Tag Archives: Brie Larson

Short Term 12 (2013)

28 Friday Jul 2017

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D: Destin Daniel Cretton / 97m

Cast: Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr, Kaitlyn Dever, Rami Malek, Lakeith Stanfield, Kevin Balmore (as Kevin Hernandez), Stephanie Beatriz, Frantz Turner, Alex Calloway

Some movies catch you by surprise, literally as you’re watching them. Sometimes it’s like a switch going on inside your head, a moment when everything suddenly falls into place, or is lit up like the night sky at a fireworks party. Everything about what you’re seeing and hearing now makes perfect sense, and everything continues in that same vein, rewarding you more and more and more. Short Term 12 is one of those movies, a small-scale, low budget feature expanded by its writer/director, Destin Daniel Cretton, from his 2009 short movie of the same name. It begins simply enough at a group home for troubled teenagers, with new member of staff, Nate (Malek), being regaled on his first day at work with a story that involves a runaway teen, a support worker, and an unfortunate bowel problem. It’s a funny story, well told by the support worker himself, Mason (Gallagher Jr), but interrupted by an attempt at escaping by one of the children.

As the day progresses we’re introduced to the home’s facilitator, Jack (Turner), who advises another of the support workers, Grace (Larson) that a new girl, Jayden (Dever), will be coming to stay for a while. Grace already has plenty of children to look after at the home, from nearly eighteen year old and ready to leave Marcus (Stanfield), to the would-be escapee, Sammy (Calloway). Away from the home she and Mason are in a relationship, but Grace has recently discovered that she’s pregnant, something she hasn’t told him or anyone else. As she deals with that issue, Jayden’s arrival and her background cause Grace to assess her own past, something that she hasn’t done for some time (she and Jayden share similarities in behaviour and the emotional trauma they’ve experienced). She and Jayden start to get to know each other, but it’s not all plain sailing.

Grace eventually tells Mason that she’s pregnant, and though he’s initially shocked, he’s pleased as well, and at a party to honour Mason’s foster parents he asks Grace to marry him. She accepts, but the next day her happiness is deflated by news relating to her father. The news upsets her, but not as much as the news that the previous night, Jayden was collected by her father and won’t be returning. She berates her boss and nearly loses her job over it. Things become even worse when one of the children tries to commit suicide. With everything piling on top of her, Grace becomes withdrawn and uncommunicative with Mason, and tells him she can’t marry him or have his child. But hope comes in an unexpected form, as Grace makes one last effort to help Jayden, and by extension, herself as well.

A movie about the staff and children at a group care home that could have turned out to be mawkish, unconvincing, and trite, instead is sincere, moving, and pleasantly unsentimental. Based on writer/director Cretton’s own experiences working at a group facility for teenagers for two years, Short Term 12 (the name of the home) is a marvel of concise, effective storytelling, restrained yet emotive direction, and features a clutch of heartfelt, honest performances. It’s a movie that avoids the cliché trap with ease, and never once talks down to its audience or undermines its characters by making their issues and problems stereotypical or sensational. From Sammy’s borderline autism to the abuse Jayden is subject to, each child is given a background and a history that informs their behaviour and neutralises any notion that their actions aren’t credible. Cretton found most of the children through open casting calls (Stansfield is the only returnee from the 2009 version), and it’s a tribute to the casting team of Kerry Barden, Rich Delia and Paul Schnee that they were able to find so many children with little or no acting experience who were able to portray these characters in such a realistic manner.

But ultimately, and with no disrespect to Gallagher Jr or Dever, who both put in exemplary work, this is Larson’s movie, pure and simple. She is simply magnificent in her first leading role, imbuing Grace with a caring, resilient nature that’s slowly eroded by the overwhelming feelings that she tries so hard to avoid or ignore, feelings that are brought to the fore by becoming pregnant and meeting Jayden. Larson offers a performance that is never less than truthful, and which is fearless in presenting the emotional devastation that Grace experiences, and the pain that keeps her from enjoying any happiness beyond helping the children at the home. And as Larson explores the depths of Grace’s increasingly dissociative behaviour, she also ensures that the lifeline offered to her by helping Jayden isn’t taken up for purely selfish reasons but because Grace genuinely needs and wants to help others like her. Just the various degrees of subtlety that Larson employs is impressive enough, but she also transforms herself physically, turning in on herself as things get worse for Grace and her survivor’s guilt begins to gnaw at her. She’s aided by Cretton’s decision to frame her in close up for much of the movie, so that we get to see in detail the effect everything is having on her.

Making only his second feature, Cretton shows an assurance and a confidence in the material that some directors who’ve been making movies for far longer never achieve. In conjunction with DoP Brett Pawlak, Cretton uses a hand-held camera to tremendous effect, following his characters around as they peer into rooms and travel down hallways and gather together at break times to shoot the breeze and reestablish some sense of normalcy (if that’s at all possible) in the face of days where they’re run ragged by the demands of both the chidren and the system they’re stuck with. Cretton is clever enough not to criticise the system and its failings directly, either in relation to the staff or the children, but he does throw in some well aimed barbs that hit home with stunning accuracy. Also, he takes the issue of parental abuse and makes sure that there is no attempt to understand or condone such abuse, or to put it into a context that might offer an excuse for it. There are broader issues here that could have been addressed, but Cretton leaves them be in order to concentrate on the terrible trials endured on a daily basis by a still traumatised young woman and a devalued teenager. And it’s the best decision he could have made by far.

Rating: 8/10 – a small miracle of a movie that stumbles only once or twice in its search for emotional and social verisimilitude, Short Term 12 is impressive in a restrained, deliberate way, but it’s also one of the most emotionally honest movies seen in recent years; with an incredible performance by Larson, and the kind of intuitive screenplay that only comes along once in a while, this is a dazzlingly simple yet powerful movie that lingers in the mind long after you’ve seen it. (26/31)

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Free Fire (2016)

04 Tuesday Apr 2017

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D: Ben Wheatley / 90m

Cast: Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Jack Reynor, Michael Smiley, Sam Riley, Enzo Cilenti, Babou Ceesay, Noah Taylor, Patrick Bergin

It’s 1978 (not that it really matters), and at an abandoned warehouse in Boston, two groups come together to conclude an arms deal. Chris (Murphy) and Frank (Smiley), are members of the IRA, and they’re accompanied by two local career criminals, Bernie (Cilenti) and Stevo (Riley). They’re attempting to buy M-16’s from arms dealer Vernon (Copley) and his associate, Martin (Ceesay); they in turn have back-up in the form of Harry (Reynor) and Gordon (Taylor). Also present are facilitators Justine (Larson), who has brought the two groups together, and Ord (Hammer) who is there to ensure the deal goes through without any problems.

But as night follows day and action comedies demand conflict followed by murderous gunplay, the deal almost falls through when Vernon reveals a case containing AR-70’s and not the M-16’s Chris ordered. Ord helps pacify things and the deal goes ahead, with Chris accepting the guns and Vernon happy with his payment. But the inevitable fly in the ointment occurs when Stevo recognises Harry as the person who beat him up earlier over Stevo’s treatment of Harry’s seventeen year old cousin. Harry sees him and is incensed, and the deal is in jeopardy again. Chris tells Stevo to apologise, but though he does, he can’t resist bragging about what he did to Harry’s cousin. Harry responds by shooting Stevo in the shoulder, and the next moment everybody is shooting at each other, and fanning out across the warehouse.

What follows sees everybody shot and wounded in some way, but in particular it’s Martin who becomes everyone’s focus as he suffers a head wound that leaves him unconscious and lying next to the briefcase with the money inside it. Efforts are made to retrieve it on both sides, but it proves more difficult than anyone could have expected, and further injuries/wounds occur, leaving pretty much everyone struggling to stay alive – and when two further men turn up and shoot at them all, the whole situation goes from bad to worse to ridiculous.

The Closing Night Gala at last year’s London Film Festival, Free Fire is a movie that further cements writer/director Ben Wheatley’s reputation, but does so in a way that will have some viewers wondering what all the fuss is about. This doesn’t mean that Wheatley isn’t a talent to watch, or that his movies aren’t worth watching either, but Free Fire arrives in cinemas with a wealth of expectation behind it following its successfully received screenings at various festivals. Whether or not that level of expectation is warranted will depend on your acceptance of Wheatley being a movie maker with a distinctive visual style, and something to say. Because even though Free Fire is certainly distinctive, and directed with no small amount of flair by Wheatley, it’s not his most accomplished movie to date, and after the misfire that was High-Rise (2015), prompts the question, When will he make another movie that really confirms the talent we all know he has?

This isn’t to say that Free Fire is necessarily a bad movie, but it does appear to have been made with the intention of being entertaining, and it’s here that the movie gives cause for concern. For a director of Wheatley’s talent and rising stature, Free Fire feels too forced too often to be effective, or win over its audience. Some viewers, if they take the movie at face value, will find it enjoyable, but in a kind of loud, dumb fun kind of way. Wheatley, and his co-writer (and wife) Amy Jump, have gone for a crowd-pleasing black comedy action thriller that focuses heavily on the “fun” to be had from seeing a group of villainous individuals shoot each other, and which then sits back and watches them suffer even further.

This is where the notion that the movie is “fun” loses traction the longer the movie goes on. By letting all of its motley assortment of characters drag themselves around to less and less dramatic effect – Stevo’s demise is a particular example, a moment that makes no sense given his capacity thus far for survival – the problem of what to do with them all becomes increasingly more difficult for Wheatley to solve. In the end, he signposts the movie’s final scene, attempts to wrap it all up neatly, and confirms that any originality has been spent long before. For all its likeability, the movie hopes to beguile its audience into thinking that it’s fresh, sharp and funny, and though it does raise a smile quite often, this is more to do with the performances than Wheatley and Jump’s script.

Once the action and the shooting begins, some viewers will be left wondering who’s shooting and wounding who, and why co-writers Wheatley and Jump couldn’t have hired someone other than themselves to edit the movie. In the initial melee, it’s hard to work out just exactly what’s going on, and while it may serve to highlight the chaotic nature of the action, the spacing and the staging of the various protagonists isn’t made clear enough for viewers to accurately gauge where everyone is and how anyone can shoot anyone else. As a result, characters are hit – some more than once – and often it seems as if it’s the random choice of the screenplay. The effect this has is to distance the viewer from what’s happening – and to whom – and to reduce the characters to little more than that of ducks in a shooting gallery.

Thankfully, the cast know what they’re doing, from Copley’s quick to take offence arms dealer, to Hammer’s smooth-talking facilitator, to Riley’s drug-addled liability. As the lone female in the cast, Larson quickly becomes “one of the lads” as Justine has no option but to fight for her own survival just like everyone else. Strangely though, it’s Murphy’s IRA man who is the movie’s nominal hero, but the movie doesn’t do anything with this, and like its period setting, lacks any relevance to the action. But then relevance doesn’t appear to be in Wheatley’s remit. Instead, he wants to bludgeon us with a movie whose ambition is to be a wildly anarchic, blackly amusing thrill ride that will have audiences wincing and laughing in equal measure. He succeeds with the wincing, and occasionally with the laughing, but overall, this is dispiriting stuff from a director who can do so much more. Perhaps this is a movie Wheatley had to do in order to “get it out of his system”, and if so, then hopefully his next project will showcase his real talents as a movie maker.

Rating: 6/10 – on a basic level, Free Fire is a movie that will attract a lot of fans, and for some, reinforce their opinion of Wheatley’s skill as a director; however, even as a slice of depth-free entertainment, it fails to hit the mark fully, and stumbles too often in its execution to offer more than an occasionally diverting experience, leavened only by the occasional humorous twist, and an equally occasional sense of its own absurdity.

Monthly Roundup – March 2017

01 Saturday Apr 2017

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Fist Fight (2017) / D: Richie Keen / 91m

Cast: Ice Cube, Charlie Day, Tracy Morgan, Jillian Bell, Dean Norris, Christina Hendricks, Kumail Nanjiani, Dennis Haysbert, JoAnna Garcia Swisher, Alexa Nisenson

Rating: 3/10 – meh; lame on levels you wouldn’t have thought possible (Bell’s character wants to have sex with a pupil – and doesn’t think it’s wrong), Fist Fight is a virtually laugh-free exercise that wastes the time of everyone concerned, and its unsuspecting audience.

I.T. (2016) / D: John Moore / 95m

Cast: Pierce Brosnan, James Frecheville, Anna Friel, Stefanie Scott, Michael Nyqvist

Rating: 3/10 – meh; lame on levels you wouldn’t have thought possible (Brosnan’s character is a tech mogul who doesn’t know the first thing about the tech he’s promoting), I.T. is a virtually tension-free exercise that wastes the time of everyone concerned, and its unsuspecting audience.

Collide (2016) / D: Eran Creevy / 99m

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Felicity Jones, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley, Marwan Kenzari, Aleksandar Jovanovic, Christian Rubeck, Erdal Yildiz, Clemens Schick, Johnny Palmiero

Rating: 6/10 – Hoult’s backpacker finds himself mixed up with rival gangsters Hopkins and Kingsley, and using his driving skills to stay one step ahead of both of them; the focus is squarely on the action, which is a good thing, as Collide‘s plot is as all over the place as the various cars Hoult throws about on German autobahns, but when it’s bad it’s Hopkins intoning “I’m the destroyer of worlds” bad.

Jimmy the Gent (1934) / D: Michael Curtiz / 67m

Cast: James Cagney, Bette Davis, Allen Jenkins, Alan Dinehart, Alice White, Arthur Hohl, Mayo Methot

Rating: 7/10 – in an effort to woo back his former secretary (Davis), Cagney’s brash racketeer attempts to put a classier spin on his finding “lost” heirs business, and finds himself mellowing when a case challenges his compromised ethics; worth watching just for the pairing of Cagney and Davis, Jimmy the Gent is a typically fast-paced, razor sharp romantic comedy that may seem predictable nowadays but is nevertheless a minor gem that is effortlessly entertaining.

Kong: Skull Island (2017) / D: Jordan Vogt-Roberts / 118m

Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John Goodman, John C. Reilly, Thomas Mann, Corey Hawkins, Toby Kebbell, Tian Jing, John Ortiz, Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Richard Jenkins, Terry Notary

Rating: 5/10 – an expedition to a mysterious island in the Pacific yields dangers galore for its participants – Jackson’s crazed Army Colonel, Hiddleston’s ex-SAS captain, Larson’s anti-war photographer, Goodman’s duplicitous government official et al – not the least of which is an angry hundred-foot gorilla called Kong; while Kong: Skull Island may be visually arresting, and its action sequences pleasingly vivid, the lack of a decent plot and characters with any kind of inner life makes the movie yet another franchise-building letdown.

The Rezort (2015) / D: Steve Barker / 93m

Cast: Dougray Scott, Jessica De Gouw, Martin McCann, Elen Rhys, Claire Goose, Jassa Ahluwalia, Lawrence Walker

Rating: 4/10 – after a viral outbreak that turned its victims into flesh-hungry zombies is contained, an island resort opens that offers survivors the chance to hunt down and exterminate zombies with little or no risk of harm – but the resort is targeted from the inside and a group of holiday makers find themselves becoming the hunted; a strong idea that runs out of steam by the halfway mark, The Rezort leaves its cast stranded with a standard “run from this place to the next and look desperate” approach that drains the movie of any tension and makes it all look as generic as the next zombie movie.

Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday (1939) / D: Walter Forde / 90m

Cast: Gordon Harker, Alistair Sim, Linden Travers, Wally Patch, Edward Chapman, Philip Leaver, Kynaston Reeves

Rating: 7/10 – a seaside holiday for Inspector Hornleigh (Harker) and his trusty sidekick, Sergeant Bingham (Sim), leads inevitably to a murder case involving an inheritance and a criminal outfit who target their victims with the unwitting aid of döppelgangers; the second of three movies featuring Harker’s irascible policeman and Sim’s less-than-sharp second-in-command, Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday is a simple, easy-going, undemanding bit of fun that manages to combine drama and comedy to good effect, and which still holds up nearly eighty years later.

Inspector Hornleigh Gets on It (1941) / D: Walter Forde / 87m

aka Mail Train

Cast: Gordon Harker, Alistair Sim, Phyllis Calvert, Edward Chapman, Charles Oliver, Raymond Huntley, Percy Walsh, David Horne

Rating: 7/10 – despite being sidelined from regular detective work through a stint investigating thefts at an army barracks, Hornleigh and Bingham find themselves on the trail of Fifth Columnists; the last in the short-lived series, Inspector Hornleigh Goes to It is as sprightly and entertaining as the previous two instalments, and allows Huntley to make this priceless observation: “One of them’s tall, bald, looks intelligent but isn’t. The other’s short, sour-faced, doesn’t look intelligent but is.”

Omega Rising: Remembering Joe D’Amato (2017) / D: Eugenio Ercolani, Guiliano Emanuele / 69m

With: Joe D’Amato (archive footage), Luigi Montefiori, Michele Soavi, Claudio Fragasso, Rossella Drudi, Antonio Tentori, Carlo Maria Cordio, Mark Thompson-Ashworth

Rating: 3/10 – Aristide Massaccesi (aka Joe D’Amato)’s career in movies is assessed by some of the people who worked with him closely when he first started out; at sixty-nine minutes, Omega Rising: Remembering Joe D’Amato is a documentary that feels like it lasts twice as long, thanks to Ercolani and Emanuele’s decision to let their interviewees ramble on at length (and usually about themselves instead of D’Amato), and a random assortment of clips that don’t always illustrate what’s being talked about.

The BAFTAs 2016

14 Sunday Feb 2016

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BAFTA

It’s that time of year again for the British Film Industry to slap its collective back and try and reassure itself that it’s in some way as vital as the US in terms of production, star power, and prestige (if not box office returns). Held in the slightly cramped environment of the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden, and presented yet again by Stephen Fry, the ceremony followed the usual, tried and tested formula, and thanks to the miracle of pre-recording, didn’t outstay its welcome like the Oscar ceremony does.

One thing you probably won’t see at the Oscars is the BAFTA Kiss-Cam, an awkward bit of fun that had brief hook-ups between Cuba Gooding Jr and Stanley Tucci, Bryan Cranston and Julianne Moore, Eddie Izzard and Rebel Wilson, and oddly, Leonardo DiCaprio and Maggie Smith. Valentine’s Day, eh? What were the odds? (Winners in bold.)

BAFTA1

Outstanding British Film
45 Years – Andrew Haigh, Tristan Goligher
Amy – Asif Kapadia, James Gay-Rees
Brooklyn – John Crowley, Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey, Nick Hornby
The Danish Girl – Tom Hooper, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Anne Harrison, Gail Mutrux, Lucinda Coxon
Ex Machina – Alex Garland, Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich
The Lobster – Yorgos Lanthimos, Ceci Dempsey, Ed Guiney, Lee Magiday, Efthimis Filippou

Not a surprise but also not the best result, with both The Danish Girl and 45 Years more deserving. Presented by Kate Winslet and Idris Elba.

Special Visual Effects
Ant-Man – Jake Morrison, Greg Steele, Dan Sudick, Alex Wuttke
Ex Machina – Mark Ardington, Sara Bennett, Paul Norris, Andrew Whitehurst
Mad Max: Fury Road – Andrew Jackson, Dan Oliver, Tom Wood, Andy Williams
The Martian – Chris Lawrence, Tim Ledbury, Richard Stammers, Steven Warner
Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Chris Corbould, Roger Guyett, Paul Kavanagh, Neal Scanlan

With little to choose between any of the nominees, it wasn’t a surprise that the Force took the BAFTA, but good to see Chris Corbould, an industry veteran, rewarded (with his team) for doing such fantastic work. Presented by Emilia Clarke and Matt Smith.

EE Rising Star Award

John Boyega; Taron Egerton; Dakota Johnson; Brie Larson; Bel Powley

A public vote that Boyega himself described as a “fluke” but well-deserved nevertheless. Presented by Jack O’Connell.

BAFTA6

Best Supporting Actor
Benicio Del Toro – Sicario
Christian Bale – The Big Short
Idris Elba – Beasts of No Nation
Mark Ruffalo – Spotlight
Mark Rylance – Bridge of Spies

Absolutely the right result, Rylance’s performance was a masterclass of internalised emotion. Accepted by Steven Spielberg. Presented by Rebel Wilson, who made a really funny speech about diversity and how the Oscars are racist, not to mention how Idris Elba made her nervous.

Animated Film
Inside Out – Pete Docter
Minions – Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda
Shaun the Sheep Movie – Mark Burton, Richard Starzak

Well, who else was going to win? Presented by Eddie Izzard.

Best Supporting Actress
Kate Winslet – Steve Jobs
Alicia Vikander – Ex Machina
Rooney Mara – Carol
Jennifer Jason Leigh – The Hateful Eight
Julie Walters – Brooklyn

Winslet gave far and away the best performance in this category, and if she hadn’t won, then it would have been as baffling as why Carol hasn’t been nominated at the Oscars. Presented by Eddie Redmayne.

BAFTA3

Costume Design
Brooklyn – Odile Dicks-Mireaux
Carol – Sandy Powell
Cinderella – Sandy Powell
The Danish Girl – Paco Delgado
Mad Max: Fury Road – Jenny Beavan

A good result for both Beavan and Mad Max: Fury Road, and she got to say, “Oh what a lovely day” at the podium. Presented by Olga Kurylenko and Riz Ahmed.

Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Producer or Director
Alex Garland (Director) – Ex Machina
Debbie Tucker Green (Writer/Director) – Second Coming
Naji Abu Nowar (Writer/Director) Rupert Lloyd (Producer) – Theeb
Sean McAllister (Director/Producer), Elhum Shakerifar (Producer) – A Syrian Love Story
Stephen Fingleton (Writer/Director) – The Survivalist

A great choice for this award, and good to see such a simple, moving story get its due recognition. Presented by Dakota Johnson and Will Poulter.

Adapted Screenplay
The Big Short – Adam McKay, Charles Randolph
Brooklyn – Nick Hornby
Carol – Phyllis Nagy
Room – Emma Donoghue
Steve Jobs – Aaron Sorkin

Congrats to McKay and Randolph who took a daunting, difficult subject and made it accessible to anyone who watched the movie. Presented by Angela Bassett.

Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema (The Michael Balcon Award) 

Established 175 years ago, the winners of this award, Angels Costumes, have been involved in the movies since 1913 and whichever movie you think of, it’s likely you’ve seen at least one of their costumes over the years, from Indiana Jones’ outfit to Gandhi’s robes, and a whole lot more. Presented by Cate Blanchett.

Original Screenplay
Bridge of Spies – Matthew Charman, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Ex Machina – Alex Garland
The Hateful Eight – Quentin Tarantino
Inside Out – Josh Cooley, Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve
Spotlight – Tom McCarthy, Josh Singer

A popular choice that wasn’t any kind of a surprise, and out of a fairly level playing field, but still a good result. Presented by Cuba Gooding Jr.

Film Not in the English Language
The Assassin – Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Force Majeure – Ruben Ostlund
Theeb – Abu Naji Nowar, Rupert Lloyd
Timbuktu – Abderrahmane Sissako
Wild Tales – Damian Szifron

A great result for the portmanteau revenge movie, and good to see that a fiercely adult and uncompromising movie can win a BAFTA. Presented by Carrie Fisher and Domhnall Gleeson.

BAFTA4

The Fellowship Award

Sidney Poitier. Given by the Academy in recognition of a lifetime’s achievement in cinema, with contributions from Oprah Winfrey, Noel Clarke and Lulu. Alas, Poitier was unable to attend due to ill health but there was a filmed (and quite heartfelt) acceptance, and his award was given to him by Jamie Foxx.

Director
The Big Short – Adam McKay
Bridge of Spies – Steven Spielberg
Carol – Todd Haynes
The Martian – Ridley Scott
The Revenant – Alejandro González Iñárritu

Another non-surprise given the scale and the difficulty of making The Revenant, though Todd Haynes may well have felt robbed by comparison. Presented by Stanley Tucci.

BAFTA5

Best Actress
Brie Larson – Room
Saoirse Ronan – Brooklyn
Cate Blanchett – Carol
Alicia Vikander – The Danish Girl
Maggie Smith – The Lady in the Van

Accepted by Lenny Abrahamson, this was completely unexpected. That Cate Blanchett didn’t win was possibly the only real shock of the night. Presented by Sacha Baron Cohen.

Best Actor
Leonardo DiCaprio – The Revenant
Eddie Redmayne – The Danish Girl
Michael Fassbender – Steve Jobs
Matt Damon – The Martian
Bryan Cranston – Trumbo

What a surprise! A shoo-in for the award, DiCaprio thanked many British actors who have inspired him over the years, and Tom Hardy in particular. Presented by Julianne Moore.

BAFTA2

Best Film
The Big Short
Bridge of Spies
The Revenant
Carol
Spotlight

With DiCaprio and Iñárritu winning in their categories this wasn’t any kind of a shock, but it was a sad moment to see Carol overlooked yet again. Presented by Tom Cruise.

The following awards weren’t shown during the broadcast:

Documentary
Amy – Asif Kapadia, James Gay-Rees
Cartel Land – Matthew Heineman, Tom Yellin
He Named Me Malala – Davis Guggenheim, Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald
Listen to Me Marlon – Stevan Riley, John Battsek, George Chignell, R.J. Cutler
Sherpa – Jennifer Peedom, Bridget Ikin, John Smithson

Cinematography
Bridge of Spies – Janusz Kaminski
Carol – Ed Lachman
Mad Max: Fury Road – John Seale
The Revenant – Emmanuel Lubezki
Sicario – Roger Deakins

Editing
The Big Short – Hank Corwin
Bridge of Spies – Michael Kahn
Mad Max: Fury Road – Margaret Sixel
The Martian – Pietro Scalia
The Revenant – Stephen Mirrione

Production Design
Bridge of Spies – Adam Stockhausen, Rena DeAngelo
Carol – Judy Becker, Heather Loeffler
Mad Max: Fury Road – Colin Gibson, Lisa Thompson
The Martian – Arthur Max, Celia Bobak
Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Rick Carter, Darren Gilford, Lee Sandales

Make Up & Hair
Brooklyn – Morna Ferguson, Lorraine Glynn
Carol – Jerry DeCarlo, Patricia Regan
The Danish Girl – Jan Sewell
Mad Max: Fury Road – Lesley Vanderwalt, Damian Martin
The Revenant – Sian Grigg, Duncan Jarman, Robert Pandini

Sound
Bridge of Spies – Drew Kunin, Richard Hymns, Andy Nelson, Gary Rydstrom
Mad Max: Fury Road – Scott Hecker, Chris Jenkins, Mark Mangini, Ben Osmo, Gregg Rudloff, David White
The Martian – Paul Massey, Mac Ruth, Oliver Tarney, Mark Taylor
The Revenant – Lon Bender, Chris Duesterdiek, Martin Hernandez, Frank A. Montaño, Jon Taylor, Randy Thom
Star Wars: The Force Awakens – David Acord, Andy Nelson, Christopher Scarabosio, Matthew Wood, Stuart Wilson

So in the end it was The Revenant‘s night, with five wins. More heartening was the four wins for Mad Max: Fury Road, a movie that was released (in awards terms at least) so long ago that some people might have forgotten all about it. That Carol didn’t pick up a win remains as baffling as America’s fascination with Donald Trump, and its snub here seems to be in keeping with the Oscars more overt slight. Which begs the question, just what does a lesbian love story have to do to win an award?

Mad Max Fury Road

Room (2015)

13 Saturday Feb 2016

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Room

D: Lenny Abrahamson / 118m

Cast: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Sean Bridgers, Joan Allen, Tom McCamus, William H. Macy, Amanda Brugel

Ma (Larson) and Jack (Tremblay) live in what they refer to as Room, literally a single room environment that they haven’t been outside of since Ma was abducted and brought there seven years before, and Jack’s birth five years ago. Everything in Room is functional or adapted to be functional. There’s a TV but Ma has told Jack that the people and places and things he sees there aren’t real, and that there isn’t any outside world, only space. This doesn’t quite explain the visits of Old Nick (Bridgers) who brings supplies and ensures the power stays on, but as a constant in their lives, Jack doesn’t question his appearances, or why he has to sleep in the closet when Old Nick pays Ma “special attention”.

The door to Room is always locked; Old Nick uses a combination keypad to get in and out, and Ma doesn’t know the code. With Jack now five years old, and of an age where he can begin to understand the concept of a larger world outside Room – even if he doesn’t believe it can be true – Ma decides it’s time for them to leave and begin to lead a normal life. One night when Old Nick pays them a visit she arranges for Jack to appear sick. Old Nick refuses to do anything more than bring more painkillers the next night. But Ma persuades Jack to play dead and be wrapped up in a rug – her idea is that Old Nick will take Jack’s body somewhere to bury it; when he stops his truck at a road junction, Jack is to jump out and run to the first person he sees and ask for help.

Room - scene1

Old Nick is fooled by Ma’s assertion that Jack has died, and takes out the rug with Jack inside it. In the back of Old Nick’s truck, Jack frees himself from the rug, and after a few missed opportunities, jumps from the truck. Old Nick chases him but they encounter a man walking his dog. Seeing that something is wrong, the man challenges Old Nick who throws Jack to the ground and speeds off in his truck. The police are called, and a supportive officer (Brugel) manages to work out from what Jack tells her, just where Ma is. The two are reunited, and at last they can begin to build a new life for themselves.

Without spoiling anything for anyone who hasn’t seen Room yet, it’s a movie of two unequal parts, both in running time and in content. For the first forty-five minutes (approximately), we’re sequestered in Room with Ma and Jack, stuck like they are within four unforgiving walls. But while you might be expected to feel confined or claustrophobic, it’s rarely the case because Ma and Jack don’t see it that way – Jack because he’s never known anything else, and Ma because she’s adapted after seven years to her environment. Neither feels trapped (or at least Ma never gives any indication that she does), and neither appears unhappy with their lot. They have each other, and live in a world that, Old Nick aside, is theirs alone. For Jack it’s a normal life given the parameters Ma has made for him, and for Ma it’s the only life she can have because she wants to protect Jack.

Once Jack and Ma are free of Room, and free to go wherever they wish (once the media has lost interest in them at least), they find themselves confined in a different environment, Ma’s childhood home, now inhabited by her mother, Nancy (Allen) and her new partner, Leo (McCamus) (her father, Robert (Macy) lives abroad, though he returns when he learns Ma – whose real name is Joy – has been rescued). The remaining hour and a quarter finds Joy and Jack finding their way in this new world. There are clever moments of adjustment, such as Jack learning to navigate stairs, but Joy retreats from everyone. And while this may seem like an unexpected turn of events – that Joy should have the most trouble adapting to being back in the “real world” – it’s actually entirely predictable.

Room - scene2

This lessens the drama of the second part, as we watch Jack assimilate slowly but surely, and with much more inner confidence than his mother. While Joy becomes dissociative and withdrawn, Jack begins to blossom, aided by his grandmother and Leo (and a very cute dog called Seamus). In fact, it’s the way in which Jack adapts so quickly to his new life that causes the movie to lose some of the dramatic intensity it’s built up until that point. And with Joy missing for a while, the movie has little choice but to show just how Jack’s bonding with Leo and his grandmother is replacing his formerly rock-solid relationship with his mother. It’s a natural progression, perhaps – Jack makes his first friend during this period as well – but given the vigour and the power of the movie’s first part, it also feels like a bit of a letdown. Just how easily can Jack and Joy be separated from each other? As it turns out, quite easily.

Room has been adapted by Emma Donoghue from her novel of the same name, but what works on the page doesn’t translate so well to the screen. Jack provides random smatterings of narration to explain his feelings, but while these interior monologues work in the novel, here they’re another example of insecurities built in to the script. Far more effective is Jack’s wide-eyed astonishment at seeing an impossibly vast sky as he lies in the back of Old Nick’s truck. Inside Room we’re seeing this insular world almost entirely from Jack’s perspective, and thanks to the strength of the material, and Abrahamson’s masterly direction, these scenes have a depth and a profundity that the outside world lacks. Once we’re out of Room the movie loses its way and never recovers the compelling aspect that propels those first forty-five minutes.

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Thankfully, the two central performances, despite being hamstrung by the change in narrative direction, are uniformly superb. Larson is possibly the finest actress in her age group working today, and here she’s simply breathtaking, finding aspects and nuances of her character that aren’t always apparent from the script, and making Joy’s eventual struggle with “normality” less formulaic than it is as written. Matching her is Tremblay, giving the kind of honest, uninhibited performance that only a child actor can give. He provides such an intelligent, forthright portrayal that the viewer can only look on in wonder at how effortlessly he does it all. Just watch his reactions to being asked questions by the police officer: they’re a mini-masterclass in conflicting emotions forcing themselves past overwhelming shock.

In the director’s chair, Abrahamson (thankfully not calling himself Leonard anymore) excels at portraying the insular world of Room, and maintains an uneasy tension throughout these scenes and Jack’s escape. And with the aid of Danny Cohen’s exemplary camerawork, he allows the viewer to prowl in and around Room as if they were living there too. But once the movie settles down at Nancy’s home, his confidence and control over the material lessens and leads to several scenes lacking any kind of resonance at all. And as a result, newcomers to the story such as Allen and McCamus are left largely to fend for themselves. It’s clear that Abrahamson and Donoghue have forged a good working partnership, but it’s also clear that they couldn’t recognise or overcome the deficiencies that so hurt the movie’s second act. In the end, the relationship the viewer has built up with Ma and Jack in their captivity is ruined by their freedom, and in essence, that’s too much of a price to pay when that relationship has been so immediate and so powerful.

Rating: 7/10 – let down by an injudicious approach to its second part, Room wastes the tremendous amount of goodwill it acquires during the first part, and becomes a movie that sinks under the weight of its own capitulation; however, it does boast two hugely impressive performances from Larson and Tremblay, and an opening forty-five minutes that are among the most remarkable of any movie in recent years – so see it just for them.

Digging for Fire (2015)

28 Saturday Nov 2015

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Digging for Fire

D: Joe Swanberg / 84m

Cast: Jake Johnson, Rosemarie DeWitt, Brie Larson, Orlando Bloom, Sam Rockwell, Anna Kendrick, Mike Birbiglia, Chris Messina, Tom Bower, Sam Elliott, Judith Light, Steve Berg, Ron Livingston, Melanie Lynskey, Jane Adams

Tim (Johnson) and Lee (DeWitt) are a young-ish couple with a three year old son who agree to housesit for one of Lee’s clients while they’re away. On their first day there, while doing some gardening, Tim unearths what looks like a human bone, and a handgun. Lee is all for putting them back and forgetting about them, reasoning that the two items don’t have to be linked. Tim is brimming over with curiosity and wants to do more digging, but nevertheless he calls the police; when they prove uninterested Tim lets himself be persuaded not to pursue it further.

The weekend begins the next day. Lee has made arrangements to take their son to visit her mother (Light) and stepfather (Elliott), while Tim is tasked with completing their tax returns. But both have other plans for their respective weekends: Tim has invited several of his friends for a barbecue and beers, while Lee is looking forward to a girls’ night out with her friend Squiggy (Lynskey). Neither knows of the other’s plans, and neither of them has any intention of letting the other know what they’ve been up to.

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That nothing goes quite as either of them expect shouldn’t come as any surprise. Tim’s excitement about his discovery leads to his roping his friends into helping him dig for further remains, while Lee’s friend, too busy warring with her husband Bob (Livingston) to leave him alone with their children’s nanny for the evening, backs out of their arrangement. More of Tim’s friends turn up, with one of them, Billy Tango (Messina), bringing with him two women, Max and Alicia (Larson, Kendrick). While Tim finds himself digging alone, he’s joined by Max who shows an interest in what he’s doing, and digs with him. Meanwhile, Lee resigns herself to a quiet night at her mother’s.

The next day sees Tim making a half-hearted attempt to do the taxes before resuming his digging. Lee goes shopping and buys herself a leather jacket before returning to her mother’s and deciding that this evening she’s going to go out, even if it is by herself. Tim finds himself rejoined by Max and together they continue looking for more evidence of foul play. When he calls it a day he offers to take Max out for a bite to eat as a thank you for helping him. With her own clothes dirty from all the digging, Tim tells her to choose from Lee’s clothes. And while Tim’s evening heads in one direction, Lee’s heads in another as she meets Ben (Bloom) in a restaurant bar.

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Right about now, anyone watching Digging for Fire will be sizing up each situation and deciding which one of Tim and Lee will make the classic mistake of sleeping with someone else. But co-writers Swanberg and Johnson don’t make it so easy, and deftly pull the rug out from under the viewer’s feet. This may seem like a movie whose focus is on what happens when both halves of a married couple experience some much longed-for freedom, but it’s a much cleverer movie than that, and despite all the drinking and drug-taking and sexual tensions that occur, this is a staunchly conservative movie that reinforces marriage, fidelity and parenthood as truly desirous states to be in.

With temptation placed firmly in the way of both Tim and Lee, it’s interesting to see how the script has them react. Tim wants to party like he used to before he got married but he’s only really comfortable when he’s focused on his digging; when he calls it a night he barely receives any acknowledgment from any of his friends, so keen are they to carry on partying. And when he’s joined by Max the next day he’s so pleased that someone wants to help him it doesn’t matter to him if that someone is male or female. For Tim, discovering further evidence of foul play – if indeed there is any – has added an extra layer of blinkers to the way he views other women anyway, and despite Max’s obvious good looks and equally obvious liking for him, he can only view her as a friend.

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Lee, however, becomes seduced by Ben’s carefree nature, a world away from her life as a wife and mother, tied down by responsibilities (even though she tells their son they’re down to his father to deal with – or mommy will be angry), and a belief that her life as an individual is over with. Call it post-natal depression, or a post-marital fugue, but Lee sees herself as having lost touch with herself, while Tim tells anyone who’ll listen how much his life has changed for the good through being a parent. Neither is wrong, and their feelings are true for each of them, but it’s whether or not they really need to recapture their lives before marriage and parenthood “tied them down” that counts.

Swanberg has been making smart, subtly sophisticated comedy dramas like this one for some time now – Drinking Buddies (2013), also with Johnson, is a gem that should be tracked down immediately if you haven’t seen it already – and while you could level an accusation of naïvete at the way in which Tim and Lee behave around their “prospective partners”, it’s the way in which they recognise the strength and durability of their marriage, and how it enhances their individual lives as well as their commitment to each other that makes it all work so well. And Swanberg is aided by two generous central performances from Johnson and DeWitt, wonderful supporting turns from Birbiglia, Larson and Lynskey, and rounds it all off with a carefully chosen soundtrack that perfectly complements the events happening on screen.

Rating: 8/10 – full of indie charm and a raft of likeable characters we can all relate to, Digging for Fire is another winner from Swanberg; smart, funny, emotional and knowing, it’s a movie that many married couples will find themselves relating to, and never once gives in to the temptation of being self-conscious or patronising.

Trainwreck (2015)

01 Saturday Aug 2015

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Trainwreck

D: Judd Apatow / 125m

Cast: Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, Brie Larson, Tilda Swinton, Colin Quinn, John Cena, Vanessa Bayer, Ezra Miller, Mike Birbiglia, Evan Brinkman, LeBron James, Amar’e Stoudemire, Daniel Radcliffe, Marisa Tomei

Amy Townsend (Schumer) is a magazine journalist whose idea of a relationship is to sleep with a guy on the first date and then wave goodbye to them in the morning (or sooner if she’s able to). She works for a men’s magazine called S’nuff that publishes articles such as “You’re Not Gay, She’s Boring”; when her editor, Dianna (Swinton) assigns her to write a profile on sports doctor Aaron Conners (Hader), she balks because she knows nothing about sports and thinks it’s all too silly.

At the same time as all this is going on, Amy and her sister Kim (Larson) are trying to get their father, Gordon (Quinn), who’s suffering from multiple sclerosis, into a nursing home. He’s a bit of a curmudgeon and is always antagonising or upsetting people. He also cheated on their mother and Kim resents him for it, though Amy is more forgiving. When she meets Aaron he quickly guesses that she knows nothing about sports, but there’s an attraction between them, and she plans to meet up with him again. In the meantime an evening with her on/off boyfriend Steven (Cena) goes horribly wrong when he learns about all the other men she’s been seeing.

Kim, who’s married to Tom (Birbiglia) and is stepmother to his son Allister (Brinkman), reveals she’s pregnant, but when she tells Gordon his attitude leads to her and Amy falling out. Amy meets Aaron again and after the interview they go back to his place and have sex; Amy breaks her own rule and stays the night. Panicked by this unexpected turn of events, Amy decides she must end things but Aaron calls wanting to see her again. At the next interview she intends to tell him but her dad has a fall and she and Aaron go to him, and Aaron stitches his head wound.

Amy and Aaron begin dating in earnest but she’s worried she’ll screw it up. At a baby shower for her sister, Amy upsets everyone with tales of her sexual escapades, but when she tries to apologise to Kim a couple of days later, Kim has some bad news that brings them back together. Later though they have another falling out, and she and Aaron argue as well. When she attends a function where Aaron is to receive an award she gets a call from Dianna and leaves the room while he makes his speech. When he catches up with her outside they have a fight which carries on back at his apartment. The next morning Aaron is unable to go ahead with an operation because of how tired he is. When he confronts Amy and says they should take a break, she takes him to mean permanently. Aware that this is one argument he’s not going to win, he leaves, which prompts Amy to return to her old ways… but this gets her into more trouble than she ever expected…

Trainwreck - scene

Best known for her TV appearances in the likes of A Different Spin with Mark Hoppus (2010), Delocated (2012) and her own show, Inside Amy Schumer (2013-15), the writer and star of Trainwreck is perhaps an unlikely choice to drive a relationship dramedy directed by Judd Apatow, but surprisingly enough, Schumer does extremely well in both departments. She’s not the world’s greatest actress, and her script skirts perilously close at times to being needlessly crude, but with the aid of Apatow, Hader and a strong supporting cast, Schumer has come up with a story that covers a lot of emotional ground and manages to avoid short-changing its characters.

And while her script isn’t exactly the most original concoction out there – too much happens that makes it look as if Schumer followed a pre-existing blueprint – what makes it work as well as it does is Apatow’s handling of the various relationships and the way in which he gives his cast the room to flesh out their characters beyond the story’s conventions, and pays close attention to the serious undertones that are present throughout. These are key to the movie’s overall effectiveness, and shows that Schumer the writer is able to be poignant and touching, as well as funny and caustic. There’s a brief scene between Amy and Allister that is as touching as anything you’ll see in a more dramatic movie, and the moment when Steven reveals his true feelings for Amy is superbly written, acted and directed.

Of course, this is primarily a comedy, but though it is incredibly funny in places – Amy’s attempt at a slam dunk is the movie’s comedy highlight – there are also times where the script tries too hard, notably in a sex scene involving Schumer and Cena that undermines the idea of Amy and Steven being together and includes Cena talking dirty in Chinese (but not really). Elsewhere there are some great one-liners (Aaron calling LeBron James his bitch), instances of situational comedy that brighten things immensely (Amy’s aforementioned speech about her sexual escapades), and some great visual gags too (co-worker Nikki’s smile). All in all the comedy and the drama are well balanced and neither detracts from the other.

The cast enter into the spirit of things with enthusiasm, and aside from the inclusion of some real life athletes (James is particularly awkward), there are some really great performances, notably from Larson as the sensible but resentful sister, and Cena as the boyfriend whose inappropriate responses to another cinema goer’s complaints is another of the movie’s highlights. Schumer proves herself to be a better actress than you might expect, and Hader shows a sensitivity as Aaron that grounds the character and makes him entirely sympathetic. And there are brilliant cameos from Daniel Radcliffe and Marisa Tomei in the movie Amy and Steven go to see called The Dogwalker, a small masterpiece of Sixties existential canine distress appropriately shot in black and white and which is such a glorious pastiche it leaves you wanting more.

Trainwreck is a little slow to get off the ground, and Amy’s behaviour may put off some viewers, but this is a movie that tugs at the heartstrings just as much as it tickles the funny bone. With Apatow using his directorial prowess to enhance Schumer’s script, and a cast prepared to give it their all, Schumer’s first attempt at a polished, nuanced movie is mostly successful, though what missteps it does make aren’t enough to hurt it.

Rating: 8/10 – an unexpected treat (even with the talent involved), Trainwreck is a small triumph, both laugh out loud funny and tearfully serious; all credit to Schumer for coming up with such an intelligent script and not trying to make every scene full of unnecessary jokes.