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Monthly Roundup – January 2018

31 Wednesday Jan 2018

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Awakening the Zodiac (2017) / D: Jonathan Wright / 100m

Cast: Shane West, Leslie Bibb, Matt Craven, Nicholas Campbell, Kenneth Welsh, Stephen McHattie

Rating: 4/10 – no one knew it at the time but the notorious (and uncaptured) Zodiac killer filmed the murders he committed, something cash-strapped couple Mick and Zoe Branson (West, Bibb) discover when they come into possession of one of the reels, and then find themselves and those around them targeted by the Zodiac killer himself; there’s the germ of a good idea lurking somewhere in Awakening the Zodiac, but thanks to a sloppy script, wayward direction, and an indifferent approach to the Zodiac killer himself (by the end he’s just a generic movie-made serial killer), this never gets out of first gear, and settles for trundling along and signposting each narrative development with all the skill and style of a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest.

Home Again (2017) / D: Hallie Meyers-Shyer / 97m

Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Michael Sheen, Candice Bergen, Pico Alexander, Jon Rudnitzky, Nat Wolff, Lake Bell

Rating: 7/10 – when middle-aged fledgling interior designer Alice (Witherspoon) splits from her unreliable husband (Sheen), the last thing she expects to do is allow three young men trying to break into the movie business to move into her guest house – and then become romantically involved with one of them (Alexander); it’s hard to criticise Home Again because despite it being almost drama-free and the very definition of innocuous, it also just wants to give audiences a good time, and on that very basic level it succeeds, but it’s still possibly the most lightweight romantic comedy of 2017.

Downsizing (2017) / D: Alexander Payne / 135m

Cast: Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Hong Chau, Kristen Wiig, Rolf Lassgård, Udo Kier, Søren Pilmark, Jason Sudeikis

Rating: 5/10 – the answer to the world’s population crisis is revealed to be shrinking people to the point where they’re five inches tall, something that sad-sack occupational therapist Paul Safranek (Damon) agrees to with alacrity, but being small proves to be no different from being normal-sized, and soon Paul is having to re-think everything he’s ever thought or believed; a closer examination of Downsizing (under a microscope perhaps) reveals a movie that contains too many scenes that pass by without contributing anything to the overall storyline, and a satirical approach to the idea itself that lacks purpose, and sadly for Payne fans, his trademark wit, making it all a dreary, leaden experience that goes on for waaaaaay too long.

Family Fever (2014) / D: Nico Sommer / 71m

Original title: Familien fieber

Cast: Kathrin Waligura, Peter Trabner, Deborah Kaufmann, Jörg Witte, Jan Amazigh Sid, Anais Urban

Rating: 7/10 – when two sets of parents get together for the weekend at the request of their respective children (who are a couple), none of them are able to deal with the fallout that comes with the revelation of a secret that threatens the security of both marriages; a German comedy/drama that doesn’t always go where the viewer might expect it to, Family Fever revels in the awkwardness and frustration felt by its quartet of main characters, and though it sadly runs out of steam in the last fifteen minutes, by then it’s done more than enough to provide plenty of wicked laughs and affecting drama.

Coco (2017) / D: Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina / 105m

Cast: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach, Renee Victor, Jaime Camil, Alfonso Arau

Rating: 8/10 – Miguel (Gonzalez) is a young boy whose family has rejected any kind of music in order to focus on selling shoes, which leads him into all sorts of trouble in the Underworld on Mexico’s Day of the Dead, trouble that could also mean his never returning to the land of the living; right now you’re never quite sure how a Pixar movie is going to work out, but Coco is a treat, its mix of clever character design, beautifully rendered animation (naturally), heartfelt storylines, and memorable songs making it one to savour time and again… though, be warned, you will be in tears towards the end.

Darkest Hour (2017) / D: Joe Wright / 125m

Cast: Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, Stephen Dillane, Ben Mendelsohn, Ronald Pickup, Nicholas Jones, Samuel West

Rating: 8/10 – it’s 1940 and Great Britain is faced with a challenge: who is to lead them against the fast-approaching menace of the Nazis, and if it has to be Winston Churchill (Oldman), then what can be done to undermine him and his authority?; the answer is quite a bit – for the most part – but history is firm on Churchill’s success, and so Darkest Hour, while featuring a superb performance from Oldman, has no choice but to succumb to retelling events that have already been retold numerous times before, and in doing so doesn’t offer the viewer anything new except for a number of very good performances and assured, and surprisingly sinewy direction from Wright.

Message from the King (2016) / D: Fabrice du Welz / 102m

Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Luke Evans, Alfred Molina, Teresa Palmer, Natalie Martinez, Arthur Darbinyan, Lucan Melkonian, Diego Josef, Tom Felton, Chris Mulkey, Jake Weary

Rating: 5/10 – when his younger sister dies in suspicious circumstances in Los Angeles, South African cab driver Jacob King (Boseman) travels there to find out who caused her death and why – and exact revenge; a throwback to the kind of blaxploitation movies made in the Seventies, Message from the King at least refers to King as an angry brother in the traditional sense, but the movie’s plot is hollow, and the likes of Evans and Molina are wasted in roles that might have seemed fresh (again) in the Seventies, but here feel like caricatures for the movie to focus on in between bouts of King exacting his violent revenge.

The Commuter (2018) / D: Jaume Collet-Serra / 105m

Cast: Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Jonathan Banks, Sam Neill, Elizabeth McGovern, Killian Scott, Shazad Latif, Andy Nyman, Clara Lago, Roland Møller, Florence Pugh

Rating: 4/10 – ex-cop turned insurance salesman Michael MacCauley (Neeson) is approached by a mysterious woman (Farmiga) on his train home and tasked with finding a complete stranger who’s also on the train – what could possibly go wrong?; everything as it turns out, with The Commuter going off the rails soon after, and never getting back on track, something confirmed (if there was any doubt before then) when the script throws in an “I’m Spartacus/I’m Brian” moment (take your pick), as well as reminding everyone that Neeson really is too old for this kind of thing.

The Post (2017) / D: Steven Spielberg / 116m

Cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys, Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Jesse Plemons, David Cross, Zach Woods, Pat Healy

Rating: 9/10 – the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the level of deceit the US government had perpetrated on its citizens about its involvement in Vietnam, is explored through the days leading up to the Washington Times‘ courageous decision to publish despite the threat of imprisonment for treason that the White House was prepared to enforce; Streep is publisher Kay Graham, Hanks is legendary editor Ben Bradlee, and Spielberg is on excellent form, giving The Post a sense of immediacy and potency that other historical dramas can only dream of (and the relevance to today’s US political scene doesn’t even need to be made obvious).

The Open House (2018) / D: Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote / 94m

Cast: Dylan Minnette, Piercey Dalton, Patricia Bethune, Sharif Atkins, Aaron Abrams, Edward Olson, Katie Walder

Rating: 3/10 – a recent widow (Dalton) and her mopey son (Minnette) get away from their grief and their problems at a house that’s up for sale – and find strange things going on there right from the start; an awful thriller that just refuses to make any sense or make either of its two main characters sympathetic, The Open House does everything it can to make you look away… and not in a good way.

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Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer (2016)

14 Wednesday Jun 2017

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D: Joseph Cedar / 118m

Cast: Richard Gere, Lior Ashkenazi, Michael Sheen, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Dan Stevens, Steve Buscemi, Harris Yulin, Yehuda Almagor, Neta Riskin, Hank Azaria, Scott Shepherd, Josh Charles, Isaach De Bankolé

Norman Oppenheimer (Gere) is an aging, low-level fixer, a facilitator who wants to help people succeed in business, but who doesn’t have the necessary contacts to make things happen or to avoid being looked on with suspicion, or being dismissed out of hand. When he approaches a young investment banker, Bill Kavish (Stevens), with a deal that could make Kavish’s boss, Jo Wilf (Yulin), a fortune, he’s given the brush off. With the deal involving Israeli tax write-offs, Norman turns his attention to rising Israeli politician, Micha Eshel (Ashkenazi), who is in New York for a brief visit. He “bumps into” Eshel outside a men’s clothing store where Eshel is admiring a pair of shoes. Norman buys Eshel the shoes – as a gift – and persuades him to to join Norman at a party he’s going to that night at the home of Wilf’s main rival, Arthur Taub (Charles). But Eshel doesn’t go, and Norman’s plan to get the two men together (and involve Taub in the deal for the Israeli tax write-offs) falls apart.

Three years later, Norman is still committed to helping people achieve great success in their lives, when Eshel returns to New York as the new Israeli Prime Minister. At a reception, Norman and Eshel are reunited, and Eshel welcomes him into his inner circle as a close friend. But any further access becomes difficult, with Eshel’s chief advisor, Duby (Almagor), ensuring Norman’s calls go unanswered. Meanwhile, the synagogue that Norman is affiliated with is threatened with being sold off unless $14 million can be raised to save it. Norman takes it on himself to do so, and when Eshel asks for Norman’s help in getting his son into Harvard, he sees a way of turning the favour into a chance to save the synagogue. But his plan doesn’t work out, and Norman begins to weave a web of lies and half-truths in an effort to keep his relationship with Eshel, and the synagogue, alive in the eyes of everyone around him. But when he talks to a special Israeli investigator (Gainsbourg) on a train, and innocently mentions his connection with Eshel – and those shoes – it puts in motion a series of events that Norman couldn’t have predicted, and which leaves him having to make a decision that will have far-reaching consequences for everyone he’s involved with – and most of all, for Norman himself.

In recent years you could be forgiven for wondering if Richard Gere had given up on Hollywood altogether, and had decided to make only low budget movies for the rest of his career. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2015), his first mainstream movie since Chicago (2002), reminded us that he could still pull off the kind of matinee idol role he essayed so successfully in the Eighties and Nineties, but it was a surprise to see him in something so pleasantly superficial. Now, after several trips to the indie well, Gere has found a role that suits him as the character actor he prefers to be known as, and which offers him the chance to give his best performance in years. As the indefatigably persistent Norman Oppenheimer, Gere the matinee idol is buried beneath a camel hair coat, flat cap, unflattering hairstyle, and dangling ear buds. There are times when Gere doesn’t even look like Gere, so complete is his transformation. He gives a fascinating portrayal of a man whose entire life is predicated around helping others, of arranging meetings between remarkable men while steadfastly remaining in the background.

This does make Joseph Cedar’s follow up to his Oscar-nominated Footnote (2011) (which also starred Ashkenazi) a little difficult to get to grips with at first, as Norman’s self-effacing personality threatens to overwhelm the narrative. He’s a nice guy, but he’s still not someone you’d want hanging around in your life all the time – which is exactly what he would do. And even though Norman’s motives are entirely genuine and full of good intentions, there’s something about his demeanour that keeps the players he tries to associate with from embracing him entirely (the analogy that would best describe him is the one where he’s the kid who’s chosen last by his classmates to be on someone’s team). We also learn very little about Norman, about his life or his beginnings, how he came to be a fixer. We never see him at home either; instead he retreats to the synagogue when he needs to take a break. And he seems to be financially independent as we never see him receive any money from anyone. He’s a mystery to the viewer, and more so to the characters he interacts with, who never quite manage to interpret his actions as anything other than self-serving.

Cedar’s impressively detailed script gains momentum as the story unfolds, with Norman in the midst of a web of his own making and finding himself trapped at its centre. But Norman never gives up, and though the solution he arrives at is detrimental to himself he doesn’t hesitate to do what he must. And everything he does is for someone else’s benefit; and he doesn’t care if people aren’t appreciative. It’s not the point. Cedar surrounds Norman with a cadre of (mostly) unlikeable contacts and movers and shakers and allows them to manipulate Norman for their own ends, while Norman continues being Norman and sticking to his guns. As the movie progresses, it becomes easier and easier to understand him, and to appreciate what he’s doing, even if the why is missing. In many ways, it’s better that Norman’s motivations remain hidden, as it somehow makes the resolution to his story all the more satisfying.

Gere is surrounded by a talented cast, some of whom appear whenever necessary – Gainsbourg, Stevens, Yulin – and some, like Ashkenazi, whose involvement is absolutely essential to the success of Cedar’s movie. The Israeli-born actor gives a terrific performance as a politician whose moral compass is gradually pulled askew in the name of political expediency. Cedar gifts the actor with a tremendous monologue about the nature of compromise, and Ashkenazi delivers it with scathing wit and undeniable rancour. It’s a stand out moment, and shows that Cedar isn’t going to fall back on standard tropes for his characters, even when they’re engaged in somewhat predictable political manoeuvrings. He’s also constructed a screenplay that is humorous and darkly comic, flecked with delicious subtleties that add to the screenplay’s already impressive nature, and which makes much of the dialogue unexpectedly tart and/or subversive. With Cedar also employing a split screen effect that affords an unexpected emotional weight when it’s used, Norman is a movie that is full of surprises, and definitely worth seeking out.

Rating: 8/10 – the kind of intelligent, well thought out, and observant movie that rarely gets the attention it deserves, Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer is quite simply a joy to watch, and very easy to recommend; with Gere on such good form, and Cedar in full control of the various elements that make up his entertaining screenplay, the movie may tread some well-worn paths on it’s way to the end, but this shouldn’t put off anyone from seeing it.

Mini-Review: Passengers (2016)

29 Thursday Dec 2016

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passengers_profil

D: Morten Tyldum / 116m

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne, Andy Garcia

The spaceship Avalon is on its one hundred and twenty year journey from Earth to colony planet Homestead II. On board are two hundred and fifty-eight crew and five thousand passengers, people looking to build new lives on the colony planet. Everyone is in a state of suspended animation, asleep in hibernation pods until the Avalon is a few months from reaching its destination. Thirty years into the journey, the ship is struck by a massive meteorite. Following this, one of the passengers, engineer Jim Preston (Pratt) is woken from hibernation. The only passenger who’s awake, and with no way of resetting the hibernation pod to put him back to sleep, Jim finds the only company he has is that of an android barman named Arthur (Sheen).

After a year by himself, Jim is joined by Aurora Lane (Lawrence), a writer looking to find a story in the migration from Earth. As time goes by, a romance develops between them. But the ship is constantly malfunctioning, sometimes to the extent of putting Jim and Aurora’s lives at risk. They do what they can to fix things as they happen, but it becomes obvious that there’s a bigger problem to contend with – they just don’t know what it is. When crew member Gus Mancuso (Fishburne) is also awoken by mistake, the trio begin to make a concerted effort to locate the source of all the malfunctions. But when they do, the potential arises for one of them to have to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to save the ship…

passengers

Ostensibly a sci-fi movie about a stricken ship and the stranded souls on board, Passengers works best as a romantic drama, but even then it lacks the depth and the courage of its own convictions. Jim and Aurora make for a seemingly perfect couple, but thanks to the way in which the movie is advertised, what you don’t learn until seeing the movie is that their relationship is founded on a lie. So you have a broad, generic romance where two people inevitably fall in love, and just as inevitably part ways before coming together again for the sake of the movie’s big finish (and an unnecessary coda). Lawrence and Pratt work well together, and there’s a certain amount of chemistry between them, but unfortunately the emphasis is on the spaceship rather than their characters’ straightforwardly handled romance.

Tyldum’s last feature was The Imitation Game (2014), another movie that lacked a sense of tension (or urgency) as it told its story, and his work here is no different, failing to make the ever-expanding crisis on board into the pulse-pounding race against time it needs to be to be fully effective. Instead, Jon Spaihts’ script has Pratt mouthing romantic platitudes at every opportunity, while Lawrence endeavours to make her character’s novelistic intentions at all interesting. Only Sheen rises above the blandness of the material, and he does so by means of some very detailed micro-expressions. Unsurprisingly, the movie looks very good indeed, with Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography highlighting and complementing the sterling production design of Guy Hendrix Dyas. But when a movie fails to make you care if either or both of the main characters lives or dies, then there’s definitely something that’s not working as it should be.

Rating: 5/10 – a decent premise that’s handled with too many broad brush strokes, Passengers wastes its cast on a characters in peril narrative that should have been given more prominence, and a romance that remains tepid throughout; Lawrence and Pratt do their best, but even they look as if they’ve lost interest by the time the third act hoves into view, and Tyldum never quite seems to know how to knit everything together into a satisfying whole.

 

Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)

30 Sunday Aug 2015

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Far from the Madding Crowd

D: Thomas Vinterberg / 119m

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge, Juno Temple, Jessica Barden, Hilton McRae, Bradley Hall

1870. Bathsheba Everdene (Mulligan) shelling out on her aunt’s farm in Dorset. Her aunt’s neighbour, Gabriel Oak (Schoenaerts), is a shepherd with a hundred acres and two hundred sheep. One day he proposes marriage to Bathsheba but she rejects his offer, telling him that she is too independent for him and he would never be able to tame her. Soon after, Gabriel’s sheep are all killed when his sheepdog herds them over a cliff; unable to keep his farm going he is forced to sell up and move on. Bathsheba is sorry to see him go, but her sadness is by the news that she has inherited her uncle’s estate in Weatherbury.

Determined to run the estate herself, Bathsheba brooks no nonsense from her staff. Now a wandering worker for hire, Gabriel learns of a position as shepherd on the estate. When he arrives there he and Bathsheba are both pleased to see each other again, but she insists on the proper formalities now that she is his employer. When her efforts attract the attention of her neighbour, William Boldwood (Sheen), he too proposes marriage as Gabriel did. Bathsheba turns him down as well, and when she and Gabriel discuss the matter, his dislike for the way she treated Boldwood leads to her telling him to leave. But a problem with the sheep gives her no choice but to rehire him.

Some time later, Bathsheba is walking the grounds of her estate one night when she unexpectedly meets ex-soldier Francis Troy (Sturridge). He tells her she’s beautiful, but although she’s pleasantly surprised she tells him to leave. When she finds Troy helping with the harvest the next morning, she again tells him to leave, but before he does he manages to persuade her to meet him the next day. When she does, he proposes to her, and this time she accepts. They marry – against Gabriel’s advice – and Troy’s rapacious nature reveals itself. He milks the estate for money and treats Bathsheba like she’s his property. But his past comes back to haunt him in the form of Fanny Robbin (Temple), a young woman he was betrothed to but who went to the wrong church on their wedding day. She tells him she’s carrying his child; he agrees to meet her the next day but she doesn’t show up. Later, her discovered corpse is taken to Weatherbury (because she was a servant there). When Troy sees the body he tells Bathsheba she is nothing to him, and he leaves. He swims out to sea and Bathsheba is informed of his drowning. With the estate’s fortunes in jeopardy because of Troy’s gambling, Bathsheba is once more offered support from William Boldwood…

Carey Mulligan as "Bathsheba" and Matthias Schoenaerts as "Gabriel" in FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD. Photos by Alex Bailey.  © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved

Leaving aside any comparison with John Schlesinger’s 1967 version, Far from the Madding Crowd is a hard movie to enjoy, determined as it is to play down the passion inherent in Thomas Hardy’s novel, and the social proprieties of the period. Thanks to the adaptation and screenplay by David Nicholls, and Thomas Vinterberg’s pedestrian direction, the movie fails to ignite at any point, preferring instead to tread safely along, ticking off the novel’s high points like a classroom exercise. This leaves the unlucky viewer wondering if and when the pace will pick up, or the buttoned-down emotions will ever be released in a way that can be recognised or acknowledged.

For this is a movie that trades on lingering looks and silent expressions. Bathsheba and Gabriel do little else but show their attraction for each other by looking pointedly and often at each other (God forbid anyone should display their feelings – William Boldwood excepted). So much is left unspoken there are moments that wouldn’t feel out of place in a silent movie. No doubt this is to allow Mulligan and Schoenaerts to “act” but instead it drags the movie along, and leaves both of them somewhat stranded, as the audience waits patiently for their expected romance to finally come to fruition (once Troy and Boldwood are dispensed with).

There’s also the sense that somewhere along the way – the editing stage, probably – the decision was taken to fit the movie to a two-hour running time, because this is a movie that feels hurried and disjointed at the same time. Some scenes feel truncated, while others feel as if they’re missing the one that should have come before. It’s an odd feeling, and never really goes away, even though the movie becomes more interesting once Bathsheba is married and it holds the attention a little better. Presented in this fashion, though, leads to the movie feeling like the edited version of a mini-series. (If there’s a Director’s Cut on the horizon, then a three-hour version wouldn’t come as a surprise.)

Against this, the performances are solid if unspectacular, though Sheen is a standout as the troubled yet hopeful Boldwood, the scene where he reveals his feelings about Bathsheba to Gabriel a small masterclass in making more from stilted dialogue than would seem possible. Mulligan convinces as a free spirit (though not as a woman instantly lovestruck by the romantic attentions of a soldier), while Schoenaerts gives such a laid-back performance it’s tempting to have his pulse checked from time to time. As the dashing Troy, Sturridge acts with his top lip to the fore, and delivers his lines as if he was reading from The Young Rogue’s Guide to Eligible Damsels. And Temple is wasted as Fanny, reduced to a few scenes and given little more to do than pop in and out of the narrative as required.

What saves the movie is Charlotte Bruus Christensen’s luminous landscape photography, allied to some richly detailed interiors, and a recreation of the period that feels exactly as it would have been. Beyond that, Craig Armstrong’s score is used sparingly and with surprising acuity, the few emotional scenes left free of music so as to focus the viewer’s attention on the scene itself, and not manipulate them into feeling the “correct” emotion. It’s a rare feat, but it works well here (unlike the scenes themselves).

Rating: 5/10 – sluggish and only fleetingly engaging, Far from the Madding Crowd looks and feels like a movie that deserves a better, more considered approach; while hitting its mark sporadically may account for some of the kinder reviews out there, this is still a major disappointment from Vinterberg, and if you’re a fan of Hardy, a letdown as well.