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BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER

Producers: Mike Goodridge, Edward Berger and Matthew James Wilkinson   Director: Edward Berger    Screenplay: Rowan Joffe   Cast: Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Tilda Swinton, Alex Jennings, Deanie Ip and Alan K. Chang   Distributor: Netflix

Grade: C

The ostentatious glitz of Chinese gambling mecca Macau is vividly captured in the brilliant widescreen images of cinematographer James Friend that dominate Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Player.”  They’re sure to suffer when reduced to small-screen size.  On the other hand, the reduction might benefit the lead performance of Colin Farrell, which is so ferocious that it can barely be confined even within the boundaries of a screen in a megaplex auditorium.

In the film, with a script by Rowan Joffe based on a 2014 novel by Lawrence Osborne that might be described as Graham Greene Slight (Joffe, in fact, wrote and directed the decidedly imperfect 2010 film of Greene’s “Brighton Rock”), Farrell plays a gambling addict who styles himself as Lord Doyle, but is really just a low-born Irish con-man on the run for swindling an elderly British woman of millions, which he’s apparently squandered playing baccarat at the casino where he’s taken a suite that’s now cluttered with empty bottles and dirty flatware.  He’s addicted not so much to gambling as to losing, reveling in the humiliation of repeatedly being fleeced by sneering Grandma (Deanie Ip), whose limitless wealth makes her immune to fears of loss and whose sharp tongue skewers the loudly dressed, sweating Doyle.  When not losing at cards, Doyle is up in his rooms, shoveling fistfuls of lobster into his mouth before regurgitating it into silver bowls.

Doyle’s at the end of his rope, faced with a huge hotel bill he must pay off in days even before he’s confronted by Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton), a prissily schoolmarmish investigator who’s tracked him down and delivered an ultimatum to repay what he stole from the old lady, or face extradition to Britain.  When the body of a similarly unlucky gambler streaks past his window and crashes onto a car in the street below, the prospect of suicide seems very real, and his attempt to borrow a stake from Adrian Lippett (Alex Jennings), a slippery fellow gambler/con-man, brings him nothing. 

But a mysterious woman, Dao Ming (Fala Chen), intervenes.  She’s known for lending money to gamblers facing ruin, but shows special grace to Doyle, taking him to a cabin on a nearby island where he embraces a simple life—until he finds an increasable stash of cash in a nearby shed.  He absconds with the money, which he takes back to Macau and resumes his high life, and his place at the baccarat tables.  But this time his luck has radically changed, and Doyle experiences a weird redemption, paying off his debts, swearing off gambling (he rejects a challenge from Grandma) and dancing with a satisfied Cynthia.  He gives a handsome tip to the hotel bellboy (Alan K. Chang) who’s always treated him admiringly.  Who suffers?  His angel Dao Ming.

But hold on.  Are we to take this last act turn literally?  It feels like a hallucinatory fever dream.  The reappearance of Jennings as his final baccarat opponent, but now addressed as “Your Highness,” certainly suggests something is seriously amiss.  

But then so does the entire film, from first to last, so one could just as easily consider the whole thing a nightmare of pseudo-Lord Doyle’s drug-and-alcohol fueled imagination.  The decision is up to you.

But if the crux of the matter is obstinately unclear—“Ballad” certainly doesn’t carry a clear-cut moral, of the sort that so many films and television programs about gambling addiction do (go back, for example, to the 1960 episode of “The Twilight Zone” with Everett Sloane seduced by a talking slot machine).  If Lord Doyle is really redeemed, it’s as the result of totally undeserved luck that can only be called truly dumb.

Still, one can revel in the gaudy sight of Macau’s orgy of lights—the brightly colored replica of the Eiffel Tower appears again and again, and the hotel interiors look positively palatial.  Kudos to Berger, Friend and production designer Jonathan Houlding for utilizing the locations to such eye-popping effect.  Lisy Christi’s splashy costumes—not just Dao Ming’s Chinese finery but Doyle’s egregiously striking red and green velvet coats—add to the bizarre scenery, which Farrell chews on as liberally as the camera does.  Swinton is no slouch in the mastication department, either, nor is Ip.  (Fala Chen, on the other hand, is all quiet, Buddhist refinement.)  Refined, however, is an adjective one could never apply to Nick Emerson’s frenetic editing or Volker Bertelmann’s bombastic score.

One imagines that the filmmakers saw some profundity in Osborne’s “Ballad,” but if they were right, they’ve failed to capture it onscreen; amongst gambling movies the shallow “Small Player” is small potatoes except in the purely visual sense.         

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BLACK PHONE 2

Producers: Jason Blum, Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill   Director: Scott Derrickson Screenplay: Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill   Cast: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, Demián Bichir, Ethan Hawke, Arianna Rivas, Anna Lore, Graham Abbey and Maev Beaty   Distributor: Universal Pictures

Grade: C+

When the first “Black Phone” ended, The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), the serial killer who had preyed on young Denver boys until his latest victim, thirteen-year-old Finney Shaw (Mason Thames), managed, with some help from ghosts as well as his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), to outwit and kill him, was definitely dead.  How to bring him back for a sequel—an inevitability given the success of the 2022 original?

The solution settled on by direct Scott Derrickson and his co-writer C. Robert Cargill (with, it’s been reported, a little help from Joe Hill, who wrote the short story on which the original movie was based), is to turn The Grabber into something like Freddy Krueger, a spectral figure wo haunts dreams and terrorizes from the afterlife.  That’s not the only element of “Black Phone 2” that’s derivative; at times the movie feels a little like Frankenstein’s monster, made up of bits and pieces from previous horror movies—“Nightmare on Elm Street” here, a bit of “Friday the 13th” there, and how about dabs of “The Exorcist” and “The Shining,” and even “Carrie”? 

That’s not to say that the result doesn’t work reasonably well.  It does, especially in visual terms; there’s lots of chilling imagery, and even a touch of ghoulish poetry.  But while agreeably spooky, it ultimately comes across as a bit of a hodgepodge of genre clichés, and an attempt to give the tale an overarching familial explanation feels forced.

The movie begins, in fact, with a sequence of Hope Shaw (Anna Lore), in a remote phone booth having a weird conversation.  (We know from the first film that she died since time earlier in 1978, when its action was set, an apparent suicide.)  Later we’ll find that the phone booth is located at Alpine Lake, a Colorado Christian youth camp where she was once a counselor.

The focus then shifts to “now,” presumably around 1982, when Finney has grown into a school bully who beats up kids who call him a freak and self-medicates his trauma with marijuana.  Sis Gwen is worried about him, but their father Terrence (Jeremy Davies), now a recovering alcoholic, doesn’t want to be too intrusive.

Gwen, who’s inherited Hope’s power to have revealing visions (which were key to her helping Finney in the first outing), is having horrible nightmares involving three mutilated boys.  She’s also sleepwalking, something that worries Finney, as does her growing friendship with Ernesto Arellano (Miguel Mora), the younger brother of one of The Grabber’s victims who was not as lucky as her brother.

After learning that Hope had worked at Alpine Lake, Gwen and Ernesto contrive to apply for counselor traineeships there, and Finney decides to accompany them as a would-be protector.  (That it seems to be winter and school still in session is conveniently overlooked.)  They drive to the place in the midst of what’s later described as the worst blizzard in decades but are led through the gates by Mustang (Arianna Rivas), the horse-savvy cowgirl who’s the niece of avuncular Armando (Demián Bichir), the owner-operator of the place.  The only other people on site are the office-manager couple Kenneth (Graham Abbey) and Barbara (Maev Beaty); he’s a wimp and she’s a Bible-thumping harridan reminiscent of Carrie White’s mother.

It doesn’t take long for weird things to start happening in this isolated place, which is like a snowbound Camp Crystal Lake.  Gwen, segregated in the girls’ barracks, starts having nightmares, which leads the boys to break camp rules to watch over her.  That supposedly derelict phone book outside starts ringing, with calls for both Gwen (from those three boys—who, from a place beneath an icy cover scrape letters whose meaning it’s for her to decipher—shades of “REDRUM”) and Finney (from The Grabber, who shows up as a menacing ghost with the power to assault living victims, being seen only by his victims while remaining invisible to those looking on at the resultant mayhem).

It turns out that The Grabber had ties to Alpine Lake too, and Armando is certain that the key to ending his evil power is to locate the remains of the three spectral boys, his first victims, and bring closure to them and their families.  That leads to a concerted effort by all concerned to clear the snow from the ice-covered lake and systematically search the waters below for tell-tale evidence.  Naturally, The Grabber seeks to prevent their discovering evidence of his past misdeeds.  Who would ever have expected hm to be such an expert skater?  For that matter, who would have thought Gwen to be capable of spouting Bible verses by heart (the result of her pious mother’s influence, no doubt) while cursing like a dockworker (her daddy’s, presumably).

Adding to the plot twists is the revelation that The Grabber’s initial seizure of Finney might not have been as random as it seemed, and that his threat to Gwen might have more behind it than merely punishing her brother by proxy for having killed him.  Be that as it may, the truth about Hope’s courage helps the Shaws finally to heal and, incidentally, to the blossoming of romance between Gwen and ever-dependable Ernesto.  (One wonders whether he, played amiably by Mora, might be prominent in the next installment of what the makers seem determined to convert into a franchise.)

For the moment one can point to committed performances here by both Thames, who gets to go darker than ever before as Finney, and the ever-spunky McGraw; an engaging one from Bichir, who adds a tongue-in-cheek touch that acts as a wink to the audience; and a lean, no-nonsense turn from Davies.  Hawke’s contribution is mostly in terms of voice work, but he obviously relishes delivering the villain’s growling threats, and whoever is behind the demon mask at any given moment proves perfectly fine.  Rivas does a nice tomboy bit as Mustang and Abbey is suitably skittish as Kenneth, who cowers in the shadow of Beaty’s holier-than-thou Barbara, a woman who designs in condemning Gwen as a demon child.  (One wonders about Armando, Mustang, Kenneth and Barbara after the snow settles; the movie is so anxious to drag out a happy ending for the townies that it simply forgets about them.)

Derrickson once again proves adept at working with his cinematographer, here Pär M. Ekberg, to create creepy visuals, and works expertly with Ekberg and editor Louise Ford to fashion not only the usual jump scares but a succession of hallucinatory dream montages, using scratchy 16mm film and frantic cutting, that are italicized by the sound team and an eerie score from composer Atticus Derrrickson.  Returnee Patti Podesta’s production design once again avoids exaggerating the period detail; the Canadian locations look genuinely frigid, which must have made for a challenging shoot. 

Like most sequels, “Black Phone 2” can’t recapture the surprise of its predecessor, and the avalanche of reminiscences to other horror films suggests more lack of imagination than homage.  But genre fans will probably enjoy this brooding reunion with Finney, Gwen and The Grabber, even if it doesn’t grab you as effectively as the first movie did.