Maybe I should spend less time at the cemetery.

Aftermath

(2017)

(SPOILERS) Arnie’s post-governator movie choices have been, well, I wouldn’t quite say eclectic, but certainly not as genre-predictable as his picks pre-hiatus. Aftermath might be the least predictable of those less predictable choices, a bereavement drama – based on events following the 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision – in which he tries and fails to come to terms with the loss of his wife and daughter in an air disaster. It’s low-key and brief, but if Arnie doesn’t completely foul things up, neither is he any kind of equal for Scoot McNairy’s guilt-stricken air traffic controller.

Elliot Lester previously delivered ropey Stat serial killer flick Blitz, so presumably he’s attempting to show his versatility with a more subdued tone this time. Javier Gullon also wrote Enemy – like several of Denis Villeneuve’s movies, very nearly very good but not quite there. Together they fashion a film that, while dealing in strong themes, ends up feeling strangely inessential, and rather mechanical in drawing parallels between the descents into darkness experienced by two men affected by the disaster.

The collision itself has its roots in an unlikely phone repair undertaken while McNairy’s Jake Bonanos is alone on shift (the Überlingen disaster was blamed on overwork and delayed radar data), but other developments, such as Arnie’s Roman Melnyk tracking down McNairy and murdering him in front of his family (surprising, if you didn’t know the history of the case), are effectively translated. The ending, however, in which Jake’s now-grown-up son (Lewis Pullman) is on the verge of visiting vengeance in kind on the recently paroled Roman put me in mind of the self-perpetuating generational misery of The Place Beyond the Pines, but almost as an afterthought (as if Gullon saw the movie and decided he’d have some of that).

McNairy’s better than his material, which involves him chugging pills, making his son raw eggs for breakfast and watching Felix the Cat cartoons. And buying a gun. I wondered if Roman had also bought a gun, since he appeared to stab Jake with the same type of complimentary flick knife Jake received with his purchase. Roman’s preceding ordeal also finds him grieving at the graveyard – and sleeping there – and facing the most unconscionably offensive legal team one could imagine pressuring him into a settlement.

But if I said Arnie doesn’t foul things up, that doesn’t mean he’s remotely a standout either. He has more of a face for this kind of role now, but he just doesn’t have range; he doesn’t fit the material any more than he did the team leader in Sabotage, on the face of it a much more “Arnie” role. Lester appears to know this, as he doesn’t inflict any showy breakdowns on him, but you’re left with a sensation that the Austrian Oak has unwittingly stumbled into an issue-of-the-week TV movie. Aftermath is tellingly at its strongest when Roman is committing his violent act, and the aftermath, in which he mistakes Jake’s wife (Maggie Grace) and son for his own family and sits disconcertingly on the couch with them as they sob, terrified.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

I never strangled a chicken in my life!

Rope (1948) (SPOILERS) Rope doesn’t initially appear to have been one of the most venerated of Hitchcocks, but it has gone through something of a rehabilitation over the years, certainly since it came back into circulation during the 80s. I’ve always rated it highly; yes, the seams of it being, essentially, a formal experiment on the director’s part, are evident, but it’s also an expert piece of writing that uses our immediate knowledge of the crime to create tension throughout; what we/the killers know is juxtaposed with the polite dinner party they’ve thrown in order to wallow in their superiority.

They'll think I've lost control again and put it all down to evolution.

Time Bandits (1981) (SPOILERS) Terry Gilliam had co-directed previously, and his solo debut had visual flourish on its side, but it was with Time Bandits that Gilliam the auteur was born. The first part of his Trilogy of Imagination, it remains a dazzling work – as well as being one of his most successful – rich in theme and overflowing with ideas while resolutely aimed at a wide (family, if you like) audience. Indeed, most impressive about Time Bandits is that there’s no evidence of self-censoring here, of attempting to make it fit a certain formula, format or palatable template.

You must have hopes, wishes, dreams.

Brazil (1985) (SPOILERS) Terry Gilliam didn’t consider Brazil the embodiment of a totalitarian nightmare it is often labelled as. His 1984½ (one of the film’s Fellini-riffing working titles) was “ the Nineteen Eighty-Four for 1984 ”, in contrast to Michael Anderson’s Nineteen Eighty-Four from 1948. This despite Gilliam famously boasting never to have read the Orwell’s novel: “ The thing that intrigues me about certain books is that you know them even though you’ve never read them. I guess the images are archetypal ”. Or as Pauline Kael observed, Brazil is to Nineteen Eighty-Four as “ if you’d just heard about it over the years and it had seeped into your visual imagination ”. Gilliam’s suffocating system isn’t unflinchingly cruel and malevolently intolerant of individuality; it is, in his vision of a nightmare “future”, one of evils spawned by the mechanisms of an out-of-control behemoth: a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. And yet, that is not really, despite how indulgently and glee

Oh, you got me right in the pantaloons, partner.

The Party (1968) (SPOILERS) Blake Edwards’ semi-improvisational reunion with Peter Sellers is now probably best known for – I was going to use an elephant-in-the-room gag, but at least one person already went there – Sellers’ “brown face”. And it isn’t a decision one can really defend, even by citing The Party ’s influence on Bollywood. Satyajit Ray had also reportedly been considering working with Sellers… and then he saw the film. One can only assume he’d missed similar performances in The Millionairess and The Road to Hong Kong ; in the latter case, entirely understandable, if not advisable. Nevertheless, for all the flagrant stereotyping, Sellers’ bungling Hrundi V Bakshi is a very likeable character, and indeed, it’s the piece’s good-natured, soft centre – his fledgling romance with Claudine Longet’s Michele – that sees The Party through in spite of its patchy, hit-and-miss quality.

I'm an old ruin, but she certainly brings my pulse up a beat or two.

The Paradine Case (1947) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock wasn’t very positive about The Paradine Case , his second collaboration with Gregory Peck, but I think he’s a little harsh on a picture that, if it doesn’t quite come together dramatically, nevertheless maintains interest on the basis of its skewed take on the courtroom drama. Peck’s defence counsel falls for his client, Alida Valli’s accused (of murder), while wife Ann Todd wilts dependably and masochistically on the side-lines.

A herbal enema should fix you up.

Never Say Never Again (1983) (SPOILERS) There are plenty of sub-par Bond s in the official (Eon) franchise, several of them even weaker than this opportunistic remake of Thunderball , but they do still feel like Bond movies. Never Say Never Again , despite – or possibly because he’s part of it – featuring the much-vaunted, title-referencing return of the Sean Connery to the lead role, only ever feels like a cheap imitation. And yet, reputedly, it cost more than the same year’s Rog outing Octopussy .

She was addicted to Tums for a while.

Marriage Story (2019) (SPOILERS) I don’t tend to fall heavily for Noah Baumbach fare. He’s undoubtedly a distinctive voice – even if his collaborations with Wes Anderson are the least of that director’s efforts – but his devotion to an exclusive, rarefied New York bubble becomes ever more off-putting with each new project. And ever more identifiable as being a lesser chronicler of the city’s privileged quirks than his now disinherited forbear Woody Allen, who at his peak mastered a balancing act between the insightful, hilarious and self-effacing. Marriage Story finds Baumbach going yet again where Woody went before, this time brushing up against the director’s Ingmar Bergman fixation.

You can’t climb a ladder, no. But you can skip like a goat into a bar.

Juno and the Paycock (1930) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s second sound feature. Such was the lustre of this technological advance that a wordy play was picked. By Sean O’Casey, upon whom Hitchcock based the prophet of doom at the end of The Birds . Juno and the Paycock , set in 1922 during the Irish Civil War, begins as a broad comedy of domestic manners, but by the end has descended into full-blown Greek (or Catholic) tragedy. As such, it’s an uneven but still watchable affair, even if Hitch does nothing to disguise its stage origins.

Miss Livingstone, I presume.

Stage Fright (1950) (SPOILERS) This one has traditionally taken a bit of a bruising, for committing a cardinal crime – lying to the audience. More specifically, lying via a flashback, through which it is implicitly assumed the truth is always relayed. As Richard Schickel commented, though, the egregiousness of the action depends largely on whether you see it as a flaw or a brilliant act of daring: an innovation. I don’t think it’s quite that – not in Stage Fright ’s case anyway; the plot is too ordinary – but I do think it’s a picture that rewards revisiting knowing the twist, since there’s much else to enjoy it for besides.

Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know, if you ripped the fronts off houses, you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?

Shadow of a Doubt (1943) (SPOILERS) I’m not sure you could really classify Shadow of a Doubt as underrated, as some have. Not when it’s widely reported as Hitchcock’s favourite of his films. Underseen might be a more apt sobriquet, since it rarely trips off the lips in the manner of his best-known pictures. Regardless of the best way to categorise it, it’s very easy to see why the director should have been so quick to recognise Shadow of a Doubt 's qualities, even if some of those qualities are somewhat atypical.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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