A desert foray among the irresponsible rich

In The Forgiven, Ralph Fiennes displays his mastery as a contemptuous alcoholic physician whose bill for negligence may finally come due. Director John Michael McDonagh teams Fiennes with Jessica Chastain, who plays the other half of a battling couple who’ve been invited for a party weekend at an isolated villa in Morocco. Fiennes laces his performance with rueful cynicism in a movie that, among other things, takes aim at the cultural bigotry of the irresponsible rich. The key event: Driving through the desert at night, Fiennes David runs over and kills a Moroccan boy who's trying to sell fossils to tourists. No one at the villa seems overly concerned when David and his wife, Jo, show up with the dead boy in the back seat of their car. Complete with a pool and Moroccan servants, the villa belongs to Richard (Matt Smith), who shares the place with his aggressively boorish lover (Caleb Landry Jones). Based on a novel by Lawrence Osborne, The Forgiven eventually brings David into  contact with Abdellah (Ismael Kanater), the father of the dead boy. Abdellah wants to reclaim his son's body and insists that David accompany him to his home for the boy's burial. A man of few words, Abdellah travels with Anouar (Said Taghmaoui), an affable fellow with whom David is instructed to communicate. During David's trip with Abdellah, Jo keeps the laissez-faire approach to morality rolling,  sleeping with an American financial analyst (Christopher Abbott). The Moroccan landscapes add mystery and exoticism to an obvious takedown of Western decadence and elitism. David's tense encounter with Abdellah gives the story dramatic weight that almost saves the movie. Almost.

A wobbly mixture of horror and comedy

    If director Edgar Wright were a painter, his palette would be a riotous blur of colors, one bleeding into another.

     Just that kind of dizzying impact may have been what Wright was aiming for with Last Night in Soho, a mixture of horror and thriller tropes that alternates between contemporary Soho and the district during the 1960s.

   I called Last Night a horror film, but that’s not quite accurate. Although it spouts a fair share of blood, the movie also has a bouncy spirit that goes against the horror grain. It's upbeat horror.

   The story follows Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) from the country to London where she hopes to prepare herself for a career as a fashion designer.  Obsessed with the 1960s, Eloise enrolls in a school where the students seem to be moving at a faster social pace than the one to which she's accustomed.

   She should have known. Her grandmother (Rita Tushingham) already warned her about London's ability to swallow and destroy a naive young person.

   In an effort to escape the hard-partying atmosphere of her dormitory, Eloise rents a room in a house run by a landlady (Diana Rigg) who may be up to more than we expect. 

   Once ensconced in her new digs, Eloise begins to dream of life in Soho during the swinging Sixties. 

   If this is a dream, it vividly transports Eloise back to the time that long has fascinated her and gives the movie one more twist, this one involving time travel. 

   In its '60s segments, Eloise begins to follow the life of Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), a young woman who hopes to establish herself as a singer in London's fabled West End.

   The line between Eloise and Sandie begins to blur and the movie then contrives to teach Eloise that there’s more to the ‘60s than music and fashion. The ‘60s devoured dreams and dreamers, even slashed them to death.

   To achieve its cautionary goals, the story introduces a slick Londoner (Matt Smith) who promises to help Sandie achieve stardom. Let's just say he's not true to his word.

  Meanwhile back in the present, a fellow student (Michael Ajao) sees that Eloise is troubled. He tries his best to help but has no real grasp of the fact that Eloise's life includes increasingly harrowing trips to the 1960s.

  Terence Stamp drifts through the proceedings, a brooding threatening presence.

  A slick stylist, Wright (Baby Driver) has made a movie that eventually fails to be either amusing or frightening enough to save itself from being a muddled mashup that doesn't always track.

   And exactly what's at the heart of Wright's metaphorical assault on the '60s? Most likely it's youthful naïveté, low-hanging fruit that's too ripe for the picking.

   If you lived through the ‘60s, you may want to push aside the horror and attempted social commentary and simply enjoy the memories evoked by the movie’s soundtrack.

  Although there’s another danger here, as well. You may find Peter and Gordon’s A World Without Love running uncontrollably through your head. 

   Peter and Gordon? If you don't already know, don't ask.

A whistleblower tries to stop the Iraq war

The filmmaking isn't flashy, but Official Secrets tells a compelling story.

In 2003, Katherine Gun did her best to stop Britain from entering the Iraq war. As a British intelligence employee with a specialty in translation, Gun violated the country's Secrets Act so that she could reveal a controversial email. The email instructed those working at Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to look for information that could be used to pressure U.N. Security Council members to vote for a resolution authorizing the war.

Although Gun's leaked email was published by The Observer, it obviously didn't stop British participation in a war that was being carefully engineered and for which the "intelligence'' books were being cooked.

Directed by Gavin Hood (Eye in the Sky) and starring Keira Knightley, Official Secrets tells Gun's story in straightforward fashion, taking us inside a whistleblower's anxiety-riddled world. Things don't go smoothly for Gun, who eventually was put on trial for violating the Official Secrets Act of 1989.

Knightley and Hood don't add much by way of over-dramatized flourish to the portrayal of Gun, a woman who lived with her Muslim husband (Adam Bakri) in London. After making her momentous decision, Gun tormented herself. Would she get caught? Had she done the right thing?

Written by Sara and Gregory Bernstein, Official Secrets boasts a strong supporting cast. Matt Smith appears as Observer reporter Martin Bright, the journalist who fights to publish the explosive email. Matthew Goode portrays one of Bright's colleagues and Rhys Ifans signs on as the Observer's wild-eyed U.S. correspondent, a reporter who works hard to confirm the authenticity of the email Gun leaked.

Conleth Hill portrays the editor who struggles about publishing a story that could derail a war effort his paper previously supported. Late in the movie, an understated (what else?) Ralph Fiennes shows up as Ben Emmerson, the barrister who defends Katharine.

Official Secrets doesn't always make for rousing cinema but it serves as an important reminder of what can happen to those who realize that secret government objectives sometimes should be subordinated to higher values, one of them being the truth.

Bob's cinema diary: 4/8/'19 Dogman and Charlie Says

Dogman

Marcello (Marcello Fonte) earns his living grooming dogs. But in the rundown Italian coastal town where Marcello lives, this simple occupation may not be enough to support an estranged wife and a young daughter. So Marcello occasionally sells cocaine. The great irony of director Matteo Garrone's Dogman centers on Marcello’s personality. Cocaine or no, he hardly seems a typical gangster. He's a simple, good-hearted fellow who tries to get along with everyone, including the town bully (Edoardo Pesce). Pesce's Simone becomes a kind of one-man scourge, attacking people, destroying property and generally terrorizing the town's residents. He's so much a nuisance that one of the town’s businessmen go so far as to propose that an assassin be hired. As the story unfolds, Garrone (Gomorrah) turns Marcello into an unfortunate sap whose innocence and rudimentary sense of honor only add to his troubles. Garrone’s narrative builds toward an explosive ending that leaves Marcello alone and abandoned against the decaying landscape of the town where he has tried so hard to fit in. Those familiar with Garrone's work will be tempted to read metaphorical meanings into a simple tale that takes place against a backdrop of ruined buildings. As we follow Marcello's story, hope gradually gives way to feelings of abandonment. Marcello displays sweet affection for dogs and for his daughter. Even so, Garrone refuses to see life in Italy (and perhaps beyond) through a lens tinted by optimism. In Dogman, Marcello’s love for others goes largely unrequited.

Charlie Says

Rather than try to explain Charles Manson, director Mary Harron's Charlie Says concentrates on Manson’s spell-binding relationship with the women who ultimately carried out or abetted him in the Tate/LaBianca murders, endlessly discussed crimes that left an indelible mark on American culture. The movie focuses on three women: Leslie Van Houten (Hannah Murray), Patricia Krenwinkel (Sosie Bacon) and Susan Atkins (Marianne Rendon). After immersing in the cult-like atmosphere of the Manson family's California commune, Harron brings us to the murders. She follows the carnage with a lengthy section in which a teacher (Merritt Wever) tries to help each of the women -- by then imprisoned in maximum security -- achieve some degree of self-realization. Perhaps this is where the movie should have started. At it stands, Harron (American Psycho) doesn't provide a compelling enough reason for taking another drive through Manson country. And without more context, the free-floating atmosphere of the '60s -- manifested mostly through sex, drugs and the charisma Manson (Matt Smith) supposedly projected -- seems a trifle ridiculous. Last week, I wondered whether we needed another film about Ted Bundy (Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile). I had my doubts, but in this case, it seemed clear that Charlie Says doesn't offer enough by way of insight to answer the question that inevitably seems to arise with movies about heinous crimes, particularly those that already have been the subject of enough books and movies to qualify as an industry: Exactly why am I watching?