‘Quiet Place’ intoxicatingly creepy
‘Chappaquiddick’ looks into American tragedy
Let’s start with a popcorn warning. If you’re bringing your usual tub of multiplex popcorn into “A Quiet Place,” just be aware that you’ll be hearing every single crunch.
That’s because much of John Krasinski’s ingeniously creepy new film, in which he stars alongside his real-life better half, Emily Blunt, takes place in virtual silence. This is a movie about a world where noise gets you killed. In fact, if you ate popcorn IN the movie, you’d quickly be dead. Unless you were standing by a waterfall. More on that in a minute.
Krasinski, in his third feature outing as director, has a lot going for him here: An inventive premise (was it dreamed up by some vengeful librarian?), a terrific cast featuring two extremely effective child actors, and the always superb Blunt, who can register fear, joy, love and anxiety in one scene without needing to utter a word. He takes all this and runs with it, producing a taut, goosepimply thriller that earns its jump-outof-your-seat moments and only occasionally strains its own logic — and then, who really cares? It’s a monster flick!
We begin on “Day 89.” But what exactly happened 89 days ago? Our first clue is that there’s nobody in the streets of the desolate town where the Abbott family — Lee, Evelyn and three young kids — makes a precarious shopping trip. The family has ventured on foot from their farmhouse to search an abandoned store for badly needed medicine. The next clue is all the “Missing” posters on the streets. What happened to all these folks? The most obvious clue is that the family cannot speak, or make a sound. They communicate in sign language, and walk barefoot on soft sand and dirt so even their feet won’t give them away.
An early, shocking tragedy makes it clear what they’re up against: evil, hungry monsters who consume anyone who catches their attention with sound. Soon, that fateful Day 89 skips ahead to Day 472.
US Senator Edward Kennedy went to his death in 2009 haunted by his role in the drowning of a young woman 40 years earlier after he crashed their car.
The accident at a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, an upscale resort off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, indelibly stained Kennedy’s reputation and destroyed his chances of entering the White House.
“It was the event that changed the course of Teddy Kennedy’s career,” said John Curran, the director of “Chappaquiddick,” a new movie delving into the mysterious events surrounding a tragedy that has enthralled America for half a century.
Speaking at the premiere in Beverly Hills ahead of the movie’s US release on Friday, Curran described himself as a fan of Kennedy.
“I do realize I’ve had this sort of blind spot about this episode in his life and it just felt time to re-examine it honestly,” said the 57-year-old filmmaker.
Kennedy boasted a rich family political legacy linked to an era of civil rights gains as brother of president John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
The Massachusetts senator’s own legislative achievements since his election in 1962 at age 30 helped craft his legacy as one of the most accomplished lawmakers in US history.
In “True Compass,” his memoir published weeks after his death in 2009, Kennedy stuck to his assertion that Mary Jo Kopechne’s death on July 18, 1969 was an accident.