#SmallClubShitFans
Review - Weekend (2011) @ LFF 2011
Intimate, earnest and heartfelt – Weekend, is a refined and touching affair that showcases up-and-coming British film talent and an original approach to its subject matter.
On a Friday night after hanging out with his straight mates, Russell (Tom Cullen) – an introverted lifeguard – heads out to a nightclub, alone and on the pull. After heavy drinking and hopeful cruising he meets Glen (Chris New), an uninhibited and lascivious art gallery employee who he ends up spending the night with. An extended morning-after sequence of existential repartee sparks the beginning of a short lived relationship that sees the two extensively conversing, having sex, getting drunk and taking drugs – a recreational weekend romance which will resonate throughout the rest of their lives.
Played out with sensitivity and grace, Andrew Haigh’s gay romance, Weekend, will no doubt prove to be a career marker for its two male leads and talented director. Escaping the clichéd category of only being concerned with ‘coming out’ or repressed love, the film – through Haigh’s deft direction and Cullen and New’s expressive and compelling performances – steers itself towards an unconventional tale of a wary relationship between two young lovers within the titular timeframe.
Whilst being distinctly British in feel and texture, Weekend does draw comparisons with such films as Lost in Translation and Before Sunrise in its minimalist tone and execution, but importantly unlike these American romances stays defiantly modest in its scope and ambition. It’s frank sexual nature and matter-of-fact quality will ultimately withhold it from crossing over to a mainstream audience but this is an understated and engaging tale.
…Linus, 19, said he thought he could use a search button in World of Warcraft when he tried to look for his older brother in a crowd.
Review - The Tree of Life (2011)
The age-old phrase of “good things come to those who wait” strikes a particularly resonant chord when discussing Terrence Malick’s latest feature The Tree of Life. Indeed, the virtue of patience was something which many budding cinephiles had to endure in the build up to its release - a production which was hampered by prolonged shooting schedules, ongoing drawbacks and multi-extended deadlines. Once the film did eventually surface at this year’s memorable Cannes film festival, the reaction of the croisette critics extolled Malick’s odyssey as being “worth the wait” and the film left the French Riviera with the coveted Palme d’Or under its belt. It goes without saying then, that this film is a true heavyweight in both stature and content.
The elusive director’s fifth feature in thirty-eight years is a complex, extraordinarily ambitious cinematic opera thatasks for and requires an incredible amount of audience attention and again, patience. What Malick does in his combination of deep emotional drama and pondering philosophy is create a film that matches, and at times even surpasses, the depth, scale and ambition of classic Kubrick, but is one which undoubtedly will leave viewers divided.
From the very opening and the controversial epigraph from the Book of Job (Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth?), the film descends slowly, unraveling itself as a stark and profound realisation of love, life and everything in between. Beginning with the O’Brien’s (played by the equally spellbinding Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain) we see them receive news of their teenaged son’s death, their grief echoing through perplexing shot sequences and sparse dialogue - from the outset, this is a film which subverts and breaks down traditional Hollywood drama and presents itself as decidedly unorthodox in both terms of narrative and film-making.
This sequence is then supplanted by a vision of the birth of the universe, from a nebulous “In the Beginning…” to the first articulations of life on Earth and the reign and extinction of the dinosaurs - “big” style, yet baffling and bizarre symphonic passages of spectacle, all matched by an equally grandiose soundtrack.
Snap forward to the 1950s, the Midwestern middle-class suburbia of Waco, and the O’Brien family in an earlier, happier moment. Here the majority of the story lies as we see the family unit grow and age, but every now and then we’re transported intermittently to future scenes of one of the sons Jack (played by a taciturn Penn), a careworn corporate executive disenchanted with his life, who daydreams from his home and downtown office. It is clear that as we are transported through the various epochs and fractured narrative we are presented with a story of faith, grief, forgiveness and reconciliation, which are all played out in large through the device of Jack’s memory.
As Jack ponders and remembers his upbringing we witness the events that shaped his childhood as well as the trials and tribulations of the O’Brien family. However, at its core The Tree of Life presents a profoundly affecting father-son conflict between the young Jack and his frustrated, disciplinarian father.
Pitt excels as the authoritarian patriarch, a complex character whose severity and affection intertwine: “Do you love your father?” he asks Jack. “Yes, sir,” the boy replies. This is shortly followed by a frightening scene in which the sons are taught, or commanded, to swing a punch at their father; “Hit me!” O’Brien says, baring his jaw. He is a frustrated, aggrieved man who loves his family but sometimes allows his powerful temper to get the best of him. Pitt’s co-star Chastain, likewise, demonstrates skilled execution in her almost wordless portrayal of his religious and devoted wife and along with Jack Fisk’s excellent production design and Craig Berkey’s sound engineering, is one of the awe-inspiring highlights of the film.
Despite all this layered praise though, the film does have its moments of weakness and some scenes become lost on the viewer. The grandiloquent nature of the project at times becomes slightly overbearing - detracting from the drama of the story, and certain sequences unweave as demanding admiration moreover than being easily embraced. As well as this the heavy use of voice-over paired with the director’s distancing style, sometimes makes the film not as accessible as the viewer would like it to be. Nevertheless, it is the most ambitious, visually arresting and emotionally resonant film from writer-director Terrence Malick’s oeuvre.
The Tree of Life collectively is a contemplative journey, a symphonic odyssey and a solemn prayer. Yes, at times it is imbued and puffed up with pretentiousness but this is undeniably a work of art. You may feel amazed or muddled, but this is powerful cinema - something to live with, think, and talk about afterward.
[originally published on http://www.theplayground.co.uk/home.php]
Review - Hobo With a Shotgun (2011)
With a title that equally works as a synopsis, Jason Eisener’s Hobo with a Shotgun is an uber-cool and suitably gratuitous homage to the exploitation movies of the 70s and 80s. Starring veteran actor Rutger Hauer, the film does exactly what it says on the tin; a homeless vigilante, despondent with the corruption and debauched existence of a Nova Scotia hellhole, gets a gun, lets rip, and delivers justice “one shell at a time”.
Conceived as a trailer for a competition centered around Robert Rodriquez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse (2007) double-header (where it won top prize), Hobo, following Machete (2010), is the second of the fake embedded trailers to have resurfaced as a feature length film. This austerely simple story follows Hauer’s aforementioned Hobo as he arrives in the simmering town of “Hope” via boxcar train - a sequence that is perhaps the most endearing of Karim Hussain’s camerawork in the feature. Although a fitting prelude to the carnage, it captures the spirit of something that Hal Ashby might have conceived, being also reminiscent of Adam Holender’s camerawork in Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy (1969) - a soft, light-hearted and restrained sequence of cinematography - atmospherically, the thematic antithesis of what follows. Furthermore, the beginning also foregrounds the essence of “The Man with No Name” western/action cliché, with “hobo” arriving in town unannounced and taciturnly. An obvious allusion here is Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter (1973), which is a text that has a number of overt similarities throughout the duration of Hobo (the re-naming of the town sign for instance).
Hauer’s character roams the streets and eventually sets up shop panhandling outside only what can be described as a psycho-hedonists paradise - a bar-meets-S&M-torture-chamber-video-arcade. Here we are introduced to the super-villains of the picture, town kingpin, Drake (Brian Downey) and his two sociopathic sons, Slick and Rip (Gregory Smith and Nick Bateman), who we see decapitating tramps with bumper cars. Upon rescuing a hooker from certain death at the hands of Slick (who has an almost uncanny resemblance to a Risky Business (1983) era Tom Cruise - wayfarers and all), our protagonist meets his lone companion, Abby (Molly Dunsworth), who shares the same disdain for the town and helps Hobo on his mission.
From here on in the Hobo immerses himself in the macabre. With a shotgun at the ready he systematically dispatches the town’s low-lifes with vicious élan; a pimp, an exploitation-video producer, a paedophile dressed as Santa Claus - you name it, Hobo shots it. Whilst our protagonist wreaks his vengeance, Eisener’s antagonists delve into a psychotic frenzy, exacting death and mutilation by manhole cover and topless women wielding baseball bats. Even a school bus full of children feel their wrath - burnt to a crisp by flamethrower. In each case Jason Eisener proves his willingness to go over the top and beyond, with the latter scenario proving highly controversial given the fact that it is presented as a cause for laughter. The director and writer, John Davies, simply bombard you with more demented sequences than you could shake a stick at, so much so that the late appearance of two motorcycling robot assassins (a possible fleeting reference to John Hughes’ Weird Science [1985]) and a giant man eating octopus hardly raise an eyebrow.
As has been noted, Eisener’s film is incredibly adept in its self-referential and inter-textuality - you could run of a long list of titles that Hobo is in debt to but perhaps the more protuberant ones would be Raimi’s influential Evil Dead II (1987), with Abby’s ingenious adoption of a make-shift weapon using the her bone stump as a shank; the psychedelic sways and garish colour schemes of Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation (1995); and with it’s gang-war attitude and cityscape dystopia, Walter Hill’s cult classic, The Warriors (1979). Fittingly, even Ewen Dickson’s production design is reverentially stuck in the early ’80s, somewhat of a Mad Max on crack, the same goes for the film’s sound design and intentional hammy acting.
However, it should be noted that Rutger Hauer, now 67, gives a surprisingly committed and heart-felt performance as the angry hobo. Minus the verbose violence he serves up some darkly comic moments, in particular a hilarious sequence where he explains to a concerned on-looking Abby the ferocity of what a bear attack can do to a man’s face - one of the film’s truly cherishable moments.
Some may argue that Hobo encapsulates a joke worn thin, but the B-movie energy that pulses through the veins of this beast is not to be denied. Eisener’s film exists solely to push buttons but it is a more honest, less self-conscious re-creation of the cinematic exploitation era, so much so it puts Rodriguez and Tarantino to shame.
[originally published on http://www.rhythmcircus.co.uk/]
Review - The Fighter (2010)
David O’Russells boxing biopic may not have won as many Academy Awards as it would have liked to, but the awards it did win (Best Supporting Actor gong for Christian Bale and it’s sister statue for Melissa Leo) were rightly deserved - although Geoffrey Rush’s performance as Lionel Logue in The King’s Speech came a close second to Bale’s typically “method” tactics. But the star that really shines through in this assured and enjoyable Rocky like tale is Mark Wahlberg, who gives a subdued yet incisive performance as legendary fighter “Irish” Micky Ward.
Bale may have stolen all the headlines as the brother and crack-addict trainer, but Wahlberg was the linchpin of this project - the yin to Bale’s yang and whose Micky holds the film together when it could have so easily run away with itself. To his credit Bale graciously acknowledged that he couldn’t have got away with his “big” performance without the understated Wahlberg, who also worked as producer on the feature.
Wahlberg stars as real life professional boxer Micky Ward, a young, downtrodden kid from the working class suburbs of Lowell, Massachusetts, who has aspirations of becoming a welterweight champ in his profession. Everything seems set for a ‘rags to riches’ parable until we discover that his brother Dicky, himself a former boxer, has become a slave to his own crippling addiction to crack cocaine. With Dicky unable to get into the corner and support his younger, less-experienced brother, Micky soon finds himself tasting defeat after humiliating defeat. Emotionally down in the dumps, he finds a new girlfriend in a feisty local barmaid Charlene (an impressive Amy Adams). As he becomes more involved with Charlene and Dicky’s addiction becomes progressively more active, Micky finds himself in an ongoing battle of pleasing everyone, a stoic who tries to meet the needs of his lover, brother and over-controlling and vicarious living mother, Alice (played by an excellent Melissa Leo).
The film itself comes across as a punchy but lightweight companion piece to Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, but within it Mr. Russell does demonstrate moments of pure artistry , as with one particular shot near the beginning after Dicky and Micky have paraded down the street an exhilarating whoosh takes place as the camera rapidly tracks back and zooms out, recoiling from the scene of the two brothers in arms. But significantly and somewhat negatively, Russell does not try anything drastic to subvert the genre and at points, the film is hopelessly tied to generic convention, even down to the stale montage sequences.
Elsewhere, Wahlberg seems to be coming to realise that he’s at his best when playing family dramas (The Yards, Four Brothers, Boogie Nights) and Melissa Leo gives a spellbinding performance as the formidable resident matriarch and familial heavyweight, Alice. It’s a solid movie and it packs a hefty punch but unfortunately this is one fighter that doesn’t deliver that definitive K.O blow.
[originally published on http://www.cine-vue.com/]
Review - Cyrus (2010)
Charming, witty, and quintessentially quirky, Cyrus (2010) is a slice of well-worked comedy from plucky lo-fi indie brothers, Jay and Mark Duplass.
LA, the present. John C. Reilly plays John, a divorced down-and-out schlub who meanders through life alone and somewhat desperate. Upon the persistent demands from his ex-wife/best-friend (Catherine Keener) to shape-up and move on with his life he agrees to attend a local party. At the party he gets drunk and systematically tries to hit on women, severely embarrassing himself in the process.
As the alcohol flows so does his bladder and he retreats to a quiet area of the garden to escape the crowds and relieve himself. “Nice penis”, Molly (Marisa Tomei) taunts as she catches John in the act, the foxy singleton immediately striking up conversation with the embarrassed and now very drunk John.
From this initial fortuitous meeting the pair hit it off and a flourishing relationship seems set in stone. But there’s always a catch, and John has yet to meet Molly’s twenty something son, Cyrus (Jonah Hill), whose disturbing oedipal intimacy with his mother leads to a number of excruciatingly awkward scenarios that prevent John from fulfilling his romantic destiny.
Previously known for their Sundance hits The Puffy Chair (2005) and Baghead (2008), Cyrus brings the Duplass brothers into the mainstream with a smart and extremely funny romantic comedy. From the opening scene, in which John is caught in the middle of a compromising act by his ex-wife (played intelligently with an aura of honesty by go to indie girl Keener), the audience knows they are in for a string of universally uncomfortable scenarios. Yes, such situations have all been done before on film but Cyrus is devoid of cliche and instead, with its ingenious improvisational approach in hand, offers an engaging and absurdly wonderful take on the rom com genre.
What’s intriguing about Cyrus is it’s observational stance to social discomfort, much in the same-vein as an episode of Larry David’s brilliantly conceived Curb Your Enthusiasm, amusing and unnerving in equal measures. A long and unrelenting scene of comic enjoyment comes when a heavily drunk John performs a karaoke version of The Human League’s synth pop classic Don’t You Want Me Baby at the opening party - a sequence which is unashamedly awkward but nevertheless leaves the viewer posing with a wry smile of empathetic embarrassment.
All these scenarios are undoubtedly well directed, but more in the sense of the less-is-more refined approach - knowing when and where to leave the camera to capture the actors at work. Indeed, the majority of the film’s praise should be shared in equal parts by Reilly, Tomei and Hill - each of their character’s perfectly offsetting one another with thoughtful, nuanced performances; Reilly finely tunes the hapless divorce role, Tomei plays warm and friendly as well as anyone and Hill, with his dead-pan stare and sad-sack posture really brings a delightful edge to his role (who can forget his “weird” musical performance to John at the first meeting?).
Although this is by no means the most aesthetically pleasing film you may come across, its measured approach of sincerity and sensitivity mixed in moments of delightful awkwardness is something to truly cherish. A Hollywood debut for the directorial duo, Cyrus - in more ways than one - has brought the Duplasses to the masses.
[originally published on http://www.cine-vue.com/]
Review - 13 Assassins (2011)
Predominantly known for his shock antics, Takeshi Miike takes a slight theatrical diversion in his remake of Eiichi Kudo’s 1963 film, 13 Assassins. But in saying this, he by no means shies away from his renowned mixture of visceral imagery and arresting aesthetics, which ultimately may have made him produce his most accessible and pleasurable film to date.
The story, based on a semi-legendary event, focuses on the plight of a band of samurai determined to rid the world of the evil and merciless antagonist, Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira (Inagaki) - brother of the shogun and an effete sadist who rapes, tortures and kills out of boredom and a sick intrigue. Tired of Naritaugu’s path of ill destruction, one of the shogun’s advisors covertly arranges his assassination, persuading the wise and solemn Shinzaemon Shimada (Yakusho) to come out of retirement and ambush the vile Lord whilst he is on his travels to meet the shogun. A pretty basic story I think you’ll agree, but it’s a tried and tested formula that always works well and here is of no exception.
As noted, in terms of the “disturbing” this is Miike lite and a far cry away from the likes of Ichi the Killer (2001) and Audition (1999), but the director never being undeterred, still shows glimpses of the ultra-violent that have made him a renowned and forthright artist. From the opening of the film where a nobleman commits hara-kiri in the forecourt of an imposing palace, to the rolling heads and gushing blood of the final battle sequence, Miike keeps his penchant for showing the full horror of bodily mutilation - the slicing and dicing, cracked bone and cartilage that inherently comes with war.
The story, which is decidedly indebted to Kurosawa and his classic epic Seven Samurai (1954), does take a while to get going though, and long parts of the first two acts are too slow to be truly enjoyed, instead posing slight frustration for the viewer as the development and exposition come hard and heavy. Along the way we meet the entertaining hunter, Koyata (Yûsuke Iseya), who brings comic relief and a buoyant edge to a story otherwise heaped in profoundness. This presents only one of the incredibly assured pieces of casting in 13 Assassins, with Iseya showing all the energy and optomism that made Kurosawa’s frequent collaborator, Toshirõ Mifune, a sure-fire hit as the bandit in Rashomon (1950) and Seven Samurai, whilst Yakusho brings a sense of gravitas to the picture with his performance as the calm and collected Shimada.
Despite the slowness of the film’s opening, these faults are engulfed by a truly magnificent last 45 minutes, a heady whirlwind of blistering action and stylized violence that puts even John Woo to shame. The ending seems bathetic in comparison, but if you are looking for great action and enjoyable performances, 13 Assassins is a must.
[originally published on http://www.rhythmcircus.co.uk/]
Review - Paul (2011)
Aspiring illustrator Graeme Willy (Pegg) and wannabe sci-fi writer Clive Gollings (Frost) are in geek paradise when they visit Comic-Con in San Diego. In an attempt to get the most out of their American Southwest excursion and add a perfect addition to their recent visit to the sci-fi and fantasy heaven, they plan a road trip in a rented RV to visit all of the Southwest’s most famous UFO hot spots, from Nevada’s Area 51 to Roswell, New Mexico. En route, they almost collide with a speeding car that quickly runs off the road. To their amusing shock the driver turns out to be laidback stoner alien Paul (voiced by the aptly cast Seth Rogen). Assuring Graeme and Clive that he’s in trouble and needs help, Paul joins the two men and they set off with high-ranking secret government officials hot on their heels.
A budding “bromance” sci-fi road movie, Paul was the first time Simon Pegg and Nick Frost had headlined a movie without homeboy director Edgar Wright on board. As many of you will know, the trio had previously worked on big-screen post-modern genre outings Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, as well as the influential Channel 4 sit-com Spaced. But some may not know that this was the first time that Pegg and Frost had worked on a script together (Pegg and Wright were the creators of Shaun and Fuzz). With this in mind then it was a hard ask to expect their usual hilarity and on-screen chemistry to brush off onto the pages as well as it had done in the past, especially when usual collaborator and close friend Wright wasn’t at the helm. So does Paul match or even surpass the success of the duo’s previous humble offerings? Commercially, it excels, but critically, I was left wanting something more.
Whilst the story about two English travelers who coincidently come across and then harbor a fugitive alien across the American Southwest does sound like the perfect stomping ground for the jovial Pegg and Frost, they understandably but somewhat arrogantly aim too big (which inherently comes with a multi-million dollar US production) and the script doesn’t seem as tight and controlled as it should be. In various instances it comes across as far too contrived, some sort of unnatural progression from the kernels of their decidedly British previous films. In particular there were a number of loose ends and unnecessary sequences of exposition throughout the film - an example being the redundancy of the two red necks that badger our protagonists near the beginning of the feature as well as Ruth Buggs’ (Kristen Wiig) sudden disavowal of intelligent design and embrace of hedonism being clunkily written.
This being said though, there were a number of highly enjoyable and engaging scenes and at times Paul has the hallmarks of the movies which brought Pegg and Frost into the public consciousness. For instance, as we have come to expect, Paul is incredibly inter-textual, working as a pastiche of 80s sci-fi ventures, the most obvious being Spielberg’s E.T. (1982) as well as cramming in gaggy allusions to movies of all kinds from Reservoir Dogs to Lorenzo’s Oil. In one of the best lines and laugh-out-loud moments of the movie, Paul (when walking down the street holding hands with Graeme and Clive) even makes a fleeting reference to their actions as being indicative of the Friedmans’ - a family convicted of child molestation and the story of which was made into an Oscar-nominated documentary, Capturing the Friedmans (2003), by Andrew Jarecki. Quite rightfully these pop-culture assimilations by the audience gives the film ( as Chris Suter pointed out in his theatrical release review of the film for Cine-Vue) “an endearing and familiar quality and, despite not being a true companion piece to any of the earlier Wright/Pegg collaborations, certainly feels like one in spirit at times.”
The cast is made up of a mixture of industry heavyweights as well as some of the more underrated comic actors working today. Director Greg Mottola has brought in many familiar faces from his teen hits Superbad (2007) and Adventureland (2009), including Bill Hader who gives a worthy performance as FBI agent Haggard. There’s even Jeffrey Tambor, albeit in somewhat of a droll cameo. The casting of Rogen was obvious but works wonderfully and in his usual jovial mode he delivers some of the best lines of the movie. But it’s Saturday Night Live regular, Kristen Wiig, who impresses most here with a bravura display of comic timing.
Paul isn’t Shaun or Fuzz, but it was never meant to be. It’s amiable, lazy fun but importantly avoids being popcorn schlock. However, even in saying this I felt something wasn’t, well, “Wright”.
[originally published on http://www.cine-vue.com/]
