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Chappaquiddick (2017)

30 Thursday Aug 2018

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aka The Senator

D: John Curran / 107m

Cast: Jason Clarke, Kate Mara, Ed Helms, Jim Gaffigan, Clancy Brown, Taylor Nichols, Bruce Dern, Olivia Thirlby, Lexie Roth, John Fiore

It’s July 18 1969, and while Apollo 11 speeds its way to the Moon, Massachusetts’ senator Edward ‘Ted’ Kennedy (Clarke) has travelled to Chappaquiddick Island to take part in a sail race with his cousin, Joe Gargan (Helms), and US Attorney for Massachusetts, Paul Markham (Gaffigan). That evening, Kennedy, Gargan, and Markham attend a party at a beach house for the Boiler Room Girls, women who were campaign workers for his brother Robert. One of them is Mary Jo Kopechne (Mara). Late on, she and Kennedy go for a drive. Kennedy loses control of the car, and it crashes off a bridge and into a pond. With the car upside down in the water, Kennedy manages to get clear but Mary Jo isn’t so lucky; she drowns. Kennedy returns to the beach house where he tells Joe and Paul what’s happened, but even though they return to the pond, they’re unable to do anything. One thing that both Joe and Paul are certain of is that Kennedy should report the accident as soon as possible. He agrees with them, but his subsequent actions show that doing the right thing is at odds with political expediency…

If you take anything away from Chappaquiddick, it’s that Ted Kennedy was very much in thrall to his family’s political ambitions, and this caused him to behave very erratically in the days following the accident that derailed his chances of ever becoming president. Somewhere behind the experienced political manipulator was a man with a conscience who knew what he had to do – the right thing – but who also didn’t want his political life to be ruined in the process. The tug-of-war between these two ideas is the focus of a movie that tries to be fair to Kennedy and the situation he found himself in, but when you have a character (from real life or not) who tries to manipulate the details of someone’s death for their own personal advantage, and who does so almost as soon as possible, then it’s hard to look at them so objectively. Two moments stand out: Kennedy deciding to say Mary Jo was driving, and later, at her funeral, deciding to wear a neck brace to back up the fabrication that he was suffering from concussion. The movie tries, but it’s hard to sympathise with someone who defaults to manipulation so easily.

As Kennedy, Clarke gives a terrific performance, presenting Kennedy as a weak man clutching at any and all options to keep his political career alive, but with little understanding of how this makes him seem, both to his advisors and the public – and ultimately, without the necessary self-respect that would allow him to see the difference. Mara has what amounts to a supporting role as Mary Jo, while Helms has a rare dramatic role as the increasingly disillusioned Gargan, a man adopted into the Kennedy family but having to come to terms with the fact that Ted isn’t in the same league as his older brothers. The movie keeps an even, methodical pace, but given the subject matter, lacks the energy and passion needed to reinforce just how much of an impact these events had on Kennedy and his future career. Curran directs with a firm eye on the performances, while visually the movie has a dour, melancholy feel to it that matches the subject matter. As an exercise in shining a light on a story that hasn’t been dramatised before, it’s a welcome look at a turbulent moment in late Sixties US history, and as a cautionary tale it’s more than effective.

Rating: 7/10 – with a potent central performance from Clarke, Chappaquiddick is a tale of political hubris that doesn’t pull its punches when exposing just how far someone will go to protect their public position; with a matter-of-fact approach to the material, and a straightforward narrative, it’s certainly a no frills movie, but in many ways it’s all the better for being so.

The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards (2015)

14 Tuesday Nov 2017

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D: Ryan Moody, Mark Columbus, Sarah Jean Kruchowski, Shadae Lamar Smith, Vanita Shastry, Simon Savelyev, Jeremy David White / 97m

Cast: James Franco, Abigail Spencer, Rico Rodriguez, Matthew Modine, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn, Kristen Wiig, Tony Cox, Jimmy Kimmel, Jim Parrack, Natalie Portman, Thomas Mann, Keir Gilchrist, Bo Mitchell, Jacob Loeb, Kelsey Ford, Tyler Labine

A collection of seven short movies adapted from the short story collection of the same name by Robert Boswell, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards is that inopportune beast, a movie with no clear, discernible focus other than a plan to relate various tales of longing and regret, and all with the same dour approach to each of the “slices of life” that are depicted. A project that was assembled by graduate students of James Franco’s UCLA moviemaking class, it’s telling that the movie was first seen at the Atlanta Film Festival back in March 2015, but is only now receiving a limited release in the US. It’s an arthouse movie, structured in a way that makes it seem more knowing and truthful than it actually is, and which proves only moderately successful in its aims and ambitions.

The seven tales on display are a mixed bunch, both in terms of their content, and in their relation to each other. The first, A Walk in Winter, sees Conrad (Franco), a young man returning to his hometown to identify the remains of a body that may be that of his long-missing mother. An extended visit to the sheriff’s office reveals a childhood beset by abuse and further mystery. The second, Guests, concerns a young boy, Charlie (Rodriguez), who has to deal with his ailing, cancer-stricken father (Modine) and a school bully at the same time. He’s the quintessential chubby kid who’s picked on because he’s different (thanks to his dad), but he’s not the pushover everyone thinks he is. In the third tale, Almost Not Beautiful, sisters Lisa (Mara) and Amanda (Tamblyn) revisit aspects of their childhood while also trying to reconnect after spending some time apart. In doing so they discover a mutual dependency that they’d forgotten about. The fourth tale, Miss Famous, features a maid, Monica (Wiig), whose antipathy towards her clients provokes fantasies where she is rich and famous.

In the fifth, Lacunae, a young man, Paul (Parrack), also returns to his hometown, ostensibly to see his parents, but also to see an ex-girlfriend, Laura (Portman), who may have given birth to their son. Paul is adamant that the child isn’t his, but he can’t resist seeing for himself. In the sixth tale, Smoke, three friends (Gilchrist, Mann, Mitchell) sit round a camp fire and tell bogus stories of their sexual exploits. Each is seeking approbation from the other two, and each story is clearly a longed-for fantasy. And in the final tale, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, another young man, this time called Keen (Loeb), attends a party where he not only hooks up with a young woman, Lila (Ford), but also finds himself in serious trouble with the law. Each tale is bookended by clips and randomly assembled stills from old home movies and family celebrations, and all of which adds a melancholy feel to the material, and which also serves to provide a sense that these tales take place in a time and a place where nostalgia doesn’t provide a soothing balm, but quite the opposite.

With any collection of stories that are meant to have a unifying theme, that theme needs to be evident – even if it’s to varying degrees – in order for the overall movie to work effectively, and also to offset the obvious problem whereby the viewer is forced to reinvest their attention every ten to fifteen minutes in a new story and new characters, while also attempting to assimilate each tale into an organic whole. This is where any portmanteau movie succeeds or fails, but in this case, it’s very nearly a draw, with three stories lacking any appreciable impact by themselves, three other stories working effectively on their own, and one having a foot in both camps. As a whole, though, the movie remains sporadically engaging, with its broader themes of memory and fantasy pushed to the fore when its more telling themes of disappointment and paralysed ambition should be front and centre. This isn’t a feelgood movie, and nor does it come with any message of hope for its characters. Mistakes have been made, and more mistakes will be made as they move forward with their lives. The question is, will any of them learn from their mistakes?

With childhood trauma leading the way in explaining why these characters behave and struggle as they do, each director approaches their tale in a way that, unfortunately, isolates each one from the rest. There’s no symmetry to the stories, and no unifying directorial approach (other than that there is no unifying approach), all of which leaves each episode feeling under-developed or prosaic. Despite some good performances – Franco, Tamblyn, Wiig, Portman, Loeb – the movie relates each tale as if it contains a singular message within itself, and a broader message for everyone to pick up as well (though just when is difficult to work out). But the problem is that with only three of the stories working effectively enough on their own – and they are A Walk in Winter, Guests, and The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards – too much of the movie feels like there should be more to it, and too much of the movie feels like it should be making more of a connection with the viewer.

That said, there’s no denying the ambition and some of the talent on display behind the camera – Moody, Columbus, and White stand out in particular – but it’s all in service to material that isn’t as compelling as it should be given Boswell’s talent as a writer (he also provides the movie with a jaundiced, earnest narration). Some viewers may find some of the tales hard to decipher, while others may feel there’s no need for any deciphering at all, but what is clear is that some amount of interpretation is required, but that it won’t benefit the viewer in the long run. Sometimes, a teenager bragging about having sex with an older woman, is purely wish fulfilment and nothing more. It doesn’t need to resonate, and it doesn’t here. This, ultimately, is where the movie falters, by failing to resonate. And no matter how much effort has been spent, and no matter how much artistic endeavour is on display, when the tale itself isn’t able to carry the viewer forward then it’s time to move on to the next one… unless the next one has the same problem.

Rating: 5/10 – a great idea for a graduate project that proves to be less than a great idea for a movie as a whole, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards wants to be engaging and meaningful, but hasn’t the consistency to make it all work; some tolerance is required to get through the more sluggish and unaffecting episodes, but despite a clutch of good performances, it remains a frustrating experience and one that should be approached with caution.

Morgan (2016)

10 Saturday Dec 2016

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morgan-2016

D: Luke Scott / 92m

Cast: Kate Mara, Anya Taylor-Joy, Rose Leslie, Toby Jones, Michelle Yeoh, Boyd Holbrook, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Giamatti, Michael Yare, Chris Sullivan, Vinette Robinson, Brian Cox

As the song has it, “If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise…” Not once you see Kate Mara’s risk assessment consultant, Lee Weathers, driving to a facility hidden deep in the woods where a science experiment, codenamed L9, is going badly wrong. The experiment in question is the creation of a human/nano technology hybrid. The hybrid (Taylor-Joy) looks like a young woman, is called Morgan, is actually five years old, and has recently stabbed one of the team, Kathy (Leigh), repeatedly in the face and blinded them in their left eye. With a psych evaluation planned to take place that will determine whether or not the project continues, Lee’s role is to make the final decision, either to continue the work or to shut it down.

For everyone’s safety, Morgan is confined to a room that has toughened glass from wall to wall, and floor to ceiling. She appears to understand the need for this, but the team are overly apologetic about the incident with Kathy. They all state that it was their fault and not Morgan’s; they should have known better, should have been paying better attention to her current mental state. Lee takes none of this for granted, but does accept that they treat Morgan more as a human being than as a thing. When the psychiatrist, Dr Alan Shapiro (Giamatti), arrives the next day to conduct his assessment, his approach goads Morgan to anger, and a violent outburst means that Lee has no option but to shut down the project.

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She’s stopped, though, by the team. Rendered unconscious, she awakes in Morgan’s safe room, while the team’s own efforts to control the situation – and Morgan – start to unravel at an alarming rate. By the time Lee finds a way out of the room, Morgan’s determination to be free from the confines of the facility has proven disastrous for the team, and she makes her escape, taking along Amy (Leslie), who is the one member of the team that Morgan considers is her friend. But Lee is equally determined to find Morgan and make sure that the project is shut down once and for all.

Morgan is director Luke Scott’s first feature, a step up in terms of money and opportunity following his clever and impressive short movie, Loom (2012). That movie augured well for the future, but with Morgan it seems that Ridley Scott’s son has been let down by a poorly realised script, and the faint whiff of post-production interference. There’s little about the movie that works as well as it should, and long-time fans of this type of speculative sci-fi will be dismayed by the many ways in which the narrative shies away from making any kind of moral statement.

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Another screenplay picked out from the Black List (this time 2014’s), Morgan begins with a shocking act of violence, and continues with not one character reacting or behaving normally in its wake. Everyone carries on as if it was a minor incident, one that’s hardly worth bothering about. Morgan behaving strangely is to be expected, but when the team behave even more strangely than she does, and right from the start, then it only serves to undermine the drama that follows. Only Michelle Yeoh’s mother figure acts as if she has any idea of the consequences to Morgan’s actions, but she’s allotted so little screen time that she becomes the occasional, and token, voice of reason, trotted out to offer a limited balance to everyone else’s strange behaviour.

Things are further hampered by the character of Lee, played with stony-faced antipathy by Mara. It’s a role that’s difficult to talk about without revealing too much of why the character is at the facility in the first place, but while she’s an outsider given over to remaining so, Mara provides a better performance than expected, giving Lee an unexpected likeability even though she’s pretty much there to conduct a corporate hatchet job if necessary. As the movie progresses, her minimal social skills are stripped away, and Mara again strikes a careful balance between “assassin for hire” and consultant doing her job. She’s matched by Taylor-Joy, whose bleached looks and unnerving stare never quite manage to morph into the features of someone you could trust implicitly. Though her motivation becomes more and more strained as the movie continues, her performance highlights the emotions that Morgan has managed to express, even though she can’t understand them properly.

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Alas, the rest of the cast aren’t given nearly enough to make their roles worthwhile, and as you might expect, some are just waiting around until Morgan decides that everyone is surplus to requirements. The final half hour ups the ante in terms of action, and Mara and Taylor-Joy enjoy some well-choreographed fight scenes, but even then there’s a distinct lack of tension or energy. Scott seems unable to inject the necessary spark to make things that much more exciting, and the movie suffers as a result. As it heads towards an inevitable conclusion, one that it’s set up right from the moment we first see Lee in her car, Morgan begins to look and sound and feel like another great idea for a movie given the least amount of commitment by all involved. That’s not entirely true, but there are large stretches where the viewer won’t be able to shake off that feeling at all.

Watching Morgan, there’s an obvious correlation with Ex Machina (2015), but this is a different movie with a different agenda, and nowhere near as complex. The script by Seth W. Owen isn’t as fully rounded or well thought out as it needs to be, and Scott never really finds a way to avoid the pitfalls that Owen has left in situ. And watching the movie unfold, and the speed with which it changes direction from a somewhat intriguing sci-fi thriller to all-out action drama, it does smack a little of interference in the post-production stages, as if the producers had realised that the movie was in danger of losing its audience altogether if it didn’t change tack. On the plus side, the movie does have a decent score courtesy of Max Richter, and Tom McCullagh’s production design does help to anchor the movie in a more realistic fashion than the script does.

Rating: 4/10 – what could have been an intriguing, thought-provoking movie is scuppered by poor narrative choices, a lack of credible characterisations, and a shift in tone two thirds in that alters the movie’s trajectory as if no one would notice; a good idea given a lacklustre presentation, Morgan will only satisfy those viewers who don’t expect much from sci-fi thrillers, or are comfortable looking at things only on a superficial level.

Trailers – Diary of a Chambermaid (2015), Morgan (2016) and Len and Company (2015)

27 Friday May 2016

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When you’re making a version of a novel by Octave Mirbeau that’s been filmed before by the likes of Jean Renoir (in 1946), and Luis Buñuel (in 1964), then you need to bring something special to the mix. Alas, from the looks of the trailer for this latest incarnation of Diary of a Chambermaid, it seems as if director and co-writer Benoît Jacquot has somehow mishandled things to the point of making Léa Seydoux’s title character more pouting and hostile than sympathetic. Combined with elements that make it look like it will descend into thriller territory, this adaptation looks as if it’s doomed from the start, but with Vincent Lindon in support it may yet redeem itself, although to do so, it’s really got to outshine a trailer that doesn’t do the movie any justice. Unless…

 

Morgan is the first feature from Luke Scott (son of Ridley), whose short movie Loom (2012) showed considerable promise. The tale of a corporate risk assessment consultant (played by Kate Mara) who is tasked with deciding if an artificial being that’s been created in a laboratory should be terminated, it looks stylish, creepy and tense, and the trailer holds back from revealing what the artificial being looks like – even though Morgan is played by Anya Taylor-Joy, Thomasin in The Witch (2015). By adding a touch of mystery, and not revealing too much about the movie’s scenario, the trailer does better than most in making Morgan a movie that might just be better than other Frankenstein-inspired efforts released in recent years.

 

In Len and Company, Rhys Ifans is the washed-up rock star turned in-demand producer trying to get away from it all by imposing a voluntary exile on himself. But the peace and quiet and booze-assisted reflection he seeks is interrupted first by his son (played by Jack Kilmer, son of Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley), and then by the pop star he helped create (played by Juno Temple). With director Tim Godsall’s drama leavened by some moments of bittersweet humour, the movie has a knowing attitude toward its characters, and serves as a reminder that Ifans can be a remarkable actor when necessary. It may not make it onto many people’s Ten Best lists for 2016, but this looks as if it has the potential to surprise anyone who sees it.

Fantastic Four (2015)

26 Saturday Sep 2015

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Fantastic Four

D: Josh Trank / 100m

Cast: Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey, Tim Blake Nelson

Telephone call from Fantastic Four director Josh Trank to Marvel head Stan Lee:

Trank: Hi, is that Stan Lee?

Lee: Yes. Who’s this?

Trank: Hi, it’s Josh Trank, I’m directing the new Fantastic Four movie.

Lee: How’s it going?

Trank: It’s going very well, very well indeed. I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised.

Lee: That’s good. I hear you’ve made some interesting casting choices.

Trank: That’s true, but I think Toby Kebbell will be the definitive Victor Von Doom.

Lee: Ah, that wasn’t what I meant… Anyway, what can I do for you?

Trank: Well, I was calling to find out when you can come out to Louisiana to film your cameo role.

Lee: I’ll need to get back to you on that. I’m really snowed under at the moment. By the way, can you let me see any footage if you have some?

Trank: Sure, we’ve got some great early footage of Reed and Ben as grade school kids, and then seven years later when they’re played by Miles Teller and Jamie Bell.

Lee: Seven years? Okay… Well, if you could let me see it, that would be great.

Trank: Okay, I’ll get it sent to you.

Lee: Great. And I’ll let you know about the cameo.

Trank: Terrific. Well it was great talking to you. You take care now.

Lee: You too. Bye.

Trank: Bye.

Fantastic Four - scene

E-mail sent from Stan Lee to Josh Trank six days later:

Dear Josh – Thanks for sending the early footage, it was… illuminating. I don’t think I’ll be able to find the time to film a cameo, though.

Rating: 3/10 – when your superhero team only works together as a team out of narrative necessity, and the actors portraying that team appear to have all the chemistry of fire and water, then you know you’re in trouble – unless you’re Josh Trank, writers Jeremy Slater, Simon Kinberg (and Trank), and the executives at Twentieth Century Fox, in which case you plough on hoping that no one will notice just how bad the reboot you’re making really is; an appalling mess that features a badly rendered Human Torch to add insult to injury, Fantastic Four is enough to make viewers pine for the 2005 and 2007 movies that should now be reassessed in the light of this movie’s failure to provide anything other than an incoherent plot, dreadful dialogue, even worse characterisations, and one of the all-time worst superhero movies ever (seriously, even Roger Corman’s 1994 version is more enjoyable than this farrago).