| |
|
SEPTEMBER 2010 |
|
FILMS
Inception
Director:
Christopher Nolan
Featuring:
Leonardo Di Caprio, Marion Cotillard, Ken Watanabe, Cillian
Murphy, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine
Christopher Nolan has produced an amazing Body of Work in just a
few years – constantly inventive, playing with the form and
structure of film but interested in character. He has got one of
Al Pacino’s most finely nuanced performances in “Insomnia” (and
turned Robin Williams’s cutesiness into something truly
frightening in the same film); got a career best performance
from Heath Ledger in the magnificent “Dark Knight” (which should
have won him an Oscar); and even given Hugh Jackman some depth
in “The Prestige”.
“Prestige”, like his mind-boggling “Memento” (soon to be out on
Blu-Ray) was very tricksy, sleight-of-hand film-making. In
“Inception” he takes that tricksiness to another level. Compared
to this film, “The Matrix” is for kindergarten kids.
You’ll know the premise by now: DiCaprio is a corporate spy who
steals ideas in dreams but is asked to do the reverse – plant an
idea in the mind of a target.
This is an action film that also plays with your mind – it
requires close attention from the outset. The action scenes are
extraordinary. Because it’s dealing with a dream-world
comparisons with the fight scenes in “The Matrix” trilogy are
inevitable. But these are light years ahead, I guess because
movie technology has developed so much more.
The internet is already buzzing with the “significance” of the
names of characters: Ellen Page plays Ariadne, who in Greek
mythology provides a way through the maze; another character is
called Eames – Charles Eames was a celebrated architect.
DiCaprio’s character is called Cobb, which comes from Jacob, the
Biblical character who dreamt of a ladder to heaven.
In a way, for DiCaprio it’s a companion piece to Shutter Island
[see DVD reviews] as in both films his characters are beset by
notions of reality and unreality, loss and faith.
It’s a tough film to review as I don’t want to give away
secrets. Think “Solaris” with great fight scenes and a nod to
James Bond movies. It’s a glittering achievement though and
absolutely essential viewing. In fact, twice is better.
Knight
and Day
Director: James Mangold
Featuring:
Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Paul Dano
Some films just reek of failure
before they even get going whether it’s a shot by shot remake of
“Psycho”, one too many returns to a successful franchise or any
film starring Nicole Kidman. (Okay, that last one is just me, I
admit it.) Why did this classy director (“Copland” anybody?) and
classy stars allow the absolutely crap title of this film get
beyond an initial draft of the film. It sets it down squarely in
TV territory, even though it aint made for TV.
The idea of re-booting those 80s adventures like Die Hard or The
Last Boy Scout – or even Cruise’s own Mission Impossible trio –
is fine. But to do them as a rom-com stinks of Mel Gibson and
Goldie Hawn in “Bird On The Wire”. And you can’t get much worse
than that.
I like Tom Cruise. A lot. He does good action – “The Last
Samurai” is one of the most undervalued films of recent years –
and he doesn’t mind messing with his star image. Witness
Magnolia and that great turn in “Tropic Thunder” as bald, hairy,
pot-bellied agent Les Grossman. And he’s been doing comedy since
his break out performance in “Risky Business”.
And Cameron Diaz has great acting chops – although she only
needs to grin and the audience loves her.
So as rogue agent Cruise takes Diaz hostage on a flight that he
crash-lands you hope that we might be in for an update of
Hitchcock’s adventure romances – 39 Steps or North By Northwest.
Hitchcock is certainly referenced but this film lacks his nuance
or his lightness of touch. There is PLENTY of action – it’s
almost non-stop, in fact – but that means that in the end any
pretence of characterisation fizzles out under fireballs and Uzi
attacks. A big disappointment and a waste of these two fine
actors and their undoubted chemistry – they were great doing
Tope Gear together….
Down
Terrace
Director: Ben Wheatley
Featuring: Robert Hill, Robin Hill, Julia Deakin
My favourite of the three British
films up for review this month – and not just because it’s
set in beautiful Brighton. I’m nervous of any British film
doing gangsters as Guy Ritchie casts a long, malignant
shadow but this ploughs its own darkly humorous furrow. A
father and son lure the narc who got them a prison sentence
to their Brighton home to get revenge. What follows is a lot
of horrible fun.
WILD TARGET
Director:
Jonathan Lynn
Featuring:
Bill Nighy, Emily Blunt, Rupert Grint, Rupert Everett, Martin
Freeman, Eileen Atkins.
A British remake of the 1993 French
film Cible Emouvante (now re-titled for DVD release – see DVD
reviews), this has a touch of Ealing comedy and pleasurable
performances from a solid British cast. Nighy is the phlegmatic
hitman hoping to retire, the gorgeous Emily Blunt is the
kleptomaniac target who changes his life when instead of killing
her he decides to save her. A bunch of fine comic actors turn
this simple premise into an entertaining time-passer but – as
with the original - it’s by no means essential viewing.
SALT
Director: Philip Noyce
Featuring: Angelina Jolie, Live Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor
The role of
CIA agent Evelyn Salt was originally written as a man for
Tom Cruise but he didn’t want to cause confusion with the
Mission Impossible franchise (the latest of which is in the
stocks). So, thanks to the wonders of Hollywood, Jolie has
stepped into his raised shoes. The story is initially
straightforward – Jolie goes on the run when accused by a
Russian defector of being a Soviet sleeper agent briefed to
kill the US president and start World War III. But then,
naturally, things get tricksier.
Jolie has form as an action heroine and Noyce has form
handling these big kind of thrillers – he directed the two
Harrison Ford Jack Ryan films. However, he also directed Val
Kilmer in The Saint. And Jolie, fine actress though she is,
has to work hard to make the film and her character in the
least plausible. (Especially when she has to pass herself
off as a man…)
There are enough set-piece action scenes – chases,
shootings, brawls and explosions – to provide an
entertaining hour and a half. On balance, Cruise should have
chosen this over Knight and Day.
THE
EXPENDABLES
Director: Sylvester Stallone
Featuring: Sly Stallone, Jason Statham,
Jet Li, Eric Roberts and cameos from Bruce Willis,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke,
I was
really looking forward to this slice of bang-bang
nonsense as I have a soft spot for the action movies of
yore and most of these actors. (I could have lived my
life happily without encountering on celluloid Roberts.
Lundgren or Statham.) And I did enjoy it but, as with
Rambo IV, I felt let down. Why doesn’t Stallone make the
scripts better and not just settle for blowing
everything up? The plot was obviously sketched on the
back of a fag packet: a bunch of mercenaries take on a
rogue CIA agent and a Mexican drug army on an island in
the Gulf of Mexico. The actors rely on their previous to
sketch in the characters of the 2-D tough guys.
Enjoyable schlock but what might have been…
THE
SECRET IN THEIR EYES
Director: Juan Jose Campanella
Featuring: Ricardo Darin, Soledad Villamil, Pablo Rago
This Argentinian
Oscar-winner (for Best Foreign Film) is fab. A retired
lawyer visits a former colleague with an account of the
long-ago (1974) rape/murder case that has had
repercussions ever since. A likely culprit was long-ago
spotted and tracked down but the second half of the film
unravels the supposed certainties of the first.
Thrilling but also very moving. A must-see.
22 BULLETS
Director: Richard Berry
Starring: Jean Reno, Mariona Fois, Moussa Maaskri
Based
on Franz-Olivier Giesbert’s L’Immortel, this might have
been “Mesrine” had the direction been better and the
narrative stronger. Reno is great at the just-retired
Marseille gangster who tries to find out why he was was
shot 22 times then goes for revenge. Luc Besson is
attached but it’s many a long year since his glory days
of Leon (with Reno). A mess.
CHERRY
TREE LANE
Director: Paul Andrew Williams
Featuring: Rachael Blake, Tom
Butcher, Ashley Chin, Jumayn Hunter
A suburban couple
have their dinner interrupted by a teenage gang out
to teach their son a lesson. Think Eden Lake in a
semi and with gruesome humour. Good
THE
HUMAN CENTIPEDE (FIRST SEQUENCE)
Director: Tom Six
Featuring: Dieter Laser, Ashley C Williams, Ashlynn
Yennie, Akihiro Kitamura
Okay, I wimped
out of seeing this but I will, I will. However, I
just want to bring it to your attention now.
Essentially, it’s a classic mad scientist film from
the fifties. The reason the scientist abducts two
women and a man is pretty much 21st century
gross-out. He stitches them together mouth-to-anus
in a sick simulacrum of a centipede…
DVD
Wild Target (aka Cible Emouvante)
Director/Writer: Pierre Salvadori
Featuring: Jean Rochefort, Guillaume Depardieu,
Marie Trintignant.
The lugubrious Jean Rochefort has always been
able to make a lot from a little with his
deadpan comic performances and here he excels as
the hitman who becomes a bodyguard to protect
one of his intended victims. Marie Trintignant
is suitably kooky as the eccentric art forger
and kleptomaniac. Depardieu (son of Gerard so
the French equivalent of Jason Connery) is, as
usual, a blank-faced disappointment. Rochefort,
however, carries the film and transforms several
mundane scenes into comic gold. Better than the
British remake (see film reviews), though Bill
Nighy in the same role is equally good.
From Paris With Love
Director: Pierre Morel
Featuring: John Travolta, Jonathan Rhys Meyers
This film has a reasonable pedigree – written by
Luc “Leon” Besson, directed by the director of
the efficient if ludicrous Liam Neeson actioner
“Taken” – and if you like the “Transporter”
films you’ll find this a hectically efficient
way of spending a couple of bangs-for-your-buck
hours. Travolta is the idiosyncratic CIA agent
(effectively reprising his role in “Swordfish”
though he’s ditched the pony tail for the shaved
head look) helping US government employee Meyers
foil a terrorist plot in Paris. A lot of things
blow up, a lot of cars get wrecked in screechy
car chases, a swaggering Travolta wisecracks
between firing rocket launchers. Leave your
brain at home and you’ll have fun.
Antonio das Mortes (1969)
Director: Glauber Rocha
Featuring: Mauricio do Valle, Odete Lara, Hugo
Carvane.
“Deadly Antonio” was a hit man for hire in
Rocha’s 1964 “Black God, White Devil”. In the
1968 sequel the “cangaceiro killer” (cangaceiro
were rural bandits) he takes centre stage,
though he still remains enigmatic.
Rocha was the leading light of the Brazilian
Cinema Nuovo so whilst this has a strong central
idea – Antonio sides with peasants against
brutal landlords – it’s avant-garde filming
style does not make for a straightforward
narrative. A theatre group enacts many of the
scenes in a stylised way. Some characters are
emblematic or allegorical. There is dance and
music. The inspiration is the legend of St
George and the Dragon.
The film has been compared to an epic poem and
there are some epic shots of mountains and
plains. Influential in its day, it now seems
very much of its time. Worth watching though.
Chloe
Director: Atom Egoyan
Featuring: Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, Amanda
Seyfried
Armenian-Canadian indie director’s remake of
2004 French film “Nathalie” has an ingenious
premise: Gynaecologist Julianne Moore suspects
Liam Neeson’s music professor husband of
infidelity so hires prostitute Seyfried to prove
or disprove her worries. That’s right up
Egoyan’s street as many of his films deal with
voyeurism and the first half of this film
explores Moore’s erotic interest in what the
prostitute and her husband have been up to.
In the second half the film turns into a
bunny-boiler thriller and that doesn’t work
quite so well. Egoyan has attempted mainstream
thrillers before – Where The Truth Lies,
starring Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon is an
underrated success – but here as a gun-for-hire
he seems to be going through rather trite
motions.
Indie directors can regenerate mainstream movies
– look at Paul Greengrass and the Bourne films –
but Egoyan’s heart just doesn’t seem to be in
it.
Previously reviewed now on DVD & Blu-Ray
Green Zone
Director: Paul Greengrass
Featuring: Matt Damon
Scripted by Brian Helgeland, this account of a
failed search for the non-existent Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction reminded me of “All The
President’s Men” on its initial release. Both
films succeed as thrillers even though we know
the outcome from the outset. Greengrass has
proved in the Bourne films that he is unrivalled
at action scenes but he also proved in “United
93” he can do talk too. The jewel among the
extras here is the commentary from Damon and
Greengrass both over the film and a few deleted
scenes.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Director: Arden Oplev
Featuring: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace
David Fincher is directing the Hollywood version
with Brit Carey Mulligan as the eponymous Girl
but this film is far superior to its source
material. “The Girl Who Played With Fire” is out
in US cinemas and there’s a trailer for it in
the extras here, which otherwise is the usual
interviews and photos job.
Shutter Island
Director: Martin Scorsese
Featuring: Leonardo Di Caprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben
Kingsley, Michelle Williams.
Horror movie set in a 1954 loony-bin on a
fog-shrouded island – count me in. Because the
narrative is so tricksy this film rewards
reviewing anyway so the DVD purchase is a must.
Couple of good documentaries on the Extras –
but, spoiler alert, DON”T watch them until
you’ve seen the film
|
|
|
|
|
