Instead, they acquire a different kind of houseguest in the form of Gordon (Edgerton), an unwelcome blast from Simon’s past who bumps into the happy couple (seemingly) by chance and, little by little, inserts himself ever deeper into their lives. All that’s (conspicuously) missing is the pitter-patter of little feet, though not (as we soon learn) for lack of trying. They luck into a beauty of a mid-century modern in the Hollywood Hills he seems primed for a promotion at work. In “The Gift,” our apparent Everyman hero is Simon ( Jason Bateman), a sales exec at a computer security firm who has just moved back to his hometown of Los Angeles with his interior-designer wife, Robyn ( Rebecca Hall). In Edgerton’s script for the absorbing 2013 Aussie police drama “Felony,” that ordinary man was a basically good cop who made an ill-judged decision to conceal his involvement in a drunken hit-and-run. To an extent, “The Gift” functions as a riff on what might be Edgerton’s pet theme - that of an ordinary man undone by a little white lie that grows into a mushroom cloud of deceit. But some supremely effective chills and good word of mouth could spell sleeper success for this Aug. It could also be, in the shape of a living, churning city of more than eight million people, the most powerful counter-argument to the extremist politics of the present.The sins of the high-school cafeteria come home to roost in “The Gift,” a coolly unsettling thriller that begins as an unironic homage to late-’80s/early-’90s yuppies-in-peril dramas like “Fatal Attraction” and “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” before taking a turn toward the moral and existential minefield of Michael Haneke’s “Cache.” A modest but accomplished directing debut for actor and screenwriter Joel Edgerton (who also gives himself a plum role here), “The Gift” is a more psychological, slow-burn genre exercise than the psycho-stalker shocker it’s being sold as by DIY horror specialists Blumhouse and Robert Simonds’ newly launched STX Entertainment. The global city above all others, London is the best place to understand the way the world’s cities are changing. To find responses to the challenges of the twenty-first century, London must rediscover its genius for popular action and bold public intervention. In this thought-provoking, fearless, funny and subversive book, Rowan Moore shows how London’s strength depends on the creative and mutual interplay of three forces: people, business and state.
SLOW BURN GENRE FREE
London has also become its own worst enemy, testing to destruction the idea that the free market alone can build a city, a fantastical wealth machine that denies too many of its citizens a decent home or living. It is a Liberal city, which means it stands for values now in peril. It is a place of freedom, multiplicity and co-existence. It offers fulfilments of body and soul, encourages discovery and invention. London is a supreme achievement of civilization. With a new introduction for the paperback.
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