When you get a film with a name like this you’re definitely going in expecting a certain kind of cinematic experience. A giant monster running around or a guy who played with science a little too much and ended up transforming into something truly fantastic. It’s a tried and true formula that always results in a fun experience. Unfortunately this film decided to go away from that format quite a bit. I think the other angle could have been more interesting but this mystery does keep your attention very well so I would still call it a pretty good movie.
The movie starts by showing us Bruce scam a few tourists as he makes a few bucks. He then heads back to the mansion of Francis who used to be excellent at playing the piano but hasn’t had a lot of inspiration to do so after his accident which left him crippled. He is close to death and has all of his closest allies witness him signing the Will. He then falls down a flight of stairs and dies. His only two relatives immediately show up since they expect to be named in the will but instead Francis has given all of the money and his estate to Julie. The relatives decide they have to find a way to void the will but Hillary is thrilled because this means he can continue to study the stars. Unfortunately, a mysterious hand appears and murders the local attorney. It would appear that Francis may not be completely dead quite yet.
This is a classic murder mystery as a mysterious hand goes around murdering people and the characters have to find a way to stop it. The issue is that Hillary can’t seem to convince anyone that the hand is real which presents an issue. The local cop does a fingerprint test and the only print showing up on the murders belongs to Francis..but he died a long time ago. What could this mean!!!? One thing’s for sure, the characters are going to have to keep up their guard at all times. Still, what can a hand do right? Usually that would be your reaction but Francis was shown to be quite strong. In one of the scenes that played before he died, Francis started to choke Hillary even while on his wheelchair and would have slain the guy if Julie hadn’t shown up. Francis was definitely strong for his age and that was a pretty powerful scene that you would not soon forget.
Hillary makes for a very interesting character. He certainly pops out at you the instant he appears. The guy is quite possessive of his books and also likes causing trouble with everyone so he’s definitely not here to make friends. Still, he does add a level of chaos to everything which is always appreciated as shaking things up can be nice. He starts to go off the deep end to an extent by the end though and you’ll be shaking your head at his scenes. The guy has a flair for the dramatic to be sure.
Julie’s a solid heroine. She may have started to get intimidated in the second half but she did stay strong for the most part and I’m glad that she didn’t hand the building off to the relatives initially. That’s a ton of money to keep and it’s not like they were going to give her any part of it if the situation had been reversed. She also does her best to help her friends out but takes some huge risks in the end that weren’t very smart. Then there’s Bruce who is effectively the main character although his role gets smaller in the second half. He’s pretty good at scamming people all the time to earn money so he’s not exactly a hero. I thought he would take a more pro active role in trying to find the hand but he was more amused than anything during the course of the film. The whole thing felt like a game to him.
We can’t forget the Commissario who had a nice role here. He was pretty quick to try and help solve this case. He may not have been able to do much against the hand but it’s always reassuring having a cop in the building here. At the very least it’ll slow down the body count. The body count here was actually quite small so the Hand didn’t make for the most impressive horror villain out there. I suppose a small body count is better than no body count though right? It’s a start at least.
I do think that the film ended a little weakly though. For starters I didn’t like Julie’s final decision as the relatives get too sweet a deal here. They definitely didn’t earn this in the slightest and I would have preferred some kind of big sale instead. That would have made a lot more sense. Additionally, the film ends off with a few different jump scares in a row with a bunch of fake outs. I don’t think that was the most effective way to go about things. The character even started to break the fourth wall which really came out of nowhere. The ending just didn’t mesh well with the rest of the film at all so it comes off as being a little forced with nothing to do with anything. Maybe the film figured it needed some levity because things were getting too serious?
Overall, I would have taken this film in a different direction but it’s a quality title nonetheless. The writing is on point which is always important as all the characters sound very distinguished even when debating each other. They’re all looking to get the upper hand here so you definitely can’t trust anyone and in a way you could say that is how this should be. Every character is always looking to manipulate someone else so why would you trust them in the first place? At the very least you shouldn’t try to talk to any of the characters alone at night when there are no witnesses. I’d still recommend this movie though as it’s a very complete film which is strong in all areas. If it ever got a sequel I’m sure there would be some potential there.
Overall 7/10
Marnie is the kind of film that sneaks up on you. By all accounts it should be a pretty decent film as it was made a long time ago and has the classic writing/witty dialogue that you would expect to see here. Unfortunately it makes a number of key mistakes which ultimately doom it to not just being a bad film, but a horrible one all around. There’s certainly no reason to check this out so I would recommend giving it a hard skip.
The movie starts with Marnie swindling another business out of a lot of money. She enjoys going around and stealing money whenever she can which she then gives to her mother Bernice who suffered a major accident a while back and needs the support. Marnie’s next target is another big company led by Mark. What she doesn’t know is that he is one of the people who saw her at the last job so it isn’t hard for him to catch her. His terms are that he won’t report her to the police if she marries him so they get married but she is determined to make this difficult on him.
Everything goes straight down from there quite drastically. For starters we get a pretty random plot with her horse where it shows up but missed the jump and gets injured. Marnie has to put him down which shot a hole through the film’s chances of survival. The horse seems like he was added in just to be blown up which was a bad move. There was just no reason to do this. The film already had enough issues but at the end of the day this does tie into the film’s core problem which is trying to add too much information and backstory. We really don’t need to know any of this stuff for a solid mystery but the film insists on giving everyone an origin story or an extra detail.
Take Lil who is the main villain here. She’s trying to win Mark away from Marnie and it would be the usual love triangle except for one fact which changes everything. She’s Mark’s sister in law. So that basically throws the whole plot out because it’s just an awful storyline to even include in the film. Why did we need to add this extra information to her character? If she was the childhood friend or something it’s be cliché but at least would work a lot better than this variation. It’s too bad because she is easily the most entertaining character of the bunch and I dare say the smartest as well.
Then you have Beatrice and her whole backstory. Naturally it’s tragic to fit in with the rest of the film as she was in a dicey business and getting out took a lot of effort and turned into a whole conspiracy. Where the whole thing ends poorly is that suddenly she is unable to love her daughter anymore and I have a hard time buying into that. Does she sub consciously blame her for what happened or she’s just been completely traumatized from physical touch after the incident? Either way I don’t see how this would totally be blocking her from at least showing some more kindness towards Marnie.
Of course we can’t end there. Then you’ve got Marnie’s phobia of the color red as well as physical contact. This also transfers over to storms as well so she has a phobia of quite a lot of things by the time the film is through with her. We have a rather painful scene where she absolutely refuses to be touched but Mark had enough of this subplot by then and forced the issue. I don’t see why this part of the phobia had to be added and it couldn’t just stick to the color red. Having the phobia evolve with the film’s loose explanation of she was faking it all during the first act was definitely very weak.
Marnie gives Mark a tough time throughout the movie though as she struggles at every turn and never makes any effort to change. While the scenes can have good banter at times, the film never changes things up so a lot of the dialogue remains the same with slight variations. Then you have Mark who isn’t exactly a hero either as his main goal was to marry Marnie from the start so he effectively allowed her plans to progress until he could make use of them. He does what he can to rehabilitate her for most of the film but ultimately wasn’t able to stick the landing such as the boat scene.
This film does have some of the typical thriller aspects like having one person from Marnie’s past show up to start stirring up some trouble. I was glad for at least some quick stakes here because the film needed something. It’s just a shame that it couldn’t focus on this plot a little more and just throw the other ones out. That would have gone a long way towards improving the movie without a doubt. The main issue is really just the writing as it relies on a whole lot of shock value to keep the film going. That’s always a sign of poor writing because it means they were not confident enough in the script to get people watching towards the end without such big scenes.
Overall, Marnie is a film I would highly recommend staying away from. All of the plots are pretty bad here so the film never really gives you a chance to just sit down and enjoy the scenes at hand. It’s always throwing more shock value at you which definitely destroys any chance of the movie actually turning into a quality experience. It’s a shame because at the very least the premise of a thief going around robbing a bunch of people with the boss knowing about it could be fun. This just won’t be the title that actually puts that kind of storyline on the map.
Overall 0/10
Gilda is a Noir film from a while back. It’s definitely got every noir element you can ask for and makes for a pretty interesting film although the main character is definitely pretty bad. Definitely not someone you can trust in the slightest and there’s a lot of twists and turns here as the characters mess with each other. The main takeaway is that you shouldn’t get involved with gambling as things tend to get dicey.
The movie starts with a confident guy named Johnny cheating a bunch of sailors at cards and running off with all of their money. He doesn’t get far though as someone holds him at gunpoint and Johnny realizes that it may be curtains for him. That’s when a guy named Ballin shows up and rescues Johnny. Ballin is the owner of a local casino and so naturally Johnny repays this kindness by going to that guy’s casino and stealing a bunch of money. He’s caught again but Ballin decides to make him a partner. Johnny is surprisingly loyal and so the two get along really well. This all changes when Ballin goes on vacation and returns with a new wife named Gilda. Johnny and Gilda have quite the history between them which leads to a lot of friction. Gilda is a free spirit who flirts with everyone so Johnny tries to keep Ballin from finding this out. Will Johnny and Gilda’s feud end up destroying the casino?
At first things are going almost too well so you know something’s got to give. Johnny and Ballin have perfect teamwork with each other and the casino is doing better than never. They’re really on cloud 9 and Johnny’s enjoying his new lease on life. As someone who used to cheat a whole lot it makes sense that he would be good at noticing if others were using the same tricks. That said, things all fall to pieces when Gilda shows up. She is intentionally difficult a lot of the time as well as she puts him into tough situations that are hard to explain.
I would make the case that if he was straight with Ballin from the start instead of making up stories then it would have been easier. By the midway point that isn’t an option anymore though as Ballin starts to act rather dangerously. Perhaps Johnny knew that would be his reaction all the while. Johnny was really solid in the first half of the film but then he looked really bad later on. His punishment scheme involving marriage started off as incredibly petty and by the end just turned flat-out villainous. There isn’t any real way to root for him as he went completely off the deep end.
Then you have Gilda who isn’t a very good heroine. She admits to being someone who goes on the rebound all the time. While the characters do ultimately say she never actually cheated on the leads, it’s hard to really believe that given her actions. She actually did cheat on Ballin while they were still married with Johnny and she was already getting into a serious affair with someone overseas until it turned out that he was actually an inside agent. The common theme in both of these instances is that she was really quick to move on so it’s hard to imagine any real romance sticking around for the long-haul by the end. Without trust you can’t possibly have a healthy relationship after all.
The romance in the film in general is just really weak and takes away from the more interesting thriller aspects of the story. You’re interested in the conspiracies and the truth behind the casino. Not in what’s going on between Johnny and Gilda. That’s the kind of stuff you can just leave for a side story or just to the imagination but it ends up playing quite the central focus by the end.
There are two main supporting characters in Pio and Obregon. Pio is a nice janitor type character who completes all of the odd jobs around the Casino. He’s been around for a long time and is always completely confident in himself. Nobody can scare this guy and that’s because he knows just about everything. You can always count on him in crunch time and he was just fun. Then you’ve got Obregon who appears for a lot of the movie. He’s a mysterious character who is always hanging around the scene of the crime just doing his own thing. There are naturally twists around his character and they are handled quite well. He may even be the best character in the film when you think about it.
Finally you’ve got the main villain Ballin and he definitely messes up what was a pretty good system for him. He really had everything he could have wanted and then ended up messing it all up by going after Gilda when he shouldn’t have. If he had just stayed strong or not gotten married so impulsively then he would have been okay. While the guy went crazy by the end, he may have been distracted by success long enough for that not to take effect. It’s quite the coincidence that he ended up meeting up with Gilda of all people.
As with any classic Noir film the writing is important and I would say it is pretty solid here. The banter with Johnny and Ballin is always solid with a lot of subtle jabs thrown in. Johnny has a quick word for anyone who gets in his way. The only time the interactions aren’t as solid is with him and Gilda as you can see the romance coming a mile away so their tough talk just doesn’t work as well. Beyond that the whole film is definitely interesting from start to finish and the pacing means that it all goes through pretty smoothly. There’s never a point in the film where you feel like it’s dragging on.
Overall, Gilda is a solid Noir film. I wouldn’t put it as one of my all time high picks in the genre but it holds up well enough. Gilda is the weakest element of the film to be sure along with the rather weak romance here but the plots about the casino and such are solid. There’s always something going on here and definitely a lot to unpack. All of the characters could have handled the situation differently and would have been in a better spot for it except for Obregon who handled everything well from start to finish. That guy was always a step ahead of the rest. With a solid ending to close things out, I’d definitely recommend Gilda if you want to check out a classic film with a little mystery and intrigue.
Overall 6/10
