Fifty Shades Darker (2017)
Directed by James Foley
When a wounded Christian Grey tries to entice a cautious Ana Steele back into his life, she demands a new arrangement before she will give him another chance. As the two begin to build trust and find stability, shadowy figures from Christian’s past start to circle the couple, determined to destroy their hopes for a future together.
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35 films that influenced Fifty Shades Darker
What critics say influenced Fifty Shades Darker
In her sheer black panty hose, the kind women haven't worn onscreen since her mother Melanie Griffith starred in Working Girl , she did look born to play the part.
The movie itself invites these comparisons, when it has Johnson’s character Anastasia Steele, the virginal heroine of the Fifty Shades franchise who is inducted into an education in sexual bondage at the hands of Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), pay homage to Working Girl after winning a sudden promotion.
27. There’s a little homage to Johnson’s mom, Melanie Griffith, and her signature movie, Working Girl.
One of the more delightfully absurd flourishes finds Anastasia abruptly promoted to publishing executive and Johnson responds by reciting one of her mom Melanie Griffith’s monologues from Working Girl .
Director Jamie Foley’s soft-core erotica includes Anastasia and Christian at a masked ball, evoking Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut , cheapening it, too.
Even a masked ball – with guests who wear those masks with long pointy curved noses – that conjures thoughts of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut is handled poorly by director James Foley.
(About that costume ball set piece: The last thing you should want to remind people of during a movie like this is Eyes Wide Shut .)
Director James Foley seems to be nodding toward Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut in the masked ball sequence.
The masked ball sequence tries oh-so-very-hard to mimic the intrigue of Eyes Wide Shut.
That's why his parents throw a benefit party for kids what were hurt by people, a masquerade ball that, disappointingly, is nothing like "Eyes Wide Shut" - all Christian and Ana do is sneak off for a missionary mattress-hop in his old bedroom, beneath his framed "Chronicles of Riddick" poster.
And finally, it was the first American multiplex film to feature S&M (unless Secretary counts?)—and while it was never quite as grandly kinky as one might’ve hoped, let’s just say it was soft-core-porn adjacent.
The 2002 film " Secretary ," also about a dom-sub relationship involving a Mr. Grey, portrayed fear, desire, humor, simultaneously.
A subversive foray into kink à la Secretary ?
But if the first Shades felt like a slicker, glossier, but far less fun version of 2002's Secretary , then this feels closer to The Blacklist , with Johnson's Anastasia led in and out trouble by the dominant Red, sorry Grey.
It’s all wrong!”; regrettably, she doesn’t get up and leave for a much better kinky movie (like maybe Secretary or Belle de Jour ), where she can get what she obviously craves without her choice of master making our collective stomachs crawl.
This actress starred in 9½ Weeks, one of the most sultry movies ever.
Here the actress is an ambassador (maybe intentionally, likely not) from an earlier era of quasi-transgressive multiplex erotica, like Adrian Lyne’s 9½ Weeks (1986), which she starred in opposite Mickey Rourke.
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That said, she is aces when compared to Jamie Dornan, who plays Christian as if he is really auditioning to portray Patrick Bateman in a remake of “American Psycho”—whether he is supposed to come across as arrogant, romantic or vulnerable, he just seems creepy throughout and in any normal film, his presence would provoke shivers of fear and revulsion coupled with a desire for the real hero to show up and rescue Anastasia from his clutches.
Some of the greatest Hollywood melodramas (such as Douglas Sirk’s “Magnificent Obsession”) featured plotlines of an even more extravagant absurdity than that of “Fifty Shades Darker.”
Yes, there’s plenty of nudity as Steele and Grey romp around the bedroom and explore sexual taboos that may have been boundary-pushing when David Duchovny was still thumbing through “Red Shoe Diaries.”
The veteran director James Foley (whose resume includes “Glengarry Glen Ross,” multiple episodes of “House of Cards” and one of the greatest and mostly forgotten movies of the 1980s, “At Close Range”) takes over the reins from Sam Taylor-Johnson, and it’s an upgrade.
Sam Taylor-Johnson, who directed the original movie, also fought with James; she's now been replaced by James Foley, who made At Close Range (1986) and the adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross (1992).
It’s a soapy sequel, a drinks-in-the-face/masked ball/helicopter crash/melodramatic mediocrity that a better director (James Foley of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “At Close Range” and “A Perfect Stranger”) can’t lift above laughable.
Director Foley –long since fallen from the early brilliance of his At Close Range and Glengarry Glen Ross — at least once upon a time helmed the deliriously trashy Wahlberg-stalking-Witherspoon nineties teensploitation classic Fear , utilizing a skillset one assumes would’ve come in handy here.
Director James Foley ("Glengarry Glen Ross," ''At Close Range") has taken over the reins from Sam Taylor-Johnson, who clashed with James.
In other words, anyone hoping that the insertion of James Foley, the man who made such powerful films as “At Close Range,” “After Dark, My Sweet” and “Glengarry Glen Ross,” into the director’s chair would result in a somewhat more competent filmmaking experience will be among the many who come away from this one feeling profoundly disappointed.
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And, as Anastasia's disrespectful (and worse) boss Jack Hyde, Eric Johnson (2001's " Texas Rangers ") sinks his teeth into a despicable, would-be suave creep, emanating more dark magnetism than Dornan's Christian ever does."Fifty…
Fifty Shades may take pains not to let Anastasia actually accept anything as gauche as cash for the body she hands over so willingly to her prince, as Julia Roberts did in Pretty Woman .