Tag Archives: Politics

Vice (2018)

16 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

D: Adam McKay / 132m

Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Jesse Plemons, Tyler Perry, Alison Pill, Lily Rabe, Eddie Marsan, Justin Kirk, LisaGay Hamilton, Bill Camp, Don McManus, Shea Whigham, Stephen Adly Guirgis

In 1963, future vice president Dick Cheney (Bale) is working as a lineman because his alcoholism got him kicked out of Yale. Given an ultimatum by his wife, Lynne (Adams), to shape up and make something of his life, Cheney goes into politics, securing an internship at the White House during the Nixon administration. There he works for Nixon’s economic advisor Donald Rumsfeld (Carell). The two become friends (of a sort) and as the years pass, they both fall in and out of favour with the ruling elite, until during the Clinton era, Cheney becomes CEO of Halliburton, and Rumsfeld holds a variety of positions in the private sector. When he’s asked to be the running mate of George W. Bush (Rockwell) when Bush runs for president, Cheney sees an opportunity to occupy a unique position of power. But it’s in the wake of the terrorist attacks that occurred on 9/11 that Cheney sees his ambition begin to come to fruition. Without recourse to just cause, and ignoring his own intelligence agencies, Cheney orchestrates an unnecessary war in Iraq…

Although it’s perfectly well made, and intelligently constructed, Adam McKay’s foray into US politics lacks the urgency of his previous outing, The Big Short (2015), and the impact, with much of what we know about Cheney and his unrepentant manipulation of the facts post-9/11, still fresh in our memories. And it’s hard to be outraged by what Cheney did when the current incumbent of the White House abuses his position so appallingly (and deliberately), and on an almost daily basis. This leaves Vice at a bit of a disadvantage, with McKay’s screenplay laying it all out for us, but in a way that doesn’t feel fresh or surprising, but rather more like reportage. The facts are there, but the emotion isn’t, and this leaves the viewer in an awkward position: working out how to engage with a movie that should be hitting home quite forcefully, but which settles instead for telling its story too matter-of-factly for its own good (it doesn’t help that McKay lumbers his movie with having to stop and explain things such as the unitary executive theory… not the most exciting of topics). There’s also the hint of a longer movie as well, with incidents such as the Valerie Plame affair, and the accidental shooting of Harry Whittington, added to the narrative but ultimately carrying little or no dramatic weight.

And we never get to know Cheney the man, or his motives. Played with a marked reticence that makes Cheney look like a less amiable Chevy Chase, Bale is physically intimidating but often reduced to uttering grunts instead of sentences, and looking disinterested or dismissive. Cheney may have been a ruthless, calculating politician post-9/11, but a lot of the time he just looks like your average grumpy grandpa. Even the one good thing that Cheney did – retiring from public life in order to shield his daughter, Mary (Pill), from media scrutiny over being a lesbian – is tarnished by his later actions in supporting the political ambitions of his other daughter, Liz (Rabe). Rare moments such as these make Cheney appear more recognisably human, and not the unknowable cypher he is the rest of the time. All in all, it’s still a good performance from Bale, but it’s the likes of Adams and Plemons (as a fictional Iraq War veteran with an unlikely tie to Cheney) who make the material resonate more. Again, it’s intelligently constructed, and McKay sprinkles the narrative with some caustic humour to leaven the gloom, while DoP Greig Fraser ensures the sense of dirty deeds carried out behind closed doors is portrayed through tight close ups and the use of shadowy lighting. It’s a movie that speaks plainly about the issues it’s addressing, but sadly, a little too plainly to be effective.

Rating: 6/10 – dry and only fitfully engaging, Vice has the feel of a movie that’s telling its story as if everyone’s already been briefed and the movie itself is something of a formality; when a movie that seeks to recount seismic events in recent US history lacks immediacy and verve then something is very wrong indeed.

Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018)

15 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

D: Michael Moore / 128m

With: Michael Moore, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Katie Endicott, Ben Ferencz, Mona Hanna-Attisha, David Hogg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Richard Ojeda, Robert Pickell, John Podesta, Bernie Sanders, Nayyirah Shariff, Timothy Snyder, Rashida Tlaib

Where to start…? As well as being the beginning for this review, you can imagine that was also the quandary faced by Michael Moore when it came time to decide what to include in his latest documentary, a state of the nation address that shows the movie maker at his angriest and unhappiest. Moore has been chronicling the on-going downfall of America for over thirty years, and here his passion and talent for exposing the hypocrisy at the heart of American politics is firmly at the forefront of Fahrenheit 11/9‘s clarion call to the American people. The movie begins with the election of Donald Trump as President, and Moore asking the question, “How the fuck did this happen?” But if you think that’s something of a slap in the face, there’s more to come, as Moore examines the uncomfortable relationship between Trump and his daughter, Ivanka; explores the correlation between Trump’s racist comments and the increase in systemic racism; abjures the political system that encouages the complacency that allows Trump’s recidivism to go unchecked; and asserts that democracy – true democracy – is something that America has never experienced.

Away from Trump, Moore returns to his home town of Flint, Michigan, a once thriving town that is now a shadow of its former self. With the town struggling to keep itself going, in 2011 State Governor Rick Snyder backed a plan to replace the mains water pipeline that supplied clear water to Flint from Lake Huron. While the new pipeline was being built, Snyder also backed the decision to use the Flint River as the primary source of clean water for the town. But the river was toxic, and though officials repeatedly told residents it was safe to drink, soon people were getting sick. Lead levels in the water were found to be so high that the people of Flint, including between six and twelve thousand children, had been effectively poisoned. There was an outbreak of Legionnaires Disease that claimed the lives of ten people. And nothing was done about it until recently. Even a visit from Barack Obama failed to alleviate the issue – and all because he asked for a glass of water. And that’s without the military coming in and using abandoned buildings and deprived areas in Flint as a place to carry out their war games. How much worse can it get for Flint? Even Moore doesn’t know.

Moore also turns his attention to the West Virginia teachers’ strike in early 2018, and the aftermath of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that took place around the same time. With both these events, Moore shows how a new generation of Americans such as Richard Ojeda are beginning to challenge the political status quo with shows of solidarity and national marches. Moore shows there is still hope for the future, and makes the point that perhaps the nation needs this period of social and political upheaval before it can move on more profitably as a democracy. But it all comes back to Trump, the master liar and manipulator who took advantage of a bankrupt political system and used it to his own ends. To get an idea of how much Moore detests the man, see how uncomfortable he looks when he and Trump appear together on The Roseanne Show (and he has to be nice to the future President), and then watch in astonishment as he presents us with footage of Adolf Hitler speaking with Trump’s voice. Heavy-handed? Most definitely. And what follows isn’t the most rigorous of historical analogies, either, but as a warning of what might be around the corner, it’s chilling. And who’s to say Moore is wrong? After all, he was one of the few people who predicted Trump would win the presidency…

Rating: 9/10 – fiercely argued, and presenting facts and figures that often get left out of the argument – 75% of Americans believe immigration is good for the US; Barack Obama took more money from Goldman Sachs than any other contributor – Fahrenheit 11/9 sees Michael Moore back to doing what he does best: holding up a mirror to the myriad failings of American politics; necessarily hard to watch if you have any empathy for a country that has no idea how to make itself great again (or even averagely successful), it’s a movie that takes no prisoners on either side, but which also manages to find grains of hope in amongst all the fiascos and disasters.

The Front Runner (2018)

12 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

D: Jason Reitman / 113m

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Vera Farmiga, J.K. Simmons, Alfred Molina, Mamoudou Athie, Bill Burr, Oliver Cooper, Chris Coy, Kaitlyn Dever, Molly Ephraim, Ari Graynor, Mike Judge, John Bedford Lloyd, Mark O’Brien, Sara Paxton, Kevin Pollak, Steve Zissis

1984. Senator Gary Hart (Jackman) of Colorado loses the Democratic presidential nomination to Walter Mondale. Four years later, Hart is the front runner in the race for the presidency, ahead in the polls against Republican candidate George H.W. Bush, and on course to put a Democrat back in the Oval Office after Ronald Reagan’s eight-year tenure. While campaigning in Florida, Hart attends a party held by a political associate of his, and there he meets Donna Rice (Paxton), a university graduate who is interested in working for Hart’s campaign as a fundraiser. Later, a reporter at the Miami Herald, Tom Fiedler (Zissis), receives an anonymous call informing him that Hart is meeting Rice at his home in Washington. Deciding to follow Rice to Washington, she is seen in Hart’s company at his home, and appears to have stayed there overnight. The Herald publishes an article exposing Hart’s “affair”, and in the ensuing days, the senator has to decide whether he should fight the accusation and continue with his campaign, or abandon his hopes of becoming President altogether…

Based on the book All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid by Matt Bai (who also co-wrote the screenplay along with Reitman and Jay Carson), The Front Runner is an odd mix of political drama, cautionary tale, and media morality discourse, but it’s also a mix that doesn’t entirely work because it doesn’t examine these aspects in any meaningful or deliberate way. It’s true, Hart targets the media as the authors of his downfall, and makes several pointed remarks about how intrusive they’ve become in order to break a story, but rather than providing a precise examination of the way in which newspaper reporting was beginning to morph into what we’re familiar with nowadays, the movie instead opts to have several reporters look sheepish when challenged, and bleating about the public’s right to know when polls clearly showed they weren’t that interested. The movie also has a problem with the nature of Hart’s relationship with Rice. As both parties stated then (and since) that they weren’t having an affair, and no conclusive proof was ever found, the whole issue is inferred in much the same way that the Miami Herald originally reported it. As a result, the movie has a gaping narrative hole in it, one that it never overcomes.

But with all this, what truly matters is whether or not Hart’s story is actually worth telling… and on this evidence, the answer has to be No. Despite an impressive performance from Jackman that paints Hart as a man whose surface charm hides an arrogant, self-righteous personality, the movie struggles to make his downfall anything like the tragedy it’s aiming for. When he’s not putting all the blame on the media, he’s pitiful and apologetic to his long-suffering wife, Lee (Farmiga), admitting his culpability to her but not to anyone else; this makes it hard to feel sympathy for someone whose sense of personal morality is so badly compromised. Elsewhere, the movie shifts and turns uneasily in its attempts to make itself politically and socially relevant to today’s climate (feminist issues form the basis for a subplot involving Rice’s treatment by Hart’s campaign team), and Reitman shapes too many scenes that are meant to be impactful, but which fall short because they lack the necessary energy or power. Judged against the current political climate in America, the “details” of Hart’s fall from grace seem almost whimsical now in their simplicity, and The Front Runner doesn’t offer the required insights to make it more compelling or effective.

Rating: 6/10 – to paraphrase Bob Dylan, “the times they were a-changin'”, but though this is touched on in The Front Runner, like much else it touches on, the movie raises many more questions than it can answer, and often feels like a beginner’s guide to Eighties political naïvete; with a large supporting cast that’s given little to do that might improve matters – Athie and Ephraim are the exceptions – the movie casts a wide net but its catch isn’t as substantial as it should have been, and it’s only occasionally absorbing.

Peterloo (2018)

13 Tuesday Nov 2018

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

D: Mike Leigh / 154m

Cast: Rory Kinnear, Maxine Peake, Pearce Quigley, Karl Johnson, Neil Bell, Philip Jackson, John-Paul Hurley, Tom Gill, Vincent Franklin, Jeff Rawle, Philip Whitchurch, Martin Savage, Roger Sloman, Sam Troughton, Alastair Mackenzie, Tim McInnerny, Dorothy Duffy, Victoria Moseley

In the wake of Napoléon Bonaparte’s defeat on the Continent in 1815, the working classes in the north of England turn their attention to protesting against the lack of fair political representation, and asking for extended voting rights (one vote per household). Getting wind of this, and viewing it as impending sedition, the British Government – as represented by the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth (Johnson) – decides to do all it can to ensure that this new movement is unsuccessful, and preferably crushed before it can begin. While local radicals from the Manchester Observer, including its founder, Joseph Johnson (Gill), organise a great assembly to take place at St Peter’s Fields in Manchester on 9 August 1819, with a speech to be delivered by the great reformist orator Henry Hunt (Kinnear), government spies and local magistrates plot to have Hunt arrested and the crowd dispersed by force if necessary. With a crowd of around 60,000 people attending, the local militia’s attempts to break up the gathering lead to a terrible tragedy…

Beginning on the battlefield in 1815, Mike Leigh’s latest movie features several firsts for the director in terms of action and bloodshed, but Peterloo is also his most fiercely political movie to date. In telling the story of one of Britain’s worst tragedies, Leigh takes us on a vital history lesson, ranging from the semi-rural mill towns of Lancashire and their inhabitants’ clamour for fair political representation, to the richly decorated rooms of the Establishment and their unwillingness to ease the yoke of political oppression, to the austere courtrooms of the local magistrates and their callous disregard for the lives of the working class. In meeting rooms and at outdoor venues, Leigh explores and illuminates the political and social climate of the period, and through the use of lengthy speeches and extended conversations, brings to life a time when liberty was a luxury afforded only to the ruling elite, and the working classes were so beaten down they were constantly in danger of dying from starvation and disease. Leigh brings all this to life, and gives powerful voice to both the ideals of the radicals and their supporters, and the arrogance of the Establishment. By the time the massacre gets under way, the audience knows exactly what is being fought for (albeit peacefully), and why it matters. And why the elite are so determined to impede any progress.

If all this sounds irredeemably dry and didactic, then nothing could be further from the truth. Like Eric Rohmer, whose movies often consist of just two people talking at length but which are still fascinating to watch, Leigh has the same ability to draw in the viewer and make the expression of ideas as compelling as the action that inevitably follows in their wake (though if anything, the massacre itself isn’t as well realised as the rest of the movie, and carries a strangely muted impact, as if Leigh didn’t want to go too far in depicting the violence). There are real emotions on display, however, from the peacock-ish pride of Henry Hunt, to the cautious reticence of Peake’s unconvinced wife and mother, to the fervour and enthusiasm of the leaders of the nascent Manchester Female Reform Society, to the priggish belligerence of the Prince Consort (McInnerny). In this, the cast are uniformly excellent, with special mention going to Bell as radical reformer Samuel Bamford, and Franklin as the vituperative, apoplectic Magistrate Rev Etlhelson. With expressive, beautifully composed cinematography by Dick Pope that further brings the period to life, along with Suzie Davies’ highly impressive production design, this is a gripping account of a despicable act of state-organised domestic terrorism.

Rating: 9/10 – not for all tastes, but a compelling and revealing look at a key moment in 19th century British history nevertheless, Peterloo sees Mike Leigh working at the height of his considerable story-telling powers; absorbing, intelligently handled, and brimming with vitality, this does border on being unashamedly polemical at times, but when the quality of the material is this good, it’s something that can be easily forgiven.

President Evil (2018)

31 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

D: Richard Lowry / 81m

Cast: Jose Rosete, Sitara Attaie, Korbin Miles, Lys Perez, Amber Moone, Jacob Jorgensen, Kyle Sing, Ryan Quinn Adams, Vinn Sander, Christian Hutcherson, Kevin Alain, Johanna Rae

Well, it is Halloween, after all…

On the night of the 1980 US presidential election, young David Barron dons a Ronald Reagan mask and brutally murders his ex-porn star mother, Scorchy McDaniels (Rae). Thirty-eight years later, and on the eve of the mid-term elections, David (Adams) escapes from the Lar-A-Mago sanitarium where he’s spent the intervening years. Returning to his home town of Libertybelle, David takes to wearing a Donald Trump mask and hanging out at his childhood home. Meanwhile, Dr Lutin (Sing), his doctor, heads there in the hope of finding David – though he has an ulterior motive for doing so. In the same neighbourhood, best friends Lana (Attaie), Blanca (Perez), and Medjine (Boone) are preparing to have a pre-election party ahead of their participation in an anti-Republican rally on the day. Along with Blanca’s younger brother, Pepe (Jorgensen), and their transgender friend, Gabriel (Sander), the party gets off to a good start, but it isn’t long before David is picking them off one by one, while the town sheriff (Rosete) does his best to come to their aid before it’s entirely too late…

The pitch must have been a fairly simple one: hey, why don’t we make a spoof of the original Halloween where instead of a Captain Kirk mask, the killer wears a Donald Trump mask instead? And the response must have been equally simple: great idea, go make it. But in the tradition of simple ideas made on a restricted budget, President Evil is an uneven, occasionally inspired, occasionally woeful movie with a ton of good intentions that don’t always pay off. It begins with an opening credits sequence that replicates the style of Halloween’s own opening credits, but replaces the jack o’ lantern with a Trump mask. Then there’s an updated recreation of the young Michael Myers’ murder of his sister that is shot entirely from David’s point of view and ends with him being unmasked outside his home. So far, so reassuringly competent homage, though with the kind of comedic elements that reveal the makers’ broader intentions for their story. Nods and winks in the direction of John Carpenter’s seminal movie follow, as well as Easter eggs that reference some of his other movies, while the script also adds further homages from the likes of Psycho (1960) and Young Frankenstein (1974).

The comedy is a mixed bag all by itself, and ranges from deft visual flourishes (David’s Trump mask hides someone who looks like Trump), to irritating bouts of frat humour (best summed up by Miles’ popping up at odd moments as characters as varied as a perverted priest and a Jared Kushner look-a-like), and further Mel Brooks’ appropriations (“Be a Smarty and Join the Republican Party”). Like Halloween, there’s a minimum of blood and gore, but there’s a singular lack of tension throughout, and the killings are often poorly staged and framed. The performances are broadly acceptable for this sort of thing, though Attaie does make for an appealing heroine, and Lowry seems more confident when bending the knee to Carpenter’s original than he does with the newer material; it’s as if the obvious difference between them was a given he had no control over. But if there’s one aspect that the script – by Lowry and Gregory P. Wolk – does get right, it’s in depicting the anger and distrust of ethnic minorities in current day America towards the xenophobic attitudes of the predominantly white, privileged political system. The movie is strident in its approach, but is also unapologetic about being so, and on that level – and like the best of horror movies – proves to be a telling reflection of a section of US society’s real fears.

Rating: 5/10 – though there’s much that doesn’t work, and much else that should have been jettisoned at the earliest opportunity, there’s still much to enjoy in President Evil, not the least of which is the way it lampoons Donald Trump and his ill-advised ramblings; to call this a post-millennial horror comedy for post-millennials who believe they might be the last generation able to appreciate something like this, may be stretching things, but when it’s en point, there’s nothing “Fake” about it.

Chappaquiddick (2017)

30 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

aka The Senator

D: John Curran / 107m

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

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

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

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

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

The Summit (2017)

17 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Original title: La cordillera

D: Santiago Mitre / 114m

Cast: Ricardo Darín, Dolores Fonzi, Erica Rivas, Gerardo Romano, Héctor Díaz, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Alfredo Castro, Paulina García, Leonardo Franco, Elena Anaya, Christian Slater

At the beginning of The Summit, one thing is made abundantly clear: that as Argentina’s recently elected President Blanco (Darín) is on the verge of travelling to Chile to take part in a summit arranged to discuss the setting up of a South American version of OPEC, there’s trouble waiting in the wings in the form of his son-in-law. Blanco may have been involved in a misappropriation of state funds before he became president. His team of advisors are worried about the possible repercussions if this knowledge becomes public, but with the summit just a day away, they decide to play a waiting game. Blanco makes one decision, though: he arranges for his daughter, Marina (Fonzi), to be brought out to the remote Andean hotel all the delegates are staying at. Perhaps she can provide some insight into her husband’s motives, even though they’re separated.

And so, the first of four separate plot strands is woven into place. Soon there will be the political machinations that go hand in hand with a number of countries all vying to get a large piece of the pie from assembling a mult-national oil conglomerate. Marina will suffer a breakdown that will reveal one of two things: a dark family secret, or a darker personal tragedy. And to wrap things up, Blanco will be put in a position that will make or break him as a hero of his country (this plot strand arrives a little late but it’s there nonetheless). It’s an ambitious mix of storylines, but stitched together awkwardly and with each strand causing problems for the others. Will Blanco be able to find a way out of the dilemma posed by his son-in-law? Will Marina’s breakdown bring her father’s presidency crashing down around his ears? Will Brazil, the guiding force behind the oil summit, get its own way at the expense of a better option? And will Blanco, faced with making a momentous decision that could backfire on him just as easily as it could be the making of him, survive everything that’s being thrown at him?

To answer all those questions, would inevitably, negate any reasons to watch this movie in the first place. But the answers themselves aren’t as compelling as they could have been. Without giving too much away, one answer can be guessed easily, another is resolved by an unexpected event, one could go either way, and the last is – very strangely – a mix of all three. As to which of those coded answers matches which plot strand, that would be telling, but it’s enough to also say that director Mitre and his co-screenwriter, Mariano Llinás, have attempted to tell a political drama that continually stops to explore the private lives of two of its main characters, and often forgets for long stretches that there’s even a summit going on (for the most part it seems as if the summit takes place for only an hour or so each day, such is the amount of time that Blanco has to deal with all the other issues that crop up).

Where it might have been a good idea to devote equal time and emphasis to all the various strands, and make them part of a slowly evolving (and involving) narrative, Mitre decides instead to concentrate on each one as if they were unconnected to each other. This leads to abrupt transitions of both tone and pacing, as when the summit is forgotten about in order for Marina’s breakdown to be explored in ever greater detail (and long enough for an Argentinian doctor (Castro) to be flown in to treat her). Likewise the arrival of Slater’s US government representative, which requires a hush-hush meeting with Blanco that again calls for him to be away from the summit for a length of time that in any other political thriller, would have the other delegates looking at him with dark suspicion. It’s at moments like these that Mitre seems unable to decide what’s more important: the basic set up of the summit, or the other stories he and Llinás have concocted in order to pad out the running time.

With its inelegant narrative that flits back and forth and never really lets the viewer get comfortable with what’s happening, The Summit has too many longueurs that bring it up sharply and require something of a kick start to get things moving again. Mitre also wants us to invest heavily in the relationship between Blanco and Marina, but thanks to the decision to take a side-step into psychological thriller territory, the issues each has with the other are allowed to be subsumed in a game of guess-the-truth, a game that could have been intriguing and more absorbing if it wasn’t dropped as soon as the movie needed too get back to the summit and wrap things up in a nice neat bow. Like a lot of the movie’s attempts at providing a probing, incisive narrative to draw in its audience, the end result provides instead a feeling that’s more akin to frustration than satisfaction.

Against all this, the cast struggle gamely with roles that often prove perfunctory, with even the usually dependable Darín unable to make much headway with a script that paints Blanco as a politician somewhat out of his depth on the world stage, and never really changes or challenges that assessment. As the daughter with a range of issues that every politican’s daughter seems to have, Fonzi does stary-eyed before emotion, and always seems half a beat behind where her character needs to be in any given scene. Rivas is good as the president’s loyal personal secretary, Cacho makes an impression as a Machiavellian Mexican president, and Anaya has a small role as a journalist who pops up here and there to ask “difficult” questions of the countries’ leaders. But the acting is often left to fend for itself at the expense of the material, and only Javier Julia’s crisp cinematography is allowed to furnish any respite from the dull stetches that hamper the movie’s ability to keep its audience from being truly engaged with it.

Rating: 6/10 – ponderous when it should be exciting, clumsy when it should be gripping, The Summit is an unfortunate title for a movie that never hits any creative heights, and which remains stranded at ground level throughout; somewhere in its screenplay are the makings of two, better, thrillers, but it’s unlikely now that we’ll ever see them, something that is more affecting by itself than the movie as a whole.

NOTE: The following trailer doesn’t have any English language subtitles, but it does give a good sense of the movie itself.

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

14 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

A United Kingdom (2016)

28 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

D: Amma Asante / 111m

Cast: David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike, Jack Davenport, Tom Felton, Laura Carmichael, Terry Pheto, Jessica Oyelowo, Vusi Kunene, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Arnold Oceng, Anastasia Hille, Charlotte Hope, Theo Landey, Abena Ayivor, Jack Lowden, Anton Lesser

In 1947, Prince Seretse Khama of Bechuanaland (Oyelowo) was studying law in England when he met and fell in love with Ruth Williams (Pike), a clerk at a London-based law firm. Poised to inherit the position of King, Seretse’s relationship with a white woman caused concern among both the British government (who ruled over Bechuanaland as a proctectorate), and Seretse’s uncle, Tshekedi (Kunene), who was ruling as regent until Seretse was ready to ascend the throne. Faced with opposition on all sides – Ruth’s father effectively disowned her – the couple ignored warnings and approbation and eventually married in September 1948.

A political maelstrom ensued, and all intended to ensure that Seretse never became King. The British government, in the form of Alistair Canning (Davenport), their representative in South Africa, attempted to bully Seretse into renouncing his claim, but he stood firm, and both he and Ruth travelled to Bechuanaland (now modern day Botswana) to begin their life together. They received a muted welcome, with Ruth being treated with hostility by Seretse’s family, and Seretse’s uncle refusing to accept the marriage, or Seretse’s wish for them to work together to solve their country’s problems. With the people of Bechuanaland supporting Seretse’s claim to the throne (and his marriage), the British government tricked him into travelling to Britain, where in 1951, he was promptly informed that he and Ruth were being exiled from his home country for a period of five years (fortunately, Ruth stayed behind).

Back in Bechuanaland, Ruth discovered that she was pregnant. Her predicament proved beneficial in that it brought her closer to Seretse’s family, particularly his sister, Naledi (Pheto). With the women of Bechuanaland beginning to support her as well, Ruth did her best to support Seretse from afar, but with the British government proving intransigent in their attitude toward him, the would-be King was hindered at every turn. Eventually he found backing and support from members of the Labour Party, including Tony Benn (Lowden), and pressure was brought to bear. With the people of Britain voicing their dismay at the way in which Seretse and Ruth were being treated, a solution seemed on the horizon when Winston Churchill, ahead of the next General Election, announced he would rescind Seretse’s exile if the Conservatives won. They did win, but Seretse’s exile became even more of a political hot potato…

The story of Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams has been filmed before, as a TV drama in 1990 called A Marriage of Inconvenience. But where that version ran to an hour and focused more on their romance than the political upheaval that surrounded them, Amma Asante’s follow up to Belle (2013) aims to be a more comprehensive look at the trials and tribulations that affected both Seretse and Ruth, and an entire country. But as with so many historical dramas that have been made in recent years – The Birth of a Nation (2016), J. Edgar (2011), The Monuments Men (2014) – getting the balance right between historical accuracy and telling a compelling story is often the biggest problem of all. And so it proves with A United Kingdom, a movie that sets out to tell a fascinating tale wherein true love really does conquer all, but which somehow manages to fall short of making the impact it that should.

It begins well, placing the audience firmly in heritage picture-land, with convincing depictions of post-war London: its foggy streets, stoic populace, and rationing-led austerity. Seretse and Ruth’s courtship is depicted with a great deal of charm and it’s easy to see why these two fell in love with each other so easily and so readily, and despite the obvious social disapproval they would encounter (and on both sides of the racial divide, a theme that continues in Bechuanaland). Oyelowo and Pike have an easy-going chemistry, and it’s a delight to see them bring Seretse and Ruth together. Even the introduction of Davenport’s sneering, arrogant government representative can’t derail or diminish their love for each other. But this isn’t just a love story, it’s also a political drama, and once the movie switches from the gloomy back streets of London to the colourful plains of Bechuanaland, the movie changes tone and emphasis, and in doing so, loses sight of what has, up until now, made it so effective.

The trouble is that Seretse and Ruth’s relationship actually ceases being as relevant as it was before their arrival in Bechuanaland. Once there, the movie has to deal more directly with tribal politics, colonial do’s and don’t’s, government machinations, and the consequences of exile. Against all this and as a couple, Seretse and Ruth are required to take a back seat, as the wider world becomes more and more involved in their plight. Canning’s ruses and double dealings keep them marginalised, while the key to all their worries, Seretse’s uncle, disappears from the movie for around an hour. It’s left to British politicians to make the difference that’s needed, while Seretse lets himself become a figurehead for national change in Bechuanaland. And Ruth doesn’t fare any better, becoming a mother and gaining tribal respect. While this is important for the character, it has less impact than Guy Hibbert’s screenplay may have intended, and Pike is too often called upon to smile hopefully and talk in short, clichéd bursts.

Playing yet another important black historical figure after Dr Martin Luther King Jr in Selma (2014), Oyelowo is earnest, forthright, passionate in his dealings with Seretse’s people, and as the movie progresses, just a little on the dull side. It’s not Oyelowo’s fault; rather it seems that, by the time Seretse has been exiled, we’ve seen all there is to him. It’s a disconcerting thing to realise, and makes the movie’s second half more than a little disappointing as both central characters take an effective back seat in their own lives. Dramatically this is somewhat necessary – after all, they couldn’t be involved in all the background political manoeuvrings that occurred – but the downside is that the movie’s philosophical tagline, “No man is free who is not master of himself”, doesn’t feel quite as affirmative as it sounds.

Asante at least makes all those political manoeuvrings more interesting than expected (and easy to follow), and there’s some degree of humour to be derived from the way in which Canning and the rest of the British establishment receive their deserved come-uppance, but the movie ends on a triumphalist note that is a tad more simplistic than necessary (though it will send audiences away in a happy frame of mind). She also makes good use of the Botswanan locations, shooting in Seretse and Ruth’s real home at the time, and in the hospital where Ruth gave birth to their first child. Sam McCurdy’s cinematography is suitably drab and claustrophobic when in London, and beautifully airy when in Bechuanaland, making the movie hugely attractive to watch, and highlighting the impressive efforts of production designer Simon Bowles and costume designers Jenny Beavan and Anushia Nieradzik.

Rating: 7/10 – despite some prolonged stretches where the narrative either maintains the same tone from scene to scene, or it repeats itself (any scene between Seretse and Canning), A United Kingdom is still a movie that holds the attention and treats its real-life characters with respect and admiration; though not as powerful as it could have been, it’s still a movie that has the undeniable charm of a well-mounted heritage picture, and more besides.

Viceroy’s House (2017)

22 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

D: Gurinder Chadha / 106m

Cast: Hugh Bonneville, Gillian Anderson, Manish Dayal, Huma Qureshi, Michael Gambon, Om Puri, Simon Callow, Lily Travers, Tanveer Ghani, Denzil Smith, Neeraj Kabi, Darshan Jariwala

The awkwardly titled Viceroy’s House opens with a quote by Winston Churchill: “History is written by the victors.” Bearing in mind the story that follows, it’s hard to see why this particular quote has been chosen to open the movie. Perhaps director Gurinder Chadha is using it in an ironic fashion; any winners borne out of the terrible circumstances and outcomes surrounding the partition of India in 1947 may not have been aware of their having “won” anything at the time – even those who wanted the creation of Pakistan.

One thing that soon becomes apparent from watching the movie is that it’s going to be a politics-lite experience, with little depth beyond that given to an adaptation being shown on UK Sunday evening television. This means that some viewers, especially those with little awareness of the period when the British withdrew from India, and the terrible consequences that followed, will take much of what the movie tells them to heart. What should be made clear from the start is that Viceroy’s House is better viewed as an impression of those events than as a recreation.

The problem here is that one of the most traumatic upheavals of the 20th Century that involved a country and fifteen million of its inhabitants – those who were displaced – is given an unremarkable soap opera sheen that paints the British as saviours, and the Indian people as the authors of their own downfall. As an interpretation of what actually occurred on the Indian sub-continent, the movie takes several factual liberties with the events surrounding partition, and panders to the idea that the frustration experienced by Lord Louis Mountbatten (known more familiarly as “Dickie”) (Bonneville) is somehow more affecting and deserving of our sympathy than the political and social upheavals being experienced by India’s Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communities. As a dramatic approach to the material, it’s akin to asking an audience to be more sympathetic towards someone with a slight case of sunburn than someone who’s lost a limb.

The obvious comparison here is with the TV series Upstairs, Downstairs (or Downton Abbey for that matter, which also stars Bonneville). By attempting to focus on both the political machinations going on above stairs and the social upheavals occurring below stairs, Viceroy’s House tries to show the effect of partition on the British and the Indians alike. But the script – by Paul Mayeda Berges, Moira Buffini, and Chadha – takes an uncomfortable approach to the historical material, and tries to add a standard Romeo and Juliet-style romance to proceedings through the attraction between valet Jeet Kumar (Dayal) and lady’s attendant Aalia Noor (Qureshi). Alas, and despite the best efforts of Dayal and Qureshi, their romance is a tepid affair that occupies too much screen time, and lacks the kind of epic passion that could be seen as a compelling reflection of the violent passions of a country expressing itself through mounting conflict.

Other members of the Viceroy’s staff have arguments and cause problems from time to time, and Mountbatten is seen to berate them as if they were all naughty children. It’s a condescending attitude that extends to Mountbatten’s meetings with India’s leading politicians. Whether it’s Nehru (Ghani), Jinnah (Smith) or Ghandi (Dabi), the movie has “Dickie” treating them as if they should all just get along because he needs them to. And as a sop to the current need for strong female characters in pretty much every movie being made, Lady Edwina Mountbatten (Anderson) is portrayed as the “brains of the outfit”, while at the same time falling victim to the idea that their predicament is worse than that of the Indian people (“How can it be getting worse under us?”).

As the inevitability of partition looms ever nearer, and outbreaks of violence become the norm, Mountbatten is pushed into a corner and forced to accept that there can’t be a united India. With Pakistan now a certainty, he’s required to divide India into two, and enlists British lawyer Sir Cyril Radcliffe (Callow) to carry out the task. But it proves too difficult, until he’s advised by General Ismay (Gambon), Mountbatten’s advisor on all things Indian and political, that there is a solution. It’s here that the movie cements its appreciation and sympathy for the Viceroy by showing him as having been tricked by the British Government and set up for a fall if the violence continues and/or escalates out of control. It’s a moment that should elicit a good deal of compassion for “poor old” Mountbatten, but instead makes the viewer realise that Chadha feels more for him than she does for the Indian people.

Much else in the movie is perfunctory stuff designed to move the story forward with the least amount of effort or acknowledgment as to how dry and uninvolving it all is. Chadha directs with a minimum of fuss or apparent enthusiasm, leaving some scenes feeling cursory and superficial. Against this, the cast can only do their best, though Anderson manages to imbue Lady Mountbatten with a supportive, agreeable nature that makes her feel like more of a fully rounded character than anyone else. Bonneville is a good choice for “Dickie” (though he doesn’t look anything like him), but even he’s held back by a script that paints Mountbatten, somewhat plainly, as a good man in a bad situation (though if you need someone to portray “pained frustration” then Bonneville’s your man).

For someone whose family were involved in the partition and the subsequent resettlement of so many people, Chadha doesn’t always seem interested in telling a coherent, responsible story. Muslims are unlikely to be happy about the way in which they are shown to be the main instigators of the violence depicted, while the religious enmities between Muslims and Hindus are reduced to petty squabbling, a direction that is extended to the encounters between Nehru and Jinnah – if you believe the movie, then neither man could be in the same room as the other without resorting to childish bickering. By reducing the key players’ importance in this way, and by playing up the ineffective nature of Mountbatten’s tenure as Viceroy, the movie ends up paying lip service to a terrible period in India’s history, a period that deserves a much more focused and intelligent approach than is featured here.

Rating: 4/10 – sporadically effective as a heritage picture, Viceroy’s House is let down by its one-sided consideration of British colonialism, and by its insistence on depicting Indians of the time as quarreling malcontents; nowhere is freedom from oppression expressed as forcibly as needed, and the movie’s tacit exoneration of Great Britain’s often brutal occupation makes for an uncomfortable viewing experience throughout.

Miss Sloane (2016)

14 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

D: John Madden / 132m

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Mark Strong, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Alison Pill, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jake Lacy, John Lithgow, Sam Waterston, David Wilson Barnes, Al Mukadam, Douglas Smith, Chuck Shamata, Dylan Baker

At the beginning of Miss Sloane, the title character (Chastain) looks directly into camera and says the following: “Lobbying is about foresight. About anticipating your opponent’s moves and devising counter measures. The winner plots one step ahead of the opposition. And plays her trump card just after they play theirs. It’s about making sure you surprise them. And they don’t surprise you.” Chastain delivers this short speech with complete conviction and due gravitas. And in doing so, the movie puts the audience on notice: what follows may not be as true or as real as you believe.

The movie follows lobbyist Elizabeth Sloane into a senate hearing where she’s accused of authorising expenses for the Indonesian government, something which is illegal for a lobbyist to do. At first she refuses to answer the questions she’s asked, hiding behind her lawyer’s brief to “plead the Fifth”. But a more personal line of questioning leads to her abandoning this line of defence and taking the fight to the hearing. Afterwards, her lawyer (Barnes) keeps repeating “five years”, the term of imprisonment she’ll receive if she’s found guilty of perjury. But Elizabeth appears unperturbed.

The movie then travels back to roughly seven months before. Elizabeth is working for a law firm owned by George Dupont (Waterston). A representative of the National Rifle Association, Bob Sanford (Shamata), asks for her help in connecting with a broader female demographic ahead of an upcoming vote on a bill that would mean mandatory background checks on anyone looking to purchase a gun. The NRA sees it as an infringement on civil liberties, and wants to make sure that the bill, the Heaton-Harris Amendment, isn’t passed. Elizabeth laughs in Sanford’s face, and refuses to have anything to do with it. Later, Dupont makes it clear that if she doesn’t work on the NRA’s initiative then her position won’t be as assured as she thinks. That night she meets Rodolfo Schmidt (Strong), head of the law firm Peterson Wyatt, and the man in charge of the fight to get the Heaton-Harris Amendment passed. The next day, Elizabeth resigns, and takes several of her team with her to Peterson Wyatt, though one of her best colleagues, Jane Molloy (Pill), chooses to stay.

In order for the Amendment to have a chance of being successful, Elizabeth, her team, and the staff at Peterson Wyatt, including Esme Manucharian (Mbatha-Raw), have to persuade sixteen out of twenty-one uncommitted senators to vote their way. As they set about this seemingly huge task – Dupont and the NRA only need to persuade six – Elizabeth plays out various strategies in her efforts to secure the necessary votes. But it soon becomes obvious that she’ll cross almost any line in order to win, even if it means sacrificing colleagues or lying to them deliberately. With the tide turning in her favour, and Dupont becoming ever more determined to derail her progress, her old firm launches a smear campaign, one that leads to Elizabeth’s sitting before a senate hearing committee and having to answer for her actions.

From the off, Miss Sloane is a thriller that throws the viewer deep into the mire of political lobbying, and which expects them to keep up with everything that’s going on. It’s an intellectual minefield, with so many issues dependent on the appropriate (or inappropriate) use of legal and ethical considerations, that looking away for even a moment could mean the difference between knowing exactly what’s going on – difficult enough thanks to Jonathan Perera’s dauntingly detailed script – and what might be going on. If you’re ever unsure as to what is happening, and/or why, then it’s best to bear in mind that opening speech, and the lobbyist always being “one step ahead”. Do that, and most of the movie will make sense… eventually.

By preferring (or needing) to stay one step ahead at all times, Elizabeth inevitably becomes a character that the viewer can’t trust. But we can have faith in her, in her need to win, and her commitment to never being out-thought, outfoxed, or outmanoeuvred. For all her manipulations and outright deceptions, Elizabeth is consistent in her efforts to be the winner, and she makes no bones about her methods: if they get the win then that’s all that matters. Along the way this means there are some casualties, notably Mbatha-Raw’s Esme, who has a personal secret exposed in front of millions of TV viewers. Elizabeth would argue that the end justifies the means, but as she is drawn deeper and deeper into the fight to get the Amendment passed, she begins to learn that some lines, once crossed, can’t be re-crossed. And as the stakes are increased, and the senate hearing hoves into view, Elizabeth has no option but to reassess her approach to lobbying and the people she works with.

Bringing the character of Elizabeth Sloane to mesmerising life, Chastain gives, arguably, her best performance since Zero Dark Thirty (2012). Cool, controlling, yet undeniably complex in both her motivations and her need to win at all costs, Chastain portrays Elizabeth as a restless, rest-avoiding predator, always looking for the weak link in an opponent’s armour, and always ready to exploit that weak link. She’ll even use her own people if she feels it’s necessary, but she’s up front about it, and it’s this straight-shooting, unapologetic persona that Chastain exploits so well, making her unlikeable and yet still strangely admirable at the same time. Chastain is the star of the movie, unforgettable whether she’s trampling on other people’s feelings or struggling to contain her own. She’s not alone, though. As her “boss” (a term you soon feel is inadequate in describing anyone who employs her), Strong goes from marvelling at her successes to feeling increasingly worried that she’s going too far with her own, hidden agenda. As the cruelly exposed Esme, Mbatha-Raw is a perfect foil for Chastain’s ebullient performance, her wide-eyed naïvete and quiet strength making her the movie’s most sympathetic character. And there’s further impressive support from Stuhlbarg as Elizabeth’s main adversary at Dupont, Lithgow as the head of the senate committee, and Barnes as her exasperated lawyer.

Orchestrating all this is Madden, now free from depicting events at the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and displaying all the skills and directorial touches needed to shepherd Perera’s screenplay (a top five Black List script from 2015) through its varied twists and turns. Make no mistake, this is an intelligent, penetrating look at a world few of us have any conception of, and which is paced like a thriller, all of which makes Miss Sloane a much more compelling movie than expected. It’s also put together very skilfully by editor Alexander Berner, and he and Madden ensure that the many scenes that are taken up by immense amounts of exposition are as equally vital as those scenes where Elizabeth’s plans are achieving momentum, or are already in full swing. In the end, it’s a tale about personal redemption set against a dark backdrop of corruption and ethical malaise, and thanks to Chastain, is nothing less than exhilarating.

Rating: 8/10 – marred only by its predictable denouement, some by-the-numbers villainy from Dupont, and Elizabeth’s not-quite-credible overall gamble, Miss Sloane is still a political thriller with teeth, and replete with flashes of dark humour that leaven the serious tone; irresistible once it’s in full flow, this has unfortunately been overlooked by audiences – which is a shame given the pedigree of the cast, the skill of its director, and the sharpness of its script.

The 89th Annual Academy Awards – The Oscars 2017

27 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

2017-oscars-89th-academy-awards

The Oscars are back, and this year there won’t be any outcry at the lack of diversity that marred the 2016 ceremony (thank you politically conscious Academy board!). But whereas we now have a wider colour spectrum amongst the nominees – Joi McMillan is the first African-American nominee in the Editing category since 1970 – what we do have are fewer movies to choose from. La La Land‘s fourteen nominations, added to the eight nominations for Arrival and Moonlight, and the six accorded to Hacksaw Ridge, Lion and Manchester by the Sea, means a very short field to choose from overall. It’s only in the technical categories that there’s any real diversity, with the likes of Suicide Squad, Sully, Passengers and Deepwater Horizon getting a look in (and who would have thought Suicide Squad would get a nod?).

But what’s an Oscar ceremony without some kind of controversy? With diversity having been addressed, it’s politics’ turn to be the bad guy at the Oscars (and not for the first time). Asghar Farhadi, director of The Salesman, couldn’t attend the event thanks to Donald Trump’s not-exactly-popular immigration ban. And Kaled Khateeb, one of the cinematographers on documentary short The White Helmets, was also banned from entering the country (he’s from Syria). Hollywood (a foreign land all by itself at times) was built by immigrants, and over the years it’s been very vocal about political decisions that have had a negative effect on the movie industry. And this year hasn’t been any different, with ??? all taking the opportunity during their acceptance speeches to stick it to the current floppy-minded President (sorry, floppy-haired President).

But political nut-kicking aside, it was otherwise another predictable night at the Oscars, from new host Jimmy Kimmel’s tribute to some of the nominees, to the nominees in the Best Song category being performed live, to the usual weird camera pans over the audience, and close ups of stars who were all desperately pretending not to be aware that a camera was staring right… at… them. There was a big production number from Justin Timberlake to start things off and it had some very awkward looking stars trying to look like they had rhythm. The highlight of the show was the introduction of a group of tourbus tourists who weren’t expecting to take part in a live Oscar ceremony, and who stole the whole night out from under everyone. Real people – you just can’t beat ’em.

Winners in bold.

Best Supporting Actor
Mahershala Ali – Moonlight
Jeff Bridges – Hell or High Water
Lucas Hedges – Manchester by the Sea
Dev Patel – Lion
Michael Shannon – Nocturnal Animals

First-time nominee Ali’s win was no surprise, and he got a standing ovation. He thanked his teachers and their telling him that the characters are what’s important, and not him. He was visibly upset, but noted his being inspired by the rest of the cast. Presented by Alicia Vikander.

la-mahershala-ali-muslim-oscar-winner-20170226

Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling
A Man Called Ove – Eva von Bahr, Love Larson
Star Trek Beyond – Joel Harlow, Richard Alonzo
Suicide Squad – Alessandro Bertolazzi, Giorgio Gregorini, Christopher Nelson

Well, well, well, who would have thought it? Presented by Kate McKinnon and Jason Bateman.

Achievement in Costume Design
Allied – Joanna Johnston
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – Colleen Atwood
Florence Foster Jenkins – Consolata Boyle
Jackie – Madeline Fontaine
La La Land – Mary Zophres

Fourth time lucky for Atwood who really is one of the best costume designers working today. Presented by Kate McKinnon and Jason Bateman.

Best Documentary Feature
Fire at Sea – Gianfranco Rosi, Donatella Palermo
I Am Not Your Negro – Raoul Peck, Rémi Grellety, Hébert Peck
Life, Animated – Roger Ross Williams, Julie Goldman
O.J.: Made in America – Ezra Edelman, Caroline Waterlow
13th – Ava DuVernay, Spencer Averick, Howard Barish

Another odds-on favourite takes the Oscar and a short heartfelt speech from Edelman who acknowledged Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown. Presented by Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe.

Achievement in Sound Editing
Arrival – Sylvain Bellemare
Deepwater Horizon – Wylie Stateman, Renée Tondelli
Hacksaw Ridge – Robert Mackenzie, Andy Wright
La La Land – Ai-Ling Lee, Mildred Iatrou Morgan
Sully – Alan Robert Murray, Bub Asman

Another first-time winner, and the best outcome. Bellemare also won at the BAFTAs and so this was a perfect result. Presented by Sofia Boutella and Chris Evans.

Achievement in Sound Mixing
Arrival – Bernard Gariépy Strobl, Claude La Haye
Hacksaw Ridge – Kevin O’Connell, Andy Wright, Robert Mackenzie, Peter Grace
La La Land – Andy Nelson, Ai-Ling Lee, Steve A. Morrow
Rogue One – David Parker, Christopher Scarabosio, Stuart Wilson
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi – Gary Summers, Jeffrey J. Haboush, Mac Ruth

Kevin O’Connell’s first win after twenty previous nominations was a lovely moment, and he did really well to hold it together to give a heartfelt thanks to his mother for getting him a job in Sound in the first place. Presented by Sofia Boutella and Chris Evans.

gkttquuc-2-1

Best Supporting Actress
Viola Davis – Fences
Naomie Harris – Moonlight
Nicole Kidman – Lion
Octavia Spencer – Hidden Figures
Michelle Williams – Manchester by the Sea

Another odds-on favourite winner given a standing ovation, Davis’ win led to her making a speech that was poignant (if overlong) and which made reference to August Wilson for telling stories about ordinary people. Presented by Mark Rylance.

viola-davis-speech-oscars-moments

Best Foreign Language Film
Land of Mine – Martin Zandvliet
A Man Called Ove – Hannes Holm
The Salesman – Asgahr Farhadi
Tanna – Martin Butler, Bentley Dean
Toni Erdmann – Maren Ade

Farhadi obviously couldn’t attend but a speech he had prepared condemning Trump’s immigration ban received applause, and was the first fully politicised moment of the evening. Presented by Charlize Theron and Shirley MacLaine.

Best Animated Short
Blind Vaysha – Theodore Ushev
Borrowed Time – Andrew Coats, Lou Hamou-Lhadj
Pear Cider and Cigarettes – Robert Valley, Cara Speller
Pearl – Patrick Osborne
Piper – Alan Barillaro, Marc Sondheimer

A great result for Pixar whose animated shorts are still as beautifully and brilliantly made even when the company’s feature length movies don’t quite meet those requirements. Presented by Hailee Steinfeld and Gael Garcia Bernal.

Best Animated Feature
Kubo and the Two Strings – Travis Knight, Arianne Sutner
Moana – John Musker, Ron Clements, Osnat Shurer
My Life as a Zucchini – Claude Barras, Max Karli
The Red Turtle – Michaël Dudok de Wit, Toshio Suzuki
Zootopia – Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Clark Spencer

Richly deserved, this was easily the right result, and also the right Disney movie to win the award. Presented by Hailee Steinfeld and Gael Garcia Bernal.

480x270-q100_ba64b0b63b7f28950a4f67545d855435

Best Production Design
Arrival – Patrice Vermette, Paul Hotte
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – Stuart Craig, Anna Pinnock
Hail, Caesar! – Jess Gonchor, Nancy Haigh
La La Land – David Wasco, Sandy Reynolds-Wasco
Passengers – Guy Hendrix Dyas, Gene Serdena

The first win of the night for La La Land and not entirely unexpected. Presented by Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan.

Achievement in Visual Effects
Deepwater Horizon – Craig Hammack, Jason Snell, Jason Billington, Burt Dalton
Doctor Strange – Stephane Ceretti, Richard Bluff, Vincent Cirelli, Paul Corbould
The Jungle Book – Robert Legato, Adam Valdez, Andrew R. Jones, Dan Lemmon
Kubo and the Two Strings – Steve Emerson, Oliver Jones, Brian McLean, Brad Schiff
Rogue One – John Knoll, Mohen Leo, Hal Hickel, Neil Corbould

Not the best result but in keeping with the evening’s apparent attempt – by this stage – to give an award to every separate movie that was nominated. Presented by Felicity Jones and Riz Ahmed.

Best Film Editing
Arrival – Joe Walker
Hacksaw Ridge – John Gilbert
Hell or High Water – Jake Roberts
La La Land – Tom Cross
Moonlight – Nat Sanders, Joi McMillon

And so, the first movie to win two Oscars is… Hacksaw Ridge, a notion that wouldn’t have been given too much credence before the show started. A good result nevertheless. Presented by Michael J. Fox and Seth Rogen.

Best Documentary Short Subject
Extremis – Dan Krauss
4.1 Miles – Daphne Matziaraki
Joe’s Violin – Kahane Cooperman, Rafaela Neihausen
Watani: My Homeland – Marcel Mettelsiefen, Stephen Ellis
The White Helmets – Orlando von Einsiedel, Joanna Natasegara

Another poke in the eye for Donald Trump and his immigration ban, and a prepared speech by the leader of the White Helmets (unable to attend) was received warmly. Presented by Salma Hayek and David Oyelowo.

Best Live Action Short
Ennemis intérieurs – Sélim Azzazi
La Femme et le TGV – Timo von Gunten, Giacun Caduff
Silent Nights – Asks Bang, Kim Magnussen
Sing – Kristóf Deák, Anna Udvardy
Timecode – Juanjo Giménez

Like many of the categories, not an easy one to pick but still a deserved award. Presented by Salma Hayek and David Oyelowo.

Cinematography
Arrival – Bradford Young
La La Land – Linus Sandgren
Lion – Greig Fraser
Moonlight – James Laxton
Silence – Rodrigo Prieto

Not exactly unexpected, but if you were Rodrigo Prieto you’d have every right to feel aggrieved. Presented by Javier Bardem and Meryl Streep.

Best Original Score
Jackie – Mica Levi
La La Land – Justin Hurwitz
Lion – Dustin O’Halloran, Hauschka
Moonlight – Nicholas Britell
Passengers – Thomas Newman

La La Land starts to gain momentum at this point, picking up its third award, and Hurwitz gave a succinct speech thanking everyone else on the movie for inspiring him. Presented by Samuel L. Jackson.

Best Original Song
Jim: The James Foley Story – “The Empty Chair” – J. Ralph, Sting
La La Land – “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” – Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek, Justin Paul
La La Land – “City of Stars” – Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek, Justin Paul
Moana – “How Far I’ll Go” – Lin-Manuel Miranda
Trolls – “Can’t Stop the Feeling” – Justin Timberlake, Max Martin, Karl Johan Schuster

Number four for La La Land, with Hurwitz doing his best to thank all the people he couldn’t previously. Presented by Scarlett Johansson.

Best Original Screenplay
Hell or High Water – Taylor Sheridan
La La Land – Damien Chazelle
The Lobster – Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou
Manchester by the Sea – Kenneth Lonergan
20th Century Women – Mike Mills

A near flawless script that would have been robbed if anyone else had won. Lonergan was magnanimous in his speech and gave thanks to his father who passed away earlier this year. Presented by Ben Affleck and “guest”.

480x270-q100_05688e8e0084bea90ec0467350a798b7

Best Adapted Screenplay
Arrival – Eric Heisserer
Fences – August Wilson
Hidden Figures – Allison Schroeder, Theodore Melfi
Lion – Luke Davies
Moonlight – Barry Jenkins, Tarell Alvin McCraney

Moonlight‘s second win was entirely well deserved and Jenkins managed to thank a hell of a lot of people and at a rate of knots. And McCraney made it clear that the movie was for anyone who felt the same way that Chiron does. Presented by Amy Adams.

Best Director
Damien Chazelle – La La Land
Mel Gibson – Hacksaw Ridge
Barry Jenkins – Moonlight
Kenneth Lonergan – Manchester by the Sea
Denis Villeneuve – Arrival

The youngest person ever to win Best Director, Chazelle was a little overwhelmed but gave a lovely shout out to his girlfriend. Presented by Halle Berry.

Best Actor
Casey Affleck – Manchester by the Sea
Andrew Garfield – Hacksaw Ridge
Ryan Gosling – La La Land
Viggo Mortensen – Captain Fantastic
Denzel Washington – Fences

Despite the possibility of Washington snatching the award at the last minute, Affleck was easily the right choice, and was completely “dumbfounded” by his win, but still managed to give a poignant acceptance speech. Presented by Brie Larson.

89th Annual Academy Awards - Show

Best Actress
Isabelle Huppert – Elle
Ruth Negga – Loving
Natalie Portman – Jackie
Emma Stone – La La Land
Meryl Streep – Florence Foster Jenkins

Absolutely, positively, completely and utterly the wrong choice – Stone was good in La La Land but Huppert was in a league of her own. Stone, though, was humble in her acceptance, and it was a popular result. Presented by Leonardo DiCaprio.

rt-emma-stone-02-as-170226_4x3_992

Best Picture
Arrival – Shawn Levy, Dan Levine, Aaron Ryder, David Linde
Fences – Scott Rudin, Denzel Washington, Todd Black
Hacksaw Ridge – Bill Mechanic, David Permut
Hell or High Water – Carla Hacken, Julie Yorn
Hidden Figures – Donna Gigliotti, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, Pharrell Williams, Theodore Melfi
La La Land – Fred Berger, Jordan Horowitz, Marc Platt
Lion – Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, Angie Fielder
Manchester by the Sea – Matt Damon, Kimberly Steward, Chris Moore, Lauren Beck, Kevin J. Walsh
Moonlight – Adele Romanski, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner

The evening ended with a complete cock-up as the award was first awarded to La La Land, and appeared to be the result of a mistake with the envelopes (or senility in Warren Beatty – we may never know). For many a great result, but if any movie has to beat La La Land then Moonlight isn’t a bad alternative. Presented by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.

And so, despite the controversy on the last award, La La Land was the evening’s overall winner with six Oscars. Moonlight‘s win for Best Film was well deserved, and the variety of winners was encouraging. The show was as slickly produced as ever, and Jimmy Kimmel’s ongoing war of attrition with Matt Damon provided some good laughs, but the undoubted highlight was provided not by Kimmel, or any of the stars, but by Gary from Chicago, a future celebrity in the making.

Our Brand Is Crisis (2015)

25 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Our Brand Is Crisis

D: David Gordon Green / 107m

Cast: Sandra Bullock, Billy Bob Thornton, Anthony Mackie, Joaquim de Almeida, Ann Dowd, Scoot McNairy, Zoe Kazan, Dominic Flores, Reynaldo Pacheco, Louis Arcello, Octavio Gómez Berríos, Luis Chávez

When a Bolivian politician, Pedro Castillo (de Almeida), hires an American political consulting firm to help him win the upcoming Presidential elections, they’re unprepared for how unpopular he is with the Bolivian people, and how uncharismatic he is. With their candidate adrift in the polls by twenty-eight points, the consultants, led by Ben (Mackie), bring in “Calamity” Jane Bodine (so called because of the way in which she’s mishandled the last four electoral campaigns she’s overseen). Arriving in Bolivia, Jane is initially laid low by altitude sickness, and takes a few days to find her feet. During this time, the other consultants do their best to make Castillo more voter friendly, but nothing seems to work.

Castillo’s main rival is a plain-speaking man of the people called Rivera (Arcello). His campaign is being run by Jane’s nemesis, Pat Candy (Thornton), a man who – like Jane – isn’t averse to lying and cheating to getting the job done. When he orchestrates a physical assault on Castillo, Jane sees the answer to the campaign’s problems in Castillo’s response – he knocks his assailant to the ground – and at once she regains her old flair for electoral battle. She quickly energises the consulting team (and against their better judgment on occasion), and impresses on them that the message should be that Castillo doesn’t have time for silly publicity stunts; he’s too busy trying to get elected so that he can save the country from the crisis it finds itself in right then.

Our Brand Is Crisis Movie Film Trailers Reviews Movieholic Hub

This approach begins to work, and Castillo makes up some ground in the polls, but there’s a problem: it won’t be enough. Jane advocates starting a negative campaign, looking for dirt on Rivera, anything that will put him in a bad light. But Castillo is resistant to the idea, and refuses to do it. Behind his back, Jane has some flyers printed that make it seem Rivera has launched his own negative campaign. Castillo relents, and Jane digs deep into Rivera’s background, uncovering a public funding fraud related to the purchase of some cars. It proves to be the first salvo in a battle between Jane and Candy that in time, changes the whole complexion of the campaign, and gives Castillo a fighting chance of winning the election.

For anyone watching Our Brand Is Crisis who finds themselves suffering an attack of déjà vu, it will be because this story has been covered before (with the real people concerned) in the 2005 documentary of the same name. Covering the 2002 Bolivian Presidential elections, and the involvement of US consulting firm Greenberg Carville Shrum, Rachel Boynton’s timely examination of political campaign tactics was both illuminating and worrying in equal measure. Arriving ten years on, and without the benefit of those elections to give it some much-needed context, Our Brand Is Crisis feels out-of-sorts with itself from the moment it touches down in Bolivia and tries to develop its comedy credentials by having Jane look ill and barf into a wastebasket.

It’s at this point that anyone expecting a political satire will begin to suspect they’re going to be disappointed. And so it proves, with the movie’s comic highlight involving the sad demise of a llama (so not really much of a highlight). Elsewhere there’s a nervy, whingy performance from McNairy that is meant to provide further humour but looks and sounds out of place, and the kind of uncomfortable banter between Jane and Candy that in any other workplace would have seen him fired for sexual harrassment. It’s hard to see why such obvious attempts at comedy were included in the movie, as all they do is interrupt the more carefully orchestrated drama, and detract from the somewhat clumsy message the movie is promoting (basically, never trust a politician or the people who work for him/her).

OBIC - scene1

That said, the movie does get its point across quite succinctly at times. Castillo has a quiet exchange on the campaign bus with a naïve young supporter called Eduardo (Pacheco) in which he spells out exactly what’s going to happen if he’s elected, and by inference, what it will mean for Bolivia. It’s played with due restraint by the two actors and is the movie’s most plainly shot scene, a simple two-hander (with cutaways to Jane) that also shows just how good the movie could have been if the effects of political expediency had been shown rather than the lengths that some consulting teams will go to to maintain that expediency. And in its own deceptive way it illustrates clearly the difference between a campaign promise and an elected imperative.

Again, it’s the political dirty tricks that become the focus, from the revelation that Castillo had an affair (and which Peter Straughan’s script never manages to make as devastating as it’s meant to be), to the ridiculous notion that Rivera has Nazi sympathies. The game of political oneupmanship between Jane and Candy is also one of the movie’s less convincing sleight of hands, while the impromptu visit by Jane to Eduardo’s home (and which leads to her getting drunk and arrested) merely adds to the notion that the script hasn’t decided what it wants to be: searing political drama, raucous comedy, or mocking satire. In the end it’s none of these. Instead it’s a messy political exposé that fails to tell us anything new about either South American politics or the grubby tactics used by US consulting firms to ensure their candidate’s success.

OBIC - scene3

It does, however, have one great redeeming feature: Sandra Bullock. In a movie that tries too hard and spreads itself too thin (and often in the same scene), Bullock is the through line that the audience can connect and stay with. Beneath her seen-it-all-with-warts-on demeanour and lack of shame at some of the things she devises, Jane is a memorable character made all the more memorable for Bullock’s portrayal of her as a media-savvy manipulator with hidden reserves of compassion. There’s a scene at the end that, in the hands of some actresses, would have appeared maudlin and unconvincing. But Bullock nails it with a dazed expression and eyes full of fear for what she’s done. It’s the movie’s strongest, most affecting moment; it’s just a shame that it comes so late in the day.

Developed by George Clooney and his producing partner Grant Heslov, Our Brand Is Crisis was originally meant to be directed by and star Clooney, but as time – and the movie’s development – rolled on, his intended participation dwindled to that of producer. Seeing the movie now this seems like a wise move on his part. Even though Green is a clever, often mercurial director, he’s defeated here by the hit-and-largely-miss script, and as a result he never finds a consistent tone that the movie can adhere to. Away from Bullock, the rest of the cast provide serviceable performances (thanks to some cruelly underdeveloped characters), with only de Almeida showing what can be done with the briefest of outlines. And Thornton, drafted in to give one of his patented Machiavellian opponent roles, does just that – and nothing more.

Rating: 5/10 – an undemanding look at how political campaigns can be manipulated toward a desired outcome, Our Brand Is Crisis lacks dramatic focus and a clear approach to the material; saved by Bullock’s performance, the movie nevertheless struggles to fly when she’s not on screen, and ends up as disappointing as the electoral outcome.

10 Movies That Are 40 Years Old This Year – 2015

31 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

If 1974 was a banner year, then surprisingly 1975 kept up the level of quality from around the globe. A closer look at the releases for 1975 show an amazing amount of movies that simply shone, and for all kinds of reasons. As with the list for 1974, there could have been a lot more movies included here, and the ten featured below were difficult to choose from out of all the fantastic movies available, but I think these are as representative of what a great year 1975 was as you’re likely to get.

1) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey’s landmark novel was given the best screen treatment possible, one of the best ensemble casts ever, and placed in the hands of a director, Milos Forman, who was able to tease out every nuance and subtlety of emotion that the movie required. At once depressing, sad, comedic and poignant, but ultimately uplifting, this is the finest hour for everyone concerned and one of the few movies to tackle issues of mental health head on and without flinching.

One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

2) Jaws – The grandaddy of all Summer tentpole movies, it’s still easy to see why Steven Spielberg’s make-or-break movie was so successful, and caused audiences around the world to stay out of the water. With that menacing score by John Williams, one of the most effective jump scares in screen history, a great trio of performances from Shaw, Dreyfuss and Scheider, some of the most intense cat-and-shark sequences ever, it all adds up to a movie that still terrifies as much today as it did back then.

Jaws

3) Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom – Pasolini’s fierce condemnation of the Italian Fascist ruling classes during World War II, and the increasing lack of empathy in modern society, is one long, intentionally nihilistic piece of anguished propaganda. Difficult to watch, with long scenes that test the audience’s endurance, Pasolini’s last movie before he was murdered is shot through with despair and lacking completely in hope, or faith in the goodness of man, and is as powerful a vision of hell on earth as you’re ever likely to see.

Salo

4) Dog Day Afternoon – Based on a true story, Sidney Lumet’s triumphant telling of friendship and compassion and the lengths one person will go to to ensure their friend’s happiness boasts a stunning performance from Al Pacino, and is as tense as any other thriller out there. Mixing high drama with situational comedy borne out of the characters themselves, Dog Day Afternoon is unexpectedly affecting and is one of those movies that reveals different facets to its story with each successive viewing.

Dog Day Afternoon

5) Nashville – The ensemble movie’s highpoint, Robert Altman’s look at the contemporary US political scene is merely a backdrop for some of the most riveting dissections of people’s behaviour and (in)tolerances yet seen in the movies. Full of standout moments (and none more so than Keith Carradine’s rendition of I’m Easy), and with Altman in firm control at the helm, this is another movie that rewards with every viewing.

Nashville

6) Grey Gardens – One of the finest documentaries ever made, Grey Gardens is as compelling as any thriller and as absorbing as any intimate portrait of an unusual lifestyle can be. Produced and co-directed by Albert and David Maysles, the lives of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, “Little Edie”, are highlighted in haunting, intimate detail, and prove that any notions of strangeness in others is merely a matter of misguided perception.

Grey Gardens

7) Picnic at Hanging Rock – Peter Weir’s haunting, immaculately filmed mystery is one of the most memorably eerie movies ever made, its sense of time and place and mood all combining to create a cinematic experience that remains unmatched. A true classic of Australian cinema and the movie that catapulted Weir – deservedly – onto the international scene, it’s as unsettling now as it was back when it was first released.

Picnic at Hanging Rock

8) Dersu Uzala – Kurosawa’s examination of the differences that exist between the old ways of nature and the apparent progress that civilisation brings is enhanced by some stunning cinematography and two magnificent central performances by Yuriy Solomin and Maksim Munzuk. By turns deceptively gripping and subtly elegiac, the movie has an emotional honesty to it that makes the development of the relationship between the explorer and the hunter that much more convincing and affecting.

Dersu Uzala

9) The Man Who Would Be King – One of director John Huston’s favourite projects, this adaptation of a story by Rudyard Kipling is the kind of rip-roaring adventure tale that doesn’t really get made any more, and features drama, comedy, suspense, action and two lovely performances from Sean Connery and Michael Caine. At its core it’s a heartfelt look at an enduring friendship overtaken by one man’s delusion of grandeur, but it’s also a penetrating examination of the abuse of power and the consequences thereof.

Man Who Would Be King, The

10) Shampoo – For some this is Warren Beatty’s finest hour, but the plaudits must go to his co-screenwriter, Robert Towne, for constructing such a beautifully realised satire on the fallout from the sexual revolution that took place in the Sixties and the way in which it gave way to a period of political paranoia. The cast hit all the right notes with ease, Hal Ashby directs with his usual simplicity and attention to framing, and the caustic humour is used more subtly than expected, making the contexts it relates to more important – and effective – than having a slew of one-liners.

Shampoo

Xala (1975)

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Xala

aka The Curse

D: Ousmane Sembene / 123m

Cast: Thierno Leye, Seune Samb, Younouss Seye, Myriam Niang, Fatim Diagne, Mustapha Ture, Iliamane Sagna, Dieynaba Niang

With independence from France finally achieved, the white administrators of the Senegalese Chamber of Commerce are ousted from their offices by a group of local businessmen (who promptly accept hefty bribes from the French so that true power resides with them, “behind-the-scenes”). One businessman, El Hadji Abou Kader Beye (Leye) is preparing to marry for a third time. His first wife, Adja (Samb), and his second, Oumi (Seye) are both unhappy with his decision, as his new bride is much younger than them. But on the night of the wedding, El Hadji finds he cannot get an erection and the marriage remains unconsummated.

The beleaguered businessman confides in the President of the Chamber of Commerce who recommends he visit a marabout (a local witchdoctor). But despite the marabout’s advice, El Hadji remains impotent. Oumi visits him and invites him to her home that evening with the promise of sex; during her visit El Hadji starts to wonder if his impotency is a curse – a xala – placed on him by his second wife. Leaving his office his driver (Sagna) advises El Hadji to visit his marabout. A cure is effected but El Hadji finds his new wife has her period; he visits Oumi as arranged and he has sex with her instead. Meanwhile, El Hadji’s colleagues begin to discover that he’s running up debts he’s unable to repay, and that he’s been selling rice on the black market to maintain his social and economic standing.

His store comes under scrutiny from one of his buyers. With no stock in it, El Hadji has to reassure and cajole the man into accepting that all will be well and soon. A summons from the President of the Chamber of Commerce interrupts them. At the meeting, El Hadji is advised to go and visit his bank director. When he does so, he’s told that any further advances he needs will be dependent on his clearing his existing debts. But it’s at a further Chamber of Commerce meeting that El Hadji finds his future  as both a member and a businessman in jeopardy, and he still has no idea who placed the xala on him to begin with, or why.

Xala - scene

There’s a French proverb that goes, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. It means, the more things change, the more they stay the same. This is the theme at the heart of Sembene’s scathing look at contemporary politics in Senegal during the Seventies (and as adapted from his own novel of the same name). Xala is unapologetic  in its attempts to expose the continuing corruption that plagues the country, whoever is in power, and it paints a powerful portrait of the ways in which that corruption affects the poor and the disadvantaged. Viewed now after forty years, and with much more known about the ways in which Colonial Africa overthrew its European masters, only to prove even more ruinous in its inability to govern itself, the movie is a candid snapshot of the times.

Sembene tells the audience everything they need to know about the political backdrop to the movie in the opening scenes where the local businessmen take over the Chamber of Commerce with all the pomp and circumstance of men acting with a moral certainty. The white administrators are rudely dispensed with, but are soon back, with briefcases full of money, one for each of the men who are supposed to be “better” than they are. With the bribes accepted eagerly, one of them hangs around as the President’s “advisor”, hovering in the background like a political fixer of old. The old corrupt system is dead, long live the new corrupt system. And once Sembene has established that indeed, things will remain the same, he focuses on El Hadji as an example of the greed and selfishness that were – and are – endemic in African politics.

The businessman’s lifestyle, or at least the lifestyles of his two wives, along with the cost of marrying a third, soon proves to be his undoing. Such is El Hadji’s need to be seen to be ascending the social and political ladder, it results in his risking everything to arrive and stay there. Like so many African leaders in the post-Colonial era, the temptation to appropriate resources for himself – and at the expense of the people – is shown as an extension of his usual business practice, a refinement if you will of sharp practice. The only difference between Xala and real life is that Sembene doesn’t let El Hadji off the hook, and his comeuppance is both well-deserved and horrible at the same time.

Although there is a great deal of drama to be had from El Hadji’s shady wheeling and dealing, it doesn’t come along until well after the halfway mark. Until then, the movie follows a recognisably European comic scenario, with the new groom afflicted by a bout of impotence that sees him berated by his new mother-in-law, and encouraged to approach his new wife on all fours with a fetish in his mouth that makes him look like some kind of dentally challenged vampire (it’s all part of a “cure”). There’s good fun to be had from the way in which this serious businessman, now in a position of power, will yield to the most bizarre of behaviours in order to regain his potency, and how he’ll let his first two wives dominate him. Sembene also pokes fun at El Hadji’s increasing “Europeanisation” through his wearing of Western clothing beneath more traditional robes, and his pretentious assertion that he only drinks bottled water (and which is used to fill his car’s radiator at one point).

Sembene also casts a judicious eye on El Hadji’s surroundings, spending time with those less fortunate than his main character, and speaking up for the rights of the disenfranchised and the disabled. As this storyline becomes more and more important to the narrative, Sembene more closely examines the ways in which this abandoned section of Senegalese society should have more of a voice than it does. Their ultimate effect on the fate of El Hadji is introduced with great skill by Sembene and leads to one of the most terrible of movie endings, but one that retains a redemptive feel, both for them and for El Hadji.

Xala - scene2

The movie has a washed-out colour scheme that may well be due to the film stock available for Sembene to use, but even so it makes for an effective reflection on the murky practices of El Hadji and the Chamber of Commerce (and their puppet masters). The soundtrack is filtered through the bustle of street life, and the occasional bursts of music enliven what is a mostly sombre tale. Sembene shows a complete confidence in the material throughout, and if he slips up occasionally in his attempts to make El Hadji as emotionally impotent as he is physically, then he can be forgiven for trying to add another layer to the character’s problems.

Rating: 8/10 – forthright and critical in its depiction of post-Colonial political corruption, and with a compelling comic sensibility, Xala tells it’s story simply and with a sense of righteous indignity; there are times when it seems as if we’re watching a documentary, but Sembene directs with compassion and no small amount of skill.

To Be Takei (2014)

16 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by in Movies

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

To Be Takei

D: Jennifer M. Kroot, Bill Weber / 94m

George Takei, Brad Takei, Howard Stern, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, Brad Savage, Lea Salonga, John Cho, B.D. Wong, Daniel Inouye

George Takei’s early life in Los Angeles was blighted by Executive Order 9066 which ordered the internment of all persons considered a threat to national security, particularly any Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast. Takei and his family were moved to the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas. After a year, the introduction of a “loyalty questionnaire” – which his father refused to sign – meant they were relocated to a camp in Tule Lake, California. At the end of the war they were allowed to return to Los Angeles.

Takei did well in school, and eventually enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley. He became interested in acting – though he admits he was a “performer” long before then – but it wasn’t until the late Fifties that he began to find work, initially doing voice over work on movies such as Rodan (1956). A couple of Jerry Lewis movies (albeit playing racially dubious roles) gave him a small degree of exposure, enough to be considered for the role of Sulu in Star Trek. As part of the multi-ethnic crew, Takei’s appearance was a tremendous boost for Asian-American actors, but in real terms his career continued at a steady pace, mostly in TV.

1973 saw the beginning of Takei’s political career. He ran for the City Council of Los Angeles, but narrowly lost out. However, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to the team responsible for the planning of the Los Angeles subway system. His political career came to a close in the early Eighties as the Star Trek movies became increasingly popular. Concentrating his efforts on acting, Takei saw in the Nineties by finally becoming Captain Sulu in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). At around the same time he became involved in The Howard Stern Show, and is the show’s semi-regular announcer even now. The new century saw him as busy as ever but 2005 was a defining year: in October, Takei revealed that he was gay and had been in a relationship (with Brad Altman) for eighteen years. To many it wasn’t a shock as he’d been a supporter of LGBT organisations for some time, but it led to his becoming a more vocal supporter of gay rights and same-sex marriage; at present he’s a spokesperson for the Human Rights Act “Coming Out Project”.

In 2008, he and Brad married and together they tour the world giving speeches and making convention appearances and turning up on TV. Takei has embraced Facebook in a big way and currently has around eight million followers; his daily posts are funny and occasionally, controversial. And in 2012 he appeared in the stage musical Allegiance, a project he helped initiate and which is set in a Japanese internment camp in World War II.

To Be Takei - scene

If you sat down to write a book or a film script or a stage play, and you made your main character a somewhat diminutive Japanese-American homosexual who finds fame as an actor on a science fiction TV show, it’s a safe bet that publishers and backers would look at you funny and then laugh you out of the room for being so foolish. After all, who’s going to believe a story as far-fetched as that? And yet, George Takei is living proof that you can be all that and more.

Charting his life and experiences, To Be Takei is an amusing, warm-hearted look at a man who, over the last fifty years, has become a pop-culture icon. It’s a sweet-natured movie, much like the man himself, and is a wonderful introduction to a man who laughs at everything (unless you say being gay is a lifestyle – he’ll tell you in no uncertain terms it’s not, it’s an orientation). He has a great laugh too, a rich, soulful chuckle that punctuates his speech as if he can’t control it. Seeing him being so cheerful, and so much of the time, it’s plain to see he’s a man who’s lived not only a full life – he’s currently 77 – but is still doing so and with no intention of slowing down. His energy levels are prodigious. But it’s most likely his childhood at Rohwer that informs this, and the scenes where he discusses his time at the camps in Arkansas and California add a depth and a meaning to a life that, otherwise, seems to have been a model of fun and excitement. That it hasn’t left any permanent emotional scars is a testament to his resilience and his refusal not to let it affect him in any meaningful way. It’s these scenes that resonate the most, especially when they dovetail into those that show the development of Allegiance.

The movie follows Takei and Brad as they attend various functions and travel round the US. At one point they’re up in the mountains scattering Brad’s mother’s ashes. The wind proves to be blowing in the wrong direction and some of the ashes end up on their clothes. George’s pithy observation? “And I think your mom’s going to be at the cleaner’s too.” The relationship between George and Brad is the cornerstone of the movie, their devotion to each other so evident that when they’re taking the mickey out of each other, you’re laughing with them because it wouldn’t even occur to you to laugh at them. Even when Brad is in manager mode and bossing George around, there’s a deep-rooted affection there the whole time that makes it all the more marvellous to witness.

As well as his time in the internment camps there’s a fair amount of time devoted to his exploits in Star Trek, and the ongoing animosity between George and William Shatner – “Speaking of fat alcoholics… good evening, Bill.” – but it’s the contributions of Nimoy, Nichols and Koenig that add a poignancy to the proceedings, and reinforce just how much he’s loved by his old “comrades in space”. In fact, the movie is very good at providing just the right amount of time for each phase of his life and career, and for the current day activities he gets up to. Balancing out what really has been an incredibly varied and rewarding life, it’s to the movie’s credit – and Takei’s – that he remains as likeable as he’s always been. He’s so highly regarded and he’s so open and honest about things that by the movie’s end you feel you almost know him, such is the attention to detail and interest in him shown by Kroot and Weber. And with the honesty and commitment shown by Takei and Brad, the movie also paints a lovely portrait of two people who are still enamoured of each other after more than twenty-five years.

Rating: 8/10 – a documentary about a remarkable man presented in a fun, entertaining way, To Be Takei is a joy to watch, and made all the more so by Takei’s obvious enjoyment at being filmed; even if you only watch it to see his public service announcement regarding Tim Hardaway – “Oh my” indeed – you’ll find yourself wishing you could spend just a little bit more time in his company.