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OT: "I Care a Lot" on Netflix

posted 3 years ago by ecarle (14979)
18 replies | jump to latest

NO SPOILERS

The years have passed and I'm not particularly young anymore and one "regret" is the extent to which the youthful excitements of "the movies" have passed back into time themselves. Movie stars aren't such a big deal to me anymore and movies in general no longer really have the power to "awe" me.

Except sometimes, with a few filmmakers and that's a good feeling. A coupla years ago, I was in great anticipation of both QT's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Scorsese's The Irishman and the anticipation paid off with two films(especially the QT) that ALMOST brought back my youthful movie love at the levels of my childhood, teens, and 20s.

On a much lesser scale - but with surprising power nonetheless -- a recent release TO Netflix surprised me by hooking me as the movies once did often, not rarely.

"I Care a Lot" is one of those "straight to Netflix" movies that had a decent enough cast. By the time it was over, as opposed to recent HBO Plus "movies" like "The Little Things" (with Denzel) and "Those Who Wish Me Dead" (with Angie Jolie) which did NOT feel like "real" movies...this one DID.

For a pretty simple reason: due to clever writing and excellent acting...this movie GRIPS the viewer. The film creates anger and outrage pretty much from the jump, and maintains that anger and outrage through a series of suspenseful scenes (alternating with great conflict dialogue between actors) all the way to the end. Its darkly funny, too. But VERY darkly. Its too mean to enjoy.

Rosamund Pike is our lead, and in interviews, Ms. Pike has confirmed that her character here is the most evil one she has played since the one in "Gone Girl"(which, I guess is her most famous movie outside of a Pierce Brosnan Bond from way back when.)

The premise is evidently based on a "worst case" scenario of something that CAN(the research tells us) happen in real life. Ms. Pike is a very officious, very smart, very pretty and very prevaricating "professional legal guardian of incompetant senior citizens," with a vicious modus operandi. Research and locate a "patsy" -- an elderly person with no relatives and assets(preferably a house) and money. Get a crooked doctor to declare the elderly person "incompetent"; get a judge to go along; take over the care of the elderly person and sock them away in a nursing home. And THEN: sell their house, drain all their money into your own accounts, and leave them destitute.

Its an evil practice, and we see Pike go after her newest "patsy" -- sweet-faced Dianne Wiest - and work her dark magic. Over Wiest's protests ("There's nothing wrong with me,I'm fine"), Pike spirits Wiest away to "house arrest" at a nursing home and goes to work on selling her house and draining her assets.

Watching the sociopathic Pike ruin Wiest's life - while controlling Wiest with too many drugs and too little food at the crooked nursing home -- creates rage and anger that reminds me the phrase "its only a movie" still doesn't work if you are worked up to a frenzy of hate.

Meanwhile, the evil Pike eventually finds herself coming up against all manner of opponents out to save Wiest...but the battle is among baddies. And great fun to watch.

I found the film interestingly at odds with that cliche term "political correctness," but there it was. Pike's equally uncaring partner-in-crime is her beautiful lesbian partner(in work and in bed) Eiza Gonzalez. And these two evil women have the help of yet another evil woman -- a doctor(pert red-headed Alica Witt, a crush of long ago) to put the elderly away as incompetent. yep, its a three-woman-team of arch villains (plus one man who runs the nursing home.)

The judge who so often does Pike's bidding -- in a mixture of bleeding-heart "caring," prideful ego, and...stupidity?...is played by an African-American man. (That's Pike's "play" - the female doctor diagnoses the victim as incompetent, the judge affirms, the crooked nursing home owner institutes imprisonment.) I found it all most fair and equitable in doling out villainies.

As for Pike, she at once plays her "I am woman, hear me roar" card against those who would try to stop her, and impressively fights back against all manner of verbal and physical threats to her well being.

Peter Dinklage is in this, glowering away with his oh-so-expressive face. And Chris Messina is handsome and funny as a crooked lawyer crossing swords with Pike.

By the time it was over, I wasn't sure if "I Care a Lot" was a Hitchcock-style classic(though it borrows a lot of his suspense tropes and smiling-villain power), but I certainly would not have felt short-changed had I paid to see it at the theater. Its an "ARRRGH!" movie - you feel the rage. (As with Scorpio in Dirty Harry and Rusk in HItchcock's Frenzy, one feels the desire to reach into the screen and kill them.)

Looks good, too. All well-lit and pastel, in accord with Pike's feminine wiles.

A good double feature with "Gone Girl."

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

I Care a Lot has a strange tone. It sets a up a truly loathsome character who represents what exactly: the specific mechanism of conspiratorial professional guardianship leading to elder abuse? The fusion of late stage capitalism with Girlboss/Mean Girl/Hustle-culture Feminism? The film shows the loathsome character as pretty glamorous and attractive and hip and successful, ultimately taking her exploitative schemes national with mob backing (which Dinklage's character apparently has no problem with - it was really only *his* mom he cared about, and even after having been tortured, etc. he has no qualms about setting up a national business to do to other people's moms what he didn't appreciate done to his own). The film ends with Pike getting her comeuppance out of the blue from the vigilante violence of a previously exploited party (right after Pike's character gives an absurd monologue questioning whether she's a lion or a lamb! What?). But there's no suggestion that the new national programme for elder/exploitation explodes or ceases to be a Wall Street darling, rather this new sort of amoral capitalistic enterprise machine will roll on. Huh? Did the film care at all about any of the real world issues it raised?

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

Black Comedy's are hard I guess. At some point we have to let go of caring about the bad things the magnetically evil, funny lead did. Kind Hearts and Coronets succeeds because because the bad character only kills members of his own cartoonishly rich and eccentric family. Chaplin's Mr Verdoux repulses and fails because it's simply impossible to set aside all the wives he kills. I think ICAL is down the Mr Verdoux (low) end of the spectrum of Black Comedy success.

But opinions are going to vary about this. I remember feeling increasingly irritated by all the trolling of signifiers of modern hipster/instagram-ready cool among the conspirators- the multicultural lesbian girlfriend, the female doctor, the black judge. But some people are going to like that, even think it profound. The whole film in fact seemed designed to annoy me - the implausible action, the flippant reversal ending, the vague worshipping of money and glitz/instagram-readiness throughout. But a lot of my distaste for that stuff is just taste I suppose.

I feel now like I need to do a big survey of Black Comedies to try to figure out where I stand. Maybe nowhere coherent I fear! Anyhow, for a small moment back in the fall it looked like ICAL was going to steal Promising Young Woman's thunder, but then Oscar etc. nominations confirmed that PYC was this year's chosen one, candy-colored Blackish comedy with revered Brit actress star, and suddently ICAL was all but forgotten. (PYC has its problems too in my view but fewer than ICAL I'd say.)

Rosamunde Pike and Carey Mulligan were in a few good movies together - Pride and Prejudice, An Education - earlier in their careers, often playing sisterly types: pretty, soft English girls we like. Pike has ended up doing a strong line in terrifying predatory women. Around the same time as Gone Girl she was great channeling Isabelle Adjani's subway freakout in Possession (1981) in a music video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElvLZMsYXlo

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

As you say, ecarle, ICAL is an '"ARRRGH!" movie - you feel the rage', i.e., against the main character and maybe even despair about how easily evil schemes can become normal business culture (or normal political culture, think of how things that *used* to be just academic anecdotes and the definition of political evil, e.g., about voter supression & restricting votes, about industrial-scale gerrymandering possibilities, and about the buggy POS the US constitution is that it allows legislators to throw out electoral votes and in turn send presidential elections to be decided in the House of Representative on a 'majority of states' basis, are now one party's core political strategies and the party's base goes along with all that). But the film's take on all this really angering and despair-provoking stuff is very superficial - it's all little more than a convenient excuse for lots of ogling glamour and wealth and hustle.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

SPOILERS

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I Care a Lot has a strange tone.

--

Aha...you've seen it! This "opens the door" for a SPOILER discussion that gets into what does and doesn't work in it. And -- we shall see, nothing is ever REALLY OT from Psycho. Not even this one.

---

It sets a up a truly loathsome character
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"Truly loathsome character" -- that's about right. I think I am trying to articulate that in my case, with movies slowly "drifting away from interesting me" as I know more about them...here was a movie that used a blunt emotional instrument -- a loathsome character -- to create good basic human ANGER within me -- which means the movies still CAN work. I believe this has been called the "strangling a kitten on screen" syndrome -- a filmmaker can make our blood boil with ease if they write a character cruel and mean enough.

I'm reminded here that part of the brilliance of Psycho remains that Norman Bates is NOT loathsome for the duration of the film. He's nice and polite and shy and..amazingly...even when he becomes a clear accomplice to Mother's murders by sinking the cars with the bodies ...we STILL stay at least somewhat on his side.

The other way to go -- as in I Care A Lot -- is with the "loathsome from the get go" character you want to hate. "Marla"(Rosamund Pike ) is such a one.

Marla is hateable for another Hitchcock reason -- too many people(like the judge) take her at her word as a "caring person interested in the welfare of her clients." WE know that's not the case at all, she's not only a crook , she takes a sadist's delight in literally torturing her charges (via an increase in drugs and a decrease in food) and she tells one of them (Dianne Wiest) just that: "I own you. You're not going to escape me. I control everything that is done to you and for you. You'll never get out of this nursing home."(I paraphrased all of that, its the "gist.")

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

a loathsome character who represents what exactly: the specific mechanism of conspiratorial professional guardianship leading to elder abuse? The fusion of late stage capitalism with Girlboss/Mean Girl/Hustle-culture Feminism?

--

Oh...both, I'd suppose. The "corrupt guardianship" is the crux of the film -- the premise that makes it unique(to my mind.) But making Marla both attractive(pretty much inevitable in a story like this) and "empowered" allows the current critique of such things. Does not our support for female empowerment end when that empowerment is based on psychopathic criminal motivations?

And I do think, as the film goes on , that Marla registers as a psychopath. She profits off the misery of old people, and she delights in torturing old people(with her words and with the deeds that OTHERS perform for her.)

And this is what makes the movie oh so fun eventually(SPOILERS): Evil Marla has kidnapped the wrong old lady this time(Wiest.) Wiest is the mother of an even MORE psychotic Russian Mafia gang boss(Peter Dinklage) and we delight in what's going to happen: this OTHER evil person will be "our savior" in taking out Evil Marla. Movies have actually been doing this for years, giving us mob or hitman characters who do horrible things to horrible people on our behalf(example: Michael Caine in the original Get Carter). Dinklage isn't the cops or the FBI ...he's the Mob. And he will beat, torture, possibly KILL Marla (and her teammates) with impunity. And this will satisfy us...because this is an "AARRGH" movie.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I concur with what a few reviews pointed out: the most fun scene in the movie is before Dinklage confronts Marla directly. Instead, he sends a young, handsome(though sorta goofy looking) lawyer(Chris Messina) to make first contact with Marla and to spar with her: he KNOWS of her scams; he KNOWS of her evil; he KNOWS how many old people she has victimized -- but he is here only to extract Dianne Wiest from Marla's clutches, nothing more.

And Marla decides...she's having none of it. Ultra evil herself, she figures out that there's a lot of money to be made by releasing Wiest to this mob lawyer. Rosamund Pike is interesting here -- she's a beautiful woman of middle-age now, the looks are going a bit, and she turns on a huge, face-filling smile that looks rather like Mrs. Bate's toothy grin. It feels false -- I'm reminded of Joe Stefano's script direction for Arbogast: "He has a particularly unfriendly smile." So does Marla.

Back and forth Marla and the handsome mob lawyer go....she better fork over Wiest, this can get ugly, broken bones, excruciating death. So what? Marla counters. A psychopath can't be intimidated. A fun scene. -- a two-hander in the tradition of Norman/Arbogast way back when; QT and Aaron Sorkin today. If not quite at those levels...but...good enough. Fun.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The film shows the loathsome character as pretty glamorous and attractive and hip and successful, ultimately taking her exploitative schemes national with mob backing (which Dinklage's character apparently has no problem with - it was really only *his* mom he cared about, and even after having been tortured, etc. he has no qualms about setting up a national business to do to other people's moms what he didn't appreciate done to his own).

---

I had no problem with Dinklage electing to partner with Marla in taking her evil scam nationwide even as she victimized his own mother. They are fellow greed-driven sociopath/psychopaths....Dinklage sees the money in the scheme and cares nothing about other people's old parents.

Indeed, my heart sunk at this moment -- again, movies can effect me emotionally no matter the "quality" -- was this going to be one of those "the bad guys win" movies? Back to the 70's?

And in the last moments of the film -- we are finally avenged. A character barely seen at the beginning of the film(but certainly established as an ARRRGH victim in his scenes) appears with a gun and shoots Marla down in front of her girlfriend.

This begs another question: was this too "easy" , this last-minute delivery of justice that makes us feel better?

Sure, I say. This reminded me of another movie -- Van Sant's "To Die For" - in which Evil Nicole Kidman gets away with everything(including arranging her husband's murder) only to finally get killed by a mob hitman at the end(hired by her husband's family.) Same deal, really...quick, arbitrary and oh so satisfying.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The film ends with Pike getting her comeuppance out of the blue from the vigilante violence of a previously exploited party (right after Pike's character gives an absurd monologue questioning whether she's a lion or a lamb! What?).

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I don't recall the content of the monologue, but the shooter was certainly well established in his angst: Marla had put HIS mother away in a nursing home and cut off his ability to contact her entirely. Then the mother died. Given the look and sound of this character(desperate, unattractive, alone) -- it made a lot of sense to me that he'd shoot(as long as he was willing to take the consequences.)

That son is part of the "set up" of I Care A Lot, the "food for thought" part: Marla had convinced the judge that the son was a villain himself -- "all too common" -- an uncaring child who refuses to get food and treatment for the parent because it would "cut into their inheritance."

..and you COULD do a movie like that, where the adult child IS the villain and the guardian saves the day by protecting the client from "the evil family members." (This was Clint Eastwood's role in Million Dollar Baby - -except the evil family member was the mother, not the child.)

In short, legal guardians can be villains(like Marla) or heroes(like Eastwood)...the story changes with the characters. As things do in life.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

But there's no suggestion that the new national programme for elder/exploitation explodes or ceases to be a Wall Street darling, rather this new sort of amoral capitalistic enterprise machine will roll on. Huh? Did the film care at all about any of the real world issues it raised?

--

Good question and -- I don't know. Our main villain is dispatched, and satisfaction is felt. I suppose you could call "I Care A Lot" a "message movie" : SOMEBODY should monitor legal guardians to make sure they don't abuse their clients (I think this came up in a real life case about the treatment of Peter Falk at his end). Or better still, WE should make sure that our parents are properly taken care of in their last years. Of course, Marla specialized in elder patients "with nobody" (and then finds out that Wiest has SOMEBODY.)

Look, the care and protection of our fellow human beings is a issue for the ages. Orphans, foster children...elder care.. the homeless. Tough issues, often hard to face, often dealt with in unpalatable but successful ways(many foster care females thrown out at age 18 become strippers to earn their way in the world.)

This movie picked "one angle," cast it well, used a thriller framework and delivered satisfaction...rather than frustration -- at the end. Good enough for me.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Black Comedy's are hard I guess. At some point we have to let go of caring about the bad things the magnetically evil, funny lead did.

---

Indeed. I often found that reviews which call a film "a black comedy" may well be leading us to a movie about mean and heartless characters we aren't going to like, and an ending that will not be satisfying at all. Critics sometimes like these films with their "bad guys win" and downbeat endings. And I suppose I'm kind of "mashing up genres" here -- a downer tragedy like Chinatown or The Last Detail isn't a black comedy. Kind Hearts and Coronets and Monsieur Verdoux are much more like it -- rooting for the bad guys.

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Kind Hearts and Coronets succeeds because because the bad character only kills members of his own cartoonishly rich and eccentric family. Chaplin's Mr Verdoux repulses and fails because it's simply impossible to set aside all the wives he kills. I think ICAL is down the Mr Verdoux (low) end of the spectrum of Black Comedy success.

--

There you go. The villainy of the bad guy is measured by the innocence of the victims.

I'm reminded that, back in 1972, I noticed that both The Godfather and Frenzy had significant, brutal strangulation scenes -- in which the strangling took much longer than the "desultory squeeze" in earlier films. In The Godfather, the victim is a huge, hulking Mafia henchman(Luca Brasi) so one watches his murder(by three men; he's big) with a certain detached regard for the brutality of it. In Frenzy, the victim is a petite, innocent woman (targeted by a rapist-killer) so we watch with a fully invested mix of heartbreak and disgust.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

But opinions are going to vary about this. I remember feeling increasingly irritated by all the trolling of signifiers of modern hipster/instagram-ready cool among the conspirators- the multicultural lesbian girlfriend, the female doctor, the black judge. But some people are going to like that, even think it profound.

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I'm not sure I'm following you here -- the trolling was outside commentary , or within the film itself?

I myself took note of these casting and character decisions and frankly, I wasn't sure what to do with them. Marla and her girlfriend are extremely evil people -- so are we supposed to factor their lesbian relationship INTO that? Or simply take this as a characterization point.

Similarly, the judge is the only person in Marla's scheme(and it seems like only this one judge always takes these cases) who is not "part of the conspiracy." Marla and a crooked doctor(also a woman, whether lesbian or not isn't portrayed) railroad these old people as part of the plan, but the judge "innocently" goes along every time. And ends up being someone we look at negatively -- why doesn't he check the facts? He BUYS Marla's fulsome speeches? He says to one person: "Do you disagree with my decision?" and we see his ego is invested. Anyway, he's a problematic character and one considers the African-American casting choice. Though I suppose we should NOT be questioning these casting choices in this day and age. Whether hero, villain, or stooge(the judge) race, creed, and sexual orientation need not matter.

(Sidebar: I did enjoy that Dinklage's mob men ended up killing the crooked doctor and badly beating up Marla's girlfriend. The ARRRGH factor, satisfied again.)

--

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The whole film in fact seemed designed to annoy me - the implausible action, the flippant reversal ending, the vague worshipping of money and glitz/instagram-readiness throughout. But a lot of my distaste for that stuff is just taste I suppose.

--

Well, it annoyed me too -- but it did grip me, held my interest. The scene between Marla and the young mob lawyer was "my kind of fun" -- ping pong dialogue(Pike's exquisite use of vape smoking throughout the film, and in this scene was a nifty, Satanic character trait.)

And I'm reminded of this: "I Care A Lot" shows us something that we are shown a lot: there are lots of good, charismatic actors out there -- but they are almost always at the mercy of their scripts. "I Care A Lot" isn't Oscar level(or even Hitchcock level) but...it worked for me. And Rosamund Pike, Peter Dinklage, Chris Messina, and Dianne Wiest were more than enough reason to watch(also, for personal reasons, Alicia Witt -- I recall her as a Hollywood assistant who seduced and abandoned Chris Moltisanti on The Sopranos years ago; she has aged well.) These actors have been in better things, but they made this thing...better.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I feel now like I need to do a big survey of Black Comedies to try to figure out where I stand. Maybe nowhere coherent I fear!

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Me,too...I suppose that the problem is "black comedy" is a pretty broad term. I know that I personally can't stand movies where "the bad guys win." (And critics seem to love those as "true to life.")

I like watching bad guys kill off WORSE guys. Michael Caine's rampage of revenge in Get Carter is the perfect example(not Sly Stallone in the sanitized remake.)

One critic called Psycho "the Blackest of Black Comedies" and I guess it is. A certain humor runs through the horrors of the film, and the basic concept was considered funny by some -- a man dresses up as his mother to kill.

There's a John Huston/Bogart movie I've never seen called "Beat the Devil" which is ALWAYS written of as a black comedy. Surely it is not in the horror tradition so...what IS it?

And so forth and so on.

"I Care a Lot" also reminds us that when your central villain is a sexy woman(see also: To Die For)...other elements enter in. Black comedy meets sexual tension.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Anyhow, for a small moment back in the fall it looked like ICAL was going to steal Promising Young Woman's thunder, but then Oscar etc. nominations confirmed that PYC was this year's chosen one, candy-colored Blackish comedy with revered Brit actress star, and suddently ICAL was all but forgotten. (PYC has its problems too in my view but fewer than ICAL I'd say.)

--

Yes... I wonder to what extent COVID and streaming entered into this? "We will show PYW in some theaters and push it for Oscar...I Care A Lot will be relegated to streaming."

Promising Young Woman is on streaming right now, but I've avoided seeing it yet for one simple reason: I am waiting for the rental fee to come down. I can watch so many other movies "for free" on streaming(including I Care a Lot) that my "value" side stops me from paying.

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Rosamunde Pike and Carey Mulligan were in a few good movies together - Pride and Prejudice, An Education - earlier in their careers, often playing sisterly types: pretty, soft English girls we like. P

--

You know, I SAW An Education...can't remember a thing about it, can't remember that Pike was in it; Carey Muligan, yes -- it "made" her.

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Pike has ended up doing a strong line in terrifying predatory women.

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Yes...well Pike has made a point in interviews in linking the Gone Girl villain(who, come to think of it, DOES get away with her crimes) to Marla. "If you liked me mean in THAT, wait til you see me in THIS."

Pike was also a villain in that Bond movie(Die Another Day) -- I looked at the photos from that movie and realized it was a long time ago; she was young and "hot"(a Bond girl) back then. (Bond woman Halle Berry kills her.) Now, she's just...attractive, and actually with an interestingly angular face and that scary toothy grin.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

PS. One weird thing in I Care a Lot. Pike gets one tooth knocked out during a beating while captured, ends up escaping a murder attempt and enters a 7-11 to buy some provisions. She puts the tooth into the full bottle of milk she buys. Odd moment. Can't figure it out.

..

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

I remember feeling increasingly irritated by all the trolling of signifiers of modern hipster/instagram-ready cool among the conspirators- the multicultural lesbian girlfriend, the female doctor, the black judge. But some people are going to like that, even think it profound.
---
I'm not sure I'm following you here -- the trolling was outside commentary , or within the film itself?

I meant inside the film. That is, it felt to me like the film made casting decisions in part to immunize itself against certain criticisms (perhaps making us like loathsome characters more than we should or at least feel guilty about doing so) but also in part to mock (by exaggerating) the tendency towards ultra-diverse casting these days. Something about the expenditure of the film's energies in these directions just bugged me.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

I wasn't nearly as enthuasiastic for this film as you were. I watched it because I saw it had the great Dianne Wiest. I was most intrigued by her character but disappointed the screenplay forgot about her story for most of the film.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I wasn't nearly as enthuasiastic for this film as you were.

--

OK. Understood.

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I watched it because I saw it had the great Dianne Wiest. I was most intrigued by her character but disappointed the screenplay forgot about her story for most of the film.

--

Well, Wiest -- like most actors -- has the calling card of her "unique face." In her case, those little slits for eyes can create a "sweet little granny effect' these days (back in her younger Woody Allen days, it was a "sweet little waif" look.) She's incredibly sympathetic as Pike moves in for the kill and essentially kidnaps her (to a crooked nursuing home) and has her beaten down with high drugs and sparse food.

But then..and this is fun...Wiest slowly reveals that (a) she's connected to the mob , (b) she's relishing what the mob is going to do to Pike and (c) she's rather "mob-like" herself -- rough and tough and capable of saying that most vicious of all slurs against a female, and capable of physical violence. I liked that "twist" to the Wiest character but indeed -- she rather disappears until saved at the end.