Dead of Winter: Great start, deplorable finish

Dead of Winter (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five); rated R, for violence and profanity

Available via: HBO MAX

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.1.26

Between this film and her recent starring role in the British miniseries adaptation of Mick Herron’s Down Cemetery Road, Emma Thompson appears to be staking a place in the action thriller genre.

 

Having been spotted by a pair of desperate and deranged kidnappers — one of whom
expertly wields a rifle — Barb (Emma Thompson) does her best to hide.

But whereas her character in that miniseries is a scrappy private investigator, her role here is strictly ordinary ... if perhaps more resourceful than most.

Director Brian Kirk’s brooding, atmospheric drama gets its suspenseful heft from a cleverly structured original script by Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb. Thompson handles the starring role with total persuasion; she’s one of a handful of talented actors who can fill even mundane bits of business with complex theatrical heft.

 

Barb (Thompson) is introduced as she begins a new day, in the isolated, snowbound wilderness of northern Minnesota. Her movements and behavior bespeak countless mornings just like this, but today somehow feels a bit different; her features suggest sorrow.

 

Her home is adjacent to a bait-and-tackle store that is closed for the winter; both are within easy driving distance of nearby Lake Hilda ... and, indeed, she loads supplies into her truck and heads in that direction. Before leaving the house, she snatches a treasured Polaroid photograph — we can’t quite make it out — and clips it to one of the truck’s interior visors.

 

But it’s a wretched day, with a blizzard warning; attempting to get anywhere, in the midst of such extreme weather, seems the height of recklessness. Why would someone experienced with such an environment, risk making such a trip?

 

Ah, but Barb has an excellent reason ... which we don’t learn about, until the third act.

 

(This Minnesota setting notwithstanding, filming took place in Koli, Finland, and Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia ... where, presumably, the snow and frozen lake conditions were more reliable.)

 

A faint sound, en route to the lake, piques her curiosity; she follows it to a cabin, where a man (Marc Menchaca) is chopping firewood. Startled, he demands to know what she wants. Sensing something amiss, Barb changes tack and — feigning unfamiliarity — asks for directions to the lake. 

 

Somewhat pacified, he answers; Barb departs. But she notices fresh dapples of blood on the snow in front of the cabin.

My Salinger Year: Book it!

My Salinger Year (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and sexual candor

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.7.21

This is a valentine to writers.

 

Director/scripter Philippe Falardeau’s gentle drama — adapted from Joanna Rakoff’s 2014 memoir, and available via Amazon Prime — is as delightful as her book. Imagine a less acerbic take on The Devil Wears Prada, set instead in New York’s mid-1990s literary world, and boasting a truly droll (mostly) off-camera supporting character.

 

Finding it increasingly difficult not to empathize with so many of the adoring fans who
write passionate letters to J.D. Salinger, Joanna (Margaret Qualley) grieves over
the way this correspondence is treated by the author's literary agency.

The charm of Rakoff’s memoir derives from her witty, often self-deprecating glimpse back at her impulsive, fresh-faced younger self. Falardeau maintains this authorial presence by granting star Margaret Qualley (as Joanna) plenty of narration: both off-camera voice-over and, rather cheekily, with occasional break-the-fourth-wall glances at us viewers. Cinematographer Sara Mishara frames her in a lot of tight close-ups.

 

In most cases, so much narration would become a tiresome gimmick, but not here: Qualley is so endearing, so wide-eyed and ingenuous, that we can’t spend enough time with her.

 

The story begins as Joanna impulsively abandons UC Berkeley’s graduate school, without a formal farewell to her musician boyfriend (Hamza Haq, as Karl), and moves to Manhattan with dreams of becoming a poet (having placed two pieces in the Paris Review). Lacking a job or place to live, she moves in with tolerant best friend Jenny (Seána Kerslake).

 

Joanna makes the rounds, and eventually sits across from Margaret (Sigourney Weaver), who heads her own modest literary agency. It’s a stubborn remnant of the mid-century publishing world, with plush, wood-paneled offices occupied by professionally dressed staffers who still rely on typewriters and Dictaphones, and where agents doze after three-martini lunches.

 

Margaret, needing an assistant, is impressed by Joanna’s enthusiasm. “Be prepared for long hours,” Margaret archly warns. “A lot of college graduates would love this job.”

 

The work load does prove grueling, particularly when Joanna — wholly unfamiliar with Dictaphones — initially can’t transcribe more than two or three words at a time. (I’ve been there; I recall how gawdawful that process was.) But while Margaret is stoic and old-fashioned, her work-related demands aren’t unreasonable; she’s far from the savage martinet Meryl Streep made Miranda Priestly, in The Devil Wears Prada.

 

The “surprise” lands when it turns out that Margaret has long represented J.D. Salinger, whom she — and everybody else in the office — refers to as Jerry. Joanna is tasked with processing his voluminous fan mail, all of which must be answered via decades-old form letters. 

 

All the fan mail then is shredded: which is to say, Salinger never sees it. As he wishes.

 

Margaret therefore is less the reclusive Salinger’s literary agent — he hasn’t published anything since a short story in 1965 (!) — and more his protector. “Never, ever give out his address,” she cautions.