THE REVENANT

(Alejandro Gonzalez Inarittu, 2015)

The Revenant starts with a sudden, brutally violent attack upon a trapper camp by a war party of Arikara Indians in 1823. Arrows abruptly appear in throats, blood spurts, and all of a sudden a pitched battle of horrific violence and chaos is underway. Obviously inspired by his work on Birdman, Inarittu shoots all of this in what appears to be a single, awesome take, as the men fight, die and begin a panicked retreat towards their boat on the river, the Indians in pursuit.
Shot by the genius cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, this scene reminded me of nothing so much as the work of Terrence Malick. His masterful The New World, also shot by "Chivu" created an utterly immersive, 360 degree world upon the American Frontier, and Lubezki's camera patrolled it incessantly, as it does here. Only the world summoned up by Inarittu has a lot of Sam Peckinpah in it too - it is tough and masculine, filled with big and peculiar characters and terrible deaths, a sense of relish for the violence and suffering on screen.
This focus upon action is new for Inarittu. It is also quite refreshing. His earlier work was often weighed down by a pompous sense of seriousness, of a director with an undergraduate understanding of the world filled with conviction that he had important things to say. Babel is perhaps the nadir of his work, a trite and simplistic thesis on communication, interconnectedness and the modern world.
The Revenant too strains for seriousness, but it is taciturn film, entirely wordless for long stretches, and Inarittu reduced to images is a much more impressive director than the man who relied on vacuous screenplays to communicate his themes. On one level, this film is an absolutely incredible action film, with its plot concerning a man struggling to survive in an unbelievably harsh environment and his quest for revenge after he is left for dead, and watches his son murdered. Only Inarittu fills it with long, slow scenes glorying in his sensational landscapes, and sequences revealing the state of mind of his protagonist, Glass (Leo DiCaprio), as he is haunted by memories of a massacre in an Indian village, the death of his wife and his own actions to save his son.
The action scenes are outstanding: both that stunning early battle, a later pursuit across a plain, an extended and terrifying bear attack, and the final confrontation each contains a few genuinely jaw-dropping moments, and they help make this an entirely gripping experience, for all that its director has greater pretensions.
The ferociously committed performances are a great boon, too. DiCaprio does most of his work without dialogue, and still manages to convey his agony and fierce will to survive with just his face and body language. Tom Hardy, as the man who betrays him, unveils another funny voice and accent, but creates a weak, believably complex antagonist in his Fitzgerald.
The likes of Will Poulter and Domhnall Gleeson match them in smaller parts.
For all that, Lubezki is undeniably the film's true star; his work here is sensational, and this is truly an every-frame-a-painting movie. For all the effort that Inarittu devotes to creating a strong thematic content here - his suggestions that Tarkovsky as an influence say it all - this film is amazing. Powerful, beautiful and riveting, it is hard to shake off.

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS

(J.J. Abrams, 2015)

I am one of Generation Star Wars.
Seeing the first two films in a double-bill around 1982 was a formative event in my childhood and, lame and corny though it sounds, helped to turn me into the person I am today. I accept the value of the myth created by George Lucas, I understand how it has shaped and turned popular culture, and in some ways, I've been waiting for this film for thirty-odd years. I know I brought a few metric tons of baggage into the cinema with me when I went to see The Force Awakens.
With that said, this is a good piece of genre entertainment, not a great one. The narrative is a bit of a mess, but so many other elements are excellent that they offer no little compensation. The story focuses on the search for a vanished Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), a quest which involves both sides of a conflict in a galaxy now overseen by a Republic. Those sides are the Resistance, led by Leia (Carrie Fisher), now a General; and the First Order, an Empire-worshipping army led by Supreme Commander Snoke (voiced by Andy Serkis) whose leadership includes a new version of the Darth Vader-Grand Moff Tarkin duo in Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Commander Nux (Domhnall Gleeson). That suggests one of the issues with this film: it has a karaoke feel to it, with almost every single element recalling or referring to one from the original trilogy.
Take the heroes: Rey (Daisy Ridley) is a scavenger who we first encounter alone and shiftless on a desert planet, just like Luke at the start of Star Wars. Finn (John Boyega) is a scrapper who makes one decision after another and winds up up to his neck in the Resistance, despite starting the film as a Stormtrooper. Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) is a cocksure, witty X-Wing Pilot, seemingly blustering and improvising his way through sticky situations, just like Han Solo when we first encountered him.
Speaking of Han Solo (Harrison Ford), he and Chewbacca show up too, going about their roguish smuggling business and drawn back into a conflict centred around the Force, just like they were in Star Wars.
Not only that; there is basically a new Death Star. There is a climactic light sabre duel. There is an X-Wing dogfight with Tie Fighters. There is a snowy planet. There is a cantina scene, complete with odd music. There is a wise old alien who knows more than she lets on and dispenses advice, informed by her awareness of the Force. There is the death of an old, mentor character at the hands of a younger character, who was once close to him.
Abrams takes Star Wars itself as a sub-sub-genre; sci-fi by way of space opera, and as all that quotation and repetition suggests, he is extremely faithful to the conventions of that sub-sub-genre. Perhaps too much so, in that this film is never really surprising, with even its twists reminiscent of twists from the original trilogy. But then a massive part of the pleasure here is that this film feels like Star Wars in a way none of the prequels really did.
And then there are the virtues that Abrams brings: he has always been good on character, and the characters here are fascinating. Take Kylo Ren's volatile brattishness (he is just the way Anakin Skywalker should have been in the prequels), soulfully played by Adam Driver. Or Daisy Ridley playing Rey and her gradual awakening to who and what she may be (accusations that her character is a "Mary Sue" seem ignorant of the "hidden Prince" trend which has been popular in the fantasy genre for decades, and of which she seems a prime example) as a frightening and then exhilarating journey. John Boyega's Finn, meanwhile, is the most entertaining of the three, finding himself while wisecracking and double-taking the whole time. The older characters, meanwhile, show up just like old friends, the changes in them moving and amusing in equal measure. Harrison Ford in particular seems to be having a good time as Solo, and he manages to play a few difficult moments with a lot of emotion and wit.
Abrams other chief strengths are aesthetic - his films are usually incredibly pacy, and The Force Awakens whips along throughout its two hour twenty running time, never really pausing for breath. That is useful, when the story is as messy and occasionally stupid as this one is. Another compensation is the visceral physicality of his storytelling. There have never been moments in Star Wars films like some of the shots here - Tie Fighters appearing against the sun, Storm Troopers waiting in a shuddering drop-ship.
Above all, Abrams knows how to make his films fun. The Force Awakens is stuffed with gags, great action beats, nice character moments and rich detail, and it is entertaining from start to finish, with a few passages which have resonance  and emotion throbbing through them. It also sets up Rian Johnson's Episode VIII in a manner which suggests it has a great chance of becoming another Empire Strikes Back. Lets hope so. For now, The Force Awakens is a definitive statement - Star Wars is back, and it's good again. Whew.

BROOKLYN

(John Crowley, 2015)

To this particular Irish emigre, Brooklyn seems so Irish in a multitude of ways; in its mixture of repression and melancholy, its often hysterical humour, its gentle beauty and, perhaps most of all, in its surging undertow of strong emotion.
It tells the defining Irish story of the 20th century: the story of a young person emigrating to America. Eilish (Saoirse Ronan, as brilliant here as ever, and making a serious play for the undisputed title of finest actress of her generation) has little future n Enniscorthy, Wexford, and so she leaves her sister and mother behind for a new life. In Brooklyn she lives in a boarding house for single Irish girls, policed by fearsome, hilarious landlady Mrs Kehoe (Julie Walters, brilliant) and spends her days working in a department store. At first her loneliness and homesickness are cripplingly painful, but eventually the kindly priest who arranged her emigration (Jim Broadbent, joint the Tom Cruise school of awful Irish accents but otherwise beautifully gentle) sets her up with night school classes in book-keeping and she meets a kind, sweet young Italian boy, Tony (Emory Cohen) at a dance. But sudden tragedy at home means she has to return, and while there she realises her prospects have changed, and Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson) challenges Tony's place in hr affections.
Nick Hornby's script is a sensitive, nuanced adaptation of Colm Toibin's novel, and Crowley's direction of it is exquisitely measured and careful. He isolates Eilish in frames in her early days in Brooklyn, small, pale and mouselike amidst the colour and bustle and brashness of America. Ronan understands this and she plays Eilish's slow flowering with lovely subtlety; it's in her body language, in her sudden readiness to smile. The visuals also depict the difference between the starkness of Ireland and the busy New World adeptly; the colours in Ireland are pale, chilly, catholic. America seems warm and bursting with life.
All of this only amplifies the quandary that becomes the emotional crux of the film: Eilish and her choice of men and futures. She is smarter and more sensitive than lovely Tony, but he represents a new start, away from the gossip and small-mindedness of Enniscorthy. Jim - played by Gleeson as a quiet, watchful man - is perhaps better-suited to her, but he has the baggage of her past in his wake.
the film allows both of them to be sympathetic, and the draw of home and her mother only makes the decision harder for Eilish and the audience. Michael Brook's beautiful score really earns its money in that last act, as that surge of emotion kicks in.
Its perhaps a shame that it takes so long for stakes to raise to that level, as early on things tend to drag somewhat, but this is generally a lovely, little film, and what it does, it does very well.

EX MACHINA

(Alex Garland, 2015)

It's not a criticism of Ex Machina to say it resembles an extremely good episode of The Outer Limits stretched to feature length. In fact, it may be a compliment.
This provocative piece of science fiction, filled with ideas and founded around three strong characters makes for an intense, unsettling experience.
Domhnail Gleeson is Caleb, a coder at a hugely successful search engine company who wins a workplace lottery to spend a week at the isolated, beautiful estate of the reclusive founder-owner-genius Nathan (Oscar Isaac).  There he discovers that Nathan has created a robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander), and he wants Caleb to perform a turing test on it through conversation.
Writer-director and former novelist Garland has structured his debut like a novel; it is split, with onscreen titles pages, into days and once during each day Caleb has a conversation with Ava. Afterwards he hangs out with the Bro-like Nathan (who gets drunk late at night, and alternates detox and boxing a punchbag in the mornings), becoming increasingly disturbed and suspicious about his methodology and motivations. This may have something to do with the fact that he might in fact be falling in love with Ava, who is worryingly beautiful, and even seems to be flirting with him.
Gleeson and Isaac are brilliantly cast here, with the former's jumpy anxiety a fine contrast to the cocky intensity of the latter. Isaac gets the best speeches and the most interesting depths, and much of this film plays like a theatrical two-hander - intense exchanges and arguments between intelligent individuals about abstract ideas. Their dynamic is perfect; Isaac penetrating, patronising and deliberately cool. Gleeson struggling to retain any composure.
Vikander's Ava then, comes out of left field. First seen in silhouette, she makes a lovely electronic whirring noise as she moves. But she seems more and more human with each scene, though Vikander never loses the odd, alien quality she gives the character - there in the way she holds herself, the way she turns her head. She seems to fall for Caleb just as much as he has fallen for her, but the film is full of dire warnings of the consequences for her creation: early on, Caleb equates Nathan with a God (Nathan's deliberate (?) misremembering of this moment is a quiet comic highlight) , and later, Nathan speculates that one day A.Is will view humans as we regard fossils on the plains of Africa - dumb apes and their clumsy tools. All of this and the growing tension between the three characters (together with Nathan's silent maid, Kyoko) makes for a growing sense of unease. Garland's cinematographer, Rob Hardy, is a vital contributor here - he shoots Nathan's house-cum-research facility with long, muted tracking shots down corridors, plenty of oblique angles on Ava, observed and aware, in her room, the nearby vastness of the green mountainsides and waterfalls emphasising the isolation of these characters as their drama plays out.
And it is a drama which has a great ending that makes perfect sense and seems inevitable, in retrospect. As if nothing else could have happened, it could have gone no other way. That's what's in the eyes of the three principals in the climactic moments: This is how it always had to be.
Garland should have a hell of a career ahead of him.

FRANK

(Leonard Abrahamson, 2014)

Frank does many difficult things extremely well.
It is a black comedy which is, at it's core, about mental illness. Not only that; it addresses lots of the unpalatable truths of human interaction - insecurity, ambition, weakness, jealousy. And it is funny despite that.
It creates an interesting portrayal of musicians at work which lacks most of the usual cliches applied to musicians in cinema. And the music is pretty good, too.
One of it's central characters spends 95% of the story wearing a papier mache head. And this only makes him more hypnotic.
It follows Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), a frustrated young office drone from a seaside British town with dreams of rock stardom from the time he encounters Soronpfrbs, an American band on a shambolic tour in a battered old van. Their singer and leader is Frank (Michael Fassbender), who constantly wears that head. He eats in it, sleeps in it, showers in it (wrapped inside a plastic bag). He also seems to be a sort of genius; improvising songs at will, inspired by everything, dragging the rest of the band along in his wake.
After their keyboard player attempts suicide, Jon fills in on keyboards for a gig in his hometown, then gets a phonecall offering him the role on a long-term basis. He travels to rural Ireland, where they set to work on an album, the recording of which takes months. During this time, the web of co-dependencies and rivalries in the band, mostly revolving around Clara (Maggie Gylenhall) grows more complex, as Jon pushes for a more commercial, "likeable" direction, surreptitiously filming their sessions and posting the results on YouTube, where they develop a cult following (this film makes excellent use of twitter as a comedic device). That following results in the offer of a gig at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas. But Frank starts to feel the pressure of performing before a large audience as the band starts to crumble around him, and Jon struggles to hold everything together.
Abrahamson has a gift for observation and for texture; and Frank is full of funny, precisely nuanced scenes in vivid locations, each of them ably captured. The characters seem like they are types, exaggerated for comedic effect...until the pathos starts to seep into this story, and the melancholy heart of Frank himself and of Dan (Scoot McNairy) becomes evident. This is contrasted with Jon's desperate desire to be a star despite a shortfall of talent, and Clara's manic need for control.
Occasionally we even see them play music, a sort of droning eclectic mix of post-rock and electronic experimentation that actually is interesting and good.
Fassbender is as magnetic as ever, using beautifully concise movement and body language to let that blankly surprised giant head act for him. It works. It's hard to drag your eyes away from him whenever he is onscreen.
Gleeson gives great support as the wide-eyed, painfully human Jon, while Gyllenhall is deadpan deliciousness as Clara, casually devastating with her brutal one-line dismissals. The script is full of sly wit, but it is tender to its characters too. All of this, and it still manages to say moving, near-profound things about creativity, inspiration and selfishness. It is magnificent, and quite, quite unique.

CALVARY

(John Michael McDonagh, 2014)

Brendan Gleeson is a great actor. And with John Michael McDonagh he seems to have found a writer-director who understands how best to use him, who sees the depths in him and is able to access them in his work.
Their first film together, The Guard, found the wicked humour in Gleeson, and let him deadpan his way through some hilarious dialogue, while never losing sight of the intelligence in his eyes. Here, McDonagh allows him to brood and think, and his expressive face and clear body language lets the audience in on what he is thinking.
And that in turn allows McDonagh to consider his big themes - faith and atheism, the Church and god, the meaning of religion itself - through his leading man. Gleeson plays a "good priest" in a small Sligo parish. Informed in a confessional in the opening scene by an unseen Parishioner that he will be murdered "Sunday week" as vengeance for the abuse the man suffered at the hands of a Priest as a child, he spends the week seemingly as he normally would. This provides an episodic structure but also allows McDonagh to portray not just the Priest but also his community as he visits troubled parishioners and they visit him.
They include a cynically aetheistic Surgeon (Aidan Gillen), an imprisoned serial killer (Domhnall Gleeson), a former banker who made millions from Celtic Tiger Ireland (Dylan Moran), a cuckolded butcher (Chris O'Dowd) and a few more. Gleeson dispenses advice, tries not to judge, gives the last rites, and argues theology with many. The Catholic Church is fair game in modern Ireland, seen as child abusing, greedy and fascistic, and Calvary reflects this nicely, in the many bitter barbs aimed Gleeson's way by his neighbours.
The most emotional storyline involves the arrival of his daughter (Kelly Reilly) wearing bandages on her wrists from a recent failed suicide attempt, and his attempts to deal with this while his own mortality hangs over him. McDonagh writes terrific dialogue, and that combined with an excellent cast allows the often simplistic archetypes which constitute his characters to burst to life here. They challenge, amuse and touch Gleeson and his own brilliance means that his struggle with their eccentricities and biases is always clear and involving.
McDonagh is a classicist in style, and his film is filled with simple, powerful compositions, artfully contrasting the huge skies and bleak beauty of Sligo with some startling stylised interiors. Mainly though his camera focuses on Gleeson. The big man can carry any film if allowed to, and given this script he works more than a few wonders.

SHADOW DANCER

(James Marsh, 2012) Here is a thriller set in Northern Ireland in the awkward period when the Troubles began the slow journey towards an ending of sorts. 1993, here rendered as just as colourless and drab as 1973, the setting for the first scene, and the IRA leadership are guardedly drifting towards agreeing to abide by a peace agreement. Colette McVeigh (Andrea Riseborough) is a single mother and Republican sister to two brothers who are members of the IRA, Gerry (Aidan Gillen) and Conor (Domhnall Gleeson). Her mission to plant a bomb on the London Underground foiled early on, Colette is half-threatened, half-sweettalked by British Agent Mac (Clive Owen) into becoming a secret informant for the British. Only her safety is threatened by the suspicions of Brendan (Martin McCann) and the agendas and games of Mac's superiors, most notably Kate (Gillian Anderson). Marsh's film is slow-burning, relatively subtle, sombre, intelligent and utterly humourless. It is perhaps a little too minor-key and tasteful for it's own good, rarely succumbing to the temptation to try try to thrill the audience, instead remaining a bit arty, a bit classy. There are a couple of suspense sequences where Colette may be discovered, but even these are quiet and clear-eyed, lacking the intoxicating charge which is mandatory in the very best, most lurid thrillers. The notable exception is the second scene, introducing Colette in a long wordless scene on the Tube, evoking a keen, visceral sense of paranoia and the physical feel of those trains and tunnels. Marsh is a fine storyteller, never more so than in this scene; there is no dialogue for ten minutes yet it is abundantly clear exactly what is happening. The cast are generally fine, though almost nobody has a convincingly developed character to play. Even Riseborough's Colette is something of an enigma, spending much of the film brooding while staring out windows. Marsh keeps it grim, often finding the beauty in unlikely scenes - a body discovered beneath an electricity pylon in grass made golden by the sun, for instance. Dublin stands in for Belfast - a massive distraction to this particular Dubliner - and Marsh conjures up some interestingly composed frames of the grey landscape, either bisected by tower blocks or studded with identical little houses, while also modulating the tone here beautifully. Almost too beautifully; Shadow Dancer rarely rises above a hushed whisper, and as a result its thrills and pleasures are modest.