Review: The Good Liar

by Scott Thomson

Two Grand High thesps of the most esteemed order playing against each other in a cunning game of deceit. A surefire winning recipe, right? Maybe not.

Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Helen Mirren are most certainly having a gay old time together, practically purring in each calculated exchange with one another. It is not often enough that we get to see the screen shared by a pair of Britain’s most beloved (capital ‘A’) Actors but this is far from enough to lift The Good Liar from the escalating preposterousness that clouds the fun within. It reads like an “oh my God what if we did this thing...” kind of idea conjured by a drunken playwright after too many Merlots round Sir Ian’s pub on a Saturday evening. The result is a film perhaps best enjoyed in a similar state... 

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Open Thread & Random Buzz

What movies are you thinking about right this very second?

I've got four movies playing in my head at the moment, two still imaginary and two just screened. The still-imaginary ones are, first, the Bill Condon / Sir Ian McKellen / Dame Helen Mirren thriller The Good Liar which got strong buzz out of the industry promo event CinemaCon. The second is the film adaptation of Cats which sounds Titanic-like (the boat not the movie) in its possibly epic high profile sinkability. Apparently the cats are not fully mocapped creatures but still look like the actors with fur digitally added but they're cat-sized (but why would they mention the cat-sized bit unless they shared scenes with humans which Nooooo).

As for the real movies that already exist in competed form, Laika has another winner with Missing Link (they've yet to make a stinker!) which we currently have in the 'most likely to be nominated' spot in the Best Animated Feature race. It opens in just one week so more on that one real soon. The other is Sebastian Schipper's Roads which we can't talk about yet because it doesn't premiere until later this month at Tribeca but let it be known that we love it. Oops. We weren't supposed to talk about it! But it's from the German director who made that exciting 'how'd he do that?' entirely continuous shot movie Victoria a couple of years back. This new film Roads could, like Victoria, be categoried in the subgenre of "Protagonist having dangerous and unexpected soul-shaking adventure whilst travelling abroad" movie but its much different so Schipper is no one-hit wonder or one-trick pony. The leads Fionn Whitehead (Dunkirk, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch) and Stéphane Bak (Elle, Farewell to the Night) have terrific chemistry. If you're planning to hit Tribeca, schedule it.

What's on your cinematic mind?