Wednesday, 25 August 2010

Blood Work (2002)


Clint Eastwood, as director, has mastered the art of writing himself into his own films. In Pale Rider, for example, he knew just where to place himself in front of the camera and throughout his career he has delivered some great one-liners. Here in Blood Work, Eastwood delivers a performance that feels like all the characters he has played before but just a little older.

Eastwood plays Terry McCaleb, a retired F.B.I agent, who suffers from health problems after needing a heart transplant, following an incident we see right at the beginning of the film. Eastwood himself was 72 when he directed, produced and starred in Blood Work and having himself portray McCaleb immediately establishes a believability about the character.

McCaleb lives aboard a yacht and one day is visited by Graciella Jones whose sister has been murdered in a convenience store. In a seperate incident, a man has also been murdered whilst using an ATM and McCaleb is convinced the two are linked. These killings provide the platform for the screenplay to unfold in what will come to involve a Russian factory worker and ultimately a blood link. The police in the film view McCaleb as poking his nose in buisness that is no longer his concern but McCaleb has personal reasons of his own for wanting to get involved. Happy Valentines Day.

The screenplay is excellent and fluidly shifts between three ongoing plotlines. The investigation is obviously the main focus of the film and remains interesting and intriguing throughout the film but there is also the subplot of McCaleb's health with remains an issue until the very end as well as the developing (and perhaps unlikely) relationship that develops between Terry and Graciella.

There is good support from Jeff Daniels, Wanda De Jesus and Paul Rodriguez who all portray memorable characters but like most of Eastwood's films he steals the show on the performance front.

The story perhaps comes full circle twenty minutes too early. The mystery is solved but the film carries on as we see it at it's most Hollywood (although the film actually never comes anywhere close to falling into that Typical Hollywood Thriller mould) as the film climaxes with an action scene aboard a ship that didn't really have me caring about it half as much as I cared about the rest of the film. These scenes do however allow Eastwood's clever direction and the intelligent screenplay to shine once again as there is something of a lethargic nature to the sequence due the health of McCaleb.

Blood Work is though up there with Eastwood's best and of the nine films I've seen with him at the helm I'd say it is only better by two: Million Dollar Baby and Changeling. Eastwood is in his 80's now and is directing his best films in this period. His work in the noughties eclipses everything I've seen by him from the 70', 80's and 90's and with Letters From Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers up next I'm sure I will continue to vouch for that statement.

Rating: 8-8.5/10

Wednesday, 4 August 2010

Inception (2010)


The hyperbole surrounding Inception over the past two weeks has been nothing short of ridiculous. Flocks of people who don't really know what they are talking about keep on labelling Christopher Nolan's latest effort 'like da best film evvva'. It's release has seen in burst in at number three on the suspect and easily influenced IMDB Top 250 List, as fanboys around the world vote it a massive 10/10 whether they have seen the damn film or not. So is Inception the best film ever? Does it deserve to be number three on the list? Is it a 10/10? And are the comparisons of Nolan to legendary director Stanley Kubrick justified? No, no, no and um..no.


I was however massively looking forward to Inception. Despite his two Batman efforts leaving me feeling a little cold, I have liked what else I've seen by Nolan, namely Memento and The Prestige. And in a world where 3D is increasingly sapping any creativity out of mainstream cinema, Nolan is gaining a reputation as being a 'thoughtful' director. I'm also massively keen on films that take on dreamlike atmospheres or explore the nature of dreams in any way they see fit. How could a film billed as one about dreams within dreams within dreams possibly go wrong?

Leonardo Di Caprio stars as Dom Cobb, a professional dream stealer, who places himself in the dreams of others in order to steal ideas from them. Through his impressive work he is approached with a request to attempt 'inception' the art not of stealing an idea but of implanting one. It's a lot more technical and apparently a lot more lucrative. Dom's partner Albert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) calls 'inception' impossible but Cobb ignores him and assembles his team. Ellen Page is hired as the architect to create the worlds that the dreamers will occupy.


The job requires the implantation of an idea into the mind of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). That idea is that Fischer will want to break up the empire of his terminally ill father in order to stop the company from being a threat. A plan is formed and Nolan allows his characters to explain and carry out the complex operation in what becomes an increasingly confusing and multi-layered narrative as it heads towards its conclusion.


The film features an all star cast, some of whom I have already mentioned, but one that further includes Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard and more. Employment of such a cast is always dangerous as it can often lead to an absence of memorable performances and despite my love of Di Caprio, Gordon-Levitt and Page, they all fail to deliver. Like with his Batman films there isn't much in the way of an emotional attachment to any of the characters on show.

But the film's major problem is just how prosaic it is. My hopes for a film that genuine explores the nature of dreams, creating a dreamlike atmosphere in the process were never satisfied and instead Nolan presents us with what is actually a pretty standard heist film that eventually becomes your typical Summer Action Blockbuster. Only difference is is that Inception isn't a remake, a reboot or a sequel but a truly original screenplay that wants to share with us some interesting ideas but doesn't have the right man at the helm to do so. I appreciate the thought but I don't appreciate the product.

Perhaps on seconds viewing, knowing that this is predominantly an action film and nothing over and above an action film I'd enjoy it more but the criticism that Nolan has create a film that describes dreams as occurring too literally (thus not allowing for the fluidity and lack of logic that often have) still stands. The response is usually that this was never Nolan's intention and that he always wanted to make Inception an action film, but Inception was created entirely from scratch and it could have been about anything. Nolan choose to make it about dream exploration but then didn't truly carry this idea through in a way that seems correct.


On a positive note I really enjoyed the films score. It's big and booming and shares a similarity to another of the years films starring Leonardo Di Caprio, a.k.a. Shutter Island (and that's not the only thing the two films have in common). The special effects (all $160 million dollars of them) are also good most noticeably the zero gravity corridor scene but this and all the other effects are lessened by the fact that I had already seen them countless times before in the trailer. The film doesn't surprise us with any fresh visually dazzling moments not chosen for the trailer.


Despite my complaints Inception isn't another in film to suffer from 'third act syndrome'. It's not one that falls apart at any moment after building itself up to be something special. It's the entire focus of the film that was disappointment but it remains loyal to what Nolan wanted it to be throughout and it does prove that Nolan is one of the best when it comes to creating big action blockbusters. It's just a shame that he choose Inception to fall into that category.


On a certain level I did enjoy Inception. It's energetic and despite a reasonably lengthy running time it does whizz by, never letting you out of it's grasp. It's what I'd call an enjoyable cinematic experience. Take that statement however you will. It seems that Inception is this years Avatar.

Rating: 6.5/10

Thursday, 15 July 2010

Wendy and Lucy (2008)


There was a moment in 'Wendy and Lucy' at which I paused the film and wondered how on earth I could possibly feel any sympathy towards the situation that Wendy now found herself in. The film tells me nothing about why it is that she has become so lonely, so poor and so determined to travel to Alaska. We learn nothing of her past, we learn only fragments of her present and we will know nothing of her future. Wendy's ambitions, Wendy's past jobs, relationships and hobbies are never revealed.

I thought to myself, 'surely we need some sort of back-story to this woman's life to sympathise with the fact that she finds herself alone with her dog Lucy in an unfamiliar town with little money, no friends or family around her, and a car whose ignition will no longer fire up?' But at the same time of asking such question I realised that I did feel sympathy. The question was a redundant one, for it mattered not what had happened before in Wendy's life. In the here and now, Wendy was in a torrid situation and that is all that seems to matter. It's a credit to this film that it manages to successfully tease out that emotion from it's viewer despite not giving us much of a reason to attach ourselves to it's lead character.

Wendy's only friend is her 'yellow-gold' Golden Retriever called Lucy. Together they have travelled perhaps from Indiana and are heading for Alaska so that Wendy can find work there. The job plans there do not bring about excitement raising questions as to why Wendy things travelling so far to get there is such a good idea. It's as if Alaska is viewed as the end of the world.
Wendy takes overnight comfort in her car but one morning is woken by a friendly security guard whose job it is to watch over a car park that never seems to have any cars populating it. Despite his friendly persona he takes his job seriously and reluctantly informs Wendy that overnight stays in the car park are against regulations and she will have to pull out. Wendy agrees but her car won't start.

This is only the beginning of her problems. Needing to restock on dog food but not wanting to pay, Wendy is caught stealing from the local store and taking to the local station for questioning, finger prints and so that she can pay her fine. When she is eventually released she returns to the store to find that Lucy (whom she had tied to a bike rack whilst she went into the store previously) has disappeared. Even lonelier now, Wendy is advised by the friendly security guard to keep checking the local dog pound to see if she is handed in. She has to walk there and walk back again to see if the local garage has fixed her car yet. Most of the time she hears bad news, "No dogs match that description" or "Your bill could be $2000". Eventually she gives up on the car, but never on Lucy.

The film stars Michelle Williams an actress I'm unfamiliar with despite her being in familiar films such as Shutter Island, Synecdoche New York and Brokeback Mountain. Most of this credit I just mentioned should be given to this 29 year old's performance, which is so good and convinced me to believe in her. The Toronto Film Critics Association also recognized this talent by awarding her their 'Best Actress Award' in 2008 fending off competition from Meryll Streep for her performance in Doubt. Past recipients of the award are Thora Birch in Ghost World, Ellen Page in Juno (who beat Laura Dern to the prize in her powerhouse performance in the epic Inland Empire) and Carey Mulligan in last year's An Education. That is how good a performance this is by Miss Williams.

The cinematography helps too. Not only does Sam Levy capture wide-lens shots that look really nice but he also points the camera straight at the expressive face of Wendy which really captures the emotion of the journey that she undertook and may now regret. We'll never know.

And then, by the end, when Wendy makes that heart-wrenching decision, we salute the film for making us realise, in it's short running time of 80 minutes, that the decision was the right one and for convincing us so truly that Wendy's emotions were real.


Rating: 8/10

Thursday, 24 June 2010

Funny Games U.S (2007)


**CONTAINS SPOILERS**

Golden rule number one when reviewing a film is that it has to hold my interest from beginning to end. It seems daft to open this review with such an obvious point but it feels fitting in this case, for Michael Haneke's Funny Games U.S. does exactly that. Indeed I was interested from beginning to end. But that does not tell the full story because despite being an interesting film, perhaps even an enjoyable one, Funny Games is not entirely successful. At the heart of this is that fact that it's a Haneke film. Now, I don't mean that derogatorily for Haneke is an intelligent director and one of the most important currently working today. But there is so much more going on in Funny Games U.S than meets the eye and I think that Haneke fails in getting his thoughts across successfully.


Funny Games U.S is a shot-for-shot remake of his effort ten years previously. Yes that's right Haneke remade his own film, Funny Games, shooting it exactly how he shot the original. However, the remake is in the English language and stars familiar names Tim Roth and Naomi Watts in the lead roles. Roth and Watts play George and Ann, a happily married couple who, along with their son Georgie, are on their way to their lake house for a presumed weekend break. To make their journey go quicker they entertain themselves by playing 'guess the classical song and composer'. This is a well-to do family, comfortably settled in familiar family life. Shortly after their arrival at the lake house they are introduced by their next-door neighbours to two seemingly friendly young men Peter and Paul who, despite their friendly persona, appear to be a little odd. The men continue to impress themselves on the family and, when a persistent request for eggs tests Ann's patience forcing her to demand that they leave the family alone things begin to get a little sinister as Peter and Paul, dressed in all-white, force the family to take part in physical and psychological games testing their resolve to stay alive.

This plot description may lead you to believe that this is just another run of the mill horror film but you would be far from the truth. In fact I wouldn't, perhaps controversially so, even describe this as a horror film per se. Despite the perhaps tired and familiar story at no point did I think that Haneke was trying to produce his own take on the horror genre. Funny Games U.S. is more of a commentary than a film in it's own right. Haneke has said of his film that it is a reaction to the way that violence in films has become consumerized in America and it is often said that the original Funny Games was Haneke's way of 'telling off' those film viewers who take pleasure out of such violent films. Haneke remade Funny Games in order to elevate the film (i.e. his message) to those unfamiliar with viewing films in any other language than English (i.e the Americans of whom Haneke refers to).


Haneke's way of getting across his message sees Peter and Paul (perhaps Haneke's messengers?) consistently 'breaking the fourth wall' (i.e. talking directly to the audience). The two perpetrators consistently ask the audience questions like 'why are you watching this?' as well as predicting whose side the audience is on and what the audience expect to ask next. There is even a bizarre scene in which a remote control is used to rewind time in order to have a scene play out differently.


I'm fine with Haneke's message in fact I even admire it. But as a film Funny Games U.S. isn't too successful and in many respects (but I stress not all) it does just become another exploitation film with predictable outcomes and unsavoury characters that are not explored too well.

But there are a lot of positives about Funny Games U.S. Firstly, the eerie performances of Michael Pitt (Last Days) and Brady Corbet are excellent and as a growing fan of Naomi Watts I enjoyed seeing her here as well. Secondly,Haneke's direction is sublime and the film is well constructed and like there is in his 2005 near-masterpiece Cache, there is one scene that totally comes out of nowhere and blew me away with how well it was captured. I admire Haneke's basic and still camerawork that was present in Cache and is present again here. Thirdly and tying in I guess with the purpose behind Funny Games is the admirable scene in which Ann dies. I admire the unimportance Haneke ascribes to the scene that sees Peter and Paul nonchalantly dispose of her body. Fourthly, the thrash screamo metal song (Bonehead by Naked City) is used as a score in a way that only Haneke would dare to do. It makes for such an odd and contrasting opening scene. And finally, the film does remain tense throughout and did, as I mentioned at the start, refrain from breaking golden rule number one.


Rating: 7/10

Tuesday, 8 June 2010

Alice in Wonderland (2010)


And so the stage was set: take my favourite animated film of all time a
nd put it in the hands of someone with the visual imagination of Tim Burton and hey presto a brilliant re-imagining of a classic children's story should result. Surely Alice in Wonderland was going to be one of the highlights of 2010 despite the decision to show it in 3D? Well no, not exactly. The trouble is, is that Tim Burton just isn't very good. Granted I've seen only a handful of his works but so far none of them have received anything more than half marks. Edward Scissorhands is probably the best I've seen so far. Visually quite interesting but ultimately unspectacular. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was just a little bit too glossy for my liking and Burton's vision of Willy Wonka somewhat peculiar. Corpse Bride, distinctively average. Batman, again visually interesting, (more so than Christopher Nolan's acclaimed Dark Knight), but the story is, well, a bit of a mess.

Perhaps I've just not seen his best. Big Fish looks interesting. The word 'masterpiece' often gets aimed at Ed Wood and Sweeney Todd certainly has it's fans and everything looked perfectly set up here with Alice. I grant Burton his visual flair (although that doesn't make me a fan per se) and it seemed that it should perfectly match up with Carroll's classic novel, but sadly it doesn't. But what goes wrong?

Burton, according to the trusty source of Wikipedia, said this of his production of Alice in Wonderland: "new movie is to give the story "some framework of emotional grounding...to try and make Alice feel more like a story as opposed to a series of events." But this seems contrary to the reason that I especially loved the original Disney version. Is Burton not a fan? I loved the original precisely because Alice walks around the surreal world of Wonderland and engages with it's inhabitants for short periods of time. There isn't a 'story' as such in the 1951 but instead an adventure and adventures don't have to have beginnings, middles and ends.

The plot of Burton's version does share a lot of similarities with the version of Clyde Geronimi and co, more so in the first third than the rest of the film. Once again we meet Alice, except this time instead of lying on the banks of a river, she is a little older and about to wed the peculiar Hamish Ascot against her will. Eventually she follows a White Rabbit and falls down a hole, before engaging in the familiar activities of eating 'Eat Me' cake and drinking 'Drink Me' liquid. If only the key fit a normal sized door eh? Eventually Alice is just the right size to fit through the tiny door and once again she finds her self in Wonderland (or 'Underland in fact, as Burton chooses to coin it). We quickly meet familiar characters: Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), the Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry) and eventually the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp). And abruptly this is where the familiarities stop
.


Alice eventually gets embroiled in story with an all too familiar arc, that ends up suffering from a syndrome that many modern day multiplex films suffer from: Third Act Syndrome. What makes Alice in Wonderland even more insufferable is that it suffers from it as soon as Alice steps foot in Wonderland. The story immediately because a generic action-adventure and exploring Wonderland's fantastic landscape is never on Burton's mind. Those moments in the film that we do get to stop and look at the surroundings didn't please me but disappointed me. Even getting on board Robert Stromberg of Avatar fame couldn't help to make the film visually appealing and looking at the Wonderland surrounding the Mad Hatter's tea party looks like a scene from John Hillcoat's gloomy post-apocalyptic film The Road. Now that's not exciting is it?

Some characters get more screentime than others but the choice is a bad one. Depp disappointed me as the Mad Hatter. Don't get me wrong, Depp is magnificently talented but I think the character of the Mad Hatter is written wrong here, again the fault of Burton. Helena Bonham Carter (who obviously had to be in this didn't she?) gives a pretty annoying, noisy performances as the Red Queen. Mia Wasikowska is adequate as Alice but the only noteworthy performance is Alan Rickman's voice work of the Caterpillar but sadly he is given less than five minutes screentime I'd say.

And so we come to the third act. By this time we are really meant to care about the outcome remember? But here we don't. It involves a standard, over-long, dull, battle scene that would be just as suited to Robin Hood or Clash of the Titans or District 9 and so on, which involves Alice having to slay some big Jabberwocky. Lovely. Not. It's generic and it's mind-numbing and it sums up mainstream cinema in the 21st century.

Vulgarization doesn't even come close to explaining what Tim Burton has done to Lewis Carroll's and Disney's classic story. Every choice he makes is the wrong one, and although the script is occasionally humorous and some performances are decent I'm sorry to say it's a disaster pretty much from the word go.


(I fail to mention that I actually saw this in 2D. Alice in Wonderland 3D, now that really would give me to something to moan about.)


Rating: 2/10

Monday, 31 May 2010

Where The Wild Things Are (2009)


"I have a sadness shield that keeps out all the sadness, and it's big enough for all of us."

Adapting a book that consists of just under ten lines into a feature length film cannot be an easy task. But this was precisely the problem facing Spike Jonze when he decided to adapt Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s picture book, Where The Wild Things Are, into a film that would eventually span around 95 minutes.


Too young to play with the older children and dissatisfied with his life at home, the ever-playful Max gets into an argument with his mother and proceeds to flee from his home. Eventually Max reaches the waters edge of a lake where a small boat is moored. Eager to escape the problems facing him at home Max escapes into his imagination and soon he is sailing across the vast ocean in a boat now more than double the size it first appeared. After battling heavy rain, Max eventually reaches unfamiliar land and quickly stumbles across a group of furry creatures much bigger than he, already engaged in some form of domestic. These are the Wild Things (voiced by familiar names such as Forest Whitaker, Paul Dano and Chris Cooper) and soon they install Max as their king in order to restore some form of order.


This world that Max has created for himself consists of a forest, inhabited by the Wild Things themselves, and an expansive desert landscape. The Wild Things are interesting to look at and in contrast to most films aimed at children in the 21st century are not forced to look ‘cutesy’ and ‘fluffy’. Their creation is interesting too, a combination of real-life muppetry and computer-generated imagery that works together perfectly to make the Wild Things look as if they really do occupy the same space as Max himself.


The film is a perfect encapsulation of the wild and vivid imagination that fascinates young children. Watching it I was reminded of my younger self, as Max’s imagination produces ideas not too dissimilar from ones I remember having growing up as a child. Talk of battles and of forts and imaginary objects such as the ‘sadness shield’ invented to allow good to prevail are precisely the things that I myself conjured up when I too was under the control of my imagination.

Under-lying symbolism is also suggested with the Wild Things of Max’s imagination perhaps playing the roles of the people most prominent in his life outside his vivid thoughts. Several times throughout the film I considered the possibility of Carol as representing Max himself, with his horns very much resembling the ears on Max’s wolf costume.


The challenging role of Max is played with craft by Max Records. Not only does he boast an incredibly cool name, but he also proves himself to be a fine young, budding actor. He is required to carry the film on his own and does some whilst maintaining the innocence and enthusiasm we would come to expect of a child immersed in his own creative thoughts.


But despite its short running time parts of the film do seem to drag. Regardless of its many charming moments the film is guilty of plenty of uninspired padding in order to stretch it out to feature length and it seems simply that Jonze does not have enough ideas of his own to justify refusing to settle for a shorter running time. The film will undoubtedly make me smile as you revel in its innocence but taken as a whole it just is not as successful as I had hoped.



Rating: 6.5-7/10

Tuesday, 27 April 2010

The Road (2009)


The end of the world is upon us and well, there ain't a whole lot we can do about it. This sentence just about sums up the plot of John Hillcoat's adaptation of the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy, author of the book that led to the brilliant Coen Brothers film No Country For Old Men. In The Road, civilization as we know it has been wiped out. The majority of the population has died, animals no longer exist and food is sparse. The reason for this remains unknown throughout the whole film but in this situation a reason isn't necessary. This sparsity has led some to cannibalism but not the Man (Viggo Mortensen) or the Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee), these are the 'good guys' as the Boy often refers to them as.

The landscape is beautifully captured by Hillcoat and his team. CGI aided I am sure but nevertheless Hillcoat's palette of predominantly grey and murky colours matches the bleak outlook of the film perfectly. Visually, it's a very impressive film to look at.

The film also stars Charlize Theron in a role that is almost superfluous. She plays the Wife of the Man and mother of the Boy. She only appears in flashbacks, from a time when civilization was slightly less bleak but clearly the destruction of the world has already kicked in. We see the Wife give birth to the Boy but soon after, failing to see any hope in the future, walks out of the house leaving behind her family, and disappears, quite literally, into the shadows to die.

What The Road is, and where it stands above many post-apocalyptic stories, such as I Am Legend, is that it doesn't bastardize the situation with daft flesh-eating zombies or fantastical mythological nonsense. What we have here is exactly what I'd imagine 'the end of the world' to be like. Simply a hopeless world in which it is a struggle to survive,not because of the dangers of being mauled to death but by the sheer forces of nature and evaporation of the human world as we can to accept it.

But would I ever want to see this film again. Probably not. As I am sure I've made clear, it's a bleak film with no outlook on the future. It's not what you'd call easy viewing and isn't a film that you'd get much out of a second time round. It's lacking in as much emotive punch as it probably should have, and the emotion it does try to draw out of the viewer, especially in scenes at the very end of the film, is a little manipulative and an attempt to force the hand. But by no means is The Road a bad film and hey...it's better than Avatar.



Rating: 7/10