(Joachim Trier, 2015)
It is so rare these days to see an English language drama made by a director with a real exhilarating feeling for the possibilities of cinema.
Much of what is acclaimed and viewed as quality drama is naturalistic and kitchen sink in approach, utilising handheld camera, chronological editing, low or found lighting and verging into melodrama by accident rather than design. It is influenced more by TV than cinema. Trier takes another approach: his movie always feels like cinema. It is ambitious, frequently beautiful, allusive, literary, mysterious.
It is also superb.
The story tells of the aftermath - 5 years after, in fact - of the death of a famous war photographer (Isabelle Huppert). Survived by a schoolteacher husband Gene (Gabriel Byrne) and two sons, Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg), who is beginning his own family and struggling to come to terms with that, and Conrad (Devin Druid), a high schooler nursing his own obsessions and insecurities, a new exhibition and accompanying article in the New York Times by Richard (David Strathairn) raises the issue that Isabelle's death was in fact a suicide. Conrad - 12 at the time - is ignorant of this fact, and while Gene and Jonah struggle with their own feelings about the ghost haunting their lives and the women sharing them (Gene is having a secret affair with a colleague, while Jonah runs into an old girlfriend while in hospital for the birth of his first child), they must also decide how and if to tell Conrad about the reality of his mother's death.
That makes the story sound far more melodramatic than it is. Trier in fact makes it just like life: at times funny, sometimes profound, lovely and dreamlike. These characters all have rich inner lives, and Trier is brave and empathetic enough to follow them off on tangents to investigate. So we are treated to Gene's inner monologue when he and Hannah (Amy Ryan) connect at a party. He allows the girl Conrad has been obsessed with to narrate their brief moment together, though the perspective is obviously Conrad's. We get glimpses of Isabelle's life and her depression and joy. We see her death in slo-mo, and the bomb blast which almost killed her a few years before.
There are flashbacks to her visit with Jonah in College, the strange erotic moment they share in the bathroom. Then there are the naturalistic conversations, the Skype calls, the tense moments over breakfast cereal. Trier plays with perspective and narration. He slips elliptically between time frames without explanation, as if somebody is remembering all of this.
And it works beautifully. This is an utterly superior family drama. But also an excellent art film, about life and how it feels to be alive. The real subject of all art, perhaps. And one Trier excels at tackling.
Showing posts with label Drama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Drama. Show all posts
Wednesday, 4 May 2016
Wednesday, 20 April 2016
DHEEPAN
(Jacques Audiard, 2015)
The way Audiard combines poetic realism with gritty genre material remains unique in modern cinema. Dheepan may not be his strongest film, but it is still sensitive, riveting filmmaking.
It follows a Tamil Tiger soldier who escape Sri Lanka by pretending to be married to a young woman likewise seeking escape. They pretend a young orphan girl is their daughter and find themselves in a banlieue on the outskirts of autumnal Paris. Dheepan works as the caretaker for their housing estate, his 'daughter' learns French at school, while his 'wife' fearfully, confusedly hides away from the world until a job is found for her cooking and cleaning for a disabled old man. As they negotiate life in a country where they do not speak the language (they all appear to be fluent in English, and the woman talks of escaping to her cousin in London), they realise that some facts of life are universal. In this case that includes the men with guns who rule the estate - gangs of drug dealers patrolling the rooftops and stoops. But Dheepan was once just such a man with a gun, and traumatised as he is, it is not long until he is forced to use violence to defend those he has come to love.
That Taxi Driver-ish ending is impressive and hard won by a film that builds character and place patiently and with a fine eye for two hours. Audiard paints these three people with fine strokes; Dheepan himself is proud and in pain, widowed and mourning two children, shellshocked by the war which killed his entire unit, he stoically works and learns and falls in love with the woman pretending to be his wife slowly and despite himself. She is more complex; angry and at odds with her environment until her job allows her to find who she is once again. The scene where she seduces her 'husband' is erotic and realistic in just the right amounts.
The girl meanwhile noisily adapts.
Audiard details all this with his usual intimacy; allowing us into the characters heads at moments, showing the way they perceive things, the subjective truth of moments revealed and then snatched away again. At the same time we learn the life of the estate, its patterns and rules, its geography.
All this pays off in the bloody, dreamlike chaos of the climax.
Which is - brilliantly, surprisingly - followed by a blissfully happy ending.
The way Audiard combines poetic realism with gritty genre material remains unique in modern cinema. Dheepan may not be his strongest film, but it is still sensitive, riveting filmmaking.
It follows a Tamil Tiger soldier who escape Sri Lanka by pretending to be married to a young woman likewise seeking escape. They pretend a young orphan girl is their daughter and find themselves in a banlieue on the outskirts of autumnal Paris. Dheepan works as the caretaker for their housing estate, his 'daughter' learns French at school, while his 'wife' fearfully, confusedly hides away from the world until a job is found for her cooking and cleaning for a disabled old man. As they negotiate life in a country where they do not speak the language (they all appear to be fluent in English, and the woman talks of escaping to her cousin in London), they realise that some facts of life are universal. In this case that includes the men with guns who rule the estate - gangs of drug dealers patrolling the rooftops and stoops. But Dheepan was once just such a man with a gun, and traumatised as he is, it is not long until he is forced to use violence to defend those he has come to love.
That Taxi Driver-ish ending is impressive and hard won by a film that builds character and place patiently and with a fine eye for two hours. Audiard paints these three people with fine strokes; Dheepan himself is proud and in pain, widowed and mourning two children, shellshocked by the war which killed his entire unit, he stoically works and learns and falls in love with the woman pretending to be his wife slowly and despite himself. She is more complex; angry and at odds with her environment until her job allows her to find who she is once again. The scene where she seduces her 'husband' is erotic and realistic in just the right amounts.
The girl meanwhile noisily adapts.
Audiard details all this with his usual intimacy; allowing us into the characters heads at moments, showing the way they perceive things, the subjective truth of moments revealed and then snatched away again. At the same time we learn the life of the estate, its patterns and rules, its geography.
All this pays off in the bloody, dreamlike chaos of the climax.
Which is - brilliantly, surprisingly - followed by a blissfully happy ending.
Sunday, 17 April 2016
MIDNIGHT SPECIAL
(Jeff Nichols, 2015)
Nichols' "voice" makes perfect sense here, applied to a sci-fi thriller which refers to Spielberg's sci-fi cinema of the late '70s and early '80s; like J.J. Abrams' Super 8, Midnight Special seems hugely indebted to E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as well as John Carpernter's Starman.
The difference is that while Abrams is a skilled mimic, Nichols has his own sensibility and style. It is artier than most mainstream Hollywood cinema, patient and precise, with much attention paid to tone and mood. Visually he uses almost-Hawksian simple set-ups, eschewing flashy cutting or ostentatious angles.
Each of his films is imbued with a strong sense of emotion, perhaps at the expense of plot. So here there is no exposition, meaning that the audience is involved in an intriguing game of catch-up from the start. We meet two men, on the run from the authorities across the South of the U.S. with a little boy in tow. The boy wears swimming goggles and headphones. They travel by night, the driver wearing night-vision goggles so that their car travels in darkness. They use cardboard to blackout motel room windows in the daytime. The Government is searching for them, as is the cult they appear to have escaped. The boy is spoken of in reverent terms by cult members, and appears to have powers of some sort. One of the men (Michael Shannon) is revealed as his birth father.
Nichols lets the details come slowly, focusing instead on the mood of desperation and fear around the fugitives. This is really a story of a father's struggle to protect his child, and as such it accrues tremendous emotional power as it moves with gathering speed towards a climax. The sci-fi elements are all sudden shocks in the story, and the naturalism of the setting and playing gives them an awesome effect; a scene at a gas station is interrupted by a shower of falling satellite debris. Shannon is woken from sleep by the house being shaken off the ground by the light shooting from his sons eyes. The boys touch kills patches of grass.
While the film is without any Spielbergian sentimentality, it does try for Spielbergian awe, and the context and tone helps it achieve something like that. It is a slow burn that sparks to life impressively.
Nichols is great with actors as ever. Shannon, Edgerton and Dunst are all excellent, while Driver shows good range as the Government expert on their trail. Perhaps most impressive is the cinematography of regular Nichols collaborator, Adam Stone; he paints a muted, wintry picture of the Southern States by night, lit by halogen and headlamps.
Nichols' "voice" makes perfect sense here, applied to a sci-fi thriller which refers to Spielberg's sci-fi cinema of the late '70s and early '80s; like J.J. Abrams' Super 8, Midnight Special seems hugely indebted to E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as well as John Carpernter's Starman.
The difference is that while Abrams is a skilled mimic, Nichols has his own sensibility and style. It is artier than most mainstream Hollywood cinema, patient and precise, with much attention paid to tone and mood. Visually he uses almost-Hawksian simple set-ups, eschewing flashy cutting or ostentatious angles.
Each of his films is imbued with a strong sense of emotion, perhaps at the expense of plot. So here there is no exposition, meaning that the audience is involved in an intriguing game of catch-up from the start. We meet two men, on the run from the authorities across the South of the U.S. with a little boy in tow. The boy wears swimming goggles and headphones. They travel by night, the driver wearing night-vision goggles so that their car travels in darkness. They use cardboard to blackout motel room windows in the daytime. The Government is searching for them, as is the cult they appear to have escaped. The boy is spoken of in reverent terms by cult members, and appears to have powers of some sort. One of the men (Michael Shannon) is revealed as his birth father.
Nichols lets the details come slowly, focusing instead on the mood of desperation and fear around the fugitives. This is really a story of a father's struggle to protect his child, and as such it accrues tremendous emotional power as it moves with gathering speed towards a climax. The sci-fi elements are all sudden shocks in the story, and the naturalism of the setting and playing gives them an awesome effect; a scene at a gas station is interrupted by a shower of falling satellite debris. Shannon is woken from sleep by the house being shaken off the ground by the light shooting from his sons eyes. The boys touch kills patches of grass.
While the film is without any Spielbergian sentimentality, it does try for Spielbergian awe, and the context and tone helps it achieve something like that. It is a slow burn that sparks to life impressively.
Nichols is great with actors as ever. Shannon, Edgerton and Dunst are all excellent, while Driver shows good range as the Government expert on their trail. Perhaps most impressive is the cinematography of regular Nichols collaborator, Adam Stone; he paints a muted, wintry picture of the Southern States by night, lit by halogen and headlamps.
Saturday, 20 February 2016
THE SURVIVALIST
(Stephen Fingleton, 2015)
The Survivalist aims to depict a post-apocalyptic world without any of the iconography or mythology of the Road Warrior school of post-apocalyptic action. It focuses on one man living alone on a tiny farm hidden in Northern Irish woodland. When we first encounter him he is disposing of the corpse of an intruder, and we sense this is not the first time. He tends to his crops, sleeps, eats, masturbates. He is twitchy and paranoid about more intruders, and as we learn, he is right to be. This is - as it always is after an apocalypse in fiction - a world of Darwinian principles. Only the very strongest survive. Two women arrive. Mother and daughter, they say. They want food, perhaps a nights shelter. They trade sex with the younger woman for both. Meanwhile they plot to take the man's gun and his home away from him.
Fingleton carefully observes the shifting dynamics between these three people. The watchful, cunning older woman. The man's wariness soften as he develops feelings for the girl. The girl realise who she may be better off siding with. Eventually, other intruders come. They are armed. Loyalties are tested, realities faced. There is little dialogue, no non-diagetic music. We hear the characters breathe, the wind in the trees. We watch their eyes watch one another.
The space is precisely mapped out by Fingleton, the arena of the shed the three share, the clearing where the man confronts an intruder, the stream nearby. The pacing is deliberate, controlled. This is a slow world. No need to rush it. It acquires a mesmeric quality.
Martin McCann is excellent as the man, so stoic that any flicker of feeling in his eyes has a seismic effect. Mia Goth is just as mysterious as the young woman, while Olwen Fouere seems to have stepped from some medieval myth; wise and frightening, she possesses an unforgettable face.
This is tense, beautiful, though-provoking. Its quality makes a virtue of a small budget and modest ambition.
The Survivalist aims to depict a post-apocalyptic world without any of the iconography or mythology of the Road Warrior school of post-apocalyptic action. It focuses on one man living alone on a tiny farm hidden in Northern Irish woodland. When we first encounter him he is disposing of the corpse of an intruder, and we sense this is not the first time. He tends to his crops, sleeps, eats, masturbates. He is twitchy and paranoid about more intruders, and as we learn, he is right to be. This is - as it always is after an apocalypse in fiction - a world of Darwinian principles. Only the very strongest survive. Two women arrive. Mother and daughter, they say. They want food, perhaps a nights shelter. They trade sex with the younger woman for both. Meanwhile they plot to take the man's gun and his home away from him.
Fingleton carefully observes the shifting dynamics between these three people. The watchful, cunning older woman. The man's wariness soften as he develops feelings for the girl. The girl realise who she may be better off siding with. Eventually, other intruders come. They are armed. Loyalties are tested, realities faced. There is little dialogue, no non-diagetic music. We hear the characters breathe, the wind in the trees. We watch their eyes watch one another.
The space is precisely mapped out by Fingleton, the arena of the shed the three share, the clearing where the man confronts an intruder, the stream nearby. The pacing is deliberate, controlled. This is a slow world. No need to rush it. It acquires a mesmeric quality.
Martin McCann is excellent as the man, so stoic that any flicker of feeling in his eyes has a seismic effect. Mia Goth is just as mysterious as the young woman, while Olwen Fouere seems to have stepped from some medieval myth; wise and frightening, she possesses an unforgettable face.
This is tense, beautiful, though-provoking. Its quality makes a virtue of a small budget and modest ambition.
Tuesday, 16 February 2016
THE PROGRAM
(Stephen Frears, 2015)
The first act here strikes an odd balance.
It portrays Lance Armstrong (Ben Foster)
as a sympathetic protagonist, forced into
doping because if he wanted to win, well then that was the only way. Everybody
else was doing it, so why shouldn’t he? Especially when he has had to fight off
cancer, a time in his life depicted as an awful battle in grim, shadowed hospital rooms.
Lance’s return sees him convinced that
doping is the only way, and he embraces the work of his Doctor Michele Ferarri
(Guillaume Canet) and is rewarded with seven consecutive tour de France victories.
He is friend to Presidents and celebrities,
adored for his charity which raises millions for cancer research, happily
married with children, and one of the greatest athletes on Earth.
Only David Walsh (Chris O’Dowd) is
disgusted. If everybody can see there is something wrong within cycling, then
everybody is happy to stay silent. But Walsh cannot. He rants and asks
questions, and it is then, when he is backed into a corner, that we see another
side of Lance. He bullies, threatens, sues. He uses cancer and his charity as a
shield. He gets away with it. Until he doesn’t anymore.
The procedural aspects of this story are
its most interesting element.
How Armstrong and his team doped, how he
escaped detection for so long. But director Frears and screenwriter John Hodge
want this to be something of a character study, and that is where the film
comes somewhat unstuck.
Armstrong loves winning, loves a battle.
But that doesn’t explain him, explain his controlling aggression, explain the
way he destroys those who oppose him. Ben Foster does his best, but when his
Armstrong looks into a mirror he seems like an empty puppet. These filmmakers
don’t understand this man. And that leaves the film curiously hollow.
TUMBLEDOWN
(Sean Mewshaw, 2015)
So say Bon Iver had died after that one
(good) record. Or say Elliott Smith had only made that early acoustic record.
And then died, leaving a small body of work and a wife (Rebecca Hall, good as ever) behind to guard his
legacy. And she’s trying to write a book about him but shes too close and too
involved and still mourning, and she can’t do him justice, alone as she is in
her rural house with the ghosts of their life together and his home-made
recording studio. Then this New York intellectual professor of pop culture (Jason Sudekis) shows up, writing some arty-farty tenure application academic book, and they
hate one another straight away, but she relents and asks him to write the
biography for her. And he agrees, eager for a scoop and needing the money, and
moves in, and of course, of course, slowly, but not too slowly, they fall for
one another.
Only there’s still the ghost of that dead,
seemingly perfect genius singer-songwriter, and he has his theories and her
memories and the oddball eccentrics of her small town life, including her
family and his life in New York, and so so many hurdles before they can be
together.
Oh and it’s a gentle comedy-drama. Most of
the drama coming from his one-liner responses to those small-town
eccentricities and her withering contempt for his big city ways. Most of the
drama from her continued grief for her dead soul mate.
The leads are appealing and believable and
they make a cute couple. It’s nice. Agreeable. You could watch it on a plane.
The songs – by Damien Jurado – are pretty.
Monday, 8 February 2016
MISSISSIPPI GRIND
(Ana Boden, Ryan Fleck, 2016)
Boden and Fleck are such careful filmmakers, it tends to make their films play at an odd remove. Here they take this scruffy little genre hybrid - two gamblers meet cute, bond, and set off on a road trip to earn some more money, all the while watching their own relationship change and twist with each revelation and decision - and make of it a scrupulously middling indie movie, distinguished mainly by excellent performances by Ryan Reynolds and (especially) Ben Mendelsohn as the gamblers.
They are intelligent directors, and Mississippi Grind pays the right kind of attention to setting and location, so that the film feels thick with place. But even that feels careful, a little by the numbers; there are nicely weighted shots of locations in each town, as if programmed by a computer versed in filmmaking 101. A late reveal of the identity, occupation and character of Reynolds' mother should be crushing, but it feels cynical. The final splurge is refreshing in its outcome, but feels oddly like a coda, after Mendelsohn has earlier shown his truest colours with lies and risks taken to support his gambling habit.
But those performances are worth it; Reynolds showing a melancholy and darkness behind his charm, Mendelsohn all last-chance desperation and blown-out self-awareness. They have genuine chemistry, too. And if overall it never lives up to Altman's California Split, well: what does? More of a problem is how a movie like John Dahl's Rounders feels more alive and full of characters.
Boden and Fleck are such careful filmmakers, it tends to make their films play at an odd remove. Here they take this scruffy little genre hybrid - two gamblers meet cute, bond, and set off on a road trip to earn some more money, all the while watching their own relationship change and twist with each revelation and decision - and make of it a scrupulously middling indie movie, distinguished mainly by excellent performances by Ryan Reynolds and (especially) Ben Mendelsohn as the gamblers.
They are intelligent directors, and Mississippi Grind pays the right kind of attention to setting and location, so that the film feels thick with place. But even that feels careful, a little by the numbers; there are nicely weighted shots of locations in each town, as if programmed by a computer versed in filmmaking 101. A late reveal of the identity, occupation and character of Reynolds' mother should be crushing, but it feels cynical. The final splurge is refreshing in its outcome, but feels oddly like a coda, after Mendelsohn has earlier shown his truest colours with lies and risks taken to support his gambling habit.
But those performances are worth it; Reynolds showing a melancholy and darkness behind his charm, Mendelsohn all last-chance desperation and blown-out self-awareness. They have genuine chemistry, too. And if overall it never lives up to Altman's California Split, well: what does? More of a problem is how a movie like John Dahl's Rounders feels more alive and full of characters.
Thursday, 7 January 2016
THE BIG SHORT
(Adam McKay, 2015)
It starts out all Goodfellas-by-way-of-amped-up-1990s-Oliver Stone; rapid changes in film stock, music pumping, loads of voiceover, exposition but delivered with wit and gags and style; angry and exhilarated and loud and energetic.
Thats lasts about 15-20 minutes, and then The Big Short settles into what it actually is: a sort of real life financial heist story. Oh, every so often McKay throws in a little splash of post-modernism - here's Selena Gomez or Margot Robbie or Anthony Bourdain, as themselves, explaining some complex financial concept in layman's terms, here's Ryan Gosling's narrator figure addressing the camera - but mainly it stays on the straight and narrow, and just tells its story.
Luckily that story is inherently interesting. How the global financial crash came about is just one more story beat here; and when Steve Carrell's Mark Baum realises what is about to happen and is sent reeling away from a restaurant, stunned by the knowledge, The Big Short reaches a nice pitch of hysterical black comedy and sober despair at what was allowed to happen. His character has his own Fund, and he and his team bet wildly against the housing market at the behest of Gosling's slick trader Jared Vennett. They have been beaten to the punch by oddball genius hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Christian Bale), who defies all his clients and incurs at least one lawsuit by doing the same thing a year or so earlier. Then there are the two small town traders who happen across this deal and, aided by their ex-Wall Street Hotshot neighbour Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) buy into the same game.
From then on, its just a waiting game, and McKay conjures impressive tension, considering the fact that we all know what eventually happens.
In the interim McKay shows his characters shock at just how rigged and corrupt the banking industry in the USA was back then, but always keeps the actions and locations varied - Wall Street is prominent, but his characters visit Miami condos, Vegas casinos, Devon Pubs and lap-dancing clubs along the way. Even if the humour is pitch black, he drops the odd bombshell of realism to shock the audience: Pitt chiding his young proteges by recounting the human cost of what will happen being perhaps the highlight.
The starry cast makes it all that much more painless. Gosling can play smug and slick in his sleep, Carrell makes Baum's emotional implosion not only queasy but touching, Pitt is convincingly eccentric, and Bale steals the film with his surges of energy (soundtracked to heavy metal drumming) and inability to socially connect.
McKay keeps it busy and colourful, and ends on a nice note of triumph for his heroes, but defeat for his country, which is probably as it should be, with this story.
It starts out all Goodfellas-by-way-of-amped-up-1990s-Oliver Stone; rapid changes in film stock, music pumping, loads of voiceover, exposition but delivered with wit and gags and style; angry and exhilarated and loud and energetic.
Thats lasts about 15-20 minutes, and then The Big Short settles into what it actually is: a sort of real life financial heist story. Oh, every so often McKay throws in a little splash of post-modernism - here's Selena Gomez or Margot Robbie or Anthony Bourdain, as themselves, explaining some complex financial concept in layman's terms, here's Ryan Gosling's narrator figure addressing the camera - but mainly it stays on the straight and narrow, and just tells its story.
Luckily that story is inherently interesting. How the global financial crash came about is just one more story beat here; and when Steve Carrell's Mark Baum realises what is about to happen and is sent reeling away from a restaurant, stunned by the knowledge, The Big Short reaches a nice pitch of hysterical black comedy and sober despair at what was allowed to happen. His character has his own Fund, and he and his team bet wildly against the housing market at the behest of Gosling's slick trader Jared Vennett. They have been beaten to the punch by oddball genius hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Christian Bale), who defies all his clients and incurs at least one lawsuit by doing the same thing a year or so earlier. Then there are the two small town traders who happen across this deal and, aided by their ex-Wall Street Hotshot neighbour Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) buy into the same game.
From then on, its just a waiting game, and McKay conjures impressive tension, considering the fact that we all know what eventually happens.
In the interim McKay shows his characters shock at just how rigged and corrupt the banking industry in the USA was back then, but always keeps the actions and locations varied - Wall Street is prominent, but his characters visit Miami condos, Vegas casinos, Devon Pubs and lap-dancing clubs along the way. Even if the humour is pitch black, he drops the odd bombshell of realism to shock the audience: Pitt chiding his young proteges by recounting the human cost of what will happen being perhaps the highlight.
The starry cast makes it all that much more painless. Gosling can play smug and slick in his sleep, Carrell makes Baum's emotional implosion not only queasy but touching, Pitt is convincingly eccentric, and Bale steals the film with his surges of energy (soundtracked to heavy metal drumming) and inability to socially connect.
McKay keeps it busy and colourful, and ends on a nice note of triumph for his heroes, but defeat for his country, which is probably as it should be, with this story.
Sunday, 3 January 2016
THE MEND
(John Magary, 2015)
The way Magary makes The Mend feel loose while keeping it commendably tight is a small miracle.
That begins with the first "act" (this feels loose and fluid enough that the notion of a three or seven act structure has no relevance whatsoever) wherein the camera observes a party at the New York apartment of Alan and Farrah (Stephen Plunkett and Mickey Sumner), a 30something couple with bohemian friends. We first meet them in the middle of an argument about sex, and the strains in their relationship - perfectly believable, banal little strains which will be uncomfortably recognisable to anyone who has ever had a relationship - are instantly evident, as is the genuine feeling between them. We have already met Alan's older brother, Mat (Josh Lucas in perhaps his best ever role), a sociopathic bullshitter who gets thrown out of his girlfriend's apartment in the first scene and reels across the city, an absolute raging mess of issues until he winds up at the party.
Alan and Farah leave on vacation in a rush the next morning, unaware that Mat is still there, unconscious in their back room. When he awakens, he moves in, then moves in his girlfriend and her son. And then Alan returns suddenly, Farrah having left him, and the brothers' difficult relationship is put under new and intense strain.
All of this is taken in by Magary in a detached, almost remote fashion. His characters supply the energy and emotion, while he follows them around and misses not a nuance or a wince. His film recalls the work of Arnaud Desplechin (in style) but Mat is a character straight out of Mike Leigh - a manchild without any verbal filter or sense of social graces, like a toned-down American version of David Thewlis in Naked.
But all of the characters in The Mend feel as well-observed as Matt; the film's cornerstone seems to be the way personality traits are passed down from parents, and Alan is as messed-up as Mat, albeit in a more polite and acceptable manner. Their father looms over the action, discussed by an old friend at the party, appearing to Alan in a hallucination, mentioned by both as points of comparison. The films women are just as complex; Farrah dealing with her relationship issues in a more adult way than her partner, and Matt's girlfriend Andrea (Lucy Owen) struggling with her feelings for him while also trying to raise her boy. The way Matt responds to a natural and growing intimacy between Andrea and Alan is both hilarious and spot-on. That is the film's best quality; it manages to be both well-observed and savagely funny. The characters may not be all that likeable, but they are sympathetic, and their foibles and outrages are genuinely funny.
The way Magary makes The Mend feel loose while keeping it commendably tight is a small miracle.
That begins with the first "act" (this feels loose and fluid enough that the notion of a three or seven act structure has no relevance whatsoever) wherein the camera observes a party at the New York apartment of Alan and Farrah (Stephen Plunkett and Mickey Sumner), a 30something couple with bohemian friends. We first meet them in the middle of an argument about sex, and the strains in their relationship - perfectly believable, banal little strains which will be uncomfortably recognisable to anyone who has ever had a relationship - are instantly evident, as is the genuine feeling between them. We have already met Alan's older brother, Mat (Josh Lucas in perhaps his best ever role), a sociopathic bullshitter who gets thrown out of his girlfriend's apartment in the first scene and reels across the city, an absolute raging mess of issues until he winds up at the party.
Alan and Farah leave on vacation in a rush the next morning, unaware that Mat is still there, unconscious in their back room. When he awakens, he moves in, then moves in his girlfriend and her son. And then Alan returns suddenly, Farrah having left him, and the brothers' difficult relationship is put under new and intense strain.
All of this is taken in by Magary in a detached, almost remote fashion. His characters supply the energy and emotion, while he follows them around and misses not a nuance or a wince. His film recalls the work of Arnaud Desplechin (in style) but Mat is a character straight out of Mike Leigh - a manchild without any verbal filter or sense of social graces, like a toned-down American version of David Thewlis in Naked.
But all of the characters in The Mend feel as well-observed as Matt; the film's cornerstone seems to be the way personality traits are passed down from parents, and Alan is as messed-up as Mat, albeit in a more polite and acceptable manner. Their father looms over the action, discussed by an old friend at the party, appearing to Alan in a hallucination, mentioned by both as points of comparison. The films women are just as complex; Farrah dealing with her relationship issues in a more adult way than her partner, and Matt's girlfriend Andrea (Lucy Owen) struggling with her feelings for him while also trying to raise her boy. The way Matt responds to a natural and growing intimacy between Andrea and Alan is both hilarious and spot-on. That is the film's best quality; it manages to be both well-observed and savagely funny. The characters may not be all that likeable, but they are sympathetic, and their foibles and outrages are genuinely funny.
Friday, 1 January 2016
ANOMALISA
(Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson, 2015)
Kaufman has the priceless ability to engage with his themes - usually some combination of love, isolation, fear of death, loneliness and depression - with the lightest of touches, concealed within his stories, which are accessible, funny and dramatic. He also seems equipped with a high concept generator: man discovers a tunnel into John Malkovich's mind? A service which can help cure heartbreak by wiping out all memories of a lover? An ongoing theatre project which replicates the banalities and profundities of a mans life?
Here the concept is part of the execution. David Thewlis voices Michael Stone, a bestselling motivational writer, whose book on customer service, "How Can I Help You Help Them?" has brought him to Cincinnati to speak at a conference. The character, like everybody else in the film, is played by a detailed stop-motion puppet. Everyone else he encounters - the taxi driver, speaking in platitudes about his city and its delights, the hotel concierge, the waitress in the bar, his ex-girlfriend, his wife and little boy - is voiced by Tom Noonan, varying his tone and pitch only fractionally throughout.
As a metaphor for Michael's isolation and solipsism, this works beautifully, and really pays off in a nightmare sequence in the third act. Michael is desperate for connection with another person, and is thrilled when he meets Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a phone centre manager who has travelled to the conference just to hear him speak. They have quite a touching romance for one night, and then - well - how it goes captures the arc of most romantic relationships, and says some pointed things about expectations and the way individuality and selfishness affects such interactions.
It has that beautiful and distinctive Kaufman feeling; melancholy yet quietly hilarious, profound yet everyday. The details are where much of the humour lies, both in the character work, the background - the Fregoli hotel, where Michael and Lisa meet, is a nicely expressionist location - and Johnson's work with the puppets is lovely.
It finishes on a note halfway between sadness and realistic acceptance and feels somehow optimistic. No mean feat in a film with such sad ideas about life and love. But then that is the Charlie Kaufman effect.
Kaufman has the priceless ability to engage with his themes - usually some combination of love, isolation, fear of death, loneliness and depression - with the lightest of touches, concealed within his stories, which are accessible, funny and dramatic. He also seems equipped with a high concept generator: man discovers a tunnel into John Malkovich's mind? A service which can help cure heartbreak by wiping out all memories of a lover? An ongoing theatre project which replicates the banalities and profundities of a mans life?
Here the concept is part of the execution. David Thewlis voices Michael Stone, a bestselling motivational writer, whose book on customer service, "How Can I Help You Help Them?" has brought him to Cincinnati to speak at a conference. The character, like everybody else in the film, is played by a detailed stop-motion puppet. Everyone else he encounters - the taxi driver, speaking in platitudes about his city and its delights, the hotel concierge, the waitress in the bar, his ex-girlfriend, his wife and little boy - is voiced by Tom Noonan, varying his tone and pitch only fractionally throughout.
As a metaphor for Michael's isolation and solipsism, this works beautifully, and really pays off in a nightmare sequence in the third act. Michael is desperate for connection with another person, and is thrilled when he meets Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a phone centre manager who has travelled to the conference just to hear him speak. They have quite a touching romance for one night, and then - well - how it goes captures the arc of most romantic relationships, and says some pointed things about expectations and the way individuality and selfishness affects such interactions.
It has that beautiful and distinctive Kaufman feeling; melancholy yet quietly hilarious, profound yet everyday. The details are where much of the humour lies, both in the character work, the background - the Fregoli hotel, where Michael and Lisa meet, is a nicely expressionist location - and Johnson's work with the puppets is lovely.
It finishes on a note halfway between sadness and realistic acceptance and feels somehow optimistic. No mean feat in a film with such sad ideas about life and love. But then that is the Charlie Kaufman effect.
Sunday, 27 December 2015
SPOTLIGHT
(Tom McCarthy, 2015)
Spotlight has a great real-life story as raw material. It also has an outstanding cast of character actors and movie stars all committing fearlessly to this treatment of that story. What it does not have is a writer-director with any real feel for cinema.
That's not to say there is nothing to recommend in Spotlight; it is an engrossing, beautifully-acted procedural, with plenty of finely-observed details that bring the story and world to life. It's screenplay has some nice moments and a few fine characters.
Previous true-life procedurals like All the Presidents Men and the Insider combined sharp scripts and great actors with bravura direction. It's just that I don't think McCarthy is capable of "bravura". He is fantastic with actors, and this film is really well paced, giving out just enough exposition to keep an audience interested but never enough to slow things down so much that they might become bored.
The story follows a specialist team of reporters at the Boston Globe as they investigate a story of the Catholic Church and it's decade-long cover-up of paedophile priests. Those reporters are played by the likes of Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams while Liev Schrieber appears as the new Editor of the Paper, an outsider and Jew, who pushes for the story to the displeasure of most of the city, it seems.
McCarthy shoots it all like it's television. From 1997. Flat, "realistic" lighting, dull blocking and compositions. The camera moves little, and never with any real sense of purpose, either thematic or aesthetic. It feels as if he has learned to direct from a book of How to Direct. Directing: a Fools Guide, perhaps?
It's a shame, because this could and should be an important film about a hugely controversial topic. Instead it is a mediocrity; never bad - its far too tasteful for that - but never great either.
Spotlight has a great real-life story as raw material. It also has an outstanding cast of character actors and movie stars all committing fearlessly to this treatment of that story. What it does not have is a writer-director with any real feel for cinema.
That's not to say there is nothing to recommend in Spotlight; it is an engrossing, beautifully-acted procedural, with plenty of finely-observed details that bring the story and world to life. It's screenplay has some nice moments and a few fine characters.
Previous true-life procedurals like All the Presidents Men and the Insider combined sharp scripts and great actors with bravura direction. It's just that I don't think McCarthy is capable of "bravura". He is fantastic with actors, and this film is really well paced, giving out just enough exposition to keep an audience interested but never enough to slow things down so much that they might become bored.
The story follows a specialist team of reporters at the Boston Globe as they investigate a story of the Catholic Church and it's decade-long cover-up of paedophile priests. Those reporters are played by the likes of Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams while Liev Schrieber appears as the new Editor of the Paper, an outsider and Jew, who pushes for the story to the displeasure of most of the city, it seems.
McCarthy shoots it all like it's television. From 1997. Flat, "realistic" lighting, dull blocking and compositions. The camera moves little, and never with any real sense of purpose, either thematic or aesthetic. It feels as if he has learned to direct from a book of How to Direct. Directing: a Fools Guide, perhaps?
It's a shame, because this could and should be an important film about a hugely controversial topic. Instead it is a mediocrity; never bad - its far too tasteful for that - but never great either.
Tuesday, 22 December 2015
CAROL
(Todd Haynes, 2015)
I should have loved Carol.
I love stores of passion denied, of love faced with formidable obstacles.
I love cinematic storytelling that centres on the craft of directing. And this film is beautifully directed. Haynes' artistry seems at a new level here, and he plays with focus, colour and perspective impressionistically, communicating his characters inner states with nuance and soulfulness throughout the film. He does not waste a single shot, either, and more or less every shot is lovely.
Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett are both superb as the women who fall in love in 1950s Manhattan. Mara in particular finds depths and harmonics within her lonely, complicated young photographer that give her emotional collapse late in the film unusual power. Blanchett is doing her thing - strong and superficial, but vulnerable - and nobody else does that as well as she does, of course. There are supporting actors of incredible class like Kyle Chandler and Sarah Paulson, in interesting, layered roles.
This world feels real and lived in, with texture and detail that enhances and underlines the main story lines and themes.
And yet: I didn't love Carol. It felt a little one-noted and simplistic. Its view of the world as a mausoleum where even love is a melancholy, grim experience was wearing and exhausting to me. The relentlessly dour atmosphere only increased that sense, as did the absence of any humour or joy in the world Haynes depicts. It is undoubtedly a beautiful and beautifully crafted film, but I felt more respect for it than love.
I should have loved Carol.
I love stores of passion denied, of love faced with formidable obstacles.
I love cinematic storytelling that centres on the craft of directing. And this film is beautifully directed. Haynes' artistry seems at a new level here, and he plays with focus, colour and perspective impressionistically, communicating his characters inner states with nuance and soulfulness throughout the film. He does not waste a single shot, either, and more or less every shot is lovely.
Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett are both superb as the women who fall in love in 1950s Manhattan. Mara in particular finds depths and harmonics within her lonely, complicated young photographer that give her emotional collapse late in the film unusual power. Blanchett is doing her thing - strong and superficial, but vulnerable - and nobody else does that as well as she does, of course. There are supporting actors of incredible class like Kyle Chandler and Sarah Paulson, in interesting, layered roles.
This world feels real and lived in, with texture and detail that enhances and underlines the main story lines and themes.
And yet: I didn't love Carol. It felt a little one-noted and simplistic. Its view of the world as a mausoleum where even love is a melancholy, grim experience was wearing and exhausting to me. The relentlessly dour atmosphere only increased that sense, as did the absence of any humour or joy in the world Haynes depicts. It is undoubtedly a beautiful and beautifully crafted film, but I felt more respect for it than love.
Monday, 21 December 2015
CREED
(Ryan Coogler, 2015)
The confidence and assurance Coogler demonstrates in the leap from his debut, Fruitvale Station, a small-scale independent film, to Creed, a big studio boxing drama and a reboot-sequel to the Rocky series, is truly startling. And not only is he confident; he is successful - this is a superb piece of studio film-making, made with wit and style, engrossing, exciting and affecting throughout.
The story follows Adonis "Donny" Thompson (Michael B Jordan, showing the movie star chops needed to carry a whole film on his shoulders), illegitimate son of Apollo Creed, as he gives up his white collar world in Los Angeles and travels to Philadelphia, where he convinces his father's old friend Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) to help train him. Donny must battle his old demons - of course, this is a boxing movie - while Rocky deals with his. Along the way, too, there are a couple of epic boxing matches.
The only real issue Creed has is pacing; at just over two hours it is a little overlong, and it feels as if the whole movie restarts after Donny's first real fight, when Rocky confronts his own problems. Aside from that, it is a beautifully crafted example of the boxing genre. Donny is an interesting character, fighting because he feels he needs to, and his relationship with Rocky is touching - mutual surrogacy which is finally acknowledged, and needed by both men. He also has a sweet romance with Biancha (Tessa Thompson), a singer whose progressive hearing loss gives her character a never-overplayed thematic resonance for Donny, with his issues with making his mark while he has time, and Rocky's obsession with the past and future.
While cramming in two lead storylines - one for Donny and one for Rocky - creates some of those pacing issues, it also allows Stallone to shade this portrayal of his oldest character with some lovely notes of melancholy and regret. This is probably his best acting work, and he retains that old movie star presence, now deepened by age and sadness, which gives this film a nice depth of flavour.
But it stands and falls as a boxing movie, and what is so exceptional is the way it embraces each and every boxing movie cliche (most of them pumped up by Stallone in the Rocky series) and yet transcends them. There are training montages, of course. Donny screws up and comes perilously close to losing everyone he loves. There is a run through the streets of Philadelphia.
But Coogler is an exciting talent, and he knows the power of a moving camera and comes up with some interesting angles on familiar material. He shoots Donny's first big fight in one extended shot, lending it the elegance and power of a great dance sequence in a musical. Whenever a possible opponent for Donny appears on-screen, his career stats appear beside him, like something from a computer game. That Philadelphia run is mainly in slo-mo, with motorbikes racing around Donny as he sprints. Donny and Biancha first connect in an upside-down shot, lying on her floor, listening to her music. The way the dialogue drops away as the referee addresses Rocky and Donny in the dressing room, and all we can hear is the crowd above.
Donny's sudden and panicked need to go use the toilet before his first fight is typical of this film - slight twists on familiar material, freshening it up. The climactic bout is shot in a more modern style, lot of movement and impact cuts, but it is done about as well as it can be done, and it follows the emotional arc familiar from this series to exhilarating effect.
All of this and the clear-eyed way it regards issues of ageing and legacy make this an unusually intelligent studio franchise film, and one that is almost entirely successful.
The confidence and assurance Coogler demonstrates in the leap from his debut, Fruitvale Station, a small-scale independent film, to Creed, a big studio boxing drama and a reboot-sequel to the Rocky series, is truly startling. And not only is he confident; he is successful - this is a superb piece of studio film-making, made with wit and style, engrossing, exciting and affecting throughout.
The story follows Adonis "Donny" Thompson (Michael B Jordan, showing the movie star chops needed to carry a whole film on his shoulders), illegitimate son of Apollo Creed, as he gives up his white collar world in Los Angeles and travels to Philadelphia, where he convinces his father's old friend Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) to help train him. Donny must battle his old demons - of course, this is a boxing movie - while Rocky deals with his. Along the way, too, there are a couple of epic boxing matches.
The only real issue Creed has is pacing; at just over two hours it is a little overlong, and it feels as if the whole movie restarts after Donny's first real fight, when Rocky confronts his own problems. Aside from that, it is a beautifully crafted example of the boxing genre. Donny is an interesting character, fighting because he feels he needs to, and his relationship with Rocky is touching - mutual surrogacy which is finally acknowledged, and needed by both men. He also has a sweet romance with Biancha (Tessa Thompson), a singer whose progressive hearing loss gives her character a never-overplayed thematic resonance for Donny, with his issues with making his mark while he has time, and Rocky's obsession with the past and future.
While cramming in two lead storylines - one for Donny and one for Rocky - creates some of those pacing issues, it also allows Stallone to shade this portrayal of his oldest character with some lovely notes of melancholy and regret. This is probably his best acting work, and he retains that old movie star presence, now deepened by age and sadness, which gives this film a nice depth of flavour.
But it stands and falls as a boxing movie, and what is so exceptional is the way it embraces each and every boxing movie cliche (most of them pumped up by Stallone in the Rocky series) and yet transcends them. There are training montages, of course. Donny screws up and comes perilously close to losing everyone he loves. There is a run through the streets of Philadelphia.
But Coogler is an exciting talent, and he knows the power of a moving camera and comes up with some interesting angles on familiar material. He shoots Donny's first big fight in one extended shot, lending it the elegance and power of a great dance sequence in a musical. Whenever a possible opponent for Donny appears on-screen, his career stats appear beside him, like something from a computer game. That Philadelphia run is mainly in slo-mo, with motorbikes racing around Donny as he sprints. Donny and Biancha first connect in an upside-down shot, lying on her floor, listening to her music. The way the dialogue drops away as the referee addresses Rocky and Donny in the dressing room, and all we can hear is the crowd above.
Donny's sudden and panicked need to go use the toilet before his first fight is typical of this film - slight twists on familiar material, freshening it up. The climactic bout is shot in a more modern style, lot of movement and impact cuts, but it is done about as well as it can be done, and it follows the emotional arc familiar from this series to exhilarating effect.
All of this and the clear-eyed way it regards issues of ageing and legacy make this an unusually intelligent studio franchise film, and one that is almost entirely successful.
Thursday, 17 December 2015
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.
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.
Monday, 7 December 2015
THE LOBSTER
(Yorgios Lanthimos, 2015)
There are some brilliant ideas and moments here. The central conceit is the kind of thing that shows how imaginatively conservative so much cinema is: it imagines a world where single people are sent to a hotel in order to pair off within 45 days. If they do not, they are transformed into the animal of their choosing. Some evenings, they head off to a local forest to hunt "loners", rogue singles who have forsworn relationships and live off the land. David (Colin Farrell), recently abandoned by his wife for another man, arrives at the hotel with his brother in the form of a dog, and befriends a man with a limp (Ben Wishaw) and a man with a lisp (John C Reilly), while eluding the affections of a desperate woman (Ashley Jensen). Halfway through the action shifts to the forest as David joins the loners. Here, and against the rules, he falls for a woman who is short-sighted, like him (Rachel Weisz), but if the leader (Leá Seydoux) finds out, they will be in danger.
This is all told in a series of deadpan scenes with flat, affectless delivery of dialogue, Lanthimos' coldly controlled style, and a severe score of several pieces for string quartet sawing away in the background.
While there are some moments of brilliant comedy, much of the success of the material is down to the cast. Farrell and Wishaw do extremely well at halting and awkward loneliness, while Olivia Coleman is another standout as the matter-of-fact hotel manager. Weisz's voiceover is played for some big laughs too, but the story takes a strange turn towards the climax and becomes surprisingly moving.
The allegory at the heart of the story is a little too broad and vague to sustain an entire narrative, even if sometimes it becomes more precise and pleasingly cynical. There are shots here at online dating logarithms, tinder and our cultural acceptance of couples over singles which are often provocative, but much of it is too scattershot to have much of an effect, for all that it is still witty and accessible.It occasionally hints at making more profound statements about human attraction and repulsion - why we need other people and what it does to us - but never quite commits to that.
There are some brilliant ideas and moments here. The central conceit is the kind of thing that shows how imaginatively conservative so much cinema is: it imagines a world where single people are sent to a hotel in order to pair off within 45 days. If they do not, they are transformed into the animal of their choosing. Some evenings, they head off to a local forest to hunt "loners", rogue singles who have forsworn relationships and live off the land. David (Colin Farrell), recently abandoned by his wife for another man, arrives at the hotel with his brother in the form of a dog, and befriends a man with a limp (Ben Wishaw) and a man with a lisp (John C Reilly), while eluding the affections of a desperate woman (Ashley Jensen). Halfway through the action shifts to the forest as David joins the loners. Here, and against the rules, he falls for a woman who is short-sighted, like him (Rachel Weisz), but if the leader (Leá Seydoux) finds out, they will be in danger.
This is all told in a series of deadpan scenes with flat, affectless delivery of dialogue, Lanthimos' coldly controlled style, and a severe score of several pieces for string quartet sawing away in the background.
While there are some moments of brilliant comedy, much of the success of the material is down to the cast. Farrell and Wishaw do extremely well at halting and awkward loneliness, while Olivia Coleman is another standout as the matter-of-fact hotel manager. Weisz's voiceover is played for some big laughs too, but the story takes a strange turn towards the climax and becomes surprisingly moving.
The allegory at the heart of the story is a little too broad and vague to sustain an entire narrative, even if sometimes it becomes more precise and pleasingly cynical. There are shots here at online dating logarithms, tinder and our cultural acceptance of couples over singles which are often provocative, but much of it is too scattershot to have much of an effect, for all that it is still witty and accessible.It occasionally hints at making more profound statements about human attraction and repulsion - why we need other people and what it does to us - but never quite commits to that.
Monday, 30 November 2015
LOVE
(Gaspar Noé, 2015)
I wasn't really prepared for how much of a French film Love would be. A French film in the archetypal, cliched sense, I mean; it is basically an endless series of scenes of characters talking intensely about themselves and each other and their relationships, only lacking the wit or depth of Rohmer, say. Instead Love inserts (no pun intended) a bunch of explicit sex scenes, one every five or ten minutes, which don't really do anything to change the story or the characters, and don't really reflect the themes in any significant way, either.
The story shows us a day in the life of Murphy (Karl Glusman) (whose life is full of things going wrong - subtle, Gaspar!), a young American wannabe filmmaker in Paris. He has had an unplanned baby with a girl, Omi (Aomi Muyock) and feeling trapped, falls down a rabbit hole of memories of Electra (Klara Kristin), his old girlfriend, and possibly the love of his life, though those memories are decidedly mixed. Electra's mother has contacted Murphy, fearful for her suicidal daughter, and Murphy remembers a sequence of their sexual encounters and conversations and arguments as he tries to deal with her loss and his new situation.
The script is frequently terrible - Noé writes like an undergraduate - and his unprofessional cast aren't up to elevating the material. That leaves Noé himself. And thankfully, he knows exactly what he's doing. He has always had a strong visual sensibility and here his often painterly lighting and symmetrical compositions - this is a film shot with 3D in mind - make for an utterly visually distinctive experience. The sex scenes are posed and arranged with the audience in mind, removing any air of realism, however "real" they may be, but this ensures that they are regularly beautiful. Glusman spends 95% of the film dead centre of the frame, and despite the fumbled nature of the script it still feels like Noé has touched on a few universals here. There are scenes that feel true in their sordid little emotional confrontations, their petty jealousies and passionate desires, exchanges that are fuelled by real feeling and real love.
But it feels self-indulgent, as if the thing that Noé most needs at this point in his career is a producer, somebody to rein him in and tell him what is working and what is not. Otherwise he just follows his own odd muse, and the result is this odd mess of mastery and masturbation.
I wasn't really prepared for how much of a French film Love would be. A French film in the archetypal, cliched sense, I mean; it is basically an endless series of scenes of characters talking intensely about themselves and each other and their relationships, only lacking the wit or depth of Rohmer, say. Instead Love inserts (no pun intended) a bunch of explicit sex scenes, one every five or ten minutes, which don't really do anything to change the story or the characters, and don't really reflect the themes in any significant way, either.
The story shows us a day in the life of Murphy (Karl Glusman) (whose life is full of things going wrong - subtle, Gaspar!), a young American wannabe filmmaker in Paris. He has had an unplanned baby with a girl, Omi (Aomi Muyock) and feeling trapped, falls down a rabbit hole of memories of Electra (Klara Kristin), his old girlfriend, and possibly the love of his life, though those memories are decidedly mixed. Electra's mother has contacted Murphy, fearful for her suicidal daughter, and Murphy remembers a sequence of their sexual encounters and conversations and arguments as he tries to deal with her loss and his new situation.
The script is frequently terrible - Noé writes like an undergraduate - and his unprofessional cast aren't up to elevating the material. That leaves Noé himself. And thankfully, he knows exactly what he's doing. He has always had a strong visual sensibility and here his often painterly lighting and symmetrical compositions - this is a film shot with 3D in mind - make for an utterly visually distinctive experience. The sex scenes are posed and arranged with the audience in mind, removing any air of realism, however "real" they may be, but this ensures that they are regularly beautiful. Glusman spends 95% of the film dead centre of the frame, and despite the fumbled nature of the script it still feels like Noé has touched on a few universals here. There are scenes that feel true in their sordid little emotional confrontations, their petty jealousies and passionate desires, exchanges that are fuelled by real feeling and real love.
But it feels self-indulgent, as if the thing that Noé most needs at this point in his career is a producer, somebody to rein him in and tell him what is working and what is not. Otherwise he just follows his own odd muse, and the result is this odd mess of mastery and masturbation.
Thursday, 26 November 2015
STEVE JOBS
(Danny Boyle, 2015)
In Steve Jobs, director Danny Boyle mostly stays out of the way. This is writer Aaron Sorkin's movie, and Boyle is wise enough to realise that and attempt a just-subtly-stylish-enough film version of a Sorkin script that plays way theatrical, with its 3 locations, its artificially tightened timeframes and its triple echo three act structure. So no hyperactive editing or wild camera angles. Mostly just nicely shot talking heads in well-blocked, intelligently-framed scenes.
The performances, then, take much of the weight. The story focuses on Jobs (Michael Fassbender) at three crucial moments in his life: in 1984, in the minutes before the public launch of the Macintosh. In 1988, after Jobs has been fired from Apple and is about to launch the Black Box for his own company, Next. And in 1998, as he launches the iMac.
Each sequence is shot on different stock, set backstage at a different event centre, as Jobs jousts with his marketing executive and "work wife" Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), meets his old friend and colleague Steve "Woz" Wozniak (Seth Rogen), banters with engineer Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg) and deals with Apple CEO John Scully (Jeff Daniels). All this while preparing to face hundreds of people and the worlds media. And dealing with Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterson) the mother of his child, and with the child herself, as a cute 5 year old, needy 9 year old, and complex, wounded teen.
Sorkin's script portrays Jobs as a difficult egomaniac who is worth it; he's a genius. And Fassbender nails that - intelligence bubbling beneath his face, impatient and baffled by people, always rushing towards the future he feels like only he sees. Winslet and he share a few emotional scenes, but the biggest and best confrontations are with a raw Woz, demanding some recognition for his generation of engineers and telling Jobs without hesitation how much of an asshole he is, and Rogen is terrific. Just as good is Jeff Daniels, moving from fatherly to antagonistic to regretful over the course of the film.
For his part, Jobs changes. He begins believing he's right, and ends up absolutely certain of it. along the way he might just learn a bit about people, or at least himself.
Theatrical yes. But that is not a problem with actors like these saying words like this.
In Steve Jobs, director Danny Boyle mostly stays out of the way. This is writer Aaron Sorkin's movie, and Boyle is wise enough to realise that and attempt a just-subtly-stylish-enough film version of a Sorkin script that plays way theatrical, with its 3 locations, its artificially tightened timeframes and its triple echo three act structure. So no hyperactive editing or wild camera angles. Mostly just nicely shot talking heads in well-blocked, intelligently-framed scenes.
The performances, then, take much of the weight. The story focuses on Jobs (Michael Fassbender) at three crucial moments in his life: in 1984, in the minutes before the public launch of the Macintosh. In 1988, after Jobs has been fired from Apple and is about to launch the Black Box for his own company, Next. And in 1998, as he launches the iMac.
Each sequence is shot on different stock, set backstage at a different event centre, as Jobs jousts with his marketing executive and "work wife" Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), meets his old friend and colleague Steve "Woz" Wozniak (Seth Rogen), banters with engineer Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg) and deals with Apple CEO John Scully (Jeff Daniels). All this while preparing to face hundreds of people and the worlds media. And dealing with Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterson) the mother of his child, and with the child herself, as a cute 5 year old, needy 9 year old, and complex, wounded teen.
Sorkin's script portrays Jobs as a difficult egomaniac who is worth it; he's a genius. And Fassbender nails that - intelligence bubbling beneath his face, impatient and baffled by people, always rushing towards the future he feels like only he sees. Winslet and he share a few emotional scenes, but the biggest and best confrontations are with a raw Woz, demanding some recognition for his generation of engineers and telling Jobs without hesitation how much of an asshole he is, and Rogen is terrific. Just as good is Jeff Daniels, moving from fatherly to antagonistic to regretful over the course of the film.
For his part, Jobs changes. He begins believing he's right, and ends up absolutely certain of it. along the way he might just learn a bit about people, or at least himself.
Theatrical yes. But that is not a problem with actors like these saying words like this.
Friday, 20 November 2015
THE END OF THE TOUR
(James Ponsoldt, 2015)
This is a modest film. Which is odd, since it attempts a portrayal of David Foster Wallace (played here, quite well, by Jason Segal), perhaps the greatest novelist of his generation, and one of the most interesting thinkers of his time. That portrayal comes in the form of a record of the trip he takes in the company of David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg), who is interviewing him for a piece in Rolling Stone magazine. So, the majority of the film captures the two men deep in conversation: about art, about literature, about women and work, America and children, movies and food, New York and tv, college and sports, parents and dogs.
And - the odd shaft of Wallace with or wisdom, direct from Lipsky's book, aside - much of it isn't all that interesting or entertaining. Wallace struggles with how to present himself, how to avoid seeming pretentious or annoying, while Lipsky struggles with his own admiration and envy for his subject, while also needing to remain a cold-eyed assassin about a man he comes rapidly to feel affection for. The best material here has more or less nothing to do with the fact that the film is about David Foster Wallace; it is instead the scenes when the two men spend time with two women in Minneapolis, the last stop on Wallaces's book tour. Wallace struggles in these scenes with his own feelings of jealousy as Eisenberg's Lipsky seems to easily charm one of the women, an old college friend of the novelist. Eisenberg, blessed with such an easy command of social awkwardness in its many shades, vividly expresses Lipsky's unease and careful probing while Segal perhaps overdoes Wallace's regular-guy qualities. Ponsoldt avoids pyrotechnics, following the trail carefully to the emotional peak of the last act, capturing a wintry MidWest and a grey Minneapolis with economy.
Perhaps most pleasingly, the score is full of 1990s indie rock.
This is a modest film. Which is odd, since it attempts a portrayal of David Foster Wallace (played here, quite well, by Jason Segal), perhaps the greatest novelist of his generation, and one of the most interesting thinkers of his time. That portrayal comes in the form of a record of the trip he takes in the company of David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg), who is interviewing him for a piece in Rolling Stone magazine. So, the majority of the film captures the two men deep in conversation: about art, about literature, about women and work, America and children, movies and food, New York and tv, college and sports, parents and dogs.
And - the odd shaft of Wallace with or wisdom, direct from Lipsky's book, aside - much of it isn't all that interesting or entertaining. Wallace struggles with how to present himself, how to avoid seeming pretentious or annoying, while Lipsky struggles with his own admiration and envy for his subject, while also needing to remain a cold-eyed assassin about a man he comes rapidly to feel affection for. The best material here has more or less nothing to do with the fact that the film is about David Foster Wallace; it is instead the scenes when the two men spend time with two women in Minneapolis, the last stop on Wallaces's book tour. Wallace struggles in these scenes with his own feelings of jealousy as Eisenberg's Lipsky seems to easily charm one of the women, an old college friend of the novelist. Eisenberg, blessed with such an easy command of social awkwardness in its many shades, vividly expresses Lipsky's unease and careful probing while Segal perhaps overdoes Wallace's regular-guy qualities. Ponsoldt avoids pyrotechnics, following the trail carefully to the emotional peak of the last act, capturing a wintry MidWest and a grey Minneapolis with economy.
Perhaps most pleasingly, the score is full of 1990s indie rock.
Friday, 2 October 2015
99 HOMES
(Ramin Bahrani, 2014)
99 Homes isn't really a thriller, although it feels like one from the very first scene. Bahrani establishes a tense atmosphere with an opening crawl away from a dead man sitting in his bathroom, the rifle he used to end his own life in his hands, blood splatters on the wall, and through the house from which he was being evicted. Policemen move around, his wife and children wail as he is stretchered off. And in the middle of it all is Michael Shannon's Rick Carver, a real estate agent and developer who was the one evicting the man on behalf of the band which now owned his property. Bahrani follows him outside, through an angry phone call and a sarcastic, devastating exchange with a coroner, all of it soundtracked by a blunt, electronic rhythm. A feeling of dread has arrived, fully-formed, with this film. It never really lessens.
We see a little of Carver's life and business before he is evicting Nash (Andrew Garfield) from the family home where he lives with his mother and young son. Nash is a roofer, and in the 2008 of the film, the construction business has just collapsed, leaving him without a viable income. He and his family end up living in a motel after a horribly upsetting eviction. But he goes looking for Carver, believing some tools stolen, and instead, ends up working for him. Carver, impressed by his competence and initiative, promotes him rapidly, and soon it is Nash himself raking in money and evicting baffled families.
So 99 Homes is a deal-with-the-devil story, focused intently and fascinatingly on real estate chicanery in the world after the financial collapse of 2008. We see the details of the scams Carver and Nash run, and hear many of Carver's justifications. But Bahrani - a director whose films have always examined the reality of the American dream - ensures that we don't miss the other side of the equation. From the raw agony of Nash's mother and son when they lose their home, to the pitiful state of an elderly widower with nowhere to go and no family to call, this film is furiously moving about the human cost of the situation and furiously angry about the reasons for it.
The dread that settles in the opening scene does come to a head, but before that we get the spectacle of a terrific Garfield and a monstrous Shannon battling for the soul of the film. Both excel, and Bahrani's character doesn't miss a nuance. He is a director building a strong and undervalued body of work, and this may well be his best film yet.
99 Homes isn't really a thriller, although it feels like one from the very first scene. Bahrani establishes a tense atmosphere with an opening crawl away from a dead man sitting in his bathroom, the rifle he used to end his own life in his hands, blood splatters on the wall, and through the house from which he was being evicted. Policemen move around, his wife and children wail as he is stretchered off. And in the middle of it all is Michael Shannon's Rick Carver, a real estate agent and developer who was the one evicting the man on behalf of the band which now owned his property. Bahrani follows him outside, through an angry phone call and a sarcastic, devastating exchange with a coroner, all of it soundtracked by a blunt, electronic rhythm. A feeling of dread has arrived, fully-formed, with this film. It never really lessens.
We see a little of Carver's life and business before he is evicting Nash (Andrew Garfield) from the family home where he lives with his mother and young son. Nash is a roofer, and in the 2008 of the film, the construction business has just collapsed, leaving him without a viable income. He and his family end up living in a motel after a horribly upsetting eviction. But he goes looking for Carver, believing some tools stolen, and instead, ends up working for him. Carver, impressed by his competence and initiative, promotes him rapidly, and soon it is Nash himself raking in money and evicting baffled families.
So 99 Homes is a deal-with-the-devil story, focused intently and fascinatingly on real estate chicanery in the world after the financial collapse of 2008. We see the details of the scams Carver and Nash run, and hear many of Carver's justifications. But Bahrani - a director whose films have always examined the reality of the American dream - ensures that we don't miss the other side of the equation. From the raw agony of Nash's mother and son when they lose their home, to the pitiful state of an elderly widower with nowhere to go and no family to call, this film is furiously moving about the human cost of the situation and furiously angry about the reasons for it.
The dread that settles in the opening scene does come to a head, but before that we get the spectacle of a terrific Garfield and a monstrous Shannon battling for the soul of the film. Both excel, and Bahrani's character doesn't miss a nuance. He is a director building a strong and undervalued body of work, and this may well be his best film yet.
Friday, 25 September 2015
LEGENDS OF THE FALL
(Ed Zwick, 1994)
It's not easy to adapt author Jim Harrison to the screen. A filmmaker as vital and distinctive as Tony Scott found that out with Revenge. And if he couldn't quite translate the timeless macho poetry of Harrison to film, what chance did a director as plodding and insipid as Ed Zwick have?
Based on Legends of the Fall: absolutely no chance. Harrison's novella is both spare and epic, but Zwick's movie is instead turgid and ridiculous, an episodic and at times cringeworthy soap opera with beautiful landscapes and bad performances.
Brad Pitt plays Tristan, beloved middle son of Col Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins). They live on a Montana ranch along with Ludlow's American Indian employees, who bring Tristan up as a half-brave with a respect for nature and a certain intolerance for the ways of white society. His older brother Alfred (Aidan Quinn, giving the best performance in the film, full of pain and anger) is more conventional, while the plot is kicked off when the youngest, Samuel (Henry Thomas) brings home a beautiful girl who bewitches all three brothers. She is Susannah (Julia Ormond), and she falls for Tristan, of course, beginning a long series of scenes in which Ormond and Pitt appear to be competing to see who has the shiniest hair.
Samuel wants to go off to fight in WW1, so Tristan goes along to protect him, fails, and takes his revenge by crossing no mans land after dark and scalping Germans. When he returns to Montana, he and Susannah comfort each other after their loss in the most predictable, soft focus way possible, then he goes off travelling the world to quiet "the bear inside him", leaving her to wait at home at the mercy of a smitten Alfred.
In 1994, Pitt had not yet realised that acting meant more than just posing, flexing his cheek muscles and biting his lips. He is awful here; a vacant, beautiful model. Ormond is little better, causing you to wonder why any of the three brothers would be interested in her.
Both are outdone by Hopkins, who gets to play a post-stroke Ludlow as a shambling invalid, and slices the ham thickly here.
Zwick's direction never dodges a visual cliche, from the slow motion during key scenes to the honeyed cinematography, and the score and script all combine to make this feel somehow neutered.
It's not easy to adapt author Jim Harrison to the screen. A filmmaker as vital and distinctive as Tony Scott found that out with Revenge. And if he couldn't quite translate the timeless macho poetry of Harrison to film, what chance did a director as plodding and insipid as Ed Zwick have?
Based on Legends of the Fall: absolutely no chance. Harrison's novella is both spare and epic, but Zwick's movie is instead turgid and ridiculous, an episodic and at times cringeworthy soap opera with beautiful landscapes and bad performances.
Brad Pitt plays Tristan, beloved middle son of Col Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins). They live on a Montana ranch along with Ludlow's American Indian employees, who bring Tristan up as a half-brave with a respect for nature and a certain intolerance for the ways of white society. His older brother Alfred (Aidan Quinn, giving the best performance in the film, full of pain and anger) is more conventional, while the plot is kicked off when the youngest, Samuel (Henry Thomas) brings home a beautiful girl who bewitches all three brothers. She is Susannah (Julia Ormond), and she falls for Tristan, of course, beginning a long series of scenes in which Ormond and Pitt appear to be competing to see who has the shiniest hair.
Samuel wants to go off to fight in WW1, so Tristan goes along to protect him, fails, and takes his revenge by crossing no mans land after dark and scalping Germans. When he returns to Montana, he and Susannah comfort each other after their loss in the most predictable, soft focus way possible, then he goes off travelling the world to quiet "the bear inside him", leaving her to wait at home at the mercy of a smitten Alfred.
In 1994, Pitt had not yet realised that acting meant more than just posing, flexing his cheek muscles and biting his lips. He is awful here; a vacant, beautiful model. Ormond is little better, causing you to wonder why any of the three brothers would be interested in her.
Both are outdone by Hopkins, who gets to play a post-stroke Ludlow as a shambling invalid, and slices the ham thickly here.
Zwick's direction never dodges a visual cliche, from the slow motion during key scenes to the honeyed cinematography, and the score and script all combine to make this feel somehow neutered.
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