At The Movies: Amsterdam misfires, Blonde salvaged by its leading lady

Amsterdam is loosely based on the 1933 White House Putsch. PHOTO: The Walt Disney Co

Amsterdam (NC16)

134 minutes, opens on Thursday
2 stars

The story: Christian Bale plays a doctor, John David Washington an attorney and Margot Robbie a nurse. The three friends are framed for a murder in 1930s New York and uncover a dastardly political conspiracy.

Amsterdam, the first feature from Hollywood film-maker David O. Russell since Joy (2015), is loosely based on the 1933 White House Putsch, a plot to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install a dictator.

But to be clear, this true-crime period comedy romance adventure with its mannered wackiness and empty caricatures is a misfire, nothing like the 2013 true-crime period caper American Hustle which scored 10 Academy Award nominations, including for writer-director Russell and his regular lead Bale.

Bale’s doctor here is a big-hearted war veteran with a glass eye. He narrates the flashback showing the threesome forging their bond and finding freedom – from racism, family, social strictures – in 1918 Europe during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in a Manhattan thick with post-war intrigue, they reunite to investigate an assassination.

Famous actors swan in and out of the narrative sprawl, each given an idiosyncrasy in place of a character – whether Michael Shannon’s and Mike Myers’ pair of Allied spies, who are avid ornithologists, or Robbie’s nurse, who alchemises shrapnel into art.

Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy are a society couple. Chris Rock, Zoe Saldana, Matthias Schoenaerts and Taylor Swift are others in a crowded cast, their combined screen time less than that of Bale’s glass eye.

Only Robert De Niro plays his decorated general straight in a late welcome appearance. That is because he has to deliver the movie’s serious, timely warning about safeguarding democracy from resurgent fascism, although almost as grave a concern is the squandering of the collective acting talent.

Hot take: Do not be deceived by the starry cast. This is a misbegotten farce.


Blonde (R21)

Ana de Armas is the blonde who salvages a sordid biography. PHOTO: NETFLIX

167 minutes, available on Netflix
3 stars

The story: Ana de Armas has the unenviable task of incarnating the Hollywood screen goddess in an expressionistic reimagining of the Marilyn Monroe myth, based on Joyce Carol Oates’ 2000 novel.

Gliding between Technicolor and monochrome, Blonde is, all at once, artful film-making, a star-making showcase for de Armas and a lurid biopic that is polarising critics and nauseating just about everyone.

This Monroe, born to an abusive single mother (Julianne Nicholson), is a teary woman-child forever searching for a phantom father to deliver her from her brief, tragic life of rape and male exploitation: by studio chiefs, the public, the paparazzi, the President of the United States, as well as her two husbands, an “Ex-Athlete” (Bobby Cannavale) and “The Playwright” (Adrien Brody) she calls “Daddy”.

Her graphic fever dream of naked sexual degradation and addiction is a punishing watch. Viewers “disgusted” by this controversial melodrama are reportedly switching off after 20 minutes.

“Am I meat to be delivered?” wonders the blonde bombshell. Yes is the reply, and not an incorrect one from acclaimed Australian writer-director Andrew Dominik, who indicted fame with acuity in The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2007).

But what Dominik refuses to appreciate in his vulgar victimisation of his subject is that Monroe’s mind and prodigious gift remained hers. She formed a production company, and negotiated her contract for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).

Cuban-American actress de Armas seamlessly re-enacts scenes from Monroe’s classics, including also The Seven Year Itch (1955). Her resemblance is bewitching. She brings luminosity and feeling — all of herself, beyond those exposed body parts — to even the bleakest moments.

Hot take: Ana de Armas is the blonde who salvages a sordid biography.

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