Hector (2015)

04 Monday Jun 2018

Tags

Charity shelter, Drama, Family ties, Homeless, Jake Gavin, Keith Allen, London, Peter Mullan, Review, Sarah Solemani, Scotland

D: Jake Gavin / 87m

Cast: Peter Mullan, Keith Allen, Natalie Gavin, Laurie Ventry, Sarah Solemani, Ewan Stewart, Stephen Tompkinson, Gina McKee

Hector McAdam (Mullan) is a fifty-something homeless man “living” with two other homeless people, Dougie (Ventry) and Hazel (Gavin), in a makeshift “home” at the rear of a service station in Scotland. He walks with a limp and has been in poor health for some time. Needing an operation, Hector decides to get in touch with his sister, Lizzie (McKee), who lives in Newcastle, but though he tracks down her husband, Derek (Tompkinson), his sister doesn’t want to see him. With his annual trip to London to stay at a charity shelter over the Xmas period coming up, Hector determines instead to find his brother, Peter (Stewart). With the aid of one of the shelter’s support workers, Sara (Solemani), Hector tries to locate Peter, but with only a vague idea of where to find him, his chances of being successful are very slim. But one day, Sara has a surprise for him, an unexpected visitor – Peter. As the reasons for Hector being homeless begin to be revealed, he’s also given a chance to reconnect with his family, and to face the future with more optimism than before…

Movies like Hector can appear – at first – as if they’re too slight, or too ephemeral, to work properly. This is borne out by the movie’s opening scenes, which see Hector trudging the streets from place to place and looking forlorn and rootless, a man adrift from his own life but having made a kind of peace with that. He’s good-natured, kind and thoughtful, but above all modest in his efforts to get by. Whatever his previous life, he’s moved on in his own way, even though it’s meant rejecting his family (and losing much more). We never learn what it is that means he needs an operation, but the emphasis is clear: it’s serious enough to make him rethink his situation and want to make amends (he has been homeless, and isolated himself, for fifteen years). As we spend more time with Hector, watching how painful walking is for him, how he has moments where he seems on the verge of some kind of seizure, first-time writer/director Jake Gavin ensures that Hector’s plight is one the viewer is entirely sympathetic of. He’s a good man, well liked and regarded, and thanks to Peter Mullan’s exemplary performance, deserving of our support.

By telling Hector’s story against a backdrop of homelessness and personal hardship, Gavin eschews the usual tropes and themes associated with such elements in favour of an approach that allows for tragedy and heartbreak, but not in a way that’s exploitative or melodramatic. Gavin’s direction is confident yet simple, allowing the narrative to broaden its scope when necessary, and to introduce a number of secondary characters, including Solemani’s ultra-supportive charity worker, that allows for an optimistic tone throughout. It’s arguable that Hector has it too easy – a social worker has helped him get his benefits and a pension, a shopkeeper helps him after he’s been assaulted – but that would be to miss the point of Hector’s story: it’s about taking those first brave steps toward reconciliation, both with his family and with himself. Mullan’s performance is first class, quietly commanding and authoritative, and with an emotional clarity to the character that’s all the more impressive for being so restrained. There’s fine support from Solemani, Ventry and Gavin, though Tompkinson’s over protective (and boorish) brother-in-law feels out of place, something that fortunately doesn’t harm the movie too much. It’s a surprisingly rewarding first feature, touching but persuasive, and with a simple sincerity that’s hard to beat.

Rating: 8/10 – a good example of the antithesis of today’s modern blockbuster, Hector is a small gem of a movie: unshowy yet emotive, and handled with due care and attention by all concerned; shot in a low-key style by DoP David Raedeker, this modest production is intelligent, absorbing, and beautifully understated.

Love the Coopers (2015)

04 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Alan Arkin, Christmas, Comedy, Diane Keaton, Drama, Dysfunctional family, Ed Helms, Family ties, Jessie Nelson, John Goodman, Olivia Wilde, Relationships, Review, Romance, Steve Martin

aka Christmas With the Coopers

D: Jessie Nelson / 107m

Cast: Diane Keaton, John Goodman, Alan Arkin, Olivia Wilde, Ed Helms, Marisa Tomei, Amanda Seyfried, June Squibb, Jake Lacy, Anthony Mackie, Alex Borstein, Timothée Chalamet, Maxwell Simkins, Blake Baumgartner, Steve Martin

It’s February, so what better time to watch a movie set at Xmas? Coming to Love the Coopers a couple of months or so after what would be deemed the best time to watch it, the first thing that comes to mind about the movie is that it didn’t have to be set at Xmas at all. As several branches of the same extended family all prepare to get together over the Yuletide period, it’s easy to see how this could have been set at Thanksgiving, or on an anniversary, or in the run up to a wedding (or even a funeral). The backdrop is just that: a backdrop, serviceable enough, but aside from the introduction of mistletoe to encourage some very sloppy kissing, there’s nothing about Love the Coopers that required it to be set at Xmas.

With that out of the way, the viewer can now sit back and enjoy the highly amusing interactions between the various members of the Cooper family, from acerbic patriarch Bucky (Arkin), to his uptight daughter Charlotte (Keaton) and her nearly estranged husband Sam (Goodman), and on down to their wayward daughter Eleanor (Wilde) who meets a soldier, Joe (Lacy), in an airport bar and persuades him to pose as her boyfriend. Then there’s Charlotte’s brother, Hank (Helms), who’s recently lost his job as an in-store photographer, and their sister, Emma (Tomei), who resorts to shoplifting as a way of getting Charlotte a present she’ll have to pretend to like. Oh, and then there’s diner waitress Ruby (Seyfried), whose friendship with Bucky might mean more to both of them than they’ll admit.

Wait, there was mention of “highly amusing interactions”. Well, that was probably the intention, but sadly, Steven Rogers’ screenplay forgot to include any appreciable laughs beyond the aforementioned sloppy kissing, and the tried and trusted use of inappropriate comments from a senior citizen with dementia, Sam’s Aunt Fishy (Squibb). Matters are made worse by the decision to include a narrator (Martin) who provides a running commentary on what’s happening, and what the characters are thinking, and who at the end, is revealed to be – well, let’s just say the narrator’s identity is meant to be whimsical and in some ways, cute, but it just goes to show how poorly constructed and thought out the whole thing is.

With the humour left somewhere behind in an earlier draft perhaps, the movie tries to make the most of a series of underwhelming dramatic scenarios, from the impending break up of Charlotte and Sam, to Hank’s inability to get a new job while keeping his recent unemployment a secret from everyone else, to Eleanor’s confusion over what sort of life she wants and whether or not she believes in love (yawn). Thanks again to Rogers’ screenplay though, the viewer will find these trials and tribulations having a minimal impact, and will most likely be checking their watch to see how much longer all these banal travails have got to continue.

Taking advantage of a Xmas metaphor, the movie is the equivalent of the Xmas roast that’s not been cooked properly. It’s dramatically turgid, unconvincing, and despite the incredibly talented cast (who are clearly wasted – and not in an alcoholic way; that might have been more interesting), never takes flight in the way that its makers probably intended. Quite why it was made is hard to work out, and it’s definitely a movie that you’ll only endure once, but if there’s one thing about it that can be used as a positive, it’s that – no, actually, there isn’t anything.

Rating: 3/10 – the dysfunctional American family coming together to feud and fuss with each other is a staple of US movie making, but Love the Coopers brings absolutely nothing new to the (Xmas) table; poor in every department, and one that its cast will probably want to forget, this is a movie that defies anyone to gain any kind of reward from it.

Stray Bullet (2010)

30 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

1976, Family ties, Georges Hachem, Hind Taher, Lebanon, Marriage, Nadine Labaki, Noha, Review, Revolution, Takla Chamoun, War

Original title: Rsasa taycheh

D: Georges Hachem / 75m

Cast: Nadine Labaki, Takla Chamoun, Hind Taher, Badih Bou Chakra, Rodrigue Sleiman, Nazih Youssef, Patricia Nammour, Pauline Haddad, Nasri Sayegh, Joelle Hannah, Lamia Merhi

Set in Palestine at summer’s end in 1976, Stray Bullet examines the increasing tensions that arise a fortnight before Noha (Labaki) is due to marry Jean (Youssef). Noha is unsure if she wants to go through with the wedding; talking to her friend Wadad (Nammour), it becomes clear that Noha still has feelings for Joseph (Sleiman), the man she was seeing up until three years ago. She tells her friend that she has arranged to meet Joseph, but she doesn’t know if her feelings for him are strong enough to convince her to cancel the wedding. Confused about her own emotions, and unsure of how Joseph feels about her, Noha goes ahead with the meeting already aware that her family will not agree to her seeing Joseph, and that if they find out it will cause a rift between herself and her brother Assaf (Chakra).

Noha meets Joseph and they drive out into the nearby countryside. They talk about how they feel but Noha is disappointed with Joseph’s reactions and gets out of the car. She walks out of sight of Joseph and finds herself witness to a female revolutionary murdering someone tied up in a sack. Joseph appears having heard the shot. While Noha remains in hiding, Joseph is taken away by the revolutionary’s men. Left with no other option, Noha walks back home.

Later that evening, Noha, her mother (Taher), and her older sister Leila (Chamoun) attend a pre-wedding get together at her brother’s. Jean is there too, along with his mother, while the female revolutionary Noha saw earlier, Alexandra (Haddad), is also there (though it’s never made clear how she fits into the family dynamic). There follows a debate about the war – so recently over and yet so clearly on the verge of being resumed – and further discussion about the wedding. As the evening progresses, circumstances provide Assaf with the knowledge that Noha has seen Joseph. He assaults his sister before throwing her out and telling her she isn’t his sister anymore and he doesn’t know her. As she reaches home, tragedy strikes and Noha’s life is turned completely upside down.

Stray Bullet, with its theme of family loyalty versus personal freedom, is a dour piece, deliberately paced, and gloomily lit. The visual style sits well with Noha’s emotional demeanour and her struggle to come to terms with her own feelings. The conflict she feels towards Joseph highlights the way in which she also feels estranged from everyone else around her, particularly her sister, who being older and still unmarried, is who she fears she will become if she doesn’t marry. Noha wants to get married and avoid becoming like Leila, but at the same time she has no feelings for Jean. Family pressure has got her this far, to a point where if she doesn’t act, it will be too late. But which is the worst option: to be married to someone she doesn’t love, or to remain single and unloved by anyone else?

Labaki is a strong screen presence and convincingly portrays Noha as a woman determined to find her own path in life and not the one her family thinks she should take. Noha is wilful, at times scornful, of her sister and mother’s concerns about her commitment to the marriage, and Labaki’s performance is a fierce exercise in emotional warfare, burying Noha’s vulnerability so that she can survive the battle she knows is ahead of her. The moment when Noha rails against Assaf is a short but gripping one, and in that moment, Labaki gives voice to all the pain and insecurity that Noha has been keeping in check for so long. It’s a stand-out moment, and a mesmerising one thanks to Labaki’s committed performance.

Director Hachem has assembled a fine cast, and his script – while at first glance a little predictable – gives everyone plenty to do, even in the smaller roles. Chamoun is particularly good as Noha’s spinster sister and the monologue she gives detailing the failure of her engagement is etched with deep-rooted regret and self-pity. Hachem also makes good use of close-ups, cutting in tight on the characters’ faces, leaving nothing to the audience’s imagination as to how these people are feeling, and how it’s all affecting them. Anger, disappointment, expectations, loss, distress, rage – all these and more are clearly visible. The undercurrents can that affect family life are highlighted with unflinching directness. As a result, the movie’s coda is nothing more than devastating.

Rating: 8/10 – a short but powerfully realised movie that lingers in the memory thanks to good performances and a straightforward visual style; with clear direction and a streamlined, character-driven script, Stray Bullet is a poignant, rewarding experience.