(Quentin Tarantino, 2015)
Tarantino sells tickets. Meaning Tarantino - ever since his third film, Jackie Brown, at any rate - can do whatever the hell he wants. Self-indulgence wasn't exactly far away from projects like his double movie spaghetti-western-kung-fu-ninja revenge movie, Kill Bill (I & II) or his bizarro cinema-kills-the-nazis WW2 Mission movie, Inglorious Basterds.
With The Hateful Eight he's decided to make an Agatha Christie-style Murder mystery in a locked room. This despite the fact that he is shooting on epic 70mm. In a location set in a blizzard on a stunning Wyoming mountain. In a film that lasts three hours.
Like I said, Tarantino can do whatever the hell he wants.
The titular Eight are gathered together at Minnies Haberdashery, a stagecoach stop which is mysteriously lacking its owners. We first meet a stagecoach, carrying legendary bounty hunter John "the Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell rocking a John Wayne drawl) and the prisoner he is taking in chains to hang in Red Rock, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) as they pick up two passengers traveling through the snow on foot, Major Marquise Warren (Samuel L Jackson), who is another legendary bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix, an ex-Confederate Guerrilla and unrepentant racist, who is on his way to his post as new Sheriff of Red Rock. In this opening chapter, the tone of the film is set. Westerns are meant to be slow, but Tarantino takes that to ridiculous extremes. Each conversation is filled with loquacious tangents and long, sometimes brilliant speeches. The actors are clearly loving it, and some fare very well indeed (Goggins, Roth and Jackson best of all), but it feels like another 2 or 3 drafts were needed to find the essential film within this great shaggy beast.
The length and copious dialogue (and a nice Morricone score taken partly from rejected portions of score from Carpenters The Thing) does create tension, but Tarantino partly breaks that with his usual structural playfulness, flashing back to ear lie run the day, showing an event from a different perspective...
Most of this happens after the stage arrives at the haberdashery and there encounters four men, waiting out the storm. Both Warren and Ruth believe at least one of them is an accomplice of Daisy's, set on freeing her, and of course, they are correct. But it takes two more hours of those long speeches and anecdotes for the whole thing to resolve itself in some hilariously graphic (and surprisingly uninspired) slo-mo and spluttery violence.
There are a bunch of great moments, a few big laughs, and lots of great acting (or at least great line delivery), but throughout I was thinking how Delmer Davies or Budd Boetticher would have told the whole story, better, in about 82 minutes.
Showing posts with label Jennifer Jason Leigh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jennifer Jason Leigh. Show all posts
Thursday, 14 January 2016
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.
Saturday, 28 December 2013
THE SPECTACULAR NOW
(James Ponsoldt, 2013)
Set within the usual movie-world of a High School in smalltown USA, complete with keg parties, proms, graduation and caring teachers, what really separates The Spectacular Now from most other teen movies is the acuity of its focus.
That focus is all on Sutter Keely (Miles Teller), a loquacious, charmingly hedonistic senior who has just been dumped by his girlfriend, the smart, pretty Cassidy (Brie Larson) and finds himself approaching the first real turning point in his life. High School is ending, and Sutter, who is popular and seems genuinely happy with his life there, doesn't know what to do with himself. He is surprisingly drawn to the pretty, shy Aimee (Shailene Woodley) and they begin a tentative romance. But Sutter's own nature presents a problem to most everything in his life, and a long-awaited meeting with his absent, deadbeat father (Kyle Chandler) further complicates things.
Much here rests on Teller's performance, and he is exceptional, creating a character who is evidently charismatic but always sympathetic, despite the frequent idiocy of his behaviour. He matches the film - Ponsoldt has created a world which, while portraying an environment familiar from many teen movies, feels more authentic than most, both emotionally and dramatically. Teller is soulful and warm, like the movie, and Woodley is his equal, making Aimee a complicated girl, clever but bewitched by this charming youth and his sudden interest in her.
There are many lovely moments here - Sutter's intense, complex relationship with Cassidy, who knows she has to move on to allow her adult life to begin, but just can't let go, is always nicely observed and played, and Kyle Chandler and Jennifer Jason Leigh get one great scene each. The moments where Sutter and Aimee connect and grow closer always feel true and touching, and Ponsoldt is good on atmosphere and feel; this is a movie that feels as if its set in the real world, which is still rare in this genre. It always looks good - casually lush photography which never shies away from the spots and blemishes on the faces of its lead characters - but what is most notable is the emotional effect. Sutter's journey initially feels minor, even trifling, but it gathers weight and is moving by the last scene.
Set within the usual movie-world of a High School in smalltown USA, complete with keg parties, proms, graduation and caring teachers, what really separates The Spectacular Now from most other teen movies is the acuity of its focus.
That focus is all on Sutter Keely (Miles Teller), a loquacious, charmingly hedonistic senior who has just been dumped by his girlfriend, the smart, pretty Cassidy (Brie Larson) and finds himself approaching the first real turning point in his life. High School is ending, and Sutter, who is popular and seems genuinely happy with his life there, doesn't know what to do with himself. He is surprisingly drawn to the pretty, shy Aimee (Shailene Woodley) and they begin a tentative romance. But Sutter's own nature presents a problem to most everything in his life, and a long-awaited meeting with his absent, deadbeat father (Kyle Chandler) further complicates things.
Much here rests on Teller's performance, and he is exceptional, creating a character who is evidently charismatic but always sympathetic, despite the frequent idiocy of his behaviour. He matches the film - Ponsoldt has created a world which, while portraying an environment familiar from many teen movies, feels more authentic than most, both emotionally and dramatically. Teller is soulful and warm, like the movie, and Woodley is his equal, making Aimee a complicated girl, clever but bewitched by this charming youth and his sudden interest in her.
There are many lovely moments here - Sutter's intense, complex relationship with Cassidy, who knows she has to move on to allow her adult life to begin, but just can't let go, is always nicely observed and played, and Kyle Chandler and Jennifer Jason Leigh get one great scene each. The moments where Sutter and Aimee connect and grow closer always feel true and touching, and Ponsoldt is good on atmosphere and feel; this is a movie that feels as if its set in the real world, which is still rare in this genre. It always looks good - casually lush photography which never shies away from the spots and blemishes on the faces of its lead characters - but what is most notable is the emotional effect. Sutter's journey initially feels minor, even trifling, but it gathers weight and is moving by the last scene.
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