Monthly Archives: February 2015

Testament of Youth  (2014)    0/100

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Rating :   0/100             COMPLETE INCINERATION           129 Min        12A

Aaaargh what a load of garbage! A film about stupid posh people who go off to war excited about potentially killing themselves and who then try to moan about it poignantly, completely ignoring their own idiocy and the fact that it was their very ilk who were not only responsible for starting the blooming war in the first place, but for then buying their way into the ranks of the officer elite and, once again through their stupidity, sending many thousands of men who didn’t have a choice about being there to their pointless and horrible deaths, all told through the eyes of the most pathetic useless waify twat that you can imagine. The waify twat in question is Vera Brittain, whose autobiographical novel this is based on, and World War I is the society event of the day. Vera is a woman, and is therefore much put upon and oppressed – as we can tell in the very beginning when daddy, and this did bring a tear to my eye, buys her a piano when she didn’t want one and she flips out, proving she’s an ungrateful spoilt little pisser right from the word go.

This upset at the piano is all to do with money going on something that everyone can use rather than sending her to Oxford to study, but she is apparently used to getting her own way so daddy eventually pays up anyway. Whilst we are waiting for the terribly exciting decision from the uni (even though she forgot to check what was required for the entrance exam and cocked it up and yet her entry is a forgone conclusion anyway) we are to believe that she is somehow a talented and spirited exception that is fighting the good fight for women’s lib, which is a massive bastardisation of the social issues of the day – women attended university in Britain long before 1914 (officially British universities have been open to women since 1876) and I imagine if you were male or female and, say, from the sticks around Birmingham you may have had much more difficulty getting into Oxford then than a young lass from gentrified money. So she’s really clever and talented right? So clever, in fact, she convinces her father to send her brother off to the war as ‘it will be good for him’, ahaha ha ha. Really? You’ve somehow got into Oxford and yet the poorest uneducated homeless orphan on the street can easily tell you that going off to any war is unlikely to be ‘good for you’.

At some point in the near future she realise this may have been a mistake and so she tries to get out of her studies to ‘do her bit’ as a nurse – to which her superior quite rightly points out that this is treating her place at the university with quite considerable disdain and she shouldn’t squander the privilege to go and do something she’s not trained at and will make no real difference in so doing either. She does it anyway and we see many, many shots of other nurses running around trying to save people whilst she looks hopelessly around aghast at the horrors she is surrounded by. Over the years, though, she remains unremittingly aghast, perpetually doing the better part of nothing – even Scarlett O’Hara did a better job of getting her hands dirty when she had to. The drama is unveiled in a horrendously melodramatic way that is so painfully bad I simply refuse to believe any of it is based on anything other than the most rudimentary of facts.

As for the acting, it is universally terrible – in particular from Alicia Vikander, who plays Brittain, and Kit Harington who plays her love interest and who initially has a job at the back somewhere but then volunteers for the front. Bright lad, you can see why the pair fell for each other. Directed by James Kent, it is also perforated by long almost completely silent shots and if you are going to make a film in this manner then you absolutely have to know what you are doing, otherwise not only does it seem utterly pretentious but you simply create many awkward moments for all but a solo audience. This really couldn’t paint a more negative portrayal of Brittain, which is sad as this is also the first big-screen adaptation of her most famous literary work, first published in 1933 and eventually forming part of an ongoing memoir that she was still writing for when she passed away in 1970.

Whiplash  (2014)    72/100

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Rating :   72/100                                                                     107 Min        15

Another best film contender at this year’s Oscars, ‘Whiplash’ is the up-close and intense story of one music teacher’s bullying of his students in an effort to drive them to greatness. Determined potential drumming prodigy Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) is numero uno on the list of students to break, and J.K.Simmons is abrasively and brutally brilliant as the demonic instructor hell bent on validating himself through ‘discovery’ of talent, whose determination is no doubt driven relentlessly on by his seeming failure to uncover any diamonds in the rough so far in his career, thus he feeds his own sadistic cruelty quite convinced the pain and suffering he causes is justified.

Teller is miles (ahaha) better in this than in anything I’ve seen him in so far (see ‘That Awkward Moment‘), and since it is him drumming (albeit with a lot of great editing from Tom Cross: the film’s solo, for example, took two days to film) he deserves a lot of credit, as does Nate Lang, who plays one of his competitors, for training him (Lang spent months tutoring him in the discipline of jazz drumming, differing considerably from his previous tenure drumming for both a church youth group and his band ‘The Mutes’ in high school). Teller, though, doesn’t yet have the emotional range to fully light up the film, to really, really make us feel for him.

It may perhaps seem a little too far fetched, that Simmon’s Terence Fletcher has been exaggerated beyond what would simply be allowed anywhere, but it’s partly based on writer/director Damien Chazelle’s own time in a jazz band (whose previous writing credits oddly include ‘The Last Exorcism Part II‘) and in The Red Dragon’s experience it’s bang on, and reminded him perfectly of one individual who was so despotic that he received bodily threats from concerned parents and yet who was still allowed to continue teaching unabated, resulting in a mass exodus of distressed and scarred students. No doubt many in the classical music industry will see similar shades of someone from their own past, or present …

Foxcatcher  (2014)    73/100

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Rating :   73/100                                                                     129 Min        15

A finely acted and yet supremely depressing true story about Olympic wrestlers Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) and David Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) and their coach Jean du Pont (Steve Carell), who describes himself as one of the richest men in America at the time and who takes on Mark as a way to engage with the sport that he loves but which he has never competed in himself, we are led to conclude that this is largely because his mother (Vanessa Redgrave) very much looks down on the activity as a ‘lowly’ sport. He’s not much of a coach, his body and mannerisms are more like Monty Burns from the Simpsons than anything resembling an athlete or a figure of authority and respect, and the story focuses on the psychological effects of a lifetime spent futilely trying to please an aloof parent, a situation complicated by wealth and indulgent privilege, as well as Mark’s situation growing up and competing in the shadow of his, loving, brother David.

The first thing you notice about the film is the altered physical aspect that all three central performers have sewn into their portrayals – in fact, the three all hunch to some extent, two of them from muscular strengthening and combat, the other via atrophy, but their look and style are all very well nuanced and delivered. Indeed, for Carell this is not only a rare non-comedic role but an extremely transformative one with prosthetics and a deserved Oscar nod for his lonely and fractious study of du Pont – with Ruffalo getting an equally merited supporting nomination although Tatum is every bit their equal. Set in the eighties and directed by Bennett Miller (‘Capote’ 05, ‘Moneyball’ 11), a slightly grainy texture has been applied to the film, which I think is to the movie’s detraction – it is already somewhat dark and miserable without a further visible layer being applied, but it remains a taught and very believable exploration of the themes and characters, and the real story both intrigues and saddens throughout.

The Theory of Everything  (2014)    75/100

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Rating :   75/100                                                                     123 Min        12A

Eddie Redmayne annoyed me intensely throughout ‘Les Miserables‘, but I have to admit he is very good in this as the talented and cruelly fated cosmologist Stephen Hawking who developed motor neuron disease when he was just 21, and for once Redmayne does put his hair down for the role (it would have been most amusing had he not done so). It’s an extremely sad story and so the physicality of what happens to the main character necessarily takes up around half of the film’s focus as the disease slowly destroys his ability to use all of the muscles in his body, with the other half zoning in on Hawking’s relationship with his wife Jane (Felicity Jones) from when they meet at Cambridge in 1963 until more or less the present day, in fact the screenplay is based on her memoir ‘Travelling to Infinity – My Life with Stephen’ published in 2008.

The title refers to the ongoing search in physics for a unifying equation that will cover all of the fundamental forces of nature and will bring quantum mechanics and general relativity into harmony with one another, as currently they don’t completely work together suggesting something is wrong with at least one of them somewhere. What is actually more fascinating than the physics (the film doesn’t really delve too deeply into the science involved) is the effect on the marital relations of the Hawkings of other people being introduced into their interpersonal space, and one could easily put the disability issue to one side and extrapolate similar effects for any relationship, and perhaps argue for a more general equation surrounding this type of natural force. Redmayne and Jones are both up for awards – in fact Redmayne has already won the Golden Globe so he may be running as the most serious contender to ‘Birdman’s‘ Micheal Keaton for the Oscar. Despite the seriousness of the film and a story that is quite painful to watch, this is nonetheless a wonderful and heartfelt biography from director James Marsh (‘Shadow Dancer‘, ‘Man on Wire’ 08).

Birdman  (2014)    90/100

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Rating :   90/100                       Treasure Chest                      119 Min        15

Hot favourite to take home the Oscar for best picture and best actor this year, ‘Birdman’ tells the story of Michael Keaton’s Riggan Thomson who is attempting to put on his first Broadway play: an adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Love’ starring, and written by, himself. There is a knowing element of self reference – Riggan is most famous for a series of big-screen hits surrounding the fictional superhero ‘Birdman’, but when he refused to do the fourth instalment his career went on the back burner and then dropped off the radar completely, we are told Birdman 3 came out in 92 which is of course when ‘Batman Returns’ was released and it is fair to say Keaton never really hit the spotlight again afterward until now, although he has had some really good supporting roles recently, in ‘RoboCop‘ and ‘Need for Speed‘ for example.

The story thus allows for a lot of commentary regarding the movie industry as a whole, blockbuster success vs real art, movie stars vs stage and ‘serious’ actors etc. and both particular to the performing arts and also transcending them is the central concept of the need to feel valued, and what damage a fruitless search for validation can do as well as the precipitous dangers of ego. It’s directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (‘Biutiful’ 10, ‘Babel’ 06, ’21 Grams’ 03, ‘Amores Perros’ 2000) and what makes the film primarily stand out is his decision to film the vast majority of the movie in what is displayed as one continuous take – all bookended by a sort of prologue and epilogue, with the take itself interjected by two time-lapses and one fade to and from white (with the occasional bit of digital manipulation to merge locations and so on).

It’s not the first time this has been attempted in a feature film – Hitchcock’s ‘Rope’ (48) is the most famous example, and the scene with Michael Fassbender and Liam Cunningham in ‘Hunger’ (08) also springs to mind, but there Hitchcock was hindered by technology: using actual film limited the length of his takes, in the digital era a film in one shot is entirely possible. You do think to yourself ‘well, so what?’ after all, stage performers do continuous takes sometimes twice a day every day for months. As if sensing the obvious attack on his otherwise superlative work, Iñárritu flits continuously and seamlessly between backstage, outdoor and rooftop scenes and those taking place onstage in front of a live audience, beginning with the previews and then the opening night performance. Together with the logistics of filming the thing it is all very impressive – in fact the camera operators in particular deserve a lot of credit. There’s a knowing nod to another classic of cinema as well – ‘The Passenger‘ (as if to lovingly stamp his knowledge of film into the work), where at the end the camera famously travels from an interior shot seemingly straight through a barred window to the outside. To film it a rig was built so that the bars slid apart as the camera moved forwards, and here after one of the time-lapses the camera similarly passes with ease through a barred window – at first I thought perhaps that it was just a zoom and a change, or that there are no bars and it’s simply digital, but I think maybe you can actually hear the sliding of metal if you listen carefully …

On first viewing it was all a little distracting (I had no idea long takes were involved), rather like watching a friend perform you are slightly nervous for everyone and it is relentless, leaving The Red Dragon with a question as to, despite its technical wizardry and craftsmanship, does it really work as a piece of entertainment? On second viewing though, it was a lot easier to relax and appreciate what is on display, and it is pretty marvellous – but it wouldn’t mean half as much without a tremendous and almost faultless central performance from Keaton, whose perhaps biggest achievement is that he always seems utterly in control of what’s he’s doing, despite the onerous weight placed on his shoulders. We watch Riggan run through the gamut of human emotion as he contends with the stress of the venture, the egos of his troupe, his own feelings of low self worth, the distance he’s created between him and his family, and the constant pecking of his alter ego ‘Birdman’ who has been chipping away dangerously at his psyche for decades and whom we see depicted onscreen as well, sometimes literally hovering over his shoulder.

It’s not completely perfect, there are some hiccups like when Naomi Watts and Andrea Riseborough move in for a lesbian kiss (the lead up to this is probably the weakest part of the film) and where there had been silence, drumbeats kick in – but too early, all but ruining the palpable tension the moment had created, and whilst there appear to be some fluffed lines there equally seems to be great improvisation – in particular from Riseborough who is about to walk in front of the audience when one of the stage hands gets in the way, and she immediately turns back to Keaton to deliver a line instead of just freezing awkwardly, before heading back to the stage. Also in support are Zach Galifianakis, Emma Stone (as Riggan’s daughter), Lindsay Duncan, Amy Ryan and Ed Norton, who is nothing short of brilliant and who may or may not be sporting a real boner at one point (he is pretending to have sex with Naomi Watts and, well, he’s going to get one anyway so, as his character concludes, he might as well use it).

The ending is left open to interpretation and initially it did jar a little. In fact, since I really enjoyed everything else this is what prompted me to watch it again and my own personal take is that the central ‘one shot’ epsiode of the film is all real, but both the very beginning and end segments aren’t, they have more to do with a little playfullness on Iñárritu’s part, but also the dreams and desires of Riggan. For me it works well that way at any rate.

I can’t really see anything beating this for best film, actor and director – especially as it’s about the industry and is in itself redemptive, acknowledging its worth, and especially Keaton’s, gives all performers hope, validity and reassurance whether they are currently successful or not. Indeed, I think the best way to approach any artistic or creative endeavour is to simply put yourself into the work, and by that very process you become the thing – if you have sung onstage or recorded music then you are a singer, if you have acted on screen or stage then you are an actor, volume and monetary or critical success aren’t really relevant in terms of validation, if you beat yourself up chasing the latter then what’s the point in doing it in the first place? Enjoy the art of creating, and if fortune smiles your way so much the better, but the pride in actually doing something and having the balls to do it should always be placed paramount above all else. If you love film and/or have spent any time around the vibrant internal organs of a theatre, then you will love Birdman.