Tim Burton proves once again that he is much, much better at directing more serious story and character focused dramas than he is at helming off-the-wall slices of his own rather repetitive imagination. This is probably his best film since ‘Big Fish’ (03) and it tells the true to life story of the Keanes, the husband and wife soon to become household names in 1950’s America as the ‘Big Eyes’ paintings take the art world by storm. Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz play the central couple and they are both a delight to watch here – in fact Adams has just netted herself a well deserved Golden Globe for her performance although an Oscar nomination was conspicuous by its absence, which she can feel legitimately miffed at.
Burton is himself a long time collector and admirer of the artwork, which no doubt goes some way to account for his dedication to the project and should hopefully ensure a largely truthful retelling of the tale, which explores what a marriage as a united entity can mean within a cultural background where the man was very much king of his castle, alongside Mrs Keane’s growing sense of self confidence and a determination to not be ruled by that same social convention and as such the story can easily be cited as anecdotal of feminist struggles and successes of the era. With a light and airy feel, it’s dramatically both fascinating and unfolds slowly but is never disappointing – bar moments where Burton simply can’t help regressing into his penchant for overindulgence, such as when Danny Elfman’s score pounds heavily to tell us this character IS NOW GOING TO ACT IN A VILLAINOUS MANNER and comedy elements in the final furlong are somewhat overplayed. Suitably haunting songs from Lana Del Rey (see below) that were written for the movie and play on multiple occasions throughout round off a very polished and, in terms of popular culture and art history, enlightening biography.
A film to help keep the horror genre alive and buck the modern trend of either rehashing old pained stories and techniques or using handheld cameras. Independent and original, from writer and director Jennifer Kent (this is inspired by her previous short film ‘Monster’ 05 that she created after an apprenticeship under Lars Von Trier, working on ‘Dogville’ in 03), the film revolves around single mother Amelia (Essie Davis) and her young boy Sam (Noah Wiseman), a ‘special’ kid whose unique take on social interaction and his obsession with weaponry forces the mother to take him out of school. Trying to send him off to sleep one night, Amelia takes a mysterious book that she has no memory of, ‘Mister Babadook’, down off the shelf and begins reading to Sam, only to quickly stop when she realises it describes the creepy creepy Babadook whom, once acknowledged in the reader’s mind, comes into existence to torment and pervert the family.
Allowing us to feel sympathetic toward both main characters, the film plays with the scenario that the Babadook may be real, but also that actually Amelia may just be going completely mental under the stress of dealing with Sam and indeed life in general, with more than a couple of golden comedic moments in this vein along the way. Curiously, the Babadook concept and book are very likeable, threatening too, but the illustrations have a certain darkly humorous charm to them. Indeed, the book used in the film is set to be published in print form next year due to popular demand – can there be a better present for someone you don’t like? Although really you should just stick it into their kid’s bookcase when they’re not looking ….
Legendary director David Cronenberg’s latest follows multiple strands in a somewhat mysterious narrative, but this is at its heart a very traditional horror film – one with its targets very deliberately aimed at that sort of delivery despite suggesting a more high brow affair, and there’s even a knowing indirect mention of critics being able to ‘get it’ when talking about something else during the film. The title is reference to the actual physical maps tourists can get their eager little hands on in L.A. if they want to take a wander around the streets looking at all the houses of the rich and famous, and indeed it also references the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (a fictitious member of which is featured above). This leads to fairly obvious satire about the lives of the celebrity elite, Julianne Moore’s neurotic and self obsessed desperate actress Havana Segrand, John Cusack and Olivia William’s life of keeping up appearances at the Weiss household despite the best efforts of their spoiled son, and all of this is fine just nothing we haven’t seen many times before, indeed Cronenberg’s last film ‘Cosmopolis’ (12) had many a similar vein running through it.
It’s the underlying cheekily dark tone permeating the film that gives it a breathing life. That, and the performances from all the cast but in particular Moore who is completely fantastic in her role of the despotic narcissus clawing at the walls of her own vanity for success, both desirous of everything her ego feels is due her but also just as eager to be devoured by the masses, a sort of ultimate metaphor for consumerism. Mia Wasikowska is the centre point for the entire story as her character, Agatha, appears in the midst of Hollywood high society and begins to affect them all, the burn marks on her face and body an almost magnetic and catalytic black mirror instilling chaos around her. Also with Robert Pattinson and Sarah Gadon in support, a creepily indulgent film that sits proudly, if perhaps not terribly prominently, within the canon of its director.
Who doesn’t like a good disaster film? If for no other reason than one can sit and enjoy it thinking ‘thank fuck I am not there right now’, and indeed real life potential perils can often be more terrifying than anything within the domain of the horror genre. This follows a group of storm chasers (à la ‘Twister’ 96, in fact I’m pretty sure you can hear the voice of Bill Paxton as the weather man at one point) as they descend on the small town of Silverton Oklahoma, and although the weather is taken to extremes it is entirely justified by global conditions, like Katrina as they mention, regularly going to pot. Even in the UK we just had the remains of hurricane Bertha hit our shores for unseasonally windy and wet conditions, completely ruining The Red Dragon’s ultimate frisbee season, and in fact coming out of the cinema after this there were booming, ominous peals of thunder echoing overhead, which, naturally, is just what you want after seeing this. Indeed, Britain has one of the highest numbers of tornadoes in the world relative to its land area – though they’re mostly just totty little rubbish ones that don’t do anything, not withstanding the twister that obliterated parts of Birmingham last decade.
This is actually part of the handheld camera genre, for the most part, but they have made a really good job of it compared to many of their contemporaries, moving things along quickly and without irritating the audience with pointless explanations for cameras and poor viewing quality. The action flits between the professionals, some amateur YouTube daredevils, and a father with his two sons due to film the highschool graduation ceremony until one of them bunks off to help a local girl with her own project – and when you see the girl in question (Alycia Debnam Carey) you will understand why. Overall, the effects are dramatically immersive and the tension feels suitably real, there are no Oscar worthy moments but the ensemble cast (of whom probably Richard Armitage and Matt Walsh are the most recognisable faces) make it seem believable. It kind of feels like a ‘Twister’ reboot, but nonetheless it is good fun and with the technological advances since then it also stands as an improvement on some of those late nineties waymarks that the filmmakers were no doubt inspired by.
The trailer for this made it look a lot more melodramatic than it is, a shame as it’s a solid film with a strong political context and an actual historical trial as framework for its main protagonists to flit around. Although the court case was real and seminal for the law of England and Wales, taking place in 1783, very little is known about the main characters other than their existence and their familial setup, so director Amma Asante and writer Misan Sagay had a lot of leeway with where to take them and the two pictured above are most famous for a painting of the pair of them, which can currently be seen in Scone Palace in Scotland.
Belle (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is the heroine of the piece, and as the daughter of a rich white man and a black slave she is raised by the family of the former whilst he goes off around the world never to return. She is accepted into the family, the rest of whom are played by Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson, Penelope Wilton and Sarah Gadon, but she must always know ‘her place’ until her and her sister reach the age of coming out, when they must quickly be married before consumption gets them or they decide to go frolicking in the rain and then die, often the fate of females in British period dramas.
The pace is perfect, the costumes are rich and the locations suitably grandiose with burgeoning bosoms in abundance – did ladies really wear corsets to breakfast? Doesn’t seem particularly conducive to digestion, nor so for their male companions who must have found it tricky to concentrate on their food, especially with the visible threat of explosion and the potential loss of one’s eye. The trial of the deplorable Zong massacre, which forms the backbone of the story, concerned the drowning of all the slaves onboard the Zong and her captain’s subsequent insurance claim against loss of earnings through unavoidable jettison of cargo – his claim being low water supplies only sufficient for his crew necessitated the killings. This presented the law with a rather thorny moral and monetary point to consider, and the head of Belle’s household, Lord Mansfield, is the man who must make the ruling.
In terms of film, it supplies a nice backstory to that of the fight for the abolition of slavery in the UK detailed in ‘Amazing Grace’ (06), but it is dangerous to think of it as a relic of the past as it still rears its ugly head in modern day Britain with recent rulings against the government in the high court in England to try to curb it. This refers to the forcing of those out of work for a certain amount of time (it was originally to be one year, but reports abound of less time than this) into work, which in principle I’m not sure many people would argue against, but work that they weren’t paid for, instead they just continued to receive state benefits working out at two pound something an hour (the legal minimum wage for anyone over 21 is more than six pounds an hour) – often for large companies like Tesco (who did at least eventually pull out of the scheme on moral grounds) immediately demonstrating that they could have in fact offered the individual a paid position, but would rather take on slave labour. If people didn’t comply, they were left with nothing and, as far as the government were concerned, to die.
Orchestrating this were middle men, private agencies, modern day slavers who did the same thing in Australia before they came here, where I believe their schemes were eventually brought to an end. Meanwhile here the high court ruled it wasn’t slavery but that it had been delivered in an illegal manner, which was a cop-out for the state really, but it did mean those affected could claim money back for any welfare suspension borne from refusing to comply with the system – and it was an individual who stuck her neck out to fight the Conservative government and achieved partial victory (The Red Dragon himself broached this issue with no less than two parliamentarians, with what can only be described as very limited results, proving the old adage ‘If you want something done, you have to do it yourself’).
Belle then is both a fascinating footnote in this story of human bondage and a well balanced drama with good performances from old hands and new faces alike, and it would be a wonderful idea indeed if the powers that be took heed of the more emotive and full of gusto speeches it delivers, since they can’t even muster a whimper in opposition to evil today unless they consider it to be within the purview of their own interests.
The timing of coming to write this review couldn’t be any more topical. This is a well acted and well executed Polish film focusing on the real life exploits of Ryszard Kukliński, codename Jack Strong, who, throughout the 1970’s, used his position within the Polish military to pass on Soviet secrets to the CIA. The story has a strong connection with that of the rise of the Solidarity movement, documented in Walesa – Man of Hope, as both historical narratives were largely generated by the brutal and lethal suppression of the 1970 riots in the Polish north, riots begat by a crippling rise in food prices.
Marcin Dorocinski gives a wonderful and sympathetic central performance as Kukliński, and the rest of the cast, including Patrick Wilson, Maja Ostaszewska and Dagmara Dominczyk all do a convincing job of selling a tension fraught scenario of espionage and political consequences. The language oscillates between Polish, English and Russian, with Wilson’s verbal adroitness in Polish a bit of a revelation (until I realised he’s married to Dominczyk – interestingly, commentary has been made in the media of late on the dramatic rise in the number of Scottish men learning Polish, a rise no doubt directly proportional to the large influx of incredibly beautiful Polish ladies to our shores …) and the most poignant aspect of the plot involves one Russian general’s secret plan to effectively use Eastern Europe to start World War III, and how the plan was thwarted.
How many of the facts have had liberties taken with them here is difficult to tell, but in light of Russia’s recent belligerent activity in the Black Sea, it hardly sounds fanciful. This, then, is very much an important political film of our current time and not just a dramatic retrospective of what the whole world thought was a bygone era. Indeed, it seems like Putin regards international politics as markedly similar to a game of Diplomacy (wherein Sevastopol is one of the most hotly fought over areas for its strategic port) and comparisons with Hitler’s annexation of Austria are not only merited, but quintessential to the furore of debate going on. In the game of Diplomacy it’s vital early on to get the territories you want whilst seeming as reasonable as possible to the other players in the vicinity – if you take a look below at Hardtalk’s Stephen Sackur interviewing Putin’s spokesman and long time major player in the Russian government’s media machine Dmitry Peskov, aired just a few hours ago, you don’t have to be an expert at reading people to tell he’s not quite the full shilling.
Indeed, if Peskov was playing the board game he would be promptly laughed out of Europe on the basis of this interview. It was interesting too that Sackur makes mention of the recent referendum and how not only did it take place under the threat of Russian guns, but that the people had no option in the vote to the keep the status quo in place. This is a pretty major point that the BBC have elsewhere repeatedly not made mention of in their regular updates – in fact they actually seem to be giving the impression there is a level of legitimacy to the vote, with one of the correspondents asking a Ukrainian politician if he didn’t simply have to now accept Crimea has become a part of Russia, which is way, way off the mark for independent journalism.
There would seem to be, at this juncture when tensions and military aggression are rising, a rather opportune way out for the Ukrainian leadership. They should first settle and unite the rest of the country, using every ploy they can think of and perhaps with the timely bringing forward up of the upcoming May presidential election, and simultaneously the majority in their parliament, the Rada, should unite in promising a new referendum in Crimea should the Russians leave voluntarily as speedily as they arrived – a referendum that would be fair and monitored by the international community, including Russian delegates. This would put the ball back into Putin’s court and throw their claims of legitimacy right back at them. It’s very unlikely Russia would back down now given Putin has signed the papers accepting Crimea, but it would make their position much more difficult and buy the Ukrainians more time, and if they somehow did retreat even if the Crimea still went and joined Russia, it’s still better than bloodshed and the escalation and destabilisation that most likely Moscow is hoping will arise. Plus it would give Russia a graceful way of regaining some international favour, as they’d surely fancy their chances at Crimea willingly joining them, and indeed it could set a favourable precedent for them with other Russian speaking areas along their border, but a diplomatic battle to win over the people of a region, is always a million times more preferable to an armed struggle against vastly superior military forces, so it’s kind of a win-win given the current powder keg sizzling away on the peninsula.
Interestingly, toward the end of ‘My Perestroika’ one of the interviewees voices his concern that the current Russian government is heading back down the path of the old Soviet ways of repression and indoctrination, a view which seems to be borne out by events. It would perhaps be telling to see a fair and free independence referendum taking place in Chechnya, or indeed throughout many of the other constituent parts of Russia …
A dark, perhaps a little too dark, tale focusing on two brothers in a small American town dominated by the steel works that one of them works in. Life is tough, and for the other brother who has returned from several tours of duty in the Middle East full of bile and hatred, the only thing he feels he can do now is fight for money. Cue the ‘just one last fight’ line and we know bad things are going to happen. It’s a brutal tale of violence, desperation, regret and revenge, very well acted by Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Woody Harrelson, Zoe Saldana and Forest Whitaker (Casey Affleck also appears but he really needs to take some diction lessons) and it’s a film that, although it hides nothing, it does throw an uneasiness at the audience, forcing them to ponder and consider it.
The second cinematic adaptation of James Thurber’s 1939 short story (the first was in 1947 with Danny Kaye as Mitty) this time starring and directed by Ben Stiller as the titular central character. Stiller excels at playing the sympathetic everyman, and never has he been more successful at doing so than here, as we see our hero to be daydreaming about winning the girl of his dreams (we see these phases of zoning out as over the top action sequences that he plays out in his head) whilst he remains quiet and somewhat under the radar, dutifully adherent to his routine job and routine lifestyle, until one day adventurer and photographer Sean Penn inadvertently sends him on a trip that’s a million miles (well, not quite a million) outside of his comfort zone.
It’s a feel-good film that really works, as Mitty rediscovers a sense of joie de vivre whilst we learn more about his character and backstory. It ebbs and flows, as the real world quenches his new found optimism when he returns from his first adventure, but ultimately there is a real sense of cathartic satisfaction from this film, and the wonderful location shots of Iceland are enough to make anyone want to do a spot of travelling. With Kristen Wiig and Adam Scott.
The latest film from director Alexander Payne (‘Sideways’ 04, ‘The Descendants’ 11) stars Bruce Dern as Woody Grant, whom we initially see determinedly walking down a Montana highway trying to march his way to Lincoln Nebraska (that state’s capital) before being picked up by a state trooper and his worried family informed. His wife Kate (June Squibb) and sons David (Will Forte) and Ross (Bob Odenkirk) try to convince him that the marketing voucher he’s received saying he may have won a million dollars to be collected in Lincoln isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, but eventually David takes Woody on a road trip in order to satisfy him and spend some time with his father, stopping off in the small town where Woody and Kate first met along the way.
The entire film is shot in black and white, which looks great (they used Arri Alexa digital cameras, which would definitely be The Red Dragon’s weapon of choice too), and has elements of both a personal journey – the sort of thing where you one day decide I am absolutely going to do this one thing, even though that one thing may not make a great deal of sense, may not be at all practical, and may not have even existed as a thought a mere second ago, but then as the story progresses it becomes a much more reflective piece looking at the father son relationship, and the lives of the family in general. The same slow burn but involving nature from Payne’s previous work turns this into something endearing – helped along by good performances from everyone on the way. Bob Nelson wrote the screenplay, making this the first of Payne’s feature films not to have him appear on the writing credits.
The sequel to last year’s first instalment in The Hunger Games trilogy (well, they are stretching the original three novels by Suzanne Collins into four films) sees the return of new best actress Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson as Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark respectively, ready to face the repercussions and responsibilities expected of them by the domineering force of The Capitol after successfully surviving the annual Hunger Games in the last film – a brutal last man standing, kill or be killed contest designed to both entertain and control the partially enslaved populace in this dystopian vision of the world’s future.
Those consequences are predictable enough – indeed the very names of the novels and films are kind of spoilers in their own right. Not that there is much in the way of originality in this teen fantasy series – the Japanese film ‘Battle Royale’ (2000) which predates all of the novels is one of many examples telling essentially the same story. However, the production value here is enormous, with a great spectrum of committed creative talent behind it. All of which ensures that the films are visually engrossing and perfect just to escape from reality for a few hours with.
Aside from an underwhelmingly abrupt ending, this is just as fun as the first one, compellingly acted and with a number of nice flourishes – like Cinna’s (Lenny Kravitz) indulgence with Katniss’s dresses …
