Alan Cumming Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Rare Objects’ (2023), starring Julia Mayorga, Katie Holmes, Derek Luke and Alan Cumming

September 1, 2023

by Carla Hay

Derek Luke and Julia Mayorga in “Rare Objects” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

“Rare Objects” (2023)

Directed by Katie Holmes

Some language in Spanish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, the dramatic film “Rare Objects” (based on the 2016 novel of the same name) has a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A working-class college student, who is recovering from trauma in her personal life, gets a job at a high-end antiques store, where she meets some eccentric people who have backgrounds that are very different from hers.

Culture Audience: “Rare Objects” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star/director Katie Holmes and slow-moving movies that don’t have much that’s interesting to say.

Katie Holmes in “Rare Objects” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

“Rare Objects” is a boring slog of a film with a flimsy plot and main characters who sound very phony. Katie Holmes has directed yet another cinematic misfire in which she’s cast herself as the star. Her awkward over-acting in “Rare Objects” does not help.

Holmes co-wrote the turgid “Rare Objects” screenplay with Phaedon A. Papadopoulos. They adapted the screenplay from Kathleen Tesaro’s 2016 novel of the same name. “Rare Objects” does something that most movies that take place in New York City don’t do: It actually makes vibrant, “love it or hate it” New York City look dull. The story in “Rare Objects” is fairly unfocused and doesn’t seem to have much of an idea about what do with the main characters, who sort of meander along in life and have very shallow conversations.

“Rare Objects” begins by showing protagonist Benita Parla (played by Julia Mayorga) in a major life slump. Benita is a student at the City University of New York, but she’s taking a break from school because she had an abortion after getting pregnant from rape. She also temporarily checked herself into a psychiatric facility for post-traumatic stress disorder.

Benita has flashbacks about the rape throughout most of the movie. Her rapist was on a dinner date with her on the night that he raped her. During this dinner date, he told her that he was new to the area and worked in finance. These flashbacks are put into the movie without further exploration about what these memories are doing to Benita.

Adding to Benita’s woes, she’s not completely over her ex-boyfriend Anthony (played by Giancarlo Vidrio), whom she hasn’t seen in a while. Benita decides to suddenly visit Anthony unannounced. He’s surprised to see her and tells Benita something that she doesn’t want to hear: He’s getting married. Any hope that Benita might have had that she and Anthony would get back together is now gone.

Benita has kept the rape and abortion a secret from most people who are close to her, including her best friend Angie (played by Olivia Gilliatt), who is a single mother to a baby. And so, when Benita tells her immigrant single mother Aymee Parla (played by Saundra Santiago), who works as a seamstress, that she’s taking a break from school and wants to move back in with Aymee, Aymee’s reaction is one of judgmental disappointment. Aymee thinks that Benita is just being a lazy flake, but ultimately she supports Benita’s decision and lets Benita move back in with her.

Benita is stressed-out about her student loans. Aymee tells Benita to be grateful for the opportunities that Benita has and to “just pray.” However, “just praying” doesn’t pay Benita’s bills, so she starts looking for a job. She sees an ad for a job as a sales assistant at the Colony Club, an upscale antiques store. Benita doesn’t know anything about antiques, so she goes into the interview with a “fake it ’til you make it” mindset.

Colony Club owner Peter Kessler (played by Alan Cumming) interviews Benita. Peter has high standards and is very fussy. He’s an elitist, but he’s not a mean-spirited person. Peter can sense that Benita doesn’t know much about antiques, but he hires her anyway because she seems pleasant and very eager to learn. He tells Benita that her job requires greeting and assisting clients and to be “attentive but un-presuming.”

A great deal of “Rare Objects” shows Benita working in the store and meeting a range of people who are usually wealthy. Two of those people are Diana Van der Laar (played by Holmes) and her brother James Van Der Laar (played by David Alexander Flinn), who have a slightly weird, overly co-dependent relationship. Diana takes a liking to Benita, and it isn’t long before Benita is hanging out with Diana when Benita isn’t working.

Diana has a lot of issues. She uses illegal drugs, and she’s spent time in a psychiatric facility through involuntary admission. Diana blames her haughty socialite mother Linda Van der Laar (played by Candy Buckley) for most of the emotional damage that Diana has. There’s a lot of cringeworthy dialogue in “Rare Objects,” and most of it comes from Diana.

When Benita tells Diana that she was raped, Diana’s response is: “When you think about it, it was a bad dream, like it never happened.” When the conversation turns to whether or not Diana and Benita have ever fallen in love with someone, Diana says to Benita: “Our mothers teach us how to be desired, but not how to be loved. I think you’re a goddess, made more perfect by experience.”

The movie is about two-thirds over when another character awkwardly shows up: His name is Ben Winshaw (played by Derek Luke), who is a married father working for the Colony Club, but he was away when Benita was hired. Benita is surprised to meet him because Peter never told her about Ben. In this role, Luke (who is American in real life) has a very fake-sounding Caribbean accent that we do not need to hear. “Rare Objects” starts to set up a subplot about a rivalry between Benita and Ben, but this subplot ultimately goes nowhere.

The character of Ben (and the phony accent that Luke gives this character) can best be described as “unnecessary” to this movie. One might assume that Luke is in “Rare Objects” because he was in Holmes’ 2022 flop “Alone Together,” which she wrote and directed. This Ben character looks like a role that was given to a friend so the friend could have a job, even though the role is not essential to the story. There’s nothing about “Rare Objects” that’s essential viewing, unless you want to see a lot of mediocre-to-bad acting in a lackluster movie that most people will forget soon after seeing it.

IFC Films released “Rare Objects” in U.S. cinemas, digital and VOD on April 14, 2023.

Review: ‘Marlowe’ (2023), starring Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger and Jessica Lange

February 15, 2023

by Carla Hay

Liam Neeson in “Marlowe” (Photo courtesy of Open Road Films/Briarcliff Entertainment)

“Marlowe” (2023)

Directed by Neil Jordan

Culture Representation: Taking place in the Los Angeles area, in 1939, the dramatic film “Marlowe” features a predominantly white cast (with a few African Americans and Latinos) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Jaded private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a wealthy married socialite to investigate the disappearance of her younger lover, who was declared dead, but she says that he’s still alive.

Culture Audience: “Marlowe” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the Philip Marlowe detective books, star Liam Neeson and movies that are watered-down and less-interesting versions of the books.

Diane Kruger in “Marlowe” (Photo courtesy of Open Road Films/Briarcliff Entertainment)

“Marlowe” is going for a classic film noir vibe, but the results are flat and listless. The movie’s story is poorly constructed and badly edited. If you want to see cast members act like wooden robots or over-emote in the worst ways, then watch “Marlowe.”

Directed by Neil Jordan (who co-wrote the drab “Marlowe” screenplay with William Monahan), “Marlowe” is a movie that shouldn’t be as inadequate as it is. It’s disappointing that “Marlowe” came from Jordan and Monahan, who are both capable of doing much better work in the movie genre of crime dramas. Jordan wrote and directed the 1992 vibrant thriller “The Crying Game,” for which he won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Monahan is the Oscar-winning screenwriter of the 2005 twist-filled remake “The Departed,” for which Monahan earned an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

There’s nothing Oscar-worthy about “Marlowe,” which plods along at sluggish pace and is just a lazy compilation of repetitive scenes and awkwardly delivered dialogue. “Marlowe” (which takes place in the Los Angeles area in 1939) doesn’t do any justice to novelist Raymond Chandler’s originally created character Philip Marlowe, the private investigator who’s the protagonist of this atrocious movie. Several films and two TV series have been made about Marlowe. The 2023 version of “Marlowe” (which is based on John Banville’s 2014 novel “The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Mystery”) is by far the worst on-screen adaptation of a Marlowe story.

Liam Neeson is also miscast as Marlowe, who is presented in this very misguided movie as another rehashed version of Neeson’s Bryan Mills character in the “Taken” action movie series. In this subpar “Marlowe” film, Marlowe has the fight skills of a movie stunt person, while his detective skills seem like an afterthought. And never mind that Marlowe is supposed to be in his late 30s to early 40s, born and raised an American, while Neeson (who was in his late 60s when this movie was filmed) is originally from Ireland and doesn’t even try to hide his Irish accent when playing Marlowe.

“Marlowe” has some gorgeous outdoor scenery (the movie was filmed in Barcelona and Dublin, with both cities convincingly substituting for 1939 Los Angeles), but the movie’s cinematoraphy is an uneven mix of warm glows and muddy ugliness, depending on the scene. The movie’s production design and costume design are aesthetically pleasing. However, all of that doesn’t match the relentlessly dour and hollow presentation of the story’s characters.

In the beginning of the movie, Marlowe (a bachelor with no children and no romantic attachments) is hired by married wealthy socialite Clare Cavendish (played by Diane Kruger) to find her missing lover Nico Peterson (played by François Arnaud, shown mostly in flashbacks). Nico is a younger man who worked as a prop master and occasional actor in movies. Clare says that Nico also made money by fraudulently selling junk as antiques.

Marlowe isn’t judgmental about this extramarital affair, but Clare explains to him that she and her husband Richard Cavendish (played by Patrick Muldoon) have “an arrangement.” Clare also makes sure to let Marlowe know that she has more money than Richard has. Whatever “arrangement” that Clare and Richard have, it doesn’t prevent Richard from being rude to Marlowe when the two men first meet each other with Clare nearby. Richard tells Marlowe to “go fuck himself” before Richard walks away from the conversation. Clare says to Marlowe to explain Richard’s terrible manners: “He must think there’s something between us—something sexual.”

The problem with Clare saying that Nico is still alive is that Nico has been declared dead from a hit-and-run car accident that happened outside of an exclusive social club called the Corbata Club, where Clare and Nico would frequently meet up. Nico’s half-sister Lynn Peterson (played by Daniela Melchior) identified the body at the morgue before the body was cremated. However, Clare insists to Marlowe that Nico is still alive, because Clare heard that people who knew Nico have seen him alive since that fateful accident. What really happened to Nico?

During this investigation, Marlowe encounters the expected array of shady and corrupt characters. Corbata Club manager Floyd Hansen (played by Danny Huston) has no qualms in telling Marlowe that he covers up scandals for the club’s best customers. Dorothy Quincannon (played by Jessica Lange), Clare’s domineering mother, who is a faded Hollywood actress, is quick to tell Marlowe that Clare has a mental illness that Clare probably inherited from Clare’s father, an oil mogul who drove off of a cliff in La Jolla, California, before Clare was born.

Joe Green (played by Ian Hart) is a sarcastic police officer, who lets Marlowe walk away from crime scenes caused by Marlowe, without even questioning Marlowe. Lou Hendricks (played by Alan Cumming) is an arrogant fixer whose clients are wealthy people. Cedric (played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is Lou’s driver, who knows how to keep secrets. Meanwhile, one of the few trustworthy characters in “Marlowe” is Marlowe’s secretary Hilda (played by Stella Stocker), but the movie makes her so generic and sidelined, she ulimately becomes insignificant. It’s a wasted opportunity to create a fascinating character who knows Marlowe very well.

“Marlowe” becomes a tedious mush of Marlowe blandly interviewing people at various locations; Marlowe getting into fist fights where he’s always outnumbered but always seems to win these fights; and Marlowe listening to the catty comments that Clare and Dorothy have to say about each other. This mother and daughter have a love/hate relationship that is mostly hate. After a while, this family feud becomes monotonous and a chore to watch.

While some of the “Marlowe” cast members seem to be acting on an emotionally aloof autopilot (this is especially true of Neeson and Kruger), other cast members (such as Huston and Cumming) ham it up to the point where their characters almost become parodies. Lange seems to be doing her best to bring some spicy intrigue to this film, but she doesn’t have enough screen time and is overshadowed by the cringeworthy acting by most of the other cast members. It doesn’t help that she’s given awful lines of dialogue to say, such as this mind-numbing statement that Carol says to Marlowe: “You know what they say about the boys’ club. There is one.”

With the direction, screenplay and acting a tonal mess, that leaves the mystery about Nico to possibly be the film’s saving grace. But “Marlowe” bungles that mystery too. When secrets are revealed, so much of it is rushed and looks very “only in a movie” fake. This uninspired flop is about famed detective Marlowe looking for a missing person. Too bad “Marlowe” is missing what it should have had: a good presentation of a classic detective story.

Open Road Films and Briarcliff Entertainment released “Marlowe” in U.S. cinemas on February 15, 2023.

Review: ‘My Old School,’ starring Alan Cumming and the voices of Clare Grogan and Lulu

September 25, 2022

by Carla Hay

“My Old School”

Directed by Jono McLeod

Culture Representation: In the documentary film “My Old School,” a predominantly white group of people (with one black person and a few people of South Asian heritage) talk about Brandon Lee, an unusual student who was enrolled in the high school Bearsden Academy in Glasgow Scotland, in 1993.

Culture Clash: Lee had a scandalous secret, which was eventually exposed while he was a Bearsden Academy student.

Culture Audience: “My Old School” will appeal mainly to people who are interested in seeing a “truth is stranger than fiction” documentary about the lengths that people will go to achieve a goal.

A scene from “My Old School” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)

With whimsical animation and compelling interviews, the documentary “My Old School” tells the strange-but-true story of an unusual student who enrolled in Scotland’s Bearsden Academy high school in 1993. It’s a bittersweet tale of deception, denial and broken dreams. Although the scandal that’s chronicled in this documentary made international news, many viewers of “My Old School” don’t know about the scandal and might enjoy the documentary more if they don’t know about the scandal in advance. For this reason, this review will not give details about the scandal, which is revealed in the last third of the movie.

Directed by Jono McLeod, “My Old School” tells the story of Brandon Lee, a student who enrolled as a third-year student in the elite high school Bearsden Academy in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1993. It just so happens that McLeod was a Bearsden Academy student at the same time as Lee, which is why this documentary is titled “My Old School.” It’s explained in the beginning of the documentary that Lee gave audio-only interviews for the movie because he did not want to appear on camera.

Instead, Scottish actor Alan Cumming is shown lip-synching what Lee said in the interviews. Several years ago, Cumming was set to star in a feature-film drama about Lee, but that movie never happened because Lee “broke off ties with the production company,” according to an intro title card in “My Old School.” In its own way, “My Old School” gave Cumming a chance to play the role that he had been set to do in the dramatic feature film.

“My Old School” (which had its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival) also has interviews with some of the Bearsden Academy students and faculty who knew Lee back in 1993. The documentary also uses quite a bit of animation to recreate descriptions of what the interviewees say happened while Lee was enrolled in Bearsden Academy. Lee had a scandalous secret that was exposed during his short-lived year at Bearsden Academy in the 1990s.

In “My Old School,” Lee describes his 1993 enrollment in Bearsden Academy as a “self-made hell.” From the beginning, he stood out because he looked a lot older than 16, which is the age he told everyone that he was. Lee’s story was that he was a transfer student from Canada. He was raised by a single mother, who was an opera singer, so he traveled and lived in many different places. Lee said that his parents were separated and that he had no contact with his father, who was described as a professor living in London.

Lee also said that he and his mother were in a car accident, where she died and he was left physically scarred. After his mother’s death, Lee said he moved in with his maternal grandmother in a council flat in Glasgow, which is how he ended up at Bearsden Academy. It’s not spoiler information to reveal that Lee was really a lot older than 16 in 1993. But it won’t be revealed in this review what Lee’s real age was at the time or why he lied about his age.

It’s not the first time there’s been a true story of an adult posing as a teenager in high school. But there are some very surprising elements to this story that make it more uncommon than most. “My Old School” also has commentary on social class issues that affected what Lee did and people’s perceptions of him.

It’s explained in the movie that Bearsden Academy is in an upper-class area of Glasgow. However, some people who lived in the Bearsden neighborhood were working-class and lived in an area nicknamed Spam Valley. It had that nickname in reference to the idea that the lower-income people who lived in the area had to eat spam, in order to afford living in the Bearsden neighborhood.

Living in a council flat (which is the United Kingdom equivalent of public housing in the United States) automatically labeled Lee as a Spam Valley person. He was enrolled in Bearsden Academy because he was highly intelligent. (Lee told people that he had a genius-level IQ.) He also had upwardly mobile ambitions to become a medical doctor.

At first, Lee was a misfit when he enrolled in Bearsden Academy. He was bullied by some of the students for his odd-looking appearance of looking much older than 16. In classes, he was clearly the smartest student in the room. Students and faculty assumed that because he was raised by an opera singer and traveled a lot, that was the reason why Lee appeared to be older and more sophisticated than a typical teenager.

Eventually, he made some friends at Bearsden Academy. One of the first friendships he formed was with Stefen Addo, one of the few black students in the school. Addo and Lee had something in common, because they were both treated like outcasts by other students. The two schoolmates got to know each other better during their biology class, where Lee often helped Addo.

Addo, who is interviewed in the documentary, comments: “He would also a do a very funny Clint Eastwood impression. He was just an all-around nice guy.” Addo says of race relations at Bearsden, “There was quite a lot of racism going on. I had quite a few hate mail letters delivered to my home … just the usual abuse, really.”

Lee adds of the neighborhood where Bearsden is located, “There were only a few people who weren’t white Anglo Saxons. It’s a little station where the rich people live, the well-to-do people. And there’s the attitude that accompanies it.” Addo says that Lee stood up for Addo when Addo got racist bullying in school, and the bullies eventually stopped attacking Addo.

Brian MacKinnon and Donald Lindsay (who are both interviewed in “My Old School”) were best friends when they attended Bearsden Academy. They also have vivid memories of Lee, who bonded with Lindsay over music. Lindsay says in the documentary, “What I remember talking to Brandon about was music.”

Lindsay adds that he secretly liked techno music, which wasn’t considered cool for guys to like at the time, but Lee admitted he also liked techno music. Lindsay remembers that Lee was a fan of music acts such as Television (a rock band) and 2 Unlimited (a dance music duo). Lindsay also became fans of those artists too.

Lee eventually became more popular with the Bearsden Academy students when they found out that he had a driver’s license and a car, so he became a useful “chauffeur” for students who wanted car rides from him. In the United Kingdom, people can get a provisional driver’s license at age 15, but aren’t legally allowed to drive a car until the age of 17. Lee explained to people that he got his driver’s license in Canada, where 16 is the minimum age to get a driver’s license.

Lee also made his mark on Bearsden Academy by being cast in the lead role of Lieutenant Joseph Cable in the school’s production of the musical “South Pacific.” Paul MacAlindin, who was a Bearsden music teacher at the time, remembers that he didn’t think Lee had the personality or talent to have this leading role. However, Lee could do an American accent very well, which is the main reason whe he got the role. Everyone at Bearsden Academy would later find out that Lee was doing a lot more acting than in his role in “South Pacific.”

The animation in “My Old School” might be a little too distracting for some viewers. However, the animation fits the tone of the movie very well and certainly works better than if the filmmakers had chosen live actors for the recreations. The story of Lee is almost cartoonish, so it seems appropriate that there’s some animation in this documentary. The voice actors in the animation scenes are Cumming (who does the voice of Lee in 1993), Clare Grogan, Lulu, Juliet Cadzow, Michelle Gallagher, Camilla Kerslake, Gary Lamont, Natalie McConnon, Joe McFadden, Carly McKinnon, Brian O’Sullivan, Wam Siluka Jr. and Dawn Steele.

“My Old School” has a breezy tone to it that makes the documentary almost seem comedic at times. That’s mainly because the people who were fooled by Lee can laugh about it now. They were easily conned, even though there were so many indications that Lee was lying about his real age. Even with comedic touches in “My Old School,” the movie also peels away the layers of Lee’s real story, which has a lot of sadness to it and is often pathetic. The main takeaway that viewers will have is that he is still living in the “self-made hell” that he started when he enrolled in Bearsden Academy under false pretenses.

Magnolia Pictures released “My Old School” in select U.S. cinemas on July 22, 2022. The movie was released in the United Kingdom on August 19, 2022.