Category Archives: Film Blurb

The Evil That Men Do (Ramon Térmens, Spain, 2015)

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the evil that men do

‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is interred with their bones’. So says Shakespeare in Julius Caesar and so shows this film.

Two henchmen, Santiago (Daniel Faraldo) and Benny (Daniel Tarbet), work for a narco kingpin. They run an outfit in the middle of nowhere – but close enough to a taco stand and a Christian revival tent — where they torture and kill their victims. They’re housed in an armed warehouse full of the heads of rivals they’ve captured and murdered, which they occasionally send as messages to the competition. It has a holding chamber reachable only by a portable staircase where they can keep kidnap victims and torture them at leisure. There’s an industrial freezer where corpses in various states of dismemberment can be kept on hold with various body parts defrosted at various times to suit every type of communication. There’s also a surgery fitted out for torture and even an industrial furnace where corpses of those nameless, unloved and thus of no use in this particular kind of communication can be easily cremated. They’re professional and have no qualms about doing their job though Salvador is better at it, more ruthless, whilst Benny is American and can’t quite get rid of his namby-pamby qualities. However, how will they act when the next  package they receive is the very lively, spoiled and manipulative 12 year-old daughter of a rival narco honcho.

The Evil That Men Do is a very dark and very funny film with very charismatic performances from Faraldo and also from Sergio Peris-Mencheta as the narco kingpin’s nephew. It’s beautifully shot and directed, a delight to see, except for the one moment, a chainsaw scene more brutal even than the one in Scarface, that even I had to close my eyes at. The film is listed as Spanish though it is clearly Mexican and contains and evokes that lawlessness, lack of respect for life, sheer brutality and barbarism that seems to be part of the very fabric of life in that country today. It’s hard to see this as merely a genre film or even to accept the violence as stylised or cartoony and designed to fit an imaginary world. The director has been so successful in creating so much out of very spare means that the film hits close to the bone of a country in chaos. The darkness and brutality here speak a culture; and the laughs that the film very successfully manages to earn from the audience doesn’t wash away the sadness of a culture reduced to this.

Seen at the Festival des films du monde, Montreal, September 2015, where the film received it’s world premiere.

José Arroyo

Il segreto di Italia/ The Secret of Italia (Antonello Belluco, Italy, 2014)

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il segreto di italia

Il segreto di Italia/ The Secret of Italia is a period film based on historical events. It is set in the town of Codevigo at that moment near the end of WWII when Italy is about to be liberated from Fascism by the Allies in conjunction with partisan rebels made up mostly of members of the Communist Party, some of whom once also used to be Fascists.

The secret of adult Italia (Romina Power) is that for many years she’s been burdened with guilt over a secret that the film will reveal (spoilers ahead): as a teenager (played by Gloria Rizzato) she was in love with Faronacci Fontana (Alberto Vetri), the son of the Fascist mayor of Codevigo, who in turn was in love with a widow called Ada (Maria Vittoria Casarotti Todeschini). When Italia finds them messing around in the hayloft, she reveals their hiding place to the ‘liberating’ forces and the left-wingers take their revenge on the scion of the Fascist mayor by brutally murdering anyone suspected of having a fascist affiliation without trial or due process.

The other secret of Italy that the film crudely attempts to ‘reveal’ is that the mainly Communist partisan rebels who helped liberate Italy with the Allies perpetrated horrible atrocities on innocent civilians, many of them undirected revenge killings, and were themselves thuggish murderers. In this film, the fascists are all nice ordinary people who just wore the black shirt occasionally at village feasts to be polite and because it helped with the business of farming but really they didn’t mean anybody any harm.

This is a messed up film, structurally built around flashbacks that seem unnecessary, and with some unpleasantly brutal scenes. I’ve never seen such a scorching a denunciation of ‘liberating forces’ or such a sweet and nostalgic chocolate-box evocation of Fascists. For that reason alone it’s worth seeing. Certainly anybody interested in Italian culture and history will find it rewards a look, if one with a critical eye.

I understand a suit has already been instigated against the film in Italy and that boycotts have occurred at some screenings. Despite some fine performances, Alberto Vetri’s in particular, the film is so crude – Italia’s secret is that of Italy it exclaims! — it’s not really worth the bother of boycotting: it’s unlikely to find much of an audience. But it is precisely because it mounts such a crude attack on the left and such a glowing defence of the right – and because it is seems to be a component of a structure of feeling in Europe that seems to be on a rising tide, that I recommend a viewing.

José Arroyo

Seen atthe Festival des films du monde, Montreal, September 2015.

Labia/ Glibness (Gabriel Patricio Bertini, Argentina 2014)

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A dark and funny thriller that exposes the Argentine upper classes as a more elegant but no less brutal mafia, efficiently and ruthlessly organising their criminal activities for the rapacious enrichment of a few families. Dario Levi is Federal Judge Alberto Franccioni. As the film begins, we’re told his daughter needs to get a new kidney or she will die. He’s willing to pay a million for the kidney and go to Orlando for the transplant so the kid can visit Disneyland during her convalescnence. ‘She wants to go to Disney in Orlando instead of Paris?’ fumes the grandmother, who blames her ex-daughter-in-law, a low class blackmailing junky for the lapse in taste.

As the day progresses Alberto is harassed by all kinds pressing concerns, domestic and professional: someone in his staff has stolen a Serrano ham and he needs to figure out who it is; his daughter’s birthday is coming up and he’s got to make arrangements; his ex is trying to blackmail him; his sister is cheating on her husband with his nephew’s music teacher (‘Oh no’ says the grandmother, when she hears another of her grandchildren has descended into the popular and vulgar by  exchanging learning violin on  a Stradivarius for a guitar lessons, ‘we’ve become a family of guitarreros); he’s been asked to run for Vice-Governor of the Province but so has his millionaire neighbour – should he accept? And if so how to remove his friend from the candidacy without leaving an imprint and continuing on good terms?

Like Tony Sorprano, Francionni is harangued at home but all ruthless smarts in the workplace; he has the music teacher violently dealt with, finds out about the ham, plots the destruction of his competing political candidate and consults his mother, the true Don of the family, as to whether to accept an offer of Vice Governor of the Province. ‘A Vice-Governor is merely the employee of a more  ambitious person. You have to aim for President!’ The film is beautifully directed by Bertini, who is not afraid to hold his shots in lengthy medium close-ups on the faces of his extraordinary actors and depicting a brutal, familial world as sordid as it is elegant with a minimum of means and to maximum effect.

Labia is a very funny, insightful film, held together by an extraordinary central performance by Levi: the humour and suspicion by which he tries to sniff out the information he needs from people too scared to be truthful is fantastically entertaining. The film also boast an an equally great performance by Elena Boggan, who makes of  Alberto’s mother a Lady MacBeth of a matriarch, if Lady McBeth could be at equal ease with all of the world’s sophisticated pleasures whilst leaving her conscience unpricked by power’s most brutish necessities.  The ending is a cop-out that somewhat spoils what is otherwise an insightful and entertaining film.

José Arroyo

Seen at the Festival des films du monde, Montreal, September 2015

The Man From U.N.C.L.E (Guy Ritchie, USA, 2015)

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The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is unexceptional but rather fun, in a slightly leaden way. Guy Ritchie directs the action well, attempts a cheeky ironic tone for the film  he doesn’t always succeed in achieving, and is not very good with those actors who need his help: Armie Hammer is completely inexpressive physically though does a great accent and can find comic timing vocally that somehow eludes other aspects of his performance; Henry Cavill does better and is better looking doing it but he’s done so much weightlifting his body strains at his suits, evoking a kind of physical boxiness that works against that nonchalant physical elegance the character is meant to exude; a rare instance in which a great body works against the role (though his performance is also sabotaged by the cinematography); Alicia Vikander is pretty but can’t find a rhythm  for her performance and seems wasted; Elizabeth Debicki fares better as the villainess and her long leggy frame, elegant way of wearing clothes, and understated ironic way with a line makes her very enjoyable to watch. But it is Hugh Grant —  only in the film for what seems like two minutes — who steals the show. A trifle, not light or sparkly enough but with some clever action and a great score of 60s tunes. The audience did like it even though either the print or the projection didn’t provide the luminosity the colour palette seemed to require. It is better and more enjoyable than an episode of the old TV show.

José Arroyo

 

Addendum: I have now seen this twice more on Netflix and found it great fun. My appreciation of Armie Hammer and Alicia Vikander increased; my love of the soundtrack sky-rocketed. It is a trifle, very broad and fast-moving with the set-pieces working much better than my first impression. I now recommend it.

Senso (Luchino Visconti, Italy, 1954)

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A Venetian Countess (Alida Valli) loses her reason in succumbing to her senses and to Lieutenant Franz Mahler (Farley Granger) of the invading Austrian Army. She gives up money and position; even betrays her family, her country and her highest ideals; all for a feckless sensualist, a gigolo from the first and one who’ll show himself a quivering coward by the end. That’s where love and desire will take you in the world of Visconti and of Senso.

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It’s a beautiful film, gorgeous to look at. Valli seems to float from canal to piazza, in large hooped skirt, in a wind-blown veil, as she suffers, desires, trembles, and looks for and at her lover; whilst refusing to see what is at all times clear to the audience: that he’s a cheap hustler unworthy of such sacrifices. The film is set at the time Garibaldi was uniting Italy and there are clearly points being made about European and Italian history that are beyond my present reach.

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But the central story is entirely accessible; and the cinematic means through which to convey that story are the work of a giant of cinema; from the tour de force opening at the opera house to the tragic battle sequences at the end; from the grandeur of the houses right down to the exquisiteness of the pattern of a scarf that Valli holds to her face: everything is perfection. Even Granger, giving an awkward, unskilled performance is to the film’s advantage, as the looks-without-substance characteristic of the actor is so well used to convey that of the character.

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A film of faded colours, set at a key historical moment, but focussing rather on the depths to which desire might drive one. A great film.

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José Arroyo

The Fault in Our Stars (Josh Boone, USA, 2014)

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The Fault in Our Stars
The Fault in Our Stars is not as retchingly bad as I expected it to be. Beautiful young people do die of cancer of course; and not before they LOVE and suffer tremblingly to an exquisite soundtrack full of the very saddest songs. However, Wilhelm Defoe appears as the emotionally closed-off, selfish artist who listens to Swedish rap and represents everything that’s horrible, which is to to go such lengths to avoid pain that one ends up not feeling at all. He hasn’t quite lost his Green Goblin attitude and is great fun to watch. Shailene Woodley is brave yet vulnerable, all through a constant trickle of tears. Luckily she also manages to be spiky enough to avoid being cloying; it’s a difficult part and she’s wonderful in it. Laura Dern and Sam Trammell are perfect parents and thus annoying but much less so than they could have been. My eyes did well up a little and I did find it manipulative but that’s what goes to one of these movies for – to cry; which is not to say that the filmmakers couldn’t have earned those tears more honestly and more imaginatively. What I liked best was the witty visualizing and pacing of the text and e-mail messages – a delight. As for the rest … Seeing it as a treatise on the true meaning of life will result in inevitable disappointment. However, as emotion porn for the stony-hearted, it offers its share of interest and pleasures. Going to see this type of movie does require a ‘love-means-never-to-have-to-say-you’re-sorry’ attitude. I didn’t love it. But I’m not sorry I saw it either.

José Arroyo

The Royal Family of Broadway (George Cukor/Cyril Gardner, USA, 1930)

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A legendary film, difficult to see until now, and worth watching for many reasons: it’s adapted from the Kaufman and Ferber Broadway hit from 1927 and is based on the Barrymores; it makes one understand why Ina Claire was a Broadway superstar and then considered without equal in light comedy, something heretofore hard for me to grasp having seen her only in supporting parts, even when she’s been very good in them, like in Ninotchka; it’s one of the films directed by George Cukor in his first year as a film director, was a hit, and paved the way for the type of brilliant career he would go on to have, often mining a similar vein of sophisticated comedy — themes of the relation between theatre and life, women’s struggles with being and doing; it’s a pre-code film with quite daring moments (March undressing, March playful with sexual orientation, March patting a man in the bum); the film skews the traditional placement of gender in film where men do and women are there to be looked at — here women do and feel; March in the Barrymore role is put on all kinds of display, including sexually; the film is enveloped in an oblique but nonetheless evident haze of aspects of gay culture —  camp, innuendo, the theatrical, the performative, the excessive (and this includes the male flesh on display)

March on the right in 1930; Barrymore on the left in 1929.
March on the right in 1930; Barrymore on the left in 1929.

The most famous scene in the film is March’s entrance (see clip below), which begins as a coup-de-théâtre, where everyone’s looking in his direction. We see someone swathed in fur and then March-as-Barrymore is revealed, and is revealed to be as theatrical as the famous profile he is impersonating. It’s the entrance usually afforded stars, and the role, a handsome bigger-than-life rake of a film star, attracted all kinds of theatre actors who looked down on cinema, weren’t afraid to be theatrical and weren’t yet top-ranking stars themselves (Laurence Olivier played the part in the West End). March’s success in it won him a Paramount contract.

The scene is also famous because of the crane shot that follows March after his entrance from the stairs and into the bathroom as he undresses. According to Arthur Jacobson, ‘We didn’t have such things as camera cranes in 1930, so we had to figure out how to do it’ (loc 1020). They did it with a forklift and moved the camera backward and forward by having about twenty men pushing it. It’s worth it. The scene dazzles technically — appealing to those interested in the development of film as an art form in the era of sound – and for rather more base motives, as March does a little strip-tease throughout the scene, including a little flash of bum, and then quite a tease of the opening and closing of the shower door, a tease at the audience with perhaps an attempt to mask the suggestiveness of the scene, whilst having the peekaboo take place during a conversation with his mother and his sister, which of course is also motivated via the representation of the particular, and particularly titillating, mores of theatre and bohemia. Very much worth a look.

José Arroyo

Charles Tranberg, Fredric March: A Consummate Actor Duncan, Oklahoma: BearManor Media, loc. 1020 in Kindle.

Devil’s Knot (Atom Egoyan, USA, 2014)

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Devil's Knot

 

A movie about the sexual killing of pre-pubescent children that has Dane DeHaan as the ice-cream man but that doesn’t end the way you’d expect it to. Another film that paints a dark picture of a rural America wading in poverty, ignorance, corruption; of a society that lacking justice in this world seeks it in another, sometimes through Jesus and sometimes through witchcraft.

This America that we see is depicted for us by a Canadian, a director famous for keeping things cool, distant, objective, complicated; one who likes to take it slow and doesn’t feel the need to take the audience with him; even when a town is willing to sacrifice three innocent teenagers as revenge for the murder of three innocent children. We see events in different mediums but the aim is to complicate rather than clarify. The focus is on self-expression rather than communication; maybe the director doesn’t trust the audience, maybe he simply hasn’t given any thought to it. Too bad for us.

Any film that needs a whole set of title cards at the end to wrap up the film can’t be said to work and I find the story-telling weak. However, Egoyan knows how to set a mood, one that starts under a river in a forest and ends up troublingly lodged in one’s psyche. The shots are often in shallow focus so that only one thing is clear at a time; and the camera sometimes wonders to the side of the action and sometimes outside of it completely, indicating that there are other answers to be sought.

Reese Whitherspoon gives another tart performance as a rural working class Mom, a multi-faceted one where hardness and anguish and need and love get even more muddled up with a need for justice. The moment where she dares her husband to hit her or when her arms seem to take up a life of their own and reach out for the nearest child as an evocation of the loss of her own, are moments worth treasuring: they show us a great actress giving her all and back to her peak.

Devil’s Knot also has other attractions: Stephen Moyer from True Blood is the lawyer working for the State; Bruce Greenwood clearly indicates that his Judge David Burnett has another agenda, Colin Firth is a very trim private investigator trying and failing to solve the case. It’s a film based on a true story, of great interest and many attractions. The pleasures, however, are few.

 

José Arroyo

Grace of Monaco (Olivier Dahan, France/USA/Belgium/Italy/Switzerland, 2014)

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grace of monaco

 

Grace of Monaco is the kind of movie where the star wears a billowing ballgown, races frantically through endless palace corridors and jumps into a huge bed …. to weep. Life is so very difficile; even when Maria Callas (Paz Vega) — wearing a fabulous Jeanne Toussaint panther ring —  is your bestie, warbles beautifully,and goes horseback riding with you as a show of support. Luckily there’s a ball at the end so that jewels, gowns and seating arrangements can play their role in simultaneously resolving affairs of state and of the heart.

Nicole Kidman gets an endless amount of close-ups, some so extreme that her earrings are out of focus. The whole film is designed so we can see her be beautiful and suffer nobly while she learns to say goodbye to Hollywood and all the fun of the movie star life and hello to politics, duty, and sacrifice in her new role as Princess of Monaco. Callas’ drive for artistic expression above all else is contrasted with Grace’s willingness to sacrifice art for family and country. Lubtisch was already sending up this type of material a hundred years ago. One looks on the screen in a daze that might might have been caused by the diamonds display but is more accurately attributed to  the drivel that is the story and its treatment.

Derek Jacobi is the fey and worldly aristocrat who teaches Grace protocol. Frank Langella is, I kid you not, Father Tuck, guardian of Grace’s soul. Tim Roth is Prince Rainier, the  unappreciative husband; and first glowers at Grace but then ends up giving her warm glow due to her great diplomatic skills and even greater love for the nuclear family. Grace learns how to act serenity whilst dealing with palace intrigue and other people’s selfishness. At the end Grace is so good at her new role that she gets a standing ovation for her efforts; even old grouch De Gaulle is moved to stand. It’s pure trash, very demodée but lovely to look at.

The film does have an interesting exploration on the nature of acting and performance, in life and in art. Some scenes of Nicole Kidman rehearsing her lines and her expressions would rival De Niro’s ‘Are You Looking At Me’ scene in Taxi Driver if only the film were better. As it is, I can’t in good faith recommend it to anyone  except lovers of fine jewellery.  However, I must say that if you put aside all considerations of film art and are happy to look at glossy layouts in fashion magazines, a boxed set with Madonna’s W.E., the Naomi Watts Diana and this Grace of Monaco would make for one glamorous binge.

 

José Arroyo

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (David Lowery, USA, 2013)

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I love the sound of Casey Affleck’s voice; a high-pitched bass sound, roundly toned, softly uttered, as distinctive as any in the current cinema; and capable of expressing so much; here the strangled murmur of the intensely wished about to be extinguished. It’s got Rooney Mara, very good in it as well; and it’s lovely to see Keith Carradine onscreen at any time. But I didn’t think much of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints; and there were moments where Bradford Young’s cinematography was so dark I felt I wasn’t seeing it either.  I suppose I found it sub-Badlands; however, I do understand why others rate the film more highly. Ain’t Them Bodies Saints conveys an acute but flowing sadness that remains in the memory and is difficult to shake off: a sigh for that which is treasured but can no longer be. It feels not only the story of a doomed couple but also a kind of mourning for America.

José Arroyo

Nebraska (Alexander Payne, USA, 2013)

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Nebraska is very funny, bleakly beautiful, and sad in all the right ways. An elderly man (Bruce Dern) ravaged by a lifetime of drink and with incipient Alzheimer’s is convinced he’s won a million in a sweepstake which everyone else knows is a way of conning elderly people to take out magazine subscriptions. David (Will Forte), the youngest of his two sons, decides to humour his father and drive him to Nebraska as a way of spending time with him, a way of getting closer whilst there’s still time. What the son discovers is what all children no matter how old are shocked to learn about their parents; that they are not defined simply by their relationship to their children; that they are automous beings who have dreams, desires, hopes, histories, and wishes which may predate and extend beyond their offspring; which sometime does not even include them. Nebraska is like a ‘30s Depression movie in its bleak view of America and in some of the wisecracks the mother (June Squibb) gets to utter. It differs in that the wisecracks are sometimes mean-spirited and in that the characters are as bleak, blank and miserable as the conditions of their existence.  It also rather shames itself by having no one on screen as smart as the man behind the camera — the film is spiritually hemmed-in and diminished by a whiff of smugness and self-satisfied superiority towards its subjects . A Cagney, a Davis, a Blondell, any working class prole in front of the camera in the 30s would have punched the highlights right out of Alexander Payne’s hair. But Dern no can do, which is perhaps why, in spite of concerted efforts since the late 60, and no matter how good he is, he’s never become a star. That said, it’s a great performance in an almost great film.

José Arroyo

The Butler (Lee Daniels, USA, 2013)

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A history lesson à la Classics Illustrated – the Scooby-Doo version – on the civil rights of black people in America told through an imaginative depiction of the life of Cecil Gains (Forest Whittaker), a White House butler who worked for eight different presidents, The Butler  is nonetheless at times very moving. Moreover,  the melodramatic story is wittily leavened  by a humor that seems agreeably camp; camp that is enlivening, affirming and all the more pleasurable to see for being unusual in a story that focuses on an African-American family. Whittaker is better at conveying the emotion underneath the mask of blankness when with the presidents than the on-the surface human emotionality when with his family. Oprah Winfrey gets the down-low and sexy dimension of the wife just right, a considerable achievement given who she is and what she represents. There is a pleasure in seeing an all-star cast play these historical characters: when icons impersonate icons does the iconicity  of each combine to jive or jar? I’ll leave it up to you to pick your favorites though I can’t resist mentioning that I was shocked at how Jane Fonda was made up to look, even if she was playing Nancy Reagan. A movie that has nothing to do with the art of cinema but a lot to do with the fulfillment of film’s role as ‘America’s National Theatre’; the way such films make Americans feel they’re taking part in a collective conversation; and the audience’s pleasure in seeing how wigs and costumes are used as a shortcut to period and how an array of actors, many treasured since childhood, are now doing, ‘being’ and enacting.

José Arroyo

Two Days in Paris (Julie Delpy, France, 2007)

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2 Days in Paris

A charming tale of a couple’s visit to Paris: he’s an American interior decorator; she’s a French photographer; they’ve already been together for two years; but not in her culture, not in her hometown, not with her parents, not in Paris. The film has genuinely funny moments of culture clash, and it’s definitely an intelligent woman’s take on romance. I found it an enjoyable film to see even though it’s not quite good. Adam Goldberg is totally charmless and very badly cast. Daniel Brühl appears as an eco-terrorist who might be gay. I suspect the woman in the audience will laugh out loud and all the men who don’t find Delpy adorable will feel unable to utter the ‘ouch!’-es they’ll so acutely feel. The film doesn’t know how to end, so a contrived voice-over is meant to wrap up what should have been left open and painful. Too bad….but a very promising directing debut from Delpy nonetheless.

José Arroyo

The Hunger Games (Gary Ross, USA, 2012)

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I didn’t think much of this when I first saw it and seeing it again  on DVD leaves an even worse impression. The only thing that’s still fresh and interesting is Jennifer Lawrence. The rest is very clunky and already rather cheap-looking. Even having District 12 look like a photo of the Great Depression and having the place where all the rich people live look like Berlin circa 1936, à la Leni Riefenstahl, is too obvious, too uninteresting; and the Marie Antoniette haircuts and so on — I understand the rationale but it’s over-emphatic and inelegant: does even the makeup have to be slathered on to make these people ugly? The film doesn’t have the same kind of sympathy for these characters that the novel had and that the film will have to earn in the sequels. Nobody and nothing is really good or sharp. I particularly disliked Stanley Tucci, who keeps playing fey cultural deviants in one smug note, one that would kiss itself with glee were it able to pop in from another dimension … and yet, the film was one of the most popular of its year. But was it loved? I doubt it.

José Arroyo

The Woman in Black (James Watkins, UK, 2012)

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The Woman in Black

*Major Spoiler*

Daniel Radcliffe is surprisingly good as Arthur Kipps, the young solicitor whose life is unraveling due to the death of his wife in childbirth. He goes up North and into a haunted house. Every time ‘The Woman in Black’ is seen, a child dies. Radcliffe finds the reasons for this and hopes to put an end to it by reuniting ‘The Woman in Black’ with the child that was taken away from her (her revenge for her child being taken away from her is to take other people’s children). However, it doesn’t work and at the end Radcliff dies with his child. There is some very good direction by James Watkins. I particularly like the device that Radcliffe’s p.o.v doesn’t see exactly what we do until the end. Those initial moments where we see what he doesn’t are what begin the suspense and scariness in a film that barely throws a chill during the first half. The cinematography by Tim Maurice Jones is lovely, particularly the helicopter shots where you see them kind of imprisoned in this desolately beautiful landscape.  Screenplay is credited to Jane Goldman and is based on Susan Hill’s famous novel. I liked it but not as much as my friends did.

José Arroyo

Zodiac (David Fincher, USA, 2007)

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Based on the famed ‘Zodiac Killer’ who operated in San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s and whose murders remain unresolved, David Fincher’s film has fantastic set design, marvelous mise-en-scène and complex story-telling. Gyllenhall is adequate as Robert Graysmith, the cartoonist who begins to detect a pattern to the killings. Where the film really breaks down is with Robert Downey Jr. as Paul Avery, the crime reporter who Graysmith enlists in his quest to solve the murders. Downey Jr. is becoming the ‘Greer Garson Of Our Day’: everything he does is meant to incite a round of applause, he can’t seem to get over the cuteness of each of his actions, and there’s an implicit gracious bow to each part of his performance, like a toreador after each pass of the cape; all  extraordinarily grande-dame-ish and irritating. In spite of Mark Ruffalo, fascinating as always, the casting rather sinks what is otherwise a fantastic movie: gorgeous to look at, marvelously plotted, rather dankly elegant, and with a searing visual intelligence. A film that sadly and ultimately remains unsatisfying but which every film buff should see.

José Arroyo