LOUDER THAN BOMBS

(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.

BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE

(Zack Snyder, 2016)

Forced to try to make super-hero movies in a different way to Marvel, Warner Bothers and DC have gone all-in on grim and gritty. That might be in part an attempt to duplicate the success Christopher Nolan experienced with his Dark Knight trilogy, which embraced the darker aspects of Batman mythology, largely eschewing any humour, campness or fun along the way.
Snyder already aped that approach with Man of Steel, and here he brings in his own interpretation of the "Bat of Gotham" to set up the extended Universe DC presumably feels is their right, looking at the industry-altering success Marvel has enjoyed with its unending flow of Marvel Universe product.            
And that approach has its strengths. Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (explicitly nodding to the hints of the coming Justice League in a few scenes here) is positively stuffed to the gills with stuff. With easter eggs, characters, gadgets, dialogue, cgi, mythology, action, exposition, technobabble, ephemera, spectacle: just stuff. It also has more ideas than any Marvel film, which may be another of the legacies left by Christopher Nolan.
It's just that in his films, the ideas are foregrounded. Indeed, if his Batman trilogy has a major flaw, it is an inability to balance the demands of an action spectacle with his own desire to engage with big themes. Well, Zack Snyder can do the action spectacle in his sleep. But the big themes are a different story. He allows his characters to expound upon the nature of heroism and power, but that's it. The film doesn't pursue these ideas in any meaningful way. Instead, Snyder flicks through them en route to another big slugfest action sequence. And so the tone isn't earned by the story it frames, and it just seems slightly, unnecessarily grim.
But then perhaps this is the perfect superhero film for the modern world; teetering on the edge of anarchy (glimpsed in a Batman nightmare filled with more Darkseid-shaped easter eggs), split between those who worship powerful figures (Snyder conjures one lovely scene where revellers at a Mexican Day of the Dead festival bow and stretch to touch the Kryptonian) and those who despise them (Batman is feared and seen as a myth), mired in bureaucracy (a surprising amount of plot is spent dealing with import permission) and secretly run by the powerful mega-rich.
Snyder is as visually assured as ever. This is perhaps best seen in the way he shoots Batman - an early encounter with two beat cops treats him like a horror character; seen in blurred background and shadow. The later take-down of a warehouse full of armed thugs is the closest approximation of the Batman I grew up reading I have ever seen. Mixing tech and fighting acumen, it is easily the best action scene in the film; thrillingly shot and cut without resorting to slo-mo, Snyder's personal visual tic.
The cast is strong, which helps carry some of the more shockingly badly written scenes. Ben Affleck makes for an appealingly tired and sombre Bruce Wayne, (a somewhat underused) Cavill is more confident as Clark/Superman, and Amy Adams makes Lois more vulnerable than she was in Man of Steel. Jeremy Irons is a nicely sardonic Alfred, while Gal Gadot is magnetic and does well with no real part in her handful of scenes as Wonder Woman. Jesse Eisenberg plays Lex Luthor as a damaged manchild, a super villain in word and gesture before ever becoming one in deed, all titters, furies and whimsically murderous asides and impulses.
The plot is an awkward thing. It shows that this was a movie conceived in a panic just days before it was announced as a way to combat the empire-building of Marvel. The narrative hoops screenwriters Chris Terrio and David S Goyer jump through in order to get the two titular heroes face-to-face feel formidable, and the first act is a wonder of fleet exposition and character introduction. After that though it starts to grind a little. Too much going on, too little of it as interesting as it should be. Affleck is good in all of his scenes, but then he has the best character to play. The climactic confrontation is impressive, but instantly gazzumped by the arrival of the cgi Doomsday and Wonder Woman to complete the "trinity" at the heart of the DC Universe.
The cosmetic debt to Frank Miller's the Dark Knight Returns is outweighed by the debt to the (terrible) Death of Superman by Dan Jurgens, which may just sum up the issues with Snyder's film.
But its issues, such as they are, are interesting. This film is a fascinating mess.

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.

AMERICAN ULTRA

(Nima Nourizadeh, 2015)

American Ultra probably looked great in the conceptual stage. A small-town stoner and his girlfriend wind up dodging assassins and kill-squads in a sleepy anonymous North Carolina town. Give it a few nasty action sequences, a little comedy quirk, charmingly convincing performances from stars Jesse Eisenberg and Kristin Stewart, and some millennial style from director Nima Nourizadeh and we should have a winner, right?
But it never really works. The tone lurches unpredictably around from scene to scene. It looks and feels like it should be an action-comedy, but there is barely any comedy, and what there is, isn't particularly funny. The action scenes are peculiarly bloodthirsty and violent without ever really becoming exciting. The moment where Eisenberg discovers that he is actually a highly trained sleeper agent killing machine feels ripped straight out of The Bourne Identity but here it lacks any of the adrenalised glee of that moment. Supporting characters aren't fleshed out enough - wasting an actor like Walton Goggins on a one-dimensional psycho called "Laugher" (he laughs a lot) is particularly unforgivable even if a late speech tries to humanise him - though Topher Grace is good as  his usual smug self in the villain part.
Eisenberg and Stewart are both fine too, rekindling the chemistry they showed in the vastly superior Adventureland, but even their relationship is a narrative mess. A twist halfway through and the resultant emotional explosion feels like the film hasn't earned it, and is never in keeping with the light tone some scenes attempt.
There are some great ideas here, a few big laughs and some good scenes, but it's not enough to stop the whole thing feeling like an undercooked dud.

NIGHT MOVES

(Kelly Reichardt, 2014)

Reichardt's brand of hushed, precise art cinema proves a surprisingly good fit for a paranoid thriller here. Following three novice Environmental terrorists as they plan and execute the destruction of a dam in Oregon, Night Moves concentrates on the cross-currents and dynamics between these people, most effectively as the tension mounts in the hours before the bombing and as their paranoia grows in the aftermath.
Shot mostly in muted, autumnal hues, Reichardt is as sensitive as ever to the landscapes in which she sets her story. But her camera is also attuned to the faces and body language of this trio.
Their plan has come from Josh (Jesse Eisenberg), a tightly wound, humourless young man who lives in a Yurt on a farming co-operative. His awkward gracelesness is nicely, subtly contrasted with the chattering charm of Dee (Dakota Fanning), a little rich girl who funds some of Josh's smaller acts of rebellion but finds herself unprepared for the real-life repercussions of their bombing. They are joined by an old friend of Josh's, Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), an ex-Marine, ex-Con who handles the explosives and deals with their situation better than his co-conspirators.
The film steadily follows their preparations as they buy a boat and fertiliser, make explosives and get into position. We get glimpses of their differing philosophies and reasons for doing this; Josh's anger about salmon dying so people can charge their iPods, Harmon on the bloat of Portland into the countryside, and Dee on how industrial fishing is destroying ocean bio-diversity. That all makes their actions seem righteous and motivated, but there is the unmistakable sense that they do not know quite what they are doing. In the aftermath, Reichardt allows Josh's boss to casually destroy the meaning of their act when he calls it "theatre" and we can see in Josh's eyes that - after a tragic and unexpected consequence has struck him - he doesn't even disagree.
The atmosphere is thick with angst and tension, and that only increases once the act has taken place and Josh is spiralling, worried about his accomplices and the future. The ending is ambiguous and haunting in a way that provides a perfect fit with the quiet tone of the film.

TO ROME WITH LOVE

(Woody Allen, 2012) Woody Allen still makes "good" films. To Rome With Love, for instance, is consistently engaging, thematically interesting, occasionally hilarious, nicely acted, and shot by Darius Khondji with a fine feel for the beauty of the Eternal City in the waning evenings of a late summer. The problem is that Woody Allen once made unequivocally great films. Films that fairly throbbed with inspiration and ideas, films that were formally adventurous but always accessible, films that were moving and intriguing yet generally brilliantly funny. And, much though I realise it is poor form to criticise a film for what it is not rather than what it actually is, this is an unavoidable consideration whenever one addresses this particular writer-director's latest work. To Rome With Love is another in Allen's recent European series. Here he takes Rome as his setting, shuffling between a number of different stories: Allen himself and Judy Davis visiting their daughter, engaged to a handsome Roman lawyer, whose father is a gifted Opera singer, but only in the shower; Alec Baldwin, reminiscing about a summer in his youth when he (incarnated in the form of Jesse Eisenberg) falls for his girlfriend's pretentious friend (Ellen Page). There are also two Italian-language strands: a young couple honeymooning in the city become accidentally separated and embark on their own sexual journeys, and Roberto Benigni plays a clerk who becomes hugely famous overnight for no reason. That synopsis suggests the difference between the Woody Allen of today and the Woody Allen of the 1970s and 80s - a couple of the big comic ideas in To Rome With Love would have been tossed off in his older films, but here they are given far too much time and space for their slightness to sustain, and they seem thin and annoyingly shrill as a result. As ever with Allen, performances make up for that to some extent, and here Benigni and Penelope Cruz (as a typically caricatured/idealised Allen version of a prostitute) are entertainingly broad, while the Baldwin/Eisenberg strand holds perhaps the best mix of comedy and drama of any in the film, and is charmingly played by all involved. But mix is a problem here - these stories don't hold together well, and indeed, they don't play off one another at all, throwing off few unexpected resonances or contrasts, instead feeling somewhat randomly shuffled. The humour lurches from extraordinarily heavy satire - especially in the Benigni section - to some sparkling one liners, via a bit of decent character comedy, and even some broad farce which plays like much popular Italian tv, but its never light enough or quite snappy enough to work the way it could, for all the reliable qualities that Allen ensures in his cinema.