(Ben Stiller, 2008)
This uber-comedy tries to all things as once, and just about succeeds. It is a Hollywood satire, mocking actorly pretension (brilliantly through Downey Jr's Russell Crowe skit, Kirk Lazarus, so deep in character he doesn't know who he is anymore), Executive arrogance (Tom Cruise having a great time riffing on Harvey Weinstein), agent desperation and obliviousness (Matthew McConaughey just on the verge of the McConnanaisance), and various stripes of movie star awfulness (Jack Black going cold turkey in the jungle, Ben Stiller trying to become a "serious" actor, Brandon T Jackson obsessing over his "Booty Sweat" branding), "visionary" British theatre directors (Steve Coogan) and generally just destroying cinema excess by almost personifying it. The opening sequence - after a series of genuinely hilarious and note perfect fake trailers - is a massive, epic battle in the Vietnamese jungle, parodying Platoon and other Vietnam movie cliches and culminating in an immense explosion.
Stiller seems to be telling us just how ridiculous Hollywood movies are, how obscene the expense and the spectacle, then going to ridiculous expense in order to deliver outrageous spectacle. The story picks up near the end of the shoot of a hugely ambitious and expensive Viet-epic called Tropic Thunder, based on the memoir by grizzled, hook-handed vet Nick Nolte. Fading action star Tuck Speedman (Stiller) leads the cast, supported by Downey, Jack Black's gross-out comedian, Jackson's crossover rapper, and Jay Baruchel as the lucky character actor given a small supporting part. But the director (Coogan) is over his head and unable to corral his cast of egos, and after a disastrous scene loses millions, he drags the principals out into the jungle to shoot guerrilla-style, and is promptly blown up by a mine, leaving the squabbling actors trekking through the jungle, pursued by armed drug militia and unsure of what is real and what is not.
Part of why Tropic Thunder works so well is because Stiller has gone to such lengths to make sure it looks, sounds and moves like one of the spectacles it so mercilessly mocks. Shot beautifully by John Toll and scored by Theodore Shapiro, it is only the script - alternately razor-sharp and full of deadpan stupidity - and the brilliant performances which make it clear it can be both broad and subtle by turns. The climax features a huge gun battle, jungle buildings exploding in huge orange fireballs, while also highlighting Downey Jr having a literal meltdown, shedding character personas like old lizard skins.
It is magnificently quotable - "Never go full retard" is just the start of it, and each of the main actors has at least one great or hilarious moment, exploring their characters many issues and insecurities.
It's one of the great comedies of the last decade, and it rewards multiple viewings.
Showing posts with label Matthew McConaughey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matthew McConaughey. Show all posts
Saturday, 1 August 2015
Thursday, 20 November 2014
INTERSTELLAR
(Christopher Nolan, 2014)
By now, the things that Christopher Nolan does well are taken largely for granted. This is a director who makes immense blockbuster films, a widely reviled genre. And yet he makes them with an utterly serious intent, set on examining big, important themes through narratives including superheroes and sci-fi action. He largely eschews digital visual effects in favour of more old-fashioned in-camera tricks, and his films all look and sound splendid - he has mastered a monolithic, stately visual style based seemingly on a mix of Michael Mann in his middle period (Heat, The Insider) and Stanley Kubrick, coupled with deafening Hans Zimmer scores which make his films must-see big-screen experiences. All this and massive movie stars too.
And yet...
Interstellar is a fascinating, hugely flawed film, like much of Nolan's work. These days, with ridiculously huge budgets and final cut, his films must be as close to his vision As any major director is ever likely to get. And that's a possible reason for the fact that stretches of Interstellar feel interminable. The third act, in particular, is boring and seemingly endless. Perhaps if he were a slightly less popular and commercial filmmaker, some executive would be on-hand to make the point to Nolan that This film needed another week or so in the editing suite. But instead he indulges himself, and while his commercial instincts tell him to introduce some conflict on a human level in his third act - a decision leading to perhaps the weakest passage in the film - he somehow also thinks it is ok to include not one but three, yes, three separate scenes of spaceships docking in space stations, the second and third both attempts at suspense which fall monumentally flat.
In fact the best moments in this film are all early on, before Nolan is able to indulge his desire to remake 2001, when the drama is still largely domestic and Terran. At some unspecified point in the future, a worldwide blight and ferocious dust storms wipe out the majority of crops, kill millions, and ensure that governments redirect most of their spending away from defence and technology and into agriculture. Matthew McConaughey plays Coop, an ex-NASA pilot and engineer now working as a farmer somewhere in the Midwest. A widower, he has two young children who he chooses to leave after offered a mission from a NASA operating in secrecy. The mission is a last chance to save humanity from the inevitable death awaiting the species, and involves travelling through a wormhole to investigate the viability of planets in a distant solar system.
The scenes of Coop's life on earth are quiet, beautiful and almost banal. He attends a parents evening at his daughters school, where he learns that she has been fighting with classmates because of her belief that the moon landings happened and were not just (the now-official line) state sponsored propaganda. He drinks beer on the porch with his wise father-in-law (John Lithgow), flees dust storms, fixes machinery, does his best as a dad. His bond with his daughter, Murph, is especially powerful, and their relationship is the emotional backbone of the film.
For such a big film it has an astoundingly narrow emotional focus - this is purely a fathers paean to his daughter. Murph grows up to be a bitter Jessica Chastain, finding a surrogate father in Michael Caine's NASA Professor Brandt, whose own daughter (Ann Hathaway, struggling with the worst dialogue in the film) is off in space with Coop.
The frayed bond between Coop and Murph is central to the best sequence in the film. The astronauts visit a planet where each hour that elapses equals seven years on earth. Suspense, immediately established, obviously things go wrong, and the scene where Coop watches his children's video messages and their development from teenagers to adults is immensely powerful, mainly because of McConaughey's performance.
There is a depth of emotion here, but Nolan frames it in an almost Spielbergian manner - trucking in wonder and sentiment, whereas his usual mode is a more rational Kubrickian distance. His films all seem rooted in a Godless universe, yet here is a film which seeks to make us wonder at the mysteries of that universe. This sets up a strange tension the movie never quite resolves.
It also feels as if it needed another week or two in the editing suite; or perhaps Nolan has reached such a level of power and influence that nobody dares tell him when he is being self-indulgent. Because the last act here is interminable - featuring two separate scenes (both meant to be suspenseful) of spaceships docking, it loses all tension and instead dissolves into metaphysics and manipulative melodrama. McConaughey keeps it watchable and it is always a typically grand, colossally-scaled spectacle, but it is confused and unsatisfying too.
The coda - while moving - feels a little contrived widescreen splendour, we've been here so many times before in cinema, watching astronauts struggle with eternity, and seen it done more intelligently and more cinematically. This is a film made by a director who fell in love with 2001: A Space Odyssey as a young man, and in this case that's very much a bad thing, since that influence is detectable in a number of irritating ways. The final product feels more like two other misfires of exploration: DePalma's Mission To Mars (minus the grandstanding set-pieces) and Cameron's The Abyss (minus the watery close encounters), only it feels a little inferior to both of those too.
For all it's strengths, Interstellar is fascinating chiefly because of the ways in which it fails.
By now, the things that Christopher Nolan does well are taken largely for granted. This is a director who makes immense blockbuster films, a widely reviled genre. And yet he makes them with an utterly serious intent, set on examining big, important themes through narratives including superheroes and sci-fi action. He largely eschews digital visual effects in favour of more old-fashioned in-camera tricks, and his films all look and sound splendid - he has mastered a monolithic, stately visual style based seemingly on a mix of Michael Mann in his middle period (Heat, The Insider) and Stanley Kubrick, coupled with deafening Hans Zimmer scores which make his films must-see big-screen experiences. All this and massive movie stars too.
And yet...
Interstellar is a fascinating, hugely flawed film, like much of Nolan's work. These days, with ridiculously huge budgets and final cut, his films must be as close to his vision As any major director is ever likely to get. And that's a possible reason for the fact that stretches of Interstellar feel interminable. The third act, in particular, is boring and seemingly endless. Perhaps if he were a slightly less popular and commercial filmmaker, some executive would be on-hand to make the point to Nolan that This film needed another week or so in the editing suite. But instead he indulges himself, and while his commercial instincts tell him to introduce some conflict on a human level in his third act - a decision leading to perhaps the weakest passage in the film - he somehow also thinks it is ok to include not one but three, yes, three separate scenes of spaceships docking in space stations, the second and third both attempts at suspense which fall monumentally flat.
In fact the best moments in this film are all early on, before Nolan is able to indulge his desire to remake 2001, when the drama is still largely domestic and Terran. At some unspecified point in the future, a worldwide blight and ferocious dust storms wipe out the majority of crops, kill millions, and ensure that governments redirect most of their spending away from defence and technology and into agriculture. Matthew McConaughey plays Coop, an ex-NASA pilot and engineer now working as a farmer somewhere in the Midwest. A widower, he has two young children who he chooses to leave after offered a mission from a NASA operating in secrecy. The mission is a last chance to save humanity from the inevitable death awaiting the species, and involves travelling through a wormhole to investigate the viability of planets in a distant solar system.
The scenes of Coop's life on earth are quiet, beautiful and almost banal. He attends a parents evening at his daughters school, where he learns that she has been fighting with classmates because of her belief that the moon landings happened and were not just (the now-official line) state sponsored propaganda. He drinks beer on the porch with his wise father-in-law (John Lithgow), flees dust storms, fixes machinery, does his best as a dad. His bond with his daughter, Murph, is especially powerful, and their relationship is the emotional backbone of the film.
For such a big film it has an astoundingly narrow emotional focus - this is purely a fathers paean to his daughter. Murph grows up to be a bitter Jessica Chastain, finding a surrogate father in Michael Caine's NASA Professor Brandt, whose own daughter (Ann Hathaway, struggling with the worst dialogue in the film) is off in space with Coop.
The frayed bond between Coop and Murph is central to the best sequence in the film. The astronauts visit a planet where each hour that elapses equals seven years on earth. Suspense, immediately established, obviously things go wrong, and the scene where Coop watches his children's video messages and their development from teenagers to adults is immensely powerful, mainly because of McConaughey's performance.
There is a depth of emotion here, but Nolan frames it in an almost Spielbergian manner - trucking in wonder and sentiment, whereas his usual mode is a more rational Kubrickian distance. His films all seem rooted in a Godless universe, yet here is a film which seeks to make us wonder at the mysteries of that universe. This sets up a strange tension the movie never quite resolves.
It also feels as if it needed another week or two in the editing suite; or perhaps Nolan has reached such a level of power and influence that nobody dares tell him when he is being self-indulgent. Because the last act here is interminable - featuring two separate scenes (both meant to be suspenseful) of spaceships docking, it loses all tension and instead dissolves into metaphysics and manipulative melodrama. McConaughey keeps it watchable and it is always a typically grand, colossally-scaled spectacle, but it is confused and unsatisfying too.
The coda - while moving - feels a little contrived widescreen splendour, we've been here so many times before in cinema, watching astronauts struggle with eternity, and seen it done more intelligently and more cinematically. This is a film made by a director who fell in love with 2001: A Space Odyssey as a young man, and in this case that's very much a bad thing, since that influence is detectable in a number of irritating ways. The final product feels more like two other misfires of exploration: DePalma's Mission To Mars (minus the grandstanding set-pieces) and Cameron's The Abyss (minus the watery close encounters), only it feels a little inferior to both of those too.
For all it's strengths, Interstellar is fascinating chiefly because of the ways in which it fails.
Saturday, 8 February 2014
DALLAS BUYERS CLUB
(Jean-Marc Valleé, 2013)
Somehow less than the sum of it's parts, Valleé's biopic of Ron Woodruff, an AIDS patient in 1980s Dallas who confounds the Medical establishment and defies the FDA by importing unapproved drugs from Mexico, Japan, Holland and Israel is nevertheless filled with good things.
Most notable of those is another in what is becoming a long series of great Matthew McConaughey performances. Ridiculous 50 pound weight-loss aside, he plays Woodruff as a swaggering good old boy and unabashed homophobe who is transformed by his efforts to manage his own condition and his encounters with fellow (mostly gay) sufferers. Expansive, charismatic and funny, Woodruff's journey is predictable but made believable by McConaughey never playing it easy - he starts to help people because he sees an opportunity to make money, and his eventual softening towards extroverted Drag Queen Rayon (Jared Leto, similarly excellent) is slow and authentically scarred by misunderstanding and prejudice.
The plot kicks in once Woodruff has been diagnosed and begins to investigate possible treatments. A sojourn in a Mexican clinic convinces him that treating symptoms is the way to go, and he begins importing drugs in huge quantities and exploiting a legal loophole by selling memberships in a "Buyers Club" which entitles it's members to free medication. Along the way he encounters homophobia alongside the opposition of the FDA and the IRS. He is supported by a kindly doctor (Jennifer Garner), and finds his friendship with her and Rayon more fulfilling than the macho bluster he shared with his old friends, who all shun him after his diagnosis.
Valleé keeps his style loose and edgy, finding the beauty in trailer parks and motel lots, using an electric buzz on the soundtrack to signal vividly the moments when Woodruff's illness gets the better of him.
But the screenplay is a little trite, a little repetitive, a little too by-numbers, and it never really feels worthy of the performances of this cast or director.
Somehow less than the sum of it's parts, Valleé's biopic of Ron Woodruff, an AIDS patient in 1980s Dallas who confounds the Medical establishment and defies the FDA by importing unapproved drugs from Mexico, Japan, Holland and Israel is nevertheless filled with good things.
Most notable of those is another in what is becoming a long series of great Matthew McConaughey performances. Ridiculous 50 pound weight-loss aside, he plays Woodruff as a swaggering good old boy and unabashed homophobe who is transformed by his efforts to manage his own condition and his encounters with fellow (mostly gay) sufferers. Expansive, charismatic and funny, Woodruff's journey is predictable but made believable by McConaughey never playing it easy - he starts to help people because he sees an opportunity to make money, and his eventual softening towards extroverted Drag Queen Rayon (Jared Leto, similarly excellent) is slow and authentically scarred by misunderstanding and prejudice.
The plot kicks in once Woodruff has been diagnosed and begins to investigate possible treatments. A sojourn in a Mexican clinic convinces him that treating symptoms is the way to go, and he begins importing drugs in huge quantities and exploiting a legal loophole by selling memberships in a "Buyers Club" which entitles it's members to free medication. Along the way he encounters homophobia alongside the opposition of the FDA and the IRS. He is supported by a kindly doctor (Jennifer Garner), and finds his friendship with her and Rayon more fulfilling than the macho bluster he shared with his old friends, who all shun him after his diagnosis.
Valleé keeps his style loose and edgy, finding the beauty in trailer parks and motel lots, using an electric buzz on the soundtrack to signal vividly the moments when Woodruff's illness gets the better of him.
But the screenplay is a little trite, a little repetitive, a little too by-numbers, and it never really feels worthy of the performances of this cast or director.
Wednesday, 22 January 2014
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
(Martin Scorsese, 2013)
Blame Goodfellas. That more-or-less universally adored 1990 film was a comeback of sorts for Martin Scorsese, and it remains perhaps his most ostentatiously "directed" work; with its use of slow motion, freeze-frames and its reverse dolly zooms, it positively begs an audience to notice the hand of the filmmaker throughout. No wonder it's been so very influential (films from Blow to Boogie Nights to Mesrine and American Hustle all ape Goodfellas to various degrees) - it is one of those films that makes the director look like the main man.
That hadn't been quite the case prior to that in Scorsese's career. His films had always looked good, always featured dazzling sequences, showcasing his talent as a visual stylist, but never before had they been quite so joyously excessive. Since the huge critical and commercial success of Goodfellas, Scorsese revisits that style every couple of films and adapts it slightly for others. It has become his style, in effect. The shame of this is that it now seems self-parodic, or as one critic has put it, "Scor-cese" (as in journalese). A sort of hackneyed visual idiolect.
The Wolf of Wall Street is possibly the purest expression of that style imaginable.
A wicked, hilarious, epic black comedy following the rise and fall of Wall Street stockbroker turned fraudster Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), the rambling, episodic storyline allows Scorsese to show us many of his tricks. The plot - filled as it is with an incredible amount of sequences of sex, drugs and general debauchery - allows for this, with the narrative asking that various altered states need to be interpreted somehow.
Like Goodfellas, it's largely told in flashback, narrated by a self-aware protagonist who actually talks directly to the audience, breaks off explaining things because they don't really matter, and generally glories in the twists and turns of his own story. That story is rich in supporting characters, most obviously embodied by Jonah Hill as Jordan's right-hand man, Donny, and Margot Robbie as his beautiful second wife, Naomi. As Jordan's activities become more lucrative and less legal, his habits swell until he is seemingly constantly enjoying either drugs or prostitutes (often both). Perhaps the standout sequence is a long quallude high which plays out like brilliant slapstick comedy.
This is probably Scorsese's funniest film. The silly debate over whether or not the director intends us to admire these people ignores the fact that they - and their babylonian excesses - are funny whether or not you admire them. That begins with Matthew McConaughey, whose cameo role as Jordan's mentor revolves around a standout sequence where he openly snorts coke over lunch in a restaurant, then begins a chest-beating anthem to Wall Street after revealing the secret con of the entire system to the younger man. Also hilarious is Rob Reiner as Jordan's father.
They are balanced somewhat by Kyle Chandler, somehow creating a layered individual out of an underwritten FBI agent who becomes Jordan's nemesis.
It is only with his arrival that the film really acquires a plot, as Jordan desperately seeks to cover his back and hide his money before the government catch up to him.
There are many dazzling scenes here - Scorsese is still a master, after all - but it is massively overlong, numbingly repetitive and strangely empty (which is perhaps the point, admittedly).
DiCaprio holds it together well, despite several of his co-stars walking away with their every scene, and despite a seemingly random selection of tunes on the soundtrack (once a definite Scorsese specialty), this is genuinely, roundly entertaining throughout.
But from a master given this sort of canvas to work on, is that really enough?
Blame Goodfellas. That more-or-less universally adored 1990 film was a comeback of sorts for Martin Scorsese, and it remains perhaps his most ostentatiously "directed" work; with its use of slow motion, freeze-frames and its reverse dolly zooms, it positively begs an audience to notice the hand of the filmmaker throughout. No wonder it's been so very influential (films from Blow to Boogie Nights to Mesrine and American Hustle all ape Goodfellas to various degrees) - it is one of those films that makes the director look like the main man.
That hadn't been quite the case prior to that in Scorsese's career. His films had always looked good, always featured dazzling sequences, showcasing his talent as a visual stylist, but never before had they been quite so joyously excessive. Since the huge critical and commercial success of Goodfellas, Scorsese revisits that style every couple of films and adapts it slightly for others. It has become his style, in effect. The shame of this is that it now seems self-parodic, or as one critic has put it, "Scor-cese" (as in journalese). A sort of hackneyed visual idiolect.
The Wolf of Wall Street is possibly the purest expression of that style imaginable.
A wicked, hilarious, epic black comedy following the rise and fall of Wall Street stockbroker turned fraudster Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), the rambling, episodic storyline allows Scorsese to show us many of his tricks. The plot - filled as it is with an incredible amount of sequences of sex, drugs and general debauchery - allows for this, with the narrative asking that various altered states need to be interpreted somehow.
Like Goodfellas, it's largely told in flashback, narrated by a self-aware protagonist who actually talks directly to the audience, breaks off explaining things because they don't really matter, and generally glories in the twists and turns of his own story. That story is rich in supporting characters, most obviously embodied by Jonah Hill as Jordan's right-hand man, Donny, and Margot Robbie as his beautiful second wife, Naomi. As Jordan's activities become more lucrative and less legal, his habits swell until he is seemingly constantly enjoying either drugs or prostitutes (often both). Perhaps the standout sequence is a long quallude high which plays out like brilliant slapstick comedy.
This is probably Scorsese's funniest film. The silly debate over whether or not the director intends us to admire these people ignores the fact that they - and their babylonian excesses - are funny whether or not you admire them. That begins with Matthew McConaughey, whose cameo role as Jordan's mentor revolves around a standout sequence where he openly snorts coke over lunch in a restaurant, then begins a chest-beating anthem to Wall Street after revealing the secret con of the entire system to the younger man. Also hilarious is Rob Reiner as Jordan's father.
They are balanced somewhat by Kyle Chandler, somehow creating a layered individual out of an underwritten FBI agent who becomes Jordan's nemesis.
It is only with his arrival that the film really acquires a plot, as Jordan desperately seeks to cover his back and hide his money before the government catch up to him.
There are many dazzling scenes here - Scorsese is still a master, after all - but it is massively overlong, numbingly repetitive and strangely empty (which is perhaps the point, admittedly).
DiCaprio holds it together well, despite several of his co-stars walking away with their every scene, and despite a seemingly random selection of tunes on the soundtrack (once a definite Scorsese specialty), this is genuinely, roundly entertaining throughout.
But from a master given this sort of canvas to work on, is that really enough?
Saturday, 11 May 2013
MUD
(Jeff Nichols, 2012)
Mud feels like an instant classic.
Nichols' third film gets so much right, and so little wrong, and it also presents a side to him not particularly evident in his first two movies; he now appears one of the leading talents in American cinema, with a fantastically broad range and formidable storytelling skills.
Those are easy to see in the first few scenes of Mud, especially in the effortless way he paints in this world. Here is the American South presented as a vivid, real place, in the form of a small town with all its drag strip bars and chain restaurants, contrasted with the life of the river which has an almost mythic presence within the film. Nichols is good on the subtle and obvious differences between the two. Our 14 year old hero, Ellis (Tye Sheridan, outstanding) lives and works on that river with his mother (Sarah Paulson) and fisherman father. Nichols uses the family to express the conflict between town and country. Parental marriage breakdown centres around Mom's desire to give life in town a try, while Ellis ("I ain't no townie!") wants to stay on the river and work with his dad, despite the attractions of the many girls in town.
The main plot revolves around a discovery Ellis and his friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) make on a small island in the river. There's a boat hanging suspended in a tree, deposited there by a storm. And a man living in it. His name is Mud, and as played by Matthew McConaughey he is a silver-tongued charmer with a love of tall tails and a gospel delivery. He wears crosses on his boot heels, a pistol in his waistband, and is hiding after the murder of a man. He claims to be waiting to meet his girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) and persuades the boys to bring him supplies, and, eventually, ferry messages to her. But there are sinister, armed men in town looking for him, State troopers setting up roadblocks in order to trap him, and his old friend and neighbour of Ellis (Sam Shepherd) says he's not to be trusted and the boys should stay away. But by then, of course, its already too late...
As a naturalistic portrait of adolescent male friendship, Mud is terrific; sensitive to the subtle nuances and unspoken bonds, never forced in the way it traces the quiet refusal of emotion boys specialise in. And it uses the mysterious forces driving adult lives to cast so much light on the world of Ellis and Neckbone; Ellis is a romantic, yearning for a girl in town, hopeful his parents will rediscover their love for one another despite his father's cynicism, and the story Mud tells him appeals to him because of its old-fashioned certainty about true love. Then we learn the truth about Mud and Juniper, and Ellis' heartbreak is shattering and almost visceral. Meanwhile Neckbone seems more pragmatic, guided by his loving but relaxed Uncle (Michael Shannon), until we realise that he will do more or less anything his friend asks of him.
Nichols has a nice eye and a superb gift for tone and place, but here those gifts appear to have been internalised. Instead, he realises to what extent this story is about faces, and he keeps his lens close to his cast throughout.
Despite the feeling of intense mounting suspense, then, there is enough time to delve into Mud as a character. Mud is a liar, yes, but his fantasising is always pointed and intriguing, and the audience feels as attracted to him as the two boys are.
Mud feels like an instant classic.
Nichols' third film gets so much right, and so little wrong, and it also presents a side to him not particularly evident in his first two movies; he now appears one of the leading talents in American cinema, with a fantastically broad range and formidable storytelling skills.
Those are easy to see in the first few scenes of Mud, especially in the effortless way he paints in this world. Here is the American South presented as a vivid, real place, in the form of a small town with all its drag strip bars and chain restaurants, contrasted with the life of the river which has an almost mythic presence within the film. Nichols is good on the subtle and obvious differences between the two. Our 14 year old hero, Ellis (Tye Sheridan, outstanding) lives and works on that river with his mother (Sarah Paulson) and fisherman father. Nichols uses the family to express the conflict between town and country. Parental marriage breakdown centres around Mom's desire to give life in town a try, while Ellis ("I ain't no townie!") wants to stay on the river and work with his dad, despite the attractions of the many girls in town.
The main plot revolves around a discovery Ellis and his friend Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) make on a small island in the river. There's a boat hanging suspended in a tree, deposited there by a storm. And a man living in it. His name is Mud, and as played by Matthew McConaughey he is a silver-tongued charmer with a love of tall tails and a gospel delivery. He wears crosses on his boot heels, a pistol in his waistband, and is hiding after the murder of a man. He claims to be waiting to meet his girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) and persuades the boys to bring him supplies, and, eventually, ferry messages to her. But there are sinister, armed men in town looking for him, State troopers setting up roadblocks in order to trap him, and his old friend and neighbour of Ellis (Sam Shepherd) says he's not to be trusted and the boys should stay away. But by then, of course, its already too late...
As a naturalistic portrait of adolescent male friendship, Mud is terrific; sensitive to the subtle nuances and unspoken bonds, never forced in the way it traces the quiet refusal of emotion boys specialise in. And it uses the mysterious forces driving adult lives to cast so much light on the world of Ellis and Neckbone; Ellis is a romantic, yearning for a girl in town, hopeful his parents will rediscover their love for one another despite his father's cynicism, and the story Mud tells him appeals to him because of its old-fashioned certainty about true love. Then we learn the truth about Mud and Juniper, and Ellis' heartbreak is shattering and almost visceral. Meanwhile Neckbone seems more pragmatic, guided by his loving but relaxed Uncle (Michael Shannon), until we realise that he will do more or less anything his friend asks of him.
Nichols has a nice eye and a superb gift for tone and place, but here those gifts appear to have been internalised. Instead, he realises to what extent this story is about faces, and he keeps his lens close to his cast throughout.
Despite the feeling of intense mounting suspense, then, there is enough time to delve into Mud as a character. Mud is a liar, yes, but his fantasising is always pointed and intriguing, and the audience feels as attracted to him as the two boys are.
Friday, 20 July 2012
KILLER JOE
(William Friedkin, 2011)
Matthew McConaughey is astonishing in Killer Joe. In the title role, as Detective Joe Cooper, a cop with a sideline in paid assassination who gets mixed up with a damaged White trash family somewhere in Texas, he displays the sort of magnetic cold-eyed charm which, in this sort of pulp, always means that a character is holding down some sort of inner violence. And so it proves. McConaughey twists the courtly old-fashioned Southern politeness which is a big part of his persona until it is a disturbing, off key element of his character; this man is too polite, too precise in his language for the environment he inhabits. When he reveals the other side of his nature later on, it is not remotely surprising. Rather it is oddly satisfying, firstly to see McConaughey live up to all that promise as an actor. And secondly to see a film pay off and deliver after lots of tension.
Based on a Tracy Letts play - the stage bound source material is still evident in the few characters and locations, and more particularly in the way the final act all occurs in a single setting, in one long unbroken scene - and adapted for the screen by the playwright, Killer Joe is the blackest comedy imaginable, a post-Tarantino slice of Southern trailer-park noir, based around a handful of great performances and Friedkins solid, if somewhat anonymous direction.
McConaughey might be the single-most enthralling element, but he is given strong backing by Emile Hirsch, Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon and (especially) Juno Temple as Dottie, the oddball innocent/savant of a daughter Joe takes a liking to. Letts' characterisation is bold in its simplicity, and his people talk in spellbinding little riffs and exchanges, many of which are drily hilarious. Friedkin ensures it is splendidly atmospheric - the art direction for the trailer in which so much action occurs is just about perfect - and tense from the moment Joe enters the picture and the plot is set in motion, but it is perhaps guilty of trying too hard to be weird, struggling for a Lynchian blend of quirk, sleaze, humour and violence which is particularly difficult to achieve. If Killer Joe never quite makes it, it is at least nasty and generally enthralling.
The whole thing rises to a quite brilliant final scene of horrific, hilarious violence, and what is quite frankly the best use of a piece of fried chicken I've ever seen in a movie.
Tuesday, 17 July 2012
MAGIC MIKE
(Steven Soderbergh, 2012)
Few directors make films so acute and intelligent about the way we live now as Steven Soderbergh. It's partly the way he shoots. And he does shoot, acting (under pseudonyms) as his own cinematographer and editor. The control this gives him over the visual character of his films means his interest in capturing something of the fleeting, instant beauty of the modern world is evident in much of his work. Magic Mike, which has discomforting elements reminiscent of the romantic comedy, is partly a lifestyle movie, dedicated to revealing the glamour of a life far removed from what most in the audience would consider normal. And Soderbergh is skilled at making that life look truly beautiful.
His film follows a 30 year old stripper-entrepreneur (Channing Tatum, wholly winning here) over three months of summer in Tampa, Florida, as he introduces an unemployed, aimless hunk (Alex Pettyfer) to his particular form of showbiz, questions his own future, and becomes attracted to his new friend's sister (Cody Horn).
The story is set in a sunkissed corner of the US, and these young strippers move in a world of designer apartments and beach houses, pounding nightclubs and parties on sandbanks, drive immense 4x4s and mix with beautiful women. Soderbergh gives all of that the allure it demands.
Soderbergh also captures the time and place with a fluid vividness and attention to detail and texture that gives the story a resonance on an intimate, everyday level. Whereas many modern films set in glamourous worlds feel unreal, impossibly perfect and set-dressed, Soderbergh ensures this film feels like it's set in our world.
And yet, while Magic Mike seems to celebrate it's protagonists lifestyle, Soderbergh instead critiques it. The scenes of the strippers performances are shot in a manner reminiscent of the fight scenes in his last film, Haywire; master-shot displays of virtuoso skill and athleticism. A couple of them are played for laughs, and the film never shies away from the darker side of the sex industry; the injuries, the drugs, the lonely lack of a future. Only the undeniable homo-eroticism is never acknowledged, though it may be utterly implicit in the numerous instances of muscled men dancing together.
This is decidedly a film for the austerity era; Mike is stymied in his entrepreneurial ambitions by cold economic reality, and there is an ever-present hard-scrabble quality to his daily activities, carrying a wad of notes in his pocket, juggling his businesses.
His journey to self-discovery and escape is compelling and beautifully played by Tatum, while his friend "The Kid" is on the opposite trajectory, more or less becoming Mike. Pettyfer plays his character with just the right amount of cockiness creeping into a slightly blank lack of definition. Both are outshone by Matthew McConaughey, stealing every scene he's in as Dallas, the owner of the strip-club and a natural showman and preacher, all oiled pecs and hyperbolic southern charm.
The weakest element is the love story - partly because Horn is a little stiff (but then so is her character, it might be argued) - which comes to a disappointingly predictable, if familiarly satisfying, conclusion after a few interestingly and realistically ambiguous early exchanges between its mismatched pair.
Overall, however, Magic Mike is an almost casually great piece of American movie-making; brilliantly made and stylishly gripping toughout.
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