{"id":7434,"date":"2020-02-21T17:47:25","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T17:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/?p=7434"},"modified":"2020-02-23T17:47:45","modified_gmt":"2020-02-23T17:47:45","slug":"the-night-clerk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/the-night-clerk\/","title":{"rendered":"The Night Clerk"},"content":{"rendered":"
[vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Watching hotel guests every move gets one night clerk in a heap of trouble. Tye Sheridan, in an unusual role, plays Bart well as a tech savvy young man with Asperger\u2019s syndrome. The young actor obviously studied well and is convincing. But is this film?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Pulitzer prize winning playwright (The Shadow Box<\/i>, 1977), Michael Cristofer is the writer\/director of this film. He had taken a 15 year hiatus from writing, but returned to acting first (Mr. Robot,<\/i> among other series) before putting this film together. With an A-list cast, the plot keeps your attention, but watching Tye Sheridan\u2019s Bart watch everybody, even for innocent reasons, is disturbing.<\/p>\n

Bart puts cameras in hotel rooms where he works at so he can surreptitiously observe other people, not for prurient reasons, but to get the tools to learn how to have more normal social interactions. It backfires.\u00a0<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”7442″ alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”7440″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”7438″][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]Bart is able to watch his cameras both at work and from home where he lives in the basement of the house he shares with his mother, Ethel, (Helen Hunt). We wish Hunt\u2019s role had been less bland. We think Cristofer could\u00a0 <\/span>have done more with her character to explain their relationship and his actions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cristofer gives us views of the activity at the hotel through the cameras as Bart watches intently. There are so many closeups of Bart\u2019s eyes as he reacts to the behavior of the people who stay there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When Bart observes a man murder a woman in one of the hotel\u2019s rooms, he rushes back to the hotel to try to save the woman, but he\u2019s too late. Detective Espana (John Leguizamo) finds Bart sitting on the bloody bed. He becomes the prime suspect, but the detective, becomes both sympathetic as well as suspicious of this strange young man and his involvement. Bart can\u2019t reveal that he\u2019s stashed cameras all over the premises which would prove his innocence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Leguizamo plays a Colombo type of detective. He\u2019s not a super sleuth, but\u00a0 <\/span>curious about this young man and his involvement in what happened at the hotel. He\u2019s sympathetic but doesn\u2019t seem too adept at putting the pieces together.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”7439″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”7436″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”7443″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]Of course, it gets more complicated when another beautiful woman, Andrea, (Ana de Armas)\u00a0 <\/span>shows up at the hotel with a man Bart has seen\u00a0 <\/span>at the hotel before. Andrea and the guy are definitely a couple, but she is being so attentive and kind to Bart that he\u2019s slowly becoming attached to her. Andrea reveals that she had someone in her family who was like Bart, which is why she relates to him. De Armas is captivating, sexy and mysterious, but this misdirection doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense. It\u2019s virtually a dream sequence for what could become an unlikely romance. But what about the other guy?<\/p>\n

Tye Sheridan definitely stretches his acting chops convincingly playing a young man on the autism spectrum. Leguizamo\u2019s role as the detective could have been a tool more efficiently used by the director to add to his relationship with Bart. The film moves slowly and, credit to Director Cristofer, the payoff is unexpected and bittersweet. But is it satisfying? Not so much.<\/p>\n

Saban Films \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>1 hour 30 minutes\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>R[\/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=S082VhMncOg” el_width=”80″ align=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][\/vc_section]\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Watching hotel guests every move gets one night clerk in a heap of trouble. Tye Sheridan, in an unusual role, plays Bart well as a tech savvy young man with Asperger\u2019s syndrome. The young actor obviously studied well and is convincing. But is this film?\u00a0 Pulitzer prize winning playwright (The Shadow Box, 1977), Michael Cristofer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7437,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7434"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7451,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7434\/revisions\/7451"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}