jeopardy. He is pressured to let Emily take the blame for a crime she has committed "due to reasons of insanity" rather than it become known that the drug he prescribed to her as the potential reason for her actions. Although he does sincerely want to help Emily, he bows to the pressure that he is getting from many sides and commits her to a mental health facility under his continued supervision, rather than send her outright to prison.

There are still a lot of gray areas of suspicion about him so Dr. Banks still wants to clear his reputation even though he is not legally blamed. During his own investigation he begins to suspect that Emily is not as innocent as he has been led to believe, and that there has been a conspiracy around him.

CIFF 2012: The Scapegoat

This is based on a Daphne duMaurier book, a previous film adaptation starred Alec Guinness. I don’t know the lead actor, Matthew Rhys, but I did recognize a few of the actors in the smaller roles. The story is a period piece taking place in the 1950s just when England's Princess Elizabeth is about to be crowned as Queen Elizabeth II. A teacher John is just leaving his post at a boys school—you can tell he is definitely not of the social or economic class of his students’ families. He teaches Greek and it is decided that these old languages are not needed anymore in the modern world, so his post has been eliminated. A bit bitter, he drinks at a hotel bar where he sees a man who amazingly looks exactly like him. He and this other man, Johnny (played also by Rhys), learn a bit about each other and Johnny buys him drinks and they stay the night at the hotel when they get too drunk. When John wakes, he finds his clothes are gone and a personal driver has arrived to take him “home”—Johnny’s home—believing John to be Johnny.

At first John tries to convince people he is not Johnny—they just think he has a bad hangover—until he meets the family. Lady Spence, the mother (Eileen Atkins), is a bedridden matron who does not go out anymore; wife Frances (Alice Orr-Ewing) is one of those sweet wives who loves her husband, not knowing his bad side; brother Paul (Andrew Scott) is trying to hold the family business together, a glassmaking factory; Paul’s wife Nina (Sheridan Smith), whom John finds out has been having an affair with Johnny; Blanche (Jodhi May), the outspoken sister; and Mary Lou, Johnny’s precocious daughter.

Bit by bit he is taken with the Spences, and to a lesser extent he is enjoying the life of a heritaged and monied family; but he also wants to find out why Johnny has forced him into this impersonation. It seems the factory is not doing well, and Johnny had been on a business trip to negotiate a merger; unbeknownst to everyone, the details of the merger are not good for the family or their workers. Johnny has run away and taken this unique opportunity to leave his problems to John to deal with. John is unable to tell the hard truth to the family and the factory workers, so stumbles about trying to find a solution and playing for time. At first he just wants Johnny to retake his life, but as we start to see secrets all around, John slowly sympathizes with the family, even falling in love with the wife Frances. But Johnny has been pretty dastardly and all his actions have caused problems for each member of the family. John’s presence and actions within the family change everything for the better for all the characters.

CIFF 2012: Sleep Tight

This Spanish horror thriller takes place in an apartment building, and focuses on the live-in concierge Cesar who works there during the day. He seems friendly and helpful enough and caters to his tenants' needs and whims. But we see his dark side at night--he hides in the apartment of a beautiful tenant, Clara, drugs her so she won't wake up, then lies beside her all night, waking in time to leave and pretend life is normal.

Although at first we are led by his actions and narrating dialogue to believe he is a typical stalker, this is not exactly (or not initially) about sex. Cesar is depressed, to the point where he cannot stand that Clara always has a smile on her face. His vendetta against her to is to make her as unhappy as he is.

Cesar's actions against Clara get more and more extreme. He injects chemicals into her lotions to cause a rash. He infests her apartment with bugs. In one scene he is almost caught by Clara's boyfriend. Later we come to know that Cesar has sexually violated Clara without her knowledge.

We see that the neighbor kid across the hall has seen some of this illicit behavior and has been blackmailing Cesar. A curmudgeon tenant has looked into Cesar's past and discovered he has never been able to keep a job, suggesting to us that Cesar has done this many times before. Cesar frames the cleaning lady's son when the police discover the stalker letters. All this causes Cesar to contemplate suicide.

CIFF 2012: The Exam

This takes place in late 1950s Hungary. A young spy, Andris, is to be tested for his loyalty. He is the type that manages some minor espionage agents, collecting their information as they monitor certain people, and passing on their info to his own handler, Markos. Unknown to Andris, Markos has a team opposite his apartment building, monitoring Andris' moves, tapping his conversations. The exam involves positioning Andris with opportunities to reveal his identity or betray his organization, and seeing if he will take that step to do so.

The story shows us how Markos tries to stay ahead of the action as it moves pretty quickly, taking place over a few days around Christmas. An innocuous test observer turns out to have a more powerful position than he appears, which affects Markos.