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Now that Nicolas Cage has had his stock upgraded as of late (thanks to his lovely performance in “Pig” and his self-aware turn in the recent “ The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent ”), and Bruce Willis has retired, I suspect that Liam Neeson is going to be the next actor who finds himself in the critical crosshairs for doing far too many forgettable movies. His latest, “Memory,” is already his second such film in 2022, and since his list of upcoming projects on IMDb mentions titles like “Retribution,” “In the Land of Saints and Sinners,” “The Revenger” and “Cold Pursuit Sequel Project,” it doesn’t appear that he will be disembarking this particular gravy train anytime soon. To his credit, “Memory” is at least slightly more ambitious than most of the similar films Neeson has done recently. But it's certainly not enough to make you overlook how one of our most powerful actors is again wasting his time on the kind of half-baked thriller Charles Bronson used to crank out with depressing regularity during the waning days of his career.

The time around, Neeson plays Alex Lewis , another expert hired killer with a particular set of skills. As this film opens, he's considering leaving the life behind after seeing signs of the Alzheimer’s that has already claimed his brother. Nevertheless, Alex accepts one final job in El Paso, in which he has to bump off two separate people and recover some important flash drives from the first victim. He pulls off the first hit easily enough but when he discovers that the second victim is a 12-year-old girl ( Mia Sanchez ), Alex refuses to pull the trigger and keeps the flash drives for himself as an insurance policy.

Unfortunately, the girl had been pimped out by her father to a number of wealthy and powerful people, including the depraved son of powerful real estate developer Davana Sealman ( Monica Bellucci ), who put out the original hit in order to help her child evade justice. After tying up that loose end, she also calls for Alex to be killed. But even though he's slipping mentally, he's still skillful enough to evade her hired goons and kill everyone remotely connected to the crime. Alex also plants enough clues for an FBI task force led by Vincent Serra ( Guy Pearce ), who also tried to help the girl and feels guilty about what happened to her, to pursue him while always remaining one step ahead of them.

If the basic story points of “Memory” sound familiar to you, it may be that you've seen “ The Memory of a Killer ,” the 2003 Belgian crime drama that has been Americanized here (with both films based on Jef Geeraerts ’ novel The Alzheimer Case ). Although this version more or less follows the same narrative path of its predecessor, the original film, although a perfectly good genre film in its own right, was more interested in its central character (played in a very good performance by Jan Decleir ) as he is forced to reckon with both the weight of his past misdeeds and the cruelties of his present condition. 

“Memory” does begin to work when Neeson gets a hold of script's more dramatically impactful moments, but these scenes are simply too few and far between to be truly effective. Dario Scardapane ’s screenplay tends to put more of an emphasis on the big action beats, which are implausible enough as is and doubly so when you consider that they involve a character with deteriorating cognitive abilities. Although these scenes are handled with some style by director Martin Campbell , whose oeuvre includes one of the very best James Bond films (“Casino Royale”) and a lot of stuff that will be politely overlooked here, they wind up overwhelming the human drama involving Neeson’s character. This is especially evident during a new, less thoughtful finale in which one of the key villains is dispatched in an especially gruesome manner in order to give the gorehounds in the audience a final thrill before the end credits. Other than Neeson, the only performance of note here comes from Bellucci, whose casting here is unexpected, to say the least.

“Memory” is a little better than the majority of Neeson’s recent action excursions and there's a chance it may prove to be better than most of his future projects. However, that doesn't prove to be enough to make it worth watching, and those lucky enough to have seen “The Memory of a Killer” are likely to be disappointed as well. Yes, a little more effort has gone into the making of "Memory," so it's a shame—and an ironic one to boot—that the end results are so forgettable.

Now playing in theaters.

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

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Memory (2022)

Rated R for violence, some bloody images and language throughout.

114 minutes

Liam Neeson as Alex Lewis

Guy Pearce as Vincent Serra

Taj Atwal as Linda Amistead

Harold Torres as Hugo Marquez

Monica Bellucci as Davana Sealman

Ray Stevenson as Detective Danny Mora

Stella Stocker as Maya

Antonio Jaramillo as Papa Leon

• Martin Campbell

Writer (book)

• Jef Geeraerts
• Dario Scardapane

Cinematographer

• David Tattersall

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Liam neeson in ‘memory’: film review.

Guy Pearce co-stars as an FBI agent in a remake of a Belgian crime thriller involving a child trafficking ring and a hitman struggling with Alzheimer’s.

By Sheri Linden

Sheri Linden

Senior Copy Editor/Film Critic

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The premise of Memory just might be the mother of all high concepts: A hired assassin has Alzheimer’s. It instantly evokes two possible interpretations: bruising black comedy would be one, thoughtful musing on life and death the other. In especially deft hands, a third option would meld the two. As directed by Martin Campbell from a screenplay by Dario Scardapane, and even with a couple of soulful actors at its center, that premise plays out as none of the above; it’s a mechanical plot point in a perfunctory actioner that leaves laughs — intentional ones, anyway — and existential meditations by the wayside.

Adapting the 2003 Belgian feature The Memory of a Killer , based on the novel De Zaak Alzheimer ( The Alzheimer Case ), Memory comes equipped with all the accoutrements of the contract-killer genre: the burner phones, the silencers, the laser sights, the Liam Neeson . This time, though, Neeson isn’t the law-and-order guy wielding questionable methods in the name of justice, but the mercenary who is faced with an unacceptable assignment — his target is a 13-year-old girl — and trying to do the right thing before his dimming cognitive lights go out permanently.

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Release date: Friday, April 29

Cast: Liam Neeson, Guy Pearce, Monica Bellucci, Taj Atwal, Ray Fearon, Ray Stevenson, Harold Torres

Director: Martin Campbell

Screenwriter: Dario Scardapane

To believe, as we’re meant to, that Neeson’s Alex Lewis spent his formative years in El Paso, Texas, where most of the action is set, would require its own cognitive disconnect. Then again, the production was shot mainly in Bulgaria, and there’s a vaguely intercontinental, pan-European vibe to the cast, from small supporting roles to Monica Bellucci ’s spiritless rendering of a villainous bigwig.

But the Lone Star State is meant to be more than a state of mind in Memory . It’s meant to put a topical slant on a storyline involving the abuse and trafficking of children. The teenager who Alex refuses to kill is an undocumented immigrant; a detention center for such children proves to be a vicious nexus of public and private interests; and the real-life unsolved murders of countless girls and women in Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, haunts and drives a key character.

For all its questions of morality, mortality and politics, the film feels empty at its core, not unlike the sleek modern spaces where the story’s ultra-wealthy, ultra-corrupt and ultra-clichéd scheme and cavort joylessly. Matching the screenplay’s lack of nuance, Campbell ( Casino Royale , The Protégé ) orchestrates the proceedings with a flat efficacy, stringing together familiar action beats and churning up little that rings true.

As the movie opens, Alex pulls off a hit of gruesome expertise in a Guadalajara hospital, a scene that’s mirrored, with even more blood, in the film’s final stretch. However ruthless a killing machine Alex may be, his humanizing predicament becomes clear when, returning to his car after dispatching his victim, he struggles for a painful moment to remember where he put his car key. The pills he takes are designed to forestall the inevitable, and to help maintain an even keel he scrawls factoids on his inner forearm for easy reference. Neeson signals Alex’s frustration and his acknowledgment of defeat. He’s ready to quit this crazy business, a decision that his Mexico City contact Mauricio (Lee Boardman) rejects, hoisting a fat envelope of cash at him with instructions to kill two people in El Paso, a town Alex knows well.

After dispatching target No. 1, a well-to-do businessman (Scot Williams), and retrieving an item from his safe, Alex discovers that the second would-be victim is 13-year-old Beatriz (Mia Sanchez). With his customary violence, he lets his smarmy local handler (Daniel de Bourg) know that he wants the contract canceled, setting off a new round of cat-and-mouse in which he’s the quarry.

FBI agent Vincent Serra ( Guy Pearce ), meanwhile, has taken a particular interest in Beatriz, who was being pimped by her father (Antonio Jaramillo) and is now orphaned, after a sting by Vincent’s team, the agency’s Child Exploitation Task Force, goes spectacularly wrong. Vincent’s boss, Gerald Nussbaum (Ray Fearon), puts the task force on ice and sends Mexican investigator Hugo Marquez (Harold Torres) packing. But Hugo finds a reason to stick around, and neither Vincent nor his partner, Linda Amisted (Taj Atwal), is eager to pivot to run-of-the-mill local crimes. An El Paso detective (Ray Stevenson) isn’t thrilled to have them around, and Alex, in his last-ditch pursuit of truth and justice, is one step ahead of them all. If only he can remember where he put that flash drive filled with incriminating audio.

Scardapane (producer-writer of the series The Bridge and The Punisher ) advances the story via information drops posing as conversation. Case in point: “You realize we’re talking about one of the most powerful real estate moguls in the country, right?” Bellucci’s Davana Sealman, the mogul in question, pulls many puppet strings in the city, a power that her hedonistic son (Josh Taylor) depends on. The pileup of one-note characters also includes a prostitute (Stella Stocker) working the bar at Alex’s hotel, and a trophy-wife stereotype (Natalie Anderson) who feels like something out of a subpar Raymond Chandler knockoff, or an unintended spoof of one.

The involvement of Pearce is a wink and a nod to his role in a classic of the memory-affliction subgenre, Memento , a taut and masterful thriller in whose shadow Memory withers. Pearce is one of the greatest actors of his generation, and his performance is the strongest, most sustained and convincing element of the film — and one that frequently finds him in a vacuum.

He enters the story delivering a performance within a performance: In the attempted sting, Vincent poses as a john seeking the company of an underage girl. Even after he’s shaken off the layers of scuzz required for that role, there’s something off about Vincent, a sense that he’s uncared for. The explanation arrives in an eleventh-hour revelation that should be crushing in its sadness but is instead awkward in its narrative ineptitude.

To give that disclosure its intended impact, Campbell would have had to stir up certain undercurrents in the characters who interact with Vincent. Atwal comes closest in a final exchange that, against the odds in a movie that can feel propelled by an algorithm, produces a satisfying emotional zing.

However unsubtle the material, Neeson offers unforced glimmers of a soul lost to brutality as Alex wavers between a thickening mental fog and perfect lucidity when the plot demands it. But there’s also a sense of his effortless screen magnetism being shoehorned into a thriller boilerplate. And it’s tempting to imagine, when Alex is staring into the middle distance, forgetting where he is and why, that Neeson might be remembering when he played complex men like Alfred Kinsey and Michael Collins.

Full credits

Distributors: Briarcliff Entertainment, Open Road Films Production companies: Black Bear Pictures, Welle Entertainment, Saville Productions Cast: Liam Neeson, Guy Pearce, Monica Bellucci, Taj Atwal, Ray Fearon, Ray Stevenson, Harold Torres, Josh Taylor, Antonio Jaramillo, Daniel De Bourg, Scot Williams, Stella Stocker, Rebecca Calder, Atanas Srebrev, Lee Boardman, Natalie Anderson, Mia Sanchez Director: Martin Campbell Screenwriter: Dario Scardapane Based on the book De Zaak Alzheimer by Jef Geeraerts and on the picture De Zaak Alzheimer by Carl Joos and Erik Van Looy Producers: Cathy Schulman, Moshe Diamant, Rupert Maconick, Michael Heimler, Arthur Sarkissian Executive producers: Teddy Schwarzman, Ben Stillman, Peter Bouckaert, Rudy Durand, Tom Ortenberg, James Masciello, Matthew Sidari Director of photography: David Tattersall Production designer: Wolf Kroeger Costume designer: Irina Kotcheva Editor: Jo Francis Music: Rupert Parkes Casting: Pam Dixon, Dan Hubbard

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Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard Are So Weirdly Right Together in Memory

This review was originally published on September 9. We are recirculating it now timed to Memory’ s debut in theaters.

The waning days of a film festival aren’t generally regarded as a time for great discoveries or major premieres. Much of the press has left, and those that remain have become a bit more cavalier about attending screenings; many of them are out shopping for delicate souvenirs and resilient cheeses to take home. At this year’s Venice , when star power was already notoriously hard to come by owing to the ongoing SAG-WGA strike, you could be forgiven for assuming that the party was pretty much over.

But then, here comes Memory , starring Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, one of the few films at this year’s festival allowed to have its stars attend its premiere. Appropriately so, too, because it’s almost entirely their show. Mexican director Michel Franco’s somber drama about the ghosts of the past has a lot on its mind, and not all of it makes sense. But its two leads are so good together, so weirdly right together, that everything slips away and you just watch them.

Perhaps this is all by design. Memory is such a lean work that Chastain and Sarsgaard are allowed to dominate much of the screen, even just physically. She plays Sylvia, a single mother 13 years sober who works at an adult daycare center while raising her teenage daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber). We sense her protectiveness early on with the swiftness and thoroughness she shows in locking her apartment door whenever she steps inside, with the way she watches Anna from across the street during recess at school. When someone comes to repair her fridge, Sylvia notes that she had specifically requested a woman. Chastain makes Sylvia’s simmering anxiety palpable, though in decidedly unshowy fashion. Something clearly broke in her a long time ago, and we sense that she’s spent a lot of time trying to hold it all together and move on.

One night, while attending her high school reunion, Sylvia is silently confronted by a man, Saul Shapiro (Sarsgaard). He says nothing, just sits next to her and stares. She says nothing back, just leaves. He follows her to the subway, then to her apartment. He stands outside her building, and in the morning she finds him curled up among the tires of the auto shop downstairs, shivering and incoherent. She takes his wallet and calls a number. It turns out that Saul suffers from dementia, often forgetting where he is and wandering away from the home in which he lives with his brother (Josh Charles). But Sylvia remembers Saul. In fact, she claims that he was a close friend of the boy who raped her when she was 12. What’s more, she claims that Saul also raped her once. “Do you remember what you used to make me do?” she asks him angrily the next time they meet, “or do you only remember when it’s convenient?” He stares at her blankly. He doesn’t remember a thing.

Here’s where the movie gets interestingly thorny, at least briefly. Sylvia’s sister Olivia (Merritt Wever) informs her that she is, in fact, wrong about Saul – that he started school the year she left and that he couldn’t have done the things she claims he did. This coincides with Saul’s family asking if Sylvia might be willing to help care for him during the day. She agrees, and before we know it, she and this man whom she briefly thought was a monster are suddenly spending a lot of time together. Is it something about his blankness, his gentle acceptance that attracts her? Sylvia’s daughter is getting to that age when she’s starting to rebel against her clearly overprotective mom’s edicts. And now here’s this grown man who will do anything she says, and who clearly loves just being there with her, largely because there’s nothing else he can do.

Franco’s script is so spare that we have relatively little to latch onto – almost as if the film is itself in the process of forgetting certain details. Sylvia’s accusation of Saul is barely discussed once it’s all cleared up, which seems odd for this woman to whom the past feels so resilient, so eternally corrosive. In fact, the movie turns out not to be about their common history at all, but rather their very odd, increasingly loving present.

Luckily, we have these two actors, who when together feel like a chemical reaction come to life. Her tension is transformed by his pleasant pliancy, and vice-versa. Sylvia is burdened by a swirl of memories — most of which we get only hints of — confronted by a man who can’t remember increasingly vast stretches of his life. As their relationship grows in tenderness, we pull for them, even as we sense that something horrifying might be around the corner.

The film is on less firm ground when it actually tries to untangle Sylvia’s past. The inevitable revelations about what happened to her are fairly predictable, though no less harrowing for being so. It does feel at times like Franco wants to resolve these elements quickly and get on with the rest of his movie. There’s a climactic scene in which Sylvia confronts her family that’s riveting in the moment because it’s so well-acted, but its impact dissolves the second you start to think further about it. Even so, this is clearly a film that’s meant to be carried by its leads. And as a showcase for these stars, Memory works superbly.

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‘Memory’ Review: Jessica Chastain Is a Caretaker with Demons in Michel Franco’s Demented Romance

Ryan lattanzio, deputy editor, film.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2023 Venice Film Festival. Ketchup Entertainment releases the film in select theaters on Friday, December 22, with expansion to follow on Friday, January 5.

Michel Franco ‘s “ Memory ” is in the tradition of movies about broken people coming together, with all the heartbreak and melodrama required.

Saul, as we eventually learn, has a form of dementia that alternates between total mental clarity and blackouts that leave him lost. Sylvia (Chastain) is an adult daycare social worker who forms a patchy connection with him after their creepy first encounter, and it turns to love.

Writer/director Franco leaves his heart ajar for perhaps the first time — his prior films, even his most recent “Sundown” about a man (Tim Roth) who abandons his family while on vacation in Mexico at a time of great need, maintain an emotional cool. “Memory,” unlike the rest, is a weepie but still a weepie for those who hate them, as the Mexican filmmaker keeps 10 feet of emotional distance from his characters at all times — until he doesn’t. “Memory” feels like what happens after a typical Michel Franco movie, the worst of the damage already done and out of the way. (No genocide or deus-ex-machina auto deaths here!)

Sylvia lives with her daughter Anna (Brooke Timber) in the waterside Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. She keeps multiple locks and an alarm system affixed to the front door of their two-bedroom apartment, and flinches when a maintenance worker who shows up turns out to be a man and not the woman she asked for. There’s a distrust around men she even reveals in the film’s opening scene, an AA meeting in which Sylvia is celebrating 13 years of sobriety. (Her daughter, who attends also, looks old enough for us to surmise that Sylvia got sober around the time Anna was born.) “You’re the only man who stayed,” she tells her sponsor, jokingly, but it clearly took her years to get to a joke like this without it being laced with pain.

It’s there that she drops a horrified unexpected bomb on this man whom we’ve learned from Isaac has dementia: Do you remember when you raped me when I was 12 and you were 17? She storms off, tossing his “In Case of Emergency Please Call…” lanyard into a trash can. “You deserve to be the way you are.” But again, that social worker streak kicks in, and she feels guilty, returning to find Saul. And as the pieces unfold, is she telling the truth in her allegations, or is she just a child of abuse and trauma who uses lying as a manipulation and coping tactic?

Meanwhile, dropping in as if from the sky, her estranged mother Samantha (Jessica Harper, and if you’re going to call upon a legendary actress to play a recalcitrant mother from Miami, it should of course be her) re-enters the lives of Olivia and her children. There are concerns that Sylvia has long been lying about childhood sexual abuse, concerns that even Olivia seems to corroborate, however wearily. Samantha’s sudden visibility in their lives isn’t deeply explained by Franco, who tends to keep exposition close to his chest.

Sarsgaard plays Saul with a tentative energy, often vacant-eyed until he snaps into focus, while Sylvia, obviously loveless since sobriety other than her relationship with her daughter, is desperate for some kind of connection with another person even if it interrupts her controlled existence: Go to work, go to the AA meetings, pay the bills, take your daughter to school, push the horrors of yesterday under the proverbial planter in the corner.

And oh there are horrors, however offscreen and tucked in the past. When Sylvia, eventually flush in her caretaking-turned-romance with Saul, brings him back to Olivia’s to “meet the family,” she’s met with the terrible surprise of her long-gone mother Samantha there. The third-act swerve into a dysfunctional family breakdown during which all the ghosts of years ago are laid out in one harrowing scene — shot in Franco’s characteristic long-take style, working with cinematographer Yves Cape — feels just a bit pat for the measured drama that’s come before it.

There’s an errant moment toward the end that shows Sylvia listlessly vacuuming, Chastain’s red hair flying out of place, alone again. The actress displays an extraordinary understanding of the mechanisms of control an addict must go through to keep out the bad and stay the course. “Memory” has the makings of a play in its hyper-focus on the central dilemma of an alcoholic woman and a mentally ill man trying to love each other.

Chastain has made a point in her career to play only women of inner strength. Sylvia’s isn’t immediate, but it’s there. Watching her hardened outsides come just slightly undone from the inside is as moving as watching Franco’s own do just that as he opens his heart up to caring for the characters he’s created. Is his dark imagination pulling a fast one on us? I don’t think so.

“Memory” premiered at the 2023 Venice Film Festival.

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Two strangers grapple with hazy 'memory' in this unsettling film.

Justin Chang

Jessica Chastain plays a single mother who connects with a man with early-onset dementia (Peter Sarsgaard) in Memory . via Ketchup Entertainment hide caption

Jessica Chastain plays a single mother who connects with a man with early-onset dementia (Peter Sarsgaard) in Memory .

The Mexican writer-director Michel Franco is something of a feel-bad filmmaker. His style can be chilly and severe. His characters are often comfortable bourgeois types who are in for some class-based comeuppance. His usual method is to set up the camera at a distance from his characters and watch them squirm in tense, unbroken long takes.

Sometimes all hell breaks loose, as in Franco's dystopian drama New Order , about a mass revolt in Mexico City. Sometimes the nightmare takes hold more quietly, like in Sundown , his recent slow-burn thriller about a vacation gone wrong.

I haven't always been a fan of Franco's work, not because I object to pessimistic worldviews in art, but because his shock tactics have sometimes felt cheap and derivative, borrowed from other filmmakers. But his new English-language movie, Memory , is something of a surprise. For starters, it's fascinating to see how well-known American actors like Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard adapt to his more detached style of filmmaking. And while his touch is as clinical and somber as ever, there's a sense of tenderness and even optimism here that feels new to his work.

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'femininity is not weakness,' jessica chastain says of 'zookeeper's wife'.

Chastain plays Sylvia, a single mom who works at an adult daycare center. From the moment we meet her, at an AA meeting where people congratulate her on her many years of sobriety, it's clear that she's been through a lot. She's intensely protective of her teenage daughter, rarely letting her hang out with other kids, especially boys. Whenever she returns home to her Brooklyn apartment, she immediately locks the door behind her and sets the home security system. Even when Sylvia's doing nothing, we see the tension in her body, as if she were steeling herself against the next blow.

One night, while attending her high school reunion, Sylvia is approached by a man named Saul, played by Sarsgaard. He says nothing, but his silent attentiveness unnerves Sylvia, especially when he follows her home and spends the night camped outside her apartment. The next morning, Sylvia learns more about Saul that might help explain his disturbing behavior: He has early-onset dementia and suffers regular short-term memory loss.

Some of the backstory in Memory is confusing by design. Sylvia remembers being sexually abused by a 17-year-old student named Ben when she was 12, and she initially accuses Saul of having abused her too. We soon learn that he couldn't have, because they were at school at different times. It would seem that Sylvia's own memory, clouded by personal pain, isn't entirely reliable either.

Despite the awkwardness and tension of these early encounters, Sylvia and Saul are clearly drawn to each other. Seeing how well Saul responds to Sylvia's company, his family offers her a part-time job looking after him during the day. As their connection deepens, they realize how much they have in common. Both Sylvia and Saul feel like outcasts. Both, too, have issues with their families; Saul's brother, played by Josh Charles, treats him like a nuisance and a child. And while Sylvia is close to her younger sister, nicely played by Merritt Wever, she's been estranged for years from their mother, who refuses to believe her allegations of sexual abuse.

The movie poignantly suggests that Sylvia and Saul are two very different people who, by chance, have come into each other's lives at just the right moment. At the same time, the story does come uncomfortably close to romanticizing dementia, as if Saul's air of friendly, unthreatening bafflement somehow made him the perfect boyfriend.

But while I have some reservations about how the movie addresses trauma and illness, this is one case where Franco's restraint actually works: There's something admirably evenhanded about how he observes these characters trying to navigate uncharted waters in real time. Chastain and Sarsgaard are very moving here; it's touching to see how the battle-hardened Sylvia responds to Saul's gentle spirit, and how he warms to her patience and attention.

This isn't the first time Franco has focused on the act of caregiving; more than once I was reminded of his 2015 drama, Chronic , which starred Tim Roth as a palliative care worker. I didn't love that movie, either, but it had some of the same unsettling intimacy and emotional force as Memory . It's enough to make me want to revisit some of Franco's work, with newly appreciative eyes.

clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

Noirish ‘Memory’ is a cut above the average Liam Neeson action flick

A hit man with alzheimer’s disease develops a conscience when he’s hired to kill a 13-year-old girl.

There’s a sameness to many of the roles Liam Neeson takes these days. With a few notable recent exceptions that still prove his depth and range — “ Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House ,” “ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs ,” “ Ordinary Love ” — the Oscar-nominated star of “ Schindler’s List ” has lately become more associated with action thrillers in which he plays a certain type: an emotionally damaged, perhaps even demon-driven antihero/loner plagued by alcoholism, an ethically compromised past, grief or some other psychic pain whose quest for redemption has turned him into an avenging angel. The quality of these films fluctuates between satisfying and disappointing, for the same reason. Because Neeson is so adept at rendering this stock character, he doesn’t always work very hard at it. Sometimes that effortlessness is a pleasure, and sometimes it just feels lazy.

Liam Neeson, a beloved action star who can pack an emotional punch

In plot, at least, “Memory” is no exception. Based on the 1985 novel “De Zaak Alzheimer” by Belgian writer Jef Geeraerts and its 2003 Belgian film adaptation, “The Memory of a Killer,” Neeson’s latest genre exercise centers on a hit man with dementia who suddenly sprouts a conscience when one of the targets he’s been hired to kill turns out to be a 13-year-old girl. And yet “Memory” is a cut above average, for this sort of thing. Mostly that’s thanks to the direction of Martin Campbell (“ Casino Royale ”), who injects the same freshness of energy into this formulaic outing that he did with last year’s assassin thriller “ The Protege .”

“Memory” feels more like film noir — deliciously dark, cynical and slightly amoral — than a pulpy piece of rote storytelling.

Neeson, for one thing, isn’t really the good guy here, or really even the bad guy with a heart of gold. His Alex Lewis is a coldblooded killer. With one exception — the barely teenage prostitute (Mia Sanchez) Alex refuses to kill after he’s hired to kill a couple of people to cover up a child-exploitation ring — he has few qualms about whom he murders. Cops, in particular, are so much collateral damage in Alex’s single-minded mission to take out the members of the international sex-trafficking cartel. The fact that he’s starting to lose his memory, and must write reminders down on his forearm with a Sharpie, barely makes him more sympathetic.

It’s a weird feeling, not being able to root wholeheartedly for Neeson. But I kind of like it. It feels honest, and less pandering.

Some cops, however, are spared. Two members of the FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force (Guy Pearce and Taj Atwal), along with a Mexican detective (Harold Torres) on loan to the FBI, are allowed to live so they can perform cleanup on the messy pile of corpses Alex leaves behind in his path of vengeance. Mostly, as Pearce’s Agent Vincent Serra observes, that entails “taking out” the traffickers whom Vincent and the task force aren’t legally able to execute, while leaving the feds a trail of “breadcrumbs.”

Vincent’s pursuit of Alex, while following those breadcrumbs, is the engine that drives the plot. (The casting of Pearce, who in 2001’s “ Memento ” played an amnesiac pursuing his wife’s killer while marking his own body with clues, is a nice sort of callback.)

“Memory” is by no means a deep film. But there’s something here that lends the familiar proceedings a bittersweet aftertaste that lingers in the mind. That’s the film’s mix of moral ambiguity and the regret of someone for whom it’s too late to undo the past, but not perhaps to rectify the present, even when the law can’t. In the words of Vincent: “Memory’s a mother-f---er. And as for justice, it ain’t guaranteed.”

R. At area theaters. Contains violence, some bloody images, brief nudity, mature thematic elements and coarse language throughout. 114 minutes.

Review: In ‘Memory,’ two survivors come to a wary bond, even if the past harbors demons

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A guarded Jessica Chastain and a rumpled Peter Sarsgaard make mysterious, sweetly dissonant music together in “Memory,” a touch-and-go drama about connection that’s as steeped in discomfort as it is cautiously hopeful about one’s ability to find peace within it.

Writer-director Michel Franco’s take on an offbeat urban romance — between a social worker and a cognitively impaired, housebound man — has no use for easy or overwrought emotions or snap conclusions. Franco’s story implies that to really see someone on the inside is hard work. And doing so when nobody around you trusts your eyesight, much less your judgment? Even harder.

When we meet Chastain’s Sylvia, she’s the back of a head in a darkly lighted AA meeting. Members heap praise on her for how she’s handled her struggle across 13 years of sobriety, a span of time that corresponds to the age of her daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber), also in tow.

In the outside world, where she works in adult day care and lives in a tightly secured apartment, Sylvia’s manner is hard-edged and solitary — and when it comes to Anna, who enjoys hanging out with her aunt Olivia ( Merritt Wever ) and same-age cousins, as watchful as a hawk. Silvia looks ill at ease around her extended family, or is it just anyone who’s not her daughter?

Her unease palpably becomes ours, though, when she’s followed home from her high school reunion by a shaggy-looking attendee who then camps outside her building overnight in the pouring rain. Gentle-seeming but clearly not well, Saul (Sarsgaard) is picked up the next morning by his brother Isaac (Josh Charles), which is when we learn that the former suffers from dementia and lives unsupervised in his brownstone, occasionally looked after by Isaac and an adoring niece ( Elsie Fisher ).

Healing, connection, optimism’: Peter Sarsgaard takes ‘Memory’ beyond the dementia

“I find it so gratifying that people are emotional watching this. They have a feeling of unity and optimism,” the actor says.

Dec. 20, 2023

Sylvia, however, is convinced that smiling, polite Saul is actually a figure from her traumatic childhood who recognized her that night. When she initiates a follow-up visit, the gesture appears charitable but comes with a pent-up confrontation in mind. In its clarifying wake, however, a tenderness develops between these damaged souls, one that becomes increasingly difficult to understand for their respective families — including the mother Sylvia won’t speak to, for reasons that become disturbingly clear as things combust in the final act. (Even before we know what we suspect, Jessica Harper ’s few scenes vividly suggest a manipulative affluence worth purging.)

Franco is a cool-headed ironist with a flair for oblique narrative and a fascination with the detached worlds of the wealthy. In taut, violent oddities of disintegration like “New Order” and “Sundown,” his style can translate into a bracing, compelling distance that’s not for all tastes. But because “Memory” is, at root, a story of people finding each other, the vibe is more reminiscent of Franco’s caretaking character study “Chronic,” while still touching on the abiding peculiarities of people who come from money and what’s always simmering in broken people. More directly than his previous films, his penchant for long takes with minimal intercutting seeds an emotional suspense, for us as well as the fragile humans inside cinematographer Yves Cape’s cool, steady frame.

Chastain and Sarsgaard use that time and space well too, playing out what’s unspoken and making real their characters’ budding, unsentimental closeness. There are whole areas of this twosome’s bond that remain unexplained. Ultimately, that feels like a virtue of the movie, rather than a flaw.

Franco’s way with a heartfelt story means foregrounding a feral alertness to danger to get us to appreciate the warmth its protagonists are waiting to bestow. But it’s also what’s admirably adult about “Memory.” It’s a movie that understands fully how nothing about our lives is a given, and that if you look hard enough at yours, there’s always something worth escaping from and running toward.

Rating: R, for some sexual content, language and graphic nudity Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes Playing: AMC Century City 15

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Movie Review: Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard anchor ‘Memory,’ a thorny drama with a tender heart

This image released by Ketchup Entertainment shows Peter Sarsgaard, left, and Jessica Chastain in a scene from “Memory.” (Ketchup Entertainment via AP)

This image released by Ketchup Entertainment shows Jessica Chastain in a scene from “Memory.” (Ketchup Entertainment via AP)

Actors Peter Sarsgaard, left, and Jessica Chastain pose backstage before discussing the film “Memory,” at The 92nd Street Y, Friday, Dec. 15, 2023, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

Actor Jessica Chastain poses backstage before discussing the film “Memory,” at The 92nd Street Y, Friday, Dec. 15, 2023, in New York. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

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Pain and trauma permeate Michel Franco’s new drama “ Memory, ” about two lost souls who find surprising comfort in one another. Both Jessica Chastain’s Sylvia and Peter Sarsgaard’s Saul are hostage to their own minds, though in vastly different ways. Hers haunts her. His is failing rapidly. And neither are entirely trustworthy.

“Memory,” expanding nationwide Friday, starts as a seemingly standard issue “damaged person” movie, introducing Chastain’s Sylvia celebrating 12 years of sobriety at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that her 12-year-old attends with her. But there are layers to this dramatic mystery, compounded with unreliable narrators and moral grey areas. Before you know it, the film morphs from something familiar into something altogether unexpected.

Though it is not easily categorizable, “Memory” is a thoughtful journey featuring very fine performances from both Chastain and Sarsgaard, who was rewarded with the best actor prize from the Venice Film Festival last fall. While there are moments of levity to break up the anguish, it could also come with a laundry list of trigger warnings as it explores difficult subjects from sexual abuse to mental illness in pretty unsatisfactory ways. Perhaps it’s a good thing that the holidays are over because this is not one to watch with the family, especially if they’re harboring secrets of their own that have evolved into generational trauma.

The film binds you at first to Sylvia, a social worker and single mother who is suspicious of everything and everyone. She always seems ready to bolt for safety and survival. She lives by a strict routine: Walking her daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber), to school, going to work at an adult day care and her AA meetings. Home is a fortress: As soon as she steps into her downtrodden apartment, she’s triple locking her door and punching in the security code to arm the place.

Even knowing her this little, it’s surprising that her younger sister Olivia (Merritt Wever) is able to convince her to tag along to a high school reunion kind of event early in the film. The decision seems even more unfathomable when you learn additional details about Sylvia’s school years, but it’s clear that she is uncomfortable and unhappy at the event, which she soon leaves.

For a moment, you wonder if perhaps her fears and anxieties are warranted as she realizes that night that a man is following her home, first down the street, then onto the same subway car, then off at the same spot, right to her doorstep. It is like a nightmare as she fumbles for her keys. You hold your breath until she’s made it inside. Hours later, the man is still there outside, looking up at her. Is he imagined? A dream? An ex? A stranger?

The man in question is Saul, who she finds out is suffering from early onset dementia. He won’t remember that he followed her home or why but he will remember her for whatever reason. His brother, Isaac (Josh Charles), asks if Sylvia would want to work for them as a companion to Saul.

And Saul and Sylvia develop a deep bond with one another that goes beyond professional caretaker boundaries. Both are damaged and longing for connection and their friendship is like a balm, until it evolves into something else. Without going into too many details, this relationship presents an ethical quandary that the movie does not seem willing to engage with in any serious way, making “Memory” feel underdeveloped at best. At worst, it’s not even sure what it’s trying to say. This movie has one of those endings that presents itself as happy but leaves you with a lingering feeling of dread and worry for all involved.

Movies can be empathy machines and also a form of therapy, giving audiences permission to step into a stranger’s shoes and feel things that otherwise might seem too difficult, too transgressive, too much.

Sarsgaard does a beautiful job of playing this man who has been dealt an awful card, whose body still works but whose mind is untrustworthy. His isn’t the only one: Sylvia also has flawed recall, as do members of her family, like her compartmentalizing mother played brilliantly by Jessica Harper. It all compounds into misery, secrets and shame.

Memory may be imperfect, this movie reminds us, but feelings rarely are.

“Memory,” a Ketchup Entertainment release in limited theaters now and expanding nationwide on Jan. 5, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “graphic nudity, some sexual content, language.” Running time: 110 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

‘Memory’ Review: Hit-Man Movie Remake Is a Retread of Familiar Liam Neeson Roles

Liam Neeson plays a bad guy who goes after worse guys, while the onset of Alzheimer's complicates matters, in this tough, déjà vu action movie.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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The less you remember about 2003 Belgian thriller “ Memory of a Killer,” the better, when it comes to its remake, directed by “Casino Royale” veteran Martin Campbell . Relocated to El Paso, Texas, this new version — which channels the brutal cynicism of recent Taylor Sheridan movies, or the even more ruthless tone of Ridley Scott’s “The Counselor” — takes the bones of a tough European crime drama and uses them as the grim gallows on which to hang yet another nihilistic Liam Neeson action vehicle.

These days, such Liam Neeson movies unofficially constitute a genre unto themselves. Starting with “Taken,” the Oscar-nominated actor who so sensitively played one of the screen’s great savers of souls in “Schindler’s List” has been reborn as a symbol of retribution. “Taken” came out in 2010, the year after the shocking skiing accident of real-life wife Natasha Richardson, and it has felt as if the actor himself was transformed by that tragedy, hollowed out and reduced to a rage machine. He is, as the mad dad in that movie said, a man with “a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career,” skills that have been unexpectedly honed into this incredibly specific, incredibly lethal persona.

In film after film, multiple times a year, Neeson plays men who power forward in pursuit of vengeance or justice — like a human shark, or a deadly weapon with the safety catch removed. Through it all, Neeson remains a great actor, someone who seeks to understand the soul of such violent men, and that sets his projects apart from the countless other “Taken” knockoffs produced each year. His movies make money, and in turn, Neeson makes more movies, each one a lot like the last, to the extent that audiences reasonably know what to expect. “Memory” may surprise them — provided they’ve forgotten the movie on which it’s based, that is, since the twisty plot felt fresher in its earlier incarnation.

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Neeson plays Alex Lewis, a hit man who is very good at his job. We recognize this because Alex is pushing 70 and still getting the jump on men half his age. We recognize this too because hit men so often wind up being hunted and killed by other hit men in such movies, or else moving to a Caribbean island with a bag of diamonds — but “Memory” doesn’t feel like that kind of movie. Alex is slowly losing his mind to Alzheimer’s, which means retirement isn’t likely to be so glamorous. We recognize this when, after completing his first job, he misplaces the key to his getaway vehicle. We recognize this too when he rolls up his sleeve and we see all the key details scribbled there in black marker.

At this point, audiences will no doubt remember another movie, Christopher Nolan’s backsliding puzzle-box thriller “Memento,” so it’s a bit surprising when the film introduces none other than that film’s star, Guy Pearce, as the FBI agent whose investigation into a sordid sex trafficking ring puts him on a collision course with Neeson’s character. Relatively early in the film, Campbell shows the two men sitting in neighboring cars, unaware of one another’s existence. They are driving to the same place: a safe house where Vincent Serra (Pearce) is trying to protect a teenage girl who’s meant to be a key witness in his case. Alex has been sent there to kill her.

Alex gets as far as the girl’s bedroom before deciding not to pull the trigger. But the decision is much deeper than that. In refusing to fulfill the assignment, he’s signing his own death warrant. He will be hunted by other hit men, and he will take as many of the bad guys with him before he goes as possible. Alex knows he’s no hero, but there are worse people than him in the world, and “Memory” becomes a kind of brutal cleanup exercise in which he can achieve what law enforcement can’t. Typically, he’s the tool people call to snuff the star witness before the trial. Now, he’s the one who can step in when the police move too slow. For this to work, Alex and Vincent must make a sort of uneasy arrangement, and audiences must accept that the entire justice system is broken.

Alex’s employer, it turns out, is a powerful Texas millionaire, embodied by Monica Bellucci as a woman who once was beautiful and now is obsessed with trying to prolong her own life. Her character is complicit in an underage sex ring, the likes of which righteous QAnon followers are so adamant lurks in the shadows of American society. Maybe it does. In “Memory,” Neeson could be their very own action hero, working his way up the chain until he’s dismantled the whole operation.

There’s less action here than you might assume. Campbell’s directing style is typically energetic, shot with a muscular moving camera. But when the violence comes, it’s sudden, unexpected and irreversible. At one point, Alex makes a car blow up, and Campbell shows the explosions from miles away, a tiny flash of fire all but lost in a wide shot of El Paso. Later, Alex kills a man at the gym, and the murder goes unseen and unheard by the woman working out in the foreground.

In the end, “Memory” isn’t terribly convincing, but it’s at least trying for something more serious than most. Released earlier this year, thematically similar “Catch the Fair One” was a far better movie. But it didn’t star Liam Neeson. And if that’s a prerequisite when picking such films, you could certainly do worse than “Memory.”

Reviewed online, April 26, 2022. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 114 MIN.

• Production: A Briarcliff Entertainment, Open Road Films release of a Briarcliff Entertainment, Open Road Films, Black Bear Pictures presentation of a Welle Entertainment production, in association with Saville Prods., Arthur Sarkissian production. Producers: Cathy Shulman, Moshe Diamant, Rupert Maconick, Michael Heimler, Arthur Sarkissian. Executive producers: Teddy Schwarzman, Ben Stillman, Peter Bouckaert, Rudy Durand, Tom Ortenberg, James Masciello, Matthew Sidari.
• Crew: Director: Martin Campbell. Screenplay: Dario Scardapane, based on the picture "De Zaak Alzheimer" by Carl Joos, Erik Van Looy. Camera: David Tattersall. Editor: Jo Francis. Music: Rupert Parkes.
• With: Liam Neeson, Guy Pearce, Monica Bellucci, Taj Atwal, Ray Fearon, Harold Torres.

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• Drama , Thriller

Content Caution

In Theaters

• April 29, 2022
• Liam Neeson as Alex Lewis; Guy Pearce as Vincent Serra; Monica Bellucci as Davana Sealman; Ray Stevenson as Detective Danny Mora; Ray Fearon as Special Agent Gerald Nussbaum

Home Release Date

• June 21, 2022
• Martin Campbell

Distributor

• Briarcliff Entertainment

Movie Review

Where did he put the keys? They should be here under the windshield visor. That’s where he always leaves them. He wouldn’t have taken them into the hospital with him. Would he? No, no. That would be crazy. Sloppy. Bad, bad, bad.

They’re not on the seat. Not in his pants pocket. In his shirt! Yes, he put them in his scrubs’ top pocket. That’s right, he was masquerading as an orderly this time. Hospital. Scrubs. Right.

He almost forced himself to retrace his steps back through the lobby and into the room where he garroted his mark’s throat. Blood everywhere. People walking by. Bad. That would have been an amateur mistake. He never makes those. Or … he didn’t.

But things are getting worse.

Alex Lewis has long known that the decline would happen. Alzheimer’s disease has hit his whole family this way. His older brother is little more than an empty … uh, just empty at this point. For Alex, it’s only been little things: a key, a picture, a word, a note. That’s why he’s taken to writing instructions and reminders on his own arm. But for some jobs, like Alex’s, you can’t be plagued with memory loss or the threat of a rubbed-off message.

Killers can’t be losing track of things. Not even keys. In this line of work, it won’t get you fired. It’ll get you dead.

He even tried to quit. But his handler talked him out of it. “Men like us, don’t retire,” he told Alex. But what do you do when you can’t remember the address, the name, the … thingamajig any longer? What then?

Just one more job. Make it a big one. And then he’ll have enough cash to hide himself away somewhere, maybe. He’ll have to leave what’s left of his brother behind. But, hey, soon enough he’ll probably forget him anyway.

Just one last, uh … whatchamacallit. Then he’ll be fine.[ Note: Spoilers are contained in the following sections. ]

Positive Elements

Alex’s next job changes everything, as he’s called upon to kill a teen girl who had been dragged into child prostitution by sex trafficking ring. Obviously, that’s not good. Alex, however, can’t force himself to follow through. But the girl is brutally murdered anyway by someone else. Alex, feeling that he’s close to losing everything anyway, takes it upon himself to hunt down those calling the shots. He also helps an FBI agent named Vincent Serra. Vincent had gone out of his way to help protect the abused girl—who was left homeless after a police sting went wrong.

Both men attempt to bring the powerbrokers behind the much larger trafficking operation to justice. Of course, their methods for doing so are much different. “We all have to die, Vincent. What’s important is what we do before we go,” Alex tells the FBI agent.

Amid a tainted justice system, we see very few good men and women. Vincent is one of a rare breed here.

Spiritual Elements

A Mexican detective wears six St. Mary medals around his neck to remind him of abused and murdered young women that he’s encountered in the course of a human trafficking case.

Someone says a prayer in Spanish and ends it with an affirmative “Amen.”

Sexual Content

We see several different women wearing open shirts or low-cut tops. One of them is in a formfitting swimsuit. Part of Vincent’s investigation into a sexual trafficking ring involves him paying, supposedly, to have sex with a man’s teen daughter. The girl undresses to a lightweight shift, but then discovers that Vincent is wearing a wire when she pulls open his shirt.

Later we see snapshots of that same teen girl being slapped by her father and a short video of her being tossed onto a bed by a shirtless older man. Later still, we see that same man at a yacht party. He strips off his clothes and lays face down on a bed and orders a different teen girl to get undressed. (She’s stopped from doing so.) The party also features an onboard hot tub packed with young women in bikinis.

A wife suspects her husband of an affair and demands he wash off the woman’s perfume. A woman openly flirts with Alex at a bar and later—after Alex slaps down a drunken man rudely hitting on her—the two end up in bed together. We see her in a cleavage-baring slip the next morning.

Violent Content

There’s quite a bit of brawling and death-dealing in this R-rated pic. Alex pounds away at several men in and out of the course of his job. He also breaks a man’s nose with a rifle butt. He batters another guy in a public restroom, smashing the man through a porcelain toilet. He slaps a drunk around at a hotel bar, slamming his head into the bar.

In another scene, Alex beats a killer mercilessly, slamming the man’s head and face into a car mirror and through a window. He then ties the bloodied man into the car and detonates a bomb on the vehicle’s undercarriage. We see him shoot several people in the head, up close and at a distance. He rips open a man’s gushing neck with a wire garrote.

In turn, Alex is also beaten badly by an angry police officer in a police interview. And the guy notes that he’ll take all afternoon to beat a confession out of him.

We’re shown pictures of two young boys with bruises all over their backs. A young girl is battered. We see her later with a bloody bullet hole in her forehead. A woman’s throat is slashed open by a man behind her, and the camera watches her bleed out. An innocent woman is shot in the throat by a gunman. Alex is shot in the side at one point and his shirt soon becomes soaked with blood. He opens his shirt, revealing the wound, then pours vodka on it and lights it afire to cauterize the laceration.

Someone tells a story about his wife getting hit by a drunk driver who then backs up to kill her son so there wouldn’t be any witnesses. A police sniper kills an innocent man. A man is riddled with bullets from police fire. Vincent tumbles out a second story window with an armed man who dies in the fall.

Crude or Profane Language

Some 40 f-words and a dozen s-words are joined by multiple uses of “a–hole” and “h—.” God’s and Jesus’ names are misused seven times total (with God’s name being combined with “d–n” once).

Drug and Alcohol Content

Both Alex and Vincent drink pretty heavily in several separate scenes. We see others drinking champagne, wine and booze at bars and at a yacht party. Vincent and a fellow female agent get drunk at a bar. A man and woman drink shots of tequila. A murder victim’s wife is visibly drunk during a police interview.

Two different guys smoke cigarettes.

Alex regularly takes a prescription medication designed to help his Alzheimer’s disease symptoms. A wealthy woman receives injections of a drug from her private physician. And a doctor moves to give someone a lethal injection before he’s stopped. We’re told of a man who was high on meth.

Other Negative Elements

This film declares that criminal organizations have corrupted many in the high seats of power in the U.S. criminal justice system (and in Washington, D.C.). We see several different people in authority corrupted by money and promises of power. And in the end, it’s suggested that murder may be the only way to solve that systemic disease.

Some might winkingly say that Liam Neeson is yet again playing a hero who has something, ahem, taken from him: this time his memory.

But that’s not accurate, really. In part, that’s because Neeson initially plays a true villain here, albeit someone with a conscience that’s starting to awaken. So when he’s not killing people in the film Memory, he’s straining to give heavy handed aid to the real hero before he loses himself to Alzheimer’s.

We’re shown child sex trafficking and gory murder in a crime-riddled world rotted to the core by graft and power. And it’s all part and parcel of a badly broken and horribly corrupted U.S. justice system.

Does that make for a stark social commentary? Maybe. But it also leaves you stewing in a fairly dark worldview. And no amount of orange soda and Gummy bears will make that depressing and often foul viewpoint any sweeter.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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Feud: Capote vs the Swans review – the starriest TV show in living memory forgets to be fun

It’s got Naomi Watts, Chloë Sevigny and Demi Moore, plus Tom Hollander as a deliciously evil Truman Capote. It’s got style to die for and supreme scandal. So how is the new series from king of camp Ryan Murphy such a dud?

W hat. The hell. Happened? You’ve got writer, raconteur and bon vivant Truman Capote. You’ve got his Swans, the impossibly rich and glamorous socialites of 50s, 60s and 70s Manhattan he befriended – which means you’ve got 50s, 60s and 70s Manhattan to play with too – and you’ve got the fabulous feud between them that erupted when he inexplicably, publicly, irretrievably betrayed them. You’ve got a cast to die for. Tom Hollander as Capote, Naomi Watts, Diane Lane, Chloë Sevigny and Calista Flockhart as the Swans (and Demi Moore as “peafowl at best” according to Capote, always as vicious as he could be charming, with Molly Ringwald and Treat Williams in the mix too). Gus Van Sant directs most of the eight episodes. And executive producing the whole thing (adapted by playwright Jon Robin Baitz from Laurence Leamer’s book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era) is Ryan Murphy. His list of hits includes Nip/Tuck (Grey’s Anatomy on crack), Glee (Glee on crack), the American Crime Story anthology that gave us the bingeable but astute The People v OJ Simpson and The Assassination of Gianni Versace, 12 gloriously bananas seasons of American Horror Story (Murder House, Asylum, Coven, Freak Show – need I go on?) All of which have rightly established him as the high priest of camp television.

His latest endeavour, Feud: Capote vs the Swans, should be the perfect companion piece to yet another Murphy hit – 2017’s Feud: Bette and Joan, which had Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange taking lumps out of each other and the scenery as they played out the lavishly baroque hatred between screen legends Davis and Crawford. And yet it is a dud. Albeit a dud that opens well, with Capote rushing to the rescue of his favourite Swan Babe Paley (Watts), who has discovered the latest of her serially unfaithful husband Bill’s (Williams) affairs via the mistress deliberately leaving menstrual bloodstains all over the marital bed and upholstery. Capote administers Valium, scotch and advice to turn her pain and Bill’s guilt into the acquisition of a Gauguin that Princess Margaret has her eye on. Soothed, she drifts off to sleep by his side.

Thereafter we are quickly introduced to the steely Slim Keith (Lane), who married up and far away from her origins in “Rustfuck, California”, the more blue-blooded CZ Guest (Sevigny) and wannabe Ann Woodward (Moore), whom Capote delights in tormenting as much as he fawns over the rest. But soon after that – and, crucially, too soon for us to have got the true measure of these relationships – we arrive at the moment in 1975 which ignites the feud that lasts until the writer’s death-by-drink a decade later.

Esquire magazine publishes an excerpt from his forthcoming “masterpiece” (never in fact finished) Answered Prayers. It is a barely fictionalised account of the Swans’ gilded lives and dirty secrets, including Paley’s sanguinary humiliation. They close ranks and freeze Capote out. And, really – that’s it. There is no major movement from then on. The timeline jumps around to try to obscure this. We flash back to Capote’s heyday, forward to an (imagined and ill-judged) meeting with James Baldwin, wherein Baldwin tells him, utterly incredibly, that his truth-telling piece about elite lives is “his slave revolt”, interspersing all with scenes between Capote and his various (frequently abusive) lovers.

But if ever there was a story that would benefit from simple linear telling, it’s this one. Without a holistic sense of the group and the nuances of their bonds it becomes impossible to judge whether their 10 years of isolating Capote was admirable sorority or terrible cruelty. The women – each of whose biographies would supply a lifetime’s worth of dramas and documentaries, especially once Flockhart turns up as Jackie O’s jealousy-wracked sister Lee Radziwill – are virtually indistinguishable from each other and exist only as satellites to Capote. Hollander is wonderful in the part (as are all the women in theirs, as far as they go). But they are working with so little. Ideas are floated but never developed. Maybe Capote published his piece because that’s what writers do – Graham Greene’s “splinter of ice in the heart” at play. Maybe misogyny, jealousy or both fuelled him. Maybe it was revenge for the way society shunned his mother (played by Jessica Lange as if she had just popped across from American Horror Story, which is fun but jarring). Maybe he saw that he was an exception to their otherwise intact homophobic prejudices. Maybe it was just a huge drunken mistake by a raging alcoholic as Capote was by then. But nothing is followed through, no conclusions drawn, no coherence provided.

Above all, it simply isn’t fun. Lange aside, it isn’t even camp. It’s cautious, dry, almost worthy in parts (the Swans are much given to anachronistic sounding soundbites about men’s power and women’s suffering) with a handful of good lines scattered about. Just enough to spike your flagging interest and keep hope alive that the Murphy magic will arrive. But it never does.

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Critic’s Notebook

4 Documentaries That Explore How Families Cope With Dementia

In “Little Empty Boxes” and other films, the heartbreak of memory loss is intertwined with deeper cultural implications.

By Alissa Wilkinson

When his creative, funny, independent mother, Kathy, began to exhibit signs of dementia, the writer Max Lugavere moved cross-country and picked up a camera to start documenting his journey to figure out how to help her. The result is “ Little Empty Boxes, ” a new documentary that’s strongest when it chronicles their relationship. Kathy’s memories of Max’s upbringing and his desire to be close to her bring them both a strange comfort. (She passed away in 2019.) The rest of the film — notably interviews with researchers studying links between nutrition, exercise and brain health — is uneven. Its visual language ranges from traditional, brightly lit talking heads to an observational approach, which can provoke whiplash for the viewer.

But “Little Empty Boxes,” directed by Lugavere and Chris Newhard, made me think about other powerful documentaries that chronicle walking through memory loss with a loved one. The experience can be tremendously painful, with family and friends feeling helpless; watching a film about it can in turn be both gut-wrenching and cathartic.

One of the best recent movies about memory loss — nominated for an Oscar last year — is “ The Eternal Memory ” about the Chilean journalist Augusto Góngora and his wife, the actress Paulina Urrutia. Directed by Maite Alberdi, the film ( streaming on Paramount+ ) weaves Góngora’s slow decline into a broader meditation on cultural memory, and on what we lose as communities when we’re denied the ability to retain those memories — through book bans and state propaganda that whitewashes historical truth. But the broader metaphor doesn’t obscure Góngora and Urrutia’s love story, which is heartwrenchingly beautiful.

Even more harrowing is “ Tell Me Who I Am ” (Netflix) directed by Ed Perkins. Like “Little Empty Boxes,” this 2019 film is more effective when exploring its subjects’ relationship than when it turns journalistic. Alex Lewis was in a motorcycle accident at 18, and when he woke up, he’d lost his memory. His twin brother, Marcus, helped him reconstruct his life, but as the film goes on, Alex — and the audience — realize that Marcus was holding back information about their past, and that revealing it is fraught. The brothers’ trust and love holds the film together.

The most unmissable and life-affirming film of this sort, though, is “ Dick Johnson Is Dead ” (Netflix) from 2020. Dick Johnson is the father of the director Kirsten Johnson; years after losing his wife (Kirsten’s mother) to Alzheimer’s, he begins to exhibit signs of dementia. Facing an uncertain future, Dick and Kirsten work together to humorously and movingly stage different ways he might die, while exploring their relationship and the meaning of love, history and remembrance. It’s a vital, hilarious, gorgeous and truly innovative film, and I can’t think of a better exploration of the bond between a filmmaker and a parent in the face of impending loss.

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

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Memory Reviews

I do applaud Memory for accomplishing the impossible, which is to make you forget about virtually every aspect of the film by the time the lights go back up in the cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Mar 6, 2024

Memory seethes with evil deeds and evil-doers motivated by nothing more than greed and a lust for power. And for once, Neeson’s character isn’t a blinding ray of light purifying everything around him through sheer will power and clenched fists.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 5, 2022

An above-average Liam Neeson action piece...Aimed squarely at an adult audience that doesn't mind lots of plot talk, veteran director Martin Campbell gives th proceedings an usually jagged edge that lifts it above more formula-minded genre pieces.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 30, 2022

Personally I think what Liam Neeson should do is order a hit on the role of hit man and have a go at doing something different.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 18, 2022

[Memory] offers only predictable plotting and fitful thrills.

Full Review | Oct 7, 2022

Casino Royale director Martin Campbell makes great use of his locations, but the film is unlikely to linger long in your own memory.

Full Review | Oct 6, 2022

Props to Campbell and Neeson for trying to spice up the usual murderous melange, but <i>Memory</i> ends up just as forgettable as all those other flicks.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 16, 2022

You can pretty much forget about it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 23, 2022

... An empty, repetitive, and ultimately, forgettable. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 25, 2022

When it comes to his thriller outings, autopilot is the only speed he [Neeson] has.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 14, 2022

The unnecessarily convoluted psychological thriller “Memory” proves two things: 1) That Liam Neeson, when he wants to, can really act; and, 2) that Liam Neeson acting doesn’t mesh well with Liam Neeson being an action star.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | May 29, 2022

It is a Liam Neeson movie, no more no less - it is a Liam Neeson movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | May 22, 2022

... Lots of fights, lots of chases, lots of bullets, lots of death. Lots of lots. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | May 20, 2022

Although this new film is not exceptional, it has a few aces up its sleeve. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 19, 2022

Memory is ironically named, because it is yet another Liam Neeson movie that you will completely forget about as soon as you reach the parking lot.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | May 19, 2022

Memory isn't a Neeson action vehicle nor the sordid noir the original was, resulting in an acceptable yet inconsequential movie. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | May 17, 2022

Set to turn 70 in June, Liam Neeson is still on his game in this forgettable action thriller in which he plays a professional assassin suffering from the beginning stages of Alzheimer's/dementia.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | May 13, 2022

By no means is this thriller destined to become a classic, but it’s a satisfying indulgence.

Full Review | May 10, 2022

I wish I could forget it!

[Neeson's] charm is dulled by Lewis' failing mind and a script that neglects backstory and character development, all of which leave us feeling detached from his performance ... If given the choice to strike Memory from our own memory, we gladly would.

Full Review | May 9, 2022

Fact Check: Does Abigail (2024) have a post credit scene? Explained

U niversal's new horror movie Abigail was released on April 19, 2024. Inspired by the 1936 film Dracula's Daughter, the film amassed positive reviews from critics and audiences alike. With Matilda the Musical star Alisha Weir in the titular role, the success of the film has fans yearning for a sequel.

Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett's previous movie Scream VI included a meta-post-credits scene. However, Abigail (2024) does not have a post-credit scene.

Before the titles rolled, the movie concluded with a tribute to the late Angus Cloud. The Euphoria star, who died of an accidental overdose in July 2023, played Dean in the vampire movie. The tribute read -

"In loving memory of Angus Cloud."

What is Abigail about? Plot details explained

Abigail is a vampire horror flick with elements of comedy. The story follows a group of six criminals who are tasked with kidnapping the young daughter of a powerful underworld crimelord from New York City.

After they take her to a secluded mansion, they find themselves trapped after realizing that the young girl is a blood-thirsty vampire. As they try to survive the night, Abigail hunts them down in a cat-and-mouse chase.

With the tagline "Children can be such monsters," the film's synopsis on its official website reads -

"After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they're locked inside with no normal little girl."

Made on a budget of $28 million, the film has a runtime of 109 minutes.

The cast of Abigail, list explored

Besides Alisha Weir as the vampire child, Scream VI star Melissa Barrera leads the cast of Abigail. Dan Stevens, who starred in the movie Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire , also plays an important role.

The complete list of actors in the movie includes:

• Melissa Barrera as Joey
• Dan Stevens as Frank
• Alisha Weir as Abigail
• Will Catlett as Rickles
• Kathryn Newton as Sammy
• Kevin Durand as Peter
• Angus Cloud as Dean
• Giancarlo Esposito as Lambert

At the end of the movie, Matthew Goode, who starred in A Discovery of Witches , makes a brief appearance as Abigail's father, Kristof Lazar.

The movie has grossed around $16 million worldwide at the box office as of April 22, 2024. After premiering at the Overlook Film Festival on April 7, 2024, the film was released by Universal Pictures on April 19.

According to an agreement made in December 2021 between Universal and Peacock, most Universal films will debut on the streaming platform as soon as 45 days after the release. This indicates that this movie will be available on Peacock from June for four months, followed by a release on Prime Video.

Produced by Radio Silence Productions, Abigail is available to watch in theatres.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Them: The Scare’ On Prime Video, A Second Season Of The Scary Anthology Series

Where to stream:.

• THEM: The Scare
• Deborah Ayorinde

‘Them’ Creator Little Marvin Encourages Critics Who Didn’t Like Season 1 To “Enjoy Season 2 On Its Own Terms”

Deborah ayorinde on returning for ‘them’ season 2, building chemistry with “living legend” pam grier, and season 3 potential, ‘sense and sensibility’ star deborah ayorinde reveals her “hallmark hunk” dan jeannotte was “such a gentleman”, stream it or skip it: ‘sense and sensibility’ on the hallmark channel, a worthy and entertaining adaptation of jane austen’s first novel.

When Them premiered in 2021, it came on the heels of Lovecraft Country and a number of other horror films and series that portrayed institutional racism as the “monster” that frightens and kills as much as the actual otherworldy forces do. The first season took place in the 1950s, during the Great Migration, where the racism was more overt. The second season of the anthology series takes place in 1991, one of the many times when society was reminded that racism is still alive and well in our society.

THEM: THE SCARE : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A quote from Aristotle: “Fear is the pain arising from the anticipation of evil.” We hear some breathing. Then a man with a pillowcase over his head is sitting amongst servo robots, with a birthday cake in front of him.

The Gist: “LOS ANGELES, 1991.” LAPD detective Dawn Reed (Deborah Ayorinde) wakes up to her alarm; footage of the Rodney King beating is playing on the TV. Her mother Athena (Pam Grier) wishes her a happy birthday; her teenage son Kel (Joshua J. Williams III) is still in bed.

Dawn gets paged to a murder scene, and what she finds is so grisly that even veteran cops are losing their breakfasts. The body of an older woman is crammed in the cabinet under her sink, with her limbs broken in awkward ways. Her head is snapped back, jaw distended, eyes wide in horror. Dawn notes all of this on her mini-cassette recorder as she surveys the crime scene.

In the meantime, Edmund Gaines (Luke James), who works at a Chuck E. Cheese-like restaurant, auditions for a role as a gang member in a film, and he’s so mild-mannered that he doesn’t even come close. In fact, it’s so bad that the guy manning the camera can’t stifle a laugh. He gets encouragement from Rhonda (Tamika Shannon), the casting agency’s receptionist. They’ve come to know each other a little bit, and Edmund is so taken with Rhonda that he stays in his car all day stalking the office.

Dawn’s boss, Lieutenant Schiff (Wayne Knight), pairs her up with another detective, Ronald McKinney (Jeremy Bobb) on this case, over her objections. But, given her history, Schiff knows she needs the help to keep the investigation on track. The victim was a foster mother named Bernice Mott (Cindi Davis), someone who is familiar to the police due to some domestic violence calls. When they question Malcolm (Deion Smith), one of her older foster kids, Dawn is horrified that McKinney is jumping to the conclusion that Malcolm likely did it; McKinney keeps loudly cracking joints just to get the teen’s attention.

Rhonda takes Edmund up on his invitation to bring her son to his restaurant. His manner switches from menacing to mild almost immediately upon seeing them. He goes and bounces in the bounce house with him, but not before Rhonda promises to flag parts form him in scripts she sees, and they exchange numbers.

Dawn goes to visit Malcom’s little sister Kia (Hattie Hoskins), and while reporting that living with Mrs. Mott was a scary experience, Mrs. Mott herself was scared of “Him,” saying that “she didn’t want to fall asleep. She didn’t want us to fall asleep, either.” We flash to Mrs. Mott screaming “He’s in the house!” while her wall of TV’s — likely there to stave off this scary presence — are blaring. Then a flash to Kia seeing the cleaning products lined up in the hall, and the cracking and screaming of Mrs. Mott being stuffed under the sink.

When Dawn crawls under her own sink, listening to her own description of Mrs. Mott’s body to try to figure out how she got there, things start going scarily awry around her house.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Them: The Scare is the second season of the Them horror anthology created by Little Marvin; the first season, which took place in the 1950s and also starred Ayorinde, came out in 2021.

Our Take: Like the first season of Them , the horror in Them: The Scare is as much about institutional racism than it is about some sort of apparition or monster. Just like at the beginning of the first season, Little Marvin and his writers, along with director Craig William Macneill, are more intent on scaring audiences via a feeling of creepy foreboding than anything else, and they do an effective job of it in the first episode.

There are two sides to this story that are seemingly unrelated, at least on first glance. We see more of Dawn’s investigation into Bernice Mott’s grisly death than we see of Edmund’s inherent weirdness, but we were probably more creeped out by Edmund’s story. That is definitely attributable to Luke James’ ability to go from stone-faced to childlike in the snap of a finger. When we see in in his apartment, looking at a trunk full of children’s toys, a chill definitely went up our spine.

But Dawn’s side of the story might eventually be the scarier one, due to the fact that she’s working for a department that is in the middle of a scandal that will play out in the national media and lead to the 1992 riots. She’s likely one of the few Black female detectives in the LAPD, and she has to do her job amongst rampant racism and sexism. All of those factors, plus what’s going on at home with her mother Athena, will likely play into how she goes about investigating this murder. As in the show’s first season, Ayorinde is adept at turning her emotions on a dime, and while Dawn is supposed to be an emotional rock in her family, the way she approaches her investigations is unusual and fascinating to watch.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Dawn hears a deep voice going “Are you scared?” which jolts her out from under the sink. She holds her chest while panic breathing.

Sleeper Star: We love the idea of having Pam Grier and Wayne Knight in their supporting roles. Not sure if Knight is going to be anything more than Dawn’s not-racist boss, but we still like seeing him there nevertheless. Grier’s character Athena certainly has more going on than just being Dawn’s mother, and we’re looking forward to seeing what that is.

Most Pilot-y Line: Edmund’s boss did not like the dance he did in costume at the restaurant. “The kids liked it,” Edmund said. “A kid just tried to swallow a Skee-Ball. They’re not Siskel and Ebert,” the boss replies.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The first episode of Them: The Scare does a good job at setting the scene and giving viewers the creeps from the jump.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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