Post by Dracula on May 7, 2022 10:32:56 GMT -5
Deep Water(5/1/2022)
I’ve noticed lately that the glut of “effects driven franchise movies” coming out of Hollywood these days has led to a sort of rose tinted nostalgia for the trashy movies the studios used to put out in previous eras and I think that’s mostly a mistake. Both Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay put out movies this year and while neither were exactly embraced with open arms there was an odd nostalgia in the air for both mens’ careers that certainly feels odd given that these same critics (rightly) had nothing nice to say about their past work. It’s like reminiscing about Wal-Mart in the age of Amazon. And a similar things seems to be happening in regards to the “erotic thriller” genre in the wake of director Adrian Lyne’s return to cinema after twenty years with his Ben Affleck starring erotic thriller Deep Water. Do not let nostalgia fool you, with very few exceptions the wave of erotic thrillers we got in the 80s and early 90s were actually terrible. Many of them were basically glorified softcore pornography and they deservedly won Razzie after Razzie when they were new and by and large his association with the genre kind of ran Lyne’s career into the ground and its sad that rather than move on he’s decided to return to this tainted well with his return. The film involves Ben Affleck playing the husband to a woman played by Ana de Armas, who has apparently grown tired of the Affleck character’s skills in the bedroom and has convinced him to let her sleep with other men… you get the distinct impression that even if Affleck has allowed this he isn’t really okay with it, and he becomes something of a suspect once some of the men she’s had affairs with turn up dead.
So, obviously this couple is decidedly not opening up their marriage in a healthy and open way and you get the distinct impression that they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by consulting some online resources and maybe arranging for the de Armas to do her liaisons at a hotel or something instead of cucking Affleck in his own house. But this is an erotic thriller, of course it’s not interested in the concept of healthy relationship dynamics being a possibility, it’s instead looking to display how everyone’s life is going to go to shit in the most salacious way possible if they diverge from god sanctioned monogamy. Even compared to the erotic thrillers of old, however, this is a little weak. Generally speaking those movies at least delivered on the legitimized skinimax thrills they were made for, and while this one isn’t exactly sexless it sure puts a lot of its liaisons off-screen and rarely goes below the belt in its gaze. And the way the story develops is just the stupidest thing. Whatever mystery it sets up is resolved in ways that are fairly anticlimactic and it ends with a very strange car chase. Also there’s some weird stuff with snails that goes nowhere. To make things worse you can’t help but compare this to David Fincher’s Gone Girl, which also featured Affleck and actually managed to take a salacious marriage story like this and do something infinitely more intriguing and well executed with it, by contrast this feels like a Dollar Store imitation. Whatever affections people have for this genre and this movie are misplaced, it’s a total turkey.
*1/2 out of Five
I’ve noticed lately that the glut of “effects driven franchise movies” coming out of Hollywood these days has led to a sort of rose tinted nostalgia for the trashy movies the studios used to put out in previous eras and I think that’s mostly a mistake. Both Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay put out movies this year and while neither were exactly embraced with open arms there was an odd nostalgia in the air for both mens’ careers that certainly feels odd given that these same critics (rightly) had nothing nice to say about their past work. It’s like reminiscing about Wal-Mart in the age of Amazon. And a similar things seems to be happening in regards to the “erotic thriller” genre in the wake of director Adrian Lyne’s return to cinema after twenty years with his Ben Affleck starring erotic thriller Deep Water. Do not let nostalgia fool you, with very few exceptions the wave of erotic thrillers we got in the 80s and early 90s were actually terrible. Many of them were basically glorified softcore pornography and they deservedly won Razzie after Razzie when they were new and by and large his association with the genre kind of ran Lyne’s career into the ground and its sad that rather than move on he’s decided to return to this tainted well with his return. The film involves Ben Affleck playing the husband to a woman played by Ana de Armas, who has apparently grown tired of the Affleck character’s skills in the bedroom and has convinced him to let her sleep with other men… you get the distinct impression that even if Affleck has allowed this he isn’t really okay with it, and he becomes something of a suspect once some of the men she’s had affairs with turn up dead.
So, obviously this couple is decidedly not opening up their marriage in a healthy and open way and you get the distinct impression that they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by consulting some online resources and maybe arranging for the de Armas to do her liaisons at a hotel or something instead of cucking Affleck in his own house. But this is an erotic thriller, of course it’s not interested in the concept of healthy relationship dynamics being a possibility, it’s instead looking to display how everyone’s life is going to go to shit in the most salacious way possible if they diverge from god sanctioned monogamy. Even compared to the erotic thrillers of old, however, this is a little weak. Generally speaking those movies at least delivered on the legitimized skinimax thrills they were made for, and while this one isn’t exactly sexless it sure puts a lot of its liaisons off-screen and rarely goes below the belt in its gaze. And the way the story develops is just the stupidest thing. Whatever mystery it sets up is resolved in ways that are fairly anticlimactic and it ends with a very strange car chase. Also there’s some weird stuff with snails that goes nowhere. To make things worse you can’t help but compare this to David Fincher’s Gone Girl, which also featured Affleck and actually managed to take a salacious marriage story like this and do something infinitely more intriguing and well executed with it, by contrast this feels like a Dollar Store imitation. Whatever affections people have for this genre and this movie are misplaced, it’s a total turkey.
*1/2 out of Five
