(John Hillcoat, 2016)
A Cops and Robbers movie!
Hillcoat gathers a really impressive cast here, and embeds them in a world thick with macho atmosphere and sticky Atlanta, Georgia authenticity. Matt Cook's screenplay was on the Black List a few years ago, and it's easy to see why: it's full of great pulp characters and moments, and ripe for muscular action treatment. Hillcoat delivers in that department, opening the film with a heist carried out by Michael Belmont (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Russell Welch (Norman Reedus), two ex-military contractors now working for hire for the Russian Mob in the sinister form of Kate Winslet's cold gang boss. Russell and Michael enlist Russell's junkie ex-cop brother (Aaron Paul in another loser role) and he in turn calls in dirty cops Marcus (Anthony Mackie) and Rodriguez (Clifton Collins Jr) for the heist on a downtown bank, focused on recovering a single safety deposit box. The heist goes wrong and attracts the attention of burned out detective Allen (Woody Harrelson). Meanwhile, the gang have to perform another job, and the decision is made to kill a cop as a massive distraction - the police band code for this is a 999 - and the chosen victim is Chris (Casey Affleck), an Iraq-war veteran and nephew of Allen, recently transferred from a cushy suburb to the gangs unit, where he and Marcus make for uneasy partners.
Along the way, Hillcoat throws in an extended police raid on a projects gang den, the second heist and a handful of tense confrontations in great urban neo-noir locations. He plays with colour and composition. Lost of reds, lots of reflections, visually portraying the bloodiness and duplicity of this world.
The whole thing is more or less ludicrously macho, all shape charges and assault rifles, but the characters are surprisingly rich and convincing for a world as pulpy as the one, and the excellent cast (Ejiofor, Affleck and Winslet in particular) make it extremely compelling.
It's grim - but then isn't every Hillcoat film - but always entertaining.
Showing posts with label Kate Winslet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kate Winslet. Show all posts
Friday, 26 February 2016
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.
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