The Gift

Does a person’s past matter to you? Obviously that’s a question that demands a more nuanced answer than simply ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ because context is important. But still, how much do you worry about the kind of person someone was before they met you? The kind of person they are around other people? The kind of person they are when they’re sure you’re not watching? If that’s the kind of headspace you want to get into, then Joel Edgerton has a gift for you.

The Gift stars Rebecca Hall as Robyn, the poor woman stuck between two seemingly nice men. On the one hand, there’s her loving husband Simon (Jason Bateman), with whom she just moved to California and is eager to start a family. On the other is Gordo (Joel Edgerton), a classmate of Simon’s who by chance runs into the couple after they move to town. Gordo starts leaving the couple gifts on the porch of their fancy, gigantic house and quickly strikes up an awkward friendship with Robyn, one Simon wants to put to a swift end right from the start.

The three leads do good work portraying complicated people with mysterious pasts that are at their best when only hinted at. Honestly, when most of the cards are on the table at the end of the movie, when The Gift is at its most disturbing moment, is when I was least interested in the movie. The reveal was appropriate to this somewhat Hitchcockian thriller, but with all the tense and weird scenes earlier in the story, I hoped for an even more outlandish ending.

Also I think it’s kinda funny this is the movie that Joel Edgerton had to, absolutely had to, write and direct and costar in with an hilarious beard. Was Edgerton sick of all the two-faced bastards in Hollywood? Did he think it was important there was a movie about the silent suffering of upper-middle class white people? Did he just want to prove to everyone that he could do this so that maybe he’d have a shot at the next Marvel, DC, or Star Wars movie? Maybe he’s just an artist that had to art.

Anyway, The Gift was maybe a little too good to be nominated for a Mildly Pleased Award, especially because there aren’t a ton of these domestic dramas these days. Was the last one Lakeview Terrace? Man, Lakeview Terrace was a good movie. If only The Gift had as much to say about society as that did, we might have really had something.

Macbeth

Remember how just after The Avengers became absolutely huge, Joss Whedon took some of his favorite actors and made a version of Much Ado About Nothing? Director Justin Kurzel must have really liked that idea, so much so that he got his big Shakespeare adaption out before he and star Michael Fassbender could start work on their big franchise movie, Assassin’s Creed. So instead of a palette cleanser, the Scottish play instead serves as a trial run for this cast and crew’s ability to do historical epics. And what a savage epic it is.

This depiction of the classic story of betrayal, murder, and karmic comeuppance emphasizes the war-torn Scotland that serves as the backdrop of most versions. A lot of Shakespeare’s plays are set around war, but this Macbeth is keen on showing not just the gritty battles featured in the play, but the toll it’s taking on everyone. It paints Macbeth himself (Fassbender) as something of a PTSD-sufferer, cloudy and uncertain after so much death. His increasingly warped mind and the uncertain times end up driving the action much more than the typical mastermind adaptations focus on, Lady Macbeth.

Lady Macbeth as played by Marion Cotillard is still the best performance of this movie, even though it felt like she was more of a schemer than the player she could have been. Her world seems to center around her husband; she wants him to have more power, she worries about his state of mind. Eventually she just wanders out of the picture, a shame since I really did feel like Cotillard was bringing it while Fassbender’s performance was a little too mumbly.

But the real star of this Macbeth is the aesthetics. Characters are dressed in beautiful costumes and always seem to have mud, blood, and paint all over themselves. The sets always felt cold, whether they were Scottish marshes, Macbeth’s tiny wooden home, or the vast castle rooms. This extends to the film’s color palette as well, which is desaturated save for bright, bloody reds. Clearly Macbeth is not set in a happy, easy world.

Finally, I must ask you how much you enjoy slow motion brutality. Because the movie’s big battles contain many slow motion shots, which may or may not work for you. This is a brooding movie, one that is at its best when it indulges in dark visual flourishes. Let me put it this way: I might not really have enjoyed a Fassbender/Cotillard Macbeth play, but Kurzel did enough as a director to make it an interesting film. Now let’s see how he does when the source material is a video game story so muddled not even Lady Macbeth could figure it all out.