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Arbitrage  (2012)    68/100

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Rating :   68/100                                                                     107 Min        15

Dictionary.com’s definition of the word arbitrage is “Finance. The simultaneous purchase and sale of the same securities, commodities, or foreign exchange in different markets to profit from unequal prices.” for those of you who, like me, were not entirely sure what the title of this film actually means. It can also mean to arbitrate between parties, but it’s the financial context that is implied here, loosely describing the business transactions of central character Robert Miller, played by Richard Gere. The successful head of a multi-million dollar company, one that also employs both his children, his ledgers aren’t all that they would seem, which produces a ticking time bomb as he struggles to dig himself out of an enormous economic crevice, and the growing pressure cracks begin to fracture other areas of his life in the process.

Gere has played many similar roles over the years and he does a very good job here, and overall it’s a pretty solid, interesting film. The story plays with shifting around our sympathies to a small degree, and seeing this explored further, as well as tweaking the supporting roles to make them more involving, could have added an extra degree of intrigue and complexity. As it is, it remains a drama worth going to see, with decent acting support from Susan Sarandon, Tim Roth, and up and comers Nate Parker (‘Red Tails’) and Brit Marling (‘Another Earth’). It is the first dramatic feature film to be written and directed by Nicholas Jarecki.

Argo  (2012)    31/100

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Rating :   31/100                                                                     120 Min        15

The sheer and unequivocal arrogance of this film is grotesque and abhorrent to say the least, as the filmmakers rewrite a now well documented piece of history giving the American authorities credit for other people’s bravery and work, and making cheap political digs at Iran’s expense in the process.

Leaving aside the factual debacle for the moment, the film follows the events surrounding the storming of the American embassy, and subsequent hostage taking of the diplomats, in Tehran in 1979 by a mob of angry Iranians (many of them students) over Jimmy Carter’s decision to allow sanctuary in the States to the deposed Iranian Shah. During the panic a small group of Americans managed to get away and find secret refuge with Canadian diplomats elsewhere in the city. CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendes (Ben Affleck – also the director of the film) is hired to think of a way to get them out of the country, and comes up with the notion of passing them off as a Canadian film crew, location scouting for a new, fake, Sci-Fi film entitled ‘Argo’. The rest of the film follows that escape attempt.

The style and feel of the film is accessible and noteworthy, with a lot of attention being paid to the fashion and trends of the day, and a decent amount of humour has been sewn into the script for the first half of the film. The direction is also well paced and involving for the first half, music is well used throughout, and there exist a lot of nice touches, especially with the fake Sci-Fi movie, even if some of them feel a little too modern, such as the robot they create for it. It is perhaps easy to see why people in the industry love this film, as we get a glimpse of the behind the scenes world of Hollywood via Oscar winning makeup artist and CIA helper John Chambers (John Goodman) who aids the set up of Argo to look authentic, one of the few things it gets historically correct. There are more than one or two digs at Hollywood as an industry, and nods in the Academy’s direction with mention of multiple Oscar winners ‘Network’ and ‘Kramer versus Kramer’ (‘Argo’ itself is nominated for seven Academy Awards, including best picture).

The film suffers a severe problem with its marketing, in that if you’ve seen the trailer, you can pretty safely infer several key things about the film. With that in mind, a lot of the tension that Affleck tries to create feels entirely artificial. This is taken to the point of lunacy as, despite the fact they have been in hiding for seventy nine days, about four or five things converge at pretty much the exact moment in time in order to try and escalate the tension as much as possible, but to say it’s unbelievable would be like saying it’s a little chillier in space than it is here on Earth. At one point an Iranian guard has a huge rant in Farsi at a befuddled Affleck and co even though we’ve already been told these members of the military were likely educated in the west, and sure enough we later hear him speaking in English, all purely so the situation seems more extreme. It ends up being much the same as watching an action film where the hero escapes by always being one second faster than the hail of bullets and explosions dogging his shadow, and by the lack of any real intelligence in the bad guys.

Purely viewed as entertainment and ignoring history completely, I would rate this somewhere in the lower sixties. However, what this film has done with history simply cannot be ignored. Jimmy Carter has said himself in interview with Piers Morgan (something showing in itself a lack of political savvy) that ninety percent of the entire rescue operation was Canadian, whereas ‘Argo’ would have us believe that statistic belonged wholesale to the U.S. administration. A secondary great evil is that in the film it is stated very clearly that both New Zealand and The United Kingdom refused to give sanctuary to the American diplomats, something which is an outright disgraceful lie, both countries actively helped – one of those involved in the events, Bob Anders, said after seeing the film “They put their lives on the line for us. We were all at risk. I hope no one in Britain will be offended by what’s said in the film. The British were good to us and we’re forever grateful.” How in the name of hell do George Clooney and co. (he is one of the producers) think it is ok to rewrite history as they see fit? I mean, they have actually stated the very polar opposite of what actually happened, both here and generally (although Tony Mendez did come up with the Argo idea and did work for the CIA). Affleck has said that he lied about the other countries involvement as he wanted to show that these people had nowhere else to go, but since they ended up with the Canadians eventually, because everyone agreed it was becoming too dangerous everywhere else anyway, why in the name of bloody hell don’t they just tell the truth!!! The Red Dragon watches a good many films, and when it comes to history in the movies you learn to always take it with a pinch of salt, however even I, though I thought it strange, was inclined to believe them when they said sanctuary was denied because it is presented as fact, and it’s the sort of thing that you think well surely they wouldn’t make that up?

This is just the beginning of the gross make believe that was put into the film, indeed, almost everything in the second half is a complete fabrication. Including the Iranians forcing children in a sweat shop at gun point to reassemble shredded mug shots of the consulate staff – there were no mug shots, and consular documents were reassembled by the Iranian students who could read English. There are several ironies here too, one being when Alan Arkin’s character (another fiction by the way) bemoans the Canadians taking the credit for the operation, and another the efforts taken to make the actors playing those in hiding look like their real life counterparts as they show during the end credits – if they are going to go to those lengths for cosmetic details which do not matter ultimately why in the name of God not make the actual story accurate, or for that matter cast Affleck as Mendez who is in fact Mexican? Indeed, in reality it seems Mr Mendez, come the day of the actual exfiltration, slept in by half an hour, and had to actually be woken up by one of the New Zealand diplomats that the film claims turned the Americans away! See the Guardian article here for more details.

Another outrageous lie is delivered via a sinister choice of quote from Jimmy Carter, also as the end credits play, as he states “Eventually we got every hostage back home safe and sound, and we upheld the integrity of our country and we did it peacefully” – this is with regard to the remaining hostages who were the ones actually seized by the Iranians and properly held captive, whose fate ‘Argo’ makes no other reference too. Well, in reality the Americans attempted a military rescue which was a complete and unmitigated disaster, resulting in abortion half way through and the death of several American service men and one innocent Iranian civilian. It is generally thought to have been a major factor in Carter losing the presidency later that year, and indeed literally minutes after he had left office, Iran released all the hostages.

This film is an absolute disgrace, and it deserves to be lambasted, not rewarded as, unfortunately, it is in danger of being at the upcoming Oscars. Even its inclusion of a dilapidated Hollywood sign on Lee Hill is ironic as it had actually been repaired by the time of the events depicted, and the film itself represents Hollywood at its most careless. On the back of this we can look forward to Affleck’s next project about the Americans who invented ice hockey, and then his piece on the beginnings of the industrial revolution, in Philadelphia. His last two films (‘The Town’, ‘Gone Baby Gone’) were both great, but if you can’t make the truth work on film, to the point where you’re advocating and propagating a lie, then you have no right to be working in the medium.

Argo fuck yourself Ben Affleck.


Quotes

“’Hmm let’s see. Well, this one’s got an MA in English, she should be your screenwriter. Sometimes they go along on scouts, because they want their free meals. Here’s your director.’ {Chambers}
‘You can teach someone to be a director in a day?’ {Mendez}
‘You can teach a rhesus monkey to be a director in a day.’ {Chambers}” John Goodman/John Chambers and Ben Affleck/Tony Mendez

“So you want to come to Hollywood, and act like a big shot, without actually doing anything? You’ll fit right in.” John Goodman/John Chambers

“If he could act he wouldn’t be playing the minotaur” John Goodman/John Chambers

“Ok, you got six people hiding out in a town of what, four million people all of whom chant death to America all the live long day, you want to set up a movie in a week, you want to lie to Hollywood, a town where everybody lies for a living, then you’re gonna sneak 007 over here into a country that wants CIA blood on their breakfast cereal, and you’re going to walk the Brady Bunch out of the most watched city in the world…. Right. Look, I, I gotta tell you, we did suicide missions in the army that had better odds than this.” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“Hi, I only got a couple of minutes, I’m getting a lifetime achievement award… I’d rather stay home and count the wrinkles on my dog’s balls.” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“If I’m doing a fake movie, it’s going to be a fake hit” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“Well, what can I say. Congratulations. But see, it kinda worries me when you say that, and let me tell you why. Couple of weeks ago I was sitting at Trader Vic’s enjoying a Mai Tai, when my pal Warren Beatty comes in, he wishes me well, we have a little chat. Seems he was attached to star in Zulu Empire, which was going to anchor that MGM slate, but Warren confided in me that the picture’s gone over budget because the Zulu extras want to unionise. They may be cannibals, but they want health and dental so the movie’s kaput, which means that the MGM deal ain’t gonna happen, and your script ain’t worth the buffalo shit on a nickel. So, the way it looks to me, through the cataracts I grant you, is that you can either sign here, and take ten thousand dollars for your toilet paper script, or you can go fuck yourself. With all due respect.” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“Bad news, bad news. Even when it’s good news it’s bad news. John Wayne’s in the ground six months, this is what’s left of America.” Alan Arkin/Lester Siegel

“Fade in on a star ship landing. An exotic middle-Eastern vibe. Women gather offering ecstatic libations to the sky gods. Argo, science fantasy adventure.” Ben Affleck/Tony Mendez

“Hi, my name’s Kevin Harkins and, I’m going to get you home.” Ben Affleck/Tony Mendez

“This is what I do. I get people out. And I’ve never left anyone behind… My name is Tony Mendez, I’m from New York, my father worked construction, my mother teaches elementary school, I have a wife and a ten year old son. You play along with me today I promise you I will get you out tomorrow.” Ben Affleck/Tony Mendez

“Brace yourself, it’s like talking to those two old fucks on the Muppets.” Bryan Cranston/Jack O’Donnell

“This is the best bad idea we have sir, by far.” Bryan Cranston/Jack O’Donnell

Amour  (2012)    57/100

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Rating :   57/100                                                                     127 Min        12A

‘Amour’ deals with elderly couple Georges and Anne, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emannuel Riva respectively, as they both deal with the anguish incurred when Anne suddenly suffers a stroke. It is the latest French language film from Austrian auteur Michael Haneke (‘The White Ribbon’, ‘Funny Games’, ‘Hidden’) and although a lot of thought has gone into each scene and line of dialogue, and the film is both thought provoking and well acted, and indeed successful at showing what the impact of a serious stroke can be, The Red Dragon found it nevertheless to be suffering from a certain design flaw. If you are familiar with Haneke’s work, then you can tell not only what will happen in the end by the first ten – fifteen minutes of the film, but also the manner in which it will develop. Through this lens it takes on the guise of an artificial construct, an example of what The Red Dragon likes to call dehumanised cinema, where the script is written to a sort of signature template, no matter how involved, and the characters have little to no, or in this case inverted and anaesthetised, positive human connection, and instead function as cogs in a large artistic wheel. In effect, we watch a play of smoke and mirrors, rather than one full of human characters.

It is a subtle distinction in this case, so much so I decided to watch it twice, and whilst I found it difficult to change my initial reaction to the piece, I certainly came to appreciate its attention to detail a lot more. The film opens with the discovery of the body of Anne, and with regards to her husband we are presented with a duality as to his character, given in uncertain but equal measure until a very clear distinction is arrived at and quickly followed by a trademark Haneke flourish. Therein, however, it is trying to be too clever for its own good, with a lot of the story and direction designed to keep us guessing rather than invest in the two octogenarians as people, and the flourish is vile in its predictability and austere anti-reason character skewering. Haneke also fits in a bit of art house indulgence in the form of a pigeon that mysteriously flies in through an open window twice, and each time proceeds to devour the food crumbs that have very obviously been put down to keep it there long enough for the shot.

Riva is up for Oscar glory thanks to her performance in this, which is merited, and she is the oldest actress to receive the honour, especially nice since the ceremony will be taking place on her birthday (she will be turning 86). It’s one of three high profile French films this year to focus on serious physical impairments, the others being ‘Rust and Bone’ and ‘Untouchable’, the latter of which is by far the most rewarding and deserving of the three. Similarly, the American film ‘The Sessions’ fits into that category, also an award contender and a bit more positive in its outlook, but with something of a forced sense of comedy. ‘Amour’ is also nominated for best film, director, and original screenplay at Sunday’s Academy Awards, and although it is a film I wanted to like more than I did, there remains a certain beauty to the performances, and a certain icy warmth in their relationship to the title.

A Good Day to Die Hard  (2013)    65/100

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Rating :   65/100                                                                       98 Min        12A

Bruce Willis reprises the role of John McClane that made him officially a movie star way back in 1988 with the original ‘Die Hard’, a movie that set the benchmark for every action film made ever since and became a Christmas/family tradition to watch every year (partly because it’s set at, and aired, every Christmas, and also partly due to a similar tradition set by Joey and Chandler in ‘Friends’).  The original film was followed by ‘Die Hard 2: Die Harder’ 1990, ‘Die Hard with a Vengeance’ 95, and ‘Die Hard 4.0/Live Free or Die Hard’ (also the state motto of New Hampshire incidentally – minus the ‘Hard’ part of course) 07.  All four of the previous films were worthy additions to the canon, featuring the world’s hardest cop vs. money grabbing pseudo terrorists, but what of the fifth one?  Well, it’s a lot more action focused than even its predecessors, and with a relatively short running time a lot of that action is extremely tightly cut, making it quite fast paced but also at times difficult to make out what’s going on.  Perhaps especially true during a huge car chase sequence which is otherwise packed full of impressive stunts, but is mostly reduced to a visual blur and a series of loud metallic crunches.  For a sequence that took weeks of filming, all the effort put into it deserved a better final product.  Similarly there’s a scene where Bruce Willis’ hands go from being tied to being free to beat the hell out of the bad guy, and I guess you’re supposed to assume he unties himself offscreen somehow, but there’s a constant thread of unbelievability throughout the action sequences, and one of the things that made the previous films a success was that even though they were, quite literally, over the top, efforts were made to make it seem plausible.

A plot does exist here, but so much emphasis is placed on the action that it’s been degraded in the process.  John McClane’s kids are alluded to in ‘Die Hard’, but whereas the introduction of his daughter worked with the great story in the fourth instalment, here the appearance of his son, played by Australian actor Jai Courtney (the bad guy in ‘Jack Reacher’), feels a little tawdry and allows for more than one overly cheesy moment, and although the always lovely Mary Elizabeth Winstead appears briefly as the daughter again, she only has about thirty seconds or less screen time.  If they are grooming Jai to take over the franchise they may be in for trouble as although he has the physique of an action star, he is so far lacking the onscreen charisma that would be needed for the role, in a similar way to the general reception of Indy’s son Mutt in the last Indiana Jones film.  The action all takes place in Russia, the latest in a list of Hollywood films to do so (‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’, ‘Chernobyl Diaries’, ‘The Darkest Hour’, a tiny bit of the last Transformers movie), although it was filmed in Hungary, and anyone who has played ‘Call of Duty’ will see some very familiar scenes in Chernobyl.  Indeed, one can easily imagine the filmmakers sitting playing the game and having a ‘brainwave’, “Hey I know, let’s put John McClane in Chernobyl and have him blow the shit out of it!”.  Hmm.  The game is actually more realistic than the film, with radiation treated as a minor irritation to fitting Chernobyl into the story.

Despite all this, The Red Dragon still gained some nostalgic pleasure from investing in another Die Hard film, but alas it is a mar on a franchise that had thus far put paid to the widely, and falsely, held notion that sequels only dilute the original.  It was a great idea to release the film on Valentine’s Day, but an extremely questionable one to pick a director and a writer (John Moore and Skip Woods respectively) with only a small number of ok-ish films under their belt, including video game adaptations for each of them.  It seems that British audiences have been treated with the disdain of being given a heavily cut version so that the film can have a 12A rating (it’s rated R in the states), which is absolutely disgraceful.  The fact that the director has already started working on his director’s cut suggests he is far from happy with the released version on either side of the Atlantic, and we can hopefully expect to see a better one appearing on dvd in the future.  Good to see the continuation of some of the music from the other films, and indeed a classy Rolling Stones song play over the credits at the end, one knew to The Red Dragon, and one that you can see the video for, featuring Noomi Rapace, below.  If Bruce Willis and company can make number six something special, then all will be forgiven.

Age of Consent  (1969)    73/100

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Rating :   73/100                                                                       98 Min        12

Great little film from master director Michael Powell featuring an early starring role for Helen Mirren, and based to a large degree on the novel of the same name by prolific Australian artist Norman Lindsay (who also wrote the classic children’s work ‘The Magic Pudding’, published in 1918). James Mason attempts an Australian accent, with varying degrees of success, as Bradley Morahan, an artist looking to get away from the stifling constraints of urban life who relocates to an idyllic island (specifically Dunk island, in the Great Barrier Reef region of the Coral Sea). In the beginning the pace is a little too slow, as the artist meanders around, his inner turmoil matched by angry and frenetic snapshots of the natural world surrounding him. Enter the beguiling water nymph of Mirren’s Cora Ryan, whose determination to save money and leave the location of his self imposed exile creates a symbiotic relationship between the two; he pays her to model for him, and much as the artist has to make use of the light before it fades, the opportunity to appreciate the rare creature he has before him rekindles his passion for life and art alike, whilst she playfully revels in the mysterious appreciation. This forms the core of the film, as we see him produce colourful and soulful work, almost like a cross between Van Gogh and Gauguin, whilst the other characters are given to share that sense of vibrancy in their varied distinction, and several dogs are tossed around for comical effect (sometimes by each other).

The film is sadly not yet available on DVD in the UK. It was recently restored by Martin Scorcese’s The Film Foundation and his long time editor Thelma Schoonmaker (the former is a long time admirer of Michael Powell’s work, the later was his wife at the time of his passing in 1990) as part of their worthy project to protect the work of the auteur. Just as their successful restoration of Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s ‘The Red Shoes’ led to it becoming a favourite of an entirely new audience and generation, so too might Film 4’s decision to air this restored gem spark more interest in the director’s work, and in this, his last ever feature film (though he would do one more as part of The Archers with Pressburger again). James Mason also met his future wife Clarissa Kaye (who plays his character’s old flame in the early part of the movie) on the shoot, and the two remained together until his death in 1984. Interestingly, it’s mentioned in the cast list at the end that Helen Mirren is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a nice plug for her early career, and something which I don’t believe I’ve ever seen done in the credits to a movie before. An, at times, mouth-wateringly bright and infectious piece, and a fantastic way to bow out of an eclectic career in film.