InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 1
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FILM REVIEWS<br />
2023, a callback to the grindhouse flicks of the ‘70s offers up the<br />
most respectful portrait of sex workers the big screen has seen<br />
in ages, and yet here we are.<br />
It also can’t be overstated just how great the film looks, each<br />
shot a tutorial in proper shot composition, with the occasional<br />
ajar door and rain-streaked car window proving as effective as<br />
the choice of shag carpeting seen at its end <strong>—</strong> which, pardon the<br />
expression, is quite simply chef’s kiss. This is only outdone by the<br />
choice of a needle drop, also approaching the denouement, so<br />
utterly perfect that Swab deserves credit for blowing his entire<br />
budget on simply obtaining its rights. Much like past Swab<br />
projects, the cast is uniformly terrific, which proves that the<br />
filmmaker is both a technician and an actor’s director, and that’s<br />
a rare combo in today’s climate. The lone name cast member,<br />
one Mr. William Baldwin, certainly seems thrilled to get<br />
down-and-dirty and earn a paycheck, but the fact that he is the<br />
weak link here seems less a factor of commitment and more a<br />
result of the level of wackadoo characterization he is forced to<br />
endure. Such a complaint, however, is one of the few this critic is<br />
going to lob at Candy Land, which kicks off 2023 on exactly the<br />
right foot; Team Swab starts right here. <strong>—</strong> STEVEN WARNER<br />
DIRECTOR: John Swab CAST: Olivia Luccardi, William Baldwin,<br />
Sam Quartin, Owen Campbell DISTRIBUTOR: Quiver Distribution<br />
IN THEATERS: January 6 RUNTIME: 1 hr. 33 min.<br />
THE PALE BLUE EYE<br />
Scott Cooper<br />
Based on Louis Bayard’s 2003 novel, Scott Cooper’s painfully dull<br />
The Pale Blue Eye imagines a fictional murder mystery featuring<br />
one Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling) assisting alleged master<br />
detective Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) in sleuthing around<br />
West Point (which Poe actually did attend). Someone’s strung up a<br />
cadet and cut out his heart, and for some reason Landor settles<br />
on Poe as someone who can help him navigate the ins and outs<br />
of both the Academy and the local gentry, while the famous<br />
author finds both fuel for his writing and a pretty girl in the<br />
course of the case.<br />
It’s an ostensibly intriguing idea to give us a moody, atmospheric<br />
mystery as the inspiration for some of fiction’s most famous<br />
works, but the film that Cooper delivers is instead inert,<br />
suspense-free, and so emotionally remote as to render any<br />
attempts at complexity or ambiguity completely unnoticeable.<br />
Even more puzzling is that the story would appear to have little to<br />
no bearing on Poe’s work at all; even though Melling is sufficiently<br />
convincing as a melancholic weirdo, one could swap Poe out here<br />
for literally anyone else, famous or not, and The Pale Blue Eye<br />
would remain the exact same film. Sure, there might be a few<br />
easter eggs to be found and some references to remind of Poe’s<br />
famous stories and poems, but they don’t<br />
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