We haven't seen a lot of crime movies set amongst the british "traveller" communities - the only other one I can think of is Brad Pitt's character in "Snatch", which played his incomprehensibility for laughs. In this case, it isn't, quite - instead, it's shown as a tight-knit but somewhat tense family, led by Brendan Gleeson as Colby as a mix of psychopathy and whimsy in about equal measure. Michael Fassbinder plays his son, an enthusiastic largely petty criminal who never the less has great warmth for his kids and an extensive wariness about his father's intentions. The story is largely Fassbinder's (using his natural irish accent for once) as he attempts to pull away from his family, even as it appears from his previous crimes it may already be too late for him...
The film flounders a little on exactly how sympathetic it wants the bonds of father and son to be - pretty much everything that befalls them is Colby's fault in one way or another, yet the ending sentimentalizes things and slightly betrays the much tougher performances that Fassbinder and Gleeson have been giving. In some ways this has elements of the same problems I had with "Captain Fantastic" - just because someone is a biological parent does not mean that they are necessarily the best person for a child to stay with, and estrangement can be the best option out of a bad set of options, which neither film seems entirely willing to accept. Still for much of its length this is a pretty fascinating film of an anarchistic community on the edge of society that did keep me interested, even if it fell at the last hurdle.
Saturday 25 February 2017
The Great Wall
I am a sucker for a film with a "dumb but awesome" premise. And this one has a doozy. In China about a thousand years ago, a group of Europeans visit looking for "the black powder" (basically, gunpowder). But when they hit the Great Wall, they discover that the people of China have something more pressing - in particular, the reason the wall was built in the first place - to protect China from a vast army of lizard-creatures. Soon our heroes are joining in the fight, as the lizard creatures attacks grow increasingly dangerous....
Dumb this is, but also quite entertaining. In particular, it looks gorgeous - the various chinese warriors in their various-coloured armour (each squadron getting a different primary colour) look amazing and the finale, as the action moves to an imperial city and our heroes are fighting all over a tower, has some stunning lighting going on. The script and acting are slightly another matter - things are a little slow to get going and Matt Damon plays the western hero in a rather standard clenched-jaw hero manner (Pedro Pascal, as his slightly shiftier offsider, gets to be a whole heap more charismatic). Zhang Yimou has always had a beautiful eye and if this lacks pretty much every inch of any of the depth of, say, "Raise the Red Lantern", it does have its own uniquely wild sensibility that makes this rather enjoyable stuff.
Dumb this is, but also quite entertaining. In particular, it looks gorgeous - the various chinese warriors in their various-coloured armour (each squadron getting a different primary colour) look amazing and the finale, as the action moves to an imperial city and our heroes are fighting all over a tower, has some stunning lighting going on. The script and acting are slightly another matter - things are a little slow to get going and Matt Damon plays the western hero in a rather standard clenched-jaw hero manner (Pedro Pascal, as his slightly shiftier offsider, gets to be a whole heap more charismatic). Zhang Yimou has always had a beautiful eye and if this lacks pretty much every inch of any of the depth of, say, "Raise the Red Lantern", it does have its own uniquely wild sensibility that makes this rather enjoyable stuff.
Saturday 18 February 2017
Silence
"Silence" is a film about faith and culture and the ways in which one can slam against the other. It's set in the 1600s as a mostly-closed Japan is visited by Roman Catholic missionaries, building small cults of "hidden christians". Two priests follow the trail of their mentor, who has apparently denied the faith, and find themselves in the middle of a japanese version of the inquisition, witness to brutal acts as those in charge seek to chase out an invading faith.
In some ways this is a difficult film to get into - neither of the two priests are necessarily sympathetic characters as they are, in effect, seeking to impose a foreign culture on Japan. Andrew Garfield takes the lead here, and he does capture a certain sense of naive fanaticism - Adam Driver's priest drops out of the main narrative too frequently and is strangely underwritten. Liam Neeson as the mentor has strong impact when he shows up late in the action.
There's a combination of beauty and brutality in the setting that makes this intriguing to watch, even if the theological underpinning may not be entirely the kind of thing I'd automatically chase. In mood, it's probably closest to Scorcese's "Kundun" or "Last Temptation of Christ" - a film directly about faith that refuses to either confirm or deny that faith, presented with simplicity and care.
This is one of those films where I can be impressed by the work without ever quite loving it - it's a very well thought out and dwelt upon film that doesn't capture my heart. I can't say people shouldn't see this, but I can't say that it's an automatic recommend either.
Fences
August Wilson's play "Fences" is a classic American play that hasn't gotten into the repertoire in Australia largely due to the cast being entirely African-American (and there not being particularly many African-American performers in Australia). It gets a very faithful film adaptation both directed by and starring Denzel Washington - possibly a little too much so (he's a little indulgent in letting his character's speeches go longer than perhaps they need to).
In some ways this is Wilson bouncing up against the classic 50's American drama (particularly "Death of a Salesman" - there's a riff on being "well liked", a fair bit of football, a secret mistress and a final funeral scene) - it's a family drama that uses that lens to say something bigger about the human experience - in this case, the effects of living while black through the first half of the twentieth century on a man and how the wounds he's suffered pass onto his son and family. Troy, our lead, is not entirely a sympathetic character - he's a blowhard and a bit of a bully - but there's a stubborn integrity to him that keeps us engaged, even as it becomes increasingly obvious how compromised he is. If Willy Loman is the White American dream of achievement and success, Troy Maxon is the black dream of merely being able to survive, keeping your head down because the big dreams hurt too much when they're shattered.
Viola Davis is the only performer really allowed to stand toe-to-toe with Washington and she absolutely does, in a performance of power and integrity. The remaining performances have their moments, but this is a production that rises and falls on Washington, and while there's a little actor's vanity in keeping the speeches at full length, there's certainly an ability to let his character be weak and fallible (and indeed, at one point, noticeably paunchy in the stomach).
I don't know that this entirely succeeds in doing the magical leap from theatre to film but it's a damn good capturing of the play anyway and well worth watching.
In some ways this is Wilson bouncing up against the classic 50's American drama (particularly "Death of a Salesman" - there's a riff on being "well liked", a fair bit of football, a secret mistress and a final funeral scene) - it's a family drama that uses that lens to say something bigger about the human experience - in this case, the effects of living while black through the first half of the twentieth century on a man and how the wounds he's suffered pass onto his son and family. Troy, our lead, is not entirely a sympathetic character - he's a blowhard and a bit of a bully - but there's a stubborn integrity to him that keeps us engaged, even as it becomes increasingly obvious how compromised he is. If Willy Loman is the White American dream of achievement and success, Troy Maxon is the black dream of merely being able to survive, keeping your head down because the big dreams hurt too much when they're shattered.
Viola Davis is the only performer really allowed to stand toe-to-toe with Washington and she absolutely does, in a performance of power and integrity. The remaining performances have their moments, but this is a production that rises and falls on Washington, and while there's a little actor's vanity in keeping the speeches at full length, there's certainly an ability to let his character be weak and fallible (and indeed, at one point, noticeably paunchy in the stomach).
I don't know that this entirely succeeds in doing the magical leap from theatre to film but it's a damn good capturing of the play anyway and well worth watching.
Friday 17 February 2017
Loving
The case of "Loving vs Virginia" is known as the supreme court case that enshrined the right to inter-racial marriage in the United States. So an awards-season biopic about the people behind the case would have to be a campaigning, rabble-rousing film full of obvious "oscar moments" and self-important speechifying, right?
Nope. This is a rare case where it really truly is about the people, not about the headline. There's very little speechifying here - Richard and Mildred Loving aren't those kinda people, they're people who just want to live their lives together in peace. And through slow accumulation of details, the relationship becomes solidified, and the dirty racist policy that kept unjust laws on the books is let tarnished all the more by rarely being directly ranted against. Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga's performances are central to this - there's very little flashy in the performances, instead communicating simple, uncomplicated decency as they go through the daily business of work, raising children, communing with friends and family - almost ignoring the wider world's cruelties until it comes crashing into their bedroom.
This is a film of more low-key pleasures than most, but it's engrossing none the less.
Nope. This is a rare case where it really truly is about the people, not about the headline. There's very little speechifying here - Richard and Mildred Loving aren't those kinda people, they're people who just want to live their lives together in peace. And through slow accumulation of details, the relationship becomes solidified, and the dirty racist policy that kept unjust laws on the books is let tarnished all the more by rarely being directly ranted against. Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga's performances are central to this - there's very little flashy in the performances, instead communicating simple, uncomplicated decency as they go through the daily business of work, raising children, communing with friends and family - almost ignoring the wider world's cruelties until it comes crashing into their bedroom.
This is a film of more low-key pleasures than most, but it's engrossing none the less.
Toni Erdmann
Sometimes you can't quite get with the wavelength of a film. Such is the case with me and "Toni Erdmann", a much-praised film about a retired father who enjoys pranks and who decides to show up in his adult daughter's life in a bodgy wig and a set of ridiculous dentures largely to annoy her. For some reason the prankishness never actually amused me, instead feeling kinda tedious and annoying, and so while most of the rest of the audience giggled along nicely, I didn't.
There are a couple of compensations. The story worked for me more when it was focussed on his mortified daughter who is fully aware what her dad is up to but is unable to stop him, and particularly in the last twenty minutes or so (when the dad largely disappears and the daughter is left to make her own choices). And clearly there is an audience for this (my session was packed with happy gigglers). But for me, this doesn't quite hit the spot.
There are a couple of compensations. The story worked for me more when it was focussed on his mortified daughter who is fully aware what her dad is up to but is unable to stop him, and particularly in the last twenty minutes or so (when the dad largely disappears and the daughter is left to make her own choices). And clearly there is an audience for this (my session was packed with happy gigglers). But for me, this doesn't quite hit the spot.
Fifty Shades Darker
I didn't see "Fifty Shades of Grey". Nor have I read the book. Nor have I any intention of ever doing so. I am, however, pop-culture aware enough to know the basics of the novelistic romance sensation of the last decade - which seems to have given BDSM some bonus publicity.
As someone who does know a couple of people who practice BDSM and talk about it, it pretty soon becomes clear that, like most people talking about themselves and their own hobbies, this can very quickly become kinda laboriously complicated and a tad dull. I must admit I was hoping for some grand melodrama in among the panting and spanking, but this isn't quite that. I gather the first movie ended with a disruption in the relationship as he went too far on the spanking, and she left, but they get back together in this one pretty quickly with only the slightest of reservations. Instead, we are left with the question "can a nice average girl love a handsome massively loaded but-only-vaguely-defined-what-he-actually-does billionaire who happens to have a few troubling psychological problems", and the answer is, largely, sure, why not. There's only one moment in the entire film where Christian's "dark side" comes across as more than just a described attribute, and given the film largely sets up a lot of complications only to dismiss them pretty quickly as nothing much to worry about, we're never in much suspense as to where this is going. Three separate baddies are introduced only to peter off into nothingness - Kim Basinger, most prominently, only has two scenes of being mildly snide before she's told off by everybody and dismissed from the movie. Dakota Johnson as our heroine at least has a light touch - while her character is largely an underwritten doormat, set up to offer mild objections before ultimately deciding to continue drifting along with Christian, she has a pleasant quality that leads me to hope she ends up in a better movie sometime. Jamie Dorman isn't as fortunate, given he's meant to be the irresistible source of romantic complication and instead seems like a perfectly nice chap who's just a bit weird sometimes.
Long-term Hollywood regular James Foley directs, and given he's male, not surprisingly the sex scenes tend to have Dorman keeping his pants on for as long as possible (Johnson's nipples, however, are regular guest stars). It's lush but empty soap opera that presumably looks nice to fans of the novels while never really drawing in anybody who is immune to their fascinations. I surprisingly did not hate this or find it ludicrous, but I can't say this is something people should rush to see either.
As someone who does know a couple of people who practice BDSM and talk about it, it pretty soon becomes clear that, like most people talking about themselves and their own hobbies, this can very quickly become kinda laboriously complicated and a tad dull. I must admit I was hoping for some grand melodrama in among the panting and spanking, but this isn't quite that. I gather the first movie ended with a disruption in the relationship as he went too far on the spanking, and she left, but they get back together in this one pretty quickly with only the slightest of reservations. Instead, we are left with the question "can a nice average girl love a handsome massively loaded but-only-vaguely-defined-what-he-actually-does billionaire who happens to have a few troubling psychological problems", and the answer is, largely, sure, why not. There's only one moment in the entire film where Christian's "dark side" comes across as more than just a described attribute, and given the film largely sets up a lot of complications only to dismiss them pretty quickly as nothing much to worry about, we're never in much suspense as to where this is going. Three separate baddies are introduced only to peter off into nothingness - Kim Basinger, most prominently, only has two scenes of being mildly snide before she's told off by everybody and dismissed from the movie. Dakota Johnson as our heroine at least has a light touch - while her character is largely an underwritten doormat, set up to offer mild objections before ultimately deciding to continue drifting along with Christian, she has a pleasant quality that leads me to hope she ends up in a better movie sometime. Jamie Dorman isn't as fortunate, given he's meant to be the irresistible source of romantic complication and instead seems like a perfectly nice chap who's just a bit weird sometimes.
Long-term Hollywood regular James Foley directs, and given he's male, not surprisingly the sex scenes tend to have Dorman keeping his pants on for as long as possible (Johnson's nipples, however, are regular guest stars). It's lush but empty soap opera that presumably looks nice to fans of the novels while never really drawing in anybody who is immune to their fascinations. I surprisingly did not hate this or find it ludicrous, but I can't say this is something people should rush to see either.
Hidden Figures
Let's talk about populist entertainment. Because that's what this is. YEs, it's in Oscar Season, yes, it's based on a true story (although the true story is bent a fair few ways - virtually none of the events depicted occur when they historically happened beyond the timeline of NASA and Russian space launches), yes it features some fairly talented actresses. But this is not a film of particular depth. What it does have is a hell of a lot of charisma from the central trio (Janelle Monae in particular pops off the screen - I'm a fan of her music and I'm hoping that cinema finds many wonderful things to do with her over the next couple of years), a very funky soundtrack (Pharell Williams is a producer, so of course it is), and plenty of crowd-pleasing "you go girl" moments, even if they may strain credibility more than a tad (it's not screamingly believable, for example, that IBM engineers are unable to program their own computer but one woman who's read a programming textbook can get NASA's computer up to speed in no more than a quick montage).
Look, the roles aren't necessarily much (Octavia Spencer is playing the compassionate motherly one, Taraji P. Henson the nerdiest and Monae the ultra-sexy wannabe engineer), but they're played for all they're worth, and in many ways this is sorta "Steel Magnolias with maths" - it's got a little heart, a little humour and a lot of warmth. It takes a curmudgeon to really hate this.
Look, the roles aren't necessarily much (Octavia Spencer is playing the compassionate motherly one, Taraji P. Henson the nerdiest and Monae the ultra-sexy wannabe engineer), but they're played for all they're worth, and in many ways this is sorta "Steel Magnolias with maths" - it's got a little heart, a little humour and a lot of warmth. It takes a curmudgeon to really hate this.
Manchester by the sea
Kenneth Lonergan is not, perhaps, the most productive filmmaker ever. "Manchester by the Sea" is only his third movie as writer and director since 2000 - his first, "You can count on me" being a launchpoint for Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney, and his second, "Margaret", being controversially held up due to disputes in edits for five years before getting a half-hearted release in 2011. But he's a writer-director who really knows how to get to the human heart in all its complicated ways. In this case it's a film about mourning and connection, as Casey Affleck plays a disconnected, angry janitor who is suddenly required to look after his teenage nephew when his brother dies. This has a way of never going quite where you expect - the tragedy that informs Affleck's alienation is laid out clearly and the trauma is something he's never going to completely transcend - which means suddenly it's the small steps that matter, as a broken man and a boy who isn't as grown up as he thinks he is start to very slowly drop even an inch of their defensive barriers.
Michelle Williams' role is small but crucial, similarly Kyle Chandler's. This is not a film about transcending the pain so much as living with it still going on, and all the better for it
Michelle Williams' role is small but crucial, similarly Kyle Chandler's. This is not a film about transcending the pain so much as living with it still going on, and all the better for it
Friday 10 February 2017
Gold
The reason we needed to have a McConnaissance was because Mathew McConaghey is simultaneously a quite likeable and a quite lazy actor. He is quite capable of coasting on his not inconsiderable charm in vehicles that don't reward that with anything else interesting going on.
And while he does some considerable physical transformation for "Gold" (putting on a fair bit of weight and going bald), he's still basically playing the all round good-ol-boy type, and not ding anything particularly new or interesting with it. The plot is fairly standard issue - the rise and fall of a gold-mining entrepreneur as his discovery in Indonesia is compromised both by political and financial forces that he doesn't quite control, and while using the "inspired by a true story"trope, it changes names and characters extensively (in particular, pretty much to match McConaghey's usual persona - although all the unflattering history of the Suharto family does seem to have survived). The Indonesia section of the film is a little intriguing, although it's abandoned in favour of more conventional state-side shenanigans, but all in all this ends up being a fairly flat experience without very much to recommend it. Bryce Dallas Howard has another not-very-good-girlfriend role (although she does at least get to be around for the end of the movie), Edgar Ramirez has a nice presence but is pretty marginalised for a lot of the film (particularly the stateside stuff), and Corey Stoll does good snooty glowering but it never pays off into anything bigger.
So this is more gestures towards what could be a good movie than an actually good movie.
And while he does some considerable physical transformation for "Gold" (putting on a fair bit of weight and going bald), he's still basically playing the all round good-ol-boy type, and not ding anything particularly new or interesting with it. The plot is fairly standard issue - the rise and fall of a gold-mining entrepreneur as his discovery in Indonesia is compromised both by political and financial forces that he doesn't quite control, and while using the "inspired by a true story"trope, it changes names and characters extensively (in particular, pretty much to match McConaghey's usual persona - although all the unflattering history of the Suharto family does seem to have survived). The Indonesia section of the film is a little intriguing, although it's abandoned in favour of more conventional state-side shenanigans, but all in all this ends up being a fairly flat experience without very much to recommend it. Bryce Dallas Howard has another not-very-good-girlfriend role (although she does at least get to be around for the end of the movie), Edgar Ramirez has a nice presence but is pretty marginalised for a lot of the film (particularly the stateside stuff), and Corey Stoll does good snooty glowering but it never pays off into anything bigger.
So this is more gestures towards what could be a good movie than an actually good movie.
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