Danny Huston Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘Consecration’ (2023), starring Jena Malone, Danny Huston, Thoren Ferguson, Will Keen, Ian Pirie and Janet Suzman

July 30, 2023

by Carla Hay

Jena Malone (center) in “Consecration” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

“Consecration” (2023)

Directed by Christopher Smith

Culture Representation: Taking place in the United Kingdom, the horror film “Concentration” features a nearly all-white cast of characters (with a few Asians and black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A London-based ophthamologist goes to a mysterious convent in the Scottish Highlands to investigate the death of her priest brother, who is said to have murdered another priest and then committed suicide on the convent property.

Culture Audience: “Consecration” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of stars Jena Malone and Catholic-oriented horror movies that have flimsy stories and very little scares.

Danny Huston (center) in “Consecration” (Photo courtesy of IFC Films)

There has rarely been a genuinely great horror movie about nuns. “Consecration” is yet another in a long line of these misfires doing the usual stereotypes of uptight Catholic nuns in a substandard story about supernatural evil. The movie’s ending is awful.

Directed by Christopher Smith (who co-wrote the nonsensical “Consecration” screenplay with Laurie Cook), “Consecration has a story concept with the potential to be an interesting horror movie. However, the screenplay bungles and jumbles this concept at almost every turn. There are some visually striking images in “Consecration,” but visuals alone cannot make up for a weak and poorly conceived screenplay.

“Consecration” (which takes place in the United Kingdom) begins with viewers hearing a voiceover from a London-based ophthamologist named Grace Fario (played by Jena Malone) saying: “My brother used to believe I had a guardian angel. And I used to believe in nothing. But now, I’m not so sure.”

Grace is bachelorette who doesn’t live with any people but she has an orange tabby cat named Mr. Moo. One of the first scenes in the movie shows Grace referring a patient named Mrs. To (played by Valerie Saruf) and her husband Mr. To (played by Godwin To) to another experienced ophthamologist named Dr. John (played by Will Keen), who thinks Grace is competent but a bit eccentric. Dr. John calls Grace a “recluse.”

Grace is at home when she gets a devastating phone call: Her younger brother Michael (played by Steffan Gennydd in flashbacks), a Catholic priest who was living in Scotland, has been found dead at Mount Saviour Convent in the Scottish Highlands. Michael is said to have murdered another Catholic priest named Father Carol, who was visiting from Rome, before Michael supposedly killed himself by jumping off of a cliff. The convent is located on a remote cliff that overlooks a beach.

Grace, who is an atheist, doesn’t believe that Michael committed a murder/suicide. She immediately goes to Mount Saviour Convent to investigate. Grace is able to see Michael’s body before he is buried. And she immediately notices that his injuries do not look consistent with a suicide by jumping off of a cliff. Michael’s body was supposedly found on the beach, but Grace sees that there is no sand anywhere on his body.

During her investigation, Grace interacts with three people the most: Detective Chief Inspector Harris (played by Thoren Ferguson), who is polite and methodical, thinks Grace is interfering with his own investigation into Michael’s death. The convent’s Mother Superior (played by Janet Suzman) is stern and very superstitious. Father Russo (played by Danny Huston), who leads the religious ceremonies held at the convent, is domineering and quick-tempered.

DCI Harris tells Grace that the convent is on land owned by the Vatican. “Technically, we’re not in Scotland right now,” he adds. Mother Superior thinks she’s in another world altogether, as she tells Grace: “It was a demon, not your brother, who killed Father Carol.” Grace’s response to Mother Superior is this rude comment: “Cut the bullshit.”

The convent nuns are preparing a consecration ceremony to purify the land as a holy site after these gruesome deaths. Grace stays at the convent, because it’s the movie’s convenient way for Grace to personally witness all the creepy supernatural things that happen to her at this darkly lit convent, which doesn’t seem to know the meaning of electricity in every room.

Grace eventually finds out that the nuns have a bizarre punishment ritual where someone who has “sinned” has to stand on the cliff and take a step backward for every sin that person has committed. If the person falls backward off the cliff and dies, the nuns believe that it’s God’s way of showing that the person deserved to die this way.

Grace has the expected nightmarish visions in this cliché-ridden film, which over-relies on showing too many “jump scare” scenes that don’t really go anywhere and don’t add much to the plot. There are also mind-numbing scenes of Grace being annoyed by a young nun named Sister Beth (played Alexandra Lewis), who likes to play “peek-a-boo” type pranks on Grace. There are also predictable clashes between Grace and Mother Superior, who tells Grace: You are not how your brother described you; ‘calm, measured, full of grace.'” Mother Superior and Sister Beth are the only nuns in the movie who have memorable personalities.

Some of Grace’s backstory is revealed to give more clues about why Grace and Michael ended up having very different views about religion. The siblings’ father Vincent (played by Ian Pirie) is in prison for killing the siblings’ mother. There are a few flashback scenes showing the childhoods of Grace (played by Daisy Allen) and Michael (played by Kit Rakusen), as well as what happened on the day that their mother (played Victoria Donovan) died. The acting performances in “Consecration” range from mediocre to very unimpressive.

Unfortunately, so much of “Consecration” is too caught up in showing disconnected scenes that further muddle the overall story. Grace’s “investigation” never looks authentic or believable. And a lot of the movie’s dialogue is simply atrocious. There’s a scene where Sister Beth tells Grace: “I knew a man once. We rubbed our bellies so close together, it made black snakes appear. Don’t tell Mother.” After watching “Consecration,” the only blessing you might feel is that this time-wasting movie is finally over and is unlikely to ever get a sequel.

IFC Films released “Consecration” in select U.S. cinemas on February 10, 2023. The movie was released on digital and VOD on March 7, 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: ‘Traveling Light’ (2022), starring Danny Huston, Tony Todd, Stephen Dorff and Olivia d’Abo

August 30, 2022

by Carla Hay

Danny Huston, Stephen Dorff and Duke Nicholson in “Traveling Light” (Photo courtesy of Xenon Pictures)

“Traveling Light” (2022)

Directed by Bernard Rose

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles on May 30 and May 31, 2020, the dramatic film “Traveling Light” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Various strangers, who end up crossing paths each other in some way or another, have different ways of coping with quarantine lockdowns and other restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Culture Audience: “Traveling Light” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of stars Danny Huston, Stephen Dorff and Tony Todd and any rambling and aimless movies that are a complete waste of time.

Stephen Dorff and Olivia d’Abo in “Traveling Light” (Photo courtesy of Xenon Pictures)

One of the many unfortunate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the entertainment industry is that it’s spawned a lot of awful movies with a COVID-19 theme. “Traveling Light” is one of these cinematic abominations. It’s utterly incoherent and pointless.

How bad is “Traveling Light”? When I saw the movie in a New York City movie theater, at a screening attended by members of the ticket-buying public, there were only three people in the room, including myself. By the end of the movie, the other two people—who clearly disliked the movie and couldn’t take watching it anymore—had walked out in disgust. One person left about halfway through the film, while the other person had enough of “Traveling Light’s” nonsense about three-quarters of the way through the movie.

Because I planned to review the film, I stayed until the bitter end. “Traveling Light” (written and directed by Bernard Rose) is so sloppily made, the end credits are very incomplete. The only end credits that showed up on screen were quick listings of the music composers and songwriters whose work could be heard in “Traveling Light.” There are student films and amateur YouTube videos that are more professionally made than “Traveling Light.”

“Traveling Light” writer/director Rose is best known for directing and co-writing the 1992 horror film “Candyman,” which spawned several inferior sequels and a 2021 reboot/sequel. “Candyman” and Rose’s 1994 drama “Immortal Beloved” (starring Gary Oldman) are probably Rose’s best-received movies by critics. All of Rose’s other movies have been considered middling or forgettable flops with critics and general audiences.

Rose’s connection to the original “Candyman” movie explains why original “Candyman” star Tony Todd is in “Traveling Light” in a completely underdeveloped and embarrassing role. Rose apparently also used his past working relationship with longtime British actor Danny Huston (who usually plays American characters in American-made movies) to lure Huston into the junkpile trap of making “Traveling Light.” Rose and Huston previously worked together on the the 2012 comedy/drama “2 Jacks” and a substandard 2015 remake of the horror classic “Frankenstein.”

“Traveling Light” takes place in Los Angeles during a 24-hour period from May 30 to May 31, 2020, during the pre-vaccine quarantined lockdown days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The movie is somewhat trying to be an experimental, avant-garde 2020 version of the 2005 Oscar-winning drama “Crash,” a movie showing various Los Angeles residents who are seemingly strangers to each other, but it’s eventually revealed how they cross paths and affect each other lives.

If “Crash” had any influence on “Traveling Light,” it’s not worth bragging about, since “Crash” is considered one of the worst Best Picture winners of all time at the Academy Awards. And “Traveling Light” is far from award-worthy. “Traveling Light” is such an obscure bomb, it’s not even notable enough to get on the radar of the Razzie Awards.

In “Traveling Light,” the movie goes back and forth between showing various neurotic characters who are mostly middle-aged. Harry (played by Huston) is a famous spiritual guru who has a cult-like following. He has gatherings in the homes of affluent people, under the guise that these gatherings are spiritual enlightenment seminars/retreats. “Traveling Light” shows one of these gatherings, which is really just a party where people take all sorts of drugs with Harry. Being a celebrity guru has taken an emotional toll on Harry’s marriage to his long-suffering wife Blue (Rosie Fellner), who is living in Harry’s shadow.

Todd (played by Stephen Dorff) is a semi-famous actor who is one of Harry’s devoted followers. Todd feels so restless and bored in his marriage to his loyal and responsible wife Mary (played by Olivia d’Abo), it’s not unusual for Todd to disappear for several days, so that he can avoid having to interact with Mary. After Todd does a virtual group meditation session with Harry, a star-struck Todd comments to Mary about Harry’s supposed genius skills: “I don’t think I can meditate that fast. He’s channeling something.”

Caddy (played by “Candyman” star Todd) is a brooding bachelor loner who has come out of retirement (his previous job is never mentioned) during the pandemic to become a rideshare driver because he doesn’t want to be cooped up in his house during a quarantine. Caddy is adamant that he and other people around him need to wear face masks during this pandemic. He is superstitious about getting infected with COVID-19, so he carries a bag of juju and a crucifix with him as good luck charms. Caddy is also dealing with the emotional pain of looking for his missing adult son Cecil, who is homeless and has mental health issues.

Arthur (played by Matthew Jacobs) is a British oddball with a fixation on trying to monitor people who are not wearing a mask and/or not social distancing. In one aggravatingly stupid sequence in the movie, Arthur uses his phone to video record a homeless couple named Anne (played by Jen Kuhn) and Blaster (played by Jeff Hilliard) because Anne and Blaster are not wearing masks and not social distancing while out on a public street. Anne and Blaster get annoyed when they see Arthur video recording them and tell him to stop. He refuses.

Arthur’s video recording is creepy but not illegal, as long as he doesn’t use the footage for any commercial purposes that would require signed release forms. For example, people on a public street can be recorded without their permission for security surveillance, for private (non-commercial use), or for news-gathering purposes. The problem is that Arthur refuses to tell Anne and Blaster where he’s going to put the video footage that he took of this homeless couple.

It leads to a confrontation where Anne and Blaster chase after Arthur on the street. They corner Arthur and get into a physical altercation with him, until Arthur agrees to delete the video footage. This sequence is neither amusing nor interesting. And it just makes Arthur look weird and petty, because homeless people have a lot bigger problems to worry about than a stranger trying to shame them for not social distancing on a street during this pandemic.

Arthur is acquainted with another eccentric who also has a very meddling and preachy attitude about whether or not people are wearing face masks in public. This busybody is named Gretchen (played by Vanessa Yuille), who has gone as far as making hand-held signs with slogans lecturing people to wear face masks. “Traveling Light” has some contrived and awkward-looking scenes where Arthur and Gretchen communicate by phone or meet each other in person to come up with schemes to catch people aren’t wearing face masks.

As far as Gretchen and Arthur are concerned, people who aren’t wearing face masks during the pandemic are health terrorists who are putting other people’s lives in danger. Gretchen proudly shows Arthur one of her hand-held signs, which says: “Don’t be a [dick], wear a mask!” Instead of the word “dick,” she put an illustration of a penis on the sign. Gretchen thinks the penis illustration is appropriate, while Arthur does not, and they debate about it. This is what’s supposed to pass as comedy in “Traveling Light.”

“Traveling Light” makes a very superficial attempt at having a social conscience, when the movie shows in its opening scene that Caddy (who is African American) is watching with despair some TV news about the civil rights protests following the death of George Floyd by police brutality. As most people know by now, Floyd was an unarmed, 46-year-old African American man who was murdered on a Minneapolis street by a white police officer who put his full body weight on Floyd’s neck, while three of the cop’s colleagues stood by and prevented bystanders from helping Floyd, who was begging for help. Floyd’s murder (which happened on May 25, 2020) was documented on video and led to worldwide protests over racist police brutality.

Unfortunately, “Traveling Light” does nothing substantial with the movie being set during the history-making anti-police-brutality protests in the days and weeks after Floyd’s murder. The movie could have explored the added anxiety that Caddy must have felt in knowing that his homeless son Cecil, a mentally ill African American man, is especially vulnerable to police brutality or unlawful arrests/detainments. Instead, these issues are tossed aside in “Traveling Light” like a discarded pandemic mask.

“Traveling Light” has tedious scenes showing the drug-induced ramblings of attendees at one of Harry’s retreats at a hillside mansion, where Harry hands out an unidentified liquid psychedelic drug that he calls an “elixir.” Harry repeats, “I ask for forgiveness, and I give forgiveness.” Todd is at one of these “retreats,” where various other drugs are consumed, including marijuana, cocaine, pills and alcohol. Expect to see some predictable druggie scenes that go nowhere and mean nothing.

Two people in their 20s named Clara (played by Lena Gora) and Sydney (played by Duke Nicholson) meet at this party and seem to have an attraction to each other. Too bad their drugged-out conversations are just the verbal equivalent of diarrhea. Sydney is so stoned, he can barely stand, let along comprehend what’s going on around him.

Clara then flirts with Todd when they end up alone together in a walk-in closet. Todd’s worried wife Mary suddenly shows up at the party and angrily demands to know what Clara is doing with recovering drug addict Todd, who is supposed to be clean and sober. Todd and Clara deny that anything sexual is going on between them. And then, Clara pretends that Sydney is her boyfriend. This part of the movie is like watching someone’s drugged-addled idea of a soap opera.

It should come as no surprise that some of these characters end up as passengers in Caddy’s car, as if he’s the only rideshare driver in Los Angeles. Caddy says at one point in the movie that he’s only been a rideshare driver for one day. The way that he berates some of his customers for not wearing masks, you get the feeling that he won’t last much longer as a rideshare driver because of all the bad reviews he’s going to get from customers. All of the cast members’ performances in “Traveling Light” range from lackluster to excruciatingly horrible.

At one point in this dreadful movie, Harry leads a group chant where he roars like an animal, because he’s so whacked out on drugs. His followers love it, because they think whatever comes out of Harry’s mouth is supposed to have some deeper meaning. “Traveling Light” is one of those pretentiously bad films that tries to make people think it has deeper meaning too, but it’s all just a sham that’s nothing but a load of rubbish and hot air.

Xenon Pictures released “Traveling Light” in select U.S. cinemas, beginning in Los Angeles on June 10, 2022, and in New York City and Seattle on August 19, 2022.