DAILY FILM DOSE: A Daily Film Appreciation and Review Blog: 2011 Films

Showing posts with label 2011 Films. Show all posts

Wednesday, 14 November 2012

The Forgiveness of Blood

A very curious second film for Joshua Marston after his Oscar-nominated 'Maria Full of Grace', a fully Albanian-language film set in that very culturally specific country with no allusions to an American viewpoint. Marston’s desire to tell a non-American story in a different language is wholly admirable, but the slowburn pacing and staid emotional tone prevents the film from becoming the sad ironic tragedy it desires to be.

The Forgiveness of Blood (2011) dir. Joshua Marston
Starring: Tristan Halilaj, Refet Abazi, Sindi Lacej, Ilire Vinca Celaj

By Alan Bacchus

Nik (Halilaj) is an Albanian teenager connected to his friends by his cell phone like any of us in North American would be. But he also rides unpaved roads on a cart pulled by a horse, a mixture of old and new which fuels the conflicts in Marston's morally confounding picture. Early on we see Nik having lunch at a pub with his family where he witnesses a verbal standoff with a rival group from his extended family. The tension in the room is thick, suggesting a long-standing intra-family feud.

Another confrontation with Nik’s sister triggers a domino effect of events culminating in the death of one of the other family members. By the cultural rules dating back to the Middle Ages, as a member of the extended family Nik is in this war too and could be a target for retaliation. Thus, he and his sister are forced to sequester themselves in their home in what amounts to a voluntary domestic imprisonment, which, judging the history of these confrontations, could mean years.

Marston finds his conflict not between the two warring groups but within Nik's own family unit, specifically his stubborn uncle who represents the bullish adherence to the outmoded cultural ways of life, which are obsolete in the technologically interconnected world in which Nik wants to live.

As an American, Marston’s reverence to the Albanian culture is admirable and makes us believe this predicament completely. His themes of family unity and the conflict of the old world and new world are strong and clear. And by putting the audience in the point of view of Nik, the idea of losing years off one’s life to this baffling and pointless conflict within one’s own greater family is mind-boggling and utterly frightful.

But perhaps in an effort not to sensationalize the subject matter in the typical Hollywood way, Marston seems to overcompensate and under-dramatize this wholly troubling story. Tristan Halilaj’s performance is too restrained and internalized, thus zapping the film of the desired tension or suspense.

***

The Forgiveness of Blood is available on The Criterion Collection on Blu-ray and DVD.

Thursday, 16 August 2012

A Separation

Conflict in this film has the structural complexity of a spiderweb. One event or turn of the plot fuels everything in this surprisingly intense conversation film, causing each of the mostly humane and decent characters to turn on one another in sometimes aggressive, sometimes passive ways, but it's always thoroughly thought-provoking.

A Separation (2011) dir. Asghar Farhadi
Starring: Peyman Moadi, Leila Hatami, Sareh Bayat, Shahab Hosseini, Sarina Farhadi

By Alan Bacchus

In the opening Nader and Simin, husband and wife, well-dressed, articulate and educated, are engaged in a heated discussion in front of a judge. Simin has made an application for divorce, which Nader denies. Simin wants to take their daughter abroad to give her a chance for more career opportunities in life. Nader needs to stay to care for his Alzheimer’s-inflicted father. Simin doesn’t leave the country but moves out of the house, leaving Nader and their daughter together at home with his ailing father.

Requiring a nurse to watch the old man, Nader hires Razieh, a desperate woman, pregnant with an unemployed husband. And so, it’s no surprise that the job is a burden to her physically and emotionally. The shoe drops when Nader comes home to find his father alone, tied to the bed with Razieh nowhere to be found. When she returns, an argument turns physical as Razieh is pushed out the door and falls to the ground. The next thing Nader knows, Razieh is taken to the hospital, miscarries and Nader is charged with murder.

From here, Farhadi crafts a riveting battle of wills, primarily between Nader and Razieh’s husband, Hojjat, a hot-head with a violent streak who not only challenges all of Nader’s excuses but could just be a physical threat to him and his 11-year-old daughter.

It’s a confounding moral twister. We sympathize with each of Farhadi’s characters, as each of them articulates a reasonable argument for guilt and innocence in the matter. Farhadi is clear to make Nader the everyman in this situation, an innocent subject to an accident and tumultuous conundrum into which any of us could have been thrown. But everyone is a victim in this story, and Farhadi’s objective approach causes us just as much confusion as we wrestle with own personal sense of judgment. Is Nader guilty for pushing Razieh, however justified? Is Razieh guilty for not disclosing her pregnancy? Is Simin guilty for leaving the family, forcing Nader to hire a stranger to look after his father?

Being an Iranian film, Farhadi also manages to subvert our expectations of commenting on the controversial political or social issues associated with the country. Admirably Farhadi does not pass judgment on the Iranian law, politics, religion or social mores, he simply takes them for granted and plays his conflict within the constrained bubble of the country’s customs and traditions of society. For example, one of the sources of conflict is the fact that Nader gives the nurse the job without consulting the nurse's husband – something protested by Hojjat in the heat of one of the many verbal arguments.

In Western/North American culture it’s impossible not to reject this as a point of argument for Hojjat, but in Iran this is the way things are and Farhadi never asks us to pass judgment on this. The result is a culturally sensitive film accessible to even the most ignorant or culturally insular audiences.

***½

A Separation is available on DVD from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in Canada.

Wednesday, 15 August 2012

Le Havre

A very slight but heartwarming picture no doubt, from the master of Euro deadpan, Aki Kaurismäki. The story of a humble shoeshiner who takes in an African refugee works best as a quiet comedy, delightful but not profound, and arguably over-praised in its Cannes/Toronto festival journey.

Le Havre (2011) dir. Aki Kaurismäki
Starring: André Wilms, Blondin Miguel, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Kati Outinen

By Alan Bacchus

Aki Kaurismäki’s films certainly won't provide shock and awe, but they do give a very palpable optimistic and humanistic viewpoint on topical and serious issues. Here, Kaurismäki is in France, specifically the French port city of Le Havre, a city famous for being the demarcation point for refugees fleeing the continent for the UK and beyond. Kaurismäki’s hero is a Capra-esque loner, Marcel Marx, a ne’er-do-well elderly man, eking out an existence as a lowly street shoeshiner. As played by Andre Wilms, Marcel silently cries out for our sympathy. And it’s not hard to dish it out when early on we see his wife admitted to the hospital with a potentially fateful but unnamed diagnosis.

Marcel finds his solace in the most unlikely of places, namely a young black teenager called Idrissa who escaped custody after he and a group of fellow refugees were found holed up in a cargo container at the docks. The pair barely speaks to each other, but Marcel senses Idrissa’s pleas for help and Idrissa senses Marcel’s compassion. On their tail is the passively persistent detective who pursues Idrissa and casts a suspecting eye on Marcel. It's Marcel’s neighbours who create a Capra-like rally of support for Idrissa and Marcel and help the pair best the weary detective.

Kaurismäki’s distinct cinematic visual style complements the eccentric tone and silent-cinema approach. There’s something about Timo Salminen’s cinematography that creates a sense of artificial but effective drama. It’s partly an overlit studio style, lighting the characters with strong sources of light, unafraid of the harsh shadows which sometimes appear in the background. A stagey look results, like the dioramic look of Wes Anderson.

Kaurismäki’s modus operandi, his deadpan style, is always front and centre, perhaps overly so. Marcel’s glum demeanor can feel forced, as he seems to be begging too hard for our sympathy when it's not warranted. And forgotten-about almost completely is Idrissa, who is less a character than a cipher for the plot. Kaurismäki cleverly makes a statement without the need to push the buttons most issue-driven films bombard us with. And the ace in his hole is a marvelous denouement, Marcel's reunion with his wife, which might seem like an unmotivated deus ex machina, but it's an ending that works because it just 'feels right.'

Le Havre is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

***

Tuesday, 24 April 2012

The Innkeepers

The Innkeepers (2011) dir. Ti West
Starring: Sara Paxton, Pat Healy, Kelly McGillis

**

By Alan Bacchus

There’s much to admire in Ti West’s creepy and understated haunted house film in which a pair of lowly minimum wage underachievers attempt to capture the essence of an alleged ghost in a rundown mountain view hotel. It’s a playful film with a consciously restrained quality, a mix of comedy and suspense without ever succumbing to exploitative gore and horror. That said, there’s just not enough guts to this story to truly satisfy its audience beyond the atmosphere and tone.

Taking place largely in a single location, a quaint Victorian inn which comes off like a low budget version of The Shining’s Overlook Hotel, West introduces us to Claire and Luke (Paxton and Healy), who are employed as the last two staff members of the inn on its last day before closing down. Luke, who runs a paranormal ghost hunting website, is there to take audio samples of a ghost named Madeline O'Malley, rumoured to have haunted its confines for decades, with the unambitious Claire tagging along mainly for the fun.

There are a few guests for the evening, each with their own idiosyncrasies that contribute to the uneasy feeling of dread. Kelly McGillis turns in a creepy performance as a has-been actress staying for the night. And the presence of an old man who arrives to spend one night in his old room to rekindle the feelings of his honeymoon is chilling.

West succeeds in creating the gothic tone of a Hammer Horror mystery, from the moody atmospheric music to the classical widescreen photography reminiscent of John Carpenter’s great films of the ‘80s, right down to the chapter breaks written in old gothic script and designed like 1920s title cards.

While The Innkeepers plays directly off of The Shining, West's aesthetic sensibilities resemble 1980's John Carpenter (i.e., The Fog, Prince of Darkness), floating his widescreen anamorphic camera through empty hallways with Carpenter-like panache. But unfortunately West is missing the bravura escalation of action and horror marked by both Carpenter and Kubrick. Indeed there is a ghost with a grisly backstory who looks downright scary in her brief flashes, but we simply don’t see enough of the spectre. With murky or non-existent motivations, we don’t ever see O'Malley as a character, thus we don’t really fear her either.

Ti West’s camerawork is teasing, building up a number of moments but rarely paying them off. For example, he crafts a terrific sequence in which Claire investigates an open cellar door. West gives us a traditional false scare when the terrifying silence is interrupted by a bird flying out of the dark space, but he leaves the scene without paying it off with a real punch. The cellar does come back into play in the final scene, but it’s still a wasted set piece, indicative of the underwhelming quality of the film as a whole.

The Innkeepers is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Entertainment One in Canada.

Thursday, 19 April 2012

Contraband

Contraband (2011) dir. Baltasar Kormakur
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, Lukas Haas, Giovani Ribisi

***

By Alan Bacchus

The success and quality of this film might come with some surprise. For a January doldrums release combined with a ho-hum trailer, there seemed to be no prestige associated with this picture. But dig into the production team involved and its quality and success is not surprising at all. The story of a working class smuggler gone straight but pulled back into his life of crime for one last job makes for a robust actioner in a relatively untapped milieu (port to port seaway lifestyle) told with high-energy plot-turning intensity.

The fact is Contraband is more than just a forgettable piece of studio fluff. First, it comes from Working Title Pictures, the British production company with great taste and genre range, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Shaun of the Dead, The Big Lebowski, Atonement, Bridget Jones. Mark Wahlberg’s also a producer, a fine one with surprisingly good taste. And the director in this endeavour is the Icelandic auteur Baltasar Kormakur, known for a varied career of art house (101 Reykjavik) and genre (the fine neo-noir piece A Little Piece of Heaven) pictures, but a consistently strong cinematic style, not to mention the lead actor (not director) of the original Icelandic production. But to execute an action thriller with Hollywood genre expectations? Aiding Kormakur is action lens master Barry Ackroyd, Paul Greengrass’s nimble DOP who handheld those masterpieces of action The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum. As such, Kormakur delivers.

Contraband is competitive with any moderately budgeted action film, but it was made outside of Hollywood. Wahlberg plays Chris Farraday, a regular working class family man in New Orleans. He and his pals seem to be tripping the life fantastic when his disreputable brother-in-law gets his nose into trouble in a smuggling run where he’s forced to dump his goods. But Chris is no ordinary Joe. He’s a reformed smuggler himself, forced back into the world of crime to repay the debt to his maniacal mob boss, Tim Briggs (Ribisi).

So Chris and his pals hatch one last plan to buy some counterfeit money in Panama and smuggle it back into New Orleans. This begins a wild ride, an actioner with a pot boiling plot that turns just about every 15 minutes.

The film cleverly moves from the local gangster plotting in New Orleans to the open waters aboard a transport ship wherein Chris and company have to quietly plot their heist under the nose of the tight ass ship captain (JK Simmons). And when the crew lands in Panama, suddenly we’re in a new country and almost a new movie, an action film anchored by a raucous heist of an armoured car. Kormakur cleverly connects the action to the home front by bringing Chris’s wife and kid into the fold as an added threat.

Then Chris has to get back on the boat with the counterfeit money, which makes for an adventure unto itself, before sailing back and making the final deal with the slimy Briggs. All this plot-turning action is executed with a great sense of pace and strong muscular production value as good as anything at the Tony Scott level of action filmmaking.

Barry Ackroyd’s camera isn’t as shaky as it is with Greengrass, but the stamp of realism is there. The production value achieved with the relatively small budget is admirable. By moving the action from the harbour to inland to the transport ship, Panama and back to New Orleans, it gives the film a larger quality than what was probably on the balance sheet.

But Contraband succeeds because everything is played for real, from the authentic New Orleans locations to the working class men not that far removed from you or me. It's another deceiving performance from Mark Wahlberg, not unlike his modest performance in The Fighter, a hero under extraordinary circumstances played with a humble understatedness. Wahlberg’s ability to be tough and tender at the same time is a rare quality, seemingly innate to him as a person. It’s just one stop in a remarkable overachieving career of a former one-hit wonder rapper and underwear pitchman, now an influential Hollywood star and producer.

Contraband is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Universal Home Entertainment.

Wednesday, 18 April 2012

War Horse

War Horse (2011) dir. Steven Spielberg
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson,

**½

By Alan Bacchus

There's a great deal going on in War Horse, but enjoyment of the film essentially comes down to how much you can stomach the Spielberg brand of syrupy schmaltz, where metaphors are loud and clear, no emotions are left unexpressed and almost nothing is between the lines.

If this was a year in which modern films paid homage to the past (i.e., The Artist and Hugo), War Horse would also fit in with this company, harkening back to not only the "mature" Steven Spielberg of the late '80s (The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Always), but the dreamy cinema of John Ford. Ford has creeped into almost all of Spielberg's films in some form of another, but at times, War Horse is, shamelessly, The Quiet Man revisited.

Certainly the opening act does, which feels like a film within a film - the story of the birth of the warhorse Joey and how he came into the company of the Narracott family, specifically smitten young son Albert (Jeremy Irvine), with whom he develops a unique bond. This all takes place in the rolling green hills of Devonshire, beneath impossibly beautiful cloudscapes, shot with the same kind of compositional perfection that made Ford famous. The overly tender sweetness of Albert's unspoken love for the horse, which seems to hypnotize both he and his father (Peter Mullan), is devoid of any kind of reality. For good and bad, it's the stuff of old world Hollywood dream factory filmmaking.

Spielberg settles down for much more accessible second and third acts, where the horse is brought into the cavalry to fight in WWI. This is where Spielberg never misses a beat – choreographing and directing phenomenal action scenes with breathtaking scope and intensity, a talent still unrivalled by even the hottest young directors. The story cleverly follows Joey's Odyssey-like journey from owner to owner, each of whom exhibits their unconditional attachment to the horse. Twists occur that allow us to see both sides of the battle and show the confounding tragic irony of the war as a conflict of cockeyed gentlemen fought by innocent and naive kids with nothing at stake except their lives.

Despite the mushiness, Spielberg does engineer a satisfying and cathartic reunification at the end, a moment drawn out to excess, but a scene in keeping with the storybook tone of the rest of the film, and thus earned dutifully by Spielberg.

This review first appeared on Exclaim.ca

Tuesday, 17 April 2012

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011) dir. Stephen Daldry
Starring: Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Max Von Sydow,

*½

By Alan Bacchus

Stephen Daldry's (The Reader, The Hours) latest slice of grief-stricken melodrama (based upon the Jonathan Safran Foer novel of a young boy dealing with the tragic effects of 9/11) is so brutally over-conceived it's tortuous. In fact, young Oskar Snell might just be one of the most annoying characters in recent memory, a boy characterized as too smart and too mature for his age, a savant growing up idolizing his saintly father, Thomas (Tom Hanks), before he tragically died in the World Trade Centre on 9/11.

Daldry, working from another syrupy, magic-realist script from Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), moves back and forth before and after Thomas's death. In flashbacks and narration, we learn of Thomas's odd education of his son, sending him on a series of "reconnaissance missions," challenging Oskar to expand his perception of the world and solve riddles using intelligence, deduction and guile. Several montages show Oskar engaging in impossibly wistful sleuthing, the kind of next-level empowerment and education we expect from privileged, home schooled children, or something perhaps in an episode of The Cosby Show.

After Thomas's death, when Oskar discovers a key hidden in a vase in his closet, he endeavours to discover its lock, a task he accepts with the same dedication and precision as any other reconnaissance mission. The name written on the key is "Black," which sends him on a meticulous but ridiculous search for all the "Blacks" in NYC. Of course, there are hundreds. Yet, each stranger he meets actually welcomes him and engages him in profound conversations on life.

I would forgive this lapse in reality if the film didn't double back on itself and provide an even more ridiculous explanation as to how and why. Not satisfied simply with the idiosyncratic Hardy Boys mission, the filmmakers pile more peculiarities onto Oskar. When he's not making profound pronunciations, he's pinching and scarring himself in secret. He also does Tae Kwan Do, carries around a tambourine to sooth himself, has a fear of subways and bridges, and carries around a gas mask.

Max Von Sydow, curiously nominated for an Oscar here, plays a crotchety old man renting a room in his building, whom Oskar befriends and takes along the journey. Not satisfied with simply having Von Sydow in his movie, Daldry and company have him as a mute, choosing not to speak since the breakdown of his marriage decades ago. Thus, instead of dialogue, Von Sydow writes his thoughts on scribbled pieces of note paper for Oskar to read or follow like breadcrumbs around the city.

All of this hubbub leads to what is intended to be a profound existential reconciliation of the tragedy of 9/11. Using this important event as the background and theme of this tired hodgepodge of melodrama makes this pill even more difficult to swallow.

In the special features, of course, the proclamation of the filmmakers and actors involved would make this picture seem like the greatest film ever made. There's a decent making-of documentary and a casting featurette on the young role of Oskar Snell. But the best segment is the sidebar story of Daniel McGinley, a real person who died in 9/11, whose photo was used in a quick close-up of the memorial wall in the film. What seemed like an innocuous bit of set dressing turns out to have a unique story, one infinitely more emotional and resonant than this film's.

This review first appeared on Exclaim.ca

Monday, 16 April 2012

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Starring: Tom Cruise, Jerermy Renner, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg, Michael Nyqvist

***

By Alan Bacchus

Tom Cruise is one resilient guy – not just his Ethan Hunt character, who gets knocked around like a fumbled football, but the movie star himself, who is currently on a fine career comeback of sorts from his low point – the couch surfing debacle, his stupid Scientology pronunciations, as well as the horrific Knight and Day. Doing another Mission Impossible movie (a fourth one) seemed, perhaps, to be like going back to a dry well.

But then the film became a massive hit, one of the biggest films of the year and genuinely a terrific action film, arguably the second best of the series. The De Palma-directed original is still unrivalled, a film that actually gets better with age. I doubt Ghost Protocol will last as long as the first film – already on second viewing, it’s not as thrilling. But it’s still better than the John Woo or the JJ Abrams entries.

In this film Ethan Hunt begins the film in a Russian prison, about to be broken out by his crack IMF team, this time featuring the luscious Paula Patton and the witty Simon Pegg. It’s a tense and yet surprisingly humorous scene, equal parts Cruise’s muscular showmanship and Spielberg comedy. Once free, Hunt and company track down some stolen Russian launch codes. In order to locate them they have to infiltrate the Kremlin to find files on the #1 suspect, Cobalt. Here we move to set piece #2 in the film, a terrific combination of new wave techno gadgetry and delicately paced Hitchcockian tension, ending in a running chase and a huge CG explosion.

The Americans are blamed for the Kremlin blast, rendering all IMF teams disavowed. Thus, the group is forced to fend for themselves. They are joined by a slick new analyst, William Brandt (Renner), who is not used to the crazy lifestyle of the field operators on a globe-trotting mission to recover the nuclear launch codes before an evil Swedish scientist can destroy the world.

As with most action films and the Mission Impossible series in particular, MI:4 is anchored by its set pieces. However, the best moments of these films and the original series aren't necessarily the action, but rather the heist-like covert operations and tactics of the crew. The prison sequence is decent and gets the film going, and the Kremlin sequence has the gadgets and detailed subversion plotting we like to see. But the film reaches its high (pun intended) in the Dubai Burj sequence, in which Hunt and company have to break into the computer room of the building from the outside 130 floors up. The sight of the real Cruise hanging (albeit with a digitally removed safety harness) up that high is astonishing. More so in Imax, less so on the small screen, of course. This scene continues with an equally well executed sequence exchanging the aforementioned launch codes for a set of diamonds. Here Bird uses somewhat realistic high tech devices like contact lens-sized cameras that can photocopy documentation remotely in the blink of an eye. It’s a stretch, but not that much to have us suspend our disbelief.

This sequence leads to a chase in a sandstorm, which perhaps might pay homage to the ultimate sandstorm sequence in cinema, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman. I doubt it though.

Unfortunately, MI:4 never gets better than the Dubai scenes. When the film moves to Mumbai, the two main set pieces – Jeremy Renner crawling inside a computer mainframe looking to deactivate a nuclear missile and Cruise battling Dragon Tattoo alum Michael Nyqvist in a remotely operated parking garage tower – never trump the Kremlin or Dubai sequences. And the ticking clock, a race to disarm a nuclear missile midfield, is the stuff of bad James Bond plotting.

Pixar vet Brad Bird makes a strong live action debut as director, though he doesn’t have a sense of his own style yet, not like JJ Abrams did in his outing. However bad, at least John Woo’s film felt like a John Woo film. And of course, Brian De Palma’s is an action-suspense masterpiece. That said, this film, and in fact all of the MI films (even John Woo’s), make the tired old James Bond films look like amateur work. Credit goes to Tom Cruise and his resilience, as evidenced in the Blu-ray special features. He appears to be a passionate cinema junkie who gets a kick out of making entertaining action films from this series. I just wish he didn't take his shirt off so much – for some reason it makes me uncomfortable.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Wednesday, 11 April 2012

Carnage

Carnage (2011) dir. Roman Polanski
Starring: Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly, Jodie Foster, Christophe Waltz

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Recalling the power of the fiery words of the four adults in Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, Carnage, the latest Roman Polanski film, based on the stage play God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, has the same kind of effect. In this film Polanski assembles two couples bickering about the restitution deserved when one child assaults the other child in a play yard spat. Carnage’s approach is more suitable and satirical than Wolf, keenly skewering the conservative elite, liberal wonkheads and in general the ineffectiveness of civilized dispute resolution – intellectual nihilism at its best.

Jodie Foster is a wound-up tight liberal writer/librarian harbouring strong feelings of inadequacy about her weak writing career. John C. Reilly, her husband, is a salt of the earth bathroom fixture salesman, partly emasculated by his current domestic status as equal caregiver to his son. Together they have a son, whom we never see, but whom was the victim of a blow from another boy in the school yard, which has left him with some facial lacerations and in need of dental work. Kate Winslet is a lawyer in a doomed marriage with a workaholic investment banker, Christophe Waltz, who spends most of his time on his Blackberry. They are the parents of the other boy committed the assault.

The film opens with the negotiation process of the formal apology letter, nitpicking every word in a passive aggressive way to exert their authority over the other. When it's time to leave, Alan and Nancy (Waltz/Winslet) can’t seem to get out of the door, or get in the elevator without being sucked back into their argument. Michael and Penelope (Reilly/Foster), likewise, just can’t let go of the damage inflicted upon their son. The rest of the day is spent in a complex and evolving dialogue between the four boobs, fueled by scotch. Their unspoken opinions of each other and themselves devolve the get-together into a satirical spat for the ages.

Polanski is certainly at home working in a cramped apartment, deftly moving his camera from character to character and around the room while escalating tension before spilling over into its angered catharsis. The film is scripted by Reza and Polanski, who are very careful not to assign full culpability to any of the characters. Foster is delightfully grating as a ball of neuroses, the turning point represented by her attachment to an art book coffee table decoration that gets puked on by Kate Winslet. Initially, Reilly appears to be the mediator but then reveals his former life as a bully, not unlike his son, who revelled in his school yard status and quiet envy of Waltz's alpha male persona. Waltz’s droll reactions to all the shenanigans makes him the audience’s point of view into the absurdity, always maintaining his composure with a straight face, but still annoyingly crass and self-absorbed. Winslet is perhaps the most normal of the bunch, but once the scotch starts flowing she unleashes her own form of verbal vengeance on Michael, Penelope and her husband, Alan.

The title of the film refers to the God of Carnage, discussed by the characters, which serves as a mythological metaphor for the effectiveness of simple school yard justice versus the inane dance of manners. For fear of indulging in too much intellectual hyperbole, Reza brilliantly has Kate Winslet puke over Penelope’s coffee table, a ridiculous absurdist act that gleefully pays homage to the surrealist king, Luis Bunuel. But Carnage stays on the side of realism. We can't help but see ourselves in each of these characters, who make the discussion thoroughly engaging, hilarious and powerful.

Tuesday, 20 March 2012

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) dir. Tomas Alfredson
Starring: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Despite being completely dumbfounded by the murky-to-the-point-of-nauseating narrative obscurity of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the film stayed with me, lingering for weeks like an itch I couldn’t scratch before I was compelled to see it again. Tinker Tailor is kind of addictive – a puzzle likely never to be solved, but so utterly compelling we don’t need to understand everything.

Alfredson’s long lenses, which subliminally make us feel like we’re silently looking over the shoulders of his characters, allow him to feel the delicateness of all the proceedings. The Cold War spy games in this case mean finding a mole that may or may not be placed at the top of the British intelligence community – specifically the 'Circus', a subcommittee of nervous British spies headed by a very anxious man named Control (John Hurt).

Alfredson effortlessly moves us back and forth in time, to the point of complete temporal confusion. And by adding the possibility of tactics of counter-intelligence, that is false information planted by competing spies to sniff out double-agents, the machinations becomes dizzying.

The performances of the characters are so compelling, even though we may not get the details (or the big picture), the emotional stakes are real. Mark Strong, for instance, who seems to be playing the heavy in every picture these days, is given a very tender role and a relationship with another character that may or may not be homosexual. Same with the remarkable Benedict Cumberbatch, who, while committing everything to the cause of finding the mole, is forced to give up something so vital to life, and it’s devastating to watch.

Gary Oldman glues all these great actors together without doing much other than holding his poker face and staying calm. His ability to keep his emotions out of the conflict results in a performance that is icy cold but heroic at the same time.

The editing of this picture is also remarkable. Dino Jonsater assembles Alfredson’s luscious imagery like one slow-moving montage scene. Jonsater is bold enough to cut an entire scene with one slow reaction shot of a character turning around and gazing curiously into the eyes of another.

This is the palette of the picture – snippets of glances, words, whispers and scenes, glimpses of the parts, never the whole, but with the main hero, George Smiley (Oldman), always a step ahead of the audience. I understand the conscious obscurity of the plotting will turn people off, but Tinker Tailor triumphs for its ability to create emotion and feeling from its profound themes of brotherhood and betrayal.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is available on Blu-ray from EOne Home Entertainment in Canada. For admirers of the film who were confused as hell, commentary from Alfredson and Oldman provides good insight into some of the vague and confounding plotting elements.

Tuesday, 13 March 2012

Young Adult

Young Adult (2011) dir. Jason Reitman
Starring: Charlize Theron, Patrick Wilson, Patton Oswald

***½

By Alan Bacchus

It's interesting that despite being Reitman’s least successful film at the box office, Young Adult is probably his best. Thank You for Smoking was an interesting premise and a decent first feature, Juno, its Oscars notwithstanding, seems too sweet and conflict-free with today’s eyes, and Up in the Air was a shamelessly contrived new millennium tragi-comedy.

Young Adult, written by Juno scribe Diablo Cody, is the most honest film of the four. It’s the story of a hack writer from Minneapolis, recently dumped by her boyfriend, who rebounds with a vengeance on her suburban hometown and her old high school boy toy.

Mavis Gary (wonderfully played by Charlize Theron) is damaged goods. She’s insecure, lonely, depressed in her job, and when she’s cc’d on a baby announcement by her former high school boyfriend, Buddy Slade (Wilson), she decides to jump in her Mini, go back home and steal him away from his suburban hellhole. But when she arrives, he’s a changed man, happily married and domesticated. That doesn’t stop her from aggressively and pathetically pining after him.

Mavis finds solace in another damaged soul, Matt (Oswald), a former loser afflicted with a leg injury from high school bullying. Together they drown their mutual sorrows in his homemade whisky. All the while Matt discovers his own inner beauty by witnessing Mavis’s self-destruction.

There’s a strong, relatable but bitchy, sympathetic human being at the core of this picture. Cody’s absurd plotting and witty dialogue masks a sad and lonely character study of a woman suffering from a feeling of displacement and inadequacy. Part of this is physical – Reitman is careful to show Mavis checking herself in the mirror constantly, stuffing her bra for more cleavage and coiffing herself to the max in order to exert her superiority over her old friends. Even though Mavis (via Theron) is still a gorgeous figure, it’s her self-loathing with which we can identify.

Reitman seems to make a fetish of the mundane details of people’s regular life routines – not only Mavis plucking her eyebrows or doing her nails, but pathetically using her own spit to fool her shitty ink jet printer into squeezing out one more faded print-out. These minute details speak volumes and are key to establishing the humble middle American realism in which the film is grounded.

The supporting actors are all well cast, specifically Patrick Wilson playing into type as the handsome doofus, Buddy Slade, who’s characterized as a former hot shot now relegated to bagging pumped breast milk. Cody admirably reverses our pre-conceived notions of Slade and the residents of the community as emasculated failures living in a depressingly moderate small town by revealing Mavis as a pathetic poseur who clings onto her shabby career and Minneapolis city lifestyle as her defense mechanism to life.

Young Adult is the most challenging and profound film of Reitman’s and Cody’s career. It's a mature shift for both filmmakers. Sadly, the failure of the film might have them going back to precious filmmaking of the Juno and Up in the Air variety.

Young Adult is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Thursday, 8 March 2012

The Adventures of Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin
Starring: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg

****

By Alan Bacchus

International audiences embraced this film to the tune of $395 million. Sadly, American audiences did not. Perhaps people didn’t know what Tintin was. Rin Tin Tin the dog maybe? A cartoon for kids maybe? Either way, most of America missed out on one of the best films of the year, a great adventure story from an old master in a new medium.

What’s remarkable is the authorship Spielberg injects into the film. Despite working in a sterile motion capture studio without an actual camera and in animation, nothing looks fake or cartoonish. In fact, it’s arguably the most photorealistic animated film I’ve seen. Other than the faces of the characters, Tintin is a real world.

The backstory of the project is now well known, first optioned by Spielberg in the 1980s. While making Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg put the film on hold until he could find a way to shoot it without making it another Indy Jones film. And so, when Spielberg teamed up with Peter Jackson's Weta Studios, which created Gollum in Lord of the Rings, Tintin the film was born, as was the Jackson/Spielberg collaboration.

The story of the intrepid young amateur sleuth, who, through the purchase of a model ship at a local market, incites a globetrotting adventure for lost treasure is lean and mean action filmmaking. Writers Peter Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish honour the fun in discovering the mystery of the Lost Unicorn ship and crafting delightful pot-boiler characters to support the heroes. For instance, the moustache twirling villain, Rackham, is a deliciously upper class snob out for revenge; the affable Thomson/Thompson cops feel like a comic duo plucked out of the silent era; and of course Tintin's trusty four legged partner, Snowy the dog, is part of a long tradition of cinematic dog sidekicks.

As such, despite the most advanced new millennium technology, the film still feels like old fashioned swashbuckling adventure this side of a Michael Curtiz/Errol Flynn.

The Blu-ray special features are clear to point out what separates this film from other motion capture pictures, including Avatar, Spielberg’s mise-en-scene, and they don’t get lost in the technological mumbo jumbo. Tintin looks and feels like a Steven Spielberg film, from the delightful comedic action right down to the composition, lighting and pacing that are distinct to the man.

And if you’re scared off by the thought of watching another kids’ film, I was pleasantly surprised to see as much guns, blood, violence and questionable behaviour as in any of the Indiana Jones films. Hell, Tintin is barely out of his teenage years and he carries his own pistol! Captain Haddock’s alcoholism, which serves as a major plotting device, is the main hurdle in his character arc and recalls the character traits of a politically incorrect bygone era.

In the end, Tintin still feels like an Indiana Jones film. However, it’s not a knock-off but rather a revival of that youthful energy in escapist entertainment Spielberg used to have as a young director. In the past 20 years, every one of Spielberg’s attempts at recreating the fun of Raiders, ET or Jaws has either failed or under-delivered. Films like Minority Report and War of the Worlds were failed by weak attempts at adult characterizations and adult themes. There’s nothing mature or serious about Tintin. It’s full-tilt retro action cinema at its finest.

The Adventures of Tintin is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Tuesday, 28 February 2012

Unstoppable

Unstoppable (2011) dir. Tony Scott
Starring: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson, Kevin Dunn, Ethan Suplee

***

By Alan Bacchus

Yesterday in southern Ontario a train derailed killing three engineers and injuring many other passengers. It was a sad day, which also happened to be the day after I watched this Tony Scott action movie on Netflix, as I happened to miss it last year. The train has been such an important part of our economy and culture for a couple of centuries, and it has also been a frequent setting for cinema.

There’s something cinematic about the power of a train, from those first Edison films to John Ford's breakout film The Iron Horse to Hitchcock’s use of the metallic beast as a metaphor for his characters' isolation and confinement (and in the case of North By Northwest, the consumation of his characters’ sexual tension).

In Unstoppable action veteran Tony Scott finds an interesting film in a real story of a train carrying flammable diesel fuel running wild out of its depot on a crash course with a small Pennsylvania town. The accident happens when a lazy and portly train engineer (Suplee) gets out of the train to switch tracks while it's moving. Unfortunately, when the throttle level moves on its own, it accelerates the train, leaving the ol’ fatty gasping for air.

Enter Denzel Washington and Chris Pine, an old cynical veteran paired with a wet-behind-the-ears engineer. They’re off on their own journey, business as usual, but bickering about union gripes and various other working class burdens. Suddenly, on this random day both men get thrust into this adventure with a chance to save lives and reclaim their confidence and pride in their jobs.

This is disaster filmmaking 101, where the threat of an inanimate object on people’s lives serves as the chief antagonist, and the screenwriters plug into interpersonal conflict as a proxy for a non-existent human enemy. In this case it’s Kevin Dunn playing the white collar, suit-wearing lackie who wants to derail the train on purpose to avoid disaster. But Scott and company aren’t content to characterize Dunn in standard black and white terms. He’s clear to show Dunn as a former rail yard workman instead of an ignorant desk jockey. His end goal is the same as our heroes, but they have a differing opinion on which plan will work.

For our working class heroes, they desire to use their own train engine to catch up to the half-mile-long wild train, hook onto its back like a caboose and slow it down enough for it to successfully navigate past a dangerous dogleg turn.

Scott successfully cuts back and forth between Washington and Pine, the men and women relaying instructions from the dispatch centre, and a whole lot of helicopter shots, crash zooms and quick cuts of the run-amuck train zooming past the camera. We don’t get too many of these disaster pictures anymore. In the '90s we regularly got one or two every season, thus over-saturating the genre. And so, in moderation, a film like Unstoppable can successfully stimulate us.

After watching the film I just had to look up the ‘real story’. According to the news clip I found on youtube, the film could barely warrant the use of the term ‘inspired by’. There were very few, if any, lives threatened in the real story, but there were just enough for Hollywood to turn it into money making entertainment.

Friday, 24 February 2012

Hugo

Hugo (2011) dir. Martin Scorsese
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen

***

By Alan Bacchus

Yes, it's true. I'm not as enamoured with Martin Scorsese's ‘kids’ film and multiple Oscar nominee as most others. Firstly, it's not really a kids film at all. It’s a warm-hearted whimsical fantasy for sure, but it’s something more directly related to the Jean-Pierre Jeunet/Terry Gilliam/Baz Luhrmann adult magic realism.

While there's a strong emotional core to this picture, that being the reclamation of spirit of turn-of-the-century filmmaker Georges Méliès through the journey of its young hero Hugo Cabret, the film is also overloaded with visual paraphernalia, which actually feels more derivative (of said filmmakers above) than fresh or unique to Scorsese.

The opening act seems to show off the production design and special effects. Unfortunately, the frames are too busy for the film’s own good. The CGI-enhanced compositions are overloaded with wide-angle imagery, leaving everything in focus and confusing our eye. I'm also put off by the 'three-strip colour process' visual design of Robert Richardson's lighting (the same look as The Aviator), which means everything seems to have a distracting teal coloured tint.

But this is all surface gloss. The guts of the story are fascinating. However, it really doesn't kick in until the halfway mark with a brilliant mid-point turn (admirably hidden to audiences in its marketing push), which sends the film in a whole new direction. In fact, it’s essentially a two-act film, cleaved in half by the reveal of Ben Kingsley’s character as the real-life Georges Méliès.

This moment occurs when Hugo (Butterfield) and his investigative partner, Isabelle (Moretz), use the heart-shaped key to turn on the automaton robot, which sketches out a scene from A Trip to the Moon. It's a great moment connecting all the key characters in the film, including Hugo, Isabelle, Hugo's father and, of course, Georges. It plunks the film down in something real and tangible rather than the overly processed 3D retro fantasy world. This is when Hugo gets interesting. The rest of the film plays out like an hour-long third act with Hugo and Isabelle plotting to get Georges to acknowledge his place in cinema history.

I don't know if children would appreciate the significance of this switch or the real identity of Georges, the grumpy train station vendor. This is magic for adults, the Spielberg kind of magic, and the omniscient hand of God or fate guiding our characters to fulfill their dreams.

Scorsese's direction is functional but certainly not of the auteur quality we expect of him. He's a great talent, and thus he's comfortable wearing the skin of a Jeunet or Spielberg. But it's still a disguise for Marty, and it just doesn't feel like his movie. Thus, it’s not a masterpiece.

Hugo is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Thursday, 23 February 2012

Tiny Furniture

Tiny Furniture (2011) dir. Lena Dunham
Starring: Lena Dunham, Laurie Simmons, Grace Dunham, Jemima Kirk, Alex Karpovsky, David Call

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Tiny Furniture is a remarkable little quirky gem from a then 24-year-old wunderkind of sorts. This is Lena Dunham, a New Yorker who, even before turning 25, established a unique voice in cinema by satirizing the New York Art Brat scene. Tiny Furniture wasn’t even her first feature film. Before that she honed her self-referential life story into a smaller film, Creative Nonfiction, and two web series, Tight Shots (2007) and Delusional Downtown Divas (2008), as well as a number of shorts.

The themes, characters and situations of her previous work merge like those of a young Quentin Tarantino into her breakthrough film, Tiny Furniture, which famously won the SXSW Narrative Feature Film Award in 2010. This led to her soon-to-premiere Judd Apatow-produced HBO series, Girls.

Lena courageously puts a thinly disguised version of herself onto the screen as Aura, a college film school grad returning home to Manhattan to live with her mother and hopefully figure out what to do with her life. The imposing figure of her immensely successful mother, who owns an impressive studio loft and makes a living creating art from photographing ‘tiny furniture’, is a passive burden on Aura. Same with her younger sister, who isn’t out of high school but has achieved more as an artist than anything Aura has done. Add to her woes being dumped by her boyfriend and the presence of her former childhood friend, Charlotte, an over-privileged brat.

For most of the picture we see Aura moping around in unglamorous bedroom attire with no makeup and her hair unconditioned in a perpetual bed head. It’s a far cry from the meticulously coifed hipsters she hangs out with. Despite her appearance, Aura is bubbly, effervescent and optimistic on the outside. She takes a job as a hostess at a local restaurant and is sort of dating a couch-surfing fellow art brat, Jed. In fact, most of the film is conflict-free, as we follow Aura around in her post-grad malaise, which doesn’t really seem to concern her.

The shoe drops when her mother’s confrontation about Jed sparks the anger-fueled shouting match of frustration we’ve been expecting to see. In order to reconcile her angst, Aura engages in a mild sexual bender with a restaurant colleague and eventually confesses her insecurities to her mother.

Ms. Dunham would probably be the first to admit the problems of her character are tepid at best, certainly not melodramatic – an understated emotional journey. But it’s Dunham’s remarkably addictive character and performance that has us glued to the screen. There seems to be a conscious effort for Dunham to expose the most unglamorous parts of her body, often walking around the house in a long t-shirt with no pants, glorifying her pear-shaped body. Dunham’s comfort with her own body is not lost on us, as it conforms to the honesty she puts into her character. The hipster art world environment also threatens to make us all feel inferior, and yet Aura is someone we’d actually want to be friends with. She’s an unpretentious, down-to-earth woman with the same struggles of insecurity as the rest of us.

There’s also Dunham's superb eye for composition and unique mise-en-scene. She maximizes the small spaces of her mother’s loft as well as the real Manhattan cafes, bars and streets in and on which she films. As such, Tiny Furniture is stylized but real and honest – qualities that are rare for such a young filmmaker.

Tiny Furniture is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Tuesday, 21 February 2012

If a Tree Falls...

If a Tree Falls... The Story of the Earth Liberation Front (2011) dir Marshall Curry
Documentary

***½

By Alan Bacchus

I have to admit, I groaned at the thought of watching another heroic activist film. Yet, Marshall Curry's story of the Earth Liberation Front, the so-called 'eco-terrorist' group that aggressively pushed their agenda of saving the planet with hardcore violent radicalism in the late ‘90s/'00s, is a deceptive film, which, at a glance, would purport to aggrandize the organization. But as it gradually reveals a non-partisan approach, both championing the cause and revealing the ironies and fallacies of their idealism, the film exposes more fascinating complexities than most issue-driven films.

For Curry, Daniel McGowan is the face of the organization. He’s an environmental activist responsible for two acts of arson, which has him up for a life sentence in prison. But based on his middle-class appearance, he certainly doesn't fit the mold of a left-wing extremist. As Daniel awaits his trial under house arrest, the camera acts as his confession booth through which we learn about the E.L.F., including Daniel's involvement and the events that led to his arrest.

We learn of the environmental movement in general and their non-violent activities and protests, such as the WTO protests in Seattle where many others from his organization, in the name of the cause, were subject to brutal policing tactics. But when Daniel meets the men and women involved in the E.L.F., who in one swift stroke can physically erase the cause of environmental destruction, the non-violent tactics look grossly ineffective in comparison. Over the course of a few years in the early 2000s Daniel becomes involved in a number of arsons, deemed by the authorities to be domestic terrorism.

But at one point, upon witnessing the grief of the owner of a lumber company after touring the carcass of his charred building, Daniel has a change of heart and gets out of the organization. Here's where Curry admirably switches viewpoints, telling the story from the side of the authorities set on taking down Daniel and his cohorts.

It's a refreshingly pragmatic approach to a traditionally partisan subject, something that tarnished films like The Cove and The Corporation, proving there's value in showing both sides of a story. Curry effectively humanizes the investigators, the FBI and even the cops videotaped beating protestors in Seattle. The drive to find the perpetrators thus becomes as involving as the E.L.F.'s fight against corruptors of the environment.

And Daniel's downfall comes from a sad, tragic irony squeezed out of the movement – betrayed and sold out from within by the same extremists who accused corporations of selling out the earth for a buck. It not only makes for a fascinating twist in the story, but in the bigger picture it forces us all to confront and put a price on our own convictions.

The final act question posits whether Daniel should be considered a terrorist. Curry is clear with his opinion that Daniel is not, something I personally disagree with. Yet, it doesn't harm my enjoyment of the film.

If a Tree Falls... is deservedly up for an Oscar for Best Documentary. Please watch this film and challenge yourself to answer some of the questions posed to Daniel and the other participants involved.

Monday, 20 February 2012

Rampart

Rampart (2011) dir. Oen Moverman
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Robin Wright, Ice Cube, Ben Foster, Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon, Ned Beatty, Sigourney Weaver

**½

By Alan Bacchus

Dave Brown is a despicable human being, an old-school LAPD cop – the Rodney King-beating/Mark Fuhrman type known for outrageous racism, heinous corruption and all around overly aggressive, inhumane policing tactics. Under the hardboiled pen of James (LA Confidential) Ellroy and Oren (The Messenger) Moverman's concerted directorial style, Rampart becomes a character study of an anti-hero to the extreme.

While it's an admirable second film after Moverman's acclaimed and slightly precious The Messenger, it has the misfortune of being closely linked in theme and tone to Bad Lieutenant, albeit a much softer version than both Abel Ferrara's and Werner Herzog's insane films.

It's 1999 and Dave Brown is introduced as a shithead LAPD cop who's constantly being reprimanded for his bad behaviour. He's a member of the controversial 'Rampart' division known for its questionable policing tactics, and specifically for Brown, an incident involving the cold blooded killing of a serial date rapist. This is the last time we'll ever think of Brown as a heroic vigilante.

After a car accident Brown goes bonkers and beats the driver to near-death, an incident caught on camera and thus made public. As he tries to negotiate his way around that shit storm, he somehow charms and beds a hot lawyer (Robin Wright). Covert advice from a retired cop and former colleague of Brown's father results in more bad decisions, as Brown descends into hell, a snowball effect of violence and corruption he just can't get out of.

While intended not to fit into traditional forms of narrative drama, the film seems to neither commit fully to an Abel Ferrara-style Alice in Wonderland journey for his character nor the intricate noirish-style plotting we know from Ellroy's LA Confidential. These two movies fight each other, resulting in a mostly confused state for the viewer.

We're supposed to notice Woody Harrelson as a monstrous anti-hero, but everyone seems to be trying so hard to get him an Oscar nomination. We never sympathize with his character even though he seems to find continued support from his friends and family.

What never fits into the puzzle is that Dave is a charming pick-up artist who can bed women at will. He is seen picking up numerous beautiful ladies, including Robin Wright, yet he has no charm or grace – only red flags taped all over his body that say STAY AWAY!

The subplotting of Dave's two children born from two sisters (Heche and Nixon) and yet still living in the same house is an outlier that could have been its own movie. But here it’s just more unnecessary complication to confuse us.

And the film just ends as if they ran out of story to tell, or that there wasn't one in the first place. This is the kind of picture we may come to appreciate years down the road if Moverman turns into someone like a Martin Scorsese, when we can appreciate its place in some kind of iconic career filmography. But for now it's just an unfocused pale version of Bad Lieutenant.

Rampart opens this Friday in Canada from eOne Films.

Tuesday, 7 February 2012

A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas

A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas (2011) dir. Todd Strauss-Schulson
Starring: Kal Penn, John Cho, Elias Koteas, Neil Patrick Harris

***

By Alan Bacchus

We're into the third entry in this series, a time when characters are usually farmed out to cheaper actors to accommodate lower budgets and the straight-to-video market. But this series seems to be improving with each new film proving that Harold and Kumar is one of the more surprisingly venerable comic franchises.

This film justly satisfies the requirements established in the previous two films. Returning are the two buddies and former roommates that form an odd couple scenario – Harold (Cho) is the conservative one, a Korean-American family man who is at odds with his pot smoking, med school drop-out, Indo-American friend, Kumar (Penn).

The film revels in shocking us with outrageous behaviour. Drug use is, of course, front and centre, and it’s not just weed and bongs. Even cocaine is featured with fun-loving humour. There are fewer cultural jokes than usual, the kind that play into the stereotypes of Koreans and Indians as overachieving academic math and tech wizzes. And we don't really miss those jokes, as it seems the franchise has successfully 'matured' from its slight concept into a series anchored by its likeable characters and perfectly cast comic duo.

This was a 3D film in theatres, and on Blu-ray, of course, it's 2D. But we can still laugh at the self-acknowledgement of the technology and all those sticks, eggs, candy canes, cocks and other debris shamelessly shoved in our faces for an exaggerated 3D effect.

As for the 'story', Harold and Kumar's new adventure has them gallivanting around town on Christmas Eve looking for the perfect tree to replace Harold's valued family tree, which they destroyed in a fire. A couple of tag-along characters, Kumar's douche bag buddy and Harold’s ultra-conservative neighbour, add some freshness. Along the way the neighbour's baby gets doused in cocaine and spends the rest of the film on a twitchy coke high. Ukrainian gangsters also come into play, as do Harold and Kumar's respective wife and girlfriend, who provide the requisite closure to their personal journey of self-realization.

A surprisingly enjoyable raunchy comedy, the Harold and Kumar franchise continues to satisfy and provide dumb laughs through its unintentionally endearing characters.

A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas is available on Blu-ray from Warner Home Entertainment.

Monday, 6 February 2012

Restless

Restless (2011) dir. Gus Van Sant
Starring: Henry Hopper, Mia Wasikowska, Ryo Kase

**½

By Alan Bacchus

Annabelle and Enoch are a couple of social oddballs who find each other through their mutual fascination with death. In fact, they meet when Enoch crashes a funeral attended by Annie, and they later crash other people's funerals just for fun.

Their burgeoning relationship takes us from one whimsical romantic scene to the next, from etching chalk outlines of themselves on the pavement to attending a Halloween party dressed as a Japanese pilot and Geisha girl. Enoch also has an imaginary friend, Hiroshi, who is a downed kamikaze pilot from WWII. Annabelle, in addition to working with cancer-stricken children, reveals that she also has cancer and has three months to live. Yes, the theme here is death, which provides the only connective tissue between these overly idiosyncratic story elements.

But this is a Gus Van Sant film, and he rarely plays it safe, constantly testing himself and the audience and never resting on his laurels. Restless falls between his traditional melodramas, such as Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester, and his aesthetically adventurous efforts like Paranoid Park, Last Days and Gerry.

While overly sappy in tone, including the oh-so-tender musical choices, Restless is also rigorously bizarre. Even the lead character's name, Enoch, is ridiculous, and the same goes for the anachronistic costumes and the staid tone in which he speaks with his kamikaze best friend. Annie also inexplicably draws water birds, writes plays about her own death and, like Enoch, dresses in impossibly quirky outfits fresh out of the Nouvelle Vague.

The best part of the release is the Blu-ray special features, which contain a completely silent version of the same film. During production, after every shot, Van Sant would do a silent take with the actors using their expressions to convey the drama of the scene without dialogue, or in post-production he would use dialogue insert cards like in old fashioned silent cinema (or The Artist). The final result isn't really watchable, but it's an innovative experiment that speaks to Van Sant's creativity and desire to show us something we've never seen before - brownie points and an extra half-star for that.

Restless is available on Blu-ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Sunday, 29 January 2012

Drive

Drive (2011) dir. Nicholas Winding Refn
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks

***½

By Alan Bacchus

There should be a caveat at the beginning of this film, or maybe on the poster or the trailer, that says, "This is NOT a car chase movie." Instead, it’s an oddball mix of neo-noir plotting and retro pop '80s aesthetic forming a bizarre but unique and invigorating genre film.

I suspect this project started with a rather rudimentary crime script featuring a stunt car driver who moonlights as a getaway man in Los Angeles and becomes a protector of sorts to his motherly but attractive neighbour and her young child. But under the stylized lensing of hip Danish director, Nicholas Winding Refn (Bronson, The Pusher Trilogy), it becomes a bold statement much greater than what was on the page.

The opening sequence is thrilling. It's a quiet but suspenseful heist, which introduces us to the unnamed getaway driver (Gosling), who goes about his job with exacting precision and professionalism. After that we get a retro-style credit sequence featuring hot pink script-like font (Forte-like for font nerds), like something fresh out of Miami Vice, To Live and Die in LA or Something Wild. This oddball duality colours the entire film.

After introducing the neighbour, the driver’s mentor and a gang of nefarious criminals that surrounds them, the criminal plotting gets ratcheted up when the neighbour’s husband, freshly released from prison, moves back in. The driver, who now sees himself as protector for the young gal’s son, teams up with the husband to complete ‘one last job’ in order to repay an outstanding debt. Of course, things don’t go as planned and the driver finds himself on the run and targeted for death.

Refn shifts us between these familiar noir story beats and a self-consciously syrupy love story punctuated by synthesized retro-cheese love ballads. The mix of blood curdling violence and this overly sweet tenderness generates the same feelings as David Lynch’s emotional extremes in Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, and even the Hitchcockian thrillers of Brian De Palma.

Drive aspires to achieve the same results by turning familiar melodrama into something unfamiliar and fresh. These aesthetic choices might turn off a lot of viewers, especially those expecting a stone cold Walter Hill, but for a fan of stylish experimentation Drive burns some serious rubber.

And once again, thank you Cliff Martinez for another delicious electronic score, just like his work on Contagion, and for helping to subvert all those forgettable copycat music scores heard in most other action films. Regretfully, the Academy not only snubbed Gosling and Refn, but even worse, they ignored Cliff Martinez's work in a category that, considering John Williams' two nominations this year, is lacking in credibility.

Drive is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Alliance Films in Canada

Subscribe to: Comments ( Atom )