The Better Sister, on Prime Video

Statistically, most murders are committed within families. The Mackintosh family is especially suspect, since the late husband was a lawyer and the widow is a journalist. Inevitably, they become prime tabloid fodder, because she married her unstable drug-addicted sister’s late ex-husband. Nevertheless, the estranged siblings must work together to save the young man they both consider their son in co-creators Olivia Milch & Regina Corrado’s eight-episode The Better Sister, adapted from Alafair Burke’s novel, which premieres today on Prime Video.

The murder of Adam Mackintosh is real. The break-in was faked. Unfortunately, the circumstances lead Detectives Nancy Guidry and Matt Bowen to Chloe Taylor’s step-son, Ethan. She is desperate to protect him, but, inconveniently, his biological mother Nicky Mackintosh now has custody. Their reunion is especially tense, because Taylor once agreed to sign her sister into straight-jacket-style rehab, to secure her future husband’s sole custody rights. It seemed like the thing to do at the time, but she starts to regret her decision as she learns more about the circumstances of her husband’s first marriage.

Guidry’s resentment of Taylor’s “privilege” makes her happy to focus the entire investigation on Ethan. Awkwardly, his lawyer, Michelle Sanders, shares her low opinion of the sister-mothers, but she has sympathy for their son and she is very good at her job, so they put up with her. She was referred to Taylor by Jake Rodriguez, her husband’s associate, with whom she was on the verge of having an affair. At the same time, he was closely assisting her late husband’s representation of a dodgy multi-national company, whose specialty seems to be constructing soccer stadiums in the Middle East, with suspicious rapidity.

So, clearly there are a lot of motives and conflicts of interest to untangle. Indeed, The Better Sister has several twists worthy of a Gillian Flynn adaptation, but the tone is way, way trashier. At least in this case, the soapy luridness is also entertaining. If you are looking for a hothouse fully stocked with family secrets and sneaky scheming, you will find plenty here.

Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks fully embrace the spirit of the material, diving head-first into the angst and melodrama. Similarly, Kim Dickens is one-person snark-factory as unabashedly abrasive and defiantly biased as Det. Guidry. Yet, nobody is more flamboyant than Matthew Modine as Adam’s sleazy, ambiguously villainous, and proudly out boss, Bill Braddock.

Tribeca ’17: The Sinner (pilot)

Meursault from Camus’s The Stranger would understand. You’re at the beach, its hot, so you just kill some random dude. However, Cora Tanner does it in front of her husband and several dozen horrified witnesses. She would have the world believe she did it in a moment of madness, but the grizzled detective in charge suspects Tanner had more personal motivations than the Imp of Perverse in Antonio Campos pilot for The Sinner (trailer here), which premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, in advance of its USA network broadcast.

Tanner has a domineering mother-in-law and a weak momma’s husband. She works all day at the family business, then she and the spineless Mason pick-up their toddler from his parent’s house, where they have dinner, before turning in for the night in their next-door home. We wouldn’t blame her for killing someone, but we have to question her choice of victim.

Granted, his girlfriend was being kind of obnoxious, but it was the entitled young man-about-town whom Tanner Ginsu-ed up like a vintage 1980s slasher-killer. She immediately confesses, but says little else. She implies it was a case of temporary insanity, but refuses to say anything to establish her case. It all makes slightly pervy Det. Harry Ambrose deeply suspicious. He is determined to sniff out some sort of motive before Tanner’s guilty plea seals her fate, but nobody wants to help him—least of all Tanner.

Again, The Sinner shows the challenges of showcasing episodic work at film festivals. The pilot is definitely cinematic, as one might expect from a stylist like Campos and cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes, who has considerable film credits as a DP and a director of his own projects. However, it just feels like it barely began when the forty-five minutes are up. Granted, that can and probably should be taken as a good sign, but it would have been nice for audience members to have a chance to see more of the give and take between the series two biggest stars, Jessica Biel and Bill Pullman playing Tanner and Ambrose, before the post-screening panel discussion.

Still, the pilot ends with some promising revelations—or rather more accurately, hints of revelations. It definitely leaves viewers intrigued and wanting to see more of the mystery unspool. However, you can live a full and satisfying life without watching Bill Pullman (who happened to star in the Broadway production of The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?) engaging in a d/s humiliation session with his ex-mistress.

Be that as it may, Pullman is mostly very good as the haggard but incisively intelligent Ambrose. It is also impressive how thoroughly Biel glammed down to play Tanner. She just looks like an average person in Sinner, except when she is drenched in blood splatter. However, even at her Plain Janest, it is hard to believe Biel’s Tanner is hitched to the putzy Mason and his sad excuse for a beard, played with tiresome whininess by Christopher Abbott.

Based on the German novel by Petra Hammesfahr, The Sinner pilot suggests it will offer a few twists on the unreliable narrator “Girl” thrillers, while providing the staples fans of the sub-sub-genre enjoy. Even with that awkward bit, the pilot shows potential, but it is still hard to judge whether the entire series should be recommended when the first season starts August 2 on USA, following its special screening at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Tribeca ’16: A Kind of Murder

Detective Corby assumes Mitchell Kimmel is an early 1960s Scott Peterson and he is probably right. He also assumes the same thing about Walter Stackhouse, but the mystery-writing architect is more of a Walter Mitty than a Bluebeard. Unfortunately, he will make every possible mistake to attract suspicion in Andy Goddard’s A Kind of Murder, which screens during the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.

Stackhouse is indeed the title character of Patricia Highsmith’s The Blunderer. He ought to know better, since he has just had his second crime story published in a magazine—not that his wife Clara cares. Constantly scoldy but also prone to jealous delusions, she is difficult to live with. Poor Stackhouse dutifully intervenes during her latest suicide attempt, but he is not so sure he will do so the next time, especially after he meets the pretty and emotionally stable Ellie Briess.

For professional and perhaps also personal reasons, Stackhouse develops a fascination with the murder of Kimmel’s wife. It seems entirely possible the sleazy independent bookstore owner faked an alibi, in order to murder the woman during her intercity bus’s layover at a rest stop. He even ventures out to Kimmel’s store, but finds the proprietor rather unsavory. Acting on impulse, Stackhouse similarly stalks his own wife while she is on the same bus, but she rather inconveniently throws herself off a bridge before he can find her. At least, that is Stackhouse’s story, but the way he parses it out in piecemeal fashion will cast him in a decidedly guilty light.

A Kind of Murder is a blandly prosaic title compared to The Blunderer, but the film itself is wonderfully stylish Hitchcockian take on the early Mad Men era. Patrick Wilson is actually quite a good fit for the guilt-ridden and morally compromised Walter Stackhouse, while Jessica Biel makes an appropriately hot mess as the high-strung Clara Stackhouse. However, Eddie Marsan steals the show as the sociopathic Kimmel, which probably shouldn’t surprise anyone. Unfortunately, Vincent Kartheiser lacks the presence and heft to give Det. Corby any sense of menace. He is more like a Colombo who thinks he is a Dirty Harry.

Production designer Pete Zumba, costume designer Sarah Mae Burton, and the entire design team have crafted a wonderfully inviting period production, which cinematographer Chris Seager gives an uber-noir sheen. It is just a pleasure for genre fans to dive into this stylized New York that probably never really was. Goddard keeps the elements working in concert, fully capitalizing on the rich bourgeoisie trappings and Highsmith’s subversive motifs. Recommended with enthusiasm for thriller fans, A Kind of Murder screens again tonight (4/19) and Thursday (4/21), as part of this year’s Tribeca.

Pascal Laugier’s The Tall Man

It is the town even country music forgot.  It has the grim name of Cold Rock, Washington, but it might as well be called “Stimulus Village.”  When the mine closed, the jobs disappeared, but that was just the start of their problems.  A prolonged epidemic of child abductions continues to plague the town.  Sketchy sightings of a shadowy figure have given rise to a new urban legend, but one desperate woman will confront the truth behind the bogeyman in Pascal Laugier’s The Tall Man (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Julia Denning is registered nurse and the only remaining medical care-provider left in Cold Rock.  While her late husband was a beloved pillar of the community, many of the locals never really warmed to her.  Yet, she stays out of a sense of duty.  Then one fateful night, she wakes to find little David has been spirited away.  More resourceful than her neighbors, Denning gives chase, nearly reclaiming David from his abductor.  However, when Lieutenant Dodd, the big city copper on loan to overwhelmed small town, deposits the battered and distraught Denning at the local diner for safekeeping, she finds her fellow townspeople are acting suspiciously squirrely.

There is a huge game-changing twist in Tall Man, but Laugier drops it comparatively early in the game.  Instead of a M. Night Shyamalan ending intended to make viewers feel stupid for buying into his films’ ostensive premises, Laugier allows at least a good third of the picture to explore the implications of his revelation.  While the big surprise eventually leads to credibility questions that would be spoilery to explain, it is executed quite smoothly.

As Denning, Jessica Biel plays a critical role selling the gotcha, rather decisively subverting the woman-in-jeopardy archetype.  Stephen McHattie (star of Pontypool, probably the best zombie film since the original Night of the Living Dead) brings genre cred and a cool, steely presence to Lt. Dodd.  Unfortunately, the rest of the ensemble is largely underwhelming as underwritten stock characters.  Still, it is somewhat amusing to see William B. Davis, the cigarette smoking man in The X-Files, as the ineffectual Sheriff Chestnut.  You wonder why they keep re-electing him, given the circumstances.

Tricky to categorize, Tall Man largely inhabits the zone where horror movies and dark thrillers overlap.  Laugier is quite effective establishing the dark, eerie vibe, but his third act-denouement suffers from a lack of tension.  Still, The Tall Man is far more distinctive than other disposable horror-ish films that stumbled into theaters this year, such as ATM and Beneath the Darkness.  Soon to be an interesting VOD or rental choice, The Tall Man just does not quite have enough thrills or scares for current New York City movie ticket prices.  Maybe worth keeping in mind for later, it opens today (8/31) at the AMC Village 7.

Anglo-American Love: Easy Virtue

Sure, opposites attract, but can they stay together? Noel Coward put that question to the test with the marriage of the very British John Whittaker and his beautiful American wife Larita. While retaining all the acerbic critiques of the British polite society, director Stephen Elliott also throws in the odd modern flourish in his adaptation of Coward’s 1924 play Easy Virtue (trailer here), which opens in New York and Los Angeles this Friday, following its recent American premiere at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival.

Widowed under mysterious circumstances, Larita is now a minor celebrity having fashioned a career as a glamorous race-car driver. Her new husband, the somewhat younger Whittaker, has never held a job in his life, nor has he ever stood up to his domineering mother. The two newlyweds could not be more dissimilar, encompassing differences of youth and experience, the landed gentry and the industrious middle class, and dare we say it, Old Europe and the New World, all of which were perfect grist for the Coward’s sly wit

Needless to say, Mrs. Whittaker, the severe family matriarch, never envisioned an American black-widow novelty-act as her daughter-in-law. Outwardly, she is scrupulously polite to Larita, but a Cold War of the classes is quickly joined between the two.

Whittaker’s meek sisters prove little more welcoming than their judgmental mother, but she does find some allies in the Whittaker manor. Of course, the servants love her and she also forms a fast friendship with Whittaker’s father. The moody Mr. Whittaker is definitely a member of the lost generation. The sole surviving member of the village regiment, he only reluctantly returned home after months spent deadening his pain with Parisian hedonism. He enjoys Larita’s plucky character and recognizes an inner sadness in her similar to his own.

Elliott shows a strong affinity for Coward’s drawing-room banter. While at times the comedic situations are bit too cute, he keeps the pace brisk and brings out surprising depth in the relationship between Larita and her new father-in-law. Colin Firth is pitch-perfect as Mr. Whittaker, mordantly droll but also genuinely poignant, providing the film’s emotional center.

Indeed, Virtue boasts an impressive cast, led by Jessica Biel. Thanks to her smart, vivacious performance as Larita, it is completely believable both the haunted father and shallow son would be attracted to her. The rigidly proper Mrs. Whittaker is the sort of ice-queen role Kristin Scott Thomas seems to have been born to play to the hilt, digging into her acidic dialogue with relish. However, Ben Barnes is a bit bland as John Whittaker, coming across as a watered down Bertie Wooster.

Virtue is an appropriately elegant production, featuring sheik costumes and an entertaining soundtrack of popular 1920’s songs with a few modern tunes re-recorded in period style by Marius de Vries mixed in for comedic effect. Though it is often wincingly pointed, Virtue has an infectious spirit that is quite appealing. Featuring fantastic work from Firth and perhaps Biel’s strongest screen performance to date, it is a thoroughly charming film. It opens this Friday in New York at the Lincoln Plaza and Union Square Cinemas.