Set in 1973–maybe—Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men is set on a remote island off the Cornish coast that appears to be deserted—maybe—save for one woman (Mary Woodvine) whom is only referred to in the credits as “The Volunteer” and who appears to be there to study the meager wildflowers in bloom. Each day, she puts on her raincoat, hikes through the hills to a particular patch of flowers and takes the temperature of the soil. Then, she heads back down, taking a moment to drop a stone in a well and wait for the sound of the splash before returning to her home to make some tea and make notations of her observations in a log book. (Suffice it to say, the phrase “no change” appears a lot. As time goes on, however, things do begin to change—maybe—as lichen begins to sprout on both the flowers and a scar on her stomach. If that weren’t enough, she at one point thinks that she is seeing herself emerging from the house and there is also the presence of a mysterious young girl (Flo Crowe), who could be the younger version of the woman, her daughter or even the manifestation of those killed in a tragic event cited on a plaque that is, along with the house and well, the only real evidence that people actually set foot on the island prior to her. Then things start to get really odd, in ways that I will leave for you to discover.
With its enigmatic plotting, lack of dialogue, retro styling (it has been shot in 16MM and looks and sounds as if it could have been made back in 1973), I suspect that many observers will find themselves comparing Enys Men to Skinamarink, the oddball low-fi horror entry that became an instant cult favorite when it debuted earlier this year. Of course, another point of commonality between the two films is that I was never entirely sure during either of them as to what the hell was going on at any given point. That said, I would say that Enys Men is the more successful of the two because while it may not quite be the straightforward example of the folk horror subgenre suggested by the trailer, Jenkin creates a undeniably odd and unsettling mood right from the opening moments and maintains it throughout, putting viewers into the shoes of the hapless volunteer as things start getting strange. Those looking for more overt thrills and scares may find themselves growing a tad restless with the slow burner of a film but those who prefer being quietly creeped instead of noisily shocked every few minutes will want to give it a look—preferably in a venue older and funkier than the usual antiseptic multiplex, if possible.
I think that I saw Murder Mystery, the 2019 Adam Sandler-Jennifer Aniston mystery-comedy vehicle that became a big hit when it debuted on Netflix, but I confess that I have no conscious memory of it other than the basic fact of its existence. I have, however, seen the inevitable Murder Mystery 2 and if all goes well, it should hopefully be vacating my mind before too long as well. Having parlayed their unexpected prowess for solving crimes into a full-time detective agency that is now on the rocks, married couple Nick (Sandler) and Audrey (Aniston) head off to the Caribbean to attend the wedding of their friend, the Maharajah (Adele Akhtar) to Frenchwoman Claudette (Melanie Laurent). Before long, the Maharajah is kidnapped by someone demanding $50 million for his return and while a supper-competent investigator (Mark Strong) arrives on the scene to take charge, Nick and Audrey begin their own investigation, one that eventually leads them to Paris and climactic wackiness atop the Eiffel Tower.
Murder Mystery 2 is a film about as exciting and inventive as its title and even though it clocks in at a relative meager 89 minutes, it still feels as if it goes on forever. Essentially, it is little more than an excuse for Sandler, Aniston and the rest of the cast (which also includes Jodie Turner-Smith and Danny Boon) to have presumably well-paid working vacations in glamorous locales that were occasionally interrupted by the need to film a scene of no particular consequence. The jokes are never amusing, the mystery aspect is substandard at best and the whole thing is strangely violent for something that is at least pretending to be a lark—whatever one’s expectations might be for Jennifer Aniston in a film, I suspect they don’t include seeing her wackily planting a hatchet in some goon’s skull. The two leads are presumably having fun—this is their third screen pairing—but none of that ever comes across to viewers. Frankly, the only genuinely amusing and mysterious thing about Murder Mystery 2 is the fact that it is being released only a couple of weeks after Sandler became this year’s recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor—this is not necessarily to say that he does not deserve the prize but I suspect that if the people voting had seen this one, they might have postponed that accolade for another year, simply to avoid embarrassment.
Perhaps sensing a certain audience antipathy towards more superhero origin stories, it seems as if filmmakers this year have switched their focus to the origin stories of their favorite toys, devices and other pieces of cultural detritus. With films focused on the development of Air Jordans and the Blackberry on the immediate horizon, the first one out of the gate is Tetris, which recounts the wild tale of how the work of a computer programmer behind the Iron Curtain went on to become one of the most popular and beloved video games of all time and the center of a wild battle between the forces of capitalism and socialism set amidst the dying days of the latter.
Our hero is Henk Rogers (Taron Everton), a man running a struggling software company in Japan in the late 1980s who happens upon the game at a trade show and, like so many others, is instantly captivated by its seemingly simple but maddeningly complex gameplay. He attempts to secure the game rights for Nintendo—it seems to be the perfect game to include with their upcoming product, the handheld Game Boy—but finds that another businessman, Robert Stein (Toby Jones) has evidently secured the rights and licensed them to a company run by publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam) and his obnoxiously hotheaded son Kevin (Anthony Boyle). When he learns that a complete deal has not actually been signed and that the rights are still theoretically in air, Henk heads off to the USSR to surreptitiously meet with the programmer, Alexei Pajitnov (Nikita Yefremov), and deal with government officials in order to get the rights, while being threatened by the simultaneous efforts by Stein and Maxwell to secure them (the latter counting on his apparent friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev to give him the upper hand) and the machinations of a high-ranking member of the KGB who sees that the times are changing and who tries to cut himself in on the deal as well, no matter the cost.
In the broad strokes, Tetris is essentially a cross between The Social Network and Argo, which does at least sound interesting in theory. Director Jon S. Baird and screenwriter Noah Pink do an okay job of keeping the combination of corporate skullduggery and genuine espionage moving along at a decent enough clip. However, what they cannot quite overcome—despite such conceits as rendering certain establishing shots in pixilated animations meant to suggest the video game capabilities of the era—is that a good deal of the film involves people sitting around in rooms negotiating contracts and yelling at each other about various deal points and this gets a little tedious after a while. (The film tries to boost the energy level towards the end by turning into a flat-out chase film that I suspect bears little resemblance to the real life events.) This is frustrating because the idea of a story involving the dying days of the Soviet Union and how a mere video game helped lead the way to a new, if brief, way of thinking sounds compelling, but we just never get it here. There are some interesting moments here and there and good performances from Edgerton and Yefremov but for the most part, Tetris is a superficially intriguing film that starts off okay but never quite makes it past its initial level into something really memorable.