Complete Unknown (2016)

Complete Unknown (2016) was co-written and directed by Joshua Marston. It stars Rachel Weisz as Alice Manning, a beautiful 30-something woman biologist, who manages to make contact with Tom (Michael Shannon) by being invited to his birthday party.

Alice and Tom broke up 15 years earlier, and she disappeared. He presumed she was dead. Tom is now married to a lovely Iranian woman, Ramina, played by Azita Ghanizada. The couple live in New York City, but a problem has arisen. Ramina has been invited to attend a very prestigious three-year course in jewelry design on the west coast. Tom is reluctant to leave his job. (Actually, that plot line is more or less filler. The real plot concerns Alice.)

Alice has done many things in the interim 15 years. One of the questions in the movie is whether she actually has done these things. Alice is an instant and effective liar, so it's hard to know what she has or hasn't done.

The acting in the movie is excellent from the stars to the supporting cast. Look for Kathy Bates and Danny Glover in cameo roles. Condola Rashad plays Sharon, one of the guests at the party. She is the most perceptive person in the movie. She catches on before anyone else does. Azita Ghanizada looks perfect as an intelligent, artistic wife, who cares about her husband, but also cares about her personal development.

I enjoyed this movie because of the fine acting overall, and, particularly, because of Rachel Weisz's performance as Alice. The sets, costumes, and general ambiance looked perfect. My discomfort about the movie is due to the fact that everyone is charmed and fascinated by the enigmatic Alice. I think the entire film would crash because you only care about Alice because she's is played by Rachel Weisz. Rachel Weisz is very beautiful, and director Marston and his cinematographer can't stop looking at her. If Alice were unattractive, no one would care about where she had been and what she had done in the past 15 years.

We saw this film on the large screen at Rochester's excellent Little Theatre. It will work well enough on the small screen. It's interesting to me that Complete Unknown has a dismal overall IMDb rating of 6.7. However, if you look at the demographics, males gave it a 6.5, while females gave it a 7.3. Because, as is typical for IMDb, the number of male votes is three or four times the number of female votes, the male vote prevails. However, 41% of the voters gave it an 8, 9, or 10. Think about this when you decide whether or not to see this film.

Fmovies: I watched this movie because it billed itself as a "mystery". The only mystery is how anyone could find it entertaining. It was about as enticing as a toenail clipping. I agree with other reviews in that this movie featured very bland and self absorbed characters, not the least of which was the female lead. Also, talk about implausible. The woman doesn't look much over thirty yet she has had all these jobs and experiences, many of which would take years of schooling. Sad and pathetic and yes infuriatingly stupid.

"Complete Unknown" (2016 release; 92 min.) brings the story of Alice (played by Rachel Weisz). In the pre-credit opening montage, we see her in a number of completely different settings (emergency room nurse, magician's assistant, pianist, etc.) Who is this person? After the opening credits, we get to know Alice, now a biologist in New York. She takes an interest in a guy at the cafeteria, and it's not long before they befriend. One evening they go to a dinner party to celebrate the birthday of her friend's co-worker (played by Michael Shannon). Shockingly, the co-worker recognizes from a prior life, 15 years ago, and confronts her. Why did she vanish without a trace all those years ago? Why did she come back? To tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the latest movie from writer-director Josh Marston. Here he tackles a potentially intriguing promise: a woman seemingly drops off the face of the earth 15 years ago, and then returns, all the while spinning tales (are they true? or made up?) about her exploits in Australia, China, Mexico, and so on. The first half hour of the movie is the best, as at that point we are barely understanding what is going on, keeping us hungry to understand the full picture (is Alice battling multiple-personalities disorder? is she a con-artist? a femme fatale? delusional? all of those?). As that full picture emerges, regrettably (but perhaps unavoidably) the mystery is lifted and the movie loses some of its appeal (but not interest). Rachel Weisz absolutely shines in the lead role, and to see her in all these different settings is a true delight. Michael Shannon at times seems to struggle to keep up with Weisz on the screen. Kathy Bates and Danny Glover play an elder couple (one long scene, maybe 10 min. of screen time). The movie flew by in no time, but I also have to be honest: the ending baffled me, and not in the best way. Last but not least, there is a wonderful score, courtesy of Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurrians.

The movie premiered at the Sundance festival earlier this year and was snapped up by Amazon Studios, yes, this is yet another movie release from Amazon, The movie finally opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati and I couldn't wait to see it. The early Friday evening screening where I saw this at was attended nicely, but by no means anywhere near a sell-out. If you are interested in a character and relationship drama that seems it could go in many different directions, and stars the lovely and talented Rachel Weisz, I'd suggest you check out "Complete Unknown", be it in the theater, on VOD, or eventually on VDV/Blu-ray, and give it a try.

Complete Unknown fmovies. Rachel Weisz is one of the most talented English actresses and Michael Shannon is one of the most underrated but very good actors. When these two comes together as co-star, I thought this will be a very good drama movie. The trailer and the premises are and thought this will be another Rachel Weisz classic like "The Constant Gardener", "The Fountain", "Agora", and "The Lobster". This is not a typical storyline and I am not telling this is not a good movie but if you saw the previous drama movie of Rachel Weisz, this is definitely a poor film.

I know Joshua Marston is a good director for drama movie and he directed some good TV drama. But this movie is a complete mismatch of the story and the telling style. The screenplay was very poorly written and the story has also plot holes. This is a drama movie and the pace is almost nothing. The whole plot was rounding one specific character(I am not telling the storyline or not giving any spoiler), the dialogues are very choppy and widely not presentative for a slow paced drama movie. CHaracer development is very sluggish and it is completely understood that the lazy screenplay also harmed the character's maturity.

Joshua Marston's direction is not so bad but he didn't find the right combination for the character's chemistry and the movie completely failed to create the sympathy or the emotions for the characters. Editing is not so good and the cast has not done a good job for their roles except Rachel Weisz. She is the one and only plus point of this movie. She has done an outstanding job for the role of Alice Manning. She has a perfect emotion and her dialogue delivery was very good and maybe she is the perfect choice for the role.

Overall I gave it 3 stars only for Rachel Weisz and if the screenplay, script, and the chemistry between the characters did good then the movie would be a good example.

Why this vapid material needed a-list acting talent I'll never know but good on the director for getting to work with Shannon and Weisz who were utterly wasted on this meaningless and pointless film story. Starts out pretty vague and meandering and then gels into something you can understand, but then the 3rd act is just more vague, unformed nonsense with no resolution to speak of. I suppose when you have the best of the best as your leads, you can get away with weak material but this film lacked a "persuasive theory," which seems to be a trend as of late with films that either try too hard (and fail) to depict an underlying theme, and films that don't even bother, leaving an audience to fill in the gaps and conjure up their own meaning for the film.

Alice (Rachel Weisz) re-enters Tom's (Michael Shannon) life after disappearing for fifteen years. Only, she's hard to identify because of the multiple personalities she has assumed in those years. She remains the titular heroine of Complete Unknown, and she is a stranger to the end of this complicated and accomplished indie.

Don't come to this absorbing adventure seeking Walter Mitty thrills: Alice subtly changes her personal shape and doesn't burden us with cheap melodrama or even sexual romance. Rather the emphasis is on discovery: As Tom peels back the layers of her personalities and discovers her, he is drawn into discovery of himself and his own unfulfilled life. Although she is the center of the exploration, he is close behind, like all of us afraid to look inside ourselves to see the multiple possibilities for life change.

Complete Unknown exposes the yearning we may all have to live other lives. In Alice's case, she may have lived as a magician's assistant and a researcher, and more in between. But actually whatever roles she has taken, she cannot efface her core self as her return to observe her parents and see Tom again shows.

In a bizarre occurrence on the street, Tom helps a fallen old lady (Kathy Bates) by pretending to be an osteopath, rather enjoying how Alice has roped him into to assuming the new role. At this point, director Joshua Marston shifts from the mystery of Alice's identity to the mystery of who Tom is or wants to be.

He becomes the one whose identity we also speculate about. Whether or not he decides to leave his unfulfilled job to go with his wife to California for her professional study opportunity becomes just as intriguing as Alice's many lives. The film is figuratively blunt about the power of changing one's life, for good or ill.

Marston has masterfully made us question our own identities and our use of talents and pursuit of other lives than the ones we have stuck ourselves in. By extension, Complete Unknown may be a discourse on the ability of art such as movies to take us into lives heretofore unavailable to us.

Anyway, this is a film for thinking people who may want to speculate on the lives they could have and the life they have.