the Struthers review

A Dangerous Method

2012-02-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

Egos and ids, desire and repression, love and obsession all collide in David Cronenberg's examination of the relationships between three of the giants of the psychoanalytic movement of the early 20th century in A Dangerous Method.

In it's opening scenes Keira Knightly bursts onto the screen as Sabina Spielrein in an exhaustingly energetic hysterical convulsion. She's been committed to the care of the restrained and measured Dr. Carl Jung, played by the intensly dry Michael Fassbender. She takes immediately to his use of Sigmund Frued's talking therapy, beguiling Jung by opening up (perhaps a little too easily) with a frankness about her sexual dysfunction and sets on a path not only to cure herself, but also to train in those methods as well. She intrigues Jung with her volatile openness and challenges him intellectually.

As Jung distinguishes himself as a psychoanalyst he comes into direct contact with the venerable ego of Dr. Freud, an engagingly pompous Viggo Mortensen, and begins a turbulent "father/son, master/apprentice" relationship. Cronenberg has in fact built a whole film where it's impossible not to analyse the relationships of everyone involved in Freudian and Jungian terms, because they are constantly doing just that. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed their unravelling of themselves and each other, often emotionlessly, occasionally callously, but pushing, experimenting with boundaries, testing their theories.

The cast are fantastic in making believable work of Christopher Hampton's densely worded, melodramatic screenplay, adapted from his own stage play and from John Kerr's book. Also of note is the delicious arrival of Vincent Cassel as an unrepressed id who whispers into Jung's ear like a cartoonish devil on a shoulder and Sarah Gadon as Jung's monetarily emasculating wife. Sex and death, desire and repression. That's what it's all about... right?

A Dangerous Method rates 4 stars.

Review by Struthers Murray.

The Artist

2012-02-06T16:42:00.000-08:00

The Artist is a film about falling in and out of love. It's about a silent film star falling in love with an ambitious newcomer to the neglect of his wife. And it's about the world falling out of love with the art of silent cinema.

The Artist is written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius and features the charismatic Jean Dujardin, who he previously collaborated with on the successful French spy spoof OSS 117 films. He plays George Valentin, a silent movie god who comes crashing down to Earth when his art-form is taken away by the arrival of "talkies".

And this is Hollywood; so when one star is falls, another must ascend. This "A Star is Born" story shows a big eyed Peppey Miller (the captivating Bérénice Bejo), scrambling and lucking her way into the movies and Valentin's heart, via a savvy combination of persistence, talent and sheer gumption.

Then there's the dog. Co-starring with Valentin on screen and accompanying him home is a Jack Russell who mugs for the cameras as good as any seasoned vaudevillian. And while it seems that Uggie has become the breakout star of the film, he's also my main irritant. I think it's more of a personal flaw of mine, but I can't help but watch animals act. By that I mean that I can see them acting. Usually to their trainer who's positioned in an awkward eye-line that has the dog looking off past the actor they're on screen with. I watch them waiting for their commands, hitting their marks (or not) and generally behaving like dogs don't. It's not Uggie's fault, he's brilliant, if not a little too good, but he's in pretty much every scene and so took me out of most of them.

When you don't have words to accompany your pictures then nuance becomes more difficult and you go for those big emotions, for schmaltz and for tragedy. And that's of course what we know silent cinema for; big faces, overacting and slapstick. It's a big idea, boldly realised, but it's also a bit long and a bit slow.

The cynic in me wants to dismiss The Artist as sentimental Baby-Boomer-targeting-awards-bait; and I'm right, that is cynical. And while I wasn't completely engrossed and whisked-away I can't deny that The Artist is a finely crafted, superbly acted and deftly directed film that is encouraging a wider audience to appreciate a story told in an unfamiliar vernacular, while also being very entertaining. But it's also a film about filmmaking and those mechanics held me at a distance.

The Artist rates 3 1/2 stars.

Reviewed by Struthers Murray.

Shame

2012-02-03T03:06:00.000-08:00

It's easy enough to go through life normalising or even reveling in self-destructive behavior. We learn these behaviors early, develop them over time and get into a mindset of simple self-justification. One thing leads to another, leads to another, leads to just another Tuesday...

With Shame, Director Steve McQueen (Hunger) and writer Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady, TV's The Hour) unflinchingly dissect this side of human nature through dysfunctional adult siblings Brandon and Sissy, brought bare by a painfully anguished Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan.

Brandon leads a solitary lifestyle in New York peppered with a monotonous parade of almost nightly female guests. Rarely the same one, sometimes paid. Otherwise his social life appears to consist of reluctantly being his married boss' wing-man. This is interrupted with the arrival of his sister Sissy, who is on the road, escaping her relationship and suddenly invading Brandon's space.

When siblings come together on screen, especially when they're as clearly damaged as these two, there's a lifetime of possibility and McQueen and Morgan do a brilliant job of eking the story out, of revealing just enough. These people are interesting, their pain is interesting and this remains so until the very end when perhaps there is the possibility of hope. But first there's the bottom, and shame.

It's the story of what's untold. It's what can't be said or even acknowledged by either Brandon or Sissy. It's the implicit force outside of what we're seeing that's impacting so gravely and explicitly on these two lives that we're granted a window into.

Shame is both sexually and emotionally graphic and demanding of it's audience. Some of cinematographer Sean Bobbitt's beautifully long and languid shots are perhaps dragged out a little far, taking "show, don't tell" to it's furthest ebb of my patience. The score is also frequently overly dramatic and unnecessary in a film that is plenty dramatic without the signposting. But these gripes aside Shame is in the end a satisfying experience that will leave you thinking about these two lost souls, who they are, where they've come from and have you hoping as to where they might go.

Shame rates 4 stars.

Reviewed by Struthers Murray

Haywire

2012-01-31T02:12:00.000-08:00

Steven Soderbergh's Haywire won me over completely in the moment when Gina Carano's Mallory runs through the streets of Barcelona chasing down an assailant. It's not a dizzying, breakneck sprint, but a heavy-footed attrition while laden with heavy boots and an assault rifle. She still eventually catches him and beats the crap out of him like we've seen in dozens of spy/action thrillers before, but this was more satisfying, less certain.

Haywire is the antidote to the hyperbolic cartoon violence of The 300 or the scores of bloodless casualties in the Marvel universe or even the hint of magic realism in the Bourne films. The punches hit hard, the bruises last and actions have consequences.

Written by Lem Dobbs, who Soderbergh worked previously with on the superb The Limey, Haywire is a neatly taught and highly enjoyable thriller about Mallory, a highly skilled and in-demand black ops professional trying to decipher who has sold her out and set her up for a fall.

It's a simple premise and like I've said, the kind of globe-spanning crash and bash film we've seen before, but the excellence of this comes in it's execution. Soderbergh's attention to reality, to the geography of his characters and their abilities to be human and fragile gives this film it's weight.

It also helps that when your star is mostly known as a Muay Thai fighter that she's largely engaged in brutally choreographed fight scenes while surrounded by a coterie of name stars with severe acting chops.

Her father is Bill Pullman, her boss and ex-boyfriend is Ewan McGregor, his boss is Michael Douglas, and there's Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum and Antonio Banderas in there as well.

It's an impressive list that along with Soderbergh's vision and execution, elevates Haywire beyond schlock, guilty pleasure, to something that's more enjoyable: An action film that doesn't insult your intelligence. That doesn't ask you to make knowing leaps of faith as it jumps through planet-sized plot holes. It's an enjoyable thrill-ride of a movie that won't trouble your bullshit meter.

Haywire rates 4 stars.

Review by Struthers Murray

We Need To Talk About Kevin

2011-11-09T18:10:00.000-08:00

We Need to Talk About Kevin is the new film from Morvern Callar director Lynne Ramsay. The story of a mother dealing with a son who appears to be evil (at least to her) before committing a horribly violent act that leaves her to deal with the guilt, remorse and retribution. It’s Ramsay’s first feature since Callar, and it appears as though in the last nine years she’s been thinking about and planning every sequence, scene, shot, lens and word of her latest project.

Kevin actually feels to me as though Ramsay is working really hard to impress and live up to Morvern Callar. But unlike her bold and rambunctious earlier work this is like a student filmmaker desperately trying to imbue every scene with added meaning and context, rather than allowing the film to tell itself, to unravel naturally and without force.This didn’t feel like a real world to me, so the characters and their actions became inconsequential. The fiction isn’t a convincing reality.

Tilda Swinton as Eva is, as usual, her wonderfully cold and withdrawn self. Perfectly cast as the vagabond travel writer-cum-restrained, reluctant mother who rarely appears even remotely fulfilled by the role of parent; she’s on screen, delivering brilliantly in nearly every scene while her emotional journey is eked-out. John C. Reilly as Kevin’s father is underused, popping in at regular intervals for some comfortable and easy interactions with Kevin as punchlines to the frustrations that Eva has just endured.

And whilst Ezra Miller is perfectly nasty as Kevin in his teenage years it’s the performance of Rock Duer who really stands out as evil toddler Kevin refusing to roll the ball back to Eva with a scowl on his face that could force a children’s television presenter’s soul to crack.

The unnecessary over-use of water cleansing symbolism and blood metaphors are rife, noticeable and distracting. These seem like the mistakes of an anxious first-time director who’s trying to force their film have more depth than necessary when the story itself is more than engaging enough to do without them.

Surprisingly however, We Need To Talk About Kevin does have an ultimately satisfying end, it’s just that the journey itself was a cumbersome and and trying effort. And it’s important to remember that if you’re a bit of a bitch that your child will probably kill five or six people and you’ll be blamed for it.

We Need To Talk About Kevin rates 2 and a half stars.

Reviewer: Struthers Murray.

Wuthering Heights

2011-11-09T17:27:00.001-08:00

Emily Brontë’s enduring Wuthering Heights arrives for its latest re-telling, towing behind it the baggage of numerous big-screen and TV adaptations, a ballet and a couple of operas. Andrea Arnold, the director of Red Road and the critically acclaimed Fish Tank brings a unique and brave vision of unrequited love on the Yorkshire moors.

The novel itself is one of the (many) pre-20th-century classics that have passed me by, with my foreknowledge of the text stemming solely from a Monty Python sketch and a Kate Bush song. However it feels to me as though Andrea Arnold has produced a very original, visceral and nuanced adaptation of what I understand to be a novel of great inner turmoil and complexity. She reveals a great depth of character to even the smallest of roles by merely observing them, their interactions with each other, and her convincingly raw, realist vision of life in the 1840s.

Solomon Glave and Shannon Beer play the young Heathcliff and Catherine in a pair of mesmerisingly natural performances. The two barely speak a word to each other as they trudge around a waterlogged and desolate moor, taking a childish delight in the stark natural beauty of the landscape. They bond, they quarrel and they quietly observe each other. It’s cold, it’s dark, it’s raining, yet it’s the people Heathcliff must be wary of. Life on a farm, even a wealthy one, is hard and as an adopted outsider he’s subjected to hardships and humiliations that begin to mould him.

It’s the older Heathcliff and Catherine, Kaya Scodelario and James Howson who make things sticky by becoming melodramatic. It’s bound to happen, Heathcliff has returned, mysteriously wealthy, bearing a large chip on his shoulder and scores to settle. He means to show them all the man he has become. Catherine meanwhile, has become slightly bitter with her life at the Manor house where she is pregnant with her gormless fop of a husband’s child.

Where the opening of the film felt natural and effortless the final act feels constrained by convention and dramatically forced. Arnold seems to be working harder for an emotional kick as the plot becomes more entangled and important, distracting slightly from what is overall a magnificent accomplishment in filmmaking.

Wuthering Heights rates four stars.

Reviewer: Struthers Murray

Red State

2011-10-07T08:47:00.001-07:00

Kevin Smith’s Red State is a gripping and tense religious horror story that grabs hold of you early and doesn’t let up until the Rapture comes. It’s a huge and cinematically mature departure for Smith, who as a writer and director has produced a string of profanity-laced relationship comedies with varying budgets and degrees of success.

The naturalistic acting and dialogue and the documentary style hand-held cinematography do a brilliant job of taking over-the-top characters and circumstance and planting them in a frightening reality. Three teenage boys in middle America are lured to a trailer some miles out of town for the promise of sex. They instead find themselves ensnared by a militant religious sect, the kind who protest the funerals of evil, evil homosexuals. When they try to escape the ramshackle compound all hell breaks loose and a stand-off with the authorities ensues.

Ghosts and goblins don’t scare me; recent vampire over-kill has delivered nothing more than the occasional jump or moment of tension here and there, but religion... Religion exists and Smith’s family of extremists aren’t too far from the batshit tree of reality. Michael Parks and Melissa Leo as Abin Cooper, the softly spoken hate speech preacher and his daughter Sarah play divinely grotesque characters that are the creepy equal of any fantastical horror movie villain.

John Goodman is one of the great underrated actors of the modern era, and his portrayal of ATF agent Joseph Keenan is the sturdy, yet reluctant center of the film. His equanimity and quiet despair in the face of the carnage and blood, photographed efficiently and effectively by longtime collaborator David Klein, holds the film together.

Smith wants to say something (actually a couple of things) with Red State, and he does so in a concise but relentless and surprising manner. And even manages to have the final word himself. It’s the most out-there yet least affected of his films to date and it’s a fine piece of entertainment.

Red State rates 4 stars.

Reviewer: Struthers Murray

Melancholia

2011-10-04T05:46:00.001-07:00

Lars von Trier doesn’t need to create a large planet called Melancholia set on a collision course with Earth to give his latest film it’s dramatic impetus. It’s a beautiful, brutal and intense human dissection, sharply yet languidly realised by the Danish master on it’s own... while there also happens to be a large planet called Melancholia set on a collision course with Earth. But that might mean something too.

As well as being a brilliant storyteller von Trier has seemed at times to have messily perfected the PT Barnham showmanship sales pitch. A little controversy here, a crazy idea there. Dogville with it’s bare studio and lines on the ground for sets, The Boss of it All’s random computer generated camera angle selection and the initial development of the Dogme ‘95 movement are all about using a hook to sell a difficult story that might otherwise struggle to find a larger audience. The old Nazi chestnut thing helps get a few column inches here and there also.

Melancholia is a film about chaos and control. An extravagant and tightly scheduled wedding that is already running two hours behind slips further and further awry as the bride, Justine, a simply remarkable Kirsten Dunst slowly sabotages the evening’s intricacies. The groom, Michael, is excellently brought to life with a nervous but gentle resignation by Alexander Skarsgard. The deep-felt love for his new bride is what makes his pain, suffered quietly, so wrenching.

Justine’s pain is harder to quantify. Her deeply estranged and far from perfect parents; the cold and brutally truthful Charlotte Rampling and the flippant blaggard John Hurt, give a glimpse, but the black dog can be elusive. Justine sets about causing so much chaos as to control the events of the night forcing a conclusion that she may not desire, but that she may feel destined to fulfil.

Part two of the film sees control returning. Normalcy is attempted as the mess is cleared away. Here Charlotte Gainsberg and Kiefer Sutherland come to the fore, as Justine’s forgiving and hopeful sister Clair and Clair’s husband John who commits the ultimate act of control as they await the slowly rising tide.

The film itself is one of von Trier’s more controlled. A measured and understated big-name cast deliver fine performances throughout. The script and camera and editing are all purposeful and restrained. This is a mature performance from the chaotic, brattish Dane.

Money is control. Poverty is chaos. Poor people die because of chaos every day. A flood may kill hundreds in China or Pakistan, but maybe one or two in the West. von Trier throws a planet at his white, wealthy audience, reminding us that our bubbles of control, of order and manicured lawns can also be cruelly and randomly torn apart. And like the ripples of an explosion, Melancholia resonates, asking questions and throwing ideas out into the cosmos.

Melancholia rates 4 ½ stars.

Reviewer: Struthers Murray

Drive

2011-10-04T05:44:00.000-07:00

Drive is Danish director Nicholas Winding Refn’s enthralling Hollywood debut after wowing audiences with his dark and disturbing Pusher films and UK production Bronson. It’s a simple tale of a getaway driver who gets pulled further and further into a quagmire of murder and mayhem when a heist goes badly. An homage to 1980s low-budget car chase thrillers, Drive manages to be equally an over-the-top bloody, schlock mess-up, and a patiently restrained portrait of a man.

Ryan Gossling stars, poses and eats up every frame of the film as the unnamed “Driver”. He works part time as a mechanic, part time as a film and TV stunt driver, is readying himself for a racing driver career and moonlights as a getaway driver for the occasional heist. He tackles each job with quiet professionalism and obsessive dedication, but with no... well, drive. He lacks passion for who he is and for what he does. He isn’t driven by money, by dreams or by glory. He just is.

That is of course until a pretty, but baggage heavy girl, British actress Carey Mulligan, and her young son enter his life. It’s an uneasy and drawn-out courtship. They manage more pained glances, lingering close-ups and restrained emotion than an average Austen adaptation. And Refn’s borderline obsession with spending much of the film absorbing Gossling’s every perfectly lit, pensive expression as he considers each moment, can at times prove a little awkward for an audience. If we’re given almost no clues to the workings of his inner world, his past and what he hopes for, we can’t gain insight, and when you can’t fill in the blanks they remain empty.

However, in its more intense moments Drive consists of expertly constructed scenes of gripping tension, bloody ultra-violence and kick-arse car chases as Driver avoids the attentions of the grimy L.A. underworld. This is where Ron Pearlman and Albert Brooks get to strut their sleazy stuff and they do so with gusto as a couple old-time gangsters pulling the strings in their little world.

The look and feel of the film is almost a character in itself. From the supurb pumping 80s soundtrack to the dirty L.A. art direction, everything is seedy and lo-fi to the point of fetish. The lighting and cinematography by Newton Thomas Sigel is exemplary, sexy, harsh and engaging. He’s a deft hand with a string of massive budget blockbusters to his name (Superman Returns, X-Men), but he’s relishing every minute of Drive and his experience shows.

Drive is a wild, but cautious ride. Refn takes you on a scorpion embroidered journey into his world, shows you some cool shit, then lets you drive off into the night.

Drive rates 3 ½ stars.

Reviewer: Struthers Murray

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

2011-10-04T05:40:00.000-07:00

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a methodical unraveling. A simple question is asked. Who is the Soviet double agent within the corridors of the top echelons of MI6? An impressive cast of characters is introduced in a whirlwind of positioning and counter-positioning as the game is set in motion.

It’s Smiley, a dazzling (in the most un-dazzling fashion) Gary Oldman, who must sift through the dangling threads. Gently pulling here and there and waiting to see what falls out and makes sense. It’s the opposite of every spy film you’ve ever seen, but it’s somehow still a bit sexy.

The large, big-name cast, though excellent all and one, can be a bit distracting and some characters seem cut a little short. But Tinker is a film dense with complexity that edges over the two hour mark. It’s a gripping ride, and screenwriters Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughn have done a magnificent job in boiling down John le Carré’s novel into a film that stands as a whole.

Tinker is the first feature for Swedish director Thomas Alfredson since his acclaimed breakthrough Let the Right One In. It’s an odd choice for him to tackle something so British and so revered, and an interesting choice by the producers to pick someone who’s mostly directed television. This, however is no criticism as every frame of the film is stunning. London hasn’t looked this good in years.

Alfredson’s camera moves with purpose and waits with patience. The cinematography is by Hoyte Van Hoytema, who also shot Let the Right One In and it shows. The pair of them obviously work well together and they’ve achieved a look and a feel that makes a smokey, dour, transitioning 1970s London ooze sexily out of the screen.

It’s a fantastic film, but made at a time when it doesn’t really matter any more. It used to bother me watching spy films why on Earth anyone would be a double agent for the Soviets. The USSR was always depicted as a bleak and dire place, but I never fully understood that for much of the 20th century, to many Britons, the ideas of Communism were preferable to their sexist, racist, classist, squalor dwelling lives, whose leaders were an entrenched aristocracy and borderline Fascist monarchy. I get it now, but it still lacks the relevance of the recent Page 8, which tackled similar territory with a more timely story in similar way.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy rates 4 stars.

Reviewer: Struthers Murray

Troll Hunter

2011-10-04T05:31:00.000-07:00

Troll Hunter fits neatly into the found-footage-faux-docu-horror genre somewhere between The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, but without the former’s over-earnestness and the latter’s budget. The concept is simple, some university student reporters begin following a bear poacher who, it turns out, works for the Norwegian government controlling the Troll population. The result is a fun, tense and surprising little film about 200ft tall mythical monsters of the north.

The novice cast led by the fresh-faced Glenn Erland Tosterud asThomas, the nervous on-camera reporter, who is followed by sound recordist Johanna and cameraman Kalle (Johanna Mørk and Thomas Alf Larson) as he builds up the courage to confront a supposed bear poacher Hans (Otto Jespersen).

The performances are fantastic, with the film being shot in the hand-held documentary style, they remain naturalistic throughout, even as the crew witnesses stranger and stranger things. The camerawork itself is simple and inventive in the face of budgetary constraints, as are the special effects (Trolls mostly) with the director and cinematographer making the most of the lush Norwegian landscape.

Though it’s not really about anything. Cloverfield was a brilliant post-9/11 catharsis about a monster that devastates downtown New York. But with Troll Hunter you’re not going to come out of the cinema realising something defining about humanity... though there might be something there about ballooning human populations encroaching on the territories of native fauna... no. Perhaps not. It’s escapist fun. There are good laughs, some tense drama and one great big fantastic fart joke.

Troll Hunter is good old fashioned tongue-in-cheek, fun and is probably the best film about Trolls you’ll ever see.

Troll Hunter rates 3 ½ stars.

Reviewer: Struthers Murray

Mamma Mia

2009-03-24T06:51:00.000-07:00

So instead of burning all evidence of the film ever having been made, Mamma Mia! has been released on DVD. So just in case somebody evil suggests you have a night in with some good bad trash; read on and be warned.

Director: Schøød B. Strungup
Writer: A. Shameful Håch
Cast: Fone Itin, Justin Itforcash

Mamma Mia! is the script-challenged rehash of the jukebox-musical of the same name that throws together a “best-of” selection of ABBA’s pop hits with a flimsy plot and big-name cast, in a lowest common denominator attempt to attract a large (box office) audience.

However, to say that Mamma Mia! is script-challenged, is like saying that the victims of the Boxing Day tsunami experienced moisture related discomfort. The plot was so meandering, pointless and obvious that I thought I was re-watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, except Mamma Mia! only felt like it went for eleven hours. I’m not saying that this is the worst film that I’ve ever seen, but Colin Firth does appear to be trying to escape off the side of the poster.

This may be a rumour that I’m just starting now, but I’ve heard from sources that Mamma Mia! is so bad that Michael Bay accidentally added it to his resume. (Now the same joke, but for bigger film-nerds) Word on the grapevine is that Mamma Mia! is so poorly directed that Alan Smithee refused to have his name added to the credits.

I’d like to say that I’ve never been so bored in my life, but I can still remember high school, which was at least something I was able to sleep through without being sonically abused by professional actors poorly lip-syncing to their own horrible recordings (Pierce Brosnan I’m talking to you). And Meryl Streep's curiously haggard and unenthusiastic performance seems to entail impersonating Annabel Chung after a long day at the office.

As a film Mamma Mia! exists solely as a flimsy conceit that inserts dialog between poorly staged song and dance numbers that manage to exude all the passion of a sober threesome wedged between Iain Hewitson and Amanda Vanstone. There just isn't enough lube in the world to make it feel ok. Then when the film runs out of plot the songs keep going, hanging off the end of the film as a reminder of how pointless the whole thing had been.

Perhaps the brilliant marketing ploy of putting an exclamation point in the title will generate some excitement, but inevitably watching Mamma Mia! is like being forced to sit through the unbearable home video of a wedding you didn’t want to go in the first place.

Mamma Mia! didn't rate a theatrical release and certainly doesn't rate any stars.

Last Chance Harvey

2009-03-03T07:11:00.000-08:00

Sure Dustin looks good for his 70-odd years, but I think the poster may have had some work done.

Director: Joel Hopkins
Writer: Joel Hopkins
Cast: Emma Thomson, Dustin Hoffman

So I didn't really think that you could say that you'd just spent a couple of hours with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson and had not enjoyed yourself. But with Last Chance Harvey I also don't think you could guarantee that it would be particularly memorable.

It is, despite starring two of the most watchable people in cinema, amusing without being funny, charming but uninspired, and romantic without knocking off any socks.

Harvey (Hoffman) is a music jingle writ... aaaaahhh, who gives a damn?

It's just not enough.

Last Chance Harvey rates 2 1/2 stars.

Rachel Getting Married

2009-03-01T06:50:00.000-08:00

Family, family, family. Oh boy.

Director: Jonathan Demme
Writer: Jenny Lumet
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Debra Winger, Rosemarie Dewitt, Bill Irwin

Anne Hathaway is good. I don't care if you're put off by her Princess Diary, Devil Wearing, Get Smart past; because in Rachel Getting Married she lives up to her promise of being a really good actress. Hathaway is in almost every frame of Jonathan Demme's uncomfortably brilliant family drama, playing an awfully self-involved person with few redeeming qualities, and dammit; she made me like her.

Jonathan Demme has, in the past, made big, dramatic films like The Sience of the Lambs and Philadelphia, but his recent obsession with documentary has led him to create a somewhat Dogme 95, low budget, hand-held drama out of Jenny Lumet's family oriented vivisecting script.

Sure there are problems with using several standard HDV cameras to make a feature; like the focusing issues that plague parts of Rachel Getting Married, but like any low budget feature, these limitations force the filmmakers to create something special. Something that isn't relying on its looks to pass muster. The script has to be good, and the acting even better, and Demme and his cast rise to the occasion.

With her titular sister getting married, Kym is allowed to 'escape' from the confines of the drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic she's called home for some time, and it's an awkward homecoming. There's no time for anyone to breathe and take things in before they begin to unravel. It's a fascinating peice of family melodrama that is both mesmerizing and at times almost unwatchable.

The cast are all fantastic, with the Hathaway/Debra Winger scene being one that will be remembered as one of the most electrifying/illuminating scenes in cinema history, and one that I can't forget. It's a film of genuine depth and experienced storytelling that will resonate with anyone who has a family. There are a few sequences that outstay their welcome, but as a whole the film is such a memorable experience that you wouldn't take anything away from it.

Rachel Getting Married rates 4 stars.

Frozen River

2009-03-01T05:36:00.000-08:00

Cold, hard desperation is a mother trying to get by.

Director: Courtney hunt
Writer: Courtney Hunt
Cast: Melissa Leo, Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott.

What a gem of a film. It's shot on video in possibly the most unglamorous part of America, with a largely unknown cast, about a segment of the community that doesn't have their stories told. But Frozen River is an extraordinary peice of filmmaking that should be both seen and celebrated.

Courtney Hunt's debut feature is beautiful because of its reality, human because of its fragility, and warm in spite of its cold and bitterness. Melissa Leo, who the nerdier of nerds may recognise from the brilliant Homicide: Life on the Street, grabs ahold of you from the first minute of the film, and she doesn't let go until the credits roll. It's the performance of a lifetime; one of experience, of pain, of love and of life. It's a performance to appreciate and to cherish, and I thank her for.

Leo is Ray Eddy, a mother of two, who works part time for no money. She puts food on the table, horrible food, for her two sons that she can't do anything more for. Her husband has just left, taking with him the savings they've scraped together through years of hardship. She now can't pay the final installment for what she considers to be her dream home, and what we would charitably think of as basic living.

Through her husband's abandoned car she meets Lila (Misty Upham, in a performance that equally matches Leo's), a native Mowhawk, who convinces/maneuvers Eddy into smuggling things/people across a frozen river from Canada into the US. It's easy money, the bills can be paid, it'll be a good Christmas, and just maybe she can save their home.

It's a worthy story and a fulfilling journey. A story of heartbreak and of hope, and one that you should absolutely experience.

Frozen River rates 4 1/2 stars.

Milk

2009-03-01T04:25:00.000-08:00

He's Harvey Milk, and he's here to recruit you.

Director: Gus Van Sant
Writer: Dustin Lance Black
Cast: Sean Penn, James Franco, Emile Hirsch

Gus Van San is unarguably a filmmaker on a mission. His films of the last five years have been a must-see, extraordinary journey through life, death and humanity on an almost Zen-like level, with Elephant and Paranoid Park amongst the best cinema of the new millennium.

He has repeatedly proven himself to be a filmmaker of patience, of silence, and of the moments in time that shape us. With his exploration of the life of Harvey Milk, Van Sant lays raw his own personal sexual history in the struggles of every gay man whose human and societal rights are still, in 2009, not fully realised.

The story of the first ever openly gay publicly elected official in the US, Milk is beautifully filmed, and brilliantly acted, though at times struggles a little in the story stakes. It hits all the right notes, but at times fails to find it's focus as a piece of entertainment, often becoming bogged down in minutia.

But these are minor criticisms in what is, in true Van Sant style, an exceptional piece of cinema that really is about something. In a world where Western culture celebrates its equal opportunity humanity, Milk highlights the reality of the enormous struggle that has gone before, and the uphill battle that is still being waged every day for the gay community to be able to publicly acknowledge the person in the world they love the most.

Van Sant's confidence in himself and his actors is on display as most scenes in Milk play out simply in one or two wide-angle shots. Archival footage of the time is used to great effect, allowing the film more fully to inhabit its 1970's timeframe, and the actors are given the space to act and they inhabit their characters entirely, with the film benefiting. Sean Penn lives up to his expectations and accolades, as do James Franco, Emile Hirsch and the rest of te cast.

Milk rates 4 stars.

The Best & Worst of 2008

2009-02-10T19:28:00.000-08:00

With the Academy Awards just around the corner, let's look back at what's missing from the official list.

The lineup for Best Picture for this year's academy awards are:

The Reader
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
Frost/Nixon
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

...and of these five films Frost/Nixon is just bad, Bejamin Button I haven't seen because everyone I know warns me off it as a giant snore-fest, The Reader is meant to be okay, but not great, Slumdog Millionaire is actually quite good, and Milk has been universally praised. So the academy can only come up with two films that were really excellent and worthy of praise last year? What are we missing?

I only managed to get to about 60 films at the cinema last year, so I certainly haven't seen close to everything, and I do get to a lot of films that I know will be good and skip the bad ones pretty successfully. But I'm pretty sure I can easily come up with 10 films that I saw that are far more worthy than the 5 listed above. In sort of order:

The Dark Knight
The Secret of the Grain (French)
My Winnipeg (documentary, sort of)
The Wrestler
Lars and the Real Girl
Update: Milk
The King of Kong (documentary)
The Edge of Love
Wall-E
Waltz with Bashir (Israel, animation, documentary)
The Visitor
Be Kind Rewind (Gondry fan)

Also rans: Iron Man, The Counterfeiters (German), Charlie Wilson's War, Sweeny Todd, The Rest of the Night (Italian), Cloverfield (massively underrated).

Ok, so there's a few docos and foreign films, but many of them also fail to turn up in the doco and foreign film catagories. The worst films are somewhat harder to compile because I try my hardest to avoid them:

Mamma Mia! - hands down the winner!
Rambo
Wanted
August Rush
Sex and the City

So help me out - what's missing? What do you agree/disagree with? Are the academy awards a write-off this year? (I'm aware that there were probably much worse chick flicks last year than Sex and the City, but I didn't see them).

Gran Torino

2009-02-07T21:51:00.000-08:00

He's as mad as hell and he's not going to sit on his front porch any longer.

Director: Clint Eastwood
Writers: Nick Schenk (screenplay), Dave Johannson (story)
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Ahney Her

As a director Clint Eastwood is becoming positively prolific in his old (78) age. He's very successfully averaged a critically acclaimed film per year for the last couple of decades. However, as an actor he's been taking it a little easier, choosing mostly to work for himself when needed. The last time he acted in a film he didn't direct was 1993, and now with Gran Torino finished it appears he won't be acting for anyone again.

So is his old-man-turns-vigilante Gran Torino an appropriately fitting parting shot from The Man with No Name? It would seem so. And not just because of the taciturn anti-hero connections to his early career, but because of the stilted acting, stock stereotype characters, and trite, laboured dialogue that was so enjoyable in those early Spagetti Westerns.

Eastwood does indeed own the character of of the overly scowl prone Walt Kowalski, whose wife dies, leaving him alone in "the old neighbourhood" that has become a place for the Hmong community to settle. He's an equal opportunity racist who finds himself becoming increasingly entwined in the lives of the neighbours he's never so much as acknowledged before when one of them is forced by a gang to steal Walt's mint-condition car, the titular Gran Torino.

A film about friendship, family and community, and the shared humanity of simply wanting to live a peaceful life, Gran Torino manages to eventually charm its way into being an enjoyable and rewarding experience. By the time it reaches its climax the faults are mostly forgiven, and the melodrama works effectively enough to garner real emotion and empathy for the characters, as well as serving up some genuine laughs.

Save yourself some energy; get to know somebody before you decide they're worth hating.

Gran Torino rates 3 1/2 stars.

Revolutionary Road

2009-02-05T20:30:00.000-08:00

If only the movie were ar awesome as the ties DiCaprio gets to wear.

Director: Sam Mendes
Wrieters: Justin Haythe (screenplay), Richard Yates (novel)
Cast: Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio

Set in 1955, the acclaimed novel Revolutionary Road was first published in 1961, with the film adaptation now arriving 47 years later amid a pantheon of examinations of conformity in suburbia. They're arriving thick and fast, both in the form of satire: Desperate Housewives & Weeds, and drama: Mad Men & Far From Heaven. So does it add anything to the discussion? Yes. But not quite enough to make it stand out.

Dissatisfaction with suburbia was the basis of director Sam Mendes' first film American Beauty, however where Lester Burnham has an awakening from the life he's bought into, in Revolutionary Road, April and Frank Wheeler consider themselves outsiders who are slowly becoming trapped and suffocated.

Winslet and DiCaprio both give superb performances as the spirited April and Frank, a young married couple who have, they believe, taken temporary refuge as a begrudging housewife and cubicle jockey in order to raise their children in stability. But what sets this apart from other texts is April. The burden of children and the ties of the apron are not something she's willing to accept, and it's this early feminist struggle that holds the film up as something worthy of consideration.

The production design, direction and cinematography all conspire to produce a lavish period production, but are in the end let down by a script that simply runs too long, with Frank and April having more than one shouting match too many. While American Beauty was a tightly scripted thriller, Revolutionary Road could have done with leaving some ambiguities in the end.

Revolutionary Road rates 3 stars.

The Wrestler

2009-01-29T05:38:00.000-08:00

He's busted and broken, but he's still got some fight.

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Writer: Robert D. Siegel
Cast: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood

After the crumbling defeat of the intollerably incomprehensible The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky has pulled himself up off the wrestling metaphor to whatever it is wrestler's get up from, flicked the hair from his eyes, oiled up, applied the fake tan, and has dived back head first with The Wrestler into the crowd-pleasing, rigged world of fakery that is movies that are exceptionally good.

Mickey Rourke just simply is as good as all of the press he's been getting. He wears the character of Randy "The Ram" Robinson so completely, so hopefully and so tragically, that you can't help but be moved by his struggle.

The script by Robert D. Siegel is brilliant and simple and moving, perfectly complimented by Aronofsky's direction and the cinematography of Maryse Alberti. They allow the audience to unflinchingly see the man for who he is, and dangle the promise of who he might be.

The amazing supporting cast, from Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood, all the way down to the blood-and-guts wrestlers and their devoted fans give The Wrestler its grounding in reality, and no one has ever been able to say that about wrestling before.

The Wrestler rates 4 1/2 stars.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

2009-01-26T07:43:00.000-08:00

2 girls + 1 guy + another girl + a bucket of neuroses = a good time had by all.

Director: Woody Allen
Writer: Woody Allen
Cast: Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz, Rebecca Hall

He's back! Except for the slight issue of him never being overly popular to begin with, and also that he never stopped making good films (he just managed to slot a couple of shit ones in here and there).

Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona is his usual tangle of neurotic people finding their way in the world with crazy love, romance and sex . And let's not forget that if you take the 'n' and 'u' out of 'neurotic', you do actually get 'erotic' which has nothing to do with anything really, it's just making things up, but I'm just not sure if I'm, you know, all that talented, really, which probably stems from my parents never fully giving me the encouragement that I... but I digress. Oh, and this time it's in Barcelona, which is nice.

The film has beautiful women falling out of every frame, with Javier Bardem following them with intent from some or other picturesque location and into the bedroom. It's funny, delightful, endearing and all sorts of other lovely things. It's food, it's wine, it's conversation and it's sex (and even art gets thrown in there occasionally as well).

Vicky Cristina Barcelona rates 4 stars.

Frost/Nixon

2009-01-26T00:29:00.000-08:00

A bit of a chat with a disgraced former president doesn't sound all that exciting. And it isn't.

Director: Ron Howard
Writer: Peter Morgan
Cast: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon

The safe and easy option for placing a film in its historical context is to mash together a montage of news footage with TV reporters skipping the audience through all the necessary bits of exposition they might need to know. That easy way out is how Frost/Nixon begins, and the bar doesn't get raised much further from there.

Ron Howard proves to be a curious choice to direct a film with a relatively small budget ($30 million), that was adapted from a play, that was about a television interview, and that would require interesting and creative choices to solve those obstacles. Instead what you get is a by-the-numbers, looks pretty but lacks any real depth, adaptation of a critically acclaimed play about a pretty-boy TV presenter trying to elicit an apology from a world-weary Nixon for the Watergate cover-up.

The script from Peter Morgan, who adapted his own stage play, seems to have lost its way from the stage to the screen. Why supporting characters such as James Reston Jr, and Bob Zelnick do awkwardly acted talking-head pieces to camera, telling the audience in clear and insulting terms what they're watching and why they're watching it (a tool documentary filmmakers resort to when they don't have any interesting footage at hand) seems unnecessary. Why wouldn't you use the actors and a crew hanging around to maybe... you know... act in and film those scenes?

Michael Sheen and Frank Langella are fantastic as Frost and Nixon respectively, however as film subjects they are not likeable guys and spending a couple of hours with them is a considerably tiresome prospect when there's not much going on. The backstage machinations and wrangling are not nearly as pugilistic as the Rumble in the Jungle allusions would have you believe. It's not much of a rope-a-dope if the reason you were getting beat for the first seven rounds is that you weren't very good, and while Frost does manage to extract the much vaunted admission and apology, he doesn't come through with any real insight into his subject.

With Frost/Nixon Ron Howard serves up predictable, pedestrian, schmaltzy, pap, completely failing to deliver on what should have been a tensely psychological, edge-of-your-seat, knockout. It should have been an exciting film where interesting things are revealed about people of historical importance. But it's not.

Frost/Nixon rates 2 stars.

Slumdog Millionaire

2009-01-14T03:51:00.000-08:00

A rollicking yarn from the slums of Mumbai to the set of Millionaire.

Director: Danny Boyle with Loveleen Tandan (co-director India)
Writers: Simon Beaufoy (screenplay), Vikas Swarup (novel)
Cast: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto

Like fellow British filmmaking compatriot Michael Winterbottom, Danny Boyle seems to be a combination of easily bored, endlessly curious and unwilling to be pigeonholed. From the iconic Trainspotting, to horror and sci-fi genre pieces, he's produced an eclectic raft of excellent films at every turn.

His latest offering is Slumdog Millionaire. It's both a chaotic, exciting, and picaresque adventure through the slums of Mumbai, and a measured and tense, television-studio-bound triumph of overcoming-the-odds the human spirit.

Dev Patel plays the 18 year-old incarnation of Jamal Malik. An impoverished autodidactic being interrogated (Cheney would say legally) by the Mumbai police because he's one question away from the top 20,000,000 rupee question the Hindi Who Wants To Be A Mllionaire?. He's an uneducated nobody from the slums, so he's of course suspected of having cheated.

The police inspector dragged away from investigating real crimes makes Jamal talk him through how he came to know the answer to each question he's been asked so far. This results in a series of flashbacks vividly recounting Jamal's story from boyhood. It's a rollicking, tragic adventure centered around Jamal, his older brother Salim and a fellow orphan Latika. They're played over three different periods by nine actors, all of who deliver exceptional performances of reality and depth (the youngest of the children are possibly some of the cutest to ever appear on film).

A: Luck
B: Love
C: Passion
D: Destiny

The logistics of filming in the slums of India (especially crowd control) are staggering to ponder, with Boyle's direction seemingly documentary and guerrilla, though quite clearly planned, and storyboarded with a detailed eye, and shot beautifully by Anthony Dod Mantle's experienced and steady hand.

Slumdog Millionaire is simply a really good story, really well told. But there's also a wealth of depth lurking not far under the surface. Money will set you free? It's a vibrant exultation of humanity, hope, love and life that will take you along for a ride that you won't soon forget.

Slumdog Millionaire rates 4 1/2 stars.

All Tomorrow's Parties, Mt Buller

2009-01-13T06:28:00.000-08:00

A mountain, a Cave, some Saints, and a Diamond Dancer.

Event: Music Festival
Location: Mt. Buller
Line-up: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Saints, Spiritualized, Bill Calahan, more and etc.

If you weren't on the mountain for Nick Cave's sound check on Thursday the 8th, then you weren't really at ATP Mt. Buller 2009; unless of course you came to any other part of the festival over the following couple of days. The whole thing was really pretty sweet.

A spectacular location of breathtaking views up on Mt. Buller was the setting for the Nick Cave curated All Tomorrow's Parties festival of music, cinema and art; where only half of the expected crowd bought tickets for the music, no one bothered with the cinema, and the art wasn't ready for viewing until halfway through the last day.

But that's not to say that any of the program was unappealing or fell short in any way. Of he six-thousand tickets available, only about 2800 had been sold by the opening morning, but the reasons for this were nothing to do with the show on offer.

ATP was always going to skew towards an older crowd, but the distance from Melbourne, the lack of accommodation and it's expense were always going to be issues for a crowd used to paying for a music festival ticket and having their camping included in the price.

But that of course meant that for those who made it up to the high-country, there was a festival of relaxed crowds, front row availability, ease of movement, and little or no cues for any facilities. It was a festival for people who aren't to keen on an imposed proximity to other people. Nice.

Bill Callahan managed some shoe-gazing greatness, giving the audience a taste of Diamond Dancer and Cold-Blooded Old Times, while Primitive Calculators' half-baked punk aesthetic produced a shambolic, techno soundscape that was a part 70's, part modern, cross-generational mash of dubious yet enjoyable quality.

James 'Blood' Ulmer plugged away in front of an appreciative audience, the walls of the smaller amphitheatre slowly filling to capacity as he slapped away at his old-man-blues-river shtick that seemed to excite a crowd that I'm guessing had no prior experience of him. Back over on the main stage Grinderman (or as I'm calling them - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Light but Heavy) performed a tight but brief set that served as a nice precursor to the following night's show.

That night The Saints played hard and fast, though a sober review will be hard to find. Their lead-in was the magnificent Dirty Three, who were as soaring and as cinematic as the location, and the night seemed to be over before it began.

A beautifully warm and picturesque Saturday continued our picaresque adventure with The Stabs venturing out from The Tote to the side of a mountain to deliver their angry feedback short, sharp rock. Bridezilla started roughly, but proved they could play, and play hard. Afrirampo threatened to be shrieking, hollering, whale-song abstraction, and they were. But they were also very funny and highly entertaining.

Ok, ok, let's skip to the main event, Spiritualized were a fantastic ethereal opening for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds who played a festival knockout show, the perfect exclamation point for a truly sensational weekend. They were dynamic and raucous, working the crowd to produce a show that will be remembered for a long time by everyone who made it up there.

Burn After Reading

2009-01-12T21:06:00.000-08:00

The Cohens once again weave a quirky cast through a self-inflicted tangled web of destruction.

Directors: Joel & Ethan Cohen
Writers: Joel & Ethan Cohen
Cast: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, John Malcovich

Those familiar with the body of work of Joel and Ethan Cohen won't be all that surprised, or even delighted with their latest effort, Burn After Reading.

It's a film that seems to have all the right pieces in place to be a really fine Cohenist film, but somehow manages to miss the mark on nearly every point.

It appears to be a comedy; but it's not all that funny. It has the option of being a drama; but none of the characters are likeable enough to care what happens to them. It's a quirky web of self-destruction; but lacks the sort of spiraling-out-of-control gut-wrenching of Fargo.

An ensemble piece, Burn After Reading is about an inadequate, alcoholic CIA agent (John Malcovich) who quits when he's demoted and decides that his espionage exploits are worthy of a book. When a disc of the book accidentally ends up in the hands of a couple of less-than-stupid gymn instructors, they of course decide to blackmail him, and the lives of all involved begin to crumble.

You're a Mormon. Compared to you we all have a drinking problem.

It's disappointing to see such an amazing cast reduced to caricaturish tics and forced mannerisms. George Clooney has ramped his up from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? and Brad Pitt has toned his down from 12 Monkeys, but neither has the slapstick schtick to work with that made those performances work.

Frances McDormond's character drives much of the action, but is so shallow that her obsessive drive for her plastic surgery proceedures could be seen as her own little metaphor. Tilda Swinton gets to roll out her ice-queen, but has very little to do, and Malcovich is... well... Malcovich.

It's the lack of depth in each and every character that makes this such a curious film from the Cohens, who are usually very adept at weaving not just quirky, but interesting characters and stories.

Burn After Reading rates 2 1/2 stars.