Black Bag (2025)

George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) went to a club to meet Philip Meacham.  Meacham explained that the agency had a traitor.  He provided a list with 5 names.  One of the names on the list was Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett), who happened to be George's wife.  In order to ferret out the rat, George invited all of them to dinner at his home.  George is a gourmet; he also drugged the food.  Once everyone was sufficiently lubricated, the game began.  Make a resolution for the person on your right.  It turned out that everyone was sleeping with everyone else, but nothing to mark out a traitor.  However, after dinner, George spotted something amiss that implicated his wife.

In the week that followed, George investigated the suspects, including his wife.  His investigations led to further incriminating evidence against his wife!  Even if she was guilty, he would protect her.  He needed to thwart a clandestine plan while keeping his wife safe.  The crisscross of lies led everyone to suspect one another.

The climax was something of a letdown.  It is a replay of the original dinner party with life on the line.  That the villain grabbed the gun provided by the host as though it was actually useful was beyond foolish.  Of course, it's a dummy gun.  How in the world could anyone - especially someone who works in intelligence - believe a loaded gun would just be offered?

Fassbender plays George as a flat, emotionless man.  He makes Roger Moore's raised eyebrow look like Shatnerian overacting by comparison.  He is a cold calculating machine with a keen eye for deception.  Cate Blanchett is similarly limited in emotional range.  It definitely gives the impression that these spies are focused and unflappable.  By contrast, the satellite operator, Clarissa, has wide emotional swings and the psychologist, Zoe, felt very normal as a person.  Pierce Brosnan plays Arthur Stieglitz, the chief of the agency.  It is not a good role, as he gets outmaneuvered by his subordinates and seemed to be oblivious to what was happening.

The movie feels like an old British spy thriller in the vein of The Ipcress File or Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  There is a lot of dialogue and no action.  This is more of a whodunit than a spy movie.  That the villain proved to be sloppy and incompetent was disappointing.

Just okay.

Nightmare Alley (2021)

In 1939, Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) dragged the shrouded body across the floor and dropped it into a shallow grave in the middle of the house.  On his way out the door, he ignites the house.  Soon after, he is on a bus that stops near a cafe.  By chance, a dwarf walks by him and he turns to follow him.  He arrives at a carnival and soon becomes a carny himself.  There is Bruno the Strongman (Ron Perlmam), Clem (Willem Dafoe) who has a tent full of pickled oddities as well as the crazed geek who bites the heads off chickens, Zeena (Toni Collette) the Seer, Pete (David Strathairn) the mentalist, Molly (Rooney Mara) the electrical girl, and others.  Stanton is soon having an affair with Zeena, learning mentalism from the frequently drunk Pete, and pursuing Molly.  Before long, he has mastered mentalism and runs away with Molly to start an act.

Two years later, they are having considerable success as a mentalist act.  It is then that Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) attends the show to test his talents.  He proves sufficiently impressive that she provides her card and makes richer marks available.  Of course, her clients are rich and powerful and won't take kindly to him if he is shown to be a fraud.  The payoff is great but so is the risk.

Throughout the movie, Stanton is warned against carrying his mentalism shtick too far, against crossing lines, or starting to believe your own lies.  Despite the wise counsel from every carny he has met, he pushes forward to the big score.

Here is a movie about a bad man who does bad things and has a bad outcome.  Karma.  Though well-made and excellently acted, it is hard to enjoy watching an unsympathetic character on the make.  Sure, his final mark deserves to be cheated, but he's putting Molly in the crosshairs.

Of all the Giullermo del Toro films, this one has the fewest bizarre monsters.  In fact, other than the pickled oddities in Clem's collection, all the monsters are human.  Worse, this is a two and a half hour slog that reaches the conclusion that has been telegraphed from the start.

Hard pass.

Ocean's Eight

Fresh out of prison, Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock), cons her way into a luxury hotel room with recently purloined beauty products.  After pampering herself, she meets her former partner, Lou (Cate Blanchett) and outlines a jewelry heist.  Debbie has spent her five years in prison planning the heist and is sure it will work.  They look for a team.  They recruit a down-on-her luck fashion designer: Rose Weil (Helena Bonham Carter).  They need a jeweler: Amita (Mindy Kaling).  They need a computer hacker: Nine Ball (Rihanna).  Next is the pickpocket: Constance (Awkwafina).  Finally, they need a fence: Tammy (Sarah Paulson).  Yes, that is only 7 because 8 joins as a twist after the heist.  Of course, there is also the mark, noted actress Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway).  There are some appearances by members of Ocean's 11, such as Reuben (Elliot Gould), so this isn't an all-female reboot (e.g. Ghostbusters) but a continuation with a different member of the Ocean family.  Debbie is Danny's (George Clooney) sister.  Danny is purportedly dead though Debbie has some doubts when she visits his grave at a mausoleum.

 

As heist movies go, it is all right.  It felt a little too smooth.  The inevitable bumps were resolved entirely too easily.  I was particularly annoyed when Nine Ball's younger sister - who looked like she was 12 - solved the magnetic lock problem.  It was too easy and the stakes were too small.  The characters were never in any trouble.  Even after the heist, the insurance investigator (James Corden) knows that Debbie masterminded the whole thing but happily takes down the patsy she has framed.  Of course, the patsy is the one who sent her to jail so he deserves it.  Ha ha.  There is another twist that completely undercuts the risks they took to smuggle the jewels out of the gala.

Johnny Hooker: He threatened to kill me.
Henry Gondorff: Hell, kid, they don't do that, you know you're not getting to 'em.

That's an exchanged from The Sting (1973) that has always stuck with me.  By that standard, Ocean's Eight never got to them.  It never got to me either.  It is just okay.