Deep Water

Director: Adrian Lyne
Starring: Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas, Tracy Letts, Grace Jenkins, Rachel Blanchard, Kristen Connolly, Jacob Elordi, Lil Rel Howery, Brendan C. Miller, Finn Wittrock 
Running Time: 115 min.
Rating: R

★★★ (out of ★★★★)

A man watches his wife flaunt her extra-marital affairs about town, outwardly accepting that she can do whatever she wants in their open relationship, even while he's viewed as an emasculated joke by their friends. Slowly, he grows tired of this humiliating arrangement and a rage builds inside. No longer able  to contain himself, it's only a matter of time before he snaps. But enough already about Will Smith's marriage. Adrian Lyne's latest erotic thriller, Deep Water, finds the 81 year-old director back in territory reminiscent of some of his most notable and controversial efforts, such as 9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal and Unfaithful. 

The tone here isn't nearly as sure-footed, but as far as B-movie sleaze goes, it's actually a lot of fun. Of course, this is more of a good time if you're receptive to the idea of watching a darkly comedic parody of those aforementioned films, which some would accuse of already being spoofs of sorts. That it looks great, is well made and carried by two stars as talented as they are famous helps a lot, with both actors totally game and aware of the type of project they're in, committing themselves accordingly.

Vic Van Allen (Ben Affleck) is a wealthy, retired robotics engineer living with his wife, Melinda (Ana de Armas) and their young daughter Trixie (Grace Jenkins) in the small town of Little Wesley, Louisiana. Their combative, almost entirely loveless union is built upon a mostly unspoken arrangement that seems to benefit her far more than he. It's basically understood, even by friends who know them, that they're in an open marriage where she can comfortably take on as many lovers as she wishes just so long as she doesn't abandon her family. 

The flirty, extroverted Melinda relishes attention from men, publicly throwing herself at each new one she encounters as a sullen, morose Vic stands in the corner at parties, seething with jealousy. With his role how relegated to making dinner for her various boyfriends, he's finally had a enough. After Vic makes a not so thinly veiled threat against Melinda's current flame, younger musician, Joel Dash (Brendan C. Miller), about having previously killed one of her ex-lovers, their marriage is now on shakier ground than ever. And when her latest boyfriend ends up dead in a swimming pool, suspicion turns toward Vic, who may or may not be harboring a dark secret that threatens to unravel their already toxic relationship.      

Most of the opening hour sees sulking, dejected Affleck as Vic almost sleepwalking through his wife's very public displays of infidelity. If an open marriage arrangement was made, he was either the last on Earth to find out or entirely uncomfortable with the ground rules. It turns out to be the latter, and whatever sympathy anyone could muster for him having to watch his wife throw herself at every man in town evaporates a lot faster than you'd expect. She's a handful for sure, fiery and and wildly unpredictable, but if he really cared that much he'd just leave, so a good portion of the film is spent waiting for him to explode. 

Her indifference to his anger is evident when she first brings home her "piano teacher," Charlie (Jacob Elordi) and then college ex Tony (Finn Wittrock), both of whom send Vic over the deep end. Leaving Melinda is too simple a solution and against his supposed principles, so if he can't have her all to himself, we can figure out the rest. When the film's major centerpiece incident occurs and nosy neighbor Don Wilson (Tracy Letts) becomes obsessed with proving Vic's a murderer, much to his wife Kelly's (Kristen Connolly) justifiable embarrassment.

While many have given Affleck a tough time for taking on troubled, middle-aged sad sack roles like this, he's really exceptional at it, especially here when given very little dialogue in the picture's first half, instead revealing most of Vic's inner plight through depressive body language and facial expressions. And after breaking through in Knives Out and outright stealing No Time to Die, this further extends Ana de Armas' streak as one of the most exciting actresses around. Bringing a wildly devious, frenetic energy to Melinda's every scene, de Armas is completely convincing as this woman entirely uninterested in being controlled by her husband or anyone else. You almost get the impression that Vic could kill not only half the men in this small town, but most of Louisiana, and Melinda still wouldn't run out of candidates to sleep with just because she can.

As absurd as the entire plot is at times, Lyne does really get a lot of little details right, like the social dynamic, as Vic and Melinda's friends look at their fractured marriage with both bewilderment and pity, at least when they're not partying. Watching, all we can think of is the adverse affect it's likely having on precocious daughter Trixie, who's stuck in the middle of this mess with two walking disasters for parents. 

Tracy Letts basically steals the show as the very suspicious Don, who's plagued by his unhealthy preoccupation with exposing Vic's potential guilt. It leads the story down a ridiculously compelling path, as he's good enough an actor to actually us that this pompous windbag of a character would take the dumb steps he does in the crazy last act. At the very least, it's no more far-fetched than believing Affleck as a retiree who amassed his great wealth from building guidance chips for drones, a detail that results in a lively political argument.  

That a long gestating project completed years ago was earmarked for a theatrical rollout before heading to Hulu shouldn't be taken as a damning indictment on its quality, especially since such a fate is commonplace now for mid-level adult dramas. If nothing else, it contains one of the more insane vehicular chase scenes in recent memory, featuring some extreme mountain biking and an important public service warning for anyone still on the fence about that whole texting while driving issue.  

That this is actually based on a 1957 Patricia Highsmith novel seems almost impossible to believe given how jarringly modern its story and setting feels. Having not read the book and going strictly by its synopsis, Zach Helm and Sam Levinson's screenplay doesn't seem to veer far from the source plot-wise, aside from a wacky ending. In this sense, Lyne deserve a lot of credit for updating the material to fit the type of 90's erotic thriller Deep Water is clearly being patterned after. While mileage may vary as to how successfully viewers think this was captured, it still harnesses something in that realm with more entertaining flare than expected.  

Get Out

Director: Jordan Peele
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Catherine Keener, Caleb Landry Jones, Lil Rel Howery, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, LaKeith Stanfield, Stephen Root
Running Time: 103 min.
Rating: R

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

The scariest, most frighteningly realistic part of Jordan Peele's Get Out comes early, uncomfortably zeroing in on certain stupid things that certain white people say to black people in conversations to "prove" they're not racist. With every little action and comment you squirm since their obliviousness knows no bounds, terminally unaware of how ridiculous and ignorant they sound. Some of them are probably your friends, co-workers, teachers, neighbors or family members. And on occasion, I'm willing to bet those offenders have even included you and I. It would probably be insulting to suggest that the first sixty minutes of this horror thriller places anyone in the shoes of a black man being judged by the friends and family of his white girlfriend, but it does sure give us an eye-opening idea of what he'd have to put up with. That so much of this is subtle, even subliminal, to someone not consciously looking, is possibly its most unsettling aspect.

While making no mistake about the fact that Get Out is first and foremost a damning social commentary on racial tensions in America, what's been somewhat lost in the conversation is how slyly and expertly the comedian Peele (making his directorial debut) plays that hand. That is until he doesn't have to anymore, and audiences' worst fears, heavily hinted at from the very first frame, eventually come to fruition. Even with plenty of clues where this is going, it's still kind of jaw-dropping just how far Peele's willing to take this, to the point that you wonder how a project this socially, racially and politically charged even got the go-ahead.  You could quibble about where the plot eventually ends up, but good luck finding fault in how it arrives there, building genuine terror and suspense the entire way through. "Originality" isn't a word thrown around too often these days and while there are a few familiar genre elements at play, that definitely applies here.

When black photographer Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) takes a trip with his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) to meet her parents for the first time, she confides in him that she hasn't revealed to them his race and doubts it will be an issue. Described by Rose as open and accepting people, neurosurgeon Dean (Bradley Whitford) and psychiatrist Missy (Catherine Keener) warmly welcome Chris into their home and, almost right off the bat, something seems off. Whether it be Dean's overly enthusiastic boasting of having wanted Obama elected to a third term, his defensive explanation of why all the hired help is black, or Missy's insistence on hypnotizing Chris, it appears any concerns of not fitting in might be the least of his problems.

It only gets stranger from there, with an uncomfortable encounter with Rose's drunk, unstable brother, Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones), offensive interrogations from party guests, and the black live-in housekeeper Georgina (a brilliantly creepy Betty Gabriel) and groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) behaving like zombies. Confiding his suspicions by phone to best friend and TSA agent, Rod (Lil Rel Howery), Chris realizes he's walked into something very bad, and while he wants to stay to support Rose, common sense tells him he can't get out soon enough, as what starts as Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? very quickly devolves into Guess Who's Coming to Hell?

It may not be completely apparent until the final credits just how carefully the story is set up, playing on real-life anxieties and prejudices to draw the viewer in, as for much of its running length, the people and situations Chris encounters at the Armitage house are not only steeped heavily in realism, but painfully uncomfortable to watch. It's a key component that all these interactions, as disturbingly strange as they are, aren't so outright hostile that even he initially chalks it up to paranoia or nerves. It's easy to imagine an alternate director's cut of all these scenes that heavily emphasize that since Peele's ability to let audience's see through the protagonist's eyes at the true extent of this ignorant behavior is one of his script's greatest strengths. It's at work through every interaction at that house, whether it be a houseguest trying to chat Chris up about Tiger Woods or Rose's brother's obsession with his athletic abilities, even challenging him to a fight in one of many cringe-worthy dinner table moments.

Through much of this, Chris is about as good and patient a sport as anyone could be under some pretty degrading circumstances, and little known English actor Daniel Kaluuya skillfully walks a really tight rope, trying to remain calm in the midst of deplorable treatment masking itself as mildly disingenuous hospitality. It slowly gets to him, attempting to put on a solid front for Rose, played by Allison Williams as essentially the ideal girlfriend, even as the relationship eventually carries with it this unspoken racist implication that he'd be an idiot to screw it up, almost as if he should consider himself "'lucky" to land someone like her. In other words, don't rock the boat because you're the one being judged. All these racial overtones and undertones just keep building, boiling to the surface when the narrative bomb is dropped and a full-blown, insane explanation is given for what we've been seeing.

By the time Peele shows his cards and it's clear what's happening (the details of which land somewhere between A Clockwork Orange, The Stepford Wives and Soylent Green), a shift has to come, and how well he pulls off this transition is what will make or break the movie for many. Mostly, it's a seamless one due to the fact that we've been pulling so hard for this protagonist since he walked into an already awkward situation with the best of intentions, realizing it's now a fight for  survival. And once it is, you'll again be scratching your head at how this was even made to begin with, and yet somehow Peele pulls it off, juggling sci-fi, horror, comedy and socially conscious drama as deftly as possible considering the unexplored thematic terrain.

Given how many different things are attempted, this all remains fairly consistent right up until and including the final scene, which frightens in much the same way the rest of the film does, just in a more literal context. It cleverly reminds us, in even the most extreme situations, how justified the protagonist's fear is, and how stagnantly ingrained society's view of him is. By masquerading as a horror film, before fully evolving into one, it's able to explore and tackle timely issues that could otherwise play as as a preachy sermon under more traditional circumstances. Instead, we get something that pushes the envelope just far enough to leave a lasting imprint. How much of one will have to bare itself out in subsequent viewings, which is something Get Out proves more than worthy of.