I’m a huge movie buff, obvs, but I’m partial to the occasional slump in front of the telly box from time to time. I go for drama, on the whole. (I’d rather boil my head in a vat of hot oil than watch ‘reality’ TV.) The more unreal the better, please. I also eschew anything made with a younger audience in mind. I’m a proud GenX-er, and increasingly I’m drawn to things that contain people I can see myself in. You know, old people.
That’s probably why I had such a smashing time bingeing The Boroughs recently. This Netflix series might have been written especially for me. Set today, it channels the energy of films I grew up with, such as ET and The Goonies, in which gangs of ordinary kids band together to solve a problem or defeat an enemy. It’s not a gang of kids in this show, though. No siree. The heroes of this story are the elderly residents of the Boroughs retirement village in New Mexico. (What is it with New Mexico by the way? I know Vince Gilligan is obsessed with the place: Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and Pluribus are all set there, but now the Boroughs, too?)
The whole cast is great, and it’s a real ensemble piece, but the real stand-out performance for me is Alfred Molina as Sam Cooper. He’s a reluctant resident, moving to the community shortly after his wife’s death. At first he’s desperate to leave, but once he discovers that deadly shenanigans are afoot, he throws himself into defeating the baddies, making friends and cathode-ray guns along the way.
Full disclosure here. I have a massive crush on Alfred Molina. Sure, he’s past his prime now, and is carrying – ahem – a few extra pounds, but there’s a crookedness to his smile and a twinkle in his eye that this gal just can’t resist.
My crush goes back a long way, too. To Christmas Day, 1984, to be exact, which was the date of the first showing of Spielberg’s Raiders Of The Lost Ark on UK TV. I know, I know, it’s oiled-up, burnished, bare-chested Harrison Ford we’re supposed to go ga-ga for. But it was Molina’s hapless, hopeless, double-crossing Satipo that got me wanting to write I Love You on my eyelids. He’s only in the film for about ten minutes, but he made quite the impression.
Here’s a few of his other performances that stayed with me. It’s a tiny snapshot of his career (he has 236 acting credits on IMDB) but they do show something of his talent and range.
Species – directed by Roger Donaldson, 1995
Molina dies very early on in Raiders, impaled by a set of deadly spikes that shoot out of a booby-trapped wall, but he makes it a full hour into Species before coming to a grisly end. Unlike, say, James Franco’s dementia researcher in Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, or Denise Richards as the nuclear scientist, Dr Christmas Jones in The World Is Not Enough, Molina is very credible as a molecular biologist in this movie. He’s part of a team trying to splice alien and human DNA to create a hybrid known as Sil... with hilarious consequences.
Not really. The consequences are gory, crunchy and pretty horrific, not least for Molina’s Dr Stephen Arden, who meets a terrible end at the hands of the sexy hybrid. He’s not the mad scientist type here: he’s not after glory or world domination. He portrays Dr Arden as a cautious, responsible guy, making his demise laden with the pathos that is the hallmark of his acting style.
Spider Man 2 – Sam Raimi, 2004
Speaking of a pathos-laden performances, Molina gave us another one in Spider Man 2 as Doctor Otto Octavius. Initially a kindly mentor to student Peter Parker, whom invites home to meet his beautiful wife Rosie, (Connie Nielsen), he soon becomes Peter’s alter-ego’s nemesis. Again, far from being greedy for power, Doc Ock, the villain, is born out of an accident during an experiment. His beloved Rosie is killed, and the tentacles Otto created to bring unlimited, cheap fuel to humanity, become fused to his body, and a monster is born.
Molina has a great time in this movie. There’s much hamminess and scenery-chewing in the latter half of the film, but Molina keeps Doc Ock rooted in humanity, so much so that his death at the end is a conscious sacrifice of his own life to save others, rather than defeat at the hands of Spider Man. I’m mostly bored by superhero flicks to be honest, but I’d gladly watch this one on rotation.
Frida – Julie Taymor, 2002
Molina brings strong husband energy to Taymor’s biopic of the fabulous Frida Kahlo, too. By all accounts Diego Rivera – himself a great artist – was a bit of a, shall we say, mercurial fellow. He could be, by turns, charismatic, infuriating, adoring, unfaithful, brilliant and stubborn. Molina brings all these qualities to the screen, and the chemistry between him and Salma Hayek (Santanico Pandemonium off of From Dusk Till Dawn) is electric. He was about 50 when he made this film, but he exudes the energy of a much younger man, and carries off paint-spattered dungarees better than most. The descendant of Spanish and Italian immigrants, he brings passion, romance and heat to this role, flashing his blinding toothy grin and his gnarly grimace in equal measure.
Promising Young Woman – Emerald Fennell, 2020
I can’t tell you how much I love this film. It’s clever, and funny, and sad and devastating, and there’s not a dud moment anywhere in it. In a world of flabby, overlong, grandiose movies, this one stands out as a real gem. It’s also currently an A-level set text, so I get paid to watch and talk about it. Yay! It’s essentially a revenge tragedy in which Carey Mulligan plays Cassie, a once-promising young woman whose life is stuck. She’s unable to progress with her career or her relationships because she’s tormented by the death of her best friend, Nina, who took her own life following a violent rape while she was at college. In a shattering two-hander, Cassie goes to visit Jordan Green (Molina) a lawyer who defended Al Munroe, Nina’s rapist and secured his freedom. Cassie rightly blames him for Nina’s death almost as much as she blames Al Munroe. Her original plan is to confront Green and then send in a hired heavy to work him over a bit. She’s wrong-footed, though, when she discovers that Green has quit his well-paid and prestigious job, and now spends his days alone in his home, chain-smoking, surrounded by dead plants and clutter.
Molina is utterly convincing when he describes the breakdown he’s suffered since realising the havoc his work caused in countless women’s lives. When he tells Cassie ‘I’ve been waiting’ for someone like her to find him, we believe him. When he kneels before her, sobbing and begging for forgiveness, we feel that – just maybe – change is possible and violent men might find themselves punished, not protected, in future. It’s a masterclass in understated, powerful humanity. A lesser actor would have muffed it, making the scene all about poor old Jordan Green, but not Molina: we completely buy that his thoughts lie with the victims of sexual violence, not on himself.
I won’t spoil the end (but do track it down if you haven’t seen it – it’s superb) but Molina appears again, briefly at the end in a scene that offers him the redemption he craves. He accepts that offer with humility and purpose, letting a glimmer of light into the dark world women like Nina and Cassie inhabit. It’s a great example of a supporting role that brings real texture and depth to the whole film.
Alfred Molina, I salute you!
