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The Show (2017)

10 Sunday Dec 2017

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Original title: This Is Your Death

D: Giancarlo Esposito / 105m

Cast: Josh Duhamel, Giancarlo Esposito, Famke Janssen, Caitlin FitzGerald, Sarah Wayne Callies, Chris Ellis, Lucia Walters, Brooke Warrington, Jaeden Noel

The rise and rise and continued rise of reality TV shows has, according to the latest movie to feature James Franco in an “anyone could have played it” cameo, brought us to a bit of an impasse. With audiences (apparently) becoming bored with watching the lives of celebrities, would-be celebrities and those looking for love, what’s a television network to do when their latest hit show, Marriage to a Millionaire, ends in murder and suicide? For the show’s host, Adam Rogers (Duhamel), it proves to be a bit of a wake up call. For network chief Ilana Katz (Janssen), it provides an opportunity to create a brand new show unlike any seen before on national TV. Ilana wants to make a show that features ordinary members of the public killing themselves live on television. At first, Adam is repulsed by the idea, as is the live event producer, Sylvia (FitzGerald), that Ilana wants to hire. But Adam convinces himself that the show doesn’t have to be as tawdry or exploitative as it sounds. Instead, he believes the deaths can have meaning, and he comes up with an idea that facilitates this: the death of each person who takes part will be financially beneficial to someone in their lives…

It’s a measure of The Show‘s innate stupidity as a movie that this notion – and all by itself – doesn’t derail things from the moment the idea is mentioned. It’s certainly the moment when the movie gives up all attempts at credibility, and settles for being an unadulterated mess. As Adam demands more and more creative control (and gets it), his insistence that the show is “real” (whatever that means), and is helping people to see that their lives can make a difference, becomes more and more nonsensical as the movie progresses. Both Adam and the script – the work of Kenny Yakkel and Noah Pink – become less and less convincing as the show, titled This Is Your Death, becomes a ratings winner, and any initial horror or disgust is conveniently overlooked. Behind the scenes, Sylvia acts as the show’s voice of conscience, but her objections to the show’s format and content is continually undermined by her remaining as the producer. Away from the show, the only other voice of dissent is provided by Adam’s sister, Karina (Callies), a nurse who quickly points out the immorality of what her brother is doing. But Adam doesn’t want to listen because Adam has his own agenda.

The movie tries to keep several plot strands going all at the same time, but while some of those strands are pursued to the end, there are just as many that are maintained in such a haphazard fashion that they add to the sense that nobody working on this movie had a clear idea as to what it was actually about. Anyone looking for a movie that supports the idea of dignity through suicide will find the televised versions shown here abhorrent, while anyone looking for a cogent and thoughtful examination of what it means to sacrifice yourself for the good of your loved ones, will come away perplexed by the simplistic and lunk-headed approach that’s adopted by Yakkel and Pink’s unimpressive screenplay. There are themes and issues raised that the movie could have addressed more directly, such as the audience’s complicity in people’s deaths, and the need for each death to be as violent as possible (when someone takes their life by lethal injection, it’s something of a relief).

But the movie is trying to be a thriller first and foremost, even though at best it’s a muddled drama that seeks to hurl contentious barbs at our obsession with reality television, and to a lesser extent, social media. Some of this is addressed through the character of Ilana, who wants only for the show to be successful, and who is willing to look the other way when circumstances dictate. But the character is an easy target, the network executive without a conscience, and though Janssen is a talented actress, there’s nothing she can do with the role because Ilana is a caricature without any substance. Then there’s Adam himself, increasingly arrogant, increasingly self-aggrandising, and only interested in what benefits the show can give him, from national fame on a whole different level to what he’s experienced before, to a new house that is way too big for just one person. The script tries to make it seem that Adam truly believes in what the show is trying to do, but whenever it tries to get him to explain his beliefs, they remain as unconvincing as the show as a whole.

Away from the studio, the movie offers us two stories, the one that relates to Karina and her efforts to remain clean from drugs (and which you know is going to collide with the show at some stage), and the efforts of a fifty-something ex-salesman, Mason Washington (Esposito), and his efforts to keep a roof over the heads of himself and his family. Mason is working two jobs when we first meet him, but inevitably he loses both thanks to Basic Plotting 101, and when he can’t find any alternative work (and even gets turned down by a loan shark; yes, a loan shark whose conscience works better than anyone on the show), Mason begins to think about trading his life for his family’s future security. He’s the emotional core of the movie, someone we can care about and hope doesn’t kill himself, and thanks to Esposito’s sympathetic portrayal, that’s easily done. But Esposito the director still has the issue of connecting what’s essentially a character drama (Mason’s trouble finding a job etc.) with a low-concept reality TV-based thriller. Sadly, the two don’t mix as well as intended.

The performances are consistent with the lack of consistency in the narrative, and the likes of Callies, FitzGerald, and Janssen can only do so much to ensure their characters aren’t completely stereotypical. But while Esposito makes it work, Duhamel isn’t so lucky, and as he showed in Misconduct (2016), when the character isn’t fully there, he’s not always able to build on what’s available and create a compelling portrayal. Duhamel is a likeable actor, but in this kind of movie and in this kind of role, he often seems out of his depth, and he struggles accordingly. By the end of the movie, and a scene set outside the studio, the limitations of his performance are on full display (though he’s not helped by Esposito’s clumsy direction; watch Esposito exit the scene as Mason to see just how clumsy Esposito’s direction can be). With so much that doesn’t work, or is simply under-developed, the movie coasts along trying to be relevant and/or insightful, but instead, falls down at every turn, and relies too heavily on dramatic clichés to ever achieve anything that isn’t superficial or half-baked.

Rating: 3/10 – as ideas go, it’s not a bad one, but the treatment is what keeps The Show from being anything other than a jumbled, unconvincing, and embarrassing farrago; another example of a movie that feels as if everyone is working from a first draft, it plays out like a bad dream that you hope you’ll be able to forget, but which lingers in the memory just a little too long for comfort.

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Brigsby Bear (2017)

06 Monday Nov 2017

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D: Dave McCary / 97m

Cast: Kyle Mooney, Greg Kinnear, Matt Walsh, Mark Hamill, Michaela Watkins, Ryan Simpkins, Jorge Lendeborg Jr, Alexa Demie, Claire Danes, Kate Lyn Sheil, Beck Bennett, Jane Adams

James Mitchum (Mooney) is in his mid-twenties and has never strayed beyond the immediate confines of the underground bunker that he and his parents, Ted (Hamill) and April (Adams), live in due to the outside air being poisonous (though the cause is left unexplained). James has grown up watching a TV show called Brigsby Bear Adventures, which concerns a bear called Brigsby and the adventures he has in space as he tries to stop the evil Sunsnatcher from destroying all the light in the universe. Brigsby is aided by two twins, the Smile Sisters, who are roughly eight or nine. James knows the show inside out, and for good reason: it’s the only TV show he’s ever seen. But James’ life is turned upside down when police arrive at the bunker, and it’s revealed that James was stolen as a baby from his real parents, Greg (Walsh) and Louise Pope (Watkins).

United with his birth parents, and his younger sister, Aubrey (Simpkins), James finds much that is puzzling about this new world he’s been thrust into, and his obvious lack of social skills don’t help, but the one thing he has that he can rely on, the one thing that continues to make sense to him, is Brigsby Bear. But when he’s informed that Ted created the character and made all the shows himself, instead of trying to put this information into the context of his “abducted” life and its structure (the video tapes of the show that Ted made were as much educational as they were entertainment), James decides to make a Brigsby Bear movie, and use it as a way of completing Brigsby’s story. James’s reasoning is plain: if Ted can no longer finish the story, who better than James? With the aid of some of Aubrey’s school friends, including budding movie maker Spencer (Lendeborg Jr), and admirer Meredith (Demie), and police detective Vogel (Kinnear) (who helps with “access” to some of the show’s original props), James sets about making his dream come true.

If you see a movie that’s more sincere and more touching than Brigsby Bear in 2017, then that movie definitely needs to be brought to everyone’s attention, because this movie is both those things and much, much more. A feelgood movie that takes a truly original notion and explores it with unexpected depth and compassion, Brigsby Bear is a terrific, wonderfully constructed movie that touches on universal themes of acceptance and individuality and belonging, and does so in such a well thought out and affecting way that it’s hard not to find yourself smiling to yourself without always realising it while the movie is playing. Conceived and written by its star, Kyle Mooney, and his friend, Kevin Costello, James’s own adventure is one that is both touching and heartfelt, and which pulls the viewer along by the sheer exuberance that emanates from the screenplay and its use of the characters involved. James isn’t a socially awkward teenager in an adult’s body, he’s a socially awkward adult with a teenager’s mindset. But his commitment to Brigsby Bear isn’t a sign of a child whose emotional growth has been stunted by prolonged exposure to the show. Instead it provides clear evidence that James has absorbed many of the life lessons that Ted has tried to teach him; all he has to do now is recognise the situations in which he should use them (it’s an interesting subtext – that Ted has actually done a good job of being a father to James despite the circumstances – that, sadly, isn’t followed up).

That he gets so many things wrong becomes understandable, but Mooney and Costello’s screenplay, ably realised by McCary, also shows how James develops as a person, and how he learns from his mistakes. Mooney is superb as James, always seeming as if he’s just on the verge of working out some diffuse mystery, and always in a way that keeps everyone around him slightly on tenterhooks, unsure of where his enthusiasm for Brigsby will take him. It leads to some wonderfully charming moments that emphasise and highlight the joys of extremely low budget movie making, and how the making of this particular movie serves as a final chapter for the first part of James’s life; it’s his way of putting the past behind him and beginning to move on. And as he reconciles his past with his future, more lessons are learned and James’s growth as an individual helps him to forge the new relationships that will allow him to rebuild his life.

Directed with confidence, and with a focus on the emotional core of the screenplay by McCary (making his feature debut), the movie is quirky, and infused with a sweet-natured humour that allows for easy laughs throughout, but not at the expense of the sentimental nature of the drama. Some viewers may find that the movie isn’t “dark” enough, as if the initial set up should lead on to darker material, but that idea is quickly undermined (and dismissed) when Vogel asks James if the Mitchums ever “touched” him. James confirms this, saying it happened often, and demonstrates by shaking Vogel’s hand. This isn’t a movie where any physical or psychological damage to its lead character is either mandatory or relevant – there are plenty of other movies where those aspects are addressed. Instead it’s a movie that in its own compassionate way, avoids those issues but only because it’s not the story it wants to tell. (And even when James is sent to a psychiatric hospital, there’s still the opportunity for laughs rather than misery.)

With great supporting turns from the likes of Kinnear (as a cop with thespian leanings), Danes (as a domineering therapist), and Hamill (as the not quite so evil abductor that you’d expect), the movie is also careful to portray the Pope family dynamic as one of protracted confusion mixed with dwindling hope that James will ever be fully integrated into that dynamic. The script provides answers to many of the questions it raises (including that one), but is shrewd enough to keep James’s future an enigma that even he may never solve. This ambiguity allows the movie to end on a high note that is actually more poignant and more apt when considering where James’s story began, and which is in keeping entirely with its off-kilter nature. Few movies this year are likely to be as engaging or as captivating as this one, and that’s because this movie is a true one of a kind.

Rating: 9/10 – with its fully rounded central character, offbeat yet creative scenario, and effortlessly endearing atmosphere, Brigsby Bear is like a surprise present you weren’t expecting – at all; smart, funny, and genuine, it’s a movie that eschews moralising for optimism, and does so in such a warm, convivial manner that it’s entirely too hard to resist.

Money Monster (2016)

10 Wednesday Aug 2016

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Money Monster

D: Jodie Foster / 98m

Cast: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O’Connell, Dominic West, Caitriona Balfe, Giancarlo Esposito, Christopher Denham, Lenny Venito, Chris Bauer, Dennis Boutsikaris, Emily Meade, Condola Rashad, Aaron Yoo

Lee Gates (Clooney) is the host of TV show, Money Monster. Gates acts as an advisor for anyone looking to invest their money in stocks and shares, but he does so in a hyped-up, devil-may-care fashion that makes him seem sharp and ahead of the game. From the opening dance routines to his frequently ad hoc approach to any scripted segments, Gates talks and behaves as if he can’t ever be wrong. As he gears up to present the latest edition of the show, Gates is expecting to interview Walt Camby (West), the CEO of IBIS Clear Capital, an investment company whose main trading algorithm has developed a glitch and “lost” $800 million, leaving some of their investors high and dry. But Camby is off the grid, and his chief communications officer, Diane Lester (Balfe), is left to field Gates’s questions.

Once on air, the show is interrupted by a delivery man (O’Connell) who appears on set and reveals he has a gun. He forces Gates to put on a vest that’s crammed with C4, and threatens to detonate the explosives unless he gets some answers as to why IBIS’ algorithm went so badly wrong. The delivery man, whose name is Kyle Budwell, is appalled that Gates, and everyone else, is just accepting Camby’s line that it was all just a glitch. Why, he asks, isn’t anyone asking how it could have happened, and why is everyone not as angry as he is, especially as Gates, on a previous edition of the show, told his viewers that investing in IBIS was safer than investing in savings bonds.

MM - scene2

The police are quick to arrive, and the show is allowed to carry on broadcasting live. Gates’s producer, Patty Fenn (Roberts), is stuck in the unenviable position of having to keep both Gates and Kyle calm, and to keep the on-set camera and sound team from being hurt as well. Soon the police – and Gates – learn that Kyle inherited $60,000 when his mother died and he invested it all in IBIS shares; now he has virtually nothing except a job that pays fourteen dollars an hour and a pregnant girlfriend, Molly (Meade). Meanwhile, Diane begins to suspect that all isn’t as it seems at IBIS when her senior colleagues prove less than helpful as she tries to piece together what happened to make the company lose so much money in one hit. And as she begins to work out what happened, so too does Patty and Gates. As the mounting evidence points to fraud on a massive scale, Camby resurfaces, and he and Gates and Kyle find themselves on a collision course to reveal the truth.

If you’re thinking that Money Monster sounds like a fast-paced financial thriller where Wall Street is the bad guy, and Clooney portrays a champion for the little guy who exposes fraud and corruption wherever they rear their ugly heads, then you’re going to be disappointed. It is a financial thriller, that much is true, but the pacing is a little haphazard, and any tension inherent in the material is worn down by director Jodie Foster’s unwillingness to have the movie edited appropriately (and it’s not as if her editor, Matt Chessé, hasn’t any experience in this area – he’s worked on both World War Z (2013) and Quantum of Solace (2008) before now). This is best expressed in a horribly lengthy sequence that sees Gates and Kyle walk from the TV studios to Federal Hall, surrounded by armed police and baying crowds. With precious little happening apart from Clooney looking anxious and O’Connell looking like he can’t work out what’s going on, the sequence comes to a contrived end long after you’ve begun hoping that they’ll get there already.

MM - scene1

With the movie’s thriller elements lacking energy or defined purpose, there’s the small matter of the McGuffin, the $800 million. Such is the muddled approach to the story as a whole, that the script – by Jamie Linden, Alan DiFiore and Jim Rouf – never really decides if it’s important or not. That Camby is behind its disappearance is never in doubt, but Kyle’s motivations for challenging its public perception as a glitch manage to change from scene to scene. One minute he wants the money back so all the investors who’ve lost out can be remunerated, the next he wants an explanation as to how the money could have vanished in the first place, and then he’s looking for an admission of guilt. With the script unable to decide what Kyle wants, it leaves O’Connell adrift and having to do the best he can with a character who keeps telling Gates he’s not stupid, but who is then outed by his girlfriend as being exactly that (and when she does, it’s harsh).

Clooney is left stranded a lot of the time, especially in the twenty minutes or so after Kyle’s arrival on set. But when Gates is given stuff to do – argue about the state of his life against Kyle’s, plead with the public to buy IBIS shares in order to save his life – he’s stuck with dialogue that feels and sounds clunky and unconvincing. Clooney is a very good actor, but not even he can do anything with lines such as, “We take care of each other. It’s in our DNA. Not because an equation tells you to do it, but because it’s the right thing to do.” Roberts is likewise hampered by a role that requires her to be too many things at once: TV producer, hostage negotiator, amateur detective, and grudging friend (to Gates). She does her best but in the end has to coast along with the vagaries of the script like everyone else.

MM - scene3

The script tries to make the apparent complacency of ordinary investors as much to blame for financial disasters as it does the banks, the investment companies and the government, an argument that sounds edgy but is quickly shelved once Camby’s apparent perfidy is placed front and centre, and there are some Gosh No! moments when Kyle trots out a few financial conspiracy theories, but on the whole this is a movie with a script that doesn’t know exactly what it wants to say, and sadly, a director who doesn’t quite know how to get it into better shape. There are stretches where Money Monster is quite listless, content to cruise along in neutral and wait until the next plot development hoves into view. What that means for the viewer though, is a movie that never grips as it should, and never engages consistently with its audience.

Rating: 5/10 – only moderately rewarding, Money Monster lacks discernible energy and stumbles around trying too hard to be an efficient thriller (without quite knowing how to be one); a disappointment then given the talent involved, this could have been a lot more interesting, and a lot more entertaining, if it hadn’t been so rambling in its approach and its execution.

 

Oh! the Horror! – Scare Campaign (2016) and Emelie (2015)

25 Monday Jul 2016

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Scare Campaign

Scare Campaign (2016) / D: Colin Cairnes, Cameron Cairnes / 80m

Cast: Meegan Warner, Ian Meadows, Olivia DeJonge, Josh Quong Tart, Patrick Harvey, Cassandra Magrath, Steve Mouzakis, Jason Geary, John Brumpton, Sigrid Thornton

Scare Campaign is a TV show that loves to prank unsuspecting members of the public by putting them in creepy situations and then scaring the life out of them. Approaching the end of its fifth season, the latest show has to be rescued after the stooge reacts to a “reanimated” corpse by producing a gun. Warned by their boss (Thornton) at the network, Marcus (Meadows) and his team are tasked with making their season finale more contemporary and more dramatic, particularly in light of the exploits of a rival “reality” TV show called Masked Freaks, which appears to show snuff footage.

Taking over an abandoned mental hospital, Marcus and his team – including ex-girlfriend and lead actress, Emma (Warner), aspiring newcomer Abby (DeJonge), and make up supremo JD (Harvey) – get ready to prank their latest stooge by making it look as if the place is haunted by the ghosts of former patients. Enter Rohan (Tart), the stooge, who reveals an unexpected connection to the hospital, and who soon goes on a rampage killing the Scared Campaign team. Emma finds herself being chased by Rohan, and along the way, discovers cameras that aren’t linked to the production…

Scare Campaign - scene

There’s a degree of fun to be had from Scare Campaign, the latest feature from Australians Colin and Cameron Cairnes, and horror fans in general will be happy with the level of inventive gore on display, but the movie falls into the same traps as many other low-budget horror movies, from the perfunctory character development – does it really matter if Emma and Marcus once had a relationship? – to the uninspired use of the low-budget horror movie maker’s location of choice, the abandoned medical facility.

Where the movie does score highly is in its use of humour, offering up some genuinely funny moments when you least expect it, as when one of the team reveals that they do their research. Co-writers and directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes inject enough rude energy to keep viewers watching once the central conceit is revealed, but by the movie’s awkward and credibility-lite conclusion, some viewers may well have become exasperated by some of the narrative decisions. That said, Warner and Tart provide good performances, and the relatively short running time means the movie doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Rating: 5/10 – though not as effective as it would like to be, Scare Campaign is still a reasonably likeable shocker, even if it does come across as too derivative for comfort; the Cairnes brothers have talent, but coming after their more impressive first feature 100 Bloody Acres (2012), this looks and feels like a backward step.

 

Emelie

Emelie (2015) / D: Michael Thelin / 80m

Cast: Sarah Bolger, Joshua Rush, Carly Adams, Thomas Bair, Chris Beetem, Susan Pourfar, Elizabeth Jayne, Dante Hoagland

Stressed out and needing an evening together without their kids, frazzled parents Dan and Joyce (Beetem, Pourfar) don’t stop to think that it’s strange that the babysitter who shows up isn’t the one they were expecting. Instead they head off without checking to see if Anna (Bolger) really is who she says she is, and leave their three children – Jacob (Rush), Sally (Adams), and Christopher (Bair) – in the care of a young woman who soon begins behaving oddly. She plays inappropriate games with them, and soon earns the suspicion of eldest child Jacob, who begins to realise that Anna may not be the replacement babysitter she’s supposed to be.

While their parents remain oblivious to what’s going on at home, Anna’s behaviour becomes increasingly alarming, and Jacob, Sally and Christopher find themselves being menaced by her. When the reason for her being there is revealed, Jacob does his best to keep his siblings safe, but Anna (now revealed as Emelie), always manages to keep one step ahead, even when the original babysitter’s friend, Maggie (Jayne), calls to say hi. Matters escalate, and by the time Dan and Joyce try to ring home and get no answer – prompting their swift return home – Emelie has almost achieved her aim in being there.

Emelie - scene

Michael Thelin’s first feature opens with an abduction, a predatory incident that takes place in broad daylight, and which is scary because it happens so easily. And a few uneasy moments aside, it’s also easily Emelie‘s most effective sequence. For despite many good intentions, and a handful of scenes that veer off in directions that aren’t immediately obvious, the movie struggles to maintain the sense of eerie disquietude that that opening provides. It’s a shame, as the uneven narrative needs more than just a few incongruous and unsettling moments to be as potent as it should be.

As the titular villain, Bolger gives a compelling performance, and manages to maintain a sense of repressed violence that adds greatly to her portrayal of a young woman pushing herself into a very dark expression of parental need. It’s also good to report that all three child actors cope well with the demands of the script, and Thelin directs them with due care and consideration. Once a cat-and-mouse situation develops, Thelin can’t resist adopting a more melodramatic approach, and there’s a subplot involving Emelie’s “partner” that seems superfluous until it’s used (clumsily) to link the parents and their belief that something is wrong at home. And to rounds things off, Thelin also can’t resist the possibility of a sequel, something that anyone watching this will not be clamouring for.

Rating: 4/10 – clunky and annoying for the most part, Emelie takes every parent’s fear – that of their children being at the mercy of a stranger who means to do them harm – and tries too hard to be different, resulting in a movie that is only fitfully tense and only occasionally alarming; with any menace reduced as a result, the movie can only pander to genre tropes in the hope that no one will notice just how ineffectual it is, and how poorly developed is Rich Herbeck’s screenplay.

Welcome to Me (2014)

19 Tuesday May 2015

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Welcome to Me

D: Shira Piven / 105m

Cast: Kristen Wiig, Wes Bentley, Linda Cardellini, Joan Cusack, Loretta Devine, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Thomas Mann, James Marsden, Tim Robbins, Alan Tudyk

Alice Klieg (Wiig) suffers from borderline personality disorder and lives off of benefits. She doesn’t have a job, but she is on medication and she sees a psychiatrist, Dr Daryl Moffet (Robbins). She plays the California state lottery each week; when she wins $86 million, Alice decides she wants to regain the life she had before she was diagnosed. She stops taking her medication and tells Dr Moffet that she no longer wishes to see him. She also moves out of her apartment and goes to stay in a casino hotel.

An avid TV watcher, Alice becomes enamoured of a show hosted by Gabe Ruskin (Bentley). She is in the audience one day when a volunteer is needed; Alice rushes to the stage. What follows attracts the attention of Gabe’s brother, Rich (Marsden), his producer and with Gabe co-owner of the production company that airs the show. Alice takes the opportunity to request a show of her own that she wants to call Welcome to Me. When she pays for a hundred two-hour shows upfront, Rich agrees to her suggestion – though the rest of the production team aren’t so sold on the idea. The first show airs and is a disaster, but instead of being put off, Alice invests more money into the show, thus making it look more professional.

She and Gabe begin a relationship, and the show slowly gains in popularity thanks to Alice’s confessional approach to the show’s content, and re-enactments of key scenes from her past. However, as she becomes more and more fixated on the show, her family and her closest friend, Gina (Cardellini) are largely forgotten about. She has a brief fling with a college reporter (Mann); when Gabe learns about it on one of Alice’s shows he’s visibly upset and angry. And when Alice accidentally spills hot chili on herself, burning her chest and upper arms, he reassessment of what the show needs leads to her carrying out live neutering of dogs and cats.

Things come to a head when Gabe quits and Rich learns that, thanks to Alice’s slanderous statements about people on her show, the company is facing a number of lawsuits. Rich confronts Alice live on air and tells her she needs to change her ideas about the show and fast. This causes Alice to halt the show and return to the casino hotel where in the days that follow she suffers a nervous breakdown. While she’s in hospital – and back on her medication – Alice begins to think of a way in which she can make it up to all the people she’s let down.

Welcome to Me - scene

Treading a very fine line between being sympathetic (mostly) and exploitative (occasionally), Welcome to Me is an odd movie that appears to go to some lengths to make its audience uncomfortable while watching it. We’ve had movies that feature characters with mental health problems many, many, many times before, but none that have placed them in a world where their private fantasies have been given such a free rein, and so easily.

The problem with the movie’s treatment of Alice is that it wants you to believe that she has a plan when in fact she really doesn’t. It also wants you to believe that a television production company would let Alice on the air without first vetting her and putting any relevant checks and balances in place. This isn’t public service broadcasting, and the speed and the convenience of Alice’s show hitting the airwaves (and making it onto the ratings) makes for an unconvincing development. And it’s during these segments that it becomes clear the script – by Eliot Laurence – doesn’t really know what to do with Alice, or how to explore the traumatic experiences that have triggered Alice’s disorder.

It’s a shame as it takes the edge off of Wiig’s inspired performance – possibly her best to date – and saddles the movie with several tiresome stretches that fail to engage as effectively as when the action happens away from the studio. Laurence and director Piven (sister of Jeremy, and wife of co-producer Adam McKay) invest a lot of time and effort in making Alice such a credible, fully believable character, and then place her in a milieu that doesn’t even bother to reflect on the vagaries of being a celebrity with mental health problems. It does touch on the way in which fame can isolate celebrities from the “normal” people around them, but in Alice’s case she’s already isolated, so where is the drama? And it doesn’t help that the characters surrounding Alice aren’t as sufficiently well drawn as she is, leaving cast members such as Marsden and Bentley struggling to make much of an impact (Marsden is particularly ill-served).

With all the focus and attention going on Alice, it’s to Wiig’s credit that she inhabits the role so completely and confidently that she carries the movie effortlessly, making up for the shortfall elsewhere. In fact, it’s such a strong, emotive performance that the movie loses its footing on the rare occasions she’s not on screen. Emotionally adrift yet  bound up in her own unresolved feelings of anger and rejection, Alice is a role that suits Wiig’s ability to “blank face” to a tee; you can see Alice looking out at you and seeing right through you at the same time.

Elsewhere, Clayton Hartley’s production design (reflecting the chaotic nature of Alice’s mind at home and in the studio), and David Robbins’ score (providing clever emotional cues for Alice’s behaviour) work to the movie’s advantage, while the script’s attempts at quirky, indie sensibility humour work with more of a success rate than the drama does.

Rating: 6/10 – a decent idea but lacking a through follow through, Welcome to Me ultimately has little to say about mental illness or the perils of being a modern day celebrity; relenting when it should be biting, this is saved (constantly) by Wiig’s ambitious and exhilarating performance.

Mini-Review: Million Dollar Arm (2014)

24 Friday Oct 2014

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Million Dollar Arm

D: Craig Gillespie / 124m

Cast: Jon Hamm, Aasif Mandvi, Lake Bell, Alan Arkin, Bill Paxton, Suraj Sharma, Madhur Mittal, Pitobash, Tzi Ma

Sports agent J.B. Bernstein (Hamm) is struggling to sign that one sports superstar that will make his agency a success, but when his best chance falls through, he’s on the verge of giving up.  Then inspiration strikes from two unlikely sources: Susan Boyle’s appearance on Britain’s Got Talent and televised cricket.  Creating the concept of a TV show that searches for potential baseball talent in India, particularly pitchers, J.B. eventually discovers Rinku Singh (Sharma) and Dinesh Patel (Mittal), two young men with no experience or understanding at all of baseball.

J.B. brings them to the US, where as part of winning the show they undergo training for a year under the auspices of veteran coaches Ray Poitevint (Arkin) and Tom House (Paxton), but things don’t go as smoothly as J.B. had hoped, and Rinku and Dinesh struggle to come to terms with playing baseball and adjusting to their new way of life. With their prospects of being signed to a major league baseball team slipping away from them, and J.B.’s business under threat too, it all hinges on a try-out designed to show just what Rinku and Dinesh can do.

Million Dollar Arm - scene

Another true story of unlikely triumph over predictable adversity, Million Dollar Arm  – the name of the show J.B. creates – takes one of the most surprising rags to riches stories of the last ten years and gives it a bland makeover that robs it of any appreciable drama while promoting the aspirational aspects at every opportunity.  In short the movie is heavily Disney-fied, a by-the-numbers tale that treats the material with reverence but at the expense of any real emotion.  It’s a shame as Rinku and Dinesh’s story has the scope and range to allow the exploration of several wider issues, not the least of which is racism, a subject that Million Dollar Arm engages with fitfully and with obvious reluctance.

Thankfully, the cast are on hand to guide the audience through, providing assured performances – Bell, as J.B.’s lodger and love interest, steals every scene she’s in – and in the director’s chair, Gillespie musters things with enthusiasm despite the restrictions inherent in the script.  The movie is brightly lit and often gorgeous to look at – thanks to DoP Gyula Pados – and A.R. Rahman’s score is infectiously rousing and uplifting.

Rating: 5/10 – entertaining enough, though on a deliberately vapid level, Million Dollar Arm is an undemanding movie that sticks to a very rigid formula (and never lets the viewer forget it); with the outcome never in doubt, it’s left to the more than capable cast to raise this out of the doldrums it otherwise seems happy to inhabit.

The Equalizer (2014)

30 Tuesday Sep 2014

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D: Antoine Fuqua / 131m

Cast: Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz, David Harbour, Haley Bennett, Bill Pullman, Melissa Leo, David Meunier, Johnny Skourtis

Robert McCall (Washington) is a quiet, reserved man who works at a hardware store in Boston and is generally well liked by his colleagues.  At home he lives a somewhat monastic, ordered lifestyle, and the only time he appears to go out is when he goes to a local diner and reads his latest book.  As a regular he gets to know Terri (Moretz), a teen prostitute with ambitions to be a singer.  When McCall witnesses her being mistreated by her pimp, Slavi (Meunier), and then she ends up in the hospital, badly beaten up, he decides to do something about it.  He pays Slavi a visit, and when negotiations don’t go as he’d hoped, he kills Slavi and four of his men.

What McCall doesn’t know is that Slavi was part of the East Coast Russian mob, and he’s singlehandedly taken out the Boston hub of that organisation.  The mob sends a fixer, Teddy (Csokas), to find the person responsible, but it takes a while, during which time McCall gets on with helping others who are experiencing crime-related problems.  When Teddy finally tracks him down, McCall decides to turn the tables on him and become the hunter instead of the hunted.  Striking at the mob’s operation while staying one step ahead of Teddy’s efforts to find and kill him, McCall reveals further aspects of a past that no one knows about, and which he keeps hidden.

When Teddy discovers a potential weakness in McCall’s character, his friendships with the people he works with, he holds them hostage and gives McCall an ultimatum: either give himself up or they all die.  But McCall has other ideas…

Equalizer, The - scene

Adapted from the US TV show that ran from 1985-1989 and starred Edward Woodward, The Equalizer is a big screen reboot that trades that series’ subtlety and clever plotting for a more direct, impactful approach, despite its slow burn opening and attempts at deft character work.  It’s a long while before McCall’s visit to Slavi, and during that time we get to see him at home, at work, at the diner, leading a normal life of sorts, but obviously lonely rather than a loner.  We learn that he’s a widower, and that he’s working his way through a list of books his wife was aiming to read before she died.  He helps a co-worker, Ralphie (Skourtis), prepare for a security guard exam, jokes with other co-workers that he was once one of Gladys Knight’s Pips, and encourages Terri to change her life and follow her dream of being a singer.  He’s kind, attentive, supportive, fair, but still a bit of an enigma.

It’s all “good stuff” and gives Washington a chance to show off his acting chops (which are considerable), and serves to introduce McCall as just more than the violent avenger he’s soon to become.  But the drawback is that once McCall faces off against Slavi and his men, all that character build-up is jettisoned in favour of a more traditional action thriller style movie, and Washington stops being Mr Average and becomes an invincible righter of wrongs.  In many ways this is unavoidable, the nature of the story giving the director and his star little option but to revert to the tried and trusted approach of blowing shit up and killing a whole bunch of stuntmen.  But thankfully, and despite the increasingly derivative nature of the narrative, Fuqua’s distinctive visual style and Washington’s reliable acting skills hold the viewer’s attention, and offset some of the more ludicrous moments (McCall walks away from a series of huge, multiple explosions at such an insanely slow pace it’s less a case of a cool looking moment than a clue that Denzel can’t run that fast anymore).

In the end, The Equalizer reveals itself as an origin story, prepping the way for potential sequels (though Washington has yet to make one).  On this evidence, any further outings will need to address the issue of how much McCall’s character will be focused on, and whether or not aspects such as his borderline OCD is dealt with (it’s featured, but isn’t developed, the same as his use of a stopwatch to time certain moments and incidents).  The storylines will need to be a bit more impressive as well, and a more serious adversary to give a much needed sense of threat; Teddy is certainly psychotic but McCall outwits and dispatches him too easily, leaving any possibility of tension or doubt about the outcome so far behind it’s practically invisible.

As a vehicle for Washington, The Equalizer is a good fit, and he’s ably supported by Csokas, Moretz and Harbour, while Pullman and Leo appear as old friends of McCall who know his history.  Richard Wenk’s script works best when focusing on McCall as Mr Average, and his relationships with Terri and Ralphie are skilfully drawn.  The action scenes are expertly choreographed (though a fight between McCall and one of Teddy’s men is scrappily edited: blows are landed but who’s being hit is mostly a mystery), and Mauro Fiore’s cinematography adds a vitality that helps counter the familiarity that builds once Slavi bites the dust.

Rating: 7/10 – although it eventually proves an entertaining introduction to Robert McCall and his “set of skills”, The Equalizer is too formulaic to have much of a genuine impact; a good vehicle for Washington but not a movie to stay in the memory for too long despite the positives (that the movie then squanders).