The Snowman (2017)

18 Wednesday Oct 2017

Tags

Charlotte Gainsbourg, Crime, Drama, Harry Hole, Jo Nesbø, Literary adaptation, Michael Fassbender, Murder, Rebecca Ferguson, Review, Serial killer, Thriller, Tomas Alfredson

D: Tomas Alfredson / 119m

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, J.K. Simmons, Toby Jones, David Dencik, Chloë Sevigny, James D’Arcy, Jonas Karlsson, Adrian Dunbar, Ronan Vibert, Michael Yates

Another week, another literary adaptation, another disappointment… Sometimes it’s hard to understand just what happened when a movie based on a well regarded novel hits our screens with all the turgid urgency of dripping sludge. Who do you blame? The director? Maybe. They are in overall charge of how the movie looks and sounds and how thrilling or dramatic or funny or affecting it should be. Or maybe it’s the screenwriter(s). Maybe they didn’t “get” the novel or work out the best way of transferring it to the big screen. Maybe it’s the cast. Maybe they weren’t “feeling it” and couldn’t find their way to putting in good performances. Or perhaps it’s just something a little less tangible, the tone perhaps, or the pacing, or the emotion of the piece. Maybe – maybe – it’s a combination of all these.

That certainly seems to be the case with The Snowman, an adaptation of the novel by Jo Nesbø, and the first movie to feature his troubled detective, Harry Hole (played here by Michael Fassbender in a portrayal that seems based around Hole having only the one expression). Now, if you’ve read this paragraph up til now and you’ve been pronouncing Hole as in a hole in the ground, then you have the first problem that the movie can’t or won’t overcome: no one can even pronounce the lead character’s name correctly. Harry’s surname is pronounced Ho-ly as in holy scripture, or as with this movie, what the holy hell is happening? When the makers of a movie can’t even get the lead character’s name right, then what chance does the rest of the movie have? In short, hardly any chance at all.

A rushed production that finished shooting in April 2016, but which required reshoots in the spring of this year, the movie quickly gets bogged down by the requirements of a muddled script that wants to be regarded as another excellent example of the awkwardly named Scandi-noir. All the elements are there to be ticked off one by one: the dark, brooding lead detective, the dark, brooding atmosphere, the dark, brooding nature of the murders, the killer’s dark, brooding psychological profile, the dark, brooding visual backdrop – clearly if it wasn’t dark and brooding then it wasn’t allowed to remain in the screenplay. But just as having too much of a good thing can spoil that very same thing, having too little in the way of structure, common sense and thrills can also damage a movie’s chances, and The Snowman sabotages its own semi-focused ambitions at every turn.

For a thriller that should grip like a vice, there are just too many risible moments that offer unfortunate injections of humour, such as when James D’Arcy’s character reveals that he’s “infertile. I can’t have children”, just to make sure there’s no one in the audience who won’t understand what infertile means. Then there are the dreadful, logic-takes-a-beating moments such as when the killer uses a mobile phone they know the police will be monitoring to help them pin the blame on someone else, but who then forgets that they can be traced through the use of another mobile phone later on. Scenes come and go that don’t always follow on from each other (though it’s more disheartening to think there might be a longer Director’s Cut out there somewhere), and Harry’s maverick cop activities keep him in the front line no matter how often he acts independently of the rest of the Oslo police force, while Rebecca Ferguson’s impassioned rookie, Katrine, gets sidelined the first time she uses her own initiative. Some of this is in service of the plot, but mostly it just seems that in piecing together the key points of Nesbø’s novel, screenwriters Hossein Amini, Peter Straughan, and Søren Sveistrup have decided to only include the events from every other chapter in the novel, and not adapt the novel as a whole.

Characterisations suffer too as a result of this approach, with Harry’s alcoholism only of any relevance in introducing him to the audience, and to provide a degree of drama surrounding his continual inability to spend time with the son (Yates) of his old flame, Rakel (Gainsbourg). Being an alcoholic isn’t allowed to get in the way of showing just how good a detective Harry really is, and so it becomes less and less effective as a character defect the longer the movie goes on. Likewise the relationship between Harry and Rakel is confusing because there’s no back story for the viewer to latch onto (it might have helped if the producers had decided to adapt the first book in the Harry Hole series, instead of the seventh). The killer’s motives remain vague and unconvincing throughout, and their need to build a snowman at the scene of each crime is as baffling at the end as it is at the beginning. It’s as if it’s use as a signature “flourish” by the killer is all that’s needed. (A reason for it? Ah, don’t worry about it; it’ll look cool.)

Alfredson has spoken about the challenges of making the movie within a short period of time, and without a completed script, leading to issues that were discovered in the editing suite. But while it does seem that there are huge gaps in the narrative, and the movie has to work extra hard to maintain any tension or sense of urgency, it’s the flatness of the drama and the lethargy in certain scenes that can’t be explained away just because of a shortened production period. In the end, Nesbø’s page-turner has become a movie that fails to match up to its energy and verve, and which remains a leaden, dreary experience for the viewer. The performances are adequate (though Kilmer, worryingly, looks as if he’s trying to impersonate present day Gary Busey), and Dion Beebe’s cinematography does at least capture the beautiful isolation of rural Norway in often stunning fashion. But otherwise, this is a routine, formulaic serial killer movie that does itself no favours from beginning to end.

Rating: 4/10 – muddled and convoluted aren’t words that any potential viewer wants to hear, but they describe The Snowman perfectly; uninspired and chock full of thriller clichés, the movie stumbles along trying to be clever and effective, but instead ends up putting a finish to any notion of an intended Harry Hole franchise.

A Dangerous Method (2011)

14 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Affair, Carl Jung, Catch Up movie, David Cronenberg, Drama, Historical drama, Keira Knightley, Michael Fassbender, Psychoanalysis, Sabina Spielrein, Sigmund Freud, True story, Viggo Mortensen

D: David Cronenberg / 99m

Cast: Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Vincent Cassel, Sarah Gadon

A movie examining the intellectual and professional battle between Carl Jung (Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Mortensen) may not be the most obvious choice for David Cronenberg to direct, but there’s long been a psycho-sexual element to his movies that fits in quite easily with Jung and Freud’s combative attitudes about notions of sexual repression (though even they may have balked at some of the ideas Cronenberg came up with during his Seventies output). What emerges though is a movie that concentrates as much on the machinations of the mind as it does on the pleasures of the flesh.

The movie opens in 1902, with the arrival of Sabina Spielrein (Knightley) at the Burghölzli, a psychiatric hospital in Zurich. Sabina displays extreme manic behaviour and contorts her body into uncomfortable positions as an expression of her illness. She is placed in the care of a young doctor, Carl Jung. He begins treating her using various techniques including dream interpretation (though mostly he just asks her how certain events in her childhood made her feel). Sabina responds to the treatment and soon she makes a breakthrough in understanding the root cause of her mania. Wishing to be a psychanalyst (the term Jung uses), Sabina begins to help Jung with his research. Soon, he begins corresponding with Freud, and before long they have a mentor/pupil relationship despite some of the differences in their approach to psychoanalysis (the term Freud uses).

When Freud recommends Jung treat one of his patients, Otto Gross (Cassel), the man’s indulgence of his sexual desires and his insistence that sexual repression is at odds with living a normal, healthy life, serves to make Jung confront his desire for Sabina. They embark on an affair, one that Jung’s wife, Emma (Gadon), tolerates, while Jung himself continues his professional and personal relationship with Freud. However, at the same time that their friendship begins to deteriorate over their different opinions about psychoanalysis, Jung is struck by guilt and seeks to end his affair with Sabina. She involves Freud on her behalf but while he sympathises with her (and more so because Jung has lied to him about the affair), he is unable to intervene. Soon, he and Jung end their relationship, and Sabina strikes out on her own as a psychoanalyst.

Adapted partly from the book, A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr, and partly from screenwriter Christopher Hampton’s play, The Talking Cure, A Dangerous Method is a beautifully shot movie (by DoP Peter Suschitzky) that features a marvellous, deftly arranged score by Howard Shore (based on leitmotifs from Wagner’s Siegfried), and a richly detailed recreation of early 20th century Europe (some parts of which didn’t need to be de-modernised at all). It’s also a movie that outlines and explains in simple terms the differences between Freud and Jung’s different approaches to psychoanalysis, while at the same time doing so in a way that maintains the mystique that surrounded their differing approaches (and for many people, still does). It’s all down to Hampton’s intelligent, precise screenplay and Cronenberg’s effortless way of telling the story. There’s not a wasted scene or moment in the whole movie.

Cronenberg shows a sure hand throughout, and as the inter-relationships between Jung and Freud, and Jung and Sabina, and eventually Sabina and Freud, begin to grow more and more intense, he allows the viewer a glimpse inside the mind and the motivations of each character, whether it’s Jung’s fear of professional repudiation, or Freud’s unyielding pragmatism, or even the enjoyment Sabina derives from being humiliated. These are characters, real life people, that we can understand and, to a degree, sympathise with. They were all involved in the creation of a field of medicine that has since been of benefit to millions upon millions. That they had their own problems shouldn’t be a surprise, anf thanks to Hampton’s erudite and very adroit script, those problems are fleshed out with tremendous skill, and in Cronenberg’s hands, delivered with impeccable attention to professional and emotional detail. Jung may have been more willing to explore other avenues relating to the way in which our subconscious works, but even Freud’s rigid demeanour and intellect are presented credibly and with no small amount of rigour.

The director is aided by a trio of superb performances. Mortensen, playing older, gives Freud a shrewd gravitas, appearing always thoughtful, always seeking to understand the impulses that drive everyone around him (and especially Jung). It’s a role that requires the actor to appear ruminative for long stretches, passively observing and deducing, and Mortensen carries it off with his usual skill and ingenuity. He’s also the source of much of the movie’s dry, offhand humour. Mortensen is such a thoughtful, articulate actor that his presence acts almost as a guarantee of quality, and working with Cronenberg for the third time – after A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007) – he renews that acquaintance to incredibly good effect. As Jung, Fassbender gets the lion’s share of the narrative, and gives a detailed, insightful performance that shows the doubts and concerns that Jung had in terms of his work, and his marriage, and his relationship with Sabina. It’s a well rounded portrayal, not lacking in emotional precision, and gives the actor a chance to impress in a role that requires much of the character’s feelings to be expressed internally, as befits both the period and contemporary public expectations.

How different then for Keira Knightley, who right from the very beginning has to provide an hysteric performance, one that pushes her as an actress and one that pushes the audience’s acceptance of her as a dramatic actress (there’s no doubt that Knightley can act; it’s just that it gets easily forgotten when she’s also a celebrity). She brings a passion and a commitment to the role of Sabina that is powerful and uncomfortable to watch in her early scenes, and even though she gets “better”, the character’s mania remains there, just under the surface and ready to release itself at a moment’s notice. Here, Knightley’s angular features are used to strikingly good effect as Cronenberg keeps her looking as if every moment is a struggle to continue to be “normal”. She and Fassbender work well together, and their scenes are some of the most potent in the whole movie.

As a movie dealing with the birth of psychoanalysis as we know it today, the arguments for and against the theories of Jung and Freud are presented in a way that makes them both intriguing, and elusive, in terms of their true efficacy. Both men were convinced their own approaches were the correct ones, but the movie doesn’t side with either of them, leaving the viewer to make up their own minds as to which man is “right” and which man is “wrong”. Cronenberg orchestrates these discussions with admirable finesse, and if some scenes seem too clinical or distant from the heated passions they’re depicting, it’s in keeping with the notion that Jung and Freud, and even Sabina, were first and foremost observers, and that their own lives were just as worthy of inspection (or introspection) as anyone else’s. And perhaps even more so.

Rating: 8/10 – a vivid and captivating examination of the ways in which early forms of psychoanalysis drew on the experiences and sentiments of its practitioners, A Dangerous Method is absorbing and exhilarating in equal measure; with Cronenberg handling the material so sensitively and without over-simplifying things, it’s a movie that stands out for being about complex ideas as to what makes us tick, and isn’t just a vapid exploration of carnal desires. (14/31)

Alien: Covenant (2017)

12 Friday May 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Drama, Horror, Katherine Waterston, Michael Fassbender, Prequel, Review, Ridley Scott, Sci-fi, Sequel, Thriller, Xenomorph

D: Ridley Scott / 122m

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir, Carmen Ejogo, Jussie Smollett, Callie Hernandez, Amy Siemetz, Nathaniel Dean, Alexander England, Benjamin Rigby, Uli Latukefu, Tess Haubrich

When the Alien franchise was given a new lease of life with official prequel Prometheus (2012), audiences were teased with the idea that they would finally learn just where the series’ chief villain, the xenomorph, came from. Prometheus, though, raised far more questions than it provided answers, and while it introduced the Engineers and went some way to showing the xenomorph’s origins (though not the reasons for its creation), the intended link between this first prequel and the original Alien (1979) remained obscure, and still far from being revealed. With Alien: Covenant, audiences could be excused for believing that some of those unanswered questions would be addressed, and the connecting story expanded on. But with at least two further prequels (sequels to the prequels?) planned, and possibly a third, the message here is frustratingly clear: don’t expect to learn anything you didn’t already know.

After the cod-theological leanings of Prometheus, the latest in the saga opts instead for cod-philosophical leanings, and spends time musing on notions of creation and acknowledging one’s place in the scheme of things. But the movie – scripted by John Logan and Dante Harper from a story by Jack Paglen and Michael Green – isn’t interested in exploring these notions in relation to the human contingent of the story, but instead in relation to two androids: David and Walter (both Fassbender) who represent opposite ends of their creationist cycle. David is the prototype, while Walter is the later model built to surpass the limitations of the original. Together they talk about their creator’s expectations for them, and then their own. But while on the surface these musings appear in keeping with the wider story of the xenomorph’s creation (whatever that may be), they don’t add as much depth to the material as may have been intended. Instead, they provide a basis and a reason for a third act “reveal” that exists purely to set up the next installment.

Before then, we’re introduced to the latest group of dinner dates for the murderous xenomorph. Only this time it’s either a neomorph (“infant” version) or a protomorph (“adult” version), but either way it still behaves like its forebear(?), has acid for blood, screeches like a banshee, and kills anyone in its path. This time around, the movie’s motley band of victims is the crew of the colony ship Covenant. A group of terraformers en route to an Earth-like planet called Origae-6, their cargo consists of two thousand colonists all in cryo-sleep, and a thousand embryos all in cold storage. While the crew also enjoys their cryo-sleep (they’re seven-and-a-half years away from reaching their destination), Walter carries out a variety of assigned tasks and monitors the ship and its personnel. A blast of unexpected solar energy damages the ship, and Walter wakes up the crew – all except for the captain, whose cryo-pod refuses to open. Thanks to the damage to the ship’s systems, the captain burns to death in his cryo-pod, which leaves Oram (Crudup) in charge.

A distress signal picked up from a planet that apparently doesn’t exist on any celestial maps reveals a human origin, and prompts Oram to redirect the Covenant to check it out. With the planet appearing to support human life, and being only a few weeks’ to get to, the reservations of chief terraformer Daniels (Waterston) are acknowledged but unheeded. Leaving chief pilot Tennessee (McBride) and two other crewmembers on board, Oram, along with Daniels, Walter, and the rest of the crew descends to the planet’s surface. There they find an anomaly in the form of wheat, a crashed spaceship, danger in the form of spores that infect two of the crew, and an unexpected rescuer when said spores precipitate the deaths of more than the infected. With a massive magnetic storm hindering their return to the Covenant, Oram and the remaining crew must find a way to survive the deadly intentions of the protomorph, and a more sinister danger lurking in their midst.

Those who found themselves dissatisfied with the direction taken in Prometheus will be pleased with this return to the series’ more basic roots, but even though it’s a step in the right direction, the problem with the movie overall is that it doesn’t offer anything new, and it doesn’t come close to replicating the tension and sense of dread that made Alien such an impressive outing. It tries to, and the script is clearly designed and constructed to provide gory set pieces at regular intervals in honour of the series’ abiding commitment to shocking audiences with jolts of body horror, but for anyone who’s seen all the previous movies in the franchise, this is a retread of scenes and set ups that were far more effective the first time round. Likewise the introduction of the various characters as regular joes, a device used to very good effect in Alien, but which here is truncated in favour of getting on with the action. Inevitably this means that when the crew starts to be whittled down, it doesn’t have the same effect as in the past, and Waterston’s plucky terraformer aside, it’s difficult to care about anyone as well.

In many ways, Alien: Covenant is a stripped down series’ entry that concentrates more on reliving old glories than advancing the franchise’s intended long-form narrative. Whatever happens in Alien: Awakening (2019?), it’s to be hoped that it reverts to telling the story begun in Prometheus and which should eventually connect with Alien. Here there are still more questions to be answered, and there’s a suspicion that the writers are already painting themselves into a corner, and that the decision to make a handful of prequels instead of just one all-encompassing prequel is beginning to look more than a little unsound. This has all the hallmarks of a movie made in response to the negative reaction afforded Prometheus, and if so, you have to wonder what this movie would have been like if the reaction had been positive. More of the same? Further exploration of the Engineers and their motivations? More pseudo-religious theorising? Less rampaging alien attacks and gory killings? It looks as if we’ll never know.

With the characters reduced mostly to alien-bait, only Fassbender and Waterston make any impact, though it is good to see McBride playing it completely straight for once. Fassbender is a mercurial actor but he always seems to have a stillness about him that seeps through in all his performances. Here as both David and Walter, that stillness is used to tremendous effect, and whether he’s waxing lyrical about art and music as David, or looking concerned as Walter, Fassbender provides two endlessly fascinating portrayals for the price of one. Waterston is equally impressive in a role that will inevitably draw comparisons with Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, but Waterston is canny enough not to make Daniels as strong-willed as Ripley, nor as valorous. Though she’s the movie’s nominal heroine, Daniels retains a vulnerability that Ripley didn’t have at all, and Waterston is a winning presence, her last act heroism borne out of desperation rather than determination.

Third time around, Ridley Scott ensures the movie looks as beautiful and darkly realised as his other entries, but somehow fails to make the movie as tense and compelling as Alien, or as intellectually portentous as Prometheus. He does ensure that the movie rattles along at a fair old lick, but with the script providing a series of “greatest hits” moments for him to revisit, Scott’s involvement doesn’t always appear to be as purposeful as in the past. There are too many moments where the movie’s energy seems to flag, and the tension dissipates as a result, leaving the viewer to wonder, if a director’s cut should be released in the future, will it be shorter than the theatrical version? And not even he can avoid making the movie’s coda look uninspired and predictable, all of which begs the question, should someone else sit in the director’s chair for the rest of the prequels?

Rating: 6/10 – a fitful, occasionally impressive second prequel/first sequel, Alien: Covenant revisits the haunted house horror tropes that made the first movie so successful, but finds little inspiration to help it fulfill its intentions; another missed opportunity to make the series as momentous as it was nearly forty years ago, where the story goes from here remains to be seen, but in continuing Scott et al really need to remember that a satisfying mystery requires a satisfying answer, something that this entry seems to have forgotten about entirely.

Trespass Against Us (2016)

21 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Adam Smith, Brendan Gleeson, Crime, Drama, Father/son relationship, Lyndsey Marshal, Michael Fassbender, Review, Rory Kinnear, Travellers

D: Adam Smith / 99m

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Brendan Gleeson, Lyndsey Marshal, Georgie Smith, Rory Kinnear, Killian Scott, Sean Harris, Gerard Kearns, Tony Way, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Barry Keoghan, Kacie Anderson, Peter Wight, Alan Williams, Anna Calder-Marshall, Mark Lewis Jones

Chad Cutler (Fassbender) is part of a Travellers community whose patriarch is his father, Colby (Gleeson). Chad doesn’t know how to read or write, but he does know how to drive a car, especially if that car is being pursued by the police and it needs not to be caught. He’s also married, to Kelly (Marshal), and has two children, Tyson (Smith) and Mini (Anderson). Kelly wants more for their children than living in a caravan in a field, and though they go to a local school, it’s the only aspect of “normal” life they’re familiar with. Kelly wants them to move into a proper home – a house – and Chad is in agreement with her: he doesn’t want his children growing up in the same environment he did, and settling for less. But there’s a problem. If Colby finds out what they’re planning, he’ll never agree to it, and he’ll make sure they don’t leave.

While Chad sources a home for them nearby, Colby insists on his involvement in the robbery of a large house that proves to be the home of the Lord Lieutenant for the county. Though the robbery is successful, and Chad evades capture by the police – led by PC Lovage (Kinnear) – he’s not “out of the woods” just yet. Lovage is determined to arrest Chad, but if he can’t do it by fair means then he’ll twist the rules to suit his own agenda. This involves raiding the Travellers’ camp, and intimidating them as well as Chad and Kelly. When Chad learns that his father has intimidated the owner of the home he and his family were going to move into, and it’s no longer on offer, a showdown looms between Chad and Colby, one that Colby wins.

In the meantime, Tyson and Mini go missing from the school. Chad searches for them, but it’s not until Kelly goes to the police that anyone knows the children are with them, and not actually missing or lost. Lovage tries to use their presence at the station as leverage in getting Chad or Kelly to admit his involvement in the robbery, but it doesn’t work. It’s not until Chad, attempting to buy a puppy as a birthday present for Tyson, is refused due to who he is that circumstances conspire to fix the issue of his family’s future once and for all.

Stories about the Travelling community are relatively thin on the ground, which makes Trespass Against Us all the more welcome. Highlighting the darker side of a life that most people will only know about from TV reality shows such as My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, Adam Smith’s directorial debut is keen to show how hierarchy and loyalty play very important roles in the lives of Travellers, and how aspirations, no matter how much they may be needed, go against the established order of things. Whether or not Chad is a typical example of a “new generation” that sees the traditions of the Travelling community as old-fashioned or no longer socially relevant, isn’t addressed directly by Smith and screenwriter Alistair Siddons, but it certainly fuels the story of Chad’s “defection”.

Played with grit and determination by an on-form Fassbender, Chad is aware of his limitations and the possibilities available to his children, but he’s fighting a losing battle against his father. Colby asserts an unhealthy authority over his grandchildren, and at times is far more of an authority figure to them than Chad is. He tells Tyson to ignore what his teacher tells him at school, and looks to reinforce the sense of being part of a tight-knit community that keeps its own counsel (or particularly, Colby’s). Chad has no immediate answer to his father’s belligerence, and is too scared to challenge him openly. Chad and Kelly may want better lives for their children, but Colby doesn’t even see it as an issue; he believes the life they all lead is the right one for them, and any other opinion is a betrayal. As Colby, Gleeson delivers the kind of intense, brooding performance he’s so good at, and he shows Colby’s anger at being challenged in a way that mixes resigned authority and the enjoyment he derives from being a bully.

But while the family dynamic, and the battle, between Chad and Colby forms the central storyline, other aspects of the script lack the same intensity or fail to engage the audience as effectively. Kinnear has the thankless task of making PC Lovage anything more than a pasty-faced thug in a police uniform, his determination to arrest Chad made into an obsession that causes him to behave in ways that steer away from credibility at every turn. Likewise, Harris is back playing the kind of role that casting directors seem eager to offer him. Gordon Bennett – yes, really – sports a close-cropped scalp and rat’s-tail extensions, and looks as if he hasn’t had a bath in weeks. He’s the community halfwit, protected by Colby, derided by Chad and the others, and capable of acts of unwitting cruelty. Harris is a very good actor, but Gordon as written adds little to the narrative, and the script uses him on occasion to move things along, but he’s often a distracting presence, and an unnecessary one at that.

The twin themes of community and tradition are given enough space and time to be explored with a fair degree of depth, and though in truth, this is a story that could have been applied to any number of other, different family units, Smith and Siddons do their best to show how relevant these themes are in Traveller life. The austerity of tradition is touched on to good effect, but the reasoning behind continuing such traditions isn’t explored at all, leaving the viewer to wonder just why living in a field – no matter how much it keeps society away from the Travellers in general – is so preferable to the alternative. It’s an exclusionist stance that needed referencing, if only to provide viewers with a broader perspective.

As a drama, Trespass Against Us sometimes feels forced, as events drift into melodrama and Chad’s dream of emancipation from his father drifts further and further away. By the end, and the unlikely convergence of people and circumstance that provides Chad with a solution, some viewers may well be experiencing a kind of emotional ennui. There’s no payoff, or distinct resolution to Chad’s plight, only a hope that the decision he makes will have the required effect, and allow Kelly and the children to escape Colby’s clutches. But it’s a puzzling conclusion to a story that starts off well, includes a couple of impressively mounted car chases, but which soon loses dramatic focus and traction, and in doing so, looks and feels as if it’s lost sight of that very same story it started off with.

Rating: 7/10 – a mixed bag in terms of drama and the overall material, Trespass Against Us never quite scales the heights of its own ambitions, but it does feature two commanding performances from Fassbender and Gleeson, and a refreshing mise-en-scéne; let down by its own inconsistencies, it’s nevertheless a movie that shouldn’t be avoided, and which may in time, find itself ripe for reassessment.

Assassin’s Creed (2016)

07 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Abstergo, Action, Aguilar de Nerha, Apple of Eden, Drama, Jeremy Irons, Justin Kurzel, Knights Templar, Marion Cotillard, Michael Fassbender, Review, The Animus, Ubisoft, Video game

D: Justin Kurzel / 115m

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling, Michael Kenneth Williams, Denis Ménochet, Ariane Labed, Khalid Abdalla, Essie Davis, Matias Varela, Callum Turner, Carlos Bardem, Javier Gutiérrez, Hovik Keuchkerian

Another video game adaptation, more raised expectations (after all, it’s been something of a passion project for Michael Fassbender, so it should be good – or better than the rest, at least), the usual hype surrounding these sort of things, and what are we left with? A genre defining moment that sees, at last, a video game adaptation delivering on everything it promises, or yet another failed opportunity to prove that video game adaptations can work, even if it’s due solely to the people involved? Well, with Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft’s wildly successful video game series, the answer is: a bit of both.

First off, if you’re a gamer, then chances are you’ll enjoy the movie for the same reasons you like the game. It retains the parkour chases from the games, keeps an historical backdrop for the game elements to take place in, includes but doesn’t expand on the Bleeding Effect, makes continually good use of the hidden blades set in bracers on the assassin’s arms, and focuses on the eternal battle between the Assassin’s Creed and the Knights Templar (though this time for the Apple of Eden and not the Pieces of Eden). In short, much of the movie will be familiar to anyone who’s played at least one of the games.

Secondly though, if you’re not a gamer, and this is all new to you, then you might find yourself less impressed by all of the above, and more concerned as to why many of the narrative elements don’t make any sense whatsoever. Take the manner in which Callum Lynch (Fassbender) is co-opted by Abstergo Industries into their genetic memory programme: about to be executed for murder, he’s strapped down and about to be given a lethal injection. He blacks out and when he comes to he’s in Abstergo’s complex outside Madrid. Dramatic, eh? Well, not really. We all know Lynch can’t be killed off so early in the movie, so why all the Death Row stuff? Why have him on Death Row at all? We see him running away from the Knights Templar when he’s a young boy; why not have him captured after being on the run (albeit for thirty years – which begs the further question: why did Abstergo take so long)? If you can think of a really good reason for any of this, please let director Justin Kurzel and his screenwriters, Michael Lesslie, Adam Cooper and Bill Collage know, so they can maybe put together Assassin’s Creed – The Recut.

Obscure narrative decisions aside (let’s not even think about the woolly-minded inclusion of Lynch’s dad as an old man (Gleeson), a subplot that hints of excised scenes that might have explained it all a bit more), Assassin’s Creed is a video game adaptation that makes the same basic mistakes that every other unsuccessful video game adaptation makes: it lacks emotion and characters we can care about. Despite the best efforts of all concerned, Callum is just another stereotype whose aptitude for violence (in the pursuit of peace, no less) is exploited to the fullest time and time again. As for Cotillard’s character, the outwardly concerned and considerate scientist, Dr Sofia Rikkin, her attempts at showing sympathy for Lynch’s predicament remain unconvincing throughout, as if it was the only trait the screenwriters could come up with, so often is it trotted out. And if there’s a badly hidden riddle that the movie fails to address, it’s why employ an actress of Cotillard’s calibre, and then give her a supporting role with so little to do?

As frustrating as much of the movie is, Assassin’s Creed does impress with its action scenes, though even then there are caveats. These scenes are carved up into tiny bite-sized pieces – scraps, if you like – by the kind of rapid-fire editing that obscures what’s going on and who’s doing exactly what to whom, and makes it all too difficult to follow. There’s a tremendous amount of athleticism on display here, and Fassbender is a part of some of it, but overall his stunt double is put through his paces as Lynch’s Spanish ancestor, Aguilar de Nerha, hurtles over rooftops and engages in plenty of Dark Ages fisticuffs. It’s all done at breakneck speed but exciting as these sequences are – and they are – the editing gets in the way. The sequences are certainly kinetic, but with editor Christopher Tellefsen determined to make everything go by in a blur, and Kurzel apparently happy with the way these fight sequences look, what should be impressive, awe-inspiring and crowd-pleasing stuff lacks the true impetus that would elevate them to a point where every viewer is saying to themselves, “Good God, wow!” Instead you can applaud the effort that’s gone into assembling them, but that’s as far as it goes.

In between the action sequences, Kurzel and his cast get bogged down by endless reams of exposition, while subplots build quietly in the background. Fassbender does what he can but this isn’t one of his best performances, largely because the script gives him very little to be getting on with (though to be fair it’s the action that’s important, not the characters). Irons is an unsurprising bad guy, Rampling and Gleeson are brought in for five minutes apiece, and the likes of Williams, Ménochet and Davis have to make do with roles that are even more underwritten than the main ones. Only Labed makes a real impression, as Maria, one of Aguilar’s fellow assassins; against the odds she stands out where everyone else seems to fade into Andy Nicholson’s murky production design.

If all this makes it sound as if Assassin’s Creed is an awful movie that deserves to be avoided, then that’s not strictly true. It’s just that with all the talent involved, this particular video game adaptation stood a good chance of bucking the trend and actually working on its own merits. That it doesn’t is an indication – as if it were needed – that video games are incredibly difficult to adapt for the big screen, and it’s likely they always will be. But if you go into this with an open mind and don’t expect too much from it, there’s a lot to enjoy; it’s just that what’s on display isn’t as exciting or as fresh and rewarding as its makers will have intended.

Rating: 5/10 – another missed opportunity, Assassin’s Creed adds itself to the ever growing pile of video game adaptations that have fallen way short of matching the success of their original incarnations; having set things up for a sequel, the makers will have to find a better way than this to bring audiences back for another rousing adventure in history, and retain the services of Kurzel, Fassbender and Cotillard.

10 Stars Who Weren’t Born in the Country You Think They Were

13 Monday Jun 2016

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Actors, Actresses, Amy Adams, Birthplaces, Bruce Willis, Emma Watson, Eva Green, Joaquin Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, Kim Cattrall, Michael Fassbender, Oscar Isaac, Rose Byrne, Stars

When we see certain stars in their movies we’re prone to making subconcious conclusions about them: what they’re like off-camera (how nice or how nasty), what they might like to do in their spare time, and sometimes, if they’re single, that we’d be the perfect partner for them (creepy yes, but in a non-stalker kind of way, you know?). Some stars have been around long enough for most people to know that they’re not originally from the country we associate them with. For example, Mel Gibson is generally regarded as Australian but was actually born in the good old US of A. And Audrey Hepburn – American? British? – was born in Belgium. In the spirit of full disclosure, here are ten stars who weren’t born in the country you think they were. See how many of them you knew already.

1 – Emma Watson – the star of the Harry Potter movies, and more recently, Regression (2015), looks and sounds like the quintessential English rose, but guess again. Although both her parents are English, Miss Watson was actually born in Paris, France.

2 – Eva Green – the mercurial, fearless star of movies such as Casino Royale (2006) and 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) has a classical beauty that could have originated in any of a dozen countries around the globe, but like Emma Watson, Green was born in Paris, France.

3 – Keanu Reeves – with his Hawaiian Christian name and chiselled good looks, you could be forgiven for believing Reeves to be as American as they come, but in fact the star of The Matrix (1999) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) was born in Beirut, Lebanon.

4 – Bruce Willis – the tough-as-nails star of Die Hard (1988) and The Sixth Sense (1999) – like so many others in this list – is generally regarded as American through and through but again, appearances can be (and are) deceiving, as Willis was born in Idar-Oberstein in the former West Germany.

5 – Rose Byrne – an actress whose career began back in 1994 as the unfortunately named Rastus Summers in Dallas Doll, Byrne has made a name for herself in recent years in a number of R-rated comedies, and while she seems as American as the next actress, she was actually born in Balmain, Australia.

6 – Oscar Isaac – with his dark, brooding looks, Isaac has a cosmopolitan aura about him that, like Eva Green, could mean he was born just about anywhere, but while he’s played a Russian in Pu239 (2006), and a Mexican in For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada (2012) – amongst others – Isaac actually heralds from Guatemala.

7 – Michael Fassbender – despite having grown up in Northern Ireland and having made a name for himself in a handful of well-received British movies, including Hunger (2008) and Fish Tank (2009), the younger incarnation of Magneto in the X-Men movies actually hails from Heidelberg in the former West Germany.

8 – Joaquin Phoenix – while most of his siblings were born in the US, including his brother River, the star of Walk the Line (2005) and Her (2013) was born in a country where his parents were serving as Children of God missionaries at the time. The country? None other than Puerto Rico.

9 – Amy Adams – as quintessentially American in appearance as Emma Watson is quintessentially British in appearance, the actress who was billed as Gorgeous Woman in Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny (2006), and who is now Clark Kent/Superman’s go-to gal, was actually born in Vicenza, Italy.

10 – Kim Cattrall – the star of Sex and the City and, going further back, Big Trouble in Little China (1986), looks American, sounds American, and appears steeped in all things American, but again, appearances are deceiving as the truth is she was born in Liverpool, England.

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

22 Sunday May 2016

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Action, Angel, Apocalypse, Beast, Bryan Singer, Cyclops, Drama, Evan Peters, Havok, James McAvoy, Jean Grey, Jennifer Lawrence, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Magneto, Marvel, Michael Fassbender, Mutants, Mystique, Nicholas Hoult, Nightcrawler, Oscar Isaac, Professor Xavier, Psylocke, Quicksilver, Review, Rose Byrne, School for Gifted Children, Sci-fi, Sequel, Storm, Superheroes, Thriller, X-Men

D: Bryan Singer / 144m

Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, Evan Peters, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Lucas Till, Olivia Munn, Ben Hardy, Alexandra Shipp, Josh Helman, Ally Sheedy

It’s okay.

Rating: 6/10 – an average sequel that offers a muddled storyline complete with yet more disaster porn, the best thing you can say about X-Men: Apocalypse is that it’s competently made; without a strong emotional core to help the audience care about the characters, or a real sense of impending apocalypse to make the stakes all the more gripping, this is a sequel that fails to build on the good work achieved in the previous two instalments.

Trailers – The Accountant (2016), Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016) and The Light Between Oceans (2016)

13 Friday May 2016

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120fps, Alicia Vikander, Ang Lee, Assassin, Ben Affleck, Derek Cianfrance, Drama, Forensic accountant, Gavin O'Connor, Joe Alwyn, Literary adaptation, Michael Fassbender, Movies, Parenthood, Previews, Rachel Weisz, Thriller, Trailers, Vin Diesel, Warfare, Western Australia

NOTE: The current For One Week Only is taking a well-deserved break after its Disney sequel marathon yesterday; it’ll be back tomorrow.

Once he’s reprised his role as Batman in Suicide Squad, Ben Affleck will next be seen in this odd thriller about a maths savant who works as a forensic accountant by day and is a hired assassin by night (of course). Working for the bad guys works out okay, but when Affleck’s character, Christian Wolff, takes on a legitimate client, things take a more deadly turn. It doesn’t help that Christian is also being pursued by the Treasury Department (led by J.K. Simmons). Whether or not this will be any good is open to conjecture, but Warner Bros. have put back its original release date from 29 January to 14 October, suggesting that there’s not the complete confidence in it that you might expect. It does have a great cast, with Anna Kendrick, Jon Bernthal and John Lithgow in support, and director Gavin O’Connor did a good job in taking over on Jane Got a Gun (2015), so this does have bags of promise at least. Perhaps a bit of finger-crossing is in order, then.

An adaptation of the novel by Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk has a lot to recommend it. It’s the first feature from Ang Lee since Life of Pi (2012), it has a supporting turn from Vin Diesel which should remind people that away from muscle cars and a certain genetically-enhanced murderer he’s a much better actor than he’s given credit for, and has been filmed in 4K, 3D and 120fps. Early footage shown at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas last month was greeted with the kind of superlatives that make this a shoo-in at next year’s round of awards ceremonies. Away from the technical side though, this looks to be an emotional and compelling look at the differences between the realities of war and perceptions reached at home, and features a break-out performance from newcomer Joe Alwyn as Billy Lynn.

Another literary adaptation, this time from the novel by M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans is the latest from director Derek Cianfrance, who gave us Blue Valentine (2010) and The Place Beyond the Pines (2012). It’s a heartfelt tale of impassioned romance, parental loss, uncontrollable grief, and a gift from the sea that brings with it a painful moral dilemma. Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander are the couple making a difficult choice in the midst of overwhelming grief, while Rachel Weisz is the widow whose recent loss threatens their regained happiness. The movie looks beautiful thanks to Justin Kurzel’s go-to cinematographer Adam Arkapaw (he also shot the first series of True Detective), and the period settings – post-World War I Western Australia – appear to have been lovingly recreated. If everything turns out as hoped, then this too will be sparring for awards come the beginning of 2017.

Steve Jobs (2015)

21 Thursday Jan 2016

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1984, 1988, 1998, Aaron Sorkin, Apple, Biography, Black cube, Computers, Computing, Danny Boyle, Drama, Father/daughter relationship, History, iMac, Jeff Daniels, Kate Winslet, Literary adaptation, Macintosh, Michael Fassbender, NeXT, Product launches, Review, Seth Rogen, True story

D: Danny Boyle / 122m

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg, Katherine Waterston, Ripley Sobo, Makenzie Moss, Perla Haney-Jardine, Sarah Snook, John Ortiz

Steve Jobs – maverick genius, arrogant manipulator, or indifferent human being? In Danny Boyle’s latest movie we get to learn that the late founder and CEO of Apple was all three, which shouldn’t be a surprise as each description isn’t exclusive of itself. But where Aaron Sorkin’s script, adapted from Walter Isaacson’s book, impresses most is when we see Jobs being all three at the same time.

The structure of the movie allows us to see Jobs at three separate points in his life, and each time in the immediate lead up to a product launch. So in 1984 we see him trying to launch the Macintosh, Apple’s first new product in seven years since the Apple II. In 1988 he’s on his own, attempting to impress everyone with the NeXT computer, an item that is doomed to failure. And we end on a high note in 1998 with the launch of the first iMac and Jobs’ ensuring he would never be forgotten. It’s like a crazy rollercoaster ride, as the advances in computer innovation are revealed to be less important than marketing and design. As Jobs so aptly puts it, “They won’t know what they’re looking at or why they like it but they’ll know they want it”.

By telling Jobs’ story in three distinct episodes, Boyle and Sorkin, with the aid of a very talented cast, reveal how Jobs started with an idea and kept pursuing it for over fifteen years. That idea may have gone through some variations in all that time, but the movie paints a very convincing portrait of a man driven by the need to do things differently and in a way that’s at odds with everyone around him. In his pursuit of excellence in home computing, Jobs brooked very little compromise, and we see this in the meticulous nature of his product launches, where even the Exit signs have to be switched off so that the visual presentation can have the most impact. Jobs doesn’t compromise, and he doesn’t recognise the value and support of the people around him, including his old friend and co-creator of the Macintosh, Steve Wozniak (Rogen), and his long-suffering personal assistant Joanna Hoffman (Winslet).

Each launch brings its own set of issues and problems for Jobs to overcome, from the first Macintosh’s failure to say “hello”, to the NeXT computer’s lack of an operating system, to Wozniak’s public insistence that the iMac launch should include an acknowledgment of the work put in by the team who made Apple II so successful. Jobs refuses to accept that any of these will interfere with his plans for success, and he drives the people around him with a fierce determination that is both alienating and patronising. The movie keeps Jobs focused and uncompromising in his self-belief, right until the end, and as an anti-hero he fits the bill entirely.

But while the behind the scenes manoeuvrings that show how each phase of Jobs’ career were a necessary, evolutionary step (for him and his computers) all make for compelling viewing, the movie is less successful with its three act structure than it realises. Each section relies on a lot of repetition, as encounters and personal problems are examined each time, albeit from slightly different angles. Jobs’ condescending treatment of Wozniak is a case in point, as is his dismissive treatment of computer engineer Andy Hertzfeld (Stuhlbarg). And then there’s Lisa, the daughter he tried to deny having.

Jobs’ relationship with Lisa is one of the bigger subplots in the movie, and as an attempt by Boyle and Sorkin to show the man’s more “human” side, it’s nevertheless quite clumsy and unconvincing in its execution. At the first launch, Lisa is five years old; up until she uses a Macintosh to draw a picture, Jobs is distant toward her, and to her mother, Chrisann (Waterston). But the picture changes his feelings about her, and in the other two acts we see the same sort of thing happen again, as Jobs begins to treat Lisa as a person and not a Court-confirmed inconvenience (Jobs was so arrogant that upon learning that a paternity test showed it was 94% certain he was Lisa’s father, he came up with an algorithm that counter-claimed that the 6% difference meant Chrisann could have slept with any one of twenty-eight million men and the result would have been the same). While it’s a creditable attempt to humanise Jobs, it’s these scenes that carry the least weight, and the least credibility. By the time Lisa is nineteen and on the verge of wanting nothing to do with him, all it takes is for Jobs to say he was “poorly made” and she forgives him just like that (as well as a hastily improvised bribe that promises she’ll have one of the first iPods).

More potent is the relationship Jobs has with John Sculley (Daniels), the CEO he poached from Pepsi to run Apple in the Eighties. It was Sculley who had Jobs ousted from Apple following the disastrous sales of the Macintosh, and Sorkin’s script soars whenever it focuses on the pair’s uneasy relationship. There’s a bravura scene where Jobs confronts Sculley over what he sees as the CEO’s betrayal of him, and Boyle intercuts with flashbacks that show the depth of Jobs’ own complicity, giving the audience a balanced view of what happened and why. Both Fassbender and Daniels are superb in these scenes, and the movie has a fire and an energy that it lacks elsewhere.

As expected, Boyle elicits strong performances from his cast, with Fassbender giving a superb performance as the empathy-lite Jobs, and Winslet stealing the movie out from under him as Joanna. Winslet is simply in a class of her own, adding subtlety and shading to a role that would otherwise have been quite bland. When she confronts Jobs over his treatment of Lisa before the ’98 launch, the pent-up emotions she releases are as liberating for the viewer as they are for Joanna. In support, Rogen shows fleeting glimpses of the actor he can be when he’s not channelling Seth Rogen, and Daniels is magnificent as Sculley.

Jobs is frequently challenged as to what he can actually do, and at one point he tells Wozniak that “musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra”. With Jobs, Boyle shows himself to be a great conductor as well, but thanks to some uncomfortable narrative decisions borne out of Sorkin’s script, this isn’t as rewarding as some of his other movies, and his control over the material, while evident throughout, isn’t enough to overcome the movie’s built-in deficiencies. That said, and as with all of Boyle’s movies, it’s visually stimulating and in tandem with editor Elliot Graham, he maintains a pace and a rhythm that propel the viewer along effortlessly.

Rating: 7/10 – slickly, professionally made with Boyle firmly in charge and full of impressive performances, Jobs is nevertheless a movie that fails to do full justice to its central character; as a result Jobs the human being proves less interesting than Jobs the arrogant perfectionist, and any insights into the man that can be gleaned are at the expense of soap opera elements that, unfortunately, compromise his more acerbic nature.

Macbeth (2015)

06 Tuesday Oct 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Banquo, Drama, Elizabeth Debicki, Justin Kurzel, Lady Macbeth, Literary adaptation, Macduff, Madness, Marion Cotillard, Michael Fassbender, Murder, Paddy Considine, Prophecy, Regicide, Review, Scotland, Sean Harris, Shakespeare, Three Witches

D: Justin Kurzel / 113m

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Paddy Considine, Sean Harris, David Thewlis, Jack Reynor, Elizabeth Debicki

With Scotland ruled by King Duncan (Thewlis), his throne comes under threat from a Scottish lord seeking to overthrow him. Duncan’s depleted army is led by Macbeth (Fassbender), the Thane of Glamis, and thanks to his savagery and skill on the battlefield, Duncan’s forces win the fight and rout the opposition. On the fringes of the battle, Macbeth sees three women who stand watching him. When he approaches them, along with his trusted servant Banquo (Considine), they prophesy his rise to become Thane of Cawdor as well as Glamis, and his future role as King. They also tell Banquo that his offspring will provide a line of kings to come.

Soon after, Macbeth receives word that Duncan has awarded him the title of Thane of Cawdor (as predicted), and that the King wishes to spend the night at Macbeth’s home. News sent by Macbeth to his wife (Cotillard) of the day’s strange events prompts her to plot Duncan’s death so that her husband can ascend to the throne, though Macbeth is in need of her persuasion to even consider the idea. But when Duncan proclaims his successor will be Malcolm (Reynor), Macbeth sees no option but to go ahead with his wife’s plan. He kills Duncan, but Malcolm flees for his life, allowing Macbeth to blame him for Duncan’s death.

Macbeth is crowned king but he frets over the prophecy’s assertion that Banquo is the head of a line of future kings. Unwilling to see his reign usurped by Banquo’s inheritors, he charges two men to kill him and his son. Banquo is killed but his son escapes. At a feast later that night, Macbeth sees the murdered Banquo amongst the guests, and becomes maddened by the sight of him. Lady Macbeth does her best to calm him, but the actions of Macduff (Harris), who leaves in disgust at the new king’s erratic behaviour, lead Macbeth to have his family – his wife (Debicki) and three children – apprehended and put to death. Macduff has already left for England, and when he hears of his family’s fate, determines to have his revenge on Macbeth, and joins the army Malcolm has assembled to take back the crown. But while they plan their assault, Macbeth relies on his belief that “no man of woman born” can ever harm him, and is invincible. Lady Macbeth, though, seeing how much her husband’s mind has deteriorated begins to see that their futures have become heavily fore-shortened.

In a year that has seen any number of disappointing big-budget, action-stuffed, plot-lite, spectacle-driven adventure movies, it’s a pleasure to finally watch a movie that is the whole package – the real deal, if you like – and doesn’t pander in any way to any one particular audience demographic; in short, Macbeth is simply stunning. Thanks to a concise, yet exacting adaptation of Shakespeare’s play by Todd Louiso, Jacob Koskoff and Michael Lesslie, and Justin Kurzel’s robust, instinctive direction, this is a movie that sizzles with energy and fire and passion, and grips from its opening, dreamlike battle, shot and edited to perfection as Macbeth becomes aware of the three witches watching from the battle’s edge and the fighting rages around him. It’s a virtuoso sequence, visually arresting and exotically violent, and gives the audience a firm idea of the approach that Kurzel is taking with the material.

Indelible image follows indelible image as the wilds of Scotland are photographed to highlight both their inherent beauty and the eeriness that can be sensed within them, while the interiors, hemming in the passions that motivate Macbeth and his manipulative wife, act as a melting pot for the murderous intentions and descent into madness that erodes the new king’s grip on his throne. Rarely has a movie used its locations to such striking effect, with mist-shrouded hills and candle-strewn rooms becoming just as fervid and foreboding as each other. Kurzel’s eye for a powerful, arresting image is maintained throughout, whether it’s a church emerging from out of the highland mist, or the overhead shot of the King’s throne (almost lost in the emptiness of the great hall it resides in). Kurzel’s innovative style reaches its zenith in the way he presents the moment when “Birnam Wood doth come to Dunsinane”, a blazing wall of flame that reflects the ferocity of the attack and the intensity of Macduff’s thirst for revenge.

But while the movie is often a thing of beauty (and cruelly so), it’s the depth and richness of the performances that stands out most. Fassbender is a tightly coiled Macbeth, his conscience unravelling with ever increasing speed as his attempts to thwart the prophecy drive him to ever more desperate measures. Fassbender plays him at first as a reluctant conspirator, reliant on his wife to persuade him that killing Duncan is the “right” thing to do, but once he becomes King his sense of regal propriety gives way to paranoia and madness and prideful arrogance. These are aspects of Macbeth’s character that could easily be overplayed by the wrong actor but Fassbender is more than up to the challenge; when he tells Lady Macbeth his mind is full of scorpions, the smile he offers her is chilling in its murderous intent, and all the more effective for being fleeting and unexpected.

Matching Fassbender for intensity and the intelligence of their portrayal is Cotillard. The French actress is superb here, her cold-hearted determination and rejection of moral rectitude as unnerving as it is coolly self-justified. The scene where she realises she’s lost control of Macbeth and can do nothing to prevent his madness consuming him (and her) is magnificently handled, the character’s sudden awareness that everything is about to crumble around her, and that she’s misjudged her husband’s actions, is affecting and credibly realised. And later, Cotillard provides what is perhaps the movie’s best scene, as she delivers the “Out, damned spot” soliloquy with such an emotional wallop that it’s almost uncomfortable to watch (it’s also possibly the best single scene in any movie this year).

Of the rest of the cast, Considine is quietly commanding as Banquo, his taciturn visage used to best effect when placed among the unsuspecting guests at the feast, and Harris’s Macduff swirls with uncontrolled hostility, as maddened in his own way as Macbeth. Thewlis is an avuncular Duncan, Debicki and Reynor minor presences due to the adaptation’s focus on the key characters, and there are smaller roles for the likes of Maurice Roëves and David Hayman. The violence is stylised, though not as bloody as you might expect, and the make up team have done a great job adding various scars and cuts where needed (and excel themselves with Macduff’s broken nose). The costumes are functional rather than ornate – though Duncan sports what looks like a scarf made by a favoured child – and it’s photographed with rigorous style and impressive use of filters by Adam Arkapaw, Kurzel’s cinematographer on Snowtown (2011). There’s also a terrifically mournful, plaintive score supplied by Jed Kurzel that acts as a character in its own right, and underscores the tragedy of events with such conviction that it’s ultimately haunting.

Rating: 9/10 – easily the best Shakespeare adaptation in a very long time, Macbeth is a triumph of casting, directing, scripting, filming, and every other aspect required to make this one of the films of the year; an oft-told tale given a new lease of life through its presentation of the title character enduring a semi-lucid fever dream of grandeur, madness and inevitable tragedy, this is a tour-de-force of modern movie making and not to be missed.

Trailer – Macbeth (2015)

01 Tuesday Sep 2015

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Macbeth (2015), Marion Cotillard, Michael Fassbender, Preview, Shakespeare, Trailer

The latest movie adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth features the dream pairing of Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard as the tragic Scot and his manipulative wife, and has already impressed critics with its blend of visceral shocks and bold interpretation of the text. It certainly looks good, with vivid battle scenes, three very unnerving witches, several hints of uncompromising bloodshed, and a sense of time and place that reeks of febrile intensity. And that’s without the foreboding atmosphere, or themes of madness, betrayal and paranoia. All in all, this should be a movie lover’s delight, and a prime contender come the awards season.

Slow West (2015)

17 Sunday May 2015

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Action, American Mid-West, Ben Mendelsohn, Bounty hunters, Drama, John Maclean, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Review, Reward, Western

D: John Maclean / 84m

Cast: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Ben Mendelsohn, Caren Pistorius, Rory McCann, Andrew Robertt

In the 1870’s, a young Scotsman by the name of Jay Cavendish (Smit-McPhee) is travelling alone across the American Mid-West in search of his true love, Rose Ross (Pistorius). Rose has fled to America with her father (McCann) after he accidentally killed a Scottish nobleman. As he passes through a burnt-out Indian settlement he meets Silas Selleck (Fassbinder), a loner who knows the territory and is willing to act as Jay’s escort and keep him safe until he finds Rose – for a price.

Jay has romantic notions that he and Rose will be able to resume the relationship they had back in Scotland, but what he doesn’t know is that her father’s crime has followed them across the Atlantic, and there is a bounty on their heads of $2,000, dead or alive. He’s also unaware that Silas is using Jay to find Rose and her father so he can collect the reward. And he’s further unaware that the gang Silas used to be a member of, led by Payne (Mendelsohn), are tracking them both in hopes of getting the bounty as well.

Along the way they stop at a trading post but a young couple try to rob the place. It leads to Jay shooting the woman, the first time he’s ever used a gun. When he and Silas leave, Jay discovers the couple’s two young children outside; he gives them the supplies he’s carried out by way of recompense. Jay later becomes distrustful of Silas and early one morning, leaves their camp and sets off alone again. On a barren plain he meets Werner (Robertt) who is hospitable and glad of the company, but when Jay wakes the next morning, Werner is gone and so are all of Jay’s possessions. Heading on in what he thinks is the right direction he’s eventually rejoined by Silas, who has everything that Werner stole.

As they find themselves getting nearer to where Rose and her father are living, they receive a visit from Payne who brings absinthe. The three men proceed to get drunk, yet when Jay goes off to relieve himself, Payne confronts Silas over his plans to claim the bounty. The next day, and with Payne and his gang close behind them, Jay and Silas set off on the last leg of their trek. But when they reach their destination, it’s not only Payne they have to worry about, but another bounty hunter, one who has got there before them.

A sombre, often downbeat Western, Slow West is nevertheless an engrossing, visually striking movie that tells a very simple tale with a great deal of panache. It’s a coming of age tale and a rite of passage movie as well as a journey of discovery, and is superbly acted by its talented cast.

It works best by focusing on the dreams and hopes of fish-out-of-water Jay, and how he matures over the course of his travels. In the hands of Smit-McPhee, and writer/director Maclean, Jay is one of the most fully rounded and believable characters of recent years (and any genre). His fervent belief that he and Rose are fated to be together is so compellingly drawn that what happens when they finally meet is like a punch to the heart. Jay is so focused on finding Rose that it colours his recollections of their time together in Scotland, and Maclean inserts flashbacks to those days at key moments in the narrative. As well as filling in Jay’s back story, these flashbacks serve to show how Jay’s romantic idealism has reached the point where he has travelled all the way from Scotland to find Rose – and that there’s every possibility that she won’t be as excited to see him as he hopes. It’s a feeling that develops as the movie progresses, and makes Jay’s naïve nature all the more credible, and all the more endearing.

Jay’s potentially misplaced confidence acts as a catalyst for Silas’s reassessment of his own life and needs. It’s a subtle transformation, handled expertly by Fassbender, and shows that it’s not just Jay who is on a journey of discovery, however unexpected it might be for Silas, or ultimately advantageous. His taciturn, withdrawn nature is slowly eroded by Jay’s determination, and in the end he behaves unselfishly and with a newfound purpose, and not just for Jay but for Rose as well, someone he doesn’t even know. Though this change of heart is rushed to make way for the traditional final third shootout – which is skilfully choreographed and assembled by Maclean and editors Roland Gallois and Jon Gregory – it’s still a sign of Maclean’s bold approach to his own script that it never feels like a contrivance but more of a well constructed fait accompli.

With both lead actors on such impressive form, it’s possibly one of the few movies where Mendelsohn is overshadowed, but he does play a secondary role and has far less screen time. As Jay’s romantic ideal, Pistorius plays Rose as an intelligent young woman who is more than aware of her place in the world, and Jay’s as well. Her scenes with Smit-McPhee have a charming quality to them that helps the viewer understand just what drives Jay to find Rose.

The movie’s strong, deceptively detailed script is enhanced by Robbie Ryan’s often stunning photography, its New Zealand locations (while not quite standing in for the Mid-West that convincingly) so beautifully depicted it’s hard not to stare in awe at the mountains that can be seen rising majestically in various backgrounds, or the clear, achingly blue skies above them. Aa a result, Maclean’s visual compositions range from dazzling to spectacular, and the landscapes that Jay and Silas travel through can be seen as characters in their own right (the ashen atmosphere surrounding the Indian settlement is a case in point). Add an evocative, mood-sensitive score from Jed Kurzel and you have a rare Western that speaks from the heart as well as from the mind.

Rating: 9/10 – one of the (so far) must-see movies of 2015, Slow West could have been another fifteen or twenty minutes longer, but that’s a very minor quibble; hugely impressive all round, this is a bona fide modern classic.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

27 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Beast, Bolivar Trask, Bryan Singer, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Magneto, Marvel, Michael Fassbender, Mutants, Patrick Stewart, Professor X, Quicksilver, Review, Sci-fi, Sentinels, Time travel, Wolverine

x-men-days-of-future-past_04aaf850

D: Bryan Singer / 131m

Cast: Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage, Halle Berry, Shawn Ashmore, Evan Peters, Omar Sy, Josh Helman, Mark Camacho

With X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) leaving a sour taste in the mouth after the glories of the first two X-Men movies, and with two subsequent Wolverine adventures proving that even a massive fan favourite doesn’t mean an automatically good movie, the future of the X-Men franchise was looking a little doubtful. With both Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen “getting on a bit”, the decision to revisit Charles Xavier and Eric Lehnsherr in their younger days in X-Men: First Class (2011) was a positive boon for the franchise and one that revitalised what was otherwise a moribund series. Now, with the equivalent of a spring in its step, we have a movie that both acknowledges its predecessors and forges a whole new path for its mutant protagonists.

Opening in the near future, with mutants and mankind alike being targeted for extinction by Sentinels, the world is a wasteland. With the Sentinels able to assimilate whatever mutant powers are pitched against them, a band of mutants including Kitty Pryde (Page), Bishop (Sy) and Iceman (Ashmore) fight a rearguard action against them that sees Professor X’s pupils evade certain death through Kitty’s ability to send a person’s consciousness back in time; this allows the remaining mutants to anticipate a Sentinel attack and flee before it can happen, thus erasing that particular timeline. With the arrival of Professor X (Stewart), Magneto (McKellen), Logan aka Wolverine (Jackman) and Storm (Berry), a last, desperate decision is made to send Wolverine’s consciousness back into his body in 1973, the year the Sentinels were created by industrialist Bolivar Trask (Dinklage). Back then, Trask was assassinated by Raven aka Mystique (Lawrence), which led to her capture and the advancement of the Sentinel programme using her DNA (this enables the Sentinels to assimilate other mutants’ powers). Logan’s mission: to unite the estranged Charles and Erik, track down Raven, and stop her from killing Trask.

Of course, it’s not easy. Since the events of X-Men: First Class, Charles has taken to wallowing in self-pity at the loss of Raven, and has lost his powers thanks to a serum created by Hank McCoy aka Beast (Hoult) that allows him to walk. He agrees to help for Mystique’s sake, though he is unhappy about needing Erik’s help. With the aid of Quicksilver (Peters), they free Erik from a cell beneath the Pentagon and travel to Paris (where Raven is due to kill Trask at a conference). Imitating a Vietnamese officer, Raven infiltrates the conference room where Trask plans to sell his Sentinel technology to the highest bidder. He reveals a hand-held mutant detector that is triggered by Raven’s presence. Hastily despatching the other attendees – including a young William Stryker (Helman) – Raven is stopped from shooting Trask by the arrival of Logan et al. Erik disarms her and then turns the gun on her; aware that her DNA will make the Sentinels an unstoppable force he believes it is better for her to die than to let them become so strong. Raven makes her escape but is wounded in the attempt. Erik tries to follow her but is stopped by Hank who has morphed into his Beast persona. All three are caught on film and the “mutant menace” espoused by Trask is taken up by President Nixon (Camacho) who gives the go ahead to the Sentinel programme.

At a press conference in the grounds of the White House set up to reveal the existence of the Sentinels and their purpose, Raven impersonates a Secret Service agent in order to get to Trask. Now on his own, Erik steals back the helmet that magnifies his powers and uses them to levitate a baseball stadium; he transports it to the press conference and drops it around the White House, effectively sealing it off from the police and everyone else. Charles is trapped under a piece of fallen scaffolding, while Logan and Hank do battle with one of the Sentinels (which are now under Erik’s control). In the future, the Sentinels attack the mutant hideout; casualties mount up as Professor X and Magneto wonder if Logan’s mission will be successful in time. As the future becomes ever bleaker, Erik castigates the President and his staff for their animosity towards mutants, and threatens them with a new world order, with mutants in control. With Logan and Hank unable to stop the Sentinel, and Raven still intent on killing Trask, and Erik about to dispose of Nixon and his staff, in the future the Sentinels breach the mutant hideout and target Magneto and Professor X…

Even at this late stage in the game there’s still more to the story than you’d expect. X-Men: Days of Future Past is a triumph for all concerned, an exciting, often unpredictable addition to the X-Men saga that more than lives up to expectations but also deepens and enriches the story begun in X-Men: First Class. With the stakes upped considerably, and the inclusion of more mutants than have been seen since The Last Stand, the movie seems, at first glance, to be overdoing it, adding too much to the mix for it to be as satisfying or rewarding as it should be (by necessity as much as expediency, some characters have more screen time than others). But thanks to Simon Kinberg’s measured script, the movie glides smoothly along, gaining momentum, adding layer upon layer of meaning, and providing an emotional depth that is missing from most – if not all – other superhero movies.

Largely this is due to the stellar cast, led by McAvoy and Fassbender, two actors who have made their roles their own. Their adversarial friendship is expanded upon here, both characters’ sense of having been betrayed by the other adding a dangerous edge to their scenes together, adding to the tension that develops as the world heads towards oblivion. Both actors give tremendous performances (McAvoy is superb in his opening scenes with Jackman), and the support they receive, notably from Hoult and Jackman, is equally impressive, while Dinklage (sporting a wig and a half) invests Trask with an eerie messianic quality that elevates the character from perfunctory villain to unwavering fear monger. And then there’s Lawrence, endowing Raven/Mystique with a mix of rage, sadness and longed-for redemption that makes her the most intriguing character of all, her dual nature at odds with itself even when fiercely determined to walk her own path. The real surprise, though, is the inclusion of Quicksilver. Peters turns in a funny, smart, freewheeling performance that is as charming as it is a real comedic shot in the arm. His sardonic smile and deadpan glances are perfectly pitched, and his appearance leaves you wanting more (which we’ll get in X-Men: Apocalypse).

Returning to the director’s chair following the departure of Matthew Vaughn, Singer shows a firm grasp of the material and an even firmer grasp on ensuring the human/mutant element isn’t lost amongst all the special effects and impressively mounted carnage. Even a small scene, such as the one between Professor X and Magneto towards the end of the movie, is more affecting than you might expect, and there are numerous occasions where Singer’s pleasure at being back in the director’s chair couldn’t be more evident if he’d stopped the movie mid-scene and held up a sign saying “I loved making this movie”. Singer is an expressive director, always willing to try something new, and his staging of the showdown at the White House shows a clear intention to avoid the usual action motifs, making the sequence that much more impressive (it’s also a clever move to reduce Logan’s involvement in the action, especially as he doesn’t have his adamantium skeleton for Erik to play around with).

The early Seventies are recreated with a fine eye for the details of the time, and there’s an astute tweaking on contemporary fashions (though it might have been fun to see Wolverine in bell bottoms), while the inclusion of footage shot as if it were news reports from the time is a clever conceit and works particularly well during Raven’s escape from the conference. The Sentinels are appropriately scary (and make Terminator 2’s T-1000 look like a skinny prototype), there’s the by-now obligatory post-credits sequence that sets up the next instalment, and there are a number of cameos that will have fans cheering in their seats (two cameos are very welcome indeed).

There are some stumbles. The opening ten to fifteen minutes, where the plot is established and some new characters introduced, is a bit clunky and muddled, and as mentioned before some of the cast don’t fare as well as others. Page does little more than sit with her fingers poised either side of Jackman’s temples for most of the movie, while McKellen gets to add the odd line here and there, but it’s Berry who’s almost completely sidelined, so much so that one of the cameo turns has more lines than her. (And on the subject of screen time, someone should give Anna Paquin’s agent a gold star; she appears for approximately ten dialogue-free seconds but is seventh billed; now that’s impressive.) Trask’s hand-held mutant detector is a clumsy contrivance that feels like it was added at the last minute, and the movie’s coda owes a little too much to another recent sci-fi franchise reboot (but it’s a welcome development nevertheless). All in all, though, the movie is too well constructed and executed for any of these (very minor) problems to spoil the overall presentation.

Rating: 8/10 – back on top as the best of the superhero movie franchises thanks to Singer’s return and an intelligent approach to the story (one of the comics’ most well-respected outings), X-Men: Days of Future Past is a treat for fans and non-fans alike; audacious, skilful, thought-provoking and often dazzling, the movie helps erase the debacle that was X-Men: The Last Stand, and is a better alternative universe for it.

12 Years a Slave (2013)

10 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Edwin Epps, Lupita Nyong'o, Michael Fassbender, Patsey, Paul Dano, Plantation, Review, Sarah Paulson, Slavery, Solomon Northup, Steve McQueen, True story, US history, Whipping

D: Steve McQueen / 134m

Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong’o, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Sarah Paulson, Adepero Oduye, Paul Giamatti, Garret Dillahunt, Brad Pitt, Alfre Woodard, Scoot McNairy, Taran Killam

In 2013 the movie that drew most people to the cinema was the third solo outing for Marvel’s high-tech reboot of the Tin Man, Iron Man 3. That movie was fun, a well-made piece of confectionery that was hyped, trailed and previewed to within an inch of its life. Enjoyable as it was though, it was still the equivalent of a Big Mac and fries, offering a quick fix for the Geek Squads and providing little or no nourishment for anyone not au fait with Marvel’s plan for Cinematic World Domination. But if 2013 is to be remembered as the year a man in a can was seen by more people than any other movie, what of that other way of remembering any given year: by the movie that was easily the best the year had to offer.

In some years, that “choice” has been easy. In 1930, All Quiet on the Western Front. In 1945, Les enfants du paradis. In 1962, Lawrence of Arabia. In 1974, The Godfather Part II. In 1993, Schindler’s List. And in 2013…a movie most of us won’t see until 2014. A movie called 12 Years a Slave.

Directed by McQueen from the account written by Solomon Northup, a free man living in New York with his wife and two children in 1841, 12 Years a Slave is a devastating account of one man’s abduction into slavery, and his subsequent experiences on the plantations of Louisiana. Northup is an accomplished musician, well-respected, and flattered when two members of a circus troupe approach him to join their company. He journeys from New York to Washington with them only to wake up after a night’s drinking to find himself in chains and told he is now a slave; his name is also denied him and he is told he is to answer to Platt. At first he finds himself at the mercy of (the ironically named) slave trader Freeman (Giamatti), until he is sold, along with a woman called Eliza (Oduye), to plantation owner Mr Ford (Cumberbatch). Ford is in the process of adding extra buildings to his land, and has a master carpenter Tibeats (Dano) who oversees the construction. Northup impresses Ford with his engineering skills but soon makes an enemy of Tibeats. Before long, Tibeats pushes Northup too far and Northup beats him with his own whip. Tibeats swears revenge against Northup and returns with two men; they proceed to hang Northup but are stopped by Ford’s overseer, Chapin (J.D. Evermore). Although Chapin stops Northup from being killed, he leaves him hanging from the tree with his toes barely touching the ground to save himself from being strangled; it’s only when Ford returns at the end of the day that he is cut down. But Ford’s leniency comes at a price: he must sell Northup on in order to save his plantation from Tibeats’ wrath.

Where Ford has been a considerate and compassionate man, Northup’s new owner, Edwin Epps is anything but. He has his slaves whipped if they don’t make the daily quota for picking cotton, and when his wife complains that he is paying too much attention to one of the female slaves, Patsey (Nyong’o), he tells her coldly that he will see the back of her before he will rid himself of Patsey. Northup becomes Patsey’s confidante, and he does his best to keep Epps from bothering her, but it doesn’t always work. It’s only when a carpenter named Bass (Pitt) comes to work on the plantation, and speaks of equality, that Northup takes courage and explains his situation. Bass agrees to help him, and some time later, Northup is freed and reunited with his family.

From the outset, 12 Years a Slave grabs the attention and keeps its audience riveted. The topic of slavery is one that has been only fitfully addressed in cinema, and while movies such as Amistad (1997), and Amazing Grace (2006) have taken a political approach to the issue, there hasn’t been a movie that has looked at it from both the financial side of things, and the actual day-to-day living experience. Throughout the movie it’s made clear that slavery is a business, and a lucrative one for people such as the trader Freeman, and for the plantation owners who invest in slaves as a means of reaping huge profits. Against this wellspring of money, a slave’s life is worth nothing at all, and the movie delivers this message on several occasions. When Northup is on tiptoe trying not to hang, it’s heartbreaking to see the other slaves carry on with their tasks as if he isn’t there; only by going about their business can they add value to their lives.

12 Years a Slave is also quite graphic in its depiction of the violence endemic in slavery, with one on-screen whipping being truly horrifying, and its the casual nature of it all that the movie depicts so well, along with the hateful racism that fuelled so much of it. Early on, before Northup is placed with Freeman, he is beaten with a paddle. The scene is shocking both for what happens to Northup, and for the sustained nature of the beating. Epps’s wife throws a decanter in Patsey’s face, her racism mixed with jealousy and injured pride. There are other moments where violence escalates from nothing, and there is a palpable sense of the violent undercurrents that were prevalent during this period. If the movie presents these aspects unflinchingly, then it is to show the full horror of the constant threat of injury or death that slaves experienced. (And to anyone who feels these scenes were unnecessary or uncomfortable to watch, then you are missing the point. The life of a slave was far worse than anything depicted here, and by showing us the things that we do see, the movie reinforces the fact that, so far removed from both those times and those circumstances as we are in our daily lives, we can easily fail to realise how terrible slavery actually was.)

Thankfully, in amongst the brutal violence and the despair there are quiet moments of hope to offset the horror. Northup’s relationship with Patsey is affecting and desperately sad at the same time, and shows how two people can still retain a measure of their humanity despite existing under appalling conditions. Thanks to both Ejiofor and Nyong’o, their scenes together are both emotionally charged and riveting viewing.

The heart of the film is Ejiofor’s towering performance, a career best that is breathtaking to watch as he depicts a man who somehow retains his dignity and his sense of self through twelve years of degradation and terror. Ejiofor holds the attention in every scene he’s in, deflecting focus even from Fassbender, whose performance as Epps is mesmerising in its intensity. The audience is drawn to Ejiofor as their moral compass and guide; without him, the movie would be a series of vignettes without a central point of reference. He displays a clear understanding of the emotions that governed Northup’s reactions and response to his situation: the despair, the anger, the resignation to his plight, the fear, the barely acknowledged hope of regaining his freedom, the sadness, the sense of loss, and most effective of all, the will to survive. It’s a magnificent achievement.

As already mentioned, Fassbender is on brilliant form as the tortured, torturing Epps, adding layers to a character who could have been portrayed more matter-of-factly and with less attention to nuance and interpretation. His performance is mercurial, adding a sense of uncertainty to Epps that makes his unpredictable nature more dangerous. His scenes with Ejiofor are akin to an acting masterclass. In the various supporting roles, Dano stands out as the mealy-mouthed, insecure Tibeats, all puffed-up pride and coiled hostility, while Cumberbatch continues to impress as the fair-minded, socially conscious Ford. Paulson also impresses as Mistress Epps, her eyes never once betraying any emotion other than disgust. And making her feature debut, Nyong’o is superb as the object of Epps’s lust, imbuing Patsey with an inner strength and determination that offsets the cruelty she receives at the hands of Epps and his wife.

This is McQueen’s third feature – after Hunger (2008) and Shame (2011) – and serves to reinforce how talented a director he is. His control of the material is confident and assured, and he elicits strong performances from everyone in the cast. In conjunction with cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, McQueen places the camera in exactly the right place in each scene, framing the action expertly and with close attention to the physical and emotional requirements of each set-up. His decision to make 12 Years a Slave has proved to be a wise one, and the way in which he’s overcome the difficulties inherent in telling such a complex story is compelling.

12 Years a Slave is a harrowing, disturbing look at a shameful period in US history, and while some people might say that we don’t need to see the barbarity of the times to know it was evil, a reminder as powerful as this one is should always be welcome. With stand-out performances, an insightful, intricate script courtesy of John Ridley, and a score by Hans Zimmer that perfectly supports the emotional and dramatic moments in the film, 12 Years a Slave is a movie deserving of everyone’s attention.

Rating: 9/10 – a modern masterpiece, with much to say about the nature of evil as the will to survive it; an engrossing, deeply moving account of one man’s journey through a contemporary hell and his eventual salvation.

The Counselor (2013)

23 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Cartel, Cormac McCarthy, Crime, Drama, Drugs, Javier Bardem, Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Review, Ridley Scott, Thriller

aka The Counsellor

D: Ridley Scott / 117m

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem, Brad Pitt, Rosie Perez, Bruno Ganz, Rubén Blades, Sam Spruell, Toby Kebbell, Natalie Dormer, Goran Visnjic

An original thriller from the pen of Cormac McCarthy, The Counselor is a cautionary tale about what can happen when a good man does something bad. The ‘bad’ in this case is get involved in a drug deal where a $20m shipment, bound for Chicago from Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, is hijacked along the way. The good man is the titular (unnamed) counsellor, seen first expressing his love for Laura (Cruz). His plan is to use the money he’ll get back from the deal to set up their life together; he buys a very expensive diamond engagement ring for her, further stretching his finances. In on the deal with him is Rainer (Bardem, sporting another of his strange movie hairstyles) and Westray (Pitt). What none of them know is that Rainer’s girlfriend, Malkina (Diaz) is behind the hijacking. What follows is a game of cat-and-mouse as all three men try and stay one step ahead of the cartel that suspects one or all of them are responsible.

Like a lot of Ridley Scott’s movies, The Counselor starts off promisingly enough but soon tails off into something completely at odds with the original mise-en-scène. The cautionary tale becomes a darkly-comic thriller that becomes a series of improbable scenes involving the Counselor’s efforts to extricate himself from the mess he’s got himself into, before becoming an equally improbable electronic money heist set in London. All the while, the movie is punctuated with the kind of profound monologues (Blades’ especially) that nobody really says in real life, and clinically-filmed set pieces that offer brief release from the turgid nature of the screenplay. There’s no doubt that McCarthy is a great writer, but film is a medium that, on this occasion, he’s failed to get to grips with. His characterisations are only occasionally compelling, while the Counselor is required to fall apart as soon as he hears about the hijacking and just plummet further from there. Malkina has no back story, no reasons given for her actions and Diaz is left playing a modern-dress version of Lady Macbeth, but without the informed psychology. It’s a tribute to Diaz that Malkina isn’t played entirely one-dimensionally, but there are times when it’s a close-run thing. And the character of Laura is given little to do other than to provide a reason for the Counselor’s getting involved in the deal in the first place; after that Cruz is pretty much sidelined.

As you would expect from a Ridley Scott movie, The Counselor is a visual treat, Scott painting celluloid pictures with the same verve and attention to detail that he’s been doing since The Duellists (1977). The desert vistas in Mexico are beautifully filmed, as is the US back road where the hijacking takes place – a brutally short but bravura piece that is a stand out, along with Westray’s eventual fate. Scott’s grasp on a script’s cinematic requirements is as sharp as always, and while he is a supreme stylist, he doesn’t appear to have kept a firm hand on what’s being filmed; as a result there are several nuances that are missing or undeveloped, not least in the encounter between Malkina and Laura which could have resonated much more than it does. Instead it becomes just a scene where we learn Malkina can be manipulative for the sake of it.

While Diaz and Bardem’s characters make for an unlikely couple, their scenes together are fun to watch, but it’s Pitt who comes off best as the been there, seen-it-all, knows when to get out Westray. It’s he that predicts the movie’s outcome, he that tells the audience in his first scene what’s going to happen to at least two of the characters, and it’s he that has the best line in the movie: when talking about the cartel, he says, “…they don’t really believe in coincidences. They’ve heard of them. They’ve just never seen one.” There’s a great little cameo from John Leguizamo (uncredited), and as Malkina’s hijacker of choice, Sam Spruell exudes a cold menace that keeps you watching out for him even when he’s not on-screen. Fassbender has the unenviable task of getting the audience to sympathise with a character who looks for anyone else to get him out of the hole he’s dug too deep, and by the film’s end you wish the cartel would catch up with him and put him, and us, out of our collective misery.

The Counselor isn’t a bad movie per se, just a muddled, at times distracting movie that loses focus throughout, only to redeem itself with a scene or two of better impact. There’s a nihilistic approach at times, and often you don’t care what happens to anyone, even Laura, presented here as a (mostly) innocent bystander. It looks great, as expected, but there are too many hollow moments for it to work properly. As with a lot of movies, the script is responsible for this, and while this is only his second screenplay after The Sunset Limited (2011), McCarthy shouldn’t be discouraged from writing any more.

Rating: 6/10 – it could have been so much better, but The Counselor fails to engage on an emotional level, and while as you’d expect from Scott it’s a pleasure to look at, there’s too little going on too often for it to work as a whole.

thedullwoodexperiment

~ Viewing movies in a different light

Tag Archives: Michael Fassbender

The Snowman (2017)

A Dangerous Method (2011)

Alien: Covenant (2017)

Trespass Against Us (2016)

Assassin’s Creed (2016)

10 Stars Who Weren’t Born in the Country You Think They Were

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Trailers – The Accountant (2016), Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016) and The Light Between Oceans (2016)

Steve Jobs (2015)

Macbeth (2015)

Trailer – Macbeth (2015)

Slow West (2015)

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

12 Years a Slave (2013)

The Counselor (2013)

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