Film Review: Monsters
Plenty of comparisons have been made between writer/director/cinematographer Gareth Edwards’ debut feature and other recent, shoestring-budgeted films about aliens like ‘District 9′, but being completely honest ‘Monsters’ is in a league of its own. ‘Monsters’, made by a crew of four, with only two professional actors, looks and feels like a $100 million + production, and whilst it (as ‘District 9′) has something to say, its agenda is far more subtle than its South African counterpart, and as such is even more engaging and in many ways more interesting. Years after alien life has taken root on earth, photojournalist Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy), working in central America, is asked by his boss to escort his daughter Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able) back to the US. After an ill-timed drunken fling, Kaulder loses their passports, forcing the couple to cross the ‘Infected Zone’, a region of northern Mexico otherwise quarantined off because of giant killer aliens. So far so stereotypical eh? And yet ‘Monsters’ is anything but stereotypical.
What Edwards instead delivers is an odd-couple road movie, and he manages to fill it full of insight, strong characterisation and a quite different take on ‘what if aliens invaded the earth’. Kaulder and the engaged Samantha grow ever closer as they trek slowly through the beautiful yet scarred rainforest landscape where aliens have long since become the norm. The further they go the more they realise the alien threat isn’t what they’d previously imagined it to be, nor is America the impregnable fortress they’d been led to believe. It’s far from a good guy/bad guy tale – our expectations are also toyed with, as Edwards presents the story almost as an extraterrestrial natural history documentary. And as the documentary below shows, he did it almost single-handedly:
Shooting guerilla-style and getting his documentary feel from knocking on locals’ doors in central America and asking to film in their houses gives ‘Monsters’ a fresh, almost revolutionary feeling, lacking even in ‘District 9′. The fact that he’s a special effects wizard and did most of it himself is remarkable, but yet more impressive is his sparse, well considered use of his CGI. Whereas most monster movies are CGI-driven spectacles, he uses it to build tension, to illustrate the framework of his two-character road movie and to add to the tone his wonderful cinematography has already set. This is a beautiful film where it needs to be, a gritty film where it suits, and still manages to be epic on the scale of ‘Apocalypse Now’.
It’s flawed of course – there isn’t really much of a monstery pay-off (apart from the climax – not what you expect even then), and some of Edwards’ message does get a bit preachy sometimes, but these are tiny gripes about a sensational, sensitive debut feature from a film maker clearly destined for great things. It would be a mistake to ignore real life married couple leads McNairy and Able, whose easy chemistry and effortless performances show them destined for great things too. Their uneasy friendship and growing relationship are utterly believable, and give us a powerful stake in caring about what happens to them. Using them to illustrate the issues Edwards is interested in is a masterstroke - even when the energy sags slightly, they hold everything together.
Gareth Edwards has offered sci-fi/alien films an entirely new set of avenues to explore in the future. I couldn’t help but think at many points that it was like ‘Cloverfield’ but with a script, but it’s so much more. ‘Monsters’ is ultimately a film which dares to have a perspective on its monsters, which presumes its audience is intelligent and is looking for more than an easy hit of shocks and spectacles. ‘Iron Man 2′ and the like may have been splashier efforts this year, but this is far greater quality.
8/10
Film Review: The American (Spoilers)
George Clooney’s latest is an intensely clever film which forgets it needs to be entertaining. I mean a film which calls itself a thriller about a hitman hiding out in Italy surely needs some actual thrills, no? Instead we have a character study with a surfeit of existential angst, and while it’s shot extraordinarily well by director Anton Corbijn, and Clooney’s performance as a man doing everything in his power to avoid human emotions is highly impressive, the film is dull, lifeless and very rarely interesting.
Clooney plays hitman/armourer Jack/Edward, who is tucked away in the Italian mountains after a failed assassination attempt in Sweden. In the tranquil countryside he is befriended by local priest Paolo Bonacelli (who nearly steals the film from him), whilst working on a weapon for his boss Johan Leysen and his client Thekla Reuten. Alone and forsaking his emotions, he avoids contact with others, yet frequents hooker Violante Placido, who unexpectedly falls for him. Isolated by choice, but affected by the world nonetheless, his well ordered world refuses to stay ordered, under constant threat from unknown assassins, as well as his growing feelings for Placido. When the weapon is completed everything falls apart completely as his last job really does start looking like his last.
People are starting to get fed up of Clooney’s mid-life crisis repertoire now, adept though he may be at portraying them. His Jack/Edward may be charismatic but has very little likeable about him, indeed because of screenwriter Rowan Joffe’s sparse script we barely even get to know him. And Clooney may be mesmerising, but there’s little point to this film – the weapon he works for is ultimately used against him, his love for Placido is ultimately doomed and his friendship with Bonacelli may be peppered with amusing one-liners, but it ends up leading nowhere.
Corbijn gives his film wonderful detail and context – Jack/Edward has a totally fleshed out world in which to reside, but it has no warmth to it whatsoever. That may have been part of the point – a man who eschews emotions to keep himself safe is hardly likely to engage the world emotionally through choice, but it robs the film of entertainment value; there’s only so long you can tolerate him sitting in his room, either meditating or working (and without dialogue) without getting bored quite frankly. Joffe’s script too is painfully obvious – it’s pretty clear from early on that the film is going to be a tragedy (making its thriller moniker quite baffling), but there is almost no character conflict in getting there. The car park face off with Reuten could easily have had more made of it, but even in the final act Corbijn opts for angst instead of dramatic engagement. There are also moments which don’t make sense – Clooney’s behaviour in the film’s finale in particular. There may be high drama (almost the only instance of it) in the lead character knowing he’s about to die, but it’s preposterous to suggest it couldn’t have been avoided.
It has its moments – the burgeoning friendship between Clooney and the priest has some cute moments, and the is-it-a-face-off-with-Placido-or-isn’t-it is gently amusing, but they’re pretty shallow. You never get the feeling that Jack/Edward questions his life or chooses to engage in life until it’s too late, and as a viewer you never see any action until the final act. I admired the sparse script – there was next to no exposition in telling the story, and that’s rare in this day and age, but the absence of warmth, humour or conflict made this a largely (but not entirely) futile experience – I’d have preferred it to have been more than just clever. I’d also like Clooney’s next outing to have some fun again, thanks.
6/10
Film Review: Another Year
Heartwarming yet tragic, laugh out loud, yet unsettling, Mike Leigh’s bittersweet investigation of age is a true thing of beauty, although not for the faint hearted. Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) are a sixty-something couple, secure, well-adjusted, happy, and comfortable about getting old. Their friends however are not: Mary (the sublime Lesley Manville) is plagued by insecurities about what she’s failed to achieve in her life, whilst Ken (Peter Wight) has given up all hope or ambition, and Leigh shows us the collisions between secure and insecure over four weekend meetings over all four seasons. It may sound insufferably boring – nothing dramatic after all happens, but it’s a demonstration of Leigh’s genius that it remains gripping, accessible and emotionally engaging from the first moment until the bleak ending. It’s a film of towering yet understated performances, which manage effortlessly to eke out significant truths about growing old and the human condition.
At the centre of the drama is Mary’s friendship with the couple. Mary, twice divorced, and resorting to alcohol to numb the pain of her failures, has become almost entirely dependent on Tom and Gerri. For them life simply goes on, as they accept the changes that come with growing older, whilst gently uncomfortable at their son Joe’s (Oliver Maltman) resolute singletondom. Mary continues to visit them, relying on their confidence for emotional support in her difficult life, but it becomes increasingly clear that she sees Joe as a backstop to her future, should all else fail. Then Joe finds love with Katie (Karina Fernandez), an easy fit into the easy dynamic which Mary knows she doesn’t fit into, and things start going downhill for her…
It sounds like a tense drama, but it’s far from one – much of the ‘action’ of the film is conversational, although it’s no less dynamic for it. As other reviews have pointed out Leigh here is a master at making the mundane and intensely normal unmissable – the screenplay can’t be faulted in any way, and indeed operates on a multitude of levels. Leigh has something to say about companionship in old age, but also about the way in which people need to adapt to change in order to have any shot at happiness as they get older. Quite rightly he frequently makes it uncomfortable viewing, but there’s a rich vein of wry humour which allows ‘Another Year’ to be warm and inviting at the same time. After all everyone wants to be Tom and Gerri, and fears becoming Mary, don’t they?
Leigh has more to discuss than just people’s adaptability to change though. We see a scene where Gerri is brushing her hair before going to bed – her hair is grey, her chin is sagging, she’s not as thin as she used to be, but she’s no less beautiful for it, and Tom makes it very clear that he loves her just as she is (and vice-versa); acceptance is very much the undercurrent of the film, and whilst it allows the warm, loving, happy scenes with Tom, Gerri, Joe and Katie, it also underpins the much darker finale. Gerri says early on to Mary ‘life can be unkind can’t it?’ – very clearly the case, and it’s to the writer/director’s credit that he gives the characters who increasingly realise they’re unlikely to improve their lot in life as much dignity as his central pairing. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll certainly be given food for thought with this masterpiece.
10/10
Film Review: We Are What We Are (Spoilers)
You’d have thought a film about cannibals would be gripping right? Wrong. From its promotion I was expecting a Mexican ‘Let the Right One In’, but where the Swedish vampire classic had a very clear vision and rock solid writing, this is just a mess. ‘Somos Lo Que Hay’ fails on character development, a consistent plotline, engaging acting, competent direction, you name it – very little of what writer/director Jorge Michel Grau offers is believable, and given the opportunities available in its premise it’s almost unforgiveable. I’m getting ahead of myself though.
A dirt poor family’s patriarch freaks out and dies at the mall. His batshit crazy family finds out, after brothers Alfredo (Francisco Barreiro) & Julian (Alan Chávez) are kicked out of their market stall for being, well, violent, and decides extreme measures are needed in order to keep eating with no income. So they kill a local prostitute and try to kill Alfredo’s first gay lover, before things get messy and the inept local detectives (not so) hot on their trail unexpectedly catch up with them. Will they get a chance to eat their prey before the law stops them dead?
With a sharp directorial eye this could have been a deeply uncomfortable horror film with a biting (ahem) social commentary; there’s even a rich seam of dark humour available. But Grau sidesteps these options in favour of irritating ambiguity – Alfredo questions his sexuality and appears to find a first love, but ultimately craves his insane mother’s approval more than his own future. Mother Carmen Beato wants to protect her kids from unbelievable poverty and social exclusion, but is only able to show it by beating people over the head with a shovel. Sister Sabina (Paulina Gaitan) manipulates brother Julian with semi-incestuous advances, but to no clear end, and then just looks menacing in the film’s pointless finale, having seemingly manipulated her siblings into killing one another. Black comedy or woefully badly thought out?
The opportunities for satire and black comedy are endless, and it does seem as though Grau has something to say – bereft of any morality whatsoever, the family justifies its killing spree with a quasi-religious ritual, but even then this is never adequately explained (or completed) and their reasons for descending into cannibalism aren’t remotely clear. Is this a ham fisted attempt at social commentary on the social exclusion of absolute poverty? Well it may have had an impact if the characters didn’t spend most of their time just looking longingly at nothing. The refusal to romanticise any of them is a refreshing departure from the Hollywood norm – there really isn’t anything else like this out there right now – but the problem is none of them is ultimately very interesting. Only Francisco Barreiro’s Alfredo comes close but Grau’s apparent conclusion that his embracing of his sexual orientation is merely a means to find new *ahem* meat falls flat and switched what little interest I had off completely. As it stands, it would need to be remade with a thoughtfully tuned script and insightful direction for me to want to revisit.
4/10
Film Review: Unstoppable (Video)
I could have told you more about the plot in the video I suppose, but you could write it yourself. In this story allegedly based on true events, two idiot train workers lose control of a huge train with a seriously toxic cargo. Dispatcher Rosario Dawson must find a way to stop the ever accelerating juggernaut before it derails and takes out serious numbers of people. Of course it’s rookie Pine (continuing the theme of reluctant, rookie hero he initiated in ‘Star Trek’) and old timer Washington who come to the rescue, lobbing a few class-based grenades at their superiors, in an amusing series of credit crunch jibes.
It’s typically jingoistic (can you name a Tony Scott film which isn’t?), painfully simplistic (rugged heros separated from their women at the start – will they find love by the end?), but a hell of a lot of old fashioned fun. The leads all know they’re in a silly piece of hokum and tailor their performances accordingly, the production values are as big budget as you’d expect from Scott, and it’s frequently extremely funny. I should also mention that although the film is woven around Washington and Pine and whether or not this initially antagonistic pair can work successfully as a team, Dawson (as in ‘Sin City’) comes very close to stealing the show on a number of occasions. It’s a neat element you wouldn’t expect from a film like this – charm from all the leads which just doesn’t quit.
‘Unstoppable’ isn’t remotely original but it’s the epitome of no-brainer, rollercoaster ride films.
8.5/10
Film Review: Howl
You might think a film about a poem by Beat Generation stalwart Allen Ginsberg might be dull, sentimental or just plain pointless – well you’d be wrong. ‘Howl’ is itself a work of art, divided as it is between a recreation of courtroom sequences of the actual obscenity trial of the published poem, an animation of said poem and a pseudo-documentary interview with James (‘Harry Osborn’) Franco as Ginsberg, again with its dialogue lifted from actual interviews he gave. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have taken a lot of daring risks with this film, not least of which the animation – how can a film which decries putting poetry into prose possibly make definitive statements about ‘Howl’ by forcing fixed ideas and images onto it? And yet it manages to charm, to educate and entertain at the same time. It may walk a line of hypocrisy, and may not quite rise to the standards it sets for itself, but it comes pretty close indeed.
‘Howl’ was prosecuted, as ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ was three years later, for obscenity in 1957, and Epstein & Friedman’s script offers an insight into who Ginsberg was, what experiences and social changes made him into the towering figure he became, and why the poem was judged as not guilty of obscenity as Lawrence’s book was. It’s a brave undertaking and is supported by a towering performance by Franco of the great, gay poet who helped to transform post-war American popular culture. It’s a moving ode to a complicated man, which may not offer much more than a snapshot of him, set mostly at only one point in his life, but it’s no less powerful for it. I was inspired, interested and moved, when all I’d expected was to watch a courtroom drama which is there, but very much not the primary plotline the film makers have chosen to set their focus on.
Very much at the forefront of ‘Howl’ is the animation, and much has been made of it. Were the film makers wrong to fix ideas into the poem? Maybe. But as other criticism I’ve read points out, their chief error could be seen as making it more serious in hindsight than it was likely meant to be at the time. Ginsberg wasn’t considered a genius at the time (when Lawrence surely was), but in the same way that the Chatterley trial opened the door to greater freedom of speech in the UK in high culture, the ‘Howl’ trial offered the same opening for its ‘low’ counterpart. What harm was there in someone using the word ‘fuck’ or ‘ass’ or any sexually suggestive language, particularly when the point of writing the poem wasn’t there to influence but to impress? The film needed a slightly more critical look here and didn’t fully follow through.
Other criticism I’ve read complains that Franco is held back from delivering a fully three-dimensional and emotionally convincing performance because very little of what made Ginsberg tick being offered in the script, and while this is unquestionably true (would his predilection for younger boys in later life have made him a remotely sympathetic subject?), I don’t think it matters altogether much. ‘Howl’ is a tribute to the co-writers/co-directors’ hero, it’s a brilliantly told story of a fascinating man whose literary impact is still being felt half a century later, and Franco’s performance is compelling. It may not be perfect but it’s not terribly far off.
9/10
Film Review: Due Date
It’s very American is all I can say, by which I mean clearly made for a very broad, undemanding, Friday night, cheap-and-easy-laughs market. That would be all well and good in itself if it weren’t such a drab, lifeless, cynical and uninteresting film, which has nothing to say about its characters and doesn’t even pull the comedy off well. Robert Downey Jr plays an architect in Atlanta desperate to get home to his wife in Los Angeles who’s about to give birth to their first child. At the airport he comes into contact with Zack Galifianakis, a perm-headed lunatic with behavioural problems far more serious than just tourettes. Galifianakis gets them thrown off the plane and onto a no-fly list, forcing the most unlikely road movie ever; without even his wallet, Downey has no choice but to join him driving across the US.
It would be all well and good if this were merely a re-run of the far superior ‘Planes, Trains & Automobiles’ but this film fails in every area where Steve Martin and John Candy succeeded. Galifianakis has no redeeming qualities worth speaking of – he portrays the lovable Candy figure from time to time but is hindered by a one-note script. Downey has the same problems – where he’s supposed to be the straight man, he’s written as the fully straight man – he’s not terribly likable either, nor terribly interesting, and has to get by on his charisma alone (of which he admittedly has in abundance). To succeed and overcome its lack of originality this film needs charm, but mystifyingly neither of the leads offers it. Galifianakis may not yet have proven any ability more than he demonstrated in ‘The Hangover’, not so Downey. I can’t fathom why he accepted this role which, given his enormous comedic talents, he then appears to sleepwalk through. I’m sure he needs a quick film between Marvel film appearances, but this shouldn’t have been it. The only time he comes alive is with Jamie Foxx – hardly surprising given their chemistry in ‘The Soloist’, but it makes you wonder why either of them bothered with this.
You could yourself write most of the thrills and spills they get into – Galifianakis falling asleep at the wheel, their accidental incursion into Mexico, the confrontation at the Grand Canyon, but for reasons known only to the committee of screenwriters an extra level of conflict is added – could they not agree a more convincing motivation to justify Foxx’s casting? But it’s a mystery too why punching a child in a film otherwise relatively serious should be deemed funny, or why Downey’s character should be written as so relentlessly mean in a film meant to be a comedy. Perhaps the American audiences aren’t thought to care that much – the British one never raised much more than a titter. A confused and pointless film, just not uniformally hateful.
5/10
Film Review: Kaboom
I must confess I don’t know all of Gregg Araki’s work, but was blown away by his adaptation of Scott Heim’s ‘Mysterious Skin’. ‘Kaboom’ appears more of a return to his cult roots, and what a return it is. Drug addled realities, huge amounts of sex between extremely hot actors and preposterous conspiracy theories. What more could you ask for, particularly with a lead actor as hot as Thomas Dekker (I may return to this)? Nothing as far as I’m concerned – this is a definitive gay cult film for the early 21st century.
Dekker (‘Heroes’/'Sarah Connor Chronicles’) plays Smith, an 18 year old gay student who refuses to self-define as such, but gets around. He lusts after his impossibly beautiful surfer roommate Thor (Chris Zykla), gossips with his sarcastic lesbian best friend Stella (Haley Bennett) and shags much of what moves – men, women, it’s all the same to him at the end of the day. One night he eats a drug laced cookie at a party and sleeps with the redoubtable London (Juno Temple); he also appears to see the violent murder of the Red Haired Girl. Or does he? Who are the animal masked men?
With this film Araki has a lot to say about the current generation (although he’s also admitted ‘Kaboom’ is a semi-biographical work as well). Smith has sex with the outrageously well-built & hot Hunter (Jason Olive) whilst on a nudist beach, is pursued by the cute Oliver (Brennan Mejia) and is desired by pretty much everyone; he’s equanimous about whom he beds as long as they’re cool. He studies film for no clear reason at all, but loves his indie music (a personal obsession of Araki’s) and only finds a hint of true intimacy with London. The writer/director has even more of a snipe at lesbian culture, suggesting (or does he?) Stella’s one conquest is an actual witch, and he peppers his highly sexualised teen drama with these odd contradictions. Smith’s obsession with the Red Haired Girl walks the film uncomfortably through this murky world, albeit without much purpose until the film’s final act.
Of course Araki peppers the film with his other personal obsessions – what is the cult of the animal masked men and what do they want? Why does Smith keep appearing to be able to see elements of his future? What starts out as a teen drama veers towards a vicious, self-satirising black comedy with bitingly incisive wit. Stella attacks public figures like Clay Aiken, Mel Gibson, Lady Gaga, and gay people in general, with even Smith acknowledging ‘strange seems to be the new normal’. Araki wraps his characters in a 90210-esque pastel coloured world, but it becomes increasingly paranoid – Smith and Oliver never get it on, Smith gets attacked and robbed in his dorm room by an assailant who might just be imaginary, and asks too late if Hunter has safer sex, whilst continually being pursued by the animal masked men just out of the edge of his consciousness. Araki has no shame in suddenly changing perspective, and when he breaks out fully into black comedy the film takes on an entirely different and in many ways deeper significance: are all these relationships for naught?
As the writer/director points out earlier in the film, film studies student Smith may be completely wasting his time in education by studying an art form which has a limited shelf life, and Araki hints very strongly that there’s no point to anything. It’s quite an achievement to wrap nihilism in light hearted sexuality, which keeps it very light, enjoyable and entertaining from the outset. It may become very Twin Peaks-esque but it’s also very funny – the Red Haired Girl changes persona and identity more than once as the film races through its various acts, but never once does Araki lose hold of your sympathy for some terrifically drawn characters (Dekker’s Smith in particular). Cult films may or may not be your thing, but when the film starts with a full frontal nude shot of an outrageously beautiful young man, how can you go wrong? Run, don’t walk I say. I will again when it eventually hits British cinemas.
9.5/10
Film Review: RED (Spoilers)
They do still have it, it’s true. And if director Robert Schwentke and screenwriters Jon and Erich Hoeber had played to that, you’d have had a film truly worthy of Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner, the co-creators of the DC/Wildstorm book, upon which the film is based. The tone of the adaptation is completely different for starters, sure – Bruce Willis’ retired CIA assassin Frank Moses isn’t a cold, relentless killer with room in his heart only for pensions clerk Mary-Louise Parker, before killing everyone in Langley for trying to off him in his retirement. The film’s Frank Moses instead has friends – the batshit crazy John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, who lives in a care home, and the deadly Helen Mirren, who although retired still kills a bit on the side. He cracks a bit wise, but the film’s Moses is still targeted for assassination by the CIA, here by up-and-coming CIA assassin Karl Urban, who is as unquestioning as Willis was in his youth and is no less deadly.
The movie fast becomes a good humoured road trip around the US, as Moses tries to stay one step ahead of Urban, who is in turn being controlled by nefarious people behind key figures in the CIA. Will he and his gang stay alive long enough to track down who’s behind the plot to kill them? It’s an awful lot of fun, with Malkovich’s excellent insane act (we need more of him on screen please), Freeman’s normal stoicism commanding every scene he’s in, and Willis is well enough cast as Moses, although the gleam in his eye was occasionally jarring (Sin City proved he can do without). The film offers some quite sharp commentary on age too, with the parallels between Willis and Urban clear, and Helen Mirren effectively stealing the show out from under the men, but for some unknown reason she and her male cohorts are only allowed to burn slowly on screen, rather than explode. You are granted what becomes a rollercoaster ride, sure, but it surely would have made better sense to have taken these larger than life personalities and let them off the leash. The first half of the film also suffers from far too little energy – it takes far too long to get to Malkovich and for the wisecracking to start in earnest; artist Cully Hamner imbued the book with more pathos than the film has, and with less plot to work with.
From the amount it’s earned, ‘RED’ has successfully made a statement about age in Hollywood. Willis and co couldn’t have been more warmly embraced by audiences both sides of the pond, and rightly so – it’s wonderful to see these greats so warmly embraced. It may not be a perfect film – Parker’s role for example is horribly underwritten and occasionally fully out of step with the characters around her, the dark rationale behind the book is ditched in favour of a generic conspiracy theory, and Willis could have been much truer to Ellis’ Moses, but the film gets right more than it gets wrong. Pity that its moments of real bite – Malkovich running with a suicide jacket at the vice president (Julian McMahon), pretty much any scene Mirren is in – weren’t more plentiful.
7/10
Film Review: Route Irish (Spoilers)
Ken Loach is angry about Iraq and he wants you to know it. The thing is Ken Loach is always angry, and this is both the biggest strength of this film and its biggest weakness. ‘Route Irish’ is a story about the private security industry in post-war Iraq, and the way in which the British working class are hired by unscrupulous profiteers, often at the cost of their lives. Loach as ever offers a fierce, class-based perspective on what remains a largely secret war – it’s often gruelling stuff, often brilliantly acted, but its uncompromising viewpoint leaves you questioning the point of it. If an all-time great film-maker insists on making a film which is so harsh it’s barely entertaining, how does he think he’ll get his message across (however valid)? Who’ll want to come and watch it? It’s not ‘Hurt Locker’ after all.
Mark Womack plays Fergus, a former soldier and mercenary who doesn’t believe the official explanation of his life-long best friend Frankie’s (John Bishop) death in Iraq. As he investigates (with the help of Frankie’s girlfriend Andrea Lowe), Fergus finds the ruthless lengths which the private security firm they were both attached to will go to in order to retain their lucrative contracts. Will a man already angry and impatient be able to hold it together long enough in order to bring those responsible for Frankie’s death to book?
Loach’s latest is little more than a glorified blogpost – a polemic against the security industry in post-war Iraq, and how the working classes aren’t just being butchered there as a result, but how the secret war they’re involved in is being exported back here. It’s fantastic that he’s exploring a story which most of the media are largely ignoring, but his his relentless, uncompromising position on his subject matter is regularly offputting. His leads are ghoulish stereotypes, and whilst they may be true to life they’re hardly enjoyable characters to spend time watching. Loach has been around long enough surely to get off his high horse and compromise some analysis for entertainment value, but he persists in retaining production values better suited for television (despite some impressively well-shot action sequences filmed in Jordan).
Paul Laverty’s script irritatingly veers from intelligent to overblown, as a dour (but worthy) investigation into the issues turns into an exercise in revenge, as Fergus kills first the fellow contractor he believed murdered Frankie, and then the bosses of the firm itself, before committing suicide. The consequences of his actions are never properly looked at, and the waterboarding sequence endured by co-star Trevor Williams was surely unnecessary in making the sociological points Loach wants rammed down your throat. You can’t help but wonder if the sudden change in tone was imposed on the veteran film maker (the film was financed by more film companies and authorities than I’ve ever seen before), as the impact of his investigation is largely lost. It would surely have been far more enjoyable and worthwhile to have seen the impact of contractors continuing to war back in the UK.
Having said that, if Loach is your thing you can’t miss this. You won’t exactly leave feeling warm hearted, but you will have learned something about the war you may not have understood before, and he should be commended for achieving that. Pity that his audience will be so small he might as well not have bothered.
6/10
Film Review: Black Swan
Darren Aronofsky’s latest may well be a work of true genius.
I know this film has been highly anticipated after the runaway success of ‘The Wrestler’, but it surpassed every expectation I could have had. ‘Black Swan’ manages to be highly entertaining, compelling, impossibly artistic and highly intelligent in equal measure. Will mass audiences embrace it? It’s hard to tell, but I don’t personally think it matters – this is one of the best films ever made, and there isn’t a single element of it which lets it down.
Natalie Portman plays Nina, a ballerina aspiring for the lead in director Vincent Cassel’s staging of Swan Lake. She’s in direct competition with the up-and-coming Mila Kunis, not just for the role, but seemingly for the Frenchman’s affections too, and firmly under the thumb of her mother Barbara Hershey, a former ballerina herself. What is Nina prepared to do to get the role, what did the role do to her predecessor Winona Ryder, and when she gets the role what is she prepared to do in order to fulfil everyone’s expectations of her?
It’s an incredibly powerful and relentlessly dark psychological drama – Hershey tries to live out her ambitions through her daughter, but will she let her? Nina craves her director’s approval, but where will she go in her mind in order to gain it? And is her rivalry with Kunis real or is it all in her mind? Aronofsky keeps you on the edge of your seat from the outset, paralleling the film with the plot of the ballet and his sheer artistry is breathtaking. Nina’s fate seems predetermined, but that can’t be so, can it? Is Kunis conspiring against her? Is Hershey driving her mad? There aren’t any easy answers, and Aronofsky doesn’t let you know until the end just what’s gone on. He gets away with it through uniformally Oscar-worthy performances: Cassel is his customary, sterling self, but it’s very much Portman’s and Kunis’ show – occasionally electric, occasionally disturbing, both delivering the performances of their careers.
It’s inevitably not going to be a film for everyone, but from its intelligence and sheer artistry, I’d rank it as one of the best films I’ve ever seen. Aronofsky and his screenwriters Mark Heyman and Andres Heinz pose interesting and uncomfortable questions about art, and succeed in providing challenging answers whilst never losing your attention for a moment. Deserves a whole room full of awards.
10/10
Film Review: Easy A (Spoilers)
It’s not hard to see why Emma Stone has already become the next big thing. Easily stepping into La Lohan’s shoes for feelgood teen comedy with bite, she commands the screen with just as much charisma as she showed in ‘Zombieland’, and with intelligence to spare. Granted, ‘Easy A’ doesn’t require much intelligence to watch, but it does ask some awkward questions about modern teenagers and of teen life in general, and doesn’t always offer easy answers. Stone plays Olive Penderghast, a high school loner who one day inadvertently makes her best friend think she’d slept with a college student. Enter her gay friend Brandon (Dan Byrd), a bullied loner too, who asks her to pretend to have sex with him in order to relieve his daily torment. She agrees, but it opens the floodgates for all bullied loners – Olive relieves the suffering of the lives of the high school oppressed, but at the cost of her own reputation. She meanwhile doesn’t have sex with anyone, and doesn’t even notice the advances of ‘Woodchuck’ Todd (Penn Badgley).
Bert V Royal’s script is peppered with hilariously funny lines, largely given to Stone’s ultra-liberal parents Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson, but Will Gluck’s movie isn’t afraid of going very dark places too. Stone is even thrown under the bus by school counsellor Lisa Kudrow (typically witty yet acerbic), who sleeps with a ‘Christian’ student behind her husband Thomas Haden Church’s back. Royal and Gluck never give her a break – her reputation gets shot to hell whilst trying to do the right thing, yet the people she helps don’t help her back. It may not be as black as ‘Heathers’, but it has a similar point to make about contemporary teen culture.
It likens itself to the teen movies of the 1980′s (‘Say Anything’ in particular), but whilst it occasionally has similar sensibilities, it does tread ground they covered more sincerely two and a half decades ago. There’s nothing original here, and whilst Stone fills the role effortlessly, she does quite often give off the air that she’s beneath it. I couldn’t agree more – ‘Zombieland’ most recently made that clear, and it’ll be interesting to see her in the Spider-Man reboot, but this is still a lot of well-meaning fun. Comparisons have been made between this and ‘Clueless’ – both have strong, career-making female leads, both pay homage to notable pieces of literature (Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’ there, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter’ here), and it’s a significant point; both may be fluffy but they’re intelligent too. You won’t see a teen movie ultimately this good again for a long time.
8/10
Film Review: The Social Network
The combination of Jesse Eisenberg playing Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, with direction by David Fincher is a stroke of genius. It really is. The story of the creation of Facebook and the conflicts arising from it between the co-founders and others connected to Zuckerberg at the time should have been deathly dull: a semi-autistic computer nerd who some say screwed everyone over (at least in the film, I’ll get to real life later) in order to make his website the Next Big Thing doesn’t sound like a must-see. And indeed the conflicts shouldn’t come across as terribly sympathetic for film audiences – these are Harvard elitists who fell out, and the outcomes (particularly the lawsuits) are a matter of public record. There are no surprises here, yet Fincher manages to keep it gripping from the start.
He’s helped in no small measure by the casting of his star. Eisenberg showed in Zombieland that he has intelligence, charisma and superb comic timing. In ‘The Social Network’ he refines all of those qualities to deliver a dark, interesting and genuinely compelling performance of a notable recluse. Zuckerberg himself has complained that the motivations ascribed to him in the film weren’t what drove him, and that there were numerous factual inaccuracies, but that surely misses the point. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has gone on record saying this was a dramatisation of real events, and he’s quite right – an attempt to capture history would have made this a documentary, which it’s very clearly not; it’s an entertaining but subjective presentation of a true story. Take a look at what Zuckerberg himself has to say:
I think he’s wrong in his conclusion – I think this film is an effective character study that chooses not to take what he says at face value; adapted as it is from Ben Mezrich’s ‘The Accidental Billionaires’. It’s entitled to have its own viewpoint, right or wrong, and co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s (Andrew Garfield, promising pretty and intense things for the Spider-Man reboot) account of that period is likely no more definitive than Zuckerberg’s. The film ultimately is successful at giving a very powerful and electric (the editing in this film is quite brilliant) account of the forces and the period which led to the rise of worldwide social media.
Fincher punctuates Sorkin’s note-perfect dialogue with his normal washed-out palette and it looks just gorgeous, but a niggle remains. Sorkin and Fincher never do take a definitive stand on Zuckerberg – that much power and no agenda? Really? They suggest (as does he) that it was something he just wanted to do, without really understanding (or caring much about) the forces he unleashed, but this never really washes. What they succeed in demonstrating (through a very effective structure, cutting backwards and forwards from two of the lawsuits against Zuckerberg) is the incredible disparity between a bunch of elitist kids who were close before they got very lucky and very powerful indeed, and very much not afterwards. ‘The Social Network’ doesn’t have the punch of ‘Fight Club’ but it too effectively encapsulates the period it’s set in. Great stuff.
9/10
Film Review: Devil (Spoilers)
‘Devil’ may have had an excellent promotional campaign, but the connection with M Night Shyamalan should really set alarm bells off to those in the know. For all the bluster about being a supernatural thriller, ‘Devil’ is surprisingly conventional, often tediously so, and is ultimately painfully preachy and annoying.
Five people enter a skyscraper lift, all with their own secrets. Half way up it stops inexplicably, as things start to go wrong. Then the lights go out and passengers start dying, but why? That’s what cop Chris Messina must find out, with communication with the passengers inexplicably poor and other terrible accidents happening around him. One security guard insists that Satan has intervened, but with what agenda?
What could have been a classic blood n guts fright fest comes across more like a poor TV movie, with the most obvious passenger of all (Jenny O’Hara) hosting the Devil, who aims to cull His way through the other passengers until He reaches his intended target. Of course Logan Marshall-Green’s dark secret just happens to connect to Messina’s dark past, leading to a woefully predictable moral quandry for the investigating officer, which of course (being a Shyamalan creation) is resolved in the most patronising and preachy manner possible. Director John Erick Dowdle does, I admit, achieve the impossible and makes this irritating mess pretty entertaining – there may be almost no suspense but there’s sure some fun shock value. Screenwriter Brian Nelson’s work though is ultimately a pretty weak affair – no credible character development, a thoroughly uninteresting story with the world’s most pointless voiceover practically screaming the film’s subtext for those stupid enough not to have read the title of the film.
Only worth bothering with at the cinema if you’re really bored, otherwise a definite example of wait until it’s on the TV and see it for free!
4/10
Film Review: Buried (Spoilers)
If Ryan Reynolds hadn’t been attached to this it no doubt would never have been made, and this steaming pile of crap really shouldn’t have. Rarely in my cinema going life have I ever been so infuriated by a 90 minute experience, having left feeling like my time had been utterly and completely wasted but for experiencing the sight of Reynolds’ arms (and what arms!). The travesty is that ‘Buried’ is underpinned by a whole series of good, theatrical ideas, which never get tackled (or directed) properly, and then there are the continuity goofs. But I’ll get to them.
Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, an American truck driver in Iraq, whose convoy is attacked by insurgents, who kill most of his friends. He is buried in a wooden coffin in a shallow grave, and ransomed for $5 million, and has the length of the film to either raise the money or find his way out. What should then be an exercise in suspense and claustrophobia then mystifyingly becomes an exercise in tedium. Which family member is he phoning? Who cares? Is it really likely that his HR director would torment him so thoroughly when he’s close to death? Why do we need to hear the political platitudes from screenwriter Chris Sparling about how widespread and horrific this phenomenon is in post-war Iraq right now? Director Rodrigo Cortes never buckles down and delivers the suspense/horror film which this initially promises to be.
It’s not because the premise is faulty – it’s entirely because there’s never any real sense of suspense. Reynolds hears a call to prayer, suggesting he’s not just in a shallow grave but a really shallow grave – why doesn’t he just kick his way out when the coffin starts to collapse? Why is more not made of the clock ticking, of the mobile phone he’s given losing power? Why does he have more air than he could possibly handle, after burning more than his fair share with his lighter’s flame (and a goddamn fire) and panicking regularly? These inconsistencies may be true to life for all we know but this is a movie – although Reynolds makes Conroy very human and likeable this just isn’t entertaining or remotely compelling.
And don’t get me started about the betrayal of an ending. I accept that either way out would have been difficult to write, but it comes straight out of the Twilight Zone. It might work on the TV after half an hour of suspense, but not after 90 minutes of the film makers desperately trying to tell you something. Conroy’s death, whilst neatly undoing his ‘rescue’, tells you you’ve just wasted the entire movie finding out very little about a nice (but uninteresting) man for no reason. I wish I’d walked out. Don’t touch with a barge pole.
2/10
