BONE TOMAHAWK

(S. Craig Zahler, 2015)

I knew Zahler was a novelist before I checked his bio. The first two acts of Bone Tomahawk are full of scenes that play out much longer than they would in the majority of movies; Zahler lets us watch his characters talk the way a novelist would. Not in that Tarantino way, asking us to marvel at the wit and quality of the dialogue, but in a manner designed to increase our knowledge and understanding of the characters. We spend an hour and a half in their company before the stakes are suddenly raised, and - unlike in so many horror films - we actually care what happens to them.
That means that the first half of the film does feel a little post-Tarantno, a little like Deadwood (which Zahler has criticised in interviews), a little lazy and self-indulgent. Zahler's writing is fine, but it is his cast that sells the dialogue. Kurt Russell always feels like a natural fit in Westerns, and he is excellent here as an unflappable, confident Sheriff. Patrick Wilson presents yet another in his series of precise studies of masculinity under fire, before emerging in the climax as the true hero of the film. Matthew Fox turns the soulfulness of his presence into a shield, playing an amoral, unlikable killer with unplumbed depths. All, however, are outshone by Richard Jenkins in the Walter Brennan role, the loquacious old-timer who can barely keep quiet for 5 seconds and whose mutterings often contain great insights. These four set off on a journey ("Ride out to their doom!" as the hilarious, right-on-the-money end credits ballad would have it) after Wilson's nurse wife and a young deputy are abducted from the town jailhouse one night.
Their abductors are identified by the town's token Native American as a nameless, inbred tribe of cannibalistic troglodytes who live in caves days ride away and who are fearsome and savage. The men's journey is slow and detailed, their personality clashes and interactions containing longueurs and entertainment both, before the last act when what has been a lightly quirky Western with some comedy transforms into a brutally gory cannibal horror film. Zahler fills the script with interesting details; from a half-crippled Wilson's dialogue with God as he prepares to enter the troglodytes valley, to the cannibal's having whistles of bone sewn into their throats to aid their howling communication, to Fox revealing his back-story as he faces death, this is a beautifully imagined world which makes light of its modest budget.
Only the somewhat flat photography and constant reliance on mid-shots ( there is rarely a sense of the physical scale common to westerns here) let it down a little, while the spring use of a score helps in that last act when the tension starts to rise. Generally, it feels startlingly unique for a mash-up of such familiar genres, and is an interesting, entertaining watch throughout, questioning tropes and mythology as it goes.

YOUNG ADULT

(Jason Reitman, 2011)

Blessed with a Diablo Cody screenplay which is sporadically breathtaking in its ferocity, Young Adult is a beautifully sustained and focused character study. The character at its centre is Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), a 37 year old writer ("author" she insists) of a series of Young Adult novels set in High School who lives what is established is an empty and unrewarding single life in Minneapolis. Divorced and with only her dog for company as she completes the final novel in the cancelled series, Mavis becomes fixated on her high-school flame Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson in another of his series of finely shaded studies of modern masculinity), who has just had a baby with his wife. She returns to her loathed hometown of Mercury, Minneasota, planning to win Buddy back. There she runs into Matt (Patton Oswalt), a self-described "fat geek"who she ignored throughout High School. She only remembers him when she realises he is the "hatecrime guy", referring to an incident where he was beaten with crowbars by some jocks who thought he was gay, breaking his legs and mangling his penis, leaving him with a limp and a cane for life. Now, as a felow outcast, they have common ground, and she confesses her plans to him as she attempts to woo Buddy away from his wife and infant daughter.
Theron is fantastic as Mavis, a truly awful figure who sees her own life through the prism of High School, both her writing and history twisted in her psyche. We hear snatches of her narrative as she writes, its symbiotic relationship with her own life growing as everything becomes more involved and disturbed. Mavis, the "psychotic prom queen bitch" is monumentally selfish, unable to censor herself, hilariously vain, and caught up in a massive self-deception, intent on a fantasy of a life with Buddy, her one true love. She shows no vulnerability whatsoever until the last act, when reality crashes into her life at a (somewhat contrived) social gathering, in the kind of scene that provides a climax of sorts but would never ever happen in reality.
The film gets away with that because Cody and director Reitman have done such an impressive job establishing these characters and the world of Mercury in all its safe, retail-park (in)glory. Buddy is happy in his regular, small life, happy with his sports bar and job in ad sales, while Mavis lies about her own success. The opening ten minutes, following Mavis through her days in Minneapolis, are curiously, perfectly flat - the light is grey and harsh, there is no music, only the dim jabber of the reality tv she keeps on in the background. As soon as she leaves for Mercury, her teen dream reawakened, Teenage Fanclub burst onto the soundtrack, and that town, for all its dull safeness, is portrayed with a warmth and humanity absent from the scenes of the big city. The other characters feel just as well-imagined and true as Mavis and her old boyfriend. Oswalt's Matt is resigned to his life but shows flashes of bitterness, and Mavis' parents offer a glimpse into the banality of her upbringing.
Reitman's direction is nicely judged throughout, sensitive to mood and character interplay, but with a good sense of comic timing too.
But really this is Theron's show, and she makes Mavis a fascinating, flawed monster, all too aware of her own beauty but incapable of enjoying it, or anything. That would be difficult to bear if the film weren't so darkly funny, but it is full of blistering one-liners and quietly agonising social embarrassment, and Theron plays it all with a conviction which only makes it funnier.

THE A-TEAM

(Joe Carnahan, 2010)

How to walk the fine line between silly and stupid? Ask Joe Carnahan, who manages to make his adaptation of the massively successful 80s action series irredeemably silly without ever quite tipping over into stupidity. He gets the tone just right; the particulars of the plot, the iron cast cliches of the Globe-trotting heist-cum-conspiracy involving mercenaries, the US Military and the CIA: all this is played absolutely straight, all tough guy dialogue, fast-cutting and slick visuals. But the iconic characters of the four members of the A-Team themselves, while reproduced quite faithfully from the tv show, are cartoonishly appealing and leavened with only the slightest traces of realism.
We have Liam Neeson as Col. Hannibal Smith, the cigar-chomping man with the plan, Bradley Cooper letting his smug smoothness carry his work as Lt Templeton "Faceman" Peck, UFC star Quinton Jackson as Bosco "B.A." Barracus, the hard man with a fear of flying, and Sharlto Copley as Murdock, insane pilot and comic relief. Copley gets most of the funny bits, and his Murdock has a genuine edge of suicidal mania absent from the original. Patrick Wilson's villain is witty and interesting by the standards of the genre; CIA Agent as ivy league City trader, he invokes Call of Duty, appreciates combat acumen and code names as "awesome", and is generally a post-Tarantino reading of the standard action movie villain. Jessica Biel has less of interest to do, but she gets perhaps the film's single funniest line (it works better in context): "They're trying to fly a tank".
The story is an origin story; depicting the first time the four characters work together, and how they are framed and imprisoned for a crime they didn't commit, it skips from Mexico to Iraq to Germany to Los Angeles and takes in nocturnal raids on convoys, assassination, prison escapes and gunfights in city centres.
The real silliness, however, is reserved by Carnahan for his set-pieces. The aforementioned tank-flying is inspired, but each of the big action scenes manages to combine thrills with laughs. Only the climax - a big face-off in the classic action movie setting of. Dock - is a slight letdown, with too much shoddy cgi (and even then, that is almost balanced by a couple of fine action and character beats).
Carnahan directs all well - though it strays too FA towards visual incoherence on a few occasions - it's funnier than many comedies, and it contains the them from the tv show.
But more than that, all you really need to know: they fly. A tank.