Blue Ruin (2013)

Blue Ruin (2013)

Broken and homeless, Dwight Evans (Macon Blair) spends his life eating out of bins and sleeping in his car. Upon discovering that Wade Cleland, the man responsible for his parents murder is to be released from jail, he sets out for revenge, killing Wade and setting into motion a series of events that can only lead to one logical conclusion.

Unflinching and achingly brutal, Blue Ruin is an incredibly sparse piece of film making, almost silent for much of the runtime, save for the background noises and an impressively crisp ambient score. Information on Dwights predicament and motives are slowly drip fed, until we realise the seriousness of his intentions, and furthermore, the pain that will surely be coming his way.

The revenge thriller is a well worn genre, and for the most part Blue Ruin sticks to a blue print that works, while injecting an indie freshness by focussing on the human story, the morality of such a venture and the effect it has on not just the killer, but his loved ones and even those he is seeking to destroy.

We follow Dwight through literally every scene, seeing everything through his eyes, feeling everything he feels. Macon Blair is mesmerising in the role, giving Dwight a single minded drive that in the hands of another actor could so easily be play as hammy and overly emotional. Turning from beach living Stig of the Dump to mild-looking yet brutal killer in the blink of an eye, he manages to makes us empathise with him, despite every questionable deed.

Jeremy Saulnier directs and photographs the film with an efficiency and naturalism that one wouldn't naturally associate with such a brutal thriller, providing calm and beautiful scenic imagery to directly counter the genuinely nervy tension and agonising violence that punctuates the rest of the action. Much like the lead character, the film itself calmly and methodically works its way to the logical conclusion, dragging us by the hand. It's compelling yet also jarringly distancing.

The supporting cast are mostly fine in their roles playing second fiddle to Blair, particularly Amy Hargreaves as his sister, lending the film a humanity and warmth where otherwise it could have come off as overly mechanical and soulless. Devin Ratray also provides some humour as a childhood friend with an unexpected armoury, although it's arguable that his scenes veer too sharply away into humour and detract from the naturalism cultivated so carefully elsewhere in the film.

So too, the denouement lacks the punch it so sorely deserves given how sharp the preceding journey was, with the methodical narrative collapsing and losing momentum as Dwight holes himself up for the final showdown.

Nonetheless, Blue Ruin is an immensely impressive thriller for those with the nerve to stick it out, and can certainly show its bigger budget siblings a thing or two about how to craft a engrossing narrative based around one man, a car and his desire for revenge.

* * * *

~This review was originally written for York Nouse~

Review: Locke (2014)

Locke (2014)

A construction worker leaves his job as a site foreman on a skyscraper build and drives to London. He leaves behind everything he holds dear, the reasons for which unfold over the course of several phone calls with friends, family and colleagues.

Locke is a daring conceit, a story propelled forward purely by the power of the spoken word, contained within in a tight theatrical box and filmed in almost real time, the film doesn't immediately lend itself to cinema. Yet, what initially seems like it could be a boring, repetitive premise lends itself a thoughtful, ruminative character study, beautifully shot and deeply affecting throughout.

Kudos, particularly must go to director Steven Knight and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos, who strive to inject the film with dynamism one wouldn't immediately expect from such limiting set-up. We are forced to focus on Locke's words, the neat hypnotic camera work dousing the screen in a myriad of colours, the hazy blur of the passing world goes almost unnoticed, enabling us to visualise the drama unfolding off screen. It's abstract yet strangely beautiful.

And indeed, for it's limited premise, Locke never feels claustrophobic, Tom Hardy draws you in with his sharp calm performance, inviting empathy and even sympathy in spite of his actions. It's a brave performance for an actor mostly known for such loud, brash characters, and yet it works. So too, the voices on the other end of the line are pitched perfectly. Heard but never seen, each one carefully drip feeding the requisite drama, humour and tension with limited means.

The script, too is well crafted, focussing on the minutiae, creating a kitchen sink drama that delivers big (admittedly obvious) metaphors about collapsing buildings and cracks in concrete. For the most part it's very successful, although some of the imaginary chats with his deceased father are jarring and don't quite ring true and distract from the main thrust of the narrative. It also may have benefited from some quieter moments, with Hardy and his co-stars talking fairly constantly for the entire 90 minutes. For a film about one man alone in a car, there isn't much breathing space, pauses for thought are few and far between. And although this serves to ramp up the tension, especially towards the end, it also makes the film seem overly busy and doesn't afford the viewer a great deal of time for things to sink in.

Nonetheless, the film is held together by a towering performance from Tom Hardy as a man who can barely keep himself together, with subtle physical tics and assured vocal delivery demonstrating a fragile psyche in mid breakdown. Together with a great supporting cast and hypnotic photography, Locke comes together as a very compelling little film indeed.

* * * *

~This review was originally written for York Nouse~

Review: Noah (2014)

Noah (2014)

Whether you're religious or otherwise, the story of Noah is a pretty much ubiquitous bedtime classic, one of those perennial tales that everyone remembers from their youth; a key part of western culture and cornerstone of Abrahamic religion, featuring as it does in both the Quran and the Judeo-Christian book of Genesis. 

Bearing that in mind, it would take a person of mighty cojones indeed to not only consider adapting it for the screen, but to also dare to modify the tale. Step in Darren Aronofsky, an auteur and defiantly independent film maker who has assiduously developed the film over the best part of a decade and produced what must be the most downright bonkers, wilfully bizarre studio blockbuster in years.

The story itself adheres fairly closely to the old familiar, albeit with with some fairly mighty embellishments:

Humanity, cast out of paradise for eating the forbidden fruit, have forged a path of self destruction and selfishness. Noah (Russell Crowe), the last good man on the planet lives a quiet, righteous life away from the rest, foraging berries and generally living in peace with the world. One day he receives a message from “The Creator”, who is vexed with mankinds lack of respect and plans to dispose of them all with an almighty flood, tasking Noah with the building of an arc that will save all the animals (two of each), while leaving the other humans to die. These others, led by angry cockney king Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone), are understandbly miffed about the whole thing and do their best to inhibit Noahs arcly enterprise.

Darren Aronofsky has always been a maverick film maker with a history of thoughtful, deeply individual films: if anyone was to make a decent go of making this it would be him. Indeed, even with such a massive blockbuster canvas to work with, Aronofsky's Noah is little different to his other films in its bold, uncompromising, and gruelling vision; full of compelling, often divisive story telling and beautiful visuals, as well as the unerring potential to divide an audience in two. However, unlike his other films it is also the closest he has come to making a bad film.

Based on his own graphic novel, the film is laden with a frankly shonky script that, although hitting the key narrative beats and adding some neat flourishes along the way, never really offers any of the characters, Noah aside, any form of development, nor is there any compelling reasoning or motivation for the main characters actions. It's also fairly hard to determine a genuine focus behind the film thanks to choppy edit, robbing it of its clearly intended meditative core. The film is stuffed with varying degrees of social commentary and moral sermonising on the ills of modern society that never come to come to any fruitful conclusion either way. It's all fairly murky.

As mentioned, the story deviates from the source in some key ways. Noah is assisted by giant walking, talking rock beasts, fallen angels called The Watchers who come across as the bastard child of Optmus Prime and the Ents from The Lord of the Rings, who are admittedly fairly entertaining but seem to belong in a different film entirely. So too, a massive sweeping battle, deftly put together and possessed of a gritty realism evokes something from Peter Jacksons Rings saga more than anything else and just doesn't seem to make sense within the confined narrative of the story.

That being said, the film is often so dazzling to look at that these shortcomings can sometimes be ignored. The beautiful Icelandic scenery is shot with a loving eye, the cast frequently silhouetted against beautiful lingering sunsets. So too, a stunning two minute sequence telling the creation story from big bang to the ascent of man is a thing to behold, and will no doubt rile the religious purists.

However, for every beautifully crafted image there's another, jarring over the top CGI shot of poorly animated snakes and elephants walking through a pixel forest to jolt you out of your seat and remind you that what's on screen just doesn't seem to want to cohere into something great. Likewise, the post apocalyptic costume design is often laughable, screaming Benetton advert rather than a biblical epic.

The cast are varying degrees of fine, Russell Crow in particular shining as the gruff loner with some very difficult lines and fairly dark character developments late on, while Jennifer Connelly humanises the film and lends an empathetic core, no mean feat given that she has hardly anything interesting to say or, for that matter, any character development whatsoever.

Anthony Hopkins is the highlight of the film, delivering his four or five lines with a twinkle in his eye as the strangely magical and berry obsessed Methuselah, who doesn't fit in with anything else going on around him.

Going down the ladder, Logan Lerman and Douglas Booth are both completely boring background fluff as the sons Ham and Shem, while Emma Watson isn't given much else to do apart from cry, which she does fairly well. Bottom of the heap though is surely Ray Winstone, who is woefully miscast as a naff king who spends the entire film shouting and forging swords in the rain, or lending unintentional comedy from sitting in a darkened corner and quietly eating what I assume are dinosaurs and unicorns.

Despite all this though, Noah isn't a complete failure, and you can't deny Aronofsky's lofty aims and ambitions even if his final product falls way short of the intended mark.

Noah is a daring and interesting film, wilfully bizarre and unrelentingly annoying, yet strangely compelling and often visually sumptuous.

Not quite a biblical catastrophe then, just a disappointing misfire.

2/5

Thomas Shutt

Review: The Double (2014)

The Double (2014)

In a bleak and distorted alternate reality, isolated and lonely office clerk Simon (Jesse Eisenberg) encounters James (Eisenberg again), the exact double of himself but with polar opposite characteristics. At first the two become friends, but as the confident and aggressive doppelgänger proceeds to take over all aspects of his life a bitter antagonism builds and Simon begins to unravel.

Based on a 19^th century novella by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Richard Ayoade's “The Double” takes the plot and primary themes of the source story and melds them together with off kilter surrealism to create a darkly comic, Kafkaesque nightmare.

Much has been said of the films influences; it's not hard to see shades of Terry Gilliam's seminal Brazil in the film or, indeed, hints of Wes Anderson and the Coen brothers; but too closely comparing Ayoade's work with his antecedents would be to do a major disservice to what he has created here.

Meticulously crafted from top to bottom, the sparse script (co-written by the director and Avi Korine) makes for a deliberately claustrophobic, confined film. Most of the scenes take place in only one or two scant but well designed sets, the small cast drift from event to event like puppets; actions and sounds repeated over again in a dance of despair and inevitability.

It's a stark, bold vision, both artistically and tonally; Ayoade makes no concessions for the popular audience. The beautifully lit photography by Erik Wilson works alongside the angular, dense sound design ramping up the tension, while a delightfully noirish score score by Andrew Hewitt cuts throughout like nails to a chalkboard.

The limited cast each do fine work with tricky roles, Eisenberg particularly shining in his duel capacity as protagonist and antagonist. While in the past he has come across as a bit too glib or self knowing, here Ayoade uses these traits as advantages, drawing out a performance that fully exploits the actors quirks. Mia Wasikowska too is wonderful as the sweetly melancholic Hannah, co-worker and love interest caught between Eisenberg's polar opposites.

Likewise, Ayoade has wisely filled out his remaining cast with fine comic actors, each providing otherwise thinly drawn characters with a degree of depth and humour. Cameos from Chris Morris and Paddy Considine shine in particular as a hilarious highlights. Indeed, dark as it is, The Double is a very funny film, full of surreal asides and well judged physical humour.

The film is not without a few issues, however. The momentum so meticulously established in the first half wanes in a final act that comes across as rushed, muddling a finale that ends up landing with more of a timid thud than the expected explosion. So too, a sub-plot involving Simon's mother doesn't quite hit home, offering a few funny moments at the expense of diluting the impact of the core story.

These quibbles are minor, though, given how elegant and well crafted the majority of the film is, and it'd be a hard personality indeed who could walk away from the film without something to think about. Ayoade, along with his cast and crew have built a strong individual piece of cinema that stands proudly separate from anything on offer in mainstream cinema at the moment, and for that they should be applauded.

4/5

Review originally written for York Vision

Review: Her (2013)

Review: Her (2013)

The set up: Los Angeles, in the not too distant future, and preposterously named writer Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) has recently split from the love of his life. Navel gazing and stuck in a rut he buys a shiny new operating system, an artificially intelligent entity designed to give his life a spring clean and boost his happiness. Constantly linked to him via smartphone and earpiece, the new OS, named Samantha (silkily voiced by Scarlett Johansson) gives him more than he expected, and inevitably Theodore falls in love.

“Man creates machine, man falls in love with machine” is not a new concept by any stretch; Isaac Asimov and Philip K Dick were touching on these themes nearly half a century ago, but in this package as a science fiction romantic comedy drama, we are offered a new, interesting and often beautiful take.
We are presented with the burgeoning relationship as something organic and normal, it could almost be a standard "boy meets girl" love story were it not for the fact that one half of the couple resides in a computer. Indeed, Her wears its romantic comedy influences on its sleeve, not least in its debt to existential 70’s Woody Allen (albeit with a pinch of Minority Reports glossy future sheen). Her is a film that fuses many fairly common elements together in an distinctly uncommon and fresh package.

Much like the best sci fi, it works as a mirror of the present day, reflecting contemporary anxieties and cultural quirks: The film is littered with people vacantly walking around with earphones in, staring at their phones, or talking via hands free thingamy; Theodore sits alone on the couch interacting with a game rather than with other people. In his job, he writes love letters for people who either can't be bothered to write them themselves.

And yet despite the blunt, unflattering treatise on modern ills, and the almost standard rom-com tropes, what we ultimately end up with is a genuinely sweet natured film with honest heart felt emotion. It's a tough balancing act, but writer/director Spike Jonze has produced perhaps his sharpest film yet.
The (deservedly) Oscar nominated screenplay guides his star through a gamut of emotional turmoil. Joaquin Phoenix is at the top of his game here, bringing humor and innocence to a character that in other hands could easily come off as distant and moody. Phoenix is in nearly every scene in the film, with much of that in tight close up, and every emotional tick, every minute thought is delivered with precision and authenticity. It's a great performance, and a surprise to me that he hasn't been nominated for the big awards, since Her is just as much dependent on his performance as it is on Jonze's creativity.

Scarlett Johansson adds warmth and, strangely, humanity to the film, drawing us in and making us believe, just as Twombly does, that there's genuine emotion in this machine. Amy Adams is also invaluable, if underused, as a good natured best friend figure and the only real other person who it's easy to connect with.
Visually, too, the film is wonderfully judged, the cinematography striking yet warm, framing of each shot inextricably linked to Theodores frame of mind at any given time. The  beautiful final shot is an image I'd be happy to have on my wall. Likewise, the music, by Arcade Fire's William Buttler is less a traditional orchestral score, more an ambient soundscape punctuated by brief flickers of piano, dripping with melancholy and reinforcing rather than hammering home the emotion.

Of course, it is possible to fault. At 126 minutes it runs a tad long and as mentioned; Amy Adams gets short changed in terms of screen time. But these few flaws aside, what we have here is a beautiful and thoughtful film, an observation on loneliness, isolation and the how modern technological innovations may not be the best way to remedy these woes. While in lesser hands this could have been a drab lecture, Jonze, together with his impeccable cast and technical crew, has managed to create a modern classic.

5/5


~Review originally written for York Vision~

Review: Robocop (2014)

Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman ) is a cop, a bloody good cop at that, but unfortunately he gets exploded and what’s left of him encased in metal. Lo, he becomes Robocop: a cybernetic force of good who kicks ass and eats bad guys for breakfast.

Therein lies the basic premise of both the original and new Robocop, and in the case of Paul Verhoevens schlocky 80’s classic, a razor sharp rumination on themes as varied as political corruption, authoritarianism and human nature; chock full of satire, wonderfully gory action and, most importantly, oodles of fun.

Although this new reimagining does touch base with all the above, it never quite comes close to matching it in any meaningful way, let alone surpassing it. But, after a spree of awful and pointless remakes recently (Total Recall, anyone?), Robocop is actually, when all is said and done, not bad at all.

Much like the central character himself, Robocop (2014) is a well put together, glossy bit of kit; but ultimately you have to question how much free will director José Padilha actually had in its genesis, and how much of its DNA was imposed by the suited bods in the office upstairs.

Narratively it’s smart and snappy and you can’t deny that much thought has clearly gone into the story, which deviates from the original in some new and interesting ways. Likewise, it looks great, with top level effects and shiny cinematography making it consistently great to watch. However tonally it veers wildly and that’s where the main problems lay.

Specifically, it often seems like the film-makers couldn't decide what they wanted the film to be, so they just crammed all the ideas in there for good measure: one minute it’s soft and mournful, next it's all whizz bang spectacle, then a bit of ham handed political satire for luck. Although it’s hard to fault the intent, the sometimes sharp philosophical musings just don’t sit well with the loud, forgettable action and are often undermined by it. Likewise, the strange decision to use the original theme music is very distracting and feels like an attempt to remind us of the original, rather than give the new film something of its own.

That being said, Padilha has assembled a great cast here and they all make a decent effort with the material they're given. A particular tip of the hat must go to Michael Keaton as a dodgy CEO with the lions share of the best lines, and his partner as most valuable player, Gary Oldman who shares most of the screen time with Keaton as a good-egg Doctor. Both light up the screen, and it's hard to imagine the film would be half as watchable without their efforts. Likewise, Samuel L Jackson is a pleasure in his small role hamming it up as rush Limbaugh-like political commentator.

Elsewhere, though the remaining cast don't really fair quite as well, especially poor Joel Kinnaman as the titular tin man who just isn't given anything meaningful to do aside from mumble and shoot.

So it's a fairly entertaining movie then, mostly elevated by some good performances and slick gloss, but it's hard to escape the feeling that it could have been so much more if only they'd just let it be a little more... human.

3/5

~This review was originally written for York Vision~

Review: 12 Years A Slave (2014)

12 Years a Slave (2014)  

The set up is simple: It is Pre-Civil War United States and Solomon Northup (Chiwetelu Ejiofor), a free man from New York, is abducted, stripped of his identity and sold into a life of slavery in the south. Over the following decade the renamed "Platt" first becomes the property of Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), before being sold down the river to Epps (Michael Fassbender), an unhinged psychopath who's obsession with slave girl Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o) edges him into regular fits of cruel, violent rage.

Based on the memoirs of Northup himself, 12 Years a Slave treads similar thematic ground to last years Django Unchained. But where Tarantino doused his film in an ostentatious, gleeful revisionist sheen, McQueen provides nothing of the sort. His is a sober, often painful study that has its basis in cold punishing fact.

As is to be expected from a Turner prize winning artist, every image is precise and sharp, there is no flab or excess here. Stunningly photographed, prolonged indelible images that infiltrate the mind and induce unease. Central of which is a extended shot of Northup, strung up from a tree as punishment, his feet barely reaching the ground, life continuing around him in ignorance. It's deliberately stark, visceral and uncomfortable viewing. You want it to stop, but of course it doesn't.

The film is full of these unflinching, devastating moments, most of which are provided by the deranged Epps, who delivers an unrelenting stream of degrading, painful punishments to his slaves.
Most notable is a scene in which the master whips field girl and object of his obsession, Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o, in an impressive understated performance), then forces Solomon himself to provide the torture. It’s unpleasant, sickening and all the worse because it's true. These things happened, and they happened regularly.

McQueen counterbalances these frequent abhorrent occurrences with punctuations of elegance, shots of the deep south in its serene beauty, the flickering embers of a dying fire, moments of emotional release for Northup.

The cast is uniformly excellent, with much deserved praise being heaped on Ejiofer. His natural performance delivering a humanity and empathy, a surrogate for the audience, a way in to this horrific situation. Descending through the emotional spectrum, his often silent performance relies on a mastery of the physical, minute changes in his face or stance telling a story without the need for words. Michael Fassbender is also impressive, delivering a performance of pure fire and brimstone, terrifying and repugnant. Both are awards worthy.

However, the film isn't entirely perfect. Narratively speaking, it never truly gives the impression that Northup has been living this misery for many years. While the pace is often broken by a disjointed structure as Northup is dragged from owner to owner and back again. It's also possible to gripe that the film tells the story of the man who survived, who ultimately did get his happy ending where countless millions did not. This film shows us a journey into (and out of) slavery, allowing us to leave at the end with him.

But of course, these are all  inherent in the source material, and in making a film for the masses Mcqueen has to consent to certain stylistic constraints. And, in the end films about American Slavery are so vanishingly rare, especially as blunt and real as this, it's hard to find flaws in the intent.

Ultimately, 12 years a slave is an overwhelmingly accomplished film, weighty and powerful. A story of the triumph of courage through an unthinkable hell, a real life pain and trauma for millions, told in a beautiful often brutal and uncompromising fashion, and yet it comes through the other side with no shortage of grace and beauty. A elegant, emotional film.


5/5


Thom Shutt


*This review was originally written for York Vision*